Geek of All Trades

More on Shabana ji and Javed sahib

I mentioned a couple of days ago my excitement at meeting my favorite Hindi film actress, the brilliant, talented, and beautiful woman who started it all for me, Shabana Azmi.  This came about because Shabana jii and her husband, the revered screenwriter and songwriter Javed Akhtar, are in the United States touring a show they have put together about Shabana's father, who was also a famous poet.  I saw the show as well, and I'll tell you about that later.  The day before the show, Shabana and Javed made a hastily-arranged appearance at Harvard, which is where I met her and took the pictures I posted the other day. 

I found myself face-to-face with Shabana not long after I arrived at the venue; she was sitting inconspicuously on a couch and I walked up behind her unknowingly after spotting my Hindi teacher Naseem jii nearby.  I looked down at Shabana, she looked up at me, and my brain short-circuited; I think I managed to say "Hello, how are you?" and she responded politely.  My teacher introduced us.  "Shabana jii," she said in Hindi, "this is Carla, one of my students; she loves you very much."  She shook my hand, which was warm and sweating, I later realized.  She asked me a couple of polite questions; I was incapable of thinking of anything intelligent to say, and then it was over. 

I returned to my seat behind her and just watched and listened as she interacted with other people who came by to say hello; some fans, some friends.  I had the completely surreal experience of listening to her exchange email addresses with my teacher; that felt more like something I would have witnessed in a dream than in real life.  Eventually she and Javed took their places at the front of the room and the event was underway.  They were there, they said, to listen to what was on students' minds, so they opened the floor immediately, without any prepared remarks, for questions about art and activism, the twin foci of both their lives.

I took copious notes on the presentation, and I wrote them up for my friends at BollyWHAT?  I also want to present them to you here, but they are quite long, so they continue below the jump. 

... because it sure ain't looking good

Susie Bright is rightly depressed about the state of reproductive rights.  She and the other sources she links to make the astute point that much of the anti-choice force isn't about the lives of babies; it's about imposing control over women and their sexuality. 

An explosive situation

One morning a few weeks ago, my usually indomitable friend J. turned to me with furrowed brow and said, fear edging her softened voice, "Do you think the United States is going to bomb Iran?"

J.'s concern was as personal as it was political.  She was born in Iran.  Her family fled during the revolution, I think, and she lived most of her young life in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.  But Iran is her birthplace, her original home, and she seems (sometimes, at least) to think of herself as Persian first, and everything else that she is subordinately. 

I didn't know how to answer J.'s question, and neither did David, who is usually better equipped to speak on such matters than I.  Relations with Iran looked bad then, and they have only gotten worse in recent weeks. 

The U.N. is increasingly concerned with Iran's interest in obtaining the means to manufacture weapons-grade enriched uranium.  Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be a raving madman who seems hell-bent, Kim Jong-Il style, on demonstrating his independence and strength by defying, insulting, and provoking other world powers, especially the U.S. 

While I see the hypocrisy in efforts by the world's nuclear club to keep the club's doors closed to newcomers, it is hard to see how diplomacy can have any effect at all with Ahmadinejad, whose rhetoric echoes that of those who in the West are commonly called terrorists, and who in his speeches cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as evidence of the world-wide Jewish conspiracy he perceives.  One cannot imagine Security Council resolutions having any more sway on this man than they had on Saddam Hussein.   

Nevertheless, the American folly in Iraq has left the armed forces too depleted to launch a similar attack on Iran.  Ahmadinejad surely knows this, and spews his rhetoric secure in the belief that the U.S. and its allies will hesitate to take on another Iraq-style mission.  But the President and his administration aren't going to let Ahmadinejad thumb his nose at them with impunity for long.  They let Kim Jong-Il do so for fear of stepping on China's toes, but there is no such buffer for Iran.

And so, as ever, there is nothing but fear and uncertainty for the future in the Middle East.  Israel is more uncertain than ever, while Sharon languishes on life support; Palestine is led by Hamas; Iraq is God-knows-what; Iran is a war waiting to happen.  And I still don't know what to say to J., except to apologize for being an American, for the contributions that my country's missteps have made to this terrifying mess. 

No irony intended

News that the state of California had executed its oldest death row inmate hardly caught my attention.  D.'s only comment after we heard about Clarence Ray Allen's failed appeals on the radio this morning was, while he hates the death penalty as much as anyone, "if it isn't cruel and unusual punishment to execute a 55-year-old man, then it isn't cruel and unusual to execute a 75-year-old man."  I told him he could feel secure in the knowledge that Governor Schwarzenneger and the California Supreme Court agreed with him. 

I hate the death penalty, too.  I hate it (among other reasons) because it substitutes revenge, one of humankind's basest impulses, for justice and mercy, which are among the more elevated and elevating aspects of the intellects God gave us.  I've heard it complained that such arguments can only be made by people who haven't lost loved ones to violent crimes.  That's exactly correct, but I think its correctness only proves my point.  No one has ever expressed that idea better than my old law school friend, J.D., who was at the time one of the staunchest law-and-order hardasses I'd ever met.  J.D. said, "If someone did something to hurt my mother, I wouldn't want them in jail for life.  I'd want to kill them with my bare hands."  She paused, and then added, "that's why I'm against the death penalty." 

