Mar

31

He’s so fair, he’s so fine

March 31, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

He’s so fine
Wish he were mine
That handsome boy over there
The one with the wavy hair

He’s a soft-spoken guy
Also seems kind of shy
For he’s so fine
So fine
So fine…

- He’s so fine (The Chiffons: One Fine Day: 1963)

rahul with tribals - photo courtesy mangalorean.comRahul Gandhi, heir to the Gandhi dynasty in India, is on a ‘discover/connect India’ tour, meeting ordinary people across the nation, fishermen, tribals, special needs children, riot victims, farmers, everybody.

In a Karnataka bordertown, Rahul’s helicopter landed amidst curious tribals whose reactions to his visit shows the colors of rural India, the innocent face of our population, the public who have come for a glimpse for a deity that has just landed from the skies:-

“…He is so white (fair)! We didn’t know Indians can be so fair! From a distance, he looks like a foreigner…..his regality, mannerisms and simplicity have convinced us that he must be from a royal family..”
- Chennamma (47)

“…It is surprising he did not find a woman (bride)! Why so? In our community, boys get married by 20 and girls by 18. Is it so difficult to find a partner for him?…”
- Lakshmi (24)

“…This is the first time such a big leader has come to our place, that too in a helicopter. Our children who see only natural birds fly in the forest were delighted to watch a copter carrying Gandhi descending and making huge noise….”
- Veeranna (32)

Mm, mm Hallelujah
My sweet Lord Hallelujah
My my Lord Hallelujah

Mm, my Lord Hare Krishna
My my my Lord Hare Krishna
Oh, my sweet Lord Krishna Krishna
Ooh, ooh Hare Hare

- My Sweet Lord: George Harrison (1970)

Mar

30

Man bites cobra to teach it a lesson

March 30, 2008 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

A man from the state of West Bengal turned the tables on a poisonous cobra, and the cobra never even saw it coming.

Subhas Banerjee, a canteen worker at a police station, was returning home from work. Near his Ekra village, he found a few villagers discussing about spotting cobra nearby. Banerjee who was intoxicated (no, they do not serve alcohol in the police station canteen) took it upon himself to check the cobra out.

When he saw the cobra, he first hit it with a stick. He then went on to bite the live cobra to death. And then he went on to utter some words of wisdom that would put fear of Shiva into the hearts of any cobras nearby :-

“..The snake should also know how it feels to be bitten..”

And then, Subhas Banerjee fell down to the ground, unconscious. The cobra on one side, Subhas Banerjee on the other, the stick separating the two vicious species with biting egos. But Subhas was soon taken to a nearby hospital and survived the cobra bite (him biting the cobra).

Mar

30

A modern day Muslim Rama from Kerala

March 30, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

A man travels more than a thousand miles to save his dearest wife from the clutches of monsters who kidnapped her. Sounds familiar. But this real life ‘Ramayana‘ happened to a Muslim man from Kerala, and his wife who was misled and kidnapped in the faraway land of Muscat.

When their business didn’t do well as expected, a Muslim man and his wife, both from Kerala, decided to try their luck in the middle east. They arranged for work visas through a travel agent, a housemaid’s job for the wife, and the husband, the agent promised would soon get some work. The wife left for Muscat, on January 21st this year.

A few weeks later, the husband in Malappuram, Kerala, got a frantic call from his weeping wife, telling him how she had been duped into prostitution. He soon arrived in Muscat, disguised himself as a customer, managed to find the pimp who was pimping his wife, and talked the pimp into bringing him this new girl, all for Rs 3500. The couple met only briefly before the pimp and his henchmen managed to take the wife away again, this time torturing her into disclosing this customer’s identity.

But this story has a happy ending. On March 23rd, the Oman police with the help of the Indian embassy, rescued the woman. She is now reunited with the man who is sort of a modern day Rama, who traveled a thousand miles into a foreign land to rescue his sweetheart. A 21st century poor man from Kerala can do this for his wife trapped a thousand miles away in Muscat. Then, could a king from North India a few thousand years ago, not do this to rescue his beloved queen, traveling a couple thousand miles to an adjacent country? I don’t see why one story would be less believable than the other!

