Monthly Archives: August 2005

F(l)agged on the Ferry

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It was bound to happen sooner or later and this past weekend it happened to me. My black backpack was searched. It wouldnÂ’t have been remarkable if it happened at a mass transit checkpoint. After all, statistically there was a good chance since I take the New York City subway and LIRR trains on a daily basis. But my brush with long arm of the law took place about 50 miles from Manhattan while standing in line to board a ferry to Fire Island.

For those of you not from the New York area, Fire Island is a small island off the coast of the southern fork of Long Island, New York. In the 1930s and 40s it was a haven for artists and writers and slowly turned into a summer retreat for mostly gays and lesbians. Today, Fire Island is synonymous with “gay beach”.

My wife son and I were with in line with our friends (a lesbian couple and their baby) waiting to board the ferry. As they opened the gate, and the line started to move, I shuffled along with the others in line. Right before I got I stepped on board, I was approached by a man in dark glasses. If he had asked me for my number, I would have been flattered.

“Sir, do you mind stepping aside? I just need to check your backpack.”

It sounded like a request. But it wasnÂ’t.

“Sure”, I said, and stood there while he checked my bag which was still strapped to my back.

After a cursory glance, he said “All done. That’s it”

As I began to leave, he said “Hold on, let me zip you up first”

He closed my bag and I stepped on to the ferry to join my family and friends.

After taking a seat on the top deck I looked to see if others were being checked. No one else was under scrutiny. Our friends who were renting a place on the island for the weekend met as us and while we were settling in one of them asked “Did they stop and check you before you boarded the ferry?”

“Yes” I replied, “Did they check you too?”

“Yeah, they checked my bag and after that I stepped out of line to see if they were doing this to others. I stood there counting to see if it was every 5th person or if there was a method. But I was the only one they searched.”

Now I must add that my friend who was searched is gay, Guyanese (Indian descent) and dark-skinned and I of course had a three day growth of beard.

IÂ’d like to think they were screening us to make sure werenÂ’t smuggling in anything that would take away from the “fabulousness” of the island. Continue reading →

Learning Hindi

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hindi.jpg Manorama has a great post about her experience taking Hindi at her university. She is a Bangladeshi-American graduate student, and is studying the language mainly for scholarly/ academic purposes, as I understand it. Her post dovetails nicely with one of the issues raised in my post yesterday — how and whether South Asians in the diaspora end up learning Hindi — and gives me the chance to research and reflect on the status of Hindi and other South Asian languages at American universities in general.

Manorama’s university decided it needed to separate the ‘Heritage’ Hindi students from the ‘non-Heritage’ (i.e., white, in this case) students. Students who grew up in households where Punjabi, Hindi, Gujurati, etc. were spoken generally go in the Heritage section, where less effort is spent on pronunciation and some basic vocabulary, while more effort is spent on grammar and so on. It’s arguably a good idea, though it results in de facto segregation. Continue reading →

Surviving a crash

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The first lesson I learned as a pilot is that airplanes are incredibly forgiving beasts.  Seriously, you almost have to try to crash them on purpose.  This runs counter to conventional beliefs because movies and the media always play up the stewardess being sucked out of the cabin angle, or the gremlin on the wing angle.  Learning how to crash-land a plane is one of the most interesting lessons that a begining pilot is taught.  Flying is not nearly as spontaneous as one thinks.  There is a checklist for everything.  My checklists were always on a clipboard that wrapped around my right leg, secured with a velcro strap.  If you think that’s kind of silly you should see the volumes of checklists that astronauts have to follow to do anything. 

Practicing crash landings is like a dress rehearsal for a performance you never wish to be in.  At the last minute you pull up of course, otherwise you have to explain to farmer John why there is a Cessna burning in his field.  The closest I ever came to an accident was in fact a landing.  I took a friend up for her birthday.  While landing, the plane bounced several times, several meters up off the runway.  She didn’t realize how badly I had botched it.  Never during all my instruction had such a thing happened but having memorized my checklist I was able to recover.  That brings me finally to Flight 358.  Science Daily reports:

All 297 passengers and 12 crew survived a catastrophic airliner fire Tuesday at Toronto’s international airport, a Canadian airport official said.

The official stressed he was quoting “unconfirmed reports.” He said there appeared to be only 14 minor injuries, but could not confirm that one of Air France Flight 358’s pilots had been taken to the hospital

He refused to speculate on the cause of the fire. The airliner after a flight from Paris.

Earlier, flame and smoke were pouring out of the passenger airliner at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport shortly after an accident around 4 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

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Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

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Writer, director, actor, and comedian Albert Brooks is working on a new film set to be released next year (tip from Srinath).  IMDB has only the most basic details about it (including cast), but Ain’t it Cool News has more (with spoiler warnings):

Okay, so I went to a screening in Pasadena of the new Albert Brooks film. I love this guy’s movies, but I wasn’t crazy about The Muse (I’m with Moriarty on that one). However here’s the truly excellent news: The Albert Brooks I know and love is in fact back!

The title is indeed: Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World and the premise is essentially the title. Albert Brooks, playing himself again – brilliant! (For any of you who haven’t seen Real Life, first, you’re lame. Second, run, don’t walk). So he gets called up by the powers that be, i.e. real life ex-Senator, and current day Law & Order cast member, Fred Dalton Thompson – who too is playing himself, to go to India and Pakistan and find out what makes the Muslims laugh. This is a late in the game attempt by the government to try something other than the “usual methods of spying and fighting” to figure out what the hell is going on on that side of the world.

Mr. Brooks appears somewhat incredulous. He even stops the meeting to point out that India is largely Hindu, not Muslim. To which the one of the suits responds that there are 150 million Muslims in India, and Fred Thomson says, “Is that enough for ya?” Hilarious.

DANGER DANGER SPOILER AHEAD!!!

So much happens once he’s in India, but so much doesn’t too, I mean this is really the brilliance of the movie, but let me save that for a minute. Albert spends the whole movie asking people what they think is funny and never gets any real answers. It turns out that Muslims (and Hindus) are pretty much like Americans; their sense of humor is completely idiosyncratic and doesn’t tell you jack shit about what the country as a whole might consider funny.

I can understand this last point.  Only a few people find funny the things I do.  I’d love to hear some stories of jokes that didn’t go over so well due to cultural differences from our readers.  There is more to the review above in case you aren’t too worried about spoilers.  Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is set for wide release in January 2006.  Let’s hope that for Brooks sake it doesn’t inspire any Van Gogh type critical reviews.

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Raza exhibition in NYC

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I’m one of those Philistines. I dig modern art more than the classics, and Rothkos are pretty to look at, but their high price utterly escapes me. I’m very finicky about what I read, but I sometimes feel like I was born without certain senses. A sommelier in my kitchen might be bored by the mundaneness of the choices. I wish someone would sit down and say, ‘It’s ok. Most people think someone is crazy-eyed when they mention the top notes in a wine’s bouquet. Really, you’re perfectly normal.’

So I’m probably not the best person to introduce this post, but here goes. A NYC art gallery is exhibiting the works of the eminent Indian abstract painter Syed Haider Raza:

Raza’s form was heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionism of the New York School of Painters including Sam Francis, Kandinsky and Rothko. He has also been especially inspired by moderist masters, particularly by the feverish intensity of color of Cezanne and Van Gogh’s work. However, the underlying and continuing inspiration in his work has been his homeland, India…

Born in Madhya Pradesh, India in 1922, Raza studied at the JJ School of Art, Bombay. In 1950 he received a scholarship from the French government to study at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was awarded the Prix de la Critique in 1956 in France. In 1962, The University of California, Berkeley, invited him as a visiting lecturer where he did some pivotal work. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India, the highest honor bestowed by the Indian Government. He currently lives and works in Gorbio [in France] and Paris.

This is the first show for my buddy Priyanka Mathew, the new gallery director. She says, ‘He’s 82, and this probably will be a rare and perhaps final visit to New York. A disciple of his, Sujata Bajaj, will also be mounted.’ I assure you she’s referring to Bajaj’s paintings  Bajaj shuttles between homes in Norway, France and Pune along a disjoint meridian.

Here are photos from an exhibition of Raza’s work last year. Here’s the gallery’s current Indian art exhibit, Shakti 2005. It’s quite lovely.

Syed Haider Raza exhibition, Gallery Arts India, Sep. 16 – Oct. 9, 2005; opening reception Sep. 16; 206 Fifth Avenue at 25th St., 5th Floor, Manhattan; times TBD Continue reading →

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Why does Pakistan support Jaish and Lakshar? [updated]

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I have a most un-mutinous confession to make – there are lots of things in the world I don’t understand, yet I still blog about them. One of these things is the Pakistani government’s continuing support of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, two Pakistan based militant/terrorist groups that claim Kashmiri independence as their goal. As I mentioned earlier, the Pakistani government has a very soft policy towards these two organizations:

Some security analysts in Pakistan have been critical of the government’s seemingly soft stance in relation to Harkat and Jaish – wondering why they have not been dealt with as severely as some of the other groups. [BBC]

These two groups were implicated in the attack on the Indian Parliament that came just a few months after the 9/11 attacks in the USA:

The atrocity of 13 December [2001] when five terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament, killing eight officials and a gardener, has given New Delhi the high moral ground. New Delhi insists that the five were Pakistanis and belonged to two Pakistan-based terrorist groups – Jaish-e-Mohamed (Army of the Prophet Mohamed) and Lakshar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pious). Islamabad has denied the claim and refused to accept the bodies. [cite]

They’re also the only terrorist group linked with the first group of British bombers:

Not only is there no clear link between the two sets of suspects, there is no established link between either group and al-Qaeda or any other known terror network, say British officials. There are lots of tantalizing links back to Pakistan from the July 7 gang, three of whom had parents born there. When Shehzad Tanweer — who killed seven on a train near Aldgate station — and Mohammed Sidique Khan — who killed six at Edgware Road station — left Leeds to visit Pakistan in 2004, they were frequently seen with members and recruiters of the banned militant organizations Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, according to several people in Samundri, a town near the village where Tanweer stayed with his uncle. [cite]

Here’s the question – why does Musharraf continue to support these two groups, given the high costs involved?

