Crazyfinger

Our Draupadi

Something I wrote about Draupadi over at Pustakam.net site.

Dr. Edwina Pendarvis on U.S. Education System

Particularly for Asian-American parents, a first brush with the primary and secondary schools in US evoke feelings varying from disappointment, dread to depressing thoughts with worries about the future of the child.  Especially among Indians temptations are high to go back to India, preferring the secondary schooling system there.  In both US and India, there is a definite glaring difference in the quality of secondary education and the graduate schools.  For some reason neither country is able to get both right.  This interview, over at Fools Mountain blog, with Dr. Edwina Pendarvis (Part 1, Part 2) sheds some light on the experiences from Chinese point of view.   

New "Translation" Blog

For a while there was a thought to put up a focused blog on translating efforts from Indian languages into English, but no action until now.  Well, Pavada is up.  I know, the design is not exactly original but please visit, comment and help correct the misinterpretations and mistakes. 

"Why Does Getting Married Makes You Fat?"

All the betas and epsilons are there...including that "tradiational marriage" in Table 1 (clicking on link opens a PDF document)  

Unique ID Authority Chairman & the Art of Handwaving

 From India's Unique ID Authority Chairman's interview: 

• "We are not doing something different from what already exists."  
• "Having this number does not confer any rights, benefits or any entitlements.  All it does is confirming that X is X."
• "We will have to design it as good as possible."
• "It is not a reinvention but scaling up."

In other words, we don't know how much it really costs, we are still investigating the technology, at this time we can't really articulate in specific terms what problem or a set of a problems this UID program really solves, but we will do our best. Either Mr. Nilekani is doing a poor job of evangelizing the UID program or worse, he and his team are in over their heads on this one.  But most worrisome is that the approach, from this interview, appears to be technology-centric for the sake of building technology.  And you know when that happens, it's like a solution looking for a problem.  What we need is more information, more specific information on what are the specific problems this UID is suppose to address and how.  

I know it is apples and oranges, but compare the above handwaving to this news item that came out of China (take it for what it is worth):

China’s nine-year compulsory education policy had made great achievements in recent years, covering more than 160 million primary and middle school students so far in both rural and urban areas, said Education Minister Zhou Ji at a news conference here recently.

Last year, the enrolment percentage in both the 3, 00,900 primary schools and 57,900 middle schools across the country reached 98 per cent, said Mr. Zhou. The government also spent tens of billions of yuan over the past several years to establish more than 8,000 boarding schools nationwide, rebuild dangerous buildings and improve living conditions in schools, he said.

China’s nine-year compulsory education policy, which was launched in 1986, enables students over six years of age nationwide to have free education at both primary and secondary schools.

Mr. Zhou also stressed the importance of shortening the gap between urban and rural areas in terms of teachers’ quality by improving rural teachers’ economic and social status.

The government has released a wage reform ensuring that payment of rural teachers are not lower than that of local civil servants. Further, the government issued many preferential policies to encourage teachers, college graduates and school students to go to the countryside to teach. This year, more than 2, 00,000 college graduates have done so.

As for development of vocational education, which is considered as an important task for China’s education development, Mr. Zhou said there would be free access to secondary vocational education this year in order to better promote its development. The policy would be primarily implemented in agriculture related majors and for poor students, said Mr. Zhou.

He did not reveal the exact time for the policy to take effect. He said the scale of secondary vocational school development was now equal to that of high schools, with student enrolment numbers higher than high school. Last year, the enrolment number in secondary vocational schools reached 8.1 million, and the number might be 8.6 million for this year, he said.

White Oleander

During the past six months or so I've seen on HBO a few movies that are quite simply near-perfect.  Yesterday's White Oleander was one of them.  I used to think that if a movie is made out of a novel, then forget the movie, just go read the book.  Not lately.  There are some movies today that make you think, "Wow, it's difficult to write that.  How did they pull it off...?"  Here is a clip.

Donald Keene in Japan Times

Those who read Japanese literature translated into English will know who Donald Keene is.  The Japan Times published an extended interview with him in their Sept 6, 2009 issue.  I used to read his weekly column in Daily Yomiuri Online but I can't seem to find the link to it anymore.  If anyone can find it I'd love to read them again.  But it may be that those columns have been turned into a book.  If you haven't read Keene, I recommend starting with Chushingura - a puppet play, and Yoshimasa (you can find the book on Amazon)

"Dying art?"

As a matter of taste, it is never an interesting exercise to point out the deficiencies of someone's article.  But the author of this article ought to look around once in a while on the internet.  There's plenty of good poetry, especially in local languages.  And whatever does he mean by this, by the way:

"Partly owing to the advent of technology that provides mass entertainment like television and partly because poets have developed a propensity to self-destruct."

The Character of a Writer

Often I read this essay in order to remind myself that the weariness and the contempt that inevitably surfaces when I attempt to write my thoughts is not just a matter of mood, nor it is of a particular sentiment or the medium.  It is all of that, but essentially it is a matter of character.  Of the reader and of the writer.

"…And before I had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set of authors I had come among, and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve.  Those views furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life. 
    The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach? it was explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taught without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food, lodging, women, and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was very good.
    This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests.  To be its priest was very pleasant and profitable.  And I lived a considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity.  But in the second, and especially in the third year of this life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this religion and to examine it.  My first cause of doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in accord among themselves.  Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers; we teach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly.  Others said: No! we are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly.  And they disputed, quarreled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another.  There were also many among us who did not care who was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means of this activity of ours.  All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed.
    Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life; but they were self-confident and self-satisfied as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized that that faith was a fraud.
    But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher.  I naively imagined that I was a poet and artist and could teach everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly.
    From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what.
    To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though there are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic asylum.
    We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote -- teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another -- just as in a lunatic asylum.
    Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions of words which the post carried all over...[...], and we still went on teaching and could in no way find time to teach enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.
    It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work and to feel assured that we were very important people we required a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised:  "All that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture.  And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself justified.
    It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself."

 A Confession - by Leo Tolstoy (1872 or 1882) (Trans: Aylmer Maude)

Translating Gorati Venkanna

After this conversation over at Kufr blog, I got to thinking about translating this song.  Here it is.  It is not at all how the original in Telugu is.  I won't go into details of why such a loss is the most difficult thing to recover.  I am leaving the comments section open just in case someone has a better result or a corrective suggestion. 

How many more years...!
[Missing two lines]
This bloodshed, this violence, still how many more years...!

Lords, ruling chiefs, elders...!
O, well-armed ring leaders
O lord Samaranagireddi... you,
Do be cozy my lord, do be in comfort

Bharatavirareddi... you, shall
Hand out the bombs
Our people... shall 
Tread that path

Narasimha nayudu, you... shall   
Snap your fingers
And all these people... shall 
Jiggy in ringers

Narasimha nayudu lord, you,
Narasimha nayudu lord, you... shall   
Bristle your moustache in pride
We shall rush with our incensed anger

Indrasenareddi...!  Indrasenareddi shall 
Cast high as moon, shall  
Sit on heaven's throne

The umbrellas over your head we are
The soles under your feet we are
The machetes in your fists we are

Hound dogs, that chase
At your roil, ruffle and hiss, are we

Sons, who slaughter
Even a blood-brother at your wrath, are we
Do be cozy my lord, do be in comfort

O, well-armed lordly lords
O, well-armed ring leaders
O, faction leaders
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

May your last born be,
May your last born be
Given the visa for America
Be happy There

May your first born, be an SP and
May your first born, be an SP and
Swing the truncheon
Look after you
In a manner with no cases

Collector, like a son-in-law, shall 
Bear your feet's burden
Authority, like a dog, shall
Watch over you

Our cow herding son
Shall lift up your hatchet
Shall decapitate as many heads
As the morsels from you 
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

Your thousand-noter
We shall receive with humility
Sever the arm
Of whomever you show,
And show you

Your five thousand-noter
We shall receive with joy
Cut off the two legs of one of them
And show you

At your call for tender
We shall raise working heads
If the work stalls,
If the work stalls we shall be
Bones of your contention

When we gave you bombs
You fed us your expensive whisky
Your delicious food

And so if harm's your way,
Though our little one shivers
With cold and fever,
We shall go even at night,

And though the month-old bride
Is alone at home we shall
Seize our hunting knives,
At your times of trouble

If you give us bombs
We shall hurl, as play balls
For your sake
On our own heads
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

As hired guns, we shall bear the blame
As country's leaders, you shall gain merit
What do you say...!

Playing your part, heroes shall strike a hit
Seeing that cinema, our folks shall whistle

Next to Gandhi, Nehru shall be your pictures
In police stations shall be our photos
Do be cozy my lords, do be in comfort

The New Bitch

Back in the day it was:

"That's really why he got upset that day when he couldn't get his engine started.  It was an intrusion on his reality.  It just blew a hole right through his whole groovy way of looking at things and he would not face up to it because it seemed to threaten his whole life style.  In a way he was experiencing the same sort of anger scientific people have sometimes about abstract art, or at least used to have.  That didn't fit their life style either." ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," Robert M. Pirsig)

Now:

...a mass upper class that was so immersed in symbolic and digital cerebration that it had become incapable of carrying out the most ordinary functions.

Feels to me it is the technology that has undergone a transformation in its gender.  Back in the day it was "manly" and now it is "sexy." 

Radio Darvish

Just discovered this radio station browsing through iTunes.  What a find...!  (Photo of Darvish Khan courtesy Wikipedia)

China: Tiger, the size of an Elephant

With a population of just under two million people, Yiwu's business revolves around a huge building of 62,000 stalls containing umbrellas, socks, toys, electronics, zips and other goods -- all spread out over four million square metres (43 million square feet).

`"If you allocated three minutes per supplier during eight hours of daily business, you would need over a year to make your way round it (the market)," said Li Xuhang, vice mayor of Yiwu city, at the heart of Zhejiang province.'

Remarkable in China

"Entrepreneurial activity hasn't ground to a halt. In Guangdong province, a manufacturing and trade hub, 62,400 companies shut down in 2008, according to government records. But 100,600 companies were started, resulting in a net increase of 38,200 companies." 

This graph from the article shows a remarkable transition into private-owned enterprises.  

To Be The Best...is Peaceful

And when you see these athletes in action, you know all your whining, griping and bitching about how boring, purposeless life is, is all hogwash. 

Through James Fallows of The Atlantic. Apparently this below video is fake.

Shirinjan (Uyghur folk song) and Noor Jehan...

Miss M. tells me this song may not be all that popular in Xinjiang in spite of what the YouTube title says.  She ought to know as she is from there.  Be that as it may...


And who can resist Noor Jehan...?

BWV 639, "Who Do Men Say That I Am?", Merry Christmas...!

Just saw this in The Atlantic Online - What Do Men Say That I Am? by Cullen Murphy:

"This is one of the most resonant questions in the whole of the New Testament. It is the question, it seems, of a man who wishes to disturb but who is also himself disturbed; of a man who has somehow found himself in deeper waters than anticipated; of a man at once baffled and intrigued by a destiny that he may have begun to glimpse but of which he is not fully aware. And thus, seeking guidance, seeking perhaps to ken the range of possibilities, Jesus put the question to his followers. It is an affecting and very human moment. Some of the disciples replied, "John the Baptist." Others said "Elijah" or "One of the prophets." Unmentioned by the disciples on this occasion were the many choicer and less admiring epithets for Jesus then current in Palestine—blasphemer, false prophet, madman. Jesus persisted: "But who do you say that I am?" Only Simon Peter ventured a reply: "Thou art the Christ." In the end Jesus declined to enlighten his followers. He simply bade them to hold their tongues.

They did not, of course, and the questions that Jesus posed, or is said to have posed, have therefore been posed for all time. It may be that Jesus went to his death not knowing quite who he was, regardless of what other men thought."

Thomas Sheehan, whose discussions with the author feature extensively in this article, is an electrifying teacher.  I took one of his evening courses at Stanford.  If you have iTunes, click here for his "Historical Jesus" course (free, scroll down to "Arts and Humanities" section).

Here is an excerpt by Thomas Sheehan from the above article:

"There's nothing absolutely foundational in Christianity that is obligatory for anybody—for the Salvadoran guerrilla, the Evanstonian bourgeois Catholic, David Tracy, or me. What you have is always the slippery ground of hermeneutics, of the need to interpret. Frankly, I don't think that there's a definable orthodoxy any longer even within Roman Catholicism. I know a Jesuit theologian who told a group of us that the Christ event—Jesus sent by God and the whole ball of wax—applies only to Western culture. 'Christ is the symbol of Western culture for being touched by God. Ontologically, the Christ does not apply, may never have had any significance, for Eastern cultures.'

Merry Christmas and happy holidays...!

Major Tammy Duckworth

 

Note: I had originally written a variation of this essay as a blogpost for a now-defunct blog of mine.  Major Tammy Duckworth's story never loses its shine for me.  Re-reading it, re-posting it under a different title each time...is how I stay connected.  Major Tammy's photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons License.

How does a person develop dogmatic beliefs?  I have a notion.

Most of us, when overcome by feelings of disconnectedness from our surroundings, experience a sense of inner agitation.  When human affairs are pressed beyond the ordinary, such as when at war, these moments of disconnectedness steer us to identify things that are “right” or “wrong.”   Soon these moments turn into beliefs.  Then we become emphatic about these beliefs.  Then we suddenly find it easy to relate our normal day-to-day occurrences to these beliefs. 

But this disconnect, the inner agitation, doesn't go away.  It seems to persist despite our emphatic beliefs of right and wrong.  This feeling, instead of getting resolved, dissolved, disappear and reassure us in the staunch positions we take on the issues of political importance, seems to go right past our ordinary day-to-day beliefs and is still left dangling, in search of home.

Where is the home for this feeling, for this disconnect? 

