Mortgages, money laundering and Bollywood - the story of one local Indian businessman

He was an icon in the local Indian community, a flashy movie producer who invested millions in Bollywood films and brought Indian musical acts to the Washington area.

Vijay K. Taneja had an aura about him, a celebrity image that made people trust him, according to people who know the Fairfax County businessman. Problem was, Taneja admitted in federal court yesterday, his entertainment ventures were financed with money obtained through an extensive mortgage fraud scheme.

[...]

Prosecutors told the judge that Taneja invested millions of his mortgage proceeds in Indian films and theatrical productions through one of his companies, Elite Entertainment, and that they are still trying to untangle the financial web. "He has millions of dollars unaccounted for," Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Learned said as he asked Hilton to order Taneja to be electronically monitored to ensure that he doesn't flee before sentencing. "There's so much money, and it's difficult to figure out where it all went."

The entire story is here. It was hard to miss his presence - his Elite Entertainment posters advertising performances by major Bollywood stars (I remember one Asha Bhonsle concert at Constitution Hall) in the DC metro area and his flyers advertising his mortgage business occupied valuable real estate on the walls and windows of our local Indian grocery stores.

Helen Thomas is back...

... among the White House press corps. Will be interesting to witness the verbal jousting between a young, cerebral president and the relentlessly inquisitive reporter who has lived a not insignificant number of years, years that Obama will only have read about in history books.

Echoes of Bobby Kennedy's 1968 Campaign

In its June 2008 issue, Vanity Fair magazine excerpted Thurston Clarke's book, The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America, about Bobby Kennedy's short-lived - but enlivening - campaign. I started reading the article many times, but could never find the time to finish it until a few days ago.

The excerpt chronicles Bobby Kennedy's internal dilemmas and his struggle to articulate why he should run for president and challenge his own party's sitting president. It brings into sharp relief the various private agonies stymying the potential candidate, his wife, his sister-in-law (Jackie Kennedy), his brother and the sundry friends close to the family. JFK's assassination is preying on their minds. They wonder aloud and privately if the same fate will befall Bobby Kennedy.

The part that resonated with me the most was the description of a nervous Kennedy starting his speech in front of a mixed crowd at KSU (some adoring, some hostile):

As Kennedy began, his voice cracked, and those near the stage noticed his hands trembling and his right leg shaking.

[...]

He told the K.S.U. students that their country was “deep in a malaise of the spirit” and suffering from “a deep crisis of confidence”—the kinds of phrases that no politician has dared utter since President Carter was pilloried for speaking of a national “crisis of confidence” during his notorious “malaise speech,” in which he never used the word “malaise.”

Kennedy opened his attack on President Johnson’s Vietnam policy with a confession and an apology. “Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public,” he said. “I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions which helped set us on our present path.”

[...]

I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility, before history and before my fellow citizens. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetration.

Kennedy’s apology elicited the loudest cheers of the morning so far, perhaps because these students appreciated hearing an adult admit to a mistake, or because they too had once supported the war and Kennedy’s mea culpa made it easier for them to admit that they too had been wrong.

As I was reading about this campaign from 40 years ago while being fully obsessessed about the campaign this year, it was hard to escape the parallels - issues of race (much more raw in Kennedy's time, of course); the pall of a war gone bad hanging over the electorate; the inspirational campaigns run by two young, appealing senators; the reluctance of the party establishment to embrace their candidacies; the undercurrent of fear for their lives; the yearning for change that had gripped a tired population.

The photographs accompanying the article (from Bill Eppridge's A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties) are a wonderful bonus. A web-only slideshow of 17 photographs is here.

Scenes of Philadelphia

National Treasure (the movie, the first one, which was shot in Philadelphia and DC) and the John Adams miniseries on HBO, based on the book by David McCullough, both turned out to be pretty popular in our house. If you have the time and inclination, the John Adams series is worth watching, not least for the acting. Paul Giamatti (as John Adams), Laura Linney (as Abigail Adams, the wife and mother of American Presidents), Stephen Dillane (as Thomas Jefferson) and Tom Wilkinson (as Ben Franklin) are brilliant.

We drove up to Philadelphia, where the idea of America took root, a couple of weekends ago. It's a pleasant enough drive up from DC. Philadelphia is a great city to live in, visit or even just drive through. It's lovely on many levels - the people are nice and friendly, the streets are made for walking, the buildings are history unto themselves, the food is great.

The city was buzzing. Both Obama and Palin happened to be campaigning or doing events during that time.

It was fun to go back, more than 16 years after I first lived there briefly, to see things I had not had the time (or the awareness of) to see and to see familiar places through C's eyes. We mostly spent the two days hanging out in the city center, walked up to the waterfront (where I'd been to a Max Roach concert many years ago with some friends; on the walk back to the apartment, they had sung the theme song from Married With Children at the top of their lungs while I looked on bemusedly - back then I had no idea what it was), saw Liberty Bell and took a tour of Independence Hall.

