Misanthrope

Monsoon night in Mumbai

2009-07-06T05:57:00.005+05:30

Wadala road bridge, 1:30 am: The light from a street lamp falls on a few tents on the curb, in which families are sleeping. The tents are covered in blue or white plastic sheets in case it rains. Outside one of the tents, a small white cat sits quietly, its back to the cars on the road.

Mumbai's shabby public infrastructure

2009-07-06T05:24:00.005+05:30

Got masking tape?

For some reason, sloppy paint jobs abound in Mumbai. Not only are freshly painted railings and things not cordoned off until the paint dries, but they don't even have a simple sign saying “wet paint”. Thousands of passers-by find out the hard way, and taxpayer money ends up achieving fingerprinty finishes on public infrastructure.

This particular sloppy paint job was at the main entrance of one of Bombay's most beautiful buildings, a heritage site. I'm not naming it here because as soon as I took the picture, I was told photography is not allowed (of course there was no sign saying so!). But since nobody required me to delete the picture from my camera, here it is:

Here's a closer look on the other side of the arch:

Below is a shot of Platforms 1-2 at Khar Station in suburban Mumbai. They were painting the metal beams under the roof with a metallic silver paint (you can see the bamboo scaffold in the background). I guess it has just never occurred to anyone in the railways that it may be worth investing in some plastic sheeting or drop cloths, or at least requiring painters to spread old newspapers so that the benches and ground look neat afterwards.

Beautiful antique bench, splattered with silver metallic paint:

Mumbai's urban infrastructure -- "like new" equals broken

2009-05-31T04:22:00.005+05:30

This is how roads are “upgraded” under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP). Note that this picture is an “after” picture, not a “before” one. This is the arterial Swami Vivekanand Road in suburban Mumbai. The paving is a couple of years old at most. The day I took this photo (Thursday, November 27, 2008), the broken curb was visible because there wasn't a car parked on it.

Mumbai's roads routinely get dug up by utility and phone companies for laying or fixing broken cables -- companies with no expertise to dig or rebuild a dug road. But then the Mumbai municipal authorities don't seem to know their head from their ass either. Result: senior citizens are under virtual house arrest (because the streets are too tough an obstacle course for arthritic knees and because curbs are non-existent or intermittent at best), and people who must walk/drive to go about their lives die when the road caves in. It's happened before, and it's going to happen again.

Is the civic-mindedness of Parsis overrated?

2009-05-26T02:56:00.007+05:30

Probably not - they're still better-than-average citizens as far as I can see. But you know that Bombay / Mumbai has gone to the dogs when even Parsis start behaving like this:

Mumbai's streets are filthy, filthy, filthy, lined with unspeakable and unidentifiable things. That stuff gets on your shoes. Someone is going to sit on the seat where this commuter has put her shoes. She knows it. There are trilingual signs on the walls of commuter trains, particularly in the first class compartments (which this is), saying, “Please do not put your feet on the seat”. I took this woman's picture from the neighboring compartment. Later I heard her talk on her cell phone, and which is how I knew she was Parsi. Parsis have long been considered Bombay's most civic-minded citizens, and yet here she is, embodying much that is wrong with this city and its people.

Racism is alive and well in the age of Obama

2009-05-23T16:44:00.004+05:30

Image: Gillian Laub for The New York Times

From today's NYT:

Racially segregated proms...are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change. When the actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for last year’s first-of-its-kind integrated prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, his home state, the idea was quickly embraced by students — and rejected by a group of white parents, who held a competing “private” prom. (The effort is the subject of a documentary, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” which will be shown on HBO in July.) The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students — referred to by many students as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom” — are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come. Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed.

Full story

Taliban unhappy with its own court's verdict

2009-03-24T21:20:00.006+05:30

Image source: BBC Online

BBC reports that a farmer appealed to one of these new Sharia courts in Swat because the Taliban wanted to build a dirt road through his farm. The court ruled in his favor, and now the Taliban are pissed off. Isn't it amazing how people who demand a system nearly always assume it's going to work for them, and never seem to seriously think how it may work against what they envisioned?

For some reason that I haven't time to fathom right now, I'm reminded of an old book on Muslim endowments in 19th c. India. In it, the author, Gregory Kozlowski, shows how vastly differently the colonial court system worked from adjudication of disputes by Qazis or other Islamic officials. In Kozlowski's assessment, the Qazis preferred to get both sides to compromise, because they acted with a view to the best possible formula for the coexistence of the disputing parties, and also because they themselves were very much a part of the community in which they arbitrated. On the other hand, colonial courts tended to treat a dispute as having a losing side and a winning side, and verdicts created a welter of new problems with regard to authority, property ownership and other issues.

Obama's Guantánamo decision: is there any alternative?

2009-01-25T04:59:00.007+05:30

So the "problem" is that President Obama has ordered the closure of this blot on America's soul, and at the same time NYT has reported that Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi and former Guantánamo detainee, has emerged an Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. Therefore, many (especially Republicans, who seem determined not to learn anything from anything, and whose imagination has become bankrupt of everything but fear) argue, if we release the remaining 245 detainees, they may go and do the same thing.

