India Currents October 2016 edition

How Should You Vote?

by Raj Nathan

Colorful Fall Cooking

by Praba Iyer

All That Tamasha

by Kalpana Mohan

Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence

AP Classes SAT Scores ‘Good’ College

october 2016 • vol. 30 , no. 7 • indiacurrents.com • $3.95

How Much Is Too Much?

The high price of pushing kids to attain elite status

By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

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I

The Clear Choice

In less than five weeks our nation will elect its next president and recent polls suggest that a Trump Presidency is a very real prospect. It is frightening to think of this possibility and terrifying to think that one-half the country actually thinks of him as the better candidate. In 2000, when George W. Bush was first elected President, I became despondent.

However, I took solace in the fact that our democracy is a system of checks and balances. No matter the ideological differences between the two major parties, no matter the considerable influence of special interest groups, in the end legislation is always a matter of compromise, of back room deals and marginal change.

Ours is too big a nation and too unwieldy a democracy to change course quickly and unexpectedly. However what I did not anticipate, is the havoc that could be wrought by our Commander-in-chief in profoundly disturbing the world order. As Americans, we shoulder the responsibility of electing a President who inflicted considerable damage based on flimsy intelligence that warned of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Unfortunately candidate Trump makes President George Bush look like a very good president, if not a great one. He has shown contempt for our democratic institutions. Trump’s grasp of policy is that of a fifth grader who has slept through his civics lesson. He cannot hide his dislike for immigrants, minorities, and others who don’t look or think like him. If elected President he has promised to overturn international treaties and cozy up to Putin.

Perhaps he sees in Putin a mirror image of himself—a demagogue who has scant regard for democratic institutions and the rule of law. Trump has the ability to create havoc both domestically and abroad. His charm and appeal lies in dividing people and in bringing out the worst in us. “Let’s Make American Great Again,” is a fool’s promise meant to mislead and divide. It is a dangerous call to nationalism in its worst sense as evidenced by the hatred that binds people at Trump rallies.

Candidate Clinton is a seasoned politician. Her experience as a Senator from New York, as First Lady for two presi-

dential terms, and as Secretary of State under President Obama have plunged her headlong into the rough and tumble of Washington politics. Her grasp of international affairs is second to none. More importantly she has a vision for America, one that is based on ideology, pragmatism, and policy, and not on the vague promise of greatness. Her detractors in Congress tried their best to burn her at the stake of Libya, only to find that she came out unsinged. The bar is always high for a trailblazer and she will find her path to a historic presidency no easier.

This election is not about gun ownership, abortion rights, or Supreme Court nominations. This election is unfortunately not an ideological battle. It is a battle for the heart and soul of America, a nation built on the promise of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In voting for Trump we will be rolling back centuries of hard fought liberties that were promised by our founding fathers and realized by our collective actions as a nation, often

at great cost. A vote for Trump will be a betrayal of America. Hillary Clinton is the clear choice.

Read our magazine for articles on the upcoming elections. Through the blur of the school week as Mondays collapse into Fridays, step back and take a clear look at goals for your children. Our cover story, “How Much is Too Much?” by Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, and the essay, “More than a GPA,” by Maya Murthy will help you understand the pressures faced by high school students to excel. Our essays on hiking the Grand Canyon, film and book reviews, health and wellness, recipes and a fictional story will expand your mental boundaries.

We work hard to expand your mental boundaries and moodscapes and I can’t be prouder!

Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, Managing Editor

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INDIA CURRENTS October 2016 • vol 33 • no 7

ELECTIONS

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3 | EDITORIAL The Clear Choice

By Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

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EDUCATION

8 | COMMENTARY No Amma for America

By Sandip Roy

24 | FICTION The Sandalwood Tree

By Jyothi Vinod 34 | BOOKS Review of A World Elsewhere

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The high price of pushing kids to excel

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letters to the editor A Welcome, an Adieu and the Precious Seed We welcome Nirupama Vaidhyanathan as the new managing editor. We bid farewell and the best of luck to Jaya Padmanabhan, who relinquished the position for greener pastures. It was always a pleasure to work with her.

In her first editorial, “Life is Good,” Nirupama talks about how the precious seed sprouts and grows during her short vacation. In our front yard, we have a cherry tomato plant. It was not planted, but sprouted out of a crevice and steals water from the lawn sprinklers. I estimate that it has provided at least three hundred little fruits and continues to do so.

In a different field, I wanted to recall the detection, recently at CERN, Switzerland, of a tiny seed, a particle named Higgs Boson. Profs. Higgs and Englert won the Nobel prize for predicting this entity in 2013. Incidentally, the boson, an atom sized particle with very strange properties, was predicted by and named after Prof. Satyendranath Bose in the late 1930s. Satyan, as he is respectfully remembered did not receive any awards for this stupendous theoretical work,.except of course the name. Remember, there were no computers at that time. Satyan worked from scratch on first principles to create the concept of a fourth state of matter: the condensates. That claim was validated experimentally decades later with the award of another Nobel prize for Bose’s original theoretical prediction, shared by Wieman and Cornell of the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2001. Satyan has passed on, un-honored and unsung.

Scanning a wide horizon from subatomic particles to photons, plants, animals and humans, Nirupama is right: life, as we learn time and again, sprouts with vitality and vigor in ways that are exciting and hopeful. The beauty of nature and the nature of beauty are unfathomable.

P. Mahadevan, email

Pamban Bridge View

The September 2016 issue was a pleasure to read covering the lady who drives the Lotus, the thugs amongst us and the travel article on Dhanushkodi. As a 6 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

septuagenarian, I fondly remember the days when Dhanushkodi was a port. The Boat Mail, later called as the Indo-Ceylon Express, started from Madras-Egmore station and traveled through the main line to stop on the pier in Dhanushkodi. Passengers could walk to the ship through a small drawbridge. If I remember right, the ships were also owned partly by the South Indian Railways. The Boat Mail train used to slow down going through the Pamban Bridge and it was a beautiful sight to see sunsets and sunrises from Pamban.

Viswanathan, email We received many comments regarding Shikha Tandon’s piece, “An Olympian’s Journey.”

Check out the online article for her video. A sample letter is included below.

Interest in Indian Sports Rises

I would like those who indulge in India-bashing to understand that taking sports as a career is very risky.

Blaming the government for infrastructure, corruption and dishonesty is passé. Primarily due to the improvement in our economy, our capacity to take risks is gradually on the rise. In due course, I am certain that India’s performance in sports will improve considerably.

A period of 70 years in the history of a nation that was enslaved for centuries is negligible. Sports is featuring now after ‘roti, kapada, makan’, health care and education issues have been partially addressed.

Instead of blaming, please ask yourself about your contribution towards sports.

Change; Act now.

Sidharth Seth, email

Limitations Are Drawn By Us

Great article,Gayatri! Everyone featured in the article, “UnDesis: Unconventional Choices,” showed that limitations and boundaries are drawn by us. When you are determined, your true grit shines through.

Your interview with Jatinder showed me what an amazing trailblazer woman she is. Also, we hope you keep writing more often and bring to the forefront many such hidden gems.

Deepta Avantsa, email

Send us an original letter of upto 300 words to letters@indiacurrents.com Letters are edited for brevity and clarity.

Follow at twitter.com/indiacurrents on facebook.com/ IndiaCurrents

Most Popular Articles September 2016

1) An Olympian’s Journey Shikha Tandon 2) Undesis: Unconventional Choices Gayatri Subramaniam 3) Life is Good Nirupama Vaidhyanathan 4) Mitigating Risk of Heart Disease Prakash Narayan 5) Digital Edition—September India Currnts 6) Banks of An Ancient River Aniruddh Chawda 7) Master Storyteller: Nilita Vachani Nirupama Vaidhyanathan 8) Journey to Land’s End Vidya Pradhan 9) What is Organic Anyway?

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election

No Amma For America

T

he truest thing former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his leaked emails is the one least talked about: “It is time to start ignoring [Donald Trump].” He wrote to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in December 2015: “You guys are playing his game, you are his oxygen.” Even bashing Trump does not work, he says. “To go and call him an idiot just emboldens him.”

Instead, the media has been fixated on Powell’s opinions about the two candidates for president. So, he does not think highly of Trump. He’s “a national disgrace and an international pariah,” says Powell. But it’s his opinion of Clinton that’s being called more damning, “I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect. A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home,” according to the New York Post.

And, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”

Those who opposed Clinton—and that includes legions of Bernie Sanders supporters—triumphantly brandish those lines as clinching proof of Clinton’s fatal character flaws. Why the man who misled the UN about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction should have much credibility as a character witness is puzzling.

What’s more puzzling is how Powell, thanks to his aura of a sort of grave Morgan Freeman of politics, largely gets a pass on the sexism in his comments. Notice what he finds so objectionable about Clinton. Her husband’s affairs. Her greed.

Her ambition. As if Trump is exempt from greed or ambition. Or affairs, for that matter.

But in a 70-year-old man, ambition is an asset, greed is unexceptional and affairs are proof of virility. They are certainly not disqualifications for higher office. In a woman, those same qualities are liabilities.

This double standard is so normalized by now that we barely notice it. We see the more obvious tropes of sexism: the memes of a KFC-style HRC special “two fat thighs.” But Powell’s comments let slip a 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

By Sandip Roy

J Jayalalitha, Chief Minister and Hillary Clinton

more insidious kind of “likeability sexism.”

Clinton is not “nice” enough in a culture where women are supposed to be ‘nice.’

Thus, a Trump can talk about disarming her bodyguards and seeing what happens and that’s just Trump being Trump, worth a little tut-tutting at best. But when a Clinton in a rare unguarded moment, talks about the “deplorables” in Trump’s base, she has to face an editorial backlash and quickly back-pedal.

Clinton’s long record in public life means voters can have legitimate policydifferences with her stance on many topics and the way she’s evolved, the inevitable U-turns on issues and accusations of being in the pockets of donors. The problem for Clinton is less the in-your-face hostility she faces from the right wing that snarls ‘Trump That Bitch!’ at overheated rallies.

It’s a more nuanced sexism often masquerading as patronising advice.

A male television anchor feels far fewer qualms about interrupting Clinton than about interrupting Trump even when he pops out yet another whopper of a lie. She can’t get too deep into policy details. It would be too wonky. She can’t be seen as

nagging or complaining. No whining about double standards.

Legendary journalist Bob Woodward advised her to “lower the temperature” in her voice, something no one ever told the stentorian Sanders.

The problem, writes Dana Millbank, in the Washington Post, is, “Men can be tough and warm at the same time— think Ronald Reagan—but for women it’s a trade-off.”

It’s a trade-off that those who have gone before Clinton in other countries have also struggled with. Perhaps a Mamata Banerjee, a Jayalalithaa or a Mayawati in India are luckier. They have faced the gauntlet of ugly sexism, but they do not have husbands whose sex lives have to become their responsibility. They have also adopted warm monikers like Didi, Amma and Behenji.

The comfort of those familial nicknames weirdly gives them a certain leeway to act tough and get away with it, because at some level, their voters are reassured that those women are still taking care of them just as Didis and Ammas do.

American politics, alas, has no room for a Hillary-Didi. She’s stuck with being just Hillary Clinton. The great irony is that in an election in which Trump is a candidate, it’s Hillary Clinton who has to make sure she does not come across as too threatening.

Clinton can lose the election for many reasons. America might well be over the Clintons. But let’s not pretend that America, left or right, is over the sexism. n This article first appeared in the Economic Times. Reprinted with permission.

Sandip Roy is a writer and cultural commentator. and the author of the novel, “Don’t let him know.”

Notice what he finds so objectionable about Clinton. Her husband’s affairs. Her greed. Her ambition. As if Trump is exempt from greed or ambition. Or affairs, for that matter.

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perspective

More Than a GPA

By Maya Murthy

I

spent the first year of high school, like many others in this area, comparing myself to the people around me. I’d ask people for their test scores and spend hours seething with envy over little victories I saw people achieving. In retrospect, I realize that it was easier for me to base my own self-worth on a numerical system: if my friend got a 95 percent and I got a 92 percent, then she was three points higher than me. Concepts like kindness or honesty or courage were a little less concrete and so more difficult to use as the foundation for a fifteen-year old’s identity.

After a while, this system started to fall apart. I took a class in tenth grade and failed almost every test. I would study frantically, only to get 60 percent if I was lucky, and 30 percent if I was not. That would have made me 25 points worse off than the person next to me even on a good day. Eventually I realized that my worldview wasn’t sustainable, at least if I wanted to graduate with some sort of sanity, and I opened my eyes. I looked at my classmates for the first time and tried to remember something about them that didn’t have to do with their grades or SAT scores.

I couldn’t. Some of these people had been in my classes since the first grade, and I couldn’t remember a single thing about them beyond a subject or two that they’dexcelled at, or a test they had done poorly on. Sure I might know a few of my friends, but most of my relationships with people were firmly based on school— teachers, subjects, scores and homework.

Fluid and fragile, these relationships were liable to break at the slightest amount of pressure applied.

So I decided to ask them, about anything other than school. I spent the next three years talking about the art they drew, their favorite authors, issues revolving around social justice and a recipe for a mug cake they’d made three nights ago. I asked about their first relationships, their dreams, and whether they really did want to be a doctor and do dissections which I

found disgusting. (Apparently, the answer was yes from more than a few.) My classmates told me about their internships, the last movie they watched, their parents and who their favorite Bollywood actor was.

It seems simple, but the truth about growing up in a desi-dominated suburb like Cupertino is that we’re all raised to see each other as nothing more than the sum of our academic careers—all of us defined by the same metric of test scores, college lists and weighted GPAs. The pressure we talk about, the weight that sends kids into spirals of depression and anxiety is a function of trying to fit a mold too small to contain our own excesses.

I know that changing culture is hard, and that is what our state of academic one-upmanship has become—a culture.

Simply identifying that we’re over-stressed and under-confident doesn’t help us find a solution, unless we start doing things differently than what we’re doing right now.

If the problem is that we don’t know each other, then the easiest thing to do is to start asking the right questions. Let’s take all those conversations we have at desi parties, we can all identify with the scenario which plays out something like

14 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

this: the smile, the inquiry into general well being and then finally the inquisition.

The merits of the ACT vs the SAT are debated rigorously, the optimum number and minimum score of SAT 2s pondered over an appetizer and soft drink. College lists are compared, adjusted for number of schools, along with acceptance rate and the difficulty of gaining admission to a prospective major.

Each of these conversations reduce a student to nothing more than their occupation, makes them feel like their academic ability is the only metric that matters.

When this ability is the only thing everyone wants to know about, it makes you believe that your test taking skill is the only thing that makes you a person that people want to know. Theoretically, we all know that every person is more than the college they will attend, but it’s hard to grasp that concept when your prospects are the only topic on the table.

Personally, I took the ACT and three SAT 2s. I didn’t apply to any of the top 20 schools.

None of this is as important to me as Captain America, Hindu mythology, or the last thing Donald Trump did. The issue

I had friends who made their own trail isn’t that we can’t have conversations mix, friends who were nationally ranked about school, but when conversations fencers, and friends who loved to wear about academics dominate the converDesi parties follow this exact tie dyed pants. One friend wrote her sation that’s a problem. Academics are a essay about Rajnikanth, while part of every kid’s life, but so are sports pattern: the inquiry into general college another insisted in sitting in the exact teams and music, movies, books, as well-being and finally the inqui- same center row in a darkened movie well as the plans made with friends last None of these interests were weekend. Someone’s college list or test sition. The merits of the ACT vs theater. even vaguely similar, and so I was able scores don’t tell us about the muffins the SAT are debated rigorously, to know each person as themselves— they baked for a birthday party, nor do and complete on their own. they show us the comic strips they read the optimum number and mini- whole So now that school has begun I’d as a child. mum score of SAT 2s pondered like to ask a favor. The next time you I asked my friends about what they a high school student, ask them wished someone could have asked them, over an appetizer and soft drink. meet about the movies they last watched, or and mostly, they said that they wantthe things they wish they could bake. ed to talk about their passions. They Because I promise, there’s absolutely wanted to talk about the movie Legally nothing you could learn from their test Blonde. The future of journalism. Varun When I graduated, I took with me scores that you couldn’t figure out talking Dhawan, the actor. The 2016 presidential a collection of facts about the people I about literally anything else.n election. The TV show The Flash. The San had known, little inconsequential things Francisco Giants. Harry Potter. Someone like the way one friend doodled eyes in Maya Murthy is a first year student at the wanted to talk about their cat. Another the margins of notebook paper, and how University of Toronto who loves pop music, easy wanted to talk about how it felt to fall another loved mixed martial arts. A friend to follow muffin recipes and stories about hein love for the first time. Food, favorite of mine looked at colleges based on their roes. She tries to follow politics despite her betteachers, books, fictional characters, curdance teams, while another decorated her ter instincts, and inevitably ends up watching rent affairs. bedroom walls with old birthday cards. romantic comedies when things look too bleak.

“Anything,” they all said “anything but college.”

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 15

cover

Pressure Cooker How much is too much?

By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

I

am an English professor. That means that after thirteen years of elementary and high school, four years of university, and seven more years of graduate education, I decided that I hadn’t yet had enough of school.

Over the years, my position at the table has changed—now I’m the one apologizing for bad penmanship on the blackboard. But I am literally still in school, because I believe deeply in the processes and aspirations of education.

I value school. So people think I’m joking when I tell them the following: That it truly doesn’t matter where they go to college. And that my daughter can be anything she wants to be—except a straight-A student.

I’ve been affiliated with major public and private universities in California, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, and now Nevada. I’ve worked with world famous public intellectuals and lesser known scholars of equal intellect. I’ve taught graduates of America’s elite high schools, first generation college-bound students, and “non-traditional” students.

I know, and don’t deny, the value of a “name-brand” college, but a “namebrand” college is no guarantee of an inspiring education, never mind lifelong success. I know that you can find committed, brilliant teachers and students in any institution—and that numerous factors determine who ends up where. And I know what it means to be a straight-A student, and what it doesn’t. I know what

good grades, high SAT scores, AP exams, and admission to highly-ranked colleges get you, and what they don’t, and how, finally, irrelevant all of that is to the work of trying to live and build, for oneself and others, a meaningful, critical life. ***

L

et me say that again, with a different emphasis. Most people agree that high SAT scores don’t equate to a meaningful life, and that GPAs don’t capture intellectual potential.

But what if—when taken to the extreme— a belief in quantified academic merit is actually at odds with the pursuit of academic and personal excellence?

