Misanthrope

Sikandra and Agra: Akbar's tomb and the Taj Mahal

2011-03-17T00:39:00.003+05:30

We recently drove from Delhi to see the Taj Mahal. On the way, we stopped at Sikandra to visit the tomb of Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Here's the trip in pictures.

The sunrise over industrial Faridabad was beautiful, but I'm not enough of a morning person to have taken a picture. Being more of an animals-later-in-the-day person, this was the first pic I took on our trip:

Our driver pulled over at a seemingly random spot along the highway, and this macaque leapt out of nowhere at our car, startling everyone. Of course we fell headlong into the tourist trap, taking pictures :)

When we gave the monkey's owner Rs 20, he demanded Rs 100 each from the three of us. He got Rs 30 and that was that.

Below: Sikandra. This is the "buland darwaaza" (great gate) leading to the gardens of the tomb of Akbar, the greatest, ablest, and probably the most enlightened of the Mughal emperors. Early 17th century, local red sandstone with ornate marble inlay (including Koranic calligraphy in letters at least a foot high). I can't imagine how anyone can plan and execute a facade as ornate and detailed as this.

Below: A closer look at the main arch of the gate. It's the south gate of the complex. This is not painting or glazed tiles - it's stone inlay, set in stone.

Below: Because iconography is strictly forbidden, Islamic art relies heavily on geometric and floral motifs, and calligraphy. Chevrons, eight-pointed stars, and octagonal designs are common, but I find the incorporation of this swastika to be an interesting Hindu / Indic touch:

The gate is equally ornate on the other side. I took this picture after walking through the gate, into the gardens. Garden tombs, by the way, seem to be an innovation from around the 15th-16th century. Not really sure about this, though. The gardens at Sikandra are laid in the typical Mughal "chaar baagh" design, which divides the layout into four equal quadrants and is aligned precisely to the four cardinal points.

One of the smaller residents of the gardens. He was excessively bold for an Indian squirrel - almost climbed on my shoe. According to legend, the Indian squirrel got his stripes by helping Ram build the bridge to Lanka and bring back Sita. Ram patted him to thank him, and his fingers left this mark.

Other denizens of the gardens included spotted deer and black buck. On a previous visit, I've seen monkeys, but there weren't any this time. Looking out on the gardens feels like stepping into an 18th century miniature painting (which, incidentally, would likely be painted using a squirrel-hair brush).

Below: The tomb itself looks like a mishmash of architectural styles, with Islamic arches and a profusion of chhatris. Beyond the main arch is an ornate foyer, then a dark passage leading into the chamber where Akbar rests.

Below: Vaulted foyer through which you enter the tomb, with floral designs and calligraphy embossed with gold leaf.

Below: Damaged panel under main arch.

Below: Door leading to Akbar's burial chamber.

Below: Recess in the foyer wall. I suppose this is a recent addition - the wall looks like plaster and the design is too stark.

Below: Carved stone screen off the main foyer of the tomb structure. I am not sure what the symbolic significance (if any) of skylights and screens is in Islamic architecture - given the interdiction to portray god, I wonder there's more to it than beauty / ventilation / lighting.

Below: Akbar's cenotaph in the foreground. In the background is the ramp that leads into the chamber.

Below: The single skylight that lights the chamber.

Sorry this picture lacks drama and romance:

My little camera couldn't capture the ornate lamp that hung over the cenotaph in that dark chamber, so I had to use a flash to show the detail. Must ... get ... DSLR ...

Below: Gold-plated lunch recess for the guard at Sikandra.

Below: Lamp in the foyer. My guess is bronze.

Below: Pottery "store" on the highway from Sikandra to Agra. I took this from the car window - it's on the edge of the road.

Got stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the edge of Agra. This chai shop was right outside our car:

Back on the road in our tasseled Toyota Innova, with Sekhar at the wheel and Venkateswara on the dashboard:

Below: Cut paper delivery guy stuck in the traffic jam along with us. Maybe he's headed for a bindery?

Below: Paper recycling guy was also stuck in the same traffic.

Below: Another "buland darwaaza", also of red sandstone. This is the gateway to the Taj Mahal. Again, chaar baagh gardens on the other side. The forecourt has entrances from three cardinal directions. We are in front of the gate that faces the fourth direction (north) and leads to the Taj Mahal (like Akbar's tomb, the Taj faces south). This gate is perfectly aligned with the Taj - you can see the pale arch of the Taj through it.

Below: Walking through the gate - view of the Taj from under the arch. It was very sunny, around 1:30 or 2 pm.

Below: On the other side of the gate. The Taj is mindboggling in its perfection and symmetry. I cannot imagine how anyone could even conceive of something so huge, so detailed, so complicated (importing precious materials and experts from so many countries) in the 17th century, much less actually have it made. The whole structure is tiled with marble from Makrana, Rajasthan. The jade, onyx, coral, amethyst, lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl and other semiprecious inlay materials came from Persia, China, Tibet, Afghanistan, Russia, and the Indian Ocean. Many of the artisans came from other countries too.

Below: I turned around and took this picture of the sandstone gate again. It's equally ornate on the outside and inside. Again, not painting or glazed tile but stone inlay.

Below: The gardens are perfect at many levels. First, each quadrant mirrors the other quadrants. Second, the motifs tiled into the quadrants are horizontally and vertically symmetrical in themselves. And the whole complex is perfectly symmetrical and aligned to the four directions, with the Taj facing south.

Below: Satellite view of the perfection. This is how the Taj complex looks in Google Earth - perfectly aligned to the four cardinal points. Mid-17th century!

In the above image, going from south to north, you can see the forecourt with its three entrances to the east, west and south. Tourists enter from the east. On the northern side of the forecourt are the sandstone steps and the big sandstone gate. Further up, the gardens in front of the Taj, and then the monument itself with its four minarets, flanked by the mosque and its replica.

Below: The main cupola with its crescent finial.

It's very difficult to convey scale. I took the picture below from maybe 20 meters away.

Below: The sides of the Taj Mahal are about as ornate as the front, and the arches built on a similar scale - perhaps the exact same height as the front arch. This calligraphic stone inlay runs around the main arch on the Western face.

Although many people were taking pictures, photography is not permitted in the main chamber where the cenotaphs of Arjumand Bano (Mumtaz Mahal) and emperor Shahjehan are. So I have no pictures of that dimly daylit chamber whose walls are covered with even finer inlay than the outside. The cenotaphs are encircled by carved screens.

Below: Wall of one of the narrow passageways that filter daylight very gently into the building. At Sikandra, a sign by the car park said: हमारी विरासत, हमारा गौरव (our heritage, our pride). Clearly not for some idiots.

Below: The Yamuna river runs by just north of the Taj Mahal. This is the minaret in the northeast corner of the structure. We sat for a couple of hours, I think, in the marble-covered shadow of the Taj, with a cool breeze coming in from across the river. Despite the hundreds of tourists gaping, jabbering and taking pictures, it was relaxing to sit there.

Below: This red sandstone building is to the east of the Taj Mahal, and a replica of the mosque on the other side. It was possibly used as a rest house - can't find confirmation of this.

Below: East-facing arch of the Taj.

Below: Southeastern minaret in the late afternoon sun. Makrana marble tile.

Below: We stopped for coffee at a not-very-clean UP Tourism cafe.

And then the long drive back home. A tiring but fabulous day!

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 8

2011-03-06T13:50:00.007+05:30

Why did I do it, this Arab music week? Until a few days ago, Arab music for me was limited to Fairouz, a Khaled album that I bought on cassette tape years ago and later bought on CD, and Putumayo's Arabic Groove that I discovered a few years ago.
Pourquoi je l'ai fait, cette Semaine de la musique arabe? Jusqu'a la semaine derniere, je ne connaissais rien de la musique arabe sauf que Fairouz, Khaled, et Arabic Groove de Putumayo, que j'ai decouvert il y a quelques annees.

This week has been my exploration of the living, breathing, modern reality of young people in the Arab world. So no traditional wedding songs and Bedouin folk music - I was looking for rai, rap, rock, hip-hop, and reggae. I feel it's too bad that some people know nothing of it beyond Osama, Al Qaeda and the Taliban (yes, I know Pakistanis and Afghans are not Arabs), and am alarmed at how little I myself know of the culture and everyday life of West Asia and North Africa, despite my own country's ancient ties with that region.
Cette semaine a ete mon exploration de la musique contemporaine de la jeunesse arabe. Pas de chansons de mariage traditionelles ou de la musique bedouine. Je cherchais rai, rap, rock, hip-hop et reggae. C'est dommage que quelques gens ne savent rien de cette culture qu'Osama, Al Qaida et les Talibans (oui, je sais que les habitants de Pakistan et Afghanistan ne sont pas arabes). J'ai ete choque de realiser que moi aussi, je sais trop peu de la culture et vie quotidienne d'Asie de l'Ouest et d'Afrique du Nord, malgre les liens anciens de mon pays avec la region.

The songs I've posted, as far as I can tell, are about love and everyday life, just like pop music anywhere. As far as I'm aware, no song advocates violence (if you discover otherwise, please alert me).
Les chansons que j'ai postees parlent, pour autant que je sache, de l'amour et de la vie quotidienne, tout comme la musique pop partout. Je crois qu'aucune chanson exhorte la violence (si vous decouvrez autrement, s'il vous plait me prevenir).

For me, no language crosses barriers as effectively as music, especially contemporary music. I often used it when teaching world history at an American university, discussing how it was the outcome of a particular region's history.
Pour moi, aucune langue traverse les barrieres culturelles aussi bien que la musique, surtout la musique d'aujourd'hui. Je jouais souvent de la musique quand j'enseignais l'histoire du monde dans une universite americaine - on a discute la musique comme un resultat de l'histoire d'une region donnee.

To pick each day's song, I went through several others, and in that process, I made discoveries that
don't show up in the blog, like Tunisian mezoued music. I was surprised, because it sounds to me a bit like Celtic bagpipe music and a bit like the popular folk music from my own ancestral land (where I have never lived, but which is also desert, with lots of tribes and a relatively large proportion of Muslims in the population).
Pour choisir la chanson de la journee, j'en ai ecoute plusieurs. En train de faire cela, j'ai decouvert des choses qui ne sont pas inclus dans les postes - par exemple la musique mezoued tunisienne, qui m'a surpris car elle sonne un peu comme la cornemuse ecossaise, et un peu comme la musique de ma terre ancestrale (je n'y ai jamais habite, mais c'est aussi dans le desert et a une grande population des musulmans).

When I started out on the Arabic Music Week project, it was just to explore a contemporary culture that I knew was out there. As an Indian and a graduate student in the US, I've read, heard and experienced enough stereotypes to know how devastating they can be at worst, hurtful and dangerous very often, and annoying at best. I once wore an everyday cotton shalwaar-kameez to campus (in the US) on a day off and got asked if it was a "ceremonial dress" - does everything that's different from the western norm have to be special and steeped in tradition? Can't it just be another everyday reality? Western men make jokes about women and violence all the time (and they are frequently offensive). If an Arab makes such jokes, should that be perceived as religious politics, then? I think most people are ordinary people in their culture(s), and their thoughts and behavior are for the most part ordinary reactions to the things around them.
Quand j'ai commence ce projet sur la musique arabe, je voulais seulement explorer une culture contemporaine dont l'existence j'etais sure. Comme indienne qui a etudie dans une universite americaine, j'ai lu, entendu et vecu assez de stereotypes qui sont blessant, dangereux, et a tout le moins genant. Une fois, j'ai porte un shalwaar-kameez ordinaire au campus (c'etait le weekend), et quelqu'un m'a demande si c'etait de vetements ceremoniales. Est-ce que tout ce qui est different de la norme de l'Ouest doit etre special ou de la tradition sacree? N'est-il pas possible que ce n'est qu'une realite quotidienne? Les hommes americains, britanniques et europeens font souvent des blagues sexistes, par exemple, ou sur la violence. Ces plaisenteries sont parfois blessants ou de mauvais gout. Quand un Arabe fait une telle blague, est-ce qu'elle est ancree donc dans une politique religieuse? Je pense que la pluspart des gens est ordinaire dans leur culture, et ses pensees et ses manieres sont generalement des reactions ordinaires a leur environnement.

In the middle of my exploration, I discovered that almost at the same time that I posted a Tunisian rap song, CNN posted this report, about the important role of rap in Tunisia:
Pendant mon exploration, j'ai decouvert que quand j'ai poste le rap tunisien, CNN a poste au meme temps un report sur la role politique de rap en Tunisie:

And in my search, I discovered the astonishingly cool MaliKah (sorry, embedding is disabled, but please watch the AFP video!). Below I'm posting another song, just for you to sample - the person who posted it says she's singing about a group that doesn't even understand Islam is spoiling the image of the faith by killing in the name of religion:
Et dans mes recherches, j'ai decouvert la super-cool MaliKah (integration m alheureusement desactivee par YouTube, mais s'il vous plait regardez cette video de l'AFP!). Dessous j'ai poste une chanson ou elle chante d'un groupe qui gate l'image de l'Islam en tuant au nom de la religion:

I've never been a fan of rap, but I'm a little closer to being one after Arab Music Week :)

Je n'ai jamais ete un fan de rap, mais peut-etre mais la semaine de la musique arabe m'a apporté un peu plus près :)

And lastly, an interview with the Palestinian rap group DAM:

Et enfin, une entrevue avec les rappeurs palestiniens de DAM:

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 7

2011-03-05T07:00:00.004+05:30

Osiris is a rock group from Bahrain.

Osiris est une groupe rock de Bahrein.

Arab music week / semaine de la musique arabe - 6

2011-03-04T16:02:00.001+05:30

Today, a political song. This is the Palestinian group DAM.

Aujourd'hui, une chanson politique, par un groupe Palestinienne qui s'appelle DAM.

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 5

2011-03-03T15:34:00.002+05:30

Rap tunisien par Balti. (Note: je ne comprends pas tous les paroles. Si elles sont blessantes, je m'excuse et j'espere que vous laissez une note pour me prevenir. Je ne supporte pas la violence et la haine.)

Rap from Tunisia by Balti. (Please note that I don't understand all the words. If they are offensive, I apologize, and hope that you'll leave a comment to alert me. I do not support violence and hate.)

Arab music week / semaine de la musique arabe - 4

2011-03-02T01:47:00.001+05:30

Cette chanson s'appelle "Still Libyano" mais je ne suis pas sure si l'artiste est de la Libye.

The song is called "Still Libyano, but I'm not sure the singer is Libyan.

Sooo, here's another song, "Bahebbak" by a real Libyan, Cheb Jilani.

Voici donc encore une chanson, "Bahebbak" par Cheb Jilani, qui vient vraiement de la Libye.

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week - 3

2011-03-01T11:08:00.000+05:30

Diana Haddad, Lebanon / Liban:

Arab music week / Semaine de la musique arabe - 2

2011-02-28T10:03:00.001+05:30

Rachid Taha, Algeria / Algerie

Semaine de la musique arabe / Arab music week

2011-02-27T21:07:00.002+05:30

Starting today, I'm going to try to post a song every day. Just popular music, not necessarily political. Today's song is from Morocco, by Sawt el Atlas. I'm not familiar with Arabic pop music, so your suggestions, information, translations are welcome (please leave a comment). Peace.

Cette semaine j'essaierai poster chaque jour une chanson arabe. Je m'interesse ici dans la musique populaire, pas necessairement des chansons politiques. La premiere chanson est par Sawt el Atlas, un duo marocain. Je ne connais pas bien la musique populaire arabe - je serais contente de vos suggestions, informations, traductions. Paix.

A sad song for the festive season, by Joni Mitchell

2010-12-03T02:49:00.001+05:30

Consumer, cow, milkman, roses, tulsi: one ecosystem

2010-10-22T23:09:00.001+05:30

When I was little, we got our milk delivered straight from the buffalo sheds a few miles away (this was still Bombay, not somewhere in the countryside). The milkman had a bunch of buffaloes (or tended someone else's), and brought milk in large aluminum buckets, like the one on the left, and measured out as much as my mom wanted, into a large saucepan from the kitchen.

There was no packaging at all, no waste, and the milk had to be 100% fresh or else you'd know at once (it's warm here so fresh milk doesn't keep long unless you pasteurize by boiling). Sometimes the milkman would bring me a rose from the bush that grew by the shed. And when we wanted fertilizer for our house plants, he'd bring a dung cake (dry, not stinky). We'd pound it into a very coarse powder and scatter it in the tulsi pots. One cowpat is quite a lot of fertilizer!

It was such a wonderful, simple and environment-friendly system, and the producers (buffalo and milkman) were a more direct part of the lives of us consumers, not separate. The milk man died, the sheds got moved out, and we now get our milk and fertilizer in plastic packets, and the roses come from commercial farms with a massive carbon footprint (refrigerated trucks or planes). We have no idea who feeds the buffaloes or tends the flowers, what their names are (our milkman was Udit Narayan), whether they look healthy and are paid well, and how fresh or pure the milk truly is.

