Mall Road

Turn right from Mall Road and go straight ahead...

2005-10-15T12:39:00.000+05:30

Mall Road stays at the same place on the Ring Road, but just as Mall Road keeps getting a facelift (the Metro, renovated bus stands, sexy new road costructed by the DMRC rather than the MCD), this blog has shifted to a new location.

Please update your bookmarks, blogrolls and RSS feeds.

See you there!

How many all-India Deans does IIPM have?

2005-10-13T22:56:00.000+05:30

The Hindustan Times had a story in which they quoted one A Sandip:

However, IIPM is now working towards sending a physical copy of the legal notice to Sabnis, seeking damages for defamation.

"We are not concerned about the blog, and in no way has the written matter on the blog affected us," says A. Sandip, IIPM's all-India dean. "But we are going to take legal action against the blogger for defamation. The person is identifiable. It is a legal notice against the person and not the blog."

Next day, the Indian Express has a story in which A Sandip shows selective amnesia:

When asked, A Sandeep, all-India dean for IIPM, said: “I don’t think so. I have no idea about it.”

I wonder if IIPM has two all-India Deans and both are called A. Sandip? And I wonder if their first names are also the same?

IIPM and IPC Section 499

2005-10-13T17:43:00.000+05:30

The legal notice sent by IIPM to Rashmi Bansal, editor of JAM, is not available to us, butthe ones sent to Gaurav and Varna are. Under which section of the Indian Penal Code would they be sued? Section 499, as far as I know, because it deals with defamation. I am no lawyer but am trying to exercise my brains here. Check out the link and struggle with the legalities. It will be great fun, I tell you.

For one, it can be said that JAM, Rashmi, Gaurav, Varna, Desipundit and everone has done this in the favour of "public good", which exempts everyone from any allegation of committing "defamation" on IIPM.

Reading the Indian Penal Code is one of my favourite pastimes!

Also have a look at Praveen Dalal's 'Cyber Law Forum' blog.

Have a look at some other resources: The Hoot's legal ready reckoner; the website of the Ministry of Information Technology; the IT Act; amendments in the IT Act that are likely to be passed in the winter session of the Parliament; and the sundry policies and rules of the IT Ministry.

Huh, quite some work!

"IIPM" is the second most searched keyword on Technorati at the moment. All hail the Indian blogosphere

2005-10-11T13:10:00.000+05:30

Blogger Search shows 274 posts on the subject at the moment!

Five years of Creativegarh

2005-10-11T04:10:00.000+05:30

Arun Verma of Creativegarh (who is now running Uncube) has requested the members of the Creativegarh mailing list put up this logo on our blogs if we think Creativegarh has added some value in our lives.

Arun and Creativegarh have been great help so many times that I can't thank him enough. Congrats on 5 years of CG. And do invite me for the party Arun!

By the way, Arun has been blogging at Cre8ive Ignition.

The art of writing legal notices

2005-10-09T21:13:00.000+05:30

Everyone knows what IIPM is all about. They seem to have only increased their lack of credibility by doing this. It's been quite some time I laughed so much.

For more, see this.

JAM may be a populist dishrag, but they deserve kudos for this. Also see the second and third parts of the story.

Join the war, guys.

I don't need to tell you how dubious IIPM is, because anyone who is serious about an MBA already knows it.

Sue me too, Mr Arindam Chaudhuri! Send it to mallroad at shivamvij dot com :)

Update 1: Others joining the issue: Harini, Srini, Charu, Anshul, Amrit, Muthuvel, Thalassa Mikra, Jagan, Vijay Krishna, Vatsan, Jo, Varna, Swaroop CH, Shivam, Ash, Abi, Jujitsu, Uma, Shub, Rajan, Havoc, Abhishek, Chandrachoodan, Kaushik, Alpha-Q, Mandar, Kaushal, Chenthil, Anthony, Bonatellis, Apurv, Scudie, Sriyansa, Miss J, Neha, Tablepost, Chitthacharcha, Saket, Dhananjay, Sriram, The Comic Project, Gawker, Nilu, Ian, Jabberwock, Niket, Ravikiran, Hitchiker, Vinaya. [Got this list via Desipundit and will keep updating it.]

Update 2: Someone claiming to be an ex-IIPM student and an ex-IIPM employee has set up a new blog on the issue.

Surviving an earthquake

2005-10-09T15:25:00.000+05:30

Photograph: FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images, via Rediff

I was sleeping around nine thirty in the morning when Arnab woke me up, "Shivam, earthquake! Shivam, get up! earthquake!" Ah, so they had finally found a way to get the insomniac to wake up before noon, I thought. Yes, yes, I said. Found my glasses and got out and wo! Everyone was leaving the house and really going out in the open. It must really be an earthquake, but why couldn't I feel it? Turns out it lasted thirty seconds and was over by the time I opened my eyes.

Arnab was the only one in the house to have felt the earth shaking. "I am from Assam," he explained. Vinod had refused to believe him until he was shown through the transparent body of the filter how the water was splashing left and right.

Outside, as neighbours who hardly knew each other started talking, I joked about why we had left valuables inside. We would have been screwed if the skyscraper had fell, right?

An earthquake, if it does not kill people around you, can be a source of humour - at least until the news arrives that as many as 18,000 are dead. Nobody died around us in Noida, and phone calls to friends and family confirmed that nobody died in Delhi or anywhere in North India. So everywhere we started exchanging notes about the quake, and this is the funniest part. Everyone goes about asking everyone else in a light hearted manner, "Did you feel the tremors?" D said he was woken up by the quake and could feel his bed shifting. His ambition is to die of alcoholism. Had the tremors last a little longer, we wouldn't have been talking about it like this.

I refreshed Google News again and again to find out where the epicentre was. I took about an hour for the news to pour in - a phone call informed me that TV was faster than the web. Some had already died in Srinagar and Pakistan. Tremors had also been felt in Kabul. And you thought it was globalisation which was rendering national borders meaningless?

The epicentre was Muzaffarabad (capital of Pakistani Kashmir), which is 125 kms from Srinagar (capital of Indian Kashmir) and 95 kms from Islamabad (the Pakistani capital).

Since when did natural disasters start interfering in geopolitics. eh?

It must be better to die in an earthquake than to survive one. Not only does it leave you destitute, but also (particularly if you lost loved ones to it) shatters your faith in the stability of the ground beneath your feet. Which is a terrifying thought. Would you ever again believe anything, anyone?

Perhaps earthquakes are god’s way of converting people to atheism.

An earthquake is worse than a tsunami because those who live by the sea half-expect the waters to be unpredictable. Delhi is known to be very “quake prone,” as the papers sensationally remind us every now and then. The area near the river Yamuna is said to be the one that would be the worst hit. Places like Mayur Vihar, Samachar Apartments, and Patparganj (which is where Arnab lives) are said to be built upon the fault line.

After I graduate I would probably be looking for a room or two in one of these places, because all struggling journos seem to live there.

Who knows, the earth may gobble me up one day.

Delhi bloggers meet on Sunday

2005-10-08T01:48:00.000+05:30

It's that time of the month again. Delhi's bloggers will meet for a Bombay style bloggers meet on Sunday 9 October at 5 pm at the open terrace of the Indian Coffee House in CP. I chose this venue over Barista or CCD as these cafes are not conducive to intelligent conversation (though they are very conducive to dating). It's the music, you know.

Getting there: The Indian Coffee House is on the second floor of Mohan Singh Place, a building just next to Rivoli cinema. Rivoli cinema is just behind Regal cinema. Regal is a major Connaught Place bus stand, walking distance from the Delhi Metro's "Rajiv Chowk" (blah, blah) station.

Who organises the Delhi bloggers meet? The last one was organised by Saket Vaidya, and this one is being organised by me. One of those attending the meet will be requested to volunteer to organise the next one. This is a process as democratic and non-hierarchical as the blog mela, and has been copied from the Bombay bloggers meet.

What do I mean by Bombay-style meets? Once again, it's self-explanatory. If you haven't read any Bombay bloggers meets' reports, then read one and you will know what I mean!

Who can attend the meet? Anyone who is in Delhi-NCR on Sunday 9 October 2005 at 5 pm and has a blog.

What will be do there? There would be, I assure you, no flies to kill at the Indian Coffee House. The meet is an opportunity for bloggers to meet. We could talk about issues that we have been posting about, we could exchange notes with Saket about handling CSS or moving to Wordpress. We could bitch about blogger's slow evolution considering the changes that are coming about in blogging softwares. We could ask Samit on how to get Penguin to buy our manuscripts or we could exchange notes about Google Earth with Jabberwock. We could ask The Compulsive Confessor the secret of getting 20 plus comments for every post, and we could ask Dhiraj why his 'Bodhi Shop' has been converted into a 'Bodhi Shoppers' Guide'. (When a businessman becomes a shoppers' guide, how objective can he be?) And be careful about whether River is caricaturing you. Dilip D'Souza is in Delhi and I will try to persuade him to join us. Lastly, I am rather fond of the mince cutlet at the Indian Coffee House.

See you there!

I apologise for posting about the event only one day in advance. I just realised that I would be busy with other things on the remaining Sundays of the month.

Please spread the word by blogging about the event.

The previous Delhi bloggers' meet: a report by Saket.

ZESTPoets offline meet at the Indian Coffee House: a report by me of the June meet (with pictures by Anand) and one of the September meet by Dhiraj.

Via Desipundit, just saw a spoof blog meet by Karthik.

Tag 23

2005-10-03T17:43:00.000+05:30

I have just one question.

That was the fifth sentence in the 23rd post on this blog.

So what's the point? K of Presstalk had tagged me.

That post was about the persistent discrimination of Dalits in tsnumai relief programmes several months after the tsunami.

I don't want to say much more about that. Saket and other anti-reservationist right-wing bloggers won't see my point because they don't want to. They will blog at the next given opportunity about how reservations are responsible for all our ills, how we have thrown meritocracy out of the window; but how often do you find them making posts about caste discrimination? All they would say about it is that it's 'bad', 'unfortunate'. They will say that the 'solution' is 'education'; but what when the educated discriminate?

I know what they will say: you can't use "anecdotal evidence" to make a generalisation.

Ah, but how many anecdotes do they want to accept the truth of caste in the city?

Some time ago I did a study of a partucular profession in a particular city and I would like them to refute what I found.

Anyway, I am supposed to pass on this tag to five bloggers: Saket, River, Ballofyarn, Harini, and Patrix.

Here's what you have to do:
1. delve into your blog archive.
2. find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. tag five people to do the same.

Update (6 Oct): The tag was taken up by Saket, Patrix, River, and Harini. I see that my title "Tag 23" has been used by some of them.

Looking for Desipandit?

2005-10-03T17:03:00.000+05:30

I do make typos on my blog more often than I would like to, and often I correct them within 24 hours of the posting, but it seems typos have their uses.

I was probably the first blogger to blog about Desipundit, which has filled a gap in the Indian blogosphere and given it a greater sense of community. However, in the title of that post, I called it 'Desipandit'! I see that every now and then some google searchers reach my blog looking for "Desipandit"!

Thank me, Patrix!

The United Nations and media ethics

2005-10-03T16:41:00.000+05:30

When Shashi Tharoor is in town, as he will be in November, Page 3 goes ga-ga over him. Stephanians like to think of him as Kofi Annan's successor, and so the Stephanian-dominated media splashes him all over. When he was promoting his novel Riot, one paper wrote that Tharoor had managed to charm the Delhi gliterrati with his good looks!

If only hacks on the desk paid a little more attention to what he does in his job as the UN's spokesperson, they would get some "sexy stories".

Israelpundit (just discovered him!) rants against Tharoor & Co.'s "fake news" programme on CNBC (in US). Mr Israelpundit also has a blog called Mediacrity, where he writes more about Tharoor.

Why Japanese Encephalitis is Not a Sexy Story

2005-10-02T01:38:00.000+05:30

Sexy story. That's what editors say. The north-east, for instance, is never a sexy story.

An epidemic in Uttar Pradesh has already killed a thousand children by skewed 'official figures'. Forget government apathy, how have you seen the media cover the story? Has it been getting half as many column inches as the Greg-Ganguly war? No, because it's not a sexy story. Readers surely care a damn about an epidemic in Gorakhpur; it's common like water shortage.

However, you must see how the Washington Post covered it. This is how John Lancaster's report begins:

Kiran Kumari had been sick for more than a week. Now, lying on her back in a sweltering, overcrowded hospital ward, the skinny 11-year-old with the copper-streaked hair had lapsed into unconsciousness and could no longer breathe on her own. So her father was breathing for her.

Sitting on the edge of her thin mattress, his face a taut mask of exhaustion, the destitute farmworker rhythmically squeezed a football-sized plastic ventilator with his callused hands, forcing air into her lungs with every pump.

Such life-saving duties are normally left to professionals, but in this case, there were not enough to go around. Over the last two months, hospitals in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have been overwhelmed by Japanese encephalitis, a viral infection that has sickened more than 2,000 children and killed nearly 600, making it one of the deadliest outbreaks of the disease on record in India.

And how he ends it:

Despite their exhaustion, Kumari's parents and sister kept substituting for each other on the ventilator, refusing to give up hope. It was no use. On Thursday morning, they and their daughter were nowhere to be found, and another sick child had taken her bed.

A doctor said the girl had died at 5:15 a.m.

(No, that won't do, you must read the whole of it.)

Why do you never find a story written so grippingly in an Indian paper or magazine? All you will find are official releases converted into five single-sentence paragraphs.

At the most you will find an Express frontpage story like this one, but even this is too racy.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Indian print journalists don't seem to be very fond of a craft called narrative journalism, which, by the way, is the reason for Reader's Digest's undying popularity. Mark Kramer of the prestigious Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism describes it as "journalism that doesn't assume the reader is a robot, that acknowledges the reader knows lots and feels and snickers and gets wild." Narrative, he says:

denotes writing with (A) set scenes, (B) characters, (C) action that unfolds over time, (D) the interpretable voice of a teller -- a narrator with a somewhat discernable personality -- and (E) some sense of relationship to the reader, viewer or listener, which, all arrayed, (F) lead the audience toward a point, realization or destination.

Lancaster's story above may not exactly be the best example of the craft, but it employs those techniques.

Secondly, Aman tells me that these great Western papers have sub-editors on the desk who are a thousand times more skilled than our deskies who consider "subbing" a drudgery. Their sub-eds turn around a copy so skillfully that even the reporter who filed it cannot recognise it.

Now try telling Jain & Jain that doing something like this could increase the time their readers spend 'reading' the Slimes of India.

[PS: Googling for this post made me discover this amazing e-zine!]

Christmas in September

2005-09-21T19:40:00.000+05:30

Yeh kya ho raha hain! Wordpress is offering free blogging space and the classy Opera browser has become a freeware. I thought Christmas was a few months away.

Every third person in the world...

2005-09-19T15:52:00.000+05:30

"Every third person in the world now has a cellphone!" Google News beams at me.

Of course Larry, just that most of these one-third are in the first world.

It's amazing how statistics can make you believe we live in an equal world. Now what did uncle Disraeli say about lies?

Shoot to kill

2005-09-18T19:24:00.000+05:30

[click to enlarge]

On a photo-taking spree in my hostel, I asked a lot of people to pose doing some antics. Most chose to appear doing some violence - I wonder why. In this picture you can see Asim trying to kill his former roommate, Fahad, in my room. The picture came off very badly (hehe, me using digicam firts time) but Srinivas did some Photshop tricks on it ("diffuse glow, mono," whatever that is) and bingo! Doesn't it look amazing now? Like some theatre scene...

Big little man

2005-09-18T18:49:00.000+05:30

So Tehelka's much hyped 'first major interview' with Rahul Gandhi has backfired. Regardless of the political uproar, the interview itself is amusing. Tehelka on its part is clearly cosying itself to The Family at 10 Janpath, and the words that they use are, to say the very least, embarassing. These words, for instance, preced the actual interview:

Rahul was unstoppable once he got going. At times he was like an express train, moving from thought to thought at great speed. He had good fun, laughing at many things, and went over several aspects of his personality. He is free with his hands, and likes to make gestures to stress a point while he speaks. Every time he cracked a joke, he hitched up the sleeves of his white kurta. [Emphasis mine.]

As though they were writing about an international rock star.

