Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Bhutan to get its first railway link

Published
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on December 31, 2009
in Bhutan and Travel
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From The Times:

The reclusive Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is to have its first railway after its newly crowned monarch finalised a plan with India to build an 11-mile (18km) link between the two countries.

The railway, funded by India, will be Bhutan’s boldest step yet into the modern world. Lost in time like the mythical Shangri-La, the Buddhist kingdom had no roads or telephones until 1960 and no television until 1999. The track will offer one of the most breathtaking rail journeys in the world across the foot of the Himalayas. More:

God has left politics

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on December 31, 2009
in Faith, India, Politics and Religion
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There’s proof Indians are becoming more religious. Yet the days of politics based on religion seem to be over. What happened? Hartosh Singh Bal in Open:

Religiosity is on the ascendant in this country as never before. In the last five years, daily attendance at Hindu shrines has risen dramatically. At Tirupati, it has gone up from 20,000 to 35,000. At Vaishno Devi, annual attendance has gone up from 5 million in 2004 to 7.7 million in the first 11 months of this year. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stuck in New Delhi debating the Liberhan report in the backdrop of what could have been, has found its vote share in consistent decline over the past decade. In the Indian general election held earlier this year, it dipped to its lowest level since the party shot to prominence in 1991. If today the party is in shambles, offering little hope even to its most committed supporters, it is because it has failed to ‘harvest the souls’ that according to conventional wisdom should have been the saffron party’s for the taking.

This paradox, India’s increasing religiosity and a right wing in terminal decline, is uniquely ours. Across the world, the growth of middle-class religiosity fuelled by consumerism has strengthened right wing movements. Countries such as Turkey, which have seen a boom in the economy, have responded by voting in right wing governments to power, and in the US, the growth of evangelism has benefitted the Republicans. More:

The Vijay Iyer Trio

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on December 31, 2009
in Music
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Indian-American jazz musician Vijay Iyer and his Vijay Iyer Trio’s “Historicity” album was the most honored jazz album of the year. Click here to read the full article in Village Voice, and here to go to his website.

Below, Vijay Iyer Trio: about “Historicity”

And below, Vijay Iyer Trio recording Galang.

RIP: Vishnuvardhan

Published
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on December 30, 2009
in Movies and Obituaries
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In Rediff.com Sunaad Raghuram’s tribute to Vishnuvardhan, the silent superstar of Kannada cinema

I woke up to the news of the sudden demise of a man Kannada filmdom was so used to knowing as Vishnuvardhan. The name on his passport, though, would have actually read: Mysore Narayan Rao Sampath Kumar. Born 1950. Mysore. Vidyaranyapuram if I may add. As I sit down to pen my thoughts on the man whom I had liked, admired and enjoyed watching on screen right from the 1970’s, there comes a visage so handsome and smart that I yearn to see it all over again. more

The man who wired Silicon Valley

Published
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on December 30, 2009
in Business
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An examination of the career of Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon Group, career reveals how, for two decades, he persuaded executives at some of America’s most prominent companies to risk their careers by passing corporate secrets. From The Wall Street Journal:

Raj Rajaratnam liked to tell people that his first name meant “king” in Hindi, and, coupled with his last name, that made him “king of kings.”

He told the story with the broad, toothy smile that had ingratiated him to a generation of Silicon Valley executives. The grin softened the edge of a boss who’d call you an “idiot” or prod you into some humiliating stunt: Would you take $5,000 to be shocked with a stun gun?

