BOMBAY’S RUSH HOUR ROCKED BY BLASTS (11 Updates)

Posted on by

Ultrabrown.jpg Breaking News in Bombay via AP:

Seven explosions rocked Bombay’s commuter rail network during Tuesday evening’s rush hour. The blasts ripped apart train compartments and reportedly killed dozens, police and Indian media said.

Though the chaos makes it difficult to ascertain exact numbers, how many have been injured, Indiant tv reports said that “the death toll could be in the dozens.” 40 80 100 105 137 163 172 200 people have died and 300 464 700 are injured. I’m sure that before I can even update this post, one of you will comment with the latest numbers; I sincerely hope that they are not high. I know, I’m excessively idealistic, but whenever I hear “Breaking News”, “Bombs” or “Trains” or similar, I screw my eyes shut and pray for miracles.

Television images showed injured victims sprawled on train tracks, frantically dialing their cell phones. Some of the injured were being carried away from the crash site. The force of the blasts ripped doors and windows off carriages, and luggage and debris were strewn about.
Pranay Prabhakar, the spokesman for the Western Railway, confirmed that seven blasts had taken place. He said all trains had been suspended, and he appealed to the public to stay away from the city’s train stations.
Bombay, India’s financial center, and New Delhi, the capital, were reportedly on high alert. Bombay’s commuter rail network is among the most crowded in the world.

Developing… 🙁 Continue reading →

The Big Payback

Posted on by

My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. 🙂

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

Continue reading →

Salty Tigers Are No Match For A Woman

Posted on by

le tigre.jpg

Somewhere near the Sundarbans, a teenager cancelled a Royal Bengal tiger‘s dinner plans. Using nothing more than a row boat oar, she kept the ferocious cat at bay for ten minutes. Unbelievable. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ve heard of mothers lifting cars off of their trapped children in order to save them. Maybe when the person in danger is a loved one…anything is possible. Via the BBC:

A woman in Bangladesh…fended off a Royal Bengal tiger which was attacking her husband, police say…

Eighteen-year-old Nazma Akhter and her husband Anwarul Islam, 25, were fishing for shrimp on Sunday in a canal on the fringes of the Sundarbans…

After biting Akkhter’s husband, the tiger tried to abscond with him, as Bengals are wont to do with their quarry; that’s when the fierce animal had to reckon with a fiercer woman.

Police chief ASM Zahid said…”This woman is extraordinarily courageous, because she alone fought the tiger and saved her husband,” he told the BBC.

“I salute her for her courage.”

Approximately 20 people are killed by tigers each year in Bangladesh; last week alone in the Sunderbans, two women died because of attacks from the lethal carnivores.

Local newspapers reported that such was the beating it received from the paddle that it was forced to beat a retreat into the forest.

Such a beating!

I had guessed that pressures from humans impinging on the Royal ‘hood were the cause for all of these deaths by Tiger, but apparently, there’s another reason: Continue reading →

Lingering tension in Gujarat

Posted on by

Despite the fact that the last remnants of my family (on both sides) emigrated from India twenty years ago, the happenings in Ahmedabad, Gujarat are always of concern to me. All of my relatives (on both sides) have returned to purchase homes in Ahmedabad. It is part of an economic boom over there from what I understand. In Ahmedabad, my family will spend a significant amount of their retirement years. I will also probably make several trips there. The Christian Science Monitor featured an article on Friday that caused me worry:

… religious segregation is expanding not only to places of worship, but also neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. At the entrance of some villages, gaily painted message boards have sprung up since the riots that read: “Welcome to this Hindu village in the Hindu nation of Gujarat.”

Expressing concern over this increasing polarization, a recent report by a high level committee from the Indian Prime Minister’s office, to be tabled in the Indian Parliament in October, states that Gujarat still hasn’t recuperated from the riots in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. The committee noted that several Gujarati cities and towns are sharply divided into Hindu and Muslim ghettoes. Muslims, a minority in the state, face social and economic boycott from society at large. The committee also observed that dropout rates of Muslim girls have risen. And there’s a dismal representation of Muslims in public-sector jobs.

“There’s a state of fear and insecurity among Muslims,” says a member of the committee. “The state government has done little to end the state of alienation…” [Link]

I think that it is naturally important to look at the source of any claims pertaining to ethnic relations in Gujarat. In the paragraph above a study was conducted at the behest of the Prime Minister. In this excerpt below you will note that the examination was done by one of India’s mainstream newspapers:

The Indian Express, a national daily, reported last month that Muslims are being sidelined from the Indian government’s ambitious antipoverty project that promises the country’s rural poor 100 days of employment every year.

“Where the communal divide was hardened, where violence led to murder and widespread arson … Muslims are nowhere on the employment rolls,” the newspaper reported after touring six districts within Gujarat where the scheme is being implemented. Not just are there information blackouts, even those Muslims who enquire about jobs are turned away, the report said.

