Chutney makes everything better!

I found a fun song at Trini Jungle Juice that cheered me up -- Machel Montano's "O Larki".

Chutney soca is, of course, the legacy of an empire that replaced slavery with the indenture system.

No words

I am in tears. I don't know what to say.

Here's the story from Iraq that accompanied the picture.

Getting over it

Secondary schools in England will be allowed to teach Mandarin or Arabic instead of EU languages as part of proposals to update the curriculum.

Climate change, slavery and healthy cooking also feature in a shake-up of what 11 to 14-year-olds should study.

...In history, all 11-14-year-olds would for the first time have to study the British slave trade.

They would find out about reformers such as William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano, and how the anti-slavery movement led to later campaigns and civil rights movements.

Other changes include a new emphasis on "essential life skills" such as practical cooking.

Full story

Once, English kids were taught scientific thinking in combination with cultural superiority. They could then go to Haileybury College to learn how to rule the "natives", and make the East their career. "Natives", meanwhile, could learn to read and write English well enough to become clerks, but were actively discouraged from studying science and technology.

It looks today as though the British were right to discourage them! Now that they have been let loose, just look what's happened -- every engineering department in the US is overrun with them. If the Raj had let them, they might have made its Colonels and Collectors and Reverends look rather silly.

The peoples and environment that are still suffering the onslaught of 19th century capitalism have long been claiming their due share of attention. And it seems that today, England can no longer avoid giving it to those mutated remnants of empire. This isn't happening anywhere near as much as it should on fronts like diplomacy, economic cooperation, and reparations. But perhaps it will, if Europe's new generation of policymakers consists of native speakers of Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, Xhosa, etc.

My Euromillions

I don't want to claim my prize. I just want one pound (or dollar, or euro) for every prize I've been selected for, every lottery I've ever won, every stock tip I've ever received, and every dictator's / earl's legacy I've inherited.

Spammers, if you're reading this, don't send me an e-mail; just send me a dollar. That will make me very happy.

The Ministry of Food Processing is trying to kill us

This ad appeared in The Times of India edition dated Jan 31, 2007. It's decidedly ugly. It's also unoriginal: the tagline "Processed food mein hai kuchh khaas" (there's something special about processed food) seems inspired by McDonald's tagline "McDonald's mein hai kuchh baat" (there's something special about McDonald's). There's not even a fig-leaf of an attempt to conceal where the message is coming from.

And what is this nonsense about how wonderful processed foods are? If anyone knows how to preserve foods, Indians do. Even my great-great-grandmothers know how to make sun-dried papads and achaars that keep for a year or more. They could stock dried fruit, dehydrated legumes, and six months worth of food grain sealed in giant earthen jars. Their year's supply of spices was ensured by sun-drying and pounding large quantities of ginger, cloves, peppercorns, chilli peppers, turmeric, cumin, and coriander seeds. Their kitchens had stores of rice that had been only husked, or processed into poha, or puffed into kurmura -- all of which are good for you, and which keep for months. They bought chickpeas that were either green, or dried into chana, or further processed into chana dal, or still further into besan. I think they did not have much use for butylated hydroxytoluene (which sounds like an ingredient in a bomb recipe, and not like something to eat) and without the plastic McLitter of Modified Atmosphere Packaging.

Why is Indian taxpayer money propping up an entire ministry for food processing? I say the money is better spent establishing a Ministry for Consuming Food and Water As Close As Possible to Where and When They Occur Naturally.

It seems that attracting investment, especially foreign investment, has become a goal in itself. The government has lost sight of why, and for whom, India needs investment.

Now, if only if those fresh-food-browsing losers would all switch to eating food embalmed with chemicals, mummified in polluting packaging, and far removed from the time and place of its birth, we could realize our fear of hell on earth. And the people over at the ministry for food processing would feel needed.