SPAN: January/February, 2008

January/February

Front cover: Snowflake phofographs superimposed on a shot of fhe Himalayan peak of Nanda Devi under a full moon, faken from Auli in Uttarakhand by Ashok Dilwali.

2008

SPAN~ "n,

VOLUME XLIX NUMBER 1 Publisher: Editor-in-Chief: Editor: Associate Editor: Urdu Editor' Hindi Editor.

Copy Editors: Art Director: Deputy Art Directors: Editorial Assistant: Production/Circulation Manager: Printing Assistant: Business Manager: Research Services:

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Larry Schwartz Lisa A. Swenarski de Herrera Laurinda Keys Long Deepanjali Kakati Anjum Naim Giriraj Agarwal Richa Varma Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Hemant Bhatnagar Khurshid Anwar Abbasi Qasim Raza Vanessa Holsomback Rakesh Agrawal Alok Kaushik R. Narayan Bureauof International Information Programs, TheAmerican Library

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*Community America's

Harvest Season

40 *Marriage Indian American Style

By Anne LeeSeshadri

43

*U's-India

Teacher Exchanges

By Giriraj Agarwal

CON 3

Fairs Celebrate

TEN

T S

46 Where's My Cool Stuff?

* A Fresh Start

By Michelle Austein

4 8

*What are Primaries and Caucuses? *Votingforthe FirstTime

I

*50 YearsAgo

,~-,,~ ..~i

By Richa Varma

*Lincoln House's Half Century

-;

10 PreservingWinter's Miraclesof Beauty

By Dr Kay Redfield Jamison

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On the Lighter Side * Edison,NewJersey:An IndianAmericanT~I

By Sebastian John

*Pursuing Justice

II

I 29 I I 36

58 *Achievers: *America Supports Cultural Preservation

! 60

Chhatrapati Dutta

Lettersto the Editor

By Angus McDonald

*Preserving Monuments on an EcoFriendly Heritage Route in New Delhi

Correction: In fhe November/December 2007 issue, SPAN incorrecfly sfated in the arficle "Farmers' Markefs Are Growing in fhe United Sfates" fhaf fhe Mennonite farmers are also called fhe Amish. The two religious groups are nof fhe same.

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A LETTER FROM

THE

PUBLISHER

y the time you read this issue of SPAN, Americans will have at last begun the complex and extended process to select the next President of the United States.

President George W. Bush is constitutionally ineligible to seek reelection and Vice President Dick Cheney has declined to run for president-so for the first time in 80 years, neither the incumbent President nor vice president is seeking election. As a result, there are several candidates in both political parties seeking the presidential nomination.

The process for selecting President Bush's successor, already underway for most candidates for over a year, now moves into high gear-and the consequence of the coming political party caucuses and primary elections will be a narrowing of the field of candidates. In fact, due to the early scheduling of these preliminary state-by-state selections in 2008, the candidates effectively chosen to represent the major parties will likely be known in February.

Americans will then participate in a long campaign season that will continue through the national party nominating conventions (the Democrats will meet in Denver, Colorado, from August 25-28, the Republicans will meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in Minnesota, from September 1-4) and then on to the November 4 general elections. After the formalities of the Electoral College are complete, the next President of the United States will be sworn in on January 20,2009.

It's a much longer process than an Indian national election-or for that matter for any other nation's election process. Indians often remark to Americans about the long and complex selection process for American political party leadership that takes place before, rather than after, the election as in India. However, we share in common a com-

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mitment to political party and leadership selection decisions that are made democratically, in free and fair processes based on universal franchise.

Americans are accustomed to engaging in political discussions easily and are usually glad to offer our interpretations of America's political process. Throughout this election year, SPAN will feature articles with unique insights and interpretations of the U.S election process In this issue, "A Fresh Start" by Michelle Austein explains why this is an unusual election and what many Americans are thinking about as they observe the candidates and vote in the primaries. We're also offering short articles explaining the primary election process and checking in with a very enthusiastic new American citizen, Malavika Jagannathan, originally from Bangalore, who will be voting in her first U.S. presidential election.

Because understanding our world requires recognition of the timeless as well as current affairs, we are including in this issue an article by Angus McDonald about his travels around South and Central Asia to take photographs of selected historic conservation projects that have been undertaken in recent years by the United States, with local partners. The Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation tangibly demonstrates America's enduring commitment to preserve and protect mankind's heritage and underscores for this region's young people the region's deep common traditions.

An interview with two experts about this year's U.S. presidential election.

A

A more diverse American society has produced a wide range of candidates for President in an unusual election.

The 2008 U.S. presidential election is unusual because neither an incumbent president nor vice president is running for the highest office in the land. Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, and Jerry Hagstrom, contributing editor of the National Journal, discuss what's in store for the 2008 election season.

Can you tell us why Americans and international audiences are paying so much attention so early to the 2008 presidential race and why this race seems to be different than previous U.S. elections?

Cook: It's really the first one in 80 years that we haven't had a sitting president or vice president seeking the presidency. To have a wide-open race for both [the Democratic and Republican parties] is really extraordinary.

Usually you have a president or vice president on one side that is generally going to win [his party's nomination] easily, or maybe just two people running, and then a big field of lots of candidates on the other side. This time, it's big fields on both sides. It's really an amazing election cycle. We have never seen anything like it.

Hagstrom: I think it's also both a fun race to watch and an important race for people in other countries. And it's important to start watching it earlier because it's so unclear who will be the candidates and, of course, who will finally win the election. <t ~ Candidates began raising money earlier than in past is elections.

Part of the reason is that no incumbent is runco ~ ning. Are there other reasons?

Cook: It's harder and harder to reach voters than it used to be. Twenty and 30 years ago, you had three television networks, and you could pretty much reach everyone that way. Now with cable and satellite television and hundreds [L

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Voters, most of them university students, form lines to register and cast ballots in Durham, New Hampshire during the last presidential elections in 2004.

in American history. Do you have thoughts on why that is happening this season and if this sets any type of precedent ~ for future elections? ~ Hagstrom: Well, I think that one reason is because the socie~ ty has evolved and is really more diverse and more accepting of ~il: !j>! diversity. Twenty or 30 years ago, it would have been hard for o these [candidates] to get taken seriously.

Cook: A Gallup poll earlier this year said 94 percent of Americans would vote for a qualified candidate who is an African American. Eighty-eight percent would vote for a qualified candidate who is a woman. Those statistics wouldn't have existed eight or 12 or 16 or 20 years ago. Our country is more diverse now than it used to be. It's more accepting of diversity now than it used to be. Yes, we have had women run before. We have had African Americans run for president, but they never had a real chance.

This time they are running and they have a real chance, and that A Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney partakes in a traditional campaign event, cuddling a baby, eight-month-old says something about how America has changed.

Harrison Rayner, in Kingston, New Hampshire in July, 2007.

Many people in the United States expect Iraq will dominate campaigns. What other issues are we hearing about? and hundreds of channels, and with a lot of other distractions, it's Cook: I think Iraq is going to be a big factor, but I'm not sure. harder to reach voters; it's hard to get a message across to them. We don't know where this situation will be in the fall of 2008.

Hagstrom: Many, many years ago, people used to campaign How the economy is doing could be an issue. The environment at big events, or they campaigned at big factories, and they got a and global warming have finally come of age. It's finally the big turnout. Today you can't do that. You have to realize that issue that some people-for 20, 30 years-have been working to Americans are working in offices. They don't really turn out for make it. But at the end of the day, most voters are evaluating these big events. So you have to reach people through television people, not issues. and radio, and that requires money to buy adveltising.

Hagstrom: In the end, what really matters in a presidential Cook: In the United States, people are really voting on the race is character. It's a question of whom do you trust. candidate-the person-and not the party. That requires a lot Many of the states have moved their primary elections more spending than you would see in a parliamentary form of earlier on the calendar. It seems like a large number are government. going to have their election on February 5. What impact does Hagstrom: Because we use a primary system of selecting our this have on the campaign season? candidates, that means that a candidate can really come from Cook: Well, it's ironic that a lot of states have moved their prinowhere. He or she does not have to have a long history within maries forward to February 5 so that they could have a role. And the party in order to get a nomination. But it takes money and now, so many have done so that most of those states and people people and time to reach those party members before the pri- aren't really going to have much of a say. When you have 21 or mary takes place.

22 or 23 out of 50 states, including some of the largest states in This year's candidates seem to be among the most diverse the union, all voting on the same day, it's kind of hard for india:.

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hat are Primaries and Caucuses? rimaries and caucuses are held in aliSO states under rules set by the political parties and the state governments to help determine the Republican and Democratic parties' candidates for President.

Caucuses gauge support for candidates through local meetings of party members, while primary elections gauge support through statewide direct voting by people who have registered as members of one party or the other.

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These events determine which candidates will receive a state's votes at the political parties' national conventions later in the year. The primary voters are actually choosing a group of delegates pledged to a particular candidate, and trusting them to vote for that person at the convention. State party leaders who support the winning candidates select the delegates It's easy to track the primary process because the news media

report how many delegates each candidate has won in each state and how many more they need to "clinch the nomination."

Historically, the Iowa caucus in the Midwest and the New Hampshire primary in New England, held in January of each four-year presidential election cycle, have been the first two events. This has given these two small states a lot of power, because if candidates do well there, they can attract more support and money for the later pri-

maries; if they do poorly they may drop out of the race. This year, some of the bigger states have pushed to hold their primaries ear1ier so that they can have more influence in the nomination process They have done this despite threats from the national party leaders that delegates chosen in such early primaries may not get a full vote at the conventions. As of early January, the 2008 primary calendar was not yet settled.

-L.K.L and S.G.

-==_ -==_=====-_=====-_=-===-History of the Presidential Primary System

=~

residential primaries originated in the United States at the turn of the 20th century as an outgrowth of the Progressive Movement. Reformers fighting corruption at that time objected to links between political bosses and big business. Primaries became part of their reform effort to return the government to the people.

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Florida enacted the first presidential primary law in 1901, giving party officials the option of holding an election to choose national conI

vention delegates, but there was no provision for placing the names of presidential candidates on the ballot. Oregon became the first state to

For more information: Background on the New Hampshire Primary http://www. pol iticallibrary.org/Current-Primary/background.aspx Iowa's first-in-the-nation

status

hold a preferential primary vote for president in 1910, and by 1912, a dozen states had enacted presidential primary laws. Over the years, that number increased, with 17 states holding primaries in 1968 and 30 in 1976. By 2000, and again in 2008, the number will be 41 states, with the rest having caucuses. -Stuart Gorin, USINFO

http://www.sos.state.ia.us/press/2007/2007_02_20.html vidual states to get personal attention. My guess is that we will know who the [main parties'] candidates are, if not after February 5, then maybe the set of primaries a week or so after that.

Then, we'll have the campaign kind of go into remission for a little. And people will focus on other things for two or three months, and then the campaign will sort of resume and pick back up all the way through the November election.

Hagstrom: So far, it looks like the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary ...held before these February 5 primaries, will still be important in giving a signal of whom the American people like.

What do undecided voters look for, and do we have any sense yet of what they will be looking for in this season?

Cook: They are looking for character, or sort of comfort. It's like you are trying to decide whom you want to invite into your living room and be on your television set for the next four years. Voters understand that they are not even ~ aware of a lot of the issues that presidents have ~ to face. It's whom they feel comfortable with, ~ I who is going to make decisions about things <..i that they have no way of even knowing exist. ~ Hagstrom: I think that, in terms of those voters, one issue that will matter is where the war in Iraq stands when we really get into the campaign season. It could be their dominant issue or maybe something else will be dominant.

How will the 2008 race affect U.S. foreign policy?

Hagstrom: The Democratic candidates have all said that they would make changes in the policy in Iraq, while the Republican candidates at this point are differing about whether they would follow the course that President [George W.] Bush has laid out or what changes they would make.

Cook: I think the President of the United States represents the face of America to the rest of the world. It's an opportunity to start afresh.

Would either of you be able to suggest whether or not voter turnout will be on the rise?

Cook: We've actually seen voter turnout rise for the last six or eight years for a couple of reasons. We used to hear people say, "It doesn't matter who wins." Well, you don't hear that anymore because, I think, people understand whether it's terrorism or

whether it's the war or poverty or Hurricane Katrina, people believe now that it matters who's President of the United States.

Some of the comparisons that are made of U.S. voter turnout, they're not really fair comparisons. You look at the United States and you think of municipal, county, state, federal, primary elections, general elections, in some cases run-offs, special elections.

Q.

A Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (left), and fellow Democrat, Senator Barack Obama, respond to a question during a candidates' debate at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas in November, 2007.

Americans are simply asked to vote more often than people in other countries. I think there are over 600,000 elective offices in the United States. It's really not a fair comparison because Americans do vote more than any other people in the world. It's just that they're spread over a lot more different elections.

Hagstrom: People do realize that it does matter who wins, and I would think that the voters would be quite highly motivated to turn out, but it also may depend on who the candidates are and whether the base of each party really cares about electing the person who has been nominated.

We've seen technology playing more of a role in how candidates are discussed, especially informally on the Web. Do you think that affects how candidates campaign?

Cook: I think if you looked at overall campaign budgets, you

Left: A Republican presidential hopeful, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee plays a bass guitar with a band during a rally at an Ohio school in November, 2007. would find a larger but still very, very small percentage of [candidates'] campaign budgets devoted to new technologies.

Hagstrom: [The Internet] is very good for organizing your supporters; it's very good for raising money, but it is not good

While the United States has a single federal government, the ~ country contains: â&#x20AC;˘ 50 state governments, â&#x20AC;˘ more than 300,000 elected positions with local governments (county, city and town), â&#x20AC;˘ and nearly 200,000 special purpose districts such as school districts and water "Job creation isn't that difficult. districts. ... Elect me and you've just Consequently, U.S. voters are created one. " asked to vote not just for president and Congress but also for school boards, college boards, thousands of state and local utility boards, and other posigovernment officials, including: tions of public trust. state legislators, state governors Some of the more unusual and Iieutenant governors, state elected positions are: county coroner, members of irrigation auditors, county commissioners, mayors of towns and cities, districts and town cemetery commissions, and tree warden, the aldermen, judges, constables, magistrates, sheriffs, justices of official overseeing the removal of the peace, and members of hazardous trees on town property.

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for persuasion. The exception to that has been the development of YouTube, a visual medium that is on the Internet.

Every campaign now has some young person with a camera following the opposition candidate. It comes back to this issue with character. [Americans] want to see who this person is in an unguarded moment. And some of these unguarded moments occur when the candidate is speaking to a friendly audience.

And so this development of filming all the candidates all the time and putting any mistakes on YouTube is, in a way, very revealing. I don't think voters should think that it is the only aspect of that candidate, but it has become an important part of these campaigns.

In U.S. elections, the outcome of the presidential race comes down to a handful of swing states, and we generally see the same few states being targeted again and again because they could vote either Democratic or Republican .

Do we have a sense that this time around it's going to be the same handful of influential states, any new states?

Cook: To a large extent it's the same states. If you look at the 2000 George W. Bush-AI Gore race and the 2004 George W. Bush-John Kerry race, there are only three states in the whole union that were different from one time to the next. Gore was able to win both New Mexico and Iowa but lost New Hampshire, and Kerry won New Hampshire and lost New Mexico and Iowa.

I think it's largely going to be the same states, but we're seeing Democrats moving up a little bit more in some of the southwestern states. We'll see New Hampshire, which used to be a very conservative, Republican-oriented state, has become less and less conservative and more Democratic. But at the same time, you're seeing some other states that are getting less Democratic and more Republican. Louisiana, for example. West Virginia-we're

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~ Left: A Democratic ~ presidential hopeful, o former Senator John Edwards talks to potential voters at a house party in Nashua, New Hampshire in July, 2007.

Below: Rudy Giuliani (right), New York City's former mayor and a Republican presidential hopeful, poses for a photo with university student Dean Schwartz (left) during a campaign visit at a Cuban restaurant in Miami, Florida, in October, 2007.

seeing its voting patterns change and getting hard for Democrats, and it used to be a safe Democratic state.

Hagstrom: What I'm expecting in this election is a lot of fighting for the rural voter. Rural America is generally regarded as Republican territory, but it isn't always Republican, and the Democrats did quite well in the congressional races in 2006.

States have been spending a lot of time and money since 2000 looking at how they conduct their elections. Do you think this is going to affect voter turnout?

Cook: Voter turnout in 2004 was higher than it was in 2000.

In the last two mid-term elections, voter turnout has gone up. As a country we do not spend a whole lot of money on our voterelection administration process, and as a result we have a system that has got a lot of flaws. It's not fraud, contrary to what a lot of people believe.

If Americans wanted to spend more money on vote counting and election administration, we could have a really, really good system, but do you want to do that at the expense of, say, education? Health care? Our responsibilities around the world in terms of foreign aid? In the great scheme of things, having an exact, precise count on elections when the vast majority of them

http://cookpolitical.com/ National Journal http://nationaljournal.com/

aren't even close-that's just never been a real high priority for people in terms of allocating their money.

