Identity crisis

On Monday the LA Times ran an insightful story [free reg. required] on what happens when you pretend to be an American all day:

Every Saturday morning Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It’s the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders.

Between 20 and 33 years old and keen to hide their symptoms from employers and families, the patients have significantly increased Kalyanasundaram’s workload.

“They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub.”

According to a report in the Indian Express newspaper, one in 15 people seeking counseling from a doctor in Chennai, India, works either in software or at a call center

…”The strain of pretending to be ‘Bob’ or ‘Susan’ on the phone for weeks on end and keeping up with ‘Eastenders’ [a British television soap opera] and baseball can lead to questions of identity,”…

Yeah, I sort of saw this coming. As a former telemarketer I know full well the depression that can clutch at you when dealing with rude people all day. The other interesting issue the Times article looks at is what happens when the kids start making more money than the parents. The “as long as you live in my house” leverage just doesn’t cut it. “Mom, I’ll be at Moe’s.”

India’s work patterns also are testing traditionally close family structures. Gouhari said: “Children are earning vastly more than their parents ever did and the new disposable income is leading to a burgeoning pub culture which is causing a lot of family tension.”

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The next generation rickshaw

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When I worked for a few months in Delhi at the end of 2002 I was pleasantly surprised by my daily commute. I had heard that the Delhi air was absolutely choked with automobile exhaust fumes and made commuting unbearable. Having converted many buses and rickshaws over to natural gas (CNG) seemed to have done a pretty good job in cleaning up the Delhi skies. Los Angeles, where I live, is still playing catch-up. In the near future though, Indian cities may surge ahead again thanks to the most reliable form of transportation. Indianexpress.com explains:

The great Indian autorickshaw may have just shifted to the eco-friendly CNG but itร‚โ€™s ready for the generation-next fuel.

Taking a major leap towards Indo-US co-operation in the energy sector, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have helped develop a hydrogen-run three-wheeler for Indian roads.

The Rochester Hills (Michigan)-based Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) has successfully converted and developed a CNG-run three-wheeler of Bajaj Automobiles into one run on hydrogen fuel.

Converting over to a hydrogen economy in the U.S. would be a massive undertaking that would span a couple decades. Some analysts think that China and India who have a smaller oil infrastructure could make the switch more easily, and also become more competitive economically, if they start with an alternative energy source while their economies are still developing. I know the critics will say that a hydrogen economy is pie in the sky but I’ve always had a saying: If it’s good enough for the Space Shuttle then its good enough for me (Tang and Velcro included). Continue reading

Code jock

At age nine, Arfa Randhawa from Faisalabad, Pakistan, became the youngest person ever to pass a Microsoft certification exam in programming (via Slashdot):

Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn’t hire people her age…

She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language… The institute instructors assumed it would take Arfa about a year to go through the process of certification for developing Windows applications. But after four months… she passed the required exams….

“I saw her doing something extraordinary, making presentations,” said her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa and came with his daughter to Microsoft this week… he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age…

Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. “Soma” Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car. [Link]

BillG evinced some curiosity:

… he asked her at what age Muslim women start wearing the “Hijab”… Arfa… extended an invitation to him to visit… The Microsoft chief reportedly accepted the invitation and said that he would visit Pakistan in the near future. [Link]

Arfa says she wants to build satellites or software. She has stiff competition in Mridul Seth of Bangalore, who at age eight became the youngest to pass the Microsoft system admin exam.

Somasegar blogged their meeting here. Related post here.

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“…is worth the risk of life”

For the last seven years I have kept this picture in a frame on my desk. It is a picture I took of the Astronaut memorial wall in Florida. I’m sure my family isn’t going to appreciate the fact that there are no pictures of them ๐Ÿ™‚

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After nearly two and a half years NASA will be launching a shuttle back into space (scheduled for Wednesday). Anna emailed me the fact that the shuttle will be carrying symbolic mementos of the seven astronauts that perished aboard Columbia in February of 2003. The Hindu reports:

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Countdown began today for the launch of Discovery, the first shuttle to be launched since the Columbia crash two years ago, which will carry a photograph of India-born astrologer Kalpana Chawla, and mementos from her colleagues who perished in the tragedy.

Jean P Harrison, widower of Chawla said he was sending a photograph of his wife aboard Discovery, which is poised for liftoff day with five-man, two-woman crew on Wednesday.

The picture of Kalpana is from her college days in India, where she is sitting in her dorm room surrounded by photographs of aircraft and one of a space shuttle.

Wow. I never even knew she was an astrologer as well. Continue reading

Rinse and spin

          

This little chestnut has been on CNN’s front page since Friday, in the bottom left corner (thanks, chick pea). It’s also on the current Time home page.

The Time magazine story is not only part of MTV Desi’s PR launch (sow widely, eat phat), it’s part of the South Asian brand launch in the U.S. It’s the usual hype and Mercedes-driving uncles, but hey, we’re narcissists:

… during the 1990s the number of Indians in the U.S. more than doubled–making them the fastest-growing Asian minority. There are some 2.5 million desis in the U.S., and the vast majority are Indian…. consider how premium a customer a South Asian is: Indians alone commanded $76 billion worth of disposable personal income last year… median household income is nearly $64,000–50% higher than the national average. The U.S. has always welcomed the world’s poor and working classes. India has sent its professionals… 64% of Indians in the U.S. hold a bachelor’s degree, vs. 24% of the overall population… “We make up one-fifth of the population of the world. Imagine that.”

Jay Sean explains why he picked Bipasha Basu for his video. What the other reason could possibly be escapes my mind.

Sean is miked and seated in front of an MTV logo reminiscent of the Taj Mahal… “This is your boy Jay Sean,” he says, “and you’re watching MTV Desi…” Sean, in typical eyebrow-raising rock-star fashion, picked actress Bipasha Basu for his music video in part because she was racy enough to have had an onscreen kiss…

Ah yes, now I remember. It’s because she looks like this:

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4

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Arrested development

The BBC is running a pictorial on members of the pheasant family in South Asia which are being hunted to extinction. This spectacular-looking family includes the Indian, green and white peafowl, the satyr tragopan, the Himalayan monal, the Western tragopan and the Koklass pheasant, among others.

    

Last October, the Acorn covered the hunting of another South Asian bird. Arab sheikhs fly into Pakistan every year to hunt the endangered houbara bustard, carving the deserts into exclusive playgrounds. Believing the bustard to be an aphrodisiac, the sheikhs use the C-130 Hercules, one of the biggest airplanes in the world, to airlift deli trucks into the desert to store their meat.

Some have built personal airfields… Some have constructed large desert palaces… Some live in elaborate tent cities, guarded by legions of Bedouin troops… Totally closed off to outsiders, these hunting fiefdoms are, in effect, Arab principalities. They sprinkle the vast deserts of Balochistan, Punjab, and Sind… the late King Khalid of Saudi Arabia transported dancing camels in a C-130 to join him on his hunt… The sheikhs normally spent between ten and twenty million dollars for a typical royal hunt…

“… while Pakistanis are being arrested and prosecuted if they’re found to be hunting the bird, Arab dignitaries are given diplomatic immunity… It’s slaughter, mass slaughter. They kill everything in sight.” When I asked him why the government of Pakistan had done so little… he replied, “Because we lack the moral fibre…”… The Pakistanis see the Arabs breaking Pakistan’s own laws, yet there are huge sums of money involved… [Link – PDF]

In the bustard hunt, some see an allegory for Pakistan itself:

Like the houbara bustard, Pakistan too has been the prize in many people’s elaborate games. It has been used by the Gulf States to house and train their Islamists, the fodder for the war in Afghanistan, and by the United States as a conduit for arms and money for anti-Soviet forces. It was given the cold shoulder by both once the last Russian tank departed. Like the devastated desert after a houbara hunt, Pakistan was left a wasteland of heavily armed and angry militants and a socio-economic situation that threatens to turn the country completely towards militant Islam. [Link]

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Remove head from sand, it’s the healthy thing to do

Thanks to stupid attitudes towards gay people, an apparent allergy to condoms, prostitution, intravenous drug use and little if any testing, “there will undoubtedly be an explosion of Aids” in Asia, sayeth the UN AIDS Director, Peter Piot.

