Indian Writing

Reader Rajendran Narayanan points me to news reports about the tragic death of his school and college friend Rizwanur Rahman, whose body was found beside the railway tracks in north Kolkata last week. Rizwanur, a computer graphics teacher from a middle-class background, had married Priyanka Todi, the daughter of an affluent Kolkata businessman, by registered marriage in August 2007. Priyanka’s family, who had apparently been opposed to the marriage, had filed a complaint with the police.

There has been a tremendous public outcry in Kolkata over the case, including the apparent intervention by some police officials in a legal marriage between adults. Among those who joined a silent protest march was eminent writer and activist Mahasweta Devi. Rizwanur’s family has apparently moved the High Court for an inquiry into the death; meanwhile, the West Bengal government ordered a CID probe as well as an inquiry by a retired High Court judge. Some of the several news reports about the case here, here, here, here, and here.

Rajendran Narayanan, who was Rizwanur’s classmate at St.Lawrence School and St. Xavier’s College, writes: “Rizwanur was my classmate for 8 years… it is quite difficult for me to brush the matter aside or be cynical about the impossibility of any action. I am optimistic about justice.”

September 28, New Delhi: “Open Baithak” Performance in Poetry & Art Series at the Queen’s Gallery, British Council, 17 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi

Time: 6.30-9 pm, Sep 28, 2007 Friday

Make your own performance equation at Open Baithak. Perform the word, or just perform.
Sign up starts at 6.30pm. Open reading/performance start at 7pm. Each poet/performer gets 5 mins on the stage and is expected to bring in new work every time — and also to delight the audience by doing risky and innovative things with it. You can read/perform in any language. Wheelchair accessible.

Baithak Theme: Love, Lies, Forgetting

Please contact Monica Mody in advance if you have tech needs/questions, or for more info: openbaithak@gmail.com

Special Feature: Video Shorts by Shakti Bhatt (1980-2007)

About Open Baithak: A new monthly poetry in performance series in Delhi, Open Baithak offers a space for poets to think about new and innovative ways of presenting poetry to audiences, and a test platform for emerging poet performers. It makes a regular meeting place for poets from different linguistic, written and oral traditions. It is also a meeting place for listeners and readers of poetry.

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October 2: Peace Mela, Mumbai

Celebrating the International Day of Non-Violence: 2nd October 2007
2nd October is no longer just an important date on the Indian calendar. It is now the day on which people across the globe will observe the United Nations Day of Non-Violence.

On this special day, Citizens for Peace, in partnership with Times of India, is planning a Peace Mela - an evening dedicated to creative expressions of the striving for peace through music, song, poetry, dance, drama, films and more. The Peace Mela will be held in Mumbai (at the Horniman Circle/Asiatic Library space ) on the evening of 2nd October. It will be a five hour long gathering of well-known performing artists as well as unknown young talent. The youth of Mumbai will be invited to participate through showcasing their creative work - poems, prose pieces, posters, photographs etc.– all on the theme of peace. The Horniman Garden area will be used to display poems, photographs and prose pieces that people have sent in.

A film festival on the theme will be held in the Max Mueller Bhavan from 2pm to 7pm.
Some of the artistes who will be participating include:
Musicians - Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan
Poets and writers - Arundhathi Subramaniam, Atul Tiwari, Javed Akhtar, Jerry Pinto, Menka Shivdasani, Ranjit Hoskote, and others
Singers - Jagjit Singh, Vivienne Pocha & Merlin D’ Souza, Suraj Bhoeer, Shekhar Sen, Devieka and Suresh Bhojwani and others
Children’s performances: Khoj (Teesta Setalvad’s group) and Raell Padamsee’s Group
Drama: Monologue from Iqbal Niyazi’s play “Yeh kiska lahu hai”

The programme will end with the taking of a Peace Pledge by everyone present.
Citizens for Peace, a volunteer group based in Mumbai, is a non political organization that was formed in response to the violence and anarchy that ravaged Mumbai in 1992-93. It is a group of concerned citizens who came together to reaffirm Mumbai’s cosmopolitan ethos and liberal, enlightened tradition. Its belief is that while there will always be differences between people – of belief, culture, values and religion – the only way to settle these differences is through open dialogue and respect for the rule of law.

