Back in Philly

So I've been back in the U.S. for about 24 hours now. Here are my travel experiences regarding the flight and the first day in the U.S.

1) First of all, I have completely avoided jet lag. This I did by getting only about two-and-a-half hours of sleep the night before I left in Bangalore. I went to sleep around 01:00 a.m. and got up at 03:30 a.m. to leave for the airport. My flight from Bangalore was at 06:45 a.m. on a Boeing 777 and after breakfast, I went to sleep. I love traveling in the off-season! On the Bangalore-London flight, I was at a window seat and I had all three seats to myself between the window and the aisle. So I was able to nicely stretch out and go to sleep. It still wasn't uninterrupted sleep owing to turbulence and the narrowness of the seat for sleeping, but it was adequate and restful on the whole. And thanks to the map on the screen right in front of me, I was able to track my sleep and position.

So I went to sleep right off the coast of India, off of Goa. When I got up and looked at the map, I was somewhere near Tabriz in northwest Iran, near the Turkish border. Then I went back to sleep. The next time I woke up, I was somewhere over the Bosphorus crossing into Europe. I went back to sleep once again. I woke up again one final time during the flight as left the Balkans into central Europe. They served me lunch and I landed at London Heathrow at about 12:30 p.m. GMT or 06:00 p.m. IST.

2) At Heathrow, I passed through two more security checks (in addition to two in Bangalore) and I entered the transit terminal, which is HUGE. After buying Toblerone chocolates, one of my traditions at any European airport, I went to a computer and sat down to check e-mail. I logged on to find this short e-mail from British Airways.

"Dear Customer,

Flight BA69 on 28 Nov/LHR - our apologies this flight
is cancelled due a/c tech, please call BA reservations to rebook.

Yours sincerely,
British Airways Customer Service"

That's all! I was momentarily confused until I realized that BA 69 was my London Heathrow to Philadelphia flight. So I went to the customer service counter and told the lady that I was supposed to be on the Philadelphia flight. She asked me to go downstairs one level and said they were rerouting us through New York. So I went down there and my reservations were changed to a flight landing at New York JFK. The plane left about two hours earlier and I would reach New York about two hours earlier (though New York is marginally closer to London, increased air traffic results in a longer wait time for landing, hence the exact same flight time). The lady told me that British Airways would arrange for ground transportation to take us from New York JFK to Philadelphia and that our baggage would be rerouted to New York JFK.

The other main thing that I noticed in London was the sky. For the first time in about nine months, I noticed a subdued light even in midday. In Bangalore, the sun at noon even now in late November is roughly 67 degrees above the horizon, or roughly where the sun in Philadelphia is in late March or mid September. But in the middle latitudes, in the winter, the sun is low in the sky, even at noon, and the light is much more subdued since it's striking the sky and dispersing at an extreme angle. The blue is much more darker and softer. It's like early evening throughout the day. At London at this time of the year, even at "high" noon, the sun is only 30 degrees above the horizon. It was a sudden realization that I had left the warm Bangalore climate and was back in lands of cold winters.

By the way, I used the word middle latitudes because I do not like the word "temperate regions." According to traditional European and American teachings, we live in the "temperate zone", Bangalore is in the "torrid zone" and the polar regions are the "frigid zone." I'm sorry, that is entirely up to interpretation and is another reflection of a superiority complex on the part of Europeans and Americans. For me, Bangalore is in a "temperate zone", Singapore or Madras would be "torrid zone" and a place like Minneapolis would be in the "frigid zone". Rather than use subjective terms, we can just use terms like "tropics", "middle latitudes" and polar regions.

3) The flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK was more or less normal. In order to avoid jet lag, I had slept on the Bangalore to London Heathrow flight and I had to stay awake on this one. Aboard this Boeing 747-400, I had seats in the middle of the aircraft all to myself. Did I mention how much I enjoy traveling in the off-season? So I watched a number of movies, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Cars, and Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Regarding the movies, I felt the first Pirates of the Caribbean was way better, Cars was a propaganda piece manufactured by the oil & auto industry, and Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was no different than previous Fast and the Furious movies, only now it was with left-hand drive cars instead of right-hand drive cars. But I did manage to keep myself entertained for about seven and a half hours and landed in New York JFK at around 05:30 p.m. EST (04:00 a.m. IST).

4) I landed in New York JFK and passed through immigration to the baggage claim area. As I waited there, I heard an announcement that requested some passengers to bypass baggage claim and exit directly after immigration to the British Airways counter. I half-expected my name to be called and it was! I exited customs and went to the British Airways counter where I told the lady, "I think my bags are in London." She asked me my name and confirmed what I had just said. So they gave me a baggage coupon and said that my bags would be coming on the flight the day after and would be delivered by FedEx the day after that (which didn't turn out to be the case since I *still* don't have my luggage yet).

5) Mani picked me up at Philadelphia International Airport (British Airways had arranged for a bus from New York JFK to Philly) at around 10:15 p.m. (08:45 a.m. IST). We came to Drexel and met Manu and went to Manu's place for some time. I wanted to drive back from Manu's place, which was interesting.

For one thing, after getting in the car, I was fiddling with the windshield wipers until I realized I was in the U.S. and that the lights were on the left of the steering. I also instinctively lowered my left hand to release the handbrake and at this point, Mani started getting nervous. It didn't help his nervousness when at 34th and Lancaster, I turned on the wipers when I had intended to turn on the right turn signal.

But I got my bearings and proceeded smoothly until from there onto I-76 W. As I merged onto I-76 W, I quickly moved into the left lane and as I proceeded, I noticed that there was traffic merging onto the highway from my left. In this merging lane, there were three cars where I was parallel to the last car of the three. I honked to let them know that I was there.

At this point, Mani is staring at me. I even turned to him told him, "Why is your horn so weak?" I think somewhere as I was completing this sentence, I realized what I had done. I started laughing and told him that I had honked because I didn't want the people merging to suddenly come into my lane, to which Mani responded, "You dog, they don't do that over here." Clearly, driving in India will take longer to eliminate from my system (although a few miles ahead of this incident, a giant pick-up truck did cut me off, necessitating the use of the horn).

And that was the story of my trip here and my first 24 hours here. More to come in the next few days.

Olympics Beijing 2008

How the Chinese prepare for the Olympics.

"For about 20 minutes the Chinese side impressed their guests with slick presentations, and a deluge of facts and figures; everything from the number of trees being planted, to the treatment of Olympic sewage.

The presentation complete, the group of Chinese officials sat back smiling, confident that the foreigners had been suitably impressed. But Ken and Seb clearly hadn't read the script.

Lord Coe immediately launched into a string of questions: "How would the facilities be used after the Olympics? What percentage of energy used during the Olympics will come from renewable sources? How would the Chinese achieve their aim of making the Olympics carbon-neutral?"

A look of panic came over the officials faces. Why were these foreigners asking questions? Hadn't they been listening to the carefully prepared presentation?

For a few minutes the officials floundered and waffled, before the meeting was brought to a swift close."

LOL!!!

"For Seb and Ken it was lesson number one in Chinese bureaucrat-dom, official information is there to be consumed, not questioned."

"Take the example of Beijing's international airport. To cope with the extra Olympic visitors, it's being doubled in size, with a vast new terminal building and third runway, in a design by Lord Norman Foster.

But while in London, Heathrow airport's new terminal five started life somewhere back in the mid 1990s, and still isn't finished, Beijing's new space-age terminal three only broke ground in early 2005.

By the end of next year it will be complete. It's also about twice the size of the Heathrow building, and includes a new runway, railway link, and new motorway.

To make way for all this, three villages and thousands of villagers had to be moved.

In Britain this would represent a huge legal and financial obstacle. Not in China."

Bangalore's new international airport is floudering for similar problems. Unlike China, there's this pesky thing called human rights in India which the government has to take care of before pursuing a gigantic project.

Who's in India? Hu is in India!

Chinese dictator Hu Jintao just today concluded a four day visit to India. Throughout the four days of his summit, Tibetans in exile protested across the country targeting Hu Jintao in their demonstrations. And with good reason, Hu Jintao was the leader of the Tibetan "Autonomous Region" in the late 1980s when China brutally put down some protests there.