Glad someone uploaded this song :)

2010-10-18T00:25:00.001+05:30

Never got to hear much of Emmylou Harris growing up in India. Heard a bit in the US, and this is one of my favorite songs:

First truly habitable planet discovered

2010-09-30T22:35:00.000+05:30

Illustration of Gliese 581g from National Geographic, courtesy Lynette Cook.

From National Geographic:

Astronomers studying a nearby star say they've found the first potentially habitable planet—likely a rocky place with an atmosphere, temperate regions, and crucially, liquid water, considered vital for life as we know it.

Other extrasolar planets have been called Earthlike, but, astronomer Paul Butler assured, "this is really the first Goldilocks planet"—not too hot, not too cold...

...The Gliese 581g discovery is based on 11 years of observations, largely via the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The data allowed scientists to detect the wobble in a star's orbit caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet—a technique called radial velocity.

Given the relative ease of finding this planet, 10 to 20 percent of all stars may have potentially habitable planets, Vogt said in a press release. (See an interactive guide to the hundreds of known planets.)

"There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy."

Nice to know, but I don't think of it as a useful discovery. I'm sure they don't want any illegal aliens there, and certainly not ones stupid enough to break their own planet. If we went there, we'd be like fugitive criminals. Stupid fugitive criminals. Maybe they're worrying there that we'd go over and make their planet squalid, too, with all our shouting and overcrowding and dirty habits.

Sanam Marvi and the contemporary sufi music of Pakistan

2010-09-04T23:39:00.004+05:30

I'm no fan of Coca-Cola, but I am really grateful for Coke Studio's fabulous contribution to Pakistani culture. So much brilliant tradition and modernity out there! Makes me proud to be South Asian (I happen to be Indian, but only incidentally: my grandmother's village is 10 kilometres from that horrible, artificial border).

It's unfortunate that too much of the world (including India) knows little about Pakistan besides terrorism, intolerance, and political instability. The song I linked above is contemporary Sufi. Sufism is the opposite of violence, intolerance and instability - it's loving, embracing, and enduring.

Bhopal verdict - justice delayed AND denied

2010-06-09T23:31:00.004+05:30

Skulls discarded after research at Hamidia Hospital. Medical experts believe the methyl isocyanate gas inhaled by people in Bhopal may have affected the brain. Photo : Raghu Rai.

Referring to the compensation to Bhopal gas victims, Dow Chemical's public affairs specialist Kathy Hunt said in public in 2002 that “$500 is plenty good for an Indian." The explanation for this may be that Hunt and Dow are racist. But what is wrong with us?

From The Times of India, June 8, 2010:

Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision.
"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court.
However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II.

Caetano Veloso sings "Cajuína"

2010-05-29T14:02:00.009+05:30

I love Caetano Veloso. And now I hear him sing every time my cell phone rings :) I have the studio version from Putumayo's Acoustic Brazil collection. Sorry that the subtitles in the video below are quite nonsensical, but it's a great live version of the song!

I don't know Portuguese but I understand that cajuína is a beverage distilled from cashew, and that the best cajuína comes from northeastern Brazil. This song refers to Teresina, which may be a place there.

I would welcome a good translation and some information about whether this is a traditional song in Brazil - leave a comment! Also, if it's traditional, is it known in other former Portuguese colonies like Cabo Verde or Angola?

Stephen Colbert on the hypocrisy of CSR

2010-05-01T12:04:00.005+05:30

When you consume harmful products to help a cause, does your help outweigh the harm you're causing? Stephen lampoons corporate social responsibility, KFC, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Ford, and Marlboro.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Tip/Wag - Scientists & KFC

www.colbertnation.com

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Political Humor

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Hey Bobby Marley, sing something good to me!

2010-04-15T00:15:00.004+05:30

LOL, whoever created this video must have smoked some crazy shit.

PS - Feel obliged to say that I don't endorse drugs, just psychedelic videos.

PPS - I heart Manu Chao

Christmas lights in Mumbai

2009-12-31T05:06:00.003+05:30

I took these pictures a couple of days after Christmas, in the vicinity of Sacred Heart Church in the Mumbai suburb of Santa Cruz. This church was built in the 1930s, I think in place of the Santa Cruz church from which the area got its name. The old church was destroyed long ago. Below is a picture of lights in the church driveway.

Below is a picture of the intersection of Church Avenue and Hasanabad Lane. A street with a Christian name and a church on it, and one with a Muslim name and a mosque on it. The neighborhood is home to plenty of Christians (nearly all Catholic), Muslims, Hindus, and no doubt other religious minorities.

Up to perhaps the mid-90s, the surrounding lanes were lined with cute little cottages that belonged mostly to Christians. The houses had names like "Carmel", "Villa Linda", "Aurora", "La Petite Fleur", "Violet" and "Homestead". Some still exist, but others are replaced with ugly buildings like the one at the intersection below. Many of these new buildings have names that reflect cultural poverty -- "Silver Symphony", "Silver Melody" and "Silver Harmony". One unpretentious villa (I think it was Violet) got torn down in the years I was away from the city, and in its place sprang up a little pink fortress called, equally incredibly, "Pinky Cottage". I have to wonder if such strange names are chosen by people who insist on using the English language despite having no feel for it. That is sad. Why not name your home something nice in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Sanskrit, or whatever? Do the people who name them have no beautiful vocabulary they can call their own?

Below, a closer look at the star. It says "Love was born at Christmas, star 'n' angels gave the sign", and then hope, love, joy, peace, and "Wishing you a merry Christmas".

I don't know for sure what this little bit of road is called. I'm just calling it Convent Avenue. It's the lane right across from the Willingdon Catholic Gymkhana. Every year the entire lane is lit up, and for some reason it always reminds me of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet.

Below, the star on Convent Avenue.

I think from a distance this star looks like an LED dragonfly.

I took the picture below with a flash, so you can see the Christmas lights intertwined with tropical bougainvillea. India is north of the equator so technically it's "winter" in Mumbai, but that just means about 15 degrees Celsius (roughly 60 Fahrenheit), so I was in T-shirt and sandals.

I walked past the dragonfly/star, and took the picture below.

Below, a closer look at the star/dragonfly. It was a lot of LED bulbs strung around a wire frame. Probably nothing special to look at in the daytime, but quite pretty at night. I thought the sign dangling below struck a jarring visual note. FWIW, it says "The star guides you to the Christ, Prince of Peace".

Somebody's home on either Convent Av or St. Francis Road.

Below, a vinyl sign at the corner of Convent Av and St. Francis Road, put up by the Congress Party. Mumbai can always count on its politicians to uglify everything with their poor aesthetic sense. There was a bigger, uglier Christmas greeting put up by the BJP near Sacred Heart Church, but I didn't take a picture. If they want to make our neighborhood ugly, the least they can do is make us laugh - Baba Siddique should have worn a Santa suit for this picture. Next election I'm not voting for anyone unless they wear a Santa suit in their Christmas poster.

Below, a dilapidated cross outside a dilapidated cottage at the corner of Hasanabad Lane and St. Francis Road. My camera is straight, the cross is crooked.

Below, festive decorations outside a coffee shop in Santa Cruz East.

Happy 2010!

Christmas at St. Thomas Cathedral, Bombay (Mumbai)

2009-12-25T02:08:00.007+05:30

The cathedral of St. Thomas (part of the Church of North India) is in the heart of Mumbai's business district, which is still called "Fort" (it used to be a walled-off fort in the early British settlement, but nothing of the wall remains now). The church was built in 1718, a century before the British defeated the Maratha rulers of western India. In 1718, Bombay was just a spot of British territory in a vast swathe of native-controlled territory.

Below is the fountain in the small hemmed-in front yard. I took the picture just a few days ago. No white Christmas in Bombay!

Embossed on the fountain are the words, "Whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never thirst". Bit ironic in a city suffering from an acute water crisis entirely because of utter disregard for nature and greed for profit. The fountain is dry as a bone, although there were a hose and two earthen pots of water nearby, and the yard looks well-watered.

Below is the entrance to the church. For some reason I couldn't avoid the haze.

Below is the view of the church from the narthex.

Below, a memorial to a colonel of the Bombay Army. The walls and floor of the cathedral are crammed with memorials of varying degrees of ornateness. A remarkable number of them commemorate people who died in their 30s or 40s. This stone is faded and stained, perhaps from moisture, but most are in good condition.

Below is the crib. I tried to shoot it in as Christmas-card-like a manner as I could.

Below, a longer shot of the crib. As you can see, it's tucked between memorials.

Below, a memorial to the Old Toughs. It reads: "To the Glory of God and Sacred to the Memory of All Ranks of The 'Old Toughs' who gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1918, and in the many campaigns through which the battalion served since it's [sic] formation in 1668 till it's [sic] disbandment July 31st 1922. This tablet is erected in the city of their origin and their home for over 200 years by their comrades on disbandment in proud and grateful memory of the sacrifice they made for King - Country. 'Spectamur Agendo'.".

Below, Christmas tree and eagle lectern. Where I'm standing is the crossing, where the nave and transepts of the church meet.

Eagle lecterns are commonly seen in churches. The eagle is a symbol of the apostle John.

Below, an historic pew. The lesson I learned from this photo: wear gray or brown to make a non-descript reflection if you want to stay out of the picture!

Above, a memorial to Robert Money. The name is familiar to many people in Mumbai because there's a high school and technical college named after him. It was founded in 1836, a year after the East India Company civil servant died of illness at age 32.

Below, stained glass window to one side of the entrance, depicting saints Gabriel, Thomas and Michael.

Merry Christmas!

Diwali joy and regrets

2009-10-26T02:54:00.004+05:30

I had a happy Diwali. But some precious pictures are only in my mind, and I can only share them through words because I had no camera and/or no time to stop and take pictures.

People setting up their bedding on the street for the night on Delisle Road (N. M. Joshi Marg) under cheap strings of LED lights that decorated their shanties for Diwali.
Diwali lantern bazaar in Mahim, a little south of Victoria School.
Yesterday (Sunday, Oct 25), a police van illegally parked on the kerb outside Nanda Cottage, Church Avenue, Khar. I don't know if the police were there to investigate a local crime, or just on patrol for Chhat Pooja (hundreds of thousands of people were expected at Juhu Beach, and Church Avenue is an arterial road).

Still, here are some pictures I did take during Dassera and Diwali:

Below: Swastikas - an ancient Indic auspicious symbol that invokes good fortune - embellish a neighbor's apartment entrance at Dassera

Below: Fresh marigolds and stalks of grain mark celebration, prosperity and the harvest of the kharif (monsoon) crop

Below: Remains of religious rituals - red-and-yellow cotton thread, red fabric, coconut shells, marigolds and zinnias, and incense ash - are disposed of near the roots of a tree. The plastic bags and polyester fabric are unfortunate mutants of an environmentally friendly tradition of composting religious remnants.

Below: A giant paper Raavan towers over traffic on a busy road. Effigies of Raavan are burned on Dassera, to commemorate the victory of good (Lord Ram) over evil (Raavan).

Below: Clearly the 10-headed demon king disapproves of the way people drive in Mumbai.

Below: Dassera procession on Haines Road at Agripada. Cops were posted in areas where Hindu-Muslim tension may be a possibility, and also along visarjan routes (routes to the beaches, where idols of Durga would be immersed in the water).

Below: All the ladies were out in their colorful finery to bid the mother goddess farewell.

And Durga Maata deserves nothing less than a proper western-style drum kit mounted on wheels:

Below: Durga stands on a float, in front of her tiger and carrying her trident. She is flanked by three priest types. Traditional marigolds have been eschewed for colored gerbera daisies.

Below: Man selling LED lights in the pedestrian subway that connects Capitol Cinema and VT Station. This was a couple of days before Diwali, the festival of lights. The electricity is probably stolen or bought with a bribe.

Below: Rangoli (sand painting) at the entrance of my home for Diwali. I made it long and narrow to fit the threshold, because a bigger one would be in the way of people entering neighboring apartments. The swastika is not anti-semitic, just a wish for good fortune.

Below: The lamps are earthen, with coconut oil and cotton wicks. Some people say they are to welcome the victorious Lord Ram back to Ayodhya. Another explanation is that they welcome Lakshmi (goddess of material prosperity) into one's home. The adherents of the latter theory are generally of the business/trading communities who celebrate a new year (2066 this year) the day after Diwali. For them, Diwali is also the occasion for Lakshmi pooja (worship) , to open new account books on an auspicious note. A swastika is marked in vermilion paste on the first page. Whatever the reason for the lamps, the city looks lovely all lit up.

Below: More offerings under a tree. These must have been left by the Gujarati working-class community near my apartment, because the camel-riding devi, Dashaamaa, is not traditionally worshipped by the trading and Brahman castes as far as I know. The plastic bag is full of a mung bean-like legume called matki.

Below: This is what Diwali is really about in Mumbai - sales on electronics ;) Two men transport a flat-screen LCD TV on a motorcycle near Kamla Mills. I actually saw two other men on another motorcycle a few kilometres further south, doing the same thing. I'm still trying to figure out why someone who spent at least Rs 30,000 on the TV wouldn't pay another Rs 150 for a cab, which would be safer and more comfortable for the men and for the TV.

Thank you, Mercedes Sosa

2009-10-04T22:02:00.005+05:30

Mercedes Sosa was born in July 1935, just a few days before my own mother, on the other side of the world. I can't recall when I first heard her, although I'm fairly sure it was in the US, well after Sosa was already famous and past her sixtieth birthday. Like my own mother's voice, her voice became a strong, reassuring, inspiring familiar presence in my life without my even noticing it.

Sosa was among the leading voices of the Nueva Canción movement of 1960s Latin America, which combined folk music with progressive/political lyrics, sort of like the American protest song.

Sosa supported Juan Perón's pro-labor politics. As Argentina grew more repressive, she found herself being searched an arrested on stage at a performance in 1979. She moved to Europe as she was banned in her own country. She moved back around the time of the Falklands War (1982).

Sosa has collaborated with many great musicians, including Joan Baez, Milton Nascimento, Nana Mouskouri, Luciano Pavarotti, Caetano Veloso, Shakira, and Sting.

She was suffering from renal ailments, and died earlier today. RIP.

Happy Indian independence day

2009-08-15T06:41:00.003+05:30

Some pictures I took around Mumbai in the week before Independence Day. Barring the flag in first picture, I was looking for saffron-white-green that was not intended as patriotic.

Below, a girl sells flags for Rs. 2 (US$ 0.04) at the Capitol Cinema traffic light.

Below: Billboard, tree, pedestrians and bus stop near Mahalakshmi train station

Below: Store front on Haines Road / Baburao Jagtap Marg, Agripada

Below: Freshly washed or dyed clothes dry above a tin roof off Jacob Circle, Mahalakshmi

Below: Municipal garbage truck

Below: Grimy decoration on the back of a cab

Below: Ganesh, nestled among fresh marigolds and spider lilies, protects this cabbie from potholes and the swine flu.

Mumbai's summer fruit - much more than mangoes

2009-07-09T02:19:00.025+05:30

Last month, the mango season ended here in Mumbai. At that time, during a conversation about mangoes, the person I was chatting with grumbled, "You can't get good fruit in this country". These are the tropics, she has lived here all her life (she's no spring chicken) and she has plenty of money to buy any fruit she wants. But apparently third-world fruit does not count as fruit. I'm amazed, always, at the innumerable ways - many divorced from all reality - which we Indians can find to disparage ourselves.

I said in surprise that I ate not only mangoes but also canteloupe, chikoo, and other fruits for breakfast every morning. This rich and powerful woman, who wears lots of gold, diamonds and Louis Vuitton every day, then blamed her fruitwallah for not bringing biodiversity to her doorstep. He only brings mangoes, she complained. Well, why would any smart businessman sell her Rs. 30/kilo fruit when she unquestioningly and regularly buys fruit that costs Rs. 200/kilo and lacks the information to ask for other fruit in Mumbai's peak fruit season! Going to the market is one way to benefit from a market economy, but I guess the market street is a little rough on Rs. 8,000 designer shoes...

I love going to the market, which unfortunately I get to do only once a week. All through the summer, I photographed the fruit I was about to eat for breakfast. Here are those and a couple of other results. Enjoy!

Above: Curbside fruit seller at the corner of Tulsi Pipe and Mori roads, Mahim.

Below: Jackfruit seller in the Santa Cruz market. Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus or Artocarpus heterophylla), the world's largest tree-borne fruit, is native to South Asia. When I asked for permission to take the picture, I apologetically told the vendor I would not buy any jackfruit because I don't like it. Truth is, I'd never tasted it (except for jackfruit chips - yum!) because the smell puts me off. But he cheerfully offered me a free sample. It was sweet, and I was surprised to find it was somewhat dry (i.e. not juicy) and chewy. I could get to like it, I guess!

Above: Baby jackfruit on the tree. This picture was not taken in Mumbai like the rest of the photos here. It was in Norris Town, Bangalore, in Feb 2007, using a film camera.

