Accidental Blogger

The turban as target: why split hairs?

Since 9/11/2001, while Muslims have been subjected to official suspicion by governmental agencies, American Sikhs, more than any other group, have faced random violence unleashed by individual patriotic vigilantes. Yesterday's shooting at the Oak Creek Gurudwara near Milwaukee is being treated as domestic terrorism and a hate crime by the FBI. The killer is dead, shot by the police. So we may never know what motivated his rampage. The speculation is that it was a case of mistaken identity and that the gunman may have wished to kill Muslims but mistook the turbaned and bearded Sikh men as co-religionists of the now deceased Osama Bin Laden, the most notorious man with a turban and a beard that many Americans identify as their quintessential enemy. Sikhs of course, are not Muslims and it would still be a heinous hate crime if they were. But do such fine distinctions matter to a rage filled hater? Would he have killed anyway because Sikhs reminded him of Al Qaida and the Taliban and the physical symbols of otherness were enough for him to go berserk?  See Amardeep Singh's thoughtful commentary on the matter.

Dean C. Rowan, Esteemed Film Critic

Comments on Dean's original article on Steve Elkins' film The Reach of Resonance  are now closed. I am publishing the Northwest Film Forum link here. Check out Dean's quote.

Slumming it out (Sujatha)

I finally got to read Katherine Boo's 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity" a few weeks ago. Praised to the high heavens as an authentic portrait of authentic people (as opposed to fake Slumdogs) in Annawadi, a dirty, sewage cesspool surrounded by assorted huts, inhabited largely by upwardly mobile garbage processors and resellers, Boo puts together a curiously clinical dissection of life in the slums.

From the New York Times on Katherine Boo's attempt to piece out the lives that she describes in her book:

"In her early visits to Annawadi, which began in 2007, Ms. Boo, who is small, blond and delicate looking and knew none of the half dozen or so languages spoken there, was anything but invisible. There are, or used to be, two main landmarks in the slum: a concrete wall with ads for Italian tiles (“Beautiful Forever”) that give the book its title, and a foul-smelling sewage lake: a junk-rimmed pool of excrement, monsoon runoff and petrochemicals. While videotaping one day, Ms. Boo fell in, and when she came out her feet were blue.

“At first it was a circus act,” she said in New York the other day. “It was, ‘Look at that crazy white woman!’ ” But she spent so much time in Annawadi, reporting almost daily for four- or five-month stints over a span of four years, that eventually she became a fixture and was taken for granted. “The people got bored with me,” she said, “and they started laughing when others thought I was interesting. I think some of them even felt sorry for me.”

In a sequel to her book, this New Yorker article had a short video of the denizens of Annawadi, showing a brief glimpse of some of the people whose lives she describes.

But as ever, she offends the sensibilities of the 'India Shining' crowd, one of whom has left a telling comment at the end:

"I  requested to Katherine Boo your work as a report of sanitary Inspector of India I read and understand Now please just visit to ghetto of America and describe how poor people of U.S.living most penury condition,how horrible crimes occurred there.Let world know how most mighty and super rich America treated her poor people"

 

Which is exactly what she had been doing for years before turning those sharp eyes to India. From her Wikipedia page:

"In 2000, her series for the Post about group homes for mentally retarded people won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Pulitzer judges noted that her work "disclosed wretched neglect and abuse in the city’s group homes for the mentally retarded, which forced officials to acknowledge the conditions and begin reforms."

In 2003, she joined the staff of The New Yorker, to which she had been contributing since 2001. One of her subsequent New Yorker articles, "The Marriage Cure," won the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2004. The article chronicled state-sponsored efforts to teach poor people in an Oklahoma community about marriage in hopes that such classes would help their students avoid or escape poverty. Another of Boo's New Yorker articles, "After Welfare", won the 2002 Sidney Hillman Award, which honors articles that advance the cause of social justice."

But the comment did remind me of something else: the redoubtable Katherine Mayo and the polemics of her 'sanitory inspector' job of reporting on pre-Independence India. Much of that was truth, but when presented with a biased eye, raised considerable outrage, whereas Katherine Boo's willingness to slum it out with the Annawadians makes for a very different approach.

Boo offers no prescriptives, except when she is pressed, here in this interview by Bill Gates. On her being asked about why she eschews policy recommendations:

"As a documentary journalist, I don’t see my role as lecturing governments or international development people about what they should do. Rather, I’m trying to give an unsentimental, rigorously reported account of how government policy or market forces affect lives and prospects on the so-called ground—not least because I think that’s information conscientious policymakers and philanthropists long for, and often lack.

On the books in India, for instance, you’ll find internationally acclaimed laws intended to involve more Dalits and women in the governance of the country, as well as to bring child laborers and girls into the education system. But when I looked closer in Mumbai, I found that the reforms had been implemented so shoddily that their main effect was to circulate money and power among the political elite. (I’ve seen variations on that theme in American inner cities, too.) If such diversions of public funds and subversions of policy intent aren’t brought to light, we might assume that low-income or low-caste families have received more help than they’ve actually had. Worse, we might see their failure to thrive as a reflection on their capacities, when the essential failure has come at the level of the powerful.:

 

Another Katherine, another era, but a different kind of lens, unsparing but not judgmental.

 

4th Annual 3 QD Prize in Science

I forgot to post this earlier. The nomination process for the 4th annual 3 Quarks Daily competition for best science writing on blogs is under way. If you have read a blog post in this category that caught your attention, please consider nominating it. Details here.

Curry or Culture? (all A.B Bloggers)

The National Geographic Bee finals were held yesterday in Washington DC, with 10 finalists selected from all the state champions. Seven out of the ten were of Indian origin, one was of Chinese extraction, two were Caucasian. As always, we wonder why there is a preponderance of kids from India in competitions like these.  Is it the curry after all?

We had a long email discussion about the results. Here is the thread of those emails.

The Return of the Mommy Wars- Mother's Day 2012 (Sujatha)

It's the time of the year for the return of the Mommy wars in the media, with Time magazine's choice of shock-jocking cover leading the fray. What could be more motherly than a mother with her nursing child, after all ? But no, Time's editors chose the worst shot possible out of those that were so carefully taken at the photo session - the one that clobbers you on the head with 'I'm better, prettier, sexier, more shocking than you"  and a headline to match: "Are you Mom enough? ", rather than the one with more realism to it,(second one in the photoshoot set ), matching more closely the realities of the mother-child pair who only very rarely, in current culture, continue nursing into and beyond toddlerhood.

Would Elisabeth Badinter think that the Time cover symbolizes all that is the worst about the image of motherhood that she decries in her book 'The Conflict' '? Isn't it a challenge to her assertion that women ought to maintain economic independence even after motherhood and not be so attached to their children as promoted by 'attachment parenting' advocates? 

It was not always so easy to maintain a safe distance from the physicality of the mother-child bond, as Badinter would prefer now, Before the invention of easily digestible formulas, babies who lost mothers or had mothers/wetnurses who did not succeed in breastfeeding, died in infancy. The extremely high neonatal mortality rate isn't a 'good old days' number that we would like to see come back :

"(Powdered milk, jars of baby food, and disposable diapers were created for a reason, says Badinter.) But the less modern women use them, the longer they stay at home, bending over backward for their children, losing a sense of independence—and economic edge—in the process. “We used to talk constantly about ways to reconcile a woman’s maternal responsibilities with her need to retain financial independence,” Badinter tells The Daily Beast by email. “Now we talk exclusively about a mother’s duties and the ‘rights’ of the young child, which increase substantially year after."

Like Ann Romney, whose main claim to fame rests on her definition of the working mother (and yes, all mothers work, it never is paid in money and therefore cannot be quantified by the rules for determining economic worth), Badinter invokes her own credentials as the mother of three, but neglects to mention her own not-so-minor conflict of interest - her company Publicis' links to Nestle, Mead & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories, among the largest infant formula manufacturers in the world.

"Yet, whether Badinter is out of touch as an author likely goes back to whether she’s out of touch as a mother. And while she’s portrayed herself as an ordinary mom—she had three children within three and a half years, all while a full-time student—she also had an au pair to help out. Her family wealth is estimated at $920 million. Her husband, Robert Badinter, is a former French justice minister and a prominent lawyer.

Still, Badinter contends, no mother is perfect, least of all she. “The more time passes, the more I’m convinced that the perfect mother is a myth,” she says. “What woman can boast of having always had the right reactions, made the right decisions? … As for me, I’ll say that it’s for my children to judge.”

Amen to the last line. No mother is perfect. Or rather, every (or most) mothers are perfect to their kids, no matter how they choose to parent, whether  'attached' as Jamie Grumet or 'detached' as Badinter, with all their faults and failings. But perfect or not, there is one thing that all mothers excel at- Being judgmental about other women's mothering abilities.

Apropos of the occasion, here is Ruchira's blast from the past- the intriguing and mysterious 'Unaboober' Gypsy Woman, whose expression reminds me of the 'Judge me if you dare' eyes of Ma Durga .

She sees all, knows all, and protects all.

 

 Happy Mother's Day!

Chlorine Road

It is more than two years since I had written a post about street names - the overabundance of homage to politicians among them and names that change at the whim of people in power or because of changing politics and local sensibilities. I find road names a fascinating subject and take note of them, always looking for instances where someone had the imagination to stray off the beaten path of dedicating every public street and building to wealth, power and patriotism.

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in Galveston with a friend. Close to where we were staying is a bridge that leads to the city of Freeport which lies quietly to the south of Galveston Island, its more glamorous, arty and historic neighbor. I do not know much about Freeport except that it is an industrial sea-side town where Dow Corning has a large chemical plant.  Almost eight years ago, I had passed through Freeport on my way to Galveston via a circuitous scenic route that my husband had insisted on taking. I noted at that time with some surprise that one of the streets we passed was named Chlorine Road.  I was reminded of that odd street name and mentioned it to my friend. She informed me that the streets of Freeport where the Dow plant is located are marked by many such chemical names.  A search brought up a google map of the area which indeed shows streets bearing names such as Tin, Nickel, Iron, Copper, Zinc, Benzine, Glycol, Butane and Electric.

Neighborhoods within cities often follow a central theme in naming their streets - trees, universities, presidents, marine culture etc. The streets in my own subdivision which is not on the sea but contains several lakes, bear aquatic names; streets like Jetty Circle, Shoreline Drive, Midstream Street, Westshore Lane, Harborview Court etc. But rarely have I seen the essential ingredients of a particular business used in street names. Are there more out there? At hospital complexes, in Silicon Valley or other places dedicated to a specialized pursuit?

Note: This post was originally published in December of 2007. Recently a friend was talking about road names on Facebook and I was reminded of Chlorine Road and similar topics we have discussed here before.

After six and a half years, some of us are not posting with the same frequency as the early days of the blog. We used to write a lot and often. Rather than leave the front page idling for long periods, I have decided to bring some of the old posts to the front from time to time. These may be familiar to some but others new to the blog, including some of our own writers, have not seen them. I request the older A.B. authors (Sujatha, Dean) to do the same with some of their posts that are more than three years old, especially those that generated a lively discussion. Choose from non-time sensitive posts (ignore politics, mostly) of cultural nature that are often fun to read and re-read.

09 11 11 - Architecture in the Shadow of Ground Zero (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - Architecture in the Shadow of Ground Zero (Norman Costa)

 

  

 

  

Urban Landscape Panorama, New Jersey

 

09 11 11 - New Lives in the Shadow of Ground Zero (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - New Lives in the Shadow of Ground Zero (Norman Costa)

 

They live here.

