Desicritics Category: Culture: Books - Non Fiction

"Oh Boy!"

Seema Dhindaw — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:43:09 EDT

“Thank god, it’s a boy! How wonderful! Congratulations” I remember the desi uncles and aunties saying with abandon even as I stood right next to my parents. My memories of their uninhibited exclamations of “Badhaai ho, munda hua!” ring loud and clear even today. Being their first-born, a daughter, I couldn’t help being overcome with feelings of jealousy and apprehension. The realization that someone else was going to steal my parent’s attention was enough to get my 6-year old heart racing. My big brown eyes widened and filled with fear as I looked up at my parents and repeatedly asked “Do you still love me?”

As my brother and I grew older, sadly my fears became reality. The favoritism had become strikingly apparent not just to me but others as well. My aunt and neighbors noticed and did what they could to make me feel special. My grandmother, on the other hand, visiting from India could not see past my brother.

I faded into the background and all my tiny accomplishments in kindergarten and elementary school went unnoticed. I began to realize just how important it was for my parents to have a son, particularly my mother. As teenage years approached, the treatment meted out by our parents was obviously differential. He got to stay out later than I did. His mistakes were more readily forgiven. His anger and outbursts excused with “Boys are like that, its ok.” He was bought an expensive car because “it would stay in the family.” His announcement of having a girlfriend was met with pride and encouragement while even a mention of my boyfriend would probably inspire histrionics. Over the years my hostility towards him manifested and our relationship floundered.

Many Indians including Punjabis tend to agree upon the value of the male child. In Indian households and particularly in North Indian families, the son is expected to live with his wife and children while caring for his aging parents in the same house. This can be quite a lot of pressure for any son. Financial responsibilities and the lack of privacy can make life pretty miserable for everyone.

What is bothersome is not that these biases exist but that many families strive relentlessly to preserve and propagate those here in America. My own family, I feel, has been guilty of this. Many a times my mother has made statements such as “He’s a boy, so it’s different. You should be more understanding”, ” We feel sad for so and so. They just have two daughters. Who will care for them when they’re old?!” A daughter can take as good if not better care of her parents than any son could. Why such a strong bias especially when you have a daughter who cares for you? A gift from me is “no big deal” but any small card or gesture from my brother is received with open arms and praise.

How does being female somehow make us inferior? The last time I checked we were in the year 2008, weren’t we? Not 1930. One would think these views about women would be the height of the matter but surprisingly they are not! It actually makes a difference if you are thin and fair. Even Bollywood has adopted the “gori chitti aur patli” (fair and skinny) paradigm. Recently, Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor has made headlines for becoming an unhealthy and perhaps anorexic size zero. “Zero” not only describes how good she looks but also her acting abilities.

Bollywood actresses like her wear drag-queen-style make-up to match the desired skin color to appear beautiful. Up until recently no significant effort was made towards making the nearing 40 year old balding male actors with receding hairlines and age inappropriate clothing, more appealing.

No doubt Bollywood is guilty of such nonsense but what does one say when the almost 300 lb aunties in sarees with bulging love handles, blouses that barely fit and extraordinarily huge hips casually comment on how so and so’s daughter should lose weight. “She would look so much prettier.” What about their own short chubby sons? I'd like to ask. The standard response which I've heard so often is "Oh, but they are boys, so looks don’t matter as much. It is the girl that has to get married off.” Such a mentality is difficult to change.

Enforcing these beliefs in girls raised in the United States is ridiculous. It breeds low self-esteem within an environment that values confidence and grooming over skin color and weight. Tanning salons have opened up all over and constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry. Yet you still have Indians saying “Hai! Kitni gori hai, patli hai! Changa munda milega”.

As a woman born and raised in the US, I now find myself rolling my eyes at these comments but I have to admit, they affected my self-worth deeply as a teenager. Perhaps on a subconscious level they made me rebellious as well. Why do the women have to endure phone calls and comments centered around their weight and looks? How fair is it that no one seems to notice the nice developing potbelly on my brother or the man boobs that have appeared on Kunal? Women have to deal with comments such as "moti hogayi hai na?"

It doesn't matter that you might be a successful researcher or a prominent scientist or an engineer. Fat is of utmost importance. It is the men,the sons who are complimented on their careers. Even your female friends who happen to get in touch with you online after years have past don't care about your professional accomplishments. "You've become chubby" "Moti, fat jaadi....i".This obsession with weight among Indian women in particular is upsetting.Why aren't such comments directed towards men?

Hearing such female-degrading comments from families and friends at social gatherings has become commonplace for me. However, it was astonishing to face such comments in a professional setting. My very own Indian ex-PhD advisor wasn’t afraid to reveal and act on her biases. At a lab lunch celebrating my birthday, she in a very matter of fact manner said “Indian women need to be subdued, as Seema will learn.”

