Amar Akbar Anthony

Faiz, the poet of nowhere

2011-05-12T11:25:00.000Z

This Faiz Ahmed Faiz hysteria with most Indians, gay Pakistanis and confused firangis resulted in me exasperatedly asking my father (the average expat desi not illuminated by the literati) if he ever related to Faiz during his younger days and his poetry; he responded;

Gulon mein rang bhare baad-e-naubahaar chale
Chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka kaarobaar chale

'Thats the only piece of poetry apart from 'mujhsey pehli si mohabbat' that i remember from him only because Mehdi Hasan and Noor Jahan made the two songs popular respectively.

He was gay poet who was popular with communists and special class of rich people who had all the time on their hands.

I think Iqbal, poet of the East was a better poet and if main stream is concerned Ahmed Faraz'.

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With due respect to the intelligence of Faiz fans, Faiz is known to have stood up to corrupt regime and is said to have swore in Gen Yahya's office while waiting for him with the words 'tell that dog to hurry up' - if anecdotes are to be relied upon.

Hollywood style Incest

2010-09-18T08:52:00.005Z

A female genetically modified creature created using the DNA of a female scientist, whose husband (the father effectively) ends up shagging the clean shaven bald creature, followed by the creature getting a sex change procedure due to genetic defect and returning dad's sexual favor by impregnating the donor herself i.e. It's mother, who is paid handsomely to deliver the patented creature who is the child of the mother's child...

That Splice from Hollywood for you...not even worth watching on DVD..

2010-09-06T23:35:00.000Z

I miss this.

Rant....

2010-08-02T05:55:00.005Z

Rating: R18+

Disclaimer: Apologies for the extreme profanities but heard first-hand over a period of one month (compiled in one paragraph) and convey the complete meaning. People with head and heart problems resulting from profanities should avoid reading any further. The blog and its contents occasionally reflect other people's opinion and donot always represent the opinion of the writer's who are simply sharing these comments for the reader's entertatinment and insight.

In this instance 2/3 bloggers agree with the comments below. One of them probably lost money on betting and the other had to clean his ear wax after a month of listening to these comments. The third one is on leave.

Original Rant in Urdu
Behnchod, bloody shit admi, bhosri ka. usko akal nahi hai
madarchod - zaroor chakka marna hai -ground pey shot nai laga sakta!?
mein coach hota tu bat ka danda uski gaand mey ghusata aur wohi danda usko sunghata!!
kuttay ko bhi akal ek dafa ghalti kar kay.
kamazkum defend tu karey..dusri ball pey shot marney ki kya zarurat hai!?
mey uski jaga hota tu head down kar kay single ya double leta...
lekin nai! stupid admi...dheet ki tarha chakka marna hai..bloody chakka!
darpok admi captaincy chor kay bhaag gaya..mard ki tarha challenge kabool karey!
hijray ki aulad!
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Attempted translation in English of the above Rant..

Sister-f*****, bloody shit man, asshole - doesnt he have brains!
mother f***** has to hit a six everytime - cant he hit ground shots!?
If I was a coach, I would have shoved the end of the bat up his ass and made him smell it!!
even a dog has brains after making one mistake.
Atleast defend the frikkin ball, why hit a six on the second ball!
If I was in his place, I would I would take single or double!
But no! stupid man, has to hit a six like a mule! bloody sixer (akin to circus joker)
coward man runs away from his captaincy..cant even face the challenge like a pathan man!
son of a enunch!

--A die-hard agitated pakistani fan commenting on Afridi and team's performance in last few test matches in Great Britian.

Billu Barber --- alternate endings

2009-12-12T12:55:00.000Z

Irfan Khan plays Billu, a poor barber who lives an uneventful life with his wife and two children in some north Indian village until Bollywood superstar Sahir Khan --- Shahrukh Khan --- comes to the village to shoot a film. Billu had mentioned to his family that he knows Sahir. When his children talk about their father's friendship with the star, word spreads throughout the village. Virtually overnight, Billu becomes the center of attention, and everyone wants him to introduce them to Sahir. While Billu refuses and downplays the friendship, the villagers persist, until they accuse him of lying about his friendship. Even his family begin to doubt his character and integrity, but Billu remains quiet about the nature of his friendship with Sahir.

So, how does this pickle end?

If this was Satyajit Ray classic, the truth would have become known in such a fashion that only Billu's family would have found out about it. And their reaction to the truth would have been noted in a few glances, with hardly a word uttered.

If this was a great Bollywood movie, the movie would have ended with Sahir Khan's speech at the local school, when the truth is revealed. The last scene would have been Billu leaving the school, with the villagers' reactions left to the audience's imagination.

If this was a good Bollywood movie, it would have ended with Billu's children apologising to the father.

But this otherwise interesting movie had a typically terrible Bollywood ending where Sahir and Billu are reunited.

Freedom Fighters / Terrorists want to look cool too! (1)

2009-11-16T02:18:00.002Z

'Indians' Down Under

2009-08-11T02:45:00.001Z

'Indian' students in Australia have attracted a lot of attention lately. There has been racist violence --- see this Economist artcle --- as well as fairly dodgy practices in Australia's education exports industry --- see here. Ironically, much of the violence has been perpetrated not by 'Anglos', but by youths of other ethnic groups. And the students are often ripped off by members of their own communities.

Education is a major service export for Australia, and these scandals pose a major risk to the sector. That's why the country's Prime Minister made formal statements in the parliament promising an end to the attacks, sent a high level delegation to India, and received the Indian Foreign Minister earlier this month with much pomp and ceremony.

Of course, attackers don't ask the victims for their passports --- they don't discriminate on which side of the Radcliffe Line their victims comes from: all Desis are 'fair targets'.

The number of young Bangladeshis in Sydney and Melbourne run well into five figures, and they too have faced similar troubles. It's however difficult to imagine the Australian government reacting that strongly if the attacks were solely against Bangladeshi students.

I guess it's about time India's neighbours benefitted from its hegemony.

Meanwhile, when Lateline, a major Australian current affairs talk show, ran a story on this, they got two people who do not subscribe to any form of the 'Indian' identity.

Dark Side of the Moon

2009-07-25T23:03:00.001Z

Earlier this week, Moonlanding anniversary was everywhere. Now, I was born many years after the event that made Ray Bradbury suggest be the beginning of a new global calendar. So I have nothing to say when old people talk about ‘oh I remember….’ But I do remember 1 April 2003, when I first watched the Dark Side of the Moon — not the Pink Floyd album, but the French mockumentary.

Titled Operation Lune in French, the premise is that Moonlanding was a hoax, and what the world saw on 23 Jul 1969 was shot in the set of the Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for this, Uncle Sam gave Kubrick some fancy camera, but when CIA operatives associated with the project started dying mysteriously in places like South America, Kubrick got spooked, and that’s why he only made two movies in his last two decades, and all the big guns in Nixon-Ford administration, Kissinger, Alex Haig, Rumsfeld, they were all in on it.

On that evening, I got home from work and switched on the TV. Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf was telling us that the foreign invaders were drowing in their own blood. I flicked it to CNN — but how would I know if they were telling the truth? I flicked the channel again. Something was in French. Ah, the French would tell us the truth, I thought (I was young, and naive). What was this, I wondered! Kissinger and Rumsfeld admitting to deception? Whoa! This is cooler than the other side of the pillow!

I highly recommend it.

I also remember the last time I watched 2001 in a theatre. It was the Summer of 2001. We went to a midnight screening. During the scene where the hominid tribes scream at each other over the water hole, my friend yelled out — Jews and Palestinians. Everybody had a good laugh. I highly recommend that movie too. If you find it hard to follow the birth of the star child, a kolki full of mari jane will help. If that proves too hard, penadol with red bull can give you a solid bender.

On the White Tiger

2009-05-08T08:56:00.000Z

I finished Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger in two nights. Let me begin with some quick observations.

The prose is very simple and crisp. There is no Rushdiesque long sentences. But it is still quite evocative.
Adiga describes poverty very accurately, but without sentimentalism or development porn. I was reminded of Satyajit Ray’s movies.
However, unlike Ray’s rural movies — and very much like his urban movies — Adiga has a strong, albeit subtle, subversive tone. I like subversion.
I am never going to be able to look at a driver the same way again.

Recommendation: yes.

She didn't see

2009-04-25T03:10:00.004Z

The valleys of northwest are ruled by madmen who care more about the length of one's beard than anything else. In the delta of the east, paramilitary revolts and kills the commander and wife. In the vast democratic experiment in the middle doesn't exist in the huge swatch of territory ruled by Naxalites.

Meanwhile, a singer passes away. A singer who wanted to see the promised day:

Jab zulm-o-sitam ke kohe-garaan rui ki tarah ud jaayenge,
Hum mahkoomon ke pau tale, jab dharti dhar dhar dharkegi…
Sab taaj uchale jaenge
Sab takht girae jaenge…
Uthega An-al-Huq ka nara jo mai bhi hoon aur tum bhi ho…

Radicals of left and right are trying to realise their utopian vision in Desh. History warns us against grand experiments, but the status quo is not sustainable either.

Iqbal Bano didn't see the promised day. Is it too late for us too?

Out of Pakistan

2009-03-31T07:19:00.002Z

I'd really like to watch these Pakistani classics.

International Gorillay. A criminal mastermind sets out to destroy Islam by luring Pakistanis into gambling, dancing, and all manner of sundry sins. He tortures his prisoners by reading to them aloud from his blasphemous novel. The brave mujahedin out to stop him are disguised in Batsuits; and in the end, a quartet of levitating Qurans shoot laser beams into the nefarious villain's head, causing him to explode. Oh, the villain is named Salman Rushdie.

Zinda Laash. A black and white thriller from 1967, sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Dracula. The first and only Pakistani film to earn the label "For Adults Only," after the board of censors accused the film of being "corruptive and evil."

Aurat Raj. A group of women discover a bomb that switches gender roles and seize power by setting it off. In this brave new world, women wield machine guns and flick their cigarettes with an easy flair, while men twirl in slow motion and swing their hips coquettishly.

Zibahkhana. Five teenagers set out to watch a concert, but find their van break down and get set upon by flesh eating zombies, a ghoulish hitchhiker, and a blood-soaked, burqa-wearing killer. The writer-director's next project is apparently a genre-busting women-in-prison meets porn-factory meets monster-spectacular named Jhabarjhilla.

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More here.

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Akbar isn't impressed.

Sick piece of movie. About zombies wearing salwar kameez and a senseless plot with amateur acting. The acting/story line is so bad- its hilarious. Not even worth blogging.

How often does the best picture win?

2009-02-23T10:52:00.004Z

So the Academy Awards, Oscar, is done. Slumdog Millionaire won. But was that the best movie of the year? How often does the year's best picture actually win the Oscar? Put differently, how does posteriority treat an Oscar winner? And what's the metric of 'best' anyway?

These questions come up every year. You see, Oscar, like the Nobel for subjects other than natural sciences, or the Man Booker or Pultizer, involves a lot of politicking and lobbying and broader socio-cultural trends. With the 'emergence of India' being a favourite talking point of the global cognoscenti, it may not be all that surprising that Slumdog won, just as it may not have been surprising to see Arvind Adiga's White Tiger win last year's Booker. More about the book some other time, but was Slumdog the best movie of 2008? Let's be more specific, was it the best movie available to the general filmgoing public in the Anglophone world in 2008?

We can use the IMDB's ratings (details at the bottom of this page) to answer this question. Registered voters in IMDB are movie buffs whose ratings probably reflects artistic appreciation better than box office takings would, while the large number and anonymous nature of the membership would mean these ratings are free of the politiciking that afflicts Oscars. According to the IMDB regulars, 2008's best movie was The Dark Knight (6th in top 250, with 8.9 score from over 347,000 users). Slumdog Millionaire is 34th in top 250 (8.6 score from 67,700 users). Personally, I think the Batman sequel is one of the best movies of all time, and not just for the politics, but this didn't even get nominated for Oscar.

So, how often does the IMDB best picture win? Not that often it turns out. 80 Oscars have been handed out so far, and only 17 of them are considered best pictures of the year according to the IMDB. That is, the Academy has got it right only 21.25% times! Quite miserable, really.

However, they are getting better. In 3 of the past 5 years the best picture won the Oscar. Only time when the Academy performed better was between 1970 and 1978, when they got it right 6 out of 9 years. The whole list is attached as an image. A few trivia.

The IMDB number 1, The Shawshank Redemption, lost to Forrest Gump (44) in 1994. Two of IMDB top 10 --- Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo and The Dark Knight --- didn't even get nominated.

On the flipside, three Oscar-winning blockbusters --- Gone with the wind, Ben-Hur and Titanic --- weren't the best movie of the year. In fact, Titanic, the biggest grossing movie of all time, isn't even in IMDB top 250!

If it wins, Slumdog Millionaire will be the 2nd South Asia related movie to take an Oscar, the first being Gandhi (165) of 1982. The best movie of that year was Blade Runner (109). There is no other South Asia related movie in the IMDB top 250.

Lazy Days

2009-02-21T05:58:00.000Z

IMG_3786

Mrs Inspector Amar Nath

2008-12-18T00:37:00.002Z

When Yossarian, who had not been heard from for years, learnt that yours truly was getting married, he wrote in to offer congratulations. "I presume an arranged marriage with a Sikh girl, are you getting a dowry?" he asked in his usual charming manner.

Yossarian always had a certain world view, one in which Bengalis solely ate fish, where a girl who smiled at you wanted your affections, where the Inspector Amar Naths of the world got arranged marriages with Sikh girls and rediscovered their religion. And in which Punjab's only culture of course was agriculture.

