A nice account of flying in one of the new ‘budget’ airlines operating in south india. It’s almost like a good old train journey!
Bollywood’s Tarantino!
Ram Gopal Varma makes it to Salon! Impressive research on RGV and his philosophy of movies. I’ve always been an admirer of RGV. Some of his movies are highly flawed, but his courage to turn the concept of movies in Bollywood on its head and create his kind of movies. Good or bad, RGV is showing the way for other directors in Bollywood and I can understand why the author compares him to Tarantino.
This commentary at Salon answers one of my long standing questions!
Googled yet again!
Okay guys, playtime! This time, google has incorporated a calculator into it’s search engine so that if you enter an expression into the search field, it evaluates it for you. Now guys, you do not have to enter things the way you do it into your scientific calculator – in true google style, it tries to understand your expressions in natural language. Just try out the following search terms and see its magic for yourself!
2 metres in feet
mass of earth times mass of sun
2 teaspoons in ml
2*gamma
Okay, that’s not it, you can use it for pretty mundane calculations too like 2 * 2 + 4 or something crazy like square root of 3 times fifth root of 7!
By the way, 3 cups is 24 oz. (Now I know whom to blame my recipe blunders on!)
It’s a crazy, crazy world…
It’s mardi gras time for viruses and worms this week. No sooner had the Blaster worm infected millions of computers that someone wrote a counter worm named Nachi. Nachi works almost exactly like Blaster with similar effects, but like a determined foe, it attempts to download the patch for the hole exploited by Blaster from Microsoft, and then attempts to commit hara-kiri! Now if only all worms were so nice. Of course the fact that this worm slows down network traffic like it’s devious cousin is of course, beside the point. On tuesday, the ASU network was clogged by the battle of the worms as ‘hundreds of computers within ASU mounted attacks on the entire network’ as reported in an ASU security bulletin.
Since yesterday, the w32.sobig.a@mm worm has been making the rounds. I’ve been getting dozens of returned mails from people I absolutely do not know with messages that I’ve been sending them viruses! This worm infects your windows computer if you are connected to a network and then proceeds to mine your html, text and emails for addresses it can send itself to using its built in SMTP server. It also spoofs the ‘from’ address so that the email appears to be sent from one of those stolen addresses! I had to keep freeing up space in my inbox all day! I hope none of the profs in my address book got the virus from me. What a crazy week.. the blackouts, the gasoline shortage in phoenix and now all these viruses!
It was a long day at work and I had skipped breakfast. The vending machine would be my salvation, the holder of unspeakable treasures (or so I felt as my stomach slowly took control of my brain in a foodless coup) I hunted out a dollar note (my last) and made my way to the vending machine only to find empty rows and two packs of instant noodles sitting forlonely as if waiting their turn on the chair. Dammit, I was ready for anything, so in went my dollar note.. C8 I punched.. no response.. the noodles were $1.25 and I didn’t have a quarter, only a tenner which the machine in all it’s humility wouldn’t accept.
Nor would it give me back my note, so my creative mind went to work. I punched in the code for an empty row. (If there is nothing to vend, it should give me 100% change right?). I watched eagerly as the empty row spun and moved forward to drop an imaginary food item into the tray below. Then the machine proceeded to give me 10cents as my just change.
My stupidity was so great that I couldn’t help smile at the whole situation. Nidhi was online a few minutes later and she kept spending occassional messages about the kachoris she was going to make. I could have licked my computer monitor.
Pretty soon I was fantasizing about food. As in The Life of Pi, my fantasies began to grow. “A Ganges of dhal soup. Hot chapattis the size of Rajasthan. Bowls of rice as big as Uttar Pradesh. Sambars to flood all of Tamil Nadu. Ice cream heaped as high as the Himalayas.”
I did indulge in something like that at Fogo e Brasa later that night. Steaks as tall as the Empire State Building.
Pi is turning out to be a great conversation opener. People are forever curious to know about the strange title. So is it like.. the number pi? Naah, it’s this guy who gets shipwrecked and drifts in a lifeboat for seven months with a tiger. Tell me more about it!
[On the net: Create a 3D Display using cellophane!]
