Living la vida desi

Posted on by

I’ve blogged earlier about how India tends to attract B-list musicians, ones no longer at the peak of their popularity but often with some emotional connection to India. Here’s another example — Ricky Martin will be performing in India next month (HT to Hilal)

Do I have enough gel in my hair?

However, this concert is a bit different. It’s a private performance at a “high profile shaadi in Jaipur“. The match between former Menudo star and “Mumbai-based industrialist Neeraj Raja Kocchar” (the father of the groom) was made by DJ Aqeel, fresh from spinning disks for the well heeled at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Apparently slightly past their prime international pop stars are the new status symbol for extravagant weddings — who knew? Now I know what to get the tycoon who has everything.

I was also surprised to read that this wasn’t Martin’s first performance in India. In 2005, he performed a benefit for children with HIV/AIDS at the Taj Mahal as part of his ongoing engagement with the issue of children’s rights:

Martin, however, is no stranger to India. He has visited the country several times, most recently to record the string arrangements for his first English-language album in five years, “Life”. Martin, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, has long been a strong advocate of children’s rights and protection through his Ricky Martin Foundation. He also backs groups working to prevent child trafficking and prostitution in several countries, including India. [Link]

Martin rescued three young girls from the streets of Kolkata from a life of prostitution… [Link]

Social activism. It’s not just for Bono and Madonna and Peter Gabriel and Bob Geldorf and … any more.

Continue reading →

The early favorite

Posted on by

While all the wannabe flavors-of-the-week announce they will be running for President (way earlier than any of us should even care), the one race I’ve been keeping a close eye on is the one for Louisiana’s Governor’s house. Just take a look at what the polls show:

In a bid to become the first Indian American governor in the United States, U.S . Congressman Bobby Jindal, R-La., has announced his candidacy for governor of Louisiana.

Significantly, a recent independent poll said he would soundly crush current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco – who has been under fire by the slow pace of recovery after hurricanes Katrina and Rita – in any rematch of their 2003 race.

In an e-mail to supporters Jan. 22, the 35-year-old Jindal said, “Our state, our communities, and our families have been through some very tough times. There is clearly a hunger for a new approach to governing…” [Link]

So what has Jindal been doing that has put him so far in front? One word: Katrina. People are sick of almost every elected official in the state of Louisiana except for Jindal (whose own house was damaged), who has escaped much of the wrath because he has been getting bills passed to help his constituents.

The poll, conducted Jan. 13-14 by Southern Media and Opinion Research, said about 59 percent of 600 likely voters said they would vote for Jindal, while 35 percent prefer Blanco.

The survey also found that the state’s voters have made up their minds about the governor’s race, with the primary set for Oct. 20 and a runoff, if needed, Nov. 17.

In a three-way race with Democratic public service commissioner Foster Campbell, the totals are: Jindal, 58 percent; Blanco, 31 percent; and Campbell, 6 percent.

Fewer than seven percent of those surveyed are undecided or refused to specify the candidate they would vote for in a race between Jindal and Blanco. [Link]

Continue reading →

Iraq as an example of democracy

Posted on by

If you’ll all remember, one of the chief re-envisioned reasons that President Bush gave for taking the U.S. into a war in Iraq (after WMDs had been discredited) centered around the idea that with a democracy in place in the middle of the Middle East, neighboring nations would see it as a shining example of how their own governments could be if only they chose good over evil. Bush was half right. Iraq is turning into an example for its neighbors. The Christian Science Monitor reports on how democracy gets spread:

MULTAN, PAKISTAN – In this Punjabi city of shrines, Shiites and Sunnis prayed side by side during Ashura this week, the holiest holiday for the world’s 150 million Shiite Muslims. But a province away, suicide bombers attempted to strike Shiite processions throughout Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, leaving as many as 21 dead and more than 40 injured in three separate incidents, including two suicide attacks.

The violence, the latest in a sharp uptick against Pakistan’s Shiite minority, has heightened concerns that Iraq’s conflict may be feeding sectarian violence here. Whether the conflict in Iraq is capable of igniting Pakistan’s simmering sectarian tensions raises questions about a growing global sectarian war…

The answer is important, analysts say, because Pakistan’s 30 million Shiites – numbering more than Iraq’s – could become a flash point if sectarian violence spreads. [Link]

The belief that we could simply plant democracy like Johnny Appleseed is an example of the soft bigotry of unrealistic expectations. Most people that knew anything about the culture and history of the region basically foretold what has happened since. After a couple centuries of colonialism and arbitrarily imposed borders you can’t just expect people to forget their old conflicts to pray at the alter of democracy. Tocqueville in his 1835 work “Democracy in America” cautioned that democracy’s fatal flaw was that it could lead to a tyranny of the majority. In Iraq the Sunnis seem determined to prevent such a tyranny before it even begins. The great fear now is that the Muslim belief in “Ummah” will cause this fire to spread even further.

