2008, which has to be the most memorably bad year in recent memory, went out with with a sting in the tail. We were vacationing the last couple of weeks, offline and off-media most of the time, but caught snippets of the Israel/Hamas conflict in bits and pieces on airport cameras and hotel newspapers. (As I write this, Yahoo news reports yet another “blistering offensive” on Gaza and public opinion towards Israel’s actions, normally inclined to be favorable, is teetering towards denunciation of the Jewish state for the civilian Palestinian casualties inflicted by the sustained attack.)

All through the East on our two weeks in the region, people we met presented a gloomy  outlook for 2009. “Put your money in gold,” observed a friend in banking morosely, utterly pessimistic about the state of his own industry. The financial market in Asia has held up so far, mainly because of the healthier balance sheets of companies in the region, but the ripple effect from the US economic collapse is expected to extract its toll this year as the biggest global consumer puts its wallet away. The one bright spot seems to be the sensible, no-drama transition of President-elect Obama. A mortgage broker friend confided that home equity and refinance had picked up shortly after the elections as buyers and home-owners felt a little reassured by the competent political appointments and calming weekly addresses of the President-elect.

Still, by all accounts, 2009 is poised to be a tough year, as the implications of the US recession begin to sink in. As portfolios shrink and home values dwindle, it’s a time to take stock of what’s really important and I am making my New Year’s resolutions in that spirit –

1. Loving – Extra hugs for my family and more calls to parents back home. In these gloomy times, we have to hold on to the people who have always been and always will be there for us.

2. Living – “I am thankful I have my health, my kids are growing up fine and my brain is still functioning,” said a friend. Amen to that. When you get down to it, what more do you need?

3. Giving – If there’s one thing that the US presidential elections have taught me, it is that a small effort by a large number of people can make a big difference. If each of us spares a buck or two for those less fortunate, charities can continue doing their good work even in these tough economic times. When things get rough it is our instinct to hunker down and get tight-fisted, but I plan to put away a dollar a day to be given to a worthy organization. Don’t forget a charity you’ve been supporting – even if you can’t match the contributions of previous years, every little bit helps.

4. Reaching out – I am truly grateful to Water, No Ice readers for keeping me going. As an Indian American who loves both countries equally, it has been a privilege to write about life and people in the Bay Area and the US for the last couple of years. A big thanks to guest writers who have shared their opinions and advice on this forum – I hope to see more of you this year as we navigate these troubled times.

Happy 2009 to all ! Do share your New Year’s resolutions.

There are still a few days left, but since I will be off on vacation till the end of the year, I thought I’d take stock of what has been a tumultuous year to anyone who has been living in the US.

First there was the Presidential election. Had someone predicted even a couple of years ago that a man proudly bearing the middle name of Hussein would be even remotely electable, they would have been dismissed as kooky optimists . But a perfect storm – guilt over Iraq, disillusionment over the Republican brand of conservatism, dismay over Katrina, a collapsing economy and a candidate with a Machiavellian understanding of grassroots organization – made it possible to Americans to elect a scrawny African American with a funny name their President. The vote of 70 million people made it possible for 300 million to hold their heads up again in the international arena, though carrying a US passport is still fraught with danger in parts of the world.

The US economy groaned under the weight of war spending and leveraged risk and gave way as 3 quarters of negative growth announced a recession. Gas prices, touching $5 a gallon in the summer, dropped precipitously as demand crashed and domestic industry slowed to a crawl. While foreign policy mavens looked at the silver lining of declining Middle-East influence, environmentalists worried that the enthusiasm for green initiatives and gasoline alternatives could recede just as it did during the Reagan era.

US Auto companies clamored for a bailout of their own, reasoning that with $700 billion floating around, $15 billion would seem like spare change. But Congress proved surprisingly hostile to the idea, enraging workers already outraged by the protection of absurdly high executive compensation in defaulting financial institutions. It feels like only a honeymoon period for the President-elect is keeping a full-fledged class war from erupting.

Terrorism got the global visibility it craved as attacks on high-end hotels in Mumbai brought the reality of it all to the rich, aka “people who matter”. Unprecedented 24-hour coverage via CNN  created universal outrage and gave the President-elect of the US leverage in his hard-line stance on Pakistan – maybe we will finally see some pressure being brought on the beleagured civilian government in Pakistan. Meanwhile, there has been a sort of awakening among the politically-apathetic intelligentsia – if the carnage in Mumbai leads to even the beginnings of political reform in India, those deaths would mean something.

We enter 2009 battered and bruised. Some lessons are there for the learning – for a free market to function, tight regulatory oversight is necessary; greed is good, but not when you earn 300 times the salary of the average worker; spending is necessary, but not when you max out your credit cards and leverage your home; one vote, one voice and one dollar at a time can dramatically change the face a country presents to the world; terrorism cannot be fought like a  war, rather, it can be combated by cooperation between enemies, by painstaking police work, by working towards the social inequality that breeds resentment and disengagement.

Is this the lowest we can go? Is the only way up? I hope so.

– Home of Hope is being featured on NBC’s Bay Area Proud segment on December 24th and December 25th at 11:19 p.m. This a proud moment for the organization, which devotes itself to specific, project related non-profit work in India.

– The India Community Center at Milpitas is reducing its general membership fees by 30-40%. Lots of other changes are being implemented to make the center more of a community watering hole. Other changes include –

• The ‘ICC State Month Days’ are back! Due to incredibly popular demand by the community we are restarting these highly popular events with a celebration of Tamilian culture on 11th January 2009, Goan in February, and Karnataka in March.
• Access and use of our brand new computer and internet center
• 5 -10% discount on kids camps and classes
• 10% discount at the ICC café
• Free membership of the ICC Table Tennis Club
• Discount on ICC services such as spa, room rentals etc.

“I’m ambivalent about this,” said a friend. “After all, he is the President, yaar.” She was, of course, referring to the chappal heard around the world. Yesterday Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoe at still-President Bush saying “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

I’m sure some journalistic code of conduct has been violated – isn’t the pen supposed to be mightier than the shoe? – but I can’t help feeling a sneaking sense of sympathy for the poor man. Here you have a country reeling under a civil war and a prolonged, mismanaged occupation and you have to sit and listen to the chief architect of that destruction blithely state that “things are going well”. That’s enough to make anyone snap. Zaidi’s action is like that little kid in the fable saying, “The emperor has no clothes.”

That’s the irony of crime in the 21st century. Default on your taxes and get summoned to court. Bankrupt the economy and you’ll still preserve your obscene compensation packages. Get into an argument with your neighbor and get hauled off to the hoosegow. Give orders to kill tens of thousands of people and displace millions and you get to build a presidential library. And stock it with what? Copies of “The pet goat?”

Zaidi’s ultimate insult comes from the frustration of knowing that the people responsible for one of the biggest military and strategic blunders in modern times will not only get away scot-free but are busy rewriting history to bolster their legacies. Impeachment is off the table, as the Democrats have been at pains to emphasize and it appears that even the egregious crime of torture will be swept away under the carpet of a new administration. What more can a hapless patriot do than make a symbolic gesture of “@#$% you”?

Zaidi’s arrest has, predictably enough, sparked protests in Iraq. Let’s hope the Iraqi governement has the sense not to make a martyr out of him and lets him off with a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, here is an alternate theory of the incident –

In the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, frustration over government inaction and incompetence has boiled over among India’s educated class. In a sick sort of way, the terrorists’ deliberate attempt to target upper income and foreign nationals, done to give them more visibility in the global arena, seems to have had an unexpectedly beneficial side effect- that of waking up the apathetic Indian elite.(Here is an interesting article in the NYT about it.)

Hundreds of protests and vigils have been organized in the last week and calls for reform have been ringing across the nation. One such well-intentioned but misguided email doing the rounds is “I vote nobody”, a viral mail exhorting voters to demand a form that allows him/her to vote for “nobody” at the polling booth.

Why should you go and say “I VOTE NOBODY”… because, in a ward, if a candidate wins, say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received “49-O” votes more than 123, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision on them. This would bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for election. This would change the way; of our whole political system… it is seemingly surprising why the election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public….

First, let’s see what 49 O really says-

Rule 49-O of The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 (as amended) reads:-
“49-O.   Elector  deciding  not  to  vote.-If  an  elector,  after  his electoral  roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in  Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon  as required  under  sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to  record  his vote,  a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form  17A  by  the  presiding  officer  and  the  signature  or  thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.”

Unlike in the US, there is no room on the Indian ballot to write-in a candidate. With a paper ballot, it is easy to waste your vote by just marking multiple candidates. Since you can’t do that on an electronic voting machine, you can ask for a separate form ( which most voting locations don’t have, as Geeta Padmanabhan found out) to mark your protest vote. But then your vote is no longer secret. It appears that the Election Commission recommended in 2004 that “the law should be amended to specifically provide for negative / neutral voting.” This hasn’t happened yet.

Either way, it is a wasted vote. Contrary to the claims of the email, the interpretation of 49-O as it stands appears to be vague enough to allow the winning candidate’s election to stand regardless of the number of protest votes. (In the US there have been some notable write-in candidates but mostly the space is used by mischievous voters to write in their own name or characters like Mickey Mouse!)

What is ironic that an entire class of people who have chosen not to exercise their vote for many, many years should want to make their first foray into the voting booth as a protest move. Maybe if everyone who was well educated and well informed actually bothered to participate in the political process, the look of Indian government would be very different today. Basab writes in an excellent post –

In India we need our own political revolution. This has to be led by educated voters who are more discerning, wherever they are. They need to roll up their trousers (or sarees) and wade into the murky waters of Indian politics. They don’t have to become politicians but they must become more engaged. Politics is a contact sport. You can’t bring about change by shouting advice from the stands.