Hagstrom: One of the reasons you see so many stories about these variations in the elections is that our elections are run by the state governments. The federal government gets involved only when there is a major problem. So, you do have a lot of variation from state to state and county to county.

Another factor is that we have this [past] legacy of not allowing African Americans in the southern states to vote. And nobody wants to go back to a system in which we are restricting the right to vote. There is a resistance to becoming so strict that you might be preventing somebody from voting. And this is a very important issue in a country that is as diverse in population as the United States. ~

Trends in American public opinion http://www.pollingreport.com/

Michelle Austein is a writer with the U.S. Bureau of International Information Programs.

U.S presidential election on YouTube -nttP7fwww.youtube.com7results?路s-e-a-rc~n _-q-u-er-y =-u.-s.-+-p-re-siOenfial + election + &search = Search

Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

For more information: The Cook Political Report

for the An Indian American describes her excitement about casting her first ballot.

he right to vote is one of the most basic privileges in a democracy. In the United States, anyone who is an American citizen and at least 18 years old is eligible to vote.

For first-time voters, casting that inaugural ballot is a monumental occasion. It is a chance for them to exercise their constitutionally protected right and to participate in political decision making.

Malavika Jagannathan, 23, felt this enthusiasm about voting for the first time. As a reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Jagannathan was frustrated with covering elections on the job but being unable to participate herself.

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Jackie Haggett, a student at the University of New Hampshire, swears to a town election official that her application information is correct as she registers to vote in Durham, New Hampshire, before the 2004 elections.

Originally from Bangalore, Jagannathan moved to the United States with her family in 1995, settling in College Station, Texas.

From an early age, her family stressed the importance of political participation. "My mom always said that although our passports were from a different country, you had to be an active participant in any society you are in," Jagannathan says.

She was involved in politics long before she was eligible to vote. In high school she volunteered for the Democratic Party and the Green Party, handing out flyers and organizing voter registration drives at school. "I would set up these little booths, but I couldn't register them [other students]

Right: Malavika Jagannathan, a Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter, at work in the newsroom. She will get to vote in a U.S. presidential election for the first time this year.

Below: Harvard Law School student Sarah Isgur at her desk at the Romney for President Headquarters in Boston in March, 2007. Many students in the United States are involved in campaigning and fundraising for political parties and candidates.

myself because I wasn't registered to vote," she says.

According to Jagannathan, her status as a noncitizen actually inspired her to become more involved in politics. "I knew that I wasn't able to [vote], but I could definitely still contribute in ways other than voting," she says. "I think that's partially why I was pretty into politics."

On December 14,2006, Jagannathan became a U.S. citizen.

The next day she visited the Green Bay city hall and checked the "Yes" box on the voter registration application that asks, "Are you a citizen of the United States of America?"

Even though it was almost two months until the next election, Jagannathan was eager to sign up. "I figured I'd been talking about voting for so long, the first thing I should do is register," she says.

Two months later, Jagannathan voted in a local primary election with a few initiatives on the ballot. "I was very excited. My polling place is a church around the comer from where I live, and it's run by these little old ladies. I told them it was my first time to vote, and they got all excited, too," she says.

After covering several elections as a reporter and volunteering for a political party, it was a relief to finally participate as a voter.

"I had sort of built it up for a long time, and I think, especially after the November 2006 elections, when it was killing me to sit here and cover the elections and not be able to participate, it kind of fulfilled that in a little way," she says.

Even though not all of her favored candidates won that day, Jagannathan made a vow to friends and family that she would try to vote in every subsequent election. "It just felt that I was a part of something," she explains. "And I think not having that for a long time, I realized that having it is pretty important."

According to Jagannathan, new citizens may value the right to vote even more than U.S.-born citizens. "I think that when you're just sort of born with these rights, you maybe don't think about them as much," she says. "When you have to live without them and then you get them, it becomes a lot more important." ~ Rebecca ZeiJman is a writer with International Information Programs.

the

u.s.

Bureau

2008 Election: Main contenders http://news.bbc.co.uk/21hi/americaS/5006788.stm Background on the New Hampshire primary http://www .pol iti callibrary. org/Current-Primary /background .aspx American voters http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/voting.html

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Preserving Winter's .

M rac es of ~K~DยงJ~O~Y enius has many guises.

In the case of Wilson Bentley, genius took the form of a magnificent obsession, an allabsorbing, life-long passion to record the exquisite anatomy of snow crystals and preserve them for posterity.

It is a rare person who remains unmoved by a first snowfall. Snow is magic: it draws us in, jostles memory and stirs desire. It enchants. For Snowflake Bentley, snow cast a lifelong spell. Like [American naturalists] John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, whose contemporary he

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was, Bentley was incapable of indifference to the world around him.

When there was a winter storm and snow was flying, he was in the fields or hills; he could not stay indoors.

His delight in snow made him an astute observer of it; it then made him an infectiously enthusiastic guide. Exuberance gave him passion, stamina and a lasting voice to speak out for small beauties.

Wilson Bentley was born on a farm in the state of Vermont in 1865, just as the American Civil War was ending. He was captivated by the beauty of snow crystals even

§ Wilson Bentley demonstrates in 1917 ~ how he photographed snowflakes. He ~ captured the images of more than 5,000 ~ individual snow crystals in his lifetime.

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supremely happy. Passionate about ~ snowflakes, he devoted his life to their .~study and preservation.

I ~ "I found that snowflakes were miracles ~ of beauty," he once said to an interview~ er. "It seems a shame that this beauty j should not be seen and appreciated by ~ others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever i repeated." He was as stricken by their ~ impermanence as struck by their beauty: "When a snowflake melted," he lamented, "that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind." One snowstorm brought him the most exquisite crystal he had seen to date, "a wonderful little splinter of ice, incredibly fragile," but despite his care, the crystal was broken while transferring it to a slide. Even after many years had passed, he was to declare the loss of the snow crystal "a tragedy," and only with effort would he be able to hold back his tears.

Bentley was insistent upon saving his "snow blossoms" for the rest of the world; he was possessed, he said, by a "great desire to show people something of this wonderful loveliness, an ambition

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when very young, and managed to per- Nature's realm in every direction, the suade his parents to buy him a camera broader and grander becomes the vista and microscope. By the age of 19, he had opened up to the view." taken the very first photomicrograph of a Bentley could not remember a time snow crystal [that showed a magnified when he did not love the snow. Always, image of a snowflake]. He was irretrievfrom the beginning, he said, "it was the ably smitten. "Amazed and thrilled at snowflakes that fascinated me most." their matchless loveliness," Bentley From the first snowfall to the last, he wrote many years later, "the work soon became so all-absorbing that I have continued it with undiminished enthusiasm all these years. No words can convey the least idea of the intense enjoyment, the almost countless thrills, these winter studies have afforded me." Unlike John Muir, who went from the exploration of the vast wilderness lands to the apprehension of self, Bentley went from the study of the infinitesimal to contemplation of the grand: "The deeper one enters into the study of Nature," he believed, "the further one ventures into and along the by- § paths that, like a mystic maze, thread ~

Bentley is famous for his declaration that no two snowflakes are alike.

~ ~

Left: Tourists frolic in the season's first snow at Kufri, on the outskirts of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, December, 2006.

Right: Photographs of complex, beautiful snowflakes show Nature's most remarkable works of art.

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to become, in some measure, its preserver." Just as Muir and Roosevelt could not feel as they did about the American wilderness and not do everything within their powers to save it, so too Bentley looked at snowflakes, loved them, and then did all he could do to preserve their beauty. Snow crystals existed for a reason, he was convinced: "Perhaps they come to us not only to reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Creation but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade away.

"But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent. . .it fades but to come again."

(Author Henry David Thoreau, who died only a few years before Bentley was born, also had a near-mystical response to snowflakes: "How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are gener-

freezing cold as the snows fell, capturing crystals mid-flight, transferring them to glass plates, and photographing them before they could melt. Later, when he published their delicate images in the journals of science, his exuberance danced across the pages.

Enthusiastic descriptions of the shapes and origins of snow crystals, which bubbled up irrepressibly in his writings, were utterly out of keeping with the more circumspect language of most scientists.

Indeed, Bentley's language would be stricken from any modern scientific journal; even a whiff of it would result in withering reviews and raised eyebrows from more measured colleagues. Strong emotion, more often than not, is at crosspurposes with accurate scientific description. Enthusiasm is meant to be kept on a

photographic images he had chosen to include in the paper. They were, he said, "marvelously beautiful objects of nature ... the feast of [their] beauty fills these pages." Snow crystals Numbers 716 and 718, he proclaimed, were "very choice and beautiful," and Numbers 722 and 723 were "charming patterns in snow architecture." He went on, enraptured by what he described as the "gems from God's own laboratory": "Number 785 is so rarely beautiful," he enthused, and Number 781 is "wonderfully beautiful," while the "great beauty of Number 837 will appeal to all lovers of the beautiful."

Other crystals were "exquisitely" or "exceptionally beautiful." The snowstorm of February 1902, he gushed, contributed "choice examples of snow crystal architecture, as souvenirs of the skill of the

ated!" he wrote in his journal. "I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."

Nature, he reflected with hope, had "not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart?")

Bentley's calling was to preserve the snow crystals and, once they were preserved, to give their loveliness an exuberant voice. He did the former with a patience that is nearly impossible to imagine, painstakingly taking photographs of more than 5,000 individual crystals during his lifetime. Winter after New England winter, he stood in the

tight rein and love itself on a short lead, although one could argue, as [British intellectual] Cyril Connolly did, that he who is too much a master of his passions is reason's slave.

Bentley need not have worried about such enslavement. In one scientific paper, published in 1902, Bentley used the words "beauty" or "beautiful" nearly 40 times in nine pages. The paper was about the atmospheric conditions affecting the size and form of snow crystals, as well as the classification of crystals and their occurrence and distribution in relation to various drifts and types of clouds and temperatures. But Bentley also wrote about the loveliness of the snow crystals whose

Divine Artist."

Bentley was unable to contain himself, even when making scientific hypotheses.

In one scientific paper, he started his speculations about the growth of crystals in a straightforward way: "I assume that the configurations of the exterior portions of the crystals sUlTounding the nucleus must depend largely upon the initial and subsequent movement, or the flights, downward, or horizontally, of the growing crystals within the clouds," he wrote. The objectivity of his language, to this point, is indistinguishable from that of any other scientist writing in the same journal. He continued for a while in a dispassionate vein: "We must therefore make a careful

study and analysis of the interior portions of crystals .... These interior details reveal more or less completely the preexisting forms that the crystals assumed during their youth in cloudland."

But then Bentley's joy in the beauty of snow crystals breaks through: "Was ever life history written in more dainty or fairy-like hieroglyphics?" he asked. "How charming the task of trying to decipher them." It would be impossible, he concluded, to find the ultimate snowflake, though that would not keep him from ardent pursuit. "It is extremely improbable that anyone has as yet found, or, indeed, ever will find, the one preeminently beautiful and symmetrical snow crystal that nature has probably fashioned when in her most artistic mood."

Duncan Blanchard, an atmospheric sci-

crystals, he rhapsodized, had to be seen to be believed. "The beautiful branching one that fell December 9, 1921," with his usual zeal, and Number 4215 was "thrillingly beautiful." He wished that all readers of the journal in which his latest photographs appeared "could see and enjoy the snowflake masterpieces of this winter."

The images of the snow crystals reproduced in the article are indeed beautiful, and Bentley's ebullient portrayals very much make one wish one could have been there during the snowstorms as he captured the crystals falling to earth. Who

entist who has written the definitive biography of Snowflake Bentley, likens Bentley's search for the "preeminently beautiful snow crystal" to Sir Galahad's for the Holy Grail. This quest, believes Blanchard, "sustained and nourished Bentley with undiminished enthusiasm until ills dying day. This was exuberance at its best."

Certainly, 25 years after writing about the "preeminently beautiful" snow crystal, Snowflake Bentley was still enthralled.

And still looking. Subsequent winters provided him a wealth of new crystal photographs, and 40 of the new "snow gems," he was sure, could be described as "wonderful" or "masterpieces."

Individual

would not have wanted to be there during the 1927 snowflake season as described

by Bentley, especially during the "wonderfully brilliant closing" of one late February day recalled by him? On that date, he exclaimed, "the clouds for a while showered the earth with starry, fern-like gems such as thrill, amaze and delight snowflake lovers." His delight is contagious.

Bentley is famous for his declaration that no two snowflakes are alike. He and other scientists knew that the infinite varieties of temperature and humidity conditions act together in such a way as to idiosyncratically notch crystals on their downward flight; unless collected at very

high altitude before its journey is done, each snow crystal will be unique. This is true even of crystals artificially created in laboratory snow tanks. No two will be alike; each will carry the physical history of its individual travels. A single ice crystal contains some 10 sextillion molecules; therefore, "considering all the ways those molecules can be arranged," argues one contemporary scientist, "the odds against any two completely identical snowflakes having fallen since the atmosphere formed some four billion years ago are enormous." Another has stated that "it could snow day and night until the sun

It seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others.

dies before two snow crystals would be exactly, precisely alike." This is a marvelous, if unprovable, thought. Snowflake Bentley intuited such singularity and loved it.

Bentley's enthusiasm for snowflakes would be simply a footnote in the annals of enthusiasts and eccentrics were it not for the results of his sustained passion, for it was a passion which allowed him to withstand the chill of both winter and his Vermont neighbors. He endured the inevitable frustrations and failures involved in capturing and photograpillng a solitary snow crystal before it melted into nothingness because he felt an urgency that others did not. Bentley's temperament and

sensibilities impelled him to share beauty with those less exposed to it and to proselytize those who felt less acutely than he.

His exuberance brought to millions a loveliness that fell from the skies. He saw, he felt, and he captured a tiny gorgeousness for history. No bit of Nature ever had a better Boswell.

Bentley loved snowflakes above all else, but he also made important contributions to the understanding of other phenomena of nature. He observed and carefully described the date, appearance, and intensities of more than 600 auroras [sporadic radiant emissions from the upper

naturalists, photographers, scientists and jewelry designers at Tiffany. There is no equivalent of his photographic collection, nor is it likely that there will ever be one.

When Bentley died in 1931, even his Vermont neighbors had a sense of the importance of his life and passing. "John Ruskin declared that genius is only a superior power of seeing," wrote his hometown newspaper. "Wilson Bentley

atmosphere] and took meticulous measurements of nearly 350 individual raindrops. He was a pioneer photographer of clouds, frost and dew, and his work on cloud physics, in the assessment of Blanchard and other atmospheric scientists, was 40 years ahead of its time.

The people in his New England village, however, regarded him as a little cracked.

Being Vermont farmers and less than transfixed by snow, they found Bentley's intoxication odd. Why take pictures of snowflakes, they asked, when "you can't sell them and you can't eat them."

Fortunately, the American Meteorological Society disagreed and awarded the selfeducated dairy farmer its first research

was a living example of this type of genius. He saw something in the snowflakes which other men failed to see, not because they could not see, but because they had not the patience and the understanding to look."

Nor had they his capacity for joy or exuberant pursuit. "So long as eyes shall see and kindle at the beautiful in Nature,"

Bentley said, his camera and pen would be there. It was his capacity to be kindled, of course, that set Bentley apart.

His urgency and passion ensured that his message would be both seen and heard.

The physicist W.J. Humphreys, one of the many eminent scientists who were deeply impressed by his work, wrote the text to accompany Bentley's photographic masterpiece, Snow Crystals. In it, he

When a snowflake melted, just that much beauty was gone, without leaving a record.

For more information: Un Wilson 1:Serliley http://snowflakebenti

ey.com

-------

All about snowflakes http://snowcrystals.

com

observed that Bentley had pursued his life's work with the "insistent ardor of the lover and the tireless patience of the scientist," that he had "made it possible for others to share at leisure, and by the comfortable fireside, the joys that hour after hour bound him to his microscope and his camera in an ice cold shed."

Bentley brought indoors an otherwise invisible beauty from the skies.

Bentley's was a magnificent obsession, plumb-line true and enduring. Just days before he died, he wrote in his weather notebook for the last time. "Cold west wind afternoon," the entry reads.

"Snow flying." ~

Bentley's snowflake collection at the Buffalo

grant His photomicrographs of snow

Museum of Science

crystals made their way into scientific journals-60 were published in Nature alone-as well as into popular newspapers and magazines, and they influenced

http://www .bentleysciencebuff.

org/

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychologist and the author of Exuberance: The Passion for Life.

