That was, of course, six years back. A lot has changed in the intervening years. I left my newspaper job to study and subsequently work in the US and Ankush finally wrote and published his first novel last month. Ankush and I continued to correspond as much as time and effort would permit. (We lost touch for a while until I saw another essay of his "Spotting Veron" short-listed for the prestigious Outlook/Picador 2004-05 contest and sent him an email…. just like old times) He has also been my guide to new writing in India, recommending some very interesting novels by first time authors.
Publishing his first novel has been a challenge for him – it’s not easy for a first time author with no connections to find a publishing house willing to take the chance (which is quite sad when you see so many horrible marketing gimmicks passing off as novels). His book Jet City Woman (derived from the same story I read years back) was released by Rupa and Co last month and you can read all about it on his new blog where he also mentions his repeated attempts at writing a novel and later finding a publisher. If you are in India, go buy the book and support a new author.
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( 3 / 160 )I saw David Beckham making his North American debut on Thursday night. And it was almost like watching the Beatles. You laugh but that’s how it felt at the RFK stadium in DC. First, he wasn’t supposed to play due to an injury and understandably it pissed off people since the ticket prices had been raised for just this game. Then they said he might just play. So the stadium was packed – more than 48,000 compared to the usual 17,000 or so who usually attend a MLS game.
And it was FUN! Jets flew low over the stadium just before the game began. Then there was the deafening cheer for the DC United team. And boos for Beckham when he was introduced – a result of grumpiness at probably not seeing the one player they had come to see. The atmosphere was super festive with the crowds cheering all throughout. And funny banners like “we sing better than your wife” targeted at Posh who alas wasn’t around. The game in itself was pretty lame although DC United was definitely dominating. A 1-0 lead and after United managed to get 2 consecutive corners, Beckham started warming up and a collective roar went through the crowd as cameras started flashing like crazy. All eyes were glued on him but he still played the tease for quite a while. It was only in the 72nd minute that he came onto the field and the roars and cheers were ridiculous. And the first time that he touched the ball a couple of girls behind me let out a deafening scream. It was crazy… they looked like they would start crying. Beckham did show a bit of trademark passes but ultimately LA Galaxy lost. But it was interesting to watch a real celeb who is so much larger than the game… at least in the US.
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( 3 / 218 )So the final word on the last installment of Harry Potter has been late but some friends asked not to discuss the book until they read it… and they were delayed in reading it for whatever reason. (See Monica, I am so not Kakutani)
So what do people think of this book? It was good in the sense that there was closure. Everything finally fit although I am still wondering about Aunt Petunia. If you have followed the series you will remember she is about to throw Harry out in the beginning of the Order of the Phoenix book when she gets an owl-post saying something on the lines of “remember!!!” upon which she lets Harry stay. Remember what??? Also it made me feel so happy that Snape was not the Evil One. It was exactly along the lines of what we discussed two years back but his enduring love for Harry’s mom made me quite weepy.
But I still felt a bit disappointed with the last book. The more I read it, the more I felt as if Rowling has been inspired by Bollywood movies. Just like a good Bollywood film, all the good guys came out to defend Hogwarts at just the right final moment. And that last “scene” when Harry and Voldemont confront each other with everyone listening… circling each other while Harry said his big dialogues was sooo Bollywoodish. Almost like a war movie (Border) when the Indian and Pakistani army leaders look at each other across the field and threaten to kill the other first... after all, you can't attack until you have said your final piece! I almost expected everyone to get into a sidey screw-in-the-lightbulb dance after Voldemont died – sarees flashing while Ron and Hermoine did a chunari chunari.
And the epilogue was so happy-happy that it almost made me sick. It’s nice but saccharine sweetness usually makes me sick.
