March 2011
50 posts
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With so much attention being paid to the noisy revolutions taking place around the world these days, it’s refreshing to pay attention to one of the rare “quiet revolutions” going on for years, in say a place like Tibet.
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Pankaj Misra is his usual garrulous, over-writing self as a reviewer in his review of Jennifer Eagan’s new novel.
But it looks like the novel, A Visit From The Goon Squad is worth a read.
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An Op-Art of Glenn Beck’s hypothetical cable channel, named “Tea-V” is funny, if only the Hollywood actor chosen at its chief spokesperson is Jon Voight.
Isn’t that Angelina Jolie’s father? The one who, unable to tolerate his famous daughter’s ultra-liberal credentials, called her a “vampire” that drinks blood to preserve her beauty?
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Writer/Cultural critic Amit Chaudhuri is sick, he says, of the book industry that has grown around the “idea” of India. Reviewing the litany of new writing on India—as a concept rather than as a place—Chaudhuri asks if Indians can ever produce cultural work about India without mentioning the word “India”. Let the work itself evoke something unique about the...
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Watch
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal best-selling author Amitav Ghosh discusses India’s obsession with pop culture and why “India versus China” is more farce than fact.
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Liked reading this piece on the value of books by Roberto Bolano.
Redeems my faith in reading as a wonderful experience in and of itself.
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The cash-for-vote culture in Indian politics has apparently taken a new turn into modernity (I’d say absurdity) according to a Wall Street Journal report.
DMK, the party that rules Tamil Nadu has, in its party manifesto, blatantly promised every voter who votes for its candidates, a laptop, a mixer-grinder and a free bus-pass. When I was growing up, contenders for political office used to...
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“Formerly he could only offer small planes as bribes, [but] now he can pay for...”
– A WikiLeaks leak about rising corruption in Indian politics. The quote pertains to India’s current Industry minister, Kamal Nath. The information was given by a Congress party official to an official in the US embassy in New Delhi. It was meant to have been a praise of Nath’s personal...
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Just got to know that there is a new breed of sushis in the market.
In his Op-Ed piece on the current state of political affairs in the Middle East, Tom Friedman writes:
In Bahrain, a Sunni minority, 30 percent of the population, rules over a Shiite majority. There are many Bahrani Sunnis and Shiites—so called sushis, fused by intermarriage—who carry modern political identities and...
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The most exquisite of intimacies, I feel are those, where you are able to occupy the same place with sombody for hours, without the need to speak.
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Being an English professor myself, I can quite see the relevance of a pedagogy of “teaching to the Text Message” advocated by a writing Professor at John Jay College (in Queens, NY).
He proposes that English Composition courses be re designed around encouraging students to produce pithy yet meaningful (and thoughtful) writing assigments that speak to the kind of writing culture they...
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“China is so afraid about a “Chinese spring”—of the Arab not...”
– Me.
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Sarah Palin's Passage to India →
Finished reading the text of Sarah Palin’s speech which she delivered during her recent visit to India.
My verdict: the speech was very un sexy.
True to the Indian tradition of lick spittling pretty white women, Palin was introduced to the audience as the “Republican party’s sexiest brand” (which in itself is a highly undignified label anyways).
Some moments from the...
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I’m not sure if it’s sensitive to rename Japan as the “land of the rising radiation plume.”
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While reading V.S. Naipaul’s latest travelogue on Africa—The Masque of Africa—I am coming across interesting nuggets of information regarding the art of warfare in pre-colonial Africa.
Here’s a bit I wanted to share:
War was noise, to frighten the enemy. [Mutesa] had fifty drummers, as many flute-players, and any number of men ready to shake gourds with pebbles. There...
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Gender bias in The New Yorker Magazine?
In January of 2011, a reader, wrote an open letter on Facebook to the magazine known for being wonderfully intellectual.
The gist of her complain was that there are hardly any female writers (except in the short “Shouts & Murmurs” type of segments, and in the fiction and poetry sections) in The New Yorker.
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Readers Respond To The NYT Paywall →
What readers have said in response to the NYTimes’ decision to raise a pay wall on its website from March 28, 2011.
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The latest US News and World Report ranking is out for America’s top Graduate Schools.
Malcolm Gladwell has already pointed out the manipulative tactic used by the report. The annual report by no means, Gladwell assures us, deserves the status of either an academic almanac or gospel that is accorded it.
Gladwell does particularly well in positing the conundrum of why Penn State, a public...
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Sara Palin is scheduled to visit India.
In the vein of Balram Halwai, the hero of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Govind Acharya, of Amnesty International’s South Asia Co-group, has written an imaginary letter to Palin, suggesting whom she should meet in India.
Balram asks the Chinese premier to see the wretched yet hidden places of the new India; likewise Acharya tells Palin to...
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Now that India has earned the (dubious) distinction of being the world’s largest arms importer (gone are the days of importing wheat etc.), might we expect it to now initiate programs of regime changes in its neighboring countries?
Could start with Myanmar as an appetizer…
Incidentally China occupies position #2 as an arms importer. Doesn’t mean its planning to be a less...
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I wish the media would stop reporting on the stock market in connection with Japan’s natural disaster.
It’s insensitive and inhuman, to say the least.
