H-1Bs—The Best and the Brightest? By Jaya Padmanabhan
Is Too Much Sitting Killing You? By Panchajanya Paul
In Defense of Sudden Outsiders By Samantha Rajaram
Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence
• indiacurrents.com march march 2017 2017 30 ,30 no., no. 11 • 11indiacurrents.com • vol. • vol. • $3.95
Yoga's journey to a strip mall near you By Geetika Pathania Jain
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“I Don’t Like Obama”
hree years ago, my teenage son walked on the streets of Berkeley, raised his voice and said, “I don’t like Obama.” While attending summer camp, a fellow student visiting from China was incredulous that one could speak such blasphemous words against the President out loud. To prove that he would not face any consequences for those words, my son walked down the street shouting to no one in particular, “I don’t like Obama.” Recounting this incident, my son said, “Until I walked down that street saying the words out loud, he didn’t believe me.” This incident is a reminder that, even in the 21st century, to live in a vibrant democracy predicated upon the right to free speech is indeed a privilege like no other. Building upon the private citizen’s right to speak is the all-important role of the media as a watchdog on power. It is the fourth pillar on which the house of democracy rests. For President Trump to refer to the media as, “the enemy of the American people,” is an egregious mistake that I strongly condemn. Trump is indeed the classic “disruptor,” upending all rules in governance. In this scenario, there is a windfall for him that few are talking about. Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times said, “In a single month, he received $817 million in coverage, higher than any single person has ever received in the four years that mediaQuant has been analyzing the media. Obama’s monthly earned media value hovered around $200 to $500 million.” mediaQuant is a firm that measures every mention of a person or brand that has not been paid for which adds up to earned media value. President Trump is smashing records for free coverage, even when you pit him against the 1,000 most famous people in the world today. The article says, “The coverage those 1,000 people garnered last month totaled $721 million. Mr. Trump gets about $100 million more in coverage than the next 1,000 famous people put together.” And, that should give us pause. Active political engagement is critical, but we cannot let all parts of our being to be subsumed by our new leader. There is plenty going on around us that does not involve the President. As I write this editorial, sheets of rain are
hitting the windowpanes and California is in the middle of a deluge. According to a federal report by the US Drought Monitor, just 3 months ago, 60% of the state could be classified as facing severe drought while now only 7% of the state can be classified in that manner. Aging infrastructure was brought into sharp focus with the damaged spillway at Lake Oroville, where agencies are now working overtime to prevent a catastrophic incident. Wet weather heralds the arrival of spring and brings with it new possibilities. If you’ve been thinking of signing up for a yoga class, you don’t have to go further than the local strip mall. Geetika Pathania Jain’s cover story is a fascinating look into yoga’s journey to that strip mall near you. At the Hong Kong airport, I stumbled upon a “Silent Room,” and found everyone perfecting asanas. There is an enviable stillness that envelops the practitioner when you just watch. What can be more wonderful than that?
Come to think of it, maybe there is something that can compete with that yogic stillness. When my younger son was three years old, he would sit on his haunches staring at the roses in our garden. He would stare even longer at the newly bloomed flowers wondering how they could have morphed from bud to flower in the time that he had slept. On one such day of intense observation that only children are capable of, he asked me, “If you and I sat through the night with a flashlight, can we actually see the petals open?” Can we see these daily miracles that spring is sure to bring, by training our mind’s flashlight all around us? n
Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, Managing Editor
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INDIA CURRENTS March 2017 • vol 30 • no 11
LIFESTYLE
3 | EDITORIAL
West Coast Edition
I Don't Like Obama” By Nirupama Vaidhyanathan
www.indiacurrents.com
Find us on 20 | POETRY Jandhyala Papayya Sastry: He Who Listened to Flowers Talk By Aparna Munukutla Gunupudi
PERSPECTIVES 10 | VIEWPOINT In Defense of Sudden Outsiders By Samantha Rajaram
34 | BOOKS Review of The Chaos of Empire By Prabhu Palani
26 | PERSPECTIVE What Does the Bully Want? By Chandra Ganguly
40 | RECIPE Achari Baigan By Jagruti Vedamati
28 | HUMOR Of Poetic Muse, Tweens and Teens By Saumya Balasubramanian 51 | ON INGLISH Stalking Rice By Kalpana Mohan
42 | MUSIC When in Doubt: Be a Hero By Priya Das
16 | Whitewashing Yoga American Counter-Culture and Yoga Jones
72 | HEALTHY LIFE Is Too Much Sitting Killing You? By Dr. Panchajanya Paul 76 |COMMENTARY Whither America: Melting Pot Redux? By Vijay Rajvaidya 78 | LAST WORD Trump is Right: Democats' Political Correctness is to Blame By Sarita Sarvate
By Geetika Pathania Jain
8 | Now and Then
60 |RELATIONSHIP DIVA Four Tips For the Woman Looking for Love By Jasbina Ahluwalia
H-1Bs—The Best and the Brightest? By Jaya Padmanabhan DEPARTMENTS
36 | Ask A Lawyer Legal Advice for Traveling Back to the US By Indu-Liladhar Hathi
4 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |March 2017
47 | TRAVEL Fifty Shades of Green and More in Switzerland By Prem Souri Kishore
6 30 36 62
| Letters to the Editor | Tax Talk | Ask a Lawyer | Cultural Calendar
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letters to the editor What will the future be for my grandchildren? I read India Currents regularly. I was prompted to write this after reading the editorial. (Editorial, India Currents, February 2017). I want to share my thoughts on the current political climate. In 1970, I got married and my husband was doing his doctoral work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Since I was born and raised in Mumbai which was a busy city, the town of Amherst felt like being back at my grandmother’s village. Though everyone around me was very friendly, I felt very homesick. I had imagined a very different America. Eventually we moved to Boston. I was surrounded by white people but I never felt the brownness of my skin. Our two boys were born and they graduated from high school. I became a naturalized citizen. When the Watergate investigations were televised, I watched in awe and was impressed by the democratic process. I was proud to take Indian dishes for international events held at school and I would receive many compliments! I truly felt that I was part of this melting pot. But now? I feel very afraid! What will the future be for my four grandchildren? My older son is married to a Caucasian and my younger one is married to an Indian-American. I have two grandchildren who have white skin and two grandchildren who have brown skin. All four of them call me Paati. What kind of future can I expect for these children? The hatred and divisiveness that is pervading this nation has shaken me to the core. Of course, I realize that there are good and bad people all around us. I just want everyone to think before they go on national media and spit out words that will have a huge impact on our children and grandchildren. As for me, I have taken a first step to engage with the community by reaching out to a magazine that I trust. I listen to Carnatic music to try to calm my thoughts. Author’s name withheld upon request
6 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |March 2017
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I did not expect this
This is written in response to Jaya Padmanabhan’s article in the February issue (Go Back to Your Country, India Currents, February 2017). I did not expect to read about these experiences that Jaya faced right here in San Francisco. Since this city is full of immigrants, I was surprised to read about this. Sudha Viswanathan, web
Trump’s values are not American values
This is written in response to Jaya Padmanabhan’s article in the February issue (Go Back to Your Country, India Currents, February 2017). As an immigrant, I was welcomed and I believe that America is the most welcoming nation for immigrants. As a graduate student, I arrived in Atlanta in 1988. An Army major I met would pick up furniture at garage sales, fix it and then bring it to foreign students. Even 9/11 did not change America, thanks to the inclusive response from President George W. Bush. I am a proud and patriotic American. The overwhelming number of my fellow Americans are decent, honorable, compassionate and welcoming people. Our president does not represent that majority. Rameysh Ramdas, San Jose
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Most Read Articles in February 2017 1) Go Back to Your Country Jaya Padmanabhan 2) A New Lease of Life Bakialakshmi Ramachandran 3) Rivers of Brown Sneha Abraham 4) UC Berkeley Versus Trump: Get Facts Nirupama Vaidhyanathan 5) A Tale of Two Loves Nirupama Vaidhyanathan 6) Katha IC Fiction Contest Rules Staff Writer 7) My Love Story with India Jeanne Fredriksen, Nancy Swing, Russell Sunshine and Nirupama Vaidhyanathan 8) Under the Peepal Tree Kalpana Mohan 9) Calling Writers: Exciting Opportunities Staff Writer 10) February 2017 Digital Edition
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Now and Then
H-1Bs—The Best and the Brightest?
W
By Jaya Padmanabhan
hat is this notion of the best and brightest? For one, it is The Wall Street Journal reported that IITs were ranked the most conflicted banality fourth behind Stanford, Harvard, and University of Califorof the moment. The term is generously used by liberal politicians and business nia for incubating the most number of students who formed leaders to make the case for H-1B imbillion dollar startups in America. migrants, but the phrase has a long history of ideological righteousness much reviled by conservative worse, but they are able to infest the United States with mediocre engineers, disguised as the best and brightest engineers. The probpoliticians. In 1972, David Halberstam, a Pulitzer prize winning New York lem is the dumping of inferior tech workers from India displacing Times journalist, wrote a seminal book questioning President John American workers.” The commenter is only partially wrong. The Wall Street JourF. Kennedy’s foreign policy decisions during the Vietnam war. He nal reported recently that India’s Indian Institute of Technology called it The Best and the Brightest. The book debunked the foreign schools were ranked fourth behind Stanford, Harvard, and Unipolicy credentials of the best and the brightest in Kennedy’s adversity of California for incubating the most number of students ministration. Halberstam wrote about how this group of academwho went on to form billion dollar startups in America. But not ics and intellectuals “all of whom had seemed so dazzling when all engineers who are hired in the H-1B program are from the IITs they had first taken office,” ended up becoming the architects of or from top notch institutions. And not all engineers hired from one of the worst disasters of American history. top notch schools are necessarily the best or brightest. It was just a few weeks ago that Stephen K. Bannon, the White The issue is about volume and displacement, stupid! ElemenHouse Chief Strategist, was spotted in an airport carrying a copy tary science terms have become yardsticks of aggravation. of The Best and the Brightest. In an op-ed published in The New People who enter the pool tend to displace others from the York Times, Marc Tracy writes about Bannon’s respect for the book same pool and the more this happens, the more there is a pervadand quotes him as saying: “It’s great for seeing how little mistakes ing sense of affliction. In 2016, there were 236,000 H-1B applicaearly on can lead to big ones later.” tions received, an increase of 3,000 from the previous year. In the book, Halberstam describes an incident between a We may argue that these jobs that H-1Bs are hired for are not “dazzled” Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his mentor, Sam always replacements, but merely the right fit for the right job at Rayburn, after the Vice President’s first Cabinet meeting, when the right price. Even so, grievance is a perceptive state and given Lyndon Johnson exclaims enthusiastically to Rayburn: “how voice to even by those who are not really good fits for those same extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next,” referring jobs. to the intellectually attuned Cabinet staff. To which, Rayburn Many folks I talk to tend to provide anecdotal evidence of responds “you may be right, and they may be every bit as intelat least one H-1B engineer they know, or they’ve heard of who ligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just performed sub-par at his/her job—who had poor communication one of them had run for sheriff once.” That story, according to skills, did not speak up at meetings, was behind schedule, delivHalberstam goes to show “the difference between intelligence and ered an inadequately thought-through product, required more wisdom, between the abstract facility and verbal facility which the training, or had deplorable personal hygiene habits. It’s about the team exuded, and true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, impact of numbers. The pervasiveness of an idea begins to take often bitter experience.” hold, if enough people have enough anecdotal evidence. Hobbled by this narrative, it is no wonder that when the same It’s a time of crisis for H-1B visa holders and applicants. This term came to be applied to those poor, unsuspecting foreign nacannot be about working longer and harder anymore. That alone, tionals who came to America armed with H-1B visas to connect unfortunately, may not be sufficient to stave off the perils of imthe wires of innovation in the Silicon Valley, it became baggage minent White House policies. that they either had to live up to or confront. Writing about Robert Kennedy, Halberstam recounts how As the number of H-1Bs increased, the labor bottleneck eased “toughness fascinated him; he was not at ease with an America somewhat, and those who began to lose jobs because of incomwhich had flabby waistlines.” That frame of reference has not petence, lack of knowledge, incomplete education, insufficient changed much since Kennedy’s time. As America’s H-1B policy application or a combination of these factors found a bogeyman heads to the chopping block, it is time to cinch those smart belts. they could easily identify. Today, “the best and the brightest” is America has no patience for even a hint of slackness. n used as both an invective as well as an invocation. It depends on one’s political bent. As a reader recently commented in response to one of my Jaya Padmanabhan was the editor of India Currents from 2012-16. immigration columns: “The education system [in] India [is] far She is the author of the collection of short stories, Transactions of Belonging. 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |March 2017
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 9
viewpoint
In Defense of Sudden Outsiders By Samantha Rajaram
I
n the past week, I have been thinking about my childhood trips to India. The jet lag—the surreal feeling of leaving one country and waking up in another. Upon returning to the United States, my sister and I would stay up all night until my father took us to McDonald’s at 5 a.m. for breakfast (pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs). After breakfast, we would go grocery shopping. There were never any lines at 7 a.m. Something in that memory of America died within me. Assailed by news stories of executive orders banning Muslims, building a wall to keep people out, ending medical coverage for those who desperately need it, I didn’t realize how dearly I held in my own mind the benevolent image of America as an oasis. Other countries had despots and dictators. Other countries suffered from entrenched corruption (how many times had I witnessed my dad handing a wad of rupee notes to a customs official in India so we could leave the airport?) I had encountered a fair amount of racism in my own childhood growing up in Wyoming, and my parents, though they don’t speak of it, did as well. But fundamentally, and without requiring articulation, I had come to believe that America was a place of kindness, openness, and aspiration. I imbibed without question the notion that if I worked hard enough, I would succeed. I know now that this isn’t true, that such a vision of America is far more problematic than my child’s understanding would allow. But still. People continue to come here seeking something better. Sometimes “better” comes with loneliness, a sense of belonging neither
here nor there, a sense of provisional American-ness. During various times in my own life, and particularly when I was going through a difficult divorce, my mother would remark in frustration that she wished we hadn’t come here. I’ve never felt that way. And I’m sure, if pressed, she would admit the same. This country allowed me to start my life over again. I changed careers. I am a divorced parent of three children and, most importantly, I am free. I can live my life as I wish to. I can go for a walk at 10 p.m. around my neighborhood with only the shadowy feeling of vigilance (the province of all women) when I do so. I can attend a march of a 100,000 people without worrying about my safety. I can bring my own children to that same march with no greater worry than that one of them may need to use a bathroom at some point. I can live alone as a woman and not be judged. I can get an abortion if I need one (here in California, anyway). I know that if I tell my friends about my experiences of racism, I will be met with compassion and kindness. I am an English professor now, though I will always be a lawyer. During my time in law school I came to love the Constitution, riddled as it is with ambiguity and, we now see, gaps as to what to do when a narcissistic autocrat is, unbelievably, bestowed with Article II powers. The other day in class, during our ten minute break, I saw two female students sharing photographs on their respective cell phones. One was a recent immigrant from Cameroon. The other was an immigrant from Afghanistan, wearing a purdah. They laughed
Something in that memory of America died within me. Assailed by news stories of executive orders banning Muslims, building a wall to keep people out, and ending medical coverage for those who desperately need it, I didn’t realize how dearly I held in my own mind the benevolent image of America as an oasis. 10 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |March 2017
and chatted like old friends. It was only the third day of class. After class, I walked back to my office with another student, an Iraq war veteran, who told me about growing up in Oakland and about taking gunshots in Tikrit. In what other country could I have so many different people in one place, connecting Jiddu Krishnamurti’s concept of freedom in Freedom from the Known to lyrics from J. Cole’s newest track? Later that night, with a sense of foreboding, I scanned the news. The wall was going to happen. The ban on Muslims and refugees was underway. The White House had openly condemned the press. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had canceled an upcoming meeting with the President. Orwellian stories from elsewhere. Not in my country. But here we are. And for those of us who came here seeking something better, it is time for us to give back to this country that gave us so much. Daily calls to our senators. Protests. Words of support and kindness to our immigrant groups. Regard for each other as humans, not as drains on public coffers. Many in my community are Republican for financial purposes, or are politically centrist or silent because we have been taught to be “good immigrants.” But being American does not just mean paying taxes and blithely going to the mall. To be conferred the privilege of American citizenship carries with it the duty to safeguard its now imperiled democracy. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday was only weeks ago, wrote in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” that “anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” We are seeing our people turned into outsiders and we cannot let that happen, lest we give up on America itself, and all that it has given us.n Samantha Rajaram is a mother, community college professor of English, writer, and attorney. She lives in the Bay Area.
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 11
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cover
Whitewashing
American Counter-Culture and Yoga Jones By Geetika Pathania Jain
M
uch before yoga could be accepted as a wholesome and family-friendly practice available at a yoga studio next to a Starbucks cafe at the local strip mall, many yogis would work assiduously to strip away yoga’s sinister overtones and would guide in its re-emergence as a secular and peaceful practice. The dreadlocks had to go, and the ash-smeared hashishsmoking yogi was replaced by a yogi of pleasing hair-length and body hygiene. A wholesale shedding of the hirsute and unkempt image of the yogi, as well as a generous application of spit and polish was undertaken before a shiny and sanitized version of the modern yogi emerged, suitable for Western consumption.
Yogis Through the Colonial Lens
Early interactions between yoga practitioners and Westerners during the British Raj were illuminating. Presumably, colonial yogis severely tested prevailing puritanical Victorian sensibilities by their more freewheeling native ways. A recent exhibition by the Smithsonian, “Yoga: the Art of Transformation,” dubbed as
the first exhibition on yoga, devoted a full section on how the colonialists of the British Raj remained uncomprehending and just a bit uneasy at the fakirs on their beds of nails and with a proclivity to levitate. Many yogis were not integrated into mainstream society even in colonial India, and had been the perennial outsiders, spurning family life, living in communes and frequently smoking consciousness-altering substances. Much like American hippies of the 70s who would come much later, these early yogis tolerated ridicule and derogatory appellations. While Western counterculture hippies have been called beatniks or freaks, the British, upon encountering yogis and at a loss as to how to frame the mendicants, called them fakirs, even though the latter were of Muslim lineage, such as sufi dervishes. An Orientalist lens is evident in the film Hindoo Fakir made by Thomas Edison in 1902, and described as a “remarkable and mystifying” picture. A fakir, with referents more Islamic than Hindu, is seen creating cinematic “trick” spectacles such as a flower that turns into a girl with wings, who flies around the stage. In 1931, Churchill’s infamous reference to Gandhi in 1931 as a “half-naked fakir” cemented the status of the word as a colonial slur. Clearly, the powers of yogis, such as levitation and visions induced both fascination and fear in the West, mixed with a healthy does of disdain. Sinister yogis continued to populate popular culture, including a poison-dart spewing fakir referred to only as “the eyes” in the 1950s Tintin series, The Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus. The fakir uses blow-darts dipped with rajaijah juice to drive his victims such as the Maharaja of Gaipajama insane. Hypnosis, the Indian rope trick, and escapology are additional skills in this drug-smuggling, criminal fakir’s sinister repertoire.
The Transformation Begins
Aware of yoga’s image problem, Swami Vivekananda, in his 1896 book Raja Yoga, decried the contortionists and conYogi on bed of nails representing bygone visual images of yogis 16 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |March 2017
jurers who were giving yoga a bad rap in the West. Swami Viveimages, far less sinister than earlier colonialist and neo-colonialist kananda taught and lectured extensively on Hinduism and yoga images, add to yoga’s continuing salience in contemporary culin America during his first visit from 1893-1896 and, during his tural consciousness. second visit, from 1899-1900. Another important yoga teacher, T. Krishnamachari, was hired The Counter-culture and Eastern Mysticism in Curin the 1920s by the Raja of Oudh and trained many influential rent Culture students in India who From represenhelped spread his teachtations of sinister ings overseas. yogis where “othB.K.S. Iyengar, with erness” was indeed his well-groomed mane the guiding prinof hair was lauded by ciple, we move to celebrity violinist Yehudi the present where Menuhin, who wrote the Netflix show, the foreword for IyenOrange is the New gar’s 1966 book, Light on Black has referencYoga. Menuhin’s endorsees to Amma the ment of Iyengar as “his hugging saint, and best violin teacher,” a nod depicts Sanskrit to the benefits of yoga, chants and dishelped provide cultural cussions of astral legitimacy to the practice planes. of yoga in the West. Book by Indra Devi, yoga guru and Marilyn Monroe doing a headstand The attractive sariA character, Norma, develops a cult following among prison wearing Indra Devi originally born Eugenie V. Peterson, brought inmates due to her shoulder squeeze that miraculously heals. As yoga to Hollywood in the fifties and contributed to the trend of a younger, painfully shy woman, Norma, in bell-bottoms and making yoga acceptable. Marilyn Monroe was one of her famous flower garlands, had become enamored with Guru Mack, a hipdisciples who adopted the practice of yoga in her wellness roupie. Norma becomes one of Guru Mack’s multiple wives and tine. The Beatles traveled to India in 1968 to learn transcendental sticks with him through the bitter end (which she precipitates, meditation at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ashram in Rishikesh, and thus receives the prison term). Before his death he is shown and their well-publicized trip was another opportunity to enhance broke and disheartened in a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle van, yoga’s image. the hippie vehicle of choice. Through these characters, the show These first interactions of yoga teachers with famous celebriprovides a perspective on the counter-cultural social movement ties captured through photographs and articles in print magazines of the 60s that drew upon Eastern mysticism that challenged the hastened the acceptance of yoga in other parts of society. But mainstream. it was the 1970s hippies who provided yoga with the warmest embrace. The hippie movement was a counter-cultural social The Fakir Gets a Makeover: Enter Yoga Jones movement that drew upon Eastern mysticism for a pagan, backWe see a fairly sympathetic view of yogis in Yoga Jones, an to-nature spiritual life to challenge the mainstream orthodoxy of inmate at Litchfield Penitentiary in the same show. Yoga Jones is competitive consumer capitalism and Christian family values. a white yogi, a nod to the present-day acceptance of yoga culture and its tropes in present-day American society. She displays many his circuitous trajectory of how yoga shed its sketchy image characteristics emblematic of “hippie culture.” and arrived into the American mainstream is a fascinating Yoga Jones radiates a serene high-mindedness that one might journey; a journey that has ended at a strip mall near you. associate with yoga even when there is a Darwinian struggle for This transformation can be examined through the lens of popular survival around her. She, on the other hand, is like the proverbial cultural representations. In contemporary television shows such lotus in the mud, full of helpful advice to new inmates, active in as Orange is the the prison garden where she grows kale, and apt to spout poetry New Black, Eastern by Rumi. spiritual traditions Yoga Jones provides a new perspective to the newly arrived are depicted with protagonist Piper Chapman, stressing the impermanence of every characters such as moment. Incarceration, however scary and dehumanizing an exYoga Jones, Guru perience, could be borne if it was not to be forever. Mack and Norma Yoga Jones: Do you know what a mandala is? embodying the Piper Chapman: Um, those are those round Buddhist art things. history of the 70s Yoga Jones: The Tibetan monks make them out of sand laid out into c o u n t e r- c u l t u re big beautiful designs. And when they’re done, after days or weeks of hippie movement work, they wipe it all away. B.K.S. Iyengar, yoga guru in America. These Piper Chapman: Wow, that’s, that’s a lot.
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Yoga Jones: Try to look at your experience here as a mandala, Chapman. Work hard to make something as meaningful and beautiful as you can. And when you’re done, pack it in and know it was all temporary.” This gem of Buddhist philosophy serves to soften Piper’s prison landing in prison. Strategies such as yoga to overcome suffering can take on special significance in prison, where inmates face horrific stresses in an institutional environment that robs them of agency and human dignity. In one episode, when prison instructor Yoga Jones hears that Piper has ended her relationship with Alex, she exudes Zen calmness and quotes Rumi, saying that lovers don’t ever meet, that they are in each other all along. In response to this poetic sentiment, Alex responds that their relationship was something like that, but with the extra elements of backstabbing and drugs. We return from the rarefied verse of Rumi to the moral relativism and undeniable grit of a woman’s prison. Yoga in American prisons does have a real-life version. Prison yoga instructor Ron Miller, for instance, teaches yoga to inmates as part of The Prison Project.
Poster for International Yoga Day
entire chapter in William Broad’s The Science of Yoga. A raised eyebrow regarding downward dog (adhomukh shvanasana) is expressed in a 2016 episode of the sitcom Modern Family where Gloria takes Claire to a yoga studio where the teacher is adjusting Claire in a bold manner. The yoga teacher exudes not serenity, but a rakish come-hither-ness. Western Internet yogi celebrity Kino McGregor routinely performs yoga in a bikini; a puzzling sartorial decision till one realizes that audience size is the currency of the Internet. These interactions draw attention to another strand of
Number of yoga practitioners in 2012: 20.4 million Number of yoga practitioners in 2016: 36 million Annual practitioner spending on yoga classes, clothing, equipment, and accessories rose to $16 billion, up from $10 billion over the past four years. Yoga’s Other Baggage
Along with this projection of yoga as a way to deal with the stresses of being in prison, we also see some other less desirable strands of thinking displayed in television portrayals. Norma’s elevated status among her acolytes can be seen as an examination of the curious nature of faith in different societies. When a toast seems to bear the likeness of Norma, her followers are overcome with devotion. The storyline is a clear sendup of the seemingly irresistible draw of charismatic, occasionally scandalous, spiritual gurus from real life The most recent real-life yoga celebrity who has been dogged by sex scandals is Bikram Chowdhury of the franchise Bikram Yoga. Bikram Chowdhury has not been good for yoga’s reputation and the scandal feeds into the suspicion that yoga and loose morals somehow go together. Another enduring strand of thought—yogic eroticism has an
Yoga Jones in Orange is the New Black 18 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
thinking that colors Western perception of yoga, which is yoga’s reputation as an alleged aphrodisiac A sex scandal involving a yoga guru, whose followers place such trust in him, is a particularly troubling breach of trust. By contrast, B.K.S. Iyengar’s book Light on Yoga makes references to the virtues of brahmacharya or celibacy. While yoga has become so ubiquitous as to even appear in fictional television shows, yoga’s real coup has been its recognition at the United Nations, which declared an International Day of Yoga in 2015. Yoga’s stress-busting promise of inner harmony and a mind-body connection is spreading.
The Subversive Act of Relaxing
In its “avatar” outside of India, most current depictions of yoga are of calming “Om” breaths, where resorts boast of resident yoga teachers to help rejuvenate and de-stress visitors, and of salons and studios where one can nip in to get a quick relaxation fix. The history of how yoga got this salubrious veneer highlights how ironic it is that yogis critical of mainstream materialism are called upon to dissipate work stress, a product of consumer culture and work schedules It also speaks to the subversive act of relaxing in a world which is accelerating in its velocity and break-neck information assault. While it can be argued that the mainstream adoption of yoga culture constitutes an escape from the stresses of oppressive 24/7 work cultures in a globalized corporate landscape, a yoga mat, just like a tattoo, is indeed open to interpretation. s it a sign of conformity to a fad? Or a rebellious political statement? Or is it just an act of personal expression? This meaning is open to interpretation.
I
Thomas Friedman, in his recent book Thank You for Being Late talks of the radical act of taking back one’s ownership of time from the deluge of information overload. Mindfulness is the new mantra, an antidote to the accelerated velocity of everyday life and stresses of the win-at-all-costs work culture. One can argue that even the act of a ten-minute yoga nap during savasana is subversive in the fiercely competitive world of nonstop productivity. Ironically, the same counter-cultural movements that were considered anti-work, now provide an antidote to stress, preventing burnout and facilitating continued productivity. Corporate yoga is on the rise. Once again, consumer capitalism coopts what challenges it and absorbs it within its fold. Today’s corporate yoga chains such as Core Power and Yoga Works, full of lululemon-clad svelte practitioners are hardly recognizable as counter-cultural in any way. Yoga Journal, a glossy ad-filled magazine devoted to wellness and self-care, feels more square and establishment by the day. As part of modern yoga’s journey, it distanced itself from the 70s hippies who had let their hair down and experimented with psychedelic drugs. It was to appeal to sensibilities of Western mainstream practitioners that the yoga community offered a sanitized, uniquely American, secular, asana-based athletic yoga. We can see this hybridization as the emergence of a new form of yoga on American shores. n Geetika Pathania Jain, Ph.D. is a frequent contributor to India Currents. She is a certified yoga teacher and finds that standing on her her head often gives her a new perspective. She sometimes finds herself wondering if doing yoga would make Donald Trump a better president.
Geetika Pathania Jain practicing yoga
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poetry
Jandhyala Papayya Sastri : He Who Listened to Flowers Talk By Aparna Munukutla Gunupudi
You pluck us while we play in our mother’s lap that is soft with bed of tender leaves; What good is your worship while you prove to have no heart?Translation commenting on the practice of offering flowers as part of prayer
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was about ten years old when my father forced me go to a local literary festival in Proddutur situated in Cuddapah district in Andhra Pradesh. I had two choices—I could either go to the lecture being held at the town center or listen to a lecture at home. In an attempt to choose the lesser of the two evils, I followed my father to the town center. To my surprise, the lecture was very inspiring and I was spellbound along with the rest of the audience. The speaker was none other than Jandhyala Papayya Sastri. His speech planted a seed in my heart that fostered a deep love and appreciation for Telugu literature. It took a while for the plant to grow from that seed, as it needed tender love and care. However, twenty years later, on the day I wrote my first poem, I made him my “Manasika Guru” or “virtual mentor.” Jandhyala Papayya Sastry was born on August 4, 1912 in Kommuru village in Guntur district. He started writing at the age of 16; he wrote poems appreciating nature, recognizing the plight of untouchables and songs with nationalist themes during the Independence movement. He was inspired to write his poetry collection titled Karunasri when he visited Buddhist sculptures at Amaravati. After that he was popularly and affectionately known as “Karunasri” for his style of including heartwarming expressions in his poems. He worked as a Telugu lecturer, and was conferred with an honorary doctorate from Sri Venkateswara University. He has about 30 works to his credit, and Pushpa Vilapam and Kunti Kumari are the most famous and soul moving kavyas. His distinct poetic style is characterized by simple, lyrical language and thought-provoking messages; this ability endeared him to
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oka nimEshammu kannu mUyuduvu gAni rammu terachiti mA kuTIrammu talupu.
