 www.indiawrites.org |
|
||
| Search | |||
|
New York DiaryManhattan Magic, Educating Sarah, Cross-border TalkBy Manish ChandNEW YORK: With over 100 world leaders and thousands of diplomats and media men from just about every country under the sun parked in New York for the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly, the swanky Manhattan has morphed into a high-security fortress and a polyglot global village disporting an eclectic array of manners and morals. Hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) white-and-blue cars flaunting the motto 'Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect', sharply dressed policemen wielding high-tech surveillance gadgets, menacing sniffer dogs and squads of secret police personnel are swarming all over the place, determined to ensure that this global jamboree goes without a hitch.
But even as this sprightly city mounts spectacular security build-up for the UNGA, the powers-that-be in the city have ensured that it's business as usual in the city with minimum intrusive check-ups. New Yorkers, famed for their innate talent for blending business with pleasure, can't resist the temptation of having a good time. Broadway is buzzing with theatre enthusiasts and Times Square is teeming with revelers blithely chattering in at least a hundred lingos, defying the gloomy talk of the worst-ever financial meltdown that has gripped the almighty America.
Zardari hugs Manmohan
"You are the leader of a modern India," Zardari, the widower of the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, told Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh prime minister of India, when he met him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Sept 24 in Hotel Millennium Plaza, a few blocks away from the UN headquarters. The dapper, grey-suited Zardari, reviled till recently as ‘Mr 10 Per Cent’ for his propensity for profiteering during his slain wife Benazir Bhutto’s tenure as prime minister, hugged Manmohan Singh twice and told him that he had always admired him since he liberated India’s economy from fetters of stifling controls and set it on the path of becoming a major global power. The economist-turned-politician, on his part, congratulated Zardari on his election and "the victory of democracy in Pakistan." More than 20 years his senior, Manmohan Singh expressed the hope that this would pave the way for "a profound transformation of the bilateral relationship." This was their first meeting since Zardari became president early September. India is ready to give a chance to Zardari who is desperately floundering for legitimacy amid the rising militancy and shifting civil-military equations in Pakistan, but is not quite sure whether the flamboyant politician can deliver. Manmohan Singh appeared satisfied at getting a pledge from the newly-elected Pakistan president about not allowing the Pakistani territory to be used for terror activities against India, but he is not the gullible idealist to be swayed by sweet words so easily. With a historical baggage of betrayals and obfuscations behind it, New Delhi can only hope that Zardari matches his words with action on the ground.
Zardari high on Sarah, Manmohan opts for India tutorial
Typically self-effacing and modest, Manmohan Singh was his gracious best when he met Palin, the new poster girl of GOP. In fact, Palin, the small-town mayor turned governor of Alaska who describes herself as a "hockey mom", had her first taste of India when she met the Indian prime minister in New York Palace Hotel on a drizzly evening late September. Manmohan Singh told Palin, who has hardly travelled overseas and is being attacked by her critics for naivete in foreign policy, about a rising India which is opening a new chapter in its relations with the US. He also spoke about the importance of the India-US nuclear deal in transforming relations between the once estranged democracies and updated her on India's positions on a wide variety of global issues ranging from climate change to terrorism. Zardari, on the other hand, behaved like a smitten man when he shook hands with the bespectacled Palin, who flaunts Alaska-shaped gold earrings with panache and has a genius for hogging media headlines ever since Republican presidential candidate John McCain literally plucked her out of suburban obscurity into national limelight by declaring her his running mate in the Nov 4 presidential elections.
Hindi-Chinni 'aam admi'Barely a fortnight after reports of China’s dubious attitude in the NSG created much heartburns in India, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao were on backslapping terms and were trying to give a literary finesse to their friendship. Call it book diplomacy if you like. In a warm gesture of friendship, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presented a signed book to Manmohan Singh containing the speeches by the two leaders on inclusive globalization and development when they met on the sidelines of the UN global meet in the last week of September. The Chinese premier, who enjoys a personal rapport with Manmohan Singh, also shared China's experience in inclusive development. They signed their respective copy and exchanged it. The book, published by Cambridge University Press, contains the speech delivered by Manmohan Singh on inclusive globalization at the Cambridge University a couple of years ago and Wen's recent speech at Singapore University on inclusive development. They also discussed "similar approaches" to major global issues and shared their experience in inclusive development and inclusive globalization. Both India and China, rising economic powers, are facing the growing spectre of economic inequality and are trying to put aam admi (common man) at the centre of their development process. The book diplomacy set a positive tone for the first meeting between the two leaders of emerging powers after the NSG waiver in Vienna last month and created a positive buzz ahead of Manmohan Singh’s visit to attend a summit of Asian and European countries in Beijing late October. China's perceived role in the NSG had threatened to strain bilateral ties, but India has since then sought to put behind it this issue in the interests of good neighbourly relations.
Carnival of the oppressedIt's carnival time for professional revolutionaries and agit-prop artists. Rebels with dime-a-dozen causes ranging from the Russian invasion of Georgia and continuing carnage in Iraq to human rights excesses and the persecution of the Falun Gong have parked themselves outside the UN Headquarters in the Turtle Bay area, shouting and singing to convert the distracted passer-by to their mission. Dressed in colourful and eye-catching outfits, this bunch of cause-peddlers distribute pamphlets and try a hundred tricks to make sure that you join in this carnival of the oppressed.
Ahmadinejad taunts Bush, rails against bulliesSurprisingly, US President George W. Bush, often the butt of diatribes of the persecuted, has tried to steal their thunder by calling on the UN to challenge tyranny and extremism. In his last speech to the UNGA Sept 23, Bush tried to pose as a revolutionary. "Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world," he said. True to his reputation, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played the iconoclast and railed against "bullying powers" and "murderous Zionism" in his fiery speech to the UNGA. "The American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road," he prophesied. Clearly, it takes all sorts to make a revolution.
Comments |
|
Entire blocks, specially the hotels which are hosting heads of state and government, have been cut off from traffic. Hotel Waldorf Astoria - perhaps the world's most expensive piece of real estate, where US President George W. Bush networks with visiting leaders - is strictly off limits. Traffic could be really messy at times and it may take more than an hour to traverse a couple of blocks which otherwise would have taken no more than five minutes.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is the latest addition to the global fan club of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also a former finance minister who opened India's economy in the 1990s and has now struck a landmark nuclear deal with the US that has brought India back into the global nuclear fold after decades of denial. 
Nothing revealed the personality contrast between the leaders of India and Pakistan more than the way they responded to the glamorous Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s desire to be educated into the finer points of foreign policy. 
I can't go on, says Beckett's Unnamable. I will go on. A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams.
And Proust, too, killing himself to write his book comes close to the concept of dharma when, echoing Balzac, he says that in the end it's less the desire for fame than 'the habit of laboriousness' that takes a writer to the end of a work. But dharma, as this ideal of truth to oneself, or living out the truth in oneself, can also be used to reconcile men to servitude and make them find in paralyzing obedience the highest spiritual good. 'And do thy duty, even if it be humble,' says the Aryan Gita,
'rather than another's, even it be great. To die on one's duty is life: to live in another' death.
My discovery over the years is that the mother tongues have so much in them, so much that is alive, and are much more pervasive, in all strata of society, in all ages from children to the very old, men and women, literate and non-literate. What holds them together? It's not Sanskrit. It's these mother tongues. I think I went into linguistics because of that. That spoken languages had to be very, very important. It was important in my youth to have discovered this.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We are talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled expression in economical ways. Let's not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by daemons. He doesn’t know why they chose him and he is usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
I am trembling with cold