The Kite Runner

Recently I read The Kite Runner
I was amazed the way it pulled me in. I picked it up at the airport on my way to India. The book was in addition to my 3 magazines and the iPod that were meant to keep me occupied during the roundtrip from Boston to Delhi. I didn’t touch either the mags or the iPod.

It’s a moving story of coming to terms with the past. Its about the rare chance when an opportunity comes to redeem one’s self of fast sins. Amir, the son of an influential Afghani and Hassen, the son of the house servant have a lot in common, including a love for flying Kites. They have more in common than meets the eye and yet Amir is the social elite while Hassen is from a minority – good only to serve the higher classes.

The Taliban throttle Afganistan and Amir and his father escape to America. Land of opportunity finds Amir his love and a marriage. It’s a good life and then the chance manifests it self to redeem his dark days.

It’s a sad, melancholic and anti climactic story but lifts and fills one with hope at the same time. It feels very real – as if it may have been a biography.

‘Full on’ in Mumbai, Goa and Kochi

Pepe Escobar of Asia Times in Full power on theArabian Sea has an interesting and entertaining take on thecurrent Indian socio-political.

He uses Mumbai, Goa and Kochi as’representative’ of India.The article skims through a lot of issues and offers little in terms of a new perspectivebut it is full of fascinating historical and anthropological tit bits on thesecoastal cities. Things like:

That more people live in Mumbai that the whole of Australia.
That the name Bombaycomes from Bom Bahia (‘good bay’ in Portuguese) and I though it was an anglicizedpronunciation of Mumba, the goddess worshipped by the fishing villages of thatarea.
The Tata family were former opium concessionaires.
Chinese Admiral Zheng was trading with India- long before Vasco da Gamma ‘discovered’ Indiawith the help of a ‘Moor from Gujarat’.
That 34% of the 21.7 billion dollars sent back by migrant Indians comes fromMalayaleese of Kerala.

World Aids day today

I know someone who is HIV positive. It’s painful seeing him reduce to a shadow of his former self. There was a time when he soared high in the sky. He was a trained pilot. A gentle demeanor and a sad calm hang around him these days. He has resigned his life to fate seclusion. No friends come around anymore; his conditionis a stigma and a source of embarrassment for his family.

No one, no matter how reckless a life he has led, deserves the curse of AIDS and it is acurse in conservative India.

AIDS is a terrible disease. It takes away from your body and spirit the ability to fight and resist. We are doing a lot to fight the virus but little to improve social environment of the affected person. A lot needs to be done to improve the way society looks at this disease. People with AIDS today face a social segregation far worse than that faced with alcoholism and leprosy.