Will The Gulf’s Manmade Islands Sink Into The Sea?

The Gulf countries are committed to attracting tourists to the region, going to great lengths (and depths) to bring travelers and the accompanying revenue to the area.

Private manmade islands are among the massive development projects designed to lure tourists out of the airport during their stopovers and into the resorts and beaches of the Arabian Gulf. However, the past year’s tumultuous political conditions and economic struggles call into question whether or not these ambitious projects will draw enough visitors to earn a return on investment that will allow the developments to float, which raises the question: will they simply sink back into the ocean?

The trend of building artificial archipelagoes in the Gulf began almost a decade ago with Dubai’s Palm Islands. The three palm-shaped islands were developed to be major commercial and residential attractions. Luxury resorts, restaurants and high-end retail stores seemed to rush to be a part of the unique project.

Initial promise prompted the continuation of the fad with the building of the World Islands, a collection of estate, mid-size and high-density islands roughly forming the shape of the earth. Early excitement surrounding the invitation-only World Islands brought about plans to add an additional archipelago, the Universe Islands.

In the past few years, global economic hardship has significantly slowed the rate of development and investment in these extravagant tourist attractions. In 2009, the market crash forced Abu Dhabi to bail out Dubai World whose subsidiary, Nakheel, is the developer of the Palm, the World and the future Universe Islands.

Dubai real estate prices tumbled over 60% from its 2008 peak reported Bloomberg Business Week. The drastic decline forced many of the grand development plans for the islands to be indefinitely postponed. Up until a couple of years ago, the only development on any of the World Islands was a model home built on the Greenland island by Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

Adding to an already difficult investment environment, the World Islands developer Kleindienst Group reported to Arabian Business in early 2011 that the islands will erode if they remain undeveloped.

Shortly after the islands were reported to be disappearing back into the ocean, a UK- based developer announced that a $653 million investment in the World Islands was to be canceled and the group was looking to sell its islands (Finland, Sapporo and Kathmandu).

Those are not the only islands up for sale. Just a few months ago, Emirates 24/7 reported that a UAE-based real estate agency had put several additional World Islands on the market. Initially, the islands ranged in cost from $20m to $50m. Arabian Business reported that Finland, Sapporo and Kathmandu were being offered for $17m, $21m, and $15m, respectively.

The artificial island communities have seen recent signs of a recovery. Nakheel is working on its first major development project since the 2009 bailout. The Pointe at Palm Jumeirah will be an opulent retail, restaurant, and relaxation destination replete with synchronized dancing water fountains. Nakeel’s website assures that “if not arriving by private boat, access to the complex will be easy and convenient.”

Kleindienst’s Heart of Europe project, covering the islands of Austria, Germany, Netherlands, St. Petersburg, Sweden and Switzerland, is still moving forward though significantly behind schedule. Each island is designed to resemble, in some way, its namesake country. For example, Austria will be constructed to sit on a hill, while, the development’s website reads, Sweden will have a “climate-controlled raining road.” Other features of the project include six lighthouses, six hotels, underwater villas, and, of course, a half-dozen “floating palaces.”

Earlier this year, the Kleindienst Group opened its development on the Lebanon island called the “World Island Beach Club”, according to The National. The Beach Club was designed to be a destination for the World’s yachters where they can escape to a quite beachside cabana with butler service.

Prospects for tourism over the coming year seem promising. The Arab spring has shifted would-be tourists and regional vacationers from Egypt and the Levant to the Arabian Gulf. However, as Gulf News indicates, the boom in hotels in the Gulf has created a surplus in hotel vacancy. So, while an increase in tourism is anticipated, it is unlikely that the hotels would be filled to their maximum capacity.

The real estate crash was undoubtedly a huge setback for the grandeur planned for Palm, World and Universe Islands. Recent developments and an expected rise in tourism indicate that the archipelagos are unlikely to descend completely into the Arabian Gulf waters. A full recovery, however, will be slow and painstaking, requiring the patience on the part of wealthy investors and developers.

Nakheel is wise to hold off on plans to create the Universe Islands with so many of the World’s islands still uninhabited and undeveloped. In the meantime, the few Palm and World projects will offer plenty of amusement for travelers headed to Dubai.

Why Don’t Men Cover Their Faces?

One of an international reader of INN tells her intimate story about what's feminine and masculine in the Middle East.

We used to play at my aunt’s garden when we were younger…girls and boys, there was no difference… we grew up together… we used to race, play, laugh… sometimes we would fight playfully… we used to watch TV together… cry at the end of sad cartoons together… we grew a bit older... we began to study for our classes together… whenever we’d fight we used to threaten the other that we’d tell on them to the teacher… we used to play practical jokes on one another… we’d laugh with all our hearts…

And so the days went by…

My cousin and I are staring outside the window… we are looking at the garden where my male cousin and his friends are playing… this is the garden where we used to play together… they used to be our friends once upon a time… these are the boys we used to play with… what happened? Why are we prisoners at home, while they play ball outside with all freedom… what did we do? Did we grow older? Did our bodies change? Did we become an object of temptation that needs to be covered from people’s eyes? Aren’t those the boys we knew since we were children? What changed? Why are we strangers? Why do I run and hide whenever I hear one of their voices? Is it just because the pitch of his voice changed? Is that why we aren’t friends anymore? Are we supposed to act differently towards one another? Different to how we acted just yesterday? We started to act shy and anxious whenever we’d speak… we stopped playing with one another… My cousin and I began spending our spare time watching Mexican soap operas, as if we were in our 50s…

