Thoughts After Petri's Piece on the Post-ness of Poetry

Nota Bene: John Deming at Coldfront has more than sufficiently responded to Petri's post here. Folk far more skilled and driven than I will continue to say what must be said; consider this a collection of annotations on what poetry means to one simple little MFA student and her (me) alone.

 Nota Bene, duo: Hilarious that the same paper which published Petri's chatty little condemnation of poetry only last year featured a video interview with a poet, who made a strong case for why poetry is alive and relevant, contexting its role in DC! Vae victis. Full disclosure: signed up for my first class ever with said poet, which began last week.

WHEN Blanco began reading the inaugural poem, I swear I held my breath and waited for that moment when the words being spoken would cause a visceral reaction-- a catch in my throat, sudden pin-pricking tears, that weird warm ache in my chest I get every time I'm at the start of a really good hockey game and whoever's singing the Star Spangled Banner does a good job because fuck you, this is not about loyalty, I love my country but I personally have never heard an anthem responded to THIS strongly, this genuinely every time.

 But I digress.

 Point being, I waited the entire length of Blanco's reading, waited for something. And that something did not affect me in the deeply personal way I was hoping for. No offence to Blanco-- it can only mean great honor and inconceivable pressure to read at state events, and this particular piece was chosen by whoever was in charge of planning the festivities, who evidently deemed it appropriate enough for the moment. Twitter showed Blanco much love, and rightly so. Some said it happily reminded them of Whitman, others of Frank O' Hara. Please find the full text of Blanco's piece here, as well as a discussion of its value and Blanco's own, as a poet.

 Today, Alexandra Petri swaggered up to the community blog section of the WaPo and asked ye olde brazen question brazenly, titling her post 'Is poetry dead?'

 She isn't the first. However, poetry (and Poetry) has been succinctly (as with Deming's post earlier today) and successfully defended through the ages. Shelley famously did it, and before him Sir Philip Sidney in his 'Apologie', and since the latter suffered no compunction to adhere to even a ballpark New Yorker page length, here is an overview and outline of said Apologie (he really meant defence, as opposed to defense, the way Shelley did).

 Both white men, writing in English, belonging to England. Okay yes, now that's a problem. I've been in writing and literature classes since I was 16, and I was never directed to read a defense of poetry written by anyone other than these two gents, which meant I never got to hear from different genders, identities or ethnicities on why poetry is important, and in fact, should be defended. This of course means that I'm beyond glad Blanco was chosen, for both where he comes from, the struggle he discusses, and what he stands by in his inaugural poem, for as pointed out in the Daily Beast article,

 “While Blanco is careful not to turn the poem into a confessional act, since its purpose is largely civic, he makes it true to his own experience in referring to his mother’s sacrifices as a cashier and his father’s as a cane cutter,” said Jahan Ramazani, an editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. “In doing so, he makes vivid for us the specific sacrifices that make possible his act of writing the poem as well as the multitudinous sacrifices that stand behind the shared poetry of our daily experience. We are often reminded at such public ceremonies of the hardship of previous generations, but Blanco found a way to make it real in the immediacy of his example. 

 Tangent: not that women have been absent at all from making spaces for, and thereby defending poetry-- here's a wonderful narrative of the amazing ladies behind the founding and defining of Poetry magazine's aesthetic, appropriately titled '100 Years of Poetry: 'In the Middle of Major Men'. In addition, here is a pithy statement by Harriet Monroe, founder and editor of Poetry magazine, on their/her editorial 'open door' policy-- What she has to say sheds important light on the subject of "major" and "minor" poets, and the role of popularity. 

 It is indeed impossible to dismiss the popular (possibly) perspective that Petri appears to be vocalizing: 

 But after the inaugural, after Richard Blanco’s almost seventy lines of self-reflection and the use of phrases like “plum blush” — which sounded like exactly what the phrase “poem” denotes to us now — I wonder what will become of it. 

 There are several variables at work here: poetry hasn't been televised since what, Def Jam on HBO? In fact, when was the last time a poem was given major airtime, forcing "non-MFA" folk (going by Petri's reasoning) to consider what intent its words were communicating? 

 Petri references poetry taught in high school, and in a paragraph dismisses the entire process of digesting a poem in one's teenage years. She uses the word "quaint"-- this makes me sad to think of the banal poetry sessions she must have been exposed to, and yet reminds me of how much I have to be thankful for: 

• The first time we discussed David Diop's 'Africa': still get goosebumps thinking of the power with which he dismissed those white, fading flowers at the base of the towering, terrifying tree of Africa's future, and the "bitter taste of liberty".  
• The time we studied Dante, contrasting how he referenced the viewing of stars at the end of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradisio, and how it affected a much younger, far more ardently religious me with how it echoed the bits from St. Matthews gospel as I had come to know them in the protestant communion liturgy: "... that even in the mud, we are haunted by the stars" 
• The first time we read Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The first time I heard Iron Maiden's rendition of the same, on the Powerslave album. The time we performed it for an awed group of school children (sorry, first-n-last self-aggrandizing link here, promise). 

Prosaic truth: when poetry, like all art forms, doesn't emotionally affect listeners or readers at large, it doesn't work at large. The point Petri seems to be making is much the same point made by the disaffected urban youth portrayed in 'Dangerous Minds', viz. WTF poetry?? WHY? Aside: Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise is often discussed utilizing New and Sociological Criticism, made famous by Michelle Pfeiffer's character in aforementioned movie as well as in many poetry classes across the world. Petri states, 

 All the things that poetry used to do, other things do much better. But naturally we still have government-subsidized poets. Poets are like the Postal Service — a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service. 

 First, for shame, taking down the Postal Service! Are we then to do away with grandmothers, meals made from scratch, the radio and public tv as well? #postaloutrage! (Here's the Mother Jones discussion of the same) 

Deming brings up a brilliant point when he addresses the way in which Petri loosely associates the role of poetry with revolution and political change: please read his entire response twice and share widely, because he is absofuckingutely right in quoting Vonnegut on Vietnam, Tarkovsky on art and social change, and referencing what Robert Frost said at the inauguration that he was invited to read at. 

 But did Petri truly get her idea about the role of poetry from pop culture references like 'Dangerous Minds'? She refers to the role of news agencies and media, claiming that the original role of poetry has been overtaken by these more prosaic and relevant (?) venues. Aside: totally stoked someone took the trouble to correct her on misappropriating the William Carlos Williams reference to the news. What is hilarious is that the poets Petri gives a shout out to weren't the most PC or Washington-friendly folk around: Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams were and forever will be Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams, giants of self-expression and torch bearers of speaking what no one else had the balls to vocalize. 

 Tangent: who really are our Ginsbergs and Williams today? Or do we see in poetry today more room for contemplation than provocation? 

 Petri makes an interesting point when she discusses what I can only assume she means is ivory tower poetry, saying 

 The kind of poetry they read to you at poetry readings and ladle in your direction at the Inaugural is — well, it’s all very nice, and sounds a lot like a Poem, but — it has changed nothing. No truly radical art form has such a well-established grant process. 

 Ah. Okay. Is accessibility the issue then? But what would be more accessible at the inaugural then, Kendrick Lamar? Possibly, yes, but that takes us back to political protocol and red tape and appropriateness. Would a more visceral poem, one that appealed more to my (inconsequential) instincts and those of Petri herself, have been allowed at the inaugural? What would this poem have said? Would it have made unfortunate mention of wars, economic woes, drought and the quiet terror of living in a post-hegemonic Capitalist America? 

 Maybe. And maybe it would have also viscerally discussed what is beautiful and gritty about this country I have come to know slowly, firsthand. Would it have gone down well with everyone watching and supporting this President? Does poetry ever have to go down well, or does it ever have a role as specific as what Petri seems to suggest? 