 

 

 

09 11 11 - The Gathering (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - The Gathering (Norman Costa)

The gathering of people at Ground Zero, in New York City, September 11, 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

09 11 11 - Remembering and the Names (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - Remembering and the Names (Norman Costa)

Remembering those who died in the attack on the Twin Towers takes many forms.

 

 

The reading of the names.

 

 

 

 

09 11 11 - The Freedom Tower (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - The Freedom Tower (Norman Costa)

 

The Freedom Tower from different vantage points.

 

 

09 11 11 - NYC's Bravest and Finest, and the Aftermath (Norman Costa)

09 11 11 - NYC's Bravest and Finest, and the Aftermath (Norman Costa)

 

Fire fighters love to have their pictures taken. Police are very shy in front of the lens of a citizen's camera.

 

The Aftermath

 

 

 

Save A Mother - "Beyond Sultanpur": 2012 Appeal

Progress Report for 2011 - 2012 _ Dr. Shiban Ganju, Founder of Save A Mother

SAM Activities for 2011-2012

• Last year was a turning point in the growth of Save A Mother. The program of maternal mortality reduction developed by Save A Mother (SAM) is being expanded by Mahila Vikas Parishad to 45 districts of UP with the funding from UNICEF and Melinda and Gates Foundation. SAM helped to launch this expansion and participated in 351 training sessions for new health workers, communities and public health officials.  
• 75 Health activists (Swasthya Sakhi) who had volunteered for SAM for last 4 years have been deputed as Community Health Trainers for the last one year under the UNICEF funded project.
• SAM will expand maternal mortality program to Gadag district in Karnataka in summer of 2012. The program will be funded by Deshpande Foundation. If more financial resources become available SAM may expand program to Kurkhshetra in Haryana, Ajmer in Rajasthan and Guna in MP.
• SAM has launched a TB eradication program in about 200 villages in Sultanpur area in UP. This program will be expanded to 1000 villages in next 3 years.
• SAM is helping to improve the operation of 16 rural health clinics which give free care to 1500 patients daily. These clinics are funded by Asia Heart Foundation. With the help of the doctors working in the clinics, SAM is launching a program to reduce water borne diseases by 80% in next four years.
• SAM has developed a software program to manage rural clinics and facilitate the work of public health workers in the field by giving them a GPRS phone application by which they can upload the field data and receive messages. The software will be in operation by the summer of 2012.
• Bangalore chapter of SAM is organizing a music concert by Alka Yagnik on 21 April to raise funds to expand work in Karnataka.

 

I am pleased to be part of Save A Mother (SAM) and its commendable work in reducing maternal and infant mortality in rural India. My association with the organization dates back to 2009 when I responded to Dr. Ganju's invitation urging me to become a volunteer with the Houston chapter, around the time he decided to take his outreach efforts beyond his hometown of Chicago. Since then I have met and worked with a dedicated and enthusiastic group of Houstonians who work year round to make possible the realization of the stated goals and objectives of SAM. As the report above explains and the title of this year's fundraiser suggests, the effort that began as Dr. Ganju's personal and modest mission in a village named Sultanpur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has expanded to benefit several more villages in UP and other states.

The 4^thannual fund-raising gala for Save A Mother in Houston is scheduled for May 4, 2012.The bulk of our fund raising is achieved through direct personal contact with individuals and businesses. The blog appeal is our way of reaching friends, family and generous strangers outside the Houston area who may find it simpler to donate on-line. The response to our previous fundraisers has been very generous so far. We hope to generate similar levels of support in 2012 both here on the blog as well as in the real world. This year I have set a goal of raising $3,000 on Accidental Blogger on behalf for SAM. If you wish to help, please use the ChipIn widget on the left side column of the page to make your contribution. Any amount you give is appreciated and will be put to good use. Thank you very much.

For more information on the mission of the organization see the message from the founder here and in the excellent video above, narrated by Dr. Ganju and Indian actors Shabana Azmi and Anupam Kher. More information is available at the Save A Mother website.

