It’s poor form to leave a party without saying goodbye. And though for a while now I’ve done little more than relax on the porch and watch the revelers come and go, it’s time now for me to head back out into the city. I’ve had a rich and productive experience here and I thank you all for the insight and the perspectives; you’ve helped me through changes and contributed to my growth in ways you don’t know. I don’t have time to blog at this point, but there are other ways to maintain and contribute to online communities, and I look forward to running into some of you in those future settings. To everyone: Go forward with honesty, kindness, and joy in our complex and ambiguous diasporic lives. PEACE. Continue reading
Category Archives: News
Immortal.
I think it was Camille who originally alerted us to the horrific discovery of a baby in Bombay, who had been stabbed almost to death, before being thrown in the garbage.
A newborn Indian baby found abandoned with 26 stab wounds has survived, doctors said on Wednesday, despite a cracked skull and exposed intestines.
The baby boy, who doctors said was aged between one and two days, was discovered soaked in blood at a garbage dump in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Tuesday, they said.
His intestines were hanging out from a deep wound on his back and he had dirt and garbage stuck on him.
“When he was brought in he looked pale from blood loss,” said Ramesh Hatti, a doctor at a city hospital.
“He is still in a lot of pain but is now stable.”
Police have not been able to trace the baby’s parents or establish a reason for the attack.
Babies are sometimes abandoned by unwed Indian mothers, who fear severe social repercussions for having a child out of wedlock. [CNN]
Today, another tipster emailed us an update– via The Mumbai Mirror:
The good news is that the infant is doing well…Dr Oak said he has been taken off the ventilator. “He is able to breathe on his own but he is too young and vulnerable to infection. So, we may keep him in the ICU for a few days,†he said.
The phone has been ringing off the hook, at the hospital.
Many callers were eager to adopt the little one. A woman called up the Mumbai Mirror office and said, “How can I adopt the baby? What is the procedure. How can I help this child?â€
According to Madhuri Mhatre, a social worker with an adoption agency called Bal Anand, “Adoption takes a lot of time because we have to be sure that the child goes into a good family. We check the legal, financial and domestic background of all prospective parents.â€
In any case, doctors said, it is too early to speak of adoption.
This tiny little fighter is so lucky, so fierce:
A milkman saw the bleeding child in a garbage dump outside Lokhandwala complex at Kandivli (W) on Tuesday morning. He rushed the baby to Bhagwati hospital in Borivli. But since Bhagwati was not equipped to take care of the injured infant, he was sent to B Y L Nair Hospital. Doctors carried out a two-hour operation on Tuesday night to close the wounds and replace lost blood. He was then put on a ventilator.
I get chills every time I read that. How many times did this child slip through death’s fingers…
The state government plans to inquire about the miracle baby now recuperating in B Y L Nair Hospital…
Since government-run children’s homes do not often handle newborns, the department will contact NGOs who have the expertise to do so.
“At the same time, I have instructed my officials to check out if the government-run children’s homes in Mumbai and Pune have the facilities to take care of the baby,†said Dr Singh, who is unhappy about too much publicity being given to the baby’s wounds.
Wait, why?
He says such images can cause distress among citizens.
Oh, boo-hoo. There can’t be enough publicity, if it inspires much-necessary outrage and reasserts the power of shame. The elderly and the newly-born are not garbage, to be disposed of when inconvenient. Continue reading
More FREE fun for the People– in Berkeley
Via my Auntie Valsa’s kid, Jasmin, over at ASATA, news of an upcoming free M.I.A. show at Amoeba Records in Berkeley, this Saturday at 2pm.
I “hella” thought those of you in the yay area who have reconciled your inner turmoil regarding her connection with/representation of/grahpic allusions to the LTTE might want to know. Me? I’m still conflicted, so I’ll keep humming
Let you be superior
I’m flithy with the fury ya
…it’s easy being morally inferior when there’s such a sick soundtrack to feel shame to. I keed, I keed. Continue reading
“Trashed” Grandmother Passes Away.
A heart-breaking update to my previous post, “On Respect for our Elders“:
A SICK 75-year-old grandmother who was thrown in the garbage by her relatives in India last week has died, officials say.
Chinnammal Palaniappan, died on Sunday in a home for elderly people where she was taken after being rescued from the garbage dump in Erode town, 400km from Chennai, capital of southern Tamil Nadu state.