For some, Al Qaeda’s war against Shiites has already ignited tensions in Pakistan. Editorials in leading newspapers – particularly after this week’s suicide bombings – speak of a “new anti-Shiite wave that is radiating from Iraq …” and President Pervez Musharraf has warned of the need to diffuse sectarianism “not just for the country’s security, but for the entire Muslim world.”

Such fears may be well grounded, even though the number of sectarian killings is down when compared with the past. In January, police investigators in Karachi announced that Al Qaeda worked with local sectarian groups to carry out some of the largest suicide attacks against sectarian targets last year, which left more than 60 dead, according to local news reports. And this past week’s suicide attacks bore the signature of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, observers say.

Whether or not it spells a war emanating from Iraq, the West should pay heed, say analysts… [Link]
Continue reading →

She Got Game

Posted on by

I can’t say that I’m brimming with enthusiasm about the Super Bowl, what with (a) my team not being in it, and (b) the two-week break that precedes it, which really kills the post-season viewing momentum in the name of cramming in seven more days of bullshit corporate hype. Having said that, though, this seems an appropriate time to spotlight the work of Aditi Kinkhabwala, a real-life desi woman sportswriter, who had a Super Bowl-related piece this week at Sports Illustrated’s website. In it, she proclaims her love for Indianapolis Colts linebacker Gary Brackett, whose path to football stardom was several times barred by family tragedy:

Less than a week later, [Brackett’s father] Granville passed away, his heart finally having given out.

Brackett finished that season with 25 tackles. Then shortly after the Super Bowl, in February 2004, [Brackett’s mother] Sandra was rushed to the hospital for an emergency hysterectomy. She never left, an operating-table stroke putting her into what would be a fatal coma.

Brackett went back out to Indy that summer, until, just before mini-camp, he found out his brother Greg had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. Gary told head coach Tony Dungy the outside shot of staving off Greg’s leukemia was more important than fighting for a roster spot and he skipped the camp.

A few weeks after he made the donation Brackett fought his way onto Dungy’s roster. He again played special teams, before pounding Denver for 11 tackles in his one start in January. And before Greg, despite the transplant, succumbed to the cancer in February.

The other reason Aditi loves Brackett, besides his triumph over the odds, is that he played his college ball at Rutgers. In addition to her column at SI.com, Kinkhabwala is a staff sports writer at the Bergen Record in New Jersey, where her beat is Rutgers sports. She covered the unlikely success of the Scarlet Knights football team this past season, and is now deep in the men’s and women’s basketball seasons. Continue reading →

Crosswords, Crossing swords, and Another Brainy Desi Guy

Posted on by

One of the side characters in the recent documentary Wordplay is a desi crossword puzzle aficionado named Kiran Kedlaya, who came in second at the 2006 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (the Crossword Superbowl, if you will). Kedlaya is an MIT mathematics professor who specializes in polynomial equations. According to the interview on Cogito.org, he started competitive crossword solving in graduate school, and says the skill works the same part of the brain math does:

Is there a connection between math and crosswords? Dr. Kedlaya thinks that math, music and computer science – popular professions among “solvers” – tap into a similar part of the brain. Wordplay, says Dr. Kedlaya, suggests that the link is using language in unique way. In a crossword, figuring out the word from the clue is not sufficient; decoding how the letters cross is vital, too. (link)

This is corroborated in the film Wordplay, where it’s pointed out that a disproportionate number of the top crossword puzzle-solvers are people with computer science and mathematics backgrounds. It makes a certain kind of sense — though I might have expected verbal types to have a leg up in some ways.

The obvious issue this might raise for people is, to what extent is crossword puzzle solving a kind of adult version of a spelling bee? I tend to think the skills involved are somewhat different: while doing the NYT Sunday Crossword requires a large reservoir of arcane knowledge, it doesn’t require (or benefit from) rote memorization.

