Author Archives: amardeep

“Satyagraha,” by Phillip Glass, at the Met Opera House

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The New York Times has a behind-the-scenes look at a new version of Phillip Glass’s modernist opera, “Satyagraha,” which is playing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York until May 1. There is also a companion video piece, which I could watch but not listen to from the computer I’m working on this morning.

The libretto uses the Bhagavad-Gita as a source, and the opera as a whole aims to index some of the key events in Gandhi’s early political awakening in South Africa with the plot and text of the Gita. That alone might be a little confusing, since the central question facing Arjuna in the Gita, as most readers will know, is whether or not to fight — and Gandhi’s signature political contribution (“Satyagraha”) is the philosophy of non-violent resistance. The choice could of course be defended depending on your interpretation of the Gita, and indeed, I gather that Gandhi did his own translation — with commentary — of the Bhagavad-Gita in 1924. I haven’t read Gandhi’s version, though I should note that it has recently been re-published as a volume called Bhagavad-Gita According to Gandhi.

The current interpretation of Glass’s work adds some new elements, including a strong focus on newsprint and newspaper culture as a theme in Gandhi’s story (that at least seems dead-on). There are also towering puppets, made of “newspaper, fiberglass kite poles, light cotton cloth and lots of latex glue,” which symbolize historical figures from Gandhi’s past (Tolstoy), present, and future (MLK).

It seems like an interesting work, though I have to admit I’m not sure I personally would enjoy it. (And most tickets under $100 have already been sold out, so it’s not something where a person would go casually…) Has anyone seen this? Is anyone planning to? Continue reading →

On Getting a Tan

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What does it mean to get tanned when you’re brown to begin with? This is a question particular in some ways to South Asians living in northern countries — where you don’t get much exposure to sunlight much of the year, and where you are surrounded by friends and colleagues who do take pride in “getting a tan.” (In India, home of “Fair and Lovely” ointments, there is no culture of tanning.)

This came up for me because I recently went on a short vacation with my family in the Caribbean. We went to the north coast of the Dominican Republic (a major tourist destination, I know). We rented a small villa near, but not in, one of the massive resorts that dominate the “Silver Coast.” Quite nice, overall, and restful.

I didn’t actively seek to get a tan, but I definitely came back a lot darker than I was when we left. My wife also got quite dark, and even my 18 month old son got a bit darker, though we were careful to keep his delicate skin protected wherever possible from direct sunlight.

Now, I generally like getting a bit tan — it seems to bring out some rich orange tones in my “brown” complexion. And I’m certainly not one of those people who would ever say that fairer skin is more appealing than darker skin. There are many different ways of being beautiful, and I find the desi obsession with skin tone (especially as it indexes with the matrimonials culture) tedious and embarrassing. (And sometimes tragic, as in this recent story posted on the News Tab)

Nor is it the case that getting tanned is new to me: living on the east coast of the U.S., one generally finds one’s skin tone in August to be a few shades darker than it was in May, even if you’re one of those people who tends to hide indoors in front of books and/or a computer 95% of the time.

But here’s the odd part. On occasion, over the past couple of days since coming back, I’ve found myself feeling slightly embarrassed to be so tan — as if part of me is thinking, “wait, everyone, this isn’t my normal skin tone!” And then I’m immediately embarrassed to be embarrassed — because what the initial embarrassment perhaps reveals is an unconscious skin tone bias that comes out if and when one’s skin tone does in fact become darker. (More forgivingly, it might simply be that one is always embarrassed to look a little different from how one normally looks.)

Has anyone else ever been embarrassed to be tan? Or conversely, are there desi readers who particularly enjoy seeing their skin get tanned? Continue reading →

Caption This

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The following image was sent to me by email; it comes from the Times of India; I don’t know the artist or the original context in which it was printed:

okrishna radhillary.jpg

Please provide a caption or title. avoiding the use of the word “kala.”

I should acknowledge that at least one conservative Hindu website has declared that they find the above image offensive. Do readers agree?

