drunk on ink

Same Blog New Address

2007-02-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

Because I can't for the life of me figure out how to unglitch the glitch in my archives. Thanks for reading me here and please continue doing so at www.blogspot.soniahkamal.com

Loving or Hating Arundhati Roy?

2007-01-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

Saba Bhaumik's opinion piece in Outlook India once again attempts to explain why Indians may not be madly in love with Arundhati Roy while the West supposedly is but Bhaumik doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said a million times: Indian males are envious coz Roy is smart, the women are confused by her outspokeness and, while Roy's hair styles challenge beauty norms, her sense of style sets dressing trends. Ye Gods, cries the plaited, sari wearing, stay at home Indian woman according to Bhaumik, how does Roy do it. Bhaumik should get off the looks wagon--traditional or modern-- and go straight for the brains-- Roy's politics. I do think Bhaumik has a point about Roy's controversial politics and how her views have made her a household name in many worlds but it would have been stronger to have cited reasons other than

the Sunday Times carried a full-page article that somewhat absurdly equated Roy with Victoria Beckham, both described as "role models for young British women". Ridiculous as the comparison between a sexy footballer-wife-pop-star and a serious novelist-essayist may be, it does reveal that Roy has been an icon in the West for some years now.

Roy's greatest crime of course is that of perceived anti-nationalism i.e. not yelling, pompoms aloft, 'East or West, India is the best.' How popular would Roy be if she was American-- or lived in America-- and did not say 'East or West, America is the best and always right'? Or in any country where she was to go against the status quo? Roy's 'style, articulation and high profile causes' may get her attention in the West but is she really an icon? Do women and men look to her for courage to stand up for the depressing issues of the day be it how 'really' poor people are going to fend for themselves, or whether a particular 'terrorist' ('freedom fighter'?) is guilty or framed? Recently Arundhati was on the US radio show Democracy Now saying that, when she talks to journalists from the West, all they want to hear is how absolutely great things in India are and how the great is getting greater by the day. If she goes against that she's suddenly not the most popular guest around. I must add that it hardly escapes notice how journalist after journalist never fail to mention how petite and pretty she is and of course what state her hair is in. If she was obese and plain looking and had ratty hair how much attention would anyone give to what she has to say? Or would her words have more weight, no pun intended? As for Bhaumik's supposition that 'most of us still think of Roy as a Booker Prize winning author of a novel we have never read', I'm assuming she means that Indians have not read it and, with that assumption, I'd like to know which Indians she's talking about because, if there's one novel I would think they'd actually have read, it would be The God of Small Things. This is certainly true in Pakistan where Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Naipal's 'A House for Mr. Biswas' may grace many an English reader's bookshelf but it is Roy's lone ranger that has actually been read.

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire is Roy's essay on modern day imperialism and the Bush administration. Read a review here. Buy it here.

Review: 'This is Not Civilization' by Robert Rosenberg

2006-12-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

A former Peace Corp volunteer, Robert Rosenberg uses his sojourns in an Apache Indian Reservation in the US, in Kyrgyzstan and in Turkey to weave a treat of a cross cultural novel where even Americans are just one more people finding a meaningful address on this earth. However addresses come at the cost of permanency and a bond, if not to land, then perhaps to the people met and promises made. It is this bond that his debut novel This is Not Civilization explores: what do relationships mean in a world where it is increasingly easy to get up, get on a plane and move on.

Twenty three year old Jeff Hartig, college graduated son of white upper-middle class America is shattered by his father's adultery. As a distraction he decides to be useful to humanity and, straight after college, applies for the post of manager at a Teen Center in Red Cliffs Apache reservation, Arizona. However Jeff’s efforts—a computer laboratory, a functional library, a game room with music, Ping-Pong, foosball— are repeatedly vandalized and finally Jeff packs his bags.

Conflicted Apache teen Adam Dale, ‘the only student at the high school trailer with the attendance record to qualify’ for the job of Jeff’s assistant, is sorely disappointed with Jeff’s incumbent departure. Also he is mystified by Jeff’s non-committal lifestyle: how is Jeff able to break ties so easily, indeed to run away from a sense of responsibility?

