Category Archives: News

Campaign Yields South Asian Bone Marrow Transplant Donor

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piaAwal270x130.jpgPia Awal’s search for a bone marrow transplant donor produced a match last week, and she will undergo the procedure later this month at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Awal, who has leukemia, inspired family and friends to launch a nationwide search for a match, which ultimately led to the addition of 12,442 profiles to the country’s bone marrow registry.

The online portion of their campaign was truly impressive. I recall receiving numerous e-mails about Awal’s plight from South Asians and non-South Asians alike. The grueling ordeal was also documented on the web by Awal and her fiance, Tim Dutta.

USA Today/AP: Bone Marrow Found for Woman Seeking South Asian Donors
Official Site: MatchPia.org
Nirali Magazine: Hoping for a Match

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Marriage plans foiled again

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Damn. Unable to find love here because women simply don’t understand me, I had planned on making my next trip to India count. I had intended to find myself a bride while over there. Now it seems there will be people running a background check on me first. I got to say this is long overdue, even though a background check is sure to eliminate me. From the Times of India:

The Union ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs will appoint volunteers abroad to carry out a background check on ‘eligible’ bachelors settled in foreign countries.

At the forthcoming Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), the ministry is planning to appoint non-resident Indian (NRI) volunteers who will represent it in foreign countries, to make discreet inquiries about bachelors who have set their sights on the Indian marriage mart. The PBD is to be held at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Nariman Point, Mumbai, from January 7 to 9.

The idea is the brainchild of Jagdish Tytler, minister of state for Overseas Indian Affairs. Speaking to TOI en route to Kenya and South Africa to promote the PBD, he said, “This is being done to prevent the exploitation of gullible girls and their families by so-called bachelors.” There are 10,000 cases in Punjab alone of NRI husbands abandoning their wives. In Gujarat about 12,000 cases have been reported, Tytler said. Figures for other states were not available with him.

Wanting to be part of “The War on Terror”

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When I first heard about this story several months ago it just really got under my skin. Apparently these Macedonian police decided that they would prove that Macedonia was fully committed to the U.S. led global war against terror. They did so by luring innocent Indian and Pakistani illegal immigrants into Macedonia and then presenting them to the world as captured terrorists shortly before executing them. Their trial has now commenced. From Aljazeera:

The four defendants include police general Goran Stojkov, intelligence officer Aleksandar Cvetkov, the former commander of a now disbanded special police unit, Boban Utkovski, and businessman Mitko Kikerkov

Former Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski was initially also charged as the main organiser of the slaying but fled to Croatia. He is in detention in the coastal Croatian town of Pula and the case against him will be handled by authorities there.

Ahead of the trial, the defence lawyers claimed their clients were innocent and victims of “politically motivated” proceedings that are part of “political revenge” by the new Macedonian government.

Sources at the court, who asked not to be named, said that at least 30 witnesses will testify during the trial.

The defendants face sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

Macaulay’s Minute

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An argument is raging in Pakistan about the reform of religious education in madrassas. Lord Macaulay’s infamous Minute on Indian Education, a treatise on imposing English-language education on India, anticipated many of the same arguments.

Macaulay’s text was openly racist…

I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia… the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England… We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language… The languages of Western Europe civilized Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar.

… shrewdly imperialist…

What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit colleges is not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth… If there should be any opposition among the natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will be the effect of our own system. It will be headed by persons supported by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we persevere in our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be.
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Middle Eastern mutiny

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Robert Kaplan draws a comparison in the NYT between this blog’s namesake revolt and the war in Iraq. He argues that rather than evangelizing instant democracy, the U.S. should temper its ambitions:

… Iraq has turned out like the Indian mutiny against the British in 1857 and 1858, when the attempts of Evangelical and Utilitarian reformers in London to modernize and Christianize India – to make it more like England – were met with a violent revolt against imperial rule… The bloody debacle… did signal a transition: away from an ad hoc imperium fired by an intemperate lust to impose domestic values abroad, and toward a calmer, more pragmatic empire built on international trade and technology.

Kaplan’s description of the British Empire pre-Sepoy Rebellion is oddly enervated. Modernize India? Methinks the evangelicals were mainly interested in conversion. To them, heathen Hindus were the sub-Saharan Africans of the 19th century, a teeming continent of raw material for Christianity. Alexander Pope chastised Hindu beliefs in his ‘Essay on Man’:

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav’n,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
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White House celebrates Diwali

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The White House hosted its second Diwali celebration Wednesday, which is very cool. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays with the evangelicals who equate Hinduism with devil worship. Former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill hosted the party; it was his last day in government, he just resigned as head of Iraq policy due to a staffer abuse mini-scandal.

Dubya and Laura, Karl Rove (who attended last year), and Representative-elect Bobby Jindal were no-shows. One fundraiser said that for Indian-Americans, ‘pay to play’ is all pay, no play; he threw a hissy-fit when Bush attended a Ramadan dinner a few hours later:

Community activists were told that if the President and the First Lady attended the event of one community or nationals, there would be pressure from others. But a few hours after the Diwali event, Bush attended an Iftar dinner hosted by the White House to mark the end of Ramzaan… “We raised millions for the President and the GOP… and this is what we got in return,” the activist, also a physician, fumed.