On other occasions, instead of providing advice regarding my project she would make comments about how I should “lose weight” so that I can “get a husband.” “ You should work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because you don’t have a husband or kids. Look at all the other people in lab,they aren’t single. They have families. Even XYZ has a girlfriend.” As I listened to these unprofessional comments, I couldn’t help thinking ”aren’t you a woman too? Don’t you have a daughter? “ At the time being her student, I was too scared to say anything for fear that she would jeopardize my future. As fate would have it, I didn’t have to say anything, I guess just being an overweight, single American woman of Indian descent was enough for her to screw me over on a whim.

It’s depressing that such strong biases exist in the US among Indians even today. It takes a toll on you when you hear the same comments so many times from the people who are supposed to be your strongest supporters. It is even more alarming that people with these views can abuse their power and get away it. Isn’t it about time that people do away with this mentality and accept each other with fairness and equality? Man, woman, short. Tall, fat, skinny—what does it matter? Aren’t we all human?

Book Review: Superstar India By Shobhaa De

Deepti Lamba — Thu, 8 May 2008 12:30:11 EDT

Here is a lady who has written over fifteen books, written thousands of columns, has a frisky personality, gift of the gab and more and glamor that gets her places. Her latest book is more like a collection of blog entries which have nothing new to tell us. I'm talking about Shobhaa De's new book - Superstar India - From Incredible To Unstoppable.

Its just one big tirade against neo-liberalism, the denial of poverty, corruption, love and hate for all that is Western, lack of compassion, jingoism, lavish weddings, gender relationships, sex, the new generation, traditions, festivities, jhola carrying commies, and our collective dirty nature. Did I miss out on anything else? A lot - but nothing you don't know about if you happen to be an Indian.

The book is nothing more than a marketing stunt.

Her 'hot' appearance is what Penguin banked on. Don't get me wrong - the lady has class and is a good writer but the book was an utter bore. It wasn't a 'V. S Naipaul' that had Indians either wanting to strangle the author or love him for his observations on post-colonial India. Instead, Superstar India merely states what we all know. We know what India is all about, we know that the new booming economy, the flyovers, the new jet setters of India do not represent our country and those who think along these lines are leading delusional ignorant lives.

In many ways, she has treated the readers like sounding boards where we might try to unravel her rants like unpaid psychiatrists driven insane by a mind emptily discussing problems and offering no solutions.

Instead of writing her memoirs (and I don't understand why people touching their sixties want to write memoirs), Shobhaa De should stick to writing risque stories as she once told Prince Charles.

The book should have been named The Satirical Reflections On Superstar India And On Indian Middle Class Drawing Room Conversations. and maybe then I could have been a little less nasty in my review.

Book Review: Young Dick Cheney: Great American

Temple Stark — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:36:42 EDT

Who is a less caring person than Dick Cheney? Think about it a few moments and the names you can come up with live in the annals of political and global horror. They are loved by only the sickest people on the planet. Or academics.

It's hard to think on that too much without becoming melancholy and a touch depressed. That's where Young Dick Cheney: Great American (Alternet Books) comes in. The authors, Bruce Kluger and David Slavin, offer a comprehensive and expansive detailed narrative of Cheney's childhood - in a fictional, mocking way.

Go into this book, expecting to laugh and expecting a simple approach to satire. Thankfully, the only things tortured here are puns and your groan muscles.

Who'da thunk that a person could read about Dick Cheney and enjoy it?

Young Dick Cheney offers a respectful look at the Cheney years from birth to soul death - a span of about 18 years.

Respectful of the truth, naturally, not the man.

This underrated expose on Dick Cheney's Nebraska childhood and formative years offers a keen insight into what branded the current vice-president a real Dick. It wasn't just the Lazy Eight Fork to the rear.

The authors describe their pocket-sized work as an "inspiring and sometimes even true childhood story of Richard B. Cheney, a secretive yet sensitive boy with a shoot-from-the-hip, shoot-in-the-face style all his own."

Best of all there's James Thurber-esque simple illustrations by rather than photos so readers don't get that Gorgon effect of looking into his eyes and having all their emotions irreversibly turn to stone.

Young Dick Cheney does not, however, offer any details on how he received his training as a Sith Lord.

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

Just in time to laugh, not cry, comes this over-the-top and mercifully short book. It achieves the near impossible by making you feel sorry for the guy - the fake guy in the book, anyway.

Child abuse, neglect, isolation, murder nor prostitution feature in Dick's childhood. No, those all came later in life, during his time in government.

From the book's dedication to the Constitution and the Ativa SX180D shredder, the book offers straightforward fictionalized biography with wickedly clever one liners strung end to end. Phrases and passages cause a variety of reactions from snorting recognition of humor ("The brutal blizzard that beat down on Lincoln the night of Young Dick's birth was somehow different. For one thing it was July.") to moments that bring tears to your eyes and sweat glands.

