June 2014 by India Currents

Some Other Country by Benedito Ferrao

India Has Won! Decoding Elections 2014

Letter From a Dad by Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy

INDIA CURRENTS Celebrating 28 Years of Excellence

Ishq, Actually june 2014 • vol. 28 , no . 3 • www. indiacurrents.com

Affairs of the heart, as related by American Muslim women By Zenobia Khaleel

How Jay-Z Trumped Modi 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 Manager: Derek Nunes ads@indiacurrents.com Northern California: (408) 324-0488 x 222 Southern California: (714) 523-8788 x 222 Marketing Associate: Pallavi Nemali marketing@indiacurrents.com (408) 324-0488 x221

Let’s wrap our heads around this. India conducted the largest elections—814,500,000 people had a ballot. Voter turnout hit a stunning 66.38%—More than 500 million people voted! The new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tweet “India has won! Acche din aanewale hain!” (Good days ahead!) was re-tweeted 70,410 times (as of May 23) setting a record as the nation’s most re-tweeted post. Narendra Modi is the sixth most followed world leader on Twitter. These are electrifying numbers and reflect an evolving India standing at the crossroads of modernism and traditionalism, of aspiration and expectation, which the western media is still trying to understand. This was ridiculously apparent on the evening of May 15, when India’s election results were rapidly streaming in; a thrilling and colorful kaleidoscope of contestants, voters, analysts, poll numbers, laddoos and Lok Sabha seats. At about the same time, CNN was playing and replaying the video of Jay-Z being assaulted in an elevator by his sister-in-law Solange; ABC had the Wheel of Fortune contestant Sili Pese solving “Heavenly Body” on its bonus round, and PBS’s NewsHour pontificated on the unsure situation in Greece and France. No mention of India’s elections

on any television channel, except on Comedy Central, where the Daily Show’s Jason Jones put out a hilarious spoof on what the minority looks like in India. Eagerly, the morning after, I searched for commentaries in the leading United States newspapers, and found a handful that left me chafing at the lack of preparation and anticipation of a history-bending moment. This should have been no surprise, since John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight and a Daily Show alumnus, lampooned Fox News for a risible segment, in April, on how this august media channel showcased their interest in India by featuring a leopard on the loose in some obscure corner of the country, at the same time that millions were pouring into polling booths. It seems that comedy shows are on the upper curve of trending news topics. Television news arbiters have extrapolated that an “in-depth” discussion of a kick aimed at Jay-Z’s nether parts is so much more relevant than the coverage of the “world’s biggest” peaceful democratic exercise. It’s time to change that channel, America! Jaya Padmanabhan

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INDIA CURRENTS June 2014 • vol 28 • no 3

PERSPECTIVES 1 | EDITORIAL How Jay-Z Trumped Modi By Jaya Padmanabhan

Southern California Edition www.indiacurrents.com

Find us on

45 | RELATIONSHIP DIVA Selective v. Picky By Jasbina Ahluwalia

7 | A THOUSAND WORDS An Indian on Indians By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

15 | PARENT PRINCIPLE Letter From a Dad By Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy 16 | BUSINESS Silicon Valley Elitism By Vivek Wadhwa

18 | Ishq, Actually Muslim women discuss love, relationships and marriage By Zenobia Khaleel

10 | Feature India Elections 2014! By Vamsee Juluri, Ranjani Iyer Mohanty, Sujeet Rajan, Sandip Roy

28 | FINANCE The Science of Uncertainty II By Rahul Varshneya 30 | BOOKS Reviews of Transactions of Belonging and Salaam, Love By Jeanne Fredriksen, Dilnavaz Bamboat

6 | FORUM Should California Levy an Inequality Tax? By Rameysh Ramdas, Mani Subramani

8 | COMMENTARY Some Other Country By R. Benedito Ferrao

LIFESTYLE

34 | Films Reviews of Koyelaanchal and Bhoothnath Returns By Aniruddh Chawda, Madhumita Gupta

36 | Music Zakir Hussain Throws a Party! By Priya Das

56 | TRAVEL Hyderabadi Splendor By Arundhati Nath 58 | RECIPE The Scent of a Green Papaya By Praba Iyer 52 | REFLECTIONS We Are All Connected By Gopi Kallayil 54 | HEALTHY LIFE Myths About Palliative Care By Richard Springer 63 | DEAR DOCTOR Outbursts and Breakdowns By Alzak Amlani

WHAT’S CURRENT 46 | Cultural Calendar 50 | Spiritual Calendar

June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 3

voices Peaks and Valleys

I commend Nirmala Nataraj for writing the piece on sexuality (Journey to My Desire, India Currents, May 2014). I’ve felt that our community, like Nataraj says, is totally wound up on issues relating to sexuality. Just as she points out, we’ve been conditioned by all sorts of ideas about what “good” girls may do and how they may behave. Certainly I, too, am guilty of foisting some of those hand-me-down opinions about the “right” and “wrong” of sexuality on my children. But the story didn’t satisfy me. It seemed like the writer was holding something back; it seemed like someone was doing OM on me and then, out of the blue, the person went off to take a call and make aloo subzi. The piece was vague about what exactly Nataraj discovered in the practice of OM that transformed her inside out. The article did not explain how OM would give me both, sexual satisfaction as well as spiritual fulfillment. It was alluded to with no details. And then the question, if it is not a climax but just ridges and peaks and valleys, what exactly is it? There was no map with legends, such as “You are here.” The devil, for me, is in the details. Obviously, I understand that OM is at a different level conceptually, but for folks like me at sea level, please enlighten us with a GPS, a printed map, or a walkie-talkie. While Nataraj is a good writer, at several places in the article, she lost me. For example, and I quote: “Like tantra, OM suggests that we transform sex obsession into sex integration, and that the same time, we view the path of desire as a viable exploration, and consider mundane experience and sensations as aspects of a much larger totality.” I consider myself a savvier reader than most, because I am always worrying about how a reader may understand me. Yet, in several places, I couldn’t make sense of her point. The setup of the piece was not adequate. I would have been happier knowing what it was in her marriage that made her sexually dissatisfied? What expectations did she go in with about her partner? What experiences had she had with sex before marriage? Nataraj seems to be implying that marital happiness, conformance to social mores and sexual fulfillment are mutually exclusive. At several points in the article, she hints that there were several things shaking up her marriage, not just sexual incompatibility. Yet, she gives her marriage only two years, not long enough, in my opinion, when hers was not an “arranged” marriage, i.e., she went into the marriage having known the man

4 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

well, I would think. Again, I wasn’t given enough background. The ending, too, seemed abrupt. I would have liked it better if she had disclosed that she was an OM teacher earlier. Kalpana Mohan, Saratoga, CA The Author Responds I appreciate Kalpana’s thoughtful critique. To be honest, aside from the fact that some of the original details I included were edited from the piece, I felt that I had to censor myself considerably, because I was sensitive to the potential audience. I agree that the devil is in the details. But the details are tricky and multifaceted; they include a slew of things that make me even more of an outlier in the community. To speak to these things is important, of course, but in this arena, I’m still discovering my voice. For me, writing the piece was a significant and fairly scary step, a coming-out of sorts. Perhaps I didn’t do it as gracefully as I would have liked, but at the same time, it prompted curiosity and a desire for “more.” It led many Indian-Americans to look me up and read some of the more informative and personal pieces I have included, which are more explicit and give people an idea of the range of my experiences. That may well offer me the courage to go further and be more vulnerable about the details in future. Nirmala Nataraj, El Cerrito, CA

Hiring and Inspiring

Regarding the editorial by Jaya Padmanabhan (Bock’s Analysis, India Currents, May 2014), aside from pursuing a financially lucrative career, what about encouraging our children to pursue what they enjoy doing, something that would make them happy— like writing! Jana Seshadri, Bay Area, CA

I would treat Computer Science as just another language—like Mandarin, Spanish or English. It is the language of the future because just about everything is reflected on the Internet and will require some familiarity with it. It will make kids more employable, which is not a bad thing. That said, the very same Laszlo Bock very wisely does not correlate fancy numbers and schools with job success. So, ultimately, if the child is not robotic in the quest for name brands with the relentlessly padding of resumes, the meaningless volunteering in exotic lands, the redundant internships (affirmation of the rich), where they learn zilch ... he or she will do fine. The New York Times article, “The Decline and Fall of the English Major” by Verlyn Klinkenborg is testament to the power of immersing oneself in the humanities and English in particular: “I find a vivid pressing

sense of how much they need the skill they didn’t acquire earlier in life. They don’t call that skill the humanities. They don’t call it literature. They call it writing—the ability to distribute their thinking in the kinds of sentences that have a merit, even a literary merit, of their own.” Renuka Pullat, Hillsborough, CA It’s the story of every parent and every child. I think, deep inside, every child has an ideal, but every day that ideal gets tossed aside in order to meet the practical. Success in the humanities requires (typically) a lot of time; it’s a buildup of years of knowledge, rejection, disappointment. The practical constantly beats the ideal. San Francisco is in the throes of rising property values; if kids are going after their heart, the house they want is going to be in Watsonville, not in Pacific Heights. At least that’s what their parents are telling them. To the point about the thinking itself. I think analysis in the humanities calls for logic, wisdom, honesty, life experience and some amount of fearlessness. Most kids, fresh out of college, simply aren’t ready for the demands of it. Computer science provides a far easier route in every way, even if there is a hole in the soul. Kalpana Mohan, Saratoga, CA With due deference to Bock, in spite of being a huge advocate of STEM pursuit, I entirely disagree with the premise that humanities and languages do not foster creative thought. In fact, humanities, English, philosophy, and history all require much creativity and logic. Humanities (English major) provide, as standard evidence, clarity of thought and expression, writing and analysis. I would think these are important for a job at Google. As my younger sons are in the process of deciding majors and colleges, we have been reading and thinking about the importance of music, sports, and language in their overall grooming. Shivakumar Raman, Bay Area, CA

SPEAK YOUR MIND! Have a thought or opinion to share? Send us an original letter of up to 300 words, and include your name, address, and phone number. Letters are edited for clarity and brevity. Write India Currents Letters, 1885 Lundy Ave. Suite 220, San Jose 95131 or email letters@indiacurrents.com.

India Currents is now available on the Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/IndiaCurrents/dp/B005LRAXNG Follow us at twitter.com/indiacurrents on facebook.com/IndiaCurrents Most Popular Articles Online May 2014 1) Journey to My Desire Nirmala Nataraj 2) An Orange Letdown Kalpana Mohan 3) What the Goddess Says Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan 4) Microsoftie Nadella Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy

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forum

Should California Levy an Inequality Tax?

No, this is not the way to cut income inequality

Yes, California should have a sliding levy

By Rameysh Ramdas

By Mani Subramani

Rameysh Ramdas, an S.F. Bay Area professional, writes as a hobby.

Mani Subramani works in the semi-conductor industry in Silicon Valley.

alifornia, the “Golden State,” with 38 million residents, many from all corners of the earth, the eighth largest economy in the world, is finally on a path to recovery. Under Governor Brown’s astute stewardship, we are now facing a budget surplus after many years of massive deficits. The unemployment rate that peaked at over 12.4% in 2010 is now 7.8% with a rising GDP. However, California is still ranked 48th in the Tax Foundation’s “State Business Tax Climate Index” in 2013 prompting companies like Toyota to flee the state by moving more than 2,000 jobs from Torrance, CA to Dallas, TX. To his credit, Governor Brown is trying to remedy this with a sales and use tax exemption for purchase of equipment in manufacturing, R&D and Bio-tech, tax credits for companies that hire in targeted areas, and a $780 million fund offering tax incentives to dissuade companies from relocating. However, many of Brown’s fellow Democrats in the Legislature are working to pull the rug from economic recovery by championing laws that are hostile to general business interests. As Dan Walters eloquently pointed out in a recent Mercury News op-ed on the left wing Democratic legislators—“If you are a politically incorrect business, your taxes should be raised, but if you are trendy, like space travel, or your executives conheavily to Demo... should it be the Gov- tribute cratic campaigns, like the ernment’s job to deter- film industry, you get tax breaks.” Walters cited the mine what a private en- tax breaks provided to film industry and the terprise should reward the Assembly Bill 777 which would provide a targeted its CEO property exemption to SpaceX owned by Elon Musk who already enjoys generous subsidies for his other venture, Tesla, a darling of the left. Ironically, per press reports, Tesla is considering locating its planned battery factory in Texas. Another example of the California Legislature’s misguided venture is SB 1372, a bill under which companies whose CEOs make more than 100 times the pay of their average employee will be taxed at a higher rate—almost double. While the objective of reducing income inequality is laudable, should it be the Government’s job to determine what a private enterprise should reward its CEO for achieving shareholder objectives? And, there is no requirement in the bill that savings from the CEO pay will reach the rank and file workers. Every business enterprise in the United States has 50 possiblities for locating operations, or worse, moving overseas. Each state must compete to earn the trust of these businesses, and enable their development such that it will result in job growth and an influx of new residents—thus providing both increased tax revenue and economic growth. California must strive to be the destination of choice for businesses and that is the primary responsibility of our legislature. California’s business climate should be as good as the weather we enjoy! n

6 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

emember Gil Amelio? He was CEO of Apple in Feb 1996 and was fired in July 1997 by the board. During that period Apple stock hit a 12 year low. For this dubious distinction Amelio received a performance bonus of 2.6 million and a severance pay of 3.5 million. One would have to agree that was egregious overcompensation. Apple’s board of 1997 was a beacon for accountability. Recent boardrooms by comparison have been awarding billions to people without any accountability. A study conducted by Economic Policy Institute in 2011 found that the discrepancy between top and average worker increased from 20 to over 200 since 1965 while the stock market increased by an inflation adjusted factor of 2.5. Such inequality is not just about fairness or sustainability of the middle class. It shakes the very core of free market capitalism. Whose job is it to fix this? Half-a-century of experience shows that markets are not able to or being allowed to address it. Just as different states are experimenting with minimum wage laws large states such as ours should pioneer the inequality tax. While it is hard to estimate fair compensation ratios, 100 times average employee salary seems to be a very rewarding number. The fact that California “has the third worst state business tax climate in the nation,” according to CalTax, is empirical testament to the ineffective... simplistic tax poliness of tax policy to stimcies will not be sufulate corporate activity. “Corporations lookficient to keep the ing to relocate, or even establish, a business in the state’s economy growWest may shy away from ing. California, as the state’s 8.84 percent flat rate is the highest corporate tax rate in the West,” the Tax Foundation said in 2011, and this scenario hasn’t changed. Nationally, only nine other states have a corporate tax rate higher than California in 2014. It is also educational to look at the companies that create jobs in California. Just as in the country, companies with less than 500 people account for a majority of the jobs in the state. These businesses typically do not have highly paid executives on their payroll and will have compensation ratios that are well under the threshold for SB 1372. In fact such efficient companies will benefit under the law with a much lower tax rate paid for by the inequality tax. This could create a favorable environment for small and innovative businesses. California lawmakers should be concerned with wage gaps and there is no doubt that the economy will grow if businesses are incentivized to plow back their profits into paying higher salaries to the rank and file than increasing compensations for their executive staff. California is a large state with a large economy. As such, simplistic tax policies will not be sufficient to keep the state’s economy growing. It has to be a combination of quality of life, policy fairness, taxes and services that will attract innovative and creative minds to the state that form the talent pool to create the Apples and Teslas of the future. n

a thousand words

An Indian On Indians By Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

am an Indian American who often writes about Indian American experiences in my journalism. I’ve reviewed books by Indian subcontinental writers like Mohsin Hamid and am researching discourses on India’s globality and the rise of Asia in my dissertation. My work is uber contemporary, and I sometimes fear that it seems like solipsistic navel-gazing. I’m envious of the mathematician’s otherworldly abstractions, the historian studying Merovingian burial rites, and the literary critic of Chaucer’s Middle English. They don’t have to make worthy objects of their subjects in quite the same way as those of us working close to home. There are two schools of thought about the “autobiographical” content of research and writing, or, put differently, two ways of thinking about the distance a scholar or writer should have from the subjects she is writing about. Both of these perspectives have to do with what we think objectivity in scholarship should look like, what it means “to know” something, and what it is that’s worth knowing. The first perspective is voiced by feminist theorist Inderpal Grewal in the foreword to her canonical work on global American culture and the South Asian diaspora, Transnational America (2005): “[B]ecause there are communities to care about, there is something I care to write about.” For Grewal, her experience with Narika, the Bay Area-based organization that supports victims of domestic violence, exploitation, and trafficking, is as significant for her academic work as her training in literary criticism and cultural theory. Like many other practitioners of what are sometimes called “Identity Studies” (including Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies), Grewal is keenly attuned to the way that our lives shape our standpoint on the world and the posture we assume when engaging in scholarly labor. Working through how “who” we are inflects “what” we study can be a knowledge project in its own right. Then there is the second viewpoint, i.e., that there can be no true scholarship without distance from one’s objects and that we should each pursue research on things we (at first) know nothing about, for that is the nature of the scholarly enterprise: to discover the unknown, not to recover, re-encounter, and rehash the known quantities of one’s life. My cousin Kanishk has his creative writing students spin a globe, land somewhere, then write about and from it. If it’s a fishing outpost in Iceland and the student is from Queens, all the better. Writing is a journey from non-knowledge into knowledge, from absence to creation, so why limit yourself to your own world as the model for an imagined one or as the object for sustained inquiry—whether sociological, anthropological, philosophical, or literary? I’m overstating these positions a bit, and conflating scholarship in general with writing in particular, but my point is to draw a distinction between how we choose our objects (what we study) and how they in turn define us (who we are as scholars). I would argue that most writers’ and scholars’ lives and worlds bleed into their work whether they are penning confessional essays or studying algae. The difference is that the memoirist’s identity-driven claims are on the surface, while the biologist gets to duck behind the bulwark of the scientific method. There are other issues at work, of course. In the decades since the culture wars and the opening of the canon, there has been a tacit, troubling “division of labor” in the humanities in which African Americans often end up in African American Studies, women conduct

