August 2006 – Anasuya Sengupta

Outsourcing flu

You can be Bangalore-d in many more ways than one. It’s not just our world-class infrastructure that we can boast about at the moment. We are also, solely from anecdotal evidence, the world’s flu capital. No, not bird flu (for which we now have a cheap vaccine developed by Indian researchers), not chikangunya (‘that which bends up’, from the Makonde, a matrilineal ethnic group from east Africa… and you thought it sounded like it originated in north Karnataka? So did I), though these have added weight to the honours list. But the common, garden variety, seven-days-or-a-week influenza is… well… everywhere. Especially in me. Twice over in the last two weeks.

You think the world is outsourcing flu, amongst all else? Sigh. It feels like it at the moment in my little corner of the blogosphere. And I’m the privileged back-end office. Working overtime. Triple sigh.

In the hope of recovery – and for all the others who I know are suffering too – here’s a funny something from the master of cheerer-ups: Ogden Nash. And just in case you’re wondering: when I have a snuffle, my temper is uffle.

The Sniffle

Bag it, tag it, sell it to the butcher at the store…

I’ve just discovered one of the – dubious – joys of becoming part of an online community. You are liable to get tagged. N having left this cryptic message – ‘you have been tagged’ – as a comment on a post of mine, I had to Sherlock my way into figuring out what it meant. Don’t snigger (yet; that’s still to come). New entrants to new universes have a tough time figuring out local topography and language. Simply, it means this:

Say who tagged you
Say eight things about yourself
Tag 6 people

Ouch.

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Nothing but sound and fury?

So another Independence Day dropped by, and left, somewhat disappointed at the muted hospitality of our home this year round. I was not really in the mood for adda-bajji (a very Bengali term for gourmet gossip) around nationalism, patriotism, jingoism and the shades of difference.

Granted, I think of the nation as an imagined community, courtesy Benedict Anderson, but the alleys and hyperboles of this landscape tend to reach two dead ends: one, of too much imagination (in that too many people imagine the nation in too many different ways; i.e. when do the joys of pluralism get overwhelmed by the dangers of confusion?) and the other, of too little imagination (in that too few people seem to have the power to change the nature of the nation for the greater good, and those who do, hardly seem to think about it at all).

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Ignorant MPs

From The Hoot:

NDTV India did a random survey of members of parliament to see if they knew something about India’s history. What is the order of colours on India’s flag? What was Mahatma Gandhi’s full name? Who wrote the national anthem? Lots of blank faces around, but no red ones. Our MPs apparently think history is for the schoolbooks, and did not seem particularly embarrassed at their ignorance. Najma Heptullah referred to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee as Bumkum Chottopadhya.

Minimum security, maximum impact…

Or: women political cartoonists and why we need more of ’em.

I thought it was about time I introduced Stephanie McMillan to those of you who read this blog, but don’t know about her (and possibly don’t check my blogroll; hey, that’s okay, forgive you). I came upon her when this brilliant cartoon did the rounds:

This was up on Stephanie’s site, Minimum Security, in April 2006, in response to Republican Senator Bill Napoli‘s support to a legislation in South Dakota limiting abortion services access to (in his words):

…a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married.

The rest of us, married or otherwise, virgin or otherwise, religious or otherwise, clearly don’t count. So Stephanie felt, if anti-abortion politicians can be so certain about telling women what to do with their bodies, why not let them deal with other decisions women make? All other decisions…!

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Geeky Gals at the BlogHer Conference

I know I was being cheeky by commenting on Stake Five that we might explore Feminist ColdFusion or ColdFused Feminism, but the interfaces between gender and technology do fascinate me. Unsurprising, now that I’m with a geek who’s feminist and slowly turning into a feminist gee-eek! myself (what else can explain my evangelism around Ubuntu, which is my OS, and various other minor joys around website constructions and blog creations?). Any which way, it made me interested in learning more about the second BlogHer (‘where the women bloggers are’) conference, held in San Jose, July 28-29.

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Flower and Fire: a tribute to Kaifi Azmi

On Saturday, Ashwin and I went to watch ‘Kaifi Aur Main’ (Kaifi and I), Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar‘s tribute to Kaifi Azmi and Shaukat Kaifi, Shabana’s parents. Based on Shaukat’s book ‘Yaad Ki Raah Guzzar’ (Down Memory Lane) and Kaifi’s own poetry and interviews, it was a wonderful evening in memory of a strange and wonderful man.

Ashwin, unfortunately, found the Urdu too difficult, so all he could do was to watch my delight (hardly entertainment, I fear)… It did help that the performance was at the St John’s auditorium, round the corner from home – everything one does/not do in Bangalore these days is a locational hazard.

The evening had been billed as a theatrical presentation by IPTA Mumbai, but as Deepa Punjwani points out in her review of the performance in Mumbai, it was not quite theatre. It was quite a mehfil (particularly with Jaswinder Singh’s music), and certainly a tribute. Both to Kaifi and to Shaukat, interestingly. For instance, Shaukat remembers how she thought the feminist in Kaifi was speaking directly to her, when she first heard his poem ‘Aurat’ (Woman):

Rut badal daal agar falna foolana hai tujhe
Uth meri jaan mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe
(Change the season to grow, to flourish
Wake up, my love, my soul; walk with me).

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