Mar

29

An IIT on every street, an IIM on every block

March 29, 2008 posted by indiatime | 16 Comments

Indian government has finalized plans to set up 8 new IITs and 7 new IIMs, many of them starting this coming academic session this fall. Each of the IITs will cost about 760 Crore Rupees each and each of the IIMs will cost 250 Crore Rupees each. The new IIT centers that will start this year will be the ones in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. And the IIM starting this year will be the one in Meghalaya. Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab are also getting an IIT each and Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Haryana will be geting an IIM each.

Years ago, I was in the front row seat watching a state chief minister telling the audience that his state will have an IT park on every block of every town. It was a surreal feeling watching a politician making a vague and confusing statement with little reverence to anything else but politicking. The announcement about the new IITs and IIMs by Arjun Singh, the human resources minister, is right up that alley. I don’t know if I’m shocked, stunned, wonderstruck or perhaps humored by the government’s chutzpah in making a rash decision to extend and moreover dilute the IIT and IIM brand in a way as never done before by any government in modern Indian history.

The keyword my friends, is brand dilution. It is the weakening of a brand through its overuse. IIT, which has become one of India’s biggest recognized brands, is a distillation of over 50 years of meritocracy plus core values of excellence and superlativeness. Dinesh Mohan, a professor at the IIT, Delhi, wrote that IIT brand can be further enhanced by the IITs becoming more interdisciplinary in research outlook, a rebranding of sorts that would take reinventing IITs with a vision of the future. IIT Alumni have expressed their fears of brand dilution and frequently and vociferously opposed any moves by Indian government to corrupt IITs with quota systems and affirmative action logic.

But all good things must come to an end. The brand IIT, a dream that started in 1951 will soon be killed by the political dimwits who consider themselves the saviors of India’s masses. The man who has a dowry case filed against him by his daughter-in-law, the man who was once accused of running a fake lottery, has now decided the fate of the avant-garde educational initiative that helped propel India into a technology powerhouse. Brand IIT, and along with it, the brand IIM will soon be diluted to a point where the average Joe will soon be able to enter into an IIT by circumventing the meritocracy which was the heart of these brainiacs.

Arjun Singh’s logic is as elementary as his intellect. If 7 IITs and 7 IIMs can have such a big impact, then why not have 7 more of each? In fact, why not have 70 or 700? Soon, there will be enough IITs and IIMs that we will not need any of our third-rate engineering schools and ordinary MBA programs. Every child will go to an IIT and then to an IIM. All our children, once they graduate, will start with salary packages of 100 lakh Rupees per year. Those who do not get that salary can then get a subsidy from the government to make their salary up to par.

All those new IITs will soon be sending rockets to the moon, a hundred thousand rockets taking off for the moon, all from the incredible superpower of tomorrow. All those new IIMs will soon be producing managers of the 22nd century who will solve all our problems. Imagine an India with no poor people, where everyone is an IIT graduate or an IIM graduate or an AIIMS graduate. The democratization of the dream. A mudpack facelift of India’s ivory minarets. A revisionistic redesign of something that was becoming too much of a good thing, anyways.

Mar

28

A recently released study by the USIBC (US-India Business Council) has claimed that piracy within India’s entertainment industry is causing huge losses to India’s economy, losses amounting to more than 800,000 jobs and upto 16,000 Crores Rupees or about 4 billion dollars. The study, touted as a combined Bollywood-Hollywood initiative, is pointing to the affliction of piracy as the number one obstacle to the progress and growth of India’s entertainment industry. The results of the study were announced yesterday, at a FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) conference in Mumbai.

I disagree. After a hundred years of copyright violations, stealing stories and screenplays, copying shots frame-to-frame, Bollywood’s claims look not just deceitful and disingenous, but laughable and ludicrous as well. In last fifty years, there is probably not one director in Bollywood who can boast a career entrenched in originality and probably not one actor who hasn’t acted in at least one stolen movie. Every time a Bollywood producer or director is confronted with the mention of the Hollywood original that they stole from, their response has always been that the Hollywood originals inspired their Bollywood versions. Well, then, that is exactly what a CD or a DVD copy is. An inspired copy of a copied original. The thieves on Lamington road in Mumbai, or the piracy mafia that pervades Bollywood could make the same argument. Behind every theft is a moment of inspiration. Who could deny that?