They make it clear that Mr Gandhi himself invited Tehelka to 'give' the interview. Mr Gandhi seems to have decided that it's time for him to become a 'leader', to take on the mantle. It's a farce of an interview, he's asked no real questions. Mr Gandhi could well have given a lecture. In the so-called interview he is so full of himself, so obsessed with driving home the point that he's 'different' from other politicians, even the Cangressi variety. What do you make of him when he says he could have been Prime Minister at 25 if he wanted to? Does that really make him humble, as he claims throughout the interview? Five questions before declaring his humility, he was humbly telling his interviewer: "You know, I am sorry to say this but you seem to have come to Amethi with arrogance. You seem to think that these guys know nothing." Humble? Of course! One is tempted to say that Gandhi is bullying his interviewer, and the interviewer, on his part, is there only to be bullied. The interviewer and his paper seem to be aware of being used for someone's PR job.

The gem is towards the end, when the inetrviewer decides to ask a question for a change:

All right. But why don't you ask questions in Parliament, or speak on issues at home?
I don't ask questions in Parliament because I like to think things through. Just look around at the questions that are asked in Parliament, and you'll know why I don't ask questions. I mean look at them. S***, is that the kind of stuff you want me to ask?

I can't remember any of the questions anyway.
But surely you remember my question on sugarcane farmers. You remember it because I asked it, and something was done immediately for the farmers (the farmers' dues were cleared).

Many MP's ask similar questions, and they do so because lobbies and interest groups persuade (sometimes even bribe) them to. So what's the big deal Mr Gandhi? What makes you think that from among a group of over 500 MP's (including mama dearest) you are the only one asking the right questions?

Humility? Of course!

Oh yes sir, you could have been Prime Minister at 25. The people of India are idiots and you are, well, Rahul Gandhi. But it ain't your fault, just that it is a pity to be born with such a burden.

It's fine if he really wants to say all this, just that I don't see why Tehelka should undermine itse credibility by printing a young man's ambitious nothingness as a cover story.

On a different note, why does the Slimes of India call Tehelka 'a weekly, published from Delhi'? Why can't they name the paper? After all Tehelka gave them an ad too...

The Ladies Tailor

2005-09-16T15:08:00.000+05:30

Harini writes about how the Ladies Tailor is a species made extinct by the retail boom, at least in the metros. Now, like any good boy, I am pro-market, much as the liberterian bloggers think I am not. But, as I wrote earlier, for us to pretend that no cultural change is taking place, and worse, to not question what that implies, is really sad.

But then consumerism, and the attached -ism's of capitalism, globalisation and popular culture, are known to make you discourage you from thinking.

Baba Adam ke zamanay ki site...

2005-09-16T14:44:00.000+05:30

Which India website would you choose for the Mall Road Jurrasic Park-Age Website Award? I have my choice, but first let me see yours...

Monkeys as P(o)ets

2005-09-14T13:31:00.000+05:30

Oh, the ZESTPoets meet on Sunday. It seemed a damp squib to begin with, but you know Brian Mendonca, he is enthusiasm personified. Seven people turned up in all. I'm not going to write a report, because Dhiraj has written one here. He writes so well, gives me a complex all the time. Wonder how he did those stories for a certain Page 3 supplement years ago!

Uploading verse

2005-09-10T18:11:00.000+05:30

Update: DNA has got itself a decent website and this story can be found here.

DNA in Mumbai has published an article about online poetry in India, and ZESTPoets finds a mention in it. Since the paper is not online, I'm posting the article here. Links: ZESTPoets, Nitoo Das, Monica Mody, and Juhi Dua. The first ZESTPoets reading was held in June and the next one is tomorrow.

Uploading verse

By Subuhi Jiwani
DNA, September 10, 2005

“You’re like an ostrich with its head in the sand, communicating by wagging its tail,” says Mumbai poet Jane Bhandari, describing what it feels like to write to an on-line group. She is a member of ZESTPoets, a special interest yahoo group that focuses on writing and discussing South Asian poetry in English.

Unlike other poetry websites (www.geocities.com/varnamala/ineng.html, for instance) ZESTPoets is, by definition, interactive. The India edition of http://poetryinternational.org/, edited by Arundhati Subramaniam, is exhaustive with biographies, news articles and poems, in English and in translation. But it stops at the known names.

ZESTPoets’ members need not be South Asian but the workshop material – usually unpublished and by unrecognized poets – must be.

“There isn’t a community of [Indian] poets that can share work, receive feedback, and read the work of others, including the established names,” says Shivam Vij, one of the founders of ZESTPoets and a B.A. student of English Literature at St Stephens College. “A mailing list doesn’t require its members to negotiate city traffic and reach a place where struggling poets might hang out.”

Poetry groups like The Bombay Poetry Circle have, for decades now, groomed poets and chiseled poems. But cyberspace cuts through prestige barriers, offering something these groups can never approximate: anonymity. Nitoo Das, prolific blogger and online poet who’s been studying on-line poetry communities says, “A lot of people crave the disguise of screen names. For many online poets, poetry is therapy, sometimes written as a humiliating secret.” When asked if the internet helps people be more frank — and possibly, more merciless —she’s skeptical. “The initial sense of liberation wanes after some time and then, you m! ay suddenly become conscious that the same old paradigms play their part online as they do offline.”

Detractors of online poetry complain that the internet isn’t all ‘democratising’: the web isn’t available in India’s remote areas. But for Das “poetry has always been elitist, especially after it became a part of print culture”.

The internet might have altered poetry reading habits but Delhi poet Vivek Narayanan is wary of this. He says, “The internet can also foster a kind of haphazard reading of poetry, where people consume individual poems of varying quality rather than whole collections from start to finish.”

But Das’ observation underlines the difference between online poetry and the printed word. “You don’t have to pay for online poetry, most of the time. So, if someone cannot buy poetry books, he/she can simply spend ten bucks per hour in an internet café.”

The internet, testify many ZEST poets, has ac! tually driven them to buy collections of poetry, especially after they sampled some on the website. But it might also tempt them to switch to the ESPN or BBC web pages. After all, flipping a page in a book only takes you to the next.

Strange conversations

2005-09-10T18:00:00.000+05:30

Some emails here...

Dear Shivam,
I want to ask about the blogger's meet. What you guys will do tomorrow ? It is starting at 5 pm, right ? And when will it end ? And also, why don't you all post your pictures in your blogs?
Regards, *****

My reply: there's no bloggers meet tomorrow! it was last week!

Stranger: If you want to say no to me be honest & direct. I also have better things to do. ; - )

Me: no, no, if you want to come for the ZESTPoets meet you are most welcome. just bring sme poetry in hand. see this.

Stranger: What if i don't have any poetry? Can i come empty handed? Just to meet and listen to you people? ; - )
or Is it okay if i bring someone else's poetry?

Me: it's okay to bring someone else's poetry. The ZESTPoets meets are not for 'networking' but for poetry.

Stranger: then no point coming there..........i had enough of poetry. I prefer those who live poetic life than just write poetry.

Me: okay

-ends-

ROTFL!

Aashiq banaya

2005-09-09T20:47:00.000+05:30

Aashiq banaya, aashiq banaya... the track plays everywhere I go. And there are some more like this one. The same tracks. They blare loudly into my ear, into my mind, no matter where I am. Be it a cybercafe or a coffee shop or a restaurant or the radio that my hostelmates insist on making me listen. It makes me numb, like an anaesthetic.

And when I am back to my senses, I wonder silently: when will popular culture consume itself?

What a wimp!

2005-09-05T22:55:00.000+05:30

This blog may be called Mall Road but has not a single picture of the area. Partly because I haven't yet got myself a digicam and partly because I've been too lazy about this blog (evident by the diminishing output). So one Sunday I managed to persuade my friend Srinivas, a brilliant photographer, to go with me to Mall Road and take arbit photos. We took nearly 200, of which about 10 should find their way as random header images in Mall Road's new WordPress site. In the meanwhile, I'll be posting some of those images here, images I have something to say about. Let's begin with the very last pix, the one we took while walking back from Mall Road.

On Chattra Marg (detest that name!) there is a bus stand called "Delhi University", because the Vice Chancellor's office, for some reason, is called "Delhi University". There's only one bus that passes through Chattra Marg all day - DTC bus number 212, ferrying its passengers to Nand Nagri. The bus stops on this road are perfect love spots for certain kind of love birds - certainly not the sort found in my college, who believe in public display of affection rather than cladestine meetings in a bus stop.

I saw a couple there and asked Srinivas to take out the camera and shoot the couple! Fast! Don't worry, they won't beat us up or take away your camera.

They didn't.

Honestly, I expected the guy to cross the road and shout and scream at us, but all he did was to shift towards the left so that his lady love's face would not be visible, depriving Mall Road's readers the opportunity to admire her.

What a wimp, I thought.

Etchical issues? Privacy? Voyeurism? Sexual harassment, even? Now either we could take the photograph or worry about ethics. I wanted this snap because I thought it is a part of my experience of walking down to Mall Road from my college every now and then.

You're mad, said Srinivas.

BCCL vs The Indian Blogosphere

2005-08-31T18:42:00.000+05:30

The Slimes of India caricatured bloggers on page one the other day. It was only because of surfing blogs that I got to read the story, because I don't subscribe to the Slimes. The story's by Charles Assisi, whose work in Businessworld I always admired.

Codey has a rebuttal here. May be the story has a point, though as a generalisation you know it's trash. However, the tone of the story sounds pejorative, which makes me wonder, what does the Times have against blogging and bloggers? It's simple: the Indian blogosphere is a big critic of the Slimes. And why does the story repeatedly talk about Jivah, who doesn't even blog anymore? Because Jivah was responsible for this.

It's war now: the Indian blogosphere vs. BCCL.

Pradyuman Maheshwari, zindabad.

Better late than never: Mall Road's mela is here

2005-08-23T17:13:00.000+05:30

Prologue

Please accept my apologies for the delay in putting up the mela. I won't offer any excuses. Better late than never. If your nomination couldn't be accepted, it is not meant to be a reflection on the quality of the post. There are several factors one may take into account while choosing a post.

The Mela

Yazad once wrote on his blog that too much is made of the blogosphere being a form of 'alternative media'. I then thought he was right, but reading through so many posts for the second blog mela at Mall Road, I think I disagree with Yazad.

Too many of us distrust mainstream media, and not without reason. I do think we are often very harsh on mainstream media: we can go on and on about how slimy the Slimes is, but we will not give credit to the media where it is due. The media did a very good job, for instance, in pressurising the Indian government to drop Jagdish Tytler from the cabinet and reminding the nation, and not least the political class, of the Congress-perpetrated riots against the Sikh community in 1984. Be that as it may, the blogosphere is the most honest possible indicator of public opinion - the public that has access to digital resources, that is. The 1984 pogrom recieved its fair share. One feels especially pained when public memory of such events gets linked to personal memory. For those born in 1984, like Prathamesh and me, the year means more than just the year of our birth. We are not Midnight's Children but those of Apocalypse. Amrit's account is particularly moving. The blogosphere is in no mood to forgive and forget: Ennis wants to know who gave the orders. CK2 has been counting historical wrongs that lead up to the carnage. Kuttan is right when he says the a mere resignation is not enough, but such are the times we live in that a great virtue is made out of resigning from the cabinet whereas the chap should have been in jail long ago. 'A Sikh Abroad' says he doesn't want the Advanis of the world to champion the Sikh cause. Swami thinks the '84 riots were a crime worse than Modi's, though I'm not so sure.

Annie (whose blog I enjoy more than anyone else's) takes a politically incorrect look at the tamasha that is Independence Day. I-Day Celebrations for me are a matter of popular culture: as crass by now as Bollywood. Newton's third law of motion - every action has an equal and opposite reaction - may have been rendered politically incorrect by Narendra Modi, but it stands. Like it happened with the India Shining campaign: the idea of celebrating the republic on an appointed day will inevitably lead many of us to find faults in the republic. So you have Deepalan asking if we should celebrate this Independence at all. And did you say you were proud of our heritage? For expats like Saswat Pattanayak, the I-Day experience tends to be a little different, tinged with inevitable exilophilia. Introspecting ideas of patriotism and nationalism, like Sanjay does, is always a good idea, but hey, make no mistake, the breed of die-hard patriots is still alive. Like Rajendra and Nirav.

I know hard news can be depressing after a while. Aparna Ray has mastered the art of taking a dig at the very idea of news by reducing every news item into a digestible limerick. Good job, Aparna. If the Supreme Court agrees with petitioner Ajay Goswami, then papers like the Slimes will have to stop publishing 'sexually explicit' content lest Indian kids get to choose which model is hotter than the other. Prithi Shetty thinks this is good news, but some say it's plain and simple moral policing. If Goswami's petition is successful, the papers may want to publish Aparna's limericks instead. No sex-vex Aparna, okay, the kids are reading! I'm sure Mr Goswami would be apalled at Saket's proposal to "corporatise" prostitution.

Greatbong has a lucid review of Dus, but the film that all of blogosphere's been talking about is The Rising, as also about Mangal Pandey the man. Lok-adhikar remembers the cause, Varun Singh has a review, and Deba couldn't have been more disappointed. Sepoy at Chapati Mystery does a fantastic job of narrating the story of Mangal Pandey in two parts and then reviewing the film. Thanks Sepoy, I dig it! Amardeep has an insightful post on the issue of language in the movie.

Amit Varma eavesdrops on a conversation between A Dog and a Blog. A rare post in India Uncut in that it does not have a link to a story in a mainstream media website. Dilip D'Souza is again playing the doubting Thomas of Indian reforms. Arzan celebrated the Parsi New Year, an event certainly more appealing to me than I-Day!

Navin has a post on India's oil security: the most neglected issue that is now haunting us all of a sudden. Water's going to be next. Anup has a detailed discussion on Kalam's warnings about energy security.

DoZ is getting nostalgic about his growing up years in Delhi.

Ujwal Gandhi has a new 'netfix' for India.

I loved Sakshi's post on living a dog's life(style). A picture is worth a thousand words, and she has so many pictures there. Really cool blog.

Anand has a great post on Sita's abandonment, and there's some very rich discussion taking place in the comments there. JK of Varnam has been busting some more myths.

Harini Calamur wonders why some people think they are above the law. I sincerely think most Indians, if not all, see the law as something malleable, something that is flexible to our needs. We think that is a legitimate thing to do, and does not necessarily amount to violating the law.

Gawker satirises satirises CNN's falling standards, saying a computer virus could be responsible for it. Trust internet viruses to be a source of humour.

Sunil Laxman finally knows what a long walk is like. Sujatha, on the other hand, has been walking the streets of Philadelphia.

Harini has been reading Narendra Jadhav's book, The Untouchable. Srini has a thought-provoking post on Prof Gopal Guru's Ambedkarite argument on Manmohan SIngh's I-Day speech.

I began this mela talking about blogs as alternative media. But if mainstream media needs mediwatch institutions, so perhaps does the blogosphere. Purvi has taken a well-meaning step towards creating such an institution in the Indian blogosphere. I found her first post rather promising.

To end the mela, I leave you with the week's best post: "30in2005" meets Sachin Tendulkar and is bowled over. Fantastic!

Epilogue

Thank you for nominating posts for this mela, for spreading the word about it, for linking to it, for reading it. If there are any mistakes, please do point them out.

Another mela, another blog, another week. The show must go on.

Oh yes, the Blog Mela, right here!

2005-08-18T15:16:00.000+05:30

This post is sticky - originally posted on 15 August 2005

I had completely forgotten about the existence of the blog mela, let alone that I am supposed to host the next one. By contrast I do check Desipundit everyday. So I wasn't wrong when I described Desipundit as 24x7 blog mela. Great job Patrix!

But hey, blog melas are blog melas. Unlike Desipundit, they travel from blog to blog every week. They are often written in new creative styles by their hosts. And they have the potential of sounding like a weekly review.

So here we are. Mall Road will host this week's blog mela. The last date for nominations is the midnight of Friday 19 August, Indian Standard Time (which, as we know, always runs late.)

I take this mela business very seriously and I hope it's the same with you. But since I am involved with a hundred and one things for the next two weeks, I will have very little time to find good posts, the way I did for the last mela Mall Road hosted. So all of you are requested to nominate in bulk!

Please nominate only those posts dated between 13 and 19 August. And please avoid, so far as possible, nominating posts that have already appeared on Desipundit.

You can nominate posts by commenting here, but I prefer if you email your nominations to mallroad@shivamvij.com.

If all goes well, I may be on a WordPress site by then.

The previous mela was hosted by Shanti as Abhishek was absconding.

You saw that weapon with him?

2005-08-15T20:15:00.000+05:30

I was born in 1984. Growing up in Lucknow, there were many vague things I could not understand, still can't. One of them was my mother's frantic reaction when giant-looking Sikhs would visit our colony wearing what seemed a costume to me. It would be blue and saffron, and they brandished what I thought were mock-swords.

