news views and analysis

The image you see below is from a recent issue of GQ Magazine published in India. Arjun Rampal actor/model answers some candid questions and one of his answers is a boastful “I am one of the few people who have gone into the Agyari pretending to be a Parsi”.

This is really pathetic and obnoxious of Arjun Rampal. A little background. Arjun Rampal is married to Meher Jesia, ex Miss India.

Current rules state that only Parsis are allowed entry into their holy places, the Agiyaris and the Atashbehrams. And Arjun is not a Parsi. What right does he then have to break the rules of a community, just to satiate his own personal curiosity and boast about it.

Rules in religion are not always agreed upon. But as long as they exist one needs to respect them. I wonder if Arjun Rampal would dare to go to the Kaaba at Mecca, which is out of bounds to non-Muslims. No offence to Muslims, but I wish he would try that stunt and see the consequences.

Parsi fire temples are not guarded securitized places. Over the centuries there has been a certain respect/trust within the society, which respects the wishes of the Parsi community and not venture into their fire temples.

I am not a legal maven, but I wonder if a criminal case of trespass can be filed against this Arjun Rampal. He has knowingly desecrated a consecrated place, an agiary.

It also makes me wonder what sort of a person Arjun is, what moral standards he must have to take credit in publicly admitting such an act.

Cross-Posted on Parsi Khabar.

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is slated to be the Grand Marshall at this year’s India Day Parade here in NYC. This will be the 29th year of this parade.

To be held on Sunday August 16, 2009, the parade starts at 12:00 pm at 41st street @ Madison Avenue and ends at 28th Street. There is a big “mela” at the end with stalls selling everything from newspaper subscriptions to food, music, clothes and what not !.

Be there. It should be a fun-filled day, especially if the weather is good.

As soon as the word Prohibition is uttered, the first word that comes to mind is Gujarat. The prohibtion on sale of alcohol or alcoholic products in Gujarat is the reason why.

Ever since I was a child I found it funny that my parents would always lament about not getting alcohol in Gujarat. Whenever we went for family vacations to Navsari (mom’s ancestral home) or our farm in Anklaach, off Valsad, or even to Udvada the Vatican of us Parsis, alcohol or rather the lack of it was the topic of discussion. It didnt help matters that we Parsis are known for enjoying the “spirits” and a Parsi “peg” will give any patiala peg a run for its money.

The TOI brings up the issue of Prohibition and an underlying need for a debate in this article.

When as a child I enquired as to why the sale of alcohol was banned in Gujarat, I was told that it was because it was the state of Mahatma Gandhi. The G word was the solution to all the ills of society it seemed at that time. In later years I did realize that the Mahatma was not to be blamed for this entirely.

Gandhiji advocated prohibition as a public policy first time in a long missive to viceroy before setting out on the Dandi march on March 12, 1930. His idea was that this would deny the government a huge revenue. Thus, Gandhiji mainly saw prohibition as a weapon to fight the British rule. There was no mention of wrecked lives, ruined homes, etc. He did not then raise social or moral issues .[link]

60 years later, Prohibition is in reality a failure. One can sit at the Globe Hotel in Udvada and get all kinds of beer and whisky without a hassle and with only a slight premium. At our farm in Anklaach, it is not uncommon for villagers to brew their own “mahuro”….a country liquor made from distilling certain flowers.

The last time I was in Ahmedabad was during a ZONASA Convention in 1996. Our hosts, the students at CEPT gave us easy pointers to where we could get our “khumba” as Old Monk Rum is referred to.

So then how is the prohibition actually working? Isn’t not allowing the official sale of liquor, actually forcing people into illegal trade and consumption? And who really benifits from this illegal trade ?

Allegations are flying freely that prohibition has spawned corruption in the police force. The initial fault, however, lay largely with the political leadership. Prohibition is essentially a social legislation and police comes in as a backup. Instead, men in uniform are the only one left holding it. Some in the force make the most of minding what is nobody’s baby..[link]

How farcial the situation is, can be seen as one drives from Udvada to Devka. Devka is in Daman, a Union Territory abutting Udvada. An official hoarding announces “Welcome to Daman, Union Territory” (or something similar). And within 50 meters of that hoarding on the Daman side are liquour shacks. And there are dozens as one drives into Devka. These shacks are no more than sheets of tin metal with a roof and plastic chairs and tables. The shacks contain cold storage for beer and other soft drinks to be accompanied with alcohol. And people drive in just to drink and drive back.

Daman has a glorious history that spans millennia. It saw empires and invaders come and go, leaving little marks on its otherwise vibrant culture, art and tradition. It is, however, not the rich cultural heritage that attracts tourists to the Union Territory. The main attraction of this place with 10 distilleries remains liquor [link]

It would be really interesting to see if Narendra Modi has the political courage to re-evaluate prohibition as a concept and move ahead on this issue.

