Last Call

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It was my intention to go out in Style&Snark, involving some kind of LiveBloggingEvent or Recap of Priya&Divya’s Super Sweet 16. But in light of Tuesday’s gripping events on a subcontinent where the Innocent&Hardworking cram 15-per-square meter traveling to and from work in order to put food on the table in the pursuit of better tomorrows, the trivial voyeuristic judgment of affluent, ill-mannered, hyphenated-American teenagers and the parents who indulge them suddenly seemed all the more irrelevant.

In my Sepia denouement, it seemed appropriate to disclose one small confession: I’m scared of Indians. Like, terrified. Like, if everyone in the last comment thread was standing together in a room, it would take me several cocktails to muster the courage to enter. And one of those cocktails would probably have to include some ratio of 151.

Seriously. Continue reading →

Investment undeterred by fear

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It is comforting to note that in these times of terror, hard-headed businessmen still make their investment decisions undeterred by threat. My newest hero is that Titan of Industry, the Captain of Capitalism, Laxmi Mittal. It seems that the world’s richest Indian is increasing his investment in India-na:

Mittal Steel Co. plans to begin a $10 million expansion of research and development laboratories in East Chicago. The first phase, to start this week, would add 22,000 square feet to a laboratory. It is expected to be completed within a year. The company is based in the Netherlands, but its U.S. operations are run from Chicago. [Link]

This announcement came the day after it was revealed that India-na is the state in the union most densely populated with potential terrorist targets:

Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation. [Link]

That’s 11% of all targets on the National Asset Database. This is a state so hated by terrorists that even a rural popcorn factory with five employees is considered a target! Clearly Mittal is a man of steel, a hombre without fear, somebody who does not blanch even in the face of terrorists as confused as Christopher Columbus. Who needs Hanu-man, Indian Super-man, a brown Justice League, or any other Indian superheroes when we have a Mittal-man of our own ?

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A Gujarati Connection?

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On Monday of this week I wrote this post (Lingering Tension in Gujarat) examining a Christian Science Monitor article on the growing powder keg of tensions in the Indian state of Gujarat (where my family emigrated from). The very next day the Mumbai Train Attacks occurred. Could these two seemingly unrelated topics be somehow related? I am the LAST person to jump to conclusions involving terrorism but I do want to point out some facts that the media is now reporting. In the passages below I have highlighted facts so as to separate from rumor:

Gujarat appears to loom large over the Mumbai blasts. That’s apparently why terrorists targeted only the Western Railway tracks and that too only first-class coaches.

Sources said the aim apparently was to hit moneyed Gujaratis, many of whom stay in suburbs of Vile Parle, Kandivli, Malad and Borivli along the Western Railway and travel first class.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba, intelligence reports suggest, has recruited local youths saying that they should take revenge for the atrocities heaped on the minority community in Gujarat where the Narendra Modi government is heavily funded by the rich Gujarati businessmen of Mumbai.

It is not for nothing that Modi is coming here early next week to meet community leaders. [Link]

What else do we know?

The aftershocks of Tuesday’s serial blasts in Mumbai shook Gujarat deeply. A large number of people killed and injured were Gujaratis.

At least seven people, mostly diamond traders, were killed in the blasts, while another eight diamond traders were reported to be missing till Wednesday evening. [Link]

Here is more:

The Railways on Wednesday cancelled the Shatabdi Express from Ahmedabad and Mumbai and three trains originating from Mumbai.

The 2010 Shatabdi from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and its counterpart from Mumbai Train 2009, the 9023 Ferozepur Express, the 9215 Saurashtra Express from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and the 239B Ahmedabad passenger train have also been cancelled for the day. [Link]

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One-A-Day

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Disclaimer: Some good lovin’ from time to time is also required.

Because I am blessed and in good health, I only require my fish oil supplement and my multivitamin to get me through each day. I am definitely one of the lucky ones though. For those living with AIDS it is not nearly so easy. The most effective way to slow down the ravages of AIDS has been via a triple cocktail of drugs such as Sustiva, Viread, and Emtriva.

The triple-cocktail treatment for HIV involves taking three different drugs to combat the infection. These medications are two nucleoside analog drugs, such as AZT and 3TC, and a protease inhibitor, such as Crixivan. The drugs drastically reduce the concentration of viri in the bloodstream to undetectable levels by affecting enzymes in the virus itself. The drugs do not completely eliminate every virus in the body and probably never will. It is not certain whether patients taking the drugs may still be able to transmit HIV to other people. In addition, the drugs are not a vaccine which can be prevent a person from being infected with HIV.

The total cost of the medication may be as much as $12,000 a year, although some health insurance companies cover the drugs.[Link]

Some positive news announced late today for those suffering from AIDS:

The first once-a-day AIDS pill that combines three current medicines won U.S. approval on Wednesday, offering patients a more convenient alternative to current multiple drug cocktails.

Atripla, which contains Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s drug Sustiva and Gilead Inc.’s medicines Viread and Emtriva, is the latest step in making it easier for AIDS patients to keep the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in check — a process that once included dozens of daily pills.

