An eBook version of Kalam’s annual anthology of poetry from marginalized communities in Calcutta is now available on Rising Voices. A $5 PayPal donation is suggested.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of poetry, at least compared to novels and short stories. Maybe I’m too lazy or not imaginative enough, but I get annoyed with the gaps, the white space, the ambiguity. I love descriptive language, but I want it to make sense. Art that is completely left to interpretation usually leaves me shrugging.

That’s one of the things I like so much about the poems in Open Box - the poets’ descriptions of people and places aren’t masked behind impossible-to-understand metaphors. They are just very well put.

Here is Rahool Goswami’s The Lazy Afternoon Tale, translated into English from its original Bengali:

Till yesterday, my afternoons were not as lazy.
It’s be the regular routine of college or work
Or adda or the collage of dust on the street.
Busy life - it never stopped, not for a moment,
But today …
The afternoon is endless;
After a long time, I am alone in my room today,
On a lonely afternoon.

Nupur, the neighbour’s daughter,
Comes to the veranda to pick up clothes she’d hung up to dry.
On seeing me she bursts into an innocent smile:
‘Oh Rana-da, you’re home? At this hour?’
Before I could respond,
Nupur’s mother calls her into her house:
She scrambles trying to arrange the dried clothes as she runs.

A slice of the veranda appears beyond the door curtain:
A few little birds twitter, fly around and settle in my vision;
I lie down on the bed,
And I remember how I would lay my sleeping head on my
father’s hands.

In the house opposite ours, Aunt Mitali abuses a customer:
I guess, the man’s done what he wanted to do, but doesn’t want
to pay up …
I’ve heard this so many times since childhood that I feel nothing now.
Earlier, when neighbours cussed around,
Father would say,
‘Don’t listen to all that - just keep yourself busy’
I remember those words a lot,
Today.

The poems in the eBook are printed alongside the wonderful photographs of Bishan.

You can get a glimpse of Rahool introducing himself, ever so briefly, in the first video of this post. If the visa gods are on our side, then Rahool will be joining me in a couple weeks in Brussels for the Youth Summit of Interdependence Day. Also present will be Deneiber, Diego, Taslima, and Pati. That’s right, I will be playing the role of responsible adult chaperone. Álvaro has penned a nice post about the conference in Spanish.

Once these kids finally have their visas in hand, I will be feeling 200% less anxious.

A Californian woman named Bernann McKinney paid a South Korean scientist nearly $50,000 to clone her deceased pit bull, Booger. How much would I pay to clone my very own Booger? That’s right, $51,000. Though I’d make her miniature and stuff her in my suitcase and carry her around with me so she could make me laugh all the time just like her emails always do.

We actually have one of the greatest email threads Of All Time going on right now. Does that ever happen to you? Where you read back over the whole thread and you’re like, damn it we’re hilarious. In fact, I’ve recently received several queries from loyal readers as to the fashion statusness, geographic location, mental stability and general well-being of my dear little sister, The Boogs. So here’s your update, my dear Internet: she is living in a pink victorian house in San Francisco while working at a hipster coffee house and taking classes with titles like ‘cosmic evolution’ (I shit you not) at a nearby community college. Latest update: she watched Jaws in 3D in Dolores Park (!) and this weekend is seeing the following bands in concert: devendra banhart, broken social scene, regina spektor, radiohead, manu chao, stars, black keys, beck, m.ward, bon iver, andrew bird, wilco. How does she feel about this? In her own words, or that is, word, “EPIC”. Does she wear purple leotards and play dodge ball? I am afraid, as I know you are, that all the evidence points to an unwavering ‘affirmative’.

What is the greatest part of being involved in a community like Global Voices? Oh, loved ones, there are so many perks. But the best perk of all is seeing a friendly face - that is, a face belonging to a friend - at just about every airport in the world. So after the lazy one-toed sloths at SpiceJet finally deposited my sweaty freckledness into the baggage claim of Calcutta’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, there were the smiling faces and waving hands of my dear friends Aparna and Ramesh. Aparna has been my virtual homegirl for years now. Which means, of course, nothing much. We first met In Real Life back in December 2006 in Delhi, but that too was limited to a couple nods and waves of recognition.

At this year’s GV Summit in Budapest we had much more time to talk and … (is there a phrase somewhere in between “catching up” and “getting to know one another”?). Then, one morning, in fact, the morning after the summit, hella early, when all the rest of Budapest was still happily asleep, I run into this Indian dude with an air of royalty and a perfect moustache. How is this? Why do I know a tall Indian in Budapest? Then it clicked, this was Aparna’s debonair husband, Ramesh. The man’s voice? Succulent. And though future hospitality might be revoked for committing this to google’s forgetless cache, here is an anecdote: he once called up a hotel to make a reservation and the woman taking the reservation actually called him back … just to say what a lovely voice he has. Now that is pimp.

Did I mention that Aparna is hilarious?

Fast forward 10 days, after some bizarre treatment from my frenemies at the Bangadeshi consulate in Calcutta, and one very noisy airplane belonging to GMG Airlines (their fish curry is about as good as their website) dropped me off onto the tarmac of Zia Antorjatik Bimanbôndor International Airport. Waiting for me right outside: the tranquil and kind face of Mr. Ripon. Here is a picture of Mr. Ripon with his ever faithful rear-view-mirror-hanging, safe-sex-smart bunny named, appropriately enough, Mr. Bunny.

For those of you who, like me, are too lazy to click on links, let me tell you that Mr. Ripon stopped going to school in grade five to help support his mother and now speaks some of the dopest English in all of Bangladesh. For some reason, I especially like how he says “sure”. Come by and meet him and you’ll know what I mean.

Thursday was a day like any other. Me writing a gazillion emails. Me reading a gazillion emails. Me pulling my hair out about said gazillion emails. Then there was a conference call with grant auditors (fun!) and miscellaneous logistics about this and that. Finally it was time to close the laptop and open the book and get some shuteye. Then the phone rings.

But what a lovely surprise. It turned out to be Kira, a wonderful Venezuelan blogger with a heart the size of Jupiter (1.43128×1015 km³). She’s been visiting the Nari Jibon project every Friday for the last few months and helping the young women there open their own individual blogs and start using Flickr more.

She has also been living in Bangladesh For Five Years. And before that? Uganda … For Five Years. So imagine all the emotions she must be feeling right now as, in just one day, she heads back to Venezuela. Better yet, read her post about it. Also highly recommended: her bi-lingual post about Nari Jibon.

Some people are so easy to fall into conversation with from the very first second. Kira explained how the young women at Nari Jibon made her last few months here bearable, how she cried when she had to say goodbye to Taslima, and how they will all stay in her heart forever. She laughed when she told me that the mother of Zannat and Jesmin said that Kira was already like her third daughter. (”And I’m older than their mother!” she exclaimed.)

The grave grave error? After getting off the phone with Kira I ordered room service. Just a snack. When a chicken sandwich goes for about a dollar, how can you resist?

Four hours later and, clutching my stomach, I stumbled toward the toilet and threw my head in like a cheap date. And that is more or less how the following 30 hours would ensue. Usually when people say ‘food poisoning’ they’re being a tad dramatic about the poison part. Not this time. I collectively vomited and sweated out over 8 liters of water.

The hotel staff tried their best to be helpful. Which is to say that they called my room Every Single Hour to ask how I was feeling. My response? “I think if I could just sleep a while, I’d feel better.” And then I’d go to the toilet to vomit.

Finally, in the afternoon, a good twenty hours without consuming anything but water, I tried to be brave. Anything not spicy. There it was: spaghetti. Imagine my heartbreak when I made the herculean effort to get to the door, only to receive … my masala chow mein. Or, as the smiling hotel employee referred to it, “your spaghetti, sir.”

And then I went to the toilet to vomit.

Two new songs from Oakland artists:

Via Revaz, The Grouch’s ARTSY (Give that man a Wikipedia page!):

Via Britt, Michael Franti’s Say Hey:

This post is for the new Rising Voices blog carnival which Rezwan is organizing every month. This month’s topic is to write about your favorite holiday. Today I was at the Nari Jibon center with Nasrin, Rabaya, Sonia, and Zannat while they wrote about their favorite holidays here in Bangladesh. Sujon also has a great post about which shows how Eid is celebrated in rural towns in Bangladesh. Taslima told me that she’ll be writing her post soon about the first day of spring. The Nari Jibon citizen journalists made an outstanding documentary video about the first day of spring last year.

