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 Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 12:12 pm Post subject: Mother India |
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WELCOME!
भारत गणराज्य* Mother India:
Lagaan
Once Upon a Time in India
DVD
Lagaan
Once Upon a Time in India
Audio CD
| Quote: | While we were lamenting the decline of the contemporary musical, India's Bollywood was not so quietly breathing new life into the form, adding its own unique music and choreography to casts of truly marvelous, entertaining characters, and we just can't get enough.
In this one, a nasty British officer (is there any other in the movies, at least?), whose hunting afternoon is spoiled by a skillful rock-tossing villager, decides to have some fun by proposing a cricket match - a sport, in our view, less fascinating than a review of this week's laundry list - between the officers and the locals. There's a twist, however. This is a high-stakes game whose outcome will mean a triple tax or lagaan for the poor farmers if they lose.
The commanding officer is less than pleased at the idea.
Captain Russell: But they won't win.
Colonel: You're missing the whole bloody point. Do you realize we could have on our hands a bloody situation of cricket matches all over the subcontinent to cancel the bloody tax?!
Captain Russell: But there's one thing you don't know. If they lose, which they will, they will have to pay the queen three times the tax.
Colonel: This is ridiculous! This officer wants to make the government into a kind of bookie with whom he can place wagers. What would you have us do next? Race horses?
Captain Russell is thus informed that if he loses the wager, he himself will pay the lagaan followed by a posting to Central Africa. The subtitles then read, It was against British pride to withdraw from the wager. |
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| Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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Such a Long Journey
DVD
| Quote: | Frostbacks like ourselves are in danger of an uncharacteristic show of nationalism as a result of this Canadian-made film based on a famous Canadian novel by Rohinton Mistry, about a cheerful Bombay bank clerk, Gustad Noble ( played masterfully by Roshan Seth), his family and his adventures trying to help a friend involved in a political coup in the '70s at the outset of war in the Punjab. Everything, everything about this movie is magnificent, even its last line, which contains this elegant reference to the ultimate gamble[/i]:
Gustad (to the pavement artist): But where will you go?
Pavement Artist (played by Ranjit Chowdhry): What does it matter where? In a world where roadside latrines become temples and shrines, then temples and shrines turn to ashes and dust, does it matter where?... Your cap. (hands Gustad his hat).
Gustad: Thank you. Good luck.
(wait for it...)
Pavement Artist: Luck is the spit of gods and goddesses.
Forget the rivers of people in Bombay's busy streets and Gustad's terrible train ride awash with the splendor and suffering that was India. Get this one for the music. Will anyone sing like that for us, we wonder, as we lay dying? |
Such a Long Journey
Audio CD
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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Magic Seeds
Book 2 of Half a Life
Hardcover
By Nobel Prize winner 2001 V.S. Naipal
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: OK, he was born in Trinidad, but the place to which Naipaul takes is unforgettably, unmistakably Mother - even when the story begins as this one does in Berlin: |
| Quote: | Willie said, "I don't see what I can do. I don't know where I can go."
"You've never felt there was anything for you to do. You've never understood that men have to make the world for themselves."
"You're right."
"Don't talk to me like that. That's the way the oppressor class thinks. They've just got to sit tight, and the world will continue to be all right for them."
Willie said, "It doesn't help me when you twist things. You know very well what I mean. I feel a bad hand was dealt me. What could I have done in India? What could I have done in England in 1957 or 1958? Or in Africa?"
"Eighteen years in Africa. Your poor wife. She thought she was getting a man. She should have talked to me."
Willie said, "I was always someone on the outside. I still am. What can I do in Berlin?"
"You were on the outside because you wanted to be. You've always preferred to hide. It's the colonial psypchosis, the caste psychosis. You inherited it from your father. You were in Africa for eighteen years. There was a great guerrilla war there. Didn't you know?"
"It was always far away. It was a secret war, until the very end."
"It was a glorious war. At least in the beginning. When you think about it, it can bring tears to the eyes. A poor and helpless people, slaves in their own land, starting from scratch in every way. What did you do? Did you seek them out? Did you join them? Did you help them? That was a big enough cause to anyone looking for a cause. But no. You stayed in your estate house with your lovely little half-white wife and pulled the pillow over your ears and hoped that no bad black freedom fighter was going to come in the night with a gun and heavy boots and frighten you."