Palaniappan had told her rescuers that on July 19 she was taken from her home by her grandsons and on waking up found herself among a heap of rotting garbage.
“She was improving after she was fed and given necessary medicines in the facility but on Sunday evening she developed breathing problems and died,†an official said.
Thanks for posting this to the news tab, Anonymous. At least she’s finally at peace.
If anyone hears news regarding the worthless family who did this despicable deed, please let us know. I can’t be the only one who is interested in their fate, and how the TN government proceeds with this tragic case. Continue reading
Congrats, Aarti!
The Hill has more beautiful people for us, 40 more, in fact. The first one caught tipster DTK’s attention (thanks!).
Aarti Nayak, scheduler for Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.), doesn’t like skiing one bit, but that’s where she met her husband, Dave — on the slopes.
“He had a little blond girlfriend at the time,†she says with a wry smile. But when Nayak came into the picture, well, the blond was history. They have been married since September. She hopes to have kids.
Considering today’s hot comment threads/topics, it seems appropriate to wonder what kind of wedding they had?
Was it meant to be? Nayak reads astrological signs, although she’s not a fervent believer.
During college at Virginia Tech, she and a friend wrote blurbs on astrological signs for the Eccentric, a student newspaper — they were called the “psychic sisters.â€
At any rate, she doesn’t look one bit “psychic.â€
What the H-E-double-toothpicks does a “psychic” look like? Enough with this paranormal profiling!
The first-generation American from an Indian family twirls her dark, curly hair, which her friends have compared to singer-model Toni Braxton’s locks.
Let me channel “chip-on-her-shoulder-Auntie“: “Vy they had to compare her to Toni Braxton? Minnie Driver also has such hair! Harrumph! Racist!” 😉
But makeup is not very important to her.
“I don’t care anymore,†she explains.
Even about lipgloss?? Say it isn’t so, my sweet sister…perhaps you just need some Hindu lips.
When it comes to beauty, Nayak is gently scornful of contests and pageants. She said one of their past interns participated in pageants and waved the Miss America wave.
“Who are these girls anyway?†she asks skeptically.
Oh, and as for her auspicious placement at the top of the list:
Other than the Top 10 , the rest of these beautiful people are not ranked in any specific order.
Suuuuuuuuuure they aren’t. Continue reading
Behold: Toronto’s Swaminarayan Mandir
Several of you have written to us regarding the grand opening of Canada’s Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (that was fun to type!). The pictures, which you can view in a slideshow here, are gorgeous. Were any Canadian mutineers there on July 22? If so, please let us know, below.
After 18 months of construction and millions in fundraising efforts, a one-of-a-kind Hindu temple opened Sunday in Toronto.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on-hand to celebrate the official unveiling of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir.
Harper said the $40 million architectural marvel represents India’s and Canada’s embracement of spiritual and ethnic pluralism.
“Canada’s accommodation of diversity is not without precedent,” Harper said, addressing a large crowd.
“There have been forerunners — and of these perhaps none is as note-worthy as India.”
Located at Hwy 427 and Finch Avenue in north-west Toronto, the temple is an architectural masterpiece. Built with Turkish limestone and Italian marble, the temple was built by artisans armed with chisels, hammers and ancient Hindu doctrine outlining how a holy place should be constructed. [CTV.ca]
By the numbers:
–24,000: the number of pieces sculpted in India, marked with a barcode and then reassembled to create the mandir.
–July 22, 2007: official opening
–$40 million: cost of construction, majority of which came from the community
–400: the number of volunteers who devoted their time to such an awesome project.
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As giddy as such architectural perfection makes me, my inner %$#@< is wondering if Dubya would have made like Harper, had this mandir been constructed somewhere in this great nation… Continue reading
The Greatest Living American?
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The Greatest Living American? |
The greatest living American is Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and joins Jimmy Carter as the two living American-born laureates around whose necks this distinction as been placed.
How did Borlaug win his Nobel back in 1970?
Through the 1940s and 1950s, Borlaug developed high-yield wheat strains, then patiently taught the new science of Green Revolution agriculture to poor farmers of Mexico and nations to its south. When famine struck India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s, Borlaug and a team of Mexican assistants raced to the Subcontinent and, often working within sight of artillery flashes from the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, sowed the first high-yield cereal crop in that region; in a decade, India’s food production increased sevenfold, saving the Subcontinent from predicted Malthusian catastrophes.