In any case, the protests were widespread across India from Bangalore to New Delhi to Bombay to Darjeeling. I drove past a site of protest in Bangalore on Nov 21 and decided to stop and explore it further. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me and whatever I did capture was with the primitive camera and video recorder that my phone here possesses.

I stuck around the scene of the protest for about 45 minutes during which time the protesters raised slogans against China and Hu Jintao and the protest was forcefully ended by Bangalore police who broke it up. I was both heartened and disappointed by the protest, as I'll explain now.

I was heartened to see the protest because it stood as a symbol of India's vibrant democracy as well as India's commitment to human rights.

• The Tibetan flag, which if flown within Tibet will get you imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities, fluttered proudly in Bangalore as it was waved by a Tibetan protester. The Tibetan flag is one of my favorite flags, in my opinion it looks absolutely beautiful, and to see it being waved around proudly always does my heart good. It represents the struggle the Tibetan people face in their quest for a basic human right, the right to self-determination and the right to freedom. When I visited a Tibetan store in Berkeley, CA about a year ago (almost to the week), I tried to procure a Tibetan flag to hang in my living room, but he didn't have any more left.
• There were plenty of placards all around denouncing China for burying nuclear waste in Tibet and warning of dire consequences regarding China's military expansionist ambitions showing a red China stretching across Asia including half of India.
  
• An animated Tibetan youth led a candlelight protest for Tibet and rallied the group by shouting catchy slogans such as
• "Who's the murderer? Hu Jintao! Who's the killer? Hu Jintao! Who's the torturer? Hu Jintao!"
• "Free (crowd screams Tibet!)! Free (crowd screams Tibet!)! Free (crowd screams Tibet!)!"
• "Tibet ki aazadi, Bharat ki suraksha" which is Hindi for "Tibet's freedom, India's security" and makes the point that India would never have to spend hundreds of millions of rupees in militarily protecting an Indo-Tibet border.
• "Hu Jintao kutta, maro jutta!" which roughly translates into "Hu Jintao is a dog, pelt him with shoes".
• "Long live the Dalai Lama, free the Panchen Lama!" (the Panchen Lama was abducted by Chinese authorities when he was a toddler and he and his parents have not been since. The Communist junta has installed a fake Panchen Lama of its own (don't ask me how a supposedly atheist government decides where a Buddhist monk has been reincarnated).
  

There were some other slogans, but I forget them. By the way, my cell phone does not record sound, so no, there is nothing wrong with your sound card when you watched those videos. Everything I described until now was heartening. So what disappointed me? Well, the way the protest ended. There was a police contingent standing by the protesters throughout the day and at around 7 p.m. a large empty police van showed up along with dozens of police officers.

One of the police officers went up to the lead Tibetan protester and from what I could hear of their conversation, which was in English, it went like this:

Police: You will have to end this protest and disperse now.
Protester: Why should we disperse now?
Police: You had taken out permission to conduct this protest today until 2 p.m. and now it is 7 p.m. You can come back take permission again and come back tomorrow, but you have to leave now.
Protester: Why should we come back tomorrow? Why can't we have permissio now to continue the protest?
Police: (inaudible) ... You cannot occupy this public area now without permission. You must vacate this place. Come back tomorrow if you want with fresh permission.
Protester: You say we are occupying this area. China is illegally occupying Tibet without permission. We are saying they should vacate Tibet!

What that last sentence of the protester had to do with anything, I have no idea. Anyway, failing to convince the protesters to disperse peacefully, the policemen charged the crowd beating them with lathi sticks and hauling them into the police van, which newspaper and media photographers had a field day with the drama that was unfolding. I didn't take too many videos because I didn't want the police damaging my phone (they confiscated a Tibetan's camera as he was taping, although they returned it about 15 mins later since they have no legal right to take it). The police van was filled and in the time a new one came, some protesters gathered themselves in a corner and continued to shout slogans against Hu Jintao and China. I didn't stay till the end, but from seeing all the debris left behind (plastic water bottles, cardboard signs, etc), there was going to be a lot of work for the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike the next day.

Towards the end, I was disappointed with the Tibetans' behavior and felt it marred an otherwise powerful protest. We in India are not their enemies. In fact, India has given them refugee status and many of them that are born in India have the option of accepting Indian citizenship, although they have been asked not to by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-exile for fear of diluting the Tibetan cause.

