Pickling Mangoes by Sahana Rangarajan
Why is Science Not Popular? by Sarita Sarvate
An Ode to My Mac Air by Vibha Akkaraju
INDIA CURRENTS Celebrating 28 Years of Excellence
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july 2014 • vol. 28 , no . 4 • www. indiacurrents.com
Bhopal Virginia—despite a Affairs to ofWest the heart, as related by thirty year Muslim gap and 8,000 miles American women between the two chemical spills, the By Zenobia Khaleel same concerns are being raised. By Jayshree Chander
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Teachers are the life-blood of our community. Their teachings, interpretations and explanations course through the minds of our young, providing essential intellectual sustenance. So it is important for us, as a society, to get the best out of our teachers and to convince the best of us to become teachers. The recent ruling by Judge Rolf M. Treu, Los Angeles Superior Court, striking down elementary and high school teacher tenure, addresses the issue of firing bad teachers while sidelining the dilemma of hiring good teachers and teacher retention. Historian Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, commenting on Judge Treu’s ruling, in an interview with Michael Krasny, stressed that doing away with tenure is a “horrible prospect.” If tenure is attacked “you don’t increase quality of teaching or up performance and … you make it easier to exploit the teachers and usually exploiting people does not get better performance.” The argument for tenure is that it is a process that safeguards against teachers being indiscriminately fired by administrators. And the problem with tenure is that it makes firing of bad teachers virtually impossible. The issue of ineffective teachers is closely related to how the teaching profession has
changed over the years. One study found that the number of highest-achieving women who became teachers fell by 80% between 1964 to 2000. The challenge lies in attracting more high-quality applicants to the teaching profession. Teachers have very stressful jobs; they are grossly underpaid, have to handle crisis situations frequently, and are subject to critical scrutiny from students, parents as well as school administrators. Good teachers are those that come equipped with the resources to deal with all this and still remain inspired and passionate in the classroom. One reason we have ineffective teachers is because we don’t have enough incentives to attract high-achievers into the profession. Job security is one such incentive. Lee Iacocca once said: “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.” If teacher tenure is struck off the list, we are increasing the likelihood of a shrinking pool of talented educators. Let’s not make tenure the scapegoat of what’s essentially wrong with our education system. Jaya Padmanabhan
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INDIA CURRENTS July 2014 • vol 28 • no 4
PERSPECTIVES
Southern California Edition
1 | EDITORIAL Teachers—The Best of Us? By Jaya Padmanabhan
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LIFESTYLE 28 | FINANCE Reflections of the Economy By Rahul Varshneya 30 | MUSIC July Jingles By Vidya Sridhar
6 | FORUM Was the Bergdahl Exchange Well-Founded? By Rameysh Ramdas, Mani Subramani 7 | A THOUSAND WORDS Counter Valley Thinking, II By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
37 | BOOKS Reviews of And the Mountains Echoed and Illicit Happiness of Other People By Jeanne Fredriksen, Raj C. Oza
8 | MEDIA The Never-Ending Horror Story By Sandip Roy
45 | RELATIONSHIP DIVA Is She Cheating On Me? By Jasbina Ahluwalia
14 | CURRENT AFFAIRS Women’s Rights and the Modi Government By Krishan Jeyarajasingham 16 | POLITICS Narendra Modi 2.0? By Shashi Tharoor 21 | VIEWPOINT An Ode to My Beloved By Vibha Akkaraju 23 | IMMIGRATION The Journey to Citizenship By V.V. Sundaram 44 | YOUTH Pickling Mangoes By Sahana Rangarajan 59 | ON INGLISH Frenzy on the Maidan By Kalpana Mohan 60 | OPINION Motherhood Above All? By Dilnavaz Bamboat 64 | THE LAST WORD Why is Science Not Popular? By Sarita Sarvate
2 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
10 | Hazards of Toxic Spills and Leaks The chemical spill in West Virginia—a reminder of the Bhopal tragedy By Jayshree Chander
18 | Fiction Blood and Guts
52 | REFLECTIONS How to Float to the Top By Gopi Kallayil 54 | HEALTHY LIFE Copper’s Gift of Health By S. Shivashankar 56 | TRAVEL The Wonders of Saxony By Melanie P. Kumar
By Vidya Pradhan
63 | DEAR DOCTOR Anxiety Meltdown By Alzak Amlani
34 | Films
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4 | Voices 9 | Popular Articles
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26 | Ask a Lawyer 27 | Visa Dates
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voices
India and the News
I was a little taken aback by Jaya Padmanabhan’s critique of American media for covering Jay-Z (How Jay-Z Trumped Modi, India Currents, June 2014). She refers to Fox News coverage of a leopard on the loose as non-news worthy. Working for Fox, I can tell her that any story involving animals is news worthy for the American people are very concerned with animal safety and welfare and partner with Indians who are equally concerned: PETA. Sometime ago we had a bear come down from Glendale and hundreds of media hours were devoted to a bear-cam and bear twitter/ facebook feeds. It is actually very eltist of India Currents that it does not devote any press to pets/animals/Indian vetenarians etc. As far as covering Modi, Fox followed the norm. Elections in friendly countries is often covered lightly ... do you hear minuteby-minute coverage of elections in Australia or the United Kingdom? What is concerning to me is that so little time was devoted by India Currents to cover our local candidates such as Neel Kashkari and Kamala Harris. As a volunteer pollworker I know there is a lot of interest in Indian-Americans running for office. It is time to drop the left liberal bias of India Currents and deal with real people. Gopal Chakravarthy, California I agree with the editorial by Jaya Padmanabhan last month. The United States media completely ignored India’s election results. Major TV networks and newspapers make little mention of news from India. When the United States media features India it is seems to be negative, like a train accident, a murder, rape, poverty or slums. The problem is that half of the people in the United States do not know where India is and it is likely that they know more about Hong Kong then about India. A complete absence of news this time may have another factor. It was a major victory for Narendra Modi and the BJP. Narendra Modi was persona non grata in the United States till he was elected. He was denied a visa to enter the United States. If violation of human rights was the issue against Modi, then why not pay more attention to China, where tanks were rolled on innocent people, or Saudi Arabia where a woman caught driving is arrested and her husband fired. Today Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of a country whose middle class is bigger than the entire United States population, 4 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
and this middle class has huge spending power. United States corporations are hungry to get into India and cut themselves a piece of this spending pie. And magically the visa situation has been resolved. In fact, Modi has been invited to the United States by President Obama himself. United States administrations, whether democrat or republican, have a habit of treating other countries like banana republics. It is time to stop this practice. Virendra Jain. California There are two important issues to consider: first, if you lived long enough in the United States, it is no surprise for you that locals/natives view the United States as the entire world; and second, Indians in general have an unfailing tendency to look for “endorsement” from the United States. In reality, it hardly matters. Los Angeles Times devoted front page for five days in a row to report a recorded racial slur from a real estate developer who also amassed wealth and owned a NBA team. Election results and Narendra Modi’s taking over as India’s Prime Minister were on a second page. India is the largest democracy in the world, as everyone in the world is aware of. So it is time to move on and establish India as the most powerful democracy that will overshadow the rest of the world. It is just a matter of time, now that the corruptioninfested country ousted a dynasty that made India an impoverished nation. Kasi Gabbita, California
Modi and India
Vamse Juluri, you are on point in your article (Decoding Elections 2014, India Currents, June 2014). I am an enthusiastic supporter of Modi and am no Hindu fanatic. I see Modi as a level headed pragmatist, patriotic and has a soft heart for the poor and oppressed of India of any community. I predict he will deliver the goods as he has promised and re-establish true pride for India for the first time since 1947. When you write, “ ... most reasonable Hindus. They may not care for the ultranationalism and minority-abusing that some Hindutva leaders did, but they do care about their religion, their nation and their place in the world,” you speak for the balanced nationalists who care about India and that goes for many people of Indian origin all over the world. Byravan Viswanathan Let’s not jump too high on Modi. Modi’s foundation is RSS, which killed Mohatma Gandhi. Modi rode to power riding on Hindu nationalism where Hindu fundamentalists amply rewarded him for his role in
Gujarat riots. Within a week of Modi’s inauguration, two teenage Dalit girls were raped and then hanged to death. An innocent Muslim man was beaten to death by a Hindu mob on the false accusation that the Muslim had insulted Shivaji. Modi preferred to remain silent on both. This was a golden opportunity to take on Hindu higher castes, corrupt police force and fanatical extremists. When a man in power excludes morality from his political expediency—nothing good or great can ever come out of him, no matter how many of us are eager to ride on the Modi bandwagon. Mohammed Shoaib
Hiring and Inspiring
Vivek Wadhwa appears to have joined the vultures circling the Silicon Valley, who are on the prowl for race, age and gender bias (Silicon Valley Elitism, India Currents, June 2014). Silicon Valley is just a geographical spot on the California Coast. It is far, far smaller than the sum of its parts. The sum encompasses the globe. Google has photographically recorded every street with a name or number, in every country. It has made every encyclopedia in the world obsolete and updates the information package continuously; totalitarian governments are afraid of its knowledge content. Cisco teleconferencing technology brings literally anybody from anywhere on to your inter-active screen; Facebook has a free membership well in excess of a billion people, the majority in South-East Asia, and so too does Twitter. Skype, smart phones (including tablets) and other telecom derivatives are the craze of the times. Suffice to say that the Silicon Valley community has now spread to every corner of the globe through innovation, development and marketing, all in the last three decades. Truthfully, Silicon Valley refers now to this whole community, not to the headquarters of the major players. No country in the world will decline an offer from anyone to duplicate a version of Silicon Valley in their own locale notwithstanding the stigma of elitism. P. Mahadevan, Fullerton, CA
SPEAK YOUR MIND! Have a thought or opinion to share? Send us an original letter of up to 300 words, and include your name, address, and phone number. Letters are edited for clarity and brevity. Write India Currents Letters, 1885 Lundy Ave. Suite 220, San Jose 95131 or email letters@indiacurrents.com.
Love and Marriage
I would like to congratulate Kunal Kamath for his perspective (A New Bollywood Love Story, India Currents, June 2014). I think it’s important to be more accepting of issues such as gay and lesbian relationships. Many in our culture are uneducated on (which is hard to believe because most of us have college degrees) and find it difficult to accept or talk about such issues. The writer talks about Bollywood movies that are based on love marriages, which is again not a common practice in our culture, yet we are crazy about it! I still don’t understand how and why love can be considered bad. I think there are some big issues that we should be worried about such as poverty, class system, women’s rights (safety), etc. Gay and lesbian love was present in ancient civilizations and will be present in the future. It’s time we began educating ourselves with an open mind. Thanks Kunal for writing this article! Keep up the good work! Vandana Dev
Sex and Marriage
It was only on reading Kalpana Mohan’s comments and Nirmala Nataraj’s response that I read the latter’s original article (Journey to My Desire, India Currents, May 2014).
She addresses an important issue. In a blog on rediff.com, I read that in the West, sex is the basis of love; whereas in India, love is the basis of sex. In other words, in the West, lack of sex means lack of love, but not necessarily so in India. It is a commonly held belief in our community that sex is to be within marriage. J. Krishnamurthi in his book. Education and Significance of Life has said: “As long as there is no deep understanding of the whole process of desire, the institution of marriage as it now exists, whether in the East or in the West, cannot provide the answer to the sexual problem. ... When there is love, sex is never a problem—it is the lack of love that creates the problem.” Jayananda Hiranandani, Artesia, CA
OCI Problems
Our family of four submitted our OCI documents to BLS International in March 2014. We were informed by email that my husband’s and mine had been processed and we were to present ourselves for passport verification. However, just at that time, (May 2014) the Indian Consulate changed the outsourcing agency to Cox & Kings. When we went to Cox & Kings for passport verification, nobody seemed to know where the pa-
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perwork was. My husband made many trips to the new agency. As for my two kids, there is no way to access their application, because when we go online using the old BLS number, it says that their application is being processed. This is very, very frustrating. David/Maruska Desouza, California
Response from the Consulate
OCI cards are processed and printed in India and then are sent to the Consulate. In the case of Mr. David Desouza and Ms. Maruska Desouza and their children, we have worked with them to resolve the issue. As the earlier service provider, M/s. BLS International, had many problems in providing satisfactory services, the service provider has been changed to M/s. CKGS. Some of the applicants who had submitted their applications to BLS have been facing such problems due to data transfer problems by the new agency. However, such applicants may email their details at complaint.ckgs@ gmail.com We do hope that the new service provider, CKGS would streamline the process at the earliest so that applicants do not face needless problems. B.C. Joshi, Vice Consul(PIO & OCI) Consulate General of India, San Francisco
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forum
Was the Bergdahl Exchange Well-Founded? No, the cost is too high
Yes, Obama must rescue prisoners-of-war
By Rameysh Ramdas
By Mani Subramani
las, just when Fox News right wing hosts were losing their oxygen, spinning conspiracy out of a human tragedy in Benghazi, the Obama administration handed them a bonanza on a platter with the way they handled the Taliban prisoner swap. The administration agreed to a secret deal with the Taliban to release five of their high value prisoners from Guantanamo in exchange for the return of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who was being held hostage in Afghanistan. This would normally have been celebrated as bringing home the only hostage from the Afghan war. But this one is different since there are questions whether Bergdahl is a war hero or a deserter who walked away from his unit with six soldiers dying in the search for him thereafter. And whether we should have negotiated with the Taliban and released five high value detainees, who could turn against our interests again. Time Magazine aptly titled its cover page story on this with the question- “Was he worth it?” Our nation has had an honored tradition of never leaving behind a soldier in a war zone and bringing them ... there are questions home at any cost. That is whether Bergdahl is a a sacred promise that we make to our young men war hero or a deserter and women in uniform. The Vietnam War saw the who walked away heroic search and rescue of Lt. Col. Hambleton that from his unit with six lasted a total of 17 days, soldiers dying in the with 24 sorties and the loss of 13 men in the mission. search for him thereDuring the Kosovo war, the Clinton administration after. courageously rescued Cpt. Scott O’Grady who was shot down in Serbia. Our nation has also had a long standing principle to never negotiate with terrorists. Having decided to deal with the Taliban, President Obama should have gained the support of key Congressional leaders ahead of announcing the deal, as the law requires, and fended off partisan attacks. Finally, President Obama should have spoken to the nation and explained his rationale to make this decision and rallied the country to his defense, assuring the people that there will be a full and thorough investigation of Bergdahl’s disappearance during the war. Instead of carefully choreographing the narrative himself, President Obama delegated the task to Security Advisor Susan Rice. Just as in the Benghazi narrative, Rice completely changed the trajectory by saying that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction” prompting many that served with him to be outraged at the description, fueling GOP attacks. President Obama should be remembered for his courageous decision and successful capture of Bin Laden. Instead, the public is left with the image and perception of a President bereft of purpose or competence in foreign policy and national security due to blunders such as this most recent prisoner swap. n
he prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has become an albatross around the neck of American Democracy. A total of 779 people were captured and sent to Guantanamo since 2002. All but 149 detainees are still at Guantanamo. The rest have been transferred to countries like Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, among others. Most of these countries are not, what we would consider, states with strong laws against terrorist activities and in many cases these countries are breeding grounds for terrorists. The dozens of prisoners who are still left behind have been successful in garnering media attention by going on hunger strikes to protest their plight. With no dearth of defense lawyers eager to represent them, it has become a circus in recent years. In other words, we can’t get rid of these “terrorists” fast enough or find countries willing to accept them. Guantanamo was one of the tools invented to implement the thoroughly discredited Bush-Cheney doctrine. The 1% doctrine where the best defense against terrorism was to round up the terrorists at it source and put them away in a secure place. All 779 of them! The mistake President Obama is guilty of is not following through on his campaign promise to close this prison in Cuba. So who can blame the President if he traded five of these prisoners for our only POW from the Afghanistan war. The Gitmo prisoners cost the United States, 2.7 mil... we can’t get rid of lion per prisoner, per year. these “terrorists” fast That is a huge burden to bear in the face of hard enough or find counpressed defense resources. And is a crucial reason for tries willing to accept the prisoner swap. them. It is particularly offensive that the presidents’s critics choose to argue that Bergdahl was a deserter of his post and hence does not deserve to be rescued. As Robert Brooks points out in the New York Times “the president has a solemn duty to take all measures necessary to rescue prisoners-of-war. Regardless of whether the soldier was a deserter or if he said insulting and shameful things about his country and his Army. The debt we owe to fellow Americans is not based on individual merit. It is based on citizenship, and loyalty to the national community.” In fact from Berghdahl’s writings prior to joining the Army when he was released from the Coast Guard it is clear that he was indeed a confused young man. We need to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially when he is held captive by our enemies. The conservative right lead by Senator McCain who, it appears, sees no cause low enough to take up against President Obama. It is not that they do not want to free POWs. They do. It is not that they do not negotiate with terrorists. Because they did with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It is this particular five prisoners for this particular POW that they object. As mentioned in the blogosphere perhaps the President should make them an offer that they cannot refuse. A repeal of the Affordable Care Act in exchange for the release of the five prisoners? LOL! n
Rameysh Ramdas, an S.F. Bay Area professional, writes as a hobby.
Mani Subramani works in the semi-conductor industry in Silicon Valley.
A
6 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
T
a thousand words
Counter Valley Thinking, Part 2 By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
E
veryone is talking about change. In the Bay Area, it’s the privileged who are “changing the world” one start-up, acquisition, or application at a time. They call it “creative destruction” and “disruption.” In India, pandits and pundits are still processing the results of the parliamentary elections. Celebrants say it was time for “change.” Everyone is talking about change, but they also mean change: the former is something new; the latter, cash money. In every utterance resides the double meaning. I was talking to an old friend recently. At seventeen, he was going to be a neurosurgeon, then he took up poetry, then he wound up in consulting, and now he’s a business student with his heart set on a future IPO. If, a decade ago, the nation’s top graduates flocked to the banks, now they’re headed to the Bay, to make a difference, or so they say. “My colleagues and I live in fear,” he said. “What if, twenty years from now, we’re middle managers at Google? That would mean we hadn’t made a difference, that we hadn’t changed anything.” I raised an eyebrow. Working for Google: the new signifier of techno-elite failure? The way he said it, he might have been talking about flipping burgers. But what he meant was that Google is comfortable and predictable, and that substantial, disruptive, paradigm-shifting “change” won’t issue from the ranks of the hegemon in the future—in either sense of the word. Now, I grew up in the Valley, but my parents emphasized intellectual risks, not profit-driven ones, and I have not drunk the cult of entrepreneurship Kool-Aid. I find the current overemphasis on innovation and change—rhetoric borne of the Silicon Valley, but which now permeates the mainstream media, non-technological industries, and the staid towers of academia—faddish and ironically unimaginative. It is often politically suspect (just who is changing what for whom?), and it has inaugurated new, myopic structures of personal and professional valuation (cue my friend, living in fear of a non-disruptive corporate salary). In fact, the whole country has got Valley Fever. Stanford is the new Harvard. New Yorkers are talking about “founder hounders” moving West to wed start-up kings. It’s the gold rush, baby. Again. People I grew up with drive Tesla cars and ride the Apple bus up and down the Peninsula. When I moved out of my Berkeley apartment, I was priced out of the rental market. A term like gentrification doesn’t begin to capture what’s happening. All along the Embarcadero, people in their twenties, making more than their parents ever did. Rana Dasgupta’s book on the transformation of Delhi, Capital, calls what’s happened there over the last decade an “eruption:” an eruption of money—more black than white—that has transformed an already precariously unequal society for the worse, that has neither created jobs nor decreased poverty, but has inaugurated new structures of prejudice, segregation, and misery. Is Dasgupta’s “eruption” that far from our own “disruption?” Tech evangelists know that companies like Netflix eventually contribute to the failure of brick-and-mortar stores and cost tens of thousands of jobs. But my Google-fearing friend says Netflix has done great things for the average Joe. “Now everyone can watch whatever, whenever,” he says. “Netflix has fundamentally improved our quality of life.”
