The Lox Sherpa of Russ and Daughters

The Lox Sherpa of Russ & Daughters

Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

UPWARD As a youth Chhapte Sherpa led climbers up Mount Everest.

WHEN Hurricane Sandy threatened to cut power to Russ & Daughters, the popular lox purveyor on Houston Street, Chhapte Sherpa, an assistant manager there, was a first responder in saving the salmon. Each day he found ways to make it to work from his apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. When the power went down, he helped pack caviar to be stored in backup refrigerators in Brooklyn. He helped move the lox with ice into crates, and helped set up a generator to keep the refrigerators running.

Photographs

And as the days wore on, he remained unfazed by the power failure.

“I never even know what electricity was, never saw it, until I was in my 20s,” said Mr. Sherpa, 39, who grew up in a tiny village in the eastern Himalayas. “I never saw a car or a television growing up.”

Mr. Sherpa, who has worked the past decade at the store and has become known as Sherpa Lox and as something of an attraction at the shop, is not your stereotypical Lower East Side lox-slicer.

“He's the Sherpa who speaks Yiddish,” said Niki Russ Federman, who along with Joshua Russ Tupper is one of the store's fourth-generation proprietors. “If he's serving a young man, he might say, ‘Boychik what do you want?' ”

Mr. Sherpa, as his last name implies, belongs to the renowned tribe of mountain people known for helping adventurers up Mount Everest, and this is exactly what Mr. Sherpa did in his youth.

“The two jobs are not really different,” he said of climbing versus fish-slicing. “Both involve helping people.”

Working at the store, which reopened on Thursday, is “not as dangerous as climbing in the Himalayas, of course, but it still requires endurance,” he said.

This was evident that afternoon, when the store had two large bags of food and water - a care package - to be delivered to an ill staff member laid-up in his blacked-out apartment where the elevators were not working.

Of course, Mr. Sherpa was tapped to haul the bags up the 24 floors.

“We asked him if we made the bags too heavy,” said Ms. Russ Federman. “He said, ‘Niki, I've carried 90 pounds up Mount Everest.' ”

Mr. Sherpa, whose full name is Chhapte Sherpa Pinasha, said he grew up the youngest of four children in a wooden shack that was a seven-hour walk from the nearest food market.

Through his teens he went barefoot, even in freezing temperatures, he said, but at age 15 he got a pair of flip-flops to take foreigners on treks, and to join his father in carrying sacks of salt over his shoulder on long walks to base-camps for Everest climbers.

A couple from California who were trekking clients financed his study of English in Katmandu. Mr. Sherpa got married there and then in 1996 immigrated to California to work on the couple's vineyard in the Napa Valley, crushing grapes with his bare feet. He became known as the man who always went barefoot.

He worked as a line chef in Alabama and returned at times to Katmandu, where he and his wife had two children. She is currently raising them there, and Mr. Sherpa hopes to reunite with them one day.

A dozen years ago, he moved to New York. A Chinatown employment agency found him a job at Sable's smoked fish shop on the Upper East Side. After 18 months he was hired by Russ & Daughters, where he learned how to work quickly during the High Holy Days rush, and picked up some Yiddish from Jose and Herman, two Dominican immigrants who have each worked in the shop for more than 30 years.

They taught him, for example, that a “bissel” of cream cheese was just a light “schmear,” and that all the staff members are “mishpukah” - part of the Russ family.

Most important, they taught him how to cut lox “thin enough to read a newspaper through it,” Mr. Sherpa said. Now, he has his own following of customers, including the film producer Robert Evans, he said. Mr. Evans likes his Nova lox so thin that, as the employees at the shop say, it only has one side.

After growing up on a diet of flour paste, cheese soup and butter tea, Mr. Sherpa now subsists on caviar and pickled herring and wild Baltic salmon. Instead of trekking in flip-flops, he hops the F train to work (when it's running), and he prefers coffee to butter tea.

“Forget about it,” he said. “You have to start your day with coffee in this city.”

E-mail: character@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on November 4, 2012, on page MB4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Guide for Summits and Lox.

