sexual dynamics

so. Just to continue procrastinating on the everest of work I have to do, the million social engagements I have to rsvp on, the massive sleep debt to be worked on, and the dehydration of copious amounts of alcohol, I have decided to write about the sexual dynamics at school here.

We have what is called a midcareer program. Luminaries include about 8 world presidents. This is the program for people who have a minimum of seven years experience. Then we have the basic masters in public policy and the masters in public administration (for people who already possess a masters). Then we have the masters in public administration in international development (commonly known as How To Be A World Bank Economist).

The midcareers are for the most part married. If not, there's something else up with them. The incoming MPPs are the source of talent for most of the school, as the median age is around 26. Midcareers typically prey on MPP1s.

The school's acronym is also known as Kiss Sex Goodbye.

Lastly, its that time of the semester where everyone is starting to come apart at the seams and look for some stress relief and finding it in the most unexpected places. It's all rather funny actually.

abizaid

So just spent 3 hours procrastinating by watching more episodes of the West Wing, trawling Friendster, trying to Skype people who're never there, MOPE-ing, and just generally feeling sorry for myself.

John Abizaid, Commander of US CENTCOM, and in charge of the Iraqi operation, and an ex-personal hero of mine (he has fallen from grace since then) and also Arab American, spoke at school on Friday, days after his controversial Congressional testimony- where he was unclear on whether or not the U.S. should increase or decrease troop levels in Iraq. The level of conflict in Iraq right now is the highest it has been. Rumours in the policy community is that the U.S. will start decreasing troop levels as early as in six months. The future looks grim for Iraq. The decreased troop levels will mean increased sectarian violence. I don't pretend to know much about the situation, but what Colin Powell said a long time ago holds true: "If you break it, you own it".

Abizaid, a Westpoint and Harvard grad, also said interestingly enough that he is optimistic about the future. It should have sounded silly, and would have from anyone else, but not from this man. That's not to say I believe it, but it's good to believe that there are still a few good men.

casino royale

I love reading the New York Times review of movies, particularly by A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, a younger critic who's giving him a run for his money. I especially love how the paper insists on calling actors by their surnames with suffixes e.g. Pierce Brosnan becomes Mr. Brosnan.

But here are some choice quotes about Casino Royale (from the NY Times Review) that I think are written in the spirit of the whole 007 adventure itself and is profound in and of themselves. Movie critics of the world- you now define the zeitgeist.

"Every generation gets the Bond it deserves if not necessarily desires, and with his creased face and uneasy smile, Mr. Craig fits these grim times well"

"Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill. "

"You see Mr. Craig sweating (and very nice sweat it is too); you sense the filmmakers doing the same. "

"They have also surrounded Mr. Craig with estimable supporting players, including the French actress Eva Green, whose talent is actually larger than her breasts. "

“Casino Royale” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The sex is demure, the violence less so.

It is rather dull to have to go back to reviewing null hypothesis testing for a stats exam, after such a smashing review as that.

analysis

and now the analysis begins, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad mortem.
at moments like these, it is best to realize that Van Wilder had it right: "Life. don't take it too seriously. You'll never get out alive".

(it helps, if only for a moment).

brothers in arms

Am listening to the classic Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits most famously featured in the Season 2 finale of the West Wing, the single greatest television episode of all time. It sent chills down my spine when I first watched it and every time since. It transcends the medium of television. Reportedly Martin Sheen started crying at the end of the table read for that script. Now I'm watching the West Wing Season 7 and its not as good, but yet, still retains every now and then that flicker of brilliance which reminds you that it raised the bar which nothing else has quite managed to touch the same way.

vox populi vox dei

The Democrats have won both Houses, after concession by George Allen from Virginia finally. For the first time in 12 years, they are finally in power. The fun thing about being in policy school is that there was a massive spontaneous party with drinking into the wee hours, obsessive watching of the election results on laptops, incessant politics discussion, nailbiting waiting for Allen to concede and finally, the shock resignation of Rumsfeld led to standing ovations (we have plasmas in common areas) from both faculty and students. It seems like a new dawn, and let's hope it's not a false one. It was our professor, an active politico that managed Webb's campaign in Virginia and when he came into class, he got a standing, prolonged ovation.

Politics matter. It's the only thing we've got to really change things.

rumi

Because someone quoted Rumi at me today and I really must stop falling in love with so many random people because I haven't got very much left.