Anyhow, who am I to argue about the validity of one man's veltenschaung over another's? Thus I wrote back:

Thank you Yossarian, yes an arranged marriage, with a good Gursikh family - farmers. They are from a village near Bhatinda, and as she is an only daughter, I am going to get 10 acres of land and 51 cows in my dowry. Don't get me wrong, they are not unsophisticated villagers, they are quite prosperous - it's just they are into agriculture. Also they are naming a tractor after me. A bit religious too. I had to promise on our holy book I would never smoke again, so Akbar old mate, no more Sheesha for you and me. You would be suprised how much alcohol people from villages drink. One grandfather is a priest at the village gurudwara, so lot of pressure on me to become more religious. The other grandfather was an Army colonel, with a very Anglo-Jat moustache pointing upwards and all.

Fought in 1971 war by the way Anthony - he was really excited that I too was going to Dhaka! Apparently he was the legendary Shahbeg Singh's underling - when they were training the Mukti Bahini. He cut his beard and moustache and put on a lungi and stank of fish as part of his disguise. This was all told to me over a Scotch whisky.

Actually, the whole village has a very interesting history. Bhatinda is in the south of our Punjab, a region known as the Malwa. The more fertile and better irrigated fields are North and West (especially in what is now Pakistani Punjab). So 60 years ago, this area was barren and largely uninhabited. When Hindu and Sikh refugees came across at the time of partition, there was not enough (and similar quality) land to give them to compensate for what they had left behind, so many of the refugees had to make do with land in Malwa. This includes my wife's family.

One thing the administrators tried to do was ensure communities were settled together where possible. So this village consists entirely of Sikh and Hindu refugees who came over together from their home in Pakistan. In fact, they have named their new village after their old home in Pakistan - the village's name is Naya Toba Tek Singh.

The Indian awful conspiracy: Part II

2008-12-07T07:04:00.002Z

The Nation likes to describe itself as "the most credible of English newspapers in Pakistan". Among their credible and brilliant insights is one by columnist Humayun Gauhar that "the militants were neither Pakistani nor Muslim but Hindu and Israeli".

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/07-Dec-2008/Lesson-one-cover-up

This view, credible and brilliant as it may be, is not unique in Pakistani media. Earlier in the week, Frontier Post had an article with the headline:

Mumbai terror attacks :
Further evidence of the Anglo-American-Mossad-RSS nexus

http://frontierpost.com.pk/News.aspx?ncat=ar&nid=621 . If the link does not work, try getting to it from here: http://frontierpost.com.pk/Default.aspx?ad=04-12-2008

the Indian awful conspiracy

2008-12-07T06:27:00.000Z

	Pakistan foils Indian conspiracy http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=61906
	Updated at: 0740 PST, Sunday, December 07, 2008
	ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Intelligence agencies once again made unsuccessful, the Indian awful conspiracy against state of Pakistan. According to details Pakistan intelligence got confirmed report about Indian conspiracy that Indian navy had planned to kidnap Pakistan cargo ship carrying cement for Sri Lanka. Intelligence sources said that Indian Navy had hatched a conspiracy to place arms on Pakistani cargo ship to put blame of smuggling of arms and ammunition on Pakistan government but Pakistani intelligence agency stopped that cargo ship at Karachi port.

Pakistani Ambassador admits that LeT received training and support from ISI, and then lies about LeT continuing to operate in Pakistan

2008-12-01T13:47:00.001Z

Or so I claim. Shoot me down, here's my semantic argument:

CNN's "Late Edition"

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=1&docID=news-000002992102

BLITZER: A lot of intelligence, counter terrorism experts are pointing a finger at this group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. And I'm going to read to you from "The New York Times" today because I want you to respond. "Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has a track record of attacks against India has received training and support from Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, according to widespread intelligence reports." That was in today's "New York Times."

Read: LeT has received training and support from ISI

HAQQANI: Lashkar-e-Taiba is a group that has been banned in Pakistan. Of course, all such groups, al Qaeda is a banned group but that doesn't stop al Qaeda from operating. The important thing is that the government of Pakistan will make sure that any group or individual that is found to be involved in this or any other act of terrorism is subjected to the same process that these groups have to be subjected to under international law. Let me just say one thing.

Read: Haqqani implicitly admits the accusation is correct (by not denying it outright). He has to, he has himself written in the past that ISI supports LeT. All he says is that LeT is banned, which is not the question he was asked.

BLITZER: Was this group, though, created by Pakistani intelligence?

HAQQANI: Well, there's no way for me to know who created it. But we do know that it existed in Pakistan and operated in Pakistan until it was banned.

Read: Haqqani seems to suggest LeT stopped operating in Pakistan after it was "banned". This is incorrect. LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002. Writing in 2005, Haqqani himself said "Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to move against either Lashkar, which continues to operate in Kashmir, or Jamaat-ul-Dawa, which operates freely in Pakistan." He also says that "Saeed (LeT's founder) remains free and continues to expand membership of his organization..."

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The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups

Husain Haqqani Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, April 2005

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=16922

The most significant jihadi group of Wahhabi persuasion is Lashkar-e-

Taiba (The Army of the Pure) founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

Backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services,

Lashkar-e-Taiba became the military wing of Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad

(Center for the Call to Righteousness).

After

the U.S. froze Lashkar-e-Taiba's assets and called for it to be banned, Saeed

changed his organization's name in Pakistan to Jamaat-ul-Dawa (the Society

for Preaching). Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to move against

either Lashkar, which continues to operate in Kashmir, or Jamaat-ul-Dawa,

which operates freely in Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ul-Dawa

scaled down their military operations against India to help Pakistan honor its

commitments to the U.S. and India. But Saeed remains free and continues to

expand membership of his organization despite divisions in its leadership.

Under U.S. pressure, General Musharraf placed Jamaat-ul-Dawa on a

watch list in November 2003.

Akbar is incommunicado

2008-11-08T03:57:00.002Z

In the aftermath of the US election, we received the following press statement released by the Al-Akbar movement - the one promising revolution in Pakistan or Khaleejistan.

Akbar will not be checking his e-mails indefinitely and will be disassociating with all blogs and bloggers. He will be checking the colour of Barack Obama — it’s light brown, not black — and to eliminate all witnesses to the Obama-McCain bets with Anthony. Nara-e-Akbar Akbar Akbar.

Dear reader, stay tuned for this developing story.

Obama Wins! Akbar Dances!

2008-11-05T08:10:00.007Z

As per the terms of the bet between Anthony and Akbar, the world now waits for this historic moment: our very own Akbar on youtube, draped in the Indian flag, dancing the bhangra, and shouting Democracy Zindabad!

So you can appreciate the sweetness of this moment, you should understand that Akbar thinks it his patriotic duty to direct all his farts in India's general direction, and considers Democracy to be American Imperialism not suited for the genuis of the Pakistani people. We are not sure about his Bhangra skills either.

If I ever have grandchildren...

2008-10-30T22:34:00.003Z

...I hope they will be bastards.

No man or woman should be forced to bow to false Gods, or fill in forms in triplicate for bastard bureaucrats. And there is no other way.

A pox on all marriages!

2008-10-30T22:25:00.004Z

I hereby certify that whoever thought this is not an insane way to register a marriage is an idiot and a lunatic. I also certify that I am not an idiot and a lunatic, as required by the forms referred to in point 1.

Q1. What is the procedure for Solemnization of marriage / Registration of marriage?
i. Procedure for Registration under HMA.
ii. Procedure for Registration under SMA.
iii. Procedure for Solemnization of marriage under SMA.

Q. Where do I have to go and during which hours?
To the office of Additional Divisional Magistrate in whose jurisdiction any of the husband or wife resides, during 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. on any working day. The office is located in the DC office complex on main Mehrauli Badarpur Road and near Anupam Appt. for assistance of public, reception counter is manned during the official hours for proper guidance. Necessary forms can also be obtained from Reception Counter or can be downloaded from this site.

Q. Which papers/documents/fees, do I have to take with me?
1. Hindu /Special marriage Application form duly signed by both husband and wife. 2. Hindhu/Special marriage Documentary evidence of date of birth of parties (Matriculation Certificate / Passport / Birth Certificate) Minimum age of both parties is 21 years at the time of registration under the Special Marriage Act. 3.Residential proof of husband and wife . 4.In case of Special Marriage Act, documentary evidence regarding stay in Delhi of the parties for more than 30 days (ration card or report from the concerned SHO). 5. Hindu marriage Affidavit by both the parties stating place and date of marriage, date of birth, marital status at the time of marriage and nationality. 6.Two Hindu/Special marriage passport size photographs of both the parties and one marriage photograph. 7.Marriage invitation Hindu marriage card, if available. 8. Hindu marriage If marriage was solemnized in a religious place, a certificate from the priest is required who solemnized the marriage. 9.Rs. 10/- in case of Hindu Marriage Act and Rs.15/- in case of Special Marriage Act to be deposited with the cashier of District and the receipt should be attached with the application form. 10.Affirmation that the parties are not related to each other within the prohibited degree of relationship as per Hindu Marriage Act or Special Marriage Act as the case may be. For details of such relationships Click here. 11.Attested copy of divorce decree/order in case of a divorcee and death certificate of spouse in case of widow/widower. 12.In case one of the parties belong to other than Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh religions, a conversion certificate from the priest who solemnized the marriage (in case of Hindu Marriage Act). 13. In case one of the parties is a foreign national, no objection certificate/marital Status certificate from the concerned embassy.

All documents excluding receipt should be attested by a Gazetted Officer.

A-A-A bets on the US election

2008-10-24T04:43:00.002Z

The brothers are all barracking for Sen Obama, but both Amar and Akbar have bet on Sen McCain against Anthony. This post records the bets.

Back in May, Anthony said: Well, Obama has won the nomination. And markets are giving him a 60% chance of beating McCain. I'm happy to give anyone a 3 to 1 odd that Obama will win.

Amar accepted: Alright, I accept your offer of 3 books vs 1 book. Suggested limits on cost of books -up to 25 pounds or A$ equivalent as price of each book (ie 75 / 25 pounds maximum stakes). I fully expect to lose the bet, but the odds you offer are better than the market's.

Akbar had an alternative offer: If Obama wins, I will take you Khalil Jibran restaurant in Sydney red light area. If McCain wins, you will stop supporting democracy and become pro-dictatorship in Bangladesh (evidenced by public declaration of this in atleast one article agaisnt democracy).

Anthony's counteroffer: I can go to a Sydney restaurant whenever I want, so you've to offer something more. Here is what I suggest - if Obama is the next president, you'll drape yourself in the Indian flag, dance bhangra and shout democracy zindabad (it will have to be witnessed by someone credible, or videotaped or something). If Obama is not the next president, I'll give you an anti-democracy article.

Akbar: Man - it's cheaper for me to fly and dine you in the most expensive restaurant than to get my mother to stitch the indian flag! Let's make it more painful for u as well - in the event of McCain winning, you will drape your head and body in a Pakistani flag, and make a video speach against democracy and praise Gen Musharraf and Gen Moeen and post it in A-A-A and other political blogs and facebook. I agree to your Indian flag demand only if you agree to the above.

Anthony: Done.

Here is how the Intrade odd of an Obama presidency has evolved since May.

A-A on Italy's Deshis

2008-10-17T23:52:00.002Z

Amar

I think I have been witnessing, in little visual sightings over 4 years, the rise of the Bangladeshi community in italy. In the early years, they were selling umbrellas and knick knacks on street corners, carrying everything they sold. Then I started seeing them behind the counter in semi-permanent and corner shops, and in restaurants, as waiters and chefs.

Then I saw that some of them had their own small shops, and I even found a place with Bangladeshi candidates for rival parties competing in local elections.

This year, for the first time, I saw that women had followed the men, and I saw families together - man, woman, and little children. These families were not sellling products, they were checking out things like normal family on weekend, and then to cap it all, I even saw overly ghettoised Bangladeshi teens, in expensive sneakers wandering on their own.

I feel like I have seen community evolution in high speed.

Akbar

My father just picked on any Bengali vendor whenever i was busy looking for a street on the map - one of his ways to keep himself entertained.

He would start off with - Bandhu! kaimun acchen? After the usual Bhalo and Ami-o Bhalo, there would be the usual bari kothaye and questions about Italy and waghiara waghaira, and directions - which bus to take etc.

Some would be arrogant and say their bari is Rome and dont know any other bari (bari = home), and dad would nod his head disappointingly and mutter - arrogant bastard, forgetting his roots.

Near the colloseum, dad combined an old Pakistani film dialogue into his own - Yeh woh jaga hai jahan Rome kay zaleel kuttay kharey hokar tamasha dekhtay tey. I responded - Ab Bengali kharey hotay hain!!

We bought coconut slices and fruit salad from a Bengali vendor. In the heat the taste was heavenly.

Govt of Khalsa

2008-10-15T02:06:00.002Z

The most interesting looking chef I ever saw

2008-09-26T04:33:00.006Z

This photo is from the BBC website. The blurb reads: Sweet makers prepare special pastries in Damascus, on the fourth week and final of the Muslim fasting month Ramadan. (Photo: Bassem Tellawi/A

Somehow they seem to have overlooked that the Chef is carrying an absolutely gigantic tray of sweets, has a ferocious face and scary moustache, and just in case you had any doubts about whether you enjoyed his cooking, he also carries a pistol! Has there been a more colourful chef? Damn those western cooks who swear a bit and think they are men, this cook is a real man's man who will kick their gym-going ass! He swears even more, loves to resort to violence and he doesn't take rubbish from noone! And when he gets angry, he takes his pistol out and fires in the air! Woohoo!

We need more colourful people like this in our lives.

Gens M

2008-08-20T09:43:00.006Z

One gone.

One more to kick out.

Hum dekhenge.

Inquilaab Zindabad.

Jesus look-alike

2008-08-05T22:18:00.004Z

This looks like Jesus, doesn't it?

Well, perhaps not entirely! Poseidon, Greek God of the Sea, and perhaps one of the inspirations for our modern image of Jesus, seen flaunting his stuff in an ancient mosaic at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

On Jodhaa Akbar

2008-07-28T11:00:00.002Z

Just in case you are not familiar with the world of Hindi movies, Jodhaa Akbar is one of the most expensive movies ever made in India. Set in the 16th century, it is based on Emperor Akbar's relationship with his Rajput wife Jodhaa Bai. This is my take on the movie. Short version: it lacks direction. Long version, read on.

