I have read your articles ever since I was a kid and you were at India Today. You have often come across as a balanced person not prone to Gandhi nonsense, until now. I live in a White Nation (the US) and have never felt like a second class citizen. Only a blind and a deaf person can compare the pride of a US citizen with the indignity of being an India. A US citizen trusts his government, knows his/her death will never go unpunished, while an Indian solider is there to die. Elite is a bad word in India because 95% of our country lives in abject poverty. Next time ask the waiter in Taj who served you the Rs 400 drink, how much he makes in a month. The Durban who opens the door for you, ask him how much he makes? I bet his monthly salary will be around your dinner bill. Shame on you and journalists like you who have failed India in the past with coloured reporting and are doing so now. They should feel ashamed. Rather than calling bush names, maybe we should hang our heads in shame on PM’s like Vajpayee who is too old to walk, too much of a coward to protect his people.

Maybe, just maybe, the day people like us (the English educated hence smarter) start feeling ashamed enough we will start making changes in India rather than just exploiting our servants and labour class. It anguishes me to read this national character articles. A nation that cannot feed its people (a la Orrisa) has no character, a nation whose children move around naked (Mumbai) has no reason to feel proud, a nation whose elected reps call religious riots "opposite reaction" has no future. Once again, shame on you and all of India. I am ashamed to be an Indian and shame on you for suggesting anything else.

Chet (Chaitanya)
 

O Gandhi, whom you hold in such contempt, despite all his controversial behavior, is largely responsible for the fact that there is no white boot on a part of your anatomy today.

O You live in a white nation but you are not white and never will be. You can fool yourself to believe that you are not treated as a second class citizen. You choose to forget the Dot Busters, the Sikh who was killed because he looked foreign and rampant racism. How many times a week do you have to explain where you are from and spend your time EXPLAINING India to Americans? I cringe to think what you say to them about India. We do not need spokesman such as you. You will never be able to share a good desi joke with any of your new friends.If you can’t laugh together, you cannot understand each other.You will always be an alien.

O Yes, we are economically poor compared to US but we do not have to suffer the highest rate of teenage pregnancies, kids coming into schools and killing students and teachers, the highest rate of suicide among college students, alienated parents and children, lonely old people dumped into old age homes, drugs being offered to eight year olds (as my daughter was when she was in the UN school in New York), serial marriages and divorces. The US had a president who was senile and deaf (Reagan), one who turned out to be a serial sex offender (Clinton), and now you have one who didn’t know the heads of state of major countries and ignored warnings of a terrorist attack months before it took place. The US is responsible for massacres in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Chile and the list goes on. The rest of the world does not view America with the rose-colored glasses you have been brainwashed by the US media to see thorough. And, how much does a waiter in Jean Georges restaurant in Trump International Hotel in New York make compared to the price of the drink he is serving? The labour class in exploited all over the world.

O You seem to very upset that I am pointing out we have a national character to be ashamed of and we should do something about it. Your insistence that we stay ashamed and do nothing about it is perhaps to make it easier for you to live in a country where the only religion is to hang out at malls and accumulate consumer items you don’t really need but have been dictated by advertising to buy that, to keep the US economy going. It is not by accident that Americans are flocking to yoga and meditation classes to buy happiness.

O I love America’s energy and have good friends there. New York is a centre for an enormous outpouring of creativity and imaginative thinking. Every country has its own problems. It is for the people who belong there to take responsibility for change.

O If you are so far removed from India, ask yourself why you are so anguished with my article. Chaitanya is raising his head, Chet is in trouble.

Regards,
Madhu Trehan

Hailing from Sri Lanka via London, M.I.A. is Maya Arulpragasam. Her early underground singles, ‘Galang’ and ‘Sunshowers’, shocked listeners with sharp lyrics about urban unease thrown on top of raw beats you could dance to, and in late 2004, as she finished her debut album for XL Recordings, she released a hip-hop style promotional mixtape showcasing her distinctive vocal style and quirky rapping over dancehall rhythms and instrumental tracks by platinum artists like Missy Elliot and Jay-Z. As a collaboration with another buzz artist (Philly’s DJ/producer Diplo), the Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1 mixtape had roughly the same effect as gasoline on an open fire; the project made many critics’ "best of" list for 2004 while simultaneously cementing her proper album Arular as the most anticipated release of 2005.

