This was just too good to miss. Our thanks to Dave and Jenny at ‘Our Delhi Struggle‘:
And here’s the link:
Monthly Archive for June, 2008
U.S. accommodation to Pakistan’s government and a shift from counterterrorism efforts to preparations for the war in Iraq in 2002 helped make Pakistan a haven for Al Qaeda. From The New York Times:
Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda.
Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.
India’s Parsi community is shrinking fast. For every birth, there are five deaths, prompting fierce debate between reformists and traditionalists who are concerned about ethnic purity. In The Independent, Andrew Buncombe reports from Mumbai:
For centuries, Mumbai’s Parsis have brought their dead to the Towers of Silence to be devoured by vultures, a traditional form of “burial” the community insists is hygienic, efficient and in keeping with their faith. Yet these days, there are very few of the carrion-eaters to be seen.
With Asia’s vultures having been drastically reduced by the widespread use of toxic pesticides, the Parsis have been forced to erect solar concentrators – essentially large magnifying lenses – to help turn the corpses into dust. “There are not many vultures,” said Cyrus Siganporia, a retired engineer who helps at the peaceful, secluded site on the city’s Malabar Hill where peacocks strut and birds sing. “They come sometimes, not often. ‘Sometimes’ is the word.”
But while India’s Parsis are suffering from a shortage of vultures they are also facing a much more pressing problem, a shortage of themselves.
As ‘witnessed’ by his then neighbour Arun Bhatia. From The Indian Express:
I was present at the Bangalore launch of his autobiography by Dev Anand recently. Among other things he has said in the book, he has put it on record that he loved Suraiya, but she was indecisive. I saw Dev Sa’ab at the launch but he didn’t see me – I was in the background. The same was the case in the mid-’40s at Marine Drive in Bombay. He would come to visit Suraiya who lived at Krishna Mahal in a sea-front ground-floor flat while my family was next door at Keval Mahal.
Before school hours in the morning, we kids would see a dozen or two Suraiya fans hanging about, craning their necks to see through her ground floor windows. She usually dodged them, with a burqa, deftly slinking into her big, American Packard car. It was the same story every day: disappointed fans would disperse, bringing to an end the morning’s boring routine for us kids.
Manjushree Thapa, the Kathmandu-based author of ‘Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy,’ in The Indian Express:
Girija Prasad Koirala’s resignation as prime minister has been greeted with equal relief and dismay in Nepal. Ahead of the April 10 Constituent Assembly election, Koirala had announced that no matter what the outcome, he would resign afterwards. When the Maoists came in as the largest party, though, his apologists began to claim that the election had been only for a constitution-drafting body, and not for a government. They argued that the interim government – with Koirala as the prime minister, and also as the provisional head of state – could only be voted out with an absolute majority. Koirala went along with this dubious logic; and his refusal to resign came across, to his detractors, as an expression of megalomania.
This launched a month of intense inter-party bickering, bickering which cast an anxious shadow over what should have been a joyous moment for Nepal: the abolition of the monarchy on May 28.
The subjects being bickered over have been among the most decisive of the peace process, subjects that will make or break Nepal in the coming years. Who is to be the head of state, the prime minister or (with the king now gone) a president? Which of these should hold executive power? How, if at all, should the Nepal Army and the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army be merged? Who should be the commander-in-chief?
‘We are trying our best to understand democracy’
The Maoist guerrilla leader who is about to become Nepal’s prime minister faces a dilemma: how can he reconcile his ideology with the realities of political office? Raymond Whitaker of The Independent met him:
It is not easy securing a meeting with the Maoist guerrilla leader poised to become prime minister of the new republic of Nepal.
Prachanda, which means “awesome” or “the fierce one”, came out of the jungle two years ago, but his journey from insurgent commander to mainstream politician is far from complete. As if to emphasise his distance from the Kathmandu political establishment, which he calls “feudal”, he lives in a run-down area of the city, close to a rubbish-strewn canal. His house, with sandbagged emplacements at each corner, is guarded by unsmiling male and female cadres in camouflage fatigues and caps with a red star on the peak.
From The Guardian:
Yesterday was the biggest day in the life of one 26-year-old insurance agent in Delhi, yet he came to the city’s long-awaited first gay parade hiding behind a mask.
“I have to remain invisible,” he said. “If my parents see me on TV, I won’t be able to go home. And if my colleagues recognise me, there’ll be hell to pay in the office.”
The gay insurance agent is typical of millions of Indians condemned to lead a double life since, much like in Victorian Britain, they risk becoming social outcasts and even criminals if their sexual preferences are revealed.
Though the setting up of advocacy groups and helplines in recent years has given India’s homosexuals a voice and some solace, they are still largely a hidden and persecuted community. But in a sign of changing times, India’s gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the traditional hijra transsexual community came together for the first-ever Delhi Queer Pride Parade yesterday.
Delhi’s feeling gay and Deepa Mehta is happy
From The Times of India:
Deepa Mehta, who has just completed another celluloid treatise on the subjugation of women, can’t hide the pride in her voice when she’s told that Delhi’s first-ever gay parade today will begin from Regal cinema in the Capital, where the screening of her lesbian film, Fire, was forcibly stopped years ago.
“I remember I was in Dubai in 1996, watching AR Rahman’s concert. I had just thought Fire would come and go in India without creating a ripple, like all films on unconventional themes. I should’ve known better. I got a call in the middle of the concert, asking me to come down to Delhi immediately. They had just halted the screening of Fire. I was aghast. It was my first brush with the moral police. Later, of course, I got used to being bullied by extra-constitutional censors in India.”
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The documentary maker Sean Langan tells Peter Beaumont about the three-month ordeal that saw him kidnapped and threatened with death in tribal Pakistan. From The Guardian:
It was the moment documentary film-maker Sean Langan believed he was about to die.
After being held captive on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by a group allied to the Taliban for three months, he was travelling to the place where, he had been told, he would finally be released.
The driver pulled over in the darkness of early morning for what his captors said was a toilet stop.
As a door opened, Langan could see, in the side mirror, one of the men accompanying him walking around the car and removing a pistol from the waistband of his trousers.
Told that his fixer was already dead, he waited for the shot. “It is the way I thought it was going to happen,” he said. “Shot on a road like that. Somewhere remote.”
The last time he visited Sri Lanka, it was two days after the Boxing Day tsunami had struck. Yet among the devastation, a shaky ceasefire between Tamil rebels and government forces seemed to offer a glimmer of hope. So what went wrong? Euan Ferguson returns to find an island paradise once again torn apart by conflict. From The Observer:
Hard not to laugh, for a brief second, when you’re told about Claymore landmines. I am being told of them by a helpful young Sri Lankan near a military checkpoint, who is making a fairly compelling case not to be stupid by waiting till dark and dancing off around the guns and into the jungle. But I’m quietly laughing because I have just learned that the Claymore – shaped like a fat, convex, olive-green laptop with little legs to bury in the ground – has embossed writing on the business end. What the writing says is: ‘Front towards Enemy.’
Even the arms industry, apparently, can’t help but pap-feed us with health and safety disclaimers. And one of the most effective counters to tripwires, it turns out, is Silly String, which lands on the wires in all its gaudy, giveaway colours, without detonating them. The most inhuman, anonymous, cowardly, deadly weasels of modern warfare, and they come with safety warnings, and they’re battled by streamers designed more normally for parties featuring jelly. Hard not to laugh. Briefly.
In Outlook, Sheela Reddy profiles Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter Upinder Singh:
“You can’t miss it,” says historian Upinder Singh rather apologetically, giving directions to her home in the St Stephen’s staff quarters. “It looks like a fortress.” It does: a towering blank metal gate, of which a chocolate square pops open at the first knock to reveal the head of a grim securityman. And there’s a whole posse of Black Cats behind the gate, befitting the home of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter. But inside, it’s a different world: cane chairs, cement floors and peeling white walls. The shabby-genteel world of two university dons who, between them, share most of the housework-there’s a part-time cook, Neena, to whom Upinder wants to dedicate her next book and “the boys help a little but not as much as I’d like them to”.
And between them, they have also probably read all the books lining their walls, where plaster casts of Socrates rub shoulders with Harappan dancing girls. In fact, half-a-dozen of these books have been written by Upinder herself.
[Photo: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's daughter Upinder in her modest home in the St. Stephen's staff quarters, Delhi. / Outlook]
When doctors told Jane Wilson-Howarth her baby needed major surgery, she feared his life would not be worth living. So she left behind the consultants, the needles, the tests and took him far away to live among the ’sane, baby-loving’ people of Nepal. From The Guardian:
At the next river – the biggest so far – we drove down the bank and plunged in. Clear water surged on to the bonnet and over the windscreen of the Land Cruiser. Three-and-a-half-year-old Alexander whooped with delight and his excitement made little David chuckle. With water churning up to the windows, the river was intimidatingly wide, but it was exciting and exquisite too. At the far bank, we drove up on to a pristine beach. Panicking chickens scattered between thatched huts as we passed under an arch of sprightly bougainvillaea, and pulled up in the courtyard of an imposing two-storey house.
Within minutes of arriving at our new home on Rajapur island, Simon, my husband, was whisked away to meet local farmers. As the incoming water expert, he was expected to offer wise solutions to problems that rival landowners had been squabbling over for generations. He stayed frenetically busy, but the boys and I had the luxury of time: time to explore. Alexander took rides with his special friend the Tractor Man and learned how to feed a new calf. Meanwhile, I could sit with David, soaking up the reviving winter sunshine. He was more peaceful than I had ever known. He was content, and for now, at least, away from life-support machines and probes and drips.
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Legend has it that it was the apostle, Thomas, the doubting one, who brought Christianity to Southern India – and now, aside from the odd jealous spat, the Virgin Mary and goddess Bhagavati are worshipped with equal fervour. William Dalrymple in The Guardian:
On the edge of the jungle lay a small wooden temple. It was late evening, and the sun had already disappeared behind the palms. The light was fading fast, and the hundreds of small clay lamps lined up on the wooden slats of the temple all seemed to be burning brighter and brighter, minute by minute.
The oiled torsos of the temple Brahmins were gleaming, too. They had nearly finished the evening ceremony – surrounding the idol of the goddess Bhagavati with burning splints as they rang bells, chanted and blew on conch shells. The ritual prepared the goddess for sleep.
Only when it was over, and the doors of the inner shrine were sealed for the night, were they able to tell me about the goddess they served. Bhagavati is the pre-eminent goddess in Kerala, the most powerful and beloved. In some incarnations, it was true, she could be ferocious: a figure of terror, a stalker of cremation grounds who slaughtered demons without hesitation or compassion.
After a decade, Shekhar Kapur is back in India for the long haul to finish his next film. In extensive interviews with Lounge-Mint, he talks about why he’s raising a $1 billion media fund.
Kapur is in the process of roping in strategic investors for a $1 billion (about Rs4,300 crore) private fund for creative work in digital technology in South Asia. He says the Singapore government (for gaming and animation) and China’s Hina Group, an investment banking and private equity group, are already on board and he is in talks with some Indian companies as well. “This fund will not look at film-making, because I believe that the next big splurge is not in Bollywood or Hollywood; it’s in the world of the Web-to tell stories that are immediate, that can hook you in your cellphone. This fund will aggregate together content creators and technology from Asia. I want to be in creative control from the time content is made to the gatekeeping stage and then distribution. Professionals will only manage it.”
Kapur already has two characters in mind for a story that will unfold in your cellphone if the fund is successfully raised, and channelled: “an ordinary girl and her travails through life, and perhaps an animal.” After being the creative head of Virgin Comics, the company Kapur formed with Deepak Chopra, a close friend, this is the film-maker’s second big jab at mass media. Among other ideas (“I’m working on five more things that you have no clue about, and I can’t tell you”) that he is flirting with is a Twenty20 kabaddi tournament, only for Indian television. His reasons for thinking up the last are obvious, but the vision to execute it and, to an extent, generate the funds for it, is still fuzzy.