Let's begin with the things that I liked. I liked the language. I had to use the subtitle to understand many of the Farsi words. But I did get the feeling that this is how the elite of North India might have conversed in the Sultani era and beyond. Also, listening to the Rajput’s Sanskritised Hindi and the chaste Urdu of akbar, one appreciates just how syncretic Bollywood is. And that’s a good thing. Bollywood for a peaceful Desh!

I also liked the costumes and sets. Again, I got the feeling that this is what people in 1550s India (not just the rich, but also the men in bazaar) wore, and this is what the place might have looked like.

And at 200 minutes, the movie didn’t really sag. The set, costume and dialogue kept it going. But the core of it — the love story between the Emperor and his wife — was at most 100 minutes. So the makers of this movie had two options they wasted: they could have done more with the love story, or they could show more battles and politics.

Amar or I would have liked the second option. As it were, the movie didn't have much of politics. It didn’t show any of Akbar’s reign. And I think that was good. The historical basis of the events covered in the movie are 6 months of akbar’s 62 years of life. I’m glad that the movie didn’t explicitly say that Akbar was a great king because of his marriage to a Rajput princess.

In fact, it almost certainly got the history wrong. For one thing, the 6 feet plus Roshan is a very improbable Akbar - according to the historical record, Akbar was a rather short fellow. But the movie doesn't claim to get the history right. It is billed as ‘one narrative of what happened’ in those months.

I was rather disappointed about the battle scenes though. I wasn’t expecting Lord of the Rings, sure. But Bollywood probably has reached a stage where we can expect something like Gladiator (the battle between the Romans and Goths). And I don’t think the problem was money or technology. I think the issue was more with direction. Even the one-on-one combats were not anywhere near as awe-inspiring as they could have been.

In any case, packing in more politics and battles probably would have made it a very different movie from what they set out to make. But there is really no reason why they couldn’t have taken the first option.

I think they could have done a much better job with the love story.

Now, romances are hard to do. A love story with a happy ending is even harder — to paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy endings are alike and so on. But even then, one can think of a number of possible avenues not pursued (or not pursued enough).

For example, Jodhaa could have had feelings for someone else, but she’d come to love Akbar: she was engaged, she could have had developed feelings for his fiance — Rai’s debut movie was based on the theme of love and marriage, and that was a great love story.

And if the romance didn't have a third person, then it needed other enemies and obstacles. They could have had lot more court intrigue. Indeed, there was a bit of it, with tensions leading up to the intermission, but then it all fell through.

They could have shown a lot more verbal jousting and battles of wit. Think of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story. In fact, Bollywood and Urdu literature have a rich tradition of this. One wonders, why wasn’t more made of that heritage?

I should also note couple of other things.

I was extremely disappointed with the Khawaja song. It's meant to be a Sufi devotional number. The idea is that the song should lead to the listener transcend into some ‘deeper meaning’ and dance away in a haze (I think ganjah helps). I love the genre, whether in Urdu, Punjabi or Bangla (in Bangla they mix Radha-Krishna/Ali/Rasul/pirs/tigers the whole lot — talk about a confused syncretic bunch). This particular song was just boring though.

I liked some of the lesser characters. The guy playing the renegade Rajput prince looks like Amitabh Bachchan circa 1975. Him and the guy playing akbar’s brother-in-law were both impressive. Maham Anaga was also really cool. But the evil mullah could have been a lot more evil.

Finally, having seen Taare Zameen Par, and noting Gowarikar and Farhan Akhter's recent outputs, one must wonder how much of Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai were Aamir Khan.

Ramayana

2008-07-24T23:11:00.007Z

This summer, the British Library in London have been hosting a fascinating exhibition on the Indian epic, the Ramayana. Not only that, they are hosting online the 17th century illuminated manuscript which forms the centre piece of the exhibition. They have done a brilliant job, and you can and should go view it here.

I have alway been interested by the Ramayana story and its characters (Sympathy for Ravan, Translating Ramayana and Other Thoughts, Sita the Bitch, Chat-up Lines of the Ancients), but am not as familiar with the story as I would like to be, so when I visited a couple of months ago, some things struck me as unexpected. At the time I scribbled them down on a brochure, and now I jot them down here to share my ignorance and thoughts with my friends. These unexpected realisations were:

1. Rama is shown with blue skin and a moustache.

Thinking about it, Krishna is blue, and Rama and Krishna are both avtars of Vishnu, so perhaps that is not so odd. There is some logic, though I have not previously seen Rama depicted as blue-skinned. Why should Vishnu be blue though? It was Shiva who was neel-kantha or blue throated, from drinking the poison of the cosmic ocean.

The moustache thing is fascinating. From casual observation, a majority of Indian men seem to have a moustache, but in the popular depictions of Hindu Gods and Epics, only the demons, the villains seem to have moustaches, while the male Gods are depicted clean-shaven and looking somewhat androgynous. Is this perhaps only a recent innovation? I was thrilled to see a more hirsute Indian hero.

2. Why does Ravana have a donkey's head as one of his 10 heads in this image? Also, why was he shown with a donkey's head only on this manuscript page (page 38), but none of the other pages?

3. Don't you love the crazy faces of the women in the photo? One has a disturbingly wide smile, one appears to be a Zombie. But even the Zombie has found a lover. Ravana's Lanka seems a haven for those who are different, a kind of Amsterdam of its day.

4. Why are there bears (yes, they do look like boars, but the commentary said bears) fighting in Rama's army? What is the story here?

5. Did you know monkeys come in two colours?

6. I was amused in a juvenile kind of way by the anatomical accuracy of the monkeys in the manuscripts. They all seemed to have visible male genitalia! If this casual observation was correct, this suggests that Rama's vanar-sena, or monkey army, was also exclusively male. This raises:

7. Why aren't there any female monkeys fighting? Are female monkeys not as good at fighting, and not even of some relative utility? Is war an exclusively male preserve across species? I don't know about the warrior capabilities of female monkeys, but it seems wasteful to leave them out fully!

8. This wasn't something I noticed, but rather I overheard. There were a group of serious sounding women discussing the Ramayana story. One said she was troubled as it began with a queen who controlled the king, and ended with a queen controlled by a king. This, she declared, made the Ramayana story quite problematic from a feminist perspective.

No comments!

A-A-A talk Fatherland

2008-06-30T04:21:00.000Z

Akbar: I am reading Fatherland. In so many ways the Nazi Germany is similar to Saudi Arabia. For example Saudis require all nationals to get pre-marital medical check up, which is also mentioned in Fatherland.

Anthony: I’d have thought most totalitarian regimes have that kind of behaviour in common. Anyhow, what do you think of the story?

Akbar: It’s good. Better than the movie. But the ending was, well, hmm.. shrug.

Anthony: Yes, the ending was thoroughly disappointing.

Amar: Yeah, it's a total copout. If I remember correctly, it is that they succeed in giving the information to the Americans, who are stunned by the horror of what happened and stop becoming friends with the Germans. A better novel, more chilling and probably more believable, would have been to give the information to the Americans, then realise the Americans have known it all along, and that they don't really care — it makes sense to be friends with the Germans, and raking up past just gets in the way.

Or have I got the ending wrong?

If I have it right, I think it was probably the Publishers who made him change the ending to appeal to Americans — I can't believe such a good writer would pick such a crappy ending.

Akbar: The book leaves it ambiguous as to what happens — it implies without saying the information gets across — it doesn't deal with what happens afterwards.

It's the movie which shows the information reaching the Americans at the last moment, and stopping the American rapprochement with the Germans.

Amar: I still think the better ending would be the throwing of cold water on the fire of hope.

I didn't get 'Life of Pi'

2008-05-06T08:43:00.001Z

First published in September 2001, Life of Pi by Canadian author Yann Martel is a novel that explores religion and spirituality. It won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2002. This alone is a good reason for reading the book, and if you haven’t, don’t read any further because it may spoil an otherwise good yarn for you.

This is not a book review as such. Rather, it shows why I didn’t get the ‘deeper meaning’ of the novel.

The novel promises a story that will make one believe in God. So, what’s the story? Well, there is this confused kid who gets shipwrecked and survives 200 something days in the Pacific Ocean. Pretty amazing stuff. The thing is, there are two versions of the story, one more fantastic and less sad than the other. There is no way to tell which is true. The only thing we know is that the ship sank and the boy survived. And so it is with God, we’re told.

I read it and went, huh?

Okay, so we — the human civilisation — are a ‘miracle’. For life to form, we need a certain kind of star, and a planet that is a certain distant from the star, with a certain kind of atmosphere and mass and structure. Then that life will have to evolve in a certain way for there to be any intelligence. And the intelligence will have to be used in a certain way for there to be any civilisation. And chances of all this happening is very low, and yet here we are.

We have two sets of stories to choose from. One story has a cosmic being / nature / supreme order / authority / God that gives this ‘miracle’ a sense of meaning and purpose. The other story says that yes it’s a low probability event, but it has happened and there is no underlying rhyme or reason for it.

The first is a more fantastic story. The second is sad because it means that our lives don’t really mean much — the whole unbearable lightness of being.

I knew all this before reading Life of Pi. So after reading the book, I thought huh, this is not making me believe in God any more than what I did (or didn’t) before. But then I thought, hmm, perhaps the idea of the book is to put doubt into the minds of believers. But that just sounds far-fetched.

Then I remembered something I read about the Holocaust survivors. The ones who were religious going in found their faith strengthened — didn’t their very survival prove God’s existence? Those who were doubters on the other hand became even more so — what kind of God allows his chosen people to get wiped out?

I guess so it is with this book — believers will believe, and the doubters will doubt.

Jis Desh Main Ganga Behti Hai

2008-04-25T12:39:00.003Z

The Mumbai Indians' next home game on April 27 may not feature the much talked about cheerleaders. Though there is no official word as yet, a minister in the Maharashtra government spoke out against them. "We live in India where womanhood is worshipped. How can anything obscene like this can be allowed?," asked Siddharam Mhetre, the minister of state for home affairs.

***

The Minister then started singing Hum us desh ke vasi hai jis desh main Ganga behti hai. That's when everyone realised the Minister had been living in his own fantasy world since 1960.

Dates with destiny

2008-04-01T05:11:00.003Z

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

Thus Pundit Nehru greets India's freedom in one of the most wellknown speeches of the 20th century.

I came across this the other day:

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

I know you are thinking 'cool, Obama channels Nehru'. Unfortunately, it's not Obama. It's Franklin D Roosevelt, speaking before the Democratic Convention on 27 June 1936, well over 11 years before Nehru. The above sentences appear towards the end of the speech, followed by this:

In this world of our in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.

Here is the rest of FDR's speech.

Incredible movie biology

2008-03-12T10:28:00.001Z

Some time ago, Amar talked about the Giant Rat of Sumatra, er New Guinea. Well, islands are conducive for things like Giant Rats, and other odd-sized animals. Islands typically don’t have large carnivores — not enough food supply for their survival. So, in the absence of large carnivores, smaller carnivores and herbivores grow bigger than their mainland counterparts. And at the same time, large herbivores tend to shrink over time. That’s why islands could have Dwarf Elephants. These phenomena are called island gigantism and insular dwarfism respectively.

Could something like this have happened in Skul Island? The wiki link says that the island has an unstable ecosystem. What does that mean? Those dinosaurs have survived 65 million years in the island, how unstable could the ecosystem really be then? And how the hell did those insect grow so big?

And what about Kong himself? How did his kind get to grow so big? The wiki says it was the last of its species. How did it get to the island?

And what about the human inhabitants? I thought the scene where they came to get Ann was genuinely cool. Obviously their religion is a cult of Kong. But what is Kong meant to do with Ann? Gorillas don’t eat meat (they eat insects if occasionally). Does Kong eat meat?
I watched King Kong in the plane few weeks ago, and started wondering these. You see, one really can’t enjoy the grandeur of King Kong in the tiny screen that one gets in the economy class in a Boeing 777. This is one big screen movie.

I watched I am Legend in the big screen. I was looking forward to it eagerly. Will Smith is cool. The idea of the original novel seemed cool. A deserted New York City could have been cool. And I happened to be there when they were shooting it. How could it go wrong?

Well, it did go wrong. Neville, Smith’s character, was hunting the mutants. But the mutants were also hunting Neville. They were watching him. They laid traps for him. I’m sure New York’s concrete jungle could have been exploited for some really spine tingling cat and mouse spooky scenes. Shame nothing like that happened.

And since it wasn’t thrilling enough, I started wondering about the mutants’ biology. So the virus that was supposed cure cancer had terrible side effects — it killed most of the humanity, and resulted in rabies, hair loss, loss of resistance to the UV ray and extreme aggression among most of the survivors. Only a very small number of people were resistant to the mutated virus.

Okay, so far so good. But why the hell do all the mutants look similar? Surely CGI doesn’t have to mean that. These creatures only come out at night because of their problem with the UV ray. But does a problem with the UV ray give them night vision? Does the virus affect their optic nerves? And how did the creatures get to be so powerful? And how did they develop spiderman-like climbing abilities?

You see, if you start thinking about this stuff, the movie is obviously not going so well for you. But I’m still curious enough about the book to read it. Perhaps I’ll write about it some other time. Meanwhile, if you want more such stuff (physics, not biology), check this out.

bow wow!

2008-03-02T01:32:00.005Z

:-)

2008-02-29T22:01:00.002Z

2008-02-29T21:49:00.002Z

The Cemetery of Kings - Jaisalmer

2008-02-29T21:40:00.002Z

Subhanllah!!

2008-02-11T11:50:00.000Z

SubhanAllah! Prophet's Mosque, Medinah - drowned in a sea of lights -All thanks and credit to the skillfull Saudi Binladin Group (yes- Osama relatives) whose worker tolied day and night to build such a magnificent mosque - and continue to renovate and refurnish. By God! Osama and family shall be granted a place in Heaven -Inshallah! and so shall the King -All Hail the dead fat King!!

All hail Akbar's Samsung D-900 mobile, whose magnifient 3.0 megapixel camera captured this beautiful view for the world. All hail Akbar's vanity, for the camera is better than Amar's Gheesa Peeta (worn/torn) Canon, which has captured all sinful anatomic statues/busts of Florence and Spain. By God Amar and his Cannon will rot in hell.

In search of 'peace and stability'

2008-01-28T05:45:00.000Z

Bienvenu a notre pays

2008-01-26T18:21:00.001Z

Accommodation

2008-01-19T18:51:00.000Z

Suite
The Simple but Stylish Executive Suits Are Favoured by Toop-level Business Travellers. Each Comes with Extra Ordinary Views and First Class Amenities.

:-) I will not name and shame the people who offer the Suit, but I have stayed with them, and the people working there are very nice. But their claims and their language are still ridiculous!

Losers

2008-01-16T23:00:00.000Z

When I was young, I did not care for Losers. I had not then realised that these were my brethren, that I was one of them, that in their pain, in the emptiness and misery of their existence I would find kinship, that sense of belonging, that feeling of understanding and being understood. The Losers, I now realise, are my people. And Loss is my intimate companion.

I came across this marvellous loser earlier this week:

How wonderfully and ridiculously tragic our fellow loser is! His song is miserable and self-pitying enough. He says some people's fate is wine, for others it's thirst. We know which one he is. He is singing about his loss, because having lost everything he cared for, the loss itself is all he has now.

But to return to the action on scene. It is clear that not only is our loser tragic and sad, he is also literally blind. Thus he does not see his lost beloved walk through the door. She hears his every word, our loser oblivious to her presence in the room (though not of her presence in the world). At the end of his song, she walks up to him. And slaps him! She accuses him of having seen her earlier, thus inadvertently revealing to us that he has lost his sight since their parting, she tells him she hates him, and storms out the door.

Our loser is left standing, hurt, lost, alone, and also despised. We sigh in pleasure at the exquisiteness of his pain, as it connects to the solitary pain of our own hearts. We can rejoice that our own suffering is so unworthy compared to his. Truly, this man is a badshah among losers, and to him we raise our literal glass of wine, because metaphorically of course ours are all empty as well.

Salut!

Garajti Khabrain Thundering News: India Declares War on Australia

2008-01-08T00:34:00.000Z

State of Emergency Imposed; Indian Prime Minister makes Declaration of War.

In Breaking News coming to us from Delhi, India has made a formal Declaration of War against Australia. In stunning scenes carried live across the nation on Doordarshan, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood on the wall of Delhi's Red Fort with a sword raised in one hand, and declared: This is no monkey business, Yeh Hamara Mulk Hai! Aur Hum Is Ke Jism Par Loot ke Zakham Nahin Dekh Sakte!

Well informed sources from the Defence Ministery say that the Western Fleet of the Indian Navy has already set sail for Perth on Australia's Western Coast to bomb it into submission ahead of the 3rd Test Match. It is believed that the plan is to occupy Western Australia initially and establish a base there, with an autumn offensive to follow against the Sydney and Melbourne Cricket Grounds. Once Australia has been fully captured, it will be renamed Naya Desh and Biharis, Illegal Bangladeshis, Gujarati Muslims, Kashmiri Pundits, BA Graduates and other marginalised sections of society will be encouraged to move there. In Bihar, the first wave of potential emigrants has already started packing their bags and arriving at Patna Bus Station.

The invasion of Australia has near universal support among Indians, and an Indian Victory in Perth will boost the ruling Congress Party's electoral chances. The BCCI is believed to be secretly financing the invasion, as taking over Cricket Australia's infrastructure and players is seen as the best means of increasing Indian Cricket's brand value.

A Congress Party spokesman on condition of anonymity has said that once the invasion is completed, Monkeys will be introduced to Australian continent to make a moral point. "Once these Australians realise what charming animals monkeys are, they will realise that Harbhajan was not being racist. We are a mature and tolerant society, and the Australians should not be so sensitive and touchy. They are clearly over reacting to this incident."

Hear hear!

How the Benazir assassination has affected A-A-A

2008-01-03T03:27:00.000Z

As his career in the import-export business hit a brick wall, Amar was looking for a new career. His facebook photo provided him with one. He is now Billawal Bhutto Zardari's body double. Girls, the womanising party animal is the real Billawal, so relax. Hardcore PPP activists, that guy quoting obscure Urdu poetry and irrelevant historical facts is Amar, but since the real Billawal can't speak Urdu, you're better off with the double,

Meanwhile, inspired by the fiery rhetorics of pretentious Bangladeshi blogs with names like deepshit and the trailer of Jodha Akbar, Akbar has joined politics. Not electoral politics though, his is the path of revolution. In the first communique of his group Al Akbar, Akbar stated from an undisclosed location that 'democracy has no meaning in Pakistan until all the feudal landlords are liquidated'. Then the crowd, or some kids, were heard chanting 'Nara-e-Akbar Akbar Akbar'. Then an elderly lady was heard yelling 'Oh my son, stop looking at those dirty pictures of Amsterdam'.

Anthony too has been affected by the assassination. Buoyed by the success of his solo investigative writing efforts (which includes such classics such as 'Joe DiMaggio killed JFK because the latter screwed Marilyn'), Anthony is about to unveil the true killer of Bibi - Asif Ali Zardari!

2008-01-02T02:19:00.000Z

The secret correspondence of the brothers A* and A*

2007-12-26T23:11:00.000Z

We have recently recovered this exchange of correspondence between the brothers A* and A*. Their obscure expressions and odd style of language seems alien to our modern sensibilities, and it may be that part of the discussion is in fact in a secret code. Certainly the Scholars who have so far inspected the letters, while attesting to their authenticity, have failed to provide any meaningful interpretation of them. One angry Scholar has even suggested that the authors of the letters may in fact just be speaking nonsense. We wholeheartedly agree with the Angry Scholarji.

The first letter:

Dear Dara Sikho

By the Will and Grace of Allah the most merciful, your brother in Islam has reached his destination safely. However as much did the Arab chics lure your brother with their silent beauty, and inspite of the vigorous inspection by the merciless Pakistani female security guard at the check-in counter, your Brother maintained his virginity and awaits a female slave of my right hand in return as gift of my patience.

May this message reach you in peace and may you bear hundreds of kids from the dodgy women of Amsterdam.

Allah O Akbar

Salam and Allah Hafiz

A* yar wali

The Second letter

Dear fratricidal Alamgir Aurangzeb

Has your moustache disappeared due to the inspiration of the prophet, peace be upon him, or because of the hard stares and questions of the bastard bureaucrats of Vilayet?

I am gratified to hear of your safe and timely return to the fortress of Islam, where you will be safe from the unchaste seductresses and temptresses of the wasted west. There in ritual purity you can concentrate on singing the praise of god and earning extravagant tax free salaries as your reward on earth.

Please give my regards to your devout and devoted parents, whose constant prayers and
virtuous lives acted as a prophylactic when their son arrived in the immoral west, protecting him from being impregnated by lustful corruptions and desires, in the same way a condom-shaped Marks and Spencer cap protected your head from the cold.

Since your departure, It has turned much colder here, which would seem to imply that hell has frozen over. We trust that you are in warmth and comfort however.

Allah's curse on all unbelievers,

Yours Sincerely

Your father Shah Jahan.

2007-12-23T10:47:00.001Z

The Giant Rat of Sumatra

2007-12-19T02:55:00.000Z

The discerning of Sherlock Holmes's readers have long been aware of the existence of a mystery concerning the Giant Rat of Sumatra. But its precise details have remained unknown, and at the end of the Victorian era, Holmes was only willing to say that it was a story for which the world is not yet prepared. Indeed, the Giant Rat itself remained unknown to the Western World.

This has now slightly changed.

ps: Yes, you are right. It's New Guinea not Sumatra. But it's close!

Heroes, villains and ideas

2007-12-15T12:06:00.000Z

Bangladesh is marking its liberation from Pakistani occupation this weekend. And a few weeks from now, Indians will celebrate the founding of their republic. During these weeks, TV channels in that part of the world play patriotic tunes. This post is about two such songs — both about the land and gold — and how they display a betrayal of a fundamental tenet of each nation’s foundation.

Let’s start with the Bangladeshi song Shona shona shona. The song says the land, mati, of Bangladesh is better than gold, and under this land sleeps many heroes: Rafiq, Shafiq, Barkat, Titu Mir and Isa Khan.

Who are these heroes? Rafiq, Shafiq and Barkat were killed by the authorities during the language riot of 1952 — a milestone moment in Bangladesh’s nationalism. Titu Mir defied the East India Company and organised a peasant revolt in the 19th century. Isa Khan was a Bengali chieftain who resisted the Mughals in the 16th century.

Notice how all of these heroes are Muslim men? Bangladesh was supposed to be a secular people’s republic. The song was written in the late 1960s, when the ethos of secularism and a progressive society were at the mainstream of Bangladeshi politics. And yet, the song didn’t include Surya Sen or Pritilata Waddedar (Chittagong-based militant revolutionaries killed by the Raj in the 1930s).

The Indian Republic of course has the word secularism in its official name. But you wouldn’t know the supposedly secular nature of the republic from one of the most played song on Indian channels in the week preceding its anniversary in January. The song Mere desh ki dharti proclaims that the land produces gold and diamond, and India is home to these heroes: Gautam, Nanak, Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Tagore, Hari Singh Nalwa, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Bhagat Singh and Jawaharlal Nehru. So, the pantheon of Indian heroes includes a fascist and a warlord, but no Muslim or women. We didn’t expect Noor Inayat Khan to be honoured, but surely the Rani of Jhansi or Tipu Sultan deserves a mention.

Both Bangladeshi and Indian songs are from the 1960s, a time when overtly communal politics seemed to be on the wane in our part of the world, a time when women’s rights were being recognised by the society at large. And yet, two very well known songs of that era, listing the respective nations’ heroes, failed to find a place for the silent minorities that make up the majority of those nations.

And today, four decades hence, the very ideas of secular liberalism are under threat in our part of the world. In Bangladesh, villains who committed genocide in their fight against those ideas in 1971 became resurgent. In India, villains who committed genocide in 2002 to turn India into a Hindu state are gathering strength.

Secularism, liberty, equality of opportunity between genders, these ideas are worth fighting for regardless of nationalism or historical divisions. Indeed, I believe those ideas are more valuable than tribalism or dispute over real estate. This December, or this January, when we hear patriotic songs, let’s think about these ideas, and dedicate ourselves to them.

Air Khalistan

2007-11-19T20:35:00.001Z

Air Khalistan

The Future Vision

Air Khalistan represents the Sikh Nation's committment to comfortable travel for all passengers, state of the culinary art Khalistani Cuisine, enroute strengthening and stretching exercise facility and new nondenominational breakthrough scientific Khalistani Meditation to further enhance the relaxation and minimize the jet lag for the passengers. Outer space flying will also be an option where airplane speed of Mach 3-5 will be the standard norm. It will minimize the travel time and make business travel more efficient. Air Khalistan look forward to serving you with enthusiasm in the future.

Thanks for visiting our web site.

CEO

Air Khalistan

Khalistani Cuisine

-Khalistani Prindey

(Chicken Tandoori)

-Khalistani Haria Maujan

(Saag)

-Khalistani Ladaki Chicken

(Green Chilli Chicken)

-Khalistani Mithian Maujan

(Ras Malai)

.......... and many more1 Please stay tune.

***

Amar: I wish I could say I made this up. But this is from Khalistan.Net, and those are the wise words of Air Khalistan's CEO. They might even be serious. You can visit the original site here:
http://www.khalistan.net/air-khalistan.html

A-A-A on the coming revolution in Khaleejistan

2007-11-18T09:55:00.000Z

As Chapati reports, they have shut down Geo TV in Dubai. The dictator in Pakistan is afraid of the media. Sheikhs in Dubai are probably afraid too, about possible political tremors in their fiefdoms. While we await the fall of the dictator in Pakistan, here’s a conversation we had some time ago.

Anthony

In Syriana, the disaffected youth from a Dubai-like place turns to Jihad. While this hasn't actually happened, could something similar happen? In next few decades, as the age of oil ends, what will happen to the millions of Desis that make up the underclass in the Gulf?

Akbar

I have never seen/heard about Desi youth in the Gulf being recruited for Jihad. So far I have only heard of the NWFP and Kashmir as recruitment centres. So, a Syriana-like situation is not happening. The only resistance in Saudi is from Shiias and Al Qaeda, who tend to be mostly Arab. Dubai or Oman is the last place I would think about recruiting.

As for when the oil runs out, well, the expats will be f..ked. They are nowhere. Those who have emigrated to the west know that’s where they will settle. People in Desh know their future is, well, either in poverty or in plenty. But people in Middle East don’t know where they belong. If they go back to Desh, they face adjustment problem, and then there is the political uncertainty. If they go West, well, they may not get visa and in any case, they will never save enough to have a comfortable lifestyle similar to what they have in Middle East.

Anthony

See this is my point. Depending on how you count it, 20 to 80% of residents in most cities in the region are expats, and many expats have spent most of the past 3 decades there. One can't seriously expect them to be evicted without tension. I suspect when the oil era ends, the political geography of the region will look very different. When the oil era ends, the current monarchies will probably be overthrown. This could happen in a number of ways.

One scenario, 'good' but very unlikely, is that there would be democratic transformation that gives expats citizenship rights. A more likely, 'bad', scenario is a series of military coups. Some young officer like Nasser will overthrow the house of Saud. But Arab nationalism is a spent force, so these young army men will have to have something else to legitimise their rule, and the support of the expats might be at a premium. The ‘ugly’ scenario, also quite likely, is radical Islam in a new incarnation. Islam is an internationalist ideology. It is very conceivable that Islamist parties with mass support, as opposed to the militants and insurgents, could rise. These parties will have huge support among Desis – for all the pictures of Bose and Bin Laden, Desis like mass parties like Congress and League.

