time diffs

The World Time Clock has been quite useful in discovering the difference between time zones. Paper 1 is due at 3pm Boston time on the 16 Jan. This means it is due at 7am on 17th Jan (Sydney time) or 4am 17th Jan (Singapore time). At both these times I will be in the air. Paper 2 is due at 23:59 on Tuesday 16th Jan/Wed 17th Jan and that means it is due at 12:59pm 17th Jan in Singapore and 3:59pm Jan 17th in Sydney.

Can someone please tell me if I screwed that up? Every last minute counts. Its so boring to have papers due while being on holiday

a christmas letter

"Dear friends. We are getting older but are in fairly good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think that this war is an unmitigated disaster that will wind up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It's winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all."
Garrison Keillor- A Prairie Home Companion

Journalistic Independence

How important is it? Should the journalist record the facts (even while acknowledging that merely choosing which facts to report involves editorial discretion and therefore introduces some sort of bias) or should the journalist report in a bent in accordance with her paper's owners (as the editor will typically slash a journalist's piece in such a fashion if he too follows such a code). Or should she follow her own sets of morals and outrage and implant her lens on a story told to millions, shaping millions' point of view? The risks of that are of course high. Like Robert Fisk, who said that "It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.” and that "Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind"; one faces discrimination by readers and by other members of the Establishment. For example Dumeetha Luthra of the BBC who reports in Sri Lanka about Sri Lanka (and who is Indian and not Sri Lankan) has been accused of reporting bias in favour of the Tamils and now rumours abound that the young lady is seeing someone Tamil in Colombo. She has received so much flak from the country that the BBC has posted her elsewhere. Truth?
"There is no such thing as truth here, there are only opinions", Anil's Ghost

pain!

Wah. My face still ting-ling one ok! Wa leow! Went for facial today: the woman dig dig, I pain, crying somemore. Cannot tahan! Next time, going to one with no extraction hor. Wah! Die Already!

another's but our's

charcoal musings II

As I look out of the window, the Lady of Lourdes (requirement for a saint- something magical must be done to be canonized. O Catholic Shenanigans) disappears to be replaced by something else, a muggy haze cut through by brilliant burning sun-rays, steam rising from badly-potholed asphalt melting in the heat, autorickshaws swerving heroically in the face of honking lorry drivers, ubiquitous white vans (synonymous with dread), ancient Ambassadors with windows permanently stuck down and civil servants stuck inside wilting valiantly in the gridlocked heat anxious to punch in their time cards, Galle Road merchants parked on stools observing, chador-ed Muslim women moving in packs giggling and laughing gutturally, schoolgirls clad in white, plaits swinging with unconsciously sensual walks, (a pack of boys not far behind self-conscious), Colombo women clad in suits and short skirts with incongrous Japanese hair as is the fashion now, beleaguered traffic policemen waiting to go off on lunch breaks, fruit and fish stalls spilling out onto the main Galle thoroughfare, cows meandering chewing at garbage, wheelbarrows piled high with glistening rambutan and mangosteen, 5 rupees each, billboards of Rajapakse (President) and Muralitharan (cricketing star) threatening to crumble down from cheap scaffolding and always the scent of the Pacific wafting over Colombo, doing strange things to its insides, rotting old houses from damp, turning all the rules upside down.

I remember too, driving along the same road the day after Rajapakse won the election. Every store was shuttered down and the streets were empty and an ill wind blew. There could not have been more than 3 cars on the main road. Checkpoints abounded, manned by grim-faced soldiers, boys of not more than 19 or 20 who used to flirt with us but now noted impassively the birthplace on my passport. Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The road deserted, the schools shut down in fear of communal riots predicted to descend in the aftermath of the election of a hardline son of the south. The eerie silence was punctuated by a car backfiring and we paused, silently, heart beating violently, for was this the start of the bombings?

"You and then the Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so that they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this?" Kip, in the English Patient.

charcoal musings

Is it rather fatuous to write on the importance of com(passion)? in my time here both amongst friends and strangers, I have witnessed now so many instances of intolerance and irritation, an unconscious sense of class-based arrogance towards others, that it is disturbing to realize that perhaps as we age, and revert towards a conservative isolationist stance as we were no doubt taught to by the generation above us, that we perpetuate the same structures that we once wanted to demolish. Everyone lives in boxes here but it's sad to see the lack of politeness, manners or just plain nice-ness that I thought people once had. Maybe it's frustration at their own lives or perhaps not, but still.