Next the self centered Jeff is accepted by the Peace Corps and sent to the remote mountain village of Kyzyl Adyr Kirovka in post-Soviet Kyrgstan to teach English. Rosenberg deftly weaves a comical picture of the languid Kirovka folk going about their life as they know it while their country transitions from a communist economy to the opportunities of privatization. The gracious, party loving villagers submerge their new English teacher with generous hospitality- eat, vodka, eat, vodka then eat and vodka some more. However all the villagers secretly hope that Jeff will marry one of their daughters and whisk her away to the good i.e. financially secure American life.

Most hopeful to this end is the energetic Anerbek Tashtantaliev manager of the village’s main livelihood, a defunct cheese factory still financed by the ex-communist government because of a bureaucratic mix-up. Anarbek lives in fear of discovery, but soon he has greater problems when his daughter Nazira falls from grace on account of running away from the man who would be her husband via the ancient Kyrgyz tradition of bride-kidnapping. Rosenberg’s ability to seamlessly weave in cultural nuggets without exoticizing a culture or pronouncing judgments is one of the novel’s strong points. In fact it compels the reader to ponder what exactly it means to be civilized and who decides that--the locals or visitors, the native born or the immigrants, the domestic governments or those providing foreign aid?

Nazira is Rosenberg’s most realized creation. A thoroughly progressive Muslim woman, smart, resourceful and independent, she sets out to seduce Jeff as best as she can. But Jeff, a somewhat vapid character perhaps because he really doesn’t have much of an inner conflict save that of good intentions laced with apathy, moves when his Peace Corp gig ends feeling guilty for the impulsive one night stand with Nazira but with, as usual, no real strings attached.

Jeff travels to many countries finally landing in Turkey. In Istanbul he finds a job resettling refugees who are trying to get into the US, the home Jeff has no desire to return to. The irony does not escape Jeff and, even more poignant is his feeling that this job, between anchorless folk, has finally anchored him and given him purpose.

Jeff’s jollity is put to a test when his past knocks on his door and his home becomes a communal address. First enters Adam. University completed, Reservation left behind, he wants to see what the world has to offer, can he crash at Jeff’s? Next comes Anarbek who is being blackmailed in Kyrgstan to the tune of twelve thousand dollars or else his cheese factory fraud will be reported to the authorities. When her father does not return to the village in the prescribed time Nazira, her heart heavy with the secret she’s keeping from Jeff, arrives in Istanbul too.

Particularly enjoyable is Rosenberg’s depiction of big city Istanbul, a delectable mix of East and West, ancient and modern, city slick and village bumpkin, ‘the sense that this city lay at the center of the world.’ The prose is always vigorous and never gets bogged down with details for the sake of details or pretty sunsets in different countries like so many cross-cultural novels tend to do. True to form the novel does not end with a sunset over the Bosphorus, instead, just when it seems everyone is set, Istanbul is rocked by the devastating earthquake of 1999 and the novel spirals to its satisfying conclusion of what home and obligations ultimately mean for each character.

This is Not Civilization goes deeper than being merely a tale of similarities and dissimilarities between East and West and whether the twain shall ever meet. Instead it attempts to probe what happiness means and how, in all likelihoods, it means the same thing everywhere, or does it? Rosenberg says in an interview, “I find this amazing: how quickly the world has become connected, how straight forward it is for even relatively impoverished people to search out a new home. It no longer requires an epic journey across the sea, or a year's trek across a continent. I wanted to write a novel which reflected this reality, this flux and interconnectedness.”

What Rosenberg sets out to do he achieves above all with humor. The novel begins with one of the funniest opening I’ve read in a long time: ‘The idea of using porn films to encourage the dairy cows to breed was a poor one’; the earnest blooper is carried further when Anarbek supposes that perhaps the scheme failed because the videos featured sheep.

A Nice Warm Feeling

2006-11-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

'And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women' was reviewed in Newsline.
About my story 'Runaway Truck Ramp' Talib Qizilbash writes:

Many of the selections are much more effective in showing how truly contemporary these women writers are, as the pieces are daring both in content and style. Soniah Kamal’s ‘Runaway Truck Ramp’ is a standout story for openly tackling the quintessential Pakistani taboo subject: sex. Her approach is both clever and candid. It’s candid for the relaxed manner in which she delivers the details of a fling that quickly turns ugly for a young woman because of her partner’s double standards and his view that she is just “practice.” The cleverness lies in how Kamal explores inbred and distasteful attitudes towards sex, for her heroine is not a young Pakistani woman, but a white American who hooks up with a charming Pakistani man.
read rest of the review here

Iraqi Kid Runs For Water What will be on this chil...