The Tibetan Government-in-exile itself is given a more or less free reign in India, including the power to collect annual taxes from Tibetan refugees living in the country. The least the Tibetan protesters could have done was to respect the law of the land. Ideally, in a democracy, protests should be allowed anywhere, anytime. However, in the interest of maintaining law and order as well as security, many free nations require protesters to take permission for protests, which will be assigned a time and a place. India is no different.

The Tibetan protesters had a permit to protest all of Nov 20, which they did. On Nov 21, they had taken permission to protest until 2 p.m., according to the police. They stayed on five hours past their permission and refused to move, instead bringing up an inane attempt at an analogy for the Chinese occupation of Tibet to justify their presence. When they did finally leave / were removed, they left a big mess. In my opinion, it was an abuse of India's freedoms. Of course, everyone in India abuses Indian democracy in similar manners (such as an unpermitted protest involving the Communist Party of India-Marxist's CITU Autorickshaw Drivers Union that blocked and caused a major traffic jam in a busy area of the city today).

Nonetheless, had the Tibetans peacefully dispersed taking their refuse with them leaving the intersection as it originally was and returned the next day with fresh permission, they would have garnered all the more of the public's, including my own, sympathy.

Of course, there could be reasons that I do not know about, such as Indian police not giving permission to the protesters for political reasons and India and China get increasingly chummy with each other, but that did not seem to be the case here, since the policeman invited the protesters back the next day. Instead of winning the hearts of Bangaloreans, the Tibetans' actions led to one of the policeman say to the laughter of an assembled crowd, "Illi bandu jagala madthare. Namma awurige jaga illa", which in Kannada means, "They come and create a ruckus here. We don't even have space for our own people." Indians by and large are sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, but that doesn't mean we'll condone everything even as blatant disrespect is shown for the law of the land.

On a final note, I found it somewhat ironic that the Tibetans were protesting against cultural genocide in Tibet, of which a major component is the suppression of Tibetan language by Chinese people. A report commissioned by the Tibetan Government-in-exile found:

"It was noted that very few Chinese in Tibet could speak Tibetan. Even those who were born in Tibet or had lived there for many years, rarely spoke Tibetan. Those who did speak Tibetan had extremely limited language skills. From conversations with Tibetans and Chinese on this subject, it was learned that Chinese and Tibetans believe that it is not necessary for Chinese living or working in Tibet to be able to speak Tibetan. Urban Tibetans on the other hand, need to learn Chinese in order to be able to function fully in their own urban society. In one Chinese restaurant on the Beijing Donglu, the mission tried to order food in Tibetan, but the Chinese waiters and waitresses were unable to understand. After several minutes a Tibetan girl working in the kitchen was asked to translate for the mission from Tibetan into Chinese. However, her command of Chinese was not sufficient for this task. As some of the staff spoke fluent English, orders were then taken in English. The Tibetan girl told the mission she was from a rural area and had recently started her job in the Chinese restaurant. When asked how much she earned per month, she answered she was rather uncertain about this. After her first month she had received RMB 300 while her colleagues earned around RMB 1000 a month. When asked why there was a difference between her salary and those of her colleagues, she answered that she did not know as her Chinese was not good enough to ask for an explanation. It was clear that the girl was severely handicapped by not being able to speak and understand Chinese sufficiently."

What appeared as ironic to me is that the Tibetans were shouting slogans in English and Hindi, imposed by North Indians as the "national language" while no slogan was raised in Kannada, the local language spoken in Bangalore. Of course, while the situation in any southern Indian state is nowhere near as bad as that of Tibet, north Indians in southern India do exhibit many of the characteristics that Chinese exhibit in Tibet, with many of them not knowing the local language even years after living here and believing it is their God-given right that everyone in India be able to understand and speak to them in their own language.

But I'm going somewhat off topic here. And before I end this post, one final note. I was surprised and angered by the Indian government's decision this time to confine radical Tibetan independence activist Tensing Tsundue to Dharamshala this year so that he wouldn't "embarrass" the Indian government.

In the past, Tsundue has carried out dramatic protests such as unfurling the Tibet flag across from the hotel where the Chinese leadership is staying in India and the like. It was also unfortunate that the Indian government has decided to restrict Tibetans' movements in India and keep them out of sight of the Chinese dictator as he toured India. In addition, China has requested and India has agreed to "not allow Tibetans living in the country to engage in anti-China political activities from Indian territory."

I fully agree with a recent editorial in The Times of India that said:

"New Delhi has officially accepted China's occupation of Tibet, but it has no business to demand that all sections of civil society toe the line."

In concluding this blog post, I would like to remind both the Chinese and Indian governments that India is a democratic society where many citizens can and often will have views that sharply different from the government, and we will make every effort to express those views in public. Meanwhile, I would like to urge the Tibetans to respect the law of the land and disperse peacefully when their protests end rather than fighting with police. If you want to fight, please do so against the People's Liberation Army. Trust me, by protesting responsibly, you will win a lot more people to your cause, which ultimately is a righteous one.

"Desis" in Congress

EDIT (11/13/06): I forgot to mention this earlier, but perhaps the most important impact made by an Indian-American was by a person who wasn't a candidate at all! I am, of course, talking about Mr. S.R. Sidharth, who was a campaign worker for Jim Webb, Senator-elect from Virginia and was insulted by George Allen who called him "macaca," a racist slur that means monkey. That statement turned this "Republican-leaning" state into a "toss-up" which was colored blue on election election. Here are some articles on Mr. S.R. Sidharth, one which he gave to The Washington Post in August and one he gave today to Deccan Herald. And of course, everyone and their grandmother's in laws now know that Virginia's race ended up coloring a blue majority in the Senate, thereby shattering the evil "genious" Karl Rove's hopes of a "permanent Republican majority." By the way, does anyone else think that "permanent Republican majority" sounds a lot like "Thousand Year Reich?"

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Here in India, people share a kinship with other Indians all around the world, always very eager to hear how their brothers and sisters in far off lands are faring. Today was no exception. In today's Deccan Herald, almost the entire "Foreign" news page was devoted to the U.S. midterm elections. Of that space, about half was devoted to how Indian-Americans fared in various federal, state, and local races.

There were quite a few Indian-Americans who ran for the U.S. Congress, but only one was reelected. This person is Mr. Bobby Jindal, R-La. It is pretty sad that he's the sole representative of Indians in Congress though. He's about as far of a right-wing nutcase as you can get.

For starters, he has a 0% rating on conservation and environment related issues from Defenders of Wildlife, and during the 109th Congress, he voted on everything from drilling and spilling in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge to helping the "America's Number 1 Wildlife Villain" and soon-to-be-out-of-work Congressman Richard Pombo, R-Calif, redefine the historic Endangered Species Act. On other issues, his stance is no better. He is against abortion in all cases, even in the case of rape or incest, and he has not yet stated his stance on abortion when the mother's life is at stake. And he is a exteme jingoist, who supports a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag burning!

Hmm, I thought that the constitution was to ensure that the fundamentally inherent rights of all human beings weren't taken away. But these new brand of Republicans want the Constitution to be pretty much another legislature, whether it be with flag burning or gay marriage. The Constitution tried legislating once, with prohibition, and we all know how great that turned out.

Anyway, so what about the remainder of the desi candidates? Well, I don't know too much about them. Although, I would not have minded if Mr. Raj Bhakta had won election to Congress. He was running for a congressional district that covered some of northeast Philadelphia and parts of Montgomery County, Jenkintown, etc. The man's half Indian, half Irish. Now you might be asking, "Vivek, how could you support someone who ran against Allyson Schwartz, who received a 100% conservation rating from Defenders of Wildlife? Well, first of all, Raj ran as a pro-environment Republican. His web site stated his opposition against drilling in the Arctic as well as how he would fight against members of his own party and the president to protect the environment. That very important issue was quickly off the table. And he supported the India-US nuclear deal while Allyson Schwartz voted opposes it. But he lost, pretty handily. It was hard for anyone to win this year who had a R following their name, borne out by the story of Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island who is actually to the Left of five Democrats in the Senate and who did not vote for George Bush in 2004.

So for the moment at least, Mr. Jindal remains the only desi in the Capitol building. And he is a far cry from the last desi in Congress, Mr. Dalip Singh Saund, who represented the 29th district of California from 1957 - 1963. Unlike, Mr. Saund, who was a progressive and campaigned for South Asians to be naturalized (prior to the Luce-Celler Act being passed in 1946, South Asians were considered "unassimilable" and were not able to become naturalized citizens of the U.S.), Mr. Jindal is yet one more self-righteous Republican bigot from the South. Oh, well, perhaps in the coming years, there will be someone who I as an Indian can be proud of.

YEEAAAGGGGHHHH!!!

If there ever was a day to justify the explosive enthusiam that the Dean Scream represents, it was today, 11/08/2006, a day which represented a bright, new direction for America.

I woke up at 06:30 a.m. today to turn on CNN and watch the election results pour in. When I turned on the tv, many of the eastern states had just finished polling and the count in the House was 30 seats for Democrats, 12 seats for the Republicans, and 393 seats undecided.

These past few days was one of nervousness. Here's a little bit of what happened before:

Nov. 7, 2000 - I was in Bangalore then as well and woke up at early in the morning on Nov. 8 to watch CNN. I remember my feelings when with the fate of the presidency at stake, CNN called Florida for George Bush Jr. around 2 p.m. IST, give or take an hour, and declared him the 43rd president of the United States. I was crushed, I had so fervently wanted Gore to win. Then hope sprang anew as Florida went from red to yellow as it was once again placed in the "Too Close to Call" category. Then over the coming weeks, I saw in disbelief as the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George Bush on partisan lines. Despite the fact that there was precedent for the vote count to be continued all the way to January, the 5 Republican appointed judges declared that enough time was spent and George Bush took the presidency with a lead of 537 votes.

Nov. 5, 2002 - I don't quite remember the details of this election, only that it wasn't a happy one. This was one of those rare elections for which I actually was present in the U.S. I remember the Senate being lost and reading in a news article how Bush had whooped and pumped his fists when he saw the results come in. The election results didn't do anything to make those gloomy, cold, dark November days any brighter.

Nov. 2, 2004 - This was one of those races where I tried everything possible to ensure that George Bush left office. Once again, for this election, I was in India on holiday. I had submitted commentary after commentary to my university's student newspaper on why George Bush should not be reelected. Everything seemed to be going great, Kerry routed Bush in the first presidential debate. The polls showed them in a statistical heat. I woke up again early on Nov. 3 to watch election results on CNN. I turned on CNN, saw big leads in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio, and a few hours later, George Bush was reelected. This time, surprisingly, there was no shock and no feeling of crushing disappointment. I turned off the tv and continued on with my life.

But today, EVERYTHING was different.

At one point, when I was watching CNN, the Democrats had captured seven key "toss-up" races in the House and needed eight more. In a spurt, race after race came on the screen and flashed blue as Democrats took seats from Indiana to New York to Arizona. There was a tidal wave of resentment and anger against the Bush administration that swept the country. A net gain of 28 seats! Today was fantastic.

I was watching the post-election interviews and it's clear that everyone in the Democratic camp was in the same frame of mind as me. We had won! We had actually won. It's been such a long time since we tasted victory, we had forgotten how sweet it was.

Nancy Pelosi will be the first female Speaker of the House. The Senate will likely enter Democratic hands as well, Jim Webb and Jon Tester are both leading by very small margins in Virginia and Montana respectively. If they can survive the recount, the Senate will be 51-49 in Democrats' favor and with our strong House majority, we can *finally* provide the kind of oversight that this administration desperately needs.

For the moment, let's relish this victory. We have provided a New Direction for America. I look forward to the first 100 hours of the New Congress when we enact landmark legislation such as increasing the minimum wage and making healthcare affordable to all Americans, irrespective of income.

On a personal note, this will also be the last election in which I am a mere spectator. I intend to apply for citizenship immediately on my return to the U.S. in July. I look forward to taking part in the Democratic primary for the 2008 presidential elections as well as the presidential elections themselves.

Politics of Language

I was waiting along with my friend in a queue at the Bangalore City Bus stand yesterday. We were both traveling to Mysore (about 140 kms southwest of Bangalore) and were waiting to buy tickets. I hadn't seen her in almost two months and we were just chatting generally. Usually, when I talk with my friends in/from Bangalore, depending on who it is, it usually varies from about 70-95% English, with Kannada making up the remaining part.

So anyway, we were just chatting and this guy standing in the queue near us suddenly interjects. He was like, "Listen, you know Kannada, she knows Kannada, so why don't both of you talk in Kannada? You can talk in English at your workplace, but talk in Kannada now. Are you ashamed of speaking in Kannada?" First thought in my mind was, what business is it of his what language I speak in, especially when it doesn't concern him in the least. So I replied, "Yes, we both know Kannada ..." and I was going to finish with "but we'll speak how we're comforable" when he interjected, "so talk in Kannada then."

At which point, we decided to ignore him and continued speaking in English, while he complained to the guy next to him, "See what the fate of Kannada is when even people who know it don't speak it." Well, I have news for him. The world is getting globalized and English is the lingua franca. It's sad that people are losing touch with their local languages and mother tongues, but that's the price of progress. For example, I do feel bad about the fact that my "thinking language" is English, not Tamil which is my mother tongue. But that's besides the point. This guy has no right to tell me what language I should speak in with my friends. I generally do try to speak in Kannada as much as possible when I go to stores, etc and if I had asked this man a question first, I would have spoken to him in Kannada, not English. This man, unfortunately, represents the wave of linguistic fanaticism that crops up the state every now and then.

I mentioned the lingustic fanatics in my last post who are fighting to keep English out of being taught in government-aided schools. This anti-English illogic doesn't stop there! The announcement was made on November 1, 2006 and within the next couple of months, the names of Bangalore, Mysore, Bellary, Hubli, Belgaum, and Mangalore are going to revert back to their pre-British names of Bengalooru, Mysooru, Ballary, Hubballi, Belagaavi, and Mangalooru respectively. First of all, Bangalore sounds a million times cooler than Bengalooru. We even have a English word named after it for God's sake, "Someone's job gets Bangalored." So from now on, is it going to get "Bengalooroed?" Come on, don't tell me that the Government of Karnataka doesn't have anything better to do than to change the names of cities. This process involves a huge cost, because all the signs on the roads, highways, government documents, legal documents, etc has to be changed. It's expected to cost hundreds of millions of rupees before all is said and done. Is this really necessary? Couldn't this money be better spent ensuring that the children of Bangalore have decent schools, the citizens of Bangalore have a decent subway system that will unclog the roads. Really, what is the need of the hour, infrastructure or a new name? Our brilliant politicians, aiming for that votebank of lingustic fanatics, obviously decided on the latter.

Sadly, this is not a trend restricted to Karnataka. Bangalore is the most recent city to fall victim to this waste of money and time. Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram, Alleppey became Alappuzha, Quilon became Kollam, Cochin became Kochi, Cannanore became Kannur, Calicut became Kozhikode, Panjim became Panaji, Baroda became Vadodara, and Calcutta has become Kolkata. So you see, the insanity has not been restricted to Bangalore, but is widespread around India.

So is Cubbon Park in Bangalore, named after Mark Cubbon, a British designer of the city, going to be renamed? Why not change the name of the country itself? After all, India is a name given by the British. In Indian languages, the name of the country is Bharata. So should we all become citizens of Bharata? My passport says "Republic of India" in English and "Bharat Ganarajya" in Hindi. In front of a State Bank of India in Bangalore, you would see a sign that says "State Bank of India" in English and "Bharateeya Rashtriya Bank" in Kannada. The point is that the country is always referred to as India in English and Bharata in Indian languages. Similarly, Bangalore was always Bengalooru in Kannada. In fact, the bus I am sitting on right now on the way back from Mysore says in front, in Kannada, "Madikeri - Mysooru - Bengalooru" and the corresponding English sign says "Madikeri - Mysore - Bangalore." Even when I speak in Kannada and refer to Bangalore, it's always referred to as Bengalooru, since it sounds right. The point is, Bangalore was already Bengalooru in Kannada, so why bother with changing the name of the place in English? It's kind of like how Rome is Rome in English but Roma in Italian. Similarly here, in government documents in Kannada, Bangalore has always been referred to me with Bengalooru.

So, will someone please throw these lingustic fanatics out of the Vidhana Soudha and let the government handle some real work.

And did I mention how horrible Bengalooru sounds in English? If I could only have that beautiful name Bangalore back for this city!

Israeli Tactics

I am dismayed by the actions taken by the Israeli Army in dealing with the recent mosque standoff.

Israel Opens Fire During Mosque Standoff

The ideal solution to me is obvious. Once the militants refused to surrender, Israel should have brought in the fighter jets and bombed this mosque to smithereens. Then this entire episode would not have happened.

In my opinion, any supposed place of worship that knowingly offers sanctuary to people who have tried to take the lives of innocents, as in the case of these militants that retreated into the mosque after firing rockets into Israel, forfeits the support of God and ceases to be holy.

And I like how Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian Prime Minister, has called upon the international community to take note of this incident. Wait a minute, isn't he from the Hamas Party, a recognized terrorist organization that openly supports the destruction of Israel and millions of its people based solely on their Jewish religion? Right ... here's a guy with a lot of credibility who we should take seriously!

When the Palestinians stop electing terrorists and using places of worship to cover those that murder, then maybe they'll have the credibility to threaten Israeli actions. And let's not forget, these women were heading to the mosque in order to aid the militants' escape and provide cover for them so that they could fire at Israeli troops without being fired at. Hardly a Jallianwala Bagh ...

The Educated & The Really Educated

Today is Karnataka Rajyothsava, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Karnataka as a State within the Indian Union. As such, it is a school holiday and our servant lady who comes by every day to wash clothes, vessels, and sweep and mop the floor brought along her young daughter, who played with our dog Dino and generally sat around while her mother worked.

While talking to this little girl, I got to know a little bit about the state of her education. She's apparently in the third grade and the medium of instruction in her school is Kannada, since she goes to a public-aided school. In Karnataka, the law requires that all schools that receive government money compulsarily teach in Kannada until at least the fifth grade, from which point onwards they may begin to teach in English, if they have the facilities. Consequently, this curious girl, who lingered around me and my laptop as I surfed thru CNN and The New York Times web pages, was unable to read any of the articles that I could open. On speaking to her, she told me that she knew a little bit of English to read and write, but not much.

Compare this to middle class and upper middle class children like myself who could afford to go to private schools and learnt to read and speak English by the first grade. Kids in the third and fourth grade in my neighborhood, also belonging to the middle class, roll around on their bicycles on the street in front of my house, pausing to pet Dino when I walk by them, talking to me and among themselves entirely in English, with a knowledge of grammar and diction that would put three-fourths of West Philadelphia to shame.

This is the state of education in India. The New York Times and the rest of the international media heaps laurels on the state of India's English-educated workforce, but the sad reality is that it often does not extend below the middle class. While it is encouraging that this girl is going to school and her parents realize the value of educating their children and also that she will be helped by caste-based quotas when she enrolls for college (although it is my fervent belief that quotas should be based on income, not caste, in which case this girl would still benefit), her knowledge of English will prove crucial in her eventual fight to obtain a good job in the competitive global marketplace that is today's working world.

The linguistic extremists in India have placed enough pressure on the government to ensure that all government-aided schools are taught only in Kannada medium, in their dogmatic efforts to "preserve" the local language, they are potentially compromising on these poor students' chances of upliftment in society. While the children can certainly learn English later on, it has been decisively proven that children pick up things best at an early age. The current state government has promised that English will be a mandatory class among other Kannada medium classes from the first grade onwards from this academic year. I wonder what the quality of those classes are, however.

And let's keep in mind, this is in Bangalore, India's silicon plateau. One can imagine the state of public education in the socially backward and uneducated rural hinterland of North India, especially in places like the Cow Belt.

Cow Belt = "The expanse of land stretching more or less horizontally across the `chest’ of India, below the northernmost states of Jammu and Kashmir, yet above the peninsular states such as Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, is often referred to as the `Cow Belt’. This isn’t just a mere reference to the fact that much of this area is dominated by agriculture (and bullocks, not tractors, are often the means to help plough fields). This has loads of other connotations. The fact, for instance, that it’s a pretty backward region, where issues that India would much rather sweep under the carpet, like poverty, illiteracy, caste discrimination, and the subjugation of women are more the rule than the exception. The people of the Cow Belt (of which Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest states) are said to know only one type of culture--agriculture."