December 2011
1 post
4 tags
October 2011
1 post
3 tags
September 2010
7 posts
2 tags
3 tags
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasant sensations in the...”
– Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches, 1932
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
“We had already tamed our own hostile landscapes, the enormous stretches of the...”
– Los Angeles Times reporter Megan K. Stack in Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, the best book I’ve read about the Mideast since Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, and more lyrical than that. (Think Joan Didion, with cluster bombs.)
3 tags
3 tags
June 2010
1 post
3 tags
“I wanted to be roaming the world, I wanted to be telling stories, I wanted to be...”
– Christiane Amanpour on starting at CNN. 2010 Harvard Class Day speech.
April 2010
1 post
3 tags
March 2010
3 posts
3 tags
3 tags
“This is a very beautiful country. Everyone can come and settle here. Everyone...”
– Varalakshmi, 13, on India. Her mother is a maid; together they stay under a sheet-metal roof.
3 tags
December 2009
1 post
3 tags
“Spray the D.D.T. to drainage to avoid the mosquitos.”
– Slogan from a government school-submitted entry to my foundation’s annual poster contest. The theme: “Healthy environment starts at home.”
November 2009
5 posts
5 tags
Where American directness fails →
NYT on the difficulties of Indian-Americans returning to India for work. The reporter interviews an Indian bureaucrat who sacked an Indian-American hire, saying the new guy had “misunderstood nearly everything”:
“To prove his point, Mr. Brahmachari, who was two hours late for an interview scheduled by his office, read from a government guide about decision-making in the...
6 tags
Coconut crisis →
NYT on a shortage of coconut pickers in the southern state of Kerala: “Unlike northern states, where caste remains a force and education remains out of reach for many, Kerala has a 100 percent literacy rate, and the shackles of caste are looser than ever.
But this has created a crisis of its own: If no one wants to pluck coconuts anymore, how will this industry survive?”
3 tags
“You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of...”
– Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
5 tags
'Our India and Its Progress'
Among a bookseller’s bug-eaten stacks, I found an eighth-grade social studies textbook from the year 1966. Published in Bangalore for kids in the nearby town of Mysore, it covers topics from farm irrigation to the Himalayan mountains. Our India and Its Progress also provides endless amusement, and not just because of the title. Imagine 13-year-olds studying this:
“Generally, when the...
3 tags
October 2009
16 posts
5 tags
Eating by the rules
“I can’t come to south India,” my friend joked over the phone from Mumbai. “They eat with their hands.”
I laughed. Food etiquette is the only thing I cannot handle in Bangalore, this most westernized of eastern cities.
Bring on the cows obstructing the street with their dung and balding skin. Bring on the fleets of rickshaws and cargo trucks swerving to hit you. You...
4 tags
5 tags
Sensible alternate transportation →
Should Bangalore’s rickshaw drivers strike again and leave us tiptoeing in the cow-dung streets, bring out the cupcake cars.
7 tags
Indianomics
Sure, life is cheaper in India. It’s what the country’s citizens choose to charge more for that surprises me:
Shampoo service at a salon (50 rupees) v. bottle of the salon’s shampoo (550 rupees)
Pineapple juice (15 rupees) v. apple juice (25 rupees) [And who drinks apple juice past age 8?]
Tax on saris (0%) v. tax on leather goods (12.5%)
With this data and carefully observed...
6 tags
Obama, now an "Indian Abroad" →
At first glance, The Times of India appears to categorize Obama with NRIs, or non-resident Indians.
As brilliant as that would be, the newspaper’s “Indians Abroad” section name must refer to the anonymous South Asians celebrating Divali with the president, not the man many Kenyans and Muslims love to claim as their own.
4 tags
3 tags
5 tags
Harvard, now without hot breakfast →
3 tags
“Please tell me you are which spray used. Smell very nice.”
– Written note from teacher at Adugodi Government Girls School.
6 tags
3 tags
“A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or...”
– Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books, 1993. (Thanks to fellow fellow Nikolai for sending.)
6 tags
Good thing my next flight's on Air India →
During this weekend’s 30,000-foot-high brawl between cabin and cockpit crew, a pilot reportedly threatened to land in Pakistan. Another choice morsel: ”A week earlier, another Air India flight from the city of Amritsar to London had to be delayed by several hours after passengers noticed a rat on board.”
6 tags
6 tags
WatchFrom afar, the men hoisting black flags on Chennai’s beach appeared to protest angrily. Close up, we saw cameras, white screens and a man shading a photogenic actor with an umbrella. This was a product of Kollywood, Bollywood’s sister in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The “K” comes from Kodambakkam, the district where the Tamil-language film industry began. Not all is in...
4 tags
Delhi, in retrospect →
Fellow Clinton fellow Nafisa Ferdous posted photos and notes from our 10-day orientation in Delhi. While you’re there, check out the rest of her blog, Nafisa in Kolkata.
5 tags
September 2009
12 posts
6 tags
Bargain-basement Bangalore
My roommate opens new Puma stores in India, where the brand is so new that people think the sneakers are actually made for running. But even as more stores are built to cater to privileged Indians, not all of the existing ones are turning a profit. One of the many reasons why: the goods here are priced 30 percent less than in the company’s home country of Germany.
It’s obvious why...
4 tags
5 tags
We pay 20 cents for a coconut in Bangalore →
…and hipsters in New York are paying $2+. Then they carry it, neglecting to stick around so the coconut man can slice it open to reveal the jelly. Waste.
3 tags
“He had not expected such a sincere welcome, and he feared his studied composure...”
– Orhan Pamuk, Snow
4 tags
WatchTalent aside, the American India Foundation didn’t send 20 Americans to India to launch 20 Bollywood careers. The fellowship’s aim is to aid NGOs and their communities while grooming young people invested in India and (its) development. We’re now in the third week at our placements, settling into apartments and job descriptions, learning to disguise or exploit our foreignness.
...
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Cupcakes in the Middle East →
The NYT featured my friend Fadi’s cupcake empire, three bakeries in Beirut, Amman and Dubai. The Sugar Daddy’s in Amman is deep in ex-pat country, tucked behind the American Embassy; foreigners and privileged Jordanians wearing Juicy sweatsuits hold a monopoly on purchases behind the pink-paint facade. At $3.50 per Red Velvet, the cupcakes are pricey, but still cheaper than a...
2 tags
“What we choose to eat or refuse to eat, and how we eat it defines us as much as...”
– “Castes, Cuisines and Confluence: A Brief Note on Malyali Culinary History,” the introduction to a Keralan cookbook
1 tag
“Students should appreciate the scientists, not the film stars.”
– Suma, a biology teacher at Government Girls Pre-University College on B.P. Wadia Road, Basavana Gudi, Bangalore.
3 tags
3 tags
WatchAn American India Foundation colleague invited me to a gathering for the swami he follows, Sathya Sai Baba. (He’s the man with the ‘fro often pictured holding his palms out in blessing; find him here and 17 kilometers outside central Bangalore at his Whitefield ashram.) After a concert sung to Lakshmi and Allah, among other religious figures, young women performed this candle ceremony.