(As I understand it, images of deities in the Hindu tradition are widely appropriated and reinterpreted in the culture. They don’t have the same “forbidden” status that they do in, say, Islam. While I can definitely see how a nude image of a Hindu deity not normally represented as nude might be offensive, I think a comic or satirical gloss on a revered story from the tradition, as in the image above, isn’t that uncommon. I am, as always, open to hearing other points of view…) Continue reading →

A Book With “@” in the Title

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There’s a profile in the New York Times of Chetan Bhagat (thanks, Pocobrat), author of One Night @ The Call Center, which was released in the U.S. on paperback last year. Bhagat, an author few in the west will have heard of, has now become the biggest English-language author in Indian history:

But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist in India’s history, according to his publisher, Rupa & Company, one of India’s oldest and best established publishers. His story of campus life, “Five Point Someone,” published in 2004, and a later novel, “One Night @ the Call Center,” sold a combined one million copies.

Mr. Bhagat, who wrote his books while living here, has difficulty explaining why a 35-year-old investment banker writing in his spare time has had such phenomenal success reaching an audience of mainly middle-class Indians in their 20s. The novels, deliberately sentimental in the tradition of Bollywood filmmaking, are priced like an Indian movie ticket — just 100 rupees, or $2.46 — and have won little praise as literature.

“The book critics, they all hate me,” Mr. Bhagat said in an interview here. (link)

Yes, it’s true, we do hate him.

I read One Night @ The Call Center a few months ago, when the American publisher sent me a review copy. Some parts were so bad, they made me cry. I was particularly bored by the chapters detailing the protagonist’s unrequited romance, which are set off in bold type for some reason (though the fact that they are set off in bold is actually useful — the font makes it easier to identify the chapters to skip!).

That said, the novel does have some amusing cultural commentary scattered here and there, and I suspect it’s the book’s candor on the grim–yet economically privileged–experience of overnight call center workers that has made Bhagat so popular. That, and the book is so easy it could be read by a stoned dog on a moonless night.

Here is one passage, on accents, I thought interesting: Continue reading →

Your Indi-Pop Fix: Raghu Dixit

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Every so often I link to musicians I learn about via MTV India, a desi TV channel I subscribe to at home. Sometimes readers groan in horror at my taste (“God this is a horrible song”), but for some reason I persist…

Today, meet Raghu Dixit, whose song “Hey Bhagwan” is starting to show up in the rotation on MTV India:

The sound quality in the YouTube upload is poor, but at least you get a sense of what the music is like (you can hear a higher quality preview of the song here; also, another video sharing site, Vimeo, is carrying the video). I also like the lyrics (My rough translation of the chorus: “Hey Bhagwan, give me life all over again”).

Raghu Dixit also has a blog, with a detailed account of the shooting of this video at Mehboob Studios in Bombay.

In the U.S. Raghu Dixit’s CD is on sale at CD Baby, where you can also preview the other songs on the album (check out “Mysore Se Ayi”). Continue reading →

Suriname’s Linguistic Khichri

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The New York Times has an article on Sranan Tongo, the creole language that is spoken by a majority of people in Suriname, in South America.

Suriname, like Guyana and Trinidad, has a large Indian diaspora population from the 19th century, people who came across originally as indentured laborers. For a country of just 470,000 people, the linguistic and cultural diversity is truly astonishing:

To get a sense of the Babel of languages here, just stroll through this capital, which resembles a small New England town except the stately white clapboard houses are interspersed with palm trees, colorful Chinese casinos and minaret-topped mosques.

Slip into one of the Indonesian eateries known as warungs to hear Javanese, spoken by about 15 percent of the population. Choose a roti shop, with its traditional Indian bread, to listen to Surinamese Hindi, spoken by the descendants of 19th-century Indian immigrants, who make up more than a third of the population. And merchants throughout Paramaribo speak Chinese, even though the numbers of Chinese immigrants are small. (link)

Is it just me, or is Suriname exactly like Queens? (The food options sound enticing.)

For the curious, there is a Sranan Tongo-to-English dictionary here (not many words derived from Indian languages, as far as I can tell), and a “Sarnami Hindustani”-to-Dutch dictionary here. (Of course, for the latter, you need to know Dutch!)

I would also recommend a reader comment on an earlier post by Vinod (where he mentioned the Surinamese Indians in Amsterdam).
Continue reading →

Pakistan’s New PM: Raza Gilani

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The first sentence of the AP report on the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is rather telling:

When former parliament speaker Yousaf Raza Gilani was first tipped as a contender to be prime minister, he quipped that taking high office in Pakistan’s cutthroat politics could fast-track him back to prison. (link)

Wait — back to prison?

