shahana

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:25:00 +0000

the Efficacy of Pizza in curing Dengue

is something that needs to be researched. It seems to have worked wonders on the brother of mine. Perhaps we should try it on my poor old antique dog as well...

And speaking of old stuff (I seem to be mired in it), valiant and concentrated work continues on this topic. The question of the moment - why bother to keep old stuff? Throw it away. Demolish everything. Make new stuff. Its a valid point. And, in fact, conservation architects seem to demolish more than normal ones. I mean most architects just start with a blank slate, conservation folks usually start with some selective demolition.

So about this selective demolition-ing.

Who decides

what to remove,

what to keep,

what is pretty,

what is useful,

what is pretty useful, prettily useful, usefully pretty, neither pretty nor useful

Artistic, aesthetic and frequently historical values are highly subjective stuff. But of course the fact of the matter is that age gives an artefact value that cannot be argued with. Antiquity makes it indifferent to praise and criticism from us, trying to place a value on it today. Its value at the time of its creation could have been something very different. Who knows really?

Ever read The Picture of Dorian Grey? Oscar Wilde writes in it, 'the one charm of the past is that it is the past.' So that's putting it clearly. It is valuable because it is old. However, considering the fate of the unfortunate Mr. Grey, perhaps what he meant was that one should leave the past alone. The charm lies in the fact that it has already happened. Its done. Its gone.

So what to do?

photograph it and demolish it?

preserve whats left of its charm from a bygone era?

actively recapture its charm from a bygone era?

or do what we indians do best - figure out how this bygone era charm stuff is going to make us rich.

Next up: Making money off bygone eras.......

But before that I'm going to feed some modern day pizza to my historical artefact doggie. She's neither pretty nor useful. But she's absolutely got ALL her charm. Sometimes one keeps old stuff just because one wants to, you know. No rationale no logic no reason no shit. Reading for this week - The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:20:00 +0000

More adventures wiv Mouse

very very dead Mouse.

Yeah the semi-electrocuted Mouse shuffled off its mortal coil thing recently... thank god! It had been creeping around with glazed eyes in a half-dead mousey-zombie fashion for ages. And then next I know, there's this AWFUL smell in my room

That's the problem with Dying Mouse. Eventually it is Dead Mouse. And it chooses mouse-like places to die like behind cupboards, under desks etc. One doesn't ever notice or come across a dead mouse. One is alerted to it by the whiffy odour that emanates from some inaccessible corner of the room.

So after moving loads of furniture around - the corpse was located and duly chalk outlined. Actually that's not true. Mouse had died in a particular gruesome manner. So gruesome, I couldn't bear to go anywhere near it. It was lying in a huge puddle of coagulated blood, bloody entrails leaking out of its body, body soft and deflated and decomposing, decomposed limbs hanging loosely, gnawed on perhaps by a fellow mouse..........I nearly threw up.

Then picked up a pillow and evacuated to a couch in the living room for the night. I can catch, pick up, pin and dissect live mice. But the smell of a dead one makes me whimper and run away yelping with my tail between my legs.

Well at least its dead.

One down and four to go

On a happier note, Arsenal's been doing alright - wins against Birmingham City 3-1, Blackburn 6-1. In fact Arsenal's won all their Premier League matches except for THAT absolutely DISASTROUS trip to Manchester. Captain Cesc's been out of commission with serious family problems but apparently they won't affect his club fixtures.

Speaking of serious family problems, my poor little brother has Dengue fever. Well he isn't so little. But he was in hospital last weekend and has been running fever like 101-102 deg Fahrenheit for a week now. What's that? 38-39 deg Celsius? I don't know. A LOT. His lips are all blistered and dry and his cheeks look sunburned. But his platelet count isn't falling fast enough that he needs to get re-admitted to hospital. Of course, if it does start falling fast enough - he'll need blood transfusions ASAP. So all he can do is have water and paracetamol.

Bah paracetamol.......there's got to be something stronger!

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:44:00 +0000

mouse

in the house

doom

in my room

on menu - internet cable

the legs of my table

the mains after appetiser

some choice electrical wire

electrocution!

its in shock

no its recovered

and run off

ah well, c'est la vie

BUT hopefully lets see

next time mousey may not be

just quite so lucky

Clearly my poem was inspired by real life events and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It is just these little metaphysical occurrences of everyday life that inspire me to poetry. It also inspires me to other stuff. Every time I see the cute little thing now, a fit of homicidal mania overtakes me and I ACHE for a poisoned harpoon that I can spear it with. If it had stuck to chewing on the woodwork, I may have been more understanding. But the internet cable......my tolerance only stretches that far.

Anyway this is just part of my ongoing travails with wildlife. A recent trip to Shimla was like a sort of Horror movie meets Sci-Fi fantasy meets Discovery channel. The name of the movie would be

Invasion of the Plastic Snatchers - The Environment Strikes Back!

Shimla and, in fact, the entire state of Himachal Pradesh (and for all I know the entire Himalayas) is infested with a breed of particularly vicious, aggressive, greedy Kleptomaniacal monkeys. They love us humans, primarily as a source of food. The clever little monstrous beasts have recognised the fact that humans carry food around in plastic bags. SO if you're out and about in the hills with a plastic bag (even if it just has some dirty old socks in it like mine had) - you WILL be attacked. They WILL nonchalantly walk upto you, grab your bag from your hands, examine it and casually keep what they like while tossing the rest over the steepest mountainside.

