Archive for December, 2004If you’re a member of the Amazon Associates program, then you can provide a link for visitors to your site to donate to the American Red Cross. It’s as easy as purchasing a book, and 100% of the proceeds go to the ARC for the tsunami relief efforts. See the Amazon box on the right side of my blog. If you have access to your template, you, too, can enter the html code anywhere on your site. A prominent place is best. For more info, log into your Associates account, or click here. 
My friend Rohit and some others have set up a blog to help consolidate information on the earthquake, tsunamis, and resulting relief efforts. Great great idea. I hope to put in a little time on the blog providing links to aid organizations and the like in the next few days. Though, if you check out the site, you’ll see it’s already quite comprehensive. There are also links to donate money online. The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami BlogWedding It’s wedding season in India, and most especially in Bombay, where it hasn’t rained since November 2 and it won’t again until May or June. The bandstands and cricket fields along Marine Drive and the causeway from South Mumbai up to Bandra are framed by hot pink archways and, by night, are flooded with lights and guests. Drop by any of the hotels in the afternoon and evening, and you are guaranteed to see a stunning array of women in beaded saris and men in fancy kurtas and long, fringed scarves. And, Tuesdays are almost as popular as Saturdays, because many couples, regardless of religious or social background, call on astrologers to determine their marriage timings. I can’t believe I’m even going to comment on this, as it’s a ridiculous tabloid issue. But the big media news around here for the last week or so has been the outrage over a celebrity kiss caught on a cell phone camera. Someone snapped a pic of actors Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur in a liplock, sold the fuzzy photo to Mid Day (Mumbai’s afternoon tabloid), and the whole thing has been front-page fodder ever since. So what? I understand the whole privacy issue, but it was just a kiss! Before I came over here people would tell me about how conservative Indian society is, and would often reference the non-kiss rule for Bollywood films. Bombay isn’t particularly conservative – it is a city, after all – but this “Kapoor-kiss-a” has really fed into the stereotype. Surely there’s got to be more news going on in the world than clandestine celebrity kisses? Well, there are also the occasional, sensational news stories about mass fires in the slums, mafia torture of a diamond dealer (whereby the victim was hung upside down and given a petrol enema), and disfiguring acid attacks on young women by jealous ex-lovers. But those pieces rarely merit as many column inches. (Ironically, this post is a case in point.) I was semi-discussing this stupid Kapoor-Kapur story with an Indian friend last night and he brought up an amusing contradiction. At more than one billion people, India is poised to become the most populous nation in the world soon. Yet a kiss is taboo? You’ve got to wonder how this country was even populated at all.
Law 36 of the 48 Laws of Power states, “Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them Is the Best Revenge.” Admittedly, I have regarded the whole Bollywood scene with a bit of disdain, and I’ve tried my damnedest to ignore it. Of course, that was until Anthony and I had the chance to go to the premier of Swades, the new Shah Rukh Khan film, last night. How did firangis like us get invited to the premier, you ask? Well, it turns out that Anthony’s voice has a bit part in the movie! In fact, his American-accented voice may have even landed him a commercial or two. That remains to be seen. At any rate, I’m completely jealous. But, at least, I get to accompany a rising star. Right? No one ever said finding a Christmas tree in Bombay would be easy. But that’s exactly what we set out to do this past weekend.
