Monthly Archives: February 2005

Swab-in-cheek wisdom

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When I was a kid, I used to devour comic books about Indian mythology. One of the best set of stories was about Birbal, the wise chief minister in emperor Akbar’s court. The Birbal-of-the-comic-books used to take the piss out of the wealthy, pompous and illogical with cleverness and humor.

One of the tales I remember was a story, pretty much identical to the one from King Solomon, where two different women claimed to be the mother of a single baby. Birbal ordered that the baby be cut in half and shared between the women. One of the supplicants begged him to stop and gave up her struggle, and her love for the child revealed her as the true mother.

These days, gene sequencers dispense justice like modern-day Birbals:

Sri Lankan authorities say DNA results have confirmed the identity of a baby who was found alive in the rubble of the tsunami disaster. Nicknamed “Baby 81,” the toddler was the subject of a desperate eight-week custody battle involving as many as nine couples… Nine couples claimed the child was theirs, but only Murugupillai Jeyarajah and his wife Jenita followed through, providing DNA samples.

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CIA projects grim future for Pakistan

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From StrategyPage –

February 14, 2005: A new CIA report predicts that Pakistan may well come apart in the next decade. Corruption and poor government are making Islamic radicalism more popular, especially in the Pushtun (northwest) and Baluchi (southwest) tribal areas. Most of the population is not tribal. In fact, about have the population is in one province, Punjab. When India and Pakistan were formed in 1947, Punjab was split, with about 70 percent of it going to Pakistan. The Indian portion, with better government and less corruption, has done more than twice as well as the Pakistani part (on a per-capita basis). India also has problems with tribal separatists (in the northeast), but in Pakistan the tribes comprise a larger portion of the population (at least ten percent.) It’s expensive to fight the tribes, and the Baluchis are eager to take control of the lucrative natural gas fields operating in Baluchistan. The CIA report sees the country coming apart along ethnic lines, much like Yugoslavia did in the 1990s. This would create a Punjabi state, with at least half the population, plus Pushtun and Baluchi states, plus one or two more. The big question is what would happen to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis dismiss the report, pointing out that, while they created the mess, they’ve also learned to deal with it.

Personally, this whole scenario feels a bit far fetched… But, I’m just the messenger 😉 Continue reading →

Girls in white dresses with blue-satin sashes…

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Little Malayalee kids are so cute:

Dubai: A nine-year-old girl from Kerala has won 100 kg of gold, worth about Rs.60 million in India, in the world’s biggest gold promotion event at the Dubai Shopping Festival 2005, it was announced here Sunday.
“I don’t know the value in rupees, but I know 100 kg is a lot of gold,” said Shakiba Asif, when told that she had won the prize. The family had got a coupon for Dh.250 (about 3,000 rupees) that won the grand prize.
The 10th Dubai Shopping Festival, which ended Saturday, has proved to be lucky for the Asif family from Malapuram in Kerala, though Shakiba said she did not know the number of zeroes in the total value of the gold she had won.
But what Shakiba – a fourth standard student at a school here who nurses the hope of becoming a doctor – was sure that she wanted to buy “a lot of new dresses”. And what is a lot?
“Two”, she said promptly. “Also I want to give sweets to my schoolmates.”

Awwww. What a dear. I hope she gets her two dresses, and that she pirouettes happily in them. 🙂

A big TY to our favourite gori Andrea for leaving the link in my diary’s comments. I love posting about sweet things. Speaking of, who among you sweet things wants to take me to next year’s shopping festival? I saw an excellent segment on this extravaganza while watching the PBS show i adore most– Globetrekker. Dubai sounds like my kind of town. 😉 Continue reading →

Shadchen for Dummies

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The article itself isn’t as “directly” brown as everything else we dissect or publish here, but the subject matter is familiar enough– even if it doesn’t explicitly mention south asians:

…parents, relatives or a designated member of the community took on the sacred task of arranging for a young person to create a new household, thus ensuring the continuity and stability of society. Although in much of the world that tradition continues, in our mainstream culture of individual choice and romantic self-determination, finding your own mate is a rite of passage, an exercise in autogenesis.
Among certain immigrant groups in this country, like those from Southeast Asia and Africa, ancient traditions of arranging marriages continue. In the Jewish tradition, arranging three marriages secures you a place in heaven. Ultra-Orthodox marriages are routinely arranged, and conservative communities often have informal matchmakers.