 The truth is that poetry is all pervasive, and has moved on to arenas as varied as bathroom stalls, support groups, cathartic House Music vocals, tumblrs and twitter feeds. I want to humbly suggest here that the inherent value of poetry (everything that has caused it to survive till date, its ability to be the vehicle for what would otherwise be impossible to say out loud) has proven to be so significant that popular culture itself constantly aims to achieve what successful poetry achieves, in an attempt to lay claim to authenticity, even if this claim is only fleeting. A quick sample follows--

Rives. Rakim. The voice of Mary J. Blige. The grace of the pied piperesque Dancing Guy, at the 2009 Sasquatch Festival. The Dylan song you remember most. What the folk behind One Giant Leap achieved. So many incredible moments of current events (the news that Petri is obsessed with) captured in photography. Something about the crowd participation at Coldplay's Glastonbury show, during the finale of Viva La Vida (hover for link). 

Here's where I feel Petri missed the point: it isn't that poetry and poems have been upstaged by the news (also since when did epic tradition = news? Even for a cheeky blog post, a stretch). The more primal function of poems has always been something more than simply recounting a story (see her examples of Gilgamesh and the Iliad, even). This "more than simply recounting" has been elbowed aside by our public, enhanced access to streaming media, which allows us to share a complex emotion or thought now via a share button or link, instead of pouring over a page or reading (out loud?) a troubling-in-its-intensity line. 

 Doesn't help either that it's incredibly hard to always know how to talk about poetry. And here perhaps there's a kernel of truth to Petri's sly challenges to Poetry, and all types of MFA and grant-funded poetry activities-- have we made it uncool, unmanly, un-PC, un-hip to talk poetry in public? Is talking or sharing poetry considered presumptuous? Too high-brow for Joe Shmoe? And when did this happen, considering (accessible!) poetry everywhere in the world (except from pre-WWI Empire-minded nations) has most always come from working men and women? 

 John Deming has it on the nose, I believe-- there's something that smacks of smugness in Petri's post. Yes, it is a BLOGpost, as this is, but it is about POETRY, which is kinda like a stranger coming into your home and poking fun at all the albums you inherited from your mother, hence it is not, at the same time, JUST a blog post. Aside: One hopes WaPo's SEO folk are happy with their cups that are verily running over. This was solid, mid-level case of trolling. 

 There is poetry everywhere today, on the insides of buses in this country, shared at popular public events back home in mine-- I hope you all at some point in your life attend an evening of ghazals or Qawalli where it isn't seen as esoteric entertainment. Why? Jeff Buckley on the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, here. 

 Look, I wish Blanco's poem turned up the heat even more than it did. I wish it issued more of a gentle challenge than give thanks and speak of hope the way it did. But this was a DC event, ladies and gents! And in the teeth of the remaining guff Petri seems to have leveled at poetry, all I can say is this-- 

 A) A poem "should not mean, but be". 

 B) If you think Poetry cannot say anything that (journalistic or otherwise) prose can, I offer the following poem by Lyubomir Levchev as proof:

TOMORROW’S BREAD

Once I reproached my son
because he did not know
where to buy bread.
And now...
now he is selling bread
in America.
In Washington.
In his daytime routine
he teaches at the university.
At night he writes poetry.
But on Saturdays and Sundays
he sells bread
on the corner of Nebraska and Connecticut.

The fields of Bulgaria are empty.
Those women of the earth who used to

reap the crops to feed the generations,
are fading away like the notes of a dying song.

Politicians set up the melodrama:
“Who filched the wheat of the motherland?!”

But what lies between bread and man remains

hidden behind the several names,
different in taste and different in price.

My son sells bread for sandwiches,
rosemary buns, olive rolls,
“Zaatar” loaves, Spanish sesame “Semolina,”

walnut bread, wheat bread, sprinkled with raisins,

Italian “Pane Bello.”
“Palladin,” kneaded with olive oil, with yeast and milk,

corn bread, pumpkin seed bread,
Turkish bread, bread made of clouds…

Only Bulgarian bread is not available,

nor the leftover bread from yesterday!

“Some bread remains unsold
every day,” my son says.
“We are given a loaf for dinner.
The rest is wrapped in plastic bags

and dumped…”

Weariness weighs on my son.
The bread has handed him an American dream
(And this, too, means The American Dream)
Oh God, don’t you hear? My son is praying for something!
Danger encircles him like an aura.

Give me the answer, Lord, to one single prayer—

to one last wish,
then do, please, whatever my son asks of you.

And sure, you might as well adopt him!

In Sofia
the shades of old women
scour the dark.
Ransacking the rubbish bins they collect bread.

Pointing at one of them, a teacher

of history and Bulgarian language, they say:

“Don’t jump to conclusions, take it easy!

She’s not taking the bread for herself. She feeds

stray dogs

and birds.”

And my words too are food for dogs

and birds.

Oh God!

Why am I alive?

Why do I wander alone in the Rhodopes?

Why do I gaze down abandoned wells?

Why do I dig into caves where people lie?

And pass the night in sacred places, renounced by you?

I am seeking the way

to the last magician’s hideout,

he who forgot to die

but has not forgotten the secret of bread.

Not today’s bread, which is for sale,

not yesterday’s bread which has been dumped…

I must know the secret of tomorrow’s bread.

The bread our lips will touch in awe.

The bread that takes our children by the hand

and leads them all back home.

Translated into English by Jack Harte

Work in Progress: Dopamine Dali

Aight. The goal of writing all this down is to make sure

1. I remind myself to see this project through till it's done.
2. This idea (all mine, ALL MINE, Y'HEAR??) is book-marked on this blog for posterity.

I've been meaning to start work on Dopamine Dali for about 7 months now, and an ART 131 class assignment finally gave me the space to start a process book for it.

The finished version will play with some found text, but will certainly contain far more original artwork and a singular recurring motif. Maybe those famous whiskers. Maybe.

More on why and how once it's actually done.

For a fantastic piece on Dali and his fascination with bread, please read this fantastic study by one Julia Pine. 

Dead egg-heads, or Priyanka's Art Project for this year's Dia de los Muertos

What you may not know about me is that I'm a closet crafter (less Myers-Briggs, more xacto knives and gorilla glue).

As a kid, I revelled in making Plasticine figures, random collages and dolls out of shells, petals, sticks & bits of rag. Stopped when I hit my teens because muddling about making tiny things gave way to writing, and I began to believe it was what the grown-up me preferred doing.

It took me a little over a decade to realize that I've been missing out on loads of fun all these years. So here, presented for your pleasure, are the egg-shell calaveras I've been working on for this year's dia de los muertos.

I'll keep making calaveras as long as we plan on eating omelettes, quiches and sunny-sides all the way up to Halloween. Got any ideas? I'm thinking of personalizing a few-- For instance, the last black and white one is made for Sharanya, as a love and good health protection skull.

This was also the first time I've ever tried putting a watermark on an image, so um... forgive the lame text. PicMarkr's an easy, free watermarking tool so I have to give them props.

[Pulls a broom and a foam cactus out of the Whose Line Is It Anyway prop box]

Be well, beautiful.

On the need for good scotch

Tonight I miss my father most, and his collection of scotch.

You're lucky if you live far away from home and on the night before one of your many transatlantic journeys, you get to speak to your father and say--"I'd like to keep that bottle of Caol Ila." You're luckier still if he looks at you, nods, and helps you roll it into two scarves and one college sweatshirt.

No more is said, but there's a lifetime of words communicated in that simple act of a bottle being passed from father to daughter.

