Morality, dress and the state

Saris with tummies exposed too sexy for Nigeria, IANS/ CNN-IBN, August 6, 2008.

Talk about imported moralities--traditional dress that bares the midriff is also suspect.

Something positive?

I just found this extremely cheering:

Nimisha Srivastava, McVada: What's cooking between Shiv Sena and Macs, CNN-IBN, August 6, 2008.

Maybe it's the prospect of something having taste at MacDonald's should I ever be forced to eat there again.

Research visas for non-Indian scholars

According to this Times of India report, the procedure for applying for a research visa appears to have gotten easier.

D Suresh Kumar, New rules for foreign scholars, TNN/ Times of India, 4 Aug 2008.

Watch this space for updates.

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?