After the jump: a super-easy Sepia Mutiny themed Crossword I myself created, using a free service. Continue reading →

Transparency, Indian Consulate Style

Posted on by

Oh this is too rich. Thank you, thank you, thank you to tipster IslandGirl for placing on the news tab the story about the reams of confidential visa application info that the Indian Consulate in San Francisco sent off for recycling to an open-air facility that doesn’t shred, and where anybody can stroll in off the street. The San Francisco Chronicle did just that.

Thousands of visa applications and other sensitive documents, including paperwork submitted by top executives and political figures, sat for more than a month in the open yard of a San Francisco recycling center after they were dumped there by the city’s Indian Consulate.

The documents, which security experts say represented a potential treasure trove for identity thieves or terrorists, finally were hauled away Wednesday after The Chronicle inspected the site and questioned officials at the consulate and the recycling facility.

Among the papers were visa applications submitted by Byron Pollitt, chief financial officer of San Francisco’s Gap Inc., and Anne Gust, wife of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The best part, though, are the tin-ear responses by the various Indian consular officials. There’s a semantic argument:

Information on the documents includes applicants’ names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, professions, employers, passport numbers and photos. Accompanying letters detail people’s travel plans and reasons for visiting India.

“As we see it, the documents are not confidential,” said B.S. Prakash, the consul general. “We would see something as confidential if it has a Social Security number or a credit card number, not a passport number.”

A cultural argument:

At the Indian Consulate, Consul General Prakash said there may be a cultural dimension to the level of outrage related to the incident among Western visa applicants.

“In India, I would not be alarmed,” he said. “We have grown up giving such information in many, many places. We would not be so worried if someone had our passport number.”

An environmental argument:

Deputy Consul General Sircar said that in other countries, Indian officials are able to go to the roofs of their offices and burn documents they’re no longer able to store.

“In America, you cannot do that,” he said.

All this stuff was sitting out there, in boxes marked “Visa Applications” at an open-access, community recycling center in Haight-Ashbury. I’m waiting for them to blame Nancy Pelosi! Continue reading →

London Brawling: Another Round in the British Identity Debate

Posted on by

sun-british.jpgIf you get your news mainly from US outlets, you’ve probably heard by now about the alleged plot foiled yesterday in Birmingham, England, in which extremists planned to kidnap a British Muslim soldier whilst on leave and execute him as a collaborator. There are some reports today that the plotters had as many as 25 targets identified.

But you may not have heard about the big debate that has erupted in Britain, also this week, about the results of a survey and report called “Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism,” by Policy Exchange, which most reports describe as a right-of-center think-tank. The results of the survey that have garnered the most attention suggest, among other findings, that a surprisingly large proportion of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia. There are of course major debates about how the question was phrased and what the responses imply in practice. It is also clear that the British Muslim community is no monolith, and all commentators are zooming in on the fact that more “extremist” or “separatist” stances are much more common among the youngest respondents (18-24) and progressively less so in the older groups. Again, what this means is being hotly discussed.

I don’t have time right now to do the topic justice, but hopefully commenters here, especially from the UK, will give us some perspectives. My man Sunny Hundal is already on the case along with the commenters at Pickled Politics. There are many other views online at the Guardian’s op-ed site, including this one from Dave Hill and this from Timothy Garton-Ash; you can root around the main UK papers for more. Be prepared for fatuous pieces too, such as this one that says folks shouldn’t worry about youth Islamic radicalism in the UK as it’s just the same kind of temporary rebellion that hippie kids displayed in the 1960s. Talk about adding nothing to the debate. Finally, if you have the time and inclination you can read the full report and crunch the numbers; let us know what you find.

However I found the most valuable summation of the discussion in this article at the website Spiked, by the lead author of the report, Munira Mirza (the report co-authors are Abi Senthilkumaran and Zein Ja’far). Here the sister responds to the first wave of discussion and makes some useful points: Continue reading →

Sugar and the City

Posted on by

New York City has just released preliminary results of a health study that shows that more than one in eight adult New Yorkers have diabetes, while twice as many have abnormally high blood sugar that could be a sign of conditions leading to diabetes. Moreover, of the city’s diabetes sufferers, at least one-third do not know that they have the disease, while many of those who know they have it are not managing to treat it properly. Here’s the NYC health commissioner quoted in the New York Times today:

“This confirms that we as a society are doing a rotten job both preventing and controlling diabetes,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner. “We can do a much better job helping people with diabetes get their condition under better control. The fact that there are over 100,000 New Yorkers with seriously out-of-control diabetes, and over 200,000 who don’t even know they have diabetes, is a real indictment of our health care system.”

