Forbes Article on D.C. Pedicabs

The nose wheel makes an acute turn and plants itself in the six-foot-wide gap between two cars idling at a traffic light on 14^thStreet. Before we have time to analyse just how our driver would steer the rest of the 10-foot-long ‘pedicab’ into that space, we’re straddling another lane line a few feet down the road between a big, red tourist bus and a truck. A few more zigs and zags later, we are in front of a bank of vehicles at least 30 cars deep, clear of all the exhaust. Our driver looks back at us and declares triumphantly, “Like I said, this is not my first day on the job!”

For the past two years, Will Visbeck has been honing his skills as a driver of a pedicab – known to the rest of the world variously as cycle rickshaw, cyclo, becak or trishaw – on the streets of Washington, D.C. It has no roof, doors, seatbelts, airbags, rear-view mirrors or stereo systems (though headlight, taillight and turn signals are in evidence) but we do get to make leisurely circles around statues and monuments as our driver keeps up his commentary of the sights.

Originally published in ForbesLife India. A link to the pdf version is here.

Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: Anatomy of a Siege

Nearly a year ago now, we went on a road trip to Asheville, North Carolina, for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had about an hour left on the nine-hour drive when a friend called us from Chicago with the news that Mumbai was under attack. "Are you close to a TV?" he asked. Two hours later we turned on the TV in our apartment and saw the horror unfolding right in front of television cameras.

The rampage, the deaths, the agony, the chaos and the destruction - they were all there, the images constantly and relentlessly flitting across our screens, the cameras documenting the mayhem minute by painful minute. We had questions. Why did it take so long for the military forces to reach the hotels and the hospitals? Why were reporters not cautioned about broadcasting the tactics of security forces? Could the attacks have been avoided in the first place? Could the damage have been minimized?

In an article titled Anatomy of a Siege, Marie Brenner weaves in the numerous strands of the events that transpired that day in a gripping essay for the November '09 issue of Vanity Fair:

The city’s rage had narrowed down to one issue: long into the night a squad of police and a contingent from the army had stood outside the Taj while terrorists roamed the floors above, taking hostages. The police were waiting for orders from a commissioner of noble lineage who stayed put in his car at the nearby Oberoi hotel and for the arrival of commandos and anti-terror forces from New Delhi. From his station a few blocks away, A. N. Roy, the head of the state police, screamed at his men, “Why can’t they go in? Why are they standing there?” But powerful as he was, Roy could not directly command the local police. India is a top-down society of entrenched bureaucrats, with appallingly inadequate communication among agencies.

[...]

One of those trapped was Dr. Mangeshikar, who had started her evening declaring that she would stay at the wedding one hour tops. The hotel staff passed trays of sandwiches and drinks at Chambers. “Leave this kitchen right now—the terrorists are on the way,” Kang ordered. “They refused to leave,” Kang told me. “They said, 'We are preparing food and drinks for the guests.’” Kang ordered them again, “Leave! Your lives are in danger.” Dattatrey Chaskar, a waiter, begged Kang, “Save my son!” No one could find the young man. Later he would be discovered huddled among stacks of lamb chops in a cold-storage cabinet.

Parts of the story leave you shaken, you look at some of the survivors and wonder what you'd have done in their situation. Would it have occurred to me to conjure up a make-shift toilet out of sheets in a corner of the room for hotel guests holed up in a room - as it did to Mallika Jagad, who happened to be in charge of a banquet that day?

The entire story is available by clicking here: Anatomy of a Siege.

Related posts: Volunteerism vs. Terrorism

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.