Author Archives: namrata

Nothing Meek In Her Voice

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rishiheadshot.jpg A couple weeks ago I was standing on the train during my morning commute, my arm stretched all the way up so my finger could curl about the ceiling pole, idly twisting about on my toes in a half-turn to survey the crowd and eye-scape their morning reading for titles, authors, snatches of prose. What are they reading? I always wonder, like a ghost watching a feast. These days it makes me ill to read on the train, and I feel like I never have time to read real books–spoiled by my steady diet of magazines and blogs, I can’t quite digest those bricks of literature. That morning there were some romance novels, a Crichton, Guns Germs & Steel. A woman shifted, and behind her a gray-suited man’s folded back New Yorker came into view, the familiar Deco font, and like my mother’s voice the desi words sharpened into focus:

Karma, by Rishi Reddi, Harper Perennial; $12.95: Each of the stories in this startlingly mature collection shows first- and second-generation Indian-Americans attempting to manage the disconnect between cultures. The premise is hardly a new one, but Reddi’s understated prose and her choice of details give her revelations a quiet power.(link.)

Some part of me groaned. Karma? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s really the best title you can come up with? Saying the premise is hardly new seems like the understatement of the generation. My skimming glance over the title story (then findable online, now sadly only partially available online as a pdf excerpt) quickly got me to a line that seemed worrisomely familiar:

. . Shankar and Neha were deposited on the threshold of their new life.

Oh not, not another catalog of the first apartment’s goods! Quick, do they mention those EIGHT DOLLARS? Continue reading →

World Water Day

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ganga_dolphin.jpgIt’s almost over but shouldn’t go unnoticed on the Mutiny. The river Indus, or the Sindhu, lent her name to a land and a people. Now, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, she and her East-facing twin Ganga are dying:

Five of the ten rivers listed in the report are in Asia alone. They are the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Indus. . .Even without warmer temperatures threatening to melt Himalayan glaciers, the Indus River faces scarcity due to over-extraction for agriculture. Fish populations, the main source of protein and overall life support systems for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened.(link)

In a report issued about dangers to 10 of the world’s great rivers, the WWF. Climate changes threatens the Ganges and especially the Indus with both a decrease in supply and the hazardous instability of sudden floods. The Indus basin more than 178 million people and draws as much of 80% of it’s water from Himalayan glaciers; the Ganges basin has atleast 200 million people (See Razib’s comment below). 60% of the tributaries of the Ganges are being diverted. Both rivers are the homes to their own special populations of rare freshwater dolphins–approximately 1100 Indus river dolphins and only a couple thousand Ganges Dolphins, as well as a very rare Ganges freshwater shark. The Ganges and Brahmaputra together span 10 biomes and water the last tiger inhabited mangroves. The report is available in PDF form and is well-written and well-foot-noted–it’s a concise set of geography lessons and worth reading on its own.

One of the loveliest things I ever saw in India was while crossing a branch of the Ganges in the West Bengal countryside–half a dozen dolphins jumping in coordinated arcs across the river, their tails flipping, backlit by the afternoon sun. I stood up in my amazement, rocking the boat, but I was suddenly unafraid–they were so delightful. I want my grandchildren to see them too.

Related: Drinking Water, Melting Glaciers and Climate Change, previous WWF report on Rivers.

(Updated in light of Razib’s comment.) Continue reading →

Pushing Polio Out Of Pakistan: Don’t Give Up!

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poli_prcs.jpgHello, I’m Namrata, a new contributor. I broke into the North Dakota headquarters a few months ago and ANNA decreed I was too small to be kicked out into the winter cold. When it warmed up everyone had gotten used to me, so finally Abhi and Ennis said I might as well earn my keep since I keep stealing their magazines out of the mailbox. One of the ones I like to steal is New Scientist, and there was some sad news from the desh in the latest issue:

Last month Abdul Ghani Khan, a senior Pakistani doctor, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb shortly after urging villagers to vaccinate their children. [link]

According to the Daily Times of Pakistan Dr. Khan was killed in Bajur Agency after trying to convince addressing a convening local jirga, or council; he was greeted angrily in an area where opposition to the vaccine has spread by word of mouth and radio sermon.

“As soon as we reached there, an armed prayer leader warned us against visiting the area. Some locals said: ‘On one hand, our enemy (a reference to the United States) is bombing us for no reason while on the other hand you are coming here disguised as polio campaigners to spread vulgarity,” [an injured companion of Dr. Khan] told Daily Times at the hospital. (link)

The day before the Daily Times had reported that 24,000 children in Northern Pakistan have gone unvaccinated, and earlier Pakistan confirmed a sharp uptick in polio cases (28 to 39), concentrated in the borderlands with similarly troubled Afghanistan. To put this all in perspective, the two nations apparently did successfully immunize 2 million children only a few months ago. Continue reading →