"A BUTTON for your belly", announced the style section of New York magazine, and displayed the Navel Bindi Bliss (NBB) in action. Apparently coming hot on the heels of the navel ring, which is already passe, the NBB is a "bejewelled, adhesive-backed nugget that sits inside the belly button". It has "already brought some Subcontinental chic to the midriffs oi LiT Kim, Brandy, and Madonna too". Funny thing is I do not know of this as a Subcontinentalartefact, even though the marketeer in New York, Melody Weir, claims that "the bindi's little mirrors attract light and stimulate the third chakra, known to bring wisdom, energy and insight". The NBBs apparently fit both "innies and outies" in terms of navel contours, and—get a load of this—"are supposedly made by blind Nepalese."THE MOST popular couple for Indian photojournalists in the third week of February were the father-daughter-combo of Panditji and his daughter Anoushka. Take a look at the (good and bad) photography as reflected in the various Indian national English dailies. The Asian Age, obviously, could have done better, The Hindu saw it fit to advertise a television programme.
WILL CHHETRIA Patrakar invite an Islamic fatwa upon himself (there are also Hindu fatwas out these days) if he dares label as despicable, atavistic and barbarous the new round of baying for the blood of the unfortunate person of Salman Rushdie? From Iran's nastier ayatollahs all the way to one Mr Abu Asim Azmi, president of the Maharashtra unit of the Sa m aj wad i Party (see him spitting in the picture), they are all involved in calling for the head of a man. Is there no court of law that dares take cognisance of this oral bloodletting? What will the stupor-laden justices of the International Court of Justice in The Hague do if suddenly confronted with a referral? In the meantime, here's hoping that the bullets and daggers will never hit their target, and may Salman die of natural causes, many, many years hence.
THE MOST-USED picture in the press in February, Subcontinent-wide, was probably that of a pregnant Brazilian lady, Luciana Gimenez. She is six months gone, and mothering a child whose father is allegedly Mick] agger. Lest I too be accused of voyeuristic leanings (willy-nilly, I may become that, the number of times I am having to comment on use of Northern flesh by our Southern editor-sahebs), the picture of Ms Gimenez is reproduced here only in miniature.
FOR ONCE, a volunteer development group without a godawful acronym (although there is a ferocious tantric goddess as 'logo'). Solar Sisters is a Kathmandu-based programme which takes contributing (Western) participants to remote locations in Nepal, by bus and on foot, and introduces renewable solar energy technologies in rural households.
"BOO" TO Reuters for lifting from a Kuensel story and reporting on "mercenaries" from eastern Nepal active in anti-government demonstrations in early February in Southern Bhutan. "Mercenary" means person from another nationality fighting (a government) for pay. Well, these people from "eastern Nepal", were most likely Bhutancsc Lhotshampa refugees from the UNHCR-run camps located there. Not likely that they would have to be paid by anyone to go demonstrate for their eviction nearly a decade ago by Thimphu. Loose second-hand reporting from Reuters, an organisation one expects a bit more from than this.