1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 23, 7:37 am ET
SAN ANTONIO – The soldiers in standard-issue fatigues and combat boots stood side-by-side repeating their creed: "I am an American soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values ...."
Capt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan was no different except that he wore a full beard and black turban, the first Sikh in a generation allowed to complete U.S. Army basic officer training without sacrificing the articles of his faith. He completed the nine-week training Monday after Army officials made an exemption to a policy that has effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984.
"I'm feeling very humbled. I'm a soldier," said the 31-year-old dentist, smiling after the ceremony at Fort Sam Houston. "This has been my dream."
Rattan had to get a waiver from the Army to serve without sacrificing the unshorn hair mandated by his faith. An immigrant from India who arrived in New York as a teenager, Rattan said he hopes his military commitment will allow him to give back to his adopted home country and will help diminish prejudice Sikhs sometimes face in the U.S.

Full story at--
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_army_sikh_soldier

============================================================

Time on India's Deadly Chemical Addiction

"India's rural activists for years have blamed the overuse and misuse
of pesticides for a pervasive health crisis that afflicts villages
like Jhajjal across the cotton belt of Punjab. Evidence continues to
mount that the problems are severe. Last month, a government-funded
study revealed that chemical fertilizers and pesticides have seeped
into the groundwater in four Punjab districts and are causing an
alarming array of ecological and health problems including cancer and
mental retardation. A June 2005 study by the new Delhi-based Centre
for Science and Environment found residues of between 6 and 13
pesticides in blood samples of villagers from Mahi Nangal, Jajjal and
Balloh villages in Bhatinda district. Recent research by Punjabi
University at Patiala established evidence of DNA damage among
agricultural workers exposed to pesticides; damaged genes can give
rise to a range of cancers as well as neurological and reproductive
disorders. Bala, a 24-year-old day laborer, worked for two months in
the fields during the spraying season four years ago. Not long after,
her second child, a boy, was born with a neurological disorder and has
recently been diagnosed with hydrocyphalis. "His treatment is so
expensive that we have had to borrow large amounts of money...I know
he won't survive" she says. Surinder Singh, the executive director of
the rural NGO Kheti Virasat, says, "Punjab is paying with its life for
a dubious promise of prosperity," says an article in Time Magazine.

It is very sad to see that this began a very long ago with the "Green
Revolution"!! As the article says, "Punjab's lethal pesticide legacy
can be traced to the Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, when
high-yielding varieties of cotton were introduced in the region's
relatively arid Malwa belt. Initially the move was successful as
yields and prices were good. But farmers soon discovered that the
cotton was highly susceptible to pests, and ended up spending huge
amounts on pesticides. As the pests, such as pink bollworm and aphids,
became increasingly resistant to chemical spraying, farmers reacted by
laying on even more, sometimes mixing two or more products against all
scientific evidence. The region virtually became a chemical
laboratory. The expense of spraying put many farmers deep in debt, yet
they remain vulnerable to outbreaks such as a mealy bug attack last
year that destroyed 70% of the crop. "Earlier, we used less water,
traditional crops and organic manure. Now, it's all chemicals," says
Sarmukh Singh, a 93-year-old patriarch in Jhajjal. "We've got our land
addicted, but we don't know how to fight this addiction."

"The health impact on the region is shocking. A daily passenger train
that runs from Bathinder to Bikaner in neighboring Rajasthan is
nicknamed the "Cancer Express" because it routinely fills a dozen cars
with patients and their attendants on their way to a charitable
hospital. Despite the high incidence of cancer, there is no
government-run cancer hospital in the Malwa region, although the
government announced plans to build one last year. "Officials
sometimes visit our village, but they never seem to do anything," says
Santosh, a 35-year-old resident of Jhajjal who was diagnosed with
leukemia three years back and goes to Bikaner every six months for a
blood transfusion," says the article which was quite an eye opener for
me. As the article asks, can Punjab play with the lives of it's next
generation, really?

