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Not My History? By Jaya Padmanabhan

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Guns, Tragedy and Individual Rights: Struggling for Answers Yet Again By Gayathri Chakravarthy Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

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2 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |November 2017

ales and the power they exercised in the last election cycle continues to be discussed. Male sexual impropriety in the fields of technology, Hollywood and television are hard to miss. Discussions of the actions of men seem to be all around us. Something that rarely gets airtime in these discussions is the topic of emotional vulnerability among men. Yes, you did read that right—emotional vulnerabilities in men, not women. What does it mean to be a man in today’s society? Social conditioning of men from a young age emphasizes the bottling of emotions, with a display of emotion associated with weakness. And both, males and females, frown upon any display of emotional weakness among men. And, this starts young. Very young. I am happy that it has always been socially acceptable for me to cry. I cried on the school playground when I fell down, I cried when I lost a loved one; heck, I sit with a box of tissues when I watch a movie to this day! How many men can say that they are treated with indulgence and support when they cry? Pause to think about that. To simply shed tears is frowned upon, even when there is no physiological difference between men and women and their emotional states. In fact, what we find in male babies is quite revealing. The New York Times reports, “One study out of Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in 1999 found that 6-month-old boys were more likely to show “facial expressions of anger, to fuss, to gesture to be picked up” and “tended to cry more than girls.” “Boys were also more socially oriented than girls,” the report said—more likely to look at their mother and “display facial expressions of joy.” Boys as infants are clearly expressing intense emotive involvement even more than girls. What do we do to these male infants who are expressing emotions freely? What I read next in the New York Times essay, Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest, by Andrew Reiner made my eyes moisten. He states: “Last semester, a student in the masculinity course I teach showed a video clip she had found online of a toddler getting what appeared to be his first vaccinations. Off camera, we hear

Be A Man his father’s voice. “I’ll hold your hand, O.K.?” Then, as his son becomes increasingly agitated: “Don’t cry!… Aw, big boy! High five, high five! Say you’re a man: ‘I’m a man!’ ” The video ends with the whimpering toddler screwing up his face in anger and pounding his chest. “I’m a man!” he barks through tears and gritted teeth.” How can there not be repercussions for this bottling of emotions? Starting young with constant reinforcement through adulthood, men are consistently encouraged to repress emotions. This repression and a subsequent need to assert power in other ways leads to various outcomes that undermine the tenets of a healthy society for males and females. Michael Kimmel, the renowned sociologist and leader of masculine studies, in his essay Bros before Hoes says that young male adolescents, “hear the voices of the men in their lives—fathers, coaches, brothers, grandfathers, coaches, priests— to inform their ideas of masculinity.” And

with these voices in their minds, they cite “not crying,” as one of the first rules of the “Guy Code.” Other predictable unwritten rules include, “It’s better to be mad than sad; take it like a man; nice guys finish last.” Kimmel states: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” Can we change this history? Can we allow boys to just cry? As I sit whimpering through a movie, with indulgent smiles from friends and family, I will stop to think about this. We need to hug our daughters tightly. But we need to hug our sons even closer. They need the hugs more than our daughters do. n

Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, Managing Editor

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INDIA CURRENTS November 2017 • vol 31 • no 8

3 | EDITORIAL

West Coast Edition

Be A Man By Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

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15 |PERSPECTIVE No Pride and Full of Prejudice By Gayatri Barr 22 | OPINION When Sexual Assault Happens What Should You Do? By Rasana Atreya 24|RELATIONSHIP DIVA Resolving Conflict in Relationships By Jasbina Ahluwalia

Happy Thanksgiving!

28| PROFILE 200 Million Reasons to Care

By Annika Young 32| YOUTH Bollywood: Can You Make Up Your Mind? By Kanchan Naik

COLUMNS 8 | NOW AND THEN Not my History? By Jaya Padmanabhan 30 | DESI LENS My #MeToo Story By Kalpana Mohan

36 |TRAVEL Myanmar—All That Glitters is

10 | As American As Apple Pie? Guns, Tragedy and Individual Rights By Gayathri Chakravarthy and

70 | LAST WORD Is Identity Politics Passe in the Age of Globalization? By Sarita Sarvate

Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

16 | Poetry Iconic Poet of Mughal India: Mirza Ghalib

DEPARTMENTS 6 | Letters to the Editor 27 | Visa Dates 50 | Cultural Calendar

By Monita Soni

34 | Recipes New Thanksgiving Recipes By Praba Iyer

4 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |November 2017

Really Gold

By Riz Mithani 40 | BOOKS

The Last Gods of Indochine

By Samantha Rajaram When Dimple Met Rishi

By Jeanne Fredriksen 44 |FILMS

Secret Superstar Golmaal Again

By Aniruddh Chawda 64 | HEALTHY LIFE A Cookbook for Healthy Living—Deepa's Secrets By Prakash Narayan 68 |DEAR DOCTOR Starting Over After Divorce By Alzak Amlani

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letters to the editor

Letter from reader

Remedy for Vowel Woes

This is in response to the essay by Ashwin Krishnan (Extreme Vetting-Desi Shtyle, October 2017). Deat Ashwin, I have a partial remedy for your vowel woes, especially the one involving proper nouns; simply listen to some English county cricket commentary! You will then pronounce with careless insouciance such minefields as Portsmouth, Falmouth, Dartmouth (the “ou” is as in enough). Doozies like Warwick (where the second “w” is silent) the shires (pronounced “sheer”) or the Thames ( “tems”) will present no problem and will fall with admirable nonchalance from your lips. If you’re unable to summon up any enthusiasm for cricket, just go on the offensive and you be the grammar police! Some handy tips to deal with the American adolescent: When you ask your daughter how she fared on her math quiz and she replies, “I did good,” shoot right back at her

Drawing from Artist Kartik Tirvedi

with, “Actually you did not do good. You did well. (Hopefully).” Take heart, Ashwin, no need to fake your accent (no one is fooled anyway!), wear that desi accent like a badge of honor and go for it! Gayathri Chakravarthy, email.

True Tribute to an Artist

This is in response to the cover story (The Artist, The Musician, The Mystic, Pavani Kaushik, October 2017). I want to express my joy and admiration for the story by Pavani Kaushik. As a friend and fan of Kartik Trivedi for nearly 40 years, this is the most deserving and real portrayal of this unique artist. I regard this a befitting tribute and honor to a genius amongst us. Pavani has taken us on a beautiful journey into the art and soul of an extraordinary artist of our times. Reading the article prompted me to look deeper into and experiencing Kartik’s paintings adorning our humble

6 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |November 2017

home, at a different level and dimension. G. S. Satya, email

Speeches That I Remember

This is in response to the essay by Jaya Padmanabhan (What is the Best Speech You’ve Heard? October 2017). I Have a Dream is by far the best speech I have heard, albeit on tape. I have read the transcript of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address a hundred times, and have been floored by the eloquence and the scrupulous precision. I have committed both of these speeches to memory. I have also loved listening to great actors delivering dialogs, such as Adrian Lester doing the Hamlet soliloquy. Shivakumar Raman, web

Send us an original letter of up to 300 words. letters@indiacurrents.com

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 7

now and then

Not My History?

By Jaya Padmanabhan

n the December 22, 1941 issue of Life magazine there is an article titled “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese.” A Chinese public servant and a Japanese warrior are presented to the reader and the racial differences between the two are explicitly highlighted. The pictures deliver and perpetuate the enemy discernibly. The Chinese man has a slight smile on his face whereas the Japanese man stares somewhat ominously into the camera, with his lips turned down. The text, of course, is hardly subtle: “Life here adduces a rule-of-thumb from the anthropometric conformations that distinguish friendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs.” The early 1900s was a time of war, a time of hardship, and a time of extreme patriotism. Along with all of this, came a dose of irrationality. “Yellow peril” paranoia infected the nation, and, on February 19, 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, removing approximately 120,000 people of Japanese heritage from their lives and confining them to concentration camps behind barbed wire fences for close to four years. The Exclusion Exhibition at the Presidio Officer’s Club in San Francisco gives context and urgency to this Japanese incarceration experience. The deeply unsettling black and white images bring home the idea that exclusion and alienation can all too easily be replicated. The Exclusion Order was a great big squeeze of a racist tube which had fueled injunctive political policies like the Immigration Act of 1907 and the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924. These policies swept up all Asian communities under its scope, including Indians, on the basis that they were not white. Between 1903 and 1908, 3,000 Punjabis entered America and worked for the Western Pacific Railways, lumber mills and logging camps in the west. They were frequently targeted by mobs. This is our history—our Asian American, ethnic and racial history—not so very long ago. Yesterday it was the Japanese, today it’s the Muslims, who will it be tomorrow? The past is invariably someone else’s present. We often point to white supremacy as the underlying ideology behind racial truculence and antipathy, and in this blame game we often forget our own roles. The 1991 movie Mississippi Masala exposed uncomfortable attitudes that minority cultures bear for each other. The movie’s primary articulation is an inter-racial romance between Mina, an Indian woman, and Demetrius, an African American man. “Can you imagine turning down Harry Patel for a black man?” a character asks rhetorically, framing the answer in the same way that the pictures of the Chinese and Japanese men are framed in the Life article. The ironies in the movie are manifold. The Indian family escapes “Indophobia” in Uganda, under Idi Amin’s peremptory diktat that all Indians leave Uganda within 90 days in August of 1972. The family was forced to leave behind their property, personal belongings and history, but, they bring to America their own racial prejudices, preferring to think of the black community in stereotypes. 8 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |November 2017

This is our history—our Asian American, ethnic and racial history—not so long ago. Yesterday it was the Japanese, today it’s the Muslims. Who will it be tomorrow? Indeed, as the movie portrayed, being a victim of racial insensitivity does not shield one from performing acts of racism. We cannot turn away from the experiences of the Japanese in 1942 as not belonging to us, just as we cannot turn away from the experiences of African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, Dreamers, or the undocumented men and women who are dehumanized and de-characterized by the frequently applied “illegal” derivative. At an ethnic media roundtable organized by New America Media and the Presidio Trust, when the idea of exclusion as an insular concept was brought up, Fernando Torres, freelance reporter for La Opinion de la Bahia remarked about how inclusion and exclusion are closely interrelated especially in the context of Latino migration. “If you were never included for real, you can be excluded,” he charged. He offered up the idea that it’s ethnic and racial protection that’s the reason for our cultural ghettoization though, that may be an oversimplification. Yes, we do protect ourselves with like-mindedness, colormindedness, creed-mindedness, and class-mindedness, but we also alienate ourselves in exactly that way. At the moment, more and more Indian Americans are being targeted for the “taking away our jobs” sentiment. In these times, we must make ourselves recall our histories and participate in each other’s instances of alienation as people of the same community. Certainly, it’s not the color of our complexions that differentiates us, or the size of our jawbone. But the scale of our engagement for each other. Our survival depends on that. n Jaya Padmanabhan was the editor of India Currents from 2012-16. She is the author of the collection of short stories, Transactions of Belonging.

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 9

As American Guns, Tragedy and Individual Rights: By Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

372 gs: There were Mass shootin 2015, s in the US in mass shooting ndople and wou killing 475 pe ass rding to the M ing 1,870, acco gs lo ta ker, which ca Shooting Trac ooting s. A mass sh such incident insingle shooting is defined as a s four kills or injure cident which e asth , including or more people sailant. ooting Tracker Source: Mass Sh

School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no one was hurt. Source: Gun Violence Archive

Can We Do Something, Anything to StopThis Madness? By Nirupama Vaidhyanathan

watched as details of the Las Vegas shooting trickled in. Conflicting reports in the beginning, and then the fog cleared to paint a clear picture of the developments on the Strip. A lone gunman shot at a crowd that had gathered to listen to a country music concert—the final tally—number of wounded and injured 546, with 45 people still hospitalized, some in critical condition. Fifty eight lives lost. The motive for this madness is still unclear. As headlines screamed, television hosts nodded their heads in disbelief and as murmurs of sympathy cascaded all around me, I was shocked. Shocked by feeling inured to the unfolding tragedy. There was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness; this country will never wake up to regulating gun ownership, I thought. The NRA wields so much power that meaningful reform in gun laws was merely a pipe dream. What was the point of even getting upset with the state of affairs? I felt small, marginalized, defeated. Personally, the shocking aspect to this reaction was the level of disengagement. I did not want to read the editorials, the sanctimonious hectoring of people on both sides of the gun ownership debate, and I did not want to dwell on victim accounts. There is enough and more that we know already about the gun debate.

10 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition |November 2017

How the US compar es: The number of gun murders pe r capita in the US in 2012 (the mo st recent year for comparable statis tics) was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared wi th just 0.1. Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Ca nada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10 % in the UK. Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

In a Washington Post story, Peter Holley points out that the latest public service announcement by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence asserts: “Americans are shot by toddlers at least once a week,” the oneminute video notes. We need to lock them up. Not the guns — that’s just un-American. Round them up. Deport them. Get them out of our country. And keep them away from guns.” The terrible statistic stops us in our tracks with its horror, but, even here the horror turns into a nightmare only when names, families and faces come into focus. That is what happened a few months ago when I read this story. The Washington Post reported on a story where a nine year old girl Kimi Reylander was shot and killed by her 4 year old brother, Jaxon. These were the people and the names behind that one statistic. Joel Watson, the great-grandfather who left out the gun. Tina Watson, the grandmother who didn’t see the gun. Amanda Watson, the mother whose son reached for the gun. Jaxon, who pulled the trigger. The scene so ordinary, the ending tragic. Kimi on the floor watching a show on her iPad, the younger brother clambering up on the bed to get a better view. Finding a gun on the dresser, the boy thinks it’s a toy and he pulls the trigger. In an instant, the bullet rips through his sister’s head and she is dead. What happened next is the part that bothers me most. According to reporting by the Washington Post, after the shooting was termed an accident by the authorities, the boy’s mother, Amanda

As Apple Pie? Struggling for Answers Yet Again and Gayathri Chakravarthy Watson hoisted a pistol with a scope and posted a picture on Facebook saying, “I’m pretty badass.” She followed a few weeks later with an entry into a marksmanship competition and posted a video of that on Facebook as well. To me, it is incomprehensible. This attachment to guns as a marker of identity. American identity. American culture. It is here that we enter murky territory. Pulling us back centuries to the founding of the nation to the wording of the Second Amendment to the founding of the NRA and the politicisation of the issue. The text of the Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Dr. Akhil Amar, constitutional historian at Yale University says that the word, “militia” was dropped from the discussion during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War and the right to bear arms morphed into an “individual” right. Once it was framed as an individual right, the cultural markers become very different. Radically different. The word “militia” automatically conjures up a vision of a group fighting for a common cause. Once that word was removed from the discussion to focus on an individual’s right to bear arms, every argument was won in favor of the individual right. From lower courts to the Supreme Court, judgements were written and rewritten to champion the right of the individual to bear arms. And, that is the only way that one can interpret the actions of the mother, Amanda Watson who posed alongside her gun on Facebook even as she was dealing with the loss of her nine year old daughter battling crippling migraine headaches. If we do not look at this as a war to change a country’s culture, we will be fighting an empty battle. It is a daunting battle, essentially it is a battle over the framing of an issue. But, it is a battle that is worth fighting. The odds are stacked sky high agianst us. Consider this fact: the month of Obama’s election in 2008, 1.1 million guns were sold fearing strict gun control laws. The month after Sandy Hook in December 2012, that same number soared to 2 million. That is a country’s reaction to a national tragedy. More guns. Individuals asserting their rights. With their wallets and their actions. Fareed Zakaria had a telling response to the oft-repeated claim that guns are not the problem, people are. Comparing the vast differences in gun-related violence in the United States and Britain, he says, “This disparity is the central fact that needs to be studied, explained and addressed. When seen in this light, it becomes obvious why focusing on mental health is a dodge. The rate of mental illness in the United States is not anywhere close to 40 times the rate in Britain. But the rate of gun deaths is 40 times

higher. America does have more than 14 times as many guns as Britain per capita, and far fewer restrictions on their ownership and use. That’s the obvious correlation staring us in the face, as we insist on talking about every other possible issue.” So, even as I write this, I’m still struggling to come up with a coherent explanation as to why I felt so removed when the shooting happened at Las Vegas. I wonder—Can we change as a nation? Do we have the will to change? Obama’s words after the Sandy Hook massacre haunt me to this day. “We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison. The children who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012: Dare I even speak their names aloud when I do nothing? When we do nothing? n

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 11

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Musings After Vegas By Gayathri Chakravarthy n the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, my sister made a telling comment. She remarked, “We’re getting to be an increasingly unhappy people. Steve Paddock must have been a very unhappy man.” While being unhappy can hardly absolve one from such a heinous act, understanding why he did what he did is actually important. From what we hear, this was a man who enjoyed good physical health, had money to burn, was footloose and fancy free, and yet must have been absolutely wretched to have planned and carried out in such meticulous detail, this horrendous act which he knew might well end with his own demise. To write him off as a mentally insane outlier is taking the easy way out. This may help us take comfort in the knowledge that this was an isolated incident, well outside the mainstream in which we live and really nothing to do with us, unless we have the misfortune to be on the receiving end of this violence. But I believe there are many, many Steven Paddocks in the making in our inner circle, who may not take that ultimate step, but who nevertheless find themselves coping with varying degrees of desperation. I lived in Australia prior to settling down in the United States and witnessed firsthand, the shock and outrage of a nation traumatised by the mass shooting at Port Arthur in 1996. In the days that followed, gun legislation was brought about at remarkable speed with nary a soul objecting. There have been no such incidents in Australia since. Sadly, I do not believe we will

The University of California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis’ Sacramento campus officially launched 4th July, 2017 under the direction of Garen Wintemute, a recognized authority on the epidemiology of firearm violence. Funded with a $5 million appropriation from the state of California for five years it is the first research center to be started with public funds. The center will focus on understanding the underlying causes of firearm violence, while attempting to drill down to further identify the factors associated with an increased risk for gun violence and its effects on individuals and communities.

