1) Amitava Kumar v Salman Rushdie : A literary spat - via
It seems that Rushdie was due to visit Vassar College, where Amitava teaches, and, offended by pieces such as this (Is Salman Rushdie God?), "made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if [Amitava] was involved in his visit.". The sixth comment at the post is by Salman Rushdie himself, who writes that he did not threaten to cancel his visit to Vassar, and merely refused to be on the same stage as him.

2) Salman Rushdie: His life, his work and his religion

In the 17 years since Ayatollah Khomeini passed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the writer's unflinching criticism of the religion into which he was born has never been stifled. Now, as the force of Islamist fury reverberates around the world, the acclaimed Anglo-Asian novelist tells Johann Hari why we're all living under a fatwa now.

3) Since his move to the US and especially since 9-11, Rushdie has taken up the role of being a social commentator* rather than being a novelist (and a sucky one at that for the past decade, me thinks**, despite what he himself thinks (first link is a PTI copy of second link, which is an AP article. Shame!!) --

"Salman Rushdie said Tuesday that he has to struggle more to find the energy to write as he gets older, but he has developed greater control over his writing."

Just last week, he got into trouble by saying this..

In defense of a comment made by the British Leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, who suggested that Muslim women should be forced to remove their veils in his presence, Rushdie said: “[Straw] was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”

Also read more on the veil debate:
So what is your problem, then, Rushdie?
Freedom dressed up

I can see why Blair backs Straw's comments but why did Rushdie have to offer any opinion? I suppose with his writing going down the tube, he still wants to continue to be in the limelight and so wants to continue to create sparks on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to the fatwa, people keep asking him for his opinion in today's day and age of intolerance & fight-back against the fundamentalist Islamists.

Little mercies - good to know he still supports Indian Muslims 'because they are not as radicalized'. (Sarcasm)

* some examples:
Rushdie urges Muslim engagement with West
Rushdie says terror is glamour
Rushdie 'feels sorry' for Pope
Intimidating the West, From Rushdie to Benedict

**I had written this elsewhere ..

Rushdie has failed to capture his magic from the 80s in the 90s! Padmalaxmi as his Muse, seems to have only made it worse - I found 'The Fury' to be unreadable! 'Ground beneath her feet' was enjoyable initially but I didn't finish it - probably should give it a second try! This year, Rushdie will come out with his latest novel, Shalimar the Clown

4) For the time being, it looks like he has taken up the position of professor at Emory University in Atlanta and has sold his personal archive, including two unpublished novels, to the University.

The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the previous poet laureate, for a reported 600,000 dollars. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for 200,000 dollars. The two unpublished novels - The Antagonist, influenced by Thomas Pynchon, the American writer, and The Book of Peer - were written by Rushdie in the 1970s. 59-year-old Rushdie said his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid."

Apparently, the Brits have got their panties in a bunch about losing their heritage to foreign universities...since when did Salman become British heritage! ;)

(I wonder if the decision to leave NYC is related to the rumored split with Padmalakshmi. Guess not - seems, no 'splitsville' though she does find him 'complicated' and praises Sean Bean's kissing. Ok..this is not a tabloid. I'd better stop because he supposedly will come after you with a baseball bat if you ever write mean things about his wife :))

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Not Rushdie-related but kinda related links
Faith, riots and (un)reason
Fatwa on freedom

Daily Show host Jon Stewart dispelled rumors of a Presidential run as "a real sign of how sad people are" with the state of affairs in the country. Nothing says 'I am ashamed of you my government' more than 'Stewart/Colbert '08.

Anna Politkovskaya, courageous journalist and critic of the Putin administration's brutal war of crimes in Chechnya, was shot dead at her apartment building earlier this week.

Vilhelm Konnander writes about Anna Politkovskaya murder and Vladimir Putin’s silence:

“The fact remains: When Russia’s “first journalist” is silenced, Russia’s “first person” stays silent. No word from Putin, no word from the Kremlin when the freedom of the press is trampled on by brutal suppression. The tacit message thus sent, resounds with piercing echo: Freedom of speech has no place in Putin’s Russia.”

White Sun of the Desert writes that Politkovskaya’s “death is a tragedy for Russia. If somehow the government was involved, it represents a disaster.”

Analysis: The assassination of Anna Politkovskaya is designed to warn others against exposing the abuses of Moscow's authoritarian nationalist drift

Chechnya: Articles by Anna Politkovskaya

"Russia's Secret Heroes", an excerpt from A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya.

Red October:Killing the Truth in Moscow

Edward Lucas posts the Economist’s obituary.

A Step At A Time translates an earlier interview with Anna Politkovskaya’s editor, Dmitry Muratov.