And so the days went by…

I am at school…we are learning about what a woman should cover… her hair is temptation… her eyebrows are temptation… I remembered my favorite male singer… his eyes were beautiful too… his hair is beautiful… why doesn’t he veil? I asked myself this question, however, I couldn’t find the answer… I remembered that I was banned from playing in the garden because I hit puberty… however, my male friends weren’t… didn’t they hit puberty too? Why weren’t they imprisoned at home? I also couldn’t find the answer…

And so the days went by…

I hear it all the time… “A woman is a jewel that needs to be protected (i.e. covered)”… and sometimes it is even said that a woman is like candy “if you remove the wrapper (i.e. the cover) the flies will swarm around her”… I turn on the TV and find that favorite male singer that I am so fond of brushing his soft silky hair and flaunting his handsomeness… his arms are bare… his chest is bare… why isn’t this object of temptation covered? Why isn’t he imprisoned at home? Why aren’t women tempted by him? Some might claim that a woman shouldn’t look at this… then shouldn’t men shield their gaze when looking at a tempting female “object”? I couldn’t find the answer…

And so the days went by…

I am at university… I see some people distributing a small religious book… “Temptations of a Woman”…Her hair… her feet… her eyes, and “thus, a woman must cover one of her eyes as both of them together are tempting”…I swear this is what I read in this book!... it’s as if there is nothing left in this world to talk about and scrutinize other than a woman and how she is a temptation…I decided to observe men’s looks…I wanted to know which women would attract men with her temptation… in front of me walks a woman wearing a tight Abaya (long black cover)… aha!.. I found her… she is an object of temptation… I continue watching… in front of me walks a woman with a baggy Abaya, however, with an uncovered face…the man stares at her… aha! So her face is also a temptation… a third woman walks in front of me... her face is covered and she is wearing a baggy Abaya from top to toe… the man is staring at her! Huh? I don’t understand… what is so tempting about a black Abaya? No eyes, no feet… What is this man staring at? At that moment I realized that clothing has nothing to do with it… men would stare on all occasions… however, he, with his broad shoulders and his hair, eyes and lips isn’t considered an object of temptation, even if all the women in the world started at him… he is a man…he shouldn’t hide in his home… no one calls him a jewel... at that moment I wished I wasn’t a jewel. I wished to be a free man…

And so the days went by…

I am in a Western country... women are walking around me…one is wearing pants... the other is wearing a short skirt…another wears shorts…men and women are walking side by side… it is strange... no one is staring… why don’t I see the looks of men I saw in my country? Those looks that made a woman feel naked… those looks that I hated… the ones that made me hate being on this earth, and hate being born a woman… those looks that deny me my humanity…why don’t I see those looks here? All the women are dressed up… why don’t I see those looks even though all the women are attractive here? I saw one women run and laugh… I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to run once I hit puberty… I remembered my aunt’s window… I remembered I was an object of temptation that must be covered… I remembered that a man in my country wears white, while I am covered in black… I asked myself, why don’t men wear black? Why don’t men cover their faces? And I couldn’t find the answer…

And so the days go by…

'From Fake Sheikhs To Fake Teams'

The international break – and this one is rather long – allows me to store my bottle of vitriol and recharge my invectiveness as I take a look at the flip side of football.

For everything that that makes you drop your jaw for a wonderful moment of magic on the pitch, there is usually one that forces you to get a shovel to prise it off the floor when you look at some of the more incredulous stories of the beautiful game. This is a compilation of the Five Biggest Hoaxes in World Football.

Sheikh it up, Sven
In 2006, news broke of a potential deal between a Sheikh from the United Arab Emirates involved in a consortium to buy Aston Villa Football Club with then England manager Sven-Goran Ericsson to be installed as the new coach.

Being flown out to the seven-star Burj al Arab hotel in downtown Dubai, just five months before England were scheduled to participate at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, to discuss the possibility of bringing in some of his star players to Birmingham.

Chief among them was David Beckham, who was apparently unhappy with the situation at Real Madrid. The Swede said: “I know for sure he wants to come back to England … if it’s a London club, he will come tomorrow. And it’s up to me to convince him Birmingham is the right place to be.”

The alleged reason that Aston Villa was discussed was because Ericsson described him as “an old man…he is sick.”

In addition, he spilled the beans on three other England players. Rio Ferdinand was described as “too lazy”, Wayne Rooney’s temperament, he speculated was caused by his upbringing in a poor family and Michael Owen was at Real Madrid because of the salary they paid him, despite being unhappy in the Spanish capital.

All that would have been fine and well if he was indeed talking to a Sheikh, but this incriminating information had been inadvertently told to Mazhar Mahmood, an undercover journalist for the News of the World tabloid, which has since been closed because of the phone-hacking scandal in Britain.

A fake football team
In 2010, before Bahrain’s AFC World Cup qualifiers, they beat the Togolese 3-0 in a friendly at the National Stadium in Riffa, Bahrain. Josef Hickersberger, who was then the coach of the team, called the game boring and questioned the match fitness of the opposition players.

With good reason. Turns out that the Togolese team that was sent to Arabia was a fake. As incredulous as it may sound, a team of impostors played in that game. On further investigation, the Togolese Football Federation said they had received no word on this team and were unaware that such a football game had ever been played.

FIFA and the Togolese Federation opened an investigation into the game, and the culprit was soon exposed.

Although the names of the players who took part in that game are not known, the mastermind behind what is probably the most embarrassing incident for the country was former coach Bana Tchanile.

Having already been banned before for taking Togolese players to Egypt without permission, Tchanile was slapped with a three-year ban from all forms of the game. He later apologised to his country for the ignominy he had brought upon them.

A BBC report says that he did so because he was frustrated with the lack of opportunities youth players received in the senior football team.

The investor that wasn’t
In 1990, Aldershot FC were steeped in debt and owed half a million pounds to potential investors. On the verge of facing sanctions, they were saved by 19-year-old Spencer Trethewy, in the final throes of public school – which would obviously raise eyebrows – but with £200,000 to his name – which would surely crack smiles.

Pledging this money to the Shots in exchange for a place on the Board of Directors, it was later unearthed that he had borrowed most of this money and was in no way capable of paying it back. After three months in the club’s boardroom, Trethewy was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 months in jail, which on appeal was reduced to eleven months.

The Qatar (not just yet) Dream League
On the 13th of March, British newspaper The Times carried a story about a summer tournament in the Arab nation called the Qatari Dream Football League, where Europe’s finest would be invited to play exhibition games in an attempt to provide a boost to football awareness in the country.

‘Sheikhs shake world game’ read the headline on the back page of the newspaper, with the article claiming that all participating teams would get up to £175 million over the course of two years and that four Premier League teams were being targeted.

Impressive, but fake.

The ‘journalistic nightmare’ was originally uncovered by Oliver Kay, a writer for the paper with connections inside several European football clubs including Paris Saint-Germain. One such individual at the Parisian side was in communication with both the owners and the paper.

Kay had picked up plenty of information from this source in the past, all of which was trustworthy and reliable and could therefore bank on the Dream Football League news being right. In addition, if there was one nation that actually had the resources to pull this off.

But as he rang up several other clubs, possibly in an attempt to flesh out the article further, he began to receive answers that would turn the story upside down. All the answers were off the record and fell into two categories. One: they had no idea of the concept. Two: they were aware of such a programme in the works and they were also aware of the £175 million figure being mentioned, but they all presumed that this would not happen and even if it did, they would not be involved.

It turns out that in the rush to be the first to publish this article, The Times had foregone the stringent checks that accompany publication. The issue is now being looked at by the London-based paper’s internal ombudsman.

After the article was published, Times Football Editor Tony Evans penned an article titled ‘When we are wrong, we will hold our hands up. It is the right thing to do’ where he spoke in detail of what has just been mentioned and apologised on behalf of everybody about the fake story their paper carried.

“Ali Dia, you liar, you liar”
Having failed trials at Port Val, Gillingham and Bournemouth, Senegalese forward Ali Dia was playing for Non-League side Blyth Spartans when he was offered a month’s contract by then Southampton manager Graeme Souness in 1996 after receiving a call from George Weah with the Liberian legend saying that Dia was his cousin and had played 13 times for his nation and was an up and coming star at Paris Saint-Germain.

Although Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth did not buy this, Souness acquiesced and gave Dia the number 33 shirt. His moment of glory came on the 23rd of November that year when he came on for the injured Matt le Tissier in a 2-0 defeat against Leeds.

‘Le Tiss’ had this to say about the man who replaced him, calling him Bambi on ice: “His performance was almost comical. He kind of took my place, but he didn’t really have a position. He was just wondering everywhere. I don’t think he realised what position he was supposed to be in. I don’t even know if he spoke English – I don’t think I ever said a word to him. In the end he got himself subbed because he was that bad.”

Everybody was surprised when Dia had been named on the bench for that game, but nobody discussed it because the mood was sombre after that Leeds defeat.

The squad never saw him again. He was asked to report for a medical check-up but was never seen after that. Soon afterwards, news of the hoax began to filter through the dressing room. Souness never discussed the issue because he had been made to look ‘very, very silly’.

It was later discovered that Dia had asked one of his cousins to place the hoax call and he was in no way related to Weah. The information about him playing for club and country was also false.

Despite Southampton’s recent successes up the English table, Dia’s infamy is seldom forgotten by Saints fans. He has become a cult figure at the club for all the wrong reasons and his shirt is one of the highest-selling in the history of Southampton Football Club. The chant ‘Ali Dia, you liar, you liar’ is still very popular with Southampton fans.

The 'Salman Khan' You Don't Know?

SALMAN KHAN 'LATEST PHOTOGRAPH 

Here's the hidden, side of Salman Khan right here in front of you..Have fun knowing the superstar just the way he is.

Okay, he may have had several high profile relationships. But Salman has a problem uttering the all important three words women want to hear: I love you

He’s never wooed a girl with candle-lit dinners, chocolates or rose bouquets… Well, if the girls swooning at his feet are anything to go by, he must be doing it right.

He tried his hand at modelling before acting. He also worked as an assistant director straight out of college.

He confesses he's a difficult boyfriend. You don’t need to be Albert Einstein to guess that.

Before he became an actor, he had written three scripts. Baaghi was one of them. We want to forget that Chandra Mukhi and Veer were the other two. 

SALMAN KHAN DURING AN AD SHOOT

The first time he showed his pictures to a production house, he was shown the door. Stupid people didn’t think he had what it takes to be a star. Guess who’s having the last laugh

Back in the ’90s girls kept an eye out in Bandra for a shirtless hunk who’d drive around casually in his jeep. No points for guessing who he was. Moving around shirtless is his favourite activity.

He’s never worked in a film written by his father Salim Khan.

As a kid, Salman was terribly scared of his father. Young Salman once set newspapers on fire in his balcony. And he was thrashed by his dad.

Now this one’s a shocker! Until recently, Salman had no one handling his finances. Apparently, he’d give his cheques to daddy dearest. Chweet na? We hear he has hired an agency to look after his finances now.

A RARE PHOTO OF SALMAN KHAN IN LEISURE

The reason why Arbaaz Khan, as a kid, didn’t get beaten up by dad was because Sallu bhai always came to his rescue.

According to his dad Salim Khan, ‘uska har problem raat ke 11 bajey se lekar teen baje tak hota hain!’ (All his problems occur between 11pm and 3 am!) Ha!

He was 13, when he started dating! And he hasn’t stopped yet.

His favourite colour is black.

One person who suffers serious nightmares even today is Salman’s English teacher, Mrs Arghya. He troubled her the most in school.

Guess who was the first choice for Baazigar? 
Yup, you got that right. But Sallu made it to the top anyway.

Ever since he was embroiled in the black buck case, he hasn’t set foot in Jodhpur. But we’re told he’s allergic to the city. We don’t blame him.

Don't call him Bhai if you dont know him. Be warned before its too late

SALMAN KHAN ON A 'ARABIAN' GET UP!

When he was lodged in Thane jail for the hit and run case, he’d share his home-cooked food with the inmates much to their delight. It’s also said that he donated TV sets to the jail after his release.

An ex-girl friend once pointed out the grey strands in his hair. 
Obviously, pointing out that age was fast catching up and that he was on his way out. Salman simply smiled.

How does he bounce back from depression? He just looks around at the lesser fortunate people. And then sends up a prayer of gratitude.

Salman Khan is still in touch with his ex-Somy Ali. Reportedly, He’s even bought her a flat in Dubai.

He never reads the reviews of his movies.

He finds it absurd that box-office pundits take his work seriously when he’s done it so casually! Well…

He believes people can’t stand him for more than five minutes. Now, now. Don’t the box-office collections say something else?

Salman can be mercurial. What he likes today can easily be on his hate list, two months from now.

THIS IS 'REAL' SALMAN KHAN WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP OR WIGG

Remember Veer? He had big plans to direct it. Better sense prevailed.

Believe it or faint, Ek Tha Tiger was Salman’s first ever Yash Raj solo film.

Don’t people usually try out clothes before buying them? Well Salman Khan doesn’t see the need for it.

He feels awkward working with Kareena. After all he’s seen this Kapoor as a six-year old kid roaming on his sets in frocks.

Once he put a ‘Do not disturb’ board on director Shirish Kunder’s van while they were shooting for Jaan-E-Mann. Naturally, no one disturbed the director. When Shirish turned up late on the set, Salman threw a fit. Ofcourse, it was in mock anger.

He can go from a 32” waist to a 30” in two flat days. Tell us the secret, Salman.

When it comes to clothes he’s finicky about the fit. He’d rather wear a cheap shirt if it fits well than ill-fitting designer wear.

Once he got to know that 35 women workers on his set wanted sarees. He promptly sent his Man Friday to buy them.

Technology doesn’t excite him. He blames Arbaaz for introducing him to Twitter.

When he went bald for Tere Naam, he loved his look so much that he made his make-up man and spot boy shave their heads too. Tee hee!

He has a fetish for sunglasses.  His collection is something he takes immense pride in.

SALMAN KHAN IN A SERIOUS MOOD DURING A SHOOT

He endured trigeminal neuralgia (TN) for seven years. He couldn’t talk or act properly. This facial nerve disorder sends a shock-like pain to the forehead, cheek and jaw and is said to trigger the maximum suicides.

While suffering TN, it would take him an hour and half to finish an omelette. He could eat only after 2-3 drinks. Alcohol numbed his senses.

He thinks a biography on his life is pointless. He won’t speak the truth and no one’s interested in the lies. True that!

Holi: Bringing Colour Into Life

Holi, the festival of colors, is celebrated in the month of Phalgun (February-March). Also called Phagwah, it is the full moon day in Phalgun that ushers in the spring season in India. It is also a celebration of the harvest season.

The festival gets its name from the Puranic story of Holika. Holika was the sister the demon-king Hiranyakashipu. The king, egoistic as he was, desired that everybody in his kingdom worship him alone. Much to his ire, he found that his son, Prahlada, was a worshipper of Lord Vishnu. It was then that Hiranyakashipu decided to kill Prahlada in connivance with his sister. Holika had been granted a boon that gave her the power to remain unaffected by fire. To lure Prahlada into a fire, Holika sat him on her lap and pretended to play with him while Hiranyakashipu ordered his men to set the place where they sat on fire. It was then that Holika's boon failed her. In her sinister venture to kill the Lord's devotee, Holika was burned to ashes while Prahlada came out unscathed.

Another reason why Holi is significant is its association with Raasleela, the Divine Dance that Lord Krishna performed for the gopis , his devotees in Vrindavan on this day.

‘Holi' comes from the word ‘hola' which means sacrifice. And the festival is a reminder that we must live our lives in a spirit of service and sacrifice.

Holi symbolises victory of our higher aspirations over our lower, base desires. It is the burning of our petty, material desires at the altar of our goal of self-development. It stands for the victory of good over evil, a theme that runs through every Indian festival. For it is impossible that those who live their lives by truth will ever be overcome by the corrupt.

Another important aspect of Holi is its joy and fun. Contrary to common perception, spirituality is about enjoying life to its fullest. The spiritual life is not about giving up our possessions but discovering higher, permanent joys. It is a path filled with serendipity and moments of sheer joy reflected in the life of Lord Krishna.

Holi - the festival of colors - is undoubtedly the most fun-filled and boisterous of Hindu festival. It's an occasion that brings in unadulterated joy and mirth, fun and play, music and dance, and, of course, lots of bright colors!

Happy Days Are Here Again!
With winter neatly tucked up in the attic, it's time to come out of our cocoons and enjoy this spring festival. Every year it is celebrated on the day after the full moon in early March and glorifies good harvest and fertility of the land. It is also time for spring harvest. The new crop refills the stores in every household and perhaps such abundance accounts for the riotous merriment during Holi. This also explains the other names of this celebration - 'Vasant Mahotsava' and 'Kama Mahotsava'.

"Don't Mind, It's Holi!"
During Holi, practices, which at other times could be offensive, are allowed. Squirting colored water on passers-by, dunking friends in mud pool amidst teasing and laughter, getting intoxicated on bhaang and reveling with companions is perfectly acceptable. In fact, on the days of Holi, you can get away with almost anything by saying, "Don't mind, it's Holi!" (Hindi = Bura na mano, Holi hai.)

The Festive License!
Women, especially, enjoy the freedom of relaxed rules and sometimes join in the merriment rather aggressively. There is also much vulgar behavior connected with phallic themes. It is a time when pollution is not important, a time for license and obscenity in place of the usual societal and caste restrictions. In a way, Holi is a means for the people to ventilate their 'latent heat' and experience strange physical relaxations.

Like all Indian and Hindu festivals, Holi is inextricably linked to mythical tales. There are at least three legends that are directly associated with the festival of colors: the Holika-Hiranyakashipu-Prahlad episode, Lord Shiva's killing of Kamadeva, and the story of the ogress Dhundhi.

The Holika-Prahlad Episode
The evolution of the term Holi makes an interesting study in itself. Legend has it that it derives its name from Holika, the sister of the mythical megalomaniac king Hiranyakashipu who commanded everyone to worship him. But his little son Prahlad refused to do so. Instead he became a devotee of Vishnu, the Hindu God.

Hiranyakashipu ordered his sister Holika to kill Prahlad and she, possessing the power to walk through fire unharmed, picked up the child and walked into a fire with him. Prahlad, however, chanted the names of God and was saved from the fire. Holika perished because she did not know that her powers were only effective if she entered the fire alone.

This myth has a strong association with the festival of Holi, and even today there is a practice of hurling cow dung into the fire and shouting obscenities at it, as if at Holika.

The Story of Dhundhi
It was also on this day that an ogress called Dhundhi, who was troubling the children in the kingdom of Prthu was chased away by the shouts and pranks of village youngsters. Although this female monster had secured several boons that made her almost invincible, shouts, abuses and pranks of boys was a chink in the armor for Dhundi, owing to a curse from Lord Shiva.

The Kamadeva Myth
It is often believed that it was on this day that Lord Shiva opened his third eye and incinerated Kamadeva, the god of love, to death. So, many people worship Kamadeva on Holi-day, with the simple offering of a mixture of mango blossoms and sandalwood paste.

Radha-Krishna Legend
Holi is also celebrated in memory of the immortal love of Lord Krishna and Radha. The young Krishna would complain to his mother Yashoda about why Radha was so fair and he so dark. Yashoda advised him to apply colour on Radha's face and see how her complexion would change. In the legends of Krishna as a youth he is depicted playing all sorts of pranks with the gopis or cowgirls. One prank was to throw colored powder all over them. So at Holi, images of Krishna and his consort Radha are often carried through the streets. Holi is celebrated with eclat in the villages around Mathura, the birth-place of Krishna.

Holi as a festival seems to have started several centuries before Christ as can be inferred from its mentions in the religious works of Jaimini's Purvamimamsa-Sutras and Kathaka-Grhya-Sutra.

Holi in Temple Sculptures
Holi is one of the oldest among Hindu festivals, there is no doubt. Various references are found in the sculptures on walls of old temples. A 16th century panel sculpted in a temple at Hampi, capital of Vijayanagar, shows a joyous scene depicting Holi where a prince and his princess are standing amidst maids waiting with syringes to drench the royal couple in colored water.

Holi in Medieval Paintings
A 16th century Ahmednagar painting is on the theme of Vasanta Ragini - spring song or music. It shows a royal couple sitting on a grand swing, while maidens are playing music and spraying colors with pichkaris (hand-pumps). A Mewar painting (circa 1755) shows the Maharana with his courtiers. While the ruler is bestowing gifts on some people, a merry dance is on, and in the center is a tank filled with colored water. A Bundi miniature shows a king seated on a tusker, and from a balcony above some damsels are showering gulal (colored powders) on him.

Birthday of Shri Chaitanya MahaPrabhu
Holi Purnima is also celebrated as the birthday of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (A.D. 1486-1533), mostly in Bengal, and also in the coastal city of Puri, Orissa, and the holy cities of Mathura and Vrindavan, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Making the Colors of Holi
The colors of Holi, called 'gulal', in the medieval times were made at home, from the flowers of the 'tesu' or 'palash' tree, also called 'the flame of the forest'. These flowers, bright red or deep orange in color, were collected from the forest and spread out on mats, to dry in the sun, and then ground to fine dust. The powder when mixed with water made a beautiful saffron-red dye. This pigment and also 'aabir', made from natural colored talc, which were extensively used as Holi colors, are good for the skin, unlike the chemical colors of our days.

