Monthly Archives: July 2006

One-A-Day

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Disclaimer: Some good lovin’ from time to time is also required.

Because I am blessed and in good health, I only require my fish oil supplement and my multivitamin to get me through each day. I am definitely one of the lucky ones though. For those living with AIDS it is not nearly so easy. The most effective way to slow down the ravages of AIDS has been via a triple cocktail of drugs such as Sustiva, Viread, and Emtriva.

The triple-cocktail treatment for HIV involves taking three different drugs to combat the infection. These medications are two nucleoside analog drugs, such as AZT and 3TC, and a protease inhibitor, such as Crixivan. The drugs drastically reduce the concentration of viri in the bloodstream to undetectable levels by affecting enzymes in the virus itself. The drugs do not completely eliminate every virus in the body and probably never will. It is not certain whether patients taking the drugs may still be able to transmit HIV to other people. In addition, the drugs are not a vaccine which can be prevent a person from being infected with HIV.

The total cost of the medication may be as much as $12,000 a year, although some health insurance companies cover the drugs.[Link]

Some positive news announced late today for those suffering from AIDS:

The first once-a-day AIDS pill that combines three current medicines won U.S. approval on Wednesday, offering patients a more convenient alternative to current multiple drug cocktails.

Atripla, which contains Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s drug Sustiva and Gilead Inc.’s medicines Viread and Emtriva, is the latest step in making it easier for AIDS patients to keep the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in check — a process that once included dozens of daily pills.

“It’s one thing to have medicine available, but it will only be effective when people can indeed take it as they are supposed to,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Murray Lumpkin told reporters. [Link]

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SAJA Convention

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The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) holds its 12th annual convention, this Thursday through Sunday, in New York City. For more information on SAJA and the convention click here. SAJA has become quite a formidable organization. The convention will gather 1,000 media desis and desiphiles, which should be an interesting scene on a number of levels, and the outside speakers are quite a high-power group, from the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs to the head of the Associated Press.

I will be attending the convention and covering it on behalf of the Mutiny. I don’t know what this will mean in practice, nor what tack or tone I’ll take — I like to improvise — but I’ll be there and filing reports for you.

Quite a few SAJA-ers and associates read Sepia Mutiny, so here’s an open invitation for anyone attending the conference to get in touch. E-mail me and include your cellphone so I can send you a text during the event.

Any questions or suggestions from readers, please leave them in the comments or feel free to drop me a line.

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Deafening silence in the blogosphere

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While trying to deal with the tragedy in Mumbai, I have been wondering what the coverage of the story tells us about ourselves.

I was not surprised by MSM coverage in America: poor in local papers, better in papers with a large desi population or those with an international audience. I was pleased to hear that CNN and CNBC had decent cable news coverage, perhaps because they’re well established in India.

What has baffled me, however, is the relative silence from the world of blogs. The blogosphere is supposed to be the cutting edge, far more advanced than the MSM, yet they’re spending less time on the story.

To be more precise, Technorati’s rankings of popular news stories shows us that average bloggers are paying some attention to the bombings; the fourth, sixth and twentieth most reblogged news stories are the BBC, CNN, and Fox News versions of this story. It’s currently less important than the death of Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett, or coverage of Zidane’s press coverage, but more important than Bob Novak and the big dig.

Where we see a distressing lack of coverage most clearly is amongst political blogs in the top 100 list [Thanks Manish]:

Amongst other major politics blogs, Atrios did a one line link while travelling and WashingtonMonthly covered black hair but not blacker events.

What gives? I emailed the following question to three significant political bloggers:

No opinion on the Mumbai bombings?

I’m surprised. Many more have died than did in London a year ago, and the death toll is currently just a little under the death toll from Madrid. Yet the blogosphere is largely quiet. Why?

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Let’s form a posse

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I’m kind of tired of reading comments right now. Instead, I am going to put up some pictures. When lots of big words make my head spin I like retreating to pictures. The first one is the cover of Time Magazine from this week:

The second picture is from this t-shirt titled “Cowboys and Indians” that an SM reader tipped us off to:

“Cowboys and Indians”

In the dimly-lit opium den that is my head, I thought these two pictures kind of went together given the evolving geopolitical situation.

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On the ground

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Bombay may or may not be the Maximum City, but maximum respect goes out to local writers Dilip D’Souza and Mutineer Emeritus Manish Vij for their pieces in Salon today. Dilip offers a reporter’s chronicle of the day; Manish, a very elegant urban essay centered on the railway.

