SPAN: March/April 2009

It's a Family ADair he first visas issued by the new US Consulate General in Hyderabad were given to the family of Salauddin Khan on March 4. The visas allowed the Khans to visit the United States for business or pleasure. The Khans say they are looking forward to visiting New York, Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a milestone for those who had worked to establish a U.S. diplomatic facility in the Andhra Pradesh capital for yearseven before President George W Bush, during his 2006 visit, announced the US commitment to open a consulate general in Hyderabad.

Among those on hand to wish the Khans well and celebrate the milestone was Consul General Cornel is M. Keur. "Although the Consulate General has been operating since my arrival in July 2008, the opening of our consular section was delayed until the completion of the Paigah Palace renovation project," he says "My colleagues and I are pleased that we are finally able to provide consular services to Indian and

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For more information: http://hyderabad .usconsu late. gov/

From left: Mark Leoni, consular section chief at the Hyderabad Consulate, Salauddin Khan and Fredric Stem, the vice consul.

Consulate staff are in the background.

American citizens residing in Andhra Pradesh."

In the first week of operations, 23 visas were issued and by midMarch the number was up to 275. The Consulate General has scheduled appointments to permit testing systems and training of personnel, but expects to interview 400 people per day by the end of April.

The Consulate General is operating from temporary quarters at the Paigah Palace until a permanent building is constructed. Although the formal ceremony marking the opening at the Paigah Palace facility took place last October, renovation, refurbishing and security checks had to be completed before it was ready for the public.

-L.K.L.

No more traveling to get a travel visa. Andhra Pradesh residents are now receiving U.S. visas close to home, in Hyderabad.

March/April

Front cover: "Women as Guardians" poster, with artwork by Ann Altman, trom the National Women's History Project.

2009

SPAN Publisher: Editor in Chief: Editor: Associate Editor: Urdu Editor: Hindi Editor: Copy Editors' Art Director: Deputy Art Directors: Editorial Assistant: Production/Circulation Manager: Printing Assistant: Research Services:

Larry Schwartz Lisa A. Swenarski de Herrera Laurinda Keys Long Deepanjali Kakati Anjum Naim Giriraj Agarwal Richa Varma Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Hemant Bhatnagar Khurshid Anwar Abbasi Qasim Raza Yugesh Mathur Rakesh Agrawal Alok Kaushik Bureau of International Information Programs, The American Library

Book Review: Why Can't a Woman Write the Great American Novel?

By Laura Miller

* Celebrating Women's Contributions to the World

By Louise Fenner

* Women Scientists:

Working for Recognition "--

By Jeffrey Thomas

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New U.S. View on Global Warming

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Todd Stern Climate Change Envoy

By Deepanjali Kakati

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Music: Green Melodies

By Richa Varma

28 32 37 38

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* Letters to the Editor

Published by the PublicAllairs Section,AmericanCenter,24 Kasturba

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Sports: The Best Foot Forward

By Vaidehi Iyer

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Boston Marathon

By Yugesh Mathur

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Business: By Design

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Literature: Transcending Borders

GandhiMarg,NewDelhi 110001 (phone:23472000), on behaltot the AmericanEmbassy,NewDelhi. Printed at ThomsonPressIndiaLimiled.

18/35, DelhiMathuraRoad.Faridabad,Haryana121007. Opinions expressedin this68-pagemagazinedo nolnecessarilyrellecltheviewsor policiesat IheU.S.Govemment

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with a star may be reprinted with permission Those without a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted Contact SPAN at 011-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

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By Steven P Kerchoff

Retracing the Pilgrimage *

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Music: That's Why They Call it the Blues subscri plionspan@slale.gov

By Laurinda Keys Long

Religion: Diversity is Only.the First Step

By Anjum Naim

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* Achievers: Salma Arastu

Cliff Palace: Living on the Edge

at the Jaipur Literature Festival

14 19

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By Avery Comarow

By Vaidehi Iyer

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On the Lighter Side

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Promoting Education Partnerships

Indian Americans: The Hemingway Effect

By Manish Chand

By Akhil Sharma

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Correction:Ina photocaptionon page10 of theJanuary/February2009 issue,SPANmisidenfifiedthe GandhiMemorialFundollicial presenting gifts to Mr.and Mrs. Martin LutherKing.Jr. Theollicial wasthetund chairman,R.R.Diwakar.

A LETTER FROM

THE

PUBLISHER [,1

S spring makes its annual appearance,

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it's natural to think about the Earth, our planet, and its amazing powers of renewal and rebirth. For many Americans, the return of spring after months of short, cold days and gray skies is a relief to all the senses. In India we delight in the bright yellow blossoms of the laburnum trees, enjoy the red-cheeked bulbuls noisily furnishing their nests and savor the cool mornings and evenings. It is because of these natural rhythms Americans concerned about our environment have chosen this season to celebrate Earth Day, in late April, for almost 40 years It was in 1970 that this grassroots movement began, with Americans in big cities and small towns holding recycling drives, water cleanup campaigns, air pollution teach-ins, energy-saving picnics and environmentally conscious fun fairs. That's when we began having discussions, on a personal, local and national level, about making choices to reduce waste and stop using products that pollute.

We also began learning how our individual decisions to turn off the lights and recycle our trash can have a direct impact on the preservation of park lands or the cleanliness of our rivers.

Women's History Month is also observed each spring. This year Americans focused on "Women Taking the Lead to Save the Planet."

Our cover art by Ann Altman shows women as guardians of plants, animals and children. An article by Louise Fenner highlights the contributions of women who have promoted biodiversity in landscaping, used school gardens to provide healthy lunches for kids, and encouraged girls and boys to choose science careers and find solutions to our environmental challenges.

This variety of approach is reflected in our cover story, "Different Shades of Green," by Jane Varner Malhotra, on how Americans still celebrate Earth Day, teaching each other how to protect the environment in the choices they make. For her article "Green Melodies," Richa Varma interviewed members of Solar Punch, an American band that traveled across India in an electric car and bio-fuel bus, demonstrating their solar-powered musical instruments. The U.S. Mission in India and other Indian and American donors supported the band's goal, which is to teach that environmental protection is important enough to require us all to accept some personal inconvenience or sacrifice.

"For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change," U.S. President Barack Obama says. He promises that America will take the lead to fight global warming, cut energy consumption and reduce the country's dependence on imported oil. The president also appointed the first U.S. special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, who is profiled by Deepanjali Kakati in this issue.

Indians and Americans increasingly share a love of running, explains Vaidehi Iyer in "The Best Foot Forward." Ms. Iyer testifies to the difference running has made in her life-something I well understand. When the weather cooperates, it's a great way to maintain fitness and combat the stress of modern life. The sense of accomplishment, exhilaration and camaraderie that one feels from participating in a race, regardless of speed or distance, is infectious A fine "green" sport for spring.

American communities celebrate Earth Day in offbeat ways.

aylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin, spent much of the 1960s traveling across the United States, giving speeches and working to enact laws to protect the environment. Eventually he grew frustrated that political leaders were, for the most part, ignoring the rising problems of pollution and pesticides. At a conference in Seattle, Washington in 1969, Nelson announced the idea of a teach-ina mass meeting to discuss a subject of public interest-to raise awareness about the environment. In a statement prepared for the Washington, D.C.-based Wilderness Society not long before his death in 2005, Nelson described the remarkable reaction to the idea: "The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country.

The American people finally had a forum to express ... concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air-and they did so with spectacular exuberance."

On April 22, 1970, grassroots events around the United States

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Left: Gaylord Nelson at the Celebrating Community-based Conservation 2001 conference in Wisconsin.

attracted millions of people to celebrate the first Earth Day. The events drew unprecedented media attention and political action on the issues of pollution and preservation. By the end of 1970, the Clean Air Act was signed into law, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was established. The Clean Water Act followed in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

Denis Hayes, who as a Harvard law student had helped Nelson coordinate the first Earth Day, organized the first International Earth Day in 1990. Some 200 million people celebrated the event across the globe. Hayes then founded Earth Day Network as the institutional home for Earth Day. It now has a Web site where organizers can register their events and find free resources and event ideas. Raquel Garcia, Earth Day Network's communications manager, noted that last year 7,000 Earth Day events were registered on the site worldwide. "But we know the actual number of programs was far greater. We,estimate that one billion people observed or celebrated Earth Day in some way in 2008 and we expect it to grow in 2009."

The largest U.S. celebration this year is the Green Apple Festival, held in major cities across the country in partnership

Stinson Beach Above: A family with their sculpture titled "Green Peace" at Zach Pine's nature event in California.

Above right: A participant at the nature event does a back flip next to a rock sculpture.

Austin, Texas Right: Bicycles assembled by Yellow Bikes, a local nonprofit that reconditions broken bikes and releases them to the community; and bikes shaped as bugs, are featured as carbon neutral transportation options at the Earth Day celebrations.

with Earth Day Network. Earth Day Tokyo is another major celebration, featuring speeches and concerts with a sound stage fueled completely by recycled tempura oil.

Yet it's those quirky, small-town gatherings that showcase grassroots organizing in the spirit of the original Earth Day. As Nelson had explained, "Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself."

Four years after his death at the age of 89, the legacy of Nelson's Earth Day lives on.

Stinson Beach, California Traveling north from San Francisco along coastal Highway 1, follow the sign to tucked-away Stinson Beach on Saturday, April 18, and you'll come across an assorted collection of stones, sticks, and people of all ages building collaborative, natural art.

Led by environmental artist Zach Pine, the annual Create- WithNature Earth Day event offers an opportunity for people to make temporary sculptures with natural objects in the environment where they are found.

Pine began the celebration in 2005, after searching for an event that, "would fit with my desire to celebrate the day not only in a way that would honor the Ealth, but also in a way that could have lasting beneficial effects. In my past work as an environmental artist, using natural materials in natural settings to make temporary sculptures, I had felt personally how this kind of creative work can forge powerful and motivating bonds with the environment. I had also just begun to see how collaborative creation, with nature as part of the collaboration, had the potential to bring people together and affirm the force of collective action," he says. " .. .1 suddenly realized that the ideal event for me was one I could lead and take part in at the same time-returning to a favorite beach from my childhood and inviting others to engage in a celebration of the Earth through collaborative creation."

A crowd arranging large stones into precarious towers, or pebbles interlaced with spiraling seaweed on the sand, invites curious passers-by to join the creative community. "I especially enjoy this aspect of the event," explains Pine. "It reaches people who may not have previously attached much meaning to Earth Day or even to the environment or environmental action." Some participants are inspired to write or recite poetry. Some ask Pine to photograph their creations. Others just keep building until the ocean or the wind reclaims the fragile pieces.

Like a mandala created from sand, impermanence is an underlying theme for Pine's event. "As an artist, it frees you to not

For more information:

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Gaylord Nelson ..•... http://wllderness.or IcontenV aylord-nelson Earth Day Network http://www.eartfiaay. ne Zach Pine http://www.naturesculpture.com/ Austin Earth Day nttp:! Iwww.austinearthOay.com!i naex. tUm I

Coming to a Theater Near You? n theaters across the United States on Earth Day 2009, Disney plans to release the movie earth, the first film from the new Disneynature banner, Co-shot with the successful SSC series, the story follows the lives of three animal families over the course of a year, as a way for audiences to get to know our planet more intimately.

Although Disney has not yet announced plans for the film's-g release in India, several other nature i documentaries are available on DVD ~ And while watching a movie may not: be everyone's idea of a green activity :§ for Earth Day, if a group gathers to ~ watch it together, at least that reduces ~ each individual carbon footprint g OJ Check out these titles for learning ~ about environmental issues and get- ~ ting in touch with nature, even if it's through a big screen: • An Inconvenient Truth (AI Gore on global warming) • Planet Earth (SSC nature documentary series) • The Eleventh Hour (Leonardo DiCaprio on global warming) • March of the Penguins (life cycle of the Emperor penguins) • Winged Migration (birds around the world) • Rivers and Tides (Andy Goldworthy's natural art) • The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (a man connecting with a flock of urban parrots) • Baraka (view of the world in stunning, wordless imagery)

worry about the outcome and lets you enjoy the process," he says. "I see it as a practice for daily life, outside of our art making, to be accepting of the impermanence of things."

Austin, Texas The state capital of Texas, with a population of 700,000, hosts a weekly downtown farmer's market that blossoms into a fullblown festival for Earth Day each year. "Environmental leaders are getting behind the idea of local, organic food production as

our most effective, first step to engaging the broader community in change that affects carbon, green jobs, social network capital and safety," explains event organizer Randy Jewart. He describes the festival as a celebration of green arts, featuring dancers, musicians, sculptors and other artists and performers presenting environmental issues.

Organizers try to model environmental responsibility in the production of the event, such as using a solar-powered amplified music stage, and banning plastic water bottles. (They use big,

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refillable jugs of filtered water, and paper cups). Even the event signs are recycled from used, full-sized vinyl highway billboards donated by a billboard company.

Close to 100 exhibitors from nonprofit environmental groups and small, green businesses participate in the event.

Recycled materials are used to construct artistic installations.

The popular Green Art Kids area features hands-on activities relating to environmental issues, including fun with the Greater Austin Garbage Arts, where people learn how to turn

ince Earth Day happens to be my Ingredients: birthday, I've been celebrating it most • 1 (550-gram) paGkage of chocolate of my life. Here is a fun recipe for Dirt sandwich cookies (like Oreo or Dark Cake that my mother makes-full of Fantasy) If you don't have these processed foods but delicious, and it always specific ingredients, just make sure surprises the guests when you start scoopthat the top layer looks like dirt. ing it from the flower pot onto the plates.

• 1;4 cup melted butter -Jane Malhotra • 1 (220-gram) package of cream cheese rr ~ • 2 cups milk ~ • 1 small (100-gram) package of ~ instant vanilla pudding mix ~w • 1 (220-gram) tub of non-dairy whipped topping (like Cool Whip) I

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Crush cookies into crumbs. Set aside.

Cream together butter and cream cheese. In a large bowl, combine milk and pudding, then add butter and cream cheese mix and whipped topping. Beat together· until thoroughly combined. Line a flower pot with foil and put in a layer of cookie crumbs, then pudding mix, alternating until you end with a layer of cookie crumbs. Top with an artificial flower and some gummy candy "worms" and you have the perfect Earth Day treat for kids.

New U.S. View on GlohatWarming President Barack Obama moves Quickly on energy, climate policies. limate change is a planetary process, but its effects-sea level rise, shrinking glaciers, changes in plant and animal distribution, early-blooming trees, permafrost thaws-are regional and local.

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Some of the effects are already occurring, and the Barack Obama administration is moving fast to put the United States in a leadership position to work with other nations and meet the challenges of climate change and energy security.

"For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil, while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs," President Obama said before signing two related presidential memorandums in his first week in office.

"We hold no illusion about the task that lies ahead. I cannot promise a quick fix; no single technology or set of regulations will get the job done. But we will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America that is free from our energy dependence and empowered by a new energy economy that puts millions of our citizens to work," he said.

In what he called "a down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," President Obama directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel

For more information:

efficiency standards for American cars.

The second memo directed the U.S Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a petition by California to set more stringent limits for greenhouse gas emissions from ' motor vehicles than those set by the federal government.

"We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead," President Obama said.

The president said he views America as part of a global coalition whose members work together to "protect the global climate and cOI-1 lective security. He said other large ~ economies such as China and India ~ must do their part to limit green- @ house gas emissions, "just as we is are now willing to do ours." a: . .. h r d President Barack Obama signs an executive order on energy In t e Irst memoran um, independence and climate change in the White House in January.

President Obama directed the Behind him are (from left) u.s. Transportation Secretary Ray Department of Transportalion to set LaHood, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator new fuel-economy standards by Lisa Jackson.

