Was Charlie Hebdo Funny? by Sarita Sarvate
Let's Talk About Death, Baby by Ranjani Iyer Mohanty
2015: Year of Girl Geek? by Neerja Raman
INDIA CURRENTS Celebrating 28 Years of Excellence
Rules of Desire february 2015 • vol. 28, no .10 • www. indiacurrents.com
Is desire part of our moral compass? By Nirmala Nataraj
Freedom to Walk Away facebook.com/IndiaCurrents twitter.com/IndiaCurrents Now published in three separate editions HEAD OFFICE 1885 Lundy Ave Ste 220, San Jose, CA 95131 Phone: (408) 324-0488 Fax: (408) 324-0477 Email: info@indiacurrents.com www.indiacurrents.com Publisher: Vandana Kumar publisher@indiacurrents.com (408) 324-0488 x225 Managing Director: Vijay Rajvaidya md@indiacurrents.com Editor: Jaya Padmanabhan editor@indiacurrents.com (408) 324-0488 x226 Events Editor: Mona Shah events@indiacurrents.com (408) 324-0488 x224 Advertising Department ads@indiacurrents.com Northern California: (408) 324-0488 x 222 Southern California: (714) 523-8788 x 222
On June 30, 2003, within a week of MTV airing the adult animated television series called Clone High in the United States, Indian lawmakers and activists protested the depiction of Mahatma Gandhi in the series, where “Gandhi acts in many epi-sodes as the comic relief.” In response to the protests, MTV issued the following apology: “MTV wants to make it clear that ‘Clone High’ was created and intended for an Amer-ican audience ... The animated show parodies several historical figures from around the world, including the United States, where this form of comedy is common.” Hardly an apology? Yes, and also infuriating in its patronizing language and for propagating stereotypes. The intent of the apology, it seemed to me, was to enlist the idea that eastern cultural sensitivities don’t translate across the skin color divide. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I remembered this particular incident, not because of the extent to which it reinforced the east-west dichotomy, but that the show had a short run (one season) and was displaced from its prime time slot even before its first season ended because of “mediocre ratings.” So, as it turned out, comedy and parody didn’t necessarily equate, even in America. On the face of it, public dialog about
freedom of speech is rife with such discursive dichotomies. Many of the commentaries originating in India after the Charlie Hebdo attack addressed the boundary conditions of the freedom of speech algorithm—the curbs that must be in place and the judicious consideration of potentially hurtful opinions. Most NYT op-ed writers argued vehemently for the unfettered right to express. I believe that in democratic societies (east or west) our freedoms rest on the supposition that opinions expressed in public will be tempered by sensitivity and empathy. And in most cases, that is true. In the case of Charlie Hebdo, it is reasonable to assume that the magazine could not sustain readership because of its uncomfortable lack of good taste. Before the attack, Charlie Hebdo had a print run of 60,000 copies of which less than half found buyers. The banner on its homepage just prior to the attack, sadly and ironically, declared: “Charlie est en danger!” So, it’s really not about eastern sensitivities or western liberalism. It is about how, as a global society, we know how to self-correct, without resorting to violence. It’s about having the confidence to walk away from the bullies on our playground. Jaya Padmanabhan
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February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 1
INDIA CURRENTS February 2015 • vol 28 • no 10
PERSPECTIVES 1 | EDITORIAL Freedom to Walk Away By Jaya Padmanabhan
Southern California Edition www.indiacurrents.com
Find us on
28 | BOOKS Reviews of Don’t Let Him Know and In the Light of What We Know By Jeanne Fredriksen, Raj C. Oza
7 | A THOUSAND WORDS Notes on a First Winter By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
31 | TAX TALK Understanding ACA By Rita Bhayani
8 | MEDIA Is Bobby Jindal Ashamed of his Indian Roots? By Sandip Roy
15 | POLITICAL OPINION Modi’s Dilemma By Shashi Tharoor 16 | LIVES Remembering India’s First Woman Journalist By Roopa Ramamoorthi 34 | VIEWPOINT Ending the Sistah Wars By Anitha Chakravarthi 45 | COMMENTARY Well Then, Where is Your Home? By Jessica Faleiro 54 | PERSPECTIVE Let’s Talk About Death, Baby By Ranjani Iyer Mohanty 58 | ON INGLISH Unearthing Shakti By Kalpana Mohan 64 | THE LAST WORD Was Charlie Hebdo Funny? By Sarita Sarvate 2 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
22 | BUSINESS 2015: Year of the Girl Geek By Neerja Raman 22 | FINANCE Looking Ahead at 2015 By Rahul Varshneya
6 | MY POLITICAL LIFE How to Win an Election By Rishi Kumar
12 | POLITICS President Obama’s Statement at US-India Business Council; India’s Engagement with US and Russia By Chandra Mittal
LIFESTYLE
10 | Rules of Desire How do desire, morality, spirituality and ethics interplay with each other? By Nirmala Nataraj
18 | Opinion Plunging Necklines, Gaping Armholes, Low Risers By Sujatha Ramprasad
38 | Films Reviews of PK and Tevar By Aniruddh Chawda
56 | Travel
36 | MUSIC A New Bird Calls By Priya Das 43 | RELATIONSHIP DIVA What to Avoid when Flirting with Guys By Jasbina Ahluwalia 49 | SCIENCE Shortfalls of Science By P. Mahadevan 52 | HEALTHY LIFE Are We Aging Faster? By Ronesh Sinha 63 | DEAR DOCTOR Needing an Intimate Connection By Alzak Amlani
DEPARTMENTS 4 | Voices 5 | Popular Articles
Hand it to Antwerp
20 | Ask a Lawyer 21 | Visa Dates
By Kalpana Sunder
62 | Bits and Tweets
60 | Recipe Craving the Classic Aloo Gobhi By Teena Arora
WHAT’S CURRENT 44 | Cultural Calendar 50 | Spiritual Calendar
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 3
letters to the editor
Objective Truth and Morality
In response to Sarita Sarvate’s essay (Has Democracy Been Compromised, India Currents, Dec ‘14—Jan ‘15)—it may be worthy to consider that democracy is an idea compromised from the very beginning. It’s an idea not even worth dying for, as so many American soldiers have for decades. Democracy comes from a Greek word (demokratia) which essentially means rule of the people. This means that if you can get a majority of the people to agree with a certain set of ideas you can make the laws of the land, you can even change the Constitution of the United States. In extreme cases, entire groups of people have been declared unfit to live, as in so many of the communist People’s Republic regines. Laws can change based on the contemporary tastes of the people. Currently, in a democratic system we have abortion, gay marriage, pornography, marijuana and excessive taxes to support a welfare state, and this is what American soldiers are fighting to defend. More specifically, when a people discover that they can vote for legislators who will tax others so as to give them welfare checks, that is when a democracy finally implodes on itself. A democracy could possibly work if you have enough people who believe in objective truth and morality, such as that which comes from the Bible. Otherwise a democracy can easily turn into tyranny. Ara Piranian, North Hollywood, CA
Cannot Justify Spanking
As a liberal and a progressive, I take great pride in who I am and what I believe in. So I take issue with the letter in the November issue of India Currents, titled “Spanking and the Bible,” written by Ara Piranian. No one should use the Bible to spank children and justify it by saying that it’s loving and done in a Biblical manner. Children are people and have needs that differ. What works for some parents doesn’t work for others. Daniel Garcia, Gilroy, CA
Foot and Mouth Disease
Bobby Jindal seems to be suffering from a bad bout of foot and mouth disease. Following his ludicrous defense of former President Bush’s heinous torture practices, the Louisiana governor made a major faux pas by echoing Fox News assertions about Muslims in the wake of the terror attacks
4 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
on Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher Market in Paris. Jindal echoed the absurd claims of selfdescribed terrorism expert, Steve Emerson, of Fox News that parts of Europe, including the entire English city of Birmingham (my birth place) was firmly in control of Muslims where non-Muslims feared to tread. Emerson ended up with mega doses of egg all over his face and was forced to apologize; Fox News broadcaster, Julie issued the broadest apology, directed at the people of England and France—“Over the course of this last week, we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France. Now this applies especially to discussions of so-called “no-go zones,” areas where non-Muslims allegedly aren’t allowed in and police supposedly won’t go. To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.” It is now time for Jindal to issue a similar apology failing which he should take a vow of silence and retire into obscurity. Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA
Contribute Against Corruption
Shashi Tharoor in his article (Corruption is still India’s Biggest Problem, India Currents, November 2014) makes many good suggestions, especially regarding how business owners and ordinary citizens can make a contribution against corruption. I would like to add the obligation of people of Indian origin who live outside India to this noble cause, and give a few examples worth following. Tharoor advises businessmen and citizens to refrain from bribing government officals and others and making excuses to justify the bribes. One good example in this regard is the policy of Tata Industries (started by Parsi Zarathushti/Zoroastrian Jamshedji Tata and currently headed by anothr Parsi, Cyrus Mistry) against giving bribes, even though they have often suffered delays and refusals in obtaining licenses.
SPEAK YOUR MIND!
Have a thought or opinion to share? Send us an original letter of up to 300 words, and include your name, address, and phone number. Letters are edited for clarity and brevity. Write India Currents Letters, 1885 Lundy Ave. Suite 220, San Jose 95131 or email letters@indiacurrents.com.
In my own personal life, I have also followed this policy against giving or accepting bribes. Whenever I go to visit my family in India, I have faced indirect pressures from customs officials for some bribe to get through the line quicker, especially when I arrive at Mumbai airport after midnight with wife and child, tired from a long journey. One time, the passenger waiting in the line behind me congratulated me for not buckling under, when we were finally let through without any bribe giving. It is not easy to fight corruption as Tharoor points out, but as Mahatma Gandhi said, you have to “Be the change you wish to see.” With the leadership of visionary prime minister, Narendra Modi, Indians at home and abroad can make a difference in combatting corruption and lifting this burden from the suffering poor class. Maneck Bhujwala, Huntington Beach, CA
An Evocative Description
Prem Souri Kishore’s travelogue on her trip to the shores of Croatia kept me engrossed (The Lure of Croatia, India Currents, October 2014). With its adroit sprinklings of mythology, history and current affairs the article brought me to the conclusion that with this country, one does not have to worry about traveling in hope or fearing the arrival. I, like a few others, did not know anything of Croatia till it became independent, and precious little after that too. The article has greatly enhanced my knowledge of the country, and has ignited a desire in me to visit it. Travel for most of us, including for the arm chair traveler, is mostly a trip to historic monuments, and yet there are others who hold out against the classic countries. (Say Rome, once more, and I will scream). The hardy souls want to brave the least traveled routes to be able to come back and say “the natives were friendly.” But for the ones wanting a happy middle, travel in “unknown” but “enchanting” climes, Croatia seems to be the answer, after reading the article. Getting there is not the fun, it is the going that matters, through road trips. The author’s description of her journey to and fro the New Riviera, with evocative descriptions of the sights and sounds, not to mention the tastes, of the Italian cities she passed through, clearly point out the advantages of a road trip to the Croatian shore. I would if I could. If the tour operators in North America find their telephone ringing off the hook, with calls from your readers on how to get to Croatia, I should not be surprised. Vijay Mohan, email
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analysis
How to Win an Election By Rishi Kumar
I
with respected community leaders and board members of key organizations. Seek their mentorship and endorsements and referrals for other endorsements. Endorsements lend credibility to your work. You will not win all the endorsements you think you deserve. Make sure that the ones you do get are prominently displayed on your promotional flyers and website. It is likely that you may be lining up endorsements all the way to the finals week to fine tune a campaign message or that final piece of mailer. Stay on your toes, listen, react, and adapt.
It is a long drawn out coffee meeting in Saratoga’s quaint downtown and our spirited discussion on politics is getting hotter than my steaming mocha. But despite the rather acrid debate, I am feeling rather optimistic. At the end of the day, my buddy Richard and I have a lot in common—we are passionate about working for the Saratoga community, we have served together on many committees, and share a common ideology. I am convinced that he will endorse my candidacy for Saratoga city council. As I broach the topic with that sense of self-assurance, I see Richard look away, avoiding eye contact. “Uhhh … You know Rishi, not right now. I’ll wait.” I am taken aback, speechless for a few seconds, but then the dismay gives way to a sense of acceptance. It’s about time I learned to expect the unexpected. After all I had signed up for the roller coaster ride of a lifetime! I am honored and delighted that I eventually landed a seat on the Saratoga City Council. It was a rather intense race. Let’s just say that for a “volunteer” role in the city government—the council elections created some pretty tumultuous ripples in the otherwise sleepy town of 30,000 people. I see it as citizen engagement at its finest. As an Indian-American in the Silicon Valley, let’s face it, we are more likely to churn out start-ups than run for office. To some extent, we are still “outsiders” trying to assimilate and understand our new world, and our community profile does get dissected and analyzed a bit more in close-knit voter communities So how did I run a campaign that beat the odds and shattered stereotypes and got me to the finish line?
President Obama’s campaign team redefined the process with a data-driven approach. First, find out who the people are who are likely to vote for you. Fine tune your target group, and then like Arjun just aim for the parrot’s eye. Know your voter base. This will finesse the message and help build your elevator pitch for campaigning. Once your base is identified, pool your base and affiliations together as targets for your fundraising effort. In my case, when I had done this, funds came pouring in. Do you think it was time to push that “Easy” button? I wish! If I had been cruising along on Ocean Drive before, I had to fasten my seatbelt soon. A few weeks since that meeting with Richard, I was checking out the Friday morning local newspaper’s letter section. I noticed that Richard had written a letter endorsing another candidate and also embedded a nice zinger on my candidacy in that letter. I barely dwelled on it as I resumed planning for the weekend’s campaigning efforts.
Affiliations
Canvassing
An average voter spends 15 seconds making a decision and you want your name to be instantly recognizable. Announce early, line up your affiliations, support groups and endorsements. Your endorsements are driven primarily by your involvement in the community. Retrace your connections, community engagements and line up meetings
6 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Targeting the Right Base
When it comes to field campaigning and outreach, a great campaign manager is a fantastic start. I was able to find my Krishna— the guide who led the Pandavas to victory. My campaign manager was absolutely key for my win. I realized I had to trust the experts and follow their wisdom—I could not possibly do it all.
Successful campaigns have a marketing team that drives the mechanism of outreach. Door to door campaigning, neighborhood Meet-and-Greets, campaign flyers, Facebook ads/posts all work in their own way. Pick multiple outreach approaches to get your message to your target voter base. To execute you need a passionate volunteer base, the more the merrier. The old school approach of going door to door and meeting voters still rocks! I got out there, knocked on doors and met the voters. I engaged in active dialogs, tried to understand their angst and how I could help. I had to reach out to this base repeatedly to ensure they cast their vote. I set my mantra to campaigning hard, staying focused on the campaign charter, letting the darts fly by, and building an outreach model all the way till 7:45pm on election night.
T
he swearing-in ceremony just concluded. It is official, I am now a council member of Saratoga. It is still settling in. There is a sense calmness after a whirlwind campaign. I am out in the lobby, meeting folks, thanking our stellar volunteers, the endorsers, and acknowledging the congratulations. Through the corner of my eye I see Richard waiting as I wrap up a conversation. Richard walks over and warmly offers his congratulations. I smile warmly too and we have our usual friendly banter. Richard walks away exclaiming with enthusiasm, “I would love to be involved, let me know how I can help.” I turn to my campaign manager and whisper, “Remember the hit piece? This was the guy.” He smiles and gestures with a hand wave—time to move on. Yes, we move on. Let bygones be bygones, time to do some more good for my community now! n Rishi Kumar is the founder of the Bay Area Indian American Democratic Club whose charter is to further the interests and values of Indian Americans, work towards political empowerment and advance ethical standards in the political system. He is a member of the Saratoga City Council.
a thousand words
Notes on a First Winter By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan
I
am beginning to understand what they mean about the weather. How it moves some to move across country, how it determines life courses, induces seasonal affective disorder, becomes the subject of conversations, warrants studies, poetry, even philosophy. I am beginning to understand hats and gloves, the critical difference between gloves and mittens. I am beginning to speak the language of humidifiers and forced heat, of radiators and space heaters. I know not to stand too close to the window, to keep the far bathroom door shut. I know, for the first time, the value of a really good pair of socks, and why jacket hoods are lined with that showy, faux fur. I have felt the special pinch of grocery bags digging into the creased joints of cold fingers, of jiggling frozen key into unyielding lock as the bags stretch and threaten to give way, and baby refuses to walk, refuses to do anything but sit on my hip and shout, pulling her mittens off in search of raisins. I am beginning to understand why Californians are so often the objects of disdain: undeserving inhabitants of the land of fair weather, land under-appreciated by those who did not endure a hard winter, did not come out into the sun squinting and warming their hands in air that hours earlier left them frost-bitten and numb. I’m still cold, actually, as I type these words. My feet, despite the wool socks, are slowly being drained of blood, which science tells me is prioritizing circulation around my core and vital organs. My fingers, too, are steadily turning white. I type faster, hoping to regain feeling, but I’m not fast enough to keep up with the cold coming in from our sunroom, with floor to ceiling windows designed, it seems, to bring in maximum chill. When I moved to Chicago last fall, people kept asking how I—Indian by descent; Californian, born and raised—was preparing to deal with the punishing weather, specifically the winter, in the era of the Polar Vortex. My Midwestern in-laws outfitted me with winter socks and scarves; friends sent recommendations for down jackets in three styles. My grandmother sitting in Chennai companionably reassured me that it was unseasonably frigid there, too, and then stopped, as if she realized we were speaking different languages of cold. At time of writing, the temperature has yet to dip into the negatives (Fahrenheit), but I walked to the University of Chicago yesterday in four degrees (-15 Celsius), the wind whipping my dripping nostrils, alpaca scarf stuck to my face by my tangible breath, and I had a sense then of what poet Rita Dove meant when she wrote, “Snow would be the easy / way out—that softening / sky like a sigh of relief.” So far, we haven’t had any snow to speak of, only light dusts and flurries, unless you count that odd hailstorm we had on Halloween, which blew cobwebs from bushes onto the sidewalks, and left little children shivering in their superhero tights. Is it self-indulgent to write about the weather, when there are so many other, more urgent issues to attend to? Police brutality, statesponsored torture, infectious diseases, the Academy Awards? I’m being facetious, of course. But whenever I start chastising myself for dwelling on the weather I try to remember that climate change is arguably the most significant challenge of our shared lifetime, and that if we are to effect mass action in response to that “inconvenient
I am beginning to understand why Californians are so often the objects of disdain: undeserving inhabitants of the land of fair weather, land underappreciated by those who did not endure a hard winter, ... truth” we should probably start by acknowledging our intimate relation to changes in climate. We are human beings with bodies that get hot and cold, that shiver and sweat. Our spirits can only take so much rain before they, too, are dampened. Our soles can only take so much snow. V.S. Naipaul once commented on how strange it is that although M.K. Gandhi spent three years in England, “there is nothing in his autobiography [Story of My Experiments with Truth] about the climate or the seasons, so unlike the heat and monsoon of Gujarat and Bombay.” To Naipaul, this lack of attention was revelatory of the author’s complete “self-absorption.” Not commenting on the weather is like refusing to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room. It’s right in front of you, all around you and, literally, inside you with every breath you take. For his part, Naipaul frequently observes the weather in his travelogues, whether the “real and disagreeable” heat of Bombay in the early 1960s, or the mid-August heat of Dallas in 1984, heat that was “a revelation,” that “made one think of the old days … gave another idea of the lives of the early settlers.” That’s the irony of the weather: At once, it forces you into a radical present, the unavoidable reality of your chapped lips or sweating back, and takes you out of yourself into other times and places. The first big snow I saw in Princeton took me back to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s account of growing up in that “little house in the big woods” in Wisconsin, where she and her sister Mary poured molasses onto snow and ate it as candy once it hardened. That Halloween hailstorm—so fundamentally indifferent to the occasion it disrupted—gave me another idea of the lives lived in these parts. I thought about fashion, cuisine, alcohol, recreation, exercise, pedestrianism: things that become cultural markers and stamps of identity but are really just contingent on the weather. So much of who we think we are has little really to do with us, and more than we might admit to do with the elements. Google tells me that the Chicago climate is basically the same as in Moscow: humid continental. My ancestors in south India were formed in the tropical monsoon and trade-wind littoral climate, so should I really be expected to deal with sub-zero winter? I am beginning to understand why they drink so much in Russia. Well, bring on the toddy. I’m going out to taste the snow. n Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 7
media
Is Bobby Jindal Ashamed of his Indian Roots? By Sandip Roy
T
he fault is not with Bobby Jindal as much as it is with the Indian American community which is so anxious to hold him up as its golden success story. Jindal is happy to take the money they raise, be anointed the India Abroad Person of the Year as he was in 2005 but then turn around and snub the same community. My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India. To be fair to him he goes on to qualify that statement before anyone accuses him of being embarrassed about curry in his lunchbox. On the face of it, there’s nothing remotely surprising about what he has to say at the Henry Jackson Society in London. I do not believe in hyphenated Americans. This view gets me into some trouble with the media back home. They like to refer to Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, ItalianAmericans, Mexican-Americans, and all the rest. To be clear—I am not suggesting for one second that people should be shy or embarrassed about their ethnic heritage. But I am explicitly saying that it is completely reasonable for nations to discriminate between allowing people into their country who want to embrace their culture, or allowing people into their country who want to destroy their culture, or establish a separate culture within. The problem is with the either-or view of immigration that Jindal seems to hold. Either you are 100% red-blooded American or else you are setting up some fifth column within the country, a sleeper cell of invaders rather than immigrants which wants to “destroy (American) culture.” But he never clarifies what it means to be American vs Indian-American. Could you not like your dal-chawal and still root for the San Francisco Giants and grill hamburgers on the fourth of July? Are those things mutually incompatible? No matter how he tries to qualify it, Jindal implies that a hyphenated identity is tantamount to some kind of dual loyalty and therefore suspect. “I find people who care about skin pigmentation to be the most 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Bobby Jindal; wikipedia.org
dim-witted lot around,” protests Jindal not realizing that in his adamant rejection of the hyphen he too is demonstrating how much he cares about how he is perceived because of his pigmentation. He misses the basic point that to be Indian-American does not mean he needs to only care about desi voters, watch Bollywood and eat curry. The left side of the hyphen does not need to overpower the right side. The hyphen can actually be a mark of strength not a weak link. It strengthens America’s sense of itself joining so many ethnic groups to an American core. And that hyphenated identity is a basic building block of America where almost everyone other than Native Americans are descended from fairly recent immigrants in a way that is not true of India. Many feel that Jindal’s protestations are cynical, part of a grand strategy to sell himself to voters as he eyes a presidential run. Even Obama dialed down his “blackness” when he ran for office. There were embarrassing stories about African Americans being moved out of photo-ops so that it did not look too black. But at no point did he try to disown his origins in order to be American. He knew that he would be the first African American president and that was historical and while he needed to show no special favors to his community there was
no need to whitewash himself. He ran for election as Barack Obama not Barry Obama. “I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” Michelle Obama told People magazine. “Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.” Obama tried to emphasize after the recent police killings of black men that it was “not a black problem” but an “American problem” when anybody in the country is not treated equally under the law. Obama is not denying race might have something to do with those lopsided police violence statistics but he is saying it’s a problem the country as a whole needs to confront, not something that only black groups should care about. Jindal is suggesting almost the reverse implying that by eliminating the hyphen, Americans can wish away the complexity of race and ethnicity in his country. As I have written before, Jindal and fellow governor Nikki Haley are perfect examples of politicians who have used their brown-ness to side step the loaded black and white race politics of their home states. Their skin color gives the Republican party the tan that it desperately needs so that it does not increasingly look like a party of grumpy white men. But as governors, their politics, on issues like immigration, have never given their very conservative base the slightest pause. Bobby Jindal became only the second Indian American to be a US Congressman and that was decades after the first. It could actually be an inspirational story precisely because there are so few other Indian Americans who have achieved that. But it can only be inspirational if Bobby Jindal recognizes that he is Indian American and that his story is exceptional because not many Piyushes in Louisiana think they can become governors of their state. Meanwhile Indian Americans had better get over their pride in apna Bobby. That bird has long flown the coop. n Sandip Roy is the Culture Editor for Firstpost. com. A version of this story appeared on Firstpost.com.
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 9
cover
Rules of Desire Ethics, boundaries, and behavior By Nirmala Nataraj
The notion that desire contradicts ethics either makes people wilt in terror or it transforms them into greedy little children slavering over all the delights at the candy counter. The truth couldn’t be more different. Desire has the power to be our strongest moral compass even as it leads us to the kind of ecstasy that would make a Harlequin romance look pallid.
L
et me start by saying that I’m a life coach, and desire is the name of my game. My clientele are couples and individuals who’ve been divorced from their sexuality for too long. On the surface, these people are successful and happy, yet a fundamental spark is missing. Often, when the match of desire is struck, the pile of kindling has accumulated to such a degree that there is the danger of being burnt down altogether. Of course, there’s one major mistaken assumption that many clients and otherwise well-meaning people make—that is, acting on one’s desire is equivalent to throwing out principles and ethics altogether. After all, morality is like kryptonite to the supernatu-
10 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
ral fortitude of desire, which wants what it wants when it wants it. Right? Wrong. I’ve witnessed too many exploding powder kegs—generated by those who kept their desire in the closet for too long— to keep that particular myth going.
Desire and Morality
The Bhagavad Gita famously states, “While concentrating on objects of the senses, a person develops attachment to the objects; from attachment desires are born, from desire anger arises.” However, many Hindu texts and teachers have suggested that attempting to eradicate desire is a fool’s errand. Instead, fulfilling appropriate desires that aid
in our spiritual development keeps us from becoming slaves to our constant craving. Admittedly, few people I know are currently working to align their desires with their spirituality. I’ve met many well-meaning men and women who prefer to use desire as a fantasy security blanket that lets them take refuge from the realities of their lives. Recently, I had a client who was absolutely serious about his desire to cheat on his partner of 20 years. He had no intention of ending the relationship (after all, she would never be willing to let him go, and besides, what would their family and the neighbors think?) but he didn’t believe that lying to his partner was such a big deal. In his mind, he
had stifled his true impulses for so long that there was nothing wrong with going out of control. He was entitled to that kind of happiness, especially after all he’d suffered, gods damn it! To me, his justifications seemed like a giant red flag, but they weren’t unusual. His was the type of adolescent behavior typical among people who are just coming into an understanding of their desire. Many of my clients are good people who have been accustomed to placing everyone else’s needs before their own. These same people often end up transforming into the most insufferable and selfish individuals after they discover the potency of their desire. This isn’t because desire is bad, however—it’s because, as psychiatrist Carl Jung noted with his “principle of enantiodromia,” the abundance of any one quality or force eventually produces its opposite. When we are operating on extremes, the principle of equilibrium will ensure that we revert to the flipside of our original behavior in order to restore balance. My client was using “desire” as an excuse to let his fantasies run roughshod over everything else. If this man were truly willing to live out his desire, he wouldn’t simultaneously be chaining himself to a dead-end marriage.
Desire and the Voice of Reason
Of course, when I speak about the ethics of desire, I’m not necessarily talking about the laundry list of shoulds and shouldn’ts that society has beaten into our skulls. It’s simply about understanding what the most skillful behavior is in any given situation. An example I like to share with people is that of the addict. While his superficial desire may be urging him to reach for the next available high, another voice may be urging him to refrain … especially because he knows the crash-and-burn cycle all too well, and that his next hit is likely to come at too high a cost. On the surface, his “desire” to use may feel like it’s coming from a place of truth, whereas the voice of “reason” may be a pesky hindrance to having what he wants. Of course, the dichotomy between desire and reason is a false one. Surely, a combination of common sense (after all, fire hurts when you put your hand in it) and risk-taking is in order. Because the addict’s compulsive behavior is in the driver’s seat, his ability to clearly distinguish which voice to listen to is going to be cloudy. But desire doesn’t preclude restraint.
Skillful vs. Unskillful Behavior
Let’s come back to the idea that it’s not
about right vs. wrong. I have a client who used to incessantly engage in relationships with married men. It was almost an addiction, but it was one that she justified to herself over and over again. After all, they were the ones who sought her out. What their wives didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. She was helping them experience a freedom they otherwise had no access to. The notion of infidelity itself is a social construct placed on people to make them feel guilty about their sexuality. And so on and so forth. Whatever argument someone would come to her with, she had a counterargument. That is … until she came to a huge realization about her approach. It was, simply put, unskillful. The men always ended up leaving, the relationships seemed to impact her ability to trust and open up to other men, and whether or not their wives ever found out, she knew that she was leaving a mark on their marriages that was not exactly pretty or beneficial. Now, she operates on the premise that cheating is never a wise idea. At first, she resisted this notion, because someone else’s morality was dictating the parameters of her choices. But at a certain point, her rebelliousness gave way to a profound consideration of her actions. She began to ask herself a simple question: Do my actions leave a mess in their wake? If the answer that surfaced was yes, she refrained from repeating them. It’s always a smart idea to examine the after effects of our desires. It is ultimately about being in a harmonious relationship with the world.
Living a Desire-Based Life
An ethical approach to desire also includes taking other people into account. Does acting on your desire interfere or conflict with another person’s desire or free will? One of my clients, a self-proclaimed “nerd” with lousy luck when it came to women, showed up one day, frustrated and even a little angry. “I’ve been doing this work with you for over a month and I’m not seeing any results,” he complained. “Women still won’t date me, and the last woman I came on to told me that I was being creepy. This just confirms my belief that the only thing they want is a guy with money and muscles!” What my client didn’t recognize was that his expression of desire was operating on unspoken beliefs about his own “unattractiveness,” as well as a hostility that was tangible whether he opened his mouth or not.
A Creative Commons Image I suggested to my client that he might find more success if he adjusted his dials according to a woman’s response. If he were to make an invitation and she responded with ambivalence (“I’m not sure I’m ready” or “I’m not sure I’ll like it”), he should back off and let her lead. In the realm of desire, we are all free agents. Just because you’ve expressed desire, it doesn’t mean that someone else is honor-bound to do the same. Rather than forming expectations of specific outcomes, make clean requests and be receptive to the responses you get. Communication is key in most situations. In the case of the man who wanted to cheat on his wife, he believed that he could never experience the passion he wanted with the woman he’d been with for over two decades. But in truth, he’d never made his desires known except through oblique comments and evasive communication. Whereas many people are ashamed of their desire and cover it up with plenty of smokescreens, to trust our desire is to bring it out into the light of day, no matter where the chips may fall. This is actually the only way we can make our desire sustainable and to allow it to be the compass it is meant to be.
Desire, Honesty and Ethics
Developing an ethical approach to desire also means being honest with ourselves. If I am feeding my desire for perfect health with alcohol and chocolate chip cookies, I know I’ve come into contact with some crossed wires. When we acknowledge that our actions bear fruit in the world, we can begin to practice responsible hedonism. The universe wants us to have what we most desire. But in order to fulfill our birthright, we must determine how skillful our actions are—and how effectively they lead us to our deepest potential and expression of truth. n Nirmala Nataraj is a writer, editor, and desire coach. To learn more about her work, visit www. sacredfirecoaching.com February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 11
politics
Remarks by President Obama At U.S.-India Business Council Summit
Delivered on January 26, 2015 at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi, India
P
rime Minister Modi, I want to thank you again—both for your invitation to join you on this incredible Republic Day and the wonderful hospitality that you’ve shown me over the past two days. Today’s ceremonies and parade were truly spectacular. It was a moving tribute to India’s founding, its democracy, its progress. As I said yesterday, even as this visit is rich with symbolism, it’s also a visit of great substance. We’re advancing the vision that I laid out on my last visit—India and the United States as true global partners. And a core element of this vision is greater trade, investment and economic partnership. We can grow and we can prosper together, and establish a set of global norms in terms of how business is done that will benefit not just our two countries, but people around the world. And when I spoke to you on my last visit, I pledged to broaden and deepen our economic ties—and that’s what we’ve done. In the last few years, we’ve increased trade between our countries by some 60 percent. Today, it’s nearly $100 billion a year —which is a record high. And this is a winwin. It’s a win for America and our workers because U.S. exports to India are up nearly 35 percent, and those exports support about 170,000 well-paying American jobs. At the same time, Indian investment in our country is growing, as well. And those Indian investments are supporting jobs across America. And our growing trade is a win for India, because increased U.S. exports and investment here mean more American-made planes flying passengers on India’s airlines all over the world, more American-made turbines generating the energy India needs to continue with its growth, more Americanmade machinery upgrading India’s infrastructure. And because we’ve made it easier for foreign companies to sell and invest in America, India’s exports to the United States are also increasing—and that means more jobs and opportunities here in India. In the end, that’s the purpose of trade and investment—to deliver a better life for our people. And both Indian and American workers are and can benefit even more in the future from close ties between our two countries. So we’re moving in the right direction. That said, we all know that the U.S.-India 12 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
economic relationship is also defined by so much untapped potential. Of all America’s imports from the world, about 2 percent come from India. Of all of America’s exports to the world, just over 1 percent go to India —1 percent to over a billion people. We do about $100 billion a year in trade with India, which is a great improvement since I took office. But we do about $560 billion a year with China. That gives you some sense of the potential both for the kind of growth that India might unleash, and the potential for greater trade between our two countries. So I think everybody here will agree, we’ve got to do better. I know Prime Minister Modi agrees, and he just shared his expansive vision on this issue with you. As we announced yesterday, we’ve taken a number of concrete steps forward on this visit. New breakthroughs will help us overcome some key issues and move us toward fully implementing our civil-nuclear agreement. We’ve taken another big step forward in our defense cooperation with a new technology and trade initiative so that Indian and American companies can jointly develop and produce new defense technologies. We’ve agreed to resume discussions that would move us toward a bilateral investment treaty that would facilitate Indian businesses making more investments in the United States, and U.S. businesses making more investments here in India. And we’ve agreed to step up our efforts with a new high-level U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue to make sure we’re taking concrete steps that build on our progress so that when two leaders share a vision and make agreements, we know that our agencies, our bureaucracies will follow through aggressively and we can hold them accountable. Prime Minister Modi, I want to thank you for your personal commitment to helping us advance all of these efforts. Today, I’m proud to announce additional steps—a series of United States initiatives that will generate more than $4 billion in trade and investment with India and support thousands of jobs in both of our countries. Specifically, over the next two years, our Export-Import Bank will commit up to $1 billion in financing to support “Made-inAmerica” exports to India. And Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) will
support lending to small and medium businesses across India that we anticipate will ultimately result in more than $1 billion in loans in underserved rural and urban markets. And our U.S. Trade and Development Agency will aim to leverage nearly $2 billion in investments in renewable energy in India. So we’re moving forward. There’s new momentum, there’s new energy, new hope that we can finally begin to realize the full potential of our economic relationship. And I want to close by suggesting several specific areas where we need to focus. First, we have to keep working to make it easier to do business together in both our countries. Prime Minister Modi has initiated reforms, including a new government committee dedicated to fast-tracking American investments. And we enthusiastically support these efforts. We need to be incentivizing trade and investment, not stifling it. Second, we can work together to develop new technologies that help India leap forward. And I know I speak for the American companies represented here when they say they’re ready to partner with Indian firms to build next-generation trains that run on cleaner energy and to lay the new railways India needs for the future. They’re ready to help upgrade roads and ports and airports to make it easier for Indians to connect with each other and with the world. They’re ready to install broadband connections to give communities reliable access to the Internet and to help build the smart cities that Prime Minister Modi has called for. And finally, we need to make sure that economic growth in both our countries is inclusive and sustained. India’s astonishing growth in recent decades has lifted countless millions out of poverty and created one of the world’s largest middle classes. There’s an important lesson in that. Growth, in the end, has to make people’s lives better in real, tangible and lasting ways. I know the Prime Minister has expressed his commitment. You have the commitment of the President of the United States and my administration. I’m looking forward to working with all of you. The next time I come to India, I expect we will have made more progress. n Abridged for space constraints
India’s Engagement with United States and Russia Economic pragmatism giving shape to politics By Chandra K. Mittal
I
f one were to analyze India’s recent foreign policy moves towards United States and Russia, one cannot but be amused by how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is playing his hand of friendship with both Obama and Putin, simultaneously. This reflects just how the world has changed since the Cold War when no developing country could so brazenly and publicly make deals with two powerful adversaries with such finesse and confidence as India is doing. In old times, such conduct could have even evoked some type of punitive measure from the adversaries. But today a new world has emerged with new rules of diplomatic engagement primarily geared towards self survival. In September 2014, during his visit to the United States, Modi impressed the government establishment and worked with President Obama in the White House to develop the US-India strategic relationship in the area of energy, environment, security, and joint economic development. Then, in December 2014, he received Russian President Vladimir Putin in India and entered into multiple bilateral agreements. This would be followed by President Obama’s visit to India in January 2015 as the Chief Guest for India’s Republic Day celebrations, as well as further strengthening the US-India economic, political and security cooperation. These developments by themselves, as well as their timing, assume special significance in the current political context when the United States has strained relations with Russia due to the impasse on Ukraine and thus the United States objected to India’s making the deal with Putin. But India went ahead anyway compelling the United States to not only accept the deal, but also declare no change in its plans for Obama’s visit to India in January 2015. Furthermore, to put a good face on it, the US State department spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated at a press conference “No. India remains an important partner. Obviously, our economic relationship is a big part of what we continue to work on” (with India). Such events simply provide glimpses of things to come in the
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
future as countries exert their autonomy for self preservation. As for India, contrary to general perceptions and predictions of pundits and scholars about Narendra Modi being a conservative ideologue, a saffron Hindu fundamentalist, or a right winger, which he may well be, he is proving to be first and foremost an “economic pragmatist” who is highly skilled, calculated, analytical and perceptive about national and global politics. India’s recent deals with China, United States and Russia, all point to the fact that India only means business regardless of their internal politi-
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US Secretary of State John Kerry
cal persuasions and philosophies. Incidentally, this also plays well at home with India’s diverse political subgroups that ranges from capitalistic to socialistic to communistic in nature. India’s economic deals with these giants are also playing well in the partnering countries as they want to engage India in economic cooperation for their own economic reasons. Curiously enough, India’s old “non-alignment” policy status seems to be completely tolerable to Western countries now, which in the past looked down upon “non-alignment” and interpreted it as “anti-West.” But today in the “non-polar” political environment, its meaning has changed, and the West is willing to do business without any stigma. Economic slow-downs in the West coupled with growth of the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) over the past three decades have diminished the monopolistic control and clout of the West on the world economy. This has compelled Western nations to accommodate LDCs and accept their terms for building relationships which could not have been imagined before. Today, the economic compulsions of the developed democracies and autocracies alike are more pressing than their political principles and philosophies, which have taken the back seat in interest of today’s economic gains. These relationships are creating a “winwin” situation in the changing world, and are forming new doctrines for international conduct. The conservative British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the 1800s said “We have no permanent friend. We have no permanent enemies. We just have permanent interests” to justify his philosophy of political relationships. Perhaps, little did he realize the prophetic impact of the wisdom of his statement for the politicians of future generations. n Chandra K Mittal is Professor at Houston Community College and Co-Founder of IndoAmerican Association, Houston. He can be followed on Twitter @drchandramittal. February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 13
GLORIOUS SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST J
esus Christ is coming back again to this world as "the King of Kings & the Lord of Lords" to judge Nations with HIS righteousness, to be with HIS people who have accepted Christ into their hearts & lived/living a life acceptable to Christ, having their names written in "the Book of Life" & to live with them forever. For the Lord Jesus Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we, who are alive and remain, shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. No one knows the day & hour when Jesus Christ will come back, not even the angels of heaven, but only the Father God in heaven. The day of Christ coming also called as "the Day of the Lord" will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Nevertheless we, according to HIS promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Jesus Christ coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but MY words will by no means pass away”
What will happen to people who are left behind during Christ Second coming?
Who will not be with Christ forever?
For people whose names are written in "the Book of Life" it will be a glorious day & for others it will be a day of destruction. The Lord will consume with the breath of HIS mouth and destroy with the brightness of HIS coming.
What will be the signs before Second coming of Christ & of the end age?