Liberty Bell

Independence Hall

Inside the courtyard of Independence Hall

The room in which the Continental Congress met and deliberated.

The chair is the only original item remaining from the days of the Revolutionary War

For a bit of flashback, here's a part of an essay about my first days in Philadelphia:

This past 13th marked 13 years since the day I arrived in the US - with two huge suitcases, one handbag and one really thick jacket my mom and I bought from a pavement seller in the Jayanagar 4th block shopping complex.

The suitcases contained everything I would need and all that I could call my own during my first few months in the US - rasam powder, sambar powder, molaga pudi, and assorted snacks and pickles, all of my favorite clothes plus a few new ones purchased in bouts of frenzied shopping as the d-day arrived, money orders for school, passport, I-20, and all the collective hopes, aspirations and fears of a family sending their girl off to a foreign land thousands of miles away.

My parents and brother traveled with me from Bangalore to Bombay to see me off on the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. It was an ungodly hour but the airport was bathed in undying light, alive, busy, buzzing with people trying to manage farewells and immigration forms and carts and unwieldy suitcases and sleepy children and bubbling emotions all at once. As I turned to wave a final goodbye, I saw the pinched, drawn faces of my parents and brother through suddenly hot, stinging eyes. The fact that I was going and going alone did not sink in until I passed immigration and faced the long, nearly-empty passage to the Lufthansa gate.

[...]

I hated Philadelphia those first few weeks.

Everything seemed starker, darker. I was alone most of the time - on the way to school, at school, while figuring out what classes to take, at the bank. The days were getting shorter and colder and all my classes were at night.

The friends I was staying with were very nice and always made sure I ate when I was home, but they had their own lives, their own personal crises and their own inside jokes (one of the girls was a big Oprah fan and the other girls used to tease her about it. The first time I heard them teasing her, I thought, wow! she must really love the opera to want to watch it on TV everyday!).

The entire post is here.

The Drama and Cost of One Amateur Sport

In the heat of the presidential campaign, what with all the anecdotes and gaffes about hockey moms with lipstick, pitbulls and lipstick on pigs (it all seems so far away now), the Post ran an article about local hockey moms. It did a nice job of profiling the hockey family life - lots of practice and games in frigid temperatures accompanied by lots of travel to out-of-town games, a lifestyle not unfamiliar to any family whose children are involved in any sport. But what was surprising and somewhat shocking to me was the cost. It costs upwards of $10,000 per child per year to play amateur ice hockey. You can just imagine how easily costs can get out of control if you have more than one child in the sport (one family profiled in the article had three children on four travel teams costing $40,000).

I read that article and thanked our stars that our son was into swimming. The most expensive component of his nine-month winter swim-team program costs was his coaching fees. His team swim suit, cap, goggles, flippers and travel costs added up to less than a couple of hundred dollars. Summer league swim team, which operates for about 10 weeks, costs even less.

Or so I thought.

Late this past summer with the league competitions in full swing, as each week passed and as the Divisional Championships and the All-Star races loomed closer and closer, pool decks rumbled with murmurs of team records, league records, All-Star cuts and Aquablades. Aquablade? That was the first I'd heard of it and I heard it from an eight year-old. So I checked with the experts - the team's three 19 year-old coaches. No one can tell if it really helps, they said, but it might do something for C's confidence, especially if everyone else in his event is wearing one.

We did not promise C, who was lobbying for it hard by then, anything, but we said we'd go take a look at it. We did. It was shiny and smooth, with tiny, vertical ribs formed into the material that one would imagine would help the water glide off more easily. It was also close to a hundred dollars. We decided it was time for some carrot and stick therapy. With the Divisionals just a week or so away we came to the understanding that we would get the Aquablade if he made it to the All-Stars.

The entire swim-team experience is fun, but nothing compares to the drama of Divisionals. Divisionals is make-or-break time as far as making it to the All-Star team is concerned. No matter how well or how badly the swimmers perform during the rest of the summer league season, the time achieved at Divisionals is all that counts. During that one Saturday at the end of July, 104 teams across 17 divisions swim their hearts out. Even the youngest ones know where they stand and whether they have a shot at making All-Stars.

During the 2007 season, C and the other kids his age had no clue, but this year, it was night from day. They knew who they had to beat to win their races, they knew to figure out their seedings from the lane positions assigned to them, and the time they needed to get, down to the hundredth of a second, in order to make the cut.

They dipped into the meet sheet frequently, pestered the coach for their swim times, exchanged notes about their races and hung on the fence separating the viewing area from the pool, cheering their team-mates on in the hot sun.