"It wasn't like that, Sarojini. In my heart of hearts I was always on the Africans' side, but I didn't have a war to go to."
"If everybody had said that, there would never have been any revolution anywhere. We all have wars to go to.(From the chapter entitled, The Rose-Sellers], at p. 5) |
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:11 am Post subject: |
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Chance
A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market & Everything Else
By Amir D. Aczel
| Quote: | Dice games were also popular in ancient China and India. The history and lore of probability are steeped in romantic legend about gambling: one particular tale illustrates this. In the third book of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, which was written before AD 400, King Rituparna discusses probability and statistics with Nala, a man possessed by the demigod of dicing. Rituparna is described as having the ability to estimate the number of leaves on a tree based on the number of leaves on a randomly chosen branch (a procedure akin to modern statistical methodology). Rituparna says:
I of dice possess the science
And in numbers thus am skilled.
The verse suggests Rituparna had some knowledge of probability theory, as his conscious link between dice and numbers would indicate.
The rabbis of the early centuries following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70 also had some familiarity with probaility. This is evidenced in the Talmud, written about the same time as the Mahabharata. According to the Talmud, probability arguments were widely used in determining issues related to dietary laws, paternity in cases of adultery, tax distributions, and other issues in which uncertainty played a role... (From the Introduction at pgs. x-xi) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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In Light of India
Hardcover
By 1990 Nobel Prize Winner Octavio Paz
| Quote: | ...A bellboy in a turban and an immaculate white jacket took me to my room. It was tiny but agreeable. I put my things in the closet, bathed quickly, and put on a white shirt. I ran down the stairs and plunged into the streets. There, awaiting me, was an unimagined reality:
waves of heat; huge grey and red buildings, a Victorian
London growing among palm trees and banyans like a
recurrent nightmare, leprous walls, wide and beautiful
avenues, huge unfamiliar trees, stinking alleyways,
torrents of cars, people coming and going, skeletal
cows with no owners, beggars, creaking carts drawn by
enervated oxen, rivers of bicycles,
a survivor of the British Raj, in a meticulous and
threadbare white suit, with a black umbrella,
another beggar, four half-naked would-be saints
daubed with paint, red betel stains on the sidewalk,
horn battles between a taxi and a dusty bus, more
bicycles, more cows, another half-naked saint,
turning the corner, the apparition of a girl like a half-
opened flower,
gusts of stench, decomposing matter, whiffs of pure
and fresh perfumes,
stalls selling coconuts and slices of pineapple, ragged
vagrants with no job and no luck, a gang of adolescents
like an escaping herd of deer,
... (From the chapter entitled, Bombay, at pgs. 9-10) |
A deeply poetic, admiring yet honest look at another fascinating place we'll probably never see except in movies.
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated
Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the
Human Brain
Hardcover
By David Shenk
| Quote: | Even with its broad resonance, though, chess was not immune to controversy. From the very first exposure to the game, there had been a serious and recurring question as to whether chess was allowable under Islamic law. The Koran - the sacred text of revelations received by Muhammad - did not mention chess by name, but did explicitly outlaw the use of both "images" and "lots." The prohibition of images was aimed at eliminating any sort of idol worship, and was instituted broadly against any directly representational art or sculpture. Lots included gambling of any kind. Since chess play at the time quite often involved wagers - indeed, one ancient story from India portrayed young players betting their own fingers in game, cutting them off on the spot after a loss, cauterizing the wounds, and continuing to play - many first- and second-generation Muslims considered the game altogether tainted and plainly illegal. Others regarded chess as having no purpose other than recreation, and thus falling into the category of official disapproval (though not strict prohibition).
But chess did have a purpose, a deadly serious one, according to many proponents at that time. It not only broadly sharpened the mind but also specifically trained war strategists for battle. "There is nothing wrong in it," proclaimed Muhammad's second successor, the pious and asustere Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab. "It has to do with war."
