Lt. Neil Prakash tells us how the military makes coffee:
Mr. Abrams the coffee maker… slip the lid into the back grill of the exhaust. Then set your canteen cup for about 2 minutes. Let the 900 degree exhaust of your jet engine heat that puppy up and BAM – hot water for shaving, Ramen noodles, coffee…
There’s a certain combination of brute force and delicacy here that I find very appealing 🙂
As Manish recently noted, three Indian-Americans were awarded the Rhodes Scholarship this year. One of them is Ian Desai of the University of Chicago. Ian plans to use his time to make a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata. From The Tribune of India:
A New Yorker, Desai graduated this year with a degree in ancient studies. In 2001, he tried to retrace the mythic journey of Jason and the Argonauts through Greece, Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
He traveled by bus, motor cycle, car and on foot. To get around, he used a little Greek, broken Turkish and the kindness of strangers. He even negotiated with Turkish fishermen to spend 10 days on their trawler.
At one point he and Michael Newton, a photographer who chronicled the trip, were warned by a Georgian train conductor that they were in bandit country.
“WeÂ’re very proud of him,” said Susan Art, Dean of Students of the University of ChicagoÂ’s undergraduate college. “Ian is a remarkable individual who has contributed so much to the university. I think his success does justice to the quality of the education we offer,” Art added. Desai hopes to build upon his undergraduate research that has explored a rarely undertaken subject: a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata.
Now to me, mythology-geek that I am, this sounds like a fascinating study. I Googled the terms “Mahabharata and Illiad” to see what came up and this review of the Mahabharata which draws parallels to the Illiad was one of the first. I suppose all Myth is to a great deal interrelated. Joesph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces does a good job of exploring that hypothesis. In any case I hope to hear more about this in a few years when he finishes.
SM reader Janani rightly calls out some jerk who works at Star 98.7 in Los Angeles, via blog:
To Whom it May Concern:
I am a 2nd-generation East Indian American, and two nights ago, around 8-9 PM, I heard your nighttime deejay do a skit with a man pretending to be from India, named “Swami.”
…having your AMERICAN actor pretend (terribly, i might add) to be a man from India, complete with an exaggerated accent and a bumbling personality, turns the Asian immigrant into someone who should be LAUGHED AT. This is a sentiment that I would have expected 20 years ago – in fact, these are the same jokes I heard as a child on the school playground – but not now, when the Indian population has worked hard to earn a legitimate place in America’s ALLEGEDLY multicultural society. And FYI – Swami isn’t actually a name, but a title given to Indian spiritual leaders. So thanks for debasing Indian spirituality at the same time.
I don’t really expect anyone to read this, and if you do, I don’t know if you’ll understand my disgust or take the time to respond. But as someone actually invested in the idea of the United States as a land of opportunity for EVERYONE, I was severely disappointed that even in this small skit, your station revealed that society’s acceptance of all creeds, races, colors is often merely a facade. A parting shot of advice: if you can’t treat a culture or ethnicity with some degree of sensitivity, keep your mouths shut. We’ll all appreciate that much more.
So I went to Star 98.7’s site, and I was charmed by their openness to feedback:
If you have comments or suggestions we’d like to hear them…. so drop us a snail mail or email to share your thoughts with us.
BUSINESS LINE 818-559-2252
starprogramming@ClearChannel.com
Also, one of their main advertisers is Sona Med Spas & Laser Centers…which is run by one Dr. H. Shah. Interesting. If I were Dr. Shah, I’d be making a phone call…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released a pair of posters aimed at assisting authorities with properly identifying and searching Muslims and Sikhs.
The posters come from the DOJ’s Initiative to Combat Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash, and offer detailed explanations of each religion’s different head coverings. The posters also include seemingly obvious instructions such as “show respect,” and “searches should be done by members of the same sex.” (Can one request searches from the opposite sex, or does that cost extra?)
For
the most part, the photos on the Sikh poster are effective in demonstrating a
pagri, patka and chunni. But on the Muslim poster, one of the images is sure
to generate confusion in the field (photo on the right). We can only pray that
former Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn’t completely lose it when graduation
ceremonies commence in May.
Common
Muslim American Head Coverings (PDF, 1.5 MB)
Common Sikh American
Head Coverings (PDF, 1 MB)
My good friend Super Jagjit was so impressed by the posters that he created one for the DOJ to offer South Asian shopkeepers in rural areas:
Common Redneck Head Coverings (PDF, 255 KB)
Hindustan Times: U.S. Justice Department issues poster on Sikhism
Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf paid a visit to Washington, D.C. over the weekend,
where he met with U.S. President George W. Bush, and more notably, gave a series
of tantalizing interviews to the capital’s press corps.
During a closed door meeting, Bush and Musharraf discussed the war on terror, trade between their two countries, and the Palestine-Israel conflict. In a joint press conference where Bush did most of the talking, he praised his Pakistani counterpart, saying, “our relationships are good, they’re strong, and they will remain that way.”
In turn, Musharraf congratulated Bush on his victory in last month’s elections. “All that I would like to say, that I’ve come here basically to congratulate the President very sincerely, with all my sincerity, for having won the elections,” he said.
The lovefest between the two men ended shortly after the brief photo opportunity. Free of the White House muzzle, Musharraf sounded off on a number of topics in subsequent interviews with various media outlets:
| Search for Osama Bin Laden: | “He is alive, but more than that, where he is, no…we don’t know where he is.” — Washington Post/Yahoo! |
| India and Kashmir: | “I’m very optimistic of the future.” — AFP/Yahoo! |
| U.S. request for access to nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan: | “It shows a lack of trust.” — Washington Post/Yahoo! |
| World’s safety after Iraq invasion: | “I think it’s less safe, certainly…we have landed ourselves in more problems.” — Wolf Blitzer/CNN |
| Purchase of U.S. F-16 fighter jets: | “We discussed the F-16 issue…that is all I would like to say.” — AFP/Yahoo! |
| Timetable for democratic elections in Pakistan: | (Crickets chirping) |
(from the tipline – thanks JT!) This sort of stuff is usually a tad too political for SM BUT, since it’s a desi-writer taking on another desi-writer, I figured it was well within Sepia Mutiny’s posting guidelines 😉
The fact that it’s by a WSJ staff writer I follow from time to time – Tunku Varadarajan – & that he provides a BEAUTIFUL skewering of Arundhati Roy was merely the icing on the cake –
When a friend learned that I was pondering a piece critical of Ms. Roy … he e-mailed me reprovingly to ask whether that would not be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But second thoughts can strike at the speed of light. No sooner had he hit the “send” button than he hit it again: “There are certain fish, however, in certain barrels, that cannot be ignored.” …A certain segment of the American intelligentsia connects gleefully with exotic leftists like Ms. Roy. In fact, the Ms. Roys of our age, and their fans and subsidy-givers in the West, enjoy a touching symbiosis. Arundhati Roy, I’d venture to say, is George Soros’s political poster girl. Ms. Roy and her type pay the ultimate compliment to America by holding that all world events occur at America’s behest and that the six billion non-Americans on the planet are but helpless pawns, incapable of doing anything–especially anything bad–without Uncle Sam’s imprimatur.
Those are just a few of the plentiful nuggets in a very well written & succinct piece.
As if dowry deaths, gender-influenced abortions and other social ills didn’t make me ill enough, now I can read about NRIs who return to India and marry purely for fiscal reasons, with the intent to abandon their naive new brides;
Baljeet Kaur gave her life savings and a scooter as dowry to marry Harvinder Singh in 1986 with the promise she would leave Punjab and join him in Canada where he drove a taxi.
A few weeks later, after pocketing 400,000 rupees (8,510 dollars), Singh went back to Canada, promising his then 24-year-old pregnant bride he would return for her within a year.