NASA's Snow and Ice Data Center http://nsidc .org/ cryosphere

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Edison, New

Je~sey

An Indian American Town From indoor cricket to a Hindu temple, pan shops, dosa and biryani stalls, and saris in the store windows, this eastern U.S. suburban area could be an Indian municipality. riving down Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey, is like going through Lajpat Nagar market in New Delhi-albeit with some key differences. Chock-ablock with sari showrooms, grocery stores selling curry pata, and Bollywood music shops ...even the mannequins have the same plastic hair. Though the streets are crowded in the early evenings, they are not, however, packed with people jostling for a spot to examine street vendors' wares.

Also, parking spots are plentiful, and there are only a few blasts from car horns.

D

This is "Little India," and like the Chinatowns and Little Italys that came before it, it is the expression of an immigrant culture that is finally establishing itself in the melting pot of America. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Edison's population of about a 100,000 was 17.5 percent Indian American. That is the highest percentage of any municipality in the United States, and growing. Edison's mayor, Jun Choi, estimates that Indians and Indian Americans now make up one-third of the city.

It has come a long way from the small grocery store and video shop outpost that residents remember from the 1980s. Now the Indian section of Oak Tree Road stretches for about three kilometers and boasts a designer clothing mall with brands like Ritu Beri's. Patrons of all races and skin colors shop for bangles and halal meat.

The 40-minute train ride to New York City from the Edison Metro Center station is the biggest reason for the Indian diaspora in Edison. With cheaper home prices and the added bonus of backyards, Indians working in New York flocked to the town

Left: Children play basketball at the Swaminarayan Temple in Iselin, New Jersey.

Mahendra Bohra and his friends sell their own brand of cricket gear.

Above: A practice session at the Dreamcricket facility in Hillsborough, New Jersey.

Edison is an 83-square-kilometer township famous as the site of inventor Thomas Alva Edison's laboratory, where he developed the incandescent light bulb and made the first sound recording. The town's Web site (http://www.edisonnj.org/) boasts that its "high achieving public schools, central location, vibrant business environment and diverse community make Edison a great place to live, work and raise a family." Edison has three libraries and 17 schools for fewer than 14,000 students. Parks are a big thing. The town has 25 of them, and a "Find the Perfect Park" page on the municipal Web site.

New Jersey was one of the original 13 American states, and one of its residents, Francis Hopkinson, designed the first U.S. flag, with 13 stars and stripes. The state is the home of Princeton and Rutgers universities, the Newark International Airport, and the entertainment center of Atlantic City.

throughout the 1990s and the last decade.

Indian-centric businesses are flourishing, and not just the dosa and chicken tikka restaurants. You can buy cricket bats, learn Bollywood dancing and tryon wedding saris within a 48-kilometer radius. Big Indian companies like Infosys, Birlasoft and Ranbaxy have offices in the area, a sign of prosperity that is not immediately apparent on Oak Tree Road.

Pradip Kothari, owner of a travel agency and an activist for the Indian community, helped see it through the worst times in the early 1990s, when local prejudices against proliferating Indian American businesses led to his brand new agency office being burned by vandals. Other businesses were destroyed, too, and the community was afraid. Kothari knew that something must be done. "We come in this country like everyone else and want to have the American dream," says Kothari, 61, who arrived in the United States in 1970 and had just moved to Edison at the time the trouble started. First, he helped to get the businesses together and set up a night watch program, which became so strong they sta11ed chasing some vandals down so they could be arrested. The community also brought their grievances to the courts and established a successful Navaratri festival for the Gujarati population, attracting thousands of attendees each year.

Though Kothari acknowledges that some tensions remain, he believes the local community has largely embraced the Indians.

For instance, Dr. Sudanshu Prasad, an Indian American physician, is a township council member, and Kaizen Technologies, an Indian American-owned firm with offices in both countries, was just named business of the year by the Edison Chamber of Commerce.

"The Indian community has brought in a wealth of diversity to the township of Edison," says Mayor Choi. "The community has several prominent doctors ...as well as a large number of professionals in the information technology and finance industries. The increased global trade between our country and India has been partly responsible for the rapid growth of the Indian community in Edison. It will continue to bring more technology-based business to Edison and, consequently, enrich our economy as welL" Kumar Balani publishes Biz India magazine, based in nearby East Brunswick, which details success stories of Indian business people in the United States and dishes out investment advice.

When pitching to advertisers, Balani has a powerful set of figures behind him. First, he says that the Indian population in New Jersey grew from 170,000 in 2000 to about 270,000 in 2007, according to his research. Also, according to the Indian American Center for Political Awareness, almost 40 percent of all Indians in the United States have a master's, doctorate or other professional degree (five times the national average) and a 2003 study by Merrill Lynch found that one in every 26 Indians in the United States is a millionaire. When he relates these figAbove left: A South Indian restaurant in Edison, New Jersey.

Center Left: Raoji Patel at the Mama Pan shop on Oak Tree Road in Edison.

Bottom Left: A chef makes kebabs at a restaurant on Oak Tree Road.

Above: Indian Americans stroll across Oak Tree Road in the evening.

Right: A sari shop on Oak Tree Road, center of the Indian American neighborhood.

Right: Leelamma Mathew, an immigrant from Kerala, works as a cashier at a K-Mart department store in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

ures to non-Indian advertisers, Balani says that 99 percent of them respond, '''Wow! Really?' So we ask them, 'Is this a market you want to get into?'" His business is growing as more advertisers answer "yes"-from 5,000 copies in the paper's first run in 2002 to 30,000 now.

Other businesses are growing as well. Mahendra Bohra, 31, is a co-founder of Dreamcricket, which is expanding its Brown and Willis cricket gear brand. It's a long way from when he made his own Web site, dreamcricket.com, as a hobby when he graduated in 2000 from Syracuse University in New York state. Taking inspiration from the American pastime of fantasy football-in which fans create their own "team" of players from actual football teams and compete on line based on those players' real-life performances during games-he created a fantasy cricket game.

Soon, however, he and his friends realized they could turn this passion into something more.

Now, New Jersey residents can play cricket year-round in the indoor cricket pitch at the store Bohra and his pals set up in Hillsborough, near Edison. It features $8,000 worth of automatic pitching machines with 25 variations of speed and movement.

In addition to running cricket news and the on-line game, Dreamcricket also sells DVDs of World Cups and other famous matches. Bohra, who came from Bombay to attend university in the United States in the 1990s, lives in Princeton, New Jersey, from where he helps run the business. Cricket products are sold on line and out of stores in New Jersey and Fremont, California.

Though Bohra and most of his friends in the company still have their day jobs (he works for a technology firm), he believes Dreamcricket will turn into a full-time commitment as America gets more familiar with cricket as a sport.

Atul Huckoo has similar hopes for the Edison Cricket Club, which made it to the statewide cricket play-offs in 2007. A Kashmiri who lived in the United States as a child and returned in 1999 after other stops around the world, Huckoo, 47, directs advertising sales for a syndicated television network, Imaginasian TV, which has programming from India, China and South Korea. Though he used to play cricket, he now spends his spare time managing the club and has roped in sponsors such as Emirates Airlines, which provides general funding, and Kingfisher, which provides free beer. "We either celebrate with chilled beer or drown our sorrows in it," he says, laughing.

The cricket league for the entire state of New Jersey started in 1994 with 32 teams and has grown to 44. With sponsors, Huckoo has attracted better players, and with support from the city authorities, he has access to a general purpose field large enough to play the game properly, instead of the baseball fields used earlier.

With so many South Asians around, interest in cricket is high and Edison has movie theaters that show India-Pakistan matches. Huckoo realizes it is a challenge to get average Americans interested in the game. Though For more information: they don't usually watch the Edison matches, non-Indians do walk past when a game is on, stop to http!/www.edisonnj.org/ look and ask questions. Huckoo New Jersey tries his best to answer, he says, http!lwww.state.nj.us/ but, "It's difficult for Americans

Above: Jagdish Sadana (left) and Padma Khanna at the Indianica Dance School in Edison, New Jersey.

Right: Padma Khanna and her students practice at the dance school.

Below: Kumar Balani at his Biz India newspaper office in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Below right: A Bollywood concert in East Brunswick.

to grasp how six to seven hours are dedicated to the game." The shorter Twenty20 form would bring wider popularity, he thinks.

Volunteers of the Edison Swaminarayan temple in nearby Iselin are also familiar with answering lots of questions.

Neighbors ask about Hinduism during the annual fundraiser for local hospitals and during the Diwali feast, when temple members invite their non-Hindu friends. The fundraiser, in which volunteers pledge to walk a certain distance in exchange for donations, "allows us and the community to explore one another and understand one another," says Siddharth Dubal, a second-generation Indian American and a lawyer.

Another second-generation Indian American, college freshman Vinay Limbachia, answers questions about reincarnation in

his role as a leader in the Hindu Student Council at nearby Rutgers University. "There are some misconceptions, but they are few and far between," he says. He recently organized a discussion of monotheism versus polytheism on campus.

Limbachia started attending the temple's religious and Gujarati

Other "Little Indias" are in these U.S. cities Jersey City, New Jersey; Jackson Heights in New York City, New York; in Berkeley, near San Francisco, and Artesia, south of Los Angeles, in California; along Devon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, and in Houston, Texas.

language classes in his early teens. "I became a more aware individual. I felt like I was part of something bigger," he says.

"I'm proud to say I can at least write my name [in Gujarati] now." Limbachia sees more second- and third-generation Indian Americans becoming involved in the temple, and he's always pushing for more members of his student organization. One of his biggest dreams is to return to India; but first, he's got to brush up on his Gujarati. ~ Sebastian John is an Indian Washington, D.C.

writer

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Write to editorspan@state.gov

and photographer

based in

What Americans

Can Learn from

GANDHI Half a century ago, Chester Bowles, former U.S. Ambassador to India, compared the "civil disobedience" methods of Mohandas K. Gandhi with the peaceful triumph of black Americans seeking civil rights in Montgomery, Alabama. Not all of the problems he outlined regarding U.S. racial relations have been resolved, but his reasons for hope remain valid.

Mohandas K. Gandhi walks with supporters during the Salt March in March, 1930.

OW let's practice it again," the Negro preacher said to members of his congregation. I'm a white man and I insult you, I shove you, maybe I hit you.

What do you do?" Their answer was ready: "I keep my temper. I do not budge. I do not strike back. I turn the other cheek." It was a December evening in 1956. After a year of walking to work and of riding in hundreds of cars organized in general pools, the 42,000 Negroes of Montgomery, Alabama, had established their constitutional right to ride in non-segregated buses.

With the beginning of the next workday the new bus rules would go into effect. Now they were patiently going through demonstration sessions in their churches, pretending the pews were bus seats, learning how to apply their Christian princi-

N

pIes to this most explosive of all problems in human relations.

"Now remember," their ministers advised them, "don't crow.

Don't lord it over the white riders. Show patience and respect.

Do unto them as you would have them do unto you."

In the following weeks, white extremists fired shots, hurled bombs and subjected the Negroes and their leaders to a barrage of threats and insults. But they stood their ground, firm and dignified, without arrogance or bitterness.

When their victory was finally won, many white citizens who had been active in organizing resistance to bus desegregation said grudgingly, "We didn't know the Negroes had the stuff to do what they've just done. We never thought we'd come to respect them, but we have."

Just how had this practical, latter-day demonstration of

the Sermon on the Mount been achieved? What were the techniques which made it possible? The Montgomery program had deep spiritual roots, not only in Christianity but in the ancient religions of Asia. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 27-year-old Negro minister who more than any other individual was responsible for its success, says frankly that he borrowed his techniques directly from Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used them brilliantly to bring freedom to 400 million Indians.

Gandhi in turn was stimulated by the views of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, and by an American, Henry David Thoreau, who was sentenced to serve in a Massachusetts prison because of his "peaceful protest" against the Fugitive Slave Laws. Indeed, it was from Thoreau's essay, Civil Disobedience, that Gandhi borrowed the phrase used widely to describe his program.

Thoreau himself was influenced by the writings of the forest wise men of India who wrote the Upanishads. These ancient Hindu writings were translated into English in the early 1800s.

Thoreau read and pondered them in the Harvard College Library.

Thus, this political technique of boycott and nonviolent protest has already crossed and re-crossed the ocean to strengthen hearts and to influence minds in South Asia, South Africa and in the

state of Alabama.

Many Americans who consider themselves hard-headed may discount the happenings in Montgomery as a special situation and scoff at the suggestion that such techniques could, in fact, ease the explosive racial antagonism that plagues so many American communities. But one thing is sure: their skepticism is no greater than that of Gandhi's contemporaries a few years before his final triumph.

When this little man in a loincloth said, "I believe it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire, to save his honor, his religion, his soul, and to lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration," there was general merriment in British and Indian ruling circles. But even the most skeptical ultimately came to honor him.

The term "Negro," commonly used decades ago by people including Chester Bowles, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to describe Americans of African heritage, is no longer considered appropriate in the United States. The most common terms now used by Americans of African descent to describe themselves are African American, black American, and black, as in ''I'm black and I'm proud," a slogan that emerged in the 1960s.

After years of jail-going in resistance to unfair laws and years of hard constructive work to create the conditions of justice among the Indians themselves, he demonstrated the political power of his religious faith. By bringing that faith shrewdly and courageously to bear on the intolerable institution of colonialism, he freed the Indian people. In so doing, he laid the groundwork for the fall of the British colonial empire and for its regeneration in the British Commonwealth of Nations--exactly as he said he would.

There are suggestive parallels between the Montgomery boycott and the beginning of Gandhi's struggle. The movement

Ralph Abernathy (left) and Martin Luther King, Jr. lead a group of civil rights campaigners as thCl) march to the Birmingham cih) hall in Alabama on'April12, 1963.

in Montgomery started from an incident which blossomed into a crusade.

A quiet Negro seamstress, Rosa Parks, had been forced many times to give her bus seat to a white person. But one day, for some reason that she herself did not fully understand, she suddenly decided not to move. When the driver threatened to call the police, she said, "Then you just call them."

Mrs. Parks was arrested. Negro religious leaders called for a one-day, city-wide boycott of the buses. When white extremists reacted vigorously, the protest grew until it covered the entire city

Mohandas K. Gandhi addresses members of the Congress party in Calcutta to help resolve a dispute in August, 1934.

bus system and involved almost every Negro family in Montgomery.

The Gandhian movement which ultimately freed India from foreign rule started in about the same way; in his case, the spark which set it off was struck on a train in remote, race-conscious South Africa in 1893.

Gandhi had begun his adult career a year or so earlier as an insecure, inarticulate young attorney. While studying law in England, he wore a high silk hat and took dancing lessons. In India, he was so shy and frightened that he lost his first case, involving a $10 claim, when he became tongue-tied before the judge and was laughed out of court.

To help him build confidence in himself, his relatively well-todo family arranged for him to handle a lawsuit between some Indian merchants in South Africa. In Africa's fiery racial furnace something happened that transformed this 24-year-old failure into an architect of history.

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, some 100,000 Indians were living there, most of whom had been recruited as cheap labor for the European plantations and mines.

A few hundred chosen Indians had been given a right to vote, but otherwise all were second-class citizens. These were called "coolies" or "sammies" and suffered segregation. On the statute books they were described as "semi-barbarous Asiatics." Into this situation came the proud, young, British-educated Gandhi, insisting on his first-class ways.

The night of his fU'st train ride in South Africa, Gandhi was ordered to leave the compartment reserved for whites. When he refused to do so, he was pushed off the train at the next station.

As he stood shivering there in the dark, his overcoat and baggage still on the train now fast disappearing down the tracks, Gandhi asked himself the fateful question, "Should I fight for my rights here or go back to India?"

"I came to the conclusion," he recounts, "that to run back to India would be cowardly." The "golden rule," he decided, "is to dare to do the right at any cost."

When he took the stagecoach for the city of Pretoria he was addressed as "sammie," ordered to sit outside on a dirty sackcloth

and beaten by a burly white man. When he arrived in Pretoria, the hotels refused to give him a room. It was an American Negro who befriended him and somehow found him lodgings.

The next day, he invited the Indians of Pretoria to a meeting at which he proposed that they stand up and fight the discrimination against them and that the fight be conducted with new, constructive methods. This time the words came easily.

The end they must seek, Gandhi said, was a community of true neighbors. Therefore, the means must be those of persuasion and not of violence. Members of the Indian minority must forgo hatred.

They must respect their white neighbors as fellow human beings even while opposing their unjust discriminatory laws. They must prepare themselves to endure blows and prison without flinching and without resort to counterblows or insults. They must persuade, not only through words but through their lives. Their words must become flesh.

"Let us begin," he suggested, "by considering the grievances held against us by the white people. Let us see if the reasons or rationalizations which the whites give for discriminating against us are justified."

"Then," he continued, "let us put our own house in order, even now while fighting for our civil rights, even before they grant the reforms we ask, even poor as we are."

Many of the Indian merchants who came to hear him were known for slick dealings and sharp bargaining. Gandhi proposed that they stick rigidly to the truth and that they show a new concern for their responsibility to the community.

