With a Sort of a Mental Squint

A Nation Of Dreams

2006-10-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

A Reproduction of a Tehelka article on Mahasweta Devi. It is Beautiful;

"Mahasweta Devi had people in tears at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Delivered with passionate heart, her inaugural speech about our freedoms still on hold stirs a kind of moral transformation."

Excerpts

Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is recollected has been, it is repeated backwards, whereas repetition properly so-called is recollected forward.
Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition

At 80-plus I move forward often stepping back into the shadows. Sometimes I am bold enough to step back into the sunlight. As a young person, as a mother, I would often move forward to when I was old. Amuse my son. Pretend I couldn’t hear or see. Make mockery of memory, forget things that had happened a moment ago. These games were for fun. Now they are no longer funny. My life has moved forward and is repeating itself. I am repeating myself. Recollecting for you what has been. What is. What could have been. May have been.

See the tree, the forest, the field lush with crops, a stream dazzling in sunlight. And see, the spotted deer are jumping and fleeing to the forest, the mothers are filling the pitchers from the stream, clutching their children. And the houses are the ones they left behind at Badihatta. The sun is leaning to see the earth. The peasants are irrigating their fields. What an expanse of forest. How green the hills are.

Nothing happens unless you know how to dream. The Establishment is out to destroy, by remote control, all the brain cells that induce dreams. But some dreams manage to escape. I am after the dreams that have escaped from jail. The right to dream is what allows mankind to survive. If you end the right to dream — which the entire world and everyone is doing — you destroy the world. The right to dream should be the first fundamental right. The right to dream. [...]
There’s a story about Nanak — his father made him sit in a shop, told him to sell goods… dus, gyarah, barah, tera… tera, tera, tera... and he gave everything away. Everything is yours. With me, everything became tera… nothing touches the inside. Material things don’t touch me, I remain an outsider, I can’t always be an insider. Genuine warmth, real understanding, some friendship, a few strange things touch me, but I’m an outsider and an insider at the same time. [...]

Since the 1980s, I have been vocal about the daily injustice and exploitation faced by the most marginalised and dispossessed of our people: tribals, the landless rural poor who then turn into itinerant labour or pavement dwellers in cities. Through reports in newspapers, through petitions, court cases, letters to the authorities, participation in activist organisations and advocacy, through the grassroots journal I edit, Bortika, in which the dispossessed tell their own truths, and finally through my fiction, I have sought to bring the harsh reality of this ignored segment of India’s population to the notice of the nation, I have sought to include their forgotten and invisible history in the official history of the nation. I have said over and over, our Independence was false; there has been no Independence for these dispossessed peoples, still deprived of their most basic rights.

How to save and protect one’s culture in these circumstances? Which culture do we protect? And what do we mean when we speak of Indian culture in the 21st century? What culture? Which India? Sixty years after our hard-won Independence, the khadi sari is India just as the mini skirt and the backless choli is. A bullock cart is India just as much as is the latest Toyota or Mercedes car. Illiteracy haunts us, yet the same India produces men and women at the forefront of medicine, science and technology. Eight-year-old children toil mercilessly, facing unimaginable working conditions and abuse as child labourers. That is India. On the other hand, there is another lot of eight-year-olds who spend their time in air-conditioned classrooms and call their mothers at lunch break using their personal mobile phones. That too is India. Satyam Shivam Sundaram is India. Choli ke peechchey kya hai is also India. The multiplex and the mega mall are India. The snake charmer and the maharishi — they too are India.

Indian culture is a tapestry of many weaves, many threads. The weaving is endless as are the shades of the pattern. Somewhere dark, somewhere light, somewhere saffron, somewhere as green as the fields of new paddy, somewhere flecked with blood, somewhere washed cool by the waters of a Himalayan spring. Somewhere the red of a watermelon slice. Somewhere the blue of an autumn sky in Bengal. Somewhere the purple of a musk deer’s eye. Somewhere the red of a new bride’s sindoor. Somewhere the threads form words in Urdu, somewhere in Bengali, somewhere in Kannada, somewhere in Assamese, yet elsewhere in Marathi. Somewhere the cloth frays. Somewhere the threads tear. But still it holds. Still. It holds.

The pattern shifts, flows, stutters, forms again and changes shape from one season to the other. I see one India in the pattern. You see another. Light and shadow play. History and modernity collide. Superstition and myth, Rabindrasangeet and rap, Sufi and Shia and Sunni, caste and computers, text and sub-plot, laughter and tears, governments and oppositions, reservations and quotas, struggles and captivity, success and achievement, hamburgers and Hari Om Hari, Sanskrit and sms, the smell of rain and the sound of the sea. A seamless stitching. Many, many hands have stitched, are stitching and will continue to stitch India. My country. Torn, tattered, proud, beautiful, hot, humid, cold, sandy, bright, dull, educated, barbaric, savage, shining India. My country. And its myriad cultures. From time immemorial to now, the 21st country. From the Indus Valley to the bluetooth handset, India has seen it all, contains it all within itself and its cultures. There is room in India for all faiths, all languages, all people. Despite the communal crises, despite the fundamentalism, the backwardness of rural life, the memories of underdevelopment which are no memory but reality for us, the threat of aids, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and droughts, farmer suicides, police violence, environmental disasters wreaked by industries and farmland being bought over by multinational companies, despite the battering by history and circumstance, India still is. Its culture still is. Hence we all still are. India has learnt to survive, to adapt, to keep the old with the modern, to walk hand in hand with the new millennium whistling a tune from the dawn of time. This is truly the age when the joota is Japani, the patloon Englistani, the topi Roosi. But the dil — the dil is and always will remain Hindustani.

As we face the future, and as I stand here, invited to speak of my country’s culture before such an eminent gathering and at such an honourable occasion, I wish to share my dream of where I would like to see my India go. I have spoken of the fundamental right to dream. I would now like to exercise that right.
I dream of an India where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. Where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Where words come out of the depth of truth. Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary sand of dead habit.

I dream of an India to which the world ‘backward’ does not and cannot ever apply. I wish to be Third World no more but First, the only world. I wish for children to be educated. I wish for women to step into the light. I wish for justice for the common man. Survival for the farmer. Homes for the poor. And hope for all. I wish for debts to cease. For poverty to vanish. For hunger to become a bad word that no one utters. I wish for the environment to be protected, to be loved and restored. I wish the land to be healed, the waters to be pure again. For the tiger to survive. I wish for self reliance, for self respect, for independence from the shackles of superstition. I wish for equal medical aid for all.

For light and water and a roof above every head. I wish for more and more books to be written, to be published, in every language there is in the country. Let the words pour out. Let the stories be told. Let the people read. Let them learn to read. To trace their fingers over every alphabet until they can spell their names. Their addresses. Until they can write for themselves: I know. I can. I will. Let us fight ignorance with knowledge. Let us battle hatred with logic. Let us slay evil with the sword of the pen.

I wish for no more satis, no more dowry deaths, no more honour killings, no more flesh being bought and sold. Let no more parents sell their children to survive. Let no more mothers drown their daughters in the dead of night. Let the downtrodden awake, let the forgotten faces and the muffled voices arise to claim their own. Let the pattern make room, let these new threads find place, let new colours set afire the tapestry. Set ablaze the future. Into that heaven of freedom, let my India awaken again and again. It is a big dream, I know. But not an impossible one.

When I speak of Indian culture, then, I speak of all this. Culture is what will take us into the future yet keep us in close contact with our roots, our history, our tradition, our heritage. Culture will let us take a quantum leap and land on the moon bur first, before all that, it must help us take a few small steps towards understanding ourselves better, towards knowing each other better. Culture must once again remind us to be a tolerant and truly secular people.

I have tried in my own way to give you a picture of this culture. But how am I to even to begin arriving at a definition that will be acceptable to all across an India that is so chaotic. So calm. So flexible. So rigid. So rich. So poor. So understanding. So easy to be misunderstood. After all, there are many Indias, as I say over and over again. Simultaneous. Even parallel.

And whose culture is it anyway? Yours? Mine? Theirs? There are so many ‘theirs’ in the land of my birth who have nothing but the harsh landscape of surviving from day to day. The dispossessed remain with us after six decades of becoming possessed of a freedom we all fought for. They all fought for.I claim elsewhere to have always written about the ‘culture of the downtrodden’. How tall or short or true or false is this claim? The more I think and write and think some more, the harder it gets to arrive at a definition. I hesitate. I falter. I cling to the belief that for any culture as old and ancient as ours to have survived over time and in time, there could only be one basic common and acceptable core thought: humaneness. To accept each other’s right to be human with dignity.

This then is my fight. My dream. In my life and in my literature.

Jamghat- a million revolutions

2006-10-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Over the past 2 years i have come across some of the most amazing individuals. People who dont talk but do. Those who are willing to be the change and get their satisfaction from taking up tough challenges. The following is an eye-opening view that Kaivalya Desai wished to share with my walkers group (KLOD.B) and i am reproducing it for the rest of the world in my Blog:

Jamghat “a group of street children”

Sleep Out Without All Out

On 11th of September 2006, when the Jamghat team started its new project at Jama Masjid, a wild thought struck all of us. Despite so many people in front of our eyes there and on other streets of Delhi we were not able to digest the fact that these people actually eat, drink and sleep in those conditions.

So we decided to have a first hand feel of the condition of homeless people and specially kids on the streets of Delhi at night. Finally we thought of sleeping on Delhi roads for a night. While we were deciding on the date of sleep out a number of questions crossed our minds, like ‘can these people sleep here without taking drugs and suletion(solution)’ and then in the process finalized the date as 23rd of September 2006.

On 23rd before the sleep out we did a night walk which started at 7:00 p.m. from Old Delhi Railway Station. The four of us that is Amit, Vinay, Vinod and me(Kaivalya) were accompanied by John who is an intern from England and is doing a research project on street kids in Delhi and by Upamanyu who is student of Delhi University and a very dear friend of Jamghat.

From 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. we covered the the Purani Dilli area including Fatehpuri area of Chandni Chowk, Kashmere Gate, I.S.B.T. and Yamuna Bazar.

After the walk we got a very positive feedback from John who was now even more determined to work towards the problems of street kids in Delhi and then with good wishes left us behind. Then came the time to sleep out with the people on the streets and only the sky above us.

The place where we slept was a divider on the outer ring road near Yamuna Bazar. The reason why we selected this place was that it was prone to all kindsof dangers from from Police Harassment to Gundas to Accidents due to fast moving heavy vehicles at night.

We went through some crazy experiences at night. Once our sleep was broken by two big rats fighting near our toes and they scaring us rather than we scaring them. Sometimes drug addicts came and started keenly staring at us but they didn’t do anything and went away quietly. But the most scary incident was when a heavy truck almost ran over us it actually kissed our heads and went away.
In the middle of the night at around 2 we woke up because of the cold weather that night. All of us were shivering as we didn’t have any blanket or bed sheet to cover ourselves. But this forced us to think about the situation of other people on chilly winter nights of December and January. Then we got up and went to I.S.B.T. to have a cup of tea after which we went to another pavement which was stinking due to urine smell but when we found so many people already sleeping out there we thought that even we should try it out.
By this time were so tired that as soon as we laid down there we went to sleep for two hours. This gave us partial answers to some of our questions. We actually were able to empathize with people who do so much of physical work throughout the day and are therefore able to sleep in those dangerous conditions.
In the morning we did a feedback session in which each one of us in a couple of lines said what came straight from our hearts following are those statements:-

AMIT- Kabhi Paise nahi honge, ghar nahi hoga aur kam nahi hoga to in logon ki tarah mehnat karke sadak pe soke bhi zindagi ka saath nibha lenge par usool nahi bechenge.

VINAY- Yaar uth ke issue ke baare mein soch ke bhi nahi soch pa raha hoon ya log akhir yahaan har roz manage kaise karte hain.

VINOD- Ajeeb si khushi hai ki hum issue ko janane ke liye sadak pe utar aaye.

UPAMANYU- Maain Dilli mein 1.5 saal se akela hostel mein reh raha hoon par aaj tak kisi bhi tarah ka nasha nahi kiya but agar yahan 1 mahine bhi rahoonga to bure se bura nasha karne lagoonga.

KAIVALYA- Sharir se aam aadmi hone ki gandh aa rahi hai aur amiron ke chotepan pe gussa aa raha ki wo apne faayede ke alawa kuch nahi sochte but at the same time I feel very luck to have been brought up in a secure environment.

But till now a lot of questions disturb us and we seriously need to find answers to them so that we could actually WORK WITH KIDS RATHER THAN TRYING THE STEROETYPE WAY OF WORKING FOR THEM.

Also in the end we on behalf of Jamghat would like to invite more and more volunteers who could help us out in our efforts in any which way and work with us towards building a better environment for the street kids.

HAZAARON KHWAISHEIN AISI

Kaivalya Desai
Jamghat

Space tourist

2006-09-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

I Loooovveeee Indian News ...

CNN Says "Female space tourist blasts off"
Star News Says " Haseena pahunchi Sitaron me"

why Haseena??

bloody crap

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger

2006-09-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

Something i stumbled on :-

What a buzz all the bloggers are making these days! It seems like just about everybody is pouring their musings into a text box. Are you feeling tempted to start a blog of your own? Here are some ways to bypass the trend.

Steps

Find five completely random blogs, and read them daily for a month. After thirty days, you will absolutely dread your self-imposed requirement to read all that dreck. Any blog you create will most likely be on par with what you've been reading. Don't put anyone through that.
Consider that your voice, even if it is truly a good one, is a tiny peep against the massive wave of tripe out there. The odds of anyone you don't already know finding your blog are low.
Write on a regular basis in a text editor instead. If that doesn't satisfy your urge, and you feel that you must post your blog online, then you might just be craving attention and validation--which you'll never truly find in a blog. If you give up on your Wordpad journal after about three days, you'll do the same with a blog that just takes up server space.
Ask yourself if you really have the time to commit to a blog. What about that treehouse you wanted to build? Or the book you wanted to write? Or the car you wanted to fix up? Or the restaurant you wanted to take your significant other to? Or the new career you wanted to pursue? Instead of writing about pretty much nothing, or whining about all the things you wish you were doing instead, start doing something that'd actually be worth writing about. And if it's really worth writing about, you'll be having too much fun doing it to tear yourself away from it.

Tips

Rest easy in the knowledge that it's perfectly okay and respectable to not have a blog at all.
If attention and validation are what you're looking for, know that you will get neither from blogging. As above, very few people will ever know that your blog (or you, by proxy) exists. The remainder of comments posted to your blog will be sappy treacle, which you won't trust as being sincere anyway.
Consider writing on a wiki instead. Unlike most blogs, wikis like Wikipedia and wikiHow are read by millions of people each month. Several wikiHow authors receive "fan mail" messages every day from appreciative readers. In addition, many authors discover that they enjoy the wiki collaborative writing process more than writing in solitude.
If you plan to use a blog as a way of keeping in touch with a group of people, such as friends, family, or co-workers, then you may want to make sure it's inaccessible to the public (for the public's sake as well as yours). Using a message board instead of a blog can simplify matters and help keep it interactive.
Try participating as a regular commentator to three to five blogs that you think highly of. This plan has the advantage of writing for the public along with not doing the publishing oneself.

Warnings
The information you post on the Internet is likely to linger for years and years to come, as web pages are archived by "snapshot" services like the Wayback Machine. Once it's out there, you can't take it back. An employer running a Google search on your name years down the line might be turned off by your now documented obsession with your cat.
Keep in mind that, unless you expressly make it otherwise, blogs are extremely public. This is not your secret diary that you write your innermost thoughts in because only you have the key and you wear it around your neck 24/7. If you have stuff that you don't want your mom, your best friend, your significant other, your secret crush, or your aforementioned cat to know, don't go blabbing it to complete strangers on the internet. You cannot assume that the people you don't want to see what you're saying won't somehow stumble across your blog and know all your dirty little secrets. If you must record these thoughts for posterity, do so offline.
You may never know if you enjoy blogging unless you try it.

the above was a wikipost from http://www.wikihow.com/ i kinda liked what they are saying. But i have only one response. I enjoy writing and seeing my words appear on the screen and i enjoy knowing that some people out there may be reading what i have written. Some simple pleasures of life, nothing more.

Back with a Vengeance

2006-09-19T03:26:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentleman,,

The Man is Back (me, myself & the undersigned) after a long hiatus.In the 5 months that i was supposed to have vanished from the face of the earth. I think i have done some interesting stuff. Lemme just see:

Got myself a Beautiful & Amazing Girlfriend .
Co-Authored a book on Delhi for Outlook Traveller (Walks in Delhi & Heritage Sites (book will be out in a month)
Took up Studying for a CFA (CFA institute, ex-AIMR).
Finally decided on a career goal, (after 4 yrs of indecision & confusion)
the old fire in the belly is also back (it had kinda disappeared 3 yrs ago to be replaced by an odd state of mind numbness & boredom)
Helped setup with my mom, a trading company in Apparels, Jewellery and Accesories (called Indus Tree)(now creating the logo & website)

hmmm,, i have been busy, will be talking bout em in future blog posts.
CIAO for now

p.s: my absence will also be explained. :)

Strange Results from Google Trends

2006-05-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Google Trends is a cool new tool (timepass) just launched from the fabled stables of Google Labs. And in its own words it---

"analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results -- our search-volume graph."

"Below the search and news volume graphs, Google Trends displays the top cities, regions, and languages for the first term you entered.

now its that second line that i found quite interesting & proceeded to test drive the tool. and i did get some really curious responses.

the words chosen for the experiment were:

+Sex
+Bollywood
+Shah Rukh Khan

aaaaaaand i entered the first word- "SEX"

In the top ranking cities, the results indicate 2 Indian cities (naturally delhi is the top city which searched for "SEX"), 2 Turkish cities & 1 Egyptian city. Hey! what happened to western corruption..(and what is the deal with Chicago?)

It keeps getting curiouser & curiouser (is that a word?)

The second chart shows the Countries from where the term was searched and it does seem to have some sort of pattern, Pakistan, Egypt, Vietnam, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, India, etc (a stellar collection of sexually repressed countries, I Think).

The next in line is "Bollywood"

now here our movies seem to be extremely popular in Pakistan and especially Lahore . More than our country in fact.

BTW why do people in Surat want to know so much about Bollywood (The Bharat Shah Effect ??)

Here again Pakistan takes the cake (they are more interested in our movies than we are????)

Now for the last Word Search "Shah Rukh Khan".

Either this guy is in morocco and getting covered by the Media there OR the moroccans have taken an unhealthy liking to our KING KHAN.

aaand what is Lima, doing searching about him (it doesn't even have an NRI population ??)
The Moroccans and the Pakis are at it again, followed closely by India & Peru???

Now with the above results. I call upon all fellow armchairs researchers & fellow time wasters. we have a new tool in our hands, Make use of it, its good fun..and utterly thought provoking :)

P.S. also please get me some answers

Enjoy.

Fun with Dick & Jane -The Chinese Version

2006-05-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

Check out the back cover of this DVD. Rest assured that the chinese maybe wonderful at manufacturing stuff at cheap prices, but they are a bit away from world domination, if this is how they market their products. They seem to have copied a critical review(not exactly flattering :) ) from IMDB.com and printed it on the back of the DVD Cover.

This is what it actually says:

"This seems to be one of those films in which almost all the funny bits were in the trailer, and the trailer wasn't really all that good. For a pretty short film, I seemed to be looking at my watch quite a bit.... and thinking my watch must be broken since it couldn't be possible that not much time had passed by. Jim Carrey was definitely trying, but for as much of a Jim Carrey fan as i am, it generally seemed he had done it all before, and it was better the last few times he did it.

Tea Leoni was not bad, but did not add much to the film, either. And Judd Apatow must have used all his good material in the 40 yr old Virgin, because I only got a couple of laughs out of this one. Although I would say that there was a bit of laughter around me in the theatre, so some folks must have enjoyed it. This wasn't a bad movie maybe worth watching on HBO if you have nothing better to do. Just not worth the price of popcorn."

The Skeletor Show

2006-05-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

hehehe found someone doing a spoof on Skeletor called "The Skeletor Show" from our favorite childhood show "He Man and the Masters of the Universe".

Actually its not that funny, but worth a dekko.

miracle & success

2006-05-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

Saw "Miracle" yesterday on Star Movies, an entertaining sports movie about how a bunch of 20-24 yr olds won the olympics gold medal coming from nowhere, absolute underdogs to beat an invincible Russian squad in 1978.

It was an interesting movie yet in many ways average.

What really caught my eye at the end of the movie, were the credits. They talked about what the players are presently doing (the kinda job) and surprisingly all of them had become either vice presidents (of well known Consulting & Financial Kind), CEOs , Entrepreneurs , and yes! head surgeons & doctors too.(atleast 15 of the 20 guys were like that).

Makes me wonder, is it possible that successful people in one area (even as diverse as Medicine & Ice Hockey) can be successful in other areas also. Then i remember

(Geena Davis was an olympic archer at the age of 45 after a successful acting career).

(Hedy Lamarr, the famous actress of the 30s was a member of the inventor's council, and filed many patents in communication technology which would later become the founding principle of the modern Mobile Technologies).

I wonder if our achieving sports men/women could ever become as successful in another career. I dont think so, we the public would never allow them in another career (especially as tough as a Business Career or Medicine, which would require them to go to college again)

Reggaeton Ninos......video

2006-05-06T02:37:00.000-07:00

Bet you have not heard of Reggaeton, the new music sub culture, a combination of Hip Hop, Cumbia, Dancehall & Reggae. it is a subculture with strong hispanic roots and has been 15 yrs in the making. The proponents in recent years have been Daddy Yankee and N.O.R.E. and it is going to grow bigger in the next 5 yrs. I love it because it has a strong emphasis on melody and it kinda grew on me, with VH1 promoting it big time in the last month.

In betwen all this, there is a new band called Reggaeton Ninos-- children who have taken and remixed all the great reggaeton hits, giving their own spin to the songs and removing the explicit lyrics. they are quite good, essentialy latin youths from NY (10-17 yrs). (P-Star,Rahelly, Isaac & William). They seem to have skyrocketed to the top of the billboards. I believe the concept of remade songs for tweens has also made the music bosses sit up & take notice.

Reggaeton Ninos Lyrics

Reggaeton Ninos Music Video Codes

Music Video Codes by VideoCure.com

Food & the Names that Guide Us

2006-05-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

Sample these Dishes from some recent menus, i have had the honor recently of getting my hands on.(5 star hotel restaurants actually !)

Rice Dumplings with lentil sauce
Aubergine Onion Pizza

.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
yes, they are
also known by their poor country names..

Idli Sambhar
Baingan ke bharte ka pizza.

I pity the poor soul, who experiments in these joints?

Reminds me of the time i ordered Geoffrey's Chicken platter and actually got Butter Chicken and Nan.
blech!

UN cooking podcast-killing treaty

2006-05-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

The UN's World Intellectual Property Organization has reconvened to discuss a treaty to kill innovative Internet audio/video offerings -- like podcasting, YouTube, Google Video, and Democracy Player -- in order to protect the business models of a few entrenched broadcasters. This is the Broadcast Treaty, and the process -- never pretty -- got uglier than ever today.

The Chairman of this treaty committee has colluded with the US to bring this treaty to the Web, and to be sure that it contains a clause that will give DRM even more mandatory protection than it enjoys today. As the committee reconvened today, the Chairman revealed that he'd gone even further in giving the US what it wants, at the expense of the will of the rest of the world, particularly developing nations like Brazil & India

Virtually the entire world has opposed the extension of the broadcast treaty to the Web. Giving people who host Web-based audio/video a 50-year monopoly over the use of the copies they send out is just plain nuts. The Web is full of Creative Commons licensed material, public domain material, and other material that either no one owns, or has been expressly licensed for free re-distribution. The US has carried water for Microsoft and Yahoo, both of whom see a webcasting provision as an easy way of keeping competition from overtaking their video offerings. Even the head of the US Copyright Office agrees that the world hates this idea.

Previously, the Chairman had resolved the problem by putting webcasting into an optional part of the treaty (a small improvement, since the US would certainly require its trading partners to adopt it as part of its treaties). But with this meeting, the Chair has put it back into the core of the treaty -- a core that virtually every country in the room has already rejected!

To make matters worse, the Chair has also moved the objections to the treaty's DRM requirement into an optional section of the treaty, to be discussed separately. Many developing nations, most notably Brazil and India, previously rejected the idea that the treaty would extend even more legal protection to DRM, which has been a total failure at enriching artists, and which will turn their domestic entertainment industry into merely suppliers for US DRM companies like Microsoft and Apple.

When EFF brought a letter signed by 20 leading technology firms opposing this treaty, they let the copies be repeatedly stolen and tossed in the garbage cans in the toilets. They threatened to throw out bloggers who published the contents of the negotiations.

These twin provisions -- Webcasting and DRM -- are deadly for podcasters. Podcasting services rely on the ability to mirror, aggregate, index, process, convert and host podcasts, and hundreds of thousands of podcasts are licensed to explicitly permit this kind of work. But once you need permission from hosting companies like Yahoo before you can index, and once it's illegal to break copy-restriction formats to analyze the podcasts they contain, it's game over.

The forest of hundreds of startups gets burned to the ground, and only a few old trees like Yahoo and Microsoft are left standing.

This is the same UN agency that created the DMCA and EUCD, the laws used to jail crypto researchers and shut out tech companies that want to make interoperable technology, that let the Church of Scientology and others censor web-pages by claiming that they infringe on copyright.

They're the most deadly enemies the Internet has.

They claim they're acting on your behalf.

This post was written for boingboing.net and i have reproduced it here because i believe that it is relevant to all.

see EEF for more details

Immigration

2006-05-02T02:10:00.000-07:00

My respose to Arzan's take on Immigration Monday

USA was built on immigration. And no it was not only built by nice, educated Individuals alone. The story of america is the story of first generation immigrants who had the fire to succeed, because there was no other option but to survive. The usual wealth generators are the 1st generation immigrants, while by the 2nd & 3rd generation they are integrated into the american mainstream. This happened with largescale immigration phases by the Irish, Italians, Russians, Germans & the Jews and they all came in uneducated, rough and were what other countries would call SCUM. but the fact is that the drive to succeed is the highest in a dispossessed people/refugees(in this case economic).

An entrepreneurial study that we had once conducted ,indicated a situation in india wherin the richest people were usually those who were once refugees whether Punjabis, from the partition, Gujaratis & Marwaris from drought impacted areas from Gujarat & Rajasthan.

So i believe it is wrong to say that the hispanics would provide less economic value than the Indians & Chinese who come in better educated. It is a matter of time and the drive to succeed (fire in the belly) will equalise everything.

Though i believe that in USA immigration has to be done in a more focussed manner , so as to channelise it the way the canadians are doing, by allotting points on the basis of skills. This will have to be supported by strong immigration policing & better border control. but it has to be kept in mind tha those who have lived in USA for a period of time will have to be given a choice (before they are sent to deportation camps) to prove how they had been useful to the Country. (whether by contributing sufficient taxes or by any community service etc) and if the immigration division finds it above a certain minimum threshold, they should be allowed to stay.

Drishya

2006-04-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

I came across a fascinating group (courtesy: Jabberwock).which calls itself

Drishya--a film appreciation & research group.

and their site says:

" We at Drishya believe that Film is a medium that can communicate to people cutting across class creed and race. The language of film can identify and address issues like gender, child abuse, communalism, sex education and violence. Sensitive subjects like AIDS awareness can be dealt with empathetically using cinematic narrative.

This is where we started our journey. We took cinema where electricity is a new phenomenon. We showed people in rural West Bengal, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Bicycle Thief and we watched them enjoy both equally. We organized shows featuring the ancient art of oral story telling or ‘Kathak’ before our film screenings so that people could enjoy the most ancient art form with the most modern.

Our screening are uniquely designed for our target audiences so that they can take back something new after watching them. We have categorized screenings designed to address specific issues like gender women empowerment, or Film Noir. These screenings are specially thought of keeping Universities and Film Schools in mind.

Our future goals include adding to our collection of films. Drishya is also keen to build up a film archive which will preserve these films using the latest technology so they can be used for screening and study in the future."

It makes me feel good that, after so many years, the youth in this country are reclaiming their right to a cultural space, whether theater, music, blogs, literature or any other avenue of intellectual & creative thought. They have an awesome collection of some path breaking cinema.

Getting a Passport in Delhi

2006-03-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

I am Furious, I am Angry and Damned Pissed , I have been running all over town to get my passport form submitted. (taking a day off, standing in line for 4 hours etc etc). AND all this while, i had assumed that their is only one passport office in Delhi.

Unknown to the general public including ME, the govt seems to actually have three other offices running in the show which have asolutely no crowds ( i.e. are mostly empty & have no silly token system) and not only that, are also open on saturdays for working people.

What irritates the hell outta me is the big question "why is this information not available anywhere else" except the Delhi Police Website.

It is not on the passport website, nor is it in any other govenment related communication. and most of all the maha question --why is this information not revealed (even pasted on a wall will do ) in the regional passport office in Bhikaji Cama Place?.

My sources :) indicate that the reason is the money involved and that fact that each of the passport offfices compete for the application money, with the inevitable result: the consumer is not informed about the existence of other offices and as a result simpler procedures and other alternatives.

How To Be An Expert

2006-03-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

A nice post by Headrush, detailing what it really takes to be an expert.

Italy = India

2006-03-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

turn up the volume /

Check out the hilarious animation short by Bruno Bozzetto, the famous italian character animator. It is a fantastic parody of the differences between Italy and the rest of Europe. But that's not the point i am trying to make here.

See the similarity between Italy and India. Makes me understand how Sonia Gandhi can feel so comfortable here. :-]

for more such animations: check: Link

To Prepone an American

2006-02-27T01:34:00.000-08:00

Had a mini argument with the team today. The point of contention was the use of "Prepone" in client communication. It seems according to my colleagues, there is no word like "Prepone" in the english language.

A quick check on google revealed that americans do not understand the concept of prepone, well, it means the advancement of a scheduled date/time and is a simple antonym of postpone. What googling also revealed was that there has been some sort of healthy discussion on the word happening and is the latest addition in the western dictionaries.

What i found interesting about the word is that unlike most other words in the english language of Indian Origin, this word is bereft of any ethnic moorings. It is a simple word created from another simple english word on the basis of necessity.

It complies with two criteria, first it needs to be spoken by a substantial number of people & second it needs to be understood the first time any newbie hears it.

Well, about the word, we let it be, in the capability document we were creating, its time the americans learnt new english :)

Grizzly Man

2006-02-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

Watched a dvd of a movie “Grizzly Man”, which began with the line ---

In nature, there are boundaries.

One man spent the last 13 years of his life crossing them.

In effect a movie/documentary, made from the footage camera of a now dead protagonist and interviews with the people he knew.