2006-12-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

Iraqi Kid Runs For Water

What will be on this child’s heart and mind on his walk back? As for the soldiers, do they even have hearts and minds coz if they do they're not in the right place. Actually if they concede that they’re just as morally rotten as the rest of the world they could happily continue making desperate children run for their water and no one would be more disgusted than they are with anyone else.

'Visa Blues'-- When You Know Who You Are But Your Country Does Not

2006-11-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

No matter where an immigrant makes their home they have a country of origin, a country they believe 'their's' whether they return or not. Hafiza Nilofar Khan believed the same of Bangladesh. Only did Bangladesh believe it too? Add yet another twist in the story of 'where am I, who am I, why am I.'

Nilofar writes:
When I had a civil marriage in St. Helens, Oregon in the year 1998 with a Caucasian American, my father was alarmed since he believed that a Muslim woman cannot marry a Christian man without first converting him into Islam. In my gender ignorance about Islamic rules, I tried to pacify my distressed father by arguing that people who are “ehlekitab”, meaning, believers in the book (Torah, Bible or Koran) may marry each other without having to convert. When my father retorted that only Muslim men are allowed to marry a non-Muslim woman, and not vice versa, I did not grasp the full significance of the convention, and took it for my own religiously inclined father's desire to have a Muslim son-in-law. This August, when I was allowed to leave Dhaka only after paying eighty thousand taka to the Passport and Immigration office in fees and fine, and going through endless stress on account of having a foreigner for a husband, and a daughter, did I realise the actual import of my father's premonitions. If my father were alive today, he might have said, “I forewarned you"
read the rest here

So This Means if I'm Raped in Pakistan I Won't Be Stoned to Death? Or what one General Did another General UnDoes.

2006-11-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

A woman is raped every two hours and gang raped every eight hours in Pakistan.

Pakistan Independent Human Rights Commission
2006

1979. General Zia-ul-Haq's takes over running of Pakistan in a military coup. He decides Pakistan will be governed under Islamic law and so the Shariat Laws and the Hudood Ordinance come into effect

The Hudood Ordinance deals with women's issues and the Zina Laws in particular with
a) abduction of women
b) prostitution
c) adultery
d) rape

New rule: to prove she's been raped in Pakistan a women must produce four males who've witnessed the rape. If she can't, the rape is prosecuted as adultery.
Punishment for adultery: includes imprisonment, lashing and stoning to death.

Behind the Scences of this particular Islamic law:
The indiction to providing four male witness applies in Islamic law to a case where someone accuses a woman of adultery. Four male witnesses must corroborate that this particular married woman cheated on her husband. If four male witnesses cannot be found the accuser is in big big trouble. However General Zia and his band of bearded (and some unbearded) brothers twisted this Islamic law and applied it to women who were raped.
(A lawyer friend of mine once told me that bascially women can get away with having sex in Islam because who the hell can find four male witnesses who can prove without a doubt that they are not lying).

2006 Summer
The government of Pakistan proposes a Woman's Protection Bill that states women who are raped will no longer need to produce four male witnesses.
Many bearded members of parliament protest.
The bill is put aside.

2006 November.
Government returns to the bill.
It is passed.
Women and Men who have been waiting to exhale for the past 27 years, exhale. And again breathe deeply to see what will become of this in the real world of lawyers, courts and appeals.

ps. Muktar Mai maintains an Urdu blog about her day to day life in her new found role

pps. The fundo dudes are very upset. Says Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Islamic Alliance: "the bill will turn Pakistan into a free sex zone." Darling- it will be what it will be only now rapists won't go scott free just because they didn't invite four dudes to watch them perform or, rather, the four dudes who watched joined in instead of holding back in order to do the right thing and testify later.

pps. check out the excellent Pakistaniat blog's excellent write up

ppps. the day Pakistan separates religion from law will be the finest moment of its life

pppps. A pat on the back for President Musharraf and his government for passing the WPB.
His previously egregious statement that women cried rape for fame and money had my heart sinking to new found depths. It's beginning a bit of an upwards float. Although the Pakistani part of my mind will soon begin to wonder what's in it for Musharraf, what's it in for anyone who voted yeah, what's in it, what's in it....because being altruistic is usually not the Pakistani politican's way if any politician's.

God Revisited !!!

2006-11-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

Slate's Deputy Editor David Plotz knew religion in 'bits and pieces' --he knew a bit of this, he remembered a piece of that, the rest he picked up along the way. Then, one day, in adulthood, he goes to a Bar Mitzvah and picks up the good book and opens it and reads and what he reads startles him enough to read more and record what he comes away reading. This record makes for a hysterical series. Here's a, what is known in modern parlance, sneak peek:

Moses leads the Israelites into the wilderness—Day 1 of their 40-year trek. They immediately complain that they're thirsty and the only available water is bitter. We're a grumbling people, aren't we? Freedom after 430 years of captivity, and nothing to do but grouse. The Israelites had crabbed to Moses when Pharaoh made them gather their own straw. When the Egyptian army pursued them to the Sea of Reeds, they had griped to Moses that they would rather have stayed in Egypt as slaves than die by the sea. Now they're fussing that they're thirsty. God gives Moses a piece of wood that cleans up the water—the world's first Brita filter.

The whole series is laced with laugh out loud Brita filter moments, yet never compromising on the serious subtext. Here's the series.
I wish the Quran and Prophet Mohammed were explored in this fashion. But that would mean fatwah and who in thier right mind would be up for that.
ps. left mind?-- okay, okay, juvenile humor :)

Pakistani PoWs from the Kargil War - Part 1 Look ...

2006-11-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

Pakistani PoWs from the Kargil War - Part 1

Look into these mens' eyes. Then close your eyes and hear their voices. Sad. Bewildered. Lost.
War is the oldest preoccupation in the world-- he said, he said, mine, no mine-- wars are here to stay despite all the 'we want peace' talk.
Talk is cheap- while these poor, forlorn soldiers from Pakistan tell their tales, the U-tube comments sections are full of invective from both Indians and Pakistanis: we're better than you, we won Kargil, no we did, fuck you, fuck you and fuck your mama too.
So, while the 'educated' battle it out online another poor, forlorn boy in a far flung region gets ready to receive his uniform and put it on.

ps. the reel news: Brittany files for divorce from K-Fed-- life goes on and on and on....

video link from blogger Silsila-e-Mah-o-Saal

Borat has Entered the Building: review The Kazakhs...

2006-11-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

Borat has Entered the Building: review

The Kazakhstan government is not happy, nor should it be. Sasha Baron Cohen's movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan' depicts Kazakhstan as a mysogynistic, anti-semitic, handicap bashing backwater of impoverished villages. Borat arrives in the US to learn civilization for his country and we follow his journey from New York to Los Angeles with stops at Richmond, Dallas, Atlanta etc. Borat is played even bigger and better than his character on HBO's Da Ali G Show. My husband can't stand Borat. I think his dead pan politically insane comments and attitudes are hilarious. Never-the-less, even as I laughed at Borat 's goofs and spoofs in this 80 minute film, it was a very uncomfortable 80 minutes--the comments about Muslims and gay people and the anti-semitic jokes turned my stomach. But in a searching way. There's a scene where an old Jewish couple are figaratively turned into cockroaches-- not funny. To me. Yet much of the audience in the cinema laughed. I kept having to remind myself that Sasha playing Borat is Jewish himself-- you know, I can call my mother what I want but you better respect her. Which is a troubling notion. If people do think this way, is it only a problem when they think this way out loud? Does political correctness curtail freedom of speech? Am I now advocating thought police?
Some scenes were downright frightening: a group of white frat boys bemoaning the end of slavery, a Christian revival where Borat is encouraged to talk in 'tongues', Borat at a gun store where he's happily shown a gun perfect for killing a Jew. And some scenes were just gross--just because hair and fat is added to nudity does not have me cracking up.
That the film's most touching and protective relationship occurs between Borat and a prostitute speaks volumes for the social satire this film is, and for the goodness that deep down Borat's heart is capable of. Or maybe I'm giving Borat too much credit. At the end of the film one wonders that, were this actually real, what 'learnings' Borat would have returned to Kazakhstan from the US with. One thing is for sure though: there are many Americans who have a bit, a lota bit, of Borat living within their souls.

What Ever Happened to Yvonne Ridley after capture by the Taliban?

