Have the Indian Delegates currently attending the RNC scored any points for our community yet? The Hindustani Times reports:

An Indian American delegate [Akshay Desai] to the Republican convention has said that India will be among the first countries US President George W Bush plans to visit if re-elected in the November 2 elections.

The Christian Science Monitor has a bleak story on a problem that many assume is a thing of the past:

Slaves are cheap these days. Their price is the lowest it’s been in about 4,000 years. And right now the world has a glut of human slaves - 27 million by conservative estimates and more than at any time in human history. Although now banned in every country, slavery has boomed in the past 50 years as the global population has exploded. A billion people scrape by on $1 a day. That extreme poverty combined with local government corruption and a global economy that leaps national boundaries has produced a surge in the number of slaves - even though in the developed world, that word conjures up the 19th century rather than the evening news.

One of the seminal "growing up ABCD" collective memories was the torturous trip back to India (during school vacations only!) to visit the relatives. I so vividly remember the lines, the waiting, the baggage weight limit horrors, bumped passengers, horrible food, non-existant customer service, ugh, basically everything.

One can only imagine what went through those bomb sniffing dogs minds as they encountered an aunty's suitcase laden with 101 masala's, spices, and vege's.

Well, times might be a changing -- US ready to open its skies to any Indian airline.

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 31: Building on its idea of an open-skies agreement with India, the United States has provided a detailed proposal listing far-reaching features of such an agreement, the first of its kind being considered by India. At present, none of the US airlines has direct flights to India, barring one which operates to Mumbai. In contrast: Daily, there are are 20 non-stop services to China, 13 to South Korea and an average of 51 to Japan.

The US govt official apparently has a stake in the matter - he's desi! -

...US Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Aviation Karan Bhatia

The upside for us? Better service and lower fares -

The existing agreement allows only designated carriers to specific points. While Indian carriers can touch New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, US airlines can only operate to Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai. ...

The US has argued that an open-skies agreement will also bring down air fares. While the distance between Washington DC and New Delhi is close to that from Washington DC to Seoul, the air fare to New Delhi is almost double that to Seoul. The US believes this is largely because of the open skies agreement it has with South Korea.

Just want to make sure everyone sees Kal Penn's reply to criticism of his film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. (Or at least a comment by someone posting a long, careful defense under his name.)

A final scene I’d like to clarify is the “Bag of Weed Dream Sequence”, in which Kumar fantasizes about, falls in love with, and marries a giant bag of weed. In a bout of post-marital financial hardship and depression, Kumar slaps the weed, calls her a “bitch”, and then apologizes... everyone should know that the scene is a parody of (and shot almost exactly like) a very famous scene in the Robert DeNiro film, “Raging Bull”.

It's much like my point of view, though I missed the Raging Bull reference:

[T]he bit about slapping a bag of weed is intended to make fun of Kumar and is anti-domestic violence. Kumar is in an undershirt in a slummy apartment, chest hair showing, drinking crummy coffee. It's enlightened society saying that Archie Bunker-like abusers are uncool troglodytes.

Harold and Kumar disappointed us. They represented Asian American men as being homophobic, spineless, sex-crazed misogynists.

Kal Penn's site now has a new link to the anti-domestic violence org Narika and a page of links to progressive South Asian orgs.

Art film stud Rahul Bose’ new wave film Everybody Says I’m Fine returns to Manhattan at the Pioneer Theater from Sep. 1-8. The film, a thriller in English about a mind-reading hairdresser in Bombay, stars Bose (Mr. and Mrs. Iyer) and British desi Koel Purie (American Daylight, Road to Ladakh). Upper Stall pointed out why the film is innovative, part of a flowering of increasingly sophisticated Indian cinema which includes Dil Chahta Hai and Yuva:

ESIF is most unlike any other commercially made English film in India… The film is not intended for an international (read festival) audience. It is for English speaking Indians… Bose is certainly not trying to sell India with a typical portrayal of a kind of Indianess from a Western perspective… There is no deliberate indulgence in trying to woo a “crossover audience” (whatever that is.) It’s a good story to tell. And Bose has just happened to do it in English.

As usual, the New York Times didn’t grok it.

Znet has an interesting interview, dated August 31, 2004, with Booker prize winning author turned-global activist, Arundhati Roy here. And then here is a link-filled article about her recent talks on the Left coast.

In person, Roy is soft-spoken and nothing like a rabble-rouser. She seems to save her sharpest words for the printed page. For her public speeches in the United States, Roy usually reads essays she has written. In fact, Roy says, her onstage comments are really written for herself. That many people (especially liberal thinkers) agree with her statements is but a kind of bonus. "I think what probably drives me as a writer is a curiosity to understand and to keep understanding," Roy says. "When I write, I write for myself, not just in order to let people know, because the writing clarifies things to me."

Both make for interesting reads.

Sigh.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - A Web site linked to an Iraqi militant group showed a video of what was purported to be the killing of 12 Nepalese workers by militants who had kidnapped them. The Nepalese Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the report of the hostages' deaths. The 12 had been reported kidnapped Aug. 20.

Nepal should respond by allowing the Gurkha's to go medieval on their asses.

Every time you hear the name of Arizona Senator John McCain this week, with regards to the Republican National Convention, you will hear in the same breath how he is helping Bush despite the fact that he really doesn’t like the man. Is it really true that McCain doesn’t like Bush? We may never find out until we see his memoirs, but their might be cause for the animosity. The ill feelings might have their roots in Bush’s Brain, the evil genius Karl Rove. Elanor Clift of Newsweek Magazine writes:

The Kerry campaign thinks it has succeeded in discrediting the scurrilous attack on Kerry’s military service, but Rove got what he wanted. Instead of talking about a failed war in Iraq and a new report that shows 1.3 million more Americans living in poverty, we’re debating what happened in the Mekong Delta in 1968. The strategy “came straight from the West Wing,” says the GOP staffer. “Nobody should be confused.” Asked to explain, this Republican says Rove is smart enough to keep technical distance. But all it takes is a well-placed wink to activate a web of Bush family hit men, confidantes and deep-pocket donors. “They know what to do—it’s like sleeper cells that get activated,” he says, likening the players to “political terrorists.”

They sprang into action in 2000 when Bush was running in the primaries against John McCain. After getting beat in New Hampshire by McCain, Bush’s first event was at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Standing next to Bush on the stage was a veteran who went right at McCain, questioning his Vietnam service while Bush remained silent. A whisper campaign told voters that McCain had a black child. (The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.) McCain lost the primary; the veteran became a Bush administration appointee.

A London production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night reimagines the play by setting it in modern India. Stephen Beresford's production opened Aug. 26 in London for a ten-week run, featuring a mostly desi cast for the classic gender-bending, mistaken identity tale.

The production relies on notable actors including Kulvinder Ghir (Goodness Gracious Me) as Feste, Raza Jaffrey (fresh from London's Bombay Dreams) as the duke, and Neha Dubey (the cutie in Monsoon Wedding). Shireen Martineau plays the androgynous female lead, Viola. Jatinder Verma from Tara Arts is advising; he previously put together an all-desi version of Moliere's Tartuffe at the National Theatre in London.

Beresford said India was exactly what he was looking for:

...[M]odern people in a modern setting but living in a culture that’s rooted in its past, mysterious, religious and magical; a place where attitudes to sex, love and death are frank and realistic, but where women might veil themselves in front of strangers; a world of shrines and marriage settlements, where ancient music and ritual are a part of daily life... Once India had suggested itself, the solutions followed. Feste becomes a Baul singer, a Bengali tradition of nomadic minstrels and soothsayers... [A]n Elizabethan setting carries its own problems. If you want the freshness and sophistication of the play to come across, you set yourself an uphill struggle by kitting out the actors with ruffs...

learning can be hic …fun:

A school in Orissa becomes a liquor store after classes end every day.

This came to light after a police posse raided the school on Wednesday night and found people in large numbers consuming liquor in the premises. Police also seized about 150 litres of liquor from the school premises.

The school-cum-liquor store is actually a government primary school located in Kalajamuna village in the southern district of Ganjam. It has up to class five with over 200 students. The school has about six staff members, including the teachers.

i have no clue who bengali actress Monalisa is, but she definitely has my attention (and the attention of many of our Stuff-appreciating, red-blooded, male readers after THIS post, i’m sure):

“I know what people want from us. Although bikinis have become progressively smaller and girls have been flaunting their bare legs on screen, it’s just not enough. I think the Indian audience now wants to see actresses do topless scenes. They want full value for the money they spend,” she says.

Monalisa, who pairs up with item girl Payal Rohatgi in the sex comedy Tauba Tauba, is willing to oblige. According to the bindaas babe: “If I have an attractive figure, why should I have problems showing it off? To be honest I have no qualms about uncovering the upper half of my body, but the requirement of the story should be such.”

A breast-baring performance, insists Monalisa, has logic of its own. “Unnecessarily shedding your clothes just amounts to obscenity.”

um. wow. so many thoughts, so few of them printable. ;) i kid.

i’m torn:

-part of me wants to support her, if that’s what she wants, since i’m not one to talk about modesty;)

-part of me would be saddened if indian film became as crassly lame and over-sexed as the rest of the world’s, i.e. amreeka’s

-part of me can’t BELIEVE that she said what i “bolded”. indian audiences want value, and that means getting nekkid? eep. :o

it is an issue of the separation of mandir and state. i think. read on:

A Hindu temple in Flushing, Queens, has shot into prominence with its trustees asking for an injunction on a state court order that asks the temple to conduct elections and have proper audits.

Attorneys for the Ganesh temple, the oldest Hindu temple in North America, citing the principle of the separation of religion and state, asked a federal judge on August 26 to place an injunction on the state Supreme Court order.

When the case came up for hearing at a Brooklyn court it was packed with Indian Americans, some of them with sandalwood and ash marks on their forehead, many of the women in saris, eliciting curious glances from visitors to the federal court.

…The matter, which was only a local and community issue in Queens, gained national prominence after the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty took up the case.

via HindustanTimes.com

Gurinder Chadha, director as everyone should now know of Bend it Like Beckham and the forthcoming Bride and Prejudice spoke to recently spoke to rediff.com about her recently completed film.

How would you define Bride And Prejudice? It is a British film made by British finance, obviously because I am British. But it is a homage to Hindi cinema and to Hollywood musicals. My friends in the West, who have seen it, have compared it to Grease. They don't know the musical references from Hindi films. There are very deliberate references to the cinema of Manoj Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra and Karan Johar. Do you think post-Bend It, Bride And Prejudice might be over-sold to the public? I don't think so. I know audiences will go to the theatres with a lot of expectations. But they will enjoy it. I don't think it will be a huge 100-week 'House Full' film in India because it's in English...What I hope to do with Bride And Prejudice is make the Hindi language familiar to the world. After all, Bollywood is much bigger than Hollywood. Hopefully, it will work both ways. It will spur Westerners to watch more Hindi movies and also inspire Bollywood filmmakers towards better narratives.

Click here to read the full interview.

The film opens in India and the UK on October 8th, and during the very busy Christmas movie season in the states.

Incidentally, it is quite amazing to flip on my cable, and in one channel sweep find Monsoon Wedding on IFC, Bend it Like Beckham on HBO, and commercials for Mira Nair's forthcoming Vanity Fair throughout. From eating chilled monkey brains and snake surprise to this. How far Desis have come!

UGA (the University of Georgia) has a new frat on the block as reported by their school newspaper, The Red and Black:

“We were trying to find something that fits our needs — not the stereotypical frat…a place to be accepted,” said Vinay Matai, president of Sigma Beta Rho and a senior from Greenville, S.C.

“(The fraternity) focuses on social aspects and philanthropy,” he said. “We want to give back to the community.”

Matai founded the University chapter in May along with seven other students.

But I personally was wondering why you need a brown fraternity when there is potentially an Indian or South Asian Students Association on campus that might be able to do some of the same activities? My question was answered as I scrolled down:

Are the Republicans outsourcing their campaign to Banaglore, India? From The Telegraph:

Stung by leaks that Republicans are outsourcing their election campaign work to India, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the party’s highest policy-making body, recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against one of its own outfits for raising money by using Indian telemarketers.

The complaint alleged that fund-raising telephone calls from India on behalf of an organisation called the Republican Victory Committee “prompted false, widespread rumours that the RNC was outsourcing its donor phone calls to India.”

Okay, who let the cat out of the bag in the first place though?

The Texas outfit may have actually got away with its outsourcing exercise if it had not been for the poor training given to Indian telemarketers who handled the job. Sources here said the India-based operation was exposed when one American who received a fund-raising phone call on behalf of the Republican Victory Committee wanted to know where the call was coming from.

“The Washington DC of Virginia,” the caller answered. Washington, the US capital, is actually in DC, short for District of Columbia, and Virginia is its neighbouring state.

The answer, which misrepresented American geography, triggered a series of actions which eventually led to the RNC’s complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

Aren’t the Republicans firmly behind outsourcing though?

Vicious OpEd in Rediff -The Great Indian Excuses resurface.

If Anjali Bhagwat had stiff muscles, K M Binu ran with the wrong spikes, Karnam Malleswari suffered a last-minute back problem, and Suma Shirur was done in by a mental block!

The exceptions were heptathlete J J Shobha, who braved excruciating pain to finish the event in eleventh place, and tennis stars Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes.

There seems to be no end to the excuses given by Indian athletes for their shoddy performances at yet another Olympiad that ended last night in Athens.

Whether these were genuine reasons for their failure, only the athletes can tell. But one thing is for sure. They have got readymade excuses for every failure and it appears to come to them naturally.

While Manish reports on the celebrations @ Amritsar, in local news, the Bay Area Sikh's have opened the nation's largest Gurdwara in San Jose - MercuryNews.com | 08/28/2004 | Gurdwara facts

The new San Jose gurdwara will be the largest and most expensive in the country. The Bay Area is home to four other Sikh temples, in Hayward, Pittsburg, El Sobrante and Fremont. Fremont's temple, built in 1991 for $1.8 million, had been the nation's largest. The San Jose gurdwara: Cost $10 million, which was collected over 10 years. Was paid for with $6.75 million from the sale of its former home on Quimby Road, and $4.36 million from individual loans and donations from the Sikh community. Encompasses three buildings that total 20,000 square feet on 40 acres in the Evergreen district.

When planned, the Gurdwara raised some controversy -

Plans for the 40-acre property sparked controversy when Sikhs first unveiled their goal to move from the old temple on Quimby Road. A vocal minority of neighbors feared there would be traffic and noise headaches and criticized the magnitude of the project, which was scaled back to meet some of the concerns. Public hearings in San Jose lasted late into the night and at times erupted into name-calling. Protesters carried signs reading ``No Sikh Jose.''

But all's well that ends well -

``I'm very emotional,'' said Amrit Singh Sachdev, 49, a computer engineer. ``This is bringing back memories for me, when the whole street shuts down, just like in India.'' The ceremony, which drew about 7,000 guests, signified a happy chapter in a rocky journey that began in the early 1990s.

Whole streets shut down like in India? Well, I suppose there's always a temple opening up somewhere....

On Sep. 1, Sikhs will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the day their holy book was first brought to their most sacred site. In 1604, Guru Arjan Dev carried the Guru Granth Sahib into the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. The book is accorded such respect that a prayer is spoken before the book is closed, and it’s swaddled in fine cloth and carried on the head.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to hold that post, will preside over the 4 million-strong celebration. In a nod to modernity, Amritsar will host a laser show, very apropos since the inventor of fiber optics is a Sikh.