Many Aquablades came out during the Divisionals. One swimmer (still in her early teens but with a better than excellent chance of making it to the US team for the 2012 Olympics) was so careful not to stretch out her Aquablade too much that she changed into it just before her race and promptly changed out of it between the two races each competitor is allowed at Divisionals.

The races across the league end around noon and it takes the rest of the day to rank the swimmers in each age group and event. The swimmers may have won their races but they have no idea how they ranked when compared to the kids in the 103 other teams that also swam that morning. The teams go back to their respective communities and prepare for the banquet later that evening. The noisy, festive evening is for recognizing volunteers, coaches, team reps, most improved swimmers and most valuable swimmers. But the most anticipated highlight of the evening is a phone call towards the end of the banquet. A league official calls each team rep with the list of swimmers in that team that made it to All-Stars.

It's pandemonium after that. A brief silence before each name is announced is followed by whistles and hoots and chants. The kids (and the coaches and parents) revel in the success of hour-long daily practices and drills over the previous 10 weeks, and the weekly races.

It was was particularly exhilarating this year because C made the cut in his favorite event - the butterfly. The next day we kept our promise and hot-footed it to the sports store and got the Aquablade. The next weekend, after another week of daily practices, he swam in his new suit and improved on his previous best time by about 1.4 seconds, which is a huge improvement no doubt, but at Divisionals he had cut down his time by about 0.9 seconds, without the Aquablade.

We lost no time in making sure he did not attribute his improved performance solely to the swim suit. We pointed to the better swimmers in the lanes next to him (he knew he did well when he had a fast swimmer in the lane next to him), we pointed to this steady improvement over the course of the previous winter and the summer, we pointed to his intense preparation in the week leading up to the All-Stars.

Later that summer, we had help from a very credible quarter. Michael Phelps, in one of his TV interviews after the Olympics, credited his success to his training and discipline rather than his new LZR racers.

Last week, however, the issue was brought a tad closer to home from the rarefied world of Olympic-level swimming. The Post carried an article about the new class warfare about to erupt in amateur swimming at the high school and college level:

The futuristic swimsuits worn last summer by nearly every competitor at the Beijing Olympics, most notably Michael Phelps, are generating an aquatic version of class warfare as college and high school swim seasons get underway.

The sleek, long-length suits, which are widely believed to enhance performance although no testing has proven it, can cost more than $500 each and have to be replaced after a few meets. Many collegiate coaches and parents of promising young swimmers don't have the budgets for the suits. But they fear their kids will be hindered without them.

The debate is whether to ban the suits at amateur competitions. The article talks about college and high school sports departments feeling the pressure to buy the $500 suits (which last only for about three races before they have to be replaced because of loss of elasticity) for their swimmers. For us, happily, it is an issue we will not have to deal with for the near future - USA Swimming (the organization that governs the sport nationally) has banned the suit at all of its events for swimmers 12 years old and younger.

Newsweek Behind the Scences of the Presidential Campaigns

Newsweek is running a seven-part report on the workings of the McCain and Obama campaigns. Reporters followed the campaigns for a year and undertook not to report on any of their findings until after the election.

Makes for compelling reading.

Accompanying videos showcase certain anecdotes and stories. The one below discusses the Palin wardrobe flap.

Eugene Allen's Story

Eugene Allen started his career at the White House working in the pantry. He witnessed eight administrations, eventually working his way up to Maitre d'. Days before the presidential election this past week, the Washington Post interviewed him and his wife for a story.

He was in the White House kitchen the day JFK was slain. He got a personal invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."

[...]

First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming dinner for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He told her he was well ahead in the planning and had already picked out the china. But she told him he would not be working that night.

"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner." Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son says, 'Mama, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'

Lovely story, albeit with a sad ending.

Skyline Drive, Fall 2008

Three weekends ago we drove to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Shenandoah Valley is beautiful any time of the year, but especially breathtaking in the Fall, with the trees turning brilliant shades of yellow, red and orange. Although the colors had started turning, given what we've seen closer to home over the last couple of weekends, they had not peaked yet.

It's Midnight and It's Election Day 2008

November 4th has arrived in the East Coast and the first results have already come in!

Dixville Notch, a village in New Hampshire, has all of 21 registered voters. Around midnight they all congregate in one room in a local office and each one goes off into his booth and puts his vote down on a piece of paper, which then goes into a wooden ballot box. A few minutes later, the first official results roll in.

The village is staunchly Republican and has voted so in every presidential election but the one in 1968. Well, this year, it bucked the trend again. The votes went down this way - Obama, 15; McCain, 6; Nader, 0.

Plus, the Redskins lost their Monday night game on their home turf today. Electoral wisdom has it that if the Redskins lose their last home game before the elections, then the incumbent party is headed for a loss as well.

Will this maxim hold true in 2008 as well?