After coming of Christ, Satan will be bound for 1000 years. Saints of God will rule with Christ during these 1000 years. There will be no death and everyone will live happy with joy & peace, since the Prince of Peace will rule them. After 1000 years of Christ reign, satan will be released to see the reign of Christ with righteousness. Satan will go around nations deceiving people one more time and gather few folks to fight against HIS saints. God will send fire and devour them. Satan will be sent to hell forever.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Only people whose sins are cleansed by the Blood of Christ, lived/living righteous life before Christ & have their names written in "the Book of Life" will inherit the Kingdom of God or to be with HIM forever. The Bible says in 1Cor 6:9-10, Gal 5:19-21, Rom 1:29-32, Rev 21:8, Rev 14:9-11 that the unrighteous people will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
Many will be deceived during last days saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ therefore do not go after them. But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end will not come immediately. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Many will be persecuted, beaten, killed, offended, betrayed and hated for Christ sake even by parents, brothers, relatives, friends and children. But not a hair of your head shall be lost. By your patience possess your souls. Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the entire world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
The Great Tribulation
1000 years of Christ reign
The Great White Throne Judgment
After casting Satan into the Lake of fire (hell), Christ will judge the dead & the Nations with HIS Righteousness. If anyone’s name is not found in “the Book of Life”, then they will be cast into the Lake of fire. Whomsoever name is found in “the Book of Life” will have eternal life with Christ in New Heaven, New Earth & New Jerusalem. There is no death, no sorrow, no crying & no pain.
Now how can I redeem this Gift of Salvation in my life, so I can be with Christ forever?
All we have to do is to believe Jesus, accept HIM into your heart, ask HIM to cleanse your sins by HIS precious blood & live a life acceptable to Christ every day from now on. (Repeat this simple prayer - Prayer means talking to God in your heart)
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, and then know that its desolation is near. Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place where it ought not, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Jesus predicts the destruction of Temple of God to his disciples saying, “The days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down”. For in those days there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of creation of this world. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved.
Lord Jesus, Thank you for coming into this world for me and my sins. I truly accept you just as I am. Come into my heart; cleanse me and my sins with your precious Blood. Be in my heart forever and help me to live and lead a Holy life like you. I also invite YOU & Your Holy Spirit to come into my heart and give me the Joy, Peace, Happiness, Deliverance from sins, bondages and sickness forever. Thank you for giving me the assurance of being with me forever. In Jesus name I pray Amen.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days, there will be signs like the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see 14 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
If you have truly meant this prayer, then you have accepted Jesus Christ into your heart & your name will be written in “the Book of Life”. HE will be with you forever. HE will not leave you nor forsake you. If you need prayers or would like to know more about Jesus, then you can visit nearby Christian churches who believes in Trinity (The Father God, Lord Jesus Christ & The Holy Spirit) or email us at : info@christforworld.org
political opinion
Modi’s Dilemma By Shashi Tharoor
I
t has become increasingly clear that the new Indian government faces a dilemma entirely of its own making, one that its predecessor never had to deal with. The election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister was initially hailed around the world as marking the advent of a more business-friendly government in the world’s largest democracy. Investors rushed to hail Modi as a new messiah of development, one whose sound-bites were noticeably promarket: “We will replace red tape with a red carpet,” “the government has no business to be in business,” and “Make in India” were among his more popular slogans. Modi’s BJP party enjoyed the first absolute majority in the lower House of Parliament of any Party in a quarter of a century, thus freeing it from the pressures and constraints of coalition governance. The Prime Minister’s forays abroad were invariably accompanied by talk of new business opportunities, new foreign investments and new joint ventures. He vowed to improve India’s ranking in the World Bank’s “Global Ease of Doing Business Report” from a dismal 125th position to “at least 50th” in the world. The talk remains, but it seems increasingly removed from the central preoccupations of Modi’s ruling party. Modi has risen to power at the head of a family of ostensibly right-wing organizations that not only largely do not share his economic priorities, but are obsessed with what is known as “cultural nationalism,” which is really little more than Hindu majoritarian chauvinism of the most bigoted kind. The tensions between the two tendencies—the economic reformism preached at the top and the cultural nativism that animates the majority beneath—have begun to paralyze the Government. What makes it worse is that the political majority needed by the Prime Minister to pursue his economic policies relies entirely on the political campaigns and organizational capacity of the very people whose chauvinism is undermining him. It is a contradiction that emerges from the heart of the ruling party’s schizophrenic nature. The ascension of Modi was followed almost immediately by a series of incidents affecting India’s minorities, particularly Muslims. They ranged from the tragic—the beating to death of a young Muslim techie in Pune in “retaliation” for a supposedly defam-
atory social media posting he had nothing to do with—to the ridiculous (the shoving of food down the unwilling throat of a Muslim cafeteria employee during the fasting month of Ramadan by a legislator from a BJP ally). Then came a nationwide scare about “love jihad,” an alleged Muslim ploy to seduce Hindu girls into romantic entanglements that would lead to their conversion to Islam and make India a Muslim-majority country. No sooner had this BJP-fueled hysteria been widely dismissed (Muslims are currently 13% of the Indian population, and there have been only a handful of such marriages) than the inflammatory rhetoric mounted. A prominent Modi supporter declared that all Indians had to acknowledge that they were culturally Hindu; a member of the Council of Ministers divided the country into “Ramzada”s (believers in the Hindu god Ram) and “Haramzada”s (bastards), and remained in her post under Modi’s benign gaze. Another ruling party legislator declared Mahatma Gandhi’s Hindu-chauvinist assassin to be a patriot, while a fringe party in the Modi camp announced a campaign to install the assassin’s busts throughout the country. The galloping nativism knew no bounds. The Education Minister abruptly decided mid-term to withdraw German as an optional third language in government schools and replace it with Sanskrit. The Prime Minister himself embarrassed many by declaring in a speech at a new hospital, no less, that the figure of the Hindu god Ganesh, with his elephant head on a human body, testified to the ancient Hindus’ knowledge of plastic surgery! Meanwhile the RSS, a volunteer organization modelled on the Fascist groups of the 1920s (complete with khaki shorts and staves), declared a campaign of “Ghar wapasi” (“return home”), or reconversion of minorities back to the Hinduism from which their ancestors had allegedly lapsed in the distant past. The resultant controversies have not merely convulsed the nation and dominated political discourse, they have sidelined Modi’s economic policies altogether. Protests by Opposition parties against these extremely provocative statements and measures have paralyzed the Houses of Parliament, making it impossible for the government to introduce, let alone pass, important elements of pending economic reform legislation, such as
a law raising foreign investment in the insurance sector to 49%. But Modi, who needs the foot soldiers of these organizations for the election campaigns that sustain his majorities in Delhi and in an increasing number of states, has said nothing to silence his supporters or mollify his critics. The problem is that the dominant strand in the ruling party cares much more about asserting Hindu chauvinism than it does about the economic reforms and investments that Modi trumpeted—and which won him the support of voters who did not share his “Hindutva” agenda. That agenda, however, is undermining the economic agenda. Investors are looking with mounting concern at Modi’s inability to manage this contradiction in his own support base. Foreigners are particularly concerned. As negative press increased abroad, potential investors have begun to feel skittish. “What to think about the recent anti-Christian and Muslim tirades and conversion propositions?” one of them, Lorenz Reibling of the German-American firm Taurus Investments, asked me on the verge of committing a major investment to India. “Conversion and ethnic/ religious cleansing doesn’t ring well here in Germany particularly. The bizarre dream of a 100% Hindu India would be an India with little or no foreign support. That is not what India deserves.” He added, in an email: “I doubt the Middle Eastern investors would welcome an anti-Muslim policy either. They could react by turning off the $-spigot. Europeans and Americans certainly would scale back considerably if Christians are exposed to an inquisition in reverse.” Reibling was giving voice to what many investors abroad are already saying. The warning bells have already rung. The Prime Minister finds himself in an invidious position in relation to his own supporters: he can’t live with them and he can’t live without them. But until he resolves this fundamental dilemma, the hopes of a Modi Miracle in the Indian economy will fade as rapidly as they rose. n Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, and the former UN UnderSecretary-General. He has written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century. This article was first published on ndtv.com February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 15
lives
Remembering India’s First Woman Photojournalist Homai Vyarawalla: December 9, 1913—January 15, 2012
I
n today’s world with selfies and instagrams, where everyone is snapping pictures on their iPhones, it was illuminating to see the black and white photos of Homai Vyarawalla, belonging to another era when photography was black and white, and cameras were bulky and most professional photographers were male. She died three years ago, last month, and I still vividly remember that day back in 2010 when my father and I had noticed an article in the newspaper about her photography exhibition and decided to check it out. At the Modern Art Gallery in Mumbai, we notice a woman, white haired, with a face full of wrinkles, like the rings on a tree. She is seated on a wheelchair at the center of the hall, just ten feet from my father and me. The photo at the entrance matches her face. Wow, imagine our luck! Homai Vyarawalla the lady herself, maybe being photographed for an interview. Lights, camera, and Vyarawalla in front of the lens? But no. We are surprised to find her joining our tour! Vyarawalla then begins to share tidbits of information—how in those days photographers could not go within twenty feet of VIPs. She talks about how she had to order some of the parts to assemble her camera on her own, since she could not afford the fancy American cameras in those days. I could not help wondering how she lugged those twenty pounds of camera with her. She points to a photograph she has never exhibited before. It is of the Indian Prime Minister Nehru wiping Vietnames leader Ho Chi Minh’s beard. That would not have appeared dignified, I suppose. I take in her pictures of Old Bombay—a monsoon afternoon at the Gateway, the parapet with only three people and two umbrellas, a lone lamp post reflected in the puddle of water. Where are all the crowds I wonder? Then I remember this is 1930, not the 21st century. We prepare to climb another floor. Vyarawalla, 97 years of age, gets up and slowly but sure-footedly climbs using only the railing for support. In two of the photos on display Vyarawalla herself is the subject. In one of them, we are told that she is sixteen years old and is seated in front of a kerosene stove making chappatis before catching the local train to school. Her face looks young and innocent, her hair is coal black and cropped short. Another photo shows her in her thirties, 16 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Indira Gandhi with Jackie Kennedy at Teen Murti
Photos: Homai Vyarawalla
House, New Delhi, 1962
wearing a white sari, maybe chiffon or cotto, a gigantic camera is draped on her right shoulder along with her sari pallu. I wonder who took these photographs? We break for lunch and when we return we see that Vyarawalla is back, participating in another tour for aam junta (ordinary people) like us. I once again study the photos of Old Bombay—there’s one with a policeman, obviously British, looking out stiffly, wearing a starched white uniform (or light colored outfit—this is a black and white photo after all), with a blow horn and commanding black boots. He is standing on a wooden table, directing traffic—mostly pedestrians in khadi (hand woven) with topis (turbans). They are carrying statues of the elephant God Ganapati being taken for immersion in the sea. Those Ganapatis seem small compared to today’s ten feet mega monstrosities carried in huge lorries (trucks). Another photo, this one of a ship, from Britain, is shown as having just arrived at the harbor. My father comments, “If you think a flight
from the United States is long, think of those days when people were in the ship for three weeks.” Emaciated Indian porters appear hurrying around carrying the heavy luggage of what my father calls “beef eating British sahibs.” As we leave, I remark, how lucky we were to have seen not only Homai Vyarawalla’s photographs of Gandhi and Nehru and old Bombay and Delhi, but also the legendary lady herself. My father comments, “Yes, true but I also feel like she’s being paraded around like the monkeys at Nariman Point, being brought out for the curator and author to sell more books.” I guess the image is angled, depending on how it is framed. n Roopa Ramamoorthi is a biotech scientist working in global health, and a poet. Her essays, poetry and short stories have been published in various venues including a perspective piece on NPR, an essay in the book She is Such a Geek, India Currents, Berkeley Daily Planet, Khabar and Konch.
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 17
business
2015: Year of Girl Geek? By Neerja Raman
A
t the start of a new year is when pundits predict, futurists forecast and change-makers challenge. It is also when we trend watch, retrospect and resolve. 2015 is no different; except for one thing. This year, I cannot help but notice how my long term personal cause, scarcity of technical women, seems to have garnered enough media attention that I dare think it is set to become an overnight change. I believe 2015 will be a catalyst year when women come into their own in the workplace. Enrollment and retention of women in technical disciplines will increase. Leading indicators like equal pay, equal representation, and equal opportunity will shift towards the positive aggressively. Even more dramatic, girls will be drawn to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) in greater numbers. From junior-high to the boardroom, girls and women will have more options for their dreams. Geek girls will be cool, tech women will be leaders.
As a working mother, I observed my daughters’ struggles with being good at math and being considered un-cool. As for higher education, in New York only three women were enrolled in my graduate chemistry class and all of us dropped out without getting our Ph.D.
What’s Been Brewing in 2014?
Media The Huffington Post reported that “Women are certainly still transitioning into workplace equality, particularly in tech— which is why we’re always seeing headlines that display shocking statistics about the lack of women in leadership roles” said Molly Reynolds. The book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook made it into just about every controversy on the subject, in a social as well as professional context.
An internet search shows a staggering amount of digital ink on the topic of working women (and lack thereof) in technical capacities. Employers In June 2014, Yahoo was back into positive media space by publishing a diversity report and acknowledging a deplorable lack of women in its workforce. Other players followed suit—Google and Facebook—and acknowledged themselves equally culpable. Women support groups like GirlGeeks.org had their most successful conferences to date. Leaders How about thought leaders? In December 2014 Rev. Jesse Jackson shook up Silicon Valley leaders by taking them to task over diversity. USA Today said “Jesse Jackson spent the better part of this year imploring high-tech companies to include more Afri-
18 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
can-Americans, Latinos and women among their employees.”
Intel at CES In January 2015, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, a gathering of techies, a male bastion, Intel announced a $300 million investment in training and recruiting female and other groups of under-represented computer scientists. “A confluence of industry events has brought the lack of women and minorities in tech-
nology to the center stage, from the threats and harassment that have characterized the debate in the gaming world to the publication of hiring data and diversity statistics in the tech industry,” said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. That CES was the venue of choice, versus say, a women’s conference is significant. It establishes diversity not as just a women’s issue but men’s as well. In the past, we used to have to make the case that diversity in workforce brings diversity in thought; it’s better for business, teamwork, culture, whatever worked. No need to be an apologist in 2015.
So What?
Admittedly, with decades of professional experience in Silicon Valley, I do not remember a time when we did not lament the lack of diversity, lack of role models and mentors, lack of pipeline for technical women, payinequality, glass ceilings and sticky floors. As a working mother, I observed my daughters’ struggles with being good at math and being considered un-cool. As for higher education, in New York only three women were enrolled in my graduate chemistry class and all of us dropped out without getting our Ph.D. But in 2014, it was not just women in technology, like myself, that got involved in the discussion, everyone else did too.
Why will 2015 be different?
In addition to the volume of discourse in 2014, even bigger changes are evident. Women have changed. We no longer talk about mommy wars, quantity vs quality of time in rearing children (a big one for me and I thank my role model working mom in India), and why we need good daycare (I attended town hall meetings with only one other woman to support me, to bring after-school care to Bullis Elementary school in Los Altos Hills). We don’t hear the term latchkey-kids and moms are not accused of resorting to local libraries as child-care ha-
vens because women have learned to support one-another and created new businesses to fill such gaps. We don’t talk about work-life balance as if it is a women’s issue alone. We don’t talk about “you can’t have it all.” Men have changed too. Passage of time has created a new generation of dads used to working alongside women. They proudly take paternity leave. When I started working in the late 1970s, the mommy ideal was stayat-home “Leave it to Beaver.” No longer. Daddy today wants his daughter to have economic independence and marry for love not financial security. A college degree is to acquire skills not a catch. A job is a necessity, a career yet more satisfactory. There is societal change. When men and women change, their families and aspirations change. We see it in social settings today whereas in the past it was just in the workplace. They say, those who predict the future must know how to chew glass. I can eat my words but I’m predicting I won’t have to. Success always seems to come overnight whether it is people, inventions or social change. Small movements make a tsunami. A small dating application (Facebook) launched the phenomenon of social media. Amazon and EBay added e-tail to retail. Netscape launched the Internet making the transition from computing to communication. A browser application (Internet Explorer) became an Operating System and PCs made computing personal. When I retrospect about 2015, it will be the year when bad news became good news because it engaged everyone to act to be part of the solution. Encourage your daughter to explore science. Enroll yourself in the computer class. Form a women’s support organization. Be a mentor. Join the movement. Dream. n Neerja Raman is currently Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University after over 25 years’ experience in the industry. Motivated by the challenges and skills gap faced by women in Silicon Valley, Neerja Raman has been an advocate and mentor for technical women and has written a book on leadership in the global world. She was inducted into the Technology Hall of Fame in 2005 by Women in Technology International (WITI). She considers herself fortunate to have had parents who encouraged her to study science in school. She maintains a social entrepreneurship blog (From Good to Gold).
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 19
ask a lawyer
Driver’s License and Immigration Enforcement By Indu Liladhar-Hathi
Q
I am currently out of status and reside in California. Is it possible to apply for a driver’s license?
A
Yes, starting January 2nd, 2015, under AB 60, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will issue an original driver’s license to any California resident who is eligible for a driver’s license, regardless of immigration status. Applicants must meet all other qualifications to obtain a driver’s license and provide proof of identity and California residency and schedule an appointment with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Q
Will I still qualify for an AB 60 license if I have a prior order of deportation or other prior immigration violations?
A
Your immigration history is not a factor in whether you qualify for an AB 60 license. However, people with deportation orders, especially recent ones, may be at risk if they apply for an AB 60 license. The California DMV will not proactively
share information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But if ICE is already looking for you, and asks the DMV for information about you, the DMV may share your name, address, and photograph. This means that if ICE is already looking for you, it could be risky to apply for a license. Please consult with an immigration lawyer before applying for an AB 60 license.
Q
I previously applied for a driver’s license in California using a fake name. Will this affect my ability to apply for an AB 60 license or place me at risk if I apply?
A
Although many people were forced into situations such as these in order to drive to take care of their children or make ends meet, it’s very risky for people in this situation to apply for a license. The DMV may refer cases it perceives as fraud for prosecution. The current advice is not to apply until we know much more about how the DMV is handling these types of cases.
Q
I previous applied and obtained a driver’s
license in California using a fake social security number. Will this affect my ability to apply for an AB 60 license or place me at risk if I apply?
A
Using a fake social security number could be considered to be fraud, as well, so we recommended waiting to apply until we know more information.
Q A
Does AB 60 contain protections from discrimination?
The law prohibits state or local government agencies, officials, or programs that receive state funds from discriminating against someone because he or she has an AB 60 license. This includes state and local law enforcement officials. AB 60 itself also specifies that it is against the law to discriminate against an individual who has an AB 60 driver’s license. n Information courtesy of Alison Kamhi with ILRC, San Francisco. Immigration and Business attorney Indu Liladhar-Hathi has an office in San Jose.(408) 453-5335.
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legal visa dates Important Note: U.S. travelers seeking visas to India will now need to obtain them through Cox & Kings Global Services Pvt. Ltd. Call 1-866-978-0055, email enquiriesusa@ckgs.com or visit www.in.ckgs.us for more information.
February 2015
T
his column carries priority dates and other transitional information as taken from the U.S. State Department’s Visa Bulletin. The information below is from the Visa Bulletin for February 2015. In the tables below, the listing of a date for any class indicates that the class is oversubscribed. “Current” means that numbers are available for all qualified applicants. “Unavailable” means no numbers are available.
FAMILY PREFERENCE VISA DATES Preference Dates for India
EMPLOYMENT-BASED VISA DATES Preference Dates for India 1st Current 2nd Sep 01, 2005 3rd Dec 22, 2003 Other Dec 22, 2003 Workers 4th Current Certain Current Religious Workers 5th Current Targeted Employment Areas The Department of State has a recorded message with visa availability information at (202)485-7699, which is updated in the middle of each month. Source: http://travel. state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy/ bulletin/2015/visa-bulletin-for-february-2015. html
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finance
Looking Ahead at 2015 By Rahul Varshneya
L
ast year was a strong year for the American economy and stock market. The last year has given confidence to Wall Street and Main Street alike. Although employment levels aren’t where we would like to be, we have reversed the outflow from the labor force and are now adding jobs to our economy. 2014 has been the year of some major improvements, including ending the asset purchase program. 2015 will be a defining year for the economic recovery and will determine whether we return to a boom cycle or continue a tepid recovery for multiple years.
Jobless Growth
Economists believed that 2014 would buck the trend of the jobless growth seen in 2013 and reflect a more traditional economic growth trajectory. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.6% to 5.6%. This was a combination of new job creation and individuals leaving the labor force, voluntarily or otherwise. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate drop provided optimism, which spurred the strong stock market performance. In 2015, we will see the unemployment rate level drop taper off and even rise slightly as individuals re-enter the workforce. This is nothing to be alarmed about. As the unemployment rate normalizes, we can depend on it again as a measure of our economy.