As India Prepares to Host Pakistan, More at Stake Than Cricket

Ishara S.Kodikara/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesPakistani wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal watching the ball after Indian cricketer Virat Kohli played a shot during a match of the ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup tournament, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.     

Now that the Indian Home Ministry has approved Pakistan's tour of this country for a short series of One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 matches in December and January, the arch rivals are all set to revive their bilateral cricket relations in an event that is likely to transcend sports.

Cricket has long played a big part in India-Pakistan relations, and the Pakistan team's visit is being seen as one of the most important diplomatic events for both countries since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, in which militants from Pakistan killed over 160 people. Pakistan last played India in 2007, for five One-Day Internationals and three tests. (The two sides have met in multinational tournaments, however.)

The Indian government's decision last week to allow Pakistan to play in India came after lengthy discussions between officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and those of the Pakistan Cricket Board, between the two governments, and finally between the Indian Home Ministry and the Indian cricket board. The Indian cricket board's vice president, Rajiv Shukla, who is also the chairman of Indian Premier League, said that the government has guaranteed the Pakistan team's security as it tours India.

Some Indians have been eagerly awaiting the return of India-Pakistan national matches. “I wholeheartedly welcome India's decision,” Gundappa Viswanath, the renowned former cricketer, said in an interview. “Being a sportsperson, I strongly feel that sport should be left alone and not mixed with politics or diplomacy.

“The rivalry, howsoever intense, should be buried on the field at the end of the day,” he said. “I'm sure fans on either side of the border must be excited about the resumption of bilateral cricket ties between India and Pakistan.”

But the former India cricketer Kirti Azad, now a member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party, expressed surprise over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's silence on the matter, recalling Mr. Singh's vow that India would not resume diplomatic relations with Pakistan until Islamabad punished those involved in the Mumbai attacks.

“The B.J.P. would raise the issue prominently in the winter session of Parliament,” Mr. Azad said in a news conference. “I agree sports should be kept out of politics, but it cannot be done at the cost of country's security and prestige.”

For the same reason, the former India cricket captain Sunil Gavaskar in July had criticized the Indian cricket board's attempts to revive ties with Pakistan. Mr. Gavaskar found many supporters, including the Shiv Sena Party chief, Bal Thackeray, a longtime critic of Pakistan.
“Playing cricket with them is treason,” Mr. Thackeray wrote in an editorial in the party newspaper Saamana at the time.
He also suggested the Indian cricket board be “publicly whipped” before the Taj Hotel and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, two of the sites attacked by militants in 2008.

On Thursday, Mr. Thackeray said in another Saamana editorial that the Pakistan team's visit to India was a matter of “national shame.” He accused the Indian cricket board of “betraying the country for sake of mo ney” and added that Indian cricketers and the home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, were part of the betrayal.

But a majority of former Pakistani cricketing greats, including Abdul Qadir, Asif Iqbal, Javed Miandad, Sarfraz Nawaz and Zaheer Abbas, have welcomed the resumption of national matches, saying that it marked a big step forward in improving relations between the two countries.

Aamer Sohail, former Pakistan opening batsman, even suggested that India should also play in Pakistan, a move that would encourage other countries' teams to visit Pakistan. International cricket teams have avoided Pakistan after gunmen attacked a bus carrying the Sri Lankan team on its way to play in Lahore in March 2009. Since then, Pakistan has had to hold its “home” series at neutral venues in the United Arab Emirates, incurring heavy financial losses in the process.

As always happens whenever India and Pakistan meet on a cricket field in either of the two countries, ma ny high-level officials from both sides of the border are expected to attend these matches. The last time India and Pakistan played against each other was in the ICC World Twenty20 Championship in Sri Lanka in September, with India winning the match.
They had earlier clashed in the semifinal of the 2011 World Cup at Mohali in India, which was watched by Mr. Singh and his Pakistani counterpart at the time, Yousaf Raza Gilani. Pakistan lost both these matches.

Indian Images Reflect the Present

Indian Images Reflect the Present

A Review of ‘Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest,' in Ewing

Collection of Shelley and Donald Rubin

A 2007 mixed-media piece by Seema Kohli.

