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Style over subdivision

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on October 22, 2009

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In the Washington Post, a story on Virginia designer Raji Radhakrishnan:

Radhakrishnan, a 37-year-old designer, has remade the standard open-plan living area into something more modern. She has added architectural heft with thick plaster moldings, steel brackets plus upgraded hardware and fixtures in the bathrooms and kitchen.

She dumped the standard tile fireplace surround for one she created of perforated steel and added a faux finish to the plain wood mantel.

In the master bedroom, Radhakrishnan turned a photo she snapped at Versailles into a giant sepia mural that serves as a headboard. It picks up on a passion of her husband’s: Murali Narasimhan, a 40-year-old software entrepreneur, is a collector of first-edition books. “It has an old-world feel, sort of like a library,” he says.

Radhakrishnan’s life in design and arts unfolded dramatically. Born in southern India, she traveled as a young girl while performing classical Indian dance. Her father’s Indian foreign-service job took the family abroad. More:

End of an affair: Nehru-Edwina movie scrapped

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on October 22, 2009

in Books, India and Movies

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From the Telegraph, Calcutta:

Indian Summer, a Hollywood film based on Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, has been shelved, leaving behind a mystery on what the film-makers found too hot to handle: money or Indian prudes.

The film was supposed to focus on one of the most sensitive chapters of the final days of the Raj – the relationship between India’s first Prime Minister and the wife of Britain’s last Viceroy.

Universal Pictures, among Hollywood’s oldest studios, has postponed plans for shooting, apparently because of the scale of the budget, thought to have been between $30 million (Rs 138 crore) and $40 million (Rs 184 crore).

Sources said director Joe Wright considered making the film, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, for less than $30 million, before deciding to wait for more favourable market conditions. More:

Previously on AW: Nehru and Edwina: the movie

And in Foreign Policy: What the censorship of a film about India’s founding father shows about New Delhi’s cautious relationship toward its own history:

The film’s international cast of superstars — Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett playing Edwina, and Hugh Grant tipped to portray her husband, Louis — did nothing to deter New Delhi from issuing a series of silly cuts. Among them: no kissing, no scenes of physical intimacy between Nehru and Edwina, and no use of the word “love.” The director, Joe Wright, whose previous films include the hugely successful Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, has no choice but to comply if he wants to shoot the film in India. And that’s not all: Should Wright go ahead, the completed film will have to be shown to a government “expert” who will judge whether it depicts “a correct and balanced perspective on the topic covered.”

Writings from Pakistan

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on July 7, 2009

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The June edition of Words Without Borders is dedicated to writings from Pakistan with an introduction by Basharat Peer. “Pakistan has of late become synonymous with such acts of violence by terrorists and with stories of military gunships pounding distant villages as they hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives and around two million have been displaced in the latest, ongoing phase of fighting in the Swat valley, writes Peer. It’s at this critical moment in history that Peer scouts around for contemporary Pakistani voices who have ‘inspired and paved the way’ for a whole new generation of writers. First, a short story by Intizaar Hussain called The First Morning (translated from Urdu by Basharat Peer).

cc/MVI's photostream

cc/MVI's photostream

I have no definite answer to questions about why I migrated from India to Pakistan after the partition in 1947. I look back and see a crowded train rushing past lively and desolate towns and villages, under a bright sun, and in the dark of night. The train is running through the most frightening night and the passengers are quiet like statues. I strain to hear them breathe. Where will the train stop? And will it move again, if it stops?

Half a century later, it seems to have been the moment when two eras met and parted. History has its own dawns and dusks. We were in between the dusk and dawn of history. That is what made the journey from Meerut to Lahore the longest journey. We weren’t on a train; we were on the ship of history. We had left home at dawn and it was noon. The train had already crossed Saharanpur. We were past the borders of our province, Uttar Pradesh, into that enormous wilderness that had seen carnage a few days earlier. Now there was silence. Those destined to survive and leave, had left. Those destined to fall, had fallen. Their homes were still smoldering.