Another reason to hate the death penalty is the hypocrisy evidenced by so many of its supporters and agents, as illustrated so aptly in a CNN story on Mr. Allen's demise:

Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.

"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him," then execute him.   

Internet miscellany

Here are a few interesting items I've come across in recent web-surfing.

Plan B: Get it while you can is a trenchant rumination on reproductive rights from the blog of a fellow Bryn Mawr alum. 

In a recent post at Language Log, Ben Zimmer calls readers' attention to the PlanetRead literacy project, aimed at increasing literacy in India by providing television programs subtitled in several languages.  Zimmer links an example archived in Google video - an absolutely delightful video for a sweet Telugu song, subtitled in English, in romanized Telugu, and in Telugu's native script.  Well worth watching.

A very funny photoshop contest at Worth 1000 - Pimp my Ren, in which participants are invited to bring the bling-bling to classic works of art.  The Girl with the Pearl Nosering may be my favorite, though all entries are clever and very well-executed.

O'Connor - not Rehnquist - first pin to fall

I wasn't too worried by Chief Justice Rehnquist's expected retirement.  After all, he's so conservative already that replacing him with a Bush appointee would not change the Court's composition that drastically. 

But then, today, comes the distressing news that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has submitted her resignation to the President.  Justice O'Connor has been a true centrist on the Court and has been the swing vote - and the elegant author - of many a 5-4 decision over her near quarter-century's service.  The effect of filling her seat with a Bush ideologue is incalculable.  Abortion, the death penalty, the First Amendment - these are just a few of the areas in which an O'Connor vote has been decisive and in which a Bush lackey would likely have voted the other way. 

This is a sad day, a day that marks a new stage in the erosion of so many of the freedoms we cherish.   And it only stands to get worse from here.  John Paul Stevens is doing his best Thurgood Marshall imitation, trying to hand on through the storm of a right-wing president, but it is only a matter of time before he must leave the Court as well.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg has battled health issues of her own.  It's difficult to overstate the terrifying concentration of ideology on a Court that featured the two-headed monster of Scalia and Thomas, Rehnquist or another just like him, and three Bush appointees. 

Up until today, the Court had gone a record 11 years without a change of Justice.  O'Connor's retirement is just the beginning of the new era.  It's going to be a long, scary ride from here.

Praying for Zach

While clicking on TypePad's "Recently Updated Weblogs" links (I've mentioned those before), I came across this post in someone else's blog.

It made me cry. 

I sometimes forget that some kids still have to go through what young Zach is going through, even here in the U.S. where we are free in so many ways.  I am so lucky to have the family I have.  I'm praying for Zach today. 

The religion that dare not speak its name?

I couldn't read much of the article in this week's Times Magazine about the crusade against gay marriage, because the people who oppose it make me almost too angry to think.  But in the few snippets I read, I couldn't help but notice this (on page 2 of the web version):

[Anti-gay activists'] passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.

Emphasis added.  Hey folks - seeks to spread itself?  Doesn't that sound a lot more like evangelical Christianity than like homosexuality?  Yeah - it did to me, too.

My home town gets it right

The New York Times reports that a Manhattan judge has ruled that a state law effectively barring gay marriage violates the state Constitution.  She has ordered New York City, the defendant in the lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal on behalf of five couples, to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in 30 days. 

This is a great victory in the ongoing battle for equal marriage, although the war is far from won, even in New York; the ruling only applies to New York City, and there are other cases pending elsewhere in the state in which judges have upheld the ban.   And the city has not yet officially announced whether it will appeal, but realistically appeal must be inevitable.  But it is another significant notch in the belt of organizations like Lambda Legal, and here in Massachusetts, Equal Marriage.

Still, I am proud of my home town for getting it right, and I only wish I could count on the rest of my country to do the same.  When was the last time a president was permitted to express his bigotry openly in a State of the Union address?  And yet our president seems perfectly comfortable standing before the country and announcing that some of us are not entitled to the same rights as others, because he finds the idea distasteful.  The president's view makes me sick, but I have too much respect for the Constitution to propose an amendment banning it. 

Love the sinner; hate his kids

I heard on the news yesterday morning that a group of concerned parents in a California diocese were pressuring their parish Catholic school to revoke the enrollment of the twin adopted sons of a gay couple.  Here is a link to the NPR story.

A spokesman for this parents' group actually said that the gay couple was trying to put the "homosexual agenda" (remember this?) ahead of the education of children.

Come again?

Hysterical bigotry never ceases to amaze me.  Don't these people realize how stupid they sound?  That's right, folks, you're never safe: homosexuals have actually stooped to adopting children and sending them to school, if you can imagine the audacity, just to impose their agenda on God-fearing people like you.  Where will it ever end?