Childhood Allergies

Tharini at Winkie's Way circulated an impassioned e-mail a few weeks ago asking for stories of childhood allergies and how to deal with them. Although I had not experienced them first hand with my children (touch wood), food allergies are so ubiquitous that there is no escaping their impact on everyday life - the food you can pack for your children is restricted by what food allergies their classmates have (the most frequent I've encountered is no nuts of any kind in my son's lunch bag), food to be served at parties involving kids (or sleepovers or playdates) must be vetted beforehand with the list of attendees.

Over the years, we've also seen our friends Sushama and Shyam struggle with this issue from the day their son was born. He was allergic to every single food, even breast milk. Each time we got together with them, we would hear the latest on what they had found out from the doctors, what they were going through and how Aneesh was dealing with it all. We would see them keep a watchful eye on him every time he tried something new. We would see them rush home to deal with a sudden reaction. Slowly we saw their confidence grow as they got a handle on the issue and felt they could deal with what they had been handed.

As he grew older, we also saw Aneesh starting to check with his parents first before putting anything in his mouth, and never make a fuss if he was told not to eat something - usually at gatherings these were things like chips or cake that the other kids were chowing down with no second thought. It was a lot of growing up for a small child. I realized that bringing up Aneesh involved (in addition to all the things parents not facing this struggle go through) not only being vigilant about what he can and cannot eat, but also educating a young child about his condition.

I asked Sushama to write about her experiences and she agreed. Her essay (titled "Nobody is Allergic to Rice" - a myth she and her husband had the experience of debunking first hand) and a table of facts about allergies and what she learned from them appear below.

More posts on this topic are in the pipeline across a few blogs. I'll link to them here when they go up. Thanks to Tharini for starting this off and thanks to Sushama for being willing to rake up some painful memories.


"NOBODY IS ALLERGIC TO RICE" - Sushama Acharya

The Pediatrician, the Dermatologist, The Allergist, The Pulmonologist, The Nutritionist –every one of them told us that: “Nobody is allergic to rice. It is the most basic of all grains. No child is allergic to rice”. I walked out of every one of their offices telling my husband Shyam, “They are so wrong”.

The first time I fed Aneesh Gerber rice cereal when he was six months old, was also the first time I felt the real fear of losing my child. He ate a whole bowl of cereal, and without warning, threw up the entire amount through his nose and mouth. He started gasping for breath while I cried on the phone to a 911 dispatcher. I was convinced he was allergic to rice – despite all the specialists in town telling me otherwise.

Within the first week of Aneesh’s existence it became painfully apparent to us and his pediatrician that there was something terribly wrong with him. He was covered from head to toe in rashes and his skin looked “weird”. After a slew of speculation, a battery of tests, and visits to every pediatric specialist in town, by his sixth month, Cancer was ruled out (Thank God!). The consensus was food allergies, although nobody could tell us what exactly he was allergic to.

They say a mother’s instincts are always right. And they couldn’t be more correct. After convincing his (second) Allergist to do a blood test in his 10th month, I was proven right. Aneesh was allergic to rice… and wheat…and dairy…and soy…and nuts…and most vegetables…and most fruits. The only saving grace was that he was not allergic to oats. Being strict vegetarians, we were out of ideas on what to feed this child. He lived his first year and a half on three major foods – Alimentum (a special formula for allergic kids), carrots, and apples.

In retrospect, his first year was the toughest for him and for us.

NO TURNING BACK

Strict vegetarians and strong theists -- that was our identity in the second year of Aneesh’s life. Two things dominated our lives that year – Aneesh’s nutrition, given our vegetarian diet, and our belief in God. Our parents, siblings, and friends were our pillars of support. They prayed for Aneesh and suggested various treatments and recipes. My in-laws did special poojas for his health and even sent us a talisman. We tied it around Aneesh’s waist. On one of his doctors’ visits, the nurse asked us if the talisman was helping and if he was getting better. Shyam said, “We don’t know about him, but it sure is helping us.”

By now, we had learned not to panic. We had spent endless hours researching food allergies and trying to find alternate treatment. We knew that most of Aneesh’s allergies were probably not life-threatening.

And then one day, I cooked and mashed a little potato, and gave it to him in a spoon. And I witnessed a miracle. He ate it and nothing happened. I remember running to find his allergy report. There it was in plain letters – he was allergic to potatoes. My initial confusion was replaced with a certain confidence. What if the report was not accurate? After all, his Allergist did tell us to experiment with small amounts of different foods. So, I started cooking a different vegetable every day and feeding it to him. Although he was still allergic to most of them, it somehow made me feel like I was helping him.

That year we started Aneesh on two things that I believe reversed his condition -- homeopathic medicine from a doctor in India, and whites from eggs with a high Omega3 content. After a couple of months of starting him on these, I noticed he was less fussy especially at meal time. Armed with my new-found confidence and my friends’ suggestions, I started experimenting with different grains. Wholefoods became my favorite store to shop.