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What India Means To Me by Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill
A Luncheon Speech Sponsored By The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Taj Mahal Hotel New Delhi, India
[excerpts - Thanks to Avinash for this one. This is long, but interesting. The amazing part is that Blackwill has seen more of India in two years than I've seen in my lifetime!]
Ten days ago, I gave my final policy speech as US Ambassador to India. Today, I shall share with you personal thoughts about how this country has shaped me during these past two years. Unlike Siddhartha, my meditations while preparing this address have not produced total Enlightenment. Unfortunately, Brahma and Saraswati, because of my own limitations, will not adequately inspire my remarks on this occasion with regard to my spiritual and intellectual advancement. I clearly need to spend more time at Brahma’s temple in Pushkar.
And, despite my continuing contemplations, I am not always able to follow Krishna’s wise words, “Be thou of even mind.” He might have added, including at your Round Tables at Roosevelt House. Notwithstanding my many inadequacies and the persistence of Maya, the ever-present veil of illusion, please permit me to proceed since India is the great storyteller, and because I am soon leaving this amazing country.
Shortly after my arrival, I took the train from New Delhi to Mumbai to see and feel the land and people of India. You must understand that I love to ride the rails. Paul Theroux, the glorious American writer who was my friend in the Peace Corps in Africa more than thirty years ago, describes train travel like this, “the train soothed and comforted me and stimulated my imagination. It …provided access to my past by activating my memory. I had made a discovery: I would gladly go anywhere on a train.” That’s also me.
So let’s quickly take the train around India, pausing in Delhi before we begin.
Learning about the seven cities. Presenting my credentials to President Narayanan in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, hearing my name read out by an official with the deepest voice on the planet. I so wished that my mother, Roma from South Dakota, may her soul rest in peace, could have been there to see her boy, Bobby Dean, on that splendid occasion. I was astonished to find myself there. She would not have been surprised.
Visiting Humayun’s tomb with US Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill who commented that when it was erected, those living on my continent had built no structure higher than twenty feet. So you see, we Americans fell behind you Indians very early on in the architectural sweepstakes. It seems doubtful that we will ever catch up.
Back to traveling in India. Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal – the heat, the dust, and the glacial source of the Ganga. Like so much of India, alpha and omega provide conflicting context. The vale of Kashmir, yearning to be again a normal place. Dal Lake, which Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith once told me, was as close to heaven as one could get on this earth. Ladakh’s high plateau with the Buddhist prayer flags flapping in the mountain wind.
Sugar in strong tea, a taste that I acquired in India only in the last two months. I will now treasure that for the rest of my life. Someday, I am going to drive from Manali to Leh, listening to jazz all the way. Want to come along? Has this possibility never entered your mind? Not yet. Think about it.
I recall speaking to jawans on the Siachen. Those men from all over India give new meaning to the word tough. Listening enraptured to a male singer accompanied by a harmonium in the Golden Temple. Gyrating frenetically in a borrowed red turban with a professional local dance group outside on a lawn on a balmy evening in Chandigarh. My Ambassadorial reputation may have survived my hip-hop performance, but barely. However, here is a real curiosity. After my extremely energetic and, I thought, dazzling audition that night, I received no offer to join that dance team. I can only conclude that they could not find my address in India. I could be wrong, but my guess is that they are still trying to locate the mysterious long legged whirling dervish of that evening. As I speak with you today, perhaps they will see me on television and be in touch. Have no doubt. I am always ready to dance, fast or slow. It liberates me. How about you?
As you can hear, I could go on along these lines for several months. But don’t you worry. I have arranged meals and bedding for all assembled here so that you will be comfortable as I continue my extended tour. As has been said, the world is divided into two parts – those who have seen the Taj Mahal, and those who have not. I am proud to be in the first, still too exclusive group. The Shatabdi Express transported me there and back in great comfort. A wonderful train.
All of Rajasthan entrances me. The noble Rajput legacy. Jaipur. Udaipur. Jodhpur. And perhaps my favorite, the medieval walled city of Jaisalmer, land of the Bhatti princes, born of the moon. Parapets into the sky. On some nights, there must be stars nowhere else above the planet because they all seem to be over Jaisalmer. I am surprised some city in northern Europe has not sued Jaisalmer for stealing all the stars. Be sure and take your sunglasses along when you go there — to deal with the starry nights.
