Eventful Two Days - 12/30/2007

So last year, a major political player in the region was killed (Saddam Hussein). This year, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday.
I didn't know much about Bhutto, and until she came out exile a few months ago, I honestly didn't know idea who she was. And I don't know much about the politics within Pakistan, so I wont act as if I do. But she was a progressive politician trying to spread democracy in a region that may not want change. She was educated in the West and the people that hate Western civilizations feared her winning the elections next week. Since I didn't know much about her, I hadn't really formed an opinion on her. I hadn't decided whether I liked her or not. I don't know how to weigh the corruption accusations. But if she was truly about spreading democracy and equality throughout a region that isn't know for those two things, then she couldn't have been all that bad. I've seen major world leaders die, but this is the first assassination I've witnessed, and it's a fairly scary thing. You never think something like this can happen in an age of high security. And I've had to try and figure out how my family feels about this. They have a lot more knowledge of the politics in the region, so they have defined opinions of who they like and dislike. I still can't tell how they felt about Bhutto, but they do think the Pakistan Govt had something to do with her death rather than al Qaeda. I tend to agree that I don't think al Qaeda had anything to do with it. They will take credit for just about anything.
The photojournalist in me was hoping that there would be some protests or gatherings to mourn Bhutto around Bombay, but I didn't hear of anything. Oh well.

So the reason why I haven't posted in a few days is because my cousin didn't pay the internet bill, so the internet was cut for a few days. We finally got it back this morning, but I was out of the house all day.

Friday morning, I woke up fairly early and was about to catch the sun coming up. Brought back memories of waking up with my mom and watching the sun come up. The only difference is that we were watching from my grandmother's house, whereas I was at my aunts house.


Speaking of my grandmother, I visited her for the first time on Friday.

My cousin Samira and I went to see her. And while I love her to death, I can't help but feel frustrated with how stubborn she is. The girl that she has looking after her is about as useless a human being you will find on this planet. All she is good for is lying and taking advantage of my grandmother, and playing all of us for fools. My grandmother has about a half dozen or more medications that are prescribed to her, and she's supposed to be taking most of them daily. When Samira and I opened her medicine box, we found enough medicine for about two months. In the case of some of her medicines, there was enough for three months. I've said it many times, but if I could speak Hindi, I'd have ripped into that girl three years ago. I've told Nani that this girl isn't helping her, but she refuses to get rid of her. Nani hasn't taken her heart medicine in nearly two months, and she hasn't had her calcium pills in nearly as long, yet this girl is checking off on the schedule that Nani is having her pills. The girl isn't too bright because she never got rid of the pills.
But it was really sad to see my grandmother practically crying when Samira and I told her that we were going to have to tell my aunt that she wasn't taking her medicine. It was like one of those scenes when a child breaks something and doesn't want there parents to find out because of the fear of being yelled at. Except this was the mother scared of her child doing the yelling.
There's only so many times I can come here and watch this girl basically whittle away the life of my last remaining grandparent. Each of the last three years, I've told Nani she needs to get rid of this girl, that she is no good. Last year, this girl wasn't feeding her proper meals. Now she's not giving Nani her medicine.
I've always loved going to Bandra and spending time with my grandmother, holding her hand and spending time with her, but when somebody refuses to listen to you about something so serious and refuses to make the requisite changed to improve her life, it makes the visits tough.
But I love her. I don't like to give up on people. And my mom wouldn't be happy if I gave up on her mother.

So I've been looking for stories here that i might be able to photograph and send back to the photo editors for the first issue of the school paper next semester. I was given some ideas but I felt like I hadn't started soon enough, so I figured that finding a hard-hitting topic which required special access would be too difficult (may next year). I decided that I would just come here and find a story in the news and see if something comes of it. Talking with one of next semesters editors, Amanda, she suggested that I try and localize a story here in Bombay to San Francisco. She suggested finding some groups that might be in Bombay but were organized in California.
Anyway, I've been checking the three papers we get at the house and cnn-ibn.com regularly, and I think I found the story I want to pursue. It's not a breaking news story, but it can related back to San Francisco on some level.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/1200_trees_face_axe_for_city_projects/articleshow/2654059.cms
Since the internet had been down for the last two days at my cousins house, I haven't been about to do any research into where these trees might be or when the chopping might happen, but I think this story relates back to us because San Francisco was deemed the Greenist city and because of the whole tree squatting protest going on in Berkeley. My cousin said he knows a few journalists and that he will make a few calls for me. Hopefully I can find something before I head home.
Next year, I'll plan better and shoot for the heavy story.