We are three, by Rumi

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

bs-ers

"At the end she chooses life, and in choosing life she chooses imperfection and compromise. And that's something she's never before allowed herself" - Emma Thompson in the Sunday Times magazine about her new movie Stranger than Fiction.

I forgot to tell you this story. John was in town last Monday and I had to wear a skirt to go to the Harvard Club which is this incredibly posh members-only place and then shuttle to the business school which I thought was a really tough crowd to work but in the end, an entire section ended up donating a school which was brilliant and really changed my perception about their motivations.

cold

I distintly blinked when at 4:30pm I saw a very large moon hung in the pitch-dark sky. added to the bitter cold of 2 degrees in what is just early november and I am not feeling very kindly disposed to things at the moment. I feel like escaping really perhaps to London or something ridiculous like that over the coming weekend and throwing financial caution to the winds, but it would be TOO extravagant and quite possibly I would be too sad so it is best to hang on for dear life here and plow through the next six weeks after which I shall be home. I did not expect to want to leave so quickly, but I think the pace is getting to me. I have no time to call parents or friends and it has been over three months since I spoke to my blood sister. This cannot continue.

iller

In Starbucks, (horrors) because I couldn't get a seat at the indie coffeeshop round the corner (and also because I had niggling doubts about its hygiene due to presence of extremely grungy, long-haired, unwashed waiters which no doubt contributed to its street cred but left me slightly wary!). Plotting India and Chinese inequality indicators, while trying very desperately not to think of someone who is only a few states away. Perhaps that is too much information. Feeling slightly blue, and listening to Roy Orbison is not really helping matters. But there promises to be a game night tonight with a bunch of close friends (which at the moment sounds far more appealing than getting dressed up and bopping the night away). I've also come down with an awful cold which does not make things better.

man proposes and god disposes

on a plan to save Sri Lanka and things that you never thought you would say in your adult life.

Me: Have you thought about the very real possibility that you might be killed?

Him: I have. But I'm willing to take the chance and take precautions. After all if they want to kill me, it's a sign that I must be doing something right. Besides you'll be there to carry on the work and others like you.

Me: Don't try and be a hero.

Him: This killing and dying it can't go on. It can't.

And for a brief moment, it felt like I had discovered the reason why i was here and it was strange and terrifying and compelling all at once.

rhapsody

There's something about Bohemian Rhapsody isn't there? I keep listening to it and its crazy operatic blend of pop, rock, classic, yearning angst, despair and manic energy and I can't get over it. It's timeless. No wonder it was voted the Nation's favourite song or something in Britain.

Absolutely plastered last night at a Diwali show. Bumped into an old RJC person outside and was in shock. Then tried to get a cab whilst drunk at 3am and it was awful. But we braved the biting winds, got home and collapsed and woke up and I vowed never to drink again.

Rhapsody on a Winter Night by T.S. Eliot

TWELVE o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

kennedy peace talks

I'm angry and I'm tired. I'm angry because clearly even thousands of miles away on a whole different planet you can still have fruitless discussions about Sri Lanka with educated intelligentsia and because the nature of conflict, development, human rights are still so misunderstood by those with the best of intentioned. Brings to mind something that a dear friend said recently: It's the white liberals that I hate the most. I can deal with white conservatives, because I know where they're coming from, but when the white liberals talk the talk and turn around and stab you in the back; that betrayal hurts the most.

I guess that's what I feel here. I feel so vilified by everyone. Abroad, outside, amongst Tamil friends and family, I'm always the one pushing for a moderate point of view, pushing always for the inclusion of alternative political voices into defining Tamil aspirations. Here, of all places, the debate is so limited that I end up inevitably foghorning for the LTTE because otherwise Tamil people would have no voice. Elegant variations of idealism are never realistic.

We are having peace talks every Tuesday as I am on a group project with another Sri Lankan and the title of our project is "solve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka". He has the patience of an elephant and a frustratingly dialectical-materialist view of time, and I have all the urgency and narrow blinkeredness of a hummingbird and we are getting nowhere fast, which has sadly mirrored the history of peace talks in Sri Lanka.