All over the country, educators, parents, and pundits are now asking variants of this question. Open a newspaper anywhere in the country, and you’ll read about “high-pressure” schools and the health risks associated with increased stress

I know what good grades, high SAT scores, Advanced Placement exams, and admission to highly-ranked colleges get you, and what they don’t, and how, finally, irrelevant all of that is to the work of trying to live and build, for oneself and others, a meaningful, critical life.

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among those who are overly focused on grades, resume-padding, and what Frank Bruni calls in Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, “the college admissions mania.”

“Expectations surrounding education have spun out of control,” argues Vicki Abeles, author of Beyond Measure. “On top of a seven-hour school day, our kids march through hours of nightly homework, daily sports practices and band rehearsals, and weekend-consuming assignments and tournaments. Each activity is seen as a step on the ladder to a top college, an enviable job and a successful life.”

India Currents has long been attuned to this problem, given that our first circle of address includes high-achieving Indian Americans of the competitive Silicon Valley. “Let Kids Be Kids,” Nirupama Vaidhyanathan wrote in these pages nearly a decade ago, recounting the machinations of “overzealous Indian parents” who micromanage (if not complete) their children’s homework and jealously watch the successes of their peers. In 2013, Sarita Sarvate argued in “Letting Children Be Children” that the Indian American community in the Valley is too “obsessed with success” and filled with “Tiger moms” and dads who make comparatively less ambitious Indians “feel like pariahs.”

To be clear: This is not an indictment of achievement. You or your children

might be among the Bay Area’s many Speech-and-Debaters, Spelling Bee-ers, and Intel Science Searchers. I, too, grew up in San Jose and am the product of schools known for academic rigor. But when researchers like Abeles are reporting a “nationwide epidemic of school-related stress,” it bears asking: what exactly are we emphasizing when we emphasize grades and college admissions? As a community that values “achievement,” what have we achieved?

I was beginning a graduate program in the East Bay when, in 2009-2010, Palo Alto experienced its first “suicide cluster”: six teenagers, including four from the same school, killed themselves over a span of nine months. The news was incredibly disturbing, but I soon put it out of my mind as a grotesque aberration. Part of me clearly didn’t want to believe that high schoolers now experience stresses meriting suicide-prevention and wide-scale communal intervention.

When the “echo cluster” struck—between October 2014 and March 2015, four more students from the same community committed suicide—it stopped me in my tracks. By this time, I had become a parent, and even though my own child

was years from high school, I was already negotiating the delicate balance between praise and pressure, expectation and demand.

Soon after the second cluster, Palo Alto student Carolyn Walworth penned an op-ed in the Palo Alto Weekly that confirmed parents’ and educators’ worst fears.

“As I sit in my room staring at the list of colleges…I can’t help but feel desolate,” Walworth wrote. “My stress began in elementary school, where students were segregated…as ‘early’ and ‘late’ readers…

Middle school didn’t get any better. ” She wrote of having panic attacks and missed periods, as school-related stress manifested as physical illness: “We are not teenagers.

We are lifeless bodies in a system that breeds competition, hatred, and discourages teamwork and genuine learning.”

It’s possible to dismiss Walworth’s cri de coeur as one student’s negative experience of a competitive high school environment. But Maya Murthy’s essay, in this issue of India Currents (pg.14), suggests that much of what Walworth identifies is widely shared. “I couldn’t remember a single thing about them beyond a subject or two they’d excelled at,” Murthy writes of her freshman-year classmates. “[M]y

worldview wasn’t sustainable, at least if I wanted to graduate with some sort of sanity.”

We cannot point to impassioned student writing and think that it is merely a product of teen angst. Adults are a big part of the problem, and the statistics confirm that these are widespread, community issues. In July 2016, the California Healthy Kids Survey found that “onethird of California’s 11th-graders and onequarter of seventh-graders reported feeling chronically sad or hopeless over the past 12 months.” Earlier this year, Dr. Stuart Slavin of Saint Louis University School of Medicine announced the results of a wellness study he conducted at a major public high school in Fremont. 54% of students surveyed were suffering from depression.

80% showed moderate to severe anxiety levels.

I talked to Slavin about his findings.

“My sense,” he told me, “is that parents are generally motivated…by wanting what is best for their children. The problem [is] that their view of what is ‘best’ is in my opinion often too narrow and in some ways misguided.” He noted that Indian American parents in particular, given the highly competitive environment around college admissions in India, might believe that “the more prestigious/elite the college that a student gets into, the better path that puts this student on in life.” But increased pressure can have serious effects on children’s mental health. Are the possible costs of depression, eating disorders, self-injurious behavior, and other adverse outcomes worth it? “What we should be encouraging is a healthy pursuit of excellence,” Slavin says, “rather than a potentially damaging pursuit of perfection.”

When I first read Slavin’s report, it brought to mind studies that have found high rates of depression and suicidal tendencies among graduate students. I thought, too, of the demand for “effortless perfection” that haunts high achieving university students, especially young women, who are supposed to have, do, and be it all without manifesting effort or stress.

Clearly, these problems are not contained in grades 9-12. When the over-burdened high schoolers reach college, the anxiety, unhealthy habits, and burden of expectation come with them.

Slavin confirmed my anecdotal sus

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picions, noting that “depression in adolescence is associated with a higher risk of depression in adulthood.” He added: “Parents can’t be comfortable in the belief that their [high school students] will be fine after they get through with all of this.” Well over half the college counseling directors surveyed in a 2014 study reported steady increases, since 2009, in college students with clinical depression and anxiety disorders. Every year, more students arrive at university on psychiatric medication.

After four years of high school lived in preparation for a fantasy future in that perfect college, college students find heightened challenges and new stresses—if, that is, they aren’t already entirely burned out.

Now they must delay the development of deep relationships and practices of self-care for life post-college. “Real life,” they tell themselves, is what they’ll be living in the future, an imagined future that eclipses childhood years spent in a blur of anxiety and worry, a future that they will one day come to view as the ever-receding horizon of the unlived past. *** n 2015, The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin asked just what it was about the Silicon Valley that had created this particularly volatile pressure cooker. Her hypothesis? Affluence and Asian exceptionalism.

On the first point, Rosin cited the work of child development scholar, Suniya Luthar, who has shown that children from upper and upper-middle-class families evidence depression, anxiety, and high-risk behaviors like substance abuse and promiscuity at a rate two to three times the national average. As Luthar writes, “Affluence leads people to believe they are wholly responsible for their own success or failure…they believe that they can control most aspects of their lives…They come to expect perfection. This is a double illusion, since neither complete control nor perfection is possible.”

Obviously, not everyone in the Silicon Valley is wealthy. While researching this story, I read numerous, wrenching stories

I

about Bay Area college students who can’t afford rent, and who have to choose between buying textbooks and eating dinner.

20% of San Jose State University students surveyed in one study report “sometimes” or “often” not eating for a full day. Bay Area housing costs have driven countless families away from their communities; now, some students make commutes as long as 70 miles in order to remain in the schools they know. The students I teach at a land-grant university in Nevada face similar economic challenges. They ask for extensions on assignments because they can’t afford childcare or they’re simultaneously working two jobs.

Given the material challenges faced by these comparatively disadvantaged students, it can feel politically incorrect to dwell on what Luthar calls “The Problem with Rich Kids.” But there is a problem.

A disproportionate number of students at the Silicon Valley’s elite public and private high schools are from wealthy families, and while it’s possible for wealthy people to raise well-adjusted children, what Luthar terms the “high rate of maladjustment among affluent adolescents” is a mounting concern. At issue are the development of “acquisitive” rather than “philanthropic” values, “narcissistic exhibitionism,” criminal behavior, shallow senses of self, extreme vulnerability to parental criticism, acute status consciousness, and inability to form close friendships. As Luthar warns,“[The] values [of today’s highly educated youth] will disproportionately shape norms in education, politics, and business.”

Then, there is the question of whether the dominance of Asians in these schools, including us Indians, is part of the problem. This is not a new charge. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal held up two high-performing Bay Area high schools as exemplary causes of “The New White Flight”: “Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven…[The] schools, put…bluntly, are too Asian.” In her reporting, Rosin found that “some non-Asian parents” still

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attribute the increased pressure in high school to the changing ethnic demographics of the Valley. One well-known Palo Alto high school is now 40% Asian; another in Saratoga is “about three-fifths Asian.” Four of the last nine students to commit suicide in Palo Alto were of Asian origin.

This is not an issue unique to the Silicon Valley. Amy Chua, the original “Tiger Mom,” lives in New Haven, Connecticut. In Anjali Enjeti’s recent telling in her article, “Ghosts of White People Past: Witnessing White Flight From an Asian Ethnoburb,” the problem extends to “ethno-burbs” all over the country, including her neighborhood of Johns Creek, Georgia, where whites are moving out of their school district for reasons like, “Asian parents take their kids for extra tutoring…

My kids won’t get into a good college because of all of the Asians.” The tacit racism of such claims is the subject of Enjeti’s article. Less frequently discussed is how Asian students themselves are impacted by these trends. Too often, an Asian student’s “average” performance is construed as failure relative to that of “model” peers.

Silicon Valley high schools are increasingly attuned to this constellation of problems. In 2007, the “Stressed Out Schools” conference brought parents, educators, and researchers together to brainstorm stress reduction strategies like “‘college free’ zones in which [families] don’t discuss SAT scores, college applications, where you are applying.” Scholar Denise Clark Pope spearheaded the effort. “[High school students] are not mini-adults,” Pope stressed. “They have very different developmental needs...They need 9.5 hours of sleep each night…their brains are not fully developed, and their bodies are still changing…They’ll be ready for ‘reality’ soon enough.”

Slavin similarly advocates limiting homework, the amount of time that can be spent on extracurriculars, and the number of AP classes that students can take. This April, the Mercury News’ Sharon Noguchi reported that Bay Area schools are taking

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 19

College Admissions Have Become Very Competitive Our experts can help!

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steps to “ease up on pressure” by changing school start-times and bringing therapy dogs to campus.

Are such measures effective?

High schools are now trying to support depressed students, which is commendable, but depression is a symptom of the crisis—not the underlying cause. In our exchange, Slavin stressed that the idea that “depression is a disease or an illness” is itself part of the problem.

“Depression,” he said, “is often what’s called reactive; it is produced or at least initiated by the toxicity of the environment. When viewed purely as an illness, it lets all of us off the hook…We should be looking at this crisis as an environmental health issue.”

Put differently, a teenager driven to despair by school stress is not an example of individual pathology. It’s not a parenting problem. It’s a communal plague in which many actors from teachers to college recruiters to coaches to parents to students, are complicit. This is the water in which we now swim. And everyone in question—from the Bay Area, to other ethno-burbs, to any one of many highpressure, achievement-oriented, affluent, competitive communities—needs to move from a reactive mode to a proactive one, in which we are not simply, to paraphrase Walworth, “putting bandaids over gunshot wounds,” but actually getting rid of the guns. ***

a teenager driven to despair by school stress is not an example of individual pathology. At issue is not a parenting problem.

It’s a communal plague, in which everyone, from teachers to college recruiters to coaches to parents to students, is complicit. This is the water in which we now swim.

I

n the movies, the iconic American high school is one of prom queens and homecomings, football games and locker-room sociality. High school is the playground of independent, sexually liberated, seemingly “adult” teenagers whose parents are rarely seen on camera.

College is a pervasive subtext, but not really the point. When I started high school in 1999, it was immediately clear that my experience was not going to look like what I’d seen in the movies, and not just because I went to an all-girls Catholic school. My experience was different because, as an Indian American, I grew up in a community that does not view high school as a terminal degree or an end in itself. My mother often dismissed the importance Americans place on high school graduation, as if children become adults at 18, as if college were icing on the cake of maturation, and not the first stop in a journey of higher education that would, ideally in her view, extend beyond the first post-graduate degree.

And yet, the thing that saved me from the Silicon Valley pressure cooker is that I didn’t actually go to one of those highstress schools. I went to a school that was good—some programs, like English and History, were excellent—but it was patently not, between 1999 and 2003, one of the Bay Area’s “best” high schools. Our average SAT scores were lower. We didn’t send students to the Intel Science search.

Frankly, we didn’t have as many Asians.

The majority of my classmates intended to

remain in-state for college.

I couldn’t fetishize AP courses because there weren’t many, so I wrote for the school newspaper, started a column in this magazine, was selected for the Mercury News’ Board of Contributors, and came into my own as a writer and thinker. I didn’t fetishize any particular college because our school had no admissions track record at any of them, and so when I got a university opportunity I didn’t expect, I could embrace it wholly.

As a Bay Area-bred Indian American, I feel sad saying this, but not being surrounded by other Indians was probably the making of me. Not going to a “better” high school was the making of me. Being a relatively big fish in a small pond was the making of me. Being surrounded by peers who had aspirations beyond getting into the highest-ranked college was the making of me.

Having classmates for whom high school was potentially a terminal degree taught me something as well: to live life in the present, not to defer real learning, growth, and meaning to the next stage of life, when I would, finally, have “arrived.”

Times have changed. My old high school now resembles those more competitive schools, and I wonder if there’s any place left in the Valley, in the country, that hasn’t been touched by the pressure machine. I wonder, because I’m going to have to make hard decisions about my own child’s education soon enough.

You may be making or living with such decisions now. I’m not worried about my daughter’s grades, how much she eventually earns, or what college she goes to. At three, she is already radiantly bright and driven. All I can ever ask of her is that she become more fully herself.

But I do worry about us parents, educators, and community members. Will we be able to recreate an educational system that values curiosity, openness to failure and engagement in the world? And, when we do, will we defend it? n Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan has been a regular contributor to India Currents since 2001.

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 21

education

Want to Impress Colleges?

Be Yourself

By Purvi Mody

H

ow much weight do colleges give to participation in sports? Does it help if I quit tennis and pursue a more unique sport? Can I get into a top school if I am captain of Speech and Debate? Do I really have to do research? Is 2300 the score I need to get into any college? What if I try to skip ahead in math and do calculus in my junior year?

Is that better than if I do calculus in my senior year?

These are the types of questions I often get from parents of older students as it relates to their high school students. But these were the questions that a very eager and precocious seventh grader asked me the other day. As a thirteen-year old, she is already wrapped up in the college admissions race going so far as to know the name of her “dream” school. While I was not shocked to hear from such a young girl her plans for the future because so many students are thinking about college earlier and earlier in their lives, I was a little saddened to think about her pursuing only those interests and activities she deemed would “look good on her college application.”

Middle school students, all students for that matter, should use their time pursuing activities that truly appeal to their sense of curiosity, their sense of adventure, and their sense of fun. Colleges, yes, want to see accomplishments, strong academics, and a complete list of activities, all of which should stem from a student’s interests and not from some preconceived notion of what is expected. Admissions officers do not match applications against a set list of criteria. And when colleges tout the use of a holistic admissions process they are not just trying to calm the applying masses. So rather than planning the next year or few years trying to be the perfect college applicant, use that time being the best “you” that you can be.

Get involved in the activities that really speak to you. Those are the ones where you are likely to gain some recognition anyways. And in whatever you pursue reach for the stars, knowing that failure can be just as valuable as success. If the opportunities you want are not in front of you, find ways to make them happen.

Start a club if you want but because you are passionate about a cause not because starting a club shows leadership. Think beyond the bounds of your high school.

Perhaps you would love to or need to get a job. Working in a fast food restaurant can teach you some very valuable skills about working with customers and working in

Don’t sign up for the hardest courses because that is what you think you need to do. Take the classes that excite you and also ones that show colleges your academic potential.

22 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

an office can teach you about a potential career. Both are valuable.

When it comes to academics and test scores, balance is the key. You should push yourself to your limits. But you also have to be deeply aware of what those limits are. Don’t sign up for the hardest courses because that is what you think you need to do. Take the classes that excite you and also ones that show colleges your academic potential. And work for your test scores but don’t obsess about them—admissions officers certainly don’t.

The reality is that almost anything you do is valuable to an admission’s officer because it gives a glimpse into who you are.

In the several pages that make up your college application, admissions officers want to learn as much about you as possible —about what you will contribute to the campus, what you will gain from the experience of being a student, and what you will represent as an alumnus of the school.

In trying to build a well-rounded class, admissions officers want students that will contribute in different ways. Admitting students that fit any checklist will only bring together a boring, uni-dimensional group of students that will not inspire one another.

It is important to think about the future. It is important to have goals. But it is also essential to live in the moment. As I tell my students, this is your life. Live it to the best of your ability and admissions officers will be more than impressed. n Purvi Mody is an expert College Admissions Counselor at Insight Education, an Educational and College Admissions Counseling company in the Bay Area since 1999. Send us your questions about your student’s high school or college admissions at info@insighteducation.net

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 23

fiction

Memory of a Fragrance Katha Fiction Contest 2016 • Third Place

By Jyothi Vinod

I

But what was a sixty-year old woman sprinkled a few drops of water on like me doing in the bylanes of her childthe flat round stone and worked the hood? This traipsing back into the past severed tree limb—smooth face downwouldn’t do. I invoked the names of a wards—in a sequence of relentless spirals. few deities, held the wall for support, and Despite protests from my aging joints, I shuffled to the bedroom. I looked around sat cross-legged in the puja room. It was my room, relieved that my son, Jagdish my last evening in the apartment. I colwould arrive the next morning to help lected the soft scented paste on a silver me pack before the final move. What had leaf and anointed the framed pictures of he said? “We’ll pack only essentials. There the smiling deities. When I touched the really isn’t the space for everything here. cool paste to my forehead and throat and Ma, you understand, don’t you?” joined my palms in prayer, the breath of an Did I? I wasn’t sure I knew what I ancient sandalwood tree filled my lungs. needed anymore.

I leaned against the wall and heard Jagdish worked as an investment a voice from my childhood—my grandbanker in Perth and surprisingly had also mother’s: “Kamli, close your eyes and gained fame as a poet in recent years. He imagine a dense jungle. You know, just dedicated his first book of poetry to me. like the one behind this house, where birds I didn’t understand much of it, though. of brilliant plumage paint the air in color I suggested he dedicate his next book to and song. Beasts roam free and fearless. my grandmother, the unsung The mighty river braids and poet and philosopher, whose unbraids her watery tresses “Every now and then the rain will orches- genes I believe he definitely on the forest floor before inherited. He now dedicates the plunging down a misty watrate a melody from the tree tops to the books to his wife and children. terfall. Every now and then Two years ago my husband the rain will orchestrate a roots. Only in a home like this, your sandalHari was struck by a scooter melody from the tree tops wood tree will grow, tall and beautiful, fillwhile crossing the road to the to the roots. Only in a home like this, your sandalwood ing her every pore with the scent of the jun- milk booth. Internal head injutree will grow, tall and beaugle. Not in a little earthen pot in your city.” ries beneath a calm countenance finally claimed him. And he was tiful, filling her every pore gone, just like that, smiling. We with the scent of the jungle. had just settled in our new flat Not in a little earthen pot in in Bangalore that year after his your city.” in our balcony back home in Pune. And retirement, confident we’d live together She had placed the cool sandalwood that was her reply. She wielded swords in for at least the next twenty years. block in my small hands. “Don’t worry. words of spontaneous verse, though I was I had lived in many cities across the You’re only five years old. You can have too young then to catch her veiled remoncountry with Hari.

