Blogbharti

Summer holidays

2008-05-11T19:45:20Z

It was the time of freedom, and everything seemed to be at a standstill. We caught what we thought were fishes (but were actually tadpoles) in a nearby pond, played hide and seek, buried our feet in the warm sand from a construction site next door, or searched for small conches and did craftwork. As the evening drew closer, we exchanged horror stories and waited for our dads to arrive home.

…

The day would end with a simple dinner. If we had our cousins over, it was always “Kayyi Tuthu“—an elder sitting the kids in a circle and handing morsels of food to each by turns. Curd rice with nimbekayi uppinakayi (lime pickle) on a moonlit terrace with a faint, scented breeze.

Heavenly.

If mangoes were for dessert, a tussle would ensue for the vaate (pit) while it was split up amongst the kids. Good times.

As we went to bed reminiscing the day, a cool breeze from the Gulmohars would flow in thru’ the open windows. Luckier teenage guys would take their roll-up beds to the terrace and sleep in the open beneath a star-lit sky.

As the day ended, a sense of contentment would wrap us like a blanket and a promise of another beautiful summer day tomorrow would fill our dreams.

Ranjana Rao reminisces her summer holidays in Mysore.

The world according to the Hindu

2008-05-11T10:08:33Z

What is news to the Hindu? Karunanidhi keeping a promise:

This promise to the people of Tamilnadu to anoint his son to the throne, the Emperor has given more responsibilites to the Prince and Hindu is all glee for the emperor has kept his promise- how noble- mere subjects we are supposed to celebrate this “Pattabhishekam”. Not satisfied with making it the front page news, it interviews Kanimozhi, another jewel in the crown of the Emperor on the performance of her brother and a great poet and a judge that she is, she rightly judged his performance to be “exceptionally well”.

And this:

While IBN reports it as clash between the Governor and the State, for the Hindu Governor just “opts” for power cut, the city has been “suffering from sporadic power cuts over the past few days that the local authorities attribute largely to cable and transformer faults”- it is not any body’s fault- what can the Government do if the cable and transformers are faulty? Government dont have any control on those inanimate objects- if they are at fault, can Government put them behind bars or drag them to court? And ofcourse, taking a leaf out of MK, WB Chief Secretary says, West Bengal is better off than other states.

Swarnasrikrishnan offers some sharp insights.

Free Binayak Sen Film Festival

2008-05-11T09:21:29Z

I came across this piece of news in Struggle News:

To mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Dr Sen, on 14 May 2008 and to call for his immediate release the Free Binayak Sen Film Festival is being organised by concerned citizens and groups around the country. The package of 10 documentaries, presented in this Festival, highlight the issues of human rights and public health and deal with themes ranging from nutrition, greed of drug companies, environmental pollution and state atrocities.

Some of the films that’d be screened are K.P. Sasi’s In the name of medicine, Vani Subramaniam’s It’s a Boy. it’s going to be a boy!, Michael Moore’s Sicko etc., Check the linked article for details.

‘Gendered’ majority

2008-05-11T09:08:39Z

K.M.Venugopalan says the institution of the hetero-sexual family plays a pivotal role in ’selectively sanctifying certain kinds of economic, social and cultural activities of people‘:

The politics of claiming autonomy over bodies cannot perhaps wait, until all the fears associated with morals and culture are settled forever. It is imperative to talk about how deeply the gendered individuals in a hetero-normative society would love to assert their freedoms as others would.We seem to have reached a point that no political movement can inch ahead, unless the conspiracy of silence about sexuality is broken. Sexuality is an important arena of struggle, where everybody would perhaps need to fight at least for the legally enforceable rights against those privileges and deprivations perpetuated by the ill founded morality regime, based solely on gender.

Mirror Lake

2008-05-11T07:24:18Z

Pooja visits the Mirror Lake at Yesomite and posts what else but great reflections!

Burma?

2008-05-10T18:03:36Z

Burma, says anonandon, is disappearing:

A friend of mine has a favourite joke about Indian media. He says, the country of Japan could cease to exist but our newspapers would be far more concerned about the pretty young Bollywood starlet who stares out of the page with mascara heavy eyes, pouting next to a headline that says, “I do not expose.” Well, the country of Burma is actually ceasing to exist and yesterday, NDTV 24×7 had a program asking whether there is pressure on women today to be sexy. In this program, Shefalee Vasudev, editor of Marie Claire, urged us to consider “how the word sexy is being vocabularised.” The ticker below informed me that 25% in a NDTV survey said lap-dancing is a good profession. The word Burma didn’t crop up even once.

