The alchemists

By William Pfaff

Friday, May 23, 2008

PARIS: The global financial market has become "a monster," responsible for "massive destruction of assets," according to the president of Germany and former head of the IMF, Horst Kohler. It "grotesquely" remunerates its executives, he added.

According to Kenneth Griffin, founder and head of the $20 billion Citadel Investment Group - one of the biggest and most successful American hedge fund companies - international finance has been functioning on the judgment of "29-year-old kids" who "control the capital markets of America ... young guys right out of business school."

In the big banks that provide universal financial services, he said in an interview published in the International Herald Tribune, the chief executives often "only understand a part of the business."

In the celebrated case of the French bank Société Générale, it appears that the head of the bank had little idea what went on in its trading rooms, where a young man, eager to earn the approbation of his superiors and a larger bonus, made trades involving sums exceeding the total worth of the bank.

Griffin says his "tentative" conclusion is that the industry needs greater regulation. To the industry outsider, regulation is needed not only because of what the CEO does not know, but because of the discrepancy between reality and the academic market-models that provided the rationale for the vast deregulation of the global economy in recent years.

As viewed from universities, the international economy is thought to be composed of well-informed individuals and companies acting rationally in their own and their customers' best interests, maximizing profit opportunities, aware of risks and managing them prudently, committed to the integrity of the system upon which they and their national economies depend.

The academic model of commodities trading does not regard speculation as a problem because any anomalies are corrected by rational consumer reactions.

Paul Krugman wrote last week in the International Herald Tribune that if the world oil price had been quadrupled by speculation, "drivers would cut back on their driving; homeowners would turn down their thermostats; owners of marginal oil wells would put them back into production."

I'm sure they would. Industry would develop Canadian shale oil, the big oil companies would resume exploration (which they have neglected) and start building new refineries, General Motors and Ford would make smaller cars, and the Japanese and Europeans who already make small cars would have booming sales.

That's what happened in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil price crisis, which was a deliberate oil producers' boycott. By 1982 the oil price was forced down.

That experience has nothing to do with the present situation. No market speculator intends to hoard his oil until the price goes up.

Speculative trading deals in points and quarter-points. You buy a contract if the oil price is moving up, and sell it three minutes later to someone convinced it will go higher. Traders buy their contracts and spread rumors suggesting increased shortage of the commodity (not too hard to do with nonstop financial TV, which lives by reporting every scrap of news affecting commodity or stock prices). When the price begins to move, the trader unloads.

Real or rumored problems in the Nigerian oil fields, political troubles for Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Gazprom uncertainties - all have been the stuff from which trading fortunes are made.

Futures trading in commodities originally had a necessary role in stabilizing prices. As the financial frenzy of recent years took over the big banks, the markets obliged by creating derivatives and other new instruments of trade, while the futures market retained traditionally low margin requirements.

The Chicago commodities markets, the Mercantile Exchange and the Board of Trade, merged to form a new company in order to create new trading opportunities. The volume of this year's trades - now over a million a day - is already close to the total for all 2007.

As a general rule, the margin required to buy an oil futures contract is 10 percent. Pledge $10,000 and buy $100,000 worth of oil. Or why be a piker? Put up $100,000 and buy a million-dollar contract. The price goes up one dollar five minutes later and you've made a million.

These are not transactions between producers and consumers, when the classical economic rules would function. These trades, unregulated, have virtually no useful economic role. They have become a form of parasitical professional gambling that distorts the transactions between producers and buyers.

Kohler compared the speculative bankers with alchemists, who purported to make gold from dross. It is not a bad comparison, and our contemporaries have, thus far, done better than their medieval counterparts, who often ended burned at the stake.

Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13161495

Nobody loves you like Mama does

By Garrison Keillor
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn't anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother's Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, "Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I'll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!" and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the Infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna's chest, she said, "What in the world am I supposed to do with that?"
It begins in innocence. Music is playing, the night smells of lilacs, she asks if he would like to come in for a minute, and he does, and little does she know what cataclysm awaits her inside: the loss of individuality as she joins the Holy Order of Maternity.
Mothers were, at one time, young women with possibilities who might have taken a different route and become glamorous and powerful figures in size-two dresses and instead found themselves cleaning up excrement and jiggling colicky babies to get them to stop screaming. They hardly ever get to London anymore or have time to read James Joyce. They sit down to dinner with adults and feel brain-dead. A bouquet of flowers hardly seems compensation enough. How about a million dollars and a house in the south of France?
My mother appears in a photograph of five young women in white summer dresses walking hand-in-hand, grinning, on a country lane near Cottage Grove, Minnesota, in 1932 when she was 17, not long before she met my father, and they all look so fresh and happy, as if in a careless paradise all their own.
She is willowy, shy and beautiful and she might've modeled evening gowns at Dayton's Sky Room and maybe been spotted by a Hollywood scout and wound up in pictures, playing the village girl who charms the world-weary tycoon stranded in Littleville by the blizzard.
Instead, she became a suburban pioneer, making a home in a muddy cornfield, putting up the stewed tomatoes and canned beans every fall, raising six children, slogging through bouts of mumps and flu, whomping up big Christmases, fishing the laundry out of the washing machine and putting it through the wringer and hanging it on the line. Is that what the smiling girl of 1932 had in mind?
The cruel injustice of motherhood is that, out of devotion to her brood, she sacrifices so much of her own life that her children grow up to find her a little boring in comparison to the maiden aunt who is a little rebellious and more fun to be around, whereas Mom is just the lady who runs the vacuum. As Erma Bombeck said, the kids walk in and ask her, "Is anybody home?"
But she loves you. You could come home with snakes tattooed on your face and she still would see the good in you. Most great men were mama's boys. She encouraged them long before anybody else could see any talent there.
Your mother is on top of the situation. Your father has a hard time remembering your birthday or even your Christian name, but your mother knows you by scent, thanks to years of doing your laundry. She knows when you're in trouble. And you will get into deep trouble someday. Count on it.
Someone will file a lawsuit against you and subpoena your e-mail and it will all come flooding out, your dark secrets, your nefarious dealings, and your friends will cross the street to avoid you and your brothers and sisters will fade into the woodwork, but your mother will still love you. Like an old lioness, she'll come running even if you're two thousand miles away.
That is why you pay homage to the old lady on Mother's Day. You entered this cold world causing her more pain than she thought possible and now she won't ever give up on you. Those old ladies you see being wheeled onto airliners are the mothers of children facing imminent indictment for terrible things. Mama will be in the courtroom for you, baby. She will look the jury in the eye and her look may get you acquitted.
Buy her something nice for Mother's Day this spring, like a set of gold ingots. Or a black car with a chauffeur. She's your mama, honeybuns. At least you could write her a note.


Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=12652559

Can you become a creature of new habits?

By Janet Rae-Dupree
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd," William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

"The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder," says Dawna Markova, author of "The Open Mind" and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. "But we are taught instead to 'decide,' just as our president calls himself 'the Decider.' " She adds, however, that "to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities."
All of us work through problems in ways of which we're unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. "This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything," explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book "This Year I Will..." and Markova's business partner. "That's a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence."

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you're an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you've learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

"I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit," Ryan says. "Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that's going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain."
Ryan and Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It's that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

"Getting into the stretch zone is good for you," Ryan says in "This Year I Will... ." "It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day — listen to a new radio station, for instance — found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general."

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

"Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain," Ryan notes in her book. "If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we'll run from what we're trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don't set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness."

Simultaneously, take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don't. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity.
"Try lacing your hands together," Markova says. "You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn't it? That's the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new."

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.
But if, during creation of that new habit, the "Great Decider" steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, "you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again," she says.
"You cannot have innovation," she adds, "unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder."

Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=12604112

Who will tell the people?

By Thomas L. Friedman
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Traveling the United States these past five months while writing a book, I've had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it's this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper - that we're just not that strong anymore. We're borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage - as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.
Our president's latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after Sept. 11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents' generation - work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means - have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream - a house - with no money down and no payments for two years."
That's why Donald Rumsfeld's infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: "You go to war with the army you have." Hey, you march into the future with the country you have - not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In JFK's waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, as if we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it's because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world's best talent - including Americans.

And us? Harvard's president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in "downsized labs, layoffs of post-docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions." Today, she added, "China, India, Singapore . . . have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere."

Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is "toughening up" Barack Obama so he'll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don't need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I'm voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV - at 8 p.m. - from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.
I don't know if Barack Obama can lead that way, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn't matter is dead wrong. "Of course, hope alone is not enough," says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, "but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else."

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted - enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America.

They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity - big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, "no one can touch us."

Source:http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=12547158

Ford reaches deal to sell Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.3 billion

By Heather Timmons

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

NEW DELHI: Tata Motors, part of India's fast-growing Tata Group, is buying Jaguar and Land Rover from beleaguered Ford Motor for $2.3 billion.

The purchase price is more than the market expected, but still about half what Ford originally paid for the brands several years ago. The long-awaited deal, which was announced Wednesday, also carries a painful payout for Ford. After the transaction closes, which is expected midyear, Ford will give Tata $600 million to make up for shortfalls in the two brands' pension plans.

Tata Group, one of India's largest conglomerates, has been on an overseas acquisition spree in recent years, buying up everything from tea and coffee companies to steel manufacturers. Other Indian companies are also eyeing overseas acquisitions as a weak dollar, coupled with strong domestic growth, make takeovers attractive, particularly in the United States.

When Tata does deals, it rarely changes the character of the company that it buys over the near term. Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Motors, reiterated that strategy on Wednesday, saying the Tata Group "will endeavor to preserve and build on their heritage and competitiveness" of the two brands, while "keeping their identities intact." No changes are expected to employment terms for the approximately 16,000 employees of Jaguard and Land Rover.

Ford is in the midst of a painful overhaul, shedding costly units and workers in the United States. The Ford chief executive and president, Alan Mulally, said in a statement he was confident that Jaguar and Land Rover would thrive under their new owners.

"Now, it is time for Ford to concentrate on integrating the Ford brand globally, as we implement our plan to create a strong Ford Motor Company that delivers profitable growth for all," he said.

Ford has lost $15 billion in the past two years.

Ford will continue to provide some components, including power trains, to Jaguar and Land Rover, which are built in Britain, as well as some research and development support. Ford's finance arm, Ford Motor Credit, will continue to provide financing to Jaguar and Land Rover dealers and customers for up to 12 months.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/26/business/26tata.php

In most species, faithfulness is a fantasy

You can accuse the disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of many things in his decision to flout the law by soliciting the services of a pricey prostitute: hypocrisy, egomania, sophomoric impulsiveness and self-indulgence, delusional ineptitude and boneheadedness. But one trait decidedly not on display in Spitzer's splashy act of whole-life catabolism was originality.

It's all been done before, every snickering bit of it, and not just by powerful "risk-taking" alpha men who may or may not be enriched for the hormone testosterone. It's been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form "pair bonds" of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.

Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.

As David Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, put it with Cole Porter flair: Infants have their infancy; adults, adultery. Barash, who wrote "The Myth of Monogamy" with his psychiatrist-wife, Judith Eve Lipton, cited a scene from the movie "Heartburn" in which a Nora Ephronesque character complains to her father about her husband's philanderings and the father quips that if she'd wanted fidelity, she should have married a swan. Fat lot of good that would have done her, Barash said: we now know that swans can cheat, too. Instead, the heroine might have considered union with Diplozoon paradoxum, a flatworm that lives in gills of freshwater fish. "Males and females meet each other as adolescents, and their bodies literally fuse together, whereupon they remain faithful until death," Barash said. "That's the only species I know of in which there seems to be 100 percent monogamy." And where the only hearts burned belong to the unlucky host fish.

Even the "oldest profession" that figured so prominently in Spitzer's demise is old news. Nonhuman beings have been shown to pay for sex, too. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of South Bohemia described transactions among great grey shrikes, elegant raptorlike birds with silver capes, white bellies and black tails that, like 90 percent of bird species, form pair bonds to breed. A male shrike provisions his mate with so-called nuptial gifts: rodents, lizards, small birds or large insects that he impales on sticks. But when the male shrike hankers after extracurricular sex, he will offer a would-be mistress an even bigger kebab than the ones he gives to his wife — for the richer the offering, the researchers found, the greater the chance that the female will agree to a fly-by-night fling.

In another recent report from the lubricious annals of Animal Behaviour entitled "Payment for sex in a macaque mating market," Michael Gumert of Hiram College described his two-year study of a group of longtailed macaques that live near the Rimba ecotourist lodge in the Tanjung Puting National Park of Indonesia. Gumert determined that male macaques pay for sex with that all-important, multipurpose primate currency, grooming. He saw that, whereas females groomed males and other females for social and political reasons — to affirm a friendship or make nice to a dominant — and mothers groomed their young to soothe and clean them, when an adult male spent time picking parasites from an adult female's hide, he expected compensation in the form of copulation, or at the very least a close genital inspection. About 89 percent of the male-grooming-female episodes observed, Gumert said in an interview from Singapore, where he is on the faculty of Nanyang Technological University, "were directed toward sexually active females" with whom the males had a chance of mating.

Significantly, males adjust their grooming behavior in a distinctly economic fashion, paying a higher or lower price depending on the availability and quality of the merchandise and competition from other buyers. "What led me to think of grooming as a form of payment was seeing how it changed across different market conditions," Gumert said. "When there were fewer females around, the male would groom longer, and when there were lots of females, the grooming times went down." Males also groomed females of high rank considerably longer than they did low-status females with nary a diamond to their page.

Commonplace though adultery may be, and as avidly as animals engage in it when given the opportunity, nobody seems to approve of it in others, and humans are hardly the only species that will rise up in outrage against wantonness real or perceived. Most female baboons have lost half an ear here, a swatch of pelt there, to the jealous fury of their much larger and toothier mates. Among scarab beetles, males and females generally pair up to start a family, jointly gathering dung and rolling and patting it into the rich brood balls in which the female deposits her fertilized eggs. The male may on occasion try to attract an extra female or two — but he does so at his peril. In one experiment with postmatrimonial scarabs, the female beetle was kept tethered in the vicinity of her mate, who quickly seized the opportunity to pheromonally broadcast for fresh faces. Upon being released from bondage, the female dashed over and knocked the male flat on his back. "She'd roll him right into the ball of dung," Barash said, "which seemed altogether appropriate."

In the case of the territorial red-backed salamander, males and females alike are inclined to zealous partner policing and will punish partners they believe to have strayed: with threat displays, mouth nips and throat bites, and most coldblooded of all, a withdrawal of affection, a refusal to engage. Be warned, you big lounge lizard: it could happen to you.

Source:http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=11209673

As Turmoil Subsides, Tourism in Nepal Surges

By SETH SHERWOOD

AS morning crowds of sari-clad women and mustached men packed the busy streets of Katmandu on the first day of December, The Himalayan Times, an English-language daily newspaper, trumpeted a staggering discovery.

“Yeti Footprints Found at Khumbu,” declared the headline in bold type. An article explained that an expedition had come across a mammoth five-toed footprint buried in the ice near the base camp for Mount Everest. After a long period without a credible sighting, the elusive creature seemed to have suddenly reappeared.

In fact, it was hardly the only reappearance to celebrate. All over Katmandu that week, from trekking agencies to curry houses, some almost equally prized specimens were leaving tracks after years of scarcity: foreign travelers. According to the Nepal Tourism Board, December capped a banner year, with air arrivals up 27 percent over the 2006 total. Overall, 2007 welcomed some 360,000 foreign air travelers to the country, making it the most successful year for tourism since 2000.

For a poor but picturesque country that was nearly pulled apart by a decade of bloodshed and political turmoil — which witnessed some 13,000 deaths from a Maoist insurrection, the bizarre murder of most of the royal family by the crown prince, the seizure of absolute power by a subsequent king and the resulting pro-democracy riots — the numbers are heartening indeed.

They owe much to the calmed political situation. The civilian government has been restored, the Maoists have signed a peace treaty, and democratic elections are scheduled for later this year. As a result, several airlines resumed service or began new routes to Katmandu last year. Hotels report surges in bookings. And the streets of the city where raging protests once flared are again humming with bicycle rickshaws, sacred cows and beat-up taxis ferrying international visitors to the numerous World Heritage Sites in and around the capital city.

“We had planned to come a couple of years ago, but the political unrest made it impossible,” said Christa Hoyal, from Utah, as she lunched at the Katmandu Guest House with her traveling companion, Liz Tanner, also from Utah. A copy of The Himalayan Times with the yeti article on the front lay next to them. “But when things settled down,” she said, “we rebooked our tickets and came over.”

So far, Ms. Hoyal said, they had ridden elephants on safari in Royal Chitwan National Park and explored Katmandu’s centuries-old Hindu shrines and former royal palaces.

“There have been no concerns at all in terms of personal safety,” she said.

For others who have canceled or deferred journeys to Katmandu, the good news is that the troubled decade did nothing to harm the city’s age-old appeals.

THE snowcapped Himalayas, visible on clear days, soar eternally upward. Impervious to the vicissitudes of politics and trends, Katmandu’s artisans continue to produce rich carpets, yak-wool clothing, wood sculptures and thangka paintings. Day after day, crowds still await the appearance of the Kumari — a Nepali child considered to be the incarnation of a deity — below her mansion’s window in the city’s iconic Durbar Square.

And while the city might not be the mythical Shangri-La — crumbling buildings, rusted-out vehicles, emaciated dogs and impoverished families fill the poorly drained streets — the ancient religions of Hinduism and Buddhism do much to infuse meaning and color into the landscape. For more than anything else, Katmandu’s twin faiths make the city one of the planet’s most powerful magnets for spiritual seekers and philosophic souls.

In myriad guises and manifestations, each threads itself through daily life: the vermilion anointments on the foreheads of clerks and laborers; the wreaths of marigolds hanging from motorcycle handlebars; the prayer beads wrapped around wrists and necks; the colorful pictures of Shiva painted on huge exhaust-spewing trucks; the temples that draw worshipers from all over the world.

On an evening in late November, the scent of smoldering incense mingled with the stench of burning garbage as dusk settled over the massive stupa of Boudhanath. Resembling a gold pyramid propped on a mammoth white dome, the stupa is the center of Buddhist worship in Katmandu.

Around its base, hundreds of Tibetan and Nepali worshipers walked in a ritual clockwise circuit, spinning prayer wheels and muttering chants. A couple of dozen Westerners, many of them dressed in the colorful fabrics and hammered metal jewelry sold in nearby shops, also joined the human tide. Some were students at the White Monastery, one of the 30-odd Buddhist monasteries tucked into the predominantly Tibetan neighborhood. Some were on more private and more personal missions to Katmandu.

“A friend of mine died in Fiji while he was scuba diving,” said Mark Daddario, an American traveler from Southern California, as he watched the slow-moving pageant. “He was wearing some of my equipment when it happened.

“I have some of his ashes with me on this trip,” he continued, explaining that he had quit his job as a beer salesman to make time for the journey, which was also to include India and Southeast Asia. “I’ve been depositing them at monasteries all over the country.”

High above, painted atop the stupa, the huge, disembodied eyes of the Buddha gazed downward at the procession. Was Mr. Daddario at all concerned about visiting a remote nation that, until recently, tourists had largely avoided?

Mr. Daddario shook his head and smiled.

“My mom is probably worried about me,” he said, “but she knows that I’m on my fourth passport.”

A few days later, a diverse crowd of Nepalis and foreigners milled among the Ganesh and Shiva shrines in the temple complex of Pashupatinath, the holiest spot of Hindu ground in Katmandu. Situated along the banks of the Bagmati River, a tributary of India’s sacred Ganges, the assemblage of time-eater stone statues and buildings suggests a Nepalese version of Angkor Wat.

As hordes of brown monkeys scuttled over the stones, the human throngs peered at an unfolding spectacle along the riverbank. Several large cremation platforms — known as ghats — began to crackle with flames and billow with smoke and ash. Many of the bodies could still be perceived, like shadows, within the roaring orange blazes. Next to one of the ghats, a Nepali family lay out the stiffened body of a white-haired woman on rock slab and began to wrap it in an orange sheet.

“The conception of death is amazingly different here,” remarked Sean Speers, from San Francisco, as he watched the scene. Nearby, a group of sadhus — Hindu holy men — with painted faces and limbs coated in white ash were chatting with Mr. Speers’s girlfriend.

Mr. Speers said he had come to Nepal to visit his girlfriend, a fellow San Franciscan who was living in a rural village, and to trek to the base camp of Mount Everest.

“But a big draw for me was also just to meet the Nepali people,” Mr. Speers added, motioning to the sadhus. “I have to say, they’ve been delightful.”

As night arrived on the first day of December and news of the yeti footprint spread though the city, thousands of young Nepalis and scores of Westerners packed the lanes of the Thamel neighborhood for the fifth annual Tuborg Project: Peace, an outdoor music festival. On a series of stages, D.J.’s and bands played loud sets, sending music reverberating through the district’s tightly packed guest houses, bars, ethnic restaurants and handicraft shops.

For years, as the Maoist insurgency gained steam and political tensions mounted, no neighborhood suffered as much from the tourism drop-off as Thamel. On this night, however, the many foreign faces and accents in the streets gave the promise of better times ahead.

After the final set, a Nepali M.C. took the stage and addressed the crowd in English. “Remember, tonight is for peace!” he yelled to the sea of waving hands. Green shafts of laser light streaked overhead in the sky. He paused, then shouted, “We’re all happier with peace, right?”

His words echoed through the streets and faded into the night. But judging from the burst of cheers that followed, the message clearly lingered.

VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

There are no direct flights between the United States and Katmandu. For certain dates in April, Qatar Airways (www.qatarairways.com) offers flights from Newark airport to Katmandu, with a stop in the Qatari capital of Doha, from about $1,600.

WHERE TO STAY

In the busy Thamel entertainment district, the Katmandu Guest House (977-1-470-0800; www.ktmgh.com) has standard doubles from $25 per day. Doubles with air-conditioning from $50. A stone’s throw from the iconic Buddhist stupa of Boudhanath, Pal Rabten Khansar Guest House (www.sakyatharig.org.np) has very simple double rooms from 900 rupees ($13.39 at 67.2 Nepalese rupees to the dollar).

WHERE TO EAT

Outfitted with a pleasant roof deck, Third Eye Restaurant on the main drag in Thamel does very good Indian and Nepali foods, such as nan, kebabs, curries and fruit lassis. Around 1,000 rupees for a three-course meal for two people. Overlooking the Boudhanath stupa, the Stupa View Restaurant (977-1-448-0262) serves momos (Tibetan dumplings), pizzas and pasta with yak cheese. A three-course meal for two people is also around 1,000 rupees.

WHERE TO SHOP

The Thamel district teems with shops selling all manner of handmade Buddha statues, woven fabrics, ritual masks and yak woolens. Small but worth tracking down, Best Tea and Spices Shop (across from the Hotel Garuda in Thamel; 977-1-470-0505) sells spicy Nepali masala tea (250 rupees a box), jasmine tea (200 rupees a box), Darjeeling tea (200 rupees a box) and more.

Just inside the Boudhanath Gate, dozens of small shops sell Tibetan and Nepali woodwork, instruments, carpets, clothing and jewelry. Tibet Furniture (977-1-207-3412; www.tibetfurniture.com) is a trove of painted wooden doors, carved chests and fine metalwork.

Source:http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/travel/23Next.html?pagewanted=print

36 hours in new Delhi

By Somini Sengupta

Friday, March 21, 2008

A seat of power for more than a thousand years, the city-state of Delhi is a survivor of conquest and change. The Lodi and Mughal dynasties ruled this area, as did the British, until it was again transformed by the refugees of partition. Today, new money has conquered the region, which includes New Delhi, the capital of a rapidly changing India. Spiraling rents have put a Swarovski shop where a small independent bookshop once stood, and in the same market, a shop called It's All About Bling sells spangly earrings. Thankfully, much of the remarkable history has survived, allowing the visitor to travel easily through the accordion pleats of time.

Friday

4 p.m. 1) SUNSET TOMB

This is a city of ruins and none is more elegantly preserved than Humayun's Tomb, a precursor to the Taj Mahal and an early example of Mughal architecture. Built in the 1560s for Humayun, the second Mughal emperor, the domed mausoleum has an elaborate garden, potted with red sandstone tombs, gates and a mosque (admission is 250 rupees for foreigners, about $6 at 41 rupees to the dollar). Savor it at the golden end of the day.