One glass baton filled with pale gold. Always poured into lead crystal, over two cubes of ice. It's my father saying- here, take. Your next few years will be some fantastic mixed with guttural lows. You will embarrass yourself. You will say the wrong thing and miss opportunities. You will get robbed. You will choose the wrong people, the wrong situation, the wrong underwear for the wrong job interview. There is no fairy godmother, no charm to place under your pillow at night. Your mother will be upset, and there will a birthday, maybe several, when she will not call.

He never had what I have now. Never had, at the age of twenty-six, the luxury of sitting on a quiet summer night out on a dark balcony, sipping his parent's twelve year old single malt out of a scotch glass cut in Czechoslovakia.

My father is a great man, and a self-made one. Everything he is now, he chose to be-- Picking and choosing from observations and conversations. His longest running teachings are as follows: King makers are more important than kings. Sometimes you have to push, sometimes you have to pull. Carry people with you. Sip your scotch. Respect is earned the longer you make a bottle last.

My father never had the patience to type luxury of typing out his thoughts either. Has a lovely block script he uses in all official letters and forms though. But he depends on oral tradition when it comes to my brother and I, and though I've stopped faking exams to get out of these phone conversations with my father, they still play a poor second fiddle to actually sitting and talking with him.

I delete forwards from him everyday. He's in the smallest of G+ circles, and used to leave comments on my facebook pictures when I was still on there, but I miss experiencing conversation with him so goddamn much. I imagine the talks we'd have in person now, him a little more mellow, me just a little older. I recall all his ticks, all his mannerisms: the way he starts to cough if he gets into a really hearty, good laugh. The way he closes his eyes if he's listening to Floyd, Elvis or Zeppelin. The way I can always tell when he's too busy planning a response to listen to me. The way he reads my sins without hearing a single confession, and humbles me with his companionable silence instead of calling me out.

He's no saint, my father. He picked up cheap luggage from a relative who bought them at Moore Market in Madras for my first flight into the US post 9/11, despite my protests. He reacted badly to every boyfriend I've ever told them about. He insists women cannot have successful families and careers, and once advised me to become a dentist because it meant good money. But he's my old man. The one who taught me how to hustle. Close to seven years have passed since I last lived at home, and time seems to be passing faster than ever before.

It's incredibly presumptuous, and maybe a little conceited to speak of mortality where I am right now. I've been relatively lucky in death. The ones I have lost have come back to me some other way. I've no debilitating drug habit, or illness. I don't drive. I'm on the wrong end of my mid-twenties, and I have yet to do my Big Thing. My parents are getting older, but then again whose aren't?

I miss him everyday. A two year whimsical study scholarship has turned into too long. I miss his smell, that father smell, Old Spice and sweat and on some evenings, good whiskey. I miss the sound his chappals make. The way he ties his lungi effortlessly. The way he cools his tea.

I miss my mother too, but my mother does not drink. This changes things, slightly.

These things this scotch brings up.

Two doubles are enough.

Salt doesn't hurt an Islay whiskey. The current distillery, built between 1972 and 1974 in the same location as the original, overlooks the sea.

I'll need a new bottle by the year's end, at which time
I think I'll go home.

This piece was the prototype of *this* piece, which was published by Bluestem Magazine for their September 2011 Quarterly. It's much, much better. Trust me.

'Outsourced': this currycature aint funny no more, mama.

An edited version of this piece appeared in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 47, Dated November 27, 2010. Please visit that link for the stripped-down version of this ramble.

As sitcom viewers, we hold some truths to be self-evident. For instance: a majority of American sitcoms are made for easy caricature, with the rare exception focused on social commentary—Salutations, Larry Gelbart, Gene Reynolds and Alan Alda: M*A*S*H changed the lives of everyone who plugged into the Star TV episode re-runs in the early 1990s, then rediscovered it online a few years later. Corollary to this truth: American sitcoms made for easy caricature either provide a generation with popular catch-phrases, or catches flack from a key demographic of the same generation for hackneyed writing.

Image courtesy mamapop.com

American television channel NBC’s Outsourced, which premiered on September 23, 2010 and was picked up for a full season a few weeks ago, has been rousing mixed reactions from just such a key demographic: 20-30 something American viewers, including Indian Americans and Indians currently residing in the United States. Most viewers have sounded off on their dislike of the show’s lack of timeliness, and some of its casting decisions. Others have commented on the refreshing presence of Indians and Indian themes, however dated, playing a main role in an American prime time show.

The movie this series is based on was a perfect little fairytale. Much like Mississippi Masala did in its own time, 2006’s Outsourced captured a certain piece of the Indian/American reality in our recent history with sweet detail. An eventful year, 2006 contained the death of Syd Barrett, Bismillah Khan and Pramod Mahajan. Several members of the Viriginia Tech campus were killed in a tragic homicidal shooting incident. Movie releases included Borat, Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest, Rang De Basanti, Krrish and Lage Raho Munnabhai. The July Mumbai train bombings happened, as did Hurricane Katrina, and the hanging of Saddam Hussein. The one thread that strung 2006 through in the United States was talk of American jobs being shipped abroad. And call centers was as far as American pop culture got in 2006 with Indian references, apart from quaint films like the Guru (2002).

2010 is a very different time. The past few years have brought us Big Bang Theory’s Raj Koothrappali and his non-Orientalist, Indian-grad-at-Caltech set of Indian cultural references. The entire cast eats Indian take-out once a week except for him (he detests Indian food), and throughout the series the viewer is aware that the other characters are well educated about Koothrappali’s manners and mores as well as a range of realties regarding India and the US-Indian diaspora. Russell Peters is now very old hat, except for those of us whose parents are just discovering Facebook. There is or was, the guy from Lost. Sanjaya, his hair and their combined appearance on American Idol. Slumdog Millionnaire. Bollywood Dance work-out classes. Bikram Yoga. MetroPCS’s Tech and Talk ad campaign. Harvard’s professional Bhangra team. Adiga and Lahiri are only some of the more recent additions to a plethora of Indian authors making a name for themselves internationally. And most importantly, no self-respecting pop culture pulse checker has mentioned call centers in about three years.

Quick overview of the Outsourced series plot: An American Novelties Company fires all their American staff, and then outsources the sales over to an artistic postcard representation of “Mumbai”, together with a young, snotty white American manager named Todd Dempsey (Ben Rappaport). Cue the Mumbai employee list: Rajiv, the Machiavellian manager, one beautiful young thing in love with her traditions (Rebecca Hazlewood’s complicated British accent attempting an Indian accent attempting an American accent), one sexually repressed bumpkin (Anisha Nagarajan, one of the happy surprises of the show), one Romeo with a heart of gold (Sacha Dhawan), one socially inept outcast (Parvesh Cheena, who plays his part brilliantly and together with Nagarajan, is responsible for some of the only nuanced characterization in this series.) Todd is quick to realize he needs to pick up on Indian cultural realities: from navigating personal space to understanding gender roles to realising that there is no such holiday as ‘Jolly Vindaloo Day’.

Still awake? The high yawn quotient of this tired, done to death plot is to an extent because Todd Dempsey is unlikeable from the get-go, portrayed as he is, as a close-minded white boy who’s terrified of losing his job security. But the show’s major flaws lie less in racism and more in lazy writing. Outsourced’s pilot took hesitant, baby steps, as if the cast and crew were constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure they hadn’t stepped on several million brown toes across the world. Can this be put down to all the backlash that followed Joel Stein’s unintentionally incendiary piece for TIME? Or do we place the script in the context of some of the reactions Mr. Boyle’s Oscar winning production garnered for itself?