American ‘fool’ gets Suu Kyi into more trouble

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on May 15, 2009

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Burma’s detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam across a lake to gain access to her compound. Her trial has been set for May 18.

An AFP report says the 53-year-old American, John William Yettaw, is said to be a Mormon and Vietnam War veteran “with a quixotic world view.” The Nobel laureate campaigner’s chief lawyer said, “he is a fool.”

Detained American Visited Suu Kyi Before?

The opposition newspaper Irrawaddy said the American who swam across the lake to Suu Kyi’s house, may have made another secret visit to her last year. A report in the paper, quoting Burma’s state-run newspapers, says:

“Yettaw swam on the night of May 3 to the lakeside home of the 63-year-old Suu Kyi and left the same way on the night of May 5, before being arrested the next morning. The swimming distance between the house and where he was arrested is about 1 1/4 miles (2 kilometers).

“The reports said the man was found with an empty 1.3-gallon (5-liter) plastic water jug-presumably used as a floatation device-as well as a US passport, a flashlight, pliers, a camera, two $100 bills and some local currency.” Click here to read the full report.

He was on a “spiritual quest,” says his family

The Telegraph, UK, quoting the daughter of the American man who swam across the lake to Suu Kyi’s house, says he was already psychologically scarred by the Vietnam war, and “tipped over the edge by his 17-year old son’s death two years ago.”

“He probably thought he would be in and out and no one would know, because that’s what happened before,” said his wife, Betty Yettaw, referring to a previously unknown visit last summer when Mrs Suu Kyi’s maids turned him away without seeing her. More:

Al Qaeda’s global base is Pakistan: Petraeus

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on May 9, 2009

in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism

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Yochi J. Dreazen in the Wall Street Journal

Senior leaders of al Qaeda are using sanctuaries in Pakistan’s lawless frontier regions to plan new terror attacks and funnel money, manpower and guidance to affiliates around the world, according to a top American military commander.

Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in an interview that Pakistan has become the nerve center of al Qaeda’s global operations, allowing the terror group to re-establish its organizational structure and build stronger ties to al Qaeda offshoots in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe.

The comments underscore a growing U.S. belief that Pakistan has displaced Afghanistan as al Qaeda’s main stronghold. “It is the headquarters of the al Qaeda senior leadership,” said the general, who took the helm of the military’s Central Command last fall.

In the interview, Gen. Petraeus also warned of difficult months ahead in Afghanistan, saying Taliban militants are moving weapons and forces into areas where the U.S. is adding troops, planning a “surge” of their own to counter the U.S. plan. More:

Interview: Priyanki Gandhi

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on May 3, 2009

in India, Indian elections 2009 and Politics

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Outlook magazine’s Sheela Reddy catches up with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on the campaign trail.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra

How old were you when you gave your first public speech?

I think when I was around 16-17 years.

How are you so clued in to the political scene?

Because my family is involved in it, I’ve grown up in that atmosphere. I’ve always known what is going on. I meet them, I hear what’s going on.

You once described your husband, Robert, as “a good man”. What did you mean?

He is one of the cleanest people I have ever met. He is someone who is completely comfortable in his own skin; he does not get carried away by anything. And considering that this life (in a high-profile political family) was new to him-it has really been only 12 years since he has been in this life-I think the way he handles it is absolutely amazing. More:

And below, Sheela Reddy accompanies Indira’s campaigning granddaughter

A Nose For Politics

The woman dumps a three-month-old sleeping infant in my lap and squeezes forward towards the barricade separating us from Priyanka Gandhi. The woman-mother? grandmother? it’s hard to tell, when the skin is weathered into this ageless, parched brown-has been waiting for over two hours for this moment, oblivious to the heat-a blazing 45°C-compounded by a hot wind blowing fine mists of dust on us. It’s the 13th of Priyanka’s 19 poll meetings for the day, and she goes through her drill-how her family is nothing without people’s support; how Sonia Gandhi is merely a public servant whose duty it is to carry out the public will; and far from doing them a favour, it is the people who’re doing the family a favour with their unstinting support. Read the full story in Outlook:

‘Tiger of Mysore’ relic for sale

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on March 25, 2009

in Art, Heritage and India

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From The Times:

A golden tiger’s head from the throne of Tipu Sultan – an Indian king famed for resisting British rule – is to go on auction in London next week, less than a month after a sale of Mahatma Gandhi’s belongings sparked an outcry in India.

