Literary Safari

Today marks the seven year anniversary of the Iraq war. There has been very little coverage in the media.

But I’m still thinking about Nina Berman’s series of photographs “Marine Wedding.” On exhibit as part of the Whitney’s Biennial 2010, they are a poignant reminder of the impact and ripple human effects of the war.

The 2006 photographs on view document the marriage of former Marine sergeant Ty Ziegel, then twenty-four, to his high school sweetheart, Renee Kline, twenty-one. After being severely disfigured in a suicide bomber’s attack while stationed in Iraq, Ty underwent fifty reconstructive operations. … Without any staging or direction, Berman took spontaneous photographs of Ty and Renee in the weeks leading up to their wedding day and accompanied them when they had their wedding portrait taken. Her picture of them at the portrait studio conveys an air of alienation between the couple, who separated a few months after their wedding. …

Read and listen to a PBS interview with Berman here.

Here’s the first in a series of reviews of books that I think would make great gifts this holiday season. 

Rang (pronounced rung) is the Hindi word for color. It is the word that first came to mind when I began turning the vibrant pages of India: In Word and Image (Welcome Books, 2008, $60) by photographer Eric Meola.

Featuring an introduction by Bharati Mukherjee, this book captures the lively hues and moods of India through more than 200 photos of her diverse peoples, festivals, and traditions, with a special focus on festivals.

Meola’s extensive travels through India (and his keen eye) gift us with an intimate glimpse of subjects ranging from the exquisite palaces of Rajasthan and temples of Tamil Nadu to the simple monasteries of the Himalayas. What makes this book stand out in the company of other photographic perspectives on India, however, is the pairing of images with literary tidbits from a sampling of India’s best (and some of my favorite) writers—Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, R. K. Narayan, V. S. Naipul, and more.

If you’re looking for a book about the new India–which looks at the rise of shopping malls, tech parks, gourmet restaurants, and fusion fashions–this is not the book for you. Instead, you’ll prefer Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora, by Steve Raymer. But, if you’re looking for a book that does justice to the the architectural and cultural dazzle of India, then this book is for you.

Whether you’re a first-time traveler to India seeking inspiration, a travel shutterbug, or simply someone like me who occasionally catches the wanderlust virus for the homeland, this is a coffee table jewel worth acquiring. And sharing. In fact, I was going to suggest it as a holiday gift, but I’m afraid that once it lands in your lap, you’ll probably be reluctant to part with it! (So … maybe you’d like to order two?!

A few parting images for you …

 

 

All photos by Eric Meola. Reprinted with permission of Welcome Books.

It rained heavily this morning, but this portrait of Obama and Hillary by Jordan-born sidewalk artist Hani Shihada can still be found on Broadway and 109th Street.

Hani has been making public art in NYC since 1985. He can be found all over New York City from April to October. Part of the Italian tradition of madonnari, street painters who typically use charcoal, white chalk, and bits of roof tiles, he started his career in Perugia, Italy. His works last for this long because he makes his pastels himself and then, applies a thin film of acrylic to the finished work. Yet, like the Tibetan sand mandala, his works also eventually fade and vanish.

I’ve been enjoying walking by this particular work over the last several weeks. Though I didn’t get to see Hani work on the painting, it was interesting to watch people’s responses as Obama began to appear next to Hillary (she was there first), how they make sure to walk around the art, to not step on it. (Granted, this is the liberal, left-leaning Upper West Side!)

I checked in with Hani. If you want to catch him at work, he is currently creating an outdoor mural on 10th Avenue and 40th Street, from now through the 17th of August or thereabouts. (Incidentally, it was a commission he received from someone who had seen his Hilobama piece.)

This was originally posted at Sepia Mutiny.

