MRI - Another torturous procedure for Breast Cancer?.

The American Cancer Society came out with some new directives regarding the early detection of breast cancer. These directives that apply to about a million women in the United States alone, though beneficial, are not clearly targeted, may not be accessible to all, may create unnecessary panic, and may not be viable at this time.

An MRI costs anywhere from $2000/- to $ 4000/- . In order for you to get one your primary physician has to prescribe it (only if you've tested positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation), your insurance has to cover it (only if you fall in the 'high risk' category), and a medical facility has to schedule it (could be a long wait). Given all these obstacles, and the fact that there is bound to be panic after the American Cancer Society directives, it is worrisome to know that we don't have enough medical facilities or the required personnel to handle the sudden influx of patients needing an MRI.

The mammogram though a great detector test for Breast Cancer, is also a source of anxiety and pain to millions of women. With the new directives, women will now be undergoing yet another test under the MRI and that'll mean another excruciating wait for its results!

Longevity of life I guess, but at what cost! What about the 'quality of life'?!

Khalilzad, the New US representative at the UN - A facelift?

John Bolton who did not get confirmed as the US representative to the UN last year will now make way for a new US representative, Khalmai Khalilzad who is currently serving as the US Ambassador to Iraq. Khalilzad has also been the special envoy for the US President to Afghanistan and was responsible for organizing the Afghan opposition against the Taliban.

Richard Haass, President on the Council of Foreign Affairs, when asked about Khalilzad this morning on NPR, pointed out that Khalilzad would be different from the brusque Bolton, who often clashed with his counterparts at the UN. Khalilzad, on the other hand, would work from within, and would not rile up things as his unconfirmed predecessor did.

The interview with Haass was enlightening in many ways. It did not just throw light on Khalil zad, the new US Representative to the UN, but it also informed me on the role of a US Representative to the UN. That the representative would debate, design, and uphold the UN policy, and would try to get his own government aboard on it as well. The foreign policy of the US would not affect the UN Representative's decisions or his actions. In the light of this enlightenment, what Haass said next, made me sit up and wonder. He said that Zad, as the new US representative would now first have to focus on 'fashioning an international consensus against Iran' that poses a nuclear threat, then focus on the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and next keep up the pressure in Lebanon so that the Syrians don't get off the hook. My concern is that if a diplomat as eminent as Haass starts second guessing what a UN representative would do, and then devalues human life while prioritizing UN actions, then there is little hope left! The genocide in Darfur is "ongoing"; there are hundreds dying there as we speak! The threat of Iran may be imminent, but it is still only a threat, and keeping the pressure in Lebanon to keep Syria in check but reeks of US foreign policy.

Khalilzad as a 'fresh base' at the UN will have to do some 'damage control' after Bolton, but hopefully he is not a stooge of the US foreign policy makers trying to wring some arm at the UN. To quote Woody Allen, just as Haass did, "90% of life is about showing up;" However, one hopes Khalilzad is not ''showing up' in 'wolf garb!'

Cricket Selling NIKE in India

NIKE 's first Cricket advertisement! I guess the game has finally arrived. This is an an advertisement campaign designed for a cricket crazy India. NIKE, sure has its feel on the pulse of this nation, which I'm told eats drinks and breathes cricket. This is especially true now that the World Cup is on in the West Indies, and where the Indian team has a fighting chance of emerging the winner.

Reflections on Humility

The majestic old tree does bend
its branches laden with fruits.
Acres and acres of lush prairie grass
a humble blanket becomes;
laying prone to the gusty winds.
Swallowing her pride a mother pleads,
begging leniency for her errant child.

Is humility, indeed, a quality
that's often termed as modesty?
One that'll not let the ego be
but a humble 'n selfless entity.
Can I a Gandhi be?
To put another before me,
that'd be ultimate humility.

What'd that do to my self esteem?
And to my confidence
that took so long to build.
Now that I have the edge,
why would I to another yield?
Humility at the cost of success?
Unlikely, I need my space;
besides, I'd be out of the race!
Inconceivable, I confess.


Braggarts, loudmouths, and showoffs,
the coterie that currently rule the world.
Christ and Buddha but exceptions
amid a world full of contentions.
And what of Thomas 'n Aquinas
who 'submission' did profess'
but 'twas only to the almighty.

Humility's but an antiquated trait.
and could not a modern leader create.

Iranian Mayor for Beverly Hills?

'Tehr-Angeles' not merely in name anymore! Beverly Hills, California may actually have elected Jimmy Delshad, an Iranian Jew, to be their next mayor. Delshad, who is now an Iranian American, fled Khomeini's regime in 1979 and made USA his home.

This news item, of an Iranian American Mayor for Beverly Hills, is featuring prominently in the US media in spite/ because of the strained relations that currently exist between the two countries. Whatever the case may be, personally, this event once again reinforces my faith in Americanism, a term that I define as the ability to be different, to recognize diversity, and to weave in the diversity into the American fabric.

Deepa Mehta's 'Water' - The Eternal Equalizer?

What a shocking movie! I'm so glad this movie, 'Water', is set in India, and unfolds in the late 1930's; in the present day context it would be utterly unthinkable to imagine that anyone could perpetrate or be accomplice to a crime so heinous, on minds and bodies so young and so innocent! What's worse is that the act is committed in compliance with social norms!

I really wouldn't want to give away even the slightest bit of the plot because it would lessen the impact of the movie, but I would like to commend the three actresses who gave some evocative performances as 'Chuhiya' the bubbly nine year old, 'Kalyani' the unbelievably beautiful 19 year old, and 'Didi' the philosophic 50 year old. The three come together in the movie to spend a life of penance in an 'aashram' for widows on the holy banks of the River Ganges.