Farewell Old Socks.

Any attempt at retrieval or retaliation on your part will have the monkeys advance towards you baring their teeth and claws. Make no mistake. They can and do bite. Then its off to the hospital for some anti-rabies needle fun.

But like I said this is Mother Nature working her wonders in mysterious ways. Plastic bags are the bane of the environment. They are not bio-degradable, they clog water bodies/rivers/streams, cause wildlife to choke, are generally carcinogenic to the poor goats and cows that eat them - AND most importantly, enormously ugly to look at. It is the single worst visual pollutant of the countryside. Why countryside! Any side! Seaside, Urbanside, Ruralside, you name it.

And now the environment fights back. Through its chosen ones - The Marauding Monkeys! Fear of these beasts is going to force people to stop using plastic bags. Mark my words - this will single-handedly do more for reducing plastic pollution than any state ban can ever do.

But eco-friendly as I am - I still hate those monkeys. And mice. And while I'm on a rant - pigeons.

God, I hate pigeons!

Wanted: One Poison Harpoon. Any shape or Size. Instruction Manual to be included.

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:24:00 +0000

Ok, Enough of this

misty green warm nostalgic fuzzy feeling shit. The party's over. I don't like it anymore. Its been raining since day before yesterday night and I'm sick of it. Traffic jams and chaos on the roads. The weekend's here and I don't want to be indoors waiting for it to stop pouring.

I've learnt a new word today. From Singapore. Yes lah, its 'shiok'. The Mutton Rogan Josh I had yesterday was Damn Shiok!

It warmed the cockles of my heart

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Its been raining all day....

and the forest behind my house looks lovely - misty and green. Its called the Jahanpanah City Forest (!). It's interesting this concept of a 'City Forest'. From what I can make out there isn't much forestlike bio-diversity, most of the trees are local thorny Babul (Acacia) - nothing particularly pretty or interesting .....or useful......except for the much needed green cover it provides to Delhi.

I like working indoors when its raining outside. I'm reminded of when I was studying for my Xth Board Prelims in Jan '95 when it rained a lot and was freezing and I was snug in my huge purple Razai trying to memorize Sanskrit Shabd & Dhaatu Roops.

For the Shabd (noun) conjugation of Man (Nar), the first lines go

Nar(uh) Nar(auh) Nar(aaah)

Nar(um) Nar(oh) Nar(aan)

Nar(en) Nar(abhyam) Nar(ebhyee)

forgot the rest (there's another 4 or 5 lines of noun conjugation in Sanskrit)

Somehow rain in London never put me in any sort of similar mood....except a sort of generally disgruntled grey one. But even that mood got muted due to overuse. One can't really get dramatically and violently disgruntled every day.

My brother met Gautam Gambhir at work on Monday, played cricket with him, got his autograph ... and hasn't touched earth since. Unfortunately I've been out of the country so long, I can't recognise the newer people on the Indian cricket team including Gambhir. So while I've been supportive to him in his joy, I haven't been able to work up quite that level of enthusiasm as perhaps I'd have for Tendulkar or someone.

And as I take root and feel the tendrils curl up between my fingers and wind themselves around my laptop binding me to it forever, I work tap-tap-tapping into eternity....and feel everything vanish. Has cricket restarted? Is India playing somewhere? What's up with Arsenal? Does Afghanistan really have a new president? Did Samoa really switch from American left-hand-drive to Aussie right-hand-drive? Is a South-African pigeon carrying a data stick really 96% faster than South African ADSL broadband?

And most importantly,

Did I really fall so sick because I quit drinking vodka?

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:10:00 +0000

Some recycled poetry....

from me. To explain my absence from the blog yet again.

one lung withered shrivelled grey

one lung a mucusy miasma

lovely weather in delhi, a perfect monsoony day

but of course i have the bloody asthma.......

I think its a bit more than asthma this time. It seems to have evolved out of flu and then mutated into something quite nasty. Anyway at least the fever's gone down, the headache's eased up. Now the only issue is the breathing thing. Or lack thereof.

Anyway I see my last post was about the Onam meal that I had. I discovered Kozhambu (the zh is pronounced as an 'r' rolling it out from the back of the mouth) is Tamil and not from Kerala. However there was a very spicy Imli (Tamarind) chutney that I pretended was the same and treated with equal love. There was Payasam which is a sweetened milk dessert. In fact there were two versions! One was with rice, sort of similar to the Arroz con Leche that I believe is common in Latin America. And the other one was with Vietnamese Jackfruit! Awesome

I love Jackfruit. I loved it ripe and sweet with sticky rice that we had in Bangkok and Penang. And I love it raw and cooked like in the Bengali style. But its one of those foods you know - people either love it or hate it. And when I say hate it, I mean it makes them feel like throwing up. Ripe Jackfruit (like its nefarious cousin, the Durian) has a unique smell that some people (like me) find ok and some other people (like my mother) find absolutely vile, repulsive and vomit-inducing. If you are intrigued, I suggest you rush out to your nearest oriental/ Chinese/ South-east Asian grocer and get a whiff of either Jackfruit or Durian.......and then we shall know which camp you belong to.