The gem-encrusted figure due to go on sale at Bonhams on April 2 is considered one of the most important relics of Tipu Sultan, who ruled the southern kingdom of Mysore from 1782-1799 and is renowned as India’s first freedom fighter.

And click here to go to Bonhams:

In India, e-cradle for abandoned babies

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on March 17, 2009

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Ninety percent of abandoned children are girls. Rhys Blakely in The Times:

Charu is less than a month old and dangerously underweight. On Sunday evening she became the 101st child to be deposited at a special cot enabling parents to abandon unwanted babies anonymously. Yet she can still be described as one of the lucky ones.

The tiny baby girl quite possibly owes her life to the e-cradle, an electronic cot nestled in a tiny room with a front and back door, attached to a state-run medical centre in the southern Indian city of Trivandrum.

Israeli marketing, Bollywood style

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on March 11, 2009

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Noah Shachtman in Wired: [via 3quarksdaily]

Let’s say you’re a defense-company marketing executive. And you want to make a splash at the Indian defense ministry’s annual air show. Do you:

(a) buy expensive gifts for New Delhi’s generals;

(b) treat the press to Kingfishers and samosas;

(c) produce a Bollywood-esque video featuring bare-midriff girls, flower-draped missiles, and the catch phrase “dinga dinga dee?”

Unfortunately for us, Israeli arms-maker Rafael chose C. Which means we may have just found the most atrocious defense video of all time, just days into the Iron Eagles -- our celebration of the awesomely bad videos of the military-industrial complex. Trust me, Slumdog Millionaire it ain’t.

The Cambridge chaplain fighting fanaticism by radio in Swat valley

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on March 7, 2009

in Conflict, Pakistan and Uncategorized

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John Butt, a Cambridge University chaplain, came to Swat in Pakistan in 1969. He liked the valley’s rugged beauty and its people, converted to Islam, trained as a mullah, and has lived there ever since.

Angus McDowall of The Telegraph, UK, met Butt “fears the arrival of a warped form of Sharia heavily reliant on corporal punishment.” Butt has set up his own radio station to counter the militants’ message and for those who do not like their beautiful homeland being turned into a Taliban mini-state.

Photo by Heartkins

Photo by Heartkins

Our slum people are the world’s best!

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on February 25, 2009

in India and Society

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India’s euphoria over Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar sweep reveals much about its national character, writes Tunku Varadarajan in Times Online

Search every corner of the globe, I say, and you will not find a people more complex – and complexed – than Indians. Quite without irony, a nation, many of whose citizens had just been heaping abuse and lawsuits on Slumdog Millionaire for showing India in a bad light, and for using the intolerable word “dog” to describe those poor little slum-wallahs, is now in a state of euphoric bhangra over its winning eight statuettes conferred by an “academy” that regards a bunch of Scientologists (not to mention Mickey Rourke) as icons. Maybe it’s a result of 200 years of colonialism, but Indians are world champions at caring – really caring! – about what foreigners (more accurately, Westerners) think or say about them. They will live blithely with impressively foetid slums in their midst, thinking nothing of the juxtaposition of Victorian-era poverty and world-class, 21st-century living standards. But the national outrage stirred when a Western film-maker uses “slumdog” in the title of his film is an incandescent sight to behold.

A secret CIA airbase in southern Pakistan

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on February 19, 2009

in Afghanistan, Conflict and Pakistan

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Tom Coghlan in Kabul, Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Jeremy Page in Delhi. From The Times:

The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, a Times investigation has found.

The Pakistani and US governments have repeatedly denied that Washington is running military operations, covert or otherwise, on Pakistani territory – a hugely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country.