In a mansion on a manmade island in Biscayne Bay in February 2007, Mr. Rajaratnam seemed determined to live up to his regal description of his name. It was Super Bowl weekend, and America’s rich and powerful had descended on South Florida to watch the Indianapolis Colts play the Chicago Bears. Mostly they were there to do business. Mr. Rajaratnam’s business was running a hedge fund, Galleon Group, that had made him a billionaire. And that business was based on contacts. More:

Coming to TED 2010, Raghava KK

Published
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on December 30, 2009
in Art and India
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Raghava KK is a contemporary artist living and working in Bangalore. His paintings and drawings use cartoonish shapes and colors to examine the body, society, our world. Painting from www.raghavakk.com

Coded, from the series All Things Yellow To The Jaundiced Eey

The unending holiday season in India

Published
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on December 29, 2009
in Faith, India and Religion
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Aakar Patel in The News, Karachi:

In India, secularism is inclusive. Europe’s secularism measures distance of the state from Christianity. Indians think of secularism as equal respect for all religions. This is supposed to reflect the Hindu belief in tolerance. One famous Sanskrit line is: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Vasudha is mother earth and kutumb is family and so the line means the whole world is a family. However, our recent record of religious violence shows that inclusive secularism isn’t always followed. Often unhinged views on religion are tolerated under this formulation of non-interference, and journalist George Verghese described Indian secularism as ‘equal respect for everyone’s communalism’.

But the doctrine of inclusive secularism is India’s constitution and perhaps at some point we will become good enough to deserve that fine document. Since the state tries to be inclusive, every religion’s celebrations are official holidays in India. Our calendar is the most colourful in the world.

Many urban Americans now greet each other this season with the words ‘Happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. This is typical European thoughtfulness of the feelings of others. The ‘happy holidayers’ want to share their joy but want not to offend Jews and others. Personally I like ‘Merry Christmas’ and see no reason why anybody should be offended that Christians are celebrating the birth of their saviour. In India, however, you couldn’t say ‘Happy holidays’ because we have them through the year. Let’s have a look. More:

No internet sex please, we’re Indian

Published
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on December 29, 2009
in India and Technology
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From the Guardian:

It may have given the world the Kama Sutra and the Bollywood wet sari scene, but it appears that India is not yet ready to be exposed to the delicate subject of sex on the internet.

A Guardian investigation has discovered that several internet companies have quietly introduced filters to prevent Indian users from accessing sexual content.

The Yahoo search engine and Flickr photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo) altered their sites earlier this month to prevent users in India from switching off the safe-search facility. The block also applies to users in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea.

Microsoft has also barred Indian users of its Bing search engine from searching for sexual content. Users who do try to search for sexual material receive a notice informing them that “your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content”.

The clampdown is understood to be in response to recent changes to India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, which bans the publication of pornographic material. More:

The decade that was India’s

Published
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on December 29, 2009
in Economy and India
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S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:

Ten years later, the world is in panic mode again—and some economists think India will come to the rescue yet again. This time, it’s from the evolution of that nascent outsourcing model into the engine of a robust global player that can do more than serve U.S. companies; Indians can buy their products, too. Indeed, ask an economist who will replace the U.S. consumer and the answer increasingly seems to be … the Asian consumer.

The bookends of this decade are significant for India and its place in the new economic order. The backlash against outsourcing remains a very real threat, intensifying amid 10% unemployment in the U.S. But outsourcing—and the idea that companies must operate cheaply, efficiently, globally—has come to be an accepted, inescapable reality. More:

Injury

Published
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on December 29, 2009
in Books
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“Injury” is the theme of Tehelka’s annual fiction issue this year. The issue carries stories by Kuzhali Manickavel, Daman Singh, Mohan Sikka, Aseem Kaul, Karan Mahajan, Paromita Vohra, Aruni Kashyap, Parvati Sharma, Arul Mani, Sujit Saraf, Gaurav Solanki and Charu Nivedita:

Below, from Anarch by Kuzhali Manickavel:

KUZHALI MANICKAVELIn China They Do It with Chillies’ is a racist song, but it’s ok for you to sing it in India because there are hardly any Chinese people here. Your favourite line is ‘And fuck knows for what.’ You like the way everyone leans forward and spits out the word ‘fuck’. You believe it means something profound and sad when they sing it that way.

You look at The Young Man In The Blue Shirt. He is walking in front of you, shouting ‘In China they do it with CHILLIES. Chillies, machan, fucking red chillies, shove it right up their-’ he claps and nearly loses his balance. Yesterday you tried to tell him what it was like to carry a cello home in the snow. You told him how you easily made the transition from two braids to ponytail but getting your parents to let you wear your hair loose was a different matter altogether.

