Dear Mr. Nanga Fakir,
We're writing to let you know that the Committee for the Haminder Subah Sath Mehmil Memorial Foundation Annual Chapati Fellowship has met. After reviewing a very strong pool of thousands of international applicants, your dossier was chosen as the winning application. The Committee was particularly impressed with your strong commitment to the field of excellence in both of your areas of specialization, Nangepan and Fakirbaazi. In keeping with the Foundation's values of excellence and achievement, along with a special focus on specialization, we at Chapati Mystery annually award one Chapati Fellowship to the applicant that most successfully demonstrates a commitment to those core principles.
The Committee was particularly impressed with your skillful use of David Foster Wallace Pastiche to describe a person's lip (your own?) being hit with a squash racquet. We felt that the piece was made particularly strong by the inclusion of a footnote that compares the ripping apart of the skin on the lip to "Shakti Kapoor & Gulshan Grover's tearing through the Clothes of the Hero's Sister in the quintessential mainstream '80s Hindi film." Some members of the Committee were reminiscing about Shakti Kapoor's best lines of dialogue in that particular film only last night. No less impressive was your use of comparative technique to tease out important qualities of an interview with David Foster Wallace. It had not previously occurred to the Committee to view David Foster Wallace's demeanor and speech patterns through Nirmal Verma-colored glasses. In fact, some members of the Committee have never read David Foster Wallace at all, much less given him any thought (except on the occasion of his tragic suicide, which served as an unwelcome reminder to members of the Committee that life is nasty, brutish and short, and depression a nation-wide epidemic), and it was decided that your discussions of that late author provided a valuable service to the members of society that have not read, and perhaps do not plan to read, the works of that departed luminary. It was thus that the Committee voted to bestow upon you the great honor of a Chapati Fellowship.
As you may know, your fellowship will consist of five hundred buttery chapatis (hot, as of this writing), to be mailed to you upon your completion of the attached forms. As you will see, you will be asked to provide information about your visa status, as well as other pertinent details. Please keep in mind that processing of your fellowship can be delayed up to two years with certain types of visas. In addition to the five hundred unrestricted chapatis that you will receive, you are also eligible for reimbursements for certain types of research and writing expenses as permitted under federal guidelines (see attached handbook). You may receive reimbursements for up to five hundred additional hot, buttery chapatis as and when you complete the attached green forms, and attach, but do not staple, your receipts to them. The receipts must be legible, non-credit card receipts with all purchased items listed on them. These must be taped to 8 1/2" x11" sheets of plain white paper, with explanatory notes next to each receipt. In addition, a type-written list of the receipts, and a justification of each expense, should be stapled (not clipped) to the green forms and the sheets with the receipts taped to them. All typed correspondence should be written in 12 PT Times or Palatino fonts with a minimum 1" margin and right-left justification.
The Committee wishes to congratulate you on your successful application, and your award of this great honor.
Sincerely yours,
Chapati Fellowship Committee
COMMENTS
Nanga Fakir | March 01, 2010
Chapati Scholarship. Check. Next in line: World Domination.