But it didn’t take us this when you marry. But someday, far, strance against my father and uncles who long to realize that populous cities only far away in the distant future, all that will had uprooted themselves from her home crowded us into loneliness.

Sampigegram remain is the memory of a fragrance.” in Sampigegram to build lives in cities. beckoned like a green beacon.

We decided As a child, every time I visited her I I often imagined chopped limbs of giant to relocate there one day with a few likehad worried that her using the sandalwood sandalwood trees marching into homes minded relatives.

The move never hapblock twice every day in the puja room across the country, being worked upon, pened.

The idea of rural bliss appealed to would reduce it to a thin sliver. I asked her and disappearing forever. It had made me all of us, but nestled forever in the future if I could grow my own sandalwood tree anxious.

24 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

like an unborn dream. A few village cousins who had always lived in the ancestral home at Sampigegram held fast to the weathered house and land like silver oaks in a coffee plantation.

Finally, it was the clerk in the government office who licked the stamps before he affixed them on the documents and pounded the final seal of ownership, who made it easy for them to leave. After a fair division of the compensation, they joined their children in various corners of the world. They now lived in unimaginably clean and convenient houses, perpetually lost in the well-ordered streets of foreign lands. Oh, the maps the hearts draw!

I walked slowly through the rooms of my apartment, trailed my fingers on the familiar objects, walls, and windows. I was unsure if I was leaving myself behind or gathering myself together. I aimlessly tidied the kitchen and went back into the bedroom, unable to decide what to pack.

For nights after Hari’s demise, I’d stayed up gathering bed fellows for my insomnia: the news channel in somebody’s apartment, strains of instrumental music from elsewhere, groans of shutters downed in the clubhouse, a key turned in a neighbor’s door, the watchman knocking the gate with his stick and the ubiquitous kitchen sounds.

I drew them towards me— the sounds of the night—safe in their familiar strangeness. I stretched on the bed in my darkened bedroom. A weak light that shone through the patterned window grill threw a quivering golden orb on the dark wall. The sounds of the night simmered to an almost velvety silence.

Like a mallet on a sheet of glass, a child’s uncontrolled cackle of laughter shattered the quiet. Whole-hearted mirth spouted in bursts. I heard a grown-up’s low voice admonish, “You’re laughing too much, you’ll surely cry yourself to sleep.”

The night grew quiet again. Didn’t the child ever ask if the converse was also true?

When the child’s laughter resumed, I struggled to sit up. Was that Rahul? Had the family moved back? Gripped by a nameless dread, I detached my hearing-aid.

I squeezed my eyes shut, the world slid further away. I had to learn to deal with this ridiculous insecurity that sneaked upon me at the slightest pretext. I paced the bedroom unable to relax.

But six months ago I really had been

a different person. My body wearing out on the outside notwithstanding, my mind was calm. I had made peace with my loss and loneliness. I deftly fended off Jagdish’s repeated entreaties to move to Australia with him. How could I live in Australia with his Australian wife? Moreover, life had taken on festive proportions after I befriended my new, young neighbors.

Two-year old Rahul came by often with his mother Alka. It wasn’t hard to see Jagdish in that child again. And it was flattering to have a young woman seek out my advice and company. I had no other close friends among the residents of our apartment complex.

One afternoon when the doorbell rang, a tired-looking Alka stood at the door with Rahul. “Aunty, can I leave Rahul with you for a couple of hours? My mother has a lump in her breast and is scheduled for tests today.” It was the first time that she had asked me for a favor.

“Of course, it’s no problem. Can you wait? I have a chapati on the tava.” I had hurried back to the kitchen, turned the stove off, and upset a tray of peanuts in the process. I bent to pick them up: a two-year old could easily choke on peanuts.

“Don’t worry, Alka. I’m sure the tests…” I called out as I returned to the living room. There was no one there.

Rahul wasn’t in any of the rooms and when I tried Alka’s doorbell, it went unanswered. I couldn’t have imagined it all.

I called out for Rahul and then overcame hesitation to knock the doors of a few apartments along the corridor. Someone located the contact numbers of Alka and her husband from the housing society’s records. Both the phones were switched off. A few men checked the elevator and stairs. I grew uneasy. The security guard was summoned. He pleaded that he had gone out for a quick lunch and had just returned. He assured us he couldn’t have left his post for more than fifteen minutes and no, he hadn’t seen Alka and Rahul leave by the main gate. The housing secretary ordered a search that combed the vast campus through the five towers with eighty apartments each. He assured me that in all likelihood Alka had changed her mind and taken Rahul with her.

It was around 8 pm when my doorbell had rung again. I rushed to open the door.

I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life.

“Alka, your phone was switched off.

Where’s Rahul? He wasn’t in the hall when I returned…”

She had looked distracted. A couple of curious neighbors gathered at the door.

“Aunty, thanks. Hope Rahul didn’t trouble you. Is he asleep?” Alka moved towards the bedroom.

I had placed a hand on her shoulder.

“There’s some mistake. Your son was never here. I tried calling—” She whipped around and struck my left cheek. “Liar!”

The neighbors tried to calm a hysterical Alka. She pulled from their grasp and raced through all the rooms. She had pulled open cupboards, peeked under the furniture, searched the balcony, and even checked under the bathroom sink.

“What have you done to him? Where’s my baby?”

I was overcome by nausea. I held my face and sat down, bowed down by the weight of her implied accusations. Later that night two policemen had arrived with Alka’s husband. I was ordered to visit the police station the next day to record my statement. They warned me not to “escape.” One of the police constables had even lifted a dining chair from my kitchen and planted it outside the main door. They clearly weren’t taking any chances and had

Katha 2016 Results FIRST PLACE: dmanabhan Tea Time by Mallika Pa Washington D.C. SECOND PLACE: R.K. Biswas, It Comes From Uranus by Chennai, India THIRD PLACE: Jyothi Vinod, Memory of a Fragrance by Bangalore, India ION: HONORABLE MENT la, wa Healthy by Iqbal Pittal California ION: HONORABLE MENT annan nv The End by Gayatri Po Dubai, UAE

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 25

greater faith in my agility than I did.

Jagdish was at first incredulous and then furious when I had called him. “Ma, I’ve told you a million times to move in with me. I can’t fly down right away, but I’ll ask my friend Nilesh to accompany you to the police station tomorrow. There’s been a goof-up somewhere. Don’t worry.

Things will clear up soon.”

The next day I tried not to register the humiliating interrogation at the police station and instead focused on the pain in my left ear. On our way back from the police station Nilesh and I visited a doctor who recommended a small operation to repair the tear in my left ear drum. The one week I spent healing was hell. It was as if the doctor had sewn my ear drum with Alka’s shrieks trapped inside; they rang through my deaf ear all the time. I was advised to use a hearing aid. I was conscious that the neighbors looked at me with suspicion. Alka’s single swipe had knocked out more than my hearing.

Within a week, the hunt for Rahul had revealed the amorous affair of Alka’s husband and their maid. The maid had slipped in with drug-laced chocolate or chloroform just after Alka left Rahul at the door when I was in the kitchen. The maid carried the boy down the service lift to her home in the slum behind our building.

As more worms and decay surfaced, I had deliberately avoided the updates.

My hearing aid remained a loud reminder of my eroded confidence. I had handed Jagdish the reins to my life; the parent and child reversed roles. His wife Shirley called to say she’d love to have me stay with them; eight-year old Anya and three-year old Om would benefit growing up with their grandmother. I had six months to complete the formalities for the

sale of the apartment and join them.

A month after that dreadful incident, Jagdish had flown down with his family.

We joined my numerous cousins with their families and assembled at Sampigegram. It was a kind of “last supper” before the Government officially occupied the land, not a celebration of my acquittal. A railway line would soon knife across the land where the house and paddy fields stood. Portions of the beautiful jungle would be cleared for a railway station.

We were all seated on the floor for the traditional meal served on plantain leaves.

Om had not wanted to eat off the leaf.

Jagdish put a mound of rice in the center of Om’s plate and poured the vegetable stew around it.

“Just pull little morsels of rice into the stew and gulp it down.” He had demonstrated once. “Think of it as the ‘stew sea’ eating the ‘rice island’.”

Anya made a well in the mound of rice and poured the stew in the center like she saw some older people do. “Look Papa, isn’t this is a great way to eat?”

“Yes, Anya. And either way, the island…rice island is gone…gone.” Jagdish had toyed with the food on his leaf. He spoke more to himself. “Rice is meant

I had placed a hand on her shoulder. “There’s some mistake. Your son was never here. I tried calling—” She whipped around and struck my left cheek. “Liar!”

26 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

to be eaten, and a life is meant to be lived. Erosion is inevitable—from within or without. Nothing disappears. But exists somewhere in our Universe.”

I had heard the breeze in the trees outside—the language of a million protesting leaves.

“Soon this house, fields, and the jungle will disappear,” an emotional old uncle addressed Jagdish. “Where in your Universe can you find all of this together again?” He waved his trembling hand in a circle over his head.

“Memories belong to us and we belong to the Universe.” I had followed Jagdish’s gaze to the huge windows. I sensed the verdant jungle pressed in on us, eager to listen and learn of their fate. “We are the chopped limbs of Sampigegram. And it’s important for each limb to remember it once belonged to a tree,” Jagdish continued, his eyes moist. “Every time life works on us or against us, we have a choice of the fragrance we emit.”

“It’s okay for you to talk in convoluted verses, son.

I grant you poetic license,” another elderly relative intervened. “And moreover, why should this affect you? You live in Australia.”

“There’s the choice, Uncle. We have the happy and sad past within us that cannot be erased...or changed. Every time we believe we’ve lost something we cherished, we ought to use that choice.” Jagdish had spoken gently, as if to a child. “Because sometimes all that will keep us breathing is the memory of a fragrance. And to do that, it doesn’t matter where anybody lives—India or Australia.”

Even as I heard him, something unraveled within me. I’ve heard it happen with non-functional huge machinery. Sometimes, all that it needs to resume work is a tiny jolt for some seemingly inconsequential part to fall into place. There I was between two generations, making sense of my grandmother’s words through my son’s explanation. Why had that wisdom just arced over fifty-five years of my life?

Jagdish had gone on to explain like to a class of kindergarteners how the thirty odd villages around the jungle would soon

connect to the rest of the country; the trains would give thousands access to health and education. Of course, we knew all this and more. Jagdish ate in silence, while a few relatives continued to argue and fret over their loss. But, for the first time in two years, I felt hugely unshackled and light.

I stopped pacing. The night was young as I looked out of the window. I marveled how even the recollection of Jagdish’s words had soothed me. Who was afraid of a child’s laughter? I fixed my hearing aid again. Instead of wasting my last night in the apartment in the company of stale fears and tears, it was time for some celebration.

A strong urge to do a shadow play overcame me. Hari and I had resorted to forgotten childhood games on nights when the power cut plunged us in darkness.

I arranged the fingers of my wizened hands: the thumb, middle and ring fingers became doe-eyed deer; the fore finger and little finger became the upright antlers.

I held my aged hands shakily against the window and two young deer pranced and sprang joyfully towards the quivering orb on the wall.

The orb now looked like a magnificent golden tree—my sandalwood tree. n Jyothi Vinod writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She taught undergraduate engineering courses for ten years before committing to her childhood dream of becoming a writer in 2013. Since then, her work has appeared in the Deccan Herald, Good Housekeeping India, Femina, Spark and Reading Hour to name a few. She won second place in the Katha competition administered by India

/ indiacurrents @ indiacurrents

Currents in 2015. n Comments from the judges: Prajwal: A beautifully written story about roots and family ties, also about old-age loneliness and helplessness.

Amulya: Cleverly using a hearing aid as a metaphor for living a full life, this short story is subtle and nuanced, Memory of a Fragrance is about the love we lose and the lives we almost squander.

About the judges: Prajwal Parajuly is the son of an Indian father and a Nepalese mother. The Gurkha’s Daughter, his widely acclaimed debut collection of short stories, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Land Where I Flee, his first novel, was an Independent (London) book of the year and a Kansas City Star best book of 2015. He is the Clayton B. Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. He has been homeless for three years now.

Amulya Malladi is the author of six novels, including The Sound of Language and The Mango Season. Her books have been translated into several languages, including Dutch, German, Spanish, Danish, Romanian, Serbian, and Tamil. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in journalism. When she’s not writing, she works as a marketing executive for a global medical device company. She lives in Copenhagen with her husband and two children.

Connect with Amulya at www.amulyamalladi.com. Her latest book, A House for Happy Mothers, will be released in June 2016.

Read other winning entries online at www. indiacurrents.com

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ask a lawyer

What Are My Rights Under the California Equal Pay Act?

By Bobby Shukla

T

he California Equal Pay Act requires equal pay for members of both sexes for doing essentially the same work. The Act has been in effect for many years but recent amendments have strengthened it.

Formerly, the Equal Pay Act prohibited different pay for “equal” work. The amended law prohibits different pay for “substantially similar” work. “Substantially similar work” refers to work that is mostly similar in skill, effort, responsibility, and performed under similar working conditions.

Skill refers to the experience, ability, education, and training required to perform the job. Effort refers to the amount of physical or mental exertion needed to perform the job. Responsibility refers to the degree of accountability or duties required in performing the job.

Working conditions has been interpreted

to mean the physical surroundings and hazards, which include consideration of the temperature, ventilation and exposure to fumes at the work sites being compared.

The amended law also eliminates the requirement that the jobs being compared be located at the same establishment.

You may have a claim under the Act if you one or more person of the opposite sex is being paid more than you for substantially similar work even if the other person has a different job tittle. Your employer overcomes such a claim if it demonstrates a legitimate reason for the pay difference, such as seniority, merit, a system that measures production, and/or a “bona fide factor other than sex.” Examples of a “bona fide factor other than sex” include education, training or experience. The employer must also show that any such reason is not arbitrary, but job-related and consistent with business necessity.

30 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

Under the Act, employers may not prohibit employees from disclosing their wages, discussing the wages of others, or inquiring about others’ wages and prohibits retaliation on that basis. Retaliation against an employee who assists another employee with bringing claims under the Act is also expressly prohibited.

If you believe you are being unlawfully underpaid, you should consult a lawyer to determine potential remedies.n Bobby Shukla represents individuals in employment law matters. She can be reached at (415) 986-1338.

Disclaimer: The information provided here is generalized and not for purposes of providing legal advice. You should contact an attorney to obtain advice regarding your particular circumstance.

Legal visa dates Important Note: U.S. travelers seeking visas to India will now need to obtain them through Cox & Kings Global Services Pvt. Ltd. Call 1-866-978-0055, email enquiriesusa@ckgs.com or visit www.in.ckgs.us for more information.

October 2016

T

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 October 2016.

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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Preference Dates for India 1st Current 2nd Jan 15, 2007 3rd Mar 01, 2005 Other Mar 01, 2005 Workers 4th Current Certain Unauthorized Religious Workers 5th Unauthorized Regional Center The Department of State has a recorded message with visa availability information at (202)485-7699, which is updated in the middle of each month.

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Email: info@vermafirm.com

www.vermafirm.com October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 31

Take your medicine

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legal

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books

Feminist by Default?

By Raphael Gunner

A World Elsewhere by Shanta Acharya. Universe Publishing Group. 2015. 360 pages.

I

n 1984, I met a young scholar named Shanta Acharya. She had just finished her doctorate in English literature at Oxford and was working as a teaching fellow in the English department at Harvard. I was a graduate student in English literature at the time and was on my way to Oxford for a year of research. I didn’t know much about Shanta’s back story, other than that she had grown up in India. We became friends and stayed in touch over the years.

Shanta settled in London and became a recognized poet (Not This, Not That, 1994; Numbering Our Days’ Illusions, 1995; Looking In, Looking Out, 2005; Shringara, 2006; Dreams That Spell The Light, 2010; and New & Selected due in 2017). And I moved to Los Angeles and became a psychologist and a yoga teacher. In February of this year I received an email from Shanta letting me know she had published a novel.

A World Elsewhere is an illuminating and disturbing exploration of the quest for love and marriage in 1970s India. It tells the story of Asha, a beautiful and gifted girl, who is born into a Brahmin family in the mid-1950s. Asha’s father is a lecturer at the most prestigious college in Orissa. Asha’s mother is the daughter of the Secretary of State for Education. Both parents come from a tradition of learning, and both are committed to marriage and family.

Asha excels as a student of literature and is well suited intellectually to become an academic. Nonetheless, she has no interest in pursuing a career. She wants passionately to get married, to have children, and to stay at home—a role for which her mother prepares her from childhood.

Yet despite Asha’s interest in a conventional life, she breaks with convention by rejecting arranged marriage. Instead, she insists defiantly on marrying for love.

Totally inexperienced in the realities of

34 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

relationship, outside the imaginings of Jane Austen’s novels, she is unable to recognize her fiance’s true character—until it is too late to cancel the wedding. Once they are married, the stress lines appear.

With astonishing speed the relationship shatters.

The shattering of Asha’s marriage is unspeakably brutal. Following the wedding, Asha moves in with her in-laws and dutifully ministers to their daily needs.

Her in-laws, in turn, are cold and unwelcoming. Asha’s husband meanwhile is disappointed with her dowry and bitterly realizes that he has overestimated her wealth. Moreover, limited by mediocre academics, he is unable to find a well-paying job. This intensifies his resentment and leaves him humiliated.

Humiliation leads to verbal assault. And verbal assault leads to physical and sexual violence.

Unprotected by laws against rape within marriage and trapped in a world resigned to abuse, Asha finds herself faced with a devastating choice—to exit her marriage and become a social pariah or to remain in her marriage and risk being killed.

Foremost among the qualities that make A World Elsewhere important is the honesty with which it describes domestic abuse. It shows how education, class, family, and beauty are no stay against misogyny and rage. It captures the shame that suffuses the victim. And it illuminates the acceptance, by both women and men, of violence as a feature of the institution of marriage.

Whether Asha is able to leave her catastrophic marriage is the culminating question that the novel explores. To do so would require that she stand up against a system that tacitly endorses violence against women. To do so would require that she face down a patriarchy that stigmatizes women for resisting abuse. To do so would make her a feminist hero by default.

As for the woman I met in 1984 who grew up in Orissa, studied literature at Oxford, and managed to find her way to a teaching fellowship at Harvard, she was recently honored in the House of Lords for her poetry. A World Elsewhere expands her corpus impressively. It is a major addition to the Indian canon, a powerful contribution to feminist literature, and a novel for anyone interested in the subtleties of marriage. n Raphael Gunner is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles. He combines talk therapy with mindfulness, breathwork, and the occasional posture to help clients find their way to contentment. He is also a yoga teacher and a devotee of Ashtanga. He can be contacted through his web site DrRaphaelGunner.com.

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38 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

Blurred Feud

By Aniruddh Chawda HAPPY BHAAG JAYEGI. Director: Mudassar Aziz. Players: Diana Penty, Abhay Deol, Momal Sheikh, Jimmy Shergill, Ali Faizal, Kanwaljit Singh, Piyush Mishra.

Music: Sohail Sen. Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu with Eng. sub-tit. Theatrical release (Eros)

T

o mention Pakistan in a Hindi movie script, habeas corpus requires that it be in the context of either a) war footing (Refugee, Border, Line of Control, Kargil) or b) parody (Filmistan). Yes, there was the sordid romance that more often than not gets entangled in border lining barb wire (Veer-Zaara, Henna)— which squarely place them back at war footing in the grand scheme of things.

That leaves precious little space in the middle. There is no other route. Unless you are Happy Bhaag Jayegi. Avoiding a movie focused on war or parody, this nifty border-hugging comedy takes a friendly cultural clash between neighbors and elevates it into an unlikely delight.

This story, written by Director Aziz, has a somewhat far-fetched and yet pleasantly approachable premise. Harpreet Kaur aka Happy (Penty) is about to be unhappily married off to the strongarmed Bagga (Shergill) in New Delhi.

Not so fast. Happy, you see, has other plans. On the nuptial date, Happy plans to elope with her beau, the not-so-rich Guddu (Faizal). The teensy weensy bummer is that instead of hiding in the truck that will carry Happy to her beloved Guddu, Happy mistakenly jumps onto the wrong truck and ends up in—wait, wait—Lahore, Pakistan where Happy becomes a most unruly and unwelcome house-guest to the Lahore princeling Bilal Ahmed (Deol). Jeepers creepers!

Aziz and company make this completely implausible scenario so seamless and so plausible that before one can truly appreciate the irony of precious turns to Happy’s misadventure, we are already onto the next escapade. The comedy style that Aziz employs is often reminiscent of black and white 1960s Johnny Walker or Shammi Kapoor mistaken-identity, mis-

taken-deliveries capers. A large enclosed basket that should haul flowers instead has a highly surprised—and angry—bride popping out of it. A no-nonsense and handsome lord of the manor clad in traditional salwar-kameez must rely on his bumbling cast of benevolent underlings to maintain a social straight face. They are trademarks that help this bridal flight remain afloat.

From the get-go, the staging is also surprisingly non-religious. Happy, her angry father back in Delhi (Singh), Guddu and Bagga are all Sikh or Hindu. Everyone in Lahore is Muslim. And yet there are no signs of comeuppance directed at anyone’s creed. This is all about the inflections of vernacular—Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu—that mix in comical phrases and the juxtaposition is uncanny. It is all good clean fun.

As Happy, newcomer Penty brings a nice who-me-surprised expression to her role. She must—and does—remain feisty to throw everyone else off-kilter. Deol’s political. Grand Poobah-in-the-making is refinement personified—at least in his public appearances. His trespasses with his upper crust fiancé Zoya (Sheikh) might as well be Dharmendra and Saira Bano from another era. Ahmed’s unwitting sidekick is the not-so-bright Lahore beat cop ACP Afridi, played with impeccable self-deprecation by Mishra. Afridi being made to go to New Delhi against his better judgement is seen refusing to step off of a bus

to touch Indian soil. That pretty much sums up the state of diplomatic affairs that often characterize the India-Pakistan rivalry: the scene is both hysterically funny and also simply insightful.

Sohail Sen’s soundtrack has good things to offer. There is bhangra bounce— Harshdeep Kaur and Shahid Mallya’s Happy Oye and especially the throb of Mika Singh’s Gabru. There is emotion—Arijit Singh’s Zara Si Dosti and especially Altamash Faridi’s beautiful Ashiq Tera. And there is a sufi-qawalli stop—Javed Ali’s Yaaram. The quality, pacing and choreography of these songs greatly enhances the story’s appeal while the somber musical moments gracefully counter-balance the non-stop laughs.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the script is its apolitical take. For all the zingers flared in both directions, Indians and Pakistanis might as well be neighbors settling a missing-bride case over the fence.

Improbable as it may seem, it is highly refreshing to see an India-Pakistan détente through soft focus binoculars which capture a blurred-line contiguous landscape separated by miles and not trenches.n EQ: A

Globe trekker, aesthete, photographer, ski bum, film buff, and commentator, Aniruddh Chawda writes from Milwaukee.

LATA’S FLICK PICKS n  Sulta m to us R    om  Disho dro  Mohenja

October 2016| West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 39

films

No Defence Against Honor Killings

By Geetika Pathania Jain

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra acclaimed director shares his insights into filmmaking in an exclusive interview with Geetika Pathania Jain about his upcoming film, Mirzya.

G

eetika Pathania Jain (GPJ): Rakeysh, thanks for making yourself available for this exclusive interview. What would you like to tell our readers from India Currents about your new movie Mirzya?

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (ROPM): Mirzya is based on the legend of Mirza-Sahiba. It’s in the collective consciousness of South Asia. It’s an epic love story which has a likeness to the tragic love stories of Romeo and Juliet, Heer Ranjha and Laila Majnu.

I first saw the play when I was in college. What really resonated with me was the part of Sahiba, the strong female protagonist. Here was a woman who was pretty arrogant, maybe even a bit vain.

Very aware of her inner beauty, not just her outer beauty and she uses that as a weapon. Mirzya falls in love with her.

There’s no logic to why we fall in love— when love beckons, everything else fails.

And so they elope on her wedding night.

Mirzya is a skilled mounted archer, and they are pursued by a posse of her brothers. They ride for three nights and four days and finally they take shelter under a tree. There is only one more night of travel left. It’s getting dark and there she imagines that her brothers have arrived, and that Mirzya, a sharp shooter kills them one by one. And at a cathartic mo-

ment in the story, she picks up the arrows, breaks them and scatters them around.

Dawn breaks and her nightmare starts to come true. Her brothers arrive and they are soon surrounded. Mirzya wakes up, grabs his bow and arrows and finds them broken. He looks intently at Sahiba, and seems to ask—Why? And, then hundreds of arrows kill him, and he lies there bleeding to death, and Sahiba is taken away.

Typically, at the end of the play, the director would ask the audience—why did Sahiba break the arrows? And we would struggle to come up with answers—but, do we really know why we hurt the ones we love the most?

GPJ: The story of Mirzya and Sahiba is a famous Punjabi story and also one which resonates with today’s times. What do you feel about the fact that, in contemporary times, this could be construed as an honor killing?

How do you feel about some of these regressive traditions and how can we be careful to not glamorize this idea that women who transgress will be answerable to their families who have the ultimate responsibility of bringing them back into the fold?

40 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

ROPM: On the contrary, it’s a question of why we do what we do in love.

Somewhere deep inside of me the question remains—why did Sahiba break the arrows? Mirzya was quite capable of defending himself from any kind of attack—he was such a great archer that he could hit a moving target while galloping on his horse with his eyes closed.

With this burning question inside of me, I called Gulzar bhai and said, “a cup of tea?” and he says “aa jao, beta.” (Come over, son). We are neighbors so I walked across to his house.

GPJ: Gulzar! Gulzar is such a wellloved lyricist and important part of Indian film culture. So what did Gulzar say?

ROPM: I asked Gulzar, “Why did Sahiba break the arrows? So he said “bachoo, tum woh Sahiba se ja ke poochho.”

(Kiddo, go ask Sahiba).

GPJ: Ha ha. Super response.

ROPM: I told him—I’ve been looking for her, and she seems to elude me. He had a twinkle in his eyes and told me to travel this journey to find the answer. Why do we do all the crazy things that we do when we’re in love?

GPJ: That is indeed a question to be asked to all the hopeless romantics and all the star-crossed lovers. Rakeysh, as you may know, India Currents is a community magazine for the Indian diaspora. My next question is about the followers of your art in the West— are we in your thoughts at all?

ROPM: It may sound corny, but I think of you all the time. And the reason is this: I want to tell Indian stories to the world. I want South Asians to be proud of Indian cinema and take their friends out and say it’s not just all song and dance.

So it’s always been our endeavor to keep raising the bar with each story that we tell. Someone at the Venice Film Festival named me un-Bollywood and I loved it! I treasure that article so much. And the time has come for us to tell human stories that

interest the world at large: not just stories about conflict. To introduce ourselves, our culture, our tradition, not in a jingoistic fashion but in a more universal way because we all know that human emotions remain the same across any culture.

GPJ: I have really enjoyed your previous works. Do you feel that this film is a precursor or a successor to any of the films you’ve made?

ROPM: My first film, Aks, was a paranormal thriller which had its roots in the Ramayana. My grandmother told me at the end of every story—Ram and Ravan are both inside you. So I brought that idea out in a contemporary thriller.

To address questions of corruption, I did Rang de Basanti. Rather than pointing fingers and saying: “In India, nothing works,” you have to be part of the system to change it.

And then I went on to make Delhi 6.

I belong to Old Delhi and grew up in an environment of intolerance. When you look at the mirror, you are looking for Allah, you are looking for Bhagwan—you will find that answer inside you. Please don’t break mosques and build temples or break temples and build mosques. So, that

was Delhi 6 and then Bhaag Milkha Bhaag was obviously about the pain of Partition. Milkha Singh was one of those kids who suffered—a 12-year old who saw the massacre of his family during the ethnic violence of 1947. But even then, he grew up to be a world champion. Milkha Singh gave us that kind of confidence and pride.

There are so many love stories—and I wondered is there something more to this beast called love? The strong female character in Mirzya drew me close to the story. Somewhere I found that connection in Mirzya’s character as well. He is a Sufi man to the core, who lets his girlfriend be what she is and accepts her even at his death. I think he realizes that Sahiba had a tear in her eye when she broke the arrows.

She was making the supreme sacrifice— she sacrificed the one she loved the most to avoid a bigger bloodbath. That’s how this myth of Mirza Sahiba plays out in India today.

GPJ: I really want to congratulate you on taking on something that brings to contemporary times an ancient legend. Also, you seem to be grappling with the question—why did she do something which seems so counter-in-

tuitive like breaking the arrows? Is that what the film hinges on—the answer to that central question— is that what you are seeking?

ROPM: It’s a parable. The question is why do we do what we do? Something within you that makes you do things— have we forgotten this silent voice inside us amidst the whole noise outside us? I’d like to leave you with a thought that when you see this movie, you should see it with a loved one and if you’re not seeing it with your loved one, then just go back home and hold his hand and share a moment because every moment that we’re together we are blessed. The loved one could be your father, brother, husband or it a boyfriend. It doesn’t matter. Love plays out in various ways—it can make you crazy, it can make you seek revenge. But the purest form, which I learned by telling this story, is giving in love. Our sacrifice is the purest emotion and I hope that comes through. n Geetika Pathania Jain is a frequent contributor to India Currents magazine. When she is not writing reviews or grading student papers, Geetika can be found enjoying the great outdoors.

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travel

Hiking From Rim to Rim A trip to the Grand Canyon

By Mike Manoj

G

rand Canyon is rightly named.

The beauty of this place cannot be fully described in words. It is one of the deepest gorges on Earth with an average depth of one mile (1.6 km) and an average width of ten miles (16 km). Because of the tremendous natural beauty that surrounds the place, hiking the Canyon rim to rim is considered fulfilling the “bucket list” for many seasoned hikers around the world. As we found out, it does require a good chunk of mental fortitude along with physical endurance.

Our plan was to hike from the North to the South Rim with an overnight stay in the valley in between at Phantom Lodge.

Day One: Euphoria and the Surrealistic Landscape Beginning at the trailhead called North Kaibab, we began the 14 mile hike. Truly, the challenge of hiking this trail was like none other. The distance in miles was not

48 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |October 2016

the challenge: the intensity level required given the difficulty of the trail was the real challenge. Although the trail is well maintained by the National Park Service, much of the trail was heavily covered with rocks and stones and was used by mules or horses as well. Most of the trail was filled with slopes that lunged upward and downward, architected as steps with wooden blocks separating each. Hikers have to manage these hindrances with attention and care, which meant a good amount of slowing down of speed in order to avoid any mishap. The price can be sometimes deadly. Though not heavily advertised, it is a fact that many lives are lost in the Grand Canyon on these trails, due to accidents either self-made or due to factors surrounding the environment (heat, cold etc.,) that were not properly taken into account.

Anticipating these odds, we had done our homework for this for over a year,

Trailside view

preparing mostly by running and hiking local trails in and around Maryland. This did help us a lot to get in good physical shape, but the mental challenges were something we were unprepared for, as we would rudely find out during the hike.

From all the materials I had read up on this, I clearly knew it would be different in many ways such as weather, especially heat but I was definitely not ready for the dramatic “theater” experience the canyon hike provided—that hit us right from the time we started hiking.

The moment we started hiking, the visual magic of the surroundings absorbed my senses. The landscape was uniquely indescribable and much of it remains in my mind as jaw-droppingly awesome.

The exquisitely carved rocks that underwent environmental ravages dating back to 25,000 million years, stared at you from all sides throughout the hike. Desert lizards, squirrels and the ever permanent scorching sun kept you company, while the heat and thirst constantly tested the limits of our physical and mental will.

The day we hiked all the way to Phantom Lodge, it was a steaming high of 95 degrees, typical for any other day in July.

The radiating volcanic rocks and the “box” like geological formation of the canyon at the place around where the desolate lodge was situated kept the heat up by another few notches or more, on that day, to 106 degrees. As we slowly meandered through the trail with my GoPro on my head, some of the excitement and euphoria that we had in the beginning of the hike seemed to vanish in front of the stubbornly overpowering elements. The overbearing need to remain mentally focused to steer clear of the not-so hidden dangers of the trail, while handling the influence of weakness and pain in my heat exhausted body was something that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Tired and exhausted, we

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Somewhere in the Canyon

kept wondering why the lodge was so far away even when our GPS map showed that it was 5 miles away. By then, it was quite evident that our speed was only averaging an hour a mile. We had crossed over 10 miles in 5-6 hours through a downward spiral starting at 12,000 feet at the top of the trail quickly falling to somewhere in the 2000-3000 feet above sea level. Finally, when we reached Phantom Lodge, all we wanted was a cold shower and some good food. We slept exhausted and spent.

Day Two: On the Road Again From the Phantom Lodge, our final leg was to hike 10 miles to the top of the South Rim using the Bright Angels Trail.

We got up around 3 a.m. and began the hike to face another day when hot weather had been predicted. The climb led us in a zigzag fashion by the side of the mighty Colorado river but it was no less challenging in terms of difficulty. Five hours went by, and the sun was beating down on us. The electrolytes and water mix in the back pack was being refilled at the water stops along the way, and yet, heavy heat and signs of heat exhaustion was evident in many ways in my body. The mind has a strange way of testing your will. All of a sudden, some strange questions began forming in my mind. What did I get myself into? Will I fall down somewhere and will that be the end? Can I ever make it out of here? Where is the end? How many more steps to go? These thoughts swirled in my head as I put one foot in front of the other. My eyes were straining to look for 50 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |October 2016

any dangers down below, with each step that I took.

To keep my apprehensions from completely taking over my mind, I trained my mind to focus on the panoramic beauty of the Canyon. I wanted to complete the hike. I wanted to feel the joy of completing this test of endurance. The trick did pay off—my defeatist attitude morphed into one of determination. Finally, by 1 p.m. we reached the top, to a well-deserved high five between us. Through all the sweat, tears, excitement and endurance, we had successfully completed the rim to rim hike! n

What To Do Differently: Given another opportunity, I might have attempted the hike in a month other than July when the tempeartures were soaring! We chose that time of year based on available reservations at Phantom Lodge.

Believe it or not, these reservations are booked a year in advance. I took the available date and planned my trip around it.

To take weather conditions into account, check weather patterns on their website and figure out the best time of year to visit given individual preferences and tolerance for hot and cold weather.

Where to stay: Phantom Ranch situated within the Grand Canyon. Or, you can choose to camp in designated campgrounds along the way.

When to visit: Check weather conditions and choose a time that works with your individual tolerance. Be aware that there are unusual weather patterns including rock slides that can affect your hiking plans.

What to Carry: Hiking gear, sticks, flashlights, salty snacks to prevent dehydration and plenty of water.

Mike Manoj lives in Maryland. He works as a cyber security consultant for federal agencies.

In addition to hiking, Mike enjoys singing and playing drums.

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recipes

Colorful Fall Cooking

By Praba Iyer

A

s October creeps into my sunny Californian existence, I walk around the Mountain View farmer’s market observing the changes. A new medley of colors has arrived. Bold orange, yellow and purple vegetables and fruits of all sizes and shapes lie alongside each other in the stalls. These vibrant colors take me back to Mylapore, a market suburb in Chennai, where stalls were packed with

colorful clay dolls in every size and shape welcoming the Navarathri season, which is also celebrated at this time of year.

I was a happy little girl as I walked through the bustling crowds then, looking for beautiful dolls to adorn my golu steps at home. Not much has changed in my “happiness quotient.” As I walk through the crowds in Mountain View now, I feel as happy as that little girl, looking for

6-7 curry leaves 2 dry red peppers

Bisi Bele Bhath

This was my father-in law’s favorite dish. May his soul be happy and at peace.

This is great for Navarathri parties. It is a hearty dish with lots of vegetables and rice and can be a one-pot meal. All it needs is a side of chips and raita. I’ve incorporated many fall seasonal vegetables.

This is best served in a slow cooker so that it stays warm. It may seem like a complicated long recipe but it has just 4 steps, once you’ve prepped all the ingredients.

Garnish Chopped fresh cilantro Method (1)Wash and clean the rice and toor dal and cook it together in water. Remove and mash the misture.

(2) Roast the spices in a pan with oil and grind it to a paste with a little water. (3) Add the two cups of vegetables to a large pan. Add 1 cup of water, salt, turmeric, tamarind and the ground paste and jaggery. Once the vegetables are almost cooked, add the rice and toor dal mixture to it and stir on low heat until all the vegetables look well blended with the rice. (4) Lastly add the tempering to this large pan of bisi bele and mix well. Check and adjust salt. Sprinkle with cilantro. Serve piping hot with potato chips and raita.