Although he was still allergic to most foods, Aneesh’s second year was definitely his “Jump Start” year.

“MUMMY, WHY CAN’T I EAT CAKE?”

The first time he asked me that question at a friend’s birthday party, I fought hard to hold back my tears. How could I explain to a three year old what food allergies are? More importantly, how could I explain it to him, and still make him feel like he was just like other kids in many ways?

Aneesh’s third and fourth years were probably the years that drained my energy and challenged my sanity the most. By the time he was three and a half, he had outgrown his allergy for rice, wheat, tapioca, some vegetables and fruits (what a blessing!). But he had also learned to talk and understand that he was “different” from other kids. At birthday parties, he got his “special pizza” and cup cake, and was still not allowed to eat what his other friends ate. He had started going to a Montessori, and was not allowed to get lunch from the school.

I started talking to him about his allergies and his reaction to various foods. I learned to answer his questions patiently. “Why can’t I eat cake?” “Because you are allergic to stuff that is in the cake. When you grow up, you will be able to eat it too.” “But why am I allergic and not my friends?” “Because they don’t fuss over their food, and they eat what their moms give them. If you eat without fussing, you will outgrow your allergies too”. “Why don’t you and daddy have allergies?” “Because, not all people are alike. We all having something or other that is not right with us. Daddy and I need glasses to see things clearly. You don’t.” “What will happen if I eat cheese?” “You will throw up and start itching all over”. This last question was repeated so many times, that one day we sat him on the kitchen counter, set a bottle of Benadryl next to him, and gave him a 1 millimeter piece of cheese. Before even swallowing it completely, he stuck his tongue out and started panting. We stuck a spoonful of Benadryl in his mouth and told him, “See what happens when you eat cheese?”

It has been over two years since that incident, and I have not heard the “cheese question” from him again. Sometimes, “tough love” works.

When he was four, my son did me proud. At a friend’s birthday party, the lady serving the kids put a slice of cheese pizza on his plate before I could get to him. He told her, “No, thank you. I am allergic to cheese. I cannot eat this. My mummy has brought my pizza for me.”

I knew then, that my baby had become a “big boy”.

Shyam and I made a pact with each other. We would not “baby” this boy any more. He had reached a point where he was capable of understanding his situation and accepting it. Although we had always told him that he was just like other kids, for the first time, we started to believe it ourselves. For the first time I thought that maybe, just maybe, he will do alright in a public school without someone supervising him at lunch time.

Also for the first time since his birth, Shyam and I entertained the thought of a real vacation.

THERE IS HOPE

When he turned five and a half, we took Aneesh to India after four years. The last time he had been to India, he had suffered several allergic reactions, and we almost lost him to a respiratory infection. This time was different. He was able to eat a few Indian foods and stayed healthy through the month long trip. I carried some of his foods and snacks from here, but it was worth the effort. For the first time since he was born, we had a real family vacation.

I think back now to the day I fed him a bowl of rice cereal, and say, “Thank You, God”. His doctors will tell you that Aneesh is still allergic to dairy, soy, nuts, some lentils, chick peas, and kidney beans, although to a much lesser degree. If you ask Shyam and me, we will tell you he is no longer allergic to rice, wheat, some lentils, most vegetables, and fruits.

If that isn’t hope, what is?


FACTS AND WHAT I LEARNED FROM EXPERIENCE

• Fact: 30% of all children born in the USA suffer from food allergies. That is one in every three children.
  Experience: The US has the most number of grocery stores that carry foods to meet the needs of allergic children. Wholefoods, My Organic Market (MOM), and ROOTS are all stores that are easily accessible and “allergic-kid friendly”. Their staff is trained to help parents find specialized foods. They can help me find foods that I didn’t even know existed.


• Fact: Doctors speak from scientific knowledge and experience.
  Experience: A mother speaks from instinct. Sometimes, a mother’s instinct tops a doctor’s experience.


• Fact: Homeopaths have done more research on food allergies than experts in any other branch of medicine.
  Experience: Not all homeopaths are legit. In fact, a lot of them add steroids in their medicine. Checking a homeopath’s (or any other doctor’s) references before seeing him/her are of paramount importance.


• Fact: Most kids with multiple food allergies also suffer from multiple air-borne and chemical allergies.
  Experience: Keeping a home clean and dust-free goes a long way in keeping the child comfortable. Changing air filters in the house regularly helps immensely. So does using natural cleaners like Baking Soda and Vinegar. Chemical fumes can affect an already weak immune system.


• Fact: Children with the classic triage – food allergies, Asthma, and Eczema – almost always have a very high eosinophil count.
  Experience: Just because a child has a high eosinophil count does not mean that the child has cancer. I should not believe everything I read on the Internet.