The UN estimates 8.2m people in Asia have HIV, of whom 5.1m are in India.
The risk of the disease spreading further in the region was now higher than ever, Mr Piot told a conference in the Japanese city of Kobe.

5.1 million, eh? I’m sure it’s a bit more than THAT. I hardly think that they managed to count everyone, or that people are happily volunteering such info…and that’s assuming they’re even AWARE of what they bear.

If concrete steps are taken now, the effect on future rates of infection could be dramatic:

Twelve million extra people could be infected in Asia within the next five years – an increase of 150% – he said.
But, “with major political will”, this could be reduced to six million.

I think a goal such as this deserves major everything, political will included. Education must be part of the solution– the stigma attached to being HIV+ means that the infected avoid getting treated and are in denial about their dire situation. Case in point:

The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the problem for Asia is that many people think Aids is not a big issue there.

No, it’s definitely not a big issue. Denial may not be in Egypt, after all… Continue reading

HIV Pos, caste no bar

Two satisfied clientsIndia’s first marriage bureau for the HIV + has opened up in Gujurat. This is hard work in India, a country where weddings are cancelled just because one party has an inauspicious birthdate. Nonetheless, Daksha Patel (who is HIV positive herself) has already helped seven couples get married.

Both Daksha and her clients approach marriage with a typical Indian matter-of-factness. They don’t hold wishy-washy “ishq conquers all” sentiments; they know very well that life is hard and money is important.

In one exchange, Daksha interrogates a client who earns 3,000 rupees (roughly US $70) a month:

“You will have to look after yourself and your wife – you are both HIV positive, maybe you will have to spend on medicines,” says a concerned Daksha.

“Will you be able to manage all this with your income?” [BBC]

Similarly, one satisfied client explains:

“I had read about this organization which worked with HIV positive people and ran a marriage bureau. I had come to find out more about the bureau – for the purpose of marriage only … I did not want a very handsome person, or a very rich person. I just wanted a husband who can understand me – and who can provide for three square meals a day.” [BBC]
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Real Life Russian Dolls

russian_dolls_semyenov_c.jpgThe shiznit rarely gets weirder than this

Doctors in Bangladesh say they have removed a long-dead foetus from the abdomen of a teenage boy who was complaining of stomach pains. They said the foetus would have become the boy’s twin had it grown normally in their mother’s womb. They said it was a case of an extremely rare condition where two foetuses are conceived as conjoined twins but one absorbs the other. …”Apart from the head, all other limbs of the baby were developed.”

Ewww. Just plain ewww. The villagers reacted as villagers in da homeland usually do – not content to wait for the Enquirer to put its alien autopsy spin on the story, they flocked to see it first hand –

Hundreds of curious locals flocked to the hospital on hearing a rumour that a boy had given birth to a baby.

Kuato Lives! Continue reading

Tech campus Babylon

 

News.com just posted photos of the Infosys campus in Bangalore. Wow, Karnataka really can be sterilized so it’s just as boring as Santa Clara. But it’s nice to see homo technorati in their natural habitat.

Their signature building looks like the retro-Jetson TWA terminal at JFK. The landscaping makes it look like those SoCal Spanish-style haciendas rented out discreetly for porn shoots.

Don’t you think you’ll be telling your nieces and nephews to work here someday?

Here’s a surfeit of campus snapshots. Related post here.

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