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Kite Runner

I am not a big reader of fiction. I can certainly count on my fingers the number of fiction that I have finished start to finish in one shot – within a 24 hour period. Kite Runner, a New York Times Bestseller by Khaled Hosseini is one such novel.

I am not good at writing reviews and this is certainly not an attempt at doing that. I am hoping that the few sentences I have written here will motivate someone to pick up this wonderful novel and have it tug at your emotions like it did for me.

The story is told by Amir and traces his life starting from his childhood memories and incidents with his friend Hasan in Kabul, who also happens to be his servant’s son, his interactions with his benevolent father who is tough with him and his father’s best friend Rahim Khan, him migrating to America, marrying his love and eventually visiting Kabul in what can be termed as an act of redemption and then coming back to America with perhaps his peace of mind.

There are a few unexpected twists in the story within which the author has managed to weave a thread of friendship, loyalty, paternal affection, love, revenge and redemption all in one story. The story is wonderfully interwoven with the modern history of Afghanistan, starting just before the end of Zahir Shah’s era to the time when America declared its war on terrorism. The author uses a lot of Afghan words that adds to the earthiness of the story.

There are points in the story that made me almost cry and others that made me smile a bit. There are a few mullah Naseerudin jokes too!! I just finished reading the book 30 minutes back and still have the glorious after taste of having read a great novel. Hard to believe this is Khaled Hosseini’s first novel.

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Egypt Via My Tunnel Vision

Once again, I lapsed into a period of silence – a silence, almost Omerta – which would have made La Cosa Nostra proud. I watched my husband frenetically type up our adventures in Egypt well into the night, on the teensy keypad of his blackberry. Really, this man Sukumar now – doesn’t he ever feel tired? He’s like the energizer bunny & just watching him makes me feel worn out. Here I was, lazing out & there he was, making me giddy with all his buzzing around.

Okey-dokey, I’ll stop doling out excuses. You guys know good old Samuel Johnson, the guy that created the dictionary? He could only work in fits & starts – long periods of indolence, followed by bursts of febrile activity. Just like me. Sadly, my resemblance to Johnson, the literary genius begin & end there.

Since Sukumar has written in detail about ancient Egypt, I decided to write some snippets about modern Egypt. So here it is – Egypt thru the jaundiced eyes of Priya Raju.

Bheja Fry
Wherever we went, we were greeted with shouts of “India!” and “Amitabh Bachchan!” by guides, drivers, waiters, shop keepers & touts. Nobody knew who the Prime Minister of India was, but they knew Amitabh. On our trip to Abu Simbel, the driver declared gleefully, “We love your Minister of Culture”. I didn’t know we had one! Pitying my ignorance, the man added, “Amitabh Bachchan, of course!”. I had a tough time convincing him that – No, Mr Bachchan is an actor not a minister. “Are you sure?” asked the driver sadly. I told him, “He was an MP once, but he isn’t part of the government now”. Not to be outdone, the driver shot back – “Well then, you should make him the Minister of Culture soon!”. I solemnly promised to rectify that lapse as soon as I landed in India.

Our guide Sami was obviously overawed by AB. He asked me, “Is Mr Bachchan a billionaire now?”. “Hmmm – No, he lost a lot of money producing movies. I’m sure he’s a multi-milionaire now”. He refused to believe me & started fantasizing about how much money AB must have in the bank. The adulation was a tad too much. Just to switch gears, I told him that Mr Bachchan was married to acclaimed actor Jaya Bhaduri, who quit acting after having kids. This was received with exclamations of joy – all nice girls quit their jobs after having children, don’t they? My feminist back bristled.

So much that by the end of our trip, I was sick & tired of the (usually) delightful Mr Bachchan. Adding to the Big B overload, I watched “Cheeni Kum” on the way to Cairo & “Shootout at Lokhandwala” (where AB plays a small role) on the way back to Chennai. Ooh, please save me from Amitabh Bachchan. He has invaded & taken over my brain.

Wooden Heads
After a trip to Karnak, we were having a cuppa in our hotel’s restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, was tickled pink. After serving us our coffee, he told us that he loved Bollywood dancing. “I especially love it that both men & women dance in Bollywood”, said the young man & looked at us yearningly. I was half afraid that he expected us to gyrate to a filmy number right then & there, with a heavy dose of Jhatkas & Matkas. “Thank you, that will be all”, I said firmly, much to the disappointment of the waiter.

Now, I hate the term “Bollywood”. That’s a derogatory term coined by Westerners for the moronic cinemas made in India. The subtext is this: Bollywood = Escapist fantasy with lavish sets, running around the trees, half naked women, ridiculously indestructible heroes & unimaginative stories churned by absolute cretins. They don’t use the term “Bollywood” to describe a well-thought out movie like “Droh Kaal”, for example. For some inexplicable reason – my guess is, because we are dumb asses who don’t know when we are slighted – we are proud to call the Hindi film industry “Bollywood”.

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah also thinks its sheer idiocy on our part to use the term “Bollywood” unflinchingly (Source: Deccan Herald, July 3rd). And for the love of my sainted aunt, regional movies are from “Kollywood” (Tamil), “Tollywood” (Telugu), “Malluwood” (Malayalam) & “Sandalwood” (Kannada).

Woes of a Frazzled Citizen
Our Tour Manager Esam was a pleasant & polite young man.I asked him about the typical problems middle class Egyptians face. He’s getting married in April & he said that the biggest problem in Cairo is housing. “It is very difficult to find a house. Decent flats are expensive & the city has already exploded well into the desert”. I told him, “Yes, flats are expensive in Indian cities also”. He asked me, “Tell me, what’s the Indian government doing to solve the problem?”. I was completely taken aback. In my opinion, India already has a big, regulatory government that meddles with everything & solves almost nothing. I’ll be glad if the government doesn’t try to solve the housing problem. Aloud, I said, “Nothing, Essam”. Sadly shaking his head, Essam said, “Likewise. Our government isn’t taking sufficient interest in solving the housing problem”.

I stared straight ahead. A car with a bumper sticker, “Fuck the System” was directly in front of us. Why blame the system? India’s or Egypt’s housing problem can only be solved by private enterprises. A liberal dose of right-wing entrepreneurship is just what Egypt needs, I thought – but had enough sense to keep my own counsel. A socialist setup squeezes all enterprise from people & leaves in its wake a nation of clerks, waiters & miscellaneous order-takers. As a country, India has started recovering only 15-20 years back. It is ridiculous to blame the British education system for our lack of initiative, fostered under the “License, Quota Raj” – a beast of our own making.

Next Up
That wraps it up for this week, folks. Watch this space. My next post will primarily be on Women in Egypt. And shopping. Why be cruel enough to separate the XX chromosomes from their favorite addiction?

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The humble newspaper as an index?

As someone brought up in Chennai, i have long been used to starting my day with The Hindu newspaper.  I don’t remember reading the newspaper much during my time at BITS, Pilani except for the occasional copy of the Hindustan Times . I guess,  somehow i couldn’t get myself to read other newspapers due to TheHindu disease which afflicts most Chennai-ites.

Sometime in the beginning of  1988, I reached Mumbai  and for the first time, I laid my hands on a copy of the Times of India newspaper and i should say it captivated me. What impressed me the most was the number of pages in it compared to relatively puny looking Hindu newspaper that i was familiar with.  I didn’t think much about the difference in size at that time, but that information was definitely filed away somewhere in my brain, i am sure.

Later in Dubai, I read the Khaleej Times and Gulf News and they were not as bulky as the Times of India. It is when I reached New Jersey in the year 1990 for my first stint in the USA, that the bulkiness of the newspaper really hit me – New York Times included as many as 3 big supplements on a sunday with a full fledged magazine thrown in. Even the local Star Ledger had lots of pages.

In my second stint in the USA from 1996 onwards, I was a subscriber of New York Times, St. Petersburg Times (when in Florida) and the Star Ledger when I was in NJ and the Wall Street Journal.

I could never get through the entire newspaper on any given day and especially on Sundays the task of reading the entire newspaper would be a marathon. I always used to wonder if anyone reads the entire newspaper and if not why does it have so many pages?

Okay, I am sure you are thinking – so what is the big deal about all this with the newspapers?

Recently, on our tour of Egypt, I had a chance to read the Egyptian Gazette – it was a puny newspaper with not more than 10 pages.

That is when the Aha moment struck me – is it possible that the bulkiness of the newspaper is an approximate indicator  of size of the economy?  Egyptian economy is not that strong. That would explain why Mumbai, India’s financial nerve center would have a big newspaper. Same explanation for the New York Times from New York, the world’s financial nerve center.  Same explanation for the relatively small size of the Hindu newspaper from Chennai which is not so economically powerful.  I also happened to notice that the Hindu newspaper has grown in number of pages reflecting the growth of the Chennai economy. Or maybe it is my imagination – looking for data to support my theory (called confirmation bias).

I did some Googling to see if anyone else has talked about this idea of the number of pages of a newspaper serving as an economic index. I couldn’t find any and again it could be my confirmation bias 🙂

I haven’t thought this through completely and I don’t have too much data to support my theory other than my own observations which is not more than a handful.

