Open your eyes

The copyright law is to be amended but this won’t help the disabled. V. Kumara Swamy reports

Yogender Kumar likes to “listen” to books. For the visually challenged postgraduate student of Delhi University, this is a daily habit. “There were very few books in Braille — at least not the ones I wanted to read,” he says, talking about his school and college days. Then he got to know about audio books — books that could be heard on a tape, a CD or on the Internet. That’s how he explored the works of his favourite author, Munshi Premchand.

Kumar and his friends have found another way to listen to their favourite books as well as college notes. “We simply ask our non-blind friends to record them for us. In some cases electronically available books are converted into audio formats,” he says.

But an amendment (Copyright Amendment Bill, 2010) to the Copyright Act, 1957, may put an end to Kumar and his friends’ innovative ways of seeking knowledge.

Full report here Telegraph

Selling tea, Indian writer keeps passion alive

Brewing steaming cup of tea by roadside is what he does for earning his livelihood. But writing books is what he lives for. The 55-year old Laxman Rao is a unique story in himself.

A graduate from Delhi University, he rides to his shop everyday on a bicycle carrying his books in one bag and a saucepan, tealeaves, sugar, milk and plastic cups in another.

Everyday, one p.m. is when he reaches Digambar road in the heart of Delhi where some of India's major English newspaper houses are located, and sets up his shop by the road under the canopy of an old banyan tree.

The stall comprises a stove, a stone slate to sit on and a plastic sheet to spread his book titles on. For his customers, he would quickly make a sitting bench by placing a wooden plank on two bricks each on either ends.

Full report here Xinhua