Translation:
Jandhyala Papayya Sastri (1912-1992)
readers at all levels of society. He died on June 21, 1992. I hope that my maiden attempt to translate this poetry will help make his thoughts accessible to readers. In the following poem called “Anjali”, the poet is engaged in a conversation with the Lord, and the poet literally makes it sound like the Lord is sitting in front of him. ******
Verses from Telugu work, Anjali
puTTAboyedi bulli bujjayi kosamai podugu ginneku pAlu pOsi pOsi kaliki vennelalUru chaluva dosiLLatO latalaku mArAku latiki yatiki pUlakanchaalalO rOlambamulaku rEpaTi bhOjanamu siddhaparachi parachi telavaarakunDa moggalalOna jorabaDi vintavintala rangu vEsi vEsi tIrikE lEni visva samsAramandu alasi poyitivEmo dEvAdi dEva
You fill the mother’s udder with milk for the calf to be born You tend the creepers with your cool hands to grow new shoots and leaves You provide the nectar in the flower plates as the meals to be served for the bees in the morning You enter into the buds before dawn to paint amazing colors You must be tired from caring for all these universal chores Oh Lord, the doors to my home are open and please take a minute of rest! This is a magical expression of the Lord’s chores. It makes the reader re-imagine so many natural events as expressions of God’s manifestations. The reader feels compelled to see if the Lord is actually roaming in these places. In this poem, he invites the Lord into his house, and then suddenly he finds himself in a quandary. Then he goes on to explain his predicament. ****** kUrchunDa mA inTa kurcchIlu LEvu praNayAnkamE siddhaparachanunTi pAdyammu niDa mAku pannIru lEdu nA kannILLato kALLu kaDaganunTi pUjakai mAviTa pushpAlu lEvu nA prEmAnjalulE samarpimpanunTi naivEdyammiDa mAku nArikELamu lEdu hrudayamE chEti kandIyanunTi lOtu rAnIya nunnantalOna nIku rammu dayasEyu mAtma PIThammu paiki amruta jhari chindu nI padAmkamula yandu kOTi svargAlu molipinchu konuchu tanDri
Translation:
I have no fancy furniture to offer you to sit but for my affectionate lap
OW EYEBR ING D THRE$A 00
5
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I don’t have flavored water but shall wash your feet with my joyous tears Don’t have flowers with me but offer the flowers of my love and affection No coconut to offer but myself whole heartedly I shall not neglect you due to my limitations, come my Lord Ascend the throne of my soul, let me reap heavenly joy at your nectar streaming feet The poet invokes the Lord into his heart. From ancient poetic verses, he draws a moving analogy of invoking the Lord into one’s heart. His humility and unparalleled elegance in his choice of words makes the reader’s eyes swell with tears. In another noted work Pushpa Vilapam: A flower’s lament, the author personifies the flower by expressing its feelings and describes the pain it must feel because of human cruelty. He goes on to describe the beautiful and selfless virtues of all flowers that have only contributed good things to nature around them. This poem was set to music and rendered by late Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao. ******
Verses from Telugu work, Pushpa Vilapam talliyoDilOna talirAku talpamandu ADukonu mammulanu buTTalandu Chidimi ammukonduve MOkshavittammu koraku hrudayamE lEni nI pUjalendukOyi
Translation:
You pluck us while we play in our mother’s lap that is soft with bed of tender leaves What good is your worship while you prove to have no heart ****** jaDamatula mEmu jnAnavantuDavu nIvu buddhiyunnadi bhAva samruddhi galadu banDabArenatOyi nI gunDekAya sivunakai pUyadE nAlgu chinni pUlu
Translation:
We are ignorant and you are intelligent You have wisdom and wealth of mind Is your heart petrified as a rock Do you not know that we bloom for lord Siva ****** gAlini gAravintumu sugandhammu pUsi, samAsrayinchu bhrungAlaku vindu chEsedamu kammani tEnelu, mimmu bOntla 22 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
nEtrAlaku hAyi gUrtumu, swatantrula mammu swArthabudhitO tALumu tumpabOvakumu talliki biDDaku vEru sEtuvE
Translation:
We pay our respects by applying fragrance to the breezes We offer sweet honey to the hovering bumble bees We present a pleasant view to your eyes While we are doing our jobs independently Oh selfish one, is it fair for you to sever us from our mother ****** Atmasukhammu kOsamai anyula gontula kOsi tecchu puNyAtmuDa nIku mOksha meTu labbunu netturu chEti pUja viswAtmuDu swIkarinchune charAchara varti prabhunDu mA pavitrAtmala nandukODe, naDamantrapu nI tagulATamETikin
Translation:
Oh honorable one! Is it really fair to attain salvation by cutting our throats You think the Lord shall accept offerings from such bloody hands Why do we need you as a middleman to reach the Lord Don’t you think the Lord would accept us for our pious souls? ****** hese are just a few verses drawn from two poems. What makes Pushpa Vilapam so unique is that it describes the plight that flowers must feel while subtly criticizing society for the widespread belief of trying to attain salvation by physical acts such as offering flowers to the Lord. He clearly projects a picture of open-heartedness to flowers
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by attributing their seasonal blooms for Lord Siva as being of their own accord while humans, heartlessly depend on others’ help. He beautifully brings out plea vs. power and ignorance vs. intelligence. It is quite challenging for a reader to use a flower as an offering after reading this poem. As a young girl, his speech left an indelible impression on me. I still remember something that he shared then when he talked about an intelligent turn of phrase. It was a description of Lord Shanmukha as “muddugAru nI momu” which simply means “your charming face.” He later split the word—(mu+duga+aru) and this way of splitting brought forth a different expression—mu means three, duga means two, a product of three and two is Aru which means six. I was so fascinated with this novel way to describe all six faces of Shanmukha in one word. Though it is difficult to express such delicate expressions in English, many of his poems have been translated into English. I strongly recommend that you read and enjoy his beautiful poetry. This phrase is part of a poem in his collection called Udayasri. Udayasri was translated into English by Sri S. Purnachandra Rao and is called A Posy of Compassion. His other works are Karunasri, Vijayasri, Aruna Kiranalu, Omar Khayyam and Telugubala (simple poems for children). The pleasure that we will get from reading his poems will be immeasurable and lasting. n Lyricist and short story writer, Aparna Munukutla Gunupudi works as a Revenue controller and lives in Palo Alto.
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perspective
What Does the Bully Want? By Chandra Ganguly
W
hen I was a teenager, I used to get bullied a lot. My bullies were relentless. I could barely be in a class with them or pass them by on my way to get some water and they would seize the opportunity to say something hurtful or make a face, a smirk – hard to catch and pin down as a crime, but easy to cause pain. They would call me names that took me years to live down and overcome. They were charming, had their own circle of friends, popular enough, smart and good enough in what they did that no one called them on their cowardice. The new student lived as an outsider for many years in their classrooms. I learned how to fight against them but I also learned how to be angry. I do not think I have ever really forgiven them but that is my own personal tragedy and responsibility. I have been thinking a lot about those bullies these days. Barely a month into office and the country is in turmoil and many people have been harmed already including some Muslim worshippers in a Quebec mosque who were killed by a white, anti-immigrant, Trump-supporting young man a few weeks ago. More harm and hate still waiting to be unleashed by this bully and his supporters. Very few from his circle will want to earn his wrath by opposing him openly or otherwise. The latest ban on people from some Muslim countries means that children and fathers and mothers and grandparents and siblings will be separated from each other, perhaps indefinitely, and many who had built lives for themselves here will have to leave it all behind along with pieces of who they believed they were in America. The bully will not stop here, I know. More harm will be caused, people will be hurt and while the stock markets hold up, his fol26 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
My bullies were relentless. The new student lived as an outsider for many years in their classrooms. I learned how to fight against them but I also learned how to be angry. I do not think I have ever really forgiven them but that is my own personal tragedy and responsibility. I have been thinking a lot about those bullies these days. lowers shall praise him for his acumen in the business of running a country. Until when? What catastrophe awaits us at the end of this narrow path of his policies that have obviously not been thought through? The bully likes to make a splash. Like a badly paced runner, the new president in his barely still slept-in bed in the White House is raging forward like a blind bull in America’s china shop of immigration health care and climate change. No country can live in isolation anymore though, and unfortunately these policies will slowly trickle down and affect the entire world. Our ozone layer is shared as are our borders and our waters and our air and our peoples. No wall will save us from the degradation of these essential commodities. What does the bully want? The bully wants attention. The bully wants
power. The bully wants to feel popular. The new president of my country is getting enough of all of that and his will is bolstered to move fast and quick and brashly on. Human decency in the form of protests marches and petitions gives us hope but I worry still. I am now a grown woman. My memories of my bullies are almost three decades old. In many ways I am now the woman I want to be, but inside I know that I will always carry the scars inflicted by them. That is exactly what I fear for this country and the world. n Chandra Ganguly is a MFA student at Bennington College. She writes about the meaning and loss of identity and issues around gender and culture. She lives with her family in Palo Alto, California.
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humor
Of Poetic Muse, Tweens and Teens
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he husband may not be able to carry a tune, but you can’t fault him with his knowledge of lyrics. In fact, he once won a singing competition. The judges pleaded with him to not sing, but to simply recite the beautiful lyrics, and their team sailed home with the trophy (or whatever it is college competitions have the budget to give). He won it solely on the strength of being able to appreciate the lyrics. The husband’s Antakshiri prize is like Bertie Wooster’s Scripture prize, and is much bandied about in our home. It is also the husband who stops a song from lilting along and repeats the words—his eyes shining with the hidden meaning in the verse. I must admit some of the songs have a beautiful lyrical quality about them, that had he not stopped and replayed them, I would have been lost in the melody of the piece. Let’s read these beautiful lyrics by N. Muthukumar, a Tamil lyricist who won two National Film Awards, who unfortunately died early at the age of 41.
Previous evening’s mist is you, Previous birth’s search is you When I sleep The song that comes from far away is you, The pathway filled with flowers is you, The sunrise that has not dawned is you, Even when the day awakens, in my sleep At the corner of my eye The dream that I see is you. One day our tweenage daughter set out to make me listen to songs that her generation listens to. You know the cool stuff? So, we did, and I was wondering when the husband will stop the song to 28 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
By Saumya Balasubramanian discern inner meanings and things, but he did not find the need to. We listened to artists like Taylor Swift, Adele, and Elle King from popular albums whose sales records were mind boggling when I looked them up later. We are never getting back together: I remember when we broke up the first time Saying, “This is it, I’ve had enough,” ‘cause like We hadn’t seen each other in a month When you said you needed space. (What?) Then you come around again and say “Baby, I miss you and I swear I’m gonna change, trust me.” Remember how that lasted for a day? I say, “I hate you,” we break up, you call me, “I love you.” Hello Hello from the other side I must have called a thousand times To tell you I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done But when I call you never seem to be home “Hmm, are there any other songs that we can listen to—you know where it is not a guy yearning for a girl, or vice-versa,” I ask or hopefully still, “Or with those wonderful hidden meanings like in poems?” The daughter shook her head. “Well, teenagers mostly listen to stuff about love,” she said rolling her eyes. “Especially famous songs ma—it is like you are just talking with a guitar strumming in the background,” said the daughter. It does seem that of late, popular songs have taken to this style of rendering plain conversation-style lyrics, which is endearing the first few times but, when you listen to the songs multiple times, I would like to hear a poetic twist somewhere. I am not a teenager anymore, so I can’t say whether teens today are happy with the fare but, it would be nice to have a contented smile midway through the song when you get that metaphor or poignant hidden meaning. Sure, this is the time for the stirrings of the teenage hormones and what-not, but it is hardly the only
awakening one finds in the teenage body and mind. It is also the time for confusion about career choices; the time when you see how well you can play a game, or how competitive you can get on that track. It is the time when the mind is grappling with trigonometry and unraveling the complexity of organic chemistry, the time you are surprised at the lucidity with which artists can tap into their inner creativity. It is the time for at once broadening one’s intellectual horizons, and it is also the time to make questionable choices with friends. It is the time you freak out after lighting candles on the Ouija board. It is the time you read Dostoevsky and ponder upon the meaning of life. It is the time you make fun of soppy love stories, but secretly hope for your own Prince Charming one day. It is a time of intense moral learning and the time when crushes are a part of life. You know how we see these caricatures in cartoons, with an abnormal potato sized head tottering on pea sized bodies? It seems like recent pop songs are like that when it comes to lyrics about love. Why not write beautiful songs about friendship, or abrasive teachers and the camaraderie that goes on among children while dealing with all of this? Teenage angst is a whole package. If song lyrics are stuck in teen brains all day long, why not give the grey cells some work and smile inwardly when you get that hard metaphor? Here is a call to all you tweens and teens out there. Dazzle us with your thoughts and the ways in which you make sense of the world with the songs you write. As adults, most of us have given into the familiarity of routine and the rigmarole of paying bills. What we need is the thirst and energy of youth, and that, you can gift to us with your poetic lyrics, and your view of this world we live in. n Saumya writes regularly at nourishncherish. wordpress.com. She lives with her family in the Bay Area where she lilts along, savoring the ability to find humor in everyday life.
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tax talk
Tax Time: Ins and Outs of Interest Expenses By Khorshed Alam
C
an you deduct interest expenses on your 2016 tax return? It depends. Generally, the tax law requires you to allocate interest payments under a complex set of rules. The tax results vary, based on whether the expense is characterized as mortgage interest, investment interest, business interest, or personal interest.
Mortgage Interest
This is interest paid on a mortgage used to secure a qualified home (technically called “qualified residence interest”). The home can be your principal residence or one other place, like a vacation home. Generally, your deduction is limited to interest paid on the first $1 million of acquisition debt and up to $100,000 of home equity debt.
Investment Interest
When you borrow money to invest in
WE SPEAK TAX
ENROLLED AGENT
say, securities or investment real estate, the interest is deductible up to the amount of your “net investment income” for the year. This includes most income items such as royalties, interest, and annuity payments.
Business Interest
Interest paid for business purposes, including debts incurred by a self-employed individual, are fully deductible. Unlike the deductions for mortgage interest and investment interest, there are no annual limits. But you can’t write off any personal interest expenses disguised as business interest.
Personal Interest
Finally, interest that doesn’t fall into any of the three previous categories is treated as personal interest. In virtually all instances, personal interest is not deductible. This includes amounts paid on most
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30 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
credit card debt and car loans. There is, however, a limited exception for interest paid on up to $2,500 of student loan debt, phased out for upper-income taxpayers. This is a basic overview on tax treatment of various forms of interest expense. It does not account for variations or special rules such as limits on passive activity interest. When in doubt, seek advice for your personal situation. n
Khorshed Alam is a practicing CPA and business valuation analyst. He is the presdient and CEO of Alam Accountancy corporation. Check out www.alamcpatax.com or call (408) 445-1120.
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 31
32 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
India Currents Supports
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 33
books
Chaos of Events By Prabhu Palani The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India 2016. Jon Wilson. Publisher: Public Affairs 586 pp. $18.56
W
ritten history has a way of neatly packaging its chapters for convenience and understanding. And so you have the history of the Mughals, the history of the Greeks, the history of the Indus Civilization, and so on. In such a reading you get a good understanding of the central tenets of the period, its peoples, culture, and its government. However the unfortunate by-product of this approach is that it misleads us into believing that there is usually some grand design and purpose behind the rise and fall of empires. It was as if a central body had a vision that precisely plotted the path that regimes took and somehow ceased to exist due to natural calamity or war. The reality of human development in societies, unfortunately, mirrors the development of individual human beings—a combination of chance and effort occasionally thwarted, enhanced, or modified by the vagaries of the forces of nature beyond oneself. And so it was with the development of the greatest of modern Empires, especially in her Crown Jewel, argues Jon Wilson in the The Chaos of Empire. The British held sway over a wide swath of the Indian subcontinent, not from some grand plan that emanated from Westminster, but from a series of events that emanated from the everyday actions of human beings, both native and British. It was a messy marriage of conflict, violence, desire, greed, jealousy, and occasionally good intention, disrupted by larger forces far removed from local events. There was no grand British plan executed to suit the realities of everyday Indian life—rather everyday events coalesced
into the outlines of an administration. This revisionist history debunks the notion of a Raj that was glamorous and orderly, its bureaucratic institutions created to serve the needs of the people it ruled. Wilson’s research to support his thesis is both exhaustive and interesting. The book is a compilation of anecdotes used to support the notion that British policy making was often a chaotic result of circumstance. Wilson traces the history of the Raj from the early days of the East India Company to the final carnage of partition, viewed through the prism of specific events and people. In this progression we read about the life of Katherine Cooke, the daughter of a lower-middle-class army captain and military engineer stationed in Bengal in the early 1700s. Katherine’s life is replete with tragedy and pain as she crisscrosses India caught in a complex series of events involving the British, the Portugese, the Marathas, the Mughals, and finally the state of Atingal in the deep south in present day Kerala. In the span of a de-
The British held sway over a wide swath of the Indian subcontinent, not from some grand plan that emanated from Westminster, but from a series of events that emanated from the everyday actions of human beings, both native and British. 34 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
cade, she was captured, imprisoned, and released, lost three husbands, the last two to firepower and treachery and finally went back to Britain to spend the last days of her life in the Oxfordshire village of Nuffield. Her story is a reflection of the early days of the Raj as the East India Company desperately sought to establish its supremacy through violence and diplomacy, filled with anxiety and fear in an alien land. The decisions they took reflected the realities on the ground, in which survival was often the main motivation and decisions, both military and strategic, had to be made by Britons acting in a purely tactical fashion. The other great British invention was its aptitude for record keeping. In fact today’s big data analysts have much to thank the British for their meticulous, and if one were uncharitable, their almost paranoid obsession with documenting every small detail. The utilitarian John Sturn Mill, Examiner of Indian Correspondence at the Company, wrote that “the great success of our Indian administration” was because it was “carried on in writing.” Wilson argues that the reality was different and that the “extraordinary flow of paper that Mill celebrated constructed a world of letters, ledgers and account books that had its own pristine order but could not comprehend or rule the forces which shaped rural society.” The British, it seems, hid behind the voluminous amount of paper they created, to offer some semblance of control. From 1861 onwards, the Government published annual Moral and Material Progress reports that tried to reflect the vision of the state as “commander and builder” with progress being measured by improvements in roads, railways, and other pubic infrastructure projects and not as a “nurturer of human capacity and talent.” It was this fixation for records that led the English magistrate in Bengal, William Herschel, to develop the use of fingerprints in lieu of signatures to track Indian contractors, much before the technique was used for crime-solving. This was also the reason why the British introduced the use of stamp papers. While its North American colonies rebelled against
legal it, the use of stamps took on a life of its own in India and flourishes till today! Wilson’s narrative is brilliant and informative. To read the history of the Raj as a series of accidental events casts its history in new light. He makes quite a convincing case that history is not written from the central corridors of power but by the daily actions of minor players who often place their own survival above everything else. And yet Wilson’s approach to chronicling minor events and tying them to the grander narrative of the Raj feels like the forest has been missed for the trees. The events chronicled, while individually fascinating, such as the stories of Katherine Cooke or that of Kattabomma Nayakkar, ignore the very real role played by a central command, whether it be the Company’s offices in London or later that of the British Administration. While the early days of the Raj were often chaotic and unpredictable, surely there was a sense of Empire as Britain’s Indian dominion grew and its stranglehold over the subcontinent tightened. It may be argued that the British had no lofty higher purpose in the way the Empire unfolded and yet it cannot be denied that there existed a very real desire to retain and expand, while also struggling with the moral and intellectual issues of an occupying power. Wilson’s own approach, written from a distinctly European point of view, does come across as a chaos of ideas. Whether this was another ploy to support his thesis is unclear, but the narrative does come unhinged at times, with the reader wondering about the relevance of strange connections to a grander whole. Perhaps this chaos, while difficult to read, is as it should be. We, as human beings, strive to make sense of the whole, just as we seek a grand unifying theory to make sense of the physical world. In Wilson’s world, perhaps no such exists. n Prabhu Palani is an investment expert, histry buff, and poet based in the San Francisco Bay area. An avid student of colonial history, he obtained an MLA from Stanford in 2009 and wrote a thesis entitled, “English and Empire: The Case of the Madras Presidency,” which explored the origins of the English language in southern India. His poetry collection, The Pearl and Other Poems was published in 2016. He is the founder and CIO of Tresses Capital Management, an investment advisory firm.