Eventually, a general consensus found the game acceptable in the Islamnic world under certain condtions:
no wagering
no interference with religious duties
no displays of anger or improper language
no playing in public
no representational pieces
This last item came out of the Koran's prohibition against images. ... (House of Wisdom, Chess and the Muslim Renaissance, pgs. 30-32) |
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| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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Fury
Hardcover
By Salman Rushdie
| Quote: | | Professor Malik Solanka, retired historian of ideas, irascible dollmaker, and since his recent fifty-fifth birthday celibate and solitary by his own (much criticized) choice, in his silvered years found himself living in a golden age. Outside his window a long, humid summer, the first hot season of the third millennium, baked and perspired. The city boiled with money. Rents and property values had never been higher, and in the garment industry it was widely held that fashion had never been so fashionable. New restaurants opened every hour. Stores, dealerships, galleries struggled to satisfy the skyrocketing demand for ever more recherché produce: limited-edition olive oils, three-hundred-dollar corkscrews, customized Humvees, the latest anti-virus software, escort services featuring contortionists and twins, video installations, outsider art, featherlight shawls made from the chin-fluff of extinct mountain goats. So many people were doing up their apartments that supplies of high-grade fixtures and fitting s were at a premium. There were waiting lists for baths, doorknobs, imported hardwoods, antiqued fireplaces, bidets, marble slabs. In spite of the recent falls in the value of the Nasdaq index and the value of Amazon stock, the new technology had the city by the ears: the talk was still of start-ups, IPOs, interactivity, the unimaginable future that had just begun to begin. The future was a casino, and everyone was gambling, and everyone expected to win. (Opening paragraph, Part One, pgs. 3-4) |
Brimming with reactions and ideas on all manner of subject, especially contemporary America.
Fury
Narrated in a pleasant British hush by the author despite
the high-choler title
Audio CD
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| Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:55 am Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
Time's River
The Voyage of Life in Art and Poetry
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Hardcover
Selected by Kate Farrell
| Quote: | Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age forever.
Whenever I Hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell -
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever:
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one of ours -
And the songs of every poet both past and forever.
Rabindranath Tagore, Indian, 1861-1941
Translated by William Radice
(-- p. 50, adjacent to Titian, Venus with a Mirror, c. 1555) |
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| Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
The Post-American World
Hardcover
By Fareed Zakaria
| Quote: | America's Best Industry
"Ah, yes," say those who are more worried, "but you're looking at a snapshot of today. America's advantages are rapidly eroding as the country loses its scientific and technological base." For some, the decline of science is symptomatic of a larger cultural decay. A country that once adhered to a Puritan ethic of delayed gratification has become one that revels in instant pleasures. We're losing interest in the basics - math, manufacturing, hard work, savings - and becoming a postindustrial society that specializes in consumption and leisure. "More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees," says General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt. "So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we're well on our way." (footnote omitted)
... What hope does the United States have if for every qualified American engineer there are 11 Chinese and Indian ones? For the cost of one chemist or engineer in the United States, the (2005 National Academy of Sciences) report pointed out a company could hire 5 well-trained and eager chemists in China or 11 engineers in India. (-- pgs. 187-188) |
Yes, but get this:
| Quote: | ... A group of professors at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University traveled to China and India to collect data from governmental and nongovernmental sources and interview businessmen and academics. They concluded that eliminating graduates of two-or three-year programs halves the Chinese figure (of engineering grads) ... and even this number is probably significantly inflated by differing definitions of "engineer" that often include auto mechanics and industrial repairmen. ... That means the United States actually trains more engineers per capita than either India or China does. (footnote omitted)
And the numbers don't address the issue of quality. As someone who grew up in India, I have a healthy appreciation for the virtues of its famous engineering academies, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). ... In fact, many of the IITs are decidedly second-rate, with mediocre equipment, indifferent teachers, and unimaginative classwork. Rajiv Sahney, who attended IIT and then went to Caltech, says, "The IITs' core advantage is the entrance exam, which is superbly designed to select extremely intelligent students. In terms of teaching and facilities, they really don't compare with any decent American technical institute." And once you get beyond the IITs and other such elite academies - which graduate under ten thousand students a year - the quality of higher education in and India remains extremely poor, which is why so many students leave those countries to get trained abroad.
... In both India and China, it (McKinsey Global Institute study on emerging global labor market, 2005) noted, beyond the small number of top-tier academies, the quality and quantity of education is low. Only 10 per cent of Indians get any kind of postsecondary education. ... Wages of trained engineers in both countries are rising by 15 per cent a year, a sure sign that demand is outstripping supply. ...