After the deadly dull pilot, things did mildly improve with the first few episodes. The writers didn’t descend to easy tropes like spontaneous Bollywood dance/item number inclusions, even when it may have spiked their ratings. Arranged marriage references only began in episode three. But Outsourced’s Todd Dempsey continued to interact with a Mumbai that only exists in his imagination: there are no “decent burgers” to be had, no one has ever heard of Halloween (yet everyone seems to take to Halloween costuming in episode six like kitty party aunties to an Avon demonstration) and Rajiv is terrified of a tiger in episode four. As Madhuri Shekar, MFA student of Dramatic Writing, freelance writer & blogger for Reality Rocks and a Marketing and Communications Assistant at the University of Southern California said “… it’s set in an India that is unrecognizable… The thing that most offends me is the fact that they're trying so hard not to offend. It's just not funny most of the time, and there's nothing edgy, raw, or chaotic about a sitcom that's set in India. You'd have to really work hard to sanitize India”

Do we blame the inability of an American creative team to engage with the at times sordid and wholly hilarious realities in India, and a contemporary juxtaposition of American and Indian socio-cultural realities? Or do we blame ourselves, for having portrayed to the world that as one entire nation, Indians cannot take jokes made at our expense well? Can we laugh at ourselves as we are now, or can we only laugh at the happy two dimensional clichés of ourselves that we agreed to endorse over a decade ago? Or is it that we are so out of touch with what it truly takes to live in urban India today that we have to wait for a book like Adiga’s ‘White Tiger’ or any movie that Anurag Kashyap is behind to feel comfortable commenting on all that is real and “gritty” about us? Where are the jokes about recreational drug use, alcohol binges, relationship hypocrisy, urban angst, adult boredom, economic woes and general twisted humor, or do we pretend that none of this exists at home? India, us who are privileged enough to spend time having this conversation, are we so uptight that we cannot even reckon with these realities?

Let it be said there is some fun in the Outsourced scripts. Some winning touches include the A-team call center workers who return to India after gaining US degrees to work BPO gigs for Apple and Microsoft, who have mastered various American dialects and cult slang phrases and use them against the American manager’s loyal tribe of plastic vomit pushers. Dempsey and a fellow expatriate Charlie Davis (Diedrich Bader) dancing in an Indian disco for the first time, Davis discussing access to Yankee doodle American food like Smuckers Jam and Jiffy Peanut Butter, and the Indian manager Rajiv’s desperately passive aggressive comebacks are all LOL-worthy. The writers are beginning to push the envelope, using the same Sunny treatment that Lee and Walsh have perfected in other scripts: characters that don’t excuse or explain themselves, their awkward situations or their dystopian behavior. One only hopes that the writers continue to push the limit so as to explore ideas of Indian comedy that go beyond spoofs, stereotypes and slapstick.

What is particularly upsetting about Outsourced is that it could have been brilliant. It could have been a moment for keen social commentary on all us everyday people, both in the US and in India—us still living with our parents people, us saving money on rent by living with strangers people, us refusing to get into the family business people, us still repaying student loans people, us still single “because seriously, are you kidding?” people. Outsourced could have been a moment for writers and audience to have the gumption and the guts to look at Indians for the first time not through the lens of stereotypes but to be honest with Indian idiosyncrasies, whether they be Indians in the United States or in India. It could have finally been that big cross-over moment, where we all acknowledge that with torrents, travel between the two countries, cable TV and the internet in general, the supposed distance between America and India has moved on beyond Delhi belly and tech support. Outsourced could have been a place on TV we could finally go for gritty, realistic commentary on what it takes to earn and keep a job, pay bills and stay relevant to our peers in an urban Indian social circle. Perhaps authentic storytelling can only happen when writers in India participate in the production and scripting of such shows. Perhaps it is finally the time for stories about contemporary India that are told internationally to be crafted, produced and invested in locally. There is a market—We are all already here.

S.K when he's frunk and no one's listening.

Don't give them a name. Don't associate a song with them, especially the classics- Not The Who, not that one Mother Love Bone song, not Joplin. Don't leave them voicemail. Don't take souvenirs. Do not dream. Do not dream. Do not dream. And if you must write at all, write words filled with bone shards, so they'll be looking over their shoulder forever.

Trick-or-treatise: Transcendence and Il Matto

It was just another internet thing this July. In fact, it was in keeping with the perfect Internet Thing Trope:

• American TV personality notices a youtube video.
• Puts it on twitter, calls it "funny"
• Major American media network picks up on the story, tries to paint it as a good example of how internet memes work.

Curious, because I think it's a meme #fail.

Unlike Rick Rolling, Lolcats or Sad Keanu Reeves, this video evoked various reactions instead of one universal emotion/message. Many thought the guy was acting the fool-- and yes, there's a double rainbow song, and even an error 404 page. But about as many folk found it inspiring. I started receiving it in my email as the day's happy thought from my parents' friends.

The guy himself, Paul Vasquez AKA Yosemite Bear, wrote about it all on his site. Reading that post is what got me writing this one. Bits like these:

On July 3rd I woke, checked my email and noticed I had some strange comments on one of my You Tube videos. I thought that's weird, I just deleted them without another thought, sometimes it happens. I went back to recheck my email and more weird comments on the same video, I thought this is strange, what's going on so I went to You Tube and started investigating. I quickly found the comment that started the beginning of my life taking on a much larger perspective. "Jimmy Kimmel Tweeted your video, you're so lucky." It hit me, my life was going to change, I always knew it was coming and here it was. I had done all the steps, I had followed a path I had laid out for creativity. I had always followed my passion, I had never cared about money, I always focused on art, Spirit, family, love, enjoying life, documenting what I thought was important and getting ready for when society breaks down and now one of my videos is going viral. I called my girlfriend Sage who was on her way over (a three hour drive to tell her that my life is going to change. I told her I had something like 18,000 hits in just a few hours and she said "big deal" I'll be impressed when you have a million views. Fast forward four days and I'm at a million views and she's impressed, I've been doing interviews all over the world MTV Canada ran my video and two others, things are going crazy, my phone is ringing non stop and my email is flooded with offers with people wanting to work with me and be connected to me. All of this is mind blowing, I am struggling to try and figure out what it all means but after two weeks I have had some time to contemplate stand back and think and remember that I have bee saying for years that this is what I have been saying was going to happen, it's not how I expected it to happen, I didn't expect fame, I didn't expect fortune to come this way but I have put all the pieces into place for this to happen so when it happened and a reporter asked me for the first time was this all a big surprise to you what I heard coming out of my mouth was a big surprise to both of use, "no I expected this all along". Then reporters tried to get me to say I faked the reaction I had when I saw the rainbow but nobody believes this, everybody believes I am a pure soul...

If you haven't watch the video, do. Most everyone starts out laughing: it's what every stoner TV comedy script from the past two decades has aimed for. Seth Rogen would sell his mother and his Dental plan to come up with that tone, language and timing. You start out thinking it's a joke, just like when you start out watching for instance, a video of Bill Hicks doing a routine and you think hey, snarky funny man here.

Nota bene: in *no* way am I comparing Hicks to Yosemite Bear. The only think they have in common is I look up to both of them. Work with me here!

Look-- Bear, in that video, is sincere about everything. Hicks, in the above-linked video, in all his routines is sincere about everything, especially when he is at his gosh-darned angriest. Especially then.

Yosemite Bear played from his fuckin heart. In his own way. He could've done what we would've all done. Taken a video, kept our reactions to polite noises, posted it on Fb with edited comments about what a lovely holiday it was. Instead, he went with the crazy wisdom of Il Matto.

And by doing so, Bear ended up channeling the very origins of Transcendentalism.

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own....

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Transcendentalist, 1842

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread

bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all

beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed

by our own seed & golden hairy naked

accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black

formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our

eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive

riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening

sitdown vision.

Dunno. Something to be said for being this unselfconscious. What joy such people must feel.

Scrutable Americans

The Americans are a mighty people, indefatigable, persistent, unflagging, sleepless and dreamless. If they hate someone, they kill him with indifference; if they love someone, they smother him with kindness. He who wishes to live in New York should keep a sharp sword by him, but in a sheath full of honey; a sword to punish those who like to kill time, and honey to gratify those who are hungry.

--Kahlil Gibran, Blue Flame ix

"What you wish were true"

So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful.

Watch this. Because I just did, after years and years.

I don't talk about it much on this blog, but here's a truth: if you are in love-- and it doesn't matter if it's legal or not. And it doesn't matter if it's practical. And it doesn't matter if it drives you insane, or drives silence between you and your spouse and your mother and your well-organized life. If you are in love, this is what it should feel like when you find each other that first time.

Your brain empty, and all you can think is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful.

Notes from DC, take 3.

Rumba Café

I fell in love with this city because of D-, because it was he who showed me how to navigate it, who showed me his favourite places and people. Him and his bag filled with books and his papers filled with poetry, him and his quiet slow rising cigar smoke. He was the one who introduced me to the Café. The Argentinians who worked the bar when I visited that year weren't here anymore and I missed Gabriela. I missed how on just my second visit she knew what beer I wanted to follow the mojito. How angry she had been with that misplaced group of FOB Indians, the four guys all in horizontal stripes who walked into her Café and ordered Johnny Walker on one of the hottest days in May, in the Afternoon. Who grumbled amongst themselves when the bill came, who left small change as her tip. I remember how she jumped over the counter, yelling Hey! You forgot your change! and the look on their faces. How I wanted to apologize without knowing what to say, how she was still flushed mad as she laughed at my despairing face and said it's okay, jerks come by all the time.

I remember dancing all night here, along walls filled with fetishes, madonnas, orishas, votive candles and effigies, all stuffed with folded dollar bills as offerings. The autographed instruments gifted to the Café by respected musicians. That smell of fresh-muddled lime and lemon and mint. I pledged allegiance to the death a long time ago, which is why we came here next.

There’s a live band playing tonight. The big round bouncer smiles us through the door. He can tell that I know the code. I buy the first round, noticing all at once that we’re the only people in that night not of South American or Hispanic origin. Maybe we would see our server from the last place here too, maybe later in the night. Our guys are stuck behind a big group of people outside the Café, with everyone inside yelling at them while laughing, no space, man, no space! I go out and get them through the door because the bouncer remembers me. And at that exact instant I remember why I love this place, this street. I am remembered here, God only knows why, or maybe they fake it and pull this with everyone, but I don’t care. The band playing is the same one playing from the last time I was here, the mojito is muddled perfectly.

A big crowd of Argentinean kids move by our table, crowding right around where the men are playing. A few of us follow and dance. The one guy who never dances has the biggest grin in the world on his face, everything in his body saying Let’s Go! Let’s Go! Let’s GO! He asks us if it’s okay to stand this close to the band and we laugh and drink from his glass and give him ours, and then we dance with all the children. They know the words to every song, screaming along with the singer and we mouth with them, we don't know the words but we can’t help it, we aren’t faking knowledge but we must participate, as if we don’t have a choice. The guy who doesn’t dance goes, fuck man it’s like a reaction is expected, even necessary from us, like they want us to participate! And the guy I’m dancing with raises his arms in a benediction , I think. It couldn't have been ironic. Nothing was ironic that night.

And the children don’t mind us, they sing sad songs while hugging everyone and air-guitaring, one guy kneels down in front of the singer in a faux duet. We don’t understand a word they are singing but it sounds like regret and anger and pain and the sweetness of lost expectations, like that fucking nightingale with a thorn in its heart bleeding a white rose into red, like Icarus was a shadow against the sun, throwing everything they had left that night into singing the song. We stayed with them. We stayed out far later than any of us had in recent times. And all the time we were there, we sang, we danced, we spilled our drinks, we took photos with strangers, we stood guard over each other at the loo. We stayed till they turned on the lights, then rode in a single taxi, all six of us, back through empty streets, tucked into each others arms, over each others’ knees, some of us already asleep with the deep dreamless silence of children.

Notes from DC, take 2.

Tryst

We sat around as a group, fucked up from the heat, from the watching Argentina lose, from all the bad pop music that was playing downstairs. There had been a barbecue that had gone the way most barbecues go in July on the East Coast, too much to clean up after, even with all the disposables, too many bugs. At least four of us had wanted Argentina to win. I didn’t watch football. I respected it, sensing how much it meant to so many. But I had wanted Argentina to win. I had first wanted Mexico to win. Then Paraguay to win. Still some hope for Uruguay. But they were all chopped down and Argentina remained that day, the beautiful long-haired boys with the most European heritage out of all of South America. One of the girls says it’s the heat that makes me this racist. I want to talk about love for the underdog, but I don't. Instead I say it’s not fair that countries that control the means of production get to stay in the World Cup finals. Then we had an argument about Equal Opportunity Employment. Then we found some rum, while I tried to imagine what watching football in Argentina that day must have felt like.

We need to get out. I know this, but I need to sell the idea to the group. This is the most amount of time we’ve all spent together in a long while, and it’s beginning to tell. I can see it on their faces—a few want sleep, another wants a smoke, another misses her boyfriend, another is worried about not finding a job. Fuck that shit. We’re still young (I don't say this out loud) and it’s only 10PM on a Saturday night (this I say out loud). Don’t ask me how I did it, but I got everyone out the door; it helped that I knew this one neighborhood better than anyone else in the apartment, and there were two good places to get drinks, no dress code, no cover, nice atmosphere.

We get there. We walk into the coffeeshop first. It’s still filled with mismatched furniture and low light, coming mainly from purposefully dowdy lampshades placed around the room: numerous chairs and sofas, from yard sales, from dorm rooms, from someone’s grandmother’s living room. We corner a school desk, a couple of hard straight-back chairs and a chaise. Without anyone saying it, I know, I just know that I’m in charge of making this night work, since I dragged everyone out. The trick is to not look anxious. This place is notorious for bad service, mostly because they are used to serving kids who are high or drunk or backpackers and interns who are too tired to want their food and drink pronto. Eye contact, eye contact.
One of the guys suggests a round of shots. I want to bear hug his languid body, but I resist, concur and finally get the attention of one of the servers. Contact.

He looks messed up, man. Dark curls falling into his eyes, stained apron, this gone look as he smiles at us wanly, and tells us in heavily accented English that he’s had a real rough day, and what would we like?

I talk him down from suggesting Patron. I laugh, I lean in and say all the right things to let him know we’ve been here before, and we aren’t tourists. We get a cheap tequila, order drinks from the menu card and I know he’ll get them wrong. Remembering to not look anxious.
The tequila and lime wedges come, no salt. We spill some on the cracked wood, we grin, we mutter toasts no one hears and down our shots.

The music gets louder immediately, immediately more likeable. Wasn’t the heat of the liquor, I swear to you that they turn the music up at 11:00PM to convince people to stay longer, just one drink more. We all respond. The music takes the silence away and we are grateful. We make jokes at each other’s expense, recalling good times from the past. Our eyes are all lit up, our skins shine, we smile at each other, any outsider would say we love each other. Our drinks arrive, three of them wrong, we try them anyway but the bar tender comes this time with the right ones, shaking his Viking hair, tells us to keep the old drinks. Our server comes back, apologizing. His team lost today, please don’t say anything guys.