As a temporary American expat to India, Borlaug’s impact on India’s development was possibly greater than Deming’s on Japan…
On Respect for our Elders
Please. Spare us your liberal Western Judeo-Christian BS. Hinduism is far superior when it comes to questions of individual growth and development. For example, we don’t consider death a chance to go to happy land up in the sky, so that article about the baby is total BS. Life and death are part of the same cycle for us. A wife is subservient to her husband because Sita was subservient to Ram. Yeah, a Westerner may not understand that, but at least in India we don’t need to place condom machines in every university bathroom. We don’t have a whole porn industry devoted to the exploitation of vulnerable women. We don’t put our elders in nursing homes because of an obsession with career promotion. We value our families, and just as importantly, the larger community. And Hindu women have done just fine for 5000+++ years, thank you very much. So cut this feminist BS. Next you’ll be promoting gay rights in India. Liberalism is NOT going to destroy the fabric of our society. [sm]
I volunteered at a nursing home while attending college in the US. Many of the elderly women told me that their children visit only during holidays. Most of the day, these elderly people would be playing cards, or watching television or some such activity. But even though these children had neglected their parents, parents being parents, the parents (even with all the amnesia and what not) would remember their kids and often reminisce, out of the blue.
When I see young Indian kids walking around with their grandparents, I can appreciate the harmony of Indian culture. I know that that venerable revered being will not have to extinguish his/her days, sitting around a table playing cards or wait for the next holiday to see a family member. There is something more important trying to outwit your husband in every aspect (feminism), and I would have to say that this is the image of you that you project onto your children. After all, a parents are a child’s first role models. [sm]
When the desi nursing homes actually materialize, then we can debate it…Have you been in a nursing home? Have you seen the size of one of the cramped rooms they have for occupants? Its disgusting. Desi’s will never go down that path, thankfully. [sm]
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Via an Anonymous Tipster:
Indian granny thrown on garbage dump
An Indian couple found an unwell 75-year-old woman lying on a garbage dump, apparently thrown out of her home by her daughter and grandsons who did not want to take care of her, the Hindustan Times reported.
“She never complained about her family’s behaviour, only rued the fact that she couldn’t move without help,” Mohanasundari, one of the rescuers, said.
Are you a Potterwallah?
Though I have never been a fan of Harry, I have always been an ardent devotee of pop culture, so Potter-mania interests me for that reason. I’m marinating in it here, but I’m tickled by what’s going on there, and by there, I mean India.
By 7 am, Strand Book Stall, Fort, Mumbai, who opened their doors at 6.30 am sharp on July 21, had sold 2,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Queues of excited Potterwallahs, who had been in line since 6 am or earlier, wound themselves around the block in this busy Mumbai business district, where Saturday is usually a very quiet day.
Mothers and daughters, teenagers, young working people, plenty of youngsters with their parents and lot of oldies. all stood in a queue calmly clutching receipts for copies booked up to three months earlier.
The paan wallahs and chai wallahs nearby had seen this phenomenon before. “Yes it is for that book,” they said sagely. “I don’t know what the book is about.” [Rediff]
That is almost exactly what I said to a stranger, earlier today! 😉
And you muggle-borns? Did you skip to the last page, like the rowdy teens in Mumbai did? Continue reading
SF: Stern Grove Bhangra + Cheek Swabbing – SUNDAY
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Pahtee In Thee Ghe-tto… |
One of the best things about summer in San Francisco is the annual Stern Grove summer concert series. The festival brings in some of the best in lesser known music with a particular emphasis on international / world beats.
This Sunday they’re doing it up Desi and will feature the Grammy-nominated Anoushka Shankar, Karsh Kale, The Non-Stop Bhangra Collective, Dholrhythms, and more.
Where: Stern Grove Park
When: Sunday, July 22; Concert starts @ 2:00 but seating is first come / first serve and once they’re at capacity, they stop admitting new folks. So be there by 1230 or so just to be safe.
And, of course, no gathering of Desi’s this large is complete without an obligatory shout out for folks to come out get their cheeks swabbed and help Sameer & Vinay find a bone marrow match. Sameer’s team is looking for volunteers to help out with the cause. I’ll be there with a few other mutineers so stop by and say hello!