Team India - Cricket World Cup

So Team India swept to their Cricket World title after a span of 28 years, and in the process became the first country to win a title on its home soil (Sri Lanka was the first to win as a host country, but the final was played in Pakistan in 1996).


I was thinking about the gauntlet that India had to run through to win the cup...and their last four victories came in order against 
The West Indies
Australia
Pakistan
Sri Lanka.


Now, the Cricket World Cup has been played since 1975, and the following countries have, in order, won their first title since then.
West Indies
India
Australia
Pakistan
Sri Lanka.


The amazing thing about Team India's run in the 2011 World Cup is that they beat the teams in the same order as their first World Cup title. Obviously it is a mere coincidence, but it is still uncanny that the sequence played out in this way.


Beyond all this though, congratulations are in order to the Men in Blue. They did themselves and the country proud.


This year, S and I have been privileged to have watched and followed two teams that made a successful run at the title. Both of them were talented enough that they were considered favorites for the title, both stumbled a bit and then when they hit on all cylinders, took on all comers and blitzed their way to the epitome of their respective sports.


One is Team India in Cricket. The other? The 2010-11 Green Bay Packers in the NFL.

India...Incredible India...

Two minutes. 120 seconds. A million facets. A billion people. Countless vistas. Belonging to the one and only...Nature. All showcasing the good in the land that is home to a sixth of humanity.

In those 120 seconds, this video paints a fascinating montage of India. Set to a thumping rhythm that is at once pulsating and engaging, the rhythms of the melting pot that India is, are captured beautifully and artfully.

And thankfully, it showcases the best way to experience India. Not on a guided tour.

Tree of Gold

Sting sang "Fields of Gold" and of walking in 'em.

Shanxix (of relation to moi) simply executed it in his own version of digital poetry (er photos). Gold dust covering the trees on a fine winter morning as captured from inside a train running at 80 kmph.

The Sun or The Mist

My brother the nature fan(atic !!!) snapped this wonderland scene enroute to Tirunelveli on one wonderful winter morning. Talk of being there at the right time at the right place with the right equipment.

"Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World"

Diversity. In language. Mannerism. In speech. In contexts. Its everywhere. So it should be no surprise that people have a hard time understanding each others' idiosyncracies. Be it at the individual or family or ethno-religious or national context. A lot of times, we seem to be at logger heads. Being the curious people that we are, we want to try and understand the other.

And when we fall flat and fail to understand, it is because of one and only one reason - the effort was not honestly unbiased.

Looking For Comedy..the film, is the story of one such attempt by the American Administration to understand what causes the Muslims to laugh. Tragically, they use the means of a Hollywood comic, Albert Brooks to achieve their results, and well, the result is a comedy of errors, culture shock, and misunderstandings bordering on the comic. What is perceived as a job well done by the Brooks' character is actually a botched job that may have resulted in precipitating the already tenous relationship between India and Pakistan. (Talk about difference in perceptions).

What this movie so adeptly underscores is that, despite best efforts to actually try and genuinely understand something, when we go into an initiative inadequately prepared, the result is inevitable catastrophe. Especially when the funny guy sent in by the government has had no prior exposure to the cultural subcontexts of the places that he is supposedly scouting.

Two poignant scenes that underscore the theme of the movie happen within minutes of each other...first, the State Department cohort sent with the comic asks the comic's secretary to tell him to "break a leg". Her response..."Oh please. Thats rude." The second is when, the comic has tried in vain to get the audience to respond to some of his stand-up jokes, he asks in jest as to how many in the audience knows and understands English. And much to his chagrin, the entire audience lifts their hands up.

Two vastly different experiences - one at an individual level and another at a group level that has the same symptoms of the vastly under-rated problem - the problem of understanding and appreciating multi-culturalism. When an effort is made to understand a different culture through the same lens as we view ours, the result is a grotesque misrepresentation of the glorious concept of cultural diversity.

Looking for Comedy is a fantastic indie that atleast has the guts to hint at our seeming inability to understand diversity on its own merits.

