The White Tiger - Book Review

The "White Tiger" debut novel by Aravind Adiga won the Booker Prize for 2008 and caught my attention. Aravind Adiga is a citizen of the world, born in Madras, educated in Mangalore, Syndney, Columbia University, Oxford etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aravind_Adiga .

The book is very simple narrating the letters written by a presumptuous self-styled "white tiger", entrepreneur from Bangalore, to Chairman Wen Jibao of China. Its a satirical narrative by a man born in a North Indian village who becomes the car driver of a wealthy landlord, moves to Delhi with the landlord's son, witnesses and narrates the parallel worlds of India. Untold wealth, corruption, hypocrasies, caste system etc all residing comfortably cheek by jowl with dire poverty, slavishness, rank oppurtunism etc. For any normal Indian there is nothing much knew to learn. There is no eye popping wisdom here, no Naipaul like penetrativeness.

When I somebody raved to me about Sashi Tharoor's "From Midnight to Millennium" my response was "its a book for the average westerner to read on his flight to India and touching down at the airport wants to say 'I know India'". The purpose it to write a light book with all seriousness but just serious enough to skate through without taxing one's mind too much. I do not mean to insult those books, such genre has its place too. So is it with "White Tiger". Its a skating narrative that takes the reader from rigid village caste politics, to habits of the worker class, to corridors of political brokers, the hypocrisies of each class (who said only the rich are hypocritical) all within some 270 pages.

One thing which really struck me was the Capra-esque depiction of political corruption. Adiga does not use labels, just oleagenous titles like "Great Socialist", any politician in India would fit that. Frank Capra's "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" is similar, Capra does not label "democrat" or "republican", a fact that might be noticeable only to a discerning reflective viewer. (Am I complimenting myself there, maybe).

Its a book to be read and passed along to friends.

The turnout that wasn't -- Election 2008

Nearly 120 million voted in 2004 Presidential elections, one of the highest turnovers until 2008. There was mainstream media screaming about hours long queues, the exponential surge in democratic voter rolls, the astronomical surge in youth voting, of course a generational promise to be fulfilled and experienced for Black voters, we all expected to break the 2004 record by a mile and half. I was curious to see the data. Guess what the final tally stands at an impressive 126 million. Impressive certainly, but given the hoopla one could be forgiven to thinking that the numbers would be eye popping. It is not. So what happened to those queues that we saw in Atlanta, Florida, Georgia, NC (25% in Raleigh had finished voting through early balloting).

Here is my surmise. Ever since the Florida recount mess up in 2000 there was constant chatter of how the villainous Republicans would disenfranchise Blacks, poor voters etc. This is the 24 hour news cycle so lets add demos by Princeton Univ Prof who showed how "easy" it is to divert votes from Obama to McCain by changing just one microprocessor in 5 minutes. The show was moderated by a Black comedian. All this left first time voters and especially Blacks with an apprehension and not wanting to be seen as not having done their bit they thronged early. Then the rest, also fearing long lines on election day, thronged earlier because after all every so called "expert" (where do they grow) was pontificating on record breaking turnout, election machine break downs, oh there was Lou Dobbs as usual ranting on somebody subverting democracy.

Against all that backdrop the early voting did indeed surge and take the sting out of election day. Amidst the euphoria of Barack being elected nobody bothered to call the networks to task on fear mongering and plain exaggerations.

PS: For ages leftists ranted about how conservative neocon judges in US Supreme court selected George Bush. Nobody squeaked a protest when the SAME SC sided with democratic state official of Ohio on a technicality in preventing a widely accepted fraud by ACORN in registering voters in Ohio. Of course for every left wing nut who rants on Florida for Al Gore there is a right wing nut raving about how Daley "fixed" Chicago for JFK. What goes around comes around.

The other side of Hollywood - Part1 - Honoring Teachers

What is it about the teacher-student or mentor-fledgling relationship that so fascinates Hollywood? So many of Hollywood is shamelessly pilfered under the "inspired by.." canard in India but there is one wonderful side of Hollywood that has never been imitated, sadly and that is the genre of "inspirational mentor" movie type.

