I am a part of the solution. Are you?

May 26th, 2006 • 19 comments To be filed

Several clips from “The Inconvinient Truth,” statistics from Columbia uni. professor Jim Hansen and powerful oratory from Al Gore later I emerged out of Town Hall, a changed person. I feel like I am part of something universal, a movement that’s larger than life.

During the elections, I had the opportunity to see John Kerry. He came to my university to encourage students to vote for me and I remember not being impressed with his speech at all. It didn’t move me. But today, sitting on those plush front seats in Manhattan’s Town Hall listening to Al Gore gush passionately about protecting the planet and fighting global warming, I fell deeply in love with this man’s mission, vision and sense of purpose.

Global warming is not a myth. We are witnessing a climactic shift right now. In the last 30 years, the temperature of earth has risen by 1F. And another 2F are in the pipeline. If the temp. on Earth rises anymore –earth’s temperature will leave the climate range it has stayed in since one million years. And when that happens : it will be catacylismic. A 20 metre rise in sea-level will submerge half of Manhattan, 50 million people in India and millions of people elsewhere.
Animals are already migrating north — If global warming continues at the current rate, 50% of animal and plant species will exterminate within the next century.

I urge you to please visit, “www.stopglobalwarming.org” and do your bit.

I will use Al Gore’s introductory remarks to drive him the point:
1) Global warming is real. It is happening. Look around you.
2) We, human beings, are responsible for it.
3) The results are bad, approaching worse.
4) We need to fix it.
5) WE HAVE THE TIME. The window has not closed yet.

Do you remember learning about chloro-flouro-carbons in school? In the 90’s, scientists convinced the nation that CFC’s were depleting the ozone layer. The media paid attention, the government paid attention and the public took action. Result? we won the battle. Within the next decade, the CFC’s problem will be entirely solved. The gases are already on the decline in the environment.

If we could do that once, we can do it again. If we were active once, we can once again find the perseverence to believe in this cause. If we need to sign a petition, raise a protest or lobby the government– we can do it. Because without the government’s support, it is a lost battle. If you want to know why, visit the sites I mentioned and use your common sense.

Before we hit an irreversible change in climate, it’s time to renew the political will of Americans. And one more request: watch the Al Gore movie, “An Inconvinient Truth.” He is going to release the powerpoint presentation of his movie under the Creative Commons Licsence and allow users to use his presentation in our voices. So we will soon have that available too.

We have the tools, we have the determination and the will power– all we need to do now is act on it. And collectively if we try, there is something each of us can do to save our planet.

1) Become vegeterians. Or atleast change your eating habits and eat lower down the food chain. Believe it or not, it helps conserve the environmental balance.
2) Use car-pools. Or buy hybrids. Or use public transportation. I do not own a car and do not intend to. Partly because I am lazy but mostly because it is one less contributing to pollution and traffic.
3) Save paper, save electricity. Don’t keep your chargers plugged in if you aren’t using them. Little things — just pay attention around you.
4) Leave me a comment– tell me how YOU are doing your bit.

***

What we believe, defines us. My moment of clarity came one afternoon in Florence. Florentine leather wholesalers fiercely lured us into their showrooms and showed us their varieties of leather. “Feel this,” he said, thrusting a beautiful, buttery soft violet leather coat in my direction. “This is newly-born lambskin. Touch.. touch.. this is so soft.”
He had leather coats of every imaginable animal, in every imaginable stage of growth. I was repulsed. “Baby calfskin, cowskin, baby lambskin….”
Gory images of dead animals being skinned for the coats stacked precariously in the 1000sq. ft showroom flashed in my head one after another. I could not bear to stay there anymore. I had bile rising in my stomach.
Ironically, Florence killed my fascination with leather.

It is difficult to stay true to my ideals and beliefs especially when a lot of what I do is so closely connected to the fashion industry. BUT, but BUT– you do what you can, when you can and how you can. It’s not an SAT exam, no one’s watching you, and no one’s holding a gun to your head. We may be long dead before the climate takes a turn for the worse, but our children will be. So let’s do what we can, let’s spread the word, let’s believe.

