Akeelah and the Bee
Saw an inspriational tear jerker of a movie today. Akeelah and the bee is about an 11 year old African American girl growing up in South Central Los Angeles trying to be cool and go to school at the same time, with an incredible talent for spelling. The odds are all against her, her father is dead, her brother is a dead beat, her sister has a baby in the house, her mother works all the time, and is on edge. Only her older brother is concerned about her. He is in the Air force and encourages her when he is around, promising to parachute down when she in Washington D.C. for the Scripps national spelling bee finals.
Her coach Dr. Joshua Larabee (Lawrence Fishburne), on sabbatical from U.C.L.A., is recovering from the loss of his daughter and divorce from his wife. He is inspirational and provides context to the words for Akeelah (Keke Palmer). He tells her you have to say the word correctly, before you can spell it, explaining the roots of words from Latin, Greek and French. He has her read books on African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. He does not allow her to speak to him in “ghetto talk” but to be polite and refrain from slang.
Akeelah meets up with another speller who has a crush on her, Javier. Javier invites her to his home in the ritzy Woodland hills, where his friends play scrabble on his birthday. He even gives her a quick impulsive kiss!
Akeelah practices for the spelling bee by including her whole neighboor hood, from the Korean grocer, to the local cool guy, from her mother to all her siblings, to her friends and her teachers at school.
After watching the movie, you come out feeling positive since at the Bee, Akeelah changes the meaning of winning to encompassing all with her goodness. She is willing to forgo the prize so that another contestant who is under a lot of pressure from his family to win, can will. But he sees through her kindness, and does not let her lose. So we come out of the movie in the true spirit of sportsmanship, where everyone fights a good fight and lets all of us be winners.
Review by Roger Ebert
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060427/REVIEWS/60421002/1023
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Modern Love
I am married, but my husband and I have lived apart since we got married, not intentionally, but that's how it happened.
My husband has been living in Bloomington, Indiana , since we got married four years ago. He is working on his Ph.D. Most of the time I live in New York , [where I own and run a retail store], but I return to Delhi twice a year for work, a holiday and a chance to meet family.
David lived in Morocco, on a Fulbright scholarship, the year after America went to war in Iraq. I was scared for his life, and always feared he might be kidnaped and have his throat slit live on T.V., becoming the next Danny Pearl in Morocco. But other than being pick-pocketed he survived the year. We met in Paris at this time, he came from Morocco by boat and train through Spain. I came from New York by plane. We don't believe in cell phones (waste of money, don't have so many people to call, and don't want to be on call 24-7). So we have to depend on the announcement intercoms when we are lost at airports. We have spent only one anniversary together; otherwise his grandmother sends chocolates and flowers to me from him. I like waking early, he likes to be up late.
We meet up once every couple of months. This has been going on since we got married. We have never lived together. I am from New Delhi, he is from St.Louis. We were at Sarah Lawrence College together, but then we lost touch, and the met up at Columbia. University's Miller theater six years later. We had both gone to watch a dance performance by Malvika Sarabai titled V for Violence. We dated for a couple of years, while he was in New York, he had his apartment and I had mine. We decided to get married after five years of dating, then he applied to graduate schools for his dissertation, and got a full scholarship to Bloomington. He tipped his hat while getting into a taxi to LaGuardia airport, and left me in New York.
Our marriage took place in Delhi, with a lot of pomp and splendor. We both flew from New York but on separate planes to Delhi, I had bought my ticket earlier, and he bought his ticket later. We spent our honey moon in Kerala at an Ayurvedic resort where the food was bland, the massages were great and the views amazing. We married, honeymooned, and then he left to go back to Bloomington and I came to New York.
We speak on the phone regularly, we fight on the phone and make up on the phone. He can tell my moods by my voice and I can tell his. If he's low I cheer him up, if I am low he cheers me up.
My family is concerned, and worried about me being alone in New York. Some family who get confused, ask where is he, is he back from Morocco (he has been back over a year now), how he's doing in Cincinnati, some clueless relatives repeat, I don't correct them, since they will probably repeat the mistake again next year, it all sounds the same to them.
