The end of another hectic week. Before I start with the summary posts there are two things I need to mention. One is that this week Paul was kind enough to award me the Sun Mountain award. Paul has an excellent blog where he discusses in an analytical and intelligent manner issues close to his heart. He is also involved in the blogging world ( I don’t know anyone this involved) and is a very very thoughtful blogger. That is why I am awarding him the Thoughtful Blogger Award, which was awarded to me by Axinia.

Another thing I want to write about is that around the 9th/10th of May my page rank increased from 5 to 6. Page rank is dependent on a lot of factors, and not just traffic. The chances of getting a high page rank increase if you have a group blog, your own domain, consistent blogging, sites which link to you, original material, no copyright violation (if they find a blog providing information without giving credit to the source that blog can forget about a decent page rank!). Page rank can also go if Google finds that you link to spam blogs and exhange commercial links. Getting a higher page rank gets progressively difficult. For example, getting from 5 to 6 is much more difficult than getting from 4 to 5… that is why I am happy. I don’t know how long this will last as Google can remove the page rank overnight, but as of now I am grateful. I am not a commercial blogger so for me its just satisfaction, but for commercial bloggers page rank is very important as companies pay you for their ads depending on your page rank.

Now to the summary posts of the week.

India isn’t eating too much I thought the controversial issue of Bush and Rice “accusing” India and China of pushing up world food prices (because now we can afford to buy good food!!) would have blown over by now…but the controversy seems to have embarrassed America…IHT, a reputed American publication has been highly critical of Bush’s statements..Developing nations like China and India have long been blamed for everything from the rising cost of commodities to global warming, because they are consuming more goods and fuels than ever before…

Why weren’t large mammals exterminated in India like they were in many parts of the world? America once had its share of elephants and lions…and more. Australia and New Zealand had huge mammals too…gigantic flightless birds and reptiles. They’ve all gone now. Exterminated by pre-historic humans. So if we in India are slowly killing off our tigers at least we can take some kind of twisted comfort in the fact that we are doing exactly what human beings down the ages did …exterminate species. They did it then and we are doing it now…

Extreme Internet Censorship isolates a country Internet censorship exists in varying degrees all over the world. In some countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and a considerable number of Western European countries, it’s negligible and the government encourages the internet industry to self-regulate and also asks users themselves to use “filtering/blocking technologies’ to block objectionable content. In other words, the internet is not really policed by the government. But some countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, North Korea, China and Vietnam have a high degree of internet control by the government. India falls somewhere inbetween…

Education Cess and Petrol Cess - where’s the money going? All of us need to be alert to the fact that the cess being collected from us might not be being properly utilized. The Daily Pioneer was forced to conduct an investigation… Its disheartening to know that the government’s contribution to education expenditure (minus the cess which is our money) has decreased. This means that government is diverting the money it was earlier spending on education to something else! Sure, there is nothing illegal in that…

Speed Racer - Movie Review Speed Racer is a cinematic cocktail of Science Fiction, Action Adventure and Fantasy…so despite the fact that neither Racing nor Cars do much for me, the movie struck a chord. Not only because I love those genres, or because the movie is a visual treat and one of the most entertaining movies I have seen in recent times, but also because it made me feel something. Not many Hollywood movies do that for me but two things in this movie get you all emotional. One is the…

Do children affect the health of a marriage? Why should children affect a couple’s marriage either negatively or positively? Surely the success of a marriage depends on the relationship between the couple? And whether a couple’s marriage is affected by the presence or the absence of kids would also depend on the couple’s individual preference (for children)…and this would vary not just with individuals but also different societies and cultures…couples who want kids badly could feel incomplete as a family/couple without them, and this feeling of inadequacy could well drive a wedge between them particularly if one blames the other…

I thought the controversial issue of Bush and Rice “accusing” India and China of pushing up world food prices (because now we can afford to buy good food!!) would have blown over by now…but to my surprise, the International Herald Tribune wrote about it yesterday:

…a growing number of politicians, economists and academics (in the west) believe that “instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy and go on a diet.

Then there was a TOI report today which said that the Indian arm of the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has “jumped headlong” into the controversy by writing a letter this week to the US President George Bush “urging him to become a vegetarian and asking other compassionate Americans to follow his example.”

How it all started
It was the United Nations which started it all by saying that the growing demand for bio-fuels, needs of rising populations and the growing middle class in India and China were pushing up food prices. America’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice latched on to this and said that “improvement in the diets of people in India and China” was a factor in the current global supply shortage…and well, Bush parroted it…even though India is an exporter of food, not importer.

This seemed to be the trigger that Indian politicians needed. All of India’s political parties including the ruling Congress, BJP and the Left lashed out at the US President for his statements. And as for the Opposition parties, they used Bush’s statement to bash the Congress in the election year…

While the Left parties blamed the “neoliberal economic policies imposed on India by the Bush administration”, the BJP used the US President’s statement to attack the Congress-led coalition at the Centre over its “failure” to control inflation.

