Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy: Buy One, Get One Free

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6TCV8swmrE

Watch this video clip.

Arundhati Roy is at her best in this one. This lecture was presented in New York City at the Riverside Church, on May 13, 2003. She garnered resounding applause and quite a few peals of laughter of realisation, from a three-thousand-plus audience… 

Delhi Deciphered

Hindus believe that all rivers, irrespective of their beauty or cleanliness, deserve special homage as givers of life and fertility. They are the veins of Mother Earth, just as the mountains are her muscles and the forests are her long and lovely tresses. The red sediment carried from the hills during the monsoon is the Mother Earth’s menstrual flow. The Jamuna, one of India’s seven most sacred rivers, is no exception. She is the daughter of the Sun and the sister of Yama, God of Death. Once, under the influence of alcohol, Balaram the brother of Krishna attempted to rape her; when she resisted the divine drunkard tied her to his plough and dragged her across North India – irrigating the plains of Doab as he did so. Finally he dumped her into the Ganges near Allahabad.

In the Golden Age of the Guptas (fifth and sixth century AD) when it became common for statues of the two sisters, Ganga and Jamuna, to be placed at the doors of temples, Jamuna was depicted as a beautiful Dravidian girl with a delicately curved, almost Semitic nose and thick, curly hair….

… Ganga stands on a crocodile and looks like a lovely long Punjabi girl: she is tall and thin and her long tresses are tied into a plait. Jamuna, who stands on a tortoise, is unmistakeably a Tamil – she has huge sensuous lips, tight, curly locks and a diaphanous bodice, which barely succeeds in enclosing her enormous breasts.

-William Dalrymple, City of Djinns

A Fine Balance

Why do humans attempt to hide their feelings? Whether it is anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else’s. A little annoyance they acted out like a gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle would do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry