Yesterday’s candle light vigil was something that was asking to be photographed. And it wasn’t just me. No. Pretty much every Mumbaikar wandering around near Leopold’s, Marine Drive, and the Taj, was standing there with cell phone outstretched, clicking away. There was this incredible drive to bear witness. And in my case, I wondered whether or not part of my need to do so was borne out of a desire to outsource my reaction. Well here are the pictures. Make what you’d like out of them. They aren’t photographs of the recycled news material of flames and smoke billowing, or of that beady-eyed gunman entering the Taj, or of mobs, relieved tourists, martyrs, teary-eyed survivors. This was just the neighborhood of South Bombay, lighting candles, holding hands, singing, and wandering around with that vaguely cheery expression that seemed to wryly comment “aise to hota hai…†but with a gentle reverence as well. It was Bombay’s Dia de los Muertos…
Published by Guest Writer January 5th, 2008
in Uncategorized and cricket.
Ok, so the title is not his but it sort of works. And gets us google traffic. A piece by our guest writer Kishore Budha.
OK, so racism in South Asian cricket has cropped up again and Symonds is at the centre of it all — again. Apparently, Harbhajan Singh called Symonds a monkey (read here. A lazy check on Google news shows over 597 news reports on the topic. 10:17 GMT.). Given the sheer cacophony and the lack of access to anything but images, soundbites, and interpretations of what is happening, the drama is best left to itself (in any case, I lack any expertise on racism). Instead, one could glance at past reports on this issue to focus on the political economy that perhaps influences how the issue will be handled.
Published by Guest Writer December 12th, 2007
in Sex, Uncategorized and guest writer.
We haven’t spoke about sex on SMC, well not for a long time anyway and in rather oblique terms, when we did. We did not even have a category under sex, until now. Unforgivable for a website which is out there to garner maximum eyeballs. So I went out and got ourselves a veritable expert on the subject. Nicky Falkof has just written a book, well not about sex, but marriage, drawing critical acclaim. She writes regularly on issues of women empowerment, marriage and sex in English broadsheets but given that she is an activist at heart, has agreed to contribute regularly with us. Enough from me and over to Nicky.
Nicky Falkof is currently engaged in a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies at the interdisciplinary London Consortium, focusing on race and masculinity in popular South African cinema. Her first book, Ball and Chain: The Trouble With Modern Marriage, was published in 2007.
FEMINISM AND THE SEX INDUSTRY
Published by Guest Writer November 12th, 2007
in remix and video.
UPDATE
Just to clarify and to repeat, cause it seems like i was not clear the first time: This video has been made by some fans of ours. They call themselves Sacred Media Jokes. They have put “made by Sacred Media Cow” in the you tube clip itself, but that’s because, I think, a part of their joke was to confuse everyone . It seems they have succeeded. None of the core members have been involved in making this video.
*****
An anonymous SMC fan sent me a message saying that, to celebrate SMC’s 1st birthday, it made us a video.
It’s called …”mushy pussy”. A remix critique of Pakistan’s Mush. They call themselves “Sacred Media Jokes”.
I’ll post more information about this new group as and when I have it.
Published by Guest Writer October 11th, 2007
in Burma and Uncategorized.
This was at the candle light vigil organised in Guwahati on October 6. The next day some Burmese activists arrived in Guwahati coinciding with the visit of Mr. Pranab Mukherjee to the city. There was a meeting with “invitations” and a dress code where Mr. Mukherjee and Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia would address the gathering on “development” of the “Northeast” and opening up of trade routes with Southeast Asia. The media mostly covered that and inane questions of participants on tourism potential and grand plans of Dr. Ahluwalia to build more hotels and airstrips. As the Burmese activists made an innocuous exit in a cheap flight back to Delhi that evening, the minister and his entourage did not utter the B word even once. So much for India’s commitment to uphold democracy.
Published by Guest Writer October 11th, 2007
in Internet and Uncategorized.
This is a small research video on the concept of community done by an anthropologist, Patricia G Lang of the University of Southern California. It is interesting how various forms of media and what they create and represent are now increasingly becoming tools for research.
This piece of work reveals a couple of interesting aspects of the technological society. One, the fact that media is no longer largely a secondary source of information for research. Media itself is the subject of research as its growth also has to reinvention of many processes, notions and discourses not conventionally associated with it. In the Cyber Era, there now are online communities. There is the Flickr Community. There is the YouTube Community. There is the Facebook Community. And the list goes on and on.
Two, media related technological innovations have impacted social relations incredibly. It has managed to fill a void in the urban and individualistic societal framework that one can witness in many industrially developed societies. People talk about “connecting” over the Internet now. Peoples’ emotional, political and social needs are being increasingly addressed by various forms of media including the internet.
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