Shit man, we all wanted Argentina to win. Our hearts, filled with love, pour towards this server. Far from his home country, like us. One of us asks what the national drink of Argentina is. If I could’ve sucked up all his words and poured them down his throat I would have. Don’t know any Argentinians but I had a feeling symbols and standards of the country would be hard to discuss, especially at night, especially on a night like this. I know what it is like to come from a city and country with many fathers. There is some pride but also some shame in it, like how all mongrels and half-casts feel. Our server reeled but stood his ground. Said people drink a lot of wine, beer… like how all Europeans drink. Yerba Mate. And something made with gin. Or maybe ginger. The one who asked exchanged the words with the server like a chorus—
gin?
ginger?
gin!
ginger!
And they gave up laughing, and one who was trained in dance said something about the Argentinean tango, and the one who watched football passionately said fuck Germany, and he thanked us and asked us if we needed anything else, and of course we said no.

Then we passed around our drinks, giggling like teenagers, and took bad pictures of each other and the glasses on the table, which with all the water glasses and shot glasses and wrong drink glasses now looked like a glass harmonica. And everyone lets go. The girls squeeze my hands gratefully, and I must have blushed. Never look anxious or overwhelmed. Which is why I suggested moving on to the next door place, the best mojitos and caipirinhas in the city, probably on the East Coast, this far north anyway. I don’t give them time to falter: I leave the boys in charge of the bill, head off arm in arm with the girls to the Café.

Notes from DC, take 1.

the 4th of July


Like every capital city everywhere in the world, this one was mapped out for the day. A lawn here, a parking lot there, this monument’s special open hours: all for the purpose of free and equal access to the evening’s fireworks display.


Lost interest the night before, even. Fireworks reminded me of November 25th in Oman, where all that oil money went into exquisite, complicated sulphur and light formations in the sky. Who the fuck knew it was oil money then anyway? Not us expat kids, all we saw were the lights. We’d go to the houses of family friends who lived in the hills, and watch the national flag and the kanjar picked out in bursts of light in the sky. The fireworks in DC? Drugstore Americana, big umbrellas of blue, gold, white and red sparks opening and closing in turns.


We went out to eat a late lunch, then shopped discounted sales, landed at the pool finally. Went up the road from the apartment complex about half an hour before everything started. None of us seemed particularly eager to go, but there wasn’t anything else to do. The roads would be jammed, restaurant service would be bad, bars nearby would be dead. For some reason, everyone with babies had come out. Everyone! On some level, nationalist propaganda must tie into state-approved levels of procreation. Come celebrate the country’s birth with your new born!


Ungeneralizable unintentionally racist observation: in this part of the city, the white parents are getting older and older, all with SPF45 and wet-wipes and organic baby food. The Hispanic and Black parents are getting younger, as are their babies. Saw one that hadn’t even opened its eyes yet. The mother was tending to it on the grass by the sidewalk, kneeling as if to pick up a spilt handbag and this bigger guy—let’s call him Jorge, he looked like a Jorge—Jorge looks over to this skinny younger Hispanic couple. Thin and tough and young, so young, and Jorge says, don’t you want one of them? The girl tightens her lip, and the guy says, her? She calls them “it”. All the Asians who are here without a car are sitting down dutifully, no babies in tow at all. Eyes with that work visa look: they know it’s a pledge of allegiance, just showing up. Their kids eager eyed and waiting. I’m not sure if they’ve seen American fireworks before, because there’s an expectation on their face that makes me think they’re dreaming diwali. Or dussehra. Or Pongal.


Another kid with her baby harnessed across her chest. Maybe 15, 16? They’re doing all the right things though, at least this baby’s eyes are open. Teenagers are tough these days, there’s nothing you can tell them except that whatever they believe right now, they will be disappointed soon enough. We’re getting old, one of the girls I’m with laughs. Yeah we are. Shit. Look at us. The youngest 25, the oldest 31. But we could be our parents, the orderly way we’re behaving. I could be my grandfather.


What we see everywhere: folding chairs, picnic baskets, bug spray, torches, parched grass. One white family tries to keep everyone from sitting in front of them with a good-natured warning about a low hanging branch. “Ya don’t want to be wearin’ that thing on the 4th, now do ya?” Most move away, some laugh and thank them for the warning, all the ethnic folk laughing overloud and in a higher pitch than they intended, as if to wipe away that niggling doubt whether the family was just using the branch a slim excuse to get the better view. Three tough South Asian kids, all younger than 10 take a long look at the branch and sit underneath it. I want to applaud. I want to bang a fuckin’ drum and sing Dixie, because it’s a victory. You can’t teach kids to fear death. Mortality means nothing. Just start the damn fireworks. Let’s go. One kid gets up and starts swinging from a leaning lamppost in half circles. Let’s go. Let’s Go.


This far away from the Capitol we can’t hear any fanfare—there’s no voices or trumpets riding on the wind, but all the cars have stopped on road next to us, and people have gotten out with their cameras and phones on the bridge to take pictures. No one angry. You have to be stupid to think you can drive in any country during an independence day fireworks display.


I take stock. About five small groups of white Americans. The rest, all migrants, like us. Standing in a heat we wouldn’t be standing in if this was back home. Staring at heavy, hot twilight sky.And when it starts, it starts quiet, only one holler to welcome it. We stare at it like it’s a Keno machine, or the lady at the airline counter reading out stand-by seat numbers. Occasionally there’s a nice big bright one: a venn diagram of pink and blue pin pricks in the night sky. A plane flies right against one big BOOM! and that gets the crowd going.


The girl who spoke before, she and I start talking. About job prospects, about books, about that baby down on the grass, goddamn that baby is way too young to be outside like this. What are these people doing, having kids this young we say, and we shift uncomfortably, each of our shining eggs rattling around inside our purses. We are the right type of young. We go places without people asking us who we’re with. But we’re tormented by all the turgid, surging family presence all around us. I look around. The only other single people are also gathered tight together, facing outwards, wary and not knowing why. This much Americana and the heat is getting to us all. Another plane flies by. More whoops.


One of the five small groups starts a “USA! USA!” chant. Silence all around, a Ghanaian family next to us laughs quietly and one guy pleasant-voiced, yells out, but not too loud, “Go Ghana! Go Ghana!”. One of the parked car Asian families yells “Go Pakistan!” Score 2 for Dixie. Everyone within earshot grins or laughs. We’re in a new immigrant part of the city, it’s clean, upmarket and well-kept, the immigrants keep it this way and work hard to fit in with the larger crowds in the malls, on the subway. When the last wave of lights start, a black woman who had been offering free face painting to everyone turns to her young daughter and tells her it’s time to go home. The girl goes, why do we have to start leaving now? The woman goes, Baby girl, I know your mind is not developed enough to remember events from last year, but these fireworks always last only 20 minutes, and after that there’s a mad rush. We gotta leave now, girl.


I’m wondering whether we’ll remember anything at all, wondering what the past half hour meant to any of us. At this exact moment the crowd starts to rush away, pull away, suddenly stir-crazy, like that standing around was too much. There’s no music, no singing, and we all need a drink, even the ones standing there still staring at the sky, as if unsatisfied, as if there had to be more to this thing.


Next year we’ll try getting closer, one of the girls say.


I’m sad because I can’t remember the music or words of the Omani national anthem. All I remember is, you sing it as a group in Arabic, and it has that rising wave on wave feeling, till at the end of it you feel like your chest is being shot out of a cannon.


I throw the cigarette in the gutter. A shower of tiny sparks and then oblivion.

On the need for a Tandav list

I don't know about you, but my favourite movie/t.v. moments are when the surly and/or famous character feels compelled to dance.

It's always spontaneous. And the less pretty, the better. The characters never let on that they can or want to dance, but do anyway and it always either lightens a tense moment or builds a relationship, as happens in the Pulp Fiction dance scene or the "ABCs" sequence from Clerks II.