In response, Bharat Barot, Gujarat’s minister of state for rural development, said that in villages “the majority community called the shots.” The state was probing whether the alienation of Muslims was deliberate, and, if so, “it’ll be fixed immediately…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Raja Rao (RIP) and Czeslaw Milosz

Posted on by

Indian author Raja Rao passed away in Austin, Texas, at the grand old age of 96. rajarao-hands.jpg He’s best known as the author of Kanthapura, and is one of those authors so strongly identified with the 1930s and 40s that it was actually a little surprising to find out he was still alive. (But then, his contemporary Mulk Raj Anand only passed away fairly recently himself.)

Rao lived a nomadic, complicated, 20th century life. He was born and raised in Mysore, and oddly enough for a South Indian Brahmin boy, he received his education mainly at Muslim schools in Hyderabad (his father worked for the local government, I believe). According to excerpts of his memoirs here, he also studied at Aligarh Muslim University until he received an invitation to come to a university in Montpellier, France, from a visiting French professor. This was around 1928; he ended up staying in France for more than a decade, studying, again surprisingly, Christian theology, and marrying a French woman who was also in academia. The marriage soon fell apart, and Rao returned to India on the eve of the Second World War, becoming more and more religious. He spent a great deal of time in ashrams in the 1940s, though he was also active in the independence movement. Though Rao later returned to France, he finally settled in Austin, Texas, where he taught in the Philosophy department (alongside G.V. Desani) until he retired in 1980. Continue reading →

Next stop, Johannesburg

Posted on by

0000figozidane_84216a.jpgA couple of hours from now, 22 handsome men of various shapes and hues will peel off their sweat-drenched jerseys and exchange them, amid hugs and kisses and mussing of hair, before a crowd of tens of thousands and a television audience of billions. And just like that, the World Cup will be over.

As the sporting winner emerges from the final pairing of France and Italy, so shall the competitionÂ’s winning narrative, the storyline of storylines that best succeeds in taking events on the field and giving them interpretive power to tell us something about the world we live in.

It is interesting that we are having discussions right now at the Mutiny about nationalism, jingoism, patriotism, anti-nationalism, and matters of that sort, at the same time that the worldÂ’s quadriennial celebration of national identities wraps up. The World Cup is a curious beast, it is a time when national loyalties are expressed, loudly and even virulently, yet in a choreographed manner and by universally recognized rules of engagement and fair play, for a limited duration and all at the same time.

ItÂ’s as much a celebration of the porousness of national barriers as it is of their continued relevance. ItÂ’s an event that inherently applauds globalization – the demographic flows, the internationalization of the business of sports, the diffusion of popular culture, the technological advances that permit billions of people to watch the same high-quality image feeds, the ease of travel that permits delegations of supporters to travel from the far corners of the planet. And itÂ’s also an opportunity to wrap oneself in oneÂ’s flag – or that of another country to which one feels loyalty, or kinship, or just a whimsical fancy. Continue reading →

Jingoism in the blogosphere

Posted on by

For a while now I have been meaning to write about a topic that has been of great concern to me (I am pretty sure most of my co-bloggers are as disturbed by it as I am). I have noticed that the blogosphere, with its ability to confer an anonymous voice to anyone, is often the venue for ignorant and naked jingoism. A blog like ours, which mostly covers items about, and of interest to North Americans of South Asian origin, offers a particularly unique window into what I am referring to. All of the bloggers who write for SM live in North America. Some were born here and some were not. The resulting mix of loyalties, the perception of mixed loyalties, our readers expectation of mixed loyalties, or our readers anger at a lack of loyalty toward the lands of our “origin,” results in a perfect storm. SM and a few other sites like it are being viewed by some as a sort of virtual ideological battlefield where the hearts and minds of several thousand readers hang in the balance.

Jingo: (n) One who vociferously supports one’s country, especially one who supports a belligerent foreign policy; a chauvinistic patriot. [link]

In its traditional use the word “jingo” (a pejorative term) means something far different than the word “patriot.” A patriot loves their country or geographic region and is ready to defend it…but is not above questioning it or beyond introspection. A true patriot is willing to defend against all enemies both external and internal. A jingo is the worst kind of nationalist (even worse when mixed with religion). They lash out at the tiniest hint of criticism directed at “their own.” A few days ago a reader commented on what he saw transpiring on our News Tab:

Off topic, but also in a strange way, slightly related to this topic, is the way in which the news tab here on Sepia Mutiny is used as a repository for anti Muslim chauvinism. This goes beyond the legitimate posting of stories on Muslim extremism and runs to the extent of posting articles from the RSS newspaper, posting about Little Green Football style documentary screeds about ‘The Truth About Islam’. I have noticed how these posts amazingly get large numbers of ‘Interested’ clicks in a short amount of time. Amazing!