My grand mother says " its about time he came back and lived with you, it's the giddy limit" Our social lives are strange, since we are married but not a unit. I hang out with my single friends, and he hangs out in Bloomington with other single folk.
This summer he is planning to move back to New York and I don't know how we will cope living together, after living apart all our married lives! We love each other but we also like our own separate spaces. We are each others' best friends, we tell each what happened in our day, we ask each others' advise and gripe if our work has been stressful. He analyzes my family sometimes objectively and me his whenever necessary. It isn't an easy life, but then no ones life is simple, just some people's are more complicated than others.
My husband has been living in Bloomington, Indiana , since we got married four years ago. He is working on his Ph.D. Most of the time I live in New York , [where I own and run a retail store], but I return to Delhi twice a year for work, a holiday and a chance to meet family.
David lived in Morocco, on a Fulbright scholarship, the year after America went to war in Iraq. I was scared for his life, and always feared he might be kidnaped and have his throat slit live on T.V., becoming the next Danny Pearl in Morocco. But other than being pick-pocketed he survived the year. We met in Paris at this time, he came from Morocco by boat and train through Spain. I came from New York by plane. We don't believe in cell phones (waste of money, don't have so many people to call, and don't want to be on call 24-7). So we have to depend on the announcement intercoms when we are lost at airports. We have spent only one anniversary together; otherwise his grandmother sends chocolates and flowers to me from him. I like waking early, he likes to be up late.
We meet up once every couple of months. This has been going on since we got married. We have never lived together. I am from New Delhi, he is from St.Louis. We were at Sarah Lawrence College together, but then we lost touch, and the met up at Columbia. University's Miller theater six years later. We had both gone to watch a dance performance by Malvika Sarabai titled V for Violence. We dated for a couple of years, while he was in New York, he had his apartment and I had mine. We decided to get married after five years of dating, then he applied to graduate schools for his dissertation, and got a full scholarship to Bloomington. He tipped his hat while getting into a taxi to LaGuardia airport, and left me in New York.
Our marriage took place in Delhi, with a lot of pomp and splendor. We both flew from New York but on separate planes to Delhi, I had bought my ticket earlier, and he bought his ticket later. We spent our honey moon in Kerala at an Ayurvedic resort where the food was bland, the massages were great and the views amazing. We married, honeymooned, and then he left to go back to Bloomington and I came to New York.
We speak on the phone regularly, we fight on the phone and make up on the phone. He can tell my moods by my voice and I can tell his. If he's low I cheer him up, if I am low he cheers me up.
My family is concerned, and worried about me being alone in New York. Some family who get confused, ask where is he, is he back from Morocco (he has been back over a year now), how he's doing in Cincinnati, some clueless relatives repeat, I don't correct them, since they will probably repeat the mistake again next year, it all sounds the same to them.
My grand mother says " its about time he came back and lived with you, it's the giddy limit" Our social lives are strange, since we are married but not a unit. I hang out with my single friends, and he hangs out in Bloomington with other single folk.
This summer he is planning to move back to New York and I don't know how we will cope living together, after living apart all our married lives! We love each other but we also like our own separate spaces. We are each others' best friends, we tell each what happened in our day, we ask each others' advise and gripe if our work has been stressful. He analyzes my family sometimes objectively and me his whenever necessary. It isn't an easy life, but then no ones life is simple, just some people's are more complicated than others.
Friday, May 05, 2006
once in a lifetime
Wonderful short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, in the New Yorker. Her prose is smooth, not jarring. It’s descriptive, emotional and evocative. I liked her description of jet lag, it caught the mood of being in another state while trying to recover from jetlag.
In the morning you all slept in, victims of jet lag, reminding us that despite your presence, your bags crowding the hallways, your toothbrushes cluttering the side of the sink, you belonged elsewhere. When I returned from school in the afternoon you were still sleeping, and at dinner, breakfast for you, you all declined the curry we were eating, craving toast and tea. It was like that for the first few days: you were awake when we slept, sleeping when we were awake; we were leading antipodal lives under the same roof.
