Category: General news

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— Read Yamaguchi’s remarkable story here: http://bit.ly/5OO4CD

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Ibrahim with his mother and sisters in the tiny room in which the family lives. Outside, the hall is dark and damp. Ibrahim’s father (sitting in the photo below) cannot work because of his asthma.

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Bangali biye (Bengali wedding)

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Members of the younger generation in my family think differently than did my grandparents. Many of the centuries-old traditions and rituals are falling away as young men and women adopt a more progressive — and often more gender equitable — outlook toward life.

But one thing that remains constant are the intricate ways of a Bengali Hindu wedding.
My cousin’s daughter, Shoma, had been planning her wedding for months. I arrived early on the morning of December 2 for the remaining five days of festivities. That afternoon, family members blessed the bride (many with 22 karat gold jewelry in hand) in a ceremony known as Aai Budo Bhaat. It’s also a bachelorette party of sorts and several of Shoma’s friends showed up later in the evening for a dinner party.
The next day, the women of the family grind turmeric with a mortar and pestle and anoint the bride with the paste. This allegedly brightens the complexion and makes her skin glow on her wedding day. It’s a messy affair, leaving women with stubborn ochre-stained nails.
There are numerous pre-wedding rituals. What they have in common is food.
With each ceremony, the family gathers for an elaborate feast, which for Bengalis is incomplete without a spectacular fish preparation. Often the fish is saturated with mustard paste and steamed inside a banana leaf.
Then there is rice. Lentils. Fried puffed breads. Roasted eggplant. Medleys made with vegetables we never see here — red pumpkin, bitter gourd, and greens and beans that I couldn’t even name in English. Mutton curries and savory chutneys.
And, of course, the sweet stuff — the other thing that have made Bengalis famous. Sweet curd, sandesh, rasagollahs, malai chom choms. (Pictured here are some sweets that arrived from the groom’s family. The photo of the fish, a Ganges carp, was sent along with other gifts as an offering of goodwill from Shoma’s family to the groom’s household.)
By wedding day, I swore I could not eat another morsel.
Shomas’s family greeted the groom, who arrived in a flower-laden car with a large entourage. Shoma’s mother blessed him with a bamboo tray containing an earthen lamp, husked rice and trefoil (see photo).
The actual ceremony, oddly enough, is often not even witnessed by guests. Astrologers set the time for the nuptials and sometimes, it’s in the middle of the night! Luckily, Shoma’s was in the evening and people did gather around the marriage platform, though few really understood the Sanskrit mantras the priest was chanting.
Shoma looked like a princess, a blanket of gold around her neck and chest and the henna on her arms hidden by filigreed and bejewelled bangles. Even her tiara was solid gold.
Bride and groom exchanged flower garlands (see photo). The end of her maroon brocaded sari was tied to one end of his perfectly pleated and ironed white muslin and silk.
Shoma and her groom, Bishan, sat on front of a fire to chant mantras after the priest. They took seven rounds around the flames. Agni, the god of fire, is the divine witness to the union.
Shoma and Bishan will be living in Istanbul, where he has a job with a bank. The rituals performed on a hazy Kolkata December night will soon become as distant as the moon.
I was glad to have witnessed the actual ceremony for once. It reminded me of what an ancient land India is. Steeped in tradition. And it made me ponder whether the next generation, consumed with McDonalds and Macintoshes, will still foster such ceremony.
And then, I, who was determined not to fill my belly once again, did just that.
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Remembering 26/11

A year ago, I was making my way to Mexico City, dreaming of the serene canals of Xochimilco and the burst of a hot tamale in my mouth.
By my heart was heavy.
In my homeland, Mumbai was under siege, attacked by gunmen in hotels, the main train station, a popular restaurant and a Jewish cultural center. More than 160 people perished on that day that came to be known as “26/11.”
I watched the flames engulf the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, a majestic landmark in India’s largest city. The stairwell there is mesmerizing. British Raj architecture at its finest.
On my last visit to Mumbai, I had stayed at the Oberoi-Trident in a room that offered a view of Marine Drive and the waves of the Arabian Sea.
Both hotels were scenes of tragedy a year ago.
Mumbaikers are like New Yorkers. They never stop in a city that hardly sleeps.
But they did stop on Thursday. Just as they had a year ago. Except then, it was forced upon them. Today, they chose to pause — and remember.
Fallen citizens and local heroes. And what it’s like to survive.
In the CNN newsroom, I sat quietly in a corner to write about the anniversary. Tragedy is always difficult to convey. It’s that much harder when it becomes personal.
Read the story: http://bit.ly/8wGQgc
And with each bite of turkey, give thanks for all we have.
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White House feasting

President Barack Obama hosts his first state visit today. The guest? Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Makes me proud.
Singh, India’s first Sikh leader, is an a Cambridge- and Oxford-educated economist who was first sworn in as prime minister in May 2004 and again this past May when the Congress party won national elections.
During his visit to Washington, Singh will certainly be looking for ways to continue strong bonds forged between India and the United States under the administration of George W. Bush. Talk may not come easy — India’s chief rivals China and Pakistan are both strong U.S. allies.
Foreign policy aside, here comes the real question. What’s for dinner?
Politico reports that the White House has invited super chef Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit fame to cook the divine for Obama’s first state dinner. Wonder if Samuelsson will be mixing masala on the menu.
Though he’s nearing 80, Singh is known to be hale and hearty partly because he follows a strict diet, preferring vegetarian over carnivorous fare. A potato-filled dosa over mutton kabobs.
I’ll be waiting to find out what goes onto Singh’s plate tonight. He is, after all, the leader of a nation that now, after years of post-colonial poverty, has become an economic giant commanding global attention.
Tonight’s state dinner might just contain the ultimate carrot.
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Ode to a water tank


Tallah Tank turns 100 today.