The Accidental Russophile compiles links on the tragic event; La Russophobe accuses him of “an early attack” on the murdered journalist.

A quick history recap perhaps is appropriate here:

First Chechen War (1994-96)
Second Chechen War (1999- present)

And earlier in September, Andrey Kozlov, the top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank was shot dead, allegedly because of his efforts to clean up the country's banking system by closing banks that were involved in money laundering. Kozlov, in the late 90s, was responsible for saving Russia from financial ruin.

Meanwhile, a report says that there have been 655,000 deaths in Iraq since the US invasion of the country...all I can say is..

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" - 1 Corinthians 15:55

Earlier this week, the 2006 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Andrew Fire of Stanford University and Craig Mello at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, for groundbreaking discovery in silencing genes. Called RNA interference, it occurs in plants, animals and people and is important for regulating gene activity and helping defend against viruses. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction or inactivation of the messenger RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.

Amazing that the prize has been awarded to researchers just 8-9 years after their discovery!

But it's appropriate, said Bruce Stillman, president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., because the work ''is recognized now as one of the really revolutionary changes in the way we think about how genes are controlled.''

Apparently, this discovery has spawned a niche biotechnology industry almost immediately after its discovery in 1997. And earlier this week, I also read about a related research study

Scientists stop colon cancer growth in mice by blocking just one enzyme
Texas researchers have discovered what may become a potent new weapon in the fight against colon cancer. In cell culture experiments, scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the University of Texas at Arlington determined that stopping the activity of a single enzyme called aldose reductase could shut down the toxic network of biochemical signals that promotes inflammation and colon cancer cell growth.

And today the Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to Roger Kornberg, the son of a Nobel laureate, for describing gene copying in cells, which can give insight into illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. The process of gene copying, known as "genetic transcription" is central to life.

"If transcription stops, genetic information is no longer transferred into the
different parts of the body. Since these are then no longer renewed, the
organism dies within a few days," the Academy said. Disturbances in
transcription contribute to many human illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease
and various kinds of inflammation, it added. Poisonous toadstools kill by
interrupting the process. Understanding transcription is also important for the
development of various therapeutic applications of stem cells, the Academy said.
Kornberg was the first to create pictures showing transcription in action. His
depictions were so detailed that separate atoms could be distinguished.

I have writen on the topic of happiness some time back, but this week I picked up a really interesting book at the library - Happiness - A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard. I'll read the book soon but reading the book flap and praise for the book by others made me want to blog about it.

Matthieu Ricard, is son of the famous French philosopher, Jean-François Revel (who died earlier this year) & Yahne Le Toumelin, a contemparary French painter and later Buddhist nun herself. After or while completing his Ph.D. at the Institut Pasteur under the Nobel laureate, Francois Jacob, in the then upcoming field of molecular genetics, Matthieu undertooktook a trip to India in 1967, which changed the course of his life, leading him to "a future in which seeking inner happiness took precedence over all other pursuits." Since then, for the past 35 years, he has spent his life residing at the Shechen monastery near Kathmandu in Nepal as a Buddhist monk, working on various humanitarian projects in Tibet and Nepal.

Here is an excerpt from the book flap:

"In the book, 'he makes a passionate case for happiness as a goal that deserves at least as much energy as any other in our lives. Wealth? Fitness? Career success? How can we possibly place these above true and last well-being? Drawing from works of fiction and poetry, contemporary Western philosophy, Buddhist thought, current psychological and scientific research, and personal experience, Ricard weaves an inspirational and forward-looking account of how we can begin to rethink our realities in a fast-moving modern world."

A chapter excerpt can be read here. And here are some gems from blurbs with praise for the book!

"Happiness is to be found in controlling the mind, not circumstances." - Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, winner of Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for "having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty." (Aside: read this interview with Kahneman)

"You may not find happiness in a book, but if reading a book can precipitate a tectonic shift in your life and mind toward robust, genuine, deeply rooted happiness, this would be the book." - Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to our senses

"..how preoccupation with the self leads to the detrimental urges, thoughts, and feelings that present barriers to genuine liberation." - Aaron Beck, MD, author of Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, 1976.

"...to change the individual is also, ultimately, to change the world." - George Soros

Wow.. me thinks much happiness may come by reading the book! I hope to update with a review of book after I read it... (Disclaimer: I've promised book reviews before and not delivered!)... but in the meantime read this review and reader's responses at the amazon.com link to the book. Better still - read the book itself! ;)

Note: Per Wired magazine, in 2002 "Dr. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin and a conference presenter, used an fMRI machine to map the brain of monk Matthieu Ricard. While Ricard, a monk with over 30 years' experience in contemplative practice, engaged in what Buddhists call compassion meditation, Davidson measured the activity in his brain. The pictures showed excessive activity in the left prefrontal cortex (just inside the forehead) of Ricard's brain."

