By Rohini Mohan
Sunil Lala is a self published NRI author. American Khichdi is a collection of his musings in which he explores the life of the Desi who lives in America. From our obsession for Bollywood to our double standards when it comes to accepting our adopted culture, from the birth of an ABCD to the shock of the death of a loved one in a strange land, from life in India to the Khichdi that life is outside India; the book waxes eloquent on each of these varied topics. Continue reading
Possibly as a result of the evangelist bent of the current administration in the US, there has recently been a rash of atheist manifestos debunking the existence of God and the necessity for religion. There’s Christopher Hitchens’ vitriolic ‘God is not Great’, Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ and a host of other treatises from atheists like Sam Harris and Victor Mills, fed up with the crimes committed by man which appear to have some sort of religious sanction or religious provocation.
To a questioning mind, the existence of God has to be, at the very least, a matter of doubt. As a Hindu, I have been lucky to be part of a religion that is, to put it mildly, rather loosey-goosey. There is room for every intellect, from the slavish, ritualistic devotion to a particular deity to the spiritually evolved Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. The framework of Hinduism has perfectly suited my intrinsically skeptical mindset, so I was thrown into confusion when confronted with the need for belief in my 11 year old son.
Like Nachiketa in the Upanishads, my son has lately been obsessed with the after-life – specifically, what happens to us after we die. Being no Yama (except when it comes to homework and bedtime curfews!) I scrambled around for answers that would satisfy without scaring.
In the Upanishads, as in the Gita, the classic answer has been as follows –
The supreme Self is beyond name and form,
Beyond the senses, inexhaustible,
Without beginning, without end, beyond
Time, space, and causality, eternal,
Immutable. Those who realize the Self
Are forever free from the jaws of death.Eknath Easwaran’s translation
Unfortunately, this is a philosophy out of the grasp of most adults, so it was no surprise that it did my son no good. After a few unsatisfactory discussions we moved on to Christianity, where the concepts of heaven and hell have structure and clarity. This was much more to the 11 year-old’s liking and I began to get a glimpse into why religion plays such an important role in people’s lives.
Christianity and Islam both have the advantage over Hinduism of having a set of scriptures that lay down the law in pretty simple lists of do’s and don’ts. My theory of religious evolution goes somewhat like this –
Out of the need for order in societal chaos is born a new religion. To the society at large, it probably takes the shape of a ‘cult’ till it gains enough adherents to become respectable. The three guiding principles of any new religion are –
Contrast – How your religion differs from the existing belief system
Convince – Why it is better, and
Convert – What will happen to you if you don’t join.
Eventually, as the religion ages, it begins to lose some of its dogma and become more inclusive. It also begins to allow conflicting schools of thought to co-exist in relative harmony. But as it loses its fundamentalism, it also loses its appeal to people who want the comfort of being told what to do.
Hinduism is in this mature stage, which explains the rise of gurus and godmen. When I talk to followers of gurus about their motivation, not surprisingly, it is the craving for direction that is the biggest driver. The appeal of the guru is that of a parent for a child – someone who takes on the burden of responsibility of thinking for you.
Newer religions like Islam still have the structure and discipline in place, which is why they are such an attraction to confused, angry child-men seeking a higher purpose in life. A New York Times article about the failed terrorist plot in Germany recently reports –
…radical Muslims began to exert a glamorous gravitational pull on some German youths, German authorities say. In 2003 a local convert calling himself “Hamza” Fischer was killed fighting against Russian troops in Chechnya.
“They like the clear rules,” Mr. Köpfer says of the young converts. “Many of them are attracted to Islam not as a religion but as an ideology.”
I fear the attraction these ideologies have for my pre-teen. I don’t underestimate his need for clear answers. Since I can’t tell him comforting lies, the best I can do is to point out that the inflexibility and exclusivity of existing religions condemn non-believers (that would be us, his parents) to a very descriptive hell, set a good example for moral and ethical behavior, and hope for the best.
By Vidya Pradhan
It is an immigrant’s tale as old as time. Rukhsana( not her real name) was brought to the US from her native South Asian country on a fiancée visa. Once she was married, her in-laws found many excuses not to proceed with her green card application. This ensured that the lonely and helpless girl would submit to other, typical, patterns of abuse – emotional, verbal and physical – without recourse. With her spirit all but extinguished, Rukhsana made a last ditch attempt to escape. While being taken out of the state, she evaded her captors and asked a stranger for help. She was taken to the police station, where she had her first piece of luck since coming to the land of the free, a meeting with a Narika representative. Continue reading
By Rohini Mohan
There are millions of people who set out to do something with their lives. Some fail, and fade into oblivion while most fall to mediocrity; but there are a chosen few who can’t help but succeed. It’s almost like there is a divine force guiding them on their journey. Mother Theresa was one of the blessed ones. And she chose to share her largesse with the City of Joy, bringing succor to many. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu arrived in India at the age of 18. Clad in her iconic white sari with the blue border, she lived and worked amongst the poorest of the poor, until her death a decade ago this week. Continue reading
About a dozen or so years ago, when I first arrived in the US, we bounced around the north-east for a while, changing 4 homes in 2 years. It was with a big gasp of relief that I landed in the Bay Area, where Indian stores and Indian mores were both part of the landscape and I found families who shared my cultural ambivalence.
Lately, though, it seems that the India of my childhood has been making an insidious creep into mainstream American society. Many values that I considered uniquely Indian are popping up as micro and macro trends in the big, bad West. Check these out –
Education – Possibly as a result of the powerful waves emanating from Tam-bram engineering brains, there has been a resurgence in the importance of science and math in early education. Some schools, especially those serving predominantly minority populations, have pared their curriculum down to these two basic functions. With President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, testing and teaching to the test have never been as significant. Without commenting on whether this is a positive trend or not, it does appear that elementary education in public schools is slowly beginning to resemble the rote-driven, drill emphasizing education I received growing up.
Girls gone mild – A new book by Wendy Shalit, a 1997 graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, profiles young women who stand up to social pressures to embrace promiscuity. Her previous book was 'Returning to modesty: discovering the lost virtue'. Apparently there is a growing trend in the country of girls wanting to (gasp!) stay in school, work hard and generally lead wholesome lives.
Abstinence -Thanks to the President's born-again evangelism, abstinence-only sex education has been given federal funding of over a billion dollars. A corollary to 'girls gone mild', this seems to forebode a return to the time when girls were chaste and boys had to wait.
The Bollywood influence – Suddenly, song-and-dance routines, which used to be a staple of Hollywood studio productions 50 years ago, are making a big comeback – witness the success of High School Musical. Thanks to the cross-over influences of Mira Nair and Gurinder Chaddha, we get to see Nicole Kidman dancing to 'Chamma Chamma' and our heroines gracing the red carpet at all the prestigious film festivals. Hrithik Roshan was profiled as an 'It' boy in GQ magazine as early as 2002.
The Yoga boom – There is Ashtanga Yoga, Viniyoga, Integral Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, Kripalu Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Power Yoga, Corporate Yoga, Office Yoga, Zen Yoga, Belly-dancing Yoga( I kid you not) and Pilates Yoga. Need I say more?
Medicine – Thanks to the advances in genetic testing, scientists are coming around to the fact that each individual may require a different set of therapies and medications for the same set of symptoms, a fact that has been a principal precept in Ayurveda for centuries. Kudos to Deepak Chopra for making millions off ancient Indian medical science. Hey, at least he understood the worth of our heritage!
Fashion – Chikan, Zardosi, Kantha, Tie-Dye- these have already penetrated mainstream clothing retail establishments. The long, crushed fabric skirts, that used to be a staple of Colaba Causeway in Mumbai are now so ubiquitous here that I have sometimes found them on sale at the local American grocery store.
Food – Once dependent on price-gouging Indian stores for my spices and dals, I now find clean, uncontaminated, organic versions in most large grocery chains. Most restaurants in the neighborhood have also bowed to the overwhelming vegetarian requests and now offer a fairly varied meatless menu. The best example is a Thai restaurant a stone's throw away, where the vegetarian menu is so extensive that Friday evenings resemble an Indian Babel.
Comics – A series of comics based on Indian mythology have hit the stands recently. Check out a review of Ramayana 3392 here.
And last but not least, the Pressure Cooker! Imagine my visiting mother's amusement when a Caucasian friend tripped in one evening to announce she had discovered a most wonderful kitchen appliance which allowed her to 'cook stuff in minutes.'
Of course, the India that I am talking about is one I view through the nostalgia-filled, rose-tinted glasses of memory. I suspect that urban India has changed so much since I've been away that culturally, a fuddy-duddy like me is going to be more comfortable here today than back home.
Yet another nail in the DVD coffin was hammered in today, though at first glance it seems to be a rather flimsy one. Santa Clara start-up Vudu is offering a set-top box for movies on demand with an initial movie library of 5000 titles.
Customers have to have broadband access and more importantly, need to pay $399 upfront for the device, in addition to rental or purchase fees for the movies. Rental fees range from 99 cents to $3.99 and movies are available for purchase for prices ranging from $4.99 to $19.99.
This brings the tally of companies already offering online movie downloads to 4( Netflix, Jaman, Blockbuster-via Movie link, being the others) with big guns like Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and Apple nipping at their heels.
It's hard not to feel a sense of deja vu(du)( couldn't resist!). Not so long ago, Tivo offered a (then) revolutionary technology that allowed viewers to record programs from their TV on to a set-top box without the need for a Phd. in VCR programming. Once the market had been primed and educated, the cable and satellite companies just took over with their DVRs and Tivo has been languishing ever since.
I expect a similar shake-up in the online movie downloads market. Everybody wants a piece of the $10 billion dollar market, but once again, cable companies like Comcast have a giant advantage in that their delivery systems are in place, they are tried and tested and they have an existing client base that can be sold too with minimum effort and no further investment in technology. Comcast already offers about 300 titles, which may be a drop compared to the 5000 plus movies the other players have, but I suspect they are just waiting to see how the movie wars play out. (At least, one hopes there is a marketing strategy behind their decision to wait. Their Bollywood service, which requires you to pay a monthly fee for access to a small library of movies, is a pretty bad idea and I wouldn't be surprised if it dies a quiet unremarked death. It would have been much more sensible to include Bollywood movies in their pay-per-view menu.)
As I see it, there is nothing to distinguish all these players from each other, except the social networking component offered by Jaman, which is the only one truly capitalizing on the interactivity of the internet. Their technology is great but their library is woefully small, so it seems likely that once the dust has settled, they would be a good candidate for acquisition by the survivors.
Meanwhile, it is the customer who is going to be the real winner. No more trips to the video store, the capacity to watch new movies without waiting in a queue, cheaper movies – what's not to like? All the players offer HD quality too. I, for one, can't wait.
by Basab Pradhan
Ramayana and the Mahabharata are not just great stories – they form the backdrop to the rich tapestry of greatest mythology there is – Indian mythology. But they are also religious texts. To tell these stories in ways that strictly adhere the original scripts, is a safe commercial bet. After all, India is a deeply religious country. Ramanand Sagar and B. R. Chopra did exactly that with their TV Series. But what Virgin Comics has done with Ramayan 3392 AD is anything but safe. It is bold. It is comic book art. Continue reading
By Rohini Mohan
Set in Afghanistan from start to finish without straying into the immigrant experience, Khaled Hosseini’s new book, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’. Richly developed characters and a solid storyline set against the backdrop of the turbulent events that have rocked the country, it is a tale of troubled people living in troubled times. Often when an author’s very first book is a runaway success, the second, while breathlessly awaited, ends up being a huge disappointment. Not so with this one. The heart wrenching, intricately woven story telling and the strong splendid characters are now trademark Hosseini. Continue reading
Like astronomers who make inferences about a distant planet's existence from certain anomalies in the space surrounding it, I didn’t need to see RGV Ki Aag to know it was going to turn out to be a stinker. But the hubby, bored out of his mind on a recent India trip, decided to give it a dekko. On the evening call, after some preliminary coochie-cooing (Him: “The movie started off bad in the first frame and got progressively worse.” Me: “I told you so”) we sat down to chew the fat and discuss what possessed RGV to make such a colossal dud and came up with some theories –
Greed: Curiosity Factor X 0.5 billion people who have seen Sholay( I may be underestimating that number). You do the math.