Bollywood’s copying of the Hollywood originals is sometimes far too cunning and subtle to be caught by the average moviegoer. And Bollywood has grown so accustomed and so bold in its thefts, that its members have even started thinking of themselves as the original artisans of filmmaking. One of the directors who spoke at the USIBC piracy conference was Mr. Ramesh Sippy who directed India’s all-time blockbuster Sholay in the 1970s. That movie was based on a series of characters and a series of shots from several famous Hollywood westerns, mostly Sergio Leone’s classics, some of them based on Japanese originals. Mr. Sippy or the film’s screenwriters Salim and Javed, never once thanked Sergio Leone for the incredible material his originals provided to their Indian blockbuster. Amir Khan’s Lagaan that wowed the Indian audiences was a take on a famous John Huston Hollywood film which itself was based on a Hungarian original (Ket Felido a Pokolban (1962)).

There is however, a caveat in the copyright laws, something known as ‘the fair use’, a defense most commonly cited by makers of commercial parodies. To be fair to Bollywood, most Bollywood copies of the Hollywood original could easily pass off as parodies. That, actually, may be Bollywood’s biggest tribute to the originals it has stolen and pirated from, for over a century of filmmaking.

But Bollywood just does not have credibility on the piracy issue. And worse, this piracy debate can come back to bite their behinds if they make too much of it. Although rightful and moral, it’s a double-edged argument that can handicap those who advance it. Bollywood is sounding like a pickpocket who is complaining about his own pocket being picked. It is common knowledge, that whatever Bollywood is said to be losing on behalf of piracy, it has gained significantly more because of it. Milord, the prosecution rests.

Mar

27

Life is a you know what

March 27, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

As heartening as it is to see the entire country rally behind the army samaritans who pulled alive 2-year old girl Vandana from a 45-feet borewell, the TV visuals beg a visit to the inattention and apathy about the issue of the mass murder of female fetuses in India. Recent reports put the number of those murdered baby girls at around a million, just during the last few years. So I am wondering about this strange disconnect. There probably wouldn’t be (and shouldn’t be) a single dissenting opinion on whether little Vandana deserved a rescue effort on a massive scale, coordinated by one of the best armies on the planet, covered by hundreds of news outlets, watched by 10% of the world population who sat glued to their TVs, many of them praying to their deities, chanting good wishes and mantras, Indians of all colors, religions and castes alike. How is it then, that Indians don’t bat an eye when they see the incredible numbers of female babies killed here?

Those puzzling contradictions don’t end with the subject of female babies. They extend to those army guys whose heroism and smarts saved that little girl’s life. A day after India’s government raised salaries for government employees across the boards, India’s military leaders were expressing their unhappiness with the salary increases for members of the military. They demanded parity with the raises of civilian employees and a better deal for lower-level military personnel. Also yesterday, the high court in Mumbai rejected a navy officer’s request to cancel his transfer for reasons of his father’s terminal illness. “…a person in the armed forces should know it’s a tough life..”, growled the judge.

OK. I get it. Persons dancing in Bollywood, persons playing Cricket, and persons playing politics have an easy life here. If you happen to be unlucky not to belong to any of those entitled elites, you need to understand that life is a bitch. If you are a female baby, chances are you are already dead. If you are in the military, chances are you are somewhere inside a tent blowing with freezing wind on some high mountain border listening to Sonu Nigam’s songs on the radio. Stay there. If you are a farmer, we recently announced loan waivers for you, but chances are you’ve already killled yourself.

Yesterday, Rahul Gandhi, India’s prime minister in waiting, urged India’s youth to join politics. When I mentioned that to a friend last evening, he just cracked up. “…My wife and I can’t manage to get our 3-year old to join a kindergarten school…”, he said. The night before, him and his wife had camped on the street outside the kindergarten school and had come out with only a promise of her getting admitted next year. Then he let out a big yawn and said, “…Life is a bitch, yaar…”!

Mar

26

About a week ago, a nine-year old Indian boy, apparently belonging to the Sikh faith, was found abandoned in the Southall region in London. The boy told the police that his parents had died, and his ‘white’ uncle had left him. He said he had lived in England for about 3 years.

Fast forward a week from then. Yesterday, a couple in India’s Bihar state claimed that the boy abandoned in London was their son who had been kidnapped 3 years ago. Bindiya Devi from Aurangabad, Bihar, is saying that the 9-year old is not Gurinder Singh, but Shintu Kumar. The chief minister of Bihar is throwing his weight behind the Bihar couple, and a local legislator’s wife happens to be a relative of Bindiya Devi, the woman claiming to be London boy’s lost mom.

But 9-year old Gurinder Singh has a mole on his left cheek which Bindiya Devi’s lost son did not have. Also, Gurinder Singh speaks only one language, and that is Punjabi. How does Bindiya Devi explain that? “I know my child”, she said, “I’m his mother, I recognized him in one glance”.

Local police has said that the couple is quite admant that the London boy is their son. Chief minister Nitish Kumar, the state legislators, many members of the chief minister’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA), members of the local police, the couple, their family friends, everyone it seems, has made their minds up, that Shintu Kumar is in London.

The lone ray of dissent and wisdom came when the Inspector General of the state of Bihar weighed in on the matter. “…It will be only after the DNA test of the mother and the child is matched, only then can the family claim the child as their own…“. Finally, some wise words and some semblance of intelligent life in Bihar!

Mar

25

India’s security alphabet

March 25, 2008 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

Yesterday, Rajbir Singh, a top cop who made his career assasinating bad guys, himself became a victim of the violence he had seen from very close. After killing 56 infamous criminals over a period of a decade, he was killed yestedray at point-blank range, by someone he was meeting with, over a real estate dispute. Rajbir Singh is said to have been the only cop in Delhi who himself had a z-plus security, the highest afforded to a person in this country.

That brings up a question of the effectiveness or the lack of it by what is perceived to be an iron-clad security blanket for India’s very, very important persons.

Out of the six security categories that are known to exist for people of any importance in this country, Rajbir Singh had z-plus, the highest. Then there is z, y-plus, y, x-plus and x (the plus differential for the x and y categories can sometimes be a little blurred).

Z-plus:
1. a cover of 36 security personnel includes black cat commandos, and people from National Security Guards (NSG), Special Protection Group (SPG), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as well as Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).

2. upto 2 bullet-proof vehicles, pilot cars and escort vehicles full of security personnel, ability to immobilize remote devices

3. some VIPs can have an electronic pulse jammer vehicle to immobilize remote devices in the area. This can sometimes disable TV remotes or cell phones

4. round-the-clock manned security at home and office

5. 4-8 personal security officers

6. normally provided for top VVIPs, cabinet ministers, chief ministers, very senior politicians or bureacrats,

7. is sometimes extended to celebrities e.g. Cricket celebrities, astrologers to politicians

Z:
Z-security is provided to those who are important but not indispensably.

The number of security cover goes down to only 22 and includes .

1. 2-4 personal guards

2. officially, no bullet-proof vehicle

3. mostly meant for VIPs who are on either side of the bell-curve of fame, those who are on the rise and those who are on the decline

Y-plus:

1. the security detail is now down to only 11 people plus escort cars,

2. still includes guards with automatic weapons

3. Among some celebrities who have recently got this kind of security were Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Taslima Nasrin.

X:

Down to 2 security personnel who will get you a cold pepsi as you wait in your car worrying. But, take heart. If you have been given X-plus or X security, you are probably a low-level city councilman or a corporator in India. Accept it. And rejoice. You are so not important that even the bad guys have you off of their list.

For all others out there who do not have any of these alphabets hanging around them, you may be happy to know that you belong to the safest category of citizens in this country.