Al Gore narrated an interesting anecdote. He said, in Chinese, the word Crisis is represented by two symbols plugged together. The first symbol by itself stands for danger and the second symbol by itself stands for opportunity. So danger+opportunity=crisis.

I am a part of the solution. Will you join me?

New-age travel

May 23rd, 2006 • 2 comments Culture Briefings

Turn Here is only a glimpse into how we will plan oru future trips. (Via Springwise )
Turnhere.com is somewhere between a travel channel, a travel guide and a website. The website offers 2-5 minute long films on cool places globally — meant to give you a glimpse into the local life, style and essence of the city you *may* consider visiting or vacationing at.

It is not meant to replace travel guides — it simply fills the space between the formentioned mediums that seem to be our only resources for planning a trip. We are picky consumers and we are used to having information on our fingertips (even if that means slightly controlling the element of surprise) This was in the coming, no?

I love the idea. Although I’m not planning a trip for a while, I’m lovin’ simply browsing through the videos. (They are of superior quality!)

Check it out and tell me what you think!

Digital seperation

May 23rd, 2006 • 8 comments Culture Briefings

When I was a teenager, I was fascinated by a 14-year old Norweigan girl’s diary. (When I was a teenager, www.diaryland.com was the rage) My teenage life was smooth, my parents weren’t control freaks, I wasn’t on drugs and was comfortable in my skin. Bottomline: there wasn’t any drama in my life and so I was inexplicably attracted to this girl’s drama. A punkster, she always used colors to describe how she was feeling. When she felt, “sea-green,” it meant she felt calm. It was rare, I think, but when she felt that color – it made me happy for her. She wrote about ice, blood and sleeping pills and I was drawn into a world I could distantly observe. Her life was about mangled relationships, cold parenting and fierce independence. All I could think of when I read her blog was: how could a 14 year old be so fucked up in her head and still write so beautifully? I had a crush on her, I was in awe of her.

We became friends too and would routinely sign each other’s guestbooks. And just like I had found her, I lost her. First she locked her diary and then I think she simply stopped writing there. I’m not sure what happened to her – I didn’t even know her real name. But the whole experience was weird.

If I were a teenager today and happened to lose touch with someone -I wouldn’t worry about it because sooner or later that person would surface on facebook.com or myspace.com or any of the gazillion other social networking sites. Infact, in the last two years itself I’ve been contacted by and have contacted several people I had lost touch of. It was eerie– and kinda of reassuring. There are people I still look for today, whom I routinely google. They have’t turned up yet, but I know our paths will cross again in the near future. Digitally, life has gone out of control! There is no need to lug around phone books or save email addresss in your mailbox. In a year or so, it will be so easy to find people that all you’ll have to do is google their name and the first result will be their phone number and email address with their professional details.

I will be surprised if that doesn’t happen.

But what remains untold – will I still recognize the 14-year old girl from Oslo?

Thoroughbreds vs. old nags

May 12th, 2006 • 5 comments Culture Briefings

I’ve been meaning to pen my thoughts about this issue for a while now. And then I read Pier’s conversation with a magazine editor, and his observation about the current status-quo between journalists and bloggers made me think.

“It was at that point I realized that this editor would never consider me a journalist. I wrote and published more times in a week than she did in a month and I had a bigger audience. But for her, a journalist sure wasn’t a blogger. Journalists were thoroughbred horses, and I was just an old nag that had found its way onto the course.”

I love how succintly and unfortunately, rightly so Piers substaniated the precise difference between journalists and bloggers. Traditional magazine editors are slowly opening up to the newer publishing facilities, yet, they exact a territorial and almost superior attitude when compared or even held in the same league as bloggers. Why?

Consumer magazines have understood the need of an online identity and I cannot think of a single influential magazine or a magazine with an impressive audience that does not have a website. What I’m trying to grasp is — do publishers and editors honestly understand the power of virtuality or are they simply jumping in with the bandwagon?

The closing of Elle Girl magazine was shocking — yet, the news that it would solely continue to live and operate on ellegirl.com was reassuring. The recent announcement of a mega, user-generated teen website to be unveiled by publishing monolith CondeNast didn’t surprise most of us. It was only a matter of time. More like, why didn’t they think of this sooner?

Hearst magazine Shop Etc, infact hired bloggers to write the Shop Etc blog. Nadine Haobsh, the infamous beauty editor who got fired for revealing the truth about being a beauty editor, was one of the first to be recruited for the Jane magazine blog. In addition to garnering the exisiting audiences of these blogs, these magazines are also in a way banking on the popularity of these bloggers! Because lets face it — bloggers have a face, a life, a voice we grow to love. It is a real person. And that sense of intimacy is far harder to achieve with a magazine.

In a move to achieve this level of intimacy, a particularly popular teen magazine now encourages its editors and contributors to have a myspace.com profile. Every article they write includes their name and a link to their myspace profiles — where readers can actually become friends with the editors. A brilliant move, innit?

When then are some editors so ignorant ? Or is arrogant the right word?

I love magazines — I love to hold the tangible copy to flip through while waiting for my train, I love the perfumed, glossy pages, the beautiful photo-spreads and the artwork. But I also spend close to 12 hours of my day surfing the net and working on the net. Neither media will outlast each other, atleast not in my opinion, but magazines that DO NOT fully comprehend the need of a website, will be the first to lose the race.

Besides, this distinction and projected supremacy is uncalled for because it simply doesn’t have a basis! Magazines ride on their successes partly because of their content, but mostly because of their advertisers. Once the high-end, luxury advertisers move online (which, inside circles tell me is going to happen by December) magazines will face competition with the very people they looked down upon: the bloggers.

So Piers– we are with you on this one. And the day you race the course as a finely bred Arabian is really not too far behind.

Btw…

May 9th, 2006 • 4 comments Culture Briefings

I’ve been invited to join the league of the pundits

and…
I’m a Desipundit now!

Definitions and Inhibitions

May 9th, 2006 • 5 comments To be filed

Someone asked me yesterday, “so how does it feel to be a new yorker?”
I gently corrected them stressing the fact that I only worked in New York. And I guess spent most of my time there. So are you still a Philly girl? I was probed further.
Hmm. Was I?

Does it matter? Invariably, we all come to question the validity of our identities and emotions in the context of our adapted countries and cities, ideas of home and homes and the amorphous shapes of who we are and who we ought to be.

***

The current Miss England was born in Afghanistan but moved to England when sh was 5. After she won the crown, every newspaper spinned the story on her being a Muslim instead of merely concentrating on her being English. In the June issue of Teen Vogue, she explains her frustrations on being boxed into a category : that of a Muslim. She wants to be 16. She wants to be who she thinks she is: English.

***

Five years ago, the aftermath of 9/11 — and I was stuck in a hotel in the middle of Kuwait airport for two days. Anxious to return home (USA) and helpless to change anything – the passengers befriended each other. Outside the hotel, we could hear the American fighter planes on the Kuwait air base. Inside the hotel, we lounged by the pool and feasted on lamb skewers (not for me) and mint yogurts. I particularly became good friends with a middle-aged woman and her teenage daughter. They were both returning from India and when we had the ice-breaker conversation (where are you from?) I remember their answers as vividly as the sunset on the barren Kuwaiti airport. “America.” The perplexed look on my face may have demanded a further explanation and the lady replied, “I’ve lived in America for more than 20 years now. This is my only home. I am an American.”

***

20-year old Albanian immigrant, Edie*, talks fondly of Albania, her grandmother and cousin brothers. One minute she is conversing fluently in multiple languages with her eclectic group of friends and the next minute, she has breaken into “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,” a contemporary bollywood song in lucid hindi – - effects of her Albanian upbringing. She left Albania not so long ago — when she was 15. But when asked, do you want to go back. She replies without thinking further, “This is my home. I am safe here.”
She does not need to explain why she wasn’t safe in Albania.