Then the media got on the bandwagon
All this news was already creating headlines and the Times actually published details about how much more American eat per capita as compared to the Indians…basically five times more grains. It was also revealed that the US per capita grain consumption increased from 946 kg in 2003 to 1046 kg last year whereas India’s per capita consumption remained static in this same period.

There was also criticism in the Indian media about the amount of meat eaten by Americans…they eat the highest amount of meat per capita per year in the world… per capita consumption of Beef + Chicken + Pork for Americans is 117.7 kgs while it is barely 3.6 for Indians. And in America there is consumption of other meats like Turkey as well.

Reading all this was enough to make most Indians quite indignant. Soon there were bloggers protesting against Bush’s insensitivity. It was only after all the brouhaha was over that one felt that perhaps the issue had been blown out of proportion, particularly as Bush half apologized, saying that he had meant well…that if there was “greater economic prosperity around the world, whether it’s in India or China or elsewhere…that is good for the international system.”

Has the controversy embarrassed America?
That should have been the end of the matter but the controversy seems to have embarrassed America…IHT, a reputed American publication has been highly critical of Bush’s statements. They wrote about how much America eats…about how an American consumes 3,770 calories per capita a day, the highest amount in the world, while an average Indian consumes 2,440 calories. IHT also mentioned that America is the largest per capita consumer in the world of beef which happens to be the “most energy-intensive common food source.” And where oil consumption is concerned, the United States and Canada top the world in consumption per person. The article quoted Pradeep Mehta from CUTS (Center for International Trade, Economics and Environment):

If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates…the money Americans spend on liposuction to get rid of their excess fat could be funneled to famine victims instead…

The IHT added:

Developing nations like China and India have long been blamed for everything from the rising cost of commodities to global warming, because they are consuming more goods and fuels than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down never fail to point out that per capita, India uses far fewer commodities and pollutes far less than the West, and particularly the United States.

Well, I wonder if Bush is listening or whether he cares.

(Photo is taken by me on the streets of Mumbai and copyrighted)

Related Reading: India’s population to be two billion by the end of the century
India’s expenditure on food increasing
Human beings are eating more and more
Being plump in India is approved of

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America once had its share of elephants and lions…and more. Australia and New Zealand had huge mammals too…gigantic flightless birds and reptiles. They’ve all gone now. Exterminated by pre-historic humans.
So if we in India are slowly killing off our tigers at least we can take some kind of twisted comfort in the fact that we are doing exactly what human beings down the ages did …exterminate species. They did it then and we are doing it now.

There is this book “guns germs and steel” (A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years) by Jared Diamond where he discusses how large mammals became extinct in many parts of the world.

In Australia and New Guinea they were slaughtered by the pre-historic humans who arrived there about 40,000 years ago. Excavations have revealed that Australia was home to an ostrichlike 400 pound flightless bird, a great python 16 feet long, a Giant Goanna 23 feet long weighing 1,350 pounds, Palorchestid (elephant like mammal with claws), the Marsupial Lion and land dwelling crocodiles. Humans hunted them down and killed them and their prey and also depleted their numbers by taking over their natural habitats.

But modern hunters have been equally cruel. In New Zealand, the Moa became extinct only around 1300 A.D. after the arrival of the Maori hunters. The giant lemurs of Madagascar were killed by modern humans too - around 2000 years ago. And 1500 years ago there was another carnage - of the big flightless geese of Hawaii called the Moa-nalo. And let’s not forget the the dodos of Mauritius who were killed as late as the mid seventeenth century by modern humans. All these creatures who had survived for millenia started to disappear after the arrival of humans.

The Americas too had been full of large mammals and 15000 years ago “the big American west looked much like Africa’s Serengiti plains.” Many species became extinct about 12-17000 years ago.

But lets get to the burning question: Why were large mammals not exterminated in Africa or parts of Asia? Jared Diamond has a theory…he believes that the animals in America and Australia were easy to kill as they did not evolve alongwith humans and had therefore not developed a fear of them (in these continents humans arrived millions of years after the animals had already evolved). For example the dodos of Mauritius were so tame that people could just walk up to them and kill them. Large mammals in Australia had never seen humans before and therefore were rapidly killed by them. I am sure that this theory is true to a large extent but it doesn’t explain everything.

After all, most of Europe’s large mammals met a tragic end too…at one time Europe was choc-o-bloc with lions, elephants, rhinoceros and Hippopotamuses. All gone now. But here humans and animals did evolve together. In Euroasia proto-humans arrived about 100,000 years ago (from Africa). While there are many theories as to why the big mammals disappeared in Europe (and elsewhere), there is no doubt that humans played a very big part. Europe was populated very rapidly and human settlements must have encroached on animal habitats. Besides, ideas such as conservation did not exist at the time and hunting and animal sport was part and parcel of society. Today the only large mammals that Europe boasts of are its bears and moose.

If animals survived in Africa, perhaps it was also because the humans there did not have the sophisticated weapons or large organised human societies that Europe had. Dense jungle remained dense jungle and enabled animals to survive…and today luckily ideas about conservation have taken root in countries like Kenya.

What about Asia then? Why did large mammals survive in Asia but not Europe despite large human settlements and populations in Asia? Surely it couldn’t be because humans evolved alongwith the animals? If this was the case then Europe would have its animals too, right? Well, I shall try to answer this question by talking about India as that is the country I know most about…however, my knowledge of ancient India is not deep.

Pre-historic India did not kill off its mammals and one of the major reasons is because ancient India revered its animals and not just the cow! Not because (as Jared Diamond says) the animals were able to withstand human attack because they evolved together. Well, maybe to some extent this is true…but I think animals survived in India mainly because animals have always been an important part of Indian culture. Elephants were domesticated by the ancients, not slaughtered. True, we had hunting too as royals in India had an obsession with it, but at the same time it was not on such a large-scale that it eliminated wildlife. I am not sure why. On my post on the Ellora cave temple sculptures a Canadian blogger (Suburbanlife) made an interesting observation while referring to the carvings on the temples:

…obviously the natural world’s living beings other than mankind has equal importance in the representations of the world in your religions, as contrasted with similar carvings in holy places in Europe, where the imagery is human-centric, and nature exists to be a backdrop for human activity, and might be considered of secondary importance to mankind.

This prompted a reader to write about this subject in more detail:

Animals indeed are quite integral to much Indian imagery, particularly Hindu religious or mythological imagery. Indian literature is also replete with references to animals such as in our collection of fables with animal characters and morals for humans collected in the Panchatantra, believed to go back to 2nd or 3rd century BC. Many historic figures are often depicted complete with their favourite horses, their pets and sometimes their hunted tigers and lions. In Hindu mythology, all “Gods” have animals who carry them around - their vaahan or vehicle…

You can read more about the importance of animals in Hinduism here. And here are some photographs depicting this symbiotic relationship between animals and humans in ancient India…the first three photographs are from the Ellora Temple Caves and the last two from Mammallpuram, the cave temples in Tamil Nadu:

Today we have forgotten our great ancient Indian culture…wild animals in India are being hunted and killed and in the case of tigers, they are being exterminated. On one hand we have discarded our ancient love for animals and on the other we have not bothered to embrace the modern culture of conservation…well not seriously enough.

Let me end this post with a tribute the Bishnoi people, a community in India which loves animals and protects them with their life. The photograph below is an award winning photograph by Himanshu Vyas for the best photo-journalism and was presented this year. He had gone to village in Rajasthan where the Bishnois live when he heard about a woman who was looking after a fawn.

(Photo credits: The photo of an ancient palordchestic is from pbs.org, the cave temple photos are copyrighted to me and the last photograph of the Bishnoi lady feeding a lamb is by Himanshu Vyas)

Related Reading: Tigers in India down to a thousand??
The vanishing sparrows of the world
The courts have stopped the inhuman killing of dogs in India
A visit to Mammallapuram - a photo essay
The cave temples of Ellora at Aurangabad - a photo feature
A tour of the Ajanta Caves at Aurangabad - a photo feature
Countering the Hinduphobia of the west

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Internet censorship exists in varying degrees all over the world. In some countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and a considerable number of Western European countries, it’s negligible and the government encourages the internet industry to self-regulate and also asks users themselves to use “filtering/blocking technologies’ to block objectionable content. In other words, the internet is not really policed by the government. But some countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, North Korea, China and Vietnam have a high degree of internet control by the government.

India falls somewhere inbetween
India isn’t immune to internet censorship. Certain pornographic sites have been blocked in the past and this continues to happen at regular intervals. Attempts have also been made to block sites which slander politicians, or sites run by groups which incite religious hatred, or those which publish politically sensitive material. Often these attempts are not successful. During the Kargil war the site of the Pakistani newspaper (Dawn) was blocked by vsnl (government owned internet gateway which was a monopoly at the time) but Rediff (a news site) published detailed instructions as to how one could bypass the filter and view the site!! Right now in India there are no established rules which a website needs to follow…the official banning of sites takes place in a very ad hoc manner and is often temporary. More often it is schools, universities and employers who impose restrictions on blogging or otherwise revealing information relating to their organisation. Overall though internet censorship in India is nominal.

Extreme internet censorship in China
Some countries ban all websites with specific keywords, China for example. Recently I discovered that my blog has been blocked in China. Well, WordPress itself has been blocked for some time, so I don’t know if my site was blocked alongwith WordPress or whether it happened for another reason. This blog was getting a regular stream of visitors from China at one time and you can see that from this clustermap - a screen shot taken in November 2007. Plenty of visitors from China.

That I continued to get visitors even into this year is evident from the next map. The red dots are larger.