When did I become an Indian writing on India, Indians, Indian Americans, and Indian English? Am I unconsciously making a claim to authenticity, of an ability to know something about my objects that other scholars can’t? Women’s Studies, Indians write post-colonial literary criticism, and the immigrants are left to defend Ethnic Studies from the likes of Arizona’s HB-2281. In other words, studying our “own” previously underrepresented communities has led to a kind of self-segregation that may have reinforced instead of combated the unequal valuation of culturally specific knowledge in the university. I knew all this before I started my Ph.D. in Rhetoric—was determined, for example, not to write about Jhumpa Lahiri or V.S. Naipaul, not to end up studying the Indian Anglophone novel, not to mine my life for content—so how did I end up in a scholarly domain so closely tied to the contours of my own life experience? When did I become an Indian writing on India, Indians, Indian Americans, and Indian English? Am I unconsciously making a claim to authenticity, of an ability to know something about my objects that other scholars can’t? Is this a problem of authority that I have to work through in order to find my authorial voice? Has my research become a kind of catharsis? Is my dissertation going to be one big intertextual “selfie?” I recently read my friend, anthropologist John L. Jackson, Jr.’s, Thin Description (2014), a brilliant monograph about the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (AHIJ), which is equally about the construction of identities through the assemblage of archives and the desire for knowledge of both the self and the other. While I was reading John’s book, I kept wondering if I could have been an anthropologist, could have picked some people someplace to live with, talk to, write about … in other words, to study. Would I have had the courage like John to follow the provocations of a man on a subway all the way from Brooklyn, New York to Dimona, Israel? Could I have been an Indian studying someone or something other than India? But then I reread parts of the book, heard John tell of his “Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing and its reverence for the Sabbath,” his childhood in a neighborhood populated by Jews, his friends teaching him Hebrew as they prepared for their own Bar Mitzvahs. None of these were reasons he ended up writing a book about the AHIJ community, but he acknowledged these biographical fragments as serendipitous parts of his scholarly prehistory. It’s not always clear why we feel the call of certain objects, the pull to tell this particular story or another. Is the call any less worth answering if it issues from a place that looks like home? n Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 7

commentary

Some Other Country By R. Benedito Ferrão

ight had fallen on Melbourne by the time I had gotten through immigration and customs. I made my way through the crowd of smiling people, some holding up “Welcome Home!” signs. For a moment, I entertained the possibility that at least one of them could be for me. In the arrivals area, I found a quiet spot and, fortunately, free wifi—always such a boon to itinerants. There was just enough power on my phone to send a quick message to let my folks know I had arrived safely. For a long while, I stood by my luggage cart and eyed the exit. I was not ready, just yet, to leave the neutral space of the airport, and step into terra incognita. Sure, I had found myself in this same situation many times before. But it never ceases to feel daunting, that alienness of being on the precipice of starting life anew. En route to Australia, I broke my journey in Beirut. At immigration in Lebanon, I surmised that the officer was asking me if I spoke Arabic, but being unable to respond in that tongue, I apologized in English. “How come?” He interrogated. “You were born in Kuwait,” he said, jabbing his finger at the tell-tale information in my American passport. Just a few weeks prior, the mustachioed official collecting departure cards at Bombay’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport—which will always be Sahar Airport to me from my childhood memories of transiting through there between Kuwait and Goa to see my grandmother—insisted on speaking to me in Hindi. As if to go with the nationalistically inclined name change of the airport, he questioned my inability to articulate myself fluently in “the mother tongue” that is completely unknown to my mother who was born and raised in East Africa. Waving my Overseas Citizenship of India card in my face, he chastised me, in Hindi, for not speaking the language of “your country.” I thought of the title of that novel, the one in which James Baldwin writes, “The 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another’s.” The rising antiimmigrant sentiment resulted in the turning away of exiles, some of them South Asians from once British East Africa. Never mind that they were part of Britain’s history, or that they spoke “the same language.” There was an awkward silence when the cab driver finally ended the call he had been on A Creative Commons Image from the time he had picked me up. I had gathered from the phone conversation that he was Punjabi. aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go “How long have you lived here?” I enquired. on dreaming and not to be molested by the “Ten years.” After another protracted pause, world. His dreams are his protection against he asked, “You’re here for work?” I nodded. the world.” I thought of 1961, the year in “Yes. New job.” He said, “Good, good.” which Goa ceased being Estado da Índia Leaning forward in my seat, I queried, “So, Portuguesa and, without the benefit of a local referendum to ascertain the will of its people, some years ago, there were those attacks, was handed over to India some fourteen no? On Indian students … Some were muryears after a certain “Tryst with Destiny.” I dered?” His head bobbed in assent. “But it is safe. You know … just mind your own busisigned my Portuguese name on the exit form, ness. You do your work and you go home and departed the country that neither of my after and everything will be fine.” parents, nor I, had been born in. I thought about whose home this coun“It’s not just another country for you,” a friend remarked. “It’s a whole other con- try really is and I thought of homelessness. tinent.” Nonetheless, some things were im- I thought of 1869 and the ironically named Aboriginal Protection Act, which led to the mediately familiar, I thought to myself as I Stolen Generations of state-abducted indigprepared the cash to pay the taxi driver near the end of the ride from Melbourne’s Tul- enous children. I thought of Doris Pilkington’s Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, which was lamarine Airport. For instance, there was the crowned head on the heavy currency—the turned into a film and tells the story of just such Aboriginal children who had been taken paradoxically common royal visage on the coinage of the Commonwealth. I remem- away from their families. I thought of the ber her well from those days of scrounging earliest South Asians to come to this country, together my all too uncommon wealth as a the so called “Afghans” who served as camelstudent in London. And English is spoken eers in the 1860s, transporting goods across Australia’s deserts—Muslim men who marhere—that other imperial legacy. I thought of 1968, the year in which England withdrew ried into Aboriginal communities. I thought the right of entry to British passport holders of the migrant who goes everywhere and belongs nowhere. “This is your stop,” the from its former colonies and how the lie was driver announced as he slowed down. “All given to the concept of the Commonwealth. the best!” n I thought of “Rivers of Blood,” Enoch Powell’s speech delivered that same year, in which he proclaimed, “Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from

To read more of R. Benedito Ferrão’s writing, visit his blog at thenightchild.blogspot.com or The Nightchild Nexus on Facebook.

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June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 9

feature

Decoding Elections 2014 The emerging Hindu identity By Vamsee Juluri

arendra Modi's victory needs to be understood beyond the two commonly heard positions we have heard these past few months leading up to the election. Critics of Modi saw his rise as the march of Hindu nationalist fascism and the inevitable death of secularism in India. Supporters of Modi saw his rise as a sign of hope for India after years of corruption in high places, general ineptitude, and a sickening sense of venality in civic and public life. But India’s vote for Narendra Modi needs to be understood beyond these two ideas. Even if Modi ran on a campaign of universal good governance rather than divisive anti-secular rhetoric, and even if his critics now assume that his victory means an end to something noble in India, the truth is that both positions only tiptoe around what his victory means from a modern, civilizational Hindu point of view today. The mandate that Narendra Modi has won, in other words, is not just for either good governance, or for dismantling secularism, but for embodying a new, emerging idea of what it means to be Hindu, and Indian, in the world today. It is very different from thinking of it as a mandate for Hindu nationalism of the kind we witnessed in the late 1980s and 1990s. This mandate, simply put, is about Hinduism even more than Hindu nationalism, or secularism. It might sound paradoxical, but by running on a promise of universal good, rather than on divisive identity-rhetoric, Modi has re-established a very Hindu way of looking at the world. This is important to recognize, because the anointed secular position against Modi, though seemingly a good thing—for secularism is a good thing in my view—has very little intellectual, emotional, or moral purchase in large sections of India's young today. We need to recognize that, and to respect that. Young people in India today, growing up in a rapidly globalizing cultural environment, aspiring perhaps to study or work in other countries, generally disposed favorably towards the United States and the West, and also, for the most part, accustomed to diverse, multi-religious coexistence in India and therefore not inherently hateful to other 10 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Narendra Modi Photo Credit: Narendra Modi

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The mandate that Narendra Modi has won ... is for embodying a new, emerging idea of what it means to be Hindu, and Indian, in the world today. communities, find a tremendous contradiction between how they see themselves and how they are represented in the global discourse. Young Hindus see themselves as part of a great civilizational heritage, and value it not just for its ancient glory, but also because they see its spirituality as being the core of their civilizational ethic of coexistence and respect for all religions. If Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and so many different kind of Hindus divided by language, custom, caste and history still share a land and history so deeply, they know it is not simply because of India’s secular constitution, but because of Hinduism’s ancient legacy of respecting all faiths. There is a new sense of wanting to be Indian, and Hindu, in India’s young that is very different from the simplistic Hindu nationalist rhetoric we saw two decades ago. Unfortunately, even if Hindus have moved on for the most part from the extremism and jingoistic pride of that period, the

secular commentary has not. In fact, it has only become worse, if such a thing was possible. It should come as no surprise to anyone therefore that the numerous earnest and passionate appeals to Indian voters to reject Modi that populated the august pages of The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Economist in recent months probably had very little meaning for voters in India. To know why, it is worth recalling what else these publications had to say about Hindus, Hinduism, and India in the last few years, before they took up their outraged positions on behalf of India's supposedly vanishing secularism. The Economist once described a holy Hindu deity, the Shiva Lingam at Amarnath, as a “penis-shaped lump of ice.” The Guardian once lampooned the passing of a revered Hindu guru, who probably did more to uphold India's secular, multireligious fabric than any intellectual or activist ever did, and derided his teachings as simplistic “peace, love and vegetarianism.” The New York Times published a spate of op-ed pieces after the 2008 Pakistani terrorist attacks blaming India and Hindu nationalism. Not to mention its serious advocacy for a Hinduism “expert” who compares ancient Hindus to Nazis in her book, The Hindus, and unilateral exclusion of dissenting opinion. With this sort of a track record, why would take anyone take them seriously on Narendra Modi either? The fact is that what might have been a fair, principled position of secularist critique against Hindu extremism has long ago lost all integrity in the eyes of most reasonable Hindus. They may not care for the sort of ultra-nationalism and minority-abusing that some Hindutva leaders did, but they do care about their religion, their nation, and their place in the world. They do not see secularism being advocated against Modi, but only Hinduphobia. Had Modi run on a really divisive platform, the situation would have indeed been different. But fact is that he did not. Perhaps the time has truly come for a better conversation now about India, and the future of religion, and nationalism. We need

a better notion of secularism than the profoundly orientalistic Hinduphobia we have seen so far. We also need a better notion of Hindu nationalism to enter the debate than the 19th century ideologies that have dominated its parties for a long time. At least on the latter, Modi has marked a distinct change from the past. Whether Prime Minister Modi is truly different from the Chief Minister who allegedly allowed a terrible riot to run wild in 2002 is of course a question that leaves many restless. The Indian electorate has clearly spoken in his favor. If there was really an inexcusable level of culpability, then surely votes too would not mean any lessening of it. But we do have to consider one thing, which people in India probably have and those of us who only read about India through largely Hinduphobic publications have not. For a few days in 2002, the allegation holds, a government failed in its responsibility to protect its citizens, and for this lapse punishments were indeed made. We are however not satisfied with those who paid for these crimes, and somehow sought the head, so to speak, of one man more than any other. Whether it was for what he really did, or whether he only became a symbol for all our fears, is perhaps not ever going to be known for sure. Nothing can and will erase the pain of those who suffered in Gujarat in 2002, Hindu and Muslim. Nothing can and will erase the pain of all those who suffered at the hands of terrorists and their bombs and bullets in India in the last two decades. But one thing the Indian electorate has done decisively now is to reject those whose politics have rested on the divisive and ugly identityclaims that underlie that sort of violence. India has rejected both pseudo-secularism, and jingoistic Hindu extremism. It has accepted a plank of good governance for all, which for young Hindus could also mean a repudiation of brazen, racist Hinduphobia, and for others might prove a reassurance eventually that India’s secular constitution will not be threatened, and may even be strengthened by recognizing the civilizational roots on which that country's many religions rest. This election was not really about choosing between secularism and religious extremism as it was made out to be. The choice was perhaps seen by people in India more accurately as one between Hinduphobia and an India for everyone. And India has chosen. n Vamsee Juluri is a Professor of Media Studies and the author, most recently, of Bollywood Nation: India through its Cinema. This article was first published on Huffington Post.

Democracy Equals Freedom By Ranjani Iyer Mohanty

Photo Credit: Narendra Modi Facebook page

he epic task is complete. In nine phases, over a course of 36 days, an electoral population of over 800 million people in 543 constituencies had the opportunity to vote—requiring five million people to administer the procedure and another five million to provide security, and costing taxpayers Rupees 35 billion ($580 million). A truly monumental effort. India had the biggest election but it was not alone in this venture. Spring arrived and elections were in the air; Afghanistan, South Africa, Turkey, Belgium, and Egypt were part of a longer list. Many people seem disillusioned with their current government and quite ready for change. Maybe it’s just that those who are dissatisfied are the most vocal, creating an impression of general unhappiness. Maybe it’s aggravated by the media focusing on the discontent, and playing it up to fill printed news pages and the 24-hour news cycle. Or maybe the desire for change is just natural. The grass always looks greener on the other side and even over the septic tank. But it may be more than that. It may be disillusionment with the workings of democracy. Right now, the undemocratic nations and their rulers seem stronger. Russia has dreams of expansion and Vladimir Putin is amassing troops near Ukraine. China’s “peaceful rise” has morphed to “quiet assertion” and Xi Jinping is claiming territorial rights in the South China Sea. North Korea is happy to stand alone and Kim Jong-un continues his legacy of threats against South Korea. Zimbabwe has its ageless Robert Mugabe. They seem to be able to get things done and quickly, while leaders of the democratic nations seem weak. America is gridlocked and Obama seems professorial. In the United Kingdom, Cameron seems haunted by expense scandals. South Africa has high unemployment and Jacob Zuma appears morally bankrupt. And in India corruption seems to have reigned unchecked, under Manmohan Singh. There’s no doubt that democracy is messy, slow, and inefficient. We, in India, are par-

ticularly aware of that. In the supposed race between China and India, India fares badly because we must do things democratically and with consensus. Crouching tiger, bumbling elephant. Even the well-known Indian policewoman and social activist Kiran Bedi recently said that she’s prepared to sacrifice the cause of anti-corruption for some good governance. This statement was likely made to justify her shift of support from the anti-corruption and somewhat anarchist Aam Admi Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party. But in some sense, India has made this compromise for years now. When frustrations grow in the face of inefficiencies and lack of resources, it’s understandable why people move towards anything that offers a modicum of efficiency and certainty. All forms of government come with a price. But with democracy—good or bad, right or wrong—we get the government the majority of us voted for. It may be a bumbling elephant, but it’s our bumbling elephant. And democracy at least espouses equality and human rights. Despite the chaos, gridlock, incompetence, corruption, and having to repeatedly put up with the expensive circus of elections, those of us living in democratic countries need to remind ourselves that it’s not just our right to vote but our privilege. Elections are a rare and infrequent opportunity for the common people to shape the country they live in. Democracy may be another word for freedom. Few of us would knowingly or willingly give up the freedom to succeed or fail in our own way in exchange for a more efficient life in a gilded cage as dictated by someone else. Mohandas K. Gandhi said, “Good government is no substitute for self government.” India has a new democratically elected Prime Minister. It is time now to believe that we have voted for what we think is best for India. And it’s time to hope we can arrive at a summer of satisfaction. n Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer and editor, based in New Delhi. Her articles have appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including the NY Times, IHT, WSJ, FT, and the Atlantic. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 11

India Gets a Charismatic Leader By Sujeet Rajan

arendra Damodardas Modi, who comes from a humble background as the son of a tea-seller, is a charismatic, dynamic and shrewd politician. His victory in the recent elections in India can only be matched by that of President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. If some of you readers don’t quite agree with that opinion, perhaps you might find this, too, a bit difficult to agree with: Modi is finally the global role model India has been looking for in politics as well as in business, sports, films and the arts. It’s not that India has not had its share of great politicians—with all their individual flaws—to choose from. There have been many, from the erudite and sophisticated Jawaharlal Nehru to the reformist Narasimha Rao, whose liberalization policies were taken forward by the capable Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh to shape India’s aspirations towards becoming a developed nation. I believe that Modi, too, will endeavor to follow that same path and goals. But what makes Modi a great Indian politician, a global role model, and one who commands respect is that he has beaten all odds to make the impossible possible. Obama, and now Modi, with their calculated, successful campaigns and ultimate victory at the polls, have given hope to generations, and have inspired and will continue to inspire millions of youngsters to dream big. The 2014 Lok Sabha elections were as personal for Modi as it was for Rajiv Gandhi in the wake of the assassination of his mother Indira Gandhi. The country may have voted for the first time in 30 years on the issue of the economy, but for Modi, it was about reinstating his identity as a secular Indian. Modi, who will turn 64 this September, when entrusted with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) leadership spot for the 2014 polls in India, showed tremendous enthusiasm, energy, vigor and panache at hundreds of rallies across the country. For Obama, the hardest part was to win the Democratic primaries, beating Hillary Clinton. The rest was easier, as United States votes state by state either Blue or Red. It was either going to be a narrow win or a narrow loss for him. Not so, for Modi. The challenge for him has been the same since the 2002 Gujarat riots. There was no way for him to know till the day the votes were counted how much the nation either hated or loved him. 12 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Narendra Modi Photo Credit: Narendra Modi Facebook page

Modi not only had to counter the opposition, and convince a sceptical nation of his worth, but to convince the top leaders from his own party, stalwarts like L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj, of his leadership credentials. Before Modi took on the reins of the party, the BJP was in shambles. The party was in no position to take charge of even a state government anywhere, forget sweeping polls nationally. Modi made it a cohesive national party again, gave it the badly needed stature and confidence, got immediate results in Assembly elections in prominent states, and proved to be an astute leader. Modi was ostracized by not only his fellow Indians, but by the global community for the 2002 Gujarat riots. In all those years when he was condemned and castigated, Modi could have exploded in public fury and disintegrated like an Arvind Kejriwal, or created a split within the party and formed a faction of his own, or committed political hara kiri. But instead he quietly and systematically laid the foundation for the Prime Minister’s job by developing Gujarat economically and gaining the trust with his performance as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. As detractors continued to criticize him, Modi showed one of his greatest strengths: he kept a calm front in the face of all the overt and passive aggression against him; and he didn’t stoop to denounce the lobbying-tilted actions of the United States, who refused him a diplomatic United States visa in 2005. The United States is now courting Modi. Obama has invited him to the White House; the State Department wants him to visit the United States. The visa issue, it seems was white smoke. The most difficult part, as Modi will soon come to know, is to succeed in the face of adversity, while governing the country. If Modi wants to succeed in developing

India economically, which is what his campaign message has been, he needs to make India the engine of growth, take the country towards global economic recovery, initiate measures to punish corruption and eradicate it in the long run, make the country more secular, despite the reservations of minorities, and make its defence forces and borders stronger. This is indeed a tall task and one for which Modi is well-prepared, and if he is able to achieve everything that he has stated he will, Modi will be revered in the global community as an icon. No Indian businessman, bar Ratan Tata, can come close to being a global icon—for Indian businesses believe more in the service sector to make money than in developing products like Bill Gates did. Sachin Tendulkar, for all of India’s pretensions, is still a (retired) cricket celebrity, not a global sports icon; ditto for Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in the films arena, and the country’s real writers, the ones who make money and are critically successful at the same time, like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Jhumpa Lahiri are NRIs and PIOs, so the likes of Chetan Bhagat are confined to being desi phenomenons. Besides the country is yet to produce another Rabindranath Tagore or Satyajit Ray. If Modi is able to unite a diverse and divisive populace, within the contours of democracy and government, his name will one day be taken in the same breath as one would Mahatma Gandhi’s name. As one of the two greatest Indians the country has ever produced. After all, one gave India freedom. The other could well give Indians freedom from its worries. n Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar

Modi’s Majority Will Modi represent his vote share or all of India? By Sandip Roy

t is an indisputable fact that Narendra Modi has led the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) to a clear majority on its own in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Parliament of India). It is equally an indisputable fact that at 31 percent of the vote the BJP has the lowest vote share of any party to win a single party majority in the same Lok Sabha. (To compare the BJP number in 2014 to the Congress in 2009 is an apples and oranges comparison because the Congress has not won a majority on its own since 1984). But to insinuate that because of the latter, the former is somehow suspect or even illegitimate is mischievous, delusional and ultimately undemocratic. While vote share might be of interest to psephologists and strategists, for the purposes of forming a government it’s the number of seats that counts. That’s the way the game has been set up and no one can change the rules of the game at this stage just because they are unhappy with the results. And the BJP will rightfully occupy 282 seats in the 16th Lok Sabha—that’s 52 percent of the Lok Sabha, not 31 percent. Those who want to take solace in that 69 percent who did not vote for the BJP, or the 61.5 percent who did not vote for the NDA, can do so, but those numbers are in the end crumbs of very cold comfort. If the 69 percent is important, it’s not because it can be used to question the legitimacy of Modi’s victory, but because it signals the work he has to do given that Modi and his supporters have been claiming a mandate in a way a Manmohan Singh was never able to. If the BJP wants to play down the importance of vote percentages nationally it cannot play up the tripling of its vote share in a state like West Bengal even though it only won a couple of seats there. Likewise Amit Shah is too shrewd a strategist to assume that Mayawati is irrelevant in Uttar Pradesh politics because the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) drew a blank in terms of seats. It still got 20% of the vote, something the BJP would be foolish to ignore when it comes time for Assembly elections there. Of course Modi does not have to be accommodating if he does not want to. “(T) his was not a mandate for consensus but for

India Parliament Photo Credit:India Parliament Election 2014 Facebook page

audacity,” writes journalist Swapan Dasgupta urging Modi to not yield to the “merchants of caution.” Modi’s party has a comfortable majority, he has a free hand and he can rule as he wishes, serving the interests of the 31% who elected him. He can start building a Ram Mandir tomorrow and announce a Uniform Civil Code the day after and the 69 percent can weep into their op-eds and blogs. Yes, he can. But what good will it do him? After Barack Obama won the United States presidential election in 2008, a bitter and acrimonious election where his race had become a factor, Obama rejoiced in the historic victory, much as Modi did in Vadodra, but Obama also reached out to those who did not vote for him. “And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.” Many in that 69 percent were straining to hear echoes of that in Modi’s first speech after winning as well. Modi gave some indication of that when he said “I want to tell my fellow Indians that in letter and spirit I will take all Indians with me.” The 69 percent question for Modi will be how he chooses to walk his talk. But as Ramakrishna, the mentor of his favorite icon Vivekananda put it “jato mat tato path.” (As many beliefs that many ways to God). Modi wants to put India first. One India cannot be the same thing as a homogeneous India. While the final vote breakdown numbers are still trickling in, Modi and his advisors must already have a good inkling about who make up that 69 percent of doubters. Muslims are the group who have gotten the most attention. Yet numbers prove conflicting. India Today notes that BJP won big in many seats with a high number of Muslim voters—Lucknow, Gauhati, Chandni Chowk

for example. India Today also points out that of the 102 constituencies where at least one in five voters is a Muslim, the BJP won 47 seats. In 2009 it had won 24 of those seats. Pre-poll studies have shown that the BJP went into these elections with a gender gap. Rajeswari Deshpande of the University of Pune analyzed National Election Studies (NES) figures from 1996 to 2009 to conclude that “Among those who favored Modi as prime minister, 62 per cent were men and 38 per cent were women.” And let’s not forget that gay Indians disappointed with the BJP’s stance on Section 377 are also part and parcel of this diverse India that Modi will have to lead. Modi supporters might dismiss them as inconsequential whiners but the rights to privacy and the right to dissent are not inconsequential for the health and well-being of any democratic society. Technically speaking Modi can ignore all these groups. The election results of 2014 have given Modi the unquestioned right to the bully pulpit. That does not mean the country has given him carte blanche to be the bully. The 69 percent figure should not be bandied to question Modi’s right to be the next Prime Minister of India. But it should be a reminder to him that all of India is not on the same page as he is after an election that was presented as a referendum on him. Vote share or no vote share, Modi has the keys to the kingdom. It’s his choice what he does with it—whether he decides to be the Prime Minister of India as opposed to the Commander-in-Chief of the 31 percent. n Sandip Roy is the Culture Editor for Firstpost. com. He is on leave as editor with New America Media. His weekly dispatches from India can be heard on KALW.org. This article was first published on Firstpost.com. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 13

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parent principle

Letter From a Dad A father writes an open letter to his six year old son By Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy

t is now officially an annual ritual—my open/public letter to my son on his birthday. I wrote the first one when he turned 4. I followed it up with one when he turned 5. On March 29, my medium guy (noting his objection to the word small), turned 6. Here is my letter to my young man. Dearest Dude, So you are a year older and a bit wiser. Maybe a little too much for our convenience but we will let that pass. You are starting to ask too many questions. Some of them quite complicated and a few of them uncomfortably so. Give us some time and we will catch up. Until then, let the dictionaries and encyclopedias be your friend.

but all the other parts including your newfound appreciation (as you clearly put it, not love) for pink and peach. The perspective is all good. Just one note of caution. As much as you like your friend, never, never ever call her your most favorite girl in the world. Not in front of your mom. Rule No 0: The mother is always the favorite girl, lady, woman in the world. Never changes. Until you get married and then, the “if … then” clause kicks in.

V Art

Reading Books

I love that you are hooked on math and science. Attaboy! I say. As much as your mother wanted you to be a creative type completely unlike the two of us, your DNA refuses to cooperate. The older you grow, the more obvious it gets that you are going to get into math and science. Like everyone else in the family. Now that we understand that part, would you be so kind as to consider thinking about building the next great thing. I am not looking for a $19 billion buyout. Something in the millions would be fine too. If you agree, I am willing to start saving towards your rent in San Francisco. You will most likely need it. Last year, we had talked about girls. Yes, girls. You now have your doppelgänger who happens to be a girl. We are thrilled about it. Not so much about you following her instructions to a T and getting into trouble,

We have kept technology away from you as much as possible. Sometimes we wish there could be a balance but not as yet. This birthday, we got you a Chromebook so you have all the right tools at the right time. It is a great device to learn cool things. And the occasional Angry Birds. Your continued love for music is fantastic. I love the fact that we can listen to good Karnatik music together. While you continue to love Balamurali Krishna’s singing, your newfound admiration for Abhishek Raghuram (and his Viribhoni) is admirable. As is your liking for the Sikkil Gurucharan and Anil Srinivasan combo. I hope to get you to meet one or all of them someday. Remember, these guys put in a lot of effort to get where they are. It is not just talent. So, there is no point in expecting music to come to you naturally. You have to put in the effort. Yes, I am talking about your complaints over repeated practice. Gotta do it. No way around it. I love, love the fact that you run to hug me when I drop you off at school. In front of your BFF, no less. I know this is a fleeting experience that will soon disappear. Until then, I will cherish every one of those tight hugs.

The Medium Guy

Your mother and I so desperately wish to freeze things in time. As much as we would love for you to eat your food yourself without taking the entire day, we oh so desperately miss the little guy who was knee high and wobbling around in his diapers, and babbling incessantly. We miss that little one so much and as you grow older, even more so. We love it when you speak in Tamil. But it is starting to get rarer and rarer. Please, please speak the language a little more like you used to. For our sake. It feels like honey in our ears when we hear it. No hyperbole whatsoever. I am thrilled that you are not scared of lizards in the garden. I am not gung-ho about you wanting to go and touch them. But not being scared is nice. If only your mother saw our side of things. Finally, to me, the greatest part of my day is when I put you to bed and watch you go to sleep. Nothing, absolutely nothing feels purer and awesomer than that. In that moment, the Universe just feels right. Happy birthday, my would-be paleontologist who also happens to be a would-be geologist. Signed, Appa P.S: Too early to be asking questions about the reproductive system from your encyclopedia. End of conversation. Finito. n Rangaprabhu Parthasarathy is a tech enthusiast and blogs on various topics from parenting to shopping: rangaprabhu.com. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 15

business

Silicon Valley Elitism By Vivek Wadhwa

hen computers were just for nerds and large corporations, Silicon Valley’s elite could get away with arrogance, insularity and sexism. They were building products for people that looked just like them. The child geniuses inspired so much awe that their frat-boy behavior was a topic of amusement. Now technology is everywhere. It is being used by everyone. Grandma downloads apps and communicates with junior over Facebook. Women are dominating social media and African Americans are becoming Twitter’s fastest-growing demographic group. The public is investing billions of dollars in tech companies and expects professionalism, maturity, and corporate social responsibility. It is losing its tolerance for elitism and arrogance. Note what just happened when Silicon Valley luminary Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal (Jan 24, 2014) to complain of public criticism of the Bay Area elite and his ex-wife Danielle Steel. He said “Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’” There was such an outpouring of anger on social media over the comparison to the Nazi genocide that the venture capital firm Perkins founded, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, disavowed its association with him. Tech blogs and newspapers lashed out. Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Marc Andreesen and Marc Benioff expressed their disapproval. It is a rare thing in Silicon Valley for any venture capitalist or CEO to speak up against a tech luminary—no matter how much out of line he may be. So this was a surprise. The Perkins controversy is the tip of the iceberg. Kleiner Perkins is itself embroiled in a sexual-harassment scandal that it chose to litigate rather than settle. When Twitter filed for an IPO with an all-male board, the New York Times slammed it for being an old boys’ club. Rather than admitting that his company may have erred, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo chose to lash out publicly against a critic—me—for expressing outrage in the

16 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

article. A few weeks later, Twitter gave in to the growing backlash and announced a woman director. There was no apology or humility, however. In most industries, discriminating on the basis of gender, race, or age would be considered illegal. Yet in the tech industry, venture capitalists routinely show off about their “pattern recognition” capabilities. They say they can recognize a successful entrepreneur, engineer, or business executive when they see one. The pattern always resembles Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or themselves: a nerdy male. Women, blacks, and Latinos are at a disadvantage as are older entrepreneurs. VCs openly admit that they only fund young entrepreneurs and claim that older people can’t innovate. It isn’t just venture capitalists who are insensitive to federal employment-discrimination laws. Most tech companies refuse to release gender, race, or age data. They claim this information is a trade secret. Whatever data are available reveal a strong bias towards young males. In his letter to Wall Street Journal, Tom Perkins complained of the outraged public reaction to Google buses carrying technology workers and to rising real-estate prices. But these are genuine grievances. Longtime residents of San Francisco are being displaced because of skyrocketing rents. Bus stops are being clogged with fleets of luxury buses. The tech industry is taking advantage of the investment that taxpayers made in public infrastructure, the Internet, and education—without giving much back or even acknowledging its debts to society. Silicon Valley’s tech companies are also disconnected from the communities in which they live. They remain aloof about the problems that the poor face. Very few help set up soup kitchens, build houses for the homeless, or provide scholarships for disadvantaged children. Tech moguls such as Peter Thiel go as far as admonishing the value of higher education itself—and paying children $100,000 to drop out of college. Most startups focus on building senseless social media-type apps or solving the problems of the rich—and that is what venture capitalists typically fund. Silicon Valley has an important role to play in solving the world’s problems. It is the

Women, blacks, and Latinos are at a disadvantage as are older entrepreneurs. VCs openly admit that they only fund young entrepreneurs and claim that older people can’t innovate. epicenter of innovation. Most technologists I know have a social conscience and want to do whatever they can to make the world a better place. Yet the power brokers—most venture capitalists, super-rich angel investors, and CEOs consistently show a disregard for social causes. They display a high level of arrogance, demand tax cuts for themselves, and have a don’t-care attitude. As demonstrated by the Perkins letter, this sends the wrong message to the world and holds Silicon Valley back. It is time for the Silicon Valley elite to smell the coffee and realize that the world has changed—and that they must too. It is time for tech entrepreneurs to focus on solving big problems and giving back to the world. n Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. You can follow him on Twitter at @ vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa. com. First published in The Washington Post.

June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 17

cover

Ishq, Actually

Muslim women define themselves through a discussion on love and marriage By Zenobia Khaleel

Fatima M, a student of community psychology, conducts halaqas (religious and social discussions) with teen and preteen girls in local masjids, where adolescent challenges are informally discussed. “We reach out to one other, reminding ourselves that desires, and love are a part of life, our aim is to navigate it in the most halal and healthy way possible,” adding that “Muslim society perpetuates that guys have desires, but girls don’t.” Many American Muslims face a double minority status due to their ethnic and religious backgrounds. The strain takes an intense emotional toll on the youth as they try to balance a fine act between the rigid demands of the faith, and influences of the culture that surrounds them. Community leaders and grassroot volunteers have identified that honest and healthy conversations are the need of the hour. Love Stories

Every great cup of coffee has a story behind it, goes the Starbucks adage. And, sometimes a great story has a steaming cup of coffee behind it. A coffee shop chat between lifelong friends turned into a riveting discussion that paved the path for a trailblazing book: Love, InshAllah.

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Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu were exasperated by the portrayal of Muslim women in the media. They could not recognize themselves (or any Muslim woman they knew) in the quiet and submissive portrayals of Muslim women in popular culture. The friends sought to alter this perception. In Mattu’s opinion, “Muslim women are

too often defined and limited to their headscarf (or lack thereof) or seen through the lens of national security. Our private narratives include a broad spectrum of family, professions, academics, hobbies, volunteerism, and more. It’s time our public narratives began reflecting that multiplicity too.” According to the Muslim Tribune, “a

Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu

study conducted by Dr. Ilyas Ba-Yunus, a sociology professor at State University of New York, found an alarming increase in divorce rate among Muslims in North America reaching 31%.” Aneesah Nadir, President of the Islamic Social Services Association, believes that the core reason behind the increasing rate of divorces is that expectations are not discussed prior to marriage. “Ninetynine% of marriages in the Muslim community are conducted without any counseling, unrealistic expectations and no conversation regarding these expectations,” says Nadir. Islamic Social Service Association is at the helm of “the healthy marriage covenant” initiative, which advocates that imams enforce mandatory premarital counselling or advisement, before a couple ties the knot. Nadir feels that “We’ve seen too many broken marriages and bad relationships. This protocol is long overdue.” “When parents choose a spouse for their children, ‘back from the home country’ it causes added challenges, due to different cultural values, different philosophies, and different expectations.” She notes that “the lack of support system for the spouse who comes from overseas intensifies the situation.” Nadir believes that parents need counseling themselves. Often the parents struggle with the level of involvement in their children’s lives. Love, InshAllah is an attempt by Maznavi and Mattu to begin the conversation. Conceptualized and edited by the duo, it is an anthology of stories by 25 American Muslim women who share their personal experiences with affairs of the heart. InshAllah signifies the Islamic belief that everything happens by the will of God. The stories are connected by a common thread of love, desire, passion, or lust, but defining this collection as “love stories” or “women’s studies” would be lim-

iting its genre. Through love stories, the editors opened up conversations on topics that are generally swept under the rug. Issues like bigotry and racism, interfaith relationships, polygyny, homosexuality and premarital relationships that plays out with varying intensities in Muslim households. I talked to Maznavi and Mattu, coeditors of the anthology, about the objective behind the book. Maznavi is a writer, a Fulbright scholar, and a civil rights attorney, who focuses on federal policies that target the American Muslim community. Ayesha Mattu is also a writer, editor, an international development consultant and was selected “Muslim Leader of Tomorrow” by the UN Alliance of Civilizations. She has worked in the field of women’s human rights. “The objective of the book was to change the narrative of Muslim women both within and outside the Muslim community,” stated Maznavi adding that “even within the Muslim community, there is a stereotypical notion of how a good girl behaves.” “We’ve had people across the breadth of the country—people of various faiths—reach out to us, struck by the vulnerability of the stories. These stories resonated with them as they’ve grappled with similar issues. People gifted the book to their sisters, moms and aunts to keep the conversation rolling,” beams Maznavi. Maznavi said that the feedback from the Muslim community was largely positive. A few voices of dissent argued that the book was un-islamic in discussing private issues on a public medium. “Our response was, ‘Love, InshAllah was not put forward as an Islamic book, this is not an Islamic dating manual, it is a reflection on the lives of American Muslims,’” said Maznavi

On her own chapter in the book, Mattu prefaced her story with a reference from the Holy Quran. “‘Al-Fatiha’ means ‘The Opening,’ and is used as a spiritual metaphor throughout my story. Sometimes an opening appears in our life, which leads us onto a new and unexpected path, as it did when I met my future husband.” Having been raised to believe that Islam was a religion of “No,” which had no place for joy or creativity, questions, or doubts, Mattu aspires to create an “Islam of Yes” for herself and her children. “Love, creativity, joy, and hope are our Islamic heritage and birthright. The reclamation of these qualities begins from an understanding of our rich global histories as well as a recognition of the diversity within the 1.6 billion Muslims today. Within our diversity and divergence, lies our strength and creativity—the essence of yes,” said Mattu. The book explores the journeys of the women trying to walk the line between cultural norms and personal choices as they traverse through dual identities, generational gaps, coming of age, bigotry, and self-actualization. Each story throws a powerful lens into the women’s lives and through her, into the community’s psyche. The characters in the book are not painted in stark black and white strokes. Their realistic multi-hued depiction highlights layers of vulnerability beneath tough facades. The Muslim father who read the Quran every morning and spent his nights out dancing; the mother who dishes out a feast for her visiting daughter’s Catholic boyfriend, but refuses to meet him; the teenager who makes a pact with God for his blessings as she sneaks out of home at night. The stories illustrate the clash of inner desires versus cultural identity that prevail in most immigrant June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 19

cultures. “A Journey of Two Hearts” recounts the author’s tomboyish childhood in an atheist hippy household, and her spiritual quest that leads to conversion to Islam. Her submission to the new faith comes with a price, her future with her non-Muslim husband. In “Kala Love” the writer, a daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, encounters racism and disownment by her mother when she falls in love with an African American Muslim man. Painfully aware of her community’s disdain for her dark complexion, she is disinterested in desi men since she cannot be part of another family that looks down on the color of her skin. Her story is a powerful portrayal of grace and incredible faith in the face of devastating tragedy. The writers come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and profess varying religious devotion. Their accounts are not formulaic love stories; these stories are sincere, engaging, and heartrending, which end in happily ever-afters, unrequited yearnings, second (and even third) chances at happiness. The book does a commendable job of dispelling misconceptions about arranged marriages, inhibited hijabis, and gay Muslims. “We are not quiet, we have desires, we are complicated, educated American Muslim women,” says the protagonist of the chapter, “Even Muslim Girls Get the Blues.” Maznavi believes that “there is often a dearth of secular voices in Islam, for example, Islam in America is presented as an immigrant religion.” The public response to the book has been tremendous. The book has caused a ripple effect of discussions on these issues within families, among friends and in the media. It received media coverage by all the major newspapers and media outlets. “When we zeroed in on the stories for Love, InshAllah,” explains Maznavi, “our first commitment was to the literary quality. We looked at engaging and compelling stories, but we also wanted our book to do justice to the diversity of the American Muslim community—the most diverse Muslim community in the world. We’ve reflected that diversity in terms of both ethnicity, and religious practice (orthodox, cultural, secular).” The authors have followed up on Love InshAllah with a second book, Salaam, Love, where Muslim men share their side of the love equation. n Zenobia Khaleel is a stay at home mom who dabbles in a lot of adventures (and misadventures), and is passionate about writing, traveling, acting, direction and community volunteering. Some of her articles have been published in The Hindu and The Khaleej Times. 20 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Straight Talk With the idea of keeping the ripples of conversation growing, I asked a handful of Muslim women about their challenges and expeiences with affairs of the heart. Here are some responses.

