We spotted this man just the other day on W47th St in the Jewelry District of Manhattan sporting a back-board that advertised a nearby Barber Shop.

Just a few blocks from New York City’s famous Times Square landmark, the Jewelry district in Manhattan is chock-a-block with stores selling gold, diamonds and other precious gems.

Amid all the jewelry stores on W47th St, the man with the board attached to his back stood out, mainly because what he was peddling was so different from the main business of the area.

One of the tragic eyesores of modern India, the Dharavi slum in Mumbai epitomizes the failure of the Indian state to provide the most basic necessities for its citizens.

Asia’s biggest slum, Dharavi is located in Central Mumbai, between Mahim in the west and Sion in the east and attracts poor people from across India who come to this teeming metropolis in search of a better life.

After decades of neglect, the government seems finally to have woken up to its responsibilities.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on May 31, 2007 has an advertisement from the Slum Rehabilitation Authority of the Government of Maharashtra inviting developers to bid for a project to transform this dirty slum into an integrated township with all modern amenities.

The overall cost of this ambitious project is Continue Reading…

Mounted police are an interesting sight anywhere.

In this age of Hummers, BMW and Mercedes Benz cars, the sight of a policeman atop a big horse makes for a nice picture.

Horses, once ubiquitous in New York (according to a recent issue of the New Yorker there were 120,000 horses in 1908) are a rarity these days except on Central Park South, where tourists can take short rides in carriages. 

In the above photo, we see a New York City policeman riding down 8th Avenue in Mid-Town Manhattan on a Saturday morning.

Watching Shootout at Lokhandwala is cruel punishment for Bollywood fans.

By golly, we haven’t seen such a juvenile, amateurish gangster movie - either Bollywood or Hollywood - in 45 years.

Shootout at Lokhandwala’s director Apoorva Lakhia has accomplished a feat that we thought was impossible. Lakhia has made a movie worse than his previous disaster Ek Ajnabee (a crude copy of the 2004 Denzel Washington-Dakota Fanning movie Man on Fire). Bravo, Lakhia! Way to go.

Featuring the ex-junkie and real-life criminal Sanjay Dutt, a bunch of B-grade Bollywood flops like Viveik Oberoi and Suniel Shetty and C-grade misfits such as Tusshar Kapoor and Neha Dhupia, Shootout at Lokhandwala is a film that’s crude in conception, clumsy in execution and crass in action.

Shootout at Lokhandwala was released on May 25, 2007 just as Sanjay Dutt is about to be sentenced for illegal possesion of deadly weapons.

Much is wrong with Shootout at Lokhandwala.

The gangsters Maya (Viveik Oberoi), Bhua (Tusshar Kapoor) et al are not fear-inspiring, the songs not bewitching, the action scenes not thrilling and in their angst the cops just not convincing. As a result, the narrative is seldom gripping.

For the hapless viewer caught in the crossfire of the various bubbleheads involved in the making of Shootout at Lokhandwala, the overall effect of this repellent farce is plain agonizing.

Inspired by an actual shootout at Continue Reading…

Some 50,000 low-caste Hindus and nomadic tribesmen converted to Buddhism at a horse race-track in Mumbai on Sunday in one of the single largest conversions in recent times.

For centuries, the stratified caste system has been one of the greatest scourges of India, particularly in the rural hinterlands where those from the lower castes and Dalis (former untouchables) still suffer at the hands of the upper castes.

But conversions have also become a sensitive issue in India, where some upper caste Hindus charge that inducements are resulting in conversions to other religions.

Hindus constitute the majority Continue Reading…

Cheeni Kum is one of the better movies to come out of the Bollywood stables this summer.

Featuring the talented actress Tabu and the Old Man of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan in key roles, Cheeni Kum is the charming love story of a 34-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man.

Eschewing the usual Bollywood trappings of garish costumes, tawdry dances, weird fights and silly songs, Cheeni Kum is a movie for mature audiences.

Somehow, we have a feeling that Cheeni Kum may not resonate well with younger movie-goers. You know, the 15-30 age group.

We just can’t seem to get enough of Tabu. After her jaw-dropping performance in Mira Nair’s Namesake, Tabu delights us again.

Although Amitabh has thrown in a reasonable performance in Cheeni Kum, Tabu leaves the old man completely in the shade.

Besides the fine acting by Tabu, other highlights of Cheeni Kum are its fine music and a rare instance of a decent performance by a child artiste (Swini Khara).

Music director Illaiyaraja shows that in age where all the adulation centers around A.R.Rahman, Himesh Reshamiya et al, he’s still a force to Continue Reading…

George Orwell is a name familiar to Indians.

Besides his prowess as an author, he was after all an Anglo-Indian, born in Motihari, Bihar as Eric Blair (George Orwell was actually his pen name).

Some of Orwell’s books like Animal Farm and 1984 have also found favor with the English-speaking literatti in India.

Much as we love Animal Farm, Burmese Days, 1984 and other Orwell works, one of our favorites remain his 1936 essay Shooting an Elephant.

Set in Moulmein, Lower Burma where Orwell worked as a police officer, the author beautifully describes how the imperialists are driven by the natives’ expectations to explain why he shot an elephant.

Although the elephant had turned violent and killed a Tamil Coolie earlier in the day, it had subsequently quietened down and was calmly eating grass when Orwell came across the pachyderm a few yards from the road.