In a way, prohibition is only illustrative of what Gujarat has come against as times change and the booming business in the state goes global. It is a defining moment and the task to examine the issue of prohibition should go to a proper commission of inquiry to be helped in its work with studies by experts in all that it involves. Not just how traditions and values dear to Gujarat would be sacrificed if a few people get to drink as they like.

With the current political scenario, it seems highly doubtful.

In a classic example of Bambaiya ingenuity, an advertising prop was taken off the hoarding and used as a real life tool.

Aircel the cell phone company had a life raft on a billboard at Milan Subway. The caption read “In case of emergency CUT ROPE”. The people did just that. And fun follows.

Received via email from Vikrant Parikh.

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Parents and students of New Era School on Pedder Road took out a “rasta-roko andolan” outside the school to protest the school closing an unsafe building. Traffic along the six lane Pedder Road was disrupted for over 8 hours (+/-).

Pedder Road in the city is one of the busiest thoroughfares. Not only for local traffic but also for suburban commuters connecting to points in South Bombay.

This protest was nothing but a tamasha that the parents and kids resorted to so that they get some media coverage. Ironically this happened on the same day that Omar Abdullah resigned. So the hoped for TV coverage didnt happen as they wouldve loved.

What pisses me off is the reasons and the modus operandi of these very selfish parents. The school wants to demolish the building because it is unsafe for occupancy. They are moving the children to another building a little distance away. The building has been inspected by three independent structural engineers who all agree that is is unsafe. However the parents still want the school to keep the building open and let their children study in this unsafe building.

The parents allege that the school is trying to shunt out the lower fee-paying SSC division to some other building and use this plot to build a fancy high fee-paying Int’l division school.

The controversy started last year when the school management decided to permanently shift SSC students to a new location on D N Road in Fort, as they wanted to demolish the existing building at Hughes Road for IGCSE and IB Board. Parents approached the HC against decision and won the case in July.

On June 4, the school management had circulated a notice to parents that school would restart on June 29 at building in D N Road, Fort. The school, however, did not starts as the matter was pending in court [link]

If this is correct and I am sure there is some truth to it, then take this to court, get a stay order and pursue it through legal means. Don’t resort to uncivilized hooligan tactics.

The police stood there for the most part and could not do much as they said kids were involved and therefore they could not use any means to disperse the crowd. I guess they meant tear gas et al.

The parents took shelter behind the children and held the city and lakhs of people to ransom.

What is more appalling is that students were encouraged to do crazy things like climb up on the front of buses etc as this picture shows.

This also sends a very wrong message to children, the adults of tomorrow. It teaches them that taking the law into your own hands is the recourse to all problems and loutish, roughish behavior is the way to go.

Image Copyrights Mid-Day

Mahafreed Irani, a journalist with Times of India and a friend from the blog/twitter/facebook world has a first person account on her blog.

Disclaimer: If you cannot take sarcasm and humor, please leave this site. This article is not intended or meant to be demeaning or insulting to anyone except self-righteous US Politicians having extra-marital affairs.

India is the outsourcing capital of the world. Of this there is no doubt. Of course all the outsourcing is intrinsically linked to IT. The BPO’s attest to that. Even the recent KPO’s have their roots in the prowess of India as a backend server to the corporations of the world.

However there is one area where we need to buck up.

In recent times American politicians have gone left right and center in having extra marital affairs. The pioneer of the current era was undoubtedly President Clinton. And since then there have been a whole bunch of politicians who have “sinned” in the very Christian sense. Funnily most of them are Republicans and “God-fearing” men of the faith. And at least one of them is a hypocrite of the highest order. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford voted to impeach President Clinton, but then still goes ahead and has one fulll blown affair and then confesses to having more than a roving eye with various other women.

However this very casanova Sanford may have created an opportunity for India. He outsourced his affair to a Latina from Argentina. As a late night comedian put it….”Oh what happened to the good old days when hot blooded US politicians had affairs with US women….are these US women now not good enough ?”.

Here is India’s chance. Indian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. Of that there is no doubt. And now there are direct flights to India that can get these US politicians to our shores in 14 hours!

So there I say, lets start advertising India as a great destination to have an affair. Market it to all the US politicians, be they Democratic or Republican. Issue them visas, give them sops, prepare custom made holiday packages and while at it, throw in “have one, get one free” deals.

More outsourcing power to India, what say ?

In the true notion of democracy, the most powerful name in India, the epicenter of Indian politics is a Parsi name. Religion and caste do play a big role in our country at all levels. Be it politics, government and even the private sector.