This screenshot was taken yesterday [13th May 08] but while it’s clear that readers from China have increased…the cluster map shows cumulative visitors, so these visitors could have increased anytime after November 2007. I might not have got any visitors from China in the last month but this map will not show that…I will have to wait for another month or so and check if the dots have remained static. But I already know that nowadays no one from China visits my blog. I know this because of the whois map which tracks daily visitors to this site. For some time there have been no readers from China. Here’s the map:

Those blue stars at the bottom of the Chinese mainland are of Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Another reason I am a hundred percent sure that my blog is blocked in China is that a blogger friend of mine from China has told me that he cannot access my site…and infact has said that all sites with the keyword Tibet have been blocked. In any case, it is estimated that “30,000 Chinese civil servants are monitoring Internet traffic and blocking content that is deemed undesirable. Typing in sensitive keywords such as ‘democracy’, ‘Falun Gong’ or ‘porno’ in a search engine results in an error message.”

The Chinese approve of internet control
But should we feel sympathy for the Chinese? A survey says that the over 85 percent of Chinese “approve of internet control and management.” Most Chinese believe the internet to be an “unreliable source of information” and think “much of internet content to be unsuitable for children.”

Now this seems incomprehensible to us Indians as people here protest vigorously against any kind of censorship. But Western analysts believe that the Chinese aren’t against policing of the net because over the last several years the Chinese media has been full of negative articles about the impact of the internet…and much of this negative publicity has focused on horror stories of lives being ruined by “slanderous articles” on the internet, of internet addicts living life in “military-like internet addiction rehabilitation centers” (online gaming is big in China), of online violence and pornography influencing criminal behavior, of online friendships ruining lives, of the evils of internet pornography and the risk of one’s personal and private information leaking out.

We all know that the internet is rife with dangers but the Chinese seem to be particularly wary of it. There is also a theory that China being a fairly child centric society (and that too families with just one child), there is a greater desire on the part of parents to protect their children from the perceived dangers of the internet. Mostly the internet users are the young urban Chinese but many parents are not internet savvy.

What seems a little surprising is that the Chinese don’t mind the government doing the policing for them. Guo Liang (who authored the 2007 research) is not surprised though. He says that the question Who should control the internet was a “rhetorical question anyway” as he knew the answer would be “the government”. Guo explains that since the only legitimate source of authority in many aspects of Chinese life is the state, Chinese citizens would naturally think that it’s the government which should control the internet.

But luckily, China (like India) is a land of contradictions. Despite censorship, China came neck to neck with the United States in the sheer number of internet users (210 million) in January this year and by now must have surpassed the U.S. Censorship or not, internet users in China will keep rising.

It’s a real pity though that because of the censorship, all of us are cut off from Chinese bloggers and the Chinese net population. That is the worst thing about this type of censorship. It isolates a country from the rest of the world. It prevents the Chinese from communicating with those from other countries and prevents them from being exposed to another word view.

(Photo is taken by me and is copyrighted)

Related Reading: More articles on China
The Internet makes our private lives public but most people don’t care
Top sites of the world - a comparison
A dark side of the Internet
Schools and universities in India wary of the internet

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All of us need to be alert to the fact that the cess being collected from us might not be being properly utilized. We pay two kinds of cess to the government…the petrol cess (Rs 2/- levied on very litre of petrol or high speed diesel (HSD) diesel from 1998-99) for the development and maintenance of roads/highways and the education cess (Rs 3/- levied on all central government taxes, such as corporate tax, income-tax, service tax, custom duty and excise from 2004-05) to help the education sector grow.

That’s our money…but do we know where it is going? Lets take the petrol cess first.

Petrol Cess - Lack of transparency
For some strange reason the government has refused to divulge how much money was collected and how it is being used and. The Daily Pioneer was forced to conduct an investigation to find it out. They did their job admirably by multiplying the sales of petrol and HSD oil (since 1998-99) with cess values of successive years and got the figure of Rs 84,251.7738 crore. These details were published in the 5th May issue of The Pioneer (link not available). But the lack of transparency on the government’s part is not the only problem…what’s worse is that the money is not being used efficiently.

The government is supposed to allocate the money (collected in a Central Road Fund) to various states and union territories for highway development and maintenance…but a quarter of the fund has not even been allocated and this unused money amounts to about Rs 63,790.76 crore. One has to wonder if the money is still there or has been diverted? The government isn’t talking. A quote from the Pioneer:

…Clearly, the Government is determined to stonewall all queries about how much money it has extorted from the public, leave alone telling us how that money has been spent. The Finance Ministry won’t even tell Parliament about it!

Wait, there’s worse news. Just because the central government has allocated the funds it doesn’t mean that the states are using them! Allocated funds lie unused too. An Indian express article got hold of statistics which showed that from 2004-05 to 2006-07, the amount that each state left unused ranged from 28 per cent to 3 per cent, with the southern states utilizing the funds in a better way. Even the Union territories did badly here, using only 38 percent of the grant of Rs 150 lakh from the Central Road fund.