2006-10-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

It reads like a bad novel based on the stockholm syndrome- woman captured by the Taliban; two and half years later she converts to Islam, except, 'In the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story', is the true tale of the very controversial British journalist Yvonne Ridley. Here's an interview about her converting.

What impressed Ridley more than anything else is the sisterhood among Muslim women. "They are always helping each other in matters such as childcare, fundraising and studying. They want each other to do well. I hadn't expected this. In the west were all too busy pinching each other's boyfriends, and criticizing each other's clothes or weight."
read rest here

As for those of us who hem and haw about the burqa, hijab, niqab, veil, call it what you will and give our lofty opinions on whether it's a symbol of oppression, repression, aggression, suppression or liberation here is Yvonne's essay on wearing a head covering in 21st century Britain.

Some young Muslim feminists consider the hijab and the nikab political symbols, too, a way of rejecting Western excesses such as binge drinking, casual sex and drug use. What is more liberating: being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.
read rest here

here is a review of 'In the Hands of the Taliban'
here are amazon reviews of Yvonne's novel 'Ticket to Paradise'
here is an Al-Jazeera interview from 2004.

PS. why do you think Al- Jazeera fired Yvonne?

America Yawns; Switches on Dancing with the Stars...

2006-10-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

America Yawns; Switches on Dancing with the Stars

As if the threat of international terrorism wasn't enough of a reason to spend sleepless nights, now this turning of America into what it was not. Brings to mind Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' about a world in which America is a totalitarian state. Not so surreal. It can happen here, and it is, and we're yawning because, ya know, it can't happen here.

Then They Came For Me
by
Stephen F. Rohde, Esq.

First they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim.

Then they came to detain immigrants indefinitely solely upon the certification of the Attorney General, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant.

Then they came to eavesdrop on suspects consulting with their attorneys, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a suspect.

Then they came to prosecute non-citizens before secret military commissions, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a non-citizen.

Then they came to enter homes and offices for unannounced "sneak and peek" searches, and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.

Then they came to reinstate Cointelpro and resume the infiltration and surveillance of domestic religious and political groups, and I didn't speak up because I had stopped participating in any groups.

Then they came for anyone who objected to government policy because it aided the terrorists and gave ammunition to America's enemies, and I didn't speak up because...... I didn't speak up.

Then they came for me....... and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and President of the ACLU of Southern California, is indebted to the inspiration of Rev. Martin Niemoller (1937).

William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal

2006-10-23T02:12:00.000-07:00

The Last Mughal, continues the story I began in White Mughals - the story of the fast-changing relationship between the British and the Indians, and especially Muslim Indians - in the late 18th and the mid-19th century writes author William Dalrymple in his essay for the New Statesman. Mesmerizing in its details, I found White Mughals a rewarding and important read. Fiona Atherton's review of The Last Mughal promises this to be an equal.

To a historian, it is surely Dalrymple's painstaking research, his use not only of British sources, but of never-before-translated Persian and Urdu texts, Indian eyewitness accounts and official records, which render this work groundbreaking and long overdue. Finally, a history emerges which is truly 'new', and which challenges 150 years of British teaching. Impressive as this is, the non-historian's admiration is of a different kind. As a revered travel writer as well as historian, Dalrymple's Delhi, the city which he discovered at 18 and which has "haunted and obsessed" him ever since, is tangibly depicted.
read here

ps. the portrait is of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last mughal.

Mukhtar Mai and President Musharraf's Memoirs

2006-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

A hero can come from the unlikeliest of places and Mukhtar Mai is one such hero. Already awed by her courage, watching her accept the Glamour 2005 Woman of the Year Award, I was doubly awed at her humility and simplicity. Just as awe inspiring are Muktar Mai's family for suporting rather than stifling her as well as all the people, men, women, Pakistani, non-Pakistani, who've worked to make sure her story is told and heard.
Mukhtar Mai's 'In the Name of Honor: A Memoir', published in twenty languages, is finally going to be available in the US on October 31st (halloween, but no symbolism shall be read therein). Mukhtar Mai's memoir as well as Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf's recent memoir 'In the Line of Fire' have the same US publisher so I suppose comparisons between promotion and sales etc... will be made. But both memoirs are vastly different. President Musharraf's is a political memoir while Mukhtar Mai's a memoir of politics. President Musharraf's is about running Pakistan and Mukhtar Mai''s about living in it. Perhaps they should be read together since the President has stipulated rape is a means by which women like Mukhtar Mai are afforded an opportunity to immigrate.
ps. does any one know if an Urdu translation is in the works?

