Esperanto & Blade: Trinity

As a result of the Union Square Virgin Megastore's Closing Sale ("Lights and Light Fixtures also for sale") this week, I was able to obtain a copy of the New Line Platinum Series Edition 2-Disc Unrated Version of Blade: Trinity for all of $4. As the third film in the franchise and the fourth in my bag (alongside Blade 2 and Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder) expectations were not particularly high. Iom did mi koni kio trezoro estis interna.

Among the special features (collected under the title 'Nightstalkers, Daywalkers and Familiars: The World of Blade: Trinity' - which to my mind has more colons than are necessary for any self respecting moniker) is a piece in which director David S Goyer talks about how cities are often bilingual or multilingual. Road signs and public warnings are therefore often in English and another language - in LA it might be Spanish, in Swansea perhaps Welsh, in New York almost always Hobo Scrawl.

Since the city in which the Blade films take place is never actually named, Goyer decided that the city's denizens would be fluent in Esperanto - that wonderful "international auxiliary language" that never really caught on. So all signage and advertisements in the film include Esperanto elements, and there are even segments of dialogue in Esperanto - such as an exchange between Kris Kristofferson's character Whistler and a newsvendor in which they discuss the growing public perception that Blade is a menace to society. An Esperanto flag is also visible in one scene, during a fight between Blade and a recently awoken Dracula (yes, really - only he's called Drake here - perhaps because of his leather pants.)

There is even a scene that has a character watching Incubus - a 1965 black and white horror classic starring William Shatner (yes, that William Shatner) which has the distinction of being the only feature film completely in Esperanto.

Wonderful stuff for $4. And if all that wasn't enough, there's an alternate ending that has the Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel characters fighting a werewolf-vampire hybrid in a Shanghai casino run by Russian mobsters in stetsons and inhabited by girls in assless chaps. So that's nice.

Jugaad is the asli spirit of Innovation

Now that GM looks likely to be owned by the American taxpayer, and that all the fuss around the $2000 Tata Nano is dying down, I was gratified to read that the Economist has not forgotten about Jugaad - the original low-cost auto design from Asia

A year or so ago, when somebody asked me to describe the soul of India, I gave them the phrase "jugaad". Jugaad means nothing works like it should, there is no infrastructure, there is no blueprint for success. But you have a pressing NEED: to get from point A to point B. So you just make it happen, however you can.

Like this taxi...


Or this tractor...


And here are some more 'jugaadu' shots from the Indian highways, courtesy of the Flickr Jugaad group

(thank you also to the Power of Ideas blog)

It's just a reminder that as long as anything costs Rs 1 in India, somebody will be ready to improvise a solution that works half as well, for a quarter of the cost.

No matter how ridiculous it looks.

Creative Protest 3: Get your panties in a bunch

So we have written about women coercing complacent government officials to wear bangles and about Gandhigiri. The SKAR creative protest award definitely goes to the

Consortium of Pub-Going Loose and Forward Women -- a group of women who decided to mobilize online and send unwashed pink panties to a Hindu activist group that was responsible for abusing  women in a bar.

This story has been widely written about and makes for an easy SKAR piece. However, what we found most absurd was Mr. KG Paul's take on this matter. This cherubic looking self-proclaimed citizen journalist who reports from his home (please notice the silk curtains in the background) discusses this incident and decides that it is a great opportunity to 

wax eloquent on the clash of civilizations, Justus Moser and Matthew Arnold!

Patel vs. Patel vs. Patel vs. Patel vs. Patel vs. Patel

If you thought only the Indians in India were nuts, you need to read this post.

On July 19, 2001 Cricket umpire Roy Higgins turned up to umpire a game between Yorkshire LPS & Amarmilan club from Bradford. To his surprise, all 22 of the players on the pitch were named... Patel

BBC Sport has the story, but I'd like to quote from LPS club secretary Ishy Patel
"We didn't realise we all had the same name until the match was under way, but even then we didn't think it was anything special.

"We certainly didn't think it would become such a big story.

"Twice before we've played and there were 21 Patels lining up against each other, but on this occasion our regular wicketkeeper, who is not called Patel, had to go to London for work."

Spare a thought for the one non-Patel. No wonder he took off to London for work. The scorecard from that momentous game is here below:



But thats not the only Patel story in town:

BBC News last week has an article about a marriage mart in Wembley, where groups of British Patels can meet & date another...er.. Patel. There are 250,000 Patels in the UK, divided across half a dozen castes.

As the guests arrive they are handed lists relating first names (surnames are obviously a given at this do), ages, qualifications and occupations of their opposite numbers, together with the names of the villages their forefathers came from. One girl explained:

"You look for the village where your own folks come from. But you can't link up with someone who's from your own village because they'll be too close, like your cousin or your brother."

The mind boggles. It's approximately 6800km between Wembley and any village in Gujarat.

Creative Protests 2: Gandhigiri

In 2003, Indian film actor Sanjay Dutt (no stranger to the law himself) starred as Munnabhai MBBS, a small town lad in Mumbai who pretends to his parents to be a doctor but actually makes his living as a small-time thug or "goonda" practicing extortion, called "goondagiri".

The movie was a big hit, spawning a sequel in 2006 called Lage Raho Munnabhai

In order to win his lady love's heart, (and also beset by a talking apparition of Mahatma Gandhi) Munnabhai has now become an RJ preaching ..er.. "gandhigiri" as a substitute for "goondagiri".

It's a lot simpler if you watch the video.


"Gandhigiri" with its dual antecedents in violence ("Goondagiri") & non-violence ("Gandhiism") has gained prominence fast in India and across the world.

Observe:
+ A feast held for 20 befuddled foreign students in Punjab (as a way of protesting against racism in Australia)
+ A bouquet of roses for the health minister in Delhi (to protest inaction on a dengue epidemic)
+ and my favourite: Flowers for the USCIS (Immigration) Department in Washington DC (protesting delays in green card applications)

Quotes from the head of USCIS
"The public reaction to the July 2 announcement made it clear that the federal government's management of this process needs further review,"

Quotes from the feasted students:
Visibly confused but enjoying all the attention, Simin, president of the foreign students association here, said, "It's really a heartwarming thing done by the Indian students. I really liked the garlands. After today’s function, we feel safer and more secure in this city. We just hope the same treatment is reserved for Indians abroad."

"Visibly confused, but enjoying all the attention"? I bet.

Gandhigiri has potential to go global. A group of US Citizens trying to bring their fiances into the country sent a batch of chocolate kisses to the Vermont Service Center of the USCIS

Poor USCIS, but... hahahaha... I heart gandhigiri!

Kalikamba the Astro-Palmist

Roadside sign. Kalikamba is the man for all problems. But what exactly does he mean by "CINEMA" problems? Any theories? One theory proposed by a SKAR member is as follows:

education + employment = business
promotion + abroad = marriage
land - money = enemy
husband + wife problems = court cinema

Creative Protests 1: The Power of Bangles

The power-distance between an individual and the state can be very large in India, often literally. It can take a long time to get an electricity connection.

One way, as women in India, to shame the government officials to pay attention to you is to storm into their office and make them wear bangles!

Hindu reports

"Angry over the erratic power supply in the district, Awasthi and her supporters Friday barged into the office of executive engineer R.S.Gautam and forced him and other officials there to wear bangles, police said."

Wear bangles! This brand of shaming is not unique to the subcontinent however. In Thailand, derelict policeman are forced to wear hot-pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty,"

It's hard to say where to draw the line between "humiliation" and "soul force" as a motivating factor, but it's fair to say that from the medieval blacking of the face to Gandhi's "satyagraha"; communities in India have evolved colourful ways of registering protest.

India, and the Taste for Conspicuous Consumption

There was a terrific article on Inconspicuous Consumption in the The Atlantic that got me thinking about certain consumption patterns in the Indian consumer

The article essentially states that as one's peer group becomes wealthier, consumption:
a. becomes more inconspicuous (ie. bathrooms vs. watches)
b. moves from products to services (ie. from fancy cars to fancy vacations)

Given that India, overall, is a very poor country that would imply a very strong tendency towards flashy consumption; and would also likely imply that consumption is centered around goods vs. services.

The match with reality: mobile phones sell like crazy in this country; currently 4 million a month and holding.

Luxury vacations meanwhile are only now picking up. For most Indians, vacations mean either visiting families or going on pilgrimages. For many urban Indians, vacations mean junkets to shopping destinations like New York, London, Dubai, Singapore, Bangkok.

Building businesses around upscale services may not be a bad planning strategy for the future. Which are the likely professions? Psychoanalyst? Personal shopper? Keep your eyes peeled for anything around you.

Inscrutable Massages, Food etc. in China

A few years ago, in China, we came across an inscrutable sign that said : BLIND MASSAGE

Setting ourselves the task of decoding it's meaning, we reasoned that it could mean one of two things:

1. If you are blind, you can go here to get a massage

2. You get a massage by a blind person

Given that it was a printed sign, we reckoned it could not be 1) as that sign would need to be Braille or something. We were about to move on when a sudden, horrifyingly ridiculous third alternative emerged:

3. You get to massage a blind person

Could that even be possible? What would the blind person get out of it? What would you get out of it? The mind boggled.

Sounds ridiculous, but then look at this sign:



If one can have:
- The hand grasps the beef
- Steamed rolling wish oats flavor
- Domestic life soil beans a round mass if
- Syrup long chinese yam,
- Pingyao bowl gets wet bare
- Sour picked cababe with mound
- Burn the eggplant
- Bum [*nb- our favorite: short, sweet and insanely ridiculous]
- Burn the egggplant [*nb - That's right eggplant, burn! burn!!]
- The red flour rubs mound fights
- Orchid Zhou knife cut face
- Powder vegetables if water
etc...

then anything should be possible, even option 3!

ps - we never checked out the massage, but it turns out that option 2 was correct.

Sita sings the Blues

There's nothing here but a shout-out to a terrific animated called 'Sita Sings the Blues'

The movie was made by a talented young woman called Nina Paley, and it's story (in some part) reflects her own journey through love.

Excerpted from the interview:

Wired: What is your movie about?

Nina Paley: Sita Sings the Blues is a musical, animated personal interpretation of the Indian epic the Ramayana. The aspect of the story that I focus on is the relationship between Sita and Rama, who are gods incarnated as human beings, and even they can't make their marriage work [laughs].

Wired: And that ties in with the film's second narrative.

Paley: Right, and then there's my story. I'm just an ordinary human, who also can't make her marriage work. And the way that it fails is uncannily similar to the way Rama and Sita's [relationship fails]. Inexplicable yet so familiar. And the question that I asked and the question people still ask is, "Why"? Why did Rama reject Sita? Why did my husband reject me? We don't know why, and we didn't know 3,000 years ago. I like that there's really no way to answer the question, that you have to accept that this is something that happens to a lot of humans.



You can stream the movie online at reel 13 or on YouTube in HD, but don't forget to check out her site www.sitasingstheblues.com.

Here's the trailer:


It's screening all over the world this year, it may be screening close to you.

Some heartbreaks are universal, it seems.

Monkey Business

Our collective imagination created the Monkey God
 and therefore it comes as no surprise that we, the Indian people are capable of fearing The Monkey Man!

Mass hysteria ensued in New Delhi in 2001 when a "half-beast half-man" was said to be unleashing its wrath indiscriminately on innocent people. Reportedly, the entire eastern district police force of about 3,000 personnel was put on patrol to hunt down the creature. The Times of India said an industrial worker died on Sunday night in nearby Noida town when he jumped off a first-floor building after being awoken by cries the "monkey man" was attacking.



Like almost every other supernatural story in India, this was a false alarm.

Yet, a month later, CNN reported that:
" At least three people panicked and fell to their deaths from buildings during the two-week saga because they were convinced the attacker -- described varyingly as a monkey-like creature with metallic claws and a cat with tawny, glowing eyes -- was pursuing them.
...
At the height of the panic, vigilante groups armed with sticks patrolled the streets at night on the lookout for the creature and police announced a 50,000 rupee ($1,067) reward for information leading to its capture."


And this in a country where the nominal GDP per capita is about $950.

Imagine roaming the mean streets of Delhi looking for a Monkey Man! "What did you do today?" "I looked for a half-beast, half-man. Didn't find him. Will try again tomorrow."


Monkey Men, show up in other places as well. Apparently, the Indian Railways believe that by dressing up a man like a monkey and making him walk on all fours, real monkeys will be stymied in the efforts to steal food from train passengers! 

If you don't believe us, watch the video:

And the Most famous person in the world EVER.......

Yahoo Answers thinks it's Walt Disney & Ronald McDonald

I think that can't be right. The most well-known person would have to be well-recognized in India & China to even have a chance of getting that title.

And nobody cut across national borders like this guy, twenty-five years ago....


Just look at his impact in India: knockoff videos, a genuine star and a little person. Look at his fans in China create a dancing terrorist-infiltrator and, of course, the little children

And then there's the other Thriller in Manila...

Beat that Ronald McDonald!

How Sex Education is Taught in India

Watch this video and wonder:



The video was produced by the Nrityanjali academy, a group which uses the performing arts to promote social causes in the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India.

blog.telegraph.uk has the video, with quotes:

"Our main target groups are people vulnerable to the HIV virus like sex workers, transsexuals or truck drivers," said P Narsingh Rao director of the academy.

"We tour villages in mobile video vans to show the film. The screening is followed by a question and answer session about condom use and sexually transmitted diseases."


No published stats on the effectiveness in Andhra Pradesh are known to us, as of this date. However, the academy has had a chance to present its methods before Laura Bush.

So.. hmmm.. if only there was a comedic Texan cowboy with a promiscuous love life one could set to a catchy beat ....

Wouldn't be as good as this ad, perhaps, but a place in the Top 20?

Chamrajpet Charles

I find Chamrajpet Charles to be the best social commentator on all things Bangalore.

Hear him/her/it talk about anything from Wine fever to Slumdogs to International terrorism (not to mention Bangalore's growing pains)



Ps. in case you wanted to know where Chamrajpet is

Indian Kings Proud Amid Poverty

These five ordinary-looking gentlemen above are "kings" who will not leave their subjects. Legally privy purses were abolished by the federal government in 1971; however these kings and a few courtiers linger on as pensioned dependents of the state government of Gujarat.

But the lingering question remains: When does a king cease to a king? When he decides so, or when everybody else decides so? Who decides?

Thank God we have a democratically elected parliament to decorously discuss, debate and legislate these thorny issues.