So what’s up with the states? Apparently, development work is not moving fast enough, the states are not being able to get projects going and not able to get them completed on time. Government officials have admitted that states “are not taking a pro-active stand on the issue.” So now you know why that flyover near your house is taking so long to build…

Education Cess - apathy galore
This cess is as high as 3 percent today. Initially it was just 2 percent but an an additional 1 percent was levied in 2007, ostensibly to help secondary education.

Right from the start there was a stink surrounding the education cess. A 2004 TOI article says:

Six months after the Centre introduced the cess to fund the primary education sector, there is utter confusion on how it is spent…

And can you believe it, even though Rs 2,273 crore was collected in first six months, the state education departments had no access to the funds and “no specific direction” was given to them about the funds!! Shocking isn’t it when state schools sorely lack everything from toilets to blackboards?

So has the situation improved now, 3-4 years down the line? It’s the same story of lack of transparency like in the case of petrol cess. Although we know that Rs 10,300 crore was collected in the last year, no one is quite sure of the total amout collected since the cess was introduced. This Economic Times article says:

…the total amount of cess collected seems to vary depending on where one gets the information from.

Ministers give out one figure, the Controller General of Accounts another and the human resource development ministry say something else. If you go by what the HRD Ministery says then the figures are:

2004-05 - Rs 4,318.51 crore
2005-06 - Rs 7,637.75 crore
2006-07 (the HRD ministry only had figures till February!!) - Rs 6,833 crore.

There is another aspect to this issue. The government is using the education cess to fund education projects instead of using its own money. The truth is that the government is not supposed to collect any education cess at all since setting up of educational institutions is a constitutional obligation - the government should finance it from taxes collected. But okay, let’s give the government the benefit of the doubt and imagine for a moment that it is poor and needs more money to beef up our weak educational infrastructure, weakened due to years of neglect. Shouldn’t we take this to assume that the education cess is an extra, over and above the existing expenditure of the government on education?

Nope. Its disheartening to know that the government’s contribution to education expenditure (minus the cess which is our money) has decreased. This means that government is diverting the money it was earlier spending on education to something else! Sure, there is nothing illegal in that but it goes against the very spirit of the cess.

We all want India to grow and develop and are ready to pitch in. But it’s terrible that the government is not acting responsibly. Unless it is more transparent in its functioning and clears the doubt of the citizens we will always suspect that we are being taken for a ride.

Related Reading: India Budget 2008 Highlights
Poor education is leading to mushrooming of coaching classes
India’s top universities - the government has done something good!
Lack of educational infrastructure leads to skill shortages
Corporate India will hire people from outside India if need be
The rote learning in Indian schools is harmful

(Both photos are by me and are copyrighted)

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Speed Racer is a cinematic cocktail of Science Fiction, Action Adventure and Fantasy…so despite the fact that neither Racing nor Cars do much for me, the movie struck a chord. Not only because I love those genres, or because the movie is a visual treat and one of the most entertaining movies I have seen in recent times, but also because it made me feel something. Not many Hollywood movies do that for me but two things in this movie get you all emotional. One is the underlying theme of filial love and family values and even more important - the passion that one needs to have for what one does…in this case Racing.

Sure, I agree with most reviewers when they say the plot isn’t worth talking about but inspite of that one is not disappointed…now how many movies can keep you glued to your seat without a credible plot and that too for two hours fifteen minutes? The focus isn’t on the plot at all. The story is simply used as a tool to showcase the beautiful colourful glitzy fantasy world of racing cars that is so alive that the cars can double up as ninja fighters and the racing tracks blaze and daze, taking you on a lunatic roller coaster ride. Half an hour into the movie I felt a little dizzy.

The movie is not all animation…all characters are real actors. It’s the background (including the cars) which is completely animated. That not just adds a fantasy like atmosphere to the movie, it makes everything believable because right from the start we are sucked into a fantasy world where anything is possible. Suspension from disbelief works at its best. We are drawn into a vortex of a world where racing cars zip through the air, performing unimaginable stunts. Everything is more than a trifle exaggerated, including the way the characters are presented. They have been photofinished to look almost like cartoon characters and even the way they behave is slightly extreme.

The story opens with our hero Speed (Emile Hirsch) as a kid in school. He has a passion for only one thing in life – racing. He fails at everything else but despite that has the complete support of this family. Speed’s dad (John Goodman) is an idealistic car designer and maker and elder brother Rex a racing car driver who Speed idolizes. Everything turns topsy turvy when a tragedy befalls Rex and a villain in the form of the head of an evil corporation (which makes racing cars) pops up and offers to “buy” Speed. After that it’s all up to our young hero. He has to do his stuff and prove that racing isn’t about money, it’s about the passion and talent for driving, and he proves it in heroic style.

I was a little surprised that the New York Times trashed this movie because usually I agree with their reviews. They didn’t like the movie because it didn’t have a credible story and was far too melodramatic. I think the movie is too melodramatic for western tastes…but at no point in the movie was I looking for any kind of realism. Heck, it’s pure fantasy taking place in a futuristic world. The directors make no pretense at realism.