• Fact: A RAST test can determine what a child is allergic to.
  Experience: Results of the RAST test should be taken as a guide, and not the word of law. Results of this test may vary depending on what the child has been exposed to and eaten during the day. Very often, experimenting with my child’s diet can tell me more about his allergies than a RAST test can.


• Fact: Children pick up on anxiety and nervousness in adults around them. This compounds their allergic reaction.
  Experience: Panicking is not going to help anyone. Staying calm, holding my sick child, and telling him that everything is all right can sometimes make symptoms disappear in a matter of minutes.


• Fact: The psychological and emotional well-being of allergic children requires just as much attention as their nutritional well-being.
  Experience: It is a question of mind over matter. If I believe that my child is going to be alright, my child will believe it too. The day my child believed he is going to be alright was the day he started to heal himself.


• Fact: Children with allergies often turn psychosomatic. They will themselves to “turn allergic” to foods they don’t want to try.
  Experience: Earning my child’s confidence is more important than trying to feed him foods he doesn’t find appealing. Telling him how much I love him and how I hate to see him hurt, makes him feel secure and trust me more.


• Fact: Children with allergies are often unwilling to accept new food from their parents in their home.
  Experience: The human brain works by association. When a child has numerous painful allergic reactions during meal time, his brain eventually associates the place and the person feeding him with the pain. It helped me when I leveraged the support of friends, family, and a trusted daycare provider, and had them offer him new foods in their homes.


• Fact: Pumping an allergic child’s system with allergens can lead to the child’s immune system taking a beating.
  Experience: A lot of parents think they are helping their child build immunity by giving them allergic foods. On the contrary, I felt if I did that, I would be bombarding his immune system with an allergen it cannot tolerate, and make it even worse. What is more, I would have caused the child unnecessary pain, and therefore lost his trust.


• Fact: Children with food allergies need special care.
  Experience: A child with food allergies doesn’t have to be malnourished. The guidance of a qualified Nutritionist can help keep the child healthy.

Update:

1. The Washington Post had a small note in the Kids' Post section about how allergies have soared in the last few years.

2. I've corrected the name of Tharini's blog in the first sentence. Sorry T!

Links to Allergy Awareness Posts on Other Blogs:

• Tharini has a post on the difference between food intolerance and food allergies. Good info!
• Dotmom's post on her personal experience with Chip's allergies and some do's and dont's for parents of children not facing the allergy issue.
• Imp's mom post with more personal experiences and information on how they dealt with the issue.
• Sundar Narayan's personal story.

Driving by 'Rolling Thunder'

After a lovely brunch with some friends yesterday at La Madelaine, we drove into DC to watch Rolling Thunder, the annual gathering and parade of (mostly) Harley Davidsons. We were a bit late getting in. Driving - let alone parking - turned out to be a nightmare. But we did manage to get a few pics from the car.

The parade thunders down from the Pentagon toward Constitution Avenue past the Lincoln Memorial at the top. The soldier you see standing at attention on the median (in a black and white uniform), saluting the riders, is Marine Staff Sgt. Tim Chambers who stood in that position for nearly four hours yesterday, the Post tells me this morning.

The bikes came in all sorts of cool colors and with myriad interesting attachments.

Many bikes flew the American flag and a dark-colored flag for the POWs and those MIA.

The passenger (off to the side on the left) has a mike in her helmet to communicate with the rider. The passenger seat looked so comfy.

Many streets were cordoned off and bikes lined spaces usually occupied by cars.

A cop and a parade participant exchange notes while a photographer looks on.

Guest Post: Homes In My Heart, Padma Venkatraman

After those two long interviews (with some wonderful questions) on Thursday and Friday at Saffron Tree and at Reading, Writing, Wondering it’s nice to have a stop here to write a short guest blog. Thanks for having me, Sujatha!

As I said recently in an interview with South County Independent editor Betty Cotter, I have a lot of homes inside me. And that’s what you’d asked me to blog about – travel, my early life, how (if) that has affected my writing.

I grew up in India. I lived in Chennai (Madras) until I completed High School and I spent many summers in Mumbai (Bombay) in my sister’s home. Chennai and Mumbai are of course the cities where most of Climbing the Stairs takes place. One obvious way living in different places has influenced me is the detail with which I can recollect and thus recreate the ambience of these cities. I can still remember the Jamun tree that grew along the drive in the house in Velacheri where I spent my early childhood, and the ripe fruit really did dye our drive purple in August, just as the tree outside Vidya’s home does at the beginning of the novel.

For my undergraduate degree, I moved to Bangalore – mostly because I was stubborn and I decided that I wouldn’t do engineering or medicine (the two professions that everyone else around me who got excellent grades wanted to do). I wanted to do something for the environment and only St. Joseph’s College in Bangalore had Environmental science as a major.

