Some in the conservative media were peeved earlier this week when UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Shashi Tharoor (see former posts here and here) was quoted as saying that it was “the exercise of American power” that “may well be the central issue in world politics today.” Right-of-center bloggers pick up:

This is why the UN is useless. Whatever the original intention of the organization, the mission has morphed into trying to hinder anything the US wants to do. Oh, and by the way, the US is still expected to provide most of the funding, material, and other resources necessary for the UN to function. The situation is surreal.

Tharoor however doesn’t seem to be totally against the exercise of American power (if that is what his statement was implying as deciphered by right wing media). He likes the literary freedom it may have brought at least. He has just released his new book titled, Bookless in Baghdad which is a collection of essays inspired by walking through a Baghdad booksellers market:

Walking through Baghdad’s book souk, Shashi Tharoor, author and UN secretary general for communications and public information, couldn’t help being moved. “There were so many well-educated, middle-class people selling books on the pavement in Baghdad,” says the 48-year-old author. His stroll across the souk led to a compilation of literary essays…”

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Sorry, I can’t help you in this department. You may gain some insight however in extricating yourself from worldly attachments (and that includes American Idol you freaks), by taking a look through Pankaj Mishra’s new book, “An End to Suffering,” as profiled in the New York Times:

You occasionally hear of writers, especially when their books are of long incubation, coming to resemble their subjects, and my fleeting glimpse of Pankaj Mishra seems to offer uncanny proof of the phenomenon. For here, surely, was the young Siddhartha Gautama himself: a scholar-sophisticate, a personality both cosmopolitan and ascetic, at large and at home in the world.

I wonder if this is similar to the phenomena where dog owners come to resemble their dogs?

“An End to Suffering” is part biography, part history, part travel book, part philosophic treatise. But perhaps it could best be described as a work of intellectual autobiography. I say “intellectual” rather than spiritual, let alone religious. Mishra is not a Buddhist — he “couldn’t sit still” long enough to meditate successfully — and his story is not a narrative of conversion or a road map to inner peace, at least not in the expected sense. It is, rather, the tale of his attempts to delve into the legacy of one of the world’s greatest philosophers.

The Buddha, as Mishra describes him, was not a prophet — not a religious figure but a secular one. Indeed, “he had placed no value on prayer or belief in a deity; he had not spoken of creation, original sin or the last judgment.” He likewise ignored the question of why sin and evil exist in the world, which has obsessed nearly every major religion. The Buddha’s concern was purely practical: to relieve suffering, both material and existential. His precepts weren’t couched as revelations from on high, delivered with the crash of thunder; instead they came as small quotidian insights: “I well remember how once, when I was sitting in the shade of a jambu tree on a path between the fields. . . .”

“…I took out my laptop and typed a blog entry in hopes of relieving the people’s suffering with a brief distraction.” That’s how I would have ended that quotidian insight.

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Drum roll please…and the 2004-2005 Poet of the Year award goes to…Indian poet Saleem Saim. As reported in Outlook Inida:

Noted English poet Saleem Saim has bagged the coveted “Poet of the year 2004-05” award, with a purse of 20,000 dollars, of the US based International Society of Poets. His poem, “Kept apart“, topped a list of some 5.1 million entries from across the globe and Saim has also been given a book publishing contract for his anthology, “Feeling”.

According to a letter from the Society, Saim’s induction as the best poet and award ceremony would be held in Orlando, Florida from February 25-27 this year.

Around 4,000 poets are expected to participate in the convention where Pulitzer Prize winner W D Snodgrass will present the grand prize.

The fact that he is a PhD in Chemistry and school teacher in Moradabad has not stopped Saim from honing his penchant for English literature and poetry.

See. Science geeks CAN have a way with words.

“I feel poetry as picturisation of one’s feelings thoughts, moods and sentiments,” he said adding it was the best medium to clean society of corruption and induce it towards love and humanity.

But wait. Is this all a scam??

Apparently Saleem wants to know as well. At least one person responds:

You are more likely to be declared a Saint by the Catholic Church than you are of collecting that $20,000.
Steven – Tucson, Arizona U.S.A.

Nobody said the life of a poet was easy. Continue reading →

By now it is quite well known (see previous post)that Marvel Comics and Gotham Entertainment launched a version of Spiderman for the Indian market. Despite the fact that Peter Parker is now Pavitr Prabhakar the story is very similar. The Weekly Standard quotes Gotham CEO Sharad Devarajan:

It is one thing to translate existing U.S. comics, but this project is truly what we call a “transcreation,” where we actually reinvent the origin of a property like Spider-Man so that he is an Indian boy growing up in Mumbai [formerly Bombay] and dealing with local problems and challenges. I have always believed that the superhero relates to a “universal psyche” already firmly established in India through centuries of mythological stories depicting gods and heroes with supernatural abilities . . .

Though we will remain true to the underlining mythos of Spider-Man, which is epitomized in the phrase “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility,” the character will be reinvented so his powers, problems and costume are more integrated with Indian culture. Unlike the U.S. origin, which is deeply rooted in science, the Indian version is more rooted in magic and mythology.

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Zadie Smith, she of the Bangla-Jamaica mashup White Teeth, got married last September; they met at Cambridge. I ran into her at a small London birthday party at an age when she was considered precocious, well before I’d read her. She was all biting wit, creeper hair and privacy. Authors never look like their jacket photos, nor friendsters like theirs.

She’s due out with a third novel, On Beauty, in September. Autograph Man was studiedly trivial, seemingly an entire chapter devoted to Alex-Li’s body fluids. You’ve gagged on the wealth and hype jalebi, now toss me some more of that fine, fine namkeen.

Rushdie dogged my steps all through this India trip via the gossip columns. He returned to his eternal muse, Bombay; worked the press in that quintessential writer’s city, Calcutta; and held court at a fashion designer’s nightclub in that most elegant of settings… a Noida mall. Avoid-a the New Okhla Industrial, y’all.

Kitabkhana drolled on about Rushdie’s Delhi reading:

“That story, man, that story, it has the touch of genius, pure, jaano, calibre aachey. Each line has the stamp of a Master.” (Displaced Bong intellectual wannabe who spent most of the reading with eyes closed in ecstacy that would have been more convincing if he hadn’t snored once or twice in between.) … Sleepy photographer… wanted to go home but had been told by his editor to stay till the bitter end. “In case,” the editor apparently said, “Rushdie gets shot or something.”

… my last glimpse of the Rushdies was of them using upturned plastic chairs to hold at bay hordes of… squeaky-voiced journalists asking original questions (“Mr Rushdie! Are you writing a new novel?” “Padma, what’s your favourite food?”)

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The great science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, 2001: A Space Odyssey) is perhaps the most famous foreigner living in Sri Lanka. Long considered a visionary for his works, Clarke published a book about Sri Lanka in 1957 titled, The Reefs of Taprobane. As noted in the Hindustan Times:

In an open letter sent to his friends, the British author says that in Chapter 8 of the book he had described a tidal wave attack on Galle harbour in 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa, in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean as the epicentre of the December 26, 2004 sea quake, namely, off Sumatra in Indonesia.

The loss of life in Galle harbor is nearing 8000 and is one of the worst hit areas. Another claim in the article is the following:

In more recent times, he is said to have predicted, in one of his numerous science-fiction/futuristic writings, the Al-Qaeda attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

This quote is not backed-up however, and I can’t think of which work they might be referring to. If any reader knows, then please comment.

The New York Times book review placed V.S. Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds,” and Hari Kunzru’s “Transmission” on its list of the year’s 100 best books.

Nobel prize-winning Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds” is a sequel to “Half a Life,” and finds its protagonist making an eyebrow-raising return to India. Hari Kunzru’s “Transmission” is the author’s second book, and follows the travails of a desperate Indian programmer who unleashes a destructive computer virus.

Neither novel advanced to the paper’s top 10, which will be published in tomorrow’s edition.

The New York Times: 100 notable books of the year (free registration required)
Sepia Mutiny: NYT reviews Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds”

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