Note: I plan to keep this post at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down to see new posts that appear during this period.

(If you don't see the ChipIn logo in its entirety, adjust the zoom level on your browser. Many thanks to Rahul Singhal for his help; he puts up with my technical ineptitude each year around this time.)

Taj Collage (Sujatha)

The Taj Mahal and the gardens around it now:

 

 

 

 

 

and below, before the 1900-1908 renovations by Lord Curzon: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This comparison was prompted by Ruchira's email mentioning a recent book published on the gardens of the Raj: "The book claims that while English women of the Raj period

introduced exotic European flowers and residential green lawns in India, Lord Curzon's manicure of the grounds of the Taj Mahal may have been a wrongheaded attempt at landscaping."

It is evident that the greenery takes a larger share of the focus with the earlier design, harkening back to the general principles of Mughal Gardens, of which Shalimar Bagh in Kashmir, built by Emperor Jahangir for the redoubtable Empress Nur Jahan is an excellent example. But the clearing of the greenery that was part of the main approach to the Taj Mahal, Curzon forced the viewer to focus on the building and architecture. The garden became a thin  frame around a central 'monument to love', rather than part of a harmonious whole in a sylvan wonderland.

What do you think? Does the Taj look better with the severe manicure of the grounds or with the lush greenery preceding the 20th century 'makeover'?

Can Gross National Happiness = Gross National Irony ? (Sujatha)

So much for the concept of Gross National Happiness, a concept developed and promoted as an index of well-being by the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2005. While efforts to quantify it were widely publicized and discussed, nobody seemed to take the Bhutan government to task for its treatment of the ethnically Nepali Lhotshampas and their being forced out of the country. There is an entire population of them resettled or waiting to be resettled in other countries.

"Over 105,000 Bhutanese have spent more than 15 years living in refugee camps established in Nepal by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Thousands more are living outside the camps in Nepal and India, and some in North America, Europe and Australia."

I came across one of those Bhutanese Nepali refugees a few weeks ago, as I mention in my personal blog post" Threaded"

For some refugees, the change of location has led to a hope for a new life, for example, a group settled in Pittsburgh, PA. (Article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

"They arrive, for the most part, at Pittsburgh International Airport with little more than the clothes they are wearing. They must quickly learn to navigate an unfamiliar city, speak English, adjust to American practices and organizations, find work and send their children to school.

Their journey here and the acculturation process after they arrive involve layers of international groups, U.S. government agencies, a resettlement organization and social services."

But for some it is too much to handle, with tragic results.

"He was found dead hanging in a laundry room Friday morning,” Bhanu Phuyel, another refugee resettled in the same city, told ekantipur.com from the US….Six members of the family were sharing a two-bed room apartment along with another family with four people. They had not received any other facility except food card.

[Jit Bahadur Pradhan] was annoyed with the circumstances, and used to complain with his two sons that the situation there was no better than in the camp in Nepal."

Will these dispossessed ever have their questionnaires added to those back home in Bhutan? What will happen to its much-vaunted high GNH quotient then?

Gross National Happiness does equal Gross National Irony, in this case.

 

Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer (Norman Costa)



BBC News UK 16 December 2011 Last updated at 01:21 ET

Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer (Norman Costa)

"Vanity Fair's editor said those who read him felt they knew him.

"British author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died, aged 62, according to Vanity Fair magazine.

"He died from pneumonia, a complication of the oesophageal cancer he was suffering from, at a Texas hospital.

"Vanity Fair said there would "never be another like Christopher".

"He is survived by his wife, Carol Blue, and their daughter, Antonia, and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia.

"Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter described the writer as someone "of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar".

""Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

"Mr Hitchens was born in Portsmouth in 1949 and graduated from Oxford in 1970.

"He began his career as a journalist in Britain in the 1970s and later moved to New York, becoming contributing editor to Vanity Fair in November 1992.

"He was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010, and had documented his declining health in his Vanity Fair column.

