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Kolkata: Jams, Cancun and the Little Clay Cup

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

   
Jams.  Not blackberry or strawberry or peach.  Traffic jams.  If a Kolkata cabbie can’t handle any other word of English, he can spit out, “Jam!!!” At which point he’ll switch  off the ignition as he waits.  And waits.  Fender to fender, bumper to bumper, with other canary-yellow taxis, cars driven only slightly less aggressively and hulking buses pocked with the evidence of daily scrapes and collisions. And motorcycles.  And put-puts. And man-powered, old fashioned rickshaws.

Imagine Kolkata traffic as one of those brain-teasing games consisting of 16 or more tiles,  just one of which is missing.  Using that bit of action space, the tiles must be shifted into a different pattern, with extra points for speed. Vroom! In Kolkata the cabbies make for the empty spaces as soon as they see them, and God help the pedestrian who gets in the way. I haven’t seen any fatalities yet, but close calls are frequent and harrowing.

Still, this is Kolkata, and protest marchers must be tolerated. This is true to a lesser extent elsewhere in India, too.  If you have a grievance, you can vent it by taking out a procession.  Plus you can throw the rascals out, legally, via regular elections. The need for political earthquakes is mightily minimized by democracy.  Meanwhile, here’s The Telegraph’s advice for “roads to avoid today: RR Avenue for a rally; Metro Channel for
 an All West Bengal Municipal Health Workers' Union meeting; Dorina Crossing for a students’ demonstration.

Kolkata sidewalks are as jam-packed as the streets, and the protocol for non-marching pedestrians mirrors the discourtesy among drivers on the road: me first.  The best defense, on foot or behind the wheel, is learning the game, fast.  And laughing.  Lots of laughing.  The Government College art students who created this mural for the hotel I’m staying at had the right idea. Humor. Not anger. (Blow it up.  It includes all the Kolkata stereotypes and clichés.)

These end-to-end traffic jams that frequently turn into gridlock waste pricy gasoline and increase emissions of carbon dioxide, the worst culprit in the global warming scenario.  Indian planners foresee agricultural disaster from a combination of drought and flooding, a non-paradox I won’t take time to explain.  An early casualty, they predict: basmati rice.  It may lose its fragrance,  which would be a gastronomic tragedy of historic proportions.  Other food crops will also suffer. Indian agronomists are working furiously to develop heat tolerant varieties of essential crops. 

Meanwhile, here and now, on the streets of Kolkata, breathing involves exhaust fumes, not fragrance. Very bad for people with asthma!  Kolkata’s mortality rate from respiratory problems must be horrendous. A huge park in the center of the city is often called “the lung of Kolkata.” From the neglected look of it, the city’s health is anything but good.

I went for an early morning walk on this maidan today, hoping for some relatively clean air.  The good news: very little traffic.  The bad news: another source of pollution. Trash fires. Little piles of dry leaves and damp litter smoking away.  No wonder planes landing in Kolkata descend through an ominous orangy gray wafer.

A similar smog wafer hovers over Delhi, where the winter air is also less than salubrious, although it used to be even worse—trucks, buses, even cars, trailing foul black plumes of exhaust.  No more, in Delhi or Kolkata.  Only unseen poisons creeping out to throw a dismal gray veil over every surface.   

Reform is possible, even in this beguiling land of pay-to-play and hyper red-tapism.

Buses fueled by natural gas or not (mostly not, of course), India tends to take a fairly hard line during international environmental negotiations.  The intellectual argument is attractive.  The West got to pollute for 150 years.  Expecting India to meet new, more exacting standards so much earlier in the push for industrialization isn’t fair.  In a way, it isn’t. But the Victorians hadn’t the foggiest notion about the dangers of global warming either.  We do. 

While Indian diplomats representing their country in Kyoto or Cancun stand on principal and resist the imposition of more rigorous limits on green house gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, people in the big cities of India are gasping for breath, and Indian planners are trying to figure out how on earth an already stressed country will cope with rising temperatures. Like the U.S., unfortunately, India has a pollution lobby.  In the short term there are profits to be made for a few. 