Colorful days, solemn rituals, joyous celebrations - Holi is a boisterous occasion! Draped in white, people throng the streets in large numbers and smear each other with bright hued powders and squirt coloured water on one another through pichkaris (big syringe-like hand-pumps), irrespective of caste, color, race, sex, or social status; all these petty differences are temporarily relegated to the background and people give into an unalloyed colorful rebellion. There is exchange of greetings, the elders distribute sweets and money, and all join in frenzied dance to the rhythm of the drums. But if you wanna know how to celebrate the festival of colors to the fullest through the whole length of three days, here's a primer.

Holi-Day 1
The day of the full moon (Holi Purnima) is the first day of Holi. A platter ('thali') is arranged with colored powders, and colored water is placed in a small brass pot ('lota'). The eldest male member of the family begins the festivities by sprinkling colors on each member of the family, and the youngsters follow.

Holi-Day 2
On the second day of the festival called 'Puno', images of Holika are burnt in keeping with the legend of Prahlad and his devotion to lord Vishnu. In rural India, the evening is celebrated by lighting huge bonfires as part of the community celebration when people gather near the fire to fill the air with folk songs and dances. Mothers often carry their babies five times in a clockwise direction around the fire, so that her children are blessed by Agni, the god of fire.

Holi-Day 3
The most boisterous and the final day of the festival is called 'Parva', when children, youth, men and women visit each other's homes and colored powders called 'aabir' and 'gulal' are thrown into the air and smeared on each other's faces and bodies. 'Pichkaris' and water balloons are filled with colors and spurted onto people - while young people pay their respects to elders by sprinkling some colors on their feet, some powder is also smeared on the faces of the deities, especially Krishna and Radha.

Does Genetic Medicine Make Economic Sense?

Genetic scans are getting cheap enough to become a routine part of medical care. But just because they can be doesn’t mean they should be — and the economic case for genetic medicine is far from settled.

Right now, a doctor can order up a genetic scan for a patient at a cost of $7,000 and get back a report about the unique set of mutations inside that person’s body. These aren’t the mail-order genetic tests from companies like 23andMe, which give consumers very limited results about their ancestry and possible health risks. These are medical-grade genome scans, which can provide precise information about genetic diseases people are actually suffering from or are at risk of developing.

This price point is nothing short of remarkable. When the federally funded Human Genome Project finished sequencing the first complete human genome in 2003, the total cost came to about $3 billion.

I got my own DNA scanned for an article I wrote about the plunging price of genome sequencing and the technological breakthroughs enabling the dramatic decline in costs. A commercial lab at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine charged me $7,000 for both the scan and a detailed analysis, though they technically only looked at my exome — that is, the portions of my genome that contain genes. Those are the parts doctors have the best chance of interpreting.

I embarked on this genetic adventure because I wanted to see if these scans were predictive enough to be useful for someone like me, a healthy person in my mid-30s. If the results could provide clear forecasts for diseases I might develop later in life, I could adopt strict screening regimens to catch the first symptoms or make diet and lifestyle changes.

Such actions are commonly cited when researchers talk about genetic medicine’s potential to improve routine medical care and to bring down health care costs. By allowing patients to switch to a more preventative and less reactive model of medicine, the argument goes, we can reduce emergency visits and hospital stays and save money in the long run. So, did my experience support this argument?

Not really. My results showed genetic predispositions to heart disease, kidney failure, and Parkinson’s, but the markers were rough risk factors, not sure things. The scan showed that I had mutations in certain genes that have been associated with these diseases, but my particular mutations haven’t been proven to cause any problems whatsoever.  The doctors said to weigh my results against my family medical history; I told them there’s no known Parkinson’s in the family, but a few family members have had heart and kidney problems. So, essentially, I can look out for heart or kidney symptoms or consider heart or kidney function tests when I get older.

But an overzealous testing regimen raises a new set of problems. If genome scans encourage healthy people to request complicated medical tests they do not really need, the potential economic benefits of genetic medicine could evaporate.

Still, a few classes of patients can already benefit enormously from comprehensive genome scans. Baylor’s Whole Genome Laboratory mostly provides scans for patients on “diagnostic odysseys,” having undergone tests of specific, suspect genes that failed to turn up any mutations – or a diagnosis, Genome Laboratory Director Christine Eng explained.

“They may have had thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of genetic testing previously,” she said, “And probably several rounds of frustration.”

With its more comprehensive genetic scans, the Baylor lab’s current diagnostic success rate is nearly 30 percent, meaning the lab can tell patients what specific mutations are causing their symptoms nearly one-third of the time. In the best cases, those diagnoses can improve treatments. In the worst cases, they can give patients and their families a clearer picture of their medical fate and allow for more definitive care and end-of-life plans.

Comprehensive genome scans are also starting to make sense in routine care for cancer patients. Some pioneering clinics and hospitals have begun to order genome scans of patients’ tumors, so they can study the exact mutations that are stimulating those cells to grow out of control. In a few trailblazing cases, the tests have shown doctors how to tailor their treatments to better attack a specific patient’s cancer.

