Rage Against the Fishbowl

The Middle East, South Asia link

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:31:00 +0000

Part of my new job at AIDemocracy involves putting together awareness, advocacy and action events in the context of global peace & security.

Having grown up in Oman and India, I learned early that peace and security go hand in hand, chicken AND egg, both at the same time. I also learned that without development, peace and security measures often died still-born. According to Noeleen Heyzer,

"Peace is the absence of war, but beyond that peace is a commodity unlike any other. Peace is security. Peace is a mindset. Peace is a way of living. Peace is the capacity to transcend past hurts -- to break cycles of violence and forge new pathways that say, “I would like to make sure we live as a community where there is justice, security, and development for all members.” At the end of the day, peace is an investment; it is something you create by investing in a way of life and monitoring where your resources go."

An investment. Something tangible, even. Gandhi once said, "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."

I believe the same holds true for human security: how can you worry about democratic processes, the global significance of the war in Iraq or climate change if you don't have access to clean running water, if your government changes every 8 months or if you have to bribe your way into a school or a job?

When it comes to Peace, Security and Development, I can't imagine the Middle East without thinking of South Asia. I think of the similarities in cultures, traditions, recipes, family structures and community values, both positive and negative. I think of shared histories and religions.

I think of how folk from ME/SA are always in shock the first time we get to the U.S. and find out there's no water spray attachment/lota available in loos, just toilet paper: I mean, how do you live with using just toilet paper? How? Why?

Over the past two months, I've spoken with people at all levels about my pet project at AIDemocracy viz. organizing a set of events/performances/discussions that underline moments, both depressing and heroic, that make up the many diverse, current realities in the Middle East and South Asia, the moments that don't necessarily get covered by CNN or Fox, the moments that are often at the heart of key issues of social change.

Many have been ecstatic about the idea. They love stories and situations brought into the limelight that go beyond Bollywood, hummus and ________ (insert your favourite stereotype here).

Some have asked me to reconsider. To "narrow down" my focus, make it "more realistic". The same folk tell me that talking about both the Middle East and South Asia will dilute my ask.

I understand that they are speaking from experience: most grant makers, for instance, ask for a proposal that is dedicated to one specific world region. Bureaucracies like universities, community organizations and yes, even ~~most~~ some non-profits will tell you that their target audience/funder is invested in one or the other region, that current events behooves concentrating on only one region.

I understand that these naysayers mean well. I understand how easy it is to try to do too much with too little resources, and fail. I understand the downside of throwing too much information around in an attention-deficient world. I've spent weeks trying to cut ideas, realign my program.

No dice.

Blame my pigheadedness on the Department of State folks. Yup, it's their fault: they put together funding for the PLUS program, a two year embedded education initiative that I was accepted into. They made me live with kids from all over the Middle East and South Asia. They ensured that for two years my head and heart was filled with information from various ME/SA home towns and life experiences, that we traveled around the U.S. together, sharing stories, battles, kitchens and dorm rooms.

Also, blame folk like those at UC Davis, for investing in Middle East/South Asia studies, setting up a whole separate department dedicated to the study of relationships between these two regions and their relevance to global peace, security and development today.

And don't forget the House of Representatives! It's their fault too! They support the Sub-committee on the Middle East and South Asia, a body of representatives who address issues of foreign assistance, development, security, fledgling democratic processes in the ME/SA.

What would these leaders in education, law and social initiatives know anyway.

Some folk turn around and say that there is sufficient economic growth, exposure to western culture and education levels in the ME/SA to enable people in these regions to deal with their own problems and fight their own battles without bringing in outsiders. After all, there are other countries and communities in far worse conditions.

But what about the minorities in ME/SA fighting for a voice, often silenced by a complacent or hesitant middle class?

What about the sexual and reproductive rights and health of folk in Malaysia and Indonesia who are being persecuted?
What about adivasis in India fighting for social justice and being met with criticism for being revolutionary?
What about farmers across Asia who are at the receiving end of the GMO stick?
What about young people in Nepal, concerned about the staying power of their fledgling government?
What about female education in Afghanistan and the North-Western provinces?
What about illegal settlement building in Gaza and the West Bank?
What about Tamil Refugee camps in Sri Lanka?
What about the lack of competitive employment opportunities in Morocco?
What about censorship and drought in Syria?

What about all these flip-sides, underdogs and undercurrents that don't fall neatly into the "Western world versus Islamic world" dichotomy that so many well-meaning folk urge us to "address" and "dialogue" about?

Till someone finds me an answer, here I go-- writing Middle East AND South Asia. Over, and over again.

The New Age of Non-Profits: a conversation with Ken Banks on development, knowledge sharing and FrontlineSMS

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:47:00 +0000

It had started off simple enough.

Two weeks ago as a relatively new employee of AIDemocracy, I spent a few hours trawling through Social Edge and twitter. With an eye on global development and security, my goal was to discover what was being done already in the non-profit world, who was doing it best and who among these folk were the most open to collaboration.

I made a number of new friends: the people at Acumen Fund, Water Charity (not to be confused with charity:water), Be Unreasonable, Sangam India, CORD and Open Society Institute were fantastic right off the bat-- They were engaging, interested and human. It was like a Utopian first day at school.

In the context of my new job and projects I had in mind, I needed to know what was being done in terms of technology support for non-profit outreach and education services. One name that came up regularly was Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net

I had heard of Kiwanja in passing before, but didn't know much about it's main project FrontlineSMS, otherwise known as \o/(Which, btw, is a design based on this fantastic visual here).

I wasn't sure what to expect. Before this Saturday, I had no idea who Ken Banks is as a person, and was as wary as a product of post-post-colonialism can be of anybody who does "non-profit work" in "Africa". I was afraid I might run into yet another individual who's working to "save Africa" just because that's what Bono, the UN and everyone else is talking about right now.

[And if this is something that bothers you, Aid Watch has a great post on the issue here.]

I sent an email to Ken, one of those self-introduction/basic outline of project/can we chat sometime emails. You must remember that I moonlight as a writer: after all my experiences writing lit mag queries, I was prepared to face rejection or silence.

Imagine my shock then, when I checked mail the next day to find a reply from Ken. Yes, Ken Banks himself! Not an intern, volunteer, automated message or brush-off.

He said he'd love to talk further. Over a couple more emails I discovered he would be in Providence for the Better World By Design conference, and thanks to Barbara Grota, Assistant Dean of the Business School at my uni and a small set of practical miracles, this Saturday afternoon saw Ken, Barbara, two other students and I sit down together for an intimate conversation on change-making, mobile-for-development and non-profit developmental programs.

Ken is that guy you see in TED videos, the ones that go viral the moment they're uploaded on TED's site and Facebook page.

He showed up in a white cotton shirt and no jacket, laughing at how unprepared he was for New England weather, how he should've known better. Over coffee and a banana, he told us about how Kiwanja got started: his love for computers, how he had first traveled to the African continent in '93, how he spent 16 years living and working in countries that included Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon and Uganda. He spoke about his focus on using mobile tech for conservation and development, and mentioned he was a Liverpool fan.

He was alright.

As part of his presentation, he introduced us first to the role of mobile technology in the daily life of small business owners in African countries:

Ken told us that this picture is of a woman who started off a small business by providing a cell phone connection to her community, at a time when not everyone owned a handset of their own. She then built a small grocery store around this business, and when competition stepped in in terms of wider coverage and other small business owners who had the same idea, she secured her handset with a wire so clients could enjoy a private conversation while making sure no one would make off with her phone at the same time.

Ken pointed out that small, lean-to mobile charging stations and stores just like this one were common all over East and South Africa, making a case for mobile-enabled entrepreneurship among communities that are often labeled as being aid-dependent or in need of immediate charity.

These pictures immediately struck a chord with me-- these shots could have been taken anywhere in any rural or urban area, back home in India.

What Ken's presentation did was to focus our attention on ways in which ordinary people without much skill training or capital have adapted mobile phones and mobile technology to serve as both economic and service delivery solutions-- Not only are individuals across Africa and Asia making a business for themselves out of selling & repairing cell phone hardware and connections, they are also utilizing mobile technology to stay updated on medical services and market prices for agricultural produce. He then introduced us to how FrontlineSMS functions-- Take the tour and see for yourself here.

Ken built the original software and threw it out into the world "dirty", much like how Google first opened up Gmail Beta for public users. He's been generous with both its code and its core idea, a generosity that has enabled other entrepreneurial men and women around the world to up and run with it. One of the immensely successful ideas to come out this sharing is FrontlineSMS:Medic.

FrontlineSMS:Medic (or \+/ for short) has enabled regional hospitals that serve remote, isolated communities and villages to get the word out regarding updates in treatments, schedules for open clinics, and test results. And if that wasn't incredible enough--

Patient View, a module of \+/ enables a health worker to access a patient's records using FrontlineSMS and respond in real-time to complaints from patients many miles away.

CelloPhone, new technology being developed at UCLA that will be supported by \+/

"is a revolutionary diagnostic tool that will be able to perform basic diagnostics such as Complete Blood Count, diagnosis of Malaria and TB, and CD4 T Lymphocyte count on the back of a camera cell phone, for under $1 per test. The device itself is expected to cost as little as $10. The device utilizes a new imaging technique called LUCAS, which circumvents a lens for magnification, instead taking intracellular “holograph” images of cells directly via the CCD chip ubiquitous in most camera phones. A pattern matching algorithm then analyzes cell morphology to automatically produce a diagnostic result. The diagnostic results will be communicated from the device to a central location using FrontlineSMS, and viewed with our Patient View module and/or sent to OpenMRS with our medical records module. The Ozcan lab at UCLA is developing this device, and we aim to pioneer its use in the developing world (\+/, 2009)."

All I could think at this time was, why the hell isn't everyone talking about this? Why aren't the modules of \+/ being utilized all over South Asia, for instance , where we and all our gods know it would be of incredible service?

Maybe it's because of a lack of information. Maybe not enough people know about \0/, and the other activities of Kiwanja. Or maybe some global non-profits, government agencies and contractors are afraid of all the power they might lose once local community members and non-profits start empowering themselves with such technology. Who knows?

I can imagine multiple uses of FrontlineSMS in India alone:

In disaster management response and activity coordination.
In managing the agricultural crisis by getting out messages on weather patterns, market prices and setting up a communication network for suicide prevention.
In responding to health care needs in remote villages up and down the east coast and in state interiors.

While I sat there, taking in how simple and yet beautiful FrontlineSMS' design is, and how accessible its use can be, Ken spoke quietly about some of the ideas that drove him to build \0/

"It's not about building cool-- it's about building appropriate."

FrontlineSMS began with one idea: to build on the existing, burgeoning mobile network in Africa instead of waiting either for some government to buy into fiber optic cables or on some non-profit or country's charity to set up a development-oriented program.

\0/ also builds on local awareness and local ownership, says Ken Banks, and I believe him: you can't read cases of health-workers in the Philippines and Malawi who downloaded \0/ all on their own and used it to improve the quality of care and then not believe in \0/, Kiwanja and Ken. And yet, none of this happened overnight. "Be Patient" is a core principle of this sort of work, according to Ken-- an idea that Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz mirrored in her TED talk on Patient Capital.

Ken's dream is that FrontlineSMS will grow to be self-sufficient, that people all over the world will adapt it to solve problems specific to their communities without needing him to be its brand ambassador. Considering the Open Source nature of \0/, this dream may soon become a reality.

Ken Banks' energy, candour and intelligence will infect your brain with good ideas. The thought that timely, measurable change for the better can occur on the ground, on a one to one basis without needing to wait for a grant cycle or government vote to come through is refreshingly now.

I can't wait to speak with people in South Asia about \0/ and discovering whether some of the challenges they are facing in the field can be answered with this suit of mobile technology.

What about you? Know of a non-profit, community or person who can benefit from FrontlineSMS? Direct them here. I can attest to the fact they'll get a personal response almost immediately.

I did bring that up with Ken towards the end of our conversation. He didn't know me from Eve, and I obviously didn't have big money or contacts to throw at his work. Why would such a busy guy spend time on a non-lucrative email exchange and trip to a small liberal arts university?

According to Ken, nurturing conversation around the kind of work Kiwanja supports is what has brought FrontlineSMS and its associated avatars this far. He talks about the individuals who contacted him about \0/ and are responsible for developing \0/ to the level it's at now. He also points out that he knows what it's like to be a newbie in the non-profit field. Says he wouldn't have got where he is now if it wasn't for several key people giving him a break and believing in FrontlineSMS when they didn't have to. And then, he grins.

Ken Banks, myself and Ai Jing, a fellow international student at RWU

I nod in agreement. The sun broke through a gray cloud bank, shining into the conference room we sat in. A good omen: maybe the New Age of Non-Profits is truly upon us, one in which ordinary people everywhere are empowered by need-based technology, where volunteering at a non-profit means coming up with usable ideas, not just filing proposals and where sharing real-time knowledge and experience is rated higher than how many celebrity endorsements a non-profit gets.

Of Holidays, Serendipity & the Green Goddess

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 03:29:00 +0000

If you grew up in those parts of the world that still hold onto trappings of the British Raj, you grew up thinking that a sign of cultured success was the family holiday home up in the hills or by the beach.

Alternatively, if you grew up in said Imperial Angrezi shadow but did your best to moderately protest such faux-pucca behavior, you and your parents shied away from a holiday home and instead returned to your grandparent’s place: an ancestral, mosquito-infested location where huge stainless steel tins of paapad were passed around and your uncles all had stories about every room and every wall, stories that got progressively bawdier as summer evenings wore on till your elder brother kicked you out of the room while he stayed put in a corner, the surreptitious bastard.

However—None of this holds true any longer. Liberalized global economies, stricter leave policies and those nifty mid-week discounts from travel sites mean that Heraclitus (a chap who had an incredibly hard time at school, I suspect) is your daddy; all you can do is get in short bursts of vivid experience every time your two weeks come around (unless you’re a bureaucrat or are French in which case mille pardons, you lucky sot.)

Right now, it’s not how well you know a place, it’s how many places you’ve been to—A night in Belgrade, three days in San Diego with cousins, an afternoon in Cannes, one in Catania and if it’s Tuesday it might as well be Belgium. One is made to feel there's something almost provincial about eternally returning to a single favourite holiday spot nowadays, my friend. Provincial and limiting.

Well then, if to be counter-culture these days is to swim against this tide of short trips and frequent flyer miles, I am the veritable Abbie Hoffman of holiday-making, the Timothy Leary of trip-planning. I’ll even say it--

My name is Priyanka Joseph and I’m an addict. It’s been four years since I first visited New Orleans, and I have been skulking back every summer since.

No one understands it much, except those wasafiri who tumble from all over the globe into New Orleans and have stayed put ever since. Home-grown locals are even more big-hearted than they usually are when they realize you’re in town for more than a photo-op or “material” for your next “piece”. Mid-Westerners and kids on Spring Break anxiously look away when you shoot the Death Stare at their year-round Mardi Gras beads, their Made in China feather boas sold up and down the outer streets of the French Quarter by enterprising second-generation Bengalis and Gujaratis.

And no, that is not a stereotype. All the Indian vendors I’ve run into in New Orleans have proudly attested to their regional identities while discussing mine in the same breath, bless their little hearts. They sit there smiling, the aunties and Uncles, amid the plastic boob necklaces, imitation hash pipes and epithet-tinged T-shirts while they wish you a good day after surreptitiously giving you a 10% discount. Don’t count on it happening often though—An Indian businesswoman will get carried away by that special brand of southern voodoo once or twice, but you must be quick: it is accompanied only by one or two subtle signs. Blink twice and it vanishes.

Most surreal events and places in Nola are accompanied only by one or two subtle signs.

For instance, no good bar in the French Quarter, dive or posh, is well-lit.

If the bar-tender is dressed fancy and you see bright lights, you’re in a tourist spot and unless you wish to invite my Death Stare, get out! This of course, is true only of establishments in the French Quarter. The Garden District, St. Charles and the CBD are where the smart young things of New Orleans go, and where like most smart young things anywhere else in the world, they enjoy the fixings that go with these more refined neighborhoods.

I stick to the French Quarter because visiting it every year is like meeting only the most beloved members of your family at Christmas except it’s summer in June and they’re not your family-- they’re members of an intimate, energetic, human circus who you know all by name and the moment you enter Bourbon Street you’re in it, Second Lining along with everyone else. The French Quarter is the last bastion of the city’s variegated past, and in every crack and courtyard, along every open drain and broken tile-work half-restored, in every old wall and re-painted sign the well-worn familiarity of a grand-parent reaches out to you.

And it’s not some secret club. Like a finely-trained acrobat, courtesan, juggler and the world’s greatest storyteller rolled into one, the Quarter draws you in only as far as you will go. A big hearted city, the biggest hearted in the States.

There, I said it.

The only folk disapproved of are posers and those who don’t know how to have a good time, and even they are tolerated till they try to pay their bill using a library card. Despite all the touristy trappings, besides all the people who show up figuring they’re going to be blessed with boobs, beads, cheap booze and perhaps even a piece of humanity culled from the hunks of Katrina debris, usually made up of narrated memories, water-marks and faded X’s on front doors, little souvenirs they can pack away with their shot glasses to put up on their mantelpiece in Middle Class, Anywhere—Despite all these little clichés, the City and the Quarter still find ways of sneaking into my heart with their secrets, year after year, every year closer still till the imprints they leave are like the toe-marks inside your oldest and most favored pair of chappals.

This year, the most vivid imprint I carried away from the city was of a meal I had at a small, privately run establishment that had only recently opened at the time. A meal that would have never happened if it wasn’t for a little web 2.0 magic.

Late on the Sunday afternoon that was our last day in the city, we sat in a Rue St. Anne hotel room and reviewed our list of Nola restaurants yet-to-be-experienced. Yes, there still was the old guard, the ones we always walked past and nodded a salutation to, the historical origins of fine dining in the city: Arnaud’s, Olivier’s, Brennan’s, Antoine’s, Broussard’s, GW Fins, Galatoire’s, Commander’s Palace. Legends are still told in the street regarding secretly guarded recipes, privately owned smoke-houses and the sort of tidbit goodness of the kind that could redeem your soul with a first-taste and cast you into hell at the exact same time for the lust surging in every fiber of your being at the mere mention of the Crabes mous amandine (Antoine’s) or the Wood Grilled Mississippi Redfish (G.W Fins’). And yes, this particular alchemy is not brought on by food alone.

The Big Easy is a human city. One that’s been torn apart several times in its history, by moral policing, race-oriented government policies, corruption, industry shifts, climate change and hurricane seasons. There’s so much of feeling up and down streets here that the air, especially in the hot, still summer thrums against your skin and you might just find yourself bursting into tears at the sound the old jazz-men of the Preservation Hall band make when they get into When the Saints go Marching in or Swing low, Sweet Chariot , or the insistent notes of the calliope coming off the Steamboat Natchez, for no other reason than this, this particular moment brought everything treasured about your childhood back to you in a single rush of merry-go-round sound. Oh there’s some strong stuff floating about, but that last Sunday didn’t feel like a day for reflecting on the past.

The day before, we had met and struck up an instant friendship with two transplanted locals, one a photographer and the other, a guide for the Haunted History tours. Both fantastic people, and that long afternoon spent in Pirates Alley is one of my happiest memories of New Orleans till date. We wanted more of that: to meet the people who have made this city their home to live and work in because there is no other place like it on earth. I was just about to sign out of Gmail when an email popped up from a dear friend in Madras, who declared that Neil Gaiman had delivered (pardon) an easter egg via Twitter, stating that if one was in New Orleans, one should up and over to the Green Goddess and pronounce the words, ‘Mezze of Destruction’.

Hm.

Now one suspects that Mr. Gaiman is an honorable man, all things considered. Couldn’t help but wonder what spot that phrase could get me into though. A simple Google search brought up Chef DeBarr's livejournal and the restaurant's website. It didn't take long to realize we'd be dining at the table of chefs who did things with ingredients that Da Vinci did with set squares and a single argyle sock. Strangely, the place was a only street away. No one at the hotel had heard of it but we were far too hungry to be scared off. I put their lack of knowledge down to the fact the website said it had only opened a month previous to our arrival.

In a matter of minutes, there it was: a snug warm place opposite the Pelican Club. Dim lighting, check. No fancy outfits inside, check. In fact, since we were dining late on a Sunday night, no one else but us, either. Two apron-wearing men stood behind a counter, staring at us while we stared at them.

The first thing you notice is that you aren't treated as customers, cash cows or outsiders even, which are types of treatment you can receive elsewhere in the city, especially in the Quarter. And who can blame a body? Tourists truck in with their frozen daiquiris, their cargo shorts and their cranky toddlers and demand ketchup on a po-boy, jambalaya without rabbit and crawfish étouffée without crawfish.

But that hasn't bothered the proprietors of the Green Goddess. The moment we stepped in, we were treated as co-conspirators, as if there was a great game afoot that we could be a part of if we wanted to.

It was hard to whisper anything to a server, let alone a password, because there was Chef DeBarr, standing two feet away and asking what we were in the mood for. Also, there’s no polite way of vocalizing a password days. You can’t sit there with your knees politely together and murmur some rubbish in someone's ear. I laconically blurted out-- “By the way, I was told to say ‘Mezze of Destruction’!" before half-ducking under our table, ready for anything—an explosion, a dancing ferret, a talk-show host, a well-aimed wok. Instead, we were greeted by Chef DeBarr’s warm chuckle.

“Ah, so Neil sent you then? The Mezz! That's great-- Well, for today we have a variation on the Pimm's cup. Why don't you sit down, anywhere you want to.” He then proceeded to tell us that the easter egg was a little agreement Mr. Gaiman and he had going, a personal nod from his side to the Sandman book, Brief Lives. As he moved behind the bar with all the grace of a minuet dancer, he began throwing ingredient names at us, juggling them back and forth as he sliced fresh cucumbers fine, and mixed this most delicious summer concoction: according to Chef DeBarr, their Pimm's Cup is based on the British gin-based liqueur and is a wonderful summertime cocktail which always features a cucumber in the drink:

The Green Goddess at that time hadn’t a liquor license, a smallish hurdle only for the chefs at GG and one that has long since been removed. Chef DeBarr mixed us non-alcoholic cocktail juices the entire evening though, an intrepid taste-bud extravaganza that when savored felt like the best parts of Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss shaken together then served over ice.

From that moment on, we had Chef DeBarr’s undivided attention, which is the sort of exquisite pleasure that comes to you only thrice in your life, usually when you’re too young to understand the significance of what is happening. He brought out a salad to us, that in itself was an invocation to the little GG shrine up on the wall. In a vain attempt to partake of it in a civilized manner, we stared up at the intricate, beautiful patterns on the ceiling and examined the mystic, curly-ended cutlery, quickly realizing why Mr. Gaiman might like this place. Little did I know that this was only the beginning...

While poring over the menu-- rich with local produce and fresh ingredients-- we were told why this heirloom tomato was used, what that sausage tasted like and where it was made, and how the thai basil seed drink could just be the greatest invention, juice-wise, to ever come out of that lovely land.
The whole thing was a play, a musical in four acts from aperitif to dessert, and the wonderful staff at GG were star performers executing complex routines between kitchen, bar and our table, while stories were exchanged across the room: Chef’s admiration for Bengali five spice powder and his awareness of the merits of uthappam, our confused chorus of Indian dishes we love, Coop’s on Decatur and how on earth did you flavour gulf shrimp in this immortal fashion? What powers do you hide?

So we didn’t really say the last two, just mumbled our appreciation while wondering at our luck. Our next course consisted of a plate of beautiful duck and pork sausages served with sweet potatoes, a Southern-style bangers & mash entrée--

-- and a plump, stuffed pupusa:

During the beautiful meal he served us, Chef DeBarr told us in his quiet way about why he felt the city needed a place like GG, why he loved to cook, why he believed menus needed to change with the seasons as well as the current times: he mentioned a special Persian tasting menu he was putting together for July 4th in honor of the brave folk in Iran who were standing up for their basic freedoms and the right to a just political process. Our little way, he said, of standing with them. The man is intense the way only someone who enjoys what he does, where he does it and lives that passion everyday can be.

I wanted to bring him the cinnamon my aunt brought back for my mother from an ancestral tree in Kerala. I wanted to bring him Kalpana aunty’s maami’s sambhar podi. I wanted to say here, see these are all the tastes that have ever meant something to me: what can you make with them?

Came this close to making a blubbering fool of myself. Thankfully, the GG lassi saved the day, a sobering, cooling, cinnamon-salt rimmed reminder that the Green Goddess restaurant is something good that will last a long while, something we can return to again and again.

So don’t look at lists of what to do in New Orleans. If you’re a list person, go to Disney World. They’ll love you there. Once you step out of the shuttle bus or taxi onto cobbled or paved street, breathe in deep. That mix of smells, warm, turgid and inviting, part slow-cooking roux, part day-old underage puke, part unsolved murder, part sweat, part summer garbage, part heavy river, part dust, part dead, part Jazz trio playing till 3am, part Gulf Coast breeze over the Metairie Cemetery and all these people who come here for shelter, inspiration, comfort and carnival, year in and year out—This is what I call my spiritual home, while India’s an ocean away, chasing its tail in an attempt to catch up with the glitz and glamor of what is presumed to be the Good Life as per syndicated media reports, while a beautiful magic thrives in a city that even some natives of this continent will never have the pleasure of knowing as intimately as this mere provincial addict does.

Take it from a doubly Southern girl—Sometimes the best place to holiday in is the one you can come home to with just a single step off a plane.

On Writing

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:02:00 +0000

Being a writer terrifies me.

When the words come, they force their way out. Nothing clean about it. Projectile vomit after bad meat, with the sobbing afterward. Fingers chewed down to the bone. Bad digestion, an uncharged phone, unfilled time sheets. And then when the poem or story is written, it sits there like a self-content child, sleek and nourished and confident of its own precocity. You remain the withered host, nothing parental/familial/nutritional about it. You were used, your life blood and time sucked up into its creation.

What the fuck do you do with it now?

It sits there, points at your flab, your worn tooth brush, your cable tv package, your mother's concern and laughs. Chortles when you search the web for submission guidelines and deadlines. Falls over screaming with laughter as you send carefully worded emails to published folk, asking the kind ones if they would be even kinder, even more generous and be your readers. Waiting for months, waiting for months while denying all claims that you are in fact, waiting, that howling bastard laughter in your ear.

And the screaming tears when you take up a day job instead. Like a hungry orphan. Like a bayoneted baby. Like a man crushed under a fallen bridge. Like a pig being slaughtered.

You fall behind soon enough. No paycheck tops the high of getting out a perfectly balanced, well formed sentence. You return in fits. Surreptitious. An addict. The first three days of doing nothing but write are glory days, a paid vacation sur la plage somewhere in Sardinia. And then you run out. Of words, of patience, of time.

Slink back to the job. Whoever's depending on you breathes a sigh of relief. And then frowns. Because the best parts of you all went on those pages. The husk that's left is dry, useless for anything but a shallow container they use to roll around their small hard pebbled regrets in, rolling them around in your head till thoughts go TILT! TILT! TILT!

Silent and sterile and functional for the next few days. The boss even figures you've "found your feet".

Then some old beloved motherfucker shows up. Some dear friend from ages past. They find your vein, tap twice and shoot you full of reminders, of past glories imagined and real. They power up the synapses in your head till electric jumps between letters, phonemes, words, paragraphs turn your head into a giant plasma ball.

You spend the night pouring over a keyboard, typing sentence after sentence in that default Arial 10 never looking up to edit. This makes the page look like it's filled with two dimensional black millipedes copulating in a Madras monsoon, rows upon rows of them till dawn when you stop and drink insta-coffee and smoke and immediately fall asleep.

Bukowski was an ugly drunk, ornery and mad as hell, the kind that folk are uncomfortable around. But he is authentic as all get-out, the kind of authentic that people want to sell, if only they could get their fingers on it. But he is the main man because he figured out my main question, the one that can't be answered by pulling a nine of hearts from the old fortune teller's deck.

I don't mean contract writing. I don't mean the MFA professor who put you onto his agent writing. I don't mean the I have enough media interest in me to sell a book writing.

I mean being past the age of being considered a prodigy writing. I mean not too many friends who want to spend time with you writing. I mean being a failure writing, and then failing again. I mean being a paranoid lover writing, where you check your lines and syntax in the hall mirror even when you know they're watching. I mean questioning, doubting, being ungrateful and apologizing after they're dead writing. The empty room at the book reading, sitting there finishing the booze you brought with you in a pepsi bottle writing. I mean self sabotage writing.

How do you write like that and do anything else in the world? Day jobs? Bank accounts? Families? How do you pour your fucking mind and heart, what you believe into a page and then order lunch from a menu the next minute? How can you teach your kid about wrong and right when your words constantly get you into corners? How can you pray when all you think about when you close your eyes is a story's good ending? How can you love. How can you love.
How can you love?

Leggo my Eggo, Bitch! or the Terror of the Liberated Pot-Head

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:21:00 +0000

So Americans are overweight, they say. Especially Black women, folk in Mississippi, UPS delivery guys, pregger lesbians and kids named Carl. Ever since Moore made that film, every fatty who walks into a Wendy's or Mickey D's needs to move like they're Schwarzenegger hightailing it in the Running man. Except fatties don't high tail. And waddling fast doesn't help, so there they are, desperately counting out change for the Big N' Tasty® meal with BBQ sauce on the side, being stared down by every skinny shit in the place, the ones who sip their vanilla frosty and laugh into their bony little hyperthyroidic hands at fatty's lack of self control.

Screw that.

I blame the Marijuana lobbyists.

Yeah, that's right. Them pot-smoking, Iron Chef Japan watching, bacon and strawberry jam sammie eating lobbyists who dream of being featured in High Times and make jokes about it on the subway. I'm talking to you, Keith Stroup.

Geek pot-heads (the kind who get baked and then draw plans for rebuilding their desktop computer while quoting Star Wars and more recently, episodes of the Big Bang Theory) theorize that the sh*t's better than it ever was, and they aren't the only ones. According to the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA), THC levels are five times stronger than they were in the 1970s.

This ain't your gramma's pot. So while gramma only cut a few slices from that pot roast or crumbled a slice of raisin bread at 3am when the munchies kicked in, you go out and slaughter a suckling pig. Then inhale it. With ketchup.

Toked up, we are powerless against the urge to feed our faces: we eat whole cans of sliced pineapple off our fingers like they're yummy Rings of Power, laughing like maniacs all the while. We raid gas stations for Turkey Hill on a Sunday morning. We order Chinese take out. We drive to find a Burger King after watching the first Harold and Kumar for the 32nd time. We ask for extra cheese.

And those food manufacturers know it. The advertising! The all you can eat buffets! The diet pill makers know it too, except only models die from ODing on Hydroxycut so Fatties don't mind it. Much.

Ergo-- watch out, you state health care officials of Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Your citizens have legal munchies. And we're hungry.

You can slap a tax on delicious fizzy drinks. You can intercept Hostess delivery trucks, and make gym visits mandatory.

But you cannot stop us all. There will come a Christmas Eve when you're in the dairy section standing in front of the last carton of egg-nog. And may God Have Mercy on your Lipo-suctioned, Deregulated Soul.

As for the rest of you skinny sots: travel only by daylight. And always keep a bag of Krispy Kremes in your car. You never know when you'll need a decoy.

If you can't beat 'em, Or the ubiquitous Twitter post

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:25:00 +0000

It all started with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

An online event titled "ONLINE DISCOURSE IN THE ARAB WORLD: Dispelling the Myths" was hosted by the US Institute of Peace Center of Innovation for Science, Technology and Peacebuilding, in partnership with Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on June 17th.

The discussion began with a presentation of the Berkman's Center mapping report on the "arabic blogosphere".

Download the Berkman Center's report "Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent" here, if you'd like. An interesting enough idea, but there were limitations on the study that were immediately apparent-- dialects of various arabic languages were not considered for one, and the use of labels such as "arab", "fundamentalist", "radical" and "terrorist", which despite being carefully coded by the Berkman Center, didn't sit well with a large number of the online participants as well as with some of the panelists. The study focused on blogs, leaving out more embedded forms of social media-based interaction such as Facebook, and the still popular use of listservs and mailing groups.

I first logged into the embedded chat applet on the event page, but soon discovered that the real action was on Twitter, with folk using the hashtag #arabblogs to discuss the Eventbrite-based goings on.

In about 3.5 minutes, http://twitter.com/Pjoseph85 was born.

Tweeting for the first time was a strangely nostalgic exercise. It reminded me of the good ol' days of downloading music and chatting on WinMx: less words used yes, but the same back-and-forth, the same endorsement, reaction and attribution cycle where multiple players share center stage for short bursts of time.

Those using the chat applet took time developing questions, forged temporary relationships with other users, made introductions and exchanged contact information at the end.

Those tweeting stuck to reacting to the panelists and each other much in the fashion of these lads, and rightly so. There wasn't enough time or a sufficient character limit to establish much more than disapproval or approval of a statement. There were a few points made by folk in their twitter feeds however, which ranged from the angle of the camera used to record and relay the panel discussion to the fact that it was an all-male discussion on blogging in the Arab world, when it is self-evident that a majority of arab bloggers are in fact female. Tweets added biographical information about the panelists and references they made for the edification of others, who then RTed this same information again, and again. The camera angle was righted, but no one got back to the point about the lack of female representation. Perhaps the 140 character limit made it impossible to explain.

On June 21st, Bruce Etling and John Palfrey of the Berkman Center-- speakers at the USIP event-- together with Robert Faris published a WaPo article on the role of twitter in the Iran election protests, stating the following:

... Twitter's own internal architecture puts limits on political activism. There are so many messages streaming through at any moment that any single entry is unlikely to break through the din, and the limit of 140 characters -- part of the service's charm and the secret of its success -- militates against sustained argument and nuance. (Yes, "Give me liberty or give me death" totals just 32 characters, but Patrick Henry's full speech exceeded 1,200 words.) What's most exciting is the aggregate effect of all this speech and what it reveals about the zeitgeist of the moment, but it still reflects a worldwide user population that skews wealthy, English-speaking and well-educated. The same is true of the blogosphere and social networks such as Facebook.

The authors then refer to the USIP event and say--

If dissent is channeled into cyberspace, it can keep protesters off the streets and help state security forces track political activism and new online voices. As Egyptian democracy activist Saad Ibrahim said last week during a discussion at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, this appears to be part of a long tradition for governments in the Middle East, especially in Egypt, where dissent is channeled into universities and allowed to thrive there, as long as it does not escape the university walls.

It's not a particularly conclusive piece-- All that Etling, Palfrey and Faris say is that revolutions aren't fought online, though attempts at supporting or quelling it can be made online.

Fair enough.

It's interesting to note the roots for the word 'Twitter', etymologically speaking-

to reproach, blame; originally, to observe, see, hence, to observe what is wrong... To vex by bringing to notice, or reminding of, a fault, defect, misfortune, or the like; to revile; to reproach; to upbraid; to taunt; as, he twitted his friend of falsehood.

A whole cyber sky-full of those iconic little blue winged buggers then, worrying and picking at some large issue till even more folk take notice and some "real action" takes place, "on the ground".

Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking - Stephen Hawking. Who also, apparently, tweets.

The answer, Mr. Huntington, is blowin' in the wind

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:44:00 +0000

"I've had all I can stands and I can't stands no more"-- Popeye the Sailor-man.

Two articles caught my eye this morning-- the WaPo coverage of the anti-Taliban sentiment and fighting in Pakistan, by Griff Witte, and an op-ed in the NYT regarding the current elections in Iran.

The articles highlight two separate events that till recently, as recently as six months ago, no one saw coming.

No one in their right mind, not even the most sanctimonious or the most optimistic supporter of Islamic Democracy would have put money on Pakistanis rallying to fight and lose their lives in an effort to quell the efforts of the Taliban to "fundamentalize" outlier regions of their country.

Of course, the WaPo article highlights the fact that the Pakistanis in question are from low-income families and regions: is it because these people have more to lose if the Taliban do expand, and consequentially more to gain if the Taliban doesn't? Maybe. Which means that their current action, however lauded by the American government, is rooted more in desperation rather than any higher sense of right and wrong. In fact, Witte's article sheds light on the self-doubt that abounds within households in places like Patalian, where people are questioning who is the real enemy, this time around:

"We used to know who the enemy was, and where he is coming from," said Zulfikar Sajad, his eyes vacant and sad as he sat in a mud-brick hut on a desolate plain. "Now, we don't know from which direction the bullets will come."

The Op-Ed piece in the Times is a positive piece: Camelia Entekhabifard is a respected journalist and spokesperson, and has written from the NYT before (this piece particularly stood out-- I loved the mushroom analogy). Her Op-Ed speaks of the new hope on Iranian streets, where students and women have formed protest marches and lines, wearing green in support of Mousavi, the reformist candidate that an apparent majority in Iran is hoping will change the way the country is perceived globally.

(Photo credits: MAJID/Getty Images, for Preeti Aroon's article in FP)

Entekhabifard writes,

So what makes today’s activists different? First of all, a large swath of this “third wave” of voters includes young people who do not remember the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and its related traumas. The ordeals that we suffered immediately after the 1979 revolution are just history to them. Today’s voters probably never had to lie to schoolteachers trying to ferret out damaging information about their families. Iranians may be far from free, but they do not endure the fear we experienced daily.
I used to consider myself among the most outspoken critics in Iran. But I would have never dared to stage a loud protest against a sitting president, as Iranian students did in 2007... Now, Iranians form a 12-mile human chain in support of Mr. Moussavi, and women are seeking one million signatures for a petition for gender quality. Thanks to YouTube, Facebook and blogs, it’s easier for young people to organize, express their grievances and learn personal information about top officials.

This is all very interesting, because it provides additional basis for an argument that counters Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. It shows that even within a tightly knit culture, where complex intermingled structures of society and religion provide the general populace with a code of behavior and cognition, it is possible for new ideas to take root and cause a sea-change in how people react to one another. Not every old traditional fear or belief holds true forever. Not every tie binds just because it did for one's father and his father before him.

In short, the events referred to in these two articles give an elegant bird right in the face of every conservative and every nay-sayer who claim you can't teach an old culture or community new tricks.

Paaarrtaaaaayy!!

But hold up, son. Before you start poppin' them bottles, realize that it is impossible for any movement to be wholly self-sustained. Yes, the people of Patalian, the Swat Valley and nearby regions are fighting and dying for what they believe is a worthy cause. Yes, en masse, people are agreeing that there is more than one interpretation to the role of Islam in a country's political future. But what happens when the last body hits the floor? What happens when aid runs out, or if the Taliban cut a deal or threaten some big-shot in Islamabad?

And what happens if Mousavi doesn't win the Iran elections, or does win and ends up being strong-armed into a hardline stance? What happens if the government in Iran takes over all forms of communication, and controls the use of Youtube, Facebook and blogs?

Citizen groups, bloggers, individuals and media need to let people in Pakistan know that they are supported for their bravery in attempting to choose a better political fate for themselves. The efforts of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent need support. And we're the ones to give it to them.

According to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF),

"A lack of funds is threatening the humanitarian aid effort in north-west Pakistan.
Save the Children reports that the organisation has received £2.6 million of the £6.6 million needed to assist 168,000 children and 112,000 adults in the region who have become victims of fighting in the Swat valley.

Carolyn Miller, chief executive of humanitarian charity Merlin, commented: "The only reason we haven't faced a massive humanitarian meltdown is the generosity of families and communities of modest means who've looked after the vast majority of those who've fled the fighting. The world's richest nations need to dig much deeper into their pockets to help.""

While this is true, it's not just the world's richest nations; it's the lot of us, and our "families and communities of modest means".

Multiple causes do act as a sort of check and balance on any human attempt at world peace, I suppose. Perhaps peace and development are meant to be elusive and eternally unattainable, like the perfect copper wire, or a responsible, accountable system of governance in India. Perhaps it is the holy grail of the modern age, only meant to be quested after by a rag-tag bunch of don quioxtes with different agendas.

Multiple causes mean that perhaps those who are passionate about a peaceful, thriving civic society in Sri Lanka may not be as passionate about the same in Pakistan. Or Colombia. Or Somalia. Or Nepal. Perhaps multiple causes mean that those who are passionate about open source software or free internet radio are not as concerned about containing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Perhaps those working for LGBT rights are not as concerned with autism, or primary education, or female nutrition in the developing world.

If Huntington was right, and conflicts do result from a number of causes, such as "... discrimination against people from a different civilization... different values and culture... particularly when one civilization attempts to impose its values on people of a different civilization" (2002*), then one way of sending his thesis--with all due respect-- ass over tea-kettle into oblivion, is to spread awareness about these different civilizations, till we learn from each others' conflicts and methods of disaster management, and in the process learn that our values and culture are not that different at all.

Thankfully, this has already begun: apart from the web tools named by Entekhabifard, sites like TED.com, New Ideas for Government, Peace X Peace, Social Edge and others have begun breaking down perceived and assumed differences between groups and social causes.

I only hope that this trend continues, and that Ol' Sammy, wherever he is, loses any bet he might have hedged on the world dividing into zones of civilizations reminiscent of pre- Silk Route days.

__________________________________________________________________

*Huntington, Samuel P. (2002) [1997]. "Chapter 9: The Global Politics of Civilizations". The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (The Free Press ed.). London: Simon $ Schuster. pp. p 207f

Opeth and the Dionysian Principle

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:30:00 +0000

It's a disgusting day outside. Dis-gust-ing.

Late Old French desgouster, to lose one's appetite : des-, dis- + gouster, to eat, taste (from Latin gustre; see geus- in Indo-European roots) [1]

It has been grey for three days, with that miasma of sky-piss and blanketed grey that serves to beat any latent depression into blazing life. So much for the first week of my summer break.

This is the perfect weather for listening to Opeth, though. Even better weather for putting on 'Deliverance' and 'Watershed', and reliving the show at the HOB in Boston on May 2nd.

Access the show's set-list here.

I had meant to review the show here post-haste, but that's the thing with an Opeth show: you're stuck in a sound reverie for about five days after it, every word you write to attempt describing it pales in comparison to the actual experience. It doesn't help that the sound system at the HOB owns. Screw stadium shows: there's nothing like catching a club tour if you are lucky enough to do so. I was standing with my back against the metal chain-links that protected the sound pit from the milling mob. One of the sound techs had on a well-worn crew shirt from a Queen tour-- you just *knew* that this guy was passionate about all the knobs, dials and buttons he was playing with, and had honed his skills to a fine point. The bass and treble played out beautifully, and all that the row of us acting as the sound pit's front guard could do was lean against the metal meshing and give in to the gorgeous onslaught of sonic power.

I personally consider myself lucky enough to have caught Enslaved live, as they opened for Opeth. Not going to go into an in-depth take on their music, when it is obvious this guy already has, and with great authenticity of feeling. Enslaved put on a great live act (the HOB has a no-click rule, but thankfully Jason Sheesley posted gorgeous pics from this tour here). They are not interested in the performance, they are there to play their face-melting Viking metal, with enough power to shake every Scandinavian squirrel out of the ash Yggdrasil. Hadn't heard them before. Have decided though, they sound better live than on myspace, and only dip into the prog metal work that Opeth likes to dive deep in.

Vertebrae is probably a good gateway album for folks like me who haven't heard the older, meaner Enslaved. One track (can't find the set-list anywhere, but will edit this post once I check the album over twice) in particular made me reminisce about the troll that the lads from Metalocalypse invoke: one of my top five favourite dethklok moments. Ever.

Some folks got into it, but you could tell most everyone was there for Åkerfeldt & Co.

N.B.-- Opeth is not limited by the death metal tag. Being at an Opeth show is like listening to King Crimson, Black Sabbath, King Diamond, and Floyd all at once. Being at an Opeth show is to require no other stimulant apart from the music itself. It is to merely stand there and let your body and mind be taken over by the sound. Nothing else matters, truly: Opeth isn't a band of personalities and stage antics. It's a band of ten-minute operatic masterpieces and beautiful, long Swedish man-hair.

There is no single demographic that listens to Opeth, either. There were grubby school boys, older biker chicks, retired insurance agents, genuine metal heads, a group of Assamese gents n' ladies and the few mandatory emo children present, all of 'em adorned in black, for the most part. There were the Opeth forum folk, who knew every lyric and referred to key Opeth tracks by their recognized acronym (TNATSW, for instance). Lots of women, some who began dancing mid-mosh, which was great. Nothing like a metal chick dancing to Opeth. Something about the band's music, or perhaps popped X adds grace to human bodies like nothing else. Opeth was the pied piper, and each one of us moved the way their playing told us to. It helped that Mike Åkerfeldt has a ridiculously good sense of humor. He might just end up being the godfather of heavy metal stand-up, one day.

And the moshing. By all that is powerful in heaven and hell, what moshing. Esp. during Lotus Eater.

Some enterprising dick actually recorded some of it, which is awesome.

Mashallah-- I'm not the first one to comment on the correlation between the Dionysian and Heavy Metal. Weinstein (2000) said it best:

Dionysian experience . . . is embodied in the unholy trinity of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The Dionysian is juxtaposed to a strong emotional involvement in all that challenges the order and hegemony of everyday life: monsters, the underworld and hell, the grotesque and horrifying, disasters, mayhem, carnage, injustice, death and rebellion. Both Dionysus (the Greek god of wine) and Chaos (the most ancient god, who precedes from itself) are empowered by the sonic values of the music to fight a never-ending battle for the soul of the genre and to join together in combat against the smug security and safety of respectable society (35).

[get your hands on Weinstein's 'Heavy metal: the music and its culture' if you can. All the ladies downing vodka bulls will think you infinitely more awesome than you really are, of course. *coughs* ]

Opeth is technically not what you would call a mosher band. But something special happened that night, as people collectively moved into a frenzied zone of interaction which was war/rite of passage/youth/magic/delirium all meshed into one. We could've raised the dead that night, or at least a troll or two. We could've slapped the world into a wide-awakening, without knowing we had done so, not caring that we had, so caught up were we in the beauty and olden-type ritual magic that pervaded the general admission area at the HOB.

[1]

Ru-Ba-Ru: a Review

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:32:00 +0000

Disclaimer #1: I'm more of an independent movie fan, so if you're looking for in-depth pop references to older films, Hindi or otherwise, or cutesy tid-bits about the costume designer or choice of filming locations, you're at the wrong blog.

Disclaimer #2: I'm not a B-wood fangirl. I have watched exactly seven bollywood films in my 24 years of existence, the choice of which never depended on a particular artist's ability, but more on whose birthday treat was paying for what ticket. Of that list, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, is still my favourite.

Disclaimer #3: I know the director. As a writer and a friend, I count him among the select few who have a standing invitation to my funeral. However, this fact did not compel me to feverishly seek a torrent of his movie Ru-Ba-Ru when he told me about its release in September 2008. Nor did I ask mum to FedEx a copy over, or find a kind soul who would zip a .rar version and upload it on some massive oasis of server space at his/her disposal. In fact, it took me eight months and the collapse of a precariously balanced stack of discounted DVDs-- the one next to the discounted Parle-G biscuit stack-- at a local Indian grocery store to notice that a copy of Ru-Ba-Ru could be mine for what is essentially the cost of a large green tea and a sesame bagel at the Au Bon Pain in downtown Boston.

Things I love about this film?

It's run time. I know many folk who share at least 50% of my ethnicity enjoy the three hour song, dance and tears experience, but I for one would prefer to have my left eyeball dug out with a very blunt spoon (HT to Men in Tights) and eaten by a petulant Moroccan-trying-to-pass-for-French female shop assistant at the pastry wing of Harrods at Knightsbridge who was just told by her vicious little Japanese co-worker that Indian eyeballs were a great cure for the clap. In case you missed my point-- The movie held my attention right till the end.
A lack of item numbers. And item PYTs.
A fresh soundtrack. The track 'a beautiful day' needs special mention. Won't say more-- go read this guy's take for further details. He sounds like he gets paid for doing what he does.
The ballsiness with which it gives the finger to certain ingrained Bollywood tropes: the traditionalist parent is missing, as is the overly sympathetic one. Gone is the angry patriarch, the greater cast/community/family/clan/village to whose whims the lead actors usually give in or die in their attempt to protest. There is no cloyingly cute kid brother, no amusing side-kick, no the group identity portrayed through song, dance and bad costuming.
Corollary to # 4: fresh supporting characters. The mother and step-father of Nikhil are apologetic, understanding; they reach out to their prodigal son despite the distance he has maintained for so many years, and tell his girlfriend to forget about touching their feet-- a glorious eff-off to one of the most sacred cliches of family scenes in Bollywood. Tara's mother echoes the female Indian parent stereotype, but the fact that Tara controls their flow of communication (the mother is never seen, only heard as distant bleating over long distance phone calls) gives a realistic, modern slant to their dynamic.
No extended choreographed song/dance scenes. Though I will say, I don't believe the movie needed Tara's post-play "impromptu" performance-- Her ease with figuring out the intro chords/timing, and the spontaneous entry of costumed dancers (yet another revered trope) was a bit too.. err, promptu, for that particular scene. I would assume that someone integral to the film project must have declared that the life-affirming moment for the female lead had to come through a big finale in front of a 100% appreciative audience. Not sure, but hey, I've sat through worse. Really. I have.

The movie is very, very well made. The segues, the lighting (except for that final red filter in the cab), the establishing shots in the opening sequence... a lot about the camera work made me invest mentally and emotionally in this movie.

There were some things that threw me off-- like the camera treatment of the saxophone scene, and Tara's dialogues in the first half of the movie. Then again, the day I hear realistic female dialogue in a Hindi film of non-gritty subject matter, i.e. where the woman isn't fighting the ills of poverty, drug addiction, prostitution or an unmotivated husband given to arrack-guzzling, I shall spontaneously turn hermaphrodite and take Prince on in a UFC cage match.

I'm also not quite sure about Tara's motivation: until we are told that it's opening night, the character comes across as a poor little rich girl with one and a half daddy issues, striving to please her man. Her clumsy moments don't create comedy, but unease. They evoked in me painful memories of improv moments during Adzap on various inter-college cultural stages; perhaps if Tara's character was given a little more authenticity and grounding, I would have been able to relate to her in a happier light.

The radio bit in the opening scene didn't push my happy button, nor did the camera distance during the stage bits. But these are itty-bitty details, the stuff you come up with when you run a mind-comb through the things you like, such as best friends, favourite lovers and omelets ordered the same way at the same restaurant you've been going to for the past ten years, just because feeling that intimate with a person or thing, relating that closely tricks you into believing you have the delusionary right to do so.

I don't think Nikhil needed as many flash-back moments: those felt laboured, as did some of the foreshadowing bits. We all have a list of favourite movie scenes that have deja vu script treatments. My list for instance, includes (but is not limited to) memento, stranger than fiction, sliding doors, deja vu and of course, the black cat bit from The Matrix. Moments in the second half of Ru-Ba-Ru did stand out and create suspense, but I feel the scripting could have been more graceful here, & thusly could have added to the audience's building anxiety and Nikhil's desperation without necessarily turning it into a faux-action flick.

Googling to see what has been said about the film, I couldn't help but notice the repeatedly parroted statement that Ru-Ba-Ru is lifted from the Love-Hewitt flick, 'If Only'.

Um. So?

I'm sure some die-hard B-wood fan somewhere has blogged a list of Hindi movies that are "adaptations" or "homages" of existing movies, American and otherwise. Ladies n' gentlemen-- that list is long, and still growing. And it's not just scripts alone-- I've seen clips from Hindi films that pull from soundtracks, pop songs, mannerisms of various yank heroes and famous movie moments: the kaante/reservoir dogs walk scene, anyone?

The day I encounter a wholly original, non-derived Hindi movie... well, refer aforementioned statement regarding hermaphrodites and UFC cage matches. Like Jarmusch said, it's not about whether you derive or not-- It's how well you do it.

Additional Dialogue Quibble: The taxi driver's lines were predictable at times ("you already paid me yesterday" [paraphrase], for instance). Part of me did mourn Nikhil's final mini monologue but only because there is such anguish when you put yourself as a writer or person in that moment:

what can you tell the person you love most in the world about death, either yours or theirs? What can you tell them about dealing with a final absence, about all the time you are forced to give up spending with them, about the role of fate/god/chaos theory/luck? Perhaps the best thing to do is shuffle off one's mortal coil in silence-- think of that superb moment with Irfan Khan on the phone, towards the end of Nair's 'Namesake'.

I'm not sure.

What I do know is, the movie made me ask this question. It stirred emotions, and it made me impatient: I now want movies directed by Indians in India that are free of standard devices, every last frikkin bell & whistle of 'em. I want films that can be independently directed, free of any and all market forces. I want films that bitch-slap their marketing agents into telling the truth about a movie, for once, instead of pegging it to appeal to some established demographic. I want human stories: let them be melodramatic, colourful and accompanied by music for we are Indian after all, and some traits should never be changed, but in the name of all that has ever moved you, Ever, let these stories and their characters be real.

Go watch Ru-Ba-Ru. Fuck what the papers have told you, fuck what you heard, fuck your dependency on formulas and you just might allow yourself to be surprised by the degree of honesty in this film. It isn't perfect: it holds all the promise of what can be, instead.

Indie Magazines Unite!

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Erm, actually folks, don't. Uniting is going to bring with it a tonne of bother, ranging from opposing political ideologies to disagreements over Chinese take-out.

(Pot stickers, you bastids, POT STICKERS!!)

Instead, leave it to folk like Stack.

Yes ma'am. I am the newest and biggest fan of Stack and its methods-- suitably illustrated in the following screen shot:

If you can afford the subscription fees and have bookshelf space, do it. For now, the website and its blog rich with links to free online editions of indie mags like Little White Lies are going into the top spot on my 'Take that, Andy Warhol' list (scroll down, right ==>)

American Splendour, or the Cognitive Dissonance of Place

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Growing up in the Gulf and in India, comics meant Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin, Asterix and the occasional MAD magazine. The year I was born, neighbors who were moving back to the U.K sold my parents a stack of magazines, records and plateware-- this is how I discovered Beano, Buster and the Dandy in 1992, comics that were already old enough then that the paper had turned a fragrant, faded brown.

But that was the full extent of my knowledge of comics-- as far as I was concerned, they were stories and characters created to entertain, amuse and instruct; some were based in history or myth to varying degrees, while others taught me factoids about pop culture in the U.K and U.S-- the candy kids ate, what a soda fountain used to mean, the role of the ham burger.

And then there are comics like American Splendour.

Call it conditioning, misdirected Socialism, or anything you'd like-- growing up, I never imagined you could make a comic about life as you knew it. As a kid, I never imagined a comic could be anything but funny, or action-filled. Even the comic strips that came closest to real life like Chacha Chaudhary still told stories where the bad guys always lost.

I'm a bit of a reverse fan of American Splendour-- I saw the movie before I read the comics. Though I did read and own Persepolis, part 1 and 2 before hearing about the movie, if that's any redemption.

Fact remains, folk like Satrapi and Pekar changed my perception about what can be put between two covers. Whether as comics or as graphic novels, artists who revealed bits of their life for their readers impressed me with their courage more than documentaries on Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi (May their tribe increase) ever could, mainly because as people, these artists and their characters aren't figureheads in historical situation, they aren't called upon to be leaders, saints or good examples. Instead, they are extraordinary in that they choose to put their story out there, however fraught with disillusionment or a sense of failure. And thus they are shining geniuses. Warriors in sweat pants with ink stained fingers.

Pekar created a title that would inflict as much irony as possible in two words. Cleveland, OH after all is not exactly a city that invokes a starry, let alone spangled American Dream, however post-modern. And yet, there is no better word for the entirety of his work, or the emotion the comics elicit other than Splendour. Because what makes Pekar's world remarkable is what makes the rest of America the Unsung, America the Unloved, America who's not on prime time worthy of a most secret joy--

Pekar's America is the America folk on the outside never see. It's Ginsberg's Sunflower. It's Stewart O' Nan's Night Country. It's the folk who trek to Burning Man. It's the people who drive in search of Highway 66. It's late night convenience stores. It's the surfers who ride tanker waves off the Galveston coast. It's parades and festivals and street performances. It's the America of small towns and mill towns, open country and highways, streets and avenues that the tourists and news channels always miss.

Maybe it's because I'm constantly trying to understand what home means to me. I can't live in a town or country without rationalizing why I'm here and not there. So maybe this is all just cognitive dissonance, an attempt to justify why I'm here and not in India, or Oman, or anywhere else I've previously been.

But there's something to be said for being msafiri. Wander long enough and you tend to start craving a common denominator, some artifact, expression, sound or food that helps you enter new communities, communicate with new people. We carry our perceptions of how ourselves and certain other things should be, such as sandwiches, or greeting people you really don't want to but have to, or when it's okay to ask for ketchup. All of this becomes our identity, a big, invisible radar that picks up on other people's stories and situations. Think of it as a whimsical form of high context communication.

Which is why while watching American Splendour earlier this morning for the nth time, I couldn't stop the empathy from flowing.

Yes! This is how I want it to be for myself, this is how it should be-- unapologetic, sometimes cowardly, filled with doubt, searching for the right thing to do and always opening life up and picking out threads that have appeared before, that will continue despite me, that means something to someone else. And perfect endings be damned.

I wonder whether such stories could ever happen in India. Probably not. The sense of community and carefully charted out social roles there, the carefully guarded circles in the artistic and political world, the threadbare laws that govern privacy, intellectual copyrights and collaboration, the lack of supporters for any sort of underground creative movement all comes together to mean one thing--There is no particular god in India that protects the loser, the underdog, the manic-depressive 9 to 7evener, the awkward comic book nerd with no social skills, the lone warrior who puts his or her ass out on the line without fear of censorship or criticism because she or he basically has nothing to lose, or doesn't care anymore.

Does this make living here, in this non-tourist, non-urban, non-indian immigrant part of the United States any more appetizing?

Nope.

But it does mean that by not creating art, despite being as free as I am right now of any sort of censorship, self-inflicted, group-inflicted or otherwise, I am an even bigger failure than I first imagined.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe we have a break-through.

Think I'll go finish editing that story now.

Where do Warheads Go When they Die?

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:22:00 +0000

Alternative Title: On Why I Am Ecstatic About Not Living in Amarillo, TX

I, to use the vernacular, <3 Foreign Policy Magazine. It's the one publication where government, policy and socio-economic issues in countries as diverse as Congo, Uzbekistan, Germany & East Timor are dealt with equally and objectively. And since material is contributed by academics and/or experts in their particular field, there is no stink of party politics either. Happily, no one has yet labeled FP with the doomsday preacher epithet.

Even when it publishes an article on the shelf-life and dismantling of nuclear weapons.

It's worth reading, in its entirety. Jeffrey Lewis has commendable credits, and Meri Lugo is one of those bright young intern types who I occasionally dream of becoming.

And for those of you curious about the safety measures undertaken by Pantex to ensure future generations of the good people of Amarillo aren't born with extra fingers and three purple tentacles, do pay a visit to the What to Do in Case of an Emergency at Pantex page. The instructions are a step-by-step approach to dealing with a nuclear apocalypse. What's most terrifying is, they aint kiddin'.

I bet OSHA pays them a bunch of visits. In 2000, reports were filed with the DOE regarding apparent ground water contamination at Pantex:

One report focusing on the plant's groundwater monitoring program confirms last year Pantex Plant operators did not follow DOE procedures, resulting in an approximate nine month delay in notifying senior managers and the public of newly discovered groundwater contamination at the site.

Yikes.

And for the conspiracy-theory enthusiasts, visit these good people for the whole scoop: they provide you with fun facts-- You'll be the life of a party!-- just like this one:

A 1996 study by the US Department of Health and the Texas Department of Health found higher than normal cancer rates in the counties surrounding Pantex. Although the report failed to link the high cancer rate to activities at Pantex, local citizens believe otherwise. One resident keeps a map of the nearby city of Panhandle with straight pins marking the cases of cancer in the town between 1975 and 1994. For a town with a population of only 2,300, over 400 people have been stricken with some sort of cancer.

It makes me wonder about similar facilities elsewhere in the world: where else is water being contaminated, and do those facilities have a contingency plan in case of a plant mishap?

More reasons why I am not fond of things that go boom.

The Politics of Hair-- an Indian Redux

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:47:00 +0000

That girl at twenty-
her black hair ripples
through the comb
in the pride of spring --
such beauty!
(sono ko hatachi kushini nagaruru kurokami no
ogori no haru no utsukushiki kana)

- Yosano Akiko, Midaregami: The Poetry of Yosano Akiko, 1952.

2005, the L'Oréal salon in Chennai. I was at the eye of a storm, all because Susan (one of the head stylists) and I had bonded instantly over the fact that I wanted my hair cut, as short as possible. Something with an edge, I said. Susan’s smile on hearing the word “edge” was the biggest I had ever received in a salon. She went to work with razors, clippers and two vats of colour, one copper, the other fire-engine red. Considering every other female there was getting a “trim” with the odd blonde highlight or two, Susan and I had unknowingly provided entertainment and conversational fodder for the next two and a half hours. From that day onwards, the fire-spikes got me more than just a little attention. A nun at my college (yes, it was a catholic institution) hinted that I might be setting a bad example, but found it hard to explain herself when I asked her why.

It confused the good people of the city. The look and my behavior didn’t fit into the virgin-whore dichotomy which was applied by locals to all female inhabitants of this South Indian urban village where gender is reduced to male and female, with every other identity broadly mocked, shunned or witch hunted, depending on what the mob had for breakfast. So though I never received comments fueled by either rejection or revulsion, I was broadly given to understand that I was an outsider. A strange anomaly that was ignored in the hope that it would disappear.

What’s a girl to do?

I always had short hair. My parents figured it was cheap and easy to manage. Growing up, this made me happy because I never had to deal with well-oiled hair or lice; infernal attributes of long-hairiness I observed my compatriots struggle with.

The happiness turned to angst soon enough. What my parents hadn’t told me was that there exists a direct relation between the length of a woman’s hair and her perceived attractiveness and femininity in the eyes of a majority of the human specie.

I first thought it was an Indian male thing. A thousand apologies, my countrymen. I have wronged you. You who are woefully unenlightened in terms of female sexuality, ye Freudian frou-frous! Scared of strong women due to your unaddressed mother issues, God how I love you all! Group hug.

However, time and travel has taught me otherwise. Men—and women—are biologically programmed to perceive hair length as being significantly correlated to female attractiveness (Grammer et al., 2002)
According to the Second Annual Sun/COMPAS Sex Survey (1999), the following attributes are what men seek in a potential mate:
* Average body type over 20 lbs above average
* Any kind of smile
* Brown hair over any other natural colour or dyed blonde
* Long or medium length hair over short
* The same height or slightly shorter but not taller
* The same education or more but not less
* The same income or more but not less
* A kindergarten teacher or perhaps a businesswoman but not a lawyer, and
* One who liked to wear jeans or perhaps fancy apparel, but not mini-skirts.

Sure, the sample's limited generalizability needs to be taken into account, and the culture, education and religion of the survey participants might have influenced their responses. Perhaps these answers only relate to the male readers of the Toronto Sun for the year 1999. But I would humbly proffer the opinion that demographic differences despite, optimal hair length is a pretty engendered idea in our collective awareness.

Women (and men) across cultures have written about the emotional connection they have with their protein filaments. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, assistant professor of Japanese at Vassar College, has written on female sexuality in the poetry of Yosano Akiko. According to her,

“Hair is another important symbol of femininity. Long and black hair has been admired and depicted in works of art for centuries… it is part of women’s identity. Long black hair symbolizes the nobility, gracefulness and sexuality of aristocrat women. The image of hair is a significant motif in the depiction of romantic situations in Japanese literature. Yosano Akiko, who grew up reading classic literature, had a romantic attachment to the traditional image of hair and a longing for the passionate and romantic love which is associated with beautiful long hair.
Measures my hair a full five feet
And washed and combed so soft and fair
As is my heart virginal and sweet
I cherish with a tender care
[trans. Honda Heihachiro]
(Kami goshaku tokinaba mizu ni yawarakaki
Onnna gokorowa himete hanataji)
The girl's soft, black and tender hair is cherished by the girl herself. Just like her cleanly washed hair, she is pure and innocent... In ancient court poetry, hair was often used to express the inner feelings of women. The movement of hair was used as a perfect means of expressing such feelings as anger, frustration, confusion, and jealousy which were caused by romantic relationships with men. Izumi Shikibu, a female poet from 11th century, presents a wonderfully emotional hair image:
My black hair tangled
As my own tangled thoughts,
I lie here alone,
Dreaming of one who has gone,
Who stroked my hair till it shone.
(Kurokami no midaremo shirazu
uchifuseba mazukakiyarishi hitozo koishiki)
Black tangled hair implies the confusion and uneasy feeling caused by love relationships. Tangled hair also suggests erotic beauty and implies the intimacy of men and women in bed… The flood of emotion and overwhelming feelings of love are expressed through hair.”

Why did no one tell me this?

Oh, wait. Perhaps they did. Except their stories never included women with beautiful, long hair who did much more than tend gardens or their families, cast spells and then get kidnapped and rescued in equal amounts. Instead of embracing this idea of femininity, I decided to go another way. Would I have had the same personality and received the same attention, positive and negative, if my hair had been of a different length? I have no way of knowing this.

I do know that during my two year experiment with long hair, I received far more compliments and admiration from both sexes than ever before. Men I hadn’t spoken to in a while saw my picture and made amusing attempts to re-establish contact. Women began discussing how they ran their household and took care of their kids with me. Cosmetic counter girls stopped ignoring my presence. “Uncles” and “Aunties” began asking me about my future, if I had “found anyone” yet.

Maybe it just got to be a bit much. A drag act that didn't have a curtain call.

Reger, Myers & Einwohner, the authors of Identity work in social movements, write about the song "I Am What I Am" from the musical, The Bird Cage--

In drag shows, this song becomes a ritual not only because of the frequency of its inclusion but also because the manner in which it is performed is highly predictable. During each performance of the song, Margo removes her wig at the end of the number, breaking the illusion of femininity by exposing her underlying short and thinning hair... Removing the wig at the end of this song is a common technique institutionalized by drag performers across the country... Describing her feelings the first time she saw a drag queen perform "I Am What I Am", a focus group participant stated: "... I always get choked up now when I hear that song because there was a thing of acceptance..."

Hmm. The end of an act, then.

I do love the rituals of having long hair, though. The oiling, shampooing, conditioning, the rinse and repeat. The towel turban I could wear high on my head. Flicking it over my shoulder just when I knew that adorable lad who got off at Kendall Square was looking. Hell, I’ll say it-- I loved the admiration. Years of keeping the hair treatment-free had resulted in the long black silk that is the gift of my mother's genetics.

But it got hard to deal with, on windy days and late nights back on a long train ride. The hair was tied up when I had to work. The more I had to work, the more annoying the mop got.

Whimsical Assumption #1: Women in positions of power or who commute at a high rate have shorter, more manageable, practical do’s.

Corollary to Whimsical Assumption # 1: Women with shorter, more manageable, practical do’s have to work harder to allay perceptions of them being dominating, mean-spirited, hard, butch, gay, a misandrist or given to hard-line radical feminism.

There’s a great article on Divine Caroline regarding Michelle Obama and her hairstyle choices:

In her own role as potential First Lady, Michelle Obama’s hair is politically correct. America expects the wife of Barack Obama, the man who wants to be president, to project an image of sophistication and near perfection. That image includes having hair that doesn’t make waves.

The article goes on to illustrate the troubled relationship that hair and politics have in the U.S. Throw in racial stereotypes and it turns into a Molotov cocktail—

Mainstream America considers styles that reflect the European aesthetic more acceptable and less likely to offend. Hairstyles with African roots don’t get the same respect. To say someone has a nappy head is considered an insult, and the word “nappy,” which merely describes the kinky texture of hair, is practically considered a profanity. In polite circles, the word is euphemistically referred to as “natural.”
Natural hair wearers have seen their politics; patriotism and even their hygiene come under attack. Their Afros, braids, locks and twists have been considered unprofessional, and many who have worn the styles have been demoted or have lost their jobs. Wearers of natural hairstyles also have not escaped being labeled subversive or being perceived as social misfits.

Jessica Lyons over at AlterNet has an article on why female hairstyles in politics benefit from being unchanging. Read it here.

According to Connie Koppelman, a professor of the Women's Studies Program at SUNY Stony Brook,

Hairstyles can signify conformity, for example, to army regulations, monastic celibacy, or any group-determined aesthetic. Hairstyles can also signify rebellion. Today many women choose to shave their heads as a sign of female bonding and sometimes as a form of protest against the beauty myth. Whether they go bald for personal or political reasons, bald-headed women are often perceived as threatening, perhaps because of the negative connotations associated with baldness as a sign of age, punishment, illness, or rebellion... hair ’s sexual attraction is controlled by society-or we should say patriarchy--as it has been for thousands of years. According to many polls, hair remains one of the six most sensuous parts of the body.

This is all very interesting, of course, but where does that leave all of us, the ones who aren’t running for government any time soon, who aren't starting a revolution, the ones who left the confines of Indian tradition seven seas behind, the ones who cut it on a whim, cut it because shampoo costs too damn much, cut it or shaved it clean because it was less painful than watching it fall off in clumps or two strands at a time?

What happens if you live in a country like India, where it doesn’t matter how liberal, educated or well-traveled you and your parents are, where everything about your appearance is judged as you grow up, and then judged twice as much once you approach that brutal phase referred to in the vernacular as “the marriageable age”?

Walking back from my hair appointment, my neck feeling colder than it had in a long while, I considered what I had given up, if I had given up anything at all. The stylist kept pausing to ask “are you okay?” Apparently she is used to women bursting into tears mid-snip. I thought back to that long ago evening with Susan in Chennai and laughed. I remembered how I tossed my head, a rockstar now, getting high on every look of shock, disgust and admiration. I remember wearing a sari that matched my highlights for a college ceremony.

I remember spiking my hair carefully, wearing a sardonic look with humility and grace, and feeling incredibly left out of the female collective of my colleagues at the end of that day. Still alone, that strange anomaly.

Walking through the front door, my other half greeted me with a smile and the following words—“you look just like you did the first time I met you.”
And just like that, my neck was not cold anymore.

Do what you have to do, ladies and gentlemen. Wear your hair in a way that fills you with pride, comfort and sexiness at anytime of the day or night. Cut it to make a statement, cut it to because you are tired, cut it to donate to Locks of Love. Fight that niggling urge to explain yourself.

And if you lose, like I did, go blog, and send me the link, willya?

On the relevance of the Opera to a Legal Alien

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:40:00 +0000

There was a time when the Opera was the only upmarket entertainment folks had access to.

And yes, it's long been associated with that stereotyped, heaving behemoth of imperialist, artificial snobbery that characterizes so much of what movies & books of the 1900s taught us about what rich europhiles did for fun. Even when included in memes of a working class life on screen, characters like Vivian Ward and Loretta Castorini came across as women holding on desperately, whimsically to a castle built back when they still wore pigtails.

That time is long past. Opera, like most every form of public [read: donor-based] Art has been evolving into performance that can be related to, understood intuitively and still cherished as an experience of something that is relatable, yet magical.

It was with this belief that I found myself at Boston's Schubert Theater last Friday, for a performance of Dvořák's Rusalka (go here for the synopsis) staged by the Boston Lyric Opera.

Why Dvořák?

a) You have to google his name to get the accent marks right. That is cool.
b)He was part of my impromptu yet highly creative classical music education four years ago.
c)He admired Bedřich Smetana who wrote Ma Vlast, which is a beautiful piece for those who love air-conducting, and watching the dawn come up over water, through trees.

Why Rusalka?

I was one of those girls who adored Disney's Little Mermaid back in 1990. But with the changing years came a few realizations about the nature of ingrained, subliminal evil and ergo, things changed. I needed to know an older, grislier version of the story, with tough chicks, blood, gore... and no happy ending.

Friday evening saw me clomping up the stairs of Schubert Theater in a brand new pair of black pumps. This activity was part of an attempt to play nonchalant dress-up. Nothing too elaborate, you understand. As a first-timer I knew I had to aim for somewhere between the flared jeans and the fur coat.

Word to the wise: Unless you belong to that particular genus of the female specie that travels easily on stilts, do not attempt making a night at the Opera the first high-heeled expedition of your life. Operas can run up to 3 hours with two short intervals, and the leg-room space in the balcony is reminiscent of Delta/BA transatlantic economy-class flights.

The first to arrive for the Rusalka performance were the senior members of the audience. There is something lovely about standing just inside the glass doors and watching while older couples exit sedate cars, gracefully making their way up the shallow stairs into the theater.

Traveling on the T, or walking through Boston, coming across such couples used to elicit a range of emotions in me: subconsciously, I kept to unspoken rules about being a foreigner: by avoiding loud talk, establishing ease with the local language and keeping to my space-- whether on the right of the stairway/elevator or staying out of priority seating-- I let these people know that I didn't want to intrude, that I wasn't overtaking their city, that I had my own way and most importantly, that I wasn't like every other FOB who wandered around the city taking pictures, wearing Sox hats without knowing the first thing about the franchise or the game.

It's hard being an alien in New England. There are studies ad infinitum in cross cultural psychology that show how aliens from most every Asian country experience issues with adaptation in America. It's often a choice between being a fake-accented brown noser or being a die-hard, ethnic-roots flag-waver. This city houses both groups. Each group regards the other with genial disdain, and if you arrive here with more than one cultural identity in their kit, you have to deal with said groups, and with locals assuming you belong to one or the other.

No one has time in a big city for individual stories, unless that story resonates beyond geographical and social boundaries.

Which is why the Opera can be the Great Leveler. Unlike Broadway or sporting events, it has no place for posers. Suddenly, no one cares what you look and sound like once you're through the theater doors, armed with ticket stubs. Suddenly, it's all about the story and music.

This is where Rusalka comes in. It has beautiful, sweeping romantic music: repeating motifs that work as choruses, detailed tonal painting that covers the range of human emotion without being Wagnerish. Basically, you don't have to be Czech or an Opera-head to get it.

The story is relatable:

Rusalka chooses to love a man who comes from and belongs to another world. A total stranger to her. Their love is instinctive, wordless, like the thunderbolt that hits Michael Corleone the first time he sees Apollonia in Sicily.
Her father and sisters beg her to see the error of her love, telling her that she belongs to the world she was born in.
She goes to a witch who laughs at her longing, but empathizes despite. She tells Rusalka the costs of this love will be almost unbearable, that if it doesn't work out there will be hell to pay, quite literally.
Of course the relationship doesn't work out-- they are too different, he wants too much and she's been struck mute as part of her deal with the witch. The visiting foreign princess is the perfect other woman: intelligent, eloquent and skilled in social graces.
Rusalka realizes he's full of hot air, regrets giving up her water nymph self and her water nymph virginity. Do note, her father throughout this has not cast her off. In fact, he comes back to counsel and comfort her, yelling at her for throwing away her water nymph life but still holding her close as he guides her away to the netherworld.
The foreign princess tells the prince he's a fickle twit and that he can f**k off. You want to hate her, but you can't because she only exposed what Rusalka refused to admit: the prince was never the right guy for her.
Rusalka can't fit in anymore, because she's been scarred by all she's been through. The witch tells her the only way to return to her previous, happy life, is to kill the prince. Rusalka can't do it: the guy was a dick, but she still loves him. The prince finally comes crawling by, desperate with need for that taste he never fully understood and now misses like clean air; Rusalka tells him if they kiss he will die.
He dramatically begs to be sent away because "life is nothing without you." Rusalka does the deed, remarking that she hopes he finds forgiveness from someone else, while her father declares that all sacrifice is futile.

This is the sh*t that resonates, man.

There are many delicate, beautiful moments in this opera. Of particular note is the Song to the Moon, sung by Rusalka. Here is a performance of that song by Gabriela Beňačková, possibly the most well-renowned Slovak soprano in the world.

The production itself was stunning. The sets and lighting were remarkable in their minimalism and use of video projection. Marquita Lister as Rusalka tore your heart out and sang it into the rafters till it hung there with those of the other audience members, like so many lost helium balloons into the night. Nancy Maultsby as Jezibaba the witch stole the show.

Sitting in the balcony that night with the house lights out, you couldn't tell where other audience members came from, how much they earned or what language they were most comfortable in. Your enjoyment or knowledge of the story didn't have to be validated, and for those three hours, a theater full of grown-ups was allowed to dream up and remember stories from their own lives and their own countries, breaking and mending their love all over again.

It was good realizing that there are places like the Schubert Theater, this far from home, where such magic can still happen.

Mother's music, radio milk.

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:02:00 +0000

Being up into the wee hours of the night is awesome.

No two ways about it. Don't care how you got here, who you fought, who you killed, what pills you took that are lethal if you fall asleep post-ingestion. Fact remains, staying up, without wasting the beauty of all this dark on an assignment or project is... Lovely. Awesome, even. A word which is subtly falling out of favour, if you think about it. Script writers have panned it too frequently, and one senses its demise into the Word Graveyard. A grim place, the WG, containing hoary old timers such as "bodacious", an adjective which went out of fashion in '94, and -strangely- has nothing to do with Queen Boadicea. If it did, it would've probably survived. But I digress.

So yes, late-night/pre-dawn is still a magike time. Tis the only time when both dreams and nostalgia co-exist and correlate in perfect rhythm. And the music! Criminy! 1:19am, at least in this country, is the only time you find yourself capable of opening up the oldest version of Winamp you have stored on your 'puter, and putting together a list that you haven't listened to in a decade and a half.

Admit it-- if you were born in the early 80's, your go-to music still remains late 70's through to the mid-90's, with perhaps a few anachronistic numbers thrown in. This latter bit, of course, is a gesture: you tossing your head, exclaiming "Faugh! I am not yours completely, Good Sir" in the general direction of the powerful yet gentle golem called Memory who sits at your side, in the rocking chair that survives now only in your head.

N.B-- No clue why my present self uses Tudor English while communicating with my past self.

Growing up on FM daytime radio in Muscat, circa '95, all I heard was Foreigner. Roxette. The Stones. Eagles, and after the Eagles, Don Henley. Sting. Springsteen. And then, there was dad's collection he would put on in the evening, just before bed time. Him and I sitting on the couch, me falling asleep, him nursing a night-cap.

Some Glen Miller. Some Billie Holiday. Stairway to Heaven, on Zeppelin 4. Dark Side of the Moon. Roger Whittaker, live in concert. An Andrew Lloyd Webber collection, some Bruce Hornsby; José Feliciano covering 'Light my Fire'. Dionne Warwick, that 1985 production that had her only billboard hit 'That's what friends are for', though dad and I preferred 'whispers in the dark'. Tracy Chapman- Mountains o' things. Joni Mitchell, the 'chalkman in the rain' album.

When we moved to India, and I started staying up later with my own music, the tracks changed. And then came the Great Fall: torn, then badly healed ligaments kept me at home for about 5 months, during which time all I had was my Winamp, my angst, and a valiant pair of Bose speakers.

My mother was raised Catholic. What that means is, she spent those 5 months tuned into my music and my err, pain. Every song I played conveyed a message to her. I suppose playing 'Englishman in New York' on repeat would give away the fact it had become a personal anthem to anyone, but what was interesting was it didn't just stop with just the obvious. When I listened to Travis, she listened to Travis. And Pearl Jam. And Eurythmics. And System of a Down, fighting the need to mutter a prayer on my behalf all the while.

Mum never stopped listening from then on, in fact. Dad would only sit in if it was music he recognized. Can't blame him; after a time, you only want things that are comfortable to surround your senses with.

Hence long lost play lists, on outmoded software, at 1:44am.

My favourite times though, was when mum was left in the company of the music system alone, while I busied myself inside with the computer and dad was out. She would sneak a CD or tape on-- Harry Belafonte, Simon & Garfunkel or Clayderman, even. Mum loves piano music. And when the electricity failed, which was often, she would put a chair out in the balcony, and hum softly. My brother and I would sneak glances at her during these times, listening whether the sound came in digital surround or acapella-- don't think we understood what we were seeing then, just sensed its importance.

See, comfort music, like comfort food, is the music you grew up with. Which is why nothing makes me smile like Peter, Paul & Mary's 'Puff the Magic Dragon'. This is when names and lyrics suddenly turn up like names to faces in old photographs you had begun to believe didn't belong to the same life you lead now. And suddenly, you're right there. Right there. Scrawling down lyrics in the back of note books, forward-winding the tape to just the right spot so that when you flipped it and pressed play, the right song would come on. A-Ha's 'hunting high and low', Boys II Men's cover of 'Yesterday'. It didn't feel like pop music back then. 'I wanna know what love is' had this gosphel-soul sound in its chorus, and when that Norwegian-looking lead singer belted out those impossibly high notes in 'Take on me' you believed in love that linked souls across lifetimes and space-time continuums. Rocking out to 'You give love (a bad name)' with a fat yellow sharpie for a mic was fuckin' real, you put your heart and soul into it, grooving to that great bass line Jhnn-chh-jhn-chh-Jhnn-Jjhnn-jhnnn after the opening chorus. And when the Scorpions came on?

...

Man, I had my first spiritual revelations to 'Send me an Angel'. 'Winds of Change' reminds me till this day that the most awesome --aw fuck it, bodacious even-- thing to ever happen to me at age 9 was being told that my uncle was one of the artists chosen to paint on what was left of the Berlin Wall. And just like that-- it doesn't matter anymore, what words were exchanged, what silences were left to hang in the air like hungry gulls, whose heartbreak, which loss, who doesn't matter anymore and how redemption will ever be found.

These are the moments that never fit into Twitter, nor a status msg. This is where you come back, to find a years younger version of you, writing their name inside E. Nesbit books, playing at pirates after school (Tej, this thought is for you), getting their best friend to cut and style their hair, holding "dance parties" in their room by creating a disco using a much-maligned desk-lamp, pieces of coloured glaze paper, numerous casettes and a busted up portable tape deck, swearing that life could only get more awesome.

Doesn't matter if it's true now, or not. Because an hour or so later at 2:48am, 'You can't always get what you want' has just got to the funky keys and chorus big finish, and you realize that it is in these memories, kept coal-fire-live by sound bytes, that the best part of you still survives.

I call that a bargain, the best I ever had.

Huzzah for hairy legs!

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:51:00 +0000

For, if we are to believe Daniel W. Drezner, long skirts are back in fashion again. As are angry old men, chubby models, church going and piggy banks.

Peruse the man's writing at Foreign Policy magazine, here.

# 345 on your 'Things to Do': Learn Game Theory from an M.I.T professor during your lunch break.

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:13:00 +0000

You will need about an hour, a dependable internet connection, and more than just passing curiosity.

The lectures made available courtesy Academic Earth are not your average Google or Youtube posts. They go far beyond the informative yet easy comprehensible TED videos as well: do not access Academic Earth if you are looking to be entertained alone. Visit the website if you are one of those folk who have always wanted the lesson, just not the visa fees and application package.

Academic Earth is a depository of lecture videos on the classics: Astronomy, Engineering, Economics, History, Philosophy, Psychology and Religion are just some of the covered subjects. Slate Magazine has a great article on this remarkable endeavor, here.

My one gripe is the limited list of participating universities: One hopes this project opens up to valuable lectures from other universities, Ivy or otherwise, though I don't want to imagine the sort of snafus the selection committee would run into while selecting one professor's discourse over another. Not quite sure how "international" the scope of this project is either-- the tag line does state "thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars", but there is very little of the rest of the world involved, at least at this stage. We shall call it room for development, then.

Personally, I believe this is one of the best things that could happen vis-à-vis Web 2.0 and associated bleargh, because it's an attempt to chip away at the exclusivity aura that surrounds the act of enrolling in classes where such subjects are discussed, at such depth. This means you and I don't have to sell two organs and our first born to get inputs on String Theory, or the contributing factors to the Middle East Crisis. This also means, learning at one's own pace. Does this change how education has worked till now? Perhaps, but only if such projects become more popular.

Of course, there's that old donkey to the pond adage. The creation of Academic Earth does not necessarily mean that knowledge levels of any particular demographic can be affected significantly, yet.

But heck, for late night web trawlers with a hunger for what is as yet unlearned and brain-space fueled by caffeine & a distaste for the daily news?
...
Aye. Exactly.
Ping me later, I'll be browsing the Social Entrepreneurship section.

Bhangra on daytime t.v.

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Gotta love the 81st Oscars.

Finally, despite the usual camera tactics (Brangelia angles as Anniston was on stage, et al) it was a terrific show with lovely segues and a celebration of the Musical's return. Viva Jackman! Lovely seeing Jerry Lewis on stage, and Penelope Cruz's acceptance speech was the essence of honesty and beautiful humility. Nuts to what the papers say, I liked the Best Actress award transition.

What was and is horrifying, however inevitable, were the reactions of daytime American talk show hosts and anchors. Granted, Boyle's project swept 8 out of 10 awards it was nominated for, but ad hoc Bollywood boogieing sessions? In studio, roping in every crew member and intern, arming them with gold swathes of cloth and ordering them to jig side to side energetically on pain of death? Seriously?

Sigh.

Considering daytime shows tend to hire longships-full of midget "research people" to drag up the most popular memes of the day and/or previous night, one could have wished that the fact bollywood dance sequences have been a part of Hollywood for a while now could have been recognized. It aint new, bub. Remember Bollywood/Hollywood? The Guru? The Love Guru? The ending credits scene from 40 year old virgin? Namesake? Bride and--*shivers*-- Prejudice?

When Reliance's expansion into movie production in the U.S. was first announced, articles were scarce. This piece from the WSJ however, did a good job discussing Indian-U.S movie collaborations.

What is amusing is the huge row in certain circles over the title of Boyle's movie. Granted, movies are often the basis for the creation of most stereotypes the world over, BUT-- the movie is Slumdog Millionaire. Not Attleboro's Gandhi. And Boyle has previously directed Trainspotting & The Beach, not Ben Hur, or Schindler's List. Give the entire crew a break: it's a movie made to entertain. But if only to battle all possible stereotypes the movie might give rise to, read and pass on this: huzzah for the NYTimes!

N.B-- Ahem. Hadn't realized this nomenclature had become established. Though in my defense, had never heard the term "Asian Indian" before. Hm. Shall stick to checking off "Other" on all them enrollment forms.

Oh aye--

Jai Ho, bitches.

The Day of Origin post

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:53:00 +0000

24 years doesn't feel like much time, though it should. I guess the persnickety old fool was right, youth *is* wasted on the young, to a certain extent, though in all honesty I doubt I could've spent all these years any better than I did.

The concern remains of course, for the years ahead.

I maintain that I've been blessed in terms of visions, as well as wisdom out of the mouths of friends and occasionally the radio: everything, including spam from astrology.com [Yes, I signed up for a free offer. Yes, I know you did as well] has pointed to making life choices-- remembering what's important, remembering what I set out to do, and realizing now is the time for all those plans and dreams to come together.

Overall feeling of the day? Gratitude.

My ideal birthday soiree [once the book comes out and there are funds generated for such] would be a big band swing orchestra, a ballroom, champagne and good whiskey, and everyone dressed up like it's the 1920s. Everything will be beautiful and bright. Old friends and enemies would laugh at and with each other. Our grandparents would all be alive and present, as would our children. Someone would sing "At Last", and I think I know who. We'd pick flowers from all the center-pieces and cluster-bomb each other. And at 12, we all lose our footwear and run down to sands and the sea [of course this would be a tropical place, you kiddin' me?] and laugh around fires, under stars, passing around bottles and stories.
It will be perfect.

For tonight, I'll be happy with some Cao Ila, and Sinatra singing the songs he does best. Soft lighting, watching through the window as the town here struggles with and then sleeps, exhausted and deep, under the blanketing snow.

A final thought: midst visions of the goddess and the best advice I have ever received in my life, the past few days also gave me words that have finally laid to rest every lingering doubt I've had about my mish-mashed, ad hoc, msafiri/sub-altern/post-colonial/post-its/post-modern/post-box identity. Hail Jarmusch, you and your kind.

Of Non Obvious Messages

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:47:00 +0000

The last SMS I sent was over a year ago. My current phone plan doesn't allow such luxuries, and there is no "topping off", no Airtel in this vast land of two-year contractual woes.

Why SMS anyway, when Google came through the way it did with its revolutionary "chat within your mailbox" applet. Couldn't be happier, for here finally was the Reaper of all Reapers, the dynamic traffic-light themed list that made us choose who we wished to ping often, who we would ping only on birthdays, and who were just plain un-pingable.

Despite its apparent simplicity however, the genius of gChat's design is its pliability. The variations of simple emoticons, available in collections ranging from the minimalist to the baroque. The Red Dot Status that is merely a front for a comfortable long conversation with a certain someone, or an effective barrier against queries regarding work, weather and the spelling of the word "itinerary" by a random contact who remembered mid-email that you graduated with a B.A in English and voila, are seemingly online. The disclaimer that you are busy, and they may be interrupting never really stands in said random contact's way. Hence, the Invisibility Option! Add voice and video to this potent, easy-to-use, no separate log-in required mixture and you have the reason why MSN and Yahoo weep themselves to bed every night nowadays.

Not that I don't miss sending an SMS, or two. A strange life it is when you feel nostalgic about events that took place no more than four years ago: the old reliable nokias, the furtive charging in computer labs and backstage during rehearsals, the daily struggle for available balance and then finally when the last recharge finally proved insufficient, the use of missed calls to convey messages.

Ah, missed calls! That wonderful meme of Indian youth culture! One ring meant, "call me back". Two rings meant, "the prof just walked into class, get here quick!" And good luck if you were industrious enough to be in loue at the same time as having restricted balance options. The missed call signal manual suddenly expanded exponentially to not only include new messages-- three rings means I have access to a landline and will be calling you from a strange number, but it's me alright, so pick up!-- but also messages from his or her friends as well.

It's less hectic now, though. And what with the Tower of Babelish sort of communication the world has going for it these days vis a vis acronyms, smileys, glocalized slang, song lyrics, youtube links and other googleable treasures, a whole new sort of system has been developing under our very fingertips, guerrilla-style.

I call it Non Obvious Messaging (NOM).

It's not a particularly new concept. A dear friend introduced me to it around 1998-'99, when she unveiled via yahoo messenger the possibilities that existed when one described actions between two asterisks.

*wanders lazily over to the kitchen for a coffee refill*

...

*returns, balancing a steaming mug and two shortbread cookies*

Feeling nibblish? Figured.

*Grin*

The world caught on soon though, and suddenly plain LOLing wasn't enough. Today Facebook is putting its finishing touches on the immense citadel right at the tippy-top of that Tower of Babelish communication, while the multitudes scream, clap, defenestrate, throw a sheep at and poke one another.

Ah, the poke.

According to Facebook, "a poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings."

Your own meanings.

I'll bet my last pair of clean underwear that there's published literature on the existing positive correlation between the creation of secret, somewhat exclusive systems of communication and the development of new civilizations (Dr. Pinker, are you listening?).
This is why certain folk are moving away slowly from the packaged, parceled versions of messaging each other, and are discretely beginning to take existing systems of communication and turn them into NOMs, NOMs that are most times so subtle and disguised that only the sender and receiver understand them.

There are those who communicate solely via their status messages. Those who record appropriate (and otherwise) lines from songs as NOMs to each other using Gtalk's voicemail function. Those who use a VPN to access each others' desktops, to be able to doodle on the same open Paint file. Those who have devised special hugs, touches, sounds and smiles to convey thoughts, ideas and feelings that are as yet-- praise be to everything that is alive, free, unplugged and unmarketed-- unknown to pop culture overlords.

To those who receive and relay NOMs-- salutations. You have in your fingertips the only thing still innocent, and strangely, wholly honest, that is left in this world.

Lessons for Bombay from an Art Museum in LA

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Granted, the variables that affect the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and those that affect a local government are pretty disparate: the museum doesn't have to deal with armed attacks (yet) or bad drainage.

Fact remains however, that an administration is an administration is a five syllabic word. And Roberta Smith's article, which outlines a method for rescuing the MOCA from bankruptcy, also contains important lessons for organizers, public servants and ticked off citizens everywhere.

Smith writes:

But first there needs to be a truce. Both the siege and the bunker mentality must be suspended. People have to set aside their rage at one another and at outside critics. They should stop fretting about their reputations or grudges. Egos have to be left at the door.

This article places emphasis on the importance of communication across and in spite of the badly-drawn societal lines that exist in any organization, gathering or locality. In a time where every new day brings about four emails containing news of yet another group gathering in the name of solidarity post the attacks in Bombay, this sort of communication is what the city needs first.

Of a proposed corollary to the Infinite Monkey Theorem

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Being a child of the 90's, I have often felt thwarted in terms of pop culture memes relating to pipe fixtures. All I had to work with for the longest time was this guy, or his wussy brother.

It took almost a decade and one of the most historic U.S. Presidential elections till date to deliver the Second Coming, and what a delivery it has been.

Not only did good ol' Joe provide significant fodder for spin doctors across America, but he is also an economic stimulus all by himself. Joe Lara, of Ventura County in Southern California is in business like never before, and it's all Wurzelbacher's doing: apparently, media coverage not only affects a campaign, it also bolsters small businesses.

In the words of the average joe, who wudda thunk it?

The erstwhile campaign hot-topic has done more than just help out Mr. Lara: in a most effective way, he has also gotten under Mr. Egan's skin.

Timothy Egan went after the unlicensed, tax-evading pipe cleaner [quick, is the term "faux-plumber" ready to join its brethren on Urban Dictionary yet?] in today's NYTimes with an energy that makes me hope that the object of his um, affection was wearing a hard hat when he read the article. Or had it read to him, as the case may be.
Egan writes:

If Joe really wants to write, he should keep his day job and spend his evenings reading Rick Reilly’s sports columns, Peggy Noonan’s speeches, or Jess Walter’s fiction. He should open Dostoevsky or Norman Maclean — for osmosis, if nothing else. He should study Frank McCourt on teaching or Annie Dillard on writing.

The idea that someone who stumbled into a sound bite can be published, and charge $24.95 for said words, makes so many real writers think the world is unfair.

And all you liberal, plumber-loving socialists out there-- I hear ya. You're absolutely right: give the man a break! Samuel Wurzelbacher was a lucky pipe fitter, who just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right camera running. Egan wouldn't be complaining if Sammy had hit the lottery big and then decided to self-publish, now would he?

Would he?

Hm.

In order to control for that variable then, I now humbly proffer [the most fatuous phrase of all fatuous phrases]a corollary to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, viz.

Given enough time, a publisher funding memoirs and manuscripts at random will almost surely promote a text based on an event of shallow public interest that will enrage serious writers. Or writers who take themselves seriously.

Of Tuckman's Stages, the Mulberry Bush and the Fierce Urgency of Now

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:47:00 +0000

It's early 2005. A warm day in January found a bunch of us sitting at a round table, nervously fingering our I.D cards as we fielded several angry looks from across the room that all asked the same question: "what are you kids doing in here?"

The pungent smell of human sweat--dried by several air conditioners on at full blast-- mixed with the burnt aroma of mass-produced milky coffee, the fuel of all administrative offices in South India. A few of us wanted to throw up. At least one desperately needed a cigarette. But no one in that room would leave their place for the world. We had all somehow edged our way into an open meeting with the district collector of Nagapattinam, and only another tsunami could have gotten us out of there.

In hindsight, there was no other way for that meeting to have ended. Apart from us kids, everybody at that table represented some NGO or organization that either wanted to provide fishermen with funds to repair their boats and nets, develop "tsunami-resistant" housing (no, I kid you not), provide for the mental health of the survivors of the Big Wave or deal with the sudden orphan/adoption crisis that was steadily growing in certain villages along the coastline at that time.

Competing interests meant that everyone was determined to have a say and rally support, while our little gang waited, keen and eager for the moment when we could chip in with a brief report of what we had seen-- the villages we had visited that hadn't even seen one government aid truck, that had no water, that had mini riots every time some NGO came by and dropped off sackfuls of rice.