Space Bar thinks it’s as if it has dropped off the face of the earth:

But in general, there’s no hand-wringing, life-changing angst on behalf of Burma as there was with the tsunami, or the Bombay rains, or the bomb blasts on the trains is there? It’s as if the country had dropped off the face of the earth.

‘Despicable Separation’

2008-05-10T17:35:00Z

Niven Charvet tells his Indian friends why he prefers China to India:

My belief in humanism, my love of my own language, a certain libertarian cast of mind – none of these could really explain why I am more comfortable in China than in India.

To me India is a land of separation, China a land of integration.

Although there is still a preference for male children in China, once a child is born, the girls and boys are near equals. This has not come about for particularly nice reasons but from the realization by the Chinese that they could not feed an ever-growing population and their implementation of their one child policy. The Chinese family invests heavily in this one child, whether male or female, urban or rural; an investment of love but also of money particularly for education. So the Chinese are, overall, far better educated than the Indians and the sexes are far less separate. In China, women are mostly strong individuals; in India, they are second class citizens.

The divine groom

2008-05-09T18:33:56Z

Manjula translates the poem, SotPatro by Sukumar Roy into English. It is basically about a very nice groom someone has found for his daughter:

Academics next…… Oh! Par excellence!
No,no,not his degree,but perseverance!
Nineteen attempts at a stretch……..
Matriculation degree is yet to fetch!

Yep… Sukumar Roy is the father of Satyajit Roy. For those who want to see the actual Bengali version, she has quoted that below the translation as well

‘The Tyranny of Parents’

2008-05-09T06:42:39Z

Vinod Ekbote watches parents making fools of themselves at the poolside as they watch their children learn to swim. If only it stopped at them flailing their hands, though…

the day before yesterday I saw a young mother slap her 9-10 year old daughter who was afraid to venture into the pool. It was something that made me very sad. Beating your kid in front of others is something a parent should never do. It is the worst sort of humiliation one can mete out to your kid. It filled me with horror, shame and embarrassment, watching the poor kid plead with her mother not to force her to enter the pool.

Feeding the world, some grains of rice at a time

2008-05-09T05:39:28Z

Switchblade has found this awesome website called Freerice which promises to donate 20 grains of rice for every vocabulary question you answer correctly.

All you have to do is guess a few synonyms, and for each correct answer you give, 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations World Food Program (WPF) to feed a hungry soul.
The money that pays for the rice comes from advertisements on the page.
Not only are they out to reduce the hunger thats there in the world, they are also increasing people’s vocabulary…which translates into some cool office timepass for me :)

To this day that has summed up to 580 million grains. See if you can help!

The things bachelors do

2008-05-09T01:09:06Z

Maddy recalls a hilarious experience of one of his friends, when they first came to Istanbul.

Soon the house was set, the stove was up and running and the ‘sadam’ preparation was in full steam…Turkish yoghurt was a perfect accompaniment and curd rice came along famously. However our Mallu boy had his personal share of problems, without some eggs & chicken, he felt stifled, so he too took turns making the ‘asaivam’ varieties for himself, food that (thankfully) only he could eat & enjoy. I do not remember if the two Swami’s took dubba’s to the office, but that is not important in context. I heard that they had no choice but to eat the rice if served, some Turkish Ayran (buttermilk) and the sweets for lunch. They had a good home cooked dinner everyday, though. The Prestige cooker stood in good stead, even though Turkish Pirinc (rice) is more like sticky Chinese or Thai jasmine rice.

Till one fine day they heard a loud rattle on the door just as they were about to get ready for dinner. Their neighbor from the lower flat was at the door and he was gesticulating wildly and sounding abusive. He hollered, but nobody understood anything, he gesticulated, but with no effect and so he went back. The three roommates looked at each other asking what this was all about. Next day around the same time, i.e. 8PM the man came and again did all the above. He mimicked better this day, he showed signs of a child, sleeping and he started whistling with his fingers in his mouth. Again, the three boys looked at each other, aghast, wondering if their neighbor was indeed off his rockers. He seemed so anyway, making strange signs and noises. After a while, the neighbor left again, in a huff.