There were certain things that puzzled me when I watched this movie, and that was more because of my limited knowledge about India at the time so it is vital that the viewer know some of these facts about India:
a. India was a British colony until 1947
b. child marriage was common at the time
c. Mahatma Gandhi was instrumental in getting India its freedom and also for bringing about various social reforms in the country
d. a caste system was prevalent in India at the time and this was the heirarchy:

• the 'brahmin, at the top of the social heirarchy, was 'the teacher' the one with the exclusive knowledge of the Hindu scriptures
• the 'kshatriya' was second in line, and was the ruler who was responsible for guarding the kingdom
• the 'vaishya' was third, and he was the trader within the kingdom
• the 'shudra' was the worker who did not own property and worked for one of three higher classes
• the 'uchoot' was the lowest class who handled the sanitary facilities and was thus the untouchable
• inter caste marriages were forbidden
• 'uchoots' were outcasts
• you were born into a caste and you could never change that.

Deepa Mehta's movie 'Water' is a foreign film from India ,the last in a trilogy ; the earlier two were titled 'Earth' and 'Fire' respectively. Given those titles, obviously there is an underlying theme that Ms. Mehta had in mind; however I've yet to put my finger on why the movie is titled 'Water'. Again, this may be due to my ignorance regarding the ancient Indian scriptures, Hinduism, or perhaps my distance/disconnect with Indian values and beliefs. Regardless of this, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie; enough to have researched it later and found some interesting facts about it. For instance, Ms. Mehta encountered major resistance in India during the shooting of this film from some Hindu fundamentalist groups who believed that she was misrepresenting Indian heritage and culture. As a result she had to move her entire unit to Sri Lanka and shoot the remaining part of the movie there. Nevertheless all Indians in the US who watched the movie have high praise for it, and are excited about its nomination at the Oscar's. Finally, it'd be interesting to see whether the movie will be screened in India and how it'll be received by the audiences there.

The movie is pitted against greats like 'Pan's Labyrinth' at the Oscars and may not stand much of a chance for various reasons, none of which may have to do with the talent of the movie maker or of the artists who brought it to us, but I certainly give it an A+, and I recommend everyone watch it!

Babel - In the Aftermath of the Tower

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s movie 'Babel' has been running in at least one of my neighborhood cinemas for the last so many weeks, and that in itself says something about its poularity.

The title has religious undertones, but apart from a possible underlying theme, the movie has nothing to do with religion. Shot across four different countries, the movie presents some captivating and diverse landscapes, which obviously gels well with the theme. If Pan's Labyrinth presented a dual storyline, Babel has a threesome! There are three stories unfolding, almost simultaneously, at three different places: a Moroccan desert village, the city of Tokyo, and the US Mexico border. It is to the credit of the story teller how he manages to get these stories to converge in such a lucid and cohesive way.

Brad Pitt was perhaps a major attraction for many moviegoers, but his star presence was muted in the larger frame of this story that had some riveting characters played by stellar actors like Bernal and Kikuchi. Kikuchi plays an 18 year old deaf and mute Japanese girl, who, starved of male attention due to her handicap, is now desperate to lose her virginity to the first male who will take her. Then there is the sincere Mexican nanny, played by Barraza, who almost dies while trying to save the two American children to whom she's been 'mother ever since they were born' . Barraza does a remarkable job of highlighting the plight of illegal immigrants in the US while Santiago, her nephew in the movie, played by Gael Garcia Bernal of the "Motorcycle Diaries' fame, espouses the deep felt resentment of unemployed Mexicans across the border who are but a stones throw away from the land of opportunity, and yet cannot reach it! Finally, on the third front we have the stunning Moroccan landscape inhabited by a people eking out a life in an almost uninhabitable environment, and yet they have it in them to be hospitable to foreigners who unfortunately fear them as propective or possible Islamic terrorists.

As for the title, I leave that for you to figure out along with these questions that I battled with after watching the movie and then reading certain parts of Genesis 11:1-9 :

• Why did God " go down (to Babylon), and there confuse their (man's) language, that they may not understand one another's speech", simply because man aspired to be godlike and wanted to build a tower that'd reach the heavens?
• Are we a fragmented world because of the curse of multiple languages that have sprouted across the world?
• Does language, or the lack of it, isolate us from our own kind?
• Have we failed to make cities, and like Nimrods, our settlements across the world have failed to satisfy the desires of the human body and soul?

This is a movie you'd wish you had seen if you chance to miss it.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali protests a 'living document'.

I don't really get carried away by high sounding rhetoric, especially from people who have some strong and controversial agendas. However, in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, even though hers is a controversial stance and her agenda unclear, but her words, and her articulation of them, cannot be called empty rhetoric, and it doesn't sound inflammatory either. It is this characteristic of Ayaan Hirsi Ali that made me listen to her recent interview on NPR which then lead me to wonder and ponder; the findings of which will not be penned in this post because they may be biased and that may generate controversies, of which we have too many to begin with. However, I urge anyone who is bipartisan, open minded, and believes in equal justice for all to listen to what Ms. Ali has to say; give a thought to what she's been through, to what she has done in the past, and to what she is currently working on, and then decide whether her stance is viable, valid or otherwise.

I had written about Ms Ali in an earlier post last year. She is a Somalian born woman who has lived in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Netherlands, and very recently was given political asylum in the USA. She is currently working for The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington DC. Ms Ali is often the center of many a heated debates and interviews, both within and outside of the USA.