In fact, the whole country has got Valley Fever. Stanford is the new Harvard. New Yorkers are talking about “founder hounders” moving West to wed start-up kings. It’s the gold rush, baby. Again. Defenders of “start-up innovators,” like Duke professor Aaron Chatterji, maintain that while the WhatsApps and Instagrams of the world don’t actually create significant numbers of jobs, they “almost always create real value in the economy.” “Quality of life.” “Real value.” This is the rhetoric, but I don’t buy it. Going to the movies used to be a relatively affordable social event, an opportunity for engagement not just with a cultural artifact, but also with fellow viewers, friends, dates. Now the only people who watch movies in large groups are those with surroundsound “media rooms.” I preferred the ritual of going to the movies, the illicit thrill of hands held in the back row of a Camera theater, the ticket stub found weeks later in a back pocket. And what is “real value” anyway? Writing in 2008, novelist Amit Chaudhuri observed that in the era of globalization “the ironical register of the term ‘value’ is, on the whole, no longer available to us.” Chaudhuri argued that we once used to be able to talk about the “value” of culture, “the stock” in this or that writer, and the “treasure” that is the goal of spiritual life in such a way that it was clear from our language that we didn’t mean the market value. We meant a higher value, an entirely different structure of value. The language of the market gave our statements an ironical, double meaning. Today, value no longer retains its metaphoricity, and to speak of “value” is to enter the discursive sphere of the world market, from which there is no escape. It’s “change,” but only in one sense of the word. Consider the language of these recent headlines: “Rich Indians Are More Likely to Pass Wealth to Children Unconditionally.” “LowCost Water is Hard Sell in Delhi Colony.” Riches, wealth, hard sell: words that give texture to our cognitive maps of the world. We might once have meant the other inheritances we pass on, the living infrastructure of the natural environment, the wealth of knowledge, and the value of education, but not anymore. “Pay-per-use” water flowing out of A.T.M.s is not a hard sell because its privatization is repugnant to the robust moral sensibilities of our society. No, it is literally a hard sell. People aren’t paying the $1.70 fee for the smart card to access the machines from which they’re expected to buy water, to which they have a universal right. My friend wants to do something valuable with his life; he wants to make change. Economists see the real value created by entrepreneurial job-killers. India went to the polls in an election of worldhistorical proportions, and all anybody could talk about was the value of change. There was nothing metaphorical about it.n Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 7
media
The Never-Ending Horror Story A Waco moment for India’s rape crisis?
L
ast week India was shocked by a picture that looked ripped out of the American south from decades ago. Two young women, raped and strangled, and then left dangling from a mango tree in a village in the Badaun district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The two girls, cousins, both teenagers, poor lower caste Dalits had gone out at dusk to the fields because their homes had no toilets. They never came back. When the father went to complain to the police, they didn’t pay him much attention. The police belonged to the Yadav group, also a backward caste but higher up the pecking order. And the men suspected of abducting the girls were Yadavs as well. The next morning the girls were found dangling from a mango tree by their own headscarves. The photographs went viral on social media and caused a firestorm. On one hand it’s been blasted as the “pornography of rape.” On the other hand, it’s been described as a jolt to wake up a blasé society where rape, especially out in the badlands of northern India, is commonplace enough that it does not make front page news anymore. There is a point there. We are so inured, so numbed by the never ending horror story of rape that it seems we need to descend ever lower into the pits to be shocked to attention. It’s as if faced with a rape story, the media has to ask the question “What’s new about this one?” Is it a toddler? A foreign tourist? Or now is it the horrific spectacle of these two teenagers hanging from a mango tree while a crowd of villagers including children gawk? But in the end this picture is not worth a thousand words because it cannot begin to unravel the context behind the story. And that’s where the analogies with the photographs of lynching victims in segregated America start to fall apart. In 1916, Jesse Washington, a teenaged black farmhand was lynched in Waco, Texas, accused of raping and murdering the wife of his white employer. A professional photographer took pictures of the event and they were printed and sold as postcards. That spurred national outrage. W.E. DuBois, the co-founder of the NAACP used those photographs on the cover of his organization’s newsletter. It was a controversial decision even within the NAACP. But DuBois pushed 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
New America Media • Sandip Roy for it saying it would shock white America into supporting their anti-lynching campaign. Also he was actually subverting the images that were being sold as postcards by using them to spur outrage. The photographs of the Waco lynching didn’t end lynching but in her book Lynching and Spectacle, Amy Louise Wood says it was a turning point and with it “lynching began to sow the seeds of its own collapse.” Could the Dalit girls of Badaun be a Waco moment for India’s rape crisis? Unlikely. In 1916 America, the public at large, could pretend that lynching was not really an issue because it happened far away from them in some small town in a southern state. In 21st century India, there is no spot that is safe from rape—not an abandoned mill in Mumbai, a public bus in Delhi, a taxi in Kolkata, or a village in Haryana. America needed to see what Billie Holliday later sang about as “strange fruit hanging from poplar trees” to shock it out of its romantic magnolia-scented stereotypes of the “pastoral scene of the gallant south.” In India, the problem is not of young girls routinely hanging from mango trees in the fields of Uttar Pradesh. It is about rape as routine. This barbaric scene in a way is an exception—a grisly twist to a more commonplace story. This story is really a story about lynching not just rape. But more importantly that Waco image by itself encapsulated the essence of the story that DuBois wanted to convey to the public—the black youth strung up by mob justice. That was all it needed to convey for his purposes. In Badaun, the image has shock value, but in India all rapes are not equal. Some rape victims find the police prompt in filing an FIR. In this case the girl’s father says the police who also belonged to the Yadav community “took the side of the culprits” and “abused and misbehaved” with him. That back story cannot be conveyed by the photograph. It’s a story that’s not just about rape. It’s about caste and power and property—and that includes the bodies of women. It’s about who owns land and who does not. It’s about how the lack of toilets translates into lack of safety. It’s about not just raping someone but also making an example of them. In a report for India Ink, Neha Dixit
gets at some of that complexity of caste and power, as she probes the back story of another rape in Bhagana, Haryana. There too a teenaged Dalit girl and three of her friends go to relieve themselves in the wheat fields belonging to the Jat community. They claim they were then attacked and raped by Jat men and abandoned in Bhatinda, Punjab more than 90 miles away. But as Dixit discovers it’s not just a story about bestial men. It’s a story about a fight over a plot of land granted to the village council to divide among the community. It’s a story about an alleged bandi or boycott of Dalits for daring to complain about what they felt was unfair treatment. It’s a story about Dalit laborers taking advantage of a government social program to not renew their low-paying employment contracts with Jat farmers. None of that context can be captured in any shocking photograph. And certainly no photograph can begin to convey how the conviction rates for the rape accused in India plummet even further when the victim is a Dalit woman and the perpetrator non-Dalit. In India there is rape. And then there is rape. In 1916 America, it might have been against good taste to publish those photographs but it was not against the law. In India, it’s a different story. Indian law does not allow revealing the identity of the rape victim. There can be a separate debate about how effective such a blanket ban is and whether it inadvertently reinforces stigma by making rape an especially shameful crime. But as of now that’s what the law says and the unedited photographs brutally violate the privacy of those young girls even in death. The gang rape of the young woman in that bus in Delhi touched a national chord and spurred the government into action into passing a stricter anti-rape law. That did not require us to see her brutalized body. If indeed we now need to see the “strange fruit” on our mango trees to be shocked, it begs the question about what kind of people we have become anyway. n Sandip Roy is the Culture Editor for Firstpost. com. He is on leave as editor with New America Media. His weekly dispatches from India can be heard on KALW.org. This article was first published on Firstpost.com.
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cover
Hazards of Toxic Spills and Leaks
The chemical spill in West Virginia is a reminder of the Bhopal tragedy By Jayshree Chander
A cloud of lethal gas escapes from a pesticide factory in the central Indian city of Bhopal, in 1984, immediately causing death and long-term damage. In a facsimile incident in January 2014, a storage tank disgorges chemicals contaminating the drinking water in West Virginia. These disastrous incidents reveal that despite the thirty-year gap between such calamities, there remains a clear need for environmental safety regulations and strategies for disaster preparedness as well as corporate and government accountability. The Disasters
Early in the morning of January 9, 2014 people near Charleston, West Virginia noticed a strong licorice smell in the air and called emergency officials to investigate. It turned out to be a storage tank owned by Freedom Industries that had spilled 10,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) into the Elk River in West Virginia. MCHM is a chemical used to clean coal before it goes to market. Around midnight between the 2nd and 3rd of Dec 1984 people in a very poor neighborhood in Bhopal noticed a strong feeling of burning chilis stinging their eyes and searing their lungs. It turned out to be
10 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
a storage tank owned by Union Carbide that had leaked 40 tons of methylisocyanate (MIC) gas covering an area of Bhopal, India populated by 500,000 people. MIC is a chemical used in the manufacture of the pesticide carbaryl.
The Aftermaths
In the initial few hours after the spill in West Virginia public health officials were issuing statements assuring the public there was nothing to worry about. According to a short report by CNN, West Virginia’s Poison Control director Dr. Elizabeth Scharman said there’s not much information available about the chemical because it hasn’t been
adequately studied. Ten thousand gallons of an inadequately studied chemical dumped into a river 1.5 miles upstream from a water treatment plant serving 300,000 people in nine counties. This posed a serious problem for doctors treating hundreds of people in the weeks following the spill. Federal code requires the owner of any facility post information about the hazards of any chemical which they produce, import, or to which their employees could be exposed. The regulation also states the material safety data sheet (MSDS) must be submitted to the local emergency planning committee, the state emergency response commission, and the fire department responsible for that
A Creative Commons Image facility. In this case the MSDS Eastman Chemical for MCHM is full of holes due to “lack of data.” If you look at the document it’s rather laughable. The US Chemical Safety Board has noted that “Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) often do not adequately communicate hazard data and precautions.” That’s very true in this case. Why is there no data? According to a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, MCHM was grandfathered in under 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), along with 62,000 other chemicals. No data required. The National Library of Medicine Toxicology Data Network states MCHM is an irritant to the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract and that high exposures can damage the heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs. That’s true of many chemicals. The treatment information provided for doctors is also very generic and could be applied to any poisoning case. No actual antidotes for MCHM poisoning are known. As a practicing urgent care physician I can tell you this isn’t particularly helpful information. Some days to weeks after the initial leak, Freedom Industries reported that another chemical, Dowanol PPh, was also in the tank. PPh is manufactured by none other than Dow Chemical, the current owners of Union Carbide. Once again not much is known about PPh. Dow’s safety assessment document states “Eye contact with PPh may cause severe irritation with slight corneal injury. Prolonged skin contact may cause slight irritation with local redness.” And that’s about all. The Freedom Institute atrocities continue. On Feb 6, 2014 another leak of MCHM occurred when contractors hit an underground pipe while excavating for Freedom Industries. You’d think they’d be extra careful after the first accident.
On the night of the Union Carbide Gas Disaster somewhere between 3,000-6,000 deaths occurred while the local hospitals were overwhelmed by the ill and dying. Local doctors had no information on the composition of the gas with no idea how to care for the survivors. Union Carbide was not immediately forthcoming about the toxicity of the gas nor how the survivors could be treated. In the immediate aftermath Union Carbide’s official statement to local authorities in Bhopal was that MIC was a mild irritant, not a lethal chemical. There was some possibility that sodium thiosulfate could have acted as a partial antidote to the toxicity of the cyanate component of the Union Carbide Gas, but that information was not available in a timely fashion to the treating physicians.
The Aquatic Fates
Five or six hours after the MCHM leak in West Virginia, statements were issued to not drink the water. The Do Not Use Water Advisory issued by the State of West Virginia was lifted four days after the leak. But according to the Toxnet database only half of the dissolved MCHM would have been expected to volatilize from the river in three and a half days. Several days after the advisory was lifted the Center for Disease Control issued warnings that pregnant women abstain from drinking the water, just to be on the safe side. One month after the disaster the water still smells. On Feb 6, 2014, after the second leak occurred, the West Virginia Governor requested the state’s privately held water utility to provide more bottled water to the population. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided bottled water to the area for ten days. The state has spent spent nearly a million dollars on bottled water. Why is the state paying for the bottled water? Why is
The state has spent spent nearly a million dollars on bottled water. Why is the state paying for the bottled water? Why is the bill being footed by taxpayers? Why isn’t anyone telling Freedom Industries to belly up to the bar and buy rounds of clean water for everyone? the bill being footed by taxpayers? Why isn’t anyone telling Freedom Industries to belly up to the bar and buy rounds of clean water for everyone? For years after the 1984 Union Carbide Gas Disaster, there were signs reading “Water Unfit for Drinking” on the hand pumps in the neighborhood from which residents obtained drinking water. Many of the residents of that area were illiterate. The signs were of no use. Thirty years after the disaster the groundwater and the surrounding soil is still contaminated. It wasn’t until 2004 the Supreme Court of India ordered the state government of Madhya Pradesh to provide clean drinking water to the inhabitants. In 2012 the Supreme Court gave Madhya Pradesh three months to start supplying clean water. Finally in 2013, thirty years after the disaster, a pipe supplying clean water to the contaminated communities was near completion. Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, isn’t footing the bill for the clean water to Bhopalis either.
Regulatory Failures
Tougher government oversight was recommended by the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) three years ago after they investigated a series of industrial accidents in 2008 at a Bayer CropScience Chemical Plant Institute in West Virginia. One of those accidents came dangerously close to damaging a storage tank containing methylisocyanate (MIC), the same chemical in the tank responsible for the Union Carbide Gas Disaster in Bhopal. After the investigation, the CSB recommended that West Virginia create a new chemical accident inspection program, and that state and local authorities considered the recommendation “ ... but due to a number of reasons, including funding, it has not been adopted.” [Source: Testimony from July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 11
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Roll-ups, holdings, mergers, and acquisitions go a long way to obscure accountability too.
A Creative Commons Image the Transportation and Infrastructure Field Hearing on the West Virginia Chemical Spill] The state of West Virginia wants to keep the economic climate favorable to businesses and insists there is enough regulation of industries already. The state prides itself in being industry-friendly. After the Freedom Industries spill in January 2014, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors scheduled a visit to assess the situation. Following the visit it was revealed that Freedom Industries “‘does not have OSHA history,’ meaning ... that federal workplace safety officials have never inspected the site.” [Source: Charleston Gazette] Additionally, State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials conceded “that their discovery of the [WV] leak marked the first time [West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP)] inspectors had been at the site in more than 20 years.” [Source: Charleston Gazette] Why does West Virginia not require inspections of storage tanks containing dangerous chemicals? It is clear that the owners of Freedom Industries did not follow regulations. Under current West Virginia law, Freedom Industries was required to submit a groundwater protection plan per the Clean Water Act. It is alleged that “the state had no record of a plan being filed.” [Source: the Council of State Governments Knowledge Center] Freedom Industries was required to report hazardous spills immediately following an incident. “An odor complaint was filed with WVDEP at 8:16 AM on January 9, but Freedom did not report the spill until 12:05 PM that day—almost four hours
later.” [Source: DownStream Strategies, an environmental consulting firm] According to Bloomberg Businessweek, after the January spill, Freedom Industries admitted they had earmarked $1 million in 2013 to fix the wall that ultimately failed to contain the chemical spill. They obviously hadn’t made the repairs. Freedom Industries filed for bankruptcy on Jan 17, 2014, eight days after the incident and 18 days after being acquired by Rosebud Mining via Chemstream Holdings. Roll-ups, holdings, mergers, and acquisitions go a long way to obscure accountability too.
Back to Bhopal
Union Carbide had sent an internal audit team from, where else but, West Virginia to inspect the plant in Bhopal. Their report outlined many concerns about safety mechanisms that weren’t working three months before the tragedy. That report was never sent to India. The flare tower meant to burn any gas that leaked was not lit; the caustic soda scrubber to neutralize any gas leak was not working; the refrigeration units to keep the tank and gases cold was not working as the freon was being used somewhere else; and the public alarm system had been shut off as it had been going off too frequently for 2-3 weeks before the “accident.” Dow Chemical now owns Union Carbide and denies responsibility. Another case of obscured accountability through the sleight of hand through mergers and acquisitions. The government of Madhya Pradesh, and India, have basically protected the interests of corporations. The priority demonstrated has not been the protection of its citizens, but rather making conditions favorable for foreign companies to bring their operations to India. Of course it benefits people to have jobs, but a job does you no good if you are too sick to work, or dead.
A
ccording to Rafael Moure-Eraso, chairman of the United States Chemical Safety Board, “we need comprehensive regulatory reform.” I’ll add that regulations need to be consistent worldwide. Companies are constantly escaping regulations here and dumping their toxic problems elsewhere. Years ago the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator had proposed reg-
ulations encouraging safer chemicals and processes. American companies strongly opposed these regulations, even though they comply with similar regulations in Europe. When governments calculate the balance between environment, health, and jobs, who are they keeping in mind? Aren’t the jobs for the same people who need clean environments to be healthy and happy. Having a sick and dirty job doesn’t serve anyone either, particularly the people doing the work. America is basically on a path to outstrip the 1984 Union Carbide Gas Disaster’s notorious place in history as the world’s worst industrial accident in history. According to the EPA, there are about 13,000 facilities across the United States storing or processing hazardous chemicals in amounts capable of endangering the public, not to mention all the transporting of those chemicals. Three US Senators, Barbara Boxer, Joe Manchin and John Rockefeller, all three Democrats, introduced a bill in the Senate requiring states to inspect chemical facilities that put public water systems at risk every three to five years. The pressure has been turned up now with an original action filed by two public interest law firms against the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health and Human Resources alleging the agencies “failed to protect public health and the environment.” The tragedy in Bhopal affected primarily very poor people. The tragedy in Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, impacts the upper class of government officials, attorneys, and the like. When it’s your own water, it tends to tip the regulatory scale. n
Beyond Holistic is hosting “We All Live in Bhopal: Commemorating 30 years of the Carbide Disaster”—a week of events in the San Francisco Bay Area Dec 2-7, 2014 in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Union Carbide Gas Disaster in Bhopal. Jayshree Chander is a practicing physician board certified in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, as well as Family and Community Medicine. She serves part time at the Tom Waddell Health Center for the Homeless in San Francisco and is also a performing artist. She is the founder of Beyond Holistic, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting primary prevention through healing, arts, action, and medicine. www.beyondholistic.org. A version of this article originally appeared on the blog, Nei Jing Now!-Prioritizing Well Being, www.neijingnow.org July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 13
current affairs
Women’s Rights and the Modi Government By Krishan Jeyarajasingham A Creative Commons Image
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ithin days prior to India’s latest election results that heralded a new government rising to power, an Indian court made a ruling that reinforced gender stereotypes. The court ruled that marital rape is not a crime. The ruling says that if a man and a woman are married, yet separated and living apart and a man sexually assaults the woman, he is not committing a crime. Furthermore, if a woman says no to intercourse with her husband, and her husband forces himself on her, no crime has been committed. A specific case was brought by an unidentified woman who said that a marriage had been performed while she had been drugged. She said that after the ceremony, during which she had been intoxicated, her new husband sexually assaulted her against her will and then fled. The court’s ruling stated that “sexual intercourse between the two, even if forcible, is not rape and no culpability can be fastened upon the accused.” The women of India cannot allow this to happen. This ruling puts them in the untenable position of fearing for their lives on a constant basis. Rural or urban, their safety is under threat. Misogynistic views and beliefs of entitlement have existed in our societies for far too long. Take the heinous occurrence in the beachside town of Santa Barbara, California, where a male gunman extracted revenge on women because he was consistently “rejected” by them. He got himself a gun and began shooting at women. The way to change this way of thinking will require not only political and government action with stricter gun laws and penalties for such crimes, but also a coordinated effort from parents and non-governmental organizations to instill awareness in the tender minds of young males about respect for all. For far too long India’s laws and officials have not done enough to promote and protect women’s rights. Patriarchal notions of male entitlement are repeatedly reinforced through lawmaker’s attitudes and judgments, as evidenced by the aforementioned ruling. While there are many progressive laws that seek to empower women and protect their rights, weak implementation of these 14 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
laws mean that they’re little more than words on a piece of paper. That, coupled with this latest ruling, tells Indian women that they do not possess the same rights that men have. This ruling is an affront to women’s rights. It arrests any discourse on equality and legitimizes the right of a man over a woman’s body when married. The ruling tells women—or girls over the age of 15— who are married or who will soon enter into marriage, that once they are legally married, they lose the right to decide if, when, and how often they will have sex with their husbands. Ironically, according to the New York Times, the ruling in the case was issued under a new fast-track court, created after the gang rape of a woman on a Delhi bus less than two years ago, to help address problems associated with violence against women. The aftermath of that incident included several changes made within the legal system, as recommended by the Justice Verma Report, but the recommendation to criminalize marital rape was rejected. While this ruling affects any female over the age of 15 who is married, it reminds us that many of the women this ruling affects are still girls. According to UNICEF, as of 2013, nearly 48 percent of Indian women are married by age 18, many of whom are forced into an early marriage by their family to a spouse they did not themselves choose. It has been noted in various studies that girls who are married early experience higher rates of gender-based violence experience, are at greater risk to die during child birth, and have reported higher rates of depression. As the newly elected government sets its political priorities, it is of utmost importance that India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra
Modi, seeks to ensure that India’s women are safe and that new laws grounded in the protection of women from all forms of violence must indubitably become the norm. Throughout the hotly contested election, Modi has made strong efforts to draw the support of women voters. He must make women’s empowerment a critical aspect of his political agenda. During the election campaign, on his widely watched television show, Chai Pe Charcha, Modi opened his discussion on women by highlighting their political power. He insisted that a women’s vote bank in India would supersede all voting blocs in the country, including those formed on the basis of caste, religion, and region. He strongly emphasized that women are missing in the elections and advocated for their greater political participation. Modi also referred to women as nation-makers and nationbuilders. He stated that while women were home-makers that contributed to the nation, they needed to become nation-builders by contributing to the economic development of the country. One way to do that is to provide equal education and opportunity to women: enrich a woman and you can enrich a nation. Hurt women, deny women equitable rights and a nation’s death sentence will soon commence. Placing strong, capable, highly intelligent women in positions of cabinet power can do wonders in realizing Modi’s goals. Thus far, he is off to a good start by creating a gender inclusive cabinet consisting of 25 percent of women, which is 11% more than the previous government. This sends a resounding message that it will take cooperative efforts from both genders to help establish true change that is sorely needed for a country that is the world’s largest democracy. This is a chance to “push the reset button” and to ensure that gains in women’s rights, not reductions, are par for the course under the new government. n Krishan Jeyarajasingham is a former medical student applying for post-graduate training in the United States and currently doing research in Nuclear Medicine at a center affiliated with Johns Hopkins.