Below:Mangoes (Mangifera indica) are native to the Indian subcontinent. They contain several nutrients and phytochemicals and are very good for health. For some reason they have the (false) reputation for being fattening. A mango has about 105-135 calories, of which none are from fat. It's a virtually fat-free, cholesterol-free fruit. The fruit pictured below is the prized Alfonso variety, named after the fifeenth-century Portuguese fidalgo Alfonso de Albuquerque.

Below: Peeled and uncut Alfonso mango

Below: Mango peel

Below: Mango tart at Theobroma, Colaba - slices of mango resting on almond-flavored pastry cream in a small pastry shell. It tastes as magically wonderful as it looks.

In an effort to learn more about my own carbon footprint, I've taken these days to asking vendors where the fruit I'm buying comes from. Cherries and peaches, for example, come to Mumbai from Kashmir. More on other fruits below.

Below: Canteloupes (Cucumis melo) are native to South Asia. The one below came to Mumbai's Santa Cruz market from Muzaffarpur, Bihar.

Below: With a little bit of homemade yogurt, it made three healthy and yummy breakfasts!

Below: Another variety of canteloupe

Below: A third variety. They're all equally delicious!

Below: One half de-seeded. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I'll say that cutting open a kharbooza (canteloupe) or sitaafal (custard apple) is a reminder of the abundance of nature: sweetness, nutrients, juice, and seeds, all crammed into one package. I would never buy cut fruit in a plastic cup in an American supermarket, and certainly never unnatural seedless fruit - I enjoy taking the time to cut and peel fruit. Nothing in life can be so important that you have to eat in a tearing hurry on a regular basis.

Below: Black jambul (a.k.a. jambu, jamun, Syzygium cumini, Syzygium jambolanum, Eugenia cumini and Eugenia jambolana) is native to the Indian subcontinent. It was introduced into the Americas by the Portuguese (Brazil, of course). They're about 1.5" long, but packed with enough dye to make your tongue purple for a few hours. The ones pictured below came to Mumbai from southern Gujarat. I asked the young woman who sold them to me what she would sell after the jambul season, and she said wouldn't sell anything, she'd go back to the fields.

Below: Jambul seeds are a pretty green inside, and useful in controlling diabetes.

Below: These lychees (Litchi chinensis) came to the Santa Cruz market in Mumbai from Bengal. Native to China, they grow in much of S. and SE Asia, and are rich in Vitamin C.

Below: Chikoo (also known as sapota, sapodilla, nispero, Latin name Manilkara zapota). Native to southern Mexico, introduced in SE Asia during colonization. It is very cheaply available in India. The fruit pictured below is local, i.e. from within Maharashtra state or from southern Gujarat. It's sweetest when it's soft enough to take apart with your hands - no need for a knife. If it smells a bit sour, that means it's overripe. Humble though it may be, the chikoo's sweet flavor and malty texture makes it ideal for milkshakes and ice-cream.

Below: The custard apple or sitaafal (Annona reticulata) is another exotic fruit (from the Americas, I think) that it's hard not to think of as Indian. It's about the size of an apple.If you let yourself be put off by its unfortunate toad-like appearance, you're denying yourself a wonderful treat! The meat is very sweet and creamy, with a slightly sandy texture. It's a very popular ice cream flavor in Mumbai when the fruit is in season.

Below: No need for a knife - you can gently take the fruit apart with your hands when it's ripe. The seeds are not edible, though (generations of grandmothers crushed and boiled them in coconut oil to make an effective herbal lousicide!). This fruit yielded 60 seeds. Yes, I counted.

Below: This peach came to Mumbai from Kashmir. European scientists called the peach Prunus persica because they thought it was native to Iran. But it's originally from China (not Georgia!). An average sized peach contains 30-35 calories, Vitamins A, C and E, fiber, and phytochemicals. In other words, it's healthy! Here's a nice American webpage that explains the history of peaches and links to peach recipes.

Below: Papaya (Carica papaya) is native to Central America, and unrelated to the North American pawpaw. I guess the season really starts in the early monsoon. Papaya is very common in South and SE Asia, South Africa. It can be eaten ripe (yellow) or unripe (green, in salad or curry). It is fat-free and very high in Vitamin C. Did you know that green papaya has contraceptive properties? The papaya tree below is in rural Karjat. I took the picture on a film camera in 2004.

There are still many fruits not pictured here, including the incredible palmyra fruit, known as taar gola in Marathi and Gujarati (I ate my purchase before I started this project, and never bought it again, and the season passed), plum, red date, ber (Ziziphus jujuba), red cherry, plum, pomegranate, pineapple, watermelon, etc., etc., etc.

I must acknowledge Indira of Mahanandi, whose approach to food I share in many respects, and whose delightful photography is partly what inspired me to put together this photo essay, even though my skill, patience and talent does not match hers.

Itadakimasu.

Monsoon night in Mumbai

2009-07-06T05:57:00.005+05:30

Wadala road bridge, 1:30 am: The light from a street lamp falls on a few tents on the curb, in which families are sleeping. The tents are covered in blue or white plastic sheets in case it rains. Outside one of the tents, a small white cat sits quietly, its back to the cars on the road.

Mumbai's shabby public infrastructure

2009-07-06T05:24:00.005+05:30

Got masking tape?

For some reason, sloppy paint jobs abound in Mumbai. Not only are freshly painted railings and things not cordoned off until the paint dries, but they don't even have a simple sign saying “wet paint”. Thousands of passers-by find out the hard way, and taxpayer money ends up achieving fingerprinty finishes on public infrastructure.

This particular sloppy paint job was at the main entrance of one of Bombay's most beautiful buildings, a heritage site. I'm not naming it here because as soon as I took the picture, I was told photography is not allowed (of course there was no sign saying so!). But since nobody required me to delete the picture from my camera, here it is:

Here's a closer look on the other side of the arch:

Below is a shot of Platforms 1-2 at Khar Station in suburban Mumbai. They were painting the metal beams under the roof with a metallic silver paint (you can see the bamboo scaffold in the background). I guess it has just never occurred to anyone in the railways that it may be worth investing in some plastic sheeting or drop cloths, or at least requiring painters to spread old newspapers so that the benches and ground look neat afterwards.

Beautiful antique bench, splattered with silver metallic paint:

Mumbai's urban infrastructure -- "like new" equals broken

2009-05-31T04:22:00.005+05:30

This is how roads are “upgraded” under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP). Note that this picture is an “after” picture, not a “before” one. This is the arterial Swami Vivekanand Road in suburban Mumbai. The paving is a couple of years old at most. The day I took this photo (Thursday, November 27, 2008), the broken curb was visible because there wasn't a car parked on it.

Mumbai's roads routinely get dug up by utility and phone companies for laying or fixing broken cables -- companies with no expertise to dig or rebuild a dug road. But then the Mumbai municipal authorities don't seem to know their head from their ass either. Result: senior citizens are under virtual house arrest (because the streets are too tough an obstacle course for arthritic knees and because curbs are non-existent or intermittent at best), and people who must walk/drive to go about their lives die when the road caves in. It's happened before, and it's going to happen again.

Is the civic-mindedness of Parsis overrated?

2009-05-26T02:56:00.007+05:30

Probably not - they're still better-than-average citizens as far as I can see. But you know that Bombay / Mumbai has gone to the dogs when even Parsis start behaving like this:

Mumbai's streets are filthy, filthy, filthy, lined with unspeakable and unidentifiable things. That stuff gets on your shoes. Someone is going to sit on the seat where this commuter has put her shoes. She knows it. There are trilingual signs on the walls of commuter trains, particularly in the first class compartments (which this is), saying, “Please do not put your feet on the seat”. I took this woman's picture from the neighboring compartment. Later I heard her talk on her cell phone, and which is how I knew she was Parsi. Parsis have long been considered Bombay's most civic-minded citizens, and yet here she is, embodying much that is wrong with this city and its people.

Racism is alive and well in the age of Obama

2009-05-23T16:44:00.004+05:30

Image: Gillian Laub for The New York Times

From today's NYT:

Racially segregated proms...are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change. When the actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for last year’s first-of-its-kind integrated prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, his home state, the idea was quickly embraced by students — and rejected by a group of white parents, who held a competing “private” prom. (The effort is the subject of a documentary, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” which will be shown on HBO in July.) The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students — referred to by many students as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom” — are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come. Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed.

Full story

Taliban unhappy with its own court's verdict

2009-03-24T21:20:00.006+05:30

Image source: BBC Online

BBC reports that a farmer appealed to one of these new Sharia courts in Swat because the Taliban wanted to build a dirt road through his farm. The court ruled in his favor, and now the Taliban are pissed off. Isn't it amazing how people who demand a system nearly always assume it's going to work for them, and never seem to seriously think how it may work against what they envisioned?

For some reason that I haven't time to fathom right now, I'm reminded of an old book on Muslim endowments in 19th c. India. In it, the author, Gregory Kozlowski, shows how vastly differently the colonial court system worked from adjudication of disputes by Qazis or other Islamic officials. In Kozlowski's assessment, the Qazis preferred to get both sides to compromise, because they acted with a view to the best possible formula for the coexistence of the disputing parties, and also because they themselves were very much a part of the community in which they arbitrated. On the other hand, colonial courts tended to treat a dispute as having a losing side and a winning side, and verdicts created a welter of new problems with regard to authority, property ownership and other issues.

Obama's Guantánamo decision: is there any alternative?

2009-01-25T04:59:00.007+05:30

So the "problem" is that President Obama has ordered the closure of this blot on America's soul, and at the same time NYT has reported that Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi and former Guantánamo detainee, has emerged an Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. Therefore, many (especially Republicans, who seem determined not to learn anything from anything, and whose imagination has become bankrupt of everything but fear) argue, if we release the remaining 245 detainees, they may go and do the same thing.

It appears that the al-Shihri involved in bombing the US embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, in September 2008 is the same al-Shihri who was released from Guantánamo in 2007 and passed through a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia with (other) jihadis, and who may or may not have been a jihadi before his internment at Guantánamo. The Pentagon says al-Shihri trained in urban warfare in Kabul. He says he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan two weeks after 9/11 to do "relief work", was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month in hospital in Pakistan. He was detained because he was allegedly channeling "extremists" from Iran to Afghanistan, and planning to kill a writer against whom a fatwa had been declared. His release documents say he was let go because he had gone to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Saudi Arabia, and because he denied knowledge of terrorist activities. He said if he was released, he would go back to his family in Saudi Arabia, and work at his family's store. So he was released to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia claims no one who has been through its rehab program has returned to jihad, but a Saudi official says al-Shihri disappeared from the country after completing the program. However ineffective the Saudi program may be, the US is likely to have problems developing a similar program in Yemen, because the US has complained of serious security lapses in Yemen's counterterrorism measures. And why does Yemen matter? Because 100 detainees at Guantánamo are Yemeni.

If we assume the worst about al-Shihri, he was a jihadi, detained, released, rehabilitated, and returned to jihad. If we assume the best, he was a furniture dealer who wanted to buy carpets in Iran and/or undertake relief work in Afghanistan, was detained, released, rehabilitated, and joined the jihad.

Whichever way we look at it, al-Shihri's case seems like a compelling argument in favor of closing Guantánamo, not keeping it open. Going by the worst-case assumption about al-Shihri, Guantánamo has been an utter failure: despite all that the Bush regime "invested" in the "war on terror", it could not effectively prosecute the jihadi al-Shihri, nor establish with certainty that it was safe to release him or any other detainee. Meanwhile, Guantánamo's constant pissing off of Yemen and other Arab nations was a certainty, and precluded their sincere cooperation in counterterrorism operations. And going by the best-case assumption, i.e. giving al-Shihri the benefit of the doubt, it appears Guantánamo spurred him to join the jihad.

Guantánamo is like Pandora's box -- easily opened, caused a huge mess, not so easy to close (notably, among the things that came out of that box of troubles was also hope). I think it's safe to assume Obama and his administration don't think that all it takes to close Guantánamo is to give all the detainees one-way tickets home and drop them off at the airport. Detainees will have to be put through due process either in US courts or through a UN mechanism. It will be good to have the US process these people lawfully.

Critics of this decision of Obama's should set aside childish things and recognize that there is no easy way out of Guantánamo, and that Bush created a monster that can't be ignored, for even a while. Whenever Guantánamo has to be closed, it's going to be as difficult and complicated as it is now. Bush cited that reason to keep Guantánamo open, but it's also the reason to shut it down. Some people will probably end up being released who should have remained behind bars -- as in the case of al-Shihri. But governments and ordinary people worldwide will probably start trusting America again -- and supporting it. For as long as Guantánamo is staying open, it's simply not achieving what it's intended to achieve, and it's pissing off much of the world (not just Muslims, either). There is no point in its continued existence. The sooner that prison is closed, the better.

"We Are One"

2009-01-19T08:49:00.006+05:30

Today, the US remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. as it prepares to inaugurate its first African-American president. Congratulations, America! And here's to happier times -- economic prosperity, progress, peace, and racial and political harmony.

Full text of Dr. King's speech here

'Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era'

2009-01-08T02:06:00.006+05:30

From a thought-provoking post in the Guardian by Avi Shlaim, Oxford professor of international relations:

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line...
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development... Israel turned the people of Gaza into... a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day...
Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace...
In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals...
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party...
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and...the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.
Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim... The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government... The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral...
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict... The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state... A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.

A poem for the new year

2009-01-01T04:08:00.010+05:30

Yesterday, I received this poetic wish for the new year from an American friend: "May the new year bring peace like rain dropping gently on our wounded world."

I picked a poem to start off the new year on a peaceful note. It's by the Punjabi sufi saint-poet Bulley Shah, who lived from the late 17th to the mid-18th century. He was of Uzbek heritage, was born in Bahawalpur, and lived and died in Kasur (both cities are in what is now the Pakistani Punjab). Bulley Shah wrote in his poems that no amount of learning was useful unless people looked inside themselves. Like other sufis, he saw no distinction between the God of one person and another -- for him there was no "false God", and Hindus and Muslims were one.

Well, the poem I chose is "Ki jaana main kaun". Here it is in the Nastaliq script, if you can read it (I can't). Here's an English transliteration-cum-translation. Below, I'm posting videos of three vastly different interpretations by Junoon, Rabbi, and an unidentified singer who's not identified.

Below is Junoon's sufi-rock "Bulleya" from their album Parvaaz. No comments on the video, but musically speaking, this is by far my most preferred version:

Next is Rabbi Shergill's pop version. I included it because the video contains many scenes of Mumbai - the Taj Mahal hotel, which was the site of a terrorist siege from November 26-28, 2008, the Gateway of India and waterfront across the road from the Taj, Churchgate station, and parts of Marine Drive including the Nariman Point stretch where the Oberoi and Trident hotels are. Of course, the video was made long before the recent attacks, which only goes to show how iconic the locations are where the terrorists struck. Also, Rabbi's version is more complete than Junoon's abbreviated text.

And last is this unidentified singer in what I'm guessing is a Pakistani TV studio. Personally I'm not a big fan of what I call "sugam sangeet" orchestration, although I like singer's voice. I also included it because it illustrates how differently people can interpret the same text, and because this version includes some lines missing in the two preceding versions:

Chal Bulleya, othey chaliye
jithae sarae annae
na koi saadee jaat pachhaney
thae na koi saanu manney
Let's go, Bulleya, let's go to a place
where everyone is blind,
where nobody knows our lineage
and nobody judges us by it.

Muntazer al-Zaidi threw those shoes at Bush on behalf of millions of us

2008-12-16T07:03:00.008+05:30

Misadventures in terrorist-nabbing

2008-12-10T02:30:00.008+05:30

India's security apparatus continues to work at cross purposes. Kolkata police not only mistakenly arrested an undercover operative of the Jammu and Kashmir police, who provided SIM cards to terrorists so that their phone calls could be tapped, but also promptly announced it to all who cared to know. Now the undercover operative's cover is blown, his family is in danger, and the J&K police are hopping mad. Great. Just great.

Meanwhile, interrogators of our lone captive terrorist from the Mumbai attacks apparently revealed to the press where the guy was being held (information was not published), complete with description of how he'd have to go past a long corridor full of cops in order to escape. I can just imagine someone in Muridke saying, "Thanks for the dope, chumps!"

On a more trivial note, it seems our terrorist craves Bachchan movies and a carnivorous diet (but has to make do with saatvik meals six days a week, and no movies). The poor dear.

The press also reports that this adult male citizen (Zardari's "stateless actors" claims notwithstanding, the guy is indeed Pakistani) and human butcher misses his mommy and daddy and wants to tell them he got misled into all this AK-57 stuff. "Misled" into AK-57s?? Maybe Sanjay Dutt can tell us how that happens.

And below, Jon Stewart's interview with an American interrogator who believes rapport and respect, not torture and insult, is a more efficient way to get information out of a terrorist.

By the way, today is international Human Rights Day.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Matthew Alexander

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Mumbai protests: Vision of peace? Or vituperation on vinyl?