Those who saw “Conversations with Soldiers Wounded in Iraq” on C-SPAN (originally aired March 10, 2005, with subsequent repeat broadcasts) would likely have experienced a glimpse of the very such home.  When this happens, when that metaphysical home is found for this disconnected feeling, one can't help but feel how pallid the exhortations of globalization, and of the "world citizen" are, compared to the experience of this home. 

You don't have to see that C-SPAN show to relate to what I write here.  I am writing here of what I saw: a celebration of life at its most intense and its most fullest reach.  There you watch how the soldiers have very nearly died in the mess and blood of war, but who brought a renewal of life into our experience without the ugly melodrama and narcissism that a more self-conscious narrator of the drama, for example a modern day blogger, would bring.

To see what I mean, let's start with a simple question: “Where were we on Nov 12, 2004?”

Because on that day Major Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois Army National Guard, was on a free fall, her Blackhawk helicopter shot over the skies of Iraq.  From her own narrative of the events of that day, “It was actually end of the day, we've been flying missions across Baghdad, mostly transportation of equipment.  Had a great lunch, bought some christmas ornaments from the post exchange (it was middle of November).  We were ten minutes from getting back to the base when an RPG shot by the insurgents hit the chin bubble (a Plexiglas window under the pilot seat of the Blackhawk.)”

She sat next to her husband with the C-SPAN interviewer.  Her infectious smile, dark beautiful eyes and a gentle face would have you believe she may have just escaped with minor bruises, what's the big deal and wouldn’t "those army folks" be prepared for these sorts of things anyway?

Initial charge exploded between her knees and nicked one of the Blackhawk's blades.  Instantly they lost the electronics, and the Blackhawk started to descent.  Tammy immediately attempted to land the aircraft, little realizing that she lost the foot pedals and her legs.  The control panels were gone.  When she woke up in the emergency room the right hand was broken.  The last thing she remembered was that she saw that the grass on the fields, coming through the chin bubble as they landed, was about 6 ft tall and she remembered thinking, "Wow, that's really beautiful green grass" before she passed out.  Tammy lost her right leg.  Lost her left leg below the knee to amputation.  Her right arm bones were crushed and broken the moment the Blackhawk hit the ground.  Doctors at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where this C-SPAN interview was taped, rebuilt the arm using metal pins and screws and grafted the tissue taken from her stomach.

And then there is Cpl. Michael Oreskovic - US Army, 23 years’ of age at the time of this interview.  Lost his left arm from shoulder on: "Flopping around somewhere like a chewed up hamburger."  He went through eleven surgeries and now uses a bio-electric arm. 

This is a group of people who describe things that happen to them such as ripped arms, detonations in front of their faces, warm blood pouring down their faces, soaking their clothes, with a gentle smile on their faces.  Not a hint of self-pity, not a hint of a loss, just a strange serenity in their faces, a jaded tiredness but a permanent light in their eyes: "Tough situations brings you closer.”  He waits until the question is asked: "Was anybody else injured at all?" "Yeah, my squad leader died instantly"

The casual approach, the self-effacing manner in which these soldiers speak is maddening: "Tying the shoes and pulling the zipper are the hardest things to do."

    Q: "What do you do when you get frustrated?"
    A: "Go work out"

"I wanted to go back to my unit, but everyone says no."  He describes the possibility of not being in the army in the words of, "They probably won't toss you out the window if you are a special force." 

This phrase, "toss you out the window,"  speaks volumes of the loyalty they feel towards their unit.  I cannot help but feel that this phrase is exactly that longing to find a home for that disconnected feeling, to find a home where a human being involuntarily experiences a whole body of emotions such as love, sacrifice and looking out for each other.  It appears to me that this is what prompts a soldier to go back to serve. 

There is not a hint of wasted thought, wasted emotion, in these soldiers' thinking.  Perhaps it comes from being so close to life and death.  Here there is no room for thoughts that scrape the bottom of the "about-ness," no room for the worlds of you and I where we build protective edifices of opinions and ideas of what is right and what is wrong, protecting from the action-at-a-distance. 

After all, isn’t this distance, this disconnect, this tragedy-less tin-box of clutter in our minds, is what we are all searching to find a home for?

"Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not our 9/11"

This hits the nail on the head. 

Sid Caesar (The German General)

This week's been one of those when you remember once again that the most important ingredient to living life fully is sense of urgency.  To finish what one started, to keep the focus, to keep the discipline...for some reason I am remembering an old Sid Ceaser comedy routine.  When I first saw it, way back when, I was shocked at how brilliant the routine was and how much discipline it must have taken Sid Ceaser to master it to this level of perfection.  It is comedy sure, but watch the ending, it'll surprise you...