I also don’t know why there is such a correlation? What exactly influences the number of pages in the newspaper that connects it to the economy?  Is it advertising?

If any of you have any bright ideas either in support of or against this theory, please fire away your comments.

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Egypt Moblog #10 – Egyptian Museum, Al Azhar Mosque and Khan Al Khaleeli

Today morning we reached the famous Egyptian Museum with our guide Ms. Marwah.

The Egyptian Museum has over 120, 000 pharoanic artifacts and has been operational since 1902.

Our first stop was before the Narmer Palette – this palette is from 3200 BC commemorating the unification of upper and lower egypt by Narmer (a.k.a Menes). Narmer is the founder of the pharoanic civilization that lasted nearly 3000 years with 30 dynasties. The Narmer Palette is so well preserved that it is hard to believe that it is 5200 years old.

The next stop was in front of a replica of the Rosetta Stone ( we had seen the original in the British Museum in London). Jean Francois Champollion, 23 year old French genius, in 1822, cracked this stone which had the same inscription in 3 versions – Hieroglyphic, Demotic (a commoner’s version of Hieroglyphic) and Greek. After nearly 1800 years, hierpoglyphics could be understood which literally threw the floodgates of Egyptology open. This decipherment of the Hieroglyphics is an epochal moment in the history of mankind. I for one, wait for this same moment to come for our Indus Valley script. I hope it will happen in my lifetime, that is my fervent dream.

Then we see a small statue of Khufu made of ivory – ironically this is the only artifact found of Khufu, the man who buillt the biggest pyramid of all time at Giza which we covered earlier.

Then we saw Zoser’s original statue – we saw a replica of this in the cellar near the Zoser pyramid in Saqqara. This is the one we had to see through a pair of holes.

Then we saw the crown jewels of the Egyptian Museum – the Tutankhamun collection. A few halls full of artefacts from Tut’s tomb which we covered in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

There are 4 rectangular box-shaped shrines with gold gilded. Each shrine is fitted inside the other like a Russian doll and inside the innermost one were the anthropoid coffins. The outside of the gilded shrines have the book of the dead carved on them.

We also saw the death mask made of solid gold, lots of jewellery and other paraphernalia like furniture, throne, beds. There is even a foldable bed for his expeditions. On the inside back of the royal throne we see a painting of King Tut with his wife Anexshunamun. Anexshunamun later married the high priest Ay after Tut’s death and Ay ascended the throne as the first high priest to become a pharoah.

Priya Raju was wondering that if King Tut who died at the age of 19 had so much gold and treasures buried how much would a king like Rameses II’s tomb have since he died at age 92. Unfortunately, the tomb robbers would have melted all the artifacts and taken the gold without realizing that the artefacts if intact would have netted 100-1000 times the value of the gold in them. Not to speak of all the knowledge of Egyptian customs that was lost How sad.

We saw 365 Ushabtis (we covered this in the mummification process) of King Tut. It is the only tomb where all the 365 Ushabtis were found – they had one for each day of the year.

Tut’s entrails were placed in 4 mini coffins made of gold and then placed inside the 4 canopic jars. The heads of the canopic jars had the heads of King Tut and not the traditional ones I covered in the mummification process.

Then we saw the massive statue of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiy. We then covered the Animal Mummies room – there were 4 kinds of animal mummies – pet mummies of cats, dogs etc, animal god mummies like crocodile, baboon etc, votive mummies and then victual mummies as food for the afterlife. There were some fake mummies also on display. The mummies were placed in a container shaped like the respective animal but nothing inside except some animal entrails. Perhaps, that animal was out of stock as noted in the museum display!

That completed the Egyptian Museum (one could spend weeks here and still not see all the artefacts).

We drove to the Al Azhar mosque a 1000 year old mosque. We went inside the mosque and saw the open courtyard with pillared corridors reminding us of pharoanic temples. I even noticed a papyrus motif on some of the pillars. Then we went inside the huge covered pillared hall, where people were offering their prayers.

Then we made a small donation to the mosque and were lucky to meet the Imam (a.ka Sheikh) – the Imam of this mosque is the highest priest in the Egyptian Islamic order.

After this we went to the nearby Khan al Khaleeli market – loosely translated as Market of the Khaleeli Lane. In olden days, this market was the spice market and with a Spice market in Venice it controlled the entire spice trade (there are shops selling spices here still). It is to break the control of this market on the spice trade that Columbus, Vasco De Gama and others set out to find a direct route to India resulting in the discovery of the New World and as they say the
rest is history.

