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Sita Sings the Blues
Sita Sings the Blues is a Ramayana-inspired animated film told from the standpoint of Sita, who is depicted as an Indian Betty Boop. It is written, produced, designed, and animated by Nina Paley (I haven’t seen it yet but the concept is intriguing, as is the way Paley came to it).
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose [American] husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”Categories: Art & Cinema6 comments on Sita Sings the Blues
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Two Argumentative Indians
I came across an interesting, if also long and meandering, e-debate from early 2004 between two Indians in the US: Rajiv Malhotra and Vijay Prashad. The debate spans several topics in the history, culture, and politics of South Asia and their representation on Western campuses.
Rajiv Malhotra is a public intellectual and philanthropist with a strong pro-India Hindu perspective (but non-Hindutva). He has used his financial success in the hi-tech industry to fund academic research and conferences led by Indian scholars, and seeks to restore balance to the study of Indian culture and Hinduism in the West. He runs The Infinity Foundation and is the author of Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America.
Vijay Prashad is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, CT. According to his faculty profile, he is committed to intellectual
extremism: nothing is forbidden to think about, everything is open to
investigation. Known for his outspoken leftist writing and activism, he is the author of eleven books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History Of The Third World. -
The Global Gender Gap
The World Economic Forum has released its 2008 gender gap report and ranked 130 countries on it. The gap index measures “gender-based inequalities on economic, political, education- and health-based criteria” and is “designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities” (not absolute levels of available resources and opportunities). The index is therefore independent of a country’s development level (here is the methodology).- Northern Europeans once again lead the pack: Norway, Sweden, Finland. Must be that reddish brew of euro-socialism they add into their waterworks. Or as Usha quipped, “It’s so bloody cold out there, they have nothing better to do than to fix their societies.”
- Gender gap correlates much less with a country’s economic development rank, more with affirmative action and traditional culture (which can deal a fairer hand to women). For e.g., Philippines ranked 6, Sri Lanka 12, Lesotho 16, Mozambique 18, South Africa 22, Cuba 25, Namibia 30, Tanzania 38, while the US was 27, Israel 56, Italy 67, Singapore 84, Japan 98, and S. Arabia 128.
- China ranked 57, far above India at 113 and Pakistan 127. Next time someone cites female prime ministers as evidence of women’s high status in the subcontinent (vs., say, the US, which has never elected a female head of state), cite this study. No wonder more Indian women than men recoil at the idea of returning to India after living in the West.
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Buruma on French’s Naipaul
The lives of writers are a legitimate subject of inquiry; and the truth should not be skimped. It may well be, in fact, that a full account of a writer’s life might in the end be more a work of literature and more illuminating—of a cultural or historical moment—than the writer’s books. [–VS Naipaul]
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Indian Vistas: A Calendar
Indian Vistas — 2009 Calendar by Namit Arora (US$16 + S&H)A couple of friends recently suggested that I make calendars out of my travel photo archive on Shunya. So I made one! The effort was a breeze; the hardest part was choosing the 12 images (click to preview).
The new year is a-comin’. Go ahead, buy one! All proceeds will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
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The American Electorate, 2008
Yesterday was a very happy day for me because Barack Obama won, beating John McCain 52-46 in the popular vote. That it took the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a botched war in Iraq, a deeply unpopular Republican administration, Sarah Palin, and Obama’s far superior intellect, curiosity, vision, heart, and political acumen to prevail only by 6% is hardly confidence-inspiring in the American people. But let us be gracious now and savor the victory such as it is—for the chance to have a smarter leader at the helm, for the milestone it is for US Civil Rights and the fulfillment of a powerful dream, and for the improbable journey of this son of a black Muslim man from the third-world. From the results of the national exit poll taken yesterday, I have gleaned the following choice bits about the American electorate:
- Women preferred Obama to McCain by a 56-43 margin; men were evenly split.
- Working women preferred Obama 60-39; the rest (men and non-working women) were evenly split.
- Whites (74% of electorate) preferred McCain 55-43 (white men 57-41). Blacks (13% of electorate) chose Obama 94-4, and Latinos and Asians by a two-thirds majority.
- Married people preferred McCain 52-47. Unmarried people preferred Obama 65-33.
- 27% of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered people (4% of electorate) voted for McCain.
- Protestants (54% of electorate) chose McCain 54-45. Catholics chose Obama 54-45, Jews 78-21, others (Muslims, Hindus…) 73-22.
- 23% of those who indicated their religion as “none” (atheists? 12% of electorate) voted for McCain.
- A quarter of the electorate identified themselves as White Evangelical/Born-again Christians. A quarter of them voted for Obama.
- Support for McCain grew with age but only senior citizens (65+) preferred McCain (so much for associating age with wisdom!).
- Annual family income became a factor only below $50K (60-38 for Obama, though whites in this income group preferred McCain). Above $50K, income was not a factor.
- About 6% of US families make $15K or less annually. About 6% make over $200K.
- Those with zero high school education or post-graduate degrees preferred Obama by around 20 point margins. The gap was much smaller with in-between levels of education. (A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!)
- 22% of people identified themselves as Liberals, 44% as Moderates, 34% as Conservative. Voting for Obama were 90% of the liberals, 60% of the moderates, and 20% of the conservatives.
- 50% of the electorate is “very worried” about the economy and they preferred Obama 60-38.
- A third of the electorate had no investments in the stock market and preferred Obama 61-37; the rest were evenly split.
- 42% of the electorate has a gun at home and they preferred McCain 62-37. The rest chose Obama 65-33.
- Ex-military people preferred McCain 54-44.
- Support for Obama increased moving across rural -> suburban -> urban areas.
- 10% of the people decided who to vote for in the very last week, and then split evenly.
- 28% of the electorate even today approves of the job Bush is doing.
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On Credit Default Swaps
The recent meltdown in the US financial markets has been attributed to subprime lending practices that, along with low interest rates, had fueled a housing bubble since the mid-90s. In a feeding frenzy of sorts, lenders kept lowering the bar for home mortgages. As adjustable interest rates kicked up, defaults and foreclosures began and the bubble finally burst. Housing demand and prices fell, leading to a liquidity crunch for financial institutions. Thanks to economic globalization, the malaise quickly spread across the pond.Many pundits have adequately explained the crisis (especially listen to George Soros—video below) and why the US government had to devise a massive bailout for Wall Street and recapitalize the banks (think of it as an emergency liver transplant for one who had turned to a reckless, binge drinking lifestyle). It also brought home another fact of modern capitalism: bankruptcy is only for the little folks; those big enough can’t be allowed to fail for their irresponsibility, lest they bring down the whole house. Neat, aye?
But now, having traded a pressing liquidity crisis with a higher national debt, is the worst finally behind us? In other words, do we now simply need to hunker down and ride out an economic recession that may be, at worst, longer than usual (say, lasting up to 18-24 months, instead of the average 10 months) and wait for the eventual market rebound?
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Jonathan Haidt at TED
Jonathan Haidt delivers a compelling and thoughtful digest of the essence of his research and insights on human moral psychology, and what makes conservatives and liberals different (and alike). As a follow-up to Namit’s post on Haidt a few weeks ago, here’s the 20-minute video of Haidt’s TED talk:
Haidt invites us to take his research quiz at YourMorals.Org.
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The Lives of Animals
“Life on the farm isn’t what it used to be. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes portrayed in children’s books have been replaced by windowless sheds, tiny crates, wire cages, and other confinement systems integral to what is now known as ‘factory farming.’” Here is a sobering look at how farm animals are transformed into food today (viewer discretion advised. Also see my previous post on this topic.)
(Click image below to go to the video site. Image source.)
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The Tiger of Jelepara
The amazing Sunderbans, land of superlatives, is where the Ganga River meets the Indian Ocean, a great expanse of flat, mangrove covered islands, and estuaries that change salinity with the tides. Both the world’s largest river delta and largest estuarine mangrove forest, it’s also home to the world’s largest population of Royal Bengal tigers as well as some of the world’s largest crocodiles, which can get to be over 20 ft. long, with the girth of two grown men. Every year villagers are killed by the local wildlife. Three years ago, we took a boat ride through the uninhabited regions of the wildlife sanctuary. Since the islands are heavily forested and we were confined either to the boat or to fenced-in walkways on a couple of the islands, we did not see much of the unique wildlife (except baby crocs at a breeding station). No doubt, the water, too, teems with life, including elusive pods of rare freshwater dolphins, but it’s too full of silt to see anything at all. The Sunderbans felt wild to me, and mysterious, a place where a thousand eyes peer at us, unsentimentally, though we are blithely unaware.
Here’s a recent article on the increasing conflicts between tigers and humans in the Sunderbans. It’s a story with a tragic ending, from every point of view, but it brings together several strands of complexity on questions of how people co-exist with nature (or don’t), and might have done throughout human history. The people in this article live by forest subsistence in tiger territory, much as people would have throughout southern Asia for perhaps the last 60,000 years, until the tigers (and lions, and forests) were mostly killed off, in just the last hundred years. John Vidal, of the Guardian, vividly recounts the story of one tiger:Tarak was walking along the high earth embankment that protects Jelepara from the river Chunkuri, and had just passed a small Hindu temple with its gaudy, painted wooden effigies of the tiger god Dakshin Ray. He would not have seen the real tiger that had just swum across the river from the great Sunderbans forest 400 yards away. It hauled itself out of the water and mauled him from behind. No one even heard Tarak cry out…. But that was just the start of the drama in Jelepara that night….
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Sacred Games: a review
Cross-posted from Neutral Observer.Sacred Games
is Vikram Chandra’s third work of fiction, published in early 2007. It
is a large novel, both physically as well as in scope and ambition.
Judging by its 900 pages, it doesn’t appear that the author was
slacking off during the seven years that it took him to complete it.
The book is set in turn-of-the-century Bombay and has as its central
characters a mafia don, Ganesh Gaitonde, and a police inspector, Sartaj
Singh. The broad plot could be straight out of a thousand thrillers: a
nuclear device is about to be set off in Bombay. The intention is to
make it appear to be the handiwork of Muslims, in order to ensure all
manner of mayhem. The don Gaitonde has unwittingly helped in the
importation of nuclear material, but panics after realizing this. He
builds a bunker in the middle of Bombay to try and survive the nuclear
explosions. For some reason, he then commits suicide, but not before
tipping off the police inspector to his presence there.The
book has the police procedural and popular detective fiction as its
templates, but these are merely structural frames. Chandra’s real skill
is as a weaver of stories. Much of the book is devoted to the career of
Ganesh Gaitonde, narrated in the first person: his rise from a
small-time crook to a major don, his criminal exploits, his going
international, his living on a yacht in Thailand, and his spiritual
awakening and involvement with a guru. This narrative is interleaved
with the present, where Sartaj Singh is involved in other police work.
In addition, there are so-called “insets” in which Chandra brings in
additional stories, of characters who impinge upon the lives of
Gaitonde and Sartaj Singh. Here is where Chandra’s remarkable skill as
a teller of stories is revealed. In particular, his account of the
traumas of Sartaj Singh’s mother’s family during the partition of India
is very well done. This inset has little to do with the main plot, but
adds immeasurably to the reader’s experience. Indeed, this kind of
loving attention is lavished upon almost all of the characters in the
book. This is really what sets this book apart. Even if you are not
particularly impressed with the detective work or titillated by the
Pulp Fiction type of gangster narrative, you can soak in the warmth of
knowing the characters intimately.Categories: Books & AuthorsIndependence for Kashmir?
Recent events in Kashmir have sharpened the criticism of Indian military’s botched occupation of the region (e.g., Barun Roy, Pankaj Mishra, Pratap Bhanu Mehta), with many in the Indian media even calling for the hitherto unthinkable—Kashmiri independence (e.g., Arundhati Roy, Swaminathan Aiyar, Vir Sanghvi). Here is Ms. Roy: None of these fears of what the future holds can justify the
continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than
the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for
freedom justified the colonial project. … The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It
allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by
holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in
Kashmir. It’s all being stirred into a poisonous brew and administered
intravenously, straight into our bloodstream. At the
heart of it all is a moral question. Does any government have the right
to take away people’s liberty with military force?India needs azadi [freedom] from Kashmir just as much—if not more—than Kashmir needs azadi from India.
Ten National Security Myths
A special feature in The Nation presents ten national security myths that—to varying degrees—both Obama and McCain are spouting:
As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse. Many of them are being perpetuated by the very same political forces that peddled the myth of mushroom clouds coming from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Others are the product of muddled thinking on the part of both Republicans and Democrats. If left unchallenged, these myths and fallacies could influence the outcome of the election and shape policy in the next administration…
Myth 1. It’s a dangerous world. We face an array of serious national security threats that require an experienced Commander in Chief.
Categories: PoliticsOn Conservative Values
With battle lines clearly drawn in the US, Jonathan Haidt explains what, deep down, separates the Democrats from the Republicans:
…the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it,” this is the “it” to which they refer. Conservative positions on gays, guns, god, and immigration must be understood as means to achieve one kind of morally ordered society. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label “elitist.” But how can Democrats learn to see—let alone respect—a moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?
What Are We?
“We are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds.”
This is part of the answer Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor leaves us with after relating the fascinating and gripping story of her stroke, caused by hemorrhage to the left hemisphere of her brain, and the unexpected spiritual moment she experienced within that stroke: Nirvana.
As a dedicated neuroanatomist whose work involves postmortem studies of human brains, Dr. Taylor was in a rare position to understand and examine what was happening to her when her cognitive facilities began to shut down one morning in 1996. It took her 8 years to fully recover from that stroke and to be able to share what she now calls her “stroke of insight.” When she speaks of it at the TED conference in February 2008, she begins by describing the basic functioning of the brain’s hemispheres, presenting a fresh human brain for our inspection with discomfiting matter-of-factness*. But as she continues her talk with warmth and humor, her presentation leaves off being an introductory lecture on brain anatomy and takes flight into realms of cognitive and spiritual sensation, her stroke as she lived it, her innermost life. Her telling becomes theatrical; she moves and brings her entire body to help us understand the intensity and power of her experience, and we are moved to take the journey with her. 19 minutes.
