Day 3 Politics, Islam and Kashmir

Lunch at the Festival

Dinner appetizers at the Taj

John pondering 

Unusual Dessert, was good

The conference doesn’t lend it self to pictures so here I showed today’s lunch and dinner! This was a powerful day. I won’t try to go into detail, but here are the highlights. We started by listening to Dr. Harold Varmus. He is the Nobel Prize winning scientist who is currently head of the National Cancer Institute of the NIH. He is brilliant, articulate and passionate. He explained how they have switched to an open source peer review, allowing scientist access to their research. On another topic he is not opposed to Genetically Modified Food. He feels the EU is wrong in its insistence about GMO food.

The next session was on Afghanistan after the US withdraw. Looks bad! Don’t plan on any vacations there soon. The experts had an wide range of reasons why the future is bleak. It does have the world’s largest reserve of Copper and the Chinese have bought the land, but because of the war like conditions can’t get the copper out. 

We then attended an interesting lecture by Vikram Chandra, one of our favorite authors. He has a new book about writing, computer coding and the Indian Rasa esthetic. In was fascinating and we ran right out and bought his book.

After lunch a dud of a lecture on Gender Fluidity, we walked out after about 20 minutes.

We then attended a panel on P.E.N. the world wide organization that promotes freedom of expression.  We (and you) should give money to it, and support their efforts.

The final panel of the day was on the Iran Revolution, and the Shia – Suni Split.

These two main branches of Islam basically believe the same thing and hate each other. But the hatred is really spawned by political forces who use the split for their own good. The panelist were exceptionally brilliant. The weird thing is that the US and the Iranians should be natural allies. 2^nd weirdest thing the Israeli’s and the Saudi’s have become aligned against Iran. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

We have attended many sessions about Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It makes my head burst. We are totally amazed, however, by the quality of the experts we are listening to on the panels.

After a bottle of wine at our Haveli, we had Vijay drive us across town to have dinner at the Taj. We had a primarily a Kashmiri dinner. The food was unusual and excellent. I wish it was safe to visit Kashmir.