Ask any publisher and they will tell you that people do not buy poetry. I have never understood why it does not make commercial sense to buy poetry. When I look at my bookshelf the number of poetry I have is abysmally small as compared to works of fiction. Poetry is hard to appreciate if you do not have the same sensitivity about the subject of the poem as the poet. If that is not hard enough, it gets harder when someone translates the poems that someone else has written. UNLESS the one translating the book is Gulzar.

Mera saaya jab mujhse aage nikla

Mujhe maloom thha suraj ko peechhe

ChHor aayi hoon

मेरा साया जब मुझसे आगे निकला
मुझे मालूम था सूरज को पीछे
छोड़ आई हूँ

When my shadow

Overtook me

I knew

I had crossed the sun

Sukrita Paul Kumar‘s poems have been translated into the Urdu laced Hindi that is typical of Gulzar.

There is a constant

sound of footsteps

From behind

Looking back will

demolish all hope

सुनाई देती है पीछे पीछे
किसी के क़दमों की चाप पैहम
जो मुड़के देखूं …
उम्मीद भी कट जाएगी |

Gulzar

I tried reading some of the poems in English and then read the translation in the mirror page. And then read a few of the poems in Hindi to savor the experience of mentally translating the poem back to English to see how much of the poem matched the printed translation. And then I read all the poems in English.At one stage I lost track of which one was the originally written poem and which one was the translation.

Sukrita brings in the influences of her Punjabi family, of her childhood in Africa, growing up in Aurangabad and the influences of Delhi where she currently lives. She is an honorary fellow of the prestigious International Writing Program, University of Iowa. She knows the grammar and knows what makes for the soul of a poem. See this is what makes her poems resonate with the reader. The word “Sukrita” means born of good deed – this book certainly lives upto that name.

And if there is just one word to describe the translations by Gulzar, it is brilliant. And then you will say I am biased. Yes, I am.

His website describes him as “Gulzar, is a poet above all things. His style marks a sensitivity that is best reflected through his writing and treatment of films. He is one of those sensitive people whose work is laced with the lyrical but psychologically adept examination of human sensibilities.” It is this sensitivity that comes bridges the language barrier effortlessly.

Gulzar with his two day old stubble, white kurta and shawl and deep voice fits everyone’s image of the poet who sensitizes all of us as he narrates his poems. Speaking of his poems, here is a favorite of mine. Gulzar recites his poem as it blends in with the vocals of Shubha Mudgal in the film Raincoat – Kisi mausam ka jhonka thha (trans: A gust of wind it was perhaps that left the picture on the wall forever tilted). Visualize raindrops trickling down your window pane when you hear this poem.

किसी मौसम का झोंका था
जो इस दीवार पे लटकी हुयी तस्वीर तिरछी कर गया है
गए सावन में यह दीवारें सीली नहीं थी
न जाने क्यूँ इस दफा इन में सीलन आ गयी है, दरारें पड़ गयी हैं
और सीलन इस तरह बहती है जैसे खुश्क रुखसार पर गीले आंसू चलते हैं
यह बारिश गुनगुनाती थी इसी छत की मुंडेरों पर
ये घर की खिडकियों के कांच पर लिख जाती थी संदेशे
बिलखती हुई सी बैठी रहती है अब बंद रोशनदानो के पीछे
दोपेहरें ऐसी लगती हैं – बिना मोहरों के खली खाने रखे हैं
न कोई खेलने वाला है बाज़ी न कोई चाल चलता है
अब न दिन होता है न रात होती है
सभी कुछ रुक सा गया है
वह क्या मौसम का झोंका था जो इस दीवार पे लगी तस्वीर को तिरछी कर गया है ||

This is the skill of Gulzar. He removes the chasm between the original and the translation in the book Poems Come Home. Pick up the book. On a rainy afternoon, sit near the window, watch the rain and read the poems as the different moods of the rain from the drizzle to the torrential downpour all make the poems resonate just a little more.

Recommended

PS: I am now waiting for Gulzar’s upcoming book called A Poem A Day that will have 365 poems – from poets across the world, all translated by Gulzar. Can’t wait for that one.