In several mythologies from around the world, dance plays an integral part in moral lessons and characterization. In Hans Christian Andersen's 'Red Shoes', dance is used as a form of punishment & purgatory. Shiva, in Hindu mythology, occasionally gives in to a creative/destructive tandav in his Nataraja avatar.

Hell, spontaneous dance is the only reason my mum watches Ellen. She loves it when celebrity guests bust a move. I still remember when she called right after watching Obama, still a senator then, groove his way onto the set.

I grew up on TCM movies, which meant Gene Kelley at least once every week. That scene from 'Singing in the Rain' is still iconic, not just because of Kelley's skill but because of how spontaneous he makes it look: it's the end of a long day, he's just kissed the girl. Stepping onto the platform, he takes a deep smiling breath, waves the cab away and begins one of the coolest sequences ever filmed.

And it's the let loose feature of these dance moments that get me. It's what happens to all of us: AM Radio clock in the bathroom when we wake up, the drive to work, whenever we have the house or conference room alone to ourselves. We've all had that air guitar-Mrs. Doubtfire-Dude looks like a lady moment. The problem is, those moments are getting rarer and rarer.

We're more social today than ever before: we know people on twitter, we meet them for coffee, there are pictures of us in their Facebook albums and every month, someone gets our number from a contact on LinkedIn and calls about the Next Big Start-Up Idea or a 10th class reunion. All well and good, but it means you and I get less me time.

Admit it: you've thought about getting to work early and dancing around the entire office like Mr. Pitt does in this commercial. If only because it means skipping the polite elevator rituals, the walk-to-desk drill and having to say hello to the co-worker who colour-coordinates his stationery.

We all need our Tandav moment. That sacred time when we shake off the weariness of repeatedly bad news and pet projects put off five years now. The time when we take our failures and successes and break it all down to the basics. No noise, just dance. Like Tom Cruise as Les Grossman does during the credits roll of Tropic Thunder, crumpin' to Ludacris' 'Get Back'.

Hell, yeah.

Incidentally, I have a playlist on my 'pod for this very purpose. Top 10 tracks?

Enur feat. Natasja- Calabria 2007
Khailash Kher- Babam bam
The Doors- Roadhouse Blues
Rage Against the Machine- Killing in the Name of
Clash- rock the casbah
CSNY- Carry On
Daft Punk- Technologic
DJ Unk- Walk it Out
Filter & the Crystal Method- Trip Like I do
Gogol Bordello- Wanderlust King

Who's on your Tandav list?

Fish

The Middle East, South Asia link

Part of my new job at AIDemocracy involves putting together awareness, advocacy and action events in the context of global peace & security.

Having grown up in Oman and India, I learned early that peace and security go hand in hand, chicken AND egg, both at the same time. I also learned that without development, peace and security measures often died still-born. According to Noeleen Heyzer,

"Peace is the absence of war, but beyond that peace is a commodity unlike any other. Peace is security. Peace is a mindset. Peace is a way of living. Peace is the capacity to transcend past hurts -- to break cycles of violence and forge new pathways that say, “I would like to make sure we live as a community where there is justice, security, and development for all members.” At the end of the day, peace is an investment; it is something you create by investing in a way of life and monitoring where your resources go."

An investment. Something tangible, even. Gandhi once said, "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."

I believe the same holds true for human security: how can you worry about democratic processes, the global significance of the war in Iraq or climate change if you don't have access to clean running water, if your government changes every 8 months or if you have to bribe your way into a school or a job?

When it comes to Peace, Security and Development, I can't imagine the Middle East without thinking of South Asia. I think of the similarities in cultures, traditions, recipes, family structures and community values, both positive and negative. I think of shared histories and religions.

I think of how folk from ME/SA are always in shock the first time we get to the U.S. and find out there's no water spray attachment/lota available in loos, just toilet paper: I mean, how do you live with using just toilet paper? How? Why?

Over the past two months, I've spoken with people at all levels about my pet project at AIDemocracy viz. organizing a set of events/performances/discussions that underline moments, both depressing and heroic, that make up the many diverse, current realities in the Middle East and South Asia, the moments that don't necessarily get covered by CNN or Fox, the moments that are often at the heart of key issues of social change.

Many have been ecstatic about the idea. They love stories and situations brought into the limelight that go beyond Bollywood, hummus and ________ (insert your favourite stereotype here).

Some have asked me to reconsider. To "narrow down" my focus, make it "more realistic". The same folk tell me that talking about both the Middle East and South Asia will dilute my ask.

I understand that they are speaking from experience: most grant makers, for instance, ask for a proposal that is dedicated to one specific world region. Bureaucracies like universities, community organizations and yes, even most some non-profits will tell you that their target audience/funder is invested in one or the other region, that current events behooves concentrating on only one region.

I understand that these naysayers mean well. I understand how easy it is to try to do too much with too little resources, and fail. I understand the downside of throwing too much information around in an attention-deficient world. I've spent weeks trying to cut ideas, realign my program.

No dice.

Blame my pigheadedness on the Department of State folks. Yup, it's their fault: they put together funding for the PLUS program, a two year embedded education initiative that I was accepted into. They made me live with kids from all over the Middle East and South Asia. They ensured that for two years my head and heart was filled with information from various ME/SA home towns and life experiences, that we traveled around the U.S. together, sharing stories, battles, kitchens and dorm rooms.

Also, blame folk like those at UC Davis, for investing in Middle East/South Asia studies, setting up a whole separate department dedicated to the study of relationships between these two regions and their relevance to global peace, security and development today.

And don't forget the House of Representatives! It's their fault too! They support the Sub-committee on the Middle East and South Asia, a body of representatives who address issues of foreign assistance, development, security, fledgling democratic processes in the ME/SA.

What would these leaders in education, law and social initiatives know anyway.

Some folk turn around and say that there is sufficient economic growth, exposure to western culture and education levels in the ME/SA to enable people in these regions to deal with their own problems and fight their own battles without bringing in outsiders. After all, there are other countries and communities in far worse conditions.

But what about the minorities in ME/SA fighting for a voice, often silenced by a complacent or hesitant middle class?

What about the sexual and reproductive rights and health of folk in Malaysia and Indonesia who are being persecuted?
What about adivasis in India fighting for social justice and being met with criticism for being revolutionary?
What about farmers across Asia who are at the receiving end of the GMO stick?
What about young people in Nepal, concerned about the staying power of their fledgling government?
What about female education in Afghanistan and the North-Western provinces?
What about illegal settlement building in Gaza and the West Bank?
What about Tamil Refugee camps in Sri Lanka?
What about the lack of competitive employment opportunities in Morocco?
What about censorship and drought in Syria?

What about all these flip-sides, underdogs and undercurrents that don't fall neatly into the "Western world versus Islamic world" dichotomy that so many well-meaning folk urge us to "address" and "dialogue" about?

Till someone finds me an answer, here I go-- writing Middle East AND South Asia. Over, and over again.

The New Age of Non-Profits: a conversation with Ken Banks on development, knowledge sharing and FrontlineSMS

It had started off simple enough.

Two weeks ago as a relatively new employee of AIDemocracy, I spent a few hours trawling through Social Edge and twitter. With an eye on global development and security, my goal was to discover what was being done already in the non-profit world, who was doing it best and who among these folk were the most open to collaboration.

I made a number of new friends: the people at Acumen Fund, Water Charity (not to be confused with charity:water), Be Unreasonable, Sangam India, CORD and Open Society Institute were fantastic right off the bat-- They were engaging, interested and human. It was like a Utopian first day at school.

In the context of my new job and projects I had in mind, I needed to know what was being done in terms of technology support for non-profit outreach and education services. One name that came up regularly was Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net

I had heard of Kiwanja in passing before, but didn't know much about it's main project FrontlineSMS, otherwise known as \o/(Which, btw, is a design based on this fantastic visual here).