My favorite holiday in the United States is the Fourth of July. It commemorates the independence of the United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain.. It also celebrates the world’s oldest consistent democracy. I like democracy. We celebrate this by eating too many hamburgers and hot dogs and watching fireworks in the sky. Some people also like to drink lots of beer.

My favorite memories of July 4th are from when I was living in San Diego, California with three of my best friends. We lived very close to the beach and so many people came to our neighborhood on July 4 that it was impossible to leave because there was so much traffic. In fact, the traffic in Dhaka today reminded me of the traffic in San Diego on July 4th.

Around 10 in the morning we would walk to the beach to look at all the people and talk to our friends. One year my friend brought his drums to the beach and a big crowd circled around him to listen to him play, but then the police came and told him he had to leave. He was very sad.

A picture of me and my friend Dave on 4th of July when he brought his drums to the beach. I don’t remember why we were laughing.

Another year I was having so much fun that I decided to jump in the ocean with all my clothes on. But I forgot to take my mobile phone out of my pocket and it broke. I was very sad. That same year my friend fell asleep on the beach and spent the night there. The next morning he knocked on our door and we laughed and laughed.

My friends and roommates waiting for the BBQ on our front porch in 2001.

My favorite part of 4th of July is when we have a BBQ in the afternoon. Most people BBQ hot dogs and hamburgers, but my friends and I like to cook BBQ salmon and carne asada. I think that I make the best salmon, but maybe my friends disagree. I add lemon and dill and some olive oil. Mmmmmmm, it’s delicious. I must admit that during our BBQ we drink some beer too and we listen to our favorite songs.

After our stomachs are full and we are happy, we walk back to the beach to watch the fireworks. Some of the best fireworks are over Sea World, a famous park in San Diego which is like a zoo for sea animals.

A picture of the fireworks above Sea World. This photo was taken by “Ryan-o”.

I’m in Dhaka now, but here are some tunes I was listening to while in Calcutta.

Download (Right click, save as)

Finallly, I published the long video-filled post on why I’m here in Calcutta. Here’s a teaser:

The first song in the video, “Oceanic, Part 2″, is by Anoushka Shankar. If you know her at all, it’s probably because she’s the half-sister of Norah Jones and the daughter of Ravi Shankar. For me, Anoushka was the shy girl who would sometimes flash me flirtatious smiles while she was still a senior at our high school and I was working at Miracles Cafe.

I remember, while in high school, that a few people would mention that she is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, but I didn’t really know what that meant other than reading somewhere that Ravi Shankar played along with the Beatles at some point.

The next year I found myself living in Kathmandu looking for pirated cassette tapes in Thamel (who says piracy is a thing of the internet?) when I found one with Anoushka’s picture on the cover. This can’t be right, I thought, and asked the shop keeper what’s up. Yes sir, she is very famous, he says. Well, what do you know.

Anoushka’s latest album, Breathing Under Water, is a collaboration with Karsh Kale. The album is practically a tribute to the sea. Wikipedia says she’s living in London these days, but I wonder if the album is a product of nostalgia for Encinitas’ magical coastline. From Cardiff Reef to Swami’s to Stonesteps to Beacon’s … any kid who grew up in Encinitas has strong memories of all of those beaches. Eating veggie burritos from Roberto’s, sipping on a mocha from Miracles, our first spliff, it all happened right there.

“Look at them. We’re trying to save the world and they’re still arguing about technology.” It’s the kind of statement you hear routinely at wi-fi enabled hipster coffee houses in San Francisco and Brooklyn, but here we are in New Delhi, at one of the hundreds of Cafe Coffee Days, a Starbucks-like chain that over the past 10 years has expanded exponentially all across the country. Just like India’s middle class.

