The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community
Gateway of India, Mumbai
Deepa Mehta's film "Midnight's Children", based on Salman Rushdie's book, has no distributors in India
A report in The London Guardian notes, "The film follows the narrative of the original novel and includes unflattering portrayals of top Indian political figures. Cinema experts in the subcontinent said the failure to find a distributor revealed a weakness in Indian democracy."http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/09/rushdie-film-india-controversy-book
Midnight's Children is self-defeating faithfulness, says The Guardian reviewer
According to a review in the Guardian "Salman
Rushdie makes his presence clearly felt in this adaptation of his
Booker winner. Whether that's a good thing is less certain."
The reviewer Catherine Shoard goes on to say, the film "....sheds no fresh light on the material, turns and turns but with no
new spin, fails to pepper the source. This is self-defeating
faithfulness, which genuflects so far as to insist the audience can't be
released for some 148 minutes, and employs actors perfectly cast to the
point of blandness."
Bounty on Salman Rushdie for writing "Satanic Verses" raised to $3.3 million by Ayatollah in Iran
A key Ayatollah in Iran has raised the bounty on Rushdie by $500,000 to $3.3 million total. The mullah's statement, according to The London Telegraph, noted the recent controversial film about Prophet Mohammed, "....won't be the last insulting act as long as Imam Khomeini's historic order on executing the blasphemous Salman Rushdie is not carried out".http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9546513/Iran-resurrects-Salman-Rushdie-threat.html
Janaki Bhakle of Columbia University to discuss is Hindu fundamentalism an oxymoron?
What is Hindu fundamentalism? How can fundamentalism be self-consciously modern and progressively science-driven? Listen to Bakhle discuss Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, famous as the author of Hindu fundamentalism and as a revolutionary nationalist deeply devoted to the idea of India as a Hindu state and infamous for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. How can a study of this fundamentalist serve as the political biography of a distinctly non-monotheistic fundamentalism?
https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/COUC/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=133222
Kapila Venu's Kuttiyattam dance at the Asia Society was astounding says The New York Times
Brian Seibert, writing in The New York Times sets the background for the dance depicting the episode in the Ramayana, where Sita is abandoned in the forest by Rama over doubts about her chastity.
"In one seldom-celebrated episode Rama, having rescued his wife, Sita,
from a demon, requires her to prove her chastity in a trial by fire. She
passes the test, but rumors persist, and so he abandons his pregnant
wife in the forest. The forest animals weep with her. A sage takes her
in and trains her twin sons, and years later, when Rama discovers them,
he rejoices. But still he requires of his wife another trial by fire.
The mistrust is too much for Sita to bear, and she asks the earth to
open up and swallow her."
Seibert goes on to write that this story was "...recounted in an extraordinary performance at Asia Society on Saturday (co-produced by Sanskriti Center). “The Abandonment of Sita” was a highly rare glimpse into kuttiyattam,
an ancient form of temple theater from the Kerala region in South
India. All the characters were portrayed — in mime and occasional bursts
of song — by one woman, the astounding Kapila Venu."
Siddhartha Deb gets PEN author of color $5000 award
It appears that Siddhartha Deb and/or his publisher Faber & Faber must have identified Deb as an Asian minority in the US when submitting his memoir "The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India" for the PEN award. The submission form for the PEN award states, "To be eligible, candidates must be writers of color who have not received wide media coverage."Further, "The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, celebrate outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.
Sponsored by the Open Book Program, this award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry. "
Last year Deb's book was discussed in The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/08/siddhartha-debs-publishing-odyssey.html
Maybe Deb and his publisher will submit his next book for the main PEN award.
The news from PEN about Deb's award:
"Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged."
http://www.pw.org/content/pen_american_center_announces_winners_of_2012_literary_awards?cmnt_all=1
In other news this week:
Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley argues US Fed quantitative easing hurting consumption
In its third effort to simulate job growth in the US, the Federal
Reserve launched a new round of quantitative easing last Thursday.
But argues Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets and global macro strategy at Morgan Stanley, in an opinion piece in the Financial Times, the Fed should abandon this policy since rising commodity prices, especially that of gasoline, is hurting consumers more.
Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/09/09/arts/dance/20120909_DANCELISTINGS-4.html
Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum
Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota
Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.
"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".
Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%
Khan Academy: effective and free online education help
How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge?
Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids."With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
www.khanacademy.org/
https://www.edx.org/
For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend, visit:
/http://primeindians.comThe editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly.
Your comments, views and criticisms are welcome in the section below.
No comments:
Post a Comment