So Akbar, the future belongs to you. In fact, you should start organising this mass party. You could become the Zulfi Bhutto of Khaleejistan. We could call you Khaleej-bandhu. When you take over, hire me as an economic advisor or something. And we'll get Amar to make movies about you.

Amar

Thank you thank you, for this great honour, for which I am fully qualified and all — after all, I have watched Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl.

First, Akbar, serene, god-like, is seen in his PIA flight high up in the air, eating PIA's delicious poached egg. We hear a divine fart of approval.

Then we see the arrival of the Qaid in the city of Dubai, where the annual party conference has been organised. There is a massive motorcade which unfortunately can't proceed slowly through the city due to suicide bombers. However, skillful cutting and chopping of camera angles shows the Neta’s motorcade sweeping through town

CUT

And crowds cheering as the statue of Saddam Hussein is first covered by US Flag then toppled over

CUT

A sea of demonstrators as far as the eye can see, waving , what is this, photos of Ayatollah Khomeini, yelling "We love...

CUT

"Akbar”

(voiceover) Death to the Shah!

CUT

Akbar, clearly standing in Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, waving his arms to everyone.

CUT

Back to the convoy speeding through town, and a quick and awkward cut as it is seen running over an old man.

A Sub-title appears on screen: Millions of followers come our to greet their Great Leader.

Gonotontro mukti paak

2007-11-09T11:12:00.000Z

Twenty years ago today, a young political activist protesting a military dictatorship had the words gonotontro mukti paak - roughly translated as 'give back democracy' - painted on his back. Shortly after this photo was taken, the activist named Nur Hossain was killed by the security forces.

Democracy is once again suppressed in Bangladesh and Pakistan. But not for long. Down with military dictatorships. Gonotontro mukti paak. Inquilaab Zindabad.

Whisker check

2007-11-06T06:02:00.000Z

We noted last year that no clean-shaved general has successfully saved Bangladesh and Pakistan. Since then, Moeen U Ahmed has been saving Bangladesh from suicidal inaction in the face of corruption and failed politics. And now, Pakistan also needs saving. If the very moustachoid Musharraf can't do it, will Lt Gen Ashfaq Kiani step in? Will he be successful? He is, after all, also clean-shaved.

Musharraf's Bitch

2007-11-04T05:32:00.000Z

Emergency or not
what difference does it make?
Even a four legged animal knows
Musharraf was here and
will stay!!
Why a two legged politician not fathom
this?
Musharraf's bitch is surprised to say!

Know they not this;
Power and love are always in a haste

Even Muhammed rushed to Medina
to save his chair of the day.

Are bengalis so foolish
to accept democracy their only fate?
Even Hasina's Sari
unwraps her body for the Lathi of the day
and BB's salwar
catches the martial color
to remain in place!!

Only a bald man in Makkah knows
Promises are broken to be made.

2007-11-03T09:36:00.000Z

2007-11-03T09:25:00.001Z

A-A talk cricket

2007-11-01T08:04:00.000Z

Amar

I am becoming curmudgeonlier in my old age. A couple of years ago, I would think, yeah, I prefer test matches, but I don't feel need to heap scorn on one dayers the way that Anthony does. Now, I keep hoping that one dayers die, die, die!

It may be because the trade offs have become more explicit — India has time to play Australia in about 11 ODIs in six months, but not enough time to play 2 practice matches before a test series against Australia in Australia? India needs longer test series, and more practice games, if it is to do better overseas. The reason this doesn’t happen is because of one dayers.

One dayers are destroying what is valuable to me, and therefore I want one dayers to lose. And those who promote one dayers, those boors lacking in taste and an appreciation for subtlety and complexity, curses on them too.

Anthony

Real test cricket is the only thing that does it for me. Oddly, it is because I’m so time constrained. I can’t be bothered spending an hour watching big hit after big hit. I’d much rather watch half an hour before tea on a crucial 3rd day.

Amar

I think those who like test cricket should support the rise of 20/20. Here's the theory.

On a spectrum of contest between bat and ball, test cricket is at extremes from 20/20. Therefore the more 20/20 we have, the lesser the contest between bat and ball. This is bad if you like test cricket. However, 20/20 is not competing with test cricket. They are so different, that 20/20 only takes converts from ODIs, and reduces the number of one-dayers.

Now there is a difference in skills required between tests and one-dayers. There is an even greater difference of skills required between tests and 20/20. Therefore, there will be more players suitable for tests but not 20/20 (or vice-versa), compared to tests vis-a-vis ODIs.

This means we will have a larger number of players who only play tests. Therefore less cricketers will face the issue of fatigue from playing both forms of game. Therefore they should be available to play more test cricket, and we should see finer performances from test specialists. We could have the occasional young mavericks who feed into test cricket from 20/20 and bring the skills they learn. But the shorter form of the game becomes essentially a different game, rather than the leechthat is one day cricket.

Anthony

The future of cricket is in Desh. If Desis want to do away with test cricket and play only 20/20, then that’s what will happen.

Amar

20/20 could be Desh's summer sport — played at night when it is cooler, under lights with matches say from 8pm to 11:30pm. Test cricket would be the daylight form of the game, played in the winter months when conditions allow it. And of course, there should be a regular home season — this should not be the preserve of white nations. This would also work well for another reason: the summer months are off-season for most test nations, so little test cricket could be played in summer anyway (apart from in England). So they could knock themselves crazy playing 20/20 all summer long.

Fatwa for the Protection of the Islamic Identity of Cricket in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

2007-10-23T22:24:00.000Z

Fatwa for the Protection of the Islamic Identity of Cricket in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. as Jointly Issued by the Beard-Wearing Members of the Pakistan Team, and Custodians of the Two Holy Cricket Grounds (Gaddafi Lahore and National Stadium Karachi)

Praise be to Allah, who created the bat and the ball. Praise be to his prophet, peace be upon him, who made cricket neither haram nor makruh. Praise be to the warrior of Islam Javed Miandad, who gave us victory against the enemy nation with a last ball six. Praise also to the Laws of Cricket, which have the dignity to recognise that a man should wear trousers, and grow his beard. May Allah bless Pakistan and the Pakistan cricket team, and may the grey hairs of wisdom grow on the beard of our captain Shoaib Malik. Brothers and Sisters, worshippers of the one Allah, admirers of the great game of cricket, and citizens of the Islamic republic of Pakistan, you know these are troubled times for our faith, game and nation, as infidel shadows lengthen overhead, and the bright light of Islam fades from the sky. It all began with the replacement of the bearded Mushtaq Ahmed, who led the team prayers, by the wily spinner Kaneria. Then they started to schedule cricket games during Ramadan, and when Shahid Afridi said he could not both pray and observe the Ramadan fast, his commitment was brought into question! Then, our glorious leader Inzamam, wielder of the double-edged bat, khutba-giver on the Friday prayers, was dropped for good, purportedly for bringing the team to the true faith! This is no doubt the instigation of American infidels led by George Bush who command their lap-dog the secular poodle carrying dicator Pervez Musharraf.

Sixty years ago, our ancestors fought for the creation of Pakistan, a nation where Muslims could be Muslims without fear, without hindrance, free to practice and preach their religion. Today we see the mockery of the blood of our martyrs that in this so called Islamic Republic, Muslims are not allowed to say their prayers, and observe the holy month of fasting. Those in charge have forgotten the sacred cry of our ancestors: Pakistan ka matlab kya, la illaha illallah!

We as believers, custodians of the holy pitches and stadiums, wielders of the bat and ball in the name of the green flag, in order to preserve, protect, and promulgate our faith, demand with immediate effect the following rules be implemented to safeguard the Islamic identity of Pakistan cricket:

1. No cricket during the holy month of Ramadan

2. Intervals during all cricket matches to be based around muslim prayer times, not foreign lunch and tea breaks.

3. Separate sitting of men and women at stadiums

4. No wearing of tight trousers or rubbing the ball against crotch, thereby inflaming passions of young virgins.

5. No earrings or foreign hair styles to be adopted by crickters. Instead, an official Mullah-certified barber to be appointed to travel with the team and give proper haircuts and beard-trimmings.

6. The foreign appeal of 'How is that' to be replaced by the cry of 'Inshallah', because Allah is the greatest Umpire. If Allah is willing, the umpire will give it out

7. Shoaib Malik to grow a beard in the example shown by the great Inzaman-ul-Haq, and start leading the Friday prayers.

8. Replacement of techinical Foreign coach with a homegrown khutba-giving Mullah. His inflammatory oratory will be all the motivation our boys need to triumph over their opponents.

Where there is faith, there is no coaching required! Is Jihad fought from the heart, or through a textbook?

9. Crowds to be encouraged to cry out "Allah-u-Akbar" at the fall of every wicket, scoring of ever run, four or six, instead of secular chants like the infernal "Hoo Haa Hoo Haa"

May Allah bless the Pakistan cricket team!

A letter for Arif

2007-10-23T12:14:00.000Z

Dear Readers,

It is more than a month since Arifur Rahman’s arrest. 30 days is a long time. Mohammad Arifur Rahman, the Prothom Alo cartoonist, has spent the better part of Ramadan in prison and has spent Eid away from his family. Anyone away from the loved ones can empathise and draw comparisons to their own experiences - but to be right in the centre of the Green Delta and not to be with one’s family on the Eid day? Even among his critics, surely that should elicit some sympathy.

In the past month, Arif’s culpability has been debated many times. The purpose of this post is not to re-visit that old debate. Even if we think of this man as guilty, we should ask ourselves: is his incarceration what the Prophet would have prescribed given his sense of generosity, forgiveness and - most importantly - justice?

We understand that Arif is being held at Dhaka Central Jail. We sincerely urge all of his well-wishers to write to him expressing solidarity at the address given below.

Mohammad Arifur Rahman,
Son of Mohammad Matiur Rahman,
re CR Case No. 2298/07,
Dhaka Central Jail,
Nazimuddin Road,
Dhaka.

We also urge those offended by the cartoon to write to him, for compassion towards one’s adversaries is a fast-vanishing Islamic value in today’s world.

Salam

Sympathy for Ravan

2007-10-15T01:43:00.001Z

I have some sympathy for Ravan, the ten-headed villain of the Ramayan. The logic behind it is fairly tenuous and stretched, but I make no claims to the truth, instead I prefer to read his story as I would like it to be. My version goes something like this:

In essence, I think Ravan was at his end an unhappy soul, weary of his own existence, desperate for an escape. In his youth, foolish and arrogant, he had prayed to Brahma and asked for immortality. Brahma slipped in a couple of loop-holes so that he wasn't quite immortal, but did make him virtually indestructible, or very difficult to kill.

As time went on, Ravan realised that life was not a blessing, it was a curse. He saw that existence was fundamentally unsatisfactory, that pleasures were fleeting, that happiness was elusive. He wrote the Shiva Tandav Stotra, a hymn to Shiva, in which he lamented:

Kada Sukhi Bhavamye Hum?
When will I be happy?

Eventually, he came to the realisation that as long as there was life, there is suffering. That the only way he could escape his predicament would be to die. But Brahma's boon made him virtually indestructible, and he continued to suffer, his suffering far longer and greater than other mortals who had the release of death.

Eventually, he realised that there was a way out, if Vishnu in human form as Ram was to take his life, then he would be unburdened of the shackles of existence. It was thus that he devised a ruse to provoke Rama by kidnapping his wife Sita, by refusing to return her and forcing Ram to kill Ravan to preserve his honour and recover his wife.

It can thus be seen that when Ravan kidnaps Sita, he does not have sexual relations with her, instead mostly staying away from her. He says he is waiting for her to agree to marry him, but really, Ravan was waiting for Rama's deliverance, for the death which would be his freedom.

And that is my version of Ravan's story.

Love !

2007-10-05T00:56:00.000Z

2007-10-04T12:52:00.000Z

Noor Inayat Khan (again)

2007-10-02T17:43:00.000Z

Somebody should make a movie about Noor Inayat Khan. An atmospheric World War II spy thriller, the true story of a beautiful Indian girl who went into the heart of Nazi occupied France as a spy for the Allied forces.

It is such a great story just waiting to be told. Until it does, I would urge all of you to read about her heroic (yet relatively uncelebrated - especially in Desh) life. A good starting point is her entry on Wikipedia.

Free Arif

2007-10-01T11:24:00.000Z

Arifur Rahman, a 23-year old cartoonist, was jailed by the de facto military regime in Bangladesh. His crime? Offending religious sensitivites. Rumi gives the background. Dhaka gives more details. Here is a history of the Islamist assault on freedom of thought in Bangladesh.

The Taxes of Religions

2007-09-09T02:52:00.001Z

Osama Bin Laden's latest video tape sees him invite the American people to convert to Islam. Among the benefits he offers lower taxes:

"There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent."

Osama has touched upon a matter which is close to my heart - the taxes of religions. Which religion is the most tax attractive? Bin Laden makes a case for the 2.5% levying Islam, as compared to what he calls the 'insane taxes' of the American Government, but for most of us paying the taxes of the state is not a matter of choice - but paying the taxes of religion is.

Hopefully one day in the not too distant future I will post my thoughts and do a comparison of the various religions, and help believers reduce their tax liability by choosing the religion that best matches their circumstances.

Until then, thanks to Osama for reminding the world that when choosing your God, you should consider his tax policy too!

If Amar Akbar Anthony travelled together around Europe...

2007-09-03T21:35:00.000Z

It never happened, but if it had, it would have happened like this:

Three shady looking and badly dressed desi men travel around Europe with backpacks scaring innocent train passengers and immigration officials...what a gang! There should be a movie about our train trip. I can see it now. We will probably have to ask the train driver to slow down so the various attractive vixens who cross our paths can dance scandalously on top of the train...