Cooked together ½ cup toor dal 1 cup raw rice 4 cups of water Roasted and Ground to a Paste 1 tablespoon oil 6-7 dry red peppers 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 tablespoons Bengal gram dal 1 tablespoon cumin seeds ⅛ teaspoon fenugreek ⅛ teaspoon asafoetida 1 inch cinnamon stick 3 cloves 1 cardamom 2 Marathi moggu (dried kapok buds) (optional) ½ cup fresh or dry coconut scrapings.

Vegetables Total 2 cups chopped—Turnips, okra, drumsticks, shallots, bell peppers, cau54 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |October 2016

colorful, seasonal vegetables to adorn my kitchen counter. I pick beautiful beets, juicy apples, honey like figs, crunchy leeks, crispy watercress, juicy oranges, delicious dates and bountiful Brussels sprouts. How can I possibly leave behind cranberries, blackberries, apples, pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes? My mind runs wild with ideas, with all that I can cook in the coming weeks of this October Color festn

liflower, potato, chayote squash, beans, carrots, peas. ½ teaspoon turmeric ½ teaspoon tamarind concentrate (adjust if you like it more sour) A pinch of jaggery Salt to taste Tempering 1 teaspoon ghee 1 teaspoon mustard seeds A pinch asafoetida 1 green chili chopped 2 tablespoons cashew nuts

Apple, Cranberries and Watercress Raita Ingredients 1 apple, peeled and chopped into small cubes ¼ cup fresh watercress, roughly chopped 1 teaspoon dried cranberries 1 teaspoon toasted cumin powder 1 green chili chopped fine 1 cup yogurt beaten Salt to taste A pinch sugar

Mix all the ingredients and adjust seasonings.

½ cup water 1 tablespoon yogurt A pinch of jaggery Cayenne to taste Salt to taste Garnish with chopped scal lions

Carrot Orange Salad

This colorful salad is a unique mix of vegetables and fruits. The nigella seeds add a nutty aroma to this salad.

Ingredients 2 large carrots julienned 1 orange peeled and chopped into half segments 2- 3 cherry tomatoes sliced into wedges 1 teaspoon oil 1 teaspoon nigella seeds 1 tablespoon lime juice ½ green chili chopped 1 tablespoon sliced almonds Salt to taste 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro chopped Mix the carrots, oranges, cherry tomatoes in a bowl. Heat oil, add the nigella seeds and pour this into the bowl with carrots. Add lime juice, chopped green chili and sliced almonds. Mix well and sprinkle with cilantro.

Sweet Potatoes and Pumpkin This warm side dish is sweet, spicy and sour. It is best served warm.

Goes well with rotis and rice.

Ingredients 1 large sweet potato peeled and cubed 1 cup pumpkin peeled and cubed 1 tablespoon ghee 1 teaspoon mustard seeds 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1 teaspoon ginger garlic paste ½ teaspoon turmeric 1 teaspoon garam masala

Heat ghee in a pan, add mustard seeds and let it splutter. Add cumin seeds, ginger garlic paste and mix. Now add the sweet potato cubes and pumpkin cubes. Season with salt, turmeric, garam masala, and cayenne. Mix gently with water and cook until the sweet potatoes and pumpkin get soft.

Now add the yogurt and jaggery and mix. Check seasonings. Garnish with scallions and serve. n Praba Iyer is a chef instructor, food writer, media talent and a judge for cooking contests. She specializes in team building classes through cooking for tech companies in the bay area. You can reach her at praba@ cookingmastery.com.

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analysis

Who Should You Vote For?

By Raj Nathan

N

ovember 8, 2016 is around the corner. I believe that this election is turning out to be the most important one that this country has experienced in the last forty years and it will most likely be the most important one in my lifetime. The simple reason is this—on many a topic, there is a vast difference in the views held by the two leading candidates. Their views do not fall in the realm of moderate political discourse. The candidate we choose will likely have a material effect on one’s way of life in this country.

In no election is there a convincing defense to be apathetic and not exercise one’s right to vote. In the upcoming election, given the enormous stakes, it will not only be indefensible but may also be a colossal mistake if one chooses to sit out without exercising one’s right to vote.

If you have not registered to vote, the last day to do so is October 24, 2016. You can register to vote online through the state governments’ websites or at specialty websites like www.rockthevote.com Once you have resolved to vote, how do you go about rationally choosing the right candidate most aligned with your views? What issues should be considered and prioritized? Given the parochial thunderous drumbeats emanating from the tom-toms of the candidates’ own propaganda channels, organizations with narrow agendas, and at times biased media channels, where can you go to get unbiased and factual information?

I have attempted to help readers with these questions. At the very outset, it is helpful to develop a list of categories and the pertinent issues in each category that are important to you in determining your choice. Listed is a sample for you to get started and tweak to suit your specific needs.

Where do you go to get an idea of the candidate’s positions on issues that are important to you? Certainly the candidates’ own websites provide information on their positions on issues. Press interviews and debates are reasonably good 56 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |October 2016

Personal Characteristics Vision for the Country Honesty, Transparency and Integrity Relevant Experience

Handling Pressure and Stress Economy Growth and Job Creation Trade Treaties and Protection

Investment in Innovation and Research

Plan for small business segment Education Student Loans Free 4 year College Education

Charter versus public schools Foreign Policy and National Security

Civil Liberties versus Privacy versus Domestic Security

Dealing with Terrorism

Our country’s role in the world

Position vis-a-vis specific countries of interest to you (eg. India, China, Israel, etc.)

Government

Budget allocation

Taxes

Federal Deficit

Medicare, Social Security and other Social Programs Environment

Global Warming

Alternate Energy Support

Keystone Pipeline and Off Shore Drilling HealthCare

Future of Health Care Act

Prescription medication Immigration

Illegal Immigration

Border policy

Visa allocation Social

Religion and Science

Gun Rights

LGBT and Other Minority Rights

Supreme Court Nomination Support for the Candidate

Who do people/organizations you respect support?

What is our critical allies’ view of the candidate?

Who do people/organizations you disagree with support?

Opensecrets.org A non-partisan, non-profit organization with data and focus on the influence of money in specific races

FactCheck.org A non-partisan, non-profit organization with no parochial agenda and is a product of the Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

It’s avowed aim is to reduce the level of deception and confusion in US politics.

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Politifact.com A Pulitzer prize winning website with close relationships with the Tampa Bay Times, is unbiased and developed the popular “truth-ometer”.

sources, though they oftentimes provide well-rehearsed script lines. There are also several external sources, websites, blogs and news outlets that are good sources to both gather new information and validate existing information.

The issue is not a paucity of such sources. Rather it is the plethora and the challenge of finding relevant, reliable and unbiased sources of information. We have compiled a subset of such sources. The primary guiding principle in compiling this list was to provide readers a list of non party-affiliated sources so that you can make up your minds based on the list of criteria that are important to you. The different sources have different emphases.

Some sources are more quantitative and data centric, whereas some others are more qualitative in their analyses. Our aim is to provide a base set to help the reader gather information.

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Politico.com A DC-focused e-political newspaper that is non-partisan and is focused on covering issues related to politics, policy and power.

State Election Coverage: Under the working title of the California Counts Collaborative, four public radio stations —KPCC in Pasadena, KPBS in San Diego, KQED in San Francisco and Capital Public Radio in Sacramento are sharing reporters and editors to offer comprehensive coverage of state issues throughout the election year. Visit your local radio station’s website to look up their special corner for election coverage.

Ballotpedia.org Ballotpedia covers local, state and federal politics. The content includes neutral, accurate, and verifiable information on government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, candidates, and the influencers of politics.

It might seem ludicrous to think today that at the time of Independence, only white men who owned property could vote. We have come a long way since, where today we take for granted the right to vote as a basic right of citizenship. But this basic right to vote for all, independent of color, ethnicity, and gender came only through the unwavering resolution and hard work of a few before us. In this context, certainly Susan B. Anthony who fought for women’s right to vote comes to one’s mind.

In 1872 Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York. The judge decided not to proceed with her case given the moral authority that she had gained through her public speeches and activism. Unfortunately, she did not live till 1920 to see the day when women were finally included on the ballot, but, the words that she wrote in 1894 applies to each citizen—woman or man.

“We shall someday be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people think that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”

We need to realize that voting is a hardwon freedom and we should exercise that right not only to ensure that subsequent generations enjoy the same right, but to help set the direction of our country. n Raj Nathan is a retired high tech executive who follows politics closely.

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www.manipuridancevisions.com 64 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

DANCE

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music

Real Voter Stories: Campaign Melodies and Verbatim Verse

By Priya Das

M

ore than anything, this election and the fact that it’s happening during violent times, has made everybody nationwide and all around the world sit up and look into who America is made up of. The Clinton base (and nonbase, for that matter), is understandable; she inspires people as much as she incites them to hate her. It is the Sanders and Trump campaigns that are shining a light into sections of the population that have been, it would seem, glossed over or not ever accounted for. Chief among these are the whites who feel threatened by a growing loss of ethnicity, immigrants—legal or otherwise, and millennials who have been accused of being political on social media to the exclusion of actual action.

The music world, too wants to make sense of these new bases. We will look first at the ongoing effort by Rock The Vote, a non-profit agency that has been instrumental in motivating and guiding young, first-time voters since the 1990s. The second project we will look into has Michael Friedman, a music composer who sets out to interview voters and sets their own words and stories to melody, verbatim.

Rock The Vote plays an activist’s role, in that they strive to reach the young in their own space (online, events), using their own language (“Voting Is the party”), and getting their own icons to talk to them (John Legend, Jennifer Lopez, and the like). It is non-partisan and as a banner on its website suggests, helps the 12,000 individuals who turn 18 every day, get registered to vote. The website is simple to navigate, audience-appropriately skewed for a mobile experience and with well-chosen menu titles, such as “Find your Elected Officials,” which gives you your federal and state officials by asking you to fill out a street address.

One music video has rock/rap artists grooving to “Turn Out for What”—each celebrity announces why they’ll be voting: education, reproductive rights, gay rights, marriage inequality, and so on. The song is a re-recording of the hit (120M views on YouTube) “Turn Down For What” by Li’l

Jon and DJ Snake. Rock the Vote’s version has Jon on the phone with actress Whoopi Goldberg en route to his local voting station. There he meets and sings along with more artists such as television producer Lena Dunham and multi-artist Devendra Banhart. (Incidentally, Banhart’s not desi, his Venezuelan mother and American father were followers of an Indian guru when he was born.)

Rock the Vote was founded as a response to the 1980’s censorship campaign by “parents, politicians, and police” against artists’ use of explicit language.

Such a mixture of art, organization, and activism could only have been the brainchild of somebody with that specific background. Indeed, the founder Jeff Ayeroff worked to market artists such as Madonna,

Dire Straits and Prince, and then later, helped launch the Virgin US label. Rock The Vote’s first campaign in the early 1990s showed Madonna wrapped in an American flag.

Moving on from activism to music documentaries: In February this year, The New Yorker Radio Hour aired Friedman’s “Mock Caucus.” The lyrics include: I moved here when I was 10 Now I am 18 We started a Mock Caucus at school To hear different opinions That guy Andy listens to his father, Who listens to Rush Limbaugh a lot Sure, we’re in Iowa Our school is 97% white.

Mock Caucus goes on to describe how when somebody greeted “Merry Christ

Madonna for Rock the Vote tinder Kaur, electro mic wi the VTA October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 69

mas,” the response was “We’re Muslim.”

After an account of few more such instances, the voter thought that being politically correct has encouraged people to not have strong opinions. This, according to this voter, had led to frustration and violence.

“Ballad of a Trump Supporter” aired in April, and has Friedman mouthing a South Carolina man’s words. The voter is in his sixties, talking about a youth spent hunting, being brought up by a black nanny, using the N word, glad that the confederate flag was brought down at the State Capitol grounds but confesses that he has it at home for nostalgia sake. He is happy that Trump has upset the “apple-cart.”

Listening to the lyrics is a surprising experience. The melody is barely one, and musically, it’s not even worth a review. But the power is in that the lyrics hit home.

Turns out, it’s easier to understand a voter’s psyche by listening to a verbatim account sung by a third party, rather than say, through a television interview.

Friedman’s music serves as a record of how this time was lived by voters from various strata. The irony of the policy on illegal immigrants—the making of it,

It is the Sanders and Trump campaigns that are shining a light into sections of the population that have been, it would seem glossed over.

Chief among these are the whites who feel threatened by a growing loss of ethnicity, immigrants—legal or otherwise, and millennials who have been accused of being political on social media to the exclusion of actual action.

The music world too wants to make sense of these new bases.

its enforcers, and the people who live it, is best summed up in a few lines taken from Friedman’s “Undocumented” which aired in March: Born in Mexico, grew up in United States Separated from my mother for 21 years, she stayed back…

When I was 18, my dad got deported At 18, my first job, got fired at 20 At 22 I got fired again My documents didn’t match up, In Arizona, the cop asked for my ID, All I had was my Mexican passport Which you never show a policeman In my wallet, I found a Sam’s (Club) card and showed it to him He said “Okay, yeah, If you buy in bulk, you must be an American.”

Check out the online version of this article for digital extras, including podcasts of voters’ verse. n Priya Das is an enthusiastic follower of world music, and avidly tracks inbtersecting points

DHW ANI academy of percussion music

( A non profit and charitable organization that devotes itself to uplift underprivileged and physically challenged students ) Presents

Raga And Rhythm

Pt. Partho Sarothy – Sarode

Sarode And Percussion Concert Pt. Abhijit Banerjee – Tabla

October 16th 2016, Sunday, 4 pm

Quinlan Community Center 10185 N Stelling Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014

Ticket – $20 Buy tickets – http://dhwaniacademy.net

Concert partly sponsored by National Endowment for the Arts 70 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

Somnath Roy – Ghatam

dance . music

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October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 71

feature

Truth and NonViolence: MK Gandhi Today

By V.R. Devika January 30th 1948. n assassination stunned the world.

Nathuram Godse shot three bullets into Mahatma Gandhi who was walking towards his prayer meeting in Delhi. While the crowd was stunned, a little-known fact is that the man who seized Godse was an American diplomat on his first posting outside the United States.

Godse was apprehended by Herbert Tom Reiner, a US vice-consul, who had only just arrived in India. He was attending Gandhi’s prayer meeting out of curiosity, as most visitors to New Delhi did at least once, the New York Times reported. On the ollowing day, the newspaper reported, “As the gathered crowd was in shock, Mr. Reiner grasped the assailant who still had his pistol in his hand, by the shoulders and shoved him toward the police guards.

Only then did the crowd begin to grasp what had happened.”

The mortal Gandhi died that day. His ideas continue to live on, inspiring world leaders and citizens like me. I spend my time talking about his ideas while conducting workshops and talks at schools and universities.

As my uncle was a freedom fighter, I was interested in Gandhi’s ideas since the time I was little. As a young school teacher, I was interested in ideas related to alternative education and that is when I began to read his writing seriously. I was inspired by the extraordinary courage he had to fight for the things he did apart from political freedom and the way he lived his life. His ideas may seem archaic to some now, but the world desperately needs to look at smaller things and nature friendly living today after it has polluted its oceans with plastic. His ideas were, in fact, far ahead of his time.

So who was M.K.Gandhi?

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2nd October 1869 in Gujarat, India. He studied law in London and returned to India in 1891 to practice law.

It is said that his failure in having a successful law practice in India led him to

A

For Gandhi, God was the expresssion of the deep, internal principles that morally define and animate human beings.

Truth For Gandhi, truth was God. And God, for Gandhi was the expression of the deep, internal principles that morally define and animate human beings. Each individual must follow his or her swadharma or the inner voice of truth, he said.

V.R. Devika explains charkha spinning

accept work in South Africa. From an attorney, he turned into a social worker and fought for the rights of Indians in South Africa, voluntarily giving up his lucrative practice and lived on a community farm.

He founded a new form of struggle called Satyagraha (Truth force). Returning to India in 1915 he led an extraordinary movement for the freedom of India. His creative ideas of struggle brought together the rich and millions of the poor. He fought against slavery of people whether it was held through political power or ownership as in indentured labor or in segregation as in untouchability. He sought to imagine a peaceful world, a stable society and a coherent, spiritual life. All the ideas that he used in mainstream public life were based on truth and non-violence.

72 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

Karma Gandhi assimilated ideas about “bread labor” or working for one’s food from Tolstoy’s 1898 book, The Kingdom of God Is Within You and found the same principle articulated in the third chapter of the Bagavad Gita. “If I can convince the people of the value and the necessity of bread labor, there never will be want of food and clothing,” he opined. According to him, if all worked for their food, distinctions of rank would be obliterated.

The rich would only deem themselves as trustees of their property and would use it mainly for public interest.

Thinker Ahead of His Time Gandhi’s view of the economy is the least talked about aspect of his thinking.

He has often been seen as an archaic

thinker who always talked about the rural world. But, in fact, he knew that the new economy was real, but envisioned another reality and insisted that any economy must be judged by ethical standards that focus on the least well off.

“Gandhi always carried a realistic edge in his economic writings,” writes Ronald J. Terchek, associate professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and the author of Gandhi Struggling for Autonomy. “His economic realism was not the one associated with garnering higher growth rates... his realism stems from his insistent reminders that what is neglected or discarded in the modern economy is real and remains important to the human condition.” Gandhi articulated this view in the 1930s and 40s. Recently, Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys agreed when he gave a talk in Chennai titled, “An alternative view of the future.”

Mahatma Gandhi never visited the United States, but his ideas had a lasting impact on American thought and social action, chief among them being Martin Luther King Jr. King’s 1963 march on Washington DC for equal opportunities was an idea that drew inspiration

from Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha March.

Gandhi amassed no wealth for himself or his children. His children did not take advantage of his name and seek an office of power. So all decisions taken by him, whether they were good or bad, were for the good of the general public.

In 2011, I toured the United States and gave twenty eight lectures on Gandhi in different universities. His ideas continue to engage young people even today because of his high ideals. At the College of Wooster inspite of a snowstorm, my lecture drew quite a large number of students. I demonstrated my little box spinning wheel charkha and several Indian Americans who had gathered said that they had never seen one.

The charkha, a small, portable, handcranked wheel for spinning cotton was both a tool and a symbol of the Indian Independence movement. The size varies, from that of a hardbound novel to the size of a briefcase, to a floor charkha.

Gandhi wanted the British to leave India and he wanted Indians to realize the value of producing their own goods. He achieved both by using the charkha as a

symbol of that resistance.

His ideas of decentralized economy, employment through nature friendly materials, using renewable energy are all topics for the citizens of the world to contemplate today. The choice between these two opposite and parallel strategies, epitomized by the atom bomb and Gandhian non-violence, which Einstein noted in 1949, has become even more critical today. One wonders whether the instinctive death-wish of our species (which Freud perceived) would triumph over the “soul-force,” which Gandhi sought to evoke in the human breast.

Gandhi himself had no doubt that peace ‘’will not come out of a clash of arms, but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.’’ n Check out the digital version of this article for an interesting video of the author using the charkha.

Dr. V. R. Devika, founder-trustee of The Aseema Trust, a nonprofit organization, conducts regular workshops on charkha-spinning, peace education and communication skills for students and teachers.

FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE Celebrating 22 Years Of Excellence

Mission

To help economically underprivileged and academically bright students in India complete their higher education in Engineering or Medicine through a Scholarship Program.

Achievements •18,927+ Scholars awarded scholarship •$13.67 Millions awarded in scholarship •4032 Scholars awarded scholarship In 2015-2016 •Students attending 412+ colleges in India, across 27 states •100% of your donation goes towards scholarship FFE Annual SV Gala on Oct.16th, 5 PM at Palo Alto Cabana Hotel

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1270, Oakmead Parkway, Suite:111, Sunnyvale, CA 94085 October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 73

events OCTOBER 2016

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE! NOVEMBER issue deadline: Thursday, October 20 To list your event in the Calendar, go to www.indiacurrents.com and click on List Your Event

Check us out on

special dates Mahatma Gandhi’s B’day

Oct. 2

Navaratri

Oct. 1-9

Dussehra

Oct. 11

Sharad Purnima

Oct. 16

Karva Chauth

Oct. 19

Dhan Teras

Oct. 28

Diwali

Oct. 29

Govardhana Puja

Oct. 31

Bhai Duj

Nov. 1

Guru Nanak’s B’day

Nov. 14

CULTURAL CALENDER

October

1 Saturday

Sargam Raas Garba. Live musicians

and singers. Kids garba. Ends Oct. 15.

Organized by The Sargam Group of Southern California. 8 p.m. University High School, 4771 Campus Drive., Irvine. $8. (714) 478-8927, (714) 721-8502.

Abhinaya Dance Company presents Vaanara Leela—Monkeys in the Ramayana, Nov 5-6

Harmony: Wildlife and Nature Inspired Portraits. Featuring Fremont

based painter, Bhavna Misra. The artwork is on display in the north wing of the library’s second floor. Ends Oct. 16. Organized by Phantom Art Gallery. 12 p.m.

Milpitas Main Library, Milpitas, 160 N

74 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

Main St., Milpitas. Free. (408) 586-3210. bhavna.misra@gmail.com. www.bhavnamisra.com, www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/milpitas/ departments/recreation-services/cultural-artstheater/phantom-art-gallery/.

Mr. India—A Grand Musical. A

events

What’s hot this month

THEATER

V

aanara Leela—Monkeys in the Ramayana is a dance drama presented by Abhinaya Dance Company. The Ramayana is one of the two major Sanskrit epics from Hindu mythology describing Prince Rama’s journey. The most extraordinary feature in this epic is the role played by the monkeys in the forest where the prince is exiled. Prince Rama seeks the help of Hanuman, the monkey warrior venerated as a god, and Sugreeva, king of a vast monkey army to find his abducted wife, Sita. Focusing Rasika Kumar as Hanuman on the story from the monkeys’ perspective, the producKumar. The key role of Hanution will dramatically portray man will be danced by Rasika the hordes of monkeys and Kumar. The performance their enthusiasm and energy features new choreography by as they set out to find Sita.

Mythili Kumar, Rasika Kumar, When Hanuman succeeds in Malavika Kumar and Anjana finding Sita in Lanka, he and Dasu with music composed by the monkeys assist in building Asha Ramesh. n an incredible bridge of stones spanning the ocean to reach Saturday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m.; Lanka.

Sunday, Nov. 6, 4 p.m. Mexican The performance is Heritage Plaza Theater, 1700 directed by Artistic Directors Alum Rock Ave., San Jose.

Mythili Kumar and Rasika (408) 871-5959, abhinaya.org.

Mapping the Kumbh Mela Over fifty Harvard professors, students, administrative staff, and medical practitioners made the pilgrimage to Allahabad, India, to the Kumbh Mela site in 2013, inspired by its scale and complexity, to document and analyze the processes involved in the successful functioning of the Kumbh.

Join three Harvard faculty leaders Diana Eck, Tarun Khanna and Rahul Mehrotra of the Kumbh Mela research project as they share viewpoints from the study of the Ganges pollution due to flowers and acts of worship, to understanding just how this massive feat of construct-

ing a city in the matter of a few months is completed, and whether this could be a prototype for a pop-up megacity with its own special dynamics in terms of infrastructure, food, waste, health, transportation, and communications. The systematic documentation of processes at the festival has revealed a rich and sophisticated urban typology, the various components of which could be useful in the future for other, more precarious contexts relating to disaster response, public health and sustainability. A reception follows the talk. n Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco. Free after Museum admission.

PLAY Chaos Theory—A Play. He’s cynical, cocky and well-read. She’s clever, curious and amused by him. It’s the ‘60s! Fashionable movies play at art deco cinemas, Nehruvian poshness is stylish, Beatles are the rage. They meet at Delhi University over Shakespeare and whisky, battling burning questions on literature, philosophy, existentialism and romance. She thinks a PhD in America is the answer, he follows her, across continents, campuses, decades, marriages and life. n Oct. 14-15. EnActe Arts. 6-8 p.m. Cubberley Community Theater, 4000 Middlefield Road. Suite T2, Palo Alto. $20-$100. info@ enacte.org. enacte.org.

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 75

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events nized by Gujrati Cultural Association.

Washington High School, 38442 Fremont Blvd., Fremont. $15. www.gcabayarea.org, EventMozo.com.

Sangeeta Samyoga. Featuring music by Srividya Ramanath and Bhargavi

Balasubramanian (vocal), K. P. Nandini (violin), Akshay Anathapadmanabhan (mridangam). Organized by South Indian Fine Arts. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Eagle Theater, 201 Almond Ave., Los Altos. General $20, Preferred $30, Premium $50, Sponsors, free. www.southindiafinearts.org.

2016 Sanskriti Annual Durga Puja.

Ends Oct. 2. Organized by Sanskriti.

10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Newark Pavilion, 6430 Thornton Ave., Newark. www.sanskriti.org/ migrate/.

Shanti—A Journey of Peace. Shanti

Navratri and Dandiya-raas throughtout the West Coast

half-blind, bumbling tea-seller in Delhi rises to become Prime Minister of India in this hilarious and hard-hitting satire on Indian democracy. Based on the 2007 novel The Peacock Throne, the play is a grand farce, starting with the 1984 antiSikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and ending with the election that threw up a hung parliament in 1989. Tucked amidst these momentous events is the tale of a humble and foolish tea-seller, whose rise to power is the bittersweet story of India itself. Ends Oct. 2. Organized by Naatak. 6-4 p.m. Cubberly Theater, 4000 Middlefield Road., Palo Alto.

General $22, VIP $32. Group General $18, VIP $26. (408) 499-5692, (510) 919-3584.

tickets@naatak.org, info@naatak.org. www. naatak.com/portfolio/mr-india-2016/, www. youtube.com/watch?v=1-AK5U3i-wg.

Navratri Festival. Nine consecutive

nights of Raas Garba Mahotsav. Open-air, fully lit, artificial turf with Abhishek Patvari and band and 4 other artist visiting from Ahmadabad. Ends Oct. 9. Organized by Bay Area youth Vaishnav Parivar (BAYVP). 7:30-10:30 p.m. ShreemayaKrishnaDham, 25 Corning Ave., Milpitas. $10 weekdays, $15 weekend, 9 days all-days inclusive pass $50, seniors $5. (408) 4259640. sandip_v@yahoo.com. www.bayvp.org.

GCA Raas Garba. Music by Sharvari

Dixit and group. Ends Oct. 15. Orga-

76 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

represents the meeting of Western and Eastern cultures. Featuring over 250 musicians, the Santa Clara Chorale and a string orchestra along with dancers on stage, from the Bay Area. Organized by Dharma Civilization Foundation. 3-5 p.m. Oakland Mormon Temple Interstake Center Auditorium, 4770 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. (614) 668-1668. www.purplepass. com/#135706/Dharma_Civilization_Foundation-Shanti_-_A_Journey_of_Peace-Interstake_Center_Auditorium,_Oakland_Mormon_Temple,_California-October-01-2016. html.

Home of Hope Donor Appreciation Gala. Emceed by reporter Scott

Budman and keynote speaker Kiran Modi, founder of project Udayan Care based in Delhi. Cocktails, dinner and live entertainment. Organized by Home of Hope.

6 p.m. ICC Milpitas, 525 Los Coches St., Milpitas . $150. (650) 279-8820, (408) 807-5928. info@hohinc.org. www.hohinc. org.

October

2 Sunday

McDonald’s Education Expo. Understand the College admissions process, get insider knowledge on improving your

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

Durga Puja events throughout the Bay Area

admittance rate, financial aid and scholarship guidance. Featured speakers Jason Ma, Anjali Vaswani, Roseanna Montgomery, Steven Ma. Organized by India West and Flex College Prep. 12-6 p.m. Fremont Marriott Silicon Valley—Grand Ballroom, 46100 Landing Pkwy., Fremont. Free. www. indiawest.com/collegefair.

Navratri 2016. Raas garba with live music with Samir and Dipalee Date. Organized by Bollywood Garba. 7 p.m. UCI Bren Event Center, 100 Mesa Road., Irvine. $25. www.ucirvinetickets.com.

Hindustani Semi Classical Concert

by Raghunandan Panshikar. Disciple

Devdutt Pattanaik in a Discussion of the Ramayana. Devdutt explores the

of Kishori Amonkar. Accompanied by Bharat Kamat (tabla) and Niranjan Lele (harmonium). Organized by Swar Sudha.

6-9:30 p.m. Jain Temple Auditorium, 722 S. Main St., Milpitas. $20, $30. (408) 461-8390, (510) 579-8211. swarsudha@ swarsudha.org. www.SwarSudha.org, www.

Sulekha.com/SwarSudha, www.TicketHungama.com/SwarSudha.

October

4 Tuesday

beauty and timelessness of the ancient Ramayana epic through new and fresh perspectives. With his unique, contemporary take on myth, which he defines as subjective truth, he sheds new insights on the Ramayana’s enduring appeal across two millennia, and examines its particular relevance for contemporary society,breaking free from the traditional/non traditional

ideological approach. Organized by SACHI, Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India and INK Talks. 7 p.m. Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto.

Priority $50;General $25; Members 20% discount. (650) 918-6335. info@sachi. org. www.sachi.org, www.eventbrite.com/e/ devdutt-pattanaik-in-a-discussion-of-theramayana-tickets-27694770805?aff=eac2.

October

5 Wednesday

Hindustani Vocal Concert by Sujata Ghanekar. Accompanied by

Rishikesh Armstrong on tabla. Organized

by UC Berkeley Music Dept. 12-1 p.m.

UC Berkeley, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley. Free.

(408) 394-5337. suj108@hotmail.com.

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 77

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

Happy Diwali! Events throughout the West Coast.

October

6 Thursday

Reveal of Wax Figures of Bollywood’s Biggest Stars at Madame Tussauds San Francisco. In anticipa-

tion of Diwali, the museum will bring a taste of Bollywood to the city for its wax figure launch event. The event will feature appetizers from Kasa Indian Eatery, performances by Bay Area Bollywood dance troupe Nachle SF, as well as the reveal of Madame Tussauds’ Bollywood wax figure set, which will include Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan. 7-9 p.m.

Madame Tussauds San Francisco, 145 Jefferson St., San Francisco. www.madametussauds.com/SanFrancisco.

October

7 Friday

Sharodotsav—Durga Puja 2016.

Festival starts with a brand new Durga Protima from Kolkata. This was purchased recently from one of the most reputed artists from Kumartuli, Koltata. 3 days of puja, music and food. Ends Oct. 9.

Organized by Bay Area Prabasi. Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, 344 Tully Road, San Jose. www.prabasi.org/events/durgapuja-2016.

Dakshini Durga Puja 2016. October 7: Nandita Behera’s Odissi Dance Circle presents “Devi Vandana” followed

by Rupankar (with band). October 8: Poly Chatterjee presents with local talent “Pujor Jalsha & Fashion Fiesta”; the Academy of Arts and Cultural Exchange presents “Saat Bhai Chompa: the Rise of the Prince”; Bombay night with Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Marathi winner and Hindi 2nd runner up Vishwajeet Borwankar.

78 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

October 9: Dhunuchi and Visarjan. Ends Oct. 9. Organized by Dakshini. Torrance Civic Center, 3330 Civic Center Drive., Torrance. www.dakshini.org/events/eventscalendar-2016-17/durga-pujo-2016.html.

Durga Puja. Oct 7th, Maha Shasti and a concert by the Anupam Roy and his band; Oct 8th, Maha Saptami; Oct 9th, Mahashtami; Oct 10th, Mahanabami; Oct 11th, Maha Dashami. Ends Oct. 11. Organized by Paschimi. Unify Event Center, 765 Story Road, San Jose. contact@ pashchimi.org. www.pashchimi.org.

Bay Area Durga Utsav. Orga-

nized by Bay Area Durga Utsav Santa Clara. 5-8 p.m. 5155 Stars and Stripes Drive., Santa Clara. www.facebook. com/events/259308281110960/?active_ tab=highlights.

events Subterranean Ghosts: India’s Vanishing Stepwells. Discussion with

Chicago journalist and arts and culture specialist Victoria Lautman. While Indian palaces, forts and temples receive muchdeserved attention, one of the most significant architectural wonders, stepwells are often overlooked. Several stories deep, these primarily functioned to store water during the monsoons, but also served as civic retreats, respite for traveling caravans from the brutal heat, and spiritual destinations. Organized by SACHI, Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India and Palo Alto Art Center. 7 p.m. Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto. Free.

(650) 918-6335. info@sachi.org. www. eventbrite.com/e/subterranean-ghosts-indiasvanishing-stepwells-by-victoria-lautmantickets-26708647283.

October

8 Saturday

Children’s Discovery Museum Annual Diwali Celebration. Making of

diya lamps, sampling traditional sweets, enjoying folktales, classical dance, hands on rangoli making and a fashion show.

Ends Oct. 9. 12-5 p.m. Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, 180 Woz Way, San Jose.

General $13; children: $13; seniors: $12.

(408) 298-5437. cclark@cdm.org, ayoung@ cdm.org. www.cdm.org.

Passport to India. Discover the deli-

cious flavors of India with specialty food & spice vendors, live cooking demos & more. Kids zone: Complimentary face painting, jump houses, arts & crafts. Live music, Beer garden with local craft brews and boutique wines available for purchase. Fresh farm produce & artisan food including specialty Food Trucks. 2-5 p.m.

Facebook Farmers Market, 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park.

Indians for Collective Action 2016 Annual Banquet. Honoring Anshu

Gupta, Founder of Goonj; Adhik Kadam, co­founder and director of Borderless World Foundation; Radha Basu and Dipak Basu, founders of Anudip Foundation and Jhumki Basu Foundation for

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events their dedication and commitment to helping under-served communities. Organized

by ICA. 4-9:30 p.m. India Community Center, 525 Los Coches St., Milpitas . $65.

(650) 804-1066, (650) 868­-6645, (408­) 396-­6240. pushpa_subbarao@yahoo.com, akbhushan@aol.com, bhupenmehta@yahoo. com. www.icaonline.org, www.eventbrite. com/e/ica-2016-annual-banquet-honoringanshu-gupta-adhik-kadam-radha-dipakbasu-tickets-27371594175.

Amitesh Mishra Live in Concert.

Listen to Bollywood hits and originals with Manesh Judge, Kush Khanna, Mike Nathaniel and guest artists: Anisha Bakshi, Vikas Singh. Organized by Amitesh Mishra Music. 7:30 p.m. Studio 8 (SJSLive) Night Club, 8 South 1st St., San Jose. $30. (510) 589-3505. events.sulekha.com/ amitesh-mishra-concert_event-in_san-joseca_307689.

Induz Laser Dandiya 2016. Large arena for Dandiya and Garba Dance, laser show, lessons. Best dressed contest with a power packed performance by BombayJam. 7:30-10:30 p.m. Centerville Junior High School, 37720 Fremont Blvd., Fremont.

(510) 875-5006, (510) 449-8530, (408) 813-6595. www.induz.org.

Vidya Vox in Concert. Bollywood

+ Western pop mashups. Organized by Modern Beats & Bolly 92.3. 7:30 p.m. Fox Theatre Redwood City, 2215 Broadway St., Redwood City. $30-$45. www.facebook.com/ events/1080436958677820/, foxrwc.showare. com/ordertickets.asp?p=342, www.modernbeatslive.com.

SEF Dandia 2016. San Mateo Event Center, 2495 S Delaware St., San Mateo . giftofvision.org/sef-dandia-2016?SID=fb, www.giftofvision.org.

October

9 Sunday

Ravi Gutala (tabla), Vivek Datar (harmonium), Abhijit Jere (manjira). Narration

by Arvind Kansal. Organized by Mitralaya. 9-11:30 a.m. 19306 Pinnacle Court, Saratoga, CA. $20. (408) 398-2345. anuradhatsingh@gmail.com, jayanti_s@yahoo. com. www.jayantisahasrabuddhe.com.

Vivah 2016 Bridal Expo. South Asian Wedding Expo. 11 a.m. Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy., Santa Clara. www.facebook.com/ events/1150325638341387/.

Durga of the Bay Fashion Show.

Calling all beautiful newly weds or about to wed to participate in the fashion show.

You will be dressed like a Bengali bride with unique draping of saree, mukut and chandon on forehead. Organized

by WomenNow TV. Santa Clara Golf and Tennis Club, 5155 Stars and Stripes Drive., Santa Clara. www.facebook.com/ events/539556322906844/.

October

14 Friday

Chaos Theory—A Play. He’s cynical, cocky and well-read. She’s clever, curious and amused by him. It’s the ‘60s! Fashionable movies play at art deco cinemas, Nehruvian poshness is stylish, Beatles are the rage. They meet at Delhi University over Shakespeare and whisky, battling burning questions on literature, philosophy, existentialism and romance. She thinks a PhD in America is the answer, he follows her. Across continents, campuses, decades, marriages and life, but bound by the laws of Chaos Theory. Ends Oct. 15.

Organized by EnActe Arts. 6-8 p.m. Cubberley Community Theater, 4000 Middlefield Road. Suite T2, Palo Alto . $20-$100. info@enacte.org. enacte.org/production/ chaos-theory-2016/.

Cupertino Dandiya Nite. Live music

Swaranjali. Celebrating Vidushi Veena

Sahasrabuddhe’s life and music. A vocal concert with narration by Jayanti Sahasrabuddhe (disciple and daughter-in-law of Veena Sahasrabuddhe). Accompanied by

by Piyush Nagar. Organized by Net Effect Media, Inc. 7:30-11:30 p.m. Dynasty Banquet, 10123 N Wolfe Road, Cupertino. $12$15. (408) 573-7307. sales@neteffectmedia. com. www.neteffectmedia.com, www.facebook. com/events/1730685843818874/.

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 79

events Garba Raas with Falguni Pathak.

Organized by Javanika. 8-11 p.m.

Santa Clara County Fairground, 344 Tully Road., San Jose. www.facebook.com/ events/444856862377172/.

October

15 Saturday

Diwali—Festival of Lights, A Multicultural Event. Organized by

Cuptertino Chamber of Commerce. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Memorial Park, 10185 N. Sterling Road., Cupertino. (408) 252-7054. cupertino-chamber.org/event-calendar/#id= 295&wid=501&cid=233.

Annual Free Health Fair. Health

advice from doctors. Diabetes, blood pressure testing. Flu shots, nutrition advice. Organized by Hindu Community and Cultural Center. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Shiva Vishnu Temple, Akella Hall, 1232 Arrowhead Ave., Livermore . Free. (925) 4496255, (925) 895-3659. anand_gundu@ yahoo.com. www.livermoretemple.org/hints/ content/html/2016/annual-health-fair.pdf.

Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. Discover 100

plus years of Bay Area Desi history, from 1908-2014. You’ll visit original sites, hear stories, and leave inspired by our community’s struggles for justice, from the independence movement to women’s organizing and beyond. Morning (10 a.m.–1 p.m.) and afternoon (2 p.m.–5 p.m.) tours. Organized by Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Berkeley. $5-$15. (510) 8597531. info@berkeleysouthasian.org. www. berkeleysouthasian.org.

Walk for Hope 2016. A reminder of the things that matter most in life. The route is decorated with inspiring handmade quotes and experiential activity stations. Includes live entertainment, free-t-shirt, and an opportunity to connect with local non-profits. The theme this year is Practice Kindness. Organized by Be the Cause Volunteer Organization. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Miles Square Regional Park, 16801 Euclid St., Fountain Valley. Free.

80 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events walk@bethecause.org. www.bethecause.org/ walk-for-hope/register-here, www.bethecause. org, giannajane@gmail.com.

FOG Diwali and Fireworks—Festival of Lights. Spectacular fireworks

and laser show. Cultural programs, Ram Leela, parade, fancy costumes, kids masti corner, a petting zoo, and animal rides.

Food, DJ and dance to Bollywood songs.

Organized by Festival of Globe & FIA. 11 a.m. Alameda County Fair Grounds, 4501 Pleasanton Ave., Pleasanton. $5. events.sulekha.com/fog-diwali-festival_eventin_pleasanton-ca_308780.

Light Marathi Concert by SingerActress Ketaki Mategaonkar. Orga-

kmanji84@gmail.com, siliconvalleywalk@ akfusa.org, david.taylor@akdn.org. www. akfusa.org, support.akfusa.org/site/TR?fr_ id=1138&pg=entry.

Kathak for Bollywood! Antara Bhardwaj launches her workshop for dancers around the Bay Area. This program is meant to provide dancers with all the fundamental techniques of kathak needed to choreograph and properly execute Bollywood pieces with a classical flair. 2-4 p.m. Mission Dance Theatre, 3316 24th St., San Francisco. www.facebook.com/ events/890583077708941/, www.dancewithena.com/workshops/kathak-for-bollywood.

Carnatic Music Concert. Featuring

nized by Swar Sudha. 6-10 p.m. Cubberley Auditorium, 4000 Middlefield Road., Palo Alto. $20 General, $30 preferred, $45 VIP. (408) 461-8390, (510) 579-8211. swarsudha@swarsudha.org. www.SwarSudha. org, www.Sulekha.com/SwarSudha, www.

TicketHungama.com/SwarSudha.

Sandeep Narayan (vocal), H N Bhaskar (violin), Satishkumar (mridangam). Organized by South Indian Fine Arts. 4 p.m.

Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy., Santa Clara. General $20, Preferred $30, Premium $50, Sponso,r free. www.southindiafinearts.org.

The MAGIK Tour. With Arjun Ram-

Musical Tribute to Veena Sahasrabuddhe. The tribute to the late Vidu-

pal, Farhan Akhtar, Prachi Desai, Shraddha Kapoor, Poorab Kohli and Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy. 7 p.m. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakland. $39-$1500. www. tickethungama.com/event/3177/magik-witharjun-rampal-farhan-akhtar-prachi-desaishraddha-kapoor-poorab-kohli-and-shankarehsaan-loy.

October

16 Sunday

FFE Annual SV Gala. Organized by

Foundation for Excellence. 5 p.m. Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel, 4290 El Camino Real, Palo Alto. www.ffe.org.

AKF Walk/Run. The event raises awareness and funds for programs that mobilize communities around the world to build better futures. Participants in the Walk-Run help communities in some of the poorest areas of Africa and Asia improve their quality of life. Organized

by Aga Khan Foundation. 7 a.m.-12 p.m. Lake Elizabeth Park, 40000 Paseo Padre Pkwy., Fremont. (408) 286-8484.

shi Veena Sahasrabuddhe includes video clips of some of her concerts and talks.

It features a narration of her life, interspersed by music by Anupama Chandratreya, Sonya Dalal, Suparna Dangi,Vivek Datar, Manoj Tamhankar, Arabhi Sundararajan, Preeti Tamhankar, Tanmay Bicchu, and others. Followed by aarti and mahaprasad. 4-8 p.m. Badarikashrama, 15602 Maubert Ave., San Leandro. Free. (510) 278-2444. badarik@pacbell.net. Badarikashrama, badarik@pacbell.net.

October

17 Monday

Kathakali Dance Show. Performances

by Kalamandalam Manoj, actor; Kalamandalam Sukumaran, make-up artist and other special guests. Ends Oct. 19.

Organized by Kaladharan Vishwanath. 8 p.m. The Hillsdale Club, 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley. $30, $22 students/seniors/ Saachi memebers. (510) 527-2882. saachi.org.

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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.

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events tion with Shobha Rao. Novelist Shilpi Somaya Gowda will talk about her new book, The Golden Son. Her novel is about Anil Patel, the first of his family to go to college. It is a story of family, responsibility, love, honor, tradition, and identity, in which two childhood friends—a young doctor and a newly married bride—must balance the expectations of their culture and their families with the desires of their own hearts. Shilpi will be in conversation with local phenom Shobha Rao. Shobha is the author of the debut story collection An Unrestored Woman. Shobha moved to the U.S. from India at the age of seven.

She is the winner of the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction. 7:30 p.m.

Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. Free. www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/web/2562210.

October

22 Saturday

Diwali Mela 2016 in San Diego.

Concert, games, food. Organized by MINX Events. Stone Ranch Elementary School, 16150 4S Ranch Parkway, San Diego. (858) 848-1527.

Diwali Mela—The Festival of Lights. Rath Yatra, dandiya raas, kids

games and rides. Organized by Federation of Indian American Associations (FIA).

5-11 p.m. 18700 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia.

Free. (562) 882-9922.

Ninth Annual Nikhil Banerjee Memorial Student Concert. Students of

Partha Chatterjee dedicate the concert to his guru Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. This allday music festival will highlight student performances on solo sitar, slide guitar, bansuri flute, santoor, harmonium, cello, and vina. 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Santa Teresa Hills Presbyterian Church, 5370 Snell Ave., San Jose. Free. nbmconcert@gmail.com.

Carnatic Vocal Concert—Double Header. 2-4 p.m. Shilpa Sathyanathan

(vocal), accompanied by Aparna Thyagarajan (violin) and Akshay Venkatesan (mridangam). 4:15-5:15 p.m. Achyut Pachalla(vocal), accompanied by Vittal Thirumalai (violin) and Shreyas Ramas-

82 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events wami (mridangam). Organized by SR Fine Arts. 2-5:15 p.m. Community Of Infinite Spirit, 1540, Hick’s Ave., San Jose.

Free. (408) 569-0860. dirsrfa@gmail.com. www.srfinearts.info.

Dance Recital by Swati Ramaswami. Student of Hema Malini (In-

dia) and Naina Shastri. Organized by Krishnageetham Performing Arts. 5-6:30 p.m. Community Of Infinite Spirit, 1540 Hick’s Ave., San Jose. Free. (408) 569-0860. dirsrfa@gmail.com. www.krishnageethamperformingarts.com, sujitsam@gmail.com.

October

23 Sunday

Carnatic Violin Concert. Featuring

Mysore Nagaraj and Manjunath, accompanied by Srimushnam Raja Rao (mridangam) and Giridhar Udupa (ghatam).

Organized by South Indian Fine Arts.

Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy., Santa Clara. General $25, Preferred $35, Premium $50, Sponsors, free. www.southindiafinearts.org.

October

29 Saturday

Diwali Dhamaka. Garba dance steps

with a lead, bollywood spectrum of beats with DJ, Raffle, talent show, Indian food, arts & crafts and henna. Special activities for kids. Organized by Melange. 6:309:30 p.m. Gunn High School (Titan Gym), 780 Arastradero Road., Palo Alto. (650) 823-4000. melange.ca@gmail.com. www. eventbrite.com/e/diwali-dhamaka-andbollywood-dance-tickets-27794454963, www. facebook.com/melange.ca/?fref=ts.

October

30 Sunday

Susamskritam—A Classical Music and Dance Show. Fundraiser for Sri

Ramakrishna Sarada Bhajan Mandali, that unravels the divine origin and evolution of Sanskrit. The program showcases the grandeur of this language and of its profound expressions in the Vedas, the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), and the innumerable musical compositions of the present. Music Composition,

music direction and violin by Anuradha Sridhar. Item composition and vocals by Savita Narasimhan, rhythm composition and mridangam by Shriram Brahmanandam. Vocals: TN Arunagiri and Natana Valiveti. Direction and choreography

by Vidya Krishnan. Organized by Kala Mudrika. 4-6 p.m. Cubberley Theatre, 4000 MIddlefield Road, Palo Alto. $250-$25.

(510) 371-2115, (510) 252-9541. saradamandali@gmail.com, susamskritam@gmail. com. www.saradamandali.org, www.facebook. com/susamskritam/.

November

5 Saturday

Mapping the Kumbh Mela. Join three Harvard faculty leaders Diana Eck, Tarun Khanna and Rahul Mehrotra of the Kumbh Mela research project as they share viewpoints from the 2013 Kumbh: from the study of the Ganges pollution due to acts of worship, to understanding just how this massive feat of constructing a city in the matter of a few months is completed. Organized by SACHI, Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India and Asian Art Museum. 2 p.m. Samsung Hall, Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco. Free after museum admission.

(650) 918-6335. info@sachi.org. www.sachi. org, www.eventbrite.com/e/sachi-annualevent-2016-mapping-the-kumbh-mela-tickets-27996844315?aff=es2.

Vaanara Leela—The Extraordinary Role of the Monkeys. Abhinaya’s

2016 fall concert portrays the extraordinary role of Hanuman -the monkey warrior-god and his monkey army in the ancient Indian epic, Ramayana. They assist Prince Rama in his mission to destroy the evil ten-headed demon Ravana and rescue his kidnapped wife Sita. Organized

by Abhinaya Dance Company. 7-9 p.m.

Ends Nov. 6. School of Arts & Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose. $50 VIP, $30 Preferred, $20 general, $15 student/senior. (408) 871-5959. abdanceco@gmail.com. abhinaya.org. © Copyright 201 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited.

Om Sri Mathre Namaha

Saturday October 1 st Navarathri begins from Saturday October 1st to Monday October 10th daily night at 8 pm. Sri Lalitha Sahasranama Archana by devotees.

Friday October 7th Sukla Sashti night at 7:30 pm. Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Sahasra Nama Archana Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Sunday October 9th Temple Opens at 6.30 am. Sri Venkateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Lakshmi Ganapathiabhisheka, Sri Shiva Abhisheka Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka continued with Sri Skandha Sashti Kavasam chanting, Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Morning at 9.30 am Sri Durga Ashtami Sri Chandi Homa (Sri Duraga Sapthasathi Homa) Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Monday October 10th Sri Maha Navami Sri Saraswathi Pooja Tuesday October 11th Sri Vijayadasami Temple opens at 6.30 am. Sri Venkateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Shiva Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Sri Akshrabhyasa ceremony will start from 1st batch 7 am, 8 am, 9 am, 10 am, 11 am 12 Noon, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm.

Please bring the following items for the Sri Akshrabhyasa: turmeric, kumkum, and beetel leafs 4 nos, beetel nuts 2 nos, sandal powder, agarbathi, camphor, coconut 1, banana 6 nos, fruits, flowers, rice 1 pkt, coins 15 nos, slate, pencil, writing materials, new dress vasthra for the baby and any sweet prasadam for naivedya.

Continuous Archana. Sri Druga Aarati and Sri Jai Jagadeesha Hare Aarati for Balaji Ekantha Seva. Temple closes at 10.15 pm.

Thursday October 13th at 6 pm Pradosham Shiva Sri Rudra Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Saturday October 15th at 12 Noon Sri Nava Graha Homa/ Sri Saneeswara Graha

Homa Sri Nava Graha Abhisheka Sri Saneeswara Graha Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa 2 pm: Pournami Vratha Samoohika Sri Sathya Narayna Swamy Pooja/Vratha Aarati and Manthra Pushpa 4 pm: Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka continued with Sri Vishnu Sahasra Nama Chanting Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Wednesday October 19th Sri Karva Chauth Sri Sankata Hara Chathurthi at 5 pm. Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Homa/ Srilakshmi Ganapathi Abhisheka, Kritika Vratha Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Friday October 28th at 5 pm Sri Buwaneswari/Sri Lalitha Devi Abhisheka continued with Sri Lalitha Sahaasra Nama Chanting. 6 pm: Pradosham Shiva Sri Rudra Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Saturday October 29th Sri Naraga Chathurdasi Snanam Deepawali Festival Day 1: Temple opens at 7.30 am with Sri Venikateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka, Sri Vishnu Sahasra Nama Chanting Aarati and Manthra Pushpa continuous Archana. Sri Lakshmi Aarati and Sri Jai Jagadeesha Hare Aarati for Balaji Ekantha Seva and the temple closes at 10:15pm.

Sunday October 30th Day 2: Sri Deepwali Festival. Temple opens at 7.30 am with Sri Venkateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Abhisheka, Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka, Sri Shiva Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa continued with Sri Lakshmi Kubers Pooja, Sri Kedara Gowri Vratha by devotees Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Continuous Archana. Sri Lakshmi Aarati and Sri Jai Jagadeesha Hare Aarati for Balaji Ekantha Seva and the temple closes at 10:15 pm.

Monday October 31st Skandha Sasthi begins from Sunday October 31st to November 4th daily at 8 pm. Sri Valli

Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Sahasra Nama Archana by devotees Saturday November 5Th 4 pm Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka continued with Sri Vishnu Shasra Nama chanting continued with Skandha Sashti Soora Samharam Kavadi Festival Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Saturday October 29th Sri Naraga Chathurdasi Snanam Deepawali Festival Day 1: Temple opens at 7.30 am with Sri Venikateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka, Sri Vishnu Sahasra Nama Chanting Aarati and Manthra Pushpa continuous Archana. Sri Lakshmi Aarati and Sri Jai Jagadeesha Hare Aarati for Balaji Ekantha Seva and the temple closes at 10:15pm.

Sunday October 30th Day 2: Sri Deepwali Festival. Temple opens at 7.30 am with Sri Venkateswara Suprabhatam continued with Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Abhisheka, Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka, Sri Shiva Abhisheka Aarati and Manthra Pushpa continued with Sri Lakshmi Kubers Pooja, Sri Kedara Gowri Vratha by devotees Aarati and Manthra Pushpa Continuous Archana. Sri Lakshmi Aarati and Sri Jai Jagadeesha Hare Aarati for Balaji Ekantha Seva and the temple closes at 10:15 pm.

Monday October 31st Skandha Sasthi begins from Sunday October 31st to November 4th daily at 8 pm. Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Sahasra Nama Archana by devotees Saturday November 5Th 4 pm Sri Venkateswara Abhisheka continued with Sri Vishnu Shasra Nama chanting continued with Skandha Sashti Soora Samharam Kavadi Festival Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya Abhisheka Aarati 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

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GLORIOUS SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST J

esus Christ is coming back again to this world as "the King of Kings & the Lord of Lords" to judge Nations with HIS righteousness, to be with HIS people who have accepted Christ into their hearts & lived/living a life acceptable to Christ, having their names written in "the Book of Life" & to live with them forever. For the Lord Jesus Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we, who are alive and remain, shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

No one knows the day & hour when Jesus Christ will come back, not even the angels of heaven, but only the Father God in heaven.

The day of Christ coming also called as "the Day of the Lord" will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Nevertheless we, according to HIS promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Jesus Christ coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but MY words will by no means pass away”

What will happen to people who are left behind during Christ Second coming?

Who will not be with Christ forever?

For people whose names are written in "the Book of Life" it will be a glorious day & for others it will be a day of destruction. The Lord will consume with the breath of HIS mouth and destroy with the brightness of HIS coming.

What will be the signs before Second coming of Christ & of the end age?

After coming of Christ, Satan will be bound for 1000 years. Saints of God will rule with Christ during these 1000 years. There will be no death and everyone will live happy with joy & peace, since the Prince of Peace will rule them. After 1000 years of Christ reign, satan will be released to see the reign of Christ with righteousness. Satan will go around nations deceiving people one more time and gather few folks to fight against HIS saints. God will send fire and devour them. Satan will be sent to hell forever.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Only people whose sins are cleansed by the Blood of Christ, lived/living righteous life before Christ & have their names written in "the Book of Life" will inherit the Kingdom of God or to be with HIM forever. The Bible says in 1Cor 6:9-10, Gal 5:19-21, Rom 1:29-32, Rev 21:8, Rev 14:9-11 that the unrighteous people will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Many will be deceived during last days saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ therefore do not go after them. But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end will not come immediately. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Many will be persecuted, beaten, killed, offended, betrayed and hated for Christ sake even by parents, brothers, relatives, friends and children. But not a hair of your head shall be lost. By your patience possess your souls. Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the entire world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

The Great Tribulation

1000 years of Christ reign

The Great White Throne Judgment

After casting Satan into the Lake of fire (hell), Christ will judge the dead & the Nations with HIS Righteousness. If anyone’s name is not found in “the Book of Life”, then they will be cast into the Lake of fire. Whomsoever name is found in “the Book of Life” will have eternal life with Christ in New Heaven, New Earth & New Jerusalem. There is no death, no sorrow, no crying & no pain.

Now how can I redeem this Gift of Salvation in my life, so I can be with Christ forever?

All we have to do is to believe Jesus, accept HIM into your heart, ask HIM to cleanse your sins by HIS precious blood & live a life acceptable to Christ every day from now on. (Repeat this simple prayer - Prayer means talking to God in your heart)

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, and then know that its desolation is near. Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place where it ought not, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Jesus predicts the destruction of Temple of God to his disciples saying, “The days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down”. For in those days there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of creation of this world. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved.

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.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days, there will be signs like the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see

If you have truly meant this prayer, then you have accepted Jesus Christ into your heart & your name will be written in “the Book of Life”. 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 Christian churches who believes in Trinity (The Father God, Lord Jesus Christ & The Holy Spirit) or email us at : info@christforworld.org

86 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

healthy life

Preventing Motion Sickness Why it occurs and how you can prevent it

By Vijay Gupta

M

otion sickness is a common ailment caused by exposure to certain types of motion. Such motion may be experienced during an amusement park ride, an ocean cruise, or a car ride on a winding road. Although individual susceptibility to motion sickness varies greatly, most people are susceptible if the motion is provocative enough.

The most common symptoms of motion sickness are nausea and vomiting. Other common symptoms include spatial disorientation, malaise, headache, drowsiness and dizziness.

Such symptoms may begin minutes after experiencing the offending motion and may last for hours after the motion stops.

Causes of Motion Sickness The principal cause of motion sickness is a conflict among the sensory signals that communicate the position and movement of the body to the brain. Specifically, the brain combines sensory information from the inner ears (the vestibular system), eyes, skin, joint positions, and its own expectations.

Normally, all the sensory signals and the expectations are in agreement. However, when you are reading a book in the back seat of a car on a winding road, the inner ears and the skin receptors sense the car’s motion, but the eyes see only the stationary pages of the book. This sensory conflict can potentially trigger the usual symptoms of motion sickness.

Motion Experienced in a Car The human body in a moving car moves along three independent axes: the vertical axis and two horizontal axes (front-to-back and side-to-side). The vertical motion (or oscillation) is caused

by road bumps and potholes; the frontto-back motion is caused by acceleration and braking; and the side-to-side (lateral) motion is caused by turning a corner or by driving on a curvy road. The vertical motion does not provoke motion sickness because it is effectively damped by the vehicle’s suspension system. The motions along the two horizontal axes are also muted when the car is cruising steadily on a straight and empty freeway. But these horizontal motions can become significant during city driving. And they may become specially pronounced when the car is negotiating a winding road through the mountains.

Prevention If you have a history of motion sickness when exposed to a specific type of motion, it is a good bet that you will get sick again. In general, prevention of motion sickness is far more effective than treatment of symptoms after they have occurred.

There are many practical strategies for preventing or minimizing motion sickness. An obvious strategy is to simply avoid activities that are known to be especially nauseogenic, e.g., a challenging amusement park ride or a small boat ride in rough water.

If avoidance of unpleasant motion is impractical, then try to reduce the intensity of the motion stimuli. In a public

vehicle, choose a seat location that minimizes motion: near the wings in an airplane, near the waterline in the middle of a boat or ship, and near the front in a bus. In a private vehicle, ask the driver to accelerate and brake gently, and to slow down on the curves. Reducing the curve speed by 30% (say, from 35 mph to 25 mph) decreases the level of lateral acceleration by half.

Another key strategy is to minimize the potential sensory conflict arising from any motion. In a car, the best way to do so is to drive the car yourself.

As a driver, you can anticipate any turn, acceleration, or braking, and prepare your brain and your senses for the expected motion stimuli. Indeed, car drivers rarely get motion sickness, especially if they drive gently and confidently.

But what if driving is not an option for you? In that case, the best alternative is to sit next to the driver and pretend that you are driving. Focus on the road ahead and anticipate all the bumps and turns the way the real driver is doing. Whenever the car turns, tilt your head (like the driver) towards the curve center. Memorize the routes you take frequently so that you can anticipate every turn and twist along the way. As we enter the brave new world of self-driving cars, “pretending to drive” could become a popular technique for preventing motion sickness.

Some other do’s and dont’s Always sit facing forward. Look at the road ahead. Don’t read a book or look at a screen. If you start feeling queasy, take a short break and step out of the car. On a boat or a ship, stay on the deck and look forward at the horizon. Don’t watch or talk to another person who is having motion sickness. Alternatively, take a nap if you can (during sleep, the brain

October 2016 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 87

stops receiving the sensory signals). Don’t travel on an empty stomach or a very full stomach. And drink water to stay well hydrated.

Medications and Alternative Therapies Medications are most effective when taken prophylactically, i.e., as a preventive.

Most medications must be taken at least 30-60 minutes before travel begins. On long trips, extra medication may be needed during the trip. A prescription drug for preventing motion sickness is Scopolamine (hyoscine hydrobromide). It is available as a transdermal patch that must be placed behind the ear at least four hours before the trip. Some over the counter medications are Dramamine (dimenhydrinate) and Bonine (meclizine). Note, however, that all these drugs do have significant side effects. Among alternative therapies, ginger is a popular choice. Take some ginger root before the trip, and carry some ginger gum to chew on the trip. There is also some evidence that stimulation of the P6 acupressure point on the inner wrist (using manual pressure or a wrist band) is helpful. Finally, all these drugs and thera-

pies work better when used in conjunction with the behavioral prevention strategies described earlier.

Adaptation A very different technique for preventing motion sickness is adaptation (or habituation). This technique is based on the observation that repeated exposure to a sensory stimulus makes one less sensitive to that stimulus. Adaptation to a motion stimulus is best illustrated by sailors returning from a long sea voyage—they get so used to the rocking motion of a ship that they suffer from so-called “disembarkation sickness” when they finally return to land. Closer to home, frequent bus travelers usually become desensitized to a bus’s motion, perhaps after going through a few unpleasant episodes of nausea.

Tolerance to motion stimuli can also be increased through a program of exercises that are designed to induce motion sickness in a controlled and escalating manner.

Such exercise programs are used to train astronauts and fighter pilots who must endure some very nauseogenic motion in their jobs. However, since the training

program itself is very nauseogenic, only the most motivated people manage to go through it.

Motion sickness can be a minor inconvenience or a major constraint on your travel plans, recreational activities, and even career choices, depending on your degree of susceptibility.

In my own case, I have been susceptible to motion sickness since my early childhood. Initially, through habituation, I got used to traveling by buses and taxis in India. However, upon arrival in the United States (where travel speeds are much greater), I rediscovered motion sickness on a ride through California highway Route 1. Subsequently, through trial and error, I found motion sickness prevention strategies that worked best for me. I drive the car (whenever possible), or pretend to do so. The only small problem is that I have to remember to stop the car to enjoy the beautiful scenery. n Vijay Gupta is a math and physics tutor for high school students. He enjoys studying and writing about health issues from a consumer’s perspective.

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dear doctor

Colleague Spins Fantasies About Us

By Alzak Amlani

Q

I had a colleague for about five years who expressed an interest in going out with me. I let him know that I have a partner. I am a lesbian and have been with my partner for over eight years. Recently, I moved to a different location about sixty miles away and I no longer see him. During the week of my transfer he seemed unusually attached to me, asked for us to meet socially and then followed me to my car. I was upset and let him know that I did not want to see him outside of work meetings. I could tell he was distraught and could not accept the boundary I was setting. Recently I discovered that he is telling colleagues that he and I are dating and that we’ve been close for three years now. He tells them about places we’ve visited on vacations and how our families are coming to spend holidays with us. None of this is true and I am feel freaked out. At times I have gotten short emails from him to tell me where he wants to meet with me. I have simply ignored them. I

have talked to our HR Office to see what actions I need to take to stop him from spreading rumors. However, I would like to understand how he could be weaving such tales.

A

You sound quite rational and clear as you describe this unusual and potentially scary situation. I am glad you are speaking with HR to feel safer. There is a diagnosis that could fit such thinking and behavior: Delusional Disorder. Sometimes it is induced by drugs or medication, however, when it is long standing like this, it might have a deeper, psychological cause independent of any substance. There are many types of delusions: erotic, paranoid, somatic, jealous and others. Sometimes significant anger and stalking can accompany delusional thinking, where a person cannot tell what is real and what is imagined. It is very sad to see someone carry on with their strong beliefs in the

90 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

face of contradictory facts. When people are very afraid, their minds can easily create scary fantasies. Or when people feel lonely, they will start to imagine characters around them. In most cases, as the situation changes, the fantasies drop away and the person recognizes the unreal nature and the root causes. However, when a delusional disorder is present, these fantasies linger and the person starts to act as if it were all true. At this point this person does need treatment to look at the deeper psychological needs driving such behavior, learn ways to test reality from delusion and understand the impact of his thinking on others. Often psychiatric medication is also necessary. n Alzak Amlani, Ph.D., is a counseling psychologist of Indian descent in the Bay Area. 650-325-8393. Visit www.wholenesstherapy.com

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relationship diva

Four Essential Dating Tips for Introverted Men

By Jasbina Ahluwalia

M

1. Go to the right places to meet people The best places to meet someone are where you feel the most like yourself. Online dating eases the need for onstant conversation and allows you to think without feeling pressured to think of immediate witty responses. Other low-pressure options include volunteering and taking classes.

ost dating advice centers around being as social as possible, which is useful if you’re an outgoing person. But, if you feel drained in a crowd, channeling your inner social butterfly can be counterproductive; it can even feel fake.

Although dating may come easier to those who are extroverts, it doesn’t have to be difficult for introverts. It takes playing to one’s strengths to be successful.

2. Be upfront about who you are Being quiet can sometimes give people the impression that you’re conceited or uncaring. Rather than let a date wonder if she’s doing something wrong, tell her that you take time to think before speaking.

Quick review: Who is an introvert?

Introversion and shyness are not synonyms. Introversion simply means that you gain energy (mental and physical) from doing things alone. Reading a book or going on a solitary walk may help an introvert feel recharged. Now that I know I’m an introvert, how do I find a date?

3. Ask questions Generally, people love to talk about themselvves. Play into this by asking fun, engaging questions of your date. What three questions would you ask your pet if he could talk? What has been your favorite

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On Inglish

All That Tamasha

By Kalpana Mohan

tamasha noun. a grand show, performance, or celebration, especially one involving dance; a fuss or confusion.

I

suffered through walking back from Burma had been reading Ramachandra Guha’s India after the Second World War exchanged notes After Gandhi, a riveting account of India in I’d felt instinctively with another woman whose grandfather too the years following Independence and the word “tamasha” leapt out at me. In both Urdu that the parasols were an had endured such hardship. It was inevitable that tales of Rangoon naturally segued into a and Hindi the word tamasha—with its Arabic origin—means “crowd” or “saunter,” although ironic touch: the minute discussion of Rangoon rubies.

“Did you see that ruby choker on her the word has begun to mean also “spectacle” or they were opened they neck?” my friend asked tilting her head in the “commotion.”

Guha used “tamasha” in that latter sense, blocked those in the direction of another common friend sporting meaning “spectacle,” to describe the farcical back from watching the her brand new 10,000 dollar choker studded with rubies. goings-on of the inquiry of 1977, the Shah “But why buy something only to put it Commission that probed Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s wedding proceedings on excesses during the Indian Emergency. For 21 stage. The point of an In- away in the safe deposit box in a bank?” I asked. To that my friend said that unless a months, she had the power to suspend elections and civil liberties and rule by decree. dian wedding was never parent bought something as dazzling as that During the court proceedings held during the as much to watch the during the course of her life, there would be no heirloom to bequeath to one’s children. inquiry, Mrs. Gandhi would not answer any of the questions, claiming disingenuously that ceremony as to watch And while I didn’t entirely agree with her line she was bound by her cabinet’s oath of secrecy. all those attempting to of reasoning as justification for buying jewelry, I capitulated all the same. Some of the most This travesty of the court process Guha billed a tamasha or spectacle, a term that’s popularly catch a glimpse of the beautiful things our parents passed on to us I thought to myself, came giftwrapped in stories used in Indian journalism in mocking reference ceremony. and memories. Their value was never more to the fractious tendencies of Indian politics as obvious to us until a connection had been severed. well as the raucousness of sociocultural gatherings.

For one 60-year-old guest in the audience, the September The word was popular during the British Raj and I’ve discovered several writings from the time that used the word—most often wedding offered yet another tamasha: the open bar raised quesspelt “tomasha”—to suggest the cacophony and entertainment of tions about a once closed mind. The father of the bride, a lifelong teetotaler, had been generous enough to ensure that the best cockan Indian festival.

In early September, I employed the word for the title of an tails were served just so the friends and relatives of his daughter album on Facebook to capture the mood of the crowd during and son-in-law could have the time of their lives.

Under the flaming bright umbrellas at the spectacular golf a wedding in the San Francisco Bay Area. The main ceremony took place in the glare of the sun and several thoughtful touches club, a beautiful term from the previous night’s tamasha flitted pervaded many aspects of the wedding. The groom and bride had from seat to seat: “Druncle,” a portmanteau word that described wished to serve sunglasses and parasols to the motley crowd of every good Indian uncle who had been found too inebriated to aging Indian aunties and uncles and high-octane young business navigate a straight path to the bar.

I realized that what I liked the most about a wedding applied graduates. One attendee who was used to blessing the circulating tray with the mangalsutra or sacred thread also absentmindedly to news and politics, after all. “News is tamasha and what really blessed the tray of monogrammed sunglasses doing the rounds. bothers me is that people criticize it, but still watch it,” reporter Gossip flowed under orange parasols in the rising heat. I’d felt Barkha Dutt once said to journalist Akash Bannerjee in an interview for Scroll. I thought what she said perfectly instinctively that the parasols were an ironic touch: the minute encapsulated the meaning of the word: “People they were opened they blocked those in the back from watching like to watch tamasha.” n the wedding proceedings on stage. Most of us realized that the wedding planners had been prescient. The point of an Indian Kalpana Mohan writes from California’s Silicon wedding was never as much to watch the ceremony as to watch Valley. To read more about her, go to http://kalpanall those attempting to catch a glimpse of the ceremony. Under amohan.com. the sea of orange umbrellas, one old couple whose family had 100 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

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the last word

Hillary’s Eight Point Program

D

By Sarita Sarvate

ear reader, as I write these words, the in America. That address turned the campaign in his Act election polls have tightened. Trump favor. You too should give an address revealing as if he is a and Clinton are tied at the national your struggles as a woman of a certain genlevel. Clinton’s lead in swing states has also eration, trying to make it in a male world. spoiled brat who is benarrowed. Hillary has suffered through If you do it with genuine humility, it will having inappropriately. Use a disastrous forum on national security disarm your critics and lend a new direcmoderated by Matt Lauer who has let humor and condescension like tion to your campaign.

Donald Trump bully him, while grilling 5. For twenty-five years, you have Hillary unfairly. To top it all, Clinton Obama does. Don’t rely on the been at the center of your husband’s sex has made an incredible gaffe by publicly debate moderators to counter scandals. Whether this is fair or not is calling half of Trump voters as “a basket not the question. The question is why The Donald’s lies. You do it, you act like a victim. Hillary, you are far of deplorables,” and possibly losing the election on that day—September 9, 2016. from a victim. You chose to stay with Bill. but do it with grace and I am so horrified by the thought of You need to radiate your confidence in your sarcasm.

Trump becoming the leader of the free world decision. Why not give a personal interview and making it less free, not to mention blowing to a journalist you trust, say a Gwen Ifill or a the planet up in a nuclear war (if it is not already Diane Sawyer? What have you got to lose? Why blown up in an ever-boiling climate), that I’ve chalked up not admit that you have and will always love Bill? (I hope a blueprint for Hillary’s victory: you do). Why not give the public a window into your marriage?

1. Hillary, you need the “vision thing.” Remember Bush Se- You won’t believe how many people are hungry to see this very nior, who admitted to be suffering from a lack of this very thing? personal side of you.

He was a political hack who never rose above the mundane mi6. You are no less of an elite than many world leaders. So nutia of administration; he never inspired and led the people. No own it. Don’t pretend that you are not entitled, that you have not wonder he lost to your husband Bill Clinton in 1992. You, I am been living in the cocoon of power and prestige for so long that afraid, have the same problem. You quote your experience far too you ARE divorced from the so-called white trash. Don’t call the often but the people are hungry for your vision. What do you see citizens names; show them compassion. Why is it that even I, an America and the world to look like in the next decade or two? immigrant who went to a prestigious university and realized the You need to articulate that very clearly.

American dream, feel that you are elitist, that I can’t relate to you?

2. You need to act like a leader, not a policy wonk. You need 7. Rise above the gutter politics of Donald Trump. When he to demonstrate ideas, not sheer knowledge. A leader is one who calls you names, don’t respond in kind. Act as if he is a spoiled speaks directly to the people, not just to interest groups. Bernie brat who is behaving inappropriately. Use humor and condescenSanders did that, which was why he was able to capture the imagi- sion like Obama does. Don’t rely on the debate moderators to nation of the youth. counter The Donald’s lies. You do it, but do it with grace and 3. You need a slogan. Or two. If not a slogan, at least a few sarcasm. Take the high road. Remember you are all that stands sound bites. Remember, “It’s the economy stupid?” That was between the future of humanity and Donald Trump. So take a your husband’s mantra in 1992. And it worked. People under- deep breath and have confidence in yourself. stood what he stood for. But if you ask your most ardent follower 8. Remember the old adage, “If you don’t like the conversawhat you believe in, she will start talking of your commencement tion, change it?” So far, you have avoided press conferences and speech at Wellesley College in 1969. Come on, that was nearly interviews; you have let others dictate the conversation. You a half a century ago. You need a few new slogans to encapsulate cannot win this way. You need to set the agenda; shape the conyour vision. versation.

4. You need to show the people that you are human and vulnerable. Let’s face it. You made a blunder with those emails.

Good luck Hillary. n And the more you try to explain yourself, the more you get defensive, and the issue stays in the news. You could imitate Obama Sarita Sarvate (www.saritasarvate.com) has pubinstead. You could give a speech along the lines of Obama’s adlished commentaries for New America Media, dress on race in 2008. When his black pastor Jeremiah Wright KQED FM, San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland made controversial remarks to the effect that the United States Tribune, and many nationwide publications. had brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own terrorism, Obama gave an emotional address about his experiences as a black man 102 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | October 2016

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