When I travel to a new country, my eyes are always peeled for a desi sighting. My recent trip to Brazil was no different. This is the second BRIC nation I’ve visited (with Russia and China left to go) and having heard about Indian Oil Corp., Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum joint venture earlier this year to start ethanol production in Brazil, I thought I might spot other signs of Indian investment. At the very least, I figured I would come across a Sindhi shopowner (the joke goes that even if you travel to the moon, you will meet a member of the diasporadic community of Indian traders, of which my family is a part). [more on Sindhis in Mark Anthony-Falzon's Cosmopolitan Connections: The Sindhi Diaspora 1860-2000. ]

But, there weren’t any Sindhis or Indians to speak of in Brazil. At least, we didn’t see any. (Well, there was one uncle type we ran into near the Ipanema farmer’s market, but he turned out to be a Mallu from New York, visiting his Brazilian wife’s family!)

We’d heard about Nataraj, the only Indian-run restaurant in Rio. It’s in Leblon, Rio’s most trendy residential neighborhood, and I figured we’d find a desi there. “It’s no good,” our New York uncle friend told us while he helped us shop for figs and sitaphal. “Don’t bother going.”

So we didn’t. (Now that I’m home, however, some scoping did yield a little write-up about Indian restaurants in South America here which pointed out that the restaurant is run by a family whose matriarch used to work for the British High Commission in Rio. “She had been doing special event catering for the embassy as a side interest and then one fine day she decided to open a restaurant – I’m glad she did. It takes courage to make a caipirinha with an indian twist.”

Dang. Missed opportunity for a good Sepia post. Next time I go to Rio, I’ll have to make it a point to go here.

Because Brazil is home to a multitude of skin colors, it’s easy to mistake Brazilians for Indians and vice versa so much so that many times, people mistook me and my husband for Brazilians and spoke to us in Portugese. There were, however, a few exceptions.

In Salvador de Bahia, the northern city which was the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, a photojournalist came up to us during the 2nd of July Independence Day celebrations. “Are you Indian?” he asked. “Yes,” we answered. “Can I take a picture of you? First time I’m seeing Indians in Salvador,” he said.

Wow. I felt like an intrepid explorer, though I was quite certain I couldn’t be the first Indian in Salvador.

I was proven right. Later that day, in Salvador, we were at Rafael Cine Foto in Pelhorino, trying to get our camera repaired—and ahem, negotiating for a better price—when the shopkeeper (whose English was limited) asked us, laughing, “Are you Indian?” (I guess we carry our reputation as bargain makers around with us, wherever we go!) Later, my mother mentioned that her once-in-a-while Brazilian cleaning lady told her that there are lots of Indians who own shops at the malls in Salvador. I guess I should have gone to the mall!

Despite my lack of desi human spottings, there was no dearth of Indian influence—mostly of the exotic India variety—to be found in Brazil. [A brief photo essay follows below the fold.]

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I’ve always had a thing for elephants. My first (and favorite) stuffed animal was a gray elephant. In those days, stuffed animals were not very soft or fuzzy. Mine is rough andhttp://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/mohan.jpg tough, but he has survived three decades, and continues to thrive (despite his half-fallen off trunk) alongside my collection of elephant kurtis; shell, glass, and metal elephants (including Ganeshas); elephant paintings and silkscreens, elephant magazine holder … yeah, OK, you get the point!

So, today’s poem—which I recently discovered in Billy Collins’ anthology 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day—is (brace yourselves for the long title) “Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Nez for short).

I like to pair literary and artistic selections the way people pair wine and cheese, so when I read this poem, it seemed to me a perfect accompaniment to Australia-based photojournalist Palani Mohan’s images in his new book, Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia.

Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’
Forget trying to pronounce it. What matters
is that in southern India, thousands are afflicted.
And who wouldn’t be? Children play with them
in courtyards, slap their gray skin with cupfuls
of water, shoo flies with paper pompoms.

Read the rest of this post and the conversation it generated over at Sepia Mutiny where I have a guest stint this month.

Happy Leap Year to you! I’ll pay forward bookish desi’s wish to me: Hope you’re getting to leap into fabulous endeavors today, new and old!

