freecounterpoint: IPA back to India

Sunday, August 26, 2012

IPA back to India

Time to visit there, and taste the brews.

35 comments:

Mr roT said...: Wonderful. Civilization is not dying everywhere.; 8/26/2012 11:20 AM
Tecumseh said...: The circle of life.; 8/26/2012 11:59 AM
Mr roT said...: Bury me in hops.; 8/26/2012 12:21 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: I don't know about Delhi, but here in TN
there is a strict prohibition against the sale of foreign booze; foreign as in, non-Tamilian. So Delhi IPA is right out, along with Australian shiraz, and Japanese whiskey. On the other hand, if you get close to the border with Kerala, you're sure to find toddy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_toddy

yours in sobriety,

A. Leverkühn; 8/26/2012 12:22 PM
Mr roT said...: Hey Liverkrotch, learn how to set a link, willya?; 8/26/2012 12:25 PM
Tecumseh said...: I thought India is more of a live-and-let-live kind of place, no? What's wrong to have an IPA to quench the thirst on a hot, muggy day?

As for writing html, evidently Herr Rott payed more attention to my teachings on the subject, back in the day.; 8/26/2012 12:55 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: Tecs --- I think it's all about licensing, tax, and
protectionism together with all the attending corruption. There is, nominally, a dim view taken on drinking from the more orthodox Hindu and Muslim establishments, but at the end of the day this is more noise than substance. In fact *alot* of local booze (mainly rum and beer) is produced; and drinking is tolerated as long as it happens in dimly lit, second story bars.

cheers,
A. Leverkühn; 8/26/2012 1:20 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Few things say "Laissez les bons temps rouler" quite like 3rd rate hooch in the dimly lit 2nd story bars of TN.
As R.G. found out, it's to die for.; 8/26/2012 3:28 PM
Mr roT said...: t's got to be more about Muslims than Hindus. I know a few Hindus and they don't give a shit about any of that. The Muslims I know pray and beat their women, which shows that they could use drink and aren't getting any. Maybe they really need U.S. Marines to teach them to be civil.
It's right to point out that corruption follows the enacting of stupid law without simultaneously imposing serious penalties for its transgression.; 8/26/2012 4:55 PM
Mr roT said...: As R.G. found out, it's to die for. Robert Gunning?; 8/26/2012 4:58 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: It is not very civil of you, Herr Rott, to surmise the Momo cult is more likely to disdain da gude rede wine than the religion of Durga. Not appropriate at all.
Your application to serve as aide-de-camp to Huma, at the Dept. of State, is sooooooooo Kaput. Trust me.; 8/26/2012 5:09 PM
Mr roT said...: You callin' me a huma? You're the one from Boston or some other gayradise.; 8/26/2012 5:12 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: "Robert Gunning?"

You'd been closer if you had gone with Rincon Gazpacho; 8/26/2012 5:12 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: "You callin' me a huma? You're the one from Boston or some other gayradise."

Herr Rott in Humalot.; 8/26/2012 5:13 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: I guess RG is Rajiv Gandhi ? I don't know about the 2nd floor bar connection.

Actually it's connected to Hindu social mores; even at a dietary level drinking is akin to eating meat or mushrooms --- both are Tamasic. And Chennai is overwhelmingly Hindu; the divide is something like 80% Hindu, 10% Muslim, and 10% Catholic (remember St. Thomas) --- so I think it's more a reflection of the Hindu moral majority. Having said that, Hindus have more latitude, being in the majority, and, by ratio, eat meat, kiss on beach, and drink booze more than than Muslims do (pork replacing meat).
It's not neccessarily a reflection of an inherently more severe puritanicism on the part of Muslims but rather a defense mechanism to reinforce and keep the integrity of Muslim identity.

cheers,

A. Leverkühn; 8/26/2012 5:49 PM
Mr roT said...: Liver, TN is nearly a dry state, and very Christian from Nashville to Memphis. Duh.; 8/26/2012 6:49 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: "It's not neccessarily a reflection of an inherently more severe puritanicism on the part of Muslims but rather a defense mechanism to reinforce and keep the integrity of Muslim identity. "

You see, Herr Rott? Now THAT is how to be "Appropriate" in discussing those Islamic Values. A. Leverkuhn's application to be aide-de-camp to Huma is still an ongoing proposition at the State Dept.
Seethe, Herr Rott, Seethe!; 8/26/2012 6:51 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: "Liver, TN is nearly a dry state "

