Mumbai Help

I'm about to further the perception some people have of me as being a serial offender when it comes to group blogs.

The recent floods in Bombay, though nowhere near as large a tragedy as the earthquake and tsunami, showed how unprepared the city is for a disaster.

A friend, one of the contributors to the SEA-EAT blog, has started a blog that aims to put together information on helplines in Bombay, facilities in case of emergencies, and the like. In future times of need, the idea is it will swing into action the way the way the tsunamihelp team did, posting links to current news, requests for help and the other stuff we know so well.

How you can you help

1. You could link to the blog from your own sites: http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/

2. You could become part of the team. You don't have to be from Bombay, or living in the city, though it would help if you knew a bit about it. In fact its essential that we do have some out-of-towners on board. When the electricity fails, and the net lines go down, those of us within the city may not be able to blog. Mail Sunil Nair - sunilrnair AT writers DOT net - or Peter Griffin - zigzackly AT gmail DOT com - and we'll send you an invitation.

3. You could mail in suggestions and information you have on emergency services. Same adddresses as above, or use the comments section on the blog.

4. And yes. If you live in a city or area that does not have a proper site and easily accessed emergency info, you could start your own regional blogs, and we'll link to each other. A chain of emergency service blogs.

Update:

Cloudburst Mumbai will aggregate news, links to news, and personal stories.
How to help: Same as above.

Salaam, Bombay

So you're back, old friend, unbowed,
a little damp, thirsty perhaps.
(Ironic, isn't it? Floods,
but no water in the damn taps?)

And you're telling brave stories
via email and SMS:
How many kilometres
you walked; how long it took; the mess

you walked through; and wasn't it sad
that we still haven't got a
disaster management plan;
oh, you read the new H Potter?

It's business as usual,
you're back, you're selling things.
You're picking up the phone
after the requisite two rings

Is it resilience? Pluck?
Or just that you need that pay
cheque? Whatever your reason
I'm glad you're back. Salaam, Bombay.

I love Delhi in the winter. And that's it.

Ruchir Joshi switches from a cooler to an AC:

It was not that it ceased to make the factory-worth of noise that it always makes, it was not that it stopped spewing air into my flat, it was just that, as far as coolness and dryness was concerned, it hit a wall. The air it produced was now unbearably loaded with moisture. It was as if someone had compiled large buckets of hot, glue-like sweat and was slowly pouring these buckets over my head. Escaping the barsaati-cooler nexus and venturing outside brought home an even nastier reality: all the stifling mugginess of a Calcutta in March-April, but coupled with a sort of wet, 43 degree loo, a bit like a heavyweight boxer punching you in the head, but with sodden gloves. At my advanced age, and despite my bank account showing a robustness comparable to Saurav Ganguly’s current batting average, I was forced to throw in the extremely wet towel.

The discussion around compressors and motors lasted for two days and was conducted mostly from the homes of more fortunate friends, the ones who already Had One, or Had Many. A friend best known for being a brilliant historian spent an entire lunch proselytizing about how I had No Choice.

This resonates with me. Not just because it was my first extended experience of the Delhi Summer (yes, it must be capital letters), but because I was delighted witness to some of the discussion that preceded the purchase.

Go read the rest. [Via Kitabkhana]

Play it again, Uma

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta was at Kalaghoda

And so we end up at Samovar, sipping guava juice, thinking how wonderful it would be if nothing ever changed. If these little moneyplants inside rubber boots, hanging on the grill, were to remain the same. If the red paper lampshade above the blackboard were to throw light, eternally, on the specials of the day: guava juice, litchee juice, mango lassi, pakori jaljeera, kala khatta...If this paraphernalia on the table remained here forever, in exactly this sweet, cluttered, lovable arrangement: this red plastic ketchup bottle, the cane-wrapped glass holding paper napkins and straws, the aluminium ashtray, the bowls with green chutney and Samovar’s special salsa, and of course the tiny green ceramic basket with the yellow marigold inside it, its petals tight and crinkled and mysterious as the future.

Mm. So many prawn biriyanis and memories, "pot teas" and confidences. Alas, she says, good old Sams may soon go the way of the Wayside Inn. (Hm, sorry that sounds like a bad chop sockey movie, but bear with us, we're all nostalgic like.

It really is made of cheese

Neha points us to Google's follow up to Google Earth (cue celestial trump here): Please see Google Moon.

(: Turn the zoom up to maximum, and you'll see why we will continue to adore da Goog :)

[This post dedicated to Nilanjana, to carry on from her last SMS.]

The "Ethics in Blogging (2005)" survey results...

...have been posted, quite appropriately, on a blog. I haven't looked through it in detail yet, but I thought it might be a topic worth discussing on this blog. The survey's findings are in this post.

The "Conclusion" section states

Overall, our findings show that personal and non-personal bloggers are distinctively different in their demographics, blogging experiences, and habits. Our findings also show that there are significant differences between personal and non-personal bloggers in the ethical beliefs they value and in the ethical practices they adhere to.

Therefore, an important point to note is that when studying the blogging population, distinctions must be made regarding the type of bloggers who are being examined to prevent any misperceptions.

In addition, the limited support from bloggers for a blogging code of ethics poses a serious problem for advocates of on-line social responsibility. If any inroads are to be made in terms of bloggers regulating themselves, consensus in the community must be developed.

Hm. It took a survey to come to that conclusion?

The survey was conducted by three students at the Singapore Internet Research Centre (part of Nanyang Technological University, between 6 Feb and 1 Mar 2005, and got responses from over a thousand bloggers (including yours truly) across the world.
[Cross-posted on indi�]

This little piggie...

A few days ago, Adrants got its chuddies in a knot about the image on this promotional website, which features a Bharata Natyam dancer. Her hands are in what the site calls "a pose called the Hanover High Shocker," which, apparently, has, erm, deeper meanings in America. We left a comment (the first one there), and now we see the, er, debate has carried on.

Go show them which finger is which, kids.

Mousetrap...

...is finally officially online. Would have been from the start, but the damn o3 interface stubbornly refused to accept the Indiatimes ID that is the prerequisite for a TOI column.

The Spring Dosa strikes back

We can't stop chortling. In China, says this Business Standard story, they're bastardising North Indian cuisine.

Nitin Chawla — who, ironically, is in the business of serving Chinese food in India — and his bride were not as lucky. In the course of their honeymoon, they visited Shenzen and Guangzhou, and were horrified to encounter glorified dhabas masquerading as restaurants and serving samosas and yellow dal.

. (From what we know of BS's standards, this was a pretty mixed up, awkwardly-flowing piece, we must warn you. Unless it's one of the usual web-version-has-boxes-mashed-into-main-text-and-formatting-knocked-for-a-six stories. Which would be delicious coincidence. Update: Jai clarifies, in the comments section, that that was indeed the case. So an apology to the writer, whose name has slipped our feeble mind, and - darn - the BS link don't work no more. Jai?)

[Via Amit Varma]

Maximum Suketu

An excerpt from Suketu Mehta's speech at a CRY convention in New York, where he also announced a legal defense fund for Indian street kids that he has set up.

One Bombay morning, walking on the road leading to the Strand bookstore, I saw a little family: A mother, with wild and ragged hair, walking with a baby boy, maybe a year old, fast asleep on her shoulder, leading by the hand another boy, maybe four or five, the boy rubbing his eyes with the fist of his free hand. He was walking the way children walk when they have been walking a long time; his legs jerking outward, his head nodding in a circle, to beat the monotony, to beat the tiredness. They were all barefoot. They might have been walking like this for hours. The mother said something gentle to the older boy, still clutching fast to her hand. I had walked past them, but then I had to stop. They came up to a stall, and, as I expected, the mother held out her hand. The stall owner did nothing, didn’t acknowledge them. Automatically I found myself opening my wallet. looked for a ten, then took out a fifty instead, and walked up very fast up to them, my insides raging, and thrust the fifty in her hand, "Yes, take this," and walked on without looking back, till I got to the air- conditioned bookstore and then stood in a corner and shut my eyes.

There are more excerpts on the CRY site, here, and we also have the full speech, for anyone who's interested. Leave a comment with your email address, or drop us a mail.