August 31, 2005
Sania Mirza in U.S. Open third round (updated)
18-year-old tennis terror Sania Mirza just beat her second-round U.S. Open opponent, Italian Maria Elena Camerin, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 (thanks, Sania Fan). Her next draw is 21-year-old Marion Bartoli of France (via desiFans). Mirza won her first round against Mashona Washington of Houston.
The 18-year-old from Hyderabad defeated Italy’s Elena Camerin 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 in a roller-coaster of a match and with France’s Marion Bartoli to follow, she will harbour genuine hopes of reaching the last 16 and a likely encounter with top seed Maria Sharapova.
But she will need to fully recover physically from what was a punishing second round tie if is she is to better her breakthrough third round performance at this year’s Australian Open where she eventually lost to Serena Williams. [Link]
Now ranked 42nd in the world, Mirza is the first Indian woman to win a match at the U.S. Open. She’s got lots of power, but in her last two matches committed plenty of worrisome unforced errors.
The doubles events have produced some interesting desi pairings:
Injuries notwithstanding, Sania Mirza has opted to play in the women’s doubles, partnering Australia’s Bryanne Stewart, at the US Open… Sania has a strained abdominal muscle and is also troubled by bleeding toes…
In the mixed doubles, Leander Paes joins hands with Martina Navratilova, in what could be the 48-year-old legend’s last US Open. Paes and Martina [are] seeded seventh… Mahesh Bhupathi will pair up with Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova…Paes and Bhupathi are playing with their regular partners Nenad Zemonjic of Serbia and Montenegro and Martin Damm of the Czech Republic respectively in the men’s doubles. [Link]
Update: USA Today zeroes in on Mirza’s religion:
Mirza is a devout Muslim from a conservative Islamic family who tries to pray five times a day. Her aggressive game is not only breaking down stereotypes, but also putting tennis on the map in a part of the world where cricket is king. “Fifty years ago, people in India didn’t believe that a woman could play a professional sport,” says the affable Mirza…If there is tension between being a pro athlete and coming from a conservative Muslim upbringing that calls for women to bare little skin and adopt low-profile lives, Mirza is not fazed. “Not everyone is perfect and just because I wear a miniskirt… doesn’t make me a bad Muslim…” [Link]
The ToI reporter is unforgivably cynical about sporting browns, but it’s a refreshing change:
“She’s not an Indian as far as the mind goes,” says Times of India reporter Prajwal Hegde, who came to New York to cover Mirza’s every move for India’s largest daily paper. “She’s bold and brazen and that comes out in her game.” [Link]
Previous posts: one, two, three
manish at 05:08 PM in Sports · 25 comments · Direct link
Babu hell
Sooner or later, just like the world’s first day
Sooner or later, we learn to throw the past away
History will teach us nothing…
— Sting, ‘History Will Teach Us Nothing’
India’s coalition government, the United Progressive Alliance, has pushed a quasi-socialist 
employment guarantee through Parliament:
Parliament on Wednesday night approved the historic Bill for providing employment guarantee to all rural households in the country with Rajya Sabha passing the legislation by a voice vote. [Link]The National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, 2004 promises wage employment to every rural household, in which adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Through this Bill the government, aims at removing poverty by assuring at least 100 days’ employment. [Link]
Like most government handouts, the entitlement was expanded from its original means-tested form to include all rural households, even the relatively prosperous. India needs to build plenty of infrastructure, her villages are very poor, and so I’m all for the UPA’s WPA for a limited period of time. But you do that by first fixing which roads, flyovers and airports you want to build and then figuring out manpower requirements. What you don’t do is guarantee a paycheck regardless of the availability of work, able-bodied individuals in a household or the individual worker’s performance.
The Congress returned to power in last year’s general election largely on its promises of giving the country’s economic reforms a human face and making the process more inclusive so that it benefited the poor in rural areas…“This bill has been tabled in Parliament without proper preparation. The government does not know the exact number of unemployed people. There were six such schemes earlier, but they all failed due to the same reason,” said Singh, who is chairman of the Parliament’s standing committee on rural development. The bill, when enacted, will cover all rural households, not just those below poverty line, as had been provided earlier. [Link]
It’s no surprise that the scheme was designed by a Belgian, backed by an Italian-Indian (Sonia Gandhi) and passed by a coalition which includes communists. The price tag for adding yet another layer of pork and guaranteed corruption atop the Indian economy: Rs. 1.4T ($33B, or ~$100B PPP). It’s just a grander form of the vote-fixing handouts and subsidies which already choke the economy.
This isn’t how you get villages to share in ‘India shining’: handouts rather than actual jobs, fish rather than fishing lessons. One only needs to look a few hundred miles north of Delhi to see what happens when you try to suspend the laws of economics. Seriously, doesn’t reading this make you just want to bang your head against a wall?
Bend over and grease up!
manish at 04:39 PM in Economics · 41 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
Shopaholic India
So now we know why I can shopping spree like a champion— it’s in my genes. (Thanks, 43 Seconds.)
According to the annual Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations report (pdf)—widely considered the most comprehensive source on global weapons sales—India’s got so many shopping bags full of “tanks, submarines, combat aircraft, missiles and ammunition”, her arms are sore. ;)
India was the leading buyer of conventional arms among developing nations in 2004, a report for the US Congress says. The Congressional Research Service said Delhi agreed the transfer of $5.7bn in weapons, ahead of China. [Beeb]
India was also the leading developing world purchaser over the 1997-2004 period covered in the report, sealing 10% of all such arms agreements.[Beeb]
Yes, yes, the US is the biggest “weapons mall” of them all, with around a third of all contracts. It’s the mall of America, if you will. Oh wait, we already have one of those.
Keeping up with the Wongs’?
India negotiated $15.7bn in agreed transfers of conventional weapons between 1997 and 2004 to top the list.[Beeb]
China overtook India for the period 2001-2004 on the back of a big increase in defence budget, but India was back on top for 2004 alone.[Beeb]
Enlighten me, do you think this is a good thing to be “on top” of?
anna at 04:13 PM in Humor, Military, News, Politics · 7 comments · Direct link
Disastrous celebrity
Remember when much of the coverage of last year’s tsunami focused on the Victoria Secret’s model caught up in the waves rather than the 200,000 dead? And the ToI story which said the real tragedy of the Bombay cloudburst was that customers couldn’t get their ToI?
The Indo-Asian News Service throws its hat into the ring of vacuousness. Remember that in inverted pyramid style, the most salient fact comes first in the headline and lede. So here’s the most important fact about the destruction of New Orleans and the Louisiana, Missouri and Alabama coasts as reported by IANS and quoted in Abhi’s post:
Hurricane Katrina leaves US Congressman man Jindal homeless [Link]
You can contribute to the Red Cross relief effort here. Previous posts: one, two
manish at 03:57 PM in Humor · 16 comments · Direct link
Jindal and H.R. 387
As I’m sure many of you have been following, the situation in NOLA seems to be getting worse and worse. Maitri is continuing her great coverage by trying to separate facts from media hype and B.S. Among the many people who have been evacuated is one U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal. The Central Chronicle reports:
Indian American Congressman Bobby Jindal was among thousands of residents in New Orleans, Louisiana, who were left without food or electricity after Hurricane Katrina pounded the US Gulf coast.
“The events of the last 48 hours have hit us harshly, and the effects of Hurricane Katrina are still not fully known,” Jindal, a resident of Louisiana’s New Orleans that has been submerged under the flood waters, said on his website.
”I know most of you, like my family and I, have spent a restless night, evacuated from your homes and still without power. We are all worried about what we will find when we are finally given the all clear to return,” he said.
As “luck” would have it though, one of Jindal’s first actions in Congress was to get a bill passed which eases the financial burden on victims of natural disaster:
Jindal’s legislative victories on natural disaster compensation in Congress this year are critical for Louisianans as they fight yet another major calamity.Soon after he came into Congress this year, he began to lobby and successfully got passed legislation reversing an earlier ruling that would have taxed compensation to his state’s residents for monies they got as a result of natural disasters. That law takes on added meaning for Louisianans now as they battle with massive devastation from Hurricane Katrina.
abhi at 03:51 PM in Politics · 3 comments · Direct link
The New Yorker Festival
This year’s Wells Fargo New Yorker Festival draws a grab bag of celebs-e-tweed you can pay to rub shoulders with: Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Richard Dawkins, Behnaz Sarafpour and Sasha Frere-Jones. And they’re not alone: Mikhail Baryshnikov, the Roots, yadda yadda. It’s like they swiped the Sex and the City item numbers and invited with abandon.
In a highbrow bow, a gesture of noblesse oblige, the magazine not only ran a feature on the Three Stooges this week, they invited the South Park brats to the fest. But of course the Jhumpa-Zadie axis is sold out. How now, brown cow?
The Aug. 29th issue also ran an excellent Vijay Seshadri poem, ‘Family Happiness.’ Seshadri is an English professor who may have been one of the original 2nd genners, with both a pukka American accent and an incongruous shock of gray hair. He read another poem I dig at the SAJA fest; he’s got a radio voice and a knack for lines of astringent tenderness within the clutches of marriage.
Vijay Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, in 1954 and came to America at the age of five. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio… and has lived in many parts of the country, including the Pacific Northwest, where he spent five years working in the fishing and logging industries, and New York’s Upper West Side, where he was a sometime graduate student in Columbia’s Ph.D. program in Middle Eastern Languages and Literature… He currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. [Link]
manish at 01:34 PM in Literature · 9 comments · Direct link
August 30, 2005
Kid Made, Adult Approved
New tipster FOBish informs us of yet another way India eats its young: Child Sari Weavers.
It is estimated that there are around 10,000 children in the districts of Kanchipuram and Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu work in the silk industry.There are over 100,000 looms set up in individual homes on which these famous silk saris are woven. Many of these saris cost several thousand rupees…
These children work every day of the week for up to 10 hours a day.Savarnam, an owner of two looms rejected all accusations of exploitation. Instead he said that they were helping these poor people by giving them employment.
“We make hardly any profit. The cost of raw material is high. Added to that we face competition from cheap copies of Kanchipuram saris,” he argued.
Riiight. Many, if not all these children are essentially bonded laborers working to repay a loan their parents were forced to take. Human Rights Watch reports:
A 14 year-old boy who worked as a weaver’s assistant in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, told Human Rights Watch that he could not leave his loom owner because he was paying off a loan, which in two years he had only reduced from Rs. 2,500 (U.S. $52) to Rs. 475 (U.S. $9.90). “The owner pays [a small salary] but deducts for the advance [loan],” he said. “He deducts but won’t write off the whole advance… . We only make enough to eat.”
Karnataka, in the south, is India’s primary producer of silk thread. There, production still depends on bonded children. Most are under age 14 and are Dalit or Muslim. In 2001, the state government promulgated an ambitious plan to eliminate all child labor, but it was not in operation at the time of Human Rights Watch’s investigation one year later. [link]
A detailed examination of how bonded child labor works can be found here.
So why saris?
Child labour in silk weaving is associated with a certain type of sari, the korvai or `contrast’. In this intricate sari, the design and often the colour of the borders are different from those of the main body of the cloth. Three shuttles are needed: the weaver operates two, and the assistant the third. In this labour-intensive industry, children are often employed as assistants. A child is able to perform the tasks required as efficiently as an adult, can be paid much lower rates, and is likely to remain with the weaver for longer periods than a mature counterpart, who will acquire skills only to start his own business. On the demand side of the labour market, the reasons for a weaver to prefer a child rather than an adult assistant appear clear enough.
The supply-side has its own indefatigable logic as well:
- Poverty
- Family debt, often passed on to the next generation forcing young children into bonded labor.
- A general Indian attitude toward the continuance of the social order and caste system. Most child laborers are Dalit.
- Inaccessible education system.
Time and again, Kerala is cited as having the lowest incidence of child labor in India. Whether causation or not, the state’s high literacy rate is often pointed to as a reason.
In the best tradition of tone-deaf reporting imaginable, The Christian Science Moniter recently discussed the revival of South India’s Kanchipuram silk saris, once an old-fashioned dying art, now a revived, trendy industry:
What they shopped for were Kanchipuram silk saris, considered the Versaces of southern India, because one piece can cost $1,000. Many will last a lifetime with good care, and all represent status…Each sari is individually woven on a hand loom, so no two saris are exactly the same. “The Kanchipuram sari is a limited edition,” says S. Ramesh, managing partner of a silk store in Panagal Park. “Being hand-woven, some little imperfections will be there, but that adds charm to the sari.”
Other defining features of the brocade are that the silk yarn is dyed before weaving, threads used are 3- to 5-ply, and the contrasting colored border and body are interlinked by an intricate process called korvai. The motifs are woven in special “gold” threads made by taking one or two fine silk threads, winding extra-fine silver wire/thread around it, and then dipping the resulting filament in 24-karat gold…Weaving is not a well-paid trade. The cheapest component of a handcrafted Kanchipuram silk sari is the labor. Weavers make about $14 for a sari that retails for $70 and takes nearly a week to make.[link]
Of course, if you’d like to buy a Kanchipuram silk sari, you don’t have to wonder if kids handled the looms. They’ve got pics to prove it.
cicatrix at 08:31 PM in News · 32 comments · Direct link
The Keystone Cops of Connaught Place
Raju Sharma, a money changer in New Delhi, left his office around half-past eight last night carrying a bag filled with around Rs. 14 lakhs. On his way to the car, interception!
four young men on two motorcycles intercepted him and tried to snatch the bag. At this, Mr. Sharma put a stiff resistance and raised an alarm. [linky]
I “put a stiff resistance” whenever I’m approached by four young men, too. ;)
No heroes in all of ND?
However, since one of the robbers was brandishing a revolver, no one came forward. Though he fought with the robbers for about 10 minutes, in the end the culprits managed to snatch the bag as he lost hold of it on being hit on the head with the butt of the revolver.[linky]
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Subsequently, the culprits fled from the spot. Mr. Sharma in the meantime continued to cry for help, which caught the attention of a policeman who was passing by. The duo then gave a chase to the robbers in an auto-rickshaw.[linky]
Let me see if my fecund imagination is creating the proper picture: our pistol-whipped friend screams, a cop responds and then the TWO jump in…a rickshaw? How fast can rickshaws go? Can you just see this? “Follow those ‘cycles!”
In the melee, one of the two motorcycles on which the robbers were fleeing hit the central verge and two of the robbers fell on the road. However, they managed to regain composure and flee on foot.[linky]
Random fact: I like the word “melee”. Anyway, the fugitives fled fleetly by foot? Methinks I’ve got the answer to my, “how fast can rickshaws go?” question. ;) Oy, what a flustercuck.
anna at 06:36 PM in Humor · 7 comments · Direct link
New York’s new political landscape
The Village Voice takes a look at what a white (presumably) candidate has got to do to tread the ethnic waters of the Big Apple:
Money talks, and the Wongs and Muhammads of this world are speaking louder in New York City politics. From 1989 to 2001, the number of contributions to municipal campaigns from those two surnames quadrupled as the population of Asians—a broad category that includes people from the Middle East to the Far East—grew faster than any other group in the city. Yet the ethnic calculus of this year’s mayoral campaign is still limited to blacks, whites, and Hispanics, according to the Marist and Quinnipiac polls, which report results only for those three groups, omitting a tenth of the city’s people.Yes, merely a tenth. “For us, we’re still not that big,” says John Abi-Habib, a person of Lebanese descent and a vice chairman of the Brooklyn Republican Party, who helped found a Middle Eastern political coalition eight years ago, “but then we have over 50,000 registered voters in this city.” And that number is growing, partly as a reaction to negative fallout from September 11. “The last four years, we must have registered thousands and thousands of people to vote,” Abi-Habib says, “and they see the importance of it because they know their voice has to be heard.”
Despite the obvious cultural differences between the different groups of Asian immigrants in NYC, City Councilman John Liu of Queens says that they do share some basic things in common which might be addressed by a common overall strategy in trying to capture their votes:
Ethnic labels are crude by definition: You’re black whether you just flew in from Senegal or are descended from slaves shipped to U.S. shores centuries ago. Latinos include light-skinned Cubans and Indian-blooded families from Ecuador. But the categories make some sense if common concerns affect the people they cover. And while Asian and Middle Eastern New Yorkers care about failing schools, high rent, rats, and all the usual urban woes, they also worry about things that other groups needn’t fear.“There are lots of issues that Asian Americans share,” said Liu, “one being the immigrant experience, being relatively recent immigrant arrivals. And Asians also suffer from a perpetual- foreigner syndrome, meaning that you could be a fourth- or fifth-generation Asian American but still somehow it’s difficult to believe that you’re an American. I get that: First they compliment me on my ability to speak English, and often I get asked, ‘Well, where are you from?’ and for some reason people refuse to take Flushing for an answer.”
