Old Things (1)

Today I found the song you played me on repeat from across the aisle while trying to make eye contact. You may have played it a hundred times? Played it louder than necessary. Played it back to back with another song I don’t remember at all. Something with Salman Khan in it? Some other song extolling the virtues of romantic love and taking a chance.

Anyway, I found “Mannil” on an old CD copied for me by a dear friend who’d billed it as “SPB Marina Beach Song” because even seven years ago I’d forgotten how the song was sung, but only remembered only that it was filmed on the beach. But although I’d forgotten the song itself, something about the frisson of seeming desirable to you must have stayed with me.

And today, listening to that song from another lifetime, I enjoyed it as I never have before. Remember you, footnote, person whose name I never knew. I’d look you up on facebook if I knew your name.

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Where in the world is NuNu at 3 a.m. on Friday?

Complaint: inability to breathe, chest pains (from what began as a cold contracted from older sibling).
Stuff received: inhaled steroids, oral steroids, antibiotics.
Patient's mood: manic.
Parents' mood: panicked. (Where did the weekend go?)

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Amma

Called Amma to find out that she'd been sick and feverish for two days.

Sick since she got home from Benares; since she bathed in the Ganges with its famed sin-eliminating waters and decomposing corpses downstream.

She said she only meant to take a token dip but ended up doing nine. She said she swallowed some of the water.

In the last month two childhood friends have told me that their mothers died--one six years ago and C did not make it back to the funeral, the other one month ago on account of which S wasn't celebrating her birthday this month. I loved these "Aunties"--I loved their food, their style, their staunch support of their daughters. I yearn for a chance to tell them this.

I wonder when I'll see my own Amma again.

The kids called Amma this morning to yell "Get well soon, Ammama."

It's only been two months since I was in India.


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An Interesting Lesson Plan...

Last week, when the UT campus was evacuated after a bomb threat, English professor Snehal Shingavi followed the news as many of us did: on Twitter. Like thousands of students, faculty, and staff, Shingavi turned to social media for updates on the situation.

But he also did something unusual. In a tweet, he invited everyone to talk about it.

Not long after the University noted publicly that the man who called in the bomb threat had a “light Middle Eastern accent,” Shingavi issued an open invitation to attend his class on Islamophobia. “Did UT have to say ‘middle eastern accent’ as if that told anyone anything about the bomb threat?” he tweeted.

More here.

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Cosmopolitan Vista

Not another Slumdog Millionaire. The San Francisco South Asian Film Festival is full of surprises.

The festival also showcases "Herman's House." Director Angad Bhalla is South Asian, but the film is about an African American prisoner imagining his dream house with the help of a Caucasian artist. Unusual subject for a South Asian? Not really, Bhalla says. "We rarely wonder why a white filmmaker makes a film about South Asia, or anywhere else, because we assume they have a valid opinion on the subject."

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Happy Camper

(Not.)

I spent the hours
between 11:30 p.m.
and 4:30 a.m.

in a sleeping bag
in a tent
in the backyard

because the other doggies
were so excited/insistent.
Do I have to do it again ?

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Where to start?

From Sonia Faleiro's article in the NYT For India's Children, Philanthropy Isn't Enough:

What’s most galling about this corrupt behavior is the fact that the current government is making an unprecedented effort to confront poverty. In 2011, according to a World Bank report, India spent over 2 percent of its gross domestic product on poverty alleviation. Over the past 11 years, India’s government has sought to provide free midday school meals, a guarantee of 100 days of employment annually to the rural poor and free primary education. But endemic corruption, from the very top down to the ground level, prevents them from being implemented effectively. A lack of transparency and a leakage of subsidies to the nonpoor means that poverty isn’t falling nearly as fast as it should be.

The free hot meal is the reason Meena goes to school. But her teachers routinely skip school, three days a week. When teachers don’t come, the school stays shut, and there’s no meal. A well-funded, well-intentioned program created to educate and feed poor children fails on both counts: Meena not only learns nothing, she also goes hungry.

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