All Indians, he added, must do something to improve the unsanitary conditions in the Indian slums. Why wait for legal victories "for the necessary drain cleaning?" he asked.

"We can't blame the whites," he continued, "for all our troubles, nor can we by ourselves end all the poverty in which our people are trapped. But we can begin to clean up our homes, to teach illiterate Indian adults to read and to provide free schools for the children of the poor."

By trial and error, Gandhi devised a political-action program with dramatic new dimensions. Instead of working just through the law-by appealing for an end to restrictive legislation in Parliament

and by seeking court or electoral victories-Gandhi showed the Indians how to combine peaceful resistance to discriminatory laws with constructive community service.

When the Boer War came, his followers urged him to step up his resistance program. The whites, they said, had their backs against the wall and now was the time to put on the pressure.

Gandhi rejected this proposal as unfair. Instead, he called off his political campaign, organized an Indian volunteer ambulance corps of 1,100, and led them wherever the fighting was heaviest. For valor under fire, he and 36 other Indians received Empire war medals.

When the war was over he renewed his program of nonviolent pressure on the government and the conflict again became intense.

At one point the whites tried to lynch him, and he heard the mob singing, "We'll hang Gandhi from the sour-apple tree."

Yet, Gandhi did not flinch. He led tens of thousands of Indians in a peaceful march across the state, deliberately violating the segregation laws. Hundreds were struck down by the police and thousands went to prison.

When Jan Christian Smuts, the harried leader of the South African government, offered a civil-rights compromise that seemed honorable, Gandhi accepted it despite the violent opposition of militant Indians who asserted that this was a "betrayal."

Compromise and trust, he argued, are the essence of nonviolent struggle. "Even if the opponent plays him false 20 times," he said, the civil resister must be "ready to trust him for the 21st time-for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of his creed."

Later, as white pressure to reject all compromise on discrimination mounted, Smuts went back on his word, as Gandhi's Indian critics said he would. Gandhi's response was to start the struggle anew.

Again the jails were filled with hundreds of Indians who refused to obey discriminatory laws, but who also refused to exchange blows or insults.

Eventually, Smuts decided that there was no practical alternative but to reach a fair settlement with Gandhi. "You can't put 20,000

Martin Luther King, Jr. wipes his face in the summer heat as he addresses a church congregation in Montgomery, Alabama on May 25, 1965. He said there could be no peace for the Alabama Legislature until its members agreed to listen to the voting problems of black Americans.

Indians in jail," he said.

To Gandhi himself, one of Smuts' secretaries added, "I do not like your people and do not care to assist them at all. But what am I to do? You help us in our days of need. How can we lay hands on you? I often wish you took to violence like the English strikers; then we would know at once how to dispose of you. But you will not injure even the enemy ....And that is what reduces us to sheer helplessness."

Before sailing home to India to apply his newly tested methods there on behalf of independence, Gandhi reminded the South African Indians that their victory was only half won. To Smuts, as a farewell present, he sent a pair of sandals that he had made while in jail as Smuts' prisoner.

Twenty-four years later, on Gandhi's 70th birthday in 1939, Smuts, as a gesture of friendship, returned the sandals Gandhi had given him, to show that he had cherished them through the years. "I am not worthy to stand in the shoes of so great a man," wrote the first official to send Gandhi to prison. "It was my fate to be the antagonist of a man for whom even then I had the highest respect."

In Africa, Gandhi and the Indians were outnumbered 10 to one.

In India the situation was reversed. If 400 million Indians learned to say "no" and mean it, Gandhi knew that they could end the domination of a few hundred thousand Englishmen.

But here as in South Africa, the "no" which Gandhi taught them to say was not that of violent revolution or subversion or anarchy.

Rather it was a method which taught respect for law even while resisting particular unjust laws. Peacefully, cheerfully and massively, he and his followers accepted jail as the penalty for disobeying them.

In India, as in Africa, Gandhi's program went far beyond the struggle against British domination. His goal was to build an India that could govern itself. Therefore, he spent as much time training his countrymen in constructive work in the villages as in the effort to achieve national independence.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. His birthday is celebrated as a U.S. National holiday on the following Monday each year.

This year, the holiday is on January 21.

Many Americans commemorate February as Black History Month.

His 13-point program for Indian development included the end of untouchability within Hinduism, the establishment of Hindu-Muslim unity and brotherhood, and improved methods of agriculture, diet, education and public health in the 500,000 villages where most Indians lived.

Gandhi's political genius enabled him to select and dramatize issues which the people understood. In 1930, his famous Salt March focused the whole independence fight on a simple demand of the Indian villager: an end to the hated British tax on salt and their prohibition of homemade salt.

When Gandhi announced that he would walk 320 kilometers to the shores of the Arabian Sea and make salt out of God's ocean in defiance of man's largest empire, India was electrified.

Millions of peasants gathered along the roads to cheer him as he strode quickly by.

On the night of AprilS, 1930, he reached the sea. "God willing," he said, "we will commence civil disobedience at 6:30 tomorrow morning." At sunrise he held his usual prayer meeting and at the appointed time reached down to raise his first handful of salt from the salt beach.

As the news was flashed across the country the excitement became intense, reaching into the most remote villages. Jawaharlal

olute belief in ultimate victory, applied his revolutionary new techniques of peaceful political action to the creation of a free and socially awakened India.

Independence finally came, on August 15, 1947. Throughout India, wildly cheering crowds gathered for the celebration. Massed Indian and British army bands played their respective national anthems, the Union Jack came down from the flagstaffs and the new flag of the Republic of India proudly rose in its place.

What a strange and magnificent climax to an anti-colonial revolution! Four hundred million people had won their right to rule themselves ....

Because the British yielded gracefully, the basis was laid for a new relationship of equality and mutual respect within the British Commonwealth.

As in Montgomery, Alabama, nine years later, there was grudging admiration even from the die-hards: "Say what you will, you have to give these people credit."

Gandhi's chief lieutenant, Nehru, went from being the king's prisoner to the king's first minister of his largest domain. And Lord Mountbatten went from being the last viceroy of the Emperor of India to the first govemor-general of a free commonwealth, selected for this honor by the very people who had fought British rule most of their lives. British governors who had sent thousands of Indians to jail suddenly found themselves showered with garlands and goodwill.

No thoughtful person can deny the practical effectiveness of the Gandhian approach in India or even in Montgomery, Alabama.

"We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer.

So, in winning the victory, we will not only win freedom for ourselves but we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that you will be changed, also."

Nehru and nearly 100,000 others were arrested.

Then Gandhi announced that he would lead a nonviolent march of protest on the government salt depot. Although he, too, was promptly arrested, the raid was carried out by 2,500 Indians who pledged not to raise their hands or voices against the police.

Although hundreds were struck down, there was no resort to counter-violence. When Gandhi, in his cell, heard that even the fierce Pathans from the Northwest Frontier had maintained their self-discipline, he was overjoyed. Indians everywhere began to stand a little straighter, and for the first time to feel that they, as individuals, had rights, responsibilities and a future.

Gandhi chose for his home the poorest village in the poorest part of India, where untouchables predominated. His associates protested, saying that he would bury himself there. Yet, Sevagram was soon accepted as the vital center of all India, the actual capital of this ancient nation in the course of its rebirth.

When I visited his mud hut there in 1952, it was exactly as he had left it. Among his books were the Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of St. John. Gandhi had often said that his aim in life was to live the Sermon on the Mount.

On the wall over Gandhi's simple bed hung a sign: "When you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper; and when you are wrong you cannot afford to lose it."

For 30 years, Gandhi, with brilliant political timing and a res-

But can it work in the cities of Little Rock, Chicago, Levittown and New Orleans? Can it free Americans-North, South, East and West-from the suffocating burden of racial prejudice and fear accumulated in 300 years of largely unconscious compromise with Christian principles?

To answer these questions we need to consider why Gandhi's political techniques set India free and paved the way for her emergence as an effective new democracy. The explanations of Gandhi's closest associates, including Nehru, agree on all the essentials.

The prime condition for the success of Gandhi's way of fighting injustice, they say, was that it took place within a legal system administered by people who professed a democratic creed and who permitted a large measure of free speech and a free press.

The British national conscience was stirred by the Gandhian struggle because the British are a deeply democratic and peaceful people.

Martin Luther King, Jr. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/ki The King Center www.thekingcenter.org Mohandas K. Gandhi http://www. mkgandhi. org

ng-bio. htm I

His techniques were effective because the free institutions of Britain enabled Gandhi's views and the story of his own and his followers' sacrifices to reach the people.

Dozing consciences were thus awakened, deep religious chords were struck and an atmosphere of respect and support for India's cause was gradually created.

As a trained lawyer, Gandhi never lost his respect for the majesty of law. He called for the acceptance of the state's right to make and enforce laws, while offering up his person and his freedom in protest until those laws which violated democratic principles were changed. His appeal was from man-made discriminatory laws to a higher natural law, to the moral law.

This is precisely the approach that enabled the brilliantly led, well-organized Negro citizens of Montgomery to abolish segregation on the city buses. Under the leadersmp and inspiration of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his associates, they began their mass meetings with prayers "for those that oppose us," and they regularly pledged themselves to use "only the weapons of love and nonviolence." They said they were "walking with God." They named their movement the Montgomery Improvement Association.

Dr. King laid down their objectives in eloquent Gandhian terms. "The Negro," he said, "must come to the point that he can say to his wmte brothers: 'We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. So, in winning the victory, we will not only win freedom for ourselves but we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that you will be changed, also. The victory will be a double victory: we will defeat the evil system and win the hearts and souls of the perpetrators of the evil system.'"

Like Gandhi, Dr. King also stressed that he and his associates were working for the advancement of the whites as well as for that of the colored people. "We are seeking to improve, not the Negro of Montgomery," he said, "but the whole of Montgomery."

His appeal to his Negro listeners to put their own house in order is reminiscent of Gandhi's appeal 60 years before to the Indians living in the slums of Pretoria. "Let us examine the reasons given by wmte men for segregation," Dr. King said. "Let us see which reflect conditions we can do something about, and take action ourselves. Some say we want our constitutional rights so we can marry their daughters. But that is nonsense, so we don't have to pay any attention to that."

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a follower of Mohandas K. Gandhi's nonviolent methods of civil protest and applied them during the peaceful campaign for equal rights in Montgomery, Alabama.

"Some say that we smell. Well, the fact is that some of us do smell. We cannot afford a plane trip to Paris to buy the world's most expensive perfumes, but no Negro in Montgomery is so poor that he cannot afford a five-cent bar of soap."

And then Dr. King goes on frankly to list the illegitimacy rate among Negroes, their Clime rate, their purchase of cars beyond their means, their lower health standards. And the Montgomery Improvement Association works day and night to remove these legacies of slavery, segregation and enforced second-class citizenship.

Already Montgomery city and welfare records are beginning to

reflect the change-a drop in Negro drinking, in juvenile delin- Supreme Court declared Montgomery's segregated seating in public buses unconstitutional.] Most leaders in both political parties agree quency, in divorce.

If this combination program of nonviolent opposition to segre- that the law as it has now been defined must somehow be obeyed.

But pleas for law observance, however eloquent and however gation and community service spreads beyond Montgomery, the road is likely to be a rocky one. Gandhi himself demonstrated that firmly supported in areas of crisis by federal troops, will never be there is no easy, effortless path to the attainment of our Christian sufficient in themselves. Laws which touch deep prejudices and emotions are not obeyed merely because they have been placed on objective of equal dignity for all men.

Nehru noted that by turning the other cheek the Indians at first the statute books and defined by the courts. They are obeyed only only enraged the British. Never, he says, had he seen men with when a great majority of people come to believe they are right. more hate in their eyes than the soldiers who beat him with their Prohibition [the outlawing of liquor] was clear evidence of this.

In a democratic community, President Abraham Lincoln once long, steel-tipped rods, while he stood quietly, not lifting a finger in his own defense. No civilized human being likes to have his said, "public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he conscience so severely tested.

What counted, however, was the end result. As the Indians who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions proved their capacity for peaceful resistance, they eventually won the respect of the British. Equally important, they came to possible or impossible to be executed."

If we are to ease the racial conflict which so dangerously respect themselves. "We cast off our fear," said Nehru, "and divides America in a world that is two-thirds colored, we must walked like men."

The climax of the Montgomery come to see it as a moral issue and not simply as a legal one. It struggle, observers say, came when a Negro preacher, at a is an issue involving no more church celebration, read from and no less than the dignity of man. It can successfully be met First Corinthians in the Bible: "When I was a child, I spoke as a only as the millions of good Americans, who through generachild, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when 10 tions of custom and prejudice C!J became a man, I put away child-;;j have come to believe in the dignity of only some men, are perish things." ~ suaded of their error.

It is difficult to judge prospects ~ Nowhere else in America does for this program on a nationwide ~ religious conviction run so deep scale. Gandhi was not only a spir- ~ z as in the South. It was a white itual leader of depth, dedication ~ and courage but also a political ~ Southern minister who said about the racial problem, "There genius. In America, much will Ambassador Chester Bowles shared a close relationship with Prime depend on the ability of Negro Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, often meeting him twice a week. Bowles is just one question to ask: What leaders to develop similar con- is the only American Ambassador to have served two terms in India. would Christ do?"

Sooner or later, the South, and viction and skill under pressure.

Even more will depend on the number, raw courage and dedication also the North, East and West will respond with the only Christian of their followers. answer possible, for Christ came to show the fatherhood of God The two conditions which Gandhian leaders laid down for the and the brotherhood of man, and He knows neither Gentile nor success of their nonviolent approach certainly exist here in Jew, Greek nor barbarian, black nor white.

The Gandhian way of persuasion and change is designed to America. Whether it be in Little Rock [Arkansas] or in Levittown [Pennsylvania], racial discrimination sorely troubles our national make a profound moral issue of this kind clear, to stir the conconscience. science of the great decent majority who believe in the laws of The great majority of moderate whites in Montgomery were God, and to persuade that majority to bring its actions into line profoundly shocked by the bombing of Negro churches, the with its beliefs.

"It may be through the Negroes," Gandhi once said, "that the homes of several Negro ministers and of the one white minister unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the who supported the boycott. world."

The requirement of a free press is also met. The countrywide This, it may be said, will take no less than a miracle of greatattention paid to the Montgomery bus boycott demonstrates that the means of communication are ready to carry the news. The ness. That is true. But we Americans are living in an age of miraAmerican Bill of Rights insures against the kind of terror that liq_c_le_s_a_n_d_w_e_a_re_c_ap_a_b_l_e_o_f_g_r_ea_t_n_es_s_. ~ uidates and crushes completely.

Only one thing is certain: if we are to achieve racial harmony Chester Bowles was U.S. Ambassador to India from 1951 to 1953, and in America, a great moral force of some kind must be created that again from 1963 to 1969. He died in 1986. will awaken our national conscience.

The Supreme Court has made its decision. [In 1956, the U.S.

A man rides past a shrine in Bishnupur, 140 kilometers northwest of Kolkata, and home to a rich array of architectural, artistic and crafts traditions. A 2005 grant from the Ambassador's Fund allowed the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage to develop a comprehensive plan to preserve the arts of the city.

By mid-October, I was off on a subcontinent and an ocean away, I watched whirlwind tour of the former Soviet boys in surf shirts perform namaz at the republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Eid mosque in Male', capital of the Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

In Maldives, where walls made of finely between, I would also visit Afghanistan carved coral had been scrubbed free of and Pakistan. The next leg of the trip centuries of accumulated pollution. took me to Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Begun in 2001 with a budget of $1 milMaldives and Bangladesh. Finally, I lion, the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural visited projects at Bishnupur in West Preservation has distributed about $9.5 Bengal and Gangtok in Sikkim before million, supporting 379 projects worldlanding back home in New Delhi. wide. Grants typically are between By that time, I had been driven thou$10,000 and $50,000, and are distributed sands of kilometers across Kazakhstan, throughout the developing world. My accompanying a conservation architect assignment was to document projects and two archaeologists as they funded within the State Department's searched for half-forgotten Silk Road South and Central Asia division. ruins. I had mingled with Hindu devoA priority of the program is to benefit the communities in which projects are situtees as they prayed to the newly A booklet about the U.S. Ambassador's Fund restored Kal Bhairav statue in ated. In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, for Cultural Preservation projects in South and Kathmandu's Durbar Square, and sat Central Asia was issued in the fall of 2007, a country with a long history of trade, metwith Baul minstrels late into the night containing Angus McDonald's text and allurgy and nomadic culture, the Kyrgyz as they sang songs of union with God in photographs. On its cover, the 14-meter high State Museum is home to a remarkable coldeepest rural Bangladesh. lection of precious metal objects. The cenAk Saray Ding Tower near Dashoguz in I witnessed Friday prayers more than Turkmenistan. terpiece is a hoard of 156 gold items recovonce. The first time was in Kabul in ered from the tomb of a Hun princess, Afghanistan, in a rare 17th-century cedar mosque, rebuilt after including a diadem, a breast ornament inlaid with onyx and being shattered by war in the 1990s. A uniformed soldier left his amber, and an eerily alive-looking funeral mask. Dating to the boots at the entrance but brought his gun inside. Weeks later, a early centuries A.D. and discovered in 1958, the treasures have been shown around the world but have never been displayed locally due to a lack of adequate cabinets and security equipBelow: A devotee prays at the 17th-century Mullah Mahmood ment.