"Sir, would you please say something"

I've heard it said in the US that focus on careers for kids about to head to college are driven by the prevailing theme of the prime-time dramas on TV - how the current slew of crime-dramas are driving people to consider careers as detectives, crime sleuths, and all such related careers that are the part of programs like NUMB3RS, Law & Order, Miami Vice, CSI and its spinoffs.

Apparently, in just fourteen years since the cable revolution in India, the country's thriving and not-so-thriving networks and their inane focus on "news" has spawned such a mini revolution in career focus for the country's young'uns. From traditional careers like doctors and engineers to the not-so-occasional lawyers, to the omni-present "software developers", the focus has now shifted to "TV News". Or atleast, wannabe TV journalists.

The BBC's South Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar writes an interesting critique of the new phenomenon, that threatens to over-run the TV news sector with substandard and often pathetic reporters who often show up because these are jobs with "No Experience Required". No wonder there are journalistic pieces like "Sir, would you please say something?", and "Who are you?" get thrown at no-less than a person like the Home Minister of India. Paul notes the interesting phenomenon of dumbing down of TV news, that is directly, and indirectly a result of the strangling bureaucratic mess thrown up the Indian government, under the pretext of security requirements. While Paul does suck up to NDTV, calling them thoughtful and serious journalists (apparently he didn't note/care for their coverage of the Vadodara incidents earlier this summer), one cannot fault with any other segment of his thoughtful piece, including his indulgent dig at the "old or ugly" journalists that the BBC hires :)

If its a spade...call it a spade

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/15franc.htm

Someone with guts to say what the mainstream hype-driven media refuses to report.

Found in Translation

If you are like me, and can never remember the multi-lingual names of your favorite Indian food stuffs in your favorite and mother-tongues...

You need this resource.

Bon Apetite

The coconut temple courier

BBC NEWS | South Asia | The coconut temple courier service

15,000 coconuts on regular days, 100,000 on festival days. Batons in an infinite relay race - until the coconuts reach the Maa Tarini Temple in Ghatgaon of Orissa state in eastern India.

Religiousity to an extreme? Probably. But, what matters the most is that people are happy doing it. And there are ancillary industries - candy and coconut oil that have sprung up around the area. More power to the people.

If you want to run with the big dogs...

...you got to stop pissing with the puppies.

The BBC's Delhi-based South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar writes this excellent piece on the India - US diplomacy and the new row sparked this week by the US Ambassador to India, David Mulford's remarks to the Press Trust of India.

A fantastic analysis, even-handed in explaining the points as they played out on both sides of the row. Especially considering that both sides are neither right nor wrong. Each is just trying to play the cards to their advantage - the US in getting an all-important vote to get the UN to refer Iran to the Security Countil, India in not upsetting the apple-cart vis-a-vis its special relationship with both Iran and the US.

In George W. Bush's world of black and white, the choices in this issue are mut-ex i.e. mutually exclusive. And in a rarity for me, I completely agree. But unfortunately for Georgie (and me), world politics is never played out in black and white. Rather, the viewer needs binoculars capable of interpreting the billion shades of gray that are possible in this drama.

Cooler heads are bound to prevail in this spat, and after all the posturing on both sides (Condi Rice apparently joined in the chorus, warning that the US Congress might not approve the deal if India voted against the US position, and David Mulford had to do the classic back-pedal "the remarks were taken out of context/I was quoted out of context" charade after getting a dressing-down from the Indian government). But it has queered the pitch for the Indian government...thanks to a moment of tactless lapse by a professional tactician.

I mean, how thick do you have to be, to not get the simple fact - nations do not like being bullied around, especially those that have aspirations of their own.

It is too soon to make a comparison, but if this keeps up, I cannot help think of future India-US relations on the same scale as the current French-American relations - quibbling step-sisters who cannot stop arguing/fighting/spitting at each other, and yet cannot be divorced off each other.

Vive diplomatie...

Pongal O' Pongal

(image from the Pongal restaurant web-page at pongal dot org)

Pongal - literally translates to "boiling over" as in boiling over in thankfullness, joy, celebration, a joie-de-vivre if you will. It is a celebration of the harvest, and also of the elements of nature that helped sustain the harvest, and the farm animals that helped sow the fields. Simply, it is an elegant, charming celebration of nature and our part in it. January 14 of the Gregorian calendar marked this year's celebration of the harvest in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

The first day of the month of "Thai" (rhymes with why) marks the transit of the Sun from the sign of Saggitarius to the sign of Capricorn. In southern India, it coincides with the withdrawal of the monsoons, and the ripening and eventual harvest of the fields. Plus, this also marks the end of the (brief) chilly period that is heralded by the previous month of Margazhi. Ergo, it also means a favourable disposition from the Sun. What better way to celebrate all of the above, than to indulge in it?
Traditionally the festival spreads over three days.

The first day of the festival is actually the last day of the previous month (Margazhi). Bhogi (or bhogi pongal) is the day that heralds the ushering out of the old. Its the day the house is cleaned out, and items discarded into a bonfire. If the harvest has not yet been collected, this day also marks the finishing of reaping. Kolams (or Rangolis) adorn the fronts of homes, adding to the colourful nature of the festival.

Day 2 (also the first day of the new month of Thai) is the day of offering to the Sun and the elements. This is what makes the festival of Pongal a naturally charming festival - celebrating the Sun and Earth for their bounty in the crop, the elements for their cooperation in helping create and sustain the bounty they've just harvested. Naturally, this festival is an outdoor festival. Feasts are prepared in open wood-flame stoves in earthen pots with ingredients that are the traditional part of the harvest of the season - rice, lentils and sugarcane, along with spices like turmeric and ginger, and other crops. These earthen pots are colorfully adorned too, in keeping with the spirit of the season. (See image at top).

Finally, no traditional farmer was complete without his/her own cattle to drive the ploughs. And no farmer can celebrate their harvest without celebrating their farm animals (most notably the cattle that did and still do drive the ploughs of the farmers). This marks Day 3 or Maattu Pongal. The cattle get a well-deserved cleaning, and are decorated up and paraded around the village square. For the women in the households, this also marks what is referred to as Kaanum Pongal - food is offered as rolled balls to the birds and smaller animals of the farm - each of which in their own way contributed to the success of the harvest. This is a day of revelry, fun and frolic. And this also overflows in the following day, and in many places this is considered as the fourth day of Pongal, though in all actuality, the only thing about this day is the farmers get to spend it on their own with their families.

Bawarchi has a fantastic write-up on Pongal, (including excellent material on the antecedants of the various traditions). That article is also a source for part of the material authored above. Another good source is the "About" write up on the festival.

May the bounty of Pongal smile into the hearts, minds and homes of every man, woman and child. May the blessings of the Sun smile its way into and warm every home and hearth of this Earth.

Madras of the 1890's

The Library of Congress' World's Transportation Commission photography collection has come rather interesting snap-shots of the World as it was in the mid-1890's. The entire itinerary that the commission followed is available here.

Below are two snapshots of my native city - Chennai (formerly Madras) in South India.

Madras High Court 1890s


Madras Central 1890s

A Model, a role model at that...

From the South Asia pages of the Beeb a.k.a BBC.

A heart-warming story of Guriya Khatoon.

Five Years Studies done in Nine Months.

Some may fold in the face of a single strike. Not this girl. All of thirteen years young. Talk about perseverence and guts. She had three strikes against her - poverty - Bihar - gender. Pile up the fact that her family tried to hush her up behind a purdah because she is Muslim.

Yet, in her own words - "...you have to face all your challenges in life, but most of all get an education. Because without it, you can't change your life - or your world."

Indian "Encyclopedia"

Bleeding bio-pirates.

But thankfully enough, these pirates have spurred new action from the Indian government - the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. (sign-up available)

Its about time that the Texmati and Neem-based herbicide patent-holders are put in their places.

But more importantly, it makes available traditional, non-toxic, non-chemical remedies to all of us, at a time when we seem to be living in a chemical soup of food-preservatives and OTC (over-the-counter) drugs.