As I grew up I learnt that they were jathedars, or Sikh priests, from a local Gurudwara. They would come once or twice a year, knocking on everyone's doors, asking for donations for the gurudwara. My mother would order us in, all doors and windows shut and bolted. Our neighbours would do the same. Then we would tell the jathedaar - without opening the door - that we will give our donation in the Gurudwara itself, or that we've already given it. The jathedar would persuade us in his heavy voice, but finally go away.

I aksed my mother for an explanation and she said that we should not trust strangers. "You saw that weapon with him?"

Then I learnt of Hindu-Sikh riots, which Shekhar Gupta rightly calls Congress-Sikh riots. Lucknow has never seen Hindu-Muslim riots, a very surprising fact at face value, but in 1984, Cangressis went about killing Sikhs in Lucknow too. And then everyone, including my parents, voted for Rajiv Gandhi, and some of the killers became ministers...

We must always have thought that the Sikhs could think of revenge. They didn't, and neither did they get justice. We've always known who the guilty are...

Imagine the many layers of irony here: pre-Partition Punjab is supposed to have been a place of Hindu-Sikh amity to the extent that Hindus would often raise one child as a Sikh. And many Hindu Punjabis still visit Gurudwaras, particularly in Delhi. Partition's Hindus never rioted against Lucknow's Muslims, but only embraced Lakhnavai culture, and ended up killing Sikhs in 1984. That apocalyptic year India changed into something else.

By the way, happy Independence Day. Whatever that means.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

2005-08-10T20:54:00.000+05:30

Today they screened Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi in College. You might want to check out what other bloggers are saying about the movie, but I was frankly disappointed. The English they spoke was a bit artificial, to begin with, as though they were doing school theatre. This is not to discount the good acting. Secondly, the subject (student involvement in the pre-Emergency Naxalite movement) was probably a bit cheapened by being shown as a big joke. A Marxist friend in College (yes, we still have some Comrades!) remarked that they have represented it as a rich man's son's fantasy, whereas it might have been a little more complex. Also, the love triangle was a bit over-done. For a movie supposedly representing St. Stephen's College (shot, for want of permission, in the 'rival' Hindu College!), there can't be so much of College romance, okay, because Stephen's was all-boys till 1975 when Indira Gandhi suddenly asked why should a premier institution not admit ladies.

One of my motives to see the movie was to see what the then College administration had to say about such on-campus political activity undertaken in a haze of LSD. That, sadly, was missing.

Another disappointment was the music. There could have been more of it, and much better. Or may be I've listened to Jagjit Singh's rendition of the Ghalib ghazal too many times to appreciate Shubha Mudgal's melancholic burst.

Enough of cribbing. What I really liked about it was that the glamour of the poster (see above) was not matched by the movie itself. Secondly, the subtle portrayal of Indira Gandhi and her influence by merely putting her photographs all over. The movie is sure to embarass a Cangrassi and a half, though they are beyond embarassment by now. I also had this strange feeling that the movie is trying to say, 'Thank God the revolution failed even if the price was Emergency'. This is not to say it does not show the brutality of the Emergency - it does - but puts it in a context that Cangressis often like to see it in: as an inevitable backlash to the Naxal and other troubles throughout the country that were undermining the rule of the state. So I have resolved to do some more research on this.

The DNA of DNA: where is the review?

2005-08-01T18:18:00.000+05:30

DNA, or Daily News and Analysis, has been launched in Mumbai. Oh wait, no, they launched the Mumbai edition in Delhi. You see, the flamboyant Zee group, which has launched the paper in partnership with the Dainik Bhaskar guys, wanted no less than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to do the honours. (Thanks to The Hoot for informing us about this much in advance.) In an excellent Guardian story, DNA editor Gautam Adhikari claimed that DNA will a "classical liberal paper" as good a paper as The Guardian. That's wishful thinking - for one, they will never dare to have such long stories and essays as The Guardian often carries.

Which makes me think: why isn't DNA online yet so I could check it out? You see I live in Delhi, where DNA will launch next year, having (or so they hope) consolidated their position in Mumbai.

Okay, so has anyone reviewed DNA yet? Surprisingly, nobody. Not The Hoot, not Dancewithshadows, not CSF. If Mediaah! was alive they would've done it five times by now, along with pre- and post-launch boardroom and newsroom gossip. Dancewithshadows, incidentally, had a very good review of HT's Mumbai edition.

Meanwhile, the Hindu Business Line has been giving its readers some very wrong advice.

And I'd like to bring to your notice a relatively unknown press blog. I have a gut feeling they are going to burn their fingers soon, but that's the last thing I would want to happen to two good bloggers.

Anyway, if you are in Mumbai, please tell us what DNA looks like.

Update: Adlova gives us the anatomy of DNA (thanks, Desipundit); and Kevin is disappointed by the paper. Indian Media Notes says let's not write a premature obit of DNA. Exchange4Media has a panel talk on DNA. K jots down his notes. The over all verdict seems to suggest that the paper has not been able to live up to even an iota of the hype they launched with.

Social justice and our libertarian bloggers

2005-07-23T12:45:00.000+05:30

Another question for libertarians. Not by me, but by Chetan Dhruve. Read it and let's see what you have to say!

Amitabh Bachchan Yadav

2005-07-07T23:05:00.000+05:30

Just came back home on a rick. (Home nowadays is Noida - am living in office!) I have this strange habit of getting personal with rickshawpullers. I have therefore discovered that all rickshaw pullers in Delhi-NCR (all of them!) are immigrants from Bihar. (Just as I'm an immigrant from Uttar Pradesh.) Many of them pull a rented rickshaw for a few months, thereby making some money to go back home with, and return to the native Bihar village, working in the fields for the rest of the year.

So I ask him his name.

"My name is Amitabh Bachchan."

Excuse me?

I thought he was lying because he didn't like the condescending manner in which I asked him his name. Both of us were immigrants in the big city but that made no difference to the class equation. Who was I to ask him his name? I wasn't even a policewallah asking for hafta. I did not have the authority to ask him if he had something ridiculous called a rickshaw license. Most importantly, the class equations implied that he could not turn back and ask me my name. May be he found my question too intrusive.

But Amitabh Bachchan?

After my continued prodding he explained that ever since he was born, he's been fondly called Amitabh Bachchan.

"So you don't have a name?" I asked.

"I do," he said, "Amitabh Bachchan."

But what's your dad's last name?

"Yadav."

"So you are Amitabh Bachchan Yadav?"

"Yes."

(I wondered if this could have anything to do with 'close relations' between the Bachchans and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav.)

"Do you have any brothers?"

"Yes, seven of them."

"Is any one of them called Ajitabh?"

"No."

"Okay, thank you."

ABY reminded me of another rickshaw puller outside my college - a young lad from Bihar - who also had an interesting name, though it was not as amusing as ABY's. He was called Ashok Mandal. He was also from Bihar, also from an agrarian background, also a "backward" (by caste). He was almost my age.

"Have you heard of the Mandal Commission?" I remember asking him.

"What?" he said sheepishly, "Hum padhey likhay nahin hain." (I am not educated.)

All you anti-reservationists, don't worry. There are no reserved seats for students belonging Other Backward Classes in Delhi University or its affiliated colleges.

Invitation: The ZESTEconomics blog

2005-07-05T18:45:00.000+05:30

The ZESTEconomics mailing list is coming up with a team blog. Check it out. You may want to be a member!

Meanwhile, this week's blog mela has been hosted by Amit Varma; check it out too. And please don't forget to nominate posts for the next one, to be hosted by Nilu.

So what do we tell Manoj Rawal?

2005-06-26T20:13:00.000+05:30

Update: Frantic efforts by old-Stephanians and the larger world of non-Stephanians to help manoj could not materialise as St. Stephen's College declared he will not be turned back. Why am I having a traumatic bout of sympathy for The Slimes of India?!

source: Times of India ePaper

Having appeared for an interview, a physically challenged student, Manoj Rawal, travelled all the way from his Karnal village just to find out if St. Stephen's College had granted him admission in the Mathmateics (Hons) course. They had, along with the hostel, reports today's Times of India.

The only problem was that the annual fees of the college is Rs. 43,000 (ToI says 45, but they are wrong) . Manoj has five brothers and sisters, and his father is a farmer.

Not knowing where to go, Manoj decided to request the college principal to give him a concession. ''I spoke to the principal and he referred me to the administrative staff of the college. They just told me that the 15% concession — given to handicapped students — was all I would be given,'' he says.

A 15% concession would not amount to much for Manoj who comes from a family of six, all supported by his farmer father. ''My sister has to be married off and the maximum my family can afford is Rs 5,000. So now it's either her marriage, or my admission here,'' he says.

His options are now to seek admission in some small college in Karnal or Panipat where it will be cheaper.

''But getting into St Stephen's College meant a lot to me, coming from a government school in village Kohand,'' he says.

St Stephen's College principal Anil Wilson could not be contacted for comment.

[Link unavailable, report by Shreya Roy, The Times of India, 26 June 2005, Page 4, Delhi edition]

I hope you remember the hoopla about Murli Manohar Joshi wanting to reduce the fees of the Indian Institutes of Management. It seemed the entire nation (actually, only the media, the industry and free market polemicists) were up in arms against MM Joshi: how dare that obscurantist professor-turned-politician meddle in the affairs of an institution that produces free marketeers with machine-like vitality?

Conspiracy theories were hatched that this was a larger attempt by the Minister for Human Resource Development to dilute the autonomy of the IIM's and 'saffronise' them. Given the ways of the man, these conspiracy theories could well have been true; they never materialised, however, because the saffronite got replaced by the detoxificant.

Minister Joshi's argument in wanting to reduce the IIM fees was that the fees should not be more than one-third of India's per capita income. A high fees running into several lakh rupees would effectively keep out a number of students. But the media would not listen; especially activist in spreading panic about such 'saffronisation' was the pro-market paper, The Indian Express. A letter writer in Tehelka said that the media had been presenting only one side of the story, ignoring middle class Indians like him who were happy with the move. Not surprisingly, data suggests that the 'average' IIM parent earns over three times the national per capita income.

Two possible positions on the issue:

1) If you don't have the money to pay what a college charges, you don't have the right to be in that college. You can't get a product or service for less than the market price just because you are poor. You get what you earn: there is no such thing as a free lunch. The welfare statist that I am, such an idea appears a bit insensitive to me. What is Manoj's fault that his father is a poor farmer who has to support six children? Isn't it enough that Manoj has worked hard despite his disability to get into an elite college with a minor relaxation in the merit criteria? And despite the fact that he was in a government school - you know the quality of education in India's state-run schools.

2) You can get an education loan. Just that your father has to pay interest on it while you are studying, and you pay it back when you earn. However, if the loan is in lakhs, the interest is also going to be high enough to rule it out for many Indian families. Besides, Manoj's day to day expenditure in a city like Delhi is likely to be much higher than in his native village in Haryana. Also, there is no guarantee (unlike in the IIM's) that a Maths (hons) course will get a disabled student from a rural background a job decent enough to pay back the loan. Lastly, the loan situation becomes complicated if he wants to do a master's as well.

Your comments are welcome, especially if you claim to have membership of the elite "libertarian cartel" of Indian bloggers.

As for Manoj, I'm sure the appearance of this article has already got him sponsorship. As it happens, I am a student of St. Stephen's College, and can tell you that Manoj's case is not isolated. Some years ago a brilliant student from Bihar took admission in the BA Sanskrit (honours) course, paid the first bill but didn't have to money to pay the second. He requested for it to be waived; sorry sir, said the college, please withdraw your admission. Which is exactly what he had to do, and is now in Hindu College across the street, where the fees is half of hat it is in Stephen's. So when they say St Stephen's is elitist, this is probably what they mean.

The last pre-monsoon blog mela

2005-06-26T16:34:00.000+05:30

Shanti's blog mela is up here: a lot of good blog reading lined up for you. The next mela will be hosted by Amit Uncut Verma; nominate now.

Does Mr Tytler know what he is saying?

2005-06-21T22:23:00.000+05:30

I completely agree with what Gurcharan Das has to say about the University Grants Commission:

Only two dozen out of its 200 plus universities offer reasonable teaching and most of these existed prior to the birth of UGC. For 50 years it has promoted rote learning, incompetent faculty, and mediocrity. It has punished original thinking and failed to create an employable graduate. Hence, students have been pushed into a parallel universe of coaching classes, which ironically take their obligation to students far more seriously. [link]

One hears news reports about students committing suicide after flunking Class 12 board exams. But here's one suicide caused by the lack of examinations!

No exams again, boy ends life

By Siraj Qureshi in Agra
The Indian Express
Thursday, June 02, 2005

A student of Dr B.R. Ambedkar University in Agra committed suicide yesterday after the authorities put off the pharmacy examinations for the third year in a row.

Sonvir Singh's classmates took to the streets after the incident and went on a rampage for over three hours inside the campus today, pelting stones at the Institute of Basic Science and the Vice-Chancellor's office. The university authorities had to call in the police to bring the students under control.

According to the students, Sonvir, a resident of Saiyyan town of Agra, had shut himself inside his hostel room on Tuesday after he saw that the university has closed for summer vacation till July 4 without announcing the exam dates for the pharmacy course. It was to be held in May.

Fearing that his careerwas doomed, he allegedly took his own life.

And guess what:

Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs Jagdish Tytler on Monday said... the government was contemplating setting up universities exclusively for PIO [Persons of Indian Origin], keeping in mind their need for quality higher education. [link]

What a joke, this country!

BBM at Shanti's

2005-06-21T21:10:00.000+05:30

This week's blog mela was hosteld by Harini. The next one was to be by Sruthijith of Spontaneous Order, but since he's unable to, good Shanti has taken it upon herself. So nominate now.

Reservations are more complex than you think

2005-06-20T23:25:00.000+05:30

My recent post abour Dr Death has given many a chance to harp once again on 'merit', refusing to see the reservations conundrum from any other perspective. You may want to have a look at this article by Dr Shobna Sonpar about Dalit students at IIT Delhi. I present two excerpts:

In the course of working for over a decade in the Student Counseling Service the dominant themes heard from the reserved quota students were the following:

They faced enormous pressure from family and community to succeed. Very often being first-generation literate, and the first in their families and villages to have reached the portals of higher education, their success signaled a financially comfortable future and a position of influence that would benefit the extended family and community. Being a relational society, it is expected that the fruits of individual success will be distributed. Initially, the students were gratified to be held in such high esteem and proud to be in such a prestigious institution. But soon, anxiety about succeeding, guilt about failure and a sense of being heavily burdened predominated.
They had worked extremely hard through school and for the entrance examination, and their experience after admission was one of continued and unrelenting struggle just to keep their heads above water. They faced multiple stresses and difficulties including coping with a language of instruction (English) in which they were not fluent; feeling lost, alien and intimidated in an urban, globalised environment very different from their home towns and villages; not being able to approach teachers and others for assistance because of anxieties and cultural norms that inhibited them from approaching authority. Most of all, they were competing in the same league with those acknowledged to be among the highest academic achievers in the country. Although admitted on concessionary criteria, they took the same number and type of courses as other students did and were evaluated in the same way. There was no provision for remedial/ bridge courses or extra tutorials. They thus experienced repeated academic failure and in the course of time, a crippling erosion of confidence and hope.
They felt a double sense of stigma. More overtly expressed was the sense of being academically 'outcaste', inferior and 'not entitled' to these highly coveted seats. Less openly expressed but powerful nevertheless, the feeling of academic stigma resonated with the caste stigma that was inevitably a part of their consciousness. Many carried toxic memories of humiliation and hostility from caste-related experiences in the past. Often, minor incidents (not necessarily caste-related) in the present triggered engulfing feelings of shame and anger. They coped primarily by lying low, by being at the periphery of institutional and student life and by affiliating only with others from similar backgrounds. This corresponded with an internal sense of being ignored and being invisible to the rest of the system.