March for 2011 car models. In 2007, the U.S. Congress passed than the national government. economic conditions. Promoting legislation to raise the average fuelIn the second memorandum, he climate-friendly renewable energy, economy standard to 15.1 kilome- instructed the Environmental Pro- he said, will actually stimulate the ters per liter for each auto fleet by tection Agency to reconsider a ailing U.S. economy and reduce 2020 at the latest. An auto fleet is request by California and allow it to demand for oil imports. the group of passenger cars pro- impose its own strict limits on auto "America will not be held hostage duced by each automaker. The leg- carbon dioxide emissions, which to dwindling resources, hostile islation had not been implemented. are believed to contribute to global regimes, and a warming planet," he President Obama's order would warming. said. "We will not be put off from give automakers 18 months to get "Instead of serving as a partner, action because action is hard. Now ready for the change. "Our goal is Washington stood in their way," is the time to make the tough choicnot to further burden an already Obama said. "The days of Washing- es. Now is the time to meet the chalstruggling industry. It is to help ton dragging its heels are over." lenge at this crossroad of history by America's automakers prepare for California's plan to cut emissions choosing a future that is safer for our the future," he said. by 30 percent by 2016 is the most country, prosperous for our planet, The president also acted to ambitious effort by any state or fed_an_d_s_us_ta_in_a_bl_e._" ~ remove a regulatory obstacle that eral authority to address global .prevented California and more than warming.

From the u.S. Department of a dozen other U.S. states from havObama said the United States State's Bureau of International ing stricter auto emission standards will not delay action due to tough Information Programs.

Left: Bumbada Women's Drummers ~ pelforming at the 2008 Mechanicsburg, ~ Pennsylvania, Earth Day festival.

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Below: Billy Brage signs a quilted flag 8 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. as part of Earth Day celebrations in 1995. Kids for a Clean Environment club unveiled the flag containing colored squares made by children in 49 U.S. states and 18 countries. vIsIOn for creating an Earth Day event for Mechanicsburg and the surrounding area. everyday detritus into interesting objects. ~ "In its first year, the Earth Day fesMilk cartons are converted into purses, ~ tival was Mechanicsburg's second and scraps of material crafted into no-sew 3 largest event of the year, with a couple a dolls using knot-tying. _ ~ > ~ -..-~ It thousand attendees. We. had a speaker _ _-:. _ ..;jI(J) dJ from Al Gore's Climate Change The Austin celebration is infused with a r7 '--'" -.'--'0 : ..., . ~• Project, which was a big draw," festive creativity that, as Jewart notes, Kiskis notes. This year the activities "leaves attendees with a tangible feeling in include a Green Film Festival, with their gut of what a sustainable community submissions from around the world might look, feel, taste and sound like." by aspiring filmmakers with ecoMechanicsburg, Pennsvlvania ~.,.friendly messages. Musicians, local The small town in rural Pennsylvania is' ;-"'\;,(J- ~J, .t. organic farms, and vendors featuring gearing up for its second Earth Day festi~f":1):,'tl;~~';~~~~~: some kind of green component will be val, to be held on Saturday, April 25. With a population of about on hand. Products that have been up-cycled-a telm used to 9,000, Mechanicsburg began the celebration last year "to enrich describe the remaking of waste matel1al into something betterthe quality of life in our community while providing a new, fun will be on sale. One example is skirts made from fabric scraps. and meaningful experience surrounding global and local enviAttendees include many people who are already "green-mindronmental initiatives," according to its Web site (www.mechaned" and want to learn more, and many who are just out to enjoy a icsburgearthdayfestival.com/). community festival and end up leaving with a greater awareness Event organizer Susan Kiskis grew up in New York City, of the importance of environmental issues. "Folks come out for where she enjoyed volunteering for the Earth Day Festival. She the festival and come home with a message abollt how one small now owns an organic clothing shop in town, and had a personal change can make a difference." Kiskis herself is an example of the impact one person can make. "Caring for the environment is extremely important no matter where we live. Start small," she Below left: Ava (from left), John and Jessie Tarnoff plant a sapling suggests, "and organjze a group of 10 or 20 friends to celebrate along the Los Angeles River during a community tree-planting and clean-up effort as part of Earth Day celebrations.

Earth Day, and next year it will grow into a block party, and soon Below right: Fourth graders from an elementary school in Garden it will be heightened awareness across the globe."

City, Kansas, enjoy a frog foot race organized by the local zoo for Earth Day.

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~ he January/February 2007 issue of American Interest magazine featured a memorandum to the yet-unelected 44th president of the United States. Addressed from the "United States Department of Brainstorms," it was written by Todd Stern and William Antholis, members of two Washington, D.C. think tanks. The memo called for the creation of an E-8, a forum of developed and developing countries, including India, which would meet annually to focus on ecological and resource challenges, and was distributed to all presidential aspirants.

Two years later, one of the writers finds himself appointed to a unique position in the Barack Obama administration. As the first US. special envoy for climate change, Stern will be the administration's chief climate negotiator and a principal adviser on international climate policy.

He will also lead U.S. efforts in U.N. negotiations and be a lead participant in developing climate and clean energy policy "With the appointment today of a special envoy," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the announcement in January, "we are sending an unequivocal message that the United States will be energetic, focused, strategic and serious about addressing global climate change

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and the corollary issue of clean energy." ~ "This is no time for negotiators to cling to ~ tired orthodoxies. Nor is it time for the kind of ~ recriminations that have marred too many efforts in the past," said Stern, who in the 1990s coordinated the Bill Clinton administration's climate pin the U.S. approach to the December U.N. conchange efforts and was senior White House rep- vention on climate change in Denmark, and resentative at U.N. climate negotiations in Kyoto, beyond.

Japan, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. " ... The seriousness of the climate problem "Containing climate change will require nothbecomes more stark and disturbing with each ing less than transforming the global economy passing year," he said. "We need a little less from a high-carbon to a low-carbon energy preaching about who is to blame and a little more base," he added. High-carbon resources include of that old comic book sensibility of uniting in coal and petroleum. Corn oil is low-carbon. the face of a common danger threatening the From 1999 to 2001, Stern advised the U.S Earth. Because that's what we have here." ~ Treasury secretary on economic and financial issues and supervised the department's anti-. money laundering strategy. Most recently he was Todd Stern's keynote remarks at the U.S. Climate Action Symposium a partner in WilmerHale, a Washington law firm, http://www .state. gov/g/oes/rls/remarks/ and a senior fellow at the Center for American 2009/119983.htm Progress think tank.

Stern's appointment has created a buzz. "Today marks a new chapter in U.S. climate diplomacy. The appointment of a special climate envoy underscores the high priority President Obama and The New Energy for America plan aims to: Secretary Clinton give this issue. Todd Help create 5 million new jobs by strateStern is first-rate, brilliant, with long gically investing $150 billion over the next experience and deep expertise on climate 10 years to catalyze private efforts to build a change," David Sandalow, a senior fellow clean energy future. at the Brookings Institution and author of Within 10 years save more oil than the Freedom from Oil told The Washington United States currently imports from the Post.

Middle East and Venezuela.

It has been a hectic start for the climate czar.

Put a million plug-in hybrid cars-which In February, Stern accompanied Clinton on her can get up to 65.1 kilometers per liter--on first foreign trip, to Asia, where climate change the road by 2015 and work to make sure that featured prominently in discussions. At the these are built in America.

Taiyang Gong power plant in China, Stern said, Ensure 10 percent of America's electricity " ... Building a clean energy economy is not only comes from renewable sources by 2012, something we can do consistent with economic and 25 percent by 2025. growth, it is exactly what we need to do right now Implement a cap-and-trade program for to build an economy that can compete, not only all American industry to reduce greenhouse today, but tomorrow." gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

At the U.S. Climate Action Symposium in http://www.barackobama.com/pdt!

March he set out the principles that would underfactsheet energy ~speech _ 080308.pdf The Earth Day 2009 poster produced by the U.S. Department of State was designed by Diane Woolverton and illustrated by Dugald Stermer.

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• www.whitehouse.gov

Solar Punch, a solar-powered band, tours Indian cities to show that solutions to climate change are here, and now .

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18 akinga movie about trash pickers might not be everyone's idea of a perfect honeymoon, but that is what James Dean Conklin and his wife, Elisa Zazerra, did in Cairo, Egypt in January 2008. Conklin, an American animation designer and musician, says the film, Environmental Circus, was the couple's way of sharing their passion for the environment at possibly the most important time in their lives.

"We are passionate environmentalists and are just now coming into our own as far as how to commit to the action. By sacrificing a nice hotel and a sweet spot in Europe in exchange for an experience with the zabaleen, that was as enriching to us as a new couple as anything else in the world," Conklin says. The zabaleen, an Egyptian Arabic word used for "garbage collectors," recycle whatever is usable and have been part of Cairo's waste management system for decades.

This January, Conklin was in India spreading the same zeal for the environment in the month-long 2009 Climate Solutions Road Tour with Solar Punch.

They believe they are the world's first exclusively solar-powered band, cofounded in 2007 by Conklin and Alan Bigelow in New York. Bigelow is a fulltime research scientist at Columbia University in New York.

Sponsored by grants from the U.S. State Department and more than 50 American and Indian companies, groups and individuals, the eco-friendly tour kicked off on January 3 in Chennai and

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Above: Members of Indian Youth Climate Network, who teamed with Solar Punch for the road tour, in a REVA car.

ended on February 5 in New Delhi. Art, dance, music and workshops conveyed the message of climate change.

Solar Punch teamed up with young Indian and American entrepreneurs and environment students of the New Delhibased Indian Youth Climate Network for the 3,500-kilometer, "low-carbon" expedition to 15 cities. They traveled in three solar-powered, electric plug-in REVA cars and a bio-fuel bus run on vegetable oil and jatropha, oilseed plant.

Above: T.H. Culhane inspects a solar reflector dish in Valsad, Gujarat.

Top right: Drummer Frank Marino at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.

Right: Culhane (left) and James Dean Conklin at the India Habitat Centre.

But behind the fun and entertainment was the grave issue of climate change.

"Along with the music and the dance, the serious message must also be available," says Kabir Khan, a Climate Network member on the tour.

"Everybody is aware that environmental issues are very important but people don't make that connect between their own behavior and the greater good. When it comes to being personally inconvenienced, or having to give up something, I think there are very few people out there who would be willing to make that change. That is what we were planning to change," Khan says.

So instead of being a regular tourist, staying at a nice hotel and checking out the Taj Mahal, Conklin says they went to villages and witnessed how cow dung was the central part of agriculture in many rural communities. Among their memorable experiences was seeing how mixtures of cow dung, cow urine and sugarcane extract were used as pesticide. "The crop yield seemed as vibrant and bountiful as any I've witnessed," says Conklin.

Solar Punch hltp:!/www.solarpunch.org/solar home/ climate solutions road trip.html United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change http://www. un. org/cl imatechange/ backg round/atag lance. shtm I The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/

Solar Punch is doing its part to save electricity by using the sun to power its instruments. Any energy they need to amplify their instruments-guitars, bass, keyboards, microphones-comes directly from solar power via their portable solar energy station. With a full solar-charge, they can perform six hours at a stretch---,--at night, indoors and even when it's cloudy.

"We have an overall large battery that we try to keep charged," says the guitarist, Paul Lincoln. "We use a foldable solar panel that right now is available only in the U.S. but we hope will be widespread soon.

It's a little more costly than the fixed, crystal solar panels you usually see, the blue ones. What you get when you pay a little extra is portability and we can take our show anywhere."

He explains that they use simple, off-theshelf electronic devices to "take the energy from the panel and shove it into a battery.

So we can take the sunshine and play during the day directly from the sun with our panels or if we are going to play in the evening, store the sun and play it later."

Besides performing original numbers such as Plastic and Spinning Around, Solar Punch bonded with the audience by performing hit A.R. Rahman numbers Yun hi chala chal from the movie Swades and Ghanan ghanan from Lagaan, which had environmental references.

"The sun is the simplest way for us to connect and demonstrate that there are some immediate solutions to the environ-

ment," says Conklin. "We hope that Solar Punch gives inspiration, but we really hope we are not unique. We hope there are other musicians and entertainers that are going to use green methods to celebrate and communicate their art."

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the

First U.S. Solar Energy Trade Mission to India he Barack Obama administration's first trade mission to India targeted trade in solar energy technologies during a late March tour to New Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

The delegation included solar photovoltaic and solar project developers, who met with government and industry representatives in search of potential Indian business partners. The meetings focused on using solar energy for utilities, that is, production of consumer power on a large scale. www.buyusa.gov/home

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average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the global rate in the past 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says warming of the climate system is clear from the rise in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level. The panel also predicts that by the 2050s, freshwa-

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resident Barack Obama's different approach to climate change has kindled new hope among environmentalists. The Obama administration is already off to a green start with a pledge in his first State of the Union address to invest $15 billion a year in technologies like solar, wind, advanced bio-fuels and more efficient vehicles.

Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan aims at modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving energy efficiency through methods such as installing solar panels on roofs to thicker windows and reducing the need for heating in winter and cooling in the summer.

At the U.S Embassy in New Delhi and its consulates in Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, saving energy is already a priority.

Starting with the easiest tasks-like replacing incandescent bulbs with long-life fluorescents and electric water heaters with solar heaters-the embassy has identified practical ways to cut energy use since 1995. More can be done; those who manage the U.S. government owned and leased buildings in India are committed to move forward on conserving energy and water, limiting pollution, and recycling where possible, in accordance with the president's plan.

Now, instead of running constantly, air conditioning operates about 10 hours per day, five days a week at the embassy. Electric air-conditioning chillers have been replaced with environment-friendly chillers that run on natural gas and diesel, the latter being used only in the case of emergencies. They are free of chlorofluorocarbon, which is connected with thinning of the protective ozone layer.

In 2005, a project to dig eight pits to harvest rainwater was completed at the embassy in New Delhi. The local Central Ground Water Board says that about 9,1 million liters of water are being collected in the pits each year. This represents about 40 days of the embassy's water needs.

The embassy has also replaced outdated thermostats with a new digitally controlled network that allows building temperatures to be programmed. Motion sensors switch off lights when rooms are empty.

Other measures are low-tech, but effective. Windows are caulked, or made airtight, to keep rooms cooler. Sprinklers water the landscape only

P

ter availability across much of Asia, particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease.

The good news, suggests the United Nations report, is that the technology that could stabilize and even reduce greenhouse gas levels within a few decades already exists. The problem is installing and paying for more efficient procedures

at dusk and dawn-when evaporation losses are lowest.

Nearly 120 solar heaters have been installed in U.S. diplomatic residences, reducing carbon dioxide emission by 6.15 tons every year.

The U.S. Consulates in Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai echo similar green stories.

• Chennai installed 97 solar water heaters in 2000.

• More than 400 incandescent bulbs have been replaced with energy saving bulbs.

• Chilled water pumps, tower fans, roof lights and split air conditioners are switched off during non-occupancy hours.

• Rainwater harvesting has been provided in most staff residences.

• In Kolkata, conventional lighting systems have been replaced with hitech sensor lighting.

• Electric water heaters have been replaced with solar water heaters in diplomats' residences.

• Conventional ballasts, the devices used to stabilize the flow of current in lamps, have been replaced by electronic, energy-saving ballasts.

• Old, underground aluminum cables have been replaced with copper cables to save energy, • The combined measures have saved the consulate 12 percent of its energy consumption annually.

• The consulate in Mumbai turns off electrical units during non-occupancy hours.

• The central water heating system was turned off after installing of solar water heaters, • 500 electronic ballasts have been installed in offices.

• Incandescent bulbs have been replaced with compact fluorescent lights in many residences.

for burning fossil fuels and for using renewable energy sources. This is often politically and economically difficult.

"Climate solutions are ancient and a lot of times we just have to rediscover this stuff," says Conklin, as he recalled the band's tour of an old area of Ahmedabad, in Gujarat. The inner city, built in the 1600s, with narrow streets,

but open roofs and balconies, had natural air, Conklin observes. "So even on the hottest days they had these cool rooms that were open to the sky. We shared dinner in one of these dwellings looking up at the stars .... It was amazing to see that that idea of working with the environment had been in place for 400 to 500 ~~, years. " ~

Retracing the Pilgrimagp 50 years after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s visit to India, his son, Martin Luther King III, civil rights movement leaders and a U.S. congressional delegation retraced his journey.

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Below: George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Gordon Au, James Genus, David Mooney and Terri Lyne Carrington perform at the

"Gandhi's profound influence on Dr. King will be felt for generations to come. It is the lessons humankind continues to learn from both of these great men that will guide us to a world of justice and equality for all. " - Herbie Hancock, jazz pianist and composer

Ravi Shankar Institute for Music and Performing Arts in New Delhi.

