Does the US have a future?

Failure after failure after failure. Bubbles that end in busts. Wars that aren’t won. Stimuli that don’t stimulate. All together plunging the United States into the worst economic slump since the 1930s. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, America faces a geopolitical rival that is also an effective economic competitor — a combination not seen since the kaiser’s Germany.

Into this grim situation, Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum step forward to offer hope. Or do they?

For there is an unnerving tension at the core of That Used to Be Us, a discordant emotional counterpoint. I don’t think it’s a disagreement between the authors so much as a disagreement within each of them.

Friedman and Mandelbaum repeatedly describe themselves as “optimists”, albeit “frustrated” optimists. Yet the stories they tell repeatedly suggest very different and less reassuring conclusions.

The main line of the book’s argument will arrive with congenial familiarity. Friedman is one of America’s most famous commentators, Mandelbaum one of its most distinguished academic experts on foreign policy. Their views – and their point of view – are well known. They speak from just slightly to the left of the battered American political centre: for free trade, open immigration, balanced budgets, green energy, consumption taxes, health care reform, investments in education and infrastructure.

Full review here Business Standard

America Days in Madurai

The U.S.Consulate General, Chennai, is organising a four-day programme "America Days", showcasing its cultural and educational resources, at the American College (AC) and the Gandhi Museum in Madurai from Sep 28. 


The event, being organised for the first time out side the state capital, will given an insight into the U.S Consulate's cultural and educational resources, including those of the American Library and the US-India Education foundation (USIEF). 


The AC will host the majority of the events on its campus including:creative teaching / learning workshops for teachers and teacher educators; English Language teaching workshops; Higher education in the United States and student visas, and daily screening of Oscar award-winning American films. The programme will also feature photo exhibitions, quiz contests, poetry and speech competitions for school and university students, US Consul General Andrew T.Simkin told newsmen here today.


Full report here  IBNLive

Obama, Palin on Archie comics cover

Ever imagined US President Barack Obama and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin sharing a milkshake? Well, they do in an upcoming edition of Archie comics.

Obama and Palin (Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 US elections), are reportedly dragged into a campaign battle between Archie Andrews and Reggie Mantle, who are both running for class president of Riverdale High in the December issue, the New York Post reported on Wednesday, Sep 22.

"Things aren't going so well for Archie," said the comic's editor-in-chief, Victor Gorelick.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Tagore festival from Sept 24-Oct 3 in LA

The 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore will be celebrated on a large scale week-long festival from September 24 to October 3, 2010. The festivities will feature photographic exhibition, screenings of films based on Tagore’s literary output, Gandhi and Tagore conference to assess Tagore’s contemporary global relevance, Rabindranath’s Gitanjali, songs by Rabindrasangeet singers, Chandalika dance drama, and Gujarati celebration of Tagore’s Legacy on different days, different time and at different venues.

The festival is being organized by Nalanda International founded by Navin Doshi, businessman, author and philanthropist, and Debashish Banerji, Dean, Nalanda University of Philosophical Research. The festival will explore the contemporary relevance of Tagore and celebrate his wide-ranging and profound contribution to humanity. The Institutional co-sponsors of the festival are UCLA Department of Engineering, Loyola Marymount University, Doshi Professorship, Shah Foundation established by Rashmi Shah, and CSU Long Beach Yadunandan Center founded by UKA Solanki.

Film directors, speakers, dancers, singers and other performers are specially coming from India to take part in the festival. The festival will open on September 24 evening 7pm with photographic exhibition at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles by Padamshri art historian Dr. Praapditya Pal.

Full report here India Journal

Love and longing in Los Angeles

A delightful read about self-discovery and search for identity.

Seasons of Flight is an account of a journey undertaken by Prema from a scenic Nepali village to a culturally and socially multi-hued metropolis in the U.S. The journey in this case is not only the geographical distance, but also the mental and the cultural one.