Naturally there will be a bunch of sexy desi girls in mini skirts travelling together in the same train as us. There will probably also be an Egyptian spy carrying top secret documents about the American-Zionist plot to invade the Islamic holy-places, but he will probably get killed by the Israeli Mossad femme fatale with tight leather pants and bountiful cleavage. However, he would have hours before slipped the secret disc containing the information into Anthony's coat pocket.

Then with time running out, and various sinister parties chasing us, we will have to go to Southall for a dinner meeting with a one-eyed man called Mogambo Gabbar Singh, and meet our contact from ISI in a shady nightclub where an Indian...

You get the idea...

Unsent Email - 12 June 2004

2007-09-03T21:08:00.000Z

Geography, I now realise, is not an adequate dimension to escape the tyranny of existence.

The only reality, it seems, is that existence is always suffering. It doesn't matter what you do, where you work, where you live, how you live. Living is never the fulfillment of what life seems to promise.

I have arrived at the site of my redemption, only to discover there is no redemption.

Inquilaab Zindabad

2007-08-27T08:13:00.000Z

Down with the dictatorships in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Maha bidrohi rana klanto,
Ami sheidin hobo shanto,
Jobe utpiriter krondon roll akashe batashe dhonibe na,
Ottacharir kharga kripan bheem rana bhume ranibe na...

(The battle-fatigued rebel
I will only rest,
When the cries of the oppressed no longer reach the sky,
When the sound of the oppressor's scimitar no longer rings in the battlefield...)

- Kazi Nazrul Islam (25 May 1899 - 29 August 1976).

Sixty years of Independence

2007-08-14T05:49:00.000Z

In 1997, BBC ran a series called Fifty years of Independence. Hosted by Sir Mark Tully Padma Bhushan, each 3 minute long daily episode showed a major event or topic in Desh’s post‑independence history. Covered were: freedom, the tragedies of partition, the assassination of the Mahatma and Kashmir; birth of the Indian democracy and the rise of the generals in Pakistan; five year plans and the non aligned movement; 1962 and 1965 wars; Mrs Gandhi’s ascendance and the fall of Ayub; nationalists and Naxalites in the east; the Bangladesh War; populist demagogues in New Delhi and Islamabad; two elections of 1977; Zia-ul-Huq and Afghanistan; deaths of Zulfi Bhutto and Mrs Gandhi; Khalistan, Kashmir and the north east; Rajiv, Rao and reforms; caste and communalism; coalition governments in India; and presidents, prime ministers and generals keeping each other in check in Pakistan; and, SAARC. Bangladesh, too, saw the end of the Empire sixty years ago today. If Tully had covered that country, he would have shown violent coups, dictators and political instability.

Inspired by many of these great events, Shashi Tharoor wrote the Great Indian Novel a decade or so earlier. Of course in about another decade prior to that, Salman Sahib wrote the novel that created a new literature. We can’t claim to have the talent for such high brow stuff, so last year we conjured up the Great Desi TV serial.

If one were to add the ten years since, which events would be added? Coalition governments and communal violence in India, military coup and political violence in Pakistan, in the shadow of another war in Afghanistan. Both countries exploded nuclear devices. And Desh came close to full scale war on a number of occasions. That is, the past decade has not been all that different from the previous five.

Or has it? Anyone visiting any major cities in Desh would say that things have changed radically. We see the emergence of new societies, new values and new culture, hand in hand with rapid economic progress. We see the awakening of a generation, we see changes in what the heart desires. And we like what we see.

On (profiling) the Hyderabadis….

2007-08-13T16:30:00.000Z

Indian Hyderabadis that is –not the Pakistan side Sindhi Hyderabadis. Sindhis are too cunning and nice to be Indian. Look at Bhutto –what a nice cunning guy!!

Having spent two years of my career so far sitting next to one and interacting with 5 others on a daily basis, I have a fair idea to be able to write something on Hyderabadi ‘muslim’ men and their ways.

In short, they are the kind who perform ablution not to pray but to eat biryani or kichdi (a kind of lentil mixed with rice concoction –fed in Pakistan to the poor and constipated) depending on day of the week. Generally it is a Tuesday or it could also be a ‘ChaarShamba’ –(a weird hyderabadi word for Wednesday as opposed to the standard Urdu -budh).

Both ways the biryani begins the day and kichdi ends it. In between come the lethargy, pussy and insatiable cunning ‘pull your pant down along with your leg’ kind of jealousy –especially at workplace.

Sitting next one, I realized the importance of keeping good relations with your Mamu (maternal uncle) –especially if he is a land owning multi millionaire – note owning land is not a credit for talent –jus the bastard’s luck.

Second –as soon as you get a decent job –GET MARRIED.

Food and marriage can be such emotional issue for my Hyderabadi friends, to the point of their ego being hurt. Although a common desi understanding is that if a man hasn’t married by 33 -35, he must be gay or have a weakness.

Well for Hyderabadis, it’s all the above and it’s the exclusion from the group of friends who used to be single and biryani mates and now are married. It is the silent accusative sense of being an outcast.

And as for food, if you manage to forget to invite a friend to your wedding reception, it can mean years of kichdi situation with the friend.

With their typical high pitched nasal accent, Hyderabadis can be one trusted Pakistani loyalist. Take the 1992 cricket world cup. When Pakistan won, most of Hyderabad celebrated the win – some say at a grander scale than the Pakistanis. Who celebrated Pakistani nukes in India? Hyderabadis. Whose fission material is being used in a Hyderabadi Nuclear Plant- the one and only Pakistan’s Dr. A.Q. Khan. (facts not verified).

Only if they knew what a fantastic roller coaster they would be on had they moved to Pakistan.

Somehow understanding Hyderabadis enabled me to a slightly to understand the working meaning of life. It just is. That’s how things are for them and that’s how you are supposed to deal with it.

There is no life is too short, life planning, or what am I doing in this world kind chasing your tail questions. Sweet and practical –the ones who do turn out to be philosophical turn into match fixing Azharuddins. The ones who go haywire by divorcing a wife of 10+ yrs for a hot model –sensible thing to do for some or maybe carrying around a wad of cash in their cricket gear bag enabling them to buy their roommate’s watch off their wrist- simply out of whim or fancy.

When married –they are self educated in dealing with wives – one has to cajole them, negotiate persuade. You marry because you friend/class fellow 'Rizwan' married. You marry for kids, to expand the generation. All that talk about true love, mutual understanding, altruistic orientations, sacrifice, and companionship is nonsense – practical is the way to go.

And as every hyderabadi phrase to confirm understading of the above ends with - HOU!?

Austrian days

2007-08-10T12:43:00.000Z

Some time ago, I posted this joke that, quite scarily, I found funny. In addition to the real business cycle — negative technological shocks — and Keynesian — fall in aggregate demand — stories of why recessions happen, there is also the ‘hangover theory’. The story of recessions in this theory goes like this: in the beginning, there is loose money that leads to bad investment, at some point the easy money runs out and the day of reckoning arrives, and the painful adjustment process is what we call recession.

A major proponent of this theory is Friedrich von Hayek, the doyen of Austrian school of economic thought. Listening to the school’s ideas in his iPod (yes, he is a very disturbed young man), Amar thought the Austrians were a cult who believed in the god of market called the invisible hand. Well, Paul Krugman compared Austrian macroeconomics with phlogiston theory of fire in the late 1990s. But as De Long notes here, Krugman had a sort of change of heart after the 2001 US recession.

Perhaps I should start a bit further back. Once upon a time, there was chairman of the Federal Reserve called Alan Greenspan. When the unemployment rate in the US fell to 6 per cent in the mid-1990s and everyone feared a break out of inflation, Greenspan held steady and didn’t raise rates. In the event, joblessness fell further, to 5 per cent and then to 4 per cent. And there was no inflation. What happened? It was the beginning of the new economy — the IT and globalisation inspired productivity pick up.

Stronger productivity growth led to rallying share prices, and before long, there was a full-blown bubble in the share market. Even though inflation was moderate, many crypto-Austrians, but not Krugman, thought there was too much money in the system, and Greenspan should prick the bubble. Greenspan did nothing. The bubble ran its course and burst in April 2000.

Then for the next 30 or so months, share prices fell steadily. By 2002, there were talks of a Japanese-style deflationary slump in the US. Bush administration cut taxes heavily and Greenspan slashed interest rates sharply. The economy was flooded with liquidity. Consumers borrowed, and spent, heavily. And the 2001 recession turned out to be one of the mildest on record. Greenspan became a legend.

Tax cuts and cheap money fend of a deflationary slump — sounds like textbook Keynesianism. And it seemed to have worked. Or did it? There were doubters, of the Austrian kind, but also a reformed Krugman, who thought that the tax cuts were poorly designed and money became too cheap. They argued that Greenspan merely replaced the bubble in the tech stock with one in the housing market. And sooner or later, that bubble would burst, leaving Greenspan’s successor to with a mess.

The housing bubble burst last year. It appears that there were a lot of bad loans to the sub prime mortgage market. Other financial institutions had link with these bad mortgage loans. And now it appears that the rabbit hole is much deeper than what anyone thought.
The general view it seems is that it’s Greenspan’s fault (here’s what Stiglitz says). It seems that we are all Austrians now.

Or are we? The first reaction of the central bankers seem to be to pump more money into the market, exactly the opposite of what the Austrians would suggest. Hmmm… stay tuned for what happens next.

And oh, if you have lost money in the last few days, oh well, remember, money can’t buy you love.

A-A-A on the Song of Hind

2007-08-09T22:38:00.001Z

Some time ago, we wrote about songs of Hind. We didn’t cover the song of Hind — Iqbal’s Tarana-e-Hind (audio and lyrics here). We did, however, discuss the song.

Amar:

I read something by Naipaul to the effect that Iqbal never identified with Hind. I don’t really remember what Naipaul said. But here’s what I’ve been thinking.

Iqbal says: Sare Jahan se achachha Hindustan hamara, hum bulbulen hain iski yeh gulistan hamara. Generally we assume he means everyone in Hindustan. But then he also says: Aiy ab-e-rood-i-Ganga woh din hain yaad tujhko, utra tere kinare jab karavan hamara. Here he seems to be talking about Muslims specifically when he says hamara.

If one use of hamara seems to be as a Muslim, then isn't it inconsistent to interpret the other hamaras as meaning Muslims and Hindus and Christians and Buddhists and Jews and Sikhs and tribals and Zoroastrians and Jains?

But then, he does say: Mazhab nahin sikhata apas men bair rakhna, Hindi hain ham watan hai Hindustan hamara. And when he says aapas mein, it seems to imply different religions...

So my query about Ganga is, in this bit of song he seems to use hamara for Muslims, whereas other bits are supposed to be all communities. Of course Muslims are part of hamara, so it's not necessarily wrong, but I was just wondering what he was thinking.

Anthony:

I think Iqbal seems to be using a nuanced multilayered concept of identity. He has a sentence mentioning himself: Iqbal! koi mehram apna nahin jahan men Ma'loom kya kisi ko dard-i-nihan hamara. Then there is the Muslim identity in the Ganga line. And overlaying all this is the Hindi identity.

Another reading of it could mean all hamaras are referring to Muslim Hind. But when he says Hindustan hamara (hamara being Muslim Hind), he isn't suggesting Hind is no one else's (unlike the Hindutva brigade). Rather, he means Hindi Muslims are Hindis and Hindustan is their watan. That is, he rejects Muslim separatism and urges Muslims to accept a sort of Hindustan nationalism.

This reading is just as valid.

One way to decipher this is to see where the poem was originally published.

Amar:

Here is what google pulls up.

“Centenary Of Iqbal's Tarana-e-Hind
by nkdatta8839@[EMAIL PROTECTED] (nkdatta8839) Aug 20, 2004 at 06:25 PM
Mohammad Iqbal composed the poem "Tarana-e-Hind" on August 10, 1904,
and sent it to Munshi Daya Narain Nigam, editor of Zamana of Kanpur. It was published in the September issue of the journal. The following month it was published in Makhzan of Lahore, edited by Abdul Qadir “

Check this line out: Yunan-o-misr-o-Roma sab mit gaye jahan se, ab tak magar hai baqi nam-o-nishaan hamara.

Surely the reference to the surviving civilization when Greece, Rome and Egypt are destroyed refers to the recorded Desi civilization of 4500 years. And he uses hamara here, so clearly he identifies with that as well, which Naipaul and the Hindutva moan doesn't happen. There we go, this guy identifies with everyone. He is one comfortable guy. He belongs everywhere.

Anthony:

Iqbal is clearly identifying with Hind, there's no doubt about that. Naipaul and the Hindutva are clearly wrong on this (and many other) count. The question is, whether he is urging only Muslims to identify with Hind, or is his message directed at everyone.

I presume these magazines were in Urdu, with primary readership being Muslim, and thus it's probably safe to say that he is urging his fellow Muslims to accept Hindustan and reject Muslim separatism. Mind you, this doesn't make the poem sectarian by itself — non-Muslims can still identify with Hindustan just as much as anyone else.

Amar:

While I agree these magazines were probably in Urdu, I don't think we have any reason to think he is focussing on Muslims. He wrote in Urdu, so he published in Urdu magazines. Why would he be appealing to Muslims any more than to Sikhs or Hindus? I have seen plenty of old timers, Sikh and Hindu, who were familiar with Urdu (one relative was still subscribing to Urdu papers in Delhi in the 1980s, another who was English principal made a hobby of doing Urdu crosswords), and the editor of the first magazine also seems to have been Hindu.

Anthony:

You're right. Urdu was used more widely than Hindi 100 years ago and his readership probably included as many non-Muslims as Muslims. Okay then, he was definitely endorsing Hindustan nationalism — so Naipaulian Hintdutva types are wrong. Even the most sectarian interpretation of this is championing Hind.

Akbar:

Yeah man, championing Hind, even if it means fantasizing a rule over Nepali-Tibetan glaciers: Parbat woh sab se uncha hamsaya aasmaan ka, woh santari hamara, woh pasban hamara.