6 p.m. 2) ART NOW

The new prosperity has spawned a thriving contemporary art scene. Several galleries are within a 15-minute ride into South Delhi, and new exhibitions usually open on Fridays. The Neeti Bagh neighborhood has Nature Morte (A-1 Neeti Bagh; 91-11-4174-0215; www.naturemorte.com) and Talwar Gallery (C-84 Neeti Bagh; 91-11-4605-0307; www.talwargallery.com). Nearby, Defence Colony offers Aryan Art Gallery (D-25 Defence Colony; 91-11-4155-1277; www.aryanartgallery.com) and Vadehra Art Gallery (D-40 Defence Colony; 91-11-2461-5368; www.vadehraart.com). Palette is on the top floor of a house in Golf Links (14 Golf Links; 91-11-4174-3034; www.paletteartgallery.com). Consult TimeOut Delhi and other local magazines for listings.

8 p.m. 3) ART OF THE PALATE

To continue the sensory overload, head to Basant Lok Market, a buzzing middle-class shopping center in Vasant Vihar, in the southwest sector, whose star attraction is the restaurant Punjabi by Nature (11 Basant Lok Market; 91-11-5151-6665; www.punjabibynature.in). Everything about this place is loud and large, including the food. Try the vodka gol gappa aperitif: crispy shells filled with a spiced vodka shot and popped into the mouth whole for a hot, boozy explosion. Carnivores: Try the tandoor-roasted lamb or the fish tikka. Vegetarians must make do with overspiced, tandoor roasted broccoli. For mellower non-Punjabi fare, head to the Defence Colony market and prepare to stand in line with Delhi chowhounds at Swagath (14 Defence Colony market; 91-11-2433-7538; www.swagath.in), for southern seafood dishes. Not to be missed: squid in butter garlic sauce and Chettinad-style prawns. Dinner for two runs about 2,000 rupees, at either restaurant (not counting the vodka gol gappas).

10 p.m. 4) ICE CREAM RUN

For dessert, go to one of dozens of ice cream vendors in front of India Gate, where balloons, cotton candy and the cool night air provide an evening picnic.

Saturday

8 a.m. 5) OLD GLORY

Take a taxi to the 17th-century Red Fort and Jama Masjid mosque early, when they are most
glorious. Then give yourself the rest of the morning to take in the uninterrupted life of the walled city of Emperor Shah Jahan, also known as Old Delhi. Every street is a world unto its own, devoted to auto parts or wedding cards or freshly roasted spices. One of the liveliest is Kinari Bazaar, a crafters' paradise bursting with haberdasheries, bead shops and vendors of bright red wedding turbans, alongside crumbling mansions. This is also a portrait of the head-load economy of old India, with porters ferrying everything from saris to bananas on their heads.

1 p.m. 6) TRANS-DELHI EXPRESS

The chaos of the old city dissolves in the spick-and-span Chandni Chowk station of the Delhi Metro. Eight minutes and 8 rupees later, you are at Rajiv Chowk station, in the city's modern heart, Connaught Place. Retail chains are fast taking over the early 20th-century colonnades, though several independent bookshops, jewelers and gun dealers — and several lunch options — remain. Few beat the buffet at the 1911 Restaurant in the Imperial Hotel (Janpath; 91-11-2334-1234; www.theimperialindia.com). For 3,000 rupees for two, you can choose from warm calamari, crisp rucola and tiramisù. For unusual regional dishes, try the Mosaic (M 45/1 Connaught Place; 91-11-2341-6842). Dishes include Bengal shrimp steamed in coconut and tart South Indian spinach with rice. Lunch for two, 800 rupees.

3 p.m. 7) SITAR SHOPPING

To walk off your feast, try shopping. For table linens, quilts or kurtis, there's Fabindia (B-28 Connaught Place, Inner Circle; 91-11-4151-3371; www.fabindia.com) and Soma (K-44 Connaught Place; 91-11-2341-6003; www.somashop.com) opposite the PVR Cinema. Boho chic is the specialty of People Tree (8 Regal Building, Parliament Street; 91-11-2334-0699; www.peopletreeonline.com), and a few steps away, the legendary A. Godin & Company (1 Regal Building, Parliament Street; 91-11-2336-2809) sells sitars and tablas. Keep walking down Parliament Street, past a sprawling observatory called Jantar Mantar, to the city's public soapbox. When Parliament is in session, groups line up to protest along this street, whether college students opposed to affirmative action or farmers aggrieved by loan sharks.

5 p.m. 8) FASHION ROW

If you want to go upmarket, head to the Lodi Colony main market to check out two of India's most innovative designers: the understated Rajesh Pratap Singh and the overstated Manish Arora. Singh (9 Lodi Colony Main Market; www.pratap.ws) offers a muted palette, and his cuts are lean and clean — maybe too lean if you happen to have hips. Men's shirts and women's blouses start around 6,000 rupees. Manish Arora (3 Lodi Colony Main Market; 91-11-2464-8898; www.manisharora.ws) is cheeky and loud; a black velvet tunic appliquéd with tiny clock parts goes for just under 10,000 rupees. If you would rather explore Indian crafts, skip the designer row in favor of Dilli Haat (C-126 Naraina Industrial Area; www.dillihaat.com), an outdoor bazaar where artisans peddle everything from hand-knitted socks to Madhubani-style paintings.

8 p.m. 9) UPMARKET TASTES

The young, rich and restless have many more watering holes than ever before. Smoke House Grill (Vipps Center, Masjid Moth; 91-11-4143-5530) occupies two floors in the Greater Kailash II neighborhood, and its gimmick is smoked food. For vegetarians, the offerings include smoked artichoke ravioli; for others, smoked chicken and fennel soup, or prawn and calamari ajilo with a warm, subtle red pepper bite. If you want a proper dinner, book a table upstairs. Dinner for two is around 5,000 rupees. The bar menu downstairs is limited, unless you intend to gorge on apple mojitos (350 rupees) and admire D.J. Cheenu.