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ask a lawyer
Legal Advice for Traveling Back to the US
I
n a major shift to U.S. visa policy, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Entry into the United States by Foreign Nationals” on January 27, 2017. The order went into effect immediately. Numerous lawsuits were filed and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has currently banned the implementation of the order. Because the situation remains fluid, I thought that it is critical that when traveling, you are aware of your rights.
1. U.S. Citizens
U.S. citizens have the right to enter the United States, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) is required to allow U.S. citizens entry. U.S. citizens should always travel with a valid U.S. passport. U.S. citizens also have the right
36 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
generally do not have the right to an attorney after arriving at an airport or port of entry while being questioned by CBP. However, there is a limited right to legal counsel if the CBP’s questions do not relate to immigration status.
3. Searches
to have an attorney present for any questioning.
2. Non-U.S. Citizens
The U.S. government clearly has the authority to determine whether a nonU.S. citizen is “admissible” under the applicable regulations. Non-U.S. citizens
CBP can search (www.cbp.gov/ travel/cbp-search-authority) all persons, baggage and merchandise arriving in the United States. CBP can also examine computers and cellphones, to obtain information about prior travel, eligibility for visa category, and/or evaluate admissibility. However, there is no requirement to unlock an electronic device, or to provide CBP access to social media accounts or passwords to mobile applications.
Legal 4. Do not Sign Form I-407
This form requires you to give up your green card. Do not surrender your green card, even if asked to do so without carefully considering the consequences. CBP may apply pressure to sign Form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status, as a way to force them to “voluntarily” abandon status. Anyone who refuses to sign Form I-407 must be issued a Notice to Appear (“NTA”), so that an Immigration Judge can determine whether they have abandoned his/her status. Signing the form I-407 can also trigger an exit tax so consult with tax counsel, before signing. After signing, technically the foreign national can be arrested as a person unlawfully present.
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Verma LAW FIRM Arjun Verma, Attorney at Law (408) 436-1010
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www.vermafirm.com March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 37
Yuli Law
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.
An attorney who cares about his clients and supports them not only legally but also emotionally Immigration Law: l Family based Green Card l Work based Green Card Family Law: l Work permission (H1B, L1, E1, E2) l Divorce l Naturalization l Prenuptial agreements l Fiance Visa l Child custody l Student Visa l Child support l Deportation defense l Spousal support l Asylum l Restraining orders v In spite of the coming new Trump rules, we have nontraditional, 100% legal ways to bring your loved ones to the US. v Our prices are reasonable. v Call us for a free and immediate phone consultation Eliyahu Yuli Kaplunovsky
March 2017
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his column carries final action 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 March 2017.
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.
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recipes
Thinking Out-of-the-Box with Baby Eggplants By Jagruti Vedamati
T
he first signs of spring are in full display. Never before have I been so welcoming of spring. This past winter was harsher than usual and experiencing it in our new home which is surrounded by trees only made it seem worse. After an especially cold winter, I feel specially invigorated by the advent of spring! I enjoy the crispness in the air, the prospect of longer days and I look forward to seeing fresh vegetables in the farmer’s market. Nature always has its own way of quite literally springing tiny pleasant surprises urging us to take notice. Our Sunday morning visits to the local farmer’s market have once again become
a weekly ritual that I really look forward to. The soothing sight of fresh and vibrant produce complements the hustle and bustle and I feel tempted to buy everything that is arrayed in front of me! When I head back home, I start thinking about how to prepare tasty, healthy foods that are easy to cook on a weekday. I try to experiment by completely reinventing the recipe or by making small changes like adding cumin seeds instead of mustard seeds. Some vegetables have been used only in a particular way that I feel bored at the thought of having to make them using the same recipes. One such vegetable is the
Achari Baigan
Yield: 3 servings Total Time: 45 minutes Ingredients 12 baby eggplants 1 tsp turmeric powder ½ tsp salt ½ tsp chili powder 3 tablespoons mustard oil (You can use any oil for this) Pinch asafetida powder (Hing) 1 medium onion sliced thin Mix together: 2 medium tomatoes pureed 3 teaspoons sambhar powder 1 teaspoon chilli powder ½ tsp turmeric powder ½ tsp sugar to taste Salt 2 tablespoons yogurt ½ tsp garam masala Chopped cilantro to garnish
Steps
1. Make two perpendicular cuts in the form of a cross at the base of the eggplant. Sprinkle salt, turmeric powder and chili powder and massage the insides of the eggplants. Keep aside for 10-15 minutes. 2. Over medium heat, add 2 tablespoons oil into the pan and once it is 40 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
heated, add in the marinated eggplants. Stir fry for about 3-4 minutes till the eggplants are charred slightly on the outside. Remove from the pan and set aside. 3. In the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of oil. Once it is heated, add in the asafetida and sliced onions. 4. Sauté till the onions soften and are pink in color (less than 1-2 mins). Now, mix in the dry masala with the tomato puree and add to the oil. 5. Add ½ cup of water and let it cook for about 3-4 minutes till oil floats on the top. 6. Then, add in the sautéed eggplant into the masala and continue to sauté till the eggplant is soft. 7. Now add in the yogurt, mix well and sprinkle in the garam masala and cook for 1-2 minutes. Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve.
baby eggplant. I am sure there must be several ways of preparing them, but one dish that immediately comes to mind is Bharwa Baigan. (Stuffed eggplant) Last Sunday when I picked up baby eggplant, I mentally swore that I would make something other than the usual Bharwa Baigan. Even though it is delicious, it is also quite tedious and time consuming to prepare. As I let my imagination play with these fresh baby eggplants, my aim was to come up with a recipe that was simple to cook and tasty. So here’s the recipe from my Sunday experiment with baby eggplant.
Notes: 1. To reduce cooking time, add a little oil to the marinating eggplants and place in the microwave on high for 4 minutes. This softens the eggplants and reduces cooking time on the stove. 2. To make this dish look fancy, you can add a tempering of mustard seeds, asafetida and curry leaves at the end. It adds a touch of sophistication to the dish and yes, the extra love too. 3. I use mustard oil to make it typically achari (pickle-like); you can use any oil that you want. Having experimented with eggplant, I was immensely satisfied with the results. It was all the more gratifying since I had finally chosen to do something other than the usual Bharwa Baigan. Serve it with plain rice and dal or some pulao. This is a must-make vegetarian dish for all who are eggplant lovers. Don’t be afraid to play around with the recipe and remember to always have fun experimenting!n A science educator with an ardent love for experimentation in the kitchen, Jagruti writes about cooking in her blog The Turmeric Kitchen. To help popularize her otherwise not very well known East Indian heritage, she writes extensively about Odia food and about dishes that evoke nostalgia of her days growing up in Odisha.
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March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 41
music
When in Doubt: Be a Hero By Priya Das
O
n January 11, 2016, the German Foreign Office tweeted “Good Bye David Bowie, You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall.” It was the day after Bowie died. The wall they were referring to was of course, the Berlin wall. Bowie performed in West Berlin in 1987; the wall actually formed the back of the stage. A large crowd gathered on the other side of the wall in East Berlin to listen to him. In an interview, Bowie remembers how when he performed Heroes, “it was anthemic, almost like a prayer.” The lyrics included these lines: We’re nothing, and nothing will help us Maybe we’re lying, then you better not stay But we could be safer, just for one day We can be heroes Just for one day. Riots broke out in the days after the concert, and soon, ultimately, the Berlin wall did come down. While Bowie’s music indirectly effected a political change, years later in 2011, music directly fed another kind of political action. Most of us remember being hooked to the news, watching and listening in an open-mouthed, hushed sense of wonder and elation at the events that unfolded in Tunisia and Eqypt. We are not leaving He will leave As one We demand one thing Leave, leave, leave. These simple lyrics of the song “Irhal,” sung in an Arabic dialect fueled the resolve of the people in Tahrir Square, almost to the date six years ago, in what is now known as the Arab Spring. Its singer, Ramy Essam galvanized the “sit-in” with his guitar; the crowd responded with their hearts, voices, and their daf (Egyptian drum). It was one of the many Arabic songs of resistance and protest. Artists have a unique power to not just express, but also to embody the expression of a people. As Sarah Johnson, Director of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute said 42 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
The relationship between art and politics is particularly interesting when political oppression is extreme, at times when artists are simply not tolerated. Entire genres of music have been born out of repression.
in a panel discussion on the “Artist’s Role as a Citizen,” if “artists genuinely want to connect with their audiences in a broader sense, they must stop thinking of themselves as separate entities.” On February 8th of this year, Bruce Springsteen wrote an open letter in the magazine, The Observer saying that he should have done more to not let Donald Trump win; he felt that he should have just had a concert at the same time in each of the regions where Trump campaigned. He could not believe that some states were won by a few thousand votes. He knows what he is talking about; he is known for putting his art where his heart is—his song Born in the USA was against the State neglecting Vietnam War veterans.
I must admit, that while it is imperative that people not stop themselves from taking a stand, or to expressing what they feel, artists have the actual tools to do something more. History is replete with examples of when artists did use their art, not just to galvanize their people, but also hold up a mirror.
Subramania Bharathi, Indian poet
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
Springsteen’s apology started with an ungenerous comment on Meryl Streep’s famous speech at the Golden Globe Awards. When she received the Cecil B. DeMille award earlier this year, Streep had used the time allotted to her for her thank you speech to criticize President Trump for mocking a disabled reporter. Springsteen would have liked her to do more, he said in his letter of contrition.
India’s freedom struggle has many examples of this, one being the writings of Subramanya Bharathi, who wrote the following words (translated from Tamil). Lacking mental strength and moral courage, They resort to deceit, warriors only by words Even when they see own brethren dying in misery It does not give them pause, they have forsaken honor. The relationship between art and politics is particularly interesting when political oppression is extreme, at times when artists are simply not tolerated. The Tropicalia movement in Brazil is a case in point. Brazil was under military dictatorship in
the 1960s and 70s and it is widely accepted that it was also one of the most productive creative periods. The movement brought together many different strands of music, American rock-n-roll included. It was seen as a way of mobilizing youth and therefore a threat to the regime. Gilberto Gil, who became the Minister of Culture in 2003 who was one of the primary Tropicalists, was forced into exile at that time. “Because of the suspicions that they had that we could mobilize society against them and by the ideas that we addressed, I mean, like ideas about freedom, about freedom of expression, about ways of contesting the regular ways,…to stand up for rights.” Indeed, entire genres of music have been born out of repression. African slaves used a call-to-answer form of using spoken words and handmade music (which later became known as rap) in America as a form of coping with dehumanizing slavery. It gained momentum as a protest genre with the likes of Tupac Shakur who used it to talk about violent, underprivileged neighborhoods.
Rap is considered among the official forms of protest music in the Middle East as well. DAM (Da Arabian MCs) are Arabs with Israeli citizenship who rap in Arabic, Hebrew, and English; Tupac was their inspiration. Their song, “Born Here,” was featured by CNN in 2003 and had the lyrics, I broke the law? No the law broke me. I was born here You will not sever me from my roots. The song draws an anguished parallel to the original Hebrew song generally sung by Israelis as a symbol of their own birthright to belong to that land. It was a fight of a different kind that made Robert Nesta Marley become the legend that is Bob Marley. There is perhaps no other parallel in history where a musician survived an assassination attempt and got two bitterly warring Jamaican leaders to shake hands at an event that is sometimes dubbed “The Third World Woodstock.” It was the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, which attracted an audience
of 32,000. Marley said on stage, “I’m not so good at talking but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say. Well, I’m trying to say, could we have up here onstage the presence of Mr. Michael Manley and Mr. Edward Seaga? I just want to shake hands and show the people that we’re gonna make it right, we’re gonna unite, we’re gonna make it right, we’ve got to unite. The moon is right over my head, and I give my love instead.” Marley and Bowie spoke of love, they did not seek to be heroes. And yet they were. Essam and DAM continue to reflect the deep longing of their people; they’re seen as heroes by the world. Springsteen has made us a promise to do more. These musicians were compelled to act when a conflict-free future and the light at the end of a dark tunnel seemed doubtful. When the world was in doubt, each stepped up to be a hero.n Priya Das is an enthusiastic follower of world music, and avidly tracks inbtersecting points between folk, classical, jazz and other genres.
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New Vedanta classes starting in March Mandukya Upanisad with Gaudapada Karika Dakshinamurti Stotram with Manasollasa The Classes If you are looking for an understandable, yet in-depth study of Vedanta, you do not want to miss this opportunity, which comes about every two years. Self-knowledge should be studied with a teacher from the beginning of texts – causes of obstacles to happiness in life have to be clearly shown, then ways to remove them guided in depth. If worldly disciplines like medicine or engineering require sustained study, then why should the study of truth – about ourselves, the creation we experience and the creator - be any less!.
The Texts Mandukya is generally the last Upanisad to be studied, before the �nal step, Brahma Sutras, by serious students. It explains the meaning of the sacred word OM, a complete exposition of our life. Its brevity and subtlety require skilled explanation. Who beer than Sri Gaudapada, Adi Sankara's guru's guru, who has wrien a famous, technical composition on Madukya in the form of Karika. This is further elucidated by Swami Maheshananda's discourses. That will be the basis of the class. Dakshinamurti Stotram is a masterful summary of Self knowledge in just 10 verses by Adi Sankara. It is held in such high regard that it is traditionally chanted before the study of Brahma Sutras. Again, the subtleties of thought require a detailed commentary. The one called Manasollasa is composed by one of Adi Sankara's four famous direct disciples, Sri Sureshwaracharya. Swami Maheshananda has wrien a work on it in highly sanskritized Hindi. We will follow that.
The Teacher You may be seeking the right guru. Sri Vijay Kapoor is similarly seeking students with the right disposition. Both are difficult to �nd, so we need Isvara's blessings to get us together. Sri Kapoor was introduced to Vedanta by Swami Chinmayananda in 1973. From 1979 to 1982, he aended the residential Vedanta course conducted by Swami Dayananda, having taken a leave of absence from HP. Since 2006, Sri Kapoor has been deeply in�uenced by the works of Swami Maheshanada Giri, founder of the Sankara Math in Mt Abu. After retiring from HP in 1999, he founded the Arsha Vidya Center in the Bay Area, and has taught Vedanta to over 300 dedicated students. Currently about 125 students regularly aend his 3 weekly classes. Mandukya Upanisad with Karika. Saturdays at 8 to 9:30 AM.