England 2009

2007-08-09T20:54:00.000Z

There exists the exciting possibility that sometime in the future (2008 onwards), we will see an England cricket team go into a test match with three specialist spin bowlers, representing each of the three main disciplines of spin bowling (the fourth, left arm chinamen, are extremly uncommon).

Even more amazing, all three of them could be desis.

The potential line up:
Adil Rashid - leg spin
Saqlain Mushtaq - off spin
Monty Panesar - left arm orthodox.

Monty Panesar has already secured his place in the England team. Adil Rashid is an 18 year old doing phenomenally well in county cricket and has already been identified as a future star by a number of experts. Saqlain Mushtaq previously played for Pakistan with great success at international level, but disappeared from the scene due to injury. He now holds a British Passport and becomes eligible to play for England in 2008. He also took his first 5 wicket haul on return from injury yesterday, in the process out bowling Mushtaq Ahmed, the leading spin bowler in English County Cricket.

Once upon a time in India (cont'd)

2007-08-06T07:55:00.000Z

Amar and Akbar arrive in a large covered market. They walk through the myriad of stores selling clothes, jewellery, furniture and household items to arrive in front of a tailors’.

The sign reads PIPALINAGAR TAILORS’. There is an elderly man in one corner reading a vernacular newspaper. A man is haggling over the price of a suit. A schoolboy is having his uniform measured.

Amar walks up to the counter and asks: Me and my brother here were wondering if you had a pair of Japanese shoes?

It’s a tailors’, not a shoe shop. The man in the counter replies. But we do have a number of fine English trousers.

No thank you. But I would be interested in a red Russian hat. Amar responds.

The elderly man leaves his newspaper and steps in: Ah we have just the thing for you, please come this way.

2007-08-05T07:19:00.001Z

An experiment with camera settings in Birmingham

A-A have a deep discussion

2007-08-02T08:40:00.000Z

Brothers A-A-A are children of hegira. Parts of our families moved from one part of Desh to another when different parts fell apart during the tumultuous 1970s, and before that, the 1940s. Our parents left Desh for work. And now, the time has come for one of them to make a choice: return to Desh in search of a home that they may not recognise, or stay in a land that they do not recognise as home.

Reflecting this, Amar noted: Strange is the life of the exile and the emigrant.

From this, the following conversation ensued.

Anthony: Ah, but it is the sedentary life that is an aberration when you consider the history of humanity. We are a roaming species.

Amar: We were a roaming species. And when we stopped roaming, that was when we progressed spectacularly, that was when civilisation was born. The years of roaming were lost years.

Anthony: We stopped roaming, developed agriculture and formed a civilisation which was the exploitation of many by a few. Sedentary peoples were less healthy than their pastoral nomadic neighbours. Agricultural civilizations produced priests and royal classes that built pyramids and monuments on the back of hardworking and hungry peasant, who was was worse off than his hunter-gatherer cousin. Real spectacular progress came in the more recent times, when we started roaming again. It started when a new civilization, based on the elegant faith of a nomadic people, allowed migration from one end of the known world to the other, trading ideas and commodities. It gathered pace when their rivals ventured to the unknowns beyond the oceans. The prosperity of today's cities on the hill, promised lands and new Jerusalems are all built by the roaming folks, the exile and the immigrant. This is true in Queens, New York and Southall, London, and it is true in the slums of Mumbai and Nairobi. It is the years of cultivating rice in swamps that were lost years!

Amar: A new civilisation based on the elegant faith of a nomadic people? You overlook that a recurring consequence of people venturing away from home in last five hundred years has been wars, imperialism, colonialism, vicious exploitation of others. Two world wars in the last century were also the result of people wanting to move to new places.

Anthony: Wars and invasion of others' territory didn't exactly begin in the last 500 years. Troops of chimpanzees and baboons fight wars of attrition, remember that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Folks in PNG highland have a higher probability of meeting a violent death in the hands of a stranger than anywhere else in the world. And as for exploitation, well vicious exploitation of others begun with agriculture. Slavery, serfdom, caste system – that's exploitation. Yes people moving around causes problem. But for the millions exploited in the farms around the world, migration is the only root to salvation.

Amar: And when they find salvation, don't they settle down?

Anthony: I wouldn’t know, as I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Nor does the Australian Government !

2007-07-30T17:49:00.000Z

According to the BBC news website, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard said that Australia will not be apologising to Dr Haneef. He added:

Dr Haneef was not victimised

Australia's international reputation has not been harmed by this 'mis-start' to its new anti-terrorism laws.

In George Orwell's 1984, the three slogans of the Party were:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Well, Australia has supported a war on Iraq for peace. It has robbed Dr Haneef and other people of their freedom to protect freedom. And the people who vote for such a Government may quite possiby find their strength in ignorance.

There is however still some hope for the people of Australia. I understand that instead of letting Big Brother watch over everyone, Australians prefer to watch Big Brother instead. Mr Howard does not approve.

On the world at war

2007-07-30T12:09:00.000Z

I grew up with tales of World War II — oral history of the war in Burma when I was really young, children’s books about the Great Patriotic War courtesy of the Soviet propaganda machine came next, few years later, in high school, came Alistair McLean novels, war movies and the classic documentary after which this post is titled.

I was very excited when we bought Axis and Allies. As the link suggests, this is a board game based on the war. In the game, each powers control six victory cities in the beginning: Berlin, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and Manila are under the Axis; and London, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Moscow, Leningrad and Calcutta are under the Allies. The aim is to control eight cities for a minor victory, ten for a major victory and all dozen for total victory.

As a game, it’s very different from Diplomacy. Compared to Diplomacy, Axis and Allies is lot more complex. On the other hand, two people can play the World War II game, whereas the Great War game requires seven players.

We have had our first game. My best friend refused to play the Axis powers. So I played Germany and Japan, and she played the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. We played for a few rounds, reached a stalemate with each controlling six cities, and called a truce.

In the Eastern Front of the European theatre, Germany captured Leningrad early on, and eventually took Moscow as well, leaving the remaining Soviet forces scattered across the country. Germans also broke through British defence in the Middle East, capturing Suez and cutting the British Empire in half. In the Western Front, Germans successfully repelled Allied attacks on France. In the Atlantic, u-boats did a lot of damage to the American assistance to the British. But despite this, Britain was defended well enough to deter any invasion.

While the Axis powers seemed to have done reasonably well in Europe, things were very different in the Pacific theatre. Here, the British raised a large army in India — we interpreted as India gaining freedom when the Suez fell to the Axis. This large army ousted the Japanese from the mainland South East Asia and wrested Shanghai. Meanwhile, the Americans, after heavy fighting, captured Manila. However, the Japanese home islands were heavily defended, and the game didn’t allow for the bomb.

So the Axis seemed to have the upper hand in Europe, while the Allies were in better position in the Pacific. As neither side could see a quick change in fortunes, the truce was accepted.
So, how does the game compare with history?

First, the similarities. Britain and Japan were heavily defended, making an invasion very difficult. Also, it also near impossible to see how the Axis could muster enough resources to launch an invasion of North America. Total Axis victory seemed impossible given the existing technology.
In some cases, the game deviated from the real world in directions that really could have happened. The Suez Canal could have fallen. India could have gained freedom and joined the war in full force, bringing million men to arms. And the Operation Overlord could have failed.

In the real world, Germans failed to win in Russia. And I haven’t read any serious history book that suggests that the Nazis could win in the Eastern Front. But here lies the biggest difference between the game and history. In the game, the power is Germany, not the Third Reich. Its symbol is the iron cross, not the swastika. This is interesting as Germany fights the Soviet Union, not Russia, whose symbol is the hammer and sickle. Presumably, the game’s creators figured that no one wanted to play the Nazis, while people could be expected to play communists.

Why is that, when Stalin and Mao killed more people than the Axis powers?

The main reason for this is because as an ideology, communism, like radical Islam, can, in theory, provide salvation to any believer. Nazism and fascism on the other hand are only for the chosen people. As described in a great book by Mark Mazower, Hitler’s ideology made it impossible for the German-occupied Europe to function — the subject peoples were never going to be acquiescent. And unlike in the game, in the real life the Russians fought to the end because they didn’t have a choice, they were facing extermination.

As noted in the review of Mazower’s book linked above, liberal democracy emerged victorious in the war not because of its appeal to Europeans, but because of its success in the United States. Americans suffered as much from the Depression as the Europeans, but no fascist went to the White House. As was also the case in the game, America was the arsenal of democracy that prevented an Axis victory.

Okay, enough history lessons. We also bought a game based on the Wild West, and I’m off to play that now.

The BCCI has no shame!

2007-07-29T00:06:00.000Z

An excerpt from a rediff interview with Niranjan Shah, the BCCI Secretary. The discussion turns to the applicants for the position of new coach for the Indian team, and Mr Shah gives us the spectacular sequence of responses below, each of which contradicts his previous answer:

Have all these applications come from abroad?

Yes. They all have come from abroad.

But an Indian is also learnt to have applied. Isn't this true?

Maybe someone from India has also sent an application, but I don't remember exactly at the moment.

Who is he?

I think it is Chandrakant Pandit.

Lord's: Zaheer Khan attempts a hat-trick

2007-07-24T21:44:00.001Z

India v England, 4th day of the 1st Test at Lord's: Zaheer Khan is on a hat-trick as he bowls to England's no.9 Ryan Sidebottom.

Zaheer's yorker is on target, but Sidebottom manages to keep it out.

The fielders' arms go up in the air.

The Coming Revolution in Indian Cricket - Part 1

2007-07-24T11:59:00.001Z

These are exciting times for followers of Indian Cricket. A big bloody battle looms on the horizon, as the comfortable monopoly of the Board of Control for Cricket in India is challenged by the bold entrepreneurism of Subahash Chandra and his Zee TV network.

Historically, the BCCI has had complete control over India's domestic and international cricket programme. As the Indian cricket brand has increased exponentially in value, the Board has grown richer and fatter. They have however concentrated so far only on International Cricket, neglecting Domestic cricket. Most domestic cricket games in India are a grim affair, played to empty stadiums by essentially anonymous cricketers. The schedules and venues and formats change arbitrarily, the players from the national team rarely take part, and when players reach the national team, they seem to have turned up from nowhere. For nowhere is where domestic cricket currently is.

This is where Zee TV's ambition is so exciting and refreshing. They want to create a professional Indian Cricket League, with city-based teams and a combination of local foreign players, which will attract viewers at stadiums and on television. They want to transform the domestic game, raising its profile, and making it into a popular entertainment product. In the process, they will improve domestic cricket infrastructure, increase the employment opportunities for everyone involved in the game of cricket, and offer a great new product to Indian cricket fans.

This is a great opportunity for Indian cricket. And the BCCI is trying to strangle it at birth.

(to be continued)

The Taxes of Evil: The 4th Duke of Westminster

2007-07-23T20:08:00.000Z

The 4th Duke of Westminister received a leg-wound at the D-day landings in 1944. He died of cancer in 1967, partly as a result of this wound.

While there was an exemption available from Inheritance Tax for those whose cause of death was active service in the armed forces, the Inland Revenue tried to argue the Duke was not eligible, as he had not died immediately from the wound / active service. Instead, they tried to charge Inheritance Tax on the estate he left behind on his death. The Revenue lost their case (Barty-King v Ministry of Defence).

See, the Revenue doesn't discriminate. They are willing to screw everyone over.

A-A-A want democracy and test cricket

2007-07-20T11:03:00.000Z

Amar: If this deal between BCCI and Zee TV is cancelled, it will be good for all. Stupid BCCI is trying to find another broadcaster. Let's get rid of all the one-dayers, and have a bloody extra practice game in Australia. And maybe an extra test in England instead of 7 one dayers!

Anthony: I presume the idea is to 'improve' irish cricket. Irish cricket would be better served if India played a three or four-dayer against Ireland. This would also give the Indian team good conditioning practice.

Amar: Oh no. Nothing to do with Irish cricket. The idea was to honour the 200 million plus deal done with Zee TV for playing offshore one-dayers in non-test centres (if played in test country, the local cricket board has the TV rights apparently — don't know how). Thus the 3 one-ayers with South Africa. I think the one match with Ireland was just a sop — they are also playing Pakistan in Scotland, without playing Scotland.

Anthony: What do you think will end first — this obsession with one day cricket, or military rules in Pakistan and Bangladesh?

Akbar: This obsession with one-day cricket shows that the people of Pak-Bangla lack the genius for democracy. Only when the people are ready for test cricket can democracy succeed!

On the star economists

2007-07-18T09:31:00.000Z

We discussed the greatest economists of all time last September, settling for, in chronological order: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Ronald Coase, Paul Samuelson, Kenneth Arrow, Milton Friedman, and Garry Becker. Now, these guys are all old, really old, they all remember the Great Depression. Who are the greatest economists born after World War II?

That’s the question the Economist asked in an issue in the late 1980s. They settled for eight people. They are listed below, in alphabetical order, with brief notes on where they are now.

• Alberto Alesina: works on political economy and co-authors fascinating books such as the one discussed here.

• Sanford Grossman: a very wealthy fellow with his own hedge fund.

• Paul Krugman: easily the best known of the eight, as much for his widely partisan New York Times columns as for his work in international trade and finance; might win a Nobel, perhaps with Bhagwati.

• Gregory Mankiw: served the Bush administration, sold heaps of textbooks, and has his own blog.

• Jeffrey Sachs: after providing shock therapy to countries from Bolivia to Bulgaria, Sachs has been saving the world with U2’s Bono for the past few years.

• Andrei Shleifer: he advised ex-communists on how to get into capitalism before getting into legal wrangles with the US government, ironically as his research issue is corruption.

• Larry Summers: after serving as the Secretary of Treasury during the last years of the Clinton Administration, he ran Harvard for five years before quitting over women.

• Jean Tirole: the only one in the list to be based outside the United States, and the only one to have remained in the ivory tower, working on microeconomic theory.

A decade later, the magazine asked Où sont les Krugmans d’antan? They came up with a list of another eight bright and coming economists. They are listed below, in the order of their appearance in the Economist piece, with brief notes on their specialty and what they have been up to since then.

• Michael Kremer: then of MIT, now at Harvard, Kremer was chosen for his O-ring theory, and it seems a decade on, this is still his best known work.

• Edward Glaeser: of Harvard, chosen by the Economist for his work on why cities exist, he has been a prolific researcher exploring, among other things, Rove’s excite the base strategy, the need for state sanctioned holidays, co-authoring the abovementioned book with Alesina and much, much more.

• Casey Mulligan: he was chosen for the observation that social factors, such as parents’ work ethic, contribute far more to inequality than financial constraints do; he continues to be a prolific ivory tower economist at Chicago.

• Steve Levitt: he was chosen for innovative empirical works like the one that drew a link between the legalisation of abortion in the 1970s and the drop of crime rates in the 1990s; since then, he has won the John Bates Clark medal in 2003 and written Freakonomics.

• Caroline Hoxby: of Harvard, chosen for, and continues to work on, the economics of education.

• Glenn Ellison: of MIT, continues to work on microeconomic theory.

• Wolfgang Pesendorfer: of Princeton, works on game theory and political economy.

• Matthew Rabin: of Berkeley, works on behavioural economics, and won the John Bates Clark medal in 2001.

Two people not in the list have won the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to ‘that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge’ by the American Economic Association and is considered the best accolade in the profession, in recent years. They are: MIT’s Daron Acemoglu, co-author of a great read on democracy and dictatorship, and Harvard’s Susan Athey, who works on auction theory, proving that theory is not dead.

This then raises the obvious question, who are the brightest of today’s economists? I guess there will be an article in the 2008 Christmas edition.

The Lord's Prayer

2007-07-17T21:56:00.001Z

Dear Lord's

Let the sun shine on your most hallowed grassiness when India play England. Especially on Sunday, which is the Lord's day for this believer in need of redemption.

Amen!

post-storm

2007-07-14T22:17:00.001Z

Dictator 1 - Mullahs 0

2007-07-11T22:11:00.001Z

Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid had previously been extremely vocal about the willingness of his followers to become martyrs for the cause. But when the time came, the Mullah himself proved a little less eager, preferring to try and sneak away pretending to be a woman, dressed in a burqa and carrying a handbag.

As the Mullah turned from a figure of awe into an object of ridicule, the Dictator's Government took the opportunity to humiliate their opponents further, parading this firebrand Jihadi leader on PTV wearing a burqa, a symbolic castration of this self appointed warrior of the faith.

Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda's No.2 man Ayman Al-Zawahari is pretty pissed off to see this humiliation of his Pakistani allies. He had some nasty things to say about General Musharraf in his latest video, including the following rant:

I talk to you today on the occasion of the criminal aggression carried out by Musharraf, his army and his security organs - the Crusaders' hunting dogs - against Lal Masjid in Islamabad, and on the occasion of the dirty, despicable crime committed by Pakistani military intelligence - at the orders of Musharraf - against Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi when it showed him on television in women's dress.

(...) Musharraf and his hunting dogs have rubbed your honor in the dirt in the service of the Crusaders and the Jews, and if you don't retaliate for your honor, Musharraf won't spare any of you, and won't stop until he eradicates Islam from Pakistan. Lowly Musharraf, who has sold his honor and religion to the Crusaders and Jews, is arrogant with you in the extreme and regards you with the utmost contempt, and treats you like animals and dogs, and only is satisfied by portraying you in the lowliest and most despicable light.

Political Graffiti

2007-07-09T22:24:00.001Z

This funny piece of political graffiti was spotted in Rome.

The Tricolour Flame, based on the Italian flag, is the symbol of the Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore, a right-wing Italian political party with neo-fascist leanings.

This is how their logo usually looks:

2007-07-09T22:11:00.001Z

Robin Hood of Nottingham

Desh: an alternative history — the constitution

2007-07-09T09:05:00.000Z

Some time ago, we started exploring the possibility of a Desi Commonwealth coming out of a violent non-cooperation movement. In this post, we follow up on the idea.

---

As par the Government of India Act of 1930, a constitution was drafted for the new country to be formally named the Commonwealth of India (somewhere along the way, Desh has become the popularly used term). The constitution was drafted by Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, or CR. Head of the Congress party in the southern province of Madras (now Tamil Nadu), CR was known for his conservative leanings, and these were apparent in the constitution.

There were two major issues that the constitution needed to tackle. First of these, the relationship between the Commonwealth and Britain, is no longer an issue in 2007. But the second — how Desh's mosaic of religious, ethnic, caste and class of peoples coexist — still very much is.

The British were concerned that the new Commonwealth would ally itself with hostile powers, and appropriate substantial British economic interests. To assuage such fears, the constitution included a 25 year Indo-British defence pact.

The constitution was modelled on that of the United States, with a very weak centre and strong states. The centre had power over nothing more than defence, foreign affairs including trade, and monetary policy. Unlike any other federation in the modern world (including the Commonwealth in 2007), the centre had no fiscal power except for tariff and customs duty. The states made constitutionally guaranteed contribution (based on the size of the economy, revised once every decade) for defence and the functioning of the central government. Only in the time of national emergency, such as a state of war, could the centre raise taxes.

No independent source of revenue meant that the central government could not intrude on the states' affairs — or so the framers of the constitution thought (oh how wrong they were). Only effective constraints on the state’s rights were that: there were to be no economic barriers between the states — common currency and market; and states had no powers to deal with foreign countries — war and peace were the domain of the centre.

And there was a bill of rights, but only for those eligible to vote (see below). Everything else, from roads and railways, to health and education, to police and courts (except the federal court), to land regulations, to the thorny issues surrounding Hindu-Muslim relations and untouchability, belonged to the states. Why were the states given so much power? CR, with the blessing of the founding trinity of Jinnah-Nehru-Das, thought that this was the best way to maintain political stability and territorial integrity of the new Commonwealth.

While silent on untouchability, the constitution guaranteed property rights — Desi business and land owning elites would not have it any other way. In fact, voting rights for the centre was tied to property ownership (states could widen suffrage, but none did so voluntarily), and only 10 per cent of the population, overwhelmingly men, had suffrage.

But Congress insisted on, and the British conceded, a republic. Desis, or those Desis who owned property, would vote their own president. There were to be a bi-cameral legislature, with a 500‑member House of Representatives, each elected by an equal number of voters (boundaries to be drawn once every decade) through the first-past-the-post system, and a Senate with 5 members from each state regardless of the state’s size. States would decide how their senators would be selected (these days of course senators are popularly elected, but this wouldn’t happen until much later). There would also be an independent judiciary, with ample checks and balances.

Ten provinces of British India — Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Central Province, Frontier Province, Madras, Orissa, the Punjab and the United Provinces — were to be the first 10 states of the Commonwealth. Each state of course had their own constitution.

Between 1932 and 1935, states held their elections according to their constitutions. In 1935, a central legislature was elected. In 1936 the states ratified the constitution. In January 1937, the Congress nominee Mohammed Ali Jinnah was elected to the office of the president unopposed. On 23 march 1937, Jinnah was inaugurated as the first president of the Commonwealth of India, and the Raj had ended.

---

Next: the Jinnah presidency.

Music in Prague

2007-07-08T22:29:00.000Z

2007-07-08T22:22:00.000Z

2007-07-08T22:16:00.000Z

2007-07-08T22:10:00.000Z

Aadha hai chandrama, raat aadhi...

East London Mosque

2007-07-08T13:56:00.000Z

On the left is the 'Main Entrance for Men'. On the right, the 'Main Entrance for Women'.

Why has PTV co-opted Talat Mahmood as a Pakistani?

2007-07-07T21:50:00.000Z

The PTV website, ptv.com.pk, has an online library of songs by Pakistani singers, called Pakistani Evergreen Hits. Except that Talat Mahmood, who features on this list, is surely not Pakistani.

So what is going on? On what ingenious grounds have the worthy folk at PTV seen it fit to co-opt Talat Mehmood as a Pakistani? Is there something to the Talat story that we are missing, some mysterious connection which renders his hits Pakistani Evergreen Hits?

Any idea? I have emailed PTV in search of an explanation, and will let you know what they have to say.

Once upon a time in India - Amar in action

2007-07-04T12:16:00.000Z

Ashfaqullah is an old friend of Amar’s. The two had fought side by side against the British imperialists a number of times. It has been a while however that the two met. It must be the excitement over meeting his friend that Amar does not notice the black car trailing him for a while.

Before long however Amar realises that he is being followed. A black Austin — the driver’s face is unrecognisable under a hat.

A British agent almost certainly, but why is he being followed? It could be related to the incidents last night. If that is the case then the gang is being picked up systematically, perhaps using the information supplied by the still unknown traitor. Or maybe they have become aware of the presence of Azad in the city. The very thought leads to an instinctive jaw tightening.

He has a choice to make — whether to shake the tracker, or to confront him.

While mulling over all these, Amar takes a few unrelated turns — through a morning bazaar, a rail crossing and a five-pointed roundabout — to end up on the highway outside the city. The black Austin follows suit.

Amar has chosen the latter option. It is important to find out who the tracker is.

A bus is up ahead, and a loaded lorry is coming from the opposite direction. Amar speeds up, overtakes the bus, makes a sudden U-turn as the lorry passes the car, and then makes another quick U-turn to be behind the follower. He stops the bike, takes out his pistol, aims squarely at the tyre and shoots. He doesn’t miss, the car loses control and spirals off the road to hit a tree.

The driver comes out, bleeding, a gun in his hand.

‘Drop the gun.’ Amar says, pointing his weapon towards the injured man.

The injured man raises his gun, while trying to regain balance by leaning on the crashed vehicle.

‘Drop the gun!’ Amar shouts. ‘Don’t be stupid. You’re hurt, and I don’t want to kill a Desi.’

The driver isn’t listening. He shoots. Amar shoots back, hitting the man in his leg. The man, unbalanced from the effect of the shot, stumbles and falls onto a large shard of glass which goes clean through his chest.

Amar runs over to the car. The man is dead. Amar curses himself. He goes through the dead man’s wallet. A few rupees, a photo of a young couple in their wedding dress, some receipts, and an ICC badge. The gun is a Colt 45, as common as it gets.

Amar frowns — the army carried out the raid previous night, while the dead man it seems was an ICC agent. He looks at his watch. It’s getting late, and he must be on his way.

---

Previously: Heroes and villains.

Anarchy in the ...

2007-06-30T12:54:00.000Z

What's with Hollywood? We saw Next yesterday, terrorists planning to nuke LA in what would be almost certainly a suicide action, and instead of being Jihadis, they are young blond French, German and Russian men and women who show no sign of being Muslim, and have no discernable agenda whatsoever.

Amar asked this the other day. And the question got me thinking.

We discussed Jihad International at length last year. We argued that, contra Syriana, Jihadis don’t seem to be motivated by material poverty. We also discussed Islamofascism and Islamosocialism, but didn’t draw any link between Jihad and anarchy.

Perhaps we should have. The idea is not new. This Economist article, from August 2005, draws parallels between the Jihadi violence and the anarchist ones that terrorised Europe in the late 19th century.

What did the anarchists want? Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, their first great intellectual and the scribbler of the graffiti ‘property is theft’, wanted to replace states with a society based on voluntary contracts. This appears to be the antithesis of what modern Jihadis want — Mullah Omar never seemed like a libertarian to me! The Economist notes this too, but argues that scratch the surface, and there are many similarities, not the least between the means used by the two groups. Both, for example, rely on spectacular acts of violence to highlight their ideas — hence this ditty: It will come, it will come,every bourgeois will have his bomb.

This is not a very elegant ditty. A much better one, quoted by Bertrand Russell to describe the rise of Western revolutionary ideologies, is this.

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Anarchists, fascists, Bolsheviks, Jihadis — revolutionaries of left and right are bound by this common thread, this urge to grasp, shatter and re-mould. Of course each heart desires very different things, but that’s another matter.

The legend has it that the old man of the mountain was a close friend of the poet‑mathematician who scribed this ditty. While Hassan and Omar may not have been friends, and Hassan may not have given us the word assassin, it is probably true that he wanted to shatter the state of things in his day, and led a series of asymmetric wars to achieve that end.

The world will watch in terror as the greatest city falls. Anarchy and chaos will spread...

Another message from Bin Laden or Zawahiri, both last seen alive in a mountain? No sir, this is R’as Al Ghul in Batman begins. Ghul wants to destroy Gotham …so that mankind will ravage itself, the species will be culled and the balance of nature restored. The planet will be saved for all species.

In the movie, Ghul is a white man whose sanctuary appears to be somewhere in the Himalayas. Of course the aficionados know that in the graphic novels, Ghul comes from North Africa. Perhaps an apocalyptic figure from that part of the world was too much for Hollywood to stomach.

Perhaps. But you should be relieved to know that the spooks are onto this:

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fuelling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.

Hat tip Daniel Drezner, who asks: Will the anarchists of the 21st century unite?

So, the anarchists who planned to nuke LA in the movie Amar saw were motivated by some radical ideology? Well, perhaps it was the lack of an ideology, the absence of a great cause, that motivated them? I haven’t actually seen the movie, so can’t comment. But wasn’t this the case for Tyler Durden? Didn’t he want ‘Project Mayhem’ to be the Great Depression and World War II of his generation?

Capitalism breeds alienation, argued Marx. And from alienation comes anger and violence — thus argued a Dutch philosophy teacher on board Eurostar from Paris to Amsterdam earlier this year. Thanks to my best friend and companion’s surname and religion, I’m often drawn into conversations about these matters. Most such conversations were worse than excruciating. Not this one — though a subsequent one involving the philosopher’s Fortuyn-admiring wife and a British linguist employed by the International Criminal Court on Saddam Hussein’s trial was.

Anyway, I digress. Does one need an ideology to be angry enough to blow up the outside world? Perhaps Amar should ask Amaninder.

2007-06-28T00:59:00.000Z