“It’s one thing to have medicine available, but it will only be effective when people can indeed take it as they are supposed to,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Murray Lumpkin told reporters. [Link]

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SAJA Convention

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The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) holds its 12th annual convention, this Thursday through Sunday, in New York City. For more information on SAJA and the convention click here. SAJA has become quite a formidable organization. The convention will gather 1,000 media desis and desiphiles, which should be an interesting scene on a number of levels, and the outside speakers are quite a high-power group, from the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs to the head of the Associated Press.

I will be attending the convention and covering it on behalf of the Mutiny. I don’t know what this will mean in practice, nor what tack or tone I’ll take — I like to improvise — but I’ll be there and filing reports for you.

Quite a few SAJA-ers and associates read Sepia Mutiny, so here’s an open invitation for anyone attending the conference to get in touch. E-mail me and include your cellphone so I can send you a text during the event.

Any questions or suggestions from readers, please leave them in the comments or feel free to drop me a line.

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Deafening silence in the blogosphere

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While trying to deal with the tragedy in Mumbai, I have been wondering what the coverage of the story tells us about ourselves.

I was not surprised by MSM coverage in America: poor in local papers, better in papers with a large desi population or those with an international audience. I was pleased to hear that CNN and CNBC had decent cable news coverage, perhaps because they’re well established in India.

What has baffled me, however, is the relative silence from the world of blogs. The blogosphere is supposed to be the cutting edge, far more advanced than the MSM, yet they’re spending less time on the story.

To be more precise, Technorati’s rankings of popular news stories shows us that average bloggers are paying some attention to the bombings; the fourth, sixth and twentieth most reblogged news stories are the BBC, CNN, and Fox News versions of this story. It’s currently less important than the death of Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett, or coverage of Zidane’s press coverage, but more important than Bob Novak and the big dig.

Where we see a distressing lack of coverage most clearly is amongst political blogs in the top 100 list [Thanks Manish]:

Amongst other major politics blogs, Atrios did a one line link while travelling and WashingtonMonthly covered black hair but not blacker events.

What gives? I emailed the following question to three significant political bloggers:

No opinion on the Mumbai bombings?

I’m surprised. Many more have died than did in London a year ago, and the death toll is currently just a little under the death toll from Madrid. Yet the blogosphere is largely quiet. Why?

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Let’s form a posse

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I’m kind of tired of reading comments right now. Instead, I am going to put up some pictures. When lots of big words make my head spin I like retreating to pictures. The first one is the cover of Time Magazine from this week:

The second picture is from this t-shirt titled “Cowboys and Indians” that an SM reader tipped us off to:

“Cowboys and Indians”

In the dimly-lit opium den that is my head, I thought these two pictures kind of went together given the evolving geopolitical situation.

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On the ground

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Bombay may or may not be the Maximum City, but maximum respect goes out to local writers Dilip D’Souza and Mutineer Emeritus Manish Vij for their pieces in Salon today. Dilip offers a reporter’s chronicle of the day; Manish, a very elegant urban essay centered on the railway.

Props to Salon for having reached out to these brothers. It’s well worth the small annoyance of watching a Stoli Blueberi (sic) ad — talk about irrelevant! — in order to read the online mag’s content today. Continue reading →

A Bombay Poem From Adil Jussawalla

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[I found the following in the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry. It’s by Adil Jussawalla.]

Sea Breeze, Bombay

by Adil Jussawalla

Partition’s people stitched
Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.
An opened people, fraying across the cut
country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,
Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,
Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work
Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,
Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,
come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,
Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,
Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,
Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,
Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

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Stitches

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Did you make sure to hear some music last night? I did.

Of course, IÂ’m one of the lucky ones. I wasnÂ’t on any of those trains that set off from Churchgate. I knew no one on them, not directly; though my dear friendÂ’s wifeÂ’s cousin was on board, and he escaped unharmed, and his friend merely needed some stitches.

Doubly lucky, because I could, after a long day of small frustrations, step from the sticky street into a room where there was taking place, in a relaxed off-night way, jazz.

Quiet. Sound.

Could it have been more apposite? When Rez shifted to his hybrid guitar, the one with sympathetic strings, and Kiran stood at the mic in her kurta top, and they launched into their song called “Pearl” – as in, homage to Daniel?

As she worked through the scales against the organ and hi-hat, intently pulling the notes from thin air, by hand, in that geometric way Indian singers have, there seemed a moment of formal lamentation. Sorrowful, and wise.

Later, with two desi sistas – cousins, in fact – we spoke of mosaics of hundreds of tiny shiny tiles that make up, if not life, at least a livelihood. Of missing chunks, ripped out by invaders or worn away by time.

Testing the metaphor, we imagined a workshop where we – I – stay up late, polishing new pieces, some to partly fill the gaps, others to extend the composition.

I remembered that IÂ’ve struggled, albeit in small ways.

The sound filling me still, I remembered: the possibility of tiles, the necessity of stitches. Continue reading →