“If you give just one person the right cancer treatment, you can save $20,000,” Jonathan Rothberg told me. He invented the top-of-the-line sequencing machine used in my DNA scan, and his company, Ion Torrent, was bought by the biotech giant Life Technologies Corp. in 2010 for $725 million. He thinks that cancer care will be the first “killer app” for genome sequencing technology, but that the progress will only continue.

“I do see sequencing becoming a routine part of medicine over the next few years, first as part of cancer diagnostics and therapy, and then later as more general medical test,” he said. “So in the same way that you’ll have an x-ray, you’ll have your genome sequenced.”

Rothberg is more bullish than I am on the promise of genome scans for routine medical care. But if the technology proves beneficial for the first sets of patients, both in terms of economics and medical outcome, doctors may eventually start finding real benefits for the rest of us as well.

India’s 'Metro Rail' Boom

One side effect of India’s rapid development over the past decade is the exponential growth of traditional urban centers like Mumbai or Delhi and the transformation of towns into cities.

A look at India’s latest census figures shows that in the past 10 years, the urban population has grown by more than 31 percent, with cities and towns adding more than 91 million people. The pace of urbanization, coupled with surging automobile sales to middle class city dwellers, has resulted in congested metropolitan centers. State and city agencies eager to clear traffic have started an unprecedented number of urban rail lines.

Bangalore, India’s technology hub, is a good example. Over the past decade, the city added 3 million residents, and two years ago, it launched an above-ground rail system. Currently, the system has 6.7 kilometers of track and could cover as many as 114 kilometers when finished.

Delhi’s transit system came online in 2002. Since then, operating company Delhi Metro Rail has significantly expanded its 193-kilometer urban rail network, including opening a six-stop “Airport Express” in 2011 that links New Delhi to its international airport.

Across India, as many as eight cities are either actively building subway lines or considering doing so, says Credit Suisse analyst Amish Shah. After road construction and power generation, the development of urban rail systems represents one of the country’s largest infrastructure investments, worth as much as $17 billion over five years if all projects make it past the drawing board.

Construction on many of India’s new urban rail networks began when the country’s GDP was growing at a double-digit clip. But in recent years, the country’s economy has slowed significantly, hampered by rising inflation and a record trade imbalance. Despite these challenges, Shah expects urban rail networks to continue expanding. In fact, he believes that while investment in roads and power plant construction may decline, rail investment should remain strong.

 India’s Urban Rail Networks 
City Network          Length                 Status
Kolkata                  25-Kilometer Operating (1984)
Delhi                  193-Kilometer Operating (2002)
Bangalore          114 -Kilometer    Operating (2011)
Mumbai                  147-Kilometer Under Construction; (Anticipated Launch: 2013)
Ahmedabad          76-Kilometer Advance Development
Hyderabad          71-Kilometer Under Construction; (Anticipated Launch: 2017)
Jaipur                  32-Kilometer Under Construction; (Anticipated Launch: 2013)
Kochi                  25-Kilometer In Development
Lucknow          40-Kilometer In Development
Pune                  32-Kilometer In Development

“The largest share of the infrastructure pie is driven by road and power projects, but both of these segments are expected to see decline,” he explains. “Investments supporting the construction of railway networks, including metros, monorails, or even arterial railways, should continue to grow.”

Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, provides an example of rail’s resiliency. A public-private partnership among Reliance Infrastructure as well as France’s Veolia Transport and a regional transportation agency, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, is building a three-line rapid transit system. The inaugural line of the subway, initially set to go live in 2009, is now slated to open later this year.

Other metro systems currently under development include the Metrolink Express in Ahmedabad, the economic capital of Gujarat. By 2021, predictive models indicate that the Metrolink Express could transport up to 2 million passengers a day on its 76-kilometer network. Hyderabad, a city in southern India, is developing a 71-kilometer system that, like the Mumbai network, is being spearheaded by a public-private partnership that includes Indian industrial conglomerate Larsen & Toubro. Passenger service along part of the network is expected to begin later next year.

Jaipur, Kochi, Lucknow and Pune are also either constructing or drafting projects to build out transit systems in those cities. The rapid pace of activity could cause construction delays if the few companies able to participate in the public-private partnerships driving the subway boom become overstretched.

Still, while the construction of India’s urban rail lines may go through hiccups in the coming years, it seems unlikely that anything could completely derail their development. The country’s growing urban population is on the move, and it will take continued development of urban rail projects to keep it that way.

India: A Civilisation Of Rapists?

The shocking and tragic Delhi gang rape has borne many a fruit, a few sweet, others bitter, and some just plain strange. Unprecedented street protests challenging sexual violence against women. A long-overdue national debate over gender roles and rights. A flawed anti-rape bill. And reams and reams of media coverage, including innumerable op-eds, reported stories, and in-depth features.

In recent days, the news coverage has taken a new and disturbing turn. Three separate stories in reputed publications over the past few days have put forward, to varying degrees, a similar thesis: Indians are culturally predisposed to rape. In some cases, the logic is specious; in others, the reporting flawed, but the subtext is the same: There is something about India — its men, culture, history — that makes rape a signature national trait.

It’s our cultural DNA
In a Business Standard op-ed titled ‘Consent vs Civilisation’, Devangshu Datta argues that our “twinned obsession with rape and incest leads quite naturally to multitudes of Indians being raped by their relatives.” His thesis is, in part, an attempt to explain why “mom,” “Indian aunty” and “rape” feature in the top ten search words on porn sites for India. As cultural evidence for his case, he offers the following: “street abuse [that] focuses on the sex lives of female relatives.”; regional traditions that permit inter-familial marriages (uncle-niece or between cousins); rape as a recurring motif in mythology and movies.