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Related Links:

1. A blog post on The Art of Happiness by Vikram Karve
2. Columns and articles by Matthieu Ricard via Beliefnet.com
3. Mind Over Matter: At the Eighth Mind and Life Conference, the Dalai Lama and Western scientists debate the true nature of negative emotions
4. State of Disunion: China's stranglehold onTibet tightens, even as dissenters in Beijing call for negotiation.
5. Pilgrimage to the Diamond Throne: Tens of thousands of Buddhists recently traveled to Bodhgaya to hear the Dalai Lama speak on compassion.
6. This book by Ricard's philosopher father may also make for interesting reading: The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life by Jean-Francois Revel
   

Look who has weaseled his way onto the New York's Post's famous gossip column Page 6 today (hmm...gossip-time... he and RM dont get along, huh!) .... - via

Unbelievable... A Belgian embassy official in Delhi allegedly got involved in an affair with her driver - who later killed her!! Even a Bollywood movie director couldn’t have thought of this... Life is stranger than art!

A Belgian embassy official was brutally murdered on Saturday night at Vasant Vihar, part of Delhi's posh diplomatic enclave. The police have now arrested the suspect, the murdered woman's driver – and are hinting that it was a crime of passion. The Belgian embassy already seems to be distancing itself from the incident. Belgian Embassy Spokesperson Jean Lee Villet says, “She had nothing to do with the embassy. She came here on an official passport and not on a diplomatic one."


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And an old fashioned sex scandal from the UK :)

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Today, I heard a song called Amy (hear a 1 minute excerpt here from a previous release) by Kante Manfila, a Guinean born guitarist from Mali, on Andy Kershaw's program on BBC Radio (song was on the Sep 10th playlist.. the link is updated every week and so after next week, you will not see the list I heard today.)

The reason to highlight the song is not because I love music from Africa (read my post about Farka Toure's guitar playing) but because the song is part of a new release, 'Various: West Africa Unwired', which is part of the Think Global label from the World Music Network ..

..that combines the ideals of reducing poverty, defending human rights and protecting the environment with superb collections of cutting edge music from around the world. In partnership with Amnesty International and Oxfam, all Think Global releases will use a novel type of packaging – using only 100% recycled card with no plastic tray or plastic jewel case.

For information on music from West Africa, see the following wikipedia links for music from Benin - Burkina Faso - Chad - Côte d'Ivoire - Gambia - Ghana - Guinea - Guinea-BissauLiberia - Mali - Mauritania - Niger - Nigeria - Senegal - Sierra Leone - Togo and Western Sahara.

You can also read, "West Africa's Musical Powerhouse" by Lucy Duran, in Rough Guide to World Music Volume One (Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, James McConnachie, James and Orla Duane (Ed.), pp 539-562, 2000.)

Also see this great video - Gobissa and Child, See the Rider by Markus James.

Enlisting the brilliant support of Hassi Sare (njarka violin, vocals), Solo Sidibe (kamele n'goni, vocals), and Hamma Sankare (calabash, vocals), James creates a beautiful music video about the contrast of life in the dessert and life speeding up in the modern world and how life could be over at anytime. The music video was filmed in the sand dunes and villages in and around Timbuktu, Mali.

Celebrating R. K. Narayan, on the occasion of his 100th anniversary is Jhumpa Lahiri* through this article, Narayan Days.


* Read this Jhumpa Lahiri short story in New Yorker magazine from May 2006. An overview of her literature is here. I have enjoyed Lahiri's short stories far more than anything I have read from other Indian-origin authors who reside in the US...only because she did not make a big deal of mixed culturual identities (she writes equally well about both Indian and American personas and a good short story is exactly that - a good story about people!)...or so I thought until I just researched (or to use the right verb, googled) and found articles in the WSJ and Newsweek where Lahiri talks about her hyphenated existence and about the "intense pressure to be at once 'loyal to the old world and fluent in the new.'" Blaah...wonder if the media makes a big deal out of the author's mixed identities across two nations, two cultures, and worst still...the immigrant experience, every time they encounter an author of Indian origin or whether they do so only because Indian authors (Many thanks, Bharati Mukherjee & Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni!!) have made multi-culturism and the immigrant experience their only selling point over the years. Its probably a little of both - a chicken and egg problem of sorts ...