I’m a 23 year old Pakistani-American. I grew up in a traditional household, where Islam was emphasized a lot—the rituals, as well as the wisdom behind it. I’ve been instilled to keep family involved in all my decisions; the long term repercussions of my family’s reputation have a profound influence on me, whereas, growing up in America, has given me an individualistic perspective. I try to do everything to please Allah, to keep all relationships with men on a professional level, but that doesn’t preclude the idea that I’m above crushes with Muslims and nonMuslims. But I wouldn’t act on them. I believe marriage is the halal alternative to dating, I am at a stage of life where I would like to get married. Since I am living away from home there are lots of different variables: Should I wait for my parents to find someone? Should I find someone on my own? How do I do that? What kind of moral questions should I keep in mind when I interact with people? More questions than answers! Fahima (Berkeley)

A conservative upbringing does not necessarily determine how a child turns out. When I went off to college, I realized that unlimited freedom comes with consequences. So I had to invent my own rules based on what I thought was right for me as I went along. My Muslim friends who date in college are not free of cultural baggage. They tend to not follow the casual dating culture, they put more emphasis on relationships that could end in marriage. A friend who dated a white guy would constantly wonder if she was his token minority girlfriend. Assumptions of dating and marriage are formed on one’s experiences in their own homes and circles. Some get totally blindsided by romantic concepts based on movies

and popular culture, instead of examining actual relationships around them. Ideally, I’d like to know the person before the idea of marriage is on the table. People have different motivations for getting into arranged marriages. Some are forced by their parents, some just want to get the act done with and some want to get married for the same reasons as you do. Because it’s hard to tell what their motivations are, you can’t be sure if what they’re saying is to get you to agree or if they actually believe it. Nazneen (Stanford)

Going to public school in America, there were so many social pressures to dress a certain way, go to prom, and partake in unIslamic activities. The hardest challenge was dealing with teenage hormones and wanting to have a boyfriend when I knew I couldn’t. As a Muslim there is always heavy emphasis placed on the idea that anything having to do with the opposite gender is haram. My view on dating has changed over the years. I currently believe “halal dating” with the intention of getting married are okay, as long as parents have an idea after some time. However, relationships that don’t have a direction are inappropriate. Marriage is a 3-minute procedure that today’s world has made into a convoluted and depressing trial. Arranged marriages could be a great option for young Muslims, but it only works for the young, pretty girls, and the guys who are engineers/doctors, or amongst families with large networks. It does not favor the average AmericanMuslim. Open communication with parents is vital. It really helps when parents express what their expectations are, and kids get to voice their opinions, too. But parents are uncomfortable with this topic; only if a girl is suspected of dating or talking to a boy will a mom talk to a daughter about it. It usually won’t be a discussion to validate the girl’s feelings but more so to shame her to a point where she won’t do it again. Samara (UC Davis)

I grew up witnessing arranged marriages

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and accepted this process for me as well when the time came. My parents were introduced to my husband’s family through a mutual family friend. I was curious to find out more about him or at least have the opportunity to talk with him. So I took advantage of the social media age and snooped around till I found him on Orkut. We started talking. And after four months. When we were ready to move forward, we told our families and everything was made official. I was fortunate to have some time to get to know my husband before jumping into a completely arranged marriage. Four months doesn’t make a big difference in knowing someone, but the time made it a lot more comfortable and reassuring for us to make the decision. We have now been married for four years and pray for many more years to come. I think arranged marriages are the best way to go. You do not have to put yourself out there or waste time to mingle until you find the dream guy. You can trust that your family will find someone that holds similar values, is attractive, educated and religious. With all these factors in place, it should help the marriage deal with turbulent times. When you’re young and falling in love, you do not consider the many factors that make a marriage work. It’s all infatuation in the beginning and you’re so caught up in it that everything seems to be perfect and will remain perfect. Love comes later with time, just as it does with arranged marriages. Zeeba

I’m not in a relationship and nor do I think I’ll ever be in one (except the married one). I think it’s weird dating in high school and middle school because I don’t think we’re smart, mature, or exposed enough for the entailing drama and heartbreak. I don’t date. But it’s not out of choice, it’s because of my family circumstances. I’ve faced a couple of challenges, but the same ones that other young Muslim women have faced. I wish I was asked to prom, I wish I could have stayed up late with my friends afterward. I wish I knew what I was doing, but in this household, we don’t talk about these issues. I think arranged marriage is a great idea, with the condition that the girl has a say and she knows what she’s getting herself into. I didn’t have much exposure to the masjid 22 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

and youth groups, and I didn’t really care for them. I found them all to be hypocrites in that they would lie to their families and spend time at the masjid to get away from their parents. In theory it seemed like a good plan, but it didn’t end up that way. Inaya (UC Davis)

In the early nineties when I first came to America, our intention was to go back to India by the time my daughter (who was 14 months at that time) went to kindergarten. But as the years passed I realized that we were here for the long haul. Slowly, I became accustomed to American culture, but I was determined to give my daughter an Islamic upbringing. I put her in a Sunday school and assumed that all was well as long as she was there. I still remember a conversation with a friend who said I don’t mind my son marrying any girl, as long as he is marrying a girl. Eventually, my mantra changed to “as long as she marries a boy, it didn’t matter to me whether he was from any country or any religion.” As my daughter grew older, my aspirations for her future husband kept evolving. I learned to keep an open mind for all possibilities. For now, I would like her to marry someone she likes, someone who will love and take care of her, and he should be God fearing. The last condition trumps everything else. For me it would put everything else in perspective. The way she would meet this person is not a priority for me. He could be someone she brings to us, he could be someone we bring to her, or a complete stranger, somebody whom we trust introduces us to. I am happy if she can be happy with him and raise a family with good Islamic upbringing. I try to express my expectations to all my four children, whenever the topic comes up. Shabnam

I attended an all-girls Catholic high school because my parents did not want me near boys for religious reasons. My challenges were maintaining friendships with boys and hiding romantic relationships from my parents (even in high school). I was also challenged because sometimes I had to explain myself to non-Muslim classmates when

I told them that I am not allowed to date by my parents or religion, but that I wanted to. My personal view on relationships and dating in my own life is that romantic relationships and dating should be allowed only for the purpose of marriage. This view is influenced by my faith. While “dating” someone to get to know him for marriage, I do not touch nor talk to him about anything sexual. I believe love in a relationship can (but does not have to) exist before marriage, but that it should not be expressed in all ways until marriage. I believe arranged marriages can work so long as personality compatibility is considered, and so long as BOTH spouses are personally content with consenting to the arranged marriage. The ideal process of getting married: A suitable Muslim male will find me and respectfully pursue me with the goal of marriage. Respectful pursuit implies that he approach my family. I am very family oriented so it is vital for my family to approve of my spouse beforehand. His family must also be very excited and happy to have me—or else I will not marry him. Alia (Berkeley)

I grew up with my fair share of crushes and love interests, so I know my highschooler is not immune to the charms of the opposite sex. But are these feelings genuine or instilled by popular culture, right from Disney and Barbie? I am not opposed to my daughter going to prom with a set of good friends. But recently, her school hosted a “prom fair” where prom related local businesses—limo services, gown and tux stores, nail and hair spas, and tanning spas were promoting their businesses to students. Again, makes me wonder, to what extent are these “teenage hormones” fueled by consumer groups? Zeenath

So much shame and stigma is attached to gender relations that youngsters feel like they have to sneak around. Attractions happen, its natural and normal. Keeping an open dialogue from the beginning will equip the kids to handle it well. Nura

media

Choosing to Wear the Hijab

Despite the rising tide of Islamophobia, young Muslims declare their religious identity New America Media • Anna Challet

almon Hossein, an Afghan-American Muslim working on a joint law and public policy degree at UC Berkeley and Harvard, says that his own family hates that he has a beard. The outward sign of his Muslim faith, he says, makes his family worry about his future. “They say, ‘How are you going to get a job? How are you going to be successful?’” He knows that they’re just looking out for him, he says. But he intends to keep his beard; it provides him with a connection to his spiritual journey. Hossein, who spoke on a recent panel of young Bay Area Muslims in San Jose organized by New America Media in partnership with the One Nation Bay Area Project, is among a generation of young Muslims who grew up in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the rise of Islamophobia in America. Some have personal experience with hurtful speech and ignorant comments about their faith. Yet many still choose to show their faith through practices like prayer and fasting, wearing a hijab (head covering), or growing a beard. For these young people, finding the personal meaning in these practices is part of the path toward finding their own identity within the faith. “Your practice is what identifies you as a Muslim,” says Rasheeda Plenty, an AfricanAmerican student of Islamic theology at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, the first liberal arts Muslim college in the United States. “Do this, don’t do this, fast, or hijab—you’re in this Muslim community. Everyone’s doing that, everyone expects you to do that. But [growing up], there wasn’t a conversation of the why … How is this connecting me to my creator? What is this doing for my heart?” About a quarter million Muslims live in the Bay Area, and close to half are under the age of 35, according to the first-ever study of the Bay Area Muslim community. The study was co-authored by Farid Senzai, a political science professor at Santa Clara University, and Hatem Bazian, an ethnic studies professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of Zaytuna College.

Sadia Saifuddin, Salmon Hussein on the Growing Up Muslim panel

Hossein, who grew up in Alameda County and Southern California, was in eighth grade at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was his second day at a new school in Los Angeles. He remembers that in his homeroom, his teacher asked him if he was from Afghanistan, and followed with the question, “Do you know anything about what’s going on?” Some of his classmates went on to refer to him as “Afghanistan” throughout his time in school. He recalls going to his family dentist a few years ago when he first grew his beard; someone in the office whom he’d known since he was a child laughed when she saw him and said, “Oh my God, you look just like the terrorists.” She said it “almost lovingly,” and Hossein says it was hard to be mad at her. It wasn’t the only time he got that reaction. A law student classmate of his recently said, “You’re starting to look like the Taliban.” But Hossein says these attitudes have only made him more determined to keep his beard, a physical connection to his faith and his very identity. Sadia Saifuddin, a student at UC Berkeley, is Pakistani American and grew up in Fremont and Stockton, Calif. She is the first Muslim student to serve on the UC Board of Regents. Like Hossein, Saifuddin remembers facing scrutiny at school at the time of the Sept.

11 terrorist attacks. She recalls that she chose to start wearing a hijab—a “public and external symbol of [her] faith”—just a few months before Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks, she says, she faced a “barrage of questions” at school, though she was only in the fourth grade. Those questions have persisted into her adulthood. But despite much of the criticism she hears about wearing a hijab, including the assumption that women who wear it must be “oppressed,” she says that wearing it has been liberating for her—and that being able to choose whether or not she wears it is what’s important. “I get to talk to people and the first thing I worry about isn’t how good my hair looks or whether I gain a couple of inches, because a lot of that is covered up and it’s really more about what I have to say,” she says. And for many women, she says, it’s a way of feeling closer to God. These practices can also connect some young Muslims to their larger communities in very personal ways. RoSeanna Shavers, who is African-American and grew up in the Nation of Islam, says that when she was very young, she told her mother that she wanted to be white. “Next thing you know, I was in Muslim school,” says Shavers. She says that going to an Islamic school helped with what she called her “color sickness,” and gave her something to hold onto, connecting her with her African-American identity. While she is now non-practicing, she says, “[Islam] is in me.” n The One Nation Bay Area Project—a collaboration between the Marin Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy— works to strengthen relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Visit their website to learn more about the project. Anna Challet is a reporter and project manager with New America Media working on issues related to young people’s health. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 23

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ask a lawyer

Misdemeanor Remedy By Naresh Rajan

Q A

Can a misdemeanor be settled by civil compromise?

In a number of criminal cases involving fairly minor conduct, the law allows the accused to resolve his or her case by redressing the damages to the injured party by obtaining an agreement from that party to avoid prosecution. This procedure is explained in California Penal Code sections 1377 and 1378. The first section states that when a person injured by misdemeanor conduct has a civil remedy, the offense may be settled by a compromise. It also lists the exceptions to this procedure. “Civil remedy” means that the injured party can sue the accused in civil court or small claims court to get money to offset any damages caused by the accused’s conduct. The second section, 1378, authorizes trial courts to dismiss these types of misdemeanor cases when certain conditions have been met. If the injured person appears

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before the court and acknowledges that he or she has been compensated for any and all injury sustained by the accused person’s conduct, the court has discretion to dismiss the case and discharge the accused from any penalty. If the case is dismissed pursuant to this section, the accused person cannot be prosecuted again for the same conduct. Practically speaking, the civil compromise is available for many types of misdemeanor cases, from hit and run cases, where the accused left the scene of an accident without exchanging contact and insurance information with the other party, to simple theft and battery cases. The attorney for the accused person will contact the injured party and propose that the parties conduct a civil compromise to settle the case out of court. The injured party must be satisfied that it has received compensation for its damages, and must not want to go forward with the prosecution. The accused person must compensate the injured

party for its damages. The attorney for the accused usually drafts a declaration for the injured party to sign, stating that whatever harm it sustained has been redressed and that it does not desire the accused person to be prosecuted. The attorney then will take the declaration to court and ask the judge to approve the civil compromise and dismiss the case. The injured party does have the right to be present to acknowledge that it has been compensated, but in my experience, the injured party will waive that right when signing the document and agreeing to the compromise. So, in the end, the attorney will take the declaration and appear in court to have the case dismissed once the injuries have been redressed and the injured party has been fully compensated. n Naresh Rajan is an attorney in San Mateo County. Email nrajanlaw@gmail.com.

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.

June 2014

his column carries priority dates and other transitional information as taken from the U.S. State Department’s Visa Bulletin. The information below is from the Visa Bulletin for June 2014. In the tables below, the listing of a date for any class indicates that the class is oversubscribed. “Current” means that numbers are available for all qualified applicants. “Unavailable” means no numbers are available.

FAMILY PREFERENCE VISA DATES Preference Dates for India 1st Mar 22, 2007 2A May 01, 2012 2B Apr 01, 2007 3rd Oct 01, 2003 4th Dec 15, 2001 NOTE: F2A numbers subject to percountry limit are available to applicants with priority dates beginning Mar 15, 2011 and earlier than May 01, 2012.

EMPLOYMENT-BASED VISA DATES Preference Dates for India 1st Current 2nd November 15, 2004 3rd October 15, 2003 Other October 15, 2003 Workers 4th Current Certain Current Religious Workers 5th Current Targeted Employment Areas The Department of State has a recorded message with visa availability information at (202)485-7699, which is updated in the middle of each month. Source:http://travel. state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy/ bulletin/2014/visa-bulletin-for-june-2014.html

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finance

The Science of Uncertainty Part II Understanding the stock market By Rahul Varshneya

s an investor becomes more advanced, investment analysis becomes less of an exact science and more of an art. When looking at a possible investment, financial metrics sometimes contradict one another. A good investor will be able to know which factors to use in the analysis and which to discard. Often this leads to differing opinions on the investment as the facts used are at the discretion of the investor. There are generally two schools of thought in investment analysis—fundamental and technical investing. Fundamental investing is analysis based on quantitative (profitability and earnings) and qualitative factors (brand, management team). Technical investing is conducting analysis based on behavior of the stock price. Fundamental investing is the more established and accepted investment approach in modern finance. When conducting an analysis, it is essential to go beyond just the basic financials such as the P/E ratio or profitability. One needs to be aware of every single published metric on the asset as it is the more obscure ones that sometimes tell the real story. Some of the more quantitative metrics I use are the short ratio, analyst opinion, free cash flow and leverage.

Short Ratio

Short ratio measures the amount of stock which is being sold short. The higher the short ratio, the more the public is betting for the company to fall—a warning sign for an investor. It is not to say admired companies have no one shorting them, it is common to see a 1-3% short ratio for healthy firms. Companies like Blackberry however, which is going through turmoil, is sitting at a significantly higher 12%.

Analyst Opinion

The second metric—analyst opinion, is not used often enough. Research analysts are the experts in the industry for the sector they cover. Although an individual analyst can be wrong about a stock, it is ill-advised to go against the consensus opinion as their compensation is tied to how accurate they are. It is also important to pay attention to how the consensus opinion changes on an asset. If analysts are moving from a consensus “buy” towards “hold,” it is a clear warning signal

28 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

for that investment and vice versa.

Cash Positions

Cash positions are at the heart of good management and understanding them is a part of good investment strategy. Cash positions decide the flexibility of a company— whether it is flexibility for mergers with acquisitions (M&A) activity or allowing for increased capital expenditure. Companies with poor cash positions have no money for acquisitions or research and development (R&D). Companies in these positions tend to remain stagnant and are overtaken by firms with the resources to invest in the next big idea. Cash can also directly benefit investors in the form of dividends or stock buybacks.

Leverage

Strong cash positions tend to go hand in hand with leverage, our final metric. Leverage is the amount of debt on a company’s balance sheet. High leverage is considered risky, but only to company’s who cannot support it. A sign of increased leverage, with the ability to support it, is a sign the company has increased appetite for risk—a good sign for investors. On the other hand, too much of it will eat up cash and is often a source of the debt spiral—issuing more long term debt to pay off the current debt.

eing a successful investor means knowing what not do as much as knowing what to do. There are many behaviors which plague fundamentally sound investors.

