Amodini's Book Reviews

Book Reviews and Recommendations

Palin and sexism

Written By: amodini - Oct• 26•08

Earlier this week, we found out that $150000 was spent on pretty-ing up Sarah Palin. So the hockey-mom who tries to identify with the Joe-sixpacks and the common man, shops at Neiman Marcus and Saks. Nice. If I was someone contributing to the McCain-Palin campaign, I would be pretty mad right now.Yeah, you send them some of your hard-earned money, and they spend it on shoes for Palin!

Now “The View”‘s co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck has come out in support of Palin, saying that the criticism of her spending money is sexist.

Women in public are noticed a lot more for their clothing and appearance than a man in similar public view – I agree. However, it is the double standard of the whole thing that the RNC and Ms. Hasselbeck do not seem to get. How does one have the nerve to tell America, that you identify with the average American, standing in your expensive, expensive clothing – something that you know the average American could not afford, especially in these times ?

palin2

And the RNC and it’s supporters talking of sexism sounds a little odd. Didn’t they tout Palin as the “hottest” governor ? Didn’t they have those ridiculously sexist campaign buttons at the Republican Convention ?

palin1

Oh, yeah, we call her hot and objectify her, it’s OK, anyone else so much as comments on her clothes – it’s sexist !

Posted in culture and society, dumb things people say and do, politics, usa, women | Comments Off on Palin and sexism

Music : blast from the past

Written By: amodini - Oct• 20•08

Two beautiful songs I re-heard recently. The first is “Maeri” by “Euphoria”, whose lead singer is Palash Sen. Sen is a doctor who also sings, or it could be the other way around. Euphoria’s songs are mostly energetic, almost folksy numbers, with an urban twist. Maeri is comparitively a soft, slow number :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E1xbX-QSGY]

The second is a pretty old number, “Boondein” by “Silk Route”. Their lead singer is/was Mohit Chauhan, who has a pretty distinctive voice. “Silk Route” after their big debut, almost disappeared, and only recently have I heard one filmi song by Chauhan, for the film “Fashion” (2008). Although the group has now formally dissolved (what a pity !), Chauhan has been singing for recent Hindi films like “Welcome to Sajjanpur”, etc. also. Boondein was probably their best song :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gquET0CnGrE]

Posted in bollywood, books, india, recommended | 3 Comments »

Paying taxes is unpatriotic (and so is obeying the law)

Written By: amodini - Oct• 12•08

This election is pretty surreal. It started with McCain choosing Palin as his running-mate, and then increased when we discovered that Palin couldn’t open her mouth without committing gaffes (seeing Russia from her house indeed !), or give straight answers during the VP debate. As a VP, or as a President (and I don’t even want to think about that) she’d be a national embarrasment.

I have heard some daft lines from her, but the one which takes the cake, is when she disdained the idea of paying taxes ! It boggles the mind how one can even question such a basic duty, or think it unpatriotic. Tax-payers form the corner-stone of government. Taxes are used to pay for schools, roads, water, and infrastructure and other things we take for granted. If all of us stopped paying taxes, the government couldn’t do it’s work – there would be no schools, or those wonderful public libraries, or even running water in your home. From wikipedia :

“Funds provided by taxation have been used by states and their functional equivalents throughout history to carry out many functions. Some of these include expenditures on war, the enforcement of law and public order, protection of property, economic infrastructure (roads, legal tender, enforcement of contracts, etc.), public works, social engineering, and the operation of government itself. Most modern governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities. Colonial and moderning states have also used cash taxes to draw or force reluctant subsistence producers into cash economies.”

I especially like the way, this article puts it :

The next time you drive on the road, go to school, simply breathing in clean air, or even eating a good meal you will know where the money came from that gave us these opportunities. We all have paid to make a better future for ourselves and our future generations.

Somebody tell Palin.

Posted in dumb things people say and do, usa | Comments Off on Paying taxes is unpatriotic (and so is obeying the law)

Of personal integrity and the race for the White House

Written By: amodini - Oct• 11•08

When this race started, I sort of thought of Obama and McCain as equals in my head – both basically decent men, who would do their best for the country. However, as the days have gone by, Obama is starting to come off as the better man, cool-tempered even in a crisis, reasonable, and more respectful towards his competitor.

In both the first and second debates, McCain wouldn’t look directly at Obama. In fact in the first debate, he kept referring to Obama in the third person, as in “Senator Obama doesn’t understand . . .”, while Obama addressed him in the first person. McCain’s manner appeared to be condescending. In the second debate, McCain took it closer to disrespect when he referred to Obama as “That One”, when Obama was sitting not a few feet away from him ! Talk about rude !

Also via the newsmedia, we are getting to hear of rage building at McCain/Palin rallies where people in the crowd have called out stuff like “Kill him (Obama)” and “He (Obama) is an Arab”. While McCain stopped the woman, and corrected her saying that Obama was not an Arab, he is resorting to campaigning with propaganda that he knows is patently false. Like the Ayers association. Apparently McCain didn’t get enough of the vicious smearing the last time he was made a target (in the 2000 presidential primaries, he was falsely accused of illegitimately fathering a black child, when his daughter Bridget is actually a dark-skinned kid adopted from Bangladesh), to remember what it felt like.

His negative campaign against Obama, hurts McCain especially because he sets himself up to be this holier-than-thou person, foreever denouncing the greed in Washington, and talking about the need for moral integrity and decency. He seems to be doing just the opposite. His ideals and personal integrity doesn’t seem to be what it was, because with time, he and his campaign managers stoop lower and lower in an effort to smear Senator Obama. Do they have no decency left ?

In fact, watching the second presidential debate, I thought he looked like a crochety old grand-father who wasn’t getting his way. Yes, I do want a President who goes after what he wants, but not at the cost of moral integrity and decency. If McCain can’t withstand pressure from the right-wingers enough to hold firm the ideals upon which he bases his campaign, then maybe he isn’t the right man for the job.

Posted in dumb things people say and do, usa | Comments Off on Of personal integrity and the race for the White House

Presidential or not ?

Written By: amodini - Sep• 28•08

Watching the debate this Friday, I thought McCain appeared to be condescending and sort-of miffed. If this is the time to put off rivalries and partisan-ship, he sure didn’t do as he said. He wouldn’t look at Obama, and kept addressing him in the third person. Not only is that condescending, it’s plain rude and very discourteous. It also made him (McCain) appear miffed and afraid.

And Obama was very classy. He looked directly at McCain, addressed him as John. And appeared very Presidential, even crediting McCain when he felt credit was due. Obama does look like a genuinely nice person, not one who’s putting up a show for the media, and then reverts back to his rude self, when faced with an opponent. His classiness was apparent right from the time when he told the media to lay off Palin’s pregnant teen, saying families were off-limits. I can’t imagine McCain or Palin being that gracious had it been Obama’s daughter who had been pregnant.

And now for some humor – watch Tina Fey out-Palin Palin (am sure you’ll have seen this a 100 times already, but can’t help it – Fey is that good) :

http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48cd3b64ddb82bd0/48cd0cf97d529c95/be940ef3

Posted in usa | Comments Off on Presidential or not ?

The Bookworm tag

Written By: amodini - Aug• 16•08

A muser tagged me a really long time ago, with a pretty interesting Bookworm tag. I’m completing it now. Was off blogging for some time, but hopefully will be more current now. So apologies Muser, here it is.

The tag was :

Pick up the nearest book.Open to page 123.Find the fifth sentence.Post the next three sentences.Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you .

Rendezvous with Rama -- 1996 publicationThe book I’m currently reading is “Rendezvous with Rama’ by Arthur C. Clarke. It’s about a deep space encounter with an asteroid, which turns out to be an alien space-ship. The story is set in the year 2130, and describes a time when the human race has spread out to the nearby planets. All asteroids hurtling around in near space are tracked by Project Spaceguard, a Project setup to ensure that no asteroid crashes into earth and destroys humanity, as has happened in the past. Asteroids of ‘interest” are named, while others remain mere numbers. One particular asteroid of interest, named Rama, because the astronomers having exhausted Greek and Roman mythology are now cycling through the Hindu Pantheon, is now hurtling towards our solar system, and plans are afoot to intercept it.

The spaceship that is chosen to rendezvous with Rama, is the Endeavor, captained by Commander Norton. He intercepts and set down on Rama, only to find a seemingly dead ship. The 5th sentence on page 122 (switching to 122 instead of 123, since 123 by itself might sound rather disjointed) describes what the crew sees, when they finally manage to enter Rama :

“The machines were sleeping, they were not even ticking over. Would they ever wake again, and for what purpose ? Everything was in perfect condition as usual. It was easy to believe that the closing of a single circuit in some patient, hidden computer would bring all this maze back to life.”

“Rendezvous with Rama” won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. Even so I must say, I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I’d expected to, and found myself skimming over pages. While I’ve really enjoyed Clarke’s first 2 installments of the Space Odyssey, “R with R” wasn’t as great becuase it lacked character development and the “human angle”. There is no human story here, Norton lands on Rama, and thereon begins the description of Rama. And it goes on for the whole book; I kept waiting for something to happen.

Posted in books, review | Comments Off on The Bookworm tag

A state with no teeth

Written By: amodini - May• 29•08

In an email from my Dad yesterday, he mentioned that they weren’t venturing to the markets that day, because of the Gujjar protest in the NCR. His remarks were wry, in that he said that people are protesting to be declared backward ! Indeed the reservation policy has taken on a twist with these protests when the Gujjars are actually protesting for such “privileged” status.

I heard it on NDTV too, and saw the pictures online. There were photos of Gujjars mobilizing, vandalizing train tracks and then there were photos of burnt buses. First off the issue seems ridiculous – protesting for a Scheduled Tribe status. Is this what reservations have come to mean ? A crutch to ensure educations/jobs/opportunities ? Could the early politicians of nascent India who thought of the reservation policies ever have imagined such a scenario ?

Secondly, the violent protest and vandalism. Anytime you start disrupting traffic and burning buses, you protest violently. It’s against the law. Anytime your activities cause the common man to think twice about venturing out of the house for fear of safety, you are breaking the law. The state deployed policemen and appealed for calm. But people were wary anyway.

gjr

(Photo courtesy NDTV)

Now in the media you read about the effect of the rasta-roko, you see the pictures. I half-way across the world see them. And although it is about the physical inconvenience of having a bunch of goons putting you and yours at risk, for THEIR demands, it is also about the damage it does to the image of the state. It is about the image of the Indian state, a state with no teeth.

Because when you think about it, what do these images convey ? A bunch of protesters vandalising the rail-tracks ? Just that ? What does it say about the law and order ? How much confidence does it give the common man about the state being able to protect it’s people ? Or it’s property ? My Mom, when I spoke to her definitely didn’t give the impression that the state would come to her aid, if she were to be confronted by/hurt by the Gujjar protest.

How much really do you respect someone who doen’t stand up for himself/herself ? Someone who “appeals for calm” to people who violate it ? Someone who promises no retribution to people who threaten to break it down ?

It’s not just this protest, it’s one protest after another. India might aspire to be free and fair, but fairness does have to be enforced. For one community or a group of people to run roughshod over other people’s rights to ensure that they get some advantage is unfair. And besides “appealing” for calm, the state must crack down hard on such offenders. HARD. Hard enough to make other people think twice about disrupting life again.

Protesters must be punished. And politicians like Vasundhara Raje who carelessly make promises to the community about granting “Scheduled Tribe” status like it was candy. Throw them all in jail and keep them there. The common man would applaud.

Posted in culture and society, dumb things people say and do, india, politics | 1 Comment »

Of Windy Indy and the crystal skull

Written By: amodini - May• 28•08

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Single Disc)This film is doing good business. I attribute that to all the hype generated prior to it’s release. It can’t possibly be the film. And I say this, after nodding off to sleep a couple of times during it. Between “Indiana Jones” and “National Treasure 2” (which I watched on DVD during the same weekend) it’s been too much of a bad thing.

Indy reappears on the screen after a gap of 19 years – too long, some would say – but let’s give the (old) man a fair chance. We have him going off on another one of his spur-of-the-moment adventures, jauntily doffing his hat, smiling that lopsided smile, this time to Peru, because really that country seems a perfect hunting ground for skulls and finding exotic looking tribal natives. Thick, uncut forests increase the appeal of the locale. The objective is to find Professor Oxley (John Hurt) who’s on a hunt which involves crystal skulls and the “City of Gold”.

Accompanying Indy are a varied group of people. To start with there’s a young guy called Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) and then his Mum drops in (Karen Allen). They then find Professor Oxley as well as the bad guys – who else but the KGB itself ? Cate Blanchett plays Irina Spalko, who along with her Soviet comrades is on a hunt for the crystal skull as well.

There’s no accounting for tastes of course, but this feels a little jaded. Oh, and when before have I heard the “City of Gold” theme ? Hmm…, not so long ago actually; National Treasure 2 had the same thing going on. Hidden levers, large stone entrances which close and open mysteriously on large gears, make rumbling sounds, water flooding, endless treasure which you’d be a fool to take (guess what happens to the greedy ?) you name it, and we have the clichéd thingy already. Been there done that. Why do it again ?

And where’s the excitement ? What’s making me getting me out of my seat yelling “Go, Indy” ? Nothing, really. I sat pretty quietly though-out the film, except the parts in which I dozed. This film does not work at the very basic level. It might have all the elements of an action-adventure-drama, but lacks the most important ingredient of all – the excitement, the zest, the nail-biting thrill that’d keep me on the edge of my seat, rooting for Indy.

“Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull” (IJATKOTCS) is a throw-back to the 80s (it’s set in 1957). In some parts of the film I could detect an aging affect. The clothes and the makeup is old-style. The forgotten KGB is back again. The internet is a thing of the future, and technology ? Unheard of. We are back to the basics.

Except the basics don’t work anymore. Not when we have contenders like “The Bourne Ultimatum” and the “Die Hard 4.0”. This Indy installment is very down-to-earth, they use their hands, fists, guns and tanks. Un-sophistication is it’s middle name. The stunts are very, very average. You might not guess that technology existed. Speilberg and Co. might want to go all purist on me, and not use techno-gizmos for the stunts, but that also means I’d rather go with Bourne.

“IJATKOTCS” is hyped up as the next big adventure, but in parts this feels like a kiddie film. I’m OK with goofy – I draw the line at stupid. Granted that Jones is pretty goofy and fairly awkward (that’s his character really), but in this film, sequences seem a little too contrived to draw out those laughs. It’s inspired slapstick, and while I cringed, my kids laughed at the silliness.

Yes, anything goes in this film. I’m all for theatrical liberties; after all many were taken in the previous Indy installments. But however many genial allowances I might make for a film, I do make distinctions between “fuzzy” and “retarded”. One stoops . . . to conquer. And Indy stoops all right, ( at 65, I bet his arthritic knees don’t quake), but he does not conquer.

It’s time, Indy, to hang up that fedora.

Posted in movies | 1 Comment »

Wanna-be skirt-chaser, anyone ?

Written By: amodini - May• 15•08

This one strikes me the wrong way : a sport titled “skirt-chasing”. Admittedly it is for “good”, it’s about fun, it’s about involving men and women, and it’s about health. But it still feels “awkward”, keeping in mind that for me and all the women from desi backgrounds, who have experiences of not-so-altruistic skirt-chasing, molestation is an actual problem.

Tracy Clark-Flory writes in Salon.com :

Are you an unmotivated runner? Do you enter races only to apathetically walk your way across the finish line? Maybe that’s because you aren’t being chased by a horde of screaming men! At least, that’s the thinking behind the SkirtChaser Race Series. In these events — sponsored by SkirtSports, creator of “the original fitness skirt” — women are outfitted in skirts, given a head start on the 5K race and then men, or rather “SkirtChasers,” are sent after them; the first man or woman to cross the finish line wins $500.

Sort of re-inforcing stereotypes – man the skirt-chaser, the woman the chased one. The natural order of things, eh ?

Posted in culture and society, women | Comments Off on Wanna-be skirt-chaser, anyone ?

The Spice of Life

Written By: amodini - Apr• 15•08

panipuriAs I travel to India nowadays, I find that I get “softer” with each visit. Food gets to me sooner. I love roadside food, the pani-puri, the chola-bhatura, the aloo-tikki frying tantalizingly in all that glorious oil. It’s hard though to enjoy all that without falling sick at least once – especially with water-based products like pani-puri. Which is quite a bummer because it can be said that I aspire to eat spicy foods. What is food without the spice ? What is food which doesn’t fuel the fire in your mouth ?

Here in the US, finding spicy food outside the house is a difficult task. You think Thai is spicy, I go Thai. And then when the waitress asks me what spice “number” I want, I go for the max – 5. She halts writing, peers at me, and mouths ungrammatical English, “Are you sure ? 5 very spicy”. Number 5 is not exactly tepid, but it’s not going to blow my socks off either. Still, it’s not a pretty sight; I’m not very girlie in these things. My eyes and my nose water; a tissue remains close at hand. As I spoon the food into my mouth I hardly ever break for water; it dilutes the zest. Needless to say, spicy food is always ingested only in the company of close friends and family; the others somehow don’t seem to appreciate a dripping female in the vicinity.

chinesechiliReally spicy foods are so few and far between that I want to list all the sources. The easiest source is the Chinese red pepper sauce. It’s available in the grocery aisles and at most Chinese restaurants. Made of red pepper (seeds and all) this is pretty potent if eaten in large enough quantities.

habaneroAnother source, probably the fieriest of them all, is the jabanero (or habanero) pepper. This is a yellowish looking pepper (as compared to the desi green Serrano pepper) but the mild color is misleading. At my grocery store which lists the peppers along with their “hot” rating, this is at the max – a 10. The milder jalapeno comes in at a 7. The first time I ever had a taste of the jabanero was when I was at this Mexican restaurant, and we asked the server for something spicy. He wanted to know whether we wanted real spicy, and when we replied in the affirmative, went back into the kitchen and brought us a bowl of yellow looking sauce. He told us that it was not on the menu, as most patrons couldn’t tolerate it; it was made solely for the consumption of the mostly Mexican staff. He told us that it was called “mendiga”, that it was made of uncooked jabaneros (cooking a pepper takes the edge off), that it was dangerous. We were like babes in the woods; we had no idea. And it looked like mango chutney.

Needless to say that a little pin-prick of that stuff, caused minor explosions in the mouth, and later in the digestive tract. It was that good. And it is because of that mendiga, that I now buy jabaneros, and not jalapenos in my weekly grocery shopping. Where you had to use 5 jalapenos, 1 jabanero will suffice. And that’s less work, no ?

wingstop_01Another good place to obtain your fix of the “hot” stuff is “Wingstop”. This, as the name suggests specializes in buffalo wings and chicken tenders, cooked in their special sauces. Essentially they fry the chicken and dip it in a particular sauce of your choice. The first time I went in there, I looked at the menu and the people coming into the shop. Most of them ordered the “mild” (more people) or the “hot” (less people) version of their sauce. Other than that Wingstop also offered the “Cajun” and the “Atomic” sauces, in ascending order of spiciness, and nobody was ordering either. I ordered the “Atomic” wings, and the guy goes into the back room, and comes back with this tin of sauce, which he spoons out into a bowl, and into which he dips the buffalo wings. I’m assuming they don’t use this sauce very often.

“Atomic” describes the sauce very well. One morsel of that thing blew a hole in my mouth, and I consider myself a pretty well-seasoned (can’t help the pun) spice-eater. Eating 5 Atomic buffalo wings in quick succession required an emergency trip to the restroom, but I was eating all the way there. I must add that on my most recent tryst with Atomicity, 2 doses of Imodium A-D were required to recover from the wing-eating frenzy. I’ve been on milder food since.

tacobellSo, denied most of the foods that threaten to rip to shreds the lining of my stomach, I go to my other favorite place – Taco Bell. And when the lady at the drive-by window enquires about the kind of sauce I’d like – Mild or Hot, I just smile up at her and say “Fire”.

Cross-posted on Desicritics.

Posted in books | 4 Comments »
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