Justice at Last for Bosnia?

A lot of people, not just Bosnians and Croats, have been waiting for the day Serbian Commander Ratko Mladic was held accountable for his crimes. Yes. I said crimes. Though the official verdict is not yet in. Though there is another narrative told by some who will have you think that this is an honorable man being tried for just doing his duty, i.e. 'for nothing at all.' Here the nothing at all = genocide. Genocide of Bosnians and Croats. 100, 000 of them. Mass graves. Rapes. More mass graves. Survivors who make you wonder what 'survival' really means. All this just because they are not Serbs i.e. not born into a certain ethnicity.That Mladic has been able to hide for so long is despicable in itself. But are people so blind, so nationalistic, so removed from reality that they do not think that, by sheer dint of birth, they could have been one of the murdered? 

In a demonstration of Bosnia's continuing ethnic divide, Mladic's entrance in court was applauded by people who gathered in the Serb stronghold of Pale to watch the trial on TV.

"Mladic is our hero. It's sad that we see him there," said Milan Ivanovic, a 20-year-old law student.

Groome told the three-judge panel that Mladic was hand-picked by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic because of his skills as a military commander, but also "because Karadzic believed he was willing to commit the crimes needed to achieve the strategic goals of the Bosnian Serb leadership." read rest here.

Rick Francona's book 'Chasing Demons' is a fast paced account of doing exactly that. 

When Do We Write?

My dear friend and writer Anjali Enjeti has started a new series on her blog She Started It in which she's going to ask writers when they write? You know like when they're bored, angry, sad, when they have time, don't have time. Please check it out. Yours truly is her debut writer!

 When do I write? A more fitting question might be when don’t I write! I’m writing even when I’m not actually sitting at the keyboard typing. I write, in my mind, while putting the kids to bed, before I sleep and when I wake up, as I brush my teeth and hit the shower, and make breakfast and finally take my first sip of tea and so on and so forth. In this fashion I’m writing all day long and my moods–happy, sad, angry, irritated—often act as necessary spices to season the particular piece I’m working on. read rest here.

Andre Agassi's sports memoir 'Open' and tennis matches on court and in the mind

I opened 'Open' because I'm in the habit of opening every book that comes my way. I could not put this book down.  'Open' is a candid, funny, and fun read simply because Agassi, rather than giving a blow by blow account of every tennis match he ever played, gives a blow by blow account of his inner life. He is often quite snide and he is always very matter of fact. In fact the only aspect of his life Agassi is discrete about is his wife, Steffi Graff, and their children. Every thing else is fair game, be it his drug issues, his feelings about his immigrant father, his feelings about fellow players, his feelings about the sunset, his feelings about Brooke Shields, or his feelings about his hair. Brooke and his hair are, in fact, the stars. The Brooke parts are hilarious and since she apparently okayed them, I felt okay about not feeling too bad at how dim she came across as at times. As for Agassi's hair: even Agassi was in love with Agassi's  hair, which at times wasn't even his hair, but was a toupee, which he was more concerned about losing during a tennis match then the game itself. It's hilarious to think that while one was watching Agassi run around on court and thinking why has God given a man such amazing hair, Agassi was terrified that his hair piece was going to fall off and humiliate the hell out of him. 
So obviously Agassi didn't sit down one fine day and discover that he was a fabulous storyteller and writer (yes storytelling and writing are two different creatures) therefore I scrambled to the acknowledgements hoping to find the name of his ghostwriter: it's J. R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of his own memoir, The Tender Bar.
'Open' is a treat to read because of Moehringer. These are Agassi's stories but it is Moehringer's pen which brings to them such delight and tenderness for Moehringer has the great talent for taking what could have very well have been bratty whines and transforming them into heartfelt and moving accounts. Apparently, though Agassi wanted to share credit with Moehringer on the cover, Moehringer was content to take a backseat and so Agassi profusely thanks him in the acknowledgements. Here's a little piece on their collaboration in the New York Times.
If you're looking for accounts of tennis matches then read Pete Sampras's memoir, 'A Champion's Mind: Lessons from a Life in Tennis', but if you want something psychologically richer then Agassi's 'Open' is the way to go. For once the titles alone are indicative of the type of read one is going to get!

Kahani (Story): Indian movie/thriller recommendation.

To say anything more about Kahani (Story) other than a pregnant women arrives in Kolkata to look for her missing husband is to spoil it. This is an awesome thriller-- good pacing, stellar acting by everyone, plausible dialogue, funny moments, scary moments: every moment adding up to a very satisfying experience. I especially enjoyed the way the city of Kolkata (previously Calcutta-- a city with two names in a city where the natives have two names themselves) enfolded. Kahani shows Kolkata on the street level rather than a Kolkata of drawing rooms and witty banter. The camera allows Kolkata to live and breathe in all its hustle and bustle, tight spaces, noise, dust and dirtiness.  Of course there are moments that stretch credibility-- is Vidya Balan's heavily pregnant woman really going to traipse all over town in heeled boots!-- but these moments are few and far between and ignorable since the movie is a good, fun time.
* It's okay for kids thirteen and older. Any younger and it might get a little overwhelming as well as confusing. There is no gore per se but still plenty of elements for nightmares.   

Please Look After Mother Otherwise You will Die of Guilt

 'Please Look After Mother' the first novel by South Korean writer Kyung-suk Shin to be translated into English recently won the Man Asia Booker Prize, apparently because it illustrates life in modern South Korea. I don't know if I necessarily got this sense. Mom and Dad live in a village and go to visit their kids in big city Seoul. At the train station, Dad loses Mom and Mom goes missing. The novel is a series of first person narrations by  three of the kids (it is never explained why we don't get to hear from the fourth) as well as Dad as they try to find Mom.  Each is subsumed by guilt for not taking better care of Mom when she was around. Mom's voice also makes an appearance and her section is the most powerful of the novel. In fact this novel seemed less to me about how modern Koreans live than about how many sacrifices a Mom like Mom makes for her kids. It is a touching story and familiar in that most kids do not mollycoddle Mom the way Mom did them, but then are kids supposed to? Yes, this novel says, for kids Mom should be # 1. The thing is this novel demands that Mom's sacrifices be repaid whether the kids asked for them to be made or not. 'Please Look After Mom' not only demands you be uber-nice to your mother--always--  but beats you over the head with a guilt trip if you should feel otherwise. Is Mom a good mother? Is Mom an over protective and emotionally domineering mother? Should Mom have developed her own sense of worth in order to expect others, in this case, her own kids to respect her? Am I being ridiculously callous and unsentimental to even raise such questions? If nothing else this is a story which asks where the change occurs from one generation trembling before their parents and another eyeing their parents with disdain and for this alone is worth a read. 

Saving Face at the Oscars. Pakistan's first Oscar win. A documentary on acid burning.

The first time I heard about acid burning it was because I was being threatened with it. I was being threatened by having acid thrown on my face by an upset young man whose advances I was not interested in. Displeased men throw acid on women's faces for lesser reasons in Pakistan, and other South Asian countries.
In Saving Face, Pakistan's first Oscar nominated and winning documentary film directed by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Daniel Junge, we meet two women who suffer such a fate and the male doctor who tries to help them.

This is Pakistan's wins its first Oscar!!!! Yes, yes, yes and yes! I wish things like acid burning did not exist, but they do, and here's to hoping this film brings all the awareness needed to get rid of this horrendous practice.

Us and Them. And Downtown Abbey. And Thomas the Tank Engine: Bear with me, Patience is a Virtue.

Downton Abbey comes to American shores roughly four months or so after it is first telecast in Britain. For many of us used to the immediate gratification of messaging, texting, e-mails and other instants, this is a very long and very taxing wait, and now that it is being telecast in the U.S. it comes for one hour once a week. I am a period piece junkie, and Downton is a favorite and the six day wait for one paltry hour of gratification is not fun. I'm not the only one who feels this way. The most common refrain I hear is 'I can't wait for next week's episode-- I'm going to die'.
I would have died had I lived in Downton's time period, or thereabouts. On screen things move at a crazy pace (in fact one of Downton's reasons for success is its fast pace-- the camera lingers on bells and whistles but never for too long and seldom just for the sake of it)-- visitors come and go, upstairs reverts to downstairs and downstairs goes upstairs in a blink of an eye, Matthew Crawley goes from the war front to dinner parties and back again at a dizzying rate (dizzying enough for even him to point how surreal this is war/party lifestyle is), Lady Mary is to travel to London and before we know it there she is, a phone is expected and in the next scene there it is-- and so no excruciating journeys for us as we wait to arrive at our destinations, or waiting endlessly by the telephone waiting for it to ring, or waiting for a letter we've written to arrive or waiting for a letter in return; in the realm of Downton patience is a virtue: patience is the very essence of a life where waiting, waiting, and more waiting is the reality of every day. Even worse waiting without TV or cable or DVD; books sure, but not the cornucopia we are able to feast our eyes on today.
I love Downton Abbey; thank the Gods and Goddesses that I live in today.
I come from a country where reality looks a lot like Downton-- there is a downstairs and there is an upstairs-- for upstairs life is good, for downstairs not so good. As for the Lady and the Chauffeur, this might be the title of a novel the Lady might read, but it's not going to happen, Never Ever (except in the Titanic, and that's because Hollywood made it, and maybe in Downtown but that's because it is on TV). Even though traditionally it is easier for women to marry up, would a Grantham ever marry a housemaid, the cook, or the kitchen maid? And if such an event were to occur, it would take many generations for the awkwardness to be 'forgotten'.  Maggie Smith's Countess of Grantham exemplifies this in her remarks on 'little people' and 'chimney sweeps'. Sure, she's grown fond of Matthew, but she has not forgotten that he is not really 'one of us'.
I suppose for our societies-in-social-flux one of the charms, if you will, of Downton is to watch a bunch of people who 'know their place and, moreover, accept it' but then, to excite our modern sensibilities, rebel against it too-- will they succeed in their aspirations, and if so, how well. Equally exciting is watching the Upstairs having to come to terms with the likes of Matthew's Mum, Isobel Crawley, I mean a world which sees itself on equal terms and not lesser (of course Isobel and Matthew are 'middle class' and not really servants).
Of course Britain is still class ridden (and classes exists in the U.S. as much as everyone would like to think that we're all the same-- of course there is opportunity everywhere to make your money but the class your born into 'helps' here too-- being born to a doctor versus a house cleaner even today makes a world of difference); this class consciousness is visible in British kid's programs too. Watch any episode of Thomas the Tank  Engine and there will be mention of trains growing too big for their buffers, and trains have to be learn their proper place, and trains have to be kept in place for everything to work smoothly. Forgive my analogy but Downton is easily just another train station where the Steamies and the Diesels are beginning to butt buffers. 
Judith Newman reviews three books for the New York Times about the 'real' Downton Abbey, that is one about all the (TV) people who lived there, and one about those in service, and one about those who required service. (see below also for titles of all three books)

From Margaret Powell's 'Below Stairs'.

“We always called them ‘Them,’ ” Powell writes. “ ‘Them’ was the enemy, ‘Them’ overworked us, and ‘Them’ underpaid us, and to ‘Them,’ servants were a race apart, a necessary evil.” 

This quote reminded me very much of Pakistan. Although Powell says this about Upstairs, in Pakistan the gentle folk Upstairs also also call Powell and her ilk 'Them'. In Pakistan the gentle folk upstairs complain about how irritating Them are and how keeping Them on track is a full time job in itself; in Pakistan today, the two 'Thems' bristle at each other  across a great divide, and I'm sure this would have been the case at many a Downton Abbey were it not for the fact that in Downton's time staying in one's place was a matter of honor and not merely economics. A society where the Upstairs bathrooms are bigger and better than the double/triple occupancy bedrooms of Downstairs is a society doomed; a completely equal society is a dreamer's Utopia but societies with such glaring differences are an all too real Dystopia.
I suppose it is a paradox that a Downton Abbey set in today's world would be unbearable to watch while a  Downton Abbey of yesteryear can't be telecast soon enough.

The three books reviewed by Judith Newman are

Below the Stairs by Margaret Powell.   

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by The Countess of Carnarvon

The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes (Jessica Fellowes is the niece of Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey. For an outstanding treat watch Gosford Park and then re-watch with Julian Fellowes' commentary)