Despite the sheer numbers of dead and dying at Las Vegas, the incident that shook me most was in fact Sandy Hook. That was my personal Holocaust. To this day, I still can’t get past it. If we as a nation, with a Democratic government in power at the time couldn’t pass legislation at that lowest of low moments in American history, I don’t imagine gun legislation has much hope of being implemented now. ever have meaningful gun-control legislation in America. Despite the sheer numbers of dead and dying at Las Vegas, the incident that shook me the most was in fact Sandy Hook. That was my personal Holocaust. To this day, I still can’t get past it. If we as a nation, with a Democratic government in power at the time couldn’t pass stricter legislation at that lowest of low moments in American history, I don’t imagine that it has much hope of being implemented now. But this is not a debate about gun control. I found myself, along with countless others, wondering what drives people to commit these acts, which brings me back to my earlier comment about unhappy people. Are we truly becoming unhappier? And more worrisome, are we actually fostering a culture which breeds discontent and strife? There seems to be some validity in making this premise. When I returned to the United States after a 2-year hiatus, I found that nearly all my friends had changed jobs. The number one reason given for changing jobs was not a long commute or long hours; instead, it was this: I had a boss from hell. Some common phrases I heard: these office Hitlers were: micro-managing, critical, nagging, having unrealistic expectations, pushing too hard. Some of these people left their jobs and were even willing to settle for lower-paying jobs because they felt the constant negativism they faced at work was wearing them down and they, wisely decided, it was not worth it. I was curious about what happened to the bosses. Were they still around? The surprising answer was yes, they mostly are. This is a classic example of what has now become an acceptable and even desirable trait. Pushing someone hard, almost to the point of a breakdown, is considered as increasing efficiency. Criticising people makes the critic powerful. Arrogant is the new assertive. Another incident brought this home forcefully. My daughter at middle school shared with me that girls in her school, when asked to a dance by a boy, respond with a contemptuous “Get the f___ out, you b_____.” This is supposedly the latest smart thing to say, and is currently a hit on Instagram. Pause for a moment to think about this: A boy plucks up the nerve to ask a girl he likes, and is rejected abusively by said girl who then goes on to brag about it on social media, and receives “likes” from her faithful fan following. Imagine how angry and humiliated and gut-wrenchingly hurt that boy must feel. And we wonder why teens feel so desperately unhappy that they contemplate committing suicide. November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 13

Why would this girl, instead of gently letting down the boy with a “maybe some other time” instead feel the overpowering urge to hurt? It begs the question of who the real victim is here. Is the boy a victim of the girl’s insensitivity, or is this girl so lacking in self-esteem that she abuses people to shore up her self-worth, the actual victim? These middle school monsters, if left unchecked, will probably go on to make those horrible managers everybody hates. I remember my school principal saying that there is no such thing as a petty crime. A petty criminal is a would-be big-time criminal. A car thief starts out by stealing pencils in elementary school. Why have we degenerated into a society where being nice is considered wimpy behaviour, and sneering is smart? Putting someone down is clever, getting ahead by shoving others out of the way is strong. When we stop feeling shame and our conscience deadens itself, the lines between what is moral and what isn’t start to blur until one isn’t able to distinguish between the two any longer. Anything goes. Nothing matters save our almost obsessive desire to be recognised. When my son chose to attend UC Davis in spite of being accepted at colleges with much higher rankings, we were taken aback until he explained why. Apparently, there is an informal index that measures how friendly staff, faculty and students are at university and Davis is the highest ranked for this category in the UC system. My son explained that as a freshman, it was important to him to feel encouraged and positive, and after a year there, I can wholeheartedly agree that it is indeed a very important factor and that he made a wise decision. Social niceties do matter. They

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oil the wheels of our daily lives, make onerous situations bearable, add elegance to our speech, help us navigate tricky waters, and quite possibly have beneficial effects on our health if Dr. Dyer on PBS is to be believed! Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers writes about a small Italian community living in New York State whose life-expectancy was notably high. It was found that what contributed to longevity was not a Mediterranean diet or plenty of exercise, as one might have imagined, instead it was the fact that the community was open-door, with neighbors socialising with each other as a matter of course every day! Social intercourse is actually vital to our physical and mental health and makes for grounded, well-adjusted personalities. It, therefore, doesn’t come as a surprise that Steven Paddock, along with nearly every other mass murderer in history, was a sociopath. While our Congressmen will probably let this moment pass, we as parents need not. Let’s check those Snapchat and Instagram accounts every now and then, let’s call out our kids when they sneer at someone’s accent, let’s have conversations. Let’s be that most boring and insipid word in the English language—Nice! n Gayathri Chakravarthy is a Math instructor at a Bay Area community college. She revels in offbeat theories and encourages her students to solve math problems in unconventional ways. Not surprisingly, her favorite mathematician is Ramanujam. Nirupama Vaidhyanathan is the current Managing Editor of India Currents.

reflection

No Pride and Full of Prejudice By Gayatri Barr

t was April 1978. The results of the 10th standard exam were out. I went to my school, worked my way around the groups of girls excitedly milling around the notice board, and scanned the list. I was relieved to find that I had made it into the “First Class” group. I came home and told my mother, expecting her to be happy and relieved as well. She took it in, paused in her wiping down of a plate, and said in all seriousness, “Seriya paathiya? (Did you look carefully?) Was it your hall ticket number?” I stomped about and ranted for a bit about how little faith she had in me, how she was prejudiced in favor of my brother, the ever-dedicated student, whom she would have never doubted in this manner. But in my heart, I knew—for the time I had spent studying, a First Class was probably the result of some leftover good karma! Some years went by. I, miraculously, in my mother’s eyes I presume, finished my undergraduate degree. I remember finding out the morning of the convocation that I was among the top 10 rank holders in the state. I could not wait to see my mother’s surprise when she showed up for the event. (It was the eighties—my father was at work, my brother lived in another state, and it was not the pride-filled photo op era that we live in—I was lucky my mother attended!). As I walked on stage, my eyes found her in the audience. I think I detected a glimmer of pride and I smiled back. Or was she still wondering if the college had really looked at the hall ticket number? Who knows? That summer, I applied to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay. I was called to an on-site round of tests and interviews. As I packed my things, my mother pointed out that I really did not need to pack much—it was just a 3-day process. “Yes, but if I get in,” I pointed out, “classes start the following week, so I won’t be coming back. I need more.” My mother brushed off the idea, and my parents put me on a train with my

Awarded by parents Not a Bad Job! tiny suitcase and off I went. My friends came to say goodbye, so perhaps they had more faith in me. Well, you can predict this one—I was admitted to the Master’s program, and I had to do a lot of laundry for a while because I had nothing to wear! Amma strikes again. We’ve talked about this over the years. It was, my mom insists, not a lack of pride or faith in my abilities, but her way of protecting me from disappointment. Of course they thought highly of me, she insisted. And I have come to believe her. After I moved to America, my parents came to visit. As I was driving my parents around downtown San Jose one day, a car ran a red light and hit my car. When a policeman approached, I told my parents to stay in the car and I’d handle it on my own. When I started talking to the officer, I realized my parents had silently moved in to flank me. My father extended all his bonhomie to the cop and explained how he, too, had been a police officer in India. The cop generously chatted with him while I tried giving my dad “the look” saying that the cop needed to get back to work. And then my mom moved in to decimate any doubts the cop might have about my standing as a good citizen. “We had a green light,” she explained, “and besides,” chin firmly pointed at the tall cop, “I’m her mother and I tell you, my daughter would never lie!” Yes, Amma, so said every single mother of every single criminal in San Jose. I stood there, vacillating between mortification and the urge to laugh out loud, and I was lucky that the genial policeman

took it all in stride. He didn’t book my parents for obstruction of police work or simply “wasting time,” and he gave the situation a fair assessment. My mother continued to stew in the car as I gave her a withering explanation of how one cannot try to influence a policeman. She was emphatic. “But it’s true! You would not lie about something like this!” You see? She was proud of me after all! I ponder over this now, at a time when I am the parent of two grown children. When my daughter finished 5th grade, a parent asked us what we were giving her for graduation. “Er, we might go to dinner afterwards,” I said. The man smiled and said, “I’m giving Nicole an iPod”(new technology at the time). We ran into the man after the ceremony. He was beaming. Both our girls had received some extra recognition during the ceremony. “Oh man, now I’m going to have to give her something more!” he remarked. Us? We still took her out to dinner that night. Is it not in our culture, or my family culture at any rate, to lavish praise on our kids? Will they really get “a swollen head” as people liked to say when I was growing up? Or, as parents, are we protecting ourselves by setting standards low and imagining the worst? It can only get better if we do that, right? As my younger one went off to college this fall, she reflected that she used to wonder why we didn’t buy her goodies for good grades, when she saw other parents who did. “I get it now,” she said. “You knew we had the ability and you expected it.” Whew. I’m off the hook for that. So, to my daughters, if I have not said it enough (or ever): we are proud of you for plodding on, despite your curmudgeonly parents, and proud of the nice, accomplished and grounded people that you are today. And I’m not going to say any more in case you get a swollen head! n Gayatri Subramaniam is privileged to have had parents who were always gracious enough to let her write irreverent articles and enjoy a laugh at their expense.

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poetry

Iconic Poet of Mughal India: Mirza Ghalib By Monita Soni Quaide hayaat band o gham

Asal mein dono ek hain

Maut se pehle aadmi

Gham se bisaat khaye kyun

The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same Before death, how can a man expect to be free of grief?

irza Asadullah Beg Khan, (1797–1869) was a prominent Urdu and Persian-language poet who lived towards the end of the Mughal reign in India. He used pen-names Ghalib (dominant) and asad (lion).

Early Years

Ghalib was born in Agra in a family of Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand in Uzbekistan after the downfall of the Seljuks. After immigrating to India, his grandfather Mirza Qoqan Baig Khan settled down in Agra. Ghalib’s father, Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan married Izzat-ut-Nisa Begum, a Kashmiri. He died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar, leaving 5-year old Ghalib in the custody of his Uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan. A visiting scholar from Iran, Abdus Samad taught Ghalib Persian, Arabic, philosophy, and logic for two years. He began composing at the age of 11. Ghalib was proud of his Persian compositions, but his Urdu ghazals immortalized him. The ghazal was an expression of anguished love; but Ghalib expanded ghazals to include diverse themes of existence, suffering, religion, history and humanity. In his verses, the gender identity of the beloved is indeterminate thus freeing the poet-protagonist-lover into a metaphysical realm. His poems were revolutionary and complex, yet subtle and enigmatic catching his listeners by surprise. The meaning of his composition was buried in the smoldering coals of his personal experience. He admitted that his writing was dense and confessed: “What I truly want to say emerges in an urgent complex creativity, inseparable from existence.”

Marriage and Its Impact

At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum who was a devout Muslim. After marriage, they lived in Delhi. He

Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) refers to his unhappy marriage as lifelong imprisonment. Life as one continuous painful struggle redeemed only by death is a recurring theme in his poetry. Quaide hayaat band o gham Asal mein dono ek hain Maut se pehle aadmi Gham se bisaat khaye kyun Translation The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same Before death, how can a man expect to be free of grief? His wife had several pregnancies, but none of their seven children survived beyond infancy. The pain of his wife’s grief echoes in Ghalib’s poetry. We can see him saying this to his wife after losing a child. Jaan tum par nisaar karta hyun mai nahi jaanta dua kya hai Translation I can offer you my life I don’t know what other prayer can I make? It is difficult to analyze Ghalib because he defies intellectual interpretation but as a novice I read him from my heart and let the magical layers of meaning unfold like

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a thousand-petal lotus. My father used to quote Ghalib, and this made a deep impression on me. We were at a funeral and people were weeping, when my father quoted Ghalib to say: Ghalibe khasta ke baad Kaun se kam band hain Roye zaar zaar kya Keejiye hai hai kyun Translation We are not crying for the departed soul but we are lamenting the loss to ourselves. This poem struck a chord and I delved deeper into Ghalib through his ghazals sung by K.L.Sehgal, Begum Akhtar, Mehedi Hasan, and by Jagjit Singh in Gulzar’s serial Mirza Ghalib where Naseerudin Shah portrays the poet. The more I explored, the thirstier my soul became. Like my father, Ghalib was a tall distinguished man, wore a high Turkish hat and a long Sufi jacket. His attitude towards life was to be always merry; eating and drinking on borrowed money, with a firm belief that he would be able to repay everyone once his father’s pension was approved (this never happened and he died an indebted pauper) Ghalib challenged accepted literary, social and religious norms and covered a broad array of subjects in his poetry. ******

On Human Existence

Gham agar-chay jaangusil hai, par kahan bachay ki dil hai, Gham-e-ishq gar na hota, gham-erozgaar hota! Translation Even if this sorrow is fatal, how can I escape, after all it is heart, If it would not have been sorrows-of-love, it would have been sorrows-of-world! ******

On Love

He enjoyed his own unsavory reputation as a rake and made jokes about love.

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Aashiq hoon par maashooq-farebi hai mera kaam majnuun ko bura kahti hai laila mere aage Translation He confesses that he is more faithful to the ladies than their own lovers, because even Laila bemoans the misdeeds of Majnu in my presence. Mohabbat mein nahin hai farq jeenay aur marnay ka Usi ko dekh kar jeetay hain jis kaafir pe dam nike Translation When in love, there is little difference between life and death We live by looking at the infidel who we are willing to die for. Kahoon kis say main ki kya hain Shab-e-gham buri bala hai Mujhay kya bura tha marna, agar ek baar hota ! Translation Whom should I tell what this is, Night-of-sorrows is a terrible thing, I would not have hated to die, if it was just once only! Or a tongue-in-cheek exclamation about the unpredictability of his beloved. Etibar-e-ishq kee khana-kharaabi dekhna gair ne kee aah lekin vo khafaa mujh par huye Translation See how I am being punished for someone else’s misbehavior? Or a light hearted rebuke in this one. Is saadgi pe kaun na mar jaaye ai khuda ladte hain aur haath mein talwaar bhi nahin hai Translation How can I not succumb to the simplicity of my beloved Who fights with me without any sword in her hand? Or the self deprecating one, often quoted by road-side romeos: Ishq ne ‘Ghalib’ nikamma kar diya varna ham bhi aadmi the kaam ke Translation My love has made me incompetent Otherwise I was a reputable person. But he was often contrite at his romantic misdemeanors:

Kaaba kis munh se jaaoge ‘Ghalib’ sharm tum ko magar nahi aati. Translation How will you go to the place of worship ‘Ghalib’ You are not ashamed of your actions. ****** Ghalib did not get recognition easily; he lived on borrowed money, composing and wishing that perhaps his crazyimpoverished life will reach its glorious abode one day: Karz kee peete the may lekin samajhte the ki haan rang laavegi hamaari faaka-masti ek din Aage aati thi haal-e-dil pe hansi Ab kisi baat par nahi aai Translation I laughed and joked at my state of affairs but now I can’t laugh at anything. His writing was dense, not stylized but sparkling with thought-provoking metaphors that left the reader spinning to decipher the meaning. His verse was difficult to comprehend by contemporary poets and they often said that only Ghalib or God could comprehend it. But Ghalib was proud of his own intellectual prowess and so he antagonized many with his sharp tongue. His main rival in Zafar’s court was Zouk. In a momentous mushaira (poetry reading) in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, Ghalib’s opened his poem by his matla: Hare ik baat pe kehte ho ki tu kya hai This was repeated by the audience, followed by a suspenseful pause and then the second verse was delivered with word-play. Tum he batao ke yeh andaaze guftgu kya hai? By now he had the attention of the other poets and he continued: Ragon mean daudte firne ke hum nahin kayil Zuban se hi jo na tapkei to lahu kya hai! Translation I am hardly impressed by the blood rushing through the veins I will only accept its prowess if it drips from my tongue! After this bold unpredictable composition, Ghalib was showered with several appreciations of encore or mukarrar. ****** No one could compete with him in his ability to draw inspiration from common-

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place happenings, giving them an exalted meaning through verse. His poems were on the lips of street singers, mendicants and courtesans. In 1854 Ghalib became a courtier, a poet tutor and historian in Zafar’s court and was bestowed with the titles of Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula. My father Swadesh Kumar Kapur (1931-2015) was born in Lahore and studied Urdu; he taught me that culture is the construct of language and not place. Nations are not recognized by their rulers but by poets and scholars like Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kalidasa and Ghalib. When dad read poetry to me he said Un ke dekhe se jo aa jaati hai munh pe raunak vo samajhte hain ki beemar ka haal achchha hai Translation The glow on my face in the company of the beloved Gives a false impression that I am on my way to recovery. ****** Ghalib died in Delhi on 15 February 1869. The house where he lived in Old Delhi known as the Ghalib ki Haveli has now been turned into a Ghalib Memorial, and houses a permanent exhibition. Hazaron khvahishen aisi ki har khvahish pe dam nikle bahut nikle mire arman lekin phir bhi kam nickel Translation I have a thousand yearnings, each one afflicts me so Many were fulfilled for sure, not enough although. Ghalib, who lived like a penniless rock star, gave us ghazals that have matured like premium wine, making him the most oftquoted 21st century poet among the Hindustani diaspora around the world. I have offered a sample of this eternal ambrosia I drank with my dad as a child. I hope that perhaps someone who reads this will get to the core of Ghalib’s artistry. This is my holiday wish.n Monita Soni is a pathologist and diagnoses cancer. Her writing style weaves eastern and western cultures. You can hear her commentaries on WLRH-Sundial Writers corner and on “All Things Considered.”

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perspective

When Sexual Assault Happens What Should You Do?

ape happens. It happens in “good families.” It happens to women and to men. Rape is non consensual sexual assault. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women and one in seventy one men will be raped at some point in their lives. The statistics are even worse for children—one in four girls, and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of eighteen. In this article, I’m going to refer to the rape survivor as “she,” though men may be raped too. Organizations that provide support to survivors actively discourage the use of the word “victim” because of the disempowering nature of this word. Use of the word “survivor” is encouraged. I trained as a rape crisis counselor with BAWAR (Bay Area Women Against Rape) and listened to stories of rape from women (and a few men) who had experienced trauma, and these are the lessons I learned. There are a lot of misconceptions about rape. A common one is that men rape because it is in their biological nature. This perpetuates the notion that men cannot control themselves sexually; this is unfortunate, because it takes away the blame from those that commit the crime. It is not true either that sexually deprived men rape. In fact, most men who commit rape have regular sexual partners. Another common misperception is that rapists are strangers. According to Department Of Justice statistics from 2005, a staggering 70% of sexual assaults on women were acquaintance rapes where the perpetrator was known to the survivor. The myth that some women want to be raped is another dangerous one. There are indeed women who fantasize about being sexually dominated. However, in their fantasy they are in control. During rape, they have no control. It is also commonly believed that rape does not happen in “good” South Asian families because of our emphasis on “family values.” Sadly, the odds that the rapist will be from the same community are pretty high, while the odds that the rapist

By Rasana Atreya

It is commonly believed that rape does not happen in “good” South Asian families because of our emphasis on “family values.” Sadly, the odds that the rapist will be from the same community are pretty high, while the odds that they will be a stranger are pretty low. will be a stranger (a common misperception) are pretty low. So why do rapists rape? Rape is rarely about sex alone. It is about control. It is about anger. It is about the need to humiliate by domination. Once the rape takes place, the aftermath can be equally, if not more, traumatic. Survivors are often subjected to judgment—if she got raped, she must have done something to deserve it—like being drunk or wearing attention-drawing clothing. By holding the survivor responsible for the rape, you take the blame from the criminal behavior of the rapist, and place it on the survivor. Men can be raped too, and not only by only gay men. As with the rape of women, male-on-male rape has little to do with sex or sexual orientation, and more to do with control, anger and humiliation. Men can also be raped by women in positions of power (a superior at work or a close relative like a mother or grandmother). Male survivors are as traumatized by rape as female survivors; however, societal conditioning can make it much harder for them to give a name to their trauma.

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Rape, often of a child, by a close relative is perhaps the most heinous of all rapes. A sexually assaulted child will often exhibit changes in behavior, whether in eating, bedwetting or age-inappropriate sexual behavior. An outgoing child might withdraw or begin acting out. One of the most difficult cases I counseled was that of a woman who had an orgasm during rape. Convinced that her orgasm did not give her the right to feel traumatized, she suffered in silence for years. It was only when she attempted suicide that her family forced her to seek help. Just because the survivor had an orgasm doesn’t mean she actually wanted or deserved the rape—orgasm during rape is often an involuntary, biological response to stimulation—it can never, ever serve as justification of the rape. Rape survivors suffer from symptoms that are similar to those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the syndrome war veterans are often diagnosed with. Physical ailments can range from bladder infections, to STDs, headaches, stomach aches to pelvic inflammation. The emotional impact could be depression, low self-esteem, negative body image, anxiety, guilt, shame. Sexually, survivors can display a range of coping mechanisms—from rejection of intimacy, to promiscuousness. Promiscuousness can give some survivors the illusion of control i.e. they choose to have sex; sex is not being forced on them. A rape survivor needs help and support to heal. Ignoring or denying it sends a message that she has something to be ashamed of. The survivor did not choose the rape, and she does not deserve the shame. Allow the survivor to express her

feelings. Listen and be non-judgmental. Validate the survivor’s feelings. She has a right to feel angry, sad, violated. She needs to know she is not alone in this. Encourage her to seek help through a support group or counseling. The first principle of recovery is empowerment—the survivor has to be in charge of her own recovery. Others may offer support, but not the cure. Often, well-intentioned loved ones try to help by doing everything for the survivor. This can actually be damaging because she is, again, (as during rape), not in control. Never blame the survivor, no matter what the circumstance. The survivor may blame herself because rape is about a lack of control. Blaming herself is one way the survivor attempts to take back control. She might express anger at the people closest to her because she needs a safe outlet for her anger. Don’t prescribe a time limit for the healing. Some women make fast recoveries. For others, effects can last a lifetime. Some women seek help right away; others block memories of the assault for years, until they feel secure enough to process the rape. Children often do not understand the

concept of boundaries, so it is important to teach them about “good” touch and “bad.” If your child is uncomfortable with an aunty or uncle who holds them too close, or makes them uncomfortable, don’t disregard the child’s experience. If a child confides in you, don’t disempower them by doubting them. Keep the lines of communication with your children open. Don’t force the survivor to label the rapist, don’t force her to report the assault to the police; don’t ask if she wants the rapist to perpetrate the same crime against someone else. This is an unfair burden to place on someone who has already been disempowered. It is not their job to save the world. They must focus on their own healing. And, if they choose to speak out at a later time, it must be their choice. If they choose to file a police report, support them. If they’d rather never speak about it again, support them in that, as well. In most support organizations counselors are available round the clock, and confidentiality is guaranteed. Counselors will not press for any information, including names. They are there to listen and to help. The counselors also act as advocates. An advocate is a counselor who accompa-

nies the family to the hospital and police station upon request. The role of the advocate is to advise the survivor of her rights, sensitize the police to inappropriate questions and prevent the sexual history of the survivor being relevant to the investigation. This advocacy is completely confidential, even if the advocate happens to be of the survivor’s community. Some advice for the loved ones of the survivor—this is not about you, or your anger at the perpetrator. This is not about the perpetrator, and the fact they have to be punished. This is about the survivor facing trauma. If they need you to not talk to anyone about it—respect that. If they need to not report the crime, or confront the perpetrator—respect that, as well. Sexual assault has already taken something from the survivor. Do not disempower them by doing what you think is right. Do what they think is right. They’ve already taken a huge risk by confiding in you. Don’t betray that confidence.n Rasana Atreya is a content marketer, ghost writer and novelist. http://rasanaatreya.com.

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relationship diva

Resolving Conflict In Relationships By Jasbina Ahluwalia

onflict with loved ones is unavoidable. If anything, conflict is useful, provided that it’s taken as an opportunity for both personal and relational growth, and not allowed to devolve into a heated argument. How do you utilize conflict in this way? These five tips may help.

be a useful tool to snap someone out of a defensive mindset. Read your partner and yourself carefully: if your humor is meanspirited or if your partner only appears further triggered, then back off.

1. Use Kind Physical Attention

Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is to create some space, both physical and temporal around the argument. This allows both partners to disengage, self-regulate, and then re-approach the conflict later on from a state of mutual respect instead of emotional reactivity. Just be sure that both of you reconnect later to work through the issue.

3. Establish a “Time Out” Rule

A gentle touch is often enough to “reset” a person’s mental circuitry and ease them out of their heightened emotional state. Not everybody responds to physical touch in the same way though. If your partner is someone who may be further triggered by physical contact, focus on using loving body language instead: point your feet toward the person, relax your arms by your sides, and make eye contact.

4. Repeat What the Other Person is Saying.

2. Use Humor

Restating key things your partner says (in a genuinely interested way, not a child-

Laughter is a great equalizer and can

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ish mimicking way) shows that you’re listening, which is critical. It also offers a helpful jumping off point for both of you to re-examine and re-frame your needs and make sure you’re being clear. Actions speak much louder than words.

5. Use the “My Story” Framework

Your feelings and thoughts are completely valid, and you are free to express them—as is your partner. By framing your concerns with the opener “The story I’m telling myself about this is....,” you can advocate for yourself without coming off as accusatory, and help your partner understand your perspective. n Jasbina Ahluwalia is the Founder-President of Intersections Match by Jasbina, the only premier dating coaching firm for Indian singles in the US, Canada and the UK. Jasbina@Intersectionsmatch.com

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ask a lawyer

What Rights do Transgender People Have at Work? By Bobby Shukla

nder California law, transgender or gender non-conforming individuals are protected against discrimination in the workplace. In addition to protections against gender-based discrimination, the state’s discrimination laws expressly protect employees from discrimination based on transgender status, gender identity or gender expression. “Gender expression” is defined under the law as a person’s gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth. This means employees are also protected against an employer’s perception of an employee’s gender, including an employer’s beliefs that the employee’s appearance or behavior does not conform with traditional ideas about gender. While employers may require an employee to adhere to reasonable workplace

appearance, grooming, and dress standards, an employer may not prohibit an employee from dressing consistently with the employee’s gender identity or gender expression. The only exception to this is if the employer can justify the prohibition based on business necessity. The law also prohibits discrimination against an individual who is transitioning. Transitioning is defined as a process in which an individual begins living as the gender with which they identify. This may include a name change hormone therapy treatment. Employers can only insist on using an employee’s legal name or gender if it is otherwise required to meet a legallymandated obligation. With regard to the use of restrooms, employers must permit employees to use facilities that correspond to an employee’s gender identity or gender expression. Em-

26 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

ployers must also use gender-neutral signs for single-occupancy facilities. Further, an employer cannot inquire about or require documentation on sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression as a condition of employment. Workplace harassment based on transgender status, gender identity or gender expression is also prohibited under the law. If you believe you have been subject to discrimination based on transgender status, gender identity or gender expression, you should consult with an attorney immediately to determine potential remedies and applicable statutes of limitations. n Bobby Shukla represents individuals in employment law matters at Shukla Law. She can be reached at (415) 986-1338.

Legal . tax 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.

November 2017

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profile

200 Million Reasons to Care About U.S. Healthcare Single Largest Donation by Doctors Kiran and Pallavi Patel By Annika Young

octors Kiran and Pallavi Patel have committed more than 200 million dollars to the Nova Southeastern University in Florida—the single largest donation made by an Indian American individual or family in the United States. The Patels will largely impact healthcare in the United States and India by producing hundreds of skilled medical professionals each year. Additionally, Dr. Kiran Patel and the Patel family foundation is planning to send American medical students to Africa and India to practice medicine. They will treat underprivileged patients suffering from various medical maladies, including HIV and AIDS. In turn, Indian doctors will be brought to the United States for a year-long training. Dr. Kiran Patel believes that the international initiative is an opportunity to bridge the brightest and best healthcare professionals between America, India and countries in Africa. These will be mission-driven trips with a focus towards servicing the disenfranchised in suffering communities.