Booker Prize 2006- Kiran Desai

2006-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Kiran Desai's wonderful, wonderful novel The Inheritance of Loss wins the 2006 Booker Prize. Me heart be gladeth coz I was rooting for this unput-downable read which spans India, America, and colonialism pre, post, and future of the heart, the mind and the unbreakable spirit. Here's a video interview with Kiran and a review of the novel.

US Air Force Secretary Suggests Using Non-lethal Weapons to Control Domestic Crowds First

2006-09-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Because

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne
read rest here

Excellent idea-- if we do it in our country it's only fair we do it in yours.
Now I'm going to go read some Kafka to get my bearings straight.

Balochistan after Bugti

2006-09-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

In the late eighties my eleventh grade took a cultural trip from Lahore, Punjab to Quetta, Baluchistan. Our class met the regale Akbar Bugti in the Governor House. Our enduring memory: with us was a recent PhD in Philosphy from Punjab University who'd won a gold medal to boot. He asked her to explain 'a nation is born epicurean but dies stoic', she stared at him for half an hour until finally he answered his own question.
On August 26, 2006 Akbar Bugti, Bugti tribe leader and once Governor of Baluchistan, was killed in an army attack. Some consider Bugti a tyrant concerned with only power, others a man who cared about his province and its people. Ahmed Rashid talks of the repercussions following the way Bugti was killed for Balchuchistan and Pakistan.

The army argues that millions have been spent in development, but projects such as the building of the Gawadar port, the building of cantonments and even new roads do not necessarily benefit ordinary Baloch.
The projects are defined by the army and its national security needs, rather than through consultations with the Baloch or even the Balochistan provincial assembly. Then the projects are carried out by outside companies who give few jobs to the Baloch.
By killing Bugti, the president has now earned the permanent enmity of not just the Baloch rebels but the wider Baloch population who may not believe in taking up arms, but are still frustrated with Islamabad for its failure to develop the province.
read rest here

Pankaj Mishra responds to Martin Amis

2006-09-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

On the fifth year anniversary of 9/11 British author Martin Amis wrote a 3 part essay for the Guardian-- a vitriolic essay dripping with sarcasm so much so that any valid points he may make are marred by his 'mean spirited' tone. After all one expects more from the 'rational' Westerner (Amis contends that all Muslims are irrational while all Westerners are, by the very virtue of being 'western' rational) and that too a celebrated author, meaning, for me, a deep thinker empathetic enough to examine issues from every side without needing to resort to petty linguistic tricks. Pankaj Mishra's response fills the slot.

Many people, such as Martin Amis last weekend, may continue to berate Muslims for their apparent incompatibility with 'Western' values of democracy and rationality. We could go on debating forever whether the terrorist acts of British Muslims are directly linked to British policy in the Middle East. But a more urgent question is: where will all this rage and distrust end? Are we hurtling towards the kind of wars that made the previous century so uniquely bloody? How can we change policies that have so comprehensively failed?

read full here

Work Sucks. School Sucks. Life Sucks.

2006-09-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

Canada, Montreal, Dawson College, Cafeteria: A 25 year old randomly shoots for fifteen minutes (talk about fame) because, 'work sucks, school sucks, life sucks.' Apparently his favorite video game is Super Colombine Massacre. Wtf-- if such video games must be birthed must they be named after actual massacres thus making a mockery out of a tragedy i.e. super? His mother, when questioned, is wiping away tears.
This act of unconditional love reminded me of Lionel Shriver's brilliant novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, where a 15 year old kills seven high school students in the gymnasium. The novel is written from the mother's point of view and is a particularly disturbing read about the often sugar coated relationship between parent and child, as well as the psychology of unconditional love. Shriver talks about this and much else in an indepth interview at Identity Theory.

