Surfing took a baby step or the first dip at the first India Surf Festival in Puri this month. Indian surfers, from states along India’s long coastline, came together for the first time, in one place. From fishermen’s sons to professional surfing instructors, they do not fit the classic, global image of surfers we have. They are uniquely Indian. Meet the first generation of Indian Surfers. Some day, if the sport takes off India, these guys will be the one’s responsible for making it happen, sprinkled as they are along our coastline.

I wish there were more surfing picture but excellent portraits. 

(via Mother India Father Surf)

1. Be rich. Very rich. Money may not buy happiness, but a Crore or two lying around doesn’t hurt.

2. Don’t buy anything without bargaining. Nothing. It is just against the Indian spirit. If your kid asks for a school trip to Egypt, propose Jaipur. If he turns out to be a bargainer, raise the offer to Aurangabad.

3. Have lots of kids. You must have a doctor, a lawyer, an police officer, and a magistrate in the family. Cant rely on outsiders anymore.

Tucked between a strip mall Starbucks and a Jamba Juice, at the back door of a Chipotle Grill, Bombay Bowl is one of a number of Indian restaurants whose owners are thinking big no matter how small they are. Borrowing the assembly-line format, customized service and chipper style of national chains like Subway, they plan to make dals, curries, chutneys and flatbreads into fast-food choices from coast to coast.

“This is an intriguing little video summarizing the hypothesis of a new study by Vamsi Vakulabharanam. It looks at the puzzle of why China and India are exceptions to the Kuznets curve, that economic development at first increases income inequality but then starts to produce less disparity. But that did not occur in India and China. Vakulabharanam argues that the difference lies in changes in institutional arrangements, and the inflection point was roughly 1980.” (by INETeconomics)

Legless B-Boy Dancer (by diagonaluk)

A familiar scene in the two Houses of Parliament is that of quietly dressed persons heading for the central table at a brisk pace—but with a careful and correct bearing—taking their seats, scribbling in their note-books for a while and then making an exit as quick and unobtrusive as their entry. But not many people know who are these men and women apparently always in a hurry and what is the purpose of these frequent short trips. They are the Parliamentary Reporters engaged in the momentous task of preparing a complete and authoritative record of what transpires in the highest deliberative and legislative body of the country.

A fascinating look into managing the various languages the MPs use.

The past few weeks have been pretty ordinary for me. You know how it is. Sometimes you hit that humdrum phase in life, when all you do is wake up, go to work and hang out with Shah Rukh Khan at Mannat.

Alright, I’m kidding. I meant Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor.

This happened because I was part of the writing team that scripted a recent Bollywood award function, hosted by the two stars. I must refer to these as the Slimfare Awards, because we in the media hate to acknowledge the existence of rival companies, unless we beat them in sales.

The reality is just very different on the ground. People will get their nationalistic backs up about this post, but the stats don’t lie. It’s not a matter of national pride, it’s a matter of business reality right now. Pretending a country is something it isn’t yet, doesn’t help any entrepreneurs trying to build companies there. In fact, it’s hurt India in the past because investors and Web companies have come in enthusiastically and then pulled out once the promises of the billion person economy didn’t translate.

Stay ahead with The Hindu (by The1878Hindu)

BURN!

Rushdie’s video image was not allowed at the Festival, but he was on television tonight in India, being interviewed on NDTV, and he spoke out angrily about the “unscrupulous” Muslim groups that threatened him, and an Indian government that failed to act. Speaking from London, Rushdie called the whole affair “fantastically fishy” and blamed the ruling Congress Party and other officials for bowing to electoral priorities and ignoring the priorities of freedom of expression.

Sigh!

Open’s staff writer Mihir Srivastava likes to sketch nude portraits of regular people—men and women, strangers and friends, thin and fat. Some are disgusted when he asks them if they would pose for him. But, surprisingly, many agree. Why?

Would you?

India’s first female photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla (center), seen with other press photographers at a photo session with Indira Gandhi in Delhi. (via India’s First Female Photojournalist Captured A Nation In Transition : The Picture Show : NPR)

The boy, a Class VII student and the son of a Uttar Pradesh farmer, pulled out several of his friends alive out of a burning van, caring little about his own safety. On September 4, 2010, Om Prakash was going to school along with other students in a Maruti van. But all of a sudden, the van caught fire because of a short circuit in the gas kit. The driver immediately opened his door and fled. But not Om Prakash. He broke open the van door and pulled out the others, caring little about the flames that had spread to his face, back and arms. He saved eight children. For his bravery, he has won the Sanjay Chopra Award.

One of the best parts about India’s Republic Day Parade. Wish the media talked about their stories more.

My colony has a fancy western-sounding name and, while constructing the illusion that we were buying into something exotic, the builder has installed statues vaguely modeled on Venus de Milo — nearly nude white female forms, arms missing. Then one day, our statue was found dressed in a nightgown. But perhaps some poor person needed that nightgown, so the statue was bare again. Soon enough, somebody had dressed it up again, in a man’s shirt. I often wonder at the people who did that. I doubt they were worried about the dignity of our fake plaster-of-paris Venus. It hasn’t been molested (as far as I know).

I’m sure some plaster-of-paris statues have been molested but then if that prevents from actual humans from being molested, we ought to install more nude statutes.

Politicians and clerics offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills.

More often than not, we’re focused on the temporary issues affecting minorities instead of focusing on empowering them to succeed. 

Content law is a field of law unto itself, and the Indian corpus juris contains over twenty statutes governing content. In addition to statutory law, case law and tort law also govern content – for example, the right to privacy (and the corresponding prohibition on the publication of content invasive of privacy) finds its roots not only in constitutional law but also in tort law.

Most Indian content laws are not directed specifically at online content. However, they are, for the most part, applicable to online content (even though recent debates may lead one to believe that the legal regulation of content in India is non-existent). These laws, however, do not focus on ‘pre-screening’; as with most laws, they prescribe sanctions upon the publication etc. of illegal content.

Dating back to 1860. Who says we don’t protect our history? [via @gkjohn]

Anuradha Vaidyanathan is India first Ironman athlete. The multi-tasking 30-year-old PhD holder and entrepreneur tells us about the challenges she’s had to face and how she made it.

Very few of us may have even heard of the sporting event she represents. Fewer are probably aware of the extreme physical endurance it demands. Ironman one-day triathlon that involves a 3.8km swim, 180km bicycle ride and a 42.2km run. The relatively ‘easier’ triathlon event is the Ultraman — a three-day stage race that involves a 10km swim, 420km bicycle ride and an 84.4km run.

Anuradha Vaidyanathan is India’s first Ironman athlete and one of the only 450 people in the world to have finished an Ultraman.

The study focuses on West Bengal, a state in eastern India, where one-third of the pradhan positions have been randomly reserved for women since 1998. This policy is part of a larger effort in India to put women in local government: In 1993, the country widely adopted gender quotas for village councils. As a result, India’s proportion of local elected leaders who were female rose from less than 5 percent in 1992 to more than 40 percent in 2000.

It’s all about role models. However, I bet it would help more if familial ties did not always play a role in advancement of women in Indian politics.

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