"In an August 2010 essay for the magazine he wrote: "I love the imagery of struggle.

""I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

"Prolific writer

"He wrote for numerous publications including The Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Express, the London Evening Standard, Newsday and The Atlantic.

"He was the author of 17 books, including The Trial of Henry Kissinger, God is not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, and a memoir, Hitch-22.

"Arguably, a collection of his essays, was released this year.

""Prospect of death makes me sober, objective."

"Radicalised by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies and was kicked out of the Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War.

"He became a correspondent for International Socialism magazine.

"In later life he moved away from the left. Following the September 11 attacks he argued with Noam Chomsky and others who suggested that US foreign policy had helped cause the tragedy.

"He supported the Iraq War and backed George W Bush for re-election in 2004."

 

Welcome to "Dilli"

A documentary film about life on the streets and slums of my hometown Delhi, India.

Notes from Gaza

A recently launched blog  about life in Gaza by Radhika Sainath. Radhika's blog was brought to my attention by my daughter who is a friend and erstwhile colleague of the author.

Did You Ever Notice? (Norman Costa)

Did You Ever Notice? (Norman Costa) 

Did you ever notice how he could uncover conspiracies like the placement of soap dishes in a shower so that the water spray would hasten its disappearance?

Why is it that he could get me to stay for all of "60 Minutes" so I could listen to his complaining?

How come he was the only writer to notice that the coffee in a coffee can weighs less and less while the can stays the same size?

I guess it's one of those mysteries of the universe that scientists keep telling us about. If you ask me, I think it's the scientists that are the mysterious ones.

Good bye, Andy Rooney.

Read more HERE:

The Book and the Charlatan (Sujatha)

It's always good when a book gets embroiled in a controversy, it makes for more attention and publicity for both the book and the 'libellee'. The book in question is Siddhartha Deb's 'The Beautiful and the Damned : A Portrait of the New India', the title needing a subtitle to differentiate it from F.Scott Fitzgerald's original.

 

Looking For The Resurrection (Norman Costa)

Looking for the Resurrection

by Norman Costa

I'm thinking of taking a train into NYC on Sunday, 9/11/2011. I won't get anywhere near Ground Zero to see the commemorative ceremonies, and certainly not be able to approach the Memorial. I was there over a year ago. The site was cleaned up and looked like one of those old movie sets for filming a story about building the Great Pyramid with ramps descending into a cavernous foundation.

Imagine Cecil B. DeMille's stage directors placing heavy blocks to be moved up and down the ramp. Hundreds of extras are dispersed around the set. Scaffolding, ropes, cranes, shovels, wheel barrows, and hammers are specs of stage props in a huge open air theatre.

I'm hoping to see, for the first time, a materialization from the ashes of obliterated people and structures. I would really like to see a rejuvenation of pride and confidence in New Yorkers and in everyone. I'm still wondering if I'll feel that way. I think that's the real reason I want to go to Ground Zero - why I want to place myself midst the others who will make the pilgrimage and pay their respects.

I was there when the Twin Towers were going up. I followed news stories of the progress, and interesting copy on the engineering and construction of these monoliths. Critics went up one side and down the other of the edifices and the architechs. To hell with the critics, I loved the Twin Towers from the beginning. I don't know how many times I was at Windows on the World having a drink or something to eat. The view of the East River was my favorite. You could see the FDR Drive, the jigsaw puzzle of Federal, City, and State buildings, the BMW bridges (Oh, yeah!), and the reflected sunset from the West, courtesy of the people of New Jersey. 

Today, as then, my favorite view of Manhattan is from Queens, driving on the highway leading to the Queens-Midtown tunnel. It was breath taking for me, and for anyone I took on a visit to New York City. I am not being sentimental when I say that, for me, I grieve when I see that monstrous vacuum in the skyline at the southern tip of Manhattan. If I didn't have to attend to driving, I would pull over and sit and look, as I would at the graveside of a friend or family. There is a big hole in the sky, and it will never be the same. 