EWING, N.J.

An untitled 1989 watercolor by G. R. Santosh.

“Skin Grafted,” a 2007 acrylic by Mahjabin Majumdar.

“Shakti,” a 1979 work in oil by M. F. Husain.

BEFORE “Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest,” an exhibition of modern and contemporary Indian art, came to the College of New Jersey here last month, it had already provided its curator with a crash course on Americans' attitudes toward art from that part of the world.

At Oglethorpe University Museum of Art in Atlanta, where a larger version of the show ran from March to September 2011, “people were surprised by the variety,” said Rebecca M. Brown, a teaching professor in the history of art department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Brown curated the Atlanta show and served as guest curator in New Jersey.

“My response to that was, ‘That's because we don't know this material. To us, it's not familiar,' ” she said. “But what if we were to do an exhibition of postwar art in America? It would be really, really diverse.”

The 22 paintings on display at the 1,800-square-foot gallery here both adhere to and diverge from expectations of what Indian art might look like in the years from 1947, the year India gained independence, to the present, which is the era the show documents, Dr. Brown said. All the works are figural, for example; that is, they portray the human form in various styles (some straightforward and representational, some quite abstract); figural work is one of the traditions in Indian art. Also, most circle back to the spiritual or otherworldly.

“A lot of artists use goddess images,” Dr. Brown said, including M. F. Husain in his earth-toned 1979 oil painting “Shakti,” which translates as “power.” It shows a female figure charging, arm raised, atop a lion or tiger baring ferocious teeth. Other artists “do conform to our stereotypes of India - the saffron-robed monastic images.”

But what separates the often large-scale, colorful works from one another and also anchors them to modernity is the way the painters, who represent a multitude of regions and religions, explore what it means to be human.

Sometimes, as in Sakti Burman's 2008 watercolor “Durga,” mortals and deities rub elbows. “He uses a goddess image, but he brings it back to earth,” by depicting the familiar many-armed goddess Durga at the forefront of the picture but situating an ordinary young girl wearing glasses and reading a book by her side, Dr. Brown said. Together, the images of the everyday and the exalted “form a statement about the modern world.” That is, a world in flux.

“Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest” made its way to the College of New Jersey by way of a musical event. Last year, the college booked a tabla performance by Abhijit Banerjee and the Tarang Ensemble, which took place last month as part of a daylong symposium on contemporary Indian culture.

John C. Laughton, dean of the School of the Arts and Communication, “mentioned the performance to me and said, ‘Wouldn't it be nice to have an exhibition of contemporary Indian art to go along with it?' So I started to see what might be possible,” said Emily Croll, the art gallery director, during a tour of the show on Wednesday. The exhibition runs through Dec. 16.

Ms. Croll collaborated with Deborah Hutton, an associate professor of art history at the College of New Jersey and a colleague of Dr. Brown's from graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Brown connected Dr. Hutton and Ms. Croll with Donald Rubin.

Mr. Rubin and his wife, Shelley, are collectors, based in Manhattan, who made “Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest” possible; all the works in the show are on loan from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection. The Rubins are the founders of the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan as well as the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation.

Dr. Brown's original assemblage of more than 50 paintings and sculptures for the Atlanta exhibition was culled from more than 500 pieces of contemporary and modern Indian art in the private collection, said Rachel Weingeist, senior adviser to Mr. and Mrs. Rubin.

The 22 chosen for the smaller New Jersey show by Dr. Hutton and Ms. Croll were to be “representative of works from across the decades,” Ms. Croll said, adding, “But we also selected the works that we thought were the strongest.”

They include an untitled 2007 mixed-media work by Seema Kohli that Ms. Weingeist, of Manhattan, said was “definitely one of Donald's favorites.” In it, a mermaidlike goddess with a vividly royal-blue body emerges from a mythical hybrid beast, trailed by a flowing river.

In the few weeks since the exhibition opened, students and other curious visitors have gravitated toward paintings based on their own predilections and proclivities, said Ms. Croll, of Princeton.