I am here with Amit, Ajay, Ashish, and Abhishkek, four of Delhi’s most ambitious bloggers. In fact, Ajay has even managed to make a career out of it with his popular travel and technology blogs in addition to his personal blog full of do-gooding optimism. He’s the kind of guy that mothers want their daughters to marry: tall, good looking, and mild mannered. Ajay is also one of the leading forces of the Indian Bloggers and New Media Association, which has organized over 350 bloggers in Delhi alone and now hopes to evangelize many more by hosting blogcamps which teach the basics to newcomers, and more advanced skills to those who already feel comfortable blogging. Here is a video I recorded of part of our conversation at Cafe Coffee Day. Once again, sorry about the low lighting and background noise.

Download file (right click, save as)

The South African bloggers study I refer to is here.

Every two weeks we highlight some of the latest and greatest from newly trained Rising Voices bloggers. Usually these posts take us all over the world, but this week we are going to focus specifically on Dhaka, Bangladesh where a group of ambitious young women are offering us an open window into their lives and the daily life of the city where they live. Here is an opportunity to get to know Bangladesh’s capital without purchasing a costly ticket. Special thanks to Romi, Elia, Janine, and Kristen for leaving comments on the posts featured in the last newsletter - your support is very much appreciated.

All nine of this week’s posts were featured in a wonderful article published by Rezwan on the Rising Voices website. I highly recommend it as an overview of the Nari Jibon center and the new bloggers it has trained.

Let’s start by pointing to two recent posts by Nari Jibon staff members who have led workshops to train the new bloggers. Project Director Rafiq pens an homage to his wife and two children. He says he was convinced he’d forever remain a vagabond until he met Tora, his wife, best friend, and life partner. He also gives us some tips for healthy relationships. Taslima, another Nari Jibon staff member, has probably worked harder than anyone else to train and encourage as many new bloggers from the Nari Jibon project as possible. She has become such an expert on citizen media, in fact, that she was invited to give a presentation on “using blogs to create awareness” at the Youth Human Rights and Journalism Camp in Dhaka last month. In her post she describes her experience and her presentation. Speaking of Taslima, one of her students, Zannat, explains why she appreciates her favorite teacher.

Zannat has also proven to be a skilled photographer. She published some of her work from a recent visit to Lalbagh Fort. Zannat’s post explains why the fort was selected as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites. Poly decided to use her digital camera to take pictures of her garden. We are still not sure if the color coordination was intended or coincidental. Anne, another skilled photographer, gives us a glimpse of Bangladeshis’ favorite seaside town, Cox’s Bazar.

Every family is different, but most of us have one special family member who we depend on and share our hopes and fears with. In a brief post, Sufia pays tribute to that special person in her family.

Of all the successful Rising Voices projects, Nari Jibon exemplifies how “slow and study” can lead to real change. Under Rafiq and Taslima’s leadership, Nari Jibon began training just a few bloggers how to post on their group blog. More recently, after a vist by Dr. Kathryn Ward and a series of workshops by visiting volunteers, Nari Jibon bloggers have opened their individual blogs where they find creative ways to share their lives with others. They are now individually and collectively a force in the world of citizen journalism.

We should also remember that the Nari Jibon Center is much more than a blogging center. Here women from all around Bangladesh come to learn valuable computer, business, and language skills. Bangladesh is famous for its boom of female textile workers in the 1990’s. Most of us probably have at least a few garments that were made by Bangladeshi women. Thanks to the Nari Jibon Center, many more Bangladeshi women are also now working as accountants, professors, marketers, graphic designers, and entrepreneurs.

My Saturday lunch with Amit, Ashish, Abhishkek, and Ajay was postponed until Sunday. So I decided to get on Delhi’s new(ish) metro and get off at a random stop. I took the blue line to the eastern end, to Indraprastha, once the capital of the Pandava Kingdom in the Mahabharata epic, and today just another Delhi suburb along the banks of the Yamuna River.

The metro ride itself was pretty smooth and, mercifully, air-conditioned. Depending on the length and cost of your journey, you have to purchase a different colored token which I assume uses RFID to automatically open the gates. From Rajiv Chowk (Connaught Place) to Indraprastha cost me 9 rupees, a sky-blue token. The token seller found my request for two tokens just as ludicrous as I found the fact that you have to wait in line every time you want to travel on the metro. “But sir, you are only one person,” she told me, startled, as if I believed there was an imaginary friend by my side. “I can’t have two tokens? You mean I have to wait in this line again to come back?” “Yes sir, that is correct.” A cheerful smile.

