Monthly Archives: October 2006

Chris Omprakash Sharma, America’s top climber

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Chris Sharma is the best rock climber in America, and probably the best sport climber in the world:

When he completed his long-time project Realization in Ceuse, France in 2001, the route was arguably the hardest in the world…

Sharma [has] won the World Cup of Climbing, [but] it was later recalled after he tested positive for THC, although THC is not a performance enhancing drug. He returned the cup. [Link]

Sharma has continuously pushed the limits of the sport, climbing routes more difficult than virtually anybody else:

Chris Sharma, the 24-year-old monkey boy who in 2001 introduced the world to 5.15 climbing (the sport’s hardest grade), recently cobbled together a new boulder problem, across the roof of an Ozarks cave, that some say is one of the hardest lines ever completed. [Link]

I got really excited when I first heard his name. This guy who climbs like a mountain macaca … could his name really be Krishna Omprakash Sharma? I mean, that pot thing is so Harold & Kumar.

Nope. Despite his desi middle and last names, he’s neither [racially] desi nor hadesi, he’s actually a hidesi [desi with either Hippie or Hindu convert parents]. His parents are disciples of Baba Hari Dass, “who has not spoken since 1952 and communicates by writing on a small chalkboard.” Continue reading →

I speak more Punjabi than Amharic

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Despite declaring that I do not imbibe by myself last week, tragic times call for pathetic measures; I spent the greater part of my Sunday afternoon intoxicating at Tryst, alone. I was all dressed up in black (though sadly, I did not resemble an erotic vulture), like some flashback to 1989, right down to the eyeliner-as-eyeshadow-tactic for that extra corpse-y effect.

271009556_328658be36_m.jpg My favorite way to waste a lazy Sunday is with one fat newspaper and several cups of milky coffee. After a phonecall from home bearing bad news, those props were replaced by this iBook and several pint glasses of milky coffee + alcohol, on the rocks. That was one slightly bright spot on an otherwise bleak day; what I was chugging was delicious and that’s because it was by my design. Sort of. Okay fine, the drink that I want to take credit for right now is but a slight variation on the powerhouse “Martin Blanco” cocktail I’ve been fond of forever at Tryst (iced vanilla vodka + espresso + kahlua + amaretto + milk…shaken violently). Amaretto di Saronno was my Father’s favorite liqueur and I didn’t want to taste it on a day when I was already glum. I improvised.

“Would it be possible to get Bailey’s instead of the Amaretto?”

My waiter paused and then smiled, as if he suddenly approved of such a manoeuver. “SURE.”

Later, when one of his co-workers asked me what I would call this elixir I was re-ordering for the third time, I tipsily blurted out “Martin O’blanco!” and she loved it. So there you have it. Since one of my goals in life is to get something on a menu either named after or otherwise attached to me (I’d totally settle for getting a mention in a menu “description”, which is something I think Tryst does), I take my barely-witty nomenclating of half-creative cocktails seriously enough to torture you with it.

As satisfying (and veg-happy) as Tryst’s menu is, I craved something different. I had devoured Amsterdam Falafel earlier in the day for lunch; I was suddenly consumed with memories of the fantastic gobi I had enjoyed there and I wanted more. I’m like that; if I dig something I will eat it over and over and over (PB + J, every day, grade 1-12) again. I do that with movies, too. And books. Especially suitable ones. Amsterdam it would be. I told the purveyor of O’blanco that I’d be back in 30 minutes and I left.

Though I have learned my lesson and no longer wear anything remotely cute while on 18th street, lest I encourage the invasive jerks who plague my new ‘hood with their assault attempts, all my modest, flesh-concealing layers were barely adequate for the autumn chill. I keep forgetting that it’s October and that I should expect to shiver accordingly. Or, you know, wear a jacket.

“Ay, Mami…where you going? Come on in.” Three confused desi promoters speak Latin to me half-heartedly. It’s Sunday night and the strip is dead. I think they’re more bored than serious. I smile as I pass them, right before one of them asks the other, “Was she Indian?” That’s the question of the day, apparently. Continue reading →

Non-essential computer use

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Yesterday I made the stupid mistake of forwarding this article as an internal memo to my SM bunker-mates:

Scientists at Stanford University say the United States is loaded with Internet addicts who are possibly as clinically ill as alcoholics.

The nationwide study suggests that more than one in eight adults has a hard time staying away from the Internet for more than a few days at a time. And one in 11 tries to hide his or her online habit…

The survey, conducted over the phone, found that nearly 70 percent of respondents were regular Internet users and 14 percent found it hard to stay offline for several days at a time…

According to the research, the typical Internet-addicted user is a single, college-educated, white male in his 30s who spends approximately 30 hours a week on nonessential computer use. [Link]

Minutes later the thirty-something Ennis sent out an earnest email indicating that he would not be logging on to SM for the rest of the day and asked us all to look after his post. In retrospect I realize that I should have followed the example of Kim Jong Il and kept a lid on such information. Too much knowledge decreases worker productivity. I realize also that this article might make some readers a bit anxious and reflective. Please don’t reflect. I assure you that SM falls under the essential use category.