In Lounge-Mint, Rabbi Shergill talks about the wellspring of his music and the importance of language:
While the riffs of rock music inform his musical thought-he idolizes Bruce Springsteen – Rabbi Shergill’s music is essentially Punjabi. The rhythms and cadences of the Punjabi language, and folk and Sufi musical forms are reflected in his original compositions. He feels strongly about language as a vehicle for thought-the bastardization of the Punjabi language and its homogenization, brought about by mass culture, upsets him. “Homogenizing language is tantamount to homogenizing thought,” says the 33-year-old, adding that using his own language-a dialect of Punjabi spoken in the Majha region, that he was exposed to as a child-is for him a form of protest against the homogenization of the beautiful, rich and diverse Punjabi language. Language, then, is a focal point in understanding and appreciating Shergill’s music.
Former Indian Army chief Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, who scripted India’s 1971 military victory over Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, died at the military hospital in Wellington in Tamil Nadu early Friday after developing acute bronchopneumonia. He was 94.
From India Today:
In 1942 at the height of the World War II a fierce battle was raging in Myanmar, then Burma, at the Sittang Bridge. A company of the Indian Army was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the invading Japanese forces for the capture of a position, which was critical for the control of the bridge. The young company commander was exhorting his troops when his stomach was riddled by a machine gun burst. Afraid that his company would be left leaderless if he were evacuated, he continued fighting till he collapsed.
His company won the day and the general commanding the Indian forces arrived at the scene to congratulate the soldiers. On seeing the critically wounded commander, he announced the immediate award of the Military Cross — the young officer was not expected to survive much longer and the Military Cross is not awarded posthumously. Thus began a historic military career that spanned the Indo-Pak wars and the Sino-Indian conflict, the wounded captain surviving to become India’s first field marshal.
A speech by Sam Manekshaw at his old school Sherwood College in 1969:
Your Grace, the Metropolitan of India, My Lord Bishop of Lucknow, Mr. Principal, ladies and young gentlemen of Sherwood:
Yesterday evening when my A.D.C. told me that I would have to speak here, I was horrified. I thought the Principal had asked me to come and join the celebrations; I did not realize he wanted me to sing for my supper! Believe me, as I stand here, I am terrified. Those near me can almost hear my knees knocking and my teeth chattering. For eight years in Sherwood, I was at the receiving end.
It is customary on these occasions for the guest speaker to give a learned discourse or advice to young gentlemen. It is not my fault that, although I received my early education in Sherwood, I am not learned. Sir, I am fit neither to give you a learned discourse nor advice, I really want to tell you what Sherwood has done for me.
Manekshaw’s war
Dawn Magazine, Karachi, carried this piece by Commodore (retired) Najeeb Anjum in December, 2007:
It is a reminder of the failure of leadership at the time as exemplified by Yahya Khan and his coterie in their handling of the worst crisis the country ever faced.
The Indo-Pak war of 1971 culminated in the creation of Bangladesh. Ironically, General Yahha Khan, Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army (re-designated as COAS in 1972) and President of Pakistan at the time of independence was a staff officer at Military Operations Directorate as a major and General SAM Manekshaw, the COAS of the Indian Army was posted as GSO-I as a Lt-Col. It was ordained that these two erstwhile compatriots would fight a full scale war against each other on 1971. Manekshaw showed uncommon ability to motivate his forces, coupling it with a mature war strategy and the war ended with Pakistan’s unconditional surrender.
Amrita Pande on surrogate motherhood in The Indian Express:
When I started my research on surrogacy in 2005, people wondered if I had my facts right. Women getting pregnant for someone else? In our country? Why haven’t we heard about it? The queries ran from disbelief to fascination. In the past two years, however, the Indian and international media have published so many “human interest” stories on this subject that now I can have a debate on the topic with almost anyone who reads a newspaper. The international media cover this industry as a new and sensational form of “outsourcing”. Invariably, the articles start with a description of the pigs, the crowded streets and filth in Anand, move on to the swollen tummies of these enterprising-although-illiterate Indian women and to their life stories filled with drunken husbands and poverty. The articles talk about the cost difference between a surrogacy in Anand and one in the United States and the win-win situation for the two parties involved. The Indian media follow a similar path. But is that all that we need to talk about?
Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan ranks high in philatelic firsts. From The Washington Post:
The first 3-D stamp. The first scented stamp. The first textured brushstroke stamp. The first bas-relief stamp. The first on metal. The first on silk. The first on extruded plastic. The first on a playable record. And now, according to its maker, the first stamp on a CD-ROM (though North Korea might have released one earlier).
“They probably have more firsts in the philatelic world than any country,” says Frances Todd Stewart, whose company sells Bhutan’s CD-ROM stamp and who is helping to represent the country at the 42nd Smithsonian Folklife Festival that began yesterday.
A prepubescent deity of Hindu-Buddhist tradition is also a modern child of HBO and Barbie. From The Christian Science Monitor:
Like any typical schoolgirl, 13-year-old Chanira Bajracharya struggles to finish hours of homework each day. That doesn’t stop her from stealing away to watch TV (she enjoys HBO; her younger brothers often change it to Nickelodeon) or use the computer. She even has Barbies, but now that she’s older, painting has replaced organizing tea parties as her favorite pastime.
The similarities end there. To start, no one – including her family – may scold her. Chanira eats whatever she desires, though she’s yet to abuse this power by demanding an endless supply of ice cream. And don’t even mention chores.
It may seem like she’s hit the jackpot, but in exchange for this life of relative luxury, she’s forbidden to leave her five-story home, save for religious holidays. She must also endure a constant stream of Hindu followers who come seeking her healing powers or to snap a photo of her.
[Photo: Chanira Bajracharya (c.), is one of Kathmandu's kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters]
Ayaz Memon looks back at the magical, surreal summer that ended with Kapil Dev raising aloft the World Cup. From cricinfo:
Show me a person who gave Kapil Dev’s team any chance of winning the 1983 World Cup: I will show you a liar and an opportunist.
The story of how David Frith, then editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly, had to literally eat his words after he wrote India off as no-hopers has been told far too often to be repeated here, yet is symbolic of the utter disdain with which the Indian cricket team was viewed before the tournament. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the situation was “hopeless, but not serious.”
My own belief in the Indian team’s prospects, too, tended towards zero. True, there had been some glimpses of excellence when Kapil Dev’s team beat mighty West Indies at Berbice in a one day game preceding the 1983 tournament, but India’s track record in one-day cricket, and especially in the two previous World Cups, had been pathetic to say the least.
[Photo: The catch that changed cricket: Kapil is mobbed by happy spectators after the dismissal of Richards in the final]
Above, Kapil Dev lifting the trophy at Lords, after beating West Indies to win the Prudential World Cup in 1983.
Some thought a World Cup could be won by fluke: Kapil
Kapil Dev speaks to The Telegraph, Calcutta, in the lead-up to the June 25 celebrations at Lord’s. Excerpts:
Q Clearly, this is an emotional time for you…
A (Laughs) Basically, I’m an emotional person… I’m particularly looking forward to the reunion at Lord’s… We’ll be reminiscing, cracking jokes… Pulling each other’s leg.
Well, what could happen on the 25th?
Quite a few (nine, really) of us are 50-plus and, so, I expect a lot of leg-pulling… Generally, I could be a target … I’ll be one of the team, my days of captaincy have gone… (Krishnamachari) Srikkanth and (Sandeep) Patil would talk a lot at team meetings, let’s see whether that has changed… Sunil (Gavaskar) has a great sense of humour and he could lighten up things… Dilip (Vengsarkar) wouldn’t say much at team meetings, but I don’t know whether he’ll be as quiet now when we return to the Lord’s dressing room… Kirti (Azad) would joke a lot and I remember Yashpal (Sharma) knew everything about everybody… Basically, mazza aye ga (It’ll be fun).