2008-12-05T19:59:00.008+05:30

At the best of times, I hate forwarded email by supposedly "concerned" people who have often not even Googled whatever the fuck they're forwarding. Nor do they particularly care about whether it has an effect, or what kind of effect it has. Nor will they follow up -- it's a one-off, directionless, trajectory-less endorsement of some fleeting sentiment. Such mouse-clicking "slacktivism" (isn't that an absolutely delightful epithet for when the vision-less, feckless Indian middle class believes it's "doing" something!) does serious harm when it peddles notions of revenge and hate. Here's a response to an uncle of mine, long-time Mumbai resident who now divides his year between Oceania and North America:

I can understand that people's feelings run strong at a time like this. I know what it feels like to be so frightened and helpless, because I was in the middle of it all. I was at work in ____, across from CST station and behind Cama Hospital, and between the BMC (where the attackers lobbed a grenade) and the lane next to Anjuman-e-Islam school (which they took to escape to Metro). We saw the attacks with our own eyes, outside our office windows. The terrorists fired at our building... and tried to enter it (as our security camera footage shows). And I was more fortunate than ____ [my cousin], who couldn't leave the Oberoi for two days.
Even so, I oppose the sentiments in some of the photos you forwarded. I don't think anything good is achieved by using vulgar language (the obscene pun on the Kerala CM's name), spontaneous calls for revenge (grabbing AK-47s, attacking Pakistan), and using womanhood as an insult (giving someone bangles??? I believe a woman is a human being, not an insult to masculinity).
I am also skeptical of "reform movements" that are spawned overnight with poorly thought out vision, and that may vanish within a week. In fact, people who have made solid difference in making politicians more accountable started doing so long before a terrorist attack, and they did it at the risk of their lives, too (Satyendra Dubey is no more). The true leaders and nationalists who deserve our attention are people like Aruna Roy, Sandeep Pandey and Arvind Kejriwal, and those who support them. Why not give their organizations a donation, if you feel strongly about reforming India?
With all due respect, I request that you kindly not forward me such photos or messages. I hope you will understand.

Below are some of the pix attached to my uncle's email, sent from Oceania. As of now, the URL www.reformindiamovement.org is parked with GoDaddy and contains only random links like all parked domains.

Open house at Jamaat-ud-Daawa

2008-12-05T19:18:00.004+05:30

As Pakistan comes under great international pressure, this controversial charity, widely regarded as a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, opened its doors to journalists -- the doors to its classrooms and hospital. Other areas of the campus remained out of bounds. While the BBC appears to have taken this PR exercise at face value, the Guardian has not. It wrote that the

carefully orchestrated visit took foreign and local journalists around the beautifully equipped school and hospital. The school follows the national curriculum, the headteacher, Rashid Mehnaz, said, taking pupils from around the country. The poor were given financial help, with richer pupils paying fees. Mehnaz condemned violence, saying suicide attacks were "absolutely wrong - it is forbidden in Islam".
A press conference and sumptuous lunch was laid on for journalists. However, the madrasa, mosque, and other facilities remained out of bounds, and once the official tour was over the media were no longer welcome. Although the group had said anyone was welcome to look around the site at any time, the Guardian's attempt to take up this offer after the tour was met with a heavy-handed response: burly young men arrived on motorcycles and circled, demanding that we leave...
...Certainly there were plain-clothed officials present, who said they were members of "special branch" - often a euphemism for the Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency. They wanted to provide an armed escort back to Lahore, but why intelligence agents were there - and why an escort might be necessary - was unclear. Muridke is not in a dangerous part of Pakistan, and the offer was declined.
It has long been said that the ISI has secretly backed Lashkar-e-Taiba, though the agency always rejects the accusation.

Jon Stewart & John Oliver on the Mumbai terror attacks

2008-12-03T02:24:00.003+05:30

"When you're a bankrupt ideology pursuing a bankrupt strategy, the only move you've got is the dick one."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Terrorist attack on Mumbai

2008-11-30T23:26:00.006+05:30

I took the above photo in Mumbai about 5:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 -- about four hours before the terrorist attacks began. They are Mahatma Gandhi's words, in his own writing. The quote above bears a Dandi dateline, and says, "I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might." The quote below says, "Be truthful, gentle and fearless." Gandhi and his followers walked maybe 145 miles from Sabarmati Ashram, near Ahmedabad, to Dandi, near Surat, to "illegally" make salt as an act of non-violent civil disobedience.

I took the picture for my blog, but never imagined it would be prefacing this:

At about 10:25 pm, when I was at work in my fourth-floor office right across from CST station, we heard commotion in the street below -- explosions and gunfire. From our windows, we heard screams and saw dozens of people running along the kerb and in the suburban platform # 1 (where my train pulls in from Bandra/Andheri every day). One man was running on Platform 1 while carrying another over his shoulders. This may or may not be the same guy. The gunmen were on the foot bridge at the north end of the station that I take every day to cross D. N. Road. After maybe 40 minutes, the attacks ceased.

By this time we knew, of course, that there had been blasts or firing in Colaba, near the Leopold Cafe and the Taj. No one was sure what was going on, though. I went downstairs to check if our security would let in colleagues who were stranded in Colaba, but they chose to go home to the suburbs. I was really really scared for their safety, because there was no telling at 11:30 pm how many terrorists there were, and where they may attack next. As it turned out, my colleagues made the right decision, under the circumstances.

I myself, along with 80-100 others, was stuck in my workplace until daybreak. All night long we watched the horrendous news unfold on TV, but at least we were safe and had food, water, bathrooms, and access to news. Others were not so lucky.

At 5 am, we trooped downstairs to take the early trains home. Some of our company drivers had left in fear, but a few cars and drivers were still there, so I got a ride home. Was home by 6 a.m.

The next day, I heard that the terrorists had tried to enter our building on Wednesday night. It figures -- the railway bridge leads from the platform almost to our side entrance. Our security cameras recorded footage of a man with a gun pointing straight ahead, walking towards the camera/entrance. The sharpest weapon our mostly unarmed security guards have is alertness -- they saw the terrorists approaching the building and immediately closed both entrances.Their quick thinking surely saved our lives -- the terrorists then headed for the Cama and Albless Hospital. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'd have been "hostages". After all, our building is the ideal terrorist target: a historic landmark in a busy part of town, near four major bus stops, CST station, the city administration headquarters, major markets. As far as I'm aware, my company has received at least two threats since May 2008. On Wednesday night, instead of us, the patients at Cama Hospital became targets.

It's all a matter of fate, who remained alive and who didn't.

Now, as we emerge from the shock, there's a sick churning feeling in the pit of my stomach at all the opportunistic politicking and the future of South Asia. Who could have imagined Gandhi's words would ring so loud 78 years later, in so different a context! I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.

Me llaman calle

2008-11-25T01:57:00.003+05:30

Manu Chao is one of my favorite musicians -- he has that rare combination of playfulness and sympathy, and even his profoundly sad songs make me want to celebrate and dance. I don't see how it's possible to more effectively encapsulate human experience in a four-minute song. The song below is on the soundtrack of Princesas, a film I've yet to see. I couldn't find a translation, but "Me llaman calle" translates, I think, to "They call me The Street". Princesas is about prostitutes. Enjoy!

Tina Fey's funny. Sarah Palin is not

2008-11-24T02:52:00.004+05:30

Think Tina's SNL sketch was funny? That's how comedians make politicians look ridiculous, by taking their words out of context, or distorting them, right? Not always. This video shows some of what an astonishing number of Americans actually voted for. Imagine what could have been, and give thanks that it isn't. Happy Thanksgiving!

Republicans peddling a politics of resentment

2008-09-06T06:12:00.002+05:30

Gotta love Paul Krugman:

On Tuesday, He Who Must Not Be Named — Mitt Romney mentioned him just once, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin not at all — gave a video address to the Republican National Convention. John McCain, promised President Bush, would stand up to the “angry left.” That’s no doubt true. But don’t be fooled either by Mr. McCain’s long-ago reputation as a maverick or by Ms. Palin’s appealing persona: the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.
What’s the source of all that anger?
Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment...

Bandel cheese

2008-09-02T02:39:00.007+05:30

A friend brought me this cheese from Calcutta (Kolkata) recently. My friend said it had orginally been made by priests (presumably Catholic), while another story of indeterminate source has it that was named for the Portuguese corruption of "bandar" (Arabic for port) and made by local cooks under Portuguese supervision. At any rate, today bandel is available at two shops in New Market.

An FAO webpage on traditional milk products in developing countries describes bandel as an "indigenous unripened, salted soft variety of cheese made in perforated pots. It is similar to surti paneer but made from cow's milk."

The little rounds are about 2" or 5 centimeters across, and maybe half as thick. The way to eat this cheese is to immerse it in water overnight. By morning it is distinctly softer. I pared off the rind with a knife (a butter knife is enough), and found the texture to be surprisingly spongy, like a good paneer but a bit more crumbly. The smell, however, is not like paneer! It's distinctly smoky and porky, both before and after soaking.

And you know how some things surprise you by turning out to taste quite different from how they smell? Well, bandel won't surprise you at all -- it tastes smoky and porky. I didn't like it, actually, although I like pork, and I like many kinds of cheese. This one was too strong for my liking, at least by itself.

I don't know yet whether it's supposed to be eaten in a particular way, how it might melt/cook, etc. It would probably work well crumbled into a salad, with some mild sort of greens and simple dressing. I think I could acquire the taste for bandel.

Happy birthday, Pakistan!

2008-08-14T04:08:00.007+05:30

I think Pakistan's Qaumi Tarana -- national anthem -- is beautiful, both the melody and words. Eschewing YouTube videos with military images, I have picked out three versions that I liked. I wish Pakistan's democracy every strength, great success, peace, and prosperity.

A kid showing off his shiny Ibanez.

A tribute by a cooking website, featuring Junoon's version of the anthem. The images are explained on YouTube.

And here you can listen to the words while reading the English translation. Unfortunately the type isn't very clear, and the sound starts a couple of seconds into the video, but it's simple and nice. The transliterated Urdu words are below, if you want to sing along :)

Paak sar zamin shaad baad

Kishwar-e-haseen shaad baad

Tu nishaane azme-aalishaan

Arze Pakistan

Markaz e yaqin shaad baad

Paak sarzamin ka nizaam

Quwat e akhuwat e awaam

Qaum, mulk, sultanat

Paainda taabinda baad

Shaad baad manzal e muraad

Parcham e sitaara o hilaal

Rahbar e taraqqi o kamaal

Tarjumaan e maazi shaan e haal

Jaane istaqbaal

Saayyai Khudaae zul jalaal

Why nobody respects Mumbai Police

2008-08-04T04:50:00.013+05:30

It's because it often seems they regard the maintenance of law and order as someone else's job. Moreover, they are so petulant and rude that they can't even seem to respect themselves. With cops like these, the citizens have a standing invitation to take the law into their own hands. Most of us don't do so, because we haven't descended into anarchy yet, but it looks like the cops are ensuring we get there.

According to the law, I can call the police emergency number (100) and complain anonymously about the illegal use of loudspeakers (illegal before 6:30 am, and illegal at any time in primarily residential areas; religious use is not exempted). They have to dispatch a police van and confiscate the offending equipment. Here's my conversation with Constable Jadhav a few minutes ago (Monday, August 4, 2008, at 4:16 am):

Me: I'm calling from _____, and would like to complain about the illegal use of loudspeakers at 5 am.
Constable (I don't know if it was Jadhav): Is the noise on right now?
Me: No, but it will be at 5 am. It's on every morning --
Constable: Then call at 5, when the noise is on.
Me: But it doesn't go on for long, so by the time you send the van --
Constable: I'm hanging up
Me: No, wait --
*click*

4:17 am - I call 100 again.

Me: I'm calling from _____. Please hear me through. The last time whoever answered didn't let me finish. That's not right.
Constable Jadhav: Yes?
Me: The loudspeakers start at 5 am. Please send a van.
Jadhav: Call when the noise starts.
Me: No, please understand, the noise doesn't last more than a couple of minutes.
Jadhav: This is an emergency number.
Me: I know, but it's your job to take complaints, and send a van for loudspeakers.
Jadhav: Did I say I refuse to take a complaint?
Me: No, you didn't say so, but your behavior is that of refusal.
Jadhav: Call when the noise starts, and we'll send a van.
Me: I take it you're not new to Mumbai --
Jadhav: No. Maybe you're new to Mumbai.
Me: Let me finish my sentence. If you're not new to Mumbai, you are aware that an azaan lasts a couple of minutes.
Jadhav: Yes.
Me: So if I call you when the azaan starts, and you send a van, it's going to waste their time, because the noise will end by the time the van gets there, and they're not going to be able to do a thing.
Jadhav: The van takes only five minutes to get there.
Me: But the azaan is less than five minutes.
Jadhav: This is an emergency number. At 5 am, we will call you.
Me: Why should the police call me at 5 am? I want to sleep.
Jadhav: Because the noise is disturbing you.
Me: Yes, but my plan is to be asleep at 5, not to be kept awake by loudspeakers or cops. Besides, it's not a matter of noise troubling me, it's a matter of violation of the law. You are a police constable, so you presumably know the law.
Jadhav: You call us when the noise starts. You feel they will start at 5 --
Me: No, I don't feel anything, I know it for certain. They start every morning at this time. I don't think you're taking your job seriously. What's your name?
Jadhav: Jadhav.
Me: Full name?
Jadhav: We only give out surnames.
Me: OK, then. I work for [name of media organization]. I'm going to complain about you to the ACP [Assistant Commissioner of Police].
Jadhav: You do that.
*click*

At 4:58, the first loudspeaker starts off. I call 100 again at 5:01. Get through, long pause (no constable announcing himself), disconnected.

I try again at 5:02. Same thing -- connect, silence, disconnect. Lines are not terribly busy in the morning, and this is, as Constable Jadhav reminded me, an emergency number, so there's no reason for disconnection. I'm starting to think Jadhav is exercising his discretion with the help of Caller ID.

Still at 5:02, I dial 100 yet again. I connect, and silence.

Me: Hello?
Constable: Yes?
Me: I'm calling from _____, and the loudspeaker is on. Please send a police van.
Constable: Where?
Me: [specify location]
Constable: Okay.
Me: Whom am I speaking to?
*pause*
*click*

Well, what can you say of a police force that is too busy to enforce the law because it's too busy persecuting young couples at the seashore? Words fail me.

Mosque loudspeakers violating noise laws

2008-07-27T21:04:00.011+05:30

Cartoon source: Cox and Forkum

I was not raised Muslim. I am not even religious. India is not an Islamic country. Mine is not a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. Yet I am called to prayer insistently, daily, and loudly.
Here are the timings for the mosque loudspeakers within earshot of my bedroom.

4:40 - 5:30 am
1 pm
4 - 4:10 pm
5:15 - 5:30 pm
7:15 - 7:30 pm
8:40 - 9:10 pm
There are at least four loudspeakers, but I can never count exactly because it's hard to separate individual voices in the cacophony. They all go off at slightly different times, and presumably each one calls azaan five times a day. Which means I am called to prayer around 20 times a day.

It's against the law to use loudspeakers outdoors in residential areas at any time, and in any area at all between 10:30 pm and 6:30 am. Religious use is not exempt from this law, except by specific court order, which is only possible for a limited number of days each year.

I have complained to the police literally dozens of times. I have the right to make an anonymous complaint, but they often refuse to take my complaint. They have often asked me to go to the police station and file a written complaint in person, although this is not required under the law. They are supposed to go to the spot where the violation occurs, and confiscate the loudspeakers and other offending equipment. Either the Mumbai Police has never actually dispatched a van, or, if they have, they haven't confiscated a thing, because the noise has never abated for a single day. Azaan lasts 2-5 minutes, so the cops need to station themselves by mosques and wait for the violation to occur.
There are cases of mosques in Oxford (England), Brooklyn (New York), and elsewhere being restricted from at least the pre-dawn azaan, if not more. One might argue that those are non-Muslim countries with assimilationist expectations of immigrants. But even Muslims in Islamic countries understand the need to curb noise pollution. Here's what an Indonesian blogger says about mosque loudspeakers -- she and most of the commenters agree that they are a nuisance, and that there's nothing Islamic about them. Here's a report of 150 people being arrested for abuse of mosque loudspeakers, in Pakistan.
I hope God, Allah, or whoever is up there, listening to the azaans in Mumbai, is increasingly pissed off and throws a bolt of lightning at every single loudspeaker in Mumbai, because the police sure as hell aren't doing a damn thing about it.
A call to prayer may be necessary for Muslims, but not all of us are interested. Besides, a loudspeaker is quite a different thing from a call to prayer. No scripture could possibly say that electronic amplification is necessary. If you're going to have technological innovations, then why not SMS azaans? Or Islamic alarm clocks? (Update, April 10, 2009: I just discovered that there is indeed such a thing.) Let the faithful subscribe and purchase those, and let the rest of us get some fucking sleep. If the imams won't respect the law or the human need for sleep and silence, the police ought to make them.
Update, July 23, 2010: This appears to be one of the most popular posts on my blog, and people frequently find it with keywords like mosque, loudspeaker, noise. Clearly, there's a problem, and it seems to be worldwide. I just noticed that a website called Pakistani Politics Journal has linked to this post. Welcome, PPJ readers! :)

The decline of Mumbai's university

2008-06-29T02:36:00.015+05:30

Bombay University, undated photo (taken after 1878). Image source: www.mu.ac.in

It's official: the University of Mumbai attracts flies.

The Times of India recently reported that the University Grants Commission (UGC), the government body that oversees and funds higher education in India, may take direct control of University of Mumbai. The Times quoted the head of a UGC review committee as saying, "There has been a huge drop in faculty members, which has affected the quality of teaching and research. While the number of students has steadily gone up, over 200 faculty positions are lying vacant. Also, with 600 colleges affiliated to it, the focus is more on administration than academics."

Like many things that have recast themselves from Bombay to Mumbai, this 150-year-old university, which counts historic figures among its alumni, has putrefied. But even 20 years ago, when I got my undergraduate degree from there, I was not proud of it because I considered it mediocre. I was saved by the fact that I went to elite colleges where dedicated teachers went way beyond the required curriculum, to give students a real education.

The university did not offer a major in Anthropology, so I had to major half in Anthropology and half in Psychology. (Digression: when I graduated, they forgot to write "Anthropology" on my degree certificate, but luckily the calligrapher was sitting right there when I went to collect the document, and he obligingly added it in at my request, without question.) For such Anthropology as I did study, the books prescribed by the university were not available in bookstores -- you just had to read the one copy in the St. Xavier's College library, or photocopy what you could (copiers were quaintly mechanical in the mid-1980s -- it took several minutes to print a page, as I recall). For assignments (required by our professors, but not by the university), we referred to colonial missionaries' accounts (about criminal tribes with cannibalistic pasts). In retrospect, I think we read them shockingly uncritically, but even so, it was these that led me to regard "norms" from a distance, and truly broadened my teenaged mind. Besides reading and research assignments, we also had field trips (also not required by the university). I was enthused enough about a research assignment to track down the Institute of Indian Culture in Mahakali Caves Road (back of beyond in those days), meet Stephen Fuchs, the elderly Jesuit priest who had written one of our textbooks, and use the library there to research one assignment. It astonishes me now that I was so motivated, and it says a great deal about Father John Macia, who taught me Anthropology. All these activities counted for nothing in the final assessment for the degree, and yet, they were my true education. I still have my handwritten assignments, and, having taught undergraduates myself now, I'm amazed by my own (very interesting!) choice of topics. I am so grateful to my Anthropology professors, especially Eddie Rodrigues and Father Macia, for not leaving my education to the University of Bombay!

The other half of my undergraduate degree was in Psychology. The textbooks weren't bad, but that's because they were American college textbooks! They were, of course, not available in the bookstores. Besides, the curriculum was lousy -- while an excruciatingly boring course on industrial psychology was mandatory for even the half-major, Freud and psychoanalysis were not! Thank goodness for my driven, if not wildly interesting, professor Maureen Almeida. I was very lucky also to be a student of the excellent Jennie Mendes in junior college (class 11 and 12) at Sophia, and to be able to borrow my older sibling's college textbooks to write Jennie's Psychology assignments. Of course, I was fortunate to have enough curiosity to devour those excellent books -- I can never forget Clifford Morgan & Richard King (Introduction to Psychology), Henry Clay Lindgren (An Introduction to Social Psychology), and James C. Coleman (Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life)! By the time I got to degree college myself, the textbooks had changed (they probably changed them every 15 years!). The new ones were American, too, but I don't recall the authors. All I recall is that there was now DSM IV, that psychology had become extremely physiological (which I found utterly boring), that Solomon Snyder was doing cutting-edge work on neurotransmitters, and that I was deeply impressed by Milgram's experiments on destructive obedience. But -- Freud was a frill that a Psychology degree could easily do without, according to the pedagogues at the University of Bombay.

My undergraduate days are ancient history, true. But a much more recent experience -- unmediated by the dedication of college professors -- gave rise to unalloyed dismay. In 2005, on a research trip to India from the US, for my doctoral dissertation, I had a fellowship that required me to have an institutional affiliation. Mumbai is such an intellectually atrophied city that I had little choice. I contacted the head of the relevant department at the University of Mumbai. He was all wide-eyed, and seemed to consider my topic some whole new sphere of study (as anyone who peruses Modern Asian Studies or Economic and Political Weekly would know, my field of study is certainly not "unique", even though -- surprisingly -- there's no work that's even close to my topic that focuses on Bombay/Mumbai. So the department head invited me to give a talk. I thanked him and said I'd look forward to feedback from not just faculty but also graduate students. He goggled incredulously, as if I had asked to be chauffeured in a gold-plated limousine. He said, "Those duffers!" (well, some words to that effect). He appeared sincere in his belief that an M.A. or Ph.D student is not competent to comment on or ask a useful question about someone's work. My talk was arranged as somebody's in-class event (they didn't think to tell me whose, nor the title of the course). The room was full. After the talk, I invited questions. A faculty member launched into a lengthy question, tangential to my topic and ostensibly designed to probe whether I was ignorant of major debates in the field. Then, another senior faculty member asked a question, but didn't wait for an answer before launching into a long harangue about my allegedly racist and colonial perspective. He thundered against my description of a particular community organization as conservative. (I had given several examples to explain exactly what I meant. It's my own community, by the way.) He ended his schtick with an accusation and a flourish. A large group of students applauded. I had the distinct feeling they were eager to show up the Amreekawalli (I was studying in the US, true, but I'm an Indian, from Bombay. I look and sound Indian, and don't believe I come across as putting side on. I speak several Indian languages fluently, with an Indian accent. I'm not the stereotype tank-top-wearing South Bombay monolingual Anglophone chick who gibbers when attempting to speak in Hindi). They seemed not to have registered the fact that I was presenting unprocessed raw data, from which I was only beginning to build a theory. The senior faculty member appeared to be coming from the Subaltern perspective which gained ground in the 1980s, but which has been critiqued (although, of course, still remains hugely important and relevant). I guess I have the same perspective but from the post-critique stage, and am post-colonial enough to call Indians conservative if that's what they were (one can be critical, after all, without giving up sympathy for those one studies). But nuance was clearly not the order of the day in Ranade Bhuvan that afternoon.

I would rather not get a Ph.D at all than get it from University of Mumbai.

In 2007, Time Out's excellent Mumbai edition ran a cover story (Friday, July 27, 2007) on people studying Mumbai/Bombay. It mentioned many people (including me) who were studying the city through various lenses. We were all from institutions outside Mumbai, and many outside India. But, Time Out noted, the University of Mumbai has no initiative to promote the study of Mumbai, despite the city's vital role in the country's history and economy for over 300 years.

Institutions of higher learning are the hallmark of civilization. With this chronic apology of a university, Mumbai has no claim to being an evolved and civilized city. It will go on selling medical college admissions to the highest bidders, cranking out hundreds of thousands of semi-employable B.Com. and B.Sc. graduates each year, and producing EngLit graduates and journalists who can't write a sentence to save their lives. Forget about History, Philosophy, and other disciplines that demand abstract and critical thinking! This once-great city, today riddled with potholes, feces, spit, garbage, worse sanitation than bombed-out Baghdad, corruption, poverty, multiplex cinemas, the bizarre but unshakeable corporate and middle-class delusion that it's going to be a "global" city, and the constant fatuous revelry of the insanely selfish rich, has got the university it deserves.

Why Indra Sinha is on hunger strike

2008-06-13T00:56:00.008+05:30

I don't usually copy entire articles here, but I'm making an exception this time. The following is from the Guardian online.

Why I'm going on hunger strike for Bhopal

Victims of the Union Carbide gas leak continue to suffer, their injuries and deaths uncompensated. We must support them

By Indra Sinha, author of Animal's People, which was short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize

On July 26 2006, my friend Sathyu Sarangi called me in tears from Bhopal to tell me that our mutual friend, Sunil Kumar, had taken his life. Sathyu said that when they lifted Sunil down from the ceiling fan from which he had hanged himself, he was wearing a T-shirt that said, "No More Bhopals".

Sunil was an orphan of the Union Carbide mass-gassing of Bhopal, losing his parents and three siblings on that night of terror. Aged 12, he began doing two jobs a day to bring up his surviving sister and baby brother Sanjay. He became a leader of the survivors' struggle for justice and was one of the people I loved most in Bhopal.

The BBC reported, wrongly, that Sunil was the inspiration for Animal in my novel Animal's People, but Animal certainly benefited from Sunil's courage, sense of humour and ability to live on 4 rupees (£0.05) a day. Like Animal, Sunil heard voices in his head, and suffered nightmarish visions. You can read his story here.

On the day that Sunil died, Dow Chemical's CEO Andrew Liveris visited the UN to deliver a much-publicised speech. Fireboats hired by Dow's public relations agency jetted huge sprays aloft over the Hudson River as Liveris told the assembled diplomats "Lack of clean water is the single largest cause of disease in the world and more than 4,500 children die each day because of it … We are determined to win a victory over the problem of access to clean water for every person on earth … we need to bring to the fight the kinds of things companies like Dow do best."

Stirring words. But when asked if he would clean up Bhopal, where the drinking wells of 20,000 people have been poisoned by chemicals abandoned by Dow's subsidiary Union Carbide, causing an epidemic of cancers and hundreds of children to be born malformed and with brain damage, Liveris replied, "We don't feel this is our responsibility".

Liveris couldn't be more wrong. Under the "polluter pays" principle enshrined in both Indian and US law, Union Carbide is responsible for cleaning up the contamination and compensating the thousands whose lives have been ruined. In buying Union Carbide's assets, Dow also acquired its liabilities. Dow set aside $2.3bn to settle Union Carbide's US asbestos liabilities. How then can it refuse to accept Union Carbide's Indian liabilities?

The hard answer is that Indians are not quite as human as Americans. Dow paid $10m to settle out-of-court with an American child damaged by Dursban, a pesticide so dangerous that it has been banned for domestic use in the US. But Dow employees were found to have bribed Indian Ministry of Agriculture officials to license Dursban as safe for home use in India. If an Indian child dies I doubt if there'll be $10m or even $10,000. As a Dow public affairs chief famously remarked of the paltry compensation paid to Union Carbide's victims, "$500 is plenty good for an Indian".

Why doesn't the Indian government force Dow to clean up Bhopal? The Indian law ministry has advised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Dow is indeed liable for Union Carbide's misdeeds in Bhopal. It's exactly what he doesn't wish to hear. He and his ministers are in contortions to appease Dow, which has offered to invest $1bn in India if freed from its Bhopal liabilities. When news broke of this sordid backroom hustling, 280 legal professionals, among them retired judges and eminent lawyers, said the attempts to exculpate Dow were unconstitutional and illegal.

Earlier this year, 50 Bhopali survivors, many old and sick, walked 500 miles to Delhi to ask the prime minister for safe drinking water and to make Dow clean the factory. For two months Manmohan Singh left them camped on a sweltering pavement without a reply. When Bhopali women brought their damaged children to his house and chained themselves to his railings, he had them arrested. The policewomen who led them away wept.

When India's prime minister finally gave a reply, it was all prevarication, no substance. The Bhopalis then declared that they would launch an indefinite hunger strike until their demand for justice was met.

On the eve of the fast, police beat up women and children as young as six years old who had gone to protest outside the prime minister's office. The police said they'd been told to get tough. Many of us around the world rang to protest and I asked a Mr Muthukumaran of the prime minister's office if Manmohan Singh had ordered the beatings. "Are you joking?" he replied. On the contrary, I had rarely been more serious.

As I write this the Bhopalis are still in jail, and we hear that Dow Chemical is sponsoring an exhibition called The Gallery of Good at the Cannes advertising festival. Next Monday, Dow will present The Chemistry of Socially Responsible Marketing, which is presumably the advertising campaign on which it has lavished upwards of $100m. But telling lies beautifully does not make them true. Wouldn't it have more socially responsible to use the money for cleaning up Bhopal?

I have spent much of the last five years writing a novel in which victims of a chemical disaster caused by a rogue corporation are sold out by their own politicians, triggering a desperate hunger strike. Animal's People is set in the fictional city of Khaufpur, but whatever success it has had, it owes to the inspiring courage and spirit of the Bhopalis, and the descriptions of the hunger strike were drawn directly from the experiences of my friends.

Sunil is dead, but on their small stretch of pavement in Delhi, now battered by monsoon rain, nine others have sat down to begin an indefinite fast for justice. Among them are my old friend Sathyu and, grown up into a fine young man, Sunil's baby brother, Sanjay.

How can I not join them? How can we all not support them?

• To join the fast for a period, or to register your support, please visit www.bhopal.net. Donations for medical care in Bhopal may be made at www.bhopal.org/donations/

Photos: Indra Sinha image from http://indrasinha.com, and hunger strike image and Dirty Dow logo from www.studentsforbhopal.org

More Mumbai summer

2008-06-04T00:43:00.006+05:30

Bougainvillea. Photo by moi. If you'd like to use it for any reason, please let me know!

Bougainvillea (Bougainvillea brasilensis) is named after an eighteenth-century French navigator who discovered the colorful and very thorny vine in southern America. This would be the chap Diderot alluded to in his "Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville", which was not really about travel but a critique of French society and politics.

The pink papery part isn't the real flower, the little white thingies are, although I've no idea on what basis botanists decide these things (if you do, please leave a comment). Based on the pictures I've seen of French colonies in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, and my own sojourn in Pondicherry, it seems French colonists liked to cheer up whitewashed architecture with pink, white, and deep orange variants of bougainvillea. And although Mumbai was never French territory, bougainvillea has always been part of my landscape here. It clung to a stretch of chicken wire along my school boundary, creating a shady canopy under which you could sit on the low garden wall. And there was also a big jumble of it in a corner of the garden around my parents' home. Sadly, that went when the railways took a strip of land from our landlord to widen the rail corridor. Can't think why the landlord didn't put it back inside the new property boundary, because it's pretty easy to grow. The photo above was taken on May 17, at the gates of the "haunted house" at the end of the street.

Photo of anthurium below, taken on the same day, outside the building next door to ours.

Anthurium. Photo by moi. If you'd like to use it for any reason, please let me know!

A Mumbai summer ends

2008-06-03T23:29:00.006+05:30

Mumbai has been intolerably humid. The air was so still and thick with humidity that I felt I simply couldn't bear it. Neither my nor my friends' homes have air conditioning. Nor do the buses, trains, nor most taxis. But bear it I did, simply because there was nothing else to do. These past few weeks, the air conditioning at my workplace was a sort-of incentive to go to work. (I say "sort of" because they crank the damn thing up until your brain freezes and your fingers stop moving. That's not very pleasant, either.)

A couple of hours ago, it rained -- a heavy shower for a good 20 minutes. It's like someone turned the air conditioning on for the whole neighborhood. It's dark now, and although tomorrow Mumbai is sure to be back to its nasty muggy self, at least the dust will have washed off the leaves, and the air, normally a yellowy-brown despite the year-round coastal breeze, will be a little clearer.

For the rest, here are a few glimpses of Mumbai's summer. Photos by yours truly. If you want to use them, ask me, okay?

Buy one, get gun free

2008-05-24T07:14:00.007+05:30

In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore showed us how he opened a bank account and got a gun as a free gift. Now BBC reports that a car dealer in Missouri says sales have quadrupled since it started its freebie offer. Customers can choose between a gun or a $250 gas card. While Europe is relatively stoic that gas now costs $8/gallon, America, whose population is scattered thinly across suburbs connected by no public transport worth the name, is reeling from gas that costs an outrageous $4/gallon. So it's pretty obvious what to choose, right?

The gun, silly! The gas card is only good for $250 worth of gas. How will you fill your new car after that? But go with a gun to the gas station -- hey, free gas, whenever you want it!

Mr Muller said that every buyer so far "except one guy from Canada and one old guy" chose the gun, rather than the gas card. He recommends a Kel-Tec .380 pistol, which he describes as "a nice little handgun that fits in your pocket".

Dear Mr Muller, I can't think of a single reason why I'd need a handgun in my pocket, but anyway, proceed:

He added that the promotion was inspired by recent comments from one of the Democratic nominees for the presidential election, saying: "We did it because of Barack Obama.
"He said all those people in the Midwest, you've got to have compassion for them because they're clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns."

Hmmm. Why not cash in on all the tactless or tasteless things presidential candidates have said, with totally ironic business plans for each? I'm starting a June assassination pool. Any suggestions for McCain gaffes?

