Earth Vs The Legion of Lightbulbs
Yesterday was Earth Hour in several places around the world, including here in Dubai. Not much happened, though a few buildings did turn their external lights off. One lovely radio jockey suggested that the best way to spend the hour was to turn off all the lights, fire up some candles, snuggle up with your significant other on the sofa... and watch a romantic movie on DVD (preferably on your big screen HDTV).
Take that, energy conservation!
Elsewhere people in India were complaining that cities like Mumbai were not on the bandwagon, and shame on them for not participating in this noble effort. Um, yeah, except that cities in India go through almost daily scheduled power cuts, most of which last for longer than an hour. There is a prevailing view from what I can gather, that by shutting off our light bulbs for an hour every year, we will all be directly saving the earth.
This, as far as I know, is not strictly true. Most power stations around the world run on fossil fuels; in them power is generated and thrown out onto the grid. If we aren't using it, they do not actually store any unused energy in large batteries somewhere. If the power companies got together and said, "okay, in order to save the earth we're going to shut down our power supply for a few hours," everybody would be up in arms. But that's really the only way the current electricity supply model is going to help.
Then there's all the energy that went into publicising the Earth Hour event itself; multi-storey billboards, the energy to light them for days leading up to yesterday, t-shirts and caps, concerts and karaoke and whatnot. The Earth Hour site itself declares it a 'carbon-neutral' event in its faq (and also addresses the power issue with what amounts to an "Um, yeah, we know.") but doesn't say much else about it. Are they policing every floodlit billboard around the world?
I applaud the idea as a PR exercise, certainly, but I do feel that the execution is little more than a token gesture, and everyone around the world has just jumped on because it's a lazy, easy way to think we're making a difference. It's like every Indian I've met who expects the government to solve all their problems personally, in the same way a 5 star hotel might, because, "they voted. (harrumph!)"
Conservation and reduction of our energy usage is a vital thing, but we can't pat ourselves on the back and get back to our wasteful lives just because we shut off the garden light for an hour.
Vishal K Bharadwaj is a generalist; a writer, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer and all-round crazy person.
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you fcking desi's never learn do you. all you can dream of is either a job in US or a US husband to give you money and babies and class. what do you know about hostility towards women...oh wait...you dont do you, India just happen to be the most degrading country for women, raped, with AIDS soon to be overtaking Africa, etc. what else are you proud of stupid? She just wrote about her experience being stalked by a black negro...ok let me put it in simpler language, by a nigger. she has the rights to defend herself and warn other women of this problem. and you couch activist say this is racism. well what about the vile Indians raping women on the streets? or the amount of desi voyeur porns? thats not a violation? how do we call them, mr vishal outraged the modesty of a girl, but sorry he is just 90% of the India population and that is not the WHOLE population.
Shut the fuck up and please do soemthing for the betterment of women rather that looking down on them.
I know you wont publish this, but at least you are reading this.
For the clarity of my other reader(s), this certainly has something to do with this post and my comments on it.
(Also, 'Desi' is a term roughly translating to 'countryman', used specifically to denote Indians or people of Indian ethnicity, especially by Indians abroad.)
As for a reply, I'm sure I can think of something to say, but right now all of them just boil down to, "er, okay then. Whatever."
V
PS I am greatly disturbed that my secret dream to bag a rich US hubby has been unearthed. Oh noes!
PPS Dan, it was always you! *sniff* :P
Ew. I deleted the comment I got, but I think it was either the same or very similar. I love my comment moderation.
I haven't turned on comment moderation, and so this was already published when I saw it. I did debate for a second or two about just getting rid of it, but only because some of the inflammatory language might show up as hate speech in some search engine. I wouldn't want my site to suffer because of that.
So I gave it a long, hard think (30 seconds) and realised that someone with my views is bound to piss off people(of every persuasion), that this was just the first of perhaps many shrill voices, and I'd better decide on how to deal with them right here and now.
I chose comedy, as always.
You sir, are a rogue, and a racist! How DARE you scoff at the very real threat of black negroes pursuing ladies, with sinister intent? Just because negroes of other colors have been hunted to extinction, is no reason to say Nay! to the witch-hunt and pitchfork mob.
I for one am offended and shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, by your effrontery.
Couch activist indeed.
Yours, with umbrage,
Malcomus James
(Parallel parking universe, Lot A-39)
(for clarity I think I should point out that much of James' comment is tongue-in-cheek, so don't go laying into him. ...Much.)
Rogue? Yes. Racist? Hmm... it's only racism if you think there's a race or ethnicity superior to someone else, and I think humans have the capacity to be blithering idiots no matter where they're from.
Also, Fcking Desi's (woohoo!)
Re: Couch Activist
...is surely going to be the name of my first porn movie. Thank you.
Re: Yours, with Umbrage
You're sleeping with Dolores Umbrage?!! ...and you dare call me a rogue.
V
PS You're a Man-Go ha ha ha ha
V, on the day same-sex multiple marriage of convenience becomes legal, I will totally be your way to a green card and a fabulous jetsetting US job just like I have. (Or, yanno, I'll just be your meal ticket and you can leach off my giant unemployment checks. We'll spend our days couch-surfing and drinking cheap blackberry Merlot and watching DVRed reruns of Cowboy Bebop, assuming we can scrape enough change out of the sofa cushions to keep the DirectTV bill paid. OTOH, you're stuck with my substandard improvised curries unless you want to get your ass in the kitchen and cook something, beeyotch.)