Pride: He did make another film inspired by an iconic movie and carried it off rather well (Sarkar/Godfather). Why not try for the Holy Grail of Bollywood? And the title says it all.
Gluttony: You have to be a glutton for punishment to take on a challenge of that sort. After all, this is a movie mothers motivate their young children with – “So ja beta, or main tumhe kal Sholay dikhaoongi.”
Envy: Farhan Akhtar’s stylish remake of Don and the opening collections must have prompted the question –“Why not ME?”
Lust: This is hubby’s charitable view of why RGV persists in casting the talentless Nisha Kothari in film after film. Me, I don’t think the casting couch has that much power. Heroine’s sidekick maybe. But not Basanti. The more likely explanation is that the lady has RGV’s pet dog Tommy in her kabza and is sending him regular tail clippings to make sure he keeps his end of the bargain.
Sloth: Why bother hunting for an original script when such nice, tried and tested ones are available for mangling? Just change a dialogue or two, find some contemporary stars to sign on, and voila, you have a queue of producers salivating at your front door.
Wrath: For all the naysayers who thought this remake should never have been attempted. You talking to me? You talking to me?
We also discussed possible casting choices that might have elevated the movie from a -5 to a respectable 0 out of 5. Ajay Devgan as Jai instead of Veeru, Salman(my choice) or Akshay Kumar(his) as Veeru, and Urmila as Basanti.
Also puzzling is the schizophrenia that seems to inhabit RGV’s Factory. There’s a Rangeela, then there’s a Daud. There’s a Company, then there’s a Naach. Kudos to him for constantly experimenting but boy, when he’s bad, he’s horrid. Judging by his track record, the next movie should be great! I look forward to it.
MY BOLLYWOOD PREDICTION: Saw the promos for Om Shanti Om. Don’t know about the movie, but my early prediction is that heroine Deepika Padukone will be a superstar. She has the ‘it’ factor that can’t be manufactured or earned. Remember, you heard it first here.
One of the most accomplished voices in VOI, Toshi, got eliminated today. No one can deny his talent, but his showmanship could be off-putting at times. But the real reason I think we had such a strange result is what I call the 'Reality Show Syndrome' – which is that viewers, instead of simply voting for the performance they like best, try to game the system by voting for the people who have performed poorly before and ignore the favorites. "Prosperity destabilizes itself" says Robert Samuelson in the latest issue of Newsweek, talking about the boom-bust cycle in economics and this could well apply to the sympathy/complacency factor that is the undoing of many a talented singer, as years of American Idol have clearly demonstrated.
One piece of info I wish they would reveal is the break-up between internet and phone votes and regional impact. Even if people did not naturally gravitate to singers from their state, the judges keep making sure they remind the voters of the participant's hometowns. Pretty irresponsible, if you ask me.
Of course, unintentional comedy( or maybe bathos) was provided by the judges as they rivaled the contestants in bursting into tears as Toshi's loss was declared. I wonder, whose exit would they have been ok with? Or is the high level of drama written into the script? The hapless Toshi was promptly adopted by one of the judges, as his surrogate friend/nephew/son, in an escalating burst of emotion.
To one accustomed to Simon Cowell's acerbic detachment over the last half a dozen years, the sight of grown men and women crying bitter tears was a source of squirming embarrassment. Or maybe this is the way we Indians are – loud, opinionated and weepy. Well, can't blame anybody but ourselves for the melodrama in our movies – after all, art just imitates life, doesn't it? 🙂
Oh by the way, one thing I learned from VOI is that people do say things like "Main Ganga Ma ki saugandh khakar kehta hoon ki…" in real life! I am never questioning the credibility of a a Bollywood B-movie again.
Water, No Ice 