Do go and read what happened on the fifth day. A slightly longish post, but is fun. What with lines like these - “The Indian Consulate in Istanbul is strategically located next door to the only strip joint in town.” and “They were put up in a first floor apartment and quickly geared themselves up for hard bachelor life ahead (you will realize how hard only after you see them beauties of Turkey!).”

Iron Man - reviews

2008-05-09T00:49:11Z

Mashed Musings finds it quite entertaining -

This is one of the most believable and relevant superhero movies of recent times, something which comes very close to what Spider-Man was. A cast which melt into their roles, dazzling special effects and terse dialogues make this movie worth a watch. The special effects look surprisingly believable. We are getting quite good at them now a days. Robert Downey Jr. is the surprise package of the movie. His performance is quite a mix of everything, humor included, which is quite rare in superhero movies. The movie keeps you engrossed and there is not a moment of boredom, even when Tony and Pepper are having their awkward moment together on the terrace.

Idlidosa is head-over-heels after seeing Downey -

Downey is such a natural…he potrays the role of Iron Man with such ease. From being the head of a weapons manufacturing company (Tony Stark) to Iron Man…resovled to end violence his weapons are creating in Afghanistan and from going into the wrong hands….he blends into both the roles effortlessly. His sense of humour…his quick & intelligent single liners….the way he flirts with women…..he is being himself and not trying to put on an act for the camera! No..I am not exaggerating…you have to go watch the movie.

Malvika, however, finds it average -

If you watch this movie as an element of entertainment, then its good fun! No slapstick comedy or overly romantic dialogues, but if you try to make sense of it, then good luck trying to preserve your sanity! Some scenes of how he is trying to improve the mechanics of the armour and the experiments in the basement were cute.

The movie I guess can be worth a watch if you have nothing else to do or simply because you don’t want to burn yourself to a crisp in this summer heat! No phenomenal acting as such, but good fun nonetheless!

Who wants the new 40?

2008-05-08T23:46:04Z

Ageless Bonding turns 50, and wonders why 50 can’t be just that, instead of being the new 40.

• At 40 it comes as a shock when a 25 year old calls you “aunty”; at 50 nothing affects you – not even when the 40 year old neighbour calls you aunty.
• People’s expectations from you are a lot less when you are fifty than when you are forty. I can forget birthdays, names of people and excuse myself from functions and parties without appearing rude. I can be that crazy but harmless 50 year old.
• And I can look at those grappling with their forties – career, ambition, goals, competition, success etc - from my comfortable deck on the other side!
• Forties all over again? Are you joking? I have just been through a few harrowing years of pre menopausal problems. Who wants to repeat it?

‘Practicing’ doctors

2008-05-08T23:29:37Z

In a post that starts off with a humorous analogy, Plus Ultra quotes Dr. Atul Gawande, in what seems to be the toughest part of being a doctor - the knowledge that the slightest mistake will be fatal, and irreversible.

In surgery, as in anything else, skill and confidence are learned through experience- haltingly and humiliatingly. Like the tennis player and the oboist, we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference though in medicine: it is people we practice on.

… We find it hard in medicine to talk about this with patients. The moral burden of practicing on people is always with us, but for the most part unspoken. …There is always that conflict between the imperative to give patients the best possible care and the need to provide novices with experience.

On a lighter note, is that why people call the pursuit of the medical profession, a ‘practice’?

Translated Wisdom

2008-05-08T22:41:31Z

For the ’sms generation’ which feels anything more than four lines is a lecture, Sayesha has what she calls executive summaries of Kabir’s two-liners.

Kaal karey so aaj kar, aaj karey so ab
Pal mein pralaya hoyegi, bahuri karega kab?

Rough translation: Do today what’s due tomorrow. Do now what’s due today. If the moment is lost, when will you do it?

Executive summary: Just do it.

Aisi vaani boliye, mann ka aapa khoye
Apna tan seetal karey, auran ko sukh hoye

Translation: Say your words sans your ego. You will stay composed and others will be happy too.

Executive summary: Say it in your head first.