Instead, the collection languishes in an old-fashioned safe Mosque in Kabul's old city, which was restored to keep the rare in a cramped strongroom below the museum, sharing the space cedar structure from collapse after damage from fighting in with World War II-era machine guns and ammunition.

Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. The mosque reopened in 2004 after receiving restoration grants from the Ambassador's Fund.

"These objects have toured Japan, France and Italy, and have

aroused great interest," says Akylai Sharshenalieva, the museum's storage director. "But our first priority should be to show them to our own people."

A grant from the Ambassador's Fund in 2006 has given the museum the means to provide secure, climate controlled cabinets so the collection can go on display under safe, stable conditions.

The grant also provides for copies to be made of the most important pieces, so handling of the originals can be minimized.

In Turkmenistan, another 2006 project, the restoration of the Ak Saray Ding tower, has a different kind of meaning for the local community. While archaeologists speculate that the IIthor 12th-century monument was once the gate of a traveler's rest

Right: The 18th century Eid Mosque in Male', capital of the Maldives. Carvings on the mosque, constructed from blocks of coral, were deteriorating due to lack of maintenance before further damage from the 2004 tsunami. The mosque was restored with a grant from the Ambassador's Fund in 2005.

Right: Restorers undertake the painstaking process of reweaving damaged but rare Turkmen carpets at a rate of about half a square centimeter per day. The National Carpet Museum at Ashgabat in Turkmenistan has restored about 70 carpets, nearly half of them under the grant project. With 500-600 rare carpets in need of restoration, the task has only begun.

Left: The 30-meter high mausoleum of Sultan Tekesh, who ruled Khorezm from 1172 to 1200, is an outstanding example of pre-Mongolian architecture at Kane Urgench in Turkmenistan. A grant from the Ambassador's Fund helped rebuild and repair the walls and the dome of the mausoleum, which were deteriorating due to the ravages of time and an inexpert restoration attempt.

stop on the Silk Road, built three stories high to guide caravans out of the desert, local legend tells another story.

Inhabitants of the remote region bordering Uzbekistan believe that the tower was erected in ancient times by a nobleman, in memory of his daughter who had died before she could marry. The monument is revered for its association with the purity of an unmarried girl, and draws pilgrims who pray for marriage or children.

Nearing collapse at the beginning of the 20th century, a religious leader urged the local populace to save the building in the only way they could think of: to pile earth around the crumbling base to prevent further damage. One hundred years later, with

A 2006 grant from the Ambassador's Fund allowed for the purchase of cabinets and modern security alarms so that a rare collection of exquisite jewelry and artifacts in the Kyrgyz State Museum could be displayed for the Kyrgyz people. The collection had been exhibited in Europe and Japan, but never locally because of inadequate securihJ and display facilities.

support from the Ambassador's Fund, the base had been completely rebuilt, with work in progress on restoring the upper story and double dome.

I1yas Paltayev, a history teacher from the area who accompanied us to the site, was clearly overjoyed that a piece of heritage so treasured by the community had been rescued from oblivion.

"The older people are very happy, as they recognize that this is part of tradition. I also bring my students here to teach them about their history, and to show them how tradition can be preserved," he said.

Ambassador's Fund projects are not confined to museums and monuments. In a lightning two-day VISIt to Bangladesh, squeezed between national strikes during the aborted election campaign, I was accompanied by Jon Cebra and Sabreen Rahman of the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka to witness two completed projects that are helping to sustain living traditions.

The first involved taking a seven-hour drive west of Dhaka to

see musicians of the Pally Baul Sam<yUnnayan Sangstha perform at a rural middle school. The association was formed to safeguard the skills of the Baul community of wandering minstrels, who traditionally performed at weddings and festivals. Singing centuriesold songs of Sufi mysticism and playing a remarkable variety of instruments, the Bauls have become marginalized by new forms

of entertainment such as television and recorded music.

A grant from the Ambassador's Fund enabled the association to record and transcribe Baul songs, to collect examples of their instruments, and to fund a group of musicians to tour 60 schools in Dhaka and outlying districts. Veteran performers were able to pass on their skills to a younger generation of Bauls, and support was provided to Baul families who had found themselves in difficult circumstances.

Returning to Dhaka the following day, we stopped at the village of Dharnrai, about 40 kilometers outside the capital, the last village in the country to practice the 2,000-year-old art of lost wax metal casting. At the village we met Sukanta Banik, who represents the fifth generation of a metalworking family in Dharnrai. Banik formed the Initiative for the Preservation of Dharnrai Metal-Casting and in 2003 the organization received a grant from the Ambassador's Fund to support its effort to preserve the lost wax technique.

Lost wax casting requires highly skilled crafts-people to make a wax model of the statue, which is then coated with clay.

When the mould is fired, the wax drains out and is replaced with molten metal. Once the cast has cooled, the mould is broken and the statue is filed and polished. This painstaking process allows the production of highly detailed three dimensional statues of Hindu deities, each of which is unique. But competition from inexpensive mass produced statues, combined with the exodus of much of Bangladesh's affluent Hindu

Left: A 2003 grant from the Ambassador's Fund helped artisans such as this man conduct an apprenticeship and a skills exchange program with metal workers using similar techniques in Nepal.

Above: A modern example of a 2,000-year-old tradition of handmade metal casting that survives in 30 villages around Dhamrai in the Manikganj district of Bangladesh.

community to India, has pushed the once flourishing metal casting industry almost to extinction.

A grant from the Ambassador's Fund allowed Banik to hire and train more artisans for his workshop, to produce a short DVD about the lost wax method, and to hold an exhibition in Dhaka.

"After the exhibition, lots of Bangladeshis came to see our workshop," he says. "Before, we only had four or five artisans making small pieces, and the quality was not so good. Now the artists compete with each other to make better pieces. It's the confidence of the

Above: A 2005 grant from the Ambassador's Fund benefited the Baul singers of Bangladesh. These wandering musicians are preserving a 1,000-year-old tradition of Sufi music, singing songs of love for God. The Bauls were given funds to record hundreds of songs and visit schools.

A woman walks past a Portuguese colonial-era building showing signs of tsunami damage in Matara, Sri Lanka. The Ambassador's Fund sponsored a survey of the architecturally unique town, with a mix of Dutch, Portuguese, British and indigenous structures, to facilitate reconstruction.

artists that is different now, because of the recognition."

The last stop on the journey took me to Sikkim, where a grant from the Ambassador's Fund has allowed the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok to upgrade its library and museum.

Founded in 1958, the institute houses about 45,000 Tibetan

manuscripts, the third largest collection in the world. Almost 50 years on, the grant allowed the institute to make urgent improvements to its building, including waterproofing the roof, rewiring and installing dehumidifiers. These are essential if the manuscripts are to survive in Sikkim's rainy climate.

Funds were also used to improve the displays in the institute's ground-floor museum, where visitors from all over India and the world browse through an enlightening array of Tibetan paintings, statues and ritual objects.

Angus McDonald is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne, Australia.

Heritage Route in New Delhi ith 10 million visitors expected to converge on New Delhi for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, it's expected that many of them will want to visit the capital's historic and architectural sights as well as the sports events. But preservationists, historians and ordinary folks who love the heritage of their city may be concerned about the effect of all that tourist traffic.

Help is on the way, though, with a plan to carry visitors in clean-energy shuttle buses along a model heritage route connecting the 16th century Humayun's Tomb and the Red Fort. Just as in many of the world's major cities, the buses would allow visitors to hop

W

off along the way to see some of the capital's sights that are less well known, then hop back on to travel to the next spot. The reason for the shuttles is to ease congestion and reduce air pollution The heritage routeplanned as the first in a network of such corridors connecting scores of monuments in New Delhi-would feature educational centers, sidewalk seating for those on foot, and lighting that is friendly to the environment.

It's all part of a plan by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage to highlight New Delhi's rich history, present it as a "Heritage City" destination and preserve its treasures for the future. The first route is to

and photographer

now

The tomb of Mughal Emperor Humayun would figure in a proposed heritage route in New Delhi.

be developed with the help of a $200,000 grant from the American Express company and the World Monuments Fund, which issues a biannual list of the 100 most endangered heritage sites.

"Tourism is the lifeblood of many iconic sites around the world, so enhancing the visitor experience while finding effective ways to protect and preserve these sites is critical for their survival," said American Express Vice Chairman Ed Gilligan when the grant was announced on November 7, 2007.

-L.K.L.

A woman walks past a Portuguese colonial-era building showing signs of tsunami damage in Matara, Sri Lanka. The Ambassador's Fund sponsored a survey of the architecturally unique town, with a mix of Dutch, Portuguese, British and indigenous structures, to facilitate reconstruction.

artists that is different now, because of the recognition."

The last stop on the journey took me to Sikkim, where a grant from the Ambassador's Fund has allowed the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok to upgrade its library and museum.

Founded in 1958, the institute houses about 45,000 Tibetan

manuscripts, the third largest collection in the world. Almost 50 years on, the grant allowed the institute to make urgent improvements to its building, including waterproofing the roof, rewiring and installing dehumidifiers. These are essential if the manuscripts are to survive in Sikkim's rainy climate.

Funds were also used to improve the displays in the institute's ground-floor museum, where visitors from all over India and the world browse through an enlightening array of Tibetan paintings, statues and ritual objects.

Angus McDonald is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne, Australia.

Heritage Route in New Delhi ith 10 million visitors expected to converge on New Delhi for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, it's expected that many of them will want to visit the capital's historic and architectural sights as well as the sports events. But preservationists, historians and ordinary folks who love the heritage of their city may be concerned about the effect of all that tourist traffic.

Help is on the way, though, with a plan to carry visitors in clean-energy shuttle buses along a model heritage route connecting the 16th century Humayun's Tomb and the Red Fort. Just as in many of the world's major cities, the buses would allow visitors to hop

W

off along the way to see some of the capital's sights that are less well known, then hop back on to travel to the next spot. The reason for the shuttles is to ease congestion and reduce air pollution The heritage routeplanned as the first in a network of such corridors connecting scores of monuments in New Delhi-would feature educational centers, sidewalk seating for those on foot, and lighting that is friendly to the environment.

It's all part of a plan by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage to highlight New Delhi's rich history, present it as a "Heritage City" destination and preserve its treasures for the future. The first route is to

and photographer

now

The tomb of Mughal Emperor Humayun would figure in a proposed heritage route in New Delhi.

be developed with the help of a $200,000 grant from the American Express company and the World Monuments Fund, which issues a biannual list of the 100 most endangered heritage sites.

"Tourism is the lifeblood of many iconic sites around the world, so enhancing the visitor experience while finding effective ways to protect and preserve these sites is critical for their survival," said American Express Vice Chairman Ed Gilligan when the grant was announced on November 7, 2007.

-L.K.L.

Left: A weaver prepares to spin a silk sari in a Bishnupur tradition that is still practiced today.

Below: Improved lighting and new cabinets afford a fresh view of rare statues and traditional art objects at the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Sikkim.

In addition to beautifying the museum display, the Ambassador's Fund waterproofed and rewired the building.

very year, communities across the United States celebrate the start of the harvest season at festive social gatherings featuring the finest accomplishments of their citizens, young and old, rural and urban.

These annual fairs, open to all, are part exposition, part carnival and part opportunity to learn about new technologies, sample new foods and hear from political candidates. Fairs occur at the regional, or county level, and, on a larger scale, at the state level.

Some state fairs have histories going back to the mid-1800s. Many of the largest are held in states where agriculture continues to have a major role in the local economy-midwestern states such as Minnesota and Iowa, and western states such as California.

Some southern states with long growing seasons hold their fairs in early winter, when they can also be enjoyed by vacationers from other states and abroad.

Florida, a major cirrus-producing state with a large tourism industry, holds its fair in mid-February.

Over the years, fair organizers have

E

expanded on their goal of promoting agriculture and providing a place for farmers to share ideas and techniques by featuring competitions in a variety of categories such as fine arts and handicrafts, food preparation and science. However, the largest competitive programs in many states continue to be agriculture-based.

Most fairs feature competitions for accomplishments such as nurturing a healthy calf or raising a sheep with soft, thick wool. Prizes also might be awarded for baking the best pie or stitching the most intricate embroidery.

Taking advantage of the large crowds drawn to fairs, politicians stand for hours in the sun or rain at the fairs expressing their views about current issues and answering questions from constituents.

After touring a fair's exhibits, many people end their day in the carnival or concert areas, for an evening of entertainment.

St. Paul, the capital city of Minnesota, Fred Thompson, an actor and former Senator seeking to be the Republican candidate for President, campaigns at the Minnesota State Fair in August 2007.

welcomed the Minnesota State Fair in August 2007. Since the fair's inception in 1859, there have been only five interruptions: in 1861 and 1862 due to the Civil War and the Dakota Indian conflict, in 1893 because of scheduling conflicts with the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in 1945 because of war-time fuel shortages, and in 1946 during a polio epidemic.

During the 12-day Minnesota fair, children from urban areas, whose only knowl-

Colorful glimpses of the Minnesota State Fair, which attracted nearly 1.7 million people in August 2007.

Bottom: Artist Robin Berth paints a 63-kilogram polyurethane cow that was part of an exhibit at the 2001 Minnesota State Fair.

edge of life on a farm comes from television and films, can get a close-up view of cows, pigs, chickens and rabbits raised since birth by rural children.

Nearly 1.7 million people attended the 2007 fair, where rodeo events, tractor pulls, auctions and games appealed to a range of tastes, as did the mindboggling variety of foods like apple fries, Coca-Cola cheesecake dipped in chocolate on a stick, fried fruit on a stick and peanut butter hot dogs.

The 2007 fair had some new features, including the demonstration of a new robotic milker, wine sampling, and variety shows featuring comedians, magicians and acrobats.

Now, even though the barns are empty and the crowds are gone, planning has already begun for next year's fair. ~ Kathryn writer.

McConnell

is a USINFO staff

For more information: Minnesota State Fair http://www mnstatefair. org/ Directory of State Fairs in America www.ncstatefair.com

Most fairs feature competitions with prizes awarded for accomplishments such as nurturing a healthy calf or raising a sheep with thick wool, baking the best pie or stitching the most intricate embroidery.

hat day" is around the corner again, the day that rekindles memories of love and intimacy, and precious moments stolen on moonlit balconies or beaches. For my husband and me, as well as the thousands of couples in the United States and India who confounded parental expectations, rolled the proverbial dice and married someone ethnically distinct from across the oceans, Valentine's Day represents the triumph of love over arranged, of Cupid over karma.

Meeting on an American University campus, as Srikanth and I did 10 years ago, we knew that by tying the knot and circling the fire, we'd be taking Robert Frost's "Road Less Traveled." Little did we know, however, what excitement lay in store as two cultures collided and coalesced to direct our day-to-day American, and now Indian, life.

In both Washington, D.C. and New Delhi, I happily realized that we were not alone in this experiment. Seeing American and Indian couples all around me, I found the array of choices, the coping strategies of us mixed couples exciting and a bit hilarious as well. Truth, myth or fun? I resolved to find out, and several brave couples obliged me with their special Bride & Prejudice, happily-ever-after stories.

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The array of choices, the coping strategies of mixed couples is exciting and a bit hilarious.

How The!} Met (Or as Karema Kqpoor once said: JaG WeMe~ In class, through friends, in chat rooms-

today's Indian American couples meet typically and fatefully, even when a love match was not what they or their parents had in mind.

Couple No.1: When Los Angeles native Heather Halstead, who has a Master's degree in counseling, was exploring northeastern India to find opportunities for serving people, she met Peter Malakar, a Christian Indian doctor. But romance was the furthest thing from her mind. Having earlier experienced life and customs in a remote, conservative Indian village, she was ultra-cautious. "He would e-mail me (when I returned to California) but I wouldn't respond for several months, just so that he wouldn't get the wrong idea," says Heather. The persistent doctor had the right idea all along: He kept praying. Heather returned to India, this time to New Delhi, where Peter was working. And seeing that they were better together than apart, they fell in love, got married in December, 2005 in California, and returned to New Delhi, where they now run an NGO together.

Couple No.2: For them, it was an easier choice. "My father told me he would never push me into marriage," says Moni Basu, a Bengali non-resident Indian whose family emigrated to the United States when she was 13. She met Kevin Duffy, a fellow repolter, while they were working the night beat at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the southern U.S. state of Georgia.

