AsiaScoop   Culture

No Asian culture is more steeped in the rituals and power of magic as Indonesia. In his debut novel, Indonesian-born author Erick Setiawan presents a bewitching but modern fantasy world in which two feuding families live in horribly haunted houses full of spirits and spells. Yet their lives are ruled by universal values — love, desire, loss and pain — firmly rooted in human emotions.

What does Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, have in common with the Democratic U.S. Surgeon General-designate Sanjay Gupta? They’re both Americans of Indian descent.

Tibetans and their supporters worldwide have taken to the streets in record numbers lately to protest human rights abuses in China and the 58-year-old Chinese occupation of Tibet. Over the years, a lot of things have stood between Beijing’s dictatorial rule and Tibet’s freedom — but you’d never guess the most formidable barrier: The Dalai Lama himself.

Tibet has been a thorn in China’s side ever since Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army invaded the Roof of the World in 1950. The recent unrest in Lhasa resulted in a Chinese crackdown that has effectively transformed the Beijing Olympics into what some are calling the “Human Rights Games.”

In a remote village in southwestern China live 300 women whose feet were crushed long ago to the size of a child’s. They are the last survivors haunted by a mutilating tradition that lasted a millennium — solely for men’s pleasure.

Call it by its well-known colonial name or the postcolonial P.C. “Kolkata,” the place that Mother Teresa did most to popularize is a City of Joy and cultural powerhouse like no other. AsiaScoop Contributing Photographer Dev Nayak offers an eclectic glimpse of India’s most marvelous metropolis.

Long before Europe’s enlightenment and centuries before Gautama Buddha renounced his princely life and set out to solve the riddle of human suffering, a band of ascetics in India offered hope and redemption to the masses.