Incidentally, it is for this very reason, that carrying Durian on public transport is a fine-able offence in Singapore and I think they're trying to ban it in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur as well. If they haven't already.

There are ten million pictures of both the Durian and the Jackfruit on the web so I won't bother copying those pics here. My only gripe is that most of those photos show no human scale. A fully grown Jackfruit is HUGE. One needs both hands to carry it like a baby.

Yesterday being unable to sleep, I switched on the TV and watched a few minutes of a movie called

Scary Movie

Part 3 (?!)

with Pamela Anderson playing a schoolgirl (??!!)

Dubbed in Hindi (?????????????!)

Fascinating as it was, I had to switch it off after a bit because it was making my headache worse and I'd started convulsing and frothing at the mouth. But some day I will see it in its entirety. When I am healthy and whole and FULLY PREPARED for it.

Will now push off and take some medicine or something to kick-start the breathing process again. I last took a breath about 3.5 hours ago and it really is time for another one.

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:24:00 +0000

My heart is broken....

Arsenal lost to ManU last Saturday.

But we were winning first. Before goalie Almunia made a mistake and let Rooney score.

And then Mr. Abou Diaby made an even bigger mistake - A SELF-GOAL! CATASTROPHE!

And Wenger got so mad later with a disqualified goal that he was made to leave the technical area.

And Arshavin tore something during the match and is injured now.

awful

BUT at least Arsenal lost because of Arsenal's mistakes and not because ManU was any good. These mistakes are permissible at the start of the season so stuff can be sorted for later.

I just wish they weren't happening against bloody ManU!

The week just started so badly. First this Arsenal thing. Then yesterday we discovered that my dog has a cancerous tumour that is inoperable. She's 15 years old, that is 105 human years old......just too fragile to operate upon. So we're basically going to just sit here and watch her suffer until she dies

Its one bad news after another.

Anyway

For everyone who's celebrating - Happy Onam!!

Onam is the biggest festival in the state of Kerala - a Harvest festival and a celebration of the golden age of Mahabali, the mythical Asura King who comes up from Patala (the underworld) once a year at this time to revisit his kingdom in Kerala. Also the time for the famous Snake Boat race in Kerala.

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.......again........ I really do need to start clicking)

I'm having a traditional Onam lunch at my friend's place. I guess on a banana leaf as is usual. Normally it involves huge amounts of aviyal coconut milk stew and pachadi (raita) and sambar and rasam and kozhambu (wait is that from kerala? or tamil?) and rice and chutney and mango pickle and paapad and steamed plantains and dessert - maybe payasam?

Watch this space....

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:07:00 +0000

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain..

...except death and taxes."

Benjamin Franklin (1705 - 1790)

On Monday evening my grandmother passed away. She was my last surviving grandparent, and even though she'd been ill and bedridden for many years - it was still a huge shock. The pic below is of her and my grandfather shortly after they got married. That was sometime in the 1940's I believe. I bear a strong family resemblance to her as does my mother; although when I was at her age in this pic, I weighed about 100 kilos more.

So CLEARLY, this Blogging business has yet to become a habit since its been a week since I last wrote - and I was hoping to post every day. So I'd just like to give a big thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments - on the website and by email.

Hi to Eltee, hope you're writing down all your ideas. Also thank you very much to the Anonymous reader who let me know that the Qawwali is on Thursday and not Friday. Hello hello to the Duck Designer. And thank you Mr.Stamina for letting me know that I'm a 1000 times funnier in writing than I am talking. :) I'll just take that as a compliment. For those who don't find my writing very amusing, you can now accurately and mathematically guess the humour quotient within my conversation.

Anyway, now that I know at least 5 people have read or (hopefully) are still reading, I shall become incentivised or incentivated or whatever ....... and post more regularly.

Also part of the busy week, I start work on Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar in Punjab. Also known as the Golden Temple and one of the holiest sites (if not the holiest site) for the Sikhs. More on that as and when I start work. Didn't want to lamely leave you with another picture from Wikimedia Commons as I have been doing. I hope to post some of my own, if and when I visit Amritsar. Until then wiki it.

I sat down yesterday to watch some TV. To get my mind of things (kno' wha' I meen???!). Of course, it never works. And the effort was absolutely DOOMED to failure because the first movie that came on was 'Pretty Woman'. Anyone who's read my previous post on the subject will know about my extreme love for romantic comedies.

After a bit more flipping and surfing, I found 'Hitch' with Will Smith and Eva Mendes.

Then I proceeded to take a huge hammer and battered the TV to death. Some things just cannot be tolerated. And I don't care if that is domestic abuse.

I did see a very nice Hinglish movie this weekend called DevD. Hinglish is the urban Hindi-English mix thats commonly spoken in Delhi and Mumbai. Also look up Chin-jabi which is Chinese cuisine in the Punjabi style. Well it owes very little to China except the very heavy and cloying presence of Soy Sauce. Good stuff.

So there was a heavy dose of Punjab in this movie 'DevD' - which was a quirky re-working of Devdas, the classic tale of the tragic lover who drowns his sorrow in wine, women and song. And pines away for his lost love. And basically just Dies. Which is what all tragic spurned lovers should do really instead of moping about so much.

