East-West Highway

  

…Sunrise over the Yamuna River has often prompted me to think of Paradise. From the broad shoulders of the waterway I have cherished the sights before me as I might cherish the face of my lover. This morning’s views are as inspiring as ever, especially after having been away in hiding for so long. To my right sprawls the magnificent Red Fort. Opposite, awash in the sun’s blood, stands the Taj Mahal, neither soaring as a falcon might, nor cresting like the sea. Rather, the mausoleum arches upward, strong and noble, a gateway to the heavens. Knowing that the Taj Mahal was built for my mother is among my greatest joys, and my most profound sorrows… (From the opening chapter of John Shors’ impressive debut novel Beneath a Marble Sky)

I felt like I’d been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine…

Freshmen year summer, we traveled to Rukum, a district in the Mid-Western hills in Nepal to do a project. It was one of the scariest plane rides.

Screw you Thomas Friedman, my world is NOT flat.

(Click on images for better viewing)

If classroom discussions (I can only speak – albeit very generally – for GOV and ECON classes) are any accurate reflections of things to come, ours is going to be a pretty unjust, sad, and a very dangerous world.  The world will, in all likeliness, not end in 2012  but it just looks like there are way too many problems around us.

I will blame Milton Fridman (half-joking).

I think what we need in these times is an evolution of the non-political. I say forget your stocks, put on Lady Gaga, and Just Dance.

Photo –  Conn College Dance Club Spring Show. Click on the image for a better view.

Despite the ugliness of a chauvinistic regional politics, Bombay remains India’s most authentic mark of progress – or the lack thereof. It embraces prosperity and depravity in one and resides comfortably in antithetical paradoxes of epic proportions . The fine panorama of South Bombay skyscrapers overlooks one of world’s most expansive slums. It is truly the city of slumdogs and millionaires; of beggars and billionaires. This is the quintessential story of Bombay – the microcosm of India.

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I took this photo in the famous Marine Drive from a moving bus and gave it an ‘Aged Photo’ look in photoshop lightroom. The sight of what I like to call ‘ the proletariat romance’ in the heart of India’s financial epicenter is something that never fails to fascinate.

p.s. click on the image for a better view.

High school, all over again.

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

- Pablo Neruda

Nigerian parliament last week approved the nomination of Goodluck Jonathan as their acting President with the health of incumbent Umaru Yar’Adua further deteriorating.

Mr. Goodluck is married to a woman by the name Patience Jonathan.

Guess their first kid’s name. Anyone?

Even as an avid sports lover, it took me a good few years to understand, let alone appreciate American football. Like many non-American sports fan, I have debated on numerous occasions on whether our football (remember that beautiful game with extra-ordinary finesse? Seen those Brazilians roll on field with super-human trickery that flow  sublimely with the Samba beats?) or American football is the real football. And it would be fair to say that there is football first, if I may – the real football, and then there is this feisty,brute, and uber-physical American football.                                                                     

But this geographical rivalry and the subsequent politics of naming notwithstanding,I strongly believe that every sport is transcendental in one form or the other. I have seen hundreds of Indian villagers cramp in front of a 14-inch black and white TV to see India-Pakistan cricket matches. When Ivory coast played in the world cup football a few years ago against the backdrop of an ugly civil war, the North and the South decided to call a temporary ceasefire. 19-year old middle-distance runner Mehboba Ahdyar, against all odds, stands as a powerful symbol to the youths of Afghanistan. Usain Bolt, the fastest man ever, carries the dream of a troubled nation on his shoulders.

When the Saints registered a remarkable victory on Sunday night Super Bowl, it was much more that an annual sporting victory. As a neutral, I could not think of a city that would savor Super Bowl more than New Orleans – and for reasons much, much more than sports. It was only 4 years ago that the City of New Orleans was struggling to stay afloat, and its citizens battling to stay alive after the catastrophic hurricane Katrina. New Orleans Saints were written off with no future promise among elite NFL teams, their fans often showed up to games with paper bags on their heads so their friends would not recognize them on TV.

I watched Invictus couple of days before the Super Bowl. The nature of the Saints victory, as clear underdogs, reminded me of the unheralded success of the South African Rugby team in the 1995 world cup in the immediate aftermath of the apartheid regime. The realities of 1995 South Africa are very different from 2010 New Orleans, but what a major sporting event can do to lift the morale of a society in dire need of positivity is something to admire unconditionally.

Watching the genuine festive delirium in New Orleans was a welcome change from obsessive city-rivalries that seem to characterize major American sporting events.

p.s. Apologies for the inappropriate picture. I have to appeal to my social base. Also, watch Invictus if you have not. I thought Morgan Freeman slightly overdoes himself. Matt Damon is immense.

Happy 2010! I will be blogging soon…