One could go as far as "To Sir with Love" starring Sidney Poitier and list out numerous movies that portray, many times real-life stories, teachers who sought to make a difference in a student's life or a school. Sometime back I was arguing with a School principal from Tanjore about teachers inflicting sadistic punishments, not just corporal caning but plainly sadistic stuff like asking students to kneel in hot sand with temperatures touching 80-90 deg F. Impositions, insults, crude remarks all abound in Indian schools. The principal defended it saying "how else can we deal with unruly kids from slums". I told him go watch "Dangerous minds" a true story based movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer about a teacher who made a difference in a school situated in crime prone low income area. Watching Hillary Swank starring "Freedom writers" is a moving experience. Again, same theme, teacher who goes way beyond to make a difference in a down-trodden neighborhood.

Even a fictional movie like "Akeelah and the bee" has a wonderful touching story about a girl trying to rise beyond her poverty stricken life to win the spelling bee contest. Laurence Fishburne turns out a nice performance as the tutor. The tutoring sessions are portrayed realistically.

Richard Dreyfus as the music teacher in "Holland's Opus" is career highlight performance. He was nominated for the Oscar but lost to Mel Gibson's epic "Braveheart". One of the key dialogues in the movie is when a stern principal pulls up Dreyfus for being a clock watcher, she tells him "you (as teacher) must be a compass to the students". When she retires she gifts Dreyfus a compass. Finally due to cost cutting Dreyfus himself loses his job as music program is cut. The climax is one of the most moving scenes. A despondent Dreyfus leaves the school but comes upon a surprise gathering in his honor, his old student and now governor gives a welcome "Glenn Holland wanted to be rich and famous (referring to his dream of being a composer) but he i s neither. He is not rich and is not known beyond our small community. However there is not a single soul in this audience that he has not touched". That movie, its side story of Rowena, deserves a blog by itself.

Robin Williams excels as teacher in "Good Will Hunting" and "Dead Poets society". If only we were taught poetry like he does in "Dead poets society". Even "The School of Rock" has its nice warm turn with Jack Black as music teacher instilling in school kids a love for Rock and "Led Zeppelin".

For a nation that honors its teachers with "Teacher's day" we have done nothing but then as I often say "I can count on one hand the teachers I can remember with respect out of the many in my 16 year academic stream".

Well mentoring does not have to be only in the confines of classrooms. "In search of Bobby Fisher" with its quasi-historical narrative portrays mentoring of a chess prodigy. The mentor is Ben Kingsley (he is of Indian origin with real name as Krishna Bhanji). There are few others like "Hoosiers", "Coach Carter" are good ones too.

Are women more independent thinking and more ethical?

For long TIME magazine used to declare a "Man of the year" for its last issue of the year. It started in 1928 as an idea to fill up the year end issue became a tradition, then a parlor game of expectations and criticisms. In an age of political correctness Time renamed that honor as "Person of the year" to be gender neutral. In 2002 three women (Coleen Rowley-FBI, Sherron Watkins-Enron and Cynthia Cooper-Worldcom) were featured with the title "The Whistleblowers". Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper had warned their respective upper management about the impending collapse of their companies due to fraudulent accounting. Coleen Rowley had warned her superiors at FBI bout 9/11.

I wondered how in a year 3 whistleblowers were identified and how come all were women? During the historic primary season of 2008 a good number of women commentators wrote "I shall not vote for Hillary just because she is a woman". When McCain, seeking to capitalise dissatisfied Hillary voters, nominated Sarah Palin whose ideology is largely at odds with most women voters women just flocked t o Obama. Unlike that, save a paltry 4-5 commentators, I did not see many Afro-American men comment "I shall not vote for Obama just because of his race". Men were a bandwagon effect. Women watched out for themselves.

Women are supposed to be more particular on protecting their self-interest, a laudable capitalistic virtue that in actuality they defy stereotyping or a collective bandwagon.

Even in common life women are prone to be standard bearers for codes of conduct than men. Man is said to be the last animal domesticated by woman.

Before we heap unqualified praise on women let us not forget somebody like Indira Gandhi who proved that she can far surpass men in unscrupulousness and vindictiveness. So also Jayalalitha.

Rounding up on the election term thought. Women as campaign managers (for Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton) were huge disappointments. Of course the candidates need to take a rap too but one wonders on the thread of commonality. The chief fundraiser for Obama is a woman.

Triumph of Democracy

Democracy is very messy but it is the best we have to provide for a representative government. Though America tends to characterise itself as "young" it is now 232 years old and the longest living unbroken democracy. Ofcourse many would be quick to point out the dark ages of slavery and the fact that Afro-Americans did not get voting rights as recently as 1965. Given the age and time in which America declared its independence expecting it to have universal suffrage is asking for the moon. That America set on its journey so firmly 230 years back is tribute enough to the founding fathers. A constitution that has been amended less than 30 times (of which the first ten - the bill of rights was done at inception) is testimony to prescient wisdom.

Next week US will elect its 44th President. We would have elected either the first African-American as President or the first woman as V.P. This election is making history on all benchmarks, the most hotly contested primary involving a first lady garnering 18 million votes, spending that crosses $1 billion, the longest ad war stretching over 24 months, the highest expected turnover that may blow out all past voting patterns and in process completely re-draw the electoral map of US for a generation.

Contrary to cynics I see a healthy trend over the past 4 elections. Starting with 1996 there has been a steady increase of voters, the highest so far being 2004 . 1992 -- 104 million , 1996-86 million, 2000 - 102 million, 2004-121 million. Note the explosion of electorate in 2004. A year marked by concerns of terrorism and war. George Bush got elected with 50.7 % popular vote, nobody since 1992 had crossed 50%. Of course one could say that 48.3% who voted for Kerry did not want him and point it as evidence of the poor method of representation. Arnold Toynbee justifiably lamented at how humans, so imaginative in so many areas could not imagine anything better when it came to proportional representation.

The election will of course leave the supporters of the losers with much to grumble about. If McCain loses, as is expected, the familiar grumbling would be, economy, Bush, War, Celebrity obsessed media, spending by Obama etc. If Obama loses, the list starts with serious setbacks on race relations (unfair but true), Bradley effect, conservative America, religion clingers etc. Either of that will be unjust. Anybody who somes out of a winner in the most gruelling election season in human memory deserves to be at the Oval office. with all my misgivings on Obama, I am increasingly of the view he does deserve to win. Just today NYT ran an article how the Obama campaign, though flush in cash, is parsimonious in spending it and watches every penny. I sadly remember how Hillary who started with a huge war chest burned through it with bad planning.

For the Obama supporters who proudly point to how Obama tightly ran a campaign and say that is evidence of how he would run the country, I say 2 words "George W Bush". Bush ran a disciplined campaign as against Kerry.

The democrats cried hoarse for ages about Supreme Court handing over the presidency to Bush in 2000 but did not raise a squeak of praise when the same court (with more conservative judges today) supported Ohio state secretary (Dem) in the case against her by republicans concerning voter registration irregularities in Ohio (ACORN scandal).

As Alexander Pope says "a people gets the government it deserves". May the best candidate win.

Churchill's 'Black Dogs' - A perspective on Depression

Winston Churhcill was frequently prone to very depressive moods, he referred to depression as "Black Dog". Anthony Storr, Oxford based Psychiatrist, in his book "Churchill's Black Dog and other phenomena of the Human mind" has a very engaging chapter on Winston Churchill's much lesser known side.

Churchill, is one who has passed into history and mostly a smoky idea of him prevails in the common understanding. To the westerner he remains a bull dog warrior who, in the bleakest of times, shouldered and unfathomable burden and saved the world from tyranny "unsurpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crimes". To Indians he was the unapologetic imperialist who thundered "I've not become his majesty's first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British empire" and even more notoriously is remembered for his insulting remark characterising Gandhi as "the half naked fakir".

Lost in those images is a very colorful life, he was a biographer, historian, war time correspondent, painter, brick-layer, orator and several other. His life was peppered with moments of sheer glory and abject desolateness. Especially the years between the two World Wars. After the first War and his role in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign he wandered in sheer political wilderness for nearly 20 years. In those years he was ridiculed for his failures and labeled an alarmist for crying hoarse about Hitler. Britain had no use for him.