Every celebration has its inevitable drama. Due to tensions dating back to Indira Gandhi’s reign, Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi was not invited to the celebration. And a family which holds an even older copy of the holy book has yet to agree to put its copy on display:

The precious manuscript is kept in a 900-kg iron vault built by a German engineer. Though the family claims that the National Archives has preserved the pages, scholars are sceptic. Says Dhillon, “The preservation was done sometime in the 1960s by an outdated method. Nowadays the accepted practice to preserve such manuscripts is to get them microfilmed and as far as I know this has not been done.”

Nonetheless, Amritsar is being newly repainted, the temple walkways are getting new carpeting, and pilgrims are arriving by the trainload in anticipation of celebration.

after an operation failed to "tie" his wife's fallopian tubes, Chhagan Singh Rathod of Rajasthan says he will kill his youngest daughter, Shalini, age 3, since he "cannot afford to support" her.

Mr Rathod has filed a case against the doctors in the state's High Court and wants compensation from the hospital, which denies wrongdoing.

He recently sent an e-mail to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, saying that if something was not done about his case soon he would kill Shalini - although he later withdrew the threat.

...The child in the middle of all the fuss, Shalini, is oblivious to the controversy surrounding her birth and continues to live happily in her own world.

Her father is still waiting to hear from the chief minister.

STUFF: I read that one of your musical influences is White Zombie. What part of their album Make Them Die Slowly do you most identify with?
TINA: Can I just tell you that I grew up in a heavy-metal band doing covers? My claim to fame was that I could play all the major Metallica songs. I hung out with not the greatest crowd. On prom night, everybody was on acid, but I just had a couple of beers. I grew up on Pantera and Skid Row.

I can’t BELIEVE they go here however:

STUFF: Are you well versed in the Kama Sutra?
TINA:When I’m married! You don’t get into that stuff till you’re married.

STUFF: So, are you what Britney Spears once claimed to be?
TINA:I didn’t say that, either. The Kama Sutra is about trying different things, and I just believe that if you want to go all crazy, there’s no one better to do it with than your husband. It’s a belief thing, and people have different beliefs.

I can’t beleive she even answered that question. Still, the fact that she is single gives my life hope.

With the Republican National Convention starting tomorrow, I was looking for some tunes to play loud enough so that I could drown out the spin and pandering. Luckily I found just the thing to do the trick. From the Seattle Times:

Their goal is to disrupt the status quo, and they usually do it without an invitation.

It takes mere minutes for the Infernal Noise Brigade to enliven a crowd — on the steps of the Federal Building, in the streets of Prague, or surrounding a Starbucks in Pioneer Square.

The brigade has gained a reputation for providing a soundtrack for dissent in Seattle, but many might not realize how far the music spreads.

How far does it spread exactly and what kind of music do they play?

None of the lyrics are in English. The INB does a Peruvian song about people struggling against the rule, a French freedom song, a Portuguese song about a guerrilla soldier and his lover having their last breakfast together, and a Czech folk song.

“We come from different backgrounds, and we all borrow melodies,” said Alix Chappell, a 26-year-old vocalist.

“It’s the kind of stuff you would find in a tape stall in India,” Strasser said. “A guy howling in Hindi, with rockabilly guitar and a jazz melody from the 1950s. It’s different kinds of music being misused.”

Here’s a clip you can rock to during the convention.

Jains from the small Gujarati town of Palanpur now dominate the worldwide diamond wholesaling business, taking in 65% of the revenues of the diamond capital in Belgium:

In what was once a predominantly Jewish neighborhood near Antwerp’s central station, young Indians in Armani suits haggle with Hasidic diamond buyers in long black coats, side curls and skullcaps. Hoveniersstraat, a street once celebrated for its kosher restaurants, now offers the best curry in town.

Indians like Mr. Shah gained a commercial edge over the Jews by sending their rough diamonds for finishing work to family-owned factories in Bombay and the northern Indian state of Gujarat, where labor costs are as much as 80% lower than in Antwerp… The Indians also proved canny at polishing and cutting the lower-quality rough diamonds that Jewish traders typically overlooked… “We turned cotton into silk…”

Indians… aren’t required by their religion to close their businesses from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday… Many [Jews] were Holocaust survivors afraid to part with their assets or send very expensive valuables far away… (WSJ)

Second-gen U.S. desis sometimes compete for business also outsourced to desis in India and Pakistan. And the second gen are not guaranteed to be as professionally hardcore and driven as either their parents or new desi immigrants their age. But we’re not the only community with these tensions: the New York Times reports that that American blacks are also competing with African immigrants:

“These are very aggressive people who are coming here,” said Dr. Austin, who is calling for a frank dialogue between native-born and foreign-born blacks. “I don’t berate immigrants for that; they have given up a lot to get here. But we’re going to be in competition with them. We have to be honest about it. That is one of the dividing lines.”…

By 2000, foreign-born blacks constituted 30 percent of the blacks in New York City, 28 percent of the blacks in Boston and about a quarter here in Montgomery County, Md… Bobby Austin, an administrator at the University of the District of Columbia who attended the meeting in Washington, said he understood why some blacks were offended when Mr. Kamus claimed an African-American identity. Dr. Austin said some people feared that black immigrants and their children would snatch up the hard-won opportunities made possible by the civil rights movement…

In New York City, for example, and this is strictly in my humble opinion, the 1st-gen desis who’ve made it through the immigration strainer are much more hardcore on average than U.S.-born desis of the same age. That’s due to the requirements of U.S. immigration law as well as the financial, familial and cultural hardships of emigration.

Nadeem Aslam’s tale of honor killings, Maps for Lost Lovers, has been placed on the long list for the Booker Prize this year (via Kitabkhana). Novelist Kamila Shamsie reviewed the book in the Guardian:

[T]he most extraordinary of the characters is Shamas’s wife, Kaukub… she is the young bride who used to step out of the bath and wake up her husband by twisting her hair into a yard-long rope and letting beads of water fall over him, but then grew into a woman who equates sex with shame and sin… a woman’s gold bracelet is composed of a series of semi-colons; dead tulips lean out of a bin like the necks of drunk swans; a falling icicle is a radiant dagger.

Indian medal hope Anju Bobby George set a personal best and broke the Indian national record with her sixth-place finish in the long jump at the Olympics.

Vinod has rightly complained about the unsupportive Indian press, but the Indian Express had kind words for George:

It may have been a failure for Anju Bobby George. But it was a success story for Indian athletics… In fact her 6.83 was better than her own national mark of 6.74 which she had done twice.

And the Times of India sent this valentine:

It’s alright, Anju, you are our Athena

She aroused great passions among Indian sports fans just as sprint queen P T Usha had two decades ago… To her credit, Anju kept her cool and pushed herself to the limit. In the end, Anju Bobby George achieved what she was meant to: break through a mental threshold for millions of Indians.

Meanwhile, the women’s 4x400 relay team, a.k.a. the Secret Punjabi-Malayalee Sprinters Alliance of Rajwinder Kaur, Manjeet Kaur, K.M. Beenamol and Chitra Soman, qualified for the finals, just as a previous women’s 4x400 team did in Los Angeles in ‘84.

Update: Mango Swami observed their shapely modesty:

[T]hey were the only team not wearing those skimpy bikini running shorts. Forget cutting-edge aerodynamics, we kick it old school, Umbro shorts and waist-length plaits.

Update 2: The relay team placed seventh in the finals after their anchor, Manjeet Kaur, fell ill and had to be replaced with an alternate.

More from the Penguin website:

In the summer of 1999, while the Kargil War was being fought, author Amitava Kumar married a Pakistani Muslim. That event led to a process of discovery that made Kumar examine the relationship not only between India and Pakistan but also between Hindus and Muslims inside India. Written with complete honesty and with no claims to journalistic detachment, this book chronicles the complicity that binds the writer to the rioter. Unlike both the fundamentalists and the secularists, Kumar finds—or makes—utterly human those whom he opposes. More than a travelogue which takes the reader to Wagah, Patna, Bhagalpur, Karachi, Kashmir, and even Johannesburg, this book, then, becomes a portrait of the people the author meets in these places, people dealing with the consequences of the politics of faith.

The book, which was released by Penguin India will be published in the States by the New Press in January 2005. Click here to go to the authors homepage.

Luckily, I am headed to South Asia for work in a couple weeks and can pick it up early.

The Delhi airports just got wireless Internet access today for Rs. 60/hour at the domestic airport. But if you’re (wink, wink) at the international airport, you pay the more princely sum of Rs. 100. It’s a subtle way to soak foreigners, just like the higher tourist fee for foreigners at the Taj Mahal.

What constitutes a foreigner, exactly? What about a Canadian desi who’s an Indian citizen and, just to throw the game off, has an Amrikan accent? Entire genres of literature have been written on these shades of sepia.

And nothing makes consumers see red like discriminatory pricing. It puts off visitors and marks a country as Third World in mentality. In contrast, it’s precisely the U.S.’ tolerant atmosphere that siren-songs the global wunderkind. The number of Americans happily working in India is just starting to increase. For some short-term revenue, you’d mortgage your country’s economic future?

"I don't have the luxury to fail, because I must deliver perfect results 100 percent of the time."

In case you haven't had a chance to catch Dr. 90210 yet, a marathon will air this sunday August 29--check your local listings.

Sepia Mutiny earlier reported on the trial of the accused in the AI 182 bombing. Well, this trial north of the border is just getting whackier & whackier - TheStar.com - Defence in Air India trial calls last witness.

VANCOUVER — The defence in the Air India case called its final witness today, ending another segment of the lengthy trial that included insults and angry outbursts, expletives, an admitted drug dealer and witnesses with shaky credibility.

An interesting cast of characters includes a drug dealer with that oh-so-Punjabi nickname - Mindy

Raminder Singh (Mindy) Bhandher, 26, was testifying on behalf of accused Air India bomber Ripudaman Singh Malik, who Bhandher said he regarded as a generous father figure. But during his testimony, Bhandher also acknowledged a lengthy history of drug dealing, smuggling and fraud.

A peace leader who knows how to deliver a verbal smackdown -

When he did testify — describing himself as a peaceful, devout Sikh leader — he shouted expletives at a Crown prosecutor who alleged he knew about the bombing plot and selectively warned friends to fly another day. "Bullshit!" Daljit Singh Sandhu yelled from the witness stand.

And even a F911 angle -

The defence's case even had a connection — however tenuous — to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and the popular movie Fahrenheit 911. Retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan, a commentator on U.S. news shows who makes an appearance in Moore's latest film, was called as a witness for Bagri. Cloonan criticized another FBI agent who testified for the Crown. ... The Crown accused him of weighing in on a case he knew nothing about.

This must be their OJ case but with desi's & jumbo jets instead of ex-footballers & White Bronco's...

Literary wrangler Sukhdev Sandhu, he of the wondrous New York magazine piece on the desified Spiderman, interviews Hanif Kureishi about his new memoir about his father. In My Ear at His Heart, Kureishi writes of his father’s assimilationism, marrying an Englishwoman and refusing to teach his kids Urdu:

“My dad was always very Anglicised. He felt himself to be a Chekhovian figure, wandering aimlessly and foolishly around a country where other people were very committed to religion or community. He saw England as a new start. He wanted us to be English; he didn’t want any of that in-between stuff. So I didn’t have access to India or Pakistan. If his brothers came round he’d speak Urdu, but he didn’t want my sister or me to learn it. I spent my childhood sitting around listening to people speaking in a language I didn’t understand.”

Hanif’s ascension as an iconic ‘in-betweener’ is a form of rebellion, a deep irony. It’s like the Bradford Muslims who turn fundamentalist because their parents aren’t, or the Iranians who are stridently pro-USA because their government isn’t. And Kureishi’s inability to understand Urdu left him doubly isolated, both from the outside world as a ‘Paki’ and from the Muslim community.

This piece reminds me of how much richer the diasporic milieu is in the UK than in the U.S., we’re such hicks in comparison. On Kureishi’s mentoring of other British Asians, including the writer of Bombay Dreams:

Pioneering rock queen Freddie Mercury, a.k.a. Farokh Bulsara, has posthumously penetrated the Persian market (via our very own Abhi):

[T]he Ministry [of Islamic Guidance] liked the song Bohemian Rhapsody… about a man who commits murder and sells his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution he prays to Allah for redemption… I will forever think of Wayne’s World. I imagined a bunch of Islamic clerics in the back seat of a car, banging their heads to this song.

Fashion tips for terrorists in G-al-Q. The good Turbanhead has a great photo spread:

The [al-Qaeda] manuals devote special care to teaching recruits how to pass unnoticed in the West, and include the following advice... Don't wear short pants that show socks when you're standing up. The pants should cover the socks, because intelligence authorities know that fundamentalists don't wear long pants... You should differentiate between men and women's perfume. If you use women's perfume, you are in trouble.

Honey, if you're a gender-confused fundamentalist? Sigh... where to begin.

If anyone has the juice on this guy, then hit me up. From Reuters:

Who will be this year’s Omarosa, everyone’s favorite reality TV villain? Who will be the apprentice to rise to the top of the business world? And importantly, who will hear the ominous utterance of real estate mogul Donald Trump, “You’re fired?”

Fans will know soon, as broadcaster NBC on Friday named the 18 candidates who will compete in the second season of “The Apprentice,” premiering on Sept. 9.

The men are: Kevin, 29, a law student from Chicago; Raj, 28, a real estate developer in the tiny ski resort of Vail ; Bradford, 33, a lawyer and real estate investor from Florida; Rob, 32, a corporate products salesman from Texas; Andy, 23, a new Harvard graduate from Florida; Wes, 28, a financial planner for the wealthy from Atlanta; Chris, 30, a stockbroker from Long Island with only a high school degree; and John, 24, a marketer from San Francisco.

From another source:

Raj, 28, a bow-tie wearing real estate developer who doesn’t really watch television

Now we will really see if a brown man can make it through the glass ceiling maintained by “the Man” (a.k.a. Trump).

Update: Take a look. Is this guy South Asian? Maybe a mix, or just an Indian sounding name?

Update #2: Here is the Full Scoop on Raj Bhakta of Vail Colorado.

Since we started the blog, several folks have asked me about the Sepoy Mutiny - the historical event our blog title derives from. The ever-excellent Wikipedia provides the most concise overview I've ever seen - Indian Mutiny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Indian Mutiny (also known as the Sepoy Mutiny) as known to the British or The First War Of Indian Independence as known to the Indians was a period of uprising in northern and central India against British rule in 1857-1858. It is also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857. It is widely acknowledged to be the first-ever united rebellion against colonial rule in India.

I'm personally not terribly hung up on colonial / post-colonial politics but I do think the name has a cool sound to it & the history is an interesting read...

if scary movies are your bag, baby, be sure to check out the latest film starring Krishna Banji (aka ben kingsley):

Kingsley's presence in "Suspect Zero" tells us it must be one of those brainy serial-killer movies in which the killer is much smarter than the FBI agent who has been hired to track him..."Who's the pursuer and who's the prey?" we ask ourselves, thoughtfully tugging our beards (imaginary or real) as we observe the agent-killer tête-à-tête and ponder the gnarled, twisted roots of humanity.

..."Suspect Zero" was directed by E. Elias Merhige, who previously made the inscrutable "Shadow of the Vampire."...Kingsley plays Benjamin O'Ryan, a serial killer: That's not a spoiler, since we know he's a lunatic in his first scene. (When he makes his entrance, Merhige shoots him upside down, in the rain, so the drops drip upward from a door frame -- please don't bump your head on the symbolism on your way out.) Kingsley does lots of silent-movie eye-flashing in this picture -- he's monstrously good at it, too.

via Salon.

i think that “pather panchali” was the greatest film to come out of india, ever. yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of its premiere:

KOLKATA: It was May 3, 1955. The debut film of one Satyajit Ray opened a week-long festival at New York’s MOMA. On August 26 the same year, Pather Panchali opened to Indian audiences at Basusree.

And, in a near-repeat of the phenomenon, four months after Cannes conferred an award on it, the film won the President’s Gold. That prompted the 35-year-old Ray to give up a handsome monthly salary of Rs 1,013 and shoot the sequel, Aparajito. And it changed the face of Indian cinema.

As the film steps into its 50th year, it’s time for flashbacks…

…Soumitra Chatterjee saw it the next day, “and was stupefied.” Till then, he’d weigh every Bengali film against How Green Was My Valley, or Bicycle Thieves. So disappointment was inevitable.

Pather Panchali dispelled that, “it spelled hope for Indian cinema. No, we’d not seen anything like it,” the actor repeats. “Aparajito, Jalsaghar, Charulata were better crafted, but the raw emotion of Pather Panchali has no parallel.”

A couple desi coworkers were mentioning some flare up in the cricket world and I decided to check it out... Very interesting stuff. The brouhaha erupted over comments from an Aussie player - Mathew Hayden.

SYDNEY, August 24: Matthew Hayden says Australia are the leading cricketing team in the world because its players play as a team whereas cricketers from the sub-continent, including India, play for personal milestones.

...‘‘In one-day cricket, if you get to 70 or 80, you can obviously get a hundred by just batting carefully but we just don’t do that. It affects a batsman’s statistics but we just don’t go for those personal marks,’’ he said.

...‘Counties like India suffer from that. We back ourselves against those countries because they’ll get two or three players in the 70s and beyond and they’ll be eyeing off that personal landmark and it will cost their side 40 or 50 runs as a result. Pretty much all the sub-continental sides are like that. They really can waste a lot of time and there’s no time to waste.

God, if I knew more about cricket, I could fully appreciate the significance here... BUT, there's some interesting commentary in this column responding to Mr. Hayden -

Why there’s an ‘I’ in Team India
The self comes before the team because that’s our way of life
HARSHA BHOGLE

It would be tempting, and egotistical, to ignore Mathew Hayden’s remark about players from the sub-continent being selfish. You could call it gamesmanship, and there will be a substantial element of that, but if it hurts there is probably some truth to it.

...It is my hypothesis that in over-populated, and therefore insecure, countries the self will always dominate. Feelings of comradeship, of surrendering the self to the wider cause, can only arise in either a highly spiritual phase or where the performer has ascended to a level of personal calm about his achievements.

Where you are in a mob, and we are in a mob, self-preservation will always prevail; whether it is catching a bus, or getting out of a movie hall or getting admission to a professional college.

There's some serious wisdom here.

Let’s meet the Indian delegates to next week’s Republican National Convention shall we? Who are they? Can we learn anything about their motivations and beliefs from some recent articles?

It's tough to pity the guy - CNN.com - 'Mr Hotmail' seeks new challenges - Aug 26, 2004.

(CNN) -- As the inventor of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia is the pin-up of India's IT revolution; the boy from Bangalore who went to Silicon Valley and made his fortune. Bhatia was in his mid-20s when he developed the idea of web-based email accounts in 1995, raising $300,000 in investment to launch the revolutionary service the following year. Within 12 months Hotmail had 10 million users and Bhatia had sold his creation to Microsoft for $400 million.

Launching his new company in 1999, a one click e-commerce venture called Arzoo.com, Bhatia claimed it had the potential to be twice as big as Hotmail. By mid-2001 the dotcom bubble had burst and Arzoo had folded.

"The last couple of years I was quite depressed because I didn't have an idea or a vision or a goal that would be world-beating like Hotmail. I often wondered if that would be the only success that I would have at the end of my life.

"I would rather not be known as Mr Hotmail anymore," he says. "What is in the past is over. Now I'm looking for the next big thing."

Don't get me wrong, I have respect for Hotmail and Mr. Bhatia BUT, can't he and his fawning masses attribute just a tad of his fortune to Timing and Luck? Hotmail was one of the keystone companies of the bubble - no revenue but lots of eyeballs. In any other world, it wouldn't have been a name-making $400M venture..... There's a helluva lot of Attribution Error goin' on...

Maybe I'm just jealous. ;-)

The headline screams - India has 93 per cent of Asia's 'extremely' poor.

But then you read the details -

Of the 690 million extremely poor people in developing countries of Asia, 93 per cent are in India, according to a new report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

93% of 690 = 641. But the actual number -

Of these, 93 percent (357 million) are in India, the People's Republic of China (203 million), and other South Asian countries (77 million), says the report released Thursday.

357M is more like 50%. Am I missing something obvious? But there is hope -

The ADB foresees the number of people in extreme poverty in developing Asia declining from 690 million in 2002 to 150 million in 2015.

I couldn’t beleive it either so I made the ultimate sacrifice and started surfing Hooters’ website. Sure enough:

Today, Hooters of America, Inc. (H.O.A. Inc.) announced plans for H.O.I. Pvt. Ltd. to open up in major cities in India next year.

“Hooters is a strong and exciting brand name that has a very unique place in its industry offering a perfect atmosphere to have fun, relax with friends and enjoy great food. I am looking forward to the “recreation” of this dining atmosphere in India,” said Sunil Bedi, Managing Director of H.O.I. Pvt. Ltd.

Ummm. I think I am going to start taking bets right now on how long before somebody throws a brick through their windows. Any takers?

Salman & Shilpa test positive in their new flick - MSNBC - Bollywood to Release AIDS Film.

BOMBAY, India - India's first mainstream movie with a plot centered on AIDS opens worldwide this week, with leading actors portraying characters who battle stigma and discrimination after testing positive for the deadly disease.

In the movie Khan and Shetty find out they are HIV positive after a sexual encounter following a college reunion. While Khan succumbs to the AIDS virus, Shetty, with the help of a lawyer played by Abhishek Bachchan, takes her employers to court to get her job back. Bachchan is the son of India's all-time top movie star, Amitabh Bachchan.

MRE stands for “Meals Ready to Eat.” This is what soldiers in battle zones survive on for weeks, even months at a time. They have a reputation for tasting like cardboard, and completely blah. Many times all you have to do is just add hot water. Although most people don’t realize it, MRE technology has come a long way since WWII. Not so long ago my office was above the lab where astronaut MREs are made, and let me tell you, I tried some great stuff. Now it seems that British soldiers will be getting chicken tikka masala as part of their battlefield rations:

An Army marches on its stomach and the British troops will soon have Indian curry, chicken balti and pulau rice on its ration instead of tinned cheese, stodgy casseroles and stale biscuits.

In the biggest change to the armed forces’ rations for 40 years, a new generation of meals are currently being tried out that are not only supposed to taste better, but embrace healthy eating as well, a spokesman of the Ministry of Defence has said.

Designed to last for up to three years in any climate, the new boil-in-the bag meals have been brought in by the ministry to try to calm discontent in the ranks over outdated menus, as well as complaints about the quality of British ration packs compared to the ones given in the US.

I’m not surprised. Indian food IS the most popular food in England. But won’t the soldiers need fennel seeds afterwards also?

In a cheeky act of reverse colonialism, Amrut distillery plans to sell its whisky in Scotland.

The whisky is made from barley grown in the Himalayan foothills and is malted in Delhi and Jaipur.... distilled in Bangalore, then matured for three years in American oak casks.

I loved this little blurb about the way the US vs. Canadian press covered the Games -

My dad once told me a story of which I don't remember all the details now. It was probably from the '84 games. An American was favored to win a race and didn't, he came in second. A huge disappointment. The press ran up, immediately asking how he felt and how disappointed he was. In the same race was a Canadian athlete who finished last. The Canadian press rushed up to him as asked 'You just achieved a personnel best at the Olympic games? How great does that feel?"

Bravo. Someone oughta teach this reporter a bit about sportsmanship - Indian sailors finish last again - Sify.com.

The Indian sailing duo of Malav Shroff and Sumeet Patel came up with yet another disastrous show to finish at the bottom of the table in the Mixed Open Double-handed Dinghy-49er Races in the 28th Olympic games on Monday.

The US-based Indians, Malav being the skipper and Sumeet the crew, proved no match at all at the highest level of competition at the Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre and they have been struggling to keep their head above water since race one.

With four more races to go in the 16-race event, the Indians, who came here with a wild card entry, simply stand nowhere and they would have to come up with spirited performance to leave Athens with their pride intact.

Sheesh.

Bombayite Vishal Patel scanned in ads from the semi-socialist '80s, before good printing technology hit Indian shores. Nostalgic. He also fillets half-assed Indian comics (via Boing Boing):

This story ends like every other Chacha Chaudhary story, suddenly and abruptly, like the writer/artist suddenly realised that three pages were up. As a result, we'll never know if Chhajju Chaudhary was ever brought back to Earth, or was kept on Mars for the sodomising pleasure of the Martian nobility.

My mom did this to me every night @ dinner - ABCNEWS.com : Is It OK to 'Hot Sauce' Kids?

The practice of "hot saucing" a child's tongue as a method of discipline may seem cruel to some parents, but those who regularly use the punishment say it teaches their charges valuable and long-lasting lessons.

First let me break down the Acronyms. NRO stands for National Review Online. It is the online version of the conservative magazine. What am I doing reading the pages of the “enemy’s” literature? Understand thy opponent. APA stands for Asian Pacific Americans, a term often used as an umbrella group which includes Asian Pacific Islanders. What groups fall under APA? According to skeptical author John Derbyshire:

In the first place, it is instructive to look at what “API” (or the newer, more user-friendly “APA”) actually means. Asia stretches from the Suez Canal to the Bering Strait, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Coral Sea. Whatever “API” signifies, it is certainly not a race in either the biological or the social-construction sense. A Samoan has no more in common with an Iranian than he has with an Irishman; a Pakistani is further removed from a Korean on any given criterion — linguistic, cultural, religious, phenotypic, or genetic — than he is from a Norwegian. “API” is in fact a very odd category, even more absurdly artificial than “Hispanic.” The folk gathered thereunder have only this one common characteristic: They, or their recent forebears, hail from somewhere between Istanbul and Tahiti.

oh my. according to the san francisco chronicle, pakistan’s “Drama Hour” dares to “go there”:

One recent Sunday evening at midnight in a town near here, Kohsar Riaz sat down eagerly in her favorite living room chair for her weekly dose of ARY One World network’s “Drama Hour” and was instantly engrossed in the depressing tale of a hijra (cross-dresser) disowned by family and friends, desperate for acceptance and hopelessly in love with a young man who used him solely for money.

…Tens of thousands of South Asian night owls who stayed up to watch the popular television show got a rare glimpse from the other side of one of the region’s most ostracized groups.

…”These are good things,” 56-year-old Riaz, a mother of five, said after the program. “All our Pakistanis should watch and understand that if people have problems, it doesn’t make them bad, and maybe it means they need some help, and we should listen to them.”

besides compassionately examining the plight of hijras, “Drama Hour” has also taken on taboo subjects ranging from divorce to the age-old debate between love and arranged marriages.

Each week viewers get an understanding-driven treatment of sensitive social issues that, while often poorly filmed and acted out with over-the-top melodrama (accompanied by unbelievably cheesy soundtracks), try to promote a moderate, tolerant outlook.

“It’s all about exploring and examining who we are and how we want to live,” says Lahore social worker Humaira Qureshi. “To move forward, we as an entire society have to take a deep look inside at painful, unpleasant issues and decide what we want for ourselves and our children.”

if you've ever wasted an hour or five surfing Friendster, you'll see that the women who patronize it often list "Sex in the City" under "favorite TV shows". i could write an entire post about how it is actually "Sex AND the City", but i'll refrain. that's what my own blogs are for. ;)

anyway, there's a reason why the interweb's greatest timesuck popped in to my head: sex AND the city? meet the league of women voters.

Jean Seo of san francisco decided that what america needs right now is a site "dedicated to showing why voting makes single women FABULOUS!!!". carriethevote.com also bills itself as a "ladies guide to demystifying voter registration".

i say "bravo"-- i think we can all be in favour of whatever it takes to get people to the polls. my favourite page of the site deals with the "F" word:

Why are We So Fabulous?

We're fabulous because we have the power to decide this year's election. And everybody knows it...

...Unmarried female voters have the potential to become the most incredible agents of change in America. After all, we control 21 percent of America's voting power.

We didn't know that we had this strength until recently. It's like when Luke Skywalker finally realized his own actual power. (Yes, voting let's the force be with you.)

When we didn't vote in 2000, we were just saving our secret powers for 2004, right?

If we can get our girlfriends to register and vote, we will have the power to make the world pay attention to us.

by the by...true to the character this URL pays tribute to, a pair of Manolos WILL be given away. if that isn't reason enough to click, you don't know shoes. ;)

via feministing

Swami, as he is described, is on an epic mission - he is carrying his aged, blind mother, Kethakdevi, on his shoulders on an all-India pilgrimage.

The loving son carries two baskets on his shoulders, balanced by a wooden bar ... In one, his mother, in the other his meagre belongings.

His spartan possessions include a stove and pots, a couple of rugs, some clothes, a gold-plate wristwatch and a mobile phone. [via the BBC]

"Oh hi. How are you? No, I'm not busy, just out for a stroll with my mother. You know, same old same old. Yeah, she can be a huge pain in the back sometimes, but she's my mom and I love her. So when she said, carry me all over India, I said, why not, I'm not doing anything until 2013 anyway. But ... it's boring sometimes. And mom doesn't talk much. So I'm really glad I've got unlimited night and weekend minutes on this plan. Enough about me though. What did you do this weekend, anyway?"

Immigrant patterns are such that newly arriving immigrants often flock to locals in which many of their former country-men have settled. As a result, various ethnic ghettoes are created--Chinatowns, Little Italies, and of course Little Indias. One of the more well known Little Indias is in Edison, NJ, the home of Oak Tree Road, Sukhadia Sweets, and the Subzi Mandi grocery store that my mother drives three hours to frequent. Anyway, somewhat along these lines, The New Jersery Star Ledger has run an interesting peice on the desi community in Edison.

The Asian population in Edison climbed 1,175 percent over two decades: from 2,245 residents in 1980 to 28,634 in 2000. In Woodbridge, the number of Asian residents increased by 1,025 percent over the same time frame, from 1,251 to 14,078 residents, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Magan Patel, a 64-year-old Edison resident who immigrated to New York 33 years ago, trekked home after the parade yesterday with an Indian flag swinging beside an American flag. Patel said he carried both flags to signify the synthesis of his Indian values with the job and educational opportunities he has discovered in America. "I am a U.S. citizen since 1978," Patel said. "My family's here. We live good here. I consider (myself) American."