Standing in Jaisalmer, close your eyes for a moment and see the camel caravans comiing through this desert town a thousand years ago, which I now realize by India’s civilizational standards is only yesterday – a fellow on the street might have said to me, “yes, they came through Jaisalmer, just a little while ago.”
The Jain Dilwara Temples at Mount Abu. Exquisite wonders of the world. As has been so often the case during my stay in India, I had only two hours to look. I needed more than two lifetimes there and elsewhere in this uncommon land.
Let me go on following the map and the train tracks. Inspired by the endurance and courage of the Gujaratis as they recover from the earthquake. Pulsating Mumbai. Speaking with its effervescent business community is for me like breathing pure oxygen. I cannot get enough of it. Sitting around in a small circle on wooden chairs, trading opinions with a half a dozen distinguished Mumbai painters for an hour about abstract expressionism in New York in the 1940′s and 50′s (Pollock, Kline and the rest). What a special treat. Exploring the Ajanta and Ellora caves and their wall paintings of people who felt all of the emotions that we currently carry around with us, including especially the elements of abiding love.
Andhra Pradesh with its path-breaking e-governance, and food hotter than hot. Don’t let anybody tell you differently; those Andhra peppers are without doubt weapons of mass destruction. Ancient Christianity in Kerala; world class IT in Bangalore; the game park near Mysore where I first heard of the Columbia tragedy and stayed up all night writing my poem for Kalpana; the blend of Hindu and Islamic architecture in Chennai; the elephant carvings at Mamallapuram; the exquisite culture of Kolkata; the flowers and forests of Sikkim and the border at Nathula with no shortness of breath; the Northeast, Kaziranga and the Brahmaputra.
What a country this is. And I have hardly experienced any of it. In these places, my omnipresent security detail from the Indian police – my gunmen as a good friend called them — who accompanied me everywhere in India, who kept me safe, and who were ready to give their lives to protect me.
Oh, this India that I have come to know ever so slightly.
The form and function of Indian architecture with its creation, assimilation and adaptation. Magnificent Mughal miniatures. Like you, I wish I owned two dozen of the originals. Or one. India’s innumerable and distinctive dances, beginning with the classical. The Vedas and the Upanishads. They mean so much more when I read them here: “It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of speech, the breath of breath, and the eye of the eye. When freed (from the senses) the wise, on departing from this world, become immortal.”
Indian family values, which I admire as essential first principles, and see in action many times every day in this country. The living symbolic power in this ancient civilization, the abiding aura, of — the tree. Of the circle. Of the triangle.
Arranged marriages. The fourteen hundred years of Islam in India. Friday prayers. The Indian novel in English. Who is writing better fiction today than these folks? Mesmerizing Hindustani music whose origins are deeply spiritual and therefore of particular meaning and comfort to me.
The mighty Himalayas. They humble even Blackwill, at least when he is in sight of them and it isn’t a cloudy day. Can we move them to the Potomac to give me more balance and perspective? I would not be the only one in Washington who would be grateful.
Fabulous cuisines. India is unquestionably the only country in the world where this Kansas lad raised on beefsteaks could happily be a vegetarian. But please don’t tell my relatives back on the mid-West farms.
Holi. Kashmiri carpets. Weavers everywhere capturing India’s enveloping colors. The Bengal tigers in the wild at Ranthambhore. How could they be more in command? I could use their skills in my new responsibilities back home, and have sent them an email with a job offer. Haven’t yet heard back from those big cats yet, but I remain hopeful.
The Monsoon that rains life into India. Surely this happens by God’s grace. The singular smell and sound as the drops strike the parched earth. Like so much of India for me, absolutely unforgettable.
And more than any of this, the remembrances of the character of the people of India, which I will take back to America with me – of countless individuals over these two years who have taught me, counseled me, guided me, and protected me – who were generous to me beyond imagination. I could not repay their kindnesses to Wera and me no matter how many times I was reincarnated.