When APJ was President, we had a Muslim head of state, a Sikh Prime Minister, a Catholic foreign born national as the head of the ruling coalition, and a Parsi last name as the most powerful name in Indian Politics.

Below is quoted text from an Op-Ed titled “How religious do politicians need to be?” by Aakar Patel in The News Pakistan that highlights the point.

The name Gandhi comes not from the Mahatma but from Indira’s husband Feroze Gandhi, who was Parsi. The Parsi variation of the word Gandhi, which means grocer or merchant in Gujarati, is normally spelled Ghandy. That’s because Parsis, like some Gujarati communities, find it difficult to sound the soft ‘dh’ (as in ‘Dharna’) and use the harder ‘d’ (as in ‘Diet’) instead. But by a happy coincidence Feroze used the conventional spelling and the most powerful name in Indian politics was given extension.

Her marriage to a Parsi offended nobody, but because of it Indira Gandhi was denied entry into the temple of Jagannath in the state of Orissa. Jagannath means ‘Lord of All’ and the temple is to Vishnu, one of Hinduism’s three primary gods. Perhaps uniquely in India, the Jagannath temple’s priests have kept a ‘Hindus-only’ policy, which is counterintuitive if they think of him as Lord of All. But this bigotry comes from the days when only caste Hindus were allowed into temples, and the lower castes and untouchables kept out. The constitution and the Supreme Court have decapitated caste hierarchy in India, but some people are nothing without their prejudice.

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A communique from BMC is being circulated for information.

Floods – 2009 : Mumbai

Floods in Mumbai are attributable to simultaneous occurrence of rainfall and high tides. If, the rainfall is in excess of 200 mm in a day (24 hrs), floods can occur anytime irrespective of tides. However, if there is moderate rainfall but the tide is in excess of 4.50 meters at the same time, the city of Mumbai is sure to get flooded.

Accordingly, heavy floods are anticipated on the following days in Mumbai, if there is excessive rainfall at the time of high tides, since the tides are extremely high on these days: –

BMC has already planned to keep the schools closed on 24 July 2009 since the tide level is record high of last 100 years on this day.

Mumbaites are, therefore, requested to cooperate with the administration by restricting their movements and certainly not to take their vehicles out on the roads these days.

There are speculations about very high waves on 22 July 2009 due to solar eclipse. 

Public should, therefore, keep away from the beaches that day.

The Emerging Exchanges: New Architectute of India conference was held last Thursday and Friday at the New School Campus here in NYC. Jointly hosted by the New School, India China Institute, and The Architecture League it brought together a great mix of practitioners from India.

Thursday’s first session was an introduction to the theme. Kazi Ashraf gave an overview of the current state of Indian architecture which was basically paraphrasing his article for the “Made In India” AD Issue of 2007. In showing a lot of proposals for projects he tried to cover ground about the typologies of emergent Indian architecture. However as Rahul Mehrotra pointed out later in the conference, most of them were just proposals and never ever left the drawing board. And sadly this would be a constant criticism of the conference over the next two days. More of that later in the article.

Some of the outstanding presentations were: Read More

Over the next two days I will be attending this conference at the Architectural League in New York City.

It’s been a while since an architectural-themed conference on India has taken place here in NYC and it should be interesting to see the dialogue that it generates.

Hosted at the New School auditorium, the conference sold out a few days ago. Nevertheless there are tickets available for the keynote address at the end of Day 01.

Participants include:

Himanshu Burte, Prem Chandavarkar, Kenneth Frampton, Soumitro Ghosh and Nisha Mathew, Sudhir Jambhekar, Rajeev Kathpalia, Anupama Kundoo, Reinhold Martin, Gurjit Singh Matharoo, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, Rahul Mehrotra, Geeta Mehta, Vyjayanthi Rao, Samira Rathod, Margie Ruddick and Tom Zook, Michael Sorkin, Neerja Tiku, and Billie Tsien and Tod Williams

The conference looks to understand the growth and development of Indian architecture and cities overall in the time frame of an overall growth in Indian economy, and its standing in the global scenario.

However the choice of participants seems to be a bit peculiar. There are the usual high profile “suspects” and then others that are probably there because the US-based co-chairs had heard about them. And somehow my feeling is that it does not reflect the ground realities.

As much as he is reviled in the architectural community in India, I would have loved to see Hafeez Contractor present and talk about the conference. As my friend and landscape architect Runit Chhaya of Design Cell NYC puts it “Hafeez is today, probably the only architect in India who gets buildings sold, just on his name and fame “.

I will be covering the conference in detail. If you are going to be attending, give me a shout in the comments section.