This is my work with spaces and people in rural and urban India.It includes my encounters with different cultures, development sites and issues offering immense challenges with which I navigated life.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Inside Control Room: Where lies the truth?
Control Room showed the human cost of Iraq war both to and of the Iraqi people, and to and of the American soldiers. This was the most speculator part of the film. Some of the most elusive footage, interviews and the daily working of the media at the site of conflict were probably never seen before. Director Jehane Noujaim navigation of the mediascape at the war torn Iraq, Al Jazeera’s newsroom and the Production Control Room, the actual site of news production and broadcasting, while the workers were covering the live images of the bombing of Iraq by the American and the Coalition Army was deeply focused on the realities and power of media. At the same time it also demonstrated how media can be used and abused for political purposes. Control Room shows the story of Al Jazeera’s, the Qatar based news-channel that showed the images , sound and texts of the war to the people. Such images were most profound for the American people and indeed most threatening for the US government under Bush administration. Wounded American soldiers, dying and bleeding Marines and all of such images that showed Americans being hurt was strategically hidden from the Bush administration from its people, to justify the War on civilian Iraq as a war for Liberation of Iraqi people and War by Americans as they stand for the “need of the hour” .Control Room breaks many myths that Bush Administration created through media. Most blatant amongst those were through images of Iraqi civilian casualties which were caused by American troops, attack on media personnel, and wounded American soldiers. Even more blatant was the story of Josh Rushing who was heading the Media unit of the Central Command and spoke eloquently in the film to show his support of the US and the coalition troops and his true belief that Iraq was a potential threat. Throughout the film, the US Marine was advocating the US and coalition of its action with his frank and candid interview with a former BBC employee and presently Al Jazeera's, Hassan Ibrahim. However, according to Josh’s web site (http://joshrushing.com/Bio.html) and other online resources, Pentagon ordered Josh not to give any more interviews. Josh left the US army and according to his web site he now works with Al-Jazeera English. He also wrote a book called “Mission Al-Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World”
In the story of Josh, both as we see him in Control Room and his subsequent decision to leave the US army and join Al Jazeera, what is emphasized is that no news is complete until we see what is shown to us in the light of what is not shown to us. Control Room shows what we rarely see in the so called news channels who not only shows fiction as facts but even construct news to further the political agendas and maintain status-quo. Control Room reveals how this happens. As we see the Al Jazeera’s images of wounded soldiers and civilian’s casualties in Iraq, we hear George Bush preaching to the American public with soothing words, “I expect POWs to be treated humanely, just as we are treating the prisoners we have captured humanely”. Such juxtaposition of political rhetoric and the images of the ground realities instantly separates the chaff from the wheat for it audiences. It sharpens the images that the embedded journalism has created, that of the enslaved-media, in the hands of the establishment, and at the same time, as a senior producer of Al-Jazeera Samir Khader says while looking at the wounded civilians bodies covered by its channel, “I’m supposed to call this incitement? I call this true journalism, the only true journalism in the world” thus referring to a truthful-media characterized by courage and guts.
Samir’s strong sense of journalism with adherence to objectivity and balance is also reflected in a scene where he expresses his dissatisfaction towards the choice of the interviewee, an American who criticizes America for attacking Iraq only for oil, by a co worker, for the lack of balance. Samir is seen to be looking for balance while there is none as he himself seems to have confessed as he says “the only true journalism” in the above context. We see another example of an angry journalist, Hassan Ibrahim, when he hears Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accusing Al Jazeera's interviews with US POWs as violation of the Geneva Conventions. "What about Guantanamo Bay?" , "What about the Iraqi prisoners on American TV?", he repeatedly questions, thus sharpening the blurred lines of what we see in what is shown and what we not see in what is not shown.
Control Room uses such juxtaposition to make a very strong point; it shows how media is used as tool to sell a war to an audience, who can only see what is shown to them and will believe what is made believable to them. In its intense navigation of the site of war, conflict, media-workplaces and the testimonies of the media workers, Control Room makes a revelation-like impact to those who are glued to the beliefs of notions and fictions that are bombarded on them through the propagandist media controlled by the state. At the same time Control Room also shows the conflict of media workers as they perform their journalist duties under extreme conditions. The conflict of responsibility of work and responsibility of family is best reflected, yet again in the words of another Al Jazeera’s employee who says, “Despite everything he wishes for his children to have a future in the United States, and that he himself would work for Fox”.
In its revelation about the working of the media machinery,, focusing on centers run by the state-establishments such as the Central Command and at the same time channels such as Al Jazeera, Control Room tells a powerful story of a weapon called Media which is used to hide realities and construct non- realities by the former while at the same time, as a weapon used to reveal the truth and deconstruct non -realities through elusive and disturbing but factual audio-visual narratives.
In the story of Josh, both as we see him in Control Room and his subsequent decision to leave the US army and join Al Jazeera, what is emphasized is that no news is complete until we see what is shown to us in the light of what is not shown to us. Control Room shows what we rarely see in the so called news channels who not only shows fiction as facts but even construct news to further the political agendas and maintain status-quo. Control Room reveals how this happens. As we see the Al Jazeera’s images of wounded soldiers and civilian’s casualties in Iraq, we hear George Bush preaching to the American public with soothing words, “I expect POWs to be treated humanely, just as we are treating the prisoners we have captured humanely”. Such juxtaposition of political rhetoric and the images of the ground realities instantly separates the chaff from the wheat for it audiences. It sharpens the images that the embedded journalism has created, that of the enslaved-media, in the hands of the establishment, and at the same time, as a senior producer of Al-Jazeera Samir Khader says while looking at the wounded civilians bodies covered by its channel, “I’m supposed to call this incitement? I call this true journalism, the only true journalism in the world” thus referring to a truthful-media characterized by courage and guts.
Samir’s strong sense of journalism with adherence to objectivity and balance is also reflected in a scene where he expresses his dissatisfaction towards the choice of the interviewee, an American who criticizes America for attacking Iraq only for oil, by a co worker, for the lack of balance. Samir is seen to be looking for balance while there is none as he himself seems to have confessed as he says “the only true journalism” in the above context. We see another example of an angry journalist, Hassan Ibrahim, when he hears Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accusing Al Jazeera's interviews with US POWs as violation of the Geneva Conventions. "What about Guantanamo Bay?" , "What about the Iraqi prisoners on American TV?", he repeatedly questions, thus sharpening the blurred lines of what we see in what is shown and what we not see in what is not shown.
Control Room uses such juxtaposition to make a very strong point; it shows how media is used as tool to sell a war to an audience, who can only see what is shown to them and will believe what is made believable to them. In its intense navigation of the site of war, conflict, media-workplaces and the testimonies of the media workers, Control Room makes a revelation-like impact to those who are glued to the beliefs of notions and fictions that are bombarded on them through the propagandist media controlled by the state. At the same time Control Room also shows the conflict of media workers as they perform their journalist duties under extreme conditions. The conflict of responsibility of work and responsibility of family is best reflected, yet again in the words of another Al Jazeera’s employee who says, “Despite everything he wishes for his children to have a future in the United States, and that he himself would work for Fox”.
In its revelation about the working of the media machinery,, focusing on centers run by the state-establishments such as the Central Command and at the same time channels such as Al Jazeera, Control Room tells a powerful story of a weapon called Media which is used to hide realities and construct non- realities by the former while at the same time, as a weapon used to reveal the truth and deconstruct non -realities through elusive and disturbing but factual audio-visual narratives.
Monday, May 11, 2009
A case of Hole in the wall: India 1999
This case study is from India. This was done by an Indian It company called NIIT (National Institute of information technology).As an experiment, this was immensely successful one and it took a form of a joint venture between NIIT and International Finance Corporation. This joint venture is now known as Hole-in-the-Wall Education Ltd (HiWEL).
As an experiment, it was started by Sugata Mitra, a computer engineer and founder of the Hole in the Wall, in New Delhi. In 1999, he with his colleagues dug a hole in the wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi and the NIIT office where Mitra worked. A highly powerful computer with interest connectivity was installed. A hidden camera was also installed to film the activity around the area. The experiment observed that the slum kids started playing around with the computer and in the process learnt the how to use a new technology, go online, work with an unknown language, English and most importantly how to teach others what they have learnt.
In the following years the experiment was replicated in many other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The Hole-in-the-Wall project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."
According to Linux Journal, "Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."
This experiment reflects Paulo Freire’s Educational Pedagogy where self-learning and creativity is emphasized and not the “Banking system” of the top-down-classroom set up.
This experiment demonstrated that children can self-instruct in the absence of any supervision. Presence of curiosity and peer-interest is all it required. This experiment also demonstrated the self-organization amongst children who haven’t had any formal education, and their ability to self-learn a new technology, a new language and a new way of exploring things.
In other words, this experiment provided an effective alternative to the conventional primary education methodologies practiced, not so successfully in India. The significance of this experiment becomes high considering the results of the experiment in which students not only started learning the application of a new technology like that of a PC but also learnt new words of a foreign language, English through browsing. The interviews of the students showed that sheer sense of exploration and curiosity motivated them to learn about new websites where we could learn the meaning of the unknown words they explored on the PC while browsing. Hence the experiment not only provided an effective learning platform, it also worked to narrow the huge digital divide.
A small sample sized survey demonstrated that more remote a area in terms of geography or socio-economic access, lower the quality of education. Therefore the experiment was conducted to serve the remote areas. Besides the experiment observed that there was no co relation between the quality of education and factors such as lack of infrastructure, size of the classrooms, lack of electricity and so on. But it observed that teachers in remote schools wanted to move outside of these areas into more urbane and metropolitan areas. This meant that teachers are not motivated enough to teach where they were teaching and that probably caused the lower levels of education.
This experiment was carried out in many parts of India, which is characterized by multi ethnicity, multi linguistic, and diversity in geography, socio economic conditions and races.
In all places the results were similar. Within minutes, children figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. With access and opportunity, the children quickly taught themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. It was observed that children in addition to playing games on the PC, they regularly visited news sites and used tools such the paint tool for drawing.
After the first set of successful experiments, this educational way was used with special emphasis on girl-child in rural communities. Computer kiosks were installed with special efforts to encourage girls to use them. This was immensely successful as well, as girls, given the permission and opportunity rushed to explore and learn trough computers.
The experiment was mostly conduced in slums and marginalized neighborhoods where primary education could not reach or could not work, for whatever reasons.
One of the fascinating aspect of the experiment was the way slum children negotiated with an unknown language, English, in which the computer applications were written. They were unable to pronounce the words correctly but made the correct usage of the words on the computer screen by continuously playing with it and watching the results. This reflects the building of theory through practice in the adaptation of participatory methodology.
Children called the cursor, sui, which in hindi means needle and they didn't call the hourglass symbol the hourglass because they had never seen an hourglass before. They called it the damru, which is Shiva's drum (Hindu god of Creation) as it looked bit like that.
According to the founder of this experiment, "If cyberspace is considered a place, then there are people who are already in it, and people who are not in it ... I think the hole in the wall gives us a method to create a door, if you like, through which large numbers of children can rush into this new arena. When that happens, it will have changed our society forever."
Critique of the case study
Hole in the wall as an educational methodology used a communicative tool like a personal computer and its applications to solve a very basic but a major social problem in the developing world. In this case study, access of communication and its tools have created a revolutionary way to reach and serve the unserved.
The case demonstrated a use of participatory methodology and Freirian pedagogy, which emphasized on creativity, self organization and curiosity as important tools of learning. It demonstrated that remoteness, both in terms of geography and socio economic conditions affects the quality of education. This remoteness was being looked at one of the major reasons of lack of penetration of education, a major social void particularly amongst the marginalized communities and its children. This experiment, by the way of a computer and internet, provided filler for such a void. What worked for this case is the nature of children to play and in the process learn. Computers acted like a good toy for them and it provoked them to fiddle round with it.Thus arousing their curiosity about what it does. Secondly, absence of any supervision from any adults at the site of learning also helped them to self organize and self instruct. This gave them confidence and created sustainability in their tendency to learn. Learning was not only acquired but was also replicated as children taught one another , what they learned themselves. This led to diffusion of education and easily overcame the problems of absence of good teachers or retention of good teachers, infrastructure and maintenance of infrastructure in rural India’s educational landscape. I think the strength of the case is that it depended on the ability of the marginalized community to learn and gain from the opportunity made available to them. Simplicity of the experiment and its exhaustive documentation through filming also helped t o understand the dynamics of the marginalized community, its adaptation of a new technology as an educational tool, learning curve of the communities, challenges they faced and the dyamics of their learning.
This experiment however seemed to be dependent on the group dynamics. In other words, for the experiment to work the way it did, it was important that children came in groups at the site of the PC-internet, and learnt together. In the absence of the group, individual children would not be able to learn because the experiment depended on peer interest and group learning. I view it as both, an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage because this promotes team -leaning amongst the children and encourages to them not only to learn but also continuously teach and share their learning. This builds educational solidarity. Disadvantage, however, is that child tend to learn from others what others teach him/her. This may not necessarily be of what they are interested in and would want to pick Also, it is possible that the first child who approaches the PC kiosk, learns certain things and then teaches to other what he has learned, thus spreading his perspective of that learning .Thus narrowing the scope of other learning available. But at the same time, I believe that such an disadvantage can be easily overcome by more collaborative attempts like that of attaching a formal learning session at the site. This session can be facilitated by children themselves. This would not only build leadership but would also enhance the purposefulness of the learning in a given context. Since this experiment is carried our mostly in marginalized areas, I would recommend that there are also attempts to reach out to the adults of the area which are not the target audience of the experiment. In fact adults are prevented to be at the site of PC-internet kiosks by way of physical low-ceiling installed at the site under which only children of certain height can stand and use the machine. I think by taking into loop the adults, it will help to deepen the impact of this experiment. Adults are an important component of any community especially in relation to children-development. In many cases, adults control children’s mobility and their engagements. It will, therefore be useful to not only have adults included in this experiment by way of sharing existing tools with them but also make new additions in the experiment to cater the needs of the community and its adults.
Also this experiment is primarily intends to support the primary education amongst the marginalized groups. It is therefore also needed that a long term vision of the education is embedded in the experiment. What happens when children of the community learn enough of the computers being installed? What next? Educational needs are dynamics and therefore how can this system be made dynamics? Also, it is needed to co-relate the learning through computer with the change in socio-economic conditions of the community and know the results. Other support systems such as connecting the children to higher schools once they have acquired the primary goals of education, availability of jobs and creation of bridges to such jobs for the marginalized, chalking out the need of specific learning and expected results and making it known to the rural communities are some of the very important aspects to truly empower the communities.
Hole- in- the- wall started as an effective and creative way to impart education but its potentially can only be fully realized if it receives the necessary support system both from the non-government agencies and government programs operational in the communities. Also it needs a constant focus to ensure that through education rural communities reach a socio-economic change and get empowered. Merely imparting education in the absence of other support system may pose a risk of educational tool like this acting like a video game which could amuse but not empower.
As an experiment, it was started by Sugata Mitra, a computer engineer and founder of the Hole in the Wall, in New Delhi. In 1999, he with his colleagues dug a hole in the wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi and the NIIT office where Mitra worked. A highly powerful computer with interest connectivity was installed. A hidden camera was also installed to film the activity around the area. The experiment observed that the slum kids started playing around with the computer and in the process learnt the how to use a new technology, go online, work with an unknown language, English and most importantly how to teach others what they have learnt.
In the following years the experiment was replicated in many other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The Hole-in-the-Wall project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."
According to Linux Journal, "Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."
This experiment reflects Paulo Freire’s Educational Pedagogy where self-learning and creativity is emphasized and not the “Banking system” of the top-down-classroom set up.
This experiment demonstrated that children can self-instruct in the absence of any supervision. Presence of curiosity and peer-interest is all it required. This experiment also demonstrated the self-organization amongst children who haven’t had any formal education, and their ability to self-learn a new technology, a new language and a new way of exploring things.
In other words, this experiment provided an effective alternative to the conventional primary education methodologies practiced, not so successfully in India. The significance of this experiment becomes high considering the results of the experiment in which students not only started learning the application of a new technology like that of a PC but also learnt new words of a foreign language, English through browsing. The interviews of the students showed that sheer sense of exploration and curiosity motivated them to learn about new websites where we could learn the meaning of the unknown words they explored on the PC while browsing. Hence the experiment not only provided an effective learning platform, it also worked to narrow the huge digital divide.
A small sample sized survey demonstrated that more remote a area in terms of geography or socio-economic access, lower the quality of education. Therefore the experiment was conducted to serve the remote areas. Besides the experiment observed that there was no co relation between the quality of education and factors such as lack of infrastructure, size of the classrooms, lack of electricity and so on. But it observed that teachers in remote schools wanted to move outside of these areas into more urbane and metropolitan areas. This meant that teachers are not motivated enough to teach where they were teaching and that probably caused the lower levels of education.
This experiment was carried out in many parts of India, which is characterized by multi ethnicity, multi linguistic, and diversity in geography, socio economic conditions and races.
In all places the results were similar. Within minutes, children figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. With access and opportunity, the children quickly taught themselves the rudiments of computer literacy. It was observed that children in addition to playing games on the PC, they regularly visited news sites and used tools such the paint tool for drawing.
After the first set of successful experiments, this educational way was used with special emphasis on girl-child in rural communities. Computer kiosks were installed with special efforts to encourage girls to use them. This was immensely successful as well, as girls, given the permission and opportunity rushed to explore and learn trough computers.
The experiment was mostly conduced in slums and marginalized neighborhoods where primary education could not reach or could not work, for whatever reasons.
One of the fascinating aspect of the experiment was the way slum children negotiated with an unknown language, English, in which the computer applications were written. They were unable to pronounce the words correctly but made the correct usage of the words on the computer screen by continuously playing with it and watching the results. This reflects the building of theory through practice in the adaptation of participatory methodology.
Children called the cursor, sui, which in hindi means needle and they didn't call the hourglass symbol the hourglass because they had never seen an hourglass before. They called it the damru, which is Shiva's drum (Hindu god of Creation) as it looked bit like that.
According to the founder of this experiment, "If cyberspace is considered a place, then there are people who are already in it, and people who are not in it ... I think the hole in the wall gives us a method to create a door, if you like, through which large numbers of children can rush into this new arena. When that happens, it will have changed our society forever."
Critique of the case study
Hole in the wall as an educational methodology used a communicative tool like a personal computer and its applications to solve a very basic but a major social problem in the developing world. In this case study, access of communication and its tools have created a revolutionary way to reach and serve the unserved.
The case demonstrated a use of participatory methodology and Freirian pedagogy, which emphasized on creativity, self organization and curiosity as important tools of learning. It demonstrated that remoteness, both in terms of geography and socio economic conditions affects the quality of education. This remoteness was being looked at one of the major reasons of lack of penetration of education, a major social void particularly amongst the marginalized communities and its children. This experiment, by the way of a computer and internet, provided filler for such a void. What worked for this case is the nature of children to play and in the process learn. Computers acted like a good toy for them and it provoked them to fiddle round with it.Thus arousing their curiosity about what it does. Secondly, absence of any supervision from any adults at the site of learning also helped them to self organize and self instruct. This gave them confidence and created sustainability in their tendency to learn. Learning was not only acquired but was also replicated as children taught one another , what they learned themselves. This led to diffusion of education and easily overcame the problems of absence of good teachers or retention of good teachers, infrastructure and maintenance of infrastructure in rural India’s educational landscape. I think the strength of the case is that it depended on the ability of the marginalized community to learn and gain from the opportunity made available to them. Simplicity of the experiment and its exhaustive documentation through filming also helped t o understand the dynamics of the marginalized community, its adaptation of a new technology as an educational tool, learning curve of the communities, challenges they faced and the dyamics of their learning.
This experiment however seemed to be dependent on the group dynamics. In other words, for the experiment to work the way it did, it was important that children came in groups at the site of the PC-internet, and learnt together. In the absence of the group, individual children would not be able to learn because the experiment depended on peer interest and group learning. I view it as both, an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage because this promotes team -leaning amongst the children and encourages to them not only to learn but also continuously teach and share their learning. This builds educational solidarity. Disadvantage, however, is that child tend to learn from others what others teach him/her. This may not necessarily be of what they are interested in and would want to pick Also, it is possible that the first child who approaches the PC kiosk, learns certain things and then teaches to other what he has learned, thus spreading his perspective of that learning .Thus narrowing the scope of other learning available. But at the same time, I believe that such an disadvantage can be easily overcome by more collaborative attempts like that of attaching a formal learning session at the site. This session can be facilitated by children themselves. This would not only build leadership but would also enhance the purposefulness of the learning in a given context. Since this experiment is carried our mostly in marginalized areas, I would recommend that there are also attempts to reach out to the adults of the area which are not the target audience of the experiment. In fact adults are prevented to be at the site of PC-internet kiosks by way of physical low-ceiling installed at the site under which only children of certain height can stand and use the machine. I think by taking into loop the adults, it will help to deepen the impact of this experiment. Adults are an important component of any community especially in relation to children-development. In many cases, adults control children’s mobility and their engagements. It will, therefore be useful to not only have adults included in this experiment by way of sharing existing tools with them but also make new additions in the experiment to cater the needs of the community and its adults.
Also this experiment is primarily intends to support the primary education amongst the marginalized groups. It is therefore also needed that a long term vision of the education is embedded in the experiment. What happens when children of the community learn enough of the computers being installed? What next? Educational needs are dynamics and therefore how can this system be made dynamics? Also, it is needed to co-relate the learning through computer with the change in socio-economic conditions of the community and know the results. Other support systems such as connecting the children to higher schools once they have acquired the primary goals of education, availability of jobs and creation of bridges to such jobs for the marginalized, chalking out the need of specific learning and expected results and making it known to the rural communities are some of the very important aspects to truly empower the communities.
Hole- in- the- wall started as an effective and creative way to impart education but its potentially can only be fully realized if it receives the necessary support system both from the non-government agencies and government programs operational in the communities. Also it needs a constant focus to ensure that through education rural communities reach a socio-economic change and get empowered. Merely imparting education in the absence of other support system may pose a risk of educational tool like this acting like a video game which could amuse but not empower.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Blogging the Diversity
Blogging is a new- wave of expression. It has given common people the global reach. It has brought the common narratives of daily life to an uncommon global cyberspace. It clearly transcends time and space; an investment banker on the Wall Street may write about his idea of a new Hollywood flick whereas a distant Bollywood director may share his experiences of new faith. In no time millions of across the world would read, react and ponder over these ideas and in no time, the writers will have the feedback of what they wrote. This is the power of this new tool calling blogging. It is giving not just giving the voice to the people to reach other people across the globe, it is also now increasingly becoming institutionalized. Some of the major organizations now have blogs. Any major website will seem incomplete without a well written, well fed and well read blog.
One of the beauties of blogging is that it can nurture a wide variety of themes and topics. It can be as professional as journalism with deep insight and understanding and at the same time it may look purely fun-content meant to amuse people. Yet both of such content can attract millions and can be extremely popular.
In this paper I will analyze two blogs in greater details. Both are entirely different in their content but to some extent they are expected to share their target audience.One blog is called Think progress (www.thinkprogress.org) and the other is Stuff White People Like(http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/)
Think Progress
As a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund(CAPAF), this blog intends to provide a platform to advance progressive ideas and policies. This blog gained popularity in terms of its credibility in the recent times. It has been voted as the Best Liberal blog in 2006 in the Weblog awards and was also chosen as an Official Honoree in 2009 Webby awards. The Sidney Hillman foundation has also awarded it as the Best blog of 2008 giving it the Award for the Journalism Excellence
The blog has an activist’s tone, as it “fights” for the following themes:
• Social and economic justice
• Healthy communities
• Media accountability
• Global and domestic security
• Public corruption
• Incompetent establishment
• Corporate malfeasance
• Radical right wing agenda
These themes are listed under the stub “what we are fighting for”. It is clear that the blog has adopted an activist’s tone. The rest of the blog, under different sections categorized according to the different themes listed above, speaks about each of the themes vis-a-vis the government policies, reader’s feedback and expert’s opinion on it. Each member of the editorial team has a well-written, crispy biography, starting from Harvard educated Editor-in-Chief to “The New York Times, CNN, NBC Nightly News, and The Drudge Report” researcher. This adds certain degree of credibility as it makes the writer’s background absolutely clear with the team he or she is working with.
Also the blog is always focused on policies and ideas relating to the 8 themes mentioned and therefore its perspective never appears ambiguous. It regularly reports on government’s policies, its flaws, its strengths and its general reception in the public. A regular way of doing this is through quoting the White house and through putting the video of the concerned politicians and policymakers. Very often there are also interviews of the concerned officer on the relevant theme being discussed. This keep s the content of the blog very focused and provides an opportunity of journalistic balance and objectivity by inviting reader’s comments, reference to other website and videos.
In addition to the regular news on the 8 listed themes, it also a detailed report that reader can subscribe to. This detailed report is published regularly and varies from topic to topic. The present report is on clean energy. One of the striking features of the blog is that it invites “news tip” from the readers. If readers have any news that they want to share, they can send it through a box-space with their email and name. This is a clear and simple use of Citizen’s journalism, which adds a unique interactivity and reader’s participation in the content- range. Another feature on the blog is that of the most-popular-topics. This enables readers to know which the most-read news items are, thus one can see which topics are mostly picked by the readers. This further complimented by other options such as Most Linked , Most Commented, Most Emailed with the option of reading news in the 24 hours, Last Week and Last Month. The later is an achieving system while the former is a way to measure the reader’s interest on different yardsticks such as comments, emails etc.
Besides the blog also list several other external links that speak about government policies and international affairs through its drop down stub “blog roll” while at the same time clearly showing links to other affiliated websites such as The Wonk Room.
Content of the blog and its design and interactivity is most likely to be appealing for people in Development sector, Non-government organizations, Advocacy groups and activists. The wide variety of them is just apt even for students of Social Sciences and Political Sciences particularly students of graduate studies. The depth of analysis, issues and news is diversified and rigorous. It provides good balance by listing the different point of views and also making it clear the way readers perceive this news. It therefore makes it systematic for the readers to navigate the blog and pick and choose the content of their interests.
Some of the advertisements on the blog are that of telecommunication companies like AT&T. This looks relevant because it is expected that a great of deal of the blogs readers are working and are expected to be a regular user of cell phones. However, the advertisement box is clearly marked and that makes the blog look very clean without distractions. The 8 themes have colors and all news attached to each theme has similar colors. This makes the whole blog very easy to read and pick the news items according to ones interest. The use of you tube video and the editorial comments on it makes it really handy to differentiate between what is being said by the government and what is the stand of the blog’s editorial. Together they present a balanced look, readers can, of course, add their comments, which is always easier when the source and the initial comment is available right on the blog where there is comment space.
The choice of colors, mostly primary colors is also simple yet striking. It avoids any distraction and the focuses the readers more and more on the content and on the form of the blog. But somber look of the blog does facilitate the readers’ concentration and navigation. Besides, paid advertisement space, the blog also has a separate link for donations.
The serious content, in the journalism terms can be categorized as hard news, which is well presented and well balanced. The debate on the weather blogs are an alternative to journalism or not, seems to be ending with the professional look and journalistic credibility that Think Progress is gaining. A Journalisticc award further enhances its credibility and its ability of a journalistic voice through blogging. The editorial team also adds to its richness and insightful analysis of the subject through its experience and wide exposure to journalism practice.
Stuff white people like
In stark contrast to the previous blog, this blog is “soft news”. It basically lists some of the major things that white people like. It is a one- person view and hence is extremely subjective, and not so credible. But this blog has gained immense popularity, not because of its credibility but probably because of its entertainment fun value. It is listed as no 11 blog on Technorati and has already got over 30 million hits. The beginning of this blog is rather interesting and its success unexpected. This is what the writer of the blog says about how the blog and came into being in the interview posted on the blog:
My friend Myles Valentine and I were talking over IM about the TV show The Wire. Myles said he didn’t trust any white people who did not watch the show. Somehow we ended up talking about what they were doing instead of watching it and we came up with answers like “yoga,” “plays,” “getting divorced,” and “therapy.” I thought it was a funny idea for a blog and signed up for one at wordpress.com and just started writing.
On being asked if she expected it to be so popular, the writer answered, “No. I started it with the hopes that maybe 10 of my friends would read it. I never expected it to be read by this many people.
This explains the power of media and blogging as one of its tools.
The tone of the blog is humorous and funny and yet it sounds factual at times. The home page of the blog candidly confesses, “This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.”
In the answering the question “ what white people like”, the blog enlists over 125 “stuff” like Netflix, Bob Marley, yoga, Having two last names, Religion their parents don’t belong to , Not having a TV and Difficult breakups in addition to many others. It is clear that the writer is using humor to write the daily narratives of life most likely in a Western country. The target audience is mostly likely to be students of Cultural studies, International students in campus and of course the white population.
The blog is extremely smart in raising revenues. It has relevant advertisement according to each blog posting. So the blog posting on Netflix had Netflix advertisements, being posed by Google whereas, the posting on Travelling has some travel agents whose advertisements were posted. This enables reaching a very targeted audience according to the content being provided on the web page.
The blog’s design is really easy to navigate with a book with the same title as the blog. It has a “full lists of what white people like” stub with posts, comment and search box. The design is simple and avoids any crowded look. It auotmativ\cally directs the readers to the posts being posted. The advertisements space is also limited and strategically located in small rectangular boxes to avoid any distractions. The templates have ay youthful pictures in bright colors such as organic food, dogs and natures’ shots. Mostly these pictures are the themes on which the posting are written on.
Conclusion
Both the above blogs are focused on different audience groups. These two sets of audiences may have been located in the same regions, the US and Europe, being the two most likely regions, yet their content is so different. Tone of language, design, readers participating and other factors also substantially different but blogging as a tool is common, and that underlines the power of blogging. It can handle such diversified content in the same form. This is revolutionary. The convergence of words, pictures videos and sound has never been so powerfully used in such a diversified content range. The resulting interactivity also makes it possible to adapt itself to the taste and nature of other readers, whose demographic information can be easily found put, given the online tools available to locate the reader’s location etc. This adaptability is the backbone of blogging. It can reach many audiences at the same time and yet remain focused on its core content.
Blogging will continue to mainstream the content and form that has not been able to reach the global audience due to the binding, rigid informational structures, which are now melting. In blogging, the global audience has found a global tool to reach the global demography. The stories, arts and culture, which were once considered distant and whose amalgamation with other popular forms, was perceived unlikely is now meeting its audience in all colors and textures, using a common connecting thread called blogging.
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One of the beauties of blogging is that it can nurture a wide variety of themes and topics. It can be as professional as journalism with deep insight and understanding and at the same time it may look purely fun-content meant to amuse people. Yet both of such content can attract millions and can be extremely popular.
In this paper I will analyze two blogs in greater details. Both are entirely different in their content but to some extent they are expected to share their target audience.One blog is called Think progress (www.thinkprogress.org) and the other is Stuff White People Like(http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/)
Think Progress
As a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund(CAPAF), this blog intends to provide a platform to advance progressive ideas and policies. This blog gained popularity in terms of its credibility in the recent times. It has been voted as the Best Liberal blog in 2006 in the Weblog awards and was also chosen as an Official Honoree in 2009 Webby awards. The Sidney Hillman foundation has also awarded it as the Best blog of 2008 giving it the Award for the Journalism Excellence
The blog has an activist’s tone, as it “fights” for the following themes:
• Social and economic justice
• Healthy communities
• Media accountability
• Global and domestic security
• Public corruption
• Incompetent establishment
• Corporate malfeasance
• Radical right wing agenda
These themes are listed under the stub “what we are fighting for”. It is clear that the blog has adopted an activist’s tone. The rest of the blog, under different sections categorized according to the different themes listed above, speaks about each of the themes vis-a-vis the government policies, reader’s feedback and expert’s opinion on it. Each member of the editorial team has a well-written, crispy biography, starting from Harvard educated Editor-in-Chief to “The New York Times, CNN, NBC Nightly News, and The Drudge Report” researcher. This adds certain degree of credibility as it makes the writer’s background absolutely clear with the team he or she is working with.
Also the blog is always focused on policies and ideas relating to the 8 themes mentioned and therefore its perspective never appears ambiguous. It regularly reports on government’s policies, its flaws, its strengths and its general reception in the public. A regular way of doing this is through quoting the White house and through putting the video of the concerned politicians and policymakers. Very often there are also interviews of the concerned officer on the relevant theme being discussed. This keep s the content of the blog very focused and provides an opportunity of journalistic balance and objectivity by inviting reader’s comments, reference to other website and videos.
In addition to the regular news on the 8 listed themes, it also a detailed report that reader can subscribe to. This detailed report is published regularly and varies from topic to topic. The present report is on clean energy. One of the striking features of the blog is that it invites “news tip” from the readers. If readers have any news that they want to share, they can send it through a box-space with their email and name. This is a clear and simple use of Citizen’s journalism, which adds a unique interactivity and reader’s participation in the content- range. Another feature on the blog is that of the most-popular-topics. This enables readers to know which the most-read news items are, thus one can see which topics are mostly picked by the readers. This further complimented by other options such as Most Linked , Most Commented, Most Emailed with the option of reading news in the 24 hours, Last Week and Last Month. The later is an achieving system while the former is a way to measure the reader’s interest on different yardsticks such as comments, emails etc.
Besides the blog also list several other external links that speak about government policies and international affairs through its drop down stub “blog roll” while at the same time clearly showing links to other affiliated websites such as The Wonk Room.
Content of the blog and its design and interactivity is most likely to be appealing for people in Development sector, Non-government organizations, Advocacy groups and activists. The wide variety of them is just apt even for students of Social Sciences and Political Sciences particularly students of graduate studies. The depth of analysis, issues and news is diversified and rigorous. It provides good balance by listing the different point of views and also making it clear the way readers perceive this news. It therefore makes it systematic for the readers to navigate the blog and pick and choose the content of their interests.
Some of the advertisements on the blog are that of telecommunication companies like AT&T. This looks relevant because it is expected that a great of deal of the blogs readers are working and are expected to be a regular user of cell phones. However, the advertisement box is clearly marked and that makes the blog look very clean without distractions. The 8 themes have colors and all news attached to each theme has similar colors. This makes the whole blog very easy to read and pick the news items according to ones interest. The use of you tube video and the editorial comments on it makes it really handy to differentiate between what is being said by the government and what is the stand of the blog’s editorial. Together they present a balanced look, readers can, of course, add their comments, which is always easier when the source and the initial comment is available right on the blog where there is comment space.
The choice of colors, mostly primary colors is also simple yet striking. It avoids any distraction and the focuses the readers more and more on the content and on the form of the blog. But somber look of the blog does facilitate the readers’ concentration and navigation. Besides, paid advertisement space, the blog also has a separate link for donations.
The serious content, in the journalism terms can be categorized as hard news, which is well presented and well balanced. The debate on the weather blogs are an alternative to journalism or not, seems to be ending with the professional look and journalistic credibility that Think Progress is gaining. A Journalisticc award further enhances its credibility and its ability of a journalistic voice through blogging. The editorial team also adds to its richness and insightful analysis of the subject through its experience and wide exposure to journalism practice.
Stuff white people like
In stark contrast to the previous blog, this blog is “soft news”. It basically lists some of the major things that white people like. It is a one- person view and hence is extremely subjective, and not so credible. But this blog has gained immense popularity, not because of its credibility but probably because of its entertainment fun value. It is listed as no 11 blog on Technorati and has already got over 30 million hits. The beginning of this blog is rather interesting and its success unexpected. This is what the writer of the blog says about how the blog and came into being in the interview posted on the blog:
My friend Myles Valentine and I were talking over IM about the TV show The Wire. Myles said he didn’t trust any white people who did not watch the show. Somehow we ended up talking about what they were doing instead of watching it and we came up with answers like “yoga,” “plays,” “getting divorced,” and “therapy.” I thought it was a funny idea for a blog and signed up for one at wordpress.com and just started writing.
On being asked if she expected it to be so popular, the writer answered, “No. I started it with the hopes that maybe 10 of my friends would read it. I never expected it to be read by this many people.
This explains the power of media and blogging as one of its tools.
The tone of the blog is humorous and funny and yet it sounds factual at times. The home page of the blog candidly confesses, “This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable.”
In the answering the question “ what white people like”, the blog enlists over 125 “stuff” like Netflix, Bob Marley, yoga, Having two last names, Religion their parents don’t belong to , Not having a TV and Difficult breakups in addition to many others. It is clear that the writer is using humor to write the daily narratives of life most likely in a Western country. The target audience is mostly likely to be students of Cultural studies, International students in campus and of course the white population.
The blog is extremely smart in raising revenues. It has relevant advertisement according to each blog posting. So the blog posting on Netflix had Netflix advertisements, being posed by Google whereas, the posting on Travelling has some travel agents whose advertisements were posted. This enables reaching a very targeted audience according to the content being provided on the web page.
The blog’s design is really easy to navigate with a book with the same title as the blog. It has a “full lists of what white people like” stub with posts, comment and search box. The design is simple and avoids any crowded look. It auotmativ\cally directs the readers to the posts being posted. The advertisements space is also limited and strategically located in small rectangular boxes to avoid any distractions. The templates have ay youthful pictures in bright colors such as organic food, dogs and natures’ shots. Mostly these pictures are the themes on which the posting are written on.
Conclusion
Both the above blogs are focused on different audience groups. These two sets of audiences may have been located in the same regions, the US and Europe, being the two most likely regions, yet their content is so different. Tone of language, design, readers participating and other factors also substantially different but blogging as a tool is common, and that underlines the power of blogging. It can handle such diversified content in the same form. This is revolutionary. The convergence of words, pictures videos and sound has never been so powerfully used in such a diversified content range. The resulting interactivity also makes it possible to adapt itself to the taste and nature of other readers, whose demographic information can be easily found put, given the online tools available to locate the reader’s location etc. This adaptability is the backbone of blogging. It can reach many audiences at the same time and yet remain focused on its core content.
Blogging will continue to mainstream the content and form that has not been able to reach the global audience due to the binding, rigid informational structures, which are now melting. In blogging, the global audience has found a global tool to reach the global demography. The stories, arts and culture, which were once considered distant and whose amalgamation with other popular forms, was perceived unlikely is now meeting its audience in all colors and textures, using a common connecting thread called blogging.
.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Muscial Hip-hop: In Dissonance & Harmony
Human experiences are a matter of every passing second. Such experiences are expressed in many forms. Music is one of the most popular forms in which the human experience is manifested.
Historically, it is a common knowledge that music is used by some of the great revolutionaries like Che Guevara for political purposes, Gandhi for social movements and even now special jingles are used by armed forces across the world to keep the cadets motivated, soldiers inspired and general public interested to join the force in solidarity.
In I love Hip Hop in Morocco, hip-hop as a genre of music was seen as a tool to express free speech, love for music and solidarity. Whereas in Dissonance and Harmony, music was seen as an expression of freedom under oppressive regime/occupation, it can be seen as a language that breaks the barriers of monotony of life as just being romantic-content and verbose form. As one artist says,” Music should be used to convey the society not just love all the time.”, we see that music is perceived as communicating the silence, communicating the horrors of war and turmoil and the urge to break out and “go away”. In both films, however, it is apparent that music and lyrics are perceived by the artists as something that can soothe, and fill the void, both individual and collective. Both films not only narrated the story of the artist’s journey to a Hip hop festival or to a distant city of Los Angeles, but films also narrated the conflicts within which each of the artists had to negotiate every day.
The only woman rapper in I love Hip Hop in Morocco doesn’t only wants to express her ideas of freedom and individuality through rap, but she also has to negotiate with her family, society and her gender. In Morocco, where hip-hop or any kind of music is not in a popular traditional culture, she is trying to be a part of hip-hop festival performing with other male singers to the public. Her family is supportive but the society at large isn’t. Members of another group Fnaire, chooses not to use certain words like “fuck’ which they perceived as not being a part of their language/culture. But hip-top itself is not part of their culture too. But hip-hop is their craft and they use it to self-express. Self expression is indeed a part of their faith and culture. But the form is problematic. And hence, intense negotiation.
DJ Key, another artist abandoned his work in architecture to follow his dream of hip-hop. This is yet another site of conflict between the pursuit of livelihood and the pursuit of dream and passion. In the midst of this conflict and negotiation, what emerges is an unlikely music in the form of a hip-hop concert in the midst of an uncertain audience and an nonsupporting general societal fabric.
The groups in I love Hip-hop in Morocco expresses it desires and love for the free speech through “ rebellion” social form of expression, perceived as Western ans alien, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted to their culture, faith and families. This can be seen as a conflict between the form and the content; what the artist is expressing may get a receptive audience in a Moroccan society. So the content has a social space and “social ears” but the form, the hip-hop, is apparently too alien/anti-culture/anti-faith and unacceptable and hence we see a lack of “social eye” for this. Also, the logistical support for the artist came from an American filmmaker and the American Embassy. However, all of the support was internally raised i.e., within Morocco. The other film we saw was different on this account.
Besides, while I love Hip-hop in Morocco is an attempt by rap artists to perform in their own country and create a free speech space for themselves, Dissonance and Harmony was set in a different site; War torn Iraq, highly politically volatile Egypt, Lebanon and Jordon. The artists from these countries are in the midst of physical ruin, social isolation and under their own government’s embargo on their artistic expression. An Iraqi guitar player was banned from the television, is one such blunt example of social exclusion of artistic expression in their own nation, which was torn apart by external forces as a result of international politics. In such circumstances, their art was affected with the economy, local culture, polity and general day-to-day life’s mobility. To worsen things, the globalised media created stereotypes that completely made these artists of the Arab countries almost inconceivable in the minds of the world specially the American audience, who could only imagine an Arab with a gun and nota a guitar or a violin. This documentary therefore can be seen as a bridge-builder, between the artists of the Arab world representing their Eastern societies and the artists of America and American audience representing their Western societies. Thus the film clearly tries to break the “perceived conflict” that is created by the popular media especially the news media in the minds of the Western audience.
In both films however we see that “Americans’ are trying to popularize music, Hip-hop in Morocco and other forms such rap in the Arab countries. This can still be read as cultural imperialism, by few if not many. For, in both cases, music was the focus and the major theme of the film’s narration. Whereas many will agree that music is not the major theme in a Muslim mind in a Muslim society. It is in fact a matter of debate and controversy. It is true that music doesn’t have a language and it therefore, transcends culture in many ways yet themes such family norms, prayers, social justice, charity and community are themes which would probably be more receptive in the Muslim world and its societies.
In Dissonance and Harmony I also observed a kind of “fascination” for the west specially the US in the language and affirmations of the Arab artists.(Can we understand this also as a produce of the popular media as it created Islamophobic images and sound..?)Their desire to come to the US and perform and make space for the Arab artistic expression in the minds of an American audience was remarkable. But it would have been more remarkable if their attempts to make a favorable artistic-image were directed to their resisting governments I particular and societies in general. Clearly for this the logistical support was not available. What was indeed available was a support system to come to Los Angeles, and do a show for the American audience. This can be viewed as conflicting but justified given the resistance from the authorities to the music as an artistic form of expression in the Arab culture in general.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Hard Focus Hard Realities:Chasing the Peace
Islam means peace. All its prophets including Abraham, Jesus and the last one, Muhammad propagated peace and social justice. Amongst its first revealed words of Quran are “Read” and “Pen”. Yet in the recent times of Islamophobia, all of these have been attacked. Islam is attacked for being a violent religion; terms like “fundamentalist” and “Islamic terrorism” are widely accepted as a standard terms used especially for “radical” Muslims in one part of the world or the other. Cartoons of the last prophet of Islam, a religion practiced by almost 1.5 billion people across the globe, have been depicted in the most objectionable way by a mainstream newspaper of a developed nation. The Quran is being termed as some kind of terror-text by movies like Fitna, produced by a Member of Parliament of yet another developed nation and recently a movie called Obsession, copies of which were slipped into thousands of newspaper across the US during the recent election time, was an attempt to propagate hate-speech against the fastest growing faith on earth.
In addition to all this, in our class-screening of Real Bad Arabs, what struck me was the sheer number of biased representations that were made against the Arab world in the Hollywood movies. Through these movies, the fears and observations of Edward Said in Orientalism were reinforced. We see Muslims, especially the young Muslims as angry, yelling, out-of-control, threatening, holding guns and knives draped in Yasser-Arafat-style- checks-scarf. They are shown as villains and in almost all the movies, they are showed to be killed in vast numbers, emphasizing and underlining the fact that they are too many in number and hence are a bigger threat. Edward Said, in his monumental work, Orientalism, has observed how the West especially the US has perceived the strange-looking Arabs with their strange-culture and strange- space as threat. Their different culture, instead of being perceived as a part of the diversity in cultures of the world, was being perceived as a “threateningly-different other”. This lens, through which Europe and America sees the Middle East as a threatening , backward, uncivilized, barbaric people, culture and space, all of which must be “fixed” in order to restore and retain their own freedom and peace was being termed as Orientalism, by Said.
These lenses were evident in the films that were featured in the documentary that we saw. Two of the most striking features were the representation of Muslim-youth, as being angry and aggressive, and women being suppressed and being objectified as mere sensual-objects like belle dancers.
The text Islamophobia shows a veiled woman as one of the symbols of Islam. The film also reinforces the same image as one of the images of Islam. Women are showed in Islamic veiled as oppressed or are shown as sensual-objects as belle dancers, being used by men, clad in traditional Arab dress. To my mind, this is mere stereotyping of a region with over 250 million people with different traditions, cultures and history. The practice of Muslim women covering their head with a scarf is a common practice .However, what is uncommon is the form in which the head is covered. This covering is variable across Middle East depending on the local culture and traditions. However, this differentiation is not seen in the images that appear in the documentary. The image being showed in the book as symbol is an image of a woman, who covers her full face with a black cloth with only eyes visible, is a deliberately selected image, which does not represent the whole of Middle East. Such a form of hijab is mostly visible only in a few countries like that of Saudi Arabia India and Pakistan. It is shocking how a generalized image of Arab Muslim women is represented.
The media is clearly biased on the factual representations. It strategically “failed” to inform its viewers the fact that until 18th century the worse kind of oppression was given to the women of Europe; Britain legally allowed its men to sell-off their women like a commodity whereas Swiss law legally allowed its men to have 50% legal share over their wives’ salary. And in the United States, voting rights to women were recent phenomenon and so was the right to acquire or buy property. Or, for that matter, even use their maiden name after marriage, without the husband’s permission. Furthermore, the closest to which a woman came, in terms of acquiring a political office in the US was in the recent elections when Sarah Palin was nominated by the Republicans as its candidate for the Vice Presidentship. Sadly enough, party lost the elections and the dream of seeing the first woman Vice-President, after over 200 years of feminist movement was instantly killed.
On the contrary, Pakistan, a Muslim dominated country had an Oxford-educated, woman-head, Benazir Bhutto, being democratically elected, not once but twice; Bangladesh, again a Muslim dominated country was headed by two different women namely Khalida Zia and Sheikh Hasina; Turkey had its Vice-PM as a woman and Iran had a women Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Abidi. Even historically speaking, the first Muslim person was a woman called Khadija, who was a working woman almost 1500 years ago, who gave a trade-contract to Prophet Muhammad, married him after being widowed twice and herself initiating a marriage proposal with him. Khadija was also the first women to wear the veil almost 15 centuries ago and demonstrate all the traits of a successful, modern, working woman. Yet in the long discourses and study of veil in the 21st century her portrait is missing. The whole architecture of the literature available on veil or hijab is completely devoid of the first woman, who practiced veil for the first time in history, and from whom all the discourses must start. All such work, therefore are manifested in unfairness and are unfit for any rigorous, academic investigation or any serious study.
Another misrepresentation in the Real Bad Arabs that struck me was that of Muslim men. They were shown as aggressors, violent and armed at all times. In the Hollywood movies like True Lies and Sleeper Cell, they are being shown as ruthless armed terrorists, who can strike anyone, anywhere. Even more biased are the news media reports like that of a Oklahoma City Attack, which claimed 168 lives and left over 800 people injured and is considered as the largest terrorist attack on American soil in history before the September 11 attacks. It also remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history. Within few minutes of attacks, the whole media machinery starting pointing fingers on some Middle eastern youth as the culprits behind the attack without doing any systematic investigation showing any kind of journalistic rigor. At the end of it all, it was found that the attack was carried-out by a local American, who grew-up in the same city and had connections with militia.
Such images and incidents only underline the ulterior motives and hidden agendas when it comes to representation of Arab people in general and Arab-youth in particular. The images of youth in the Hollywood movies being perpetrators of violence is in complete opposition to the fact that in the recent times, most of the Muslim regions such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza are under armed-conflict, mostly initiated by the West. Victims of these global-conflicts are mostly civilians, who are overwhelmingly Muslims, mostly children and youth. And, therefore, what we see in the movie-images are the actual victims, who are shown as perpetrators.
Edward Said's observation in Orientalism that such misrepresentation is intentional is crucial. To have such representation in the media and creating threat in the minds and hearts of people especially American people to justify huge military budgets and military aid to countries like Israel, which is responsible for the longest illegal occupation, according to the UN charter, seems intentional and the smell of greed of critical resources like oil can be felt. Such suspicions become more profound considering the strong corporate lobby in Washington DC for the production of oil and related products. A film like Syriana highlights such strong linkages and exposes the hidden agendas. Besides, works of John Pilger such as Palestine is still an issue and Fiske’s Palestine, Propaganda and the Promised Land are other monumental journalistic work which shows how Israel is funded by the US to torture civilians, especially the youth of Palestine to strengthen the state of Israel through illegal prosecution and occupation.
Furthermore, the representations that we see in the Hollywood films featured in the Real Bad Arabs can be seen as an extension of political propaganda tactic and to project Muslims as evil- villains, who can only be controlled by violence and hence it is justified to use violence to control them, as they pose a serious threat to the “civilized” world. In my view, not only are such representations dangerous for the world–peace but I think it also kills the potential of peaceful co-existence between several cultures. For, it only strengthens and supports Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization that instills fear and justifies violence against an unknown, unexplored, distant culture, probably just because it has precious resources and because it stands on, and practices its own culture, which may appear “different and strange” to the West.
In the midst of such misrepresentation John Pilger’s definition of Journalists as “not merely the messengers but also the people who understand the message and its hidden agendas” appear like a savior. It calls for courage and an insider’s insight for the truth to prevail. It is clearly not enough to switch to one television news channel and perceive as it as the window of the world. What is required is to go beyond what is shown and what is not shown, and read what is written and understand it in the light of what is not written. That will reflect the true nature of the news and real agendas of the News makers. Same is true for the so called Hollywood films, which, in reality works as propaganda and PR tactics in which defense personnel modifies scripts, builds characters and writes screenplays to change the public-perception of reality thus instilling a new- constructed reality. This is done for various reasons, most of which are political including boosting military- recruitment and propagating hate against the unknown, unexplored, different “threat”. Thus, in the end, perpetually marginalizing the future of peace and cross-cultural co-existence.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Inside the American cultural-laboratory: Where the pain meets the Doctor, the Hindi and the Slumdog.
It was an unusually bright sunny day in Athens, Ohio when I was sitting outside the laundry, waiting for my clothes to dry. I haven’t had enough sleep the previous night and the sun-rays, after the long period of continuous snowing, were rather intoxicating. I had assignments to finish. One of them was this very assignment; to write the field notes of a situational observation. And outside this huge laundry, where students came with bucket full clothes, I noticed a strange pattern; that all buckets were blue and that all of them were painfully heavy and that the carriers of the buckets, mostly the students, had to stretch their body really hard to be able to make it to the washing machines. They all struggled against the gravity and the weight of the bucket. Another strange pattern that was quite apparent was the presence of at least one book on the top of the dirty clothes, which did not look as dirty to me as the bucket itself, with brown and green mud-like marks on almost all buckets I noticed. Another observation that I invariably noticed was that the book was never read! People came with the book and the clothes, put the clothes in the machine and started talking on the their multi-colored, jazzy looking cell phones, while the book they brought along, peacefully lying on their laps or in their now empty bucket. I just wondered why add the weight of the book which is never to be read and pain the body?
Anyway, in the midst of this “patternful” laundry, I started writing my assignment from the notes I took while observing a meeting of undergraduate students with a local NGO representative, a few hours ago. Suddenly, I felt a stroke of pain in my left molar-tooth. I recalled that the pain had been there for quite some time and that I had been ignoring it. But this time it was not only sudden, it was sharp. So I decided to see a doctor. On my way, up the hill to the heath center, I decided to observe the heath center and write about it instead of the undergraduate meeting. So as a patient at the health center, I converted myself into an observer as well. As a patient, I think during my observation, I was also a participant in some ways.
So I reached the heath centre and pulled the door open. The door was rustic and made a big sound, which was equally rustic. The board hanging cautioned “No pets please”, which was reassuring that I am not in veterinary clinic! Within a span of 3 seconds, there was another rustic door which made another rustic sound. It seemed to me that these doors are some kind of a declaration of the clinic-staff for the arrival of the patients saying “You are here again, damn it?”. And on my way back, the door seemed to be saying, “Don’t you dare show up again, you sick people!!”.With those loud noises and my perceived meaning of them, I entered.
As I entered, I noticed a huge array of people, again, like in the laundry, mostly students. And yet again, like the clothes never looked dirty, none of these, supposedly patients, did not look sick at all. They were all reading business and entertainment magazines which were very decoratively kept on the shelves. Some of them were talking on phones and yet another set of people were only staring at the first two set of people I mentioned! Later I realized it is this last category of people which actually look ill at least in some ways; they looked lazy, tired, their eyes were drowsy and so on. But let me not run ahead of my discoveries. I entered the gate and went to the reception only to find a male receptionist. After many years of going to places with a Reception, this was clearly a break. I hadn’t seen a male receptionist in many years. And in this case, a white male receptionist was really exotic and rare. But these things do not matter if you have a terrible toothache. And therefore I immediately came out of my observer’s mode, and became a patient. I went to the reception and shared my shooting pain with the receptionist thinking he would stand up and rush me to the doctor. But he looked at me and in a matter- of- factly, routine manner asked, “ Are you a student?” and before I could answer ,he directed me to the computers, installed behind me which was his front asking me to fill-in the details. His 100% flat face which did not react at all to my shooting pain convinced me why we have more women receptionists across the globe than men; for a simple reason; they react at least to a shooting toothache!
With one hand on my left cheek, I turned and went to the computer to fill-in the details. I was happy to find “toothache” as one of the “reason to visit” option. It was soothing. After I filled in the details, I tried to go back to the receptionist but he as I took the first step towards him, he popped up and said, “ Sit there!” directing me to a bunch of chairs, which were already occupied by people I described above.
I went away from him and stood against one of the corners of the hall. I waited for another 5 minutes during which I heard the receptionist yelling people’s name and also the nurses in blue trousers and blue jacket coming in from the other direction and also yelling names. “Blue is certainly the color of the day”, I thought while being in a toothache- blues. Almost after 15 minutes, I heard one name being repeated yelled by the receptionist and no one was showing up. The name was yelled at least 5 times, piercing the silence of the pin-drop silent hall. The hall was really silent. The only sound that registered in my mind, besides this yelling, was the sound of the pain pounding my tooth!
After repeatedly yelling the same name several times, the receptionist picked up another name and then another. “Ricky!”, “Michael!”, “Sophia!”, “Martin!” and so on. My pain was now at its peak and reluctantly, I went to the reception to try my fate one more time. “I will go home and gargle with lukewarm water with salt in it, if he doesn’t take me to the doctor this time”, I told myself while heading the cream-colored desk where he sat. As I went to him and tried to convince him of my emergency-like situation if not fully 9/11- types- emergency, he punched in few details on his computer and almost ferociously looked at me to say, “Where were you?”. I said I was here. He irritatedly said he called my name several times, to which I enquired, “Which name?” ,to which he responded, with full confidence, “ Your name, Saied!” , pronouncing the name with a heavy American accent with all the force on the last “ed”. That was a mispronunciation. And that wasn’t the name my parent gave me 26 years ago. So it wasn’t wrong on my part not to respond to anything that was not pronounced Syed, my first name that he chose to pick or at least something close to it like Saeed, Said and so on. But with the pain already bothering me, I simply apologized and requested to send me to the doctor now. I also urged him to call me with my last name which was much easier to pronounce and I think it cannot be mispronounced, no matter how lyrical one tries to be with it.
To my surprise, I was told to wait. Again. And I did, against the same corner of the wall. But this time in almost 4 minutes, a woman with a stethoscope around her long neck and blue jacket came and yelled my name; correctly enough probably because she used my last name. I immediately stood up and went with her. She smiled and I tried to smile back but couldn’t. The pain blocked the smile completely. She took me to a room with a computer, three chairs and a table with lots chocolate cookies on it. Asking me to sit and she went out. I was alone with those cookies. I picked one to eat but realized I shouldn’t, given my toothache. So I grabbed some 10 of those cookies and stocked the inner pocked of my blue (yet again!!) coat. This, I did as a kind of a small revenge on the clinic that hasn’t treated me at all in the last 55 minutes now!! But in a few minutes, fortunately, the woman, who I thought was doctor because of her possession of a stethoscope, which, in my country, only doctors carry, returned, with another elderly woman. As I discovered they were both nurses. And one, who brought me to this room, was a trainee nurse. Now we all three sat there. The elderly nurse asked the trainee, loud enough and I could hear, to ask me, “What’s your student –ID?”
I waited for the trainee to ask me so that I could answer. She did ask and I did answer. And she punched that in to the computer. Then the elderly woman asked the trainee to ask me, “How are you doing today?”I again heard it but again waited for the trainee to ask. And when she did ask, I answered by lying and saying that I was “fine”. And yet gain the elderly woman asked the trainee to ask me, “What’s the problem that I have?”.This time I did not wait and looking straight into the eyes of the elderly woman I said, “I have terrible toothache and would really appreciate if you can do something about it!”.The elderly nurse looked at me and then calmly looked at the trainee winking with both eyes. The trainee smiled and started punching “that detail’ in to the computer. By now I understood that this was a training session going in progress and not my treatment may or may not be one of its manifestations. I prayed for it being one! After punching for over 3 minutes the trainee nurse asked to follow her. I did. As we walked down the corridor of the clinic for some 50 seconds, we came across a table. I saw one young man in his early twenties sitting. He looked weak and sleepy. But he sat straight on the table occupying only 30% of the table space. The trainee without looking at the table or me or the person on the table, directed me to sit while she slipped my file into the room on my left through an opening in the middle of the door. Without uttering any other word, she moved away from me and almost faded-out in the corridor. I was finishing almost 1 hour in the clinic with my terrible toothache only accelerating every minute while I was being engaged in all sorts of so called, medical- procedures of the health clinic.
Helplessly and by now, hopelessly, I waited for the doctor’s call. Another 15 minutes of silence passed during which the person beside me barely moved. He sat straight demonstrating some kind if a military regimentation in sitting position. I tried sitting like him for a few minutes but soon gave up. “There is no need for another pain”, I soothed myself, almost couching into the table with my fingers running through my oily hair and finally resting on my somewhat-sweaty neck.