The movie is a technological extravaganza (cost 120 million to make), and the unusually bright colours that literally explode in your face alongwith the clever editing and amazing stunts that never leave you with a dull moment. There’s a touch of humour too in the form of Speed’s younger brother and his pet monkey whose antics which are sprinkled liberally throughout the movie.

The movie is a remake of a Japanese cartoon (anime) series and written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, the Matrix people. That itself meant something to me as The Matrix is one of my favourite movies of all time.

It’s a movie that adolescents and kids will enjoy and some adults too, if they are like me. If you want to see a movie because its realistic, then forget about it! And oh yes, this movie isn’t worth seeing on video. You need a big screen.

Related Reading: More Movie Reviews
Review of Iron Man

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Why should children affect a couple’s marriage either negatively or positively? Surely the success of a marriage depends on the relationship between the couple? And whether a couple’s marriage is affected by the presence or the absence of kids would also depend on the couple’s individual preference (for children)…and this would vary not just with individuals but also different societies and cultures.

In any case the factors that go into making a marriage successful are so complex that I cannot imagine linking it to having children. But various surveys have done exactly this and that is why I wanted to explore the connection between the two. I am certainly no expert but I have had the experience of a long and happy married life and have also seen marriages of different kinds around me.

Inability to have children could affect a marriage
Couples who want kids badly could feel incomplete as a family/couple without them, and this feeling of inadequacy could well drive a wedge between them particularly if one blames the other…but another couple who doesn’t want kids and chooses not to have them could have some other stressful event tearing them apart. So its not children per se which is affecting the marriage, but stress and the blame game. I think that if a marriage is strong, it should be able to survive.

Happiness isn’t of one type
There is a recent survey (carried out in America and Europe) which says that married couples are happy (the word they used was “blissfully” happy) once their children have fled the nest.
But surely the kind of happiness that a couple feels after the children have left is different from the happiness a couple feels when the kids are around? I cannot believe that the couples who were interviewed don’t know that the joy they shared when they saw their child take his first step is equal to or as fulfilling as a romantic candlelight dinner or a week-end in Hawai. One kind of joy is not superior to the other, but the survey seems to be saying it is. I doubt that the survey asked whether the couples would have preferred being childless.

There are other older studies conducted in the USA (from 1950s to 2000) which say that there is a “drop in marital happiness” when couples have children…and the wealthier you are, the more this applies. They have explained that this is due to the fact that wealthy couples have the money to travel, go for adventure sports, and do a host of things which they would feel guilty doing if they had to leave kids behind…but I wonder if the word ‘happiness’ is the right one. The survey does not say whether the couples would actually prefer not having children. If they were truly unhappy they would regret having the kids wouldn’t they? So if they don’t regret having children it means they are quite happy the way they are. They are giving up on some “fun” in exchange for some long term fulfillment and sure they feel pangs of longing but that’s human. It shouldn’t mean that they are unhappy.

In any case I don’t think “having fun” all the time and having the freedom to do whatever one wants at any given moment necessarily means being “happy.”

If a couple doesn’t want children in the first place then its a different matter. If someone doesn’t want kids but still has them due to the pressure from their partner or society, then obviously the kids are going to be a cause for resentment and may substract from marital happiness.

Can kids “help” save a poor marriage?
If the couple has a poor relationship and wants to keep the marriage going then kids could well be a binding factor…but every person needs emotional and physical intimacy so how long can such a marriage last? At times a couple might go along with a sham marriage, sticking together for the “sake of the kids” and this does happen in India. But it can lead to unfaithfulness and bitterness. And the marriage could well break apart if the kids leave. In fact a random survey of about 2,000 cases filed in the last one year before the Bandra family court (one of two in Mumbai) last year revealed that more than 10 percent of divorce cases were from the 40-50 age group. So what I am trying to say is that children cannot really help save a marraige…

Wanting to get married and wanting to have children can be two separate issues
A couple may want to get married and not have children and they can be very happy, and on the other hand there are cases of single people wanting to have children…because its motherhood or fatherhood that they crave for, not marriage. A person looking to be married or looking to be in a committed relationship is looking for love and companionship and is ready to give it as well.

Let me show you a graph which gives the relative importance of different factors in a marriage (American). Interestingly, fewer Americans today say that children are “very important” to a successful marriage as compared to a 1990 survey. Financial considerations and sharing of household duties has assumed greater importance.

In my view faithfulness is a major criteria but I do think of it as a result of a happy marriage, rather than a cause. Other factors like good sex and sharing of chores are surely the result of a happy marriage and a good relationship. So is there anything at all that helps a marriage to be successful?

In my opinion two rational people who are in love and do things together because they have some shared interests and a shared value system which tells them that marriage (or cohabitation) is not to be taken lightly can be happy. They will work out any issues they have. A report explains my point of view. It says more than an economic analysis of a marraige it is…

…companionship which is important. The enjoyment of joint activities or the absence of loneliness and the emotional support that fosters self-esteem and mastery are all important non-instrumental aspects contributing to the individual well-being of married people…

In India, because of the vast network of social connections, the support of relatives and close family ties, marriages can at times survive without the emotional intimacy that marriage should provide. I have known some cases where the wife is closer to her sister than her husband and the husband closer to his father than his wife…at times the wife closer to her son than her husband…but the marriage carries on.