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politics
Narendra Modi 2.0? By Shashi Tharoor
W
hen Narendra Modi swept to a dramatic victory in India’s general elections, becoming the first prime minister in three decades to command an absolute majority in the lower house of India’s fractious Parliament, many in India worried about what his victory would portend. To political opponents and members of India’s liberal intelligentsia, Modi was a divisive, sectarian, authoritarian figure who had presided over the massacre of some 1,200 innocents, mainly Muslim, as chief minister of the state of Gujarat in 2002. The thought of such a figure leading a diverse and multireligious polity that had long been built on the “Nehruvian consensus” developed by the Congress Party, was anathema to many. In the event, Modi overcame this negative perception, re-branding himself as an apostle of development and pointing to his successful record in Gujarat, a state of high growth rates that under his leadership has been a magnet for investors. His brilliantlyorganized, lavishly-funded election campaign saw “Hindutva,” the ideology of Hindu chauvinism with which he and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have long been identified, relegated to the back burner, while Modi promised voters he would remake India in the model of prosperous Gujarat. The electorate rewarded the BJP—which had never previously won more than 186 seats in India’s 543-member Lower House—with 282 seats, as the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP claimed 333. The ruling Congress Party, of which I am a member, was relegated to its worst showing in history, winning a mere 44 seats. To almost everyone’s surprise, however, Modi and the BJP have eschewed the hubris and triumphalism they might have been assumed to have earned with their sweeping victory. In the couple of weeks since his election, Modi has been conciliatory and inclusive in both his pronouncements and his actions. I was a beneficiary of this unexpected generosity on the very day of his victory, when I received a startling tweet of congratulations from him on my own victory in my constituency. “Let us work together to move India forward,” he declared in his message to me. This tweet to a prominent adversary, with whom he had crossed swords in the past, was one of many signals to the nation that he was putting old enmities behind him. “I will be
16 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
An ambitious man, Modi appears to realize that if he wants to make a success of his government, he will have to lead the nation from the center and not from the extreme right ... prime minister of all Indians, including those who did not vote for me,” he announced in one of his first speeches. Cynics might point out that this was only prudent, since his party won its resounding majority with just 31 percent of the national vote, benefitting from the Westminster-style “first-past-thepost” system in constituencies with multiple contesting parties. But coming as it did from a man with a reputation of brooking no dissent and riding roughshod over opposition during his twelve years at the helm in Gujarat, it was a welcome surprise. In a series of speeches, Prime Minister Modi has gone out of his way to avoid confrontational language, to omit issues and imagery that India’s religious minorities would find offensive, and to extend a hand of friendship to his critics. After having attacked the large number of government projects and schemes named for members of the Congress Party’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty during the election, he stopped his ministers from renaming these programs, saying it was more important to get them to work more effectively. His early Cabinet appointments rewarded the party’s brighter and younger professionals, omitting many of the Hindu nationalist veterans and rabid ideologues who epitomised many Indians’ anxieties about the BJP. In a striking departure from precedent, Modi also quelled concerns in India’s neighborhood about his rise by inviting the heads of government of India’s seven South Asian neighbours, as well as that of Mauritius (the Indian Ocean republic whose population is 63 percent Indian), to his swearing-in. India’s prime ministers have never enjoyed lavish inaugurations like American presidents, traditionally assuming office after sparselyattended and low-key oath-takings behind closed doors. Modi converted this routine into a grand, opulent 4,000-guest ceremony
on the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, and invited his foreign guests to attend the televised coronation. The gesture instantly disarmed many across the borders who had been alarmed by his combative rhetoric during the campaign, in which he had promised robust action on the borders, assailed Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism. His cordial welcome to, and subsequent bilateral meetings with, the leaders of these and other neighboring countries reassured them that the Modi government would not feel obliged to live up to the belligerence of the Modi campaign. So does this all add up to a Modi 2.0, a very different figure in government from the ogre some of us had feared and demonized for years? It is still too early to tell, but the initial signs are encouraging. Prime Minister Modi would hardly be the first opposition leader to temper his views and conduct once in office, but there seems to be something more fundamental involved here. An ambitious man, Modi appears to realize that if he wants to make a success of his government, he will have to lead the nation from the center and not from the extreme right where he had built his base in the BJP. His overwhelming majority, won on the back of a highly personalized campaign which led many to vote for Modi rather than for the BJP, has also liberated him from the party’s and his own past positions. Just as he remade himself from a hate-figure into an avatar of modernity and progress, he is seeking to remake the BJP from a vehicle of Hindu chauvinism to a natural party of governance. This will mean a change in both language and tone, as he has demonstrated from day one. For an opposition member of Parliament like myself, it would be churlish not to acknowledge Modi 2.0’s inclusive outreach and to welcome his more conciliatory statements and actions. The moment he says or does something divisive or sectarian in the Modi 1.0 mold, however, we will resist him robustly. India’s people, and its pluralist democracy, deserve no less. n Shashi Tharoor, MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is the author of 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century. This article was first published on Huffington Post.
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 17
fiction
Blood and Guts Katha Fiction Contest 2014 • First Place By Vidya Pradhan
T
here was a long silence after the director finished the narration of the script. The actor leaned back in his Eames chair and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t think I can do this.” The director sighed softly. He began his pitch about how this would push the actor out of his comfort zone, how it was time to show audiences he was an “actor” and not just a star. He delicately dangled the Oscar carrot. Krishna Dev, born Krishnamurthy Devaraya, known as Krish to his fans, rocked gently and considered. His dark good looks and a muscular physique inherited from the Punjabi side of his family had catapulted him to action movie stardom in an industry that had barely begun to accept desis as second leads. His first film, an Amritraj-backed B-grade international heist caper, had been made at a budget of $33 million (with most of the budget going on the action choreography) and had ended up grossing ten times that. When his second one, a Transporter rip-off, made 500 million worldwide, Hollywood sat up and took notice. With the aging out of Stallone, Cruise, and even Stratham, a temporary vacuum had been created in the straight-up action movie genre, and Krish’s looks were ambiguous enough to be accepted by mainstream American audiences. Scripts flowed into his Hollywood Hills home, newly purchased on the expectations of the upcoming ensemble superhero movie where Krish played Brahma, a three-headed god with the ability to see the past, present, and future of any particular moment in time. Now Ricardo Bellini himself was sitting in front of him pitching his next movie, an allegory where the principal character was a serial killer who slow-tortured his victims to death. The killings were supposed to represent the environmental destruction wrought by humans, though some critics suggested 18 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
A Creative Commons Image that Bellini’s oeuvre was just violence porn disguised as art. Bellini’s commercial success in Italy had not endeared him to the intelligentsia but there was no arguing with the many awards his last movie, a harrowing look at one day in the life of a Holocaust victim, had received. “You know I am a vegetarian, right?” Krish’s plaint broke into Bellini’s speech about the advantages of working with him. “I mean, shooting people and all is okay, but I don’t think I am going to be comfortable with slicing and dicing, you know.” In private, Krish tended to lapse into his Indian accent. Bellini made a mental note to keep the accent; he knew it would be a hard sell to Krish, who had spent tens of thousands of dollars on voice coaches, but it would be so intriguing to have a serial killer with an exotic accent. It was almost as good as an Italian one. Bellini shook off Krish’s concerns with a sweeping wave of his hand. He hastily grabbed the elephant figurine his movement had dislodged and put it back on the coffee table. “It’s all fake stuff. Once you see how it is really done, you are going to be fine with it. Just think of the growth you’ll experience as an actor.” Krish still looked uneasy. Finally he said, “Let me ask Meena. I’ll get back to you.” “Sure, sure. I know you will see that this is the right next move for you.”
That night Krish showed the script to his wife. Meena Durga was the daughter of an Indian diplomat and a drop-dead gorgeous former model, but Krish had married her because he had quickly sensed that she would be his guide to a world he had only seen on television before a talent scout picked him up from a Mumbai audition. He respected her for her astuteness and uncanny sense of the pulse of public opinion and feared her for her sharp tongue. She read books that were incomprehensible to him, could speak French and German, and had an artistic sensibility that bemused him. It was she who had chosen every piece of contemporary art that hung on the walls of their home and made it into a showpiece that got a feature spread in Sunset. Krish’s only contribution was a rather garish homemade Tanjore painting that was a gift from his parents. He was pretty docile about Meena’s control over their life, but no amount of cajoling or threatening by her could persuade him to hang the painting somewhere more discreet. She finally managed to get it moved to their bedroom and was forced to avert her gaze every time she woke up. Meena read Bellini’s script quickly, getting more and more excited as she got to the end. “Of course you must do this, Krish,” she turned to him. “Clichéd as it sounds, this could be the opportunity of a lifetime.” “But Meena,” he protested, “You know how squeamish I am.” She slapped him on the shoulder affectionately. She did know and thought he was being a big baby. Even a paper cut could turn him green. But the script was fabulous and in her mind she was already on the red carpet in a Masaba gown, talking to journalists about comparisons with Javier Bardem … her thoughts halted abruptly. What if Krish couldn’t deliver? He had to, he absolutely had to.
***** Shooting for Destruction was scheduled to begin in six months. Bellini was still doing some post-publicity for his Holocaust film, which was going to be out on DVD soon. Meena met with him privately soon after the contract was signed. “I think it would be a good idea to do some preparatory training with Krish,” she began carefully. “He does tend to get uncomfortable at the sight of blood.” She avoided any mention of her doubts about Krish’s acting abilities. If Bellini was as good as they claimed, he would fix that. Her suggestion was accepted and proved to be smart. On the very first day of training, Krish ran puking from the mock operating room that had been set up to demonstrate the anatomically correct props used for the cutting scenes. Luckily there were just a handful of people in the room, including the visual effects director and a couple of interns. They were all sworn to secrecy. They were not happy, because it had taken them nearly half a day to set up the kill room, but Bellini convinced them it would do no good to the actor’s he-man reputation to be known as the guy who threw up at the sight of blood. When Meena heard about the incident from a shame-faced Krish, she swung into action. She cleared out the furniture from one of the bedrooms and created her own kill room. She made fake blood using maple syrup and food coloring which attracted a swarm of bees till she perfected it by adding a peppermint repellant. Every morning Krish practiced cutting into the cadaver prop with a rigged scalpel that had a pouch of blood cleverly hidden on one side. Once Meena had shown Krish how the blood was made, he was less queasy, though it took a couple of weeks for him to get into the spirit of the exercise. After a month, Meena felt confident sending Krish back for training. This time the results were better. The technicians demonstrated the many ways his character would be killing his victims in the movie and Krish gamely went along. When the director pointed out that some of the scenes required him to eat some of the victims’ softer body parts, he balked till he was shown how the production unit’s chef would be molding the liver and kidneys from a gelatinous fondant. Eventually the visual effects director gave the green light to Bellini for shooting to begin. After some introductory scenes showing the killer’s dysfunctional childhood, it was Krish’s turn on the sets. His first scene required him to stalk a young girl in a sparsely populated suburban neighborhood and abduct her after a long silent chase. “I want menace, not purpose,” yelled
Bellini, after Krish had emoted a determined, SWAT-team intensity for the 30th take. “You have to want to hurt her. You have to look forward to the torture and kill.” “I’m trying,” said Krish through gritted teeth. He was used to being treated like a star, and this was the first movie in which he could feel waves of contempt coming off the crew. Try as he would he could not understand why anyone would want to hurt a beautiful girl like Lydia, who played the unfortunate first victim. To help with his motivation, he imagined her as some sort of traitorous enemy of the state, who he was required to eliminate. Apparently this was not working. “Fuck this.” Bellini threw up his hands in surrender. “Let’s shoot from the girl’s POV.” Krish sat on the side for the rest of the shoot in silence. At home he would not meet Meena’s eyes. She found out why from Bellini the next day. That night Meena dismissed their Indian cook and served a steak to Krish, medium rare. “Eat.” He wrinkled his nose. “What is this?” “Just eat.” “Where is Santoshji?” Meena looked at him levelly. “Do you want to be an actor or do you want to be a laughing stock?” Krish looked at the pink slab in front of him. He poked it gingerly with the steak knife. “If I cut it will it drip blood?” he asked, half-jokingly. “That’s rare. This is medium rare.” “I can’t eat this, Meena. Don’t make me do this. What will Appa say if he finds out?” Meena just stared at him till he cut off a minute piece and put it in his mouth. He chewed and chewed and chewed and finally swallowed it with a glass of water. “Enough?” he asked hopefully. Meena stroked his hair. “Just do it baba, so many millions of people eat meat; it shouldn’t be such a big deal. Your character does so much worse stuff. How will you ever get it right if you run away every time you have to do something yucky?” Gradually she made him get over his revulsion to meat, serving him Carpaccio with onions and garam masala and moving on to sashimi. When he watched a live lobster being thrown into a vat of boiling water a week later, he barely flinched. Meena then arranged for a hunting session with one of her embassy contacts. Krish did surprisingly well, using some of the skills learned in his previous action movies to impress his host. He felt sad for the deer he had brought down, but helped with the gutting and cleaning without incident. He ate the resulting dinner with gusto.