DevD is a quirky enough new version that I hesitate to label Bollywood. And the quirkiness sort of did away with the tragic ending with no loss. Also it had a lot of Delhi in it. The schoolgirl MMS scandal, the incidence of the BMW running over the pavement dwellers, delicious momos et al.

Of course almost anything would be an improvement over the previous version of Devdas. Why does Shah Rukh Khan still exist? Why has he not been recognized for the great big HAM that he is, sliced, shrink-wrapped and sold. Bah

Again for all the non-believers out there

Portsmouth 1 - Arsenal 4

and what, you may ask, doth happen with the Champions League

Celtic 1 - Arsenal 3

Awesomeness.

This was their return match at the Emirates. If you remember the Gunners won the first leg too. Lovely stuff...... EXCEPT.....coming Saturday is the match against Manchester United which is not going to be quite so easy methinks.

Thanks to my most lovely friend Shel, I was fortunate enough to see ManU play Pompey (thats Portsmouth) at Old Trafford last season. Portsmouth had the wee little Peter Crouch then. Of course ManU won 2-0 but it wasn't a very convincing victory. Slightly more convincing than ole Cristiano's histrionics though....

Anyway I leave you with the shortest novel in the world (and a fairly sad one too) -

"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

Thats it. Thats the novel. Its by Ernest Hemingway. It took me a few days to complete it but I must say I enjoyed it very much. Ironically people have been using it to justify the complete mindless babble that is Twitter. They say that 140 characters is enough to express one's most profound thoughts.

Only if you're Hemingway, mate.

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noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Romance can kill you

Candle lit dinners cause cancer.

I read it on the BBC.

The other thing that can kill you are romantic movies. The most disgusting misogynistic unfunny puke-making one I ever saw (and there have been lots) was the one that had Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore playing divorce lawyers. I'd rather someone stick a couple of red-hot pokers into my eyeballs than ever watch that one again.....

I have a treadmill in the north-eastern corner of my room. It stands there all day and looks at me. I hear its pleading voice. Walk on me, it says, Run Run Run. USE ME. I pretend I can't hear it. I avert my gaze. I ignore.

However yesterday, I succumbed. And today again.

I walked on it. I USED it.

A funny thing though. The monitor told me, as I walked faster and faster, that my pulse DROPPED from 82 to 51. I'm no expert, but isnt it supposed to rise with exercise? Anyway after about half an hour of walking (and getting nowhere) I was feeling faint. So I stopped and did the crossword.

Which was so exciting, my pulse rose and came back to normal.....

Mental

INTACH has started a new heritage walk through the Nizamuddin area of Delhi. This is an urban village and a really historic one. However I think I may go for the Shan-e-Nizam walk instead because they seem to be organised by the locals. Nizamuddin has the dargahs (tombs) of several Sufi saints and is named after the most famous one, Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. He's the guy who said - Dilli Door Ast (Delhi is still far) when he heard news of a conquering army on its way to Delhi. He prophesied well.... the army never reached.

To give you an idea of how old this settlement is, Nizamuddin lived during the time of the Delhi sultanate (i.e. pre-Mughal) and died in 1325 A.D. The present tomb one can see there dates to 1562 A.D.

Anyway, they have a 700 year old Baoli (step-well) there which was recently conserved and revitalised by the Aga Khan Foundation & the Archaeological Survey of India. Somehow the spring that feeds the well never got choked by all the garbage. When I go, I'll take a picture and post it on here. Until then, this pic is of another Baoli in Delhi in the nearby Purana Qila (Old Fort). Just for people reading to get the concept of what a Step-well is. At the bottom of all the steps is the actual well full of water.

Fridays I guess is the day to go explore Nizamuddin because they have Qawwali after the prayers. A Qawwali is a genre of music originating from the Sufi tradition and lies somewhere between folk and classical music. To me (and I'm no expert for sure), the singers appear to follow a question & answer format or an argument & rebuttal one as they debate and discuss matters of life and faith. Its really rousing stuff and the one at the Nizamuddin basti (village) would be every Qawwali lovers dream performance.....

If they were ever able to find the place the performances are held! The basti is a confusing winding maze of lanes and shops which is the reason I want go for that heritage walk.

But only when the weather improves.

Notes: Images are not mine but from Wikimedia Commons. I've seen both places years ago but never carried a camera. I hope to go for both the walk and the Qawwali sometime at the end of September or early October when the weather in Delhi is more suitable for outdoor activities. Yes I believe the Qawwali is outdoors, I'm imagining in one of the Dargah courtyards perhaps? Drop me a line if you'd like to join. I will probably take my parents who like this stuff as much as I do.

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:27:00 +0000

I don't think anyone

is reading this blog. But I'm going to try and write on it every day anyway, just to see if I can. To see if a person has something to write about every single day of their life!

Well that comment about how I managed to mis-spell every single Turkish word in my posts on the similarities between Turkish and Hindi. I think the idea (then....I can't completely remember what happened in that raki-saturated period 2 years ago!!!), the idea was to spell the words phonetically in English so that any Hindi-speaking friends I had would be able to recognise the word. However since the Turkish and English script is very very very similar, it just looked like I got everything wrong.