Onto happier things. What would Manmohan Singh do? Those of you who understand the growth diagnostics of that vast sprawling planet called Amazing India, please email for my paper is due in two days.

The Aristotelian 'golden mean' values moderation essentially versus either extremes. Clearly moderation and I must become better acquainted especially in this new year, for at either end lies only eventual despair.

A Random News Day

The news seems to have thrown up some interesting facts today and I thought I might share it all with you, in my never-ceasing (surely better than neverending- can we put that in a poem somewhere?) procrastination on two papers regarding Indian economic strategy for the next five years and conflict in Sri Lanka.

a) Zubin Mehta a Bombay born conductor became a conductor in Vienna at the age of 22. He is married to a B list movie actress by the name of Nancy Kovack.

b) Prospect magazine is a London-based 'salon' magazine mainly written by centre left writers and pundits. I have a friend who writes for it, but so does Pico Iyer and I have come to the conclusion that any magazine that allows Pico Iyer to write for it, must remain the bastion of a mediocrity. I loathe Pico Iyer.

c) I want to see Shortbus. But I don't think I can, quite.

d) The jury is still out on Nancy Pelosi.

ref

Am in the Lee Kong Chian reference library looking out at Our Lady of Lourdes church, a lovely old, biliously repainted Catholic Church. I am here because I am trying to write business school essays. Why I don't specifically know as yet. One of the essays is totally paralysing. I've already spent two hours staring at the question which revolves around what are the ethical challenges you see in your life ahead. The crappy thing about a new year is that it always involves reflections on the year past and not all of them are pleasant. Anyhoo.

step

Step

The ceremonial funeral structure for a monk
made up of thambali palms, white cloth
is only a vessel, disintegrates

completely as his life.

The ending disappears,replacing itself
with something abstract
as air, a view.

All we'll remember in the last hours
is an afternoon – a lazy lunch
then sleeping together.

Then the disarray of grief.

On the morning of a full moon
in a forest monastery
thirty women in white
meditate on the precepts of the day
until darkness.

They walk those abstract paths
their complete heart
their burning thought focused
on this step, then this step.

In the red brick dusk
of the Sacred Quadrangle,
among holy seven-storey ambitions
where the four Buddhas
of Polonnaruwa
face out to each horizon,
is a lotus pavilion.

Taller than a man
nine lotus stalks of stone
stand solitary in the grass,
pillars that once supported
the floor of another level.

(The sensuous stalk
the sacred flower)

How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.

And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air.

Michael Ondaatje in Handwriting

sandboarding

If enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.
The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps things happened differently. But then, that is a women's tale, and it is never told to men.
From SANDMAN #9: "Tales in the Sand"

The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.
SANDMAN #21: "Season of Mists", episode 0

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
Lady Bast, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

Holiday of the Melon

What a week politically! First the death of Anton Balasingham, which will have far-reaching changes in the political leadership and strategy of the LTTE and now Niyazov, the head of state of Turkmenistan, a brutal dictator by all accounts but a most unexpected death and a very uncertain future ahead for that country

in?

Crossing various seas soon, the atlantic in a few hours and then the pacific. In today's world, if we are to be explorers, we must traverse the frontiers of thought geography, those boundaries where convention stands on one side, and the unproved on the other. And in crossing those frontiers, we become necessarily changed. I know all this and I can't help but go forward, trusting. Are you in or not?

exams

12 more hours exactly until my last exam and straight to the bar thence. Begone ye ghosts! I was in the library for 12 hours today. It's been 4 and a half years since an event like that has happened. Like Haley's comet, it'll probably be as long until next!

barack

Did you know that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein? Jesus Christ. I wonder why we haven't heard that wonderful morsel of news in the mainstream liberal media (god love 'em) yet? You gotta laud the guy just for making it through politics and thinking of running, with a name like that.

Talking to a law professor, whose student Obama was and who genuinely thinks that he's brilliant off-the-charts. There's a lot of desire in the Harvard establishment to see a mixed-race kid from the wrong side of the tracks, with an A-rab middle name, anointed.