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Poems, photographs and prose pieces on the theme of peace and non-violence will be hung from a ‘Peace Tree’ in the Horniman Circle lawn.
These are being collected by volunteers, and the details are:

Poems: Max 150 words
Prose pieces: Max 250 words
Photographs (prints): A3 or A4 sizes

Entries to be sent by either email or post.
By email to: meghann@emdiworld.com.
By courier/post to: EMDI, IES Management College, 4th Floor, Opposite Lilavati Hospital, Bandra Reclamation, Mumbai 4000 50. Ph: 26550808/26427171
Entries will not be returned.

The last date for sending in the entries is 28th Sept.

*****

Zubaan’s titles for early October:

A Terrible Matriarchy
by Easterine Iralu

First There Was Woman and Other Stories
Folktales of the Dungri Garasiya Bhils
Compiled and retold by Marija Sres

Gender, Violent Conflict and Development
Edited by Dubravka Zarkov

Reminiscences: The Memoirs of Shardabehn Mehta
Translated and compiled by Purnima Mehta Bhatt

Zubaan Diary 2008
Caste in Mithila Art

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October 10 -14, 2007: Frankfurt Book Fair

Zubaan will be present at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Urvashi Butalia and Preeti Gill will carry the most exciting and recent titles to the fair. They will be at Stand 6.0 E920, so those of you who will be there as well, do drop by!

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October 9-12: Dhrupad music festival with Uday Bhawalkar in the Jungles of Bandhavgarh.

More here.

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I received an email from the Forum Against Oppression of Women yesterday. Apparently one of their fellow activists received an offensive SMS message from a Times of India reporter after the Twenty20 final on Monday. When they contacted the editor, he insisted that the matter did not concern the ToI. This reply is not acceptable to the forum; they point out that the journalist is known to them, and to the activist concerned, only in his professional capacity. The Forum has written a letter to the ToI (extract below). As Sonia Faleiro comments, it’s a pity that there’s always at least one person who can’t see it as a game.

It may have been meant as a joke, but it really isn’t funny at all.

Here is the Forum’s letter to the ToI:

“To,
The Editor,
Times of India,
Mumbai.

September 25, 2007.

Madam/Sir,

Sub: Communal hatred spewed by TOI reporter

“Pak ko sharafat sikha denge, Hind ki taakat dikha denge… Ae Pak, humse punga no lena varna, JOHANNESBERG main kya, LAHORE main TIRANGA lehra denge, jai hind.”

This is the sms sent by Mr. Balkrishna, Reporter, Times of India, to one of our feminist friends from the Muslim community after the cricket match between India and Pakistan yesterday.

We are sure that you are as angry, anguished, and insulted as all of us undersigned.

Mr. Balkrishna is known to us, including the woman who received this sms, only in his capacity as a TOI reporter. So there can be no doubt that this sms has not been sent in the spirit of personal friendship but only in his capacity of a TOI reporter.

And hence it is important that you look at this issue seriously and ensure that your reporters do not spread such communal venom or war mongering in society.

We think, and you would agree, that as a newspaper you are accountable to your entire readership…”

Via email from Abodh of WSD:

If there’s ever a Bollywood remake of the Harry Potter movies, one thing is certain. The part of Dobby the elf is taken.

Meet Dobby the pup. Pale eyes, tiny delicate frame, enormous flappy ears.

There’s even been quite a bit of magic in her little life. She’s made a complete recovery from an injury which had left her unable to walk. She’s transformed from scared and shy to friendly and frisky. She’s playful without being boisterous. Active without being noisy.

Now four months old, she’s looking for a nice family to live with. Meanwhile she spends her days racing around the kennel trying to play with anyone and everyone.

If you want a one-of-a-kind puppy, come to WSD. Dobby’s waiting to cast her spell on you. You can call on 23733433 or e-mail wsdindiaATgmail.com

A cat story.

Pets and persons.

Kombol finds a home.

The Indian Pariah Dog Club has its own blog.