This passage gives a flavor of the humor, a mixture of subtle and in-your face (oh, sorry) at the same time.

Bundling up Young Dick in the business section from that morning’s newspaper, Jedediah and Mary Todd began the long journey home with their new child - walking down the straw path that led from his stable, then trudging through the deep midsummer snow that carpeted the seven-mile road that led out of town.

The moment the Cheneys stepped through their front door, the proud new parents got back to work. Mary Todd resumed her chores - finishing the wood-splitting she’d started before she went into labor, preparing the family meal, mopping up her amniotic fluid - while Jedediah placed Dick in a hickory crib that he’d carved from scraps of wood he’d found behind Clem Cullen’s casket factory.

As the weary couple dug into a warm supper of possum and root stew, Young Dick lay on his back in his new cradle, staring at the ceiling, his eyes open and unblinking.

Deep within the forests that surrounded the Cheney homestead, wolves howled into the dark night sky.

We get Dick's puppeteering hobby later used to good effect with US Presidents, his tendency to shoot mothers, friends and postman in the face, roustabouts with friends Donny and Scooter, his preference for working away from the spotlight, and his early addiction to oil which manifests itself into a pre-teen ground sniffing career and a desire to lay waste to nature.

And those are just the true parts, obviously.

Here's a final passage illustrating how Dick got his direction and purpose in life:

One sunny spring day when Dick was four years old, he was playing in his front yard with a beach ball. A gift from his parents, the inflatable sphere was painted to resemble the earth, and Young Dick took great delight in making it bounce any way he wanted it to. He also liked kicking it around.

Suddenly, the ball took a wild spin and rolled off in the direction of the driveway, coming to a stop beneath the back wheels of Mr. Cheney’s ’38 Packard.

Crawling beneath the car for the ball, Young Dick was startled by a sudden reflection. Just beneath the tail pipe, the sun illuminated a small, sparkling black puddle, creating the most beautiful rainbow Young Dick had ever seen. He was drawn to it, like a kitten to a dish of really dark milk.

Dick slid on his belly, closer to the inky slick. He smelled it - it was sweet and inviting. He touched it - it was wet and silky. Then he tasted it.

Suddenly the cramped space beneath the Packard seemed to glow, as if lit by the heavens above. Sprawled on his stomach and breathing heavily, Young Dick swore he could hear music - just like the songs of worship he heard every Sunday at St. Agnes’ Weeping Face of Christ Pentecostal Church. A tingle of excitement ran up his short, thick legs.

Tossing aside the earth ball, Young Dick slithered out from under the car and darted inside.

“Pa!” he shouted, bursting into the parlor and thrusting his hand beneath his father’s face. “I found this under your car! What is it?”

Jedediah took a long look at his son’s moist black finger, then smiled.

“Why, that’s oil, son,” he said. “You know: Black gold. Texas tea.”

Young Dick looked confused.

“It’s what makes cars run,” he continued patiently. “And tractors. And aeroplanes. And machines. It’s found underground, all over the earth. And people pay millions of dollars for it.”

That was when Young Dick Cheney had his first heart attack.

It's funny and a stress-leaving read. Some of the jokes are easy but still ridiculously funny. Buy this one, take a bottle, drink it down, and pass it around. It's a quick burst of humor, and with Cheney's popularity as an adult at 15 percent, most everyone you know will enjoy Young Dick ...

Try not to be too depressed by the unhappy ending we've all been witness to.

Book Review: The Innocent Man - John Grisham

Kim — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:22:17 EDT

After lying unread on my bookshelf for over 9 months, I finally got around to reading John Grisham's latest offering and first work of non-fiction - The Innocent Man.

Growing up on a steady diet of Erle Stanley Gardner and in love with Perry Mason, it was but natural that I become a fan of John Grisham's legal works of fiction. But other than Skipping Christmas which was moderately interesting, his non-legal fiction did not excite me at all. So I wasn't sure what to expect with his work of legal non-fiction.

Fortunately it was interesting reading for the most part except the botched trial that got really slow and repetitive. Since this was a true story and Grisham was using actual court transcripts, he had to keep it so, but could have edited it a bit to make it crisper. Maybe all the legal serials we watch - The Practice, Law & Order, Boston Legal, and others of their ilk have gotten me to expect snappy, sharp detective work, logical but persuasive arguments by counsel and crisp closing statements. The way the case was handled was completely slip shod and pathetic and makes you wonder at the possibility of truly getting justice unless you are in a TV serial.

Little wonder that a libel suit was filed against John Grisham on 28, September 2007, by Pontotoc County - Oklahoma, District Attorney Bill Peterson and Gary Rogers, a former Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent.

This true story, is remarkable for the fact that the main accused Ron Williamson who was framed by the law enforcement team of Pontotoc County was not just a "white" man, he was a semi-FAMOUS "white" man.