“Some are more drawn to religious imagery, and others seem compelled by the images of strong women or other subjects. There's a lot of content in the paintings - you can look deeply at them in terms of imagery and symbolism,” she said.

Contemporary Indian art may be having a moment of sorts. The Rubin Museum is scheduled to open “Modernist Art From India: Radical Terrain,” the final exhibition of a three-part series, on Nov. 9. And the Queens Museum of Art is planning what Ms. Weingeist called “an enormous exhibition” about contemporary and modern Indian art, for which the dates are still tentative.

“The timing couldn't be better for the New Jersey show,” Ms. Weingeist said. “Indian art is hot right now.”

“Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and Contemporary Indian Art From the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection,” through Dec. 16 at the College of New Jersey Art Gallery, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing; open Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 7 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 3 p.m. tcnj.edu/artgallery or (609) 771-2633.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 4, 2012

An earlier version of the picture credits in this story misspelled the first name of one of the people who provided the photographs to The Times. She is Shelley Rubin, not Shelly.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 4, 2012, on page NJ9 of the New York edition with the headline: Indian Images Reflect the Present.

Asian-Americans in the Argument

Michael Stravato for The New York Times

What is the Asian-American identity? Lesley Varghese, top left, teaches the subject at the University of Texas, Austin. Students include, clockwise from Ms. Varghese, Khai Pham, Anna Akhtar, Mariam Taherzadeh, Tu-Uyen N. Nguyen, Francis Shue, Mirusha Vogarajah and Judith Ha.

A COLLEGE education aims to guide students through unfamiliar territory - Arabic, Dante, organic chemistry - so what was once alien comes to feel a lot less so. But sometimes an issue starts so close to home that the educational goal is the inverse: to take what students think of as familiar and place it in a new and surprising light.

It's mostly the latter process that has been taking place every Tuesday and Thursday this semester in Room 303 of the Parlin Building, just below the iconic 300-foot tower of the University of Texas, Austin. On this graceful campus of 50,000 students from diverse ethnic backgrounds, three dozen undergraduates, many of them Asian-American, are examining Asian-American political identity in a course on that subject.

Ethnic politics is a touchy topic under any circumstances, but the issue here has a sharper edge as the United States Supreme Court examines whether the University of Texas is violating the Constitution by including race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. On Oct. 10, it heard oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, in which Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, says she was denied admission to the flagship campus while less qualified Latinos and African-Americans were allowed in.

In his presentation of some of the Supreme Court legal briefs to the political identity class, Khai Pham, a junior who is Vietnamese, said he didn't like the use of race in college admissions - and nobody other than the instructor, Lesley Varghese, disagreed with him. Said one classmate: “You can't make up for what went wrong in the past by helping people today.” Another added: “Maybe affirmative action was necessary at one point in time, but it is outdated today and we need a new formula.” And Anna Akhtar, a sophomore who is half Pakistani, said of her high school classmates: “I had white friends who were struggling and minority friends who were doing just fine.”

Ms. Varghese, an Indian-American lawyer and activist, said later that she hoped that what seemed obvious to those students now - that using race in admissions caused resentment, was unfair and should be abandoned - would yield to a deeper appreciation of a complex issue later in the semester.

Given the growing skepticism toward affirmative action in American society and at the Supreme Court itself (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”), its use in university admissions seems to be facing a challenging future.

Asian-Americans, who make up 5 percent of the population, are the fastest growing racial group, with three-quarters of adults born abroad, according to the Pew Research Center. And they are tangled up in the affirmative action issue in complicated ways.

On the one hand, some ambitious and disciplined students from India, South Korea and China see themselves as victims of race-conscious admissions, their numbers kept artificially low to keep a more demographically balanced campus. A lawsuit pending against Princeton alleges discrimination on grounds that applicants from other ethnic or racial groups were admitted with lesser credentials. The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights also received complaints last year against Princeton and, since withdrawn, Harvard.

On the other hand, Filipinos, Cambodians, Pacific Islanders and other Asian-Americans continue to benefit from policies that take ethnicity into account.