Also:

The shrillness of the merit discourse drowned out the facts - for instance, that the proposed reservations boiled down to 5% reservations in central (federal) government jobs and seats in a few universities for people constituting 75% of the country's population, that caste was neither the only nor the most important criterion for determining the beneficiaries (there were 11 criteria that included educational, social and quality of living parameters ranging from primary school drop-out rates, to accessibility of drinking water, to percentage of women married off before the age of 17), and that there were several other important structural reforms recommended including land reforms. The outrage that fuelled the agitation appeared to have arisen from the fact that the Mandal recommendations directly threatened the prevailing distribution of resources that favoured the 'forward' castes and classes. Although implementation of the Mandal reforms had been on the election manifesto of all the major political parties, in actually daring to implement them the government at the time collapsed. As for the students from the reserved quota at IIT; in the months following the agitation several chose to drop-out saying that they would seek readmission by repeating the entrance examination in the non-reserved category. Others who had been faring reasonably well in their studies deteriorated. In sum, the agitation reflected a twist to the 'internalization of oppression' and seemed to have heightened their sense of disentitlement.

Don't ban smoking on screen. Don't ban smoking. Ban tobacco

2005-06-20T22:01:00.000+05:30

The Union of India's decision to ban on-screen smoking is ridiculous; the order to blur smoking scenes in past films even more so.

For one, no public debate preceded the ban. It was merely a minister's gimmick.

Secondly, people, especially when they are young, tend to be attracted more by the forbidden than the available. So this blurring business in very counter-productive.

Thirdly, this ban speaks of the government's hypocrisy: the same government which earns huge tax revenues from the sale of tobacco wants cinema not to 'promote' cigarette.

I would say ban tobacco. Don't give me the freedom theory. I am allergic to passive smoking, I start coughing like mad. Despite the Supreme Court's ban on smoking in public places, people continue to smoke out in the open. It's too difficult to impose the ban. On Saturday I was in a group meeting of researchers and the Sunday before that in a poetry meet. So many were smoking it seemed impolite to point out that it hurts me. People take out a cigarette with such panache that makes amply clear that if you object, you've got to be a moron who doesn't respect individual rights. My polite request to a gentlemen once resulted in threats of violence.

So dear minister, don't ban on-screen smoking. Don't ban smoking either. Ban the production and sale of tobacco altogether! That also reduces the burden on the country's meagre health infrastructure.

Seventeen poets in search of a community

2005-06-17T16:59:00.000+05:30

Pix by aNaNd ViVeK tAnEjA

On Sunday, 12 June, all of eighteen people turned up for the first ever ZEST offline meet, held to mark the first anniversary of the ZESTPoets list. I had posted an announcement earlier. Of the eighteen one had to leave within half an hour, which is by when we got around to starting it. ANd not all had arrived by then: inexplicably, people would join us in groups every now and then, only when Vivek Narayannan would be reading!

Those who attended included Vivek Narayannan, another Vivek, Brian Mendonca, Blanche, Ronnie Bbanerjee, Anand Vivek Taneja (who took these pictures), Monica Mody, Trupthi Basarvaj, Sanjukta Basu, Abhinav, Harneet Bhatia, Susan Alex, Nitoo Das, and Ravi. The one who left before the action began was Dhiraj Singh. I have forgotten some names: please remind me you were there and I will include them.

In terms of both quality and quantity, I think, the output was much better there than on the list! Apologies for using so un-poetic terms in the last sentence. We read not just English and Indian English poetry, but also French, Portugese, Urdu and Hindi! Beat that.

Unfortunately, Juhi Dua (the initiator of ZESTPoets) tells me that in the Mumbai meet organised by Loquations, only four people turned up! That's probably because it was on Tuesday the forteenth, at 5:30 pm. Office hours don't give concessions to the muse.

It spontaneously so happened that people started reading particular poems in response to a poem read out by another person earlier. This happened in particular in the case of Vivek Narayannan's 'city' poems.

I particularly enjoyed Brian Mendonca's work, and the debate over whether a poem should have a glossary by the poet, needs to be explored further. Brian gave me copies of his essays (published in Tehelka and other places) on Indian poetry in English, and also his poems. I have requested him to post some of this on the list.

I don't know why Nitoo didn't bring along any of her (or anyone's) work. I often enjoy her poetry at her blog. I was speaking to Brian on the phone and he said he was amazed by the number of people who came just to listen and not to read. I think these were closet poets, and are likely to come out by the next time we meet again at the Indian Coffe House's open terrace, where geriatrics and monkeys, Raj-era butlers and cheap coffee give us good company. Anand gave us a background of Coffe House's history and its significance for poets, and given what an anachronism the place is today, I read out a Vikram Seth poem about another place of the past.

Party for the Retirement of the Oldest-Serving British Museum Reading Room Book Attendant
- Vikram Seth

Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, yes, it has been
A very pleasant forty... fifty years.
Quite so, sir; how time does fly. I have seen
So many changes that the world appears
Peculiar now. But this place, not much change.
Well, yes, sir, that's correct, the lighting's new.
And now we're particular about checking; strange,
Recently, though, we have lost quite a few.
Marx?... Marx?... well, there was someone of that name;
Old gentlemen he was. Sat at 10A,
Writing, writing, writing, always the same,
And foreign languages too, day after day,
Year after year. One day he left, and since then
No-one has ever heard of him again.

On this blog and on mail, there have been demands that the poetry read out at the meet be posted online. It's not possible for me to do so: there were so many and I don't have them with me. I have only their music in my mind. Those who attended are welcome to post the poems they read on the list. If you are not a member of the list, you can still read the archives. You can join ZESTPoets here, or by sending a blank email to ZESTPoets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Before leaving, some demanded that this offline meet should be held every month. Sure, why not? See you again on Sunday, 31 July 2005 at the Indian Coffe House, poems in hand.

Doctor Doctor, Dalit Doctor

2005-06-15T02:09:00.000+05:30

Reports The Telegraph:

Indian ‘Dr Death’ spotted in US

Sydney (PTI): An Indian-origin surgeon known as “Doctor Death” and linked to more than 80 deaths in an Australian hospital has been sighted in the US, a newspaper said on Monday.

Jayant Patel and his wife were seen showing friends a house that was for sale in Portland, Oregon, the Australian newspaper said quoting a resident.

Patel had fled Australia earlier this year as investigations into his work at the Bundaberg base hospital began, the paper said. The resident, who refused to give her name, said Patel was living in a million-dollar home in an upmarket neighbourhood.

“He just walked down the street, he just walked in... He looked exactly the same as he looked on television,” the paper quoted her as saying. “It was creepy.”

To add more to my musings on the Dalit question, I grew up listening to anti-reservations rhetoric which went something like this: 'You enroll a guy for MBBS with 40% marks just because he's Dalit or OBC and he doesn't know how to treat patients! Would you like to be treated by such a doctor? He could kill you!'

Now Dr Jayant Patel's name suggests he's a high caste Gujarati.

Similarly what do upper caste men (heck, even women) do in government offices? From morning to evening just how much merit do they show in serving the people?

Look who's talking about merit!

Update on 20 June: In the face of expected criticism, may I clarify that I did not say merit does not matter. I should know. Had to slog extra hard to get into an elite college, where Christians get admission with 15% marks less than the norm just because it's a Christian institution. With dalits, however, my point is that they have been deprived of the means to acquire merit. You need to see my posting in the context of my previous postings and comments on caste/reservations

Caste in the newsroom?

Caste and the city

The Ungreat Indian Middle Class

Is there such a thing as a free lunch?

Update 2: Also see my recent post on reservations.

Invitation: poetry reading on 14 June in Mumbai

2005-06-14T23:58:00.000+05:30

The ZESTPoets list has turned one year old, and we're celebrating by organising its first real-world poetry reading on

Sunday 12 June 2005, 5 pm
at the National Coffee House, Connaught Place, Delhi.
(Third Floor, Mohan Singh Place, near Rivoli Cinema)

You are welcome to walk in, preferably with poems in hand. You are welcome to read whatever poetry you would want to. You don't have to be a ZESTPoets member to attend, but joining the group would not be a bad idea either.

We have chosen CP because it is central and accessible to all; and Coffee House on Anand Vivek Taneja's recommendation. Anand promises, "Coffee House is used to impecunious poets hanging out for hours on end and declaiming (usually terrible) free verse..."

So we'll try and rescue the place. You are welcome to bring along friends and spouses. It would be nice if you could inform beforehand that you will be there, by sending a brief email to lists-at-shivamvij-dot-com.

See you there!

Loquations celebrates ZESTPoets

Loquations extends a warm invitation to all ZEST-ers in Bombay; please join us in the reading of your poems at NCPA on 14th July 2005.

14th July: Poetry on the net: Selections from ZESTPoets
(ZESTPoets celebrated their first birthday on June 3rd.)
Various readers present a programme of poems posted on the ZESTPoets list.

Moderator: Jane Bhandari.
Venue: The Sunken Garden, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai
(Entrance opposite the Oberoi.)
Time: 5.30 (more or less) till 8.00.
Date: Tuesday, 14th July 2005

ABOUT LOQUATIONS: Loquations was started by Adil Jussawalla a little over five years ago to provide a platform for poetry readings in English, including translations from other languages. There are about fifty members, some of whom are practising poets, though this is not a requirement. Presentations cover a wide variety of poetry subjects and styles, ranging from Sufi poems to William Shakespeare, from Rap to Classical Greek, or a simple reading of favourite poems. Presenters are mostly drawn from the group itself. Members do not read their own poetry at these meetings. From time to time outstation poets drop by to read their works, and take part in a lively discussion afterwards.

Loquations meets every Tuesday evening at The Chauraha, NCPA, by kind permission.

Membership is free, and visitors are welcome.

For more information email loquations2003@yahoo.co.uk

Sad. Really sad

2005-06-13T01:40:00.000+05:30

Thank you Annie, for this revealing post. Excerpt:

Hindi India Today rep number 1 clears throat - Ahem! Sir, we were hoping to work with you; we have a proposal in mind...

Raghuvansh Prasad Singh - But I am telling you the Hariyali scheme has nothing to do with the union ministry.

Hindi India Today rep number 2 shuts laptop down, then restarts it and grins at me.

rep 1 - We have crossed 1 crore circulation, sir, did you know?

Raghuvansh - One crore? That is good news.... yes, but NGOs are the bottom of the priority list for projects.

rep 2 - Yes sir, much more than 1 crore. That's just the Hindi edition.

Raghuvansh - Hmmm. Good, good... Why don't you understand - I cannot clear this project because it is not a centrally sponsored scheme!

rep 1 - Sir, actually, we were looking at a VCD, that goes in free with the magazine... or a feature that would deliver your vision to the people.

Raghuvansh - my vision?

rep 1 - Yes, sir.

Raghuvansh - Great. Then go right ahead, and deliver our vision to the people. That is a good thing to do.

rep 1 - Ahem! er... ahem! Sir, we were thinking about a paid feature.

Raghuvansh - A paid feature? What nonsense! There is no such thing as paid-for news. We have no provision for it in our rules.

Read the whole thing.

Blogging a resignation letter

2005-06-13T01:28:00.000+05:30

You got a new job and you find it sucks? Want to resign in style? Want to tell your bosses they are idiots? Simple, do it Fadereu's way.

Charukesi's blog mela

2005-06-11T11:55:00.000+05:30

Chaurkesi's blog mela is up here. The next one will be hosted by Haini; please send her your nominations.

The Philosophy of My Life...

2005-06-11T01:13:00.000+05:30

...was penned down long ago by Bob Black.

Bodhi Shop

2005-06-11T00:57:00.000+05:30

My friend Dhiraj has started a new business. It's called Bodhi Shop, sells Nirvana:

We specialise in giving our visitors a TEA-BAG experience. Human consiousness, we believe, is a spaghetti ball of buzzing energy from which thoughts and ideas leap(or k, to paraphrase the great Salman)into space, travel and then leap(k) into other willing balls of energy. Much like liquid tea leaks into hot water.

Interested?

And now: DesiPandit

2005-06-09T19:54:00.000+05:30

Just saw there's a new blog called Desi Pundit. I don't know who s/he is, but Desi Pundit's aim can only be heartening to us Indian bloggers:

Everyone claims to write for sheer joy of penning their thoughts but most do not admit that they get a kick when number of their readers increase. DesiPundit will seek to fill that void and host only external links. Yup, you are right, something like a Desi Instapundit

So there you have a constantly running Blog Mela.

By the way, that's how a lot of bloggers blog anyway: A blogs about cabbages and then B blogs about A's post on cabbages and politely disagrees and then C uses his own blog to add his fifty paisa. Don't know why they can't use the comments feature.

Secondly, someone was telling me there's smething called an online blog aggregator?

I don't know about readers, but any amount of link mirroring always helps search engine page ranks :)

By the way, I hate the NRI term 'desi'.

Update: Desipundit has moved to a new location. Apologies for the typo in this post.

Book tag! Book tag! Here I come!

2005-06-09T01:02:00.000+05:30

What nonsense is this: just because a celebrity blogger says he's 'book tagged' me, I have to spread the chain? Well yes, I have to. I resisted the call. You know I don't like to follow the herd. But Yazad is Yazad: a post or two a week on AnarCapLib is enough to cause small storms in Indian blogosphere.

Since then, another celebrity blogger, Dilip D'Souza (who's been chatting with Amitav Ghosh on radio these days) book tagged me. And now Saket Vulturo Vaidya has done it. These Bombay bloggers I tell you.

So here I go:

Total number of books I own: A few hundred. And that includes "Passport" and "Champion" guides to pass "subsidiary" exams :)

Last book I bought: Just bought Suketu Mehta's Maximum City. Read the first chapter today and I already regret buying it. It was so over hyped I knew it would be disappointing.

Last book I read: Foucault's Power/Knowledge. Will need to read it again to digest it.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. India Unbound by Gurcharan Das. I read the book in my impressionable years, and I now feel it was the right time to read it. These ideas of globalisation bringing India to salvation via a call 'center' have become too cliched today, and you need to read Das to understand the history of post-independent India's economy. Reading the book gave me the confidence about the time and place in history I am in.

I remember the author's presentation of Indira Gandhi as the Enemy No. 1 of India's economy line by line. At the same time, I still can't reconcile myself with the author's leniency over the Ambanis' not-exactly-virtuous ways of doing business. This sealed forever my belief in taking ideology, any ideology, not too rigidly, and with a pinch of salt. I agree with the sub-title of Monica's blog: "We can become anything. We are essentially protean."

2. India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics by Christopher Jaffrelot: As someone who considers himself a political person, as a university student who will be a full time journalist by next year, my awareness about caste forms an important part of my political identity, and I have Jaffrelot to thank for that. Jaffrelot establishes how the Congress party failed to incorporate Dalits and backward castes into its fold after independence, and how this was responsible for the rise of the low castes in politics. I had grown up in Lucknow in an upper caste family and society where I had only heard Mayawati and Mulayam Singh and Lalu Yadav being called names: but reading Jaffrelot's book marked the turning point in my understanding of caste and caste politics. My (upper caste) friends laugh at me when I tell them I vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party!

Jinnah wanted Pakistan because he thought the interests of Muslims won't be addressed in an independent India: the Hindu-dominated functioning of the Congress party had established this beyond doubt. Similar marginalisation happened with Dalits, as Jaffrelot establishes, and you have to thank Indian democracy for providing a safety valve through which the low caste backlash could take place.

3. Ethnic conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India by Ashutosh Varshney: This is not the first book on Hindu-Muslim riots, but the first and only one I read. It introduced me to well known ideas about riots, such as riots don't just happen but there are riot systems that get institutionalised in cities. The reason why this book influenced me so much was its revelation that Lucknow had never had a Hindu Muslim riot - despite being a BJP-Sangh base; despite being just a few hours away from Ayodhya which made the whole of north India riot in 1992; despite having 30% Muslims and 70% Hindus. The reasons for the lack of communal violence in Lucknow were equally revealing: such as Shia-Sunni violence.

What a fool I am, I thought. I have spent 18 years in this city; why does it take an NRI professor to explain me the politics of my city?

4. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh: A beautiful book, the best crafted narrative I have read. One of the great ambitions of my life is to turn it into a movie! I can't list enough reasons for loving it. No matter how obseshed you are about Pakistan-bashing (and there are a lot of Indian bloggers who have mastered this art), it is difficult to not get swept away by Ghosh's holding up of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as mirror images of each other. It takes some time for you to return to sense and realise that the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan is being considered an equal of a democratic India which is after all surviving Hindutva. Okay, here's the clue: the OUP university edition has an important essay by AN Kaul.

Once again: we're protean...

5. Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India by Pinki Virani: 'You are a writer and I want to give you an idea to write about,' said a school senior when I first met him years after he had passed out. I only knew him by face in school, and I had met him on the net while asking people to respond to questions for a story I was doing for the Lucknow edition of The Slimes of India. Let's call him A. Now A made me talk on Yahoo! Messenger and exchange emails with an anonymous friend of his, B, who remained anonymous. B went on and on about how child abuse for 14 years destroyed his life, destroyed his academic career and 'made' him a homosexual, which he detests. One of B's problems was that he loved A and wanted to have a relationship with him!

