July 2022 – Nithin's Blog

RRR Thoughts

I just watched RRR, the Indian epic anti-colonial film that’s now the third highest grossing film in India, and is receiving critical acclaim and attention in the west. (8/18/22 Edit: The movie is also receiving a fair bit of criticism for promoting casteism and Hinduatva)

Indian cinema in the west is usually associated with Hindi-language Bollywood, and tends to ignore regional cinema. RRR is a Telugu language film, and thus is separate from Hindi language Bollywood. Telugu also happens to be the language that my family speaks. It’s directed by S. S. Rajamouli, who has been successful in producing pan-Indian films that are released in multiple languages. Baahubali was another one of his high grossing Telugu films.

A Definition of Love, from bell hooks (and MLK)

“Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco June 30 1964” by geoconklin2001 is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I picked up all about love: new visions by bell hooks from McNally Jackson in Nolita last weekend. I bought it impulsively, but had known about hooks for a while.

I’m only about 10 pages in, but one passage that sticks with me is one in which hooks defines love. To clarify, it’s not her definition, it’s one she found in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s 1978 book The Road Less Traveled. He defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth…Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

NYC Subway Links

“File:MTA NYC Subway 1 train leaving 125th St.jpg” by Mtattrain is marked with CC BY-SA 4.0.

I recently moved to New York City, and regularly take the subway to get around. I’ve since gotten more interested in various things about the subway, and have done a little bit of reading about it. Here are some articles I’ve read over the past few weeks that I found interesting:

Subway system decline: This 2017 article from the Atlantic gives a good overview on the decline of the NYC subway. The subway has gotten better since then (thanks partially to ‘Train Daddy’ Andy Byford, who shows up in a different article), but many of the issues still stand. Briefly, the decline can be traced to the age of the system (it’s so old the MTA has to rebuild certain parts because they can’t be purchased), overcrowding (the subway now has nearly as many riders as its peak in 1946), lack of political will for preventative maintenance, and mismanagement of funds.

Telugu Pronunciation – Consonants

Don’t want to read? Watch this video instead!

Today, I’ll outline sounds in Telugu that are different from their English counterparts, or don’t exist in English. We’ll need to learn them in order to pronounce Telugu properly, hear distinctions between certain words, and have a good accent. I’ll focus on consonants for this post. I’ll begin by just going over the sounds, without focusing on the more technical linguistics behind it. If you’re curious to learn more, I’ve included it at the bottom of this post.

Detroit – Hamtramck Assembly

The Dodge Main, or Chrysler Hamtramck Assembly Plant, as it stood in 1965. Image from the Detroit Historical Society.

In 1980, General Motors convinced the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan to use a newly passed eminent domain law to demolish 1,500 homes, 144 businesses, and 16 churches to build a new auto plant on the Detroit – Hamtramck Border.

At the time, Detroit was in decline, losing population and businesses to the suburbs. Detroit, and its Mayor Coleman Young, wanted to attract new businesses to the struggling city, and agreed. Despite protests, legal challenges, and a visit by Ralph Nader, the Detroit neighborhood of Poletown was demolished and its 4,200 residents relocated (CityLab).

Telugu Verbs Primer

Hyderabad bazaar — Charminar in Hyderabad. Source: ruffin_reddy

This is a very quick introduction to Telugu verbs – designed to help you get speaking right away. To keep it simple, I’ve decided not to include some more advanced stuff like spelling changes or irregular verbs – I’ll cover them in a future post.

July 6th Progress

I’m writing this article to provide an update to this post. Since writing, it here’s what I’ve gotten done:

bought tickets for RRR (a new Telugu film) on Friday
skimmed through a book (Learn Telugu in 30 Days) to see what I would learn from it, but didn’t study it

I wanted to get more done by this point, and in the spirit of working on the process, here are some things that I think I need to do to be more successful in this endeavor.

Want to learn a language that’s useful in the NYC area? Check out these 5

Let’s say you live in the New York Metropolitan region, the area defined by New York City and its surrounding suburbs. You want to learn a language, but you don’t want to learn one to travel somewhere. Instead, you want to learn a language to communicate with people in your region who speak that language. What language should you learn?

I argue that your best bet is Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese), Russian, Korean or Bengali. I argue this based on a combination of three metrics. The first is total number of speakers of each language, the second is total number of speakers of each language who also don’t speak English well, and third is the percentage of each linguistic community who do not speak English well.

The location of Temple #1

Photo credit: Historic Masjid Wali Muhammad

I’m in the middle of reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I’m at the chapter where he moves to Detroit after converting to the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm mentions the NOI’s Temple No #1, citing an address on Frederick St. That wasn’t the Temple’s first address, nor was it the final one. Temple Number 1 now stands at 11529 Linwood Street, in Detroit’s Dexter Linwood neighborhood. Although it’s formally known as Temple Number 1, it is also referred to as Masjid Wali Muhammad [1].

Montréal Reflections

I just finished an 8 day trip to Montréal (with 2 days on either end in Toronto). I had some expectations about this trip that I don’t think were met, but still learned many lessons from it that I’ll share today.

My expecations about this trip

This is my second long solo trip. The first one was when I went to Mexico City in February 2020 for 10 days. I went to explore the city, get out of the cold Michigan winter, and see the Monarch Butterfly Preserve. I also wanted to immerse myself in a Spanish speaking environment, and use Spanish. I ended up speaking a decent amount of Spanish to get around, but ended up speaking mostly English with the other people at the hostel.