Um, anyway, it goes without saying that this whole subject is baffling to me; as a white middle-class American, all y'all brown people look the same to me, obviously.
Nonetheless, that post is a glittering first-class specimen of, uh, something or other, from the opening You People salvo to all the little gems it hits on its downward spiral from there. I'd applaud, but it's late and I don't want to startle the dog.
Re: El Rant-o Anonymous-o
It was like listening to an electro version of the 1812 overture, only nowhere as awesome as that should sound. Part of the reason I published it was that it was probably the largest single word-count of anything the person has ever written, even if it was highly derivative(thanks for the ML link), and I didn't want to lose someone's magnum opus to the ether.
Reason #3: "Fcking Desi's" T-Shirts and other merchandise. He/she didn't leave their name, so I can claim ownership. Or rig the MySQL database in the backend to make it look like I did it (in jest). Show me the money!
Re: Cohabitation
I would love to come over and cook my crappy curry. You've never had Kori Rotti, have you? (Okay, so I don't know to make it, but experimentation is good for the soul, I hear).
All this is based on the assumption that the dollar is not going to melt down (people keep screaming at me that it is, and this is somehow IMPORTANT, but damned if that's going to make me pick up a newspaper). It's quite possible that you might need to come over here. We don't have as good unemployment benefits or forward-thinking marriage and sex law, though, so we'd be living in shame and secret (oh the drama!). I'd trot you out to Marine Drive every morning where you'd be picked up by Bollywood scouts for Rs.500 a day as background scenery in songs set in clubs (polish your grinding skills).
Re: Brown People, Homogeneous Horde
As entropy increases with time, so too does the splitting and differentiation of brown people, or so my half-Madhava-Brahmin-half-Mangalorean-Poojary-Bombay-now-Mumbai-born-Gulf-raised-NRI-westernised-easternised- not-really-religious-but-yes-hindu-oh-those-silly-bunts-and-others-self tells me.
You have much to learn, paleface.
I'd wager something substantial that there's a market out there for "Fcking Desi" gear. Hell, I'd wear it myself if it didn't make me look like a racist twit to do so.
I have not had the pleasure of Kori Roti, no (that I know of, anyway. Some of the Indian buffets I've been to have had helpful and informative signage like "Potatoes in Yoghurt Sauce - Not Dessert"), but understand that if you're making dishes with actual names and duplicatable recipes you're already ahead of me. My kitchen tends to turn out things like Practically Chicken Tikka Masala, Very Nearly Chickpeas Korma, the several incarnations of Chili Murgh, and, on one memorable occasion, Aloo Rakshasa.
Does Bollywood really have a market for pasty, chubby white guys with dodgy fashion sense dancing badly? If so, I'm totally there; it beats going back to the register mines.
Oh, you say there's division among the melanin-enhanced, but I know well enough it'll only last until the time comes for the Big Invasion and you all band together for the higher purpose of Taking White People's Stuff. You can't fool me, man; I've seen 300. Coupla times, even. (A movie I adore, in spite of the several sensible and well-reasoned arguments not to, if for nothing else for slipping at least one moment of "OMG they put the slash right there on the screen" past, apparently, nearly everyone.)
Re: Merch
There definitely a market (and worryingly, of both the ironic comedy and deathly serious varieties), but most countries would not take well to the, um, 'eloquence' of the term. Copulating Desis, perhaps?
Re: Indian Food
Trust me, you would have remembered Kori Rotti. I too am of the cooking school Where Recipes Have No Names (it's the next Spanish Molecular Cuisine, I tell you! Ferran Adria is quaking as we speak), but once in a while I can toss together a named dish. Of course, I'm seriously considering re-engineering Kori Rotti for several reasons, so any dish I come up with will be prefixed with "Vishal's Needlessly Complicated..."
As for the rest: Chicken Tikka Masala was invented in Scotland when someone asked for "Gravy!" and all they had was some cream and canned tomato soup; it's the most democratic, individual Indian dish the 20th century has produced. And Chilli Murgh is supposed to have several incarnations; I've been to restaurants where ordering 'Chilli Chicken' and 'Chicken Chilli' from the same place nets entirely different (all spicy) results.
My Chickpeas Korma is a devolved and evolved from a recipe that originally called for chickpeas patties in a biryani. Making the patties is too much work, so now I just make chickpeas in a spinach and cream gravy (it's mild, low on chillies but high on aromatic spices like nutmeg and cardamom); then, layer it with nearly cooked basmati rice, seal it up and let it do its magic on an ultra-low flame. Massively satisfying (and fatty), and makes a nice counterpoint when served opposite a fiery red mutton biryani.
But Dude, I so want some Aloo Rakshasa now.
Re: Bollywood
"Does Bollywood really have a market for pasty, chubby white guys with dodgy fashion sense dancing badly?"
...are you kidding? That's all we have! And while Bollywood proper might be in the throes of fake-tan-six-pack-itis, us South Indians are always connoisseurs of the Jelly Belly.
Re: 300
Believe it or not... I haven't seen it yet. It's sitting there, but I'm waiting for the right mood, which has yet to present itself. Since I wasn't a fan of the book I'm not expecting much, but the five minutes I did see were actually better than the source material, so I'm looking forward to it. It's gotta be better than Beowulf, right?
...right?
Hey, wasn't this post about light-bulbs?
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