Combating Human Trafficking
Here’s an arresting short talk (25 minutes) on the realities and prevalence of human trafficking and slavery given recently by Julia Ormond at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA. According to Ormond, slavery is alive and well today. Worldwide, tens of millions of people live in slavery; and while this is the smallest fraction of the human population ever to live in bondage, they are nevertheless the largest number of slaves in history. She tells us that the institution is economically tied to powerful international crime syndicates and terrorists and involves more horror than one should ever have to imagine.
From FORA.tv: Julia Ormond, President of Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) and UN Goodwill Ambassador in Human Trafficking addressed the Global Philanthropy Forum. Julia Ormond reveals statistics in human trafficking and slavery and why it often goes unreported. Ormond recalls stories from child victims from around the world to shed light on the growing problem (from April 11th, 2008).
What Confucius Said
(This essay was published in Culture Wars, the reviews publication of the Institute of Ideas, London, in Feb 2009.)
During the Cultural Revolution, millions of Red Guards rampaged at the behest of Chairman Mao to rid China of its “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. They defaced ancient monuments, destroyed historical artifacts, burnt monasteries, persecuted traditional arts, and tortured minorities and “bourgeois thinkers”, leaving half-a-million dead in their wake. A special venom was directed at things Confucian. Encouraged to question their parents and teachers (who were traditionally revered), youngsters were soon marching with slogans like: “Parents may love me, but not as much as Chairman Mao”. Regarded later as an unmitigated disaster even by diehard commies, this wasn’t the first time a Chinese leader had turned against Confucianism. The very first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who also commissioned the Terracotta Army, had launched his own great Confucian purge in the third century BCE. But such events are anomalies for Confucianism, which would revive, adapt, and thrive again (the longest slump was during the Tang dynasty), giving China a distinctive cultural continuity for almost 2500 years.
The Modern Stop Sign
Imagine the STOP sign didn’t exist and a major corporation tried to create one today. Here is what the creative process might look like:
http://view.break.com/542649 – Watch more free videosBindra, the Silent Killer
Until Beijing, the last gold India had won at the Olympics was in 1980; no Indian had ever won an individual gold. This dismal record has been a source of shame for countless Indians. Every four years, a puny contingent would trudge to a foreign city, crash out, and the question would arise again: Why do Indians fare so badly? Answers would again span the whole gamut: economics, culture, genetics, diet, climate, politics, the dominance of cricket, and more.I can’t remember the last time India’s Olympic record bothered me. I suspect this is because Olympic medals do not correlate with values I admire in a society. They do not suggest a culture that’s engaged in evolving, say, a refined balance between justice, equality, and liberty. Playing sports to me is about having fun, being social, and engaging in friendly yet spirited contests. Sure, medals measure and reward excellence and can encourage people to aim higher, but the Olympics are now so hyper-competitive that it’s all about winning after a long and grueling regime of hi-tech training (and at times drugs) at sports academies, often sponsored by “national prestige” initiatives. Where is the joy? Are these sports “finishing schools” much different from those that produce beauty queens? Reduced to a spectacle of physical feats by people driven by vacuous notions of glory, fame, and success, I see no reason to care for the Olympics (save for a certain fascination that led me to trapeze artists in my boyhood). Richard Rodriquez wrote four years ago:
Historians tell us that the ancient Greeks attached no glory to losing. So, also, today: Only gold will get you onto the box of Wheaties. Only gold, not silver, not bronze, not a good try, will get you immortality. Only gold is immortal. As someone who feels his soul more Hebraic than Hellenic, I keep thinking that what is eternal about the eternal flame is the wish for immortality. The Olympics is a celebration of youth, of ripeness, of summer. It is the most sublime and foolish of human romances, and this is its liturgy. Appropriate now to the neo-paganism of today’s America, where one senses everywhere the obsolescence of a word like “soul.” The body is all, health is all, and death is the defeat of all. Let the games begin.
Categories: CultureBundle of Joy?
Like the protagonist of Machado de Asis’s novel, Epitaph of a Small Winner, I consider myself a small winner for having overcome my blind urge to procreate. Not long ago, an Indian auntie, displeased with my choice, called me selfish to my face—I was too devoted to living for myself, she said, echoing a common view of people who choose like me. I pointed out politely that modern couples who produce children seem to me more selfish in that case. They certainly do no favors to the unborn—or to anyone else in this crowded world—by engendering for their own gratification those who have no say in the matter. She persisted: But what about the emotional well-being that children provide? A recent article in Newsweek brought me some delight. Next time this pesky auntie needles me about the deprivations of my “childless” state (there is nothing “less” about it, I tell her; call me “childfree”), I’ll be sure to point her to this study:
