Indian Writing

From Zena’s blog, Beirut Update:

already, so many people are becoming too used to this. people have stopped going to work– what’s they point? there is war! people have let go of certain commitments and responsibilities– what’s the point? there is war! cafes and restaurants have shut down. people have let go of projects, proposals, plans… people have stopped communicating. telephones don’t work!

i saw maya today. maya lived in lebanon during the civil war. we had a strange conversation.

maya: what’s wrong with you today? you look so down… so depressed…. zena, what’s wrong? did someone die?? what’s wrong???

zena (saying this out loud to maya): oh, it’s nothing.. it’s just this war. don’t worry, i’ll be fine. (insert fake smile here).

zena (saying this in her head): i have anxiety all the time. my tummy is always in a knot. i can’t sleep. i can’t eat. i am afraid all the time. i am angry too. it’s hot. my food in my fridge keeps going bad, because electricity is on and off. i’m freaking out because my internet has been going on and off…. i’m so afraid that one day it just won’t come back on again.

maya: don’t worry. you’ll get used to this. we all did back in the 80s. you have to. you have no choice. you will see, soon you will be so used to this, you won’t even realize that there is a war going on.

zena (out lout to maya): i don’t think i want to get used to this.

zena (to herself): it doesn’t have to be like this. we don’t have to accept this. maya, i’m so sorry you once had to “get used to it”. i don’t want you or i to have to “get used to it” again. it doesn’t have to be this way. this is not a way of life. don’t we still have choices as human beings? don’t we still have a chance to prove that in the end humanity prevails?

And… Time Out Beirut.

On 22 April, 2006, film singer Udit Narayan had no clue who this woman was:

“I don’t know this woman and I have never met her before. These are attempts to malign me,” he told PTI-Bhasha on phone.

Maintaining this was yet another attempt to blackmail him, Udit said, “I had received threatening calls four or five years ago but I did not pay heed to them. I was under the impression that this was common occurrence with artistes.”

Udit Narayan has re-accepted Ranjana Narayan as his wife, the Bihar Women’s Commission said on Friday. Udit, accompanied by his lawyer Majid Menon, arrived from Mumbai by flight and drove straight from the airport to depose before the Women’s Commission office. Udit and Ranjana signed a bond paper resolving their disputes.

Rockslinga posts this new Elmaz Abinader poem:

If I put one child on my shoulders
thrust myself forward scrape my feet
to clear the rubble, or water, waste or shards
If I hold the small legs in each of my hands
steady the bounce of the body
against my back, keep the child from falling
maybe the water will clear relieving the palms…

There are more than 100 malls across the country, and this figure is expected to triple by 2007. In Mumbai alone, there are 15 malls with 25 more expected to be opened up in the next few years.

Apparently even Bangalore’s no longer free of footfalls:

“In congested Indian cities, where accommodation is cramped, the mall is now a home away from home for many Indians.”

Singer Mika on the impact of forcibly molesting Rakhi Sawant:

“I feel sorry for Emraan, poor chap it took him four years to build his image of a kissing star, while it took me just five minutes!”

Mika, brother of singer Daler Mahendi, rose to fame a month ago after the infamous kissing fiasco involving item girl Rakhi Sawant, who accused him of forcibly smooching her. The five-minute kissing drama has actually made him one sought after kisser.

“I have become an overnight smooching star and now wherever I go girls come up to me and beg me for a kiss,” he says. “The other day I was at a party in Delhi and four girls came over and kissed me. Since they were all beautiful I didn’t mind it. Next an aunty came and kissed me! Nowadays whenever I see girls and aunties swooning over me, I get scared that I might develop some kind of allergy. I will have to approach a skin specialist soon.”

“How can they all do this to me?” he wonders.

He thinks he is a victim of delayed justice.

Er, I don’t agree.

Further to this post about protests at Brick Lane against the filming of Monica Ali’s book, JR emails me this profile of Ali in the Guardian.

Nothing exciting in the profile, but it has director Peter Florence saying this about Ali’s work: “In a sense if you come under fire from those conservative people, you must be doing something right.”

Ummm, not always. Look at the protests over the Da Vinci Code film. Or Deepa Mehta’s Water. People who protest against films and books etc usually have issues to sort out within themselves. Just because some people decide to take offence against a creative work doesn’t necessarily make it a great work (At the same time, just because something is an awful bit of tripe doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a right to exist).

According to an Internet study, blogs which were once seen as instruments of citizen journalism and forums for political, social and economic debate, are actually written by bloggers who are interested in only one topic — themselves.

From Peter by email, this link to a new carpooling project.

Koolpool is a revolutionary means of facilitating car pooling in congested urban areas. It is India’s first attempt at organized car pooling. A booming economy has added a large number of vehicles to the roads but road length has remained more or less constant. The result has been the very familiar traffic snarls we face daily.

Instead of just complaining we thought of doing something about it. Our surveys on Vehicle Occupancy Levels showed that the average occupancy of private vehicles was not coming to even 2 people per car!! So what is happening is that a lot of people are just sitting in their AC cars and taking a good 30 - 45 minutes extra to reach their destinations.

Now if some of these people were to just leave their cars behind and share it with someone else then some cars could be removed from the roads. And what if you were waiting to pool but didn’t know someone whom you could pool with? Do you go about asking everybody - are you
going my way?

Koolpool uses Information Technology to bring together people who are willing to pool and are traveling in the same direction. It uses the ubiquitous SMS for matching people traveling in the same direction and wanting to pool.

We call it an interesting social experiment - it is happening for the first time - and we invite you to be a part of it.