Soccer World Cup

Overheard (or made up, not sure which):
Reporter on the street doing spots for a news show. Catches a random soccer fan and:

Reporter: So, who do you think is the dark horse for this year's cup?
Fan: India.
Reporter: India? but they aren't even part of the pool.
Fan: And that's just how dark they are.

Apologies

S'troo, I haven't posted the last couple of months. A thousand apologies to those that stopped by. A thousand more to those that stopped by more than once.

I'm creating some more time, you should see something new up here pretty often now over the next quarter.

Indian Winter

I'm in Bangalore for the next couple of weeks. It's sweater weather, and there's not a chance of snow. The idea is to put my feet up and do little - very very little. The agenda is to meet old friends, and check off the usual offenders:
1. Fanoos rolls
2. Avatar 3D
3. Gemini Circus
4. Talk to local politicians about the progress with the Metro project
5. Cleanse the city of all pollution
6. And all corruption, while I'm at it

More updates to follow in this post.

Prison Money

A friendly prof. sent me an article about the currency in prison. In the U.S., the old, gold standard - cigarettes, has now been replaced by "macks".

Mackerel fish. A can of the dastardly stuff goes for about $1. Two macks buy you a haircut, 400 macks a cellphone. There's obviously some elasticity in there, compared to the outside world. The prison has a cellphone-to-haircut ratio of 200 and the outside world, a ratio of about 6 (regular haircut, non-smart cellphone).

Explained easily enough:

Long hair, short hair, who cares? ...

The cellphone, OTOH, lets you keep tabs on your drug-peddling , allows cyber conjugal visits, helps plan the escape, etc...

So the currency is macks.

Me, I'd have thought it was simply the £.

Sorry. Prison joke.

No contradictions

Clinton (the Ms. of the Hill-Billie jodi) had strong words for Pakistan during her recent visit there:

Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002,’ Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in the country’s cultural capital, Lahore. ‘I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,’ she added.

Harsh words, blunt words, but she said what many in the US have felt for the last few years.

Pakistan has recently stepped up military offensives against the Taliban in the Waziristan region. And the Taliban has stepped up the bombing. Here's a brilliant link to images of the strife in the country.

Tangled webs we weave
Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, claims Indian sponsorship of this new wave of Taliban attacks. It's difficult for the layman to knock this claim, given India's recent assimilation of embassies in Afghanistan. India is doing great work in Afghanistan, building roads, improving healthcare facilities, etc, but many feel this is part of India's strategy to undermine Pakistan's influence in the region. Perhaps it's all a front to provide the Taliban the means to wreck further destruction in Pakistan. Analogous to Pakistan's (ISI) efforts to build a nexus between Indian insurgent groups (IIGs) and Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh and to install Pakistani maulvis in Bangladeshi madrassas to catalyze anti-India sentiments.

Back to Hillary: She snapped at some students at a University in Lahore as they tried to grill her about how the US has mistreated Pakistan, a long-serving ally.
(paraphrased)"But we've given you billions of dollars".
"If you want to see your territory shrink [by allowing terrorists to expand their space], that’s your choice. But I don’t think that’s the right choice."

But the point of my post is this: The US has indeed given Pakistan billions of dollars. The US will continue to pour money and guns into Pakistan. But the effect on the ground, despite Pakistan's intentions, hasn't been proportional. In fact, the Taliban today are bolder, more aggressive in Pakistan than they have been in a long time. What's the plan to tackle this?

How thoroughly has the U.S. has considered the long-term effects of this supply of gun-money?

What if:

(a) The Taliban gain more ground, and defeat the shaky force that Pakistan's military presents - through building allies in the government, and among the population, through bombing civilian targets till the country grinds to a halt, among several strategies. The U.S.-provided ammunition would fall into hands that would turn, now far more resolutely, against the U.S. themselves.

(b) Pakistan's military is able to defeat the Taliban...The military pledges a feeble allegiance to the government. A new General, a new coup - everything's possible in that neck of the woods. Who's to tell what their policy will be towards the U.S. then?