It plays on our petty feelings of insecurity (as our retirement savings are heavily invested in those damn stocks), and makes us fear for ourselves (what if our portfolios’ net worth dwindles?), whereas ideally we should be...
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Since January of this year, two momentous events have shaken the world.
First it was the people’s revolution for democracy and freedom in the Middle-Eastern and North African monarchies and dictatorships; then, just a few days ago, Japan was struck by a natural calamity of gargantuan proportions.
While I had much to say and analyze about the former, the latter is hard to respond to except...
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“It is true that faced with this calamity, the people of Sendai have maintained a...”
– Kazumi Sayeki in the New York Times
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I found the following observation on a newly launched Ezine on Arab culture and politics:
while the sexual assault of Lara Logan can be attributed to the “misogynist culture of Islam,” the sexual assault of 1 out of 3 women wearing the US military uniform is always only the result of deviant behavior by deviant individuals.
I agree whole-heartedly with this person (the link back to the...
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“There is nothing like it in American journalism, and that will still be the case...”
– Frank Rich, in what seems to be his farewell column in the NY Times.
The “it” refers to the Times itself, which I have enjoyed reading over the years (top to bottom). I read the Times more for the excellent language used by some of its remarkable writers, esp, the film critics, and...
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“Of course, [Newt] Gingrich is being a better husband this time around. He’s 67!...”
– Gail Collins commenting on Newt Gingrich’s recent rationale behind being a “serial adulterer” in the NYtimes.
Gingrich is on his 3rd marriage, having left the first 2 just when each contracted a life-threatening disease.
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The world’s most eligible bachelor: A Seoul-based match-making company, Couple.net, launched its plans to globalize with an experimental search for the perfect soul mate for Kim Jong-Un, President Kim Jong-Il’s son and a “roly-poly bachelor” to boot.
But the search has run into a snag as the potential groom’s data is not quite available.
Few verifiable details are...
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The newest film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre has been rated PG-13 for its “chaste passion” and “discreet violence”.
I understand the comingling of passion with chastity—for the heroine, Jane, is an embodiment of chastity (i.e. she will be kissed by nor open her legs to anybody)which tempers the passion she develops over time for her beau, the Earl...
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Note to self: Read The Company of Wolves, Angela Carter’s feminist retelling of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood”.
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I glance at Facebook updates often. I am particularly curious to see what the youth (age range 18-24) in India are up to. Of course, Facebook updates are hardly a window into the soul of a national group people, but still…I do get a faint sense that the youth of India are disengaged and a bit on the frivolous side, especially the English-speaking one’s.
While the young of nations in...
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I like the word that people aspiring for more democratic privileges in the Middle-East and Muslim countries in North Africa are using: Rage.
The word “protest” is being replaced by the word “rage”, so a day of rage has now been planned in Saudi Arabia, after days (and weeks) of rages have been carried out in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen etc.
Fires rage on for...
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“When forming images, it helps to have a dirty mind. Evolution has programmed our...”
– Joshua Foer in his book Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (2011)
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Hymenoplasty or a reconstruction of a broken hymen—making it intact—is on the rise among women in Europe.
Muslim women are especially drawn to this short medical procedure because they fear they won’t get married if they are not virgins.
This one is an odd kind of dilemma: while Muslim women, by virtue of living in the West feel pressured to have sex to be culturally accepted...
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8556852.stm →
The saying that homophobes, anti-Semites and racists are in essence wannabe homosexuals, Jews and blacks, has proven to be true in the case of US anti-gay rights senator Roy Ashburn.
But a number of gay rights activists have bemoaned the fact of Ashburn’s coming out. He’s too unsightly, in a holistic way, they claim and should’ve stayed inside the closet.
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Language crisis in academic writing: An acquisitions Editor at a major academic book publishing firm, who now teaches Creative Writing in Spokane, has expressed dismay over the abject writing produced by academics who write.
Publish or perish is the dictum that most academic live by—they literally live in fear of losing their job if they don’t publish enough. However, more often than...
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Of all major American—and might I add global—insitutions, the (American) University is, I believe, the most inclusive, democratic and eclectic, and I’m glad that an article in the New York Review of Books is with me on this.
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Mormons rule, because not only were they the masterminds behind the repeal of Prop 8 in California, but the Mormon ethic was also recently instrumental in suspending a star basketball player at Brigham Young University. Why? Because he broke the school’s Mormonic “honor code” by having sexual relations with his long time girlfriend.
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“Capitalism supports a small number of people grandly. And they will do anything...”
– Me.
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An imaginary Professor’s (imaginary) statement of her teaching methods to her imaginary students: “I am not confusing or disorganized; I just transcend understanding”.
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David Denby of the New Yorker is a masterful film critic, but he often tends to damn with faint praise (a form of art criticism that was perfected in the age of satire in 18th century England).
In his reveiw of George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, the Matt Damon-Emily Blunt starrer, Denby classifies the film as a “strange, empty movie, a metaphysical Cracker-Jack box without a prize...
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Another disheartening thought: the known world, which in Platonic terms is a world of appearances, can dissolve at the touch of a finger. It could collapse into dust.
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A disheartening thought, but one that is partially reflective of a truth, nonetheless: It is possible to do right and wrong at the same time.
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“For the past 45 years, I have had Lipton’s chicken noodle soup everyday,...”
– Hugh Hefner 