Module 1.1: Sanghvi's Article Continued

In the article, Sanghvi continues further. In the next paragraph, he says, "It was a time of change. New groups were springing up out of nowhere". He continues further in the fourth paragraph of the article:

At Tata headquarters, however, the crises mounted: record losses at Tata Motors, the much-derided plan to launch the Indica, criminal charges over Tata Tea’s alleged links with Assam militants, allegations of foolishness in the sale of Tata Oil Mills’ assets, a plan to launch a domestic airline with Singapore Airlines that was comprehensively scuttled and more. And many of us wondered if we were watching India’s greatest industrial group diminish before our very eyes.

The way he builds up the tempo, to use a term from chess, in the beginning of the article, in the first four paragraphs, makes it very clear that he is trying to show that when Ratan Tata came on to the scene, the Tata group seemed to be in doldrums and that Ratan Tata was the person who not only rescued it, but also transformed it into a giant. I do not disagree with Sanghvi but I'm trying to dissect his writing strategies. If you use similar writing strategies, you can also achieve similar effects.

This is one strategy of building up the tempo slowly as you go ahead in your article. It is an interesting writing strategy because it keeps the reader hooked on to the article till the end. So, I have had situations in my classes, where my students have disagreed with the contents of a couple of Vir Sanghvi articles but they have never faulted him for his writing style. I am sure this is something that beginners can inculcate.

In my next post, which would be a kind of follow-up and final post on this article, I would refer to various tough to understand and less commonly used words in the article and focus on their usage.