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The proofs of the booklet have arrived; and it is a pain in the neck to see your carefully crafted prose garbled and mauled. Still, it is a thousand times better than what it was 50 years ago when there was no Word or its Processor.
The 'compositor' was a much-harassed chap. He had no clue of what the various words he was compositing meant...it was all Jabberwocky to him since he knew neither Physics nor Math nor Biology but has to do his job blind.
He was the epitome of what are now called: Technocrats...they are neither technos nor aristocrats...they were merely bureaucrats with a 'spin'. The fight between our IAS babus and them was hilarious. Like between cats and dogs.
It was Rajiv Gandhi who first brought in geeks like Sam Pitroda (Read 'Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda') and pitted them against our babus...
My IAS B-i-L did his MA (Economics) before joining the Services. His second posting was as the Director of Stationary & Printing of Tamil Nadu...he oversaw the Govt Press whose job was primarily to print Govt Gazettes and sundry forms like the Income Tax Form (it ran into 28 pages then).
His next posting was as a District Magistrate & Collector of Dharmapuri.
It was as if RKN was asked to take Drill Classes.
While he was at Dharmapuri I visited him for three days. One day he took me to Krishnagiri where his Sub-Collector (a Punjabi lad) was posted. After due introductions, I came to know that the young chap did his MA (Math) and got into IAS. He told me secretly that he was thinking of quitting IAS and going for his Ph D in Math.
Then a large number of Physics guys joined the IAS...they took to the Services as ducks take to ponds...and never resigned for the sake of Physics...that says much about their ability to survive...
Coming back to those good old days of manual composition, whenever we submitted our manuscripts to a foreign journal, especially European, we first used to get 'galley' proofs (running without pagination) and after corrections, 'page proofs' (looking just like they would appear in the journal); and finally 50 free reprints.
Then on, the galley proofs disappeared as too expensive..
And then the 'free' reprints...
And then came online submission...
And then the Blogspot...
=====================================================================
The proofs of the booklet have arrived; and it is a pain in the neck to see your carefully crafted prose garbled and mauled. Still, it is a thousand times better than what it was 50 years ago when there was no Word or its Processor.
The 'compositor' was a much-harassed chap. He had no clue of what the various words he was compositing meant...it was all Jabberwocky to him since he knew neither Physics nor Math nor Biology but has to do his job blind.
He was the epitome of what are now called: Technocrats...they are neither technos nor aristocrats...they were merely bureaucrats with a 'spin'. The fight between our IAS babus and them was hilarious. Like between cats and dogs.
It was Rajiv Gandhi who first brought in geeks like Sam Pitroda (Read 'Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda') and pitted them against our babus...
My IAS B-i-L did his MA (Economics) before joining the Services. His second posting was as the Director of Stationary & Printing of Tamil Nadu...he oversaw the Govt Press whose job was primarily to print Govt Gazettes and sundry forms like the Income Tax Form (it ran into 28 pages then).
His next posting was as a District Magistrate & Collector of Dharmapuri.
It was as if RKN was asked to take Drill Classes.
While he was at Dharmapuri I visited him for three days. One day he took me to Krishnagiri where his Sub-Collector (a Punjabi lad) was posted. After due introductions, I came to know that the young chap did his MA (Math) and got into IAS. He told me secretly that he was thinking of quitting IAS and going for his Ph D in Math.
Then a large number of Physics guys joined the IAS...they took to the Services as ducks take to ponds...and never resigned for the sake of Physics...that says much about their ability to survive...
Coming back to those good old days of manual composition, whenever we submitted our manuscripts to a foreign journal, especially European, we first used to get 'galley' proofs (running without pagination) and after corrections, 'page proofs' (looking just like they would appear in the journal); and finally 50 free reprints.
Then on, the galley proofs disappeared as too expensive..
And then the 'free' reprints...
And then came online submission...
And then the Blogspot...
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