Read the full article at --
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1813081,00.html?xid=rss-world

The Tale of Mukesh Ambani

"In the last century, Mohandas K. Gandhi was India's most famous and
powerful private citizen. Today, Mr. Ambani is widely regarded as
playing that role, though in a very different way. Like Mr. Gandhi,
Mr. Ambani belongs to a merchant caste known as the modh banias, is a
vegetarian and a teetotaler and is a revolutionary thinker with bold
ideas for what India ought to become. Yet Mr. Gandhi was a scrawny
ascetic, a champion of the village, a skeptic of modernity and a man
focused on spiritual purity. Mr. Ambani is a fleshy oligarch, a
champion of the city, a burier of the past and a man who deftly — and,
some critics say, ruthlessly — wields financial power. He is the
richest person in India, with a fortune estimated in the tens of
billions of dollars, and many people here expect that he will be the
richest person on earth before long," says a profile of Mukesh Ambani
one of the world's richest people in the New York Times today.

Wow to be compared to Gandhi, that is something, isn't for a man who
is building the worlds most expensive, extravagant, and elaborate home
in Mumbai. (See my earlier post
http://vtilak.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-richest-of-rich-will-live.html)

""Can we really banish abject poverty in this country?" he mused aloud
in a rare interview at his headquarters here. "Yes, in 10, 15 years we
can say we would have done that substantially. Can we make sure that
we create a social structure where we remove untouchability? We're
fast moving to a new India where you don't think about this caste and
that caste."

As millions of Indians graduate from burning cow dung for energy to
guzzling oil, Reliance is plowing billions of dollars into energy
exploration and is building the world's largest oil refinery. It has
also opened a chain of nearly 700 stores selling food and various
wares; Mr. Ambani promises that it will funnel money from the
flourishing cities into the struggling agricultural heartland. He
envisions Reliance, with $39 billion in revenue, as providing incomes
to 12 million to 30 million Indians within the next five years by
buying from farmers and employing new workers in its stores.

And as Mumbai, Mr. Ambani's hometown and the commercial and
entertainment capital of India, has grown ever more populous and ever
less livable, he has proposed that Reliance simply build a new,
improved city across the harbor," says this very interesting article
about an even more interesting man.

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/business/worldbusiness/15ambani.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Swallowing Live Fish For Health

In Hyderabad where I grew up, every June after the first rain there would be a flood of people coming to the city for this treatment.

Reuters reports that, "Thousands throng to swallow a live fish "wonder cure" in southern India. In India's southern Hyderabad city, people gather to receive a traditional treatment believed to cure asthma and other respiratory ailments. Patients buy a two-inch-long Murrel fish, and swallow it live after it has been stuffed with a herbal mixture. And for people finding the remedy a little hard to swallow, there are doctors on hand to help the fish on its way."

Two Worlds, Just Across The Street

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer saga continues... What
better place to see this today, than in the booming techno towns of
India. "India has always had its upper classes, as well as legions of
the world's very poor. But today a landscape dotted with Hamilton
Courts, pressed up against the slums that serve them, has underscored
more than ever the stark gulf between those worlds, raising
uncomfortable questions for a democratically elected government about
whether India can enable all its citizens to scale the golden ladders
of the new economy, says an article in the New York Times.

According to this article, "In India, poverty has also dropped
appreciably in the last 17 years of economic change, even as the gulf
between the rich and poor has grown. More than a quarter of all
Indians still live below the official poverty line (subsisting on
roughly $1 a day); one in four city dwellers live on less than 50
cents a day; and nearly half of all Indian children are clinically
malnourished.
At the same time, the ranks of dollar millionaires have swelled to
100,000, and the Indian middle class, though notoriously hard to
define and still small, has by all indications expanded.
For those with the right skills, the good times have been very good.
Mr. Chand, 34, a business school graduate who runs the regional
operations for an American manufacturing firm, has seen his salary
grow eightfold in the last five years, which is not unusual for upper
class Indians like him."

