‘From a Calcutta brothel to a New York University,’ reports the BBC today on one of the eight children who were featured in the 2004 documentary Born into Brothels, a remarkable film about finding hope through art for some of the most unfortunate young residents of a red light district in Calcutta. During shooting, the children were, through the Director Zana Briski’s charity Kids with Cameras, taught photography and equipped with cameras to record their lives on film—all with Briski’s underlying aim of offering them a way to discover opportunities beyond their presumed fate of cyclical poverty and prostitution. Rotten Tomatoes.com summed the film up well when it called it a story ‘marred by tragedy and heartbreak,’ but ‘ultimately a testament to the immense power of art, even in the bleakest of environments.’

And in its synopsis of Born into Brothels, the movie website makes special mention of one of the title characters—Avijit Halder, who at the time was ‘a rotund, serious 11-year-old of immense talent,’ it says, with a particularly sad story, having experienced his mother’s murder by her pimp during the filming. 

And it’s that Halder, now a 20-year old college student at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, who is the subject of the aforementioned BBC piece. Halder left Calcutta for the US back in 2005, and supported financially by Kids with Cameras, and then more recently with a grant from NYU, he has managed to find prospects and dreams far beyond what would have been available to him in his hometown. According to this latest update, the budding filmmaker, who eventually wants to create his own film about prostitution and circumstance, is also compiling a series of photos taken in India and the United States while learning Spanish and French.

This kind of story is just the perfect sort of uplifting tale to come across on my Monday morning commute--and it’s even nicer to hear that Kids with Cameras will soon be opening a school in Calcutta called Hope House. This will be, according to them: ‘a nurturing safe haven where up to 100 girls from Calcutta's red light district can come to live and develop the strength and skills to change their own circumstance.’

Muslim fundamentalists should drink wine to become more tolerant, says Roger Vernon Scruton—philosopher and current scholar at the American Enterprise Institute—in Decanter magazine this month.
 
In the piece, Scruton reminds us of, in his opinion, a long-gone 'laughing, tolerant' era of Islam past; like that captured in classics like One Thousand and One Nights, and by historic ‘wine-loving’ Muslims such as 11th century philosopher Avicenna.

He goes onto predict that without a revival of such ‘traditions’ in Muslim cultures, the Koran will ‘continue’ to be misunderstood along with other potential detriments:

'Without the benefit of wine it’s hard to seize this truth; harder still to recognise the obligation that it imposes, to be gentle with others, and to allow them their own space.'

Meanwhile, in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia, there seems to be a way to enjoy a grape-derived beverage that may not be so…controversial. According to a recent article in the Jakarta Post, a small town in East Java is using leftover grapes from juice-making to create a coffee beverage.

Locals there call it ‘grape coffee,’ and the waste-reducing drink is made from dried and ground-up red, green and black grape remnants. The powder is described as having ‘a pleasant smell like the aroma of coffee beans roasted using a firewood stove,’ and is made like instant coffee.

One fan also points out the potential health benefits of the caffeine-free grape coffee, attesting that drinking the grape coffee made him feel ‘fresh because grapes are rich with antioxidants.’

I find that a good quality wine does have a relaxing and rejuvenating effect on my mood—although I’ve not tested it for tolerance. And there’s little chance I’d find a cup of non-caffeinated coffee as satisfying, no matter how healthy it is.

After briefly mentioning the phenomenon of reality TV in India last month, I’ve since had a chance to speak with our India correspondent Shreyasi Singh about it in more depth. And I was delighted to find that she had some insightful thoughts to share on the subject:

Do you watch much reality TV?

Yes. I make sure to catch a few episodes of each to see what the buzz is about. Actually, the reality television show boom already has two distinct categories: 1. talent hunt shows, 2. the more candid camera types. I’ve actually followed a few shows of the earlier category diligently such as Indian Idol, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, etc.

These have in fact done a lot of good for the country in two ways—one, by giving budding talent a platform to get noticed, and by infusing younger, newer talent into our entertainment industry. Of course, there’s still staging of drama, fights between judges and issues with contestants…

What about the other category? The ‘candid camera’ types?

Over the last year or so, many shows in the second category which is more disturbing, intrusive, lowest common denominator type television have sprung up such as Big Boss (an Indian version of Big Brother), and Indian versions of Get Me Out Of Here, Moment Of Truth, etc. The furore over indecent language, explicit content and controversial issues have emerged from these shows. To be honest, I find most of them unwatchable.

So would you agree that these shows are damaging to Indian culture/values?

Well, I personally don't think they are damaging to Indian culture. I think they’re an assault on people in general. Things like glorifying promiscuity and sexual infidelity—I think that would be worrying in most countries. A robust culture needs to come to terms with its popular culture but, that popular culture can sometimes give a negative image of many situations and circumstances to a younger, more impressionable audience.

What is the general buzz right now regarding reality TV in India?

The intelligentsia and media critics bash the shows, but what's also true is that almost all of them have been huge money-spinners, and have helped networks that showed them come out on top in an extremely competitive entertainment business in India.

Shreyasi’s blog on India will debut on The Diplomat website later this month. Her latest feature story is on women (or lack thereof) in the Indian military: ‘Women Not Worth the Money.’

Very rich woman in China. Feng shui master & ex-lover. Massive fortune. All embroiled in a heated battle over a questionable will. News of the made-for-movie sort from China has caused quite a stir among international media outlets today. Not surprising, as it’s got all the sensational elements needed to attract interest across the world—and even from more reputable sources including the BBC and AFP.

But this all has me wondering whatever happened to Feng shui. I recall a few years ago in the West it was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, from lifestyle magazines to buzz around office water coolers. And the talk covered a lot of ground—everything from how to harmonize your closet to Feng shui-‘ing’ dinner. But while the original principles of the practice are rooted in ancient China—dating back thousands of years–the West’s fascination with Feng shui seems to have died off relatively quickly. Perhaps it has in part to do with the kind of scepticism voiced by American writer Robert Todd Carroll in his book The Skeptic’s Dictionary:

‘Feng shui has also become another New Age "energy" scam with arrays of metaphysical products …offered for sale to help you improve your health, maximize your potential and guarantee fulfilment of some fortune cookie philosophy.’

In China though it is still going strong, at least according to Xing Jingjing, a woman in her twenties whose father is a prominent Feng shui master in Taiwan. Xing has recently opened up shop in a busy business area of Nanjing, where she offers environmental consultation services, guided by Feng shui principles. She asserts: ‘At present, many universities offer Feng shui courses. Feng shui is very popular in Taiwan, and will definitely be recognized in the Chinese mainland.’

That may be good news for the aforementioned Feng shui master Tony Chan, who can always go back to his area of expertise if—as it seems likely—he doesn’t get a piece of that fortune.

Upon seeing a photo from an essay titled ‘14 Stunning Photos of Afghanistan’ earlier this week, I was reminded of how so many great, hard-to-find photos from around the world are actually shot by the US Army. It turns out (according to some on-line sources) that aspiring army photographers must first enlist, but once in, have access to some of the finest photography training there is available.

Meanwhile, on a related note, I came across another interesting photo essay in The New York Times by photojournalist Adam Ferguson, who creates a compelling story using both words and images from a school based in Afghanistan. I highly recommend reading his thoughts accompanying his photos of Afghan girls in school.

Take this great excerpt for example:

‘…following a group of girls through cathedral-like light, watching faces be illuminated and then dropped into shadow. It was one of those moments as a photographer in Afghanistan when there was no man to tell me I couldn’t photograph the girls, no gatekeeper, and in their numbers the girls seemed to be free of taboos.’

To get some context for this particular piece, I also recommend reading the related article, ‘Hazaras Hustle to Head of Class in Afghanistan.’ It details a ‘new generation’ of Afghan youth, of the Hazara ethnic minority, (which makes up over a quarter of the Kabul population) still greatly marginalized in Afghanistan, but slowly moving towards equal status after the expulsion of the Taliban—in part through education. There’s apparently a particular emphasis amongst the Hazaras on educating women the same way as with men. I think that’s positive news, considering approximately only 1 in 7 Afghan women over the age of 15 can read and write.