The land of my ancestors once again makes me proud:

Kerala has become the first state in the country to supply free antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients.

“We are proud of this achievement because no other state has this programme. We began this supply last month through the five government medical colleges,” said Health Secretary E.K. Bharat Bhusan.

Like the rest of India, AIDS is a concern for Kerala:

There are 2,003 cases of AIDS in Kerala while 613 people have died of the disease. The state has close to 100,000 HIV patients.

I love how Uncle Bhushan takes great pains to point out that we’re better than those OTHER, more AIDS-y South Indian states:

Secretary Bhushan pointed out that while Kerala was classified as a low AIDS prevalence state, its neighbours Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were in the high prevalence category.

Whatever. Just do something, and do it now.

Since we are just days away from the anniversary of history’s worst industrial disaster, I thought it was important to highlight a couple of relevant articles on the subject starting with this excellent piece in The Tribune of India.

For many who survived the dark night of December 2-3, 1984, in Bhopal, dawn is yet to break. The leak of 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from the Union Carbide Corporation’s (UCC) pesticide factory — the worst industrial disaster in history — killed or disabled several lakhs. By the third day of the disaster, around 8,000 had died. Today the number of those who died stands at 20,000. Lakhs who survived were debilitated for life. Of the 5,20,000 who were exposed to the poisonous gases, 1,20,000 remain chronically ill. Nor is that all; till today children in the city are born infirm and deformed.

Successive governments, Union Carbide Corporation and its new owner Dow Chemical shrugged off responsibility for the compensation and rehabilitation of victims. After years of legal wrangling for compensation, more than five-and-a-half lakh survivors of the tragedy are facing another threat. The hazardous waste, still lying abandoned at the site, is continuously seeping into the ground water.

With the scientific evidence of contamination in ground water increasing and spreading with every passing day, the wait for a sequel to the 1984 disaster has started.

20,000 dead and still no justice. It reveals a lot about the way the World works when you see what kind of justice is provided after a terrorist attack by comparison. Is there any new momentum gaining in an effort to bring help and closure for the continuing victims?

It seems the government [Indian], which has been criticised for its lax regulation of the UCC and reluctance to pursue legal claims, is finally ready to hold Dow Chemical, the multibillion chemical company which took over the UCC, liable for the ground contamination.

Vinuta Gopalan, a Greenpeace India campaigner associated with the Bhopal campaign, terms this a good sign, even though it has come quite late in the day. “But that is how governments work. There is a lack of political will to enforce corporate responsibility and Dow Chemical refuses to fulfil its medical and social responsibility. It is not a question of 1000 houses but of 25,000 persons who still do not have access to piped water. These days tankers supply water to some areas, but during summers and monsoons matters become worse.”

Continue reading →

New Zealand censors have gone so far as to ban an American video game from being sold in that country. The offending game is called Postal 2: Share the Pain. “Postal,” of course is short for “going postal” which is a slang term refering to the murder sprees some U.S. Postal Service employees have gone on mostly in the 80s and 90s in the U.S. The Malaysia Star reports on the reasons behind the ban:

Chief censor Bill Hastings said the American game Postal 2: Share the Pain asked players to control a character who exposed his penis, urinated on, attacked and killed opposing groups including “angry parents protesting violent games, Arab terrorists, Catholics, Indian shop owners, gay men and other stereotyped minority and protest groups.”

But is the game any fun, and what’s this about an Indian shop owner? A review of the game found on PCGameworld sheds light on each question.

Ah, the Postal 2 demo has been released, all is well. I’ve been playing this demo a hell of a lot since its release and the one word review, is fun. The game seems to be designed to offend, which is actually a low point. Instead of satirizing life as it should be, it’s just some guys thinking: “If we let the player light women and cats on fire, someone will get pissed at us.”

… Racially, the game likes to make fun of the darker persuasion. Just take one step into Happy Ganesh, the convenience store and Postal dude asks if a Cow died in there. When you try to buy that milk you were pining for, the clerk tells you to go to the back of the line, you infidel.

You can uncover a more sinister plot involving a bunch of female characters that look suspiciously like the Taliban. A friend of mine who is Indian was brutally offended. He thought, we can make fun of Nazis because that happened so long ago, but an attack that happened a few years ago gets made fun of already since the people who attacked were already one of the most ridiculed groups of people in the country. I donÂ’t share these views, but he has a point.

Whatever happened to the good old days when it was just about fending off space invaders?

Ummm. I don’t really know how to explain this one so I am not going to even try. You gotta believe that there is a market for this. Right?

DESIGNERS of an Indian high tech crematorium have decided to screen funerals online so that people who can’t make the ceremony can watch it from the comfort of their own home.

The website will be called www.mokshadham.org [note: website is probably .com and not .org, and it isn’t up yet] which in Sanskrit means “abode of liberation”. Most Hindus believe that cremation brings liberation, mukti or moksha. Hence, the site where relatives are burnt is called a samadhi. Holy men, sadhus, may become liberated while they are still alive and so are buried, not burnt. Because of these considerations, Hindus rejoice at death and only the faithless mourn.

The site is expected to be live by June.

The family of a late Himachal Pradeshi princess is not happy with her beneficence to her domestic help:

Raj Rajeshwari, 66, princess of Bilaspur in India’s Himachal Pradesh state, reportedly changed her will shortly before she died. She left about 25m rupees ($556,000) to a peanut-selling father and son who also worked as her domestic helpers.

“…cash, gems and jewellery, a car, Persian carpets and rare artefacts have been left to Babloo Gupta and Ram Bilas. The remaining half of the property has been handed over to a trust of the Himachal Pradesh government to open an old people’s home.”… The princess’ brother is furious, accusing the beneficiaries of drugging her to change the will…

The reclusive, unmarried princess changed her will the day before she died. Is there substance to her family’s claim? Her sister-in-law says:

“They attempted to kill her by an overdose of alprex (sleeping pills) three years ago and have indulged in foul play again.”

CSI:HP is on the case. Results are due back Wednesday at 8/7 Central.

As a follow up to this post I wrote a while back, I point SM readers to an article in The Christian Science Monitor that looks into the emerging use of a mixture of English and Hindi (Hinglish) in India:

Turn on any Indian television station these days and you’re likely to hear things like “Hungry kya?” and “What your bahana is?”

Or one of your friends might ask you to “pre-pone” your dinner plans or accuse you of “Eve-teasing.”

No, you didn’t mishear them. These and countless other new words and phrases are part of the fastest-growing language in the country: Hinglish.

The mix of Hindi and English is the language of the street and the college campus, and its sound sets many parents’ teeth on edge. It’s a bridge between two cultures that has become an island of its own, a distinct hybrid culture for people who aspire to make it rich abroad without sacrificing the sassiness of the mother tongue. And it may soon claim more native speakers worldwide than English.

Once, Indians would ridicule the jumbled language of their expatriate cousins, the so-called ABCDs – or the American-Born Confused Desi. (Desi means countryman.) Now that jumble is hip, and turning up in the oddest places, from television ads to taxicabs, and even hit movies, such as “Bend it Like Beckham” or “Monsoon Wedding.”

But Hinglish isn’t just a language spoken between the younger generation or amongst the rich elite who want to come across as more “western.” It is now being used extensively in marketing campaigns by large corporations. Continue reading →