Doctors Kiran and Pallavi Patel along with University officials making donation announcement

care business in the 1990s. Currently, he runs several healthcare, hospitality and real estate businesses worth well over $1.6 billion. Since the early 2000s, he has dedicated his time and money to philanthropic efforts spanning three continents—Asia, Africa and North America. Along with his wife, Dr. Pallavi Patel, a pediatrician, he has committed more than 250 million dollars to various causes, initiatives and institutions worldwide. The Patels have maintained their commitment to invest in America, as it is this country where they grew their wealth with lucrative opportunities present in education and business. Fifty million dollars Doctors Kiran and Pallavi Patel at Nova Southeastern University of the Patels’ endowment will go directly to Southeastern UniverThe American Dream sity. Another 150 million dollars is slated The Patels arrived in the United States for real estate and facility investments in 1976. Dr. Patel made his mark as a for a future 325,000 square-foot medical highly regarded physician in the 1980s education complex that will be part of and then as a hugely successful entrepreNSU’s new Tampa Bay Regional campus, neur—who built a billion-dollar health-

28 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

in Clearwater, Florida. The campus will house a new site for NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, as well as its existing programs in the Tampa area. On 25th September 2017, American and Indian journalists converged on the white coat ceremony where NSU President Dr. George Hanbury announced the renaming of its College of Osteopathic Medicine after Dr. Kiran Patel. In a statement released by the University Dr. Kiran Patel said, “It is rare for someone to impact the world in this way, and, as an immigrant to the United States, I am particularly honored to be able to make a difference in people’s lives around the world. I believe that NSU is the future of multi-disciplinary medical education.” In a contentious American political climate amid discourse on closing borders to those seeking a new home and opportunity in the United States, Dr. Patel and the Patel Family Foundation represent an America that continues to thrive through the vision of dreamers. They also represent the best of rich and abiding Indian culture, ideals, and principles that serve to remind us that our responsibility is to leave a legacy better than the one we inherit. n

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 29

desi lens

My #MeToo Story By Kalpana Mohan

ver thirty years ago on an afternoon in Chennai, when lizards crawled down pipes and crows danced on coconut trees, the tenant renting the apartment above our home tapped on the grilled door leading into our living room. I walked towards the door wondering if the man was in some sort of trouble. I couldn’t hear his words clearly enough from the inside of our home, but when I reached the door and held it open, this gentleman—I used to call him “uncle” in deference to his age— mouthed out a request that made my ears burn. Within seconds, I realized that he had premeditated his visit to our home while my parents were away on a day trip to a town a hundred miles away. Now the large-bodied man stood on our verandah wondering if I would give him a kiss. “Just one kiss,” he said. Eyes glazed, he waited. I don’t remember my exact words to this incredible hulk—his wife was days away from giving birth to their second child miles away in Kerala—but I do remember my extreme humiliation. I recall yelling at the ogre while tears stung my eyes, calling him a cad, telling him I was not only shocked at his conduct, but deeply disappointed in him. I snapped the door shut against his face after which I ran around the house to ensure that the doors leading to the backyard were also locked. When my parents returned home, I confided first in my father detailing what had happened. He told me not to tell my mother saying that her intolerance for such nonsense was well-known. Had my mother been informed of it, physical strength permitting, she might have boxed the man’s ears and dragged him, privates rubbing the gravel, as she set about to pillory him. My father, on the other hand, preferred to avoid confrontation especially on delicate matters of sexual transgression. Through tears, I told my father that I felt ashamed, as if I were a perpetrator myself. I asked him if I could I have done something that had made a married man dare to do what he did? Had my extroverted self and my visits upstairs with his family unwittingly given the man ideas? My father had no explanation for it. He offered me mealy-mouthed words of solace, telling me that sometimes men went insane. Today I regret having complied with my father’s wishes. We were taught that the best defense for handling unwanted sexual advances was avoidance. Women didn’t blow the whistle to bring attention to offenders and thereby to themselves. It was the male prerogative to behave in a certain way; it was a woman’s obligation to put up and shut up in order to move on or move up. In the eighties in India, a similar reaction made me shuffle out of a room in silence when, during an interview with the Indian Express newspaper, the editor—a large, illustrious man who filled the room with the miasma of his ego and accomplishments— used a double entendre during my interview. When his questions turned to current affairs in the north of India I didn’t do well; it was obvious that I had foiled my interview. As he wound down, the gentleman turned to his four or five other deputies on the panel and told them to continue quizzing me, if they so wished. “I 30 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

We were taught that the best defense for handling unwanted sexual advances was avoidance. It was the male prerogative to behave in a certain way; it was a woman’s obligation to put up and shut up in order to move on or move up. think I’ve finished,” he said, breaking into a knowing smile. “You can have her now.” The men around him sniggered. When my interview ended, I felt humiliated as I trooped out of the room. While I was feisty by nature, that day I had been too cowardly to speak up. If I did, I’d hurt my chances of getting that job, I told myself. Furthermore, I was a nobody and that man was somebody famous. Three decades after that, I know better. I know that people respected those who took a stand, even if their position were antithetical to the norm. If I’ve learned anything from my life and the sexual harassment scandal of Hollywood, it’s this: Every time a woman speaks up, she paves the way for another woman to forge ahead with her dreams. When my children were little, I told them that I knew something that they did not, that years later, every minor and major assault on them would burn inside them like a small fire. Thankfully, my children are now in their twenties with enough agency, one would hope, to fight back. Sexual predators filled the peripheries of my life. I was brought up in an atmosphere where women were conditioned to believe that the predator was, in fact, our victim, and that if we showed less, we’d be preyed upon less. But bikini or burqa, malfeasants found their way into us. Some were breast-pinchers who didn’t understand that a torqued breast left a scar as deep as a resection. In the by-lanes of my gritty town, there was always a strange man or two who pleasured himself while I averted my eyes. It was par for the course, people said, and women were expected to keep creeps at bay by dressing for the part. I could talk to any woman anywhere on the planet. I know she’d tell me that just as a child measured her height by a growth chart on a wall, a woman counted her years by the endless raids on her innocence. I felt that one of the most humbling and heartwarming events of my life took place during my birthday week in mid-October. As fires raged a hundred miles north of me, women around the world joined their hands and minds to say “Me, too”—that they would not play victim to sexual harassment anymore. n Kalpana Mohan writes from California’s Silicon Valley. http://kalpanamohan.com

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youth

Bollywood: Can You Make Up Your Mind? By Kanchan Naik

ekhiye,” snaps Kajol, staring fiercely into Shah Rukh’s playful gaze. “Please leave me alone.” Her words are powerful, and her message is clear. It’s a warning sign, one as clear as crystal and firm as stone. Yet her words are accompanied with the romantic theme song of the age-old, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Violins lilt dramatically. Suddenly, the wind is a little softer, the moon is a little larger, and the face of the nation’s “heartthrob” appears onscreen. Women swoon in their seats, almost as though they were background dancers to a film they were not part of. Somewhere in the distance is the noise of a high-pitched whistle. Wrapped in the joyful embrace of background music and Shah Rukh’s laughter, the theatre is filled with a gradual sense of mirth. And the warning is gone. The intensity, forgotten. The message, futile. With humble roots in the heart of Mumbai, India’s movie industry slowly won our hearts—and tickets—with a creative splash of culture, music, emotion, and messages. What began as Dadasaheb Phalke’s 1931 debut Raja Harishchandra, evolved into a lasting cultural legacy. Actors turn into idols of worship as television screens turn into realities. Times and perspectives gradually changed and the work of Bollywood captured the imagination of a nation. Today, these movies are released worldwide as diasporic Indians flock to the theaters to catch the latest release. Yet like India itself, Bollywood is confused—stuck between two generations’ perceptions of true freedom. From writer to director, critic to audience, various perspectives are evident in Bollywood. While there are opportunities for people with different backgrounds to enjoy and relate to the movie, where does the naach gaana blend into the issues of a harsher reality? The efforts of the many-headed creature that is Bollywood to address those issues is but a mirror of our own.

Just Say “No”

The concept of giving a woman, or rather, a heroine, the opportunity to just say no—is one that is yet to appear frequently in mainstream Bollywood cinema. A glimpse at a myriad of Indian films provides dialogs, characters, and plotlines which undermine gender discrimination and harassment. A 1990 film Tum Mere Ho features a festival in which village women are publicly and physically coerced into marriage. In Tere Naam, acclaimed actor Salman Khan reinforces the message of what constitutes the Stockholm Syndrome as he plays the role of an abductor with a supposed “heart of gold,” who forces the heroine to fall in love with him. Switch screens. Switch channels. And Bollywood changes its colors with a flutter. This year, an abundance of womanempowering movies swept the Indian film industry. Pink, a meaningful drama that deals with rape is a prime example. After three young women are sexually assaulted, they are the ones forced to pay the price. Amidst corruption, assault, and India’s

32 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

hypocritical double-standards, these three protagonists struggle to gain what will truly free them all: justice. This thoughtprovoking movie is one that confronts India’s rape crisis with the simple yet significant line, “No Means No.”

A Tough Nut To Crack

Just as spontaneous dance numbers, dramatic dialogue, and comedy scenes are essential ingredients in a Bollywood movie, equal emphasis needs to be placed in having strong female characters. Currently, the difference between a strong woman and a “macho” one is rather blurred. Sonakhshi Sinha from the movie Dabaang and Dabaang2 may seem tough at first, with her deep voice and marriage refusals. Yet she is a prime example of a woman who depends upon male approval and a “prince in shining armor.” Despite the fact that Salman Khan threatens her with, “Pyaar se de rahe hain, rakh lo. Varna thapad maar se bhi sakte hain, ” [I propose to you with love, so be happy. Otherwise I can give it to you with a slap] Sonakshi inevitably marries him.

Hypocrisy reigns supreme in our hearts and on screen. Double-faced and double-edged is the sphere of Bollywood, which slides between perspectives as an attempt to please its diverse audiences. In the sequel of the same movie, Sonakshi’s husband is attacked near a temple— yet she melodramatically shouts instead of taking control of the situation or at least looking for help. Her resilient attitude is but a facade, veiling the very inaction and weaknesses which Bollywood movies should contradict. What girls in front of television screens and laptops require is not a woman who can perform action scenes and boast wildly about being stronger than a man. What they do need is a woman who faces everyday issues and retaliates with realistic, relatable strength. Female empowerment comes from within; female issues cannot be faced with superficial power.

What We Stand For

It is evident that Indians discriminate in everyday life, one of the most notorious being skin color. Light skinned women are more likely to get marriage proposals, light skinned children are known to receive more parental attention, and light skinned artists of all kinds are more likely to rise to the top of the industry. Beauty standards are built heavily around skin tones, and Bollywood is the center of the “fair is beautiful” epidemic. Without shame, various Bollywood stars endorse fairness creams that act as a “cure” for those with darker complexions. From acting legend Shah Rukh Khan to acclaimed actress Priyanka Chopra, famous Bollywood actors use their widespread influence on Indian communities to encourage this perverse attitude. But Kangana Raunat, Abhay Deol, and Nandita Das take a stand against this form of racism and stereotyping. Das, for example, is part of the “Dark is Beautiful” campaign

called “Women of Worth.” Though the industry may display bias towards lighterskinned women, Das is ready to prove her worth as an actress just the way she is. Undaunted, and unafraid, these three figures embrace the color of their complexion, without trying to yearn to be something they are not. While the Bollywood industry “rears its ugly head” in favor of colorism and stereotyping, it also strides forward towards a future of natural beauty and equality. Looking at the myriad mixed messages coming from Bollywood, I can’t help but think that the glimmering screens and the messages that filter through hold up a mirror to our own confusion. Do we want female heroines to say “no” on screen? Or, do we wait for them to swoon when the hero coerces them? What about us—do we speak out against sexual assault while also buying tickets to the next Bollywood thriller where we see heroines do more of the same? Do we sit in the theater as we watch a movie like Pink, and applaud our-

selves with sanctimonious nods of approval when we hear ordinary women speaking out? Hypocrisy reigns supreme in our hearts and on screen. Double-faced and double-edged is the sphere of Bollywood, which slides between perspectives as an attempt to please its diverse audiences. And, where does that leave us? Stuck, like the very movies we devote our Saturday evenings to. Lost, like the Indian media companies that flip between Kangana’s “mental” disorder and photos of Deepika Padukone’s wardrobe malfunction. Baffled, like the various actors and actresses told to spoon-feed the public with the same inane, repeated lines. Each and every one of us waits for someone else to break this damaging cycle between progression and relapse within the Bollywood industry. Like Kajol herself, we long for our own hero to break the shackles we cling to. Just as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’s female lead pines for her lover in a field of yellow flowers, we roam in a field of our own—one of weeds planted by hypocrisy and judgement. And neither Kajol nor us ever find our way out of this maze—entirely because we chose to do nothing about it. Yet perhaps life need not continue this way. Perhaps, in its own subtle and enigmatic way, Bollywood has the answer. In one of the most iconic scenes of this infamous Bollywood blockbuster, Kajol runs towards a train in slow motion. A train towards a foreign land in which no one can control her actions. A train in which she learns to live—and to let go. We all see the train of progress rush by us, whether we gorge on Bollywood movies or not. I know we are afraid of things we do not understand. But so is Kajol. Follow her lead. Take the first step towards that train. You just might catch it. n

Kanchan Naik is a dreamer. Writing is an ocean to her where she dives to find the right words, drowns to breathe emotions, and dabbles in darkness to find the light. She is a ninth grader at Quarry Lane School in Dublin.

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 33

recipes

New Thanksgiving Recipes By Praba Iyer

n early September, I joined my husband as he went back to his village in Palakkad, Kerala, after a ten year hiatus. He had grown up in Palakkad in a large joint family with his grandmother, mother, brother and sisters along with several uncles, aunts and cousins, with about twenty five family members under one roof. His grandmother’s home looked exactly as it did over fifty years ago. The kitchen had seen a makeover, but if the walls could speak, they would tell stories of the people who lived there—sons, daughters, cousins, grandchildren, marriages, births and deaths, celebrations and feasts all held under the watchful eye of his grandmother, the benevolent family matriarch. Her integrity and strength were the foundation on which this home had been built and sustained. The village consisted of some 100 plus row houses with clay tile roofs arrayed on the sides of a single road. The library was situated across the road from his ancestral home; the village pond was sure to fill up during the monsoons, and there were two

temples at walking distance. My husband had spent many hours in that small library, reading all that he could lay hands on. As we were walking to his aunt’s house, a man with a toothless, smiling face walked towards us. He looked like he had jumped out of the pages of R.K Narayan’s Malgudi Days. This tall thin man with thick glasses, had a large man bun right on top of his conical head. His bare chest was disproportionate to his large tummy, and a white dhoti was tied around his small waist. “This is Ramu” my husband said, a.k.a. “Kozhimuttai Ramu” as he was affectionately called by everyone in the village. “Kozhimuttai” literally translates into a hen’s egg. “Without him, I wouldn’t have passed my GRE exams and made it to America,” my husband reminiscenced. “He was the head of the library, and he had the power to either let me in, or keep me out—from Western novels to Wilbur Smith, from Perry Masons and Robert Ludlums to stacks of Reader’s Digests, encyclopedias and more, it was he who gave me the access.” Thank You Mr. Ramu

Jackfruit and Pumpkin Chili

Ripe Papaya, Avocado, Cherry Tomato Salad

Ingredients 1 medium ripe papaya seeded and cubed 1 avocado peeled, seeded and cubed 10 yellow cherry tomatoes halved 1 Persian cucumber sliced 1 green chill minced Dressing 1 teaspoon ginger 1 lime juice 1 teaspoon chaat masala powder Salt and black pepper to taste Whisk the ingredients in the dressing together and reserve it in a small bowl. Place the papaya cubes, tomatoes, avocado, chili and cucumber in a large serving bowl and refrigerate it. Right before serving, mix in the dressing and adjust the seasonings to tsste. 34 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

for helping this man dream big, even as he grew up in this small village, I thought to myself. Then there was Nallepilly Ayappan, who lived an hour away. He was a homeopathic doctor who treated children with issues from malnutrition to manic depression. He took time to share his extensive library of books and was full of interesting insights that made an impact on a teenager, eager for a sense of direction. His home had served as a quiet getaway. As I stood in Ayyappan’s backyard looking at the papaya and jackfruit trees, hibiscus and pumpkin trails, he told me, “write about the panikoorka plants, they have so much healing power.” So, this Thanksgiving, who are the Ramus and Ayyappans that have impacted your life in myriad ways? Who would you want to call or write and say two special words—Yours Thankfully! As you think about who you plan to reach out to, here are some interesting recipes with papayas, jackfruit and pumpkin for your Thanksgiving meal. n

Papaya, Avocado, Cherry Tomato Salad

This is an interesting recipe that requires a good quality root beer. This is a recipe that meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans can enjoy. Ingredients 1 can green jackfruit, drained, washed and chopped ½ can pumpkin puree 1 tablespoon oil 1 clove 1 cinnamon stick 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1 large red onion minced 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste 3 tomatoes chopped fine 2 green chilies minced ½ teaspoon turmeric 1 teaspoon garam masala powder 1 teaspoon coriander powder

½ teaspoon cayenne Salt to taste 1 cup root beer ¼ cup water Garnish: Cilantro chopped and sour cream (optional for vegans) Heat oil in a large sauce pan and add the clove, cinnamon stick, cumin seeds and bay leaf. Add ginger garlic paste and minced onion and sauté till brown. Then add the tomatoes, green chili, turmeric, garam masala powder, coriander powder and salt to taste. Add the jackfruit and cook for 2-3 minutes with a little water. Once the jackfruit is soft and cooked, add the root beer and pumpkin puree and let it stew for another 10 minutes on low heat. Check and adjust seasonings. Serve hot with chopped cilantro and a dollop of sour cream.