The whole article has a bit of a slimy feel to it. I appreciate the fact that Asian Americans are becoming motivated to vote and that politicians are being forced to listen, but here it almost seems like a contest between the candidates to see who is more down with the “brown and yellow.” The idealist in me wishes they wouldn’t have to try so hard, but maybe we are at least a generation away from that type of city.
abhi at 04:37 PM in Politics · 1 comment · Direct link
A New Spook at the Agency
Rediff.com is reporting that Sumit Ganguly will soon take over as head of the South Asia Bureau in the National Intelligence Council:
Sumit Ganguly, who currently holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations will soon be appointed the first National Intelligence Officer of the newly-formed South Asia Bureau in the National Intelligence Council, an appendage of the Central Intelligence Agency.Ganguly, also a professor of political science and director of the Indian Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the first Indian-American to serve in the NIC.
The NIC is the intelligence community’s centre for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking.
Its National Intelligence Estimates on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence (the head of the CIA) are the most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues.
Yes, intelligence estimates are quite useful (when the analysis isn’t pre-ordained at least). Well good. It makes sense to have someone of South Asian heritage actually head this new branch.
His most recent work, published by Columbia University Press and Oxford University Press (New Delhi), is entitled Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947. He also recently published The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999). His research and writing have been supported by grants from the Asia Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace. He has also been a guest scholar and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and a visiting fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York) and the International Institute of Strategic Studies (London). Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Survey, Current History and the Journal of Strategic Studies. He is also the editor of a new journal, The India Review, published by Frank Cass and Company. [Link]
Earlier, Rediff did an interview with Ganguly about his book, in which it further probed him on his views about the conflict in Kashmir. These views will almost certainly influence U.S. policy in the region:
Q: Do you endorse India’s position of ‘no talks until concrete results are seen?’A: Yes, I do. That said, India, for its own reasons, should move with much greater imagination, dexterity and skill in terms of winning back the hearts and minds of its deeply disaffected Kashmiri Muslim population. Merely harping on “cross-border terrorism” makes India’s decision-makers look foolish and disingenuous in the eyes of scholars and serious policy-makers alike.
abhi at 04:16 PM in Profiles · 21 comments · Direct link
Birth tax
SM tipster Olinda (followed by several others) sent us this depressing article from the New York Times highlighting corruption at its worst. Behold:
Just as the painful ordeal of childbirth finally ended and Nesam Velankanni waited for a nurse to lay her squalling newborn on her chest, the maternity hospital's ritual of extortion began.Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child, families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm.
Mrs. Velankanni was penniless, and her mother-in-law had to pawn gold earrings that had been a precious marriage gift so she could give the money to the attendant, or ayah. Mrs. Velankanni, a migrant to Bangalore who had been unprepared for the demand, wept in frustration.
"The ayah told my mother-in-law to pay up fast because the night duty doctor was leaving at 8 a.m. and wanted a share," she recalled.
Cynic that I am, I could actually imagine a man whisking a kid away and demanding a bribe. When a woman (who may have children of her own) does it, all hope seems lost. The article goes on to describe the fact that this sort of corruption has infected basic services that stretch from the cradle to the grave. The following quote also caught my eye because it sounds like a thing you sometimes hear about the U.S. healthcare system:
"The poor not only are paying much more of their incomes to get the same medical services as the middle and richer classes, but they are also discouraged from seeking basic medical care because they can't afford it," said Daniel Kaufmann, director of global programs at the institute.
The article ends by foreshadowing the obvious end to such rampant corruption:
Every month, [Mr. Hanumanthu] said, he must pay off city workers who threaten to confiscate his pushcart. He has no choice, he said. How else would he make a living? Last summer, he saw what happened to a vendor who refused to move when the city workers told him to. They overturned the man's cart, cracking the motor. He was out of work for three months."I've studied up to 10th grade and passed," he said bitterly. "I try to earn a decent living, but because of all the demands, I'm tempted to rob and steal to make money fast. I'm fed up with life."
Be sure to click on the multimedia presentation to the left of the article.
abhi at 01:24 AM in Business, Health and Medicine, Issues, News · 13 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
Remarkabubble Rushdie
The blazing hot publicity machine for Shalimar the Clown rolls out another feature on Salman Rushdie, this time in GQ. The cheapskate mag offers only 2 (out of 20!) sections from the print version online, so despite protestations from the Sepia Legal Dept., I transcribe the juicy bits below. Without further ado, heres the ever-quotable Salman on:
3. Comics
He liked Batman the most because he was the weirdest, Rushdie says. Strange thing to do, you know, hang upside down dressed like a bat and go out at night. He was always happiest when Batman came unaccompanied. I didnt like Robin the Boy Wonder at all, he explains, his voice still leaking some youthful annoyance. I thought he was completely redundant and had a silly uniform.[Yes, but does he know about this?]
4. Perceptions of his character after the fatwa, and Indira Gandhi bashing
The thing that happened to me had certain characteristics - it was theological, it was humorless, it was difficult to understand and all those characteristics got transposed onto me. So because it was humorless, I must be.Some were stung by the account of the previous few decades of Indian history in Midnights Children. Indira Gandhi, Indias prime minister at the time actually sued him for suggesting that her son Sanjay blamed her for the death of her husband, his father. Rushdie eventually yielded to pressure from his publishers to remove the passage, as long as she agreed that there was nothing else in the book a book fairly critical of her that she considers objectionable, and he says that the Indian press concurred with his view that this settlement was more a humiliation for the prime minister than for the author.
[The Iron Lady picked that over the transistors-for-sterilization bit? Color me surprised.]
5. The trials of English boarding school
Before his journey West [at 13], his mother tried to prepare him for some of the horrors he would face there. Such as, he remembers, having to wipe your bottom with paper. This he had refused to believe. I said, What do you mean? Its not possible. No water? Not possible.He brings up one of the great perceptions of such English educational establishments: I managed to get through four and a half years of English boarding school without a single homosexual experience I certainly never came anywhere close to it, either being hit on by anybody or the other way round. In that sense, I missed out on some apparently essential part of the experience.
6. Atheism, that pesky minute of conversion, and his subsequent renunciation of faith
He went and ate his first ham sandwich [at 14, in Britain], in order to prove that the thunderbolt would not strike me. The ham sandwich itself wasnt so good, but soon he discovered bacon sandwiches, and that was another matter altogetherIn an interview he gave shortly afterward [declaring his faith in Allah], he exemplified his new way of thinking: I feel that had I been a Muslim at the time that I wrote the book, I would clearly have written it differently clearly, and I want to make that point, and let there be no argument about it. But within him there was plenty of argument about it, and this conversion to Islam, as it was widely presented, was itself soon renounced. In truth, even in his days of darkest need, deep down his atheism never abandoned him.
9. Paging Michael Moore
I think if the West is to blame for anything, it is to blame for giving the house of Saud keys to the oil money and allowing them to use that money to propagate around the world Wahhabism, the most backward, primitive, and crummy version of Islam there had ever been, and to present that as Orthodoxy
12. His life as an ad-man (check out the pic Rushdie circa 1974!)
He was responsible for two campaigns known to anyone living in Britain in the 1970s for the designation of cream cakes as naughty but nice, and for the description of a new chocolate bar called Aero, full of air bubbles, using a chain of mutated adjectives: adorabubble, delectabubble, incredibubble It took me ten years to find out how to be a writer It would have been so easy to give up. I had all kinds of temptations. I was doing pretty well in advertising, and they dangle huge sums of money under your nose and a glamorous lifestyle, you know girls, commercial shoots, and locations, America, South Africa. The World opens up, and all you have to do is sell peanut butter and shampoo.
And damning word of praise-
upon reading it [his widely panned debut novel Grimus], his father said, What this tells me is that one day you will write a great book.
13. Scavenging for material
My view is that writers need to go everywhere. You need to put your hands into as many pieces of life as you can. Youve got to go to the whorehouse or the ballgame or the prison or the nightclub, it doesnt matter. Youve got to go everywhere. Because otherwise you dont know enough Ive always really liked the contrast between going really inside yourself for a living and then coming out and being with friends.