Essentially, the same machinery that provided arms to the Mujahideen (of which the Taliban was a more fundamentalist subset) to defeat the Soviets, only to have the Taliban come back and strike the U.S. after, is at work again. I hope history does not repeat.

News

The parental units are touring SE Asia.

The brother has them out of his hair, they have him out of theirs. These twin joys will be short-lived though.

In the papers:
There are storms and floods in Southern India. This is a great opportunity to give. Same with the earthquakes in Indonesia and Samoa. I suspect these flash crises receive a fair bit of public aid. The instant destruction tears at your heart, and hopefully loosens purse strings.

Not in the papers:
In India - the slow erosion of human capital (and the silent crumpling of little lives) when underprivileged children escape the quicksand of hard labour to attend school. The schooling is often free, but the children attend school on empty stomachs.

Imagine sending your child hungry to school. It probably hurts you to imagine such a day. You might've been running late, a water pipe might've broken, or for whatever reason, your child missed breakfast that day. You'd hurt. Imagine then that you weren't able to pack her lunch, and she didn't take her little purse, the one you keep the emergency lunch money stuffed in. The poor thing would have to sit through hour after hour of class running on last night's dinner.

Imagine next, a situation where this empty, whimpering stomach isn't an accident - you just aren't able to feed your child. You want her to learn, you want her to build a life better than yours, but you can't afford to feed her one square meal. Perhaps if she helped you till the land, repair the neighbour's clothes, you might have been able to feed her, but then she wouldn't be able to go to school. Your life hasn't amounted to anything, and you're powerless to make your daughter's life any different.

Akshayapatra provides food for underprivileged schoolchildren. Please give.

The night

In my city, there is no real night. There is a general absence of the sun but there is no darkness. Even unlit street corners glow with sound and some new form of filth or unexpected benevolence.

My experiments with the night have been timid. For instance, I've never driven tipsy. Nor have I ever been out wallet-less, post dusk.

And it makes sense, I suppose, because I'm all for retreating into the known and familiar. It gets depressing after a while, always doing the same things, taking every minute precaution. But we take comfort in these depressing minutiae, we, the urban gutless, creatures of routine and monthly checkups at the doctor's and bottled water and safety pins and floor-gazing.

I'd just walked my date back to her place. Beautiful girl. Over dinner, she held forth about some activism she supports vehemently, an indie band she's close to (but not THAT close to) and that new vegan restaurant. I loved it all.

We'd met last week. Friend of a friend. You can't be further separated than that, else it's too arranged. On the other hand, a degree lesser creates an awkward closeness. What's new to talk about? How do you newly touch?

I was under dressed. Sports jacket and trousers, she, backless and stilettos, but the conversation went well. I nodded and smiled all evening.

This was our second date and I was part impatient, part relieved that it wasn't our third, because I'm always nervous about the nightcap when offered.

So after we hastily cheek-pecked at her door, I turned and left, just slightly flushed. I liked her. I realized that, because four steps down, I peek-checked from corner of eye to see if she'd shut the door or if she was still there. I know she was still there. Behind the shut door. Sure of it.

Now I had the night for company. And what a night. All contradictions and whatnots. Noisy on the outside, still within. The hurried footfall of l'etrangers and the much longed for loving loveliness of lovely loves. Still fairly flushed, in case you were wondering.

I got mugged not five minutes later. I wish I'd listened to her - she'd told me to take the money from my wallet and split it between my various pockets.

I was now wallet-less, and out six tenners. I was also ID-less, with my cards and license flitting down the street, cloistered in the cold company of a possibly fake S&W.

It was as good a time as any to feel liberated, so I decided I would. I did my usual happy place exercise - listing my top 5 reasons to be alive (I managed to find three), whistled 'dancing queen', and jigged along the streets.

Update

You'd think the summer would help me churn out posts faster, but I've had grey, very grey exam clouds looming. I'm done with the last of them today, so the Guava man saga will continue, and I'll tie up other loose ends as well.

Hope you've been well. Keep smiling, wherever you are. I can do with the extra sunshine.