Instead of futile grandstanding like “I vote nobody”, what educated and well-off people in India should be doing is take that risky but crucial plunge into politics. Maybe the best way to do it is to start a new party, like Loksatta . Maybe the solution is to start at the bottom rung of existing parties and slowly work your way up and reform the system that way. Either way, channel your energies into participation, not rejection. What matters is you get your feet wet. If enough people resolve to never forget Mumbai, you can trust in the power of a mass movement.

“It is all about the heart,” says Jagmohan(Joy) Kapur, owner of the Maharani Reastaurant in San Francisco. A survivor of 2 open-heart surgeries, Joy has found a way to communicate his belief that cosmic laws operate on the purity of one’s heart and not on wishful thinking. Starting this Sunday, Maharani Restaurant offers “Kindness Kitchen”, a weekly meal where visitors are presented with a bill with a big zero on it and a note that says – “In the spirit of kindness and generosity, someone who dined before you made a gift of your meal. You are free to leave whatever you like when you are done. All of us are working here as volunteers and are providing this in the spirit of service. We wish and hope you will continue the cycle of generosity in your own way.”

Inspired by Karma Kitchen, Kindness Kitchen hopes to encourage the concept of paying it forward. “There is a faintly negative tone about “karma”,” says Joy. “There is an aspect of punishment to it.” Instead he wants his program to be about unconditional service and compassion towards our fellowmen.

While Maharani is not a vegetarian restaurant, the free meal served on Sundays will be vegetarian with some vegan dishes. Joy is enthusiastic about spreading the good word about vegetarianism. he reels off statistics about the environmental impact of meat. He is a reformed quasi-vegetarian himself ( fish is ok!) and hopes other people will be motivated to do the same.

Should some patrons decide to pay( what they wish), 9% of the gross take will go to Home of Hope, an organization that executes projects in India and is dear to Joy Kapur.

Check out Kindness Kitchen at the Maharani restaurant this Sunday or any other Sundays to come. The Kindness Kitvchen is open from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Sunday this December. The menu for this weekend( it will change each time) is as follows –

ENTREES
Mixed veggies
Tofu saag
Aloo masala
ACCOMPANIMENTS
Basmati Rice
Lentil (Dal) soup
Naan (Special Bread)
Raita (yogurt/cucumber)
DESSERT (Ask your server for today’s special)

As Joy puts it, “the vegetarian and vegan dishes are served with love, kindness and offered as an unconditional gift by the volunteers at the restaurant. They know that the joy they spread will come back to them manifold. “

Maharani Restaurant

1122 Post Street( between Van Ness and Polk)

San Francisco, CA 94109

(415) 775-1988

The Press Trust of India reports that 177 people have died so far in the aftermath of cyclone Nisha’s torrential rains that hit Tamil Nadu. The news did not come as a complete surprise to me because I have family in Chennai who reported of flooded roads and downed power lines. If people living in one of the better areas of the capital city were without water and power for 5 days, it stands to reason that people in the outlying rural areas were worse off – sure enough, casualty reports are coming in now.

Why are we not outraged about this? For the last week, the media have been dominated by the events in Mumbai and understandably so, but the situation in Tamil Nadu is as much a failure of governance as the carnage in Mumbai.

We seem to have given up on expecting anything from our government, whether it be basic amenities, infrastructure or protection. If our governments cannot fulfill their core obligation to look after their constituents, why are we tolerating them like parasitic beings who feed off of our efforts and give nothing in return? It is a common saw that “India thrives inspite of its government.”

I see that there is a tremendous movement in Mumbai in the wake of the terrorist attacks to hold the government accountable for its ineptitude and force them to be proactive about these kind of situations in the future. There is talk of a federal intelligence agency and enhanced attention to the needs of our police and armed forces. My hope is that a similar movement demands that the government be as proactive when it comes to natural disasters, urban planning and basic infrastructure.

My expectation though? Unlike Mumbai. the deaths in Tamil Nadu were of poor farmers and villagers who have never had a voice – I don’t believe they ever will.

Thanks to the Blackberry, reality intrudes even when you’re in the middle of San Diego Zoo with your kids, watching the pandas be cute. It is a testimony to the desensitization on (ex)Mumbaikars that my first reaction was “Oh, another bomb blast?” I had been in the thick of things in 1993, racing home in a taxi after the stock exchange explosion, unaware that many other bombs had gone off in various parts of the city. It was a time before the 24-hour news cycle.

