Beijing and New Delhi tie for 1st place in the 10 cities around the world with the worst air. There are no U.S. cities on the list. Why should there be when we’ve moved all our manufacturing to China? (Hattip: Huffington Post)

Previous pissmatchery edition is here.

Click to see image from dmaxcook at Nowpublic.com

…Rowan Somerville for his novel ‘The Shape Of Her.’ Winning sentences that convinced judges included: ‘Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.’

Any book that is nominated for the ‘Bad Sex’ award must be read. So on our reading list goes ‘A Life Apart’ by Neel Mukherjee (See the full list of nominations at Literary Review.)

Ok, that’s not entirely true…we’re reading it also because it has good reviews.

We’re assuming all copyright paperwork and such was squared off before the film’s release. Uhmm…cough…cough.

Want to learn a city’s dark secrets? Talk to its cab drivers. Or while in Mumbai’s suburbs, its autorickshaw drivers.  From Bollywood star gossip to the mover and shaker politicians, middle-class trends and follies to the dreams and aspirations of the poor, cab and rickshaw drivers tell stories that are the envy of a hungry writer.

Chandrahas Choudhary writes a superb profile story on Mumbai’s rickshaw driver in The Caravan. The nameless and faceless mostly migrant drivers who breathe in noxious fumes all day as they ferry Mumbaikars all over the suburbs.

Excerpt:

“If you think about it, the life-span of an auto-rickshaw and that of an auto driver are the same,” said Nandgaonkar. “When a new rickshaw appears on the roads of Bombay, it is given a permit. When does the permit expire? After 25 years. After that the auto is good only for scrap. Now let’s turn to the auto driver. When does a man start driving? In his early 20s, or maybe by the time he’s 30, after he’s exhausted all other options. He drives eight or nine hours a day, always tense, always breathing this terrible air, not eating his meals on time. How long can he go on before he dies? About 25 years at the most! By his 50s, he’s finished. He lives only to die, and even his family has no use for him.”

While browsing Times Of India this morning we read this tragic story of eight suicides in 48 hours in Bangalore alone. Among them a young woman who hung herself from a ceiling fan allegedly due to dowry demands.

Gender Bytes, an initiative of The 50 Million Missing (50MM) a global campaign against female genocide in India posts this list of questions and information on laws to raise public awareness of dowry demands.  Please help by passing the information along…..you never know who might need it.