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( 3 / 163 )UPDATED BELOW
Severin believes that entry into a new decade deserves a blog post. So here I am trying to write about all the lovely revelations and resolutions that are taking place. Or not. Over the years, I have seen friends doing intense soul searching when reaching their 30s. Some have taken stock of their life and made some dramatic, sometimes admirable changes. For me, I haven’t really been feeling particularly introspective etc, maybe because I am already going through some changes with a new job and such. Besides most of my friends are already in the magic decade so it’s just a matter of joining them. (Although I admit I’ll miss throwing the “being in my 20s” bit at them) As I have heard like countless times in the past few weeks (so much so that it better be true), the 30s is the new 20s! I am also not too worried about growing old, getting sagging boobs, wrinkled skin and such. It’s all good. I am going to the beach now and that is that. And if God is really nice to me, maybe I can get hold of the latest Harry Potter in the beach town. Now, that would make the arrival of the 30s puurfect!
Now all you people who are turning up your noses at my pedestrian reading habits, I am turning my nose right back at you, so there! This is the last of the Potter books and I am filled with a sense of gloom at the end of an era. How weird is it that I am more sad about the end of the Potter era than the end of my own 20s era??? Thank god for Harry Potter!
But seriously, a few of us have had intense post-mortems and discussions after each Potter book release. Distance and time have not affected this discourse and transatlantic emails have replaced the earlier chai-filled addas in a sometimes roof-less newspaper office. (I am sure this is bringing back lovely memories for the AA gang) We have continued the intensity of discussions — conspiracy theories, Voldermont, horcruxes, why the hell did Dumbledore die, more importantly why did Snape kill him etc etc – through emails and now as that annoying Michiko Kakutani tells us, there will be closure. But do we really want closure??
Bye bye Harry… and oh ya, the 20s too!
Next!
Update:
As I posted this, I got an “early birthday present” from Amit – the pdf version of the Harry Potter book on email!!! In his typical manner, he suggests I print it two sides to a page, staple it and I will get the “book” feel. But it’s not the same!!! Now this email will taunt me while I wait for the real book. Amit, how could you??? I am not talking to you anymore. This better be a joke. Right? Right?
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( 3 / 206 )Mahesh Bhatt.
Commenting on Irrfan Khan’s role being chopped in A Mighty Heart: “The Jewish lobby is responsible for scaling down the Islamic character that Irrfan plays in the film.”
If you have seen the movie, you will find this comment even more tragic. The movie shows how Pearl’s Jewish background was one of the reasons for his abduction and subsequent murder, even though Pearl kept his faith firmly in his private domain. And Mahesh Bhatt’s racist comment falls into the same category: bringing religion into an issue where it need not be there.
Why does Mahesh Bhatt hold forth on all sorts of issues where most of the time he is not qualified to make any remark? Simple, he is the most accessible person whether among filmmakers or just a famous personality in semi-retirement with nothing else to do. So when journalists need a quick comment/sound-byte, he is always called forth to hold on subjects where he talks through his arse.
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( 2.9 / 301 )Last week NYT published two memos that the presidential campaign of Barack ‘Golden Boy’ Obama circulated to discredit his main rival Hillary and Bill Clinton’s liquidation of holdings. While one memo attacked one company in particular, the other was a vicious target at the Clintons’ relationship with Indian Americans, even twisting an old Hillary joke of ‘democrat from Punjab’ and focusing mostly on outsourcing. A bit xenophobic coming from a person whose father was an immigrant himself! The memo starts with the line: “The Clintons have reaped significant financial rewards from their relationship with the Indian community, both in their personal finances and Hillary’s campaign fundraising.” Why this holier than thou attitude towards Hillary for taking campaign money from Indians? What’s the South Asians for Obama campaign about?
Now he is trying to distance himself from the memo by saying “they screwed up.” According to Obama, “My support among Indian Americans, South Asians, and Asian Americans generally, has been very strong and that's the culture within which I was raised, as having grown up in Hawaii and Asia myself. This is just an example of I think (where) staff were trying to make a point, they made it clumsily. I don't believe they understood how it came to be interpreted, but they should have understood it. I hope and trust that all my friends in the Indian-American community understand that it did not reflect my views, either on the complex issue of outsourcing or on my attitude towards the enormous contributions of the Indian-American community that they have made to this country."
Hmmmm.
