Arun puts up some of his best pictures of rivers, lakes and fountains on show.
lakes, Rivers, Sea and the Like
Published by May 17th, 2008 in India, Photoblog and Travel. 0 CommentsRetrieving Ambedkar and Gandhi
Published by May 16th, 2008 in Caste, Dalit, Democracy, History and Politics. 0 CommentsRustic Rumblings urges a re-examination of Ambedkar and Gandhi, but while doing so ‘the sameness and differences in Gandhi and Ambedkar have to be dealt with together’ because ‘the complex and profound dialectics between them can be understood only then but not when one is foregrounded ahead of the other’:
In the context of a world order, the talk of welfare state, national identity and boundaries, empowering the dalits and the impermeable nature of the self have all become atrophied. Retrieving Gandhi and Ambedkar and restructuring a post colonial discourse on their coexistent philosophies seems inevitable.
Dinkar takes time off his computer and observes the ants. A nice post with some pics.
Now, don’t you think they are really amazing ? And when you sit near and watch, the ants get the signal very fast. Within seconds all the security-staff goes inside, may be passing the warning to message to the top officials ? They came back after about five minutes and continued the duty ! See the material they used, how they collected it, the pattern and distribution of the material. WOW, I am impressed !
The girl from Ipanema gives us a first-hand look at the survival skills of a post-doc:
It basically involves very very thorough reading of the literature (aim for breadth, rather than depth), striving to stay up to speed on current work (possible competitors, collaborators, ones that tried it and failed etc.) and then the ability to assimilate all the varied reading and posit your question/hypothesis/goals in this context. You must not only be able to evaluate factual loopholes in the science of what you aim to do, but also technical loopholes that will point to how difficult/easy/doable what you’re planning to do is.
Sanjay Subramanyan asks some relevant questions following the sacking of Charu Sharma from the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the release of five players from the Kolkata Knight Riders.
… these stories highlight the thing that BCCI never did. How many times have the BCCI pulled up its players for non performance? How many times have team selection blunders been ignored? How many times have prejudices and biases dominated team selection without anyone questioning or raising the issue?
If a team can send players home because they may never get a piece of the action, why can’t the BCCI stop sending huge contingents of officials on paid holidays?
Gowri laments how IPL turned her family topsy-turvy.
Her daughter goes
‘I support Uthappa at all times. So I’ll always cheer for his team. Except’ she pauses significantly, ‘except when his team plays against Chennai Super Kings - because Chennai is my birth place! When Chennai and Uthappa’s team are not playing against Royal Challengers, I’ll always support the Royal Challengers, because I am loyal to Rahul Dravid! When the Deccan Chargers play any team other than these three, they have my support.’
while her husband goes … if I posted that too, would you even go and check???
Sunset and birdwatching at Melghat
Published by May 14th, 2008 in India, Photoblog and Travel. 0 CommentsMadras Wanderer visits Melghat and brings back spellbinding photographs.
Why the nuclear deal promotes evil
Published by May 13th, 2008 in Caste, Geopolitics, Policy and Politics. 0 CommentsAtin Basu presents a novel argument against the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal- a short but very stimulating post. And his argument, in my view, is perhaps the most convincing i’ve read until now.
So who will it make more powerful? The ruling elites. Who are these ruling elites? The ritualistic brahminical upper castes — irrespective of political hue — still rule India. These oppressors lord it over the lower castes (simplistic but generally true). So a nuclear deal that lets India retain a nuclear arsenal without any repurcussion strengthens the hand of these elites. This evil oppressive minority thus can continue to lord it over the rest of Indians. You may think that this is an argment that the left ought to be making — but they are not.
Sudipta’s fan club in the chat rooms is large, and largely composed of members of the wrong sex:
The fun with having a name that spells like that of a girl is that a lot of people also assume that you’re a girl when they haven’t met you. This includes email groups, mailing lists, potential employers, pen-pals… the list goes on. Some people are heartbroken when they come to know about this: one dude from Bangalore even added me on his IM, called me via Google Talk, and then upon hearing my voice decided to commit suicide (well, almost). :D On the other hand, when girls interact with me, they assume that I’m a girl. And then they come to know the truth, they are very surprised (and I always pray to God that they should be ‘pleasantly’ surprised). But I don’t know whether that adjective applies.
[Tip: Thanks, Manasa]
Data protection and privacy in India
Published by May 13th, 2008 in India and Science & Technology. 0 CommentsN. P. Nappinai gives a rundown of
how much the Laws in India:
- Assist in Data Protection; and / or
- Provide sufficient deterrents for violations; and / or
- Enforce such deterrents against such violators;
It is interesting to note how far we are in this department with respect to other countries in the world.
Rashmi at Youthcurry is not at all pleased with the latest Lounge edition from livemint, which is trying to sell beachwear to the Indian public for Rs. 50,000 a piece (yeah you read that right):
But here is what REALLY took the cake. The black and white striped beach dress by Chanel for… Rs 50,000.