Today’s Khan al Khaleeli is a tourist trap selling souvenirs. We bought a few souvenirs and then had a cup of Turkish Coffee at the famed El Fishawy coffee house. Egyptian Nobel laureate for Literature Naguib Mahfouz, is known to frequent this place and Priya Raju was determined to have coffee here. So we did it.

That ended our magical tour of Egypt. When we reached our hotel back it was around 5PM. We had an early dinner and hit the bed early.

My sincere thanks to all of you for taking the time to read my moblogs. Special thanks for the interesting questions and comments.

We leave for India tomorrow morning and reach Chennai early morning on Wednesday.

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Egypt Moblog #9 – Citadel, Church of St. Sergius, Ben Ezra Synagogue

Yesterday afternoon we reached Cairo from Luxor.

We first went to the Citadel – one of the largest fortresses in this part of the world built on a plateau that has a beautiful view of Cairo.

The fortress was built by Saladin, one of the greatest Islamic kings around 1176 AD to protect Cairo from the crusaders. During his time he also built a 3 mile long aquaduct to the Nile to supply the fortress with water.

Later the Mohammed Ali family built a palace here (which has been completely damaged by a fire). Mohamed Ali also built a beautiful mosque completely made of Alabaster – a marble like stone which has been used since the pharaonic times. The fountain in the courtyard of the mosque currently not in use is connected to the Nile aquaduct.

Then we went to the Church of St. Sergius (Abu Serga in Arabic) – this is the oldest church built in the 4th century AD in honor of the roman Sergius who followed christianity even before Rome converted. Of course, all of you must know that all of Rome converted only in 395 AD when Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the official religion starting the Roman catholic order.

At this point, we learnt some very interesting history lessons from our guide. First, we went to the back of the church to see a stairway leading down below to a small room. It is believed that Virgin Mary and Jesus have visited the room below and stayed for 12 days. Jerusalem is not that far from Cairo, so it is possible for this to have happened. Coptic Church as the church in Egypt is called predates the catholic church. Our guide told us that by 395 AD all of Egypt was christian but they couldn’t proclaim their religion because the Romans persecuted the early christians. They became free to practice christianity openly only after Constantine’s embrace of the faith. This was the first chuch built by the coptic christians.

Then we went to the Ben Ezra synagogue – one of the oldest jewish temples and the only one still open, although there are fewer than 50 jews left still in Egypt. Ben Ezra, a wealthy man, bought a old church and refashioned it as a Jewish temple. His tomb is also inside the temple.

Interestingly, it is believed that the temple is at the original site where tjhe basket bearing infant Moses was found by his foster mother – the pharoah’s daughter!

That covered two of the holiest of holy sites of christianity and judaism.

Then we visited the Roman towers built by Trijian in 98 AD. A church has been built over one portion of these towers and is called the Hanging Church because it has no under structure. We visited the church and in a couple of spots on the floor they have laid some glass for you to see a vast space below most of it empty with the Roman towers below giving it a sense of hanging in the air and hence the name.

Our history lesson continued – by 641 AD a full 20 years after the founding of Islam by Prophet Mohammed, Amr Ibn Ilas conquers Egypt for Islam – a mosque built then still survives. In the next few decades 85 percent of Egypt converts to Islam with the remainder still adhering to Christianity. That ratio 85:15 of muslims to christians holds to this day in Egypt.

From an anthropology perspective, we found it very interesting to note that a group of people had switched from one monotheistic religion Christianity to another Monotheistic religion Islam. Usually, people switch from a pantheistic religion such as the Pharoanic religion to a monotheistic one. Wonder if there are such enmasse conversions elsewhere in human history from one monotheistic to another monotheistic religion?

Then we went back to our hotel, took some rest and then did a short walk around the hotel, had coffee at a small restaurant, bought some souvenirs and went back to the hotel.

Cairo reminds us of any large city in North India – lots of chaotic traffic, liberal doses of grime and garbage. People are very friendly.

On the political front (Joe’s question) – people don’t seem to like Mubarak. Take this with a pinch of salt because we spoke to only our guides and tour manager. It appears Mubarak is pushing his son Gamal to the center stage (sounds familiar, eh!).

Women can’t enter the police force or military or become judges. Mubarak is not doing much to improve the economy – perception here. Elections seem to be gamed to favor Mubarak.

The economy’s main engines are the incomes from Suez Canal operations (masterfully nationalized by Nasser), Tourism and Oil Exports. Gas is quite cheap here – approx 1 USD per gallon.

We are told that it is hard for women to find jobs. Given the general moderate nature of Egypt, we were wondering why no one has thought of using Egypt as the BPO back office of the Arab world.

More to come….