This year, I've been a little more hesitant to take pictures of "mumbaikers." Don't know why exactly. Might be that I was told that while the photos I took last year were good on some level, they weren't photojournalistic photos. But it might also be because I feel bad for the people that I see. Last year, I just shot unconsciously, but this year, while I see things that I want to photograph, I just can't bring myself to press the shutter button.
I was hanging out with Zahir and his friend Ashu and Karl last night and the street lighting was cool. Even after midnight, there were taxis available and one of the drivers was just standing around. I think the photo came out pretty well.


Today, we went back to Kharghar to meet with the owners of one of the apartments that Rahim liked. On the way back, we made another pit stop at Center One and I did some shopping. Picked up a few small gifts.
Tomorrow, I am going with my aunt and uncle to pick up Sarah's mom from the airport. Her flight lands at 11:30. Hopefully we'll go to Bandra and I'll get to meet all my aunts on that side of the family. A couple of them have been calling me here trying to find out when I'm coming to see them.

Alright, well, it's 1:30 on Sunday morning, and I'm tired and I have to be up soon. More later.

Take it easy,
Ali

'Flat Hunting' in Kharghar - 12/26/07

Greetings. I spent Day Two with my aunt and two of my cousins in Kharghar looking for a new apartment for my cousin Rahim. This place is about an hour and half outside of Bombay, and the best way to describe it is a bunch of apartment complexes in the middle of nowhere. It's so out there that there are designated times during the day when there is no electricity. The place that Rahim lives in right now has no power from 10am to noon, and 2pm to 4pm. We were sitting in his bedroom with the fan on full blast when all of a sudden, it stopped. You know you're roughing it when there are specific blackouts every day.
While I know that the goal of a photojournalist is to get up close and personal with the subject and find the bigger story, I honestly think some of the best, or rather, most interesting photos you can take can actually come from a moving car. There are things that you see while riding around that you never see in the States. I wish I had the photos to prove it, but my aunt had the Air Conditioner on in the car and she wouldn't let me roll down the window, so I was limited in the pictures I could take. But I saw a child, no more that 13 years old, steering a bull-drawn carriage and whipping the bull. On the drive home, I saw a guy sleeping the back of a cargo rickshaw. It may not be the idealistic photos that professional photographers want to see, but I think they are just as telling about the country and the culture.
So on the way home, we stopped at one of the new malls, Center One, to eat. I'm still amazed by the amount of the Christmas decorations I've seen. I just wasn't aware that Christmas was such a big deal in a country made up of Hindus and Muslims.

This was the scene inside the mall. They had Christmas trees and presents hanging from the ceiling. Funny thing is, during my both of my Photojournalism classes, we've gone over where you can and can't shoot, in terms of permission. We've been told that we aren't allowed to shoot in malls, and apparently, the rule carries over to India, because after about 10 minutes, I was approached by a police women who told me that I wasn't allowed to take photos in the mall. She wasn't rude, and when I told her I'd put the camera away, she walked away. Chances are if this had happened in the States, they would have tried to get me to delete the photos.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to go to Bandra to see my grandmother. Amazing how when I made my trip at the end of 2005, the main reason was because her health wasn't very good and we weren't sure if she would make it to the summer of 2006, which is when I really wanted to go. Now, it's 2007, going on 2008, and while her short term memory is gone, she's still going strong.

Have a good Wednesday everybody.

Take it easy,
Ali

Greetings from 9,000 miles away - 12/25/07

So I just got to India a few hours ago. The weather is great. 77 degrees at 10:30 when I got out of the airport.
The plane rides were fine. The flight from Newark to Bombay was 14 hours, and to make matters worse, the battery on my ipod ran out about half way through the flight.
While we were boarding the flight in Newark, one of the ladies conducting the boarding process was stunned when everybody rushed the gate rather than waiting for there row to be called. We started talking and she asked me why everybody was in such a rush to board a 14 hour flight. I told her that this is the Indian way. There is no sense of organization. But the real reason everybody was rushing the gate was to make sure they were able to get there bag in the overhead compartments. About a week ago, I thought my flight may have been delayed due to weather. Never did I think my flight would be delayed due to the passengers taking forever to store their bags in the overhead compartment.


Tomorrow, I am going with my aunt to visit my cousin Rahim about 90 minutes away.