But you know the journalist I am: I eventually got A to confess that there was no B. It was A himself. I managed to persuade him to take counselling at the Nur Manzil Psychiatric Centre and buy a book whose review I had read in Outlook. It was called Bitter Chocolate or something, I said. He did both and he said it helped. It turned out that Nur Manzil was giving him fake anti-depressants, but he said they worked!

B is stable now, claims to have 'become' straight. I decided not to ask him the many questions I still had in mind about his story. But just one: how did Bitter Chocolate 'help' him get over what he called his 'clinical depression'? He gave a strange answer: he said that reading the stories of so many child abuse victims (and that includes the author) assured him that he was not the only one, he was not being singled out and victimised by the whole world, or rather his relatives. The book's therapy methods and encyclopedic research, he said, helped him more than the bastard shrink.

It's amazing how a book can lead a revolution. I asked B to lend me Bitter Chocolate. I could not get myself to read most of it. Since then, the book has inspired many debates, seminars, talks and plays. It has opened up an area that middle class India never talked about. This book influenced me because I saw its influence in the world around me, an in this acquaintance who now thankfully considers those years as a bad movie that's over.

A book that's on its way out of your house as you write this: Has to be Maximum City!

I book tag:

Anand Vivek Taneja
Monica Mody
Manish Vij
Nitoo Das
Ravikiran Rao

Mall Road's Free Consultancy for Banglore's Kids

2005-06-08T16:27:00.000+05:30

The insomniac that I am, getting up early and going to school had been one of the most challenging tasks of my life. And it continues to be so with 8:40 classes in college.

In Bangalore, the traffic police, parents and school managments have been squabbling over the time schools should start the day. (And this is major news on Google News!) Bangalore's schools want to make it 9 am, and I don't understand how they got so much sense. I had to be in school sharp at 7:15 am in summers! The traffic plice wants it to be shifted from 8:30 am to 8:am, to clear the way for office traffic that begins at 9 am.

I have a simple solution for them all: make it 10 am!

Love Jinnah, hate Jinnah

2005-06-08T12:18:00.000+05:30

The Parivar's new tamasha over patriarch LK Advani's declaration of Jinnah as a secular man, and that too on the soil of 'the enemy country', is more than a little amusing. I have often interacted with RSS types, and they all have the same ideas you know. And you know what I have often heard about Jinnah from these RSS types? They told me that it was very good after all that Jinnah created Pakistan, because that substantially decreased the proportion of Muslims vis-a-vis Hindus in India. I've heard this so many times that I am amazed they object to Advani praising Jinnah!

Twice condemned: A Dalit and a Woman

2005-06-04T23:09:00.000+05:30

I am a Dalit-middle-class, University educated, Telugu speaking Dalit-Christian-Woman. All these identities have a role in the way I perceive myself and the worlds I inhabit. I, as a Dalit woman, primarily write for Dalit women to uphold our interests. This statement of mine is necessary because if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others – for their use and to our detriment. This voice is not representative of all Dalit women. However, I know that my voice is important because it is the voice of a socially denigrated category, suppressed and silenced.

That's M. Swathy Margaret writing in the latest issue of Insight magazine. Wow. Had been looking for a Dalit woman who would be an intellectual of this stature. Her bio in the essay reads: "M Swathy Margaret has submitted a path-breaking dissertation on Writing Dalit Feminist Discourse Through Translation: Translating Select African American Short Stories into Telugu. She is now pursuing her PhD at CIEFL, Hyderabad. She is also a research fellow at Anveshi, a Research Centre for Women’s Studies."

Here's more from that essay:

My own self-perception and understanding as a Dalit woman, as a point of intersection/an overlap between the categories “Dalit” and “woman”, took shape in the University of Hyderabad when I joined there for my M.A. in English.

[...]

I was given a nice room in the corner of the wing in the Ladies Hostel. But the only thing was that it was unused for a couple of years in spite of it being the best room in that wing, I was told. I did not ask why. Later I was told it was the room where one Dalit woman Suneetha hung herself to the fan, after continuous sexual exploitation and ultimate rejection by a Reddy man when the question of marriage came up. Some inquired if that fact scared me. The ghost that stared at me was not the thought of a hanging female body but it was my own body which is Dalit and woman and is as vulnerable as Suneetha’s. The stories of Dalit women being used and thrown by upper caste men, told and retold by my mother came back shouting loudly in my ears.

Read the whole thing.

Insight is a very readable Dalit youth magazine brought out by a group of students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University; they are associated with the Dalit Study Circle there. The thing about Insight is that it is refreshingly human, as opposed to the theorising of the Dalit academic pantheon, and at the same time brings forth academic work on caste in a human form. Its editor is the very dynamic Anoop Kumar.

You can read the magazine every month online and subscribe to the print version by writing to insightjnu@rediffmail.com.

DTC bus route finder

2005-06-04T18:10:00.000+05:30

An online DTC bus route finder. Always thought there had to be such a thing. But I could never find it because the DTC website does not have it! Only recently did I Google for it and found it on the Delhi government website. Check it out.

The Times of Crap

2005-06-04T02:50:00.000+05:30

Update on 7 June: Thanks to a friend's friend who works at ToI, I now know the reason for this selective targeting and the sudden hiring spree at the Slimes: the poaching by DNA in Mumbai at salaries sometimes five times higher than what they were getting at the Slimes. There was panic at Times House but the Jains hit back by saying there's no dearth of supply, only of demand: so these badly written ads for stenographers appeared. Also, there were no ads for Jesus and Mary College and the Delhi School of Economics as I had earlier mentioned. Only JNU, Stephen's and LSR - at least in Delhi.

Job Function : Content/Editors/Journalists

Specialization : Others
Industry : Journalism
Qualification : Graduate
Experience : 0 -1
Level : Entry Level/Fresher
Location : Delhi

The Times of St. Stephen's - The Times of India

JOB DESCRIPTION: We invite applications from the Alma-mater of St. Stephen`s only for career in Journalism who could well be termed as architects of change in times to come, your ambition our aspiration.... wewill build together, irrespective of whether you are currently a journalist or not. Candidates with Economics, International studies, Philosophical & Spiritual studies would be preferred. Passion to hammer fat-free words that digest well with the masses fit the frame and that matters more for this role. The position will groom you for roles of reporting, editing, who knows you may be guru of journalism in years to come ....come xplore.

COMPANY DESCRIPTION: The Times of India Group is India`s largest media and entertainment conglomerate. We have emerged as a major Infotainment Company with large presence in Internet activities, Entertainment, Retailing, Radio, Multimedia, Events and Publishing. Our Brands The Times Of India, The Economic Times, Navbharat Times, Maharashtra Times, Femina & Filmfare are by far the largest selling newspapers and magazines in India. Technology has been our lifeline, and with its innovative use we have seen the group establish itself as a market leader. We are an institution, which prides itself in its positive work environment centered on customer satisfaction, professional achievement and continuous learning.

This advertisement was all over the place in The Times of India some days ago. Not that I saw it, because I don't read that paper, but friends told me. So I found it on timesjobs.com. The hilarious thing about the ad is the opening sentence: "We invite applications from the Alma-mater of St. Stephen`s..." Now ToI editors (or rather the marketing guys, who must have written this after being ordered to by one of the Jains) need some help from my copy of the Oxford Talking Dictionary CD:

Alma Mater: /alm mt, met-/ n. phr. Pl. Alma Maters, (rare) Almae Matres /alm mtrez, almi metriz/.
[L = bounteous mother, a title given to various Roman goddesses, esp. Ceres and Cybele.]
1 Someone or something providing nourishment and care.
2 esp. A university or school as regarded by its past and present members.

Also:

alumnus /lmns/ n. Pl. -ni /-n/.
[L = nursling, pupil, f. alere nourish.]
Formerly, a pupil. Now spec., a (male) graduate or former student of a school, college, university, or other educational institution.

So who is the 'Alma-mater' of St. Stephen's College? Delhi Times?!

Not so long ago, The Slimes of India had displayed its ignorance of the term 'spoof', promptly exposed by Indian blogosphere. They could silence Mediaah! but they can't possible sue all of us bloggers.

Stephen's is not the only elite institution they targeted. They did the same for St. Xavier's in Mumbai - the incorrect syntax and typos intact! Friends tell me (and they all read that paper and bitch about it; I don't see why they have to read it at all) that they also did this to the Delhi School of Economics, Jesus and Mary College and Jawaharlal Nehru University.

This means they spared Lady Shri Ram College? Probably an impact of their robust journalism department.

At first I was outraged when I read the Stephen's ad: how could they be so openly elitist? But given that Stephen's was one of a cartel amongst their target. But I now understand their strategy. You graduated from one of these institutions this summer and are not sure about a postgrad and you wake up one morning in late May and see this ad and decide what the heck, this is flattering, let's try the interview!

If your college's "Alma-mater" was invited, you as an alumnus were clearly not! Yet if you were flattered enough to walk-in for the interview, you probably don't know how journalists and editors are treated at the Times. You need a small reading list:

Is this journalism?
Would you like to be in the news? Want a picture on the front page of Bombay Times? Just pay and get it, says Hemal Ashar (Mid-Day).

The leader cons the reader
The Times of India began by devaluing editors. Devaluing journalism is the next logical step. Selling news brought the paper Rs 18 crores in 2003-2004. By Sevanti Ninan (The Hoot)

Indian media blog shuts down after legal threats from Times of India
By Mark Glaser in the Online Journalism Review

ToI editors don't know what a spoof is
A post at C**S**F by Suhail Kazi with over a hundred delicious comments

Times of India: Jewel of journalism
Posting at Sepia Mutiny by Manish Vij

Jivha's archives on the Slimes of India
Ex-blogger Jivha used to regularly blog about his favourite paper.

Offline = Dead

2005-06-04T00:28:00.000+05:30

All credit for keeping my away from the internet for over 48 hours now goes to my current professional engagements. Without access to the internet I felt I was handicapped; handicapped enough to be depressed. Am glad I'm back; didn't know blogging could be so addictive, though there are other things too that keep me addicted to my comp, like my mail.

Anyway, Vulturo Saket's well-written blog mela is up here; please nominate your posts like a good blogbandhu for the next Mela, to be hosted by Charu.

Dalit glamour

2005-06-02T23:10:00.000+05:30

Hindu boy meets Muslim girl, or Muslim girl meets Hindu boy. Love. War. Resolution. Hindi movies have done this to death, even adding Pakistan to give the tale a transnational twist. Indian Hindu boy, Pakistani Muslim girl. You know. It works. It sells.

When I read the news report below, I wondered why a dalit boy/Brahmin girl love equation has not been exploited by Hindi cinema. I have my guesses, but let's see what are yours. Leave your answer as a comment below. Also, if at all there are any mainstream (or non-mainstream) movies with love equations revolving around caste, do let me know.

Caste barriers force lovers to commit suicide

Press Trust of India

Moga, Punjab: Caste barriers forced a couple to commit suicide after the family of the girl, who belonged to an upper caste, did not agree to their marriage.

Gurtej Singh, a truck driver, and his beloved Kulwinder Kaur ended their lives in village Alamwala of here yesterday by consuming some poisonous substance, police said.

Kaur yesterday bolted herself inside a room at her house in the village and consumed some poisonous substance, which Gurtej had given her after breaking one of the windowpanes, they said.

Later, Gurtej was also found dead at some distance from the house, they said, adding it was the girl's parents who informed them about the incident.

Police said Kulwinder's parents were opposed to the idea of marrying off their daughter to a Dalit. [The Indian Express]

Blog Mela Dawt Kaam

2005-06-02T20:32:00.000+05:30

It is in the fitness of things that someone has registered a site called www.blogmela.com and started blogging there. Check it out.

Ucchay Burj Lahore Dey

2005-06-02T19:37:00.000+05:30

When in my life will I see the city of Lahore? My previous attempts in this endeavour have not had much success. This poem by Harris Khalique increases the urgency of my desire. It is from Harris' book Between You and Your Love (Karachi, 2004). If you are in Delhi and would like a copy, please ask me.

The Rivers

The Ravi and The Pride, two rivers.
Many canals taken out.
Liquid history flowing everywhere.
Certain and raw.
The Ravi holds finesse and wisdom.
The Pride, emotion and wonderment.
The two meet.
The confluence is Lahore.

In spring and summers
nothing is ambivalent
on the banks of the rivers.
Women, men, children, bazaars,
buildings, parks and kites.
Each has an opinion on the other.
Like the critics of literature and art.
Life oozes out from every pore of Lahore.

Winter brings a bit of murkiness.
The fog of The Pride is thicker than the fog of The Ravi.
Rich friends who are no more acquainted with you
invite you to dinners outside,
shiver when the fire is out.
Common folk, warm and friendly,
pray the towers of Lahore become taller *
when the fog is gone.

* ucchay burj Lahore dey

Capital will consume one and all

2005-06-02T00:13:00.000+05:30

I was raised in a world which had its own noisy neighbourhood bazaar, and I somehow feel belong(ed) there. Despite migrating to Delhi, I feel I belong to that kind of a bazaar; I like Malkaganj over Kamla Nagar, Daryaganj over the Gurgaon malls that attract more domestic tourists than Red Fort or India Gate. I feel that I am gradually becoming a consumerist animal: I feel an urgency, sometimes, about a conflict in me between the dhaba chai and the Barista coffee (which costs 25 times the chai). I feel that the consumerist animal is taking over me, that the world of the malls is emerging as victor.

At times this seems dangerously like the Good Angel and the Bad Angel of Doctor Faustus who sold his soul to the devil for short-term gains. A sobering thought, however, is that I'm not alone. As Tanu (a pseudonym of Rinku Dutta) writes in this poem: capital will consume one and all. Here it is, via ZESTPoets:

'Husha Husha, We All Fall Down' *

You are not the only one to fall
Stop feeling targeted and victimized
Capital will consume one and all

One by one, those who once stood tall
Succumb to petty money-mongering
You are not the only one to fall

Look at people thronging the city mall
Sold to designer brands, instant delights
Capital will consume one and all

Communes of the east cannot hold withal
Women and men of oil accursed lands
You are not the only one to fall

Widowed women on knees to Allah call
And though you put a tongue to every wound
Capital will consume one and all.

Soon the eagle soaring-in-flight shall stall
And plummet to the carrion-covered earth
You are not the only one to fall
Capital will consume one and all.

Tanu

May 28, 2005

* Ring around the rosie,
A pocketful of posie,
Husha, husha,
We all fall down.

- A nursery rhyme

Deep Throat

2005-06-01T00:24:00.000+05:30

Yeah, it was him. Felt. Mark Felt. FBI officer who was responsible for the Watergate scandal broken by the Wasington Post. For thirty three years he kept his identity secret, despite seeing a book and a movie on the scandal, and endless speculation about who Deep Throat was. It is only now that he has made it public, at 91 years of age.

Salute you, sir.

Devil Sings The Hymns

2005-05-30T19:35:00.000+05:30

On the Jo Bole So Nihaal bombings, Khushwant Singh's brief article in Outlook, Devil Sings The Hymns, is worth being quoted in full:

The slogan Jo bole so nihal, Sat Sri Akal (Blessed is the one who says God is truth) has both secular and religious connotations. At the end of a religious congregation, one person says, Jo bole so nihal, and the congregation replies: Sat Sri Akal. But there is no scripturalsanction for this, it is part of the maryada, the tradition, born much after the gurus.

As for the secular aspect, it was the war cry of the Sikhs when they went out to war against the armies of the Mughals and the Pathans. The Hindu equivalent would be Har Har Mahadev, the Muslim equivalent Allah-o-Akbar.

This was a war cry the Sikhs used especially when they went on the offensive, what they called Jaikara.
The slogan is also used in both political and religious meetings as a form of applause, a sort of "Well done!" And just how freely the words are used can be illustrated by the fact that Sikhs use it as a toastbefore they start drinking, just as Muslims start with a Bismillah.
While there has been an increasing growth of intolerance among the Sikhs, they still don't bother to understand the words of the gurus. "Ikna sudh, na budh, na akal sar, akhar ka bheo na lahant/Nanak se nar asal khar, jo bin gun garab karant (Neither thinking nor understanding, they read words without meaning. Nanak says they arereal donkeys, those who without doing any good are proud)."
It's a shame that a community that was so self-confident and could laugh at itself has become so bigoted, especially with the growth of a Taliban element among them. I've been slapped with a warning by the SGPC: they don't like me making jokes about Sardarjis. They threatened action against me if I didn't stop. What can they do—summon me to the Akal Takht and make me polish the shoes of worshippers? I just went ahead, using their letter in the introduction to my latest joke book. As one Sikh historian put it: "Sikhan ki jaatpaat hai danga, danga unhone guru seon manga (The Sikhs' creed is trouble; that's the blessing they asked from the Gurus.)"

