bookduniya

2009-10-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DVD COLLECTION

Religious fundamentalism and extreme nationalism are dangerous. Most of us know that. But perhaps more dangerous than these is our own collective ennui at social and political injustice that prevents our protests and voices as groups or nations. You are rocked by this feeling a thousand times over with the Human Rights Watch DVD Collection, showcasing documentary films that deal with abuse and violation throughout the world. The seven films in this collection span the globe to reveal glimpses of the provocative stories from far-flung lands: Tibetan refugees in exile in India, young workers in the silver mines of Bolivia, young men and women in the by-lanes of the Middle and Far East, and horrific killings of ordinary people by powerful regimes.

But first the story of the protesters. In 1971, a group of twenty-eight people called America's Conscience broke into a New Jersey draft board office to destroy government draft records that identified young men for military service. Arrested because of betrayal by one of their own, these people were labeled Camden 28 by the U.S. government. A court case followed in which judge and jury made a landmark decision and returned a verdict of not guilty. The Camden 28 is this story.

In Jihad for Love (Dangerous Living), gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels through the Islamic world to unveil the hidden lives of gay and lesbian Muslims, many of who have no choice but to leave their home and land for safer shores. Yet others choose to stay behind and fight for a life of dignity and social acceptance. Despite threats, imprisonment and castigation, they carry on, confident that things will eventually change.

From director Sabiha Samar of Pakistan comes Silent Waters, a film set in the days of dictator Zia-ul-Haq's rise to power. The lives of a mother and son living peacefully in a village become intertwined with fundamentalism, and long-forgotten events and scars from the past suddenly threaten the future. The film juxtaposes the events of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan with the Islamic fundamentalism in the '80s. With the rise of fundamentalism, the horrors of Partition are almost revisited.

Equally horrific are the scenes from S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. Director Rithy Pahn takes us into the world of the Khmer and their murderous inhumanity through the eyes of a survivor who finally confronts his captors. This is a difficult film to watch: staring at the face of the men who killed millions in cold blood is never easy.

Dreaming Lhasa presents one face of a Tibetan world, that of exile in Dharamsala, India. Directors Ritu Sareen and Tenzing Sonam's film is the story of Karma, a Tibetan filmmaker in New York who travels to Dharamsala to make a movie about exile. While filming her subject, she meets a monk from Tibet who is searching for a particular man. His search symbolizes Karma's own journey to come to terms with her legacy. Through the monk and their trip to meet other Tibetans by traveling across India from Dharamsala to Delhi to Rajasthan, one sees through the prism of the exiled.

Another poignant film in this collection is The Devil's Miner, the story of young brothers Basilio and Bernardino, who work in the Bolivian silver mines of Cerro Rico. Living under the yoke of poverty and grave danger, these brothers follow in the footsteps of other miners who believe and pray to the Devil they believe watches over them. Statues of devils across the tunnels of the mines and offerings made to them are the only source of comfort for these boys. Yet, despite the poverty and danger to their lives, these children have hope for the future - a future where an education funded by their earnings from the mine will bring a new and better life.

Equally affecting is the story of Jean Donovan (Roses in December), a young American missionary who was brutally slain by El Salvador's military. The film chronicles her life, her upbringing in Connecticut, and her desire to join the Catholic Church and work amongst the poor El Salvadorians at a time when leftist rebels were fighting the military regime. The church became a target for the military junta because of its anti-poverty programs, and Jean and three American nuns paid for their idealism with their lives.

The films contained in the Human Rights Watch DVD Collection, most of them multiple award-winners from various film festivals and organizations, faithfully represent the partnership between Human Rights Watch and the socially conscious filmmaking from First Run Features in their partnered effort to open the eyes we try to keep shut tight against ongoing depravity and inhumanity in a world we share with too many unluckier than we.

2009-06-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS
Daniyal Mueenuddin
W.W. Norton
Hardcover
256 pages
February 2009

Pakistan is in the spotlight. The war against terror that rages on its terrain, to the accompaniment of political machinations and a gloomy economy, threatens to ravage this land wedged between the large India and the small violence-rocked Afghan state. Almost to coincide with this world attention, Pakistani Writing in English (PWE), or Pakistani Anglophone Writing (PAW) if you prefer, is suddenly gaining visibility as a deluge of authors such as Mohsin Hamid, Mohammad Hanif, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Aamer Hussain, Shahbano Bilgrami, Azhar Abidi, Musharraf Ali Farooqi and many others make their mark on the international literary scene. Daniyal Mueenuddin is the latest addition to this star-studded gallery.

Mueenuddin’s unconventional life is the stuff of fiction. Born of a Pakistani father and American mother, he grew up in Wisconsin and Lahore, attended Yale and Dartmouth, then gave it all up to live at his ancestral farm in rural Pakistan. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, his debut collection of short stories, is a glimpse into this world where the trajectories of the old and the new, urban and rural, rich and the poor, landowner and tenant, intersect.

In an interview at a literary festival held at Jaipur in India, Mueenuddin pointed out that although it is necessary to highlight the diversity of Pakistan, he wasn’t keen on being political at all. Indeed, as the stories in this volume show, this world is much like any other, where people struggle for existence, recognition and acceptance. It is also hierarchical; like everyplace else, people jostle to reach the top where there is room only for a very few. And each person’s place and position in the ladder is unique. In the title story of the volume (all stories in this collection are interconnected), there is the rich and powerful K.K. Harouni thinking of Husna, a young women belonging to a distant branch of his family:

She behaved and spoke unlike the women he normally met, for she had always inhabited an indefinite space, neither rich nor poor, neither servant nor begum, in a city where the very concept of a middle class found expression only in a few households, managers of foreign banks and of the big industrial concerns, sugar and textiles and steel.

Husna, on the other hand knows that there are ways to improve her lot.

Seeing a girl her age stepping from a large new car in Liberty Market, among the expensive shops, or glittering in a pair of diamond drops, at a wedding, Husna’s mind would hang on these symbols of wealth, not letting go for hours. She sensed that all this might come to her through Harouni, if she became his mistress.

But there is a price to be paid for it. A price that is often very steep.

In the Old City where she grew up, the neighborhood pointed at shaming fingers at women from less than respectable families who were kept by merchants. The eyes of these creatures glided over the crowd as they rode on tongas, emerged untouched from dark streets where sewage flowed in the drain, prominent as targets in brightest red silk, lipstick, gold. Husna’s mother ground out remarks of the price that had to be paid, broken relations with family, broken old age.

Goodbye to the life she would never have, a life, economies that she would never make as she cooked and kept house for a clerking husband in the Old City, one of the boys who might have accepted her hand.

It is also a world where one is rooted. This comes at a price: when one wishes to shake off the shackles, they are too strong to come off. In “Our lady of Paris,” Sohail, a young Pakistani, introduces Helen, his American girlfriend, to his parents in Paris. Sohail’s father, when asked where he would like to be born, says

The only thing I’ve missed, I sometimes feel, is the sensation of being absolutely free, to do exactly what I like, to go where I like, to act as I like. I suspect that only an American ever feels that. You aren’t weighed down by your families, and you aren’t weighed down by history. If I ran away to the South Pole some Pakistani businessman would one day crawl into my igloo and ask if I was the cousin of K.K. Harouni.