You tried to explain why Anne of Green Gables is so important to Canadians and why at some point, almost every girl and some boys wish they could run around Prince Edward Island wearing ugly dresses. The Young Man In The Blue Shirt frowned and said what’s a green gable? You shoved him in the chest because you know he hates this. You said he was retarded.

“In Mumbai they do it with MIRCHIS,” bawls The Young Man In The Blue Shirt. Kanna, who is walking beside you, immediately starts shaking his head.

“China machan,” he says. “It’s China.”

“Fuck you. This is India. We are all Indians. We do it with mirchis,” says The Young Man In The Blue Shirt. “Yes but it’s all about China,” says Kanna.

“In China they do it with CHILLIES,” bellows The Young Man In The Blue Shirt, grabbing you by the waist.

“And FUCK knows for what,” you say, even though that line doesn’t come yet. More:

‘Democracy is the greatest revenge’

Published
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on December 28, 2009
in Pakistan and Terrorism
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Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan, in the Wall Street Journal:

Two years ago the world stopped for me and for my children. Pakistan was shaken to its core and all but came apart. Women everywhere lost one of their greatest symbols of equality. And Islam, our great religion, lost its modern face.

On Dec. 27, 2007, my wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and the second anniversary of her death is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon what she achieved for our country, and how her legacy must be preserved against those who would return Pakistan to darkness.

Twice elected prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir had an immense impact. She stood up and defeated the forces of military dictatorship. She freed all political prisoners. She ended press censorship. She legalized trade and student unions, built 46,000 primary and secondary schools and appointed the first female judges in our history. And she showed the women of Pakistan and the world that they must accept no limits on their ability and opportunity to learn, to grow and to lead in modern society. More:

Masala dosa and rosogolla

Published
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on December 27, 2009
in Food
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A typical Bengali spread

A typical Bengali spread

According to Outlook magazine’s nationwide poll published in its year-end edition, India’s national dish is not butter chicken but masala dosa. The national dessert is the juicy rosogolla. Outlook carries essays on India’s regional cuisine.

Nilanjana S. Roy, the author of A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food:

Given that biriyani, pulao and khichdi are part of the Indian palate, and that a rough three-fifths of the world’s nations have some kind of rice dish as their national favourite, surely we can anoint some combination of rice-and-veggies or rice-and-meat? Not so. Aside from the fact that wheat-eating regions will have their sentiments damaged, there’s the tricky question of which recipe you choose. The classic, plain vanilla dal-and-rice khichdi has over 60 variations. Choosing a Lucknawi biriyani over the Hyderabadi kacchi biriyani over, say, a classic coastal seer fish biriyani is beyond my capabilities. And we haven’t even got to the pulaos yet. More

Chandan Mitra, a politician and a journalist, on Bengali cuisine:

Let me detail some of the items that would be considered non-negotiable in a traditional Bengali meal. It should start with fried miniature bodi, a few spoonfuls of lightly fried saag and uchchhey (small bitter gourd)—aloo fry, begun (brinjal) bhaja and/or bhindi bhaja (chopped fried bhindi). This should be followed by shukto (a light stew of aloo, karela, green banana, laau (green gourd) etc. Coconut-laced preparations are common in Bengali cuisine; hence a chholar dal (dhuli huyi chana with chopped coconut) is considered a delicacy. This also goes well with luchi (medium-sized puris made with maida rather than atta). At lunchtime, bhaja mooger dal (dal made with roasted moong) is often the next item. Alongside, there is a wide array of side dishes. They range from aloo posto, sager ghonto or chocchori (palak cooked with aloo, brinjal and various other vegetables including pumpkin), laau-chingri (shrimps cooked with finely cut pieces of green gourd and cabbage), chhenchki (pumpkin, aloo and other vegetables bunged together to make a mash), and in some cases chhanchra (a mash made of palak, aloo, laau, topped up with the head of fish—a huge delicacy). More:

Farrukh Dhondy, a UK-based writer, playright and journalist, on Parsi food:

Parsis perch or poach eggs on most things—one can have papeta par eida, bheeda par eida, kheema par eida, bhaji par eida, tambotaan par eida, which in turn mean: eggs on potatoes, okra, mince, spinach, tomato and almost anything else. Ideal starters for the wedding banquet (and, while on the subject of eggs, the curried, scrambled, coriandered breakfast dish akoori is far superior to what our Punjabi compatriots call bhujiya), to be followed by sali-boti, sali-marghi, lamb (goat, actually) or chicken cooked with slender, fried potato straws and/or with lugan no sahs—fish, usually pomfret, surmaai or ramus in a gently spiced, sweet and sour sauce—or patraan ni machchi, pomfret baked in banana leaves with a grated coconut chutney. All that is then followed by Parsi pulao, our version of biriyani topped with the definitive Parsi dhan saak daal. More:

Also read V. Gangadhar (Gujarati cuisine), Arun Jaitley (Punjabi), Dileep Padgaonkar (Saraswat Brahmin) and more.

The unbearable likeness of travelling

Published
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on December 26, 2009
in Travel
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Salil Tripathi in Mint-Lounge:

There are times when I have got up in a strange hotel room in the early hours of dawn, before the Bach melody in my cellphone wakes me up. The light is beginning to emerge at the rim where the sky meets land, and the night loosens its hold over the city.

I get up and draw the curtains, but the cityscape does not boast of a familiar landmark. A sign advertising Coca-Cola keeps blinking, as if mocking me.

When I arrived the previous night, at the airport, the money changers had closed for the day, so the currency notes I’m carrying in my wallet can’t tell me where I am. The mini-bar in my room does not offer much help: It has Heineken and Carlsberg beer; chocolate bars of Toblerone and Kit Kat, and the nuts, Planters. The newspaper they will leave outside my room in the morning will be the International Herald Tribune. If I turn on the television set, there are strange programmes in a language I don’t understand; the only networks in English are Discovery, showing me the mating ritual of rhinos, CNN going on about an American football match, and the BBC World Service needling my conscience with another disaster somewhere. More:

Aamir Khan on his new role and turning producer

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on December 26, 2009
in India and Movies
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Sanjukta Sharma in Mint:

On the eve of the release of 3 Idiots, the only film of 2009 with Aamir Khan in a lead role, the actor’s residence at Pali Hill, Bandra, wasn’t exactly bustling with pre-release activity. He had already completed a tour across India, promoting the film, and All is Well, the film’s anthem, was already in advertisements and Top 10 lists of radio channels. Khan spoke to Mint in his study, crowded with books and files and a painting recently painted by and gifted to him by Salman Khan. Edited excerpts:

Such a long promotional tour for ‘3 Idiots’ across the country, and that too in disguise. You must be tired?

I am actually a bit under the weather. But, today, for the premiere, all the people that I visited are coming to Mumbai. After this, I’ll have to go and meet them.

You do few films. What makes you decide which films you want to be a part of? Why ‘3 Idiots’?

I choose films based on my excitement about the script and my level of confidence and faith in the director and producer of a film. At that time, I am the audience. I move towards roles instinctively, there is no great thought behind it.

I loved the script of 3 Idiots. I have been very keen to work with Rajkumar Hirani for some time now. The only doubt I had and still have is the age of the character. He’s 22 and my own age is 44 now. The audience will decide whether I’ve been able to pull it off nor not. But the character of Rancho, which I play, is someone who Raju (Hirani) felt was close to who I am in real life. I have taken some bizarre decisions, have followed my own rules. More:

Rice

Published
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on December 26, 2009
in Culture, Food and India
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Jhumpa Lahiri in the New Yorker:

My father, seventy-eight, is a methodical man. For thirty-nine years, he has had the same job, cataloguing books for a university library. He drinks two glasses of water first thing in the morning, walks for an hour every day, and devotes almost as much time, before bed, to flossing his teeth. “Winging it” is not a term that comes to mind in describing my father. When he’s driving to new places, he does not enjoy getting lost.

