Soniah Kamal of Desilit Daily posts an essay by Muneeza Shamsie on Pakistani literature from the May 7 Dawn (no direct link). The article raises some questions for me about the nature of Pakistani literature, including the basic question of how to define it.

Shamsie has edited several anthologies of Pakistani literature, including one that is scheduled to come out this year (And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women; not yet listed). Muneeza Shamsie is also the mother of Kamila Shamsie (pictured right), who seems to be a bit of a prodigy, having published four novels by the age of 32.

I’m grateful to Muneeza Shamsie for offering a long list of Pakistani writers in English; some of them are names I was unfamiliar with. But there are also some things Shamsie does in her essay that I find to be puzzling. Continue reading →

Last week Amardeep mentioned the new book by Biju Mathew who organizes and fights for the rights of taxi workers in New York City. The book is titled, Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: A back roads ride through the yellow cab industry of New York City by lead Taxi Workers’ Alliance organizer Biju Mathew.As the point of entry for many of the city’s visitors, the yellow cab has become an enduring metaphor for New York City and its exuberant twenty-four-hours-a-day rush. But just as the city has changed in recent years, so too has the industry that keeps it on the move. Indeed, as Biju Mathew reveals in this highly readable, fast-paced survey of New York’s taxi business, just about everything has been dramatically altered except the yellow paint. Drawing on conversations with the drivers themselves, Taxi! details both the pressures and triumphs of life behind the wheel, from the effects of ex-Mayor Giuliani’s “quality of life” and “zero tolerance” programs and the structure of car and medallion ownership that often results in minimal earnings after a 12-hour shift, to the unexpected ease with which a workforce representing 80 ethnicities—and at least as many languages—organized, culminating in the 1998 strike of 24,000 taxi workers. One of the organizers of the Taxi Workers’ Alliance, Mathew is uniquely qualified to survey the fascinating world of the yellow cab. Buckle up, sit back, and enjoy the ride.

This week’s New Yorker has an article about Biju’s book and the drivers that he writes about.

A book party with no cocktails: ouch. In fairness to the folks at the New Press, which helped organize such a dreaded event recently, at a restaurant on West Twenty-ninth Street, there were a few limiting circumstances. For one thing, almost all of the invited guests were driving. Also, most of them were Muslims and, more to the point, among the city’s best experts on the consequences of excessive social drinking. They were cabbies. The book being celebrated was “Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City,” by Biju Mathew, a business professor at Rider University, and a founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a fast-growing labor union.

Compounding the problem was the fact that the party didn’t begin until 1 a.m.—the start of the slow period for drivers working the night shift. Many of the cabbies, at least, would likely have been in the neighborhood anyway. The stretch of the upper Twenties bounded by Lexington and Broadway is their sanctuary—featuring not only the union’s headquarters but also free and plentiful late-night parking, a popular mosque, and several subcontinental restaurants, including Lasani, where the party took place.

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We already suspected this but now it’s official. The BBC reports on an accurate stereotype:

Indians are the world’s biggest bookworms, reading on average 10.7 hours a week, twice as long as Americans, according to a new survey. The NOP World Culture Score index surveyed 30,000 people in 30 countries from December 2004 to February 2005. Analysts said self-help and aspirational reading could explain India’s high figures. Britons and Americans scored about half the Indians’ hours and Japanese and Koreans were even lower – at 4.1 and 3.1 hours respectively.

That “self-help and aspirational reading” line is important. A lot of the reading being done is religious and scholastic and not necessarily independent reading like you’d think. Still, a bookstore in India is a “cool” place to hang out and be seen. Crosswords Bookstores are especially trendy.

R Sriram, chief executive officer of Crosswords Bookstores, a chain of 26 book shops around India, says Indians are extremely entrepreneurial and reading “is a fundamental part of their being”.

“They place a great deal of emphasis on reading. That’s the reason why they do well in education and universities abroad,” he told the BBC News website.

“People educate themselves and deal with change throughout their lives. And the way to do that is to update themselves with books.”

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The situation in Uzbekistan utterly frustrates me. After 9/11 people asked, “Why do they hate us?” Uzbekistan is a perfect example of why. The Uzbeks are ruled by a despot who does not believe in Freedom (which is supposed to be the one value that we are trying to spread). Uzbekistan however has an airbase that is of vital importance as a staging ground for combat operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. makes the choice to support a government that massacred its own people. American dollars keep that regime in power, thus setting the stage for the possibility of blowback. It would be a mistake to think that this most recent massacre is just a one time thing that surprised our government. Over a year ago I blogged about this article (a MUST READ) reporting on a prison in Uzbekistan. Gulags are “in” right now.

Time Magazine’s Asia edition features Kishore Mahbubani’s new book, “Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World,” which offers other reasons to explain how we squandered our once glorious reputation, and what we can to do change our course (although this second part is reportedly not very substantive):

Some of the ground Mahbubani covers is familiar enough, but much is not. One of his arguments is that the loss of trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world started years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq “unilaterally.” Mahbubani is particularly astute about how the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 damaged America’s image overseas. He writes, for example, about how disillusioned Thais were when the U.S. did not bail them out after it had bailed out Mexico during a similar currency crisis in 1994. The reason the U.S. spurned Thailand may seem obvious to a lot of Americans—”you’re not on our border,” one U.S. Treasury Department official supposedly told the Thais. But for a country that had followed the global financial rules as dictated by Washington—opening itself up to large capital flows from abroad, only to get hammered as that same money flew back out in a matter of days—the truth hurt in ways that most Americans still don’t get. The perception was that the U.S. would prop up another nation if threatened with a massive wave of illegal immigration, but otherwise cared only that big American banks should be able to get their money out of Thailand ASAP. Is it any wonder, Mahbubani writes, that China—the one major country that didn’t play by Washington’s rules back then—now sees its influence gaining steadily, probably at America’s expense?

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One of the best-selling books at your local store right now is the philosophical essay titled, On Bullshit. Philosophy is HOT right now, as are the philosophers who are philosophizing. That leads me to five year old Shruti Indiresan from the Bay Area. The SJ Mercury reports (thanks for the tip Runnerwallah):

Shruti Indiresan has been surprising people all of her life.

As a toddler she buzzed through books and slapped together puzzles developed for much older children. Today, at 5, the kindergartner at Faria Elementary School in Cupertino reads and writes at a fourth-grade level.

Shruti’s latest stunner: winning the Most Philosophical Kindergartner in America title with the essay she composed for the third Kids Philosophy Slam. Several thousand students across the country in kindergarten through 12th grade submitted essays on which is more important in their lives: truth or beauty.

“I feel happy when I am telling the truth,” Shruti wrote in her essay. “I become beautiful when I am truthful.”

Her mother was a bit baffled.

“She’s very fond of princesses,” Rohini Indiresan said. “So I figured she would choose beauty.”

So what was Shruti’s winning essay? Behold:

Truth means not telling a lie. It is good to tell the truth. You are telling the egzact thing that you did. I feel happy when I am telling the truth. I become beautiful when I am truthful. Beauty comes from your good behavior. You can find out you are telling the truth by the size of your nose. Truth means to me good behavior. Because truth is the only way adults will be proud of you. Everyone will like me.

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