Bombs, satellites and kids: the exciting world of APJ

2005-05-29T03:17:00.000+05:30

President APJ Abdul Kalam never fails to amuse me.

The President's latest scheme is for the launch of an International Youth satellite, to provide connectivity to students and universities around the globe.

True to form, before going public on his Youth Satellite scheme, the President telephoned Madhavan Nair, Chairman of ISRO, from Moscow, and briefed him about the scheme. Only after that, he spoke about it publicly, first at the Moscow University and then before the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Expanding on the President's latest satellite scheme from Geneva, Prof N Balakrishnan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, said: ''It should take about two years before satellites can be located to provide world students a connectivity programme.''

Added V Ponraj, Technical head of the Rashtrapati Bhavan: ''The ISRO chief told the President that he feels such a satellite programme will greatly help the youth of the world and that the ISRO will give the necessary back-up.''

He said that since President Putin was the first world leader with whom the youth satellite was discussed, the two countries would soon need to formalize an agreement on the subject, maybe, with a Memorandum of Understanding.

(Source: Kalam latest: an eye in the sky for the young - by Ritu sarin in The Indian Express.)

Now I am a little dumb, as artsees always are, but what kind of 'connectivity' will a satellite provide to world youth that the internet already does not?

Please help me understand APJ Abdul Kalam.

The Ungreat Indian Middle Class

2005-05-29T00:07:00.000+05:30

Clinton says India's done a great job in tsunami relief work. Thank you very much sir.

"Bill Clinton Should Call for Creation of Stronger Human Rights Protections," says Human Rights Watch .

Don't take their word. Google for tsunami+Dalit and you will find about sixteen thousand results. Discrimination against Dalits was seen not just in the immediate aftermath, as exposed by The Indian Express and others. Discrimination in tsunami relief work continues till this day.

I have just one question. Blood pressures shoot up across middle class India the moment you make the mistake of uttering the word 'reservations'. Middle class India, which would like to believe it is merely a co-incidence that it is largely upper-caste, was seething with rage against caste reservations throughout the Nineties despite the unprecedented opportunities that opened up for them after Manmohan Singh's 1991 liberalisation. The reason they give you for their anger is that reservations amount to unfair discrimination against the 'meritorious'.

So when there is such shameful discrimination amongst victims of a natural calamity that didn't discriminate, where does middle class India's anger disappear?

BBM: A week is a long time in blogosphere

2005-05-27T10:14:00.000+05:30

Prologue

About twenty posts were nominated for this mela, and all of them were excellent. However, I may not have been able to include a few of them as I have gone from theme to theme, using Technorati search to find suitable posts to include. Not being included is not a reflection on the quality of your post – I mean it.

Am still in a haze as I post this, so please bear with me if there are typos! Will correct them later, and would be glad if you could point them out politely.

I suggest that you read this Mela from beginning to end without clicking at any of the links. Open the links in second go and read at your leisure throughout the week.

Hulloa and welcome to the latest edition of the Bharateeya Blog Mela.

Vivek Kumar is now in the army. But how does he know? “Well, being surrounded by Army jawans with AK-47s and having an escort vehicle with a mounted LMG were two pretty good hints.” In a chilling post, with links to pics on his picture blog, Vivek writes things like, “Remember that your gun was manufactured by the lowest bidder,” and, “You won't get to hear the bullet that kills you… bullets are faster than sound.”

“There is something to be said about the feeling one gets when one picks up a gun,” he writes. I had always wondered how a soldier can mercilessly kill another soldier just because he is told that the other is an ‘enemy’? Now I know, thanks to Sachin’s linking of hostel ragging with the Milgram Experiments which show how we all can easily bow under authority and harm others without guilt. Don’t forget to see the comments section about another study, where the social scientist himself got obsessed about experimenting with the nature of abuse!

Yeah, power without responsibility can be intoxicating. Ask the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, writes Amardeep Singh after the Jo Bole So Nihaal bombings in Delhi. Even before the bombings, Amrit Hallan (who agrees the film should get another title) was lashing out at the SGPC over its ‘hypocrisy’:

I would like to ask the SGPC, doesn’t an average Sikh:

Indulge in sex?

Consume liquor?

Engage in fraudulent activities?

Interpret the Gurubani wrongly?

Ill-treat his wife, children and parents?

Visit brothels?

Being from a Sikh family, I have seen the so-called Sikhs doing all such things. Be it philandering, fornicating, excessive drinking, wife-beating, cheating other people, uttering profanities, I have seen the “respected” Sikhs doing all these.

While who is an ‘average Sikh’ is a complex issue that Amrit might want to consider, I think there’s a serious problem of stereotyping the Sikh community, which many of us do, sometimes unconsciously. Manish Vij refused to accept this when he called the Punjab Chief Minister a “jolly sardarji”, and Sonia had commented that one should see Jo Bole So Nihaal to see how Sikhs are represented. Mind you, all of this conversation happened before the bombings. After the bombings, there was just shock and awe.

There’s now the speculation of it being a gimmick of Pakistani terrorists. But Arnab Ray has another theory: “Could this be a result of turf-war between sections of SGPC and Akali Dal? A very plausible reason could be that the producer had "made peace" with one section and the other section was grouchy at not getting a share of the forgiveness pie.”

Even if the bombings were by Pakistani terorrists (convenient scapegoat, IMHO), the SGPC's stupid objections to the movie can be blamed for giving Pakistani terrorists an excuse to do this with the aim of sparking communal violence. After writing my post on sentiments and bombs, I was left wondering at the SGPC’s objection about ‘semi-clad women’ in a movie whose title is a Sikh battle cry. Why is it that expression of female sexuality in movies always becomes a threat to institutionalised religions? Fire is another examples that come to mind.

Talking about sexuality, Saket is perplexed by a nightclub’s ousting of a lesbian couple: what are the ‘rights’ of the couple, and what are the rights of the nightclub’s proprietors? I am slightly unsettled by his assertion, “In a truly free society, business owners should also be entitled to rights. I may run a night-club in the city, and I may have an aversion to those brightly colored and hideous looking printed shirts. I may make it a matter of policy to refuse entry to those who come dressed in such shirts. Its my bloody nightclub, It is private property…” I can’t agree, but neither can I disagree! But Saket, if all business owners were to assert such ‘rights’, then you would be left with an experience similar to Govar’s.

Saket often ponders on such important questions - if he is not busy addressing the needs of his male readers, that is ;)

C’mon doode, forget these weighty matters and laugh a minute, says Harini Calamur about the laughing stock that is the world’s largest selling English language broadsheet.

She points to the tamasha that Mumbai’s media explosion is turning out to be. The hoarding makes Rashmi comment on HT’s digs at ToI’s dumbing down. Charu brings forth some more amusement that this round of media blitz is dishing out. It seems the medium is going to be the message until we get the first circulation figures.

In another post, Harini points out what I’ve been noticing for some time now: despite being the lowest common denominator, this esteemed newspaper is the one that lectures you the most on what good journalism is. She writes:

Today it is the turn of their yet to be launched tabloid (why would any group want two tabloids) the Mumbai Mirror. Carrying the publicity note as news is… the headline… Now, Mumbai to get a no-nonsense paper. Arre mere bhai, itne din hamme nonsense kisne diya! [My trans: So who gave us nonsense all these days if not you?]

TN Abinandan of Nanopolitan brings forth some more froth.

Amit Varma’s post on the same subject dealt with the term ‘prosumer’ in that ToI article, and this leads to further links about the fine art of using jargon in his later posts.

Mall Road Aphorism #56: One man's jargon can be another’s primary language. Sports is all Greek to me. It is to American economist Michael Higgins’ credit, therefore, that he takes so much interest in Indian sports: he almost sounds like one billion Indians asking themselves why we are underachievers in sports, and can’t even be toppers in the one game we play: cricket! Some of the reasons he lists (such as our indulgence in the sport that produces, well, babies) are interestingly new to me: I always thought cultural and economic faactors were responsible more than anything else. Uncle and Aunty want Babloo and Dabloo to be engineer and doctor. Not a struggling soccer or tennis player. Those are just hobbies, my son!

Avinash Tadimall has been playing some real hardcore cricket in the fields of California though. The International Cricket Council with their ideas of making the game more interesting could do with his calculations about the cost of a wide ball.

You want to escape the nonsense of our newspapers? Simple, stop reading them. Spend your time reading books. One Hundred Years of Solitude has been stimulating Nivas enough for him to recommend it to you. Nilanjana has been reading an anthology of new Indian writing in English, and doesn’t seem very impressed.

If you don’t want to travel into the worlds of writers, travel in real life. Go to Goa like Vikrum did, and you will find new worlds in new people. Talk to people like Pinki, a girl from rural Rajasthan, who told Annie how she can’t dare to wear a pair of jeans in her village – not that she wants to, but Annie certianly wants her to.

Talking to strangers, however, may not be such a comforting experience if you’re some what of a celebrity. (Read the comments there and you will agree with India Uncut’s no-comments policy. Or you may not.)

Also, don’t miss Amitav Ghosh’s forthcoming interview audio.

Prufrock Two (as opposed to Prufrock One) shows how our metros are dealing with the same problems as Istanbul has been over the years. He saw this mirror image of India in Istanbul via Orhan Pamuk’s award-winning book, Istanbul: Memories of a City. Chandrahas Choudhury says Pamuk is to Istanbul what Dickens has been to London.

There’s a lot that’s happening to our cities and it’s time to wake up before it becomes too late. Truman from Bangalore talks about the cleaning up of Mumbai’s pavement booksellers: the government thought they made the place look ‘ugly’. Tilotamma is unable to find her old bookseller, Alwar, whose fall says a lot about the changing face of Chennai.

Indiagenie, don’t be surprised at Suketu Mehta comparing New York with Allahbad. Things are coming to such a pass that we need new paradigms to understand our Shanghais in our Mumbais.

Sports minister Sunil Dutt passed away this week and most bloggers remembered his acting, not his politics. For Sourin Rao, like for many bloggers, his most memorable role was that of Bhola in Padosan. Asya agrees, and types down her humming of Mere Saamne Wali Khidki Mein.

The blogosphere had its share of obituaries for Ismail Merchant too. His homosexuality has been getting more attention in blogosphere obits than it is likely to in the Indian media.

I must see all the Merchant-Ivory films that Amit recommends, but may I also recommend The Mystic Masseur, based on VS Naipaul’s beautiful novel. Merchant had apparently written a letter to Naipaul asking for permission to make Masseur into a movie, and the pompous Sir Vidia had written back saying that he had heard of Merchant’s famous persuasive powers and did not wish to put them to test!

Some random postings before I shut my trap: Anand Vivek Taneja has been going bats, which makes him wonder why disease-spreading rats are considered cute and why nobody loves bats. Well, considering that in no culture were dogs considered cute domestic pets before Victorian England made them so, there’s hope for Anand leading a All Hail Our Bats revolution.

Abhishek Kant can help you interpolate between Linux and Windows so that you can have the best of both: the consumer is king, who cares about ideology? In a previous post he was wondering about who will take responsibility for glitches in open source software?

Rahul Tyagi is outraged at the comparison of Krzysztof Kieslowski's last three movies with Sanjay Bhansali’s Black.

Naveen talks about how “economic nationalism” can be “adverse patriotism”. I like this post for such terminology: words, empty words, have for long been the greatest asset of the Communist and the Socialist: they use such terminology that they fool everyone including themselves.

The politics at the Sangeet Natak Akademi has a simple solution coming from Sruthijith: get the state out of art. Add my name as of the sinatories to your petition, sir.

Last but not the least, you must read Annie’s post on Bhanwari Devi. As chilling, if not more, than Captain Vivek’s post that we began this mela with.

Epilogue

Please nominate your posts for the next Mela, to be hosted by Saket, who has been graciously helping improve upon my blog template.

If you wish to host a Blog Mela, please ask Shanti for a date.

It has been a pleasure hosting this Mela: to the Mela initiators, coordinators and volunteers: thank you.

I hope you enjoyed the Mela and will pass through Mall Road more often, and blogroll me too, ensuring thousands of hits each day, and helping me become a blog baron… $$$!... through Google AdSense.

Happy blogging!

What did the books do to you?

2005-05-25T00:53:00.000+05:30

A nice column by Lindsay Pereira.

The last time, there was Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. A fairly new Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man. A faded edition of Khushwant Singh's Delhi. And James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late. I remember buying everything but Delhi, telling him I had a copy.

Mahesh knew exactly what to tempt his buyer with. He managed, as he often had before, to surprise me with his suggestions. When a young woman approached, he would reach out for Paulo Coelho without batting an eyelid. She would pay and leave. No words were exchanged, and the transaction would last little more than a minute.

"How do you do it?" I asked him. "Do you know these authors?" He laughed wildly, telling me he had never been to school. He couldn't read the alphabet, attempted one Hindi paperback every six months, and wrote a monthly letter to his mother who lived in Chhapra. That, for him, was all the contact with reading or writing of any kind.

He managed solely by paying a great deal of attention to his customers. With one eye firmly on the crowd passing by (he insisted on calling out to regular or potential buyers every five minutes), he told me about his "system" -- Paperback thrillers in the top and lowest rows. Penguin paperbacks in the second row, current pirated bestsellers in the third, everything else spread across the fourth.

And then what happened?

Mahesh doesn't sit there anymore. He -- and the others like him -- have been asked to leave. Selling books at that public space is now illegal. The pathways are easier to navigate now, apparently. Nothing stands between Flora Fountain and the railway station anymore, except people, and a few more people. Nothing shocking like Vladimir Nabokov, Emile Zola, Gunter Grass or William Shakespeare to stop you from reaching that train on time. Nothing but a piece of dirty cardboard, propped up against a railing near Churchgate, with the words: 'What did the books do to you?'

But where are the nominations?

2005-05-24T15:44:00.000+05:30

Hey, it's already Tuesday the 24th. Whre are your nominations for the Bharateeya Blog Mela? Have got only one so far, on email. Hurree, babu!

Update: Please stop nominating posts now, because it's been over 12 hours since I posted the Mela (read it here) and over 24 hours since the deadline passed.

Thank you very much.

Of sentiments and bombs: Jo Bole So Nihal!

2005-05-22T22:49:00.000+05:30

A still from Jo Bole So Nihal. According to a PTI report, "It has been alleged that there were some semi-nude scenes in the film, which hurt the religious sentiments of many people, as the title of the film is considered a sacred chant by the followers of the Sikh religion."

I quote here from my very first posting on this blog, which was about free speech and religion:

Ms. Karkaria's article is called He's hot, he is Indian Idol No 1. In three hundred words full of bad pun, she tries to fuse religion with contemporary popular culture, and justifies it like this:

Hinduism's original persona of rinam kritva ghritam pivet - loosely translated as 'Njoy!' - had for long been suppressed by our pretensions of being an otherworldly, spiritual people who abjured the materialist high rise for the moral high ground.

It cost us dearly on several counts, from delaying the economic miracle to delaying AIDS control. But we've woken up and not only smelled the coffee, but learnt to make a Frappuccino.

Trivial? May be. Offensive? You must be joking. But I am an atheist, how would I know? A religious Hindu may find it offensive.

In that case, should we care?

If Bachi really feels that way, why should she not write it?

May be it doesn't work that way. Since people tend to kill and get killed over religion, must we provoke them?

The issue of free speech intersecting with "religious sentiments" is a really complex one. The day I resolve it in my head, I will have achieved salvation.

And you know what happened a few hours ago? Two up-market cinema halls in Delhi (one of which is ironically called 'Liberty') were "rocked" (as a PTI report puts it) by bomb explosions.

And guess what? I was wandering around Delhi today, bus stop to bus stop, Mall Road to Daryaganj, Jama Masjid to Patel Nagar. I even considered going for a movie called Jo Bole So Nihal. In a cinema called Satyam. Evening show. Six to nine.

Folks called up from a distance of over 500 kms to find out if I was alive. I was. Buying music in Kamla Nagar.

Did you see the news?

No, why, what happened?

Bomb blasts in Delhi cinemas.

Okay, let me reach home, I'll check out.

As I switched to Google news, my heart sank. The two cinemas were showing Jo Bole So Nihal, which has been in the news for 'hurting' Sikh sentiments. Eight dead so far.

Delhi. 1984. I was six months old when they shot "Mrs." Indira Gandhi. She had hurt their sentiments. This in turn hurt Caangressi sentiments and Caangressis went about butchering every Sikh they could find. Even in Lucknow, a stone's throw from Ayodhya, where there hasn't ever been a single Hindu-Muslim riot.

Sentiments. Religious sentiments. Defending the faith. Jo Bole So Nihal!

As I said, I am an atheist. How would I know? And I haven't seen the movie. Too many people will now watch three hours of crap just to see if anyone's sentiments are hurt.

But do I have sentiments and are they ever hurt enough by a movie to kill those watching it?

The next time your sentiments are hurt enough to throw a few bombs around, let me know where you are doing it. Not because I want to write a news report or a blog posting. But because I want to see if you can kill me.

And if I survive by chance, you will have hurt more than just my sentiments, and I would need your help with making the bombs.

Monday update: One eyewitness had told a news channel that he had himself pulled out 7 bodies, and the police had reported another death. But it turns out the 7 he pulled out weren't dead. So the consensus is one dead and 50 injured.

Nay, the city isn't calm yet. Another blast, this one in north-east Delhi. 'One hurt.' The bomb was hidden in a bag. A Reuters report says, "During the height of the Sikh separatist campaign (in the 1980's), militants regularly bombed buses and markets in northern India, especially in Delhi and Punjab. They often planted bombs in radios and lunch boxes, killing and wounding many people."

There's no proof that this morning's blast in Nand Nagri is related to last night's cinema blasts. But the police have arrested a Lasker-e-Toiba militant, or someone who they claim to be an LeT militant. Last the the BJP in its attempt to be politically correct to Sikhs, had said that the Pakistani intelligence agencies were responsible for the blasts. Great job ladies and gentlemen, you should be in the CBI.

Mid-Day reports that some cinemas in Mumbai have withdrawn the film, but most have courageously decided the show must go on. Talking about courage,

While Sunny Deol was not available for comment, Rajiv Malhotra of VR Entertainers, distributors of the film, said that they have distributed the film at the behest of Sunny Deol and only he can take a decision on whether to halt proceedings.

IANS reports that Deol has been provided with security at his Juhu residence. Mr Deol, do you realise your lack of immediate response at this moment makes you anything but a hero in real life?

The Indian Express reports that the blast in Satyam was inside the ladies toilet, and it injured two children amongst others. How have Delhi's cinemagoing women hurt the Sikh community?

Chennai, Pune, Indore and other cities have also suspended the screening of the film. For the moment it's looking like an all India censorship of the film.

Its distributor in the "northern territory", a liquor baron named Ponty Chadha, says he's withdrawing the film from the entire "northern territory" and not just Punjab and aryana.

And just in case you didn't know, Jo Bole So Nihal translates as 'Blessed is the one who says God is eternal!'

Bharateeya Blog Mela: Coming soon at Mall Road

2005-05-18T13:45:00.000+05:30

Tomorrow, 19 May (US time, I don't know why), is the deadline for nominating posts for Amit's blog mela, which will be up on 20 May (US time presumably).

The next mela will be at Mall Road.

All posts dated between May 20 and May 26 are eligible, both days inclusive.
All posts should be made by Indians or should focus on India.
If you don't send your nomination by the midnight of 26 May (Indian Standard Time, GMT +5:30), you may miss the bus. The Mela will be up on Friday 27 May by, well, midnight.
Self nomination is welcome but backscratching is especially encouraged.
Please do not nominate entire blogs, and please do not nominate a million postings from a single blog. Choose the best mangoes.
Nomination does not ensure selection, but what the heck, it usually does!

Leave your nominations as comments to this post or send them to mallroad@shivamvij.com.

Yeah, I know my blog looks screwed up in IE (didn't I tell you to use Firefox?). Am fixing it, even planning to shift to Word Press.

Update: Amit has posted his blog mela here, a neat job.

TOI editors don't know what a spoof is

2005-05-13T00:48:00.000+05:30

Via Sepia Mutiny, another feather in the Times of India's hat of frivolity.

There was apparently a spoof on Aishwariya Rai on, well, spoof.com. I quote here a major chunk of it:

Roger Lodge, host of "Blind Date" --America's No. 1 TV dating humiliation show – said, "We've booked Aishwarya Rai to appear on a show segment where she will date Lorenzo -- a former stripper who wants to be a stay-at-home dad. He's tired of the superficial dating scene, but wants to form a love connection and score on the first date. We'll have to see how far he gets with Aishwarya."

Simone Sheffield, manager To Aishwarya Rai, was pleased to announce that Miss Rai would be appearing on a special version of "Jerry Springer: Too Hot For TV" episode where the beautiful actress will fight with a 380 pound woman in a trailer over some guy with a mullet, no teeth, and a 7th grade education.

Aishwarya says that she is thrilled for the chance to show her talent to such a discriminating audience. "I've heard some wonderful things about Jerry Springer. He told me that many of the actresses on his show go on to become great Hollywood screen stars. He promised me that no one would try and kiss me or rip off my clothes. I am still a bit confused about why I need bodyguards on his show, but I guess it will all work out OK. I hope so… my mother in India will be watching on the satellite!"

Now Soumya Menon of The Times of India in Delhi (must have) read the spoof, and reported it as straight news!

Ash to date stripper on US show

By Soumya Menon
The Times of India, 4 May 2005

NEW DELHI: Seen as a Bollywood ambassador in the US, Ash has already done a good bit by making appearances on David Letterman's 'Late Show' and recently on Oprah Winfrey show.

And now she is gearing up for some informal, sporty appearances. Spoof.com has reported that Aishwarya will test the waters in the US market by first appearing on some popular TV shows.

Aishwarya Rai is slated to appear in a special version of the American show 'Jerry Springer: Too Hot For TV' episode in which she will contest with a 380 pound woman.

Simone Sheffield, manager to Aishwarya Rai, said, "Miss Rai would be appearing on a special version of 'Jerry Springer: Too Hot For TV' episode where the beautiful actress will fight with a 380 pound woman in a trailer over some guy with a mullet, no teeth, and a 7th grade education.

The website reported Aishwarya as saying that she is thrilled for the chance to show her talent to such a discriminating audience.

"I've heard some wonderful things about Jerry Springer. He told me that many of the actresses on his show go on to become great Hollywood screen stars.

"He promised me that no one would try and kiss me or rip off my clothes. I am still a bit confused about why I need bodyguards on his show, but I guess it will all work out OK. I hope so... my mother in India will be watching on the satellite!"

Knowing Ash's conservative nature, she has been promised that no one will touch her unduly or kiss her or try to rip off her clothes.

Apart from this show, Ash is also reported to be booked for Roger Lodge's show 'Blind Date'.

Roger Lodge, host of "Blind Date" – America's No 1 TV dating humiliation show was reported as saying, "We've booked Aishwarya Rai to appear on a show segment."

Aishwarya will date Lorenzo – a former stripper who wants to be a stay-at-home dad, who is tired of the superficial dating scene, but wants to form a love connection and score on the first date.

We'll just have to see how far he gets with Aishwarya.

When somebody must have pointed out the hilarious faux pas, the Times conveniently removed the article from their site.

But hey, we love Google caches, don't we?

On Sepia Mutiny, Manish writes that Ms Menon denies having written the above story.

Arnab writes:

Now let's consider the TOI staffer who wrote this. He stumbles across an article in a webzine called "spoof.com". No warning bells ring. Evidently he does not know what "spoof" means. Nor does he want to find out.

And then serves up this parody as a "report" - high journalistic standards indeed. Does TOI have an editor or do correspondents just barf anything they want to?

'Hunger', Jayanta Mahapatra

2005-05-10T22:03:00.000+05:30

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen...
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.

"Physicist and poet, Jayanta Mahapatra's honours include the Jacob Glatstein Prize for poetry. He writes in English and Oriya and edits aliterary journal, 'Chandrabhaga'. He lives in Cuttack." - The Little Magazine

Mahapatra has always insisted that he is an Oriya (rather than an Indian) writing in English. The rhythms of his English poetry, he says, derive from the rhythms of Oriya oral poetry that he grew up with. His poetry often deals with poverty, deprivation, the failure of the nation-state and are imbued with a strong sense of historical continuity.

In this poem notice how Mahapatra shifts the focus from his own act of using a prostitute to the fisherman's poverty; how the fisherman's daughter has neither voice nor any agency; and how the two hungers - sexual desire and poverty - are collapsed so casually.

The second edition of the book Many Indias, Many Literatures (edited by Shormishtha Panja, Worldview, Delhi, 2001) includes an interview of Mahapatra by Sumanyu Satpathy. Unfortunately the date of the interview is not given. I type here what Mahapatra says about "Hunger".

Satpathy:
In your poem 'Hunger' I think it's [Arvind Krishna] Mehrotra who says the word "wormy" is unfortunate. But I feel the word is richly ambiguous - it can mean the man's thinness due to hunger or it could mean that he is worm-ridden.

Mahapatra:
Mehrotra knows English much better than I do. May be he's right. But I wouldn't change a single word in this poem. This poem was quoted in full in the 'Hudson Review' in 1972. Bernard Young, a famous American critic, gave me a wonderful review. I'm sorry to say that I've always had this sort of reception from Indian academics.

[...]

'Hunger' was written twenty-five years ago. I grew up in Cuttack, close to a temple. There were two rivers close by. The ways of life there were different. I was into religion. My poems today don't have those old images. I've taken the temple out of my system. I had an unhappy childhood. I had an abnormal relationship with my mother. I owe a lot to my father, though. He put me in a missionary school. The school had a British headmaster... I was trampled upon in my childhood. That still remains with me. I'm not deliberately holding on to tensions. I ran away from home thrice. I'm shaped by factors beyond my control. Now I'm at peace with myself, but this wasn't the case ten years ago. Perhaps as a result of that childhood I always feel alone, alone when I'm with my family or part of a crowd. There's a chasm inside which can never be bridged. In 'Hunger' I was writing from experience.

This is the first time he admits that the poem is autobiographical; note how he reaches this confession in the end in a convoluted manner.

Profiles of Courage from the Islamic World

2005-05-08T08:15:00.000+05:30

I have to compile a list of about 30 individuals in the Islamic world (anywhere, but mainly in the Middle East) who are profiles of individual courage against orthodox Islam, religious fundamentalism, state oppression, or discrimination in the post-9/11 West. If you have any such individuals in mind, I would be grateful to you if you could let me have any names - and then there's always Google to follow up.

Are you from Bulandshahar?

2005-05-06T19:05:00.000+05:30

The inimitable Omar Sharief
pix from Pakistan Link

Ajay is from Saharanpur and is taking the civil services examination this month. He would travel to a coaching centre everyday, and on his way back he would invariably find himself in the same DTC 'Mudrika' bus at 4 PM.

So he became pally with the bus conductor who had an uncanny resemblance with Omar Sharief, the Pakistani stage comedian of Bakra Kishtoun Mein fame (not to be confused with the Egypt-born Omar Sharif of Dr Zhivago). Having seen entire mohallas in Lucknow watching his plays on pirated CD's, I can tell you that Sharief is Pakistan's greatest cultural export to India.

One afternoon Ajay asked the conductor, "Are you from Bulandshahar?"

Yes, said the conductor, but how did you guess?

"In Bulandshahar are you from the village Mirpur?"

Yes, he said even more anxiously, but how on earth did you know?

Ajay continued: "Do you know that Omar Sharif is also from Mirpur?"

Achcha, really? For a moment the conductor didn't know how to respond. I know he looks like me, he said.

Ajay had guessed from the conductor's looks and features and lehza (dialect) that he was from Omar Sharief's clan. Sharief, said Ajay, had migrated to Pakistan in the Partition. "He must be a distant relative of yours," Ajay said with the confidence of a know-all spy.

The conductor got philosophical: yes, yes, he said, Pakistanis are just like us, we are the same people, what can one do if politicians divide us to create vote banks?

In Delhi everyone is 'from' somewhere; migration is like the weather: a boring fact. Delhi is a sea of humanity, represented for me by the ever-flowing traffic on the Ring Road and the crowds that move in and move out of buses all day. In this sea I like to think I have complete anonymity. But the 'Where Are You From?' question destroys it all: my identity hinges on a city I do not live in anymore.

One day an autowallah didn't ask me where I was 'from'. He just said: "Are you from Lucknow?"

I was stunned.

Aapko kaisay pata laga? I asked embarassedly. How did you know?

Aapki boli se, he said, from the way you speak.

Update: Sadly, Ajay read this posst and informed me that he is not sure if Mirpur is the name of the village. This incident in the bus happened a couple of years ago, and Ajay no longer remembers the exact name of the village Omar Sharief was born in. Ajay says that Sharief had mentioned the village's name in an interview, but does not remember it anymore. So if anyone does, do let me know!

Unethical business is an enemy of economic growth

2005-05-06T06:41:00.000+05:30

Sociologist Dipankar Gupta writes in today's Indian Express:

Banks are burdened by non-performing assets that amount to tens of thousands of crores of rupees, but major defaulters have not yet been charged for not honouring the loan agreements. A bank is a public institution that must abide by public norms and rules. There are clear laws in this regard, not to mention the codes of transparency and corporate governance that are much talked about these days. Even so the big fish get away because, well, they are big. Non-performing assets are not a private matter between friends, or between a loan shark and an errant defaulter. In this case the amounts are mind-boggling, regular banks are involved (some of them are even in the public sector), and, what is more, ordinary people and humble citizens are the ones paying for waywardness of the rich. This being the case it would be quite natural to expect that these major defaulters who have built business empires should be brought to book. At the very least, their names should be made known to the public whose money these business tycoons are playing around with. It is often said that should these names be known the edifice of the private sector would be shaken at the foundations. When there are thousands of crores lying as non-performing assets with banks, imagine the incalculable damage that is being done to the public. But only last week, India’s finance minister went on record saying that it would be incorrect to reveal the names of these defaulters as business would be affected.

Unethical business paralyses the economy and hinders economic growth, and yet, the only reason why the anarcho-capitalist-libertarian blogger Yazad Jal thinks there's so much poverty in India is insufficient liberalisation:

I'd like to see more people leaving poverty and getting into the large middle class morass. The best way of doing so, is to let people be. That means getting the government out of our lives as much as possible. One reason Dilip and others see liberalisation not having any effect on poverty is that the occupations of the poor have not really been liberalised. How easy is it to run a small shop or practice a small trade? On the streets of India's cities, that's amongst the most difficult things to do. True liberalisation is making life easier for the poorest of the poor -- by getting out of the way. Leaving them free to do what they want (as long as they don't impinge on the freedom of others). That's what a free economy, nay, what freedom itself is all about.

I don't mean the two are mutually exclusive; but our just obsession with free economy should allow us space to find faults with those who misuse this freedom.

But I know what Yazad is going to say: get the state out of the banking sector and you won't have any NPA's!

Template Transition

2005-05-05T03:04:00.000+05:30

In trying to install a new template, I'm facing some problems, particularly with the comments feature. Please bear with me for some time.

Update 1: Most of it is fixed, thanks to a prompt response to my SOS by Ryan Woon from Singapore. Thanks a lot Ryan!

Update 2: It's complete and isn't it cool! Thanks a million Ryan; there were so many glitches I would have had to revert to the old design had it not been for your kind help. I thought Ryan was a geek; he turns out to be a PR executive, and has a great blog!

And now, the Acid Survivors Foundation

2005-05-04T03:35:00.000+05:30

Pix from the BBC

After Mumbai's amusing "All India Letter Writers Association" comes Dhaka's "Acid Survivors Foundation". And pray, what is that? It's an activist organisation of those who had the misfortune to find acid thrown on their faces as revenge for personal disputes. While this is regularly inflicted upon women in India by men who are not able, for some reason or the other, to have their love reciprocated or consummated in marriage. In Bangladesh, however, property disputes seem to be the primary motive, or so reports the BBC.

In the award-winning Bangladeshi blog "The 3rd World View," Rezwan writes:

"Thanks to the introduction of rigorous law (death penalty) against the abusers, acid throwing attacks on women have been reduced."

That raises an alarm for those against death penalty on the grounds that speedy delivery of justice has been found to be a greater deterrent to crime than capital punishment. But hey, check out the BBC link that Rezwan provides and you'll see that that still holds true:

Acid-throwing cases are now heard in Bangladesh by special fast-track courts empowered to pass the death penalty.