Live life as an epic adventure

The last lesson of a Professor whom I have adored and for good reason too. I can’t explain all the emotions that arose, but he delivered a stunning lecture today and was rewarded with a standing ovation at the end of it. The class is a development economics class, but it ended with the best leadership class I have ever been in all semester- he said cut the crap about what you think you want to do. If you’re white and want to work in a developing country, don’t look at them as locals and you as American, don’t act out of guilt in having had a good life and wanting to give something back. If you're local, they're going to look at you different, 'cause you speak English and are foreign and wealthy and they think you want a job in the World Bank or Wall Street after that. Forget it. Cut that crap. Do what you have to do well. Be a Hero, Not a Victim. Experience is what you do with what happens to you, not what happens to you. Don't say you couldn't pass that policy because of x, y, z. Make a mark. Leave a Legacy and Live life as an epic adventure. And take yourself seriously because no one else is going to if you don’t. And even if you fail, at least you’ll have had fun. Coming at the moment it did, as I had been reevaluating what to do going forward regarding a certain project in Sri Lanka, it was a call to arms and many responded as such. Dammit, I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to fall in love with this place.

Go Big or Go Home

Years later, when I have finally become all that I want to be, and a successful film maker and author, I will look back and give interviews. Here are some choice quotes and things that I plan to let the world know about my life:

Dedication upon accepting the Nobel Prize for literature : As George Orwell said "The aim of great art is to be imaginative in its craftsmanship and politically committed at its heart". I dedicate this prize to the thousands of aid workers, toiling away in remote lands, away from those that are dear to them, materially unrewarded, at risk of life and limb, in the service of humanity. To you, to the lamplighters of Florence Nightingale, I am humbled and proud.

"I chose to start expressing with film, because I didn't have the discipline to start with writing. Writing is far more unforgiving of mistakes and unsuccessful experimentation, perhaps because of the long tradition behind it, and because all you have is a series of words. One more, or one less, and the whole thing falls apart. Film on the other hand, there are so many rescue mechanisms within it (sound, lighting, characterization, acting, tone), that its easy to start with because hardly anyone ever gets it all right. Writing on the other hand, is the higher art, and having been somewhat trained in the tradition of literature, as Byatt says, I approach the task of entering the canon with far more fear. "


(I say: GO BIG OR GO HOME)

whimper

This week is the last week of classes. To two particularly brilliant, engaged, charismatic professors, I salute you. And now, the ramp up for finals and then a flight out of these frozen climes to the tropics almost immediately afterwards. More discussion involving the limits of violence as well as the growth constraint facing China ("The answer is" the urban-rural gap). Two more massive papers to write through the break, applications, and a large project that will probably take over my life should I think about it. But until then a quote from T.S. Eliot will suffice :"This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper".

Another interesting fact I learned today: that it was the First Council of Nicaea, convened by Constantinople in AD 325 that led to the formation of a universal standard Christian doctrine.

dinner out

Talking about civil disobedience was quite emotional. Was the first time in weeks that I had done any reading for Ethics and only because it was Martin Luther King assigned. He said that we must confront the community, and if it does not want to negotiate then we must take to a program of direct action, by which he meant a nonviolent protest of civil disobedience (of breaking the law) and yet subsequently submitting to the law willingly and its penalties. And that that in reality would be expressing the highest respect for the law. But what does a group do if the community that it wants to confront simply does not want to negotiate and if a nonviolent Gandhian movement does not succeed? I want to believe what Gandhi said, which I do believe sometimes, that in the end, the way of love and truth will triumph every disaster but what if I , or others can't wait that long? And a state has violence, a monopoly on violence which it can legitimately (in the sense, electorally justified) use, and what of groups that do not? and what of those that say that war is an extension of politics by other means as Bismarck did? and yet I would not want to go so far as saying violence should be used by those who cannot achieve their ends by other means.

also had dinner yesterday with an ancient civil rights professor of law who's taking a lot of heat in the national press for his support of the use of torture in qualified situations and who really loved the sound of his own voice as well as dinner with Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha who sadly had nothing interesting to say.

reconciliation

I had a class yesterday on the justification and limits of civil disobedience and after that I was talking to someone last night about truth and reconciliation and it made me pause and reflect about the nature of conflict. X said that in south africa for example, he had lived through apartheid and seen the violence and abuse perpetrated by a system against its own people. If you had asked him 12 or 15 years ago whether he was proud to be a South African, he would have said no, but today he is. Yet, he won't sing the whole anthem (which has three different verses from Afrikaans, Xhosa and another dialect I believe) and believes that the truth and reconciliation commission has a lot to answer for, for it let a lot of white perpetrators off with amnesty yet did not include any modicum of financial reparations. He said he was denied his identity for so long that he would never surrender it again. War may be political but first and foremost it is always a human experience; it tears the heart out of memory and experience, leaving one with scars that run deep, perhaps never to be healed. He said that all the young, we, can expect from the old generation is tolerance and that they would come together but never forget the scars of the past. And it made me sad to think that there were some things that we would always be imprisoned by and that the past could never be wholly cleansed.