Yes, I know it is February and normally the peak of winter, but this year winter seems to have made a guest appearance. There is practically no snow on the ground this year.  The temperatures have been in the thirties.  It feels more like we are already in an early spring.  Not that I am complaining, especially after last year’s Snowmageddons.

But this weather means, among other things, that the pond ice must not be too thick.  The backyard pond freezes over every winter; the ice is thick enough to walk on, and I have always wondered if it is thick enough to drive a car on.  I suspect it would be, but in six years of living here, though, I haven’t even walked on the pond in winter, let alone drive a car on it.

This winter though, there have been very few days of  subzero temperatures, and for the past week or more, the temperatures have been in the thirties.  I thought that was perhaps not cold enough for thick ice to form.  Yet the neighbor has bravely decided to build a hockey rink in the backyard.

When we say “hockey” in these parts, we mean ice hockey, of course.  When Sarah Palin called herself a “Hockey Mom”, she did not mean the game that Dhyan Chand played.  That would be”Field hockey”, a sport that very few people play.  I suspect we will have to explain the game to  people in this country as ice hockey played on astroturf. To my mind, though, calling ice hockey as hockey (or NFL football as football) is like calling table tennis as tennis.

Ice hockey is a deceptively violent and dangerous game. It’s  not just that players use the hockey puck as an assault weapon, but these games are played on ice. Even with helmets and protective gear, falls on ice cause concussions and other injuries. Players have even died of on-ice injuries. (Look at this list of ice hockey player deaths on wikipedia – quite a few on-ice deaths since 1990 alone.  And this list is only pro ice hockey, and does not include high school and college teams).

What this means is that even if you are playing ice hockey in your backyard, you still need to don helmets and other protective gear. If anything, it might be slightly more dangerous as the ice will not be as smooth as in a rink.

This year, there is another danger, with the warmer temperatures – the risk of melting ice.

When I saw the neighbor carving out the rink with a shovel, I worried he would fall through the ice.  I was excited at the idea of watching an impromptu game of ice hockey, but didn’t think it would happen.  After all, there is field hockey and ice hockey, but there is no such thing as pond hockey.

Then, finally, it happened today evening.  No ice hockey, just broomball.  We got an invitation to join too, but then that would involve babysitters and so on.

The pond ice, we were told, was 10 inches thick.

If you are like me then, you’d be fascinated by “Growing Up Amish”.  It’s about one man’s experience of trying multiple times to leave the Amish church, and finally succeeding.  I’m usually not a big fan of autobiographies or memoirs, but I found this quite interesting.

There are, of course, the glimpses you get on everyday life in Amishland – on their dating customs, their religious customs and so on.  Even though these reminiscences are more than two decades old, I suspect that most things are the same way even now.

You get a fascinating male perspective to what it is to be Amish, and more importantly, the thought process that goes on.  I’ve always wondered why anyone would voluntarily choose to abandon every creature comfort and live an ascetic’s life.  It’s one thing when the poor do it when they have no choice, but why would someone who can afford a car drive a horse-drawn buggy, and why would someone reject electricity and indoor plumbing?

Part of the answer to this, I suspect, lies in the fact that women have little to no say in Amish life, and they do all the housework.  If men had to wash clothes by hand everyday or cook on a smoke-filled wood-burning stove, I suspect they would very quickly bring in electricity and indoor plumbing.

I do wish I could get more insight on how it would be to be a woman in Amishland.  One imagines a lifetime of toiling all day – cooking, canning, cleaning, dressmaking and sewing, laundry, childcare etc.  Big family sizes are very common, so the woman is also likely frequently pregnant while doing all this. Yet it looks like joint families are rare, so there’s little help.

A search on Amazon tells me there are several memoirs by people who have left the Amish, some by women.  I should probably read this book, for instance, to get a woman’s perspective.

Interestingly, it looks like cars and telephones are not verboten under all circumstances.  They do use the car of their “English” (non-Amish) neighbors for needs like say, medical emergencies (or if the grocery store is really far away).  There seems to be no prohibition about riding in a car  every now and then. Phones too, are used occasionally, it is only  having a phone or car in one’s own house that is forbidden.  So while I’m glad that pregnant women in labor aren’t driven to the hospital in horse drawn buggies, it only makes me wonder why there is such a rule in the first place, and why  anyone would listen to such a rule.