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Spicy Papaya, Pineapple Sangria This is a great drink for the early afternoon before the Thanksgiving meal. The serrano can make it too spicy if you leave it for too long. If you can find edible dry hibiscus flower you can cook it in the simple syrup and add it to the sangria. It gives it a sweet flower taste. Ingredients ½ cup sugar ¼ cup water 1 bottle white wine (like Riesling) 1 ripe papaya chopped 1 cup ripe pineapple chopped 1 serrano chili slit Basil leaves for garnish Heat the sugar and water and make it into a simple syrup. Place the chopped papaya and pineapple in a large serving pitcher. Add the white wine and simple syrup and mix. Add the serrano chili and refrigerate for a few hours. Remove the serrano in an hour if you don’t want it spicy. It gets spicier as you steep it longer. Serve cold with ice cubes and basil leaves. n

Praba Iyer is a chef instructor, food writer and a judge for cooking contests. She specializes in team building classes through cooking for tech companies in the Bay Area. praba@cookingmastery.com

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travel

Myanmar – All That Glitters Is Really Gold By Riz Mithani

angoon, the capital of Burma during British colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century, changed its name to Yangon. The country then officially adopted its Burmese name Myanma, and a ‘r’ was added to allow the peoples of the world to correctly pronounce it as Myanmar. Yangon is no longer the political capital of Myanmar. The capital is now situated 350 km away in Naypyidaw. But international travelers congregate at Yangon. Yangon is a sea of Asian humanity, a sweaty hot place that is home to people who migrated from China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Relatively speaking, they live expressing religious and economic harmony with the Bamar, the people of Burma. We chanced to be in this international metropolis on Valentine’s Day which is locally known as Lover’s Day and found it adorable that the modern ethnic Burmese couples not only held hands but dressed in identical matching clothes; one could find them on trishaws (3 wheeled pedaled vehicle), in shopping malls, in parks, on overpasses and in restaurants including those that cater to gays and lesbians. To protect their delicate skin from sunburn, Burmese couples of all ages decorate their faces with a paste made from

Bu Paya on Irrawady river built in 3rd century

The real reason you make the trip to Myanmar is to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bagan, on the banks of the Ayeyarwady River. After the turn of the first millennium AD, monarchs of Bagan built over 4,000 temples over a period of two centuries, and half of these are still standing or have been restored, making every minute of your visit worthwhile. powdering the bark of Thanaka wood. The yellowish white ornamental design made from Thanaka paste on the face of your immigration officer as you leave the airport could be your first introduction to the country’s obsession with everything that appears golden. Right in the middle of a traffic standstill, that is inconceivable to us in America, is the Sule Paya, a 46 meter high golden temple that has stood there for two millennia and to date is an alluring sight in the evenings. A Paya is the same as a Pagoda, Stupa or Zedi; it has an octagonal base and is built in layers becoming narrower as you go up each layer. You cannot go walk inside a Stupa as they are solid; the Botataung Paya along the Yangon river-

36 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

front is an exception—it is hollow, and it was changed when it was rebuilt after the damage it suffered during the Second World War. Inside the Botataung, you can walk through a maze that houses a vast collection of gold leaf plated ornamental Buddhist carvings. The history of independence from colonial rule of countries in the Indian subcontinent is intertwined and it was at the colonial villa of Mr. Dina Nath, Chairman of the Indian Independence Army of Burma that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose had hidden to discuss strategies with the Burmese National hero General Aung San. Today his villa houses the “House of Memories” restaurant and piano bar, where a room representing General Aung

San’s office is still preserved, and serves as a good diversion from seeing gilded temples. Speaking of gilded temples, the crown jewel of Yangon is the Shwedagon Paya that towers just a meter shy of 100; Shwe means “Gold” in Burmese, and Shwedagon means “Gold in the City” and estimates are that it contains anywhere from a billion to 8 billion dollars worth of gold if you calculate using today’s prices. The Paya possesses the characteristic octagonal base and a dome at the top that is bell shaped; the temple complex surrounding it houses 64 smaller pagodas. There is a webcam that will let you view over 5,000 diamonds and over 2,000 rubies that are inlaid at the top of the tower! This estimated 27 tons of gold sits on a hill 50 meters high and approaching it from one of the four covered walkways with shops selling statues of the Buddha, various souvenirs and ceremonial paraphernalia, is an experience in itself. Although the gilded city of Yangon is fascinating, the real reason you make the trip to Myanmar is to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bagan, on the banks of the Ayeyarwady River (a.k.a. Irrawaddy River), one hour away by flight from Yangon, and home to Shwedagon’s colleague Shwezigone Pagoda whose moniker connotes “Gold on the River” which in reality is no comparison in terms of expanse, beauty or gold tonnage to

Applying Thanaka Wood paste

the one in the city. Nevertheless, do not despair, as after the turn of the first millennium AD, monarchs of Bagan built over 4,000 temples over a period of two centuries, and half of these are still standing or have been restored, making every minute of your visit worthwhile. You can visit the sprawling Bagan either by horse driven cart, e-bike, taxi or hot air balloon depending on where your budget falls in the $4 to $400 range per day. A stone’s throw from the Shwezigone is the Kyan Sithar Umin which technically is a library and not a temple. Here the wall’s original frescoes depict the life of Gautama Buddha, known in Myanmar as the Buddha from India, the princely proponent of the Middle Path, who achieved enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. There were 27 Buddhas prior to him but no one

has achieved Nirvana since and the Buddhist world awaits the appearance of Maitreya, the 29th, similar to Christians awaiting the return of Jesus Christ or Muslims awaiting that of Imam Mahdi or Hindus of the Kalki Avatar who will finally bring eternal peace to our unjust wicked world. But I digress. The nearby Gubyanknge and Gubyankgyi temples, despite their similar sounding names, are decidedly distinct from one another. The former can only be opened by one of the village key-holders and you will need a flashlight to admire the restored statues within, while at the latter you will be swarmed by vendors peddling handmade sand paintings for 5000 kyat (less than 4 US dollars) or you may be able to snag a pair of rattan slippers for the same price. Even temples whose names you may not find in guidebooks nor known to your guide can be quite fascinating to visit; we stumbled upon one such that boasted 550 images of Buddha, the figure representing his previous lives. The Htilominlo is one of the larger temples boasting intricate decorations and fine carvings. It is here that you can find refreshments and toilets unless you are like the Buddha, not needing such conveniences! Vendors will approach you here and at many other temples saying, “you got my lucky money.” What they mean is that you are their first customer of the day and the

Buddha at Sulamani Pahto at Bagan Gilded Wall of the Batagung Pagoda

Shwedagon Paya November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 37

Author awaiting sunset on the Bagan plain

money you part with is going to be the luck they have through the rest of their arduous selling day. Speaking of money, the US dollar currency notes you carry into the country better be new and crisp with no creases and absolutely no handwriting or stamps on them; otherwise they will be all but impossible to exchange even at large banks. This is somewhat of a scam as we discovered that we could pawn them off by accepting a lower conversion rate. With 1 dollar equaling 1350 kyats, you find yourself handling wads of local cash but Bagan felt like a very safe place to do so. It is incredibly safe to even leave your expensive sneakers or sandals outside of temples; the guide at Ananda Pahto told us that in 20 years, no tourists have had their shoes stolen. Pahto is another word meaning “temple” and Ananda is well preserved, housing four 9m gold leaf covered Buddhas facing the four cardinal directions. Other temples you would not want to miss are Dharmayangi Pahto and Sulamani Pahto, both located on the way to New Bagan. The Dharmayangi is the largest temple in Bagan where you will run into images of the historical Guatama

Buddha and the future Maitreya Buddha placed side by side. The Sulamani on the other hand possesses many attractive murals, fine ornamental work and very large frescoes. Unfortunately, quite a bit of the exterior of these two including the Shikhara (Sanskrit for mountain peak, in this context meaning the dome at the top) were under construction following the recent earthquake in August 2016. Don’t miss the sunsets in Bagan. There are many locations from where you can experience this. Shwesandaw Paya, meaning the “Temple with the Golden Hair Relic” built in the style of a pyramid is ideal, making it a very popular spot. So is the monastery both of which afford panoramic views of hundreds of temples on the Bagan Plain. The monastery offers a more surreal experience as you come down dark passageways after the sun has set. A few entrepreneurial kids light the passages up with candles hoping to earn tips. You can also enjoy the sunset cruise down the Irrawaddy on a boat with a view of the Bu Paya. Once you feel that you are “templed out,” and you will be, there are plenty of

Sunsets must not be missed in Bagan. Shwesandaw Paya, meaning the Temple with the Golden Hair Relic built in the style of a pyramid is ideal. So is the monastery both of which afford panoramic views of hundreds of temples on the Bagan Plain. 38 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

culinary choices to nosh on, at Restaurant Row. But don’t be surprised if you spy an abandoned Pagoda from your dinner table; those 2, 000 temples have to be somewhere! You may also want to head out to The Nanda one evening where dinner includes a puppet show; these guys are really talented in synchronizing the actions of 10-12 puppets at a time. Yangon surrounds you with urban spots, while Bagan is rural with very few paved roads and it is generally poor too. As is the case with such places where people live a simple life, people are very honest and friendly. There was the lady doing laundry who immediately returned our 5000 kyat (US $3.50) bill which we had mistakenly handed her thinking it was 500 kyat, since the bills were of the same color. Then there was the girl at the airline office in downtown Bagan who spent over an hour changing our flights, something she could have asked us to hike to the airport to do. One can only hope that the recent onslaught of tourism does not change this! n Riz Mithani is a graduate of IIT Bombay and ekes out a living in the Bay Area managing a team that peddles simple business and technology solutions to highly complex problems that provide a real return on investment. When he is not singing, dancing or traveling, he blogs occasionally at rizmit.wordpress.com Closest Airport: Over 30 International carriers fly into Yangon International Airport (Airport Code: RGN) Places to stay: Either splurge at the Sule Shangri-La in downtown Yangon or check into cheaper options closer to the Shwedagon Pagoda like Hotel Lavender. In Bagan, pick an option near Restaurant Row that fits your budget. Places to eat: In Yangon, you cannot beat the “House of Memories” restaurant mentioned in the article for its variety and ambience. In Bagan, just stroll down Restaurant Row and select based on price or smell. What to shop for: Lacquerware articles while in Bagan Weather and best time to visit: Go during the winter season from November to February to avoid the rains or heat.

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books

Oriental Forays: The Last Gods of Indochine By Samantha Rajaram THE LAST GODS OF INDOCHINE by Samuel Ferrer. 422 pages. Signal 8 Press. Also available as a Kindle ebook.

can’t recall when I first read Edward Said’s groundbreaking book Orientalism, which critiques the oversimplification and romanticizing of the East by colonizers intent on packaging colonized cultures for their consumption. What I do recall is the immediate sense of gratitude I felt, for Said gave language to an experience I had long had as an Indian-American reader of English authors writing about India: “In a sense the limitations of Orientalism are...the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region.” We see this essentializing constantly in pop culture and in literature—witness Coldplay’s video for “Hymn for the Weekend” (a five minute compilation of nearly every Western stereotype about India) or Taylor Swift’s particularly offensive video for “Wildest Dream” (featuring a menagerie of African wildlife but no actual African people). As an English professor often teaching Asian-American literature, I use Said’s work as a lens through which we assess our readings. I use the same lens when I read works of literature about cultures I know little about personally, or when I read work by writers who write about cultures they are not from themselves. Samuel Ferrer’s book The Last Gods of Indochine immediately brought to mind Said’s work. Samuel Ferrer, an impressive Renaissance man, who not only plays double-bass for the Hong Kong Philharmonic, also found time to write a lauded work of historical fiction (receiving a nomination for the Man Asian Literary prize). He creates a story about two characters from vastly different time periods and cultures who are yoked together through events set in Cambodia that draw from Hindu mythology, colonial history, and the supernatural. While the book is both engaging and

well-written, Ferrer occasionally indulges in the sort of Orientalist practices Said criticizes, particularly in his treatment of Paaku, the young Cambodian boy who is thought to be an incarnation of Vishnu. The book alternates between two characters—Jacquie and Paaku. Jacquie is a young English woman living in the 1920s, whose grandfather was a famous explorer who died under mysterious (some say cursed) circumstances in Cambodia. Jacquie is the quintessential proper English lady—attractive, thin, and prudish (she notes that has never kissed a man). One imagines that she is prone to fainting and perhaps carries a parasol around for good measure. She is also haunted by a particularly dark memory

related to her nursing work at Somme during the First World War. The second story centers on Paaku (the “Lotus-Born”), whose life story comes so vividly to Jacquie that when she sees a medieval bas-relief sculpture featuring his life, she feels she has lived in those scenes herself. Paaku’s birth is a mystery, and as he learns about his origins, he becomes mired in political intrigue that threatens not only his own life, but that of his friend’s and beloved mentor, the monk Siddhikara. Ferrer includes many details that breathe life into the novel. But in telling Paaku’s story, he sometimes treads into prose that is a touch too purple. It’s an easy pitfall for writers—unable to fully tap into the culture/time/milieu of the character we are writing, we indulge in our desire for occasional treacly filler instead. Here, Ferrer describes a love scene between Paaku and his sweetheart, the girl “with lotus-petal eyes” (which I simply cannot picture, try as I might): “Like cats, they tried to lick moonbeams off each other. Like dogs, they parted and whimpered. Forgetting the language of gods, they spoke the tongues of beasts.” So often we see the use of sexual imagery to exotify the east and the ancient. The characters are likened to animals in much the way the colonizer regarded the colonial subject. I generally balk at such writing, and did so here. Ferrer’s treatment of Jacquie is much stronger. He clearly feels closer to her contemporary time period as well as her own feelings of disorientation in a foreign culture. Here, he describes Jacquie’s experience upon disembarking at Port Said: “Tunic-clad children, held captive in front of mushroom vendors watched parents laboriously inspect fungi. Other customers

Samuel Ferrer creates a story about two characters from vastly different time periods and cultures who are yoked together through events set in Cambodia that draw from Hindu mythology, colonial history, and the supernatural.

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prodded squashes, tapping them with a percussionist’s certitude, listening for tone and depth.” Such passages immediately conjure place, possibly because Ferrer has encountered such street scenes himself. The music imagery, given Ferrer’s livelihood, are particularly compelling and accurate. Ferrer’s understanding of Jacquie’s psychology is similarly nuanced and believable. Describing Jacquie’s experience of traveling alone, Ferrer writes “Perhaps being this alone was more than even Jacquie could bear. And that’s the way it often was with her: the common need to not be alone was in continuing conflict with her anxiety of actually having to interact with others.” How well Ferrer captures the conundrum of being an introvert, which I know well myself—a duality of simultaneously desiring both solitude and society, and never being entirely satisfied with either. Unfortunately, Paaku’s world is not imbued with such richness and detail, except when it comes to moments of brutality by the king and his retinue. There are graphic accounts of big toes being amputated and infants being beheaded. It’s the sort of brutality colonizers used to justify their incursions into the East. The practice of “sati” was widely held as a reason for engaging in the “white man’s burden” of civilizing India, after all. No doubt, Ferrer did his research—such practices probably occurred. But what do we, as writers, do when we focus on such cruelty when scarce little other imagery exists of the precolonial world? Even so, I found enough in The Last Gods of Indochina to keep reading. Some solid research, an intriguing romance, passages that vividly capture time, place, and insight into a character full of the believable sort of contradictions we humans present to the world. As an admirer of Edward Said, I can read a book like this, noting its colonial romanticism and oversimplification and still enjoy a thoughtful story, while feeling further inspired to contribute to and support a world where more writers of color can write about their own cultures unadulterated by colonial nostalgia and the essentializing Western gaze. n Samantha Rajaram is a mother, community college professor of English, writer, and attorney. She lives in the Bay Area.