By sheer accident, three of my family members who worked at the WTC survived the horror: My cousin received a last minute change in assignment from his supervisor; My son-in-law was late for a Path train from New Jersey into lower Manhattan; my daughter's father-in-law had a scheduled off-site meeting. I and my family were lucky and we are very grateful. 

Three-thousand human beings perished; family and friends by the tens of thousands were grieving; our country, and most of the world, were in shock. Now, we have many hundreds of responders who survived the first horror, but were harmed in the process of rescue, recovery, and demolition. Their families are now added to the list of collateral damage from the original devastation

I hope I can take that train into Grand Central Terminal on Sunday morning, 9/11. I think I will regret it if I don't. A Resurrection is meant for all of us.

My Live Blog for Hurricane Irene (Norman Costa)

My Live blog for Hurrican Irene (Norman Costa)

by Norman Costa

 

1:01 PM, Monday, August 29, 2011

The clouds have gone,

The sun is shining,

Goddess is in her Heaven,

And all is right with the world.

 

4:34 PM, Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sunday	3pm	4pm	5pm	6pm	7pm	8pm	9pm	10pm
Forecast	Cloudy	Cloudy	Rain	Rain	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy
Wind mph	22 W	39 W	46 W	45 W	44 W	42 W	40 W	34 W

I'll be honest. I was looking for some excitement from Irene. What a disappointing date. The kitchen window is not leaking. I don't see any downed trees, or even limbs. There are some scattered leaves. The sidewalks and streets almost dry. Big friggin deal!

My friend in Connecticut called to say they have trees down and no power. Her cell phone battery is going dead. She won't be going to work, tomorrow. At least they have some bragging rights.

The remaining stats on rain and wind, above, say we will have a little rain and maybe the wind will blow. Well, whoop di doo!

I think it's summed up by a headline on CNN.com: "New Yorkers unimpressed by Irene." I live in Poughkeepsie, now. But, I'm a New Yorker. I'm not impressed by Irene. 

Wait a minute. The trees are swaying. There's a wind. Really. Let's see what happens.

"Four More Years" (Norman Costa)

"Four More Years" (Norman Costa)

This political cartoon by Clay Jones is one of the best I've seen. And "No," it is not an old cartoon.

"Meet Clay Jones

"Clay Jones was often sent to the principal's office as a child for making fun of his classmates. He discovered at a young age that he had a knack for poking fun at the flaws of others, and he decided later to make it a career. He went from drawing simple Crayola caricatures of his friends to full-sized comic books by the time he was in high school."

Read more HERE.

Cultural heritage: language, literature and politics

A very nice interview with poet, author and artist Sukrita Paul Kumar in Muse India. I am publishing the full interview by GSP Rao below.

 

Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar, scholar, critic and poet of great sensitivity, has done significant work in diversified areas like women’s studies, literary translations, and cultural diversity and literary traditions of India. She has published important tomes in these areas apart from books of her poetry.She has been recipient of several national and international grants and fellowships and has lectured at Cambridge University, SOAS (London University) and several Canadian and American Universities on Indian literature. As a writer with wide exposure to traditions of both Hindi and Urdu literatures, she has interacted with leading writers of the sub-continent. As Director of a UNESCO project on “The Culture of Peace”, she edited a volume of Urdu short stories from India and Pakistan,Mapping Memories. She teaches in a Delhi University college. Her detailed profile can be viewed by clicking on her name at top left corner of this page.

She serves as the Contributing Editor of Muse India for Hindi and Urdu literatures. Here, GSP Rao, Managing Editor, engages her in a discussion on her work and motivations.

GSP : You teach, write poetry in English, are a scholar participating in several international seminars, have written and edited important tomes on Indian and South Asian literature, and were on the jury of several literary awards. You are also an artist who has had a solo exhibition of paintings. Is there a synergy in all these activities? Which of these roles is the closest to your heart?

