9/11 documentary

In my post exam lethargy I borrowed a DVD from the county library called "9/11- A filmmaker's commemorative DVD". Not really sure what to expect I sat down to watch it yesterday and was completely blown away. Let me be honest, it's not a great documentary in that it's not brilliantly made. But the sheer power of the raw footage on display is enough to overcome that. It's been a few years since 9/11, some of the goodwill generated for the US of A on that day has dissipated and many in India have argued: look, we have our own disasters and own tragedies. We don't make the fuss that you guys do. Move on with your lives.

Actually I realised yesterday why that was so wrong. In India we don't honour our dead enough. I'm not just talking about Kargil, but also about victims of say the Orissa cyclone where over 10,000 died just a few weeks before 9/11 or the earthquakes in Gujarat and Latur. There are a few human interest stories in magazines and then we forget and move on. I know we must move on, but I think sometimes it's good to sit down and remember that behind each tragedy (whether it kills 20, 200 or 20,000) is a story and much grief that we must occasionally recognise. And the documentary helped me to do that.

I remember on the second anniversary of 9/11 when they were painstakingly reading out the names of the dead, someone in the room saying to me: oh god, what a bore, are they actually going to read 3000 names? On hindsight, well, why not? Each life lost there was precious and even if I don't agree with how the Bush administration has handled things since then (or before that), what's wrong with reading out the names of the dead- it reminds you that those who died were not 3000 people unlucky to be caught in the WTC or the airplanes that day, but actually people like you or me. It is indeed a very humbling thought.

Apart from containing the only available footage of the first plane crashing into Tower 1, it also contains incredible footage of the courage and calm of the New York Fire Department. What I found most moving was the fact that hours after having escaped with their lives and a quick shower, all of them were willing to go out there and start searching for survivors. There was no bravado, no heroism, no jingoism- just shock and weariness on their faces and the knowledge that they would have to go right now and rescue those they could.

BBC report on Afghanistan

The only reason I am blogging this is because of the last line. This is a very heart-rending account of a three year old kid who was systematically amputated by criminals in Afghanistan as his father was unable to pay the ransom demanded. It also raised important questions about the criminal justice system, the rise in kidnappings and so on. However, read that last bit again:

But paying more to judges and government officials won't solve the problem of lawlessness in Afghanistan.

It's too deeply entrenched in the very structure of society.

Don't know about you, but to me that's deeply racist. What Jenny Cuffe is trying to say is that look, whatever has happened in Afghanistan's past and it's present mess is not the fault of the various imperial powers colonizing it, but really fundamentally their own fault. After all, they are a bunch of lawless nomadic tribes, and surely we can't expect Western style civilization from them, can we? And seen in that context, amputating the limbs of kids makes perfect sense of course...

Some quirky shaadis

Well, a number of reports covering various versions of Indian marriages (I suspect the rise in interest in Indian marriages is a consequence of the Mittal wedding..) but take a look at this article. It mentions a certain Amar Nath Verma who will get to marry two brides- Ragini and her sister Preeti. The latter is disabled and their father wants them both married off at the same time. Apart from the fact that this is completely illegal, what is more worrying is the attitude to the disabled girl. It's as if she's a piece of property to be disposed off. (On the other hand, our society is remarkably insensitive to the disabled, and so if she was an unmarried girl, I wonder what her life would have been like).

On the other hand, there are these people, who are having a 'desi wedding' because they think their marriage will last longer. a) Are they trying to say that the high rate of divorce in the West is a product of the rituals they follow? b) Are they aware of the many sexist connotations of our traditional marriages and how demeaning they can be to women? (In Bengali marriages, the mother of the groom does not attend. Instead she sits at home while the marriage ceremonies go on, and her son before leaving tells her that he has gone to get her a 'slave'). c) There's a deeper sociological point here that they are clearly missing. It's not as if Indian marriages are uniformly happy. Either most women do not or cannot express their unhappiness, divorce is hugely frowned upon and the 'death do us part' belief can be incredibly stifling- not always the ideal model to follow perhaps?