Hell maybe I did get everything wrong. Maybe I WAS actually trying to type it in Turkish and just screwed every single word up.......we'll never know. Its going to remain one of those unsoved mysteries.

Also I doubt any Hindi-speaking friends ever bothered reading it :(

I've started on my happy birthday stash :). Presently midway through The Ragazzi by Pasolini translated from the Italian. In the words of the immortal McD's - i'm lovin' it. I think I have a weakness for fictional books set in historical times regardless of genre. My favourite detective novel might be The Name of the Rose by Eco. Another one translated from the Italian. Hmmmm....maybe I just have a weakness for Italian

Or maybe not

In other news,

Celtic 0 - Arsenal 2

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:42:00 +0000

The Ultimate Duck

lives in Nehru Place, New Delhi. Also known as the Baha'i Mandir or the Lotus Temple. This place is exactly what its name says it is. Its a HUGE LOTUS and its a TEMPLE. You're supposed to go inside this humongous lotus and pray. That's what it is. Not an abstraction, not a concept, neither the spatial quality nor geometric principles inspired by a lotus. Nope, the whole thing JUST IS a lotus. Which reminds me of what Robert Venturi said about all buildings being either a Duck or a Decorated Shed. Well this is the Ultimate Duck.

And the whole of Gurgaon, one giant Decorated Shed. Kilometres and kilometres of Decorated Sheds. Every phase of DLF a fantasy of candy pink neo-classical awfulness stuck on giant housing blocks with weirdly English names like Princeton and Trinity Court. We've come full circle in Delhi. We removed Connaught from CP to forget our colonial roots....and then went and brought Wellington back to Gurgaon. I think he lives on plastered somewhere in the pinkness of DLF Phase V.

Mental

Coming back to the duck. I love it. Part of the reason I do is because it lives in Nehru Place, the ugliest Place ever (with a capital P). The corridors and mazes and aisles and piles of parked, parked, parking and more parked vehicles, the smoke, the dust, the uniform greyness of crumbling buildings with rotting windows, a million generators growling and about a hundred million people trying to growl just a bit louder above them as they try to sell you printer cartridges. And in the midst of all this, this SHINING WHITE MARBLE TEMPLE. How on earth do they still manage to keep it white?!!!!

And Duck it may be, and every modernist's worst nightmare come true. And every deconstructivist's too. In fact every architect who was ever a something-ist's nightmare except the post-modernis-ist. So Duck it may be and Duck it indeed is - yet inside its lovely. And why is it lovely?

Because inside it is very,

very ,

very,

very

quiet.

And everyone goes in and feels like being

very,

very

quiet

too.

Notes: I didn't take this pic - its from Wikimedia Commons. In fact if any one's curious enough about the temple, you can look it up on Wikipedia. Also look up 'Nehru Place' and Robert Venturi's 'Complexity & Contradiction in Architecture'. There's a good explanation here about the Duck and the Decorated Shed.

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:34:00 +0000

Language thou art too narrow...

........and too weake

To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake;

Knew'st thou some would, that knew her not, lament,

As in a deluge perish th'innocent?

John Donne (1572-1631)

In the state of Delhi, female infanticide and foeticide (killing of female infants and female foetuses) seems to be on the decline. For the first time in recorded history, more girls were born than boys in 2008. 1004 girls per 1000 boys. Of course a few more girls than boys is a perfectly natural phenomenon seen everywhere else in the world. However in India, a tradition of killing off girl children whether as foetuses or as infants has resulted in some rather skewed ratios. In 2007, for example, Delhi registered only 848 girls per 1000 boys.

The government credits this increase to a new scheme wherein parents are paid Rs.100,000 when a girl turns 18. Basically, they're paid not to kill their daughters. But the effectiveness of this scheme is being doubted because....."Ironically, the 2001 census clearly showed that the sex ratio is worst in middle class and upper middle class localities, including Punjabi Bagh, Greater Kailash and Malviya Nagar."

I happen to live in Greater Kailash myself.

Anyway for the first time we have 2 states in India, Delhi and Kerala, that have a natural or normal gender ratio between baby girls and boys.

2 states out of 30.

One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

It could be worse I guess. In Punjab there were areas with only 600 odd girls for every 1000 boys. That amounts to about 400 dead girls every year.

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:09:00 +0000

There's a Monkey on the A.C......

....and it's looking at me. I was reading the newspaper and looked up to find it sitting on the Air-Conditioning unit - the bit that dangles outside the house. I'm just going to ignore it. I don't like monkeys. They're vicious feral creatures that break TV antennas, bite babies, slap dogs and carry rabies. Perhaps I may be accused of extreme species-ist prejudice. I don't care. There's a Monkey outside my window and I want it to go away.

So I'm reading the news and I discover that the drought in India is because the Chief Minister of the State of Bihar ate a biscuit during last week's solar eclipse. He was accused of doing so by an opposition politician. I completely believe the accusation because the article includes a picture of the Minister doing the deed. In the full-colour photo he is shown actually eating a biscuit. A Real biscuit. I don't need any more proof than that.

Elsewhere I read that women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones (according to researchers from the University of Extremadura in Spain). The Spanish study showed that test subjects who were 'light to moderate' drinkers i.e. drank upto 5 units a day (!!) had superior bone density to non-drinkers. However, the UK's National Osteoporosis Society said that an alcohol intake of more than 2 units per day actually increased the risk of breaking a bone. How does one explain this contradiction?

