THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Did you catch the “monkey reviving his electrocuted friend” video? If you didn’t, you can watch it in the link below. Do you think you could have reacted with that much common sense to heal a human who was electrocuted? Monkey saves electrocuted friend: http://fox6now.com/2014/12/25/monkey-saves-other-monkey-after-being-electrocuted/ While watching this video, I was struck by how calm and collected The Healer was. Besides being surrounded by a large audience of unruly, loud humans, and besides being aware that he (or she?) is in an urban environment which could turn threatening to a monkey any minute, he continues with the work of resuscitating his friend without missing a beat. The Healer knows, first of all, that the monkey underneath his hand is alive. That despite looking like a potato crisp, his friend is alive and well. Secondly, he doesn’t rush in and use the Western method of resuscitation: thumping the monkey on the heart would have been so easy, and wou...

  I don’t understand economics all too well, beyond what a sporadically employed writer can be expected to understand. Having said that, I think that puts me in a unique position to explain to you, in simple terms, what I see unfolding before me in the world of currency. The American dollar, shored up by oil and its free access to the printing press, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, is under enormous pressure. Despite assurances that all is well, and despite the rising stock prices, insiders seem to think the dollar’s day is over. All over the world, nations have started to use their own national currencies to trade, which means that America’s middleman fees have been eliminated. In addition, there’s the questioning of where the “safe haven” is, in reality. With the USA printing 17 trillion dollars in the last decade, under the confident assumption that its economy would always be the eternal safe haven, there’s an oversupply of dollars. And what happens if you print ...

I recently read an The Economist blog post explaining homeopathy. The tone was condescending, and derogatory. I felt it didn’t do justice to a healing system that seems to have helped many people. I was also healed by a homeopathic doctor—rather to my surprise. I share the story with you so you can make up your mind about the intangibles that make up the process of healing. In 2007, I attended the Berlinale Film Festival. I was part of a contingent of filmmakers that attended the Talent Campus, which was a “campus” aimed to bring together young filmmakers and provide them with access to mentors from different filmic disciplines. We saw Gael Garcia Bernal, Frederick Wiseman and Wim Wenders. We heard the composer who’d done the music for “Peter Pan,” and we met the cinematographer of “Red, Blue and White.” The time I spent in Berlin was fun, and took my mind away somewhat from an incomprehensible accident that had killed a close friend of mine from college on New Year’s eve. ...

The CIA was the mastermind behind uncountable assignments that fell governments, assassinated heads of states, ran drug-smuggling cartels, caused the governments of small countries to collapse, derailed polio vaccination programs by using them as cover for covert operations, killed so many people observers estimate the total death toll of the US funded wars to be larger than the Nazis’ death toll combined, and in general caused mayhem and murder through 50 years of the last century, and a decade of this one. The time has come to end this institution. The reason is simple. The world has changed in the last 60 years. These sorts of tactics that worked in an era where secrecy was possible, are now actively visible, and dangerous, to the state utilizing these methods of covert warfare. These methods are dangerous because everyone can view them, and be cognizant of them, within the span of an hour, in this connected world. Countries all over the world have access to quick inform...

A recent article by Sudheer Sharma in the Nepali press noted that unlike the 60s, when Jawaharlal Nehru protested vociferously when Nepal opened the Tatopani trading point with China, there was no protest from India this time around as China starts to build the Kerung-Rasuwagadh pass. This road links Lhasa to Kathmandu, and then via Birjung to India. India, in other words, has matured diplomatically since the days of Nehru. Modi’s vision of a pan South Asian neighborhood prospering together in many ways is the same as Xi Jinping’s vision of an interconnected Asia. The Chinese have been very interested in the Silk Routes trading route, and in opening up ancient trade routes that used to link different parts of Asia. They want to reach markets that for historical reasons became closed to each other even though they are closer in geographical space. China and India are closer to one another than they are to Europe or the United States--indeed, they share the border in disputed...

I have friends who don’t eat honey because they feel the pain of the bees, whose food is being stolen. And then I have friends who come from communities where traditional ritual sacrifice is necessary to keep the wheel of life turning. As a Brahmin, I grew up in a household where eating buffaloes, chicken and pigs were forbidden. Brahmins don’t eat buffalo meat because buffalo is considered to be a bovine animal. Cows cannot be killed, or eaten, by Brahmins. All we were allowed were goats, and that too a few times a year. That’s why Dashain was special: the goat sacrifice was eagerly awaited because the meat was a rare treat, and also because it did taste special because it had been offered to the goddess. I now live in a mostly vegetarian household where only my father and I eat meat. We cook meat in the home—usually chicken, since ideas have changed, chicken being considered healthier—about 4 times a year. Before, Brahmins considered chicken dirty and forbidden becaus...

A woman in my neighbourhood told me she went to the Ward Office to get her Depo Provera shot. The health worker there said: Have you had the medicine for elephantitis yet? She replied: No, we got some but my husband threw it away. So the woman gave her a dose of elephantitis vaccine, right then and there. Note this incident occurred in an urban area of Kathmandu. The woman in question resides miles away from the tropical area where elephantitis occurs. Why was the Ward coercing people in Kathmandu to take elephantitis vaccines? According to the same woman, she went home and walked to the water tap, and she felt so dizzy and strange she “couldn’t recognize anybody.” Besides the side effects that nobody’s talking about, its also clear there are incentives for health workers to give unnecessary and inappropriate vaccines to people. These health workers are unknowing “marketers” in a chain of social marketing set up by a million dollar pharmaceutical company in some faraway country w...