However, with greater urbanisation and the break-up of the joint family this trend is changing. Husbands and wives are depending on each other for companionship and this could well bind them together forever or break up a weak relationship. That is one factor that people haven’t considered when we look at the increasing divorce rate in India. When a couple is by themselves, they find out much earlier if they are compatible or not. So surveys which say that couples are happy when their children leave the nest are only right if the marriage is strong in the first place.

(Photograph is taken by me and the graph is from Pew Research)

Related Reading: What kills a marriage? An emotional affair or a physical one?
It is possible to arrange love
Indian teens want dating to lead to marriage
Why is the divorce rate increasing?
Divorce rates of the world
Teens and dating in India
Internet marriage bureaus doing well in India

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Plastic bottles and pizza boxes are not safe anymore We’ve been doing it for years and now they tell us that it’s not safe. Two separate “discoveries” in the last few weeks have revealed that those hard transparent plastic bottles and containers you use are toxic…and so is cardboard. Those cardboard boxes in which you get your pizzas delivered to your home could well be carcinogenic…

An aerial view of Mumbai city (photo post) These are some of the photographs I took as we flew over Mumbai last month… the first photograph was taken after we had taken off from Mumbai and you can see that the plane was flying over some sort of railway yard…

Be careful before you enroll into that foreign course Import of higher education into India is wonderful in itself because those who cannot afford to go abroad to get their degrees can get them here. However at times the foreign course that the student dreamed of can be a disaster. It fails because the course fails to take into account Indian conditions…in other words the course runs as if it is operating in the country of its origin…

A song which inspires - a tag Aikaterine tagged me for a writer’s tag. She said: “Think of THE song that most inspires you to write, whether it gives you an idea for a story, script or just puts you into a better frame of mind AND/OR peek into the lyrics and find a verse that sums up the theme of whatever project it is you’re working on…”

You are eating GM food but you don’t know it GM foods change the DNA of plants so that they become resistant to pests and thereby increase food production. They also reduce the usage of pesticides… all this to feed the starving millions! But we are tampering with the DNA of organisms, mutating them in labs into something “superior.” That is the stuff of science fiction and horror movies and should remain so! Well, at least until we find out the exact consequences of speeding up nature…

Iron Man - Movie Review Iron Man The movie (directed by Jon Favreau) is a cinematic adaptation of Marvel Comic’s superhero and is just what we wanted to take us away from the now stale (and boring) masked heroes flying around. This one seems is for real. Iron Man’s super heroism is not in his genes like in the case of Superman or Spiderman. He builds it. Reminds one of another superhero…

The internet can make our private lives public but most people don’t care It does give one an eerie feeling doesn’t it…to know that once you put something out there on the net, it is completely out of your control…A New York Times article says that if these trends are anything to go by “a time will come when nothing that is said online will be treated as embarrassing because we will have become accustomed to everyone disclosing everything.”

We’ve been doing it for years and now they tell us that it’s not safe. Two separate “discoveries” in the last few weeks have revealed that those hard transparent plastic bottles and containers you use are toxic…and so is cardboard. Those cardboard boxes in which you get your pizzas delivered to your home could well be carcinogenic.

Some types of plastic containers are not safe anymore
The first piece of news was not reported in the Indian media as far as I know but Amit was kind enough to send me the link. The culprit here is the “odorless, tasteless chemical called bisphenol A” which is used in the manufacture of the transparent lightweight bottles.” From what I understand this chemical makes plastic more durable and harder. Well, such bottles/containers are widely used for storing drinking water and for feeding babies and I guess for sundry other things. This is what the article says:

…the US National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services last week released a draft report on the chemical, saying there was “some concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures…”

As a result of this report major corporations in the US like Wal-Mart have pledged to stop the sale of baby bottles made with bisphenol A by next year. Nalgene, which makes these bottles has agreed to replace bottles containing bisphenol A bottles in stores. The Canadian government has taken a harder stand - it is banning the chemical from all baby bottles in the country.

I’ve written about unsafe plastics (of the kind which are not food-grade) but had no idea that even “food grade plastics” could contain dangerous chemicals. Whether the bottles we use in India for storing water contain this chemical or not I don’t know, but apparently most baby bottles have it. And unfortunately newborns and infants are most vulnerable according to the findings. Both the US Toxicology Program and Canadian expert opinion is that there appeared to be “a negligible effect” from bisphenol A on adults.

What harm does bisphenol A do?
The chemical has been linked (in animal studies) to “reproductive problems and possible cancers later in life” and apparently bisphenol A can also “contribute” to obesity if the person has been exposed to it as a fetus. However, what is the exact level of risk of ingesting this chemical? This is what David Ozonoff (professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health) said (to the Boston Globe):

The truthful answer is that nobody knows…and because we don’t know, it’s prudent to avoid something that is avoidable.

