It is hard for me to be cheerful this year, when gunmen are supposedly still firing away in Mumbai.
My own experiences with the city have been far from pleasant (a robber entering a hotel room at night, being roughed around by policemen in an airport, etc) – part of it has had to do with [...]
Archive for November, 2008
Thanksgiving sadness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Mumbai on 29 November 2008 | 1 Comment »
Trouble brews for coffee planters
Posted in News clippings, Political Economy, tagged Books, Climate on 23 November 2008 | Leave a Comment »
(From the Hindu)
YERCAUD: Coffee planters of Shevaroys Hills are facing problems this year.
The advanced ‘blossom showers’ have withered their hopes of having a bountiful yield, which, according to their conservative estimate, will be of a staggering loss of 40 per cent.
(The Shevaroys Hills are in Tamil Nadu, which neighbors Kerala. For a great [...]
A Kerala cookbook
Posted in Food, Resources, tagged Books on 22 November 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am sure many more excellent cookbooks on Kerala cuisine exist out there, but I wanted to recommend one that I have: The New Tastes of India by Das Sreedharan.
Sreedharan was the founder and chef of Rasa Restaurants in London (our local one was the one in Stoke Newington).
A depressing graph
Posted in Political Economy, Sustainable agriculture, tagged Farmer suicides on 14 November 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Rate of suicides = the number of suicides per one lakh (100,000) population. Kerala is #3. In 2006, about 9,000 people committed suicide in Kerala.
Source: National Crime Records Bureau of India, 2006
Torchbearer indeed
Posted in Fetishisms and Imaginaries, Orientalism, Tourism, tagged Incredible !ndia on 10 November 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Kerala State Council recently called Kerala as the “torchbearer” to the Incedible !ndia campaign (created to promote tourism in India).
Here is Incredible !ndia’s “Timeless India” clip — Kerala is featured in the first 3 minutes:
The script describing Kerala ends with the following quote: “Then as now, India was a place [...]