I hope everybody is having a good Christmas. I was surprised that there were so many Christmas decorations in Bombay. I'm hoping to go to Bandra in the next few days because I've been told that there is quite an elaborate Christmas setup that I'd like to photograph.

Until next time, take it easy,
Ali

Etch-It-In-Stone #3: Santana will stay in Twin Cities...for good.

This time last week, the perception was that Johan Santana would be a part of the Yankees collection of $20 million players.
This time yesterday, the feeling was that he was about to turn the Red Sox into an even bigger juggernaut for the next half dozen years.
The Yankees had the best offer on the table. Phil Hughes has been widely considered the best pitching prospect in baseball. The only player the Red Sox have that is of equal talent and ceiling is Clay Buchholz, and the Sox said he was off limits from day one. The Red Sox were willing to part with Jon Lester, but he's not close to the same talent as Hughes.
When the Twins didn't accept Hughes, Melky Cabrera and a prospect from the Yankees, I had a gut feeling that they wouldn't trade him. At the July trade deadline, every team that talked to the Yankees wanted Hughes. Now, when the Twins had the chance to get him, plus an above average center fielder and possibly a 5-tool talent in Austin Jackson, they turn it down, to me that signals that they are expecting too much in return for Santana.
Santana may be the best pitcher in baseball, and for that, the Twins should receive a bounty of talent for him. But he doesn't have a contract after the 2008 season, so since the team receiving him has to throw down a hefty chunk of change to keep Santana, that drives down the price they should have to pay for him. Twins GM Bill Smith needs to understand that.
Personally, I wouldn't give up arguably the best pitching prospect in baseball, and then have to give Santana $150 million over six years. I'd just as soon take my chances with Hughes and save $24 million a year.
When the Yankees pulled out of trade talks on Monday night, that was another thing that made me feel like he wouldn't be traded. The Red Sox may want Santana just as badly as the Yankees, but they can't financially take him. Sure they may have the budget right now, but if they trade for him, they'd have to give him the $150 million he wants. That's all fine and dandy until 2007 Cy Young runner-up Josh Beckett comes knocking on GM Theo Epstein's door asking for a pay raise from the $10 million he's going to make over the next two years.
No pitcher has ever made more than $20 million in a season, so I don't think the Red Sox are too eager to have two pitchers in the same rotation making over $20 million. Chances are Beckett would want something similar to Santana's deal. Two pitchers making a combined $50 million is absurd, even for the Yankees and Red Sox.

My money is on the Twins keeping Santana, and not just for this season. I have a feeling Twins management will find a way to pay him. After all, Twins owner Carl Pohlad is one of the richest owners in baseball. And with the new stadium opening in a few years, they will have a lot more revenue money coming in.
You heard it here first, Santana will stay with Minnesota beyond 2008. The money may not be what he wants, but I think he will get enough to make him the highest paid pitcher in baseball.

Death Comes with a Heartfelt Message

Very few things shake us like death. Death stops us in our tracks.
The sports world was hit with two prominent losses in the last week that froze me.
Joe Kennedy, a free-agent pitcher who played for Oakland, Arizona and Toronto last season, passed away at the young age of 28. He had a wife, a 1-year-old kid, and his wife was pregnant with their second kid. Those two children are going to grow up without knowing their father. That’s the kind of heartbreaking news within a story that brings out the emotion in me.
Tuesday morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. to an analyst on ESPN2 saying “we have some sad news…” and he went on to break the news that Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor, all of 24 years old, had died from complications to a gunshot wound he received 24 hours earlier when someone tried to break into his Florida home.
Anybody that knows me will tell you I love sports, maybe a little too much. I take wins and losses pretty seriously. After I spend almost 12 hours on a Saturday watching college football, I feel like these athletes have become a part of my extended family. Sort of like distant cousins you know exist, but you never physically meet.
So whenever an athlete dies, I take it a lot harder than everyone else.
Taylor’s death upset me because I honestly liked Taylor as a player. He was a dominant Free Safety, which is a position on the football field that I love. Taylor’s job was to sit back and strike when the ball was in the air. My dad asked me if he was a good player and emphatically, I said he was a great player.
ESPN.com’s Marwan Maalouf broke down Taylor’s skills in a recent blurb for Scouts Inc., saying “Not only were Taylor's coverage skills exceptional, he brought a physical mentality and toughness that was well respected around the league. A devastating hitter, Taylor wanted to leave his mark in every game by letting receivers know that they had better think twice about going up for a ball in front of him.”
When I see coverage of the memorials that Washington fans are holding for Taylor, I have to fight back a few tears. He was only a kid, just one year older than me.
But I think we can learn something from Kennedy’s death, though. As of right now, everything about his death is speculation, but the people close to him believe he had an enlarged heart and that probably played a role in his death.
According to WebMD.com, there are three types of an enlarged heart and many people who suffer from any of the variations don’t have symptoms. The only version that lists “sudden death” as a possible symptom is Hypertropic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), so I’m assuming that this is the variation that Kennedy had, if in fact he had an enlarged heart.
Kennedy isn’t the only athlete to die from an enlarged heart recently. Earlier this month, Olympic Marathon runner Ryan Shay, 28 years old, collapsed, and later died, during a Men’s Olympic Marathon Trials event in New York City. After the tragic event, his father revealed that when Ryan was 14, he had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart.
HCM is something that runs through a family history, or can associated with high-blood pressure. Hopefully, enough people will see the stories of Shay and Kennedy, and take a look in the mirror, and get checked out for form of Heart Disease. If these athletes, in pretty good physical condition can die from something like this at such a young age, then I think more people can.
If anything good can possibly come from these deaths, I would hope that the mainstream media would work together with a heart disease awareness group, and get the message out to viewers and athletes, and advise them to get regular check-ups. The deaths of Kennedy and Shay should warn people that you don’t have to be on the downswing of life to have heart problems.

My BCS Outlook, as of Monday, November 26th, 2007

By a show of hands, I’d like to know how many people had the Missouri Tigers as the #1-ranked team in the polls heading into the final week of the College Football regular season. Anybody?
I imagine if I asked that to a room of 100 college football fans, everyone in the room would be looking around to see if any hands were in the air.
I hope everyone enjoys watching Missouri and West Virginia duke it out for the National Championship on January 7th. I’ll be enjoying the comfort of a bed 9,000 miles away.
For the third straight year, I will in India when the National Championship is decided. And this year, I will not be scrambling to find a way to tune into the game. I will be sleeping like a baby and I won’t shed a tear when I wake up.
Missouri and West Virginia just doesn’t get my blood pumping like USC and Texas two years ago. That was a match-up we saw coming for weeks. USC and Texas were 1-2, respectively, in every week of the BCS standings that year, except for Week 8, when Texas was #1 and USC was #2. USC was dubbed “the greatest team ever” by the mass media and the Vince Young-led Longhorns weren’t supposed to have a chance to win the game.
Don’t get me wrong, I like watching both teams run their offenses. I wish more teams used Missouri’s Run and Shoot offense. I’d love to see more teams spread five Wide Receivers out on every play. And the speed of West Virginia, with Pat White, Steve Slaton and Noel Divine, make them extremely entertaining to watch.
But the Tigers and the Mountaineers just doesn’t have the punch to make me get up at 5 a.m. this year.
What would cause me to wake up at such an odd hour while on my vacation?
A rather complicated scenario, actually. Follow me on this.
The simple part involves Missouri losing to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship and West Virginia losing to Pittsburgh on Saturday, thus eliminating both from the title picture. Ohio State, needing just one of those two teams to lose, would claim one of two vacant spots.
Now here’s is where things get tricky, and a little wishful thinking comes into play.
Watching ESPN’s BCS expert Brad Edwards recently, he went over the possible scenarios in order for LSU, the team I still feel is the best team in the nation, to make the National Championship game.
Right now, LSU is #7 in the rankings. They need Mizzou and WVU to lose. Then they need to handle their business in the SEC Championship game against Tennessee. Their chances are greatly improved if Boston College can beat Virginia Tech in the Big East title game, but VaTech doesn’t necessarily have to lose.
If all of this happens, the voters would have no choice but put LSU above Kansas and Georgia, both idle. If Missouri, West Virginia and Virginia Tech all lose this weekend, that leaves Ohio State and LSU as the last teams standing.
Now that would get me up at an ungodly time during my vacation.

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After all the event of last night, it seems as though my wish will come true, and I may actually be waking up very early in the morning on January 11th in Bombay. I had a massive headache last night, so I slept through the Mizzou-Ou game and the West Virginia-Pitt game. When I woke up, my dad broke the news to me. I was too out of it to put everything together, but now it looks like LSU will leapfrog VaTech in the rankings today.