At that meeting, representatives of the state administration told everyone that no rehabilitation would start till the government rewrote the zoning laws and fishing laws. We left the room two hours later. We never attempted to contact a government representative on the same issue again.

Cue January 2006: with a different group of students this time, a week or so before our one week visit to the Big Easy, I spent the day listening to Nagin and his aides discuss how plans for rehabilitating the 9th ward were being put on hold while "administrative and structural decisions" were made. Understandably, there were many citizens who were a bit, shall we say, a tad ticked off by their suggestions.

Cue the present day.

Mum always said, somethings never change.

Google "group dynamics" and one of the first links that show takes you to a Wiki article on a guy named Bruce Tuckman and his four stage model on group dynamics called-- no surprise-- Tuckman's Stages for a group:

Tuckman's model states that the ideal group decision-making process should occur in four stages:

* Forming (pretending to get on or get along with others);
* Storming (letting down the politeness barrier and trying to get down to the issues even if tempers flare up );
* Norming (getting used to each other and developing trust and productivity);
* Performing (working in a group to a common goal on a highly efficient and cooperative basis.

(N.B- Edgar Schein has some terrific insight into the stages in group development and organizational behaviour. Worth the trip to Amazon. Or Landmark, as the case may be.)

There have been numerous calls for collective action and individual responsibility since the attacks on the 26th of this month in Mumbai. There has been indignation at the role the media played in complicating the rescue operation carried out by the Army and NSG. There has been anger at local government representatives. There is a civil disobedience movement proposed, based on refusing to pay taxes. There have been nebulous calls to war against Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Penguins, Globalization, All Pink Things and other random entities by equally random citizens.

More importantly, there have been questions asked, SMSed, murmured, blogged, status-msged, forwarded and twittered that are growing into something approaching critical mass in terms of citizen participation in the administration of their own country.

Finally.

Of course, it could all just die down. It has before, mainly because us Indians have been so caught up in celebrating our diversity for the past 50 odd years, that getting to the Norming stage of Tuckman's list is near impossible. Our genial need for disagreement, and our devotion to exercises involving the proverbial Mulberry Bush ensure that the only certainty regarding group meetings/collaborations is the amount of kaapi that will be inhaled.

But what about the immediate need to come together? To stand together and stand by the claim that we will not stand for any more... any more...
what, exactly?

Ask the average Indian about the Mumbai attacks, and the only widely held view will be how awful the attacks were. Why they were awful, what were the contributing factors to the event-- fugghedaboudit. Best to stick with the unity in diversity tag.

Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.

Kaizad, an organizer of the Rise Up Mumbai, Rise up India! FB group wrote in post the rally in Mumbai on the 3rd:

...Yesterday, It felt as if almost the whole of Mumbai was the Gateway of India. It was a heartening show of solidarity and togetherness, and it seemed like finally, Bombay has had enough, and is not going to tolerate the political sham that runs our beloved city.
But as I passed the entire area, still deciding whether to fight the crowds and go in, or to just go home, I saw the number of people who had actually come to voice discontent or/and show solidarity, were far outnumbered by the people who came to apparently have a good time. It seemed to be a case of : If everyone's going, I'm going to go. I was appalled to see people fighting with each other to be in camera frames, and though the patriotic fervor was invigorating to say the least, it's a pity that people didn't understand the basic concept of HOW to display solidarity. I guess towards the end, it turned into a media circus, where all the major media companies got enough videos and pictures to fill their editions and bulletins for the next 20 days... I sincerely believed that the rally on the 3rd could have been the symbol of change we were hoping for, and though some of you might disagree with my views on this, I felt it wasn't. So many people together, united should have been the ideal platform for the message of progress and change to be spread. Yet all i saw was chaos, yelling, pushing and over pumped patriotism that will die out in a few hours.

Kaizad went on to say that he hopes the rally planned for the 21st will be a platform for promoting civic participation and the fierce urgent need for an overhaul of how government is run. I wish him and the group he administers only the best.

I share his, and others' concern over how this will all take place.

A few points for consideration, thus:

1. The media has always been a circus, a tricked out, parti-coloured dung beetle that survives based on the number of people who tune in. Signing petitions might get specific reporters or anchors off the air, but it won't change an ethos.
One might attempt switching off the t.v. though, or switching to good old DD. Pull a 'Cable Guy' on 'em. Replay that fantastic ending, and get your news from print media instead, via tree pulp or 54kbps.

2. The government in a democracy is of the people, by the people and for the people. Which means, you get what you pay for. There are suggestions to revamp the election system, to hold out for better candidates, to support independent candidates, to spread awareness about the need for responsible leaders. All good. All things that need to be started at the seed level: while the IAS goes to work revamping policy, school systems, colleges and universities need to teach and discuss these basics of a civil society. There needs to be more to an every day Indian's perception of government than just corruption, politics and the power of money & force. That only comes, ONLY comes, through traditional modes of education.

3. Civil Disobedience is marvelous. But like any Movement, Civil Disobedience only works when you have a figure-head up in front, being the peoples' god, saint, leader, truth-giver. Someone they can sacrifice for. Our society in India hasn't evolved to the point where a large number can act out of free will and revolt or otherwise on their own. Doesn't happen. Group think rules. And since we don't have another Gandhi, Malcolm, Bose, King or Obama, I can only hope that people can respond in large numbers responsibly, to this and other calls for public outcry. The tax bit is going to be the trip-up, mostly because majority of us don't understand how the tax system works. Those who do understand it well, are probably already benefiting from it to such an extent that going against it is in their disfavor.

4. The underestimated importance of outreach, organization and education. It's easy to throw your hands up in the air and talk about the impossibilities of developing more stringent security measures at the citizen level. And yet, all it comes down to is better utilizing that innate ability us Indians have to help each other out.

We've all seen it: kitchens set up in the wake of natural disasters, strangers visiting victims in hospitals, people pulling each other into buses to keep them from being late to school or work, stories of heroism during the recent attacks-- a thousand stories of good-will, all quietly done despite and in spite of the media, politicians and administrators. Why not make use of that same will to help?

Organize streets, apartment complexes, neighborhoods so that evacuation points are set up, safety procedures are posted on walls so people know what to do if such an event arises again. Teach folk how to take care of their own. Simple steps, which don't need a defense budget. Working together doesn't need a budget. It does mean patience, organization, and avoiding the assumption that others are either too young, too entrenched in certain ideals or too stupid to work with. Intellectual Exclusivity sucks bigger balls than the usual social bigotry we consistently condemn, and yet is far less chastised.

5. Calls for a fight against terrorism is not the same as a call for communal rioting. Terrorism is a delicate dog fight fought in circles that us mortal bloggers, community folk and random soap box orators will never enter, let alone move in. What we can do as citizens is to alter perceptions of terrorism: by not elevating it into a cause, by not assuming everyone from a country or religion supports or is associated with terrorism, by teaching and learning, impartially, about how terrorism is affecting the world at large, and India specifically.

6. The most important thing the last week has taught us is the vast amount of un-knowing, on the part of the public, the media, the local government. We are no longer safe in living off the fat of our land. The time of India being stereotyped as the home of nerdy computer engineers, snake charmers,cow patty makers and 7/11 grocery store owners is over. Like it or not, the country is now associated with wealth, international partnerships, nuclear power and economic development. We even have baseball players.

Gird your loins, maami. This land will never be the same again, and if we are all to survive democratically, should never be the same, as well.

The anti flag waving piece: this isn't v 2.0 of 9/11

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:23:00 +0000

If you haven't read Ingrid Srinath's take on the Mumbai attacks yet, you should.

This post originated as a comment on Ingrid's original piece. I'm not sure if I can fully convey how fiercely glad I am that she worded her reflection just the way she did.
Nailed it on the head, Ingrid has.

What resonated with me most is that what she has done is successfully point out the real, grit-ground that exists between bill-board versions of black and white heroes and villains, with the cavalry riding in just on cue. The piece tells us that it is on the citizens of a city, any city, to come together if security and a way of life is to be preserved.

She is absolutely right: no emergency law can come into effect, only because there are too many loop holes, far too many variables to control; stricter laws would fail every glorious mission just as any crack down would.

That is not to say that security at the state and national level cannot be reviewed seriously. India needs no Military Industrial Complex, but at the very least, no one should be able to approach a city's port without being reviewed by coast guards. Well-trained, well-armed coast guards. A lot more than just metal detectors are required in this brave new world of ours, if we intend to preserve life and limb of everyone: not just the powerful, the majority, the rich or the foreign.

What I would like to see is a grass-root, decentralized guerrilla movement of our own-- Not one that equips youth, the lonely and the estranged with hatred, propaganda, fanaticism, weapon skills and fake passports, but one that equips that same youth, the blissfully ignorant and brooding, the passionate and the complacent, the middle-aged, student and everywoman with an awareness of what it takes to preserve one's home and city-- the community skills and ideas that make individuals realize that they are the first care-taker and good neighbor, not the police, and that there is no entitlement to safety & well being based solely on social or income levels, anymore.

Not just idealism. Practical facts of life as well, such as-- don't crowd around an attack site. Don't hang around because it's exciting. Don't participate in rabble-rousing. Just the basics, really.

It's worked for Linux, for Google, for Obama, Live Earth and Second Life: we know that people can and do come together, online and in person, without the burden of hierarchy, more positively and effectively than ever before. Why not have our own training cells, our own workshops, our own classroom visits? Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction, we're told.
It's about time we stood up and counted ourselves as part of the response to glocal terrrorism.

It's about time that we-- Indians, Tourists, Mumbaikars, Policy Makers, Writers, Film Stars, Dhoodh Wallas, NGO workers all-- stop, really, STOP with writing off Bombay in packaged, star-dusted, jalebi-like versions of the truth. Today's NYTimes carried an article by Mr. Suketu Mehta, a tribute that subsided into romanticized notions of Mumbai as some sort of colourful, cheerfully sinful Camelot, hated for its Camelotness by the evil baddies, who Mr. Mehta paints as multi-lingual ogres and fanatical knights. Views like this can only complicate the situation. Yes, Mr. Mehta--- keep the spirits of the city up by all means, sing and dance and spend money in Bombay-- Celebrate life, its spicy excess! But in the name of everything that is awake, adopt some of the ideas, at least, that Ingrid suggests in her piece: participate and learn. vote and organize, don't just blame. party hard, but thrash out ideas, work at divesting your children and families of stereotypical thinking even harder.

A guide on being thankful in the 21st century

noreply@blogger.com (The Wizard of Odd) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:18:00 +0000

A while back I decided to stop blogging because somehow, the endless outpouring of self-justified edification and quirky observations created a bitter taste: existential word verif. combinations jeered the very notion that anything other than self-pleasure was going on.

The past couple of years, months, days and hours have been working hard at changing that decision.

Desperate times, desperate measures and such.

Ergo, while the U.S. spends the next 12 or more hours giving into a celebration of tradition and excess, dipping into nostalgia as a salute to the times of unchecked spending now gone by, with a clenched-jaw energy intent on creating les bon temps in the midst of a great winter of malcontent, I now proffer a guide to giving thanks. This is for those of us who will continue the day un-turkeyed, albeit glazed over, hyper-caffeinated and searching every news source for the latest developments re: the attacks last night.

A Guide to Being Thankful in the 21st Century [OR] PJ's List of 8 Mental Health Tips

1. Ignore CNN, Fox and related "sister" networks. For real news, find the blogs and RSS feeds of bloggers of Mumbai and from Mumbai, and give praise to your individual gods for their energy, intelligence and intensity.

2. Avoid chaos theories proposed on aforementioned networks. For actual facts on how international affairs/foreign policy works, visit foreign policy magazine online, or the Brookings Institute. Celebrate the fact that non-partisan, collaborative discussion is still supported the world over.

3. Pursue and enjoy self-preservation. Citizen reporting is one thing, but in a situation where there are guns and bombs going off in several locations, with the ATS, Army and police trying to control chaos and shut down the baddies, you standing there sending MMS/SMS updates and capturing the scene with your camera-phone is only making things worse. Being a by-stander is only allowed at parades, not killing zones.

4. If you're part of a country that consists of multiple communities, religions, languages, income levels, political leanings, religious holidays and calendars, hold hands and dance! Who you are and where you are makes it that much more difficult for politicians and business people to sell you gung-ho, black and white [or red, white and blue, or saffron-hued/Indian green] patriotism. Rejoice that there are no easy answers, no one bad guy, no one bad country.

5. Respect your luck. If you made it in the nick of time, or avoided an ill-fated train, road, or restaurant, silently salute karma. No more, no less.

6. Give praise for the inherent power in the mute and on/off buttons on your remote and radio. It is your one mode of control over the mass hysteria fanned by media channels in order to boost their TRP ratings.

7. Light candles for your cities, both attacked and as yet, non- targeted. If said cities are in a country as described in no. 6 on this list, it is only by a strange, whimsical grace that nothing worse has happened... yet.

8. Send love to folk like Google, who have made it possible to check on loved ones in cities under fire. All named and accounted for, over IMs, offliners, emails, blogs and twitter. Technology also meant following the attacks from the moment they happened, and not having to wait on second-hand news.

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N.B-- a) what I find curious and disturbing is how in the past few years, horrible events have coincided with calendar holidays. Christmas for me will always carry memories of the 2004 Tsunami, even tho it did happen on boxing day. Today, there is talk of feasts against the background of repeated footage of a city I haven't visited since I was a child, but which is home to a large number of people I love, respect and cherish. Somethings get harder to stomach as I get older. Wonder who else feels the same.

b) It's time for Bombay to implement the kind of security measures other major metropolitan cities in the world have. It will change things forever-- but haven't the events of last night already done that? It means more check-posts, more CCtvs, more cameras, stricter i.d. requirements and those "see something, say something" signs. Metal detectors and sniffer dogs aren't enough, any more. It's not just about national politics and separatist movements, any more. Wake up. Stand up. Don't let them sell you packaged hatreds and suspicions. Protect your own.