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Watch this brilliant discussion on the evolution of Hindi film music at the Jaipur Literary Festival featuring Gulzar, Prasoon Joshi and Javed Akhtar Click Here

Rebirth is the second book by Jahnavi Barua that I am reviewing. I had read her collection of short stories called Next Door about two years back and was totally bowled over. You can read that review here.  I had the privilege of reading the early draft of this novel – see the advantage of having Jahnavi as a friend!

Jahnavi started writing as a full time writer in 2004. Initially it was short stories that were published in various anthologies and even wrote a children’s book called, The Boy Who Lost His Voice. This doctor won the Short Fiction contest hosted by British Council in ’05 and then the second prize in the Children’s Fiction category of the same prize. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship to study Creative Writing in the UK in 2006. She is a “writer by profession, a doctor by education and a birder and gardener by passion”. 

The landscape of Assam features prominently in her prose. I saw that in her short stories and the same can be said for Rebirth. The protagonist Kaberi now married to an unloving husband in Bangalore speaks to the unborn child she is carrying and tells us about life back in Assam.

“We would all pile into Bipul Moha’s black Ambassador, the men in front, the women and children at the back, and drive away, usually on a cold winter morning. The boot would be crammed tight with battered suitcases, cloth bags stuffed with packets of biscuits and larus and home made cake, in case they ran out of food at the old Forest Lodge where we stayed.

Bipl Moha’s stately speed of forty kilometres an hour coupled with the fact that we stopped every half an hour for either Ma or Bina Mahi to buy vegetables or fish from village folks squatting patiently by the highway meant that it was late afternoon by the time we arrived at Kaziranga.”

Jahnavi’s style of narration is unhurried and yet the speed of storytelling never seems to drop. The little details of the variety of trees, flowers and birds that show up in her stories create a unique flavor of writing that is very enjoyable. As the protagonist’s mood changes so does the landscape. From the urban landscape and life of an apartment in Bangalore to the house built by Joya’s husband Bidyut on the banks of the Brahmaputra river, she describes it all with the skill of a gemcutter. The pace of the story in the first 150 odd pages is absolutely gripping. The resonance in the life of her mother and the parallels with Kaberi’s creates a much larger impact because it is unsaid and unspoken.

I personally struggle while closing a story in a novel. Life after all does not end in 203 pages. There is so much more that is happening and sometimes that is a trick that the authors have to master. The novel does not end with the same flourish as I expected. It is like having a fabulous meal and ending up with a slightly syrupy or not-so-sweet dessert.Nevertheless the main course was fabulous and demands a second helping!!

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You can order Jahnavi’s novels from Flipkart by clicking here

Carolyn Scarborough is a professionally trained life and writing coach, and works with people to turn their “whispering” to write into a reality.  Her most recent book is “Backyard Pearls: Cultivating Wisdom and Joy in Everyday Life.” She is an award-winning magazine writer, editor and newspaper columnist and has published more than 500 articles in magazines around the world. Her passion is inspiring people to tap into their inner wisdom, then share their message with the world through non-fiction books, novels, memoirs, blogs or articles.  She offers one-to-one coaching on the phone with clients around the world, as well as group tele-courses and live retreats. Check out her site www.backyardpearls.com.

Abhijit: I have heard of animal whisperers – but a Book Whisperer or a Writing Wisdom Coach. What is that about?

Carolyn: Good question. I coach people who have the desire to write… yet they are not writing. Some people have a novel, memoir, non-fiction book or even blog that’s been percolating in them for years, but they either haven’t started writing… or they start and stop and can’t get any traction. It becomes very frustrating because they really want to write, yet they’re stopped. I coach with them to discover what gets in their way and clear the path towards joyful, more effortless writing.

As a Book Whisperer, I communicate with clients on the phone — usually a couple of sessions a month — and via email. I listen very closely to what they say – even listening to what they don’t say, their tone, the messages underneath the words. From there we identify where they are right now… and where they want to be. Through the process of deep, intuitive listening and discussion, I help them move.

I have one client who has had a book in him for 15 years, yet he was so doubtful of his abilities and how to start a book that he had simply done nothing. After just one session, he was off and running and now he can’t write often enough!

Quite a few people come to me who want to write, but somewhere along the way, someone told them they weren’t good. Often it seems a schoolteacher passed down this judgment. And from then on, they’ve been shut down. The process here is restoring their belief in their innate ability to communicate and write.

Some clients are hung up because they simply are confused on how to begin, while other reasons are more deeply buried. One woman had been working on a memoir, but it was taking a long, long time to write and she kept getting distracted. As we dug deeper, she realized she had a fear of seeing the book with her name on it on a bookstore shelf. It terrified her, being visible like that. Once  this was identified, we knew how to move forward.

Others have found themselves overwhelmed with jobs and busy lives, yet they feel they are missing out on creative expression and being in touch with themselves. They are ready to open a space in their lives that is more than the day-to-day grind. They want, as author Virginia Woolf says, “A room of one’s own.” They’ve had enough of taking care of everyone else’s needs and demands and realize it’s time to slow down and connect with who they really are. Once they do this, transformation happens that affects every other area of their lives – not just the writing.

In fact, we all need this type of creative respite on a regular basis. And by taking the time to look inward and be fully in the present moment, our writing brightens. On my blog, I talk about when I found myself in need of this kind of tune-up — http://www.backyardpearls.com/blog/2010/time-for-a-sea-change/.

Finally, a desire that drives many of my clients is sharing a message that can have a positive impact on the world. They are not writing just to see their names in print (although that’s a nice side benefit). It’s so beautiful how they want to share their wisdom and contribute in a bigger way. Writing and getting published reaches so many more people, and this is what drives them.

Abhijit: Does having a writing coach help people to get published faster or does it help them to write better? How is the coach’s role different from an editor?

Carolyn: A writing coach can help people get published faster, but speed isn’t the main focus. I had one client who had spent 4 years working on her book, sitting in confusion, going different directions, getting stuck believing it wasn’t good enough or no one would read it. We started coaching and one month later her book was finished and now it’s been published. Her entire life changed. It was awe-inspiring.

We also help clients get published faster simply because they finish their project in the first place! Having a coach means having accountability. However, I don’t hold people accountable in the usual ways, through admonishments if they don’t write.

I teach clients ways to stay with writing that are based not on “push,” but on tapping into their own inspiration and inner coach. I love the quote, “Discipline is remembering what we want.” I help them remember what they want, even when they’ve forgotten it, and that keeps them going.

As for the difference between an editor and a writer… well, an editor typically looks at a piece and improves it, whether re-arranging whole sections and the focus of the piece, or making it more readable or clear. They also get into the nit-picky details of grammar. I used to be a magazine editor and know that role well.

While an editor focuses on the writing, a coach focuses more on the person behind the writing. By inspiring someone, they write more authentically and more often. By clarifying their thoughts, they write with more organization. By teaching them how to find stories, they live in a way that draws story ideas naturally. So we change the writer, not the writing.

That said, however, I do sometimes look at a client’s writing if they’d like suggestions on how to make it more vital, more interesting or ways to get their point across more clearly. That’s not the majority of what I do, but I’m happy to do it if that’s what’s needed.
Abhijit: How does a writer find his/her voice? How does one know that they have succeeded?

Carolyn: The best way of finding your voice is to write without rules, which you can do in a journal that no one will read. What do I mean by this? Well, when I take my dog Ziggy for a walk, he really enjoys it, and he’s also very good at staying right by my side on the leash. Nothing wrong with that. Yet when I let him off the leash in the park, he looks completely different. He runs, he walks, he bounds, he rolls, he leaps. He has his “voice.” He also does things which are socially unacceptable, like eating from the garbage bin. That’s also his voice, but that part can always be edited out later. J

Voice is how we sound when we write without fear, without “shoulds,” without trying to look good. I had one client who was stuck on her book, but she could blog quite effortlessly. That’s because with her book she was so focused on trying to sound “impressive,” she couldn’t write at all! Her inner perfectionist got her.

Another client has a very warm, enthusiastic personality, yet her writing sounded stilted and formal. She had so many fears and so many rules she was trying to follow, that it didn’t come out naturally. Her own voice was choked out. But when she was able to see and let go some of her fears and break all the rules, something very different appeared.

Suddenly she began writing in a way that not only “sounded” like her in terms of cadence and flow, but she also had a lot more fun doing it. That’s another clue. If writing feels like pulling teeth, you’re not likely in your voice (unless, of course, you’re a dentist). Voice usually feels more like flow coming out, and there’s an identifiable feel to it no matter what you’re writing.

As author Patrice Vecchione says, “It’s always a risk to write and speak your truth, but the risk of not doing so is greater. You have only to speak with your own voice, in its rhythms, with its melody and cadence, the voice right there within you, your distinctly human voice.”  When you do that, the rewards are immeasurable…

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Read my take on Royalty and Other Fictional Characters

Chapal Mehra is a publishing professional with over a decade in the Indian publishing industry. He began is career as a commissioning person at McGraw Hill and later worked at the Oxford University Press and Sage Publications. His last full-time assignment in publishing was as Acquisitions Manager at Penguin India. He has worked on consulting assignments with Harvard Business School Press, United Nations Development Program  and the Global business Coalition Against HIV/ AIDS. He is a graduate of New York University and is currently based in New Delhi and works as a full-time strategy and content consultant. Ask Chapal about the authors he has introduced to the market and the list is impressive. The three he always mentions are (a) We Are Like That Only by ex-McKinsey consultant and Marketing thought leader Rama Bijapurkar was the bestselling book in the non-fiction and business category for over 2 years(2007-9) and still continues to be hugely successful book in its revised avatar.  Chapal had chaperoned that book into the market. (b) Arun Maira’s Remaking India was considered a path breaking book in the application of consensus building and conflict resolution in business to national politics and development. (c) The Romance of Tata Steel by RM Lala has been critically hailed as a definitive biography of this great Indian organization.

I thought it would be great to have his perspective that first time authors could benefit from.

Abhijit: What were you looking for when you commissioned those authors?

Chapal Mehra: I think some of the better known writers that I have commissioned at various times include Arum Maira, Rama Bijapurkar, Kaushik Basu, Santosh Desai and  Jerry Rao. Not all these books came to fruition but those that did were quite successful.

I think the fundamental qualities  that one looks for in an author is a deep understanding and passion for the ideas that they want to write on, an innovative perspective on the subject and a reasonably good writing style along with a fair bit of flexibility. New ideas are very, very important  as is context which makes it relevant to the immediate market that you are addressing. A book as you know is a collaborative process. A writer entirely left on their own is often insular. Unless of course, s/he is an absolute genius. But how many of those exist?

Abhijit: As a writer how does one know which publishing house is the right one for me?

It works differently for different genres but a few simple rules apply.

A natural point is that the publisher should a considerable presence in the market you wish to address. Every brand, however big, has specializations or sub brands. Make sure you are with the right brand which has the infrastructure to bring you to your reader.  A big brand which is not player in the area you are writing on is useless for you . For eg. An academic book is well-regarded when it comes from a university press instead of say Penguin.  The next, of course, is that the publisher should have substantial content or similar books like yours, for eg. you cannot do an engineering book with a social science publisher . It would be lost. So having a companion list is important. Having a companion list ensures that the subject area gets enough attention by marketing and promotion and also your book rides along with other books. You also need to look at what the publishers strongest points are – editorial, marketing or sales? You have to understand your partners strengths and weaknesses and what they can provide you best.

Finally, your publishing house and editor have to believe in the idea that you wish to write on. It has to be a combined passion of sorts. You cannot start your first book with someone who doesn’t share your excitement. The sad thing is that in India this paddling pool is tiny.

Abhijit: Should the first time writers have agents?

Chapal Mehra: Sure. If you can find one you like and who delivers for you. Its tricky especially in India. You need to know the following : What is the role of the agent? What do you want them to do ? What do you see them providing are all things that need to be discussed before you embark on the agent relationship. It also depends on the agent you get.

Whenever I have acted as an agent I draft a strategy with the writer before we sign anything and make it clear to them what it is that I can deliver. And there is usually a follow up plan . As an agent the fun for me is to over deliver. I am also brutally frank with authors whose work I don’t think has international audience. Its better of they hate you now rather than later. We start with clear goals and work towards them instead of having some hazy idea of making you rich and famous.

Writers often overestimate the service that agents can provide. Every agent is not going to take you international with a  big fat advance. And really do you deserve that? Also you must learn from other examples worldwide. How many authors travel internationally across the world to you? Does everyone have that potential? Clearly not

Before you get an agent, you need to be sure and clear about what you want the agent to do for you. There are a lot of editorial inputs that agents can give. They can also open the right doors for you in the publishing companies and advise you on the appropriate marketing and publicity strategy. But there are agents and agents so please be sure what you want from them .

Abhijit: How should a writer choose an agent?

