The Great Ganesha

It’s been almost five months since I last posted here. And I’m not sure if I’m going to post for another five. But just got back from Barcelona and have around 2,500 pics to sort through. What a city! Also (somewhat less glamorous – unless you’re a train freak) took the Amtrak from Oakland to Portland, which was also quite an adventure. Have a few (but not nearly as many as Barcelona) pics to post from that trip as well.

At the prodding of friends I’m contemplating on whether or not to post a photoessay, a travelogue, or some convex combination of the two. But I don’t know if I have the time and/or the energy for it.

So if you’re reading this, tune in next week – there may be some good stuff to look at.

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I will watch this just to hear this sound:

In the seventeenth chapter of “The Voyage of the Beagle,” Charles Darwin turned to the mating habits of the giant Galápagos tortoise. “When the male and female are together, the male utters a hoarse roar or bellowing, which, it is said, can be heard at the distance of more than 100 yards,” he wrote. This is also the most accurate description that we possess of the duet performed by Mick Jagger and Christina Aguilera in “Shine a Light,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the Rolling Stones. [link]

Mr. Lane is – as usual – on the money.

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So we are having Spring Break. It’s a relief not to have to deal with the clamour of students. Although, over time it does become white noise and you can block it out (I’m from Bombay).

And that’s also why I have some extra time to feed the ever-increasing belly of The Great Ganesha.

Just FYI…

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Via the Ultrabrown News Feed which, I think, is one of the best ways to get your desi-in-the-media fix (if that’s the kind of thing you go for (I know I do (and not only can I nest sentences within sentences but also parentheses within parentheses (see?)))) – I found this article about a freelancing pundit. Not the CNN kind, the real deal – a Hindu priest:

“Driving, driving, driving. Our work, a little bit difficult. Driving, a little bit tiring,” Sastry said as he steered his sky-blue BMW — license plate PRIEST-B — around the Capital Beltway from his Ashburn home to the Ellicott City housewarming, a ceremony considered most auspicious if performed before sunrise. “But this is a respected thing,” he said.

Freelance priests are bountiful in India, but just seven serve one of the Washington region’s largest ethnic communities. Census data from 2006 indicate that 105,000 Indians live in the area, about 60 percent of whom are immigrants; most have settled in Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery and Howard counties. To those who regularly call upon them, Sastry and his counterparts become trusted family priests, akin to family doctors or accountants. [link]

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Well, you switch of comments notification for a few days, and find that there’s a mini-movement happening on one of your posts.

Firstly, thanks a lot guys (and especially you, CK) – it means a lot.

But I wasn’t planning on shutting things down here. Because it’s so crazy teaching here,  I’ll just be cutting down the posting just for a bit. It’ll take a lot more than that to shut this baby down! And the first minute I get to blog about a des-related offbeat story, it’s going up here. That’s a promise!

Thanks again, guys.

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Well, folks, it has been a long, strange trip, but I am suspending posting on this blog for the time-being. It was a tough decision, and took me long time to come to terms with it. The main reason is the lack of time (and energy). See you around!

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What are YOU looking at? Oh, my clone? In that case, it’s fine. Keep on looking.

The FDA (after a few years of debate) says that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe to eat. Looks like this thing has been on the back-burner for a while (pun intended, I apologize, I couldn’t resist).

“This is a huge milestone,” said Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, a leading livestock cloning company in Austin, Tex. [NYT]

Well, Walton would think that, of course. I would too if I owned a leading livestock cloning company. But there’s more.

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Dow Jones and an India-based company Dharma Investments have created a new financial index that is going to be based on the dharmic principles of Buddhism and Hinduism. No, that does not mean that you can invest in the stock of gods (in which case Ganesha – ahem, ahem! – would certainly be the industry leader), but the index will consist of companies that abide by the principles of Hinduism and Buddhism. Apparently, there are already several indices (including one by Dow Jones) that track companies compliant with Sharia, so why should the other religions be left behind?

Global index provider Dow Jones Indexes and Dharma Investments, a private investment firm, today announced the launch of the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes measuring the performance of companies selected according to the value systems and principles of dharmic religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.

The series includes the Dow Jones Dharma Global Index and four country Indexes for US, UK, Japan and India. The indices are designed to track financial products such as exchange-traded funds and other investable products that enable investors to participate in the performance of companies compliant with dharmic traditions. [BusinessStandard]

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So – I was browsing the Times of India online, reading some crappy article (sans byline, of course) about how Rushdie spent more time flirting with some Bollybabe rather than on promoting AIDS awareness or some-such. Finishing that in a few seconds, I followed some articles here and there and then went to the picture gallery. Eventually I ended up at the section on foreign fashion shows, and then to pictures of a swim wear shoot, (which, I swear, I was looking at with purely intellectual interest, in the chance that I might be asked to design a swimsuit at gunpoint. What?! People with guns aren’t rational!) when I came across this picture:

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Sir Edmund Hillary, the lanky New Zealand mountaineer and explorer who with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, won worldwide acclaim in 1953 by becoming the first to scale the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday in Wellington.

He was 88. [link]

I had the honour of meeting him once and, awed as I was, his smile alone was enough to win me over. He was an inspiration, a great man and a gentle soul. He will truly live forever with some of us.

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