Her American Born Confused Desi (ABCD)ness comes up, when she is trying to stereotype all Indians. It’s interesting how South Asians living abroad like to create a binary other, who is less than them, usually family in India.
I did not know what to make of you. Because you’d lived in India, I associated you more with my parents than with me. And yet you were unlike my cousins in Calcutta, who seemed so innocent and obedient when I visited them, asking questions about my life in America as if it were the moon, astonished by every detail.
Her writing of the story in the second person is interesting and intimate. It felt like a love story.
Her descriptions of places are precise, and the relationships between people subtle. I liked how she captured the relationship between her parents, his parents and between the two families living in the same house. She gets the highs and lows of peoples moods just right.
My parents felt slighted by your parents’ extravagant visions, ashamed of the modest home we owned. “How uncomfortable you must be here,” they said, but your parents never complained, as mine did, nightly, before falling asleep. “I didn’t expect it to take this long,” my mother said, noting that almost a month had gone by.
Hema’s take on living with a dying person, seemed self obsessed. Not concerned about the person suffering or their family, but focusing on how “I” feel. Maybe she was too young then, I wonder how she feels now, if faced with a similar situtaion.
Perhaps you believed that I was crying for you, or for your mother, but I was not. I was too young, that day, to feel sorrow or sympathy. I felt only the enormous fear of having a dying woman in our home. I remembered standing beside your mother, both of us topless in the fitting room where I tried on my first bra, disturbed that I had been in such close proximity to her disease. I was furious that you had told me, and that you had not told me, feeling at once burdened and betrayed, hating you all over again.
Jhumpa is a wonderful writer, has a way with words, but I don’t agree with a lot of her premises and perspectives.
I read the story over three subway trips to and from work, and could not put it down. I was sad the story was over. The last section or the crescendo, situated the whole story and gave it meaning and substance.
In the morning you all slept in, victims of jet lag, reminding us that despite your presence, your bags crowding the hallways, your toothbrushes cluttering the side of the sink, you belonged elsewhere. When I returned from school in the afternoon you were still sleeping, and at dinner, breakfast for you, you all declined the curry we were eating, craving toast and tea. It was like that for the first few days: you were awake when we slept, sleeping when we were awake; we were leading antipodal lives under the same roof.
Her American Born Confused Desi (ABCD)ness comes up, when she is trying to stereotype all Indians. It’s interesting how South Asians living abroad like to create a binary other, who is less than them, usually family in India.
I did not know what to make of you. Because you’d lived in India, I associated you more with my parents than with me. And yet you were unlike my cousins in Calcutta, who seemed so innocent and obedient when I visited them, asking questions about my life in America as if it were the moon, astonished by every detail.
Her writing of the story in the second person is interesting and intimate. It felt like a love story.
Her descriptions of places are precise, and the relationships between people subtle. I liked how she captured the relationship between her parents, his parents and between the two families living in the same house. She gets the highs and lows of peoples moods just right.
My parents felt slighted by your parents’ extravagant visions, ashamed of the modest home we owned. “How uncomfortable you must be here,” they said, but your parents never complained, as mine did, nightly, before falling asleep. “I didn’t expect it to take this long,” my mother said, noting that almost a month had gone by.
Hema’s take on living with a dying person, seemed self obsessed. Not concerned about the person suffering or their family, but focusing on how “I” feel. Maybe she was too young then, I wonder how she feels now, if faced with a similar situtaion.
Perhaps you believed that I was crying for you, or for your mother, but I was not. I was too young, that day, to feel sorrow or sympathy. I felt only the enormous fear of having a dying woman in our home. I remembered standing beside your mother, both of us topless in the fitting room where I tried on my first bra, disturbed that I had been in such close proximity to her disease. I was furious that you had told me, and that you had not told me, feeling at once burdened and betrayed, hating you all over again.
Jhumpa is a wonderful writer, has a way with words, but I don’t agree with a lot of her premises and perspectives.