- Perhaps 2 units a day cause your bones to break but once you reach 5, they start getting stronger.
- Perhaps 2 units a day cause women to fall down more contributing to higher bone breakage but once they reach 5, women just pass out where they are sitting without breaking anything.
- Perhaps spanish women just hold their drink better and don't fall down so much even after 5 units.
- Perhaps everyone should just quit beer and drink vodka like Real women do.

I brought the monsoon to Delhi. I take full credit for it. I just packed some of the rain from London. Its not like they'll miss it there. Yesterday was Independence Day here in India. So if its raining heavily and the whole country's celebrating independence, what do we do in Delhi?
We fly kites.

Flying kites is, of course, not compatible with heavy monsoonal rain.......nor a particularly solemn way of commemorating independence. The guy on the roof of my building is trying though. He's got a kite in the colours of our national flag. Or at least, he had one. He just lost it and now its fluttering away. I wonder why he let go. Maybe he saw the Monkey on the A.C! Maybe the monkey got him!! Yet another martyr for the nation. जय हिंद!

There's a list out - of the most burgled postcodes in the U.K. As some of you may know, the house at Fairbridge Road in North London was burgled a few months back and some of our laptops got stolen. I checked to see if our N19 postcode was on the list. It wasn't..........but neighbouring N8 (Hornsey) was. No.8 on the Burglary Hotspots List of U.K. Those burglars should really learn how to read a map and know where N8 stops and N19 starts. Idiots. I propose we blame Gordon for the illiteracy of British Burglars.

And for all you non-believers out there, I just have one thing to say to you.

Everton 1 - Arsenal 6

the end....

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:13:00 +0000

A very productive day. I met a wonderful architect called Gül who showed me around the quake affected area of Avcilar (pronounced Avjilaar). She also took me for a very productive meeting with Avcilar municipality and then we sat by the seaside for a few hours discussing all the issues of the world and culture and architecture and everything. By our side little boys jumped off the pier and into the sea!! And swam around with the tankers and fishing boats and ferries!!!

So now I'm just back from the Mevlana concert. It was FANTASTIC. The whole amphitheatre was full and folks were singing along. Clearly the sufi tradition of music and song is alive and well in Turkey. The melodies and rhythms reminded me of the music I used to hear in Oman. And yet not. The harmonies had something east-european about it. Obviously Turkey is part of east-europe so I don't know why I was surprised!

Of course I missed all the nuances of the poetry not knowing the language. But the music and atmosphere were enough! Unfortunately I had to leave after 1.5 hours of the concert to catch the last füniküler train from Taksim square to Kabataş - and then the last tram from Kabataş to Sultanahmet. And at 3am a taxi is going to take me to Istanbul Ataturk Airport to catch the flight back to London.

All in all a wonderful end to a wonderful day and a wonderful trip.

Istanbul - I'll be back..........

Whats in a name?

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:27:00 +0000

And the words for Mashhur (famous), Shaan-Shaurat (fame-glory), Defter (office), Sada (plain/simple), Tamam (ok/finish), Mohalle (neighbourhood), Firni (rice pudding), Sharbat (cold beverage), Hafta (week) and Kalam (pen) are the same in hindi and turkish. More importantly my name Shahana has a very similar meaning in Turkish as it does in Hindi (well Urdu). It means something Royal/Grand in Urdu and in Turkish it means Grand or Wonderful. So as one can imagine everytime I introduce myself in Turkey I always get a rather delighted response.

So this is one of the reasons I've had such good luck here with getting to know people and doing my research. Yesterday I went to the Istanbul Municipality Office for Urban Transformations and met a very nice architect there called Ehsen. Not only was she extremely helpful and spent the entire day explaining various projects and translating stuff for me - she EVEN INVITED me in the evening to go fishing!! As you might have read in the previous post, people in Istanbul go fishing (without bait) over the Galata bridge and its a common local hobby.

So since she had an extra rod, she invited me along for a uniquely Istanbullur's evening. And she found a wonderful spot at Karaköy pier where the fish were biting. And I caught some 15-16 little fish using just a rod and NO BAIT!! Amazing!!! Some 3-4 got away and Ehsen caught many more than me she having better technique. But this is the first time I went fishing and I couldn't believe my luck. Maybe thats what it was - beginner's luck heh heh. It’s still great....

We fished from 8pm to about 11.30pm. And the night before I went upto the rooftop restaurant and had a long dinner with the half-moon hanging over the Marmara Sea. In fact Marmara is named for the island of Marmar where they used to mine marble. And the word in hindi for marble is............Marmar. The same....yay..... And the Blue Mosque looked so beautiful I couldn’t resist and took out my sketchbook and started sketching. I thought I'd forgotten how to. Can one forget how to sketch? Not genuinely talented people surely.

I was right. I have forgotten. My efforts were dismal. But the night was beautiful anyway. I love Istanbul...

And today is my last day in Istanbul and I visit the suburb of Avcilar which was very badly affected by the 1999 earthquake. Then in the evening I might have some of the fish we caught that Ehsen will fry hopefully. And at night a free concert at the amphitheatre near Taksim of Mevlana (traditional Sufi) music.