Polls show Asian-Americans divided fairly evenly on the use of affirmative action. But its opponents appear to be growing more vocal, and they have joined the debate in a bigger way than in the past. In briefs sent to the justices, most of the established Asian-American groups, like the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, support diversity as a goal in college admissions. But a number of others take the side of Ms. Fisher and argue that colleges have increased the numbers of blacks and Hispanics in a way that is wrong and unconstitutional.

“Admission to the nation's top universities and colleges is a zero-sum proposition,” asserts the brief from the 80-20 National Asian American Educational Foundation, one of the groups opposed to affirmative action. “As aspiring applicants capable of graduating from these institutions outnumber available seats, the utilization of race as a ‘plus factor' for some inexorably applies race as a ‘minus factor' against those on the other side of the equation. Particularly hard-hit are Asian-American students, who demonstrate academic excellence at disproportionately high rates but often find the value of their work discounted on account of either their race, or nebulous criteria alluding to it.”

Ms. Fisher asserts that the policy that led to the rejection of her application to the Austin campus hurts not only white applicants but Asian-Americans.

Ethan Bronner is national legal affairs correspondent at The Times.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 4, 2012, on page ED24 of Education Life with the headline: The Asian-American Affirmation.

A Conversation With: Author Aarthi Ramachandran

Courtesy WestlandAarthi Ramachandran.

Rahul Gandhi often seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. On the television news channels, or in the Indian print media, Mr. Gandhi is ubiquitous, popping up at staged political events across the country, including recently when he donned a blue turban for an appearance in Chandigarh

Yet Mr. Gandhi is one of the most reclusive, private public figures in India, rarely directly addressing the media and never granting one-on-one interviews. For a man that many people believe could one day become India's prime minister, Mr. Gandhi remains a riddle, his vision for the nation unclear.

This presented a particular challenge for A arthi Ramachandran, a journalist who covered the Congress Party for several years before deciding to write a book about Mr. Gandhi. “Decoding Rahul Gandhi” was published in August and offers a well-reported account of Mr. Gandhi's career as a politician that is both sympathetic to him yet also tough-minded about his failings.

I interviewed Ms. Ramachandran while researching my own article about Mr. Gandhi, which documented how his star has seemed to fade since the 2009 national elections. I also e-mailed her a list of questions, in hopes that she could offer her perspective on Mr. Gandhi for readers of India Ink. Her answers, also by e-mail, are below.

Q.

Why did you decide to write a book about Rahul Gandhi?

A.

I began covering the Congress Party as a beat around the same time Rahul Gandhi took the political plunge. Given his importance in the Congress hierarchy, it made sense to track his political progress fairly closely.

I had written several pieces on Rahul. It struck me that there is a good story to be told about an extremely reclusive young man who could one day be the prime minister. I felt it would be interesting to chronicle his early years in politics.

At around the same time in 2009, when this idea struck me, I had a chance one-on-one meeting with Rahul. This was the time when much of Rahul's rhetoric revolved around finding solutions for urban migration and deprivation. I had written to him as a private citizen, putting aside my journalistic skepticism, urging him to do something about the issue of child beggars in Delhi. Oddly enough, his office wrote back saying he would like to discuss the issue with me. I found him to be well intentioned, yet somewhat confused about his role in politics. He kept telling me that he needed to “focus” on fewer things.

Q.

He is one of the mo st private and secretive political figures in India. He does not grant interviews and rarely directly addresses the media. What do you make of this strategy? Do you think this is his decision or a decision made by party strategists?

A.

Rahul has drawn an invisible curtain around himself, just as his mother, Sonia Gandhi, has. In this aspect, he has followed his mother's cue and cast himself in the role of the remote and inaccessible party leader.

This strategy cannot be the doing of party strategists alone because in the Congress nobody can determine how the Nehru-Gandhis choose to present themselves to the public on a sustained basis. While the strategy has worked to a certain extent in Sonia Gandhi's case - given her Italian roots, it has kept her from fumbling in public as she learned the ropes of Indian politics - in Rahul's case the strategy has boomeranged.

Rahul Gandhi comes across as an enigma, despite being in politics for over eight years. Because he does not give interviews or present his views on many issues affecting India, nobody really knows what he stands for.