This widening gap became very obvious to me when I visited Bangalore,
a little over a year ago. Rising sky scrapers, huge wallets,
increasing poverty and lack of infrastructure to keep with the
phenomenal growth. Similarly according to the article, "Gurgaon, a
largely privately developed city and a metonym for Indian ambition,
has seen a building frenzy to satisfy people like the Chands. The
city's population has nearly doubled in the last six years, to 1.5
million. The skyline is dotted with scaffolds. Glass towers house
companies like American Express and Accenture. Not far from Hamilton
Court, Burberry and BMW have set up shop. State services, meanwhile,
have barely kept pace. The city has neither enough water nor
electricity for the population. There is no sewage treatment plant
yet; construction is scheduled to begin this year."

"India has long lived with such inequities, and though a Maoist
rebellion is building in the countryside, the nation has for the most
part skirted social upheaval through a critical safety valve: giving
the poor their chance to vent at the ballot box. Indeed, four years
ago, voters threw out the incumbent government, with its "India
Shining" slogan, because it was perceived to have neglected the poor.
It is little wonder then that the current administration has seized on
"inclusive growth" as its mantra, and as elections approach in less
than a year, it is spending heavily on education, widely acknowledged
as a key barrier to upward mobility for the poor," says this article.

Read the full article at --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Where Wealth is Health!

While India's economic growth is on the media radar, and articles
about how Americans and other westerners are going to India for it's
high quality, yet relatively cheap healthcare get written, the truth
is that there are many millions of Indians who are getting poorer and
are unable to receive proper healthcare. Capitalism is on the rise.

From a New York Times article, titled, "Royal Care for Some of India's
Patients, Neglect for Others" -- "Mr. Steeles, 60, a car dealer from
Daphne, Ala., had flown halfway around the world last month to save
his heart, at a price he could pay. He had a mitral valve repaired at
a state-of-the-art private hospital here, called Wockhardt, and for 10
days, he was recuperating in a carpeted, wood-paneled room, with a
view of a leafy green courtyard.

A dietician helped select his meals. A dermatologist came as soon as
he complained of an itch. His Royal Suite had cable TV, a computer, a
minirefrigerator, where an attendant that afternoon stashed some ice
cream, for when he felt hungry later. Three days after surgery, he was
sitting in a chair, smiling, chattering, thrilled to be alive.

On his bed lay the morning's paper. Dominating its front page was the
story of other men, many of them day laborers who laid bricks and
mixed cement for Bangalore's construction boom, who had fallen gravely
ill after drinking illegally brewed liquor. All told, more than 150
died that week, here and in neighboring Tamil Nadu State.

Not for them the care of India's best private hospitals. They had been
wheeled in by wives and brothers to the overstretched government-run
Bowring Hospital, on the other side of town. Bowring had no intensive
care unit, no ventilators, no dialysis machine. Dinner was a stack of
white bread, on which a healthy cockroach crawled while a patient,
named Yelappa, slept.

Wockhardt has 30 ventilators, including some that are noninvasive, so
the patient does not have to have a tube rammed down his throat. At
any one time, a half-dozen are in use. An elderly woman had been in
its intensive care unit for a week, on dialysis; her family wanted to
do whatever possible to keep her alive, no matter the cost.

At Bowring, one of the young doctors, named Harish, said a ventilator
and a dialysis machine would have allowed him to keep half of his
patients alive. The most severe case, Mohammed Amin, was breathing
with the aid of a hand pump that his wife squeezed silently. Dr.
Harish sent the relative of one man to get blood tests done at the
nearest private hospital; there was no equipment to do the test here.
Then the doctor rushed to the triage section in Bowring's lobby, where
the newest patient, writhing, resisting, disoriented from the poison
in his gut, had to be tied down with bedsheets."

Universal healthcare is not just needed for the US, it is required for
other capitalistic societies like India as well.

Read the full NYT article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/weekinreview/01sengupta.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Sen on the Global Food Crisis

Amartya Sen, Nobel price winning economist has an op-ed piece titled
"The Rich Get Hungrier" in the New York Times today.

He says, "WILL the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions
ease up — or grow worse over time? The answer may be both. The recent
rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like
drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge
rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually
end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify
unless we recognize it and try to remedy it.