Sohail’s mother, in her conversation with Helen, puts it in a roundabout way: You would hate Pakistan. You’re not built for it, you’re too straight and you don’t put enough value on decorative, superficial things-that is the only way to get by there.

In the last story of the volume, “The Spoiled Man,” old Rezak - homeless, penniless and without a family - finds employment at the farm house of Sohail Harouni. Sohail is now married to Sonya, an American lady who

has made Pakistan her home and who did fit in more than most foreign women, she studied Urdu, to the point where she could communicate quite effectively, made an effort to meet Pakistani’s outside the circuit in Islamabad. Even her husband’s catty aunts admitted that she was one of the few foreigners who wore Pakistani clothes without looking like either an Amazon or a Christmas tree.

The newly hired Rezak, paid and fed well, works in the gardens tending to the apple and peach trees that his master’s American wife has gotten from her country. When, during a picnic, Sonya greets Rezak, his heart, his soul melted, as if a queen had spoken to a foot soldier. It is a feudal world where the landowner’s largesse is matched by the intense loyalty of his minions.

Readers from South Asia will identify with many of the characters and incidents. The Ghulam Rasools and Rezaks and Nawabdins could easily have been a part of my own world. For others, too, Mueenuddin’s fiction opens the gateway to a dynamic place; it would be a pity to capture it within the twin stereotypes of oppression and terrorism.

2009-03-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

STUDIO ONE ANTHOLOGY
Actors: Jack Lemmon, Eva Marie Saint, Charlton Heston, Eddie Albert, Laurence Olivier, Art Carney

Directors: Paul Nickell, Franklin Schaffner
Distributor: KOCH Vision
DVD release: 11 November 2008 Runtime: 982 minutes(6 discs)
Format: Box set, Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC

What better way to bring back the yesteryear than black and white and sepia. Especially if these happen to be teleplays of a bygone era. And lest we forget the era, commercials for Westinghouse refrigerators and washing machines (ancient mammoth looking appliances) are inserted between the plays.

The Studio One Anthology showcases television dramas that are more than 50 years old. Seventeen of these plays, telecast between 1948-1958, are now available in this set of 6 DVDs. Several of these - Wuthering Heights, Julius Caesar, 1984, etc. - are literary classics; others, like The Remarkable Incident at Carson Corners and An Almanac of Liberty, are vignettes of happennings in ordinary life. Some, including Arena, are political plays. Still others (notable among them Twelve Angry Men) are plays that became inspiration for Hollywood.

The first offering of the collection is Medium, which originally aired in December 1948. Marie Powers' role as Madame Flora, who cheats her grieving clients by fake seances and her nemesis as she is driven to madness by a seemingly real presence, is beautifully portrayed. However, the technical limitations of the camera prevent many a powerful performance from reaching its zenith. Julius Caesar on the same disc suffers from the same problem. Theodore Bikel is Julius Caesar who, despite Calpurnia's (Maria Britneva) entreaties, arrives at the Senate on the Ides of March. Absent from the play are the huge canvas, theatrics and fluorish that a Shakespearean production of Caesar requires. Philip Bourneuf as Brutus does a reasonably good job, though I didn't care much for Alfred Ryder's Mark Antony. His piece de resistance - "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears" - is far too weak and stilted. Almost a damp squib.

The war plays fare much better. Notable is The Strike of the doomed patrol in Korea. The commanding officer realizes that he must give the go-ahead for an Air Force strike with the knowledge that his own men, sent there earlier, will face certain death. The poignant portrayal of his stoic stance despite his inner conflict is the highlight of the play. Another well-staged Korea-themed play, The Death of Life of Larry Benson, centers on homecoming after war.

There are several Reginald Rose and Gore Vidal plays in this collection. Perhaps most famous among them is Rose's Twelve Angry Men, which shows how after a murder trial, the conflicting opinions of the jury members can be dramatically reversed. The other Rose play, The Remarkable Incident at Carson Corners, is also the story of a trial. Here the accused is a caretaker on trial for having murdered a child. The play ends with the father saying, "I forgive you. Please, someone forgive me." No other words could better capture the tragedy.

Gore Vidal's complex Dark Possession, the story of a woman's multiple personalities and the scene of a murder, is interesting, but Geraldine Fitzerald as Charlotte doesn't come across as convincing in the role. The other characters, too, lack depth. In contrast is Vidal's Summer Pavilion. That a daughter's struggle to extricate her life from her mother's (superbly played by Miriam Hopkins) hold can unleash such devastation is gripping to watch.

Charlton Heston makes a good impression in Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's famous romantic novel. My personal favorite of the collection is Pontius Pilate. His one word may have changed the course of history, but in this play his own life portrays the fate of those who sacrifice their principles for smaller goals. Geraldine Fitzgerald gives a memorable performance as Procula, Pilate's wife, who joins the Christian order. As the play concludes, the narrator voices takes over the screen.
"For the crucifixion still goes on. Every hour of every day the agony is reenacted. This is the season of reminder to look to ourselves. The guilt or innocence is in our hearts. For anyone today, as then, who lives in fear. Anyone who could secure his own well-being by sacrificing his principles."
It is then that one realizes that the passage of time does not really change everything, and this collection bears further testimony to that.

The teleplays in the collection are:
The Medium
Julius Caesar
June Moon
Wuthering Heights
Pontius Pilate
The Storm
1984
Confessions of a Nervous Man
The Remarkable Incident at Carson Corners
Dark Possession
The Death and Life of Larry Benson
The Strike
Twelve Angry Men
An Almanac of Liberty
Summer Pavilion
Dino
The Arena

2009-02-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

AND THE WORLD CHANGED

With Pakistan in the spotlight, the timing is just right for the deluge of writings from Pakistan that are making their mark on the international literary scene. Pakistani writing in English (PWE), often called PAW (Pakistani Anglophone writing) is making it possible for readers worldwide to gorge on fiction from this part of the subcontinent. The Bapsi Sidhwas and Kamila Shamsies have now been joined by a formidable array of writers like Mohsin Hamid, Mohammad Hanif, Nadeem Aslam, Shahbano Bilgrami, Moni Mohsin, Azhar Abidi and most recently Daniyal Mueenuddin.

And the world changed is a wonderful addition to the gems that are flooding the PAW bookshelves. Edited by Muneeza Shamsie, this collection of twenty five short stories showcases contemporary writings by Pakistan women. So that while the narratives abound with the obvious themes of violence, class conflict and hierarchy, the experience is exclusively through the eyes of women. Women writing in English are without exception the anglicized, upper class ones who by virtue of their education and social standing are anything but deprived and may not be the best spokespersons for the real Pakistan. And yet these are also the very people that inhabit a special world, one that allows a Pakistani experience within a global and often an immigrant and multicultural context. As Muneeza Shamsie says in her introduction to the volume:

Pakistani women who employ English as a creative language live between the East and West, literally and figuratively, have had to struggle to be heard. They write from the edge of both English and Pakistani literatures.
Although many of the writers included here are well known, the goal of this pioneering anthology is to reveal how Pakistani women writing in a global-albeit imperial-language, challenge stereotypes that patriarchal cultures in Pakistan and diaspora have imposed on them, both as women and as writers.

Diaspora and patriarchy also brush shoulders with war, displacement, immigrant woes and social hierarchy. Interestingly, marriage (and relations with men), the context within which women negotiate their own destiny plays second fiddle to violence and conflict. Interesting, too, is the fact that the violence that forms the leitmotif of the volume, is mostly in the context of partition and the wars with India. Indeed, the first story of this collection by Bapsi Sidhwa is about the horrors of partition. It is decades after partition in Houston, yet the wounds are still raw, as we can infer from Ammijee’s heart wrenching screams "I will never forgive your fathers! Or your grandfathers! Get out, shaitans! Sons and grandsons of shaitans! Never, never never!”

Roshni Rustomji’s Existing at the Center brings together incidents of violence across the continents where she has lived. Once again, there is the pain of partition,

“my friend Asha told me about how her favorite aunt had wept as the red tilak on her forehead and the red sindhur in the parting of her hair were rubbed off when she was widowed. All that red of marriage and of families joining together turned to blood across the land.”

which Rustomji weaves in with violence across other countries where she has lived, such as the blood and gore of Lebanon’s civil war. Lebanon, the land of heartbreaking beauty.

“where I saw a boy his face masked with blood, leap from a balcony moments after men in uniform had entered the building. The mother had screamed at the corpse of her son, not only for dying but also for having killed other mothers’ sons. Later I heard the same story during the Nicaragua war between the Sandinistas and the Contras, and during the Zapatista uprising for justice.”

The same violent motif goes through Vietnam and Afghanistan and she rants

“Mad? As I see bombs falling from the sky and listen to the young men and women ready to unleash their terrifying technology onto those they dare not think of as being human, I am reminded of history of this particular war” I remember the words of Euripides “Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

Although class, hierarchy and multiculturalism often form the basis of the story, the backdrop is mostly violence and war. The title story by Sabyn Javeri-Jilliani is the multicultural world of Karachi just before the 1965 war with India. In a typical mohalla where people yearn for news outside of what is provided by the state radio, arrives the Voice of America broadcast provided by Uncle Bobby’s car radio. But these broadcasts also bring news of the Indo-Pak war and gradually tense relations between the Hindu and Muslim that had lived side by side for ages in these communities. Where violence is not a result of strife or war, it is rooted in the social order. Feryal Ali Gauhar’s Kucha Miran Shah is a horrific story of honor killing that occurred in the protagonist’s childhood. And yet amidst the violence that percolates through generations are also these islands of gentleness and decency as seen in the gentle romance of this young man with a mute woman.

That there were fewer stories on women’s negotiation of power within marriage and patriarchal structures came as an initial surprise to me. After all this is something that most of us have come to expect from women’s narratives. It escaped me that in the aftermath of violence, the havoc that is wreaked on women, their bodies, their families, their livelihood and their communities; all these have far greater ramifications on their survival than social negotiations within a marriage. Marital relations do feature in some stories. Bina Shah’s The Optimist is the portrait of an arranged marriage between a Pakistani man and an expatriate girl. Another view of the expatriate world is shown in A Pair of Jeans where jeans symbolize decadence in a young girl in the eyes of her future Pakistani parents-in-law in Britain. Tahira Naqvi’s A Fair Exchange, is a world where a woman’s devotion to her husband can come through sacrifices offered to God in return for favors granted in life. It is also a commentary on how the intersection of religion and hierarchy can often take on bizarre forms.

Patriarchy is South Asia has a wonderful legacy in the form of solidarity amongst women. This is poignantly depicted in Fehmida Riaz’s Daughters of Aai where rural women spearhead, in their own silent way, a revolution where solidarity intermixes with superstition in a tale of sexual exploitation. In Excellent things in Women, Sara Suleri Goodyear writes about her growing up in Pakistan in a household where her Welsh mother’s quiet nature acts as a foil to her Dadi or paternal grandmother’s strong personality. Together with her sisters Tillat and Iffat, this is a world of women and their affection, gentleness and understanding across the cacophony of generations and cultures.

The stories are chronologically arranged according to the authors’ ages, so that younger authors are toward the end of the volume. It is appropriate then that the last story of the volume, is on multiculturalism. Nayyara Rehman’s Clay Fissures deals with identity in an increasingly convergent world. Here we see through the eyes of a young Hindu Pakistani albino boy, who has never been at home in his country or elsewhere. Years later, he finds himself in Balochistan conducting research on a erupting volcano. Around him are foreigners, investors in Pakistan’s refineries.

But the discrimination also taught me that the only place where color really matters is in a rainbow.
We hugged and shook hands and cheered. Europeans, Chinese, and Baluchis; Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and a Hindu all brought together by circumstance.

A fine glimpse of what would be our future in the globalized world.
First published at sawnet website

2009-01-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

HISTORIC SPEECHES

Barak Obama's upcoming inaugural address brings to mind some of the greatest speeches in history.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN"S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 1
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 2
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 3
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU"S FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT SPEECH

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of Inida and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom

that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

JAI HIND.

2009-01-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

A POSTHUMOUS EDITORIAL
Lasantha Wickramatunge

And Then They Came For Me

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic... well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you'd best stop buying this paper.

The Sunday Leader has never sought safety by unquestioningly articulating the majority view. Let's face it, that is the way to sell newspapers. On the contrary, as our opinion pieces over the years amply demonstrate, we often voice ideas that many people find distasteful. For example, we have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and urged government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.

Many people suspect that The Sunday Leader has a political agenda: it does not. If we appear more critical of the government than of the opposition it is only because we believe that - pray excuse cricketing argot - there is no point in bowling to the fielding side. Remember that for the few years of our existence in which the UNP was in office, we proved to be the biggest thorn in its flesh, exposing excess and corruption wherever it occurred. Indeed, the steady stream of embarrassing expos‚s we published may well have served to precipitate the downfall of that government.

Neither should our distaste for the war be interpreted to mean that we support the Tigers. The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be custodians of the dhamma is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to the public because of censorship.

What is more, a military occupation of the country's north and east will require the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens, deprived of all self respect. Do not imagine that you can placate them by showering "development" and "reconstruction" on them in the post-war era. The wounds of war will scar them forever, and you will also have an even more bitter and hateful Diaspora to contend with. A problem amenable to a political solution will thus become a festering wound that will yield strife for all eternity. If I seem angry and frustrated, it is only because most of my countrymen - and all of the government - cannot see this writing so plainly on the wall.

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda and I have been friends for more than a quarter century. Indeed, I suspect that I am one of the few people remaining who routinely addresses him by his first name and uses the familiar Sinhala address oya when talking to him. Although I do not attend the meetings he periodically holds for newspaper editors, hardly a month passes when we do not meet, privately or with a few close friends present, late at night at President's House. There we swap yarns, discuss politics and joke about the good old days. A few remarks to him would therefore be in order here.