14. Shalimar
Much of Shalimar the Clown is set in Kashmir, the territory disputed by India and Pakistan, and his familys original homeland. Though it is far from what the book is about, Shalimar the Clown is at times savagely direct in its appraisal of the regions history and dilemma, and of fanaticism and fundamentalism He points to the books second epigraph, borrowed from Romeo and Juliet - A plague on both your houses and says this is, very strongly what I feel. I think Kashmir got fucked twice. First it got screwed over by the Indians, then it got screwed over by the fundamentalists coming over the border. So its had it at both ends. And during this long time, more than half a century, the views of the people living there have never been taken into account Theyve been trampled over in both directions. And the book tries to tell the truth about that. This is the writers job to tell the truth.
18.The effect of a fatwa on his writing
Shalimar, an international terrorist at this point, is sent to kill a writer, a godless man, a writer against god, who had sold his soul to the West. In the novel Rushdie makes clear the writer is French-speaking perhaps partly to make it obvious that its not him, and also as an acknowledgement of Tahar Djaout, a secularist Algerian writer who was murdered by Muslim terrorists in 1993. (One of the things I think its important to say, Rushdie points out, is that many writers have been killed in this period in which I was not killed.) Describing how to prepare a venue before the arrival of a potential target: Any professional knew that the so-called principal was easiest to attack in the space between the door of his vehicle and the door of the location he planned to enter.
Also discussed: Bono, Padma Lakshmi (She always thinks that she is the heroine of all my books, including the ones written before she was born, essentially), The Power Rangers (If I ever see another episode of Power Rangers it will be much too soon), Mark Knopfler of Dire Straights (I find as I got older that almost the only quality I look for in somebody is personal warmth), marriage, Madonna (upon being sent The Ground Beneath her Feet not only had she not read it, she had shredded it), and Lou Reed (The idea that one day I would get to hang out with Lou Reed was it was like telling me that you would hang out with God Only more fun.)
cicatrix at 01:16 AM in Arts and Entertainment · 33 comments · Direct link
August 29, 2005
Uptight Updike
John Updike reviews Salman Rushdie’s latest in the New Yorker. 
He moans about Rushdie’s precocious, hyperactive style but has the grace to quote extensively. He slowly dribbles out the master’s words to be set upon by the ravenous she-wolf bitches known as rabid Rushdie fans. Such as, uh, my ‘friend.’
My ‘friend’ here appreciates Updike cribbing from Shalimar. It sounds raw. It sounds risky. It sounds fabulous. Oh, and there’s some famous-author-whining in there too.
In a neat trick both topical and intimate, Rushdie is symbolically returning to Kashmir with this novel. Recall the rapturous prose about Dal Lake, red hair, blue eyes and a distinctive proboscis where Midnight’s Children began. It’s a journey desi authors selling into the West often make in reverse: their first few books aren’t ‘write what you know,’ but rather ‘write what sells.’ Only when they’re comfortable in their bestselling skins, and the wolves of missed rent bay at the doors of younger writers, do they return to exorcise their deeper pains: for Rushdie, the rape of Kashmir; for Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan civil war.
[Dedication:] … in loving memory of my Kashmiri grandparents…
In Kashmir it is paradise itself that is falling; heaven on earth is being transformed into a living hell… Everywhere was now a part of everywhere else. Russia, America, London, Kashmir. Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete… The world was no longer calm…
… he wanted to know what it would feel like when he placed the blade of his knife against the man’s skin, when he pushed the sharp and glistening horizon of the knife against the frontier of the skin, violating the sovereignty of another human soul, moving in beyond taboo, toward the blood…
He went into his blighted apple orchard, seated himself cross-legged beneath a tree, closed his eyes, heard the verses of the Rig-Veda fill the world with beauty, and ceased upon the midnight with no pain…
There were nine grabbers in the cosmos, Surya the Sun, Soma the Moon, Budha the Mercury, Mangal the Mars, Shukra the Venus, Brihaspati the Jupiter, Shani the Saturn, and Rahu and Ketu, the two shadow planets. The shadow planets actually existed without actually existing. They were heavenly bodies without bodies… [Pyarelal Kaul:] “The shadow planets act upon us from a distance and focus our minds upon our instincts. Rahu is the exaggerator the intensifier! Ketu is the blocker the suppressor! The dance of the shadow planets is the dance of the struggle within us…”
He named the Los Angeles River after the angels of Assisi and their holy mistress and twelve years later, when a new settlement was established here, it took its title from the river’s full name, becoming El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, the Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Very Small Plot of Land. But the City of Angels now stood on a Very Large Plot of Land Indeed, thought India Ophuls, and those who dwelt there needed mightier protectors than they had been given, A-list, A-team angels, angels familiar with the violence and disorder of giant cities, butt-kicking Angeleno angels, not the small-time, underpowered, effeminate, hello-birds-hello-sky, love-and-peace, sissy-Assisi kind…
… the new pleasantvilles being built in the firetrap canyons to house the middle-class arrivistes… the less-pleasantvilles in the thick of the urban sprawl … the dirty underbelly of paradise…
[Re: India Ophuls] … weekly boxing sessions at Jimmy Fish’s boxing club on Santa Monica and Vine where Tyson and Christy Martin were known to work out… a silver luxury speedmobile with batwing doors…
[Re: Max Ophuls’ affair, Zainab Azam] … the color of scorched earth… hottest box-office star … a sex goddess such as the Indian cinema had never seen…
The lovers were their children and must be supported. Their behavior was worthy of the strongest censure… but they were good children, as everybody knew… Kashmiriyat, Kashmiriness, the belief that at the heart of Kashmiri culture there was a common bond that transcended all other differences…
[Shalimar:] “Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you, and I’ll have my revenge, I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also…”
[Boonyi Kaul:] “What a romantic you are,” she replied carelessly. “You say the sweetest things.” [Link]
Previous posts: one, two, three, four, five
manish at 11:48 PM in Literature · 6 comments · Direct link
‘Aishwarya Jones’ Diary’
What happens when Prides collide? Aishwarya Rai and Colin Firth are filming a $70M sword-and-chappals epic with Sir Ben (via DesiFans). Harvey Weinstein is backing Rai again despite the disappointing U.S. box office of Bride and Prejudice. It’s called The Last Legion:
The Last Legion is an epic adventure based on acclaimed author Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s international best-selling 2003 novel of the same name. The film is set against the fall of the Roman Empire in 470AD and its last emperor, 12-year-old Romulus Augustus…
Over-run with rebellion, Rome is a city on the brink of chaos and destruction. Imprisoned by rebels on the island-fortress of Capri, Romulus, aided by the clever strategies of his teacher Ambrosinus (Sir Ben Kingsley) and the heroic skills of his legionnaire Aurelius (Colin Firth), escape the island.Despite the turbulent events around them, this small band of Roman soldiers, accompanied by Byzantine warrior Mira (Aishwarya Rai), are determined to continue their mission to restore the Empire. This resolute group sets out on an arduous and dangerous trek for Britannia in search of the Last Legion, in their bid to make one final stand for Rome. [Link]
Colin Firth …. Aurelius
Ben Kingsley …. Ambrosinus
Aishwarya Rai …. Livia [Link]
Finally, we’ve got a suitable hero for the queen of mock chastity: not Colin Farrell, but Colin Firth, the serious Darcy in a ridiculous jumper. Though now that I mention it, the other pairing would have been interesting, the louche Lothario meeting chastity princess:
Farrell: ‘You know, I’ve dated a desi woman before.’
Aishwarya: ‘Strippers don’t count.’
Instead we get Aishwarya Jones’ Diary. ‘Aurelius, do these knickers make me look fat?’
The plot sounds like a yawner, though — road movies are better in Chargers than chariots. There lie perils in being the foreign babe du jour, e.g. the continuing obscurity of Diane Krueger from Troy. If they were going to waste an actress in an epic snooze, they should’ve just scooped up Kareena Kapoor from the remains of Asoka.*
* I haven’t seen Asoka yet, that’s a drive-by snarking.
manish at 06:02 PM in Film · 84 comments · Direct link
Burqa provocateur (updated)
Pakistani-Norwegian stand-up comic Shabana Rehman is a burqa provocateur (thanks, Srinath):
Rehman… was born in Karachi but raised in Norway… [Link]She typically begins her act wearing a burqa, which she then strips away to reveal a tight, red cocktail dress… She notably made headlines in the popular press last week by dropping her pants and baring her buttocks at a film festival in Haugesund, in southwest Norway. “I want to show that in Norway, you can do such things without being lynched or arrested… You can’t do a stunt like this in Karachi or Kabul.” [Link]
She’s pulled both a Madonna and a Demi Moore:
Rehman then went on to kiss vigorously Norway’s female Culture Minister… seeking to make a point about a debate raging in the country’s Pakistani community over a film scene showing a young Pakistani girl kissing a Norwegian boy… [Link]‘In Norway there are approximately 70,000 Muslims out of a total population of 4 million [1.75% of the population]… My answer to their reactions was to paint my body with the Norwegian flag and pose in the nude.’ [Link]
The 5’4” woman pulled an old Jewish and Punjabi wedding trick upon a fundie with suspected Al Qaeda links who took asylum in Norway. If only he were Jewish, he’d have known what was coming 
Rehman came on stage and said she wanted to carry out a “satiric test” to find out if Mullah Krekar was as strongly fundamentalist as some of his critics believe. When he approached her, she grabbed him and lifted him up in the air.