As disturbing as the overall figures are, he said, they were not unexpected. They resemble estimates made by public health officials, who expected that the disease would be more common in New York City than nationally; diabetes is less prevalent among whites than among most other groups, and New York is a mostly nonwhite city.

Which brings us to the Desi Angle (TM), and it’s a deadly serious one:

But Dr. Frieden said he was startled by some of the specific findings, including the very high numbers among Asian-Americans, especially those from South Asia. The study indicates that more than half of the New Yorkers whose families are from the Indian subcontinent have either diabetes or prediabetes.

Here’s more:

Asians have the highest rates in the city, 16 percent diabetic and 32 percent prediabetic. The cityÂ’s report does not differentiate Asians by region, but officials said that the data in their study and others show that East Asians have below-average rates of diabetes, while South Asians have by far the highest of any large group.

Diabetes afflicts about 14 percent of the cityÂ’s non-Hispanic black population, 12 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of whites.

If I can get a hold of more details I’ll update this post accordingly. Tomorrow the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC (93.9 FM in New York, and live and archived online) will be discussing this topic including the specific case of the South Asian community. Continue reading →

17 Year Old Desi Girl Makes Scientific Breakthrough

Posted on by

Madhavi Gavini is a student at a math/science high school in Mississippi, the Mississippi Institute of Math and Science. mahdavi-scope.jpg At age 14 she got interested in cystic fibrosis, especially the lung infections that kill many people suffering from CF:

It was that thirst for knowledge that drove Madhavi to search for a way to help a friend with cystic fibrosis. “I found out that most people who have CF die of pseudomonas infections,” she recalls, “so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” She was 14 at the time. “I guess the thought that a 14-year-old can’t really do much to help, didn’t really occur to me,” she says with a shrug.

Pseudomonas bacteria — in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis — can cause deadly secondary infections in people with immune-suppressing conditions such as AIDS, cancer and severe burns. This opportunistic pathogen forms a thick, protective layer around itself, making it nearly impossible for antibiotics to penetrate and destroy it. (link)

That’s the background. Interestingly, the technique she used to find a way to kill the Pseudomonas bacteria started with Ayurvedic medicine:

With an herb book from her grandparents as her guide, Madhavi sampled common grocery store and green houseplants, such as cinnamon, ginger and aloe. She obtained a strain of pseudomonas bacteria from the local university and began subjecting the germs to various plant extracts.

One of the common tropical plant extracts penetrated the bacterium’s protective layer. Next, Madhavi isolated the specific molecule in the extract that was able to inhibit bacterial growth. She found that the molecule was heat resistant, and resistant to pressure. “It kills the cell,” she explains, “by preventing the transcription of the genes involved in energy, metabolism, adaptation, membrane transport, and toxin secretion.” (link)

The herb she started with, incidentally, is Terminalia Chebula, known in Sanskrit as Haritaki. As for which molecule exactly kills the biofilm that protects the Pseudomonas, the coverage I’ve read doesn’t say.

Wow. Continue reading →

It’s Actually Not That Racist

Posted on by

A friend forwarded me this Julian Baggini article on racism in the UK, which appeared in the Guardian last week. If I could give an award to someone for coming up with the most horribly written piece of drivel I’ve read in a while, it would surely go to this Baggini guy. No, seriously. I’m not being sarcastic.

Baggini tries to argue two things. Well, he rambles on and on and ON endlessly, but I’m taking the liberty to condense his points here. First, he argues that when some white Britons refer to us brown folks as ‘Pakis,’ they don’t really mean any harm. Second, he argues that if only we were to integrate and tolerate one another more, then people wouldn’t use the word ‘Paki’ so often. My response to him is, you’re dead wrong and, it’s not that easy.

This is how Baggini sets up his argument:

The mainstream British mind is not so much misunderstood as not seriously considered. To rectify this, 18 months ago I set out to examine the national “folk philosophy” – the set of beliefs and assumptions that informs how we live and how we think. To help me do this, I found the area with the closest match of household type – young and old, rich and poor, single and married – to the country as a whole. And so I ended up living for six months in S66, on the outskirts of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

Then comes the subject of the P bomb:

Almost everyone [in Rotherham] used the word “Paki” when referring to British Asians, yet of everyone I got to know, only Neil – happy to be described as somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun – would merit the charge of being truly racist.

First of all, how on earth do you judge whether “no one in this town except X person” is “truly racist?” Did he go around Rotherham with some special racism-detecting gadget that instantly identifies individuals as “truly racist,” “somewhat racist” and “not at all racist?” Continue reading →