When you get off at Indraprastha two things immediately catch your eye. One is a giant blue and white building, which it turns out is the Indian headquarters of the World Health Organization. Directly behind this behemoth of paper moving bureaucracy is a large slum with barefoot kids flying taped-together kites. The contrast of the new Japanese-designed metro line and a large slum, all in the shadow of one of the largest international do-good organizations, was, as so many things are, a photogenic depiction of modern India. I walked along a dirt path that serves as one of two entrances to the labyrinthine slum and pulled out my camera to take a picture. In the amount of time that it took to snap the picture — one-five-hundredth of a second, according to the picture itself - I was surrounded by ten boys asking me to take their portraits while they posed like teenagers in a Southern California mall.

After I took pictures of them and they took pictures of me I was greeted by Khan, a truck driver who said he wanted to show me his neighborhood. “It’s nice neighborhood,” he told me, “you are very safe.” By the end of our walk, I couldn’t disagree with either sentiment.

I apologize for all the times I repeat what Khan tells me and for all my stupid “ah … OK’s.” As you can see, Khan and I had some communication problems. Besides, as an American, it is my duty to sound as idiotic as possible. Sorry also about the picture quality - because of the slow connection I had to upload the smallest file possible.

This is fourth slum I’ve seen. On the one hand, it should serve as a reminder to Americans who like to chant “we have poverty right here at home!” that American poverty and third world poverty are two very different things. On the other hand, like the previous three slums I’ve seen, I left Khan’s neighborhood thinking, well, aesthetics aside, they have pretty much everything that most neighborhoods have. A school, clean water, a hospital, a small market. Hell, they even have a Chinese restaurant. (That is, a grease-filled wok on someone’s porch. I politely declined an invitation to chow mein.)

There was another familiar observation: Unlike La Jolla, Beverly Hills, or Bellagio for that matter, Khan’s neighborhood was full of smiles and laughter. Makes you wonder what, if anything, needs changing.

“Why do you Americans always romanticize the happiness of poor dark people in foreign lands?” I was asked once by a wealthy friend from a developing country.

“Probably because they are happy,” I replied.

I’m a little bit disappointed. OK, not anymore. But I was. For months now I have been writing posts which summarize and link to other posts from new bloggers from the Rising Voices projects. You see, I am begging you to read what they write, begging you to leave encouraging comments. But no one does. Not my friends, not my co-workers, not the people who give us money to run the program (actually, Kristen has been one of Rising Voices’ biggest supporters).

No one seems to care.

And all of a sudden I’m OK with that. We are 6.5 billion people on this planet. We can’t pretend to care about everyone. And if we do, well, then it’s just that, pretending.

Global Voices’ mission was, and I suppose still is, to shine light on those voices traditionally ignored by the mainstream media. Now there is a new force at work to make all voices ignored - the fact that there are just too many of them. We are drowning in noise. And we are adding water to the flooding river.

Last year … hell, maybe it was more than a year ago … I had lunch with Boris in San Francisco. He was the first person to tell me that he had stopped using his RSS reader. There was no way to keep up, he said, and besides, it all stopped seeming important. Now people left and right tell me they’ve given up on their RSS readers. Instead they just click a link or even enter in a website URL whenever it might occur to them. Josh is looking for an RSS replacement. (He’ll also soon be responsible for adding more water to the flood.) Beth Kanter also complains that she isn’t able to keep up with her RSS feeds anymore. But she’s written so many posts just in the past day alone that I’m not able to find the one about information overload.

Are we talking too much? Is the fact that so many people are talking about so many people talking too much the ultimate irony?

There is a long thread on Edge.org which was inspired by by Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Carr’s argument is that the stream-like flow of information on the internet is making it difficult for many of us to read anything longer than three paragraphs. Because Carr’s argument was longer than three paragraphs, I didn’t read it.

Until last night, finally.