And tomorrow 5am back to London. Sigh.

Election Sunday in Istanbul

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:44:00 +0000

So I spent today like many Istanbullus. Well I didn’t vote in the morning like everyone else but I did sleep in.

Last night I went to bed at 3am thanks to beer, beer, raki, beer, raki and a rather lethal cocktail, the house specialty here, called The Sultan. The bartender's taken pity on a poor student (me). So I get all my drinks highly subsidized (i.e. free). The view from the rooftop bar is amazing - on one side the Sea of Marmara, on the other the old town of Sultanahmet rising upto the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya on the hill. Fantastic. I usually go up at about 11-12 every night to admire the city over a cup of apple tea. Then of course the bartender takes pity on me. And I stagger back downstairs drunk at 3am. God I love this place......

So anyway after i woke up I went down to Eminönü where the ferries leave from and lots of families come to have some fresh balik (fish)/bread/salata. Then under Galata bridge to watch the anglers patiently waiting to catch some balik using what looks like no bait (!!). Then I walked on to Kabataş to take the füniküler up through the hills to Taxim Square.

And found most of Istanbul there watching a huge TV screen where the election results were coming out in real-time as the votes were counted. Not surprisingly the AK party (aakparty) was way ahead of the others. For those following the news - this party is paradoxically Islamist and supports liberal economics especially joining the EU. One of the key reasons they got so many votes I think. The two other major parties are paradoxically Secular and Conservative. One of them is a quite a bit nationalist (perhaps even a little fascist). And they don’t support joining the EU.

So as I walked down Istiklal Caddesi where everyone was out on the streets shopping and eating and smoking nargileh (hookah) - all one could hear were the radios and tv's declaring election results. Anyway I looked around a bit and found a lovely restaurant which specialises in grilled kebabs. The mezze had some 5 preparations of aubergine. And my mixed grill platter was excellent. Except for the kidneys that I didnt try and what looked like the balls of a ram which I took a bite of (being brave) and hastily discarded. Some Turkish kahvesi (coffee) and then I went looking for dessert.

Now Turkey has great food and the raki is wonderful. But what has been a true revelation here have been the desserts. The mind boggles at the variety. So as my mind was being boggled, I settled down to a heavenly dish of dried fruits, fruit pulp and cream. All the while the election results kept coming in. The leader of one of the smaller parties (DP) that had done very badly tendered his resignation as the results were still coming in. Which is when I discovered the Hindi word for resignation is the same as Turkish - istiffa. And tea is the same in both languages as well - çay (chai). But that’s beside the point.

The point is will the Turkish army accept a democratically elected Islamist government - or will it step in as it has done before to put the secular parties in artificially. Whatever it does, the Turkish public have spoken - when I last checked - the Islamist party AK had about 48% of the total vote and 340 odd seats in parliament. The next leading party had about 20% and about 110 odd seats. A very very clear decision indeed. The Turkish people don't seem to care about religion, headscarves on women etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is the money. And they clearly feel Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government is going to help them make some.......

Şahana from Istanbul

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

Well the framework didn’t get done (surprise surprise). But it’s just as well. From the little bit of work I've done here its clear the framework would have had to change drastically. Heh heh convenient....

So today I went for a cruise up the Bosphorus right upto the Black Sea. Had a wonderful lunch at a place called Anadolu Gavağı which used to be the last checkpost for tax-paying in both Byzantine and Ottoman times. As I sat serenely eating the freshest fish ever (since Goa anyway) a million tankers ferries liners etc. etc. sailed in from the Marmara Sea.

And the Aya Sofya, Blue Mosque and Topkapı Palace all live upto expectations - and if ever there was a PALACE this is it!!!!!! But yes for me its Istanbul as a whole that’s so lovely. That sort of corny east meets west thing is very, very prominent here - in the clothes the music food architecture you name it. Incidentally I've discovered the south-Indians have soulmates here in the love of yoghurt!!! the Turkish, the Bosnians, the Armenians and huge bunches of folks in this region simply love the stuff. And after ages I had the laban I used to have in Muscat - here it’s called ayran.

So the Turkish people really like Indians. Well single female Indians anyway......... It’s a curious thing. When I have pink lipstick and no sunglasses - everyone recognizes me as Indian. If I have red lipstick they assume I'm Latin American or Arab. With no makeup and no sunglasses - its 50% Indian and 50% Turkish. They probably think I'm one of those Roma-gipsy type Turks. Hahaha I don’t mind.

So I discover the words for Hava, Duniya, Sheher, Hafta, Tamam, Safar, Dukan and Afat are all the same in Turkish and Hindi. (Air, World, City, Week, End, Journey, Shop and Disaster respectively). No need to ask how I found the last one out............NO its not anything I've done, its the topic of my dissertation. I guess my dissertation will probably turn out to be some kind of Afat as well.......

And apart from the kebabs, I've discovered a rice pudding here very similar to phirni though much thicker and caramelized on top. Bliss. Afat for my figure.

In case folks can't make out I'm enjoying myself here and in very good spirits. The sun shines everyday, everyday men proposition me, and everyday there's something new and good to eat. Do i want to come back to London - NO! I wanna live here foreverrrrrr. My love and best regards to all from Istanbul. And thank you JE for that first comment on my blog :)

Incidentally the 'sh' sound is indicated by the letter 'Ş' so my name is written Şahana in Turkish.