Whaddya talkin' about, Texas Boy? TN has barrels of Jim Beam in every corner, and a Moonshine still explodin' in every barn. It's one wild Maenady and Dionysian place. The ......
....oh, wait, so that was your point, eh? My, my, Herr Rott's wit is getting mighty dry.; 8/26/2012 6:58 PM
Mr roT said...: Yeah, AA. You win the nithead of the night medal.; 8/26/2012 7:02 PM
Tecumseh said...: Tamil Nadu/Tennessee: Minsk/Pinsk.; 8/26/2012 7:03 PM
Mr roT said...: AA, your comment containing ...THAT is how to be "Appropriate" in discussing those Islamic Values is pretty good. I will now withdraw your admittance to the neurosurgery Dept. here.; 8/26/2012 7:36 PM
Mr roT said...: Tecs, as to Tamil Nadu/Tennessee: Minsk/Pinsk, the sitar does sound a lot like the banjo.; 8/26/2012 7:38 PM
Tecumseh said...: How the real McCoy sounds.; 8/26/2012 7:56 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: Banjo and sitar; hootch and tody --- all we need now is a south indian version of deliverance ! As far as the indian banjo goes here's someone worth listening to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXBfL5lRqE

Although personally, I would recommend the Carnatic flute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgOoc8ZHLGk

(I heard this fellow in January.)

I should have added to my multi-culturalist apology that Muslims in TN don't call the shots in any arena here --- political, social, artistic. The community's position is too fragile to make any kind of real demands and for good reason; in orther parts of India (e.g. in Nellie where overnight some 2000 Bangladeshi muslim immigrants where massacred because they were seen as de fact supporters of the more secular and less Hindu-minded congress party) the threat of a spontaneous pogrom is palpably immanent, even now. Religious Muslims here keep out the way and live like ghetto jews in medieval Europe; the only reminder that they are here at all is the periodic prayer wail.

cheers,

A. Leverkühn; 8/27/2012 6:22 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: In other words, Muslims in Tamil Nadu have the opportunity to experience what life is like for every Kufr in every predominant Muslim nation on Earth?
Why, that must truly be a shock to the Ummah system.; 8/27/2012 9:28 PM
Tecumseh said...: The Ummah was in charge at some point. And the Sultan, Ghiyasuddin Dhamgani, was, by all accounts, a charming and considerate fellow:

The Hindu prisoners were divided into four sections and taken to each of the four gates of the great catcar. There, on the stakes they had carried, the prisoners were impaled. Afterwards their wives were killed and tied by their hair to these pales. Little children were massacred on the bosoms of their mothers and their corpses left there. Then, the camp was raised, and they started cutting down the trees of another forest. In the same manner did they treat their later Hindu prisoners. This is shameful conduct such as I have not known any other sovereign guilty of. It is for this that God hastened the death of Ghiyath-eddin.

One day whilst the Kadhi (Kazi) and I were having our food with (Ghiyazu-d-din), the Kazi to his right and I to his left, an infidel was brought before him accompanied by his wife and son aged seven years. The Sultan made a sign with his hand to the executioners to cut off the head of this man ; then he said to them in Arabic : ' and the son and the wife. ' They cut off their heads and I turned my eyes away. When I looked again, I saw their heads lying on the ground.

Ghiyasuddin's life was cut short in 1344: apparently, he died from the after effects of an aphrodisiac.; 8/27/2012 11:41 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: Except that the majority of Muslims in the world live in India and live here in disconnected enclaves as minorities; your unsaid suggestion Akleos that subjugation and ruling from on-high are the hallmarks of the modern Muslim experience are misleading.

Tecs, slaughter and religious persecution were common place events in the 13th and 14th century;
for example, just look at any number of pogroms carried out by various Christian principalities *throughout* Europe against jews at that time.
For instance I was surprised to learn that even in Yorkshire there was a sizable massacre following some blood libel.

But do you really think Tecs, that somehow modern day Muslims in India are in *any* way successors of the Delhi caliphate --- culturally, morally, or even ethnically ? As if they could be held responsible for 700, 500, or even 300 year old crimes. Most of that era of the Muslim-ruled-India is more or less vanished; with the exception of Mughal cuisine and perhaps some of the cooks who now make it their trademark in Kolkata. Of course modern day Muslim here want to think that they are the successors but this is only hypomanic delusionalism. The reality is that most Muslim now are low-caste Hindu converts who have been pushed to Islam as a way of escaping a truely repressive and *active* system of modern day discrimination/persecution established by vedic Brahmins well before the prophet's men set foot in the subcontinent. And all their talk about Muslim hegemony, language, and identity is just a pyrrhic attempt to film some kind of void.

cheers,
A. Leverkühn; 8/28/2012 5:18 AM
A. Leverkuhn said...: Of course, I should add escaping caste and clan by conversion is arguably an act of jumping from the fire into the frying pan; the operating assumption being that if you had to convert then you obviously had some questionable origin. Catholics also face the same trouble here (and indeed many of them are also converts from low caste) but they are, by ratio, a smaller group whose birthrate is not threatening to change demographics;
*and* they aren't linked in the popular imagination to 700 year old Muslim hubris and repression.; 8/28/2012 5:35 AM
Tecumseh said...: Well, so how do you explain away then the Bombay massacre from 2008? Or dozens of such terrorist attacks over the past couple of decades? Just boys being boys, playing with matches?; 8/28/2012 9:21 AM
A. Leverkuhn said...: The Bombay massacre is exceptional since there are indications that it was orchestrated by Pakistani intellegence and, as such, not a an expression of any domestic insurgency.