Like the placid elephant, Orwell calmly pondered the situation and the elephantine problem he is confronted with, literally and figuratively.

To kill the elephant would be murder; but to walk away would be worse because he would become the object of ridicule and laughter from the side of the natives.

And suddenly I realized I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I grasped the hollowness, the futility of the White man’s dominion in the East. 

Orwell casts the White imperialists in the role of puppets marching to the tune of the Continue Reading…

Of course, there are plenty of nice books.

But let’s admit it. There are very few books that move us.

And fewer still that move us to tears at the end of it.

About Alice is a petite book (just 78 pages). Truly in this case, we can say less is more.

Written as a loving tribute to his late wife Alice who died of cardiac arrest in 2001, About Alice by Calvin Trillin is a joy to read.

Calvin Trillin writes beautifully. With a light touch. And with a humorous tone always in the background.

Well, Trillin’s been writing for the New Yorker for more than four decades. Since 1963, if you insist on knowing the exact year. And you don’t stay at the New Yorker for four decades by being a bad writer.

As Trillin writes, Alice was:

the voice of reason, the sensible person who kept everything on an even keel despite the antics of her marginally goofy husband.

Trillin met Alice at a party given by the now defunct publication Monocle in late 1963.

Monocle’s parties seemed to grow more elaborate as its financial situation became increasingly bleak.

In just 78 pages, we get to know Alice well - the tough childhood years, the parents whose smoking ultimately caused her lung cancer, her work as educator, author and Trillin’s muse,  the children and, of course, her husband. We see them all and more.

Of course, there are rough winds in every relationship.

But Trillin glosses over their disagreements except a fleeting mention of a disagreement involving Continue Reading…

Whoa, our favorite paper New York Times has a front page story today (May 21, 2007) on India’s severe power shortages.

Writing for the Times, NYT’s South Asia bureau chief Somini Sengupta describes:

an electricity crisis that represents one of the major hurdles to India’s ability to hoist itself into the front ranks of the global economy.

The grim power scenario Somini Sengupta writes about in Gurgaon (located on the outskirts of Delhi) is true of most Indian cities.

Bangalore, Hyderabad and other so-called top Indian cities are reeling under a power crisis brought about by failure of successive state and central governments to invest in new power generation capacity.

There are no signs that India’s serious power shortages are going to disappear any time soon.

The government has promised electric connections for all — which means access to the grid, not round-the-clock power — by 2009. That is a target that does not seem plausible at current rates of power generation.

Power shortages means both businesses, hospitals and apartments are forced to rely on generators to keep things going. According to the Times story, Tata Consultancy Services maintains five generators, with a 5,300-gallon diesel fuel tank underground.

Look up at the tops of buildings, and on any given day, you are likely to find three, four or six smokestacks poking out of each, blowing gray-black plumes into the clouds. If the smokestacks are being used, it means the power is off and the building … is probably being powered by diesel-fed generators

To read the complete NYT story on India’s power crisis, click here.

Gujju Behns in the Den of Vice - at an Atlantic City Casino

Boredom makes men and women explore strange things, particularly when thrown into a strange environment.

If a move to a different culture is hard enough for the educated Indian middle class - those with the so-called cosmopolitan world views - it must be much harder for these Gujju Behns transported to America and cast into a totally alien social milieu.

Their limited education and grasp of English, and different dress habits make Gujju Behns seem like fishes out of water in mainstream America. Assimilation is just out of the question for most of them.

Visiting any place in the company of other Gujju Behns is preferable to spending yet another dreary day in their homes, assembling in the local park, or chanting slokas in praise of the Lord.

Even a visit to the Sin City a.k.a Atlantic City of the East Coast is fine.

            Lakshmi Ganapathi Temple in San Jose, CA

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Richard Durbin  on May 14, 2007 fired a shot across the bow of nine top Indian IT companies that heavily use H1B Visas charging them with displacing qualified, American workers.

In a letter to the CEOs of the top nine IT companies including Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam, and Patni seeking details of their H1B Visa program, Grassley wrote:

“More and more it appears that companies are using H-1B visas to displace qualified, American workers,” Grassley said. “Now, as we move closer to debate on an immigration bill, I continue to hear how people want to increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to companies.  Considering the high amount of fraud and abuse in the visa program, we need to take a good, hard look at the employers who are using H-1B visas and how they are using them.”

Similarly, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin also took a harsh stance on the H1B Visas, which lets skilled people like software programmers and engineers from other countries work in the U.S. temporarily.

“Supporters claim the goal of the H-1B program is to help the American economy by allowing companies to hire needed foreign workers. The reality is that too many H-1B visas are being used to facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries,” Durbin said. “We have to look at the system that generates these visas and the way they are used. This legislation will help protect American workers first by stopping H-1Bs from being exploited and used as outsourcing visas.”

The nine Indian IT companies that received letters from the Senators together used 20,000 H1B Visas.

To see the full text of the Senators’ letters, click here.

Obviously, the Indian government is not happy with the letters.

“Temporary movement of skilled professionals is an essential component of the global services economy and bears no relation to immigration issues,” Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said. “Any move that creates uncertainty and unpredictability about such movements will naturally have an adverse impact on the rapidly expanding services trade.”

Nath plans to take up the issue with U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and at the G-4 meetings starting Thursday, May 17, 2007 at Brussels.