Organic, Baby. The way to go.

The Golden Quadrilateral

In typical New York Times international columns fashion, a fantastic, yet just a little-bit condescending feature on India's most ambitious infrastructure project to date - The Golden Quadrilateral. A map of this project. A snap-shot of the status, as of the end of September.

For all the condescension that I may have detected in that write-up, I also noticed an under-current of wishful thinking on the part of the writer, that maybe we Indians should not sprint entirely down the exact path that the West has taken and maybe pause, just a bit.

Thought. Evolution. Idealogy.

There can be no restrictions on thought, which is a constantly evolving process. There should be room for fresh thoughts and ideas.

It is difficult to pinpoint the final principle of any ideology. It is therefore not right to adopt an attitude that what we have accepted as the final principle of our ideology is the ultimate truth. It is essential that our ideology stands the test of being beneficial for humankind as a whole. The thought process will not come to a halt at any time.

Paraphrased version of a statement by Atal Behari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India.

I suppose the only relevant question at this point is - Is anyone even listening? Because what this is, is one man's wisdom that actually rings true for the billions in the mob. The mob of fundamentalists everywhere that have taken up a cause, and believe beyond themselves that their chosen cause is the one true cause. The mob that believes that anyone that refuses to believe what it believes, deserve to die.

The subversion of the mob mentality, the group ego, the immovable object becoming the irresistible force, will all of these be intervened by a saner mind? By a saner thought? History says yes, and no. And that sad and conflicted answer is why India's Hindus are still fighting the caste-related issues, while simultaneously displaying remarkable progress in redressing the issues. It is why even after so many years and so many conflicts and so many so-called crusades, the holy land of Jerusalem has yet to see peace amongst its Moslem, Christian and Jewish people. It is the primary reason why the idealogues on the right-wing conservative Republican party bash the idealogues on the left-wing liberal Democratic party in the United States. And it is precisely why foul-mouthed idiots like Ann Coulter, with her immense intelligence, yet manages to spew rhetoric and half-truths.

The voice of reason. The song of thought. The verses of sensibility. The music of this trinity. Sadly they are getting trampled beneath our own weight of stupidity and utter lack of sense. People, for reason or lack thereof, simply want to listen to the jarring notes of stupidity, and forego any claim to thought after hearing it. Simply said, we are all zombies.

Warning: A Closed Mind is a Dead Mind - T.J.S. George

Disclaimer: The content below is a total reproduction in its entirety of a column by T.J.S. George that ran in the New Indian Express on Sunday, October 23, 2005. The only reason for this total reproduction is that I am not sure of access to this excellent op-ed piece without a login ID.

In case you would rather read it off of the horse's mouth, go --->here<---.

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It's a month since A.B. Vajpayee made the most visionary statement of post-Nehru India. He told his partymen in Delhi: "There can be no restrictions on thought, which is a constantly evolving process. There should be room for fresh thoughts and ideas."

Simple words, but they encapsulate the best of philosophy, political theory, social history and wisdom. Unfortunately the theme has not been taken up for any kind of debate. In the Indian-BJP context, the words immediately got mixed up with the Advani-RSS controversy. But the idea expressed by Vajpayee has a wider universal dimension and all our parties can profit from quietly digesting the meaning of his words.

Not running away from controversy, Vajpayee explained: "It is difficult to pinpoint the final principle of any ideology. It is therefore not right to adopt an attitude that what we have accepted as the final principle of our ideology is the ultimate truth. It is essential that our ideology stands the test of being beneficial for humankind as a whole. The thought process will not come to a halt at any time."

Vajpayee was merely putting in words what history has repeatedly taught us. The ideology of capitalism survived only because it yielded to evolving thought and ceased being a system of cruel Robber Baron exploitation. The ideology of Soviet Communism failed precisely because it refused to give up its rigidities. By contrast the ideology of Chinese communism has withstood the pressures of globalisation by bending with the wind.