That catch, that inswinger
India were booked at 66:1 before the 1983 World Cup started. Then they beat West Indies, overcame a hiccup against Zimbabwe, brushed aside Australia, and beat England in the semi-final to set up a final against the two-time defending champions. Having lost the toss, India batted first, making 183, and that paltry score turned out to be a winning one as West Indies collapsed for 140, the greatest upset in the history of the World Cup. Cricinfo picks out five crucial moments from the final.
Lords of ‘83: Men who won India the Cup of Joy
CNN-IBN celebrates and honours the men who scripted history for Indian cricket on a special show Lords of ‘83.
The show conducted by CNN-IBN editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai saw the legends candidly recall the big moment -- both on the field and off it. From the team’s strategy to who got to drink the most champagne to who got the maximum adulation from female fans, the show revisited some of the unseen, unheard of times.
The panel comprised Kapil Dev, the captain of that World Cup winning team; Sunil Gavaskar, an incomparable batsman; Balwinder Singh Sandhu, the man who started it all by bowling out Gordon Grenidge; Syed Kirmani, the finest wicketkeeper India has ever seen; Yashpal Sharma, one of the most astounding heroes of the ‘83 triumph and the charismatic Sandeep Patil.
Read the story and watch the video here:
With the world’s highest youth suicide rate, India’s authorities try to cut the pressure in school. Neeta Lal in Asia Sentinel:
india-studentIn the heart of New Delhi, students at the Mirambika School start their day by first helping their teachers tidy up and beautify their classrooms. They then head for a meditation session to help them “connect their outer selves with the inner,” according to the school. Only once these activities are out of the way, do the studies begin.
Similarly, students at Gurgaon’s Heritage School in north India begin their day with meditation sessions, sports and a glass of fresh juice. The school has a yoga and meditation centre that buzzes with activity throughout the day. Three yogic instructors help students master breath control and stress.
Indian health authorities are deeply concerned about stress, particularly revolving around studies. India was reported in 2004 to have the world’s highest youth suicide rate, with suicides accounting for 50to 75 percent of all deaths in adolescent girls and about a quarter of all deaths in boys between the ages of 10 to 19, most commonly by hanging, followed by poisoning, usually with insecticide.
The transfer of Myanmar’s junta to Naypyidaw, a relatively remote location, has drained the country’s finances and widened the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. From The New York Times:
The bamboo forests and sugar cane fields that once covered the gently sloping hills here have been replaced by hulking government buildings, roads so long and straight they resemble runways and a vast construction site marked by a sign: “Parliament zone. Do not enter.”
Naypyidaw is Myanmar’s new capital, built in secret by the ruling generals and announced to the public two and a half years ago, when it was a fait accompli.
A nine-hour drive north from the former capital, Yangon, it looks like nothing else in this impoverished country, where one out of three children is malnourished and many roads are nothing more than dirt tracks.
More:
The huge fashion store Primark sacked three of its suppliers last week after an investigation for the BBC’s Panorama and The Observer uncovered children labouring in Indian refugee camps to produce some of its cheapest garments. In this report from Tamil Nadu, India, The Observor’s Dan McDougall reveals the brutal reality of a supply chain that sees children as young as 11 sewing T-shirts which cost shoppers just a few pounds to buy on high streets across Britain.
Its unrivalled success took the competition by surprise as it won over both the high-street shopper and the diehard fashionista with its simple philosophy: high on style, low on price.
When Primark was launched, its flagship store in London’s Oxford Street was besieged by stampeding bargain-hunters and sold more than a million garments in its first 10 days. The opening drew a bigger crowd than that managed by Topshop’s much-hyped launch of its Kate Moss collection, which featured the supermodel herself moodily posing in its windows. Fashion bible Vogue gave a Primark jacket high-end credibility.