Bottom left: Herbie Hancock. .Below: Vinod Lele (from left), James Genus, Ravi Shankar and Parimal Sadapphal at the institute.

Right: Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, greet students after inaugurating an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s trip to India in New Delhi.

Far right: Recalling memories as he views the exhibit is Harris Wofford, who worked on civil rights for presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. He also helped form the Peace Corps and served as a U.S. senator.

Above: Herbie Hancock, Martin Luther King III and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a program to send off the delegation to India, in Washington, D.C.

Rqjghat Martin Luther King III pays tribute to Mohandas K. Gandhi at Rajghat in New Delhi.

"We thank you for really giving the world Mahatma Gandhi and his message. And we are committed to do our part to ensure that never ever will his message become in vain. " -Martin

Luther King III, at Mani Bhavan in Mumbai

Gandhi 5111riti Representative John Lewis addresses the gathering at Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi.

"You know, ifit hadn't been for Gandhi, hadn't been for Martin Luther King, Jr. there would be no Barack Obama today as president of the United States of America. The teaching of Gandhi, the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. have liberated and freed hundreds and thousands of citizens in America."

- Representative John Lewis, from Georgia, at Rajghat. He is the only surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington.

"Across India there were several poignant and deeply moving ceremonies to remember the visit a half century ago and to rekindle the torch of freedom and equality.

At a time of unprecedented challenges and threats in the world, affirming that one candle can light the darkness is the first step in the way forward. " - Representative Jim McDermott, from Washington state, in The Hindu SPAN MARCH/APRIL 2009

15

George Duke, Johnaye Kendrick, James Genus, Zakir Hussain, David Mooney and Terri Lyne Carrington perform at The Living Dream concert in New Delhi.

/II cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the jazz concert. To hear the likes of Herbie Hancock, Chaka Khan and Dee Dee Bridgewater in a single concert was something I had not expected. /I

- Pulin B. Nayak, Delhi School of Economics professor

Suhas Borker, documentary filmmaker and activist, presents a miniature spinning wheel to Martin Luther King III at the Gandhi-King Plaza.

Martin Luther King III with Karan Singh, president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, at Teen Murti House, where King delivered the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture 2009 on "A New Nonviolent Revolution."

Representative Spencer Bachus, former senator Harris Wofford, Arndrea Waters King, Representative Loretta Sanchez, Martin Luther King III, Representatives Jim McDermott, John Lewis, Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green remember those killed in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, at the Gateway of India.

liThe challenge today is to engage people who some characterize as terrorists, who certainly commit terrorist activities. How do we get them to understand that we must learn to live in a world without destroying persons or property? One of the ways to do that is through nonviolence. It is not easy, but I think it is doable.

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in The Hindu

Right: Representative John Lewis and Martin Luther King III at Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Far right: Arndrea Waters King and Martin Luther King III watch a man display a spinning wheel at Gujarat Vidyapith, a universitj! founded by Mohandas K. Gandhi, in Ahmedabad.

Representative Jim McDermott, American businessman Mukesh "Mike" Patel, Representatives Loretta Sanchez, John Lewis and Al Green, Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee sing We Shall Overcome with an interfaith choir at the Sabarmati Ashram.

"To visit on such a momentous occasion, tracing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s footsteps and visiting the resting place of Gandhi, is humbling. To be a part of these historic events and concerts to promote world peace, unity and understanding is truly a blessing. /I

-Chaka Khan, American jazz singer

Martin Luther King III pays tribute to Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity in KoLkata.

"Though Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King lived and weaved their tapestry in different countries, they were connected by an ideal and their sphere of influence touched the entire world, the most important thingfor the better. /I

- George Duke, jazz musician and singer

Chennai Actor KamaL Haasan deLivers a dramatized version of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech at The Living Dream concert in Chennai.

Diversit!J is OnC!J the Fi rst 5t91BYAHmM'NAThLIndian American sociologist and advisor to the Obama White House Eboo Patel is banking on the young generation to build relationships across religious lines for joint civic service. n the wall of the Chicago, Illinois office of Eboo Patel, director of Interfaith Youth Core, is a well-known painting, "Freedom of Worship," by early 20th century American painter Norman Rockwell.

It shows a crowd of men and women praying. Rockwell's intent was to depict people of different ethnic backgrounds and religious faiths, standing shoulder to shoulder, facing the same direction, comfortable with the presence of one another.

Patel, 33, says it is a vivid depiction of a group living in peace with its diversity, yet not exploring it. Patel, an India-born Muslim who immigrated to the United States with his father in 1975, recognizes Rockwell's desire to depict the American ideal of recognition and tolerance of diversity But he wants to push further for what he calls "religious pluralism."

He founded Youth Core to persuade young people of different faiths to respect each other, solve their problems together and change their societies for the better.

"In an era of global religious conflict, idealism has a new face: interfaith youth cooperation," Patel told SPAN during a recent visit to India as part of a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Interfaith Youth Core. "The evening news features stories of young people killing each other to the soundtrack of prayer Yet, across the country and the world, young people of many faiths are coming together around the shared value of service."

In his opinion, they are changing the toxic conversation about religion

and building the American drearn of a place in which freedom for one relies on freedom for all. He also feels this is an opportune moment for such idealism: President Barack Obama has called on Americans to volunteer and give community service at even higher levels than they already do, and young people are the president's most ardent supporters. More than 61 million Americans volunteered for charitable and national service organizations in 2007, giving 8.1 billion hours of service worth more than $158 billion to American communities, says the Corporation for National and Community Service in Washington, D.C. Patel was recently named to the President's Advisory Council on FaithBased and Neighborhood Partnerships, and hopes to shape a task force on interfaith cooperation. "Though our work is just beginning, I see this as proof that the potential of faith-based groups to do good in this country has been recognized I hope that my year on this council ends with the recognition that faith-based groups can do the most good when they work together," he says.

Published in 2007, Patel's book Acts of Faith is, in fact, a story of his own life journey and his vision in creating an interfaith youth movement to build religious pluralism.

"Religious pluralism is three things," explains Patel. "First, there must be respect for religious identity, which includes respect for secular humanist and non-believing [atheist] identities. Second, there must be mutually inspiring relationships between people of diverse faith traditions.

Finally, religious pluralism must include common action for the com-

mon good. It is not enough that we identify the call to serve in different traditions; we must act upon that call together."

Most Americans, in his opinion, agree that religious pluralism is important, and he would go a step further and say that people in general tend towards pluralism. He thinks the missing link is that people need the framework, leadership skills, training and resources to build a pluralistic world.

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"My organization works abroad through several channels. For example, during the last few weeks, two Interfaith Youth Core staff members, both Muslim women, embarked on a tour across Western Europe supported by the State Department," says Patel.

"They will conduct training for young European interfaith leaders ... with the goal of sparking an interfaith youth movement across Europe."

"In our globalized era, the world is smaller than ever before," says Patel.

"The possibility of coming of age without encountering neighbors, classmates, teachers or friends of different faiths or cultures is narrowing more every year, and I think this kind of diverse, multicultural society is the ideal place to hold interfaith dialogue."

He believes that there will be no peace in the world without religious pluralism, and no religious pluralism without the leadership of the youth.

Young people today are growing up in the most globalized era in human history; they are truly the first interfaith generation, he says.

"Faith formation for them is not only

going to involve the question: 'What does it mean to be a Muslim?' It is going to have to include an additional element, 'What does it mean to be a Muslim in a community/country/World of Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, secular humanists, etc?' !'

"One hundred years ago, the great African American scholar W.E.B. DuBois famously said, 'The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line.' Most people assumed that the color line divided black and white. But Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came around 60 years later and changed the paradigm," says Patel.

King suggested that the real dividing line wasn't between black and white, "but between those who wanted to live together as brothers and those who wanted to perish together as fools."

Patel believes the 21 st century will be dominated by the question of the faith line. "Our first and most important challenge is to recognize that the faith line does not divide Muslims and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists or secularists ... ," he says. Instead, he thinks the faith line separates religious totalitarians and religious pluralists.

Religious totalitarians want a society where their group dominates and everyone else suffocates, he says, while religious pluralists want a society where people from different backgrounds live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty. .

"The ... challenge of the faith line," Patel says, "is for those of us in the majority to stand up for our pluralist vision, to tell our story, to put the extremists back in their place: on the extremes." ~ SPAN

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2009

19

Educationists discuss how to build sustainable ties between Indian and American universities and make campuses in India more enticing to international students.

ndians make up the largest group of foreign students pursuing higher education in the United States. But the number of American students in India remains relatively small. In the 200607 academic year 2,627 of them studied in India, according to the Open Doors 2008 report by The Institute of International Education, an American nonprofit organization. While this represents a 24 percent -increase over a decade, there is consider-

able scope to draw more American students to India and promote educational collaborations.

At a recent two-day workshop in New Delhi, American and Indian educationists explored ways of promoting sustainable partnerships between American and Indian universities and encouraging Indian institutions to internationalize their campuses and facilities.

Conducted by the U.S. nonprofit

Academy for Educational Development, American education leaders and more than 30 Indian academics discussed issues ranging from health, safety and security of students to the nitty-gritty of drawing up contracts, marketing universi ties, handling emergencies and pre-departure cultural orientation of students.

Structured around the Academy for Educational Development's publication Handbookfor Hosting: The AED Guide to

Welcoming U.S. Students to Your Campus, the workshop also highlighted U.S. government efforts to popularize study abroad programs and the importance of making university campuses in India more enticing to international students.

"In the era of internationalization, globalizing the campus helps," says Vasudha Garde, director of the international center at the University of Pune. Currently, the university has about 9,500 foreign students, including many Americans. "They Far left: Carl A. Herrin displays The AED Guide to Welcoming U.s. Students to Your Campus.

Left center: Patricia Martin interacts with delegates.

Left: Kim Kreutzer of the University of Colorado at Boulder at the workshop.

imbibe Indian culture, food and music.

Inhibitions are lost in this cross-cultural transaction," says Garde.

Others see these international tie-ups as a much-needed investment in brand building. "It helps us in raising theprofile of the college and getting a global branding," says Kanika Khandelwal Aggarwal, senior lecturer at New Delhi's Lady Shri Ram College for Women.

Most American students still come to study India's history, languages, music, films and dances, but there has been a shift in recent times with more students opting for subjects like grassroots development, information technology, alternative medicine and management practices.

An .added advantage for students is that they earn credits while studying in India.

"There is this heightened attention to

India as a new world economic power.

There is a changing dynamic in official India-U.S. relations, which was simply not there a decade ago. We have now more friendly and compatible relations," says Carl A. Herrin, one of those conducting the workshop. Herrin is an international educator who has been involved with study abroad programs for over two decades.

The United States is one of India's largest trading partners, with bilateral trade estimated at $41.6 billion in 2007.

More Indians and Americans now travel to each other's countries. "The interest in India is growing. The economic success of India in the 1990s after it embarked on reforms has kindled a new interest in India," says Aparna Rayaprol, associate professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, which has had a successful Study in India program for over 10 years.

There were 146 participants in the 200708 academic year. About 1,000 American students have come to the university for six to eight weeks to single semester courses over the last decade.

"The idea is to facilitate a conversation so that when something happens in India, these American students can act as interpreters of Indian culture and systems," says Herrin. Patricia Martin of the University of Pennsylvania adds: "Young people, with their exuberance and optimism, tend to be good diplomats and rep-

for more information: Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange http://www.alliance-exchange .org United States-India Educational Foundation http://www.usief.org. in/ Association of International Education Administrators http://www.aieaworld .org Forum on Education Abroad http://www.forumea.org

Above left: Professor Mohi-udDin Sangmi of the University of Kashmir at the workshop.

Above: Participants engaged in group discussions.

Left: Carl A. Herrin addresses the delega tes.

resentatives of their country. It's soft diplomacy or citizen diplomacy."

Lack of understanding is not something two of the world's largest democracies can atford. "We should encourage more American students to come to India. It will not only help us to understand Americans better but help in creating a new generation of American scholars who Below: The workshop participants and staff of the United States-India Educational Foundation.

understand India in all its complexity," says Lalit Mansingh, former Indian ambassador to the United States.

"We want more Indian students to study in American universities in exchange programs. It makes for greater value addition," says v.c. Jha, professor in charge of planning and development at VisvaBharati university in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. American as well as Indian students are exposed to many cultures and languages at the university as it has a large

number of students from South Asia and Europe.

Cultural education has acquired a new resonance for many in the post-9/11 world that saw a burst of enthusiasm among Ameli can students for learning Arabic.

"Having more American students and greater linkages with U.S. universities will help remove misconceptions of what a Muslim university is like," says M. Saleemuddin, professor at Aligarh Muslim University. "It will give Americans an insight into Indian Muslims and lead to a dialogue among civilizations."

Bridging the perception and knowledge gap is central to the ethos of education abroad programs. Says Rayaprol: "Sometimes they come with stereotypical images of India like stray cows on roads, maharajas and snake charmers.

And when they come here, they find that Indian women are heading large corporations and McDonald's is just round street corners." ~ Manish Chand is a New Delhi-based senior editor with Indo-Asian News Service and editor of Africa Quarterly.

Speech by Robert S. Mueller, III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. early three months ago, several men in a rubber raft landed on the shores of a bustling financial capital as the sun began to set.

They scattered in different directions, carrying backpacks with automatic weapons, hand grenades and satellite phones.

Within just a few hours, innocent civilians were lying in the street, buildings were burning, hostages feared for their lives, and a city was under siege.

News of the attack quickly circled the globe, from traditional media coverage to

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streaming video, blogs, text messages and even twitters. The attackers used that same technology, not only to monitor the movements of police and rescue teams and to evade capture, but to communicate with their leaders, who were some distance away.

It was an attack both higWy coordinated and deceptively simple in its execution. Of course, I am speaking about Mumbai, in which terrorists killed more than 170 individuals and wounded more than 300.

This type of attack reminds us that terrorists with large agendas and little money

The simplest of weapons can be quite deadly when combined with capability and intent. can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact.

And it again raises the question of whether a similar attack could happen in Seattle or San Diego, Miami or Manhattan.

Globalization and evolution of the

terrorist threat

The world in which we live has changed markedly in recent years, from the integration of global markets and the ease of international travel to the rise and the reach of the Internet. But our perception of the world-and our place in it-also has changed.

Last year, scientists captured the first pictures of what they believe to be faraway planets circling stars outside of our solar system. Astronomers have identified more than 300 of these so-called "extrasolar" planets in the past 13 years.

These modem-day explorers seek to confirm what they believe to be out thereto see what has not yet been seen.

These discoveries make our world seem at once smaller and yet infinitely more vast. And they leave us with the feeling that there is much more out there to be found.

From a law enforcement and intelligence perspective, there is always more to be found. But we are not quite so optimistic about what we will discover-new threats, new technologies and new targets.

The universe of crime and terrorism stretches out infinitely before us, and we, too, are working to find what we believe to be out there, but cannot always see.

In the aftermath of September 11th, our world view was somewhat limited. We were primarily concerned with al Qaeda's leadership and its structure.

Today, we still face threats from al

Federal Bureau of Investigation tittp: www.fl:jl.gov/ Undercover Probe Busts Terror Plot Ilttp:Z www.fbi.gov/page2/may07/ftdix050807.htm The Mumbai Attacks: Terror's Tactical Shift http://www.time.com/time/world/article/O,8599,1862795,OO.html

Qaeda. But we must also focus on less well-known terrorist groups, as well as homegrown terrorists. And we must consider extremists from visa-waiver countries, who are merely an e-ticket away from the United States.

Our primary threat continues to come from the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But we are seeing persistent activity elsewhere, from the Maghreb and the Sahel [in Africa] to Yemen.

We are increasingly concerned with pockets of people around the world that identify with al Qaeda and its ideology.

Some may have little or no actual contact with al Qaeda.

Yet, fringe organizations can quickly gain broader aspirations and appeal. And should they connect with the core of al Qaeda, from training to the planning and execution of attacks, the game becomes radically different.

In each of the plots we have disrupted since September 11th, some have asked whether the individuals in question had the intent and the capability to carry out their plans.