Continue reading →

Bollywood Delusions: Race vs. Language

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katrina kaif.jpg There’s a short article in Bollywood Mantra about the new Hindi film actress Katrina Kaif (pictured right), who has a small role in Sarkar and a starring role in Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya. She speaks Hindi with a heavy British accent, so professional ‘dub’ actresses fill in for her. Two other films of hers coming out will also have other women’s voices:

Katrina Kaif will have two releases in as many weeks and Akshay Kumar, who starts with her in Raj Kanwar’s Humko Deewana Kar Gaye, thinks she’s shaping up to be a “major heroine”. But Katrina’s relatively small walk-on part in Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar and her full-fledged part in David Dhawan’s Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya have one thing in common – she did not speak her own lines in both films. Reason? Apparently Katrina’s Hindi is a bit on the weaker side. In fact, Varma had originally decided to retain Katrina’s ultra-anglicised voice in keeping with her US-returned character in Sarkar. But the Hindi spoken by the actress was way too outlandish to pass off as a non-resident Indian accent. (link)

This raises a whole complex of issues, most of which point in one way or another at the weird neuroses that continue to haunt Bollywoood. But let me just make two points. Continue reading →

Desi Lord Mayor of Manchester

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Pretty soon, the press will be full of stories concerning  the alienation of British Asian Muslims. While this is an important perspective, and may be an accurate depiction of a segment of British Muslim society, it is not the whole picture. 

There are also success stories like that of Mohammed Afzal Khan, Manchester’s first Asian Lord Mayor. Khan was a high school dropout who worked  in the textile mills until he had a typically desi epiphany:

One night in the late 1970s, clocking off from work following another long night shift, he began the trudge out of the valley toward his home. At the top of the hill, he turned to survey the scene: the chimney jutting out of the mill, the red-tiled roofs on the terraced housing emblematic of working-class northern England.
“I thought, ‘Do I want to spend the rest of my life in this mill?’ ” Khan recounts. “The answer was no. That was the moment that changed everything. I realized that education is paramount.”   [CSM]

Khan went back to school to learn the basics, working his way through college while his wife (he got married at 19) trained as a dentist. After a series of jobs “from bus driver to youth worker,” he became a police constable. Although he had achieved a measure of security and status, this wasn’t enough for Khan.

He spent 2-1/2 years as a police constable, developing a keen interest in the law. When he was informed he would not be allowed unpaid leave to study, he took a risk and quit.
“My police superintendent said, ‘You’re making a big mistake, your future is here,’ ” he recalls. “I said ‘I’ll live with my mistake.’ And I have.”  [CSM]

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Tracing my roots

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Some of the comments on SM of late have disturbed me greatly.  I am begining to realize that a lot of people are very confused about who they are.  Even worse they seem obsessed with trying to convince people who they are not.  While sitting in a jury pool all day last Tuesday I did a little bit of reading.  I learned of National Geographic’s Genographic Project which attempts to trace the path of humans as they left Africa.

[Spencer] Wells, 36, is a population geneticist using science in global pursuit of the greatest story not yet told: the story of how humankind traveled from its origins in Africa to populate the planet. The most telling clues lie with isolated, indigenous tribes like the Tubu, for their DNA remains, in a sense, the purest. Their unique genetic markers, characteristic mutations in a defined sequence of DNA, are like flags waving from the place their ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years–the starting point for ancient migrations. Any venturesome Tubu who crossed the Sahara to see the outlying world, and propagated in the process, passed on one or another of those genetic markers to his or her offspring. Any traveler who came through the Tibesti and intermarried did the same. Wells might take a cheek swab from an investment banker in Boston and find that same genetic marker: proof that one of those Tubu created a family line that leads, in some circuitous way, over continents and generations, from the Tibesti to an oak-paneled office in Back Bay. It’s in the hope of tracing myriad journeys such as this that Wells, a newly named National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, is undertaking one of the most ambitious and expensive research adventures in the National Geographic Society’s 117-year history: the grandly named Genographic Project.

At a cost of 40 million dollars over five years, the brunt of it borne by National Geographic, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation, the Genographic Project under Wells’s direction is establishing 11 DNA-sampling centers around the world, with the goal of collecting 100,000 cheek swabs or blood samples from mostly indigenous peoples like the Tubu. A sense of urgency infuses the project: Year by year, at an ever quickening rate, the outside world is crowding in on, and at the same time absorbing, indigenous peoples. A Tubu who moves to Paris will still have the genetic markers that distinguish him as a Tubu, but the geographical context for his markers will be gone. As for the Tubu who remain in the Tibesti mountains, they may marry more with outsiders as modern technology makes contact more likely. Generation by generation, tracing the last routes of historical migration of such isolated people grows that much harder. Wells wants to map as many routes as he can while their geographical origins are relatively intact.

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