Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Despite of its love affair with cricket, India is a big failure in sports. Since 1896, India has won only 26 olympic medals, most of them in field hockey. How to explain such poor performances since so long ? There is no obvious explanation. Many ( more or less valid) reasons could be advanced though : poverty, lack of political will, education ( succeeding in school is considered to be much more important than playing any game),…

Yet, despite of their meagre sports results, Indians have a competitive spirit. ( For centuries, the Rajput and Maratha princes have been known as fierce warriors. And Indian traders have been successful through the centuries…) But why struggling to win over an opponent for something as “superficial” as sports ? Indeed, the Indian tradition teaches it is much more beneficial to achieve your spiritual potential by dominating your desires, overcoming your fears,…than surpassing yourself physically.  Since centuries, pandits and gurus have explained that the way to progress was spiritual achievement…

Dirty wars: the world is a battlefield, a new film by the Nation‘s brilliant investigative reporter  Jeremy Scahilland directed by Rick Rowley (of Big Noise Films) has won this year’s Sundance Film Festival Prize for best cinematography in a US documentary.  The film, which goes on release later this year, focuses on the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Joint Special Operations Command and other covert forces in waging undeclared wars around the globe.  More information and updates here.  Here’s the ‘long synopsis’:

Dirty Wars follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestseller Blackwater, into the heart of America’s covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond. With a strong cinematic style, the film unfolds through Scahill’s investigation and personal journey as he chases down the most important human rights story of our time.

Along the way we meet two parallel casts of characters…

There is next to no training for would be drivers,… and the test is a farce. Licences are invariably obtained through bribery, and as a result there are real dangers on the roads and streets from poor judgement and suicidal manoeuvres. The general rule on Pakistan’ s roads is “might is right”. Pakistani newspapers are full of stories of buses “turning turtle”, followed invariably by the lines “driver is absconding”. Indeed, accidents often produce large and angry crowds, so the best way to avoid being beaten up ( if not worse) is to flee… ( The same is true in India where sometimes the newspapers relate the tragic end of truck drivers who have been killed by the crowd because they were responsible of a road accident !)

In theory, vehicles drive on the left ! But many drivers tend to forget the good manners… Moreover, pedestrians, cattle and a wide range of other…