Young Adult Rom-Com For the Win! By Jeanne E. Fredriksen

WHEN DIMPLE MET RISHI by Sandhya Menon. Simon Pulse (Simon & Shuster): New York. 384 pages. $17.99 hardcover. Also available as a digital book and Audible.

arranged for him to marry. This should be a piece of cake because he’ll be attending InsomniaCon, too, before heading off to school at MIT.

irl has goal (break the glass ceiling in the world of coding without “IIH” distractions). Boy has goal (woo the girl his parents have arranged for him to marry before they both go off to college). Boys meets girl but stages disastrous introduction (“Hello, future wife. I can’t wait to get started on the rest of our lives!”). Girl tosses Starbucks iced coffee at this “loony bin escapee.” Sparks fly, feet dance to Dance Pe Chance, hearts ache, and even Sunny Deol would approve of the figurative dishoom-dishoom that ensues. If Sandhya Menon’s debut young adult/new adult novel, When Dimple Met Rishi (WDMR) were ice cream, let’s just say it would be called “Rocky Road” with a cherry on top! Dimple Shah wants nothing more than to attend InsomniaCon, an intensive summer program for web coders/ designers before she heads off to Stanford as a freshman. She has no time to think about anything else, and certainly not about her mother’s obsession to find her the IIH (Ideal Indian Husband). Rishi Patel is the stuff that Hindi film heroes are made of: romance, respect for tradition, and charm. He wants nothing more than to meet, woo and secure the woman his parents have

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The problem is that Dimple has no idea what her parents, Rishi, and his parents have planned. When Dimple and Rishi are paired for the 6-week program to work on an app that will win the grand prize, the give-and-take relationship becomes a comical romp that has had readers buzzing about the book and its characters since the advance reader copies were distributed in February. Told in short segments alternating between Dimple’s and Rishi’s points of view accomplishes two things.

If Sandhya Menon’s debut young adult/new adult novel, When Dimple Met Rishi were ice cream, let’s just say it would be called “Rocky Road” with a cherry on top! The reader is kept in real time with both characters as the relationship progressesdigresses. This plays out effectively because the characters can be involved in entirely different but concurrent conversations or situations and not be constricted by face-to-face encounters. And it’s cinematic, the result offering readers the opportunity to sit back and enjoy the show. Menon unabashedly expresses her love for Bollywood films and is obsessed with happily-ever-afters, so there’s no doubt as to where this book is headed before the first page is read. Love her or hate her, Dimple is a confident young woman who knows what she wants, and even when faced with alternatives, she manages to stay true to her vision but seeks some degree of compromise—providing the scales continue to tip in her favor. She’s an American girl who happens to be Indian, wears big, square glasses, isn’t interested in fashion or makeup (much to her mother’s dismay) has a quick temper, and is laser-beam focused on her future. Rishi, who hides his true talent, is nevertheless the perfect Petruchio to Dimple’s Katherina. (characters from The Taming of the Shrew). There were countless times I thought the two were reenacting Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Yet Rishi, also born in the United States, is more traditional than Dimple and strives to please his parents as their first-born son. He believes they know best and accepts going to MIT to study computer science and engineering while deep in his heart he wants to study art and continue his comic superhero that is fresh and Indo-centric. Although it’s true that Dimple isn’t a totally-loveable character for some

of the book, it’s also true that Rishi needs to take a lesson from younger brother Ashish who is 85% free-range American and 15% Indian and needs to respect himself and what he wants more. Menon, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 15, acculturated quickly enough to be the “child of immigrant parents.” Because she fully understands the clash of values and sensibilities between generations and cultures, she translates the differences honestly and humorously. It’s clear this novel belongs in the #OwnVoices category, a movement that has shown authors writing about the marginalized and minority groups to which they belong; this is not only needed but also wanted by readers. The buzz on this book has been significant, and while the accolades might not be from sources everyone would recognize, they are gold for YA work. The #WeNeedDiverseBooks’ tumblr page in June included WDMR as

one of the “2017 Awesomely Asian YA Books.” In May, it showed up in an article on NBCNews.com titled “Books Featuring Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders for Kids and Teens,” and a School Library Journal Blog said it was one of “13 MustRead Titles for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.” Bustle. com’s exclusive first look by Kristian Wilson last October said it’s, “the arranged-marriage rom-com you have to read. It’s being described as ‘Eleanor and Park meets Bollywood with the humor and heart of My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’ so clearly it’s the book we’ve all been waiting for.” Readers on Goodreads have been duking it out with over 7,000 ratings, 92% of readers liking it, nearly 2,300 reviews, and almost 40,000 “adds” by readers (as of this writing). Buzzfeed staff writer Farrah Penn compiled the thoughts of young adult writers about the importance of diversity in young adult literature. The result was “26 YA Authors on Diverse Representation in Publishing,” posted online on May 13. Menon was included, stating, “Diverse characters are just the norm of what we see in our everyday lives, especially teens and children. I think I read a statistic somewhere out there that said that about 50% of babies born out there were not white. We’re seeing more and more kids coming into the world who need to see stories that reflect their reality.” Grab an iced coffee and get comfortable. A romantic, comedic look at young adults caught between their parents’ best intentions and their own developing views on adulthood while supporting the joy of diversity in publishing, WDMR promises laughs, giggles, and perhaps a literary Jodi #1.n Jeanne E. Fredriksen lives in North Carolina where she is a Books for Youth reviewer for Booklist magazine/American Library Association and a member of WCPE-FM The Classical Station’s Music Education Fund committee. She is working on an assortment of fiction projects.

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 43

films

The Burqa Slippers By Aniruddh Chawda

SECRET SUPERSTAR. Director: Advait Chandan. Players: Zaira Wasim, Aamir Khan, Meher Vij, Raj Arjun, Tirth Sharma, Kabir Sajid. Music: Amit Trivedi. Hindi, Gujarati and Eng. with Eng. sub-titles. Theatrical release (Zee Movies)

amir Khan’s cinema has become a textbook study of a high-achieving filmmaker who continues to capture absolutely timely cultural touchstones comprised of small, intense, stories that so easily juxtapose much larger, even global, themes. The subtext is often alienation and strangers caught in a web of a strange landscape (Peepli Live, PK, Dhobi Ghaat). Of late, that theme has expanded to the empowerment of women. With the megahit Dangal (2016), Khan expanded his reach to exploring athletic privilege prescribed by gender. With Secret Superstar, Khan takes misogyny one step further for a brilliant Cinderella spin that is a winning entry. For shy Baroda teen schoolgirl Insia Malik (Wasim), life experiences are shaped by three overlapping factors. There is her loving mother Najma (Vij), the angry outbursts of her just as nonendearing father Farookh (Arjun) and a secretive passion for music that Insia has nurtured since the age of six when her mother gifted a guitar. Insia’s father has strict reservations about Insia’s musical outreach that would prohibit her from performing in public. As a workaround to her father’s judgements, the 15-year old chances posting a video online. To maintain plausible deniability, and in step more or less with her Muslim upbringing, the online videos have Insia appearing in a burqa. As the videos go viral and the secret teen sensation gains an online following, even one small misstep and her father discovering his daughter’s online identity could endanger Insia’s dream. A teen with hidden musical talent, an abusive father and an abused mother do not quite meet on the corner of family bliss. Aided by her school yard buddy Chintan (Sharma), Insia reluctantly

reaches out to Mumbai music promoter Shakti Kumar (Khan) for an audition. Arranging to go to Mumbai for the audition, doing so while pretending to be at school, somehow keeping her father in the dark about her musical ambitions and taking literal and figurative steps away from her home bring into focus a teenager caught in the crossroads. Maintain status quo and put up with daily doses of daddy’s wrath or risk a new venture with a small possibility for happiness. Khan’s Kumar is a delightful Mini-Me version of his own real-life star and starmaker persona. Kumar is a down-market, over-the-hill former-star whose career-best waved farewell about a decade ago and he is now a lecherous, cranky lounge-lizard sporting an over-moussed coif and glittery T-shirts a few sizes too small for his girthy middle-aged spread. He can waltz into the office of his former wife’s divorce attorney’s office and in a sizzling two-minute sequence, succeed in schmoozing the coldhearted receptionist into practically giving away office secrets. This self-deprecating caricature of a superstar outwardly image now reduced to swallowing slices of humble pie is funny, perceptive and devastatingly effective. As he did with Dhobi Ghaat, Khan wisely remains in the background playing second-fiddle. The camera is always gaz-

44 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

ing out from Insia’s world-view. Wasim, who made her debut as Khan’s younger wrestler-daughter in Dangal does well again as his surrogate daughter here. Wasim’s Insia injects maturity—perhaps even a little too much maturity—into her struggling teen. She has grown up faster than can be expected. Her angst is real, at both her father’s angry outbursts but even more so at her helplessness at the suffering of her mother and young brother Guddu (Sajid). Arjun as the tyrannical father, Sharma as Insia’s accomplice for the musical shenanigans and geeky first-crush, and especially Vij as the mother silently acquiescing to abuse round out a well-cast and well-written story. Amit Trivedi’s musical score has some bright spots. With Meghna Mishra crooning many of Wasim’s onscreen songs, Mishra’s “Main Kaun Hoon,” Sunidhi Chauhan’s “Gudgudi,” and Mika Singh’s “Sexy Baliye,” the latter filmed on Khan, all make decent listening. That there are no show-stopping, glitzy numbers adds to a family outlook overall. With the empowerment theme, putting a spotlight on spousal abuse, flirting with the popular rage for creating self-promoted online videos, Wasim acing the princess looking for her figurative musical ball and Khan as a declining star who has nailed the lifetime achievement award as a SOB, Secret Superstar provides very good viewing! n EQ: A

Make Sitaarre TV your proud Media Partner Contact for value-built packages POONAM BAJAJ Executive Producer Email: sitaarre@gmail.com Cell: 510 – 304 - 8654 ü Outreach to 12 Million + Households nationwide via Comcast ü Event Promotion Ø Commercial and Infomercial Video Production Ø Telecast on TV (multiple times) Ø Social Media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter - continuous promotion) Ø Focus on Bay Area and Central Valley ü Event Coverage

JASLEEN KHANUJA Lead Anchor & Director Email: jasleen.california4@gmail.com Facebook Page: Jasleen Khanuja – Media Personality Ø Videography Ø Photography Ø Airing on Comcast Ø Posting on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. ü Stationed locally in Bay Area ü Like us on facebook

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 45

The House of Boo By Aniruddh Chawda

GOLMAAL AGAIN. Director: Rohit Shetty. Players: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Arshad Warsi, Parineeti Chopra, Shreyas Talpade, Tushar Kapoor, Kunal Khemu, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Prakash Raj. Music: Amaal Maalik, S. Thaman, D.J. Chelas, Abhishek Arora. Hindi w/ Eng. sub-titles. Theatrical release (Reliance)

he Golmaal franchise—Golmaal Again is the fourth in a series— has paid off very handsomely for the Shetty-Devgn partnership going back more than a decade of successes that include the Golmaal series starting in 2006 and they also hit pay dirt with the Singham entries. The filmmaker and his male muse—astonishingly, this is their tenth movie together—have worked up a remarkable intertwined career graph. While not in the same comedy league as the Rajkumar Hirani-Sanjay Dutt pairing in the two-entry Munnabhai movies, the occasional laugh-out-loud premise and unending silliness more than likely guarantee there will be more Golmaal headwinds in our future. Part lost-orphan tale, part love-story, part action entry, part comedy and part ghost story, the Golmaal formula is a promise to be everything to everyone without saturating or completely satisfying any of the genres they touch on. A story of five friends who trace their roots to an orphanage in Ooty, along with the ringleader Gopal (Devgn), also has Madhav (Warsi), Lucky (Kapoor), Laxman 1 (Talpade) and Laxman 2 (Khemu). Separated in early childhood, they are reunited after finding themselves on opposites ends of the far reaches of unscrupulous land-developer Reddy (Raj). Drawn back to the orphanage by Anna Mathew (Tabu), the narrator-librarian who may be chummy with a house-broken ghost or two, the Famous Five must not only outwit the land-grabber but also solve a murder or two along the way. Ooty in Tamil Nadu is a popular hill station and, given the lush greenery of the tea estates, provides an eye-catching back-

drop prized by Indian filmmakers since time immemorial. The hilltop not only provides a middle-of-nowhere feel but it also sparks interest in that area during a heavily traveled season of family visits and holiday festivities. It makes the perfect setting for an out-of-the-way orphanage that everyone wants a piece of. This remote feel also feeds into the ghost story subtext. A solemn library atmosphere can certainly harbor ghosts that can, for their choice of weapons hurl books at troublemaker and non-believing patrons. A quiet library can be the house of boo indeed! For slapstick to, well, stick, it has to be plausible. Even though this Golmaal has a huge budget—reportedly more than five times what Aamir Khan spent on his much smaller Secret Superstar—the ghostly moves, the choreography of the action stunts and even the song sequences are not commensurate with the mullah tossed in to pull all this together. This Golmaal lacks fluid motion and pokes fun at stutterers, folks who are deaf or mute and older men who like younger women. However, the audience that would thrive on neutral scripts, precise moves, precise action and precise ghost movements is decidedly not the audience the filmmakers are after. A recurring note in this five-some bromance is Devgn’s Gopal repeatedly teased for showing interest in the mysterious, pretty and younger woman living at the orphanage (Chopra). Gopal’s buddies poke fun at the May-December romance

46 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

Gopal hopes will bloom here. In a stark contrast to a host of leading male leads in Hindi cinema, most of who are or more than fifty and who almost exclusively romance 20 and 30-something female leads, Devgn’s Gopal allowing himself to show his age may be the most realistic contribution this franchise offers to the evolution of movie romance. Even though the agedifference digs are ends to another joke, Devgn could be that rare lead allowing himself to age gracefully onscreen. Noteworthy indeed! The entire movie has the appearance of a regurgitation of the disconnected mass-mayhem that pretty much summed up the previous three Golmaal packages. It uses pretty much the same cast—with the notable exception of Kareena Kapoor being replaced by Chopra as the possible love interest. The acting is loud, the fights land one punch too many and the camera simply moves too much. Released at Diwali, however, this ill-defined jumble has caught enough of an audience in a festive, silly Halloween-inflected mood to light up the box office and allowed Golmaal Again to strike box-office gold. n EQ: B Globe trekker, aesthete, photographer, ski bum, film buff, and commentator, Aniruddh Chawda writes from Milwaukee.

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Following traditional Kalakshetra syllabus - all levels

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November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 47

Kalapeetham Foundation

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Director: Smt. Kalyani Shanmugarajah (Alumnus of Kalakshetra, 1974)

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Kathak classes offered in Walnut/ Diamond Bar, Tustin/Irvine, Santa Ana

Affiliated with Hindustan art & music society, Calcutta. Students receives official accreditation, diplomas and degrees from India.

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www.rangoli.org since 1985 48 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

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626-590-5547 November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 49

events NOVEMBER

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events Edited by: Mona Shah List your event for FREE!

DECEMBER issue deadline: Monday, November 20 To list your event in the Calendar, go to

http://indiacurrents.com/eventsubmission/ Check us out on

special dates Guru Nanak’s B’day

Nov. 4

Guru Teg Bahadur Day

Nov. 24

Thanksgiving Day

Nov. 23

Christmas Day

Dec. 25

CULTURAL CALENDER November

3 Friday

AI Frontiers Conference—Applied Deep Learning. This three-day confer-

ence brings together leading scientists and practitioners who have deployed largescale AI products. You will gain a frontrow seat of the frontiers of AI, network with others who are enthusiasts about AI technology and products. Keynote speaker: Andrew Ng. Use promo code IndiaCurrents150 for a $150 discount. 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Santa Clara Convention Center 5001 Great America Pkwy., Santa Clara. http://aifrontiers.com.

Neha Kakkar—Live in Concert. 8 p.m. Event Center Arena, 290 S 7th St., San Jose. (510) 677-2777 http://events.

Neha Kakkar live in concert, November 3

sulekha.com/neha-kakkar-live-in-concert-bayarea_event-in_san-jose-ca_319538.

November

4 Saturday

Vocal Concert by Shrimati Alka Deo Marulkar. Accompanied by Sanjay

Deshpande (tabla). 11 a.m. Sai Temple Auditorium, 1221 California Circle Milpitas. http://www.basantbahar.org/

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Auditions. Be a part of the launch

of our 40th Anniversary Celebration and watch the Festival Auditions. The atmosphere is casual, but the performances are first-rate as nearly 80 dance companies present a wide variety of dances and music from around the world, hoping for a coveted spot in the 2018 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. The full schedule is posted at sfethnicdancefestival.org. 11 a.m. 5:30 p.m.. Palace of Fine Arts Theatre 3301

50 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

Lyon Street San Francisco. (415) 474-3914. terry@worldartswest.org http://worldartswest.org/main/schedule.asp.

Veena Concert by Nirmala Rajasekar. Rajasekar (veena), VVS Murari

(violin), Tanjore Murugaboopathi (mridhangam) and Ganesh (kanjira). Organized by SIFA. 4 p.m. Eagle Theater, Los Altos High School, 201 Almond Avenue Los Altos. (408) 569-7875, info@southindiafinearts. org http://www.southindiafinearts.org

Y Gee Mahendras Super Hit Tamil Play. 6 p.m. India Community Center, 525 Los Coches St., Milpitas.www.icc.org.

Spotlight 2017. A dance production

showcasing Bollywood, HipHop, Contemporary, Bharatanatyam, Salsa, Bhangra Funk, and Kollywood. 6 p.m. Woodside Performing Arts Center, 199 Churchill Ave Woodside. info@danceidentity.com www. danceidentity.com.

events Broken Seeds (Still Grow)

THEATER

major collaboration between Nava Dance Theatre co-founder and Artistic Director Nadhi Thekkek and painter and calligrapher Rupy C. Tut, the production examines one of the most formative events in recent cultural historythe 1947 Partition of British India, which created over 15 million refugees and killed over one million people. Through mixed visual media and bharatanatyam dance, Thekkek and Tut explore the immigrant experience, linking it to the displacement of their ancestors during Partition. “Many Americans from the South Asian diaspora have felt a lack of belonging in the United States,” explains Tut. “While they have not faced displacement in the same horrific ways as their ancestors, the feeling of being foreign remains. I’m hoping that Broken Seeds can help to facilitate feelings of tolerance and belonging.” Sourcing eyewitness accounts of

FILM FESTIVAL

Partition from the 1947 Partition Archive (www.1947partitionarchive.org) the show examines how the feeling of displacement continues to shape their identities as hyphenated-Americans today. Thekkek will create bharatanatyam vignettes inspired by historical accounts, while Tut will create Indian miniature paintings and calligraphy to be projected as video during the performance. The aim is to create an interaction between the gestural elements of bharatanatyam and the storytelling power of Indian miniature painting. Thekkek adds, “This project helps us examine the widespread fear of Muslims and those of Middle Eastern and South Eastern descent, many of whom, due to a fluctuating political climate, have been unfairly vilified because of their religious or ethnic background. This project can create a larger discourse on how internal personal prejudices and openly hateful rhetoric can affect the community at

large.” Composer and flautist G.S. Rajan is creating the original musical score. The entire cast will consist of 11 dancers and musicians. n November 16-19. The Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakland. For tickets go www. BrokenSeeds.com. (925) 272-7870.

Painful Language (Calligraphy) by Rupy C. Tut

INTERNATIONAL SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL

rd i’s programs culminate each year in the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival (SFISAFF)—an offering of the best independent cinema from South Asia and the Diaspora. The oldest South Asian Film Festival in the United States, 3rd i’s five-day festival is the premier showcase for documentaries, shorts, narratives and innovative and experimental visions that exemplify the best indie films – and there’s also a dash of Bollywood. This year’s festival captures the political zeitgeist of our times, bringing important questions about democracy and the political process to the screen with An Insignificant Man. Home movies offer rich fodder for filmmakers this year, their celluloid memories resurfacing stories about family and immigration, and reminding us that the personal is most definitely also the political, with Abu and Random Acts

of Legacy. This year Bollywood is offered two ways—neo-noir and classic camp, with Gurgaon and Om Shanti Om. Shilpa Ranade’s magical The World of Goopi and Bagha makes a return to the South Bay. An animated remake of Satyajit Ray’s children’s film of the same name, Ranade’s endearing film boasts excellent musical interludes, evocative animation, and an anti-war sentiment at its heart. Also screening in Cupertino is Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s The Cinema Travelers, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. Five years in the making, this poetic documentary chronicles a traveling cinema roaming the Indian countryside delivering the miracle of cinema.n Nov. 9-12 in San Francisco and Nov. 18 in Cupertino. New People Cinema and the Castro Theatre, San Francisco. Bluelight Cinemas 5, Cupertino. https://www.thirdi. org.

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 51

52 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 53

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events ace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon Street San Francisco. (415) 474-3914, terry@ worldartswest.org http://worldartswest.org/ main/schedule.asp.

Dot Mandala Painting Workshop For Adults. Teaches you the aboriginal

art form of Australia in the most contemporary and in an easy to do method. 1-4 p.m. ICC Table Tennis Center, 1507 North Boulevard Milpitas. www.icc.org.(408) 5070979 dollyashah@gmail.com.

Sakhar Khallela Manus—Marathi Play. Featuring Prashant Damle and

team. Organized by Naatya Sargam Team. 4 p.m. Smithwick Theatre Foothill College, 12345 El Monte Road Los Altos. (510) 842-7289.

November

9 Thursday

SF International South Asian Film Festival—Bollywood & Beyond.

Nataak’s Arsenic and Old Lace, November 11-19

Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital Fundraiser. Join hands to raise $1

million to support the treatment of cancer patients in Lahore. 6:30 p.m. Dougherty Community Center, Ridge View Hall, 17011 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon.

first-rate as nearly 80 dance companies present a wide variety of dances and music from around the world, hoping for a coveted spot in the 2018 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. 11a.m.-6 p.m. Pal-

Celebrating 3rd i’s fifteenth anniversary this year, presenting some of the best cinema from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Australia, and the USA. In San Francisco. https://www.thirdi.org/

Non Stop Bhangra—Last One Of The Year. The night will begin with the

ritual Bhangra dance lesson followed by dance performances with Dholrhythms Dance Company. Non Stop Bhangra Crew: Dholrhythms Dance Co, DJ Jimmy Love, DJ Rav-E, DJ Nix, Marcus Murray, Odell Hussey, with special guest: Mixtabishi (Australia). 9 p.m. Public Works 161 Erie St., San Francisco. http://nonstopbhangra.com/.

November

5 Sunday

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Auditions. Be a part of the launch

of the 40th Anniversary Celebration and watch the Festival Auditions. The atmosphere is casual, but the performances are

54 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

Dot Mandala painting workshop for adults, November 5

events November

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

10 Friday

Punjabi Singer Babbu Maan Live In Concert. 6 p.m. San Jose Center For

The Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Boulevard San Jose. https://sanjosetheaters.org/ event/babbu-maan-live-concert/

Stand up Comedy Show by Amit Tandon. Known as “The Married Guy”

in the stand-up comedy circuit. After two kids and one marriage, he realized it couldn’t get any worse and took to comedy. His comedy about middle class Indians struggling with expectations from all directions touches one and all. 7:30 p.m. India Community Center, 525 Los Coches St., Milpitas. www.dimeera.com.

November

11 Saturday

Arsenic & Old Lace—A Comedy in Hindi (with English Supertitles).

Two sweet old ladies run a B&B for old men. Their generosity knows no bounds but their charity can take unconventional forms, which results in their concealing some very dark secrets. When these secrets are revealed, their nephew panics and tries to save them from themselves, all the while trying to salvage his own engagement. Cubberley Theater, 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. https://www. naatak.com/portfolio/arsenic-and-old-lace2017/#BPTTickets.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Auditions. Be a part of the launch

of the 40th Anniversary Celebration and watch the Festival Auditions. The atmosphere is casual, but the performances are first-rate as nearly 80 dance companies present a wide variety of dances and music from around the world, hoping for a coveted spot in the 2018 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. 11 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon Street, San Francisco. (415) 474-3914. terry@worldartswest.org http://worldartswest.org/main/schedule.asp.

K. J. Yesudas Golden Night live concert, November 12

Nrithyollasa Dance Academy’s Annual Student Showcase. Indumathy

Ganesh, Artistic Director of Nrithyollasa Dance Academy presents her students as a fund raiser to support those affected by California wildfires. 2 p.m. Jackson Theater, Ohlone College, 43600 Mission Blvd., Fremont. (510) 623-8230, info@nldance.com www.nldance.com.

Bajabo Tomar Swornabeena—An Evening of Tagore’s Music. The

show combines group and duet presentations by the students of Kori O Komol and a dance ballad graced by kathak artiste Labonee Mohanta, violinist maestro Indradeep Ghosh and singer Nandita Yasmin. Samrat Kakkeri will be on tabla. 5 p.m. Le Petit Trianon Theatre, 72 N 5th St., San Jose. kori.o.komol.17@gmail.com, www. nanditayasmin.com.

Saratoga Diwali 2017. Live band entertainment and dinner. 6:30 p.m. Joan Pisani Community Center, 19655 Allendale Ave., Saratoga. http://www.saratogadiwali.

org.

Stand up Comedy Show by Amit Tandon. Known as “The Married Guy”

in the stand-up comedy circuit. After two kids and one marriage, he realized it couldn’t get any worse and took to comedy. His comedy about middle class Indians struggling with expectations from all directions touches one and all. 7 p.m. The Mark Green Center, 31224 Union City Boulevard, Union City. www.dimeera.com.

Apoorva Katha—The Struggles of Cesar Chavez Depicted in Bharatanatyam Idiom. In their fall

show Abhinaya presents vivid portrayals of Cesar Chavez’s life, his struggles as a farmworker, his awareness of Gandhi’s non-violent principles and his leadership through forming the United Farmworkers union fighting for the rights of the farmworkers. This will be preceded by traditional dramatic pieces depicting varied stories from Indian mythology and literature. 7 p.m. Mexican Heritage Plaza,

November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 55

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

Apporva Katha, the struggels of Cesar Chavez depicted in bharatanatyam idiom, November 11 and 12

1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose. (408) 8715959. https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3097874.

Alam Khan in Concert. Accompanied by Salar Nader on tabla. 7:30-10:00 p.m. Ali Akbar College of Music, 215 West End Ave., San Rafael. (415) 454-6372. office@ aacm.org, http://www.aacm.org.

November

12 Sunday

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Auditions. Be a part of the launch

of the 40th Anniversary Celebration and watch the Festival Auditions. The atmosphere is casual, but the performances are first-rate as nearly 80 dance companies present a wide variety of dances and music from around the world, hoping for a coveted spot in the 2018 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon Street, San Francisco. (415) 474-3914. terry@worldartswest.org, http://worldartswest.org/main/schedule.asp.

Apoorva Katha—The Struggles of Cesar Chavez Depicted in Bharatanatyam Idiom. In their fall

show Abhinaya presents vivid portrayals

of Cesar Chavez’s life, his struggles as a farmworker, his awareness of Gandhi’s non-violent principles and his leadership through forming the United Farmworkers union fighting for the rights of the farmworkers. This will be preceded by traditional dramatic pieces depicting varied stories from Indian mythology and literature. 4 p.m. Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose. (408) 8715959. https://www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/3097874.

K. J. Yesudas Golden Night Live Concert. Accompanied by the Laksh-

man Sruthi Orchestra. 5:30 p.m. City National Civic, 135 West San Carlos, Street San Jose. www.sulekha.com/yesudas.

November

16 Thursday

World Premiere of Broken Seeds (Still Grow). It examines one of the

most formative events in recent cultural history, the 1947 Partition of British India, which created over 15 million refugees and killed over one million people. Through a mixed visual media and bharatanatyam dance performance, they explore the hyphenated-American, immigrant experience, linking it to the

56 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

displacement of their ancestors during Partition. Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway Oakland. (925) 272-7870. www.BrokenSeeds. com.

Thursdays On The Mountain— Bollywood Night. An evening of danc-

ing, tasty food booths, classic cocktails, wine tasting and more Ticket price includes entry, entertainment, all games and free parking. 6:30-10:30 p.m. Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce Rd., Saratoga. (408) 741-2822. mbarker@mountainwinery.com, http://www.mountainwinery.com/events/ detail/thursdays-on-the-mountain-bollywoodnight.

November

17 Friday

Phir Rubaru—A Ghazal Concert.

Trianon Theater, 72 North Fifth Street, San Jose. $35. (510) 770-9414, email4niki@ gmail.com.

November

18 Saturday

SF International South Asian Film Festival—Bollywood & Beyond.

Celebrating 3rd i’s fifteenth anniversary this year, presenting some of the best

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

cinema from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Australia, and the USA. In Cupertino. https://www.thirdi.org/

Carnatic Vocal Concerts. 2-3 p.m.

Isha Yeleswarupu (vocal), accompanied by Ananaya Devnath (veena) and Ajay Gopi (mridangam). 3:15-4:15 p.m. Shivanai Sista (vocal), accompanied by Yogitha Balasubramaniam (violin) and Ajay Gopi (mridangam). 4:30-6:30 p.m. Shreyas and Achyut Srinivasn (vocal duet), accompanied by Sashidar Maduugula (violin) and Arun Shriram (mridangam). 12-6:30 p.m. Community Of Infinite Spirit, 1540 Hicks Av., San Jose. (408) 569-0860. shobanasujit93@gmail.com, www.srfinearts. info.

November

19 Sunday

Lecture/Demo and Mini Concert.

An introduction to Hindustani classical music focused on Guru-Shishya Parampara. Brief Presentation on Shrimati Lakshmi Shankar by Ashidhara Das focused on the cultural ethos and background of the music. The second part will include a formal lecture demonstration (vocal) by Aditya Das-presentation of raga bhimpalasi covering the vilambit (slow) khyal in ektaal (12 beats), madhyalaya (medium speed) khyal in teentaal (16 beats) and drut (fast). Accompanied by Anoop Bhattacharjya (tabla) and a demonstration of raga behag by Ashidhara Das in a similar format. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Cultural Integration Fellowship 2650 Fulton St San Francisco. (415) 668-1559 culturalfellowship@sbcglobal.net www.culturalintegrationfellowship.org.

November

23 Thursday

Thanksgiving Dinner and Concert.

The yearly Thanksgiving vegetarian dinner at Badarikashrama hosts a veena duet by Srikanth Chary and Hrishekesh Chary. The traditional vegetarian dinner has items from many cuisines, vegan items will also be available. Call for reservations, space is limited. 3-7 p.m. Badarikashrama 15602 Maubert Avenue, San Leandro.

Written in Water, a dance performance by Ragamala Dance Company, December 2

(510) 278-2444, badarik@pacbell.net, http://www.badarikashrama.org.

December

1 Friday

9 Saturday

Christmas and New Year Celebration. Carols, dance, songs, music, Santa,

Stand up Comedy with Hari Kondabolu. 8-10 p.m.. Fox Theater, 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. http://bit.ly/2u9I36V.

December

gifts and more. 3:30 p.m. Gale Ranch Middle School, 6400 Main Branch Rd., San Ramon. sangamaus@gmail.com, www. sangamaus.com.

2 Saturday

Ragamala Dance Company’s Written in Water. The show explores the

cultural complexities of the modern world through the metaphor of the ancient Indian board game Snakes and Ladders, with a live music score performed by an ensemble of four musicians, including jazz trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, known for his distinctive fusion of contemporary jazz and Iraqi maqam. 8 p.m. Zellerbach Playhouse, 101 Zellerbach Hall #4800, Standup comedy with Hari Kondabolu, December 1 Berkeley. https://calperformances.org/performances/2017-18/world-stage/ragamala© Copyright 2017 India Currents. All dance-company-written-in-water.php. rights reserved. Reproduction for commercial use strictly prohibited. November 2017 | West Coast Edition | www.indiacurrents.com | 57

events

California’s Best Guide to Indian Events

Southern California CULTURAL CALENDER November

2 Thursday

Franchise Expo West. Attendees can

engage with over 200 franchise brands in every industry at every investment level, access over 60 free educational sessions where in depth answers are provided to any franchising questions, and meet with lenders and consultants to learn about financing options. A couple of special seminars will facilitate female and minority business ownership. 4 p.m. Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles. (201) 226-1130. west@ franchiseexpowest.com, http://www.franchiseexpowest.com.