In the kitchen, too, he walks a deliberate line, counting out the raisins that go into his oatmeal (fifteen) and never boiling even a drop more water than required for tea. It is my father who knows how many cups of rice are necessary to feed four, or forty, or a hundred and forty people. He has a reputation for andaj—the Bengali word for “estimate”—accurately gauging quantities that tend to baffle other cooks. An oracle of rice, if you will. More:

Baba Ramdev: guru, TV star and source of controversy

Published
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on December 24, 2009
in Faith, Health and India
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Rama Lakshmi in The Washington Post:

Haridwar, India: At the crack of dawn, 4,000 people sitting on yoga mats silently watched the renowned guru Baba Ramdev on stage. After his introduction as the one who will dispel the darkness of ignorance, the orange-robed Ramdev chanted “Om” into a microphone. The audience followed with a reverential hum.

“Eat this every morning to prevent cancer,” he said, holding up four holy basil leaves.

“No blood pressure and asthma problem if you do this daily. Be free from medicines!” he exclaimed after performing a few yoga postures and demonstrating six breathing techniques. The crowd cheered. More:

After the 2004 tsunami: rebuilding lives

Published
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on December 24, 2009
in Climate change, India, Sri Lanka and The Maldives
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From The Guardian:

Shaped like an eyelid in a halo of azure water, the tiny Indian Ocean island of Dhuvaafaru in the Maldives is a fresh-minted community that has been transplanted to the Raa atoll. Clinics, schools and roads have all been built from scratch. Its homes, all newly peopled, are the legacy of tragedy on a vast scale: 2004’s Boxing Day tsunami.

This year – at the culmination of the single biggest construction project in Red Cross/Red Crescent history – 4,000 people from the nearby low-lying island of Kandholhudhoo, a place made uninhabitable by the waves that destroyed houses and snapped trees like matchsticks, were finally moved to Dhuvaafaru on the opposite side of the archipelago to begin new lives.

Among them was Hussain Alifulhu, 48, one of the last to escape the island when the tsunami swamped his home. He was among those who helped build the new community, an electrician by trade who spent the last four years living with his family in temporary shelters, fishing for sea cucumbers to make a living. On his new island home, he is working as an electrician once again. More:

Yeti scalp

Published
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on December 24, 2009
in Nepal
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Originally published in The Guardian on 23 December 1960:

Sir Edmund Hillary and Mr Desmond Doig, who have been on a yeti-hunting expedition in Nepal, arrived in London by air yesterday with the scalp of what is believed in Khumjung village to be a yeti. With them was Khumjo Chumbi, village headman, who is guardian of the scalp.

Sir Edmund said he would rather withhold his theories until the scalp had been examined by a zoologist, and until French and American experts had completed tests of the hair. But unless “something turned up” concerning the scalp he did not believe in the existence “of a strange new animal.”

Khumjo Chumbi, however, was in no doubt about the scalp’s nature. He said he had heard a yeti crying three times in one day, and his children had seen one. More:

Vodka-based hangover cure

Published
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on December 23, 2009
in Health
. 1 Comment

From The Times, London:

A nutritionist claims to have invented an alcoholic cocktail that could prevent festive hangovers by “cleaning” the bloodstream. The vodka-based tipple contains a string of “superfoods” that cleanse the system and ward off the effects of heavy drinking.

It is the brainchild of the British nutritional therapist and Indian “superfood” guru Gurpareet Bains, 32. He said: “This cocktail is about helping people have a good time without having to pay for it the following morning.”

The “Christmas spice-infused acai and pomegranate cocktail”, which has an alcohol by volume rate of 40 per cent, will still cause drunkenness, but its ingredients fight the symptoms of a hangover — commonly a splitting headache, parched mouth and the overwhelming desire to vomit. More:

Climate guru Pachauri under a cloud

Published
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on December 23, 2009
in Climate change and India
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United Nations’ top climate change czar Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri has been accused of making a “fortune” from his links with “carbon trading” companies dependent on the world body’s policy recommendations.

In a long article, The Sunday Telegraph, London, has cast serious aspersions on Pachauri’s “business deals” and alleged that he had “established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organizations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.”

Pachauri heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

In a rejoinder sent to the newspaper seeking an apology, Pachauri termed the allegations “a pack of lies” spread by climate sceptics, who were also behind the leaked emails (dubbed climategate scandal). “The Telegraph needs to appreciate that there are millions in India who don’t get enough food not have electricity and therefore, India cannot take emission cuts,” he said.

Below, the Sunday Telegraph story by Christopher Booker and Richard North:

Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations.

The issue of Dr Pachauri’s potential conflict of interest was first publicly raised last Tuesday when, after giving a lecture at Copenhagen University, he was handed a letter by two eminent ‘climate sceptics’. One was the Stephen Fielding, the Australian Senator who sparked the revolt which recently led to the defeat of his government’s ‘cap and trade scheme’. The other, from Britain, was Lord Monckton, a longtime critic of the IPCC’s science, who has recently played a key part in stiffening opposition to a cap and trade bill in the US Senate. More:

Pack of lies, says Pachauri

In an interview with the Times of India, Pachauri says: ‘‘These are a pack of lies from people who are getting desperate. They want to go after the guy whose voice is being heard. I haven’t pocketed a single penny from my association with companies and institutes.” More:

Enid Blyton and the post-colonial world

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Education, India and Society
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Amy Rosenberg in The National:

Ram Advani Booksellers sits in the heart of Hazratganj, an upscale shopping district in Lucknow, India. The store opened in 1947, just a few months before Partition, when Ram Advani fled Lahore, in the newly forming Pakistan, and set up shop in his new (old) country. In a city known at the time for its devotion to highbrow culture, aristocratic pleasures, and courtly manners, the place quickly became a destination and meeting point for the intellectual crowd, and Advani, now 88 and still running the business, acquired a reputation as an erudite host, known particularly for hand-picking recommendations for his customers based on long discussions with them.

Advani’s son, Rukun, who spent much of his childhood in the store, remembers the refinement and polish of the place, the neat rows of books, and the near-constant flow of learned patrons seeking to converse with his father. What he recalls most, however, is the single shelf in the children’s section that prominently displayed the work of the British children’s author Enid Blyton.

“I was all of eight and a half years old in 1964, when I took The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage off the shelf,” says Rukun, who now runs Permanent Black, a well-known publishing house in Delhi. “I hadn’t read anything as good as that book before, ever, so I was hooked and read everything else by Blyton that I could lay my hands on for the next three or so years.”

At the time, Blyton’s books were just starting to become widely available in India, though Ram Advani recalls having seen stray copies in the 1940s and 1950s. (“I stocked these books,” Advani says, “because there was a demand, and it was taken for granted that a store like mine, which kept only books in the English language, would have the whole lot of the Enid Blyton series on hand. I confess I never read them.”) More:

The Jinnah cap

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Leaders, Pakistan and Politics
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The Jinnah cap has long symbolised Pakistan’s national ideology and the wearer’s political aspirations. Qurat ul ain Siddiqui in Dawn:

One piece of attire has long symbolised Pakistan’s national ideology: the Jinnah cap. Technically known as the Qaraqul cap, for it is made from the fur of the Qaraqul breed of sheep, the hat is typically worn by Central Asian men (presently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is rarely seen without his). But in Pakistan, the hat has been firmly identified with the Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah for decades. This affiliation has ensured that others who sport the cap are understood to be making a political, rather than fashion, statement. Indeed, as Pakistan’s democratic fortunes have waxed and waned over the years, the choice by certain politicians to don the Jinnah cap has revealed much about political aspirations and the public mood.

The Jinnah cap was first initiated into national politics in 1937, when Jinnah sported it at the Lucknow session of the All India Muslim League on October 15. The cap was part of a complete change in Jinnah’s wardrobe; he surrendered his Saville Row suits in favour of a sherwani and Qaraqul cap meant to signify his commitment to the idea of a separate nation for the Muslims of South Asia.

Interestingly, at that point, many regarded the Jinnah cap as an answer to the hand-spun cotton cap which Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru used to wear, and which had come to symbolise the Congress Party’s ideals at the time. More:

One Pakistani institution places his faith in another

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Business, Economy, Education, Leaders, Pakistan and Society
. 1 Comment

Syed Babar Ali, 83, a veteran businessman who helped create the Lahore University of Management and Science, wants to restore merit to Pakistani society. Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times:

Mr. Ali is an institution in Pakistan. He has started some of the country’s most successful companies. But perhaps his most important contribution has been his role in creating the Lahore University of Management and Science, or L.U.M.S., begun as a business school but now evolved into the approximate equivalent of Harvard University in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s biggest problem, he believes, is one of leadership. A corrosive system of privilege and patronage has eaten away at merit, degrading the fabric of society and making it more difficult for poor people to rise. The growing tendency to see government positions as chances to profit, together with the explosion in the country’s population, has led to a sharp decline in the services that Pakistan’s government offers its people.

“Nobody is bothered about the masses,” Mr. Ali said. More:

Decoding the New Taliban

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Books and Pakistan
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Steve Coll reviews “Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field” and “Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan” by Antonio Giustozzi. In The National:

If the American-led war in Afghanistan fails to contain the Taliban, it will not be for lack of resources or military talent; it will be because American leaders have failed to see and analyse the conflict’s diverse human terrain. Afghanistan may be known as a graveyard of empires but it is also a graveyard of generalisations. As the US Commanding General in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, pointed out in his pessimistic assessment of the war last summer, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley”.

The present American approach, derived from counterinsurgency doctrine, now presumes that political and economic tactics to pacify the Taliban will prove more effective than military force. But such a politics-first strategy, premised on forging a path toward negotiations with at least some Taliban elements, will require sharp eyesight about the Taliban’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its place in Afghanistan’s social, tribal and cultural topography. More:

The many menus of Mumbai

Published
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on December 21, 2009
in Food, India and Travel
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From the Wall Street Journal:

The New Martin Hotel Eating House here is off limits to many Hindus because it serves beef. It’s off limits to many Muslims because it serves pork. Yet at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon, the sidewalk is still crowded with people waiting to get a table for lunch.

Any trip to India should include some of its great restaurants. For visitors, it’s a chance to sample a wide variety of regional cuisines that, though often little known abroad, have a place on any gourmet’s map of the world.

New Martin Hotel (the hotel part is long gone), for example, offers the distinctive and delicious food of Goa, the Indian coastal state that was once a Portuguese colony. Outside of New York and London, finding a restaurant serving Goan cuisine can be a challenge. Bengali, Gujarati, Malvani and a couple of dozen others, all are easily found in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital formerly known as Bombay. More:

Saw this, Liberhan?

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on December 21, 2009
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A team of TV journalists recorded what happened — and what didn’t happen — on December 6, 1992, in Ayodhya. Madhu Trehan in Hindustan Times:

babriIt should have taken 60 minutes — 30 minutes to watch the footage from Newstrack, the old video magazine, and 30 minutes to write the report. Newstrack’s December 1992 edition gave a minute-by-minute account of what happened in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. And yet, M.S. Liberhan took 17 years to come up with what he came up with.

Mritinjoy Jha along with his team were in Ayodhya from November 23, 1992. Thousands of pumped-up, slogan-shouting people were pouring in, carrying pick-axes and other equipment. Manoj Raghuvanshi, with another Newstrack team, had pulled the story together. In his voice-over, Raghuvanshi spoke about “a chief minister who spoke from both sides of his mouth — promising the Supreme Court that no construction would take place on the disputed site — and a prime minister who trusted everybody, including his central forces sent ostensibly to defend the masjid”.

The recordings captured Hindu leaders, including Tyagi Maharaj and Acharya Dharmendra, exhorting the crowd that the masjid must be destroyed and a temple built. Uma Bharti in her speech made three crucial points by demanding answers from the crowd: “Will you restrain yourselves when the leaders ask you to? Will you maintain peace and observe rules? Will you obey your leaders?’” The crowd bellowed a yes. But did the BJP really believe that it could control the kar sevaks, the RSS volunteers, the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad after its own passion-rousing rath yatra? More:

Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

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on December 21, 2009
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Shilpa Ray grew up in a Hindu household in New Jersey where she learned to play the harmonium. A year ago she left her band Beat The Devil to set up her own band, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers. One review said she embodies “the vocal likeness of Janis Joplin.” Another called her “a punk Ella Fitzgerald.” Click on the video above to listen to her raw voice and watch her play the harmonium.

Here’s an interview in Brooklyn Vegan (via 3quarksdaily):

shilpa_rayIt was approximately a year ago that Shilpa Ray left her band Beat The Devil to focus on her own project with her own band that she calls Shipa Ray and The Happy Hookers. That would make 2009 not only their year, but their first year.

My own excitement for the band came right around January/February when I first heard their 8-song unreleased CD-R. More:

Also read the story in the Indian Express

Unravelling Yash Chopra

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on December 20, 2009
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Shashi Baliga on the man as he completes 50 years as scriptwriter, producer and movie director. In the Hindustan Times:

yash_chopraDirector Kabir Khan remembers with some sheepishness the enthusiasm with which he showed Yash Chopra the script for his Kabul Express, a spare, taut film set in the badlands of Afghanistan. “There I was,” he says, “discussing the script with Yashji (as everyone calls the veteran), convinced I was making a cutting-edge film because it had no songs and dances. When he casually mentioned that he had made a film too, called Ittefaq, which had no songs — some 30 years ago in 1969.”

The next time Khan went to Chopra with a script was for his last movie, New York. “Yashji instantly pinpointed the flab in the script and picked out the scenes I could cut. I did so — because he was absolutely right,” he recalls.

On the day before New York opened, however, Khan had a bad case of pre-release jitters. Till his 77-year-old producer told him gently, “Beta (son), whatever the box-office fate of New York, I want you to know I am proud to put my name to your film.”

It is a moment 38-year-old Khan says will stay with him all his life. More:

Advani: No burning desire to be PM

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on December 20, 2009
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Veteran Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani relinquished his post as the leader of the opposition in Parliament. An interview in the Hindustan Times:

advani2Many people are saying your exit is the end of the ‘Advani era’?

How many people can feel as satisfied as I am today after such an eventful life? I got the support and affection of so many people. My years may have been spent more in the opposition than in the government, but I have had a satisfactory innings. As I told the MPs, there cannot be an end to a yatra that began for me when I joined the RSS at 14, which was to see India emerge as a great country. I mean it.

But were you not pressured by the RSS to leave?

Not at all. A point comes in a person’s life when one ceases to be pro-active on account of health reasons — as it happened in the case of Atalji, who is three years elder to me, and George Fernandes, who is three years younger to me. I do not want to use the word “retire”. More:

The story of a womb

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on December 20, 2009
in Health, India, Science and Society
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In the Sunday Express a report from Anand in Gujarat, India’s surrogacy hub and the story of a woman who rented her womb:

Ramilaben Solanki: "This time I am asking for Rs 5 lakh ($10,000) because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times."

Ramilaben Solanki: "This time I am asking for Rs 5 lakh ($10,000) because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times."

Before she pressed her inked thumb on the contract agreement, they had made Ramilaben Solanki understand that she is a womb. No more, no less. They had told her that the baby would be no part of her flesh and blood. That she was its shell, only a shell.

But sitting in the dark of her single-room, tin-roofed hovel—home to nine more people in her extended family—this 27-year-old domestic help in Gujarat’s Anand is still fighting to come to terms with herself. She thinks that the “pink infant with the golden hair and light brown eyes” of his American father, the one she bore and delivered, had come of her. Not through her.

For seven days and nights after, until the American couple from Wisconsin, US—whose sperm, ovum and money helped make her baby—flew in, Ramila had fed him her milk, sung him to sleep. She had also whispered in his ears that he is Deep, younger brother to her own five-year-old daughter, Deepali. More:

[Photo: The Indian Express]