And then, the door opened, a name was called. It was “Mike!”. I heard it clearly but by now I could not take any chances and I did not want to take any chances! So, I stood up while the person beside me also standing with me, hinting enough that he was Mike, I still asked him his name while both of us entered the doctor’s room. As we took the first few steps inside the doctor’s room, he said, clearly shockingly, “I AM Mike!!”. I said, “OK” and came out of the room.
After another 10-12 minutes, Mike came out. My name wasn’t called yet and I wondered painfully, “Lunch time??No??”.Thankfully, it wasn’t. I WAS called-in, again by the name which wasn’t mine! But I knew “it” was me. For, there was no one else waiting.
And there I was, finally sitting face- to-face with a doctor who would just give me a painkiller. But I again, I am rushing.
The doctor, like everyone else till now, was very calm-looking. And as humanely as possible, in that shooting pain, I hated it. But this time, I managed to smile and sit on the chair as the doctor directed me. The chair was at least 7 feet away from the doctor. This was an overwhelmingly long patient-doctor distance for me. I had to listen hard to the singing accent. Back home, this distance was never more than 2 feet! I took another deep breath and decided to continue the internal “struggle” with patience.
I did not want the doctor to ask me how I was and how my day was and all of that protocol questions so I went ahead and started speaking: Hi doctor! I have been ok for the last 6 months ever since I came from India. But since this morning I am having a terrible toothache and would appreciate if you can please do some thing it.
The doctor looked little bugged at my decision to speak first without being asked anything. After few seconds, which he utilized to utter a long “hmm..mm”, he started by asking a question and then another question and then another:
“Where is the pain? I wondered where else can a toothache? Heart? Kidney?
I politely said, “My tooth”.
“Which side?”
Left.
“At the end?”
Yes, the very end!
“ For how long?”
Since morning!!
“What kind of pain..is it bleeding?”
And, on and on…
“If only he sees my tooth, he would know all the answers in just one go. That’s what the doctors back home would do. See and not ask!” I thought to myself. So I went-on to suggest if “he would like to see my tooth please. That might help”. After another long “hmm..mm” he said, “Sure”. I spell that “sure” with only one “r”, but as he pronounced that word, I could hear at least five of them!
And then, he continued, “ theek ho.” .Those are Hindi words. He found out from my records that I am from India and assumed that I understand Hindi despite coming from a country, housing 1/6th of the world population and having at least 17 official languages, with 1.5 billion people speaking and understanding not more than one or two languages, one of which is mostly English!
“ Theek hai”, I corrected him and he nodded with a receptive smile. Those words mean “ok”
Anyway, he directed me to another room and told me to sit on a bed-like table. I almost jumped in excitement. He told me if I would stretch my mouth open and use my index finger to point where the pain is. But before he told me that, I had already done it. There I was, stretching my cheeks from inside, so that he could see clearly. But alas! He couldn’t! He pulled himself back and said, “It too dark there. I can’t see.”. I suggested using a lamp, which was safely parked next to the bed-like table. He said we could use it but it has a hot-light.
I responded with courage, “No problem sir. Please use it”. He agreed after deciding to keep the lamp little away from my face because the lamp had a hot-bulb radiating hot rays and not the cool florescent light, which normally are used in such cases. He again uttered “ theek ho”, but almost immediately correcting himself .. “oh o..theek hai.”, followed by his, now standard smile. He kept looking for over 3 minutes and then switched off the lamp, which was a hint to me that he was done. Then he pulled himself back and asked to come back to his room and again directed me to sit on the “distant” chair. I did without a choice. And then he started explaining to me what all he discovered in my mouth. Worse still, his explanations were so “medically jargoned” that I couldn’t believe my mouth was so “full of those alien and scary stuff”. While he was still speaking, I interrupted and asked, “So.. Sir what’s the treatment please?”. But without answering my question he went on and said few other things I heard but did not listen to at all. But after that he said, “It’s normal.”
I did not understand what he was referring to; the stuff in my mouth, his habit of not answering the questions, his pathological urge to tell everything.
Or, my pain?
Or, something else?
I knew my pain wasn’t normal, because it was shooting! And I didn’t care what else was what!! So I simply agreed with a nod to his telling me, “ Its normal.”
Finally I asked him if there’s any treatment for what I came here for. And for the first time in the last one decade (well YES, that’s what I felt at that moment!!) someone said that word; Prescription!! But again followed by three more Hindi words in lyrical accent: Elaaj hai na!, meaning “ Indeed, there is a treatment!”
I normally like non-native Hindi speakers, speak or try to speak Hindi to me but for some reasons this was an exception. Every demonstration that this doctor made of showing-off his knowledge of few phrases of Hindi that he learnt from his son who was in India for a few days, was the most annoying moment for me in that clinic on that day. And probably, as I now recall, anywhere, any time in my whole lifetime!
Finally, he handed over an A-4 prescription sheet to me and said I have to take these medicines twice a day for two weeks. As I said “ok” in a concluding tone while standing up holding my left cheek, he yet again demonstrated his knowledge of lyrical, accented Hindi, uttering this: Slumdog Millionaire dhekhee?”
Meaning, “Did you see Slumdog Millionaire?”
I had seen this film which was weaved around a story in India, almost three months ago, but to avoid any further conversation and gulp the painkillers he prescribed, as soon as possible, I said “No, not yet”. And he suddenly was delighted to find an opportunity to share the film he had seen the previous night!
“This is about “Moom-bai city”, he began, referring to a financial Indian city called Mumbai.
“Terrible life, you know. I was thinking it would a musical Indian film with dance and pleasant story but I was very disturbed.. you should watch and see..and ..and..”
“Does it really happen? “ Have you been to Moom-bai” “ My son was working there last year and he..”
I stood up, painfully smiling and interrupted, “Sir, I will watch this film for you. I have a class now.. Where would I get the medicines?..
While saying those last few words, I was almost out of his room leaving him behind me saying, “there’s a pharmacy out there behind the reception..Straight.. Left..Right..”
And the words faded out behind me, as I rushed out through the corridors.
I found the pharmacy and stood there. The pain of the tooth wasn’t as prominent now as the pain of my recent memories.
In the midst of those memories, I saw Mike, standing just at the pharmacy counter right in front of me; No movement at all. Militarily, straight as ever. I closed my eyes for few seconds, waiting for him to turn to me so that I could give him a farewell smile. But before my few seconds could pass, I heard an accented, melodious “ Yesss.. pleeease!”. I was finally getting the painkiller for the pain that was almost fully treated by the experiential richness of my graduate program’s Observation-assignment.
Everything was Normal.
Anyway, in the midst of this “patternful” laundry, I started writing my assignment from the notes I took while observing a meeting of undergraduate students with a local NGO representative, a few hours ago. Suddenly, I felt a stroke of pain in my left molar-tooth. I recalled that the pain had been there for quite some time and that I had been ignoring it. But this time it was not only sudden, it was sharp. So I decided to see a doctor. On my way, up the hill to the heath center, I decided to observe the heath center and write about it instead of the undergraduate meeting. So as a patient at the health center, I converted myself into an observer as well. As a patient, I think during my observation, I was also a participant in some ways.
So I reached the heath centre and pulled the door open. The door was rustic and made a big sound, which was equally rustic. The board hanging cautioned “No pets please”, which was reassuring that I am not in veterinary clinic! Within a span of 3 seconds, there was another rustic door which made another rustic sound. It seemed to me that these doors are some kind of a declaration of the clinic-staff for the arrival of the patients saying “You are here again, damn it?”. And on my way back, the door seemed to be saying, “Don’t you dare show up again, you sick people!!”.With those loud noises and my perceived meaning of them, I entered.
As I entered, I noticed a huge array of people, again, like in the laundry, mostly students. And yet again, like the clothes never looked dirty, none of these, supposedly patients, did not look sick at all. They were all reading business and entertainment magazines which were very decoratively kept on the shelves. Some of them were talking on phones and yet another set of people were only staring at the first two set of people I mentioned! Later I realized it is this last category of people which actually look ill at least in some ways; they looked lazy, tired, their eyes were drowsy and so on. But let me not run ahead of my discoveries. I entered the gate and went to the reception only to find a male receptionist. After many years of going to places with a Reception, this was clearly a break. I hadn’t seen a male receptionist in many years. And in this case, a white male receptionist was really exotic and rare. But these things do not matter if you have a terrible toothache. And therefore I immediately came out of my observer’s mode, and became a patient. I went to the reception and shared my shooting pain with the receptionist thinking he would stand up and rush me to the doctor. But he looked at me and in a matter- of- factly, routine manner asked, “ Are you a student?” and before I could answer ,he directed me to the computers, installed behind me which was his front asking me to fill-in the details. His 100% flat face which did not react at all to my shooting pain convinced me why we have more women receptionists across the globe than men; for a simple reason; they react at least to a shooting toothache!
With one hand on my left cheek, I turned and went to the computer to fill-in the details. I was happy to find “toothache” as one of the “reason to visit” option. It was soothing. After I filled in the details, I tried to go back to the receptionist but he as I took the first step towards him, he popped up and said, “ Sit there!” directing me to a bunch of chairs, which were already occupied by people I described above.
I went away from him and stood against one of the corners of the hall. I waited for another 5 minutes during which I heard the receptionist yelling people’s name and also the nurses in blue trousers and blue jacket coming in from the other direction and also yelling names. “Blue is certainly the color of the day”, I thought while being in a toothache- blues. Almost after 15 minutes, I heard one name being repeated yelled by the receptionist and no one was showing up. The name was yelled at least 5 times, piercing the silence of the pin-drop silent hall. The hall was really silent. The only sound that registered in my mind, besides this yelling, was the sound of the pain pounding my tooth!