New York through the muckraker's lens

2008-05-24T03:22:00.009+05:30

"Five cents a spot", by Jacob Riis, 1889. Image source: The New York Times

When I was about 16 or 17, the brother of a girl in my college (I think she was called Deepa), who went to Brandeis, brought back a book on one of his visits home. That book was called American Pictures, by Jacob Holdt. A friend of mine borrowed that book from Deepa, and I borrowed it from her (Jacob Holdt touched many lives in India with that one much-borrowed copy of his book!). And so I learned that there was poverty in America. And I learned that another Dane, Jacob Riis, had recorded alarmingly similar wrenching poverty a century before Holdt. Thanks, Deepa's brother!

The New York Times today has a review of a new book on Jacob Riis, titled Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Daniel Czitrom, professor of history at Mount Holyoke College, co-author of the book with Bonnie Yochelson, art historian at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, is quoted in the NYT as saying:

“I’ve always been struck by the tension between the empathy and sympathy that’s powerfully depicted in many of those images, and the kind of stereotypes, racial language, that he uses in the text... There’s a tension between the text and the photographs. Today, no one really reads Riis anymore, and yet the photographs remain incredibly moving.”

The NYT reviewer, Sewell Chan, writes:

The commonly held view of Riis is that of the muckraking police reporter, whose seminal 1890 work, “How the Other Half Lives,” prompted legislative reforms, focused attention on the desperate lives of poor urban immigrants and left an enduring mark on the history of documentary photography.
Less well-known are the contradictory elements of Riis’s life and work. He was an entertainer, a self-promoter, an evangelical, and a political conservative who had little faith in the power of government to correct social ills, arguing instead for Christian charity. He held views on race and ethnicity that would be considered offensive today. Though he is now heralded as a major figure in photographic history, he declared in his 1901 autobiography that he was “downright sorry to confess here that I am no good at all as a photographer.”

"The Baby's Playground", by Jacob Riis, c. 1890. Image source: The New York Times

India's contradictions

2008-05-08T02:48:00.005+05:30

Image source: The Onion

Academic liberals ≠ liberal academics

2008-05-05T02:02:00.007+05:30

Previously on "What's wrong with American academia"
Part 1
Part 2 (latter part of post)

Today's instalment:

It's a common criticism of academia that it remains isolated in a lofty ivory tower peopled with latte-drinking, Volvo-driving liberals. The accusation is, of course, an old stereotype. But while it typically comes from right-of-center students and working-class people who feel silenced or marginalized, I make it from a left-of-center academic's perspective -- from within, you might say (and a little bit from without also). I consider the majority of these allegedly latte-drinking, Volvo-driving scholars to be conservative -- even those who publish in "radical" academic journals -- because they hide in that ivory tower and refuse to engage with social injustice around them, despite theorizing and analyzing it till they're blue in the face. "You don't want to be seen as a troublemaker," one professor, who has published under a "radical" series, advised me. There's something profoundly unethical about making your career by expounding a vision that you don't live. Oh wait, it already has a name: hypocrisy.

Yeah, these people vote Democrat, and they lecture and write books about Rosa Parks and postcolonial resistance and Gramsci. Their office doors signal their views with self-consciously earnest flyers and cartoons, all progressive of course: "Had a good weekend? Thank a Liberal!". The self-congratulatory ring is probably not intentional.

Even the trappings are true to the stereotype: two of the four profs on my committee drove European cars (the third had a Civic -- a humble non-hybrid, I belive -- and I don't know what the fourth one drove). I don't think I ever saw any of them drink a latte, although their wine-drinking preferences (imported, i.e. non-US) were a sufficiently bourgeois equivalent. And what a flurry of excitement when Wegmans opened in town: 100 kinds of cheese, all imported -- why, we could all pretend we were in Paris! Now, I've nothing against the cheese, of course, except that it started at $8/lb. What I did find offensive was the look of fatuous delight on the professors' faces, which brought to mind the image of old Parsis in a South Bombay audience, tapping their feet to "Britannia Rules The Waves", nodding their heads in time and singing along, feeling mighty cultured.

One humble professor I knew drove an old Japanese car, taught about slavery and race, and is openly gay -- check off three boxes on the liberal list. She displayed a sense of great accomplishment in going to Cuba, although her trip was evidently quite affordable and legal. She brought back some cigars which she shared with a chosen few (including me) at a barbeque. I didn't hear her say much about the Cuban people, markets, or streets. But she made sure to casually mention that these were the most expensive Cuban cigars there are. Sometime later, she had her kitchen remodeled with beautiful handmade tiles ordered from another poor country. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for increasing the consumption of artisan products from poor countries. But every room in her home shouted, "I love Third World things!" Therefore, by association, she must love Third World people, right? After all, I'm Third-World, and she granted me the privilege of puffing at one of her horrendously expensive Cuban cigars (which, by the way, was like casting pearls before swine -- I don't like cigars, and I found it no less disgusting than any other cigar. If I must smoke, let it be a cigarette).

Liking Third World things, and visiting Third-World countries, is easy if you have the money and a visa. It does not make you liberal or warrant a sense of accomplishment, if you're bourgeois (which, let's face it, college professors are). Ivory-tower liberals, like other bourgeois, can afford to consume the Third World.

True, they choose to travel to Venezuela or Kenya, when they could have chosen Paris or Amsterdam (well, often they've already done Paris and Amsterdam). But that choice doesn't automatically make them liberal any more than skateboarding does. Voluntarily risking life and limb by traveling to a poor country -- through exposure to tropical viruses, flying on tinpot planes, etc -- is adventure, like risking injury or death by skiing or bungee jumping. Voluntarily exposing oneself to danger, as a thrilling diversion, is the fatuous delight of the rich -- quite a different thing from exposing oneself to danger to earn a meager livelihood, as many poor people (in poor and rich countries) do out of necessity.

Now, some may argue that a thrilling diversion is harmless. Could be, but it's not always so. My liberal Japanese-car-driving professor wants to visit a Third World country while her colleague's father is still governor, so she can be a guest in the governor's palace. Traveling to poor countries in a way that underscores how privileged you are, and lets you find more ways to exploit that privilege, does not (or should not) enhance your liberal credentials. It's the imperial fantasy of a farm-girl-turned-bourgeois-professor in small-town America. She's privileged by American standards (tenure, respectability, etc), but not really big cheese. At $45-50/hour (I'm guessing), she probably can't afford to fly business class and stay in club floor suites. But in a Third-World governor's palace, servants will bring tea to her four-poster bed every morning, and a liveried chauffeur will drive her around town. After a week or two, liberal credentials renewed by Third-World visit, she will return to Smalltown, USA, suitcases bursting with silk and silver -- precious pieces of imperial fantasy -- and hold forth authoritatively on the country she returned from.

So what does it mean when this conspicuous consumer of Third-World goods tells a Third-World person they have no right to be in the US? She was not an immigration officer. She was not my employer or advisor. She was not a law enforcement officer. I had never even taken a class with her! Yet she pronounced a judgement that it was not for her to pronounce, on a story that she hadn't fully heard. Hearing it might have brought to the surface the possibility of standing up for me, against one of her colleagues. Moral dilemmas are icky and complicated. The fewer sides of the story you listen to, the simpler you can keep it, at least in real life.

(Oh, and she also neglected to pay me for some work I did for her. Work without pay is that stuff you teach and write about, Professor Liberalism -- slavery!)

The real demonstration of one's liberal values is to be willing to standing up not just for someone, but also against someone, and to strive to ensure a fair hearing. That would be worthy of a sense of accomplishment -- crossing divides, sticking your neck out for what you profess (but perhaps they're called "professors" because they only profess), forging an equal partnership with the marginalized, not splitting "Others" into "good" and "bad" (e.g. "You're okay, but other Asians are not."). In a consumption situation, your beliefs are not tested. There's no dilemma.

Consider the non-dilemma situation of the Cuban-cigar-sharing barbeque: some white-American locals and some internationals were invited. "International" has a nice, liberal ring to it, doesn't it? But you want to be careful not to go too foreign, because then everyone has to work at understanding the conversation, and that just ruins the evening. So, a white couple from Oceania and myself, an Asian (me, the only non-white guest of the white professor who would later tell me I had no right to be in America). Looking back, I see why I was the perfect liberal accesory: non-white, with an accent distinct enough to be "foreign", but not so foreign as to ruin the evening. I'm articulate in English, and my views are liberal. I add a touch of diversity to any gathering, without demanding that people cope with my foreignness. No dilemma, no inconvenience.

In the dilemma situation, I not only got no hearing, but was roundly told to get out of America, and -- incredibly petty -- not paid for work done. By a racism-hating, Republican-bashing, slavery-decrying feminist gay tenured professor. The amount she owed me was not a big sum, but when it's coupled with a "Get out of America" lecture, you have to wonder about people who make their career writing about slavery.

To be sure, disengaged academics will write brilliant books, if they're brilliant. But they will never inspire or change a life. The most brilliant professors I've known as a graduate student are generally pedantic and boring in their discussions of even the most moving and profound subject material. The one professor who stands out in my memory (and the memories of most of his students) as life-changing had an incredibly courageous pedagogy (nothing edgy, just utterly earnest, honest, and challenging) and a skill and sensitivity that could only have come from the sincerity of the questions we all grappled with in class together. Thirteen years later, I'm still moved to tears when I read the papers I wrote for him. He was denied tenure at the university where he taught me, and I suspect it was because he allowed people to question received notions of pedagogy as well as of race. Only the luckiest among us get to encounter one or two teachers in our lives who are that gifted and devoted.

Isolation in the ivory tower can, of course, impoverish scholarship itself. (I am speaking of humanities and social sciences, which is what I know best). But more on that some other time. Coming up on future episodes of "What's wrong with American academia":

Pointless punctuation
Antidepressants and the privatization of social dysfunction
Faffology

Stay tuned!

Image source: http://www.cartoonstock.com

A ridiculous democracy (continued)

2008-04-26T01:23:00.007+05:30

Previously in "A ridiculous democracy"

An election in which a Democrat winner would be of especial historic significance -- either Barack Obama as the first black man, or Hillary Clinton as the first woman.

Clinton sometimes sounds like a feminist, but always piggybacks on her husband's success.

Obama, one of first African-American leaders to appeal to non-black Americans and thus be a "viable" candidate, seemed for long at pains to avoid political blaxploitation.

Not inevitable, but Clinton did, eventually, play the race card herself (or her husband did, or campaign did) (January 24).

ABC ran a report (March 13) about Obama's "anti-American" pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, evidently taking at least some quotes out of context (see video below). Making Obama anti-American by association (after all, he already is half-foreign, or Muslim, or something, so it follows logically that he must be anti-American. Because all of those folks hate America, don't they?)

Obama was forced into the difficult choice of publicly embracing/rejecting his spiritual mentor (against the backdrop of persistent questioning of his Christianity).

Obama passed test with flying colors, saying of Wright:

...he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Oddly enough, the Chicago Sun Times, which reported that Obama defended his pastor (March 26) today said he distanced himself from his pastor (April 25). And ABC, which started the Rev. Wright furore with the mishmash of soundbites, also said in yesterday's video (below) that Obama "distanced himself" but doesn't clarify from what/whom. For the record, Obama distanced himself from Wrights divisive remarks, and explicitly not from Wright the man or Wright the preacher. It's not true what they say about history being written by winners. Most of the time, it's written by bozos who can't complete a thought.

So, what it boils down to is this: America is refusing to be color-blind. When a black man runs for president as a person, and not as a black person, he is forced to address the fact that he's black. And the same America which forces him to address that fact (the media, some politicians, and sections of the electorate) compound that circumstance of birth with other similarly irrelevant circumstances, like having the DNA of someone who's Muslim. US media and politicians try to force identity politics upon those who have done everything to rise above it. This is the tragedy of racism in America.

Bisphenol-A in your kitchen?

2008-04-24T02:10:00.003+05:30

Image source: The New York Times

It's not as if we need more reasons to say no to plastic, but anyway, here goes! There is no question that Bisphenol-A (BPA) leaches from containers into liquid and solid foods. Experiments on rats suggest BPA poses a potential cancer risk and accelerated puberty. Researchers are only now beginning to monitor people's exposure to BPA. It's not easy to tell what plastics in your kitchen do or don't contain BPA. In the circumstances, the best way to take responsibility for your own health is to follow the steps excerpted below (click here to read the whole article):

How do I lower my exposure?
Switch to frozen or fresh vegetables. Use glass, porcelain and stainless-steel containers, particularly for hot foods and liquids. If you don’t want to use a glass baby bottle, several companies, including the popular brand Born Free, now sell BPA-free baby bottles and sippy cups. For formula-fed babies, you can switch to powdered formula rather than liquid.
Although many plastic products claim to be microwave safe, some scientists warn against putting any plastic in the microwave. “There is such a wide variety now, from disposable containers to actual Tupperware,” says Dr. Anila Jacob, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy group. “I don’t know of anyone who has done definitive testing of all these different types of plastic containers to see what is leaching into food.”

Good luck keeping plastic out of your body and life. If you know anything about BPA in toothbrushes, or if you have general plastic-avoidance strategies to share, please leave a comment.

Shifting the dream

2008-04-20T20:41:00.008+05:30

Here's an old favorite REM song, from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It always reminds me of Geraldine Page's character in Interiors walking into the sea until she disappears.

Leave

Nothing could be bring me closer.
Nothing could be bring me near.
Where is the road I follow
To leave it, leave?

It's under, under, under my feet.
The sea spread out there before me.
Where do I go when the land touches sea?
There is my trust in what I believe.

That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me down,
To leave it, believe it,
Leave it all behind.

Shifting the dream
Nothing could bring me further from my old friend time.
Shifting the dream
It's charging the scene
I know where I marked the signs.

I suffer the dreams of a world gone mad
I like it like that and I know it
I know it well, ugly and sweet,
I temper madness with an even extreme.

That's what keeps me
That's what keeps me
That's what keeps me down
I say that I'm a lightweight
I say that I'm a airplane
That never left the ground.

That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me down,
To leave it, believe it.
Leave it all behind.

Lift me, lift me,
I attain my dream.
I lost myself, I lost the
Heartache calling me.
I lost myself in sorrow
I lost myself in pain.
I lost myself in clarity,
Memory, leave, leave.

That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me down,
To leave it, believe it,
Leave it all behind.

That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me,
That's what keeps me down,
To leave it, believe it,
Leave it all behind.

Lift my hands, my eyes are still,
I'll walk into the sea
Shoot myself in a different place
And leave it

I've longed for this to take me,
I've longed for my release
I've waited for the callin'
To leave, leave.

Leave, leave.
Leavin', leavin'

Poetry and politics

2008-04-18T04:32:00.007+05:30

Image source: Reuters

I learned about the poet Aimé Césaire unfortunately late in my life -- during my second stint in grad school (thanks, Sue O'Brien!). Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, in 1913.

Césaire met the Senegalese writer Léopold Sedar Senghor while he was a scholarship student in Paris in the early 1930s. He is credited with creating the concept of négritude. Even as a young student, he understood the power of culture, and began to actively oppose cultural imposition by metropole France on colonized peoples. He did this by starting L'étudiant noir (the black student) in 1932, together with Senghor and the Guyanese Léon-Gontran Damas. In this journal, black writers challenged traditional models of French literature. Knowing how academia functions today, I wonder his faculty put pressure on him to stop or leave. Anyhow, Césaire graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure.

Césaire returned to Martinique, and became widely known in the late 1930s for his Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (notebook of a return to the native land). In Martinique, he taught Frantz Fanon. Obviously, Césaire belonged to that now-nearly-extinct species, the truly courageous engaged academic.

Césaire was mayor of Fort-de-France, Martinique, from 1945 to 2001, and a deputy in the French assembly for Martinique. More radical politicians, who favored independence, saw his role in the departmentalization of the colonies as a compromise. A long-time member of the French Communist Party, he grew disillusioned with Communism after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

In 2005, Césaire refused to meet Nicolas Sarkozy, then interior minister, because the latter's party had supported a law that would glorify French imperialism in schools. The law was repealed by Chirac's government.

Césaire died on Thursday, at the age of 94, in Martinique. Here's a list of his writings.

Wishful thinking?

2008-04-15T07:27:00.006+05:30

I am quite amused to see the Guardian (a paper I admire) has a strange headline on its world page as of 7:34 am (3:04 am in London) on April 15, for a news item staying Italy is about to get its most rightwing government in 14 years, which will include 'post-facists' but no moderates, after Veltroni conceded defeat. The headline says, "Berlusconi concedes defeat in Italian elections". I wish!

Rich and poor, men and women: dark contrasts in India

2008-03-28T03:13:00.015+05:30

Jaguar logo image source: http://www.thelightisgreen.com

Two sets of strikingly contrasting stories in the last couple of days. What all four stories have in common, though, is that they are all dark:

On Wednesday, March 26, 2008:
(a) An Indian company bought the very British Jaguar and Land Rover. Many may celebrate this as the empire striking back (this is not striking back!), or India's triumphal economic growth. I just think those attitudes reflect little besides the fact that corporate and middle-class India have bought into a received notion of success that has been only very questionably successful for a couple of decades now (try a Google News search for "Ford layoffs" or "GM layoffs"). And do I need to remind anyone that crude oil is has been at $100-111 a barrel. Gas retails for over $3/gallon now, and I seem to recall it at around $1.25 in the year 2000.

