cow dung cake - the blog that bites back

touch me if you can

2011-09-08T07:47:00.001-07:00

alvida, maqbool fida: m.f. husain, free at last

2011-06-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

by shuddhabrata sengupta

like possibly several other children growing up in the kind of lower-middle class metropolitan households that attempted to reconcile their aspirations towards culture with their frugal habits in the 1970s and1980s in delhi, my first introduction to the art of our time was the framed print of a husain painting. we had no television. and my parents had no gods. the only icons in our modest house were two framed pictures – an inexpensive n.s. bendre, (lalit kala akademi) print of a few women at a well and the reproduction of a husain painting, possibly detached lovingly and carefully from an air india calendar, possibly featuring the kind of goddess image that incensed the zealots who made it impossible for m. f. husain to live out his final years in india.

the occasional bus ride to the national gallery of modern art in the company of an enthusiastic (and wanting-to-be-enlightened parent) would yield a glimpses of more paintings, and then, again, there would be more husains – bold, galloping horses, faceless angular, cheerful, dancers, myths, entire histories. my eyes would travel to odd corners of the paintings, where there were sometimes more interesting, if quieter things going on, at a slight remove from the central drama of the bold strokes that dominated the pictures.

on one such trip, i think it was my mother who pointed out to me a gaily, madly painted fiat, with a jolly (but gaunt) santa claus at the wheel, turning the circle of india gate. “look”, she said, “there goes the artist – m.f. husain, he drives his car without chapels and shoes on his feet.” i think i must have been ten, but at that time, it did feel to me that if this was an artist, then to live the life of art must be an incredible freedom, literally footloose and fancy-footwear-free. what a jolly, fantastic, cheerful, ramshackle car, what a great burst of light of a beard, what a halo of hair ! that combustible locomotion of form and colour seemed to transport m.f. husain, even then, in and out of my understanding of liberty like an automobile turning circles on a roundabout, not necessarily going anywhere, just happy to be alive, excited to be well-fueled and mobile.

now, decades later, when i mumble ‘artist’ to the question ‘occupation ?’ asked curtly and almost invariably on arrival at airport immigration desks, that sense of liberty embodied in husain’s drive-away grace, which made such a profound impression on my ten year old consciousness, still comes to the rescue of my ravaged forty-something mind under the bleak light of all those situations where one is asked to account for oneself under duress. i come away from all such encounters with my dignity intact. i never thought i would ever be an artist, but now that i am called out as one, i suppose one must make the best of being what it takes to be an artist. in my life-time husain was one of those who invested the vocation of art with the artless grace of whimsy and liberty. for that alone, regardless of what i may think of the entire body of his work, i am grateful. i am sure i am not alone in my gratitude.

husain could only have become who he did in the world of art. art and sport, and to a lesser degree film and politics (which are both heavily mired in dynastic compulsions) are perhaps the only spheres of activity in our harshly, pathetically hierarchical society where a young man or woman can come, literally out of nowhere, like husain did, paint billboards for a living and still (very rarely) make it eventually into a sustained presence in the limelight, touching the eyes and minds and senses of millions of people. it tells us something about the world we live in when we realize that when all else has failed, it is art, for whatever it is worth, that has sometimes lived up to its promise of being a tiny quasi-democratic, half-egalitarian island, where the wild-card of unexpected energy and talent can still upset the best laid plans of privilege and the easy habits of power. that is why we need art in our hollow society, to still keep a door half-ajar to the anonymous practitioners of today who might yet make us turn and think again about life tomorrow.

last morning, husain turned the corner of mortal existence. he steered the wheel of the incredibly colorful automobile of his life down a one-way road where we can no longer see him, nor follow him. he is, in a sense, free at last. and we, the ungrateful people of the country which made it impossible for him to die with dignity and honor in the city he loved, should be grateful that he will no longer have reason to blame us for his humiliation. now we have the opportunity, as a society, to think a little carefully, for a while, about what fools, what philistines we have been to have lost his company while he was alive.