On stage, M.I.A.’s live show backed up the buzz with a packed schedule that saw her rocking every mic she touched, from the tiny stage of a dank Ukrainian social club in Philly to electrifying performances in front of thousands of fans at the Coachella, Glastonbury, Reading and Sonar festivals. When Arular finally dropped in April, the M.I.A. explosion took on atomic proportions.

But M.I.A. wants you to know that her story is only beginning to be told. It would be an error to mistake the positive press and rave reviews - and yes, the hype around her - for who she is as a person and as an artist, she explains, mainly because she’s always evolving and creating. "Because I was doing something that some people thought was fresh, new and exciting, there was this idea that I was gonna bring forth a big Ten Commandments type of statement or something," she says. "But people don’t realize that I had to come from a village in Sri Lanka to get here. So the journey is about the journey itself, not just about doing music."

Patterning his persona and logo after the Marvel Comics supervillain Dr. Doom, the man behind MF (Metal Face) Doom’s iron mask is actually Daniel Dumile, aka Zev Love X, a member of former Big Apple hip-hoppers KMD. First featured on the 3rd Bass single "The Gas Face," the London-born, Long Island-raised Zev made his debut with KMD a couple of years later, along with his younger brother and musical partner DJ Subroc. The 1991 album Mr. Hood, released on Elektra Records, was part of a short-lived trend of Islamic Five Percent Nation hip-hop outings, along with efforts by groups like Poor Righteous Teachers and KMD’s labelmates Brand Nubian. However, Subroc was fatally injured in 1993 when he was struck by a car, and when Zev and KMD returned the next year, it was with the even more serious and miltant Bl_ck B_st_rds, an album whose cover art alone (featuring a Little Black Sambo-ish cartoon character being hanged) spelled the end of the group’s contract with Elektra. With the album in limbo, Zev went underground for five years, "recovering from his wounds" and swearing revenge "against the industry that so badly deformed him," according to his official bio, a reworking of Dr. Doom’s origin. Meanwhile, Bl_ck B_st_rds was heavily bootlegged and Zev Love’s legend grew, but few knew at first that the rapper who began showing up at the Nuyorican Poets Café in 1998, freestyling with a stocking covering his face, was actually Zev. The imaginative MC finally ended the mystery in 1999, resurfacing in his new identity as MF Doom and making up for lost time with a critically praised new album, Operation: Doomsday, on indie label Fondle ‘Em Records. The following year saw the long-awaited official release of Bl_ck B_st_rds (complete with Sambo-style cover art), as well as several singles and an EP with fellow rhymer MF Grimm. In 2001, SubVerse re-released Operation: Doomsday and Bl_ck B_st_rds. A wealth of bootlegs, compilation appearances, mixtapes, and instrumental albums (the beloved by DJ’s Special Herbs series) surfaced over the years but no follow-up full-length until Doom introduced his alter ego, Viktor Vaughan, in 2003 with Vaudeville Villain. His team-up with the multi-talented Madlib became Madvillain and their April 2004 release, Madvillainy drew rave reviews.

Who’s the most influential rock critic in Chicago? It’s neither the Tribune’s Greg Kot nor the Sun-Times’ Jim DeRogatis. No matter how many radio shows they host or rock-lit books they publish, neither of those ubiquitous reviewers reaches as many music junkies as Ryan Schreiber.

Mr. Schreiber quit a telemarketing job in Minneapolis, sold his collection of rare records and moved to Chicago to start Pitchfork, which launched in 1995 and is still run out of the basement of his North Greenview Avenue apartment. The site draws a million visitors a month and gets contributions from more than 60 freelance music critics. Pitchfork, which makes money from ads, has won loyalty among rock’s elitist crowd with its passion for independent music, and with its ruthless, profane critiques. Mr. Schreiber once described a song by the band Oasis as "too g—damn catchy for its utter crapness."

But as Pitchfork’s influence has grown, Mr. Schreiber admits he’s felt the pressure to tone it down.

"You get to a certain size, and you can’t continue to be condescending, mean-spirited and snobbish," the Ryan further says. "Not now, when what we write directly affects the artist."

AOL had officially launched TMZ.com on DECEMBER 08 2005 ,a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions.

Deepak Nair
(article contains passages from various sources)
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RAMP CATASTROPHE: Another ‘sari’ state of affairs, with Shruti’s high heels getting caught in the sari’s pleats causing her to trip twice during the same show.

animation:Deepak Nair

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Maximum City’ by Suketu Mehta

Review by Deepak Nair

Deepak Nair

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Srinivasa Ramanujan(December 22, 1887 – April 26, 1920), one of the greatest mathematicians in history, belonged to an orthodox Hindu brahmin family in the town of Kumbakonam. He was born in Erode in South India on December22,1887.
Ramanujan showed his unsual talent for mathematics very early. Often in the middle of the night he would get up and write down mathematical formulae on a piece of slate lest he should forget them in the morning when he woke up. He would then record these marvelous formulae in his now famous notebooks. Ramanujan had a special veneration for the Goddess Namagiri of the temple in the neighbouring town of Namakkal, and we are told that the Goddess of Namakkal would come in his dreams and give him these formulae! In the town high school in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan’s teachers realized that he was unusually talented, but they obviously could not understand or judge the importance of his discoveries. Ramanujan later moved to Madras (now called Chennai), the capital and largest city in Tamil Nadu, where he attended College. Although he was successful in high school, his obsessive preoccupation with mathematics led to a neglect of other subjects and so he had to drop out of college. The advantage of being in Madras was that he could come in contact with persons, both Englishmen and Indians, who could appreciate his work. Some of them suggested that he should communicate his findings to leading mathematicians in England - India was a British colony at that time. The rest is history!
The two letters Ramanujan wrote to G. H. Hardy of Cambridge University are considered to be among the most significant in mathematical history. In these letters Ramanujan communicated hundreds of bewildering mathematical formulae he had discovered. Hardy and his peers in Cambridge, were convinced by the letters that Ramanujan was a genius of the class of Euler or Jacobi. Hardy invited Ramanujan to Cambridge to work with him so that the untutored genius could be given a proper sense of direction. Orthodox Hindus believed that it was a sin to cross the oceans, and so Ramanujan declined this invitation; his mother would not give him permission to go. But Hardy persisted. One night, his mother had a dream in which she saw Ramanujan being honored by foreigners in a great assembly. In that same dream the Goddess of Namakkal ordered the mother not to stand in the way of her son’s recognition! Thus with his mother’s permission, Ramanujan sailed for England in 1914.
In England, within a short span of five years, Ramanujan wrote several fundamental papers, some with Hardy, that revolutionized various areas of mathematics. But conditions were difficult in England at that time, worsened by the First World War. Ramanujan was a strict vegetarian, and food to suit his dietary needs was difficult to get in wartime England. He also did not take care to protect himself from the cold English winters. Thus he had to return to India in 1919, a very sick man. Hardy was concerned that Ramanujan might not live long, and so he worked hard to get him elected as Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1918. What a recognition for someone who did not even have a college degree! Shortly after Ramanujan returned to India, he died in April 1920 in Madras. In his 32 years, Ramanujan had made outstanding contributions, and was recognised with the highest honor that any academician in the British Commonwealth could aspire for, the election as Fellow of the Royal Society.
Often, his formulas were merely stated, without proof, and were only later proven to be true. His results were highly original and unconventional, and have inspired a large amount of research and many mathematical papers; however, some of his discoveries have been slow to enter the mathematical mainstream. Recently his formulae have started to be applied in the field of crystallography, and other applications in physics. The Ramanujan Journal was launched to publish work "in areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan".
An international feature film on Ramanujan’s life is being made by an Indo-British collaboration; it will be co-directed by Stephen Fry and Dev Benegal