In moderistic terms, the British Labour Party changed its ideology from "trade unionism right or wrong" to "trade unionism for growth." Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, while adhering to their Islamic ideology, have not allowed it to stand in the way of progress. In such an entrenched political system as Japan, Prime Minister Koizumi recently won re-election with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern history with a plank of radical reform.

All these are the results of paying heed to the constantly evolving process of thought, of recognising that ideologies do not have full stops. Putting a full stop means closing the mind. Fundamentalist ideologies, whether religious or political, close the minds of their followers so that unapproved thoughts won't enter them. They destroy questioning minds lest questioning minds destroy them.

Political-philosophical schools that have found acceptance in history are based on the twin principles of individual liberty and the equality of people _ precisely the principles that are anathema to fundamentalists, be they fascists or Stalinists, Taliban or Bajrang Dal.

There was mass suppression of writers in Stalin's Soviet Union; according to KGB archives 1500 writers perished, many hundreds were exiled into Siberia. Fascist regimes in Europe regularly burned whole libraries of books. Taliban shot the Bamiyan Buddha into dust. Pol Pot's first order in Cambodia was to kill every citizen who had had an education. Why, during emergency time, Kerala's Youth Congress, aided by the police, burned several public libraries in North Malabar because they had been established by the Communists.

The slogan popularised by Mussolini's Italy said it all: "To believe. To obey. To Combat." Rather different from the theme of the French Revolution: "Liberty, equality, fraternity." Today Italian fascism is gone. Pol Pot, Stalinism and the Emergency are gone. The spirit of the French Revolution remains as a permanent ispiration to people. Vajpayee didn't say it in so many words. But the meaning of what he said was: "My friends, change with the times. Or you'll be gone too."
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To all Rahmaniacs...from TIME...enjoy!

TIME - Richard Corliss - : That Old Feeling: Isn't It Rahmantic?

The article that purportedly appeared on TIME at the turn of the New Year 2005, coinciding with the end of Bombay Dreams run in New York.

Anyways, the best part of the entire piece, spread over three browser pages, comes, of course, at the very end...see for yourself.

Compassion and Support from America

The sleeping giant has awoken, and realized the magnitude of the disaster facing South Asia. And boy, has the reaction been wonderful.

Aid pledge increased 10-fold from $35 million to $350 million, the USS Abraham Lincoln group of ships is in the Indian Ocean area, purportedly to provide help as needed off the Indonesian and Thai coast. Relief materials and aid being airlifted and sent by ships. Personal visits by Colin Powell and Jeb Bush.

And now, Prez Bush, along with the two previous presidents, Clinton and Bush Sr. are coming together in a fund-raising effort for the tsunami relief.

It is indeed wonderful to see the US government following the suit of its own public in the largesse being provided for relief. Remember, the American public had gotten into action way before Bush even stirred from his ranch in Texas to make a statement. Reminded me of 1986 and the USA for Africa relief efforts to combat drought in that continent.

From my heart, thank you..

Update
Weird coincidence...I mentioned about the 1986 USA for Africa "We are the World" relief effort, and now, that is actually a reality. The song is to be duplicated in Hong Kong, with Chinese lyrics, and a new name - Love, with the proceeds from the concert going for the relief efforts.

Compassionate Conservative? What a bleeping piece of bullshit

What a joke of a response. The official US response to what is seen as the worst natural disaster of the last 40 years, is pathetic to say the least. Does it take a bleepin rocket scientist for a redneck goddamned prez to release a bleepin statement?

Atleast, on the brighter side, the American public were not in the same insensitive pathetic vein as the so called leader of the nation.

Another interesting link that puts the American Governments effort in sharp contrast to its shameless ventures into Iraq in search of oil. Also an expose on the pathetic twisting of facts that typifies the rightwing bastar**zed media. And the venerated WSJ is at it again, calling environmentalists as a bunch of hysterical leftwing liberals. And if I maybe so bold as to copy their style of news and analyses, they also called the liberals as anti-Americans and as un-American as they can be.

As for my parting guess...it is these so called left wing Americans who have probably provided the most for the disaster relief in south Asia.