15 years later we returned to the hotel to find non-stop coverage from CNN and the laptop spewing out news from NDTV, but there were still more questions than answers. It has been almost 48 hours since the first attack and I suspect that Indians the world over have become forensic scientists for the last two days, poring over the bits of information and piecing together what really happened from blogs, eyewitness accounts and pure conjecture, while the networks stay mesmerized by the “movie-like” picture of commandos descending on Mumbai rooftops.

It is a failure of information at a vulnerable time for the country, and it is failure of information of another sort that brought India to its knees on Wednesday night. For all that criticism that has been levelled at the Indian police and armed forces for their delayed response, getting their top commanders killed and the long drawn out sieges at Mumbai landmarks, there is not much any defenders can do against an attack with AK-47s and grenades without incurring loss of life and limb.

The best defense against attacks like this is preventing them before they happen and it is surprising and dismaying that such a large body of terrorists were able to plan a meticulous plan with redundancies built into it without so much as a whisper of it being known to Indian intelligence. One report I heard out of the many disjointed ones suggested that security had actually been downgraded at the Taj a couple of weeks ago. Take it with a pinch of salt, but it certainly seems like nobody had a clue.

Unfortunately, this sad episode will only renew demands for reinstallation of POTA and crackdown on certain communities. An angry Indian even said, “George Bush may have been a rotten President but at least you didn’t have another terrorist attack since 9/11.” I put it down to shock, since I hope nobody would like to create an Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo in India, but it is a sentiment I suspect many Indians have thought or voiced in the last two days. It seems almost inevitable that the Congress will lose the upcoming elections and the forces of Hindu fundamentalism will be resurgent. Xenophobic goons like Raj Thackeray will be emboldened to single out foreigners( I cut a broad swathe with that term) without fear of punishment.I shudder to think of the long term implications of these events.

What is really needed, IMHO, is not a emotion-driven vendetta ( though with Narendra Modi prowling around Mumbai, I have my fears) but a cleansing of the police and counter-terrorism organisations. Hire the best people and give them a great deal of autonomy. Our space program has been successful because of those reasons and there is no reason why our intelligence and counterterrorism departments couldn’t be as well once the pernicious influence of politics is removed. I know from firsthand knowledge that there are some really talented people in the IPS – they work under tremendous constraints and would be much more effective if given the freedom to use thir talents without interference.

“This is not a time for appeasement,” you say. Certainly in the wake of these attacks there are questions about why the convicted criminals of previous attacks are still in jail despite their death sentence – there is a thirst for blood in the Indian populace that has not been allowed to die down because of lack of closure. But there is also a  danger of overreaction. Economic prosperity in India has not been well distributed and race relations have always been a tinderbox, only waiting for an excuse to set them off. I do  not mean in any way to minimize the horror and suffering of Mumbai, but the answer is not a witch hunt. Terrorism is less a war than a crime and sovereign nations like Pakistan that breed terrorism without sanctioning it have to be coopted to defeat this Hydra.

Meanwhile here are my questions and observations about the unfolding events –

– It is commendable that the Indian authorities have decided that they will not negotiate with terrorists; I wonder if the people held as hostages feel the same way. The numbers seems to be confusing – one report put the number of hostages at 200 yet only 30-35 had been rescued. The mind keeps skittering away from the conclusion that those numbers draw.

– Why were senior members of the Mumbai anti-terrorism units in the line of fire? One theory suggests that they were specifically targeted but it has not been supported by any real news. Yet.

– News networks have been pathetic at bringing the big picture. Tabloidism has pervaded every piece of visual journalism. For several minutes last night, I watched the drama unfold at Nariman House but not one time did any of the channels give us an update of what was happening elsewhere. There were also reports on a gun battle at the Ramada – completely ignored by the networks. Every channel keeps reporting 10 places targeted but none gives a list.  I expect eventually print media will put together a comprehensive report with time lines. The shallowness of broadcast media has been blindingly exposed.

– Expect a much more furious response to these attacks as opposed to previous bomb blasts. For one, it has exposed how vulnerable our cities are to armed conflicts. For another, this time the terrorists targeted rich people.

– I think the term “Deccan Mujahiddeen” was made up 5 minutes before the terrorists landed. This well planned attack cannot be the work of a fledgling organization – or this says something dreadful about the competence of Indian counter-terrorism.

– Expect life to get a whole lot more complicated and uncomfortable if you live in , work in or visit Mumbai. What needs to be done is to institute a system of identification for Indians to allow easy travel across the country. But this is such a daunting task and so prone to corruption and hacking that the political will will quickly evaporate. Instead, the knee-jerk response will be to install metal detectors everywhere. Airport security will increase exponentially. The stable door will be triple-bolted and locked.

My thoughts and prayers are with Mumbai at this dreadful time. It has risen like a phoenix from the ashes several times and I have no doubt it will do so again. I just hope the collateral damage is minimal.

Basab has his take on the attacks here.