The Pakistani Government has also repeatedly demanded that the US halt drone attacks on northern tribal areas that it says have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and fuelled anti-American sentiment.

Dangerous double game that mirrors Pakistan’s identity crisis

Jeremy Page in The Times:

The discovery of a secret CIA airbase in southern Pakistan exposes the dangerous double game that Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s President, has to play as he tries to manage relations both with the United States and with a fiercely anti-American public.

While he is criticised in Washington for surrendering to the Taleban by allowing Sharia in the Swat Valley, he will be lambasted at home for allowing the Americans to use a Pakistani base to launch drone attacks on his own territory.

Frolicking with dolphins

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on January 18, 2009

in India, Travel and Wildlife

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The Gangetic dolphin is one of the few remaining species of fresh water dolphins in the world. With the Chinese river dolphin Baiji recently termed functionally extinct, the Gangetic and the Amazon river dolphins are now the only two remaining freshwater dolphins. Take a cruise in the Brahmaputra and see the Gangetic dolphin. S. Mitra Kalita in Mint Lounge:

As our boat approached the Brahmaputra, an unmistakable hump rose out of the river. In those seconds, the 10 of us on board reverted to childhood mannerisms to express joy: We cooed, squealed, aahh-ed, clapped hands.

For the next hour or so, our eyes darted here and there to catch a glimpse, each sighting greeted as enthusiastically as the last. If we happened to see a nose or rear or even the blowhole, the delight was much more palpable-and loud.

Just an hour outside Guwahati, the Brahmaputra is home to scores of Gangetic dolphins, locally called xihu (the “x” sounds similar to “h”). A few years ago, my good friend Sanjoy Hazarika, the well-known journalist and an expert on the North-East, had mentioned dolphins among the many causes he was involved with and urged me to take my daughter on a dolphin-watching trip. Last month, Hazarika-fresh from the festival-circuit success of Children of the River: The Xihus of Assam, a documentary he had produced- repeated his plea. And this time, I obeyed.

Warner Bros calls action on Bollywood blockbuster

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on January 17, 2009

in Entertainment and Movies

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Joe Leahy from Hyderabad in Financial Times:

Warner Brothers launched the most ambitious attempt yet by a Hollywood studio to crack the world’s most prolific movie market, Bollywood, with the commercial release of Chandni Chowk to China.

The film is the first full-scale campaign by a large US studio to create a Bollywood blockbuster, with Warner enlisting India’s star of the moment, action hero Akshay Kumar. He plays a poor cook who goes to China and learns kung fu.

Prachanda and the temple of doom

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on January 16, 2009

in Nepal and Politics

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Yubaraj Ghimire in The Indian Express:

In the past few days, Nepal’s prime minister-cum-’chairman’ Prachanda has been beating some hasty retreats. He had to yield to pressure over his ill-thought out and hurried appointments of Nepali priests in the Pashupatinath temple, and annul it after believers cutting across party lines condemned the act of ‘ sacrilege’.

The first and most sober appeal came from Gyanendra, his first after he ceased to be the king some eight months ago, asking the Government to protect the ‘sanctity’ of Pashupatinath and the traditional social and religious amity of Nepal. Prachanda, who heads a political party with a strident ‘anti-America’ and ‘anti-India’ worldview, probably thought that getting rid of Indian priests would widen support at home. But that misfired, as Nepali society favoured protecting the sanctity of lord Pashupatinath. They consistently displayed religiosity without fanaticism. But for the first time, an overwhelming majority of the Hindus who constitute more than 85 per cent of the total population, feared that they would suffer under an ‘atheist government’.

The aesthete’s dagger

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on April 9, 2008

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A gold encrusted dagger that was once owned by Shah Jahan (1628-1658), the builder of the Taj Mahal and an aesthete whose love for beauty is well known, goes under the hammer on April 10. Inscriptions on the back of the blade include the Mughal emperor’s official titles, date and place of birth, and an “honorific parasol” — an ancient pan-Asian symbol of divinity of royalty, according to Bonhams auction house.

$Shah Jahan\'s dagger$

[Pic: Reuters]