It appears that the al-Shihri involved in bombing the US embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, in September 2008 is the same al-Shihri who was released from Guantánamo in 2007 and passed through a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia with (other) jihadis, and who may or may not have been a jihadi before his internment at Guantánamo. The Pentagon says al-Shihri trained in urban warfare in Kabul. He says he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan two weeks after 9/11 to do "relief work", was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month in hospital in Pakistan. He was detained because he was allegedly channeling "extremists" from Iran to Afghanistan, and planning to kill a writer against whom a fatwa had been declared. His release documents say he was let go because he had gone to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Saudi Arabia, and because he denied knowledge of terrorist activities. He said if he was released, he would go back to his family in Saudi Arabia, and work at his family's store. So he was released to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia claims no one who has been through its rehab program has returned to jihad, but a Saudi official says al-Shihri disappeared from the country after completing the program. However ineffective the Saudi program may be, the US is likely to have problems developing a similar program in Yemen, because the US has complained of serious security lapses in Yemen's counterterrorism measures. And why does Yemen matter? Because 100 detainees at Guantánamo are Yemeni.

If we assume the worst about al-Shihri, he was a jihadi, detained, released, rehabilitated, and returned to jihad. If we assume the best, he was a furniture dealer who wanted to buy carpets in Iran and/or undertake relief work in Afghanistan, was detained, released, rehabilitated, and joined the jihad.

Whichever way we look at it, al-Shihri's case seems like a compelling argument in favor of closing Guantánamo, not keeping it open. Going by the worst-case assumption about al-Shihri, Guantánamo has been an utter failure: despite all that the Bush regime "invested" in the "war on terror", it could not effectively prosecute the jihadi al-Shihri, nor establish with certainty that it was safe to release him or any other detainee. Meanwhile, Guantánamo's constant pissing off of Yemen and other Arab nations was a certainty, and precluded their sincere cooperation in counterterrorism operations. And going by the best-case assumption, i.e. giving al-Shihri the benefit of the doubt, it appears Guantánamo spurred him to join the jihad.

Guantánamo is like Pandora's box -- easily opened, caused a huge mess, not so easy to close (notably, among the things that came out of that box of troubles was also hope). I think it's safe to assume Obama and his administration don't think that all it takes to close Guantánamo is to give all the detainees one-way tickets home and drop them off at the airport. Detainees will have to be put through due process either in US courts or through a UN mechanism. It will be good to have the US process these people lawfully.

Critics of this decision of Obama's should set aside childish things and recognize that there is no easy way out of Guantánamo, and that Bush created a monster that can't be ignored, for even a while. Whenever Guantánamo has to be closed, it's going to be as difficult and complicated as it is now. Bush cited that reason to keep Guantánamo open, but it's also the reason to shut it down. Some people will probably end up being released who should have remained behind bars -- as in the case of al-Shihri. But governments and ordinary people worldwide will probably start trusting America again -- and supporting it. For as long as Guantánamo is staying open, it's simply not achieving what it's intended to achieve, and it's pissing off much of the world (not just Muslims, either). There is no point in its continued existence. The sooner that prison is closed, the better.

"We Are One"

2009-01-19T08:49:00.006+05:30

Today, the US remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. as it prepares to inaugurate its first African-American president. Congratulations, America! And here's to happier times -- economic prosperity, progress, peace, and racial and political harmony.

Full text of Dr. King's speech here

'Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era'

2009-01-08T02:06:00.006+05:30

From a thought-provoking post in the Guardian by Avi Shlaim, Oxford professor of international relations:

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line...
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development... Israel turned the people of Gaza into... a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day...
Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace...
In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals...
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party...
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and...the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.
Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim... The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government... The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral...
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict... The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state... A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.

A poem for the new year

2009-01-01T04:08:00.010+05:30

Yesterday, I received this poetic wish for the new year from an American friend: "May the new year bring peace like rain dropping gently on our wounded world."

I picked a poem to start off the new year on a peaceful note. It's by the Punjabi sufi saint-poet Bulley Shah, who lived from the late 17th to the mid-18th century. He was of Uzbek heritage, was born in Bahawalpur, and lived and died in Kasur (both cities are in what is now the Pakistani Punjab). Bulley Shah wrote in his poems that no amount of learning was useful unless people looked inside themselves. Like other sufis, he saw no distinction between the God of one person and another -- for him there was no "false God", and Hindus and Muslims were one.

Well, the poem I chose is "Ki jaana main kaun". Here it is in the Nastaliq script, if you can read it (I can't). Here's an English transliteration-cum-translation. Below, I'm posting videos of three vastly different interpretations by Junoon, Rabbi, and an unidentified singer who's not identified.

Below is Junoon's sufi-rock "Bulleya" from their album Parvaaz. No comments on the video, but musically speaking, this is by far my most preferred version:

Next is Rabbi Shergill's pop version. I included it because the video contains many scenes of Mumbai - the Taj Mahal hotel, which was the site of a terrorist siege from November 26-28, 2008, the Gateway of India and waterfront across the road from the Taj, Churchgate station, and parts of Marine Drive including the Nariman Point stretch where the Oberoi and Trident hotels are. Of course, the video was made long before the recent attacks, which only goes to show how iconic the locations are where the terrorists struck. Also, Rabbi's version is more complete than Junoon's abbreviated text.

And last is this unidentified singer in what I'm guessing is a Pakistani TV studio. Personally I'm not a big fan of what I call "sugam sangeet" orchestration, although I like singer's voice. I also included it because it illustrates how differently people can interpret the same text, and because this version includes some lines missing in the two preceding versions:

Chal Bulleya, othey chaliye
jithae sarae annae
na koi saadee jaat pachhaney
thae na koi saanu manney
Let's go, Bulleya, let's go to a place
where everyone is blind,
where nobody knows our lineage
and nobody judges us by it.

Muntazer al-Zaidi threw those shoes at Bush on behalf of millions of us

2008-12-16T07:03:00.002+05:30

Misadventures in terrorist-nabbing

2008-12-10T02:30:00.008+05:30

India's security apparatus continues to work at cross purposes. Kolkata police not only mistakenly arrested an undercover operative of the Jammu and Kashmir police, who provided SIM cards to terrorists so that their phone calls could be tapped, but also promptly announced it to all who cared to know. Now the undercover operative's cover is blown, his family is in danger, and the J&K police are hopping mad. Great. Just great.

Meanwhile, interrogators of our lone captive terrorist from the Mumbai attacks apparently revealed to the press where the guy was being held (information was not published), complete with description of how he'd have to go past a long corridor full of cops in order to escape. I can just imagine someone in Muridke saying, "Thanks for the dope, chumps!"

On a more trivial note, it seems our terrorist craves Bachchan movies and a carnivorous diet (but has to make do with saatvik meals six days a week, and no movies). The poor dear.

The press also reports that this adult male citizen (Zardari's "stateless actors" claims notwithstanding, the guy is indeed Pakistani) and human butcher misses his mommy and daddy and wants to tell them he got misled into all this AK-57 stuff. "Misled" into AK-57s?? Maybe Sanjay Dutt can tell us how that happens.

And below, Jon Stewart's interview with an American interrogator who believes rapport and respect, not torture and insult, is a more efficient way to get information out of a terrorist.

By the way, today is international Human Rights Day.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Matthew Alexander

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Mumbai protests: Vision of peace? Or vituperation on vinyl?

2008-12-05T19:59:00.008+05:30

At the best of times, I hate forwarded email by supposedly "concerned" people who have often not even Googled whatever the fuck they're forwarding. Nor do they particularly care about whether it has an effect, or what kind of effect it has. Nor will they follow up -- it's a one-off, directionless, trajectory-less endorsement of some fleeting sentiment. Such mouse-clicking "slacktivism" (isn't that an absolutely delightful epithet for when the vision-less, feckless Indian middle class believes it's "doing" something!) does serious harm when it peddles notions of revenge and hate. Here's a response to an uncle of mine, long-time Mumbai resident who now divides his year between Oceania and North America:

I can understand that people's feelings run strong at a time like this. I know what it feels like to be so frightened and helpless, because I was in the middle of it all. I was at work in ____, across from CST station and behind Cama Hospital, and between the BMC (where the attackers lobbed a grenade) and the lane next to Anjuman-e-Islam school (which they took to escape to Metro). We saw the attacks with our own eyes, outside our office windows. The terrorists fired at our building... and tried to enter it (as our security camera footage shows). And I was more fortunate than ____ [my cousin], who couldn't leave the Oberoi for two days.
Even so, I oppose the sentiments in some of the photos you forwarded. I don't think anything good is achieved by using vulgar language (the obscene pun on the Kerala CM's name), spontaneous calls for revenge (grabbing AK-47s, attacking Pakistan), and using womanhood as an insult (giving someone bangles??? I believe a woman is a human being, not an insult to masculinity).
I am also skeptical of "reform movements" that are spawned overnight with poorly thought out vision, and that may vanish within a week. In fact, people who have made solid difference in making politicians more accountable started doing so long before a terrorist attack, and they did it at the risk of their lives, too (Satyendra Dubey is no more). The true leaders and nationalists who deserve our attention are people like Aruna Roy, Sandeep Pandey and Arvind Kejriwal, and those who support them. Why not give their organizations a donation, if you feel strongly about reforming India?
With all due respect, I request that you kindly not forward me such photos or messages. I hope you will understand.

Below are some of the pix attached to my uncle's email, sent from Oceania. As of now, the URL www.reformindiamovement.org is parked with GoDaddy and contains only random links like all parked domains.

Open house at Jamaat-ud-Daawa

2008-12-05T19:18:00.004+05:30

As Pakistan comes under great international pressure, this controversial charity, widely regarded as a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, opened its doors to journalists -- the doors to its classrooms and hospital. Other areas of the campus remained out of bounds. While the BBC appears to have taken this PR exercise at face value, the Guardian has not. It wrote that the

carefully orchestrated visit took foreign and local journalists around the beautifully equipped school and hospital. The school follows the national curriculum, the headteacher, Rashid Mehnaz, said, taking pupils from around the country. The poor were given financial help, with richer pupils paying fees. Mehnaz condemned violence, saying suicide attacks were "absolutely wrong - it is forbidden in Islam".
A press conference and sumptuous lunch was laid on for journalists. However, the madrasa, mosque, and other facilities remained out of bounds, and once the official tour was over the media were no longer welcome. Although the group had said anyone was welcome to look around the site at any time, the Guardian's attempt to take up this offer after the tour was met with a heavy-handed response: burly young men arrived on motorcycles and circled, demanding that we leave...
...Certainly there were plain-clothed officials present, who said they were members of "special branch" - often a euphemism for the Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency. They wanted to provide an armed escort back to Lahore, but why intelligence agents were there - and why an escort might be necessary - was unclear. Muridke is not in a dangerous part of Pakistan, and the offer was declined.
It has long been said that the ISI has secretly backed Lashkar-e-Taiba, though the agency always rejects the accusation.

Jon Stewart & John Oliver on the Mumbai terror attacks

2008-12-03T02:24:00.003+05:30

"When you're a bankrupt ideology pursuing a bankrupt strategy, the only move you've got is the dick one."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Terrorist attack on Mumbai

2008-11-30T23:26:00.006+05:30

I took the above photo in Mumbai about 5:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 -- about four hours before the terrorist attacks began. They are Mahatma Gandhi's words, in his own writing. The quote above bears a Dandi dateline, and says, "I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might." The quote below says, "Be truthful, gentle and fearless." Gandhi and his followers walked maybe 145 miles from Sabarmati Ashram, near Ahmedabad, to Dandi, near Surat, to "illegally" make salt as an act of non-violent civil disobedience.

I took the picture for my blog, but never imagined it would be prefacing this:

At about 10:25 pm, when I was at work in my fourth-floor office right across from CST station, we heard commotion in the street below -- explosions and gunfire. From our windows, we heard screams and saw dozens of people running along the kerb and in the suburban platform # 1 (where my train pulls in from Bandra/Andheri every day). One man was running on Platform 1 while carrying another over his shoulders. This may or may not be the same guy. The gunmen were on the foot bridge at the north end of the station that I take every day to cross D. N. Road. After maybe 40 minutes, the attacks ceased.

By this time we knew, of course, that there had been blasts or firing in Colaba, near the Leopold Cafe and the Taj. No one was sure what was going on, though. I went downstairs to check if our security would let in colleagues who were stranded in Colaba, but they chose to go home to the suburbs. I was really really scared for their safety, because there was no telling at 11:30 pm how many terrorists there were, and where they may attack next. As it turned out, my colleagues made the right decision, under the circumstances.

I myself, along with 80-100 others, was stuck in my workplace until daybreak. All night long we watched the horrendous news unfold on TV, but at least we were safe and had food, water, bathrooms, and access to news. Others were not so lucky.

At 5 am, we trooped downstairs to take the early trains home. Some of our company drivers had left in fear, but a few cars and drivers were still there, so I got a ride home. Was home by 6 a.m.

The next day, I heard that the terrorists had tried to enter our building on Wednesday night. It figures -- the railway bridge leads from the platform almost to our side entrance. Our security cameras recorded footage of a man with a gun pointing straight ahead, walking towards the camera/entrance. The sharpest weapon our mostly unarmed security guards have is alertness -- they saw the terrorists approaching the building and immediately closed both entrances.Their quick thinking surely saved our lives -- the terrorists then headed for the Cama and Albless Hospital. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'd have been "hostages". After all, our building is the ideal terrorist target: a historic landmark in a busy part of town, near four major bus stops, CST station, the city administration headquarters, major markets. As far as I'm aware, my company has received at least two threats since May 2008. On Wednesday night, instead of us, the patients at Cama Hospital became targets.

It's all a matter of fate, who remained alive and who didn't.

Now, as we emerge from the shock, there's a sick churning feeling in the pit of my stomach at all the opportunistic politicking and the future of South Asia. Who could have imagined Gandhi's words would ring so loud 78 years later, in so different a context! I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might.

Me llaman calle

2008-11-25T01:57:00.003+05:30

Manu Chao is one of my favorite musicians -- he has that rare combination of playfulness and sympathy, and even his profoundly sad songs make me want to celebrate and dance. I don't see how it's possible to more effectively encapsulate human experience in a four-minute song. The song below is on the soundtrack of Princesas, a film I've yet to see. I couldn't find a translation, but "Me llaman calle" translates, I think, to "They call me The Street". Princesas is about prostitutes. Enjoy!

Tina Fey's funny. Sarah Palin is not

2008-11-24T02:52:00.004+05:30

Think Tina's SNL sketch was funny? That's how comedians make politicians look ridiculous, by taking their words out of context, or distorting them, right? Not always. This video shows some of what an astonishing number of Americans actually voted for. Imagine what could have been, and give thanks that it isn't. Happy Thanksgiving!

Republicans peddling a politics of resentment

2008-09-06T06:12:00.002+05:30

Gotta love Paul Krugman:

On Tuesday, He Who Must Not Be Named — Mitt Romney mentioned him just once, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin not at all — gave a video address to the Republican National Convention. John McCain, promised President Bush, would stand up to the “angry left.” That’s no doubt true. But don’t be fooled either by Mr. McCain’s long-ago reputation as a maverick or by Ms. Palin’s appealing persona: the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.
What’s the source of all that anger?
Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment...

Bandel cheese

2008-09-02T02:39:00.007+05:30

A friend brought me this cheese from Calcutta (Kolkata) recently. My friend said it had orginally been made by priests (presumably Catholic), while another story of indeterminate source has it that was named for the Portuguese corruption of "bandar" (Arabic for port) and made by local cooks under Portuguese supervision. At any rate, today bandel is available at two shops in New Market.

An FAO webpage on traditional milk products in developing countries describes bandel as an "indigenous unripened, salted soft variety of cheese made in perforated pots. It is similar to surti paneer but made from cow's milk."

The little rounds are about 2" or 5 centimeters across, and maybe half as thick. The way to eat this cheese is to immerse it in water overnight. By morning it is distinctly softer. I pared off the rind with a knife (a butter knife is enough), and found the texture to be surprisingly spongy, like a good paneer but a bit more crumbly. The smell, however, is not like paneer! It's distinctly smoky and porky, both before and after soaking.

And you know how some things surprise you by turning out to taste quite different from how they smell? Well, bandel won't surprise you at all -- it tastes smoky and porky. I didn't like it, actually, although I like pork, and I like many kinds of cheese. This one was too strong for my liking, at least by itself.

I don't know yet whether it's supposed to be eaten in a particular way, how it might melt/cook, etc. It would probably work well crumbled into a salad, with some mild sort of greens and simple dressing. I think I could acquire the taste for bandel.

Happy birthday, Pakistan!

2008-08-14T04:08:00.006+05:30

I think Pakistan's Qaumi Tarana -- national anthem -- is beautiful, both the melody and words. Eschewing YouTube videos with military images, I have picked out three versions that I liked. I wish Pakistan's democracy every strength, great success, peace, and prosperity.

A kid showing off his shiny Ibanez. Great work, Extraordinarali!

A tribute by a cooking website, featuring Junoon's version of the anthem. The images are explained on YouTube.

And here you can listen to the words while reading the English translation. Unfortunately the type isn't very clear, and the sound starts a couple of seconds into the video, but it's simple and nice. The transliterated Urdu words are below, if you want to sing along :)

Paak sar zamin shaad baad

Kishwar-e-haseen shaad baad

Tu nishaane azme-aalishaan

Arze Pakistan

Markaz e yaqin shaad baad

Paak sarzamin ka nizaam

Quwat e akhuwat e awaam

Qaum, mulk, sultanat

Paainda taabinda baad

Shaad baad manzal e muraad

Parcham e sitaara o hilaal

Rahbar e taraqqi o kamaal

Tarjumaan e maazi shaan e haal

Jaane istaqbaal

Saayyai Khudaae zul jalaal

Why nobody respects Mumbai Police

2008-08-04T04:50:00.013+05:30

It's because it often seems they regard the maintenance of law and order as someone else's job. Moreover, they are so petulant and rude that they can't even seem to respect themselves. With cops like these, the citizens have a standing invitation to take the law into their own hands. Most of us don't do so, because we haven't descended into anarchy yet, but it looks like the cops are ensuring we get there.

According to the law, I can call the police emergency number (100) and complain anonymously about the illegal use of loudspeakers (illegal before 6:30 am, and illegal at any time in primarily residential areas; religious use is not exempted). They have to dispatch a police van and confiscate the offending equipment. Here's my conversation with Constable Jadhav a few minutes ago (Monday, August 4, 2008, at 4:16 am):

Me: I'm calling from _____, and would like to complain about the illegal use of loudspeakers at 5 am.
Constable (I don't know if it was Jadhav): Is the noise on right now?
Me: No, but it will be at 5 am. It's on every morning --
Constable: Then call at 5, when the noise is on.
Me: But it doesn't go on for long, so by the time you send the van --
Constable: I'm hanging up
Me: No, wait --
*click*

4:17 am - I call 100 again.

Me: I'm calling from _____. Please hear me through. The last time whoever answered didn't let me finish. That's not right.
Constable Jadhav: Yes?
Me: The loudspeakers start at 5 am. Please send a van.
Jadhav: Call when the noise starts.
Me: No, please understand, the noise doesn't last more than a couple of minutes.
Jadhav: This is an emergency number.
Me: I know, but it's your job to take complaints, and send a van for loudspeakers.
Jadhav: Did I say I refuse to take a complaint?
Me: No, you didn't say so, but your behavior is that of refusal.
Jadhav: Call when the noise starts, and we'll send a van.
Me: I take it you're not new to Mumbai --
Jadhav: No. Maybe you're new to Mumbai.
Me: Let me finish my sentence. If you're not new to Mumbai, you are aware that an azaan lasts a couple of minutes.
Jadhav: Yes.
Me: So if I call you when the azaan starts, and you send a van, it's going to waste their time, because the noise will end by the time the van gets there, and they're not going to be able to do a thing.
Jadhav: The van takes only five minutes to get there.
Me: But the azaan is less than five minutes.
Jadhav: This is an emergency number. At 5 am, we will call you.
Me: Why should the police call me at 5 am? I want to sleep.
Jadhav: Because the noise is disturbing you.
Me: Yes, but my plan is to be asleep at 5, not to be kept awake by loudspeakers or cops. Besides, it's not a matter of noise troubling me, it's a matter of violation of the law. You are a police constable, so you presumably know the law.
Jadhav: You call us when the noise starts. You feel they will start at 5 --
Me: No, I don't feel anything, I know it for certain. They start every morning at this time. I don't think you're taking your job seriously. What's your name?
Jadhav: Jadhav.
Me: Full name?
Jadhav: We only give out surnames.
Me: OK, then. I work for [name of media organization]. I'm going to complain about you to the ACP [Assistant Commissioner of Police].
Jadhav: You do that.
*click*

At 4:58, the first loudspeaker starts off. I call 100 again at 5:01. Get through, long pause (no constable announcing himself), disconnected.

I try again at 5:02. Same thing -- connect, silence, disconnect. Lines are not terribly busy in the morning, and this is, as Constable Jadhav reminded me, an emergency number, so there's no reason for disconnection. I'm starting to think Jadhav is exercising his discretion with the help of Caller ID.

Still at 5:02, I dial 100 yet again. I connect, and silence.

Me: Hello?
Constable: Yes?
Me: I'm calling from _____, and the loudspeaker is on. Please send a police van.
Constable: Where?
Me: [specify location]
Constable: Okay.
Me: Whom am I speaking to?
*pause*
*click*

Well, what can you say of a police force that is too busy to enforce the law because it's too busy persecuting young couples at the seashore? Words fail me.

Mosque loudspeakers violating noise laws

2008-07-27T21:04:00.009+05:30

Cartoon source: Cox and Forkum

I was not raised Muslim. I am not even religious. India is not an Islamic country. Mine is not a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. Yet I am called to prayer insistently, daily, and loudly.

Here are the timings for the mosque loudspeakers within earshot of my bedroom.

4:40 - 5:30 am
1 pm
4 - 4:10 pm
5:15 - 5:30 pm
7:15 - 7:30 pm
8:40 - 9:10 pm

There are at least four loudspeakers, but I can never count exactly because it's hard to separate individual voices in the cacophony. They all go off at slightly different times, and presumably each one calls azaan five times a day. Which means I am called to prayer around 20 times a day.

It's against the law to use loudspeakers outdoors in residential areas at any time, and in any area at all between 10:30 pm and 6:30 am. Religious use is not exempt from this law, except by specific court order, which is only possible for a limited number of days each year.

Rules (opens PDF)
Court orders (opens PDF)

I have complained to the police literally dozens of times. I have the right to make an anonymous complaint, but they often refuse to take my complaint. They have often asked me to go to the police station and file a written complaint in person, although this is not required under the law. They are supposed to go to the spot where the violation occurs, and confiscate the loudspeakers and other offending equipment. Either the Mumbai Police has never actually dispatched a van, or, if they have, they haven't confiscated a thing, because the noise has never abated for a single day. Azaan lasts 2-5 minutes, so the cops need to station themselves by mosques and wait for the violation to occur.

There are cases of mosques in Oxford (England), Brooklyn (New York), and elsewhere being restricted from at least the pre-dawn azaan, if not more. One might argue that those are non-Muslim countries with assimilationist expectations of immigrants. But even Muslims in Islamic countries understand the need to curb noise pollution. Here's what an Indonesian blogger says about mosque loudspeakers -- she and most of the commenters agree that they are a nuisance, and that there's nothing Islamic about them. Here's a report of 150 people being arrested for abuse of mosque loudspeakers, in Pakistan.

I hope God, Allah, or whoever is up there, listening to the azaans in Mumbai, is increasingly pissed off and throws a bolt of lightning at every single loudspeaker in Mumbai, because the police sure as hell aren't doing a damn thing about it.

A call to prayer may be necessary for Muslims, but not all of us are interested. Besides, a loudspeaker is quite a different thing from a call to prayer. No scripture could possibly say that electronic amplification is necessary. If you're going to have technological innovations, then why not SMS azaans? Or Islamic alarm clocks? (Update, April 10, 2009: I just discovered that there is indeed such a thing.) Let the faithful subscribe and purchase those, and let the rest of us get some fucking sleep. If the imams won't respect the law or the human need for sleep and silence, the police ought to make them.

The decline of Mumbai's university

2008-06-29T02:36:00.015+05:30

Bombay University, undated photo (taken after 1878). Image source: www.mu.ac.in

It's official: the University of Mumbai attracts flies.

The Times of India recently reported that the University Grants Commission (UGC), the government body that oversees and funds higher education in India, may take direct control of University of Mumbai. The Times quoted the head of a UGC review committee as saying, "There has been a huge drop in faculty members, which has affected the quality of teaching and research. While the number of students has steadily gone up, over 200 faculty positions are lying vacant. Also, with 600 colleges affiliated to it, the focus is more on administration than academics."

Like many things that have recast themselves from Bombay to Mumbai, this 150-year-old university, which counts historic figures among its alumni, has putrefied. But even 20 years ago, when I got my undergraduate degree from there, I was not proud of it because I considered it mediocre. I was saved by the fact that I went to elite colleges where dedicated teachers went way beyond the required curriculum, to give students a real education.

The university did not offer a major in Anthropology, so I had to major half in Anthropology and half in Psychology. (Digression: when I graduated, they forgot to write "Anthropology" on my degree certificate, but luckily the calligrapher was sitting right there when I went to collect the document, and he obligingly added it in at my request, without question.) For such Anthropology as I did study, the books prescribed by the university were not available in bookstores -- you just had to read the one copy in the St. Xavier's College library, or photocopy what you could (copiers were quaintly mechanical in the mid-1980s -- it took several minutes to print a page, as I recall). For assignments (required by our professors, but not by the university), we referred to colonial missionaries' accounts (about criminal tribes with cannibalistic pasts). In retrospect, I think we read them shockingly uncritically, but even so, it was these that led me to regard "norms" from a distance, and truly broadened my teenaged mind. Besides reading and research assignments, we also had field trips (also not required by the university). I was enthused enough about a research assignment to track down the Institute of Indian Culture in Mahakali Caves Road (back of beyond in those days), meet Stephen Fuchs, the elderly Jesuit priest who had written one of our textbooks, and use the library there to research one assignment. It astonishes me now that I was so motivated, and it says a great deal about Father John Macia, who taught me Anthropology. All these activities counted for nothing in the final assessment for the degree, and yet, they were my true education. I still have my handwritten assignments, and, having taught undergraduates myself now, I'm amazed by my own (very interesting!) choice of topics. I am so grateful to my Anthropology professors, especially Eddie Rodrigues and Father Macia, for not leaving my education to the University of Bombay!