Props to Salon for having reached out to these brothers. It’s well worth the small annoyance of watching a Stoli Blueberi (sic) ad — talk about irrelevant! — in order to read the online mag’s content today. Continue reading →

A Bombay Poem From Adil Jussawalla

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[I found the following in the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry. It’s by Adil Jussawalla.]

Sea Breeze, Bombay

by Adil Jussawalla

Partition’s people stitched
Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.
An opened people, fraying across the cut
country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,
Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,
Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work
Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,
Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,
come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,
Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,
Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,
Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,
Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

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Stitches

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Did you make sure to hear some music last night? I did.

Of course, IÂ’m one of the lucky ones. I wasnÂ’t on any of those trains that set off from Churchgate. I knew no one on them, not directly; though my dear friendÂ’s wifeÂ’s cousin was on board, and he escaped unharmed, and his friend merely needed some stitches.

Doubly lucky, because I could, after a long day of small frustrations, step from the sticky street into a room where there was taking place, in a relaxed off-night way, jazz.

Quiet. Sound.

Could it have been more apposite? When Rez shifted to his hybrid guitar, the one with sympathetic strings, and Kiran stood at the mic in her kurta top, and they launched into their song called “Pearl” – as in, homage to Daniel?

As she worked through the scales against the organ and hi-hat, intently pulling the notes from thin air, by hand, in that geometric way Indian singers have, there seemed a moment of formal lamentation. Sorrowful, and wise.

Later, with two desi sistas – cousins, in fact – we spoke of mosaics of hundreds of tiny shiny tiles that make up, if not life, at least a livelihood. Of missing chunks, ripped out by invaders or worn away by time.

Testing the metaphor, we imagined a workshop where we – I – stay up late, polishing new pieces, some to partly fill the gaps, others to extend the composition.

I remembered that IÂ’ve struggled, albeit in small ways.

The sound filling me still, I remembered: the possibility of tiles, the necessity of stitches. Continue reading →

BOMBAY’S RUSH HOUR ROCKED BY BLASTS (11 Updates)

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Ultrabrown.jpg Breaking News in Bombay via AP:

Seven explosions rocked Bombay’s commuter rail network during Tuesday evening’s rush hour. The blasts ripped apart train compartments and reportedly killed dozens, police and Indian media said.

Though the chaos makes it difficult to ascertain exact numbers, how many have been injured, Indiant tv reports said that “the death toll could be in the dozens.” 40 80 100 105 137 163 172 200 people have died and 300 464 700 are injured. I’m sure that before I can even update this post, one of you will comment with the latest numbers; I sincerely hope that they are not high. I know, I’m excessively idealistic, but whenever I hear “Breaking News”, “Bombs” or “Trains” or similar, I screw my eyes shut and pray for miracles.

Television images showed injured victims sprawled on train tracks, frantically dialing their cell phones. Some of the injured were being carried away from the crash site. The force of the blasts ripped doors and windows off carriages, and luggage and debris were strewn about.
Pranay Prabhakar, the spokesman for the Western Railway, confirmed that seven blasts had taken place. He said all trains had been suspended, and he appealed to the public to stay away from the city’s train stations.
Bombay, India’s financial center, and New Delhi, the capital, were reportedly on high alert. Bombay’s commuter rail network is among the most crowded in the world.

Developing… 🙁 Continue reading →

The Big Payback

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My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. 🙂

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

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Salty Tigers Are No Match For A Woman

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le tigre.jpg

Somewhere near the Sundarbans, a teenager cancelled a Royal Bengal tiger‘s dinner plans. Using nothing more than a row boat oar, she kept the ferocious cat at bay for ten minutes. Unbelievable. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ve heard of mothers lifting cars off of their trapped children in order to save them. Maybe when the person in danger is a loved one…anything is possible. Via the BBC:

A woman in Bangladesh…fended off a Royal Bengal tiger which was attacking her husband, police say…

Eighteen-year-old Nazma Akhter and her husband Anwarul Islam, 25, were fishing for shrimp on Sunday in a canal on the fringes of the Sundarbans…

After biting Akkhter’s husband, the tiger tried to abscond with him, as Bengals are wont to do with their quarry; that’s when the fierce animal had to reckon with a fiercer woman.

Police chief ASM Zahid said…”This woman is extraordinarily courageous, because she alone fought the tiger and saved her husband,” he told the BBC.

“I salute her for her courage.”

Approximately 20 people are killed by tigers each year in Bangladesh; last week alone in the Sunderbans, two women died because of attacks from the lethal carnivores.

Local newspapers reported that such was the beating it received from the paddle that it was forced to beat a retreat into the forest.

Such a beating!

I had guessed that pressures from humans impinging on the Royal ‘hood were the cause for all of these deaths by Tiger, but apparently, there’s another reason: Continue reading →