The government of India spends close to a billion rupees protecting those who think they need protection. That includes tens of thousands of security guards, vehicles, equipment, communication and a lot more. But the threats aren’t always from the outside. In case of Rajbir Singh, he was shot at point-blank range as he sat across his murderer and his Z-plus security waited outside. In case of Pramod Mahajan, a senior politician, he was shot by his own brother as the z-plus detail stood outside at the gate. In case of India’s ex-prime minister Indira Gandhi, it was people from her own z-plus details who killed her. In case of her son Rajiv, the Z-plus let him out of the security bubble as a suicide bomber blew him up on the pretext of touching his feet to show respect.

Bottomline. Your Z-plus is only as good as your luck.

Mar

25

India’s second sundance kid this year

March 25, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

A 16-year old in Ahmedabad has delivered India’s second toilet baby this year. The teen mother told the doctors two weeks ago that she had no clue she was pregnant. Her doctors, while expressing surprize at how the girl’s family had failed to notice her pregnancy for the entire 9 months, also expressed their outrage at the disintegration of the concept of nuclear family in India.

Barely a few weeks ago, India’s first toilet baby of the year 2008 was born when the mother of that baby delivered it in a running train’s toilet. The newborn fell down on the tracks through the running train’s pothole, but managed to survive. That baby stayed on the tracks for almost 2 hours until it was recovered and rescued. Fortunately for the baby, there was no train passing on those tracks within those two hours.

It has been almost a year since I last wrote about sex education in India’s schools. Several readers responded and wrote enlightening feedback about the issue. One parent wrote that her 11th grade daughter (same age as the Ahmedabad teen), after she went through the sex-ed classes in her school, was in fact more worried about adolescent pregnancies and sexually transmited diseases, and was planning to practice abstinence till she was 25. Another reader wrote that sex education really implied right wisdom from the right source at the right time. A reader from Germany wrote that young people will have sex anyway, so why not educate them properly so they are better prepared for it!

Dr. Kalam, India’s ex-president spoke in Washington, DC yesterday about the power of India’s youth, and said that it will transform India. While it is busy transforming India though, that youth power needs to control their hormones a little bit. The youth powers of India’s earlier generations failed to do that, making us one of the world’s most populous nations. Because when the hormonal power takes over the brain power, any progress and transformation are certain to go down the toilet.

Mar

24

The murderers of Shivani Bhatnagar got life terms, not death sentences. Within literally minutes of the sentences being announced, prison reform activists like Kiran Bedi have started speaking about how murderer Sharma can utilize his time behind bars teaching others, teaching French and meditation classes in the prison etc.

I don’t understand. We are talking about one of this country’s topmost IPS officers, an inspector general of prisons in Haryana state, who has now been convicted and sentenced for murder. This person Sharma and his associates took an innocent person’s life. Sharma, by virtue of his being a top cop, knew fully well what he was getting himself into. He knew the consequences of his actions, but still did what he did because he never thought he could or would be caught.

I have a very high regard for Ms. Kiran Bedi and her reform work. But I think she’s going a little too far here. Even if this person were her former colleague or someone she knows to be a good person otherwise, she isn’t making any sense here.

Sharma, the mastermind who orchestrated jornalist Shivani’s murder is a person who has consistently shown irresponsible and sociopathic behavior. Having an affair with a journalist, sharing sensitive police information with his lover, and then eliminating his lover to cover up for his acts. Even after he was caught and convicted, Sharma’s demeanor in court has been that of an arrogant IPS officer, not of a remorseful convict who is willng to take the first steps to reform. This does not seem like a person who can be reformed or who is asking to be reformed. He is an incorrigible sociopath who will never stop at exploiting a situation or a sentiment for his personal selfish interest. For Ms Kiran Bedi to get sucked into reforming this cowardly bastard seems to be crossing the reform line a little too far.

Sharma is not going to prison on a transfer as an Inspector General of Prisons. He will be going to prison as a convicted murderer. Let’s not confuse those two things.

Let Sharma rot in prison for a while until some remorse sets in his rotten brain, let him think about what he has done, the life that he took, the tragedy that he brought on to a family. Let’s not worry about how we can improve the quality of HIS life inside the prison. Let’s not worry about how Sharma can get some warm home-cooked meal in prison. Let’s not worry about whether Sharma is a PhD or whether he knows French or German. Sharma is a murderer of the lowest order, a scum, a bad son of the soil. He does not need sympathy.

Let’s save some of that sympathy for the victim and her family, eh? Ms. Kiran Bedi may have spent her life seeing the human side of imprisoned criminals on the inside. But the society at large has to worry about the criminal side of humans outside.

Mar

24

Neelam Rai recently wrote a piece in the Times about a rising contract-killing trend in a part of Punjab where property disputes are prompting non-resident Indians to set up contract killings of local relatives. The killings showe a diverse range of strained relationships, from an NRI son contracting a local gang to eliminate his entire family inluding his father, to an England-based woman who contracted another gang to get rid of her sister-in-law to a Canadian woman who got her boyfriend who came to Punjab to marry someone else.

It used to be a little difficult to do such things before. But now, with the latest technology, cell phones, and deep pockets, angry friends, jilted lovers or greedy relatives are finding it rather easier to have someone liquidated at a relatively reasonable cost of between 5 to 10 thousand dollars. The returns on that kind of investment (ROI) are several hundred fold if the matter is related to a property dispute.

And even if someone gets caught, all is not lost. Sure, there are some honest police officers who can be a pain in the neck, but by and large, the bureacucracy cooperates with the moneyed, and justice delayed can often turn into victory since extradition laws and involvement of international police agencies can ease the delay in the investigation.

And even if someone gets convicted, all is not lost. Pravin Mahajan, the infamous murderer of his own brother Pramod, one of India’s major political figures, is hoping to be a free dude in a few years. Similar cases have previously yielded verdicts of culpable homicide instead of first-degree murder, and that brings the scales of justice down to laughable punitive measures which sometimes make a mockery of the victims.

Could India benefit from a three-strikes law, such as one prevalent in many American states, where criminals are sent away for life without any chance of getting out if they commit three or more serious crimes? Dr. Radha Iyengar, a Harvard University researcher, recently published a paper where she showed that criminals about to be committing their third strike are more inclined to commit a serious crime than a petty one. In India, criminal gangs who participate in contract killings are already emboldened by their associations with the local political machinery as well as the helplessness of the ones with integrity and honesty. Though it is Punjab that is in the news with NRI-financed contract killings, big cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi have seen their their fair share of such killings in recent years. And then we have states where kidnapping and contract killings have stopped becoming frontpage news altogether since it is more a part of people’s daily lives.

Within the next few hours, a court in Delhi will announce the punishment for the senior police officers convicted of murdering Shivani Bhatnagar, a woman journalist. A death sentence to Shivani’s killers will go a long away in reaffirming those amongst us who feel the scales of justice tipping towards the bad guys, these days.

Mar

23

An Indian fisherman has recently died in the Karachi jail, a victim of Pakistan’s bullying and breaching the international conventions concerning passage of boats in coastal waters. Lakshman, a 40-year old fisherman from Gujarat was one of hundreds of fishermen who have been kidnapped, seajacked and arrested by Pakistan’s so-called Maritime Security Agencies. For last several decades, innocent Indian fishermen are routinely picked up by Pakistani navy, and taken back into Pakistan to languish and rot in Pakistan’s jails, to be used later as human bait.

Lakshman was one of the luckier ones who did not have to languish or rot for long. He died after just an year-long harassment and torture at the hands of his Pakistani captors. Sarabjit Singh, another Indian who has languished in Pakistan’s jails for years, is slated to die at the gallows in a few weeks, for allegations of spying aganist Pakistan. None of Pakistan’s accusations about those captured have ever panned out either. But Pakistan has devised this novel strategy of capturing Indian fishermen, which it can utilize as a prisoner exchange arrangement. In return of those who are returned to India, Pakistan hopes to get back its regular supply of trained extremists that it keeps sending to India ever so often.

If you think I am just arguing for the sake of an argument, think again. Recently, a Pakistani newspaper spoke of 45 Indian fishermen being captured at a distance of about 110 miles from the Karachi port. That is nowhere near Pakistan’s territorial waters. According to the UN conventions on territorial waters, Pakistan’s border at sea is only 12 nautical miles (about 14 miles) from its land border. Even for a bay, that territorial border cannot exceed farther than 24 nautical miles (Not just on the ocean waters, but even in space, a country’s sovereign space extends to that limit of 12 nautical miles).