So the people on the street—cough! cough!—will continue to suffer.  And they will stop every so often for a spot of tea served up in simple little hand-shaped clay cups.  Use and toss. Dust to dust.  Which is a theological way of saying sustainable.

 

 

Egypt: Tunis, Tehran or something else again

By Patricia H. Kushlis

It always amazes me how the pundits – and others – are so willing to extend advice albeit often unsolicited when an administration is faced with a foreign crisis.  The most egregious proffered that I’ve recently encountered was by Elliott Abrams who devoted an entire Washington Post commentary on Saturday to describe how the Bush administration had it right in terms of the necessity to send in the troops, er, I mean press hard for democratizing the Middle East and the Obama administration has been too soft on dictators including, of course, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. 

Now the fact that Abrams and company stiffed the AK-led government (the mildly Islamist party still in power in Turkey) when in 2003 it upheld its democratic and constitutional right to hold a parliamentary vote and based on that vote told the Bush administration that the US could not use the country as a land invasion route into Iraq is obviously, for Abrams, beside the point.

Selective amnesia

Strange how some people practice such selective amnesia when it’s in their interest.  I didn’t see the Bush administration jumping up and down in support of Condi Rice’s poorly received speech in Egypt in 2005 (or Bush’s own vain calls for democratization at the time) in which she told Mubarak he needed to democratize the country or there would be big domestic trouble ahead.  You do have to wonder who was in charge of the White House during the Bush II era.  The great decider – or someone else.  

Sunday on CNN Fareed Zakaria began GPS with his own assessment and roadmap for Egypt’s future.  This sounded strikingly like that of Mohamed ElBaradei’s who, surprise, surprise, Zakaria had just finished interviewing before talking to a panel of American experts on Egypt and/or the Middle East.  The latter: All white, all male and all with prestigious East Coast affiliations including two from the Council on Foreign Relations.  In my view, this was CFR overkill– but given the choices, I’d rather hear what they had to say than folk from the right wing “think” tanks.

Mubarak's time over?

Zakaria’s panelists did have different slants if not opinions:  although – if my memory serves me – all agreed that Mubarak needed to absent himself quickly from the scene.  The major question seemed to be whether the Obama administration should be expressing this sentiment in public or private.   

Presumably the deciding factor in a Mubarak “early” retirement will depend upon Egypt’s generals.  You’d think he’d be willing to move on - he is 82 going on 83 and thirty years in one job for anyone is more than enough.  Maybe the Saudis could find an empty palace in Jeddah or Riyadh for him and his entourage.  Or even build one.  They certainly don’t need USAID funds for the project.

Meanwhile, Global Post has reported that Mubarak's son Gamal, his mother Suzanne and sister are in London - sighted near their home in the posh section of Knightsbridge So much, apparently, for the heir apparent. 

Subtlety Lost to Amplification: The Dover Lane Music Conference in Kolkata

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

In January some two thousand people stay up all night four nights in a row to hear classical Indian music in Kolkata.  Call it the Red Eye Special for the raga-addicted.  Some of these music lovers, among them friends of mine, go much further.  They follow their favorite vocalists or sitarists around the country in a classical music circuit that allows the artists to assert their musical powers like ancient Indian rulers, maintaining authority by popping up, majestically, in all their  conquered provinces once a year. 

The Dover Lane Music Conference in Kolkata, which  I attended last week, has just completed its 59th session. The program each night begins at roughly nine-thirty and lasts til dawn.  The official start time is eightish, but this is India.  Anyone arriving “on time”, as I did some years ago, will be confronted by a vast amphitheater of empty seats.  Two thousand of them.  Very disconcerting. 

Even at nine pm most people in Kolkata are still at dinner.  Many haven’t even begun. So the Dover Lane finds ticket-holders ambling to their seats—noisily, with no apologies—well after the first artist is underway.  Are the fans, from fashionably late arrival on, silently glued to their seats?  They are not.  They wander in and out of the hall at whim.  To chat.  To smoke.  To snack.  To tank up on caffeine. To use, unhappily, the primitive toilets. 

Do the musicians resent this?  Do they throw hissy fits as Western soloists may, when they’ve noticed too many little coughs or, God forbid, the rustle of a candy wrapper?  Not at all.  The intrepid Indian virtuoso carries on with the business of exploring and elaborating ragas.  Whether anyone pays attention to the facility and originality on display is irrelevant—up to a point.  Indian musicians, being human, love applause—and if it comes mid-performance, again and again, so much the better.  And Indian music hounds love the minute dissection of recitals they were, despite the veneer of disrespect, paying very close attention to.

Although I am no expert here, I think the structure of Indian classical performance makes it possible for audiences to interrupt or to dip in and out of a presentation with relatively little damage to the experience. To simplify recklessly, it helps to see much  Western classical music as novelistic. If you miss a chapter, the loss throws everything off.  Indian classical music is more like a series of short short story variations on a single theme—i.e., that set of notes called a raga.  Missing one variant, though regrettable, won’t ruin those that follow.

Once things finally get underway during the Dover Lane, the program for each night includes four or five  performances of a length that would be generous enough for a stand-alone program.  At least two hours per artist.  Longer when the artist is hot and the audience is rapturous, which happens frequently.  (These are top vocalists and instrumentalists plus some of the most promising of the up-and-coming generation.)  That’s a lot of music in one stretch, even allowing for the coffee breaks.  If, like me, you aren’t accustomed to protracted high decibel attack, it amounts to painful sensory overload long before dawn arrives.   The ears scream for relief.  And yet, with 2000 listeners to satisfy, how can amplification be anything but brutal?  How else can a mob hear performances actually more suited to a traditional chamber music venue?

So purist critics in India raise complaints similar to those that New York music critics have voiced: amplified musical comedy isn’t as good, musically, as the same voices  unassisted.  And the purists are right.  I’ve head Indian classical music at private concerts and in small halls with no amplification.  It's a precious vanishing experience, though.  Classical music is pretty much doomed to the rock concert treatment, notwithstanding the fact that there’s an architectural specialty that consists of pulling off clever acoustic miracles for ever larger concert halls in the West. 

Yet, if we classical music lovers, East and West, must increasingly make our peace with sound that’s mediated electronically, interventions should be intelligently, sensitively applied. The results should be true and balanced, which was seldom the case at the Dover Lane this year.  The drones tended to be miked so heavily that delicate glides, vocal or instrumental, were hard to hear.  This is catastrophic, easily avoidable  mismanagement. 

Still and all, I was happy with my much needed fix of live Indian classical music—flute, sitar, sarod, sintur, vocal, along with a dance performance in the kuchipudi style.  I’ll go home with some extraordinary  memories—and with lots of new CDs, which are offered at gloriously reduced prices during the nights of the Conference.

Tunisia – one or many?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The Boston Globe's Boston.com recently posted 40 news photographs of the revolution in Tunisia.  These professional shots were likely edited for clarity and focus made easy by digital photography.   They’re almost too clean and too beautiful in their strange way.  Included are  two photographs which tell a story that I’ve not seen portrayed  elsewhere:  one was taken at the hospital bedside of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26 year old Tunisian whose immolation sparked the revolt, then swathed in bandages being visited by a group of Tunisian officials including the now deposed dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The second photograph is of a picturesque and deserted waterfront city street with its wrought iron street lamps, palm trees and outdoor cafes.  It could have just as easily been taken along France’s Cote D’Azur.  Maybe that was part of the problem:  the vast discrepancy between the good life for a minority in Tunisia's capital and along the country’s Mediterranean coast and the poverty of inland dust-belt cities shown in amateur cell phone videos uploaded to the Internet seemingly minutes after the demonstrations they depicted occurred.

Tunisia, although a non-oil producing Arab state, is far from the Arab world’s poorest or least educated.  Its per capita income (PPP) was over $9,000 per year in 2009. Most Tunisians have completed elementary school and many have graduated from high school. The country’s birthrate  dropped from 6.6 babies per couple in 1970 to just below replacement level by 2010 helped along by the availability of contraceptives.  