Ron Williamson was a local hero on the baseball field and was also the 41st pick in baseball's 1971 amateur draft, a second-round selection by the Oakland Athletics. Due to poor performance, he did not hit the big time but he was still quite a local celebrity when he was accused as the murderer of cocktail waitress Debra Carter.

His co-accused Dennis Fritz had nothing to implicate him except that he and Williamson were occasional "drinking buddies". Ironically Fritz's own wife had been murdered 7 years ago.

The police used forced dream confessions, convicted felons as snitches and witnesses, junk science and other dubious means to get them both convicted. Williamson got the death penalty which automatically set a series of appeals in motion while Fritz got a life sentence.

Through his incarceration, Williamson deteriorated physically and mentally despite the efforts of some good hearted souls until the Innocence Project - (basis for the serial In Justice) helped get them both acquitted after 12 years on the basis of the new technology - DNA testing.

Grisham read Williamson's obituary when he died (5 years after being released) and was inspired to research and write this book.

I started out reading the book, knowing that the main accused was innocent (could the title have been more descriptive?). Grisham wrote the book, knowing that Williamson was innocent. But even someone who didn't know some of the data presented here in hindsight, could have seen that this was a wrongful conviction. And it appalls you that even though the case came up for appeal multiple times, each person upheld the original wrongful conviction.

Hence Grisham seems to have achieved his major goal in writing this novel.

"If you believe that in America, you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you.
If you believe in the Death Penalty, this book will disturb you.
If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you"

Book Review: The Food Revolution

Blokesablogin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:21:42 EDT

Any kid in America will identify with the Baskin-Robbins brand of ice creams. Nirula's in Delhi morphed their idea of "31" flavors to be Nirula's 21! The son of the original Robbins happens to be one John Robbins who became famous in the early '90s with his first bestseller "Diet for a New America". More than a decade later, his offering, "The Food Revolution" brings to the fore the violence and apathy of factory farms, the "junk" we ingest in the name of "food" and Genetically modified foods and the effect our current food choices have on global warming.

The Food Revolution: How YOUR DIET can help save your life and our world is a must read for all of us who have no idea about how our food is "manufactured" these days. Gone are the days of village belles totting sheaves of crops, attracting unwarranted attention. Today's agribusiness has an ugly underbelly, rife with chemical industries making huge profits by selling poisonous pesticides and herbicides along with their "matching seeds" to struggling farmers in poor countries with poorer access to resources such as land and water.

I never thought much about being a vegetarian. That was how I was brought up and I could never stand the "smells" of meat to want to even try it. I still remember the butcher's shop we had to cross before we got to my grandparents' in Pallavaram. It had a hug log for a chopping board and some skinned animal- goat, I think, hanging from the ceiling. That sight always made me feel very sad for some odd reason. As much as I wanted to avert my eyes from the sight, I would sneak a peek to see the pinkish carcass hang in death.

Robbins throws an entirely researched spin to being a vegetarian, not just vegetarian, but vegan. With the amount of land and water used to grow one pound of meat versus one pound of vegetables, he shows clearly that a vegetarian diet is healthier for not just us, but also to our planet- a living and breathing entity. He begins with clearly researched findings on the benefit of a vegetarian diet to reduce the risk of diseases such as cancer and heart disease. He more than proves his point with issues of obesity, clogged arteries and metastasis.

He wonders aloud how in nature no other mammal feeds its young the milk of another mammal, except for humans. Reading that made me freeze in my chair- I come from such a "divine dairy" culture with no less than Krishna giving me the license to enjoy milk, curd and butter. After reading his descriptions of how cows are separated from their calves and injected with rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Harmone) I am now wondering what will be a good alternative for curds.

The factory farm descriptions are sure to make even the most hard core meat eater rethink his diet. The overcrowding of pens, sheds, barns, coops, homes, to turn a "mean" profit, make the "food" animals behave and grow abnormally. It is very common for many of these animals to be suffering from cancer, respiratory illnesses, obesity, immobility, pain, abnormal anatomy and physiology. The irresponsibility exhibited by large "food" producers in the name of bottomlines impacts our health, our land's health, pollute waterways and opens Pandora's Box of we-know-not-what.

There is a beautiful story of a pig farmer who had worked all his life growing hogs and after connecting with the author, decides to get into organic farming and growing broccoli. There are several incidents sprinkled around to make the book entertaining without losing its main focus.

The myth about hunger is busted. There is more than ample evidence to show that most of the crops grown go to feed cattle to later be cut down for food. The terrible public policies and strong lobbies of powerful agribusiness corporations ensure that the rich get supplied with food while the poor can just die.

All in all, this book combines the fields of medicine, public health, economy, ecology and politics to make the read interesting.