Raghav has fared quite well on the mainstream British charts thus far. His first single 'So Confused' featuring dj/producer 2 Play went as high as number 4 on the British charts and his debut solo single 'Can't Get Enough' entered the British charts at number 8, the same spot as the last collaboration single with 2Play 'It Can't Be Right', featuring Naila Boss.

Roommate of the bombers of AI 182 has a sudden case of amnesia - TheStar.com - Air India witness forgets testimony.

The former roommate of a star Crown witness became the latest in a number of defence witnesses for an accused Air India bomber who has had trouble remembering things. Balbir Singh Gharala entered the witness box for the second time today, his testimony conflicting with several statements he made a week earlier. ...Bagri, a Kamloops, B.C., sawmill worker, and Vancouver millionaire Ripudaman Singh Malik are charged with eight counts, including conspiracy and murder, in two June 23, 1985 terrorist bombings that killed 331 civilians. Two baggage handlers were killed in a Tokyo airport when a suitcase from Vancouver exploded. An hour later, 329 people headed from Toronto to India died when a second bomb ripped apart Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland.

One can only imagine the homestyle justice this guy's afraid of facing...

The gymnastics floor exercise finals just ended in Athens, and Mohini Bhardwaj finished 6th out of 8. The Romanians were dominant as always, winning gold and silver, with Spain taking the bronze. Bhardwaj’s teammates did well in their individual finals, winning gold in the all-around, silver and bronze on the uneven bars and silver on the vault.

The team silver medal is probably the end of Bhardwaj’s Olympics career, a graduation ceremony into the rest of life. The end of an intensely competitive tournament can be a relief, but also a huge letdown. Gymnast Kerry Strug, who several years ago became famous for landing a critical vault on an injured ankle, Karate Kid-style, now works in the Treasury Department’s general counsel office.

For those that missed it, NPR did a great story (audio only) about a week ago on the success of Indian owned motels and hotels in the U.S. They interview one Gujarati family in particular. The story also delves into first generation business practices such as giving out personal loans on good faith, and shows how such old world business traditions help to give immigrants a leg up in the new world economy. This is one of several South Asian related features that NPR has done in the last few weeks.

(via Madhoo) Interesting feature article in Little India magazine about 1st gen'ers unhappy w/ life in America -

Most wounding to her was the loss of her independence: Her H4 visa robbed her of her identity - she was not allowed to work, and did not have a bank balance or credit card - and to even take a trip back home, she was dependent on her husband. She had been driving for years in India, but here she failed the crucial road test because she was used to driving on the left. She recalls the utter hopelessness she felt then: “When I come out of the car, I sit and cry and cry. I don’t believe this. I’ve been driving for years and now they tell me I can’t drive? I’m crying like a baby. I don’t want to live in this country. I mean, every day you’re struggling.”

As Madhoo points out, it's sorta hard to feel pity for someone trying to drive on the Left....

The Times of India has, what I consider, a very poorly written article about Kerry fundraiser Reshma Saujani, who is active in South Asians for Kerry in 2004. She is a friend of mine, and I have a feeling she is not going to be happy with this article.

She’s the iron girl in the Kerry camp. The shrewd strategist, who finds John Kerry, “an incredible leader, easy to talk to,” and Teresa Heinz Kerry “extraordinary, very spirited’. At 28, attorney Reshma M Saujani single-handedly raised $ 1 million at the ‘India Day Parade’ in New York last week for Kerry’s presidential campaign.

This article had several basic facts wrong, including the assertion that she rasied a million dollars at the India Day Parade. Why the article felt the need to point out the following fact, I have no idea:

“…says Reshma, who interned at the White House at the same time as Monica Lewinsky in 1996. ”

In any case, hopefully we will see Reshma run for office within the next several years.

manish is usually the “culture-vulture” mutineer, but i HAVE to bring this article to your attention. In a matter of days, “Phir Milenge”, starring Salman Khan, Shilpa Shetty and Abhishek Bachchan will be released. PM is the very first bollywood phil-im to address AIDS/HIV:

The movie, directed by former actress Revathy , tells the story of a 26-year-old advertising professional Tamanna (Shilpa). At a school reunion, she meets Rohit (Salman), on whom she had a crush in school days. They spend time together, fall in love and have sex, then part, promising to meet again.

…Revathy says that her main objective in making Phir Milenge was to remove the stigma of this disease and spread its awareness among people. The film is being supported by UNAIDS.

According to the estimates, there are currently 43 million people with HIV/AIDS in the world, with five million new cases being added every year. India, with 5.1 million HIV/AIDS cases, has the second highest incidence of the disease in the world after South Africa.

aside: i feel crazy for admitting this, but i was utterly shocked when i read that first paragraph about how shilpa shetty is going to hook up with salman khan before they “part”. considering the gravity of the subject matter, i want to flog myself for getting hung up on that, but i just don’t associate sexuality with mumbai’s fine filmy products (which i’ve seen all of SEVEN of). based on my almost total-ignorance of the genre, i’m guessing they won’t show it, and my astonishment was for naught. perhaps one of you bolly-philes can edify me as to the chances of fornication on celluloid. ;)

Finance millionaire and Indophile Andrew Krieger is investing $120M in a Hyderabad sports training center to boost India's Olympics results:

As India awaits glory in Athens, its star athlete, markswoman Anjali Bhagwat, is peeved that she had to pay for a coach on her own... Krieger, who studied Hindu philosophy, is pouring $120 million into a planned sports facility in the Indian tech hub of Hyderabad, where international coaches will groom future champions in all sports. It will be a replica of IMG Academies, a coaching center in Bradenton, Fla., that has produced the likes of tennis champ Maria Sharapova.

It's just shameful that it's not an Indian investor doing this. Indian marksman Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, a major in the Indian army, won India's sole medal, and its first ever individual silver medal, in double trap shooting last week. There are many ways to slice India's medal drought, all of them wince-worthy:

N.R. Narayana Murthy, billionaire CEO of Infosys, an Indian outsourcing giant, used to be a socialist until an encounter with a Frenchwoman on a train didn’t turn out quite like Before Sunrise:

Back in the early 1970s, while traveling through Europe by train, Murthy was seized by police in a town near the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border. He had been chatting up a fellow passenger in French, and he believes that her boyfriend complained to a cop. Murthy was kept in a room in the train station for 72 hours and shipped out on a freight car. “There was no going back to communism after that,” he says.

Ah, nothing like the smell of a burned convert in the morning…

Wonderful news: The Kumars at No. 42, a successor to the incredible British Asian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, debuts on BBC America next Sunday. Like The Ali G Show, it's a celebrity interview format where the interviewers are in character. You're inviting Patrick Stewart in to meet your embarrassingly ethnic family, wicked old nani included, and filming the results.

"I said, 'Mum, this is Helena Bonham Carter.' Mum said, 'You're such a pretty girl. It's a shame they forced you to wear a monkey mask in your last film.' "

The desi grandma character is particularly pointed, which puts me in mind of Zohra Sehgal's ninja-dowager roles in Masala and Bhaji on the Beach.

"The expectation and cliche of an old Indian woman is that she's the most invisible woman in the world, walking 10 paces behind her husband," Syal says. "The old ones I met, particularly the widows, were raucous and cheeky. Widowhood was the first time no one relied on them -- that's why they turned out to be so naughty."

The troubled relationship between desis and camp:

Given the number of desi engineers, you’d think the Trekkie quotient would be through the roof, but desis have never been strong with knowing campiness. Irony is the forte of post-materialist, post-sexual revolution societies… Unintentionally camp, now, that’s different: guys with bad haircuts and thick plastic civil service specs; aging, tubby icons romancing young lovelies; Indian Superman. The legion of desi camp could overrun a big tent party and still leave badly-shirted henchmen mewling at the gates.

More here.

Browntown is a satirical comedy that explores the issue of cultural stereotyping from the point of view of three brown-skinned actors at an audition for a less-than-original TV-movie, The Color of Terror. The actors, who are competing with one another to play the role of an Arab terrorist, grapple with their misgivings about the script. With only the help of casting director’s ridiculous advice, all three actors do their best to embody all the qualities of a truly vicious terrorist.

5 shows only, from Tuesday 8/24 to Saturday 8/28. For more information on tickets, etc, go to the show website. This is part of the Fringe NYC festival, "the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 companies from all over the world performing for 16 days in more than 20 venues". Let me know how it was if you happen to catch it ...

eight london hospitals are outsourcing transcription to india, with comical, yet potentially worrisome results:

London, Aug. 19: Yet another fault has been found by British unions with the quality of outsourcing to India but this time perhaps with some justification.

Medical letters are being transcribed by secretaries in India but potentially life-threatening errors are creeping in because of insufficient knowledge of either the English language or of complicated terms, it was claimed yesterday.

It is also possible that the use of computer spell checkers is leading to some words being replaced by unlikely ones. In one example, the drug “Lansoprazole”, used to treat stomach ulcers, was transcribed as the popular holiday resort “Lanzarote”.

In another case, “phlebitis (vein inflammation) left leg” was changed to “flea bite his left leg”. And a “below knee amputation” was transcribed as “baloney amputation”. One note referred to a patient’s “cute angina” instead of “acute angina”. “Euston station tube malfunction” should have read “Eustachian tube malfunction”.

personally? i think most politicians should have their "baloney" amputated, but that's just me. :D

from The Telegraph.

There was a brouhaha over Kashmir in Windows 95:

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions... Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world..."

Why can't we all just get along? [Via Kamat's Potpourri]

Because I have a friend that works for Human Rights Watch, I have for months been following along as she examines the abuses of the federal material witness statute. What is the material witness statute? Here is a brief explanation from a Christian Science Monitor article about alleged “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla:

…rather than obtaining an arrest warrant by demonstrating to a judge that federal authorities had probable cause to believe Padilla was planning mass murder, they instead relied on an obscure federal law designed to guarantee the presence of a key witness at a criminal proceeding.

By labeling Padilla a “material witness” in an ongoing grand jury investigation of terrorism, US officials were able to whisk him off the streets and into a high-security prison cell with minimal law-enforcement effort.

Since the terror attacks on Sept. 11, the so-called material-witness statute has emerged as a key-and highly controversial-weapon in the legal arsenal being used to wage the Bush administration’s war against terrorism in America’s homeland.

The BBC is doing a show on Sikhs in the UK. Their press release starts with this little factoid: "There are enough Sikhs in Britain to fill the Royal Albert Hall one hundred times over." I've never thought of counting groups' population sizes that way before ....

The documentary is narrated by Kulvinder Ghir from "Goodness Gracious Me." It will include interviews with Comedian Sody Singh Kahlon, nonagenarian marathon record holder Fauja Singh, and twin artists Amrit and Rabindra Kaur Singh, amongst others. (This is a painting by the twins, btw.)

Now we know how many Albert Halls it takes to sit Brit Sikhs ... Nah. Tell Paul he doesn't have to worry about his day job yet.

The latest Sports Illustrated (subscription only) commemorates Vijay Singh's PGA victory last week with its own laurels: world's best golfer. Singh, a 41-year-old, 6'2" desi from Fiji, can be prickly but is intensely disciplined. With Tiger Woods in a Swedish slump, Singh has been the most consistent golf tourney winner over the last 12 months, earning $6.9M so far this year.

well if they’re going to deny a KENNEDY, no wonder i always get harassed; apparently, even being political royalty doesn’t spare you from the idiocy of the TSA’s futile attempts to protect us from…uh…senior Senators from the North-East.

Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, (D-MA) was stopped at right coast airports five times in march because his name appeared on a no-fly list. though his staff called to have the problem corrected, the Senator continued to be stopped until Homeland Security wreck-retary Tom Ridge intervened and apologized.

the washington post has more, and you should read it, please:

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.

…Kennedy’s description yesterday of his air-travel troubles — mentioned during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the 9/11 commission’s recommendations — renewed questions about the quality and effectiveness of the no-fly list. The list was established by security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Critics said the senator’s experience served as the latest example of how a system designed to improve security is instead targeting innocent travelers.

The government does not make public the names or the total number of people on the list, which officials say is constantly updated. According to FBI documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request, more than 350 Americans have been delayed or denied boarding since the list’s inception. The list has not led to any arrests, officials said.

350 americans delayed, zero arrests. oh yeah, THAT’S telesis.

The town I currently live in is so white that ...

... the local bakery makes only white bread (no wheat) and the last sandwich shop I went to only made sandwiches with mayo -- not one option had mustard!

... there is a chinese restaurant that bills itself as a "chop suey palace" (I'd take a photo but I'd rather not get arrested)

... the only kosher restaurant in town was a kosher irish place (it closed before I moved here in January, unfortunately). I can just see the menu -- corned beef and latkes!

... there actually is a 7/11 that employs only white people. It's like one of those mythical places you can only find by getting lost, and you can never get back there (none of the employees could read a map either)

But even out here they showed Harold and Kumar at the local multiplexes (both of them!)

Well, not really, but they did find the recently created Sikh contribution to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

Part art history, part anthropology, it provides an opportunity to view 19th-century miniatures alongside contemporary pictures. Much of the 20th-century work, particularly Arpana Caur's self-taught oils, is heartfelt schlock overly indebted to Western kitsch. But the English tag team of Amrita and Rabindra Kaur Singh achieves a pungent synthesis of East and West, old and new. The twins' gold-dusted 1998 gouache "Nineteen Eighty-Four (The Storming of the Golden Temple)," which commemorates the slaying of hundreds of Sikh nationalists by Indian troops that year, melds Punjabi traditions of detail and decoration with the significant gesture of Giotto and the satirical intent of British wartime realism.

Steve Scalise has dropped out of the race in Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District. That means that Republican Bobby Jindal’s chances of being elected to Congress are that much greater. From the Washinton Times:

Without Scalise in the race, analysts say, the chances Jindal will be elected outright in the Nov. 2 primary without the need for a runoff are much more likely.

Why did Scalise drop out? Here is a partial explainer.

I, like many in the left, can’t stomach much of Jindal’s politics, but the guy seems to be making all the right moves.

Two weeks ago a friend of mine in Houston forwarded me a link to an ongoing discussion on the website of Dr. Vijay Mehta. Dr. Vijay Mehta is best known for the many appearances he makes at various South Asian conferences and gatherings such as SASA, Bhangra Blowout, etc., in an attempt to create a database of potential South Asian bone marrow donors. I myself have registered for the database.

In addition to the bone marrow drive, Dr. Mehta’s website tackles several other issues that are usually swept under the rug of South Asian American society. I encourage you all to visit the site for yourself. It is the first instance I have seen of a healthy discussion between first gen’s like many of our parents, and second generation young adults. The post that I was forwarded in particular was written by a young woman named Reena who lives in Texas.

The DesiBoyz photo collection shows us the real source of India's IT prowess -

Check out the rest of the site for desi humor bits.

TCS: A Tech Central Station article which is generally quite optimistic on India's future & econ development has an interesting stat -

For those concerned that the environment will suffer as a result of further development, consider that 70 percent of Indians today defecate in public, and many rural Indians rely on dung as a source of fuel.

There's something rather apropos about reading this on a blog named Sepia Mutiny, eh?

Abhi, one of our bloggers, has a great post on the film Before Sunset and the absinthe of fiction. He just posted it, hasn't told me about it or asked me to link it, but it's deliciously, deliriously romantic:

Fiction is a heartless charlatan... You are incapable of a normal relationship because normal is a pale substitution for what already flows in your veins: possibility... Years later you don't fit anymore. You stand out like a heroin addict on a Friday night, wearing long sleeves so no one will notice.

