Caravan. Noun. a vehicle equipped for living in, typically towed by a car and used for holidays. OR a group of people, especially traders or pilgrims, travelling together across a desert in Asia or North Africa.
What does either of those two meanings have to do with a "Journal of Politics and Culture" one might ask?
Good question. Understanding that is part one of what it takes to be a Caravan Cover Story (CCS) Writer. The allure of the unanswer-ed/able question. Ask a question that floats in the Cosmic Universe of soft-headedness and distracts the reader momentarily from wanting to scratch that wart between his balls.
Anyhow, you too can be a successful CSS writer by following the 10 easy steps below and see your name at the end of an article followed by an italicized eulogy -
[You have skipped the article to see if this is in fact Chetan Bhagat, only to be disappointed/shocked]
"CSS Writer : Has been facing the glass ceiling in his own publishing firm for the past 10 years and has now decided to pen an extremely long article for Caravan, which due to reasons unknown his own firm chose not to print.
Step 1: Take a super zoomed in photo with your friend's SLR, preferably with the protagonist not looking at you but sideways or into the distance (Sunset?!), especially prefer low angle shots.
Step 2: Start off with an incident that seems perfectly normal like meeting people for lunch but make the items eaten sound exotic, change chicken to chicken a la onionesque, dal to lentil soup, roti to naan bread. Make yourself and the protagonist sound like men of taste. The reader now feels honored to be sharing part of your tasteful existence.
Step 3: Make a few impossible to verify claims at the outset of the article, like Manoj is the fastest atheist rickshaw puller in the town of Muradabad. Italicize Muradabad. Also add conditioners like arguably, maybe and supposedly to snatch away any possibility of a factual debate.
Step 4: Make historical references to incidents that happened a long time before the median reader's age. These might have nothing to do with the CCS but are good nevertheless. Who doesn't like a useless tidbit of History.
Step 5: Make it long. Very long.
Step 6: Use a long list of characters in each article. Use names interchangeably. Call Manoj by his first name and last name in different sentences. Confuse the reader, make him feel he is too dumb to understand the article. Make him concede defeat and share the article on facebook before he can read all of it.
Step 7: Go back to the protagonists childhood, discuss how his friends from school remember him (which of course is unbiased, because, hey!, who is jealous of a friend Caravan is doing is a cover story on).
Step 8: Throw in some lines that appeal to the by now beaten out brain pulp of the reader, like, Manoj thought the sky was bluer but he was happy. That night he called himself the Blue King.
Step 9: End with a vague statement that means nothing, is open ended and makes the reader wonder (but in one particular direction) so he thinks he arrived at the conclusion himself but surprisingly so did everyone else.
Step 10: Manoj now knew the reason the large hadron collider was not built in Wasseypur. Sorry Wasseypur.
What does either of those two meanings have to do with a "Journal of Politics and Culture" one might ask?
Good question. Understanding that is part one of what it takes to be a Caravan Cover Story (CCS) Writer. The allure of the unanswer-ed/able question. Ask a question that floats in the Cosmic Universe of soft-headedness and distracts the reader momentarily from wanting to scratch that wart between his balls.
Anyhow, you too can be a successful CSS writer by following the 10 easy steps below and see your name at the end of an article followed by an italicized eulogy -
[You have skipped the article to see if this is in fact Chetan Bhagat, only to be disappointed/shocked]
"CSS Writer : Has been facing the glass ceiling in his own publishing firm for the past 10 years and has now decided to pen an extremely long article for Caravan, which due to reasons unknown his own firm chose not to print.
Step 1: Take a super zoomed in photo with your friend's SLR, preferably with the protagonist not looking at you but sideways or into the distance (Sunset?!), especially prefer low angle shots.
Step 2: Start off with an incident that seems perfectly normal like meeting people for lunch but make the items eaten sound exotic, change chicken to chicken a la onionesque, dal to lentil soup, roti to naan bread. Make yourself and the protagonist sound like men of taste. The reader now feels honored to be sharing part of your tasteful existence.
Step 3: Make a few impossible to verify claims at the outset of the article, like Manoj is the fastest atheist rickshaw puller in the town of Muradabad. Italicize Muradabad. Also add conditioners like arguably, maybe and supposedly to snatch away any possibility of a factual debate.
Step 4: Make historical references to incidents that happened a long time before the median reader's age. These might have nothing to do with the CCS but are good nevertheless. Who doesn't like a useless tidbit of History.
Step 5: Make it long. Very long.
Step 6: Use a long list of characters in each article. Use names interchangeably. Call Manoj by his first name and last name in different sentences. Confuse the reader, make him feel he is too dumb to understand the article. Make him concede defeat and share the article on facebook before he can read all of it.
Step 7: Go back to the protagonists childhood, discuss how his friends from school remember him (which of course is unbiased, because, hey!, who is jealous of a friend Caravan is doing is a cover story on).
Step 8: Throw in some lines that appeal to the by now beaten out brain pulp of the reader, like, Manoj thought the sky was bluer but he was happy. That night he called himself the Blue King.
Step 9: End with a vague statement that means nothing, is open ended and makes the reader wonder (but in one particular direction) so he thinks he arrived at the conclusion himself but surprisingly so did everyone else.
Step 10: Manoj now knew the reason the large hadron collider was not built in Wasseypur. Sorry Wasseypur.