My days in Bangalore…I met a lot of people, made many friends, enjoyed myself socially. I don’t really remember studying very hard, but my CV indicates that I must have done something right…

Bangalore…when I returned there recently it was such a shock…high rises everywhere…so many lovely old homes destroyed…gridlock…no longer the idyllic place I was sentimental about. MG Road, Brigade Road, Commercial Street…Koramangala…and of course Indranagar HAL Stage II I think, where mum bought a flat…Rotaract Orchards…research at the Indian Institute of Science.

Then, I left India, for the most part, to study abroad, although I did return to work as a researcher on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – the place where my second novel, Island’s End, now under contract to Penguin and scheduled for publication in 2010, takes place.

Where else have I lived? England for a bit, at a very Hogwarts-ish boarding school. A few years ago I met an old friend from there and he said reading Harry Potter had taken him right back to Brockwood Park, the international Krishnamurthi School where I’d spent a few years, both as a student, and later as director and head of Inwoods, the elementary-middle school there. I remember beautiful walks, rolling hills, and mountain climbing trips and hikes to Wales, Cornwall, Dover, Dorset, the Lake District. Maybe I’ll write about it someday, who knows? We’ve had lots of Brits write about India from their point of view, and now we Indian authors are starting to write about the UK…

Germany. Maybe one day I’ll write a novel set here…for adults though, not YA. Why is that? I can’t explain. But if I did write a book set in Germany, I think it would have to be a book for adults not children, not even young adults.

Then, of course, America. The College of William and Mary, where I did my graduate work. The colonial parkway covered with dogwood blossoms. The sparkling waters of the Chesapeake. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where I did post-doctoral work. The farmers market in the middle of the city. Swimming pools on rooftops. Cozy coffee shops. Crazy ambulance drivers screeching past my flat all night long.

And now, Rhode Island. Ocean State sums it up perfectly. Started my life in the ocean state of Tamil Nadu, and now here I am in the Ocean State of Rhode Island… but not quite at my life’s end, I hope! After all, I have the rest of this blog book tour to complete.

Here are my remaining stops:

Tomorrow, Sunday, May 25th, I’ll be blogging on the topic of being a writing mom and finding time to write at Desi Momz Club;

Monday, May 26th, another guest post. Where were the British colonies during WWII? Doing background research for Climbing the Stairs, at author Laura Purdie Salas’s blog;

Tuesday, May 27th. Climbing the Stairs - The process of writing the novel, weaving together the different threads, at the 5 randoms;

Wednesday, May 28th. Oceanography, research and Climbing the Stairs. Making my schizophrenia work to my advantage. My (at least two) personalities. What it’s like to spend your 21st birthday on a research vessel at author Greg Fishbone’s blog;

Thursday, May 29th. What exactly is that dot on the forehead all about? Arranged marriages, Women in India in the 1940’s, Indian marriages today, gender equality issues in Climbing the Stairs, anything else you ever wanted to know about India at author Carrie Jones’s blog; and

Friday, May 30th. The grand finale. Moving to America, Becoming an American, Multicultural writing at author Mitali Perkins’s blog.

And before I forget, if you want to travel to places online that have reviews of Climbing the Stairs, here are some links:

http://www.padmasbooks.com/
http://padmasbooks.blogspot.com/
http://www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-CLIMBING-STAIRS_05-18-08_6HA2FQC_v7.b6a7bc.html
http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/index.php?id=4393

~~~

Padma, thanks for stopping by. Best wishes for a fun and successful book tour, and for continued writing success.

Climbing The Stairs, by Padma Venkatraman

I have not yet read Padma Venkatraman's debut novel for young adults, Climbing the Stairs. But if the review at Saffron Tree and the synopsis from the book cover flap are any indication, it promises to be a good read.

Fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of going to college, an unusual proposition for a girl living in British-occupied India during World War II. When tragedy strikes, Vidya and her brother Kitta are forced to move into a traditional household with her grandfather and her extended family, where men live separately upstairs and the women who live below are meant to be married, not educated.

Breaking the rules, Vidya finds refuge in her grandfather’s second-floor library. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house. Surprisingly, he treats her like an equal and encourages her intellectual curiosity. But soon it’s clear Raman wants more than just friendship, and when Kitta makes a shocking choice the family cannot condone, Vidya’s life becomes a whirlwind of personal and political complications. Will she be strong enough to survive the storm?

With the lush settings and heady emotions that mark the best Indian literature, Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel is an epic story of love and loss set against a unique moment in history. Readers of all ages will find deep empathy with Vidya as she battles between ideas and emotions while struggling to pursue her dreams.

The author has lived a multi-faceted life, packing what seems to be at least five lifetimes of action, adventure and travel into one still going strong. Tomorrow, the author will guest blog at Blogpourri, and will talk about how her travels have influenced her substantial body of writing. Until then, here are her interviews at two blogs, Saffron Tree and Reading, Writing, Wondering.

Climbing the Stairs is published by Penguin ($16.99) and is available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers.

Travel Essay: Washington, D.C.

I’ve never seen so many suits in one place,” declared a friend visiting from Ohio, as we surveyed the packed metro train to Washington for empty seats several summers ago. Suited, booted and stiletto’d locals stood out from the casually dressed, fanny-pack-and-camera-toting tourists.

It is the humble suit that gives the visitor to Washington a sense of the city’s enterprise — the production, not of automobiles or food products or pharmaceuticals, but of laws, decisions, policies, and, not to forget, a scandal or ten.

From a distance, the city is unimpressive. None of the usual landmarks that define large American cities demarcate Washington from its surroundings. There are no shiny skyscrapers signalling the start of its business district or massive steel bridges heralding the approach of its borders. You would have to look really hard to find the smokestacks on top of factories at the edge of town.

Lincoln Memorial from Memorial Bridge
What is recognizable of the city from miles away, appropriately enough, is the dome of the US Capitol—which houses Congress—and the Washington Monument, the “needle” in local parlance, erected in memory of the nation’s first president.

Up close, the city is compelling. Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s plan for the capital “of this vast empire”, as he referred to the US two centuries ago, was nothing short of genius. The land he was allocated on the banks of the Potomac alternated between marshy bogs, heavily wooded wilderness and farmland, with a few hilly patches thrown in. What he envisioned was a neatly organized city with broad, tree-lined avenues, parks and grand buildings and monuments befitting the ideals of a new nation. Amid strife and delays—typical of the way Washington does business even now—it took nearly a century for an approximation of his blueprint to come to life in stone, marble and concrete.

In an election year such as this one, Washington and the way it does business are in sharper focus than usual. “Washington insider” is bandied about as an insult as presidential candidates criss-cross the country, claiming the mantle of the “outsider” who will save the country from the clutches of the “special interests that control Washington”.

The US Capitol
What transpires once the outsider gets in is anybody’s guess, but until the dust settles on 4 November and a victor emerges—bloodied and bruised from the ever-lengthening campaign season—voters are bombarded with missives, ads, debates, media interviews and stump speeches purporting to lay bare the machinations of Congress and the White House.

These four-yearly rituals merely scratch the surface—or so it seems in the face of the number of scandals and leaks that erupt with alarming frequency in this city. The leaking of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame’s identity to the press was one of the latest, but the big daddy of them all is still Watergate. Named after the Watergate Complex—a striking edifice that houses a hotel, shops, offices and luxury apartments—the fiasco brought down a president and has the unparalleled distinction of helping name successive scandals (Monicagate sound familiar?; Lewinsky, ironically, lived at the Watergate).

Numerous paths lead into Washington from all directions, but my favourite is via the Arlington Memorial Bridge. With the majestic Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument at its top, the marble façade of the Kennedy Center and the spires of Georgetown University to its left and the entrance into Arlington Cemetery at its foot, the expansive bridge transports you into town in style.

As you follow the winding road at the top of the bridge, the vast treasure trove of cultural and political history that is Constitution Avenue begs to be explored. The must-see list—the National Gallery of Art, the National Museums of American History and Natural History, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Museums (home of the ever popular Air and Space Museum), not to mention the White House and the Capitol—is so long that days could blend into weeks in trying to do justice to all that is available in this small corner of Washington.

The World War II Memorial

The rest here.

Child Soldiers

Uganda's rebel army has stepped up a campaign of child abductions in the three countries where it operates, according to foreign investigators, humanitarian groups and Ugandan military authorities in the capital, Kampala.

The Lord's Resistance Army, a messianic armed movement that has waged a 21-year insurrection against the Ugandan government, has recently scooped up more than 100 boys and girls, human rights advocates and military officials say. The children are then forced into the rebel army ranks or made to serve as sexual hostages, rights investigators say.

The abductions are being carried out in southern Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic -- three nations where the rebels maintain bases.

[...]

The London-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said children were being forced to fight in 17 conflicts around the world, down from 27 in 2004.

The rest in today's Washington Post.

Ishmael Beah's memoir of a child soldier (published a year ago) is on my wishlist of books to read. At that time, he appeared on NPR's Fresh Air. He also wrote an essay for The New York Times adapted from his book:

I ran for days, weeks and months, and I couldn’t believe that the simple and precious world I had known, where nights were celebrated with storytelling and dancing and mornings greeted with the singing of birds and cock crows, was now a place where only guns spoke and sometimes it seemed even the sun hesitated to shine. After I discovered that my parents and two brothers had been killed, I felt even more lost and worthless in a world that had become pregnant with fear and suspicion as neighbor turned against neighbor and child against parent. Surviving each passing minute was nothing short of a miracle.