On losing a deep connection:

Is it possible that you can experience a period of time so perfect, so idealized, that it stains your soul with a color that nothing else can ever match? If so, aren't you screwed for the rest of your days?... [A]ll the things that I spend the majority of my Time doing, are really motivated by one thing. Finding a color to match the stain.

First, they were going to hang a portrait of him in the U.S. Capitol Building. Next they were going to name a building somewhere in California after him. NOW they are thinking of commemorating him on a stamp! Dilip Singh Saund is the most popular brown man in America right now even though he’s dead.

There is only one problem as I see it. This idea is coming too late. Last week Stamps.com announced a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service which will allow anybody with spare change in their pockets to create a customized stamp. That’s right. Now you can put your own picture on an official U.S. stamp and mail it anywhere you want. That being the case, the once sacred honor of being displayed on a stamp, has been cheapened. How cheap you ask? Well to put it into perspective I took the liberty of creating a stamp of me, which I could now purchase from the USPS, and one of Saund. Honestly now, which one would you choose? Which one would you choose?

Great news for South Asian 6-10 year-olds whose Clifford the Big Red Dog and Curious George books, just weren’t providing enough depth for discussion over afternoon tea. They now have a new literary magazine named Kahani:

Our Story [from the Kahani website]

It began as a wish for more, a wish to enrich a little girl’s life with literature rich in characters and plots through which she saw her everyday reflected. From that special grandma far away to the neighborhood friends she plays with, the little girl could read about her life, her unique experiences of growing up in overlapping cultures.

Many years later, that wish has come true as Kahani, a South Asian literary magazine for children who call America home. It’s the perfect title to reflect the simple but empowering concept of the magazine: ‘kahani,’ the Hindi word for ‘story.’ Named by that ‘special grandma,’ Kahani would be just that, a place where the stories of South Asian children - just like that little girl - would be told.

What began as one mother’s vision now includes the drive and energy of three other committed women. As parents themselves, the Kahani idea resonated immediately. Even more amazing, each brought in specific professional skills crucial to Kahani’s success. (How their initial meeting happened is a separate story in itself. Let’s just say it was meant to be.) Cradling crying babies in one hand, while jostling spreadsheet numbers with the other, they got down to work. The magazine was no longer just a vision.

Israeli rabbis are soon to meet to determine whether the Jews of Mizoram / Bene Menashi are "really jewish" and therefore entitled to excercise claims under the law of return. No word on whether the genetic test for the Cohen gene has been performed, like with the Bene Israel of India or the Lemba of Southern Africa.

p.s. Mizoram is a state at the eastern edge of India, just to the south of Assam, sandwiched between Bangladesh and Burma. These are desis who claim to have been a "lost tribe" but whose claims are fairly recent.

alan keyes just got on my last nerve. The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that two days ago, the carpetbagging hypocrite from the great state of maryland called women who get abortions and the doctors who provide them…”terrorists”. now i don’t care where you stand on this excruciatingly personal issue, you just don’t go there.

when the wrong-reverend jerry falwell blamed sept. 11 on “the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” just days after the horrifying attacks of 2001, the white house reprimanded him and he apologized a few days later. i’d hope for a similar outcome now, but i’m not holding my breath.

to suggest that there is some similarity between someone in al-qaeda who plots the murder of innocent americans and an american woman who requests an abortion from a doctor who will provide one is disgusting. no matter where one stands on this litmus-test of an issue…i really think that anyone with half a brain would find the would-be senator’s comments deplorable.

The remarks came as Keyes was explaining why three months ago he said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a “warning” from God to “wake up” and stop “the evil” of abortion.

from the Toronto Star, an article that discusses canada’s medical status quo— apparently they don’t have enough doctors.

this made me choke on my chardonnay. not enough doctors? there are one billion indians walking the earth! :p how is ANYONE lacking doctors?

is dr. sunil patel (who is quoted below) the only brown person in canada? ;) no, that can’t be. CANADA has TEN brown legislators! so where are all the doctors? and more pressing than that, what on earth do canadian uncles and aunties brag about at parties if their kids aren’t in med school? anyone? buehler??

Canada needs to invest $1 billion over the next five years to reverse its serious shortage of doctors and ensure there will be enough health-care providers in future to reduce long waiting lists plaguing hospitals, the Canadian Medical Association says.

The association wants Ottawa to create a national health human resources reinvestment fund, which would plan for future personnel needs and “help end the health human resources boom-and-bust planning cycle,” outgoing president Dr. Sunil Patel told a news conference at the annual meeting in Toronto yesterday.

A candidate in a North Carolina Republican congressional primary baselessly calls Pakistani immigrant Kamran Akhtar a terrorist (via Shashwati’s Blog). Here’s what the TV ad says:

“When Vernon said our unguarded Mexican border was a threat to our national security, the liberals laughed… They’re not laughing anymore. This is Pakistani terrorist Kamran Akhtar. He got arrested videotaping targets in Charlotte, North Carolina. He came here illegally, across our Mexican border… I’m Vernon Robinson and I approve this message because Akhtar didn’t come here to live the American dream. He came here to kill you. In Congress, I will shut that border down.”

Here’s what law enforcement says:

Last month, 35-year-old Kamran Akhtar was arrested while filming Charlotte’s downtown skyline… A high-ranking law enforcement official in New York said investigators there view Kamran Akhtar as a “video buff” with no links to terrorism… “At this point, there is nothing to connect this individual to any terrorist plot or organization,” Beatty [North Carolina’s head of homeland security] said Wednesday.

Vernon Robinson’s primary opponent, Republican Virginia Foxx, complained: Robinson is pulling accusations out of his colon.

Update: Robinson lost his primary to Foxx today, so his ad smacks of a last-minute Hail Mary. But he had 45% of the vote, which is just scary.

It is bad enough that the women I meet at bars sexualize me by assuming that just because I am brown, I must have Tantric skillz. NOW my collegues at school are going to ask me, and all of you other brown scientists and engineers, if we are skilled in the Vedic methods as well:

What is the square of 85? In an instant, a 17-year-old boy said without blinking, “7,225.”
Kamlesh Shetty had used a trick from a quaint concept called Vedic math, a compilation of arithmetic shortcuts believed to have been written by ancient Indians who lived centuries before Christ, during a glorious period in Indian history called the Vedic Age. Its math has now crawled into the 21st century to further Shetty’s dream of cracking a nasty engineering entrance exam.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the word “nasty” was used in the above paragraph.

For those of you interested in the election, life in Washington D.C., and the politics of the White House, not only should DC blog (and gawker family blog) Wonkette be on your blog radar, Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing should be a regular on your internet explorer's history bar.

Froomkin's most recent commentary has focused on the "Ask President Bush" events conducted by the White House and has pointed to two quite interesting pieces (among various others) on what appears to be quite misleading events. The first is from Yesterdays Times by Elisabeth Bumiller and another article by the Associated Press's Scott Lindlaw.

A huge congrats to Mohini Bhardwaj on medalling in her first, and probably only, Olympics! The U.S. women's gymnastics team won silver today, 2nd to Romania and ahead of Russia. This is a historic day: Bhardwaj is the first Indian-American Olympic medalist ever, and as far as I know, the first Indian-American Olympian. She's been working toward this day off-and-on for 21 years.

The U.S. team leaned heavily on the veteran Bhardwaj in their medal quest. She competed in every finals event except uneven bars:

[T]hey could also be proud of the way 25-year-old Mohini Bhardwaj came in at the last minute to replace Kupets on the balance beam, allowing Kupets to nurse her sore right leg a little longer before performing on the floor. "For Mohini to come in like that, with three minutes warning, that shows the preparation this whole team had," Bela Karolyi said.

From CNN's World report -

AGARTALA, India (Reuters) -- Authorities in northeast India have urged Bangladesh not to kill about 100 wild elephants that have strayed across the border and gone on a rampage, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more.

"We are very sympathetic about the elephants' plight and we will not take any steps to kill them," Munshi Anwarul Islam, Chief Forest Conservator of Bangladesh, told Reuters.

"But these elephants are destroying our houses and trees and are a threat to the local people. They are not finding a corridor to go back to India."

Funny how the wild elephants get far more consideration from CNN/Reuters than the 13 "villagers" they killed....

It was a gathering of terrorism’s elite, and they slipped silently into Pakistan from all over the world in order to attend. From England came Abu Issa al-Hindi, an Indian convert to radical Islam who specializes in surveillance. From an unknown hideout came Adnan el-Shukrijumah, an accomplished Arab Guyanese bombmaker and commercial pilot. And from Queens in New York City came Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who arrived with cash, sleeping bags, ponchos, waterproof socks and other supplies for the mountain-bound jihadis.

Maoist rebels, inspired by the shining path, in a bid to overthrow the Nepalese monarchy, have launched an indefinite blockade of Kathmandu. An indigenous Maoist movement in this day and age? The basis of their support appears to be resentment by lower caste Nepalis "against the authority wielded by the higher castes." Nor is the King very popular. (He came to power when the crown prince supposedly ran amok, high on drugs, and shot the previous King and Queen, leaving the King's brother as the new King). I don't have anything snarky or witty to say about this -- both sides routinely violate human rights and neither is democratic. It's a real Charlie Foxtrot.

I generally avoid posting overtly political stuff here BUT, I figured at least a few of y'all might be interested in my other blog persona - The IronBlogger Libertarian.

I'm currently debating "The Purpose of Arms" against a challenger and my opening statement is up -

The ultimate goal of arms is for the individual to defend himself, his rights, and his property against other individuals through the credible threat of mortal force. This is a very complex topic so I'll expend some effort here to crisply articulate a small number of core points and avoid the statistical barrage that characterizes so many gun debates.

1. Violence is an intrinsic part of human nature...

Check it out if you're interested in this sort of stuff.

For those that haven’t noticed, South Asians for Kerry (SAKI) has a website up and running. Although I don’t know for sure what the “I” in the acronym stands for, I suspect it is placed there simply so that the organization’s name is a homonym of the glorious alcoholic beverage, Sake. Well done, I say.

In an effort to energize the South Asian presence in the political process South Asians for Kerry in 2004 (SAKI) was formed in March of 2003. SAKI is officially recognized by and works closely with the Kerry campaign with chapters in Boston, Washington D.C., New York, and the Bay Area.

SAKI is focused on driving fundraising, voter registration, and policy initiatives throughout the South Asian community.

What I found most interesting on the site was the one-page issues primer.

According to my friend in NYC who works closely with SAKI, there is also an article in the WSJ today titled, “In the U.S., Indians Gain Political Clout.” Unfortunately my poor ass can’t afford the WSJ so I can’t be more helpful.

The U.S. women’s gymnastics team made it into the finals yesterday, in 2nd place after Romania. Mohini Bhardwaj also qualified for the individual finals in the floor exercise. That’s the event that resembles acrobatic street teams in New York City, but without the black people :( And it’s got some dated, frou-frou, high school cheerleading moves interleaved with all the tumbling, as breaks for muscle recovery.

Now, most of these teen gymnasts look incredibly stressed with the weight of national prestige on their shoulders. You can see the relief on their faces when they step off the mat. In contrast, if you watched Bhardwaj on Monday, her features settled into a frightening, wide-eyed, murderous look the instant before she launched onto the runway; later she said she needed to dial back on her aggression to land her vaults. Sistah is so hardcore. Her style seems higher on power than grace, the opposite of the skinny, lanky Russian diva Svetlana Khorkina.

a Gandhi for our generation? this article has more:

Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, is to kick off an unarmed Palestinian movement against Israeli occupation which is being launched by a group of social and political activists in Ramallah.

Gandhi, head of the MK Gandhi Institute for non-violence in the US, will be the star attraction at three mass rallies planned in Ramallah, Abu Dis and Bethlehem on August 26.

The campaign is being organised by a group of Palestinian social and political activists in Ramallah, who have joined hands with anti-fence activists, NGOs, and Fatah activists headed by minister without portfolio and Fatah member Kadura Fares in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s ruling condemning the construction of the West Bank barrier by Israel.

sorry vinod and abhi, but rather than end the “DRUM”/patchouli/”harold and kumar” debate on poor maria’s ass (because no ass deserves such responsibility or hardship), i say we send the cast and crew of the stoner movie that “couldn’t” to the following:

A Different Kind of Dude Fest: August 20-22. Washington, DC

This is not “just” a fest. It’s a space for men to take stock of their internalized sexism and to discuss strategies for change, for ways we can divest of patriarchy and be responsible feminist allies. To that extent, there will be:

(1)A website/zine/reading group project to foster discussion and self-reflection before and after the fest.

(2)Workshops and discussion spaces to explore issues of privilege, sexism and patriarchy, and to learn from non-gender privileged perspectives.

(3)Two nights of shows with amazing, pro-woman, pro-queer bands, many of which are involved in organizing the fest, where we can start following through with our obligation to not take gender dynamics for granted, and to forge new visions of collective liberation. And we may even have a little fun. Come!

for those of you who are utterly perplexed by this post, i implore you to go read the comments after this SM entry. it will all make sense then, dear ones.

now if you’ll kindly excuse me, i have to go berate my bf for not sympathizing with my vaginally-centered plight. he is obviously a privileged, sexist, patriarchal jerk who has not divested himself of the horrific issues that “harold” and “kumar” also suffer from….he is complicit! all of the other mutineers are! stop objectifying! patchouli for all!

In an election where every vote will make the difference, you have to pick and choose which minorities you might be able to lure into your camp, and then make a play. The ball is in play and we are it. Sify news reports:

In a first advertisment of its kind, the Republican party has re-counted the strides made in the India-US relationship urging Indian-Americans to help re-elect President George W. Bush.

The advertisement, issued by Marc Raciot, chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, said Bush understands India’s potential to become one of the great democratic powers of the 21st century and has worked to transform the US-India relationship.

“Throughout his first term in office, President Bush has honoured the many contributions of Indian-Americans in our country by advancing policies that reflect their priorities. We are grateful for the support the President’s campaign has obtained from Indian-Americans and we look forward to working together to re-elect President Bush,” the advertisement read.

Now I can’t seem to find this “advertisement.” Was it simply a verbal ad or was it print media, or television? I checked both the Bush-Cheney website and the RNC website but no luck so far. Will keep you updated. At times like this I wish there was a Karl Rove equivalent on the Dems side.

Budge Travel has run an interesting travelogue piece (reprinted on MSNBC.com) on Five trips that can change your life. Installment 1: India.

"I had not come to India on any kind of Mission Enlightenment, but the funny thing about change is how it creeps up on you when you are busy acting like a brat. As soon as we left Delhi, the little kindnesses started: When I fell sick in the Lawrence of Arabia worthy desert town of Jaisalmer, a restaurant owner named Rama became my temporary mother, easing my stomach pain with desert cures and my loneliness with long, intimate talks."

click here to read the full story

…the huge influx of smart, cute interns. Oh, stop being so self-righteous. You know that you were thinking it too, I am just saying it out loud. One of the many reasons I miss my old ‘hood.

A survey on Capitol Hill interns last year reveals how the interns straddle two worlds: a left-behind college campus where nose rings reign, and a high-powered city dotted with power ties.

