Many people in Florida (especially Indians) have strong opinions on the plight (or supposed plight depending on what view you take) of Paramvir Singh Chattwal. The Herald-Tribune reports:

Paramvir Singh Chattwal would rather stay in jail than be sent back to his native India, where he says he would face another round of beatings and torture.

Chattwal, 30, says he is so afraid of returning to India that he will take his life before someone else does.

“If I am to be deported, I will end my life here,” Chattwal said in a recent phone interview from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Bradenton.

But what is Chattwal so afraid of? Continue reading →

Last week, as we availed ourselves of the magnificently efficient Tokyo public transportation system, my friends and I commented on the fact that so many people who appeared to be deeply asleep were able to immediately wake up and get off at their exact station. How do they do it? When I fall asleep on the train my jaw drops open in a rather unnattractive manner and my head bobs around like it is improperly balanced. I am glad I am not the only one who suffers such problems but should defective people like me be punished? Gaurav Bhatia of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago was. According to India Daily:

When a 25-year-old Indian student at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) dozed off in a Chicago subway train, he did not realise his predicament would quickly become a cause celebre. Gaurav Bhatia unwittingly got caught in a controversy over Chicago’s bureaucracy after he was given a $50 ticket for sleeping on the train. The incident occurred when Bhatia, who does not own a car and resides on the IIT campus, fell asleep while riding to work. Local TV and radio channels have highlighted Bhatia’s experience, but Chicago Transport Authority (CTA) and police officials say he was penalised for “sleeping dangerously”. “How dare they?” asked an outraged Bhatia. “If the police officer had written those words on the ticket I would have told him to lock me up because I won”t accept the ticket.” Explaining how the incident had occurred, Bhatia said: “My work starts at 8 a.m., so I leave the house at 7 a.m. I usually sleep on the train. “A lot of people sleep on the train. I mean, I don”t put up my feet and lie down. I just sit there and sometimes I fall asleep, because there is nothing to do.

I am sure this law was meant to prevent homeless people from making a residence out of the train, but is a ticket necessary for an honest mistake?

A police officer came in. “He did not have to shake me up or anything like that. My body is programmed. Every day I take the same train, so my eyes just open up at the same time,” Bhatia said.

You might want to check the lines of code in your program for errors buddy.

Chicago police spokesman David Bayless, who affirmed Bhatia was “sleeping dangerously”, said: “I am told his legs were blocking the aisle.”
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Bhatia explained he had his face against the train window, so he could not possibly have stretched into the aisle. “It would have been physically impossible,” he said, “Even Keanu Reeves from ”Matrix” could not do it.”

I like to follow the exploits of old Indian men that do crazy things. Earlier I brought you the misadventures of a man that survived upon a diet of staring at the Sun. Now I bring to you the Rolling Saint. I saw this guy on TV many years ago (there is a 1994 documentary on him). From Outside Magazine:

October 1994: Covered in blisters from lying down and rolling along the roadside for 2,485 miles, Indian holy man LOTAN BABA reaches Jammu, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, eight months after departing his home, in Ratlam. Now, he’s on the roll again, covering 1,500 miles on his way to Lahore, Pakistan.

Well, it seems Baba has run into a little hitch. As reported at NewKerala:

A maverick saint who travels by rolling his body along the road has vowed to enter Pakistan Saturday to visit several religious places in the neighbouring country.

But there is a serious hitch in Lotan Baba’s plans to roll into Pakistan through the border check post at Wagah, 30 km from here, and the saint from Maharashtra knows it well.

For the record, he cannot cross into Pakistan easily as he has neither a passport nor a visa.

“I have appealed to the Indian government to issue me a passport and visa. It is up to them to complete the formalities so that I can undertake my journey smoothly,” he said Friday.

The saint, who claims to have rolled over 25,000 km, said he would start rolling from this Sikh holy city to reach the Wagah border Saturday morning.

Roll on Baba. Roll on.

No way! It will never happen. I don’t think it is very likely that a brown man will become the leader of Germany, nor is this mayor even considering it. I just wanted to put it out there to see how it sounded. Still, the thought of a brown mayor in the heart of former East Germany raised my eyebrows. From AFP:

Altlandsberg in eastern Germany has long been known for its medieval church and its stork nests, but today it is known, above all, for its long-serving Indian mayor Ravindra Gujjula.

On Sunday, Gujjula will put his popularity here to the test for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling Social Democrats (SPD) in the state of Brandenburg, in a neck-and-neck race with the successors of the former communist rulers.

He presents himself as Germany’s “only mayor of colour” and he is also one of the country’s most appreciated town leaders. Last year, electors in this town of 8,875 residents returned him to office with 80 percent of the vote.

Continue reading →

One of the most reported issues in the U.S. media a few months ago, was the issue of Gay Marriage. On one side you had the mayor of San Francisco issuing what turned out to be illegal marriage certificates and on the other side you had the President calling on Congress to amend the most sacred of all democratic texts. The rights of homosexuals are increasingly becoming an important topic in South Asia as well. From SFGate.com:

Islamabad, Pakistan — One recent Sunday evening at midnight in a town near here, Kohsar Riaz sat down eagerly in her favorite living room chair for her weekly dose of ARY One World network’s “Drama Hour” and was instantly engrossed in the depressing tale of a hijra (cross-dresser) disowned by family and friends, desperate for acceptance and hopelessly in love with a young man who used him solely for money.

The young hijra, unable to understand why his love would spurn him after achieving business success, dies trying to chase down his love’s car.

At the funeral, attended almost exclusively by other hijra, the young cross-dresser’s grief-stricken parents beg for their dead son’s forgiveness. He was their only child, but they failed to protect or help him.

Tens of thousands of South Asian night owls who stayed up to watch the popular television show got a rare glimpse from the other side of one of the region’s most ostracized groups.

Continue reading →