July 2005

The Archives

• optical character recognition

  Sunday Reading for Shadowlines

  07.31.05 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Monday cannot come soon enough. I have things to do, people. The weekend started with a birthday celebration and fails to end anytime soon. Last night we watched JSA by Chanwook Park [of Old Boy fame]. I grew up pretty close to the Wagah border between India and Pakistan and the storyline kept reminding me [...]

• homistan, imperial watch

  i read the news today, oh boy…

  07.31.05 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Itís been one hell of a week. Or is it two. Or just ten days?
  Sense of time warped by too many late nights. Have been shaken out of my long hibernation from blogging by the enormity of the disasters and calamities that have been hitting the News.
  Gurgaon sees the worst police brutality against labour [...]

• holydays

  Open Thread

  07.25.05 | Permalink | 27 Comments

  Ask. Comment. Converse. Narrate. Send me a note.

• holydays

  Siesta

  07.25.05 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  It is that time of the year, again.
  I will be quite busy over the next few weeks. Things are gathering momentum and if I don’t make a stand, I might get swept away. What will you have of your lowly sepoy then?
  My crew, my peeps, my homies are also busy with things and cannot [...]

• univerCity

  For Me

  07.23.05 | Permalink | 16 Comments

  A minor windfall of a gift certificate at Amazon. My current wishlist is all taken care of. But monies remain. So, recommend me a book, a movie, a cd. Please.

• imperial watch

  Ring Ring II

  07.22.05 | Permalink | Comment?

  The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

  KR: Hi, Rove here
  SH: Hello, Mr. Rove. This is Seymour Hersh from the NewYorker. I am working on a story about the machinations behind the Iraqi Elections and I wanted to get the WH reaction to a few of the claims made by people involved in [...]

• imperial watch

  That Terror Thing IV

  07.19.05 | Permalink | 9 Comments

  We drift through words: evil ideology, hate, freedom, jihad, islam, community, quagmire. Words that, in turn, become keys to narratives: War on Terror, Islam is Evil, Islam means Peace, Clash of Civilizations. Britain announced that they will start monitoring Muslims community by community. The Muslim community; a silent yet deadly collective to be found in [...]

• imperial watch

  That Terror Thing III

  07.18.05 | Permalink | 8 Comments

  Blah. Harumph. Shibrum. Shibrum. Blah. Harumph. Shibrum. Shibrum. Blah. Harumph. Shibrum. Harumph You. Shibrum. Shibrum Evil Ideology Harumph You. Shibrum. Shibrum Evil Ideology Harumph You. Blah. Harumph. Shibrum. Shibrum. Blah. Harumph. Shibrum. Shibrum BOOM Shibrum Them. Shibrum. Shibrum BOOM Shibrum Them. Shibrum. Shibrum BOOM Harumph Them. Shibrum. Shibrum BOOM Shibrum Them. Shibrum. Shibrum Clash [...]

• holydays

  Except In His Own Country

  07.17.05 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  In the long answer to Sepoyís question of what the fuck is up with religion in America, I mentioned evangelist Rod Parsley as unknown, but should-be-known by people who care about such things as democracy, freedom, religious plurality and the rise of the Christian Right.
  While we still sleep here in North America to the designs [...]

• optical character recognition

  Sunday Reading for Sepoys

  07.17.05 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  It sure is hot up in here. How are all of you doing? Today seems like the perfect summer afternoon to hide in an air-conditioned movie theater with Charlie. That is so the plan. The reading list for today is a tad haphazard - as they always are:

  In the LRB, Maya Jasanoff reviews Gautam Chakravarty’s [...]

• imperial watch

  That Terror Thing II

  07.15.05 | Permalink | 28 Comments

  Why exactly did the Columbine killers decide to murder in cold blood their school mates? Or what are the motivations in any of the other cases of school shootings? How do kids from a suburban family, with all the trappings of a normal existence decide to become deadly packages of terror? I ask because the [...]

• homistan

  Desi

  07.12.05 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Raver emailed last night: “Yesterday’s word of the day [oed] was grep, today’s is desi. Have you been picking the word of the day?” Funny thing is that I had an entry written yesterday on desi but deleted it accidentally. Ah, fates.
  So, Desi is the new Black. Um. Desi is the new Macarena. Check [...]

• homistan

  That Terror Thing

  07.11.05 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  I admit that I do not have many deep insights on terror or Islam etc. If pressed, I will retreat to my domain of history and start about the rupture of colonialism and some of the anachronistic responses that it generated. Yeah, it’s hackeneyed but that’s all I have for now. The tactic of terrorism [...]

• imperial watch

  London 2005

  07.07.05 | Permalink | 6 Comments

  London isn’t a stranger to bombings. But, this is the hammer that London has been waiting to fall since 9.11. I was in London that day. Browsing bookstores mindlessly. I attended the ceremony in Trafalgar Square and cried with, what seemed like, the entire population of London.
  We can wait for the inevitable proof that [...]

• homistan

  Finding His Religion

  07.06.05 | Permalink | 9 Comments

  I have wondered about Imran Khan. In that post, I quipped that he flirted with mullahs for five seconds. Since that post, Khan has garnered a lot of attention for his “role” in the Newsweek-Qur’an story [aside: I must admit that I was amiss in my reading of the protests in that post. I failed [...]