The following quote sums it all up:

Says Ketaki Gokhale, 21, who interned with Congressman Jim Langevin: “I should write a diary: My Experience On The Hill. It’s a slog. I don’t think I’d work there as a staffer. But the nightlife rocks.”

But these guys take it to the next level. I invite you to visit the Universal Life Church of Daler Mehndi -

You must visit the Daler Sacrifice.

This article discusses the (surprising to some) LACK of empirical relationship b/t formal education and income at a national level -

Over the past decade it has became an article of faith that education and skills make a vital contribution to economic performance (1). Deficiencies in national labour productivity and economic growth are increasingly attributed not to inadequacies in productive investment, but to educational shortfalls and weak labour skills (2).

...'African countries with rapid growth in human capital [the fashionable term for people's work abilities, especially levels of education] over the 1960 to 1987 period - countries like Angola, Mozambique, Ghana, Zambia, Madagascar, Sudan, and Senegal - were nevertheless growth disasters. Countries like Japan, with modest growth in human capital, were growth miracles. Other East Asian miracles like Singapore, Korea, China, and Indonesia did have rapid growth in human capital, but equal to or less than that of the African growth disasters. To take one comparison, Zambia had slightly faster expansion in human capital than Korea, but Zambia's growth rate was seven percentage points lower."

The Mallu economic malaise is a perfect example - statistically, at least, it's the most educated state in India but, alas, also one of the poorest. Books, degrees, and examinations mean little for economic growth without a comprehensive social fabric that praises constructive, gritty real world results over idealized, intellectual banter....

Apparently and Indian American Leadership Council (IALC) was one of the groups that got formed during the Democratic National Convention. What is the IALC? As reported by the IACPA and by the Pacific News Service:

Unlike the Indian American Republican Council (IARC) formed last year by Republican sympathizers in the community, the IALC is not an independent body, but a wing of the [Democratic National Committee] working within the party structure. Besides the IALC, there are five other DNC leadership Councils: the Women’s Leadership Council, the Hispanic American Leadership Council, the Asian Pacific Leadership Council, the Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council and the African American Leadership Council. The goal of each Council is to raise $2.5 million until November 2, 2004.

The use of the word sympathizers really stood out to me in the above paragraph.

I am no novice to politics. I know how the game is played and that cash rules everything, but reading this article it was so apparent that raising money for a cause seems to be more important than defining or debating the cause. I am not blaming the IALC for the impression this story left on me. It could simply be the way the article was written.

Reading this article all I could think of was the Eddie Murphy classic Coming to America where he works at fast food restaurant named McDowell's that was a total rip-off of McDonalds.

While the Hyderabad-born owner, Mr Anil Jintoorkar, feels that red (kumkum) and yellow (haldi) are the traditional, auspicious Indian colours and also proven marketing colours, the multinational fast foodchain McDonalds thinks red and yellow are their colours.

Yet another egregious example of a multinational corporation pushing around the little guy.

and he’s not “aboot” to take it! from the TOI:

MUMBAI: Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt says he would sue for defamation a Canadian paper that has labelled him a terrorist.

Calgary Herald , a leading daily in Canada, has allegedly branded Sanjay Dutt a terrorist from India and wondered about the wisdom of allowing such elements into the country.

“It was a long half-page article ripping my reputation into bits. I’ve never been more hurt in my life,” Sanjay Dutt said from Los Angeles sounding acutely upset. He left Calgary where he was shooting for Anubhav Sinha’s Dus.

i have no idea what he may or may not be guilty of with regards to terrorism, but i DO know he is, without a shadow of a doubt, guilty of terrible highlights and horrible facial hair. click the TOI link for his pic, you’ll see.

New York, New York in all its Technicolor finery. The Empire State inverted the tricolor, but the tower on 23rd St. got it right.

Apparently there was a bit of a throwdown right in the middle of the Indian Independence Day parade in Chi-town. Fellas don't you understand? Divide and conquer. THAT is what "The Man" wants.

Check out the colors Barack is sporting.

Anju Bobby George is India’s best shot at an individual medal in Athens and was the flag carrier during the opening ceremonies. She placed third in women’s long jump at the 2003 World Athletic Championships in Paris and has been training with men’s long jump record holder Mike Powell in California:

Her husband Bobby, a champion triple-jumper, was the youngest of eight brothers moulded by their father into a volleyball team. The George Brothers would play on the volleyball court in their Kerala home at Peravoor and, though all were adept, Jimmy was the star. He played for India and on the European circuit before being killed in a car accident in the 1980s. Jimmy’s popularity — he played the sport for 17 years — was such that the Italians, the World Cup winners, constructed an indoor stadium and named it after him.

Track and field begins Wed., Aug. 18, and continues through the end of the Olympics.

Update: George just landed an endorsement contract with Nike.

GNXP is a fine, if controversial, blog. Razib notes the following about ethnic movements-

any political movement or organization designed to expand freedom(s) or redress injustice for any given group is at a certain point hijacked by the self-interested and selfish subset within that group.

Uh, I guess that would be the Sepia Mutineers?

my happiness over india-pendence day diminished after reading salon:

Aug. 15, 2004 | NEW DELHI (AP) — A bomb exploded during an Independence Day parade in India’s remote northeast on Sunday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, just an hour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to fight terrorism. The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom was suspected of being behind the attack in Assam state and a second one later in the area, said Assam Inspector General of Police Khagen Sharma.

Dilip Saikia, a local lawmaker, said 15 people were killed in the powerful blast in the grounds of a local college in Dhemaji, where the parade was being held. Most of the dead were school children, who had come to see the parade, Saikia told The Associated Press over telephone from Dhemaji. The remote town is 1,015 miles northeast of New Delhi.

57 years later…we may be free of the brits, but we are still enslaved by hate, terror and violence. sigh.

Hello Mutineers - I'm en route to a biz trip so posting will continue to be light BUT, I did want to point out this list of "Hard to Translate Words" from Marginal Revolution.

1 ilunga [Tshiluba word for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third time. Note: Tshiluba is a Bantu language spoken in south-eastern Congo, and Zaire]

Alas, this list appears far from comprehensive - there's only a single Desi word -

8 selathirupavar [Tamil for a certain type of truancy]

I have no idea what it means... any candidates for other devilishly hard to translate terms from the homeland, beta?

Mohini is pronounced MO'-hi-nee, NBC people. It does not rhyme with tahini sauce! It's really not that hard. You make it sound silly when you say it that way, Elfi Schlegel. And you've got her parents' names reversed:

Bhardwaj's mother, Kaushal, is from Russia and her father, Indu, is from India.

Great NBC video of her previous competitions, including a vault with a double twist and a jaw-dropping back flip-forward flip combo. Watch her in the Olympics this Sunday and Tuesday nights. The coaches just promoted her to competing in all four events, not just vault. Go, Mo!

For the Indians among you, freedom for trysts with midnight’s children and so on, old chap. Happy day. Off to the big NYC parade in the morning.

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

—Jawaharlal Nehru

It seems that desis are a "model minority", entrepreneurial in spirit, and drawn to excel in all spheres. Even criminal life.

In the past 13 years, police have reported 76 young men killed in the Vancouver area in gang-related violence. The authorities blame drug deals gone bad and local turf wars, mostly involving well-to-do young people of Indian descent.

The gangs deal mostly in marijuana, according to police, and specialize in a popular variety grown in the province called B.C. bud. "B.C. bud marijuana is highly sought after in the United States," said constable Alex Borden of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In Blaine, Wash., Joe Giuliano, assistant chief at the local U.S. Border Patrol office, said 23 Canadian smugglers have been arrested on the U.S. side of the border this year. "Virtually all marijuana smuggling in the past fiscal year is either directly or indirectly tied back to the Indo-Canadian community," Giuliano said.

Somehow, I don't think this is what was meant by swadeshi.

Playboy prints way too much information about Kal Penn's sex life (via Gene Expression). Plus, a bong-arific R-rated trailer with a very Opie, 'vintage' anti-pot ad and Mr. Modi's naked bum.

Comment on Political Animal:

I'm not at all surprised by #4 [most popular blog language] being Farsi. Yes, a lot of people have never even heard of the Faroe Islands, but they are VERY net-savvy there.

From Dumb and Dumber:

Lloyd Christmas: That's a lovely accent... New Jersey?
Lady at bus stop: It's Austrian.
Lloyd Christmas: Austria! Well, then. G'day mate! Let's put another shrimp on the barbie!

You can catch gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj and the rest of the women's gymnastics team in the Olympics by following this TV schedule (all on NBC):

• Sun, Aug. 15, 7pm-midnight ET
• Tue, Aug. 17, 8pm-midnight ET

In case Raj Bhavsar gets bumped up from his alternate spot, or you otherwise want to partake in some chiseled bicep action, here's the men's gymnastics schedule:

• Sat, Aug. 14, 12-6pm & 8pm-midnight ET
• Mon, Aug. 16, 8pm-midnight ET

The killers who participated in recent, government-sanctioned anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat will likely get away scot-free, says the Economist. There have been no convictions to date. None.

...not a single murderer has been convicted, although perhaps 2,000 people died. The state government is under pressure from local activists, human-rights groups and India's staunchly interventionist Supreme Court to see that justice is at last done. But it continues to act less like a scourge of illegal violence than its sponsor.

In retaliation for the deaths of 58 Hindus who burned alive in a train under suspicious circumstances, 2,000 Muslims were massacred in Gujarat:

Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP's leader and, at the time, prime minister, seen as a moderate, asked “Who lit the fire first?”. That foreigners and the liberal English-language press in Delhi largely ignored the Godhra massacre, concentrating on the killings of Muslims—some 9-10% of Gujarat's 50m population—heightened the sense of grievance.

Thus far I have managed to avoid controversy. This post may result in the creation of a new orifice on my body, but I felt like it was time to mix things up.

In an “Open Letter to the Asian American Community” members of NYC based DRUM (Desis Rising Up Moving) write:

Correction: DRUM is just a listserv which people post to in the NY area. The open letter below was written by the South Asian Sisters

We went to watch Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle because we genuinely wanted to support our Asian American brothers. After all, the media coverage told us that this movie was supposed to break stereotypes and be a positive step for Asian Americans. Asian websites raved about the film, and so we were all excited to rally around this film with the rest of the community. We entered the theater and immediately noticed that the audience was comprised of predominantly Asian Americans. We wondered if a movie based on the same premise featuring white boys would draw a bigger crowd. The movie started, and we sat back, waiting to be empowered.

Hilarious…

Behind every sucessful and powerful Whitey, there is a team of brown actually getting the shit done. In the 1800s that meant tea for the British Raj, in the 1900s that meant fighting in the Burmese jungles, and in the 21st century, it means we run the Net, the banks, and everything in between… I gotta tell you, I once had a serious conversation about how it was inevitable that Indians would pretty much be running the world by 2025.

Anuvab Pal, one of my most favorite playwrights, is unleashing a new play upon the world at the NYC Fringe Festival tomorrow. The Fatwa synopsis:

A comedy about two elderly men who try to take advantage of the current American political climate to fulfill lifelong artistic desires. Both men have famous names, but are not famous themselves. They are failed writers who in attempting to promote a blasphemous novel, attempt to engineer a fatwa...

More here:

Pal compares favorably to Salman Rushdie in verbal pyrotechnics and Tom Stoppard in barbed wit, and he's starting to get mainstream recognition... like Woody Allen minus the neuroticism... Fatwa is a thinly disguised satire of Rushdie's horrific hide-and-seek with the mullahs.

Pal's work is a treat, go see the play!

Fatwa by Anuvab Pal, NYC Fringe Festival, Players Theater, Studio 3C, 115 MacDougal St, New York, NY, Aug. 14-15, 20-22, 25, 26, tickets at TicketWeb

The Harvard Crimson now reports that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will not be speaking at Harvard this September.

The Indian Express wrote last week that, following a phone call from University President Lawrence H. Summers, Singh accepted Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen’s invitation to speak at the University.

Why the reversal? What gives?

Well according to an article on Rediff.com:

The Indian Express had also reported that India's ministry of external affairs had advised the prime minister not to speak at Harvard as the timing of the lecture would clash with bilateral negotiation appointments. The article had that MEA officials felt that a "meeting with Summers, who was treasury secretary in Bill Clinton's Democratic administration, could jeopardise relations with the current Republican White House."

Sigh. Will things never change?

After serving out a 20-year term in India, Indian-Vietnamese serial killer Charles Sobhraj has been convicted again in Thailand (via Shashwati Talukdar). Sobhraj is an odd and unusual fellow as far as homicidal sociopaths go, befriending hippies on the ganja-moksha trail:

Charles Sobhraj was born… to an unwed Vietnamese shop girl and an India merchant who denied paternity… “I will make you regret that you have missed your father’s duty,” he confided in his diary.

… years later he made an even more audacious escape: this time by throwing a birthday party in which guards and prisoners alike were invited. Grapes and biscuits handed around the guests were secretly injected with sleeping pills, knocking out everyone except Sobhraj and four other escapees. Indian newspapers reported that they were so haughty about their getaway that they even photographed themselves walking through the prison gates onto the Delhi streets.

My favorite image from the DNC in Boston:

This is delegate Harjit Singh from Hershey, PA. There's actually been a Sikh delegate at the DNC for at least 12 years. When I was younger, I remember watching an older gentleman from the South in the televised coverage; he always got at least one closeup.

Sadly, there is no guaranteed patriotic prophylaxis against hate crime. Post 9/11, Surinder Singh Siddhu was badly beaten in his L.A. liquor store by hoodlums who accused him of being Bin Laden and hit him with metal poles. Siddhu was also similarly attired.

If Vijay Singh was from Madras rather than Fiji, do you think that sportswriters would call him the "Tamil Tiger Woods?"

i know the rest of you blase brown are probably so over it you’re ready to be in to it again, but because i didn’t play or hear Punjabi MC’s “beware of the boys” 1000 times over the last few years, i still get excited whenever i hear it in some unexpected place. like right before they do “the numbers” on marketplace. i just heard the unmistakable joint an hour ago, and i thought i was hallucinating, so i went to their website. there, i was delighted to find that they list all the songs used during each program…et voila:

Most Recent Listings 8/12/04

Beware of the Boys - Panjabi MC

The Shy Retirer - Arab Strap

Sun is Shining - DJ Krush

One Big Love - Patty Griffin

Thank You - Dido

Arab Strap? i also saw Belle and Sebastian listed, and i confirmed that on June 24 of this year, they had indeed played my beloved Pixies. someone at marketplace has hot taste in music. :)

Paul Varghese made it to the semifinals on Last Comic Standing (via MD). Varghese is a Texan Malayalee who started doing stand-up comedy in 2001. More here:

Growing up was a struggle, Varghese had roving gangs of Malayalee doctors and aeronautical engineers brandishing slide rules in da hood. So, to stay off the streets, he kept it real at comedy clubs... My favorite desi stand-up is still the inimitable Russell Peters, a big, chubby Canadian upon whose dewy lashes perches the daemon of unapologetic cruelty.

Warning: Given my non-blogging job, the following posting is bias. I don't care!

The Tallahassee Democrat reports:

India is rethinking its plan to send a man to the moon by 2015, as the mission would cost a lot of money and yield very little in return, the national space agency said Thursday.

Okay, I have no problem with that. India has so many other concerns that space travel should not be even a top 100 priority. What I have a problem with is that they can't be honest about that fact and instead have to cover their retreat by saying the following:

"Whatever a man can do in space, it can be done with instrumentation, also," said G. Madhavan Nair, head of the Indian Space Research Organization.