International Developments
Last year was also full of major international events which impacted world economies. China’s deregulation of its capital markets marked a big transition in its desire to become a first world superpower. Although its stock market is still highly controlled, China now allows domestic banks to open branches and issue yuan bonds internationally, support domestic businesses in activities such as mergers and acquisitions and offer shares to the open market. Meanwhile Russia has been making headlines by invading Crimea, the eastern portion of Ukraine, and annexing it to Russia. This has put immense pressure on the international markets. To avoid further catastrophes, Europe and
22 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
the United States have chosen to engage Russia in non-confrontational ways, which has yielded results to a certain degree. The sudden drop in oil prices is squeezing Russia. Its damaged domestic economy is also depressing its currency, the Russian Ruble. These two effects have forced Russia into complying with international requests.
Job Creation Efforts
2015 is a crucial year for our economic recovery and stock market. While the Federal Reserve has done an incredible job in helping the economy rebound, not every indicator suggests improvement. We are currently in a period of “recovery” called jobless growth. Indicators such as spending and stock market performance indicate a strong recovery, while the deceptively low unemployment rate masks the large amount of people still without jobs (not accounted for). In response, President Obama and his administration have outlined several policies to get people back to work. One such policy is the job skills training grant, to which the President has committed $600M, which gives funding to employers that train graduates to have the skill set necessary to be successful in jobs they are applying to at the company. Another policy recently outlined in the President’s State of the Union address is free community college for two years. Although it remains to be seen whether it will be signed into law, it will give underprivileged job seekers the chance to be educated enough to procure jobs requiring higher education which were inaccessible in the past.
Analyzing the Upside
Ongoing expectations of a market correction led to the stock market experiencing some losses in December 2014. Although January has continued with the negative momentum, there are several fundamental factors, which will contribute to a strong 2015 market performance. The first of these is cheaper oil prices due to an increase in world supply. Cheaper oil prices adversely affects Wall Street, so it is responding by cutting spending and jobs. This effect is outweighed by cheap oil’s benefit to Main
Street. Cheaper oil means lower heating bills for consumers, which gives them more disposable income. This disposable income gets recirculated into the market, which is the primary driver for the stronger than expected Q4 holiday season. With our economy recovering, the US dollar has rebounded in relation to world currencies. With a stronger dollar, the United States has a better ability to import more goods and services.
The Soft Spots
While there are several positives to look forward to for 2015, there are a few risks that might pose a threat to market performance, the biggest being potential interest rate hikes. In October 2014, the Fed announced that it would execute its final asset purchase of $15B and then discontinue the program. Although there will be no more asset purchases, the Fed is still keeping interest rates low. The Fed is maintaining their dual mandate approach before deciding the economy is strong enough to increase interest rates. Currently the dual mandate conditions are unemployment in the 5.2-5.6% range and inflation at 1.7-2%.
Optimism
With the end of the asset purchase program, the stock market will have to stand on its own two feet and there will be erratic behavior with the components of the broad market most likely moving in multiple directions. 2015 will be an interesting year for our economy and while we have several soft spots we need to avoid, it is poised to be a strong year for the recovery effort. n This article is the opinion of the author and is not shared by India Currents or any of its staff. All investors should conduct their independent analysis before taking any actions and should not make any decisions on the information provided in this article alone. Rahul Varshneya graduated from the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University with a degree in finance and works in the tech industry as a financial analyst. If you have feedback or have a topic you would like addressed please contact Rahul at rahul89@gmail.com.
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opinion
Plunging Necklines, Gaping Armholes and Low Risers Undies or Outies? By Sujatha Ramprasad
I
n a shocking reversal of trends, showing one’s undergarments has changed from being a faux pas to a fashion statement. Those of us who are used to snickering “Sunday is longer than Monday” at the sight of a peeking undergarment should refrain from going to places like Disneyland, Universal Studios or even Starbucks during summer. For, if you do, that will be the sentence you will be repeating over and over again like a broken record. Webster’s Dictionary defines an undergarment as an article of clothing worn under visible outer clothes, usually next to the skin. The key word, dear Watson, is “under.” But who cares about the textbook definition? Purple bra straps sit openly on young girls’ shoulders, next to their meager cami straps, claiming equality. Some tops are so sheer that whatever is worn underneath glimmers openly in the limelight. Not long ago, the purpose of an armhole on a top or a blouse was—ahem—to be an armhole. The opening used to be just big enough for the arm to pass through the article of clothing. However, the latest trend is to wear large arm-holed blouses; the holes start right at the shoulder and go all the way to the bottom of the tops. Surely, these armholes have changed their day job? Their sole purpose now is to provide a clear view of what is worn underneath. Before I leave this subject let me also mention the tops that have large circular cutouts in the back. Do these gaping holes exist to make sure that the observer sees and appreciates the bra straps of the wearer? Looking beyond the coffee shops and malls, one would observe that the underwear exposé has taken showbiz by storm. Many charted performers, including Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry have performed in live music concerts in their granny panties. Men’s fashion suffers the same plight.
26 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
A Creative Commons Image: David Beckham
Not long ago, the purpose of an armhole on a top or a blouse was—ahem—to be an armhole ... Surely, these armholes have changed their day job? Much has been said about young and not so young boys wearing low sagging pants. Several personalities, including President Barack Obama, have severely condemned this look. It is even banned in some cities across the United States. However, in the Public Vs. Julio Martinez case Judge Franco ruled, “While most of us may consider it distasteful, and indeed foolish, to wear one’s pants so low as to expose the underwear, people can dress as they please, wear anything, so
long as they do not offend public order and decency. The Constitution still leaves some opportunity for people to be foolish if they so desire.” Though Justin Beiber, Jay Z, and sometimes even the immaculate David Beckam wear their pants low, leaders from the black community fear that when black kids walk around with their pants on their butts, showing off their underwear, they are simply asking for trouble. Many worry that this look is abetting racial profiling. After the phenomenal success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Malik S. King, a U.S. Marine put up his very own “Pull Up Your Pants” challenge. “We’re quick in our communities to talk about racial profiling, but what we don’t want to focus on is what we’re doing to contribute to the problem, even if just a little bit. We need to start thinking about how we represent ourselves, how we talk, how we act, how we deal with police. We need to stop talking, acting, and living like thugs, and start talking, acting, and living like men. Stop making the conscious decision to fit the description.” While psychologists and sociologists have different explanations on why this fad has caught on, I have my very own pet theory about us wanting to be like Superman. You must have heard the old hackneyed joke—“What is the difference between a man and a Superman?” Answer: “A man wears his underwear inside his trousers and Superman wears it over his trousers.” Superman desperately needs a change in wardrobe to differentiate himself from the rest of the population. The saddest victims caught in the fashion crossfire are middle-aged women. Several ladies are now clamoring for normal, regular clothes. An overworked mom on Mamapedia writes, “… the awful ‘below the waist’ style! I can’t stand it!! For me, they cause muffin top AND show plumbers crack.” “Who has the time to wear a belt and
spend time removing and putting them on every time one uses the restroom,” said a busy mother of two. “I just want to put on a pair of jeans that stays put on my belly. I really don’t want to show off my underwear when I am bending and lifting up my little ones.” Gone are the days when the neckline of tops started two to three inches below the neck. Plunging necklines have necessitated even older women to show off their camisoles. “I hardly have time to choose a decent top to wear to work. Now I have to figure out a decent camisole to wear inside as well,” says a working mom. There is also the problem of feeling too hot or too snug in a layered outfit. A whole cottage industry has sprung up to solve this very problem. Chickies Cleavage Coverage offers fake tank tops that one can wear under not-so-modest tops. It is a strapless sports bra-like accessory with high front coverage, meager back support, and harnesses in front to secure it to a regular bra. This decorum accessory was even featured on Oprah and hailed as a must-have wardrobe condiment. A review of Chickies in beautytipsforministers.com: “I mean, this is basically a really expensive version of the old ‘stick a hankie over your bazoom and pin it there, dear.’ Though it seems like a big winner to me, the offerings are just too low and slinky for me to invest $33,” made me chuckle. By the way, the byline for this website is, “Because you are in the public eye and God knows you need to look good.” “To protect your rear-view from an unwanted game of peekaboo,” Hip-T has created a fifteen-inch wide band made of cotton and lyrca that can be worn around the hips over one’s low-rise pants. Way to go fashion industry! You first created the underwear exposé problem, and then you made us commoners shell out more money to overcome the difficulty you created. I agree that the select set of people who purchase their undies from Victoria’s Secret and Pink might benefit from showing them off. But the rest of us who buy our undies from Target—or from Naidu Hall if you hail from Chennai—would prefer our undies to be hidden. Thank You. Vera Wang, Samantha Cole and all you designers out there—there is a huge market for normal, regular clothes that let undies be undies. I guarantee it! n Sujatha Ramprasad is a computer engineer with great love for philosophy and literature.
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 27
books
The Art of Happiness By Jeanne Fredriksen
DON’T LET HIM KNOW by Sandip Roy. Bloomsbury USA: New York. 256 pages. Bloomsbury.com @sandipr Available in hardcover, paperback, digital book, and audio book.
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n Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike…” Author Sandip Roy disagrees with that opinion and proves it in his debut novel in stories, Don’t Let Him Know. The stories center on the Mitra family of Calcutta—Avinash, Romola, and their son Amit—and examine the challenges of maintaining a fairly drama-free existence. Moving across time, zigzagging from the United States to India and back again, using specific events of varying importance, the scope of the two generations is fully measured as much by what they do not say or do as by their speech and actions. The book begins with “A Happy Meal” in which Amit’s widowed mother Romola is visiting him in San Francisco. Immediately, there are references that continue to return in the Mitra family chronology: goodness underlain with secrets and submission to duty over personal desires. Amit finds a love letter hidden in a book he had brought from India and, strictly out of curiosity, questions his mother about the man who wrote it. Romola curbs her shock, for she was certain she had securely hidden the letter. Ironically, what Amit believes about the correspondence is far from the truth, and in that misplaced certainty, mother and son are drawn closer. This new closeness allows Amit to articulate his thoughts about quitting his job as a computer engineer to become a chef. When Romola asks him why he would want to do that, he honestly replies, “... it’s not like anyone ever asked me what I wanted to do.” Through the stories, Roy explores commonplace life experiences that result in myriad secrets, some of which are based on omission. Nine-year-old Amit is unable to own up to what happened to his Mickey Mouse watch in “The Gifts of Summer.” As a new bride in small college town America, Romola accidentally intercepts and then hides Sumit’s (a friend of Avinash) letter to Avinash in “Ring of Spices.” Other secrets are connected to taboos. As a married man, Avinash lurks on a gay chat room and goes to a park late at night with a young man he meets in “Invitation to a Party.” In “White Christmas,” college stu28 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
dent Amit loses his virginity to a bartender who is not only an American but also a black woman. And yet other secrets are born simply as a result of spontaneous actions. Romola in “A Happy Meal” is seduced by the mouthwatering commercials and bright lights of McDonald’s. She steals away to escape the thumbscrews of widowhood, having given up meat and fish. In “Requiem for a Star,” Romola’s hidden diary of her courtship by a man who became a Bengali film superstar accompanies her to the man’s house as she joins the throngs of mourners. All of the secrets are closely-held or, in some cases, forgotten. Equally, none of the revealed secrets affect the family negatively. I asked Roy how the Mitras’ secrets evolved. “I wanted to show how we all have secrets,” he said in our e-interview, “and sometimes the secrets might be delicious ones like a flirtation that we will never act upon but will polish over and over again in memory. “Some secrets tear families apart, some keep them together, some we hide from each other out of shame, some out of kindness,” Roy added. “I wanted to write a story about what looks like a happy family (and it is a happy family by most conventional definitions) and look at the secrets that lie in its core and how they might pass down from generation to generation. When Amit finds out a secret ... he thinks it actually gives him a new understanding of his mother not knowing that the secret might have another secret within it.” There is sadness in stories, for even good people from time to time experience disappointment and invisibility. This is elevated in “The Practical Thing to Do.” Following Avinash’s death and cremation, Amit is repeatedly asked what he’ll do with Romola now that she’s alone. Everyone assumes aloud that she will live with him in California; however, strapped for an answer, Amit offers another solution, one that does not sit well with Romola: she tells Amit that he could have asked her what she wanted since she was right there all along. Rewind to “A Happy Meal,” in which Amit expresses the same feeling but without a mother’s anguish. “So much of this lack of sensitivity to personal desire actually comes from a desire to be good, to be dutiful,” Roy explained. “I wanted to make sure that my characters were not villains. They were faulty people but they did their best and even
cobbled together a certain kind of happiness for the ones around them. Romola to me is a very dutiful woman but in fulfilling her duties she is also taken for granted.” In the final story, “The Scene of the Crime”, Romola is still in America with Amit. This time, they travel to Carbondale, Illinois, where the author completed his graduate studies and where Romola lived during her first year of marriage. Restless, she leaves the hotel at night in search of her old apartment building. Eventually, she loses her way but ends up having the best night of her life in a gay bar with a transvestite named Lady Bang La Desh. It is with Lady that Romola finds easy communication and a much-needed confessional. The writing is well-tempered and without great urgency, creating a “life is generally good” feeling. There isn’t an unlikeable character from beginning to end; however, Roy allows tiny cracks to appear over time. When a character isn’t seen in his or her best light, we forgive for we understand and, perhaps, see ourselves more clearly. Roy’s steady hand and clear vision reveal the characters and the relationships between them over the course of the stories as in traditional novels. Hints and confirmations of transgressions great and small are skillfully incorporated without relying on copious details that might otherwise weigh down the narrative. In the end, Roy’s carefullynuanced storytelling reveals more by saying less. n Jeanne E. Fredriksen lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where she freelances in advertising and public relations. Between assignments, she writes fiction, enjoys wine, and heads to the beach as often as she can.
High Brow Fare By Rajesh C. Oza IN THE LIGHT OF WHAT WE KNOW by Zia Haider Rahman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 497 pages.
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ia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know (aka ItLoWWK) is a serious novel that critics have been raving about. This book is likely to win a prize or two (already long-listed for The Guardian First Book award). With its exploration of universal themes such as love, fractured friendship, truth, and social injustice, and the more personal theme of a diasporic exile striving to overcome the class disadvantages of his birth, this intellectual tour de force echoes A House for Mr Biswas, and may very well establish Rahman as the literary heir to V. S. Naipaul. ItLoWWK’s lower rung introduces us to two highly-educated men—Zafar and a nameless narrator—who fall in and out of a kind of sibling love with each other and romantic love with their significant others. The romantic love is reflected in the narration of one man relating the story of another while occasionally inserting bits of himself. The failed romance of cross-cultural married life is best suggested in Zafar’s “trite homily:” “A bird and a fish can fall in love, but where will they make a home? …. They only meet when the bird has the fish in its claws.” Zafar had fallen in love with, or perhaps fallen in love with the idea of, Emily, a scion of aristocratic England. The relationship is fraught with the imbalance of power, and the insecurity of Zafar re-shaping himself to fit into Emily’s world. In metaphoric ways, this relationship reflects the inevitable loss of identity when imperial powers, such as the United States, arrive in foreign lands, such as Afghanistan, with ambiguous motivations; Zafar, like co-opted Afghanis who, I believe, rue the day that the red-white-and-blue flag was planted on their soil, and regret the inequities and indignities that pile up day after day, conveys a bitter, abiding sadness about his life with Emily: “I was so careless of the dignity that every man must guard so that he can face himself each day. That I count chief among my regrets, the relegation of dignity.” There is also the more hopeful love of, and by, parents, some of whom are present, as in a touching exchange between the narrator and his father; the father uses a childhood game of 20 questions to enter into a Socratic dialog with his son to help at a time when the
wheels seem to be coming off the son’s life. Zafar’s parents are largely absent from the novel and from his life. Like the Zen-like koan of a story related by the narrator’s father about a message on an answering machine, Zafar’s brief, contained interactions with his parents were unhelpful in his making sense of life: “Who are you and what do you want? Some people spend a lifetime trying to answer these questions. You, however, have thirty seconds.” There is a mysterious distance between Zafar and his parents that the narrator is unable to resolve until much later in the novel: “Perhaps the longing for a certainty in the love of one’s parents never dims with time … Something he said raised a question in my mind. Zafar had twice referred to being sent back to Bangladesh, sometime after his twelfth birthday ... At college and through the years of our friendship before he disappeared, I could never bring myself to ask him directly about his family or his childhood.” Zafar and the narrator strive to free themselves of a past that is at once ancient, horrific, fratricidal (Pakistan and Bangladesh’s civil war); the friends also seek freedom from a present that is materially comfortable, yet unsatisfying. Both men were educated at Oxford in mathematics and subsequently entered lucrative careers in investment banking, eventually resulting in one friend being thrown under the bus of the ruinous 2007 global financial crisis resulting from collateralized debt obli-
gations, credit default swaps, and other barely understandable vehicles of market manipulation, and the other friend leaving finance to find himself at the fringe of another American debacle—the unending war in Afghanistan with its Rumsfeldian “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. While it can be fun to poke fun at Donald Rumsfeld, the former American Secretary of State, who, along with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, will long be remembered for their tragic and foggy under-appreciation of the of folly of war, this novel is far more than a diatribe against war-mongering, neoconservative policy. It is much more of a meditation on the fogginess of the little that we know, and the personal tragedies and global catastrophes that can ensue when actions assume greater knowledge than actually exists. But Rahman is at his most powerful when he conflates the global, the personal, and the intellectual. In the blink of an eye, three chapters move from Zafar’s supper in Islamabad with a Pakistani colonel and his guests, to the narrator’s lunch in New York with an American senator who had built his fortune as the founder of a financial instruments ratings agency, to a dialog between the two friends that moves between Emily having “never cleaned a bathroom in her life” and Zafar’s childhood poverty that compels him to see the invisible people on the street and giving the homeless his leftovers from Manhattan restaurants. Tying the seemingly disconnected plot lines are three articulations. The first is an epigram by Patrick French. “I can remember at one official function [in West Pakistan] where there was a group of women, wives of members of the elite, and I overheard one laughing to the others, ‘What does it matter if women in Bengal are being raped by our soldiers? At least the next generation of Bengalis will be better looking.’” The second is the narrator’s reflection, a month after his lunch with the senator, a month during which the narrator had coaxed the senator’s son away from joining the military: “As simple as that. Business moves fast. So much for conflicts of interest. Let me point out, if it isn’t obvious already, that there’s some irony in the term conflict of interest: In practice there is seldom a conflict but rather a confluence, a mutually rewarding arrangement. I think to Zafar it might have been the ugliest thing in the world, though I expect he would have added that it’s simply February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 29
inevitable.” The last is a heated dialogue between the two friends after discussing the dissipation of Zafar’s love for Emily and remembrance of Zafar’s feeding the homeless. Zafar: “Listen. I’m talking about why I noticed the homeless guy. You can’t understand it because you don’t know what it’s like.” Narrator: “Why are you having a go at me? All I’m saying is that when you see a homeless guy and give him food, that’s a commendable act of charity.” Zafar: “You said it yourself. I always noticed them. I noticed them because I couldn’t help it. Only from the inside can you know what it’s like from the inside. Understanding isn’t just knowing or learning what it is but knowing what it’s like.” Narrator: “Do you think you might be confused a little?” Zafar: “I think I might be confused a lot.” Narrator: You say love is about actions, and all I’m saying is that your actions were quite loving.” Zafar: “What? Giving some sod on the street the leftovers that would have gone in the bin?” Narrator: “Yes.” From the early parts of the novel, the relationship between those with power and
30 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
those without, those with privilege and those without, those from Bangladesh and those from Pakistan, pre-figures much of what follows. The narrator is of landed, elite Pakistani origin; Zafar is of soiled, unknowable Bangladeshi origin. They are “brothers,” but there is a vast distance between them, just as at Partition in 1947, newly formed independent India separated Pakistan, united only by its Islamic faith and the ego of its founding father. Toward the end of the novel, there is redemption of a sort. The reader is led to believe that Zafar, this tormented soul, might have experienced happiness once upon return to Bangladesh, and the narrator’s search for the meaning of his friend’s life finds some closure: “The thought pleases me that at some time in those years he disappeared, my friend might have paid a visit to that area of the world, to the place he had been the happiest, as he once said, with the woman who had loved him.” In the end, what the narrator observes in writing the story of his friend’s life is relevant to a careful reader making sense of a challenging and highly satisfying novel: “Writing this has helped, this effort of looking in while looking out. That is what it is to consider the life of another, someone who made an impression, and in the
course of writing discover—no, not discover, not quite, not even learn or understand, but simply sit and listen and fully embrace the risk of disrupting one’s precious outlook on the world that such listening entails.” The wonder about reading Zia Haider Rahman is not only his masterful and melancholic blend of the wholeness of life, of life’s moments of sweetness (sugar), savoriness (salt), and bitterness (pepper), but also his outsider’s view, his understanding of the world from the periphery. Despite the autobiographic parallels between Zafar and Rahman, this highly personal and at the same time universal novel does not accept any worldview as a given, especially not that of the protagonist-cum-author; Rahman is neither the voice of a certain segment of the world, nor an intermediary like many South Asian authors who write for a Western audience. He is simply an individual finding his way, a seeker attempting to know the world and, in the process, inviting his reader into an engaging dialogue of self-understanding and mutual discovery. n Rajesh C. Oza is a Change Management consultant who also facilitates the interpersonal development of MBA students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
tax talk
Understanding the Affordable Care Act By Rita Bhayani
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he Affordable Care Act (ACA) has brought monumental change to the U.S. healthcare system, and has had a huge impact on taxpayers. Here are seven following tips and advice about the law and its requirements, as we head into tax season. (i) The medical expense deduction threshold rose from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) to 10 percent. That’s not applicable if the taxpayer or spouse is 65. The age-based waiver expires in 2016. What that has meant for taxpayers with AGIs of $100,000 and $10,500 in medical expenses is that they could have claimed a $3,000 deduction in 2012, but only $500 last year. The increased threshold doesn’t apply if either the taxpayer or spouse turns 65 before the end of years 2013 to 2016. The exemption is rescinded in 2017. For purposes of the Alternative Minimum Tax, medical expenses are deductible only if costs exceed 10 percent of AGI. The healthcare act doesn’t change treatment of the alternative minimum tax (AMT). (ii) The employee portion of the Medicare tax on wages is increased by 0.9 percent on wages in excess of $250,000/$125,000/$200,000 for married people filing jointly, or separately, or singles. The so-called FICA Tax comprises a Social Security tax equal to 6.2 percent of wages up to the taxable wage base ($113,700 last year) and a Medicare tax equal to 1.45 percent of all wages. Both employers and employees are subject to FICA tax. Under the ACA, the employee portion of the Medicare tax is increased by an additional tax of 0.9 percent on wages in excess of the threshold amounts noted above. But the additional tax is levied only when an individual’s wages pass the $200,000 mark. So an employee may be subject to extra withholding by earning more than $200,000 but not liable for the additional 0.9 percent tax because of a combined income with a spouse of less than $250,000. This person will receive a credit for the tax withheld. (iii) Taxpayers with a modified AGI of more than $250,000/$125,000/$200,000
for married people filing jointly or separately, or singles, are subject to a 3.8 percent Medicare Contribution Tax. Last year, the ACA imposed a new 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for higher income individuals. That income includes interest, dividends, annuities, realties and rents, and is taxed if modified AGI exceeds $250,000 for joint returns, $125,000 for married couples filing separately and $200,000 for singles. (iv) The excise tax for nonqualified payouts from a health savings account rose from 10 percent to 20 percent. (v) Those who receive subsidy or advance credits when buying insurance from an exchange must match the advance credit to the actual credit based on the actual income to determine whether any of the advance credit must be repaid or whether entitled to additional credits and file a tax return to reconcile income and advance credits. (vi) Insurance companies distinguish ACA coverages by ranking them according to their actuarial value—the percentage the carrier will pay before the insured must kick in. There are four coverage tiers or “metals:” platinum (highest), gold, silver and bronze. Someone covered by a platinum plan will have lower out-of-pocket costs that someone covered under a bronze plan. But the monthly premium for a platinum plan is much higher. (vii) Self-employed taxpayers able to deduct health insurance premiums are best served by enrolling in the premium metal plans. And just in case you just say the heck with ACA requirements and decide to skip insurance, I believe that the penalty for being uninsured in 2015 is the greater of $325 per person or two percent of household income. The maximum penalty for a family is $975. However, there are 33 separate exemptions from the penalty. n Rita Bhayani is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Management Accountant practicing at Pleasanton, CA and she protects the clients from the IRS. For more information log on to www.ritacpa.net.
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viewpoint
Ending the Sistah Wars By Anitha Chakravarthi
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t has been said before and it will be said again, but for those of you who missed it, women are their own worst enemies. Whilst I always had a niggling feeling that all was not great in the sisterhood, it was most apparent after I became a mother. The judgment, the snide comments, the comparisons came quick, laced with a film of superiority. Now, before the feminists chastise me for hating one of my own, let me state at the outset that I have great women in my life who have provided me support, guidance and great friendships. Now that I have provided a good American disclaimer, let me continue. Once we started announcing we were pregnant, at the socially acceptable 12 week mark, our family and friends shared our joy and excitement. People asked how the pregnancy was progressing and, given the constant morning sickness I was experiencing, I honestly replied: “Awful.” I added that I did not enjoy being pregnant. Now for those of you who are pregnant and feel this way, let me tell you this is not a socially acceptable answer. I was met with looks of “How could she say that?” or statements about the miracle of life. All that is great and wonderful, but between the constant vomiting for nine months, the incessant peeing, the leg cramps, the backaches and the extreme exhaustion, excuse me for not being in awe of the miracle of life. Instead of the judgment or the gloating (“Oh, I didn’t vomit once, I didn’t even know I was pregnant, I carried a 20 lb backpack and did a full marathon”), what would be appreciated is some understanding, or at a minimum, a sympathetic nodding of the head. There is often judgment passed on birth plans. Mine was rather simple: get my baby out safe, keep me alive, and when I can’t handle the pain, hit me with some good quality drugs! What I didn’t realize was there is a secret competition, with a huge prize given to mothers who have a natural delivery. If one had endured labor without drugs, then one had extreme boasting rights. Somehow, a natural birth experience without drugs was more valid than one that used medications for the alleviation of pain. Between you and me, there is no prize for pain, and, sadly, you don’t become mother of the year automatically! If that’s what 34 | INDIA CURRENTS |February 2015
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Wouldn’t it be nice if women could truly be happy for the success of their friends and stop the constant comparisons, the negativity, the jealousy and yes—the downright spitefulness. you want to experience, kudos to you. But please don’t judge the rest of us that walk into the hospital demanding a hit of epidural before we check in! In a time of extreme sleep deprivation and hormonal ups and downs, I would think fellow-mothers would be able to understand our plight the best. Of course, there are a lot of questions, and, as we all know, no right answers. What works for your child may not work for others. And as new mums, we need to make sure we are surrounded by girlfriends who simply tell us what may work and then tell us to trust our instinct and do what works for us. I was lucky enough to have one such person in my life. She listened to me cry, offered some helpful advice and then, after what she deemed was an acceptable period of wallowing, sternly told me in no uncertain terms to do what made my life easier. She assured me that it would all be ok. I think women somehow feel if they push
what they did onto someone else, it validates the choices they made. So many of my female friends have confided that in those early years, they have been shamed for not breastfeeding, breastfeeding too long, co-sleeping, letting their baby cry it out, picking up their baby too much, not picking up their baby ... I am sure we all have opinions on how a baby should be raised. But that’s all it is: our opinion. I am not sure how our opinion somehow got us a place on a judging panel! They say when a child is born, so is a guilty mother. Truer words have not been said. As a mum, I have played on both teams. Let me clarify. Six months working full-time followed by being a full-time mother, I have lived through the delights and perils, and sadly heard the slurs and unfair judgment calls of both sides. And to be completely honest, I too have judged without truly understanding! A life of a working mum is exhausting. I had to get out of the door with little or no sleep, look decent, sound intelligent at work, come home, squeeze in time with my daughter, do some household chores and all this while feeling a sense of guilt that I was not seeing my child enough. A life of a stay-at-home mum is exhausting. I must function on little to no sleep, have little to no adult interaction, deal with a crying baby or energetic toddler all day and deal with household chores, all while feeling a sense of guilt that I am not contributing financially or that I am not living up to my potential. As you can see, the common theme is guilt. Again, this is not a math problem with only one correct answer. Think of it as a pair of jeans. What might look great on someone else isn’t necessarily going to be as flattering on you. If working means you will be a better mother, then that’s what you need to do. This doesn’t mean that you don’t like your child or are abandoning your child. And being at home with your child doesn’t mean that you are one-dimensional or that you are not spending quality time with your child. What I know is every mother loves her child as much as you do yours and wants the best for the child. So let’s call a truce. How about we don’t pass judgment at the mum in the park who is on her phone? Maybe she needs a minute to herself because she has dealt with the children all day, or maybe she is checking
her email because she is on a tight deadline. Whatever it is, I am pretty sure it is none of your business. This lack of kinship between women isn’t limited just to the parenting arena. Having been part of the corporate world for a decade now, I have observed that women leaders fall into two distinct categories. There are women managers who push their female subordinates hard so any claims of partiality cannot be made. Then there are those managers who don’t take the time to cultivate and develop their female employees as they feel they too should pave the hard path to the top. Call me biased, but I have tried to stay away from female managers. Happenstance, however, proved me wrong. Take my female manager, for instance. On the outset, she may appear harsh. She pushes when she needs to, celebrates my victories, and chides me for my mistakes and above all, takes a personal interest in my life. I am sure no MBA curriculum would endorse her “unique management style,” but her retention rate suggests otherwise. Obviously, I wouldn’t tell my manager all of this; someone has to keep her grounded. But I do wish other women managers would see that humanizing their role doesn’t make them any less effective or efficient. Given everything women juggle, who best to motivate and understand the conundrum than another successful woman? Wouldn’t it be nice if women could truly be happy for the success of their friends and stop the constant comparisons, the negativity, the jealousy and yes—the downright spitefulness. As for me, I have decided to judge only unpleasant behavior and to surround myself with positive women. I understand now that we all have our ups and downs, and having a glass of wine and a few laughs with girlfriends makes everything better. Banding together as a sisterhood makes it so much easier to face the battle that is life! Having said all this, I am only too aware that it is human nature to judge – particularly about things we care immensely about. And so, when I find myself judging, which of course I do, I remind myself of what really matters. So to all the women reading this, I urge us all to collectively put down the hat of judgment, the cape of negativity and our veil of acidity and let bygones be bygones. Let us band together, to face the real enemy … cellulite of course. n Anitha Chakravarthi is a full-time mum, parttime tax specialist and a displaced Aussie finally getting used to the uniqueness of the Bay Area. She has proclaimed herself a foodie to justify her eating habits and a compulsory runner to balance out her food passion.
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not a tribute to Charlie Parker. It is a blissful udresh Mahanthappa has been devotion to a man who made so much posnamed “Alto Saxophonist of the sible.” He is referring to the fact that Parker Year,” many times over, by Downis considered a father of Bebop, the complex Beat’s International Critics Poll and by the jazz music from the 1940s. Jazz Journalists Association. He is also the There are parallels to Parker and Mahanrecipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artthappa’s lives as well. Each was around 12 ist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and when they were captivated by the sound of a New York Foundation for the Arts Feljazz; the former by the “new music” idols lowship. of his time such as Louis Armstrong. Of A great way to get to know him is his own first introduction to Parker’s music, through his latest album Bird Calls. Though Mahanthappa recalls, “I was blown away. I the press release claims that “Rudresh Mahcouldn’t believe the way he was playing, goranthappa has explored the music of his South geous with so much charisma and flying all Indian heritage and translated it through the over the horn. I think hearing Charlie Parker vocabulary of his own distinctive approach was what planted the first seeds of wanting to modern jazz,” his album has no discernto do this for the rest of my life. It was very ible South Indian flavor, in a good way. Unpowerful.” like jazz violinist Arun Ramamoorthy, whose Bird Calls also features a 20-year-old sounds are directly relatable to Karnatik trumpet prodigy called Adam O’Farrill. The music, Mahanthappa has channeled instead, effortless virtuosity reverberating between jazz master Charlie Parker into his sounds. O’Farrill and Mahanthappa can be heard in Most of the 13 tracks are inspired by spe“On The DL” inspired by Parker’s “Donna cific Parker numbers. Mahanthappa’s “GoLee.” The CD is interspersed by a series puram,” for example, is attributed to Parker’s of shorter birdcalls, solo, duo and group “Steeplechase.” Both comprise a repeated ruminative interpretations of the inspiration pattern of notes. However, Mahanthappa has music. the refrain echoing one instrument following You might wonder, “Why the title Bird the other, and shadowing the sequence till it Calls?” It is a play on Parker’s nickname, settles in to your senses. Parker, on the other “Bird,” or “Yardbird,” and of course the fact hand, had a less subtle approach in “Steeplethat he is calling out to jazz lovers of the Chase” with all the instruments playing it world, in his 95th birthday year. at once. The album’s “Talin is Thinking” is Bird Calls is available on February 10, based on “Parker’s Mood” but is more frenetContact: PARAMESWARAN 2015 on ACT Music. More info on ic. (Incidentally, the entire album is dedicated BABU Client: rudreshm.com and actmusic.com to Mahanthappa’s toddler son, Talin.) It is said that Parker’s music wasFax: both PDF babusmusic@gmail.com Priya Das is anor enthusiastic follower of world Please indicate any changes corrections fluid and harsh but the ethos of Bird Calls is music avidly tracks intersecting needed this proof, andande-mail/fax it back to us. points benot conflicted. It is simply an ode to on Parker’s tween folk, classical, jazz, and other genres. music. Admits Mahanthappa, “This album is
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films
Little Green Men By Aniruddh Chawda
PK. Director: Rajkumar Hirani. Players: Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Sanjay Dutt, Sushant Singh Rajput, Boman Irani, Saurabh Shukla. Music: Shantanu Moitra. Hindi with Eng. Sub-titles. Theatrical release (UTV)
A
amir Khan’s movies over the last five years (especially 3 Idiots and Dhoom 3) have set the box office ablaze both in India and in the diaspora markets of Europe, Middle East and North America. Along comes PK. At press time, this Christmas 2014 release had already demolished many records; the biggest global Indian movie ever, biggest domestic release in India’s history and biggest haul for a Hindi movie in just about every international market. In an extremely rare alignment of ginormous box office and valid social commentary, the Hirani-Khan vehicle PK, which is essentially a satire of mass religion, has become Exhibit A on the list of all-topics Indian ever since. A common stereotype of extraterrestrials is that of little green men with pointed ears, which is close enough. In PK, the arriving alien is short, bug-eyed, has off-white skin, baby-elephant sized ears (which might be doubling as interstellar satellite dishes for all we know) and is as naked as the day he was either born, hatched, or constructed in some intergalactic DNA cauldron. The naked visitor has no knowledge of Earth customs and through a series of gives (he loses a precious gizmo needed for him get back to his planet) and takes (he learns to steal clothing to end his naturist ways), the visitor becomes a surrogate for channeling how earthlings acquire knowledge, discriminate right from wrong and, perhaps most importantly, have prejudice, bigotry and xenophobia instilled in their world-view. A tall order indeed. Presumed to be DOA (drunk on arrival) by by-standers in the Rajasthan desert where the alien lands, the visitor is mistakenly christened “Peekay”—from the Hindi word for someone who is sloshed, PK for short. PK’s misadventures eventually lead to him 38 | INDIA CURRENTS |February 2015
crossing paths with Jagat Janani (Sharma), who goes by Jaggu, a TV reporter trying to re-connect with her lost love Sarfraz Yousuf (Rajput), a Pakistani student she fell in love with while studying in Belgium. To find his lost intergalactic beacon, to help Jaggu get in touch with Sarfraz and overcome the double-whammy taboos of an India-Pakistan romantic alliance juxtaposed over a Hindu-Muslim relationship, PK must first confront Tapasvi Maharaj (Shukla), a Hindu TV religion guru who makes a cushy living filling his coffers by exploiting Islamophobia amongst his vast audience. Khan is cast perfectly as the awkward, bumbling, new-to-everything and yet allknowing otherworldly humanoid. For support, Khan has Dutt as a traveling troubadour who befriends PK, Shukla as the hate-spewing TV so-called god-man, and also Sharma and Rajput along with Irani as Cherry Bajwa, a TV media captain (and Jaggu’s boss) who has a personal grudge to settle with the TV guru. It is smartly scripted and follows a generous comic dose of
coming-of-Earth-age transgressions boosted by a four-star cameo as the camera is about to pull away at the end. Backing up to the mega-charting box office for PK, it is the first Indian movie to gross $100 million globally (on a $13 million budget), a profoundly unheard of figure considering the vastly smaller economies of scale in India compared to Hollywood. Disney, which acquired India’s huge UTV studio in 2011, no doubt has to be very pleased. With such mega-buzz in its wake, the movie’s release was not without controversy. In India, some conservative groups asked India’s Supreme Court to block the release on grounds that the script is insulting to, amongst other things, the traditional Hindu veneration for cows. The request was turned down. This cleared safe passage for a (mostly) uninterrupted 4,800-screen domestic release in India along with international rollout that included 300 screens in North America, 75 screens in Surinam (in comparison, James Cameron’s Avatar released on 65 screens in that small South American nation) and a record-setting 70 screens in Pakistan. With his Munnabhai installments, Hirani already has the third highest franchise box-office haul, behind only Yashraj’s Dhoom movies and Rakesh Roshan/Hrithik Roshan’s Krrish series. Now he also has the biggest Indian blockbuster of all time. On terra firma, we are rooting for PK’s E.T. to locate his interstellar phone so he can call home. PK is as much satire as it is fantasy clamoring for a one-world, nay, a oneuniverse outlook. Brilliantly devised spaceships aside, in the PK alternate reality, India and Pakistan are diplomatic BFFs and phone calls to the embassy are answered at the first ring by an all-wise voice that knows everything about anything. While PK is not the greatest movie in recent times, it is certainly a transformative moment captured, albeit sophomorically, in the anti-glow of today’s biggest headlines—which in turn harken to the clash of cultures within the human family. EQ: A
Brother, Brother TEVAR. Director: Amit Sharma. Players: Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Manoj Bajpai, Raj Babbar, Rajesh Sharma, Subrat Dutta. Music: Sajid-Wajid. Hindi with Eng. Sub-tit. Theatrical release (Eros)
O
f the dozens of Hindi movies that are remakes of titles originally made in South India, only a handful truly stand out. Dilip Kumar in Ram Aur Shyam (1968), Akshay Kumar in Bhul Bhullaiya (2007), Amir Khan in Ghajini (2008) and Ajay Devgan in Singham (2010) are on the short list of decent-to-wonderful intra-Indian entries. Outside of Salman Khan movies that are also re-makes (Wanted, Ready, Body Guard), most of the remakes are not even box office hits. That, however, does not the stem the traffic flow. By that measurement, and depending entirely on perspective, the fair to middling entry Tevar, a remake the 2003 Telugu hit Okkadu, can be called a modest success. Political corruption is the sin that keeps on giving for script-writers. The slippery slope of the fall from political grace has case in point two bigwig brothers turfed out somewhere in the New Delhi hinterland. Mahendar Singh (Sharma), the older brother, is a rule-bending state minister. Compared to his younger brother Gajendar Singh (Bajpai), however, Mahendar is a model politician. Gajendar is notoriously lecherous, ill-tempered and lives to pilfer nice things by flaunting his older brother’s long, dirty-handed reach. One nice thing Gajendar spots, and of course must have, is the college student Radhika (Sinha). Gajendar will go to extreme ends to force Radhika’s hand in marriage. On the other side of town, meanwhile, the local kabaddi champion and likeable slouch Pintoo (Kapoor), while out playing hooky, spots Gajendar abusing Radhika and comes to her rescue. This only invites a hyper-violent chase by Gajendar and his goons. And the game is afoot. The rare use of kabaddi as a channel for physical contact and show of strength is in itself noteworthy. The South Asian field sport of kabaddi falls at the intersection of a tug of war pitting one player who chants “kabaddi kabaddi kabaddi” non-stop against an entire opposing team and wrestling while either
rushing, dragging or being dragged by the opponents to the finish line. Kabaddi is also the national sport of Bangladesh and Nepal and the state sport for several Indian states including Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Maharashtra and Bihar. As popular as this sport is at the local level, it gets outmuscled by cricket, which carries more political weight and bigger TV draws. The most famous Hindi movie scene featuring kabaddi framed Dilip Kumar winning at the sport at a village joust in an exciting scene in Gunga Jumna, all the way back in 1964. In Tevar, kabaddi soon gives way to cross-country chase scenes by foot, motorcycle, rickshaw and trucks. The chase scenes are deftly handled and actually fun to watch. The cat and mouse posturing is balanced by plausible will-they-won’t-they bureaucratic involvement by the local cops, led by police chief Shukla (Babbar), who also happens to be Pintoo’s father. Kapoor and Sinha make good as possible lovers on the lam. A pleasant surprise is newcomer Dutta, who plays a pivotal role as the stakes mount. Even though newbie director Sharma has ample resources, thanks to producer Boney Kapoor, who is also Arjun Kapoor’s father, a sizable chunk of the budget is, alas, spent on showcasing a handful of songs that are energetic, club-centric and yet not all that appealing. A more compact soundtrack, lesser reliance on English language phrases in Hindi language songs and better dance choreography would have surely boosted Tevar’s box-office. The real treat, however, is Bajpai as a petulant man-child that will just not learn to get along. Bajpai’s Gajendar spends about thirty minutes of screen time in nothing but bony knees and boxer shorts—the former to showcase his humble roots and the later as an act of defiance for being either beaten up or outfoxed by Pintoo once too often. Coupled
with Bajpai’s semi-nude outdoor bathing scenes in the epic Gangs of Wasseypur, the heavy-hitting 2012 entry that finally got its North American big-screen release recently, Bajpai can be anointed as something of a middle-aged sex-symbol. And like he did with Gangs of Wasseypur, Bajpai’s wily, amoral and so-well-acted villain once again makes it the sole reason to see the movie. EQ: BGlobe trekker, aesthete, photographer, ski bum, film buff, and commentator, Aniruddh Chawda writes from Milwaukee.
L ATA’S
FLICK PICKS
Alone nding Happy E er Haid a ga in L r Mr. Riight Main Au PK Easy Take It Tevar Ugly Ungli
February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 39
India Currents Remembers
A TITAN Kathak Maestro Extraordinaire
PANDIT CHITRESH DAS His legacy lives on...
“ All of us at IC are deeply saddened by his passing; the world of dance has lost an icon. We will miss you Chitresh- ji.” — Vandana Kumar
40 | INDIA CURRENTS |February 2015
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What to Avoid When Flirting with Guys By Jasbina Ahluwalia My friends tell me I don’t know how to flirt with guys at all, and I think they’re probably right. Any tips?
A
You are not alone. Here are five “don’ts” to watch out for. Don’t stare too much While making eye contact with a man is an important part of getting him to realize you’re interested, you’ll want to be careful not to take it too far. As a general rule, you should lock eyes with a guy for no more than five seconds at a time (and trust us, those five seconds can go by painfully slow when flirting doesn’t come naturally to you). Anything more than that, though, could be perceived as creepy rather than sexy. Remember: the goal is to show your confidence through eye contact, not to intimidate the poor guy. Don’t only talk about yourself Sure, awkward silences in your conversation can be, well ... awkward. But one of the worst things you can do is to try to nervously fill those silences by talking about yourself.
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same way you’d want him to respect yours-Instead, turn the focus on him. Ask him especially if you’ve just met. questions about his interests. Just be careful Don’t talk about your Exes not to ask too many questions to the point Okay, this is probably one of the absolute that he feels like you’re interviewing or grillworst mistakes you can make when trying ing him. to flirt with a guy. Under no circumstances Don’t come on too strong does another man want to hear about your Finding a balance while flirting can be exes—even if you’re comparing them to him difficult. You want the guy to know you’re in a good way. You wouldn’t want to hear interested, but you don’t want to come on about his exes, would you? too strong. Doing so could either scare him Keep the conversation on anything but off or lead him to believe that you’re only in your past romances; that’s a topic you can it for a one-night stand or casual encounter. revisit if and when the two of you eventuIf that doesn’t apply to you, be careful about ally become more serious and enter into a what you say or how clingy you are. committed relationship. Right now, focus Don’t be too touchy-feely on him! You wouldn’t want a guy walking up Have fun! n to you and assuming he has permission to touch you, right? Believe it or Kathak not, many Kala Academy guys feel the same way about their personal Jasbina is the founder and president of Intersecwww.mykathak.com space. Sure, a brief touch on the arm or a tions Match, the only personalized matchmakbrush of the hand can be a great way to show ing and dating coaching firm serving singles of a guy you’re interested, but you don’t want South Asian descent in the United States. She to insult him by taking it too far. Respect is also the host of Intersections Talk Radio. his boundaries and personal space in the Jasbina@intersectionsmatch.com.
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44 | INDIA CURRENTS |February 2015
commentary
Well Then, Where Is Your Home? Migration, assimilation and cultural differences By Jessica Faleiro
W
hen someone asks you “Where is home?” do you feel a familiar niggle of frustration? Do you feel the ground start to shift under your feet and do you switch into the pre-prepared, automated answer that you’ve learned to drone out the second you hear this question? Indeed, you’ve learned to anticipate this question when among a group of strangers at a party, or when you’ve just been introduced to a new colleague at work, or in the coffee room desperate for a caffeine fix when you’re quick to answer without seeming too vague for other coffee-loving co-workers to think: Weirdo! If you’ve lived outside of your parents’ place of birth, which in my case is India, during the developmental years of your life (basically from birth to age 18), then your values, beliefs and culture are sometimes completely outside your parents’ frame of reference. Have I blown your mind? Finally, I felt relieved and validated after reading Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. After thirty-something years of being on this planet, I found a label that actually seemed to fit me. Over the years, I’ve collected: Catholic, Goan, Indian, Woman as the labels I accepted as part of who I am and which feed my writing. But there’s always been an unexplained niggle that eluded me until I read this book. To elucidate, I was born in Goa, and was raised in Kuwait from the age of two months to fourteen years. I was displaced back to Goa during the Gulf War of 1990 and spent ten months there. Then two years in Bombay before moving to the United States, where I lived for two and a half years and then on to England, where I lived for sixteen years. I’m back in Goa and have been here for the last few months to focus on writing my second novel. But I’m still living as if I’ve got one foot out the door. That’s been the one constant feeling that’s never changed. When I was in my late teens, I recall visiting Goa during a summer break from the university I was studying at in the United States and my uncle saying: “Welcome home!” I still recall my visible recoil as I struggled within myself to accommodate
the word “home” with the place “Goa.” I felt compelled to respond: “This isn’t my home.” My father was present during the conversation and countered with, “Isn’t this your home? Well then, where is your home? We’re here. You have a room here. You’re from here.” His statement seemed ridiculous to me, but I didn’t say anything at the time. To my father, home was where his family was and where he and my mother were from. As the fruit of their loins I was, by default, from Goa too. I didn’t have a clear answer to give him, all I had was a deep source of conflict within me that I became aware of for the first time and tried to live with for close to fifteen years after that. Yes, I am a Third Culture Kid (TCK). Third Culture Kids carry unresolved grief linked to their inability to connect with their parents’ cultural expectations of them. My parents’ heritage felt like something foreign to me. Their values, beliefs and expectations are still something that I feel extremely distant from and have to expend a lot of energy resisting as they continue to dump them on me. My parents’ heritage will always feel like an adopted heritage, forcibly tacked onto me, someone who is at a loss to understand what “culture” I belong to and what community I fit into. This is because, unlike my parents, I grew up in a multi-cultural world where I learned to negotiate differences between languages, religions, values and beliefs at a very young age. On the positive side, this may be one of the greatest gifts TCKs have to offer in our changing, diverse, growing multi-cultural worlds—the demonstration of how to live in a world moving past old stereotypes, boundaries and prejudices; meeting people as individuals and building relationships with them based on areas of commonality instead of differences. Adaptation is the norm for a young TCK and so is the concept of mobility. Going back “home” to a parent’s place of birth for holidays, visiting extended family and grandparents rather than growing up with them adds to the sense of alienation from the parent’s cultural expectations.
I remember my mother once chastising me because my grandmother had told her off for not teaching me to be more docile and submissive. I must have been about ten years old then and I laughed out aloud until I realized my mother wasn’t joking. The thought of being submissive was abhorrent to me, even at that age. It was only later that I realized that I wasn’t being considered an individual. I was being shackled to some pre-determined set of rules for my gender that were foreign to my way of thinking, based on my own experiences of the world. I knew I was independent, had a voice of my own, and would lead a highly mobile life, limited only by immigration authorities in my movements globally. The expectation to be someone I wasn’t is laughable to me and I feel empowered at the realization that I could move away from the life of unrealistic expectations and towards a life lived on my own terms, based on my unique perception of the world. Some TCKs spend a lifetime thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” only to discover that they’ve lived a normal life after all— only, it’s what constitutes normal for a TCK. Many TCKs develop a “migratory instinct” that controls their lives. Along with a sense of chronic rootlessness is a feeling of restlessness. They learn to live with an unrealistic attachment to their past or a persistent expectation that the next place will finally become “home” leading to the restlessness that keeps the TCK perpetually on the move. I must confess that after over thirty years of moving around, there is no place that feels like home in the sense my father understood. Perhaps what TCKs bring to the world is a new definition of home, not as a place or where the heart is, but of being on earth and being human. Home is inside my own humanity, and that’s good enough for me. n Jessica Faleiro is a novelist, travel writer and blogger. She has a masters in creative writing from Kingston University, United Kingdom and blogs at: www.theviewfrommybalcony.wordpress. com and www.jessicafaleiro.wordpress.com. Afterlife: Ghost stories from Goa is her first novel (Rupa publications, 2012) February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 45
events FEBRUARY
California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE! MARCH issue deadline: Friday, Febuary 20, To list your event in the Calendar, go to www.indiacurrents.com and click on List Your Event
Check us out on
special dates Presidents Day Maha Shivaratri
Feb. 16
Feb. 17
Ash Wednesday
Feb. 18
Holi
March 6
CULTURAL CALENDER
February
6 Friday
Club Bollywood with DJ Nasha.
Organized by Radio5 Events. 10 p.m. Los Globos, 3040 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. $10$25. (323) 205-5594.
Ramayan Musical Drama With Dance In Hindi. Organized by Trisha
Entertainment. 7:30 p.m. Joan B. Kroc Theatre, 6601 University Ave., San Diego. $35, $30, $25. (310) 753-8990, (562) 860-1135.
February
7 Saturday
Roshni Cricket 2015. Tennis ball cricket tournament with attractive prizes. Man of the match awards, best batsmen and bowler 46 | INDIA CURRENTS |February 2015
Club Bollywood dance with DJ Nasha, Feb. 6
awards for each match will be counted. Medals for each individual players for winner and runners team. Organized by Sankara Eye Foundation. 7 a.m. Rancho Santa Susana Community Park, 5005 C E Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley. $360. (310) 9201863. anandsaidba@gmail.com, ventakeshanupama@yahoo.com. www.giftofvision.org.
Music Concert. Aruna Narayan on
sarangi and Vineet Vyas on tabla. Organized by The Music Circle. 6 p.m. Herrick Chapel, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles. $35 General, $25 basic members, free sustaining members, $5 children, $5 students w/ID. (626) 449-6987. www.musiccircle.org.
Ektaa Fest 2015. Food fest, art and craft
E
Ektaa Fest 2015
ktaa Center celebrates its 10th anniversary with Ektaa Fest 2015, a fitting tribute to showcase the work of the many talented teachers and diverse communities that make up the Indian diaspora in Southern California. A food fest, art and craft bazaar and performances promise a unique cultural experience. “Keeping with the spirit of Ektaa or unity, this production brings together on one stage, some of the diverse art forms and cultural practices that have been an integral part of the Indian Psyche and the diaspora,” says Harish Murthy, Executive Director of the Ektaa Center. Ektaa is the first and only center in Southern California dedicated to the arts and culture of India. Based in Irvine, the center serves the community with
classes, events and activities that promote an awareness and understanding of India’s rich and diverse artistic and cultural heritage. Featuring: Adaa Indian and Bollywood Dance Academy, Arpana School of Dance, Dhwani Academy of Percussion Music, GS Arts Academy, Kannada Kali, Mumbai Madness, NDM Bollywood Dance Productions and Studios Inc, Hityashetra Dance School, Prance and Dance Academy, Punjabi Community Center, Sundar Kala Kendra Kathak Dance School, Sur Academy. n
Saturday, February 7. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Food Fest and Bazaar: 4:30-6:30pm (lobby and outdoor plaza). Cultural Performance: 7 p.m. harish@ektaacenter.org. (949) 300-8912. www.ektaacenter. org. Tickets: $43, $33, $23.
Lounge, 7850 Beach Blvd., Buena Park. $60. (562) 869-9009.
March
6 Friday
Imran Khan Live in Concert. Organized by Radio5 Events. Cashmere, 6757 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. $25. (323) 205-5594.
A Convention on Indian Americans Making an Impact in America. Ends
March 8. Organized by National Federation of Indian American Association (NFIA). Sheraton Hotel, 12725 Center Court Drive, Cerritos.$150. www.nfia.net.
March
8 Sunday
2nd Annual Chalo! Bhago! Jeeyo!.
South Asian Network’s (SAN) annual walk/ run where approximately 500 men, women and children will help unite the community, encourage physical fitness and healthy
bazaar and performances promise a unique cultural experience. Organized by Ektaa. 4:30-6:30 p.m. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $43, $33, $23. (949) 300-8912. harish@ektaacenter.org. www. ektaacenter.org.
A Melodic Stride of Ragas Through Film and Ghazal. Vocal performance
by Subhapriya Srivatsan accompanied by V.Venkatesan (keyboard), Ravi Gutala (tabla), Lavanya and Keshavan (violin) and Kaushik (flute). Organized by Kalanjali. 7 p.m. Rameshwaram Main Hall, Chinmaya Mission LA, 14451 Franklin Ave., Tustin. Free, registration required. www.kalanjali.info, www.chinmayala.org.
Ramayan Musical Drama With Dance In Hindi. Organized by Trisha
Entertainment. 7 p.m. Jordon High School Auditorium, 6500 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach. $25-$90. (949) 466-5220. ruchi_lamba@ hotmail.com.
February
8 Sunday
Ramayan Musical Drama With Dance In Hindi. Organized by Ruchi Lamba, India Dance Center. 7 p.m. Co-
rona Civic Center Auditorium, 815 E 6th St., Corona. $35, $30, $25. (949) 466-5220.
February
14 Saturday
Aruna Narayan in concert, Feb. 7
Valentine Dinner and Dance. With Amit Anand. Organized by Qusro Patel.
7 p.m. Tangy Tomato Banquet Hall, 18792 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia. $50, VIP $100. (562) 860-1135, (714) 397-7224. www.synxevents. com.
February
21 Saturday
Pyar Ka Mausam—Valentine Dinner and Dance. With singing duo Preetysha
and Sameer. Dinner included. 7 p.m. Amaya
lifestyles as well as help raise SAN’s visibility in Southern California. Organized by South Asian Network. 8-11 a.m. Cerritos Regional Park, 19700 S. Bloomfield Ave., Cerritos. By February 22, $20 (walkers and runners), Free, kids 4-14. March 3 - 8, $30 (walkers and runners), $10 Kids 4-14. (562) 403-0488. humna@southasiannetwork.com. sanwalkrunlive2.eventbrite.com, www.southasiannetwork. org, facebook.com/southasiannetwork. © Copyright 2014 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited. February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 47
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science
Shortfalls of Science By P. Mahadevan
S
cience, at its present stage of development, in methodology and tools, may not be adequate to explain several baffling phenomena.
Science and Soul
The mind and the soul are not physically identifiable entities of the human anatomy. They are merely hypothetical parking sites for brain functions. They are however frequently referred to in comments such as: mind boggling, mind’s eye, soul searching, and more. They cease to function at death. Most of us, across the spectra of religions, are led to believe, by faith, that the soul leaves the body mysteriously into an ill-defined environment from which it may be sent back into another body or perpetually released from the cycle of life and death. In the scenarios referred to as comatose condition, dementia or even anesthesia including near death experience (NDE) and out of body experience (OBE), the brain function is impaired, but not dead. When blood circulation through the brain ceases, with no chance whatever of restoration, the system is dead. The memory bank of the individual turns completely blank. No means whatever to recover any of the information content exists in this condition. Nor has the soul got any sensory perception capability. If this is the moment in which the hypothetical soul leaves its housing, viz the body, it leaves with no information because the reservoir of the information pack is empty.
The Soul and One
It is inaccurate to imagine, therefore, that the soul, or jeeva atman, of some person is floating around awaiting its next assignment in another new born. The identity of the released soul is erased. This is inconsistent with the basic tenet of the Bhagavad Gita, wherein the Sarathy (one with a chariot—Krishna) persuades Partha (son of Kunti—Arjuna) to believe that there is no sin in killing his cousins and uncle because only the evil aspect of these individuals is destroyed in battle. The pristine segment survives? Atman (self) is variously described in annotations as other than the known and beyond the unknown; basis of atman is reality, permanence and bliss; formless, eternal
and infinite. In contrast, consider the three blind Frenchman, in folklore, who went to “see” an elephant. They were more precise, relatively speaking. It is flat, said one. It is rough, said another and it stinks, said the third. All were right, at least partially. This point is elegantly expressed by poet, Vijay Seshadri, the Pulitzer prize winner for English poetry (2014) in the first poem of his collection: “The 3 Sections.” “The soul, like the square root of minus one, is an impossibility that has its uses.”
An Illusion?
What is the use of this illusory idea? In the realm of the divine, it serves as a link to the body. The immortal soul is a difficult concept to comprehend, interpret, or defend. It would be non-controversial to state that nobody has been able to correlate a soul, in transition from one body to another or even released from bondage, with a particular host body. The conceptual soul, is delinked from anything real at the time of death of the host. This makes it impossible to perform any function, such as even finding the ParamAtman (God). The imaginary group of seven chiranjeevees (immortals) in our epics, such as Mahabali or Parasurama, therefore, are endowed with their body and embedded souls always to circumvent this discomfiture. Everything we have been led to believe out of faith, cannot be dismissed as invalid due to inconsistency with the science of today. During the previous seven decades, science and technology have advanced by leaps and bounds. Space exploration, including moon landing, Hubble telescope, lasers, the personal computer, safe air travel, angioplasty, and numerous miracle drugs for heart and other diseases are some of the noteworthy.
Science, Moods and Emotions
Science, by itself, at its present level of development is yet unable to explain many facets of life we accept for granted. There are many examples. We cannot analyze, scientifically, our moods, called the Nava Rasas: sensuality, heroism, empathy, contempt, fierceness, awe inspiration, fiend-
ishness, surprise and calmness? So too, our emotions: amorous desire, anger, jealousy, greed, pride and unhealthy competition. We have felt or seen all these in the normal course of events every day. Even children go through some of these. Other inaccessible phenomena for science at present are: destiny or fate, dreams, para-normal phenomena, telepathy and more.
Science Foreshadowed
The link, if any, between para-normal activity and brain waves is an unknown. Surprisingly however, the Hindu epics foreshadowed very many of these miracles and applications. To name a few: the Pushpaka Viman for air travel with solar power, pilotless navigation and voice or face recognition for commands is mentioned during the era of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata many times. Lord Siva’s emitting eye is the forerunner of the modern laser—in the 1980s two massive laser systems were built in one of the defense research facilities in California, not surprisingly named SIVA I and SIVA II. At the present time, it is enigmatic even to attempt to figure out why we humans are trying, knowingly or otherwise, to develop equivalent systems for war with the aid of modern science and engineering. We all belong together anyway. Each one of us, homo-sapiens, has received the greatest gift of all, the infinite capacity system known as the Brain. Progressive evolution of life forms into the ultimate form of humans has taken place. With my judgmental limitations, it would be preposterous to cede, at this time, to science only on these issues. We face a phenomenally baffling conundrum. n I acknowledge the benefit of discussions with Dr. T.V. Krishnamurthy, Costa Mesa, CA and Smt. Ranjini Iyengar, Fullerton, CA in drafting the above manuscript. P. Mahadevan is a retired scientist with a Ph.D. in Atomic Physics from the University of London, England. His professional work includes basic and applied research and program management for the Dept. of Defense. He taught Physics at the Univ. of Kerala, at Thiruvananthapuram. He does very little now, very slowly. February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 49
ciple, Swami Kriyananda. After service, there
SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH is time for fellowship and light refreshments
February
1 Sunday
God’s Vital Laws of Health and Well-Being. Sunday Service. Lake Shrine
Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www. yogananda-srf.org.