When Prema's name is drawn in a diversity lottery for green cards, she decides to leave her village, a caring lover, an absent sister who has joined a Maoist group, an old father and memories of her long dead mother for a place where she will be a complete stranger.

She arrives in the U.S. and finds that things are not as she imagined them to be. And so begins her struggle to survive and find her place in this totally different and new milieu.

Confused, she is never being sure about what she is doing. But one thing she is sure about is that she is not going back. As she drifts from one place to another, physically and psychologically, she meets people with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and tries to understand the “American way of life”.

Full report here Hindu

REVIEW: Roadrunner

REVIEW

Roadrunner: An Indian Quest In America   
Dilip D'souza
HarperCollins
Rs 399
ISBN: 9788172239060
Paperback

Blurb 

What do we learn when one great democracy looks at another? Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal Democracy in America answered the question 1800S. Today, India is the world's other great democracy, and maybe the answers are different. 

Through stories large and small, this book shows us America as refracted through the eyes of an Indian who is critical but not intolerant, understanding but not starry-eyed. From gawking at wall murals by German World War II POWs in Texas to getting to know the bikers for Christ at the annual bike carnival in Sturgis, from charting the history of immigrant Icelanders to driving a fire truck in a quiet mountain town, D'Souza travels American roads, discovering old cultures and new concerns in one of the most revered and reviled nations in the world today. 

More important, he explores the lessons in that process, for India and for readers everywhere, as he searches for meaning and nuance in ideas like patriotism and being liberal, in a country's sense of self.Passionate and perceptive, wry and empathetic, this book is ultimately about what it means to belong. Wherever you are. 

Reviews/ Interviews

India, Indiana Hindu 

And that is what makes Roadrunner interesting: the fact that, for a change, it is a “Man goes on long journey” story. It is the United States, seen from the outside in, by an Indian like you or me. Someone who could be an old friend: intelligent, sensitive, observant, and above all, sharing a similar world-view. It is a reversing of the gaze, as it were. 

Death Ends Fun India Today 

D'Souza confines himself largely to his American experience, only occasionally using a comparative compass, to try and make sense of post-9/11 America and its impact on Americans in general. He doesn't always succeed but it is not an easy task. He finds, predictably, bigotry and tolerance, hatred and love, tragedy and triumph in equal measure. Where he scores is that he hires a car to touch base with towns and places few people have heard of. Like Greenwood near Selma, the origin of the Blues and the civil rights movement, where he arrives a a charismatic Barack Obama is chasing an impossible dream: to become the first Black President of America. This is Alabama where white racists savagely subdued black civil rights marchers. Today, they hand out cards saying "Bama for Obama". 

One for the road Hindu

The Indian subcontinent has been an endless source of exotica for travel writers of all times - from the colonial to the present when the remotest corner of the world is just a Google search away. Those of us who are feeling a bit exhausted by being the constant target of this gaze may be enthused by the very idea behind Dilip D'Souza's "Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America".

Not that Dilip started his travel writing project with any agenda of "reversing the gaze", to borrow an esoteric phrase from post-colonial literary criticism. "I didn't think of it like that when I was travelling there at least. Having lived in America for more than 10 years, I felt the need to understand better what has become my second home," says Dilip. "But I guess it could be read like that," he adds after a pause. Through a series of stories about people and places from across the United States, the book offers a view of the vast country that is not inspired by awe, and yet is not dismissive. The stories are sometime funny (check out the chapters "Opening Lines" and "Fifth Wife"), sometimes poignant and sometimes even insipid. 

Country road took me home Mint 

...the Roadrunner template is simple: Hit the American highways, meet the American people, find the Indian parallel and there you have it, a compilation of 36 essays that traverse the breadth of the US. Steering clear of run-of-the-mill parachute journalism but not quite going the regular travelogue way, Roadrunner is perhaps best read as a highly individual account of a country and its people and everything in between, from politics and pedagogy to garbage disposal and the Grateful Dead.