And here is a true story, set in Warsaw during the Holocaust, about humans and animals:

The book begins in the mid-1930s, when a young couple, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, were the directors of Warsaw’s elaborate, fecund zoo, which housed its animals not just in cages but in habitats meant to recreate their native wetlands, deserts and woods. Antonina was a Russian-born Pole whose parents were killed by the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Russian Revolution. Jan was a rarity: a Polish Catholic whose father raised him as a staunch atheist in a working-class Jewish neighborhood. The Zabinski household was a sort of madcap bohemia, full of artists, intellectuals and a rotating assortment of non-human friends, including a lion kitten, a wolf cub, a chimpanzee, a “sluttish” cat named Balbina, a kissing rabbit named Wicek, and a paunchy muskrat who practiced an “exquisite” ritual of morning ablutions…

The mercilessly effective Nazi bombardment of Warsaw in 1939 destroyed the zoo. Ackerman, a poet and naturalist whose previous books include A Natural History of the Senses, is particularly evocative in describing the wreckage: “The sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed. . . . Wounded zebras ran, ribboned with blood, terrified howler monkeys and orangutans dashed caterwauling into the trees and bushes, snakes slithered loose, and crocodiles pushed onto their toes and trotted at speed. . . . Two giraffes lay dead on the ground, legs twisted, shockingly horizontal. . . . The monkeys and birds, screeching infernally, created an otherworldly chorus. . . . The tumult surely sounded like ten thousand Furies scratching up from hell to unhinge the world.”

And here is where the Zabinskis’ real story begins… Jan and Antonina opened their home — a Bauhaus-style glass villa — and the zoo to partisans and Jews, some of whom were smuggled out of the ghetto by Jan himself. The Zabinskis hid their “Guests” in closets, rooms and even the old animal cages; in the course of the Nazi occupation, they helped approximately 300 women, men and children. And Antonina insisted, throughout, on maintaining a festive, music-filled household, even as she and Jan lived with the constant threat of exposure, torture and death, not just for themselves but for their young son, too.

How to account for the Zabinskis’ actions? Jan was a cool, courageous risk-taker, and his upbringing had brought him personally close to many Jews. But Antonina was high-strung, often fearful (after all, the Bolsheviks had taught her something about political violence). In Ackerman’s telling, it was Antonina’s connection to the animal world — her belief that every living thing is entitled to life, respect and nurture — that made her incapable, despite her own terrors, of turning away from suffering…

The whole thing here.

I liked Ankita Mishra’s spirited singing:

and here:

And the tres cool Meiyang Chang:

And this performance by Prashant Tamang:

But my absolute favourite was Amit Paul’s Bulla ki Jaana Main Kaun:

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day.

Here is a piece by Humra Quraishi about the disorder which affected her father.

Those affected by this disorder change beyond recognition. Their intellectual capabilities deteriorate and only “little islands of memory” remain. As a specialist puts it, “memory becomes polka dotted”.

Here is Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”.

Over a year ago, Grant had started noticing so many little yellow notes stuck up all over the house. That was not entirely new. Fiona had always written things down—the title of a book she’d heard mentioned on the radio or the jobs she wanted to make sure she got done that day. Even her morning schedule was written down. He found it mystifying and touching in its precision: “7 a.m. yoga. 7:30–7:45 teeth face hair. 7:45– 8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast.”

The new notes were different. Stuck onto the kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dishtowels, Knives. Couldn’t she just open the drawers and see what was inside?

Here is a clip from “Away from Her”, Sarah Polley’s film version of the story, with Julie Christie as Fiona.

Towards the end of her life, Iris Murdoch was an Alzheimer’s patient.

*****

On another note, I was startled to see Outlook taking the moral high ground in this article about Asha Bhonsle and her mother-in-law Meera Burman (the widow of S.D.Burman). Apparently the 92-year old Meera Burman, an Alzheimer’s patient, has been bedridden since R.D.Burman’s death in 1994. And according to the article, it seems that Bhonsle shifted Meera Burman to an old age home some months ago, allegedly bringing her back this year only after she was to be presented with an award.

You’d imagine that these are difficult personal decisions that should be left to families to work out for themselves, but note Outlook’s primly disapproving tone (”that Asha could dump her mother-in-law in this fashion”; “packed off to a home for the aged”; “the drastic step”; “She may have languished there”; “perfect plot for our saas-bahu serials”). Also the speculations about Bhonsle’s interest in R.D.Burman’s property (”stories of how Asha had cleverly managed to get control over most of his assets”; “Those in the know suggest property row as a reason”). She was married to him, after all.

I don’t know the whole story, and I suspect no one does, other than the family itself; and so I didn’t like the gossipy, holier-than-thou tone of the article at all. I do feel strongly about the importance of caring for older family members, but I also think it’s important to be respectful of the choices that different people make in such circumstances. Especially if an older person is ailing and requires the kind of professional care that cannot be provided round-the-clock at home.

A last lecture by Randy Pausch, computer scientist and professor at CMU, who has pancreatic cancer and expects to have only a few more months of healthy life. From this WSJ article:

He paid tribute to his techie background. “I’ve experienced a deathbed conversion,” he said, smiling. “I just bought a Macintosh.” Flashing his rejection letters on the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.” He encouraged us to be patient with others. “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.” After showing photos of his childhood bedroom, decorated with mathematical notations he’d drawn on the walls, he said: “If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let ‘em do it.”

While displaying photos of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own. He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. “You’d be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away,” he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

He also saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home’s resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D, he said, despite how she’d introduce him: “This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the kind who helps people.”

You can watch the lecture here. And read about his cancer journey here.

This update is for family and friends who have been asking about Desh Baby.

He will be eleven months old next week. He is buzzing around the house, holding on to furniture and - just this week - taking his first shaky steps to walk alone. Ekla chalo re.

He now has six teeth, all of which he uses to good effect. He can grin toothily, chew biscuits, and bite if the opportunity arises.

Apart from A~ and me, he spends time happily with my parents, his nanny and our helper. He loves the dog and the cat, and they love him back in their own ways - Whisky with lots of tail-wagging, Bilkul with a baleful glare from a safe distance.

Desh was a bit clingy for a brief period but now meets new people cheerfully and likes to explore other people’s houses. And he LOVES other children. Every evening, when he’s taken down to the garden, he’s made much of by the other children in our building. Being the youngest in the building he gets lots of attention, and his toothy smile gets him lots of admirers.

His first thing in the morning is to go across to A~ and give him a sweet drooly kiss. I am quite jealous! (A~ would like to think that this is because of his superior parenting skills, but I’m convinced it’s because Desh Baby wants his father’s BlackBerry, which he knows is likely to be somewhere near A~’s pillow. His eyes light up whenever he gets his eager little hands on it!)

He will attend a babies’ playgroup from January. A~ and I are delighted with this nursery. It has a spacious, airy and pleasant environment; they have lots of activities for the children like cooking, colouring, meeting animals, and so on; and it’s a really nice space for children to learn and explore the world. Also, they have a lovely little garden, which is such a special thing in space-starved Mumbai. We’re sure he’ll love it, with all the other kids there and the nice teachers.

As for news of Baby No 2, I have been having a really rough time during my pregnancy, what with the never-ending nausea - I puke even when I brush my teeth - and then the backache, exhaustion, restrictions and everything else, but all seems good as far as the baby itself is concerned, so it’s worth it.

(Greenpeace/Raghu Rai, from Outlook)

They buried babies, gently brushing the dust away from the tiny faces.
They covered their own burning eyes with cloth bandages.
They carried the bodies of their loved ones for burial.
They pasted identification labels onto the foreheads of little children.
They made three-tiered graves because there was no other way to find enough space for all the bodies.
They borrowed money for medical treatment.
They aborted their pregnancies.
They coughed. And coughed.

Here is Raghu Rai’s photo essay on Bhopal. The young man in the last photograph, Sunil Kumar, was 13 years old on that horrific night in December 1984 when the gas leaked across the town. Abandoned for dead, he managed to survive. His parents and three of his siblings had died. But Sunil managed to locate his two surviving siblings - a baby brother and a nine-year old sister - and, working as a labourer, he brought them up.

(Sunil, photographed by Raghu Rai - Source)

One day in July last year, over two decades after that night, Sunil put on a t-shirt that said NO MORE BHOPALS. And then he killed himself.
Here is Indra Sinha’s tribute to this “mad Bhopali child”.

*****

“I understand because these are my people.” - Animal, the narrator in Indra Sinha’s new novel.

Alex, the amazing grey African parrot, learned more than 100 English words and had his own set of one-liners:

Like parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates…

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, she recalled, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was a lovely bird:

Although Alex was well-known as a powerhouse in the small and remarkable set of animals who show some skill with human language, I was struck by how delicately beautiful he was. He had a clean white face, and soft gray feathers in differing shades were scalloped around the white. His tail, in contrast, was an intense red. He measured about 12 inches from beak to tail, and he weighed only one pound. As I watched, Pepperberg offered Alex a piece of a muffin and he accepted it with a “Guuurrrrrrreat!” and then “Yummy.” He called it “banari” (a combination of “banana” and “cherry,” which is his word for “apple” explained Pepperberg). Alex’s voice was distant and tinny, like a recording from an old-style Victrola.