I am so curious about the “Southeast” reference…does she mean to include us within that inaccurate phrasing? Or is she the last human alive to know that we’re all about the auntie-facilitated set-up?

No matter what the author meant, it’s a fascinating piece from the NYT magazine. I’ll totally vouch for it. Oh, and if you’re going to take my word for it and try to read the rest, but you don’t have a username/pw for the site, there are ways around that.

:+:

The Grey Lady: “The New Arranged Marriage”

*Shadchen: yiddish word for “matchmaker” Continue reading →

Do you know what you are funding? -part II

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Shortly after the Tsunami I posted an entry giving readers a “heads up” that they should research the organizations that they donate money to. Not all organizations are what they seem at the surface, and money sometimes flows in misguided ways. Just as an example I linked to Campaign to Stop Funding Hate website. I unintentionally but wrongfully implied that the accusations made on that website against certain aid groups were legitimate. Judging by the numerous and lengthy comments left by readers (including the spokesman for CSFH) this is a subject more controversial than I had imagined. Earlier this week the U.K. Charity commission absolved one of the relief organizations that the Campaign to Stop Funding hate had singled out. As reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

The leader of a Duluth-based relief organization says he feels vindicated by a British government report clearing the group’s sister charity of wrongdoing in India.

The U.K. Charity Commission concluded that 2.3 million British pounds raised by Sewa International — Sewa International USA’s affiliate in the United Kingdom — indeed went to help rebuild six Indian villages devastated by a 2001 earthquake in Gujarat state.

Hate group watchdogs had accused Sewa International of using the donations to support Hindu nationalists they say foment violence against Christians, Muslims and other minorities in India. There are no such accusations against the recently created Sewa International USA, but the watchdogs had issued warnings against any group affiliated with Sewa International following India’s latest natural disaster, the Indian Ocean tsunamis.

The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (who according to Seva “are largely made up of Communist intellectuals bent on disrupting the activities of Hindu groups”) isn’t convinced however:

The two hate-group watchdogs — a U.S.-based network of activists called the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and the British group Awaaz-South Asia Watch — said the report was flawed. They noted that India denied visas to British investigators, making it impossible for them to check for themselves how the funds were actually used. The charity commission’s conclusions were based partly on a report by 30 donors who witnessed the reconstruction work and new schools as part of a visit arranged by Sewa International.

“One has to question where the Charity Commission is getting its information from,” said Ra Ravishankar, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate.

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Shaitan’s Billis

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Fresh from evangelist Benny Hinn’s miracle healings, the Jakkur airfield outside Bangalore hosted India’s version of the Blue Angels for an aviation expo where India’s surging airlines placed orders for new planes.

The Surya Kiran (Sunrays) precision flying team looks fantastic, but even to these non-military eyes they don’t cluster as tightly as the Blue Angels. They fly Kiran Mark II trainers instead of the more capable F/A-18 Hornets; these stubby trainers handle forgivingly but are slower than front-line fighters. So they use the patented Indian solution of throwing manpower at the problem by using 50% more pilots on the team 🙂

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When good kids happen to bad parents

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In case there’s any confusion, adopting a child from India is nothing like buying an end table from Target — you do not get to return the former if he or she does not work out in your home.