First class March 18, 2017 Dakshinamurti Stotram with Manasollasa on Tuesday evenings from 7:30 to 9 PM.
First Class March 21, 2017 All classes in Jain Bhawan, 722 S Main, Milpitas CA Talks are in English. Some knowledge of Sanskrit will be helpful but not required. All are welcome. Prior registration not required, but new students are requested to give their quali�cations to Sri Kapoor at vijaykapoor@gmail.com 46 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |March 2017
travel
Fifty Shades of Green and More in Switzerland
By Prem Souri Kishore
Braunwald chalet
T
he journey begins when the airline stewardess sets a tray of Swiss chocolates in front of you. I chose one tiny piece, even though the whole tray looked scrumptious enough to eat. The chocolate melts in my mouth and hits a sweet spot—the Swiss experience begins in the air! After the plane gently thuds onto the tarmac, within moments I am whisked into an automated tube train hurtling towards the main airport terminal. The sounds of alpine horns, yodelling and the mooing of cows surges in a soundtrack over the whoosh of the train as we ride along—the Swiss sure know to welcome a guest. I leave the bustling airport swarming with skiers, backpackers, school children on vacation, tourists from all over the world and buses filled with Indians. Yes—that’s rights—there are buses full of Indian tourists at the airport. Indians are beloved by the Swiss Government for they are among the country’s most dedicated visitors. The Government recently erected a statue of late Yash Chopra the famous Bollywood producer in Interlaken. He used Switzerland as the backdrop for many of his blockbusters which resulted in thousands of Indians making the country their
first choice for a vacation. They continue to visit to relive the onscreen romances of Sharmila Tagore, Rajesh Khanna, Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee and others. Chopra visited Switzerland for his honeymoon and was bewitched. Romantic scenes set against the background of waterfalls, snow, mountains and meadows featured so prominently in his movies that the scenery can almost be counted as a character in his idyllic romantic extravaganzas. The “king of romance” shot extensively in the region of Interlaken while he
made Faasle, Chandini and the legendary Dilwale Dulhan Le Jayenges—the stuff of dreams and fantasy indeed. He was given the title of Ambassador of Interlaken and a train on Jungfrau Railways has been named after him, an honor only bestowed upon one other persons—the founder of the railway system Adolf Guyer. A five star Victoria Jungfrau Grand hotel and spa in the area has also been named a suite after Chopra. I enjoy the sights in Zurich, one of the most expensive cities in the world which is teeming with hedge fund millionaires,
On the road to a chalet in Braunwald March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 47
creative artists, students, and a thriving tourist industry. The city overflows with boutiques, galleries and stylish stores that spread out from a once gritty area Langstrasse to Hauptbahnhof the main railway station with boutiques nestling under the arches of a 19th century viaduct. After browsing through stores where we see floors of diverse goods from around the world, we now go in search of chocolate. Every year, 175,000 tons of chocolate are produced in Switzerland. And the average Swiss native eats 12 kilograms per year! Armed with that information we set off looking for the oldest chocolate maker Sprungli, situated on the main shopping street, Bahnhofstrasse. It is indeed the perfect confectionery destination, with an array of sweet treats. I indulge in Luxembergli, a heavenly biscuit flavored with chocolate, vanilla, raspberry, caramel, champagne and more. One bite and I feel, “All’s right with the world!” As we return home, I glance outside to see sheep and cows on the hillsides. I hear that you have to be careful on such deserted hillsides, as there have been instances of cows attacking people. And magically a picture postcard scene appears in front of me. A sparkle of a stream, frisky ponies galloping to the fence as our car cruises along roads that cut through dark forests with mountains on the far edge of the horizon. There is hardly any noise and a sense of deep calm and permanence pervades me. The beauty fills me to the point of tears. The next day we get a chance to walk in those meadows. We are off on pine scented trails, a quintessential experience in itself. We walk up a winding road for a couple of minutes and we are amid greenery on all sides. The silence, the hushed all-embracing quiet, surrounds us as we stroll in patches of sunlight that dazzle. We pause at a stack of wood piled six feet high. A fat squirrel skitters up a tree and my eye follows it into the branches of a tree that soars upward into the blue sky. A horse and rider quietly canter by and we spot another couple. A brief smile and greeting with the traditional “Gruetsky,” we walk on again wrapped in silence in this green world of ancient trees, shrubs and mysterious pathways. Silence and contemplation overtake our senses. My heart and eyes are open as we drive down the sloping roads encircled by grey shadowy mountains, 48 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |March 2017
Black Madonna in the Benedictine monastery
forests glinting in the sunshine, pellucid lakes and vast blue skies. And the open spaces around us? Fifty shades of green no less. How is it possible to go about one’s daily business surrounded by this aching beauty—I wonder. If nature does not make you catch your breath and you pine for the jet set glamorous holiday on ski slopes, take off to St. Moritz, Gstaad, Verbier and Zermatt, slip on DayGlo ski suits, Gucci goggles, sunblock, slim poles and move swiftly across the snow. A Swiss sport, Skikjoring has skiers pulled by galloping horses. You can play golf, polo and see exciting horse racing or urge on racing dog sledders and feisty cows who lock horns on the meadows A traditional Swiss sport Steinstossen involves heaving 180 pound stones into
the distance. If you prefer less exertion, you can go on a spectacular journey to Mount Titlis, a glacier paradise of ice and snow caves with welcoming restaurants on the top. Swiss, French, German and Italian cuisine dominate the landscape of culinary choices, although there are any number of Thai, Sri Lankan, Russian, Brazilian and Indian restaurants as well. When it comes to local fare, you can try raclette cheese melted over pickled vegetables, boiled potatoes or rosti hash brown potatoes crisply flavored with herbs, bacon and cheese. A cornucopia of cheese based regional specialties abound as do signs for local cheese and dairy fairs. There is a lot of pride in recipes handed down through the generations despite fusion foods being listed on the menu. For the epicurean and sophisticated consumer, boutique restaurants offer creative exciting menus, architecture, sweeping views and the descant of distant cowbells on the meadow. A truly heady experience at so many levels! We lunch at Hotel Wassemar which is perched on a hillside by driving through a winding pathway through a forest that seems to be right out of a postcard. Atop the mountain, we sit out in the terraced garden overlooking meadows and mountains and are entranced as our dishes are brought outs—french fries that arrive in a tin bucket and a sliver of fish surrounded by asparagus, that cost 30 euros. Dining out can be expensive, but there are also small restaurants where you can grab a sandwich and hot chocolate and watch the world go by. There are any number of salad bars and food stalls enticing with
Traditional Swiss home in the village of Ellg
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What can be more Swiss than a chalet? At Braunwald, we are within nodding distance of the mountains, verdant valleys and most certainly I need to use my vocal cords. So I spring up the green hillside , spread my arms to the sky and sing lustily – “The hills are alive with the sound of music,” a la Julie Andrews and no one complains!
Sign in the parking lot of a restaurant
excellent bratwurst on the main boutique shopping road Bahnofstrasse or the self service restaurants where we often rested our weary feet. These are very affordable choices in the city. A stroll around the Limmat River banks with bobbing boats and tourists is a must. If you prefer a walk that is even more tranquil, you can meander round the twisting streets, Gothic guildhalls, churches and a very impressive Cathedral Grossmunster, a 12th century Romanesque cathedral. Another landmark is the Fraununster church with stained glass windows by Marc Chagall and St Peterhofstatt which has the largest clock face in the whole of Europe. We went on a visit to the church of the Black Madonna in Einsiedeln, a 45 minute drive from Zurich though sweeping vistas of mountains and lakes. This Benedectine Monastry houses the 15th century Black Madonna made of black marble. Pilgrims and visitors have been worshipping here for 1,000 years as the sacred place is known for its miraculous powers. Local folklore explains that the Black Madonna’s black hue was formed by centuries of candle smoke which changed the color of the original flesh-toned image. We pray, marvel at the frescoes and baroqoue edifices, browse the souvenir stores and rest with cappuccinos while the sun sets in a brilliant hued sky. During our visit, we meet families from India who have chosen to become Swiss citizens and cannot imagine living anywhere else. There are around 3,000 Indians working in the fields of technology and banking in Switzerland. Magnificent 50 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |March 2017
towering apartment buildings with excellent amenities are straddled across the city housing the families. A growing number of people from Italy, France, Germany and Austria cross the border daily to work here as well. Work ranges from construction work to clerical and managerial duties. So what is the language spoken among these diverse populations? The Swiss speak four languages fluently. Three European cultures have been so inextricably linked with the history of Switzerland that German, French and Italian are spoken along with Romansh which is perhaps the only native Swiss language. Romansh is barely used by one percent of the Swiss. After assimilating these intriguing facts, we decide to explore the country’s history further and we felt spoilt by the choices in front of us. There are 1000s of them in the country and we soon learn that this is the place with the highest per capita concentration of museums in the world! Museum of Shoes and Museum of Sewing machines are just a few incredulous titles that we saw on the list. In the heart of Zurich is the Reitberg Museum exhibiting excellent collections of masterworks from India, China, Japan, Peru and other countries making it a truly global visit. Zurich is full of surprises. On our last visit I happened to go to the police station to file a report and the walls inside the police station were filled with incredible murals and paintings. A traffic violation took me to the station. We took an illegal U turn. A foolish mistake indeed when a tram was heading in our direction with it being barely six inches away from our car. Tramlines and car lanes intersect on the same narrow roads—a detail that escaped our attention, as we were not used to looking out for trams. A deafening screech was heard as the fender of the tram hit the side of our car and merrily towed us a few hundred yards. Mercifully, no one was hurt. At the police station far from the chaos
of the accident scene, I am stunned at the visual spectacle in front of me. The painter Augusto Giacometti who died in 1947 was a brilliant artist, renowned for his visionary paintings, murals and many buildings in Zurich exhibit his versatility. This police station with huge halls and massive porticos, must have been the home of a nobleman perhaps, and it now proudly exhibited Augusto’s art. As I file my report, I find tourists gazing with rapt wonder at the murals. Obviously the police station was part of their itinerary! The surprises keep coming. I learn that the Swiss cuckoo clock was not made by the Swiss but its birthplace was in the Blackforest area in Germany. As they say what can be more Swiss than a chalet? So off we go chugging up a toy train in Braunwald and with deference to our wobbly knees, ignore the steep walk up, and take the only taxi up the winding enchanted mountain side to the chalet. Here we are within nodding distance of the mountains, verdant valleys and most certainly I need to use my vocal cords. So I spring up the green hillside, spread my arms to the sky and sing lustily—“The hills are alive with the sound of music,” a la Julie Andrews and no one complains! For three months, we steeped ourselves in a fifty shades of green landscape, a country of placid lakes, gushing rivers, soaring mountains, swaying cornfields, meadows of sunflowers and storybook homes tucked away in faraway forests. We again hear the Alpine yodelling, cow bells descant on the sound track of our airport train as we head towards the plane which will fly us back to Los Angeles. n Prem Souri Kishore is a travel and food writer, and a voice over professional speaker and radio host. She has written a book titled, ‘India: A Culinary Journey.’ Passionate about words, her personal license plate reads ‘wordstrck’ that stands for Wordstruck!
On Inglish
Stalking Rice By Kalpana Mohan
Rice < a swamp grass that is widely cultivated as a source of food, especially in Asia. >
E
I’d seen rice fields in the hinterlands of arly last year, I was watching evmany parts of the country—Bengal, Kerala, erything that made its way from I’d forced myself to winTamil Nadu, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh—but inside my kitchen cabinets, to my stovetop, to my plate, and to my now the carbohydrate from that afternoon the sight of rice mounds on the mouth. At the age of 54, I’d forced my- the protein. Shunning rice road highlighted the dramatic irony of India’s parallel existence: the country’s vision was self to winnow the carbohydrate from the protein. Shunning rice on this new on this new diet, I adopted fixated on the highway leading to globalizadiet, I adopted quinoa as my staple, sift- quinoa as my staple, sifting tion but its soul still lingered in its rural back streets, just as my heart craved rice despite all ing what was germane to my heart from what was germane to my the newfangled dietary possibilities. what was ideal for my waistline. On my most recent trip, I was invited to a I knew how, like me, there were any heart from what was ideal celebration at a local temple following which number of people in the world who for my waistline. I was served a home-style meal on a banana found it hard to spit rice out of their leaf. As I sat facing the leaf, dishes piled on. daily intake. What intrigued me, beyond Waiters slathered every square-inch of my bathe popularity of rice as a staple around nana leaf—from sweet payasam to green beans the world, was the similarity of the nomenclature across many of the world’s languages: Rice is orez in usili, potato roast, lime-drenched carrot salad, banana chips, Hebrew, rysai in Lithuanian, riso in Italian, reis in Welsh, vriže in mango pickle, coriander thogayal, papad. A vadai arrived at last; I Pashto, brizi in Old Persian, vrihi in Sanskrit, hrísgrjón in Icelandic waited, dreaming of its crunch between my teeth as lentil, spice and oruza in Greek. Some believed that the word “rice” may have and curry leaf exploded over the taste buds on my tongue. Next, had Dravidian origins—having originated from the Old Tamil steam from fresh white rice rushed into my nose. The aroma that arici—showing me how the first solid of my soul linked me to followed—of a long golden thread of aromatic ghee from ladle to leaf—had me salivating. At the end of this ritual dress-up of the others around the world. Last March, I was driving past Chennai into the hinterlands of banana leaf—even though this was the diametric opposite of a India’s Tamil Nadu. Truckloads of produce flew past me. Men lay Chippendale striptease—I lay pathetically, shamelessly seduced. I sleeping on open trucks facing the sky, their bodies plastered on was a slave to my staple once again. I’ve been thinking about every decision we’d ever made in sacks taut with onions and potatoes while wings of curry leaves swayed on either side of trucks. Areca palms and the occasional our family to invalidate the staples of our lives. My father-in-law eucalyptus rushed past. We cruised under canopies of rain trees would be the last in the family to pursue life as an agriculturist. with their powder puff pink flowers. In sections of the national His only son sought a different career leaving behind his life in the highway, blossoms of the yellow flame tree were a foil for the ugly village, just as my maternal cousins walked away from the agrarian concrete half-buildings and billboards dotting the landscape. As acreage that once sustained their families. Now I considered the implications of my attempt to change far as my eyes could see, the arable land was lush with rice, mango, my diet by walking away from rice. Altered diets and lifestyles afcoconut, banana and tomato. As we neared Krishnagiri, we passed undulating miles of jas- fected our agricultural landscape even though it seemed as if one mine farms where women picked fragrant white blossoms. All of person’s choice would hardly make a dent on the globe. Still, a a sudden, I yelled out for my chauffeur, Vinayagam, to stop. I’d few weeks ago, almost a whole year after my resolution to wean just spotted a thresher spewing rice right by the edge of the main myself from the grain of my veins, I decided to walk yet another highway. Men fed rice stalks into the thresher and rice gushed mile daily to justify my endless longing for a daily bowlful of steamed rice. n out from its noisy back end, husks intact. As Vinayagam and I walked around the machine, he told me how before such machines Kalpana Mohan writes from California’s Silicon reached the villages, threshing was done by hand with flails. A Valley. To read more about her, go to http://kalpanlittle farther away on another section of the highway, male and amohan.com. female laborers trampled over husks, separating each grain in an attempt to dry them on the road. March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 51
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Sunday September 10, 2017
Sunday October 1, 2017
- Violin Duo Sunday October 15, 2017
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 57
58 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |March 2017
dance . music
BharathaKala Kutiram
Music Performing Class Enrich it by listening to Dr. Madhuwanti Mirashi
Artistic Director:
Jayanthi Sridharan
(disciple of Pt. Omkarnath Thakur) Available for performances for all occasions.
offers Bharathanatyam Classes in Berryessa, North San Jose
Vocal Music: Light and Classical Instruments: Tabla, Harmonium, Synthesizer (Casio, Yamaha) Music Appreciation: (Hindustani) Voice Culture: (Indian Method)
Call: (408) 251-3438
Phone:(408)
e-mail: bkkdanceschool@gmail.com
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s_tyar@comcast.net
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/ indiacurrents
Founder Director, Soor Academy, India.