People will not vote for something that they don't know and understand. The Gandhi name is no longer enough to make it in politics.

Q.

You write about how his experiences as a management consultant have influenced his approach to party work and politics. How has this approach been effective for him? And ineffective?

A.

Rahul's ideas for improving efficiency and accountability in the functioning of political parties are important in their place. His zeal for more inner-party democracy, while a tad ironic, is still much needed.

However, there is no evidence yet to suggest that the approach he has chosen has worked so far. Neither has it succeeded in strengthening the Congress at the grass roots by bringing in people who are genuinely not connected to the prese nt system either through family ties or money; nor has it been able to enlist new voter support for the party or improve organizational efficiency in states where the Congress Party is in a shambles - U.P. [Uttar Pradesh] for example.

It has not worked because a political party cannot ape a corporate/manufacturing/industry model that seeks to improve efficiency in the most mechanical of ways. It needs a political program and sustained political engagement with issues. Rahul has failed on this count. No party can function on the basis of a rule book, or to put it in corporate terminology, work as per a standard operating procedure manual.

Q.

Do you think the Gandhi name still carries resonance with Indian voters that it once did?

A.

The era is far past in Indian politics when Indira Gandhi could win her way back into the hearts of voters who had deserted her after the Internal Emergency (1975-1977), by riding on elephant back to reach Belchi in Bihar, where Dalits had been killed in a horrific caste clash.

The Gandhi family name no longer automatically evokes the same blind faith from voters it did a few decades back. People want their politicians to be able to deliver things to them now. Rahul Gandhi and his mother, Sonia, might have a head start over other politicians because of the instant recognition that the Gandhi name brings, but they still have to present voters with a sensible proposition election after election.

Rahul Gandhi's inability to rescue the Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the 2007 and 2012 state elections shows people will no longer vote for the Congress only because a Gandhi happens to be in charge of the campaign.

Q.

In the book, you say that Rahul Gandhi is not a natural politician, as far as having an intuitive grasp of politics. Where did he go wrong in the U.P. elections this year? And do you think he has the abil ity to improve in this area?

A.

There were several reasons for Rahul's defeat in the 2012 U.P. elections. To enumerate just a few, Rahul's election strategy of accumulating noncore and peripheral castes and communities into a single solid vote bank for the Congress failed badly. The Muslims, who had voted for the Congress in the 2009 general elections, were not taken in by the Congress's election-eve offer of a special “sub-quota” for minorities in central government jobs and education out of the 27 percent earmarked for Other Backward Classes.

Then there was the Akhilesh Yadav factor. The Samajwadi Party leader and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's son was seen as no less a “yuvraj” (prince) than Rahul, but he came across as accessible and, more importantly, belonged to the state. In comparison, Rahul only came to U.P. to do his politics; he did not live it.

To answer the second part of the question, it would be i mpossible to write off anyone in politics. The U.P. campaign itself showed that Rahul was willing to work on his public speaking skill in order to connect better with the electorate. It won't be easy for Rahul to shed the tag of not being a natural, but similar things were said about his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who was famously described by the socialist Ram Manohar Lohia as “goongi gudiya” (dumb doll).

With good advice and a reorientation of his attitude to politics, Rahul could be a different politician. The question though is, whether he wants to change.

Q.

There has always been a question of whether Rahul is animated by politics, whether he has the fire to win and succeed in this realm. Is he competitive in this way? What do you think motivates him?

A.

As I said in the previous answer, Rahul's attitude to politics could do with reorientation. He is confused about the role he wants to play - it is not clear yet whether he sees himself as a political activist who wants to ring in fundamental changes in the system or whether he wants to gear his politics toward keeping the Congress electable. This confusion has meant that he has not really shown a willingness to take on the risks and rewards of realpolitik.

But if the U.P. polls of 2012 is a pointer, then we have seen the first glimpses of Rahul's competitive streak. He went all out in that campaign in a way he has not done before. That said, even that effort was not motivated by a desire for political power alone (which in itself may not be a bad thing, but that is a separate discussion). He had a point to prove there since he has been associated with U.P. since 2007. The need to prove himself motivates Rahul primarily, in my opinion. He wants to be seen as deserving of the mantle bestowed on him for no reason other than his ancestry.