I wasn't sure what to expect. Before this Saturday, I had no idea who Ken Banks is as a person, and was as wary as a product of post-post-colonialism can be of anybody who does "non-profit work" in "Africa". I was afraid I might run into yet another individual who's working to "save Africa" just because that's what Bono, the UN and everyone else is talking about right now.

[And if this is something that bothers you, Aid Watch has a great post on the issue here.]

I sent an email to Ken, one of those self-introduction/basic outline of project/can we chat sometime emails. You must remember that I moonlight as a writer: after all my experiences writing lit mag queries, I was prepared to face rejection or silence.

Imagine my shock then, when I checked mail the next day to find a reply from Ken. Yes, Ken Banks himself! Not an intern, volunteer, automated message or brush-off.

He said he'd love to talk further. Over a couple more emails I discovered he would be in Providence for the Better World By Design conference, and thanks to Barbara Grota, Assistant Dean of the Business School at my uni and a small set of practical miracles, this Saturday afternoon saw Ken, Barbara, two other students and I sit down together for an intimate conversation on change-making, mobile-for-development and non-profit developmental programs.

Ken is that guy you see in TED videos, the ones that go viral the moment they're uploaded on TED's site and Facebook page.

He showed up in a white cotton shirt and no jacket, laughing at how unprepared he was for New England weather, how he should've known better. Over coffee and a banana, he told us about how Kiwanja got started: his love for computers, how he had first traveled to the African continent in '93, how he spent 16 years living and working in countries that included Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon and Uganda. He spoke about his focus on using mobile tech for conservation and development, and mentioned he was a Liverpool fan.

He was alright.

As part of his presentation, he introduced us first to the role of mobile technology in the daily life of small business owners in African countries:

Ken told us that this picture is of a woman who started off a small business by providing a cell phone connection to her community, at a time when not everyone owned a handset of their own. She then built a small grocery store around this business, and when competition stepped in in terms of wider coverage and other small business owners who had the same idea, she secured her handset with a wire so clients could enjoy a private conversation while making sure no one would make off with her phone at the same time.


Ken pointed out that small, lean-to mobile charging stations and stores just like this one were common all over East and South Africa, making a case for mobile-enabled entrepreneurship among communities that are often labeled as being aid-dependent or in need of immediate charity.

These pictures immediately struck a chord with me-- these shots could have been taken anywhere in any rural or urban area, back home in India.


What Ken's presentation did was to focus our attention on ways in which ordinary people without much skill training or capital have adapted mobile phones and mobile technology to serve as both economic and service delivery solutions-- Not only are individuals across Africa and Asia making a business for themselves out of selling & repairing cell phone hardware and connections, they are also utilizing mobile technology to stay updated on medical services and market prices for agricultural produce. He then introduced us to how FrontlineSMS functions-- Take the tour and see for yourself here.

Ken built the original software and threw it out into the world "dirty", much like how Google first opened up Gmail Beta for public users. He's been generous with both its code and its core idea, a generosity that has enabled other entrepreneurial men and women around the world to up and run with it. One of the immensely successful ideas to come out this sharing is FrontlineSMS:Medic.

FrontlineSMS:Medic (or \+/ for short) has enabled regional hospitals that serve remote, isolated communities and villages to get the word out regarding updates in treatments, schedules for open clinics, and test results. And if that wasn't incredible enough--

Patient View, a module of \+/ enables a health worker to access a patient's records using FrontlineSMS and respond in real-time to complaints from patients many miles away.

CelloPhone, new technology being developed at UCLA that will be supported by \+/

"is a revolutionary diagnostic tool that will be able to perform basic diagnostics such as Complete Blood Count, diagnosis of Malaria and TB, and CD4 T Lymphocyte count on the back of a camera cell phone, for under $1 per test. The device itself is expected to cost as little as $10. The device utilizes a new imaging technique called LUCAS, which circumvents a lens for magnification, instead taking intracellular “holograph” images of cells directly via the CCD chip ubiquitous in most camera phones. A pattern matching algorithm then analyzes cell morphology to automatically produce a diagnostic result. The diagnostic results will be communicated from the device to a central location using FrontlineSMS, and viewed with our Patient View module and/or sent to OpenMRS with our medical records module. The Ozcan lab at UCLA is developing this device, and we aim to pioneer its use in the developing world (\+/, 2009)."

All I could think at this time was, why the hell isn't everyone talking about this? Why aren't the modules of \+/ being utilized all over South Asia, for instance , where we and all our gods know it would be of incredible service?

Maybe it's because of a lack of information. Maybe not enough people know about \0/, and the other activities of Kiwanja. Or maybe some global non-profits, government agencies and contractors are afraid of all the power they might lose once local community members and non-profits start empowering themselves with such technology. Who knows?

I can imagine multiple uses of FrontlineSMS in India alone:

• In disaster management response and activity coordination.
  
• In managing the agricultural crisis by getting out messages on weather patterns, market prices and setting up a communication network for suicide prevention.
• In responding to health care needs in remote villages up and down the east coast and in state interiors.

While I sat there, taking in how simple and yet beautiful FrontlineSMS' design is, and how accessible its use can be, Ken spoke quietly about some of the ideas that drove him to build \0/

"It's not about building cool-- it's about building appropriate."

FrontlineSMS began with one idea: to build on the existing, burgeoning mobile network in Africa instead of waiting either for some government to buy into fiber optic cables or on some non-profit or country's charity to set up a development-oriented program.

\0/ also builds on local awareness and local ownership, says Ken Banks, and I believe him: you can't read cases of health-workers in the Philippines and Malawi who downloaded \0/ all on their own and used it to improve the quality of care and then not believe in \0/, Kiwanja and Ken. And yet, none of this happened overnight. "Be Patient" is a core principle of this sort of work, according to Ken-- an idea that Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz mirrored in her TED talk on Patient Capital.

Ken's dream is that FrontlineSMS will grow to be self-sufficient, that people all over the world will adapt it to solve problems specific to their communities without needing him to be its brand ambassador. Considering the Open Source nature of \0/, this dream may soon become a reality.

Ken Banks' energy, candour and intelligence will infect your brain with good ideas. The thought that timely, measurable change for the better can occur on the ground, on a one to one basis without needing to wait for a grant cycle or government vote to come through is refreshingly now.

I can't wait to speak with people in South Asia about \0/ and discovering whether some of the challenges they are facing in the field can be answered with this suit of mobile technology.

What about you? Know of a non-profit, community or person who can benefit from FrontlineSMS? Direct them here. I can attest to the fact they'll get a personal response almost immediately.

I did bring that up with Ken towards the end of our conversation. He didn't know me from Eve, and I obviously didn't have big money or contacts to throw at his work. Why would such a busy guy spend time on a non-lucrative email exchange and trip to a small liberal arts university?

According to Ken, nurturing conversation around the kind of work Kiwanja supports is what has brought FrontlineSMS and its associated avatars this far. He talks about the individuals who contacted him about \0/ and are responsible for developing \0/ to the level it's at now. He also points out that he knows what it's like to be a newbie in the non-profit field. Says he wouldn't have got where he is now if it wasn't for several key people giving him a break and believing in FrontlineSMS when they didn't have to. And then, he grins.

Ken Banks, myself and Ai Jing, a fellow international student at RWU

I nod in agreement. The sun broke through a gray cloud bank, shining into the conference room we sat in. A good omen: maybe the New Age of Non-Profits is truly upon us, one in which ordinary people everywhere are empowered by need-based technology, where volunteering at a non-profit means coming up with usable ideas, not just filing proposals and where sharing real-time knowledge and experience is rated higher than how many celebrity endorsements a non-profit gets.