Book Review: White Mughals by William Dalrymple

Shantanu Dutta — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:16:40 EDT

It is to the credit of William Dalrymple that a book on which research was begun in 1997 and was published in 2002 as a book of close to 600 pages with innumerable foot notes, bibliography and other explanations did not end up as a scholarly treatise gathering dust on library shelves but has made a fascinating rendering of political history of the early to middle eighteenth century Hyderabad as its intersects with the expanding political and commercial interests of the East India Company.

At the heart of the story is an unheard of romance between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a long time resident of the Company at Hyderabad and Khair–un –Nissa a Hyderabadi Deccani aristocratic woman in strict purdah. A large chunk of the story concerns their rather unusual romance concerning their respective stations in life – Kirkpatrick was the British Resident, akin to the ambassador of the East India Company to the Nizam’s court and a Christian and Khair – Un – Nissa a Muslim in purdah. Invariably their liaison had political as well as well as religious connotations which could never be fully resolved. Caught up between political and religious intrigue, calamity is never far and the couple’s domestic life is marred with tragedy, and especially so the life of Khair –un –Nissa, who according to the book married around sixteen and before her widowhood at the age of 21 had given birth to two children, and had died by the age of 27.

However to reduce the book to a mere love story however exotic the characters is to minimize the impact of the book. The larger canvas of the book is its attempt to show that the “ White Mughals” through their lives demonstrated in spite of their quaint eccentricities and even excesses that it was possible for different cultures t co exist, learn from and live together. To do that, Dalrymple strings together characters like the Kirkpatrick brothers, Sir David Ochterlony – He of the Kolkata monument, William Hickey, the diarist , William Gardner- of the Gardner’s Horse regiment , army commanders like Hindoo Stuart to demonstrate a way of life that was not uncommon in the early decades of the nineteenth century before the jackboots of the imperialism which we so well know and despise.

Sitting in the early decades of the twenty first century , it looks fascinating to examine the lives of the characters that populate the book and the twist and turns of their life. The facts are presented matter of factly – it was considered “fast travel” to get from Machalipatnam(near Vijaywada) to Kolkata in two weeks, where mail traveled through runners called harkaras , stationed non stop so that the mail never got held up because it was passed from hand to hand like relay race and where the travel options were limited to traveling overland on bullock cart or elephant or wagons or choosing a “fast ship”.

William Dalrymple’s exhaustive research ensures that one can hardly fault him on fact. He in fact brings out once again, what has always been known, that no people who engaged with India for any length of time can not be affected by it- not even the imperious, aloof and class conscious British. This is all fine and one can put the book down with just the simple conclusion perfectly true that India has a rich and composite culture that embraces any one. But Dalrymple’s own conclusion and possible compulsion in writing the book is important. In his own words “ We still have rhetoric about clashing civilizations and almost daily generalizations in the press about East and West, Islamic and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two…East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met in the past. And they will do so again.” Perhaps if we take nothing out of the book but these thoughts alone, we would have done well.

Book Review: Merchants of Deception - The Amway Inside Story

enidhi — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:15:43 EDT

Merchants of Deception is a book by Eric Scheibeler, former Amway Emerald Distributor, who once believed strongly that Amway would fetch him a financial freedom and success, reached near top of the chain, only to discover how fraudulent the system is and how everyone involved are guaranteed to lose money.

His book exposes some key inside info regarding the operation of Amway (and other such multi-level marketing companies) and is a must read to everyone involved in this business or considering entering into it.

Most of you have heard of Amway and other network marketing/MLM companies. Chances are, some of you might be a part of it or faced pressure to join it. These “Business Opportunities” are projected as wealth creation tools or vehicles to achieve financial freedom. But the truth often is otherwise.

Those who join these kind of business almost always suffer a loss - financial or otherwise. It may be difficult to blindly agree that these NM/MLM companies do more harm than good and you HAVE to read, Merchants of Deception, to know how exactly these companies fool people with an illusion of financial freedom.

The book is 232 pages long and free for download in pdf format from the author's website (2.91MB), MerchantsofDeception.com Click here to read Merchants of Deception for free.

The book is written in first person, in a sequential order, starting from Eric’s life before joining Amway, his initial days as Amway distributor, how he trusted the company, developed loyalty to his up liners and slogged hard to promote the business and eventually climbed up the ladder to different levels in the chain.

Then he gradually discovers he is not making the amount of money he is supposed to me making at his level (Emerald) and slowly comes out of his pre-programmed mindset and starts exploring things. The truths he uncovered and the trouble he faced from his upliners because of that make this book a must read for anyone who believes network marketing can make them rich.

As some of you may not find enough time to read all 232 pages of the book, I am listing below some key extracts from the book, with permission from the author, the facts you might have never known and are guaranteed to find it difficult to digest.

First, an open request to all Amway IBOs and members of other similar businesses who are reading this: I am aware that your current mindset doesn’t allow you to accept and digest the facts given below. Your upliners are guaranteed to brand these facts as rubbish and baseless allegations and distractions which will deviate you from your goal. MY sincere request to you don’t trust me or your upliners - Think independently and make an attempt to verify the facts on your own.

1. Amway top leaders make a fortune, NOT from Amway distributorship but by selling training material (Seminars, video, audio and books, etc.)

While few top Amway IBOs (At Diamond level and above) appear to be super rich, everyone thinks they made money because of core Amway activities (buying and using products), but Eric has discovered that their IT returns prove that wrong. Just 5% of their income came from Amway and over 95% came from “tools business”, a collective name for motivational stuff they sell to down liners .

These include, conducting seminars and charging people for it, selling audio and video contents with motivational stuff that will guide down liners towards success, books, etc. Low-level IBOs who buy this stuff think that the diamonds are sharing their success about to how to become millionaires like them, while diamonds pocket millions for the simple reason that others are buying their motivational stuffs.

Hardly 1-2% of members in a total network reach Diamond and above levels and mint money this way and the rest of the distributors (IBOs) will never be able to achieve that (because they can’t create and sell such motivational stuff)

If you doubt the above, ask for the income tax returns of these millionaires.

2. There’s no way to track your earning.

Amway IBOs don’t have an option to track their earning on Amway's Web site. If they get a check for an amount which is far below what they were supposed to get, there’s no way they can trace down the cause. At Emerald level, Eric was supposed to be making $100,000 an year, but he was making a little less than $30,000.

One of his down liners, a Ruby Direct, was supposed to be earning $50,000 but had made only around $4,000. An IBO is not supposed to discuss his woes with his downliners or cross lines and upliners won’t give any explanation why there is such a huge difference. Not earning enough is attributed to "not working hard enough" or "lack of commitment to the business" or "a personal failure" and an IBO will be assured that all his woes will vanish once he reaches the next level - for which he needs to work harder.

Everyone will be under an illusion that everyone else is making lots of money and only he is not making enough. They may try to hide this fact by attempting to show off wealth and saying they’re making huge money. If they say they are not earning enough their downliners will get discouraged and de-motivated, new prospects hesitate to join and business falls further, so faking success is the only way for everyone in this business.

3. Amway founders were very much aware of all the wrong things in the organization (Cultism, Tools, Business, Under-paid distributors, Near 100% of people lose money)

Eric shows, with evidence, that the frauds he detected were not isolated incidents but spread across the organization. More importantly he proves that Amway founders were aware of this from the very early stages and nothing was done to protect innocent distributors who lost tens of thousands of dollars or punish kingpin distributors who were making fortunes by exploiting the unsuspecting downliners. The book also details several unethical things done by Amway management to silence things they didn’t want the outer world to know.

4. The four cardinal principles of Amway (and such companies)

Amway distributors were brainwashed systematically about four cardinal rules, that they should never, ever violate. They will have 100% success rate as long as they blindly adhere to the system following instructions of their seniors and outside the system there is a 0% success rate.

a. Never De-edify:

Never question your upliners. You are expected to blindly believe in whatever has been told/instructed to you by your up liners. You’re not welcome to give suggestions / make deviations / use your discretion. Eric’s loyalty was questioned when he decided to correct a few grammatical errors in a newsletter given to him for circulation by his upliner.

Further, a distributor is expected to praise his upliner whenever there's an opportunity and serve him (by fueling his tank, paying the bill and being loyal) whenever he receives advice/help from his upliner. You’re expected to blindly duplicate.

b. Never pass on negatives:

Anything that’s against Amway is branded as negative stuff. IBOs are brainwashed to believe that those who chose not to join Amway are losers, who have no dreams, no hope, no ambitions and would never achieve anything in life.

Anyone who cautions you about any possible negative impacts of Amway are jealous of your progress and trying to pull you down. You’re supposed to use only Amway products at home, nevermind how expensive it is. You’re expected not to have a plan B as that would mean you don’t trust the system fully.

If you’re not willing to put in enough efforts to promote the business you don’t love your family. You’re always expected to give positive feedback and talk good things and show off (though you didn’t like the product or running a financial loss).

c. Never Cross Line:

You need to interact with your upline and downline only and are not supposed to interact with other members of the company. This is typically to ensure retention of secrecy.

d. Never implement new ideas:

You must do what you’re told to do. Nothing more, nothing less. You’re supposed to be the owner of your business, but you have no freedom to bring in a change or run it the way you want it.

5. Nearly 100% people fail

This can sound unrealistic. With so many millionaires as living examples, how can anyone say the system is not good? After recruiting over 2,000 people under him, Eric realized that he could identify only 10 people who made net earnings of $1 or above in a year (after deducting the expenses incurred in promoting the business).

