Author Archives: manish

‘The Little Tank That Could’

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The Harvard controversy on whether women’s technical aptitudes are innate:

… [The Harvard president’s] young daughter, when given toy trucks, had treated them as dolls, naming them “Daddy truck” and “baby truck.” But critics dryly observed that men had a longstanding tradition of naming their vehicles, and babying them as though they were humans.

Lt. Neil Prakash:

You can’t beat ol’ Blinkey for armored protection.

I call my baby, Blinkey, ever since she got one of her headlights blown off in Baqubah by an RPG. The RPG had ripped open that little corner of the hull and exposed the depleted uranium armor. She’s taken so much battle-damage that we’re being told she will never return to duty after this deployment… Supposedly, she will be coded out, ripped apart and studied at a lab. If that’s true, that breaks my crew’s hearts. She has taken a pounding and kept her crew alive. She should be bronzed and placed on a concrete slab at Ft. Knox for everyone to see.

Parveen Babi passes quietly

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Parveen Babi, a screen rival of Zeenat Aman, passed away prematurely a couple of days ago at home in Bombay. The actress from Ahmedabad, a Gujarati Muslim, starred in Amar Akbar Anthony, Deewar, Namak Halal and Shaan opposite Amitabh Bachchan, made the cover of Time magazine, filmed a serial in Italy with her lover Kabir Bedi and lived in New York for many years.

Hailing from the nawab family of Junagadh, Parveen Babi did her schooling from Ahmedabad… Deewar personified the new Bollywood woman through her — smoking, drinking, not shying away from a live-in relationship, and yet desperate for the sindoor in her maang. If the film made the coronation of Bachchan as the “angry, young man” official, it also established Parveen Babi as the new western face — and figure — of the desi silver screen. [Telegraph]

Her hour of glory came when Time featured her on the cover [in 1977], much to the consternation of her screen rivals. A product of the flower children, yoga, Beatles and the students’ movement of the 1960s, Babi remained an outsider in Bollywood. Her cinema career came to an abrupt end amidst reports of alcoholism and drug abuse. [ToI]

She lived in a fishbowl, reportedly suffered from schizophrenia and then turned recluse:

Some claimed it was… the release of Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth (a semi-autobiographical look at his extramarital relationship with Parveen) and her disturbed state of mind that prompted her to abandon everything. [Rediff]

[Babi] led the life of an absolute recluse because she was afraid people were trying to kill her… Babi was afraid of doorbells and phone calls. [Telegraph]

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The fight for the proselyte

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I snapped this billboard on MG Road in Bangalore last month. The celebrity televangelist is so quintessentially capitalist cheese, so ’80s camp, so late-night TV that the ad seemed utterly incongruous. ‘This town has gone completely Amrika-crazy,’ I mused.

Since the guy has brown skin, it never even occurred to me that he might not be desi. Turns out it’s the American evangelist Benny Hinn (no relation to Benny Hill), he of whom bloggeth Abhi yesterday. Hinn is a Christian Arab Israeli from Florida. There will be a pop quiz on that in 30 minutes.

Hinn kicked off his prayer meeting at an airfield outside Bangalore today. The airfield resounded with the usual miracle healings, but violent protests against the convention flooded central Bangalore with torched buses and tear gas.

I’ve seen it all before, this bubble. It’s a land grab for souls and page views, folks, and India’s perceived as a wide-open market. It’s one of the largest and most passionate markets for religion in the world, so Hinn’s hungama is nothing but a trade visit, really. American churches already outsource prayers to Kerala. And for false miracles, every American charlatan put together couldn’t hold a candle to Indian holy men. Check out Gita Mehta’s brilliant Karma Cola:

Gita Mehta details the extent of the hippie infatuation with South Asia in her classic book… Westerners seek instant salvation; Easterners the quick rupee. Gurus could pack entire astrodomes in the ’60s, levitation was believed to signal salvation, and Western disciples believed above all else in moksha through easy sex and hard drugs. At one point there were over 100,000 hippies trekking all over South Asia searching for enlightenment in woolly-minded religious platitudes and a variety of uppers and downers.

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For gallantry in action

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Lt. Neil Prakash was just awarded a Silver Star for leading his platoon through a horrific explosive gauntlet to victory against 60 Iraqi rebels.

Well done, soldier.

It took the crew about one hour to fight their way through the next one kilometer stretch of road. Official battle reports count 23 IEDs and 20-25 RPG teams in that short distance, as well as multiple machine-gun nests, and enemy dismounts armed with small arms and hand grenades.

… enemy dismounts were attempting to throw hand grenades into the tank’s open hatches… Prakash’s tank took the brunt of the attack, sustaining blasts from multiple IEDs and at least seven standard and armor piercing RPGs… One round blew the navigation system completely off of the vehicle, while another well-aimed blast disabled his turret…

By battle’s end, the platoon was responsible for 25 confirmed destroyed enemy and an estimated 50 to 60 additional destroyed enemy personnel. Prakash was personally credited with the destruction of eight enemy strong-points, one enemy re-supply vehicle, and multiple enemy dismounts…

“He’s a pleasure to command because he doesn’t require very much direction. He uses his own judgment and he’s simply an outstanding young lieutenant…” Although born in India and maintaining strong ties to the Indian community, Prakash was raised in Syracuse, New York, in what he called a very patriotic American household.