Thanks to a couple of tipsters I also wanted to point you all to a relatively new website. CNET has a review:

That one raised eyebrow makes her an intimidating desi woman. I like it a lot.

Talk about an interactive search engine. A new search site called Ms. Dewey features a sultry woman who makes wisecracks related to the keywords that are typed in. The search results appear as a long, scrolling list in a window that pops up on the upper right.

Set against a futuristic cityscape background, Ms. Dewey–with her hair pulled back–probably represents a digital-age librarian. Her name refers to the Dewey Decimal classification system used for cataloging books in libraries.

Her quips relating to keywords range from mundane and silly to provocative. For instance, during a search for “George Bush” she mentioned how easy it was to make jokes about the president. For a search for “sex” she picked up a yellow ergonomic exercise ball and said “Safety first, and make sure you get it on film…” [Link]

So what does the first article about internet addiction have to do with the sultry Ms. Dewey? Isn’t it obvious? I’ve been reading the many neuroses laid bare on that other thread and I thought I’d offer my wise perspective on dating desi. I know that in reality nothing works. Why bother? Instead, I have found comfort in the arms of Ms. Dewey. She is the strong, beautiful, witty, articulate (sometimes verbose), and smarter-than-me desi woman I’ve been searching for my whole life. If any of you fools linger too long on her site I will hurt you. Continue reading →

Oh, What’s The Diff?

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Terrific op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times by Jeff Stein, national security editor of Congressional Quarterly. He’s been conducting a little experiment…

FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?

Here are some of the answers:

A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.’s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. “Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference,” he said. “It’s important to know who your targets are.”

That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. “The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,” he said. “And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.”

A member of the House intelligence committee:

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

Another committee member:

“Do I?” she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. “You know, I should.” She took a stab at it: “It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”

Now we’re not talking theology. Stein’s asking his repondents who’s who right now. Do they know that Hezbollah is Shiite? That Osama bin Laden is Sunni? Stein says that some of his interviewees are able to answer these questions easily. But all too many, he says, “don’t have a clue.”

“How can they do their job,” Stein asks, “without knowing the basics?” Continue reading →

“At War In All But Name”

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The LTTE has struck for the first time on Sri LankaÂ’s southern coast, in the tourist belt:

Tamil Tiger guerrillas opened a new front against the Sri Lankan government today when rebels posing as fisherman blew up their boats in an ambush on a naval base on the islandÂ’s southern tourist belt.

It is believed three sailors were killed and a dozen injured in the attack on the navy in Galle harbour. Fourteen civilians were also wounded. The authorities imposed an open-ended curfew on the town after mobs began to target Tamil-owned shops. Police brought the situation under control by firing on the crowds.

As you probably know, this bombing came two days after a particularly horrific attack in which a suicide bomber drove a truck into a convoy of buses returning Sri Lankan soldiers from their tour of duty on the front. Approximately 100 soldiers were killed. The military carried out air raids in retaliation.

A few days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, which was effected back in 1987 in the context of the India-Sri Lanka agreement, was unconstitutional and must be reversed. The merger was a concession to the Tamil separatist side and it was challenged in court by a hard-line Sinhalese party.

It is discouraging to talk about the situation in Sri Lanka. Prior threads here have eventually disintegrated into mud-slinging about the legitimacy or otherwise of the LTTEÂ’s grievances. The official or unofficial mouthpieces of the government and rebels specialize in incendiary rhetoric. The civilian peace movement in Sri Lanka appears beleaguered at best.

Most analysts agree that Sri Lanka is now at war in all but name. However, they say that both sides are likely to sit down for face-to-face talks in Switzerland at the end of the month to revive the peace process.

[Link]

So what are the conflict resolution experts saying?

Continue reading →

Sepia Destiny Part II: Dating while Desi

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Much like the girls on Sex and the City would get together to dish, my girls and I will get together and dish about the dilemmas of Dating while Desi. Yes, girls do talk, far more than we blog about. And Dating while Desi ain’t easy, as the mutiny has informed us on Sepia Destiny Part 1. In these talks, we girls will touch on questions such as, “Do you date desi only or non-desis or anyone but white boys? Do your parents sneak around behind your back with biodata and pictures? Do your parents give out your numbers to guys that call and don’t leave messages – from obscure area codes? Do your parents even know that you date? Where do you find desi guys that haven’t gone back to South Asia to get their bride already?” These questions (and more) are indicative to the plight of the single, 25 yr.+, independent-thinking desi girl and is why I love to find solidarity with my single desi sisters – whether over chai, or virtually by reading my favorite desi gal bloggers ( Rupa, TheBarMaid, Chick Pea, brimful, SP, to name a few).