***

And there’s Varun*, a fractured personality that although pays rent in Philadelphia – continues to think he is still in Bombay. Here for undergraduate studies and a career, he stays up late into the night chatting with his friends in India on MSN and sleeps through 8.30am classes. He is the first one on a flight back to Bombay on the onslaught of holidays and the last one to return. Returning, only to begin a countdown to his next flight back to Bombay. He refers to his abode in Philadelphia as “my apartment.” Never home. Why? “Dude… home is bombay man!”

***

And there’s the 23 year old Saida*, about to embark on a 2-year Master’s degree to Texas. Sitting in her living room in Karachi, she dreams of cowboys, snow and high-tech physics labs. (she does not know yet that it rarely snows in Texas) She writes on her blog about the things she will miss about Karachi every day. She takes photographs and savors every bite, every conversation and every special occasion, believing it may be the very last. She celebrates Ramadan with tears in her eyes, believing this to be her last Ramadan in Karachi. Where is home? “I don’t know…but this will always hold a special place for me.” She says, not knowing anything beyond.

***

And then there was me. An amalgamation, a reflection, an extension of all these people at some point or another. Missing and longing, memories and anticipations, confusion and final resignation — are just a dance in time. Like a ballerina’s solo coming to an end, I believe my dance has gracefully culminated into a carefree, flamingo-like flight into the ether. It happened when I stopped needing my nationality, my city (cities, rather) and my ethnicity to define myself or answer the inevitable and debatable, “where are you from.” Now the answer is usually whereever I’m living/working at the moment. Simple, no?

I will apply for my US citizenship this month and I’m thrilled — mostly because I won’t need a silly visa to enter other countries! I could think of it as a momentous episode in lifetime, when I exchange my Indian passport for the American, OR- I could think of it as shedding old skin, crawling into the new one.

What would you pick?

Love for Tokyo

May 4th, 2006 • 6 comments Culture Briefings

I type this as I watch one of the most fascinating documentary of the year- – Tokyo Revealed. (If you didn’t already know this, I am a Tokyo-phile) 10pm on Travel Channel.

So, I just watched this segment on cell-phones and it is ridiculous how advanced these people are- They actually video-chat via their cell phones and it is so simple. They buy drinks and condoms on the vending machines with a cool technology that connects their cell phones to their bank accounts.

Another interesting fact — Tokyo has a very low crime rate. According to the documentary, intense gun control is one of the factors that contributes to this safety.

And please, how can we miss the Capsule hotels?! Literally, it’s a– capsule-like quarters that have radio, tv, alarms and a bed. I guess it feels like being in a space shuttle of sorts? Mostly business men use these capsules costing $40 a night as opposed to $100 something a night in a hotel. The catch? most capsules hotels are only for men. hmm, now I wonder why/

and how cool is their transporation system? if the trains run LATE (which according to this doc. is highly improbable) anyways, if they do run late– the stations actually vend out a ticket/recepit stating that the train was late so that they passengers can show it to their bosses!

according to my roommate, who was in Tokyo for 2 weeks on business, a 2 hour commute to and from work is very normal in Tokyo. (it would be like traveling from ny to philly and back from philly to ny in the rickety chinatown bus every single day!!)

fun fact– the shibuya crossing is the world’s busiest crossing. 1,500 ppl cross every light everyday!!

(I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m giddy with enthusiasm and intrigue- – because I am!) I usually don’t use this many punctuations but I wouldn’t know how to communicate my dormant passion for this country in words alone.

When I interviewed Patricia Field, the designer/stylist for Sex and the City, I asked her why she sourced so much from Japan. (Her new store in the Bowery has an eclectic collection of little known Japanese designers and even Hello Kitty stuff.) She said to me, “They respond to popular culture — they breathe popular culture. I guess me and them speak the same language and we understand each other.” Right on.