I never really trusted plastic, never believed that it was a hundred percent safe…there were too many ifs and buts. In any case, how can anything so damaging to our environment be good for us?

All of us carry around bisphenol A
It’s not just baby bottles however. Hard plastic is used for packaging many products and we all buy them. Plastic is all pervasive. Listen to this:

A recent study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that about 93 percent of the US population had bisphenol A in their body. Infants and young children had higher levels than adults.

There is no chance that any such survey will be undertaken in India…not for another half a century at least! Far more dangerous colours and synthetic chemicals (banned in developed countries) are to be found in foodstuffs and packaging in India…who will care about the newly discovered dangers of bisphenol A?

PIzza boxes contain PFOS
Recent studies have shown Pizza boxes to contain Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) which is a carcinogenic chemical, classified as such by the US Environment Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board in 2006. It has been shown to “affect the liver, neonatal development, the immune system, and hormone levels.”
This chemical will be banned in packaging from October 2008 onwards “under the Stockholm Convention, to which India is also a signatory.” This will be a global ban but countries need to come to an agreement on it and agree to look for alternatives.

Not surprising to know that the European Union, which is always the first in these cases, has already banned PFOS. So has Mexico.

It has been known for some time now that toxic substances are present in pizza boxes. In Italian studies in 2006, chemicals like benzene, phenols and phthalates (known carcinogens) were known to be “probably released from the cardboard boxes.” These substances can migrate into the food, especially if a hot pizza (more than 60°C) is in direct contact with the box.

Well, I’m thinking our parents were wise. They used glass to store everything…from pickles and masalas to milk and water. Well, I use glass as much as possible but not for storing water. Now I’m wondering whether I should.

(The first two photos are mine. The third one, of the dominoes pizza boxes, has been taken from the dominoes (uk) site)

Related Reading: Metals and Toxins in food packaging
What the world is doing to stop plastics from degrading the environment
Check the weight of what you buy
Newsprint is unsafe to pack food in
Chemicals in our food

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These are some of the photographs I took as we flew over Mumbai last month. The first set some I took from Spicejet, a low cost airline. The windows were awfully dirty and some of the photos are smudged.

The first photograph was taken after we had taken off from Mumbai and you can see that the plane was flying over some sort of railway yard…that is visible in the bottom half of the picture. A goods train, a local subway train as well as a train station can be seen in the lower left hand corner.

The next photograph is slightly clearer and looks like we were flying over some housing colony. The western express highway is visible on the right

This is a better view of the western express highway

I don’t know which slums these are but they appeared as we neared the sea

The next set of photographs were taken when we were landing in Mumbai (a few days later) from Kingfisher Airlines. The windows were cleaner and therefore I managed to get better photographs.

The first one is a little dull…but it is the Thane Belapur industrial belt and that is how it looked…dull brown, almost as if we were looking at the craters on the moon!

This one was taken as we approached Vashi. You can see Vashi bridge on the right of the picture and I have drawn a red arrow to point out Vashi station.

This photograph was taken just a minute after the previous one.

In another minute or so we were over the Eastern Express Highway. The road seen in the photograph is actually a flyover. If you look closely you can see the road below the bridge and the vehicles plying on it.

And then into Mumbai, most probably the eastern suburbs.

On the right hand side of the photo I think is either Vikhroli or Ghatkopar railway station.

The flight path of domestic airlines doesn’t take you over the fancy south mumbai skyline, which is what characterizes Mumbai and is the Mumbai that tourists usually see. I am publishing some south Mumbai pictures too…these photographs were taken at the end of last year.

This first photo shows the skyline of Malabar Hill, an elite area of Mumbai. In the foreground is Marine Drive, a place where people come and spend their evenings watching the sea.

In fact Marine Drive is the most famous and probably the most good looking road of Mumbai. It has been called “Queens Necklace” because of the way it curves…and also because at night when its lighted up it glows like a diamond necklace from the sky. There’s a picture which shows this very well…you can see it here (not my photo).

Recently Marine Drive had a make-over. The following photo was taken while the repair work on the sidewalks and seafront was on. You can see it underway on the right of the photograph.

The photograph below was taken a few months later when the repair work was over. Today Marine Drive has a spanking new look and is the pride of Mumbai city.

And this last photograph is of the famous Mumbai skyline - “Lands End.” The tall buildings are part of Nariman Point, which is Mumbai’s most expensive commercial area. The skyscraper facing you is the Air India building. Further down are the tall buildings of the naval establishment a Cuffe Parade, which is also another very posh area. Cuffe Parade has not just the Naval establishment, but also fancy hotels and fancy residential buildings. Malabar Hill is the only other residential address in Mumbai that is preferred.

Related Viewing: A photo-essay of a traffic signal in Mumbai
A slide show of a sunset in Mumbai
A make-over for Mumbai - photos
A few more Mumbai snapshots plus information on real estate costs in Mumbai