Amusingly, someone has now posted a ‘Trouble with Hinduism’ article in response to this bigotry as a means of showing how it works both ways. Good. Chauvinists are using the news tab for their bigoted agenda. You should at least be aware of it. It is so tedious to see these monomaniacs waging their campaign and abusing what is an open and useful facility on SM. [link]

Yes, we are well aware of this phenomenon and will work to stamp it out as best we can. You can accuse us of censorship if you’d like but this isn’t about censorship but about remaining true to belief that communication is more important than simply being heard. A few weeks ago Anna sent her co-bloggers the following email:

Subject: I find the popularity of this news item a bit disturbing

The article linked reads like a SpoorLam rant…except it’s not funny.

That was one of the most popular articles in terms of number of votes we had that day…and it was little more than anti-Muslim propoganda. Continue reading →

Pass de Dutchie pon de Left Hand Side

Posted on by

After a long day spent playing Pauly Shore to my Stephan Baldwin in the bunker Biodome, my roommate Rajni likes to unwind by smoking her funny-smelling monkey cigars. The cigars usually arrive once a month in an unmarked brown box from I dunno where. Initially I thought Cuba but IÂ’ve had my fair share of those and these are definitely not those.

Anyway, once sheÂ’s good and stoned ready we break out the Myst and get to work. Rajni likes to control the mouse while I scribble furiously in our Myst journals and thumb walkthroughs for hints. This is a terrible arrangement. I swear, those cigars turn Rajni into a space-monkey. Not spaced out like her celebrity crush Baker (heee!) but spacey as in staring at every little leaf and rock for minutes on end. While all I want to do is solve the puzzles. In this life sometime.

Last night we fought about this arrangement. Well, I fought; she was just like, “Got any bananas, pathetic human?” So, I’ve given up Myst and started a new hobby. No, pyaare people, not smoking cigars. I’ve started making dreadlocks out of Rajni’s fur while she zones. She looks a hot mess now but whatever, you doob you lose. Read that, Rajni? The soundtrack I use to keep our dopey dwarf in check while I tease and tangle is Kush Arora’s wicked new album, ‘Bhang Ragga: Dancehall, Bhangra, in Future Dub’.

Last month my one and only XLR8R mag had the following to say about this boy from the Bay: Continue reading →

Mmmm, Foot. Tasty.

Posted on by

Biden blows.jpg

Yesterday, Abhi blogged about the unfortunate remarks that The Senator From MBNA made about desis in Delaware; today, Biden’s case of foot-in-mouth syndrome is still a hot topic. SD pointed to just one of the stories about donut-gate via our news tab— this one is from the grey lady:

Facing criticism, potential 2008 presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday defended his recent remark that ”you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

I wouldn’t have advised the Senator to go that route, but okay.

The Delaware senator said his words were taken out of context.

Aren’t they always? Quelle tragédie. Here’s what I heard: one needs to have a “slight” Indian accent in order to order a glazed, as if the person behind the counter wouldn’t understand you otherwise. That’s garbage.

You know, the only proverb I ever memorized as a child was “Pride goeth before a fall”. Boast and you’re toast, y’heard? I’m saddened that the Senator seems too proud to own his faux-pas.

Oh, and if you need to F5 your memory– here’s what started all the drama, Mama:

On a recent edition of the C-SPAN series ”Road to the White House,” Biden is shown in New Hampshire boasting about his support among Indian-Americans.
”I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking,” the senator said.

Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Goin’ Home” Edition

Posted on by

i really miss you.JPG When I was very young, I used to say that I wanted to grow up to be a Congresswoman from California, so that I could live and work on both coasts; to my very simple mind, it was the only way to do such an impressive and unique thing.

I fell in love with the east coast after a childhood trip to both New York and Washington, D.C. and the right side of the lower 48 has never loosened its adamantine grip on my heart. But, unlike some of my loved ones who have swtched sides, I am not happiest when I’m across from where I’m from. I wish that were the case, but as giddy as I am to live somewhere where the Smithsonian is mine for the wandering and New York is but a cab ride and Amtrak trip away, I’m haunted by homesickness far more often than I prefer to admit. If anything, I’ve made my uneasy choice because when I’m here, I miss Northern California slightly less than when that situation is reversed– but we’re talking about a 55/45 split, so it’s nowhere near an ideal situation.

Listening to Dinosaur Jr. last night certainly didn’t ameliorate the situation, but making tentative plans for a possible journey home did. I think I’ll take a few days off at the beginning of September to hug my Mother, check on my Godson, THROW AN SF MEETUP, get pedicures from people who know what they’re doing, drink plenty of Peet’s, dodge marriage queries, eat real sourdough, hold office hours, irritate my Mother and otherwise bliss out as I zip about Davis and Snob Hill in my much-missed sick civic.

I know that I’m not unique, that many of you are also far from your ‘hood, where the food is fantastic and pure love flows freely; if you care to follow a 55Friday theme, write about home, the sickness it evokes or just plain missing someone whom you love. As always, you are welcome to flash us with a story (and nothing else!) on any subject under the sun, just be thoughtful enough to leave your nanofiction below. 55 words about distance, where you grew up or the sweet thrill of “goin’ home”. Ready, steady…go. Continue reading →