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( 3 / 337 )I might not update this blog regularly but when it comes to social networks, I am so there. Facebook. Orkut. A Small World. LinkedIn. Suddenly I am in all these and some more that I am too embarrassed to reveal in this space. Right after graduation when unemployment made us all desperate for “connections” and “networks”, I joined LinkedIn and completely forgot about it until someone sent me a message asking for an informational interview. See, the thing works!
But aside of LinkedIn, I joined all these networks recently. I’ve been told Orkut was started by some Brazilian but desis have definitely taken over. The sheer number of people I have connected to on this network is insane -- school friends, college friends, work mates, ex-work mates, crushes, ex crushes, the guy I saw at the bazaar 25 years back… The problem with Orkut (and there are many) is that anyone can see your profile and send you messages. Random guys will scrap you (aka send you messages -- for the orkut-lingo challenged) asking if you are interested to “make fraandship with them” which makes “fraandship” sound downright dirrrty.
Then there is A Small World (ASW) which prides itself on being VERY exclusive. They want to keep the riff-raff out, so much so you cannot join unless someone invites you and once in, you’ll probably have to “prove yourself” before you are handed invites. I am sure you are wondering how “exclusive” it can be, if it has me – the biggest riff-raff of them all – on it. Sometimes the best of places manages to slip up. ASW can be a tight-ass like when you are trying to add a friend, it asks you again and again — are you sure he/she is your friend? Are you very very sure? Because if not, we will drag you through the streets, paint your face and throw you to the lions. Or words to that effect.
But Facebook I love. It’s my new thing. Not only does it not allow random strangers to go through your profile, it also has cute little applications. Plus you can join all sorts of crazy groups like I am on “I don’t care what they say, Pluto is still a planet”. Bet you didn’t know I cared so much about Pluto, did you? Well, I do. And if you were on facebook with me, you would know soooo much more about my planetary affiliations. So there.
Of course it does make me wonder about my maturity. I was discussing this over a nice glass of chardonnay and sushi dinner with a dear friend visiting from New York. We had just been to the gym (which is my second new thing) and our meandering discussions brought us to the number of networks we have joined in the past 6 months. Normal people usually stop doing such childish things as they get older but in our case maturity seems to be inversely proportional to our age. I am about to enter another decade and she is already there and you would think we would “grow up.” Au contraire. All the things I turned my nose up at, I am on it now! Which shows that you should never turn up your nose at anything, especially when you are young and stupid. I console myself with the thought that it’s not really my regressive maturity – I am just connected to the latest toys. On the edge, baby, on the edge!
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( 3 / 444 )Paris Hilton is backing an online petition that she shouldn’t go to prison for violating her probation for a drink-driving conviction as she "provides hope for young people all over the US and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives".
Mundane lives!!! Just for that she should be thrown into prison… and 45 days is way too short. Keep her there longer so we can be spared her antics.
Supposedly she also thinks that cops pulled her over as they were hitting on her. In LA? Does anyone else find her err not pretty at all?
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( 3 / 429 )As he says: "Unless you’ve been in a coma all these days, or even clinically dead, you probably know about this already - Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan got married yesterday, and here’s the shocking part, TO EACH OTHER."
Read this hilarious account of the Abhi-Ash wedding here.
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( 3 / 447 )Washington Post had this long but interesting piece on its Sunday section titled "Pearls Before Breakfast" that reported an experiment conducted by them — One of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made… on early morning rush hour commuters. "It was an experiment on context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"
The artist in question was Joshua Bell playing to early morning commuters near L’Enfant Plaza metro, Washington DC. Prior assessments put the number of people who will probably recognize the quality between 35 to 40 and around 75 to 100 who will stop and listen. They assessed that he would probably make around $150. The Post even wondered about security if people recognized the maestro.
The reality was completely different. In the 45 minutes that he played there, only 7 people stopped to listen, 27 gave money (mostly while on the rush) and 1070 people hurried away. Total money made: $32.17. Only one person recognized the artist. Contrary to what people say, I don’t think this is a typical-Washington response. I am sure the response would be the same if a similar experiment was conducted in Wall Street or The City.