The other half of my undergraduate degree was in Psychology. The textbooks weren't bad, but that's because they were American college textbooks! They were, of course, not available in the bookstores. Besides, the curriculum was lousy -- while an excruciatingly boring course on industrial psychology was mandatory for even the half-major, Freud and psychoanalysis were not! Thank goodness for my driven, if not wildly interesting, professor Maureen Almeida. I was very lucky also to be a student of the excellent Jennie Mendes in junior college (class 11 and 12) at Sophia, and to be able to borrow my older sibling's college textbooks to write Jennie's Psychology assignments. Of course, I was fortunate to have enough curiosity to devour those excellent books -- I can never forget Clifford Morgan & Richard King (Introduction to Psychology), Henry Clay Lindgren (An Introduction to Social Psychology), and James C. Coleman (Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life)! By the time I got to degree college myself, the textbooks had changed (they probably changed them every 15 years!). The new ones were American, too, but I don't recall the authors. All I recall is that there was now DSM IV, that psychology had become extremely physiological (which I found utterly boring), that Solomon Snyder was doing cutting-edge work on neurotransmitters, and that I was deeply impressed by Milgram's experiments on destructive obedience. But -- Freud was a frill that a Psychology degree could easily do without, according to the pedagogues at the University of Bombay.

My undergraduate days are ancient history, true. But a much more recent experience -- unmediated by the dedication of college professors -- gave rise to unalloyed dismay. In 2005, on a research trip to India from the US, for my doctoral dissertation, I had a fellowship that required me to have an institutional affiliation. Mumbai is such an intellectually atrophied city that I had little choice. I contacted the head of the relevant department at the University of Mumbai. He was all wide-eyed, and seemed to consider my topic some whole new sphere of study (as anyone who peruses Modern Asian Studies or Economic and Political Weekly would know, my field of study is certainly not "unique", even though -- surprisingly -- there's no work that's even close to my topic that focuses on Bombay/Mumbai. So the department head invited me to give a talk. I thanked him and said I'd look forward to feedback from not just faculty but also graduate students. He goggled incredulously, as if I had asked to be chauffeured in a gold-plated limousine. He said, "Those duffers!" (well, some words to that effect). He appeared sincere in his belief that an M.A. or Ph.D student is not competent to comment on or ask a useful question about someone's work. My talk was arranged as somebody's in-class event (they didn't think to tell me whose, nor the title of the course). The room was full. After the talk, I invited questions. A faculty member launched into a lengthy question, tangential to my topic and ostensibly designed to probe whether I was ignorant of major debates in the field. Then, another senior faculty member asked a question, but didn't wait for an answer before launching into a long harangue about my allegedly racist and colonial perspective. He thundered against my description of a particular community organization as conservative. (I had given several examples to explain exactly what I meant. It's my own community, by the way.) He ended his schtick with an accusation and a flourish. A large group of students applauded. I had the distinct feeling they were eager to show up the Amreekawalli (I was studying in the US, true, but I'm an Indian, from Bombay. I look and sound Indian, and don't believe I come across as putting side on. I speak several Indian languages fluently, with an Indian accent. I'm not the stereotype tank-top-wearing South Bombay monolingual Anglophone chick who gibbers when attempting to speak in Hindi). They seemed not to have registered the fact that I was presenting unprocessed raw data, from which I was only beginning to build a theory. The senior faculty member appeared to be coming from the Subaltern perspective which gained ground in the 1980s, but which has been critiqued (although, of course, still remains hugely important and relevant). I guess I have the same perspective but from the post-critique stage, and am post-colonial enough to call Indians conservative if that's what they were (one can be critical, after all, without giving up sympathy for those one studies). But nuance was clearly not the order of the day in Ranade Bhuvan that afternoon.

I would rather not get a Ph.D at all than get it from University of Mumbai.

In 2007, Time Out's excellent Mumbai edition ran a cover story (Friday, July 27, 2007) on people studying Mumbai/Bombay. It mentioned many people (including me) who were studying the city through various lenses. We were all from institutions outside Mumbai, and many outside India. But, Time Out noted, the University of Mumbai has no initiative to promote the study of Mumbai, despite the city's vital role in the country's history and economy for over 300 years.

Institutions of higher learning are the hallmark of civilization. With this chronic apology of a university, Mumbai has no claim to being an evolved and civilized city. It will go on selling medical college admissions to the highest bidders, cranking out hundreds of thousands of semi-employable B.Com. and B.Sc. graduates each year, and producing EngLit graduates and journalists who can't write a sentence to save their lives. Forget about History, Philosophy, and other disciplines that demand abstract and critical thinking! This once-great city, today riddled with potholes, feces, spit, garbage, worse sanitation than bombed-out Baghdad, corruption, poverty, multiplex cinemas, the bizarre but unshakeable corporate and middle-class delusion that it's going to be a "global" city, and the constant fatuous revelry of the insanely selfish rich, has got the university it deserves.

Why Indra Sinha is on hunger strike

2008-06-13T00:56:00.008+05:30

I don't usually copy entire articles here, but I'm making an exception this time. The following is from the Guardian online.

Why I'm going on hunger strike for Bhopal

Victims of the Union Carbide gas leak continue to suffer, their injuries and deaths uncompensated. We must support them

By Indra Sinha, author of Animal's People, which was short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize

On July 26 2006, my friend Sathyu Sarangi called me in tears from Bhopal to tell me that our mutual friend, Sunil Kumar, had taken his life. Sathyu said that when they lifted Sunil down from the ceiling fan from which he had hanged himself, he was wearing a T-shirt that said, "No More Bhopals".

Sunil was an orphan of the Union Carbide mass-gassing of Bhopal, losing his parents and three siblings on that night of terror. Aged 12, he began doing two jobs a day to bring up his surviving sister and baby brother Sanjay. He became a leader of the survivors' struggle for justice and was one of the people I loved most in Bhopal.

The BBC reported, wrongly, that Sunil was the inspiration for Animal in my novel Animal's People, but Animal certainly benefited from Sunil's courage, sense of humour and ability to live on 4 rupees (£0.05) a day. Like Animal, Sunil heard voices in his head, and suffered nightmarish visions. You can read his story here.

On the day that Sunil died, Dow Chemical's CEO Andrew Liveris visited the UN to deliver a much-publicised speech. Fireboats hired by Dow's public relations agency jetted huge sprays aloft over the Hudson River as Liveris told the assembled diplomats "Lack of clean water is the single largest cause of disease in the world and more than 4,500 children die each day because of it … We are determined to win a victory over the problem of access to clean water for every person on earth … we need to bring to the fight the kinds of things companies like Dow do best."

Stirring words. But when asked if he would clean up Bhopal, where the drinking wells of 20,000 people have been poisoned by chemicals abandoned by Dow's subsidiary Union Carbide, causing an epidemic of cancers and hundreds of children to be born malformed and with brain damage, Liveris replied, "We don't feel this is our responsibility".

Liveris couldn't be more wrong. Under the "polluter pays" principle enshrined in both Indian and US law, Union Carbide is responsible for cleaning up the contamination and compensating the thousands whose lives have been ruined. In buying Union Carbide's assets, Dow also acquired its liabilities. Dow set aside $2.3bn to settle Union Carbide's US asbestos liabilities. How then can it refuse to accept Union Carbide's Indian liabilities?

The hard answer is that Indians are not quite as human as Americans. Dow paid $10m to settle out-of-court with an American child damaged by Dursban, a pesticide so dangerous that it has been banned for domestic use in the US. But Dow employees were found to have bribed Indian Ministry of Agriculture officials to license Dursban as safe for home use in India. If an Indian child dies I doubt if there'll be $10m or even $10,000. As a Dow public affairs chief famously remarked of the paltry compensation paid to Union Carbide's victims, "$500 is plenty good for an Indian".

Why doesn't the Indian government force Dow to clean up Bhopal? The Indian law ministry has advised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Dow is indeed liable for Union Carbide's misdeeds in Bhopal. It's exactly what he doesn't wish to hear. He and his ministers are in contortions to appease Dow, which has offered to invest $1bn in India if freed from its Bhopal liabilities. When news broke of this sordid backroom hustling, 280 legal professionals, among them retired judges and eminent lawyers, said the attempts to exculpate Dow were unconstitutional and illegal.

Earlier this year, 50 Bhopali survivors, many old and sick, walked 500 miles to Delhi to ask the prime minister for safe drinking water and to make Dow clean the factory. For two months Manmohan Singh left them camped on a sweltering pavement without a reply. When Bhopali women brought their damaged children to his house and chained themselves to his railings, he had them arrested. The policewomen who led them away wept.

When India's prime minister finally gave a reply, it was all prevarication, no substance. The Bhopalis then declared that they would launch an indefinite hunger strike until their demand for justice was met.

On the eve of the fast, police beat up women and children as young as six years old who had gone to protest outside the prime minister's office. The police said they'd been told to get tough. Many of us around the world rang to protest and I asked a Mr Muthukumaran of the prime minister's office if Manmohan Singh had ordered the beatings. "Are you joking?" he replied. On the contrary, I had rarely been more serious.

As I write this the Bhopalis are still in jail, and we hear that Dow Chemical is sponsoring an exhibition called The Gallery of Good at the Cannes advertising festival. Next Monday, Dow will present The Chemistry of Socially Responsible Marketing, which is presumably the advertising campaign on which it has lavished upwards of $100m. But telling lies beautifully does not make them true. Wouldn't it have more socially responsible to use the money for cleaning up Bhopal?

I have spent much of the last five years writing a novel in which victims of a chemical disaster caused by a rogue corporation are sold out by their own politicians, triggering a desperate hunger strike. Animal's People is set in the fictional city of Khaufpur, but whatever success it has had, it owes to the inspiring courage and spirit of the Bhopalis, and the descriptions of the hunger strike were drawn directly from the experiences of my friends.

Sunil is dead, but on their small stretch of pavement in Delhi, now battered by monsoon rain, nine others have sat down to begin an indefinite fast for justice. Among them are my old friend Sathyu and, grown up into a fine young man, Sunil's baby brother, Sanjay.

How can I not join them? How can we all not support them?

• To join the fast for a period, or to register your support, please visit www.bhopal.net. Donations for medical care in Bhopal may be made at www.bhopal.org/donations/

Photos: Indra Sinha image from http://indrasinha.com, and hunger strike image and Dirty Dow logo from www.studentsforbhopal.org