If the Indian fishermen were to be caught inside the 12-nautical mile-Pakistani sea territory, article 19 of the UN convention cannot offer any protection to those fishermen, as a fishing boat’s passage through the 12-mile territorial waters is not considered an ‘innocent passage’. The international conventions do allow an extension of a contiguous zone outside the territorial waters, but even that zone does not extend beyond 24 nautical miles. So, no matter what, Pakistan cannot and should not be targetting Indian fishermen beyond about 50 miles of Karachi’s land line.

I think this is an issue where India can offer some technological help to its fishermen, where they can know if they ever veer beyond a safe zone. Their boats can then be tracked by and will alert India’s coastal agencies. And the next time Pakistan’s maritime agencies misbehave, India will have a documentary trail of that misbehavior.

More importantly, I cannot fathom what the fishermen’s families have to go through. Imagine the breadwinner in the family goes out on what is already dangerous work if you consider weathering the sea storms and natural elements. And then to become a human pawn, a bait, in international discords, to languish in enemy jails facing religious persecution and conversions and torture, to die a lonely death in a foreign land thinking of your loved ones not knowing if they even know if you are living or dead. Lakshman, a poor fisherman, must be considered a martyr since he has died because of his Indian nationality. It’s a shame that his death will soon be forgotten as a statistic as many other before him have become.

Mar

22

The looting of Chandigarh’s treasures

March 22, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

In the days of the internet, it has become a lot easier to find India’s lost treasures. From ancient coins to historical manuscripts to contemporary paintings, India’s lost treasures are now easily found in the pages of world’s big name auction houses. Last week, the New York Times reported on some precious architectural treasure for sale on the Christie’s auction pages, pieces of world famous furniture designed for the city of Chandigarh by Pierre Jeanneret, the cousin of Le Corbusier.

The government junkyards of Chandigarh have become a gathering of treasure hunters from all over the planet, becase there in these junkyards are being trashed some of the most precious pieces of modern furniture, wooden chairs and tables, valued at around ten thousand dollars a piece.

Le Corbusier, one of the most famous architects and and a celebrated urban planner of the last century, architected and planned the modern city of Chandigarh in the 1950s. Le Corbusier left the Chandigarh project in the middle and his cousin Pierre took over as the chief architect of Chandigarh, staying on in that capacity for the next 15 years. For Pierre Jeanneret, Chandigarh became his new home. He designed several landmarks in the city, from university library to an extensive wooden furniture collection, pouring the essence of his and his cousin’s ideas into some of the marvels of modern architecture. Jeaneret died the year after he left Chandigarh, and his ashes were scattered over lake Sukhna in that city.

Over the next 40 years, the architectural masterpieces designed by Jeanneret also got scattered in the ignorant bureaucratic corridors of govenmental buildings in Chandigarh. Even the Punjab University collection, something its academic faculty should have known about, got thrown out as junk.

Eric Touchaleaume, an antique dealer from Paris, came to Chandigarh as recently as 1999, and started buying the government ‘junk’ for pocketchange literally, a treasure trove that included a manhole cover (eventually listed for US $20,000), bookcases, etc. But Touchaleaume actually did a favor to Chandigarh by preserving the trasure, because Chandigarh residents, he says, were about to burn it as firewood.

Now the Chandigarh government is requesting the Unesco to grant the city a Unesco World Heritage status. It’s akin to a student applying for Harvard scholarship after geting an F in academics. You know and I know that nothing, I repeat, nothing will ever change even if the city is granted a world heritage status. That will probably bring some funds in, those funds will soon appear in the pockets of you-know-who, and Chandigarh’s treaures will be sold piecemeal on the sidewalks of New York for increasingly whopping sums. The pathetic ignorance of our bureacrats and the incredible Bollywood stupor that we spend our lives in has made it almost impossible for us to notice that India is being looted out of any remaining treasures that have still managed to survive.