Last week, in an announcement that effectively pre-empted publication by The Observer of this investigation, Primark announced it had sacked three of its clothing suppliers in India after being told by the BBC’s Panorama programme of evidence that it was subcontracting labour to child workers. The investigation found that in the refugee camps of southern India young children had been working long hours in foul conditions to sew the designs that will see, at current growth rates, Primark eclipse Marks & Spencer as Britain’s biggest mass-market fashion retailer by 2009, taking £1 of every £10 spent on clothing in the UK.
When novelist Mohammed Hanif told friends he was returning to Pakistan after 12 years in Britain, they were aghast. Why would he and his young family swap London for a city with daily power cuts and rampant gun crime? The answer proved surprisingly simple … From The Guardian:
Twelve years ago, I arrived in London from Karachi with eight suitcases, a new wife and a three-year job contract. Before leaving for London, we had put our books, furniture and even some of our kitchen utensils at our relatives’ houses. When I told my friends and family that we would be back after exactly three years, they gave us a knowing smile and encouraged us to sell that sofa instead of putting it in their store room.
Two months from now, we are planning to return to Karachi with a container full of furniture, more pots and pans than we left behind and a 10-year-old son. Friends and family in Pakistan are aghast. From London to Karachi? Why are you coming to Karachi? Do you know what happened to Sana’s friend the other day? Do you have any idea how you’ll live without electricity for 10 hours every day? And, by the way, have you discussed this with Channan? How does he feel about it?
Curry in the great scheme of things. A review of Robert Eric Frykenberg:
Seated cross-legged on a grass mat spread upon the cool, smooth stone floor of a traditional Brahman house, we waited as aromatic basmati (“Brahman”) rice was doled out onto each stainless-steel plate. Tiny stainless-steel bowls of curry (dhal, sambar, rassam, vegetable, etc.), curd, chutney, and other delightful dishes followed. Only the fingers of one’s scrubbed right hand could touch the food. Our hosts hastened to make sure that each dish was constantly full. Yet they themselves ingested nothing, lest strictest protocols of purity be violated. “SNR” (S. N. Ramaswamy) was a strict Sri Vaishnava of the Tengalai (Southern) School. With a university degree in engineering and a high position in the largest motor transport firm of South India, he was an authority on automotive history-and an ardent admirer of the late John F. Kennedy. He also visited the huge temple complex of Sri Venkateshwara at Tirupati once each month to have his head shaved (hair being gifted to the deity), and scrupulously bathed in the Triplicane temple each morning before ever touching food. And, when he ate, he ate alone, accepting food and drink only from the hand of his beloved wife (or daughter), neither of whom ate until he had been fed. His mouth received food and drink without ever coming into direct contact with fingers, utensil, or vessel. His family ate what was left after he was fed. The family never ate together; nor were meals an occasion for sharing. Eating in any “public” place was unthinkable-restaurants were a modern invention and “polluting.” Indeed, while in my house for avid scholarly discussions, his hand never strayed close to the chai and biscuits I invariably placed before him. Cosmic purity of birth required no less. Pollution brought cosmic ruin. He could only take leftovers, ritually pure food, offered to the deity. His wife could take food left by him (her deity). We could receive food “given” or offered us. This was part of the hierarchy of prasadam: grace.
Mary Jordan reports from Islamabad in The Washington Post:
Helen Rawlins climbed into her Toyota Land Cruiser at 7:30 in the morning, off to rescue another woman. The British diplomat settled into the back seat as she whizzed by the baking bustle of the Pakistani countryside: the women in colorful head scarves sitting in three-wheeled rickshaws, donkey carts piled high with mangoes, and elaborately painted buses where women sit apart from men.
Rawlins knew a tense confrontation awaited. Lately, she had been making a trip such as this once a week — to help British women of Pakistani descent lured to this country and forced, sometimes at gunpoint, into marriage.
A pine-wooded outpost in India’s northeast is alive with Bob Dylan, gospel and the blues. Somini Sengupta reprts from Shillong in The New York Times:
Lou Majaw wore his signature skin-tight, cutoff short-shorts. His long gray hair hung like dirty threads around his face. Eyes closed in prayer, a guitar cupped in arms, he strummed the chords to “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
“Happy birthday, Bob Dylan, wherever you are,” he began, standing on a stage in a near-empty church hall on an overcast Saturday afternoon. “God bless you, and thanks for everything that you’ve done.”