False! Not true. This is the same myth perpetuated by the anti-space lobby in our country as well. Here is a good explanation of why robots cannot and should not compete with humans.

Also, keep in mind that the real motivation behind the Indian space program announcing a Moon mission in the first place, was probably the same motivation behind our own program in the 50s and 60s. A nuclear arms race. Whose rocket is bigger, India's or Pakistan's?

Georgia's Khabar Magazine takes an in-depth an thought-provoking look at the Indian-American voter. The article addresses some of the chief reasons Indian-Americans don't vote (can you believe that the fear of Jury Duty is near the top of the list?), as well as breaks down this voting group into five general types.

First, the why?? question:

Why don’t more Indian-Americans vote? A basic theory shared by political scientists is as follows: the more money and education you have, the more you will vote and participate in politics. Indian-Americans are one of the most educated and wealthiest ethnic groups in the country. So, why is our voter turnout and participation so low?

An analysis by Ritesh Desai who serves on the Georgia Governor's Asian American Commission sheds light on the jury issue at least:

The Department of Motor Vehicles is required to give their list to the Federal and State Jury services. In other words, if you drive in the State of Georgia you can be called for jury duty. Yet, this myth [voting enters you into the jury pool]is just one of the many fears I have heard from Indian-Americans who hesitate to register to vote because they think the government will interfere in their lives. If they are not fearful of the government, it seems voting is still an inconvenience.

No aspiring desi humor blog is complete without a de rigeuer reference to that film of films, Indian Superman.

There's a cottage industry on the web of whitefolks reviewing this landmark 1987 movie. I personally liked Stomp Tokyo's review the best-

You will believe a movie can suck....

is this where india is headed? read on, it’s from the hindustan times:

“Rural families in China, where there is a traditional bias for boys, are being offered cash incentives to stop aborting baby girls and help correct a sex imbalance, the China Daily said on Thursday.

Under the “Care for Girls” pilot programme, girls would be exempted from paying school fees, insurance would be given to households until their daughters grow up and families with just one daughter would enjoy housing, employment, education and welfare privileges, the newspaper said.

…The problem is particularly acute in the poverty-stricken countryside, where some governments have responded by plastering villages with posters reading: “Daughters are as good as sons!”

Even though many have speculated that the Bollywood-influenced Braodway show Bombay Dreams is standing on its last legs, Republican National Convention delegates will at least have an opportunity to check out the Desi marvel.

Apparently eight Broadway shows have been approved for viewing by the host committee depending on where the delegation is from.

Every delegate, alternate, party official and elected official will receive a ticket based on where they are from to a show on Broadway. So will it be the Edison delegation or the Silicon Valley delegation that will have the pleasure to view the Bollywood drama?

Only half of the shows that wanted to be on RNC's list were selected. Emanuel Azenberg, producer of one of the rejected shows, Movin' Out, a Tony Award-winner set to music by Billy Joel, complained it was passed over because it deals with the unpopular Vietnam War. Hmmm. I wonder if the host committee has seen BD--why would they allow a show that shows the Poor overcoming the Rich—very un-Republican!

A fine rant - Dancing with Dogs: White people, black people, brown people

Translated from the movie "Padamati Sandhyaragam"-

Father: Don’t trust these white people - they look down upon us because we are dark.

…later in the movie…

Father: Don’t trust these black people - they are jealous about us because we are whiter [than them].

Watch Madhoo handle it...

Marginal Revolution reports on fascinating research on what makes some people sexier than others - their names -

New research has revealed that the vowel sounds in your name could influence how others judge the attractiveness of your face.

Women with round-sounding names such as Laura tended to score higher than those with smaller vowel sounds. "Unfortunately for me, Amy is one of the bad names," Perfors laments.

So "Ah-Na" is good while the classic Mallu-aunty name "Ai-lee-ahm-ma" is bad (although to be honest, this often isn't just because of her name) And for the boys -

For boys, a good name will contain vowel sounds made at the front of the mouth, such as 'e' or 'i' sounds; names with fuller, rounder vowel sounds such as 'u' tend to score lower. So pat yourself on the back if you're called Ben... but if your name is Paul, you might have to work work harder to snare a date.

"V-ih-nohd" is Good. "Ah-bee" - you're screwed. ;-)

Guest blogging continues @ DanielDrezner.com with an interesting post from Reihan analyzing Harold & Kumar Go To Whitecastle. Interestingly, the racial dilemma he’s focusing on is Harold’s rather than Kumar’s -

In “Harold and Kumar”, Harold dreads the prospect of pursuing a romantic relationship with “Cindy Kim,” a straight-laced Korean American co-ed at Princeton meant to evoke the stereotypical Asian American overachiever. She is a crashing bore. “Maria,” this shapely bombshell he worships form afar, is decidedly not Asian (she’s of indeterminate Latin origin, it seems — one assumes that making her a classical Anglonormative blonde would’ve been too much), though it’s never clear that she’s not also a crashing bore.

it raises interesting questions concerning the ways in which sexual attraction is bound up with aspirations. Could it be that Harold needs Maria to affirm his own attractiveness, and his self-identification? Man, I don’t know.

Reihan’s a fun writer BUT, I think I like Manish’s analysis of the trend that Harold & Kumar may portend for us (oh, wait, it’s cuz he’s citing me. ;-)

Is Hollywood’s newfound interest in drugged-out Asians a good thing or a bad thing? Vinod points out via email that Asian stoner characters are unthreatening comic figures to the average American, a sly way of slipping Asians into major roles to be laughed at without making them romantic leads. That leaves them only slightly more respectable than Fu Manchu and Stepin Fetchit.

Mohini reaps the rewards of intensity and seniority:

Mohini Bhardwaj’s already impressive story just got a little better. Bhardwaj, who is one of the oldest female gymnasts in the Athens Games at 25, was selected as captain of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. “From a year ago, if you had taken odds on her making our Olympic team — even the odds of making it to nationals — she just continues to impress,” USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said Wednesday.

I’ve been following her pint-sized Rocky story for awhile.

It’s a bit of a surprise since she was one of the last chosen for the team, but only ex-Cuban gymnast Annia Hatch outranks her in seniority (Bhardwaj is 25, Hatch is 26). Both are the oldest female U.S. gymnasts in the Olympics in 40 years.

The New York Magazine delves deeper into a story that hit the news over a month ago, about a new Indian Spiderman comic. Author Sukhdev Sandhu writes:

Farewell, Peter Parker; namaste, Pavitr Prabhakar. His fiefdom is the mean streets of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) instead of Manhattan. When crisis calls, he still dons his Spidey bodysuit, but he also sports a billowing dhoti and a pair of snazzy curl-toed slippers on his feet. The Green Goblin, his chief enemy, now takes the form of a rakshasa, a demon drawn from Indian mythology.

Remember my entry earlier this week titled The Legend of Dilip Singh that mentioned the first Indian congressman in the U.S.? Well the story continues as reported in desi-Talk NY News-India Times with the announcement that a building in California will also be named for him:

I can let you know that we hope to have passed this year a bill that will rename a building in California in honor of former Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, the first Indian-American ever elected to Congress. We are moving very, very quickly on that and we hope with the help of Congressman Bob Filner we have identified a building. We are working that process through. And we hope to just spread the word; we need the entire California delegation behind it to support it.

Anyone know what building in California they have in mind? Also why is a NY congressman (Co-Chair of Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, Congressman Joe Crowley (D-NY)) the main one behind the push? Shouldn’t this suggestion have originated from California?

The singular invocation they were chanting during their Brooklyn rehearsal began, “Oh lordy, please say it’s not broken, please say she was kidding,” before diverging into specifics:

“And please send me a hot guy who’s young and athletic and not married or secretly gay.”

“But lord, what do I have to do to get a new job and my credit card approved?”

“Am I truly a bad person because I wish my upstairs neighbor would get hit by a truck or struck by lighting every now and then?”

And you know what? I’m fine with that. I know it sounds strange to hear them and see them, but …

This is just weird. But, there’s clearly a commercial motivation here cuz otherwise, god knows, there are other places to shine the investigative spotlight - Indians say no kissing with dandruff

Most Indians wouldn’t kiss their partners if they had dandruff, according to an ACNielsen survey.

Ninety three percent of the women and 80 percent men spoken to during the survey said they wouldn’t even touch the hair of someone who has dandruff.

Nearly half of Indians have suffered from dandruff in the last three months, said the survey, which was commissioned by Head & Shoulders.

Now generally, one might be tempted to say this would cause a procreation problem out there, but… then again, maybe dandruff, kissing, and sex aren’t quite so closely linked in the motherland ;-)

In yet another instance of Indian ingenuity, the new generation of sari weavers in Benares are using condoms to help them produce more saris, faster:

The weaver rubs the condom on the loom’s shuttle, which is softened by the lubricant thus making the process of weaving faster. The lubricant does not leave any stain on the silk thread which might soil the valuable saris. There are around 150,000 to 200,000 hand and power looms in Varanasi alone and almost all are using the technique. And every loom has a daily consumption of three or four condoms.

(analysis follows, below the fold)

Brief, fascinating article @ TCS about India's Woe Over H2O

Water is rarely a political topic in rich countries, and in most developing ones it only reaches the national media when its delivery becomes a problem. But India is something of an exception. It has both serious water problems and politicians that are routinely fired for not delivering voters this most precious substance. India desperately needs water reform, and especially privatization, but even the current Indian government -- the most free-market oriented realistically imaginable -- is unlikely to try to tackle hydro-politics.

There are two most remarkable statistics about Indian water: over one million children die from water-borne diseases every year and illegal water trading realizes over $1 billion in value. What is perhaps not surprising is that these two issues are inter-related. Few Indians (perhaps 30%) have access to decent sanitation and high quality drinking water. Not only does this expose the majority to dangerous dysenteries and other water-borne disease, but it provides back-breaking toil for those (usually women and children) who have to collect it every day. The indirect costs are even more staggering with salinity levels rising in so much irrigation water that crops fail, farmers commit suicide (over 500 year this so far) and thousands of the poorest starve.

Sometimes you can't take even the tiniest things for granted...

As a bit of an econo-geek, this passage rang very true -

Indians are proud to be part of the world's largest democracy, but given the elitism in their society they are also part of the world's largest rent-seeking, politically manipulative and bureaucratically stifling society the world has ever seen.

quick, think back to when you were small and misbehaving in public…how did your parents react? don’t even try to front like they reprimanded you in english— you know they busted out with the mother tongue for one brutal yet discreet verbal smackdown. that is one small privilege of being “different” in this western world; you may snark about others and they’ll be none the wiser, since the odds of someone understanding your native tongue are totally in your favor.

well, say you’re one of the 308 members of the Canadian House of Commons, and you want to vent about some MP who’s REALLY getting on your last Canadian nerve, but you want to preserve your chances for re-election. have no fear! curse them out in PUNJABI! those damned sons-of-owls!

TEN South Asian Canadians have won recent parliamentary elections, and of that number, eight speak Punjabi, making it the fourth most popular language that is spoken by MPs. basically, this article details how MPs speak english (no, really?), french (ditto), italian (no witty parenthetical remark for this one) and now Punjabi (kiddan?). i think i was just excited that our neighbors to the north are cool enough to have brown legislators in the DOUBLE-DIGITS. now if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to go make a jack-ass out of myself to some Malkit Singh while i fantasize about ONE brown person in congress. oh balle balle!

via Livin’ Simply

who among us suspect-looking brown kids hasn’t been yanked aside for a full-cavity seach at the airport? no? not you?? but i always get…

hmmm.

anyway, after annie jacobsen’s bullshit article in Women’s Wall Street, airline security has been on a lot of people’s minds (and some of them weren’t even bloggers).

how DO you balance a genuine need for vigilance with respect for people’s dignity? how else do we solve ANY problem in this country? why, throw money at it!

this article from Steven E. Landsburg for Slate provides the details:

“Being detained and questioned is a burden; it’s inconvenient and it’s demeaning. But there’s no reason that burden has to be borne entirely by the detainees. To spread the burden, all the airlines have to do is give each detainee a $100 bill for his trouble. If Northwest had had a policy like that on Annie Jacobsen’s flight, it would have paid out $1,400 to the 14 Syrians. Assuming there were another 200 passengers on that board, they could have covered that cost with a $7 hike in ticket prices.”

Well okay, my title was purposely provocative but I am not too far off the mark. Late today the NY Times reported:

The federal government is offering $1 billion to hospitals that provide emergency care to undocumented immigrants. But to get the money, hospitals would have to ask patients about their immigration status, a prospect that alarms hospitals and advocates for immigrants.

Well of course it alarms hospitals. They know what a dumb idea this is (disclaimer: I am a liberal). Immigrants aren’t going to seek the medical help they might need knowing that Uncle Sam will be there checking their passports. In post 9/11 times, when an illegal immigrant with a brown name can get held, seemingly indefinitely, under material witness statutes, why would they risk going to the hospital? Continuing with the article:

The Department of Health and Human Services wants hospitals seeking reimbursement to ask patients these questions, among others:
-“Are you a United States citizen?”
-“Are you a lawful permanent resident, an alien with a valid current employment authorization card or other qualified alien?”
-“Are you in the United States on a nonimmigrant visa” of the type issued to students, tourists and business travelers?
-“Are you a foreign citizen who has been admitted to the United States with a 72-hour border crossing card?”

Lawyers are already pointing to the 1964 Civil Rights Act in calling this a bad idea. You should read the other silly details in the article for yourself.

And he shall don striped leotard legs and bells on slippers….

The Brits, who brought us “Monty Python,” Jonathan Swift, and other such wits, has now revived the role of court jester.

Everybody sing with me: “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love…..”

If you haven’t already seen it, Time Magazine’s Asia web issue has a moving series of pictures called, “The Sufi’s of India.” I really enjoyed taking a break from the constant scenes of violence that the media beams out of the Muslim world. This was a welcome respite. Tomorrow I will go back to looking at violence.

Nancy Gandhi quotes a Hindu article offering advice to Indian’s finding themselves in the US for the first time

Americans are fussy about personal cleanliness. Body odour makes them shudder in disgust. Personal care products such as shampoos, deodorants, dental floss and mouthwash are multi billion dollar industries. Put these down on your shopping list and use them liberally and frequently…

My favorite one would cure some of the giggles I had when visiting my cousins in India back in the day & helping ‘em on their school work -

Don’t ask for a rubber, what you want is an eraser.

FYI - some of you may be interested in comments I left over @ Seshu’s Tiffinbox blog re: Outsourcing & Capitalism. The comments are perhaps a tad overly political vs. the type of stuff I’d generally post here but I thought it may be of interest nonetheless -

FIRST - India’s GNP = $3Trillion

Total Outsourcing market in ‘03 = $1.3Billion.

So, outsourcing = 0.04% of India total GNP. A drop in the bucket. By comparison, India’s other exports (farm products, textiles, etc.) = $57Billion

SECOND - there’s a different theme in your post which I consider one of the most significant, and yet unseen political divides - are the Rules of Capitalism Natural or Arbitrary…

A friend of mine from Pakistan sent this to me -

This picture, taken in a small town in Pakistan, symbolizes what some of us deal with at work on a daily basis. The project load, that familiar expression of helplessness, the lost belief in struggle, supervisor’s indifference, the …

Last month during the Democratic National Convention in Boston I was desperately hoping to get an invite as a blogger. I knew that wasn’t going to happen however, and I was overheard several times muttering, “Who do I need to sleep with to get a floor pass?”