All of my fellow nine white American males participating in the discussion made excellent points about the significance of today’s (over)abundance of information. But the bit that really hit home for me comes from W. Daniel Hillis:

We evolved in a world where our survival depended on an intimate knowledge of our surroundings. This is still true, but our surroundings have grown. We are now trying to comprehend the global village with minds that were designed to handle a patch of savanna and a close circle of friends. Our problem is not so much that we are stupider, but rather that the world is demanding that we become smarter. Forced to be broad, we sacrifice depth. We skim, we summarize, we skip the fine print and, all too often, we miss the fine point. We know we are drowning, but we do what we can to stay afloat …

It is not just that the world has gotten more complicated (it has), but rather that more of the world has become relevant. Not only is world more connected (or, as Thomas Friedman would, say, flatter), but it is also bigger. There are more people, and more of them than ever have the resources to do something that matters to us …

We need to know more because we are expected to make more decisions. I can choose my own religion, my own communications carrier, and my own health care provider. As a resident of California, I vote my opinion on the generation of power, the definition of marriage and the treatment of farm animals. In the olden days, these kinds of things were decided by the King …

I also need to know more just to have friends. I manage to get by without knowing exactly why Paris Hilton is famous, but I cannot fully participate in society without knowing that she is well known. Of course, my own social clan has its own Charlie Rose version of celebrities, complete with must-read books, must-understand ideas, and must-see films. I am expected to have an opinion about the latest piece in The Atlantic or the New Yorker. Actually, I need to learn more just to understand the cartoons.

I rearranged and extracted from Hillis’ argument. But the essential significance, at least for me, remains the same: Just because we can befriend anyone anywhere in the world, and just because we can learn about where they come from, does that mean that we should?

How do we decide who we care about? How do we decide what to read about? What is it that makes our brain remember and value certain conversations but not others?

A couple weeks ago I was sitting at a dinner table with people from various parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. There were about 12 of us in total and we were doing what strangers do when they eat together for the first time: making small talk. As the conversation went around the table I asked my new acquaintances about the latest news items I had read about their countries. It didn’t matter if they were from Vietnam, Ukraine, Korea, or Angola - thanks to Global Voices I knew the latest events, scandals, and debates in all of their countries. Eventually someone asked how it was that I seemed to know everything about everywhere in the world. It was, of course, my opportunity to suggest that they too read Global Voices.

But now that I think about it, besides impressing international groups at dinner tables, why is it that I keep reading about Vietnam?

I have all 2.2 gigabytes of Wikipedia on my iPhone. That’s right, I downloaded Wikipedia and put it on my iPhone to read offline. (It has been helpful to, for example, settle arguments about which was Weezer’s first album.)

I could buy a solar iPhone charger, hide out in the Himalaya, read all of Wikipedia, and return to civilization three years later. What would I gain? How much would I remember? What would my brain do with its new 2.2 gigabytes of worldly information?

I’m not the first person to ponder that question. A few years ago I read a book by some witty journalist who read all of the Britannica encyclopedia from A to Z. I think it took him a year. The resulting book was a collection of strange facts and stories contained within Britannica as well as funny stories about how reading the entire encyclopedia affected his social life.

But that’s about all I remember. (I also recall that there was a chapter in which the author takes a speedreading class and comes to the conclusion that it harms his reading comprehension.) In fact, that is why I am determined to write reviews of every book I read on GoodReads - I’m afraid it’s the only way I’ll remember what the hell it is I have read.

So will I keep up with Rising Voices? Keep adding more water to the torrent?

Yes. Because even though we all complain about information overload, it’s not as if we’ve stopped reading and consuming media. Part of it is a technology problem: we haven’t yet discovered how to discover what it is we want to discover. Or, to put it another way, even though I have all 2.2 gigabytes of Wikipedia on my iPhone, I rarely know what to start reading about.

Even though you might not care what some young girl in Dhaka has to say today, maybe someday you will. Or, if not you, maybe someone else will.

This feeling of drowning in information goes away once we realize that it’s OK to just stand back and watch the river go by. That it’s OK to focus on just a drop here, and drop there.

I’ll also keep with Rising Voices and keep writing about it because, as Leonard writes, “it feels good.”

PS: I too have been cutting back on my RSS reading lately. But every day I have been reading one post from the archives of Zen Habits. It’s become a sort of bible, something to go back to, for the era of abundance. Here is a good place to start.