11 p.m. 10) POOLSIDE COCKTAILS

For a nightcap, you could head across the dark courtyard to Kuki (E-7 Masjid Moth Complex; 91-11-2922-5241), a tony disco where the cover charge ranges from zero to 2,000 rupees a couple, and on Fridays and Saturdays, "gents" without arm candy are turned away. Better value is the shimmering poolside bar Aqua, at the Park Hotel (15 Parliament Street; 91-11-2374-3000; newdelhi.theparkhotels.com). A disco ball hovers by the pool and admission is free.

Sunday

9 a.m. 11) YOGI RETREAT

The city's pièce de résistance, also its green lung, is Lodhi Gardens, a free, quiet sanctuary for parakeets and lovers. Early mornings are for yogis saluting the sun, influential bureaucrats on power walks and chipmunks and doves drinking from the same puddle. There are also 100-plus species of trees and tombs dating back to the 1400s. For breakfast and a morning paper, walk over to ChokoLa (36 Khan Market; 91-11-4175-7570), a lovely café at the Khan Market with still-lousy service. For one last kebab fix, it's worth dawdling until Khan Chacha, a stall inside the market, opens its shutters (75 Khan Market, Middle Lane; 91-98106-71103). The specialty is the kathi roll, stuffed with chicken, mutton or paneer and is arguably the tastiest memento of this new old city.

THE BASICS

Continental (www.continental.com) and Air India (www.airindia.com) fly direct from the New York City area to New Delhi, with fares in mid-April starting about $1,000. The Indira Gandhi International Airport (www.newdelhiairport.in) is undergoing a major overhaul, so be prepared for more chaos than usual.

Hotel rates have lately shot through the roof. If you're ready to splurge, stay at the ultra-modern Park Hotel in Connaught Place (15 Parliament Street; 91-11-2374-3000; newdelhi.theparkhotels.com). It has a poolside bar and modern rooms normally from 16,000 rupees, about $390 at 41 rupees to the dollar, but with discounts online.

Thikana (A-7 Gulmohar Park; 91-11-4604-1569; www.thikanadelhi.com) is a new, elegant bed-and-breakfast with modern fittings and home-cooked meals on demand. Doubles start at 4,500 rupees. The one drawback is the location: it sits along a traffic-choked artery.

The 18-room 27 Jor Bagh (27 Jor Bagh; 91-11-2469-8475; www.jorbagh27.com) is basic to the point of sterile, but it is across the street from Lodhi Gardens and the Book Shop (13/7 Jor Bagh Market; 91-11-2469-7102), perhaps the coziest book store in the country. Doubles start at 3,500 rupees.

Through all the changes, New Delhi remains a city of contrasts, so gird yourself for wrenching scenes of destitution. Charities that work with children include: Childline (www.childlineindia.org.in), Butterflies (www.butterflieschildrights.org) and Child Rights and You (www.cry.org)



Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=11317206

Greenway: The power to charm

By H. D. S. Greenway

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The power to charm

As Americans struggle to choose their candidates to replace President George W. Bush, there is no lack of argument as to what qualities a president should have. Enter Harvard University's Joseph Nye, who introduced "soft power" into the English language some 20 years ago. In his new book, "The Powers to Lead," he deconstructs just what it takes.

There are many qualities of leadership of course, which Nye examines, but what struck my eye in this political season was his discussion of "charisma." It comes from the Greek for "divine gift, or gift of grace," and those so gifted include, in Nye's eye, Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, Tony Blair, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Osama bin Laden, Jack Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Joan of Arc and Eva Peron.

Charisma can be a great source power - the power to persuade rather than force - but then soft power itself can be put to evil use. Hitler came to power through free elections, after all, and his speeches brought his audiences to a frenzy. And bin Laden spreads his lethal mischief by persuasion rather than coercion.

"Does charisma originate in the individual, in the followers, or in the situation?" Nye asks. The answer seems to be all three. Sigmund Freud thought charismatic leaders represented the return of the primal father. The sociologist Max Weber argued that charisma represented an ideal that is only approximated in reality, and that charisma grew out of the relationship between the leader and his or her followers. Therefore charisma lasts "only as long as it receives recognition, and is able to satisfy the follower . . ."

Winston Churchill's charisma was not universally recognized until his country was in a desperate war. But he had an innate gift of oratory that served him well. As John Kennedy said, Churchill took the English language and marched it off to war. Yet, when the war was nearly over, the British public voted him out of office. Worse yet, he lost to Clement Attlee, a modest man who had much to be modest about, as Churchill said, probably the least charismatic politician of his generation.

In time people can grow tired of charisma, especially if they begin to think it masks character faults. As Tory politician Michael Portillo said of Tony Blair: "What he was able to accomplish was largely due to his charisma . . ." At one time he was the master of spin, but "by now it is hard to find anyone who believes a word he says."

Nye doesn't address the current political debate, but in today's race it seems to be Barack Obama who drew the charisma card. Like Reagan and Kennedy he seems to come up with the words that inspire, much to the annoyance of Hillary Clinton who is forever wonkish. Her husband seems able to coast on charisma, but she seems doomed to impress rather than inspire.

As for John McCain, there can be a kind of charisma in a candidate's record. That was true of Dwight Eisenhower, who would not otherwise have been considered charismatic. Then there are the nonverbal elements of charisma. Nye points to academic studies that show that a handsome man enjoys an edge over an ugly rival. For a woman the advantage is even greater. Focus groups could predict the winners when shown images of candidates in unfamiliar elections. Predictions became less accurate when images were accompanied by the sound of their voices.

The journalist Martha Gellhorn once wrote, in 1946, that she could tell that Indonesia's Sukarno was a great orator "by watching his hands and following his voice and the eyes and faces of the children. One could feel his power," she wrote, even though she couldn't understand a word that he said. "One remembered Hitler."

Yet charisma for one ethnic or linguistic group can be anathema for another. Hitler's undoubted magnetism might not have worked on Italians. And Mussolini's operatic style would have seemed hilarious had he tried it on the British. But then the British never produced a Verdi, a Donizetti, nor a Rossini. Who knows, Obama might be boring in Burma, while Clinton might be electrifying in Beijing.

H. D. S. Greenway's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.

Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=10925718

Investment banker becomes best-selling author in India

HONG KONG: Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker who was distinguished from the suited phalanx of his colleagues in this city's crowded financial district only by his secret hobby.

While others planned weekend excursions on the golf course, Bhagat, then employed by Goldman Sachs, indulged a passion for writing, laboring in his private time on a racy and comedic little novel about life on the campus of an elite college in his native India.

In the early morning before going to the office he would work on draft after draft of the book, trying to get it right. He did 15 drafts in all. He almost gave up when publishers kept turning him down.

Today, Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist ever in India.

His story of campus life, "Five Point Someone," published in 2004, and a later novel about a call center, sold a combined one million copies. Only the autobiography of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has sold more.

Less than three days after the release in 2005 of "One Night @ the Call Center," another slim comedy about love and life in India's ubiquitous call centers, the entire print-run of 50,000 copies was sold, setting a record for the country's fastest-selling book.

Bhagat, who wrote his novels while living in Hong Kong, has difficulty explaining why a 35-year-old investment banker writing in his spare time has had such phenomenal success in reaching an audience of mainly middle-class Indians in their 20s. The books, which are deliberately sentimental in the tradition of Bollywood filmmaking, are priced like an Indian movie ticket - just 100 rupees, or $2.46 - and have won little praise as literature.

One reviewer in The Times of India concluded a review of "One Night @ the Call Center" with the suggestion: "Time to hang up, Mr. Bhagat?"

"The book critics, they all hate me," said Bhagat in an interview here.

But Bhagat has touched a nerve with young Indian readers and acquired almost cult status, and this undoubtedly says a great deal about their tastes, attitudes and hopes. Bhagat might not be another Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, but he has authentic claims to being one of the voices of a generation of middle-class Indian youth facing the choices and frustrations that come with the prospect of growing wealth.

"I think people really took to the books mainly because there is a lot of social comment in there," said Bhagat. "It's garbed as comedy. The plot structure is like Bollywood, because that is what my audience has been used to."

Bhagat's choice of subjects for his first two books - life at a highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology and at a call center - allowed him to explore some perennial themes: the pressures, many of them parental, to get into a top school, earn high grades, get a good job and find the right partner, while still taking time to enjoy one's youth. His argument is that for the current generation of young Indians those pressures are greater than ever before.

He described the country's current young generation as "more gutsy" than their parents, and as interesting as the generation that led India to independence in 1947.

But the competition among them is severe. Bhagat said only 1 out of 700 applicants now gets into the Indian Institute of Management that he attended in Ahmedabad, compared with 1 in 200 when he applied in 1995. That experience and his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi are the inspiration for "Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT," the title an allusion to the struggle his three main characters have with low grades.

The pressures to succeed are part of what is making India a vibrant, fast-changing economy and society, Bhagat said. But he added: "Competition has its limits. Some of it is good and some of it is harmful." A message of "Five Point Someone" is that poor grades and happiness are not mutually exclusive.

This month, after more than 10 years in Hong Kong, Bhagat moved with his wife, also a banker, and their 3-year-old twin sons back to India, where he is a director in Deutsche Bank's distressed-assets team in Mumbai. When he left India with an MBA to start a banking career in Hong Kong, just before the 1997 Asian economic crisis, there were fewer opportunities at home even for graduates of the best schools.

Bhagat now wants to be a part of the historic changes taking place as India awakens to its potential.

Still, he sees a lot wrong with the model of economic success, particularly from the perspective of the country's youth. His "One Night @ the Call Center," which is being made into a Bollywood film entitled "Hello," is, beyond its story line about frustrated office romance, a critique of a nation climbing to prosperity by answering phone calls from American consumers.

Millions of Indians might have lifted their incomes by doing call center work. But the jobs are dead ends, said Bhagat, and no well-to-do parents want their daughter to marry a call center worker.

"Is this the best we can offer to India's young generation?" he asked. "If call centers are so great and brought riches to the country, like the government says, why aren't they marrying their daughters off to a call center guy?"

With each new book, Bhagat is attempting to toughen his social criticism. He has just finished writing "Three Mistakes of My Life" - a pun of sorts, this being his third novel. But this time he is tackling a far more sensitive theme than campus or call center life.

Set in the northeastern state of Gujarat soon after the bloody sectarian riots of 2002, it deals with issues of tolerance and the confusion Bhagat maintains that young Indians feel about religious values.

"India is a very religious country, and older people have extreme views on religion," he said. "Young people are not able to relate to it."

True to his form, the story will have a "very modern twist, Bollywood comedy sort of format," he said. "If you read my books they are comedies, but very dark."

The Web chatter and e-mails Bhagat receives about his books suggest that the dark social messages, wrapped in what he described as "quick reads" in the style of the humorous British writer Nick Hornby, have been getting through to his young audience.

But it is a balancing act, Bhagat said. His is an audience that grew up with Bollywood and wants a story that "tugs at the emotions" rather than moralizes or betrays serious literary ambitions. Bhagat said he develops his plots using a computer spread sheet before he sits down to write.

Initially, he did get some literary praise, winning a Publisher's Recognition Award and a Society Young Achievers Award in India in 2005 for "Five Point Someone." But the first flush of critical success has worn off. Ravi Rao, a critic writing in The Times of India, said Bhagat had gone from "candor, easy wit and tight structure" in his first book to "a dud" with his second.

Bhagat and his publisher, Kapish Mehra of the company Rupa, have an easy retort to the critics: The books sell.

"He is not a literary writer," Mehra said. "But, more importantly, he is a successful and popular writer."

Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=11084160

SRK Unplugged

Deepika Padukone said to the media that she wanted to touch my body? Why? She should have talked to me! Do you want to touch my body? Mansoor Khan once told me, ‘Finally, we have some ugly faces becoming heroes.’ I told him, ‘Are you talking about Ajay Devgan?’ Jokes apart, I think Ajay and I are the two ugliest heroes around.

You want to see my muscles? Let me tell you, I have muscles in all the right places.I want to start an academy; I don’t want to sit on my money. I am not saying that I am doing social work. It’s just that I have principles in life. If that can change anything, I’ll feel as if I fulfilled the purpose of my life. Hopefully, by the end of it, I will be able to change many youngsters’ lives. T20 is not a gamble – it is sheer passion. I wanted to start from the sport that is popular – cricket – and use the profits to help develop other sports as well. If I go to a cricket match, it is because I like to watch sports. I also enjoy badminton, tennis, or for that matter, kanche. Main kanche bahut acche khelta tha! Why should I have tried for the Delhi team? In any case, I would not have been able to afford them. But then, don’t regionalise the game. It is, after all, about India. I am not a businessman. I have reached that juncture in my life where I can give something back to the youth.

I would like to provide the best infrastructure to the youth. I wanted to go to hockey matches, football matches. I don’t think I need any medium to promote my films. If not an actor, I would surely have been a sportsman. I used to play hockey and football in school and college. It was when I realised that I couldn’t be a sportsman that I came to Mumbai to be an actor. It’s strange that I am considered a youth icon. I believe that the youth likes me for the kind of person I am and not because I dance well or act well or look good. It’s been a 17-year-long career and they have seen the hard work I have put in. They see me and get motivated to go for the gold. Make your dreams come true, go to a town where nobody knows you and make a name for yourself there. (On smoking) Actually, people have more intelligence than you credit them with. I have also watched movies as a kid, but they never motivated me to copy them. Finally, what we do is what our heart tells us to do. There are very few people whom on screen characters can sway. Even in Don, I tell Kareena, ‘Don cigarette chodne ki koshish kar raha hai. It kills you...’ We want to convey the message subtly. Whenever I come to Delhi, people don’t say that he is drunk, vulgar and a smoker. Instead, they say that he is an educated, articulate and well-bred guy.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2772501,prtpage-1.cms

We need schools for all our children

A few months ago I visited a school run by the Bangalore charity Parikrma, which offers a world-class English-language education for slum children. Interacting with the kids, who ranged in age from five-year-olds, who had just started schooling, to 16-and-17-year-olds about to take their board exams, provided no clue to their humble origins. One child spoke boldly of his plans to join the civil services. "Three years ago," Parikrma’s founder, Shukla Bose, whispered to me, "I found him selling newspapers at a traffic light."

The Parikrma model sets out to prove that the poorest and most disadvantaged of India’s children can, if given the education, match the best of our elite. But it is not just that Shukla takes in the poorest kids - only those whose families earn less than Rs 750 a month are eligible.
It is also that she recognises that education only succeeds if other factors work in its favour. Of what use is excellent teaching if the child is too hungry to concentrate or too undernourished for her brain to develop? So Parikrma provides all the kids with a full breakfast on arrival in the morning, a solid lunch at mid-day and a snack before they leave for home. What if they can’t afford to get to school from where their parents live? So, bus-passes are provided. But how can you expect poor kids to stay in school if their parents are ill at home and need their children’s help? So, Parikrma provides healthcare assistance to the entire family during the student’s years in school. And what good is a first-rate school education if the child does not have the resources or opportunities to go to college? So, Shukla has been busy fund-raising for full scholarships to send her first graduating class to university next year. Parikrma’s approach is impressive, its experience entirely positive, and the stories of its children heart-warming. Whereas, in Bangalore’s government schools, the drop-out rate by the eighth standard is as high as 72%, and the pass rate for the higher secondary exams 8%, Parikrma’s children, despite coming from poverty-stricken homes, all stay in school, and are expected to fare extremely well when the first group of them takes their board exams. What is more, to see the discipline in the smartly-uniformed children (uniforms also provided by Parikrma, of course), the intelligence shining through their scrubbed faces, the confidence in their questions to a visitor, and above all, the hope, is to see lives transformed, and futures built where there was only despair. Parikrma’s is not the only example of such educational endeavour.
The Shanti Bhavan school in Tamil Nadu, run by the hugely impressive Abraham George - a former army officer who made his fortune in computers and is determined to give it back through his philanthropic George Foundation - also educates slum children to the highest standards, though it does so in a boarding-school format. ( The New York Times’ columnist Thomas L Friedman has written extensively of Shanti Bhavan in his book The World Is Flat .) I would not be surprised if readers write in to tell me of other charitable organisations trying to do similar work elsewhere in the country. Their methods and operating principles may vary, but the essential thing is this: they all realise that India is never going to be a great 21st century power if it doesn’t educate its young - all of them, not just the ones who can afford an education.
I am sure the government recognises this too, but it has neither the resources nor the ability to deliver quality education to all of India’s children. Education is a state subject in our federal constitution, so its quality varies widely, from Kerala’s 100% record in putting all children through school, to Bihar’s female literacy rate of 27%. Our state governments have not been able to enroll all children between the ages of five and ten in school, nor are they able to retain the ones they enroll - some drop out because their families can’t afford to keep them in school when they could be out to work in the fields or weaving rugs or making footballs, some because the teaching is so abysmal that they don’t learn anything at school anyway. The result is that more Indian kids have never seen the inside of a school than those of any other country in the world. And those who have may not see a teacher, since we hold the world record for teacher absenteeism, or be given the books and learning materials without which the educational experience is incomplete.
How on earth can we maintain our much-vaunted economic growth rates if we don’t produce enough educated Indians to claim the jobs that a 21st century economy offers? And how does the government expect to ever remedy the problem if it holds onto antiquated ideas about restricting educational opportunity to the non-profit sphere, when it is clear worldwide that the private sector is providing the best models for education? It is ironic that the man who bids fair to become the Bill Gates of schooling around the world is an Indian - Sunny Varkey, whose Global Education Management Systems already runs 65 for-profit schools across the Middle East, and who is the world’s biggest employer of British teachers outside Britain. But this Indian cannot open his GEMS schools in India, because our educational system won’t allow him to. That leaves us with a handful of excellent private and missionary schools, a large number of uneven (but mostly hopeless) government schools, millions of kids with no schooling at all - and the efforts of charities like Shanti Bhavan and Parikrma. I asked the Parikrma high school kids what they wanted to do in life. Sixteen opted for computer programming - a reflection of our era. One wanted to join the army, half a dozen the IAS, and one girl the CBI, "because I want to bring justice to our society." Our society needs justice - and it will only have it when we have enough schools to do justice to the potential of all our children.
By Shashi Tharoor
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2788535,prtpage-1.cms