Krekar… became furious, grabbed the microphone and began speaking in Norwegian for the first time that evening. “… she has no right to carry or touch me… ” Krekar said, and promised to lodge a complaint via his lawyer. Rehman… told newspaper VG she also wanted to show that if she could lift him, he could hardly be a danger to national security. [Link]
Punk’d! A Scandinavian hippie complained:
The woman gathered in the audience laughed at the stunt but panel member Lar Gule, secretary general of Norway’s Humanist Ethic League protested. “The audience does not understand what an insult Krekar has been exposed to…” Gule said. [Link]
What she gets for her apostasy: the usual.
Unidentified assailants on Wednesday fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comediene… The shots, fired at around 4:00 am, struck the windows of the restaurant of Fahrina Rehman, the sister of Shabana Rehman. [Link]
But seriously, ign’ant jokes make me cringe:
So I told jokes about what Norwegian guys ask me when I date them, like: “Hi, if I get hot on you, would your family burn you up then? And I answer, “Shut up, just screw me, I`ve got a fire extinguisher in my kitchen!” [Link]
Would it be too much to call it Punjabi or Urdu?
… once I told the audience that I am gonna tell them a really dirty joke, and then I do so: in Pakistani! Norwegians always love that one. [Link]
Publicity-monger though she may be, I salute this reckless temptress.
See also: Shazia Mirza, Deeyah, Azhar Usman
Update: Don’t stare too long at the Karachi full moon (NSFW, and thanks, Scandinavian hippie!)
Update 2: Rehman in Time (thanks, Theresa).
She reflects on the Norwegian climate, joking that her family “ran around in the snow with sandals on.” She pillories cross-cultural dating, dispensing sardonic tips on “how to pick up a Pakistani chick,” and addresses her girlhood fear that the light mustache that appeared on her upper lip would scare off potential suitors. She was reassured by the fact that her mom had found a husband despite similar wisps of down, “but that was before I knew that Dad had been forced to marry her…” She also satirizes the Norwegians themselves, with their “booze-and-pork” culture and “progressive” family structures in which a single child can have multiple sets of parents…… the Oslo daily Dagbladet listed Rehman and her Norwegian husband, author Dagfinn Norbø, among the country’s most influential opinion shapers… “I’m not out to stimulate dialogue but to satirize people’s attitudes,” she says. “That’s why I make fun of religion, nationalism and Norwegian smugness.” [Link]
manish at 04:50 PM in Humor, News · 49 comments · Direct link
We are not the enemy.
Well, ain’t this some fabulous reporting from the New York Post (Thanks, Nina):
If you were in Manhattan yesterday, you might have thought an enemy force had taken over the island and severed the East Side from the West.
The invaders were not al Qaeda, but the Pakistani Parade and Festival, which stormed Madison Avenue from 23rd to 41st streets; the Daytop Village Street Festival on Madison from 42nd to 57th; and the Church of the Good Shepherd street fair on Third Avenue from 23rd to 34th.
The occupying armies ate up 45 blocks in the city’s heart from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., plus time before and after to set up and take down.
I’m consumed by a wrath which makes me want to kick something. An enemy force? A festival which STORMED Madison Ave? Are you kidding me?
This little bit of ignorant commentary is all yours thanks to a Real Estate/Opinion writer named Steve Cuozzo. The title he chose for his piece is awesome:
SLEAZY, STINKY, CHINTZY STREET FESTS ARE MORE FOUL THAN ‘FAIR’
Granted, Cuozzo was referring to three different events while frothing-at-the-ass, but to mindlessly lump in another culture’s Independence Day with a mere street festival wasn’t very bright, considering the purpose of the lumping. Celebrating Pakistani Independence is sleazy, stinky and chintzy? Foul? I’ll tell you what’s foul: sloppy writing, ignorant thinking and pure disrespect.
Perhaps this “journalist” thought he was being snarky; maybe he imagined that his choice of words gave his opinion piece that edgy, blunt, rudeness that naive people include in their stereotypes about the city I love most. Perhaps, he is simply a jackass. Whatever his reasoning or purpose, he is wrong. He is offensive, inappropriate and ignorant. And he does not speak for me, or any of the several hundred New Yorkers I know and love.
Real New Yorkers are just that— real. They’re not jerks taking potshots at a community which contributes plenty to the luminous energy the city marinates in. Immigrant communities from every corner of the globe are exactly what make the big apple taste so addictively extraordinary.
New York’s difference is its strength.
Shame on Steve Cuozzo and shame on the New York Post for publishing such garbage in the first place. I seriously doubt that this paper of no record would have either the inclination or the testicular fortitude to print similar if it were covering the Puerto Rican day or St. Patricks day parade. The fact that the New York Post isn’t respected or taken seriously may be true, but it’s also irrelevant; Cuozzo’s words remain unacceptable.
anna at 01:59 PM in Issues · 105 comments · Direct link
August 28, 2005
We have a reporter at the scene
The reason that blogs are so relevant is that you ALWAYS have a woman (or man) on the scene. In this instance SM reader and frequent commenter, Maitri is at what is soon to be ground zero for potentially the worst hurricane to hit the U.S. in decades (although hopefully she is fleeing as I write this). Some believe that the entire city of New Orleans may be destroyed on Monday. Now personally, I don't usually believe in weather. I don't even check the weather in the morning before I leave my apartment. I will break-up with a girl if I catch her watching the Weather Channel. I have long believed that "weather" is a hoax pushed on us by the umbrella and sun-block lobbies. This one looks like it may be the real deal though. Maitri breaks it down for us:
Update 3: A gloomy prognosis still. Even Bob Breck isn't feeling the hurricane mojo, and that bodes badly for staying in a 130-year-old house. New Orleanians, board your homes and leave. August 27 21:02
Update 4: Up surveying all animated predictions of our impending local weather pattern. Landfall anon, i.e. tomorrow PM. Dinner in the Quarter last night (tomato, lettuce and Diet Coke with Shiraz chasers - anything the gastrointestinal tract can keep down) saw veteran residents discuss seriously the act, not just the thought, of getting out of here. Then again, there are the brave ones staying such as Mac and KFrye, who plans to "stand out on my balconey and shake my fists at the storm." Good plan - is the webcam all set up? Time for push-ups before hauling stuff to car; hey, the CPUs have got to go. August 28 6:57
Because of what seems to have been excellent planning, the state of Louisiana sent out the evacuation notice in plenty of time. Really, it seems to have been superbly handled and this will hopefully prevent loss of life. Get ready for shocking oil prices though. 25% of the U.S.'s refinery capacity is in the center of that green and red blob. Also, I'm sure we will get to see congressman Bobby Jindal in action around his state. 
abhi at 11:36 PM in Environment, News · 17 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
The Rock of the Marne
A moment of silence:
The Department of Defense announced today [Sat] the death of a soldier, who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Spc. Hatim S. Kathiria, 23, of Fort Worth, Texas, died on Aug. 22, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, where an enemy rocket impacted near his position. Kathiria was assigned to the 703rd Forward Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. [Link]
MSNBC has more:
A soldier who called Fort Worth home died in Iraq this week. Hatim Kathiria joined the U.S. Army just months after emigrating to the United States from India.
The 23-year-old had studied to be a software engineer, but work in that field was hard to come by. So, he joined the Army to earn citizenship more quickly and to make money to send to his family.
Kathiria was sent to Iraq in January, the same month he got married and received his U.S. citizenship. He was full of promise, and hoped to advance in the military while saving money for graduate school and preparing to help bring his family to the U.S…Shortly before he died, Kathiria told his wife that he wanted his body sent back to India to be buried in his hometown. That will happen after a military service in Washington, D.C.
Here are this month’s fallen.
abhi at 07:27 PM in Military · 33 comments · Direct link
They got married the next day
My mom, who works for a department store in the D.C. suburbs, asked me if I would be willing to write a post on SM about her co-worker Smita. My dad sent me an email:
You may want to post this on “Sepia Mutiny” i.e. if this type of things are accepted per your protocols……
Smitas husband (whose name is Abhi) will die within about two months unless he gets a bone marrow match. The story is particularly sad. My mom told me that the night before their wedding they received a call from the doctor for Abhi, who wasnt home at the time. Smita told the doctor she was his fiancé and that she would relay the message. The doctor told her Abhi was dying of Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. They went ahead and got married the next day. The two are desperately seeking a bone marrow match and have made this flyer (click on the picture) appealing for help. Many of you reading this post may end up at the annual NetIP conference in Atlanta next weekend to find a love match. If you do attend make it priority #1 to give just 5 drops of your blood for the database. Even if you can’t help save Abhi you might make a difference for someone else. Click the image below for the schedule at NetIP.
Here is a FAQ:
Why?1. There are more than 350 medical conditions for which the matching bone marrow is the only life saving remedy available.
2. Your best chance of finding a matching bone marrow is from people of your own kind. Caucasian is likely to find from a Caucasian and African American from another African American. Asian will likely to find from another Asian
3. Even from the people of your own kind the odds of finding a matching bone marrow may be as low as one in one hundred thousands.What does it involve?
The registration involves two simple steps. First you fill out a form. And, than you five drops of your blood to be tested. This is done by pricking the finger, just like a diabetic would do several times a day on his own. This is done by certified phlebotomists who are trained professionals using disposable needles.
We have blogged about this issue before (1,2,3) but we can’t stress it enough. GO give a couple drops of blood so that you are logged in the registry. South Asians and minority populations are way underrepresented in the database, and unfortunately this is an affliction in which race matters.
abhi at 12:41 PM in Health and Medicine · 18 comments · Direct link
Midnight’s towers
The Empire State Building is lit green and white this weekend in honor of Pakistan’s independence. Manhattan’s parade starts at 12:30 pm today and goes down Madison Ave. from 41st to 26th Sts.
The 23rd St. tower’s lighting is still on IST. Maybe it’s reactionary political commentary; maybe it’s a statement of solidarity; maybe, like vegetables and viceroys, it only morphs at the stroke of midnight.
manish at 05:31 AM in Holidays, Photos · Comments · Direct link
Checkered translation
Seen atop a NYC cab: ‘Hum vahan vyavsaya ke liye jaathe hain,’ ‘we go there for business’ (thanks, skk).
I love the non-translation. It’s like the out-joke in Lost in Translation when the enfant terrible director rants at length in Japanese:
Ms. Kawasaki: He want you to turn and look in camera. Okay?
Bob (Bill Murray): Is that all he said? [Link]
On the other hand, they skipped the obvious alliteration: ‘Don’t dilly-dally, Delhi daily.’
manish at 04:57 AM in Photos · 3 comments · Direct link
August 27, 2005
Pornographic terrorism
Q: So how does a terrorist make money these days to fund his activities?
A: Porn. BBC News reports (thanks for the tip Srinath):
Rebels in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura are making pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign, officials say.
The information has come from surrendered guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), according to police.
They say the rebels are forcing captured tribal women, and some men, to take part in the films.
The films are then dubbed to be sold in India and neighbouring countries.
Come on. It’s one thing if porn is between “willing” participants, but to force helpless tribal people into it, and then dubbing over their voices is just sick!
“We get a lot more money , much above our normal rates, to process these films and deliver a sleek final product.“We know the insurgents are behind these films. When we process their raw stock, we can see boys standing around with automatic rifles and revolvers pulling in girls but we are supposed to cut all that out and just concentrate on the sex,” the owner said.
“It is very good money and we don’t think it is right to question the insurgents anyway,” he said.
So what is the NLFT’s purpose anyways?
The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) was formed in December 1989 for the purpose of seceding from India in order to create an independent Christian fundamentalist state of Tripura. The group was banned under the Unlawful Activies Prevention Act of 1967.
The headquarters of NLFT is located in the Khagrachari district of Bangladesh, about 40-45 km southeast of Simanapur… The NLFT has set up a number of camps in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), in the Sylhet, Maulavi Bazar, Habiganj and Comilla regions. NLFT also has ties with Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). [Link]
Let’s review. They want to set up a God-fearing Christian fundamentalist state with the help of Islamic militants and they do so by forcing tribal people into porn. Then they use the profits to terrorize people. The world is nuts.
Apparently there is a greater connection between pornography and terrorism worldwide than I imagined. I came across this article in Pravda from a couple of years ago:
The lieutenant colonel mentioned that up to 75% of all kiddie porn is distributed on the Internet. About 90% of Interpol’s international searches dealing with computer crimes are devoted to this issue. Chepchugov also said that the income earned from porn sales is a considerable part of the black market. In addition, much of this income is used to fund both conventional criminal and terrorist activities. Each child pornsite brings in about $30 thousand in illegal income each month, according to the RIA Novosti news agency…As far as the porn business is concerned, PRAVDA.Ru has already published an article called “Internet Cash Cow: Slaughter Time.” [Link]
abhi at 06:19 PM in Film, Military, News · 38 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
The coming of the new order
Check out D’Arcy, a Brit indie pop group with an ’80s fashion fixation (obligatory M.I.A. reference via AiM):
[The band was] founded three years ago by Ashish Dharsi, the band’s vocalist and rhythm guitarist, and Tristan Evans, who plays lead guitar… “When I started as a solo singer songwriter a friend was designing a flyer and wrote my name on it as D’Arcy instead of Dharsi thinking that’s how it was spelt. I liked it and we have stuck with it and it’s attracting a lot of support, particularly from our Irish fans.” [Link]
Well, of course that’s what you get when you pronounce your pukka desi name in that posh Brit accent Ashish makes a much more interesting Dharsi than Martin Henderson.
Listen here (MP3).
manish at 05:13 PM in Music · 7 comments · Direct link
Are you paying attention? :)
Since flawless scores on the SAT are no biggie ‘round this blog— btw, you all make me sick with your disgusting perfection— I thought I’d give you a REAL test to tussle with…
Erstwhile guest blogger Amardeep once crafted something similar to have us all put up or shut up regarding our mastery of brown music. I had a blast with the good Professor’s exam, so much so that fellow Mutineer Manish accused me of cheating. Hater. ;)
No need to cheat on my little timesuck; obviously all of your Reading Comp skills are stellar if you made 800s back in high school. This quiz covers information from posts written in the last week. Have at it, SM-heads. And if you like it, I might do it to you again. :D
anna at 02:07 AM in Blog, Humor · 11 comments · Direct link
August 26, 2005
The Markhor stands proud
There is at least one group (above all others) that values the comparative “calm” that has recently settled over the LOC in Kashmir, as India/Pakistan relations have thawed. The mighty Markhor. The Independent reports:
The ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Kashmir has produced an unexpected beneficiary - the world’s largest goat.
The markhor, a mountain goat that stands almost 6ft tall at the shoulder and can weigh 17 stone, was thought to be extinct in Indian-held Kashmir. But a recent joint survey by Indian wildlife organisations and the Indian army found 35 small herds - 155 goats - thriving near the Line of Control.
As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian side, but by 1997 they had been driven to near extinction. The main cause was the conflict.
The Indian Express goes into more detail:
”It is really encouraging that we still have a sizeable Markhor population here. The present peace situation is conducive for wildlife. Regular cross-border firing and shelling was a serious threat. But the habitation was improving even before the ceasefire was announced in late 2003. We declared protected areas and were hopeful that the Markhor population would improve,” J&K Chief Wildlife Warden CM Seth told The Indian Express.J&K Principal Chief Conservator of Forests SD Swatantra also lauded the Army for its role.
”Army personnel have been sensitive to the environmental concerns. Border thaw during the last two years has helped the animals a lot. Earlier, constant presence of the troops minimised poaching and human interference. Now in the absence of conflict, the habitat is improving fast,” he said.
What a noble animal. A part of me has always wished that humans too had horns. A lot of petty arguments could be settled by simply locking horns for a few moments…or impalement. Plus girls would immediately know that you were packing.
abhi at 06:55 PM in Environment, Humor, Military · 11 comments · Direct link
Great balls of fire
A pariah agiary is rushing new pledges in Bombay (via Arzan):
On Khordad Sal, Prophet Zarathustra’s birthday, a group of Parsis quietly inaugurated a new ”universal agiary” or Fire Temple in a Colaba apartment. It was for the first time in the community’s history a temple was thrown open to non-Parsis. Almost a hundred people, both Parsis and non-Parsis, turned up for the agiary’s jashan and the humbandagi—traditional prayers recited strictly for and by Parsis. And supporting the move were script writer Sooni Taraporevala and Smita Godrej Crishna, sister of industrialist Jamshyd Godrej…The prophet encouraged conversion, but Parsi women who marry outside the fold are pariahs, debarred from fire temples, from converting their families. But dwindling numbers—the census recorded 69,601 at last count—have prompted progressive Parsis to adopt a more practical approach…
Already, half a dozen Parsi priests have started offering clandestine ritual services at Navjots, marriages and funerals for a sizeable number of ostracised clients. Now the Wadias hope the new agiary will voice the unspoken aspirations of 40 per cent of Parsis who married outside the clan. [Link]
The Parsi religion seems to be missing the key meme of those which spread widely, a liberal conversion process. The elders are displeased:
He explains that an agiary can only be consecrated by the highest echelons of the clergy, after three weeks of rituals. ”Needless to say, a group of renegade priests officiating in a cult movement certainly don’t qualify.” [Link]
Express India has an explanation which has the whiff of folk legend:
In order to escape persecution at the hands of the Muslims in Iran, a small group of Zoroastrians had left their ancestral town of Paras and set sail for India. Known as Parsis, this group on reaching Sanjan, on the Gujarat coast, asked the local king Jadi Rana, for asylum. Before getting permission, they were asked to prove how they wouldn’t be a burden on the local people. The leader of the group stirred some sugar into a bowl of milk which was filled to the brim. When the sugar dissolved, the priest told the Rana, “The bowl of milk represents your people, the sugar represents us. Just like the sugar gets absorbed in the milk and sweetens it without spilling, we, too, will assimilate with your people and sweeten their life without disturbing it.”The Rana was taken aback with the Parsi’s reply. He gave them asylum but laid down five conditions. These were:
This practice prevails even today. No outsider (not born a Parsi) is allowed to practice the faith or enter their place of worship, the Fire Temple. [Link]
Here’s more on the Parsi New Year and a photo I took of a fire temple by Bombay University. I’m not sure of the species of bird in the photo.
Related post here.
manish at 01:19 PM in Religion · 43 comments · 2 readers linked · Direct link
Tête-à-tête with ‘Mano-a-mano’
Former McKinsey chief Rajat Gupta interviews the man in the perenially blue turban in the McKinsey Quarterly (registration required). 
I bet he pronounces the name right. It’s two free-marketers talking to each other, the benefit of having an economist occupying 7 Race Course Road.
Singh says his top priority isn’t high tech or special export zones, it’s electrifying villages. He’s talking about the basic heavy lifting of a long-delayed national bootstrap:
We have, for the next four to five years, a very ambitious plan to expand… the availability of electricity to all of our villages…When I look at countries like South Korea, all children who are of secondary-school-going age are in school; our children drop out even before they complete primary school… we are making, for the first time, the most determined effort to ensure that all our children… in the next four or five years have the benefit of minimum primary schooling.
Beyond upgrading airports, his administration is also spending on ports and railroads:
We are working with the Japanese government to draw up a program in which the freight corridors between Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Chennai, and Delhi-Kolkata can be modernized. Our estimate is that that will cost about 25 thousand crore of rupees [$5.7 billion], and that’s our high priority as far as the railway system is concerned… We also are now in the process of modernizing our seaports.
The Indian government’s policy naming schemes are an odd hangover cocktail of faceless socialist, stymied bureaucrat and shudh Hindi or Sanskrit:
The Common Minimum Program, which is the benchmark for us to assess where we want to go, talks about the navratnas. These navratnas are companies essentially in the oil sectors, the power sectors, which are doing really well…
Gupta asks him the cultural question, but ‘Gantt charts’ aren’t an entirely satisfying answer:
Whenever people discuss India… in the end, the pace of implementation and actual results often lag behind. There isn’t that kind of action bias that you would like to see in the country.… because we are a federal set-up, there are a lot of things that the central government does, but there are many things, like getting land, getting water, getting electricity—in all these matters the state government comes in, the local authority comes in… we need to… cut down on this rigmarole of many tiers of decision-making processes…
We’ve got the [South] Koreans involved in building a steel plant of 12 million tons’ capacity. Right from the beginning the center and the state governments were working together to ensure that whatever milestones are agreed upon, those milestones were tracked—how they move forward, whether the work proceeds, if there are bottlenecks, to identify those bottlenecks and ensure that those bottlenecks are resolved.
On the plus side, the Indian savings rate is around the same as Japan’s, ~27% vs. the U.S.’ 0%:
… our savings rate has shot up in the last couple of years to about 27 to 28 percent of our GDP.
manish at 02:51 AM in Economics · 54 comments · Direct link
Assuaging my guilt
Being a Sepia Mutiny blogger there is one thing I feel guilty about. With this post I am going to try and absolve myself of some of that guilt. It pertains to our blog roll. You know, that list of blogs we have links to in the right hand column of our page. Many of you who are bloggers ask us all the time to add your site to our roll. Our policy is explained in our FAQ:
Q: Can you please add my blog to the sidebar?
A: Send us your Web address, and we’ll take a look. We add the blogs we love, are addicted to and read daily.
We honestly aren’t trying to be blog snobs, it’s just that we feel in order that our readers take us seriously we only include blogs that at least one of us regularly reads and can personally vouch for. It’s like the mob. If we vouch for a site that we really don’t know, then we leave ourselves open to being shot by our co-bloggers. It’s all very Donnie-Brascoesque here in mutinous North Dakota. The best way I find new blogs is when one of you leave a very interesting comment and I click on the link to your name.
I just wanted to give a shot out to some blogs that I am starting to read, and others that belong to dedicated SM tipsters/commenters that may have some promise.
(1) Chocolate & Gold Coins, Michael Higgins- Any blog with the word “chocolate” in the name is a winner. He also sends us good tips.
(2) Punjabi Boy- Really, need I say more?
(3) Currylingus- I think that is my favorite blog name EVER. Neha makes me laugh any time I visit her site. And she’s cute.
(4) Kush Tandon- The guy is definitely lacking in charm but he is the only person that visits this blog that knows as much isotopic geochemistry as me.
(5) Desis for Texas- That powerhouse Mimosa has teamed up with Dheeraj to give a kick to this new blog.
(6) arZan sam wadia- This guy has sent us a bazillion tips and I don’t think we’ve used a single one. Ever. You have to give him an A for effort though.
(7) www.CrayonPeople.com- This is a new news aggregator that links to articles pertaining to people of color. It looks promising already.
(8) Dippu- This guy is both obnoxious AND a fundamentalist. I am only listing him here to get him off our backs and to store up some good karma.
(9) Ananthan- Always leaves good comments
(10) DesiDudeinAustin- If I find out that he’s not from Austin (where I have many fond memories from) I am going to take him off this list.
(11) Sluggo- He doesn’t have a blog but this is my not-so-subtle hint that he should start one.
(12) DesiDancer- See #11
(13) dhaavak- This is the most boring blog EVER. EVER. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to it like a car wreck.
(14) The Life and Times of Chai- The BlogHer conference made her famous.
(15) Maisnon- Her blog entry about her first Barbri class is the stuff of internet legends. And she’s a sweetheart.
(16) Bong Breaker- NOTHING yet but the IPO rumors are swirling.
I know I am forgetting several of you. Forgive me please. I am counting on my co-bloggers to fill in the blanks. Before any of us blogged for SM we each had our own individual blogs. We STILL do in fact. I miss blogging on my personal blog terribly. I could be so free there. It’s like when you live alone and can just come home and walk around naked. You can’t do that at SM. Anyways, I feel less guilty now. Like I said, if you want people to visit your blog you should leave good comments on the blogs you visit.
abhi at 01:36 AM in Blog · 39 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
August 25, 2005
Blue Steel, baby, that's my look
Fresh bagels, Starbucks coffee, foot massages ??? Turbanhead mustve had the all-access pass to the North Dakota headquarters. All I see are grey socks and an ant farm. And all I got were a gaddawful hangover and some suspicious bruising.
I am truly honored by the invite to blog. Its my first time, so please be gentle.
Since fashion-lovers responded so warmly to my sartorially-obsessed MIA review, I thought Id start things off with the news that Ashish Soni is presenting a collection at New York Fashion Week next month. The first Indian to be invited to do so.
Soni, like all designers, needs money to buy fabric, stitch up samples and hire those lissome young things to stalk a runway. Our man in Delhi, however, seems a bit more enterprising than most when it comes to getting his show on the road:
At an informal press briefing today, Soni announced that his show in New York would be jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Textiles, the Ministry of Tourism and Air-India. And whats more, all this, as part of the Incredible India campaign. The total sponsorship package would amount to around $200,000, informed the designer.
We havent tapped the huge potential that we hold in the field of textiles, explained Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury at the press briefing. So when Ashish approached us with his blueprint which would help showcase Indian textiles abroad, we decided to make him an ambassador for the Incredible India campaign, she said.
Exactly how would this help tourism? Well, the huge international media presence will ensure that the world gets to see a younger, contemporary and more vibrant side to India, she reasoned. [link]
I understand involving the Ministry of Textiles, but this Incredible India campaign seems to distract the Soni from his design duties -
Soni is currently designing a number of products like yoga kits, mats, towels and T-shirts with the logo of Incredible India…The Chatwals, Sant and Vikram, are handling Soni’s after-show party at their Dream Hotel in New York.[link]
On one hand, being invited to show at NYFW is quite an honor. Almost as much as being asked to blog by Sepia Mutiny.
But it looks like Brand India is gonna overshadow his design skills, doesn’t it? And the fact that his afterparty will be in the carefully manicured hands of Vikram Chatwal isn’t doing much to squelch my fear that this will be another Anand Jon, the 2002 Fashion Week of America’s “International New Star,” and a man given to pronouncements like, “”I meditate every night and when I wake up, I check my e-mail.” See his Hilton-sisters lovin’ bio here.
In his bio, Soni states,
“for the Indian designers to make it abroad, it is essential to realise that you cannot sell a salwar kurta abroad. So the challenge is to design something where you do not loose that essential Indian sensibility and yet are able to cater to the Western asthetics”.
Soni has a much lauded career in India, and is apparently the youngest designer to launch his own line there. His past collections aren’t available for viewing online, (if someone has a paid subscription to Bharattextile.com, please send pics!) but this image from the 2004 India Fashion Week looks like his hair and makeup team was inspired by the Coneheads. Here’s hoping that he doesn’t lose that Indian sensibility while feted by Western aesthetes.
cicatrix at 11:02 PM in Fashion · 22 comments · Direct link
Guest blogger: Cicatrix
Last night we had a MOAP (Mother of all Parties) at our North Dakota world headquarters. We had just finished hazing the heck out of the newest blogger at SM. After she chugged the 10 beers laid out before her and received two taps with the ceremonial paddle (courtesy of me ), Cicatrix was given a set of keys to “the bunker.” Also, just a fair warning. Anyone that calls her “aunty” will be banned. Please join me in welcoming her [clap clap clap].
abhi at 10:07 PM in Blog · 27 comments · Direct link
To Forgive is Divine
Almost two weeks ago, fellow Mutineer Abhi wrote
Really, what kind of a soulless bastard do you have to be to kill someone while they are praying?
when he posted about the tragic murder of Houston-resident Akhil Chopra, which took place on August 11.
What kind of a bastard? Perhaps, this kind? (Thanks, RC.)
This is Howard Dale Bellamy, aka “Peanut”. As in, it takes testicles the size of peanuts to murder a man who is peacefully communing with nature, with his eyes closed. Chopra meditated daily during his lunch break in the park where he was gunned down.
True to his stellar character, Bellamy is not cooperating with authorities. “Peanut“‘s luck ran out when someone else who was using Chopra’s purloined credit card was caught; that person promptly snitched while being interrogated. Six other people who are linked to the robbery-turned-murder are also in custody, under fraud charges.
Houston police, which had earlier announced a award of $10,000 (about Rs 4.5 lakhs) for tip offs leading to Bellamy’s arrest, would soon initiate trial against him for capital murder. If convicted, he might get a death penalty as Texas has provision for this. [link]
When I first read the article, I thought, “If he’s guilty, hang him high.” A part of me is vindictively glad that this is all going down in the Lone Star state, since they have no scruples when it comes to capital punishment…but the part of me that is kind and sweet, that likes bunny rabbits and babies is reminding me that the gunman’s consummate lack of respect for the sanctity of life is what outraged me about this entire tragedy in the first place. Nothing’s fine, I’m torn.
Everlasting be your memory, Akhil.
My prayers are with your family, friends and community. If I were a fraction of the phenomenal human you were, I’d probably be praying for your killer, too. But I’m not. And that is why it’s extra horrible that he chose someone like you.
anna at 05:43 PM in Musings · 48 comments · Direct link
‘Grimus’ and Klingons
The one-man sound bite missile named Rushdie aims His cross-Atlantic test firing at 
Time and the Times (thanks, Sapna and Karthik):
There’s a line about Klingons on the very first page of Shalimar. Aren’t you worried that a pop reference like that will date the book?
… A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it’s the balance of that that’s difficult to achieve. I have a suspicion that Klingons might be more enduring than we suspect.Speaking of Klingons, wasn’t your wife… on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise?
Yes, she was. She was an alien empress of most of the universe, I think. The episode was all right. Next Generation was the one that I liked best. [Link]
Now that Lakshmi’s been on Star Trek, our nerdy readers have official permission to idolize. I love the uncharacteristically autistic, Trekkie honesty here (whereas in the Times Rushdie gives wuvvy-dovey, team player quotes). His wife was on TV, and it was just ‘eh’? Something tells me he’s going to learn about ‘withholding’ tonight, and I don’t mean taxes
The Times delves into his early career, which is always where the critical lessons of history are found — not how a success expands, but how it struggled from obscurity in the first place:
He was not part of the Barnes-Amis-McEwan lit-lad circle back then and, as someone who was still struggling to find his voice, was keenly aware that they had found their way as writers far earlier on: “There was Martin with The Rachel Papers… and Ian with his first collections of short stories… and I thought, ‘I wish I would be able to write as well as this’, but I was still stumbling around trying to find out what to do. It took me a long time to get going as a writer.”
His debut, Grimus, was both a critical and commercial failure and despite the huge and continued success of Midnight’s Children, all the more remarkable for it being only his second novel, Rushdie could not forgive the casual dismissiveness of those first reviews… he admits that if he sees people reading it, his instinct is to hide behind the furniture. “… it embarrasses me.” [Link]
On his revenge against the critics:
When he won the Booker prize for Midnight’s Children in 1981 (it was further honoured with the ultimate of accolades, the Booker of Bookers, in 1993 for the best novel in the 25-year history of the award), Rushdie made what was widely considered to be a most ungracious acceptance speech… his anger was fuelled by the reaction to Grimus: “When people were saying, ‘Find a different form of employment’, and I thought, you know, for a first book that’s real cruelty. I remember that. And I guess, with hindsight, you shouldn’t ever try to get even because you always lose.” [Link]
On going balls-out artistically with Midnight’s Children:
He started writing Midnight’s Children in his mid-thirties but it took him at least five years to complete it, which isn’t so long when you consider what a vast canvas it fills: Independence, the Partition, India, Pakistan, Kashmir… when he looks at the novel now, he simply cannot recognise himself as its creator: “I often wonder who that is. Because I don’t write like that any more. I think a lot has changed, not just in the language but also in the perspective. I mean, it’s a young man’s book and it has the strength of that.”
In its extreme vigour and vitality? “Some of the fearlessness just deciding to take it on,” he says. “After the failure of the first book and after one or two false starts or things that never made it to print, I remember thinking, well, you’d better either give up or do something much more conservative and middle-of-the-road and non-risky. Something, you know, littler.
“Or take the biggest risk you can. So that if you’re going to go down, at least go down in flames. And, actually, I remember very clearly thinking, well, OK, then, I’ll do this because I can’t think of anything more artistically dangerous. And, yes, it took me for ever…” [Link]
He continues his sophisticated deconstruction of Ceylon as snot
The light bulb moment for him was when he was gazing at a map of India - “When you write a book like this, you do find yourself looking at maps quite a bit, you know” - and was struck by the thought that the country looked just like a big nose with a drip hanging off it. Thus Saleem’s physiognomy can be read as a map of India, just as his destiny