So, what's so special about a man and a woman holding hands?

"Make hay while the sun shines" confused me back when I was a kid.  Because, in the parts of India where I grew up or vacationed, the sun always shone, and mercilessly it seemed like.  Except for those few weeks of monsoon rains when everything everywhere was damp.  Damp enough that sometimes mold grew and mother would attack that with bleaching powder.

Language is cultural, and to make hay when the sun shines probably came from a culture where there were quite a few days, weeks even, when the sun practically disappeared.  That statement makes a lot more sense to me in my middle age here in Oregon.  It is such a pleasure when the sun comes out, especially in the spring.  Flowers everywhere, bees buzzing, people biking ... and me walking by the river to take advantage of the sunny spring day.

Even the birds were sunning themselves on the rocks!

I crossed the bridge to walk along the river's west bank.  A young couple walking hand-in-hand were laughing and talking.  There is a reason I write about them.

The young man was in jeans and a tight-fitting athletic short-sleeve shirt.  I am sure if I were as fit as him, with well developed muscles, I too would wear that kind of a tight fit.  But, the muscles I have are puny, and even those hurt some time that I have to go in for physical therapy!

The young woman on that guy's arm, well, to go with the image one might expect her to be in shorts or jeans and a t-shirt, and big sun glasses.  That seems to be the typical outfit for young women on the bike path.  But, she wasn't.  This young woman was wearing a black abaya over something colorful underneath that showed in the gap between her sneakers and the abaya.  And, she had a hijab also on.

A conservative outfit.  Yet, holding hands in the public?  In the traditional Hindu Brahmin context in which I grew up, this would be like the woman wearing the sari in the madisar style and walking about while holding her husband's hand.  Chi-chi, as my grandmother would say to dismiss such possibilities.

My great-grandmother wearing the sari in a madisar style

We passed each other.  Like young lovers, this couple was also lost to the world.  I could have picked the guy's pocket and he wouldn't have noticed.  Ah, to be young and to be in love!

As I continued walking, I remembered that once before I had spotted a young woman wearing a hijab and smoking a cigarette.  A few days ago, as I was heading to work early in the morning, I saw a woman in an abaya and sneakers and walking the brisk walk of an exercise walk.  I suppose there is a lot more to women in abayas and hijabs than what meets the eye.

It was one of those rare walks when I paused to take in the scenery.  I walked away from the concrete path towards the river.  The lack of normal levels of rain was the reason why the volume was much lower and I could walk in areas that would usually be accessible only late in the summer.  The gently flowing Willamette was clear over the rocks. Clear enough for me to notice the sunlight dancing on the ripples creating mesmerizing patterns on the dark stones.  Nature is beautiful, indeed.

As I looked around, to my left was a middle-aged couple a little bit away.  We were separated by the wild growth and I could see them through a gap in the greens.

It was, really, a good day to be out with another person.

I, the solitary man, kept going.  Why I know not..After all, there is nobody waiting for me.

But, we do what we have to do to make hay while the sun shines.

Wearing the hijab in Bosnia, and not wearing it in Kyrgyzstan

Radio Free Europe offers views from

women from six countries explain why they do (or do not) wear the hijab. France made headlines recently when it banned the burqa from public spaces, but debate about Islamic headwear goes on in every corner of the world.

Click here to understand hijab, burqua, ...

And why against?

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Burqa, Hijab, Niqab, ... they are NOT the same ...

So, is there is a difference? Yes.  Yes :)

Hijab: it can be conceptualized as a head scarf.

A couple of years ago, we had a visitor from Bahrain as a house-guest for ten days or so.  She always wore a hijab.  And, it turned out that it was her choice to wear a hijab--even her mother does not wear one.
But, this was in Bahrain, which is one of the less restrictive Persian Gulf societies.

Now, let us suppose we expand the covering to most of the body--except the face.  In other words, anybody can see the entire face of the woman, despite that all-covering garment.  Well, that is the chador.

As a kid growing up in India, I think I have seen many women in chadors.  But then in India, I recall that everything was given a common word of purdah.  Purdah itself, according to Wikipedia, has Persian/Urdu origins.  But, the purdah that we generically referred to in India is more like the Niqab or burqa.

With the niqab, well, one can at least see the eyes and eyebrows.  This is also what a German reporter wore for a day to get an idea of how others might respond to a woman wearing a niqab. 
With the burqa, there is a small veil/slit for the eyes.  This is one serious covering up.
(Source for the images used here.)

As a kid, I did not see very many women in India in a burqa.  Even now, when I visit, maybe I see a lot more of the chador and niqab, but not many burqa-clad women.

Here is one of my favorite Hindi songs where you ... well, watch it :) Click here for an English translation of the lyrics

Guantanamo: a (US) state-sponsored madrassa!

I continue to have mixed feelings about Guantanamo, as I wrote earlier.
As always, I am simply impressed with how articulate Christopher Hitchens can be, and this time it is about Guantanamo. I mean, consider this sentence:

To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrassa.

Awesome. How powerful those few words strung together are! Hitchens' point is:

Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion.

And this is the same mentality that Hitchens says is the problem when it comes to Obama's big speech at Cairo--by "respecting" the traditions and practices of religions (in this case, Islam) what if we are accomplices?

Take the single case in which our president touched upon the best-known fact about the Islamic "world": its tendency to make women second-class citizens. He mentioned this only to say that "Western countries" were discriminating against Muslim women! And how is this discrimination imposed? By limiting the wearing of the head scarf or hijab (a word that Obama pronounced as hajib—imagine the uproar if George Bush had done that). The clear implication was an attack on the French law that prohibits the display of religious garb or symbols in state schools. Indeed, the following day in Paris, Obama made this point even more explicitly. I quote from an excellent commentary by an Algerian-American visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, Karima Bennoune, who says:

I have just published research conducted among the many people of Muslim, Arab and North African descent in France who support that country's 2004 law banning religious symbols in public schools which they see as a necessary deployment of the "law of the republic" to counter the "law of the Brothers," an informal rule imposed undemocratically on many women and girls in neighborhoods and at home and by fundamentalists.

(Click here for more of professor Bennoune's work.)

But to the women who are compelled to dress according to the requirements of others, Obama had nothing to say at all, as if the only "right" at stake were the right to obey an instruction that is, in fact—if it matters—not found in the Quran.

I am ok with Hitchens bringing these issues up because he beats up on any and all religions--so, it is not as if he has some agenda to promote one religion while critiquing another. I suppose Hitchens' only fault in this context was how much of a warmonger he was .... if only he had been less hawkish!

ps: in case you are wondering what the heck a madrassa is, well, click here. and here for hijab v. chador