How we preserve our heritage

I am on the road with a group of visiting students and we visited the Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur. This is the main temple in a complex of Chola temples in and around Thanjavur, designated as World Heritage Monuments. The designation has funded a great deal of restoration activity which is ongoing, but in the meanwhile, our own unique instinct for cultural conservation has led visitors to....

leave fragments of broken glass bangles in a courtyard where visitors are barefoot....

inscribe their hopes and aspirations on the wall to match Raja Raja Chola's...

litter food and bottle caps hither and yon...

If the great builders of India's past had known their progeny would be messy vandals, would they have bothered to build anything at all?

Making a difference, making us proud

Tiana Tozer, who studied Political Science at Illinois when I did, makes us proud over and over again. Check out this NBC news report that features her.

You cannot have it all!!!

A speech by Mr. Aziz Narejo is posted on Indus Asia Journal Online. I am thrilled that Mr. Narejo has read my book to learn about Sindhi history, but dismayed that he thinks I am a man.

You cannot have it all, so in this instance, I will just thank him, wherever he is for citing my work.

But, Mr. Narejo, I do not belong to the default gender. No, no, no, sir!

New book on Indian cinema and Soviet audiences

Check this out: Urmi Sahni, Book recounts Russian penchant for Indian films, CNN/IBN, May 7, 2008.

Everyone is nepotistic; why not me?!