The NCPA, located at the southernmost end of Marine Drive called Nariman Point, has four different venues, including a real first-class auditorium. I was also happy to find that at intermission the snack bar sold some of the best chilled coffee I’ve ever tasted. Aesthetics and tastebuds aside, the opera itself was quite good, and, as it was in town for only two nights, it was also well-attended. The mostly Italian cast did quite an incredible job, though consensus was that the singer who played Alfredo was having an off-night. Another nice touch to the opera came during the second act dance sequence, when a local dance troupe added a bit of Indian flavor to the matador/salon sequence. I dare say it was Bollywoodesque - see, I do like Bollywood! The womens’ colorful Cannes-Cannes-meets-desi-design costumes were exquisite, though I was a bit put off by the shirtless male dancers. I couldn’t quite figure out where they fit in, other than to lift and fling the ladies. At any rate, it perked up a second act that had, up to that point, left a lot of people scratching their heads (or answering their cell phones, as it were). Actually, I was quite impressed that only about five cells went off during the whole production, though I could hear vibrations coming out of peoples’ pockets al around me. Man, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world - there are always going to be people that have no manners when it comes to cell phones. It may seem kind of strange to be going to see opera in Bombay. But, in fact, there once was a Royal Opera House in the city that has long since fallen into disrepair. I’d love to find out more about it, but a quick search on the net yielded just a few mentions on an students’ architecture chat room. Guess I’ll have to ask around.
A delightful Bollywood jab in this week’s Onion: Bollywood Remake Of Fahrenheit 9/11 Yeah, making fun of Bollywood is just too easy sometimes. Of course, I’m not the only one who does it. There’s also my writer friend Rohit (who’s been threatening to read my blog) who wrote this funny piece a while back on serious writing, Bollywood, and how never the twain shall meet. Here’s a taste (click here for the full column): “‘Where’s the song?’ he said. ‘Er, in the carnival?’ I suggested, helplessly. ‘Hmm…we need more songs…um, suppose that we make all the six friends singers going to the carnival?’ Very shortly, I was thanking him for lunch and I never heard from him again, nor do I wish to. Before this disaster, I saw a television producer for work, and he wanted me to write a Hindi remake of Fatal Attraction, and if that was not fatal enough, in 52 episodes of an year-long serial. What did he want, I wondered, Glenn Close making one threatening phone call in each episode till Michael Douglas dies with boredom?” Nice work, Rohit. I look forward to reading more. Looking back from India, it’s amazing the kinds of things we (Americans, Europeans, others) take for granted each time we’re in the kitchen. I had one of those moments the other day when I was roasting peppers. The peppers had steeped in a bag and their scalding skins were ready to be peeled off. However, I was unable to do my usual trick of running them under cold water while I peeled them because I was could not be sure that my sink water was safe enough to ingest. That has been the conundrum each time I want to cook. Vegetables must be soaked in a solution of distilled water and bleach and/or vegetable wash for 20 minutes, then rinsed, before they are ready to eat. I eat salad here, but it’s not as ubiquitous at my dinner table as it was in the States. If I want to cook pasta (which is often), I have to hope that there’s enough water in the distiller to fill up my pot. Of course, the boiling process probably kills the bacteria, but you never know. I’d rather do the extra step then end up bedridden for a week. It’s not that big of a deal - the hardest part is remembering. I’m in a fairly nice neighborhood, and I still have to worry about bacteria in my water. Now imagine the sort of water the other 999,100,000 people in India, as well as millions more around the world, have to live with. Most aren’t even lucky enough to have a tap. My two cents. So I have to apologize for being out of touch for over a week, but I have a good excuse…I finally found a yoga instructor. Yeah, you’d think that finding a yogi in India would be easy. (You certainly see a lot of lithe, bearded men that look like they sit in lotus position all day.) But since arriving in here, I’ve heard that there are actually more people in the U.S. practicing yoga than there are in India. And, according to Namasta, the North American Studio Alliance, 30% of U.S. yoga practitioners have a household income of more than $75,000. It’s a leisurely, yuppie thing. So, that explains why I don’t see people in the streets doing surya namaskar before going to work. Why “greet the sun” when it beats down on you all day? Anyhow, there are some renowned yoga schools in the Bombay area. The best known is the Yoga Institute in Santa Cruz. And one of the more famous yoga resorts in the world, the Osho Commune, is just east of here in Pune. But the thought of sitting in traffic for more than 1 hour both ways just to destress didn’t make sense. Enter the personal yoga instructor. About four of my neighbors and I have hired a yoga instructor to come twice a week, and we do about an hour and a half of yoga and meditation up on the roof. |
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