Q.

There is always lots of gossip that Priyanka is the more talented politician of the pair. Is this fair?

A.

Priyanka is spontaneous, charming and appears far more at ease with politics. She has in the past displayed the ability to connect with people and party workers in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies in U.P. which have been with the Gandhi family for years. Her biggest asset is her resemblance to her grandmother and former Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi. Congressmen and women, especially from U.P., yearn for a Gandhi family nominee as formidable as Indira.

The Congress has been unable to reclaim the position it enjoyed in national politics after the Indira Gandhi era. Nostalgia for the Indira era, therefore, at least partly explains why Priyanka is seen as more promising of the brother-sister duo. This is accentuated by Rahul's awkwardness as a public speaker, his inability to connect with crowds and lack of communication with party workers.

But to be fair, we don't know what Priyanka's ideas are. We don't even know as much about her as we know of Rahul. The call for Priyanka is also a sign that, at least, some in the Congress are looking for a quick fix since Rahul Gandhi has not been able to meet their expectations.

Crowdfunding Citizen Journalism in Cairo

A video explaining the work of Mosireen, an Egyptian media collective engaged in an online crowdfunding campaign on the site indiegogo.

Mosireen, a media collective in downtown Cairo that offers equipment and training to citizen journalists, was born out of the effort by activists to document the Egyptian revolution online. As the group's mission statement says, that was vital during the street protests that drove Hosni Mubarak from the presidential palace 21 months ago, when, “Armed with mobile phones and cameras, thousands upon thousands of citizens kept the balance of truth in their country by recording events as they happened in front of them, wrong-footing censorship and empowering the voice of a street-level perspective.”

Sin ce The Lede exists in part to draw attention to firsthand reports on news events posted online, regular readers will be familiar with Mosireen's work. The group produced several important video reports featured on this blog during the period of military rule that followed Egypt's 2011 revolution. Video posted on the Mosireen YouTube channel documented, among other incidents: a massacre of mainly Coptic Christian civilians late last year outside the headquarters of state television, known as Maspero; a brutal attack on a female protester by Egyptian soldiers two months later; the violent dispersal of a sit-in outside the country's Parliament in February.

As chaotic street battles have become less common, the organization has evolved into a vital source of reporting on social issues - like the need to deliver justice to victims of torture, adequate healthcare, decent housing and a clean environment to Egyptian citizens.

In keeping wit h its ambition, to provide independent reporting by and for the citizens of a country where state control of the media remains largely in place, Mosireen has been engaged in a crowdfunding drive with a page for donations on the site indiegogo. So far the filmmakers have raised more than $30,000, which is three-quarters of the total they hope to raise by the end of the campaign, at midnight tonight, Pacific Time.

If you haven't donated to @mosireen yet, you still have time. Help keep this great media collective independent http://t.co/1KCgjXU5 #Egypt

- Nora Shalaby ن. شلبي (@norashalaby) 4 Nov 12

During an interview in Mosireen's office in a ramshackle building on Adly Street in Cairo this summer, Salma Said, a leader of the collective - who was riddled with birdshot pellets by the security forces while filming one attack on protesters - explained how the group's activities expanded in the aftermath of the revolution.

The activists initially came together to build an archive of clips documenting the street protests of early 2011, Ms. Said said, but then, struck by the lack of independent reporting on the post-Mubarak government, they began to make their own reports, often incorporating video recorded on phones by witnesses. Given that the airwaves were still dominated by state channels that were loathe to air any critical reports on the country's new rulers, the Mosireen activists staged a series of public screenings of video that challenged official accounts of clashes, like that the security forces only used force against “thugs,” not peaceful protesters.

According to the call for donations from supporters, the group hopes to get the resources to expand its activities to other parts of Egypt, keep its collective workspace open for free, stage more outdoor screenings, buy hard drives to hold the expanding archive of the revolution, and, “keep making films, f ilms that support civilian campaigns, films that press for social justice, films that expose state narratives.”