One hears rumors that speakers coming to the University of Chicago [I speak here of History, Anthro and South Asia] to give a talk get apprehensive. They have heard the stories of harsh questions and severe grillings. They have heard about the graduate students. When they approach Foster 103, the speakers, all nervous like a [...]
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A few days ago, I hit a perfect drive over mid-on. It was a gorgeous shot, really. The bat moving as an extension of myself. I saw the very moment that the ball hit the pitch and, seemingly, slowed down for me. I have hit that shot hundreds of time, in real matches even. During [...]
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Meanwhile, how do these DVDs get to The Shop in the first place? This is a long and complicated story. And my telling of it starts in another shop. G. Electronics, in a market in Lodi Colony. S. G., the owner of G. Elec, is a movie fanatic with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hollywood films. [...]
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[Names have been changed for obvious reasons.] January in Palika Bazaar. A day before the beginning of a major conference on Inequalities, Conflicts and Intellectual Property. I am with Brian Larkin, who is here for the conference, and we are looking for DVDs. Palika Bazaar, an ëundergroundí market in more senses than one, is of [...]
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It is way too cold for late April. I must migrate to the south, if I can. Last night was some discussion of what I would do to get a job at the University of Hawaii. It may not get as dire as that but Chicago weather isn’t helping right now. Friday was the 400th [...]
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I nearly underwent the Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation in the mid-nineties, after spending a few months ravenously devouring all the information on Catholicism I could find, both good and bad. I had become convinced that Catholicism, after a few fits and starts may have got it right after all. The social issues that concerned [...]
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Some crazy mullah in Norway has written a book in Urdu titled Iblis ki Aulad [Sons of Satan]. The book is being sold, surreptitiously, on the streets of Oslo. The outfit behind the book is All Pakistan Muslim Society. What they are doing in Norway is up to debate. Unless “All Pakistan” includes Norway, now. [...]
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I stood in the International Student Registeration Line a long time ago. Barely two days in the States, I was expected to know which classes to take and how to take them. A california sky-kissed beauty welcomed me with a radiant smile, “How can I help you?”. My first reaction, I remember vividly, was the [...]
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I was watching an old classic with grandparents – Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, possibly the funniest movie ever made. Anyhow, there comes the scene when the villain’s villainous uncle tells everyone that the villian is returning from ‘Vilayat’ in a few days – Vilayat being what I have always taken to be a reference to [...]
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Pakistanís Military Dictator-cum-President Parvez Musharraf is in India this weekend, in what is being hailed on both sides of the border (India, Pakistan and even in vilayat) as another successful round of cricket diplomacy (the first being Ziaís surprise trip to meet Rajiv Gandhi in Rajasthan in 1987). This cricket match, played in the Firuz [...]
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Played a few games of cricket yesterday. The venue was the entrance to the Reg. Ostensibly, we were all there for this. But, the sun was shining blue and I had a bat in my hand after a long, long time. The teams and the audience were a mixed bag of subalternists, cambridge wallas, and [...]
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My first experience with Tim LaHaye was as a horny preteen. On one sweltering Ohio afternoon, while visiting my Aunt Deb, and while also moving my bowels, I happened upon a paperback in their bathroom bookstack called The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love. Its cover featured a lazy couple necking, after a [...]
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The alternative society created in part by Hollywood myopia, and the cynicism-or, depending on your point of view, foresight of The Passion‘s marketers, has come to fruition. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has decided to exercise what the press and Congressional Republicans call the ‘nuclear option’ to make it easier for Senate Republicans to bring [...]
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Jonathan Dresner hosts History Carnival # 6. Irfan Khawaja’s post on Jalianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and Weekend Fisher’s post on Talmudic Messianism caught my eye. As well as this excellent post by the little professor on representations of Anne Boleyn. Sounds very familiar. Now go read the best that History has to offer in [...]
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The Group of Four vs. the Coffee Club. India vs. Pakistan. Japan vs. China. History vs. Politics. It plays out like a grand opera of broken trusts and rebounded relationships but it is the very realpolitiks surrounding the reform and expansion of the United Nations Security Council. I know that this isn’t the sexiest of [...]
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A lovely group of Seattle-based cineastes are calling out for new independently produced films about South Asia. Their Independent South Asian Film Festival (ISAFF) was a blast last yearÖ a well-balanced mix of very cool filmmakers and ñgoers, but refreshingly lacking in pretense. Maybe it’s the salty breezes of Puget Sound, or some lingering spirit [...]
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Following Qatar’s lead, UAE has decided to replace kidnapped South Asian children with robots as jockeys in the most popular camel races. Camel racing is as old as the two oldest bedouins with camels and a long stretch of desert turf. In the Roman accounts of Syria and the Hadramawt, there are mentions of horse [...]
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Who has been eating my porridge? While I was having a fairly busy weekend, CM exploded with posts. And brilliant ones at that. I feel like Jeff Van Gundy clinging to Alonzo Mourning’s leg. All I have are some feeble links: I am torn about the art of Rajkamal Kahlon. The Orientalist histories of India [...]
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In attendance at the British royal wedding last week were two Bombay/Mumbai dabbawalas. Apparently, the Raja of England met the gents on a trip to India a couple of years back, and liked them so much he decided to fly them to jolly England for his nups. Collectively, these much-lauded ‘lunch-runners’ of Mumbai deliver hot [...]
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St. Malachy comes back from the dead for each conclave. Reason being, in the 12th century CE he made a prospective list of Popes that culminate two Popes from now–at the end of the world. The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us: The most famous and best known prophecies about the popes are those attributed to St. [...]
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