Investment Pitfalls

The first is holding onto stocks for too long. Often when stocks go up, investors who are holding those assets lose discipline in favor of greed. The thought process is “I will hold onto it for another day and make just a little more.” This thought process is irrational— greed should not control the investment process. For this reason, investors should set a price target for their investments in the event it goes up or down. Conversely, in the event an individual’s investment goes down, many times there is the hope that it will rebound and the losses will be recouped, when in fact the investor continues losing money. It is very difficult for an investor to admit they

were wrong. In both cases the investment should be sold at the right time established at the beginning. The second behavioral pitfall is hindsight bias. Hindsight bias occurs when an investor believes an investment to behave a certain way without a reason and if it turns out correct—retroactively applies. It as the reason for which the investment was originally made. Hindsight bias creates a false sense of confidence in inexperienced investors and when they finally decide to enter the stock market, they are not prepared for the reality. Finally, a pitfall even seasoned investors fall into is not understanding the investment —whether it be the sector or the financial instrument itself. Option trading has become a very popular form of “high risk-high reward” investing. What they often forget is that the “quick buck” comes at the price of it being extremely risky—a swing of 90% of value is normal in option trading. Many have gone in expecting to replicate the results that top financiers enjoy, and have been overwhelmed because the financial instrument was beyond their understanding. You will lose money in the stock market, everyone does. Inexperienced investors tend not to know why they make money and cannot control how much they lose. Creating a disciplined approach independent of emotions is the key to be successful. If you invest in companies you like or admire, that alone cannot be enough—the quantitative and qualitative factors have to support it. In contrast, experienced investors gain and lose money in a controlled manner—they are able to keep emotions out of it because they are work with facts. It is up to you whether you want to control the outcome or have it control you. n This article is the opinion of the author and is not shared by India Currents or any of its staff. All investors should conduct their independent analysis before taking any actions and should not make any decisions on the information provided in this article alone. Rahul Varshneya graduated from the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University with a degree in finance and is working in the technology industry as a financial analyst.

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books

Desperately Seeking Purchase by Jeanne E. Fredriksen

TRANSACTIONS OF BELONGING by Jaya Padmanabhan. Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd. 197 pages. jayapadmanabhan.com. Paperback. $6.00 Available on Amazon.

he guiding spirit of award-winning author Jaya Padmanabhan’s acutely insightful debut collection of stories, Transactions of Belonging, is found in the title. True, book titles must be meaningful. However, a closer examination of this particular title allows a far deeper appreciation of the content. A transaction is a deal, bargain, enterprise, venture, or affair. People conduct transactions every day, consciously and unconsciously. Transactions of all manners occur between family members, colleagues, and people with whom one comes in contact, which means relationships are involved. “Belonging represents the most valuable commodity that is at the heart of every relationship,” Padmanabhan added via our e-interview. “Belonging wraps into itself the concepts of give and take, adaptability, acceptance, rejection, inclusion, longing, yearning, hope as well as love.” In her collection, she “examined the transactions we enter into, the compromises we make, the filters we use to justify our need to belong.” With this knowledge, the reader more intensely experiences the distress, struggles, and victories that occur in the collection under her bold but compassionate hand. I asked Padmanabhan to talk about her two favorite stories or characters. Her response illustrated both her comprehensive empathy for the characters and her personal interaction with the writing. “This is tough since each story evokes a different reaction from me as a writer,” she said. “My most complex relationship is with ‘His Curls,’ the story of a mother who suspects her son of being a terrorist. The process of building her character and putting words

30 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

in her mouth was poignant and felt deeply personal. This story took me the longest to write. As characters go, Sankar from the ‘Neyyappams’ story is one of my favorites. I based it on what I believed my father must have been in his youth and writing about Sankar made me re-live my relationship with my dad, now long since deceased.” Compelling, emotional, disturbing, forceful, and poignant, but not without an occasional dash of humor, each story examines lives and situations that have no easy solutions. Characters from all walks of life in a variety of settings are smartly drawn and emotionally pitted against each other. In “The Fly Swatter,” Rafat lands a job as right-hand man to the Bihari Minister of Social Justice. Inseparable by virtue of the position, the young man agonizes whether to act on the Minister’s subtle advances. Mr. Raman is “Strapped for Time” by his young housemaid, who creates both extreme anxiety and sexual tension in the 81-year old man. When she demands a specific watch as a gift, he waits restlessly to present it to her only to find that time has been unkind to both of them. In “Curtains Drawn,” young Vik lives in a household of secrets, and when the situation becomes too insufferable, he makes a difficult decision. Shona, a young woman who strives to recapture the cultural aspects of her former life while witnessing brutality toward women, finds untapped courage in “The Blue Arc.” In the one-act play “Indian Summer,” three generations pick at each other over the tiniest of forgotten issues and an explosive family dilemma. Driven by dialogue and very little action, the reader is forced to acknowledge the inherent sadness of the conversation but laugh in recognition of the fundamental silliness that arguments realistically contain. At one point, Shiny’s grandmother (Amooma) declares Shiny should drink more milk to lighten her complexion.

Shiny (whiningly): “Ma, can you tell her to stop. My complexion is not dark because of lack of milk.” Ma (with a sly smile): “Are you sure? Look at all the foods we Indians eat. Everything is colored yellow and brown. Look at the food these Americans eat, white cheese, white pasta, white bread, white eggs, white fish, white chicken, white clam chowder…” Amooma: “… and white milk.” Aside from creating remarkable and diverse characters in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, Padmanabhan employs different methods of delivery and dissimilar points at which the stories end. Very often, she eschews the neat and tidy, obliging the reader to take part in the story through debate and interpretation. “I like the challenge of experimenting with different styles and methods,” she says. “It’s interesting how each method brings out a different aspect of the narrative, sets the pace and carves out a slice of life that then frames the story … I was most gratified with

the prose poem, ‘Mustard Seeds.’ I wrote it out in longer sentences first, and then started chiseling and shaping. It was tremendously exhilarating.” “Mustard Seeds” is a personal favorite, hooking me with the first line: “Fire is like a Fibonacci sequence.” From that point, the story becomes a pendulum of emotions, swinging between sweet and painful reminiscences and the urgency of the moment. Building to an end that left me breathless and curious, I was charged to weigh all possible outcomes. As a political activist lives what may (or may not) be his final moments, some of Padmanabhan’s fervent and reflective writing is evidenced in “Mustard Seeds.” “In my careless naïveté, I assumed that the lyrics of nationalism and courage would shield the anagrams of combat and conflict hidden in the songs. But the government spoke the same language we did. They solved our anagrams, parsed our rhetoric and deciphered our allegorical references. They threatened us with obey, adhere, respond and surrender.” Later, Padmanabhan chooses vivid imagery in the present: “Each flame will rise up a little higher, curling at the very tip like a batik pattern across space.” For each character in every story, Padmanabhan’s sharp blade exposes cavernous wounds, allowing emotions, desires, inabilities, regrets, and bravery to surface and find their appropriate state of being. When asked what she would like her readers to take away from her collection, Padmanabhan replied, “That there’s a pervasive sense of loneliness among us. This is despite all the social channels of communication. That loss in connection and belonging is what I’ve tried to canvass in the stories.” Currently, she is writing her first novel, which is inspired by one of the stories in her collection. “I’m working on a novel called The Eleventh Letter,” she revealed. “It features Sankar from the ‘Neyyappams’ story and I’m temporally placing it within the confines of a socio-political uprising in Kerala, India.” 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.

A Vulnerable World By Dilnavaz Bamboat SALAAM LOVE Edited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi. Beacon Press. February 2014. 248 pages. Availability: paperback, kindle. $12.61

wo years ago, aboard a Eurostar train to Paris, I spent a two-hour journey reading a collection of essays called Love, Inshallah. The book was a pioneering effort for two important reasons: it showcased Islam in America in all its glorious diversity, and it projected a strong female voice, breaking cultural and religious stereotypes of docile, homogenous, powerless women trapped in a world not of their choosing. When I blogged about Love, Inshallah, I did not know the women behind the book. Turns out Ayesha Mattu, one of its two editors, had read my post and knew who I was when we met as part of a writers’ circle. Why am I telling you this? Because I need to insert a disclaimer that by the time I read Salaam, Love last month, Ayesha was (and is) a friend. Islam. Is there any other word you can think of that conjures up stronger images, reactions, and sentiments across the world? The faith of 1.6 billion people around the globe is the subject of debate, attack, defense, paranoia, curiosity, and wild conjecture. Stereotypes are split sharply by gender, and the men usually get a bad rap. My own experiences with the faith are best reserved for a longer post, but know this: I have formally studied both the religion and its early culture, so I speak from a platform of at least some knowledge. Salaam, Love is a sort-of sequel to Love, Inshallah. This collection of 22 deeply personal and frequently heartrending narratives by American Muslims smash the supposed monolith that Islam is perceived to be, and are shared by those who are typecast perhaps more than any other group I know: men. Frequently believed to be a conglomerate of beards, skullcaps, and patriarchal tyranny, Muslim men are the mythic bogeyman that women not of the faith are warned about. Looked at askance by even their own gender, it is often thought they have nothing to say, let alone feel or reflect. Related from their perspectives and ex-

periences as men, as Muslims, and just people, the book shares with us the passion, heartbreak, loss, confusion, imperfection, and intimacy that comes with being human. From within the framework of personal definitions of the faith to far outside it, these men: native-born Americans and immigrants, gay, straight and every orientation in-between, Caucasian, Arabic, South Asian and born into other faiths, tread delicate territory as they navigate their relationship with themselves, loved ones, and their identity, all the while leaving the door wide open for us to follow their journey. From infertility to infidelity, sexual confusion to questioning tradition, the gamut of their experiences leave us enriched, educated, and often plain agape. The “unfeeling male” stereotype evaporates before our eyes. The “benevolent patriarch” melts into an unrecognizable puddle. And the “men don’t talk about their feelings” notion? Smashed beyond smithereens. Where is the seemingly violent man who forces his will on life and women? And the pious one who holds dear his prayer mat? We meet agnostics, anti-traditionalists, believers, and those crippled with self-doubt. As we lurk, voyeurs in their vulnerable worlds, we soak in their reflected humanity, feel their pain, and exult in their expressions of happiness. Gender lines dissolve, and all that is left is unabashed, universal emotion and a strong sense of being people. It is to the book’s credit that it allows us to build absolutely no preconceived notions and offers the literary equivalent of openheart surgery. This is a brave, groundbreaking, and compelling collection that more people need to read, not just in America but around the world. n Dilnavaz Bamboat manages communications and social media for a Silicon Valley non-profit, is a scriptwriter for iPad applications for children, a writer and editor at IDEX (idex.org), a section editor at Ultra Violet (ultraviolet.in), a feminist blogger at Women’s Web (womensweb.in) and a founder member of India Helps (indiahelps. blogspot.com). She lives in the SF Bay Area. June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 31

32 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

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films

Burning Man By Aniruddh Chawda

KOYELAANCHAL. Director: Ashu Trikha. Players: Sunil Shetty, Vinod Khanna, Vipinno, Roopali Krishnarao. Hindi w/Eng. Sub-titles. Theatrical release: AMA Entertainment.

he massive coalfields of north-eastern India have figured in as gangland battlefields in a surprising number of recent Hindi movies, including the big budget entries Gangs of Wasseypur and Gunday, and the notable documentary Coal Curse, which was co-sponsored by Greenpeace. As Asia’s energy consumption increases, India’s coal reserves will no doubt figure prominently in regional geo-politics and continue to fuel movie scripts. Even though entering into this conversation somewhat belatedly and too-smug in its B-movie framing, smalltime filmmaker’s Trikha’s Koyelaanchal pulls a couple of lightweight punches to actually provide a few thought-provoking pauses. Set in a fictitious terrain called Koyelaanchal, which loosely translates into “land of coal,” while the coal miles are nominally and legally nationalized, the infrastructure is heavily controlled by former mine-owner and current mafia honcho Saryu Bhan Singh (Khanna), an old-school warrior with an extensive reach. Bhan Singh’s hegemony over the lives and livelihoods of locals attracts the attention of a team of Indian federal investigators, led by Nisheet Kumar (Shetty). As the battle of wits and muscle gets under way, Bhan Singh must increasingly rely on his stoic, die-hard enforcer Karua (Vipinno). While the premise—will Kumar and company be able to dislodge Bhan Singh from his comfy well-jaded criminal perch —may not be original, the story carves out some noteworthy and stark realities about this remote part of the country. The farther one gets from India’s power-centers, Delhi, for example, the weaker the reach of India’s federal authorities. This local power vacuum gives parts of India and the playing field of Koyelaanchal a distinct no-man’s land feel. It is truly a scary place where the rule of law has little hold. Trikha deserves kudos for capturing upcountry anarchy with such modest means. Having no rules to play by, Bhan Singh makes up his own and unleashes Karua to 34 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

vanquish anyone who disobeys—in this case, anyone who collaborates with investigators from Delhi—into brutal submission that is sometimes difficult to watch. Kumar learns that he can’t take his own safety or that of his wife and toddler son for granted any more. The steepest toll indeed comes from Karua doing exactly and precisely as he is told. Veteran Khanna has come full circle in again playing antagonist roles he started with, especially in Gulzar’s Mere Apne (1971) and Raj Khosla’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971). Shetty is sedate and in line with what is essentially a supporting role. As the strong-silent Karua and village prostitute Roopmati, it is newcomers Vipinno and Krishrao, respectively, who inject an unpredictable unevenness. Their fresh faces provide no clue as to where they will end up, making the outcome that much more interesting. Trikha’s success comes not from great histrionics or script or music or special effects. Instead, it comes from depicting coal as a way of life and having that reality etched into the faces of the actual locals used as minor characters in the narrative. This authentic touch goes a long way in giving credibility to stories about underground mine fires that

have gone unabated for over a hundred years. Lack of mine safety, social services or the welfare of children take back seats—if they get seats at all. An image of a school-age boy having to wash the blood off a soccer ball following a gangland tussle so he and his buddies can resume playing kick-ball in a dusty field leaves behind a horrific snapshot of the daily grind in this hot-underfoot and yet cold world. As far as similar gangland movies go, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur set an impossibly high bar which is nowhere near where Koyelaanchal is aiming. With an incongruous approach, using a veteran cast that had sell-by dates pass a while ago along with untested newcomers, however, Trikha come up with two-plus hours that are a somewhat cheesy trial-by-fire that is not entirely unsatisfying. n EQ: BGlobe trekker, aesthete, photographer, ski bum, film buff, and commentator, Aniruddh Chawda writes from Milwaukee.

Ghost Capture By Madhumita Gupta

BHOOTHNATH RETURNS. Director: Nitesh Tiwari. Players: Amitabh Bachchan, Parth Bhalerao, Boman Irani, Sanjay Mishra. Music: Ram Sampath, Meet Bros Anjann, Palash Muchchal, Yo Yo Honey Singh. Hindi w/Eng. Sub-titles. Theatrical release: BR Films.

s it a fantasy? Is it a fairy-tale? Is it a children’s film? Yes! And it is a pertinent commentary on the general state of the electoral machinery in the world’s biggest democracy—India. Bhoothnath was about Kailashnath Bhootnath making friends with a mischievous youngster, Banku, and returning to meet him on the earthly plane even after the final rites were supposed to have freed him from the world. The story in Bhoothnath Returns begins in a startlingly Hogwarts like mansion surrounded, for some reason, not by an Indian village but a quaint English one instead. This is the idyll where all Indians go after death— the ghost HQ, so to speak. This is also the place where souls are allotted their next births. However, merely the décor of this grand office is Western for it functions like a typical Indian sarkari daftar (government office) so getting your desired next birth can take literally lifetimes! The inefficiency of the office sets the tone for the film as we come across ghosts laughing at Bhoothnath (Bachchan) for his failure in scaring a child. A nettled Bhoothnath barges into the main office demanding a second chance to redeem himself. This time he meets Akhrot (Bhalerao), a street-smart urchin who, like Banku in the prequel, can also see Bhootnath—the mild, gentlemanly ghost and is consequently completely unafraid of him. An unlikely friendship develops between them and they form a team to help the needy with Bhoothnath’s ghostly interventions. One thing leads to another and they find themselves fighting the election against the local goon Bhau (Irani). Bachchan is in his element, singing, dancing and thoroughly enjoying himself. His comic-timing is as impeccable as ever. His spoof on his own gobbledygook speech from Amar Akbar Anthony: “You are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated with the exuberance of your own verbosity,” metamorphosing into the equally tongue-twisting

pot-shot at India’s electoral system today, is worthy of a standing ovation. I must tip the hat to Parth Bhalerao, the child-actor, who holds his own against Bachchan. One wonders how much more effective this young actor would’ve been had he not been made to overact and hence rendered highly precocious in many scenes. Taking his own line from the film, maybe “India mein yehi chalta hai.” Irani is convincing as the vile politician and has done justice to his character. The music of the film is quite catchy, especially “Party toh banti hai.” A word of appreciation for the cinematographer and art-director for re-creating a realistic slum of Dharavi—a little cleaner than the original perhaps, but still quite authentic in replicating the narrow lanes and the general chaos. The problem with Bhoothnath Returns is that there is a serious message to the electorate buried in a light-hearted comedy. If this movie had been a documentary it may have worked better. The movie, however, serves as a timely reminder (as the movie’s release coincided with the elections in India) of the rampant corruption prevalent in our society, and our own growing apathy. Though it has some laugh-out-loud moments, it lacks the action punch and fast story which is a pre-requisite for a children’s film. And since it was publicized as a children’s film, the relevant group—the voting youth of India, predictably stayed away from it, thus nullifying the significant impact it may have had on the current electorate. The predictable end of the film brings home another bitter truth—what with criminals and goons forming a significant number

of our representatives, we’re so very impoverished that a ghost becomes a viable candidate in our country. n EQ. B+ Madhumita Gupta is a freelance writer and a teacher.