Chapal Mehra: Like I said earlier, before you choose anyone be objective and determine for yourself what you want for your book. If you are not Murkami, Ishiguro or Rushdie you need to be a little bit realistic in the goals you set for your work.

So for starters, your vision of the book and the agent’s vision of YOUR book have to match. You have to agree on who the primary audience is, where it should be published and how it should be marketed. Again its like a long-term relationship. You need to be sure you want the same things and agree on a  common set of goals and these can include things such as specific deliverables such as advances and marketing  .

And in case you don’t know what you want, then you have to be guided by your agent but also do your little bit of research. Agents are like all other consultants, some deliver exactly what you want, some deliver more, some just don’t deliver. Remember the list of deliverables that you draw up helps the agent and you. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel by accident –he planned it.

Abhijit: What are the most common mistakes first time authors make? How should one avoid doing those?

Chapal Mehra: Oh they are endless:

1. Wrong agent
2. Wrong publisher
3. No idea of what they wanted for their book except that it  should get published
4. No idea of the terms of the agreement they signed
5. No idea of their intellectual property subclauses
6. Not enough discussion on how the book will be marketed and promoted

Most assume that the publisher is doing them a favor by publishing their book. Hence they refuse to ask any questions and later complain about how they were tricked. This is at heart a business transaction. So you need to be sure what you are getting into. No one is doing you a favor.  It is also an intellectual transaction so you need to be doubly sure that your ideas are cared for and promoted.

That having been said, first time authors can also be real nut cases. Some of them think that the Nobel Prize for literature is theirs and drive their agents and editors nuts with questions queries and endless heckling. There is a limit to everything . I always tell such authors if you think you are such a genius. Go elsewhere. And truthfully, when such a genius arrives every editor or publisher puts up with their tantrums. So if I am not putting up with yours. You should take the hint.

Abhijit: What are some of the watchouts for first time writers when they sign a contract with a publishing firm?

Chapal: Most professional publishing firms have standard contracts which they are not open to amending. It is the way they do business and these cannot be altered to every author’s requirement. In fact they are mostly standardized across organizations with a few changes here and there. As a first time author you need to know what you get into a contract with the publishing firm for :

Copyright: Understand the difference between copyright and  the right to publish.

What territory are you signing the book deal for? Do you want to keep US and UK or Europe rights for yourself?

Please check the royalty clause. Are you happy with what the standard royalty is ? Usually it’s the same across publishing firms

Please check the subsidiary rights.  Do you want to give up or keep –translation rights, film rights, tv series rights etc. In most cases I would advise its best to let the publishing company keep these unless you want to do something with them or you think it will have enormous potential which you have a strategy to exploit.

If its an advance contract what are your dates of delivery? What are the conditions associated with non- or late delivery?

Its always good to discuss the contract with your editor to also understand why the organization is offering the contract that it is . Most large professional publishing firms are not out to rob you. But its important for you to understand their thinking.

Abhijit: What are the typical amounts payable as advance to writers. How does one get these million dollar advances that one hears of?

Chapal: Before we discuss an advance lets understand the nature of it. An advance is a monetary commitment to a writers work. This work is a product that the publisher hopes to sell. The advance is built on the foundation that the book will sell in certain numbers. Some authors labour under the impression that large advances are always doled out . Its only a fraction of writers that get such advances. It depends on what genre, the potential and the ability of a publisher to pay. Some advances from international publishers seem big because you multiplied them by 50 really! Its not too high in India unless you are a well-established writer or the book has huge potential. It can range from Rs40,000 to a few lakhs . In any case, these huge advances are only possible if the mathematics are done properly.  Most standard advances in fact are adjustable against future royaltyThere isn’t a standard strategy to getting that multimillion dollar advance. It depends on the potential of your work and the capacity of your agent. I know of people who have written to a big publishing firm directly and been offered reasonable advances because their work is good. others usually get it through agents.  So there isnt a single strategy. And what are multi-million dollar advances? I million dollars is the equal of 5 crores in India .Which Indian writer has received these recently? Only a handful …

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My favorite website in this respect would be http://www.advicetowriters.com/ They have loads of stuff you will read and learn from. Must read.