Many Republican desis attended, and the mithai and samosas were ordered from the same New York midtown restaurant, Bukhara Grill, which catered Salman Rushdie’s wedding and is a favorite of Bill Clinton’s. Great food is nonpartisan, time for a pilgrimage:

Dhandu Ram is the man behind the tandoor at Bukhara Grill in New York. He is a master tandoor who hails from Rajasthan, but got his training on the job at the famed Bukhara at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi… As a tandoor chef, Ram is the star attraction at Bukhara Grill and agrees that more respect is given to chefs here… He points out that a tandoor chef generally gets a green card because this is a task that no one else can really do.

Update: Someone who once worked for the host of the party chimes in on Daniel Drezner’s blog:

Blackwill is an incredibly brilliant thinker with absolutely no interpersonal skills… I never saw Blackwill touch an employee other than to shake hands. His manner is such that embassy staff wondered that he could have fathered three children… He sleeps four hours a night… By the time I’d arrive in my office at 0730… I would find between 20 and 30 e-mails from Blackwill, time-stamped from 0330 onward… he was always a decent human being. I think his major fault was that he simply lacked empathy toward other human beings…

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Bugging Trees to Stop Logging

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The Independent (UK) is running an interesting story on the embedding of microchips inside of trees in the Indian state of Kerala, in order to curb illegal logging of the precious and aromatic sandalwood tree.

Forestry officials will then be able to use a satellite to monitor the trees. Not only will any attempt to cut them down be detected – the Forest Department will be able to trace the movements of any smugglers who try to take timber out of the area. The trade in contraband sandalwood is one of the most lucrative in India. The “bandit king” Veerappan, wanted for more than 120 murders before he was gunned down by Indian police last month, may have started out poaching elephants for their ivory, but soon moved on to the much more profitable business of sandalwood.

I do think the enforcement of illegal logging laws are important, but I am sure there are better uses for this technology/resource in India.

Lt Neil Prakash

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I’m a news junkie and was reading this report from Fallujah when I came across a tres Desi surname – Lt. Neil Prakash.

Did some googling and it turns out that Lt. Prakash is a recent neuroscience major from Johns Hopkins whose hope as he joined ROTC was to be in the tank corp and see some action. Like many Desi’s, he was on a path to med school –

1st Lt. Neil Prakash is the platoon commander, in the lead tank. Prakash was born in Bangalore, India, and came to the U.S. as a baby. His parents are both dentists and he was planning a career in medicine like his siblings when he enlisted in ROTC and discovered his true passion. Prakash doesnÂ’t smoke, but heÂ’s having a cigarette now. While waiting for the order to go in, heÂ’s just gotten word of video images from an overhead drone. They indicate that squads of insurgents are on many rooftops armed with machine guns and RPGs…

While I’m working on my facial tan from the glow of the CRT on my desk, Lt Prakash is perhaps 25 yrs old and is the platoon commander leading 4 70-ton tanks crewed by 16 soldiers through the streets of Fallujah. Sure makes me feel like a slacker…

Suffice to say, Prakash survived the RPG fire and had a prominent role in yesterday’s Telegraph report on the fighting in Fallujah–

“Guys with short brown hair, dark pants and carrying AK-47s were moving in groups of between two and five across the road to a yellow building,” said Lt Neil Prakash, the tank commander. “Then some started throwing Molotov cocktails and pouring gasoline on the road to create a smokescreen.” …Lt Prakash was asked to provide a grid co-ordinate.

(warning – somewhat gory details ahead) Continue reading →

Something better to bet on

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SayaliBhagat.jpg
While some gambling addicts will spend their money betting on Simpsons characters others will have this lovely option. From the Hindustan Times:

Indian beauty queen Sayali Bhagat is a hot favourite to be crowned Miss World at its 54th edition slated later this year in the tropical island of Sanya in China, according to Internet bookmakers, Interpops.com.

“The world needs some spice! It will certainly have it if Sayali Bhagat becomes the jewel in India’s crown when she wins the 54th Miss World contest,” the betting site said on Thursday.

“The world needs some spice?” Geez, please come up with something better than that.

The bookmakers said there were also some unfortunate “flavourless offerings” that may not make it past the first course. At the bottom of their betting menu are Miss Turks and Caicos at 100/1 and Miss Kenya at 150/1.

Ouch. I’m glad nobody will ever place odds on my beauty.

A sportscasters nightmare

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Though Anish Shroff was recently eliminated from ESPN’s competition to become the next sportscaster there, I give him props. I only saw parts of one episode but it looks like a tough job. A lot of sports stories are coming in while these guys are already in the middle of the show and they have to improvise and think on their feet to describe whats going on. I don’t care how many years of experience you have, nothing can prepare you for this scenario though. From The Times online of UK:

FOR a commentator, it would have been a nightmare. “Patel passes to Patel, it bounces off Patel’s boot, but Patel comes in from the wing and shoots and oh, a brilliant save by Patel. Every Patel on the terraces is on his feet.”

The reason was simple: all 124 players in a weekend five-a-side charity football tournament in Leeds, and 300 of their fans, were called Patel.

For the participants, it was an extended family occasion. The Patels may not all know each other intimately, but they are all in some way related.

This is scary. It reminds me of a nightmare I had once. Pretty soon there will be Patels within the ranks of the Mutiny as well. Oh. Too late.

Patel is merely the 24th most common surname in Britain. Nonetheless, two years ago an eleven from Mr PatelÂ’s society played cricket against another Bradford-based Indian side. All 22 players turned out to be Patels