In the last few days, this piece has been forwarded and discussed among friends. One recurring theme was a bit of guilt on our part. How many times have we rushed through life without noticing beautiful things around us? One of my friends wrote back saying: So what? Besides highlighting the almost la-di-dah point of appreciating beautiful things in life… well, what’s the point?
I thought the piece was interesting because of so many insights. We get to read the humbling of one of the greatest violinist in the world. No applause, no glance, almost invisible. "When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, “you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence… ”
Context matters. The piece quoted Kant saying that ones ability to appreciate beauty is related to ones ability to make moral judgments — and for that to happen the viewing conditions must be optimal… which apparently wasn’t at 8 am in the workweek. The same people will probably pay $100 to see this guy in a concert hall at a time convenient for them, but fail to recognize it when it’s right there. It was not as if people didn’t appreciate the beauty, just that it was irrelevant to them at that point of time as their priorities were different. (It was interesting to note how every child tried to stop and watch and every time the parents scooted them away)
But all was not lost. Few people stayed for a while even though they didn’t understand classical music or the artist – they just recognized that it was good. Or the Brazilian shoeshiner who, in spite of complaining that the violinist was too loud, didn’t call the police on a busker for the first time.
I don’t know much about classical music either. Even if I recognized that it was good, would I have stayed for the whole show? I would probably have if someone mentioned that I was actually watching a genius play. How much of my appreciation of art is dependent on others perception of it?
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( 3 / 429 )On the recent 25th anniversary of Falklands War, it’s a good time to share this beautiful poem.
Winning against Argentina
by Ros Barber
We'd hated Thatcher's war. You in a bedsit
in Reading; me an Essex student Goth.
I couldn't watch the news: her voice, Belgrano;
while you, my future mate, spent dole on pot.
So why, two decades on, were we ferocious;
did Argentina matter, so much so
that you, combining sex with watching football,
ran naked on the roof when England scored?
One nil. A Beckham penalty at half-time.
Our late result: a coloured, pregnant dot.
For several weeks we triumphed, sudden parents,
imagining the shape of love, and not
The Hand of God that knocked us from the reckoning:
a stomach ache, some bleeding. Certain loss.
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( 3 / 433 )I won’t write about Sanjaya Malakar. I won’t write about Sanjaya Malakar. I won’t write about Sanjaya Malakar….
DAMMIT!
Ok, I just have to! If the Washington Post can have an op-ed on him, who am I to resist the forces?
First, I have to confess that I haven’t seen a single episode of American Idol. Before you assume this is because of some deeply refined taste in music, television or reality shows, let me make it clear the assumption is completely misplaced. In the case of American Idol, somehow the remote control and I have never connected at the right time.
Still the Sanjaya blitzkrieg made sure that I am constantly aware of Sanjaya’s hairstyles, his talent (or lack of it), even his ability to make girls cry. And as I realized today, I have the Stockholm Syndrome! When Sanjaya did Diana, I cringed. When he did Gwen, I gaped at his pony-hawk. Now I kind of like the dude. Ok, his singing is not so great. But since when has American Idol become the mecca for artists? He is just 17! Thinking back to when I was a diffident 17-year-old (painful and tragic), I can’t help but admire this kid for putting up a show when others are laughing, getting pissed, spoofing, going on hunger strikes and other such nonsense.
That being said, I really don’t care if he wins or loses. So forget the desi-keeping-Sanjaya-in-the-contest angle although I did write about a similar situation many winters ago in The Debojit Fix!
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( 2.9 / 392 )Greg Chappell resigns as Indian cricket coach.
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( 2.9 / 420 )So much drama and it’s only the first week! In case you have been living on another planet (or the US):
1. Pakistan loses to Ireland on St Pat Day luck and is out of the world cup.
2. Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer dies and foul-play is suspected. Conspiracy theories range from betting, crazed fan, Musharraf's hidden agenda, even Taliban .
3. Former Irish cricket president goes celebrating with fans, collapses and dies .
4. India loses to Bangladesh and will be out of the World Cup unless they beat Sri Lanka tomorrow. For the sake of the team and coach Greg Chappell, I hope we do...