It is about the amateur grizzly bear expert Timothy Treadwell who periodically journeyed to Alaska to study and live with the bears. He was killed, along with his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, by a rogue bear in October 2003.

Through out the movie, you can’t figure out the guy. With all the complexities of an unpredictable guy, he was a person who considered himself an eco-warrior. He likened himself to a bear, where he lived with the wild bears for 13 yrs.

It had some astonishingly beautiful and exquisite moments, which I daresay no professional director would have attempted.

A wild fox called “spirit” dancing on the top of his tent and Tim’s camera tracking the paw steps as they moved, from inside the tent.
There is another scene in which Tim’s talking to his camera, with a bear 10 feet behind him. And suddenly two wild foxes rush in and start nudging him. Then they go and steal his cap. Tim then grabs his camera and runs after the two foxes cursing as he runs along, then the two foxes disappear into a den. This is followed some time later in the footage of them coming and giving him the cap and they then disappearing inside their den.
Tim Swimming in the lake with the bears and attempting to catch a fish.

The movie abounds with these magical moments. Yet the movie is beyond the wonderful footage, it’s about the complex man, considered a maniac, a warrior who wanted to protect the rights of bears, a suicidal man.

Throughout the movie in the interviews, he would stand accused of anthropomorphizing (establishing human emotions to animal personalities) the animals, also of habituating the bears with humans and in effect endangering them by making them not fear Humans.

But what also comes across through his own camera is a Boy turned Man who would go and live with the bears and cross an invisible boundary that separates a Human and a Wild Animal, Creating a relationship for which there was no common point, some association which emanates from a primordial past where we were all creatures of the same ilk/kind. A Simpler yet Harsher World.

The Movie begin and ends with a facts and stories around his and his girlfriends death, by a man-eating-Bear, who would be killed by the ranger team which reached his site to recover Tim & Amie’s bodies. They also discovered Audio recordings of the deaths recorded by Tim in which he is screaming to Amie “Get Out Here I Am Getting Killed”. This recording was not in the movie though it was talked about.

Timothy Treadwell -“I Love You, I Love You, I Love You” (saying through out the movie to the bears and the foxes)
Timothy Treadwell -“I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals” (To The Camera)

I f you are the kind who likes animal planet or a person who is interested in Man & Beast Context Relations. Or simply likes a good Human Story, then go watch it, you would love it.

Yo, Man. its that Freedom thing we want

2006-01-29T10:11:00.000-08:00

मोहनदास करमचन्द गांधी, giving the yo sign to the people of India.

He was assasinated on January 30 1948

Auto Expo Excursion

2006-01-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

Didn't know how to start my first sensible entry on my blog, so i made it a bit easier for me, letting my pictures do the intro talking.

So Saturday afternoon, went with a couple of friends to Pragati Maidan and my god, the buggers had put the ticket prices to 100 bloody bucks, an outrage. Though in hindsight it did reduce the crowd a bit, making it somewhat easier to click.

Suzuki Swift in its Sport' Avatar looking positively mean.

The 1.6 ltr/125 bhp model with performance tyres on 16-inch alloys, twin exhausts, Recaro seats and colour coordinated interiors.
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BIG BUS, SMALL MAN.

The Tata Globus Bus meant for long travel, a result of the Daewoo Commercial Vehicles takeover. Take my word for it; it was huge and built like a sleek Tank.
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A Bike from the Indian Motorcycle Company.

The first American bike (somebody tell me which is this model), reminds me of an upcoming movie "The Worlds fastest Indian" based on the life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle - a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record in 1967
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Confederate Phaeton 1932 model

Check out the amazingly beautiful chrome plated engine doors and 18" wire wheels More info: - OHV inline 6 cylinder 60 bhp unit.
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It’s about the feel.

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The TVS Predator concept bike,

a 500cc V-twin motor mean machine, Proof that Indian design is maturing in leaps and bounds, Hope these go from concept to production ever,
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Jenson Button's drive

The BAR Honda formula 1 car, / 0-100 in 5.2 secs. Ahem i preferred Schumacher’s ride last time (a ferrari is a Ferrari).
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My Dream CAR, The ORIGINAL FORD MUSTANG,

seen in the vintage section
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My Other Dream CAR, The NEW FORD MUSTANG GT,

seen in the Ford pavilion Actually my dream car is a Jaguar E-class 1968 model, but that is essentially a drive-in-England car.
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And bye bye to auto expo 2006, waiting for 2008

Hallelujah, The Blog Begins

2005-12-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

To Say Time Will Tell