Most of these are fairly easy to debunk. Mother- and sister- curses are common to most cultures across the world, and which share the assumption that the best way to impugn a man’s honour is to insinuate sexual contact with his female relatives.

As for incestuous relationships, ‘kissing cousins’ have long been common in the West (and account for a great number of royal progeny), while the Bible is chock-a-block with “inappropriate” relationships: Abraham married his half-sister, Lot had sex with his daughters etc. One Tamil tradition involving maternal uncles does not an incestuous culture make. And as for those porn stats, ‘mom’ rates number 9 on Tennessee’s list, one notch above India.

On the matter of mythology, Datta himself concedes that “Greek, Roman and Norse classics are also full of graphic rapes”, but avers, “The difference is that India has proudly maintained an unbroken cultural tradition in its fascination with rape. It has always been a popular motif in Indian cinema. Rape is depicted far more often onscreen than consensual sex… YouTube is chock-a-block with compilations of ‘Bollywood hot rapes,’ ‘Tamil aunty rape’ and the like.”

This is the strongest and most persuasive piece of evidence Datta presents, but he confuses the egg for the chicken. In a society where “good” women could never be shown as desiring sex, and censorship rules were stricter on matters of sex than violence, the Great Indian Rape Scene emerged as the default titillation ingredient for male moviemakers. That generations of men have been weaned on this toxic fantasy of desire has created an Indian iteration of the rape fetish — but one, as Datta acknowledges, that we share with Turkey which has evolved from a mingling of European and Middle Eastern cultures.

It’s Hindu law
In a reported piece — first accompanied by the incendiary headline “Why India allows men to rape their wives” (later changed to a tamer ‘Why India still allows marital rape’) — India Real Time’s Preetika Rana points to the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act as the prime culprit:

Some legal experts believe the government is reluctant to criminalise marital rape because it would require them to tweak laws based on religious practices, including the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, which says a wife is duty-bound to have sex with her husband. Denying sex, according to traditional Hindu beliefs, goes against the duties of an ideal wife…

There is no denying that Indian personal laws — be it Hindu or Muslim — are retrograde and gendered, or the politics of religious pandering. But there is nothing uniquely Hindu about the demand that a woman’s body belongs to her husband. In Western canon, rape was long defined as the violation of the property rights of a male:

Michelle J. Anderson, dean of the City University of New York School of Law and a leading scholar on rape law, added that marriage was “a transfer of property from father to husband and if someone deflowered the virgin, that removed the property rights of the father. Rape was about stealing his property.”… Until recent decades, marital rape was not considered a crime. In fact, rape was defined as forcing sexual intercourse on a person other than the wife of the accused.

Husbands were exempt from rape charges until the 1990s in Europe, and marital rape continues to remain an issue in even gender-equal societies like Norway, which, as the New York Times notes, is “still one of 127 countries in the world — including 12 members of the European Union — that do not explicitly criminalise rape within marriage.”

The criminalising of marital rape in most nations has indeed entailed, as Datta puts it, “cutting ourselves adrift from our cultural moorings,” or rather a universal tradition of patriarchy that treats women’s bodies as male property, be it in France, USA or India.
It’s the Indian male

Where Rana and Datta fear to tread, The Observer’s Gethin Chamberlain rushes in with unabashed enthusiasm. Armed with a large and representative sample of 6 (yes, you read that number right) Goan males, he lets us in on the big dirty secret: all Indian men think women deserve to be raped! The men dutifully serve up a variety of “alarming” and “frightening” quotes designed to scare the average female reader.

“When the girls look sexy and the boys can’t control themselves, they are going to rape. It happens,” says a young man. “Rape is a big, big problem. It starts with the woman. They drive the man fucking crazy,” declares another in this rhetorical orgy of misogyny, allowing Chamberlain to grandly conclude that his little “discussion” reveals “the deep moral conservatism of some young Indian males, coupled with confusion about gender roles in a society where economic modernisation is outstripping social attitudes.”

Of course, the key word here is “some,” a niggling detail the article bats aside so:

This collection of young men is a small, random sample, and plenty of Indians would find their views abhorrent. Foreigners thinking of visiting India – particularly young women – will find these views not only repulsive, but dangerous. Though this is a small sample, it is telling that they speak so openly, and it is clearly the case that other young Indian men would express similar thoughts – even if large numbers of their compatriots would find them shocking.

It isn’t, in fact, “clear” at all as to how six guys in a Goan bar can be used to extrapolate the thoughts of other Indian men. More accurately, these quintessentially “Indian” views — that women’s bodies are there for the taking — are shared by many men, irrespective of nationality, including those football players in Steubenville.

“The Steubenville rapists claim that, when they drove a passed-out girl from party to party, slinging her into and out-of cars like a deflated sex-dolly and sticking their fingers inside her, they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong,” writes Laurie Penny in the New Statesman, also noting, “The pictures from Steubenville don’t just show a girl being raped. They show that rape being condoned, encouraged, celebrated. What type of culture could possibly produce such pictures?”

What type of culture indeed!

Just because rape is a problem in almost every part of the world ought not to be reason to ignore it in our backyard — i.e. let’s not console ourselves by claiming, “Americans are no better.” But let’s not lose sight of our shared history of patriarchy that lies beneath its various cultural iterations. Rape is not a civilisational trait, peculiar to Indian or any other culture. No society has a monopoly on misogyny.