Anyways, back to RK or Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami... who was essentially the first Indian writer in English to become famous outside of India* too. Tagore precedes him but I consider him more a poet than a writer and more of his work was in Bengali than in English. Appropriately, RK Narayan is one of the early chapters in a recent book I read (read only about 60% of it) - Modern South Asian Literature in English by Paul Brians, part of the Series Literature as Windows to World Cultures. (Brians is a Professor of English at Washington State University, Pullman. He also maintains a webpage on Common English errors, has a page on Resources for study of World Civilizations, and The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota)

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* For example, see:
- Tribute from VS Naipual in Time magazine. (wow..he has a good word to say about someone!!)
- Pankaj Mishra discusses his work in the New York Review of Books.
- The life of RK Narayan in California Literary Review
- Obituary in New York Times
- Paul Brian's World Literature in English list has a study guide to RK's The Guide

but here is someone (Shashi Tharoor) who is not a fan!

Other Links:
- Vendor of treats - a tribute to RK Narayan
- A friend remembers RK.
- Another friend reminisces

My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes by Lila Azam Zanganeh

http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/lila_azam_zanganeh

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/iran/zanganla.htm

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200604/20060414.html

Lila Azam Zanganeh discusses Giorgio Fabre's new book about the relations between Hitler and Mussolini

Lila Azam Zanganeh, in the NYT (Nov. 7, 2004)

- 7 / 22 / 06

10 years ago, I would be listening to classical music all the time. These days it is jazz (and occasionally blues) .. listening to it incessantly on the internet for the most part - my favorite shows being Jazz with Mell Hill on BBC Radio and WWOZ.org straight from New Orleans.

But driving back from running some errands today, I was taken back to those times remembering a past joy.. (for listening to classical music has now become a past fad, the possesion of 100+ CDs from those days notwithstanding!) ... when I heard two great performances today on WGBH.org public radio

1) Ravel: Tzigane played by Dmitri Torchinsky on violin and Daniel del Pino on piano.

2) Paganini's 'Introduction, theme & variations on Paisiello's "Nel cor più"' played by Romanian violinist Eugen at the Newport Music Festival, which took place this year from July 7–23.

Pakistani cricketer, Wasim Raja dies from a heart attack while playing cricket
Obituary - The good die young Dileep Premachandran - Cross-border hero Gideon Haigh - A breathtaking strokeplayer

Veteran filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee, feted with the Dadasaheb Phalke award and Padma Vibhushan, and director of several Hindi movies that continue to be enjoyed by me time and again, including Anand, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, and other classics like Abhimaan and Khubsoorat, died at age 84 at the Leelavati hospital in Mumbai after a fight with a series of illnesses recently. His last work was Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate starring Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla, released in 1998....which I have not seen. Other fans pay tribute here..

Apparently, Geysers spewing sand and dust hundreds of feet into the "air" have been discovered on Mars. Images from a camera orbiting Mars on the Mars Odyssey probe have shown the 100mph jets of carbon dioxide erupt through ice at the planet's south pole.The geyser debris leaves dark spots, fan-like markings and spider-shaped features on the ice cap. The scientists said geysers erupted when sunlight warming the ice turned frozen carbon dioxide underground into high-pressure gas.

(In a bizzare coincidence, I saw a documentary on Science Channel yesterday on the 'killer lakes' of Africa - where a huge cloud of CO2 emanated from the bottom of the lake and killed 1800+ people around Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. Had never heard of this huge tragedy before and moreso also that such a thing was possible on earth! Interesting how scientists went about deciphering what happened and also how to degass the lakes to prevent future disasters - although per this 2005 article, efforts to prevent the release of deadly clouds of toxic gas from two African lakes appear to be failing.)

Perusing through a list of people who died in 2006 on wikipedia (no..no morbid fascination about death - just happened to reach that page after reading the wiki entry on Bismillah Khan)..and read about 3 deaths in the last 4 days of July ...

1. Akbar Mohammadi - 34, Iranian student dissident, heart attack following a hunger strike and torture.
2. Sunil Kumar, 34, Bhopal disaster campaigner against Union Carbide and founder of Children Against Carbide, found hanged.
3. Jessie Gilbert, 19, British chess player, youngest Women's World Amateur Championship winner, fall.

I had not read about their deaths nor even ever heard of these 3 people ever until today and still rue their loss today - perhaps more than I mourn the loss of a maestro like Bismillah Khan.

Update: Confused writes about how life can be a bitch!

David Grossman is one of Israel’s foremost novelists and peace activists.He is perhaps best known for his 1987 novel Yellow Wind. Though, he was initially supportive of the Israel-Lebanon war, recently he came out strongly against the 11th minute expansion of the ground war. Israel has pushed thousands of troops in the last days of war to score some brownie points against the Hezbollah before the ceasefire set in. One of them was Grossman’s 20 year old son Staff Sgt. Uri Grossman. Grossman’s opposition to expansion of the war was prescient. Today, on the last day of war, his son was killed in Lebanon.

Note: "Death be not proud" is a reference to the famous poet, John Donne's poem by the same name.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

More quotes from his work here.