http://blog.shashwati.com Shashwati Talukdar's Musings Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:04:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Here is some quality reading from a Christian bookstore, Sharing Your Faith With a Hindu, which is about how to wean your Hindu neighbors away from an ungodly, animist, and pantheist religion (Thanks Padma). Reminded me that I had years and years of Catholic indoctrination, and recently I celebrated the ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/07/02/romans-13/ My grandparents, for some reason saved their copies of the Illustrated Weekly from the fifties onwards. They only stopped saving them during the Emergency in the mid-seventies, the censorship of that era probably made the gesture meaningless. We spent our winter holidays at their home in Allahabad, and ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/06/30/remembering-the-horror/ Here is a micro-play I wrote a while back. POTTED PLANTS-OR SAY SOMETHING IF YOU SEE SOMETHING CHARACTERS Mabel-a little old lady June-Mabel's neighbor, entering middle age LOCATION A neat little garden in front of a semi-detached townhouse. TIME A lovely summers day JUNE Your roses are beautiful MABEL So they are. I never believed in false modesty, but I can certainly ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/06/22/potted-plants/ Kerim has a post on Savage Minds about the Gujjars and the recent violence in Rajasthan. http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/05/31/the-gujjar-controversy/ Most of the masseuses in Taiwan are blind, and the hospitals, especially those run by a religious group will often set aside a space for them to practice their profession. The other day, I was waiting to see the doctor at the local hospital, and decided to get a ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/05/26/learning-to-speak/ Escape Pod (a sci-fi podcast) is one of my reliable companions on long walks. A few weeks ago they had a story, Artifice and Intelligence, about a super intelligent entity called Saraswati and her human companion, Pramesh, a tech support guy somewhere in a bunker in Pondicherry. It was ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/03/04/desis-in-sci-fi/ I was trying to courier something off to my sister in India at the Family Mart, and it proved impossible to do. The clerk kept taking me to the aisle and pointing at envelopes, and I kept saying I wanted DHL, UPS or Federal Express in a mixture of English ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2008/02/25/transacting-in-bad-chinese/ The Bloomberg administration has proposed easing the rules for independent filmmakers regarding permits to film in public spaces in New York City. : The rules, to be released on Tuesday for public comment, would generally allow people using hand-held equipment, including tripods, to shoot for any length of time ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2007/10/28/film-in-the-city/ Ten people have been beaten to death by a group of villagers in the northern Indian state of Bihar, officials say. Every time I read an item like the above, I think, "Those people who got lynched were probably Denotified Tribals," the report doesn't tell you who the people ... http://blog.shashwati.com/2007/10/24/mobocracy/ An online exhibition and essay of poster art and popular film about Indian Muslims by filmmaker Yousuf Saeed. http://blog.shashwati.com/2007/10/21/this-is-what-they-look-like/