I read the story over three subway trips to and from work, and could not put it down. I was sad the story was over. The last section or the crescendo, situated the whole story and gave it meaning and substance.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Dr. Shirin Ebadi Iran Awakening
I attended Shirin Ebadi’s book release “Iran Awakening” this evening, at S.I.P.A. Columbia University. This is the third time that I have heard her, the first was at Brown’s controversial graduation speech, two years ago, when she criticized Israel, and last year at an event hosted by N.Y. County lawyers association and the Global fund for women. This time I found her very clear, strong in her opinions, and willing to take criticism and challenge the powers that be.
A brief background- she was one of the first female judges in Iran, she resigned after 1979 revolution, when women were deemed too emotion to be judges. She set up her own practise and represented the families of murdered dissident intellectuals Dariush and Parvaneh Foruhar, and Ezzat Ebrahiminejad, killed during a 1999 militia attack on his dormitory. Recently she represented the mother of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photojournalist who was killed in police custody in Iran in 2002. She is the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel prize.
Ebadi started off by describing Iran as a land of contradictions. For women discrimination is overt, polygamy is allowed. A man can divorce a woman without justification, it’s extremely difficult to seek recourse to justice. The value of a woman is half that of a man, in an accident a woman gets half the damages a man gets, two women’s testimony is equal to one mans. On the flip side 65% of students entering university are women. Iranian women got the vote before Swiss women. Forty years ago a woman was elected to be a member of parliament, now they have 30 women in parliament. Well educated women clashing with discriminatory laws is ripe for revolt and reform.
Relationship between America and Iran
Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister of Iran was thrown out by a coup instigated and supported by Britain the America. A reaction to that was the hostage crisis (November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive). She said she was ashamed of Iran’s reaction. But one needs to understand the historical context and apply correct judgement.
The Professor at S.I.P.A. asked a loaded question, that I found offensive, will Iran act rationally?
She responded by saying that it depended on international reaction towards Iran. People are extremely critical towards the government. But are not willing to accept an invasion, and will rally and protect the land with their blood.
Question about the Hijab, what her views are and the role her husband played in her life.
In modern Iran, it is compulsory to wear the Hijab, if you go out in western clothes you get punished. Her husband has been supportive, she added she had been the perfect housewife!
Womens movement in Iran
She responded by saying the women’s movement is very strong. The movement struggled for laws to change, the custody law did go in womens favor. She said the movement did not have a leader or a central secretariat, the reality is that in every household a woman is conscious of her rights.
Will you want be the future president of Iran
No she responded, the constitution says it has to be a man, but even if the constitution changes, she is not interested in elected office, but will continue her law practise and be a militant for human rights.
Is discrimination written into the shariah law, or is it in the interpretation of it?
Islam is subject to political interpretations, for instance in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive, while Bangladesh has a woman Prime Minister. In the U.S. in some churches homosexuality is acceptable and in others it is not. Misinterpretations or erroneous interpretations open up abuse. For instance in the Zahra Kazemi case, she died due to blows to her head. The court did not listen to arguments, did not allow witness testimonies. Zahra was detained in Prison section 209, which is for political prisoners. That section has camera surveillance twenty four hours. Ebadi requested the film and her clothes, to see how she died, both were refused. Justice was not rendered. In her book she has examples of terrorist acts done by the government.
In another instance student’s had protested after a popular newspaper had been shut down. After the students had gone back to their dorms, militia attacked them, and threw them down a third floor window, wounding, blinding and killing one of the students. People do not trust the judiciary in Iran.
Her views on the recent elections.
She boycotted them, elections are not free. People are not free to vote for candidates of their choice. A guardian council decides the eligibility of candidates. 90% of candidates that people want are deemed illegitimate to stand for elections by the guardian council.
Her book has been co-written by a woman who represents the lipstick jihad and they support the U.S. war on terror, does she support it as well?
No she did not support the war on terror. She emphasized the book was her work, not anyone else, but since she did not know English she needed a translator.
Question on Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons? Why is it being challenged, Pakistan has it and America has not said anything to them?
Her response was no country in the world needs nuclear weapons, her sincere hope is, that it is better to use those resources for the betterment of the conditions and the lives of the people.