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music

Zakir Hussain Throws a Party By Priya Das Zakir Hussain

ZAKIR HUSSAIN—The SFJazz Sessions. A Moment Records and Route 66 AR Production, DVD. www.amazon.com, $22.

ne of the most enthralling experiences in a music lovers’ life is to be there when melodies and rhythms are brought to life, to see the spontaneous combustion between musical talents, to witness the making of great music. Moment Records’ latest DVD release, called Zakir Hussain—The SFJazz Sessions is just that. It is a presentation of the extraordinary four days and nights in March 2013, during the inaugural season of the San Francisco Jazz Center, when Zakir Hussain threw a party for his friends to meet his other friends (paraphrased from an interview in the DVD). The line up includes Bela Fleck, banjo; Edgar Meyer, bass; Eric Harland, drums; Ganesh Rajagopalan, violin; George Brooks, saxophone; Giovanni Hidalgo, conga; Niladri Kumar, sitar; Rakesh Chaurasia, flute; and Steve Smith, drums. It is to the credit of the directors Anisa Qureshi and Taylor Phillips that we feel the presence of Hussain as the host of this party. Throughout the three hours of the DVD, we get to see him performing and talking: Excerpts from an interview, behind-the-scenes, back stage before show time, even driving. When the audience sings for him on his birthday, we get to hear him say sheepishly, “Don’t ask me my age!” The DVD is a compilation of excerpts from 12 performances, the first of which is the electrifying “Naubat.” Smith paces the rhythm by vocalizing the beats. Even as one’s mind tries to compute this, Hussain renders an answering salvo of his own bols, sets the house on fire with his tabla and invites Hidalgo to join in. He does, resoundingly so, ably matched by Harland. This piece is a frenzied jugalbandi—the tempo does not let up, you can see the energy reverberate off the musicians. “Aarambh” is aptly introduced by Hussain ruminating about his own beginningshis father whispering rhythms in his ear when he was two days old, his time performing as a young teen, and finally saying, “You are born to do something in this world, and you come down and you do that.” This piece features Rajagopalan, of the 36 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Ganesh-Kumaresh violin duo. The camaraderie between him, Kumar, Chaurasia and Hussain is highlighted by the interlude when ripples of notes and half notes are seemingly intuitively passed around in true sawal-jawab style. “Bubbles” is an enchanting reprise from the Fleck-Mayer-Hussain album “The Melody of Rhythm.” “Rapt, No Strings, Part 1” has jazz singer Molly Holm singing Rumi’s verses to Brooks’ saxophone, while Antonia Minnecola, Hussain’s wife, enlivens the poetry with a crisp Kathak rendition. “Rapt, No Strings, Part 2” is a celebration of the guru-shishya bond, with Hussain challenging his students (including Dana Pandey and Salar Nader) while at the same time gently guiding them along. Hussain comments on the improvisational nature of Indian music, wondering what kind of music will unfold, but adding at the start of “Sangat” that, “I am content in the feeling that the musicians I have with me will carry me through.” The magic of unrehearsed events, especially music, is in the first few minutes, when you hold your breath only for it to be taken away by the brilliance

of combined melody or rhythm. With “Sangat” you forget to breathe altogether after. Chaurasia, featured here, starts with a compelling call to your inner self, his music displaying and commanding a refreshing honesty. He then breaks up the melody with staccato breaths on his flute, inviting Hussain to accompany him. Continuing to be the enigmatic sutradhaar, he invites Rajagopalan and Kumar to follow them into a complex weaving of notes. “Taalkonakol” starts with Smith bold on the drums, summoning your undivided attention. The name is derived from taal (rhythm) and konakol (the art of reciting drum beats in Karnatik music, which Smith practices). He urges the audience to “repeat after me—ta ka dhi mi, ta ka dhi mi ...” transforming the audience into an a cappella orchestra echoed by the various drums of Hussain and Smith. By way of introduction to “Karvan,” Hussain says, “… these (fabulous) players will join me to show you what young India is all about.” “Karvan” features Chaurasia, Rajagopalan, Kumar, and, of course, Hussain. The scene that is brought to life through their music is that of dawn: birds aflutter, dewmoistened breezes, women and their pots undulating along similarly undulating waters. Hussain’s solo is like thunder and a misting spray of raindrops at the same time. He invites each artist to challenge him while setting up a challenging premise himself. The DVD is a must-have for those who want to witness and relive the creation of limitless moments and innovative music. n Priya Das is an enthusiastic follower of world music and avidly tracks intersecting points between folk, classical, jazz, and other genres.

Ganesh and Kumaresh, Niladri Kumar, Rakesh Chaurasia

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youth

A New Bollywood Love Story By Kunal Kamath A screenshot of the United Nations video

“K

unal, you better marry someone Indian.” I can hear the words of my Mumbai-born parents echoing in my ears over and over again. I’m not sure how serious this wish of theirs is, because I know they wouldn’t mind if I were to date someone not of Indian descent, but I can say with certainty that they have a checklist in mind when it comes to my marriage. For example, in addition to being Indian, there’s an implicit understanding that my future spouse be female. So I’ve always wondered: how would my parents respond if I identified as a member of the LGBTQ community? I’ve never had a conversation about gay rights or sexuality with my mom or dad. The silence clouding this subject in our home, I believe, comes from my parents’ upbringing in a culture that highly values the tradition of arranged marriages. The system of arranged marriages in India fosters a culture of heteronormativity that has proven difficult to uproot as the country becomes more modernized. On December 11, 2013, the Supreme Court of India overturned the 2009 ruling to decriminalize homosexuality. Being gay is now illegal in the second most populated nation in the world. There’s no denying that a part of Indian culture today suppresses homosexuality. Rejects it, even. Living in the United States, however, gives us the opportunity as Indian Americans to show Indians the direction in which a more progressive nation is heading. My parents became American citizens a few years ago, and I see their difficulty in facing topics like gay rights as a struggle between two identities: the traditional Indian and the newfound American. So how can the silence towards LGBTQ issues that I find happening in my own home be put to an end? What about Bollywood? It might seem odd to begin with a form of media so deeply a part of Indian culture, but the best place to start is at the source of the issue. Not to mention that Bollywood has a widespread global reach, inspiring German Bollywood dance ensembles and even amateur Bollywood singers in Morocco, ac38 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

cording to a BBC World Report. I remember watching Bollywood films often, with my family, as a kid. The movies could usually be distilled to a simple plot: boy meets girl; boy and girl fall in love; boy and girl get married (with interwoven upbeat, coy love songs accompanied by colorful dances). The only problem with Bollywood is that the romantic duo is always a man and woman. These films uphold the heteronormativity present in the culture of arranged marriages. However, Bollywood movies almost always contain love marriages, rarely presenting the strict rigidity of the arranged marriage world. So if these films already show love marriages, why can’t they show gay love marriages? This simple switch of a character would still produce a happy, easygoing narrative that normalizes homosexuality in Indian culture. On April 30, 2014, the United Nations released a video doing just that. Supporting marriage equality and LGBT rights in India, the short music video depicted a marriage between two Indian men. The point of most tension in the video occurred when the family’s elderly grandmother-figure saw the two men standing hand-in-hand at the end of the wedding aisle. She froze in shock, until the lyrics of the song said, “It’s a new look. It’s a new attitude,” after which the grandmother gave the happy couple her blessing.

On a more local level, Northwestern University’s Bollywood dance team, Anubhav, recently performed in the National Bollywood America competition with a routine that centers around a gay love story. After coming out to his mother, who tells him that she “loves him for who he is,” the male lead embraces his partner in a breathtaking finale. In an interview describing the motivation for the theme, team captain Yuri Doolan says, “We have this responsibility to portray that kind of love as just as legitimate of a love story as a typical love story.” This is what we need to do, as Indian Americans, to break the silence within our families, within our communities. An ocean away from the politics of India, we are in a place where we can express our beliefs. We all have a responsibility to show India the values we hold as Indian Americans, and if our target audience across the world can relate to the medium we use to showcase our stance on this issue, our message of both cultural and LGBTQ pride will be heard. n

Kunal Kamath is a rising sophomore at Columbia University in New York majoring in Computer Science. He is also a member of Columbia Bhangra, a competitive dance team, and interested in the issues of LGBTQ equality in the Indian American community as well as in his hometown of Atlanta, GA.

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viewpoint

Spring Blooms Discovering the enactment of changing seasons By Priyanka Sacheti

fter what seemed like an unending winter, spring finally arrived at our doorstep, prettily packaged and presented. As I inhaled the fresh, invigorating spring air and heard the concert of enthusiastically performed birdsong, I absorbed the transformations in the surrounding landscape. For many months, my eyes had become accustomed to the minimalist branches silhouetted against a granite-gray winter sky; green appeared to be an impossible, mythic notion. And now, there was suddenly so much to see and sense. Recently, strolling through Beacon street in Boston, the magnolia trees seemed to be in full bloom and of many hues: buttery-yellow, sepia pink, and palest pink. What is it about these trees in bloom that fascinate me so much? I wonder if the answer has to do with the fact that they vividly represent the passage of seasons, which I have only recently experienced in their fullest sense. Growing up in the Sultanate of Oman’s desert environment, I was privy to only two seasons: summer and winter. The temperatures begin to cool down in November, yet remain in the 80s till March, and that’s what we called winter. With the onset of April, the mercury would rise, ACs would be turned on and conversations would revolve around how the summer was getting hotter every year. The combination of the binary seasons and limited desert fauna meant that the only other trees I encountered were exotic species. Meanwhile, the grudging concession the landscape made to changing seasons was post-rainfall, when ephemeral desert plants bloomed, briefly sporting green down. As for flowers, my botanist mother planted petunias and marigolds in our garden during Oman’s brief winter before the summer heat diminished them—and only fuchsia and vermillion bougainvillea provided the splash of color during those furnace hot months. Later, when I arrived in the United Kingdom to pursue my undergraduate studies, I was finally able to experience the gamut of seasons. It was fall at the time: the trees on campus appeared to be on fire, the crimson and yellow and orange leaves merging with

42 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

each other before disappearing altogether into their stoic winter avatars. Then, cheery yellow daffodils polka-dotted the thawing earth by March, thankfully signaling spring. I remember encountering them once jammed into the lime green and royal blue bottles that served as the table centerpieces at a cafe, the melange of bright colors encapsulating spring. I was like a migratory bird in the United Kingdom, frequently flitting in and out of the land and thus was never able to quite appreciate the transitional aspects of seasons. It was only years later when I moved to Pittsburgh in the middle of the winter in December 2012 that I began to relish the changing seasons in and of our lives. The prolonged and bitterly cold winter this year made me eagerly anticipate spring’s arrival, with a sharper, renewed appreciation for the gifts it brought. Ever since I moved into my apartment, the trees beyond my balcony have functioned as a theater providing access to the performance of seasons. I have witnessed trees turning every shade of green imaginable; dancing in a dramatic storm; turning tomato red seemingly overnight and just as swiftly denuding themselves of dying leaves. After the fall concert, I became resigned to winter’s monochrome universe for many months. On the rare sunny day, the trees glimmered with a sharp, bright energy despite being unclothed. Their

branches appeared like fragile lace, simultaneously appearing both strong and vulnerable in winter’s face. And so, one morning, when I looked out of the balcony, I was pleasantly startled to spot bits of bright green tinting the branches; the next day, when I walked through the nearby lanes, I encountered two budding trees. Such were the vagaries of Pittsburgh weather that it unexpectedly began snowing and as I dashed through the flakes, I could not help but think that even if the temperatures told us otherwise, the trees instinctively knew that it was spring—and it was time to bud. As I write this, I look up to see trees smothered in green; what was previously a galaxy of white blossoms have already begun to leaf and even fruit. When I now walk through the streets, the pavement is littered with thousands of tiny white petals, uncannily resembling unmelting snowflakes from the distance. The other day, upon encountering a cherry blossom tree, I captured the sight on my already burgeoning phone camera roll of trees in bloom. When I turned around, I saw a delivery man leaning against his truck and smiling at me. “We waited long enough for this to happen, huh?” he said. “It may have been long but every bloom was worth the wait,” I told him—and so it is, both for a tree and ourselves. What we thought was an unendurable winter was in fact a time of introspection, renewal, and transformation; the cyclical processes of life were at constant work and the barrenness belied the embryos of growth and change growing within the subterranean depths. And so as the buds open and the blooms face the world, we too are ready to present our reinvented selves and get on with the business of living and loving life in all it seasons.n Priyanka Sacheti is an independent cultural writer based in Pittsburgh. Priyanka has written extensively about art, culture and gender. She has authored 3 poetry volumes and her short stories have appeared in international anthologies.When she’s not working on her short story collection or pursuing photography, she blogs at http://iamjustavisualperson.blogspot.com/

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Selective v. Picky By Jasbina Ahluwalia

My friends and family tell me I’m being too picky. While I do have a long list of what I want in a partner, isn’t it important to be selective? Is there a difference between being picky and being selective?

You are not alone in wondering about this. There is an important distinction between being selective (well-serving) on the one hand, and being picky (counterproductive) on the other. In my view, being selective is having clarity about what is most important to you, with respect to a partner, and being as flexible as possible in order to optimize your chances of a partner meeting your criteria. Being picky involves having a long checklist, which can be counterproductive, in the search for a partner by both dramatically narrowing the pool of possibilities, and enhancing missed opportunities with prospective partners who may come in unexpected packages.

Regarding the criteria, I encourage people to be as thoughtful as possible with respect to needs versus wants. Over the years I have asked clients to identify three essentials, as well as helped them explore the “why” behind those essentials. It was interesting to learn from Ty Tashiro, author of The Science of Happily Ever After, that three is the magic number when it comes to essentials in one’s search for a partner: “Consider the following example to see how quickly it becomes improbable to find a person with the traits you want. Choosing someone average (fiftieth percentile) on three different traits would narrow a field of one hundred potential mates down to thirteen potential mates. Wanting a partner in the top fifth percentile on three traits gives you just a one in ten thousand chance of finding that partner, and if you do not find that partner, then what do you get?

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Not only do most people not get whatever traits they prize the most in romantic partners, but they are also then left with a partner possessing a haphazard collection of traits … If a fairy godmother suddenly appeared and granted you three wishes for an ideal partner, then how would you spend your three wishes? Wisely wishing for the traits could greatly increase the odds of having a satisfying and stable relationship. The best strategy is to know the odds, accept the limitations placed on partner selection by those odds, and then make the best decisions possible to get the three traits you want the most in a partner.” n Jasbina is the founder and president of Intersections Match, the only personalized matchmaking and dating coaching firm serving singles of South Asian descent in the United States. She is also the host of Intersections Talk Radio. Jasbina@intersectionsmatch.com.

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events JUNE

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE! JULY issue deadline: Friday, June 20 To list your event in the Calendar, go to www.indiacurrents.com and fill out the Web form

Check us out on

special dates Father’s Day

June 15

Ramazan

June 28

Ratha Yatra

June 29

U.S. Independence Day

July 4

Guru Purnima

July 12

CULTURAL CALENDER

June

6 Friday

Khalil Alashar performs at the Fresh Classical Expressions, June 8

Surkhaab—A Film Screening. An il-

legal immigrant and a carrier who is on the run in a world alien from her. An exposure to the parallel world that exists in developed countries. A week in the life of a human being trafficked. 1 p.m. AMC Orange 30, 20 City Blvd., West, Orange. www.surkhaabthefilm.com.

Upaj: Improvise—A Film Screening.

The film takes us behind the scenes to watch the birth and journey of India Jazz Suites,

46 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

a East-meets-West collaboration featuring Indian kathak master and guru Pandit Chitresh Das and African American tap star Jason Samuels Smith. Q&A to follow with the performers. Ends June 8. Organized by 13th Annual Dance Media Film Festival. 7 p.m. Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), 631 West 2nd St., Los Angeles. dancecamerawest.org.

June

7 Saturday

Annual Pan IIT Picnic. Chance to win

Apple TV and other prizes, rock to Bollywood tunes with Varsha Parekh, enjoy a stand-up comedy show with your Alumni friends and their families. Organized by Pan IIT Alumni Association of Southern California. 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Camp Liberty Shelter, Liberty Park, 19211 Studebaker Road.,

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

Cerritos. IIT, IISc, Spouse/Guest: $25, children (6-14) $15, students $20. (323) 712-5924, (909) 524-1452, (858) 729-3252. vikedilla@ hotmail.com, arunkiri@gmail.com, pkunju@ gmail.com. paniitpicnic2014.eventbrite.com.

A Musical Tribute to the Late Hindustani Vocalist Lakshmi Shankar.

Featuring performances by her three students, Ashwin Rode, Dayita Datta, and Suniti Bergman along with a bharatanatyam dance by Viji Prakash. Reminiscing their interaction with Shankar will include Abhijit Banerjee (tabla), Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (mohan veena), and Pandit Rajan and Sajan Mishra. Organized by California State University, Los Angles A.S.I. 8 p.m. University Union Theatre, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles. Free.

June

8 Sunday

Fresh Classical Expressions. Khalil

Alashar will perform a solo dance, accompanied by Pankaj Mishra (sarangi), Prachi Dixit (bol padhant), and Javad Butah (tabla). The dance will be preceded by a Hindustani music concert by Girish Chatterjee (vocal), with Subhajyoti Guha (tabla) and Pankaj Mishra (sarangi). 5 p.m. Meherabode, 1214 S. Van Ness Ave., Los Angeles. meherabodeconcerts.blogspot.com.

June

14 Saturday

Celebration of 100 Years of Begum Akhtar. Opening recital in Indian classical

music by Anurupa Ganguly, then a ghazal concert by Monidipa Sharma, accompanied by Jyotiprakas (tabla) and Indradeep Ghosh (violin). Organized by Dakshini Bengali Association and VICC. 4-8 p.m. Redondo Beach Center for Spiritual Living, 907 Knob Hill, Redondo Beach. RSVP required. Individual $20, couple $25, family $30 (2 adults/2 kids under 18). Dinner included. (310) 530-5992, (562) 704-2720. info@dakshini.org. www. dakshini.org.

June

21 Saturday

An Ethereal Duet. A vocal, sitar and violin performance with Aloke Dasgupta (sitar), Indradeep Ghosh (violin the amore), Sanjukta Dasgupta (vocal). Accompanied by Javad Butta (tabla), Indradeep Ghosh (violin de amore). Organized by Raga Ranjani

A Musical Tribute to the Late Hindustani Vocalist Lakshmi Shankar, June 7

School of Music. 6 p.m. Loyola Marymount College. Theology Village, 1 LMU Drive., Los Angeles. $20/person, $35/couple. (310) 4895760.

June

28 Saturday

Gestures. An evening of bharatanatyam dance choreographed by Malathi Iyengar. Dancers include Sanam Chalan, Abhijnya Gowder, Lakshmi Iyengar, Ritika Iyer, Amiya Prasad, Anya Prasad, and Sarayu Ramanan. Organized by Rangoli Dance Company. 7:30 p.m. Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice. General $25, students/ seniors, $15 (advance)donor $40. (818 ) 788-6860. rangolidancecompany@gmail.com. rangoli.org.

July

6 Sunday

Hema Malini Live in Concert as

Durga. The music and folklore of Sati, Durga and Parvati. Organized by The Shah Foundation and Tisha Entertainment. 6 p.m. Redondo Beach Performing Art Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach . $39$79. (310)753-8990, (562) 860-1135.

July

12 Saturday

Yaadon Ki Baarat—Live Concert.

Featuring Rupali Ghogare, Srikant Narayan, Bhoomi Trivedi and Apurva Shah. Organized by The Shah Foundation and Tisha Entertainment. 7:30 p.m. La Mirada Performing Arts Theater, 14900 LaMirada Blvd., LaMirada. $29-$59. (562) 860-1135, (714) 213-3288, (310) 753-8990.

48 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 49

SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH

June

1 Sunday

Living Without Fear. Sunday Service.

Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 5430800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org.

Sunday Lectures at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. 11 a.m.

Hollywood Temple. 1946 Vedanta Place Hollywood. (323) 465-7114. Santa Barbara Temple. 927 Ladera Lane, Santa Barbara. (805) 969-290. Ramakrishna Monastery. 19961 Live Oak Canyon Road, P.O. Box 408, Trabuco Canyon. (949) 858-0342. http:// vedanta.org.

June

6 Friday

Family Gita Class. A class for kids, youth and parents. Ends June 12. 7-8:30 p.m. Simi Valley Hindu Temple, 1925 Royal Ave., Simi Valley. Free. (323) 861-1417. vishalkapoor82@ gmail.com. www.familygitaclass.org.

Kirtan in Santa Monica. Organized

by Grace. 9-11 p.m. Bhakti Yoga Shala, 207 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica . $20. (626) 755-4968. vishalkapoor82@gmail.com. www. bhaktiyogashala.com.

June

8 Sunday

Self-Analysis:Key to Mastery of Life.

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.

June

15 Sunday

The Father Aspect of God. Sunday SerGuru Purnima with Sri Ganapati Sacchidanvice. Lake Shrine Temple and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades. (310) 454-4114. anda Swami, July 12 Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., HollyEncinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, wood. (323) 661-8006. Glendale Temple, 2146 3072 First Avenue, San Diego. (619) 295East Chevy Chase Drive, Glendale. (818) 5430170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self 0800. Fullerton Temple, 142 East Chapman Realization Fellowship. www.yogananda-srf.org. Ave., Fullerton. (714) 525-1291. Encinitas Temple, 939 Second Street, Encinitas. (760) 436-7220. San Diego Temple, 3072 First AvJuly Thursday enue, San Diego. (619) 295-0170. Call temples for times. Organized by Self Realization FellowLecture on Sri Ramcharit Manas By ship. www.yogananda-srf.org. Swami Nikhilatmananda. Organized by Sanatan Dharma Temple and Vedanta Society of Southern California. 5-7 p.m. Sanatan June Sunday Dharma Temple, Gandhi Room, 15311 Pioneer Blvd., Norwalk . Free. (562) 547-3403, (562) The 4 Ways to Direct Experience of 852-4067, (562) 696-4216. mohandadlani@ God. Sunday Service. Lake Shrine Temple hotmail.com, kvcharapani@gmail.com. and Retreat, 17190 Sunset Blvd., Pacific

Palisades. (310) 454-4114. Hollywood Temple, 4860 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 6618006. 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.

June

29 Sunday

The True Purpose of Marriage. Sun-

Krishna Das CD Release Tour, July 7 50 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

day 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,

July

7 Monday

Krishna Das CD Release Tour. As part of his Kirtan Wallah tour. Organized by Jyoti Mandir. 7:30 p.m. Seaside Center for Spiritual Living, 1613 Lake Drive., Encinitas . $35 advance, $45 at the door. www.krishnadas. com/tour_schedule.cfm, www.JyotiMandir.com.

July

12 Saturday

Guru Purnima with Sri Ganapati Sacchidananda Swami. The ancient

Vedic holy day in honor of the universal truth and teacher, will be conducted with this datta guru who is a master of spiritual music. 9 a.m. Jain Center of Southern California, 8072 Commonwealth Ave., Buena Park. (949) 229-5241. gurupurnimala@gmail.com. gp2014.org. ÂŠ Copyright 2014 India Currents. All rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited.â&#x20AC;&#x201A;

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reflections

We Are All Connected By Gopi Kallayil

am walking along the banks of the Yamuna River in Brindavan, India. Every Bhagavad-Gita-quoting punditphilosopher here is happy to talk to me about the interconnection of all human beings, the oneness of all humanity. This oneness is a core philosophy espoused by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and this is where it all originated. Brindavan is the cosmic playground where the blueskinned, flute-playing, impossibly goodlooking Krishna cavorted with his thousand beautiful milkmaid girlfriends—his gopis—on a scale reserved for the gods. Now, five thousand years later, I see how it is all playing out, starting with a modest mobile phone. With my own phone forgotten in the business center at the Dubai International Airport, I decide I need to stay connected even as my assistant is working on retrieving my phone and getting it shipped to me. What if one of the milkmaids, the gopis, wants to call me? Having been named after Krishna as Gopinath, the Lord of the Gopis, I think it quite possible that the phone may ring. A five-minute transaction in a small store in a bylane next to the iconic Krishna Balaram temple (in a town with five thousand temples) is all I need to walk out armed with a number and a phone in my hands. I contemplate the power I am holding. These little things are now the 79th organ in the human body. Of course it hasn’t always been this way. I recall that in my childhood, every summer my parents would ship me off to our home village of Chittilencheri in Kerala, so that I could run wild with my cousins and drive my grandparents crazy. Watch the rice grow in my grandfather’s waterlogged paddies ploughed by water buffaloes. Or join my grandmother as she milked our single cow and then made me drink the fresh milk almost straight from the cow’s udder (with a little boiling in between) so that I could be shipped back to my parents with chubbier cheeks. Back then in Chittilencheri, for a village of 20,000 52 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

people we had three phones. One in the post office, one in the medical store, one in the school headmaster’s office. They had twodigit numbers and an operator manually connected you to the number you wanted by pushing wires into sockets. I considered myself a child prodigy because I carried the whole phone book for the village in my head. I still do—31, 32, and 33. Today as I return with my parents for a ceremony in the village temple dedicated to the presiding goddess, Cherunatturi Bhagavathy, I notice that everyone walking the small pathways along the rice paddies has a mobile phone. Tucked into little bundles in the folds of their white mundus is an amazing amount of power to manifest human interconnection. There are an estimated 6 billion mobile cellular connections on the planet. Assume for a minute that each one of them is in the hands of a different member of our human family of 7 billion people. Then think about what is now possible: that Velayudhan, walking along the paddy fields, whose father Pon-

nuchamy ploughed my grandfather’s paddies, can punch in 15 digits and—standing next to Valiya Kandum, the big paddy field in front our house—have a conversation with any one of his 6 billion brethren. He can capture an image of the buffalo in front of him and send it racing to cousin Krishnan kutty working in a hotel in Dubai. Geography is not an obstacle anymore. Distance is not a hurdle. Nor is language, because free online translation tools can help us translate between language pairs from a choice of 70+ languages. Hindi to Hmong, Gujarati to Greek, Tamil to Turkish. So Velayudhan can type in Tamil and have it sent in Russian to Tatyana from Novosibirsk. This is an unprecedented capability of connection that humanity is experiencing. All from the middle of the paddies of Chittilencheri where six years ago, when I brought my Wharton classmates Hal, Brian, Melissa, and Laura to visit, they were among the first Westerners to set foot here. Sitting at the airport in Thiruvananthapuram, where I studied at the local Gov-

ernment Arts College, I decide to push the boundaries some more. The snack shop also doubles as a gateway to the world. Three Internet-enabled terminals tempt me. Just a hundred rupees ($2) for an hour includes a free cup of masala chai with copious amounts of elaichi, inchi, cloves and other spices that grow in the fertile, moist hillsides of Kerala. I invite the world to join me at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in a public chat on video. First one to find me is Murino Norinho from Sao Paolo. He speaks Portuguese. But using translation tools, we start a merry banter going back and forth between Portuguese and English. Vinil Menon from Kochi, India, joins us, tempted by my name and location. He whooshes in delight when I launch into rapid-fire Malayalam, our mother tongue. Back in San Francisco, Emel Mutlu, one of my very good friends, is preparing her four-year-old son Arda for bedtime; she notices me hanging out and jumps in with Arda. Emel is Turkish, and grew up in a refugee camp in Bulgaria before coming to America; now Arda is gurgling in Turkish to her, delighted by this multimedia sensory experience. Murino decides that this is too good a party for his four-year-old brother Carlos to miss and brings him into the hangout. Soon Carlos and Arda are pointing to each other in the un-self-conscious way kids do. Mysteriously, they can communicate to each other in Turkish and Portuguese and make fun of each other’s antlers. This is a delightful playground for adults and children halfway across the world. Uniting India, America, Brazil, Turkey. Weaving together English, Malayalam, Turkish, Portuguese in one room. All of a sudden it dawns on me that this is what they were talking about in Brindavan. That essential truth, that interconnection that all human beings share, is what we are seeing on our screens right now. The oneness of humanity. n Gopi Kallayil is the Chief Evangelist, Google Social for Brands. Earlier he worked on marketing the Company’s flagship advertising product, AdWords, in the Americas and Asia Pacific. Kallayil also led the marketing team for AdSense, Google’s publisher-facing product.

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healthy life

Myths About Palliative Care New America Media n Richard Springer

ajor misperceptions about palliative and hospice care persist in immigrant communities, including the Indian American community, according to palliative care health professionals. “It is a major concern that those in immigrant communities equate palliative care services with near death and end-oflife treatments,” said Suresh Reddy, M.D., section chief and director of education of the Department of Symptom Control and Palliative Care at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. “And a lot of [Asian immigrants] don’t even want to hear the term hospice. They definitely view that as a death place,” he said. Hospice care is a type of care and philosophy of care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill or seriously ill patient’s pain and symptoms, and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs.

Many Too Late to Benefit

Physicians Mihir M. Kandar, Jacob J. Stand and Elise C. Carey, writing in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2013 noted, “Palliative care was often errantly equated with only providing end-of-life care. In practice, this led (and unfortunately still leads) to palliative care involvement occurring late in an illness.” At that point, he said, it’s too late for patients to benefits from many of palliative care’s interventions, such as reducing pain and symptoms in ways that stabilize the illness and minimize the need for emergency care. Reddy said he frequently has to educate Asian immigrant families about palliative care. However, after realizing that a key part of palliative care is management of pain in the “early trajectory of disease, “they are okay with it and are quite satisfied,” he said. Immigrant families are also more likely to resist taking drugs for pain, because they have misconceptions about “psychological addiction” to narcotics, the Hous-

54 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Vyjeyanthi “VJ” Periyakoil, MD, directs Stanford University’s Palliative Care Education and Training Program. Photo Credit: Richard Springer

ton physician said. Many in the Indian American community fail to look for palliative care options because they don’t know about low-cost resources available. Ratan Kumar, who is involved in hospice nursing in the San Francisco Bay Area, explained, “Overall, we need to teach, or make our Indian community aware of all the benefits of health care that can be provided to them at low cost or no cost. I think due to lack of knowledge and [being] afraid to pay the high cost of medical bills, some elderly people are not getting the care they need.” “I remember talking to this nice [Indian] lady I met in a family event. She was 70 years at the time and was visiting her family here in the United States and extended her stay. She didn’t have visitors insurance because she couldn’t afford that, and she needed her blood pressure medication. Due to the cost, she would try to cheat herself and take it only if she thought it was needed.”

How United States, India Care Differ

Another problem in the Indian American community, mainly with older adults and recent immigrants, is that they persist in expecting to be treated in the United States how they were treated in India. Vyjeyanthi “VJ” Periyakoil, M.D., director of Stanford University’s Palliative Care Education & Training Program, is the coauthor with Shalini Dara , M.D., of the paper, Health and Health Care of Asian Indian American Older Adults. This report notes, “Older [Asian Indian] patients may complain about or criticize the extensive diagnostic tests they have to undergo in the U.S., because, different from their home country, many older physicians prescribe medications without any diagnostic tests.” Reddy, who will be working with Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai this summer on a study of end-of-life care in India, said patents in India are even more resistant to being treated with drugs like morphine due

to addiction fears. Families of those with terminal illnesses in India are also more likely than Indians in the U.S. to shield patients at the end of life from knowing about their medical conditions or talking about death or dying with physicians, he said. “And anxiety and depression are underdiagnosed [in India]. That is another issue we need to crack there,” he added. Another factor that hospitals, hospices and palliative care training programs need to emphasize is that spirituality gives comfort to many Indian Americans at the end of life.

Indian Spiritual Traditions

“Asian Indians typically tend to value spirituality and traditions,” Periyakoil stated. “Many older and more traditional Hindu adults may believe their illness is caused by bad karma from a past lifetime, and they may not entirely believe in the organic etiology propounded by Western biomedicine,” says the Stanford report. “As a result, an illness may be viewed as something to be accepted and endured, rather than fixed or cured. In some situations, these beliefs may induce a quiet fatalism that

can result in therapeutic non-adherence,” the study adds. “From what I have experienced,” said Kumar, “I think hospitals are sympathetic towards dying family members. In our culture, we normally have our priest or a recording recite our holy book, the [Bhagavad] Gita.” “It is supposed to give peace to the person leaving this world and to family members. Now hospitals are allowed to do this—which is a big step in learning and understanding our culture,” Kumar explained. But Reddy said a support system for endof-life care is still lacking in immigrant communities, particularly for advance directives enabling people to write out their treatment wishes if they become unable to communicate or other areas of decision-making. “And, it doesn’t matter which religion you practice, we suffer equally. We think we are prepared for death, but we are not,” he said.n Richard Springer wrote this article through a California Healthcare Foundation Journalism Fellowship, a project of New America Media in collaboration with the Stanford In-reach for Successful Aging through Education Program.

Resources California State Hospice Association. Provides technical resources to members, advocate on and monitor legislative and regulatory activities, provide continuing education to providers on end-of-life issues and collaborate with other organizations that share an interest in end-of-life care. www.calhospice.org. Asian Network Pacific Home Care and Hospice. Provides culturally sensitive end of life care and home healh to the Asian community in the greater Bay Area. 3487 McKee Road, Suite 55, San Jose. (408) 272-8882 212 9th Street, Suite 205, Oakland. (510) 268-1118. http://www.anphc. com. Pathways Home Health and Hospice. A community based, not-for-profit organization that provides a family of health services at home to families in the Bay Area. 585 N Mary Ave., Sunnyvale. (408) 730-5900. www.pathwayshealth.org.

June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 55

travel

Hyderabadi Splendor! By Arundhati Nath

Inside Chowmahallah Palace

yderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, epitomizes the perfect blend of diversity, both in culture as well as age, seamlessly integrating the ancient with the modern. I decided to devote a few days of my summer vacation in 2013 to exploring this historic city, which is known for its magnificent forts and palaces, gardens and lakes, and of course the delectable Hyderabadi biryani, shimmering pearls and colorful glass bangles. I began my trip with a visit to Charminar in the old city area. The most identifiable monument in Hyderabad, the Charminar is a majestic structure built in the year 1591 CE by Mohammed Quli Qutb Shah. An imposing edifice of four ornately decorated minarets and four grand arches facing onto different streets, the Charminar exudes the grandeur of Indo Islamic architecture. It has a profusion of balconies and balustrades, with a mosque on the fourth floor of the structure. There is an interesting anecdote associated with the construction of this grand monument. It is widely believed that Mohammad Quli Qutb Shah promised to build a mosque at the center of the city where he prayed, on the eradication of a plague that had been ravaging his city. Thus, the Charminar was built to celebrate the end of the dreaded plague. 56 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Charminar

Gazing at the tall imposing monument made me feel as if I was looking at a signature icon of the city somewhat like the The Gateway of India is to the commercial capital, Mumbai. Adjoining the Charminar area is the popular market called the Laad Bazaar, where I found rows and rows of shops selling lacquer and glass bangles studded with many hued dazzling stones. I entered one of the stores to take a closer look and the salesman filled my wrists with the dazzle of multi-colored bangles! It was, indeed, very difficult to choose and buy one or two pairs of bangles out of the many lovely designs and colors available. Close to the Charminar is the Chowmahallah Palace, which was our next experience of Nizami grandeur. I was awestruck at the sheer brilliance of the architecture and the lavishness of its appointments. The Chowmahallah Palace was once the throne of the Asaf Jahi kings and was believed to have been inspired by the Shahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Palace in Tehran, Iran. The Chowmahallah, which literally means four palaces, was originally spread over an area of fortyfive acres (of which only twelve acres remain), consists of the Afzal Mahal, Mahtab Mahal, Tahniyat Mahal and the Aftab Mahal. Though the palaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction was originally started by Salabat

The Museum inside Chowmahallah Palace

Glass bangles on display

Jung in 1750, it was completed in 1869 through the efforts of Nizam Afzar ud Dawla Bahadur. The Chowmahalla palace has two courtyards—the northern and the southern. The southern courtyard is the oldest part and has four palaces in it. The Khilawat Mubarak contains the royal throne with the richly decorated chandeliers and architecture complementing the grandeur. At the time of Indian independence, the Nizam of Hyderabad was said to be the richest person in the world. On September 17, 1948, the Nizams lost Hyderabad to the Indian union. At present, Princess Esra, the last Nizam Mukarram Jah’s wife, is overseeing the renovation of the Chowmahalla along with the government. The fine intricate carvings on the walls of the palaces; the huge ornate chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the royal throne of the king give a perfect glimpse of royal Nizami setting of a bygone era. The Chowmahallah Palace also houses different items of daily use owned by the Nizams. Ornate items of furniture, exquisite cutlery, pieces of royal clothing, lethal weapons and much more can be found on the upper floors of the palace. Lingering at the Chowmahallah, we didn’t realize the passage of time. It was past two in the afternoon when we left. To set our hunger pangs at rest, we hailed an auto and arrived at Paradise Food Court; which is well known for its special Hyderabadi biryani. Hyderabadi biryani is made from a superior quality basmati rice and is flavored with a number of spices and condiments. While cooking, the edges of the vessel are sealed with dough to keep the aroma intact. Hyderabadi biryani has a spicy, tangy taste which lingers on the palate for long afterwards! After the sumptuous biryani, it was my turn to tuck into the delectable double ka meetha. This dessert is a tasty bread and milk pudding topped with dry fruits and is a must for anyone with a sweet tooth. A visit to Hyderabad would be incomplete without shopping for pearl jewellery. Today Hyderabad is the world leader in the pearl trade and pearls of different hues and designs can be found here. I headed to the showroom of Mangatrai Pearls and Jewellery at Basheerbagh. The extensive collection of pearl earrings, pendants, bracelets, necklaces and finger rings tested my resolve. Satisfied with the pearls I finally bought, I hired an auto and whizzed off towards Hussain Sagar Lake along Necklace Road. This lake was excavated in 1562 by Hussain Shah Wali during the rule of Ibrahin Quli Qutb Shah. This lake offers facilities for water sports like boating and paddling among others. At the center of the lake stands a majestically built monolithic structure of Gau-

tam Buddha, which is 18 metres (~60 feet) tall. It was carved out of a single white granite stone weighing 496 tons and was erected in the year 1992. I strolled through Lumbini Park and bought tickets for a boat ride to the Buddha statue. As our boat steered towards the huge statue, a mild cool breeze touched our faces. On reaching the statue and the enclosed garden, I marveled at the serene atmosphere prevailing there. Royal thrones inside Chowmahallah Palace A visit to South India must accommodate the delicious food of the south. Though usually taken for breakfast, I had a masala dosa for dinner and Ramoji Film City topped it with a tall glass of lassi at Chutney’s a vegetarian restaurant I had heard so much about Ramoji Film City that I could not resist verifying it. A drive of one and a half hours from Hyderabad, Ramoji Film City has been acknowledged by the Guinness World Records as the largest film studio complex in the world. A wonderland to the eyes, the film city left me mesmerised. The Mughal gardens, the Japanese gardens and the Hawa Mahal are all here at Ramoji. A movie makers paradise, it has everything from the Budhha’s statue settings for every scene of a film to the technical support required to make it happen. Our friendly guide, Halder, informed us that scenes of the recently released blockbuster Chennai Express were shot here. Ramoji Film City also has a number of restaurants, shopping centres, hotels and rides. Different cultural programs, which include an opening and closing ceremony, stunt shows, and dances are performed live throughout the day at several theatres and at the central court. There was also a session dedicated to the art of film making, which showed how sound mixing and video editing is done in films. The world class environs, the magical world of films and the many fascinating sights and rides of Ramoji lure thousands of people to this wonderland of cinema. Even as I left Hyderabad, the sights, smells and sounds of this Nawabi city lingered on my senses. Hyderabad was an unforgettable blend of history with modernity. n like Child, Crystal Quest, Pulse and Sterling World. She can be reached at natharundhati@ Arundhati Nath is a freelance writer from Gugmail.com. wahati, Assam. She has written for publications June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 57

recipes

The Scent of a Green Papaya By Praba Iyer

t was a pleasant, sunny afternoon in December. I was in Chennai visiting the neighborhood where I had grown up. The temples were still there, and I could still recognize the place, but the character of the street had changed. The large playground across from our street had become a huge shopping complex, and my own home had been turned into a multi-storey housing unit. Sadly, my neighbor’s home looked dilapidated and out of place. But the few papaya trees lining the front of his house were still thriving in the hot sun. The sight of the papayas triggered memories of my home. We used to grow our own papaya trees, along with mango, moringa and henna trees. The sweet smell of green papaya thoran (sauteed with coconut) that my grandmother loved to cook came flooding back. She would let some papayas ripen on the tree for us to eat as an evening snack with red pepper and salt. Yum! The “fruit of the angels” as Christopher Columbus called it, the papaya is native to the tropical Americas, Mexico and Costa Rica. It is fascinating to trace the papaya trail around the world. From the Americas, the seeds were taken to the West Indies and Bermuda in the early 1500s. Then the Spaniards took the seeds to Philippines in the early 1600s. There are conflicting theories of whether it was the Spaniards or the Portuguese who brought the papaya plant to