LS: It's funny this business of treating children as peers, I know that I have a weakness for it myself. I am not always comfortable around children. And I am very sensitive about the prospect of being condescending towards them. I hated being condescended to, when I was a child. So I always try to speak to them as if we're on the same level and the same age and they are perfectly intelligent. Well, they may be perfectly intelligent, but they are not the same age. As a consequence they have no idea what I am a talking about. Children do need at certain ages to be talked down to and if you don't talk down to them or come down to their level, you don't communicate.
read the rest here

There are some novels that stay with you long after The End either for a character (Anne of Green Gables), or brilliant language (The English Patient), or structure (The God of Small Things). I read We Need to Talk about Kevin two years ago and it still creeps me out for all the questions it raises about being a parent, good or bad, and nature versus nurture.

ps. fifteen year old Margaret Ann changed her name to Lionel Shriver because she 'thought men had an easier life'.

'Tough Day, Great Opportunity'

2006-08-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

The audience of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central has a rather awkward moment during the show on August 10th, 2006 as Jon interviews Aasif Maandvi for a skit-segment called Forced Perspectives on the carnage in Lebanon. It's akin to being caught laughing at a funeral.

"Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home" book by Alok Bhalla

2006-08-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Alok Bhalla's new book interviews seven Indian and Pakistani writers about their depiction of 1947 partition in their fiction.

Keki Daruwalla's review in The Hindu

Alok Bhalla has taken the finest Indian and Pakistani novelists who portray the Partition — Krishna Sobti, Intizar Husain, Kamleshwar, Bapsi Sidhwa, Krishna Baldev Vaid and Bhisham Sahni. (I miss Chaman Nahal here.) Through detailed dialogues he jogs their memories, and how they crafted their fiction, wrestling with the Partition's moral, social and spiritual dimensions. For, the Partition spilled over into our souls.
read it here

'Digging to America'

2006-09-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

Anne Tyler's 17th novel is a rare treat, a beautiful exploration of what it means to be an American today through the lives of a white-American family and an Iranian-American family who both adopt daughters from Korea. For all the doom and gloom these days, and today 9/11 of all days, this novel offers a hopeful perspective of class, culture and color. I loved it. Anne Tyler's rarely gives interviews so here is an interview from 1977 when she'd only written seven novels, and here is a more recent one on writing Digging to America. Also a short review by Zohreh Ghahrem.
ps. I've been thinking all day of the 9/11 messages on answering machines by people on the planes and in world trade centers: 'I love you, be good, take care, I love you.'

James Frey readers to be refunded

2006-09-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Random House is going to reimburse people who bought A Million Little Pieces, the much fabricated memoir by James Frey. Let's hope publishers beef up their methods to verify claims made in memoirs and writers who feel the need to grossly exaggerate their lives realize they're actually writing fiction.

Does 'The God of Literary Trends' still apply

2006-09-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

In 2002 Noy Thrupkaew wrote a rather damning take on the exoticism of the South Asian author and book in the US publishing world. Four years later, has anything changed? What would Kaavya Viswanathan, plagiarism withstanding, have to say?

"You know, you really should be looking for the next Arundhati Roy."
I plucked at the phone cord wrapped around my neck, sighed, and said, "Oh, absolutely."
It was 1998, and I was working at a publishing company that had jus launched an imprint featuring "the writing of women of all colors." It was my internly task to call independent booksellers across the country to find out what and whom they thought we should publish. Their advice inevitably boiled down to variations on one response: "That Indian subcontinent is really hot. Oh, oops, do you say 'South Asia' now?"
read the rest here

U.S. admits to the not so secret prisons

2006-09-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

President Bush admits the existence of CIA secret prisons in time for the fifth anniversary of 9/11 when emotions and nostalgia will run high. To keep us safe the President would like
1) military tribunals without key legal safeguards for those on trial
2) the legalization on the now officially outed CIA prisons
3) an expemption for U.S. officials from prosecution for possible war crimes.

To keep us moral human rights activists and detainee lawyers cannot possibly agree with the above.

"The president's acknowledgements today do not gloss over the gross illegalities at Guantánamo or in secret CIA prisons," said the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group that works with detainees.
In a related development, the Pentagon issued a new manual on the treatment of prisoners that explicitly prohibits water-boarding, sexual humiliation, electric shocks, the threatening use of dogs and other degrading or painful tactics.
read the rest here

There are plenty of loopholes, however, which will allow for the very torture tactics prohibited above if needed. Anyway the President still maintains that the United States does not torture since CIA tactics "while tough, did not amount to torture'". Okay. We'll take your word for it.
Do safety and morality have to be exclusive of each other?