He went back to the sets feeling hopeful. Unfortunately, his new-found taste for veal and venison did not translate to better acting. Bellini got increasingly frustrated. Murmurs about Destruction’s casting troubles began to circulate in TMZ and HuffPo. “I think I should just quit,” said a dispirited Krish after being yelled at by Bellini for the thousandth time. Meena closed her eyes. The humiliation that would ensue if Krish bailed on Destruction was not something she wanted to face. In desperation she reached out to dominatrices in Los Angeles, asking for S&M enthusiasts who would be willing to let Krish experiment on them. Krish was horrified. “What are you asking me to do, Meena?” he wailed. “Shh, shh,” she soothed him. “It’s just to get you comfortable with the role, dear. You won’t be unfaithful to me.” ***** Krish and Meena waited outside the Dolby Theater for their turn with the ABCTV host on the red carpet. Meena was resplendent in a silver Reem Accra gown that made her olive skin glow. She clutched Krish’s arm happily, turning this way and that to demonstrate her classic profile as photographers clicked away at the striking couple. Krish looked distracted. “Honey, look, there’s Angelina Jolie,” whispered Meena. They reached Brooke James, who was
Katha 2014 Results
award $300): FIRST PLACE (cash A PRADHAN DY VI Blood and Guts by Fremont, California sh award $200): SECOND PLACE (ca BALA VI RA A Bag of Ashes by nois Illi e, vill per Na SHENOY award $100): THIRD PLACE (cash MARWAH, TU RI Rivers of Time by Cupertino, California ION: HONORABLE MENT ANI SH RO by Memory Metric Georgia h, ug no Do Mc I, CHOKSH ION: HONORABLE MENT MPRASAD RA A TH JA Kindness by SU San Jose, California
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 19
interviewing the actors before they stepped in the theater. “Krish and Meena, how lovely to see you guys.” “Thanks, Brooke,” said Meena. “So Krish, how does it feel to be the first Indian American nominated for a best actor Oscar?” Krish looked at Brooke and smiled slowly. He held her gaze till she took a step back, unnerved. “Well, we’ve been seeing these reports of women being abducted and killed in horrifying ways that mirror the scenes from Destruction. Are you concerned that your movie is inspiring these copycat murders?” “Are you implying that Krish is responsible for the actions of some sicko?” Meena glared at Brooke, but her attention had already moved on to the next celebrity. Meena hurriedly propelled Krish inside. As the host Ryan Seacrest handed the mike to the guest presenter for the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, faint sirens could be heard outside the theater. “And the Oscar goes to…” Television audiences were treated to the sight of three burly policemen in full ar-
mor escorting the winner from the theater. People around the world gasped and listened to the Miranda warning as LAPD arrested Krishna Dev for the rape and murder of seven women in the county of Los Angeles. Seacrest ran on to the stage to try and salvage the situation. “Is this a case of life imitating art imitating life?” he said as Krish walked out between the policemen, head held high, betraying none of the emotion that had won him the Oscar. “I knew it,” said one of the losing nominees triumphantly. “The damn film was a documentary.” n Vidya Pradhan is a freelance writer and a published author of children’s books. She is currently working on a script for a television show for kids.This is her first story for adults. She was the editor of India Currents from June 2009 to February 2012. The judges were Indu Sundaresan and A.X. Ahmad. Judges’ Comments: Indu Sundaresan: Blood and Guts placed first for two main reasons—the sheer audacity of the writer in tackling a somewhat unrealistic
subject, and, the ability to pull it off. This is a superbly written story about the demons lurking under our everyday skins; scratch lightly and they emerge. A.X. Ahmad: The writer takes a chance and constructs a tightly-plotted thriller with a surprising plot twist. I liked being immersed in Krish’s alternative world, and the pacing and writing were stellar. This story pushes the boundaries of writing in a creative way! Indu Sundaresan was born and brought up in India and came to the United States for graduate school. She’s the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. The Twentieth Wife (book #1 of the Taj trilogy) won the Washington State Book Award. Her latest novel, The Mountain of Light, is based on the Kohinoor diamond and its last Indian owners. More at:www.indusundaresan.com A.X. Ahmad is the author of The Caretaker, the first in a trilogy featuring ex-Indian Army Captain Ranjit Singh. His second book, The Last Taxi Ride, will be published in June 2014. A former international architect, he lives in Washington, D.C. and teaches writing. www. axahmad.com
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20 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
viewpoint
An Ode to My Beloved By Vibha Akkaraju
M
y favorite gift ever, the thing that meant so much more to me than the slick, Silicon Valley emblem it is generally taken for, is on its deathbed. The lump in my throat may surprise you, but not me. My beloved MacBook Air, the now sixyear-old, lithe little machine, a one-time ballerina in a stadium full of football players, got sick recently. It seemed like gas—as if she had overeaten. Its belly developed a slight bulge, and the flap stopped closing all the way. I really thought this would just pass. Then the base started to swell more prominently, and you could see the keyboard bulging upward. But everything still worked great. The thing still heated to the perfect lap-warming temperature —just like it always had. The battery drained at a determined clip, but recharged eventually. It connected to the internet only intermittently—as if it knew I needed help avoiding distractions. I loved it and it clearly loved me back. Then one lovely afternoon—in that golden moment when the house was still and I was at no one’s beck and call, as I typed away my usual drivel, I heard a pop. I looked around. Nothing. But I knew I had heard something. I got up and walked around, inspecting the television, making sure the stove was off. As I approached my seat again, I noticed that a gap had appeared in the two plates that hide the guts of the computer. I lifted up the laptop and looked under. It was as if after a lasagna dinner, two of its shirt buttons had popped off. The remaining ones strained to hold the now-warring sides together. Srini, my spouse, coaxed me again to cut the cord. Move on, he said. I couldn’t believe it. He’s usually the sentimental sort, but here he was, ready to toss out a shimmering reminder of his greatest husbandly moment. With our kids at seven, five, and two when I was finally, slowly, climbing out of the diaper pail, he had extended me a hand—in way of this Air. In fact, he even lay aside his deep conviction—a no small feat for a 1980s UNIX geek—that Apple was Big Brother, their products overhyped, and their groupies annoying––and opted for beauty, all for my sake. He had cleared all the clutter off my desk—literally only for a day but symbolically for an era—and replaced it with a single,
beautiful reminder of my nearly-forgotten ambition. It was love at first sight, the kind that’s way too corny to talk about. I wrote several blog entries just to get my hands on this beauty. I tried to match the elegance of my words to the grace of the gift. It was a tall order, and one by which I was gladly humbled. But now, the big test: could my infatuation mature into an enduring commitment? “Surely there must be a cure,” I insisted. I googled “bloated MacBook Air,” and was barraged with a stream of frightening diagnoses: “battery exploding/expanding,” one said. “Noxious gases,” “fire hazard,” warned others. One blogger gave instructions on how to remove the battery—and then warned readers not to. At the “Genius Bar” at the Apple store, Dylan, a suave 20-something, shook his head sympathetically, maybe slightly bemusedly, at my Air’s plight, but then pointed me to a lineup of sleeker, faster, stronger machines. Did this young man have no concept of “in sickness or in health?” “But will it work without the battery?” I pleaded. “Sure, it’ll work, but it will have to stay plugged in. The second it unplugs, it will shut off.” “How about a new battery?” “I wouldn’t recommend it. This is an old machine. And as programs get bigger and bigger, and this won’t keep up.” I sit and type this on my Air tethered to life-support. The battery removed, it has its skinny silhouette back, but it’s the slimness of ill health, not fitness. And without the weight of the battery anchoring it, every time I lift my hands off the keyboard, the entire thing flips backwards. It needs me. It’s early May, the slight breeze is warmed to a glorious Northern-California perfection, and the patio is bathed in dappled sunshine. It beckons. I will go, but only after we install some electrical outlets out there. n Vibha Akkaraju is a mom of three girls, all energetic and excitable, at times temperamental, sometimes maddening, mostly endearing. When she’s not cooking, cleaning, organizing, planning and shuttling, she likes to read and sometimes write.
Do You Have a Picture That Tells a Story? India Currents invites readers to send in a picture and caption to publish in our magazine. We’ll pick the best picture every month and award a cash prize to the winning entry. Entries will be judged on the originality and creativity of the visual and the clarity and storytelling of the caption. So pick up that camera and click away.
Send the picture as a jpeg image to editor@indiacurrents.com with Subject: A Picture That Tells a Story. Deadline for entries: 10th of every month.
Friends on Canopy Road A Creative Commons Image
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 21
katha
India Currents and Khabar are pleased to announce the results of
DESI FICTION CONTEST 2014
Thank you to all for submitting your story to Katha: Desi Fiction Contest 2014. As the judges can attest, it was a very tough job to identify the finalists. The judging was completely blind. To all the writers who submitted, it is important to keep in mind that a writer is one who writes, researches, records and reflects. So keep writing and keep submitting. Congratulations to all the winners! Here are the results:
First Place: Blood and Guts by VIDYA PRADHAN, Fremont, California Second Place: A Bag of Ashes by RAVIBALA SHENOY, Naperville, Illinois Third Place: Rivers of Time by RITU MARWAH, Cupertino, California Honorable Mention: • Memory Metric by ROSHANI CHOKSHI, McDonough, Georgia
• Kindness by SUJATHA RAMPRASAD, San Jose, California The winning entries will be considered for publication in upcoming issues of India Currents and Khabar This year’s judges were Indu Sundaresan and Amin Ahmad. Indu Sundaresan is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. Her novel The Twentieth Wife (book #1 of the Taj trilogy) has won the Washington State Book Award. Her latest novel, The Mountain of Light, is based on the Kohinoor diamond and its last Indian owners. More at www.indusundaresan.com A.X. Ahmad is the author of The Caretaker, the first in a trilogy featuring ex-Indian Army Captain Ranjit Singh. His second book, The Last Taxi Ride, will be published in June 2014. A former international architect, he lives in Washington, D.C. and teaches writing. www.axahmad.com
INDIA CURRENTS Celebrating 28 years of excellence
India Currents is the Complete Indian American Magazine
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immigration
The Journey to Citizenship By V.V. Sundaram
I
A Creative Commons Image
t was a September morning in 2007. Yet another day in our retired life in Bangalore until we got a call from our younger son in California to joyfully announce that he was to become a father soon. Earlier, thanks to the United States open-arms policy to admit foreign students and offer scholarships and assistantships where possible, both our sons were able to pursue their graduate degrees in the United States in their chosen fields of engineering, and be gainfully employed with multinational companies. Since then both my children have become United States citizens. In the next few days of that wonderfully fateful call, we held frantic to and fro telephone conversations with both sons and their families. Soon, we were persuaded to seek permanent residence in the United States. Thanks again to the United States government’s deep commitment to the “family bond” concept, parents of United States citizens were able to apply for green cards without any restrictive annual visa quota. Thus launched the frantic search for documentation. This included birth certificates, marriage certificate, police clearances, and pre-emptive affidavits from elders in the families. Six months later, armed with all possible documentation, if not a little more, we boarded a flight to San Francisco with all our earthly belongings, now rolled into two suitcases each, 50 pounds apiece. The flight took off from Bangalore two hours late. Consequently we missed the connecting flight from the hub, and were bundled into a long detour flight that skipped Alaska to land in San Francisco eight hours after the scheduled arrival time. That didn’t bother us so much as the make-do lunch we were served—bananas, cookies and yogurts for an Asian vegetarian
meal. Understandably, they needed 48 or 72 hours notice to arrange for such special meals. However at the airport, on seeing a radiant daughter-in-law bearing the features of motherhood, we forgot all about the ordeal, and headed home. We got the green card even without the customary interview—thanks probably to the thorough documentation—and in a much shorter time than it took in those days. Time flies faster than you might think. More so when you have two cities to alternate for your stay, and three spirited grandsons to give you company, initially—and to stay away from, later. Now it was time to apply for citizenship, or Naturalization. Here too, the more the care and truthfulness with which you fill the form, sure to be able to defend whatever you declare therein, the more it helps the interviewing officer to gauge your eligibility. Another great characteristic of the country is that it operates on trust. When you go through the mill successfully, the officer hands you a “congratulations” letter on the spot to affirm the fact that you have passed the interview and test. Upon receiving the aforementioned letter, we were told to expect the Oath Ceremony letter in the mail. The waiting was difficult—so near yet so far. We received it, finally and our ceremony was scheduled for October 4. As the day approached, fear engulfed
us as the Government shutdown was gaining momentum. A newspaper reported that Germany had already issued a travel advisory to its citizens planning trips to the United States. The United Kingdom had followed suit, with a veiled hint that the situation still had not affected the immigrants, but one couldn’t be sure. True, the representative from the Social Security Office that had opened a booth to enable the new citizens update their statuses from Permanent Resident to Citizen, said that their regular centers might face shutdown, and advised us to avail of their presence at the ceremony. The U.S. Passport authorities could not even open their regular booth, again because of the Government shutdown, and sent a message that we go to their center nearby. At the ceremony, we were informed that there were 72 citizens-to-be from 32 countries! If this is less, then what is more? Doesn’t it speak volumes for the country as the world’s best democracy or a land of opportunities, if not a true miniature world? Among those who spoke after being bestowed citizenship, some ladies literally broke down. They regained composure and felt happy with the hope for a good life. An elderly lady who could speak little English walked with difficulty up to the podium to speak. But she couldn’t. Seeing her plight the Adjudication Officer who learnt she was from Iran, suggested: “Say ‘Thank you’ in Iranian [Persian].” She promptly said: “thank you in Iranian.” Everyone took the fiasco in an all-in-the family spirit, and gave the 79-year old lady, now a fellow American, a thunderous applause. n V.V. Sundaram, a journalist by qualification, spent the best part of his career in book-publishing for an international organization.
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 23
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ask a lawyer
Proposed Visa Amendments By Indu Liladhar-Hathi
Q States?
I am currently on an H-4 visa, and I understand that under a proposed rule, I will able to work legally in the United
A
On May 12, 2014, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced proposals to attract and retain highly skilled immigrants. The proposed rule by DHS would allow H-4 dependent spouses of certain H-1B workers eligible to apply for employment authorization. Under the current policy, the DHS does not permit the spouses of H-1B workers to work in the United States. Under the proposed rule, H-4 dependent spouses will be eligible to work if: •H-1B spouse’s I-140 petition (Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker) has been approved; or •H-1B spouse has been granted H-1B extension under the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000 (AC21). AC21 permits H-1B workers seeking
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lawful permanent residence to work and remain in the United States beyond the sixyear limit if the H-1B worker’s PERM labor certification or an I-140 petition has been pending for more than 365 days or the I-140 petition has been approved but the priority date is not current. This proposal is now subject to a sixtyday public comment period which will end on July 11, 2014. After the comment period is over, the DHS will review and consider any comments submitted. If this rule goes into effect, substantial number of H-4 dependents will benefit.
Q
I filed my adjustment of status in 2007, and at that time, I submitted my medical examination. I understand that under a new rule, I will need to submit a new medical report.
A
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently announced that it is revising its policy relating to the validity of the submitted med-
ical examination reports. Starting June 1st, 2014, medical examination report will be valid for one year from the date submitted to the USCIS. Since the reports are now valid for only one year, it will be necessary for you to submit a new report.
Q
I am an Indian national on H-1B status. Can I go to Canada for my visa stamping?
A
Due to increasingly heavy demand by Canada-based visa applicants, the seven U.S. visa processing posts in Canada are extremely limited in their ability to accept Third County National cases during the peak demand period of June, July, and August. Canadian posts have indicated that such applicants should seek appointments in their home country or elsewhere in the world. n Immigration and business attorney Indu Liladhar-Hathi has an office in San Jose.(408) 453-5335.
legal visa dates Important Note: U.S. travelers seeking visas to India will now need to obtain them through Cox & Kings Global Services Pvt. Ltd. Call 1-866-978-0055, email enquiriesusa@ckgs.com or visit www.in.ckgs.us for more information.
T
July 2014
his column carries priority dates and other transitional information as taken from the U.S. State Department’s Visa Bulletin. The information below is from the Visa Bulletin for July 2014. In the tables below, the listing of a date for any class indicates that the class is oversubscribed. “Current” means that numbers are available for all qualified applicants. “Unavailable” means no numbers are available.
FAMILY PREFERENCE VISA DATES Preference Dates for India 1st Apr 01, 2007 2A May 01, 2012 2B May 01, 2007 3rd Oct 15, 2003 4th Dec 22, 2001 NOTE: F2A numbers subject to percountry limit are available to applicants with priority dates beginning Mar 15, 2011 and earlier than May 01, 2012.
EMPLOYMENT-BASED VISA DATES Preference Dates for India 1st Current 2nd Sept 01, 2008 3rd Nov 01, 2003 Other Nov 01, 2003 Workers 4th Current Certain Current Religious Workers 5th Current Targeted Employment Areas The Department of State has a recorded message with visa availability information at (202)485-7699, which is updated in the middle of each month. Source: http://travel. state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy/ bulletin/2014/visa-bulletin-for-july-2014.html
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finance
Reflections of the Economy Understanding Jobs and Unemployment Reports By Rahul Varshneya
O
pinions of how the post-recession economy is doing vary from “still struggling” to healthy. We, as average citizens, are able to determine our own answer through various economic and financial measures. Many of us are familiar with the concept that a healthy stock market is a reflection of a healthy economy or at least a recovering one. Similarly, the monthly jobs number released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reflects the health of the labor market and by proxy the broader economy. This report is released the first Friday of each month and it discusses the job creation of the prior month. Whereas the jobs report is a bottom up approach, the unemployment rate is a top down statistical measure, which tells the same story—the health of the United States economy.
The Jobs Report
As expected this report does not include all the jobs in the United States. It is called the Monthly Non-Farm Payroll report. Nonfarm payroll jobs refer to all jobs associated with goods production, construction and manufacturing companies in the United States which contribute approximately 80% of the US GDP. It does not include farm jobs, non-profit positions, or private household jobs (i.e. nannies). Job report numbers generally range between 10-250K new jobs per month with a healthy economy averaging 225K+ jobs. March 2009 is generally accepted as the bottom of the credit crisis of 2007. From December 2007 to February 2010, the economy lost jobs every month. Only in January 2013, did the economy start consistently adding a healthy amount of jobs, which is when economists accepted that we were on the path to recovery.
Unemployment—A Deeper Issue
If jobs are the catalyst for economic growth then the unemployment rate is its barometer. In a healthy economy, economists agree that the ideal unemployment rate is 4.5-5.5%. It cannot be 0% unemployment due to imperfections in the market. In the aforementioned period of December 2007 to
28 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
February 2010, the unemployment rate went from 5% to 9%. At first glance, 9% does not seem so bad but it exposes a major flaw in how the unemployment rate is measured. The unemployment rate is the ratio of the number of unemployed to the total labor force. Unemployment measures the percentage employable individuals in a country’s workforce over the age of 16, who have lost their jobs and are actively seeking new work. The unemployment rate does not account for those who have completely given up on finding new work or the underemployed such as part time workers. Studies show that if the unemployment rate reflected this part of the population in its measure it would be around 16% unemployment—a more severe number.
The Economics to Government Policy Disconnect
Jobs growth and the unemployment rate are established principles in economics. However once economics is examined in the context of politics, it becomes much more controversial. Before we delve into this, let’s examine the issue of the deficit, which an economist or financier can solve in one sentence—raise taxes on everyone. Although the solution is an oversimplification, a politician would be committing political suicide if this were suggested as a solution. President George Bush Sr. raised taxes in his first term, and as a result his popularity suffered greatly. In the 1993 presidential elections, Bill Clinton defeated the incumbent Bush by promising to reduce taxes. Once voted into office, President Clinton didn’t deliver his tax promise (and luckily didn’t receive backlash). Along with a 7 year economic boom cycle and increased taxes during his two terms, the United States enjoyed its biggest budget surplus in 30 years. A very powerful example which illustrates this disconnect between good politics and good economics. Returning to present day—President Obama has proposed increasing the minimum wage as a sort of appeasement policy to those making minimum wage, but still
in poverty. Anyone who has studied even a bit of macroeconomics knows that raising the minimum wage will have an adverse effect on the minimum wage earners. If suddenly the minimum wage is raised from its current $7.25 to the proposed $10.10 per hour, there will be increased competition at the new price level in the form of employees switching industries or coming out of retirement. All things equal for a given wage level, the most qualified candidate will get each job opening. President Obama with his supportive economic policy has possibly and inadvertently created more unemployment with the biggest losers being the original $7.25 earners.
Looking Into the Future
Job creation is an important reflection of a growing or healthy economy. Although the usefulness of analyzing job creation trends hasn’t diminished, the credit crisis has exposed the unemployment rate to be flawed. The Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stated “[there’s] a lot of “hidden unemployment” that makes the official unemployment rate just an interesting footnote, not an important milestone for policy.” Going into the future, the Federal Reserve said it will evaluate the health of the economy through multiple measures and not depend on the performance of any particular one. The good news is that the United States is averaging 213K new jobs per month for 2014—while the nation isn’t recovering at the speed everyone expected, at least we’re moving in the right direction. n
This article is the opinion of the author and is not shared by India Currents or any of its staff. All investors should conduct their independent analysis before taking any actions and should not make any decisions on the information provided in this article alone. Rahul Varshneya graduated from the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University with a degree in finance and is working in the technology industry as a financial analyst.
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July Jingles
music
H 5
By Vidya Sridhar ere is a compilation of the top ten songs that encompass vintage energy, gentle melodies and
upbeat rhapsodies. Hypnotic rhythms provide background scores to many of these songs, leaving an unforgettable listening
Jashn
experience. n Vidya Sridhar works at NASA and is a mom of two elementary school children. She lives and breathes all things filmi.
Muskurane
Movie: Bobby Jasoos; Music: Shantanu Moitra; Lyrics: Swanand Kirkire; Singer: Shreya Ghoshal
Movie: Citylights; Music: Jeet Gannguli; Lyrics: Rashmi Singh; Singer: Arijit Singh
It’s fun, it’s cute, it’s melodious, it’s naughty and it’s soothing. An upbeat number that makes you wish you were running around dancing on the streets. n
Arijit Singh’s voice is mesmerizing and haunting. The beautiful and meaningful lyrics of the song capture the mood. The musical arrangement is superb and the song reflects the day to day happenings in all of our lives. n
Khalifa Movie: Lekar Hum Deewana Dil; Music: A.R. Rahman; Lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya; Singer: A.R. Rahman The song itself sets a tone for the entire album and it mirrors the daredevil and uber-enthusiastic attitude of the present generation. Apparently the song was composed in one night, but that just speaks to the incredible talent Rahman possesses. n
Galliyan
Movie: Ek Villain; Music: Ankit Tiwari; Lyrics: Manoj Muntashir; Singer: Ankit Tiwari “Galliyan” is a soulful number crooned by Ankit Tiwari of Aashiqui 2 fame. The musical pauses and rhythm resumptions are masterfully executed. The romance of the melody is unforgettable. n 30 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Whistle Baja
Movie: Heropanti; Music: Manj Musik; Lyrics: Raftaar; Singers: Manj and Nindy Kaur Feat Raftaar This song is a trip down melody lane with Tiger Shroff reprising his father’s unforgettable Hero melody with contemporary elements. The flute takes center stage in this musical arrangement. It is a cheerful number and one you can hit the dance floor to. n
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Bharatanatyam Arangetram Solo Dance Debut
Priya Chandini Sharma Disciple of Guru Dr. Malini Krishnamurthi Director: Natyanjali School of Dance
On Saturday, July 12, 2014 at 5 pm At the Sophia B. Clarke Theater - Mt. San Antonio College 1100 N. Grand Ave., Walnut, CA 9178 Attendance by invitation only For more information Yogendra Sharma (626) 964-6956
32 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Natyanjali School of Dance, Los Angeles www.Natyanjali.org (Artistic Director Dr. Malini Krishnamurthi) Presents
Samarpan
A Bharata Natyam Dance Performance by the Students of Natyanjali
On Saturday July 19th 2014, 5 pm At The Sophia B. Clarke Theater Walnut, CA 91789
Tickets: $20, $30 and $50
(All seats reserved) Packaged Dinner will be available after the concert for a nominal donation of $10.