Higher education is America's best industry. There are two rankings of universities worldwide. In one of them, a purely quantitative study done by Chinese researchers, eight of the top ten universities in the world are in the United States. In the other, more qualitative one by London's Times Higher Educational Supplement, it's seven. The numbers flatten out somewhat after that. Of the top twenty, seventeen or eleven are in America; of the top fifty, thirty-eight or twenty-one. Still, the basic story does not change. With 5 per cent of the world's population, the United States absolutely dominates higher education, ...
... In India, universities graduate between 35 and 50 Ph.D.s in computer science each year; in America, the figure is 1,000. ...
I went to elementary, middle and high school in Mumbai, at an excellent institution, the Cathedral and John Connon School. Its approach (30 years ago) reflected the teaching methods often described as "Asian," in which the premium is placed on memorization and constant testing. This is actually the old British, and European, pedagogical method, one that now gets described as Asian. I recall memorizing vast quantities of material, regurgitating it for exams, and then promptly forgetting it. When I went to college in the United States, I encountered a different world. While the American system is too lax on rigor and memorization - whether in math or poetry - it is much better at developing the critical faculties of the mind, which is what you need to succeed in life. Other educational systems teach you to take tests; the American system teaches you to think.
It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why America produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. In America, people are allowed to be bold, challenge authority, fail, and pick themselves up. It's America, not Japan, that produces dozens of Nobel Prize winners. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, until recently Singapore's minister of education, explains the difference between his country's system and America's. "We both have meritocracies," Shanmurgaratnam says. "Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people's talents to the fullest. ..." (-- pgs. 188-193) |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:37 am Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Questions for Dambisa Moyo
The Anti-Bono
The economist talks about why we should stop sending aid to Africa, why no one feels sorry for the Chinese and the trouble with relying on celebrities.
By Deborah Solomon
April 22/09
| Quote: | You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years. Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.
Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans. Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.
What do you think has held back Africans? I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.
If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations? Microfinance. Give people jobs.
But what if you just want to donate, say, $25? Go to the Internet and type in Kiva.org, where you can make a loan to an African entrepreneur.
Do you have a financial interest in Kiva? No, except that I’ve made loans through the system. I don’t own a share of Kiva. ...
What do your parents do? My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It’s a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.
For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market. I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no. (-- p. 11) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 9:35 am Post subject: |
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The White Tiger
Paperback
By Aravind Adiga
| Quote: | What would be my destination, if I were to come here with a red bag in my hand?
As if in answer, shining wheels and bright lights began flashing in the darkness.
Now, if you visit any train station in India, you will see, as you stand waiting for your train, a row of bizarre-looking machines with red lightbulbs, kaleidoscopic wheels, and whirling yellow circles. These are your fortune-and-weight-for-one-rupee machines that stand on every rail platform in the country.
They work like this. You put your bags down to the side. You stand on them. Then you insert a one-rupee coin into the slot.
The machine comes to life; levers start to move inside, things go clankety-clank, and the lights flash like crazy. Then there is a loud noise, and a small stiff chit of cardboard colored either green or yellow will pop out of the machine. The lights and noise calm down. On this chit will be written your fortune, and your weight in kilograms.
Two kinds of people use these machines: the children of the rich, or the fully grown adults of the poorer class, who remain all their lives children.
I stood gazing at the machines, like a man without a mind. Six glowing machines were shining at me: lightbulbs of green and yellow and kaleidoscopes of gold and black that were turning around and around. (From The Sixth Night, p. 211) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:35 am Post subject: |
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Glimpses of World History
Being Further Letters to His Daughter Written in Prison, and Containing a Rambling Account of History for Young People
Hardcover
By Jawaharlal Nehru
| Quote: | I do not know when or where these letters will be published, or whether they will be published at all, for India is a strange land to-day and it is difficult to prophesy. But I am writing these lines while I have the chance to do so, before events forestall me.
An apology and an explanation are needed for this historical series of letters. Those readers who take the trouble to go through them will perhaps find the apology and the explanation. In particular, I would refer the reader to the last letter, and perhaps it would be as well, in this topsy-turvy world, to begin at the end.