Before I close these, my final Ambassadorial remarks in India, I want to deal briefly with another subject. Many in this country have remarked upon my strong views against terrorism. In these feelings, to a considerable extent I draw on the white hot anti-terrorist convictions of my President, George W. Bush — and on the September 11 attacks on the American homeland. But on this subject, like so many others, India has left its dominant and enduring imprint on me.
While I was preparing for my Senate confirmation hearing in early 2001 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I started to read regularly the Indian press. It was then that for the first time I encountered the devastating fact of terrorism against India. Sitting in my office at Harvard, I began to keep a daily count of those killed here by terrorists. Three on Monday. Seven on Tuesday. Fourteen on Wednesday. Five on Thursday. Two on Friday. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.
India’s death toll from terrorism mounted as the snow fell and melted in Cambridge, and that New England winter turned to spring. And I became more and more angry. Innocent human beings murdered as a systemic instrument of twisted political purpose. Terror against India that rose and fell with the seasons, year after year after year.
By the time that I left the United States for India in the summer of 2001, this very personal death count that I was keeping had reached hundreds. And, for me, these were not abstract and antiseptic numbers in a newspaper story. Each death, I forced myself to remember, was a single person — an individual man, woman, child — with family, loved ones, friends. They each have a name. Just like us, they each had a life to lead. These are our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our babies, and our friends. Each had laughs to laugh. Tears to shed. Loves to love. Meals to eat. Accomplishments to record. Setbacks to overcome. Places to go. Things to do. Prayers to offer. All snuffed out by the killing hand of terror. On September 11 in America. Nearly every day in India.
No respectable religion could excuse these merciless acts. No moral framework could sanction these abominations. No political cause could justify these murders of innocents. And yet, they go on.
But, my friends, these terrorist outrages against my country and against yours will not continue indefinitely. We know this from the Ramayana, and many other holy books. Good does triumph over evil, although it sometimes takes more time than we would like.
We will win the war on terrorism, and the United States and India will win it together – because we represent good, and terrorists are evil incarnate. God will make it so.
In this context, let me conclude with a word about India’s religious beliefs. Someone once said, “the most sublime purpose of religion is to teach how to know God.” India has been working on that challenge from a variety of perspectives for several millennia. It has been my immense privilege during these two years to experience, and to profit from, these profound wellsprings of Indian spirituality.
I will return to India. How could it be otherwise?
Thank you, my friends, for listening to these, my personal musings.
And, thank you India for every single thing that I have discovered here. Mother India has changed my life — forever.
Monsoon in Arizona
Believe it or not, it’s monsoon time in Arizona. For a place that receives about 3 inches of rain a year, even if it rains once a year it’s called the monsoon. It rained like hell on tuesday night. The smell of damp earth along with the fine spray of water that hit me every time I opened the door was so much like Kerala where it rains for six months.(Okay I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s how it feels). No one can live in Kerala and not be nostalgic about the rains. The whole place becomes unbelievably beautiful. Oh yes, there was one more thing to remind of home – most areas had power outages within minutes of the thunderstorm. Now that’s something I know quite a bit about!
I’ve spent five years and as many monsoons in Kerala and never have I owned an umbrella of my own. In college there was always some nice girl to share her umbrella. (Don’t blame me, I know for sure that with my absent mindedness I cannot own an umbrella for more than a few days). Couple of weeks back I bought The Life of Pi from Borders. Ever since someone borrowed my bike permanently, I’ve been using the bus and that involves quite a bit of walking down Mill Avenue. Every time I come near the Borders bookstore I cannot resist the temptation to walk in and buy something. I invariably end up buying something from the store to justify my hanging around for two hours. (Sanaja just sits down and reads entire books without buying, so I’m sufficiently inspired to try it out the next time I visit. Now where are those Asterix comics?)
The glorious book about Pi left me without as much as a bye in a Jack in the Box (or maybe it was the bus.. I really can’t remember). So I’m reading the second copy of Pi which I purchased the same day. (I wasn’t so interested in the book, but I saw the same lady at the checkout who had sold me the earlier book and I seriously wanted to spook her out by giving her a feeling of deja vu.. by buying the same book and saying the same things).
[On the net: Great rotational illusions | Greater Illusions | Robert Blackwill gets an emotional sendoff | A bathroom odyssey in glorious technicolor | A Job for John]