in my godless, unbelieving upbringing, the divine came calling, only occasionally, courtesy m. f. husain. if there is a lasting, enduring affection that i have for the incredible vitality of the traditions that some people simplify by calling ‘hindu’, it is to some measure the responsibility of maqbool fida husain. his love for the stories of ganesh and durga, for the figures of the puranas, the mahabharata and the ramayana took me into territories that the piety of countless amar chitra kathas and the saccharine soap of ramanand sagar could never enter. he nudged me into an understanding of the fact that the traditions they call hindu (because they are obsessed with names where the nameless is more appropriate) are richer, more ambiguous, laden with more secrets and stories and magic, laughter and desire than anything that any fart in saffron robes or khaki shorts and black cap can ever pretend to know or feel. he showed me lila, play, and made it the stuff of goddesses, and occasionally of gods. the goddess who rode the monkey’s tail, the resplendent but austere strength of the sky-clad goddess astride a tiger, these were worth more their weight in faith, fida, then the sermons of a million dharam sansads. he made me understand that one can say ‘maqbool’ (i accept) to ‘fida’ (faith) even when one is sustained most actively by doubt. my atheist soul’s abiding affection for the beauty of faith, and particularly for the faith of my ancestors, is partly by way of boyhood brushes with the reproductions of maqbool fida husain.
if today, i turn to the mahabharata or the ramayana like an automatic reflex when thinking of a difficult ethical question, it is thanks to artists like husain, to poets like michael madhusudan dutt, and to their affection for, claims on and deep, abiding, subversive respect for the dense forests of all our traditions.

it is thanks in part to this barefoot farishta, this strange white bearded, halo-haired namesake of the martyred bride-groom of karbala, that i made peace with being born, at least fractionally, nominally hindu. and contrary to what the censors in saffron might think, it was this lesson in liberality that also made me think that salman rushdie has a right to be read, that taslima nasreen has a right to be listened to, and yes, that even those handful of moronic cartoonists of denmark whose work says more about their limitations than it does about their sense of humor, have a right to be seen, and if necessary, laughed away. god, or the gods, if they are in heaven, must be laughing loudest at our reluctance to laugh with them. husain, if he is in the corner of heaven specially reserved for those accused of heresy on earh, must be laughing too.

in the end, husain won his karbala, even when he lost in battle. his horses, like the good horses of imam husain, will keep riding, even after their rider has dismounted. it is the vhp, the rss, the bjp and every pompous holy-honcho who held forth on husain’s heresies that stand defeated today. their vision of culture, ‘samskruti’ ( to be said with a sufficiently upturned nasal twang) is in tatters and in need of having to be salvaged by a petulant contortionist with hunger-management issues and dreams of private militias. their vision of politics is articulated by those who dance (and not, i have to say, very well) to display their mourning. their morality is held hostage at the hands of mining mafias. their poet-laureate is comatose and was never a good poet anyway, and he was a worse statesman than he ever was a poet.

the fools who harangued husain will fade into the obscurity of the footnotes of art-history text books as miserable examples of what a society should never do to artists. among them will be people like a cardiac surgeon (dr. togadia, of the vhp) who saved fewer lives than he helped take away, a third rate painter of sentimental kitsch (raghu vyas) who stoked the early protests against m f husain at arpana kaur’s gallery in the siri fort institutional area in delhi (perhaps as a means to offload ballast from the sinking ship of his artistic career) , and the geriatric cartoonist-turned-cartoon (bal thackeray) with a reported taste for lukewarm beer (never trust a man who can’t take his beer cold!)

behind them will be the entire massed ranks of the sangh parivar, as faceless and featureless as figures in a husain painting. their contribution to culture, their addition to the sum total of intelligence, amply representable by the great bharatiya contribution to mathematics – zero. paradoxically, in bidding farewell to m.f. husain, we are also saying good riddance to those who baited him. now that their object of hate has left the building, they don’t quite know what to do. their harrumph and bluster has turned into a deflating whine. some of them have even appeared on television to express their contrition, pretending that they meant him no harm, actually, while filing hundreds of cases in courts across the country. no, it wasn’t terrorism-by-court-notices, it was just a rash of art criticism, wrapped in the language of legalese.

central to their enterprise and their discomfort was the fact that husain deployed a visuality and an iconicity that was instantly processable. whether it was the vigorous gaja-gamini on the walls of the azad hind dhaba on ballygunge circular road in calcutta or the murals on the interiors of an airport, husain’s images were never very demanding. they did not need much work to be done to be read by their viewers. they were deceptively simple, straightforward, often striking, sometimes banal. even a fool in a pair of khaki shorts and indignation leaking from his groin could (mis)read them, easily.

unfortunately for the hindutva with a hard-on brigade, contemporary art in india has moved on from where husain sa’ab stood, and stayed standing. this was more than evident in the last major survey exhibition of contemporary art from india featuring husain’s work – the indian highway roller coaster that began its journey at the serpentine gallery in london in 2009. there, husain was represented by work that seemed both monumental and dated. around him, was a plethora of work, some exceptional, mostly interesting, some indifferent, but all of which, spoke a language more reticent in terms of figuration than did husain.

the knikker-critic can neither get this language like he thinks he ‘gets’ husain, nor is he capable of being provoked by it. it will seem way too distant and cold to him. not enough images, not even gods, not even much by way of nakedness. which is why, in a minor footnote to the husain saga, we have seen a sad sunday-painter called dr. pranav prakash exhibit a set of embarrassing and cringe-worthy paintings featuring images of a ‘naked’ husain, to the great delight of the fringe of the hindutva warriors. (some even rallied in support of his right to ‘freedom of expression’). lest i be misunderstood, it needs to be said here that i would never grudge fools the right to express themselves, freely. how else would we know who they were? prakash’s naked husain painting is a strange mirror-pastiche of husain’s style, revealing in all its mediocrity, how much in awe and debt it is to the very object of its derision.

contemporary art is way too distant and aloof from the knicker-critic’s world. husain got his goat, because in a sense husain spoke his language, even if to turn his world upside down and inside out. husain was his secret self. the one who actually enjoyed and loved the world of the puranas and the epics, rather than the one who merely took sterile pride in them. the hindu far right hated husain, because most of all it hated the delight of what it meant to be an inheritor of the hindu worlds it ran away from. it hated its own humanity. husain was a far better claimant to that magical legacy of a universe of colours, enigmas and stories than any pracharak or sarsanghchalak could ever be.

today, husain has attained what the sanskrit scriptures sometimes call ‘kaivalya’ - that unique freedom, that exceptionality, that carries with it a tinge of isolation, a shade of autonomy, a sliver of loneliness. a trace of this radical autonomy is visible in an early photograph of husain taken by the critic richard bartholomew, which came to light for a generation that had never known it in the exhibition of bartholomew (senior’s) work put together by his son, pablo. in this photograph, husain can be seen on a rooftop (is it the rooftop of the naaz hotel in old delhi?) with the domes of the jame masjid in the background. it seems to be a clear, delhi winter morning. husain is in his prime, a man possessed of his delight in what he is doing. in the company of a friend (richard) in a context he loves, but somehow, detached, distant, at a slight remove. like an angel on a rooftop, absorbed in kaivalya.

who can touch that space ? no bigot can ever hope to grace a foothold in that sunshine. he is free of the bigot, but the bigot will be haunted by him, until his movement dies its necessary death. and yet, without him, culturally, the bigots will be rudderless. they can never taste the kaivalya, the radical autonomy that is husain’s by right. they will no longer know what to hate, whom to harass, whom to harangue. and without being able to hate, harass and harangue, they will be nothing, mere shadows of their petty fitful selves. husain never needed them, but they needed him. they needed him, ever so badly. that need will erode them like nothing else can. that is why husain, our ever youthful bridegroom of many forms and colours, lost the battle, but won karbala. yazid is only a decrepit wall for pilgrims to throw stones at forever in a little known corner of damascus. there will always be a conversation that you can kick-start with a husain horse, just as soon, there will be a time when people will ask “togadia? who?”

and now that we are no longer required to sign petitions to defend m.f. husain, an honest and long overdue critical assessment of his work may actually begin. now will be the time to think about how artists are trapped by repetition and the endless affirmation of themselves in their work. now will be the time to understand and reflect on how a ‘star-system’ in matters of culture reduces even the most interesting artist to a cardboard cut-out. now will be the opportunity to think about how and why we have elegies and obituaries aplenty, but so little by way of discursive and critical engagement. now will be the time to remember that too great a proximity to power can distort the perceptions of even those who appear as the most innocent and playful of artists. now will be the time to recall the irony in the fact that husain, who himself fell victim to the shenanigans of a fascist mindset, had at one time, during the nightmare called the emergency, saw it necessary to paint indira gandhi, its architect, as durga, the victorious goddess. now is the time to understand that husain’s innocence was not innocent. now is the time to remember that husain loved cinema, but made two incredibly bad feature films (‘gaja gamini’ and ‘meenaxi’). now is the time to reclaim m. f. husain as a grandfather, as uncle, as the stranger you make friends with on a long train journey, as the man who tells you the most wonderful stories and then stumps you with the narrowness of his world. as the angel and the buffoon, the faristha and the funtoos, all at once.

now is also the time to remember that he was not the only indian artist who felt compelled to leave india because of the images he had made. few people, especially the kind of cultural liberals who signed endless petitions on his behalf ever remember that the coteries around the indira gandhi who husain painted as durga made it virtually impossible for the nirod mazumdar who painted her astride a donkey to live and work in india for many years. now is the time to acknowledge that when it comes to the humbug of censorious intentions, the rss and the sangh parivar do not have any monopoly. the congress, the left, gandhians, muslim and christian zealots have all made calls for bans and harassed artists and writers.

perhaps it was this realization that ultimately made husain choose the bleak freedom of exile over the fulsome humiliation of continuing to hold on to the fetish of indian citizenship. he said it was because of ‘logistical reasons’, because of the way his work needed to be done, but no one could mistake the fact that what drove husain away ultimately was not just the hatred of the hindu far-right, but also the opportunistic and cynical indifference of the so called liberal centre, which in time honored congressi fashion chose to buckle and prevaricate rather than take a clear stand. in doing so, it revealed a malaise that is deeper than the fissures of political divisions. the sickness of the compulsion to play safe rather than fair.
in a delightfully mischievous poem called ‘duronto asha’ (audacious hope) another white haired, white bearded eminence, the other gaunt santa claus of my bilingual boyhood, rabindranath thakur, speaks of his impulsive desire to stop leading the sedentary, safe life of those accustomed to too much self-affirmation of their own identities. rather than content with being a milksop bhadralok bengali, rabindranath, suddenly and impulsively declares his true desire by saying - ‘were i much rather an arab bedouin – lost under the desert’s open skies’. i am reminded of this as a way of squaring the circle of how we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that husain, in his final years, in choosing to base himself in qatar rather than delhi or mumbai, was perhaps exercising elements of the ‘were i much rather an arab bedouin’ option.

the only time i ever met maqbool fida husain (spotting him from the window of dtc bus number 408 turning the circle of india gate at the age of ten doesn’t really count as an encounter) was a few days before the opening of the ‘indian highway’ exhibition at the serpentine gallery in london in the early december of 2008. a large mural sized painting by him was being installed. he sat, with a tall thin paint-brush in his hands, adding the very last finishing touches. people went up to to him and made polite conversation. my comrades and i in the raqs media collective, were installing not far away from him. we were introduced. there were ‘adaabs’, a few smiles. i took the pictures you see with this post. we went back to our work, he went back to his. our fishing boat signalled to his ocean liner, like ships that cross each other in the ocean’s night. we acknowledged each other’s presence and drifted apart, as ships navigating entirely different courses must. still, it was good to have seen the lights glitter on this nearly century old vessel. it was good to have sensed the rattle of its engines and turbines, to see its tall mast and take one’s bearing from its prow.

a little later, his daughter, who was looking after him, asked us, and several others, whether we had seen him. husain had disappeared. a search party was quickly put together, and a little while later he was found, under the open sky of kensington gardens. his daughter was relieved. she told us, as a ninety something man, husain was in good shape, sharp in all his responses, lucid. the only thing that worried her sometimes was the fact that he would sometimes get up and start moving, as if in a straight line, and walk as long as he could without getting tired, without stopping, and that this worried her about him getting lost, or hurt while absently crossing a busy road.

when the news of his death sunk in, i was reminded of his walk-about ways. he just got up, left. stretched his canvas. sorted his paints, started working, stopped, and then got up and left again. the pettiness of nations, the smallness of the minds of those who speak loudly on behalf of nations, could never hold back his final moves. or, as he said laughing, playfully invoking and twisting iqbal in an television interview not so long ago when the interviewer painfully and persistently asked him yet again, why he had chosen qatar over hindustan, – “hindi hain hum, vatan hai, sara jahaan hamara’.

the canvas of the open sky was always waiting for the bedouin with the paintbrush in his hand.

the monster spill

2010-05-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

we've all seen the outrageous images: a monstrous oil spill is gushing as much as 2,500,000 gallons of crude a day into the gulf of mexico.

before the spill, u.s. president obama and congressional leaders were planning to ramp up offshore drilling. now, with the spill, the politics have shifted -- and an opportunity has opened for the world's biggest historical climate polluter to shift away from oil and towards climate-safe energy sources.

at a moment like this, when leaders are making up their minds, the world's voices can help tip the balance. sign the petition urging the u.s. to stop offshore drilling and invest instead in clean renewable energy -- the signatures will be delivered to the white house in washington dc when we reach 500,000! click to sign on now and spread the word:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_offshore_drilling_3/?vl

this disaster is expected to be catastrophic for the land and people in the gulf. the oil has already reached land, contaminating wildlife sanctuaries. authorities are so concerned about the impacts of more oil reaching land that they prefer to set the gulf on fire, burning as much of the oil as possible.

meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is raking in windfall profits. bp, which operated the sunken rig, more than doubled its first quarter profits in 2010 to $5.65 billion.

for years, the world has waited for the u.s. to step up on climate. but with the carbon lobby's strangle-hold on washington, we’ve had more drilling in place of stronger investment in cleaner, safer energy sources. it’s time for a change -- senator bill nelson of florida has already introduced legislation to repeal plans to expand offshore drilling. let's back him up with an outpouring of global public outrage. sign the petition calling on president obama and congress to end offshore drilling, and take the us and the world to a clean energy future:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_offshore_drilling_3/?vl

dare you!