Couple No.3: Student Sunil Rabindranath, of South Indian-Malaysian origin, found student Ariana Leon, a Midwestern American with a keen interest in South and Southeast Asia, through mutual friends.

They attended graduate school together at Ohio University and now live in Washington, D.C. Couple No.4: Anshul Kaul, a Kashrniri, and Jenika Doctor, who now coordinates the South Asian Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., crossed paths in India while she was an intern. He Hindu, she Jewish and Unitarian, they now live in the Washington, D.C. area, are married and looking forward to their first-born.

American dads aren't necessarily any easier. Heather's father flew to India from California to check out Peter before the couple were engaged. Peter won over his future father-in-law quite quickly (as Mr. Halstead was nothing like the tough and rough Robert De Niro of Meet the Parents) and the engagement ceremony was full of Indian culture and color. But Heather also wanted an American-style engagement.

With advice from her American roommate, Peter planned a romantic day (or so he thought) boating on a lake outside New Delhi-only to discover that the water had dried up several years before, leaving only cows lazily grazing on the lake bed. Not to be deterred, Peter ordered a cup of hot tea, bent down on his knee, and beseeched Heather for her hand.

Meet the Parerlts (Do !10u want rr1!1daughter'S ha~ld?)

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daunting in any culture, but doubly so when you're dealing with foreign elders. In some instances, it's the mom who requires gentle persuasion. The first time Anshul visited Jenika's parents in the United States, her mom was concerned and a bit worried. Why wasn't he holding her hand or showing any affection? Did he really care for her? Little did she understand that to Anshul, public displays of affection were highly inappropriate, and especially embarrassing considering the "public" included his future-mother-in-law.

Creativity and negotiation are needed in planning Indian American weddings. Our four couples adopted differing approaches to satisfy the expectations of both sides.

Sunil and Ariana participated in two separate ceremonies, but integrated one another's customs in both. His family sent Hindu symbols and wall hangings to adorn the front of the church for the American ceremony. He dutifully donned his first-ever tuxedo for the occasion and she wore a purple sari instead of a traditional American, white, wedding dress. For the Hindu

How? Meeting one's prospective in-laws is (And what (o(or is II/!1 sherwani?)

engagement. Ariana wore a MalayaliSometimes these well-meaning style sari and touched the feet of spouses do get it right. Kevin is called a movie star when he dons Sunil's mother and grandmother, receiving their blessings.

Indian dress. And Ariana, after Contraryto popularbelief,Valentine'sDayis notan Americaninvention. the injtial botched attempt, is For Jenjka and Anshul, who choThe customs of exchangingromanticcards, givingflowersor sweets more comfortable and relaxed reographed and participated in a or taking time to express tender sentiments to one's significant wearing a sari than a Western style "big, fat" five-day Indian extravaother on February14 developedin Europeand were broughtto dress, says Suml. ganza, the American wedding part the UnitedStates by immigrants It is not a holidayanyincorporated both cultures, including a wherein the UnitedStates. Butwoe betideany husHo[;da!js: Twice the Usua( Fun. canopy that represented a Jewish huppah band or boyfriendwho manages to forgetthe Indian American couples tend to have and Hindu mandap, poems by Rabindranath day in the face of all the advertising double the fun when it comes to celebrating Tagore and the perennial favorite, Punjabi by greeting card and candy holiday traditions. Ariana and Sunil made their bhangra at the reception. makers, restaurants and annual Diwali party a tradition at their Northern Heather and Peter tied the knot in multi-ethnic Los hotels, florists and Virginia home. Moni and Kevin celebrate Durga Puja in Angeles, and enjoyed adding all the Indian touches gift stores.

Atlanta, Georgia, while Anshul and Jenika enjoy celebrating and flourishes they could find. Her bridesmaids wore Christmas, Holi and Hanukkah. lehengas tailor-made in New Delhi based on e-mailed Most mixed couples celebrate Christmas. "Although Christian, measurements, and a woman acquaintance originally Peter was not used to seeing a Christmas tree," Heather explajned, from Hyderabad prepared all the mouth-watering food. The most moving part of the ceremony came during a short, "but he is patient with my American customs." Sometimes it's the simple phone call, when Peter dialed his parents on their landline in other way around. Mom recalls her first Christmas with Kevin, "I Assam. With a microphone held to the receiver for all to hear, grew up (as an Indian in America) longing to celebrate Christmas.

Peter's parents prayed for God's blessings on the marriage from So Kevin did all the traditional things for me that one would do for a child, from buying and decorating a tree, to gift-wrapping preshalfway around the world. ents--everything except Santa Claus!"

The Q!lickest Wa!j to Your In-Laws' Hearts Jenika makes sure that Anshul gets his own stocking and a Christmas ornament every year, along with a traditional lan1b din(Through their stomachs, course.) ner that sits well with his Kashmiri heritage.

Americans married to Indians quickly learn the importance of

VALENTINE'S DAY

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food in their partner's culture. In fact, eating skills seem to be an avenue of acceptance into the new family.

Kevin was astounded the first time he visited his in-laws in West Bengal. As a mark of respect, he was presented with a silver plate holding 22 types of food. "Where do I even start?" he wondered.

Since that awkward first encounter with Indian cuisine and overwhelming hospitality, however, he has proven himself to be a good desi by learning to eat Bengali fish dishes with his hands. "He can sail though the tricky fish dishes," says Moni with admiration, "even the bony elish fish."

Biryani, kebabs, fish and masala dosa--these are some of the Americans' favorite dishes, covering the north, south, east and west oflndian culinary culture. With practice, Ariana has become quite an Indian cook herself. "She used to measure out everything with great pains when she cooked Kerala djshes," Sunjl explained, "but now a pinch and a smidgen have become valid measuring unjts for her."

Cu(tura( B (,m deI's (A FaShion Faux Pas) Navigating Indian culture can be tricky, say the American spouses, even after studying it for many years. Sometimes the Americans try too hard and err on the side of excess. When gallant, suave Sunil tied Ariana's first sari on her, he miscalculated with some of the pins and left half of her top exposed.

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Three Cheersjor the Ties That Bi~ld (And the (ove that em{ures') When asked what they appreciate most about their spouses' Indian culture, the Americans I interviewed were unanimous: their strong sense of family. Moni observes: "In India, the house is open to everyone in the family." She says Kevin understands the importance of family and enjoys the "family ties I have."

For all four young couples, marriage to someone from another culture was as interesting as it was illuminating. And as the years go by, do the differences diminish? To answer that I had to find a couple whose marriage had withstood the test of time and distance. I found my inspiration in Ophelia and Amos Gona, she an African American professor from the southern Umted States, he a professor from Goa, both living in suburban New Jersey since the 1970s and now retired.

When I asked Ophelia what insights she could share with SPAN readers about blidging cultural differences, she wrote: "It sounds strange, but after 46 years of marriage, I can't thjnk of anything I could possibly add." I went back home and told Srikanth, and we both smiled. ~ Anne Lee Seshadri, at left in her wedding photo with her husband, Srikanth, is an assistant cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Left: T.A v: Sharma, exchange teacherfrom Kendriya Vidyalaya in Tirumalagiri, Andhra Pradesh, teaches physics to the students of Campbell High School in New Hampshire.

Below: Timothy Daponte, exchange teacherfrom Bellaire - High School in Houston, Texas, with science students in the physics laboratory at Kendriya Vidyalaya No.3 in New Delhi.

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classroom of their own like an alternate home, with a computer or laptop, printer, microwave oven, refrigerator, music system and sometimes, a couch and sofa, where they could set things the way they like: Indian teachers in the United States on a Fulbright exchange program found they were in a completely new system where teachers as well as students had freedom to choose, from how to teach the course to the clothes students wear to school.

The experience was matched by the unique narratives of American teachers who took on Indian classrooms-equipped with the ubiquitous chalkboard and holding double the number of pupils they were used to.

Eight Indian and eight American teach-

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ers of math, science and English participated in the Fulbright Teachers Exchange Program from August-December 2007.

Administered by the United States Educational Foundation in India (USEFl), the program has completed its third year, providing opportunities to secondary school teachers to learn from each other's daily experiences and culture.

"It is truly a case of stepping into someone else's shoes. Each pair of teachers actually exchanges classrooms and teaching assignments for one semester," says Jane E. Schukoske, USEFl's executive director in New Delhi.

The Indian teachers were impressed with the facilities provided to teachers in American schools and found benefits in different techniques. In America, for instance,

it is the students who move from class to class, to keep them from growing sleepy, and also to allow the teacher to keep materials and equipment in the classroom.

"School teachers in the United States do not have to change their classroom after every period and the classrooms are provided with modern education gadgets like overhead projectors and multimedia technology.

This ensures that the teacher does not get exhausted. They can also set the classroom in a way they feel comfortable with," says Ranjini Gopalakrishnan, a math teacher from the Padma Sheshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School in Chennai. He spent the past semester at the San Lorenzo High School in the northern California town of San Lorenzo.

Sasi Raj, from Kendriya Vidyalaya at

~ Below: Debbi Huston (left) helps her Indian ~ colleague and exchange teacher Sheela iB Gabriel from the Hindu Senior Secondanj ~ School in Chennai serve Indian food at a dinner hosted by Gabriel. Both were teaching at Portland High School in Maine.

Bottom: Gabriel on a ski trip.

Above: Sasi Raj, an English teacher from the Kendriya Vidyalaya at the Air Force Station in Pune, Maharashtra, asks question of his class at Gateway Regional High School, Huntington, Massachusetts.

Right: Rama Balaji, a math teacher from Kendriya Vidyalaya in Bangalore works on a problem with one of her students at Yosemite Park High School in El Portal, California.

the Air Force Station in Pune, was also amazed at the use of modern technology he found at Gateway Regional High School in Huntington, Massachusetts. "In my U.S. school, each classroom had 10 laptops for students, who used them for writing essays and doing projects," says Raj. On their part, U.S. exchange teachers found that while most Indian students had a desire to learn, the huge classes made teaching more difficult. "An average class in an Indian school has about 50 students and the teacher is not able to give individual attention to the students, which they need and deserve," says Timothy Daponte, a physics teacher from Bellaire High School in Houston, Texas, who taught at Kendriya Vidyalaya No.3 in New Delhi.

Another American teacher, Eddie P. Grannis, describes the Indian chalk and board approach as slow. "In U.S. schools, we do not follow the lecture method. We have more projects. Teaching is more application oriented, whereas in India there is more focus on the syllabus and examinations. But both systems are now gravitating

toward each other," says Grannis, who is a teacher at the John O'Connell High School in San Francisco, California. He taught biology and environmental science at the Eklavya School in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Rodney Kleber of Gateway Regional High School in Huntington, Massachusetts, echoes his sentiments. Assigned duties at the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Pune as an English exchange teacher, Kleber checked several hundred answer sheets during a short period. Back home, he would have an assistant, a volunteer, more time, or fewer tests to grade. "I checked these papers while listening to presentations during a conference," he says.

Incidents like these left the American teachers with a sense of awe for their Indian colleagues as they neared the end of the semester. "I feel like I have not stopped [working] since I arrived. I admire how they are able to teach, do all the grading, conduct labs, wlite report cards, address

the disturbance of students and on top of that cook and clean and raise their families," says Ashanti Branch, a math teacher from San Lorenzo High School in San Lorenzo, California, who was an exchange teacher at the Padma Sheshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School in Chennai.

Erin Beth McGraw, who taught at the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, says Indian teachers are often gi ven extra responsibilities like admirtistrative work and organizing of cultural shows apart from their teaching duties. She feels this interferes with their professional work.

Also, unlike in the United States, where there are strict regulations on what work teachers can be given. "Indian teachers are not even paid for these extra jobs," says McGraw, an English teacher at Rutland High School in Rutland, Vermont.

Overall, what did the teachers learn from the experience? "Teaching in the

For more information: Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program http://www .fu Ib ri g ht - ind ia. org/S c ri pts/F orU. SNat i 0 na IsTeache rsTeac hersExchan g e,aspx Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/internationallindex.htm I

United States does not depend on emphasis on examinations and developing skills for retention of facts as much as on developing creativity, encouraging divergent thinking and analytical skills. These are some areas I would like to focus on in my classroom," says Sheela Gabriel from the Hindu Senior

dents off because I have too many vol unteers," Branch says.

The teachers also got to experience life outside the classroom. Indian teacher Sheela Gabriel did a power-point presentation titled "India: Unity in Diversity" for the students and teachers of her school.

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Top left: Math teacher Ashanti Branch from the San Lorenzo High School in California with his students at Padma Sheshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School in Chennai.

Top right: Dr. G. Malakondaiah (left), director of the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory in Hyderabad, presents a trophy to U.S. exchange teacher Erin Beth McGraw from Rutland High School in Vermont for her dance to a Telugu song at the annual sports day celebrations of the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Kanchan Bagh.

Above: Rodney Kleber, an English teacher from Gateway Regional High school in Huntington, Massachusetts, is surrounded by his students at Kendriya Vidyalaya at the Air Force Station in Pune.

Secondary School in Chennai, who taught English at Portland High School in Portland, Maine. Gabriel enjoyed the candid views of the students. "Their independence, frankness and confidence was something that is missing in Indian students," she says.

Branch, temporarily working in a Chennai school, says he liked the Indian system of the students being in one class together for the whole year. "Although they meet fewer other students, it helps to build trust and a community-like feeling within the classroom. I also like how students have a desire to learn. I like it when I ask for volunteers. I have to fight the stu-

"We had Indian music in the background and pakoras, papads and a variety of chutneys from an Indian restaurant were served on the occasion to give the whole event an Indian flavor." She also demonstrated Indian cooking for an international cooking class at her exchange school.

Some Indian teachers experienced seeing their first snowfall. When Sasi Raj saw white particles falling from the sky, he thought they were from the nearby trees.

Then some of his students told him, "Mr. Raj, they are snowflakes." "I was watching the beautiful snowflakes falling, painting the bare trees and the evergreen pine trees white, giving a spotless white look to

nature," he recalls.

The Indian teachers were also struck by the fund-raising activities of their American students. "Some students were spraying water on cars, while others washed them. They also sold cookies and food items to raise funds. It impressed me a lot," says Raj. His American liaison teacher used to drive him to school and back home every day. During the halfhour drive, they exchanged ideas about the education system, their cultures, language and people.

The American teachers had some amusing experiences. Daponte could not believe his eyes when he saw an elephant strolling down an arterial road in New Delhi.

Despite the sultry August weather, he traveled by local bus to taste the "real" India.

Diwali, though noisy and polluting, was a memorable experience for him; he celebrated with his host family and his son, Matthew, visiting from the States.

"The Fulbright program is so intensive an experience that I do not feel as if I am the same person who left India six months ago. I know I have to step into my Indian shoes once I am back on familiar ground but I wonder if those shoes will feel the same again," says Gabriel. Another Indian teacher, Meraj Fatima Parveen, has fond memories of Vermont and its Green Mountains in the northeastern United States. "They are embedded in my memories. I have never seen such marvels of nature. I would miss the 'good morning, hello, how are you today, have a nice day,' and so on which I got from almost everyone every day," she says, now back at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Kanchan Bagh, Hyderabad.

"The exchange provides an important opportunity for secondary school teachers to learn about the host country and to share that learning with their students, schools and communities at home," says Schukoske. So far, 38 teachers have participated in the program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. "USEFI is very pleased with the positive impact of the teacher exchange and plans to continue the program with about eight exchanges per year for the near f_u_tu_r_e_,'_' s_h_e_s_a_y_s_.

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Please share your views on this article.

Write to editorspan@state.gov

Where's my Robot Maid?

Perception: Rosie RealitY: Roomba We've come a long way since the Hoover vacuum cleaner, but don't throwaway the dish gloves just yet.

F

rom Rosie, the robotic maid in the American cartoon TV series, The Jetsons, to Richie Rich's Irona to Robby in the 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, we've been promised digital domestics that look and act a lot like ... a maid. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon, robot experts say. The problem? Today's machines are a long way from having the anthropomorphic qualitiesabove all, sight-found in human help.

The problem once seemed solvable enough: Connect a camera to a computer, and bingo!

Robot eye. But true perception is much tougher than it looks. "We're making progress," says Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory in California, "but getting machines to replicate our ability to perceive and manipulate the world remains incredibly hard."

For now, the field of at-home robots isn't even close. Although the market for personal and service robots has nearly doubled since 2002, your Roomba [a robotic vacuum] isn't going to bake you cupcakes or wash your dishes.

Most likely to yield an automated housekeeper is radio frequency identification, which would allow the robot to converse with inanimate objects. Working off a wireless network, it might approach a cold drink and transmit this kind of

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information Robot: Who are you?

Drink: I'm a bottle of milk. This is how you pick me up.

Robot: Anything else I should know?

Drink: I expire in three weeks. Please recycle me when I'm finished.

Kevin Ashton, vice president of www.