That’s why I was shocked when I learned that nineteen-year old Tanisha Sandhu of El Sobrante, California was actually at the convention as a delegate. Its not a trivial thing to be a delegate. Those spots are usually reserved for the party faithful (i.e. biggest fund-raisers and local politicians). As a delegate at 19 she may have a bright future ahead of her.

This past weekend seventeen-year-old Ranjit “Ricky” Gill of Morada, California spoke at the California State GOP Convention.

He is a top student at his high school, where he helps classmates in math. The aspiring doctor also volunteers at Lodi Memorial Hospital. He’s served on the Greater Lodi Area Youth Commission, and last month, he was named by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the only student representative on the state Board of Education.

Now there seems to be a push, to put him on the stage in NY at the National Convention.

The underlying logic here is probably just too complex for this ABCD to decipher -

AMRITSAR, India (AP) -- Villagers in northern India briefly detained 37 foreign tourists, most of them British, to protest the kidnapping of three Indian workers in Iraq, police said Friday.

The tourists, traveling in two buses, were stopped Thursday night near the village of Santoshgarh, the home region of two of the three Indians who are among seven truck drivers, who all work for the same Kuwaiti company, being held hostage by unknown kidnappers in Iraq.

The tourists -- 22 Britons, two South Koreans, a Japanese, an American, a Canadian, two Swiss, two Poles, a Dutch citizen, three Tibetans and two others of unknown nationality -- were returning to New Delhi from the Himalayan town of Dharmsala, said police officer Bimal Gupta.

To protest foreigners taking our people hostage... we'll take other foreigners hostage?

Kamat posted a few picts of fruits / veges that may wax nostalgic for kids who grew up at an Indian table. I for one tried dang hard back in the day to explain to my non-desi friends what a Bitter Melon was and they’re probably still wondering why someone would eat one.

Now is it me or is there something extremely lewd about Curvaceous Carrot

Fox and other major news organizations are reporting that a straight-up bigot will be reppin’ the right in the race for Tennessee’s 8th Congressional district. James L. Hart—an erstwhile real estate salesman who states that he was “forced” to resign from his job due to the attention he received via his campaign—has unsuccessfully run for this Congressional seat before, but this time he was the only republican on the ballot. Dennis Bertrand, a write-in candidate who is a former military officer lost his bid to “Help restore dignity” to the GOP by a landslide. See what happens when you blindly vote by party line, people?

Some choice quotes from the website of the man who counters claims that he is racist by pointing out that he’s okay with Asians:

“We in the Eugenic movement are not interested in competing against Adolph Hitler or Karl Marx for some minuscule little 1,000 year reich. We are interested in competing with Jesus Christ and Buddha for the destiny of man.”

“Equality is man’s most dangerous myth. All men do not have an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Only the ethical, moral and law abiding have a right to liberty; only the productive and creative have a right to life; and only the wise have a right to the pursuit of happiness.”

and my personal favourite:

“Why does Detroit look like it was hit by a nuclear bomb and Hiroshima look like it was on the side that won the war? Everyone knows the answer but is afraid to say. Because genes have a more devastating effect on civilization than nuclear bombs, and the reason for Detroit’s decline is that there are less ‘favored races’ in Detroit with an average IQ of 85 and more ‘favored races’ in Japan with an average IQ of 104.”

Wow.

Veteran journalist Om Malik of Not Really Indian outed a tech startup on his blog, to great effect:

Kathy Rittweger, CEO of Blinkx, was on what she thought was just a normal trip to the offices of Business 2.0 magazine to show the editor her new search software. Om Malik, one of the journalists in the meeting, was so impressed that he immediately wrote about it on his blog. “He called me to say he’d done a ‘blog’ on us, and I have to confess I was disappointed as it didn’t sound as good as an article,” Rittweger reflects. “Within a couple of hours we were being mentioned on thousands of sites and I had venture capitalists calling me left, right and centre. The blog made us so popular that we had to bring forward our launch from autumn to June.

Nice job, Om. (Btw, I’m writing about a guy writing about himself writing about a startup. Death by echo!)

British Asian pop-star in the making Jay Sean will be one of the two opening acts for American Hip Hop Producer/Musician extraordinaires, N.E.R.D. for their upcoming fans only London show reports nme.com.

Sean, whose latest single “Eyes on You,” entered the British charts at number six, is one of the many rising British Asian stars “making tings happen” for desi music in the UK. Others to look out for are, Jay’s record label mate and fellow Rishi Rich project member Juggy D and Indo-Canadian phenom Raghav (V2 Records), among others.

Amardeep Singh, prof at Lehigh University, finds an invisible man in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. I normally wouldn't point at a piece referencing Gayatri Spivak and other jargon-filled lit academics, but this was so worthy.

For Sikh men of course, the misnaming is much more aggressive: “Osama” and “Bin Laden” are the most common mis-names one hears. One South Philly man (a caucasian), in a moment of inspired racist efficiency, recently referred to me simply as “Bin,” thus saving himself the expenditure of five syllables he no doubt did not have to spare...

“Jhumpa” is her pet name rather than her good name... Growing up in America, however, she has chosen it as her official, public name... Asserting the name “Jhumpa” is at once a misnaming and a refusal to be misnamed...

And he dissects the lack of a handle for the desi community in the U.S., while those in the UK have long since usurped the term Asian.

...desi may work, but it remains a name like a Punjabi or Bengali pet-name, a name used around the house rather than recognized by a broader public. In this case, there is a chance that the term will reach a critical mass, but it is not yet broadly available. I find it hard to imagine the word rolling off the tongue of someone like Charlie Rose...

“India” (like Calcutta and Delhi) is itself is an Anglicization of “al-Hind,” the Persian name for the area around the Indus River... What was India before it was misnamed? The confusion of the community-without-a-name is merely the latest extension of a permanent historical crisis in naming.

Amric Singh Rathour, a New York cop who happens to be Sikh, can now wear a turban as part of his official uniform. Sikhs have a long tradition of police and military service in the Mounties, UK police forces and regiments during the British Raj. Congrats to attorney Ravi Bhalla, a friend from UC Berkeley, for the legal victory, one of a ceaseless tide for religious freedoms.

“It’s the first time New York City will see turbaned Sikh officers,” said Amardeep Singh, the legal director for the Sikh Coalition. “This is like our Rosa Parks, our first big civil rights victory in this country.”

Indirect evidence of the growing influence of the Indian lobby in Washington may come in the form of a complaint by Pakistan’s Foreign Office that “a certain lobby” in the US Congress is the driving force behind a new Bill calling for tougher monitoring of its adherence to nuclear non-proliferation. The language in the bill was deemed too abrasive by the Pakistani government.

Let your chai tea latte runneth over.

______ has graying temples with a thin patch at the back, rimless eye-glasses and a satisfied masculine air. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke and late nights in the lab.

And then, like Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, she completes the story.

But he orders gnocchi anyway, saying in his slightly raspy from smoking too many cigarettes voice, “This could be dangerous.”

Delhibelly chronicles the ambiguous desi head shake and other deep native mannerisms. Brilliance.

Indians do not nod yes and shake no... This may stem from some aversion to committing too completely to any one course of action, since all things are fated and one can never be sure what one will do, or because it's never prudent to make promises, or because a betrayal of eagerness is the worst way to begin negotiating... Facing forward, with your head in a relaxed position, tilt your head loosely from side to side, as though it is wobbling on the topmost vertebrae of your spine with the springy motion of one of those sad-looking dogs people fix to the dashboards of cars...

Customer: ...“Kitna hoga, Bhaisahib?”
Autowallah: “Pifty rupees.”
Customer: “Pifty! Er... Fifty! Bis dengey” (I’ll give you twenty).
Autowallah: “Porty.”
Customer: (He is like that only).
Autowallah: (You are like that only!)

"The escalator that ate a child." Sounds like an urban legend, or a punchline to a joke about the silly things that children are afraid of, right? Unfortunately, this is real, and not at all funny.

The apex consumer court has ordered Airports Authority of India (AAI) to pay Rs 16.5 lakh as compensation to parents of a seven-year-old girl who died after being trapped in the escalator at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here five years ago.

Jyotsna Jethani had come to India from Dubai on December 13, 1999 for her uncle's wedding. But she met with a horrifying death soon after landing when she was sucked into a hole at the base of the escalator, which is maintained by AAI. The comb plate sliced her face and her body was crushed.

Looks like criminal negligance to me, but I'm doubtful that anybody will be held accountable.

Florida is getting a Bollywood version of one of my favorite Shakespearean plays, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

Some african countries, their own health systems crippled by brain drain, begin to outsource cardiac surgery to India. "Heart operations are comparatively inexpensive in India compared to the West. Open heart surgery in a private Indian hospital typically costs around $4,000, compared to $30,000 abroad."

First, if you haven't seen Harold & Kumar go to Whitecastle, you're a turd and you don't know what you're missing. Using my unparalleled Desi-in-SF connections, I had a chance to hit a sneak preview a week before the flick opened for the proletariat.

I'm a tough critic (albeit with a softspot for juvenile slapstick humor) and I was frankly bursting in laughter throughout the flick. If my recommendation ain't enough to compel you to part with your hard earned $8, then perhaps this message from Kal Penn might convince you -

Remember when "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" came out and no one would sit next to you in school because they thought you had monkey-brains and snakes in your sandwich?... Unfortunately, most of us within the South Asian American community have had negative experiences with media images.

...I might be biased since I`m IN the film, so I`ll quote my mom (she loved it too). I believe her words were, "Very nice beta." She was joined by Ebert & Roeper who gave us "Two Thumbs Up" (the physical gesture, not the Indian soda).

Entertainment or community service, whatever the motive, go check it out.

Many of you probably remember the story of Hira Ratan Manek floating around the web over a year ago. If not, Hira is the 64 year old Indian engineer that had supposedly astounded NASA scientists when they verified that Manek spent 130 days surviving only on water.

According to that earlier article his wife, Vimla, said: “Every evening he looks at the sun for one hour without batting an eyelid. It is his main food. Occasionally he takes coffee, tea or some other liquid.”

Since then Mr. Manek was supposed to have come over to the U.S. to be studied by NASA more carefully. Not so said NASA spokesperson Delores Beasely in June. “We have no record of him being involved with us. We have checked with all offices doing related research at centers such as Johnson, Marshall and Ames.”

Okay, am I the only one that smells a conspiracy afoot? A guy that can survive for 130 days without food and was supposedly being studied by a federal agency is now missing? The word “super-soldier” comes to mind. But seriously…does anyone know where Manek might be?

The U.S. Agency for International Development has just rewarded a $500,000 grant to the non-profit educational organization Sesame Workshop to create an Indian version of Sesame Street, complete with some Indian muppets. What I really wonder is whether or not Big Bird will become a big Peacock as the show matures, instead of a...actually what kind of bird is Big Bird?

Read the full story:
U.S. gives money to add Indian Muppet to Sesame Street created for India

Here's ours. The strange tale of the Indian hostages as interpretted by The Acorn -

Fears that Iraqi insurgents do not follow Bollywood scripts and hence not play tango with the Indian government's hostage negotiation strategy were unfounded. Shiekh Dulaimi, an Iraqi do-gooder who is 'helping' in the negotiations has just demanded that Hindi film icons of yesteryears make an appeal for the release of the Indian truck drivers the Iraqi kidnappers are holding hostage. Before this is over, it would not be a surprise if Hema Malini is asked to dance over broken shards of glass while singing that famous song from Sholay. Thanks to all these bizarre twists and turns, the hostage drama is fast reducing into a farce, or so it would appear.

Walter Russell Mead, in his widely praised book Special Providence, described 4 different "personalities" in American Foreign Policy. He paid special note to the "Hamiltonians" -

Those who denounce (or, in the case of Continental realists, admire) Hamiltonians for there presumed hard-nosed, realist approach to promoting the national interest have misunderstood the synthesis of principles and interests that does so much to define the Hamiltonian mind. Business is the highest form of philanthropy; commerce is the fastest road to world peace.

If you buy it (and I certainly do), then this interview describing future Indo-Pak trade prospects should be very heartening -

At the moment bilateral trade between Pakistan and India ranges from $300 to $400 million. However, there is enormous trade potential between the two nuclear-armed countries in every field. The bilateral trade between Pakistan and India could surpass $10 billion within a few years.

Since posting about the desi-fication of danieldrezner.com, I've been eagerly waiting for the first posts from Reihan Salam & Siddharth Mohandas- I haven't been disappointed.

They start by brown-nosing their host -

Simply put, Dan Drezner is my hero. I feel really lucky to be here. Now I will abuse this privilege with a long, rambling post that will alienate almost everyone.

Vote of thanks followed by rambling? Sounds like he's giving a desi wedding toast. Reihan in particular sounds like a good candidate mutineer after his Drezner guestblogger gig is up -

I dig a good rogan josh at least as much as Siddharth, so I figure that, if not my undying love for Panjabi MC and Nehru jackets, makes me an honorary member of the Indian “diaspora” (to use a problematic and widely misused term).

... I’ve always identified very strongly as an American. While I don’t consider myself a national chauvinist (I wouldn’t, for example, pee on someone for being Canadian, let alone set them ablaze, though I might be sorely tempted), I love my native country for fairly old-school nationalist reasons—i.e., not for the Constitution, which is perfectly adequate, but for its language, culture, and a sense that I’m entangled in its troubled-yet-inspiring history. Which is why I think “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” rules so hard. I’ve already seen it three times, and I imagine I’ll see it again very soon. Go watch it. Seriously, it rules.

Anyone who identifies PMC & H&K as high points of the American cultural ethos qualifies in my book ;-) [yes, I know PMC is Brit, but you get my meta-point...]

Pooja Kumar, the woman in the Bombay Dreams print ads and the star of Flavors, has joined a new Asian TV network called Imaginasian.

Kumar lives in Chelsea, has a doctor boyfriend, likes to cook (“I make very good chicken curry”), practices meditation (“It relaxes me”) and goes to the movies twice a week.

So like, what’s up with South Carolina? Not widely recognized (at least by this blogger) as being a bastion of minority politics, all of a sudden South Carolina is the place to be if you are South Asian and have your eyes on the prize. Earlier this year, you may recall that Nikki Randhawa-Haley, 32, won the Republican Primary in South Carolina’s House District 87 and was to run unopposed in the November election. Until the middle of last month she was guaranteed a victory. Despite the fact that she now has a Democrat petition candidate running against her, she will most likely have an easy victory. That however is not where the sudden embrace by South Carolina for its brown sons and daughters ends.

Daniel Drezner is proprietor of one of the most influential Classical Liberal / Libertarian / Academic blogs (take your pick of pigeon holes...) out there . The man has quite a following and regularly squares off with the equally eminent Brad DeLong. Drezner's blog has landed him writing gigs for top tier national magazines and expert commentator roles on several TV news shows.

So, when you're Drezner and you decide to take a weeklong blogging break - you need not one but 2 guys to guest blog and fill your shoes. It's a pretty wild coinki-dink that from the sea of folks who'd kill for the exposure (sigh, myself included), both bloggers ended up desi.

The venerable Ambassador car is being imported into the UK as a soft-top model.