This has helped to shorten the trial period significantly, campaigners say.

However Ms Rahman said that in most cases the accused are acquitted because of the absence of witnesses.

"Often the accused buys the witnesses, threatens the victim's family and even tries to bribe them with financial benefits in order to settle the case outside the court," she said.

Considering this state of affairs, it is fascinating that the United Nations has elected Bangladesh as one of 53 countries that together make the UN Commission on Human Rights for 2005. Acid throwing is not the only recreational activity of the Bangaldeshis that makes their human rights record so admirable. Other games include relentless persecution of the minority Ahmadiyya community, deteriorating press freedom, and arbitly killing Indian soldiers.

Ironically, this is the same country that sought independence from Pakistan because of human rights abuses by the Pakistani army in the late 'Sixties. (That reminds me of General Aurora who just passed away. To think that Aurora and Niazi were educated together in a Quetta college!)

But don't worry, Bangladesh has fitting company at the UNHRC in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe! Looks like the UN has interesting ideas about how to guard human rights that it so enthusiastically promised to in 1948.

Who is Darius Nakhoonwala?

2005-05-03T11:33:00.000+05:30

So who is Darius Nakhoonwala? I thoroughly enjoy his weekly musings in The Hoot on, of all things, the edits our daily papers write.

Drawing upon his rich experience of "nearly three decades of analyzing editorials," he confidently offers an interesting reason for the lack of insightful editorials about the visit of Japan PM Junichiro Koizumi:

...foreign dignitaries must not end their visit on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning. The reason: by and large the editorials about their great achievements during the visit tend to be very casually written because there is no edit meeting on the weekend and the poor chap who has to write the edit does so in beery resentment.

Ah, beer.

But who is Darius Nakhoonwala? It's obviously a pseudonym, and a good one at that. Anyway, read the whole piece.

Nida Fazli

2005-05-03T05:33:00.000+05:30

LK Advani and others on a Toyota rath in 1990, Delhi.
Pix by Shanker Chakravarty in Frontline

Via Secular Right, a "pretty cool Nida Fazli verse", title not given:

Mujhe maloom hai tumharey naam sey mansoob hain tootey huey sooraj
Shikasta chand, kala aasmaan, curfew-zada rahein
Sulagtey khel ke maidan, roti cheekhti maae'n
Mujhe maaloom hai charo taraf jo ye tabahi hai
Hukumat mein siyasat ke tamashe ki gawahi hai
Tumhein Hindu ki chaahat hai na Muslim se adaavat hai
Tumhara dharm sadiyon se tijarat tha tijarat hai
Mujhe maloom hai lekin tumhe mujrim kahoon kaisey
Adaalat mein tumharey jurm ko sabit karoon kaisey
Tumhari jeib mein khanjar na haaton mein koi bum tha
Tumharey rath pe to Mariyada Purshottam ka parcham tha.

Jawed Naqvi's bad prose translation:

I know, and we all know, that this bleakness, this all-round destruction is your handiwork. You have no love for the Hindu nor enmity with the Muslim. Religion is merely your merchandise which you have used to fill your brimming coffers. But I can't prove you guilty before a magistrate since I did not actually see you plunge a knife or hurl a bomb at anyone. In fact, I know, we all know, that you were carrying aloft that fateful day not an ordinary weapon of death, but the flag proclaiming your affinity with the pious Lord Ram himself.

Nida Fazli lives in Mumbai, and the above lines, accordng to Naqvi, were written recently in response to the Gujarat pogrom, and not in 1990 as Gaurav Sabnis claims. Gaurav informs that much of Jagjit Singh's ghazals are written by Fazli.

Letter to the editor. Delete

2005-05-01T16:26:00.000+05:30

In their 'Sandesh' to 'Mumbai Samachar' the activists say that in 'Hindustan', 'Times' are changing. Robberies, rapes, and scams are committed at 'Mid-day' and even in the 'Afternoon'. People do not show courage to have 'Samna' with goondas and scamsters. Since there is no 'Free press' in India, how can an average 'Indian Express' his views?. So on this auspicious day, let us all unite and work to give 'Navshakti' to our countrymen to bring true 'Loksatta' in 'Bharat'.

That's from a mail from Dr. Leo Rebello. Amongst many other things, Dr. Rebello of Mumbai calls himself the President of the All India Letter-Writers Association. He says that "AILWA" is "celebrating its Silver Jubilee". And silly Rupert Murdoch, he thought blogs had replaced letters to the editor.

I can't understand why his selection of quotes in the mail shows so much anger with the media, but two quotes are worth pasting:

The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry they will write half your paper for you.
- C E M Joad

Journalists are like dogs, whenever anything moves they begin to bark.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Rebello says that to celebrate its silver jubilee, AILWA has got itself a "powerful website". It doesn't look like a professional website, and with those huge ads it's anything but powerful. Don't waste your time visiting it and tell Dr. Rebello about a website called blogger.com.

I don't see why a letter writers' association should be publishing books such as "Poems on Animate and Inanimate (Anthology) by Dr. Kazuyosi Ikeda", but it would be interesting to browse through "Pen Power (Encyclopedia of Letters to the Editor) by Dr. Leo Rebello".

I remember growing up writing letters to the editor. The first time I got one published in my early teens, half the worries of my life were over. When I first saw my letters in India Today or Outlook (the latter's being the most delicious letters page), I considered myself a media mogul.

One day I saw the London Times in the British Library in Lucknow, and was amazed to see two-thirds of a page devoted to letters. Indian papers have only cut down on the space for letters since then, and the London Times under Mr Murdoch has changed itself into a 'compact' version that sells better. And I've grown up too.

Dr Rebello's watch needs a new battery.

Is there such a thing as a free lunch?

2005-04-30T03:34:00.000+05:30

NYT pix

Amy Waldman, one of many fabulous foreign reporters in Delhi, brilliantly captures in an NYT story the debate on the employment guarantee scheme, juxtaposing it with the world-famous midday meal programme.

My greatest fears come true as she finds out in the outskirts of Delhi how midday meals are increasing nutrition and attendance, but not education. This also means that the HRD Ministry is going to give you huge figures in the rise of literacy, even if these students are barely going to be able to write their names after several years of schooling, I mean, eating midday meals. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

However, Waldman writes, "A study by the Center for Social Equity in New Delhi said the meal program had improved child nutrition and encouraged mixing among castes." So economists who keep harping on doing away with these welfare-statist ideas and talk merely of creating jobs, can go drown themselves in the polluted Yamuna. Yes, welfare schemes can't substitute economic growth or job creation, but can surely alleviate the sub-Saharan conditions of India's poor?

If corruption and lack of accountability are problems that hinder the effectiveness of public welfare schemes, that is not case enough to scrap such schemes and leave the poor to the mercy of market forces. You can't behead me to alleviate my headache. You can, at best, try to bring about transparency, or even try and overhaul a system that allows itself to be manipulated.

Is that enough to offend the cartel of libertarian Indian bloggers?

Google Print rocks. Turn the page

2005-04-28T02:32:00.000+05:30

Google's justly hyped Google Print service is now available online in a searchable form. Google searching has acquired such an acceptability that when I tell someone that I could not find a particular information on Google, they think I don't know how to search. Centuries of printed knowledge, however, is not online, and Google Print may change that. It's a great leap forward in the democratisation of knowledge. And since knowledge is power, the world's intellectual elites will have to continuously devise new ways of staying on the top!

Already, I can find very useful books there (and yes, 'Indian' books), ranging from Suvir Kaul's excellent compilation of essays on The Partitions of Memory to Katherine Frank's gossipy biog raphy of Indira Gandhi. And you know how you end up finding delightful titles that you otherwise won't: such as Dinners With Famous Women: From Cleopatra to Indira Gandhi.

So what will happen to Amazon and others selling books online?

The French, always eager to overreact, think that Google Print is another step in the establishment of Anglo-American cultural imperialism, and President Jacques Chirac wants the EU to consider the matter as seriously as all French noises should be. Google, on its part, claims to be more magnanimous.

The French can't understand that market forces will eventually benefit them too, and the publishing industry doesn't want to accept that the world is changing.

Blog-bandhu-on ka Budhwar Mela: The Wednesday Fair at Indian Blogosphere

2005-04-23T18:41:00.000+05:30

Definitions of mela on the Web:

fair, festival
a religious fair.
SI Parent mode; 72 in all; See Mela chart
Apple. Widely used in pastry and desserts.
Any Sikh religious festival other than the birth or death of a Guru.

Here’s another: a weekly post-compilation activity on the Indian Blogosphere. Held every Wednesday.

I have found the weekly ‘Bharateeya Blog Melas’ to be very stimulating. They give Indian blogosphere a sense of community-blogging like nothing else does. Catch last week’s Mela at AnarCapLib and this week’s at Mad Man’s Web. Please nominate posts for the Indian blogosphere for the next week’s Mela at Selective Amnesia. (Why hasn’t he put up an announcement yet?)

Check out Mela FAQ’s, Yazad’s Mela musings, and most importantly, the Mela Schedule. Mall Road has been honoured with the opportunity to host a Mela on 26th May.

While googling I found that various bloggers and Mela hosts spell ‘Bharateeya’ differently. I realise it’s a controversial term and has apparently been used tongue-in-cheek. Why else would English language bloggers from India and the diaspora call it ‘Bharataeeya’ and ‘Mela’? But please, let us arrive at a consensus about the former’s spelling, so that someone googling on the Mela is not harassed.

On the Partition Citizens

2005-04-20T02:31:00.001+05:30

I need to look at any existing historical/sociological work that may have been done on the 'refugees' of the Partition in India, which deals not with Partition but with the post-Partition history of these 'refugees' over the decades up to the rise of Hindu communalism / nationalism. While any such narrative will inevitably draw upon the Partition, what I mean to say is the the act of Partition and related events remain in the background, both textually and historically. It would deal with only the 'Punjabi' 'refugees' or only the 'Bengali' 'refugees'; or both. I intend to compare the two experiences.

I would also like to explore such work in the Pakistani context.

I would be very grateful to anyone who could point me to any sources.

You may want to have a look at my paper on Partition literature.

The Stop Blogging Campaign

2005-04-14T23:20:00.000+05:30

Silly boy, did you think blogging was a harmless activity? No, it's not just our dear PM from Pune who found out the hard way that blogging is not so personal after all.

I googled on the subject and came up with this:

[1] A blog called Don't Blog: Headlines from the Future of the Weblog Backlash (In Progress), which chronicles how people the world over have been getting into trouble because of blooging. Its theme is not "Protect Bloggers! Protect Free Speech!" but "Be pragmatic dude: do you have a life outside your blog?" A victim of blogging is someone who has been "blogged out".

Its "About" section reads: "What happens when blogging becomes mainstream? What bad things will we face? Other technologies experienced a public backlash after a hype cycle. This blog attempts to chronicle that coming backlash."

Their recent posts include:

And my favourite: Karshed: Resigning over your weblog It quotes the blogger in question:

"As I'm sure as most of y'all know by now, I no longer have my job because of this website. Management had monitored my computer for over a month, tracked what sites I visited and blog posts I wrote and tried to place me between a rock and a hard place over things said on this personal site about people at work (even when said people and said work was never mentioned explicitly)."

[2] A Village Voice article called Blogging Off: Your blog's great—nice dirt on Graydon Carter!—but can it buy me a beer? Five reasons why blogs are ruining author Whitney Pastorek's life:

1. No one shows up for anything anymore.
2. No one tells me anything anymore.
3. No one invites me to anything anymore.
4. They have created a new world order.
5. Did I mention that blogs are ruining my life?

[3] High school bans blogging. As if you can ever 'ban' anything on the net. But the idea really is to beware of paedophiles.

Officials at Proctor Jr.-Sr. High School have banned access from school computers to an Internet site that students have been using to post to weblogs, or blogs.
Principal Chris Sousa said the decision to block the site from school was made because blogging is not an educational use of school computers.

[...]

Sousa said he found the prospect of students putting information on the Internet, potentially available to predators, was a serious concern.

In the plains of Uttar Pradesh, the fear would not be so much of paedophiles as that of kidnappers.

[3] CIA Asks Bush to Stop Blogging

Washington, DC - In the interest of national security, President Bush has been asked to stop posting entries on his three-month-old personal web log, acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin said Monday.

According to McLaughlin, several recent entries on PrezGeorgeW. typepad.com have compromised military operations, while other posts may have seriously undercut the PR efforts of White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

A July 24 posting read, "Just got back from a lunch with Colin and Adil Moussa (one of Prince Saud al-Faisal's guys). Colin wants the Saudis to send some troops to Najaf - so some of the soldiers are Arab, I guess. This Moussa guy sure wears a lot of jewelry. A golden chain, a golden ring with his initials or something, and some other sparkling stuff - kinda effeminate. Anyway, best of luck in Iraq, Iyad."

You know how satire works. But the larger point is: if blogs are really personal diaries, wht would happen if heads of state were to start blogging?

Nah, they have better things to do. Like smoking out entire countries and regimes. And you silly blogger, just by starting a blog and learning some html coding you thought you had won the world?

The problem really is that sitting before a computer screen we tend to think we have great privacy - me and my blog.

Free speech, hate speech and HinduHumanRights.org

2005-04-14T22:02:00.000+05:30

I got to this site while image-googling for "Hindu gods". I was looking for a whacky mughsot which I could possibly use as my pix on MSN IM. And look what I found!

The photo was there on the homepage of a website called Hindu Human Rights. My image search had actually taken me to the internal page, Hindu Focus, and the first thing I could see was this:

I instantly knew what the site was about; I didn't need to see 'About us'. I've grown up seeing such images in the 'international' page of daily english papers in India, with text occupying 1/10th the space of the image, saying how Hindu protestors in some white city gathered outside Maharaja Restaurant or some such place, demanding that bikinis or some such thing with images of Hindu gods be withdrawn by a certain company, as these were offensive to the Hindu community. Such protests would be predictably followed by the requested withdrawl of goods, and a defensive, civilised-sounding public apology. It is only predictable that now such a campaign is sought to be globalised and available in the form of a website.

But what about that image of Shiva above? It's from the Times of India, they say, and provide you with the link of an irreverent article by the (Parsi) editor of The Times of India's Delhi edition, Bachi Karkaria. Till now only firangs were offending us, but now even desis back home have started using Adobe Photoshop to hurt Hindu sentiments. Interesting!

Ms. Karkaria's article is called He's hot, he is Indian Idol No 1. In three hundred words full of bad pun, she tries to fuse religion with contemporary popular culture, and justifies it like this:

Hinduism's original persona of “rinam kritva ghritam pivet” - loosely translated as 'Njoy!' - had for long been suppressed by our pretensions of being an otherworldly, spiritual people who abjured the materialist high rise for the moral high ground.

It cost us dearly on several counts, from delaying the economic miracle to delaying AIDS control. But we've woken up and not only smelled the coffee, but learnt to make a Frappuccino.

Raja Ravi Varma is perhaps responsible for single-handedly giving modern form and colour to Hindu Gods and Goddesses. He painted them all in vivid colours, with an European tinge in his brush. Popularity of his paintings gave him such authenticity that later versions of Gods were referred to the "original" and either accepted or rejected depending on the level of similarities.

So if The Times of India wants to experiment further with Hindu iconography, as part of its 'materialist' quest of making its paper appealing to urban India's neo-rich youth, who's Hindu Human Rights to stop them? Such pictures are a must for a newspaper that must pretend as though life is a music video which never ends. Your average ponga pandit may not agree.

Here's another problem. Bachi's article online doesn't have that image of Shiva. It must have appeared in the newspaper, though, along with the article. But Hindu Human Rights has also put up the 'objectionable' image online. And I accessed it, liked it, and put it on my MSN IM as well as this blog, thus defeating the very purpose of the Hindu Human Rights website! Similarly, someone who cares a fig about your "religious sentiments" may get ideas by seeing that piece of human clothing above, conveniently made available along with other such 'objectionable' artefacts in the Hindu Human Rights website.

This is a peculiar problem when dealing with what one considers hate speech. Example: if I am writing an essay about how the Sikh community is the butt of all jokes in India and how such stereotyping is objectionable, how can I effectively convey my point without quoting some such joke? But if I quote it, some google searcher will extract the quote, circulate it on sms, without even caring to read that I object to it! Or even if he reads it, he may think I'm just a stupid spoilsport, and would thus have no qualms about cracking Sardarji jokes.

How do you deal with this? Any ideas?

I have a lot more to say about the Hindu Human Rights website. Watch this page.