Oh and I thought I would be able to escape it by coming here, but instead, it is more of the same and since I sought it out, I can't complain and yet, I do.

more

More attacks, for the first time at a tourist spot in Galle. The war is being brought down to the South, ostensibly to start a strategy of provoking communal violence in order to increase sympathy-funding, particularly by the diaspora. The NYT has a not-bad leader (compared to the tripe published by most) found here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/18/opinion/edlanka.php

Separately there is finally, finally, a new Prize (funded by the sponsors of the Booker) for Asian writers writing in the vernacular. A long overdue prize to recognize the rich literary traditions of East Asia and the subcontinent and I look forward to the gems it will throw up (as inevitably prize-winners will get translated into English)

lanka afar

More death and destruction today with another bombing. I knew that the temporary overtures to peace were mainly just to build up/rest and change the power structure. The peace talks have supposedly been happening since March. Geneva was a total failure, surpassed only by the sheer irrelevance of nearly every member on the government team. Fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a long, bumpy ride. It's hard to get a sense from afar, given the total lack of transparent, bipartisan media reporting but the reports from the ground give some sort of sense.

Had a class on Sri Lanka today and leadership. Professor posited that it was the existence of corrupt/rent-seeking politicians in power that destroyed a developing country and only good leadership could turn the boat around. I agree with the latter, but not necessarily with the former, if that makes sense.

libraries

I hardly ever come to the main library, preferring to stay in policy school campus. But I ventured over to Widener today. It is quite extraordinary, a faux-Victorian building complete with Doric columns (on the infamous Doric columns of the age, read the Fountainhead which expresses the proper contempt for the practice of lifting wholesale Doric columns from Roman times and transplanting them to a new America) and has the most comfortable chairs and tables. In fact I would venture to say that it is exactly like in the movies. One niggling question remains; the notorious practice of each graduating student to have had sex in Widener at least once seems difficult to me, given the expansive, wide open structure of the building. It almost makes me nostalgic for the old LSE library, in the dungeons of Chancery Lane where it was rumoured that people entered (especially to the periodical sections) and were never seen again. One friend of mine went inside, fully five or six floors down in a damp section, and promptly burst into tears when at 9pm, she couldn't find her way out.

chichester psalms

A dear friend was singing in the difficult-to-get-into university choir at an old church last night, for a gala night of leonard bernstein (composer, conducter and university alumni). The leaves have started to turn and walking through cambridge is to walk through a crescendo of autumnal colours, red, oranges, deep rust, amidst falling leaves. There is talk of apple-picking next weekend and cherry blossoms in washington in the spring. Perhaps a weekend up in Maine too where the wind comes rolling in off the coasts. The choral piece was the Chichester Psalms by the eclectic Leonard Bernstein. His family were in presence at what I think last night was his sixteenth death anniversary. I had never heard it before and in the cavernous halls of the church, as the draughts whispered through the pews; it was perfect and wintry and everything I had never thought I had already imagined.

diner

The world continues to turn, imperfectly, fitfully. More strange dreams. I dreamt that my dog turned into a human being, but then it left, too.
I was told that I should attend conflict resolution workshops to learn the skill of compromise and negotiation since I clearly don't have any of those skills. The subject? A group project on "How to Solve the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka". Well yes then. Watched Diner, a strangely satisfying movie about exactly nothing.

The thing I like about this place is the type of conversation I can have. Yesterday it went from indifference curves and compensating variation to the use of market facilities in managing emergency responses to experiential education within a traditional curriculum (and how a student, an ex-teacher got his children to translate hip-hop into normal English) to leadership and the MBTI and Dead Poet's Society to more on Rawls and all in a day.

sch

Slammed again as usual, overloaded. I wake up, eyes reddened, stagger zombie-like to school, during class I do work for other classes and get through the crazy email load, and then stagger onto more classes. The work accumulates, as do the people which is good. the south asian diaspora here is quite hilarious. there is one nepali guy, one bangladeshi, one sri lankan (me), two Indians and about fifty million Pakistanis. Apparently the composition and political bent of business school and policy students reflects the presidential administration in power at any given time.

I did want to blog about something interesting, but I have completely forgotten what it is. Dinner at a friend's house, and it was nice, lovely, perfect to drink wine and talk about Rawls and this is why I had come to graduate school

on history

"We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it" Nietzsche

"To understand nationalism as an historical reality, it is essential to step outside the history that nationalism gives itself"- Sudipta Kaviraj