2010-05-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

"london, may 9: al qaeda has warned prince harry against flying an apache helicopter in afghanistan, saying that he would be abducted if he dares to do so."

dare you to do so, all you could do is threaten with words. you neither have resources, intelligence or sophistication to beat the western world. we not only dare you, but also pity you for not having what it takes to win.

the west has been screwing you inside your own homeland for years and you can not do a thing about it. period.

a lonely marg

2010-04-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

art is a lonely exercise. there is very little you can explain to others. and if you choose to, each one is bound to read it in his own way or bypass it. but this process is diverting to watch; and to a large extent rewarding. it opens out to you, various vistas you had not so far taken notice of.
- k g subramanyan

interesting!!!

2010-02-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

when an observer refers to any artwork as "interesting," this is the certifiable kiss-of-death. It denotes that the viewer either fails to comprehend its meaning or value, or worse, hates it.

-douglas brin

! ! !

2010-01-31T19:18:00.001-08:00

this is original, nobody said this before. so back off. don't try 2 steal MY statement.

2010-01-27T18:22:00.000-08:00

life is nothing but preparing for death.

-vinod dave

w under his skin

2010-01-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

before president obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as i often did in the voice, that george w. bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the constitution itself. accordingly, he turned the "war on terror" over to dick cheney and donald rumsfeld—ardent believers that the constitution presents grave obstacles in a time of global jihad.

but now, bush's successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the university of chicago—is continuing much of the bush-cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we've signed.

on january 22, 2009, the apostle of "change we can believe in" proclaimed: "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency." but four months into his first year in command, obama instructed his attorney general, eric holder, to present in a case, jewel v. national security agency, a claim of presidential "sovereign immunity" that not even dick cheney had the arrant chutzpah to propose.

- nat hentoff

a cloud still hangs over bhopal

2009-12-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

by suketu mehta

in the mumbai kindergarten my son went to, the children never had to clean up after themselves; that was the servants’ job. so i really liked the school my son attended when we moved back to brooklyn, where the teachers made the children tidy up at the end of the day. “cleanup time, cleanup time!” my 6-year-old sang, joyfully gathering his scraps. it’s a wonderful american tradition: you always clean up the mess you made.

this is the 25th anniversary of the bhopal gas disaster, an epic mess that started one night when a pesticide plant owned by the american chemical giant union carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas. before the sun rose, almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish sank to their knees and did not get up. half a million more fell ill, many with severely damaged lungs and eyes.
an additional 15,000 people have since died from the aftereffects, and 10 to 30 people are said to die every month from exposure to the hundreds of tons of toxic waste left over in the former factory. but amazingly, the site still has not been cleaned up, because dow chemical, which since acquired union carbide, refuses to accept any responsibility. the groundwater is contaminated; children of the survivors suffer from genetic abnormalities; and the victims have long since run out of their measly compensation and are begging on the streets.

i have traveled to bhopal and seen the post-apocalyptic devastation, seen the sick, seen the factory. methyl isocyanate is a deadly chemical used to kill insects. the night that 40 tons of it wafted out of the factory is, for the survivors, a fulcrum in time, marking the before and after in their lives. they still talk about “the gas” as if it were an organism they know well — how it killed buffalo and pigs, but spared chickens; how it traveled toward jahangirabad and hamidia road, while ignoring other parts of the city; how it clung to the wet earth in some places but hovered at waist level in others; how it blackened all the leaves of a peepul tree; how they could watch it move down the other side of the road, like a rain cloud seen from a sunny spot.

all over india, when misfortune strikes — when a child is ill, for example — people burn chilies to drive away the evil eye. the gas smelled like chilies burning, and people said to one another, it must be a powerfully evil eye that’s being driven away, the stench is so strong.

fleeing the gas, the bhopalis clutched their children. some babies fell, gasping, and their parents had to choose which ones to carry on their shoulders. one image still comes up over and over in their dreams: in the stampede, a thousand people are stepping on their child’s body.

in 2001, the maker of napalm married the bane of bhopal: dow chemical bought union carbide for $11.6 billion and promptly distanced itself from the disaster. if union carbide was at fault, that was too bad; it had just ceased to exist. in 2002, dow set aside $2.2 billion to cover potential liabilities arising from union carbide’s american asbestos production. by comparison, the total settlement for bhopal was $470 million. the families of the dead got an average of $2,200; the wounded got $550; a dow spokeswoman explained, that amount “is plenty good for an indian.” as representative frank pallone of new jersey observed in 2006, “in bhopal, some of the world’s poorest people are being mistreated by one of the world’s richest corporations.”

union carbide and dow were allowed to get away with it because of the international legal structures that protect multinationals from liability. union carbide sold its indian subsidiary and pulled out of india. warren anderson, the union carbide chief executive at the time of the gas leak, lives in luxurious exile in the hamptons, even though there’s an international arrest warrant out for him for culpable homicide. the indian government has yet to pursue an extradition request. imagine if an indian chief executive had jumped bail for causing an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of americans. what are the chances he’d be sunning himself in goa?

the indian government, fearful of scaring away foreign investors, has not pushed the issue with american authorities. dow has used a kind of blackmail with the indians; a 2006 letter from andrew liveris, the chief executive, to india’s ambassador to the united states asked for guarantees that dow would not be held liable for the cleanup, and thanked him for his “efforts to ensure that we have the appropriate investment climate.”

what’s missing in the whole sad story is any sense of a human connection between the faceless people who run the corporation and the victims. in 1995, a bhopali woman named sajida bano sent a handwritten letter to union carbide. the factory had killed her husband in 1981 in an accident, and then, on the night of the disaster, her 4-year-old son. “you put your hand on your heart and think,” she wrote, “if you are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and children feel?” she never received a response.

the survivors of bhopal want only to be treated as human beings — not victims, not greedy money-grabbers, just human beings who’ve gone through hell and are entitled to a measure of dignity. that includes concrete things like cleaning up the mess and providing health care for the sick, and also something more abstract but equally important — an acknowledgment that a wrong was done to them, and an apology, which bhopalis have yet to receive.

that was another fine thing my son learned in the brooklyn school: when you’ve done something bad, you should say you’re sorry. after a quarter of a century, dow should acknowledge that it is responsible for a very big mess. and now, it’s cleanup time.

gay & fasting on karva chauth

2009-11-11T10:42:00.001-08:00

ahmedabad: lugging four shopping bags, tanmay, 26, is glowing. wednesday is his big day when he fasts for his partner’s well being! many gays in the city are quietly readying themselves for a penance usually done by a wife for her husband — karva chauth. just that the prayers here will deviate a bit to ask god to make them a woman in the next life! while most are going to make it a no-food affair, some have decided to follow the traditional ‘nirjal’ (without water) fast to pray for the long lives of their boyfriends. from applying home-made face packs to buying new clothes, they are going about it just like women. says dipak, a 29-year-old engineer, “i am going to fast for my boyfriend’s long life. although i will not be applying henna on my hands, i will eat only after i see his face against the moon.” with many of them hiding their true identities from the family, they are unable to follow the tradition completely. jatin, who wants to do all the rituals, rues the fact that unlike women, who get a ‘sargi’, a platter of eatables and a few gifts from a mother-in-law, he will not get one. “last year, i woke up before sunrise and ate what i had prepared the previous night. although i keep a rigid fast, i wish i had a ‘sargi’.” jatin got an expensive branded watch last year as a karva chauth gift and hitesh, who is fasting for the first time, is looking forward to the promised gold bracelet. the fast, they say, is an expression of their love but they confess that it requires a lot of patience. “unlike women, we don’t get to rest on that day. so, we end up working without food or water which is very tiring. i hope the moon rises early,” says dipak. for hitesh, it will be a dream fulfilled. “i have always wanted to do this fast and look at him through the strainer. i have seen it in many movies and am looking forward to do it. i hope that in next life, i am born a girl.”

courtesy: janavi r iyer in the times of india

arunachal is india, you ching-cheng-chau-cho-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

2009-11-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

new delhi high court legalizes same sex relations

2009-07-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

homosexuality has been illegal in india since 1861, when british rulers codified a law prohibiting “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal.” the law, known as section 377 of india’s penal code, has long been viewed as an archaic holdover from colonialism by its detractors. hail india!

one of ten questions asked to hugh hefner

2009-03-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

hugh hefner, who said sex was better now (at 82), was asked ten question recently. one of them was:

"do you ever feel like a dirty old man?", lisa pearl of toronto asked.

"not for a moment. i'm on the side of the angels and always have been", he replied.

the ultimate irony # 2

2009-03-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

ajmal kasab is reported to be reading mahatma gandhi's autobiography in his jail cell...

Buck Fush!

2009-03-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

the ultimate irony

2009-03-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

liquor baron vijay mallya ponied up cash in an auction to buy up five personal belongings of the man, mahatma gandhi, who was a lifelong campaigner against alcohol consumption, the ironic twist both saving the prestige of the indian government and appearing to snub it weeks before a general election.

no comment

2009-02-17T19:08:00.001-08:00

mike keefe in the denver post

evil on the other side

2009-02-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

11/26 mumbai is not the first time pakistan’s involvement has been revealed in terror-related activities. the country has been actively fomenting terrorism and militancy in different parts of the world including south asia. it has emerged as the chief promoter of the so-called islamic militancy. here, underworld don dawood ibrahim’s case becomes very significant. he is believed to have masterminded the 1993 mumbai serial blasts, and is reportedly enjoying a lavish lifestyle in pakistan. but successive governments there have brazenly denied the fact. in 1999, when terrorists hijacked an indian airlines plane ic 814, they demanded the release of three dreaded ultras, including masood azhar and two others. one of the released terrorist, british-born omar ahmad saeed sheikh, was sentenced to death on july 15 by an anti-terrorism court in hyderabad in pakistan for kidnapping and murdering wall street journal reporter daniel pearl. the other released terrorist masood azhar still roams freely in pakistan and shares close connection with powerful state officials. lashkar-e-taiba (let), a terrorist organisation based in pakistan, has a long past of involvement in various terror activities in india including red fort attack in 2000, indian parliament attack in 2001, 2006, mumbai local train bombings – just to name a few. as per the cia report, the attack on indian embassy in kabul this year was also carried out by pakistan based terrorist groups along with isi. india presented evidence to pakistan regarding the involvement of isi, but all in vain. terrorism emanating from pakistan is not only injuring india, but also hurting other parts of the world. the 9/11 attack on america, the london bombings in 2005, a foiled attempt to attack the glasgow airport - all had some connection with pakistan, be it the nationality of the accused or their training or funding.

according to a cia report, let still conducts training of militants inside pakistan, runs a large charitable and social-service organisation in the name of jamaat-ud-dawa (jud), a fact that has been accepted by pakistani officials, and even has a designated spokesmen to handle inquiries from media. let was founded around 20 years back to create disturbances and to extend moral support to separatists in kashmir. it operates from a 200-acre training complex that has religious school and conference centre, in the village of muridke in eastern pakistan. in december 2001, us declared lashkar a terrorist organisation after it was accused of attacking the indian parliament. despite this, its leader hafiz saeed openly engages in anti-india rhetoric in full knowledge of pakistani authorities. in april 2006, the us classified jud as a terrorist organisation. but the pakistan government neither banned it nor shared any information about it. the group continues to raise funds, run religious schools and supply terrorists. but lately after the mumbai terror attacks the united nations security council has placed sanctions against pakistan-based jud, a front organisation for lashkar-e-taiba, declaring it a terrorist organisation. but it seems the ban has not left any impact on jud as indian foreign minister pranab mukherjee recently said that reports of jamaat-ud-daawa changing name to keep its operations intact is not a new development and that even lashkar-e-taiba had resorted to such tactics to avoid being banned. he also stressed that it is upto the government of pakistan to stop these organisations from flourishing in any form, name or shape. according to reports, the organisation is in the process of adopting a new name -- tehreek-e-hurmat-e-rasool to avoid restrictions. in 2005, pakistan's ambassador to washington husain haqqani candidly said, "the most significant jihadi group of wahhabi persuasion (influenced by the doctrine of 18th-century islamic scholar muhammad ibn-abdul wahhab) is lashkar-e-toiba, which is backed by saudi money and protected by pakistani intelligence service, isi.”

crimes of the holy land & the blind eye of the u.s. press

2009-01-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

courtesy: peter brookes / timesonline

israel is said to have test-dropped phosphorou bombs in gaza. the u.s. press did not find this as "news that is fit to print"!

agent orange devastates generations of vietnamese

2009-01-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

uncle sam has been the grand uncle of chemical ali. is there any weapon on earth now banned that was not used by the u. s. first?

who do u wish victory to?

2009-01-03T17:50:00.001-08:00

of two sons of a bitch, who do u wish victory to? hamas or israel?

image manipulation: vinod dave

no comment

2008-12-25T16:26:00.001-08:00

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/

THE fitting farewell

2008-12-14T17:43:00.000-08:00

they hate us - and india is us

2008-12-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

one of my best friend died of cancer a week ago. she was married to a pakistani guy who ruthlessly cheated her for the sake of having sex with other girls. son of a bitch was also pretending to be my 'friend' whom i had set up with the poor american girl who died of cancer. once she was driving me around in brooklyn, where we stopped for gas at a gas station. the moron gas station attendent was a pakistani guy. he looked like an indian, so i asked him where he was from. "pakistan", he said with attitude. "oh, it's the same thing. i am from india" i said. he almost lost his balance and yelled back: "it's not the same thing, we are too difference." i was kind of taken aback. i looked at him with a stare full of questions. he looked back at me with a stare full of hate. i wanted to say, "yes, we are difference, bitch. everytime there is a war between pakistan and india, india kicks your butts and makes you guys lick the ground dust." but i did not say anything.

patrick french in ny times, dec 08, 08.

as an open, diverse and at times chaotic democracy, india has long been a target for terrorism. from the assassination of mohandas gandhi in 1948 to the recent attacks in mumbai, it has faced attempts to change its national character by force. none has yet succeeded. despite its manifest social failings, india remains the developing world’s most successful experiment in free, plural, large-scale political collaboration.

the mumbai attacks were transformative, because in them, unlike previous outrages in india, the rich were caught: not only western visitors in the nation’s magnificent financial capital but also indian bankers, business owners and socialites. this had symbolic power, as the terrorists knew it would.

however, i recently saw a televised forum in which members of the public vented their fury against india’s politicians for their failure to act, and it soon became apparent the victims were poor as well as rich. one survivor, shameem khan — instantly identifiable by his name and his embroidered cap as a muslim — told how six members of his extended family had been shot dead. still in shock, he said: “a calamity has fallen on my house. what shall i do?” his neighbors had helped pay for the funeral. like most of india’s 150 million muslims, mr. khan is staunchly patriotic. the city’s muslim council refused to let the terrorists be buried in its graveyards. when these well-planned attacks unfolded, it was clear to anyone with experience of india that they were not homegrown, and almost certainly originated from pakistan. yet the reaction of the world’s news media was to rely on the outmoded idea of pakistan-india hyphenation — as if a thriving and prosperous democracy of over a billion people must be compared only to an imploded state that is having to be bailed out by the i.m.f. was pakistan to blame, asked many pundits, or was india at fault because of its treatment of minority groups?

the terrorists themselves offered little explanation, and made no clear demands. yet even as the siege continued, commentators were making chilling deductions on their behalf: their actions were because of american foreign policy, or afghanistan, or the harassment of indian muslims. personal moral responsibility was removed from the players in the atrocity. when officials said that the killers came from the pakistani terrorist group lashkar-e-taiba, it was taken as proof that india’s misdeeds in the kashmir valley were the cause.

these misdeeds are real, as are india’s other social and political failings (i recently met a kashmiri man whose father and sister had died at the hands of the indian security forces). but there is no sane reason to think lashkar-e-taiba would shut down if the situation in kashmir improved. its literature is much concerned with establishing a caliphate in central asia, and murdering those who insult the prophet. its leader, hafiz saeed, who lives on a large estate outside lahore bought with saudi money, goes about his business with minimal interference from the pakistani government.

lashkar-e-taiba is part of the international islamic front for jihad against jews and crusaders (the qaeda franchise). mr. saeed’s hatreds are catholic — his bugbears include hindus, shiites and women who wear bikinis. he regards democracy as “a jewish and christian import from europe,” and considers suicide attacks to be in accordance with islam. he has a wider strategy: “at this time our contest is kashmir. let’s see when the time comes. our struggle with the jews is always there.” as he told his followers in karachi at a rally in 2000: “there can’t be any peace while india remains intact. cut them, cut them — cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.” in short, he has an explicit political desire to create a state of war between the religious communities in india and beyond, and bring on the endgame.

like other exponents of islamist extremism, he has a view of the world that does not tolerate doubt or ambiguity: his opponents are guilty, and must be killed. i have met other radicals like mr. saeed, men who live in a dimension of absolute certainty and have contempt for the moral relativism of those who seek to excuse them. to achieve their ends, it is necessary to indoctrinate boys in the hatred of hindus, americans and jews, and dispatch them on suicide missions. it is unlikely that any of the militants who were sent from karachi to mumbai — young men from poor rural backgrounds whose families were paid for their sacrifice — had ever met a jew before they tortured and killed rabbi gavriel holtzberg and his wife, rivka, who was several months pregnant, at the mumbai jewish center.

america’s so-called war on terror has been, in many respects, a catastrophe. in pakistan, it has been chronically mishandled, leading to the radicalization of areas in the north that were previously peaceful. yet links between the military, the intelligence services and the jihadis have remained intact: lashkar-e-taiba is merely one of a number of extremist organizations that continues to function.

the prime solution to the present crisis is to force the closing of terrorist training outfits in pakistan, and apply the law to those who organize and finance operations like the mumbai massacres. hafiz saeed and other suspects should be sent to india to stand trial. the remark by pakistan’s president, asif ali zardari (a man whose history of shady business dealing makes him demonstrably unfit for high, or even low, office), that he did not think the terrorists came from pakistan would be funny if it were not tragic.

the united states gives around $1 billion a year in military aid to islamabad; that is leverage. it does the people of pakistan no favors for washington to allow their leaders to continue with the strategy of perpetual diversion, asking india to be patient while denying the true nature of the immediate terrorist threat. i received this e-mail message recently from a friend in karachi: “nowhere can get more depressing than pakistan these days — barring some african failed states and afghanistan.”

patrick french is the author, most recently, of “the world is what it is: the authorized biography of v. s. naipaul.”