Should you have an agent and such vexing questions answered here http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article611600.ece

I found this article useful Ten rules for writing fiction

We have all grown up in a world that clearly values rationality and rational behavior. Being emotional was frowned upon. Whenever someone displays emotions in public view it makes news (Think of Maradona’s expressions as the team played and lost) and the world turns its cameras to look at the person who just “lost it”. When I studied Science in school, I was told by my teacher that if there was something that cannot be explained by Science it was not worth knowing and that it was obviously irrational. Such was the vehemence with which I was nudged towards being rational. As I grew to develop my own view of the world, I got fascinated by the limitations of rationality. Rational stuff had a logical sequence and clearly activated that part of my brain that I had difficulty accessing. You try this one and you got to do this real quick: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Write down your answer. If you said that the ball costs 10c, then you are part of the majority. That is the good news. The bad news is that the correct answer is 5c. Shane Frederick, Prof at MIT Sloan posed this question to more than 3,000 students at eight different universities. Fewer than half gave the correct answer. The trick is to not go by your instinct which gives the wrong answer, but to take a second more and reflect on it. Shane has developed a 3 question test – that question is one of the three – that can be almost as accurate in predicting characteristics that other tests like the SAT, ACT, or the Wonderlic Personnel Test. He also found that those who do well on the cognitive reflection test tend to be more patient in decisions between smaller sooner rewards and larger later rewards.  Before you pat yourself on the back (your own or anybody else’s for that matter) remember, they are also more willing to gamble in financial domains.

Now let us check the other half of your ability. Try saying the words in the visual. The top line would read red, blue, orange purple. That is easy. . The task is to quickly name not the word itself, but the color of the word. As an example, for the word “green” printed in red ink, the correct verbal answer is “red.” Because of a phenomenon called directed attention, this is hilariously difficult to do. You must actively inhibit the automatic response—reading the word—in order to do something else. This is not the only way in which we can understand the power of the irrational. There are many examples that have been done to show how we all do dumb and irrational things despite taking pride in our rational selves.

Take for instance Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment. How far would you go giving what you thought were electrical shocks to another human being simply for a study about memory? What would you think when the learner went quiet after you apparently administered a shock labeled on the board “Danger: Severe Shock”? How far would you go? The majority, at least 63% of the participants continued right until the end – they administered all the shocks even with the learner screaming in agony, begging to stop and eventually falling silent. These weren’t specially selected sadists, these were ordinary people like you and me who had volunteered for a psychology study.

Magic tricks work in the same way. Rationally speaking you would of course agree that there is no such thing as a color changing card. If you picked one card from a deck of cards, how could a magician change the color of the card while you are watching the trick on camera. The camera never lies, right? Wrong.

My hypothesis is that you need to learn to develop the irrational – also known as the “creative” aspects of you. Writing a story is a good way to develop your irrational self. Stories are boring when they are straightforward and predictable. For instance try this for a rational (aka BORING as hell) opening lines of a short story.

A boy and a girl sat on the same bench in the Physics class. The Professor was teaching (what else) Physics. The boy and the girl were trying to think of what the possible question paper would be like…

Now try this one on

A boy and a girl sat on the same bench in the Physics class.While the Professor was teaching Physics, the girl’s mind wandered. She was thinking of options. What protection should she use when the boy would meet her that evening. Would it be better to carry a small revolver or should she just use the sharp kitchen knife, she wondered. The boy was telling himself, “If only I had known that she was vegetarian, I would not have poisoned the fish…

The best storytellers are magicians who use the same principles of psychology to lead the reader to a path that is perfectly rational and logical, but wrong. The purpose of every story is to coax the reader into suspending their disbelief. Good cinema does the same. See how much more interesting a life you would lead if you stopped resisting the irrational aspects of human beings. For instance, if you knew that groups fail to share information with each other that is known only to themselves and simply repeated what others already knew, you would put less faith in decisions made by the group. People are seen as more capable when they talk about shared rather than unshared information. To be on the safe side people prefer to stick to repeating things that everyone knows and, bizarrely, others like them better for it. Heck!! I am not suggesting that you drop all opportunities to be rational. Merely suggesting that the next time you do something irrational, maybe there is an opportunity for you to learn about stuff most people have learnt to ignore. For instance, by knowing about the 7 Psychological Principles of Scams you can protect yourself from scams that makes 3.2 million people each year in the UK into handing over £3.5 billion to scamsters.

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If you like to try more tests that check for cognitive skills, try a logic and reasoning skill test here

Or this interesting piece on Ten Social Psychology Studies