Saying it all, briefly

In newspapers, "middles" provide a relief of sorts from the incessantly somber intellectual analytical articles that make things insufferably serious for most of us who would like to have a glimpse of the lighter side of life. Worse, most of the stuff is seldom less than thousand words long and looks longer to the unsuspecting, uninitiated reader who, perchance, happens to go through it. So, the clever op-ed editors use middles in the same manner as Bollywood movies of yore had used comic interludes to keep the viewers interested in the teary saga of tragedy queens and kings.

Holypol; Rajbir Deswal
DK’s Book For All
Pp xxii+235. Rs 195

The fact that these are strategically placed between the main opinion article and the Letters to the Editor column, with edits on the left, tells you something about the importance of middles in the popularity stakes. Therefore, a middle writer has to be adept at conveying his thoughts in a few words in the most attractive manner. No wonder, writing middles is considered an art that requires a certain attitude: one has to be an expert in brevity. Of course, brevity could be the Shakespearean "soul of wit" or the less demanding but equally alluring—what the late US writer Dorothy Parker had described as—"soul of lingerie".

Full report here Tribune