The HEAT is ON!

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:17:00 +0000

Is it possible to write a theoretical framework in one day? Because tomorrow is Saturday and my principles forbid me from working on Saturday. And day after is Sunday and my principles forbid me from working on Sunday. And Monday I prepare to leave for Istanbul. And Tuesday I leave for Istanbul.

So, as always, have I managed to dig myself into a bloody great hole? Watch this space...

Got my haircut......

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:07:00 +0000

though no brilliant ideas yet. I think that theory of haircut=bright spark of inspiration (blogpost, Monday, 9th July) has been conclusively disproved.

In other news I leave for Istanbul this coming Tuesday on the 17th and come back on the 26th.

Hazel Blears has been discussing participatory budgeting for the UK! and she has cited Porto Alegre!! The folks over at our DPU must be squirming in ecstacy......

travel plans for july

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:11:00 +0000

Just applied for a visa to turkey and will be getting it this thursday. I hope to be flying out on the 16th or 17th next week. For those of you I haven't been in touch with, I was awarded a travel scholarship to conduct research for my master's dissertation. I'm studying housing and resettlement strategies in Istanbul. Turkey has frequent earthquakes and 1999 had two within a space of 3 months. Istanbul expects to be hit by another one sometime in the next 30-40 years and they're carrying out a lot of planning and strategy for future disaster response systems. This is what I will be studying.

My specific focus (as mentioned) is the housing solution and how strategy-planners envision the response of short-term relief housing and long-term permanent housing. The concept of 'Transition Housing' bridges both being an immediate shelter that can later transform into permanent dwelling. However, the housing/ settlement/ infrastructure responses need to follow standards for seismic movement. A housing settlement could be a very successful project where victims are happy to resettle - only to fail when the next quake hits!!

So far of course I've been so busy putting up this website, my dissertation work has sort of been pushed to the backburner. One would think a slow simmer there would have cooked it properly by now. Unfortunately analogies can only be stretched so far. The dissertation remains raw and inedible.

Not helping the cause are my other travel plans. I'm hoping to go to the seaside this weekend. Its going to be raining for sure, but if we wait for sun - we'll never do anything!!! If ever there was weather that was character building, this is it. Nearly a month without PROPER sun and time for us to look deep within ourselves and discover our inner umbrella.

I was also hoping to travel around the UK some more. Train tickets are cheap and I got this student railcard thing thats been used only once (to scotland, and that one trip was enough to recoup its cost!!). However I feel I should use it some more since I'm here. After all opportunities come and then go, deadlines exist forever.

More importantly......

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:10:00 +0000

I need to find an appropriate license because lots of this stuff is groupwork - hence not even mine to reserve all rights on. The 'presentation' and 'project' page do mention after the copyright tag that co-authors need to be asked permission too. But I don't think a license can work in such piecemeal fashion. There has to be a better way of declaring intellectual property rights where individual authors retain shared rights. And these rights are not ALL reserved.

First post - website building & copyright

noreply@blogger.com (shahana) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:28:00 +0000

Finally the website is up. This is the second one I'm putting up this year. Some of you probably saw the first one at geocities which had the two dancing spidermen. That site's been scrapped and there's a link on it redirecting to this one. Why not continue using that one? Well, apart from the fact that it only gave me 15mb filespace, the free version did not support ftp. And publishing without ftp is not an option. Why not have spiderman continue dancing on the new site? simple answer. Spiderman3. my broken heart. 'nuff said....

Since I now have stuff up in the public domain, the weighty issue of copyright comes up. Till about a couple of years back, I'd have been more than thrilled if someone copied from me. Hell, I'd be happy if ANYONE even bothered reading the stuff I wrote. Then, of course, someone did copy from me and used some of my stuff for their work WITHOUT REFERENCING ME. Now if I was the sort of brilliant person who came up with vast amounts of original thoughts everyday, it would've been ok (perhaps). But if you average about one inspiration a year, then you certainly don't want someone else taking credit for it.

So I could just put password locks on my pdf files and ensure no one ever copied anything. Thats not the point. I do want people to read and copy from my website with ease - just as long as they quote me! Opening stuff with passwords is irritating.....and i'm fairly sure no one will bother going to so much effort just to access my stuff......or at least not till I win a Nobel Prize or something (cue - roll eyes, mutter 'fat chance').

So what am I doing to protect my intellectual property? Right now there's an obnoxious looking "all rights reserved" at the bottom of every page, linked to an even more obnoxious terms & conditions page. But there is an alternative using the Creative Commons licenses. Instead of reserving ALL rights which I don't want or need to do - I could just get a license that reserves "SOME rights". This will require a bit more research as there are several types of licenses that give varying degrees of freedom to site-users. So folks should be able to copy with ease without my permission as long as they reference me. Until I have time to go through that stuff though, unfortunately, all rights will be reserved. And anyone copying from me (yeah i know, fat chance) can just drop me a line.

In other news, tomorrow I'm going for a haircut after more than one year. Yeah the frequency of my haircut seems to match those of my original ideas. Is there a co-relation? We'll know tomorrow. Watch this space