For Information Call
Jeya Venugopalan 909-396-6872 Prabha Cadambi 714-528-9146 MALINI
Musical Ensemble: Dr. Malini Krishnamurthi ~ Nattuvangam Sri Akshay Padmanabhan ~ Vocal Shri R. Srihari ~ Mridangam R. Narasimhamurthy ~ Flute.
LASYA
PURNA
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July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 33
films
Reels Without Borders By Aniruddh Chawda
FILMISTAAN. Director: Nittin Kakkar. Players: Sharib Hashmi, Inaamulhaq, Kumud Mishra, Gopal Dutt. Hindi with Eng. Sub-tit. Theatrical release (UTV Spotboy).
T
he track by which Filmistaan came to see the light of a wide release provides a stark learning curve in how tortuously slow the path some Hindi films take in production, marketing and screening. First floated as an unknown entry at a film festival in South Korea in 2012 and then going to win India’s prestigious Best Feature Film in Hindi—2012, Filmistaan only received “wide” (which is a relative 450 theaters compared to Akshay Kumar’s Holiday with a 2,000+ theater global rollout) in June 2014. All is not lost. Small-budgeted yet supremely confident in its delivery, Filmistaan is a phenom satire that uses black comedy and the universal draw of cinema, in this case Hindi movies, to spark a mini-détente in a perennially strained India-Pakistan neighborhood. Struggling actor Sunny (Hashmi) is a buffoon. Not your every day run of the mill buffoon, mind you. He is a gross buffoon, which is like, you know, 144 times more clueless than an average buffoon. Landing a short gig as a director’s assistant for the making of a documentary to be filmed along the far reaches of the Rajasthan desert, a career in movies may, just may, be on the horizon. Tasked with fixing a flat tire on a film crew vehicle late one night, Sunny’s life takes an incredible turn when he is kidnapped and finds himself not only in Pakistan but smack in the hands of Islamist border-runners. When the desert fog settles, Sunny’s captors, who think they have kidnapped an “American” (white) film crew member are just as shocked to learn they have instead bagged a “local” (Indian) victim as the bewildered Sunny is in finding himself in this predicament. Sunny is placed in the home of a caretaker family whose equally buffoon son Aftab (Inaamulhaq) takes a liking to Sunny. Conjoined by Sunny’s film “connections” —as he boasts to his unwitting hosts—and Aftab’s predilection for pirated Hindi movies, the 34 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
arrangement blossoms into an unusual bromance. In the nightly desert screenings of pirated Hindi movies, which most often is the Salman Khan breakout hit Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), shown to both bemused locals and irate Islamists, and against odds, a slight shift in the cross-border winds takes form. Kakkar’s story and direction, seemingly fledgling with a two-dimensional onset, take small stunning turns that easily translate into wider cultural jabs. An Indian border patrol guard refuses to allow filming on “his” territory—which is, by all accounts, a patch of desert sand—comes around suddenly when he is offered to “star” in his own filmed confession about how he flaunts the law. A Pakistani cop secretly craves pirated “special” movies—porn, for the uninitiated—which are all but taboo on both sides of the border. The abundant absurdities cross both ways. In captivity, Sunny hears a mournful Pakistani song late at night and realizes it is the same tune overlaid by a popular Lata Mangeshkar entry back home. The language he hears and the taste of meager rations he is served under lock is just like what he is used to in Mumbai. If not for the periodic visits by Pakistani cops making their rounds and
the sly masterminds behind Sunny’s kidnapping lurking in the hood, this could all be … India! The acting is wonderfully restrained and, given an unknown cast—highly refreshing. Hashmi and Inaamulhaq make superb firstresponder geeks out of their realm and yet perfectly in synch with a silent universal drumbeat calling them to action of sorts. Mishra and Dutt, as two machine-gun wielding good-cop bad-cop captors guarding Sunny, offer a rich peek inside the often selfdoubting and self-loathing fundamentalist mind. The movie poster—depicting worship of movies as if they are deities—is one of the best in recent memory. If newly elected prime minister’s Narendra Modi’s opening remarks can be taken at face value, one can cautiously hope for improved cross-border relations. If Filmistaan has anything to say, and it says plenty in both intended and unintended ways, there may be hope yet for a sub-continental thaw. If the best satire comes from simplicity, Filmistaan is a simple home-run. Don’t miss it! n EQ: A
Carry On, Soldier HOLIDAY. Director: A.R. Murugadoss. Players: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Dipendra Sharma, Govinda. Music: Pritam. Hindi with Eng. Sub-tit. Theatrical release (Reliance).
A
.R. Murugadoss’s Ghajini (2008) was a blockbuster that opened the floodgates for the filmmaker to able to virtually cherry pick his story and his cast. With Holiday, which has a full title of Holiday: A Soldier is Never Off Duty, Murugadoss returns with a remake of his own Tamil language entry Thuppaki (2012), which was a huge hit in south India. Roping in Akshay Kumar and allowing Kumar to take on a tailor-made action role, Holiday is foremost a formulaic action movie that goes overboard without letting on that it has done so. While not in the same league as Ghajini or even Akshay Kumar’s Special 26, along with slick, escapist summertime antics, Holiday is also like a serving of popcorn with too much butter. As Captain Viraat Bakshi (Kumar), life is all good when he returns home from the Kashmir frontier. The only immediate challenge appears to be his parents who are searching high and low for a suitable bride for Viraat. Viraat meets and greets Saiba (Sinha) who may or may not be a match for him. When a bomb goes off on a bus, Viraat’s alter-ego as a super-secret army intelligence office emerges and he sets about uncovering a terrorist sleeper cell carrying out mayhem in Mumbai. In a very modern fashion, using modern techie tools (finally, some actual smart uses of so-called smart phones!), Viraat matches wits with the highly cunning Asif (Sharma), who appears to be calling the shots at the lair of the bad guys. The first sacrifice a formulaic Hindi action-movie often surrenders to is any significant female presence. After offering a tantalizing possibility by making Sinha’s Saiba a college boxing champion and showing a ferocious-looking Saiba neutralizing a formidable opponent in the ring, this potentially life-saving skill is neatly tucked away and is never, ever mentioned again! Instead, to remind us that this script is, after all, a man’s domain, Kumar’s would-be suitable boy looking for a suitable bride literally toys with Saiba’s emotions by first rejecting her at a get-acquainted afternoon tea on grounds that she is not “modern” enough for his taste, then changing his mind after he sees her in the boxing ring and then again conveniently telling her “they are off ”—simply because he is going on a mission. Oh, well. The second sacrifice is often sensibility.
Within ten minutes of curtain rise, a bus filled with school children is bombed. As if the mere suggestion of a terrorist attack were not sufficient, the camera zooms in on the bus occupants before the bomb goes off. In the world we live in, this is without a doubt the most disturbing scene in the movie. There are so many ways to demonstrate violence, action and mayhem and simultaneously have it blend into the narrative seamlessly. It is perplexing that this scene would pass Indian film censors and yet on-screen kissing between major stars is still taboo! Oh, well. At forty-six, Kumar can still pull off the intricately choreographed action scenes, albeit a little slower than he used to back in his hit Khiladi heyday from the 1990s. With a coif that bounces too much (over-dyeing?) and denims that stretch too much (manleggings?), we have not seen this Kumar before. As Saiba, Sinha is comely, coy and demure and, unfortunately, never called on for any great emoting. Newcomer Sharma, who studied acting in Los Angeles, channels a tight control over his minions and the commensurate rage that creeps in as the deadly playing cards are rearranged by Viraat. To his credit, Kumar’s fans are diehard legions. Holiday has turned out a very respectable Box Office take and will no doubt make money. At least some of the credit goes to Pritam’s decent soundtrack. With Kunal Ganjawala’s dance number “Tu Hi To Hai” and Arjit Singh’s sultry “Aaj Dil Shayarana,” there is enough to take note here. With these
numbers and box office returns, Kumar will be back with more of the same. In 2015, he will release Singh is Bling, a carryover from the Singh is King (2008). Buy the ticket but go easy on the butter. n EQ: C+ Globe trekker, aesthete, photographer, ski bum, film buff, and commentator, Aniruddh Chawda writes from Milwaukee.
L ATA’S
FLICK PICKS
2 States hts Citylig y Fugl ti Heropan Holiday daiiyaan Kocha Karle Karley Pyar Mastram O Teri MMS 2 Ragini Ya Rab
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 35
A Migratory Bird Flies West By Geetika Pathania Jain, Sagaree Jain SURKHAAB. Director: Sanjay Talreja. Players: Barkha Madan, Sumit Suri, Vineeta Malik. Produced by: Vivek Kumar and Barkha Madan.
T
hugs are looking for Jeet in her village in Punjab, sent by a powerful minister’s son whose advances she has spurned. She needs to flee, and desperation pushes her to seek help from nefarious racketeers who promise her forged documents to Canada. So it is that Jeet, a doe-eyed village belle from Punjab, arrives in Toronto and joins the ranks of the undocumented immigrants trying to find a toe-hold in the strangeness and promise of a new country. This “fresh off the boat” experience is superbly portrayed in the film as a bittersweet amalgam of coldly efficient immigration officials, touching family reunions, and the blur of new faces and places. Jeet’s situation is made more precarious by her lack of proper papers. In one scene, convinced that every passing policeman can see through her pretense of legality, Jeet ducks out of a coffee-shop and finds herself staring at the majesty of the Niagara falls with open-mouthed wonder. She has little time to stand and stare. Sinister events unfold. Additional unsavory characters begin showing up to claim a bag that she has couriered for the village goons. (At this point, I found myself remembering the guitar case in El Mariachi, that other indie low budget action icon.) It is not till much later that Jeet begins to suspect that the crooks are after more than the besan ke laddoos (sweets) that her doting mother has sent from back home. The film starts strong, with a convincing back story, though it flags a bit towards the end. The writing by Sanjay Talreja is good, the characters believable and the storyline well conceived. Barkha Madan infuses her character with all the vulnerability of a stranger abroad and the chutzpah of a state judo champion who doubles as a Punjab di Sherni (Lioness of Punjab). It is interesting to note that there is no love interest for our strong and independent protagonist. The anti-hero Kuldip is played by Suri with believable swagger and panache. The film has done well in the film festival circuit, bagging several prestigious awards. Besides London, Madrid and Houston, film festivals in India such as the Noida International Film Festival and Dada Saheb Phalke 36 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Film Festival have sent laurels their way. I caught up with the producer Vivek Kumar, a Bay Area resident, who is a co-producer of this self-funded film. “Jeet is a reluctant immigrant. She is not a victim, though. She might be a pind di kudi (village girl) but she is a martial arts champion who can take care of herself.” The film ends on a positive note, with Jeet reunited with her brother, and gainfully employed. As for her future, one can only speculate.
I am reminded of a quote from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Diaz “What did you know about states or diasporas? What did you know about Nueba Yol [New York] or unheated “old law” tenements or children whose self-hate shortcircuited their minds? What did you know, madame, about immigration? Don’t laugh, mi negrita [my little dark one], for your world is about to be changed.” There is much to commend in this film, named after a small but robust migratory bird found near Amritsar. Surkhaab ke par nikal aaye hain is a phrase that refers to the spreading of wings and of flight, evoking the long journey that is another name for immigration.n Geetika Pathania Jain earned her doctorate in International Communications from the RadioTV-Film department of the University of Texas at Austin. Her daughter, Sagaree Jain, is studying English Literature and History at the University of California at Berkeley
books
Acts of Mercy by Jeanne E. Fredriksen
AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED by Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead Books: New York. riverheadbooks.com khaledhosseini.com Availability: hard cover, paperback, digital, audio CD, Audible audio editions.
T
he opening epigraph of Khaled Hosseini’s novel And the Mountains Echoed reads: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. -Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century Smack dab in the middle of that field is where Hosseini places his novel And the Mountains Echoed. A master storyteller, he reaches deep into the souls of his characters and lays them out raw, bare, and exposed for his readers. In his most complex novel yet, one that spans six decades, Hosseini takes us from Afghanistan to France and to Greece and the United States. He pieces together a family history of pain, separation, loss, and hope. This family, once sacrificed and fully fractured, made their way through war, poverty, displacement, and survival. The opening, as any good writing should, sets the tone and the premise, and in this case it is a story within the story. Saboor, a poor laborer in a remote village, recounts to his children a story in which a father makes a hard and terrible decision. The decision is to give his favorite child to a div, a monster, in order to save his family and the village. Although it sounds terrible at the outset, in the end there remains a lingering thought that perhaps it’s not as bad as it may seem. It is, nonetheless, a painful story for Saboor to tell, especially as it mirrors his own actions. In the fall of 1952, Saboor takes his two young children to Kabul with the intention of leaving his three-year old daughter, Pari, with the wealthy couple for whom his brother-in-law Nabi works as a cook and chauffeur. This one action will affect Saboor’s family and acquaintances for generations, but that isn’t his concern of the moment. Pari’s brother, 10-year old Abdullah, is beside himself when he realizes what his father is doing. Abdullah and Pari were inseparable but are now torn apart. What follows is a series of interlocking stories of those affected by Saboor’s action, told via multiple narrators, in different meth-
ods of delivery, and covering lives that shift and change with the circumstances in which they find themselves. With these stories come pairings that are as unlikely as they are logical as the result of life and its ebb and flow. In The Kite Runner, Hosseini focused on the relationships between fathers and sons. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, he examined the relationships between mothers and daughters. Now, Hosseini looks at the dynamics between various types of siblings. Abdullah and Pari, inseparable until their father pulls them apart. A beautiful, invalid girl and her twin, the plain caregiver. An outgoing, devil-may-care young businessman and his cousin, a shy doctor. A man who struggles as a laborer and his brother-in-law who lives a relatively good life as a servant to a wealthy but unlikely couple. None of the character’s lives are cut and dried, black and white. Tints and shades of gray weave in and out of their separate and collective histories, giving a depth to each that makes compelling reading. At its core, the book isn’t about war, it isn’t about politics, and it isn’t about Afghanistan on a contemporary global stage. It is about the people of the story and their humanity—good or bad, helpful or harmful—toward others and toward themselves. Under the difficult circumstances each finds himself or herself, is it little wonder that there’s always a question they can’t always answer: Are there any regrets? Hosseini brings so much more to the face of Afghanistan than can be gleaned from nightly news reports and award-winning photojournalism. The effects of modern history are represented by the many volunteer relief workers from far-flung corners of the world. The book is also about loss, lingering loss, a loss that is felt deeply, a loss that has no name. Hosseini describes it hauntingly via Pari. At age six, Pari is plucked from Afghanistan by her adoptive mother Nila, a half-French/half-Afghan poet, and relocated to Paris. All she had of the adoptive father who loved her were a few photos of him. Hosseini writes: “Seeing her father’s face in those photos stirred an old sensation in Pari, a feeling that she had had for as long as she could remember. That there was in her life the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence. Sometimes it was vague, like a message sent across shadowy byways and
vast distances, a weak signal on a radio dial, remote, warbled. Other times it felt so clear, this absence, so intimately close it made her heart lurch.” And so it is for other characters: Abdullah, who loses his sister and step brother; their step mother Parwana who made a difficult choice regarding the care of her twin; Idris, the young doctor whose inaction results in self-loathing; and the cook and chauffeur whose idea it was to give Pari to Nila and Suleiman. Later in life, Pari reflects, “...it is important to know…your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle…Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.” Only from Khaled Hosseini could these words come together to give a name to loss while invoking hope, gathering the gray areas of good intentions with the dark recesses of calculated appearances. His writing wreaks havoc with emotions and induces great heartache, all the while pushing toward answers and resolutions to remind us that life is so much more than an adventure. Life is never easy, but it’s always worth fighting for, whether one engages in an act of mercy or an act of redemption. n Jeanne E. Fredriksen lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where she freelances in advertising and public relations. Between assignments, she writes fiction, enjoys wine, and heads to the beach as often as she can. July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 37
IHOP My Way to Happiness by Rajesh C. Oza THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE by Manu Joseph. Norton, 2013. 340 pages.
A
s a child of parents who toiled at twoto-three jobs at a time, I marveled at what others had and was seemingly inaccessible to me. This apparent happiness of other people felt illicit and beyond my reach. It ranged from big and small material items (mansions by Lake Michigan and Schwinn bicycles upgraded every few years) to big and small experiences (multi-generational family reunions to Sunday brunches at The IHOP). The IHOP: in my youth, it was The International House of Pancakes; in this review, it is Manu Joseph’s The Illicit Happiness of Other People. The first page of Joseph’s engrossing novel immediately establishes who is inside the community of happiness and who is outside: the insiders are the orthodox Hindus of Madras (Chennai); the outsiders are a Malayalee Catholic family—Ousep and Mariamma Chacko and their two sons, Unni and Thoma. The Chackos are “The Underdog Family” of the first chapter’s title. Ousep “does not ask for coffee, but [Mariamma] brings it anyway, landing the glass on the wooden desk with minor violence to remind him of last night’s disgrace.” The disgrace is Ousep’s nightly drunken attempts at drowning a deep familial sorrow. In the mornings, a more sober Ousep faces the challenges of the day alone. “He can see the other men, the good husbands and the good fathers, their black shoes polished, serious shirts already damp in the humid air ... The men never greet Ousep. They turn away, or become interested in the ground, or wipe their spectacles. But among their own, they have great affection. They are a fellowship, and they can communicate by just clearing the phlegm in their throats.” In the pages that follow, the reader discerns that something has happened to Unni; a mystery surrounding his disappearance is the source of the family’s tragically hardearned sadness. As The IHOP’s well-paced narrative introduces multi-layered characters in this literary version of the board game Clue, its author subversively inverts the meaning of happiness. Manu Joseph turns upside-down “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”
38 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
as a “Folie à deux” or “Folly of Two.” While never specifically invoking the writers of the American Declaration of Independence, Joseph gradually, but insistently, claims through Unni’s abbreviated life that the world as we experience it is a delusion. “A mad person transfers his delusion to another person, and both of them begin to see the same delusion. And they mutually corroborate what they see as true. That is the Folly of Two.” But an influential delusion (example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”) doesn’t end with the second person. Slave-holding Thomas Jefferson passed along his delusion to fellow slave-holder John Hancock, who then put pen to paper with his famous signature and pulled in other signatories. Over the years, most Americans and an increasing part of the world have come to believe that it is their fundamental right to happily live through the never-ending cycle of work-buyplay, work-buy-play. Over two centuries, the Folly of Two has become the folie à plusieurs, or madness of many. Many of us strive to be in the fellowship of the so-called good husbands and wives, the good fathers and mothers, with their “black shoes polished” and their “serious shirts already damp in the humid air” of capitalism, socialism, Hinduism, Catholicism, or some other co-opting ism.