You can see why, after reading this book.  It’s fascinating to read about the conditioning, and the kind of brainwashing that the Amish go through.  We are the chosen ones, we are special. Our way is the only way of life to live.  Things should be this way because they have always been this way.  We cannot use telephones because we have never used telephones.   Changing our way of life would mean succumbing to the Devil’s temptations.

This kind of reasoning may seem silly to us, but the fact is that for thousands of Amish people, this makes complete sense.  It’s revealing how much this author struggles with life outside the Amish code.  It may be okay for people who were not born Amish, he reasons, to use phones or electricity or any of the other myriad modern things, but for someone born Amish, living the “English” way would mean a straight ticket to Hell.

The strange thing is that here the debate is not about the basic tenets of religion, the “English” and the Amish are both Christians, but it is about a way of life.  It’s not that there is even anything unusual about the Amish logic.  This-is-the-way-we-should-do-things-because-that’s-what-our-ancestors-did is a reasoning that’s common to every culture in the world.

But most cultures don’t shun change, they adapt to the changing times by incorporating the new mores into their customs.  The Amish seem to be trying to make time stand still in the 1800s.  It’s not surprising that would be a losing cause, what’s fascinating is the extent to which they have succeeded.

After reading different threads on wordpress.org and unsuccessfully trying all kinds of fixes, I came across one fix which suggested that the problem could be solved by adding a line to wp-config.php.  (Specifically,   you should add define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);)

Except, I had no idea where wp-config.php was.  I opened Filezilla and tried to connect to my hosting provider, something I hadn’t done in years.  Of course I had forgotten the password.

After a few unsuccessful tries, I figured out the password, but Filezilla still would not connect. That turned out to be a firewall issue, so I had to fix that.

Finally, I located wp-config.php and added the line, and voila, my blog’s editor was back to normal!  Yes, I could finally get started on my post!

As if on cue, S started to bawl.  She was hungry. Or sleepy. Or both.  My window of bloggability had just closed for the day.

Time was when my absence from my blog could be explained very simply as laziness.  Nothing has changed since then – I still don’t blog frequently, but the excuses have become more complicated.

Gulnaz’s story is horrific at multiple levels.  A system which charges rape victims with adultery is awful enough,  while jailing people for adultery  as if it were a capital crime is even more horrible.  But what really are you saying when you proclaim that said adultery can be forgiven if only you marry the guy who committed a violent crime against you?

Marrying your rapist is not a new theme, or even an Islamic theme.  I have seen this even in Hindi/ Tamil/ Telugu movies – the 1990 movie Dil (starring Aamir Khan and Madhuri Dixit) is one example I remember, and I am sure there are many others. (Readers, can you think of more examples ?)

But how does rape become A-okay if the victim marries the rapist?  The only logic I can think of is that somehow the woman’s ‘crime’- adultery/ losing her virginity is seen as worse than the man’s violent crime.  Never mind that attaching a label of  adultery implies the woman had some choice in the matter.  The people who can call a rape as adultery are no doubt,  implicitly, also blaming the woman for letting herself be raped.  Her clothes/ speech/ behavior will all be scrutinized for being “provocative”.  Of course, if you are in Afghanistan, not wearing a burqa would be deemed as dressing provocatively.

pic courtesy Reuters

No one would question that marrying your rapist is punishment.  To start with,  a man who is violent and  has so little respect for women is not the sort one would choose to marry, and to add to that, there would be the resentment against the woman for daring to call him out for rape.  In Gulnaz’s case, the rapist had been imprisoned too, which would make it even worse.  There is the  psychological damage the woman would suffer by reliving the rape every time she sees her husband, and the very real chance of physical abuse by her husband.

Why would you subject the victim to such cruel punishment?  This is only logical if you are, in fact, punishing the woman  for letting herself be raped by getting her married to her rapist, so she does not provoke some other hapless man into raping her.  You also choose to believe that the rapist will somehow change his ways if only he gets married to his victim. Or you can tell society that since the rape victim herself has chosen to forgive her attacker, we should also follow suit and ignore the fact that a crime had been committed.

And what if the rapist is already married (as in Gulnaz’s case – the rapist is her cousin’s husband).   Even if the religion/ State allows bigamy, does the rapist’s wife have no say in the matter?  What if bigamy is not allowed – should the rapist divorce his wife to marry his victim?

Rape is a capital crime and should be treated as such.  No action of the victim can be a mitigating factor, and no pardon by the victim can erase the fact that the rapist committed a crime  and needs to be punished.

What are the consequences of having laws like this? Rape victims would be very reluctant to report a rape, for who wants to be imprisoned, or have to relive the rape every single day by marrying your rapist?

What message does it send to men?  That if your advances are spurned by a woman, all you have to do is rape her and then society itself will ensure that she is married to you.

Nice way to discourage the incidence of rapes.

As for the writing style, the less said the better.  You would expect better writing from a journalist than this:

India was a series of challenges wrapped in a mystical blanket covered in an essential quandary.

If you think her knowledge of South Asia would make up for her writing skills, well then, here is her expert analysis on India-Pakistan relations:

I blamed India. Everyone here did. To understand Pakistan, India was the key. Why did Pakistan direct its militant groups toward disputed Kashmir instead of disbanding them after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan? India. Why did Pakistan develop a nuclear weapon? India. Why did Musharraf support the country’s homegrown militant groups even as he arrested Al-Qaeda’s alleged number three at any given time? India.  And why did Pakistan continually give me such a crappy visa? India.

At first, it’s a little shocking to find that these foreign correspondents know so little about the region they are spending years covering, but when you read her book, you begin to understand why.  It looks like all the journalists who are based in Kabul are one small group who socialize exclusively with each other (think parties and visits to foreigner-only bars and brothels) and have little to no contact with the locals.  And these are the independednt journalists, the embedded ones have no contact with anyone anyway as they stay in the military base.

Kim has a “fixer” – Farouq, a translator-cum-driver-cum-assistant, who seems to do all the groundwork – setting up appointments with the Taliban, tribal chiefs, anyone Kim wants to meet.   When Kim has a meeting with tribal elders in Kandahar (set up by Farouq), she does not realize she needs to wear a burqa until Farouq breaks it to her gently.  So she asks Farouq to buy her one, and does not realize till she reaches Kandahar that the burqa (which barely covers the back of her knees and reaches only to her waist in the front) is much too short for a meeting with conservative tribal chiefs.  Typically, she blames Farouq for this oversight.

So how did Ms Barker even become the South Asian Bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune?  Did she know Hindi or Urdu or Dari? Had she majored in South Asian studies, or had any previous experience reporting from South Asia or covering the region? Or had she lived in the region before?  Nope, none of the above.  Apparently, her major qualifications, as she tells the top foreign editor while asking for the job, are, in her own words:

“I have no kids and no husband, so I’m expendable,” I explained.

The boss nodded. Apparently, the newspaper had already realized this. He held up a used envelope with my name scrawled on the back, near the names of two other single women with no children.

“We know who you are”, he said. “Get ready to go to Pakistan.”

If this is what counts as a qualification in newspapers these days, it is not surprising that the highlight of the book is not her analysis of the Afghan situation, but her  claim that Nawaz Sharif, the former Pakistan Prime Minister wanted her to be his “friend”. He asks Kim if she has a boyfriend, and offers to set her up with one.  Then, much later, he tells her that he would like to be her friend, even though he is not as tall as she would like, or as fit.  He also keeps offering to buy her an iPhone.

Given that Nawaz Sharif is married, does this mean he wanted her to be his mistress? In any case, Kim seems almost proud of this offer.  She even mentions it to a member of the Pakistani military, who chokes on his Black Label and tells her “Nawaz Sharif could have any woman he wants. He had the third most beautiful woman in the world, And you come nowhere near that.”   You get the sense that this statement only makes Kim even prouder at having received Nawaz Sharif’s proposition.

In the end, you learn a lot about Kim Barker, about how newspapers are run and how foreign correspondents live and party. You learn nothing new about Afghanistan or Pakistan.  It is a strange book for a reporter/ journalist to write. But it is good entertainment anyway.

1. The name should start with an “A”.  The more As, the better. Why bother turning the pages of that baby name book all the way to “S” or even “G”.  There must be thousands of names to wade through.  Who has the time or energy to decide?  Just stop with “A”.   Pick any name, as long as it starts with “A”.  In fact, don’t even bother going to “Ab”.  You can stop at “Aa”.  The more “A”s the better.

So Aakash or Aarti or Aashna are better than a mere Ajay or Aditya.  If you can pack in even more As into the name, even better.   Like Aarav -  just one long A garnished with a few consonants.

2. Let the Gods (and Goddesses) come to your rescue. You may have never been inside a temple for years, but now is the time to show your Hindu faith by naming your baby after the 1000 names of Vishnu/Lakshmi/ Durga/ Shiva or any other deity.

3. Ancient texts are baby name books too. What better use for all those ancient texts than as baby name books? Here is a great way to choose a secular name that shows off your knowledge of India’s culture.  Select names that are either Vedic in  origin (Advait, Vedant), or those that  belong to lesser known characters from mythological texts (Ahalya, Uttara) – lesser-known is key, for everyone knows who Kausalya and Dhruva were.  Then there are characters from ancient classic literature (Manimekalai, Kannagi).  Whatever you do, just make sure to steer clear of the villains.  Even if you did think Duryodhan was a great guy who was just misunderstood, please do not name your son Duryodhan.

4.  Choose a winning combination of the parents. What better way to name the baby but by combining the parents’ names? If the father’s name is Mahesh and the mother’s name is Jaya, then the baby should be called Maya, or Jayesh.  Of course, if the father’s name is Harish and the mother is Diksha, one hopes they wouldn’t name their baby Hardik.  But you see, they will.

5. Follow the latest trend. If everyone is naming their baby Aryan, then so should you.   What are last names for except to differentiate?  And when his class ends up with 5 Aryan Sharmas, well, you can still rename him to the current fashion then.  This way, his name will always be the “latest”.

6. Is it Americanized enough? Do you think he/she will work in a call center, or an MNC?  Then you better choose an Americanizable name.  “Samanth” will become “Sam” later, while Siddhanth and Siddharth have been “Sid” for years now.  Meghna could become “Meg” and so on.  But don’t worry, your kid will find a way to Americanize any name you give him/ her – after all, even a Chakravarthy can become Chuck and a Kannan can become Conan.

7.  Numerology is key. In thirty years’ time, your kid is going to consult a numerologist and add a bunch of  As, Es and Hs to his/ her name.  But that would be thirty years of being numerologically disadvantaged, so it’s best if you consult a numerologist right away.  Your kid might have to go through life with a name like Narmmadaa or Shobhaa, but it’s a small price for a bright future, right?

8. Go Global. We are Global Indians now. Our names should be equally global. There are the time-honored names like Maya,  Anita or Tara that work everywhere. But these are so common now that you should be considering names like Ansa (Finnish) or  Freya (Nordic).  In fact, names like Freya and Diana also satisfy rule #2 and show how much we love Gods and Goddesses, irrespective of which culture they belong to.

9. Use Mother Nature. This is not a new trend, naming babies after cute animals (deer, swan, peacocks), mountains, snow, the sun and the moon has been the norm for ages.   To be different, therefore, you should choose a global variation.  So instead of naming your daughter Chandra or Poonam after the moon, you should name her Celina or Cynthia.   Instead of naming her Ganga or Kaveri, you should call her Jhanvi, or choose a lesser-known river like Kshipra, or  go global and name her Volga or Lena.

10. Go Ethnic. Why do most names have to be Sanskrit based?  Why not base them on other Indian languages? You can call your daughter Alli (Tamil for Waterlily), for instance, which would also satisfy rules #6, #8 and #9. This last one is something of a very niche trend, unfortunately.  Sadly, we Indians would nearly always prefer to use a French or a German name rather than a Tamil word for a baby name, and this is true for many Tamil speakers too. (Replace Tamil with any other Indian language and it would still be true).

None of these examples are fictional, a quick search on the net (Google/Linkedin/Facebook et al)  is all you need to convince yourself that there are real Indians with these names.

Which brings us to the question you are, no doubt, asking yourself – what did I name our baby?  We had a few simple criteria – the name should be short, just 2-3 syllables, be easy and intuitive to pronounce and spell.  After years of enduring people mispronounce my name every third time and butcher R’s every single time, we wanted something that was easy on even untrained tongues.

But we did end up following one of these rules.  I am just not saying which.

I am also virtually under house arrest. If we do go out, it seems to invariably be to S’s pediatrician. The trips also involve lugging a huge diaper bag which seems somewhat excessive, but somehow,  within the space of an hour we seem to end up using every single item in the bag.

S and I are now at different stages of life. She is at the stage where she wants to look at people and coo at them.  I am at the stage where I want to ignore her and go to sleep.  It does not help that she likes to coo at 3 am.  It looks like along with her Indian genes, she has also inherited a body clock tuned to IST 

My parents are over here to help, and I cannot imagine how I would manage without them.  I wonder how women in the US manage these initial weeks without familial help, it must be overwhelming.

It is also amazing how much stuff a tiny baby needs.  Nearly every room in the house has at least one item of S.  We opted not to put her crib in a separate nursery, so her crib, and a rocker-recliner are in our bedroom, along with diapers, wipe warmers, bottle warmers and so on.  My dresser has been mostly taken over by her. Downstairs in the family room, there is a Play Yard with a bassinet that serves as her crib during the day.  The family room is also littered with a swing, a gym/ play mat, changing pad, various boxes with her diapers, dresses and every imaginable kind of baby product.  Her car seat and strollers are in another room.  One kitchen countertop has been taken over by bottle drying racks and sterilization equipment.  Hand sanitizers are now to be found in every room.  If this is bad enough, I know it is only going to get worse from here – at least the floor is not littered with her toys – yet.

The list of things a baby in the US finds a necessity seems to be rather a long one. I got a lot of help from  Patrix and Ash in navigating the maze of stuff  I needed to buy – Ash sent me a spreadsheet she had which listed the essentials and the desirables, along with suggestions on brand, price etc. which was very useful. R spent a lot of time researching every thing from car seats and strollers to different types of cloth diapers (and that’s a subject for a whole new  post).

I don’t have time for any such research now.  It is not the recovery from the C-section that has been hard, it is the lack of sleep that has made these last few weeks tough to bear.  I sleep in intervals of one and two hours, and for someone who has never missed her eight hours of sleep, whatever the occasion, this is a little tough.  But it is getting better – not because she is sleeping longer, but I am learning to manage with less sleep

So there it is, folks, and now I think I am going to take a nap.

On one side, there is FIFA, sticking rigidly to its stand that hijabs can cause “choking injuries” and are thus unsafe to wear.  On the other side, you have the Iranian sports authorities who had at least a year to protest to FIFA if they did not like the redesigned caps that FIFA proposed to address this very issue in 2010.  The caps apparently don’t cover the entire neck (which makes them not the same as a hijab), but surely the Iranians knew this before?

Iranian women footballers Pic: Yahoo Sports

Let’s take FIFA’s stand first.  Is the hijab really a choking hazard?  From the picture above, I cannot see how anyone can accidentally choke on a hihab.  It does not have loose ends floating around, so you cannot trip on it, or have anyone get tangled it in it, or accidentally pull it.

But if someone were to grab the headscarf from behind, in the nape area, yes, you could choke.  But such a grab would have to be deliberate, and is not only illegal as per football rules, trying to choke someone deliberately would be illegal in any country.  There is no reason why you would want to grab someone’s neck to stop them when you are playing football.

So I cannot understand FIFA’s logic – are they saying that they want to prevent a set of players from playing because someone could potentially illegally grab them by the neck?  Is that the substance of their objection to the hijab?  If it is, it doesn’t make any sense.  One even starts to wonder if this is the real reason.  After all, banning hijabs in public seems to be the current fashion in Europe.

It also looks like Iran was not the only team facing the headscarf issue. Jordanian players had the same problem, but the team resolved this by not picking those women who were unwilling to play without headscarves. In even more conservative Iran, this would not have been an option.

And now the Iranian delegation is accusing the Bahrainian referree of being politically motivated in his decision to stop Iranians from playing.  (Bahrain and Iran have not been on the best of terms of late, and Bahrain believes Iran has been supporting the anti-government protestors in Bahrain).

In this whole imbroglio, those women footballers have been caught in the middle of other people playing politics and the religion card. All those women want to do is play football, and they must have overcome enormous social pressure to get to where they are.  I am sure they don’t find it comfortable to run around in the hot sun in track pants, long sleeves and a hijab.  But that’s the only way they can play at all, so they don’t have much of a choice.  It is a victory in itself that Iran still has a women’s football team and that it is allowed to play regular football at the highest level.  I cannot imagine this happening in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia -  after all,  Saudi women weren’t even allowed inside stadiums to watch football until a few years back.

The Iranian team also seems to be a pretty good one – they are ranked 51 in the world (India, in comparison, is at 54).  So they have every reason to presume that they would have qualified for the Olympics if not for this whole needless  hijab controversy.

At the end of the day, I blame FIFA for not looking at the bigger picture.  Their objections are so minor compared to the pressures the players are facing.  Why does FIFA have to stick to its ridiculous stand if it means disqualifying a whole country’s players?  Is this really the spirit of the Olympics ?  Shouldn’t they rather be encouraging these brave women who are battling so much to be able to play football?

I watched the questions get tougher and tougher through the final rounds, and soon you had reached a stage where knowing the rules of etymology no longer had any benefit.  There were words from Turkish, Arabic and Tagalog, and every world language you could think of.  You could not guess the spelling from a Greek or Latin root, you had to Know the word.  You could see the clear difference in the quality of participants between the preliminary rounds and the finalists.  The finalists were so good that the organizers had to throw tougher and tougher words at them in a desperate attempt to get them to stumble and have the field reduced to one or two.

Sukanya Roy wins the 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee (Pic: Washington Post)

You wonder how many hours these finalists would have devoted to learning spellings, as compared to the hours those other kids who had aced their Districts and failed in the preliminary rounds.  You wonder what the kids get out of all the stupendous hard work they have put in.

Sure, they learn discipline and hard work, perseverance, etymology, an amazing vocabulary, a very good command of English, and the ability to perform under pressure.  But all this is common to anyone who gets even to the preliminary rounds.  What rewards do those extra-ordinary semi-finalists and finalists get?  After all, while the winner gets around $37,500 in cash and bonds, and $2,600 worth of books, and some of the other finalists get attractive prizes, all that most of the participants (including semi-finalists) would get is a small gift card and a chance to visit Washington D.C.  The gift card would not even compensate them for their expenses in staying in D.C. for the competition, so it would be meaningless.

The organizers, on the other hand, are probably raking in the profits.  Starting from tickets to the event (at $40 per head for 2000 people) to sale of Spelling Bee memorabilia, to the TV rights, not just in the US but elsewhere too.  I’m sure the Spelling Bee is telecast in Canada (we did have a Canadian runner up and other Canadian participants) and possibly in the Caribbean.  This year, I noticed that ESPN telecast the Spelling Bee semifinals and finals  live in India, and I wonder where else they did so – Pakistan? Sri Lanka?   Does Sky telecast it in the UK?

You can certainly make a case for increasing the prize money for all participants, given how fast this competition is growing and the profits this show must surely be making.

But what I worry more is not that the participants are not benefiting monetarily, my worry is that the emphasis on the TV ratings may potentially change the nature of the competition.  As it is, many of these desi winners are not good at providing soundbytes  that the organizers would like.  You can see the disappointment in the face of the organizers who try to coax out a few words from the stunned, suddenly shy child.  Do the kids jump up in joy,  pump their fists, kneel on the stage and kiss the ground, or cry or show any emotion at all?  Not really, they just suddenly become speechless, and even look a little stupid.  It is bad enough to have robotic answers during the competition, but to continue to remain robotic after winning does not make for good TV.

There are the occasional crowd favorites, like Surjo Bandyopadhyay this year and Samir Patel in previous years, who are showmen, making for great TV. But most of the other kids just stick to an almost robotic manner of  behavior – asking the same predictable questions, answering unemotionally.  It’s not just the desi kids who do this, but with so many desi kids in the competition, one cannot help but wonder if this is a common attribute among all the desi kids.

I wonder whether, as the competition grows (which would be presumably more internationally as  more world TV audiences are drawn in), whether the organizers would not feel more pressure to make the competition more TV friendly.  I’m not sure what form this would take, and whether it would somehow confer any subtle advantage on the showman-style kids.  But on the whole, I don’t see it as a very good development for the participating kids.

To sum up, I don’t believe the kids are reaping the benefits of the show’s increase in popularity as much as the organizers are.  What’s worse is whether they are likely to get adversely affected by its continuing increase in popularity.