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Biscuits for Jesus

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Some missionaries have apparently been demanding conversion in exchange for tsunami aid (via Angry Asian Man):

Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village [Samanthapettai] in India’s southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion… Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.

It’s the missionaries’ right to distribute aid as they wish, but still, this seems mighty pinch-hearted. In contrast, Muslims have been aiding Dalits when some upper-caste Hindus have not:

Jamaath, a Muslim organisation… been running four relief camps in… Cuddalore district. The overwhelming majority of the victims are non-Muslims but that has not prevented the Jamaath from giving them three meals a day for over three days. Considering there are an estimated 40,000 people in these camps, that’s quite an achievement.

‘Times of India’ pulls a Baghdad Bob

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Power stroker Sania Mirza lost her third-round Oz Open match to Serena Williams, 6-1, 6-4, in 56 minutes. She was all nerves in the first set, which lasted just 20 minutes:

“I had butterflies in my stomach for two days. I couldn’t get to sleep last night. In the first set I was really tight…”

But she found her game in the second. Match point was an ace, the last of 12 Serena scorchers. Williams was a gracious winner:

“I was happy with the match today… I was getting girls who weren’t giving me any pace – but today she was giving me lots of hard balls… It was good to see someone from India for the first time do so well… she had a very solid game… and I see a very bright future for her.”

Here’s a shot-by-shot account. Mirza, who won Wimbledon in the junior doubles category, made $46K and is racking up endorsement deals in India.

The Times of India’s coverage was so fawningly nationalist as to be absurd. The same paper which called Mirza’s previous 50-minute win a cakewalk, treated her similarly rapid defeat like Wagner’s Ring cycle:

… it was plain that the Indian girl was stretching [Williams] to the limits of her game… Sania’s fitness was exceptional. She raced to chase down most balls hit into the corners and this really flummoxed Serena. At this level her physical training looks to be effective… In the sixth game she forced a visibly panting Serena on the back foot through power-hitting of her own…

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Trig pr0n

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BridalBeer isn’t playing with a full deck — hers has an entire suit of jokers ðŸ™‚ In today’s episode, she catches her SO thinking about his ex:

“Brian, you’ve been a Deviant Dick. I want six Broadway shows. One-a-day this week.”

“OK”

“And don’t go cheap on the seats. And no sneaking in the good seats after the singing and dancing has started. And I’ll check the places you pick for dinner on NYCitySearch.com. Atleast $$$, please”.

“OK”

“Thanks. And I earn Cheating Rights for a month”

“OK”

“Good. Now go carve circles” And I sung a fresh, unfamilar song in Bollywood melodies:-

    Miranda! Graduate classes at MIT
    Memories of your mouth in math
    Pointy-tit trignometry!

Chorus.

Go read the rest.

Indian tech boom leaves cops sucking jeep fumes

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Wired says that after a long day of shaking down motorists for C notes and beating on random street kids, the average Indian cop still doesn’t make enough to buy his own computer:

In July 2001, Mumbai’s Cyber Crime Investigation Cell launched its website, and a few days later it was hacked… police squads were known to confiscate evidence… returning with monitors and leaving computers behind…. cops in Mumbai seized pirated software floppies and stapled them together as though they were documents…

Last month, a Mumbai tabloid… asked a constable to use his ATM card and photographed his every step. He did not know how to use the card and the machine swallowed it… “The cop who checks your car license does not own a car… The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card… how can he fight cybercrime?”

As the Net roars by in a bright shirt and dark shades on a brand-new Hero Honda, the government’s business babus are left with bags of mooli and karela in hand, abusing a slow-moving rickshaw-walla with a bad attitude:

When he wanted to register a firm called Pinstorm Online last year, the Registrar of Companies “refused to grant me the name because the government officials out there did not comprehend the word ‘online,’ ” Murthy said…. “I had to change the word ‘internet’ to ‘computer network’ because the officials did not think (the) internet was a credible medium for business.”

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Frictionless commerce

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Bharat Bhushan, a MechE prof at Ohio State, is studying lotus leaves to fashion better technology. Biomimetic, how poetic — the Sanskrit gurus would approve.

The project was inspired by lotus leaves’ deceiving looks. Although they appear waxy and smooth to the naked eye, the leaves are actually covered with a series of microscopic bumps that prevent water drops from touching their surface… The idea is to use surfaces to eliminate friction between moving parts that can’t be oiled… In a few years, the development could lead to far cheaper [DLP] wide-screen televisions, [microfluidic] chips that can analyze blood samples or windshields that clean themselves…