>Sukrita : I am very conscious of the flow of time and unless I dive into it - swim in its stream - I feel like an outsider to life and suffer a strange sense of alienation. Perhaps that is what motivates me to remain engaged in the “here and now” constantly. I feel driven to go into deeper waters, always looking for something. In writing poetry or painting, there is the creative excitement of perhaps approaching something unknown, also of taking a journey within...An adventure which may not actually have any destination! The process itself seems to matter. My research and seminars etc are more outward and external but there too I try to remain close to my inner voice that gets tuned to the voices of other writers I may be studying. You mention my being on the jury for literary awards. I must say here, I do not enjoy sitting on judgement on writers and their writings and often I go against myself in accepting such assignments!

GSP : You seem to be deeply involved with life around you and derive inspiration from it for your creative work. What have literature and poetry meant in your life and how have they influenced you?

Sukrita : Literature and poetry are not separate from life… so, it’s difficult to say what they have “meant” to me. I write, teach, read literature and may be breathe it too. In fact, I have been brought up on literature! Writing a poem brings me into contact with my deepest self and I revel in that… this is what keeps me alert to poems lying all around … as much in the sunset or the full moon, as in the eye of the urchin on the road or the dog barking in the middle of the night.

As for teaching literature and sharing the joy of studying a poem together with my students and discovering its varied meanings, it is a collective and creative experience… How else would the same poem taught to a different set of students yield a fresh set of meanings? The classroom is a vibrant and dynamic workshop.

GSP : You have wide exposure to literary traditions of both Urdu and Hindi. They have similar linguistic sources and have gained significantly from cross-cultural currents. What are the abiding appeals of these two languages?

Sukrita : Hindi and Urdu have been a source of great strength to each other through centuries. Unfortunately, the language politics of the subcontinent have led to separation, nay a divorce, between them. Not only were they in complete unison at one point of time (it was difficult to decipher any dividing line between them) they remained interchangeable even while having two different scripts. The dialogue between the two languages churned a synergy and at the same time, each language strove to evolve its own identity through an inspired and sophisticated literary expression. Indeed, there has been a sharing of space as well as culture between them that nourished a healthy syncretism in the literary tradition of Hindi as well as Urdu. The politics of Partition and the well-known British strategy of “divide and rule” played an unfortunate role in communalising language identities. We must remember Gandhiji here who wished to have Hindustani, not Hindi or Urdu, as the official language of Independent India.

But, with Partition, despite the ousting of Urdu officially, can we say that we are done with it? Couched in people’s memory, Urdu poetry passes on from one generation to another and the role of Bollywood remains strong in keeping the language alive with us, within us…

GSP : Yes, Urdu ghazals and shero-shayari are particularly popular here and it is perceived as a language ideally suited for poetry. Both Hindi and Urdu literatures have long traditions and are very rich. To what extent have the important works of these literatures been translated into English and other foreign languages for them to be recognised in world literature?

Sukrita : I’m afraid, even though a lot of Hindi and Urdu literature may be found in English translation and some in other foreign languages too, there hasn’t been any significant impact of these literatures on world literature. To my mind, this is because we have not paid much attention to the quality of translations. Many times the power of the original creative writing in Urdu and Hindi does not get carried adequately into English… not in the same way as it happens in the case of say, Latin American or Russian literature. We have a long way to go in this regard.

GSP : Quality translations have been a big problem, not only in Hindi and Urdu, but all vernacular literatures. National institutions, universities and publishing industry don’t seem to be doing enough. Translations of important works should be commissioned and good translators paid well … any comment on that?

Sukrita: Mere commissioning of translations will not serve the purpose. There must be a close follow up in reviewing the process, have good editors for the translated texts and concerted efforts must be made at developing a culture of reviewing, studying and reading the translated texts. Some time ago I was invited to a couple of meetings of “Translation Mission” being set up by the government at the national level. I hope the project is on and that literary translation gets its rightful focus in a country that needs meaningful bridges amidst a plethora of languages, each abundantly rich with its own long literary tradition.