Also see this.

An English version here.

They played Je Raate Mor Duaarguli on Worldspace early this morning, which made me want to see the song from Megha Dhaka Tara once again. Here it is.

(Source)

Here is Akash Bhora from Ghatak’s Komal Gandhar. Full of glorious light and open space, it’s a contrast from the heartbreaking stillness of the song from Megha Dhaka Tara. Both songs were sung by Debabrata Biswas for Anil Chatterjee. (In Manna Dey’s autobiography, which I read recently, Dey describes Debabrata Biswas’s renditions of Rabindra Sangeet as “perhaps the best possible tribute one could have paid the poet”).

Here is a version of Je Raate Mor Duaarguli sung by Hemanta Mukherjee.

Here are two Tagore songs from Satyajit Ray, both sung by Kishore Kumar for Soumitra Chatterjee: Ami Chini Go Chini Tomare Ogo Bideshini sung by Amal in Charulata, and Bidhir Badhon Katbe Tumi sung by the revolutionary Sandip in Ghare Baire.

For me, the Jewish graveyard is like a yardstick about how long we have been in India, as the names and dates are written in Hebrew, English and Marathi. So, even if we say our prayers in Hebrew, at heart we are Indian, as at home we speak Marathi, Gujarati or English.

Yet, the outsider syndrome continues to bother me, because at the synagogue, there are moments when I feel like a minority within a minority community, as I am not fully conversant with the rituals. I like being a Jew, but do not know how to be a good Jew…so I amuse friends by calling myself a good Jew, meaning Gujju…

In a series about global migration, the NYT looks at the Kerala story.

Men seeking wives place newspaper ads, describing themselves as “handsome, teetotaler, foreign-employed” or “God-fearing and working in Dubai.”

Elsewhere, a woman who went to the Middle East to work as a housemaid and labourer so that her husband could repay his debts. When she returned after two years, she found that he had squandered the money and was planning to marry another woman… The story ends in violent tragedy.

Every English-speaking Indian man between 25 and 60 has written about the Hindi movies he has seen, the English books he has read, the foreign places he has travelled to and the curse of communalism. You mightn’t have read them all (there are a lot of them and some don’t make it to print) but their manuscripts exist and in this age of the internet, these masters of blah have migrated to the Republic of Blog.

Update: Guru and Amardeep post on Kesavan’s strange article.

“Why do you think it’s OK to harass women?” I said calmly, loudly. The man froze, then a look of fear washed over his features. He shrank like a worm. “What?” he snivelled, his eyes sliding to the floor. “I didn’t say anything bad …”

He had an illustrious career, beginning in a newly independent India, working as a trainee civil servant during Partition and going on to work in important positions such as Municipal Commissioner, Bombay and Chief Secretary, Maharashtra. After retirement, in his matter-of-fact, unsanctimonious but very determined way, he spent even more time working for the things he believed in, giving a new meaning to citizenship and public service. Characteristically, his slim memoir of his civil service days, “No Trumpets or Bugles”, is written with humour and self-deprecation.

A fine mind is rare enough. J.B.D’Souza also had that rarest of qualities - integrity. For me, it is a special privilege to have met him and interacted with him, and to be able to write this tribute for such a person.

He will be missed.

My thoughts are with his wife Neela, their son and daughter-in-law - our dear friends - Dilip and V, and the rest of the family.

Except that for most of his life, he forgot about one of them… This Vanity Fair article by Suzanna Andrews is about Daniel, Arthur Miller’s fourth child, who was born in 1966 with Down Syndrome. Miller had the child institutionalised almost immediately.

The Broadway producer Robert Whitehead, who died in 2002, would tell Martin Gottfried that Miller called him on the day of the birth. Miller was “overjoyed,” Whitehead said, and confided that he and Inge were planning to name the boy “Eugene”—possibly after Eugene O’Neill, whose play Long Day’s Journey into Night, which had won the Pulitzer in 1957, had awed Miller. The next day, however, Miller called Whitehead again and told him the baby “isn’t right.” The doctors had diagnosed the infant with Down syndrome. Born with an extra 21st chromosome, children with Down syndrome are often recognized by their upward-slanted eyes and flattened facial features. They suffer from hypotonia—decreased muscle tone—and mild to moderate retardation. Many are born with heart problems, and in 1966 they were not expected to live past the age of 20.