I’m watching a segment on the fish market in Tokyo now — and although I don’t understand anything, I can tell when one of these fishsellers has made a good sale. They auction the fish at the market at 5am in the morning. You know, we talk so much about the volumne, chaos and color in Mumbai or even New York and ofcourse, I love these cities but I think sometimes, it pays to kinda just look outside your comfort zone and realize there are cities, huge metropolis’s just as alive, throbbing and glitzy as well.

In tokyo- its best not to order sushi on the wednesday. why? the fish market in tokyo closes every other wednesday so “there is a good chance that you may be eating yesterdays fish”

check out the toilet now– a self raising seat that is already prewarmed. a control panel, like a remote controls the water flow in the hole. even the surface is covered in bacteria-free substance. their toilets come with voice-drowning sounds AND a perfume emitter.

Hmm. Sumo wrestlers are celebrities in Tokyo — weeklies talk about their love lives and they are sorta pop icons. Interesting, iinit? And a ticket to a sumo wrestling costs $500. BUT– if you call the stable master (the sumo trainer) are polite, use the right words – you may get to see the training for free. The food receipes are secret, apparently. There is also a Sumo Town, a suburb of Tokyo. (How I wish I was the producer/director of this documentary)

And now… about the shopping disctricts in Tokyo – Ginza. “5th avenue meets Rodeo Drive” The Daslu of Brazil is like the WAKO of Japan. And oh boy, look at their electronics. Their Sony showroom in Ginza is a 6th fllor mega technology haven. “in a startship” setting. And ofcourse, the video games on flat plasma TVs.

The final segment, Tokyo’s nightlife. A cool new concept of mini-bar where “6 is company, 10 is a crowd.” Interesting, huh. A lovely intimate atmosphere that attracts Tokyo’s “bohemian” crowd. And didn’t Karoke emerge in Japan? At some bars, regulars have their own microphones to avoid getting germs from using strange microphones.
Ofcourse, they have their share of exclusive clubs that cost a couple hundred dollars to get in and even more for a drink. What would I give for that cognac that costs $4000 a bottle, huh? Although I’m more of a dry white wine drinker… (that too, I only last a glass)

I had seen a documentary about Hostessing in Tokyo where young blonde girls act as hostesses at bars, acting as an accessory to rich Japanese business men who pride at the sight of a blonde woman on his arm. Reminds me of the obsession *some* Indian men have with white girls. (Is hooking up with a white girl a status symbol for fresh of the boat desis? No offense but I’ve encountered plenty with that kind of an attitude, but then again, how can we discount the white boy fascination with “oriental” beauty?) I do not sterotype, this is a general observation based solely on my personal experiences and media consumption.

The documentary is over. And now I feel wistful. I thought aloud to my better half, “maybe we should go to tokyo for our honeymoon.” he said, “sure.. uhh,. but what will you eat?”

Oops.

Life Tunes

May 1st, 2006 • Culture Briefings

We respond to fragrances and sounds – its subliminal stimuli evokes our conscience, birthing forgotten worlds and memories. Maybe that’s why we avoid wearing a perfume that sheathed us through a particularly horrific break-up or maybe thats why we tend to sniffle almost-over bottles of perfumes to relive the memories we lived in them. True? I guess music and fragrance are an extension of ourselves and our lives just the way blogs have become…. which is why, when I found Tablet Tunes I immediately fell in love with this concept.

I enjoy music best when there is a sense of discovery, a sense of nostalgia (real or imagined) attached to it. Hotels, local stores and restaurants usually play the kind of music that reflect the vibe, the cityscape and the flavor of the city. Something to get you into “the mood” or give you an imagined memory to reminisce. TabletTunes, a collateral to Tablet Hotels is such a delightful little site that I could spend hours listening to the playlists, customized by exotic hotels all over the globe, imagining myself in the psychedelic streets of Tokyo or sun-drenched balconies of Agra. (Prem Joshua anyone!?)

Aptly titled, “Soundtracks for your travels,” the site says, “playlists tailored to specific destinations or types of travel — because lounging in the medina in Marrakech should sound completely different from power shopping on the streets of Tokyo.”
This one has nailed it. And $10 for an entire crystal-clear quality album? It’s a steal!

Go visit now!