There will always be a tension between acting early to disrupt a plot in its planning stages, and continuing to investigate until we are certain that the individuals in question are poised to attack. And in each case, that calibration will be different.

Take the planned attack against Fort Dix [in New Jersey], for example. The men we convicted had engaged in target practice in the woods of Pennsylvania. They had watched al Qaeda training videos. They had a map of the base and a plan to get in.

And they had purchased semi-automatic weapons from an FBI sting operation.

Like the Mumbai attackers, these men wanted to inflict as much damage as they could. And as the Mumbai attacks illustrate, the simplest of weapons can be quite deadly when combined with capability and intent.

We must also recognize that events outside of our control may impact our national security. World politics often shape terrorist and criminal threats against the United States.

Those same politics can alter the perception of the United States in the eyes of the international community. And what of civil unrest, resource scarcity, and a shifting global economy?

A crisis in the Horn of Africa may well have a tipple effect in Minneapolis, as we shall discuss in a moment. The fall of Communism opened the door to a virtual army of cyber thieves. The integration of cultures around the world has facilitated state-sponsored espionage, a thriving child pornography market, as well as heightened gang activity.

Addressing the threat Admittedly, this overview sounds rather dire. And it underscores the need for firstrate intelligence and strong international pattnerships.

[Canadian] hockey great Wayne Gretzky was once asked how he consistently managed to be at the right place on the ice at the right time. He said that while some players skate to where the puck has been, he skates to where the puck will be.

The same is true for those of us in the FBI. We need to know where the threat is moving, and we need to get there first.

The tools upon which we built our reputation as a law enforcement organizationthe development of sources, surveillance, communication intercepts and forensic analysis-at-e the same tools necessary for a security service.

Our challenge comes in developing the intelligence to disrupt an attack before the fact.

To be effective, we must deliberately collect intelligence to fill gaps between our cases, and gaps in our knowledge base.

And that intelligence gathering will differ from city to city, and state to state, just as criminal and terrorist threats differ.

We must also determine if threats around the world translate to potential threats here at home. If there is a suicide bombing in Somalia, are we at greater risk? Do we understand the full extent of that threat?

We must weigh the value of an early prosecution of select individuals against the benefit of collecting the intelligence necessary to dismantle the entire network.

As Jonathan Evans, director of MIS, has said, "Knowing of somebody is not the same as knowing all about them." And he

~ tigation had begun. Agents from FBI ~ offices in New Delhi and Islamabad joined ~ forces with the Indian government, the ~' ~ CIA, the State Department, MI6 and New p 6 Scotland Yard. ~ ~ Through these partnerships, we had Gunprecedented access to evidence and ~ intelligence. Agents and analysts conducted more than 60 interviews, including that of the lone surviving attacker. Our forensic specialists pulled fingerprints from improvised explosive devices. They recovered data from damaged cell phones, in one case by literally wiring a smashed phone back together.

At the same time, we collected, analyzed and disseminated intelligence to our partners at home and abroad-not only to

is right.

In every case where an individual poses a threat, we must ask key questions: Where has this individual been? Who are his associates, and where are they now? What are they doing, and who are they talking to?

This targeted intelligence-gathering takes time. It requires patience, precision and dedication. And it requires a unity of effort, here at home and overseas.

Intelligence enables us to see the unseen, to discover new threats on the horizon. Yet, even the best intelligence will not provide complete certainty, given the nature and number of the threats we face.

The question remains: How do we protect ourselves from threats that emanate from overseas? We cannot close our borders or cut off the Internet. We must stmt at the source.

The day before the attacks in Mumbai, Special Agent Steve Merrill-a legal attache in the FBI's New Delhi officewas enjoying his first day off in nearly a month. He was on his way to Jodhpur to play cricket on the U.S. Embassy Team in the Maharajah's annual tournament.

For the record, you do not need to

know how to play cricket to work in the FBI's New Delhi office, but it certainly does not hurt.

The moment we lemned of the attacks, Steve made his way to Mumbai. All he had were the clothes on his back, his BlackBerry, and his cricket gear.

He immediately made contact with his Indian counterpmts and got to work. No red tape, no turf battles-just first responders, standing shoulder to shoulder in a time of crisis.

For three days, Mumbai was a blur of gunshots, explosions, fire and confusion.

In the midst of that mayhem, Steve helped to rescue Americans trapped inside the Taj Hotel.

He set up lines of communication with his FBI and intelligence community counterparts. And he coordinated the mTival of our Rapid Deployment Team.

Even before the crisis ended, the inves-

Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts.

determine how these attacks were planned, and by whom, but to ensure that if a second wave of attacks was in the offing, we possessed the intelligence to stop it.

Our work in Mumbai was not out of the ordinary. To counter these threats, we must first understand them through intelligence.

Once we gain an understanding, our law enforcement authorities allow us to move against individuals and networks.

We are not an intelligence service that collects, but does not act; nor are we a law enforcement service that acts without knowledge. Today's FBI is a security service, fusing the capability to understand the breadth and scope of threats, with the capability to dismantle those same threats.

But we understand that we do not operate in isolation. Through our international training programs at the FBI Academy [in Virginia], we are on a first-name basis with thousands of officers around the world-a brotherhood and sisterhood of partners.

And in a time of crisis, that farniliaritythat friendship-fosters an immediate and effective response.

CommunitY ouUeach We must continue to work with our law enforcement and intelligence partners around the world. But we must also work

here in the United States with the citizens we serve, to identify and disrupt those who would do us harm.

Too often, we run up against a wall between law enforcement and the community-a wall based on myth and misperception of the work we do.

We know that the best way to tear down that wall is brick by brick, person by person.

Yet, we understand the reluctance of some communities to sit down at the table with us. They may come from countries where national police forces and security services engender fear and mistrust.

Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts.

One pattern in particular concerns us.

Over the years since September lIth, we have learned of young men from communities in the United States, radicalized and recruited here to travel to countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq, Yemen or Somalia. They may be recruited to participate in the fighting, or, in the extreme case, to become suicide bombers.

A man from Minneapolis, [Minnesota] became what we believe to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing. The attack occurred last October in nOlthern Somalia, but it appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.

The prospect of young men, indoctrinated and radicalized within their own communities and induced to travel to Somalia to take up arms-and to kill themselves and perhaps many others-is a perversion of the immigrant story.

The parents of many of these young men risked everything to come to

The integration of cultures around the world has facilitated state-sponsored espionage, a thriving child pornography market, as well as heightened gang activity.

America, to provide their children with a brighter, more stable future. For these parents to leave a war-torn country only to find that their children have been convinced to return to that way of life is indeed heartbreaking.

And it raises the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what they might undertake here.

These parents are understandably worried about the welfare of their children. We, too, are concemed-not only for these families, but for the larger community.

Members of the FBI's Community Outreach teams meet with members of these communities to look at these issues.

Together, we are making progress. But there remains much work to be done.

The simple truth is that we cannot do our jobs without the trust of the American people. And we cannot build that trust without reaching out to say, "We in the Bureau are on your side. We stand ready to help."

Conclusion The world we live in has changed in countless ways. And while change can have negative consequences, it can lead to new discoveries. It can herald new perspectives, new ideas, and new ways of doing business.

Yet, even in times of great change, certain constants remain: the desire for safety and security ... the hope for peace and prosperity ... and the need for solidarity against forces that might otherwise divide us.

These constants are the same in communities and countries around the world.

It is these constants that we in the Bureau strive to protect each and every day.

The universe of crime and terrorism will no doubt continue to expand. And we in the FBI will continue in our mission to find what we believe to be out there, but cannot always see.

We understand that when one of us is at risk, we are all at risk. An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us.

And any failure is a collective failure.

Only by moving forward together, as one community, will we make lasting progress. ~

This speech was delivered on February 23.

Police Can Public The B

eing fair to the public is an important, indeed, effective way to tackle crimes and the public should not be alienated," says David Bayley, a professor of international criminal justice and policing at the University of Albany in New York. "Effective detective work is not magic," as shown ill TV shows like CSI. "Real detectives have to work on what the public tells them."

A comprehensive writer on the theory and techniques of police work, Bayley has spent four decades participating in lectures, seminars and workshops at Indian police academies. His latest visit, in February, focused on the future of policing and the role of the police and the public in counterterrorism.

"Reach out to the public. In that way you can leam more in the prevention of crimes. Win hearts and minds of local people for law and order and against terrorists," Bayley urged personnel at the Tamil Nadu Police Academy on the outskirts of Chennai.

Citizens can contribute by passing on information about crimes, identifying suspects, giving testimony in prosecutions, defending themselves and building a moral climate that supports the law. He noted that all research on crime prevention shows crime decreases when the public cooperates.

Accepting that Indians may have strained relations with their police, he said

I David Bayley http://www.albany.edu/scj/bayley.htm Tamil Nadu Police Academy http://www.tnpa.tn. gov.in/ An Insider's View-From the Outside http://www.hindu.com/fline/fI1825/18251060.htm

Make the rAllies the problem is not uncommon across the world. But apart from fulfilling their main responsibi lities of protecting life and property, preventing, detecting and investigating criminal acts, and enforcing rules and regulations, it is in the hands of law enforcers to see that the people they serve are able to place their faith in them.

"The police should make the public their friends and allies so that the public becomes the lobby for the police," Bayley says. In the United States, the public is very supportive of the police and juries often rule in favor of the police in cases brought against them.

Bayley's extensive research in India has focused on strategies of policing, evolution of police organizations, organizational reform and accountability.

Delivering the Justice VR. Krishna Iyer B.S. Indrakala, judge of the Small Causes Court, Bangalore (foreground, from left), Justice Manjula Chellur, judge in the High Court of Karnataka, and David Bayley at the Karnataka Judicial Academy in Bangalore.

David Bayley interacts with law enforcement officials at the Tamil Nadu Police Academy in Chennai.

the local police for local knoWledge, Bayley says. In 2004, so-called fusion centers were created in the United States to better coordinate communication between federal govEndowment Lecture on "Policing Terror- emment law enforcers and their colleagues ism" at the University of Madras in Chennai, on the state, county and city level.

Bayley said that world practice is for most "The strength of the American police is in countries to have specialized agencies sepa- its lower ranks and the strength of the Indian rate from the police to engage in counterter- police js in its senior ranks," observes rorism abroad, such as America's Central Bayley. He feels that the policeman on the Intelligence Agency, India's Research and ground, the constable or sub-inspector, Analysis Wing and Israel's Institute for needs to be consulted. Bayley suggests the Intelligence and Special Operations or pairing of thanas or districts to try dealing Mossad. Democratic countries have special- with a similar problem. One district would ized police agencies for the collection of follow one strategy, while the other tries a domestic intelligence about potentially vio- different tactic. An evaluation and comparilent subversion such as the U.S. Federal son is then made to see what works.

Bureau of Investigation, India's Central In the United States as well as in India, Bureau of Investigation and Israel's Shin Bayley would ,like to see police forces Bet. It is the civil constabulary, however, that become learning organizations. Teaching can observe, develop contacts, recruit hospitals, for example, are set up to test informers and find leads in the criminal strategies, he says, while police forces lack world, which often supports terrorist activity. units to research and test what works Specialized central forces trained for effectively. counterterrorism would need to count on Nevertheless, Bayley says, he has observed changes in Indian policing over the last 40 years. Policing in India has become "smarter, more reflective and • research-oriented" and is doing things in a more non-traditional way, for example, allwomen police stations. Also, more specific strategies in dealing with crime and terrorism have been developed, he says.

Bayley says he is disappointed when he hears that the public is alienated from the police and that the politicization of the police force is felt to be worse. However, he says, "India's enOl1TIOUS strength lies in its society that does not repress dissent."

As long as this is the case, improvement can take place. ~ Kalpana Chittaranjan is a freelance strategic analyst and journalist based in Chennai.

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Touch the ghosts of a pueblo people who built their villages into sheer cliffsides. chattering pack of schoolchildren rounds a bend in a stony trail down the steep mesa wall and stops cold. For . several heartbeats the kids are silent, locked on the vision a few hundred meters away. "Wow," breathe several in unison. The ranger leading the group smiles knowingly.

Awe. He sees it all the time, even in TV-besotted, attention-spanlimited children. And in jaded adults like my wife and me.

Our collecti ve gaze is ri veted on Cliff Palace, a pueblo village of mortared sandstone blocks stacked into rooms and arranged around circular pits. It glows like burned gold in the angled afternoon sun; and it's not at the bottom of the canyon [106 meters] below or on the top of the mesa [23 meters] above. The whole village is built right into the mesa wall, inside a natural niche shaped like a down-turned mouth. Questions that leap to mind all start with "How ...?" and "Why ...?" Not to mention what happened to the people who once lived here. As with so many questions about the past, there aren't always clear answers.

Cliff Palace is but one of the marvels (and mysteries) that draw about half a million visitors a year to Mesa Verde National Park. The attendance is remarkable considering the park's remote southwestern Colorado location, at least a five-hour drive from Denver or Albuquerque, New Mexico.

By sheer size, Cliff Palace dominates the park's attractions.

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But each dwelling has a personality. Balcony House is the adventure site. You have to scale a [9-meter] log ladder (wide, sturdy, securely anchored), crawl through a cramped, [3-meterlong] passage, climb a couple of smaller ladders, and exit on steep, winding steps cut into the rock. Why the obstacle-course design? Who knows? But it's fun and not much of a challenge unless you're afraid of heights. The two dwellings are the high points of any visit. You have to sign up in advance and pay [$3] for each ranger-guided tour.

Sleeping beauties The cliffside dwellings were last occupied about 700 years ago. That's when the inhabitants--called the Anasazi until a few years ago but now, more broadly, "Ancestral Pueblo peoples"migrated into Arizona and New Mexico. After centuries of farming, the mesa's soil most likely was tapped out. The dwellings lay sleeping for nearly 600 years. Once they became widely known in the l870s, artifacts were looted and ancient building timbers became firewood. It's easy to see where pieces have been picked away. Still, most of the bones of the villages remain, sheltered in the alcoves from direct assault by water and wind. ' The architecture is classic Southwest, similar to pueblo complexes in [the state of] New Mexico at Chaco Culture National

Above: Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.

Above right, from top: Scarlet globe mallow plants bloom in the park in spring; feral horses stray into the park; wild turkeys were once domesticated by the inhabitants of Mesa Verde.

Historical Park near the Four Comers area and Bandelier National Monument outside Los Alamos. Besides square chambers for sleeping and food storage, and circular pits, called kivas, which were cultural and religious gathering places, there are social plazas and small towers. Squint and you can almost see children wrestling, women braced against the back wall grinding corn, men crafting arrow points for hunting rabbits, deer and wild turkeys. I am in a ghost village inhabited by the spirits of its former residents; as I stare at their old home, I have a shuddery feeling that they are staring back at me.

But why aren't the villages at or near the ground, as at Chaco and Bandelier? No one can say for sure, but pieces of a possible explanation have emerged. The people farmed corn, squash and beans in the rich soil of the mesa top, which was a few degrees warmer than the canyon bottom, so the growing season there would last a little longer. The alcoves, created when giant slabs of sandstone ripped loose, were there for the taking and offered

some protection from summer's and winter's extremes. Scaling the walls became a daily commute for the people of Mesa Verde.

This is not a park to breeze through in a few hours: Spend a couple of days. Any time from May to November is fine weatherwise, but late September to early October is a bit less crowded and hot, and the fall colors are showing. A room at Far View Lodge atop the mesa costs a few dollars more than at one of the motels below, but you'll save 40 minutes or more of driving a day. Navigating the switchbacks up and down the mesa takes a good 20 minutes each way, much longer in bad weather, or if you're pinned behind a driver unnerved by the scarcity of guardrails or distracted by a feral horse or wild turkey. The Far View's rooms are ordinary, but the views across the Montezuma Valley are spectacular, and the restaurant is first rate. (Try the tangy cactus dip appetizer.)

Carpentrv snafu The museum at Chapin Mesa brings these ancient people to life. There are artifacts: graceful baskets and pottery, weapons and tools, children's playthings, the corn and squash they ate.