The system is such that it ensures its members keep pumping money in by buying overpriced products, attending seminars, buying motivational materials, etc. The earnings they make usually will be far less than expenses incurred for all these. People are kept going until they break, under a nonexistent hope of financial freedom which would come as soon as they reach the "next level."

Failure, when it finally happens, is attributed to an individual rather than the system, so others continue in the belief, "That can’t happen to me."

6. Dream building is a key technique employed

A prospect is made to build a huge dream (mansions, private jets, etc.) and is made to believe that their current job can never take them there but a business like Amway has the potential to take them there within years.

Greed is quite a common weakness in humans and MLM companies very effectively target that and most people don’t find any fault as such in the system and silently fall prey. The brainwashing that happens gradually after they join will keep them loyal to the system. If anyone tries to save them from the impending disaster they are heading to, such people are treated almost like enemies who are snatching their dreams away.

The book explains all these in detail. It also reveals the cultism, the emotional and financial trauma he and his family faced, the tactics adopted by his upliners to keep him silent, how he was blackmailed and threatened and more.

His struggle to recover to normalcy is remarkable. He could have walked away with huge amounts of money, had he chosen to remain silent. But he chose to spread awareness and has actively helped law enforcement agencies across the globe to investigate scams of this nature. He receives over 3,000 testimonials a day from MLM victims across the globe and his Web site is full of supporting documents, proof, the latest news related to the business.

Book Review: Gang Leader For a Day - Sudhir Venkatesh

Ms. Anona — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:24:15 EDT

When Sudhir Venkatesh was a sociology student at the University of Chicago, he was sent to the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the housing projects where African- Americans lived, to administer surveys to the residents. On just his first visit, he was held against his will in the stairwell of the multi-story edifice and was given his first lesson on urban dwellings. Even amid seemingly unorganized surroundings, nothing can be learned if giving in to generalized stereotypes and simple solutions conjured up by educated kids from the other side of town.

It was in this stairwell where he met and befriended J.T., a member of the crack-selling gang, the Black Kings. For the next seven years, Sudhir was able to observe the everyday operations of the gang under the protection of J.T. and learned that in essence the projects was really a functioning ‘community’ with complex, but organized functions, the same as any other he had ever encountered.

In Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, the reader is introduced to characters you may hope to never have the displeasure of meeting in a dark alley at night. You intimately get to know both the perpetrators and victims of casual drug use, prostitution, violence, and abuse. The lines between right and wrong become blurred, but Venkatesh neither glamorizes nor condemns the actions outright of any character and allows the reader to maintain their own ideas while stretching their spectrum. It is an ugly world where even the ambulances don’t want to show up, and, true to Chicago, politicians are in on the gain as well. The most stunning revelation is that these gangs are probably the most organized pyramid structures around, where the higher ups receive a hefty pay, but the lower tier, or newbies, receive next to minimum wage while risking being killed or thrown into jail. There are plenty of books out there about the ‘ghetto’ and this book is not more shocking than any other, but the shining light here is Sudhir himself.

Throughout Venkatesh’s book, you can sense his struggle to maintain a distinct identity while allowing it to take on a new shape. The ethics that he was brought up with growing up as an established immigrant’s son in California are tested. It gets especially interesting when Sudhir recognizes that he could be in legal contempt for the things he had witnessed and had not reported to police. He even admits to contributing a few kicks in the beating of a guy who had bloodily beat up one of the girls. The lines between casual observer and participant had become just as blurry as those between right and wrong. In a world where everyone either hustles or is hustled, Sudhir realizes that his attempt to obtain the story and write an unbiased report was not viewed by the community as anything more than another self-fulfilling act. In the end, Sudhir is viewed as just another ‘hustler’, but fortunately, not this or anything else dissuaded him, including the chagrin of many of his professors he was originally trying to impress by his boldness.

This is Venkatesh’s eighth book and Gang Leader for a Day is an overall easy read. It is a story about taking risks, not only in life, but in education as well. It is also a book about cultural awareness and the need to understand all facets of society to better understand yourself.

Book Review:The Varieties of Scientific Experience

PH — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:34:37 EDT

As soon as I finished reading The Varieties of Scientific Experience – A Personal View of the Search for God, an anthology of Carl Sagan’s 1985 Gifford lectures in Natural Theology, I wanted to grab every person on this ‘pale blue dot’ planet by the shoulders, and ask him/her to read it. Sagan was a man who, per Ann Duryan, the book’s editor, “spoke extemporaneously in nearly perfect paragraphs”. Here’s a typical passage.

‘By far the best way I know to engage the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night…every culture has felt a sense of awe and wonder looking at the sky. This is reflected throughout the world in both science and religion. Thomas Carlyle said that wonder is the basis of worship. And Einstein said, “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.” So if Carlyle and Einstein agree on something, it has a modest possibility of even being right.’

