Link Diary: January 2009

Admist so much furure about accustations of perverse ‘slum tourism’ of the West in Slumdog Millionaire and Adiga’s The White Tiger, I couldn’t have escaped unscathed. Dev aka former lallopallo 😀 posed this question “Did West take advantage of India’s slums?’ to veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and wrote a complete post about it. Hop over and oblige Dev with your views. He,  as an apiring filmmaker, is very keen to know what you think.

While we are at the subject, do not miss this Mumbai’s other side (read slumdog) presentation at Telegraph. Note the title: Mumbai’s real slumdogs Do you find it offensive? Slideshow also has a picture of child labourers making carved belts in appalling conditions.

Here is another telegraph features taht is being currently emailed all over. World’s best passenger complaint to Virgin airlines. This enterprising guy has written a toungue-in-cheek complaint letter about Mumbai-Heathrow flight to Richard Bransan, As per Telegraph, Branson himself spoke to the complainant. How could he not when the complainant has supported each and every complaint with pictures that do not lie.

Now that we are talking of complaints, there is so much we can complain about. First step is to file that RTI (Right to Information) application to proceed. If you are wondering how to do it, I suggest start by reading this basic post about how to file a RTI petition, from JNU research scholar Vikas. Vikas has taken up several RTIs against government bodies. Please bookmark this post and follow other links Vikas has provided in his post.

Did you ever wonder and think of editing wikipedia pages to improve its content? So here is a link to Wikipedia: The Missing Manual that is a now free book, which will provide you with guidelines as to how to begin.

Culture peek of the day is Axinia’s post about Russian men. Ahem Now this is for you women, read the open message Axini provides you.

Now that we are talking about women, (no, I will not talk about Mangalore attack and provide free publicity to marauders) , this piece in Huffington post complains about reviewers’ attitude to books written by women. She does make some valid points.

“America is now given over to a damned mob of scribbling women,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in the mid-nineteenth century just at the moment when many women like Austen had taken up their quills and were writing novels (and were finding big hungry audiences for their work).

Not much has changed since Hawthorne. Although Austen and the Brontës now get their due, women’s fiction today still struggles to be taken seriously. Romance novels continually get stereotyped as “soft porn for desperate housewives.” Chick lit has been dismissed by the literati as throwaway “fluff” obsessed with shopping and shoes. And even women writers like Jodi Picoult who tackle more serious issues are often labeled “hysterical” and “melodramatic” by reviewers. The book reviewing world even criticizes books for “pandering to female audiences,” as if that is such a terrible thing (yes, Publisher’s Weekly said this about the short story collection, This is Chick Lit

This article was inspired by writer Jennifer Weiner’s post where author has compared gender-discriminating reviews of current booksellers. Its interesting to read, go on.

Last but not the least, free Spanish course online by BBC. I know there are language junkie out there, feel free to learn smattering of Spanish and show off. 😛