A little haiku today, from a haiku a day, by Gimble:

February’s haste
to usher in an early
March slowed by one day.

And, here is a compedium of trivia, for your leap year reading pleasure:

> Origins of the use of the word leap to describe a year made of 366 days, courtesy of word origins.org :

“The use of leap to denote calendrical shifts like this dates to Old English, c.993 to be more exact. It appears in AElfric’s De Temporibus Anni. AElfric of Eynsham was a Benedictine monk who is probably the chief prose stylist of the late Old English period. De Temporibus Anni is his attempt to provide monks and priests with a text on astronomy and the calendar that they could use in the education of themselves and the laity and in combating superstition and myth. AElfric wrote in reference to the moon (which needs a leap day added to its orbit of the earth about every 19 years):

se dæg is gehâten Saltus lune • þæt is ðæs monan hlyp
(the day is called Saltus lune, that is the leap of the moon)

At the New York Times, Chris Turney, a professor of geography at the University of Exeter, asks the question: “Now that we’re in the 21st century, and time is measured according to oscillations of vaporized atoms, why do we still need something as oddly quaint as leap year?”

BBC News points out that those of us who receive an annual salary are working an extra day without extra pay today. (Should today have been a holiday then?)

And, my favorite: Magnum Photos presents images of great leaps and jumps at Slate’s Today in Pictures. (You can also click on the image above to go there.)

Note: I just returned from three weeks in India. Though I originally started out wanting to make time to blog about my travels, it took very little time for me to decide to just take a break from all things electronic. So, here now is a completely non-sequential travel log, purely based on what I feel like writing about at this particular time. Read more here.

Coimbatore was our first stop in India. My husband grew up in this small industrial city in Tamil Nadu. Best known for its textile industry, the town is ideally situated near Kerala, is home to numerous colleges, and is at the foothills of many well known Indian hill stations, including Ooty.

Coimbatore used to be a sleepy town, K. tells me, but I didn’t see too many signs of that. Because of its year round pleasant weather, it is rapidly becoming a popular retirement and relocation destination. Read: real estate boom. Wherever we went in the city, I saw developments of all types sprouting up – houses, apartment buildings, and retirement communities.

Whenever I land in India, I can’t help but be struck by the sheer number of billboards. In Coimbatore, my amazement was no less. The roads were populated with all sizes of billboards advertising everything you can imagine– from silk saris and department stores to water pumps and cable TV services.

All the graphics, the text, and the colors, not to mention the sheer size of the billboards, can be dizzying. But, they never bore! In the case of India’s billboards, I’m not sure that my pictures can actually speak a 1,000 words. Nevertheless, here’s a little slideshow, with captions, of the Times Square moments I experienced in Coimbatore. (Click on the lower left corner, where the title is, if you want to view the slide show in full size at Picasa.)

This from The Guardian:

They are billing it as the thinking person’s American Idol, a search for the next big superstar but with literary, as opposed to pop celebrity, pretensions. Touchstone, an imprint of the publishers Simon & Schuster, yesterday launched First Chapters, a competition designed to find writing talent through the internet. It is inviting unpublished authors to submit the first three chapters of a manuscript to the scrutiny of the voting public. The winner’s book will be published and distributed by Touchstone and the author will enjoy a $5,000 (£2,575) cash prize.

Of course, I immediately logged on to gather.com for more details about this “First Chapters” contest. Since I don’t work for any of the ineligible sponsoring companies:

(“Gather Inc. (“Sponsor”), American Public Media Group, Minnesota Public Radio, Southern California Public Radio, The Hearst Corporation, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Simon & Schuster and their respective parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, promotion, advertising, design, web design, web hosting, publicity, production and print production agencies) …

… I guess I qualify to enter.

This is at least the second Gather.com writing contest in the past six months, the last being Amazon Shorts. So we know that public journalism (with new possibilities such as You Witness News) and voting-based celebrityhood are official trends. What’s the buzz word for this new trend going to be? Participatory literary agency?