And there are village dioramas, crafted in the 1930s by Civilian Conservation Corps artisans. There is even a diorama joke, sneaked 'into the rightmost village re-creation by Don Ross, who ran the project and was so feared that no one dared challenge his

s travel and exposure to other lifestyles increases, the practice of running for health and fun is finding a growing and dedicated following in India. The movement is led by running groups started by marathoners who have run abroad, often in the United States.

America is home to three of the world's five greatest marathons: New York, Chicago and Boston. London and Berlin host the other two "big five" marathons. Rahul Verghese, alumni of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, gave up a successful corporate career to start Running and Living, an organization that motivates Indians to run for health. Verghese's columns in The Hindu, Mint and The Telegraph have also motivated many Indians, including this writer, to take up runmng.

In the United States, distance running is an evolved culture, a tradition that has drawn millions of ordinary folk as well as the famous, such as former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who often ran with their Secret Service agents.

The New York Road Runners organization, for instance, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008, and has a membership of more than 45,000. "However," says Sara Hunninghake, a spokeswoman, "We generally draw more than 300,000 people to our weekly races." The premier event, the ING New York City Marathon, is one of the world's great road races, and draws nearly 105,000 applicants.

"The United States has a solid running tradition now, but it wasn't always that way," notes Hunninghake. "The Africans in

Kenya and Ethiopia are the ones with the long-standing tradition. In the U.S., it was really the running boom of the 1970s that got people interested in,the sport. Before the '70s, there wasn't a tradition of fitness running," she says. "The only people out on the streets jogging were boxers like Muhammad Ali, the military to stay in shape, and a handful of other men that people thought were crazy. The running boom came out of a desire people had to improve their fitness. Aging baby boomers who were in their 20s and 30s realized they weren't going to live forever, and they wanted to do something about it. Running was a sport that was accessible, and relatively easy to start participating in."

"Running in the United States, in most of the places I have visited, is very enjoyable," says Prakash Murthy, a software professional who works in New York and lives in Jersey City. He is a founder-member of the Bangalore-based running group RunWalkIndia which, among other events, conducts a five-kilometer run every third Sunday in Bangalore's JP Park. In the United States, he notes, "There are dedicated running and hiking trails almost everywhere-within cities, in the suburbs, in state parks.

Looking at the many people running in the parks in my neighborhood had a lot to do with my taking up running." His friends and family help sustain RunWa1kIndia while he remains active online and times his visits for events.

"People need to be encouraged to run," agrees Vidyuth Sreenivasan, a founder of Chennai Runners, whose members voluntarily maintain a Web site, meet six days a

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week to run together, and organize scenic runs on the East Coast Road to Pondicherry.

The Chennai Runners' online group has more than 300 members. "We need role models. In India, we need more local events to be organized by competent SPOlts authorities, perhaps one event a month: five-kilometer and 1O-kilometer runs are not as daunting as a full marathon."

Sabine Tietge, a German who moved to Bangalore in 1999, founded RunnerGirlsIndia, a women-only running club.

"Many women lack the self confidence to put on a pair of running shoes and hit the road; more information and more running clubs will help," she says. Her group was established to create an environment where women runners of all levels can get together to run. It also acts as a support network, providing advice, guidance and encouragement on running-related issues.

Top left: In the 2007 Mumbai Marathon some 500 athletes from Africa and Australia competed alongside thousands of the city's residents.

Above: Runners cross the VerrazanoNarrows Bridge at the start of the New York City Marathon in 2005.

Right: Runners stream off the VerrazanoNarrows Bridge into the Brooklyn borough of New York during the 2003 marathon.

Below, far left: Steven J. White, deputlJ chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi (left), holds the Special Olympics Flame of Hope during its stopover last December en route to the Special Olympics World Winter Games in the U.S. state of Idaho in February.

Indian Special Olympians Ragini Rao and Joginder Bendi escorted the torch.

Below, center: Actor Akshay Kumar and others run with the torch in New Delhi.

Below: Runner Milkha Singh carries the 2006 Commonwealth Games Baton in New Delhi in 2005.

II

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Safe running tips for beginners from Dr. Kannan Pugazhendi Strengthen the muscles of the lower limbs with squats and calf-raising exercises for at least a week before starting to run.

The impact of running can be reduced by soft heel contact and a gentle roll to the feet, without making any audible sound.

Stretch the calf muscles, hamstring and the lower back muscles before the start of the run.

Shoes buffer the impact between the earth and feel.

Buy shoes in the evening, as feet swell during the day.

Do not increase distance suddenly. Let the progression be gradual Increase the mileage only after a few days of acclimatization.

Take 500 ml of fluid two hours before the run and 150 to 200 ml every 15 to 20 minutes during the run, especially in hot and humid conditions.

Stretch thoroughly after the run.

Add strengthening exercises as a conditioning program two to three days a week.

Don't wear dark clothes while running under a hot sun as they absorb more heat and raise body temperature.

Use proper running mechanics and avoid unnecessary movements so that you don't tire yourself needlessly.

RunnerGirlsIndia organizes fortnightly women-only runs in Bangalore. Chapters in other cities are being planned, as are regular training courses, such as the 'Couch to SK' to help women who want to start running.

Indeed, encouragement is a very strong motivation. "In the New York Marathon, the crowd support is phenomenal," says .

Ra]esh Vetcha, core team member of Hyderabad Runners, which organized the city's first marathon in August 2008 and won accolades for doing a fine job of it. "I learnt a lot from the experience of running [the NYC Marathon], from the sign ages, Running and Living htlJ):I/www.runnlnganlivlng.com New York Road Runners httJ):7/www.nyrr.org!

Chennai Runners h1t[r! /www.chennairunners.com!

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cannot help but feel inspired."

"The toughest distance to cover is from your bed to your door," says Anand Bharathi, founder-member of Bangalore's Runners for Life, which has a paid membership. "It is a challenge all of us face." _ Runners for Life also has an active Google . group of more than 1,000 runners, and is the force behind events such as the 20-kilometer corporate relay named Urban Stampede. Other marathons organized include the ultra marathon, which covers distances of more than 42.2 kilometers.

The greatest challenge to running is overcoming self-denial, and accepting that modem lifestyles are creating health problems. Misconceptions also slow down the movement for running. Says Dr. Kannan Pugazhendi, director of the Sports Medicine Center at the Young Men's Christian Association and the Sports Performance Assessment Rehabilitation Research Counseling Institute in Chennai: "There are many common myths about running. People believe it's not safe, that walking is as good as running, that running will wear out the knees and cause osteoarthritis, that running on toes is the best, or even that running alone is enough exercise. None of this is true."

Pugazhendi, a distance runner who has

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Children run in an event in Bangalore.

the way administrative authorities helped, the way runners played a key role in J organizing the event. The route goes through all the five boroughs of the city.

I The weather is great and the respect you win every step of the way is the highest ~ reward. Just run in Central Park and you

accompanied several Indian sports delegations abroad and designed training programs for police personnel, military cadets and classical dancers, follows a hotistic approach to physiotherapy and sports medicine by combining yoga, pranic healing and martial arts with hjs medical knowledge. He says, "Running safely is the key, and it is possible to do so by

following a few sensible rules." (See box.)

Runners prove this by example.

"Running, for me, is more than just running, it's my life, my first love," says ultramarathoner and one of the few musculoskeletal experts in India, Dr. Rajat Chauhan. Formerly head of the department of sports and exercise medicine in Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, he is a physician representative for several sports teams, and now founder-director of Back2Fitness, a health care provider for injury- and pain-free active lifestyles. "I moved back to India a couple of years ago.

I want to bring a running revolution in the country by getting inactive people to get moving, no matter what distance is covered in how much time, as long as they put in the effort," he says.

The most wonderful thing about running is that it allows its practitioners to literally set their own pace. "I was a heavy smoker. I was too slow. I still am. I always thought I was running barely a little more

than my walking speed and much slower al best. K.P. Suresh, now a friend, kept pace than a lot of walkers," says S. Rajesh, a with my sluggish steps and urged me to finChennai-based software professional. "But ish while dishing out splendid anecdotes on then I stumbled upon John 'The Penguin' running and weight loss.

Bingham's articles (www.runnersworld.

"Just take it one step at a time," signs off com is a superb resource). And I slowly the trim and fit Sabine Tietge. "I was 20 improved. Since then, I have become a kilos overweight just over two years ago member of the Chennai Runners group and and could not even run one minute! So if I have finished four half marathons. In the can do it, so can you!" Indeed, the power process, the best thing that happened in my of change rests in our own feet. ~ life, health-wise, was that I quit smoking."

Running is also an egalitarian and friend- Vaidehi lyer is a journalist and editor based in ly sport. Camaraderie gives as much impe- Chennai. tus to tiring feet as determination. At the Hong Kong Marathon in February 2008, two North Korean women runners finished holding hands. On my first run with the Chennai Runners last surruner, a publishing company executive I had never met until ~ that morning helped me, an overweight, j nudging-40 mother of two, finish running ~ four kilometers at a stretch, then my person- ~ r

---------------~z Right: Spectators cheer runners in the ING New York City Marathon in 2008.

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rawing inspiration from the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, the Boston Marathon in the northeastern US. state of Massachusetts has had a long run since debuting in 1897. It is the oldest city marathon in the world, and every year about 20,000 people run ~ the challenging 42.195-kilometer route of winding roads, cheered by hun- @ÂŤw dreds of thousands more. u. '< The area of the eight cities and towns along the route-Hopkinton, w >:::> Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, Brookline and BostonI w is considered a uniquely American setting, and runners say the marathon '< Fa CD showcases that American spirit.

Lance Armstrong, center, seven-time Tour de France cycling winner Traditionally held on Patriots Day, the marathon is on the 20th of April and cancer survivor, crosses the starting line of the 112th Boston this year The marathon is renowned for its level of difficulty; qualifying for Marathon in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in 2008. More than 25,000 Boston is considered an achievement in itself. Every runner needs to have runners participated. completed a certified marathon within a certain timeframe that is deterrecognized Bob Hall as a contestant. With a time of 2 hours and 58 minmined by the person's age utes, Hall had collected a promise from Race Director Will Cloney that if The marathon is also famed for its legendary roadblocks, prime among he finished in less than three hours, he would receive an official Boston them are the Newton Hills. It's not that they are too high, but appearing shortly after the 25-ki lometer mark, they've been known to break even the Athletic Association Finisher's Certificate.

From the first award-a wreath of olive branches-the Boston toughest runner The marathon drew its largest running contingent in its centenary year, Marathon now gives thousands of dollars as prize money Rob de Castella when more than 35,000 people finished the race out of 38,708 entrants was the first runner to receive money in 1986, $60,000 and a MercedesBenz for finishing first in a record time of 2 hours, 7 minutes and 51 secand were recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Other marathon milestones include: the first woman forcing her way onds. Up to 2008, more than $11 million had been awarded in prize into the race in 1966 by hiding in the bushes near the start until the race money and bo,nuses began; women permitted to run in 1972, and Boston becoming the first http://www .boston marathon. org/ http://www.adventure-marathon.com/Boston-Marathon .aspx major marathon to include a wheelchair division in 1975 when it officially (/)

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Computer-aided design (CAD) has been around for more than 30 years, and each stage of its evolution has further simplified engineers' jobs. To begin with, early, simple computers ran on basic UNIX operating systems, which were rather rudimentary when compared to what is available today. Complex twodimensional designs came next, followed

by Windows-based three-dimensional modeling.

In 1993, Jon Hirschtick, a student of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set up SolidWorks Corporation in Concord, Massachusetts. His intention was to develop tlu'ee-dimensional computer-aided design technology that did not cost much in terms of computer hardware and software, could be run on Windows, and was affordable in itself.

"A lot of people thought that Jon was crazy-we were told that you can't build CAD on Windows," says Austin O'Malley,

SolidWorks tt ://www.solloworks.com/ Systems Engineering and Design http://www.nsf.gov/funding/ pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id = 13473&org = NSF

now SolidWorks' chief technology officer and part of the original core team that debunked the notion. "It was amazing how fast that transition happened. The way we were communicating even a decade ago as opposed to now has changed tremendously."

Today, Solid Works is used by most engineers in companjes that design and manufacture products around the world. Over 14,500 educational institutions use SolidWorks software globally. SolidWorks CAD has been used to design cutting-edge NASA robots that conduct space experiments, superfast Formula One race cars, advanced electric submarine vehicles, and complex industrial machinery that has intricate parts and sub-paIts numbering in the thousands.

Presently, SolidWorks trajning is given to over a million students around the world annually. It has been a preferred 3D computer-aided design software with more than 750,000 users in over 100,000 companies.

Globally, SolidWorks computer-aided design is used in some 100 countries.

Monster.com, the popular job portal, has consistently ranked SolidWorks as the 3D technology experience most sought by employers. Not only this, the SolidWorks

Delegates attend a presentation at SolidWorks World 2009 in Orlando, Florida.

user community worldwide is larger and more active than that of any other mainstream computer-aided design software.

All of which has contributed to SolidWorks' considerable success, both as an innovator and as a global enterprise.

SolidWorks India is the second largest R&D (research and development) facility outside the company's Massachusetts headquarters, and is part of a network that has other centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, China and Ukraine. "It's a lively crowd running to hundreds of personnel, based in Pune," says 0' Malley. The Indian engineering industry is a mature one. The country has more than 1,400 engineering colleges from which 350,000 English-speiling engineers graduate annually. Of these, 300 colleges use SolidWorks computer-aided design, says the company.

The engineering technology services outsourcing market-where highly qualified design engineers create and test innovations that improve existing and new machines and services and make them

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more user-friendly for offshore clients-has grown rapidly over the last few years in India. Many believe it may grow to be as vital a sector for India as its IT & BPO (information technology and business process outsourcing) services. This could eventu· ally enable India to become a design engineering hub for the world.

Thanks to computer-aided design, engineers are able to create designs much faster than when they followed the now·outdated method of drafting their designs by hand. This helps reduce the time it takes for companies

The rapidly growing engineering technology services outsourcing market in India could help it become a design hub for the world.

to get their new and improved products to the market, which in turn increases industrial productivity, turnover and employment generation. "We.. have focused on making engineers' jobs easier and faster," says Hirschtick, who is now a member of the SolidWorks' board of directors.

"Users can typically learn the software in a couple of hours and begin designing complex products in a matter of days."

'When it is dark enough, vou can see the stars."

At SolidWorks World 2009, its annual convention, held in February in Orlando, Florida, this quote from American historian Charles Austin Beard lit up the silver screen of the enormous ballroom that fairly crackled with purpose.

The ongoing economic downturn is never far away from any business-related A model of a motorcycle at a pavilion at SolidWorks World 2009 where about 120 users displayed their three-dimensional computer aided design-enabled products and prototlJpes.

Marie Planchard, director of worldwide education markets at DS SolidWorks. discussion in the United States. What is equally evident is the triumph of the human spirit in weathering storms.

Fewer than 3,000 delegates were expected at this year's event, but 4,300 turned up. The convention celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. "I have been coming every year for the

last six years. It gives me the chance to update my knowledge and network with my peers. I wouldn't miss it for anything," says Joe N. Lance, a principal designer at Texas-based Halliburton.

O'Malley adds, "In design, things keep evolving with the focus on raising the bar in user experience. Focus is, in fact, crucial. Otherwise we end up doing everything for nobody. Is the chair you are sitting on comfortable? Even if the answer is yes, the next question is: Can it be more comfortable'?"

Some of the darkest times in history have resulted in the greatest innovations, chief executive officer Jeff Ray noted in a keynote address. Wheq,. DuPont launched nylon for parachutes, tents and stockings during the Great Depression, it was not with the expectation that their affordable alternative product would continue to be the world's best-selling fiber nearly a century later. In 1930, the Galvin brothers, known better as the founders of Motorola, made the world's first vacuum tube, battery-powered, commercial car radios. "In engineering design, more so than anywhere else, we must keep trying to see things differently," says Ray.

The award-winning design of a modified Hero Honda CBZ Xtreme motorcycle by students of lIT-Delhi's industrial design center.

Back to school With education one of its pnontles from both business and corporate citizenship perspectives, the company is "committed to helping develop today's students into tomorrow's engineers," says Marie Planchard, director of world-

Computer-aided design helps engineers work faster, which reduces the time it takes for companies to get their new products to the market.

t was a convention and exposition determined to defy the economic downturn and talk serious business on taking engineering product design to the next level with a relentless focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. So Orlando's Walt Disney World, a showcase of innovation and "imagineering," was a likely venue for the SolidWorks World 2009 convention.

Delegates (many of whom should have been jet-lagged but appeared too cheerful to remind anyone of it) rushed through an early breakfast to reach a dizzying number of general and technical sessions, expert presentations and interactions, product launches, competitions, a user summit, audio-visual theater events and boot camps, in venues that ranged from intimate conference settings to stadium-sized ballrooms with thumping rock music and giant screens. Then they paused to network over color-coded, industry-specific lunch tables.

In the meantime, many succumbed to the temptation of Walt Disney World's theme parks and marketp~ace during breaks, catching rides in one of the free shuttle services plying to and from the con~ention's Disney World resort venue. As if these were not enough to thrill the adventurer in every guest, off-site events at Disney World's Epcot Theme Park and Animal Kingdom featured a variety of food and drink, live bands, astonishing games, performances and rides, and the most splendid music-andlaser enhanced fireworks display, all of which blurred professional lines into friendships over an ice cream cone or a heart-stopping ride or a burst of fire-lit color.

As a first-time visitor, I could not help thinking, work can be this much fun only in the United States of America.

-VJ

I

Delegates enter the convention hall on the first day of SolidWorks 2009 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

wide education markets at SolidWorks.

She has visited several engineering colleges in India and admires the students.

"At IIT-Delhi ... a student showed me a prototype he was working on from this big heap of discarded air-conditioning parts. The enthusiasm I saw in that group was amazing. In colleges, the software tools are not the focus-professors teach concepts, as they must.

We, on the other hand, work toward demystifying their application."

Engineering design is one of the most rapidly emerging professions in India, with increasing demand for a high-caliber workforce. Planchard would also like to "see more women in design.

Women design with a natural empathy that is a great asset."

An award-winning Hero Honda CBZ Xtreme motorcycle design featured prominently in displays at SolidWorks World 2009, and is on the cover of all the company's training manuals this year.

The original was taken apart and reconstructed into an improved version by the students of IIT-Delhi's industrial design center.

Recently, lIT Delhi had a course on SolidWorks for the toy industry in collaboration with the Government of India, the company says. "Until now, 2D CAD dominated the Indian market, but now a definite shift toward 3D is evident," says PM. Ravikumar, education manager for South Asia.

"An industrial designer speaks through the language of sketches," says Ambar Bandi, industrial designer at the General Motors Design Center in Bangalore. He

was the winner of the SolidWorks' Passion for Design Contest 2007 for his model of a steam iron as a student of lIT-Delhi. "Good visualization in 3D is a natural gift to all designers: 3D software programs help in translating the designer's vision so that they can be easily comprehended by others in related fields--engineers, marketing people, top management, customers. Any good software should help in quick conceptual ability-this would mean the software should not be too fussy-at the same time, mainstream detailing and downstreanl manufacturing ability should not be _c_o_m_p_r_o_m_i_se_d_._" Vaidehi lyer is a journalist in Chemwi.

~

and editor based

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given above are true to the

iCO Iyer personifies the concept of a writer without borders-born in England to Indian parents, raised in the United States and the United Kingdom, and now living in Japan. For Iyer, the whole world is equally alien or equally home. His writing explores the space between cultures, and the people who inhabit that space. Iyer writes in The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search

P

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- f f: '> r I VI I

Jefferies fJ In Conversation Vikram Seth \Vit h

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for Home, "Having grown up simultaneously in three cultures, none of them fully my own, I acquired very early the sense of being loosed from time as much as from space-I had no history, I could feel, and lived under the burden of no home."

Iyer was among the writers, 'editors, readers, publishers and peliorming artists who gathered at Diggi Palace in Jaipur, Rajasthan, to engage in spirited conversation during the Jaipur Literature Festival 2009, sponsored in part by the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. A range of genres were featured, including not only belles lettres but also journalism, travel writing, history, biography and children's literature. The theme of writing that transcends borders emerged repeatedly at the event, with participants

Robinson, a poet who uses one name; writer and film director Sagari Chhabra and American author Michael MacDonald at a reception hosted by U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Steven J. White in New Delhi after the literature festival.

Author Pico lyer interacts with the audience at the ]aipur Literature Festival.

from India, the United States, United Kingdom, Paki,stan, Australia, Malaysia, China and Bangladesh.

Chronicling his development, Iyer joked that as a student of literature he learned no marketable skills, only how to read and write. "The more I studied literature, the more I was only qualified for unemployment." Despite this modest claim, however, he went on to become an essayist with Time magazine. Iyer later took a leave of absence to write Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-Sa-Far East, published in 1989 amid an explosion of travel writing. In exploring the clash of cultures that occurs when East meets West, Iyer saw a reflection of his own multicultural heritage. "To some extent," he said, "it was my background speaking."

In contrast to this global soul, American memoirist Michael Patrick MacDonald focuses on one very specific place and time, yet he too conveys something universal about the human experience. In his deeply moving memoir, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, MacDonald narrates his experiences of growing up in the impoverished South Boston neighborhood known as Southie.

MacDonald chronicles the neighborhood's povelty, violence, and crime, which no one would acknowledge or discuss openly.

Jaipur Literature Festival This insular neighborhood skyhttp://jaipurl iteraturefestival, org/ rocketed to national infamy in

1974 when riots broke out over the racial desegregation of schools.

In his remarks at the festival, MacDonald recounted his experience of leaving this neighborhood, "moving from a small, tight world which you thought was the only world." He described his subsequent work as a community organizer in black and Latino neighborhoods, where he found that "people didn't even know that there was such a thing as white poverty."

His decision to write a memoir grew out of his experience as a' community organizer, when he heard mothers telling their stories as a way of reaching out to other people and witnessed the impact of storytelling both on the audience and on the storytellers themselves.

MacDonald observed that having a lovelhate relationship with one's place of origin is a universal experience, and that a return to that place can be a part of the healing process.

Reminiscing about the connectedness and community and the sense of being part of a larger social fabric, he stated, "It still to

of the audience asked Aslam about Ondaatje's influence on his writing Celebrates: America's libraries one might have expected his answer to • Promotes: Use of libraries focus on style, since both writers • Since: 1958" exhibit an extraordinarily lush prose.

• This year: April 12 to 18 Aslam responded, however, that it • Theme: Worlds connect @ your library was Ondaatje who liberated him geo• Sponsored by: American Library Association graphically and inspired him to that has some value. Ultimately, when we do • expand beyond his own experiences this, we are also sorting things out for ourof Pakistan and England and to selves. And if w.e really go there for our- For more information: explore the entire world in his writing. selves, then it tends to work for others ...it National Library Week tends to be universal. And basically, turning ..------------------, In a session on travel writing, any tragedy and pain into a gift (for others http://www.ala.org/alaJaboutalaJoffices/pio/ moderator William Dalrymple, the but ultimately for ourselves) ought to be our natlibraryweek!nlw.cfm British writer, asked Vikram Seth, who is perhaps better known as a mantra for making this world livable for all." American Libraries in India novelist and poet, what the travel MacDonald told SPAN that his second writer offers to the reader that the book, Easter Rising, deals with "that oft- http://americanlibrary. in. Iibrary. neV asked question" of how he avoided being http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/americanl ibrary.html Encyclopcedia Britannica does not.

Seth responded that he hadn't origitrapped in Southie's cycle of violence and poverty. " ... For me it is ultimately not about getting out, but nally planned to write a book when he hitchhiked through Tibet, instead learning to embrace all that we come from and learning but people kept asking him about the trip. When he wrote a few to work with it in order to go forward. So getting out, seeing the pages about his journey, his father encouraged him to seek out a bigger world was one step toward my own 'rising,' but the publisher. The resultant book, From Heaven Lake: Travels return home (in a new way, with a new understanding of how to Through Sinkiang and Tibet, focuses not merely on the journey be in the world in all of its chaos and pain) was just as impor- itself but on the personalities and the encounters, the people as tant. ...the return home, to Southie, to learning to embrace every- well as the places. Born in Calcutta and educated in the United thing about my family and my community (wherever I may end States, as well as in England and China, Seth is a traveler whose writing reflects his experience living in several countries. During his years at Stanford University in California, he studied economics, poetry and Mandarin and returned there to teach writing. A polyglot, he is influenced by a variety of cultures, yet says English is the "instrument" in which he conveys his art.

Iyer described travel writing as autobiography in disguise, an inquiry, a conversation and a self-portrait, "using a place to work things through that you wouldn't be able to work through at home." All of the great travel writers, he said, are "fiction writers on holiday."

In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar, American travel writer Paul Theroux describes the experience of serious readers meeting their counterparts. In a passage that captures perfectly the spirit of the laipur Literature Festival, he writes, "I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike-intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits."

MacDonald experienced this during his interactions with people in India. It's one thing to find that there is a universal language that allows communication from South Boston in Journalist and activist Rami Chhabra and U.S. Deputy Chief of Massachusetts to the South Bronx in New York, he said. "But Mission Steven J. White during a reception for writers at his it's another thing to find out, when traveling to the other side of residence in New Delhi. the globe, to India, that we do indeed have the capacity to tell stories and to hear stories with understanding and empathy and up geographically)."

In the fiction of Nadeem Aslam, a British writer of Pakistani _to_t_a_l _co_n_n_e_c_t_io_n_to_th_e_u_n_i_v_e_rs_a_l_e_le_m_e_n_ts_.'_' . ~ origin, the social fabric is also rent asunder by violence, and by warfare and religious fundamentalism. Aslam has often publicly As information resource officer for the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, expressed his admiration for the Sri Lankan-born Canadian writer Steven P. Kerch off manages American Libraries in India, Bangladesh, Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. When a member Nepal and Sri Lanka. Deepanjali Kakati also contributed to this article. me is the best neighborhood in the world."

In a post-festival interview with SPAN's Deepanjali Kakati, MacDonald described writing as " ... finding a language to speak about sometimes unspeakable things." He said, "Writers kind of sort things out for others by de-tangling chaos and nlaking a story

Nationallibrarv Week

1..._-------------_ .....

is black hair in braids, his big glasses slipping down to the tip of his nose, Arthur Flowers steps up on the stage and finishes dressing. He straps a string of bells to his blue-jeaned leg, another to his ankle. He wraps a bracelet or two on his wrists, and drapes necklaces of beads, shells and a talisman pouch over his black suit jacket and black shirt. He lays out gourds, a conch shell, a bag of beads and shells on a table, tests a snatch of a tune on his harmonica, taps the microphone in front of his laptop.

Now, this English professor and novelist is ready to lecture.

"I am going to speak on blues this evening," intones Flowers, a native of Memphis, Tennessee who says he grew into adulthood without knowing anything about the African-influenced American music genre for which his hometown is famous.

Flowers discovered his musical and cultural roots, African and American, in New York. He was performing a poem on stage and someone later referred to him as a Memphis bluesman, so he researched his heritage and began incorporating music into his story-telling and literary lectures. He has been a professor of English at New York State University and now teaches literature and writing at Syracuse University in New York. His novelsAnother Good Loving Blues, De Mojo Blues-resonate with his musical roots, whether he is telling a love story or recounting the reintegration into American society of Vietnam War veterans like himself.

The cadences of the blues-with their echoes of Africans singing around a campfire, of slaves calling to each other in the fields of the Amelican South, of singing hymns of hope around plantation huts in the evening-suffuse Flowers' speaking style and his literature. His tales of ordinary folk, often poor and rural, are permeated with hints of mystery, magic and ancient stories passed down orally.

"The reason the oral tradition became so powerful in African American culture is because when Africans were brought to the United States they were systematically stripped of their cul-

H

Above: Arthur Flowers (left) converses with sculptor Andrew Logan and Rajeev Sethi, chairman of the Asian Heritage Foundation, at a post jes tiva I literary reception at the New Delhi residence of u.s. Deputy Chief of Mission Steven J. White.

Right: Flowers tells stories lit the Jaipur Literature Festival in January. ture to make them better slaves," Flowers told an audience at the American Center in New Delhi, after the Jaipur Literature Festival. All the slaves had "was what they were able to carry in the oral tradition. It was literally against the law for black folks to read and write" in some southern states. "The oral tradition was used to keep the culture alive and thriving under supremely hostile conditions."

It was later, "at the time of the great migration, at the turn of the 20th century, when black folk moved out of the farms and into the cities of the South, and moved from,being a rural people to an urban people that the oral traditions became the art forms," Flowers explains. "Their folk tales became literature and their blues music became jazz."

He clicks the play button on his laptop and the haunting, notquite-wail of a fellow soul from long ago, calling to his colaborers across a southern field, takes our breath away with its beauty and pathos. Then, Jimi Hendrix! Is that sliding wail on the guitar from the same place, culturally and spiritually, as that antique field-holler? Here comes a southern Gospel song, from an African American church choir. Then, the rhythm of the words tumbling forth from a Black, southern Gospel preacher,

"Into each life must come some trouble, must come some rain Only through adversity will you ever know your true strength When hard times come we fight the battles we find no one else could win Remember what the old blues doctor said, Trouble don't last always."

Martin Luther King, Jr. Now it's hip-hop from Louisiana bluesman Chris Thomas King. It's the same ancient beat and hearttugging undertone, surviving across cultures, years, lands and experiences.

That, says Flowers, is the blues.

The field hollers were used by slaves to communicate to each other, without words, how they were feeling, says Flowers. Each had a unique call and the musicality was innate. A friend from across the field would respond with his own holler. This call and response style is part of African music; it's also a basis of southern Gospel and rock 'n' roll.

The wailing sound, and the sadness it expressed, developed into the earliest blues music. Many people, when they hear the word "blues" think of sad, woe-is-me music. "But blues is about getting through life's trials and tribulations," says Flowers. " ... The way it works is that you might be feeling bad, because you do feel bad sometimes in life, so you're talking about it-trouble in my mind, 1 am blue, but 1 won't be blue always, sun, you gotta shine, in my backdoor some day, 1 may be blue but 1 won't be blue always,-the next thing you know you're not feeling bad at all."

Then he played some Dinah Washington, one of America's greatest blues singers, performing the classic Birth of the Blues/l Don't Hurt Anymore. The transition, the turn of the music, in her voice, in the lyrics, the arrangement and tempo, from the fieldholler cry to the "things are gonna be okay" hopefulness can plainly be heard.

"The blues are more than the art form, more than the music," says Flowers. "They are cultural instruments intimately tied to the African American culture of trial and tribulations .... When the culture was dismissed as unworthy the blues carried us through."

Flowers is a founder of the New Renaissance Writers Guild, an offshoot of the half-century-old Harlem Writers Guild, which supports African Americans telling their own experience through writing. "There are those of us who feel we are heirs to two literary traditions, the Western written tradition and the oral African tradition, and we are hoping through the fusion to contribute to the evolution of both," says Flowers.

These writers, he says, "are consciously attempting to forward a uniquely African American literary language based on the oral tradition-and its musical notes." ~

The Hemingway EDect

By AKHIL SHARMA

.

How Ernest Hemingway shaped an Indian American writer's craft and consciousness. can only speak from my own experiences, and so I should not be understood to represent all Indian American writers, I first started writing short stories in ninth grade I did this because I was very unhappy and I wanted attention, My family came to America in 1979, There was me, my brother, my mother and my father. Two years after we arrived, my brother had an accident in a swimming pool that left him severely brain damaged I was 10 then, and my brother, 14, My brother is still alive and he cannot walk or talk, Anup, ,cannot be fed through his mouth, and so he is fed through a gastrointestinal tube", For two years after the accident, my brother was kept in a hospital, and then my parents decided to take care of him themselves, ,Other than the direct worries of my brother's condition, another pressing worry that I grew up with was concern about money Because we had such little money and because we were dependent on insurance companies and nurses, we felt that we were always being betrayed, that people were not fulfilling their responsibilities, Until ninth grade, when I was 15, the only time I wrote short stories was when they were assigned for a class, In ninth grade I had a teacher, Mrs, Green, who praised me for how weill understood our reading assignments and so, to get more attention from her, I began writing stories, At first all the stories I wrote had white American characters, I think this was partially because all the fiction I read was.about white people, Equally important though was that I felt the experience of being an Indian American was not important. Living as a minority, not sharing the experiences of the majority population, I felt that my experiences, because they were not the majority experience, were not as important as those of white people. Also, to some extent, I felt that my experiences, because they were not shared, were

I

For more information: An extract from Akhil Sharma's Mother and Son http://www.bestyoungnovelists.com!Akhi 1SharmaiRead-an-extract -from-Mother-and-Son Ernest Hemingway http://www.timelesshemingway.com!

not even as real as those of white Americans, Among the problems I had in writing about whites is that I didn't know anything about whites, It was only in 10th grade that I first went into a white person's house, In 10th grade I read a biography of Ernest Hemingway, I remember starting reading it one morning at the kitchen table and the windows of the kitchen being dark, I read the biography ..,so that I could lie to people and tell them that I had read Hemingway's books, (I used to lie all the time and claim I had read books I had not.)

I read the book and was amazed, What amazed me was that Hemingway had gotten to live in France and Spain, that he had travelled to Cuba and appeared to have had a good time in his life, Till then I had thought that I would be a computer programmer or an engineer or a doctor. When I read the book, I suddenly thought that I could have a lifestyle like Ernest Hemingway's and not lead a boring life,

An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma is available at the American Library in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai.

After I read the biography, I began to read other books about Hemingway I read biographies and collections of critical essays I must have read 20 books about Hemingway before I read any actual work written by him, I read all this about Hemingway because I wanted to learn how to repeat what he had done and I didn't want to leave any clue unexamined, At first, I was not actually interested in Hemingway's own writing I think of Hemingway as the writer who has influenced me most. Hemingway, wrote about characters whose experience was exotic to American readers, He wrote about gangsters and soldiers in Italy and journalists in Paris, Among the many things I learned from Hemingway, and I could say that almost everything I am as a writer began with Hemingway or as a response against Hemingway, one was how to write about exotic things without being bogged down by the exoticism, Scholars who analyzed Hemingway pointed out that his stories

began in the middle of the action, that he wrote as if the reader already knew a great deal about the environment that he was writing about, that when he gave direct explanations, this breaking of the reality of fictional experience was a way of saying to the reader that the reason I am breaking this fictional convention is because I don't want to lie, For me, because I began my education as a writer with Hemingway and did not really read any nonwhite writers until I was in college, I have always thought that writing is just writing, Writing is just a string of words and a series of strategies that generate experiences within the reader. I have always felt that in the same way that the race of a surgeon does not matter because a heart and a gall bladder remain a heart and a gall bladder no matter the race of the patient, the race of a writer also does not matter.

I came to America as part of a great wave of immigration, Becau.se this wave of Asian immigrants has created curiosity within American society as to what exactly it is like to be in Asian families, I have been lucky to have had my books read, (I think of myself as a good writer, but I could imagine that if I had been writing 50 years earlier; my writing might have been too exotic and peripheral to be worth reading by ordinary readers,) My first book [An Obedient Father] won the PEN! Hemingway prize [in 2000], This is given to the best first novel published in any given year The person who gave me the prize was one of Hemingway's sons",. This white-haired gentleman and I sat and talked in a conference room for about 10 or 15 minutes, I did not tell him how much his father had mattered to me because I felt shy, Instead we talked about how his father had found titles for his books in The Book of Common Prayer Sometimes when I think of how lucky I have been, I want to cry, ~ New Delhi-born Akhil Sharma writes for The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He was named among the best young American novelists by Granta magazine in 2007.

A JURY of HER PEERS AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS ftom Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx

ELAINE SHOWALTER ,

very few years, someone counts up the titles covered in the New York Times Book Review and the short fiction published in The New Yorker, as well as the bylines and literary works reviewed in such highbrow journals as Harper's and the New York Review of Books, and observes that the male names outnumber the female by about two to one. This situation is lamentable, as everyone but a handful of embittered cranks seems to agree, but it's not clear that anyone ever does anything about it. The bestseller lists, though less intellectually exalted,

E

tend to break down more evenly along gender lines; between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer alone, the distaff side is more than holding its own in terms of revenue. But when it comes to respect, are women writers getting short shrift?

The question is horribly fraught, and has been since the 1970s. Ten years ago, in a much-argued-about essay for Harper's, the novelist and critic Francine Prose accused the literary establishment-dispensers of prestigious prizes and reviews-of continuing to read women's fiction with "the usual prejudices and preconceptions," even if most of them have learned not to admit as much publicly. Two years before that, Jane Smiley, also writing in Harper's, alleged that Huckleberry Finn is overvalued as a cultural

monument while Uncle Tom s Cabin is undervalued, largely because of the genders of the novels' respective authors; the claim triggered a deluge of letters in protest. Alongside the idea that women writers have been unjustly neglected, there has blossomed the suspicion that some of them have recently become unduly celebrated-an aesthetic variation on the conservative shibboleth of affirmative action run amok.

Onto this mine-studded terrain and with impressive aplomb, strides Elaine Showalter, literary scholar and professor emerita at Princeton University. Showalter has fought in the trenches of this particular war for over 30 years, beginning with her groundbreaking 1978 study, A Literature

has insisted that themes central to women's lives-marriage, motherhood, the tension between family and individual aspirations-constitute, subject matter as "serious" and significant as traditionally masculine motifs like war and travel. Yet she rejects the preference of many feminist literary scholars for emphasizing "culture importance rather than aesthetic distinction," and she doesn't hesitate to describe some of the writers discussed in A Jury of Her Peers as artistically limited, if historically interesting.

All of this is controversial enough in Showalter's chosen profession, and A Jury of Her Peers mostly steers ajudicious middle course, examining the major figures in depth while giving a nod to innovators who

roller coaster of critical politics" offers a textbook case of the absurdities of ideological criticism in the late 20th century.

As an active participant in the birth aJ1d coming-of-age of a new school of criticism, Showalter knows well that an excessively political approach can lead a critic to similarly silly, baroque conclusions, which may in part explain why A Jury of Her Peers contains, on balance, more history than interpretation.

Neveltheless, if you're inclined to make interpretations yourself, Showalter offers more grist for the mill than 100 volumes of theory. Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century-Jane Austen,

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Bronte to Lessing, and culminating in her monumental new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. Billed as "the first comprehensive history of American women writers from 1650 to 2000," A Jury of Her Peers has to negotiate the treacherous battlefield between the still-widespread, if fustian insistence on reverence for Great Writers and the pixelated theorizing of poststructuraJists hellbent on overturning the very notion of "greatness."

Showalter is certainly the woman for the job. One of the founders of feminist literary criticism, she has also written about television for People magazine and confessed her penchant for fashion in Vogue. Unquestionably erudite, she has always striven to communicate with nonacademic readers, and her prose is clear, cogent and frequently clever. She

may not be well known or exceptionally brilliant. (The latter includes many 19thcentmy authors but also some 20th-century writers more notable for the "cultural importance" of their subjects-Anzia Yezierska on the lives of Jewish immigrants, for example, or Jessie Redmon Fauset on the genteel, black middle class of the '20s and '30s- than for the power of their work.) Most illuminating, she will, when needed, chart the rise and fall of the reputation of someone like Sarah Orne Jewett (who wrote about late 19th-century life in the small towns of coastal Maine), a trajectory that went from being "patronized as the epitome of the little woman writer" in her own time to being touted as a "recovered" feminist pioneer in the 1970s and '80s, and finally, in the '90s, to being "excoriated and banished by feminist critics for her endorsement of bourgeois values and her political thought crimes."

Jewett's posthumous "dizzy ride on the

George Eliot and the Brontes, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell-while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: "While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontes, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts."

Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather wlite. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, The Story of Avis, fume, "I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen."

Housework in America has never been an uncomplicated matter. The class system in Britain consigned a certain set of people to this humble labor, while America promised the enterprising among them an opportunity to make something more of their lives. Nevertheless, the cooking and cleaning still had to be done-especially on the small family farms that were the economic engines of early America-and so the responsibility for it was transferred from a servant class to the female relatives of the new republic's self-made men.

America is the first nation united by ideas rather than a shared cultural and racial history, and foremost among those ideas is the paradigm of self-invention, via hard work, in the free territory of the fron-

nagging feeling that they were going against nature as well as country in pursuing what was rightfully a man's work. She detects the persistent recurrence of images of freaks and hybrids in the poetry and fiction of American women, and a taste for the grotesque and the gothic in writers like Flannery O'Connor and the great, underrated Shirley Jackson. Other women authors constantly made gestures of selfdeprecation, beginning with the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet, who wrote "Men can do best, and Women know it well.

Preeminence in all and each is yours."

They felt hemmed in by the need to observe a ladylike decorum and to disavow any great literary ambition. No wonder, then, that much of American

according to Showalter, "the American literary marketplace became a battlefield between women and men," with the sales mostly going to the women and the esteem reserved for the men. Even socially influential writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe (teased by Abraham Lincoln for starting the Civil War), got sniffed at by the critical establishment, and it only got worse when the 20th century ushered in the cult of the he-man novelist as personified by Ernest Hemingway ....

The indignant litany of insults and hine drances flung at woman writers through-. out history has become a familiar motifln feminist literary criticism, and Showalter wisely refuses to indulge in it overmuch.

She prefers to focus on what they brought

tier. [American] literary culture has always hankered after fiction that, in one way or another, embodies this hope. "The answer to the American quest for originality," Showalter writes, "seemed to lie in the coming of the poet-hero, a genius who, through divine inspiration, would create immortal works and an art commensurate with the vastness of the nation and the scope of its dreams." Only such a protean figure could sum up the whole country in a single work. Thjs in turn led to the fantasy of the Great American Novel-and also to ...who's expected to write the thing.

If rugged individualism was the sacred vocation of the American male, then cooking his meals, keeping his house and raising his children became by necessity the holy and ordained duty of the American female; the very soul of the nation rested upon it! The majority of the women writers whose lives and work Showalter chronicles wrestled with the

women's wntlllg before the 1960s can seem cramped and apologetic compared to their more entitled sisters across the Atlantic, let alone compared to a rampant (if charming) egoist like Walt Whitman.

The obvious subject for such women was what they knew: home life. But, as Showalter observes, "Domestic fiction has been the most controversial genre in the literary history of American women's writing, an easy target for mockery and an embarrassment to feminist critics who wish to change the canon." Margaret Fuller articulated that ambivalence when she announced that she wanted to "not write, like a woman, of love and hope and disappointment, but like a man, of the world of intellect and action"; she never managed to pull it off. Meanwhile, titans like Nathaniel Hawthorne complained of a "damned mob of scribbling women," whose sentimental tales of love and family outsold his own books. By the 1850s,

to the table. Still, surveying this history, it seems that before the 1970s there was nothing more conducive to a woman's literary success than the failure ofthe men in her life. More often than not, what prompted these writers to sit down at their desks and send out their manuscripts to magazines and book publishers was the bankruptcy, deseltion, idleness or death of her husband or father. When the touted sanctuary of the nuclear family let them down, and they needed the money to feed their children and keep a roof over their heads, their talents were finally loosed. Women like Stowe apparently supported hordes of relatives with her pen. Yet despite this manjfest evidence that the traditional, conventional gender roles really don't fit all, only a few American literary women (rich women like Edith Wharton, lesbians like Willa Cather and the odd wild card femme fatale like Edna St. Vincent Millay or Katherine Anne Porter), ever felt entirely

rogative of men.

Great Literary American Novel Syndrome is a surprisingly persistent condition, despite the increasingly obvious likelihood thai no work of art can sum up a nation as heterogeneous as [America's] without neglecting somebody. And in the end, critical reputation might become a moot point; substantive book reviews are a vanishing phenomenon, and the guardians of the citadel are fading away on every front. The last generation of old-fashioned androcentric Great Amelican Novel practitioners will die out with Philip Roth; it's difficult to picture a new version of that crew gaining a foothold in a marketplace where the vast

at ease in their profession.

This began to change in the 1960s and '70s, and Showalter, building on past work, describes the evolution of "the American female tradition" as going through four stages: "feminine," "feminist,'.' "female" and finally, the current one, which she has dubbed "free." By this she means that "American women writers in the 21st century can take on any subject they want, in any form they choose."

This may indeed be true, but to a certain degree it always was; a writer's feeling of altistic power-her authority-has been there for the seizing, even if at times it's been almost impossible to lay hands on it,

Finn) rather than women in houses (House of Mirth), and that as a result big novels by male writers get treated as major events while slender but equally accomplished books by women tend to make a smaller splash. One response to this situation is to argue that the novel of psychological nuance focused on a small number of characters shouldn't be regarded as less significant than fiction painted on a broader social canvas.

Another is for America's women writers to seize their share of those big canvases.

Showalter seems to feel that they are now doing so, and lists authors like Annie Proulx and Jane Smiley as examples. It's difficult,

given the fog generated by our national myths, rigid ideas of the genders' innate capabilities and downright sexism. The difference between then and now lies just as much in the ability to get published and read, and in the economic factors, from book sales to teaching gigs to grants and fellowships, that permit a writer to support herself in her chosen vocation. Francine Prose, in that Harper's essay a decade ago, argued that the prestige awarded by critics and prize committees is crucial in securing these supports for literary writers (as opposed to commercial and genre writers), and they are still distributed unfairly.

Prose maintained that the authorities in charge of these goodies still harbored the tacit assumption that "women writers will not write anything important-anything truly serious or necessary, revelatory or wise." Prose is right that many critics and editors, especially male ones, make a fetish of "ambition," by which they mean the contemporary equivalent of novels about men in boats (Moby-Dick, Huckleberry

however, to think of the equivalent-both majority of those who buy and read fiction in attempt and reputation---{)f Underworld are now women. Furthermore, in my or Infinite Jest by an American woman. By (admittedly limited and anecdotal) expericontrast, with examples ranging from Iris ence, literary men under 45 are as likely to Murdoch to Doris Lessing, Blitish women idolize Joan Didion or Flannery O'Connor are perfectly at home with the capacious as Norman Mailer or John Updike.

And perhaps the literary novel itself is novel of ideas; after all, George Eliot pracdoomed. A Jury of Her Peers, while a fastically invented the thing.

The great exception to this rule is cinating and often revelatory history, is women of color-most notably Toni decidedly historical. The boundless horiMorrison, but Prose also singles out the zon that Showalter sees opening up before Native American novelist Leslie Marmon us is more likely to feature memoirs and other forms of nonfiction as its landmarks, Silko-whose work became mainstream in the 1980s. Apart from their own consid- yet her book barely touches on these generable talent, these writers have been res. Whatever the future of America's politically liberated to claim a big swath women writers will be, it is women readers who will have the most say in it, and their of territory that white male novelists could not make a feasible bid for anyway; tastes are shifting. This is, indeed, a jury of Don DeLillo knows better than to attempt her peers, and every American writer now the Great American Novel about slavery. finds her---{)r himself hanging upon their Morrison's black male counterparts, on _d_e_c_is_io_n_s_. ~ the other hand, have raised an infamous ruckus over her apotheosis, which sug- Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon.com gests that winning the right to speak for an and author of The Magician's Book: A entire people is still, in some minds, a pre- Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

Celebrating Women's Contributions to the World Women's role in the environmental or "green" movement is the focus of the 2009 Women's History Month.

he life of the world-renowned American marine biologist, author and environmental advocate Rachel Carson is the inspiration for the 2009 National Women's History Month theme: Women Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet.

Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring brought worldwide attention to the harm to human health and the environment caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. She did not urge a ban on all pesticides, but called for more research on their safety, more careful use and tighter regulations. The federal government conducted a review of pesticide policies and, in 1972, eight years after Carson's death, banned the pesticide DDT in the United States. Carson and her book are credited with launching the modern environmental movement.

Every March in the United States, National Women's History Month celebrates the contributions of women to the nation's history and culture. This year's theme "honors women who have taken the lead in the environmental or 'green' movement,'" according to the National Women's History Project, an educational nonprofit group based in California. Carson is "the iconic model" for the theme.

For National Women's History Month this year, the history project asked for names of women who have shown "exceptional vision and leadership" in protecting the environment at the local, state, national and international levels. Rather than selecting only a few people from the 103 nominees, the group is recognizing all of them.

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The Women's History Month honorees include scientists, engineers, politicians, writers and filmmakers, conservationists, teachers, community organizers, religious or workplace leaders, businesswomen and others who took action to help heal the plan_ et-some by promoting legislation and edu.~cation, and others by getting their hands ยง dirty planting trees and picking up trash. ~ Some are historic figures, such as Ellen -~Swallow Richards (1842-1911), the first ~ American woman to earn a degree in ~ chemistry and the first person to undertake ~ scientific water-quality studies in the ~ United States, and Mollie H. Beattie (1947o 1996), the first woman to head the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act. Most of the honorees are contemporary women: -Lynne Cherry, author of The Great Kapok Tree and more than 30 other children's books that teach respect for the Earth; -Sharon Matola, who founded the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center in 1983 0-

International Women's Day http://www .un. org/womenwatcli/feature/iwd/ National Women's History Project http://www. nwhp. org/whm/honorees. php to protect exotic animals that had been used In a documentary film but were too tame to be released into the wild; -Margaret D. Lowman, a FlOlida biologist, science educator and pioneer in temperate and tropical forest canopy ecology, who runs a foundation for tropical forest conservation; -Sally K. Ride, the fIrst American woman in space, now a promoter of youth education in science and technology, especially on climate change; -Shirley Nelson, leader of the Navajo Nation Trash Taskforce of Arizona, which helps communities solve solid waste problems; -Lorrie Otto, of Wisconsin, a founder of the natural landscaping movement, which promotes biodiversity through the preservation and restoration of native plant communities; -Alice Waters, chef and owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in California and head of a foundation that promotes healthy school lunches and educational programs such as sustainable school gardens; and -Betsy Damon, founder of Keepers of the Waters, which supports communities in the preservation and restoration of their water sources. She works in the United States and China.

The origins of National Women's History Month can be traced to Sonoma County, California, where in 1978 the Commission on the Status of Women initiated Women's History Week. Two years later, President Jimmy Carter asked Americans to celebrate women's historic accomplishments in conjunction with International Women's Day. The U.S. Congress established the first National Women's History Week in 1981 and expanded it to a month in 1987.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women account for 50.8 percent of the U.S. population (there are 154.7 million women and 150.6 million men). Women owned 30 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the United States in 2002. For every dollar earned by men, women eamed only 77.5 _ce_n_t_s.

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The 67th U.S. Secretary of State joined the State Department after a 40-year . career as an advocate, attorney, first lady and senator As first lady of Arkansas for 12 years and of the United States from 1993 to 2001, Hillary Clinton advocated health care reform and worked on issues relating to children and families. In 2000, she became the first wife of a former president to be elected to the U.S. Senate, where she served on the Armed Services Committee, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and others. She was reelected to the Senate in 2006 and from 2007 to 2008 campaigned for the Democratic. Party's presidential nomination, winning more delegates and primary votes than any woman in history U.S Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis was a member of the US. Congress from California from 2001 to 2009, before joining the Barack Obama cabinet. In 2007, she was appointed to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission) In 2000, Solis became the first woman to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her work on environmental justice issues.

Solis made history in 1994 by becoming the first Latina elected to the California State Senate. She also worked in the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs under President Jimmy Carter

Prior to joining the Obama administration as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano was midway through her second term as governor of Arizona. She previously served as attorney general for Arizona, when she helped write a law to break up human smuggling rings. And during a term as U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, she helped lead the investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The first African American woman appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice brings to the job a career devotion to African affairs and eight years of experience in the Bill Clinton administration. She was the youngest U.S. assistant secretary of state, and specialized in African affairs, when appointed by Clinton in 1997. Rice was a senior foreign policy adviser to President Obama's election campaign.

Women Scientists

Workingâ&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘for daHenrietta Hyde, who revolutionized neurophysiology by creating the microelectrode, had to contend with strict "no women" policies for postgraduate education at universities, but in 1896 still became the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. from Germany's Heidelberg University.

Her dissertation adviser initially laughed at her desire to obtain a degree, and she was not allowed to attend lectures or laboratories, according to her memoir, Before Women Were Human Beings But she blazed a path German women soon would follow and helped show American universities the error of not admitting women to their graduate programs.

Since Gerty Cori became the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science in 1947, American women have won such prizes and awards with increasing frequency Women still do not, however, win with the frequency one would expect given their increasing numbers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

But a new project initiated by professionals and supported by the Society for Women's Health Research in Washington, D.C. seeks to change that by providing help at a critical stage the award nominating process The RAISE Project documents the glass ceiling that looms over women in the STEM fields and offers a searchable database on how to apply or nominate someone for more than 1,000 different awards. RAISE stands for "recognition of the achievements of women in science, engineering, mathematics and medicine."

The project began when a group of women involved in the sciences and related professions held their monthly networking get-together several years ago just as the year's recipients of the National Medal of Science were announced. Not a single woman was among them.

"Awards facilitate career advancement in academics and industry, provide personal validation

I

RAISE Project tittp:/lwww. rai seproject. org; Association for Women in Science nftp:7 www.awis.org7

of career choice, and enhance individual job sat- Above: Gerty Cori and isfaction-ail critical facets of recognizing the husband, Carl Cori, at achievements of women," says Dr. Stephanie their Washington Pincus, recalling that evening Pincus, a former University laboratory chair of the Department of Dermatology at the in St. Louis, Missouri.

University of Buffalo in New York, is directing the RAISE Project.

Right: Grace Hopper, She says the group focused on a single ques- a computer . tion: "What are we going to do about this?"

- programmmg pIOneer.

"So I said the way to fix this is to increase the nominations, because if you aren't nominated, you can't win," says Pincus, who is a medical doctor Fields Medal for outstanding mathematical and holds a master's degree in business. But her achievement and potential. initial notion of creating a clearinghouse that Only 8.3 percent of the Lasker Awards-among would match outstanding women with the avail- the most coveted awards in medical scienceable awards quickly proved administratively have been won by women. unworkable.

"But I am very confident that things will get bet"So we transitioned to becoming an interactive ter," Pincus says.

Web site," Pincus says She collaborated on the "One of the things we're really working on is to project with Dr. Florence Haseltine, an obstetrician try and bring transparency within award processes and gynecologist at the National Institutes of and organizations," she says "We've shown that Health. "Our goal with the Web site was to provide the composition of the award committee is very information. As we've developed the Web site, critical to the gender of the recipient." we've tried to provide a lot more instruction, She cites research that has begun to probe how advice and counseling as to how to prepare an culture affects letters of recommendation and award-what factors can be helpful." nomination.

The RAISE Project has documented that gender "It isn't just something men do to women; barriers persist in science, technology, engineer- there's a way women have of writing about what ing and mathematics. they do, writing about their projects, that is not as Women constitute almost one-third of the strong as what men say It's considered unfemiteaching and research faculty in these fields at nine to self-promote," she says "Those are some four-year colleges and universities, according to of the things we have to address in both our the most recent data from the US. National awards processes and our academic promotions."

Science Foundation.

"I've just been absolutely amazed how this has Only 17 percent of the awards given out since struck a chord of responsiveness in organizations 1981 have been won by women, and almost one- We're working with the American [Association for] third of the women who received recognition won Women in Science to put together more organizaan award given only to women. tional change issues because it's sort of something Of the more than 1,000 awards tracked by the everybody knew but nobody had the data. We knew RAISE Project, one-third have had fewer than one it intuitively, but we didn't have any way for addresspercent female recipients ing it. What we've provided is a mechanism for No woman has won the Flexner Award for people to say, 'Oh yes-this is a problem and this extraordinary contributions to the medical educa- is what we know we need to do to fix it.'" ~ tion community, for example, or the American Association for Cancer Research Award for Jeffrey Thomas is a staff writer with Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research, or the America.gov

"Next question: Due to the economy, how //lany children under the age of 50 are still living with you? ,.

"I want to thank both you and Henderson for all your long-term dedication ...by the way, which one of you is Henderson?"

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HIEVER Sarma Arastu

Conveying

Arifu( Messages almaArastu's art tells a story. She does not plan it that way but says, "Somehow the messages start appearing as I work. These messages are of love, peace, sharing and celebration of life" Born into a Hindu family in Rajasthan and married to a Muslim, Arastu uses an exquisite combination of painting and calligraphy to depict various aspects of social, cultural and spiritual life. For California-based Arastu, the varied tones and texture of her art are a reflection of her diverse life, seen in works like "Musical Fountains," "The Puppets," "Alone in the Crowd," "The Naming Ceremony," "Hopethe Sun," "Praying Together" Arastu, who was born without fingers on her left hand, graduated in fine arts from M.S. University in Baroda, Gujarat in 1974 and started working in mixed media. After a while, she felt the need to move from two-dimensional to three-dimensional surfaces. She started exploring various mediums and experimented with clay and papier-mache, ultimately adopting laser-cut aluminum expression of calligraphic characters and figures.

Elaborating on her 30-year creative journey she says. " ... 1 used to draw abstract human figures since my fine art education days. And after marriage I was exposed to the wealth of Arabic calligraphy as we moved to Iran in 1976 and then to Kuwait in 1980. I started working as a volunteer in the Islamic art museums."

She had to copy text from early manuscripts as part of her work and was charmed by the flow-

5

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Salma Arastu http://www.salmaarastu.com/

ing lines of Arabic calligraphy Gradually the lines merged in her imagination, appeared as the flow of humanity and created designs. "My calligraphy :G style is free and flowing ยง as I do not follow any par- ~ ticular style but work with ~ the space and the feel of ~ what I am writing," she Hope-The Still, says.

Arastu prefers to keep her paintings faceless because she believes that faces limit her creations in terms of their ethnicity, race and religion. "Right from the beginning ... 1 used to believe that we are all one. We are from a common spirit. There is no identity or features as these elements create differences ... .The faceless figure is the universal human figure .... " Arastu and her husband, Alamdar Husain Arastu, an architect, chose to move to the United States because "we thought that we would fit well in the American way of life. I think that we were also adventurous and wanted to find greater challenges." She is impressed by the honesty of Americans, their will to enjoy life and their arts, music and other festivals. As for Indian influences she says, "It is but natural. I am a true Indian at heart, very spiritual, and believe in tolerance."

Arastu also draws on her own experiences, such as a scene that has remained in her mind since childhood. "It was when my mother, who was the energy and inspiration for the whole household, broke down ...crying and uttering that she had become a widow. So many women were surrounding her, trying to console

acrylic on canvas, 121.92x 152.4 cm

her I knew that I had lost my father I was 10 years old then and had returned from school. I watched that scene from the doorstep," she says. Now it is conveyed in her work, "When She Became a Widow."

Arastu says that when she was a student in India in the early 1970s, she thought art was limited to certain groups or institutions only, not accessible or understood by common people. "But in the mid 1980s, on arriving in the U.S, I found that art was flourishing there, great importance was given to art in schools and people appreciated it," she says.

Arastu seems satisfied with the acceptance of her art in America. " ... Ninety five percent of my patrons are American. People from the subcontinent. .. still do not invest in art so commonly."

Apart from painting and sculpture, writing is her favorite hobby. Her first book of poems in Hindi, Dard Ki Seedhiyan, was published in 1981. After her arrival in the United States, she started writing in English. Her recent book, The Lyrical Line, has about 30 short poems "Some expressions cannot be painted and so I turn them into poems." ~

Vinod C. Dixit, Ahmedabad, Gujarat Kudos for your superb cover story on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s pilgrimage to India It reminded me that the two men, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, were not politicians or lawmakers. ....'

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They were not presidents or popes.

But they were inspired human beings who believed deeply in the power of nonviolent resistance to injustice as a tool for social change. King's life and legacy will live on and the leaders of today can learn from a man who epitomized peace, harmony, determination, righteousness, justice and freedom for all people. It clearly shows what impact Gandhi's life had. King's trip to India is a reminder that the struggle for civil rights and justice has always been and continues to be a global

I

mission; it knows no borders Satananda Bhattacharjee, Hailakandi, Assam I am really astonished to read the article "The Indian Pilgrimage of Martin Luther King, Jr." by Laurinda Keys Long. This tremendous article provided much more information to the new generation regarding the process of nonviolent noncooperation and boycott. It is indeed nice that later on African Americans used the same tactics to get justice. Hope to get more such articles in the upcoming issues of SPAN.

S.M. Goyal. Ajmer, Rajasthan The January/February 2009 issue of SPAN augurs a better 2009, especially in Indo-American ties, than the year gone by. Though the main article is a reminder of the past, yet not so distant past. The Indian pilgrimage of Martin Luther King, Jr. to study the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi makes those moments vivid.

One wonders why such giants of humanity are destined to stop bullets, though both succeeded in their missions, King just recently in Barack Obama's form. King came to India not as a tourist but as a pilgrim and that evinced his unflinching faith in the policies of Gandhi. It is heartening to note that the now-head of the US did have King in his memories.

Kumud Mohan, New Delhi You have written such a lovely piece on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s visit to India in the January/February 2009 issue of SPAN, I had to go back to see the name of the author. I also liked the stories on the inauguration of the U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, and what Indians and Americans were doing 50 years ago; pius the one on home education and the women who changed America ... It is a collector's item as far as I am concerned.

I think that the black and white cover, too, is most imaginative and appropriate.

V.S.S. Kannan, Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu As an educator I got awareness from the homeschooling article which will help me In my teaching and research guidance. Above all I am very much impressed by the information for the visually impaired and the effort taken by Mr. Jeffrey Bigham. This highl useful Information Will be transmitted to some of my students who ar~ Visually challenged.

TI'O.I.¡I â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘ ;!B,I,U"'li, Ashim Kumar Chatterjee New De/hi ' ~mbassador Mulford is Indeed right in highlightIng defense deals and ~ooperation in education In the January/February 2009 issue of SPAN. But post the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear agreement, one IS convinced the content and tenor of India's strategic relationship has reached a new level One's sense is that ou; relationship now is very comprehensive in its scope. ' , India IS stili predominantl . desire for a second green r:v~~ ~.grlCultural economy and there is has vast scope. In fact, nothin ~ Ion where scientific cooperation ture IS required for this. POSSib~yel~~than industrial grade agriculUS agricultural surplus, Provid~d a I~Ocould be a huge market for adjusted to accommodate each othe;' nomy of both countries are

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Similarly, rural housing and infr . labor Intensive technology as well astructure With semi-automatic ment offer scope for US' as urban Infrastructure develop. . private sector pa t'. . commercially viable/profitable r IClpatlon in India in a sector in these, shall one sa Imanner. Integration of U.S. private which touch the common ~'ane~s glamorous sectors of economy talked about much in the m d' n India, IS Important but is not e la. Though . use f ul work must be go' ' one IS sure that some ....

Ing on through gove . . rnment agencies like USAID . VISibility of Indo-U S c Valley and Gurgaon, HYderabado~~~r~tlon must go beyond Silicon lages In USA and India throu h une to small towns and vilIndia Business Council g not only USAID but also the U.S.

G. Nitish, 9, and K. Keerthana, 7, were among the winners in February of the Celebrate Life art contest for school children and college students, conducted by the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai and the Madras Christian Council of Social Service, which works to prevent the HIV/AIDS disease. Keerthana, whose mother, TR. Adiseshu, is at left, points to her winning artwork. http://rnccss.org/ Aashish Kumar, a professor who teaches video and documentary production at Hofstra University in New York, shares his skills an~ . experience with K. Vinesh, Vishal Diwan and Arun Joh~ of th.e.U.OIverslty of Hyderabad. Kumar (second from right) was a Fulbright vlsltmg lecturer at the university from August 2008 to January 2009. His students in an M.A. course completed an 11-minute advocacy video for a local NGO working in heritage conservation. http://www.usief.org.in/index.aspx

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Bijoy Thangaraj, 23, a software engineer at Honeywell Technology Solutions in Bangalore, is one of four winners, out of 8,400 entries, in a U.S. Department of State online video contest. His three-minute video, My Culture + Your Culture = World of Wonder, earned him a two-week trip to the United States and Adobe multimedia software. The video can be viewed at exchanges.state.gov or connect.state. gov