“Arthur was terribly shaken—he used the term ‘mongoloid,’” Whitehead recalled. He said, “‘I’m going to have to put the baby away.’” A friend of Inge’s recalls visiting her at home, in Roxbury, about a week later. “I was sitting at the bottom of the bed, and Inge was propped up, and my memory is that she was holding the baby and she was very, very unhappy,” she says. “Inge wanted to keep the baby, but Arthur wasn’t going to let her keep him.”

Some children never had any visitors. Their parents put them in Southbury and never saw them again. Other parents, like Inge Morath, were dedicated visitors. “They came like clockwork, every visiting Sunday,” says Richardson, who wonders how many of them were fully aware of the conditions in which their children were living. “If you were a parent who had left your child in that situation, would you ever want to admit that Southbury was like that? How could you live with yourself? You had to tell yourself it was all right.” Inge, however, appears to have seen things more clearly. After a Sunday visit to Southbury, du Plessix Gray recalls, Inge said, “‘You know, I go in there and it’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.’ That was the image she gave.”

Experts say it is difficult to measure how much Daniel had been held back by years of living in an institution. Early-intervention programs, nurturing families, and special-education classes—all of which Daniel missed out on—have contributed to a 15-point rise in the I.Q. scores of Down-syndrome children in the last 30 years, says Stephen Greenspan, a professor of psychiatry and former president of the Academy on Mental Retardation. Today, many higher-functioning Down-syndrome children can read and write; some graduate from high school and even college. Chris Burke, the actor with Down syndrome, who played Corky on the television show Life Goes On, lives in his own apartment in New York and commutes to work. Daniel, by contrast, had to learn basic reading skills. He had to work on his speech, and people say it is still difficult to understand him unless you know him.

Suzanna Andrews wonders about the price that Miller would ultimately have to pay for his decision:

A writer, used to being in control of narratives, Miller excised a central character who didn’t fit the plot of his life as he wanted it to be. Whether he was motivated by shame, selfishness, or fear—or, more likely, all three—Miller’s failure to tackle the truth created a hole in the heart of his story. What that cost him as a writer is hard to say now, but he never wrote anything approaching greatness after Daniel’s birth. One wonders if, in his relationship with Daniel, Miller was sitting on his greatest unwritten play.

After reading the article, I was sure only of one thing: that I would not like to be judgemental about the decision that Arthur Miller made forty years ago. It was 1966, after all. Children born with Down syndrome were generally being put into institutions. But not all. Many remained at home, in the nurturing environment of their families; and one of Daniel’s cousins, also born with Down syndrome, was being cared for at home.
And what could explain Miller’s inexplicable silence, for so many years, about Daniel’s existence?

Read the whole thing. It makes you think.

For the true meaning of junoon, meet Laxman Rao, chaiwalla and novelist:

Over 30 years ago when Laxman Rao ran away from his home in Talegaon Dashashar, western Maharashtra, with just Rs. 40 in his pocket, he had little idea of what life had in store for him. In Bhopal where he chose to get off the train, Laxman worked as a labourer for three months before he boarded the train once again and came to Delhi. “The first place I landed in was Birla Mandir and to survive I started cleaning cups and plates at different dhabas. The year was 1975 and thos e were the days when Gulshan Nanda was very famous. He used to write the most amazing stories in Hindi. I was so influenced by his writing that I decided that even I wanted to be Gulshan Nanda.”

“I felt, as I had done only class X, I needed to study further so at day time I worked and by night I would sit and read my books. I passed XI, XII and even did my graduation from Delhi University. Then in 1997, opposite the Suchita Bhawan on Vishnu Digambar Road, I built a mud platform and started selling paan beedi. I did that for 14 years before I started selling tea.”

He finished writing his first book, Nai duniya ki nai kahaniya in 1979. Armed with his manuscript, he enthusiastically made the rounds of publishers. “I went to atleast 10 publishers but no one was interested. One even told me tum paan beedi bechanewale tum kya likogye. Mere ko get out kar diya. So I decided I have come so close to making this book happen, why should I give up. So I bought paper, it was a 128 pages book and I spent Rs. 7,000 to get it published. I priced it at Rs. 7.” He decided he would be the distributor too. Everyday, armed with a bag full of his novels, Laxman made the rounds of schools and colleges on his bicycle.

“Five years later or after my death, people will say here was a man who struggled and wrote and they will remember my work.”

From assorted emails:

September 7:

Majlis and Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai host a panel Discussion on Art and Artists: Practices, Perceptions and Pedagogy
Speakers: Gulammohmmed Sheikh, Ranjit Hoskote, Shivji Panikker, and Suresh Chabria; Chair: Mitra Mukherjee Parikh

7 September 2007, 6.30 pm Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda

*****

September 8:

The PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai presents:

THE FLOWERING OF ATTENTION: A presentation on and readings from J Krishnamurti’s teachings

Date: 8 September, 2007 (Saturday)
Time: 6.30 pm
Place: Prithvi House, 1st Floor (Opp. Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu)
ENTRY FREE

*****
13 September

PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai presents a poetry reading by Hyderabad-based poet Sridala Swami from her debut collection A Reluctant Survivor

Date: 13 September, 2007 (Thursday)
Time: 6.15 pm
Place: Theosophy Hall, 3rd Floor, 40 New Marine Lines, Churchgate, Mumbai.
ENTRY FREE

*****

Roli Books and ITC Grand Central present

Kite’s Eye View
INDIA
Between Earth and Sky

by Nicolas Chorier
with a foreword by Zubin Mehta

7 pm, September 8, 2007 at The Ball Room, ITC Grand Central, Mumbai
(by invitation)

An exhibition of photographs from the book will be on display at the Durbar Hall, Asiatic Society of Mumbai, Town Hall from September 7 to 12, 10:30 am to 6:30 pm.

True to the raga after which he has been named, our son Desh loves music. Whether we’re listening to Pandit Jasraj or Talat Mahmood, our ten month old feels that he must participate in the song with a most soulful “Aaaaaaaaaaa” and some enthusiastic taalam on the bars of his cot.

One of his favourite CDs is Rehman’s Jana Gana Mana and we have heard it several times already. It’s a lovely album, notably the renderings by Rashid Khan, Shobha Gurtu, Saddiq Khan Langa, and the superb Bhimsen Joshi… I love the way the album brings together some of the different voices, instruments, dialects and accents of the country. And hearing D.K. Pattammal’s voice singing along with her granddaughter Nithyashree brought tears to my eyes.

The album also includes Tagore’s original recitation of the anthem. Deeply moving.

Writing about Nazim Hikmat in The Hindu Literary Review, Ravi Vyas quotes from the great Turkish poet’s “Advice to Our Children”:

Be naughty, that’s all right.

Climb up sheer walls,

Up towering trees.

Like an old captain let your hands direct

The course of your bicycle….

You must know how to build your own paradise on this black soil.

With your geology textbook

you must silence the man who teaches you

that creation began with Adam.

You must recognise

the importance of the Earth,

you must believe the Earth is eternal

Distinguish not between your mother

and your mother Earth.

You must love it

as much you love her.

Also read Hikmat’s poems “On Living” and “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved”.

Michael Vick, American footballer and one of the highest-paid NFL players, is currently facing trial for operating an illegal dogfighting venture on his property, being involved in the related gambling activities, and… participating not only in the dog fights but also in the executions of some dogs. Ugh. Here’s what Vick’s father had to say:

Michael Vick’s estranged father said he pushed his son to quit dogfighting years ago or, at least, put property used for the fights in the name of friends to avoid being implicated some day.

Around 250,000 dogs are believed to be used for the cruel sport of “professional” dogfighting in the US, according to this BBC report.

Meanwhile, in a welcome decision, the Supreme Court of India has restored a High Court ban on the cruel sport of Jallikattu. While this report begins by seeing the Supreme Court order as “a setback to tourism” in Tamil Nadu, the local people claim that this is part of their culture and not about cruelty. Not about cruelty? Really? A crowd several thousands strong, getting their thrills from watching a forcibly intoxicated bull being provoked by a group of several men?

What does Whisky doggie say?
Woof, woof!

What does Baby say?
Aaaaaaaaaa-

- and one more spoonful of khichdi goes into a little mouth.