This is about as poetic as Kabir, Meera and Bulle Shah will ever get.

Sagan’s tone in these lectures is benign and almost avuncular; only the patently prissy would accuse him of disrespect. His gifts as a science writer are many. He has a keen eye for the beauty in every facet of human inquiry-literature, art, science of course, and even religion. He has the sort of wit that pokes to tickle, not to hurt. For instance, when pointing out the obviously anthropocentric view of the afterlife, he recites Rupert Brooke’s Heaven. And here’s a snippet from a post-lecture Q&A session.

Q: What is your opinion on the nature of the origins of intelligent life in the universe?
A: I’m for it!

The book is rich in poetry (that of rhyme as well as reason), artists’ depictions of astronomical phenomena, and of course those breathtakingly wondrous NASA photographs. Sagan dazzles us even when citing numbers - a couple of hundred thousand million suns in the Milky Way, ten to hundred times as many galaxies in the universe, and an equation attempting to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.

Above all, his clear yet sophisticated ethics give these talks a halo of nobility. For instance, he rejects miracles not because they’re absurd but because, following Democritus and Hume, the likelihood of nature changing its course is much smaller than that of a person lying. Or consider his nuanced take on the preserve-destroy conflict innate in civilizations.

‘ [It is] a conflict within the human heart…between the bureaucratic, hierarchical, aggressive parts of our nature, which in a neurophysiological sense we share with our reptilian ancestors, and the other parts of our nature, the generalized capacity for love, for compassion, for identification with others, who may superficially not look or talk or dress exactly like us, the ability to figure the world out that is focused and concentrated in our cerebral cortex.’

Note the “superficial” and “exactly”, implying that the similarities among different peoples far outweigh the differences; and the references to “reptilian ancestors” and “cerebral cortex”, as evidence of his commitment to a purely natural theology.

Speaking in 1985, the heyday of Reagan and the Star Wars, Sagan constantly returns to the nuclear threat and warns us that we have (still true, I gather) nuclear weapons capable of destroying our species many times over. And this is a scientist’s warning, so he duly backs it up with some morbid math on how many warheads it’d take to get to doomsday. Here he is championing the ethical legacy of such heavyweights as Spinoza, Einstein and Russell - not just in their espousal of laws of nature as the only plausible god, but also in their compassion and pacifism.

By itself, atheism is a negative and that very fact weakens its sales pitch. It’s no co-incidence that the word consists of a negating prefix followed by two harsh syllables; it is supposed to signify a rejection of something. What we want is something we can embrace, something positive. Sagan offers a recipe for that. Take what is best in religion: the deep questions it seeks to answer, the compassion it seeks to advocate, and the poetry it touches upon. Add what is best in science: the persistent chipping away at the wall of ignorance; the humility and awe of knowing that we live on a planet of a sun in the ‘boondocks’ of a galaxy (to use Sagan’s imaginative expression) that is itself a miniscule part of the universe. Cook this mixture in Sagan’s funny, lucid and lyrical prose, and what you get is a literary feast of a book.

Book Review: Reflections on the Art of Living - A Joseph Campbell Companion

Anuradha Goyal — Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:38:33 EST

There are very few books that you read and you know you will keep going back to them. This is one such book.

Joseph Campbell is well known for his work in Myths and in comparative religion. In his research on Myths, he has studied most of the religions of the world and can present an interesting comparison. He is greatly influenced by eastern religions specifically Hinduism and Buddhism. He quotes a lot of times from eastern literature such as the Upanishads and Vedas. He uses a lot of Buddhist stories to make a lot of points.

This book has been complied from discussions that Campbell had with 10 of his students during a 30 day period in 1984, where they had gathered for intensive exploration of mythological dimension. It is broadly divided into 3 segments – Living in the World, Coming into awareness, Living in the Sacred. In the first section he talks about everyday living, in the second about becoming aware of oneself and one’s connectedness or oneness with the rest of the world and in the third he talks about creating your own scared space and living with it. He covers wide range of things, almost anything that touches your life spiritually. It is impossible to review such things so I would just quote some of the words from the book:

The privilege of lifetime is being who you are.

Life is without meaning.
You bring meaning to it
The meaning of life is
Whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.

The heroic life is living the individual adventure.

Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.
You are not on your own path.
If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.

If you want the whole thing,
The gods will give it to you.
But you must be ready for it.

As you go the way of life,
You would see a great chasm,
Jump
It is not as wide as you think.
When you follow your passion,
Society’s help is gone.
You must be very careful.
You’re completely on your own.

It takes courage to do what you want.
Other people have a lot of plans for you.
Nobody wants you to do what you want to do.
They want you to go on their trip, but you can do what you want.

Find a place where there is joy,
And the joy will burn out the pain.

If you connect with these words, you would probably enjoy reading this book and Joseph Campbell in general.