November

3 Friday

Conference on Building a More Inclusive Democracy. Bronco Stu-

dent Center, Ursa Minor Cal Poly Pomona Pomona. (909) 869-3868 ahimsacenter@ cpp.edu

November

4 Saturday

Sakhar Khallela Manus. Featuring

artists Prashant Damle and Shubhangi Gokhale. 3 p.m. Centinela Valley Union High School District, 14901 South Inglewood Avenue, Lawndale. info@5dimensionsinc. com www.5dimensionsinc.com.

Bridge of Support—A Musical Evening with Neetu Chandra. 6 p.m. Private Home, 19842 E. Saddle Ridge Ln., Walnut. (562) 402-4132, saharacares.org.

2nd Annual Diwali Mixer. Live band and DJ, drinks for purchase, complimentary appetizers and networking. 7 p.m. Spice Affair Main Dining Hall, 50 North La Cienega Boulevard, Beverly Hills. (480) 600-2808, (310) 698-9223.

Sham E Ghazal By Faizan Mehdi Hassan. 8 p.m. The Yellow Chilli, 7850

Beach, Boulevard Buena Park. (310) 7732594.

November

5 Sunday

HTHF Diwali Cultural Program 2017. Organized by Pasadena Hindu

Temple. 4 p.m. Monrovia High School, 845 West Colorado Boulevard, Monrovia. (626) 533-9709, (626) 351-0664, (323) 3140282. singhdirect@gmail.com.

Guru Nanak Jayanti. 5-7 p.m. Sindhu Center, 14117 Clarkdale Ave., Norwalk. (562) 864-6246.

November

8 Wednesday

Senior Citizens Meet. 10:00 a.m. -

2:00 p.m. Sikh Center of Orange County, 2530 Warner Ave., Santa Ana. (714) 6395139.

Speaker Series—Defying Stereotypes: How to Coexist in a Loving Manner. Talk on Sikhism by Rahuldeep

Gill. 7-8:30 p.m. 6440 Del Amo Blvd., Lakewood. (562) 429-0715, csclakewood.org.

November

17 Friday

Stand Up Comedy Show by Amit Tandon. 8 p.m. PYLUSD Performing Arts

Center, 1615 Valencia Avenue, Placentia. (425) 786-7475.

November

18 Saturday

Stand Up Comedy Show by Amit Tandon. 7 p.m. Assistance League Play-

House, 1367 N. St. Andrews Place, Los Angeles. info@jasandpal.com (818) 934-0486.

58 | INDIA CURRENTS |West Coast Edition |November 2017

Stand up comdy show with Amit Tandon, Nov. 17, 18 and 19

548th Parkash Utsav of Sri Guru Nanak Sahib. Friendship Auditorium,

3201 Riverside Dr., Los Angeles. hollywoodsikhtemple.com.

November

19 Sunday

Stand Up Comedy Show by Amit Tandon. 6 p.m. Qualcomm Building Q,

6455 Lusk Blvd., San Diego. https://www. tickethungama.com/event/9146/amit-tandon-stand-up-live-in-san-diego.

December

1 Friday

Bollywood Masquerade. Celebrat-

ing our unity in diversity. Dancing with live music by DJ UV and DJ Prashant. 9 p.m. The West End, 1301 5th Street, Santa Monica. http://events.sulekha.com/bollywoodmasquerade-in-los-angeles_event-in_santamonica-ca_320201.

December

9 Saturday

Stand Up Comedy Show by Neeti Palta. 8 p.m. Los Globos, 3040 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. $25-$75. (480) 280-3875. https://www.tickethungama.com/neetipalta.

Om Sri Mathre Namaha

Sunday November 5th: Day Light Saving time ends. Kritika vratha. Evening at 4.00 PM, Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha Sri Subramanya abhisheka, Sri

Friday November 17th: Karthika Masam, Evening at 4.00 PM, Sri Bhuwaneswari / Sri Lalitha Devi abhisheka continued with Sri Lalitha Sahasra nama chanting

aarati and manthra pushpa. Evening at 6.00 PM, Sri Ayyappa Mandala pooja begins Sri Ayyppa Pooja aarati and manthra pushpa. (Sri Ayyappa Mandala pooja starting from Friday November th 17 , 2017 to Sunday January 14th 2018. Ends with Sri Makara Jyothi pooja. All are welcome to participate with family). Thursday November 23 , 2017 Thanksgiving Day weekend timings. rd

Friday November 24 : Day after Thanksgiving Day weekend timings. Night at 8.00 PM, Sukla Sashti, Sri Valli Deva Sena Sametha, Sri Subramanya sahasra nama archana. th

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INDIA CURRENTS GRAPHICS (408) 324-0488

Lakshmi Ganapathi abhisheka, Wednesday November 1st: Evening at 6.00 PM, Pradosham, Sri Shiva abhisheka aarati and Shiva Sri Rudra abhisheka aarati manthra pushpa. and manthra pushpa. Tuesday November 7th: Evening at 5.00 PM Sri Sankata Hara Friday November 3rd: Evening chathurthi, Sri Lakshmi at 4.00 PM Sri Bhuwaneswari / Ganapathi homa / Sri Lakshmi Sri Lalitha Devi abhisheka Ganapathi abhisheka aarati and continued with Sri Lalitha Sahasra Nama chanting, Aippasi manthra pushpa. Pournami, Sri Maha Anna abhishekam aarati and manthra Saturday November 11th: Sri pushpa. Kalabhairava Ashtami, Sri Mahadeva asthami. Evening at 6.00 PM Sri Pournami vratha, Sri Sathya Narayana Wednesday November 15th: Swamy Pooja / vratha aarati and Evening at 6.00 PM, Pradosham, manthra pushpa. All are welcome Shiva Sri Rudra abhisheka aarati to participate with family. and manthra pushpa.

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healthy life

A Cookbook for Healthy Living – Deepa’s Secrets By Prakash Narayan

e live in an era where mass media is utilized for Mass Interpersonal Persuasion. As early as 1938, Orson Welles caused nationwide panic with his realistic over-the-radio rendition of a Martian invasion of Earth when he narrated War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells. Late-night infomercials are constantly peddling something or the other that you “cannot live without.” We have all received letters in the mail inviting us to a “free dinner” to listen to someone telling us how to lose weight quickly. In most cases, the caveat emptor is that you need to part with your money to reap the benefit of their message. So, it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that I attended a keynote address by Deepa Thomas at the BITSync 2017 conference in San Jose on the topic of “Living well by eating well,” where she presented insights from her book, Deepa’s Secrets. The keynote featured both Deepa Thomas and her husband, Thampy Thomas (founder, Elxi and NexGen Microsystems). Deepa talked about their journey and how she was able to help Thampy completely recover from an acute diabetic condition (where he was talking insulin shots twice a day for over ten years) purely by eating the right foods. His blood sugar level turned normal in just five days. She simply removed the high carb ingredients of rice and bread, boosted flavors, and rather than eating two or three big meals a day, had him stick to five small meals. This controlled the hunger pangs and the harmful insulin spikes. “We are living in a crucible of plant based food,” she said. “Yet we consume processed food. The secret to good health is to eat food that our grandmothers will recognize,” Deepa added. Her message definitely resonated well with the audience made up of alumni from BITS, Pilani. There was no “catch” in her presentation, since all royalties from the book is to be donated to FoodCorps, a non-profit organization that connects children to healthy food in American schools. I was shocked to learn from Deepa that one

out of five kids go to bed (and wake up) hungry in the United States. The mission of FoodCorps is to connect these kids with the skills (and meals) that they need

to survive. The book itself is a part memoir, recounting her early days growing up in Delhi. Every chapter has a theme and an interesting anecdote from her past. This weaving of narrative and kitchen companion tips makes us read the book beginning-to-end as opposed to “referring” to it as one would for a book of recipes. The book is also a health guide. Deepa borrows from Ayurvedic wisdom– when the diet is right, there is no need for medicine and when the diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. It is hard to get all the experts to agree on a single theory–especially when it comes to food and diet. Deepa’s research on Ayurveda led her to the conclusion that all illnesses originate from an unhealthy gut. Therefore, using ingredients that are gut-healthy makes them diabetes friendly and heart healthy. These include whole grains, plant-based, unprocessed and unrefined food. Traditional Indian food is rich and flavorful; preparing the food however is labor intensive. Also, the food is high in carbohydrates. All this has led India

64 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

to become the “Diabetes capital of the World.” In this book, Deepa advocates for “New Indian cooking,” whose foundations are not labor-intensive, yet delicious and flavorful, without the carbohydrates. In a sense, these are her “secrets.” Her focus is on foods with grains, legumes, vegetables; her boost of flavor comes from herb and spice blends; and her tricks to shorten preparation and cooking times combine to provide healthy, flavorful foods that can be prepared quickly. One example of the contrast between traditional Indian and New Indian recipes can be found in the recipe, “Ralph’s Garlicky Spinach a la Dal.” Traditionally, dal (or lentils) is cooked to a pulp and spinach is cooked to a browner shade of green. In this version, the dal is cooked al dente (or cooked firm to the bite) and the baby spinach is closer to a salad. The crowning flavor of Gremolata lifts the flavor of this dish. One more “feature” of New Indian cooking is that it is “slow carb.” This pays particular attention to which carbs are being cut. Slow carbs are digested and release energy more slowly. Hence, they are better for you. This helps to ward off hunger pangs. When the book features non-vegetarian recipes, Deepa is almost apologetic to mention, “Vegetarians, don’t leave me. You can substitute tofu or bulk up the vegetables. You won’t want to miss out on the flavor of these recipes!” There is the old adage that you can either eat to live or live to eat. By following the recipes and using healthy ingredients mentioned in Deepa’s Secrets, you can have the best of both worlds. With its rich pictures and lavish design, this visual cookbook with healing recipes is a must have for every coffee table – except that this book is more likely to be dog eared at the kitchen table.n Prakash Narayan is a software engineer and has been living in Silicon Valley for over 20 years. His twitter handle is @kpn320.

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dear doctor

Starting Over After Divorce By Alzak Amlani

The last couple of years after a difficult divorce I have been reviewing my early family life. I now recognize a lot of patterns between my married life and my life as a boy living with my parents. Although there were a lot of good things that I recall, some of the dysfunctional patterns are really deep and have repeated in new relationships. I have had some difficult conversations with my parents, especially my mother about my teenage life and how I am still treated when I return home during the holidays. Their willingness or ability to acknowledge these negative dynamics and their impact on me is minimal. I have finally reached peace, after a lot of attempts and self-reflection that I am not going to get much from them in the coming years. I went through a process of grief, as you have described in previous articles—sadness, anger, loss, blame and finally acceptance. It helped to talk to a counselor for several months. I never thought I would get here as

I was so stuck in wanting them to be different and trying to figure out what I did wrong when they couldn’t respond to me with care and understanding. I also feel a need to clear out things in my home from my marriage. The divorce was painful and now that I am starting to date other women, I feel a need to start new. Can you please help me navigate these changes appropriately?

First, it sounds like you have already gone through the most difficult aspects of these major life changes: divorce and understanding your early life and its contribution to your adult relationships. Coming to peace with our parents as you have described in an ongoing process as we keep discovering so many dimensions of that formative relationship that continue to affect us in various ways. It takes courage, skill and willingness to face our family members. Your desire to

68 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

“start new” is healthy and can take you forward. Our environment carries memories and associations of our previous relationships and experiences. If you are strongly drawn to creating a different environment by moving, giving away old clothes and re-decorating or remodeling, you ought to do it. This kind of renewal brings in new people and attitudes in our lives. Some people do it through travel—going to new places to get inspiration and to clear old perspectives and habits. Although our history is important and needs to be valued, shedding dysfunctional and painful patterns is a key aspect of creating a different life. 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

Is Identity Politics Passe in the Age of Globalization? By Sarita Sarvate

fter spending a month in Catalonia, I returned to California in September even as the referendum took place there. Looking back, I marvel at my naiveté as I set off for a writers’ residency in the high Pyrenees in early August, never suspecting that I was traveling into the troubled soul of Catalonia. But the signs were all there. When Lluis, the director of the Centre d’Art i Natura, responded to my email about practicing Spanish by suggesting that I should instead learn another romantic language, I should have taken note. The Catalans, I would soon discover, were nationalistic to a fault, speaking their idiom at the dinner table even as I sat there not comprehending a word. Don’t get me wrong, Catalans are some of the most spirited, generous, caring, and individualistic people I have ever met. But their ethnic fervor bewildered me at times. Like when Montserrat, a resident I had become close to, attacked Spanish as the language of the imperialists. Toward the end of my stay, when I summoned up enough courage to express my frustration over the language barrier, I was surprised to discover that not everyone favored ethnic jingoism. “When we create these cultural distinctions,” Oulalia, another friend said, “we create barriers. As humans, we have more in common than not.” “We look at the Middle East and criticize divisions between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds,” another resident piped in. “Yet we do the same thing here.” Lluis asked me what I thought. “I come from a country that was colonized for hundreds of years,” I said. “But instead of hating it, I love English, the language of our rulers. I am a global villager. I transcend national boundaries. I’ve traveled thousands of miles to be with you, a people I previously knew nothing about.” We cannot go back, my fellow-residents agreed, and erase our history. We have to move forward. I did not know then that in less than a month after my visit, violence would break out in the streets of Barcelona. After inciting his people to agitate for freedom, Carles Puigdemont, the president of the autonomous region, would, at the last minute, seek negotiations with Madrid. I could have told you so, I felt like saying. I have always had mixed feelings about identity politics. Perhaps it is the result of being with my father who agreed with Gandhi’s secular attitudes. “Look what religiosity has done to our country,” he always said. “Hindus and Muslims have split us up in two.” So I dread identity politics, and at the same time, I support it. When Colin Kaepernick takes the knee during the national anthem, I am 200% behind him. Because he is protesting America’s history of racism and tyranny. Of course Catalans claim they have been subjugated too; at one time, their language was banned in schools, their culture is now in danger of disappearing, they say. But are there levels of subjugation? Are there times when identity politics is a must and times when other avenues are available to resolve conflict? The United Farm Workers were vital to pro70 | INDIA CURRENTS | West Coast Edition | November 2017

Globalization and social media are wiping out cultural diversity, I fear, making our world homogeneous and bland. moting a just cause. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) continues to play an important role today. But where do we draw the line? Residents of Mumbai believe outsiders have taken their jobs and are discriminating against them. At one time, the Sikhs wanted to separate from India. The tribal peoples of India are the real underdogs; would they not be better off having their own states? The Catalans I lived with even hoped that California would soon secede from the United States, giving impetus to their movement, even as I told them that it would never happen. So where does it end? By creating and sustaining ethnic differences, are we falling prey to the very tactics of divide and rule that the imperialists used? Hotel Rwanda portrayed the Hutus senselessly killing the Tutsis. But new evidence is emerging that the CIA was involved. I, forever the global villager, am grateful that the world has become such a small place. On the other hand, I long for an epoch when every region of India had different wedding rituals, culinary traditions, music, art and theater. Globalization and social media are wiping out cultural diversity, I fear, making our world homogeneous and bland. Soon, my native tongue Marathi will be written only in Latin script, I am afraid, and many dialects will disappear from the face of the earth. At the same time, I realize that the real enemy of the people is not a rival ethnic group, race or religion but the international corporate oligarchy that is buying up politicians and exploiting the 99% for the benefit of the 1%. By using hatred and fear of the other, the powerful are abusing the powerless for personal gain. If an American white working class male realized that he had more in common with an African-American single mother, who, like him, was struggling to make a decent living in the age of automation and a shrinking social safety net, how would individuals in both groups feel? What if we moved to unite the two groups? What if those who were higher up in the pecking order, namely the white working class, initiated the movement? Spain is still recovering from its recent economic crisis. Perhaps a negotiated settlement would be preferable to a traumatic split? Identity politics and a unified world are paradigms that can co-exist, I believe. We just have to open our hearts a tiny bit. 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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