Mahinda, when you finally fought your way to the SLFP presidential nomination in 2005, nowhere were you welcomed more warmly than in this column. Indeed, we broke with a decade of tradition by referring to you throughout by your first name. So well known were your commitments to human rights and liberal values that we ushered you in like a breath of fresh air. Then, through an act of folly, you got yourself involved in the Helping Hambantota scandal. It was after a lot of soul-searching that we broke the story, at the same time urging you to return the money. By the time you did so several weeks later, a great blow had been struck to your reputation. It is one you are still trying to live down.

You have told me yourself that you were not greedy for the presidency. You did not have to hanker after it: it fell into your lap. You have told me that your sons are your greatest joy, and that you love spending time with them, leaving your brothers to operate the machinery of state. Now, it is clear to all who will see that that machinery has operated so well that my sons and daughter do not themselves have a father.

In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.

Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you. Indeed, your conduct has been like a small child suddenly let loose in a toyshop. That analogy is perhaps inapt because no child could have caused so much blood to be spilled on this land as you have, or trampled on the rights of its citizens as you do. Although you are now so drunk with power that you cannot see it, you will come to regret your sons having so rich an inheritance of blood. It can only bring tragedy. As for me, it is with a clear conscience that I go to meet my Maker. I wish, when your time finally comes, you could do the same. I wish.

As for me, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I walked tall and bowed to no man. And I have not travelled this journey alone. Fellow journalists in other branches of the media walked with me: most of them are now dead, imprisoned without trial or exiled in far-off lands. Others walk in the shadow of death that your Presidency has cast on the freedoms for which you once fought so hard. You will never be allowed to forget that my death took place under your watch. As anguished as I know you will be, I also know that you will have no choice but to protect my killers: you will see to it that the guilty one is never convicted. You have no choice. I feel sorry for you, and Shiranthi will have a long time to spend on her knees when next she goes for Confession for it is not just her owns sins which she must confess, but those of her extended family that keeps you in office.

As for the readers of The Sunday Leader, what can I say but Thank You for supporting our mission. We have espoused unpopular causes, stood up for those too feeble to stand up for themselves, locked horns with the high and mighty so swollen with power that they have forgotten their roots, exposed corruption and the waste of your hard-earned tax rupees, and made sure that whatever the propaganda of the day, you were allowed to hear a contrary view. For this I - and my family - have now paid the price that I have long known I will one day have to pay. I am - and have always been - ready for that. I have done nothing to prevent this outcome: no security, no precautions. I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death. What am I among so many? It has long been written that my life would be taken, and by whom. All that remains to be written is when.

That The Sunday Leader will continue fighting the good fight, too, is written. For I did not fight this fight alone. Many more of us have to be - and will be - killed before The Leader is laid to rest. I hope my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom but an inspiration for those who survive to step up their efforts. Indeed, I hope that it will help galvanise forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland. I also hope it will open the eyes of your President to the fact that however many are slaughtered in the name of patriotism, the human spirit will endure and flourish. Not all the Rajapakses combined can kill that.

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niem”ller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem”ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem”ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.
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Lasantha Wickramatunge, the chief editor of the Sunday Leader, was shot and killed by hired gunmen in Colombo on 8 January. Sri Lanka has the notoriety of being the worst place in the world for murdering journalists who do not support the government. The Sri lanka Editors' Guild blames the Mahinda Rajapakse government. Rajapakshe had earlier threatened Lasantha with death.

2009-01-13T20:03:00.000-08:00

HITLER: LAST TEN DAYS

April 20, 1945. A beautifully baked birthday cake comes out of the oven to the sounds of staccato gunfire. The place is a bunker in subterranean Berlin, and the huge explosions a sign that the Allies are close. The birthday boy, as you might have guessed, is the German Führer, Adolf Hitler.

The Soviet army is only a day or two away from the bunker, but the inmates seem to be oblivious to their future. At the Führer's birthday celebrations, we see Hitler's cronies (among them Alfred Jodl and Joseph Goebbels) vie to gift the best to their leader. However, closer scrutiny reveals that the truth of Germany having lost the war has dawned on the Führer's men. The generals and senior staff know what is in store, but Hitler's maniacal tendencies and paroxysms of rage prevent them from confronting their leader with the truth. The false games of deifying Hitler continue as the men mock the the cigar-smoking Churchill in the Hitler's presence, but out of earshot, they voice their concerns about theirs and their nation's future.

Sir Alec Guiness does a splendid job portraying the Nazi dictator, not merely in his staccato speech, chest thumping and theatrical demeanor, but also in conveying the essence of his power. However, with the spotlight on him alone, the film becomes a mere highlight of Hitler's terrible rage and his consequent alienation from his own inner circle.

It is impossible to watch this film without switching to comparisons with Bernd Eichinger's Untergang (Downfall), where Hitler is less of a monster and more of a maniac wavering between tenderness and madness. He towers like a colossus over his coterie; their devotion to him and belief in his world is so complete that most of them plan to die with him.By contrast, Hitler: The Last Ten Days paints the dictator with a stronger brush. More than a dramatized record of the last few days of his life, it becomes a showcase of Hitler's constant rage and insanity that turns everyone - including his wife, Eva Braun (Doris Kunstmann) - against him. So complete is his alienation (as the last scene depicts) that when his death by suicide is announced, the inmates of the bunker light up cigarettes - Hitler had banned the use of tobacco in the bunker.

2009-01-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

A MERCY

A mother begs at the feet of a man she has seen moments ago.
I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle. He said yes.

Four women are paid for by a man. The first, Lina, a Native American, serves his land.
Together they minded the fowl and starter stock; planted corn and vegetables. But it was she who taught him how to dry the fish they caught; to anticipate spawning and how to dry the fish they caught.

The second, Rebekka; he paid for her voyage to her father. So that he may get a wife in this godforsaken land.
From the moment he saw his bride-to-be struggling down the gangplank with bedding, two boxes and a heavy satchel, he knew his good fortune.
Following him, feeling the disabling resilience of land after weeks at sea, she tripped…..He did not turn around. He would offer her no pampering. She would not accept it if he did. A perfect equation for the work that lay ahead.

The acquisition of two more girls follow. One in exchange for lumber, and another as repayment of bad debts.
From the moment Rebekka and Lina set eyes on one another, there was an immediate hostility. But on a land that is harsh and demanding there was no place for enmity or jealousy. As they work together planting seedlings and raising animals, and keeping the foxes away, Rebekka gives birth only to bury the infants in the next season.They soon become friends. Not only because somebody had to pull the wasp sting from the other’s arm. Not only because it took two to push the cow away from the fence. Not only because one had to hold the head while the other one tied the trotters. Mostly because neither knew precisely what they were doing and how.

These vignettes of life in seventeenth-century America through the kaleidoscope of Toni Morrison's A Mercy reveal a new land with "forests untouched since Noah, shorelines beautiful enough to bring tears, wild food for the taking." Law and society were still fluid, as were claims on land. Black men, most of them free, worked side by side with the newly arrived whites, and Native Americans escaping fire and disease and war joined them.

It is 1682, and Anglo-Dutch trader Jacob Vaark is settling down in a small landholding in Virginia. He is persuaded to take a small slave girl as partial payment for a debt that an older plantation owner owes him. Although unwilling to take such a young child, Jacob agrees when the girl’s mother, also a slave, falls at his feet. So does little Florens come to live in his farm.

As Florens is raised on the farm, loved by Lina and others, Jacob starts living the life of a trader. His absences become longer and his fortune bigger, propelling him to build a huge mansion; midway, smallpox strikes the farm. As they struggle and against death and disease, Florens sets off to find the young blacksmith she loves; he can get medicine to cure her mistress, Rebekka, from smallpox.

The manner in which Morrison structures the narrative can leave readers perplexed, lost and disoriented. The story is told from the points of view of six different characters, and events are often non-chronologic. This feeling, too, will pass as the plot gradually unfolds. Morrison’s portrayal of this vast, limitless world of sweat, grime and hard work, disease, death and destruction, and all the people jostling and struggling to live and be heard is so real and palpable that I wished for this to be a magnum opus instead of a short novel.

I’ll refrain from disclosing any more of the plot, but Morrison’s grand finale brings us back into the pivotal act of the story: that of a woman giving her daughter away as an act of mercy, a great monologue in the mother's voice of an act that can tear and explode the human soul:

It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.

2009-01-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Here's wishing my readers a very Happy New Year. This is a pic of a small kid selling toys in a night bazar in rural Thailand. He is only three years old and altho' he looked a bit scared as the flashlights came on he put up a brave front. Later he sat looking so solemn that I went and tickled his tummy. At first he gave a shy giggle, then laughed heartily and soon gurgled with such joy that i said 'to hell with his smelly clothes and dirt streaked face and flowing nose' and picked him up and gave him a good squeeze and cuddle. He responded so beautifully; it will always be a memorable moment for me.

2008-10-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

DER UNTERGANG (DOWNFALL)

During the last days of World War II, as the Russian Red Army approaches Berlin and Germany's defeat seems imminent, Hitler and the elite of the Third Reich escape to the Reich's Chancellery bunker in subterranean Berlin to make plans and strategize. As reports of the war filter in, it is obvious to Hitler's generals and top officials that the war is lost, yet they are reluctant to show him the real situation. Terrified of Hitler's manic burst of rage, anger and theaterical chest-thumping, these men indulge the Fuehrer to the end in his fantasies of overturning the present situation and ultimately winning the war.

Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall) is told from the point of view of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary during his last days. The film opens to a interview of the real Traudl Junge, an elderly lady who, as she reminisces about her days in Hitler's bunker, gives us a peek at those last days of Hitler's life. Later in life, Junge went on record (and this is shown in the film) to say that she had no idea then that Hitler and the Nazis had perpetrated such heinous crimes; despite being just a lowly secretray with no real role in the scheme of things, she felt bitter and angry at herself for having been part of Hitler's staff. She also said that the Hitler she knew was very different from the maniac the world saw. That, in a nutshell is the main theme of Der Untergang : that the Nazis, too, had a human face, and that men who can make others commit heinous crimes often have their own ways of conveying inspiration, tenderness and understanding.

Bruno Ganz is absolutely brilliant in the role of Adolf Hitler. He wavers between softness and tenderness (the scene where he sings with the Goebbels' kids, and his understanding toward Traudl) and maniacal tendencies. We see a childlike demeanor when he sets eyes on a miniature model of an opera house and his fragility at his last hour, when he stands broken, defeated and shattered. One wonders why director Oliver Hirschbiegel drew so much flak for this humane, balanced treatment of the characters. Nowhere in the film do they arouse any sympathy in us. On the contrary - watching a maniac being capable of kindess and tenderness is a bit unsettling.

We see Hitler’s complete lack of compassion toward his on people, yet it is strange that the same people are inspired by him. There is this scene where Hitler steps out of the bunker to award medals to young kids for valor. It is Hitler's decision that these teenage boys and girls, or "Hitler youths," fight a losing battle against the Russian army across the bridges in Berlin. But these kids are in awe of him and worship him. Later, we see how Hitler doesn't blink before ordering the flooding of the underground system to halt the unstoppable Russian Army, despite knowing that all hospitals with injured men operate underground. The film then cuts to a character saying “der Fuehrer is der Fuehrer.”

The serious, somber film has its share of light moments. Himmler's line “When I meet Eisenhower, should I give him the Nazi salute or should I shake his hand?” had me chuckling.

Der Untergang has a fabulous score, touching and melancholic. Obviously with a subject matter such as this, one does not expect anything joyous. Stephen Zacharias' musice, while restrained and unobtrusive, still conveys the bitter tragedy. While the opening cue of "Des Fuehrers Sekretaerin" captures this feeling of despair beautifully and sets the tone for the whole film, I was particularly moved by the "Eva Brauns letzter Brief," a lovely movement carrying strains of poignancy and sadness. The last part of the score and my favorite, "Spaete Einsicht" has traces of some buoyant feelings, probably to capture the sentiment that the end of a war is also the time for a new beginning.

The film ends with brief information on what happened to the others in the bunker. Traudl Junge eventually escaped past the Soviet lines. Of the more famous ones, Himmler committed suicide during his imprisonment and trial; Jodl was hanged after the Nuremberg trials.

Der Untergang is an absolutely must-see film, revealing the human face of tyrants and maniacs, a face that can inspire, cajole, and force people to commit horrible acts, believing them to be for the greater good. What can be more chilling than Magda Goebbels telling Hitler of her decision to leave her six young children dead than live without National Socialism and the Fuehrer?

2008-10-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

SEA OF POPPIES
Amitav Ghosh

For me, the topic of displacement of people with the rise of empires almost always brings to mind The Glass Palace, where Amitav Ghosh’s King Thebaw watches the milling crowds at the Rangoon harbor and wonders

“What vast, what incomprehensible power, to move people in such huge numbers from one place to another-emperors, kings, farmers, dockworkers, soldiers, coolies, policemen. Why? Why this furious movement-people taken from one place to another, to pull rickshaws, to sit blind in exile? And where would his own people go, now that they were a part of this empire.”

Ghosh continues building his oeuvre with Sea of Poppies, a tale of mass migration and displacement of Indians with the rise of British power. Set in 1830s, this is the story of the people on the Ibis, a ship that will sail from the Bay of Bengal to Mauritius. Originally a slave ship, the Ibis has undergone a bit of a transformation after the abolition of slavery. When the story begins, a refurbished Ibis - minus the earlier shackles and chains - is ready to transport indentured labor to British colonies, its cargo men and women from agrarian Eastern India and Bengal who will sail to Mauritius to work as labor on plantations. Called girmitiyas (a corrupted derivative of the English “agreement” that they have signed to work as labor), these people will by sailing the Black Waters (Kaala Pani) lose not just their hearth and home forever, but also what is most precious to the Hindus of the time: their caste. Why, then, would they want to leave their land for the unknown?

This is India in the 19th century. The East India Company’s hold on Bengal is complete, and the eastern provinces beyond Bengal are also under the purview of the Company Bahadur’s rule. With policies that enforce opium cultivation and destroy indigenous agriculture and trade, this rule spells havoc for India’s villages and towns. Bearing testimony to this is the motley crowd on the ship, all products of the disaster brought on by opium cultivation and trade.

There is the young mother Deeti who, having lost her husband and her fields to opium, is now on the ship to escape her fate. Forced to cultivate opium as part of the Company’s colonial policy, Deeti and other rural folk have abandoned centuries-old agricultural traditions. Their land yields no grains or fruit, and they have no control over their opium produce either, as it is procured by factories at arbitrary prices. One of the accomplishments of this Deeti character and indeed a major highlight of this book is the detailed description of the Ghazipur Opium factory through Deeti's eyes, based on an account by one J.W.S. McArthur, a superintendent of the Ghazipur Opium factory in the 19th century. His book “Notes on an Opium Factory” couldn’t have been put to better use. The narrative sees Deeti on an errand to the factory into a world of “the uniformed burkundazes at the gate and the stacks of poppy flower rotis” (we are told elsewhere that these are used to package the opium). We see, through her eyes, the huge sheds with lofty ceilings and gigantic scales to weigh the raw opium and “bare bodied men sunk waist deep in tanks of opium, tramping round and round to soften the sludge. Their eyes were vacant, glazed, and yet somehow they managed to keep moving, as slow as ants in honey, tramping, treading.”

It does not escape Deeti’s notice that “the assemblers’ hands moved with dizzying speed as they lined hemispherical moulds with poppy-leaf rotis, moistening the wrappers with lewah, a light solution of liquid opium.”

Further ahead, Deeti crosses into the most sacred sanctum assembly room, where husband Hukam Singh works and where, as per the regulations laid by the East India Company, each package of opium “consists of exactly one seer and six-and-a-half-chittacks of poppy leaf rotis, half of fine grade and half coarse, the whole being moistened with no more and on less than five chittacks of lewah.”

On the ship, too, is Raja Neel Rattan Haldar, the zamindar of Raskhali. In their heydays, the Raskhali rajas were sought and courted by company officials to obtain finances for opium trade with China. As Neel faces financial ruin, the company’s officials bring charges of forgery against him, leading to a deportation sentence to Mauritius. If the Raja’s fall from grace and the deplorable treatment as a common criminal seem too far-fetched, we need only to look into the history of colonial Bengal. Readers with any interest in the history of the time will recall Raja Nand Kumar’s treatment at the hands of the British. In the late 18th century, Raja Nand Kumar fell out of favor with the East India company governor Warren Hastings; Nand Coomar was charged with forgery and kept in jail under pitiable conditions. It is said that Hastings’ closeness to Sir Elijah Impey, then Chief Justice, saw Nand Kumar to the gallows at a time when forgery was not awarded capital punishment.

Also on the Ibis are Pauline Lambert and Jodu. Pauline, the daughter of a French botanist, is raised by an Indian nanny whose son, Jodu, is almost Pauline’s twin. Pauline catches the fancy of Zachary Reid, an octoroon who has sailed with the Ibis from Baltimore. Zachary has by dint of luck and labor moved up the ladder to become the second mate of Ibis on his second trip on it.

Then there are the Englishmen, who seem quite tame in comparison and who (when they aren't going about some nasty business, as company official Mr. Burnham often is) are happily conversing in a Hobson-Jobson kind of language. This is immensely entertaining (“Is this little Rascal your Upper-Roger?”) with tidbits such as "tumashers in the sheeshmulls," "domepoke and chitchky of pollock-saug" from the "bobachee-connahs." Mrs. Burnham gets to mouth funny lines like “there isn’t a rootie in the choola, is there?” and “there is paltan of mems who’d give their last anna to be in your jooties.” Meanwhile, the locals fill the narrative with sprinklings of bhojpuri aisan mat kara and dekheheba ka hois while the seafarers (lascars) have their lascari lingo. This is a wonderful literary device by which as many languages as people inhabit the text.

Of the few reservations I had is the somewhat Bollywood-esquethe handling of villainous character Bhyro Singh's arrival on Ibis. And although zamindars flew kites in the 1830s, how many would, in the slow and easygoing days of early 19th-century Bengal, where time almost stood still, stop to ask for a "ten minute" break (p 155)? Also discussing the price of Patna opium in dollars “four hundred and fifty dollars a chest” (pp239) in the 1830s did seem a bit out of place. These are very minor points, of course, and the fact remains that the Sea of Poppies is a hugely entertaining and enjoyable read - and an absolutely un-put-down-able book. The next two parts of the trilogy will be eagerly awaited.

First Published @ Curled Up with A Good Book

2008-10-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

DINNER WITH THE PREZ.

Watch Pervez Musharraf in conversation over dinner.

2008-07-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

ESCHER's WORLD
By guest blogger Subhasree Basu

"Individuals of different worlds,
Vertical,Horizontal,Diagonal...are we,
Topsy,turvy the world seems,
When into each other's conceptions we see...."

2008-06-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

DAM STREET

So strong are the vignettes of small town life in Dam Street that I found myself transported to the India of the 80s. The opening scenes are of a love affair in school that gets a teenaged Xiao Yun pregnant. This is China in the early 1980s.
And the town is conservative. For Xiao Yun and her family the consequences are disastrous. Both she and her boyfriend are expelled from school and their families ostracized. In the scandal that follows, the boyfriend is sent away by his family while Xiao Yun gives birth to a baby that her mother puts up for adoption.

Cut to many years later. Xiao Yun is now a singer and earns her living by working for a local singing troupe. Her mother continues to teach children and Xiao often finds little Xiao Yong, her mother's student spending time at their home. A wonderful bond of friendship affection and trust develops between the two. Xiao Yong lives with his single mother and Xiao Yun's teacher mom goes to meet them in secret. Who really is Xiao Yong? No prizes for guessing that one!

The beauty of Dam Street is its wonderful portrayal of small town China; the people that inhabit these towns, their grim, tough and humdrum existence. And providing a perfect foil to this environment is the gentle and kind affection between a ostracized woman and the small boy.

2008-05-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

THE CROW EATERS
Bapsi Sidhwa

Faredoon Junglewalla, his wife Putli and his mother-in-law Jerbanoo, ensconced amidst the Toddywallas, Bankwallas, Botliwallahs and Chaiwallas, form the wafts and the weaves of the tapestry of the Parsee community of pre-partition Lahore and India.

Years ago, during the last years of the 19th century, Faredoon or Freddy as he was called had decided to uproot his family from a nondescript village in Central India and move north to greener pastures. His destination was Punjab, the fertile land of five rivers and the holy Sapta Sindhu of the ancient Zoroastrian texts. And so the young Freddy with a pregnant wife, young daughter and mother-in-law in toe, had set off in a bullock cart to Lahore.

With help from the local Parsees, Freddy settles down in Lahore. What follows is a cat-eat-mouse game between him and his cantankerous mother-in-law Jerbanoo. Old Jerbanoo is often greedy. And much to Freddy’s chagrin, this fact goes almost unnoticed by his wife Putli, who is now busy taking care of their expanding family. Interspersed in their family saga are the stories of the Parsee community, their births and weddings, the customs and traditions and their copings with the recent brush with modernity. The normally liberal Freddy’s discomfort at his son’s love for a non Parsee girl is very apparent.