Sunday Service at Ananada Los Angeles. 10 a.m. Purification and Fire Cer-
emony. 11 a.m. Service. Sunday Service is a special time to gather with like-minded souls for spiritual upliftment and fellowship. The service includes music, chanting, meditation, affirmation, and an inspirational talk drawn from the universal teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda. After service, there is time for fellowship and light refreshments are provided. Ananda Meditation Center South Bay, 3774 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance. (310) 779-9131. http://www. anandasouthbay.org.
February
8 Sunday
Living the Spiritual Life in a Material World. Sunday Service. Lake Shrine
Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www. yogananda-srf.org.
Sunday Service at Ananada Los Angeles. 10 a.m. Purification and Fire Cer-
emony. 11 a.m. Service. Sunday Service is a special time to gather with like-minded souls for spiritual upliftment and fellowship. The service includes music, chanting, meditation, affirmation, and an inspirational talk drawn from the universal teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and his direct dis50 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
are provided. Ananda LoveLight Center, 10524 W. Pico Blvd. #214-215, Los Angeles. (310) 779-9131. https://www.anandala.org/ venue/ananda-lovelight-center.
February
15 Sunday
True Religion: A Universal Need.
Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
Sunday Service at Ananada Los Angeles. 10 a.m. Purification and Fire Ceremony.
11 a.m. Service. Sunday Service is a special time to gather with like-minded souls for spiritual upliftment and fellowship. The service includes music, chanting, meditation, affirmation, and an inspirational talk drawn from the universal teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda. After service, there is time for fellowship and light refreshments are provided. Ananda Meditation Center South Bay, 3774 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance. (310) 779-9131. http://www.anandasouthbay. org.
February
22 Sunday
The Way to Be Happy at Will. Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org. Sunday Service at Ananada Los Angeles. 10 a.m. Purification and Fire Ceremony.
11 a.m. Service. Sunday Service is a special time to gather with like-minded souls for spiritual upliftment and fellowship. The service includes music, chanting, meditation, affirmation, and an inspirational
talk drawn from the universal teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda. After service, there is time for fellowship and light refreshments are provided. Ananda LoveLight Center, 10524 W. Pico Blvd. #214-215, Los Angeles. (310) 779-9131. https://www.anandala.org/ venue/ananda-lovelight-center.
March
1 Sunday
Expanding Your Awareness of God.
Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf. org.
March
8 Sunday
Regain Your Divine Heritage. Sunday
Service. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 543-0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 5251291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 2950170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.
Check out India Currents’ calendar online at www.IndiaCurents .com © Copyright 2014 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited.
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healthy life
Are We Aging Faster? By Ronesh Sinha
O
ur modern lifestyles have turned chronological age into a virtually insignificant number. Aging is not just the number of years you’ve inhabited planet Earth, but rather the degree of wear and tear your body, brain, and vital organs are expressing at a given point in time. When I came out of medical training and started practicing in Southern California, I could easily estimate how old my patients were by looking at them since many of them were working jobs involving physical labor, often outdoors. In fact when we are taught to do physical exams, one of the first things we report is whether patients appear their stated age. For example, “Mr. Smith appeared older than his stated age.” When I moved up to Silicon Valley to start caring for a mostly sedentary, high-tech workforce, I lost the ability to estimate a patient’s age and often would not even come close, being off by a decade. Yes, 30-year-old engineers looked like they were pushing 40. It wasn’t just the fact that they were overweight. It was their posture, their skin, and their facial expression which lost much of its ageappropriate youthfulness. As I looked at the literature on aging in the context of our current lifestyles, I realized I wasn’t imagining things. I was witnessing an epidemic of accelerated aging in my patients.
Measuring Age: It’s All About Your Genes
A better way to estimate your true health age is to analyze your genetic code or DNA. If your body were a smartphone, the apps and programs are the proteins that run all the basic functions that help your body survive and thrive. Just like writing computer code produces apps for your phone, your DNA or genetic code produces proteins for your body. One particular bit of DNA code may produce a muscle protein, while another code produces a protein for skin elasticity and so on. However having the specific gene doesn’t guarantee that the protein will be built. This is where DNA methylation comes in. There are chemical molecules called methyl groups that attach to your DNA in 52 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
very specific patterns. These patterns determine whether your genetic code will turn on or turn off production of a specific protein or process. Scientists can read these DNAmethylation patterns (aka “epigenetic clock” or “DNA methylation age”) to accurately estimate your age without any additional information about you. Why am I going into so much detail about DNA methylation? Chronological age is something we have no control over, but our DNA methylation age is something we can influence through our environmental exposures and behaviors. Also tied to DNA methylation is the health of our telomeres. Our genes are packaged into structures called chromosomes and at the tips of these chromosomes are structures called telomeres. When your telomeres are healthy, your cells divide normally, meaning your body’s tissues renew and regenerate properly. When telomeres start wearing away, cells are no longer dividing properly and your body starts exhibiting signs of internal and external aging. My patients who were 40 but looked like they were 50 was not my mind playing tricks on me. If we were to look at their DNA methylation age and the health of their telomeres, their biological age would be closer to 50. Everything from their skin down
to their bones, joints, and vital inner organs have functionally aged a decade more than their chronological age. On the other hand, I have some remarkably healthy patients who look 10 years younger than their age with fit bodies, supple joints, smooth skin and that youthful glow we all envy. Their genetic age defies their chronological age
Four Major Age Accelerators
Now that you understand the importance of DNA methylation and the health of your telomeres as a better marker for biological age, let’s discuss the four major age accelerators, a major focus of my book. Each of these factors can be modified to slow down the aging process. 1. Poor nutrition: Those methyl groups we discussed that influence gene expression are actually made directly from the nutrients you eat, such as folate from green vegetables. A nutrient-rich diet with a diversity of plants, healthy proteins and high quality, healthy fats actually feed and nourish your genes which not only manifest in optimal health for you, but also allow you to pass these pristine genes to your children and grandchildren. Most of the patients I see in my clinic are eating highly nutrient-deficient diets that
are starving their genes and contributing to accelerated aging. The other major dietary culprit behind accelerated aging is an abundance of glucose. Excess carbohydrate intake (sugar, starches and even whole grains) can damage your proteins by binding directly to form substances called advanced glycated end products, also known appropriately as “AGEs.” Back to our smartphone analogy, even if your genetic code is clean and has produced the right protein or “App,” excess glucose, like a bad software virus, can bind to your protein Apps and cause them to malfunction. So micronutrient deficiencies can disable your genes from producing the right proteins needed for optimal health, while excess glucose from too much sugar and carbohydrates can damage proteins directly. 2. Inactivity: A study done in over 2,000 identical twins that carry the same genetic material showed that the more active twins had longer, healthier telomeres than their genetically identical siblings. (http://www.edinformatics.com/news/exercise_and_aging.htm). The most active twins had genes that appeared 9 years younger than their inactive siblings. So genes are not immutable and can be influenced by behaviors such as exercise, which promotes anti-aging and prevents chronic disease. 3. Stress: A 2004 study (http://www.
2015
pnas.org/content/101/49/17312.long) comparing the telomeres of a group of age-matched mothers with healthy children versus mothers who cared for children with a chronic illness (high chronic stress group) showed shorter, unhealthier telomeres in the mothers caring for the sick children. Despite being the same chronological age, the mothers of the ill children genetically looked almost a decade older. Chronic stress promotes inflammation and oxidative damage that is inflicted upon DNA, which increases disease risk and accelerates aging. 4. Low vitamin D: Vitamin D appears to be involved in the process of DNA methylation, promoting telomere length, and in reducing chronic inflammation, all processes critical for halting accelerated aging. Does this mean taking vitamin D supplements is a proven anti-aging strategy? This has not been proven, but getting natural doses of vitamin D with safe sun exposure and physician supervised supplementation based on your blood levels appears to be a reasonable strategy.
the patients I see in my clinic are sedentary Silicon Valley workers who have all four major age accelerators. They are eating a nutrient deficient and glucose abundant diet, they are completely inactive, they are experiencing high stress and most are significantly vitamin D deficient due to work lives and personal lives confined predominantly to indoor, sundeprived spaces. Their spines are arthritic and their arteries are becoming blocked with heart-attack causing plaques in their third or fourth decade of life. Formerly known as “diseases of aging,” these conditions are presenting early in life. Even more startling is seeing the effects of these age accelerators on today’s children, who are suffering from conditions like adult onset diabetes, obesity, and fatty liver. If you are planning to have children, realize that future fathers and mothers who are leading unhealthy lives may be passing their sick genes onto their children and grandchildren, increasing their risk of obesity and chronic disease. Your lifestyle decisions are no longer just about you, but can shape the health of future generations. n
How Fast Are We Aging?
Ronesh Sinha, M.D. is a physician for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation who sees high risk South Asian patients, he blogs at southasianhealthsolution.org, and co-hosts a South Asian radio show on health.
Back to my original question stated in the title “Are we aging too fast?” Hopefully I’ve convinced you that the answer in our modern world is a resounding yes. Most of
Fe s t i v a l
Calendar
New Year’s Day
Jan. 1
Easter
April 5
Mahatma Gandhi’s B’day
Oct. 2
Guru Govind’s B'day
Jan. 5
Baisakhi
Makara Sankranti
Jan. 14
Tamil New Year
April 14
Navaratri
Oct. 13-21
April 14
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Oct. 22
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Jan. 16
Buddha Purnima
May 3
Sharad Purnima
Oct. 26
M.L. King Jr. Day
Jan. 19
Mother’s Day
May 10
Karva Chauth
Oct. 29
India’s Republic Day Saraswati Puja
Jan. 26
Memorial Day
June 21
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Nov. 8
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Father’s Day
June 15
Diwali
Nov. 11
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Jan 24
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June 18
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Nov. 12
Presidents Day
Feb. 16
Ratha Yatra
July 17
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Nov. 25
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March 6
Guru Purnima
July 31
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Nov. 26
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April 12
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Aug. 15
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March 21
Onam
Aug. 28
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March 21
Raksha Bandhan
Aug. 29
Ramanavami
March 28
Krishna Janamashtami
Sept. 5
Mahavir Jayanti
April 2
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Sept. 17
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April 3
Labor Day
Sept. 7
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April 3
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perspective
Let’s Talk About Death, Baby By Ranjani Iyer Mohanty
T
he first time I saw a dead body was when I was 20 years old and in my anatomy lab at university. Many of us are sheltered from death during our childhood and don’t give it much thought during adulthood either, unless and until we are unavoidably faced with it. But now that baby-boomers are fast becoming baby-busters, it’s high time we address the subject and on our own terms, before we are forced to. We’re very willing to talk about and even interact with death on a fictional and fantasy level. Many of our current novels (e.g., The Fault is in our Stars, House for Sale, Bones Never Lie), TV shows (e.g., Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy, Vampire Diaries), and video games deal with death, often very graphically. However, in reality, our cultures studiously avoid the subject. In the West, it’s all about being upbeat and the cult of the “survivor,” as Barbara Ehrenreich describes in her book Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. You may expect a greater acceptance of death in the East— perhaps due to a more Zen-like perspective or belief in reincarnation—but here, again, philosophy is one thing, reality is another. Often people in their 70s who wish to speak about their impending death are hushed up with platitudes: “Oh, don’t think like that, you’re still young, you have many years left!” in other words “don’t worry, be happy.” But perhaps meaning, “Don’t bring me down!” And if we the public are reticent to broach the subject, strangely so is the media. While the news itself is laced with the deaths of the famous or those who died in dramatic events (in fact such headlines are often amplified to draw eyes and ears), there’s little reportage or commentary on the field of regular dying. The New York Times “Lives” column says to prospective contributors of articles, “Do not make it about illness or death …” CS Monitor’s “Home Forum” column says it is looking for “upbeat, personal essays;” “we don’t deal with topics of death, aging and disease.” Our public psyche quietly but consciously excludes death. Much as we may try to ignore it though, the world’s population is aging. The number of people over 60 years of age is expected to double by 2050 to over two billion, with some 392 million over the age of 80. While the population in many developed countries is already aged, the aging trend in develop54 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Photo courtesy Susan Macartney ing countries is just beginning. Furthermore, death does not strike only the elderly; in 2013, 6.3 million children under the age of five died. Given such statistics and the simple truth that none of us will make it out of here alive, it behooves us to talk about death. I remember reading a short story long ago where Death comes as a handsome young man to coax a frightened old woman slowly out of her house and ultimately joyfully to her death. Likewise, we need a paradigm shift on Death. We need to see Death not as a frightening stranger but perhaps as a neighbor. We need to make death—if not a welcome then at least an expected—part of life. The Institute of Medicine’s recent report Dying In America says “efforts are needed to normalize conversations about death and dying.” And indeed some people have already begun the conversation. The appropriately named Conversation Project, started in 2010, is a collaboration of doctors, social workers, clergy, health administration experts, and media to understand and facilitate end-of-life care wishes. Franchises of “death cafes” are cropping up all over the UK and America where people—often strangers—gather for an evening to “drink tea, eat cake, and discuss death;” more than a thousand such events have already happened in the past three years. While Dying in America and the Conversation Project encourage death conversations from a logistical perspective and focus on planning for end-of-life care, Death Cafes are open, informal, and diffused forums to discuss the process, realize we’re all on the same road, and hopefully come to a greater level of acceptance of the inevitable. Just as we prepare for birth, we need to prepare to some extent for dying. To further the conversation, we could have self-help books (e.g., What to Expect When You’re Dy-
ing), courses (Pre-Death classes anyone?), and private counselors. In schools, like we have sex education, death education may not be out of place; like Morrie said, “Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live” (Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom). And death preparation could turn out to be a new and profitable service industry, while at the same time reduce healthcare costs. Some may argue why waste time, effort, and money discussing or preparing for death; it’ll happen anyway. However, Peter Saul, an intensive care specialist, says we need to “try to reclaim this process ... because how we die is important.” Many people—particularly in the West—die in ICUs with their families trying every intervention to keep them alive. By talking about death before the fact, we may not only be more accepting of the event but get to have a say in how, where, and perhaps even when we die. Interestingly, as Ken Murray explains in his essay “Why Doctors Die Differently,” doctors themselves seem to be setting an example by opting for minimal care, opting out of life-extending methods, and making a graceful exit at home. We have brought back the concept of natural home births; maybe it’s now time once again for natural home deaths. In a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, authors Eric Beinhocker and Nick Hanauer suggest that “the real measure of a society’s prosperity is the availability of solutions to human problems.” Impending death is certainly a very human problem and one we all face. And while it has no solutions, there are surely ways to make the process less frightening and more comfortable. Managing death better could be a measure of our society’s prosperity and progress. We have taken Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” to heart and are still raging against the dying of the light. Perhaps it’s time to consider another poet’s perspective. Rabindranath Tagore said, “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” n Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer, editor, and commentator based in New Delhi. Her articles have appeared in several publications, including the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the WSJ, the Financial Times, and the Atlantic.
PART V OF V
Reformation Thesis
V. Free-will Christianity ruined Western Civilization.
Free-will, decision-based Christianity ruins families, churches and, ultimately, nations. Those who are taught that man is responsible for his salvation and that God “loves everybody” often grow up weak and worldly Christians who have no true love for God, no true worship of Him and no solid foundation for growth. They remain nominal Christians for most of their lives and often times their children are unsaved and have no interest in godly matters. Free-will Christianity is the reason why a large percentage of young people leave the church after they enter college.
Free-will based Christianity ruins churches, where pastors feel like they have to tell emotional stories and jokes to gain their congregation's acceptance. Since pastors believe that they have to manipulate people to “accept Christ” they continually water down their sermons and avoid controversial passages about predestination, election, sin and hell. They're even afraid to teach what the Bible says about wives submitting to their husbands and that parents must discipline their children with the rod.
Many churches allow women to preach from the pulpit, even though the Scripture plainly teaches in I Corinthians 14:34, “The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves…” Many churches ignore this, so the Lord says in I Corinthians 14:38 that they will be ignored by Him.
The eventual outcome of such churches is that they become Liberal, eventually accepting even the perversion of homosexuality. Free-will churches become Liberal churches over a course of time, and Liberalism is the last stage of heresy and apostasy. Free-will Christianity ruins nations in that when the churches become Liberal the nation as a whole becomes Liberal. The reason why America is rushing to affirm Liberalism in all of its institutions is because American churches abandoned the doctrines of grace (i.e. predestination) and slowly shifted towards man-centered, free-will Christianity.
The reason why America is the degenerate, adulterous, Godless country that it is now, in the 21st century, is because of the anti-Biblical teachings of its churches starting in the 1840s and 1920s. Churches that teach that man's decision is the key to his own salvation reject the sovereignty of God and are largely responsible for America's decline into Christless oblivion. The history of the world can be summarized as one large tragedy contrasted with the glorious redemption and salvation of God's elect.
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travel
Hand It To Antwerp By Kalpana Sunder
W
here do I begin? The train station that looks like a Cathedral? The Diamond District? Or the cutting edge fashion scene? Maybe I should start with a story. Antwerp—A city terrorized by a giant called Druon Antigoon who made all the passing ships pay a toll; a brave lad called Brabo who killed the giant, chopped off his hand, and threw it into the Scheldt River. This does seem like a gruesome introduction to an attractive city. The mythical hero of the city, Brabo, stands tall in the center of the square throwing a hand in the air. Today the hand is a quirky symbol of the city of Antwerp in Flanders, Belgium, found on sculptures and souvenirs and even sugar cookies and chocolates shaped like hands! Imagine turning the sepia pages of a Gothic storybook ... cobbled streets, medieval turreted mansions, and secret gardens. Antwerp’s warren of medieval streets reminds me of a Vermeer masterpiece, accompanied by the constant soundtrack of cathedral carillons. “You don’t have to visit a museum in Anings than their neighbors. twerp to see art treasures,” says Johan Vink, Though most people know Antwerp my guide. And true enough, at the leviathan as the “city of diamonds” or as the fashion Cathedral of Our Lady, one of the tallest capital of Belgium, I decide that a less costly churches in Europe with a seven aisled nave, splurge would be the one that satisfied my that took 170 years to build, and dominates stomach and soul—French fries or frites the city skyline, I am bemused by the sight of doused with mayonnaise or curry ketchup the colossal altarpieces adorned with Ruben’s sold in small stalls alongwith warm, sugary “Raising of the Cross” and “Descent from waffles topped with cream, chocolate or bathe Cross.” nana slices. I remember my guide telling me Our hotel Les Nuits, which stands on that that the Belgians cook with the finesse the edge of the Fashion District, has rooms of the French but serve it in German size in black and white with dramatic lighting, a portions! cozy lounge and quirky bits of sculpture. One of my first visits is to the epicenter of the city: the Grote Market with its stunning 16th century City Hall with colored flags from the European Union. Rows of tall gabled guild houses with golden statues decorating their roofs look down at the square harking back to a time when merchants vied for prestige by building Het Steen with Lange Wapper, a legendary giant who more extravagant buildterrorized citizens in medieval times.
56 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
The mythical hero of the city, Brabo
I smell my way to Dominique Persoone’s Chocolate Line, housed in the opulent Belgian Royal Family’s former residence. The shop, decorated with period paintings and glass chandeliers, exhibits unusual creations ranging from a chocolate wedding dress, a giant frog to eerie skeletons created out of white and dark chocolate. This “shock-o-latier” as he calls himself, uses unusual ingredients like black olives, wasabi, lemongrass and has created lipsticks with chocolate, massage creams and even a “chocolate shooter” for a rock star friend to catapult a shot of choco-
Inside the Cathedral of Our Lady
late for a pure cocoa high! If you are an architecture aficionado, then Antwerp’s offerings are bound to wow you. I feast on the visual banquet of chapels, museums and guild houses that pepper the streets, sharing their space generously with modern architecture. Start at the beautiful train station which is appropriately dubbed a “railway cathedral.” It’s the most majestic one that I have seen with gleaming floors, sweeping staircases, latticework, sculptures of lions and a glass and iron dome. Johan tells me that it’s the site of the famous flash mob dance video featuring “Do, Re Mi” from the Sound Of Music which went viral. I walk on the waterfront bordering the Scheldt River and end up at a Disneyesque castle called the Het Steen, dating back to the 13th century and Antwerp’s oldest surviving building. In front is a huge statue of Lange Wapper, a legendary giant who terrorized citizens in medieval times.