Saturday night while I was surfing on YouTube alone in the North Dakota bunker, I came across this episode of Desi OC – after watching the video I thought to myself, maybe I’ve been playing the game all wrong…

The Desi OC episode above comes out of production company Raising Desi, and one of the film maker is Los Angeles comedian Tarun Shetty. (You may also recognize the gal pal from Timberlake’s Senorita music video.) All of Tarun’s addictive mini-movies are far more polished than the typical YouTube video, but the thing that struck me about this episode in particular were the rules they had for Dating while Desi. We all know the general “Dating Rules” — Wait three days before calling back, never talk politics or religion on a first date, and never say yes to a guy that asks you out the day of.

But I realize now after watching the video, that there are a whole different set of dating rules set aside for Dating while Desi. Who would have known? I certainly didn’t know the rules changed between dating desi, and dating non-desi. So, to summarize what I have learned so far…

Continue reading →

Time to Liberalize Higher Education in India?

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I’m sure many readers saw the article in the New York Times on the coming skills gap in the IT sector in India. The basic gist is this:

Software exports alone expanded by 33 percent in the last year.

The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new private colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality.

With the number of technology jobs expected to nearly double to 1.7 million in the next four years, companies are scrambling to find fresh engineering talent and to upgrade the schools that produce it. (link)

A shortage of 500,000 high tech workers is predicted for 2010. Perhaps the only way to forestall a huge wasted opportunity would be if the government were to liberalise its policy on foreign universities, and allow for-profit foreign institutions to open up campuses — with some regulation. According to this Rashmi Banga editorial in the Financial Express, the many thousands of Indian students who don’t go to IIT currently spend $3 billion on education in the U.S. — money which could be spent in India itself. Banga also outlines some of the basic problems in the Indian system as it operates from an insider’s perspective.

This is not a new idea. Proposals have been floated, committees have reported, and bills have been passed — though none of it has really led to anything. The many U.S. universities that have pondered building campuses in India (including both Stanford and Yale) have all been repulsed by the continuing ban on for-profit enterprises and the miles of regulations, regulations, regulations. (You can follow the saga on the T. Satyanarayan’s excellent Education in India blog) The arguments against liberalization seem weak. Standards are really not that hard to ensure, and a set of simple regulations or guidelines to ensure an orderly process shouldn’t be that hard. The charge of “cultural sensitivities” is raised, but are cultural sensitivities served by the current system, where thousands of students go abroad to study? (And many of them end up sticking around in the places where they get their degrees?)

It also needn’t be solely about filling the voracious staffing needs of the big consulting, outsourcing, and banking companies; I imagine that a Yale or Stanford campus in India would be much more than that. I’m sure many U.S. academics in the social sciences and humanities would jump at the chance to have rich, lively intellectual exchanges with Indian students and researchers — without having to go through a lot of bureaucracy. Continue reading →

WSJ: Free Choudhury

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Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

A quick update on Sepia Mutiny Profilee Salah Choudhury. The Wall Street Journal has picked up the story and dares the Bush Administration to match actions with words on Mr. Choudhury’s behalf –

Bangladesh does not mean much strategically to the U.S., except for the fact that it is home to some 120 million Muslims, many of them desperately poor and increasingly under the sway of violent religious notions imported from Saudi Arabia. The Bush administration, which every year spends some $64 million on Bangladesh, has made a priority of identifying moderate Muslims and giving them the space and cover they need to spread their ideas. Mr. Choudhury has identified himself, at huge personal risk, as one such Muslim. Now that he is on the run, somewhere in the darkness of Dhaka, will someone in the administration pick up the phone and explain to the Bangladeshis just what America expects of its “moderate and tolerant” friends?

And so, we shall see.

Continue reading →

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Gregor Samsa Singh

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This morning, while I was tying my turban, I was thinking about All Mixed Up’s postcard from a few weeks back. In particular, I was trying to figure out why I didn’t understand the basic conundrum that people were wrestling with… that is, why I couldn’t imagine that being white would make me like everybody else.

Let me explain with a Gedankenexperiment. Imagine that I, as a teenager, had awoken one morning to find that myself a person of pallor. I was now pink rather than brown. Who would I be?

I would like to think that I would be the guy on the left. To be honest, I was never as cool as he was. I never dressed like a Nihang, nor did I travel around India at that age. Still, I’d like to think that’s who my white doppleganger in an alternate universe would have been, even if I had been dorkier.

Now imagine that a decade later, the machine that had transformed me reversed polarity, flooding me with extra melanin. Perhaps this is my melanin plus a decade of interest. Or perhaps it is sucked from somewhere else – from some other poor soul who wakes up paler than when they slept. It doesn’t matter.

Now, all of a sudden, I’m not white but black. In this case, I’d like to think that I would be like Sri Chand Singh on the right. Sri Chand is not a convert – he (and his twin brother) have been Sikhs their whole lives. Again, I doubt I’d ever be as cool as either of them [Look at the photo of Laxmi Chand beating the Nagara drum below the fold for a photo of a supercool Sikh], but I hope I would try.

Continue reading →