“I am not saying that only we have the spark. Other people have it too; Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, they too have developed pure strains through generations. But what happens when you marry outside your kind? The spark so delicately nurtured, so subtly balanced, meets something totally alien and unmatched. Its precise balance is scrambled. It reverts to the primitive”

While the plot revolves around the Junglewalla clan, other characters and events shed much light on the spirit of oneness and the solidarity amongst the Parsees. Yet with this book Sidhwa has drawn a lot of flak from Parsees for her depiction of community. The title too (anyone who talks too much is said to have eaten crows) had created a furor of sorts. But the feeling of oneness is beautifully depicted in the narrative.

“Visiting Parsees are rare. When they did steam into the city station, the community mood became festive. The Toddywallas, the Bankwallas, Chaiwallas, Bottliwallas and Junglewallas vied with each other in making the visitors welcome. They were wafted from home to home for breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, drinks and dinner. The morning after, fortified with enough roasted chickens and hard-boiled eggs to feed an entire train, the hung-over wrecks were seen off at the station. Grandmas, grandpas, aunts, unless and children waved until the little fluttering handkerchiefs faded from view.”

Through the characters are mostly loud and boisterous, Sidhwa’s writing has a wonderful quality of restraint in it. At places the narrative is so quotidian and that one is often reminded of Rohinton Mistry. Was it a coincidence that Mistry’s world Firoz Shah Bagh was also a portrayal of the Parsees!

Humorous and witty, Sidhwa’s tale of the Junglewalla dynasty is an entertaining read.

2008-04-03T12:47:00.001-07:00

DRESDEN

Dresden, 1945. The Second World War is coming to an end as the Allied and the Red Army close in on Germany. In the city of Dresden, Anna Mauth works as a nurse at a Red Cross Hospital. Devoted and loyal to her duty, Anna's off days are also spent tending to patients. That her father is the director of the hospital and equally committed the welfare of his patients, is an added bonus for Anna. At the same hospital is Dr. Alexander Wenninger, Anna's fiance, in a match that is heartily endorsed by both set of parents.

As one of the largest cities in the German army’s Eastern command, Dresden needs to be destroyed so that Stalin’s troops can march into Berlin. The RAF bomber command has plans to annihilate Dresden’s military base. On the night of February 13, as British Lancaster bombers hover over Dresden, they are shot down. One of the bomber pilots, Robert Newman survives. Shot and wounded he hides in the basement of the hospital and is discovered by Anna. Anna mistakes him for a deserter from the German Army. And she knows the fate of such people (earlier we are shown a horrific scene where a woman who hid her deserter husband is executed on the hospital premises). Anna keeps silent and helps Robert recuperate. As they fall in love, Robert’s true identity is revealed to Anna but not before she becomes aware of shady wheeling and dealing going on in her father’s world.

Shocked and outraged, Anna has to decide where her loyalties lie. Is it to her country, to her family or to her lover? Amidst her torment, arrive the bombers and the sudden indiscriminate bombings completely destroy her city.

A brilliant film, Dresden portrays the true ramifications of war. It shows how war is not merely blood and gore or rubble and ruins. And while these may be the most visible post war vignettes, what we cannot see is the destruction of human values and spirit. But the silver lining is that amidst the wreck and destruction, there are those few who will always rise to the occasion and show extraordinary courage in the bleakest moment. In them rests the hope for humanity.

2008-02-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

THE JEWISH AMERICANS
This piece was first published in Curled Up with a Good Book.

This documentary which runs in three episodes chronicles 350 years of Jewish history in the United States. Emmy award winner director-writer David Grubin takes us on a historical tour that begins with the first Jewish settlers that arrived in this country in 1654. Over the centuries, fresh waves of immigration followed and as Jews assimilated into their new country they had to do a constant balancing act between their national and Jewish identities. And although they participated in the American war of Independence, and later in large numbers in the Civil War (where they fought both as Union and Confederate soldiers), it would take more than a century for them to establish their identity as "Jewish Americans".

Grubin takes us into the early 19th century in Charleston, S.C., which was the first major Jewish settlement. It was here that large numbers of Jews prospered and participated in public life, promptly them to call Charleston their Jerusalem and Palestine. We are told the story of Judah Benjamin, a Charleston native, who attained the post of attorney general in the confederacy. However his fall from grace and escape to Great Britain also indicates that all was not well. The oldest synagogues reiterate the same tale. Newport’s Touro synagogue, one of the oldest existing synagogues in America resembles a typical colonial building. This, says, architect James Polshek meant "You should be like everybody else on the outside and express your Judaism, your faith, on the inside."

Although America had no official religion and citizens had the right to practice their own religion, the states states had the power to prevent Jews from voting or holding public office. In Maryland it required a special piece of legislation the "Jew Bill" to change the status. Even as late as the early decades of the 20th century, discrimination against Jews remained rampant. As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg reminisces, "Many publics places had the signs that read Dogs and Jews not allowed."

Toward the end of the 19th century and soon after with World War I, huge waves of immigration was soon to change the structure and attitude within the Jewish community. Yiddish newspapers such as Forward (Forverts), literature, films and theatre flourished drawing attention to contemporary topics such as immigration, assimilation, economic welfare, rights of workers and women. From then on Jewish identity was also linked to social movements in America, of which the alliance with the Civil Rights movement gained great prominence.

In the past few decades, the rise of Zionism in America ("Palestine and extension of the American dream") and the 80s movement to support the Jews in USSR, show that American society is open to Jews and Jewish problems. Yet many Jewish Americans wonder about how their future generations will perceive their heritage and identity. As Hassidic rapper Matisyahu who tries to find his Judaec roots through music says, "We don't have that same struggle, it is a different struggle now. And the struggle here is fighting a silent death, a spritual sleep, to try to waken up."

A fascinating story of Jewish struggle, this is ultimately a chronicle of immigrant experience too. An experience that has shaped generations in America and eventually made this nation into a melting point of various cultures from all over the world.

2008-02-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

THE TYRANT'S TERRAIN
By Guest Blogger Subhasree Bose

Resting my head,
On my weary hands,
I sit alone in the corner of the lane.
Gazing and gazing in the darkness,
I sit starved ,for food ;
And a roof to rest.

Helpless am I, sitting lonely,
Surviving cold that tears me,
I fight for an inch of life,
For another time, another chance to revive me.

Surrounded by riches,
I ruled some years ago,
Making puppets of human beings, I know.
Greed vanity, jealousy was bathed,
In every mind, that I had met.
Laughter was filled ,in life that thrilled,
While sorrows peaked to make its way.
Carved in gold my spectre lay,
On the head that shattered hopes.
Plenty I saw wherever I went,
But starved were they,
For whom I did not care.

I Trampled souls,
In the path of my glory,
And adorned my rule,
With carcasses of many.
Cursed was I ,to the core of my breadth,
But arrogance had never left.