The letters have grown. There was little of planning about them, and I never thought that they would grow to these dimensions. Nearly six years ago, when my daughter was ten years old, I wrote a number of letters to her containing a brief and simple account of the early days of the world. These early letters were subsequently published in book form and they had a generous reception. The idea of continuing them hovered in my mind, but a busy life full of political activity prevented it from taking shape. Prison gave me the chance I needed, and I seized it.
Prison-life has its advantages; it brings both leisure and a measure of detachment. But the disadvantages are obvious. There are no libraries or reference books at the command of the prisoner, and, under these conditions, to write on any subject, and especially history, is a foolhardy undertaking. A number of books came to me, but they could not be kept. They came and went. Twelve years ago, however, when, in common with large numbers of my countrymen and countrywomen, I started my pilgrimages to prison, I developed the habit of making notes of the books I read. My note-books grew in number and they came to my rescue when I started writing. Other books of ocurse helped me greatly, among them inevitably, H.G. Wells's Outline of History. But the lack of good references books was very real, and because of this the narrative had often to be slurred over, or particular periods skipped. (From the author's Preface to the original edition, Jan. 1, 1934, p. vii) |
How to father a daughter 101:
| Quote: | How shall we bear ourselves in this great movement? What part shall we play in it? I cannot say what part will fall to our lot; but, whatever it may be, let us remember that we can do nothing which may bring discredit to our cause or dishonour to our people. If we are to be India's soldiers we have India's honour in our keeping, and that honour is a sacred trust. Often we may be in doubt as to what to do.l It is no easy matter to decide what is right and what is not. One little test I shall ask you to apply whenever you are in doubt. It may help you. Never do anything in secret or anything that you would wish to hide. For the desire to hide anything means that you are afraid, and fear is a bad thing and unworthy of you. Be brave, and all the rest follows. If you are brave, you will not fear will not do anything of which you are ashamed. You know that in our great Freedom Movement, under Bapuji's (Mahatma Gandhi's) leadership, there is no room for secrecy or hiding. We have nothing to hide. We are not afraid of what we do and what we say. We work in the sun and in the light. Even so in our private lives let us make friends with the sun and work in the light and do nothing secretly or furtively. Privacy, of course, we have and should have, but that is a very different thing from secrecy. And if you do so, my dear, you will grow up to be a child of light, unafraid and serene and unruffled, whatever may happen.
I have written a very long letter to you. And yet there is so much I would like to tell you. How can a letter contain it?
You are fortunate, I have said, in being a witness to this great struggle for freedom that is going on in our country. You are also very fortunate in having a very brave and wonderful little woman for your Mummie, and if you are ever in doubt or in trouble you cannot have a better friend.
Good-bye, little one, and may you grow up into a brave soldier in India's service.
With all my love and good wishes. (From A Birthday Letter for Indira Priyadarshini on Her Thirteenth Birthday, Central Prison, Naini, Oct. 20/30, pgs. 1-3) |
The Outline of History
Hardcover
By H.G. Wells, another pro-feminist legend
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:40 am Post subject: |
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From the Will to Win:
The Post-American World
Hardcover
By Fareed Zakaria
| Quote: | President Bush's foreign trips seem designed to require as little contact as possible with the countries he visits. He is usually accompanied by two thousand or so Americans, as well as several airplanes, helicopters and cars. He sees little except palaces and conference rooms. His trips involve almost no effort to demonstrate respect and appreciation for the country and culture he is visiting. They also rarely involve any meetings with people outside the government - businessmen, civil society leaders, activists. Even though the president's visit must be highly programmed by definition, a broader effort to touch the people in these foreign lands would have great symbolic value.
Consider an episode involving Bill Clinton and India. In May 1998, India detonated five underground nuclear devices. The clinton administration roundly condemned New Delhi, levied sanctions, and indefinitely postponed a planned presidential visit. The sanctions proved painful, by some estimates costing India one percent of GDP growth over the next year. Eventually Clinton relented and went to India in March 2000. He spent five days in the country, visited famous sights, put on traditional clothes, and took part in dances and ceremonies. He communicated the message that he enjoyed and admired India as a country and civilization. The result was a transformation. Clinton is a rock start in India. And George W. Bush, despite being the most pro-Indian president in American history, commands none of this attention, or respect. Policy matters but so does the symbolism surrounding it. (From Chapter 7, American Purpose, pgs. 225-226) |
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