Learn Classical Raagas, Bhajans, Dhun and Songs on Sitar, Harmonium, Keyboard and Vocals
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March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 59
relationship diva
Four Tips for the Woman Looking for Love By Jasbina Ahluwalia
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areers can be rich in meaning and fulfillment. But if career-driven lifestyles don’t afford the time and energy required to build a truly fulfilling romantic relationship, they can also be lacking in love. If you’re ready to connect with a partner, these quick tips can guide you into the arms of a loving companion, without compromising what’s genuinely important to you.
row in on characteristics you enjoy the most in a companion and number them by importance. Writing out these features will give you more flexibility to say “no” to someone who doesn’t quite meet your standards. It’s equally important to know what you won’t put up with so that you can avoid settling into a relationship “just because.”
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When can you free up time to schedule a date night? Like any goal, you’ll need to start with a plan. Evaluate your current lifestyle and habits. Be honest with yourself. This way, you can build intimacy with another without sacrificing what matters most to you.
While filling in the lines of your ideal companion, take note of the kind of partner you will be. Remove other’s opinions and focus on your own values. Sharing your life with someone else is a big commitment and the more conscious you are of your intentions, the smoother this transition can be.
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With the plethora of apps and online dating sites, sometimes one of the most
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60 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
impactful things for singles to do is just say “yes” to an invitation in real life. You will likely need to break out of your daily norm to experience new people, and the best way to do that is having the willingness to put yourself in unfamiliar situations. Love shouldn’t be a sacrifice of fulfillment. Relationships are meant to enhance your lifestyle, not hinder it. Enjoy the richness that comes with opening your heart to love. You can successfully do this without losing yourself in the process.n Jasbina Ahluwalia has pioneered an approach to matchmaking, which blends the best of the East and the West. She is the FounderPresident of Intersections Match by Jasbina, the only premier dating coaching firm for Indian singles in the US, Canada and the UK. Jasbina@Intersectionsmatch.com
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March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 61
events MARCH
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE!
APRIL issue deadline: Monday, March 20 To list your event in the Calendar, go to www.indiacurrents.com and click on Create Event
Check us out on
special dates Ash Wednesday
March 1
Holi
March 13
Nowruz
March 20
Ugadi
March 27
Gudi Padva
March 28
Ramanavami
April 5
Mahavir Jayanti
April 9
Good Friday
April 14
Baisakhi
April 14
Hanuman Jayanti
April 11
Tamil New Year
April 14
CULTURAL CALENDER
March
3 Friday
Sitarist Rajib Karamkar in Concert. Accompanied on tabla by Prithwi
Bhattacharjee. Karamkar will also be playing a short tabla solo. Food followed by concert and discussion. 7:00 p.m. AF 62 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
Silicon Valley native Saila Kariat is the writer/director of the feature film The Valley which will debut at Cinequest on March 5 at 7 p.m.
Studios. 2901 Mount Pleasant Way, Corona. (951) 961-6501.
Airport Insecurity—A Play. Based
on a true story this Kafkaesque tale of an Indian techie stuck at Frankfurt Airport without a passport visa or mobile phone. Over forty-eight hours in the airport lounge he encounters a diverse cast of characters while navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth. The resolution of his troubles surprises everyone even him. Cubberely Theater. 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. www.naatak.org.
March
4 Saturday
Sikkil Gurucharan and Shujaat Khan—A Jugalbandi. Exploring
melodic modes (raga), lyric (sahitya), and rhythm (tala), through collaboration and improvisation the artists reveal both what is distinctive and complementary in Carnatic and Hindustani music. 8:00
p.m. Mondavi Center, Jackson Hall. Mrak Hall Dr., Davis. https://www.mondaviarts. org/event/2016-17/sikkil-gurucharan-andshujaat-khan (530)754-2787.
Airport Insecurity—A Play. Based
on a true story this Kafkaesque tale of an Indian techie stuck at Frankfurt Airport without a passport visa or mobile phone. Over forty-eight hours in the airport lounge he encounters a diverse cast of characters while navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth. The resolution of his troubles surprises everyone even him. Cubberely Theater. 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. www.naatak.org.
Karnatik Music Concerts. 2-3 p.m. Kriya Pachiapala(vocal) accompanied by Yogitha Balasubramanian (violin) and Akshay Bharadhwaj (mridangam). 3:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m. Sarvagh and Suragh Shrianadh (vocal duet) accompanied by Shreyas Srinivasan (violin) and Santhosh Ravindrabharathy (mridangam). 5 p.m.-6
events p.m. Srivas Sarva (violin) accompanied by Santhosh Ravindrabharathy. Organized by SR Fine Arts. 2 p.m.-6p.m. Community Of Infinite Spirit 1540 Hicks Ave. San Jose CA 95125 www.srfinearts.com.
Confluence—Bilingual poetry event in Hindi and English. Featured Poets: Anita Kapoor Anshu Johri Carol Park Jenn Lee Smith Kalamu Chache Lita Kurth Pallavi Sharma Rekha Maitra Salma Arastu Sanjay Mathur Suzy Huerta and Tshaka Campbell. Organized by Inner Eye Arts and Poetry Center San Jose. 3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Shiva Durga Temple. 1170 Kern Avenue, Sunnyvale. https://www.facebook.com/events/764587147050620. (408) 274-5160.
Arohi Ensemble RagaJazz Afternoon Concert. Featuring Dwight Trible
(vocal) accompanied by Paul Livingstone (sitar) and Peter Jacobson (cello) Dave Lewis (drums) Leonice Shinneman (tabla) Eric Barber (saxophone) and Josef Leimberg (trumpet). Organized by MAR4WeHo Arts Winter Sounds: Arohi Ensemble. 4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. West Hollywood City Council Chambers 625 North San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood www.tanpura. com (323) 899-0704.
Airport Insecurity—A Play. Based
on a true story this Kafkaesque tale of an Indian techie stuck at Frankfurt Airport without a passport visa or mobile phone. Over forty-eight hours in the airport lounge he encounters a diverse cast of characters while navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth. The resolution of his troubles surprises everyone even him. Cubberely Theater. 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. www.naatak.org.
Chitravali—Bharatanatyam Dance Performance. A picture book on
Krishnamaya by Rama Vaidyanathan. Organized by South India Fine Arts. 4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. CET 701 Vine Street San Jose. www.sifa.org.
March
5 Sunday
Sikkil Gurucharan and Shujaat
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Khan—A Jugalbandi. Exploring
melodic modes (raga), lyric (sahitya), and rhythm (tala), through collaboration and improvisation the artists reveal both what is distinctive and complementary in Carnatic and Hindustani music. 2:00 p.m. Mondavi Center, Jackson Hall. Mrak Hall Dr., Davis. https://www.mondaviarts. org/event/2016-17/sikkil-gurucharan-andshujaat-khan (530)754-2787.
Art Show. Showcasing contemporary
and traditional Indian art from two emerging artists Nishant Dange and Umakant Tawde. Organized by Laasya Art Gallery. 1:30 a.m. (Palo Alto Please email for address.) www.laasyaart.com. (415) 645-3089.
Sikhs and Jews: Separated at Birth? A powerpoint presentation by Ken Blady and Amrik Singh Pannu on the similarities and differences between the Sikh and Orthodox Jewish religions. Organized by El Sobrante Sikh Temple. 1:00 p.m. Sikh Remple 3550 Hillcrest Road, El Sobrante. (415) 264-4110.
IBPW Annual Book Reading. A
panel discussion to examine our biases towards race culture education religion financial status and demographics. The topics will explore our comfort zones and expand our perspective to become more tolerant open and non-judgmental human beings. Organized by Indian Business and Professional Women. 3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. ICC 525 Los Coches Street Milpitas. www. ibpw.netwww.siliconvalleyreads.org. (408) 956-9115.
The Valley—A Movie by Saila Kariat. The darkest hour is just before
the dawn. For a parent what is darker than the loss of a child? Neal has it all: the foreign cars the Palo Alto mansion a stunning wife and on top of it all he’s the father to two beautiful girls. But like Icarus flying too close to the sun his life comes crashing down with the suicide of his youngest daughter. Pointing a mirror directly at our modern culture director Saila Kariat’s poignant and haunting The Valley addresses pressing issues about our humanity through the story of the love
of a father as he tries to search for whose hands are dirtied by the blood of his daughter. In his search of possible lovers roommates virtually anything that could help him figure out what happened what he uncovers will change his life forever. 7 p.m. The California Theatre 345 S 1st St., San Jose. https://cinequest.org.
March
6 Monday
Hindustani Vocal Ensemble Winter Concert. By students in the UC Davis Hindustani Vocal Ensemble. Organized by UC Davis Dept. of Music. 5 p.m.-6 p.m. Ann E. Pitzer Center, Recital Hall 144 Hutchison Dr., Davis. http://arts.ucdavis. edu/hindustani-vocal-ensemble. (510) 8472020.
March
8 Wednesday
Priya Natarajan: Mapping the Heavens—A Delightful Tour of the Cosmos. Organized by The Commonwealth Club. 7:00 p.m.-8:15 p.m. Cubberley Community Theatre. 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. https://www.eventbrite. com/e/priya-natarajan-mapping-the-heavensa-delightful-tour-of-the-cosmos-tick.
March
9 Thursday
CAAMFest 2017. A 11-day celebra-
tion of film music and food featuring a diverse showcase of over 100 narratives documentaries and special events. CAAMFest takes place throughout San Francisco and Oakland. Organized by CAAMFest. Castro Theater 429 Castro Street San Francisco http://caamfest.com/2017/ (415) 863-0814.
March
11 Saturday
Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. Discover over 100
years of Desi-American history on the streets of Berkeley. You’ll visit original sites associated with the Indian freedom movement women’s organizing and more
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 63
events
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events dom. Book signing and talk by Archarya Shunya. 11a.m.-12:15 p.m. Cultural Integration Fellowship. 2650 Fulton St., San Francisco. www.culturalintegrationfellowship. org. (415) 668-1559. Sitar Concert Featuring Partha Bose. Bose on sitar accompanied by
Indranil Mallick on tabla. Organized by Sanctuary Yoga and Ayurveda Center. 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Sanctuary Yoga and Ayurveda Center. 505 W. 1st Street, Tustin. http:// www.awakensanctuary.com/events_Concert. html. (714) 617-4593.
March
Holi events throughout the Bay in March
told through stories and street theater. Organized by Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Downtown Berkeley 1404 Henry St #4 Berkeley. (510) 859-7531.
SEF Holi. Raffle prizes food DJ music. Organized by SEF. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Alameda County Fairgrounds 4501 Pleasanton Ave., Pleasanton. www.giftofvision.org (866) 726-5272. Know Your Rights—Community Immigration Forum. Learn about
Immigration policies under the Trump administration. Your Civil Rights with Homeland Security with the police and at the airport. Resources for hate crimes and discrimination. 1:1 free legal consultations. Organized by League of Women Voters and South Asian Bar Association. 10 p.m.-2 p.m. Irvington High School 41800 Blacow Road, Fremont. http://www.southasianbar.org/events.
March
12 Sunday
FOG Holi. Kids water games DJ Raffle prizes food and dance to the beats of the Bollywood music. Organized by Festival of Globe. 11:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Newark Junior High School 6201 Lafayette Ave., Newark. FOGSV.org. (510) 304-5619. 64 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
24 Friday
Kronos—Broadway Style Bollywood Musical. In the year 2116 the Selfie—A Play in Hindi. 6:00 p.m.
Aratani Japan America Theater 244 San Pedro St., Los Angeles. (714) 731-2910.
March
18 Saturday
Rana Holi 2017. Celebrate the season
with vibrant colors refreshing Thandai Rajasthani food and live DJ. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Cardoza Park 1356 Kennedy Dr., Milpitas. http://rana.org.
An Evening of Hindustani Music.
Sarod and sitar performances by Tim White (sitar), Sudhakar Vaidyanathan, Javad Butah (tabla) and David Trasoff (sarod). 7:30 p.m. Ali Akbar College of Music. 215 West End Ave., San Rafael. http://www. aacm.org. (415) 454-6372.
Jai Uttala’s Bay Area Album Release Concert for Roots! Rock! Rama! Celebration meditation dance of the devas and love song to the universe. 8 p.m. Spirit Rock. 5000 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Woodacre. http://www.spiritrock. org.
March
19 Sunday
Lecture on Ayurveda Lifestyle Wis-
population of Earth and Saturn are on the brink of extinction. To ensure their survival both planets must make bold changes. A mission between the planets is disrupted by a sinister power seeker causing a family on earth to be torn apart. Meanwhile a new power emerges on Saturn threatening to topple the very sanctity and peace that existed on that planet. In the midst of this a celestial visitor arrives.Will it save or destroy the planets? Organized by Solskrit an Aditya Patel Company. Mexican Heritage Theater. 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose. http://www. solskrit.com/tickets.
Bishop Ranch Holi Celebration.
Traditional throwing of colors face painting henna tattoo artists Bollywood dance performers live music and food trucks. Organized by Sunset Development Company. 5:30 p.m. 2600 Camino Ramon, San Ramon. http://www.bishopranch.com/ event/holi-festival-bishop-ranch-2/; (925) 277-1700.
Speak—A Kathak and Tap Collaboration. Featuring Kathak dancers Rachna Nivas and Rina Mehta (disciples of the late Pandit Chitresh Das) along with Tap dancers Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and Michelle Dorrance. Organized by Leela Dance. 8 p.m. Yerba Buena Center for the
events Arts. 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. www.leelainstitute.org, (415) 203-4363.
March
25 Saturday
Hindustani Vocal Concert. Featuring Ram Deshpande accompanied by Sanjay Deshpande (tabla) and Ajay Joglekar (harmonium). Organized by Basant Bahar. 5 p.m. Sai Temple Auditorium. 1221 California Circle, Milpitas. basantbahar. org. (510) 651-6386.
Soul and Spice—An Indian Jazz.
Featuring George Brooks Kala Ramnath Osam Ezzeldin Kai Eckhardt and Selva Ganesh. 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Dublin Performing Arts Center. 8151 Village Pkwy., Dublin. http://www.ebmm.org.
March
26 Sunday
Mika Singh Live in Concert. Terrence
Theater Long Beach. 30 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. www.sppevents.com.
Childrens Activities on Family Day at the Art Center. Storytelling
hands-on artmaking projects and a dance performance. Listen to a dramatic and humorous South Asian folktale with storytellers from Kitaab World followed by a traditional Pithora painting activity led by Pragati Sharma. Organized by Palo Alto Art Center Foundation and SACHI. 1:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m. Palo Alto Art Center. 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto. www.sachi.org.
Carnatic Music Concert. Featrur-
ing B. Suchitra (Katha Kutcheri), VVS Murari (violin), NC Bharadwaj (mridangam). Organized by South India Fine Arts. 4:00 p.m. CET - Soto Theater. 701 Vine St., San Jose. http://www.southasianbar. org/events.
March
28 Tuesday
GYANI Indo Jazz Concert. Featur-
ing Binay Pathak (harmonium and vocal)
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Osam Ezzeldin (piano) Vishal Nagar (tabla) Abbos Kosimov (doira) combining Indian raga jazz Arabic melodies and global rhythms to make a unique brand of music blending classic Hindustani forms and cutting-edge improvisation. Organized by CSUS World Music Dept. 8 p.m. CSUS Capistrano Hall. http://www.csus.edu/ music/directions.html. http://www.csus.edu/ music/worldmusic. (916) 217-3259.
March
30 Thursday
Karsh Kale Presents Classical Science Fiction. Percussionist and com-
poser Karsh Kale has created a harmonious alchemy of East and West. Organized by SFJAZZ. 7:30 p.m. SFJAZZ Center 201 Franklin Stree,t San Francisco. http:// www.sfjazz.org/events/2016-17/0330/karshkale-presents-classical-science-fiction. (866) 920-5299.
March
31 Friday
Bhi Bhiman in Concert. His latest album Rhythm ans Reason features music that transports you across borders and through eras touching on politics with an international flair. Organized by Stanford Live. 8 p.m. Bing Concert Hall Studio. 327 Lasuen Street, Stanford. http://live.stanford. edu/calendar/march-2017/bhi-bhiman. (650) 724-2464.