Unni was one who swam against the tide. Through precocious experiences leading to his premature death at the age of 17, Unni saw through the delusions. By the first 30 pages of The IHOP, the reader knows that Unni is dead, having fallen (jumped?) from the terrace of his family’s apartment. But neither the reader nor Unni’s family knows the truth: Why this fall (this jump?)? The rest of the novel takes us along for Ousep’s search for a kind of truth, an understanding of his son; Ousep’s search becomes our own exploration into the larger issues that Joseph plumbs: “The war between good and evil has ended. And it has ended with the complete triumph of evil and a total, irrevocable extermination of good. Evil is cunning, it quickly splits itself into two—into apparent good and evil, so that mankind is under the delusion that the great conflict is still ranging and it will not go in search of the truth.” Though not an easy read at the beach, The IHOP does invite the reader to challenge his/her long-held beliefs. One can approach this pursuit of a story through the graphic novel cartoons that give life to Unni’s philosophy, or through Ousep’s journalistic surface story, or through Mariamma’s back story, or through Thoma’s by-stander story. Joseph’s tapestry is made rich by the interweaving of all these and other perspectives. What Ousep sought after Unni’s death, Mariamma experienced during her son’s life: a dialogue beginning with the question, “People want to be happy, don’t they?” Followed by, “They are desperate to be happy, aren’t they? And concluding with, “But look how many things have to go right in a person’s life for that.” The darkness of The IHOP is leavened with social satire and humorous asides that encourage the reader to smile, albeit smile a sad, wry smile. Mariamma is the source of much murderous mirth, as she dreams of Ousep’s death: “She is obviously not a murderer. She is just a housewife with exaggerated notions about herself. She does write occasional book reviews … but still she is not a bad person.” In an accepting way—never mean-spirited—Joseph completes the Chacko family with Thoma, Unni’s dim younger brother who, in relation to Unni, is like the planet Mercury: “always a mere dot next to a yellow sun.” Thoma’s academic struggles are played for cheap, but gentle, laughs: To the science exam question, “What is the opposite
dance gender of ram?” Thoma replies, “Sita,” which although theologically correct, only results in slaps from the teacher whose rubric demands “ewe” as the correct answer. Like most of humanity, Thoma soldiers on. Perhaps like the mathematically inclined who are today’s chosen ones “the boy will make it … He will crack at least one entrance exam, and he will one day have a nice house in a suburb of San Francisco, or in a suburb of a suburb of San Francisco. He will find a cute Tamil Brahmin wife and make her produce two sweet children. He will drive a Toyota Corolla to work. And there, in the conference room of his office, he will tell his small team… “We must think out of the box.” An antipathy to the techno-elites persists through The IHOP. While the root cause of this aversion to those who have arrived is not clear, the novel makes it clear that to do well at one’s studies, attend an IIT, work in the Silicon Valley (and perhaps have an occasional family brunch at The International House of Pancakes) is a crime of sorts. Joseph rails against this illicit happiness of ordinary folks. Borrowing from the annals of neuropsychiatry and perhaps the Hindu concept of maya, he boldly proclaims that “the world is a charade created by a combination of senses.” While the insights of The IHOP are not new, the story-telling behind them is novel and worthy of a careful reading. For this middle-aged reader, happiness is actually quite extraordinary and something to be celebrated. Maybe Manu Joseph has misinterpreted Leo Tolstoy in his interpretation of happiness. Tolstoy (who famously wrote in Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”) treated happiness as aspirational, while Joseph treats it as a confidence trick foist upon us a kind of opiate of the masses. But perhaps there is a more youthful reader (whose parents are toiling at two-tothree jobs) who finds herself trapped in the language of the moment, the language of Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Social Media. And perhaps this reader might turn reviewer and open her review of The IHOP thusly: “I live in a time of The IPAD (Illicit Pursuit of Alluring Devices) and The IPHONE (Illicit Pursuit of Happiness, Oddly Never-Ending). It’s time to switch off and stop marveling at what others have. These realities are socially constructed, and I’d rather that I find my own happiness, my own truth.” n For RCO’s Kakosa, Balkrishna Oza, who, in his avuncular way, brings the meaning of happiness to his family, friends, and students despite the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
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recipes
Amazing Artichokes
W
hen I first saw an artichoke, a prickly flower bud with lots of thorns, I did not think it could be edible. When I first tasted an artichoke, it was surprisingly and indescribably delicious. Eating an artichoke is similar to eating Indian drumsticks in that you eat only a small portion, the heart and the insides of the tender leaves, and throw the rest away. Indeed, it must have taken our ancestors a great deal of culinary daring or the danger of starvation to figure out how to eat this armored vegetable. Culinary historians tell us that the Romans discovered artichoke plants growing wild in North Africa and consumed only the ribs of the leaves. Later, artichokes were cultivated in Europe, where they developed large flower buds which have edible “hearts.” The much-improved modern “globe” variety has been developed for its large buds. The artichoke is a thistle-like perennial plant that loves cool moist weather. They were introduced in America in 1800 and thrive on the foggy California coast where the town of Castroville claims to be the Artichoke Capital of the World. Italy, France and Spain are still larger producers of artichokes, but artichokes for the American market
By Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff are grown almost exclusively in California. Although California artichokes can be harvested and are sold year round, the peak harvest season for large globe artichokes is March through May. Artichokes are remarkably nutritious. A medium artichoke contains about 65 calories, but as the pleasure of consuming one can take up to twenty minutes, you may use more calories eating it than you gain! An average artichoke provides four grams of protein and contains no fat. Other health benefits from this unusual vegetable include 20% of the RDA of vitamin C and 24% of dietary fiber. Artichokes are high in potassium and magnesium, and many powerful antioxidants, and they promote liver and digestive health. It is well worth the effort to become acquainted with this oddly beautiful vegetable. How to purchase artichokes: There are several different varieties of artichokes. Most common are large or medium-sized globe artichokes with green or purplish-green leaves, some with diameters as large as three to five inches. Small “baby” artichokes are sometime sold in the markets, but are mainly processed for their hearts, which are sold in cans or jars, plain or marinated. When select-
ing a fresh artichoke in the market, look for a large, firm, heavy globe with tight leaves. Avoid any with brown outer leaves or dry withered stems. How to cook and serve: Fancy restaurants cook artichokes in a variety of ways, placing them on their menus as exotic, high-end appetizers such as deep fried leaves and hearts, grilled and stuffed hearts, or artichokes minced and fried with herbs. However, the most common method of cooking artichokes is the simplest: as described below, just boil or steam them, and serve with or without a dipping sauce. Prepare a dipping sauce following one of the recipe below, while the artichokes are cooking. Artichokes are best served as an appetizer. While the rest of the dinner is cooking, diners can take their time enjoying them. Artichokes are a finger food; no utensils are necessary, but napkins will be welcome. Provide a separate plate to collect the numerous empty leaves and inedible portions that will accumulate while eating. n Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff, author of Flavors of India: Vegetarian Indian Cuisine, lives in San Francisco, where she is manager and co-owner of Other Avenues, a health-food store.
Preparing Artichokes Before cooking: First, immerse the artichokes in a bowl of cool water for a few minutes to clean them. Remove them from the water and pull off a few of the toughest outer leaves. With a small sharp scissors snip off the spiny tips of the leaves and trim the stems with a sharp knife. Then sprinkle some freshly squeezed lemon juice over the surface. This prevents artichokes from discoloring while they are cooking and enhances their flavor. To Boil: Artichokes can be either steamed or boiled. To boil them, arrange three to four artichokes in a large pot (that is not aluminum) side by side, stems down. Add enough water to cover the artichokes halfway. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, lime juice or mild vinegar to the water. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn down and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Uncover and check if done by tugging at a few outer leaves. If they come off easily, the artichokes are done. 42 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Illustration by Serena Sacharoff
To Steam:. Pour three cups of water into the bottom of a saucepan that is not made out of aluminum. (Aluminum can discolor the artichokes and offset the flavor.) Add a few tablespoons of lemon or lime juice to the water. Arrange three to four artichokes in a
steamer basket and sprinkle freshly squeezed lemon juice all over their surface. Place the steamer in the pan and cover. Bring the water to a boil, turn down the heat, and steam for 20 minutes. Uncover and turn the artichokes so that they cook on all sides. Cover and
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steam for another 15 minutes. Uncover and check for doneness by tugging at a few outer leaves. When they come off easily, the artichokes are done. Dipping Sauce: Artichokes are usually served hot with a dipping sauce. Below are several recipes for sauces that can be prepared ahead of time. Provide small individual bowls for each diner. You can also serve mayonnaise as a dipping sauce, or the artichokes can be eaten plain. Lemon Butter Sauce: In a small saucepan, melt ½ cup (one stick) of butter. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. You can also add minced fresh herbs such as oregano or basil. Divide into four to six portions and serve in individual bowls. Garlic Dipping Sauce: Mince 4-6 cloves of fresh garlic. In a small saucepan, heat ½ cup of olive oil. Add the minced garlic to the hot oil and cook for just a few minutes, until the garlic is fragrant and turns a golden color. Do not overcook. Add salt and/or pepper to taste. Divide into four to six portions and serve in individual bowls. Tomato Dipping Sauce with shallot, garlic and cumin seeds: This is a low-fat dipping sauce with an Indian flair. In a small saucepan heat a tablespoon of olive oil. Add two small shallots minced, and a clove of garlic minced. Cook until fragrant. Add ½ teaspoon cumin seeds and cook these all together for another minute. Then add 1 cup of tomatoes finely chopped. (Heirloom tomatoes work best for this.) Stir the mixture while cooking over a medium heat until a smooth sauce forms. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Divide into four portions and serve in individual bowls. How to Eat Artichokes: If your diners are not familiar with artichokes, you may want to show them how to eat one. Starting from the outside, pull off one leaf at a time and dip it into a sauce if desired. Place the inside of the leaf against your lower front teeth, bite down, and pull it away gently. The soft edible flesh will remain in your mouth while the tough outer surface comes free. Discard the empty leaf to the plate provided and repeat the process with another leaf. As you progress toward the center the leaves will be softer, and more and more of the leaf will be edible. When all of the leaves have been peeled away, you will reach the center which has two parts: the heart, and the “choke.” The heart is the best part, the most tender and flavorful part of the artichoke. With a teaspoon or a butter knife separate it from the fuzzy choke, discard the choke, and prepare to savor the heart. The heart is so yummy it needs no sauce, but whether to eat it with sauce or not is an individual pleasure. n
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youth
Pickling Mangoes Winner • Growing Up Asian in America Contest By Sahana Rangarajan
I
haven’t been to India in almost exactly a decade as of April, 2014. The hazy aspects of India have blended together in a warm, humid stew in my mind—the relentless sun, the powerful monsoons; the incessant honking of the rickshaws’ shrill horns into the small hours of the night; the hot, sticky evenings when the power would go out, and with it the light and air conditioning; spices dancing on my tongue; my grandmother’s hugs. In the midst of this mélange of memories, though, one has striking clarity: making vadu manga, pickled young mangoes in chili brine, with my mother and grandmother; three generations of Indian women, each more separated from our motherland than the last. The two women entrusted me with washing the raw mangoes. I diligently set to work, feeling the rough dimples in the firm fruits with my clumsy fingers as I rinsed them with mercifully cool water. Occasionally, my mother would cut a slice for me to suck on. The sour young fruit tickled my tongue and made me ache for more. My grandmother called the flavor pulipu. Pulipu is not just a regular sour, though. It curls your tongue. It makes your lips smack, and it’s so pervasive that the water you drink afterwards tastes sugary and sweet. The two matriarchs labored over the rest of the process: preparing the spicy brine and pickling the mangoes in traditional earthenware pots. I had a small taste of the finished product and fell in love. My tongue smarted and sparks shot down my back, but I felt awake and alive as no flavor before pulipu had made me feel. Through the years, my grandmother and I grew closer and closer, especially over cooking. Even when age had her bedridden, she narrated authentic Tamil recipes to me like fantastical tales; I thirstily listened, clutching at any fragment of my culture I could glean from my strongest connection to India. As I matured, I realized that our time together was limited, and I enjoyed our visits less; they felt like the ticking of a clock waiting to put an end to our bond. Once, at the end of a visit that I felt would be my last in her 44 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Tender Mango Pickle http://www.supernovafoods.com/dish_images/tender_mango_pickle_20.jpg
warm, soft embrace, my tears began to flow. She knew why already; she knew that I didn’t want her to leave me. Through my choking sobs, I heard her reassuring me that she would be at peace with passing, telling me not to worry. I allowed my tears to stain my face in inelegant trails down my cheeks, not caring sufficiently to dry them. They mingled with the bittersweet blood and saliva mixture already in my mouth from tensely biting my tongue. Salty; bitter; sweet; pulipu. My grandmother passed on two years ago, but I miss her more every day. However, when I bite into an intensely pulipu pickled mango, I feel her sweet hugs, hear her soft voice. And I know that India runs through my veins. n
is part of daily life, and also part of many important family traditions and cultural or religious celebrations.
Food connects us to our families, communities and identities. Food helps us learn about the diverse cultures of our friends and neighbors. Preparing and sharing meals with one another
Sahana Rangarajan, a current junior at the Harker School in San Jose, won second place in the 9-12 category of the 2014 Growing Up Asian in America contest.
What role does food play in your life as an Asian or Pacific Islander growing up in America? How are you shaped by the traditions or beliefs your family, culture or community holds around food? Growing Up Asian in America is a signature program of the Asian Pacific Fund, a Bay Area community foundation established to strengthen the Asian and Pacific Islander community in the Bay Area by increasing philanthropy and supporting the organizations that serve our most vulnerable community members. You can also view the winning entries online at www.asianpacificfund.org.
relationship diva
Is She Cheating On Me? By Jasbina Ahluwalia
Q
My best friend has been dating his girlfriend for about 8 months, and in the last couple days he has confided to me that he’s begun to suspect she may not be faithful. He’s a pretty private guy like me, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one he’s confided to. He’s always been there for me, and I hate to think there’s even a possibility that his girlfriend isn’t showing him the loyalty he deserves. Any suggestions?
A
What a great friend you are! Trust is one of the most important aspects of a relationship, and being confident that his girlfriend is being faithful is crucial to the success of your friend’s growing relationship. While context is important, and the below signs are certainly not black-and-white, here are three signs to share with him: 1. She seems more interested in her phone than in him: It is true that almost everyone is addicted to social media and engrossed in a digital world to some extent. However, if he goes
out to dinner with his girlfriend, spends the evening watching a movie or participate in anything that should consist of the two of them spending time together and she completely ignores him in favor of her phone, she might have a problem. 2. Her social calendar is too full for him: He used to have a pre-set date on which he would get together with his girlfriend. For example, every Saturday evening was their night to go out or spend time with each other, and no plans really had to be made it was just a forgone conclusion, but if suddenly “their day” gets replaced with time with her friends or last-minute changes of plans that don’t include him, she could be cheating. 3. She has become overly interested in his schedule: If his girlfriend’s texts to him primarily include questions about his schedule, because she wants to know when he will be at a certain location and for how long, this could
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be a sign she is trying to keep tabs on him so she doesn’t get caught cheating. The signs listed above can potentially be clues that his girlfriend is cheating. Importantly, however, all of them can be attributed to other factors as well. However, if more than a few of these signs exist, and his girlfriend’s behavior is changing, he needs to seriously consider that his girlfriend could be cheating or losing interest in him. I will provide a few more clues in next month’s column. Whatever the situation may be, though, it’s time to advise your friend to pay attention to the signs and possibly start a dialogue with his girlfriend about his suspicions. n Jasbina is the founder and president of Intersections Match, the only personalized matchmaking and dating coaching firm serving singles of South Asian descent in the United States. She is also the host of Intersections Talk Radio. Jasbina@intersectionsmatch.com.
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events JULY
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE! AUGUST issue deadline: Friday, July 18 To list your event in the Calendar, go to www.indiacurrents.com and fill out the Web form
Check us out on
special dates U.S. Independence Day
July 4
Guru Purnima
July 12
Eid ul Fitr
July 28
Raksha Bandhan
August 10
Indian Independence Day
August 15
Hema Malini live in concert as Durga, July 5
July
6 Sunday
Hema Malini Live in Concert as Durga. The choreography is based on
CULTURAL CALENDER
July
5 Saturday
stories from Devi Mahatmaya and also from the common folklore of Sati, Durga and Parvati. Organized by The Shah Foundation and Tisha Entertainment. 6 p.m. Redondo Beach Performing Art Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach . $39-$79. (310)753-8990, (562) 860-1135.
Omkara—Sound of Om. Featuring
Divya Devaguptapu. Om is not just a chant or vibration, but a symbol of supreme consciousness or pure existence. OmkAra is an exploration of the profound meaning of the chant OM though the expressive movement language of bharatanatyam, a traditional Indian dance. Ends July 11. Organized by San Diego Fringe Festival. Lyceum Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego. $10. sdfringe. ticketleap.com/divya/.
July
12 Saturday
Bharatanatayam Arangetram of Priya Chandini Sharma. Student of Malini
Krishnamurthi, Artistic Director of Natayanjali School of Dance. 5 p.m. Sophia B. Clarke theater, Mt. San Antonio College, 1100 N. grand Ave., Walnut. By invitaion. (626) 964-6956.
Yaadon Ki Baarat—Live Concert. Featuring Rupali Ghogare, Srikant Na-
46 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
rayan, Bhoomi Trivedi and Apurva Shah. Organized by The Shah Foundation and Tisha Entertainment. 7:30 p.m. La Mirada Performing Arts Theater, 14900 LaMirada Blvd., LaMirada. $29-$59. (562) 860-1135, (714) 213-3288, (310) 753-8990.
July
13 Sunday
Gujarati Geet Sangeet and Lunch.
Artists performing: Jayshree Bhakta and Hetal Brahmbhatt, Aanal Anjaria, Palak Vyas, Achal Anjaria, and Vijay Bhatt. Accompanied by Anish Chandani (keyboard and flute) and Jyoti Prakash (rhythm). Organized by San Fernando Valley Gujarati Association (SFVGA). 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Royal Delhi Palace Hall, 22323 Sherman Way #11, Canoga Park . $20. (818) 831-0316, (818) 993-1938, (818) 259-6667. surbhiajeet@ yahoo.com, vijaybhatt01@gmail.com. www. sfvga.org.
© Copyright 2014 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited.
recommends
Celebrating Dance Shyamal Randeria-Leonard
T
wo dance recitals will be featured on consecutive weekends by the West Covina based, Natyanjali School of Dance, for dance patrons. An annual performance Samarpan and a dance debut by Priya Chandini Sharma. The three-hour bharatnatyam performances will kick off with an invitation only arangetram by Sharma. She will be performing the traditional format of margam, as set forth in one of India’s ancient treatise on the performing arts, Natya Shastra. Margam which means path, was established in the 18th century and involves the progression of independent dances sequentially arranged to display all components of the dance form. In Samarpan, audiences can expect to see 20 students assuming roles of mythological characters and Hindu gods and goddesses such as Shiva, Rama, and Parvati. Typical to the form, the dancers will be in full regalia with brightly colored costumes accented with flowers and shimmering head dresses, assuming poses with mainly bent knees while mingling complex footwork in geometric patterns. Another characteristic feature is the nritya or interpretation, of the background song with the dancer’s expressions, gestures and emotions. Established in 1980, the school has endured shifts as students move away, go to college or get married, but continues to promote the dance originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu as a powerful medium of expression which is both educational and entertaining according to Krishnamurthi. But, the founder and choreographer concedes to the need of keeping up with generational advances in dance and music styles as well as audience need for variety, and has often enhanced her performance by peppering them with Western instrumentals. The Samarpan production exemplifies the synergy between East and West with its fusion blend of music for the pushpanjali and
Malini Krishnamurthi, Artistic Director of Natyanjali School of Dance
thillana presentations. Pushpanjali is the first performance marked with an offering of flowers and salutation to Indian deities, in particular to the lord of dance, the dancer’s teacher, the musicians and the audience, while thillana, the culminating piece will showcase dancers performing in synchrony. Krishnamurthi aims to make the environment of music and dance “pleasant and enjoyable where one can glean a lot about Indian mythology, religion, history and music systems.” Natyanjali’s orchestra will be composed of Krishnamurthi on nattuvangam, Akshay
Padmanabhan on vocals, R. Srihari on mridangam, the two-headed drum and Narasimhamurty Ramamishra on flute. Apart from her education in Karnatik music, Krishnamurthi has performed since the age of five with training in the Tanjor style of bharatnatyam. The school promotes solo dance debuts and thematic dance productions such as Krishna Leela, Paduka Pattabhishekam, Incarnations, Mystic Bride, and River of Dances among others.n July 12 Arangetram by Priya Chandini Sharma (Invitation Only). July 19, 5p.m. Sophia B. Clarke Theater Mt. San Antonio College 1100 N. Grand July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 47
48 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 49
SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH
July
1 Tuesday
Lecture on Freedom From Sadness.