“But he never come back,” Kaur said. “Whenever I asked my in-laws about him, they used to beat me and tell me to get lost. After a couple of years, I moved to my mother’s house. My son doesn’t even know who his father is.”
Kaur is one of an estimated 16,000 women in the Punjab who have been abandoned by suitors working abroad who come back home briefly in hopes of finding a wife who can pay a dowry.
Sixteen-thousand. That’s insane. And before you question my use of the word “intent” in my introduction, read on:
“It’s a very planned crime by the entire family,” said Adarsh Sharma of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCD) which is investigating the cases.
StrategyPage reports on the antics of a Indian soldier / Bollywood wannabees –
December 1, 2004: Twice this year, Indian soldiers have tried to use staged photographs, of non-existent fire fights, to win notoriety, medals and promotions. In the latest incident, a colonel commanding troops against tribal separatists in northwest India used civilians, pretending to be dead, and touched up with tomato sauce, to produce photos of the colonels brilliant combat leadership. The colonel was found out, court martialled and expelled from the army. The major who assisted him was suspended from the army for five years. Last May, some soldiers operating high on the Siachen glacier in the northwest, tried a similar stunt. They were also found out and punished. It is thought that similar attempts may have succeeded elsewhere, so the army is double checking past awards for bravery and outstanding performance in combat. This sort of thing is nothing new, and has been happening before the camera was invented. Especially in wars against irregulars, as India is fighting in its northeast and northwest, the temptation is always there.
Sheesh. Continue reading
Relax. President of his incoming freshman class of Republican congressman only. Still, a very substantial honor. From NCMonline.com:
The new Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 109th Congress have elected Bobby Jindal, R-La., president of the freshman class by a unanimous vote.
According to the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the 33-year-old “eager-beaver A student,” with “no significant opponents” to worry about, “spent much of the election season quietly getting a jump on everyone who actually did have to worry about getting elected.”
Jindal used allocated chunks of his $2-million war chest to help GOP candidates facing tougher races. In his most recent financial disclosure report, the Times-Picayune said, the Indian American donated $46,000 to other Republican candidates for House seats, $25,000 in “excess funds” to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and $750 to the National Rifle Association’s political action committee. Jindal estimates he donated or helped raise at least $150,000 for other GOP candidates, the newspaper said.
Very smart. He was thinking ahead by greasing the skids like a political pro. The Indian American Republican Council immediately issued a statement of congratulations:
The Indian American community is very proud of Bobby’s election to Congress and his election as President of the Freshman class. We know he will be a strong voice on fiscal matters and the moral issues facing our society today as he serves in Congress.
Looks like everyone is hopping on the “moral issues” bandwagon.
Shailaja Neelakantan writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that student elections in India are a farm league for national campaign thuggery:
[S]tudent elections are seen as steppingstones to national politics, and therefore a route to wealth and power. Scores of important political figures, including Atal Behari Vajpayee, the former prime minister, got their start in university campaigns…Mr. Rai’s death marked the climax of three and a half months of fear unleashed on Lucknow by members of various student groups, who defaced public property, extorted money from businessmen and doctors at gunpoint, and forced the university to shut down classes with threats of violence…
Many of these thugs become perennial students on the 10+ year plan:
Some Lucknow candidates have been at the university for as long as 13 years, earning not only bachelor’s but also numerous master’s degrees in order to continue their involvement in university politics while they wait to advance to the national level of their parties.
They’re generously funded by the national parties:
During the September elections, Mr. Khanna says, he saw student groups giving away mobile-phone cards, chocolates, and coupons for liquor, among other freebies. At Lucknow University, student leaders spent an estimated $444,000 on the elections this year. [Ed.: Yes, that’s in dollars.] “We don’t get money. We get support and nonmonetary resources to mobilize students…” He was evasive as to what he meant by nonmonetary resources.
In contrast, filmmaker Mani Ratnam lauded student activism in Yuva; his students were reformists leveraging a student campaign into a Lok Sabha seat.