April
1 Saturday
Lasuen Street, Stanford. http://live.stanford. edu. (650) 724-2464.
Vikesh Kapoor in Concert. Raised in rural Pennsylvania Kapoor has centered his music on the struggles for a good life endured by the working class. Organized by Stanford Live. Bing Concert Hall Studio. 327 Lasuen Street, Stanford. http:// live.stanford.edu/calendar/april-2017/vikeshkapoor. (650) 724-2464.
April
2 Sunday
Carnatic Music Concert. T. M.
Krishna (vocal), Rajeev Mukundan (violin), Rajna Swaminathan (mridangam). Organized by South India Fine Arts. 3:30 p.m. Carrington Hall, Sequoia High School. 1201 Brewster Ave., Redwood City. http:// www.southasianbar.org/events.
Relational Rasa—An Interactive Musical Inquiry into Integral Consciousness. Musician and performer
Sandeep Prakash will outline and demonstrate the Indian aesthetic concept of rasa—the essential sentiment embedded in a work of art or music that evokes a corresponding emotion in the reader listener or viewer. 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Cultural Integration Fellowship. 2650 Fulton St., San Francisco. www.CulturalIntegrationFellowship.org. (415) 668-1559.
Appreciating Tyagaraja’s Music—A Workshop. Featuring Pappu Venugopala
Shiva Shakti. This student recital will
depict the varied manifestations of Shiva and his consort Shakti through Abhinaya’s traditional repertoire of the past years. Organized by Abhinaya Dance Company. 11 a.m. Mexican Heritage Theater. 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose. https://abhinaya. org. (408) 871-5959.
Anoushka Shankar in Concert. As a prominent advocate for womens rights and social justice her new album Land of Gold explores the plight of the displaced. 7:30 p.m. Bing Concert Hall Studio. 327
Rao Trichy Sankaran Hyderabad Brothers and Lalgudi Krishnan. 3 p.m.-5 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. www.indianfineartsacademy.org.
Ragaspirit OC 2017. Festival of Indian music. Featured musicians include Shahid Parvez Khan (sitar) Abhijit Banerjee (tabla) Kala Ramnath (violin) Anuradha Sridhar (violin) and Shriram Bhramanandam (mridangam). Organized by Ektaa Center. 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Crystal Cove Auditorium. UCI Student Ctr., 311
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 65
events
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events
W. Peltason Dr., Irvine. www.ektaacenter.org. (949) 300-8912.
indianfineartsacademy.org.
S. Ramanathan Centenary Concert.
April
Featruing Sangeetha Kalamani Geetha Bennett (veena) Sangeetha Acharya TSR Krishnan’s tribute to S.Ramanathan. Accompanied by Raamkumar Balamurthi (mridangam) and Karthick Venkataraman (kanjira). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. indianfineartsacademy.org.
Thyagaraja Bhakti Margam—A Vocal Concert by Vijayalakshmi Subramaniam. Accompanied by Kamalakiran Vinjamuri (violin) Erode Nagaraj (mridangam) and Karthick Venkataraman (kanjira). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. indianfineartsacademy.org.
April
3 Monday
Anoushka Shankars Home. A Special
Sitar Concert celebrating 97th Birthday of Bharat Ratna Pt. Ravi Shankar. Accompanied by Ojas Adhiya (tabla) Pirashanna Thevarajah (mridangam) Ravichandra Kulur (flute) Sanjeev Shankar (shehnai) and Kenji Ota (tanpura). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 7:45 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. indianfineartsacademy.org.
April
4 Tuesday
Endaro Mahanubhavulu. A special
Carnatic and Hindustani Music and Dance Presentation. Students and disciples of C.M.Venkatachalam Suman Nayak Aler Krishnan Rohini Herur Jonathan Bosco and Divya Devaguptapu. Accompanied by Prabhu Sriram and Raamkumar Balamurthi (mridangam), Amshu Murthy, Agastya (flute) and Cleveland Balu (kanjira). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla.
66 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
5 Wednesday
Venu Gaana Mridanga Lahari— Musical Aura of Saint Thyagaraja.
A special Carnatic vocal instrumental and percussion presentation by students and disciples of Revathi Subramanian Raamkumar Balamurthi Amshu Murthy and Radhakrishnan Ramachandran. Accompanied by Raamkumar Balamurthi (mridangam) Radhakrishnan Ramachandran (flute) and Cleveland Balu (kanjira). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy 6:00 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. indianfineartsacademy.org.
April
6 Thursday
Alapanas and Abhangs. A special
Carnatic and Hindustani vocal presentation by Padma Shri Aruna Sairam accompanied by BV Raghavendra Rao (violin), Tiruvarur Vaidyanathan (mridangam) and N.Guruprasad (ghatam). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 7:30 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. indianfineartsacademy.org.
April
7 Friday
The Darkened Mirror. Indian artist
Vibha Galhotra is one of five international artists featured in the exhibition The Darkened Mirror: Global Perspectives on Water. The subject of her poetic video Manthan is India’s Yamuna River. 11 a.m. San Jose Museum of Art. 110 South Market Street, San Jose. www.sjmusart.org. (408) 271-6840.
Kalpana—A Film on Uday Shankar. The sole film of celebrated Indian
dancer Uday Shankar (older brother of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar) Kalpana is a vibrant dance-drama that revolves around a young dancer’s dream of forming his own dance academy. Originally filmed in
1948 the film was restored in 2008 by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project in association with the family of Uday Shankar and the National Film Archives of India. The film features choreography designed specifically for the camera fusing elements of Indian modernism with the cinema. This is the first time the restored version of this landmark film will be screened in California and provides a rare opportunity to view one of the classics of world cinema. Organized by Green Music Center. 7 p.m. Green Music Center, Sonoma State University. 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. http://gmc.sonoma.edu/ event/3267926-kalpana-a-film-by-uday. (866) 955-6040.
April
8 Saturday
The Evolution of Song and Dance in Hindi Cinema. The symposium
features internationally renowned scholars who will discuss the historical role that song and dance has played and continues to play in the cinema now known as Bollywood. Taking place throughout the day this conference allows patrons and lovers of Indian music and dance to learn more about these art forms. The conference will also include Q&A sessions with scholars and the general public. 9 a.m. Sonoma State University. 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. http://gmc.sonoma.edu/ event/3285855-the-evolution-of-song-anddance. (707) 664-3178.
Son of the Wind—Kathak Dance Performance. The drama brings to
life the Ramayana’s hidden hero Hanuman. Told through dramatic storytelling powerful movement and exquisite costume design and lighting this production exposes the contemporary relevance of a timeless story. Organized by Green Music Center. 7:30 p.m. Green Music Center, Sonoma State University. 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. http://gmc.sonoma.edu/ event/3189887-leela-dance. (866) 9556040.
Matru Devo Bhava. A Carnatic Jugalbandhi by Sangita Kalanidhi
events
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events April
15 Saturday
Dance India! Four Visions. From the subtlest movements to the most sweeping gestures a sublime evening of four dance expressions of India that illumines extraordinary artists. Vijayalakshmi (mohiniyattam), Rahul Acharya (odissiCalifornia gharana). The Leela Dance Collective: kathak (Rina Mehta Rachna Nivas Shefali Jain) and bharatanatyam by Shakti Dance Company. Organized by Aratani World Series. 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Aratani Theatre. 244 S. San Pedro St., Los Angeles. http://www.festivalofsacredmufestivalofsacredmusic.org. (213) 680-3700.
Soul and Spice’ A soulful concert of Indo-Western Fusion on March 25 at 6 p.m.
Arijit Singh Live In Concert. OrgaM.Chandrasekaran and G.Bharathi accompanied by Mannargudi Easwaran (mridangam) and H.Sivaramakrishnan (ghatam). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 7:45 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. www.indiafinearts.org.
April
kites flying high in the sky. Bring your own kite or purchase a new one at the festival. 11 p.m.-5 p.m. Santa Barbara City College West Campus. 973 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara. www.sbkitefest.net.
nized by Kalalaya USA, Swagat Entertainment And Lavanya Duvvi. 7 p.m. SAP Center. 525 West Santa Clara Street, San Jose. www.Kalalayausa.com. © Copyright 2017 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited.
9 Sunday
Ganga Kaveri Sangam. Gayathri Venkataraghavan and Arati Ankalikar in a Carnatic and Hindustani jugalbandhi vocal concert. Accompanied by VVS Murari (violin) NC Bharadwaj (mridangam) and Arup Chattopadhyay (tabla). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 4:00 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. www.indianfineartsacademy.org. Classical Moods—A Carnatic Vocal Concert. Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sanjay
Subrahmanyan accompanied by Nagai Muralidharan (violin) and Mannargudi Easwaran (mridangam). Organized by Indian Fine Arts Academy. 7 p.m. David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. www.indianfineartsacademy. org.
32nd Annual Santa Barbara Kite Festival. Kite tail chasing kite fighting
and sport flying along with hundreds of
Percussionist and composer Karsh Kale Presents Classical Science Fiction. on March 30 at 7:30 p.m. March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 67
San Francisco Programs March 29th - 7pm- 9pm, Evening Talk at Saint Cyprian's Episcopal Church, 2097 Turk St, San Francisco, CA 94115
March 30th - 11am - 6pm, Individual Blessings at Saint Cyprian's Episcopal Church San Francisco South Bay Programs
Experience Ammaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Unconditional Love, Peace and Divine Blessings
March 31st - 11am - 6pm, Individual Blessings at Palo Alto Unity Church, 3391 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94306
April 1st - 8am - 6pm, Meditation Retreat at Palo Alto Unity Church San Francisco East Bay Programs April 2nd - 9am - 3pm, Sacred Homa/Fire Ceremony at Fremont Hindu Temple, 3676 Delaware Drive, Fremont, CA 94538
All programs are open to the public and free of charge with the exception of meditation retreats, which require registration and have a nominal fee. Saraswati Diksha is only offered to students ages 4-24. People of all faiths are welcome. Sponsorship opportunities are available to perform the homa in Ammaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s divine presence. PLEASE NOTE: SOME of the details (Venues, etc.) may CHANGE. For more details, please visit www.karunamayi.org, contact (650)336-5871 or send email to SFBayArea@Karunamayi.org
68 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
Om Sri Mathre Namaha Vaidica Vidhya Ganapathi Center
SRI LAKSHMI GANAPATHI TEMPLE
(408) 226-3600
32B Rancho Drive, San Jose, CA 95111
(Capitol Expressway West and Montrey Road Junction, Opposite and 1 Block from Capitol Cal Train Station)
www.vvgc.org or siliconvalleyhindutemple.com
Narayana Swamy vratha / pooja. Wednesday March 29th: Chaitra All are welcome to participate with Ugadi festival, Hevilambi family Telugu/Kannada/Marathi new year. Temple opens at morning 9.30 AM At 4.30 PM Sri Venkateswara with Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka. Continued with Sri suprabhatam. Vishnu sahasra nama chanting Saturday March 4th: Kritika aarati and manthra pushpa Continued with Shiva abhisheka Vratha. Sri Valli Deva Sena sarva devata aarati panchanga. sametha, Sri Subramanya th abhisheka aarati and manthra Tuesday March 14 : pushpa At 12.00 Noon, Karadayar Nombu Patana pooja and panchanga sravana. Telugu and Kannada special pooja aarati and manthra pushpa. Please contact the temple aarati and manthra pushpa. Friday March 10th: Vasantha Navarathri begins. At 6.00 PM, Pradosham. Shiva Sri for further details Continuous archana Rudra abhisheka aarati and th manthra pushpa Thursday March 16 : Temple closes at night 10.00 PM. At 5.00 PM, Sankata Hara th Chathurthi, Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Sukh Karta Dukh Harta aarati and Saturday March 11 : Masi homa and Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Jai Jagadesha Hare aarati for Magham Balaji Ekanta Seva. Temple closes abhisheka aarati and manthra th pushpa Sunday March 12 : Daylight Friday March 31st: savings begins 12.00 Noon. Sri th At 5.00 PM, Sri Bhuwaneswari Navagraha homa, Sri Saneeswara Saturday March 25 : abhisheka kritika vratha. At 4.00 PM, Sri Venkateswara Graha homa. Continued with Sri abhisyheka. Continued with Sri Nava Graha abhisheka, Sri Sri Valli Deva Sena sametha, and Vishnu sahasra nama chanting, Saneeswara Graha abhisheka Sri Subramanya abhisheka. continued with Sani Pradosham aarati and manthra pushpa. Shiva Sri Rudra abhisheka aarati Continued with Sri Lalitha sahasra Pournami vratha, Holi festival. nama chanting Afternoon at 2.00 PM, Sri Sathya and manthra pushpa
Please Make A Note:: Temple Address:: 32 Rancho Drive, San Jose CA 95111 Temple Timings: Week Days Morning 10.00 Am To 12 Noon, Evening At 6.00 pm To 8.00 pm Week Ends And Holidays 10.00 am To 8.00 pm FOR BHAJAN'S RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES, MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCES, PRIVATE POOJAS PLEASE CONTACT TEMPLE FOR FURTHER DETAILS MANGALANI BHAVANTHU,SUBHAM BHUYATH,LOKA SAMASTHA SUKINO BHAVANTHU, LOVE ALL SERVE ALL LOVE IS ALL
For Pujas & Rituals Contact: PANDIT
GANESH SHASTHRY
880 East Fremont Ave #302, Cupertino Villas, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
(408) 245-5443 / Cell: (925) 209-7637 E-mail: srikalahatheeswara@yahoo.com
Home:
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 69
INDIA CURRENTS GRAPHICS (408) 324-0488
Friday March 3rd: At 8.30 PM, Sukla Shashti, Sri Valli Deva Sena sametha, Sri Subramanya sahasra nama archana
God's Unfailing Love……
Do you have the real Joy, Peace and happiness in your life? Have you ever asked this question What is the purpose of my
existence in this world? What is a person profited, if he/she shall gain the whole world, and lose his/her own soul? (Or) What shall a person give in exchange for his/her own soul? Is there anyone in this world who can truly love me? Many times we are lost and finally end up asking these questions. There is no one in this world, who can truly love us, except God. Initially, God created human kind (both man and woman) in HIS own image. The purpose of creating mankind was to be with God. But human kind sinned against God and lost the greatest gift of being with HIM. God is Holy. A person with sin cannot dwell or exist with God. Also with sin, human kind earned curses from God. The result of sin was death & curses.
What is sin?
Anything we do that separates us from God’s presence is called SIN. We cannot hide anything from God. God knows our troubles, problems & everything. What the World can offer us is the Lust of flesh, the Lust of eyes & the Pride of life. Anyone who takes what the World offers ends up committing sin against God.
What is the result of committing sin?
The result of committing sin is a broken heart & soul,having guilt which makes us weak before God, with sadness, no peace, sickness, curses and separation from God. The Bible says, when we were born, we were born with sin because our parents brought us into this world with a sinful nature. For all have sinned, and come short of the Glory of God. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. The wages of sin is death. No one in this world including our parents or spouse or kids or friends or relatives can love us more than God. The Bible says, God is Love and HE manifested HIS love by sending God's only Holy SON Jesus Christ into this world to save us from all our sins and redeem us from this sinful world. For God so loved the world, that HE gave HIS only begotten Son Jesus Christ, that whosoever believeth in Jesus should not perish, but have everlasting life, the life after death with God in Heaven. Jesus came to this earth only to die for us and shed HIS blood so that we can be saved by HIS grace and then receive HIS gift of Salvation. Without HIS shedding of blood there is no redemption from sins. So God sent Jesus Christ to this world to die for you and me. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. If we confess our sins to Jesus, HE is faithful and just to forgive us from our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Jesus said "Come unto ME, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” For every sin we commit, we need to pay the penalty individually. However, Jesus took all our sins upon himself, when HE died for us. By giving HIS every drop of blood, we are saved and free from the penalty of sin & death. Jesus 70 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
died for our sins and on the third day, HE rose again from death and became victorious over death, hell and sins. Jesus is a living God. HE is the same yesterday, today & forever. In the Name of Jesus there is Victory, Deliverance from sins & curses and there is Healing from sickness & Miracles in our life. Jesus Christ is the ONLY WAY to God the Father, HE is the Truth and HE is the Life. No one can go to God the Father & Heaven, except through Jesus Christ. Our family or friends, our caste or creed, our education or position, our money or riches or status, or by doing charity or by doing yoga or by doing fasting will not take us to God or to Heaven. When we accept & ask Jesus Christ to come into our heart & cleanse our sins with HIS precious blood, Jesus comes into our heart and makes us a new creature, by giving us HIS Love, Joy, HIS Peace, Hope & eternal Life with HIM. This is the TRUTH and the truth shall set you free.
Now how can I redeem HIS gift of Salvation in my life?
All we have to do is to believe Jesus, accept HIM into our heart & ask him to cleanse our sins by HIS blood by repeating this simple prayer. (Prayer means talking to God in your heart)
Lord Jesus, Thank you for coming into this world for me and my sins. I truly accept you just as I am. Come into my heart; cleanse me and my sins with your precious Blood. Be in my heart forever and help me to live and lead a Holy life like you. I also invite YOU & Your Holy Spirit to come into my heart and give me the Joy, Peace, Happiness, Deliverance from sins, bondages and sickness forever. Thank you for giving me the assurance of being with me forever. In Jesus name I pray Amen. If you have truly meant this prayer, then you have accepted Jesus into your heart. HE will be with you forever. HE will not leave you nor forsake you. If you need prayers or would like to know more about Jesus, then you can visit nearby Churches or email us at info@christforworld.org
Email: balushastri87@gmail.com
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INDIA CURRENTS Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence
ö XI m;;F;e n;m;/ All kinds of Hindu traditional Pujas and homas Ganapathi, Navagraha, Vasthu, Ayushya Homas, Marriages, Seemantham, Nama-karnam, Upanayanam, Sathyanarayana Puja, Lakshmi Puja, Durga Sapthasathi Yanthra Puja. Hiranya Sradha and last rites. American born children’s horoscopes.
Pt. Ganesh Shasthry 880 E. Fremont Ave., #302 Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Home (408) 245-5443 Cell (925) 209-7637 Kabalikarpaga@hotmail.com
l;ek:; s;m;st;; s;uiK;n;;e B;v;nt;u
VEDIC SAMPRADAYA RITUALS ALL TRADITIONAL HINDU PUJAS & HOMAS LIKE:
• Ganapati, Navagraha Homas • Upanayana, Seemantham, Marriages • Sradha, Funeral Services Classes in Puja Vidhi & Veda Chanting
PANDIT RAVICHANDRAN Veda Pandit • Sahitya Siromani 1193 Bluebell Drive, Livermore, CA 94550
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E-mail: panditravi@comcast.net March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 71
healthy life
Is Too Much Sitting Killing You? Even if you eat healthy and exercise daily, it will still not be enough. By Panchajanya Paul
I
s too much sitting killing Indian Americans? Are you having problems sleeping at night, controlling your weight, or managing your blood sugar, pressure, or cholesterol? If you are a white collar worker, you are probably sitting too much and for too long. And this may be the greatest health hazard you face. The human body is a product of millions of years of evolution. It was never meant to be sedentary. New science is revealing that being immobile and sitting at the same place for hours has dire consequences. If you are an average Indian American, your usual day begins with sitting at the table eating your breakfast, then sitting in your car, bus or train going to work. At work, you will sit at your desk for eight hours and then return home while sitting in a motorized vehicle. You will have dinner while sitting, and then watch television while relaxing on a couch. Some may go for a run or lift weights for an hour at the gym. In total, the average Indian American is sitting more than nine hours in a day. This is an all-time high in recorded history. Now, there is a vast amount of data linking a physically active lifestyle to lower rates of morbidity and mortality. Decades earlier, this connection was not studied or understood. In 1949, it was Professor Jerry Morris who made a significant discovery linking exercise to heart health. He studied the heart attack rates among drivers and conductors on Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transit system. Even though drivers and condutors were drawn from similar backgrounds and social status, drivers had a statistically significant difference in heart attack rates that adversely affected them. After his study was published in the Lancet in 1953, recommendations for exercise have become mainstream and widely followed
72 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
all over the world. Health organizations recommend around one hour of exercise a day. The American Heart Association and American College of Sports Medicine call for a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity five days a week or 20 minutes of vigorous intense physical activity three days a week. But new research reveals that one hour of activity is not enough to mitigate the harms of 23 hours of inactivity. This new finding is revolutionizing how we think about exercise. The association between sitting and mortality is dose dependent; the more you sit, the less you live. This is independent of leisure activity or baseline BMI (body mass index) so that no matter how much exercise we get or how healthy our food choices are, the dangers of prolonged sitting will still cause harm. Studies have shown that even four hours of sitting changes your metabolism and sitting is especially harmful for women. Women who sit for more than six hours per day have a 40 percent increased all-cause death rate compared to those
sitting less than three hours per day. This association is not affected by the amount of physical activity women receive. If we look back in history, until very recently, humans have always been moving. In the beginning, we were all huntergatherers, and we used to forage for food. Then the economy switched to pastoral, agricultural and after the industrial revolution, things began to change rapidly as fossil fuels and electricity replaced physical labor. In this digital age, almost everything can be done seated. Although tools and technology changed our environment, our body has not had time to evolve. Scientists and anthropologists conclude that the human body has not changed much over the last 40,000 years. Most Indian-Americans are white collar workers. They may argue that the kind of work that they do demands that they sit to focus and concentrate. They may say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Deep thinking and contemplation requires the meditative stillness of sitting.â&#x20AC;? This may seem like a valid argument, but even this argument does not stand up in the light of scientific research. The brain has enormous plasticity. It can produce new neurons and make new synaptic connections throughout life. Scientists have found that a protein called Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF) plays an important role in brain function. It improves memory, attention, mood and concentration. We produce more of this protein when we exercise and move. Therefore, moving more may not only make us healthier, it may also make us smarter. Now, the challenge becomes how to create circumstances where we can coax our bodies to move. We see that the market has responded to our need to increase movement with many creative fitness gadgets that make it easier for us to exercise. One such innovation is the Standing desk, which makes you stand and work, and the Treadmill desk, which makes you
walk and work. As companies are becoming aware of the cost of sitting and the sedentary life, some are offering standing and treadmill desks for their employees. As a practicing Indian American psy chiatrist I had to spend a lot of time sitting and listening to people’s stories, and then documenting them. As my practice got busier, I began to develop back and neck pain from prolonged sitting. And then there was the weight gain, despite my eating healthy and exercising regularly. It made me rethink the way in which I structured my day. I made changes to my schedule. I placed a small table on top of my desk and converted it into a standing desk. I try to do all my reading, typing and writing while standing. When I get tired I sit down and take rest, then I will stand again and continue. Some of my coworkers saw me make this change, and now they have also put a small platform over their desk in order to use the computer keyboard while standing. Many of us suffered from back, neck and wrist pain in the past and we have seen this disappear after we changed our posture from sitting to standing. I strongly encourage everyone to have
a standing desk or make one. There are inexpensive DIY options as well. You can make a workable standing desk using a box or stool over the regular desk. A spare treadmill or standing cycle can be placed under the desk. Pedometer smart phone apps are available that will record all steps and movements of the day. Seek all opportunities to move. While you are working, get up and move every 15 minutes. Use a pedometer or a fitness tracker. A mundane activity like walking and moving can become fun and competitive once you measure and compare with family and friends. I wear a Fit-bit Charge and try to do the recommended 10,000 steps per day. Stand while you talk on the phone. Some offices are holding standing and walking meetings. I got rid of the copier and printer in my office. This forces me to walk down the hallway to get papers. I stopped bringing bottled water and now use a recyclable mug. Every time I get thirsty, I walk to the common area to refill my water. Prolonged sitting increases the risk of death from all causes, including cardiovascular diseases, irrespective of a person’s BMI, leisure activities, and exercise.
The solution is simple—move. Make use of fitness gadgets and tools available to make you less sedentary. Make a personal commitment to stand more, move more, and sit less. Keep a daily activity log noting your position at each hour. Try to find more opportunities to move rather than sit. It has been established that we become healthier, happier, and smarter as we move more. As you finish reading now, you may stand up, and ponder what Nietzsche meant when he said “Only thoughts reached by walking have value.” n
Dr. Panchajanya Paul, MD, ABIHM, ABPN, is an American Board certified Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychiatrist. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine. He holds adjunct faculty position at Emory University School of Medicine; University of Georgia & Georgia Regents University, and University of Central Florida School of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is a freelance writer who lives in Atlanta.
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 73
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commentary
Whither America: Melting Pot Redux? By Vijay Rajvaidya
F
rom a melting pot in the 19th century to the proverbial salad bowl in the 20th century, America is again in the throes of debate over immigration. The prevailing narrative in terms of immigration has suddenly been shaken by the President’s simplistic executive actions. Salad bowl is an abstract concept that alludes to the disparate parts that make up America’s whole. Interestingly, I live within striking distance of the salad bowl of America: Salinas, and I get to watch this concept work out right here. A uniform set of laws and the market represent the “dressing” in a salad. This is where things are changing. The market is demanding cheap labor, highly skilled personnel and lower costs. This applies to both high skilled engineers (H-1B category) and manual farm labor. The law is struggling to create an acceptable framework which can enforce immigration laws without scaring away legal immigrants, or discouraging immigration altogether. The proposed laws or the “dressing” by the administration is not going well with the “salad” served. While it is the right of American citizens to choose who they want to accept in their country, the proposed policies of the federal government seem to be the choice of only a few people, therefore, it is dividing this nation. More significantly, it has a strong potential to hurt us economically and impact the leadership position America enjoys in the world today. H-1B immigration is powered by a clear process and a set of steps. So here, the process can be changed in such a way to first seek US citizens to fill the positions. The only long-term solution to solving immigration through the H-1B visa is this: Train America. It will take 10 to 15 years but it will lay a foundation that will serve America during the next high-tech revolution which is about to happen in aerospace technology. India will also benefit in the long run by reducing the dependence of Indian IT service companies on H-1B visas for rev76 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
enue. Last time when America denied India super computer and cryogenic engine technology, India developed both indigenously. It’s high-time Indian technology companies leverage their experience in developing world class IT products. They have a huge market outside their own doorsteps. While H-1B visa is administered by an established process, there is no process to get farm workers from outside of the United States, the reason for which is obvious: there is no special skill set that is required. But, there was a time when the United States did not have enough workers to work on its farmlands and they did bring farm workers from Mexico. It was under the Bracero Program. There were a series of agreements established on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement. It operated as a joint program under the State Department, the Department of Labor, and the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) in the Department of Justice. The first braceros were admitted on September 27, 1942 and from 1948 to 1964, the United States imported on average 200,000 braceros per year. The braceros could not be used as replacement workers for American workers on strike; at the same time, the braceros were not allowed to go on strike or renegotiate wages. Ironically, the origin of illegal farm workers can also be traced back to the same program. American farmers became dependent on braceros who were willing to work hard for low wages. It’s no wonder that large-scale amnesty
programs have been announced to allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States legally since the 1980s. There was a market force of clear demand working behind the change. Market forces and the legal apparatus worked hand in hand to create change. In today’s climate, the law and market forces are working against each other. Both have to give in a bit to reach a workable solution. The United States is a land governed by law and due process. My attorney friend Yuli tells me that poorly written executive orders not only disrupt markets but they choke our courts too, because that is where they will be challenged and remedied. There is another factoid I came across recently which directly connects to immigration and employment. According to a Brookings Institution analysis (reported by the Washington Post), the 487 counties that Hillary Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The morethan-2,600 counties that President Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country’s economic activity last year. We are all aware of the counties that Clinton won. They have large segments of recent Asian and Mexican immigrants. These Clinton-counties are supporting the Trump-counties financially by providing cheaper goods and services. The Trump administration may want to consider a simple formula to make America great: It can be achieved by making Trump-counties produce more, and not by making Clinton-counties poorer. The dispossessed have a right to seek remedy for their condition but it’s the leadership which should keep this perspective in mind before attempting correction by “reforming” regulations. What seems very logical at the ground level to an aggrieved person may not stand the test of time for the whole nation. Amen! n Vijay Rajvaidya is Managing Director of India Currents.
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March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 77
the last word
Trump is Right:
Democrats’ Political Correctness Is To Blame
I
By Sarita Sarvate
was at my weekly watercolor class when, across the table, a woman said, “I don’t even know anyone who voted for Trump.” “I do,” I replied. I wasn’t kidding. My Chinese Dietician, an educated woman, voted for Trump. Many Filipinos I know also did. Some friends of friends in Nevada are ardent Trump supporters. Why? Because Democrats are failing to speak to them in a nuanced way about complex issues. Take immigration for example. Many citizens, including Democrats, have complicated feelings about the topic. Immigration should be managed, they believe. To have completely open borders is just not realistic. They want to be compassionate and humane, but they also want to be rational. Yet, after suffering a humiliating defeat in the general election, what was the Democrats’ first instinct? To double down on sanctuary cities. This kind of bunker mentality does not serve as a substitute for policy, particularly in Middle America. No wonder the Democrats lost! And don’t tell me that Hillary won the popular vote, that without the interference of James Comey, Vladimir Putin, and Julian Assange, she would have pulled through, that sexism was to blame. The truth is, beating Trump should have been a cakewalk. Don’t also tell me that Republicans blocked immigration overhaul; Obama could have pushed his agenda through during the first two years when he had a Congressional majority. If Democrats don’t stop making excuses, they will lose the next election, and the next election, and the election after that. The trouble is, Democrats joined the Republicans long ago in handing over the country to Wall Street and industry. I was aghast recently when a friend told me of a sweetheart deal a well-known high tech giant had offered a twenty-something from India. Details escape me, but the starting pay was way higher than salaries at which most professionals retire. If the industry had that kind of money to throw around, I wondered, why did it not do more to help America’s youth train for jobs of the future? Why was it that, after enjoying the infrastructure provided by Silicon Valley taxpayers, the company was not giving more back to the community? Why were Democratic politicians not demanding more from the industry? Why were liberals not pushing for reforms in our education system, which failed to produce the kind of workers that the industry of tomorrow needed, while half way across the world, Indian tech institutes were fine-tuning their graduates to a ‘t’? Why was American K-12 education run by a low-paid workforce and consisted of a hodgepodge of liberal arts information? Why could a few “symbol manipulators” become millionaires and billionaires while the rest of us could not even earn a living wage? I posted something along these lines on Facebook during my 78 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | March 2017
post-election despondency. The vitriol I received was unbelievable. I was labeled a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a Trumpian. I had to get off social media. Yet, just the other day, an Indian-American friend, a staunch liberal, voiced similar sentiments, perhaps because her own child is struggling. “I am afraid of talking about this; people will think I am a right wing reactionary,” she added. And that is the crux of the problem. People cannot even talk about their feelings of resentment and unfairness, let alone explore social and political remedies. What’s worse, Democratic politicians like Pelosi and Clinton don’t see the angst, perhaps because they are the elite whose children haven’t experienced it. I realize I am treading on thin ground as I write these words, that I am in danger of being misunderstood. But I do believe that young people who were born here, who have nowhere else to go, who are living with their parents because their jobs don’t pay them enough to cover the rent, should be a priority over people who want to come here. Only in a terribly lopsided world would we allow our industry to be so lazy as to do otherwise. Does saying so make me a xenophobe? Or does it make me a patriot and a realist? Even Bernie Sanders acknowledges that immigrant workers depress local wages. Right in our backyard, the University of California at San Francisco just announced a move of its information technology work to India, for example. Even as we hear stories of the displacement of American workers, we hear about high tech immigrants being underpaid. And all the while, a few others build mansions. So, I want to ask Democratic politicians a question that has been roiling around in my head since November 8. How did Trump know what plagued the American working class? Sitting in his golden tower on Fifth Avenue, how did he feel the pulse of America? And why and how did the Democrats fail to sense it? Don’t get me wrong. I think Trump is a narcissistic power monger who is about to curb our civil rights, our press, and our judiciary. What’s worse, without regard to morality or the future of the planet, Republicans are abetting him for their own selfish gains. This is why Democrats need to talk to middle America right now about these complex issues. They need to stop viewing the Midwestern voters through the prism of their old ideas and listen and see what is really plaguing them. They need to distinguish themselves from the Republicans by showing that they really do stand for the little guy. 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.
March 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 79
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