News! Now US State Department has an office of Special Representative to Muslim Communities (SRMC), and Hillary Clinton has appointed Farah Pandith as its head. So, who is Farah Pandith?
According to the State Department press release,
Pandith, a Muslim, immigrated to the United States with her parents from Srinagar, India. She has said that she sees her personal experience as an illustration of how Muslim immigrants to the US can successfully integrate themselves into American society. She grew up in Massachusetts with a diversity of faiths, ethnicities and perspectives.
So, Pandith is of Indian Kashmiri origin, coming from the same region as this blogger. According to this news report from India, her folk in Baghat-e-Barzulla in Srinagar are celebrating, and rightly so. The report also says that her family comes from the North Kashmir town of Sopore, which has been famous for its apple trade in better times, but in the last two decades it has been the hub of Islamic terrorism. Looks like Farah can start charity at home, by converting the people in Sopore to “America loving Muslims”. I remember (from 1980s) that there used to be a prominent family of Samad Pandith in Sopore and they used to own the lone Samad Talkies theater in the town. Most likely Farah belongs to this family. Most movie theaters in Kashmir were burnt down or closed during the ascent of Islamic militancy in the early 1990s, and if I remember correctly Samad Talkies was razed to the ground too, as were most houses that non-Muslims vacated in the town. In the eyes of these separatist militants, these were all symbols of Indian/Hindu culture, which they had disowned a few generations ago. Read this interesting article about the sweet-sour relationship of Kashmir with Bollywood movies. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: farah pandith, Kashmir, muslim, srmc, USA
“Kashmir” is one of the words I google quite frequently for news and other information, since this refers to my lost motherland. Everytime I google it, one or two links to English rock band Led Zeppelin’s song titled Kashmir always appear on the first page. Since I am not a great connoisseur of Western music and had never heard the song, I assumed the song must have something to do with my Kashmir, its beauty, or the conflict there. So, I set out to research the topic a little bit. Turns out the song has really nothing to do with Kashmir, unless you dig deep into the meaning and try to find a far-fetched link. The word “Kashmir” is mentioned only once in the song, that too in passing. Read the rest of this entry »
Jimmy Kimmel, the late night comedian, apparently has this annual routine where he invites the year’s spelling bee winner to his show and goes head to head with them in a weird spelling test. Although he has been apparently winning for last few years, this year Kavya Shivashankar beat him hands down. Watch this video. It is hilarious.
A bunch of thirteen year old kids of Indian origin ruled the roost at the Scripps National Spelling Bee tonight. Out of 11 finalists, more than half (Ramya Auroprem, Aishwarya Pastapur, Sidharth Chand, Neetu Chandak, Anamika Veeramani, Tussah Heera, and Kavya Shivashankar) had Indian names. That is an astounding 7 out of 11. In each round, anyone making a mistake was out of the competition. It took 16 rounds to crown the champion, in which Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas spelt “Laodicean” correctly to take the trophy. It was interesting how she acted out writing each word on her hand with her finger before finally spelling it out.
The examiners were pronouncing each word for the contestants before they could spell it. They didn’t do badly with pronouncing the kids’ names either, except Anamika’s, which they pronounced as Anna-Meeka.
Tags: Kavya Shivashankar, Spelling Bee
Caught this excellent story on NPR’s All Things Considered today. So, there is this group of Bob Dylan fans in Shillong who make have been making a point to celebrate Bob Dylan’s birthday every year for the last 37 years. Read and listen to the story here, and get the audio here. This was my driveway moment today, or parking lot moment, if you may.
Just watched the PBS documentary “Pakistan: Children of the Taliban“. The situation in the region is really really scary. While I follow a lot of the news from the region these days, this perspective from Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was somewhat of an eye-opener. While the players were no less important, the star of the show was definitely the presenter — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the 30-year old Pakistan born journalist who seems to have risked a lot to cover stories from world’s major trouble spots. It is a shame that today is the first day I heard about this amazing journalist. The following from an article on Stanford University’s Alumni website gives an idea of who Sharmeen is: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Obaid-chinoy, Pakistan, Sharmeen, Taliban
Before I wrote my last post raising questions about the genuineness of the Varun Gandhi videos, I had a long back-and-forth with Girish Shahane of Shoot First, Mumble Later. My last two comments there are awaiting moderation, so I figured I can publish my last one here, as it got detailed enough to be a post by itself. Here goes (all the text in italics is Girish’s):
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