Tell me dear writers and editors @ Mint, would YOU ever pay up this kind of money for a beach dress? And if not, why are you recommending it to your readers??
I bet every single person on the Mint team would go buy a beach dress/ sarong from a Janpath or Colaba Causeway for Rs 150.
I bet you guys use Lakme, Lotus and Garnier sunscreen (or at best Banana Boat) - not Vichy costing Rs 1090.
I bet you guys would be terribly embarassed if you were asked to wear any of the swimsuits modelled on that yacht…
I guess this isn’t going to be “Every Girl’s Beach Basics” this summer. :)
Bharath V has posted a fusion piece of music, titled Dance Fuser in his blog. Go check it out.
Alok visits a village in Orissa, 40 KMs away from his hometown, and brings in some photos of the place.
What I have explored in those two days will remain forever with me. As someone rightly said –“You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always flowing on to you”. I am so glad now because I was able to make it to that place ‘where my roots are buried’.
Advt options for IPL
Published by May 12th, 2008 in Advertisement, Humour, India and Sports. 0 CommentsKiran Dhanwada explores advertisement options for IPL. A fun read.
Let’s take this a bit far – how about a ‘Britannia single’, ‘MRF two’ and a ‘Cheetos three’. How about naming some of the bowling/batting ends as ‘Reliance end’ and ‘Birla Sun Life end’? A sample of the commentary would flow something like this –
Daredevils Sehwag has nudged Royals Warne towards the Reliance end - is it going to be a Britannia single, ohh…it is going to be a MRF two…ohh noo, the fielder has misplaced it, probably a Cheetos three…the ball has finally reached the boundary…it is a Citibank four.
It was the time of freedom, and everything seemed to be at a standstill. We caught what we thought were fishes (but were actually tadpoles) in a nearby pond, played hide and seek, buried our feet in the warm sand from a construction site next door, or searched for small conches and did craftwork. As the evening drew closer, we exchanged horror stories and waited for our dads to arrive home.
…
The day would end with a simple dinner. If we had our cousins over, it was always “Kayyi Tuthu“—an elder sitting the kids in a circle and handing morsels of food to each by turns. Curd rice with nimbekayi uppinakayi (lime pickle) on a moonlit terrace with a faint, scented breeze.
Heavenly.
If mangoes were for dessert, a tussle would ensue for the vaate (pit) while it was split up amongst the kids. Good times.
As we went to bed reminiscing the day, a cool breeze from the Gulmohars would flow in thru’ the open windows. Luckier teenage guys would take their roll-up beds to the terrace and sleep in the open beneath a star-lit sky.
As the day ended, a sense of contentment would wrap us like a blanket and a promise of another beautiful summer day tomorrow would fill our dreams.
Ranjana Rao reminisces her summer holidays in Mysore.
What is news to the Hindu? Karunanidhi keeping a promise:
This promise to the people of Tamilnadu to anoint his son to the throne, the Emperor has given more responsibilites to the Prince and Hindu is all glee for the emperor has kept his promise- how noble- mere subjects we are supposed to celebrate this “Pattabhishekam”. Not satisfied with making it the front page news, it interviews Kanimozhi, another jewel in the crown of the Emperor on the performance of her brother and a great poet and a judge that she is, she rightly judged his performance to be “exceptionally well”.
And this:
While IBN reports it as clash between the Governor and the State, for the Hindu Governor just “opts” for power cut, the city has been “suffering from sporadic power cuts over the past few days that the local authorities attribute largely to cable and transformer faults”- it is not any body’s fault- what can the Government do if the cable and transformers are faulty? Government dont have any control on those inanimate objects- if they are at fault, can Government put them behind bars or drag them to court? And ofcourse, taking a leaf out of MK, WB Chief Secretary says, West Bengal is better off than other states.
Swarnasrikrishnan offers some sharp insights.
Free Binayak Sen Film Festival
Published by May 11th, 2008 in Activism, Cinema, Health and Human Rights. 0 CommentsI came across this piece of news in Struggle News:
To mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Dr Sen, on 14 May 2008 and to call for his immediate release the Free Binayak Sen Film Festival is being organised by concerned citizens and groups around the country. The package of 10 documentaries, presented in this Festival, highlight the issues of human rights and public health and deal with themes ranging from nutrition, greed of drug companies, environmental pollution and state atrocities.
Some of the films that’d be screened are K.P. Sasi’s In the name of medicine, Vani Subramaniam’s It’s a Boy. it’s going to be a boy!, Michael Moore’s Sicko etc., Check the linked article for details.
‘Gendered’ majority
Published by May 11th, 2008 in Caste, Culture, Society, Women and sexuality. 0 CommentsK.M.Venugopalan says the institution of the hetero-sexual family plays a pivotal role in ’selectively sanctifying certain kinds of economic, social and cultural activities of people‘:
The politics of claiming autonomy over bodies cannot perhaps wait, until all the fears associated with morals and culture are settled forever. It is imperative to talk about how deeply the gendered individuals in a hetero-normative society would love to assert their freedoms as others would.We seem to have reached a point that no political movement can inch ahead, unless the conspiracy of silence about sexuality is broken. Sexuality is an important arena of struggle, where everybody would perhaps need to fight at least for the legally enforceable rights against those privileges and deprivations perpetuated by the ill founded morality regime, based solely on gender.
Pooja visits the Mirror Lake at Yesomite and posts what else but great reflections!
Burma?
Published by May 10th, 2008 in Democracy, Geopolitics, Human Rights, Media and Women. 0 CommentsBurma, says anonandon, is disappearing:
A friend of mine has a favourite joke about Indian media. He says, the country of Japan could cease to exist but our newspapers would be far more concerned about the pretty young Bollywood starlet who stares out of the page with mascara heavy eyes, pouting next to a headline that says, “I do not expose.” Well, the country of Burma is actually ceasing to exist and yesterday, NDTV 24×7 had a program asking whether there is pressure on women today to be sexy. In this program, Shefalee Vasudev, editor of Marie Claire, urged us to consider “how the word sexy is being vocabularised.” The ticker below informed me that 25% in a NDTV survey said lap-dancing is a good profession. The word Burma didn’t crop up even once.
Space Bar thinks it’s as if it has dropped off the face of the earth:
But in general, there’s no hand-wringing, life-changing angst on behalf of Burma as there was with the tsunami, or the Bombay rains, or the bomb blasts on the trains is there? It’s as if the country had dropped off the face of the earth.
‘Despicable Separation’
Published by May 10th, 2008 in Democracy, India, Patriarchy, Religion, Society and Women. 1 CommentNiven Charvet tells his Indian friends why he prefers China to India:
My belief in humanism, my love of my own language, a certain libertarian cast of mind – none of these could really explain why I am more comfortable in China than in India.
To me India is a land of separation, China a land of integration.
Although there is still a preference for male children in China, once a child is born, the girls and boys are near equals. This has not come about for particularly nice reasons but from the realization by the Chinese that they could not feed an ever-growing population and their implementation of their one child policy. The Chinese family invests heavily in this one child, whether male or female, urban or rural; an investment of love but also of money particularly for education. So the Chinese are, overall, far better educated than the Indians and the sexes are far less separate. In China, women are mostly strong individuals; in India, they are second class citizens.
Manjula translates the poem, SotPatro by Sukumar Roy into English. It is basically about a very nice groom someone has found for his daughter:
Academics next…… Oh! Par excellence!
No,no,not his degree,but perseverance!
Nineteen attempts at a stretch……..
Matriculation degree is yet to fetch!
Yep… Sukumar Roy is the father of Satyajit Roy. For those who want to see the actual Bengali version, she has quoted that below the translation as well
Feeding the world, some grains of rice at a time
Published by May 9th, 2008 in Economy, Food and Recommended Links. 0 CommentsSwitchblade has found this awesome website called Freerice which promises to donate 20 grains of rice for every vocabulary question you answer correctly.
All you have to do is guess a few synonyms, and for each correct answer you give, 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations World Food Program (WPF) to feed a hungry soul.
The money that pays for the rice comes from advertisements on the page.
Not only are they out to reduce the hunger thats there in the world, they are also increasing people’s vocabulary…which translates into some cool office timepass for me :)
To this day that has summed up to 580 million grains. See if you can help!
Maddy recalls a hilarious experience of one of his friends, when they first came to Istanbul.
Soon the house was set, the stove was up and running and the ‘sadam’ preparation was in full steam…Turkish yoghurt was a perfect accompaniment and curd rice came along famously. However our Mallu boy had his personal share of problems, without some eggs & chicken, he felt stifled, so he too took turns making the ‘asaivam’ varieties for himself, food that (thankfully) only he could eat & enjoy. I do not remember if the two Swami’s took dubba’s to the office, but that is not important in context. I heard that they had no choice but to eat the rice if served, some Turkish Ayran (buttermilk) and the sweets for lunch. They had a good home cooked dinner everyday, though. The Prestige cooker stood in good stead, even though Turkish Pirinc (rice) is more like sticky Chinese or Thai jasmine rice.
Till one fine day they heard a loud rattle on the door just as they were about to get ready for dinner. Their neighbor from the lower flat was at the door and he was gesticulating wildly and sounding abusive. He hollered, but nobody understood anything, he gesticulated, but with no effect and so he went back. The three roommates looked at each other asking what this was all about. Next day around the same time, i.e. 8PM the man came and again did all the above. He mimicked better this day, he showed signs of a child, sleeping and he started whistling with his fingers in his mouth. Again, the three boys looked at each other, aghast, wondering if their neighbor was indeed off his rockers. He seemed so anyway, making strange signs and noises. After a while, the neighbor left again, in a huff.
Do go and read what happened on the fifth day. A slightly longish post, but is fun. What with lines like these - “The Indian Consulate in Istanbul is strategically located next door to the only strip joint in town.” and “They were put up in a first floor apartment and quickly geared themselves up for hard bachelor life ahead (you will realize how hard only after you see them beauties of Turkey!).”
Recent Comments