What went wrong?

First and foremost, the Tunisian revolution had nothing to do with radical Islam or with militant Islamists lurking beneath the surface.  Unlike in much of the rest of the Arab world, Islamic fundamentalism was kept at bay – crushed by the country’s now former leader. Rather, the straws that broke the Tunisian camel’s back were high unemployment and a corrupt political regime.

 As in Moscow in 1991 and Manila in 1986, when push came to shove, Rachid Ammar, Tunisia's  senior military commander, sided with the protestors and reportedly refused orders to fire on them although Ben Ali’s  complicit security forces and Tunisian police had previously killed at least 78 demonstrators in the events leading up to his final days in office.        

The Other Morocco: from Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains

 By Linda Bigelow, Guest Contributor

Only the most adventurous venture beyond the sun and sand of North Africa’s beaches, the souks of Marrakech or the bars of Tangiers.  Yet there is also the lesser known Morocco with its snow-covered peaks, New Mexico colored deserts, fortress villages built into rugged mountainsides by villagers seemingly from another age.  In October, off-the-beaten path travelers Lee and Linda Bigelow with a group of French hiking friends, six mules and muleteers, three Moroccan guides (one for each stage of the trip) one Berber cook and one French guide traveled from the coastal city of Marrakech into the Atlas Mountains and back in an exploration of Morocco’s high country. Here is Linda’s account of their recent trek. She illustrates it with a few of the 1,500 photographs she took along the way. - Ed. Note.

Our route was first by minibus from Marrakech - Azilal - Ait M'Hammed - Assemsouk (a lonely cafe/souk where we stopped for drinks), Zawyat Ahansal, and Tiranimine.  We then hiked to the village of Taghia from where we took two, day-hikes.  We hiked, but our bags traveled by mule.

The most memorable hike was our first, on the way to Taghia, when, near the end, we were hiking after nightfall.  We put on our headlamps and stayed close together.  We crossed a raging stream, not once, but three times in darkness.  Two women were ferried across by mules.  Our Berber guide Youssef grabbed me like a sack of potatoes and set me adroitly on the other side.  (photo left:  Enroute to Taghia 10/2010 by Linda Bigelow)

Then we started the long, winding climb up to the village.  I was right behind the guide, so I could look back and see all the tiny lights zig-zagging up the trail -- beautiful.  At one point the guide indicated we should be careful -- a thick branch was fastened to the side of a rock face where the trail gave out, and we had to carefully inch our way along this branch until we picked up the trail again.  (Two days later, we returned via this same trail, but we did that during the day when we could see what a perilous walk in the dark it had been.) 

Our second hike followed a ridge overlooking this Shangri-La and its river valley.  That same day we added a “mini hike” to the source of the river, where water gushed out of the mountainside in numerous places.  Our best meals on the whole trip were at our guide's hostel, where his wife prepared an incomparable couscous the first night and a tajine the next.  Every meal was accompanied by freshly-baked bread, rather like pita bread but more substantial.

Breathtakingly beautiful mountains

The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful.  The reds, pinks, yellows, oranges, violets, greens, and blacks were stunning.  One cliff was 900 meters high, straight up!  We met an Austrian couple in Taghia who had actually climbed it.  The terrain was highly varied and a pleasure to hike on. 

(Photo right: dusk, pink-orange clouds and moon sliver 10-2010 by Linda Bigelow.) 

We then hiked back to Tiranimine from where we took a 4x4 minibus to Ait Ayoub for two nights in the relatively prosperous, fertile valley of the Ait Bou Guemez.  Its major town is Tabant where we were in time to hike to its weekly market.  On the way to Tabant from our hostel in Ait Ayoub, we walked through the farm of our host and guide, Lahoucine, who explained many things about local agriculture, irrigation, and a community effort to educate girls.  He served us lots and lots of sweet, crunchy apples from his own apple trees, plus carrots and potatoes which were in season.  His wife prepared a variety of good, vegetarian tajines.  (Photo right: Lahoucine's apple orchard 10-2010 by Linda Bigelow)

Non-stop trek in the high mountains

After this four-day "warm-up" we began the non-stop trek on foot, accompanied by mules and completely cut off from the world.  From there on, we were up in the high mountains and reliant upon our valiant cook and all that our six mules could carry.

Dial H for Hate Speech, S for Schizophrenia, G for Gun Control and P for Politics

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Is there a correlation between the vitriolic rhetoric spewing from today’s American talk radio and Internet extremist websites and Jared Loughner’s killing spree two weekends ago at “Congress on Your Corner,” a Meet-Your-Congresswoman-event in front of a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona held so that Gabrielle Giffords could talk with  her constituents face-to-face?  Likely not a direct one.  Or at least we, the public, will not know until he has his day in court.

Beginning sometime in his teens, Loughner – according to reports – started to become increasingly violent and out of touch with reality – retreating more and more into his demon-filled fantasy world and drawn to ideas from the political extremes – left and right. 

Schizophrenia strikes the young

His behavior more than anything, I think, resembles the classic pattern of mental illness “so completely that, according to a lengthy article in Time, research psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey could say, without ever meeting Loughner, that ‘chances are 99% that he has schizophrenia.’

I certainly do not have Dr. Torrey’s credentials but I was around schizophrenics enough in my early years to know that Dr. Torrey’s response to the Time reporter makes eminent sense – beginning with the disease’s apparent youthful onset to the horrific Dante’s ninth circle of hell that consumed Loughner and his victims last week. 

What are we doing to ourselves?

Murders or attempted murders by lone, crazed assassins almost anywhere in the world are difficult, if not impossible, to prevent.  Many have a political and/or a religious component. 

But they can be made less likely in this country if, and only if, gun control laws and background checks of weapons purchasers are enacted and enforced and weapons sales made far more stringent than they are today.

I see no reason for a private citizen in a country that sees itself as civilized to be able to purchase an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. End of story. These are not weapons for self-defense to be used against the remote chance of a British military incursion – which was the real reason for the Constitution’s Second Amendment when this country was founded.

Automatics are weapons designed for mass killings of an enemy on the battlefield.  Not for the local shooting range, the destruction of beer cans, desert rats or even big game in the forest.  Self-defense or recreational hunting, my eye.

An old but true story

Over a century ago, a neighbor went to my great grandparents' door and shot and killed my great grandfather point blank.  That was in California’s Central Valley near the end of the 19^th century. My great grandparents were ranchers and the perpetrator thought that by committing the murder, my great grandmother and the kids would need to sell the ranch to him because they never would be able to handle it successfully without him.  Wrong.  My great grandfather’s widow and their children  continued to run the ranch: Never underestimate the determination of American women in the face of adversity.

 But that was then. 

That was the Wild West, the weapon of choice was not an automatic and the motive was economic.  Now I suppose a similarly likeminded neighbor would try to wipe out the entire family with a Glock.  That’s progress?

The Worst Way to Defend Religion

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Friends from Pakistan called my attention to the opinion piece below.  It's author is a highly respected Muslim intellectual and it appeared on the website of the Mumbai-based Center for Study of Society and Secularism.  As you read, remember the ghastly attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists two years ago and consider how measured India's response has been.  Consider also that the huge Muslim minority in India did not embrace the murderous assault on key structures in India's financial center.  

BLASPHEMY LAW – HOW MUCH RELIGION? HOW MUCH POLITICS?

Asghar Ali Engineer

(Secular Perspective January 16-31, 2011)

Assassination of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, Pakistan, has unleashed debate both among conservatives and liberals about justification or otherwise of the blasphemy law in Pakistan . It is totally surprising that the conservatives in Pakistan are demonstrating in favour of the assassin and not only that they are openly saying that those who condemn assassination can also be assassinated.

These conservatives should know that even if law is justified, it is not for any one to assassinate the breaker of the law. Law ceases to be a law if it is administered by any individual at his/her sweet will without following due process of law or proper legal trial. It clearly shows that law and order situation in Pakistan has almost collapsed and detailing of Malik Mumtaz Husain Qadri, the alleged assassin of Salman Taseer for security of a liberal governor also raises  [the] question: Why such a man of conservative views was detailed for his personal security.

It is equally shocking that 500 supposedly moderate clerics publicly threatened those who mourn Salman Taseer’s assassination will also meet the same fate and less shocking that when the alleged assassin was taken to the court many lawyers showered flower petals on him. And neither this threat by clerics nor celebration of assassination by, of all the people, a section of legal community, attracts any action from the state. Also, many Islamic scholars were appearing on T.V. and endorsing the action of the assassin and warning opponents not to condemn assassination. This clearly shows state is completely withdrawn and allowed fanatics to take over.

Law of Blasphemy – How Much Religious

There is no mention whatsoever of such a law in Qur’an which is most fundamental source of Islamic laws. Qur’an only says to believers to invoke Allah’s Mercy and Grace for the Prophet and that is why Muslims always write Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) in English and Sallal lahu alayhi wa sallam (i.e. May Allah’’s Mercy and Grace be on him). Also, the Qur’an describes the Prophet as rahmah lil ‘alamin i.e. mercy of all the worlds. If the Prophet is mercy for all the worlds, how can one kill in his name? Is Qur’an more fundamental or weak human sentiments?

Also, just because one thinks that someone has insulted the Prophet (PBUH) how can one straight away kill him without any due process of law, without establishing his/her guilt? If the Christian woman Asia Bibi who was given death sentence by the lower court for allegedly insulting the Prophet and some one felt that justice was not done in awarding death sentence, does he also become guilty of insulting the Prophet (PBUH)?

Any such inference would be totally against the law. Only fanatics can so conclude without any legal justification. No civilized society can tolerate this. Qur’an, as pointed out above, does not prescribe any such punishment for insulting the Prophet, let alone death punishment and here one is assassinated just because he thought the death punishment is not justified. Where was insult to the Prophet in holding such an opinion?

Guns and Civility after Tucson

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

When I consider the man who will be known forever as the Tucson killer, my thoughts trend in several directions.  I’m angry, of course, and I find myself wondering which is worse, a premeditated murder or a random slaughter. Either is unacceptable to any society, and Jared Loughner is, beyond doubt, guilty of both.  Whether or not his eventual sentence is mitigated by considerations of mental impairment, he is not, right now, the kind of person we want on the street.  Can any intervention  make him safe for society? I don’t know.

However, given what I’ve read so far, I can’t make an iron clad case for his having been institutionalized before he pulled out his Glock, with its over-populated magazine, and started shooting.  He came across as odd, evidently, and he wore his resentments pretty openly.  What’s more, he’d caught the paranoia bug which is epidemic these days.  All in all, he was a pretty unhappy camper, who made a number of people who knew him at Pima Community College distinctly uneasy.

But if we arrested every angry kid spewing nonsense and doing dumb things we’d be in worse financial trouble than we’re already in for incarcerating everyone found with a little pot in his  possession.  We can’t lock up every weirdo, let alone every resentful unpopular kid.  There are too many of them.  Most of them are innocuous,  and, here’s the rub, no one knows how to tell the sullen sheep from the murderous goats before it's too late.  In order to neutralize every apparent goat terrible multiples of sheep would have  to be locked up or “helped,” as the saying goes.

A story that surfaced in the New York Times this morning got me to thinking in this direction.  A student who contends she was wrongly institutionalized is suing the college who got her put away involuntarily.  Sounds to me like she’s got a case.  We’ll see. 

Meanwhile, we might reflect on the living hell that’s American junior and senior high school life for unpopular kids.  For those who don’t meet the recruitment criteria of the ruling cliques, life between classes ranges from ego-damaging exclusion to systematic, sadistic humiliation.  As if such traditional cruelties as vicious gossip or bullying weren’t enough to send many kids home in tears, there are email and Facebook serving as ever ready vehicles for driving vulnerable kids to suicide.