Churchill suffered serious bouts of depression during those years. Anthony Storr writes, "when depression is overwhelming, the sufferer relapses into gloom and an inactivity which maybe so profound as to render him immobile". What would a man like Churchill, a man of legendary talent, soaring ego, huge reserve of creative energy do? Storr continues, "To avoid this state of misery is of prime importance; and so the depressive before his disorder becomes too severe, may recurrently force himself into activity, deny himself rest or relaxation, and accomplish more than most men are capable of, just because he cannot afford to stop."

He took to painting. He was pretty good at it. Even at that he brought a passion that was deeply colored by his dark mood. "I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours...am genuinely sorry for the poor browns, I expect orange and vermillion will be the darkest colours".

His famous remark "we are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow-worm", is as Storr points "revealing, it combines self abasement and self-glorification in a single phrase". When he declared Britain will face Hitler, alone, he was, " a man convinced that he had an heroic mission, who believed that, in spite of all contrary evidence, he could yet triumph". Above all he felt his destiny and that of England's were intertwined. With that conviction he convinced his fellow Britons that they would triumph just as he thought he could triumph. Anyone with a modest knowledge of History can appreciate how hopeless it was for Britain in 1939-40. France had crumbled, Poland overrun, Belgium tossed aside, Austria annexed, Russia aligned with Germany, FDR standing on the sidelines. One man stood up to say "I've nothing to offer but blood and toil, tears and sweat" and lay it out clear "Victory at all costs".

Beethoven and Churchill were creative geniuses who could fight their Black Dog's and in fact turn them into manure for their creative output. What of ordinary mortals, now that's a plight worth feeling sorry about.

Racial Quotas in American Universities And Richard Feynman

Yesterday I was reading through Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people think". In the second chapter talking about how he entered MIT, Feynman says he was denied admission to Columbia University because of a quota "limiting" number of Jews admitted. I was shocked to read this. Today, I checked on the internet and wikipedia confirmed it.

Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota . Many associate anti-semitism with holocaust and think of only Nazi Germany. Little do we realise that anti-semitism was a pan-European disease. The word "ghetto" comes from Venice, the word "pogrom" originated in Russia. Cutting off one's access to education under the guise of social justice is the most widely perpetrated villainy.

From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus "Numerus clausus ("closed number" in Latin) is one of many methods used to limit the number of students who may study at a university. It can be similar to a racial quota, both in form and motivation."

Many countries adopted these policies including Ivy League universities in US.

"Although never officially legislated, between 1918 and the 1950s a number of private universities and medical schools introduced numerus clausus policies limiting admissions of students based on their religion or race to certain percentages within the college population. One of the groups affected by these policies was Jewish applicants whose admission to some New England and New York City area liberal arts universities fell significantly between the late 1910s and the mid-1930s[2]. For instance, the admission to Harvard University during that period fell from 27.6% to 17.1% and in Columbia University from 32.7% to 14.6%. Corresponding quotas were introduced in the medical and dental schools resulting during the 1930s in the decline of Jewish students: e.g. in Cornell University School of Medicine from 40% in 1918-22 to 3.57% in 1940-41, in Boston University Medical School from 48.4% in 1929-30 to 12.5% in 1934-35. "

During a speech on brain drain in 1993 I advanced the idea that many persecuted Jewish scientists emigrated to US, fleeing racist Europe. Those scientists, notably Leo Szilard and the rest with of course Einstein played a decisive role in giving US its scientific edge and of course the ultimate weapon to close the war. Wikipedia asserts "In Hungary, for example, 5,000 Jewish youngsters (including Edward Teller) left the country after the introduction of Numerus Clausus".

A memorable film by Gregory Peck is "A gentleman's agreement". Peck, portraying a reporter adopts a Jewish identity and undergoes searing experiences that lay bare the prejudices of a sick society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman

All of the above might sound outlandish and plainly unbelievable because one pervading myth is how Jewish lobbies control the media and finance, by extension the US population. A shibboleth but nevertheless unquestioningly believed.