What is Tallah Tank, you might ask. It’s allegedly the world’s largest water tank of its kind, holding a whopping nine million gallons of water to supply a city burgeoning with over 15 million people. If Tallah were to store aviation fuel in its belly, writes The Telegraph newspaper, it would be enough to fuel 158 jumbo jets.
It’s a landmark in my native Kolkata that very few tourists ever see. Located in the northern part of the city, Tallah is hardly a destination. But it’s a marvel in a city where very few things work efficiently.
“In fact,” a local Kolkata Municipal Corporation official told The Telgraph, “the city would run dry of the tank were to be shut down for a day.
Tallah has never let Kolkatans down. It has sprung only 14 leaks since it was built in the days of colonialism. The British Empire crumbled (thankfully) but Tallah kept standing. Massive. Majestic. Even menacing.
That’s how I looked at Tallah as a little girl who passed it by in a taxi on the way home to Baranagar from New Alipur, in the southern half of the city.
After a long ride through congested streets and snaking lanes, Tallah was my sign that home was near. Once the rickety black and yellow Ambassador whizzed by the tank on Barackpur Trunk Road, I could see the tops of coconut palms and the muli-story buildings of the Indian Statistical Institute.
I didn’t know then that Tallah was Kolkata’s source of water. But it was appropriate that it was such a vital symbol for me.
Happy 100th, Tallah.
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Invisible people

We take so many things for granted here in the United States, among them a little piece of paper documenting births. But millions of people across the world do not have birth certificates.
Their existence is not documented. They are often unable to access benefits, including life-saving medicines.
In many places, a person lacking a birth certificate cannot marry, vote, get a good job, obtain a passport or register their own children’s births.
They are invisible, really.
I know what it feels like. I don’t have a birth certificate.
I was only a few days old when I left on the steps of a Calcutta orphanage. My world changed when my parents adopted me and gave me a life I could never have even dreamed of as an orphan.
My father took out a small newspaper ad announcing to the world that he was claiming me as his daughter. If anyone had an objection, this was their time to speak. That was how the law worked back in 1962 in India.
I grew up without that essential birth document. Nor did I have an adoption certificate. I didn’t think about it until the day I faced a U.S. immigration officer in Jacksonville, Florida, during an interview for a green card.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “you don’t exist.”
I felt small. Unwanted.
Invisible.
An international charity called Plan has been working hard to make sure that fewer people feel invisible. So far they have enabled 40 million people in 32 countries gain access to documents.
“A birth certificate gives you legal identity as a child or as an adult. It gives you a nationality and a sense of belonging,” Plan’s chief of global advocacy Nadya Kassam told CNN in a story posted online today.
The certificate, Kassam said, proves who you are.
I still don’t have a birth certificate ( I never will) but I am now a U.S. citizen and hold my new passport close to my heart. For me, it’s so much more than a travel document.
It just might be a lifesaver one day — my only proof that I exist.


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Remembrance


Amazing Grace and Taps echoed through the vastness of Fort Hood on Tuesday, to remember 13 soldiers gunned down on post last week.


Soldiers are supposed to die in gruesome fashion at war — not in the safety of their own home.

That is what made Fort Hood so horrific for Americans. That is why the president showed up for the memorial service and television carried it live.

And yet, I remember sitting on a hard wooden bench, listening to another sergeant major do a roll call, perhaps the most poignant part of a military ceremony. At Fort Hood, the names of the dead were only called once, perhaps because there were so many to call. But in Baghdad, the names sounded three times. And there was silence each time.

It was so hot on that August day that my tears instantly dried on my cheeks. I blessed Iraq for not giving me away.

There are those who have died in horrific fashion in Iraq and Afghanistan whose names will never be called out live on television. The president will not attend their ceremonies. The entire nation will not mourn for them.

But some of their names will sound over and over again in my head today — on Veteran’s Day.

On this day, I choose the words of Benjamin Franklin:

“Never has there been a good war or a bad peace.”




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Memories of assassination


It has been 25 years since Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

The impact on Indian history is undeniable: a nation mourned its beloved daughter and simultaneously displayed its ugliest side for the rest of the world to see.
Rioting in New Delhi led to the killings of innocent Sikhs, destroying families, communities and any semblance of national unity in the country’s darkest days. If you have never seen the film, “Ammu, ” do so.
A quarter century ago, I was a young reporter just learning the business. I penned my emotions about the assassination in a piece that ran in “The Florida Flambeau,” an independent, student-run newspaper that, sadly, is no longer around.
It was a first-person story. I recalled seeing Indira’s black-and-white photo in the stairwell of the Catholic convent school I attended as a 2nd grader. The photo occupied the entire wall of the landing. Every morning I drew hope from it. No matter what you thought of Indira, the politician, she certainly served as inspiration to little brown girls in India.
It was ironic, then, that her death helped launch my career in journalism.
That is what I will think of as I read all the anniversary stories in the next couple of days. And how history might have unfolded differently had she lived.
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