It is a tale of two peoples. In one version of the story, a country
with a lot of poor people suddenly experiences fast economic
expansion, but only half of the people share in the new prosperity.
The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless
supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now
face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve.
Tragedies like this happen repeatedly in the world.

A stark example is the Bengal famine of 1943, during the last days of
the British rule in India. The poor who lived in cities experienced
rapidly rising incomes, especially in Calcutta, where huge
expenditures for the war against Japan caused a boom that quadrupled
food prices. The rural poor faced these skyrocketing prices with
little increase in income."

Voicing a popular concern that is causing a lot of debate he says,
"There is also a high-tech version of the tale of two peoples.
Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making
ethanol for motor fuel. So the stomachs of the hungry must also
compete with fuel tanks."

A very thought provoking op-ed, this can be accessed at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/opinion/28sen.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

On Bringing Up Children

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children;
now I have six children and no theories.
- John Wilmot

Hindu's Denied Tibetan Visas

"The Chinese government is refusing to issue visas to Hindus trying to
make the traditional summer pilgrimage to what they hold to be the
home of Lord Shiva in Tibet, forcing thousands to delay or cancel the
trip," reports the New York Times.

This pilgrimage is undertaken by many Hindu's and it's scenic beauty
and divinity put together far surpass it's arduousness.

Another excerpt--
"Starting in June, Hindus from Nepal and India embark on a multiweek
journey to the 22,000-foot Mount Kailash in the Himalayas and nearby
Lake Mapam Yutso, known in India as Lake Mansarovar. The trip, a
once-in-a-lifetime event for most who make it, includes treacherous
off-road drives and several days of arduous trekking, and is believed
to bring the traveler closer to the divine.
This year, though, the Chinese government is refusing to grant any
visas for travel to the Tibetan sites from Nepal, tour operators in
Nepal say. India's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Chinese
government had cited unspecified "domestic reasons."
At the same time, Beijing has retracted permission previously granted
to Indian pilgrims who were planning to make the trip in early June.
The Olympic torch is scheduled to go through Tibet's capital, Lhasa,
on June 20.
"I was planning for the last 10 years for this trip," said Rajendra
Goyal, 48, a Mumbai-based hardware trader whose trip has been
canceled. Mr. Goyal said he was on a rigorous diet and exercise
schedule for the last two months to make sure he was fit for the
mountain hiking involved.
"A pilgrim is a pilgrim, not an activist or a politician," he said. "I
am going there for religious faith, not to do any violence."

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/world/asia/21trek.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin

Bollywood Meets Hollywood

"Bollywood has met Hollywood at the Cannes Film Festival, with George
Clooney, Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt signing rupee-spinning deals for big
movie collaborations," says an article in the Times Online. It is
interesting to see that India's economic growth is going beyond
traditional business and into the realm of movies, books and other
cultural areas.

"India produces more films than any other country, and sells more than
four billion cinema tickets a year, far more than in America. Now one
of its biggest companies is to become a significant Hollywood player,
it was announced yesterday in Cannes.
Reliance Big Entertainment, part of a $100 billion (£50 billion)
Indian conglomerate, is to invest in development funds for eight
production companies owned by Alist stars: they include Nicolas Cage's
Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, Clooney's
Smokehouse Productions, Hanks's Playtone Productions and Pitt's Plan B
Entertainment.
The Indian company, owned by Anil Ambani, ranked the world's
sixth-richest man in the Forbes list, is offering an initial $1
billion investment in Hollywood. It is a vital injection of cash for
the US studios at a time when equity financing has dried up with the
credit crunch. It also offers the Americans a foothold in India.
Amit Khanna, Reliance's chairman, said: "Reliance Entertainment has a
dominant position in India but, when it comes to motion pictures, it
has been obvious that we need to extend our footprint to Hollywood . .
.
"Bollywood is somehow personified by song and dance and Hollywood by
sex and violence, and there is this idea that neither can meet. We
don't believe this is true."

Bollywood in it's original form has been quite popular in many areas
outside India, and it's popularity is only increasing. Then there is
the whole concept of the "melting pot", where as this article
emphasizes Bollywood meets Hollywood to give birth to a new genre of
films that are already in the making.

Read the full article at --
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article3965523.ece

Food Crisis -- Argument versus Action!

I was wondering why it took so long for the he said and she said to
begin after Bush made his statement, saying that the food crisis was
started by India's middle class.

Yesterday, yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, voiced his frustration at Bush's
statements and today the New York Times reports that, "Instead of
blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food
prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a
diet. That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of
politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry
at statements by top United States officials that India's rising
prosperity is to blame for food inflation. The debate has sometimes
devolved into what sounded like petty playground taunts over who are
the real gluttons devouring the world's resources."

As someone who lived and grew up in India it amazes me to see wastage
of food and other natural resources, not just by non-Indians but by
visiting Indians as well. The same folks who struggle without water in
Chennai, waste water in the US as though it was an eternal resource.
The same folks who watch people starve in Delhi, throw away food like
there was plenty of it to go around, the same folks who go without
power in Kolkatta, leave fans and lights on all over the place without
conserving any energy.

Instead of arguing, it is high time each individual stepped back and
assessed what they are each doing to make the problem better or worse.
Time to stop the bickering and get to some real action, don't you
think?

See the Times Of India video, with Baba Ramdev's statements here--
http://broadband.indiatimes.com/showvideo/3034648.cms

See the New York Times article here --
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2008/05/14/business/worldbusiness/14food.html&tntemail0=y

Another recent New York Times article on this subject-

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

A Time Magazine article on this-

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1806579,00.html

Read about Bush's statements here--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050703405.html

See what President Bush said about India being responsible for the
food crisis here--
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/may/03food.htm

Vijay Mallya and Force India

The arrival of the newest and tallest motor homes in the Formula One
paddock is an overt statement of intent by the sport's youngest team,
Force India," says the New York Times. Owned by Vijay Mallya, he says
to NYT that his Force India team and auto racing can appeal to a
growing segment of young and affluent Indians.

The Times reports that Force India's hospitality suite is airy, easy
to move around in and full of smiling team members and visitors, and
Mallya says to the Times, "I am very proud of my new motor home, but
this motor home with a slow car means nothing," said Vijay Mallya, the
Indian billionaire who owns the racing team, as well as Kingfisher
Airlines, Kingfisher beer and other companies. "The car is performing,
the motor home is adding to it all, and I think that the message is
that on the track and off the track, we are serious in this business."

Anotehr excerpt from the article --
"Cricket, which is a religion in India, is for everyone," Mallya said.
"It's for your staff, for your chauffeur, for your boss, for your
maid, for everyone. But there is this breed of youngsters in India who
are proud of their success — we call them upwardly mobile and
aspirational Indians — they are earning well, they want to show their
wealth, they want to show that they are different."
The way they do that, he said, is by dressing differently, eating
differently and having different sporting interests.
"And that is where we felt, and research showed, that F1 could be
absolutely the ideal platform," he added.
But for the plan to succeed, Mallya said, the team must succeed.

Mallaya's who attends all of the teams races says to the Times, "The
leader of the team has to be leading the team," Mallya said. "The fact
that I'm here in the same uniform as the guys, walking around in the
garage and being wherever else I need to be, it inspires confidence.
It shows I'm committed. If I am demanding commitment from others, I
need to show I'm committed myself."

Read the full article at--
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2008/05/11/sports/othersports/11prix.html&tntemail0=y

Becoming Smarter...

"What is perhaps most intriguing about the list in Condé Nast
Portfolio of the 73 Biggest Brains in Business is how few traditional
businesspeople are among them," says a New York Times article. One of
the Indians represented on this list is Ratan Tata of of the Tata
Group, the multinational conglomerate based in India.

In this article titled "How to Be Smarter," The Times quotes from
Wired magazine and says, "WHILE your I.Q. is basically determined at
birth, "still, there are lots of ways to get smarter — to max out your
so-called functional intelligence" at work and elsewhere." They list
ways to get smarter as below, and I quote--

-- Discover. "Learning new things actually strengthens your brain —
especially when you believe you can learn new things," Steve Knopper
writes. "It's a virtuous circle: When you think you're getting
smarter, you study harder, making more nerve cell connections, which,"
he says, makes you smarter.
-- Don't panic. "While a little nervousness can boost cognitive
performance, periods of intense stress essentially turn us into
Neanderthals," Eric Hagerman writes. Try to control your breathing.
Yoga could help.
-- Drink tea. "Caffeine jump-starts the body and sharpens the mind,"
Mathew Honan says. "But studies show that we Yanks are doing it all
wrong" by drinking coffee and high-energy drinks. "For optimal brain
gain, regular tea breaks" are the way to go, he writes. Small doses
throughout the day are more effective than one huge drink.
-- Practice the types of questions that appear on intelligence tests.
"They're supposed to be objective and consistent, but don't believe
it," Mr. Knopper writes. "By prepping for the verbal, numerical and
spatial problems on a typical psychometric test, you can boost your
score."
-- Exercise. Studies have shown that students who are aerobically fit
perform better on cognitive tests.

Read the full article at--
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2008/05/10/business/10offline.html&tntemail0=y

How Far Can Artists Go?

Dissolving the controversy surrounding M.F. Hussains art, a court has
basically dissolved the controversy surrounding his art and says he
needs to be back home painting.

The New York Times reports that -- "A court in India has quashed three
obscenity cases against M. F. Husain, one of the country's most famous
contemporary painters, the BBC reported. The charges contended that
Mr. Husain, 92, offended Hindus with a work, above, that represented
India as a nude goddess. The court in Delhi ruled that the painting
was not obscene. Mr. Husain, who has been accused of obscenity in at
least seven cases, apologized for the painting, which he declared an
"expression of purity." He has been living in the Middle East because
of the lawsuits, but his lawyer, Akhil Sibal, quoted the court as
saying Mr. Husain "deserves to be at home, painting his canvases."

Whereas a website by Hindu Jagruti says that Hussain is painting
derogatory art of Hindu gods, why is he not doing so of his own
religion? You can see some of the paintings at their site listed
below. An article in Frontline magazine, has some paintings by Hussain
of Hindu Gods which are not derogatory, so what does that mean?

New York Times article is at --
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2008/05/09/arts/09arts-INDIANCOURTD_BRF.html&tntemail0=y

Hindu Jagruti website is at this URL--
http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/campaigns/national/mfhussain-campaign/

Frontline magazine article on Hussain is here--
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1416/14160820.htm

Monkeying Around

Growing up in Secunderabad, one of the biggest pests even today are monkeys. Even in extremely urban areas, when all is quiet and everyone is enjoying a warm breeze out in their balconies, the monkeys invade, all of a sudden. They come in huge groups of about 50, and just barge into your homes, and grab whatever edible things they can find, bananas, fruits, food, utensils and if you try to stop them, even god can't help you... Much as I am alover of animals, these monkeys are a menace.

"Forest officials in India have come up with an unusual way of controlling pesky monkeys - they've set up a park to protect them," reports Reuters, "The primate protection park in India's northern Himachal Pradesh will house more than 2000 Simian monkeys and hopefully keep a check on the growing monkey menace in the hilly state. Estimates say over the last three years, the monkey population has grown by 50 percent."



I am keeping my fingers crossed for the people of the twin cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad and hoping that this works.

Baby Dropping Ritual...

Reuters reports that "Muslims in western India have been observing a bizarre ritual - they've been throwing their young children off a tall building to improve their health. The faithful have been observing the ritual at a shrine in Solapur, in western India's Maharastra, for more than five hundred years. They believe it will make their children strong and say no accidents have ever happened!"

The Tongue Painter...

"An artist in India's southern Kerala state displays his talent for painting pictures using his tongue. Ani K, a drawing teacher, drew inspiration from a fellow artist who painted with his foot. However, learning his craft was not without its dangers as he suffered headaches and nausea from the paint fumes. Eventually he mastered the art and is now able to finish one canvas in 3-4 days," reports Reuters. A determined person... wonder if this will power could have been put to more productive use?



Here's what will follow, controversies about dishonoring Hindu gods, because he paints with his tongue (which is of course considered very disrespectful) and the harms of toxic paints... Goodness gracious is all I can say!

Friendship Express Resumes, 40 Years Later

The passenger train service between Calcutta in India and the capital
of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is resuming after an absence of more than 40
years," reports BBC News. Dubbed Maitreyi or Friendship Express, BBC
reports that, "One man in Calcutta, however, is hoping to return to
Dhaka after leaving the city on what turned out to be the last train
out in 1965, when he was nine years old."

After what happened with the India-Pakistan trains, many will keep
their fingers crossed surely, wary of any unrest or religious violence
associated with this gesture of friendship.

Read the full BBC article at--
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7345724.stm

See this story in pictures on BBC at --
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7343248.stm

A Bharatnatyam Knight

Aniruddha Knight is the grandson of the renowned exponent of
Bharatnatyam, Balasarawathi. He is currently touring the US.
Exceptionally talented, he carries the beautiful art of Bharatnatyam
to a new level with ease and finesse.

Watch his dancing at--
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1416570538/bclid1497977517/bctid1494387761

An excerpt from the Newsweek article--
"He is tall, slim, and strikingly long limbed. Dressed in
jewel-colored silk tunics and antique ornaments that are family
heirlooms, he looks more like a handsome young maharaja than a
traditional South Indian dancer. But at 27, Aniruddha Knight is the
ninth generation heir of a 200-year-old family of professional dancers
and musicians from Chennai, India. He is also half American. His
father, Douglas Knight, married into this artistically rich family
when he studied classical drumming on a South Indian mridangam at
Wesleyan University, where Aniruddha's late grandmother--T.
Balasaraswati, India's prima danseuse--and her two musician brothers
had taught since 1962. This spring, Knight is touring the Northeast
with his six-member musical ensemble (including his father) and new
works in a program entitled "From the Heart of a Tradition."

That tradition is bharat natyam, one of India's six major--and
distinct--classical dance styles. It is taught to every middle-class
girl in India and now, with immigrant teachers and establishment of
dance schools across suburban America, it is vigorously practiced by
Indians and Americans alike. However, the version that Knight dances
is stylistically unique. It originated as a temple offering performed
by young women who were dedicated to serving God by retelling ancient
Hindu myths through music and dance in the temple courtyard. It was
art in the service of religion, an act of worship, not popular
entertainment. Eventually, some of the dancers were inducted by local
princely families into becoming court performers. A stigma attached to
the professional dancer that only disappeared when dance was
recognized as a national art form at the time of India's independence
in 1947, when the patronage of all dancers and musicians was taken
over and sanctified by the secular government.

It was in this climate that Balasaraswati was recognized as the
greatest Indian dancer of all time. Dance for Knight, as for his
grandmother, is spontaneous, not rehearsed as the music is: as the
ensemble sings a composition, he improvises movements; he follows the
music, even joins in. He takes the lead, giving his accompanists a cue
to move to the next line of text. In short, there is constant
communication between dancer and the accompanists. The star of the
show is first the music, then the dancer, who still uses the old
compositions handed down as prayer, a love song to God. As Bala
describes it, the aim is to create joy through beauty--a transporting
ecstatic experience that is shared by dancer and audience through
melody, rhythm and mime. Done right, the dancer could transport the
audience through a near out-of-body experience into a rapturous
state."

Read the full newsweek article at--
http://www.newsweek.com/id/131556

Hair Color Kills

We all know that coloring your hair is not good for health, because
our skin absorbs some of the harsh chemicals in hair color. But this
news item below, takes it to a new level. Hair color can kill you!!!

The New York Times reports that, "The authorities in Uttar Pradesh
State have banned the sale of a locally made hair dye after
debt-ridden farmers were found to be drinking it to end their lives, a
state official said. At least 11 farmers have died from swallowing the
cheap dye in a drought-hit part of the state in the last three months,
he said. In parts of western and southern India, the dire economic
state of farmers has been blamed for thousands of suicides in recent
years."

Link --
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/04/12/world/asia/12briefs-HAIRDYEBANNE_BRF.html&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin