Last week Sepia Mutiny posted on the Yes Men’s hoax. Here is an interview from Democracy Now (thank you Shaila Mehra) with the Yes Man who perpetrated the hoax, it has the BBC interview as well. They would have preferred to be on Fox News, and after the hoax was discovered they released another press release:

….we felt that we owed Dow some public relations work so we issued an explanation by Dow that in fact the Jude Finisterra fellow in the morning had not been their representative and that in fact everything he said was incorrect. Then we proceeded to outline exactly what was incorrect. Dow was not going to remediate the site even though it wouldn’t cost very much; they were not going to compensate people to more than $500, $500 was in fact enough for an Indian, plenty good for an Indian, etc., etc. Everything they were not going to do we just spelled it out for them, since all they had said was he was not their spokesperson. We thought that was insufficient.

Body and Soul has an excellent post about the hoax. She points out the callous disregard of not only Dow Chemicals, but of the media’s attitude of, “life is cheap in the third world,” and its professional lapses.

I suppose that is why we depend on the fake news with Jon Stewart to get to the real news. Here is an extensive interview on Rediff about the the sorry state of affairs.

I must be one of the last people to see this film before its official release, and as films go, this was quite enjoyable, not as good as Bhaji or Beckham, but it had its moments. The Hollywood Reporter has a pretty accurate assessment of the film:

“Bride & Prejudice” is like an Elvis Presley musical from the ’60s, filled with shiny bright colors, bouncy music and happy, smiling, pretty people. Like those old pop vehicles, this upbeat blend of Bollywood and Jane Austen is an acquired taste. While the plot is inane and the acting bland, the film’s relentless effervescence may endear it to mainstream audiences.

I wasn’t going to write about Bride and Prejudice but something about it kept nagging me, and it is largely the character of Mr. Darcy. He is supposed to be an upper-class American, and it was all wrong. The clash between Lalita and Darcy takes place within the context of a cultural clash. We are supposed to believe that Darcy finds India’s underdevelopment daunting, and Lalita thinks of him as an Imperialist. It would have worked much better if Darcy had been a Donald Trump like character, a little more brash, in that American upwardly mobile way, then the sensitive Lalita’s aversion to him would have had some dramatic resonance. Martin Henderson’s Darcy was sort of Englishy (thankfully we were spared Hugh Grant in that role), which didn’t quite work.

I am not complaining about the cultural authenticity of the characters, as much as their lack of dramatic resonance, a problem endemic to the script. Not for a moment does one believe that the characters actually have anything at stake and want something so badly that they will take some sort of drastic action. I think it comes from the mixture of styles–Bollywood and Romantic comedy, and a misunderstanding of the style itself that is at fault. Bollywood films are highly emotional, under the baroque surface of its melodramatic storyline there are monumental passions at work, at least when the film is successful. Take the case of Munna Bhai MBBS, a hysterically funny film, which never the less manages to convince you that there are deep emotions at work–it shamelessly trots out a young man dying of cancer, a much beloved father falling deathly sick, filial devotion and more, its just not a frothy extravaganza of song and dance sequences, a surface that Bride and Prejudice takes from Bollywood films, and not some of the other elements that make a Bollywood film work. Still, despite its failures, Bride and Prejudice’s mixture of styles feels like part of something interesting.

If you have been following the Kanchi Muth murder mystery, you will probably not be surprised by the following article from The Telegraph:

The chisels for Ram have been replaced by guns to protect the mahants.

On the eve of the 12th anniversary of the razing of the Babri Masjid, fear hangs over this temple town. But the insecurity is not over another violent agitation for a Ram temple but the bloody succession battles among priests and heads of trusts that have claimed several lives.

Several hundred trust heads have either acquired arms or have applied for gun licences. Of the 100 applicants whose cases are before the Faizabad district administration, 60 are mahants, police confirmed.

It seems that several priests and administrators have already been killed, The Telegraph thinks that the deflation of the Ayodhya issue is responsible for the priests turning against each other, as old rivalries resurface. The priests themselves have the perfect answer for everything:

Gyan Das was flanked by armed men even in his office near Hanumangarhi. He argued that the trusts and akharas had been created to protect the Hindu religion. So they should be armed. What if the arms are used to settle scores with rivals of the community? “That is there,” he said, “but God will save them.”

The only thing missing is a visit from Charlton Heston of the NRA, after all he did play Moses.

We have been preparing for our trip to India, and we are doing some of our travels on the Indian Railway System. I have a father who reads Railway timetables for entertainment, and am a big fan of the Monty Python Agatha Christie Railway Timetable sketch, which is all a way to tell you that I enjoy traveling by train. So I was quite overjoyed to discover the excellent Indian Railways website. It is a better website than what the airlines have, easier to navigate and make bookings. I wish there was a comparable rail system in the US. So if you are planning a visit, think of traveling by train.

The last time I was on a train in India was a few years ago, traveling from Baroda to New Delhi, in an unreserved “Ladies” compartment. It was terribly crowded, and I had to share my berth with a rather plump housewife from Karol Bagh. This lady was not only plump, she was also very talkative. The whole compartment was regaled with stories about her family and neighbors, whether we liked it or not. It turned out she came from a family of fruit merchants, and told us proudly, “My son has married into Apples, my daughter has gone to the Bananas, and we are thinking of a Guava family for the youngest son.” I found her a little tiresome, and trying to get some sleep, while being squashed by her ample behind wasn’t doing much for my temper either.

The other women in the compartment were a humdrum lot, complaining about the price of onions, the lack of cooking gas and the their disobedient children. Squashed in a corner was a skinny, quiet woman, who didn’t say a word, her only possession was a small cloth bag, the kind one gets bulk rice in. She looked sort of shell-shocked. I don’t even know how this happened, but somehow the other women, bit by bit, elicited her life story. The woman came from a village in Karnataka, and didn’t speak anything but Kannada and had been abandoned by her only son and daughter in law. She was going to Delhi in the hope of finding some relatives and perhaps working as a domestic.

The next morning, the plump fruit merchant’s wife, after loudly cursing the world, bought the Kannada village woman some tea and breakfast. Before we landed in Delhi station, she gave the woman a generous amount of money so that she could fend for herself till she got on her feet. Then the merchants wife farted loudly and left with the youngest son (promised to the Guava family), who had come to receive her at the station.

In my search for Railway lore, I found a nice little, though a trifle dry, history of the Indian Railways, and this nostalgic story from the BBC about one of the oldest narrow gauge routes in India, which is still owned by a British company. And now you can also become a member of the Indian Steam Railway Society.

Eunuch Alley is screening at the 6th Nihilist International Film Festival at:

Track 16 Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, Building C-1
Bergamot Station Art Complex
Santa Monica, CA
Friday, December 3, 8 pm
Tickets: $5