ThingMagic.com, a leading radio frequency identification company, says that instead of your spending hours cleaning up after a dinner party, a machine will take in the information provided by the pots and pans and put them where they "say" they need to be. "Combine this type of perception with robotics," he says, "and in the next 10 to 20 years we'll have our robot maid."

Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory htlp://ai .stanford.edu/ Home Robots

It's 2008, and still no robot maid! No flying car! Not even a cure for baldness! What's holding things up and when will the time come for these most coveted of personal technologies?

Scram jets can get us there-if

we make a huge investment in the technology.

An artist's concept of the X-43A Hypersonic Experimental Vehicle, or "Hyper X," in flight.

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Copyright Š 2006 by Bonnier Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Popular Science magazine with permission of Bonnier Active Media, Inc.

ew York to Tokyo in less time than it takes to watch Kill Bill: Volume 2? The question isn't if it will ever happen, but how soon.

The now-retired Concorde supersonic jet cruised

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at Mach 2, or a little more than twice the speed of sound, At Mach 5 or better, you're flying in the realm of the "hypersonic," Scientists are optimistic that air-breathing engines called scramjets will make that leap and power the planes of the future, Scramjet planes boast rocketlike speed but are more efficient than rockets because they don't have to carry the oxidant needed to ignite their fuel, So where's the 02? Everywhere, Scramjets suck up oxygen from the atmosphere, In late 2004, the X-43A Hyper X, a 3,6-meter, unmanned vehicle funded by NASA, ignited its scramjet engine and roared over the Pacific Ocean at Mach 9,6 (11,265 kilometers per hour), the highest speed ever reached by an air-breathing vehicle, Although that flight lasted just 10 seconds and ended with a planned crash, there was no confusion The technology works, "Scramjet technology [is] in about the same stage as jet engines were just prior to World War II," says George Orton, a Boeing Phantom Works project manager who helped develop the X-43A, Orton predicts that in 20 to 30 years we could see affordable, reusable vehicles powered by scramjets, But, he says, "It's going to take a considerable amount of money, effort and commitment."

The biggest obstacles to increasing the time a scramjet can fly safely are drag (or friction) and heat. Pouring money into scramjet research could eventually yield an obvious boon for weary travelers, and the upsides of fast flight are everywhere, The organ-donor market would open up from the neighborhood to the whole world, Critical rescue gear could find its way from the United States to Asia during a natural disaster, A military aircraft could bomb targets anywhere on the planet within a couple hours of taking off, "We went from the horse and buggy to the scramjets in 200 years," says Allan Paull of the University of Queensland Centre for Hypersonics in Australia, "We don't know the top speed-you want to go as fast and as high as you can get." In other words, the sky's the limit.

for~orelnlor~aUon: Scramjets http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/tscramjets.html NASA's hypersonic flight research program http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.htm

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Where's my picture phone?

Vanity killed the videophone.

Science baBies the chrome dome.

It's all in your genes, but otherwise, scientists are clueless.

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ermatologist Andrey A. Panteleyev, hair-growth expert at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York: We know nearly nothing about why male pattern hair loss occurs. We only began to understand the molecular side of hair growth 10 or 15 years ago.

How does it work?

Everything is regulated by a few hundred genes. Once we understand the molecular mechanisms at work, we will be able to modulate precisely the activity of selected genes in order to stimulate local hair growth.

So what's the holdup?

The major problem is delivery, The right gene delivered to the wrong place at the wrong time may have no effect at all-or may be harmful.

Ballpark for cracking this code?

We need another 10 or 15 years of research, Is it really my mother's father's fault?

Columbia University's Department of Dermatology All hair loss, except that caused by trauma, is genetic. http://www.cumc.Columbia.edu/depVderm/index.html But we don't know which genes.

American Hair Loss Association

We have the power, but does anyone want to use it? hat do boy genius Tom Swift, cartoon spaceman George Jetson and the crew of the fictional starship Enterprise have in common? Good hair, Or so it would seem, as experts concur that the biggest obstacle to the videophone isn't the technology, ease of use or even the price. The culprit is fear of a bad hair day, "Videophone technology is indeed very real today," says Michael Gartenberg of technology industry analyst JupiterResearch. "But do people want it? There's a certain privacy, even mystery, associated with voice communication that people have come to appreciate," For now, bad hair hasn't stopped companies from creating high-quality videophones. At the top of the heap is Motorola's $399 Ojo. Packet8's DV326 is a third the price and currently available in the market, and Voice over Internet Protocol models are [on the way].

Besides the vanity issue, other roadblocks remain. For one, we've become accustomed to being untethered from our phones. Then there's the so-called fax effect. Like a single fax machine, a videophone is useless without a phone on the other

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n early 2005, scientists posited a method to make objects invisible at a particular wavelength of light. Are we on the verge of an invisibility breakthrough?

Electrical and computer engineer Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University in Indiana: It's an interesting theory, but it's not really invisibility. In a defense application, for example, it might be possible to make an object invisible in one particular wavelength, but you cannot force your enemy to use that wavelength.

A sculpture based on the How do the superheroes do it?

Physicist James Kakalios, University book The Invisible Man of Minnesota, author of The Physics of stands in front of the Superheroes: Well, all atoms have reso- longtime home of its author, nant energy absorptions, and depending American writer Ralph Ellison in New York City in on the electronic structure of that resoMay, 2003. nant energy absorption, something might appear red to you or it could be transparent like window glass. Presumably, the fictional superhero Sue Storm is able to adjust her atoms' resonant absorption at will.

Could we adopt that strategy?

It seems unlikely that we humans would ever reach full transparency.

There are cells that are transparent-our corneas. So it's not impossible for something like that to occur. But superpowers, in and of themselves, do tend to be impossible.

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for more informadon: Purdue University

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end. More likely to catch on, Gartenberg says, are mobile picture phones and online videoconferencing technology, now available for hourly rental at many digitally connected Kinko's stores.

Andy Abramson, author of the blog VolP Watch, says to also keep an eye on the ever forward-looking pornography business.

"The VCR, DVD and streaming content all became viable businesses after the adultentertainment industry adopted their technology." If the X-rated videophone market takes off, Abramson predicts, then the nonporn videophone market will probably find traction.

for more informaUon: PacketS www.packetS.net Andy Abramson's blog http://andyabramson. blogs. coml

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cottony notion set lightly atop a sprawling mound of mangled prototypes representing millions of dollars in investment up in smoke.

In fact, fixed-wing planes have simply never been well suited to the utopian vision of an aircraft in every garage. Better to envision a helicopter, which offers two key advantages: VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) and autorotation.

It.s a bird! It's a plane! It's VTOL means you don't need a takeoff/landing Mom headed to the store to strip; autorotation means you float (rather than pick up a liter of milk! fall) to the ground in the event of power failure.

Bottom line: The near future in trUly personal he dream of the flying car has been an flight vehicles will be more spartan than once American mainstay since the first traffic imagined, emphasizing simplicity and safety for jams tried the patience of frustrated a new class of novice pilots. motorists. But despite the hopes of hundreds of A big impediment to the widespread use of inventors, the dream has remained just that: a personal aircraft-in whatever form they takemay be the Federal Aviation Administration's concern about safety. Imagine the skies peppere? with tiny vehicles zipping to and fro, conI::> verging suddenly at landing spots, and you i3 begin to see how accidents could literally rain i~ aluminum and composite on the parade.

NASAand the FederalAviation Administration

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The "Aerocar," built by an American, Edward Sweeney, demonstrated its ability to fly and drive during the 1997 Motor Show in Essen, Germany.

Federal Aviation Administration

A remote control model created by Boeing Co. (foreground) with the 1968 Taylor Aerocar IlIon display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.

hope that technology will simplify piloting. In June 1996, NASA unveiled its "Highway in the Sky" navigation system: an integrated view of the craft status, terrain and other traffic that turns the complex act of piloting into a veritable video game.

With a new generation of smaller, cheaper jets, and the growth of inexpensive navigation technologies, the Aviation Administration is seeing community airports develop services that will move us closer to sky-based commuting. "We found that most of the traffic coming into this proposed system is from cars taking trips of between 240 and 640 kilometers," says acting project manager Guy Kemmerly.

So, although the dream may emerge differently than imagined, more accessible personal flight is coming. Meanwhile, there are plenty of entrepreneurs who are still hoping you'll save their invention a spot in your garage. ~ Larry Smith is the founder and editor of Smith magazine (www.smithmag.net/)

www.faa.gov/ Please share your views on this article. Write

NASAandthe FAA'stechnologypartnership to editorspan@state.gov http://www .hq.nasa.gov/ office/aero/ events/nasa, o/ssats.htm â&#x20AC;˘

Simple Tools fOr:

I Tapan Parikh was named 2007 Humanitarian of the Year and an information technology Young Innovator of the Year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology magazine, Technology Review. He was born in New York City to parents who had emigrated from Gujarat.

A young Indian American innovator uses mobile phones to transform the lives of seamstresses and fishermen.

hen fishermen from Kerala are done fishing each day, they have to decide which of an array of ports they should sail for in order to sell their catch.

Traditionally, the fishermen have made the decision at random-or, to put it more charitably, by instinct. Then they got mobile phones. That allowed them to call each port and discover where different fishes were poorly stocked, and therefore where they would be likely to get the best price for their goods. That helped the fishermen reap a profit, but it also meant that instead of one port being stuck with more fish than could be sold while other ports ran short, there was a better chance that supply would be closer to demand at all the ports. The fishermen became more productive, markets became more efficient, and

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Kerala's economy as a whole got stronger.

This story demonstrates an easily forgotten idea: relatively simple improvements in information and communication technologies can have a dramatic effect on the way businesses and markets work. That idea is central to the work of Tapan Parikh, 33, who has a Ph.D in computer science from the University of Washington, and is co-founder of a company called ekgaon in New Delhi.

Parikh has created information systems tailored for small-business people in the developing world-systems with the mobile phone, rather than the PC, at their core. His goal is to make it easier for these business owners to manage their own operations in an efficient and transparent way, and to build connections, both with established financial institutions and with consumers in the developed world. This will help them-

they'll be able to get money to expand their operations and, ideally, find better prices for what they sell-and it should be a boon to development as well.

In the developing world, working with mobile phones has obvious advantages: they're ubiquitous even in poorer countries (there are more than 200 million cell-phone subscribers in India and more than 200 million in Africa); they're relatively affordable; and with the right software, they're easy to use. So Parikh developed Cam (so called because the phone's camera plays a key role in the user interface), a tool kit that makes it simple to use phones to capture images and scan documents, enter and process data, and run interactive audio and video.

Kerala's fishermen had been able to improve their business simply by making phone calls. Cam would carry the process a step further, by taking advantage of modem phones' computing capabilities.

Parikh's most important project with Cam has focused on perhaps the trendiest field in economic development: microfinance, in which lending groups grant tiny loans-on the order of $25-to people in ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘ :?'

the developing world, usually to fund small-business ventures.

(Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the best-known microfinance institution, the Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in establishing the field.) The best-publicized version of microfinance involves a solo entrepreneur getting a small loan from a well-financed bank. But Parikh is collaborating with organizations that are more representative of the way it usually works. A big chunk of the microfinance business in India, for example, is conducted by self-help groups, in which 15 to 20 people (usually women) pool their capital and then meet weekly or monthly to make

collective decisions about loans to members of the group. They also use their collective borrowing power to obtain loans from nongovernmental aid organizations or from fmancial institutions, and then lend that money to their members.

Parikh built a software system on top of Cam to assist self-help groups in managing their information and their operations. Unglamorously called SHG MIS (for "self-help group management and information system"), it includes a Cam-based application for entering and processing data, a text-messaging tool for uploading data to online databases, and a package of Web-based software for managing data and reporting it to any institution that has lent money to the selfhelp group. Such groups have traditionally relied on paper documentation, however, and because their members still trust paper, the software also includes a bar code-based system. Loan applications, grants, receipts and other documents are printed with identifying bar codes; the software enables the phone to scan the code, identify the document, photograph it, process the data it contains, and associate that data with the code. The result is a system that facilitates a quick and accurate flow of data from small villages to bigger cities, and vice versa.

In addition to providing a more efficient way for self-help groups to manage their finances, SHG MIS allows such groups to overcome two major challenges. First, it enables them to run their internal operations in a fair and transparent way, while ensuring that their loans make economic sense. "In these groups, things are often done in a somewhat ad hoc marmer, using informal documentation," Parikh says, "which can lead to instability and impermanence and contribute to the kinds of tensions that lead small groups to fall apart." His software gives groups a more systematic method of documenting decisions, tracking fmancial performance over time, and collecting information on which kinds of loans work and which don't. These advantages should help groups make better decisions and reduce internal political tensions.

The software could also improve the flow of information between self-help groups and the formal fmancial sector, which should enable them to get capital at better rates. As things stand right now, Parikh says, bankers'

interest in microfinance is so high that the supply of capital more than meets demand.

But because it's difficult to track so many small, scattered loans, banks tend to offer the same deal to every business, regardless of performance, ability to repay and so on. If self-help groups could document their performance in a formal, auditable system that banks could access quickly and reliably, the groups would be more likely to get fair

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.~ :;;; ~ I ~ ct ~ ~ Guatemalan coffee growers inspect a prototype phone that could help them get a better price for their crops. prices. They would have access to more capital, too.

Two things are striking about Parikh's invention. The first is how unremarkable it seems, and yet how consequential it is in practice. Parikh did not radically reimagine computing, nor did he make a major break with the way financial data is managed in the developed world. Instead, he focused on something whose benefits we take for granted-reliable, instant access to financial data-and figured out an easy, affordable way to bring it to people who need it. The second thing is that instead offorcing smallbusiness people to discard all their old ways and embrace an entirely new paradigm, Parikh's work attempts to meet them, as it were, where they live, in order to enhance their existing abilities and resources. Other engineers might insist that the self-help groups need to do away with paper, since it's less efficient than simply using digital entry devices, or develop PC-centered systems, since mobile phones (whatever their virtues) are limited in their power and capacity. Cam, though, relies on a different strategy, one that emerges from the bottom rather than being imposed from the top.

This strategy runs counter to the way computer science has traditionally been done. Many computer scientists tend to

think more about making machines faster and more powerful than they do about making sure they meet people's needs.

What's distinctive about Parikh's approach is that he's spent so much of the past seven years working not in front of a computer but in the field, talking with the people he hopes will eventually be his customers. It's a way of life that seems more characteristic of an anthropologist than a coder, but it's

problems. Because they're one-size-fits-all, they reduce the incentive for farmers to improve their growing methods or the quality of their crops above the general minimum. And they create incentives for cheating, which in turn reduces the value of the label to conSW11ers:are you really sure how that organic coffee you bought at Starbucks or Peet's was grown? So Parikh devised a Cam system called Randi, for

good has taken away from the environment, or the experience of the workers producing that good. One of the things teclmologies allow us to do is actually convey more of that information."

It would be a mistake to see Cam and technologies like it as a panacea for the problem of underdevelopment. While it's easy to become infatuated with the promise of microfinance and small-scale entrepreneurship, it's also easy to <.9 overestimate how much influence these ~ things can exe11on developing economies, ~ which often face structural problems that 8 won't be solved by making local markets more efficient. And it's also the case that, in the short run at least, the arrival of new technologies can widen the gap between the prosperous and the struggling: If you're buying more from the Camequipped farmers, you'll probably buy less from the non-Cam-equipped ones. In other words, not everyone will win.

Parikh seems well aware of the limits of technology in general and Cam in particular. But he is also convinced that mobile phones have the capability to become far more powerful tools, which is why he has other applications in mind for Cam-such as tracking disease outbreaks and improving the coordination of relief after On the floor of a home in the southern Madurai region of Tamil Nadu, women record their disasters. In each case, one can observe day's transactions. Small loans helped them start retail shops or buy additional livestock. The Parikh's respect for the virtues of financial information they enter in the phone will be automatically compiled in a central decentralized organization and the conviction database in India. that blinging more information and more transparency to social systems is better. responsible for much of what Cam has "representation and inspection too!." It Parikh is focused more on solving real become. In fact, Parikh says, "all of my allows farm inspectors to use mobile phones problems than on developing complex technologies. "I think, oftentimes, with ideas are really just rehashes of ideas that to systematically photograph and document farms in order to ensure their compliance local people have come up with." fOimal and well established disciplines like Parikh has adopted the same approach in with quality and production standards, and computer science, you run into the problem his work with fair-trade coffee fanners in to put that data on line so that it's easily of inertia, a kind of hesitancy to accept new Guatemala. In recent years, the "fair trade" found by certifying agencies, wholesalers ideas about what should count as important," and "organic" designations have come to and consumers. he says. "But I'm cautiously optimistic that have real economic value: fair-trade farmers In other words, if you wanted to know within academia as a whole, there's a broad are guaranteed a minimum price for their how that organic coffee was grown and sense that the real-world impact of someone's crop, and organic farmers can often charge whether a fair price was paid for it, Randi work is an important criterion by which to higher prices. But these labels also cause would let you fmd out. In the long run, the judge it. Ultimately, I think that's what system would allow today's simple labels counts: how can the work we do have a For more information: to become more nuanced, and in the practical impact? How can it make a Tapan Parikh and eam process it would allow prices to more difference in the way people live?" ~ http!!www.cs.washington.edu!homes!tapan! accurately reflect what consumers really ekgaon value. "At the moment, prices are good at James Surowiecki is a financial columnist at transmitting the value of goods in strict The New Yorker and author of The http!!www.ekgaon.com!

Wisdom of Crowds. economic terms," Parikh says. "But they're Muhammad Yunus not so good at transmitting other kinds of Please share your views on this article. Write www.grameen-info.org! infonnation, like what the production of a to editorspan@state.gov

ndian technicians tried their hands at using American impact grinders, cutting glass as easily as with diamonds and "spinning" metal at the U.S. Small Industries Exhibit at the Ferozshah Kolla Grounds in New Delhi on December 10, 1958. A combined effort of American manufacturers and the U.S. government, the month-long exhibit demonstrated the economic importance of new machinery for small businesses. "We have learned in the United States that small business plays a primary part in economic and social progress," Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker said while inaugurating the exhibit, reflecting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's beliefs that many of India's 400 million people could find fruitful work in small and village businesses rather than in big industries.

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he National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) was created in October 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, partially in response to America's fear of falling behind the Soviet Union in the exploration of outer space. NASA integrated the 8,000-strong workforce and missions of its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The new agency was made responsible for civilian human, satellite and robotic space programs. At that time, NASA had an annual budget of $100 million. Its net operational cost for 2007 was $15.1 billion.

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What Americans and Indians were doing in 1958

n the summer of 1958, American electrical engineer Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit, the key behind today's high-technology world. The microchip is used in processing data and storing memory in everything from personal computers to cell phones. During World War II, Kilby had joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in India, repairing radios at an outpost in the northeast. After the war, he finished university and joined Texas Instruments, where he came up with the groundbreaking idea of the integrated circuit and obtained more than 60 patents for a :{l variety of electronic inventions. The inte- â&#x201A;Ź grated circuit won 'ÂŁ Kilby the Nobel Prize m" u in Physics in 2000, @ five years before his ~ death.

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laska became the 49th U.S. state on July 7, 1958, when President Eisenhower signed into law the Alaska Statehood Act that had been passed by the U.S. Congress on June 30.

Eisenhower (left) is with Alaska Governor Mike Stepovich, holding a 0celebratory newspaper headline the next day. Alaska's path to becom- ~ ing America's largest state began in 1867, when Treasury Secretary ~ William Seward convinced President Andrew Johnson to purchase the 1.53-million-square-kilometer territory from Russia for $7.2 million. Critics attacked the purchase for the vast amount of money spent, labeling it "Seward's icebox" and Johnson's "polar bear garden." The discovery of gold in the late 1890s increased its value as a U.S. possession and boosted its population.

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our years after the U.S. Navy commissioned the world's first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, it became the first vessel to pass through the North Pole. There were 116 men aboard when the feat was accomplished on August 3, 1958. After the voyage, the entire crew was awardeda Presidential Unit Citation for their achievement, the first time the award was given in peace time. The submarine was decommissioned in 1980, after 25 years of shattering all submerged speed and distance records, and traveling more than 800,000 kilometers.

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romperforming Pulitzer Prize-winning plays to organizing workshops for local artists, the first American drama group to visit India had a busy itinerary in MarchApril,1958. The amateur troupe consisted of 13 students and three faculty members from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Among the works performed was American playwright Thornton Wilder's "Pullman car Hiawatha."

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uring two sittings with the Indian Prime Minister, American sculptor Mack M. Greene,a visiting Fulbright scholar, chiseled two busts of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958. Greene was working as a physical education lecturer at the YMCA College in Madras. One of the busts, in bronze, was presented to Nehru by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker in October, 1958. "The labor and talent which the sculptor has put into this figure and your interest in his artistic effort demonstrate the friendship and good feeling between our two countries," Bunker said while making the presentation. Bunker (left) and Greene (center) presented the second bust, in granite, to Senator J. William Fulbright (right), father of the Fulbright educational exchange pro) gram, when he visited New Delhi.

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Uncoln House's Half Century ith a move to a new and larger building on the horizon, the U.S. Consulate General in Mumbai is celebrating this January its 50 years of operations in Lincoln House, a former royal residency bui It in the art deco style and overlooking the Breach Candy seaface.

The celebration, a cocktail party and dinner co-sponsored by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, will look back at a half century of friendship between India and the United States. The party will be held on the lawns where visiting

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dignitaries have addressed the press, where children used to play between classes at the American School, and where Thanksgiving feasts and receptions, even weddings, have taken place In the spirit of celebrating binational friendship, the main entertainment will be provided by a duo dancing both American tap and Indian kathak.

For months, the Consulate General has been seeking mementos and memories from the public to share in a photo exhibition, slide show and other chronicles of the

for more information: U.S. Consulate General in Mumbai http://mumbai .usconsulate. gov/ http://mumbai.usconsulate.gov/consanniversary.

Visa queries: Nonimmigrant: E-mail MumbaiNIV@state.gov Immigrant: E-mail MumbaiIV@state.gov Telephone inquiries: U.S Consulate General: (022) 2363-3611 American Center: (022) 2262-4590

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ave a Question about U.S foreign policy, society or values? Soon you can find the answers at http://www.america.gov/, a new Web site to be launched early this year by the U.S. Department of State.

Through videos, polls, Quizzes, pictures and articles, America.gov will provide in-depth information on American culture and its relevance to US foreign policy. Designed to be credible, clickable, readable and entertaining, the site will offer content of special interest to opinion makers and university and college students.

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history of Lincoln House, as well as key moments and scenes from the past 60 years of Indo-American diplomatic history The American Consulate General in Mumbai is located in a building that was originally called Wankaner Palace, built in 1938 by the Maharaja of Wankaner. After it was sold to the U.S. government, the consulate staff moved in and operations began in 1958. Yuvraj Digvijay Sinh, the grandson of the maharaja, who lives in the family palace at Rajkot in Gujarat, has been invited as an honored guest for the celebrations.

The building at 78, Bhulabhai

Desai Road serves as the home of US Consul General Michael S. Owen and his family, as well as the American diplomatic presence in Mumbai, providing visa services and hosting economic, political and other interactions between Americans and Indians in western and central India.

The American Library, the Public Affairs Office, the US. Commercial Service and the U.S. Educational Foundation in India are in the separate American Center in the Sundeep Building at 4, New Marine Lines, in the commercial heart of Mumbai.

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s the law becoming international? How can speedier case handling bring better justice? These are among the questions US Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer was asking during meetings with the Indian Supreme Court, High Court judges and lawyers during his second trip to India, in December.

His first visit, along with then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, coincided with the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. When embassy security officers suggested that the two return home quickly, "we said we were not going back; we had come here to meet with judges, and it was very useful," Breyer recalled at a December 18 press briefing in New Delhi, with former Indian Attorney General Soli Sorabjee. It was important to continue their discussions on the law in the face of the 9/11 horror because, "The serious division in the world is not of race, gender or religion, but between people who believe in the use of reason and those who have given up on reason," said Breyer.

He believes the law has already become international, just based on cases on the US Supreme Court docket: plaintiffs in Ecuador suing the Netherlands in New York to get a more generous judgment; which environmental laws govern Mexican trucks entering the United States; whether Paraguayan generals who tortured people can be sued in Washington under anti-piracy laws.

In deciding a case on how long someone can be kept on Death Row, Breyer said he found "a precedent in India, from the Canada Privy Council, and a very good opinion in Zimbabwe. Nothing is binding, but everything is useful for learning. These are all human beings. They have similar problems, similar documents."

His trips to India are part of a dialogue on ways to speed justice, and even avoid the courts. Some ideas being discussed: "You enlist the lawyers in case management.. A panel of lawyers can look at your case and tell you honestly what it's worth, whether you have a case, or whether it should go to mediation or arbitration. But success depends on who you get to arbitrate. ... Otherwise, high-powered lawyers won't listen."

Breyer praised the work of a judge in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, who has sittings in a little house, with a social worker, lawyer and doctor on his panel, dealing mainly with abused women. "The woman describes the problem;

Top: The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington,

D.C.

Above: Former Indian Attorney General Soli Sorabjee listens as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer (right) answers a question at a press briefing in New Delhi in December, 2007.

they focus on solving her problem," Breyer said.

All nine U.S. Supreme Court justices sit together to hear cases, about 8,000 a year, and rule within three months. "The rule is no one leaves on vacation until our work is finished," said Breyer. The justices are appointed for life, by the President.

In more than 200 years, there have been only two cases of corruption in the US. federal courts, said Breyer "Part of it is prestige. Also, long terms mean you're not looking for other work, part is being paid a decent wage, part has to do with prosecution, the certainty that someone will investigate and there's a good chance you'll get caugh!," he said. "Part of it is the feeling that you are part of a system where people are depending on you to do your job honestly. The poorest citizen can come into that courtroom and get the personal attention of this high officer." ~

If there is an artist who refuses to talk, it is Chhatrapati Dutta. Given the option, he wouldn't even title his works. rt is what a viewer creates," says this 43-year-old Bangalore-born artist.

"It is not necessarily what goes into making it." Almost reluctantly, his baritone barely audible, Dutta elaborates on his philosophy while putting the finishing touches to a clay human head with a zipper running around it. At first glance it looks like an advertising mannequin waiting to be shot for a billboard rather than a piece of sculpture. But if one were to read into it and correlate it with Dutta's concerns, the zipper is all about artificial divisions and unifications. A series of 19th-century English ballads printed on huge pieces of vinyl boards stand against the wall and a lifesize donkey wrapped in Victorian crochet lace gazes at the rain-splashed lawn in Artspace, a residency studio for artists in Baruipur on the outskirts of Kolkata, where Dutta was living and working for months for an installation show at Akar Prakar Gallery in August-September, 2007.

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Chhatrapati Dutta

Breaking Barriers

By RUMA DASGUPTA

Paintings, sculpture, photography, multimedia, performance, shot footage and found objects are all brought together

by Dutta, not necessarily with surface beauty, but more often with large doses of satire and even black humor. He has broken the barrier of the flat canvas and has explored the role of an artist in the way he delineates his concerns. He dealt with institutionalized violence and individual freedom in "Bone Mill Tales," which he mounted a year ago at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata. It was breathtaking in its scale and intensity, bringing together video art, performance art and sculpture with unexpected combinations of sound bites and images.

"I use metaphors and signifiers in my works. In my recent pieces, suggestive texts and lines indicaGlorious City, painting. tive of maps and territories have played a significant role," Dutta volunteers, at last opening up to verbal communication.

His map series of paintings were shown in July-August 2007 at TamarindArt Gallery in New York, together with "Kaar land?" It is his take on a controversial car project conflict in West Bengal.

Dutta used the event to explore the bloody history of land ownership that has been a part of the story of mankind since primitive times. "Kaar," which is a pun on car, when translated into his mother tongue, Bengali, means whose, and typically, the ques- Bone Mill Tales, installation. tion is left open.

Last summer's showcase of works by Dutta and four other young Indian artists, called "Of Images and Illusions," was curated by Dipanjana Danda at TamarindArt, founded by Marguerita and Kent Charugundla. The gallery in midtown Manhattan was inaugurated in 2003 by Indian artist MF Hussain, who also appeared for the "Of Images and Illusions" opening, which showcased the work of Pappu Bardhan, Chandrima Bhattacharyya, Pratul Dash and Mahjabin Majumdar, as well as Dutta.

In the first quarter of 2008, Dutta's works will appear in a solo show

at TamarindArt. He will deal with concerns about space-geographical, psychological and sexual-that have engaged him since he started his journey as an artist, after he earned a first-class Master's degree in painting from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan in West Bengal.

Initially, Dutta opted to experiment with glass as his surface. He mastered the art of painting on the reverse side, in the reverse order, starting off with the last layer and working inwards rather than outwards. Perhaps the practice was a reflection of the inherent nature of his exploratory process. For him the process is as much the work as the finished effort.

"I would like to spend some â&#x20AC;˘ time in New York," says Dutta, "before I get down to doing anything on canvas for viewers in the U.S. The nuances of the American experience can re-skew my exploration of the dilemma of the individual against the collective."

Dutta grew up soaking in images from Hollywood films and hero worshipping actor-director Charlie Chaplin, as well as American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The concept of individual freedom was imbibed early through exposure to the youth movements of the 1960s and anti-Vietnam War campaigns.

In a recent painting called "The Screen," Dutta comments on freedom of speech.

"How can freedom of speech mean anything if the voices don't reach anywhere?" asks Dutta, an uncharacteristic flash of impatience crossing his otherwise still face. Looking for an answer perhaps, he goes back to the firing oven, where another chapter in his exploration of the dichotomies of the times is taking shape. ~ Ruma Dasgupla is a Ko/kata-based freelance writer and a correspondent with Harmony magazine.

The write-up on kala-azar is in the right perspective and rightly concludes on the necessity of medicine at an affordable price. Dr CP Thakur pointed out that due to DOT spraying during the malaria eradication program, the spread of kala-azar was checked, As kala-azar is a vector-born disease and the sand fly is the carrier of Leishmaniasis, DOT spraying killed the sand fly. A second string is the family profile of the victims and the telling photographs of the habitat of the sufferers. Ironically, the habitat and breeding place for the sand fly is the same as for the victims.

It is calculated that kala-azar travels 16 kilometers monthly I think it is equally important to work on healthy habitats for the poor Thanks for a good article on the suffering of our region.

Janki Tarun Shukla Ahmedabad, Gujarat

I liked t~e article "Kala-azar, the Destroyer of Hope best because it touched my heart.

There are lots of middle class families in India that don't take the effort to look at these children, but the United States brings thiS Issue out.

Mireille Cronin Mather Institute for One World Health San Francisco, California

The article is an accurate, moving piece on the societal and personal impact of kala-azar on people in Bihar and provides a nice overview of the current gaps and activities in addressing the disease. Well done! A few items of clarification: Fungizone is the brand name for Amphotericin B, so they are one and the same drug, and although OneWorld Health is based in the United States, the Paromomycin 1M Injection was developed in India with Indian researchers. Also, the patient study population for Phase 4 is targeted at 2,000 patients.

'Just a Small Town Boy" reveals the growing disenchantment with the culture of "work, buy, consume, die."

This is only to be expected given the erosion of values in society. Not that urban life is necessarily sinister and immoral, People may not be intrinsically bad, but they imbibe a culture where a sense of sharing and concern or to "love thy neighbor as thyself" is rare. This is true of developing countries as well.

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Jonas Salk had sought to allay fears over the safety of his anti-polio vaccine by publicly injecting himself and members of his family with the same vaccine.

This stunning episode should have found a place in the SPAN article.

Polio in tile United S\atBs: fear and tIIenVietDrv···-_·_·

S. Raghunatha Prabhu Alappuzha, Kerala

SPAN magazine's back-page write-up, "Early Detection of Breast Cancer," was very informative and inspiring. Jeannie Mulford deserves kudos for openly and candidly stating that she had breast cancer and survived after surgery. This statement must be very consoling to many women who are likely to have breast cancer and refuse to undergo mammogram tests for fear of adverse publicity and supposed shame. My wife is also one among them, The government should give encouragement and incentives to undergo mammogram tests. Non-government organizations should conduct advertising campaigns encouraging mammogram tests and dispel the notion that undergoing the test is a shame.

Dancing is an approp~iate outlet to let go of negative emotions. It goes with music and music does not recognize human-made boundaries. It joins the hearts of diflerent people from diflerent countnes.

Let me say that "musIc IS the best medicine." Music and dance not only provide solace in misery; they are also Ideal accompaniments to our JOYs.

ndian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari releases the book The State of India's Democracy at his residence in New Delhi on December 11. It was co-edited by Sumit Ganguly (right), an Indian American professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana; Professor Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford University (left), and March F. Plattner, vice president for research and studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. It marks the 60th anniversary of India's independence and subsequent transition to democracy

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ormer u.s. Vice President AI Gore (left) and Indian scientist Rajendra K. Pachauri after receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 10. For spreading awareness about global warming, Gore shared the prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Pachauri, and including hundreds of scientists from America, India and other countries.

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egistration is now open at http:// www.walkforlifeindia.org/ for the February 10 "Walk for Life" walk/run event in New Delhi. Organized by the CanSupport group, with help from the American Women's Association and the U.S. Embassy, the focus of the fivekilometer walk is to raise awareness about breast cancer and to raise funds for the care of patients.

Sunday, 10th February 2008 New Delhi, India

REGISTER NOW TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT BREAST CANCER