India in the 1600s. From India the seed was exported to Italy. Due to its adaptability the papaya plant grew all over the tropics from West Indies to South East Asia and Australia. Here in the United States, the seeds were brought to Florida from the Bahamas around 1559 and grown in home gardens until the 1960s. Now it is grown commercially in Hawaii. According to the National Horticulture Board, India is the largest producer of papaya in the world today. Papaya is an excellent source of antioxidants, Vitamin C, A and B, flavonoids and folate. It is also a great source of potassium, magnesium and pantothenic acid. Thomas Pennington Lucas, a well known botanist and medical scientist called the papaw (papaya) “the world’s greatest healing agent.” He went on to start an hospital called Vera Papaw, in Brisbane Australia where patients were treated with nothing but papaya to cure ailments. There are innumerable benefits of using papaya in our diet. In Chinese medicine the raw papaya is given to patients with digestive and stomach ailments, and to increase breast milk in nursing mothers. The fruit is used to cure constipation and dysentery and urinary ailments. In Hawaii, the latex is used on open wounds to heal it. The seeds are given to early stage cancer patients. Studies show that the antioxidants in papaya help reduce the oxidation of cholesterol that causes it

to stick to the arteries as plaque, causing heart attacks and strokes. Being a good source of fiber, papaya reduces the buildup of cholesterol in the body. As a great source of fiber, papaya is also helpful in preventing constipation. The latex of papaya contains two proteolytic enzymes called papain and chymopapain. Papain is used as an antiinflammatory agent in reducing arthritis and in healing infections and reducing fluid retention during trauma and surgery. The main ingredient in toothpastes as a whitener and digestive is papain. In many countries papaya is used as an immune booster to fight against hay fever, dengue fever, flu and cold and the leaves have been used on wounds to quicken healing. In some cases papaya is said to have caused abortions in pregnant women. Latex allergies have also been associated with papaya latex and papaya skin. The anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties are also well documented. According to the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, papain along with green tea helps reduce colon and prostate cancer. Even to this day, the papaya is used as an antidote to insect bites, used as a cleanser in cosmetics, and a natural meat tenderizer. n Praba Iyer teaches custom cooking classes around the SF Bay Area. She also blogs about cooking at rocketbites.com.

Green Papaya Thoran Ingredients 2 cups green papaya (peeled, seeded and cubed) 1 tsp oil 1 tsp mustard seeds 1 tsp urad dal (split black gram) 2-3 shallots chopped fine ¼ cup fresh shredded coconut 2-3 green chilies chopped fine salt to taste.

58 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

Method Heat oil in a skillet and add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters add the urad dhal, curry leaves and shallots Then add the coconut, green chilies and saute. Then add the raw papaya and mix. Lower the heat and let it cook for about 10 minutes or until the papaya is soft yet crunchy. Season with salt and serve. n

Papaya Hair Mask I make this mask for my wispy, dry unhealthy hair with split ends and dandruff. It is like a natural steroid boost that makes your hair come alive. Ingredients Half a ripe papaya 1 banana ½ cup yogurt 1 tbsp of coconut oil Method Blend these ingredients to a smooth paste in blender to a soft smooth paste. Apply it on the hair. Wear a cap and let it soak in for ½ an hour. Then wash it off well with water. n

Anti-Aging Face Pack I don’t throw the papaya skin without it exfoliating my face. Just rub the inside part of the papaya skin all over your face and keep for 15 minutes before you wash it off. Here’s another recipe for a face mask. Ingredients 4 cubes of ripe papaya mashed well 1 tbsp honey 1 tbsp milk 1 tsp of sandalwood powder (optional) Method Mash all these into a smooth paste and apply it to the face excluding the eyes. Leave it for about 20 minutes and then wash with cold water. Pat dry the glowing clean face. n

June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 59

On Inglish

Down From the Tonga By Kalpana Mohan

ton·ga [tong-guh] noun a light, two-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle used in India. Origin: 1870—75; Hindi tanga

n a cool morning in November 1943, my father dismounted from a tonga outside his cousin’s home on Ranga Iyer Street in the city of Chennai, then called Madras. That week my father, then barely 20 years old, would join duty at the local Accountant General’s office as an entry-level clerk on a salary of fifty rupees. I can imagine my father pulling out his luggage, reminding himself to embrace the newness, to stanch his fears of the unknown. He told me how Madras Central Station had awed him. He had gaped at its cavernous interior. Outside, he had marveled at the building’s Gothic towers and Romanesque arches in terracotta and white. From the tonga, he had taken in the sign for “Murphy Radio,” the clock tower, its flagstaff, and then—as he inhaled the dung-breath and horsehair of the animal that trotted ahead of him—the town’s broad roads, its spacious parks, its street lamps and the big shops. My father had reached his destination on a carriage that was once a popular mode of transportation introduced into India by the British. A Hindi word, tonga entered the language late in the 19th century when this light two-wheeled vehicle became popular on all the roads leading to hill-stations like Simla and Darjeeling. During the British Raj, Delhi was famous for its thousands of tongawallahs who galloped between the ancient walled city and the bungalow-buffed boulevards of Sir Edwin Lutyen’s city. The tonga, which once was a luxury ride during the wane of the Mughal Empire, became popular with the middle classes following the emergence of British India. In the 1920s, British soldiers stationed at the Red Fort would ride the tonga to the fashionable Connaught Place to go shopping on Sundays and the English ladies would ride in them for picnics out in the woods. Even though auto rickshaws surpassed them in popularity in the India of the 80s, tongas still color Indian cities in some parts, as do bullock-carts. In the historic parts, an occasional tonga is still a tourist attraction and can be a charming alternative to wend one’s way through the alleys of an old town. Just as old Indian towns still have tongas, so does one rambling town filled with characters I’ve loved all my life. Almost daily, the tonga runs smoothly through the streets of Malgudi. R. K. Narayan’s fictitious town located a few hours away by train from Madras on the shores of the fictional river Sarayu. Beyond the river a man-eating tiger roams in the forests of Mempi Hills. Captain, a plucky character in The Tiger for Malgudi, buys the possessions of a luckless Irishman called O’Brien who is brown-skinned and speaks neither English nor Irish: “He dispensed with his pony, selling it off to a tonga owner, and managed with the parrot and the monkey, which became his sole assets … He had a portable signboard painted, GRAND IRISH CIRCUS, and set it up in the town hall compound, street pavements on market square and attracted a crowd.” Captain buys O’Brien’s remaining assets to apply for a job at the majestic circus of Malgudi. Like many of Narayan’s characters who passed their days in bucolic Malgudi, my father had rarely spotted motor cars in his village in Pal-

60 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

akkad. The day he arrived in Madras, he watched wide-eyed as big cars lumbered through the roads of the town; he counted at least ten cars—they seemed to sail like ships—on the five-mile ride into T. Nagar from the railway station. He noticed how in Madras, the tonga that had carried him from the station to his cousin’s home seemed to have so little heft. Back in the village there were then only two other options for transport—one’s feet or two wheels pulled by a buffalo— and so the horse had style. In what would be a proud moment for the family in those years, a horde of our relatives traveled, in four horse-drawn carts, to the railway station in Palakkad on the occasion of my parents’ marriage in 1944. But one time my aunt Vijayam, her younger sister Samyukta and my cousins didn’t feel so proud after all. In 1966, they were returning home from the theater in Palakkad town after watching Anbe Vaa, a Tamil movie that had racked up huge success at the Box Office, when the horse decided to act beastly. It simply ejected them—like James Bond might the villainess in his Alfa Romeo. The four women spilled out of the tonga on to the road “Like balls. We rolled like balls,” Vijayam said. The women were shocked and disoriented for a few minutes but not hurt in any big way. While the tonga man apologized, the horse watched them with sticky lashes, swished its tail, blew noxious air from its orifices and neighed furiously. Meanwhile the four women quickly scrambled to cover their ankles and any exposed skin. What the lot of them did next flummoxed me. They actually trusted the horse to take them back home. “We dusted ourselves and got back on the cart and returned home to Double Street in our village.” I told my aunt I would have stood a mile away and poked the behind of the demented horse with the nib of a fountain pen attached to a bamboo pole and fled the scene as fast as my legs could’ve carried me. My aunt laughed. My father’s sisters are a feisty breed. There was, of course, another reason why the brood returned with the horse. Despite the bruises, there was the matter of prestige as they descended from the tonga. People would take note from their porches. And that counted for something. “Whenever we got the opportunity to ride in a tonga, we looked around the village with a very snooty air,” my aunt said. In those days, the tonga was the Lexus to the bullock cart which was, I suppose, its lesser cousin, the Toyota Corolla. n Kalpana Mohan writes from Saratoga. To read more about her, go to http://kalpanamohan.org and http://saritorial.com.

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June 2014 | www.indiacurrents.com | 61

viewfinder

Waiting By Shyamala Parameswaran

r winne

ll of life involves waiting for something or the other. Sometimes it is a lonely sort of waiting. Here the lady awaits the return of her family in the evening. This picture was taken on a visit to Kodunthirapulli agraharam, Palakkad, Kerala. Agraharams or traditional housing alongside temples are fast disappearing with modern day constructions replacing them. Here is an old spa-

cious airy one with tiled roof and skylight. n Shyamala Parameswaran is an avid photographer and freelance journalist. Her reports on Real Estate development in India can be found in India West issues in past weeks. She is passionate about capturing illuminating moments of people. She is active in the social media.

India Currents invites readers to submit to this column. Send us a picture with caption and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pick the best entry every month. There will be a cash prize awarded to the lucky entrant. Entries will be judged on the originality and creativity of the visual and the clarity and storytelling of the caption. So pick up that camera and click away. Send the picture as a jpeg image to editor@indiacurrents.com with Subject: A Picture That Tells a Story. Deadline for entries: 10th of every month. 62 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

dear doctor

Outbursts and Breakdowns By Alzak Amlani

Recently, my 27-year-old brother, who has always been quite sensitive, artistic, perceptive and close to me had a big breakdown. It was very scary. I have always seen him as a quieter and more spiritual person. It started with him telling me very emotionally about his break up with his girlfriend. He was very depressed when he started and then began to get pretty angry. He told me things he had analyzed about our family, myself and some other folks we knew. It seemed he had a psychic understanding of people, their true motives, issues and personality traits. He then told me that I wasn’t as supportive as he wanted in a sister and that has greatly affected his closeness to the family and even lowered his confidence with his girlfriends in the past. I was pretty shocked at hearing all of this. When I started defending myself and told him to stop blaming me for his issues, he got verbally aggressive by threatening me and yelling at me. Fortunately, I stopped reacting and just listened and he began to calm down after about thirty minutes. I am not sure how serious his outburst is and what it means

regarding his emotional health?

This is quite a thorough description of a psychological process that is worth being very aware. Significant losses can be quite destabilizing for people. His break up and maybe other changes in his life have precipitated quite an opening, a release of deeper feelings and perceptions, where his usual inhibitions and defenses are not operating. You mentioned “depression.” How seriously depressed is he and for how long? Ideally you want to encourage him to see a psychotherapist who can help him understand his current reactions, evaluate his mental state and help him work through his grief, anger and more fully diagnose his depression. With major depression, a person’s thought processes can seem bizarre, highly perceptive and quite self-revealing. It can also move towards delusional thinking with excessive paranoia. This can get very complex to understand, as some of the perceptions

can be very accurate and others outrageous. Sometimes the kind of aggression you described can be a manic episode, which is part of a bipolar disorder. In a manic state a person has high levels of energy, starts to lose touch with reality, can get aggressive, and grandiose. This can be a very creative and productive phase as well. However, it is very difficult to be around a person in this state. Support groups play a pivotal role in dealing with episodes like this. Other people who’ve been in similar situations can share their experiences and coping mechanisms, both for you as well as your brother. If it is indeed a manic episode, it has to be looked at professionally for if left untreated it can get worse and more difficult to treat. n Alzak Amlani, Ph.D., is a counseling psychologist of Indian descent in the Bay Area. 650-325-8393. Visit www. wholenesstherapy.com

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the last word

Showing Up is Eighty Percent of Life

By Sarita Sarvate

he other day I was driving along, daydreaming to the rhythm of NPR, when a voice from the past jarred me out of my reverie. It was John Holdren, President Obama’s top science advisor, discussing the administration’s recent report on climate change. But I could start the story another way and tell you that one day, when I was a young woman living in India, I came across The Daily Cal, a student newspaper from Berkeley. My life could not have been at a lower point then. I had dropped out of the Ph.D. program in Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur; I had had an arranged marriage that was not quite fulfilling; I was about to turn twenty-five, the magical age at which all government and corporate jobs would close for me. But I had not given up. I was studying for competitive exams like the Indian Administrative Services; I was trying my hand at writing, publishing letters in the Times of India. Most of all, sitting in my garden in Bhopal, I was reading. When, in The Daily Cal I read about a new graduate program in Energy and Resources in Berkeley, I thought nothing of it. I was totally disenchanted with ivory tower institutions, the sexual harassment at the hands of male students in IIT who outnumbered females by orders of magnitude, the “foreign returned” professors who were only focused on publishing research papers, and the harsh climate of Kanpur. Berkeley could only be worse, I thought. As a young girl, I had dreamt of America, but it had become a distant Shangrila. But a pen pal who lived in the One United States urged me to apply. So I life promhand-wrote the application, purchased ised bouts with a fortune worth of postage stamps, and after mailing it, promptly forgot malaria, a bad about it. cold winter morning, I travmarriage, and a job eledOne to Delhi by train; out of thourife with politics; the sands who had taken the competitive exams, I had been chosen for an inother, divorce, mi- terview for the position of Probationary Officer for the Bank of India. As I nority status, and listened to my competitors chatting in convent school accents in the hallway, I loneliness. felt I had no chance. My wedding necklace of black beads was enough to disqualify me; the bank never appointed married women to such executive positions. But then fortune smiled upon me; the chair of the interview panel asked me the one question I could wax eloquent about, the significance of T.S. Eliot’s play, “The Confidential Clerk.” And lo and behold, I secured one of the most coveted jobs in the country, becoming the first woman in the State of Madhya Pradesh to acquire such a position. My application to Berkeley had bounced back in the meantime because I had not written an essay explaining why I wanted to study there. Why did I want to study energy and resources? Because alternative energy was the only hope for India’s future? Because the country’s poor could become self-reliant with the aid of biogas, biomass, and solar energy projects? Because Gandhi himself had advocated such small scale rural development? I channeled Jawaharlal Nehru, John Kenneth Galbraith, and my father Dada to write my essay, by hand. Soon, I became a banker. I attended an executive training session in Mumbai; I hobnobbed with Bhopal’s elites; I joined the other half. Once I passed probation, I would get perks like interest-free loans for houses and vacations at hill stations. I had forgotten all about Berkeley, when, out of the blue, I received 64 | INDIA CURRENTS | June 2014

a letter from Professor John Holdren, the very same John Holdren who was on the radio the other day. “I believe we can benefit from the perspective of someone from the third world,” he wrote. I was elated. I had made the cut. I had been seen as good enough to enter Berkeley. The knowledge alone was enough for me. I did not actually plan to go there. So I thanked John Holdren for accepting me into the program but regretted that I could not attend because I had no money to survive in the United States; without financial guarantees, the United States Consulate would not grant me a visa. Besides, the bank would not allow me to leave the country. One afternoon, I began to shiver. I put on sweaters, I piled blankets on top, but the cold and fever would not go away; I had malaria. The local quack, who allegedly had purchased his medical diploma, could not help. The attacks continued, each one leaving me more debilitated than the one before. I was in this fragile state when I received another letter from John Holdren. Unbeknownst to me, he had arranged a research assistantship at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab; I was to work on a Department of Energy project to improve energy efficiency in buildings. Panic gripped me. I would fail in Berkeley, I thought. I was reluctant to abandon my successful life for one filled with unknowns. I was sure my marriage would not survive a move across continents. I was at the proverbial Morton’s fork. On one side were my family, my country, and my security. On the other were risk, adventure, and the foreign land I had always dreamt of. One life promised bouts with malaria, a bad marriage, and a job rife with politics; the other, divorce, minority status, and loneliness. In the end it was my father who said I should go. “Who gets such an opportunity?” He said. The year was 1976. Why am I telling you this story? I am not writing this because I want to boast about my achievements, but because, looking back, what stands out is the persistence of the young woman who dared, who showed up every time, who never gave up. I see the tale now, not as a part of my life, but as something that happened to someone else. All my friends were married by the time these events happened. Most took the easy way out, by earning the other “MA” degree, as in ma, or mother. I could easily have settled into the life of a housewife; I could easily have raised a couple of kids; I could easily have relegated my dream of America to a corner of my mind, to examine it every now and then with wonder. Instead, I struggled; I ventured; I persevered. Along the way, people like the bank panelist, my pen pal, and John Holdren, helped. John, in particular, had the vision to see beyond my degree from the unheard of Nagpur University, to a world where all countries could join together to wrestle with problems like climate change. But I did my part. “Showing up is eighty percent of life,” Woody Allen is alleged to have said. That young woman showed up, every single time. It is a lesson I myself need to learn all over again. 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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