After repeatedly yelling the same name several times, the receptionist picked up another name and then another. “Ricky!”, “Michael!”, “Sophia!”, “Martin!” and so on. My pain was now at its peak and reluctantly, I went to the reception to try my fate one more time. “I will go home and gargle with lukewarm water with salt in it, if he doesn’t take me to the doctor this time”, I told myself while heading the cream-colored desk where he sat. As I went to him and tried to convince him of my emergency-like situation if not fully 9/11- types- emergency, he punched in few details on his computer and almost ferociously looked at me to say, “Where were you?”. I said I was here. He irritatedly said he called my name several times, to which I enquired, “Which name?” ,to which he responded, with full confidence, “ Your name, Saied!” , pronouncing the name with a heavy American accent with all the force on the last “ed”. That was a mispronunciation. And that wasn’t the name my parent gave me 26 years ago. So it wasn’t wrong on my part not to respond to anything that was not pronounced Syed, my first name that he chose to pick or at least something close to it like Saeed, Said and so on. But with the pain already bothering me, I simply apologized and requested to send me to the doctor now. I also urged him to call me with my last name which was much easier to pronounce and I think it cannot be mispronounced, no matter how lyrical one tries to be with it.
To my surprise, I was told to wait. Again. And I did, against the same corner of the wall. But this time in almost 4 minutes, a woman with a stethoscope around her long neck and blue jacket came and yelled my name; correctly enough probably because she used my last name. I immediately stood up and went with her. She smiled and I tried to smile back but couldn’t. The pain blocked the smile completely. She took me to a room with a computer, three chairs and a table with lots chocolate cookies on it. Asking me to sit and she went out. I was alone with those cookies. I picked one to eat but realized I shouldn’t, given my toothache. So I grabbed some 10 of those cookies and stocked the inner pocked of my blue (yet again!!) coat. This, I did as a kind of a small revenge on the clinic that hasn’t treated me at all in the last 55 minutes now!! But in a few minutes, fortunately, the woman, who I thought was doctor because of her possession of a stethoscope, which, in my country, only doctors carry, returned, with another elderly woman. As I discovered they were both nurses. And one, who brought me to this room, was a trainee nurse. Now we all three sat there. The elderly nurse asked the trainee, loud enough and I could hear, to ask me, “What’s your student –ID?”
I waited for the trainee to ask me so that I could answer. She did ask and I did answer. And she punched that in to the computer. Then the elderly woman asked the trainee to ask me, “How are you doing today?”I again heard it but again waited for the trainee to ask. And when she did ask, I answered by lying and saying that I was “fine”. And yet gain the elderly woman asked the trainee to ask me, “What’s the problem that I have?”.This time I did not wait and looking straight into the eyes of the elderly woman I said, “I have terrible toothache and would really appreciate if you can do something about it!”.The elderly nurse looked at me and then calmly looked at the trainee winking with both eyes. The trainee smiled and started punching “that detail’ in to the computer. By now I understood that this was a training session going in progress and not my treatment may or may not be one of its manifestations. I prayed for it being one! After punching for over 3 minutes the trainee nurse asked to follow her. I did. As we walked down the corridor of the clinic for some 50 seconds, we came across a table. I saw one young man in his early twenties sitting. He looked weak and sleepy. But he sat straight on the table occupying only 30% of the table space. The trainee without looking at the table or me or the person on the table, directed me to sit while she slipped my file into the room on my left through an opening in the middle of the door. Without uttering any other word, she moved away from me and almost faded-out in the corridor. I was finishing almost 1 hour in the clinic with my terrible toothache only accelerating every minute while I was being engaged in all sorts of so called, medical- procedures of the health clinic.
Helplessly and by now, hopelessly, I waited for the doctor’s call. Another 15 minutes of silence passed during which the person beside me barely moved. He sat straight demonstrating some kind if a military regimentation in sitting position. I tried sitting like him for a few minutes but soon gave up. “There is no need for another pain”, I soothed myself, almost couching into the table with my fingers running through my oily hair and finally resting on my somewhat-sweaty neck.
And then, the door opened, a name was called. It was “Mike!”. I heard it clearly but by now I could not take any chances and I did not want to take any chances! So, I stood up while the person beside me also standing with me, hinting enough that he was Mike, I still asked him his name while both of us entered the doctor’s room. As we took the first few steps inside the doctor’s room, he said, clearly shockingly, “I AM Mike!!”. I said, “OK” and came out of the room.
After another 10-12 minutes, Mike came out. My name wasn’t called yet and I wondered painfully, “Lunch time??No??”.Thankfully, it wasn’t. I WAS called-in, again by the name which wasn’t mine! But I knew “it” was me. For, there was no one else waiting.
And there I was, finally sitting face- to-face with a doctor who would just give me a painkiller. But I again, I am rushing.
The doctor, like everyone else till now, was very calm-looking. And as humanely as possible, in that shooting pain, I hated it. But this time, I managed to smile and sit on the chair as the doctor directed me. The chair was at least 7 feet away from the doctor. This was an overwhelmingly long patient-doctor distance for me. I had to listen hard to the singing accent. Back home, this distance was never more than 2 feet! I took another deep breath and decided to continue the internal “struggle” with patience.
I did not want the doctor to ask me how I was and how my day was and all of that protocol questions so I went ahead and started speaking: Hi doctor! I have been ok for the last 6 months ever since I came from India. But since this morning I am having a terrible toothache and would appreciate if you can please do some thing it.
The doctor looked little bugged at my decision to speak first without being asked anything. After few seconds, which he utilized to utter a long “hmm..mm”, he started by asking a question and then another question and then another:
“Where is the pain? I wondered where else can a toothache? Heart? Kidney?
I politely said, “My tooth”.
“Which side?”
Left.
“At the end?”
Yes, the very end!
“ For how long?”
Since morning!!
“What kind of pain..is it bleeding?”
And, on and on…
“If only he sees my tooth, he would know all the answers in just one go. That’s what the doctors back home would do. See and not ask!” I thought to myself. So I went-on to suggest if “he would like to see my tooth please. That might help”. After another long “hmm..mm” he said, “Sure”. I spell that “sure” with only one “r”, but as he pronounced that word, I could hear at least five of them!
And then, he continued, “ theek ho.” .Those are Hindi words. He found out from my records that I am from India and assumed that I understand Hindi despite coming from a country, housing 1/6th of the world population and having at least 17 official languages, with 1.5 billion people speaking and understanding not more than one or two languages, one of which is mostly English!
“ Theek hai”, I corrected him and he nodded with a receptive smile. Those words mean “ok”
Anyway, he directed me to another room and told me to sit on a bed-like table. I almost jumped in excitement. He told me if I would stretch my mouth open and use my index finger to point where the pain is. But before he told me that, I had already done it. There I was, stretching my cheeks from inside, so that he could see clearly. But alas! He couldn’t! He pulled himself back and said, “It too dark there. I can’t see.”. I suggested using a lamp, which was safely parked next to the bed-like table. He said we could use it but it has a hot-light.
I responded with courage, “No problem sir. Please use it”. He agreed after deciding to keep the lamp little away from my face because the lamp had a hot-bulb radiating hot rays and not the cool florescent light, which normally are used in such cases. He again uttered “ theek ho”, but almost immediately correcting himself .. “oh o..theek hai.”, followed by his, now standard smile. He kept looking for over 3 minutes and then switched off the lamp, which was a hint to me that he was done. Then he pulled himself back and asked to come back to his room and again directed me to sit on the “distant” chair. I did without a choice. And then he started explaining to me what all he discovered in my mouth. Worse still, his explanations were so “medically jargoned” that I couldn’t believe my mouth was so “full of those alien and scary stuff”. While he was still speaking, I interrupted and asked, “So.. Sir what’s the treatment please?”. But without answering my question he went on and said few other things I heard but did not listen to at all. But after that he said, “It’s normal.”
I did not understand what he was referring to; the stuff in my mouth, his habit of not answering the questions, his pathological urge to tell everything.
Or, my pain?
Or, something else?
I knew my pain wasn’t normal, because it was shooting! And I didn’t care what else was what!! So I simply agreed with a nod to his telling me, “ Its normal.”
Finally I asked him if there’s any treatment for what I came here for. And for the first time in the last one decade (well YES, that’s what I felt at that moment!!) someone said that word; Prescription!! But again followed by three more Hindi words in lyrical accent: Elaaj hai na!, meaning “ Indeed, there is a treatment!”
I normally like non-native Hindi speakers, speak or try to speak Hindi to me but for some reasons this was an exception. Every demonstration that this doctor made of showing-off his knowledge of few phrases of Hindi that he learnt from his son who was in India for a few days, was the most annoying moment for me in that clinic on that day. And probably, as I now recall, anywhere, any time in my whole lifetime!
Finally, he handed over an A-4 prescription sheet to me and said I have to take these medicines twice a day for two weeks. As I said “ok” in a concluding tone while standing up holding my left cheek, he yet again demonstrated his knowledge of lyrical, accented Hindi, uttering this: Slumdog Millionaire dhekhee?”
Meaning, “Did you see Slumdog Millionaire?”
I had seen this film which was weaved around a story in India, almost three months ago, but to avoid any further conversation and gulp the painkillers he prescribed, as soon as possible, I said “No, not yet”. And he suddenly was delighted to find an opportunity to share the film he had seen the previous night!
“This is about “Moom-bai city”, he began, referring to a financial Indian city called Mumbai.
“Terrible life, you know. I was thinking it would a musical Indian film with dance and pleasant story but I was very disturbed.. you should watch and see..and ..and..”
“Does it really happen? “ Have you been to Moom-bai” “ My son was working there last year and he..”
I stood up, painfully smiling and interrupted, “Sir, I will watch this film for you. I have a class now.. Where would I get the medicines?..
While saying those last few words, I was almost out of his room leaving him behind me saying, “there’s a pharmacy out there behind the reception..Straight.. Left..Right..”
And the words faded out behind me, as I rushed out through the corridors.
I found the pharmacy and stood there. The pain of the tooth wasn’t as prominent now as the pain of my recent memories.
In the midst of those memories, I saw Mike, standing just at the pharmacy counter right in front of me; No movement at all. Militarily, straight as ever. I closed my eyes for few seconds, waiting for him to turn to me so that I could give him a farewell smile. But before my few seconds could pass, I heard an accented, melodious “ Yesss.. pleeease!”. I was finally getting the painkiller for the pain that was almost fully treated by the experiential richness of my graduate program’s Observation-assignment.
Everything was Normal.
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