Celebrating the National Day!!! August 9 was the National Day. Torsten was the Guest of Honour and the Guest Speaker was Nicolas Sim Hee Juat. The audiences had to bear all his bullshit because he always likes to pull my leg. He came up with all his long treausred stories about me – which girls I like, how have I failed with all my efforts in finding a “LIFE”. We had a wonderful dinner at Annalaxmi and then headed for drinks in Iguana at Clark Quay. The Red Straberry Martinis on the table, you can see. My meeting with Torsten after more than a year was interesting. I was thinking that he will be addressing me the same way his cousin (Charanpal Singh Bal) usually does. My guess was right – he called me SAHUKAR at the very first moment he saw me at the restaurant. A drink at Iguana was really nice because of the river-side ambiance, although was bit crowded. However, I enjoyed and had a good time with the patriots of Singapore.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Patriots of Singapore !!
Celebrating the National Day!!! August 9 was the National Day. Torsten was the Guest of Honour and the Guest Speaker was Nicolas Sim Hee Juat. The audiences had to bear all his bullshit because he always likes to pull my leg. He came up with all his long treausred stories about me – which girls I like, how have I failed with all my efforts in finding a “LIFE”. We had a wonderful dinner at Annalaxmi and then headed for drinks in Iguana at Clark Quay. The Red Straberry Martinis on the table, you can see. My meeting with Torsten after more than a year was interesting. I was thinking that he will be addressing me the same way his cousin (Charanpal Singh Bal) usually does. My guess was right – he called me SAHUKAR at the very first moment he saw me at the restaurant. A drink at Iguana was really nice because of the river-side ambiance, although was bit crowded. However, I enjoyed and had a good time with the patriots of Singapore.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Find a Life and You will Find a Love?
Sam de Brito's new book Building a Better Bloke provides some tips for men how to build self-esteem and a life for themselves. He believes that building a life will in turn attract women. This book deals with an aspect of the male weakness – although men appear to be bold and confident, a lot of them are actually not. Many of them also indulge in drunken behaviour. The biggest fear in their life is approaching and striking up a conversation with a woman. He suggests people to have a sense of humour and believes that if you “find a life and you will find a love”. The question, however, is that is this true or the opposite of it (If you find love you will find life). This is perhaps another question like the chicken and the egg that has no clear answer. Brito provides ten tips to lure a woman (1) Stay healthy, (2) Don't abuse alcohol or drugs, (3) Have a job that means something to you, (4) Be busy with your own activities, (5) Be well groomed and clean, (6) Have a sense of humour, (7) Talk to women as individuals, not as a gender, (8) Be a gentleman, (9) Don't mix with loser friends, and (10) Have a clean bedroom, clean sheets - and a lamp to create romantic lighting (ANI).
Reading these ten tips I feel it sounds very stupid, although he is partially right in saying that if you find a life you find love. It makes me think what is life and what kind of “love” that Brito is talking about. Is it just to find a woman or is it more than that? I guess the objective should not be to find the “love of our life” but to “love our life”. And when start loving ourselves we would perhaps find both love and life – a lovely life.
Reading these ten tips I feel it sounds very stupid, although he is partially right in saying that if you find a life you find love. It makes me think what is life and what kind of “love” that Brito is talking about. Is it just to find a woman or is it more than that? I guess the objective should not be to find the “love of our life” but to “love our life”. And when start loving ourselves we would perhaps find both love and life – a lovely life.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills?
Prof. James C. Scott was a visiting professor at the Institute of Development Studies in Roskilde University in Denmark. Presenting his research on Southeast Asia, he spoke about Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills. He argued how states stop when they come to hills and presented the history of non-state spaces. According to him, the history of agriculture in Southeast Asia is of 8,000 years. The history of homo-sapiens is 200,000 years and the history of homo-sapiens in Southeast Asia is 50,000 years. He also argued that most of human experience has been state-less. Population and production in Southeast Asia was dispersed.
He distinguished between the Valley and the Hill and argued that the valley has always been the sites of states – taxes, Kings, sites of war and of hierarchy. The hill has no permanent states, no permanent Kings and taxation system. It is relatively egalitarian, although it is considered uncivilized, primitive and as barbarian periphery. Hill peoples are the past of the valley people. Hill peoples don’t share the religion of the valley. Mountains remain at the fringes of civilization. People run away from valleys to hills to evade state-making – taxation, mono-cropping, etc. of the state. Hills are not barbarian periphery but they are kind of political refugees. Hill peoples are considered as tribes and tribes were the creation of states and empires. They are the people who live in the fringes of the state. In Southeast Asia and South Asia, tribes were escaping state-building where as in Africa tribes were part of the state project. The idea of nation-state has been to control the periphery and to expand the state sovereignty till the border.
He distinguished between the Valley and the Hill and argued that the valley has always been the sites of states – taxes, Kings, sites of war and of hierarchy. The hill has no permanent states, no permanent Kings and taxation system. It is relatively egalitarian, although it is considered uncivilized, primitive and as barbarian periphery. Hill peoples are the past of the valley people. Hill peoples don’t share the religion of the valley. Mountains remain at the fringes of civilization. People run away from valleys to hills to evade state-making – taxation, mono-cropping, etc. of the state. Hills are not barbarian periphery but they are kind of political refugees. Hill peoples are considered as tribes and tribes were the creation of states and empires. They are the people who live in the fringes of the state. In Southeast Asia and South Asia, tribes were escaping state-building where as in Africa tribes were part of the state project. The idea of nation-state has been to control the periphery and to expand the state sovereignty till the border.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Empowering Visions
Empowering Visions: The Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism
Christiane Brosius
London: Anthem Press, 2005
ISBN: 1-84331-135-6
What roles do the modern media play in the sphere of culture, politics and governance? Christiane Brosius’ Empowering Visions: the Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism (London: Anthem Press, 2005) is an attempt to address ‘why, how and when Hindutva ideologues and pragmatics exploited the video media in order to claim power over public opinion-making and opinion-shaping’ (p. 3). Grounded on the theories of popular culture, anthropology of audiovisuals and thick ethnographic analysis, Brosius brilliantly depicts the roles played by Jain Studios’ videography in representing Hindutva’s cultural nationalism as an alternative conception of modernity, nationhood and national identity against the existing morally corrupt culture of secularism. These alternative empowering visions are realized through active entwining of ‘imagination to politics and ideology, space to time, image to narrative, and agent to action’ (p. 4).
The author argues that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, since the late 1980s, have heavily exploited the modern media, particularly audiovisual technologies to create visions of idealized Hindu way of life. Employing Schiffauer’s idea of ‘field of discourse’– ‘as a sphere in which cultural agents interact with each other with regards to interpretations, norms, values, questions of style and memories’ (p. 3) – Brosius argues that Jain Studio’s production and distribution of propaganda videos has helped the BJP in spreading cultural and ideological images to influence the public consciousness with a pan-Indian cultural nationalism grounded on the glories of the golden age. By depicting the people passionately participating in the saffron revolution, these images and narratives invite further participation of the audience. Key images and narratives from the domain of local popular culture were appropriated and commodified in a package to heighten ‘political marketing’ and mobilization (p. 93); to influence the popular psyche of the people; and to present itself as a credible force to reshape the modern nation-state, reclaim the stolen stories and rewrite the national history.
Selective use of particularistic media imaginations and narratives has colonized the public conscience and provocative representations in the public sphere have generated antithetical feelings of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. Visual media has convincingly justified Hindutva’s agenda of Hindu cultural identity as ‘credible’ and depicted Muslims as anti-nationals and a threat to the nation. It argues that the national history has been misrepresented by the anti-nationals and a self-empowerment could be achieved only by re-mapping Indianness through a return to the ‘indigenous and “true” history of the Hindu people’ (p. 12). A sense of ‘pop patriotism’ is being crafted by softly manipulating the Hindu sentiment through devout citizenship, righteousness, self-sacrifice, sacred violence, heroism, national devotion, and the notion of martyrdom which has ‘left deep scars on the skin of civil society, and changed the mental maps of large parts of Indian citizenry for good’ (p. 180). The video media, which is a part of Hindutva’s ‘cheerful revolution’ aimed at forming a powerful paternalistic state with a seemingly disciplined and infantile citizenry ever ready to sacrifice for the cause of universal brotherhood and moral community (p. 93). Since 1998, the Internet has decentralized the power of representation and disseminated Hindutva ideology on a wider scale. The presentation of imaginary and narratives in cultural production has, thus, played a significant role in redefining identity, history, nationhood, governance and politics.
The only shortcoming of the book would be its overemphasis on the cultural ‘production’ of image and narratives and not the ‘reception’ of it by the people. Despite this, the book is an admiral contribution to the Anthem South Asian Studies series. Its uniqueness lies in its provocative and telling arguments embedded in ethnographic description and provides a valuable contribution to the field of popular culture and anthropology of iconography.
______________________
@ Reviewed by Sarbeswar Sahoo, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 357-358.
Christiane Brosius
London: Anthem Press, 2005
ISBN: 1-84331-135-6
What roles do the modern media play in the sphere of culture, politics and governance? Christiane Brosius’ Empowering Visions: the Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism (London: Anthem Press, 2005) is an attempt to address ‘why, how and when Hindutva ideologues and pragmatics exploited the video media in order to claim power over public opinion-making and opinion-shaping’ (p. 3). Grounded on the theories of popular culture, anthropology of audiovisuals and thick ethnographic analysis, Brosius brilliantly depicts the roles played by Jain Studios’ videography in representing Hindutva’s cultural nationalism as an alternative conception of modernity, nationhood and national identity against the existing morally corrupt culture of secularism. These alternative empowering visions are realized through active entwining of ‘imagination to politics and ideology, space to time, image to narrative, and agent to action’ (p. 4).
The author argues that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, since the late 1980s, have heavily exploited the modern media, particularly audiovisual technologies to create visions of idealized Hindu way of life. Employing Schiffauer’s idea of ‘field of discourse’– ‘as a sphere in which cultural agents interact with each other with regards to interpretations, norms, values, questions of style and memories’ (p. 3) – Brosius argues that Jain Studio’s production and distribution of propaganda videos has helped the BJP in spreading cultural and ideological images to influence the public consciousness with a pan-Indian cultural nationalism grounded on the glories of the golden age. By depicting the people passionately participating in the saffron revolution, these images and narratives invite further participation of the audience. Key images and narratives from the domain of local popular culture were appropriated and commodified in a package to heighten ‘political marketing’ and mobilization (p. 93); to influence the popular psyche of the people; and to present itself as a credible force to reshape the modern nation-state, reclaim the stolen stories and rewrite the national history.
Selective use of particularistic media imaginations and narratives has colonized the public conscience and provocative representations in the public sphere have generated antithetical feelings of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. Visual media has convincingly justified Hindutva’s agenda of Hindu cultural identity as ‘credible’ and depicted Muslims as anti-nationals and a threat to the nation. It argues that the national history has been misrepresented by the anti-nationals and a self-empowerment could be achieved only by re-mapping Indianness through a return to the ‘indigenous and “true” history of the Hindu people’ (p. 12). A sense of ‘pop patriotism’ is being crafted by softly manipulating the Hindu sentiment through devout citizenship, righteousness, self-sacrifice, sacred violence, heroism, national devotion, and the notion of martyrdom which has ‘left deep scars on the skin of civil society, and changed the mental maps of large parts of Indian citizenry for good’ (p. 180). The video media, which is a part of Hindutva’s ‘cheerful revolution’ aimed at forming a powerful paternalistic state with a seemingly disciplined and infantile citizenry ever ready to sacrifice for the cause of universal brotherhood and moral community (p. 93). Since 1998, the Internet has decentralized the power of representation and disseminated Hindutva ideology on a wider scale. The presentation of imaginary and narratives in cultural production has, thus, played a significant role in redefining identity, history, nationhood, governance and politics.
The only shortcoming of the book would be its overemphasis on the cultural ‘production’ of image and narratives and not the ‘reception’ of it by the people. Despite this, the book is an admiral contribution to the Anthem South Asian Studies series. Its uniqueness lies in its provocative and telling arguments embedded in ethnographic description and provides a valuable contribution to the field of popular culture and anthropology of iconography.
______________________
@ Reviewed by Sarbeswar Sahoo, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 357-358.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
A Momentary Look at My Past
This is a piece of art that many people in Singapore may not have noticed. It is situated right in front of the entrance to the Fullerton Hotel. I took this picture long ago in 2007 when a friend of mine from London was visiting me in Singapore and I had to act as the tourist guide. I kind of like this picture because of the kind of expression it depicts. It reminds me of my childhood days that I spent with friends in my tiny village. I remember of going to the village pond and jumping down to the pool of water from the top of the date tree….what a life that was!! Unbelievable now even to me. I loved swimming, for which I was always chased by my mom. I used to swim for hours and hours till my eyes get red. I even almost always won the swimming race – whether under water or butterfly (It was true and believe me I am good swimming underwater). In retrospect, I enjoyed my time with my friends in the very small village in the state of Orissa. Many of my friends have left the village like me having been forced by the pragmatism of life. The simplicity of life no longer exists. Not just their absence but the advent of television has replaced that simplicity and injected a sense of artificiality into the village life. When I go back, this is what I lament about. However, it is also true that I have, in the process, been affected and become a victim of such metamorphosis.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Friday, August 01, 2008
OH THE GREAT AMERICANS! STIR UP YOUR CONSCIENCE!
The history was busy to write your name,
Amongst the nations with the highest fame.
The world was proud of your grace,
Virtue and love were the signs of your face.
From your soil, streams of justice used to flow,
To the vices and wrongs, you were a lethal blow.
You used to inspire a trust in all,
You drew no line between big and small.
The cascade of wisdom from your mind,
Quenched the intellectual thirst of every kind.
To the benighted humanity, you sowed new seed,
The compassion of Jesus (p.b.u.h.) was your creed.
Why suddenly, for you, this turn of fate?
How you emerged as a symbol of hate?
Stir up your conscience,
Look ahead with prescience.
Strain your nerves to see the right,
With a sense of justice, not with might.
Your eyes will perceive a demeaning course,
That made you believe in arms and force.
Delve deep into your soul,
To find out your filthy role.
Each part of the globe was within your reach,
With the Bible in hand; its lesson to preach.
You threw it away with a ruthless shake,
Your hands now possess weapons, for power sake.
The world is now standing aghast,
Why this all has happened so fast?
I know, only a few in your midst,
Spoiled your serenity with a grisly twist,
Sullied your image as a graceful race,
And eclipsed the sedateness of your pace.
Rise up ! purge your glory,
Of the present grim story;
Restore your lost dignity,
With penitential ‘sad’ and ‘sorry’.
Listen to the shrieks and wails,
See the destruction and travails,
Your sons have caused in others’ land,
With the dead falling like heaps of sand.
When the advent of Christ (p.b.u.h.) is too close,
Why you became so hideous, and why you chose,
To smear your face with innocent blood,
To engulf the humanity with your raging flood.
Now is the time for you to repent,
For what you have done, and what you spent,
To bring about fright and fear all around,
Let once again the global ambience reverberate,
Not with threats and piercing cannonade,
But with your soothing sermons, and remorseful sound.
_______________
@ Written by Dr. Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, President, All India Muslim Forum, Lucknow- India
Amongst the nations with the highest fame.
The world was proud of your grace,
Virtue and love were the signs of your face.
From your soil, streams of justice used to flow,
To the vices and wrongs, you were a lethal blow.
You used to inspire a trust in all,
You drew no line between big and small.
The cascade of wisdom from your mind,
Quenched the intellectual thirst of every kind.
To the benighted humanity, you sowed new seed,
The compassion of Jesus (p.b.u.h.) was your creed.
Why suddenly, for you, this turn of fate?
How you emerged as a symbol of hate?
Stir up your conscience,
Look ahead with prescience.
Strain your nerves to see the right,
With a sense of justice, not with might.
Your eyes will perceive a demeaning course,
That made you believe in arms and force.
Delve deep into your soul,
To find out your filthy role.
Each part of the globe was within your reach,
With the Bible in hand; its lesson to preach.
You threw it away with a ruthless shake,
Your hands now possess weapons, for power sake.
The world is now standing aghast,
Why this all has happened so fast?
I know, only a few in your midst,
Spoiled your serenity with a grisly twist,
Sullied your image as a graceful race,
And eclipsed the sedateness of your pace.
Rise up ! purge your glory,
Of the present grim story;
Restore your lost dignity,
With penitential ‘sad’ and ‘sorry’.
Listen to the shrieks and wails,
See the destruction and travails,
Your sons have caused in others’ land,
With the dead falling like heaps of sand.
When the advent of Christ (p.b.u.h.) is too close,
Why you became so hideous, and why you chose,
To smear your face with innocent blood,
To engulf the humanity with your raging flood.
Now is the time for you to repent,
For what you have done, and what you spent,
To bring about fright and fear all around,
Let once again the global ambience reverberate,
Not with threats and piercing cannonade,
But with your soothing sermons, and remorseful sound.
_______________
@ Written by Dr. Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, President, All India Muslim Forum, Lucknow- India
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a merperson to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince.
The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the sea king; her grandmother; and her five elder sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and of human beings.
When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. A great storm hits, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from a near-drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until a young girl from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.
The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolk's 300 years, but that when mermaids die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, eventually visits the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue; the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world. Drinking the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. In addition, she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and turn to sea foam.
The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite her excruciating pain. When the prince's father orders his son to marry the neighboring king's daughter, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not, because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, but adds that the Little Mermaid is beginning to take the temple girl's place in his heart. It turns out that the princess is the temple girl, who had been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.
The prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, but before dawn, her sisters give her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife, she will become a mermaid again and live out her full life.
The Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and, as dawn breaks, throws herself into the sea. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; she has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. She will earn her own soul by doing good deeds, and she will eventually rise into the kingdom of God.
________________
The story is from Wikipedia.
The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the sea king; her grandmother; and her five elder sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and of human beings.
When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. A great storm hits, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from a near-drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until a young girl from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.
The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolk's 300 years, but that when mermaids die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, eventually visits the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue; the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world. Drinking the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. In addition, she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and turn to sea foam.
The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite her excruciating pain. When the prince's father orders his son to marry the neighboring king's daughter, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not, because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, but adds that the Little Mermaid is beginning to take the temple girl's place in his heart. It turns out that the princess is the temple girl, who had been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.
The prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, but before dawn, her sisters give her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife, she will become a mermaid again and live out her full life.
The Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and, as dawn breaks, throws herself into the sea. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; she has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. She will earn her own soul by doing good deeds, and she will eventually rise into the kingdom of God.
________________
The story is from Wikipedia.
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