One of only six plastic surgeons in Sri Lanka, Dr Chandni Perera performs reconstructive surgery to burns victims. She talks to NPR on abuse, why women burn themselves, stigmatisation and changing social attitudes.
Severe burns or fires kill or injure nearly 4 million women each year, according to figures from the World Health Organization, and nearly half of the reported cases occur in Southeast Asia.
Dr. Chandini Perera, one of only six plastic surgeons in Sri Lanka, performs reconstructive surgery to burn victims. She says most of the victims are poor and their living conditions make them vulnerable to the danger of fire. But there’s a disturbing dynamic in some cases: Women are set on fire by their husbands and boyfriends, and others set themselves on fire in an empty bid to escape abuse.
Those who survive the burns do so with disfigurement and disabilities requiring long recovery periods. That process tends to be more emotional than physical, Perera says, noting that victims are often ostracized. That, in turn, keeps the problems hidden. “If you are stigmatized and you are an outcast, then you live in this unseen world,” Perera says.
Perera believes that empowering burn victims to reenter society will help change social attitudes.
With MySpace making its India launch, could YouTube have been far behind? The video sharing website launched its Indian version on May 7 with a localised home page and search functions that allows users to share and upload videos and discover clips most relevant to India.
YouTube India is reported to have signed agreements with content providers like UTV, NDTV, Rajshri Films, Eros Entertainment and the department of tourism.
Punches, skirmishes and a strong pair of lungs. Flank your man with two strong women. Pushing and shoving is the name of the game. The Women’s Quota Bill, which provides 33 per cent reservation to women, is finally tabled, after a delay of 12 years, in India’s Rajya Sabha. The Times of India has the report.
The planning would have done a military strategist proud. The defence was deployed with skill and guile. The back-up was forceful and arrived in time. And even though the “enemy” managed to land a few punches, the skirmish was brief and ended with the contentious women’s reservation bill being introduced in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Congress parliamentary managers had done their homework well. They placed law minister H R Bhardwaj on the second row away from the aisle connecting the rest of the House. He was flanked by two women ministers, Kumari Selja and Ambika Soni.
The anti-bill lobby led by Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh did its best to disrupt proceedings. SP members moved into the well, ostensibly raising demands for action against Raj Thackeray for his anti-north Indian fulminations. But they had their eyes fixed on Bhardwaj.
Turkish educators are offering an alternative approach to religious schools that could reduce extremists’ influence. Sabrina Tavernise reports from Karachi in The New York Times:
Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.
He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.
“Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”
But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.
Can the right celebrities raise concern for Myanmar? Alex Williams in The New York Times:
“Hitler is alive in Burma” reads the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the “Juno” star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week.
The spot is one of 30 produced for U.S. Campaign for Burma, starring celebrities like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston. They will be distributed on Fanista.com, a social-networking and entertainment retail site, then passed along to sites like YouTube and Google Video every day for the next month. The goal of the campaign is to thrust the cause of human rights in Burma - now known as Myanmar - into the orbit of A-list activist causes, along with Tibet and Darfur, and to encourage international pressure on a government that activists say is one of the world’s most oppressive.
[Picture: Ellen Page of “Juno” holds a picture of Myanmar’s dictator, Senior Gen. Than Shwe.]
Muslims in western India have been observing a bizarre ritual - they’ve been throwing their young children off a tall building to improve their health. The faithful have been observing the ritual at a shrine in Solapur, in western India’s Maharastra, for more than five hundred years. They believe it will make their children strong and say no accidents have ever happened. [Reuters]
Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey, $2 billion, vaastu-compliant skyscraper, Antilla in downtown Mumbai, when completed, will be the world’s costliest residence. Matt Woolsey has the story in Forbes.
While visiting New York in 2005, Nita Ambani was in the spa at the Mandarin Oriental New York, overlooking Central Park. The contemporary Asian interiors struck her just so, and prompted her to inquire about the designer.
Nita Ambani was no ordinary tourist. She is married to Mukesh Ambani, head of Mumbai-based petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, and the fifth richest man in the world. ( Lakshmi Mittal, ranked fourth, is an Indian citizen, but a resident of the U.K.)
After the rape and murder of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, comes news that a 26-year-old French cyclist Jean-Baptiste Talleu who arrived in Mumbai from Dubai on December 4 has gone missing.
According to his family, Talleu is on a world tour. They are sure he landed in Mumbai since his bank records reveal two cash withdrawals on his credit card on December 5. He last spoke to his mother on December 2 from Dubai. After that, no news.
An e-birthday greeting sent to him on December 11 has gone unacknowledged. The family has lodged a missing person complaint with the Sahar police and is also in touch with the French consulate in Mumbai.
Lonely Planet has tagged the missing cyclist, click here for more.
Talleu is 26 years old, 5 ft 10 inches tall with long, curly, dark brown hair that is always tied. He usually wears beige, brown, blue or black clothes. Information about him can be sent directly to his mother, Marie-Claire Taleu (mctalleu@gmail.com, +33622078234) or his family friend in Mumbai, Annie Simoes (+91 9920174062)
SMA Kazmi in The Indian Express on a state-sponsored scheme to buy cow urine through milk coops and sell it to Ayurvedic pharmacies.
The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand has started an ambitious programme to buy cow urine through milk cooperative societies and sell it to Ayurvedic pharmacies or to be used in making Ayurvedic medicines. The state Government already has a demand for 5,000 litres of cow urine from Swami Ramdev’s pharmacy at Haridwar. The first phase of the programme to buy cow urine at Rs 5 a litre (about USD 0.12) was started at Kalsi in Dehradun in January.
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Women | Tagged: burns victims, Dr Chandni Perera, NPR, plastic surgery, reconstructive surgery, violence against women | 
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After the rape and murder of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, comes news that a 26-year-old French cyclist Jean-Baptiste Talleu who arrived in Mumbai from Dubai on December 4 has gone missing.