A calamity ,I am,
A curse,I am,
For time has now, made its say…

2008-01-12T22:09:00.000-08:00

SORRY FOR THE LONG HIATUS

.....but work and play kept me away. Will start posting more often now. Meanwhile check out the pictures from my December trip to Thailand.

2007-10-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

FROM DORIS LESSING'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "UNDER MY SKIN"

It is, I have observed, a rule that people who have been on the periphery of events or a life are those that rush forward to claim first place: people who do know often say nothing or little. Some of the most noisy, not to say noisome, scandals or affairs of our time, that have had a searchlight on them for years, are reflected wrongly of the public mind because the actual participants keep their counsel, and watch, ironically, from the shadows. And there is another thing, much harder to see. People who have been real movers and exciters get left out of histories, and it is because memory itself decides to reject them. These instigators are flamboyant, unscrupulous, hysterical, or even mad, certainly abrasive; but the real point is that they are apparently of a different substance from the smooth, reasonable and sane people who have been inspired by them, and who do not like to remember temporary submersions in lunacy. Often, reading histories, there are events which stick out, do not make enough sense, and one may deduce the existence of some lunatic, male or female, who was equipped with the fiery stuff of inspiration-but was quickly forgotten, since always and at all times the past gets tidied up and made safer.

2007-10-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

I HAVE BEEN TAGGED!!!
With deadlines in a row and no time to spare, O lord how unfair is that!!!

For the last few weeks I haven't had the time or inclination to check my blog, leave alone post on the site. And altho' a number of half written posts are lying around, none have seen the light of the day. Things have gotten so hectic at work that I wasn't planning on posting soon.

But that was not to be. Because Naughty Notti Nautilus has me tagged!!! Now consider two things. One, silence was never my forte. And two, I have yet to reach THAT nirvan"ous" state when all you do upon being asked about yourself is give beautific smiles.

Plus there's this other thing that not answering a tag is rude and all....and that's not a very nice way to be, is it? (Note to self: All this certainly sounds less pompous than "I just couldn't give up a chance to yak about my great self".)

Put simply, I had no option but write this post. I couldn't give up that!

What then could I give up? Well, perhaps I could omit tagging others, since most bloggers I read have been tagged on this.

And now without much ado, here goes;

8 random facts about myself

1. I am addicted to books. In fact I read as tho' my life depended on it. And no! I don't have my list which I must carry with me to THAT stranded island. I read almost anything! (On the subject of book and stranded island, I prefer Stephen Wright's lines anyday: "A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say 'How to Build a Boat'")

2. And it was to be 3-4 books at a time; all of them lying around different points in the house. And me often getting worked to a frenzy if I can't locate them. (OK enough about books, but you get the pic)

3. (Now here comes the embarassing part that I wanted to save till the very last, but might as well get it off my chest now)
I love Bollywood movies....(wait it isn't over yet)....of the David Dhawan kind. Those Govinda, Mithuda starrers with their low brow humor and constant guffaws. (And this is a secret I guard zealously from my avant garde filmi club friends who poo poo at Hollywood. Poohing at Hollywood! huh!!! Imagine that. However, I am not really in a hurry to discover what these folks would do if they saw Govinda's gyrations.

4. I love BONG food. I know the greatest cuisines of the world are all waiting to be discovered but I still love my shorshe ilish with bhat. Period. (Oh and it must be eaten in Bong style, that is after being mashed till kingdom come.)

5. Likewise I love the old DADU, his poems, his music, his dance dramas, his philosophy, his stories, his politics. I know there's been a ton of talent to follow and spring can just as easily herald the buying of mutton as the coo-ing of birds, but I prefer the latter (with apologies to the poetic Aaji ei boshonter diney, bari firi mangsho kine).

6. I have a terribly bad form of sweet tooth. Chomchom to creme brulee anything goes.

7. Every morning, come rain or shine, I must listen to music the first thing in the morning with a steaming cuppa in my hand or my day is "barbad".

8. I do most things on the 11 th hour, which is why my whole timetable is in a mess before any deadline!! Try as I might I can never get things done in advance and when I do, I end up rewriting or revising most of it closer the the deadline.

2007-09-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

THE 2007 BOOKER SHORT LIST IS OUT

Check out the six novels that made it. Boy, am I unhappy that Nikita Lalwani's Gifted didn't make it?

2007-08-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

THE BOOKER LONG LIST IS OUT...

...out too are the literary stars from the list. Read here.

2007-08-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

....IN ANOTHER CITY

Imagine four young women. Vivacious and lovely, educated, modern and fashionable. When they meet, it is to party and share their innermost secrets. When they shop, they buy till they drop dead. When they dine, they eat and drink till they are ready to burst. There cellphones ring constantly proclaiming their popular status. Then there are the heartbreaks; the men they love may be dashing and handsome, but they are often the cause of tears and sorrow.

Is this Sex and the City in a new avatar? A story four women in New York? Or Paris or any other fashion capital of the world?

No. Guess again. In fact you are allowed to take a few more guesses. For a hint squint at the pic below.

For the setting is Riyadh, one of the most conservative and restrictive capitals of the world. Where women are forbidden to drive. Forbidden to appear in public without covering their bodies in the tent-like abaya. Also forbidden is mixing with the opposite gender. If all this appears dull and claustrophobic, just flip through Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh to get a picture that is a complete turnabout.

Gamrah, Sadeem, Lamees and Michelle (or Mashael) belong to the elite Saudi society and are at ease in both worlds. However, their ambitions are often in conflict with the desires of their conservative families. At trying times such as these, it is their friendship that provides succor.

Their stories appear as a series of posts on an Internet forum by an anonymous narrator. As the events in the girls' lives unfold in weekly installments, there is a tremendous response from the subscribers to the group. Week after week, like a modern day Scheherazade, the narrator weaves these questions, queries and thoughts of the readers into her story. What we have, then, is a wonderful kaleidoscope of enchanting dreams and ambitions, friendship and understanding, romance and bitterness and all that young women the world over experience as they come of age.

Apart from the huge controversy generated in Saudi Arabia by religious extremists who demanded and obtained a ban on the book (the ban was recently lifted), the author has faced harsh criticism for portraying a Saudi world of the wealthy and elite - a world so rich in opportunity and luxury that the women characters are shown to holiday in Europe and elsewhere to mend their broken hearts. This is somewhat justified as the book does or says nothing for the majority of Saudi women for whom social injustice and lack of economic opportunities prevent a decent life.

Frivolous and funny; yet sad and poignant in places, this tale of four friends as they jostle between tradition and modernity and find their own balance in a conservative society can become a zeitgeist for Saudi women to recognize human needs above tradition.

(Some recommended readings on abayas, veils, niqab and burkinis.

2007-07-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

INGMAR BERGMAN

Ingmar Bergman passed away today.
One of my favorite scenes from The Seventh Seal is when the knight meets Death for the first time.

Who are you, asks the knight to the man in the black robes. I am Death, he answers. The knight then challenges him to a game of chess to stall death. And no matter how well he plays, the result is a foregone conclusion.

Farewell, celluloid knight.
More on The Seventh Seal in the next post.