By Swami Viditatmananda. Organized by Arsha Drishti. 7:30 p.m. First Unitarian Universalist Church, Clark Chapel, 298 Arbor Drive, San Diego. Free. (408) 905-6499. daksha@arshadrishti.org. www.arshadrishti.org.
July
3 Thursday
Lecture on Sri Ramcharit Manas By Swami Nikhilatmananda. Organized by
Sanatan Dharma Temple and Vedanta Society of Southern California. 5-7 p.m. Sanatan Dharma Temple, Gandhi Room, 15311 Pioneer Blvd., Norwalk . Free. (562) 547-3403, (562) 852-4067, (562) 696-4216. mohandadlani@ hotmail.com, kvcharapani@gmail.com.
July
6 Sunday
19961 Live Oak Canyon Road, P.O. Box 408, Trabuco Canyon. (949) 858-0342. http://vedanta.org.
July
7 Monday
Krishna Das CD Release Tour. As part of his Kirtan Wallah tour. Organized by Jyoti Mandir. 7:30 p.m. Seaside Center for Spiritual Living, 1613 Lake Drive., Encinitas . $35 advance, $45 at the door. www.krishnadas. com/tour_schedule.cfm, www.JyotiMandir.com.
July
12 Saturday
Guru Purnima with H.H. Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda. Music, pujas,
and homa. Organized by YogaTunes. 9 a.m.8 p.m. Jain Center, 8072 Commonwealth Ave., Buena Park . Free. (949) 229-5241. gurupurnimala@gmail.com. www.yogatunes.org/gp2014/, www.jaincenter.net/newsite/.
July
13 Sunday
Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 5430800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
Understanding Reincarnation. Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 5251291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 2950170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
Sunday Lectures at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. 11 a.m.
H.H. Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Live in Concert. Organized by YogaTunes.
Building World Unity. Sunday Service.
Hollywood Temple. 1946 Vedanta Place Hollywood. (323) 465-7114. Santa Barbara Temple. 927 Ladera Lane, Santa Barbara. (805) 969-290. Ramakrishna Monastery.
7-9 p.m. Orpheum Theater, 842 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. $23-$64. (949) 229-5241. info@ yogatunes.org. dycusa.org, laorpheum.com.
July
20 Sunday
The Spiritual Science of Kriya Yoga.
Krishna Das CD releasae tour, July 7 50 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 5251291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple,
Various events with Sri Ganapati Sacchidananda Swami, July 12 and 13.
3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 2950170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
July
27 Sunday
Why We Suffer. Sunday Service. Lake
Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 5430800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
August
3 Sunday
Self-Realization Fellowship World Convocation. A week of spiritual renewal,
including group meditations, kirtans and classes on the yoga meditation teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. Ends Aug. 9. Organized by Self-Realization Fellowship. Westin Bonaventure Hotel, 404 S Figueroa St., Los Angeles. (323) 225-2471. www.yogananda-srf. org. Š Copyright 2014 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited. 
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reflections
How to Float to the Top By Gopi Kallayil
W
hen I am at a party, the question I dislike the most is “What do you do?” I often challenge the other person by responding, “I live joyously and consciously. That is what I do.” But the very idea of living joyously and consciously is hard to grasp, let alone sustain, amid the demands of a high-tech workplace. I get at least 200 or 300 emails a day, each one a data fragment asking me to respond in some fashion. My grandfather, who was a rice farmer in a small village in India, probably had to respond to four or five pieces of communication a day. For him, once the sun went down and the cattle were back in the shed, the rhythm of life changed. Not in Silicon Valley, where I work—the rhythm is 24/7. There is no dial to turn down and say, “I want a bit less of it.” So you have to accept that these are the conditions you are choosing to have, and then ask, “In the midst of this, how can I be peaceful, happy and content?” The fact is that technology is like fire. Ever since we’ve discovered fire and known how to harness it, we’ve found it exceptionally useful. You can cook your food with fire; you can melt and blow glass with it. But if you misuse it, you can burn yourself or raze an entire city to the ground. Technology is a powerful tool—but whether you use the tool to be productive or destructive, to live with peace or chaos is up to you. At Google, where I work, we are building amazing technologies like selfdriving cars, Google Glass and Google Plus. But the most important technology that every human being has access to is right within us: our body, our mind, our consciousness. On the outside we have the Internet, on the inside we have what
52 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
I call the inner-net. That’s the connection you need to make if you want to live a truly conscious life. And there are simple steps you can take to connect, starting right now. Communities of employees at Google— ”Googlers”—organize themselves into groups that center on different interests. We have Gayglers, Jewglers and Carpooglers. I started a group for Yoga called Yoglers with just one student, but word spread and it has become a larger program across many Google offices. When you practice yoga, you’re asked to bring your complete,
100-percent awareness to your body and your breath. If you practice regularly, you stay more aware, and you make choices driven by that. The quality of your interactions improves. You stop checking your email when someone is talking to you. You become a more conscious human being. Yoga can be practiced all the time, like meditation. Every single moment of every day I try to be mindful, whether I am engaging with a janitor, a chef, an engineer, or a marketing colleague. I do set aside time for specific practices, and for the Yoglers class I teach, but in truth, every moment of every day is my inner work. What if you don’t have a yoga or meditation program at your work? It’s simple. Go
book a conference room. Sit, close your eyes, and start meditating. It doesn’t matter if only one person shows—or if no one does. If you sit there for 60 seconds and watch your breath, you have just started a meditation program. You don’t need a budget or resources. Someone just needs to step forward and do it. Someone, perhaps you. What’s essential to realize is that you don’t need to withdraw from the outer world in order to create a peaceful space in your inner world. There is a story in the Bhagavad Gita in which the warrior Arjuna looks across the battlefield and refuses to fight. He says, in effect, “My friends are in the other army. I can’t battle them.” And Krishna replies, “You must. In your role as a warrior, you need to battle and do so with honor.” I think Krishna is saying that this world is not to be avoided, but engaged. Some people think that they can find peace and avoid conflict—like, say, the stress of being passed over for a promotion—by going to live at a monastery or an ashram. But I have been to many ashrams and seen that these issues follow you. You think that the director of the ashram should have promoted you to be senior teacher. We tend to think, “I have my work life, then I have my spiritual life,” but the same person with the same body shows up everywhere. The challenge, of course, is to engage the world without getting entangled. A lovely metaphor that I grew up with in India is that of the beautiful lotus flower. It always floats on top of the water, even though the roots are mired in the mud below. When water falls on a lotus leaf, it gently flows off like dewdrops. The message in the metaphor is that we can be involved in life and work without being mired in it. We can let our problems roll off us. We can float to the top.n Gopi Kallayil works for Google, but the opinions expressed here are his own and not Google’s.
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healthy life
Copper’s Gift of Health By S. Shivashankar
W
hile most tap water is pretty safe to drink, water is most likely to be contaminated at the very last stage of the pipeline—your tap. Lead can seep into the water from older faucets and pipes. Using water filters, like Brita, can alleviate the problem, however with its strong bactericidal properties; water stored in a cooper vessel becomes bacteria-free in a couple of hours. The health benefits of copper are crucial for healthy existence, as this mineral enables normal metabolic process in association with amino acids and vitamins. Copper cannot be produced within the body and hence needs to be sourced from external food sources. A look at the science behind storage of water in copper vessel and its benefits might be educative. Let us explore benefits of drinking water from a copper vessel.
Storage Kills Microbes in Water
Storing water in copper and silver pots for purification finds mention in ancient texts of Ayurveda. The storage process is known to kill micro-organisms that include virus and bacteria, making it perfectly fit for drinking. This ancient view is supported by research which states that when ground-water, with a slightly alkaline pH and contaminated with 500 colony forming units (CFU)/ mL of bacteria, was stored in copper pots for 16 hours at room temperature, all bacteria were killed. It is reported to destroy diarrhea causing bacteria, such as Vibrio cholerae, enteropathogenic E. 54 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
it has to come from our food. There are several food items containing copper such as whole wheat, beans, green leafy vegetables, honey etc., but the best method of meeting the body’s need of copper is by drinking water stored overnight in a copper vessel. Two liters of the water can supply 40% of our daily requirement of copper.
Other Health Benefits
coli, Salmonella. It is also effective against many other disease-causing bacteria such as, Shigella Flexneri and Salmonella Paratyphi.
How Does it Work?
When water is stored in a copper vessel for about 16 hours, copper, in very small quantities gets dissolved in water. This process known, in scientific parlance, as the “oligodynamic effect,” has the power to destroy a wide range of molds, fungi, algae and harmful microbes due to its toxic effects on living cells. The copper content of water which reaches levels of about 190 µg/l is well within the permissible limits set by the World Health Organization and thus remains safe for drinking. After 16 hours, a slight increase in the pH of water from 7.83 to 7.93 occurs in copper pots due to which the taste of water might change a little while the physicochemical parameters remain unchanged.
Stored Water—An Ideal Source of Copper
Copper is an essential micronutrient required by our body at a level of about 1mg/day. Though it is a trace amount,
Water stored in a copper jug is good for health and well-being. It stimulates the brain, promotes bone strength, aids in digestion, regulates body fat, acts as anti-carcinogenic, regulates functioning of thyroid gland, prevents joint pain, aids in hemoglobin synthesis, maintains acid-alkaline balance in body, helps in improving fertility and conception, prevents white patches on skin, helps in healing of internal wounds and slows down aging due to its antioxidant property. Even if you do not have a copper vessel or copper container at home, you can just start with a copper cup. This way, you can slowly get introduced to the properties of drinking water from copper containers.n Sources: Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (IAIM) in Bangalore where researchers carried out the extensive study on water highly contaminated with bacterial colonies. T. Ramamurthy, a scientist at Calcutta’s National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (Niced) who collaborated on the study that was published in the Journal of Health and Popular Nutrition. S. Shivashankar is a scientist and the Head of Division for Plant Physiology and Biochemistry at Indian Institute of Horticultural Research in Bangalore. He is also the author of “Antioxidants in Plants: Role and Function.”
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 55
Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen
travel
The Wonders of Saxony By Melanie P. Kumar
S
axony, in Germany, is like something out of a picture book with its baroque castles, distinctive cobblestone streets, the beautiful Elbe river, the towering Ore Mountains, lush green meadows and a vibrant cityscape. Where Saxony scores over other places in Germany, is in its huge contributions to the fields of architecture, art and music. Artists like Caspar David Friedrich have immortalized its beauty on canvas and J.S. Bach wrote some of his most famous works in the city of Leipzig in Saxony. Saxony was at the peak of its glory till the Second World War, when much of its 1,000 years of history was obliterated. The curiosity of visiting a state that was once part of the Iron Curtain, before the reunification of East and West Germany had a powerful pull on me. A large part of the credit for Saxony’s impressive artistic collection goes to Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, who was able to fulfill his vision of a Baroque synthesis of the arts by his acquisitions, though he left his exchequer pauperized in the process. 56 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Augustus’ obsession with wealth resulted in him commissioning and imprisoning a goldsmith Johann Bottger to create gold. This resulted in the desperate Bottger cracking the secret of making porcelain, which ironically came to be known as “white gold!” Thus Saxony became the first European country to invent porcelain. Augustus the Strong’s porcelain is displayed among the State Art Collections, which has the largest porcelain collection in the world.
Saxony and India
Johann Sebastian Bach
One of the most interesting aspects of a visit to this beautiful place, is discovering Saxony’s connection to India. Through my research about Saxony, I found that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, one of India’s freedom fighters, recruited Indian prisoners of war in Germany and attempted to train them at Konigsberg, in Saxony, in preparation for the battle to free India from British yoke. However, with Germany losing the Second World War, the preparations at Konigsberg were dissolved and Bose left Germany in 1943 for Japan, where he formed
sun goes down a bit! The German traits of precision and discipline were visible during the guided tour of Volkswagen’s Transparent Manufactory in Dresden. Even I, who views cars purely as a utility, was charmed by the process combining both robots and human industry. A slinky pose for the camera in front of the Phaeton turned out to be the icing on the cake!
the Indian National Army. Rabindranath Tagore, India’s Nobel Laureate, had long ties to Saxony, too. His German publisher, Kurt Wolff established a publishing house in Leipzig in 1913 and published Tagore’s books starting in 1914. Tagore visited Wolff in Leipzig many times. He also visited Dresden, on numerous occassions, conducting speeches and seminars at different art houses. His 150th birthday was celebrated with great fanfare in Dresden in 2012.
Cathedrals and Castles
Dresden
Two of Saxony’s best known cities are Dresden and Leipzig. After the rise of Romanticism, Dresden became a center for intellectual and artistic movement, attracting poets and porcelain decorators. In 1883, four porcelain manufacturers registered their famous blue crown Dresden mark, and the Dresden porcelain style was born. What is fascinating about Dresden is its resilience. The city rebuilt itself after the bombings by the Allies, during the final months of the Second World War. For a peace-lover, it seemed cruel that 25,000 people had to become collateral damage and that 15 square miles of the city center had to be destroyed in an attempt to end the war. The indomitable spirit of the Saxons who preferred to look ahead, and the government’s efforts to restore Saxony to its former glory, should be commended. Swissotel in Dresden proved to be a haven during the five days of my stay in this state. My room was well-decorated and comfortable, though the open bathing area could have proved a challenge if one was sharing with a friend. The presence of seasonal fruits at breakfast is a big bonus for vegetarians who sometimes tire of bread and cereals. It was amazing to find that the lady who served so many people in the buffet breakfast area was able to remember my tea order on Day 2! My first stop in Dresden was the New Green Vault Treasury Museum, where I was enthralled to discover the “Court of Aurangzeb” display. This was a resplendent artifact showing “The Royal Household at Delhi on the Occasion of the Birthday of the Grand Mogul Aureng-Zeb.” It portrayed the grandeur of India’s royalty. The display was made using 4,909 diamonds, 164 emeralds, 160 rubies, a sapphire, 16 pearls and two cameos. It was created between 1701 and 1708. Also at the museum is the Green Diamond, at 41 carats—one of the largest diamonds in the world—which was extracted from the Kollur mine in Andhra Pradesh in the early 1700s. The Old Masters’ Picture Gallery at the museum was a wonderful display of Im-
Faust’s pact with the devil
pressionist paintings. Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” occupies pride of place here with the cherubs holding their own at the bottom of the painting. A stay in Dresden would be incomplete without a steamboat ride across the Elbe River. It appeared calm and showed no signs that it had breached its banks during the floods of June 2013. The boat ride to the city center revealed a view of the city that combined both man-made architectural wonders and scenic beauty. On a hot summer day, it might be advisable to take this ride when the
Language can be such a roadblock, more so when I found myself separated from my friends at Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen. The castle and the adjoining cathedral are located on a hill and tower above the city. I could see the rooftops of the houses as I made my way downhill, largely with the help of sign language, some British tourists who allowed me to use their phone (and to whom I actually posed the question, “Do you speak English?” only to be told in proper British tones, “Of course, we do!”) and a map! But that can in no way take away from the grandeur of this purely residential schloss (castle in German), which has the added fame of providing the base for the triumphant march of Meissen porcelain by acting as its first manufactory. The paintings and monumental murals on display provided clarity on the history of the Saxon state and its dynasties. In one area of the castle, I had to slip my feet into over-sized soft chappals. As I shuffled along, I marveled at the thoughtfulness of those who, without depriving visitors, also ensured protection of the wooden flooring. A view of the Elbe
July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 57
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Send the picture as a jpeg image to editor@indiacurrents.com with Subject: A Picture That Tells a Story. Deadline for entries: 10th of every month.