Of course there are dozens of attacks; but for each Muslim incident there is at least one Hindu episode (which is usually alot bloodier).
On top of that there is a deluge of intercaste massacres --- usually between two competing Hindu caste's both at the bottom of the heap haggling over a common water supply
or the like. Furthermore, on a daily basis, there are all kinds of xenophobic incidents where, for example, Bihari migrant laborers are harassed (in some cases killed) by the locals in which ever state they happen to be contracting-in at the time. The point is that there is a general and pervasive atmosphere is xenophobia (in all states within India)
which is hardly the fault of indian Muslims.

cheers,

A. Leverkühn; 8/28/2012 2:22 PM
Mr roT said...: And Auschwitz was a one-off.; 8/28/2012 3:27 PM
A. Leverkuhn said...: You're putting words in my mouth. There's no realistic comparison to be made, Herr roT. The Bombay attack(s), albeit well-planned, was *an* incident with something like 200 casualties. It was not part of some grand long-term orchestrated campaign like the Maoist have undertaken in Orisa; by the way, each time the Maoist ensnare some police unit in the hinterlands the casualties usually exceed 200. Auschwitz, as we know, was the culmination of an ever radicalising policy over the course of ten years by a *government* , whose scale of violence dwarfs the sum total of whatever counts as Muslim violence in India in modern times.

cheers,

A. Leverkühn; 8/28/2012 3:52 PM
Mr roT said...: The Austrians, at least most of them, were happy to be complicit and were not duped. It's a damned shame because now hey are the best people I have ever met, besides Roumanian girls and will never be forgiven the sins of their grandparents. Cookies crumble that way.; 8/28/2012 5:04 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: "Except that the majority of Muslims in the world live in India and live here in disconnected enclaves as minorities; your unsaid suggestion Akleos that subjugation and ruling from on-high are the hallmarks of the modern Muslim experience are misleading."

Ok, right there is enough to take a measure of Adriana Leverkuhn.
"The majority of Muslims in the world live in India"
False. Big time false. I'll let you reflect over this one, and if you fail to see how wrong you are I'll be quite happy to share some details.
" here in disconnected enclaves as minorities"
Islam is a minority religion in India today, and Muslims are not aggregated into a single region, true enough. After all, West and East Pakistan were those original "aggregations". But, in those enclaves where they hold sway, Hindus and other Kufr are clobbered bigtime. There is a massive civil strife in India between Muslims and non-Muslims, and Islam gives at least as good as it gets.
You might consider the position of non-Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh to Muslims in India, and ask yourself which minority you would prefer to be. Try to keep masochism out of your reflections. Try for honesty, if you can.
"your unsaid suggestion Akleos that subjugation and ruling from on-high are the hallmarks of the modern Muslim experience are misleading."
Uh, try to go with what I said rather than what I did not say . After all, the unsaid has the singular misfortune of not having been said, and that leaves Leverkuhn commenting on things not said rather than things said, which even the estimable Leo Naphta might hesitate in the firing....So, what did I say? Here goes: " Muslims in Tamil Nadu have the opportunity to experience what life is like for every Kufr in every predominant Muslim nation on Earth?Why, that must truly be a shock to the Ummah system"
If that is not clear enough for you, then let's adumbrate. If we take at face value your description of the sad misfortunes of being Muslim in Tamil Nadu, then Muslims in Tamil Nadu are having the opportunity to experience what life is like for every Kufr in every predominant Muslim nation on Earth. On a good day, perhaps no worse than being Christian in Malaysia, on not such a good day perhaps no worse than being a Jew in Bangladesh, and on a bad day like being a Buddhist monk in southern Thailand, or a Catholic priest in Turkey, or a Rabbi in Tehran, or a Mormon in Sudan, or an Evangelist in Nigeria, or a filipina in Saudi Arabia, or a lover of dance in Afghanistan, and on a godawful day like anyone who is not screeching abjectedly in full submission to the Sunni line in Pakistan.
But, heck, who says you've got to take my word for it? By all means, Leverkuhn, go ahead and move to one of those predominant Muslim nations. Embrace the Ummah, as no doubt there are those in Dar al Islam who would embrace you. Revel in that lovin' creed. But, don't forget, for proper observations and quality control on this not so gedanke experiment, make sure the Boyz know you are oh so not a Believer. To better guarantee the full measure of just how much Islam is Love. After all, if you go around pretending you are Joanna Taliban there is so much you might miss. [It goes without saying, eh?]; 8/28/2012 8:20 PM
Mr roT said...: AA, I think you missed the importance of Liver's inner life. This is common in the abstract branches of mathematics, a focus on the irrelevant at the expense of the obvious, but more difficult.

Even I recoiled at the assertion that the majority of all the world's muslims infest India, but I also thought this a side point. My interest is not in the possibility that muslims become a power in the electorate since they don't indicate much interest in elections outside of Iraq.; 8/29/2012 3:45 AM