4. Freddy and friends go binge drinking and falls off a pedalo. Loses vice-captaincy and UNICEF charity. This is probably the most humorous news in the entire tournament.
And you say cricket is boring? There is no better soap opera!
As a Good Indian Girl from the subcontinent, I heart cricket. It’s the sport that binds my family and friends together. The family feels it’s their collective responsibility to update me constantly given that I live in a country of cricket-infidels. So dad has all the statistics on India’s chances, the cousin has all the useless trivia on similar situations in the past, the mom has all the gossip (did you know Woolmer has a sister living in Calcutta and that an operation theatre in the Kanpur hospital where he was born is named after him?) and the sis has all the cricket-angst. Throw in a few friends who alternate between sunshine or Cassandra.
But given all this love, passion and the craze, one still wonders when it became so crazy? I mean, yes we were always passionate about the game, but when did we start burning effigies, killing people, ransacking houses? Not in my parents’ generation. Not when I was a kid. Maybe sometime after cable television entered our lives, the advertisers discovered cricketers (and vice versa) and the media became sensational.
Anyways. I never thought I would say this but it’s just a game. Chillax! So I will be grinding my teeth and watching the game tomorrow… and praying.
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( 3 / 507 )Charlize Theron came up to me and said, "You don't look like an actress. You are so ordinary and simple, but your performance was excellent."
-- The absolutely brilliant Seema Biswas (of Water and Bandit Queen fame) narrating her Oscar experience.
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( 3 / 485 )It never ceases to amaze me how lacking in creativity and imagination advertisements on American television are. First, there are way too many commercials on food and pharmaceutical products. The former will typically focus on an extreme close-up of food like cheese dripping disgustingly off a pizza and it’s enough to put you off dinner. Or the pharmaceutical ones that lists all sorts of symptoms, slyly asking if you register any (which of course you do), then scaring the shit out of you. “Do your legs ache or tingle sometimes? If yes, you are suffering from RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME!!!”
Granted there are few cool ones (like Geico) but this past week I have seen two advertisements like this and this which made me nostalgic for Indian television. The Nike ad is a prelude to the Cricket World Cup and extreme nostalgia set in after seeing this. While on nostalgia, Channel V possibly had some of the most creative promos ever. How many of us remember Quick Gun Murugan and Aunty 303? (I managed to find one very hazy Quick Gun Murugan video on youtube and will be eternally grateful if I find Aunty 303)
For the uninitiated, Quick Gun Murugan was our very-own-Clint Eastwood, except he was Tamil, with a big paunch, wore orange trousers with green shirt, had lots of facial hair and refused to fight until he had “war visky, war masala dosa (one whisky, one masala dosa).”
Villain: Hah! You var bari Clinton Eastwoodah. Haha!
QGM: Don’t keep such behavior with Quick Gun Murugan. MIND IT!
Villain: If you have drunk your mother’s milk, come out to the field… wokay!
QGM: After I have taken my sambar!
A little less known is Aunty 303 who was a mummy by day and crime-fighter at night. The wailing plump mummyji would don red spandex pants at night (complete with superman-like underwear and batman-like glasses) rolling up the stairs (and I mean rolling… like a big red ball) to avenge the baddies who shivered on seeing our favorite superheroine Aunty 303. Maybe I liked her so much because she reminded me of all-too-familiar auntyjis. What can I say – we are like this only! Mind it!
Which brings me to the thought: What if Aunty 303 had married Quick Gun Murugan? Besides being phenomenally good-looking (of course!) and having a “colorful” fashion style, what would the offsprings be like?
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( 3.1 / 471 )
Kaziranga again — Dreaming of this in the freezing cold.
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( 3 / 503 )As a teenager in India we waited for the Grammys – this was our only access to live performances in the pre-cable-TV/Doordarshan era. Parents gave permission to skip homework/study-time to see Milli Vanilli sing “Girl You Know Its True” (yeah baby, we all know that one). I haven’t seen the Grammys in recent years but somehow I was filled with similar excitement yesterday… only to be bored out of my mind. Within minutes, I was channel-switching to Family Guy, American Dad, BBC World News, Down with Love etc etc…
Granted, I was a little put-off from the first. I don’t care if Police is reuniting… just the sight of Sting semi-topless yet again, singing another rehashed song from the past, was enough to make me wish he wasn’t there.
And really, someone needs to ban James Blunt from singing the incredibly cringe-worthy “You’re Beautiful.” How the hell did that infinitely irritating song become so popular?
And it’s a little sad to see aging rockers like Red Hot Chilli Peppers strutting their stuff like they did decades ago. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but 15 years back it was cool and now it’s a “haven’t-I-seen-this-ages-back” feeling.
I don’t like R&B. Please don’t hate me but really, I don’t. And nowadays there seems to be too much of that going around.
But there was some silver lining:
Chris Brown! Who is he? Whoever he is, I liiiike.
Justin rocks! Completely dig his duet with the contest-winner, possibly the best part of the show.
I haven’t heard the Dixie Chicks new album. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything from them (country music is not my scene). But they totally rock! Anyone from Texas, who has the guts to criticize Bush and possibly alienate most of their fan base, deserves some respect. I was hoping the girls would say something political and public, but their response was muted ("We wouldn't have done this album without everything we went through, so we have no regrets"). You go, girls!
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( 3 / 480 )We were not used to being up at 4:30 in the morning, especially to see some animals. But the elephant ride at the Kaziranga National Park took an hour at the break of dawn. It was a freezing misty winter morning and all the grogginess disappeared as we went through 12-14 feet high grasslands on the back of elephants to suddenly come upon one-horned rhinos up close. But this story is not about the rhinos. It’s about two cute baby elephants that followed the older ones. One of them was 5-months-old and inseparable from its mother. The other one – all of 9 months (to be called Zizou) – was like a petulant teenager with an attitude. Or at least we thought. It followed the other elephants but at a healthy distance as if to proclaim its independence and “coolness”.
Once back, everyone started petting and feeding the elephants. It was clear that Zizou was a bit of an attention-seeker. When my sister started taking photographs, Zizou pranced around her, showing off his different “angles” as if it’s a celebrity shoot. When we surrounded the other 5-month-old baby, going ohhh-so-cute, he broke up the group and dangled his trunk at me (I'd fed him before).
When he finally settled down, D kneeled next to him, petting the trunk, giving proper attention while the rest of us looked indulgently. And suddenly:
*BAM*
A head butt.
And D was on the ground.
Zizou had enough. Whats with the hanky-panky lovey-dovey stuff? Where is the grub, dude? So he responded with the perfect head-butt that would have made Zidane proud. Then he went a step back
*BAM*
D got it again.
At this point, the audience couldn’t stop laughing. And Zizou was clearly reveling in the attention. He went back again, as if to hit for the third time, but was chased away by the forest officials. We were disappointed, imploring the officials not to hit him, to bring him back. But it seems the rest of the herd was waiting for Zizou (they were going back to the grassland).
“He needs to be disciplined,” grumbled an officer, even though he couldn’t stop smiling either. Later we were told that Zizou is an orphan from the Digboi area. When Bandits killed his mother, the baby was brought to Kaziranga. Forest officials let him hang around with the other 5-month-old and the rest of the herd. But precocious, independent Zizou was always getting lost during the grassland trips.
Below is a picture of Zizou’s second head-butt.
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( 3 / 525 )Back in the city and contemplating the grey-dull DC skyline from work. After weeks of colour, chaos, heat, dust and noise, DC seems depressingly sanitized. This trip was especially exciting and hectic (see last post) maybe a bit too much. While the good, interesting parts will be expanded on later, I have to first rant against the situation in Assam.
The day before we reached, the insurgent group ULFA had senselessly killed more than 60 migrant workers from Bihar. They came at night, the Bihari workers were separated from the Nepali laborers, lined and brutally shot at point blank range. I fail to comprehend any logic in targeting poor Bihari workers. Have they not contributed to the little progress that the state has seen (think tea tribes of Assam)? The next few days saw curfews, bandhs and fear of riots or worse retaliation on the trains from the North-East passing through Bihar. Army battalions were redeployed and a military operation started echoing the counter-insurgency days of the early 90s
ULFA stands by its claim for a separate homeland and these killings are supposedly to rid Assam of non-Assamese workers. At this point, one would like to know for whom it is fighting for? Surely not the Assamese people! Maybe 15-20 years ago people from Assam might have looked at ULFA as their modern-day Robin Hood savior but not anymore. A recent poll conducted by an NGO showed that 95 percent of Assamese rejected ULFA’s claim for a sovereign Assam. Frustrated by the violence and bloodshed, disillusioned with an organization whose top leaders live abroad while the average Assamese struggles everyday, popular support faded. The irony was not lost that ULFA, which once claimed Assam for the Assamese, was now safely ensconced in Bangladesh, following the diktats of the government. The hushed voices referring to ISI (Pakistan)-DGFI (Bangladesh) connection were now openly articulated.
And as the Republic Day approaches on January 26th, ULFA is carrying out a series of bomb attacks. ULFA calls a bandh every year on India’s Independence or Republic Day and follows it up with random acts of violence. More than two years ago on Independence Day, a bomb blast killed 16 children in Dhemaji.
We Assamese have spent decades blaming the centre for the lack of progress in the state. And why not? Whatever little industries (oil, tea, coal) are in Assam were all set up by the British. Even today violence in Assam commands a small column space in national newspapers more interested in Ash-Abi. But how can we expect outside industries to invest in a state with so much risk? The entrepreneurial spirit of the people (Assamese and non-Assamese) is killed by extortion where you pay taxes to the government and extortion money to the insurgents. Not to mention the blasts and killings that seems to be common-place now. How much is lost in the state due to bandhs? Daily wage-earners, the vegetable vendor in the bazaar whose livelihood depends on the markets staying open, are just few of the ones suffering due to an organization whose motives are unpopular and support-base suspicious at best.
For more, please read this superb piece by Patricia Mukhim.
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( 3 / 496 )Another 48 hours and I am on the plane to India. I am always excited about going home but this time more so. A dear friend is getting married in Pune. He is Indian, she is French and the wedding promises to be a potpourri of Indo-European traditions and festivities. He sent out the wedding shout months back, surely not expecting so many of us to actually pawn all our savings and bombard him with pointless mails for the next few months. And when I say “so many”, I mean MANY, like around 50 people flying in from all over the world. The past few months have seen emails flying around – plans made and unmade, tickets booked (and lost), discussion groups started on saree fashion and slutty blouses, trans-continental youtube videos exchanged on the perfect Bollywood dance number (Choli Ke Peeche anyone? Or should we do Rajnikanth?) Now all we need to do is get the party started.
And started it has. The first three initial forward team (besides the bride and groom) have already reached India. One lost her suitcase along the way (ahhh Air India) leading to tears at all the special “India-vacation” shopping that is probably lost somewhere in Qatar for all we know. But all’s well. As the groom wrote to me yesterday: “At this stage, it’s about Desh, Mera Desh, Mera Gaon.”
I am sure there will be lots of stories in the next few weeks as I make my way from Bombay-Pune-Murud-Cochin-Kumarakom-Allepey-Bombay. More exciting is that I am taking three dear friends to Assam where the Boras will force food down their throats until they raise their arms and surrender. No seriously. We don’t joke about food. The plan is to visit Kaziranga and see the one-horned rhino in its natural habitat. Walk through tea gardens on a misty winter morning. Eat pitha on Bihu day and machor tenga everyday. And finally get mom and dad to stop complaining that my friends never visit (“do you even have any?”).
This blog might or might not be updated in the next few weeks. (Ok, who am I kidding?) But this is probably also the first time in AGES that I am not stressing about where to party on new years eve and actually looking forward in anticipation at what might or might not be. I wish you a very happy holidays too and hope the new year is fun.
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( 3 / 589 )Discovered this cartoon strip by Rajneesh Kapoor. Immensely entertaining. Adding to my right link. Some samples:
Chinky?
Mac-matics
Dada is back!
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