Every May 24 for the last 35 years Mr. Majaw, 61, and one of India’s original rock ‘n’ roll bards, has held a homespun celebration of Mr. Dylan’s birth.
[Photo of Indian rocker Lou Majaw by Patrick. Under CC license]
It continues to mount brutally effective operations around the world, but from Saudi Arabia to the streets of east London, hardline Islamists are turning against Al-Qa’ida in unprecedented numbers. Is the global terror network self-destructing? A special report by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in The Independent:
Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman’s arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard – 17 hours in a Toyota pick-up truck, bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by Bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since al-Qa’ida had moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Benotman, the scion of an aristocratic family marginalised by Qaddafi, had known Bin Laden from their days fighting the communist Afghan government in the early 1990s, a period when Benotman established himself as a leader of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
The night of Benotman’s arrival, Bin Laden threw a lavish banquet in the main hall of his compound, an unusual extravagance for the frugal al-Qa’ida leader. As Bin Laden circulated, making small talk, large dishes of rice and platters of whole roasted lamb were served to some 200 jihadists, many of whom had come from around the Middle East. “It was one big reunification,” Benotman recalls. “The leaders of most of the jihadist groups in the Arab world were there and almost everybody within al-Qa’ida.”
Two monks, two conversations. Soon after meeting the Dalai Lama, James Astill interviews a monk MP in Sri Lanka. He comes away feeling distressed about the country’s war and dazed by the breadth of Buddhism. From moreintelligentlife.com
When it comes to being nice, few people would enjoy comparison with the Dalai Lama. So, it is bad luck on the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, a Sri Lankan politician known as the “war monk”, that he is the second Buddhist monk I have interviewed in recent days.
The first, the DL, seems–no kidding–little less than saintly. I visited him in Dharamsala, his refuge in northern India, with The Economist’s China correspondent, who saw more of last month’s uprising in Tibet than any other foreign journalist. The Dalai Lama wanted to hear precisely what my colleague had seen. And where it contradicted what he thought he knew–generally, where the Chinese response had been less beastly than the Dalai Lama had been told–he listened extra hard, and he tried to understand.
He is reserved and reticent. But he is also perhaps, India’s most thinking cricketer. Here’s a rare glimpse into the mind of Rahul Dravid. From Hindustan Times:
If you had spoken to Rahul Dravid during his last weeks as Indian captain, or tried to get in touch with him soon after he stepped down from the job, with a short, crisp statement and little else by way of explanation, you would have known a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
It has now been nine months since that fateful day, and many significant things have happened in Dravid’s life since. He has lost his place in the one-day team, and has matured enough to realise that this is not merely an issue of form – unless there is a dramatic change in policy, and simultaneous injuries to three or four young one-day batsman, he is not going to get a look-in. He has shepherded the Bangalore team – where he is highest-paid as the icon player – to second-last place in the inaugural Indian Premier League, in the middle of having mud slung at him by Vijay Mallya, the high-profile and occasionally petulant owner of the team. Oh, and yes, Dravid has gone past 10,000 Test runs, joining one of cricket’s most elite clubs.
Famously trenchant political psychologist Ashis Nandy is charged with criminal offence by the Gujarat police for “inflaming” communal hatred. His crime: an article he wrote in January blaming Gujarat’s middle-class Hindus for destroying communal harmony in the state. In Outlook, Sheela Reddy interviews Nandy:
Is the middle class more culpable than Modi in drawing the battleline between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat?
Modi does represent the class. Development authoritarianism like in Singapore and China today is a hidden dream of the Indian middle class too. Modi personifies that dream. However, there is a larger issue involved here. Indian democracy is fast degenerating into a psephocracy-a system totally dominated by electoral victories and defeats.The moment you enter office, you begin to think of the next election.
Previously in AW: The harassment of Ashish Nandy