Shockingly enough, there are otherwise intelligent and reasonable adults who do not grasp this distinction. On a recent episode of “Dr. Phil,” the underlying point needed to be drilled home to Melissa and Bobby, a married couple that adopted a child from India named AJ:

When they brought AJ home, things were not what they expected. “He did not want to be held by us. He would cry and kick and scream whenever we tried to hold him,” Melissa explains. “We’re kind of like, ‘What happened? Where did things go wrong?’ I do not love AJ and I wonder if I ever will.”

Melissa and Bobby also learned that AJ has special needs. “I feel resentful. I didn’t bargain for that,” says Melissa. “I’ve told him, ‘I wish we never adopted you,’ and I call him stupid. I thought I would grow to love him, but I feel like I’m forcing myself to love him.”

There are two things in this world that you just don’t f–k with:
1. Wu-Tang Clan (obviously)
2. Dr. Phil

The imposing Texan laid the smackdown on Melissa, and made hapless Bobby watch, ’cause that’s how Dr. Phil rolls:

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Posted in TV

India literally becoming a man’s world

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India’s gender imbalance is widening its gap, and officials are placing blame on the practice of female infanticide and sex-selective abortions. Uma Girish writes in The Christian Science Monitor:

Though the government has battled the practice for decades, India’s gender imbalance has worsened in recent years. Any progress toward halting infanticide, it seems, has been offset by a rise in sex-selective abortions. Too many couples – aided by medical technology, unethical doctors, and weak enforcement of laws banning abortion on the basis of gender – are electing to end a pregnancy if the fetus is female.

The consequence of female infanticide and, more recently, abortion is India’s awkwardly skewed gender ratio, among the most imbalanced in the world. The ratio among children up to the age of 6 was 962 girls per 1,000 boys in 1981, but 20 years later the inequity was actually worse: 927 girls per 1,000 boys.

The Christian Science Monitor/Yahoo!: For India’s daughters, a dark birth day

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If I had a thousand words

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worldpressphoto.jpg

Indian photographer Arko Datta has won the prestigious 2004 World Press Photo Award for his picture of this Indian woman genuflecting in absolute sorrow at the death of a relative killed in the Asian tsunami. The Voice of America reports:

The picture, taken by Reuters photographer Arko Datta, shows a woman lying on sandy ground with her hands turned toward the sky. The hand of a dead relative is visible nearby.

The photo, taken in Cuddalore in India’s Tamil Nadu state two days after the December 26 tsunami, was one of nearly 70,000 pictures submitted by professional photographers from 123 countries.

One of the judges, Kathy Ryan from The New York Times called the image graphic, historic and starkly emotional.

Mr. Datta will receive the distinguished award, along with nearly $13,000, in a special ceremony in Amsterdam in April.

I am drawn to the edge of the picture but dare not seek to uncover what lies beyond. It is as if the left edge represents the divide between this world and the next. From our vantage point it seems we have been thrust upon the scene to either speak some words of comfort to this woman or administer last rights to the dead.

But know that by whom this entire body is pervaded, is indestructible. No one is able to cause the destruction of the imperishable soul. –Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2 verse 17

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Do good fences make good neighbors?

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The Atlantic Monthly’s Abigail Cutter lists the ten most notable security barriers of the post-WWII era. Surrounded by less-than-friendly neighbors, there’s no way India is staying of this list:

5. India/Bangladesh: Aiming to curb infiltration from its neighbor, India in 1986 sanctioned what will ultimately be a 2,043-mile barbed-wire barrier. It’s expected to cost $1 billion by the time it is completed, next year.

6. India/Pakistan: In 1989 India began erecting a fence to stem the flow of arms from Pakistan. So far it has installed more than 700 miles of fencing, much of which is electrified and stands in the disputed Kashmir region. The anti-terrorist barriers will eventually run the entire 1,800-mile border with Pakistan.

Of more relevancy was number eight on the list — a fourteen-mile fence separating San Diego from Tijuana — which has made it a real pain for me, er, I mean, my friend Lupa Letap, to score cheap prescription meds.

The Atlantic Monthly: Security fences (subscription required)

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