In fact, Gilani spent five years in prison on corruption charges that may have been political in nature, and was only released in October 2006. Musharraf can’t be thrilled that a person his government once accused of defrauding the government of millions ($30 million, to be exact) is now running an overwhelmingly dominant coalition government against him. (As a side note, I find it interesting that Gilani was actually a member of Zia Ul-Haq’s government in the early 1980s, before switching over to the PPP. I haven’t been able to ascertain anywhere why he switched — what Zia stood for ideologically is quite the opposite of the PPP. Does anyone have the scoop on this aspect of Gilani’s past?)

The media is reporting that the real power will still lie with Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, and president of the PPP. Zardari, for his part, really was corrupt (charges against him too have been dropped recently), so if one believes that Gilani’s status as PM will mean a lesser likelihood of a return to the bad old days of the Benazir Bhutto regimes, one might be relieved at this turn of events.

Then again, there is also a suggestion that Zardari will run for Parliament in a by-election this summer, which would qualify him to be Prime Minister. If I were Zardari I might skip that step, and wait until Musharraf steps down as President. One would expect him to aim for the office where the real power lies in Pakistan — the Presidency.

Finally, the big question on everyone’s minds has to be the status of the former Supreme Court justices, who were detained last fall and also recently released (but not reinstated). If the new Parliament decides to go the route of confronting Musharraf directly, will not the poop hit the punkah [pukka in Punjabi]? Will Musharraf step down without a fight? Continue reading →

A Little on Obama’s Speech

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I disagree with Manish’s assessment; I actually thought Obama gave a very good speech on Tuesday. I do see the limitations: the tone and delivery was much more restrained than Obama’s earlier big speeches, so it’s not likely to bring him a new wave of supporters where he could use them most (i.e., here in Pennsylvania). But a soft and dispassionate tone was probably essential, as his primary goal was to distance himself from the unrestrained, over-the-top anger of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In contrast to Manish, I do feel that Obama did address the segments of American society who are not black or white, when he mentioned immigrants:

That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.

Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. (link)

The rhetorical move here is intriguing — he starts by acknowledging the resentment of working- and middle-class whites (which is itself significant; it’s perhaps the first time I’ve seen a Democrat say anything like this). But in the final paragraph, he moves to include immigrants, and in some sense suggests that the resentment of whites might also overlap with the resentment of immigrants about things like affirmative action. (Certainly, I know many South Asians — and Asians, more generally — who are deeply opposed to Affirmative Action, so this rings true.)

Continue reading →

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP (with excerpts from a novel)

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Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died earlier this week, at the age of 91. He was one of the best-known sci-fi writers of the 20th century, the author behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many others.

As is well-known, Clarke moved to Ceylon/Sri Lanka in 1956 — in large part for the year-around access to diving — and remained there until his death. The locale inspired at least one of Clarke’s novels, Fountains of Paradise:

Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated there when it was still called Ceylon, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Clarke held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club. Living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise in which he described a space elevator. This, he believed, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete. (link)

I first read The Fountains of Paradise many years ago, and I pulled it off the shelf this afternoon for a refresher. There is an intense opening, set in the classical period, 2000 years ago, involving a “Prince Kalidasa,” who does not seem to resemble the actual Kalidasa (who was not a prince, but a poet). And there are some rich descriptions of the island of Sri Lanka (named “Taprobane” — Tap-ROB-a-nee — by Clarke). Continue reading →

This Too Is India

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Long-time reader Kush Tandon was in India a couple of months ago, and since then he’s been slowly putting up the photos he took on his blog and on his Flickr account. As I was perusing them the other day, one photo stood out to me:

kush tandon iit roorkee.jpg

(click on the image to see it larger; click here to see Kush’s IIT-Roorkee photo set)

Kush also gives a caption to the photo to explain a little about the history of IIT Roorkee:

IIT Roorkee, once University of Roorkee, and before that Thomason College is perhaps the prettiest campus in India, something like Cornell University campus in Ithaca for North America. It is a quiet, green oasis that is about 150 years old. Its history spans training engineers for canal building in India, sappers for Indian military for many wars (British India and later independent India), for huge dam making projects immediately after the independence, and now with India’s economy opening up. (link)

I personally like the photo because it defies the clichés regarding what India looks like — which probably tend to dictate what we ourselves photograph when we go there. That is not to say that there isn’t another side to life, even in Roorkee (and Kush himself has a number of photos showing poverty as well as open trash). But both kinds of images are part of the story.

Do readers have photographs in their public collections that show images of the Indian subcontinent that also defy expectations in some way? If so, we would love to see them… Continue reading →