On the Rubens Trail
Art follows architecture as I encounter Peter Pauls Rubens, the city’s most celebrated citizen and famous for creating his round, rosy Rubenesque figures, in the medieval centre of Antwerp. The greening bronze statue in Groenplaats or Green Square depicts him in his mid-years with a cape slung over his shoulders, wrinkles and a benevolent smile. I visit the house where he lived as an adult and “showed off his wealth.” Rubenshuis is a baroque mansion with a tranquil garden and gilded windows, wine colored leather wall paper, marble busts and oil paintings. Far from being the stereotypical artist starving in a garret, he was so popular that the house brims with gifts from kings, queens, and rich
mond related business is done by Indians! The main street in the heart of the Diamond Quarter near the station is a heavily guarded zone with street cameras. At the Diamond Museum, I learn about the chemical structure of the big rocks, and the Four Cs of diamonds—carat, color, cut and clarity! I walk through dark corridors to the treasuries on each floor of the museum—they have the most exquisite treasures: footwear with diamond encrusted heels, Napoleon’s gift to his lady friend, a brooch belonging to Empress Sisi of Austria, stone-encrusted diadems, tiaras and a myriad other marvelous creations. A woman can always dream.
The Designer Scene
The Railway station dubbed the Cathedral
patrons. On the Rubens trail, I also visit the unusual Museum Plantin Moretus, a UNESCO listed museum, dedicated to the history of printing. This was home to Christopher Plantin who had one of the earliest printing businesses in 1555, and published some important books of his time, and has a great collection of Rubens paintings. As I look at old Mercator maps and a Guttenberg Bible, images of elegant women in flouncy gowns and silk clad merchants play out in my mind. Almost 85% of the rough diamonds of the world are traded in the Diamond Quarter in Antwerp and most of the dia-
At Rubens’ house
Antwerp is also an avante garde fashion center. In the 80s, six designers called the Antwerp Six stormed the design scene. Today the main shopping mile, called The Meir, has a plethora of exclusive boutiques and department stores. The Meir, the broad avenue that used to be a lake long ago, is today lined with Rococo buildings, I people-watch as stylish shoppers throng the streets, laden with shopping bags. Looming in the distance is Europe’s first skyscraper; the 300 ft Tower called Boerentoren, built in 1934 in the art deco style of Chicago and New York. To wander among the “real people” of the city I head to Theaterplein Square, where the Sunday flea market or the Vogelenmarkt sells exotic birds, parakeets, geese, budgerigars, fancy pigeons in cages and rabbits, mice and hamsters. Johan takes us to the once-derelict port area known as Eilandje lined with rusty cranes and hoists, which is now undergoing regeneration with new museums, trendy restaurants and housing projects. The star attraction here is the just-opened
Rows of tall gabled guild houses February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 57
The cutting edge MAS Museum
View of the city from the terrace of MAS
Red Star Line Museum, housed in three historic brick warehouses of the shipping company which have been meticulously restored to their original glory. The Red Star Line ships carried more than 2 million people between 1873 and 1934 to America and Canada in the quest for a better life and almost a quarter of them were Jews. “Famous people traveled on the ships in search for a better life or to avoid persecution or Nazi oppression; few were fortune hunters or
pioneers,” says Johan. There is the trademark picture of Albert Einstein in a crumpled suit and windblown hair who traveled on the Red Star Line to America in 1933. My museum hopping takes me to another show stopper in the port area—the Museum aan de Stroom called MAS, hewn out of red Indian sandstone and undulating glass, stacked like a giant Jenga block, dedicated to the city’s rich maritime history. The museum filled with some terrific art, has
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three thousand shiny hands decorating its façade and transparent storage rooms for unexhibited art. I head to the open observation deck on the 10th floor, where a panoramic view of Antwerp sweeps me away. The old and the new juxtaposed together and the glistening Scheldt river. n Kalpana Sunder is a travel writer and blogger based in Chennai, India who blogs at http:// kalpanasunder.com/blog
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recipes
Craving the Classic Aloo Gobhi By Teena Arora
M
y great grandmother would cook curried potatoes and cauliflower for the family three times a week. She liked it very spicy and used red pepper flakes not only for the heat, but also for the vibrant red color the spice exudes. Aloo Gobhi is a well-known and loved dish in Punjab, a region of Northern India where my father was born and raised. In my house, it was typically eaten and enjoyed during lunch. My love affair for this delicacy began in 1981 during a childhood trip to India for my uncle’s wedding. My grandmother passed down her recipe to me on this one very hot summer day. I remember peeling the potatoes and smelling the aromas as she added the cumin seeds, fresh ginger, turmeric, salt, and red pepper flakes to the hot burning oil in a kadhai (an Indian wok) over high heat, as she squatted next to the open air pit. We used to eat this dish with raita,
a yogurt condiment of shredded cucumbers and a raw onion and tomato salad dressed in light spices with a splash of lemon juice and chat masala. I have fond memories of this comfort food. The beauty is that it’s so versatile. There are many renditions of Aloo Gohbi, as it varies from region to region. I treasure my family’s heirloom recipe, and will always associate it with the great mothers in my life.
Over time, the recipe has evolved to East meets West, where I have added my own personal touch with the use of coconut oil, sweet potatoes and green peas (on occasion). iHeart purple cauliflower too! You can serve Aloo Gobhi on the side or on a bed of raita (since the consistency is thick). It can serve as a nice tapas type appetizer, too. Aloo Gobhi is special to me because it also happens to be my own mother’s favorite. The main ingredient is LOVE, and I am so happy to share its simplicity, aroma, and flavor with you all! May you and your family treasure this gem for generations. n Teena Arora emphasizes holistic eating and feeding the body with nutritious foods that are plant-based, seasonal, farm to table, re-invented Indian cuisine that is healthy, quick to prepare, and robust in flavor and medicinal qualities.
Aloo Gobhi—Curried Cauliflower and Potatoes with Raita Aloo Gobhi Ingredients 1 head cauliflower; cut into 1” pieces 2 medium sized sweet potatoes; peeled and cubed ½ tsp turmeric 1 tsp Currysutra curry powder 2-3 tbsp coconut oil 1 tbsp fresh ginger; finely sliced 5-6 garlic cloves; minced or sliced 1 tsp salt (adjust to taste) 1 tsp cumin seeds ½ tsp red chili/cayenne powder ½ cup water 1 tbsp butter (optional) (garnish) ½ - 1 tsp Currysutra garam masala (garnish) ½ tsp red chili flakes (optional for garnish) pinch black pepper (garnish) ¼ - ½ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro (garnish)
60 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Method Cut and divide cauliflower into 1” florets; wash thoroughly and drain. Heat oil in a wok or saucepan on medium high heat for 1-2 minutes. Add ginger and garlic; fry for 1 minute. Add cumin seeds, turmeric, curry powder, salt and red chili powder/cayenne. Stir and then, add water. Add cauliflower and potatoes; mix and stir evenly. Cover and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until the cauliflower pieces are tender. Add butter, reduce heat to low and simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove the cover/lid and increase the heat to get rid of any excess water. Add black pepper and stir slightly. Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with garam masala, red chili pepper flakes, and fresh cilantro. n Note: To make the entrée spicy, simply increase the amount of red chili powder and add diced green Thai chilies.
Raita—A yogurt condiment Ingredients 1 ½ cups Greek yogurt ½ tsp salt (adjust to taste) ½ tsp black pepper ¼ tsp cayenne pepper or (red chili) ¼ to ½ tsp Currysutra garam masala ¼ cup diced red onion ½ cup cucumber 1/3 cup peppers 1 green Thai chili diced (optional) ½ tsp of raita masala (optional) for garnish ¼ cup fresh coriander/cilantro (garnish) Method 1. Mix all the above ingredients, except fresh coriander and raita masala. 2. Garnish with raita masala and fresh coriander/cilantro. 3. Chill, and then it’s ready to serve! n
On Inglish
Unearthing Shakti By Kalpana Mohan
shakti [shuk-thee]: 1. the female principle or organ of generative power. 2. the wife of a deity, especially of Shiva. From Sanskrit sákti power
D
uring the last two months of a difficult year in which I bid my father adieu, my body was racked by pain and fatigue from both travel and overwork. I had just finished my first book. I should have felt alive and triumphant. Instead, I felt drained. In those final weeks of the year I went about my daily life feeling divested of any positive charge. I told family and friends that I felt drained of all “shakti.” I used the word in the way most people of Indian origin might use it to describe an inner force that empowers them and drives their day. “Shakti,” according to the dictionary, is defined as “the dynamic energy of a Hindu god personified as his female consort.” In broader terms, however, the word alludes to a cosmic power and derives from the Sanskrit word, akti, which refers to “power” or “divine energy.” In India, “shakti” is believed to have penetrated the earth across many parts of the subcontinent eons ago. On a visit to the city of Baroda in Gujarat, a friend, Rahul Gajjar, led me towards one such “Shakti Peeth,” a place of pilgrimage at which the earth is believed to hold extraordinary spiritual energy. I remember the morning I stepped out of my airplane and looked up at the rheumy skies above me. “Arrey baba, I’m telling you, don’t worry about the rain,” Rahul said, scowling at the grey above while flicking the ash from his halfsmoked cigarette into the puddle of water under his foot. “I have yet to see a more beautiful day through my lens. I’m telling you. I’m lucky. So YOU are lucky. Just trust Rahul Gajjar.” I had been told that there wasn’t anyone in the town more qualified than Rahul to show me around Champaner-Pavagadh, now declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tossing his cigarette into the brown sludge just before he opened the door of the beat-up purple Tata Indica, Rahul told me that given the inclement weather we would not have the time to trek up to the 10th century Shakti temple in Pavagadh hill and that we would be walking through the ruins of the medieval city of Champaner at the foothills instead. We headed towards the mountain and Rahul delved into the history of the area. Between his narration, on and off, he’d bristle at my ignorance with respect to history and folklore. “Arrey, how come you don’t know what Shakti Peeth is?” he said. “Kalpana-ji, you are Hindu, are you not?” he asked in a low voice. I steeled myself to swallow several veiled insults that morning. “A Shakti Peeth is a place that has been blessed by Goddess Shakti’s powers,” he continued, slipping into the story of Shiva and his consort Sati, who was the embodiment of Shakti, or energy, at the dawn of civilization. When Shiva heard about his wife Sati’s self-immolation at her father’s sacrificial fire, he arrived at King Daksha’s palace, seized Sati’s body from the fire and roamed around the universe in a frenzy with her charred body over his shoulders. “As usual, he danced the thandav,” he said. Skepticism now writ on the downward curve of his mustache, he turned to me to check that I did in fact understand. “You do know what the thandav is, right?” I nodded eagerly. Of course, every Hindu knew about Shiva’s cosmic dance of destruction. I employed the thandav all the time in my marriage, to make a point to my husband
or my children. Between puffs of smoke, Rahul shared other mythological details. “To stop the destruction of the world, Vishnu, the preserver of the universe, launched his discus, the sudarshana chakra, in Shiva’s direction, slashing Sati’s body into pieces.” In the distance, I saw the green curve of Pavagadh hill believed to hold one of the 51 parts of the goddess’ body that had crashed into the earth from the heavens. “And her toe fell right here at Pavagadh,” Rahul said. “That’s why this mountain is shaped like a toe.” I imagined the Lord of Dance, Shiva, crisscrossing the length and breadth of India with Sati’s blackening body slung over his shoulder, his trident hanging in mid-air, steam curling off of it while flames trailed on the palloo of Sati’s once golden sari. Rahul and I sped past mahua, bamboo and teak trees and emerged just outside Champaner Archeological Park. Holding my dupatta over my head to protect myself from the beginning showers, I stood by the desolate medieval ruins of Champaner that morning hearing the steady trickle of water on the ground and the twitter of sparrows. I took a deep breath and then another. Inside the vast prayer room of the Jami Masjid I felt the power of the duality, that yin-yang of Indian-Muslim cohabitation that had once been India’s way of life, long before any Englishman had sought to inject his dose of anarchy into the tenuous peace. As we walked around Rahul spoke in hushed tones in a voice imbued with reverence. This talented artist had been photographing the ruins for twenty years, capturing its moods in different times and climes. The BBC had profiled him for documentaries on India. Reedy, as a homegrown beedi filled with tobacco flake rolled inside a tendu leaf, Rahul seemed more like a brooding sidekick of a villain in a James Bond movie, the mustachioed fall guy who ultimately got pushed off the topmost floor of a skyscraper, camera first, by the cat-stroking villain. At the ruins that morning, as Rahul clicked his ponderous camera, he seemed contrite about tainting the quiet of the place with the clutter of his shutter. He scuttled about in an energetic trance in the drizzle, watching stealthily sometimes, running at other times, just in case he should let a picture perfect moment slip away from his pointer finger. He stopped, often just before putting his eye to the lens, shaking his head in disbelief, it seemed, at the beauty of what rose before him. I simply followed his eye. Soon I too was swirling in the center of an inexplicable shakti soaked into the earth at Champaner-Pavagadh. n Kalpana Mohan writes from Saratoga. To read more about her, go to http://kalpanamohan.org and http://saritorial.com. February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 61
bits and tweets Despite a historic fondness for films “critiquing” masculinity, the Oscars are doing little to challenge the gender status quo. —Imran Siddiquee, Writer, Idealist, Feminist
@RUPERTMURDOCH PLEASE TELL ME WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO STOP ANY AND ALL CRIMES COMMITTED BY PEOPLE OF YOUR RELIGION???!!! —Aziz Ansari, actor and comedian, in response to Murdoch’s post: “Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible. 6:07 PM - 9 Jan 2015”
Holy shit, midterms for everybody!”@ WhiteHouse: BREAKING: Obama announces his #FreeCommunityCollege proposal —Kal Penn, Actor
The beautiful scene when thousands of French protesters sang “Imagine” on the street.
“Author Perumal Murugan has died.” Facebook post by popular Tamil writer Perumal Murugan declaring that he will not write again as a reaction to the hardline attacks and harassment that targeted his fiction novel, Mathorubagan, resulting in a renewed dialog about freedom of speech.
In a conversation with Fox’s Megyn Kelly, Dinesh D’Souza, conservative political commentator, declared that Obama hasn’t lived the “African American Experience.” When questioned by Kelly, D’Souza stated “Well, he grew up in Hawaii.”
62 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Nov 1 Watching TV attack ads on propositions and candidates. Sigh. Why does everyone hate us trial lawyers? ;-( —Harmeet K. Dhillon @ pnjaban, attorney A Space Observatory Image of Andromeda Galaxy.
dear doctor
Needing an Intimate Connection By Alzak Amlani
Q
I am a single woman in my mid forties who lives alone in a large American city. I have a lot of interests and spend time reading and reflecting on my own. My siblings are married with children living in other parts of the country. I am often trying to have a deeper connection with my family members, including my nieces and nephews, even though I don’t have much in common with them. We are very cordial and supportive with each other, but we don’t seem to share our lives more deeply. When we open up to each other I feel a lot closer to them. I do my best to encourage a deeper connection. Often, my siblings get busy with their families and don’t communicate at all. At times I take it personally and feel angry or hurt. I want to find a way to enjoy them as they are and not get so upset.
A
There is a significant difference in your lifestyles and family structures. Your siblings are busy with spouses and children and probably don’t have the
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luxury of time that you have to enjoy interests and connect more deeply. Most parents are so focused on their kids’ lives that whatever energy is left over it is usually devoted to resting and catching up on other tasks. Do you have adults in your life who are like your siblings or family? If you’re single and live away from relatives, having such friends can be very meaningful. This way you get your needs met and have ongoing friends to develop relationships with. When you connect with your family, you may have to think a bit differently. Rather than expecting deep one-on-one connection through conversations about meaningful topics, you may need to learn to simply appreciate being part of the family. By thinking of your time with them as community time where you are more focused on being with the group and having a very different kind of interaction than you do privately, which can lead you to appreciate your family more. Parents love it when others take an interest in
their children. Some parents, in fact, will not socialize with family or friends who aren’t involved or at least interested in their kids. When you go to events to see your family, would you like to take a close friend along with you? This could give you the kind of companionship that you most enjoy and be in a family setting with siblings and kids. Since you don’t have a spouse, this would be a nice way for you to not feel as vulnerable. Having a close friend with you could help you feel relaxed and less needy of intimate contact. Thus, you could more easily enjoy the lightness of less intense relationships. n
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February 2015 | www.indiacurrents.com | 63
the last word
Was Charlie Hebdo Funny? By Sarita Sarvate
O
nce upon a time, the terrorist attacks in Paris would have evoked an impersonal response in me. But now, I view them with a telephoto lens. I know the streets, the boulevards, the buildings. After living in France for a month last summer, I know something of the French sense of order. And so I can feel what the Parisians must be feeling right now. And yet, after looking at the Charlie Hebdo cartoons for which their creators were killed, I am left feeling, well, absolutely nothing. Or rather, if I am to be honest, I am experiencing a mild sense of nausea. I am sorry but I don’t get the joke. I, who have collected books of New Yorker cartoons, who always looked at the caricature on the Times of India front page, fail to see the humor. What is funny about Mohammed on all fours, displaying his genitalia? What is funny about Mohammed declaring, “It is hard to be loved by idiots?” What is What is funny about Mohammed declaring, “100 lashes funny about if you don’t die laughing?” Mohammed I will just have to take the 100 lashes, I suppose. declaring, “It is hard As I look at the carto be loved by idiots?” toons, certain vignettes come back to me. I am What is funny about riding the Metro when a Mohammed declaring, tall, dark African enters the car with a boom box. “100 lashes if you don’t The old lady in front of me immediately tenses. She die laughing?” I will tries to convey through her just have to take the body language her sense of outrage. When that fails, she 100 lashes, I protests loudly. I do not know if her irritation is born out of suppose. racism or simply the French sense of discipline. But I imagine a similar scene in BART. Perhaps the other riders are equally irritated. But they dig their heads deeper into their newspapers, avoiding visibly reacting to the offending party. Which society is better? Another vignette. I am going on a hike with my hosts in the corniches above the Riviera. Coming around a bend in the denuded hills, I am dwarfed by an outsized statue of the Notre Dame du Afrique, Our Lady of Africa, whose original copy resides in the basilica of Algiers. This one is a memorial to local citizens who perished in the war of Algerian independence, I am told, which is why the lady gazes at Algeria across the Mediterranean. “Are the Algerians commemorated too?” I ask, and am met 64 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
with blank stares. And yet the same hiking companions speak glowingly of Indian immigrants who have been brought here to work for high-tech companies. This is a country experiencing a crisis of identity, I sense. In the Midi-Pyrenees, where I am staying on a farm, my American host speaks of the rising xenophobia in France. She cannot get a job as a schoolteacher, she informs me, because of her accent. And yet, I come across guardian angels everywhere. Could it be because I do not look very ethnic; that I have a universal face which allows me to pass through any continent without drawing attention? Against the backdrop of such vignettes, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons do not seem very funny to me. The history of French involvement in Algeria—the ethnic origin of the Paris terrorists—is replete with aggression, exploitation, and violence. In fact, a controversial exhibit I saw in 2012 at the Invalides outlined this bloody history, to the consternation of many patriots. I am not saying that a massacre is justified in response to cartoons but should not the cartoon makers be a little more careful about offending the sensibilities of minority ethnic groups? In the United States, the owner of a basketball team was forced to sell it after making racist remarks. The general manager of the Atlanta Hawks has been disciplined for making offensive remarks about a player. Laws against hate speech won out in these cases over the persons’ rights to free speech. A country whose history is fraught with systematized racism cannot afford the luxury of such offensive speech. Perhaps France should also scrutinize its own history, in which, as recently as 2013, a Roma girl was snatched away from a school field trip and deported. The best humor for me is often self-deprecating. When the people in power make fun of the disempowered, the result is not humor but oppression. Recently, the SF Chronicle film critic lightheartedly quipped that perhaps the real reason Kim Jong Un hacked Sony Pictures was not because its film told the story of an assassination plot against him but that the movie was just not very funny. Media outlets around the world are declaring solidarity with Charlie Hebdo based on the principle of free speech. But I myself cannot help wondering if it is good art. I am not condoning the massacre of a dozen people because of the cartoons they drew but I hope that in addition to the discussion about free speech, this tragic incident will also generate some debate as to what constitutes good humor. n Sarita Sarvate (www.saritasarvate.com) has published commentaries for New America Media, KQED FM, San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and many nationwide publications.
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