And what’s for sale at Christie’s next year? Ancient paintings from Ajanta and Ellora, the minarets of Taj Mahal, the Gateway of India in Mumbai, junk from Gandhi’s Sabarmati ashram, Madhuri’s milk teeth, and Rajni’s toothpick.

Mar

22

The day India becomes a Marijuana nation

March 22, 2008 posted by indiatime | 15 Comments

Today is holi, the Indian festival of colors and dance and fun. And today, India drinks, not tea or coffee, not coke or pepsi, but bhang, an intoxicating concoction made with hemp leaves and milk. The medicinal aspects of the drink have been known to Indians for hundreds of years, and Indians have associated the drink with a devotion to deities such as Lord Shiva.

J. M. Campbell, a gazetteer to the Bombay presidency in the British India of the late 19th century, thus penned some words of wisdom from the then British India Hemp commission:

“…(forbidding or restricting the use of hemp) would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influence…Bhang is the Joy-Giver, the Sky-Flier, the Heavenly-Guide, the Poor Man’s Heaven, the Soother of Grief…”

If starbucks ever becomes big in India, they would probably have to include a bhang flavor for the month of March, at least for the day of festive intoxication, the day when even the ministers and government officials are busy gulping marijuana drinks. There isn’t any legal age for bhang drinkers either. Adults and children, men and women, cops and conmen, Indians of all races, colors and ethnicities relish it. For a day, this tea-drinking nation pays homage to the God of intoxicating drinks, the one and only Lord Shiva.

It is one of the fantastic contrasts of India, a country that reveres a God of restraint and a God of reckless abandon alike, a place where Gods drink marijuana-laced nectar and dance merrily with young maidens, a place where religious devotion is officially allowed to turn into an out-of-body sensory high.

If you ever wondered why India plays host to so many Gods, there’s a good reason for you. Where else on the planet does God get to take a break from the day-to-day serious business and have fun and dance and drinks? Where else on the planet does God get to be human for a day and humans get to experience heaven at the cost of pocket change? Where else on the planet does one get to see the magic of mind-body continuum that manifests as the infinite colors of Holi?

Mar

21

A painting by M. F. Hussain, the exiled Indian painter, made history yesterday, when it was sold at a Christie’s auction in New York for a record sum of $ 1.6 million. That’s the highest amount ever offered for a contemporary Indian painter’s work. Christie’s website listed the painting titled ‘Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12‘ in a range of US $600,000 - 800,000. The final bid that won the auction was double that amount.

The painting, a part of a series of similar paintings by Mr. Hussain, has raised a controversy in India due to its depiction of nude Hindu goddesses by a contemporary painter who also happens to be a Muslim. Hussain has since had to leave India and is now living in exile in Dubai and London.

m.f. hussain mahabharata painting
Left of the yellow line is the ligher figure of Ganga, on the right of the line is the darker figure of the Jamuna (or Yamuna). Jamuna on the right, holds a red disk while Ganga on the left watches horses and torsos.

Hussain originally (early 1970s) made the 27 paintings, a series on the great Indian epic Mahabharata, for the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, an art festival held in Brazil every two years, basically to introduce outside art to Brazil’s art enthusiasts.

Inspired by Picasso as well as by the classical Indian art and sculptural influences, the $1.6 million painting, according to Christie’s,
“….distills the central feature of the Mahabharata into a single moving image that is monumental in scale and yet very human in scope. “….

The painting was originally in the Hewitz collection. Chester Herwitz, a leather company owner from Massachussetts, visited India with his wife Davida, in 1961. He kept coming back and fell in love with contemporary Indian art, and bought a lot of it. including any of M. F. Hussain’s paintings. The Herwitzes received an Indo-American society award in the 1970s, for their support of modern Indian art and artists, from the then president of India, R. Venkataraman. In 1999, Chester Herwitz died in a tragic 3-car collision in Petersham, Massachussetts. A year later, Davida Herwitz donated most of the Indian paintings in the Herwitz collection to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachussetts. It was 850 works of modern Indian art, valued at a minimum of $6 million in the year 2000. Davida Herwitz herself passsed away in 2002, leaving behind the largest collection of modern Indian art, lovingly collected and cared for by two wise americans - Chester and Davida Herwitz.

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