(b) While Indians are so gung-ho that their roaring economy is allowing "them" (yeah, I am personally rich, now that "we" own Jaguar!) to buy big foreign companies like Corus, Arcelor, blablablablabla, the finance minister is angry that rich countries, greedy for energy, are threatening poor ones where people starve, like.... um... India by diverting food crops to biofuels.

Photo source: http://www.unicef.org/india/resources_3018.htm

And on Thursday, March 27, 2008:

These are the two items that are on BBC's front page right now, one below the other, under "South Asia":

(a) Indian villagers 'killed witch'

(b) Indian men in US 'slave' protest

The former news item is about a woman being hunted and killed. The latter is about a protest in DC by about 100 men who came all the way from New Orleans, following news that Indian men were working in slave-like conditions in a Mississippi shipyard.

Hopefully a day will come when men won't fight against the abuse of just men, and women, just women. Currently, that's how it seems to happen nearly all the time. I think there's no disputing that women are by far more often victims of violence, murder, rape, and sexual assault as compared to men. For heaven's sake, we don't even allow millions of women to be born. Yet Indian men love to hate the laws that protecting Indian women from domestic violence, on the grounds that the laws are abused by women to harass their husbands. The view that rape or assault victims "got what they were asking for" remains horrifyingly central. Even self-styled "radical" Indian men who volunteer with well-known "progressive" movements in the US are arguing vigorously and insistently that women's clothing provokes rape, and discussing how women can dress culturally appropriately in various settings, rather than clearly saying or supporting the statement that "women deserve safety and respect". The very few women who joined the discussion briefly have withdrawn altogether, and the men don't even seem to have noticed their absence. I can't post the link, or name the people or organization here, because the message board where this is playing out is members-only, and naming anyone would possibly get me into trouble, and probably cause inordinate harm to the organization concerned (which does, sometimes, do good work). Still, message me if you're really curious or want to share a guess (although I do reserve the right to remain silent!)

Yay capitalism :\

2008-03-19T01:29:00.006+05:30

Capitalism is as much an ideology as communism, and no more or less of an economic system. Isn't it amazing that we have not only avoided questioning it, but seem to find it more and more impossible to do (even in India! If anyone should be able to see the dark side of capitalism, it should be the erstwhile jewel in the imperial crown. Even Adam Smith questioned the functioning of the British East India Company!) Probably we haven't doubted it seriously just because it hasn't completely collapsed thus far (yeah, why not wait till it does, and then figure out what was wrong with it). But it really isn't working, and has never worked. Its "success" would not exist without the things most of its votaries consider illegitimate (and therefore, illogically, not even associated with its success, as if they were exceptions to rules that otherwise work smoothly), but which are nevertheless crucial industrial and also post-industrial capitalism: slavery and colonization/imperialism (good head start there, with the free labor and raw materials), unemployment (keeps wages in check), neo-colonialism, neo-imperialism, outsourcing (pits rich countries' poor against poor countries' poor, and relies heavily on informal labor and environmental recklessness, at least in manufacturing), wartime profiteering and enslavement (IBM, Dow Chemical, Benz, Halliburton, Blackwater), environmental devastation (dear Dow Chemical again), all that good stuff.

IN SPITE of it all, it hasn't done well. (How stupid do you have to be to cheat on an exam...and flunk!) Far too many "respected" companies have done themselves -- and investors -- in with their financial roulette (Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). And now the "most trusted" names in capitalism are being bailed out by governments (Northern Rock, Bear Stearns). I think this is a good question: why is the Fed putting retirees' incomes at risk by cutting interest rates and spurring inflation, in order to bail out irresponsible investment bankers?

Oh, here's an amusing clip of Jim Cramer (CNBC dude in the video clip above) "reflecting" on his comment about how "silly" it was to take your money out of Bear Stearns. Not so funny for investors who were desperately trying to get out of the stock and couldn't, of course.

A ridiculous democracy

2008-03-14T02:37:00.015+05:30

I've yet to meet an American who understands the election system sufficiently clearly to explain its very basics -- how the electoral college is formed, how delegates are chosen, why there's no standardized procedure for various parties and states, why there are only two viable parties (I'm not going to digress here into viability, and how the Democrats could be so asinine as to nominate John Kerry), and so on. And that's saying something, because I've lived in the US for almost nine years, the entire time amongst politically and historically well-informed Americans (won't digress into my views on academic liberals here, either - saving them for another time). So I'm not talking about Americans who can't find the US on a world map.

So the illusion that passes for democracy in the US is largely an agglomeration of commercials, soundbites, pixels, poll numbers scrolling through our days like the codes on Neo's computer screen, and meaningless "what-if" analyses that seem to exist primarily to fill up the 24 hours on the 24-hour channels:

US politics is not a reality that's reflected in those images and sounds, but played out through them: it's 100% illusion. If M. Diderot were here, perhaps he'd say Americans, like children, prefer to be entertained rather than to be informed: take Bush's brazen "mission accomplished" spectacle and of course the Swiftboating of Kerry. How could these even happen?!!?? We in other parts of the world are fed fairly detailed coverage of the ongoing Barack-Hillary spectacle. It's of no consequence to us, yet it's been front-page news on some days. True, they're only the primaries, and we shouldn't care. But they're entertainment! (It's kind of like the bootleg copies of the Starr report being sold by urchins at Mumbai traffic lights, years ago.) However, why Americans tolerate the travesty of their democracy, though, is a whole other question.

And while I'm not surprised Hillary and Barack would play the race and gender cards, I am surprised at how crassly: after her tri-state victory last week, Hillary emailed her supporters to say, "Together, we are making history and showing every little girl in America that she can be anything she wants to be." As one observer notes,

if Barack Obama emailed his supporters to say, "Together, we are making history and showing every little black in America that they can be anything they want to be," then the response would be an almighty “WTF?”. Which leaves me feeling pretty confident in my diagnosis of Billary as the all-time passive aggressive power-hungry hypocritical pantsuit...ever.

I disagree with the vehemence of that final assessment on the grounds that there are quite a few contenders for "all-time passive-aggressive power-hungry hypocritical ... ever" (women leaders who have stooped lower than Hillary for far less power do, unfortunately, exist, even where nobody is of much consequence in the larger scheme of things--like liberal arts colleges, ha, ha). But it's true that politics remains crudely and shockingly stuck in the identity groove even in a country that's so educated, that has moved past a terrible civil war, where women do have a relatively more visible place in public life, and where most women can earn some sort of living wage. As a woman from one of the most misogynistic cultures in the world, I am astounded at how retrograde Hillary's politics are. And I'm astounded that women's studies scholars are organizing talks and discussions to guide students on "how feminists should vote" in these primaries. That's a question only for those who choose their future president based on skin color and genitalia. What's there to discuss? You just vote for the person who has the best track record and program. Oh wait, that means voters have to actually do their homework and engage with the candidates. Never mind.

The mean Indian middle class

2008-03-09T17:04:00.010+05:30

Photo source: Bloomberg News, by way of Business Week

I'm sick of hearing outrage from people in Mumbai who earn at least 5-10 lakh rupees (US$12,500-25,000 @ Rs40=US$1) a year, which is considered a decent income here depending on your housing situation. At any rate, it's the upper end of the Indian income spectrum, and the highest income tax bracket. These people are outraged that the 2008 Budget proposes to waive Rs60,000 crore (US$15 billion) worth of loans to poor farmers. Now, there are problems with the Budget proposal in terms of implementation -- how to reach the farmers who need the loan waiver the most. But resentment on account of it being a populist move in an election year, and on account of it being too huge a sum to give away, is yet another reflection (as if we need one) of the mean-spiritedness of the Indian middle class.

Here's an excerpt from the editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly, March 1, 2008, pp. 5-6:

If there is a group that the union finance minister has always been to keen to please, it is the increasingly vocal urban middle and upper-income classes. They were showered with benefits in the so-called “dream budget” of 1997-98 and this has been repeated in 2008-09. It is incredible that Budget 2008 has made such a major change in the effective tax rates that the individual annual tax savings will range from Rs 4,100 to as much as Rs 50,000 a year for the 32 million income tax assessees. This will certainly further boost consumption demand (and growth), but there was little justification for such a restructuring of income tax slabs. On a conservative estimate, this must surely mean an annual giveaway of Rs 30,000 crore of revenue (at an average of Rs 10,000 for the 32 million assessees) that is far larger than the one-time Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver. Only the finance ministry knows how the budget can yet project a 22 per cent growth in income tax collections in 2008-09.
The aggressive urban middle/upper-income classes have been an important force in the Indian growth story and are increasingly strident in their demands and protests. They should be celebrating Budget 2008. No wonder the headline in one major newspaper the morning after screamed: “A second car, or a holiday abroad...What’ll you take?”.

To people who should not exist!

2008-02-28T03:29:00.010+05:30

This one goes out specially to Sally, Nan, Meanie, Markus, and Grima, you sons of a silly person! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!!

Image source: icanhascheezburger, what else!

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time! XD

I'm not the biggest Monty Python fan, but I find this scene funny!

My, how those cute little coolies are growing up!

2008-02-17T15:12:00.010+05:30

Reuters reports that Chinese subway passengers are angry with an ad that urges them to buy a car. Oddly enough, Reuters posted this news item under their series titled "Oddly enough", usually reserved for quaint or amusing news items, such as botched bank heists by incompetent criminals. I don't see anything odd about the Chinese commuters' reaction - it seems quite serious that ordinary Chinese commuters have a perspective on environmental costs and speak out against the more insane ideas of their business leaders. Perhaps the people at Reuters think that when the little coolies talk like "grown-ups" it's cute. Similar protests by American or European undergraduates would very likely be cast as concern, political precociousness, and environmental responsibility.

I greatly prefer the Chinese commuters' reaction to the giddy, breathless, gasping reactions of middle-class Indians on the launch of Tata's Nano. This was probably more like how the "coolies" are supposed to react - going through the same stages, making the same mistakes, that western consumers have already outgrown, but doing it with great delight, and the delusion of "arriving", while enduring deadlier risks and consequences. Oh, those innocent child-races, they never quite grow up, do they

Tata Group chairman, Ratan Tata, poses in the company's new Nano car during its launch at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi. The car, a hatchback with a 624cc engine, is priced at about 100,000 rupees ($2,500), half that of the current cheapest car in the market. (Reuters Photo, sourced from The Times of India, January 10, 2008)

Desiderata

2008-02-14T00:51:00.007+05:30

Today I had occasion to visit a lawyer's office. The last thing I expected was for it to be a pleasant experience. The office was in a beautiful (and beautifully kept) building that smelt wonderfully of coffee, on an arterial road in Mumbai's Fort district. On the textured white walls were framed paintings and engravings of lawyers, courtrooms, and judges, all very nineteenth-century-British-looking in a grave and quiet way. They fit the context, since it was a British building in the Fort, and the partners all belong to communities that comprised Bombay's genteel elites even during the Raj. The high-ceilinged office reflected the genteelness (is that a word?), and was calming. I saw no art there that I could call modern-looking. But right inside the door was a poem - soothing thoughts that were not at all what I expected to find in a law office. It was Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata":

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

The war on bottled water continues

2008-02-12T23:06:00.000+05:30

Abridged from a BBC report:

The patriarch of Venice, Angelo Cardinal Scola, has urged the city's Catholics to give up bottled water during Lent, and instead to donate the money saved to a water pipeline project in Thailand. He is backed by the mayor, who says he drinks only tap water. Nearly all Italians drink bottled water rather than tap water. The industry is worth an estimated 3.2bn euros (£2.38bn) a year in Italy.

Bottled water harms the environment because of discarded plastic bottles, and also because of greenhouse gas emissions.

Last summer, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg urged his city's residents to drink tap water.

The "third-worldization" of America

2008-02-06T11:15:00.001+05:30

OK, I plead guilty to sensationalism--the post's title is not quite right, because the third world was largely the product of imperial exploitation, while America's current economic crisis is a sort of backfire of that exploitation. As Fanon and Memmi have argued, colonization destroys not only the colonized, but also the colonizer. I think that is reflected in America's mindless and uncomprehending consumerism--I remember spotting a teabag-squeezing device that in the kitchen in an American friend's parents' home, and wondering at the mind that created it, and then at the one that acquired and used it--its Panglossian faith that the market magically works out an equilibrium--that all the brutal suffering it inflicts on us and on others around us is somehow for the best.

Foreclosure's filthy aftermath
As foreclosures become more frequent, so do the stories of abandoned animals, insect infestations and deplorable living conditions.

Broke homeowners linked to arsons
Authorities in economically stressed cities see an increase in torched houses. Is the nation's mortgage mess transforming more Americans into criminals?

Economy fitful, Americans start to pay as they go

[Elena Gamble, who earns about $2,600 a month as a grievance counselor at a local prison] and her husband — a prison guard who brings home $2,000 a month — are grappling with $10,000 in high-interest debt. They no longer go to the movies or out to eat, except occasionally to McDonald’s. They quit their Internet service. Their car was repossessed. “What we say now is, ‘If we can’t afford it, we can’t buy it,’ ” Ms. Gamble said...

...Fran Barbaro has an M.B.A. and a résumé of computer industry jobs with salaries reaching $150,000 a year. She used to have a stock portfolio worth about $1 million. She hung original art on the walls of her three-bedroom house in Boston. But divorce, illness and motherhood drained her savings. Her home is worth less than she owes, and she owes another $200,000 to credit card companies, banks and tax collectors. Ms. Barbaro, 50, said she knew she was living beyond her means. But her house demanded work. Her two boys needed after-school programs running $25,000 a year. Medical bills multiplied.

“These were simple day-to-day expenses,” she said. “The money was always there.”

Until it wasn’t. Her take-home pay is $5,200 a month, but her debt payments reach $4,400. Ms. Barbaro has rented out her house while negotiating to lower her mortgage. She has moved to an apartment, where her sons sleep in the lone bedroom while she sleeps on a pull-out sofa.

(The readers' comments on this story are worth a read too -- NYT asked readers how they were changing their spending habits.)

Add to the above the facts that supermodel Gisele Bundchen will now only be paid in euros, and the Taj Mahal will no longer accept payment in dollars by foreign tourists.

An idiot or a genius? Or both?

2008-02-06T11:00:00.000+05:30

Personally, I think Jon Stewart is a, well, not genius, but one of the smartest people on TV, or anywhere else, for that matter. But, as he readily admits, he sometimes gets things wrong. In a recent interview in which he skewered TV finance pundits, he apparently interpreted an illustrative clip completely wrong. But the shocking thing was that his guest, the personal finance editor of CNN, failed to discern how completely wrong his interpretation was. Any wonder that America is in such bad shape - even the TV finance experts don't understand finance!

Here's the Motley Fool's observation on the issue. And here's the video clip of Jon's interview:

Photos I regret not taking

2008-01-21T03:19:00.001+05:30

We all see beautiful or moving moments that we couldn't photograph for some reason. In my case, more often than not, it's because I was too lazy or disorganized to take my camera along. I created this new tag so I can share the images that now exist only in my head.

To start off, a really old image, and one from last night.

Sometime in April/May 1990. Beach on the Andhra coast, somewhere near the estuary of the Godavari and the town of Narasapur. Blue sky, empty beach, quite barren - just a little bit of scrub - and scores of iridescent red crabs teeming astonishingly on clean white sand. Sarojamma breaks off from our little group of women who had briefly stopped there, and, in a moment of exuberance, runs towards the crabs, sending them scurrying in all directions in a panic. Just remembering Sarojamma's impulsive joy gives me a sense of freedom.

Sunday, January 20, 2008. Mumbai Festival event in the amphitheater on the Carter Road promenade, Khar/Bandra. An Australian hip-hop band called Downsyde is playing on
the stage, egging the audience on to sing along, raise their hands in the air, and dance. During the last couple of songs, the little area near the stage is packed with dancers. Two little kids, a girl of around four, with a cloud of curls, and a younger boy appropriately sporting a wool beanie, are up on the stage with the four hip-hoppants, three of whose names I remember as Shabazz, Armee, and Dazaztah (sp?). The little girl, especially, had a great sense of rhythm, and even improvised in time to the music improvisations, hurling her little arms in the air with abandon. Joy!

Just realized as I typed the last full stop - they're both seaside moments of joy...

What we need to learn from MLK today

2008-01-21T03:07:00.000+05:30

Image source: http://nobelprize.org/

Below is an excerpt from an Associated Press story by Deepti Hajela:

While there has been scholarly study of King and everything he did, that knowledge hasn't translated into the popular culture perception of him and the civil rights movement, said Richard Greenwald, professor of history at Drew University.

"We're living increasingly in a culture of top 10 lists, of celebrity biopics which simplify the past as entertainment or mythology," he said. "We lose a view on what real leadership is by compressing him down to one window."

That does a disservice to both King and society, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University.