Friends on Canopy Road A Creative Commons Image
58 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Augustus the Strong’s footprints are indelible in the annals of Saxony history. He had his best architects and artists convert a Renaissance building into a majestic hunting and pleasure palace called Schloss Moritzburg. The paintings, furniture and porcelain inside were impressive and imposing. The Federzimmer or Feather Room, where unique production techniques were used to create material from a million colored bird feathers and the sight of the world’s heaviest red deer antlers (supposedly Europe’s most important A stained glass depiction of Martin Luither King collection), left me wondering its original author, Christopher Marlowe. about the way in which man exercised power Statues of Faust and Mephistopheles are visover lesser creatures. ible at the passage leading to the cellar. Dinner at the Auerbach Cellar was an enjoyable German Legends experience, surrounded by images of Faust I visited Leipzig, which was home to two and his famous companion! of the greatest Western composers, Johann Being a vegetarian, there is always some Sebastian Bach and Mendelssohn. While anxiety about food, but the Saxony experiBach spent the last 27 years of his life in ence was a pleasant surprise. Vegetarian fare Leipzig, the city also boasted the presence was always available, and in some cases, of other composers whose houses and other unforgettable, like the lunch at the Panorama musical sites make up a “music trail,” across Restaurant in Leipzig, which comprised a the city center. Steel inlays in the shape of fabulous soup and cutlets with yummy fillmusical notes are embedded in the ground ings! Besides the seasonal vegetables, asparaand these are visible in front of St. Thomas gus, artichokes, cheese and mushrooms are School, where Bach worked as a teacher, and the options available to vegetarians and since also in front of St. Thomas Church, where I enjoy all of these, I could relish the fare in he served as a Cantor and where his remains most of the places, along with a liberal dash are buried. of pepper and chilli sauce! Identifying the stained glass window Wine-drinking is cultivated to a fine art in which the image of Bach has been imin Saxony and there were several delightful mortalized inside the church, was as much opportunities to visit wineries and indulge of a thrill as viewing the organ that he used. in some wine-tasting. The interaction with Just across the church is the Bach Museum, Herr Herrlich, the restaurant owner of Vinwhich expands on the life of the great musicenz Richter, a restaurant outlet of a Meissencian. His handwritten compositions are on based winery, was particularly heart-warming display, as also his instruments and costumes and made me wish that I had learnt some of those times. The museum is interactive German before the trip. He linked each and by tapping some pillars and putting my wine to a particular composer and played a ears to them, I could hear Bach’s ethereal composition while I sipped. He dedicated music. This prompted me to pick up The Best George Handel’s “Hallelujah” to me! of Bach CD from the souvenir counter. The desire of Saxony’s rulers to use their St. Thomas Church also has a stained wealth wisely and to convert some of it into glass impression of the great Reformer, Marthe preservation of art and culture, has made tin Luther, who is shown translating the the state a place worth visiting and revisiting. Bible into German. Another famous sight I still have regrets about what could not be in Leipzig is “Madler’s Passage,” where Meaccommodated into my itinerary and hope phistopheles (a demon featured in German for another opportunity soon. n folklore) is supposed to have persuaded Faustus (in the play written by Christopher Melanie is a Bangalore-based writer and LiterMarlowe about Faust) to accompany him ary Reviewer who has been freelancing for more to Auerbach’s Cellar. The place has been than 15 years now. She holds degrees in English memorialized by Goethe, who gained more and Mass Communications. recognition from his play Faust than perhaps
On Inglish
Frenzy on the Maidan By Kalpana Mohan
mai·dan [maee-dahn] noun (esp. in India) an open area or space in or near a town, often used as a marketplace or parade ground. Origin: 1615–25; < Hindi maidan < Persian < Arabic maydan
O
of the San Francisco Bay on July 4th n a fiery day in the summer of watching fireworks light up the sky; or 1998, our family of four stood watching the processions at the Plaza sandwiched between boisterous de Armas in Peru’s Cuzco on the day throngs of locals and tourists at the square of Corpus Christi when fifteen saints of the Hotel de Ville in Paris. We were and virgins were borne in a procession watching soccer on gigantic screens propped to the Cathedral to greet the body of up all over the vast plaza. For over a month, Christ; or walking with the crowds at the city of Paris, host of FIFA World Cup, the Junkanoo in the Bahamas on Boxrocked. Squares pulsated with people of ing Day; or simply sipping coconut different color, nationalities and faiths. Fans water at the cricket maidan in Chennai parlayed their feelings through face, hair and at the One Day International. clothes. They spoke in one universal tongue: Every maidan I have ever been in the language of a good, fair game savagely has made me ponder the oneness of played. humanity at a given hour. It has made Inside the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, our A Wikipedia Commons Image ; Eden Gardens, Kolkata me believe in the vitality of the moson, then just four, screamed every time he ment. It has also made me reckon with saw Zinedine Zidane headbutt a player or how, sometimes, in a moment of epic upheaval with historic score a goal. The boy sat atop his father’s shoulders, screaming wildly significance, the human spirit could straddle both beauty and as the sea of spectators around him erupted and clapped. He didn’t undestruction. How else could we explain the events in Egypt derstand the rules of the game. I didn’t either. But what did it matter? as they played out in Midan El-Tahrir? Or, as we saw in EuroDuring those weeks in Paris, I was reminded of the frenzy at cricket maidan, the tide of demonstrations and civil unrest in Maidan stadiums in India, of the volatility of people crowding around the radio Nezalezhnosti that altered the political landscape in Ukraine. listening to a cricket commentary. In the 80s, I used to watch the molWe saw the power of many in Kiev. We saw firsthand how the ten excitement in my relatives as they devoured a game of cricket on raw emotions of people thrown in together for a common cause a black and white television set. Me? I could not tell a ball from a bat. could sometimes extinguish the megalomaniacal dream of one. Even though I never learned to appreciate sports in any form, one Such was the power of the maidan that it riled people up and word engraved itself onto my brain in those years, over and over, as sucked the fervor of its occupants engaged in a festival, a sport, the voice of a commentator floated in from Eden Gardens or Chepauk a rally or a riot. grounds or the Oval Stadium. It was a Hindi word whose origin, traceI’ll never forget the time I was wending my way to the able to the 17th century, derives from Arabic: maidan. The word means, absolute greatest maidan in the world—where twelve radiating literally, open field—an open area, an esplanade or a space in or near a avenues meet and a flame always burns over the tomb of an town, often used as a marketplace or parade ground. unknown soldier—when the ecstasy of a nation made a man A couple of summers ago, on a morose monsoon morning, my go berserk. Our family was headed for the Bir Hakeim Metro daughter and I stood at one of India’s most magnificent grounds, Kolto celebrate with Parisians at the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile kata’s maidan, the largest urban park in the state of West Bengal. We on the night of France winning the 1998 World Cup. People marveled at Victoria Memorial built over a hundred years before, as poured in and out of the metro station, their faces the color of we stood there between puddles of water, without an umbrella, using the French flag. They were laughing, weeping, and hugging. our dupattas for cover. The place was home to many playgrounds, the The smell of alcohol and cigarettes rent the air. And while we famous 90,000-seat cricket venue Eden Gardens, several football stadipaused for a minute, wondering if this were the safe thing to ums and the city’s race course. do with two young kids on such a raucous night, an unknown We soaked in the melancholy of a stately, historic space in a dusty, Frenchman ran up to me for no reason other than the fact that chaotic city. Those acres of grass had sprouted many political rallies and he was deliriously, inexplicably happy. ideological movements. I could imagine the dissent and the passion, He swept me in his arms and kissed me, while my children the flags and their colors and the crowds and the cries and the band and my husband looked on, shocked by the and the beat. braggadocio and the fever that one nation I remember my times on many an international square. The feelcould inspire in one moment in the heart of a ings were always the same: whether we were at the Trocadero in Paris man. n enjoying the beat of African drummers until the sun set at 9 PM; or crooning with the people of Paris, along with Luciano Pavarotti, while Kalpana Mohan writes from Saratoga. To read feverish and drunken in the love of both Verdi and Pavarotti, on the more about her, go to http://kalpanamohan.org endless grassy knoll of the Jardin de Champ de Mars; or by the waters and http://saritorial.com. July 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 59
opinion
Motherhood Above All? By Dilnavaz Bamboat
A
midst all the chatter and marketing gimmicks that make up Mother’s Day celebrations, I came across a quote by Ralph Lauren, which said, “My wife Ricky has accomplished so much in her life, but being a mother has always come first.” In this seemingly simple sentence, a globally-renowned fashion icon and figure of our times placed a giant emphasis on motherhood, simultaneously outranking his spouse’s other accomplishments as a human being. He is hardly alone in this declaration of priorities, with millions of women around the globe asserting it is the most important thing they will ever do. Fair enough. The sheer physical metamorphosis a woman undergoes when producing a child, followed by a transformed-for-life sleep cycle, relentless emotional and mental demands, and a heart permanently bumping around on a leash is enough to make the toughest soldier wimp out. To anyone who goes through it, I have no argument if they believe it is the most crucial role of their life. If that is what they choose to be defined by, more power to them. I, too, believe it will be among the most critical things I do in my years on earth (but not the only one!) What fascinates me is how—and more specifically, why—entire cultures feed into this belief and generate narratives to support it to the extent of passively punishing those who don’t conform. I struggle with understanding exactly why we as a society—nay, societies across the planet—endorse this prominence of motherhood to the point where any other achievement—whether it be the Nobel prize or Prime Ministership or the rescuing of trafficked children—is deemed relatively less significant. (Case in point, Hilary Clinton recently stating that Grandmother is the most important title she—U.S. Secretary of State and past presidential candidate—will have.) First, a home truth: Not all mothers are created equal. Their circumstances are not equal. The extent and manner in which they engage in caregiving and nurturing and the rearing of little human beings is far from equal. Yes, there are certain sentiments mothers are definitely more predisposed to than other categories of the human race. Still, speaking of the experience in absolute terms does nobody any favors (except perhaps the slackers who are happy to scurry under the umbrella—and as a therapist for socially dis-
60 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Equally, it is not for us to glorify motherhood to such extremes that we look askance at those who prefer another life mission—whether by choice or circumstance. turbed and abused children, I’ve met more than my fair share of those). Why does society put such absolute emphasis on motherhood? Because of its significance in shaping the future or because it serves a distinct purpose to do so? Would our social structure be threatened if women one day believed other tasks were more important or satisfying? Does the unabashed promotion of mothers as the more important parent serve a social purpose? It behooves us to consider who society is made of: men and women. Parents and non-parents. Those who value their work (whatever it may be) and others who get by just because they have to do it. Given the ratio of men to women on the planet, it is only natural that mothers do not form a majority of the world’s population. However, by virtue of the nature of their job, every creature has one—as it has a father. But do we hear of fatherhood being the most important job a man will ever do? He has a company to run, that ladder to shimmy up, and no one thinks badly of him for leaving a colicky baby to finalize a deal. Have we as a society decided fatherhood is not Life Position #1 because it doesn’t serve us to do so? Are those global profit margins we’re sneaking a look at? Industries, incomes, and other concepts that fade into the background when the parent in question is female? As products of social conditioning who may or may not question this narrative, we need to check if we’re merely being pumped up to serve a social purpose—especially if our hearts are not in it. As much as I believe that parenthood—not just motherhood—is a joyous, rewarding experience for many people, equally, it is not for everyone. Unfortunately, the strength of this all-encompassing motherhood narrative does not account for individual differences and choices. It does not count the woman who feels her role as
an international development expert is more important. It scoffs at those who would rather follow a map than a trail of diapers. It disallows space for reflection and questioning, for you must be a really selfish person for thinking you could be complete without a person emerging from your body. In and of itself, this smothering social story is polarizing and inconsiderate of variations in personalities, ambition, and temperament. It allows no debate on whether a person may actually be a better human being without producing one. It gathers all their life’s work—no matter how significant or exceptional—and hangs it in unfavorable balance to human beings who have utilized their uterus. And in doing so, this overarching myth fails us. In far too many cultures around the world even today, Jane Austen, Frida Kahlo, Noor Inayat Khan, Emily Bronte, Florence Nightingale, Ellen Degeneres, Anne Frank, Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Sotomayor, and Mother Teresa would have questionable social standing for failing to fulfill their proscribed social role. I will repeat: It is not for us to diss motherhood. If a woman believes that is her only destiny, then she deserves (and definitely requires) all the support she can get. Equally, it is not for us to glorify motherhood to such extremes that we look askance at those who prefer another life mission—whether by choice or circumstance. May we find it in us to applaud their work, vision, and contribution to the planet with the same gusto we reserve for the parents of bonny, chubby-cheeked, dimple-elbowed, fat-toed, three-toothed little folk. I will be a parent in the future. And already I know the shift in attitude that will occur by those not closest to me. Finally, I will fit the mold. And once satisfied that I’m propped safely on that pedestal, they will walk off into the distance, looking for other matrons to idolize. And from that vantage point, I will throw darts of doubt in their direction, hoping my aim is not amiss. n Dilnavaz Bamboat manages communications and social media for a Silicon Valley non-profit, is a scriptwriter for iPad applications for children, a writer and editor at IDEX (idex.org), a section editor at Ultra Violet (ultraviolet.in), a feminist blogger at Women’s Web (womensweb. in) and a founder member of India Helps (indiahelps.blogspot.com). She lives in the SF Bay Area.
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viewfinder
A Motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gaze By Purvi Shah
r winne
W
e were driving through the town of Anand, Gujarat when on the side of the road we saw a group of people who, I can only assume, were part of one family. There were many things going on at the scene. On one side kids were playing and horsing around. On the other side were women with smaller children like the one in this photo. What captures me is not the cry-
ing girl, but the woman who is looking at the child in a way that only a mother can. n Purvi Shah is a Business Analyst who aspires to become a photo journalist by creating unique photos that capture the human condition. She can be reached at purvihshah@yahoo.com
India Currents invites readers to submit to this column. Send us a picture with caption and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pick the best entry every month. There will be a cash prize awarded to the lucky entrant. Entries will be judged on the originality and creativity of the visual and the clarity and storytelling of the caption. So pick up that camera and click away. Send the picture as a jpeg image to editor@indiacurrents.com with Subject: A Picture That Tells a Story. Deadline for entries: 10th of every month. 62 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
dear doctor
Anxiety Meltdown By Alzak Amlani
Q
I am consistently worrying and thinking about things that I have to do and issues to resolve at work and with people. I get the feedback that I am often pessimistic, and think of the worst case scenario before I try anything new. I am starting to see this pattern more clearly. At times I feel relieved that I understand my problem, but I also feel more worried, scared and anxious that I will never change. This is affecting my life at this point. I can’t seem to relax and enjoy parties and social events. Is there a way out of this pattern?
A
Sounds like you are dealing with a fair amount of anxiety at present. Did anything happen more recently that precipitated more fear and worrying? If you study psychology and Buddhism, they both address the tendency of the mind to produce narratives of incessant worry. We could say, the modern mind left to itself is a thought machine. If our attention or psychic energy is primarily diverted to the thinking process, it will feed this cycle of obsessive thoughts. It becomes a hamster wheel, hard to get off of.
Thoughts of worry are symptoms of unmetabolized feelings, especially fear and probably anger. Repetitive thinking and trying to figure things out cannot metabolize fear. Obsessing about something is a distraction from really dealing with the underlying feelings. Fear is a normal response to not feeling safe, encountering something new, being in the unknown, feeling overpowered or being abused verbally or physically. These issues are part of what people address in psychotherapy. They show up as loss of confidence, anger, hesitancy, distrust, lack of performance at work and turning away from intimacy. However, if you are not able to slow down and be with your feelings, it’s hard to make much progress in working through your past and developing a supportive and effective relationship with your inner self. Begin by doing some deep belly breathing. Lay down on the floor and when you breathe in, let your belly extend out and when you breathe out, relax. The goal is to actually turn towards your fear—see it, feel it and help it move through your body. Some
people do well with Hatha yoga or Tai Chi. Walking meditation is useful as well. Mindfully lift one foot, place it down, lift the other, place it down and continue for 10-20 minutes. This can bring you into your body more, ground you and slow you down. Keep your blood sugar stable by eating less processed foods, eating three balanced meals a day, minimizing caffeine and getting enough sleep. There are plenty of CDs and MP3s with music and guided relaxation available now to help you with breathing, feeling and letting go. Medication is an option if the anxiety disorder is severe. You want to consult a psychotherapist to work in a more holistic way. Even if you take medication, these lifestyle changes and deeper resolution of issues are essential for long-term change. n Alzak Amlani, Ph.D., is a counseling psychologist of Indian descent in the Bay Area. 650-325-8393. Visit www. wholenesstherapy.com
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the last word
W
Why is Science not Popular? By Sarita Sarvate
atching Particle Fever, a documentary, I experienced a visceral reaction. I was jumping out of my seat; I was animated and exhilarated. I could not wait to find out how it all came out, even as a part of me traveled down memory lane, wondering if I could still solve the Schroedinger equations scribbled on the blackboard. The film recounted the search for the Higgs Boson, dubbed the God Particle, which allegedly explains the creation of our universe. Focusing on a few key men and women, the film managed to engage the audience, with one flaw. It did not actually explain the physics behind the Higgs Boson, nor did it elaborate why it is critical to the formation of our universe. Instead, it simply threw around the terms supersymmetry and chaos, the two possible ways our universe could be. I can understand the reasoning behind the filmmakers’ decision; they did not wish to bore the audience. But is it wise to underestimate the filmgoer in this way? Still, the film, along with the new television series Cosmos, heralds the long overdue advent of science on the entertainment scene. Science has not captured the imagination of the American public since Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk, more than forty years ago. When you look at some of the most prestigious American magazines, like the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, what stands out is the disparity of coverage between science and the liberal arts. The New Yorker, in particular, excels in discussing artists and writers that no one has ever heard of. It is imWhat possible to imagine it giving equal space does it say to an obscure scientist or an engineer But why is it more valuable about a society instead. to know about a critic named Paul De that prizes the Man, than about Spencer Percy, the man who invented the microwave, ability to throw a which everyone uses every day? I think the reason is that products ball over the ability of the Ivy League education machine to understand the dominate our politics, government, media, literature, and entertainment. universe? I myself, though educated in science, have fallen prey to this bias, so that I am prone to reading essays about unknown critics, focusing on the cadence of sentences alone, even though the subject might bore me to death. Perhaps the problem starts with the teaching of science and math in schools. American education has often been described as mile wide and inch deep. This approach may work—sort of—with a subject like history or psychology, giving students a cornucopia of flavors, but it definitely fails when it comes to science and math. American teachers approach subjects like physics or chemistry the same way they approach English; they fail to inspire the habit of repetitive problem solving. When I was in college, I would buy a notebook, and in one weekend, fill it with differentials and integrals. American science teachers never ask that of their students, probably because they themselves never did it, for the simple reason that a majority never even studied science. I am not kidding! I was shocked when a high school science teacher I met at a party recently told me that she had not taken any science in college whatsoever. “You don’t need a science degree to teach science,” she said. “You just have to get a certificate.” I could not believe my ears. The result is that science educators only manage to dazzle their students with its complexity while failing to teach them even the basics. 64 | INDIA CURRENTS | July 2014
Take an elementary course in biology at the college level, for example. The 650 page textbook covers topics from the basic structure of a cell to brain structure, plant reproduction, theory of evolution, the DNA code, basic anatomy, sexual reproduction, genetic counseling, gene therapy, the environment, ecology, microorganisms, and plant and animal viruses, just to name a few. Is this not overkill by a long shot? One wonders what the next course is supposed to cover. I had never studied biology before, but took up the challenge of helping my younger son, only to discover that in spite of its glossy pages and snazzy diagrams, the book followed no logic and made little sense. We resorted to learning from Khan Academy videos instead. The reason why Khan Academy, founded by a South Asian, succeeds where fancy textbooks fail is that it understands that scientific learning is cumulative. Before you go on to Step B you must thoroughly understand Step A. Before you fathom the genetic code, you must first comprehend how cells produce proteins. Unfortunately, the TV show Cosmos makes the same mistake, dazzling you with spectacular visuals while failing to dwell on logical connections. I doubt that this is the fault of its star, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The producers try to impress the viewer by cutting such a wide swath that at the end of an episode one can remember little. Episode Four, for example, starts with the Big Bang, goes on to the work of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and James Maxwell, and then to electromagnetism, gravity, and the theory of relativity. It doesn’t stop there, but discusses dark stars, black holes, gravity wells, X-Rays, and event horizons. When the show does focus on telling a story about a specific scientific event, as it does in recounting the tale of Clair Patterson’s research to determine the age of our earth and his resulting discovery of the poisonous effects of lead in Episode Seven, it succeeds spectacularly. That story especially piqued my interest because Patterson’s boss who directed him to do the study was none other than Harrison Brown, the geophysicist I worked under at the East-West Center in Hawaii. Cosmos is the right show to come along at the right time. While stopping short of proselytizing, it nevertheless battles ignorant beliefs like the dogma that the earth is only six thousand years old or that climate change is not manmade. I can only hope that shows like Cosmos and movies like Particle Fever will finally begin to combat the pervasive portrayal of scientists and engineers as nerds and social incompetents. You only have to watch the TV show Silicon Valley to get my point. What does it say about a society that prizes the ability to throw a ball, over the ability to understand the universe? Which chooses its presidents on the basis of whether it wants to have beer with them? The anti-intellectualism of America has gone far enough. It is time to educate Americans about science and how deeply ingrained it is in our daily life. It is also essential if we are to compete in the labor market in a globalized world. n
Sarita Sarvate (www.saritasarvate.com) has published commentaries for New America Media, KQED FM, San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and many nationwide publications.
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4.125% 4.163% APR 15 yr fixed. 45 day rate lock. Rates as of 6/18/14. Rates subject to change.
• 10% Down Purchase, No PMI • No point, No Fee Refinance Available • HARP Loans - No Equity Required • FHA Streamline Refinances
Warren Hitesh Myer (MS, MBA, IITB)
Over $500 MM Closed Mortgage expert since 1991
www.mloan.com
888-771-7714
NMLS# 854352 • RE Broker - CA Dept of Real Estate #01163801
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California’s
Home & Loan Team Serving All Your Real Estate Needs Under One Roof One Point Options
Zero Point Options
LOAN PROGRAM RATE APR* RATE APR*
Conforming<$417k 30 yr Fixed 3.875 4.025 15 yr Fixed 3.000 3.244 7/1 ARM 2.875 2.977 5/1 ARM 2.500 2.529 Conf - Jumbo $417K to $625.5K 30 yrs Fixed 4.000 4.129 15 yrs Fixed 3.000 3.123 10/1 ARM 3.375 3.500 5/1 ARM 2.625 2.750 Jumbo $625,501 to $3,000,000 30 yrs Fixed 4.000 4.119 10/1 ARM 3.500 3.612 5/1 ARM 2.625 2.734
4.000 3.125 3.125 2.750
4.056 3.223 3.179 2.927
4.125 3.250 3.625 3.000
4.170 3.327 3.669 3.052
4.250 4.284 3.625 3.666 3.000 3.131
NOTE: 1. Rates are for owner-occupied purchase. 2. Rates quoted based on 75LTV and FICO more than 740. 3. Rates for Jumbo loans vary with amount. * APR as of June 18, 2014. APR based on maximum loan amounts for various programs. Rates may vary daily. Purchase loans with 25 day close guarantee for completed loan application. Loans with Lender-Paid Credit are available that can vary with the loan amount. Please call for custom quotes. 180 day early closure fee and other restrictions may apply on all loans. Note: Rates quoted are for approved loans and are subject to change without notice. Additionally, there may be other restrictions that could apply in specific loan scenarios that could change the actual rates applicable. Rates provided as a general guideline only.
RAMESH BHAMBHRA
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Since5 198
360 Kiely Blvd., Suite 235, San Jose, CA 95129 Bus. (408) 243-3155 ext. 201
1 (800) 4 BHAMBHRA • 1 (800) 424-2624 Approved Broker CalBRE #00896358 • NMLS#346147 • NMLS#346513