But when pressed she did agree that America had double standards and reminded the audience that a couple of years ago when Saddam Hussein was throwing chemical bombs on the Kurds, Rumsfeld did not oppose him.
She saw the future of Iran through reform. She said the people were tired of revolution and with patience people will get what they want.
A brief background- she was one of the first female judges in Iran, she resigned after 1979 revolution, when women were deemed too emotion to be judges. She set up her own practise and represented the families of murdered dissident intellectuals Dariush and Parvaneh Foruhar, and Ezzat Ebrahiminejad, killed during a 1999 militia attack on his dormitory. Recently she represented the mother of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photojournalist who was killed in police custody in Iran in 2002. She is the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel prize.
Ebadi started off by describing Iran as a land of contradictions. For women discrimination is overt, polygamy is allowed. A man can divorce a woman without justification, it’s extremely difficult to seek recourse to justice. The value of a woman is half that of a man, in an accident a woman gets half the damages a man gets, two women’s testimony is equal to one mans. On the flip side 65% of students entering university are women. Iranian women got the vote before Swiss women. Forty years ago a woman was elected to be a member of parliament, now they have 30 women in parliament. Well educated women clashing with discriminatory laws is ripe for revolt and reform.
Relationship between America and Iran
Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister of Iran was thrown out by a coup instigated and supported by Britain the America. A reaction to that was the hostage crisis (November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive). She said she was ashamed of Iran’s reaction. But one needs to understand the historical context and apply correct judgement.
The Professor at S.I.P.A. asked a loaded question, that I found offensive, will Iran act rationally?
She responded by saying that it depended on international reaction towards Iran. People are extremely critical towards the government. But are not willing to accept an invasion, and will rally and protect the land with their blood.
Question about the Hijab, what her views are and the role her husband played in her life.
In modern Iran, it is compulsory to wear the Hijab, if you go out in western clothes you get punished. Her husband has been supportive, she added she had been the perfect housewife!
Womens movement in Iran
She responded by saying the women’s movement is very strong. The movement struggled for laws to change, the custody law did go in womens favor. She said the movement did not have a leader or a central secretariat, the reality is that in every household a woman is conscious of her rights.
Will you want be the future president of Iran
No she responded, the constitution says it has to be a man, but even if the constitution changes, she is not interested in elected office, but will continue her law practise and be a militant for human rights.
Is discrimination written into the shariah law, or is it in the interpretation of it?
Islam is subject to political interpretations, for instance in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive, while Bangladesh has a woman Prime Minister. In the U.S. in some churches homosexuality is acceptable and in others it is not. Misinterpretations or erroneous interpretations open up abuse. For instance in the Zahra Kazemi case, she died due to blows to her head. The court did not listen to arguments, did not allow witness testimonies. Zahra was detained in Prison section 209, which is for political prisoners. That section has camera surveillance twenty four hours. Ebadi requested the film and her clothes, to see how she died, both were refused. Justice was not rendered. In her book she has examples of terrorist acts done by the government.
In another instance student’s had protested after a popular newspaper had been shut down. After the students had gone back to their dorms, militia attacked them, and threw them down a third floor window, wounding, blinding and killing one of the students. People do not trust the judiciary in Iran.
Her views on the recent elections.
She boycotted them, elections are not free. People are not free to vote for candidates of their choice. A guardian council decides the eligibility of candidates. 90% of candidates that people want are deemed illegitimate to stand for elections by the guardian council.
Her book has been co-written by a woman who represents the lipstick jihad and they support the U.S. war on terror, does she support it as well?
No she did not support the war on terror. She emphasized the book was her work, not anyone else, but since she did not know English she needed a translator.
Question on Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons? Why is it being challenged, Pakistan has it and America has not said anything to them?
Her response was no country in the world needs nuclear weapons, her sincere hope is, that it is better to use those resources for the betterment of the conditions and the lives of the people.
But when pressed she did agree that America had double standards and reminded the audience that a couple of years ago when Saddam Hussein was throwing chemical bombs on the Kurds, Rumsfeld did not oppose him.
She saw the future of Iran through reform. She said the people were tired of revolution and with patience people will get what they want.
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