By freezing him at that point, by putting him on a pedestal of perfection that doesn't acknowledge his complex views, "it makes it impossible both for us to find to new leaders and for us to aspire to leadership," Harris-Lacewell said.

She believes it's important for Americans in 2008 to remember how disliked King was in 1968.

A wish for the new year

2008-01-01T22:08:00.000+05:30

Photo source: www.icanhascheezburger.com

...and a song, too, featuring another Cat:

Remembering Benazir Bhutto

2007-12-30T21:14:00.000+05:30

Photo source: http://www.ppp.org.pk/photographs/picture6.jpg

Only a naive person would believe Benazir Bhutto stood for a truly liberal democracy in Pakistan. Even liberals and left-wingers in India, which has historically had a larger and politically more active middle class, are frequently utterly elitist. A journalist widely revered for his concern about India's poorest casually and gratuitously advised me in 1997 not to buy a laptop as my first computer. It was 1997, when only rich people had computers, and even they didn't have two. And this guy had only just met me, and couldn't possibly have any idea whether I was from a wealthy background or not (the answer is NOT).

Anyhow, back to Benazir, whose election campaign in the late '80s gave a great fillip to our piracy industry - I remember seeing pirate tapes of her election songs selling real cheap on the railway bridge in the Mumbai suburb where I lived then. I remember her accent, all Anglicized like any number of people I can think of, who did their A Levels in Pakistan, or went to one of the schools here in India that the Brits built to hide their bastards from the eyes of "the natives", and where rich Indians have been sending their Coca-Cola-drinking kids ever since. The kind of change that those kids have grown up to support is the kind of change Benazir stood for - the outer husk was liberal, but the kernel, well, the kernel was nothing, so long as they wouldn't have less than they had now. You couldn't really say the kernel was status quoist - it wanted more for the poor, but more than that, it wanted not-less for the A Level types.

Far more eloquent than anything I could write is this piece by William Dalrymple in The Guardian. Of course, he also knew Benazir better than I!

A failure of the imagination

2007-12-28T05:35:00.001+05:30

I just had to respond to a somewhat naive post on Wonkette, arguing (thoughtfully, not crassly) that seeing graphic images of the carnage around Benazir Bhutto's assassination would make the event seem more real to people. In terms of media exposure and how literally we take what we see on screen, we're way past My Lai. Here's my response to the Wonkette article:

Interesting and thoughtfully written. But I disagree that seeing graphic photos makes Pakistan's situation more real. Human beings do possess the mental faculties to imagine, without having everything spelled out or depicted literally. Mere jpegs of blood and entrails strewn in a Rawalpindi street are unlikely to make American individuals understand better what their votes, jokes, "aid", consumption of goods, etc. have brought to bear on Pakistan, much less help mitigate the crushing damage done over decades to the struggle for democracy in Pakistan. Revelations and epiphanies upon seeing jpeg "icons" are the stuff of religious stories, not global geopolitics and political empathy.
I think one reason we have this schizophrenia you describe so eloquently (watching fake violence, but avoiding watching real violence) in the first place is the absence of empathy. And we lack empathy at least in part because we don't take the time to read fiction. I've no great sociological thesis here, but I know that in my life, reading about characters, caring about what happens to them, imagining the constraints they are feeling, was and still is a tremendously formative influence. I also know that Hannah Arendt partly attributed the banality of evil to the failure of the imagination.

Are we all Eichmanns, that we fail to imagine, and "need" graphic images to bludgeon into our brains the effects our actions have on others? Frightening thought.

Sorry, no image this time. Only words.

The real meaning of Christmas

2007-12-25T14:29:00.000+05:30

Ugly illustration source: http://bombaysamachar.com

Front page headline in today's Mumbai Samachar print edition says "Christmas present" in large red letters. The article underneath says the Sensex jumped 692 points on Christmas eve, increasing shareholders' fortunes by Rs. 1.97 lakh crore (that's Rs 1,970,000,000,000, or US $50 billion). Here's the web version of the article. None of that multiculturalism nonsense for the Hindu-Gujarati-dominated Dalal Street -- thou shalt have no gods before money.

On a separate but not entirely unrelated note, the newspaper also reported that Narendra Modi said with a tear in his eye that no child can grow bigger than its mother (meaning he is not bigger than the BJP). Well, he can afford to say that now, because he is. Hope he trips over a garland and breaks his neck.

What would you like for Christmas?

2007-12-11T16:55:00.000+05:30

Photo source: http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/living/elk.htm

A 225-lb. elk carcass, butchered to your specifications - $1,225
Whole rabbit carcass, $38.50
A subscription to Feathered Warrior (specialty magazine for cockfighting enthusiasts), $36
The Relaxman Relaxation Capsule. (Well, you just have to read this to find out what that is, and what it costs!)

Love

2007-12-10T22:18:00.000+05:30

Photo source: http://www.wolaver.org/animals/koko.htm

Today was human rights day. Maybe Koko's got a lesson to teach us "more evolved" people?

Here's Koko's website.

At a later date, I'll post something I've begun thinking about lately, thanks to an article on notions of nationhood by Swarupa Gupta, about the language of duties, as opposed to the language of rights. Maybe.

Dirty, dirty Dow

2007-12-08T12:02:00.000+05:30

An old Daily Show with Jon Stewart clip about the Dow Chemical-Union Carbide merger. Gotta love Jon Stewart. Thanks to Ryan for dredging this up!

Where do turkeys come from?

2007-11-23T00:47:00.000+05:30

The hapless bird whose least favorite celebration this must be has an identity crisis: is it from North America, Peru, India, Ethiopia, or Turkey?

As for Thanksgiving itself, it has developed an identity crisis of its own, in true American style: is it a religious festival or not?

Nicht löschbares Feuer (inextinguishable fire)

2007-11-21T03:07:00.000+05:30

Oh, oh, oh, I found Harun Farocki's entire film "Inextinguishable Fire" online! It was not distributed in the US when it was made (1969), and apparently it's still very hard to borrow or steal a copy (didn't really try to buy one; couldn't afford it). I had a lot of trouble finding a preview copy in the US (I wanted to show it to my class when discussing the Vietnam war). I tracked down a VHS copy, don't remember how, but couldn't use it anyway, because it had no subtitles! I barely understood the commentary myself, and I daresay I have more German than most of my students.

Here's a link to watch it online, if you're curious about who created horrible weapons of mass destruction.

Here's a link to an interview with Farocki, in which he responds to questions about Jill Godmilow's remake of his film.

And here's another interview with Farocki and Godmilow.

What's wrong with American academia

2007-11-21T00:04:00.001+05:30

Left: Jennifer Harris, who sued Penn State for racial and sexual discrimination in 2005. Image source and story: USA Today

Like corporations and families, universities can be pretty sick places. Not that everything is wrong, but I often think we're in the twilight of US academia. Perhaps the future will belong to the best universities and institutes of Australia, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere.
I'm just starting off a list here. Will add future posts as more reasons occur to me.

Quality teaching is a low priority
Discrimination and intolerance
Corruption
Market-driven education (related to the tenure issue, in the first link)
Fear of foreigners

With regard to discrimination and intolerance, liberals need not feel smug. Many of them are equally culpable in the wholesale silencing and bullying of those whose views don't match their own. Others are too busy forwarding outraged emails against this, that, and the other to innumerable listserves to actually take a stand or lobby for anything on their own campus. Too many theoretical feminists, theoretical queers, and theoretical postcolonialists out there. Multiculturalism is greatly appreciated in American academia--but it's not recognized unless it's expressed in the American idiom, accompanied by the right amount of scripted enthusiastic interest in everyone you're introduced to. Obviously, it's harder to recognize what you're saying as multiculturalism if you wear a distracting headscarf or shalwar-kameez while doing it.

Haunted by Bhul Bhulaiya

2007-11-16T02:27:00.002+05:30

absolutely no getting away from this damn song in Mumbai. It played at least a million times at Ra the one evening I was there, and it's on every FM station. I don't have a radio, but I hear it in cabs, autorickshaws, and the company cars that drop us home at night. The other day I was on the 1 Ltd. bus late at night, and there was a dude three seats behind me, playing it on his damn FM cellphone. Bet he thought he was doing a good deed by sharing it with the whole damn bus.

So... here it is. I'm no connoisseur, but I think it's a pretty poorly directed video, so don't be disappointed. The sound and image quality isn't so great either -- someone's pirating skills are obviously not up to scratch :) (the film is in the theaters still).

Update from the future: The above video has been removed due to some violation or other (What? Copyright violations on the internet?? Who'da thunk it!!), so here's a link to a fresh one, if you're reeeeeally interested.

Indian Chinesisms

2007-11-11T20:10:00.000+05:30

A certain amount of fakery going on in these names:
Oh Ya - soya sauce brand (the manufacturer is Sil / Marico)
Ya Hoo - Chinese takeaway near Khar Subway
Ching Ki Shak - Chinese restaurant or takeaway, can't remember location
All of the above were seen around Mumbai.

For the record, I don't think Indian Chinese food is fakery in the sense of trying to pass off something as what it's not; it's just a creative adaptation to a different cultural context, like, er... like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet :P

Americanisms that are just plain wrong English

2007-11-11T18:51:00.000+05:30

Drive-thru lawyer, Oswego, Illinois.
Photo source: http://www.goodexperience.com/broken/images/337889974_fdd029b0f2.jpg

These are things I've heard even educated people say, not just redneckspeak:

"Catch up to", instead of catch up with
"Waiting on", instead of waiting for. You wait on someone when you fetch them food, beverages, and dessert.
"Hat", even for a baseball cap
"Cup", even for a whacking great 16 oz mug
"That" instead of "who" -- people "that" use bad grammar really "tick me off"
"Tick someone off" for when you piss them off. In English English, you "tick someone off" by giving them a piece of your mind, putting them in their place, that sort of thing.
"Off of", as in "I copied this off of the innernet", when you really just copied it off the internet.
"Innernet", "twenny" and all those other slurs. The lives of millions of T's in the middle of words are in vain in America. They either get substituted by a slurry "d" sound, or vanish altogether. And the poor "d" in "wonderful" has no hope at all -- it is its fate to vanish.
"Transportation". Syllables added for no reason. "Transport" works just fine.
"Preventative". Another useless syllable. Should we prevent disaster, or preventate it?
"Good on you" instead of good for you, when you express approval or appreciation of someone's actions.
Dropping "to be", e.g. "My car needs fixed". I've known educated people to write like this. Seems to be a Pennsylvania thing, or maybe Ohio as well.

America, America, American War Paar Da

2007-11-07T03:26:00.000+05:30

Forwarded by a friend. Some images are disturbing, but the dance, the accent -- funnee! Yennjai:

Really special

2007-11-01T04:14:00.000+05:30

Damn, I can't embed the video for this song. Anyone wants to give me a reeeeeelly special present, I'd like tickets to a Neville Brothers concert sometime.

You can also hear "Yellow Moon" at the Neville Brothers' website, but personally I prefer the live version on YouTube, linked above.

Photo source: www.saxgourmet.com

Tragic result of demand for cheap clothes

2007-10-28T19:53:00.000+05:30

From an investigative report on Gap, in the Guardian:

'I was bought from my parents' village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,' he says. 'The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we weren't fed. I've been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I don't get paid. It has been like this for four months.'
The derelict industrial unit in which Amitosh and half a dozen other children are working is smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.
Behind the youngsters huge piles of garments labelled Gap - complete with serial numbers for a new line that Gap concedes it has ordered for sale later in the year - lie completed in polythene sacks, with official packaging labels, all for export to Europe and the United States in time for Christmas...
In recent years Gap has made efforts to rebrand itself as a leader in ethical and socially responsible manufacturing, after previously being criticised for practices including the use of child labour.
With annual revenues of more than £8bn and endorsements from Madonna and Sex and The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has arguably become the most successful brand in high-street fashion. The latest face of the firm's advertising is the singer Joss Stone.
Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by Donald Fisher, now one of America's wealthiest businessmen, Gap operates more than 3,000 stores and franchises across the world. In Britain Gap, babyGap and GapKids are very successful, their own-brand jeans alone outselling their retail rivals' lines by three to one.
Last year, the company embarked on a huge advertising campaign surrounding 'Product Red', a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 singer Bono and backed by celebrities including Hollywood star Don Cheadle, singers Lenny Kravitz and Mary J Blige, Steven Spielberg and Penelope Cruz. As part of the fundraising endeavour, Gap launched a new, limited collection of clothing and accessories for men and women with Product Red branding, the profits from which are being channelled towards fighting Aids in the Third World.
On its website the company states that all individuals who work in garment factories deserve to be treated with dignity and are entitled to safe and fair working conditions and not since 2000, when a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the firm's working practices in Cambodia, have children been associated with the production of their brand.
Gap has huge contracts in India, which boasts one of the world's fastest-growing economies. But over the past decade, India has also become the world capital for child labour. According to the UN, child labour contributes an estimated 20 per cent of India's gross national product with 55 million children aged from five to 14 employed across the business and domestic sectors.
...'This may not be what they want to hear as they pull off fresh clothes from clean racks in stores but shoppers in the West should be thinking "Why am I only paying £30 for a hand-embroidered top. Who made it for such little cost? Is this top stained with a child's sweat?" That's what they need to ask themselves.' [saysBhuwan Ribhu, a Delhi lawyer and activist for the Global March Against Child Labour]

How middle-class is the green movement?

2007-10-18T23:10:00.000+05:30

Photo of Van Jones. Source: Ella Baker Center

I'm not a big Thomas Friedman fan, but his column today is interesting. It's about Van Jones, Yale law graduate and head of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, which helps kids avoid jail and secure jobs, trying to bring America's underclass into the green movement.

“We need a different on-ramp” for people from disadvantaged communities, says Mr. Jones. “The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points.”

...One thing spurring him in this project, he explained, was the way that the big oil companies bought ads in black-owned newspapers in California in 2006 showing an African-American woman filling her gas tank with a horrified look at the pump price. The ads...tried to scare African-Americans into thinking that the tax on the companies would be passed on at the pump.
...Using his little center in Oakland, Mr. Jones has been on a crusade to help underprivileged African-Americans and other disadvantaged communities understand why they would be the biggest beneficiaries of a greener America. It’s about jobs. The more government requires buildings to be more energy efficient, the more work there will be retrofitting buildings all across America with solar panels, insulation and other weatherizing materials. Those are manual-labor jobs that can’t be outsourced.
...“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Mr. Jones. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”
Let’s tell our disaffected youth: “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun.”
...The blue-collar, stepping-stone, manufacturing jobs are leaving. And they’re not being replaced by anything. So you have this whole generation of young blacks who are basically in economic free fall.” Green-collar retrofitting jobs are a great way to catch them.

History is a weapon

2007-10-14T20:35:00.000+05:30

Today I visited the website of Linda Martín Alcoff, whose work I read a bit at Syracuse University, and with whom I wish I'd been able to take a class (I can't remember why I didn't, probably a schedule conflict). On her website, I found a link to this website, which seems interesting! (I mean the content of course, but also design). Intro page text:

History isn't what happened, but a story of what happened. And there are always

different versions, different stories, about the same events. One version might revolve mainly around a specific set of facts while another version might minimize them or not include them at all.
Like stories, each of these different versions of history contain different lessons. Some histories tell us that our leaders, at least, have always tried to do right for everyone. Others remark that the emperors don't have the slaves' best interests at

heart. Some teach us that this is both what has always been and what always will be. Others counsel that we shouldn't mistake transient dominance for intrinsic superiority. Lastly, some histories paint a picture where only the elites have the power to change the world, while others point out that social change is rarely commanded from the top down.
Regardless of the value of these many lessons, History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of

which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be "neutral" or "objective." Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.
We cannot simply be passive. We must choose whose interests are best: those who

want to keep things going as they are or those who want to work to make a better world. If we choose the latter, we must seek out the tools we will need. History is just one tool to shape our understanding of our world. And every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

How not to use technology

2007-10-11T03:50:00.000+05:30

I can't believe people would be so ridiculous as to consider virtual office hours as a serious option for a non-online course. When students are paying hundreds of dollars per credit, they have the right to face-to-face time. And when professors are getting paid to teach, they are obliged to interact with students. And if they can't stand to do this in person, they should do their students a favor and take up another profession. Just my humble opinion. Below, an excerpt from a report in the Daily Collegian, followed by excerpts from Daniel Goleman's article in The New York Times:

Web chat can't replace office visit
Using "virtual office hours" is the new trend in academia nationwide and at Penn State.
Being able to ask a professor or teaching assistant questions while sitting at work or while doing homework is a major time-saver.
But, while it is technologically savvy, it reduces some feedback that can only be achieved face-to-face.
...It would be nearly impossible to have a dialogue of feedback about a term paper, a homework assignment or an upcoming exam via a chat room.
...Maybe, it's old-fashioned, but there's something important about talking to a professor in person -- an understanding that no emoticon can express.

Why email often makes things worse -- excerpt from a New York Times report:

Email is easy to write (and to misread)
...social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.
Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.
Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.
In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

Image source: The New York Times