When I visit India, I usually end up visiting a bunch of friends, uncles, aunties and cousins. Some of them live in modern apartment complexes, towers, as they call them. Taking the elevator and, on occasion, the stairs, I can’t help but think “Where is the fucking fire escape?”. Chided, I am, for such thoughts. “You have become American”, “If there is a fire, we will just run downstairs”, “Lord Ayyappa will not let anything happen to us” are among the myriad responses I’ve gotten. And then something like this happens. [NYT]

But early on Friday the hospital, known as Amri, confronted an emergency for which it seemed to have no plan: an inferno in its basement that transformed the entire hermetically sealed and air-conditioned building into a giant chimney for a searing, smoky fire.

When the smoke cleared, 94 people were dead, scores more were injured and a nation was left asking: Is nowhere, even an expensive, privately run hospital designed for the country’s upwardly mobile classes, safe from the disaster that seems to lurk on every railway line, highway on-ramp and festival ground?

The most revealing comment, at least one by a famous person, on this topic:

Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, summed up the mood when he sent this message on Twitter: “Every time I see incidents like #AMRI I’m convinced we really are a 3rd world nation with delusions of greatness.”

Indian cities, over the last 20 years in particular, have sought to model themselves after the West; swanky malls, ritzy apartment complexes and state-of-the-art hospitals and medical care; for all this prosperity and opulence, safety and concern for human lives is still a “phoren” concept.

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“When the truth is like a stranger, hits you right between the eyes”
Def Leppard certainly did not have Osama bin Laden being offed in mind, when they penned those lyrics but strangely, the lyrics of a sappy 80s hair-metal ballad fit the description of one of the most historically significant events of this young decade.

By now even the most ardent of the below-the-rock dwellers, know how Osama got his comeuppance from the elite US Navy Seal Team 6, one round above the left eye and one in the chest, in a harmonic rendition of the double tap. Random tip (100% free desi ishtyle): always use the double tap when dealing with zombies.

And while we’re at it, let’s call his assassination, ummmm, an assassination, not a killing, slaying or death. Not that it matters anyway, but there’s no shame in this assassination, the bastard deserved to die. I would’ve personally derived great pleasure in doing it myself and I’m not that violent of a person at all, but I digress. The other option would’ve been to capture him and hand him over to his buddies at the TSA as test dummy, but again I digress.

Now that everybody and their uncle has analyzed “the incident” and conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, it’s time for the questions to flow more freely than Osama’s brain matter on the floor of his million dollar mansion, a mere stone’s throw from what can only be described as Pakistan’s version of the West Point.

Questions abound:

Q. How the hell did they track him down?
A. Osama was fond of making tapes no one really wanted to see and sending them using a personal courier. Track the product, find the source. In software terms, we call it reverse engineering.

Q. How do we know that Bin Laden is dead?
A. The more important question is, will be pull a Tupac Shakur and continue acting and rapping long after his death. There is no convincing the non-believers, look at the moon landing conspiracy theorists for instance. So screw the non-believers and lets crack open an ice-cold desi tharra instead to celebrate this mosht wondrous occasion.

Q. Pics/video or it didn’t happen
A. This is one of Barack Obama’s shining moments as President of the US&A. Surely, you want him to wait till the elections for the multimedia ppt presentation of Osama’s death?

Q. Why did they bury him at sea?
A. Feeding it to the sharks as opposed to maggots? Good question. I guess at least the sharks have fricking lasers attached to their heads.

Q. Are we any safer?
A. This question was filed from the chronicles of the clueless and the naive. No, not really. But the revenge curry does taste yummy.

Q. Did the Pakistani army know Bin Laden was living in their midst?
Not that Osama being in Pakistan came as a big surprise, in fact far from it, it would’ve shocked me if he had turned up anywhere else. But to me the biggest, pardon my Hindi, WTF question stems from where he was found, as stated earlier, a mere stone’s throw from what can only be described as Pakistan’s version of the West Point. Did the Pakistani authorities not know he was living in a million dollar piece of property with high fences and barbed wires and killer Afghan hounds, to quote a cliche, right under their hirsute noses? As CIA Director Leon Panetta rightly asks “Involved or Incompetent”? On an unrelated note, the same people apparently handle nucular weapons.

Other random stuff:
-Can we have an elite Indian commando team gatecrash the Dawood Ibrahim compound in Pakistan? He’s another candidate full worthy of the double tap love.
-How cool is the story of Shoaib Athar, a Pakistani IT consultant, who accidentally live-tweeted the entire incident? **Insert shameless plug for the Über Desi Twitter feed**

Ever hear one of those feel good stories about something great happening to a good guy and think to yourself “Good for you, dude”? This is one them. Indra Tamang played lifelong butler to a rich NY-based family and ended up inheriting millions when one of his employers died. [Yahoo!] (tip Runa via email)

This story has all the making of a Bollywood potboiler with Tamang playing the role of Ramu, the loyal sidekick. Tamang’s beginnings were quite humble.

Indra Tamang was a teenage farmer in a Nepalese village without running water or electricity. He barely learned how to write and lived in a straw, mud and stone house with his parents before landing a hotel job in the capital of Katmandu.

His personable nature and skills caught the attention of a writer/photographer who was living in Nepal at that time, and he ended up hiring Tamang. From a routine existence, Tamang’s life went on to rival that of the “Most Interesting Man in the World“.

But after befriending a well-to-do hotel patron, the young man started traveling the world, meeting the likes of Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Patti Smith, and living in New York, Paris and the Greek island of Crete.
He became a sort of surrogate son — a factotum who lived the adventures of Ford and his entourage. At one point, Ford, Tamang and a friend rode a Volkswagen minibus from Istanbul to Katmandu via Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
In Paris, home was a studio on Ile Saint-Louis, and Tamang took French lessons. And there was a house on Crete, where the American’s young sidekick learned some Greek from local fishermen.
In New York, they lived in a small apartment at the Dakota four floors above Ford’s sister, Ruth Ford, a former actress, model, muse to artists and writers like William Faulkner, and widow of Hollywood actor Zachary Scott.
The Nepalese emigre went along to celebrity-studded parties the siblings hosted or attended, taking pictures of famous figures that were later published in Charles Ford’s books and exhibited in Manhattan galleries. Tamang also set up cameras for Ford for profiles of well-known faces.

Tamang didn’t always drink beer, but when he did, he preferred Gorkha Beer. Ok, I made that up.

Always, loyal to his employer, his hard work won over his employer’s family. After Charles’ death in 2002, Tamang ended up taking care of Charles’ ailing sister, who died recently. Here’s where Tamang reaped his labor’s rewards.
A Manhattan woman bequeathed Tamang her entire estate — including two apartments in the famed Dakota building off Central Park and her Russian surrealist art collection.

Ruth’s three-bedroom apartment is on the market for $4.5 million. The art collection includes works by the late artist Pavel Tchelitchew — a Russian man who was Charles’ longtime partner and died in 1957.
Tchelitchew’s portrait of Ruth Ford sold in April at Sotheby’s for nearly $1 million, including buyer’s premium. Another auction of artworks is scheduled for Thursday in Paris, followed by three more Manhattan sales in the coming year.

Turns out Ruth Ford was estranged from her children and grandchildren and ended up bequeathing her entire estate of Tamang. Although, most of the inheritance was in art collections and not cash, Tamang can now lead a comfortable existence and maybe relax a little.
His acceptance speech is not unlike Tamang himself, humble yet endearing.

Tamang says he’s grateful for his poor yet rich Nepalese heritage, which taught him that “if you work and you’re honest and earn people’s trust, maybe something good will come to you.”
Then he added a string of thank-yous spanning his life.
“I thank my mother and father for putting me on this Earth,” he said. “And thank you, Mississippi, for bringing Charles to me. And thanks to him and Ruth for making me a New Yorker!”
“And thank you, America.”

Can we say it yet? Good for you, dude!

From ibiblio.org

India-Burma
2 April 1942–28 January 1945

“We got a hell of a beating,” Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell told the crowd of reporters in the Indian capital of New Delhi. It was May 1942, and the American general, who had only recently arrived in the Far East to assume the position of chief of staff to Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, was chafing at failure in his first command in the field. Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the previous December, the Japanese had won victory after victory, extending their empire from Wake Island in the Pacific to Malaya and Singapore in Southeast Asia. When Stilwell had arrived in the embattled Chinese capital of Chungking in March, the Japanese were already driving into Burma, capturing the capital of Rangoon on 6 March. The American general took command of two Chinese divisions and, in cooperation with the British and Indians, tried to stem the Japanese onslaught. Defeated, he and his staff endured a rugged, 140-mile hike over jungle-covered mountains to India. By occupying Burma, the Japanese had not only gained access to vast resources of teak and rubber, but they had dosed the Burma Road, 700 miles of dirt highway that represented China’s last overland link with the outside world. The reopening of an overland route to China would be the major American goal, indeed obsession, in the theater throughout the campaign.

A colleague at work bought some currency from pre-colonial India. His Dad (an American Soldier-not related to the extract above) had been in India during the second world war, stationed as an aircraft spotter around the time when Japan was officially into Burma – which was also a British colony.

Here are some  pictures of what I saw today would like to share -

Uber Coin

Pre-colonial Indian currency (flip side of above pic)

Burmese Rupee in 1942, issued by the Japanese.

The language on the coins is fascinating, I can identify Hindi, Urdu and Telugu (apart from English) on the coins – the fourth is somewhat confusing for me, could be Gujarati or Punjabi. Some of the shapes, the four sided 1/2 anna and the wavy circle shaped 1 anna are very similar to 5 paisa and 10 paisa coins that I was used to in late 80’s. They soon lost any real monetary value and I haven’t seen them in a long long time. The donut shaped 1 pice is a unique shape though.Also growing up, the terms like charana (char-4 anna ~ 25 paisa), attana (aat-8 anna ~ 50 paisa) and barana (barah-12 anna ~75paisa) were quite common, when that amount of currency actually could get you something, like a bunch of fresh cilantro, or a couple of pani puris on the road side.

Almost all coins are either King George V or VI, a more detailed history of King George V and King George VI coins can be found here and here, for the numismatists among you.

And here is the Rupee, just after the amount of silver in the alloy used to make it was reduced (source: from links above)

One Rupee in 1944

Suroosh Alvi, founder of Vice Magazine and VBS.TV, ventures into an area which recently earned the moniker of the “world’s most dangerous area” – the Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan. Pulling some strings, he manages to find a political agent/guide and sets off to visit the world’s largest illegal arms market. Would it be disingenuous to question if there’s a relation between the world’s largest illegal arms market being the world’s most dangerous area? [VBS.TV via CNN]

The market is believed to have its humble origins in the Afghan-Soviet war for which the region served as dumping ground for used arms and ammunition. From ammunition being sold on the roadside like vegetables to a store selling kalashnikov, mausers and ….. grenade launchers, Alvi and his crew embark on a foreboding and somewhat depressing, but yet fascinating trip of the world’s largest illegal arms market.

Some of the highlights to watch out for: the blurb on Pakistan’s quasi cultural renaissance boosted by uncensored television channels in stark contrast to the Taliban takeover of the nation, Naeem Afridi the political agent/guide and his jovial uncle like demeanor, the journey through the rugged and historically immortal Khyber Pass and the wares in display at the gun market.