One of the things that the 9/11 report brought home is that in major disasters, there are always early warnings from experts in the field.

The vaunted British-style bureaucracy in India responded with its usual alacrity to the incoming tsunami warnings:

[T]he top brass of the Indian Air Force knew their Nicobar Air base had been submerged a full hour before the waves struck the mainland coast…

The Indian Meteorological Department knew of the earthquake within minutes. Its first fax went out two and half hours later, and was sent to the home of the previous government’s science and technology minister, rather than his successor… “[I]t was a Sunday. Time was taken by the officer to get ready and get into the car…”

“There have been four tsunamis in India in the last 100 years, and it is well-known that an earthquake of such a large magnitude generates a tsunami. There was no system in place.”… “A country that hopes to run the call centers of the world could not call its own people.”

It took time to get into the car? IIT kids broadcast large porn videos in under 30 minutes, and they couldn’t pick up the phone?

Welcome to the old new century.

On behalf of the mutineers, we wish all of our readers - and especially our commentors - a happy and safe New Years. If you're ever curious what drives a labor of love like Sepia Mutiny, it's cuz most of us obsessively hit the reload button to see the feedback and commentary generated from y'all (including and sometimes especially GC ;-). We built this house but you guys make it a lively home.

Roughly half of the Mutineers will be welcoming the New Year in NYC while others will be in DC (and possibly LA?). If you run into any of us at a party and mention the blog, we'll be honored. BUT, distract us too much from the revelry with a discussion of blogging, the Left/Right divide or what GC just said... well, it'll still be interesting but... other folks at the party might catch on to what dorks we actually are. And we can't have that.

The past 6 months have been swell -- here's to the next 12. Have fun and stay safe.

Have you deconstructed the title to this one yet? The New York Times reports on the role blogs are playing in disseminating news and information about the Tsunami in South and South East Asia:

For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs.

The so-called blogosphere, with its personal journals published on the Web, has become best known as a forum for bruising political discussion and media criticism. But the technology proved a ready medium for instant news of the tsunami disaster and for collaboration over ways to help.

I know that this post is a bit self-serving in that it occurs as a blog entry which is pointing out the value of blogs, but nonetheless I think it shows neophytes or the jaded non-believers that blogs can be relevant and worthy of a visit even if non-political in nature.

Bloggers at the scene are more deeply affected by events than the journalists who roam from one disaster to another, said Xeni Jardin, one of the four co-editors of the site BoingBoing.net, which pointed visitors to many of the disaster blogs.

“They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that other media just can’t,” with an intimate voice and an unvarnished perspective, with the richness of local context, Ms. Jardin said.

That makes blogs compelling - and now essential - reading, said Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and a blogger. Once he heard about the disaster, “Right after BBC, I went to blogs,” he said.

The following quote in the article demonstrates the dedication of (or metal defect within) bloggers:

Dr. Vaidhyanathan said he was leaving for a long-planned trip to India today and, if possible, hoped to visit relatives in Madras. “As long as there is electricity and Internet access, I’ll blog,” he said.

I personally think that is a much cooler motto than that of the post office.

Coca-Cola recently released a great Bollywood-inspired ad in Spain, Portugal and Italy (thanks, GG). The ‘Del Pita’ ad retraces The Party, The Guru and Russell Peters’ wisecrack that the only thing a desi accent is good for is cutting tension.

In the ad, a desi waiter livens up a dreary party by bursting into a Bollywood song. Here’s the really cool part: it pays homage to Absolut Vodka’s unforgettable Mulit parody — pink shirt, shiny belt buckle and all. Watch the clip.

• Low-bandwidth version
• More great Bollywood-inspired ads

Update: Boing Boing reader JJ Merelo says,

… it was released last summer and become an instant sensation: the theme has been even featured in the new year’s eve TV shows, replayed over and over as a ringtone, and so forth. The party does not really look like a Spanish party, it rather looks like a british party. Believe me, I’ve been in Spanish parties. And a bit of trivia: it’s actually a girl who sings it, it’s a kind of ‘bollywood asereje’, since it’s not really in hindi (or telugu, for that matter), but in mock-indian language, and it was originally done in Argentina. There’s also a pointer to the spanish Coca Cola site: Link, and a story by a popular hispano-argentinian blogger: Link.

Asereje is that catchy track by Las Ketchup written in nonsensical language. Here’s a machine translation of the Argentinian blogger’s post.

Spaniards are somewhat familiar with Bollywood, as the films are widely available at mainstream DVD stores in Madrid.

This story in the Mississippi Clarion Ledger is disturbing on several levels. The first is the personal story:

After several years, Vinod Taneja was to be reunited with his wife Monday night at Jackson International Airport after years of being apart.

Taneja, 56, had come alone to the United States from the couple’s home in northern India to make a life for them.

He opened Highway 80 Mini Mart in south Jackson a few months ago and was the store’s only employee.

But about two hours before his wife’s flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:30 p.m., Taneja was shot and killed at his store at 5049 U.S. 80 West.

“He wanted to make a home here,” said Hitesh Desai of the India Association of Mississippi. “The fact that his wife came here under these circumstances is demoralizing.

As if the cruel fate of that in itself isn’t sad enough, the circumstances of his death take a bizarre twist:

No one has been arrested, and a motive has not been established in Taneja’s death, said Jackson police spokesman Robert Graham.

A man wearing a “Scream” mask and dark clothes came in the store and shot Taneja, Graham said.

The mask and a piece of clothing were found in trash near the store, police said.

In response to the devastating Tsunamis that assaulted the coastal regions of South and South East Asia, South Asian Americans are trying to get past the worry and grief and move on to the task of getting aid to the victims. From NJ.com:

“Nothing happened to my family, thank God,” said Balija, who is president of the Hindu American Temple & Cultural Center in Morganville [NJ]. “A lot of fishermen live near the sea . … They don’t even know what they lost. It’s unbelievable. It’s very devastating.”

Balija said members of his temple would meet to determine what resources should be sent to victims. Meanwhile, other organizations were beginning to organize their rescue efforts yesterday.

“We are very much concerned and sorry about this,” said Pradip “Peter” Kothari, president of the Indian Business Association and Indo-American Cultural Society in New Jersey. “We have to talk to the different organizations and temples and figure out what is the best way to react.”

The San Jose Mercury News also reports [reg. required] on the beginnings of an aid effort:

[Lata] Patil, active with the Indian Community Center in Milpitas [CA], said she also planned on contacting other community members to begin coordinating aid. Others were trying to reach relief organizations such as the Red Cross to help.

White House officials said relief efforts were already under way to help people in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, a string of 1,192 coral atolls off the southwestern coast of India. Other countries would also receive aid as the extent of the disaster becomes clear, officials said. President Bush expressed his condolences Sunday to disaster victims.

“We’re working on ways to help,” said U.S. State Department official Noel Clay. “The United States will be very responsive.”

If you would like to help, a good place to start is to visit the Red Cross Website:

You can help those affected by this crisis and countless others around the world each year by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance, and other support to those in need. Call 1-800-HELP NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the International Response Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.

In addition, here is a link to the website of the Sri Lanka Association of Greater Washington, which is collecting donations. Sri Lanka was reportedly the hardest hit area.

Update: Manish and others inform me of this EXCELLENT blog that has popped up specifically to address this crisis.

Several posts (for ex., here and here) have ignited quite a firestorm of comments and degenerated into Left vs. Right name calling. This being a blog and we being Desi, I suppose it's understandable that eventually, things have gotta get political.

I found this post from Eric Raymond an interesting read for many of our "lefty" commentors (Sluggo/Liberalpundit, Anjali, Desinar, etc.) trying to understand why the "righty" folks (myself, GC, Razib, etc.) react the way we do to so much of the rhetoric -

I’ve been reading a new blog called Left2Right, founded in mid-November 2004 as an attempt by a group of left-wing intellectuals to reach out to intelligent people on the right of the American political spectrum. It is indeed a thought-provoking read, but the thoughts they are provoking are not necessarily of the sort they intend.

...One advantage my libertarianism gives me is that while I disagree violently with a lot of right-wing thinking, I understand it much better than most leftists do. The reverse is not quite as true; while I do believe I understand left-wing thinking pretty well, most right-wing intellectuals are not so ignorant of leftism that I have an unusual advantage there. They can’t be, not after having passed through the PC indoctrination camps that most American universities have become.

What proceeds is a GREAT "Lefties are from Mars, Righties are from Venus" sort of discussion. In this particular case, how the Left often talks past the Right even when they're trying to meaningfully engage them. (the fact that Raymond is writing from a Libertarian perspective is, as usual, major bonus points ;-)

For example, this quoted passage and its response could practically have been lifted verbatim from some of the stuff in our comments -

Double-check any plans to visit coastal cities on the eastern shores of South Asia:

The world’s most powerful earthquake in 40 years rocked northern Indonesia on Sunday and launched tidal waves that swamped villages and seaside resorts across Asia, killing more than 700 people in five countries….

Waves crashed into coastal villages over a wide area of Sri Lanka — some 1,000 miles west of the quake’s epicenter — killing some 300 people and displacing thousands of others, said military spokesman Brig. Daya Ratnayake. Parts of the northeastern districts of Muttur and Trincomalee were inundated by waves as high as 20 feet, said D. Rodrigo, a Muttur district official.

In India, beaches were turned into virtual open mortuaries with bodies of people caught in the tidal wave being washed ashore. At least 150 were recovered around the coastal town of Cuddalore, said deputy Superintendent of police K. Panniselvan. Some 100 others were found around Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu… Thirty-six were killed in neighboring Andhra Pradesh…

Commentator Shahnaz Chinoy Taplin writes in India Currents magazine, about her experiences with hybridized Christmas celebrations after coming to America. As reported by New California Media:

At a conference, “Clash or Consensus,” held in Washington D.C. in 2003 and sponsored by the Global Fund for Women and the Women’s Learning Partnership, I met Zainab Bangura, chair and co-founder of the Movement for Progress, a political party in Sierra Leone. When asked how it was to be a Muslim in her country, she replied: “Muslims and Christians are so integrated through marriage and in other ways that in Sierra Leone we call Christmas Christmus.”

Her comment transported me back to my youth in Bombay where we celebrated “Christmus” in a predominantly Hindu India. My Muslim mother attended a convent school and loved going to mass on Christmas Eve. Our ugly green plastic tree was strung with multicolored, electric fruit bulbs until one year when I conspired with my young and foolish maternal uncle to persuade my young, but slightly wiser, mother to let me light the tree with birthday candles—the “real thing.” Against her protestations, we lit the candles, and in a flash the tree burst into a burning inferno! Doused with buckets of water, the fire was extinguished, and passed lightly into memory.

But could the “Christmus” of her youth survive, after being trasported to America?

But Christmus didn’t always translate well for American-born children. My best-planned but worst-received Christmas was celebrated with our 4-year-old son on a December visit to the Bharatpur bird sanctuary. I was excited about doing an “Indian” Christmas for my bicultural child. From the bazaars of Jaisalmer and Jaipur, 11th-century desert towns in Rajasthan, my husband and I picked up miniature silver figurines for Riaz—a camel, an elephant, a lion, a precious Nandi (Lord Shiva’s bull), and horses in different sizes. I thought these little personable creatures would be perfect gifts on the heels of seeing live tigers and elephants in the wild at the Ranthambore Wildlife Sanctuary. Merrily decorating freshly cut branches and simulating snow with toilet paper after I put Riaz to bed, I had high aspirations for an unforgettable Christmas. Wrong!

For our son, who was used to freshly cut Christmas trees in San Francisco and had grown up with images of Santa coming down the chimney to munch on cookies and milk, this improvised Christmas in Bharatpur paled in comparison. Dissolving into tears, Riaz wailed, “Santa forgot about me, his reindeers couldn’t find Bharatpur …” I tried to reassure him. “How could Santa not find Bharatpur? It is next to the Taj, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.”

I guess nothing is perfect. As for me, I cried whenever I didn’t get Space Legos. At least we should be thankful that we can celebrate however we want. In some places (like at the college across the street from our family home in India), people are looking to ban (often through physical violence) days like Christmas and instead to promote days like “Traditional Day: A day to see how a girl looks in traditional dress.”

From Reuters UK:

Indian police have arrested a man they say kidnapped a two-year-old girl before roasting her on a fire and eating her because he was starving.

The gruesome incident took place in a jungle hamlet in Nellore district in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh about a week ago, a police officer said on Friday, and came to light after the 42-year-old man was later discovered gorging on a buffalo carcass.

“He was caught and handed over to us by villagers who found it strange that he was eating such a large animal with his bare hands with flourish,” the officer told Reuters. The man was arrested on Wednesday.

I really struggled with whether I should post this one or not. Really messed up things happen in the world all the time, but many are just isolated acts committed by truly sick individuals. I only post it because I have long been concerned about the ecological, economical, and social implications of the bush-meat trade in Africa. People wipe out entire species including the great apes (whose cut-up body parts look no different than a human’s) because they are hungry or because they know they can get money for the illegal meat on the black market. Then, last year it was reported that armed militias were actually hunting and eating the Pygmy population in Africa. The Pygmies appealed to the U.N. for protection. Anyways, what I took out of this was the thought that although this was probably a very very isolated incident, the fine line between widespread practices and insanity is a bit blurry at times.

The BBC News asked the public, in an informal poll this week, who the greatest South Asian leader ever, has been. The results surprised me, and the phrase “vote early and often” came to mind.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah 1876-1948
Lawyer and politician who fought for the cause of India’s independence from Britain, then moved on to found a Muslim state in Pakistan in 1947. In Pakistan, Jinnah is revered as Quaid-e-Azam, or ‘Great Leader.’

Up until the very end, Jinnah was a runaway winner. It looks like Gandhi made a late inning push however, when looking at the final 39% to 36% margin of victory. The Hindustan Times picks up the story:

Jinnah has relegated Mahatma to the second spot, emerging as the South Asia’s greatest ever leader in an online poll conducted by the BBC. While Jinnah has polled 39 per cent votes, the ‘Sabarmati’s Sant’ could garner only 36 per cent votes.

While some surfers have raised objections over the inclusion of Zia ul Haq, that Ahmed Shah Masood has also made it to the list of the greats flummoxes one and all.

What is more intriguing is the near-annihilation of almost all the stalwarts - such as Nehru, Chandrika, Jayawardene who failed to gather a single percentage of votes - save Subhash Chandra Bose who polled an alarming 21 per cent of the popular votes.

Well come on. The Bose result should not be surprising at all. We all love our audio speakers. I myself would have voted for the controvercial Mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Masood, but thats mostly because his nickname was “The Lion of the Panjshir.” Someday I would like to be remembered as “The Lion of the Blogosphere.”

Anyways, the bottom line is that web polls are pointless.

It’s not often that one hears of a government which is mandating an animal’s extinction; then again, India is and has always been a nation of exceptions. Her Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has decided that it is last call for the “cocktail lion”, a hybrid composed of Asian and African lion genes. All 300 of the mixed cats remaining in zoos and safari parks will be sterilised and allowed to die out, since Indian laws and traditions forbid killing them.

The authorities say the hybrid lions have weakened the blood pool of India’s lions and have turned out to be mangy, emaciated and suffering from mental and physical defects…Critics say that the breeding programmes across India were largely unsupervised over the years.

The end result has been a large increase in “cocktail” lions that have been interbred and are genetically weak. The hybrid animals bear characteristics of both species, but are low on immunity and prone to disease. Some are reported to be suffering from tuberculosis.

Zookeepers first experimented with “cocktails” by cross-breeding their Asiatic lions with African lions who were travelling the country in circuses. At places like Chhatbir Zoo in the Punjab, almost 100 of the cats were created during an era when no thought was given to genetics or preserving certain bloodlines. Zookeepers were focused on the short-term; they bred as many animals as possible, to improve exhibitions. Unfortunately, their careless efforts created the exact opposite result;

The (Chhatbir) zoo’s once healthy pride of lions is now no more than a motley collection of disease-prone animals barely able to stand up.

According to zookeepers, almost 45 lions have died over the past three years. “We lost 13 cubs in one go,” remembers wildlife warden Neeraj Gupta. Almost all the deaths occurred because the animals suffered from severe immune deficiency which slows down or prevents healing whenever the animals fall sick or are hurt.

…While the zookeepers do their utmost to treat the animals and keep them as comfortable as possible, there is little they can do for those born paralysed or for others whose open wounds refuse to heal.

. .

BBC NEWS: Feeble roar of the hybrid lions

The December 27, 2004 issue of In Touch magazine has a very special picture of our beloved, much-blogged-about-here, erstwhile-Apprentice candidate, Raj Bhakta. Page 53 of the fluffy publication features Raj sans bowtie…hell, sans PANTS in a tribute (?) of sorts to Brad Pitt’s Achilles character in the film “Troy”.

“It’s better than being Pee-Wee Herman,” says Raj of his attire, which he describes as “humbling”. Though he’s gained a reputation as a ladies’ man, Raj isn’t convinced that dressing like a Greed God will improve his chances with the opposite sex. “But,” he says, “the closer you’re associated with Brad Pitt, the better.”

Stick with the unique neckwear and natty red trousers, Raj, PLEASE…for the sake of my crush, I implore you… ;)

Sepia Mutiny: Raj, Raj and more Raj…

PV Narasimha Rao, who served as Prime Minister of India from 1991-1996 after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, had a heart attack two weeks ago; He died today at age 83.

PV Narasimha Rao was the first Indian leader outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to complete a full five-year term.

But his tenure was marred by the destruction of an ancient mosque in the city of Ayodhya by Hindu nationalists in 1992.

The demolition of the mosque led to widespread riots between Hindus and Muslims across India in which several thousand people were killed. Bitter religious divisions exist to this day.

Mr Rao also has the unwelcome distinction of being the first Indian prime minister to be convicted of corruption.

His conviction was later overturned. Rao is also remembered for his economic policies;

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who served as Mr Rao’s finance minister, said he would be remembered as the father of India’s economic reforms.

Mr Singh, an economist, was brought into politics by Mr Rao to tackle a balance of payments crisis.

They are credited with opening up the Indian economy, now one of the world’s fastest growing, after years of socialist controls.

BBC NEWS: Ex-Indian PM Narasimha Rao dies

CNN International: Former India PM Rao dead at 83

The Walt Disney Company launched last week their first two channels in India, hoping to stake a claim to the country’s 100 million children under the age of 10.

The multi-genre Disney channel and the animation-led Toon Disney are being broadcast in three regional Indian languages apart from English.

The channels will target different age-groups at different times.

The two channels will be available in English and Hindi in northern Indian and in Telugu and Tamil in the south.

They join a fast-expanding marketplace for children’s programming in India, which has welcomed three additional channels this year alone.

BBC News: Disney launches India TV channels

Perhaps the only thing more murderous than the commute in Los Angeles may be the daily trek that workers in Gosaba, India have to deal with:

Between 150-200 people from Gosaba have been killed going about their daily work — fishing and cutting wood on the edge of the park or gathering honey deep in the jungle.

The impoverished villagers say they have little choice but to risk their lives in order to eke out an existence in a hostile environment ill-suited to farming.

Every year, 20 to 30 people are carried off by tigers in the Sunderbans, home to 270 of the big cats, according to regional forestry department figures.

Such tragedies have earned Gosaba the unfortunate monicker of “island of widows.”

AFP/Yahoo!: Man-eating tigers wreak havoc on India’s island of widows

the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl having oral sex [NSFW] with her high school boyfriend has sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized children and modern technology. [Chicago Sun Times]

The boy got off (as it were) with a slap on the wrist, despite cries for his blood. Meanwhile, the girl got sent off to Canada, as if enceinte.

Magistrate Santosh Snehi Mann released the boy on bail after his parents put up 25,000 rupees ($570) and surrendered the minor's passport. The judge called his actions a "misadventure". The court ordered the boy, who cannot be named, to undergo a month of counselling and told his parents to supply weekly behavioural reports.

However, police and prosecutors had called for the boy to be kept in juvenile detention. A police petition said: "The act of the boy was obscene, depraved and showed his animal instincts and he should undergo psychiatric treatment and counselling.

The girl involved has reportedly been sent to Canada by her parents. The teenagers were both expelled from their school. [BBC]

Meanwhile, in a charmingly quaint attempt to grab the limelight, Kareena Kapoor is suing a newspaper for having had the audacity to print photographs of her canoodling with co-star Shahid Kapoor in a restaurant.

An Indian Bollywood film star has begun legal proceedings against a tabloid newspaper that published photos of her passionately kissing her co-star. Kareena Kapoor - one of Bollywood's most famous actors - is seeking an unconditional apology from the paper. She and her co-star Shahid Kapoor say the photos were doctored, and were not of them. The poor-quality photographs appeared to suggest that the two stars were kissing intimately in a restaurant.

The BBC's Zubair Ahmed says that the photographs and film clip of the two actors - who are not related - were apparently taken by someone with a video-enabled mobile phone. On Thursday, some news channels ran the entire clip. [BBC]

Previous Posts: The next M. Knight Shyamalan?
Baazee.com CEO arrested over sex clip

BoingBoing directs our attention to David Boyk's sweet Bollywood site, "Bollywood for the Skeptical". It includes 19 classic tracks and a good basic primer about Bollywood for newbies.

My favorite part of the site is David's list of "Words that Show Up a Lot in Bollywood Songs" It's like a Berlitz for Bollywood; once you learn these, you should be able to understand almost anything in a Bollywood song. That assumes, of course, that the song makes sense in the first place. [Thanks to ME-L for the link]

The BBC reports on the world’s smallest baby:

The world’s smallest known surviving baby has made her first public appearance at a US hospital, alongside her slightly larger twin sister. Rumaisa Rahman weighed just 244g (8.6 ounces) when she was born prematurely in Chicago on 19 September - less than a can of soft drink. Rumaisa’s Indian-born parents hope to take her and sister Hiba to their home in the city by early next month.

Continuing with the theme of comparing babies to common consumer goods, we are told that

Rumaisa was about the size of a mobile phone when she was born, 15 weeks before her due date. She still only weighs 1.18kg (2 pounds 10 ounces).

Amazingly enough, the twins can “survive” on their own, even though they were only around 4.3 months into term before they were delivered via C-section:

“They’re maintaining their temperature, they don’t need an incubator…. They’re normal babies,” said Dr William MacMillan at Loyola University Medical Center.

To provide a browner basis for comparison, I estimate this baby’s head was roughly the size (and possibly even the weight) of a gulab jamun when she was born ….

One of the rites of passage for many college-aged desis in North America is the annual conference of the South Asian Students Alliance, more commonly known as SASA. The conference, this year being held in Los Angeles from January 13-16th, seems to be drawing the ire of workers rights’ and other activists concerned with a boycott/strike being endorsed by almost 3,000 hotel workers against nine luxury Los Angeles-area hotels over an ongoing contract dispute with the owners, according to NBC4.tv. Labor groups including the AFL-CIO, The Los Angeles Coalition to Support Hotel Workers and the Los Angeles hotel worker's union UNITE HERE Local 11 are boycotting the hotels located throughout the city, including the official SASA conference hotel, The Wilshire Grand.

The Coalition said 3,000 hotel workers have been without a contract since it expired in March. Workers are demanding increased wages, health care benefits, a contract through 2006 and a national voice to ensure a fair contract. "They don't respect us," said Donald Wilson, banquet chef at the Century Plaza Hotel, one of the other hotels being boycotted. "They say they treat us like family, but when it comes to contract time they treat us like stepchildren." Wilson said he had worked at the Century for 26 years, and until their contract ran out this year employees always had free health care. A $40 monthly co-payment is now required, an amount many employees with families cannot afford.

In all fairness, according to a story in USC Daily Trojan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Hotel Employer Council said a contract currently being offered by the hotels offers free health care along with a 20 percent wage increase over a five-year contract period.

The Hotel Employer Council spokesmen alleges however, that "workers don't want to accept it because it is a five-year contract” and the workers “want a two-year plan so they can join up with other cities for a 2006 national labor action."

Anyway, to promote some kind of action from the South Asian student community, a group, known as the South Asians for Change is calling for the organizers of SASA to either change the location and show solidarity with the workers, or for students to boycott SASA altogether.

As we’ve blogged before, the Indian prime minister’s daughter, Amrit Singh, works for the ACLU in New York and is currently tracking down abuse at Abu Ghraib. Yesterday, her team released an FBI email from May 2004 that says President Bush personally authorized torture at Abu Ghraib:

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.”… The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from “On Scene Commander—Baghdad” to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized…

India just loves to jawbone the U.S. out of a sense of false moral superiority, and it’s completely counterproductive to her own interests. But the Abu Ghraib case is an exception: the disregard for our city on a hill ideal went much higher than the few soldiers scapegoated. I applaud Ms. Singh and, although she’s not an official spokesperson for the Indian government, caution her dad to prepare for the inevitable reprisals.

The Times of India recently profiled Ms. Singh:

Singh, who is the Prime Minister’s third daughter, studied law at Yale and has kept a relatively low profile in the US, seemingly unaffected by her father’s dramatic political ascendancy… His economist friend Jagdish Bhagwati, who teaches at Columbia University, thinks Amrit is as brilliant as her father during his youth.

Lt Prakash's blog has developed QUITE a following in few short weeks it's been published. His writing is fantastic, incisive, and dripping with first person perspective. I & many others are incredibly proud of the caliber of men in our armed forces.

In this recent entry, Prakash learns of a newly planned Hollywood movie chronicling the adventures of the Fallujah takedown in which he participated-

hunglikeastudbull : Fallujah the Movie

prakred6: i hope your kidding

hunglikeastudbull : oh no

hunglikeastudbull : i hear they are going to have Val Kilmer play the part of me

hunglikeastudbull : and the indian guy from Van Wilder play the part of "Red 6"

prakred6: i heard Apu from the Simpsons was playing me

A poll released Friday by Cornell University has some pretty scary results. Almost half of respondents in the national poll feel that some civil liberties of Muslim Americans should be curtailed as a precaution against terrorism. As stated in their press release:

About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.

Conversely, 48 percent of respondents nationally said they do not believe that civil liberties for Muslim Americans should be restricted.

The Media and Society Research Group, in Cornell’s Department of Communication, commissioned the poll, which was supervised by the Survey Research Institute, in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The results were based on 715 completed telephone interviews of respondents across the United States, and the poll has a margin of error of 3.6 percent.

The survey also examined the relation of religiosity to perceptions of Islam and Islamic countries among Christian respondents. Sixty-five percent of self-described highly religious people queried said they view Islam as encouraging violence more than other religions do; in comparison, 42 percent of the respondents who said they were not highly religious saw Islam as encouraging violence. In addition, highly religious respondents also were more likely to describe Islamic countries as violent (64 percent), fanatical (61 percent) and dangerous (64 percent). Fewer of the respondents who said they were not highly religious described Islamic countries as violent (49 percent), fanatical (46 percent) and dangerous (44 percent). But 80 percent of all respondents said they see Islamic countries as being oppressive toward women.

Over the weekend in England, a play about improprieties at a Sikh temple took a violent turn as reported by the AFP and several others:

A black comedy that triggered a weekend mini-riot because of its references to rape in a fictional Sikh temple has been cancelled, the playhouse in the English Midlands that was staging the play said.

The Birmingham Repertory Theatre said that, after consultations with police and Sikh community representatives, it was lowering the curtain on further performances of “Behzti” (Dishonour).

The piece, by Sikh actress turned playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, had sold out its entire run, but it upset Sikhs enough to prompt a series of peaceful demonstrations which turned violent on Saturday.

Three men were arrested, five police officers hurt, and the audience of some 600 evacuated in the melee, in which up to 400 protesters stormed the Rep, damaged doors, set off fire alarms and damaged backstage equipment.

The violence was apparently due to the same type of sanctimonious logic that we see displayed in so many other religious traditions.

…Sewa Singh Mandha, chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham, said “Behzti” offends on the grounds of falsehood.

“In a Sikh temple, sexual abuse does not take place, kissing and dancing don’t take place, rape doesn’t take place, homosexual activity doesn’t take place, murders do not take place,” he told BBC radio.

“I am bringing to the attention of the management of the theatre the sensitive nature of the play, because by going into the public domain it will cause deep hurt to the Sikh community.”

The Baazee.com CEO, Avnish Bajaj, was arrested yesterday by the Delhi police due to the sale of the infamous mobile phone sex clip via his auction site. Baazee.com was recently acquired by eBay. Bajaj, a U.S. citizen and Harvard MBA in his early 30s, languished in a Delhi jail last night because of a tortured Indian theory of vicarious liability. It’s as if eBay CEO Meg Whitman were thrown in jail due to the sale of off-color items on eBay. The legal analogies in this case are phone companies and ISPs, where the high volume of traffic precludes censorship, rather than a common criminal case. The guy who should actually be in jail is the student who filmed and distributed the clip without his girlfriend’s consent. The Delhi court’s actions reek of opportunism to me— to take a stand on a high-profile case in a sexually repressed society. It’s all high-volume throat clearing.

Disclaimer: Bajaj is a friend of a friend.

Update: Bajaj was denied bail and remains in jail. Condoleezza Rice has asked the Indian government to guarantee him a fair trial:

The arrest of the Baazee CEO, who has been based in Mumbai for the past four-and-a-half years, has perplexed many in the Indian establishment as Bajaj has responded to summons to help the investigators probing the case. “He, as well as Baazee.com, had been cooperating in the investigations. The arrest has come totally out of the blue…”

Yesterday, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay… called up from the US to reassure Baazee staff… Bajaj’s counsel Dinesh Mathur pleaded that his client had at no point attempted to evade the police. Moreover, with the site having more than 75 lakh listings, it was impossible to scan each and every item being traded.

Mathur said the video clip… was taken off the site after it was brought to the notice of Baazee officials that it was violating a user agreement… The magistrate, however, said the user agreement did not stand as it was not “signed” and was just a photocopy of a document.

The bullshit continues to fly.

Update 2: The Gray Lady finally cobbles together wire reports four days later.

The NYT says many Caribbean desis, who originally came to Trinidad, Tobago and Guyana to work on sugar plantations, don’t feel accepted by South Asians in the U.S.:

“They believe our grandparents quit India, so we are like strangers to them…” Mr. Pooran knows Indians, he said, who always speak to him with the expression, “You Guyanese people.” “When I speak I say, ‘We Indians,’ ” he said… Marriages with Indian immigrants from India, though not unheard of, are far less common…

Some Guyanese talk with hurt about not quite being accepted as Indian. Mr. Budhai recalled how in 1978, his wife, Serojini, won an Indian beauty pageant but was never awarded the top prize, a trip to India, after the organizers learned she was Guyanese.

They do feel some bonhomie…

When she walks into a classroom, the first people she notices are those of Indian descent, whether from India or Guyana. “We call it the Indian Connection,” she said. “I glance over at them and they glance over at me, and we exchange a smile.”… When a Sikh spiritual leader was pummeled into unconsciousness in July by a group of people who ridiculed his turban, Guyanese joined in the protests.

… despite the cultural differences:

Guyanese music, while Indian influenced, is marked by a faster West Indian style that has come to be known as chutney soca… Guyanese names are distinguishing, with common Indian first names serving as their last names because of how British planters addressed them… their English [has] a singsong lilt and Creole dialect. Guyanese curries are less spicy, and a shop that serves the flat roti bread with various stews is a distinctly Caribbean conception.

Describing what is sure to be a highly controversial idea, Science Magazine [paid or institutional access required] publishes an article about a group of scientists who are calling into question whether the Indus script is really even a script, in the traditional sense. Because of the fact that this article will not be accessible by most, I will liberally quote for the benefit of SM readers.

For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing

Academic prizes typically are designed to confer prestige. But the latest proposed award, a $10,000 check for finding a lengthy inscription from the ancient Indus civilization, is intended to goad rather than honor. The controversial scholar who announced the prize last month cheekily predicts that he will never have to pay up. Going against a century of scholarship, he and a growing number of linguists and archaeologists assert that the Indus people—unlike their Egyptian and Mesopotamian contemporaries 4000 years ago—could not write.

That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today’s Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan—the largest civilization of its day.

The Indus civilization has intrigued and puzzled researchers for more than 130 years, with their sophisticated sewers, huge numbers of wells, and a notable lack of monumental architecture or other signs of an elite class (see sidebar on p. 2027). Most intriguing of all is the mysterious system of symbols, left on small tablets, pots, and stamp seals. But without translations into a known script—the “Rosetta stones” that led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in the 19th century—hundreds of attempts to understand the symbols have so far failed. And what language the system might have expressed—such as a Dravidian language similar to tongues of today’s southern India, or a Vedic language of northern India—is also a hot topic. This is no dry discussion: Powerful Indian nationalists of the Hindutva movement see the Indus civilization as the direct ancestor to Hindu tradition and Vedic culture.

Of course as the year draws to a close, we are all bound to be pummelled with numerous top whatever lists. USATODAY, in one of the first lists, has created its own for the top 100 people of 2004. At 78, is none other than Kal Penn. From the lists profile.

Even if it weren't for Neil Patrick Harris' cameo, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle still would've been a good movie. If you don't believe me, some further proof: Penn, aka Kumar, has no fewer than five movies coming out in '05.

Also listed, and a significant amount higher I might add, is one of the stars of ABC's silent success, Lost. From USATODAYs commentary...

I don't have a problem with all these articles about Evangeline Lilly being the breakout star of Lost— I just kindly disagree. I find Andrews, who plays tortured and complex Sayid, by far the most compelling character. Let's hope he makes out of this season alive.

Here is a link to a post I did on lost back in August, and here is one and another from SM.

I wanted to point out that we here at Sepia Mutiny, have a long and rich tradition of not simply bringing to you daily gossip and rumors, and of stirring up trouble, but of also bringing you a little South Asian history from time to time. We’d secretly like to stay respectable so that you aren’t ashamed to talk about us around the water cooler, and can use us to impress that cute girl or guy you are into, with your newfound knowledge. Thus I point you to an enlightening story about St. Francis Xavier in Time Magazine’s Asia edition. This month an estimated 2 million people will shuffle past Xavier’s tomb in the state of Goa to pay their respects. That is a pilgrimage that is second only to the Haj in numbers. These bunch of pious peripatetics may cramp the style of those, who like many of our friends, are going to Goa this New Year’s Eve to party.
So what did Xavier first think of the Goan’s?

A great number of them were adventurers of all sorts who left behind them in Europe even the semblance of outward morality [and] who had become utterly corrupted by temptations [and] vices. [They] made no pretense of desisting from their most abominable practices [and] led the most licentious lives.
—Henry James Coleridge,
The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier

Wow. Almost 500 years later that still seems to be an accurate description of some of our friends that are going to Goa. Xavier it seems, was loved by many yet his behavior might definitely be called abhorrent in many ways today. Such is usually the case with religious figures.

The Los Angeles Times [registration required] publishes and in-depth article on census data released Wednesday, about the Asian American community. The full 24 page report can be found at the Census Bureau’s website and is titled, “We the People: Asians in the United States.”

From the LA times article:

Indian Americans have surged forward as the most successful Asian minority in the United States, reporting top levels of income, education, professional job status and English-language ability, even though three-fourths were foreign-born, according to U.S. census data released Wednesday.

The striking success of Asian Americans who trace their heritage to India contrasted with data showing struggles among Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong immigrants. Those three groups reported continued significant poverty rates, low job skills and limited English-language ability since their flight from war and political turmoil.

The report, “We the People: Asians in the United States,” was based on 2000 census data and underscored the enormous socioeconomic diversity among the nation’s 10 million Asian Americans, more than one third of whom live in California, the state with their largest population.

The recent Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal, was based on the true story of Merhan Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian trapped in limbo at Charles de Gaulle airport. Simplify the story considerably (see the link above to snopes.com) and voila -- a Hollywood movie!

Now, there's a "Brown Terminal" story, about a Kenyan born British desi who is stuck at a Kenyan airport, having been deported from the UK. Any bets on how quickly Bollywood will bogart and bowdlerize his story? Any bets on what it will look like when it's done?

Here's the sitch:

A Kenyan-born British man has spent six months in Kenya's international airport after being refused entry to the UK. Sanjai Shah has spent his time sleeping and wandering about in the transit lounge on the outskirts of the capital. He told the BBC he wants the British High Commission in Nairobi to send someone to the airport to sort it out.

He told the BBC's Muliro Telewa: "Life is very hard. You can sleep in the transit lounge, or wherever there is space. People are nice, they give me food. Others give me money. "I miss my wife and kids and they miss me. But if you want something, you must be ready to lose something."

The High Commission says Mr Shah had no automatic right to live and settle in the UK despite giving up his Kenyan passport after being awarded a British Overseas Citizen passport. His passport allows him entry into the UK but he was supposed to have a return ticket and sufficient funds to support his visit. Immigration officials suspected he planned to stay in the UK so refused him entry and flew him back. He said that he offered to buy a return ticket but was sent back, with a "prohibited immigrant" stamp in his passport, making it hard for him to travel to many countries.

"This is not our problem, it is London's," a Kenyan immigration official told AFP news agency. "We have repeatedly told Shah to come to our offices for us to discuss his case and advise him on how to achieve his objectives, but he has refused and opted to stay at the airport," British High Commission spokesman Mark Norton said.

Aspiring screenwriters, start your engines!

BBC: Man 'living' in airport terminal
BBC: Life in the lounge
Snopes.com: Stranded at the Airport

The Boston Globe and several others report on researcher’s findings that many herbal pills and powders sold in Indian stores in the U.S. are dangerously high in heavy metals.

The scientists, first alerted to the danger by reports of patients suffering seizures after taking herbs, discovered that one in five of the imported products they bought in local shops had levels of heavy metals sometimes hundreds of times higher than the daily amount considered safe for oral consumption. The same products are sold nationwide.

The herbal pills, powders, and liquids are a cornerstone in the practice of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient holistic system of health that originated in India and that emphasizes the mind-body connection. It relies on herbs and oils to treat illness and prevent disease. An estimated 80 percent of India’s 1 billion adults and children use the remedies as a routine part of health care.

The herbs are not regulated in India, and in this country, unlike prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicines, the imported products can be sold without rigorous scientific testing, subject only to the same standards that apply to food.

For all the post-colonial angst Brown folks have about the period of English Occupation, you do have to admit that the times created some fascinating history. Between the Thugees, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Gurkhas, and the Battle of Sargarhi, Victorian India created tales that rivalled practically any classical saga in adventure & intrigue.

Via the blogosphere, I came across the absolutely riveting story of the American who may have been the real life inspiration for Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King -- the History News Network reports on the saga of Josiah Harlan-

Josiah Harlan served as the basis of Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “The Man Who Would Be King,” written in 1888 while Kipling was a journalist for the Allahabad Pioneer newspaper. The real-life Josiah Harlan was born in 1799 into a Quaker family from Pennsylvania. As an adolescent, Harland read works in botany and medicine, but above all Greek and Roman history, having taught himself Latin and Greek. He became inordinately interested in the life and adventures of Alexander the Great, after whom he would no doubt later fashion his own adventures.

...In 1822 Harlan sailed for Calcutta on a merchant ship.

...[In 1826] Josiah succeeded in gaining a meeting with al-Moolk [the deposed king of Afghanistan residing in Punjab], during which he offered to travel to Kabul and link up with Shah Shujah’s allies in an effort to organize a rebellion against Dost Mohammed Khan, the prince who had stolen his crown.

...Harlan left Ludhiana with a rag-tag army comprised of mercenaries and headed for Kabul. Along the way, he passed himself off as a religious mystic, a wealthy adventurer, and as a doctor, even treating the locals he encountered with a variety of ills. In 1828 Harlan reached Kabul and sent a message to Dost Mohammed Khan requesting a meeting, as news of a “feringhee” or foreigner having entered Kabul circulated throughout the city. Harlan wrote in his memoir that he found Dost Mohammed to be as intelligent and sophisticated as any Western ruler.

But how did he ascend the NW Indian political ladder? A drunk Punjabi raj & an interim step as the Governor of Gujrat had something to do with it. The IHT continues the story -

Women’s sports in India are finding their toughest match taking place off-the-field and against an opponent that isn’t easily defeated — Helios, son of Hyperion and Theia (a.k.a. the sun).

The AFP reports that the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team says that the advancement of female sports is severely hindered by cultural aversion to dark-skinned brides.

“Most of the Indian men want to have a bride with a fair skin,” said captain Mamta Maben to the AFP. “Because of Indian men’s concept of beauty, so many talented players do not take up cricket because it is a gruelling sport and you are out in the sun for at least seven to eight hours.”

The much-maligned sun, which has been linked to everything from famine to skin cancer, replied with its usual foul-mouthed irreverence.

“I couldn‘t give a flying f**k about them Indian cricket b***hes. That’s right, I called them b***hes,” said the sun. “And once you puny humans destroy the ozone layer, you will all become my b***hes.”

What a jerk. Luckily, its comeuppance are in the works. Scientists expect the hot-tempered sun to burn out in 4-5 billion years. Then we’ll see who’s the b***h.

AFP/Yahoo!: Male desire for fair-skinned brides stumps women’s cricket in India
NASA: What keeps the sun burning?

Rediff.com is reporting that Abhishek Bachchan has officially bowed out of Mira Nair's upcoming film effort translating Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake onto celluloid. Bachchan, who was slated to play the lead in the film, may now be replaced by Kal Penn, whom the BBC has reported "will play an important character." The film is also slated to include Nair's New York gang--Gabriel Byrne, Natalie Portman, Chloe Sevigny, and Steve Buscemi, among others, according to the BBC story.

This film, if done well, has the potential to place Nair in the top tier of directors, and also will hopefully go quite far in presenting certain aspects of desi-American culture to mainstream America.

The story also notes that Nair has turned down the offer to direct the next Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Wow, I guess when it rains it pours. From Worldscreen.com:

MTV Networks today announced the launch of MTV World, initially consisting of three new channels in the U.S. targeting Indian-American, Chinese-American and Korean-American viewers.

The channels will feature content from MTV’s own international networks, plus original programming, promos and packaging created in the U.S. “We live in an increasingly diverse and multicultural country, where conversations at the dinner table and in the living room are more and more taking place in Chinese, Hindi, Urdu and Korean,” said MTV Networks’ chairman and CEO, Judy McGrath. “Launching these new channels is the next logical and tremendously exciting step for MTV Networks, delivering customized programming that reflects the bi-cultural identities of these audiences, not to mention providing another platform for all the great talent from these communities.”

Okay. Maybe a Sepia Mutiny blog show isn’t respectable enough to get on American Desi TV, but surely MTV will take us? I can’t wait to make an appearance on TRL with all those girls scream… Okay back to reality.

The first to launch will be MTV Desi, targeting Indian Americans. MTV China and MTV Korea will launch in 2005, with additional channels to follow. Tapped to oversee these new networks is Nusrat Durrani, as general manager and senior VP of MTV World.

Several news services carry a press release announcing the creation of a new 24-hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America:

American Desi, the first and only 24- hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America, today announced the appointment of senior management, advisors and on-air talent who among them represent over 125 years of relevant experience at such media companies as ABC, NBC, ESPN, FOX, PAX-TV and major corporations, including American Express, among others.

The new network’s senior management will lead a team of executives, producers, directors, writers, on-air talent and production personnel who have received many of the U.S. television industry’s top honors — including more than ten Emmy Awards.

Well its about damn time. What can we expect in terms of content? It looks like they are putting together a great team:

American Desi today also unveiled several featured on-air talent appointees, including Divya Ohri, Vice President of Production and Sree Sreenivasan, WABC-TV reporter and South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) co-founder. Ms. Ohri becomes American Desi’s Senior Vice President and host of “American Desi: Prime Time Live,” the flagship show of the network; “Bollywood Fix;” and co-host of “Points of View.” For his part, Mr. Sreenivasan is executive producing and hosting American Desi’s new “Live Wire; The Pulse; The Voice” in-depth affairs programming. “We are extremely proud of the unprecedented and unparalleled team we have assembled both behind and in front of the camera. Never before has such a senior assemblage of Western and South Asian executives and on-air talent been assembled to launch a comprehensive media venture for the Desi community,” said Mr. Verma.

Oh, come on. Everyone knows Hillary is going to run in ‘08. It’s inevitable. She is busy putting together her crack team (ostensibly for her ‘06 Senate Run), which includes Neera Tanden of NY. From the Hindustan Times:

Senator Hillary Clinton has chosen an Indian American and several other long-time advisers as part of her inner team to gear up for her 2006 re-election bid.

Neera Tanden, who joined the Democrat from New York last year as her legislative director, worked in former President Bill Clinton’s White House and with Hillary Clinton in various capacities for many years.

…Tanden, who was born and brought up in the US, is a law graduate. She worked as Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. She focused on healthcare, education and juvenile crime for then first lady Hillary Clinton. Even before that, she worked on the Clinton-Al Gore campaign in California in 1992 and 1996.

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School, Tanden was on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as deputy campaign manager in her run for Congress in 2001.

So what kind of team is Clinton putting together?

Roll Call magazine called Clinton’s team “a small, ethnically diverse stable of advisers dominated by women,” which is supposed to help “chart her political course over the next four years.”

Lt. Neil Prakash tells us how the military makes coffee:

Mr. Abrams the coffee maker… slip the lid into the back grill of the exhaust. Then set your canteen cup for about 2 minutes. Let the 900 degree exhaust of your jet engine heat that puppy up and BAM - hot water for shaving, Ramen noodles, coffee…

There’s a certain combination of brute force and delicacy here that I find very appealing :)

Indian classical singer Madurai Shanmugavadivu “M.S.” Subbulakshmi died late Saturday in Chennai at the age of 88 (via Sreenath Sreenivasan).

From Rediff:

“The vocalist died peacefully in her sleep,” Dr. C.V. Krishnaswamy, who treated her at the St. Isabel hospital, told PTI.

The musician was admitted to the hospital on December 2 following a bout of viral infection, which later developed into broncho pneumonia.

Her condition worsened on Friday night and she lapsed into a coma as she developed cardiac irregularities. The end came at 23:45 IST.

She was also a chronic diabetic for nearly four decades.

Born as Kunjamma in the temple city of Madurai on September 16, 1916, Subbulakshmi made her debut as a singer at the age of eight and went on to perform in concerts, a domain traditionally reserved for males.

The vocalist immortalized many songs, including “Vaishnava Janatho,” a favorite of Mahatma Gandhi, Meera bhajans, Annamacharya kirthans and the like.

Rediff: M.S. Subbulakshmi passes away
SAJA: Coverage of Indian singer M.S. Subbulakshmi

Hotelier-turned-actor Vikram Chatwal announced on Thursday his engagement to long-rumored girlfriend Priya Sachdev.

Chatwal was in India to promote his film “One Dollar Curry” at a film festival in Goa. During a visit to Bombay, he asked Sachdev to accompany him to a gurudwara. She describes the rest to The Indian Express:

In true filmi style, after they both did the matha tek, he slipped a 10-carat diamond ring on her finger. “He said, ‘This is an engagement ring. Do you accept?’” says Sachdev. “I was stunned. We couldn’t even hug in the temple. But we called his family and then called mine and everyone was very surprised.”

Delhi-based Sachdev, a former New Yorker, currently splits time between modeling and working on her new television show — an “Entertainment Tonight”-like rundown of films, celebrities and gossip. Like Chatwal, she has big-screen aspirations:

Bollywood offers have already poured in for this Bharatnatyam and Kathak dancer, but most of them have involved playing the third angle in a love triangle. “I don’t want to start as the other woman,” says Sachdev. Apparently, certain producers have also offered striptease roles claiming that she could be the next Bipasha Basu of “Jism.”

The pair have not set a wedding date, but agree that “Jism” is the greatest movie title ever.

The Indian Express: Heroine addict
Endless Sepia Mutiny coverage: On the trail of Vikram Chatwal..., Win a date with...Vikram Chatwal?, One more dream for Chatwal, and Vikram Chatwal...actor?

A daily part of too many of our late twenty-something, early thirty-something lives seems to revolve around the question of finding someone, simply to get our parents off our backs. 37 year old Priti Chowdhury, who is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Chicagoland, decided to finance and film a semi-documentary about her search for Mr. Right titled, Finding Preet. From the Philadelphia Inquirer [free registration required]:

At first glance, the dilemma sounds familiar: A successful woman in her late 30s isn’t married, and her well-meaning but old-fashioned mother and father nag her to find a husband.

But two things set this story apart.

The victim in question, Priti Chowdhury, 37, a pediatric anesthesiologist named one of Chicago’s most eligible women, spent a quarter of a million dollars to make a movie about her misadventures in love and dating. (And instead of objecting, her proud South Jersey parents are in it.)

I can already imagine dozens of my female friends looking for advanced tickets to this movie. Hell, with that many girls going, I may as well go too :)

About a year ago, a friend asked me if I could spare a couple hours to talk with her film director friend as well as a lead actress who needed to conduct some basic background research on a film about the 1984 riots against the Sikhs in India that they were working on. They wanted mostly for us to give them our impressions upon returning to India after a long absence. In my case I talked about living in Delhi and doing volunteer work there and how my perceptions of India had changed between the 14 years that passed between the time I visited as a child and when I returned as an adult. The other person she interviewed happened to have been Sikh, and was a small child in Delhi at the time of the Riots. His recollections were perfect for the type of research they needed. It seems that the director, Shonali Bose, is set to release her film next month. From the AFP:

US-based Shonali Bose is set to release a film next month depicting anti-Sikh riots that hit India following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, after accepting cuts demanded by Indian censors.

She told AFP that “Amu”, based on her novel of the same name has been shot in English and cleared for release in India by the Central Board of Film Certification.

“Amu” tells the story of an orphan named Kaju [Actress Konkona Sen Sharma], adopted and brought up in Los Angeles by American parents, who returns to India to discover her roots and finds that her real parents were killed during the anti-Sikh riots.

As Manish recently noted, three Indian-Americans were awarded the Rhodes Scholarship this year. One of them is Ian Desai of the University of Chicago. Ian plans to use his time to make a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata. From The Tribune of India:

A New Yorker, Desai graduated this year with a degree in ancient studies. In 2001, he tried to retrace the mythic journey of Jason and the Argonauts through Greece, Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

He traveled by bus, motor cycle, car and on foot. To get around, he used a little Greek, broken Turkish and the kindness of strangers. He even negotiated with Turkish fishermen to spend 10 days on their trawler.

At one point he and Michael Newton, a photographer who chronicled the trip, were warned by a Georgian train conductor that they were in bandit country.

“We’re very proud of him,” said Susan Art, Dean of Students of the University of Chicago’s undergraduate college. “Ian is a remarkable individual who has contributed so much to the university. I think his success does justice to the quality of the education we offer,” Art added. Desai hopes to build upon his undergraduate research that has explored a rarely undertaken subject: a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata.

Now to me, mythology-geek that I am, this sounds like a fascinating study. I Googled the terms “Mahabharata and Illiad” to see what came up and this review of the Mahabharata which draws parallels to the Illiad was one of the first. I suppose all Myth is to a great deal interrelated. Joesph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces does a good job of exploring that hypothesis. In any case I hope to hear more about this in a few years when he finishes.

Thanks to “offensive” timing (and who knows why else), it’s a tragedy, not a reality show.

At least two people have been killed and 18 others injured in an explosion at a concert by an Indian Bollywood star in Colombo.

Police said a hand-grenade ripped through the front stands as Shahrukh Khan ended his performance on Saturday.

The grenade exploded in the audience’s VIP section, killing a woman and a child. Also injured? 18 show attendees, six of them critically. All of the affected were Sri Lankan.

The show, called Temptation 2004 and featuring a host of Indian film stars, was billed as Sri Lanka’s biggest musical event of the year, with 10,000 people reported to have attended.

Buddhist monks had planned a peaceful protest during the performance, but they called it off after receiving a written apology from Mr Khan about the bad timing of the concert.

Left out in the cold by the greeting card companies’ standard fare? The rambunctious ragamuffins at Badmash have a new set of seasons greetings that are sure to keep you and yours warm with laughter:

      

Badmash: Holiday cards

Why is it that every time I write about some unfortunate Indian American family they happen to be Sikh? Just bad luck? The latest is the case of the Anands from Concord, California whose house was burned down in early September, allegedly by arson. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Concord police have recommended that a laborer who was working at the home next door be charged with arson and burglary in connection with the fire. The district attorney expects to make a decision within the next week or so. To support the family, a candlelit vigil was held recently at the family’s burnt-out home that brought together about 150 South Asians, neighbors, civil rights groups, and supporters from many different backgrounds who urged the district attorney to prosecute the suspect.

The Anands are thankful to the many people who have donated clothes, food, and even architectural services. Now, they are struggling to rebuild their lives.

“I can hardly sleep. I’m worried all the time what is going to happen to this family,” said father Gurcharanjeet “Don” Anand, 54. The delivery truck driver is on disability following a car accident and heart bypass surgery late last year. Thickset, with a graying beard, he is a laconic man.

But once again the question that is difficult to answer is whether or not this was a Hate Crime. The Anands suspect it MAY have been by some comments the alleged arsonist had made in prior dealings with the family.

Over three days, a man working at the house next door asked the Anands for water, and to borrow the phone. They obliged, and Minnie Anand even fixed him a plate of spaghetti when he said he was hungry. But each time, he made increasingly disturbing comments, according to the family’s pro-bono lawyer, Edwin Prather.

What made your people come here? You Indians have a lot of money. Do you own your house? You have beautiful daughters.

Sunday afternoon, the Anands turned the man away when he asked to use the phone. He left, angry. The Anands and their five children left for temple — where the bad news came that night.

Weekly news magazine 60 Minutes will broadcast a first-of-its-kind interview with Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai, according to a press release published today on her web site.

The interview comes about a month before the long-awaited release of Gurinder Chadha’s “Bride and Prejudice,” which features Rai as a co-star. The 31-year-old actress won the Miss World crown in 1994, and has since appeared in 30 Bollywood films.

“Ash’s popularity is global and America will soon get a taste of this international phenomenon,” said her manager Simone Sheffield.

The interview was conducted in Bombay by reporter Bob Simon, and produced by Neeraj Khemlani.

“This will mark the first time in the history of 60 Minutes where they feature an in-depth one-on-one profile with a Bollywood star,” said Khemlani.

The interview airs on January 2, 2005 at 7 p.m. on CBS.

Sepia Mutiny: The Windfall that Bhopal never got

Donald Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” featured the second coming of deposed contestant Raj Bhakta last Thursday, and will include the 28-year-old real estate developer in the season finale.

In last week’s episode, Trump whittled his applicant pool down to the final two -- software executive Kelly Perdew and lawyer Jennifer Massey. The finalists then were asked to assemble a team of employees comprised of fired cohorts. Each team is assigned the task of putting together a sports fundraiser for a charitable foundation. Raj was chosen by software executive Kelly, who is responsible for organizing a polo tournament.

“I’m doing this because I like winning,” said Raj during the episode. “I couldn’t give a damn about Kelly.”

The three-hour season finale airs this Thursday at 8 p.m. on NBC, and should include some great Raj moments. Oddsmakers place Kelly as the early favorite. Why? Three words: Raj Muthaf----n’ Bhakta.

Sepia Mutiny: Life after being “Fired”

Reigning Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins made her first-ever trip to India last week, and expressed to Sify News an eagerness to “to touch and feel” the country.

What has so captivated the 20-year-old Australian? A report in The Daily Telegraph allows us to rule out India’s rich historical heritage:

This week, (Hawkins) flashed her winning smile and laughed when she was asked whether she would be visiting the Taj Mahal.

“The Taj what?” she replied.

“The Taj Mahal, India’s most famous tourist spot, the monument of love, in Agra,” she was told.

“Oh, really?”

To be fair, perhaps Hawkins is a preoccupied academic who is more impressed by cultural observations than crowded tourist destinations:

“I love the way Indian girls dress up. I’m fascinated by different cultures and clothings here,” she said. “I have a video camera and I have captured people around the streets. Like one man I saw shaving on a footpath.”

The Daily Telegraph: Jen’s in Taj with culture
Sify News: I want to touch and feel India: Miss Universe

The New York Times book review placed V.S. Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds,” and Hari Kunzru’s “Transmission” on its list of the year’s 100 best books.

Nobel prize-winning Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds” is a sequel to “Half a Life,” and finds its protagonist making an eyebrow-raising return to India. Hari Kunzru’s “Transmission” is the author’s second book, and follows the travails of a desperate Indian programmer who unleashes a destructive computer virus.

Neither novel advanced to the paper’s top 10, which will be published in tomorrow’s edition.

The New York Times: 100 notable books of the year (free registration required)
Sepia Mutiny: NYT reviews Naipaul’s “Magic Seeds”

(Thanks to Deepa for alerting us via the Tip Line!)

Back in college, a single guy friend had a taxonomy of the type of women attracted by the different bands of the political spectrum.

He argued that the average attractive & approachable gal on campus was a soft lefty. She'd advocate things like national healthcare out of a semi-fashionable, prima facie concern for her fellow human beings. Of course, she felt this concern naturally extended into politics & was blind to the economic logic.

Angry, granola gals oppressed by the patriarchy often filled out the far left, weren't exactly the most dateable & he avoided them like the plague. Being famously politically incorrect, he'd remark that these gals were "either angry cuz men always treated them like sexual objects or angry cuz men never treated them like sexual objects." I'll reserve my comments.

By contrast, the few & far between campus Right Wing gals tended to be a tad too country club / prep school for our tastes.

But Libertarian activists? Well unfortunately, a libertarian rally is possibly the only gathering that scares gals off faster than a Star Trek convention. As a self-described libertarian, 'twas a pity.

BUT, enter the first, and possibly the most attractive Desi libertarian female activist I've seen in a long time. Govindini Murty was recently profiled in the Washington Post for hosting a Conservative / Libertarian film festival in the People's Republic of Hollywood -

The festival was organized by a husband-wife duo of young filmmakers, Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty, and underwritten by the Foundation for Free Markets, which likes privatizing Social Security, cutting taxes and issuing school vouchers.

...Murty, an aspiring actress, says the impetus was, in part, the cool reception she and her husband have received in Hollywood for their own screenplays and their film "Terminal Island," which premiered at the festival.

Forbes magazine released its inaugural list of India’s 40 wealthiest businessmen, with half of the entrants hailing from the nation’s burgeoning technology and pharmaceutical sectors.

Topping the list with $11.2 billion is London-based steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who holds 88% of Mittal Steel. The company will become the world’s largest manufacturer of steel following their acquisition of rival International Steel.

Other facts of note:

• Nineteen created their fortunes from scratch
• Eleven made their money in technology
• Nine made their fortunes in pharmaceuticals
• Forty percent live in Bombay
• Two Patels made the list, which means I will spend this weekend digging through the family tree.

Forbes: India’s 40 richest

The Washington Post has an encouraging story (Thanks, Deepa) about female mechanics in India that are successfully overcoming caste and gender restrictions:

In taking on such an important role, the female mechanics have challenged feudal notions of gender roles in village society, after centuries of prejudice and discrimination by members of upper castes.

“For a long time people taunted us when we arrived with our tools,” Kabirdas said. “They shooed us away. The upper castes would say, ‘You untouchable women, stay away from our hand pump. What do you know other than making bread and collecting cow dung?’”

But when the women began repairing the broken pumps promptly, they carved themselves an important niche in the hierarchy of the water-scarce village.

The Washington Post: Low-caste Indians carve a niche (free registration required)

Apparently, starring in XXX flicks in India can land you in a heap o’ trouble:

Nov 4: A local beauty queen was on Thursday arrested and five others booked for being allegedly involved in flesh trade and production of pornographic CDs in Jammu, police said.

The city police registered an FIR against six persons, including Miss Jammu Anara Gupta and five others for offences under the cinematography, immoral trafficking and information technology acts, they said.

Like in America, notoriety can bring opportunity:

Former Miss Jammu Anara Gupta, currently at the centre of a pornography scam uncovered by the Jammu and Kashmir police, is being wooed by Bollywood producers to appear in their films.

Anara, who was crowned Miss Jammu in 2001, had dreams about making it big in the Hindi film industry. But the 18-year-old’s world came crashing down after police arrested her for appearing in pornographic films that she says she was forced into doing…

State Times, one of Jammu’s leading newspapers, carried a front-page story saying Anara was being flooded with requests to appear in films.

SM reader Janani rightly calls out some jerk who works at Star 98.7 in Los Angeles, via blog:

To Whom it May Concern:

I am a 2nd-generation East Indian American, and two nights ago, around 8-9 PM, I heard your nighttime deejay do a skit with a man pretending to be from India, named “Swami.”

…having your AMERICAN actor pretend (terribly, i might add) to be a man from India, complete with an exaggerated accent and a bumbling personality, turns the Asian immigrant into someone who should be LAUGHED AT. This is a sentiment that I would have expected 20 years ago - in fact, these are the same jokes I heard as a child on the school playground - but not now, when the Indian population has worked hard to earn a legitimate place in America’s ALLEGEDLY multicultural society. And FYI - Swami isn’t actually a name, but a title given to Indian spiritual leaders. So thanks for debasing Indian spirituality at the same time.

I don’t really expect anyone to read this, and if you do, I don’t know if you’ll understand my disgust or take the time to respond. But as someone actually invested in the idea of the United States as a land of opportunity for EVERYONE, I was severely disappointed that even in this small skit, your station revealed that society’s acceptance of all creeds, races, colors is often merely a facade. A parting shot of advice: if you can’t treat a culture or ethnicity with some degree of sensitivity, keep your mouths shut. We’ll all appreciate that much more.

So I went to Star 98.7’s site, and I was charmed by their openness to feedback:

If you have comments or suggestions we’d like to hear them…. so drop us a snail mail or email to share your thoughts with us.

BUSINESS LINE 818-559-2252

starprogramming@ClearChannel.com

Also, one of their main advertisers is Sona Med Spas & Laser Centers…which is run by one Dr. H. Shah. Interesting. If I were Dr. Shah, I’d be making a phone call…

Twelve years ago Indian immigrant Terwinder Singh entered the U.S. without proper documents for an arranged marriage. Since then Singh has worked at Kohl’s Department Store, bought a home, paid taxes, bought a business, and had children in this country. On Nov. 4th Singh flagged down an officer when she had a flat tire. The police then took her to jail and have held her ever since. From NRI-worldwide.com:

Thirty-one-year-old Terwinder Singh, who had entered the United States without proper documents 12 years ago for an arranged marriage, is reportedly being treated like a fugitive by the US authorities. When Terwinder, a mother of two from Wisconsin, appealed for help after she got a flat tyre, police started checking her records as part of routine. They discovered that immigration officials had wanted her detained more than five years ago. Her appeal against the order has been hanging fire since 1998. She had been served an order to depart voluntarily, at her own expense, by March 2002. Why Terwinder ignored the order isn’t clear, but that made matters worse. Her husband, Ram Singh, claims they were unaware that her appeal had been denied or that a final order had been served to report with bags packed for deportation.

This can’t be the best way to deal with this situation. Surely she can appeal to her congressman for some understanding? As fate would have it her congressman is none other than James Sen­sen­bren­ner, the same congressman who held up the 9/11 bill in congress because he wanted tougher immigration provisions thrown in. Is he willing to help? From the Sussex Sun:

Wisdom, a coalition of about 90 Southeastern Wis­con­sin religious congregations, and its Milwaukee and Wau­ke­sha affili­ates will rally outside Congressman James Sen­sen­bren­ner’s office Thurs­day to ask him to intervene on her [Singh’s] behalf and to hold con­gres­sional hearings on broader immi­gra­tion law reform issues.

Sensenbrenner’s press sec­re­tary, Raj Bharwani, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the con­gress­man “never got involved, because he was never contacted by any member of the (Singh) family or a family representative.”

“Concern for this woman and her family is pretty wide­spread,” according to the Rev. Joy McDonald-Coltvelt of Galilee Lutheran Church in Pewaukee, a member of Wisdom’s Waukesha affiliate, Stewards of Prophetic Hopeful Intentional Action (SOPHIA).

Well I am glad to see this woman has such support from the community. Everyone knows that things seem to get done once religious institutions step in.

One midnight during Ramadan, Sullyman got up and flipped on the TV. His family was sitting down to eat before the 4 a.m. prayer and he decided to do a little channel surfing. But the station he landed on stunned him.

“It was 100 percent sex,” says the dapper young man in Kabul’s Macroryan neighborhood. “It was the first time I’d seen anything like that.”

The prurient film - and the questionable programming being pumped to thousands across Kabul - prompted the Supreme Court chief justice to ask President Hamid Karzai to stop cable broadcasts during the holy season. Last month, a Council of Ministers banned virtually all cable broadcasts in the city. The minister of information and culture created an advisory committee to review the cable networks. Since then, the networks have begun to broadcast again.

This wasn’t real sex he was referring to of course? After all, most of us grew up acutely aware of the fact that Indian censors didn’t allow Bollywood stars to kiss. Still, the thought that Bollywood movies, which are tame by Western standards, could have such a strong effect on Afghan society intrigues me. Maybe Bollywood films are the way to “spread democracy” and combat religious fundamentalism in the Middle East. Isn’t that what the U.S. administration wants? Maybe Bollywood films can do what bombs cannot. Maybe the military should broadcast Bollywood movies into Iraq as a way to soothe the insurgents. Maybe I am getting carried away.

Call me dorky for getting all gleeful over it, but I think we should break out the champagne and Kingfishers— newest Mutineer Apul got us on the blog that helped inspire Sepia Mutiny in the first place…Boing Boing!

Playbill.com is reporting that Bombay Dreams, the Bollywood meets the stage production, will be closing on January 2, 2005. The stubborn show did better than many expected after it received a thrashing in its initial reviews from many of the reviewers familiar with Broadway, but seemingly unfamiliar with the Bollywood concept. The show did surprisingly well for an ethnic themed production however, whichi will have played 284 regular performances since opening in April.

So, if you want to see Bollywood on Broadway, you better get tickets soon. You still have a chance however to see the production as it will be starting a national theater runnng in 2005-2006.

Piyush Dinker Pandya, the writer/director of the genre creating film American Desi is bringing the South Asian answer to the Kings/Queens of Comedy, yes, it is The Gurus of Comedy Tour. The first-ever national tour of South Asian standup comedy, kicks off in Los Angeles this Thursday, December 9, with Russell Peters (Comedy Central), Paul Varghese (NBC's Last Comic Standing),
Anand Chulani (American Chai), and host Aladdin (BET, American Desi).

The five-city tour moves on to San Jose on December 10, San Francisco on December 11, New York City on December 15, and closes in Boston on December 16. Other comedians on The Gurus of Comedy Tour include Pooth the Curry Comic, Vidur Kapur, Tony Sparks, and Mo-D. Complete comic lineups for each show are available here.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released a pair of posters aimed at assisting authorities with properly identifying and searching Muslims and Sikhs.

The posters come from the DOJ’s Initiative to Combat Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash, and offer detailed explanations of each religion’s different head coverings. The posters also include seemingly obvious instructions such as “show respect,” and “searches should be done by members of the same sex.” (Can one request searches from the opposite sex, or does that cost extra?)

For the most part, the photos on the Sikh poster are effective in demonstrating a pagri, patka and chunni. But on the Muslim poster, one of the images is sure to generate confusion in the field (photo on the right). We can only pray that former Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn’t completely lose it when graduation ceremonies commence in May.

Common Muslim American Head Coverings (PDF, 1.5 MB)
Common Sikh American Head Coverings (PDF, 1 MB)

My good friend Super Jagjit was so impressed by the posters that he created one for the DOJ to offer South Asian shopkeepers in rural areas:

Common Redneck Head Coverings (PDF, 255 KB)

Hindustan Times: U.S. Justice Department issues poster on Sikhism

So my favourite MC leaves me a message about this article from ABC News…apparently an Indian cell phone company is going to broadcast a new Bollywood phil-im in its entirety, for free. On their customer’s mobiles. (Well, the customers who dished $270 for a phone that can stream video…)

“Rok Sako To Rok Lo,” or “Stop, If You Can,” will be available to Bharti Tele-Ventures customers in 11 Indian cities, provided their phones have the supporting technology, said Atul Bindal, a director at India’s second-largest cellular service provider.

They are boldly and potentially annoyingly going where no company has gone before:

Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. will be “the first cellular service in the world to premiere a full-length movie on mobile phones,” Bindal said. “I am certain that this service will add a whole new dimension to the concept of mobile-based entertainment.”

“Rok Sako To Rok Lo” stars Sunny Deol (pictured)…and no one else, meaning the film’s other actors aren’t well-known, exciting or important. ;) Directed by Arindam Chaudhary, the teen flick will debut on cell phones Thursday, and be released to regular old theaters Friday.

Don’t everybody try and drain your cell phone batteries at once:

A maximum of 200 people will be able to connect and watch the movie simultaneously, and the movie cannot be copied or replayed.

If this novel experiment in using mobile phones for something other than, oh, talking, is successful, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. may air other phil-ims, for a phee. ;)

And they say asians are inscrutible. Consider what’s happening to Farhat Khan: she’s an “advice worker” in Manchester, and has been invited to meet the Queen because of her contributions to “national life”. This comes just one day after she was told that her asylum application was turned down, and that she was about to be deported back to Pakistan, which she left because she and her children were at risk for domestic violence. Wha? Well, I suppose this is a chance to bring the issue to the very top (say, Rani, could you mention this to Tony Blair? Thanks. And oh, please pass the crumpets. And one more of those delicious little tea sandwiches)

…actually, scratch the “better”…I’m just happy about the living part. We exist in amazing times, and for that I am constantly grateful and humbled. Why am I blathering all new-agey? I’m just pondering the healing powers of the Internet, that’s all.

Few thought this little boy would survive after he was bitten by a snake in Nepal.

His parents consulted a Shaman who bound the boy’s leg so tightly with a tourniquet it went gangrenous.

When doctors eventually saw him they were at a loss to know how to save him. The bandage had been on for 25 days and his leg was hanging off.

Everyone was resigned to him dying.

Everyone except Lord and Lady Swinfen. The peer and his wife run a phenomenal charity that “virtually” saved the child’s life.

South Asian youngsters continue to nerd their way to fame and fortune:

A 13-year-old girl has beaten 100,000 hopefuls to become the best young speller in the UK.

Gayathri Kumar, from Lancashire, correctly spelt words including troglodyte and disequilibrium to win the BBC’s Hard Spell competition.

Whom did Gayathri defeat? Wait for it…

The final, shown on BBC One on Sunday night, saw Gayathri go head-to-head with the other finalist, Nisha Thomas.

We have to do something about this brown-on-brown violence. I kid. So how did Gayathri best Nisha?

Gayathri, from Ormskirk, took the title when she correctly spelt Chihuahua and Nisha stumbled over dachshund.

What rhymes with Osama? It’s good to see these racist punks get served…or were they? From the Newsobserver.com:

Three men found guilty in District Court of ethnic intimidation for assaulting an Indian Sikh reached a plea agreement on less serious charges when they appealed their conviction.

In a plea agreement in Orange County Superior Court, the men pleaded guilty Monday to assault inflicting serious injury and simple assault, but not to ethnic intimidation.

One man will go to prison for 150 days for the assaults and for several probation violations. The other two will each spend 14 days in jail.

The case stemmed from an incident in March on West Franklin Street when defendant Kenneth Antwaine Perry, 20, walked past UNC student Gagandeep Bindra and called him “Osama.”

At the time, Bindra, a Sikh who has brown skin and a beard, was wearing his hair wrapped in a scarf. He responded by saying, “Your mama.”

A quick one here: Satire publication The Onion has a small blurb about the Bollywood remake of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

The Onion: Issue 49 (near the upper right-hand corner)

Vijay Singh won his first PGA Tour Player of the Year award on Monday, icing a season that saw the 41-year-old golfer capture nine titles and a record-breaking $10.9 million in prize money.

The Fijian national ends Tiger Woods’ five-year reign over the title, and is the first non-American to win the award in nearly a decade. Singh came ever-so-close to winning it last year, and felt he was more deserving of the honor, which is voted on by fellow tour players.

He rededicated himself to surpassing Woods atop the world rankings, and accomplished the goal in roughly half the expected time. The new focus supplemented a near-legendary work ethic and training regimen that once included hitting 1,000 balls a day.

So will winning the award invite complacency? Not a chance.

Singh told the Associated Press that he already has started a new workout program, “to take it a little higher.”

AP/Yahoo!: Singh wins PGA Tour Player of the Year award
Sepia Mutiny: Asians remain dominant in golf

I think we need a new category called “Raj-watch”. ;)

Mutineer Vinod selected a few words from my favourite tabloid, the New York Post, for an SM blurb about the busy Mr. Bhakta a month ago. I’ll save you the trouble of clicking about by re-pasting the aforementioned Page Six dirt here:

RECENTLY fired “Apprentice” Raj Bhakta might be better suited for a role on “The Player.” The would-be lothario distinguished himself last week by hitting on Donald Trump’s assistant, Robin Himmel, while he was waiting for the elevator to take him from the building after his dismissal.

However, Himmel may be the only one Bhakta struck out with, as three of his fellow castmates have fallen prey to his charms, a source shared, including Stacy Rotner and Jennifer Crisafulli, who have “at least made out” with Bhakta.

Aha! (and with that, may “Take on Me” waft through your head ALL DAY ;) The very next day, Page Six cleared up any ambiguity about striking:

November 11, 2004 — FIRED “Apprentice” Romeo Raj Bhakta got his wish yesterday — a “date” with Donald Trump’s pretty receptionist, Robin Himmler, who’s featured on the NBC reality show. Raj, known for his bow-ties, asked Robin out at the end of last week’s episode and — even though she has a very serious boyfriend — she agreed to at least meet Raj for a cup of Joe.

The pair chatted yesterday over coffee at (where else?) Trump Tower.

At Sepia Mutiny, we, like President Bush, are “workin’ hard”…”workin’ saturdays” to keep our readers updated on the most pressing brown matters. You don’t have to admit it to your friends, but we know why you’re addicted, and it’s obviously our thisclose coverage of dismissed/fired/rejected south asian reality show refugees. no worries. we’re so on it. ;)

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf paid a visit to Washington, D.C. over the weekend, where he met with U.S. President George W. Bush, and more notably, gave a series of tantalizing interviews to the capital’s press corps.

During a closed door meeting, Bush and Musharraf discussed the war on terror, trade between their two countries, and the Palestine-Israel conflict. In a joint press conference where Bush did most of the talking, he praised his Pakistani counterpart, saying, “our relationships are good, they’re strong, and they will remain that way.”

In turn, Musharraf congratulated Bush on his victory in last month’s elections. “All that I would like to say, that I’ve come here basically to congratulate the President very sincerely, with all my sincerity, for having won the elections,” he said.

The lovefest between the two men ended shortly after the brief photo opportunity. Free of the White House muzzle, Musharraf sounded off on a number of topics in subsequent interviews with various media outlets:

Sky News and the Washington Times report on Britain’s decision to press for prosecution in 117 so-called “honor killing” cases.

More than 100 deaths and disappearances of Asian women are being reinvestigated to ensure they were not victims of ‘honour’ crimes.

They can involve suicides, false imprisonment, forced marriages - and even murder, as happened to Heshu Yones, 16.

Heshu was stabbed to death two years ago in Acton, London, by her Kurdish father - who believed she had dishonoured the family by having a boyfriend.

There are 117 other suspected ‘honour killings’ currently under investigation in the UK alone.

Suicides among such women in Britain are three times the national average.

When this sort of stuff happens in Afghanistan we think we can only do so much about it, but when it happens in a “lawful” developed country we should take decisive action which is what Britain seems to be doing. In other countries, like France for example, when the government tries to step into cases like these it further radicalizes the youth (Muslim youth in the case of France) who feel their customs are under attack. Some clerics fuel this paranoia with lectures on how good Muslims should follow Sharia law. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli has been doing an excellent series of stories on this phenomena of the growing radicalization of the Muslim youth in Europe.

(from the tipline - thanks JT!) This sort of stuff is usually a tad too political for SM BUT, since it's a desi-writer taking on another desi-writer, I figured it was well within Sepia Mutiny's posting guidelines ;-)

The fact that it's by a WSJ staff writer I follow from time to time - Tunku Varadarajan - & that he provides a BEAUTIFUL skewering of Arundhati Roy was merely the icing on the cake -

When a friend learned that I was pondering a piece critical of Ms. Roy ... he e-mailed me reprovingly to ask whether that would not be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But second thoughts can strike at the speed of light. No sooner had he hit the "send" button than he hit it again: "There are certain fish, however, in certain barrels, that cannot be ignored."

...A certain segment of the American intelligentsia connects gleefully with exotic leftists like Ms. Roy. In fact, the Ms. Roys of our age, and their fans and subsidy-givers in the West, enjoy a touching symbiosis. Arundhati Roy, I'd venture to say, is George Soros's political poster girl.

Ms. Roy and her type pay the ultimate compliment to America by holding that all world events occur at America's behest and that the six billion non-Americans on the planet are but helpless pawns, incapable of doing anything--especially anything bad--without Uncle Sam's imprimatur.

Those are just a few of the plentiful nuggets in a very well written & succinct piece.

A fairly famous “loser” has just started a brand new organization called the Coalition for the Advancement of the Republic (CAR). What is the purpose of this organization?

The Coalition for the Advancement of the Republic (C.A.R.) has been created to espouse common sense conservatism matched with the conviction that progressive change must be embraced. Although our government requires progressive reform, on the balance, government should be kept as small and transparent as possible.

C.A.R is non-partisan. On such issues as conservation, immigration, environmental protection and enlightened land use policies, we are aligned with “liberals.” On others issues such as trade and regulation, we are aligned with traditionally conservative policy. On many issues, such as tort, tax, health care and entitlement program reform - we find common ground with mainstream good government advocates.

Underpinning all our positions is a consistent demand for accountable and limited (which is not to say inactive) government, and a faith in the efficacy of economic and individual freedom. The notion of individual responsibility is among the greatest assets of American society and must be passionately promoted.

A quick click on the “about us” link will reveal the fact that CAR was founded by none other than the bow tie wearing Republican Raj Bhakta, of Apprentice fame.

The website includes a series of essays that I will only assume have been written by Raj. Since foreign policy is my chief area of interest I clicked on the link and discovered an essay titled, “A Short Case for Closer Relations with India.”

One of the keys to a successful long-term Asia policy is a strong India. India is the only nation in the region that can balance the ever-developing Chinese colossus. India is a natural ally. In the future, when China could potentially threaten our vital interests, it would be very pleasing to know that an American-equipped and allied Indian Army of five million men is garrisoned on China’s border.

India has the manpower to put millions of boots on the ground in trouble spots. Indian troops, like their programmers, are cheap and effective. Imagine what a fine ally India would make in Iraq. The United States, for a few billion dollars, as opposed the hundreds of billions our own troops and contractors cost, could place several hundred thousand Indian troops in, say, Fallujah. We could then get busy with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and showing the Arab world the great things that America can do for them.

India, at the same time, is sufficiently weak internally so as not to pose a threat to the United States for a very long time - at least seventy or eighty years.

Ummm. The above paragraph is just a rough draft I hope. There are a number of policy problems in just these three paragraphs that Mr. Trump would not be happy about (if Trump knew anything about foreign policy). Check out the other essays for yourself before deciding whether we should hire Raj for this job.

Mutineers may remember Lt. Neil Prakash whom we profile a few weeks back here. Well, LT Neil - aka "Red Six" has been cajoled by a few of us into starting a blog and sharing his experiences.

One excerpt - ARMOR GEDDON: 5 November (D-3): Return from R&R

"Pack your shit, check under your pillow, and get your ass to Fallujah."

Under my pillow, [my platoon sergeant] left me all the maps, friendly graphics, and enemy graphics, and some intelligence reports.

..."Pray for rain," the captain said. The whole city was littered with more IEDs than probably anywhere else in Iraq. I wasn't surprised. The insurgents had gone 6 months unmolested within the city limits. "The insurgents use cheap det. cord and when it gets wet, the IEDs usually don't set off."

As if dowry deaths, gender-influenced abortions and other social ills didn’t make me ill enough, now I can read about NRIs who return to India and marry purely for fiscal reasons, with the intent to abandon their naive new brides;

Baljeet Kaur gave her life savings and a scooter as dowry to marry Harvinder Singh in 1986 with the promise she would leave Punjab and join him in Canada where he drove a taxi.

A few weeks later, after pocketing 400,000 rupees (8,510 dollars), Singh went back to Canada, promising his then 24-year-old pregnant bride he would return for her within a year.

“But he never come back,” Kaur said. “Whenever I asked my in-laws about him, they used to beat me and tell me to get lost. After a couple of years, I moved to my mother’s house. My son doesn’t even know who his father is.”

Kaur is one of an estimated 16,000 women in the Punjab who have been abandoned by suitors working abroad who come back home briefly in hopes of finding a wife who can pay a dowry.

Sixteen-thousand. That’s insane. And before you question my use of the word “intent” in my introduction, read on:

“It’s a very planned crime by the entire family,” said Adarsh Sharma of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCD) which is investigating the cases.

The Times of India recently ran an interview with the Bootylicious Beyonce in which she described her fascination for the Indian film industry.

I'm a fan of a few Bollywood films. I have seen Devdas and Lagaan , both great films. I loved Devdas -- the actress was amazing! I cried towards the end of the film," she reveals, adding that she also liked Bend It Like Beckham.

When asked if she would ever be interested in doing a film, Beyonce seemed to be down, answering,"Why not?!" Indian films are very colourful. It can be fun to do a film like that at least once. Given a chance, I'd love to do an Indian film."

And for the encouraging part of the interview, especially for the desi guys, Beyonce noted "I think Indian men are fairly good looking, at least the actors in the movies!"

It isn't that we can't get enough of her, well, maybe it is, but we thought we too would assist in the sepia conspiracy to make Aishwarya a global star, so click here to see an interview she recently gave to Emily Flynn of Newsweek Magazine.

Many things amaze me about Ash, two nice bits from the interview, her desire to always reprazent for desi cinema, and of course, the persistent and long-standing Ash is the next Bond-girl rumor. At this point, the producers of Bond need to cast her, just to give some sort of credence to the rumor mill.

Voice of America does a nice little story on the most accessible source of news in America’s number one media market: South Asian newsstands in New York.

New Yorkers love to read the news, and there are hundreds of mainstream and specialized newspapers to satisfy their needs. But the men and women behind the counters at the thousands of city newsstands and magazine stores are not nearly as diverse. These days, most New York news dealers are South Asian immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Enterprising émigrés from the region can also be seen running restaurants and other small businesses throughout the Big Apple. But the experience of Mombai-born Mohammed Khali is typical of the many South Asian immigrants who sell newspapers and magazines. Despite his old-fashioned smock and the calm, easygoing manner that many associate with India, Mr. Khali has been a New York newsagent for 27 years. He says most of the city’s newsstands are run by South Asians “because they get the jobs right away and we newsagents always need help.” Mr. Khali adds that although “there are a lot of people who are engineers and doctors and most of them are very well educated people, it’s the easiest work that they can find.”

Still, his own family is perplexed that he has not left the newsstand business to become a professional. “Mostly all my family is right here,” says Mr. Khali, “in Atlanta, Boston, California, Arizona [and] Detroit. They are engineers and everything. And I am the only [one] playing around here in the newsstand. They wonder why. I tell them I really enjoy it!”

I can relate to how Mr. Khali feels. Unlike other successful Indians who become mostly doctors and lawyers, I have shunned the life of wealth and beautiful women so that I can blog and bring the people the news that they want, dare I say need, to hear. It is a noble profession. Right? [crickets chirp in the background]

Alas, the life of a newsstand owner isn’t as glamorous as it may seem:

Not all of the dealers are quite as experienced in the ways of New York. Rajeena Patel emigrated only recently from his village in Gujarat State in western India. For him, adjusting to city life, the English language and Western ways has been hard. “Good life in India, but no money,” he says. “Here is always money, but no life.” Mr. Patel notes that gender roles are unfamiliar. “In India, [the] woman is always home, [and has] no job,” he says. “And here, I go home, [and] my wife is going to [her] job.”

The transcript of this audio story can be read here.

Last night’s edition of Fox 11 News in Los Angeles had a segment about a cricket club thriving in a most unlikely location — the much-maligned city of Compton.

Compton, which is widely-known for violent crime and as the birthplace of gangsta’ rap, plays host to one of Southern California’s most successful cricket teams.

Activist Ted Hayes founded the Compton Cricket Club as a way to offer kids an alternative to crime and gangs. “The idea of cricket is to teach people how to respect themselves and respect authority, so they stop killing each other,” said Hayes to Fox 11 News.

The club recently defeated their cross-town rival, yep, Beverly Hills, but lost in the next round, failing to capture this year’s L.A. County Cup.

Per my Friday night custom, I visit a nearby drug store on Wilshire Blvd. to pick up a bottle of soda pop and some correspondence stationary. I hop over to the greeting card aisle whenever I need to restock my arsenal of overpriced pieces of color-printed cardstock. On one such occassion, I ran into the following birthday card from Ohio-based American Greetings:

 

I felt compelled to purchase and share the card with the Mutiny because it sprung forth many conflicting questions that I could not answer: Is this good-natured, equal-opportunity ribbing? Does such mainstream inclusion signify true acceptance and integration? Is the joke really just derived from a sinister dig at turbaned Sikhs? Did I really just shell out $2.30 for a card that I’ll probably never address? Why do my Friday nights resemble that of a kind, old granny?

Any answers are greatly appreciated.

I’m off to India and Turkey for a couple of weeks today. I’ll be livin’ la vida Sepia: riding the Delhi subway; hanging out in Barista, Bangalore, and the new Indian malls; watching a Govinda caper with jeering rickshaw-wallas in the upper stall; eating at the original Bukhara Grill and trying Indo-Chinese cuisine; buying clothing which flatters the desi palette; checking out the WiFi at the airports; and generally basking in the economic liberalization everyone’s been banging on about.

I’ll also be doing a literary tour of Bombay. After having read New York novels for fifteen years, it was a relief to anchor the figurative Manhattan in plaster and stone. And after seven Rushdie novels and an entire oeuvre of diasporic literature, I’m tired of names without faces: Colaba, Bandra, Breach Candy, Cuffe Parade. I feel like the clerk in Hyderabad handling parking tickets from the midwest, I’ve got an intimate map of a terribly remote place.

I’m halfway through Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, a tome about the seamy side of Bombay, its ganglords and dancing girls in modern-day slavery. It’s quite interesting, though leaden in parts; it’s not always deftly written, but it’s a fascinating read. What’s most useful, though, is local knowledge; the best spots for vada pav, Maharashtrian food, sherwanis and Bom Bahia sunsets.

Know of a quintessentially Bombay experience? Help me pop my Mumbai cherry by leaving it in the comments.

What on earth would inspire you to see DDLJ, KKHH or KKKG again?

Perhaps if Shah Rukh Khan was magnified to half the size of a football field?

I know what you’re thinking…and no, though it’s Friday night, I’m not drunk. ;) I’m just surprised that IMAX is interested in Bollywood. That’s right, the next time you visit your cousins in Mumbai, you could while your day away watching Aftab on a screen “large enough to show a whale life-size”. (ahem. i’m in no way commenting on the girth of certain bollywood stars, but if your mind goes there, don’t blame me just because I said the screen could show a life-size whale.) :D

Before you forget the original point of this post because of my bloggy meanderings, I was trying to tell you faithful SM-readers that IMAX might be coming to INDIA. Read on:

“Eventually, Bollywood films will be converted into IMAX format. It can happen in three to four years,”said Richard L. Gelfond, co-CEO and co-chairman of IMAX Corporation.

“But India needs at least 20 IMAX theatres to justify converting films to IMAX format,” he said.

Gelfond said the company had already started talks on the subject with some film producers. India, which presently has only three IMAX theatres, will add seven more by 2008, he announced Friday.

India is a natural choice for this experiment; it has a robust film industry and the cost of converting a regular 35mm film into an IMAX movie is more competitive. Normal cost? $4 million. Indian Price? $2.5-3 million.

Last Wednesday’s episode of NBC’s “Law & Order” featured Indians using religious objects to smuggle heroin into the U.S.

Here’s a quick recap of the episode: A group of prep school students and gang-members are shot to death in a drughouse. The investigation leads to “Rahim of Bombay,” a Pakistani importer of religious objects. Rahim smuggles Afghani heroin inside his imports, because customs inspections are less stringent on religious devices. Rahim sells out his boss, a U.S.-sponsored warlord named Khaleel. At the end of the show, Khaleel is convicted for the murders.

An estimated 15 million viewers tuned in to the program, according to Nielsen Media Research.

“Law & Order” often reminds us that their stories are “ripped from the headlines.” Does anyone know if there’s a real-life event that inspired this episode? My curiosity is peaked because I’m anticipating another defamation suit filed by a desi who believes that a “Law & Order” villain is based on him.

Just an FYI for Bay Area Mutineers, the Indian ambassador to the US - Ronen Sen - will be addressing the San Francisco World Affairs Council on Monday, Dec 6 @ 12pm in downtown SF.

The title of his talk will be "Indo-US Relations: Prospects & Challenges." Details are here.

Aishwarya Rai announced yesterday that she will be the executive producer and star of a film dealing with the 1984 tragedy in Bhopal. As reported by emediawire.com:

The fiction feature film [titled “Windfall”], a murder mystery inspired by true events, is set mostly in present day America, with flashbacks to Bhopal. Movie is the story of a young woman’s search for her father, a plant manager on duty the night of the disaster. Ms. Rai plays the lead role, Jasmine Singh, an Indian-American debutante born in Bhopal but raised in Beverly Hills.

“The story of the disaster in Bhopal is all too tragic,” said Ms. Rai. “But this film will be inspiring. The story of a young woman’s search for her father, the love story with her American fiancé and the issues she goes through as a survivor of the disaster – I simply had to be involved. And I hope the films’ success will draw attention to the need of victims in Bhopal, and to those everywhere who’ve suffered from injustice.”

“This is a heroic role, like Erin Brockovich, but on an epic scale – THE INSIDER meets TITANIC,” said producer Zachary Coffin. “Aishwarya was our first, last and only choice to play the lead, and I truly believe this will be the most inspiring performance of her career yet.”

The INSIDER meets TITANIC? Surely we can minimize the latter? The film will borrow facts from a non-fiction book, The Bhopal Tragedy: What Really Happened and What It Means for American Workers and Communities at Risk, by Ward Morehouse and Arun Subramaniam. The film is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2005.

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has been a one man wrecking ball against the corrupt practices of big business the last couple years, will be featured tonight, on NOW with Bill Moyers in an episode titled Eliot Spitzer: “The Sheriff of Wall Street”.

As New York’s chief law enforcement officer, Elliot Spitzer has taken on the titans of Wall Street to get a fair deal for Main Street. His far-reaching investigations have uncovered fraudulent practices in some of the nation’s biggest companies and helped restore transparency and honesty to industries that provide important products and services to regular Americans-mutual funds, prescription drugs, insurance. On Friday December 3, 2004 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW’s David Brancaccio goes inside the mind, motivations and investigations of one for the nation’s most feared and respected attorneys general, the man they call “the sheriff of Wall Street.”

In addition to taking on the Mutual Fund industry and other titans, Spitzer is also helping the little guys. In this case, Bagladeshi pretzel vendors in Central Park.

M&T Pretzel Inc., which owns more than half the pushcarts in Central Park, has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle labor law violations because it stiffed its workers on overtime or minimum wage.

Between 50 and 100 vendors who worked from 1999 to 2002 are expected to share in the settlement, said state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who announced the deal yesterday.

Most of the workers are Bangladeshi immigrants who have gone on to other jobs.

Frequent Sepia Mutiny commentor MD is hosting BHARATEEYA BLOG MELA XXXVI over at her blog, Chai Tea Latte.

The Mela features an anthology of some of the best Desi blog writing in the past week. Perhaps a new blog or 2 will strike your fancy.

The BBC just had its own Dan Rather moment: a media hoaxer pretending to be from Union Carbide took full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster (via Sreenath Srinivasan):

The BBC had earlier twice run an interview with a man it identified as Dow Chemical spokesman Jude Finisterra, who said the company accepted full responsibility for the disaster 20 years ago in the central Indian city of Bhopal. This would have represented a major policy reversal for Dow Chemical which has said it has no responsibility for the Bhopal disaster… “We also confirm Jude Finisterra is neither an employee nor a spokesperson for Dow.”

Union Carbide accepting responsibility for Bhopal? The Beeb should’ve known that was completely implausible.

Filmmaker Vikram Jayanti’s documentary about the royal sport of chaturanga is coming to the U.S. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine covers the famous chess match between Garry Kasparov vs. IBM’s famed supercomputer.

The film hints darkly at human-machine collusion in Deep Blue’s win. The filmmaker expands on his conspiracy theory:

IBM hit the jackpot. Their share value went up and up. And it strikes me that someone in the corporation had a brilliant idea that if they could beat Kasparov, people would think that IBM were in the frontline of computing. IBM was seen as a dinosaur before this match. No one saw them as an innovator. They’re still using Deep Blue in their advertising.

He sees Kasparov as a giant betrayed:

I’ve watched him play inferior players. He just wants to get it over with. I mean, when you’re that good at chess you want a good opponent. And I suspect his fantasy was that a computer would give him that… In terms of walking naively into the lions den, I think he thought there was a chance to make some money and to do something of scientific interest.

Jayanti throws in some puffery about the sport of chess, which apparently is as physically bad-ass as badminton claims to be:

I wanted it to be a combat film. One of the first things Garry said to me was, “Chess is a contact sport.” You know he’s very physically fit. And I asked him why he has to work out so much, and he told me that you had to be very fit in order to play.

A real-life case of Bend It Like Beckham has erupted in Bangladesh:

Bangladesh’s government has stopped women taking part in a swimming competition after pressure from an Islamic group. In July, a women’s wrestling tournament was cancelled after threats to disrupt it, and a women’s football competition was called off after protests… a radical Islamic group threatened to bring the entire district around Chandpur to a halt with protests… The Committee for Resistance to Un-Islamic Activities said women taking part in the sport would offend Bangladesh’s more than 100 million Muslims.

How could we ally with a country which bans Gabrielle Reece? Such an ally would be positively un-American. Next thing you know, they’ll ban women from driving.

Mira Nair waxes about Sapphic pleasures while discussing her Vanity Fair lead Reese Witherspoon’s pregnancy:

“[W]hen I first met her husband [actor Ryan Philippe], I said ‘knock her up, won’t you, I need some flesh on the girl’,” she joked. “I’m not a fan of the underfed Los Angeles actor at all… I love the luminosity that pregnancy brings, I love the fleshiness, I love the ample bosom - it gave me much more to play with.”

Sounds like she appreciates someone with a kachori in the oven. Nair managed to work around Reese’s pieces on screen:

Nair explained how camera tricks had been used to disguise Witherspoon’s “bump” in various scenes - including hiring a number of young boys in costumes to stand in front of her. “She runs, she gets off coal carts, she jumps off horses - she does everything,” Nair said. “But there’s also a certain carriage with horses that is going to wipe the screen at a certain moment, because of the bump.”

The artist formerly known as MC Hammer would’ve understood.

A Sikh-owned gas station in Chesterfield, Virginia was burned and defaced with racist graffiti last week (via Prashant Kothari):

[T]he attackers put the gas station on fire on Wednesday and left after smearing the remaining property with graffiti containing ethnic slurs… The words “Go Back to Bin Laden B—” and “Never Again Indian Monkey N—” were sprayed on a dumpster in the rear of the gas station property. In addition, the words, “F— Arab Gas” were spray painted on the gas station’s shed… “Now they call us Osama bin Laden. In 1979, when Iranians held Americans hostage, they used to call us Ayatollahs,’ says Bammi.

I sure do miss the good ol’ days when the racists weren’t utterly ignorant. The thugs in Britain didn’t call you Eye-rainians, Eye-rackies (mortal enemies of the Eye-rainians) and bin Ladens (mortal enemy of the Eye-rackies) all at once. There was an intimacy to their taunting. And ‘Indian Monkey N—’ is missing a few other ethnically-inaccurate insults. Is it too much to ask for my racism to be specific?

But ‘F— Arab Gas’ fills me with hope. Hope that they’re energy policy-conscious racist arsonists who want a self-reliant, muscular country which can’t be blackmailed over a non-indigenous resource. And curiosity about whether these gentlemen voted for Arab gas’ #1 friend.

Yep, I sure do miss the good ol’ days.

The intrepid and clever RSS glorifies the totemic Hindu animal by claiming cow dung protects against nuclear fallout (via Spontaneous Order):

Bhanwarlal Kothari, a senior member of the RSS, said, “Our tests have shown that distemper made out of cow dung and spread over walls and roofs can block nuclear radiation.”

But wait, cows also cure cancer…

“We believe that cows’ urine can cure cancer, renal failure, arthritis and a lot of other ailments,” Mansinghka said.

… dispose of biohazards…

“Some of my friends have (debated) ways to use cow dung to wrap surgically removed human body parts and bury them in the ground,” he said. “That will save hospitals the expensive process of incinerating such organs.”

… and cause earthquakes via ‘Einsteinian pain waves’:

“The killing of animals causes natural and manmade disasters,” Bajaj said. “But, since the cow is so useful to human beings, its slaughter causes exceptional seismic activity. The cries of the animals go down to the earth through Einsteinian pain waves.”

Clearly, we should be defending our soldiers in Iraq with nothing more than bull shit. All I’m saying is give pees a chance. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting some very non-Einsteinian pain waves in my cranium.

Many people look better in the animal wax of nostalgia: dictators, drugrunners, Starsky & Hutch. But one never does: Peter Sellers, the British comedian who made a habit of playing mentally-challenged desis in brownface.

The original film [The Party] was a more-than-a-little-racist comedy with a white comedian playing ‘Hrundi V. Bakshi’ in brownface, sporting a degenerate imitation of an Indian accent. Sellers wandered around a film set for a sequel to Gunga Din, itself a landmark of racism featuring civilized British soldiers vs. naked Indian savages.

Yes, Mr. Birdie Num-Num just got an HBO biopic, which means that Glitter has lost its lock on the Razzies. Even worse, Dreamworks is remaking The Party:

The Party, a minor success in comparison to Sellers films like Dr Strangelove and The Pink Panther, was banned in India for some years. Some politicians protested the film caricatured Indians and showed them in absurd light. Only after editor Khushwant Singh intervened was the ban lifted.

The only saving grace is that they’re making the protagonist non-desi.

The Oakland Tribune recently peeked into the closet of the South Asian community, specifically in the Bay Area. In the times when Gay marriage seems to be the biggest issue facing the homosexual community, South Asians are still struggling with the basics.

Sonia first realized she was different when she was 12 or 13. Growing up in a middle-class Punjabi family in Northern California, she did not dare to discuss it with anyone.

“How could I? I am Indian,” said Sonia, who has never been to India. “You’re not supposed to have these feelings.”

Sonia is typical of the many homosexual South Asian Indians living in California, or in America, for that matter. The 2000 census puts the state in second place after New York with 451 gay Indian couples, indicating the race of the main householder alone.

But the real number is probably higher, given many are closet homosexuals. Despite living in the shadow of San Francisco, the gay capital of the world, many suppress their desires and grudgingly bow to cultural norms, while others come out and court rejection.

Sonia did both. Convinced she was being a “good daughter” by keeping her homosexuality a secret, Sonia agreed to a marriage her family had arranged. “There was no question of marrying a woman, so I married this man,” she said.

The article goes on to describe Sonia coming out to her parents and them just ignoring it, like her declaration never occured. South Asian society remains consistent in how it deals with things.

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, which is the first major, of the many organizations giving nods to the year’s best films leading up to the Oscars, announced its 2004 awards yesterday. The Best Documentary award went to Born into Brothels, a documentary about the children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district. This should make it a frontrunner for the Oscar as well.

The most stigmatized people in Calcutta’s red light district, are not the prostitutes, but their children. In the face of abject poverty, abuse, and despair, these kids have little possibility of escaping their mother’s fate or for creating another type of life.

In Born into Brothels, directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman chronicle the amazing transformation of the children they come to know in the red light district. Briski, a professional photographer, gives them lessons and cameras, igniting latent sparks of artistic genius that reside in these children who live in the most sordid and seemingly hopeless world.

The photographs taken by the children are not merely examples of remarkable observation and talent; they reflect something much larger, morally encouraging, and even politically volatile: art as an immensely liberating and empowering force.

Devoid of sentimentality, Born into Brothels defies the typical tear-stained tourist snapshot of the global underbelly. Briski spends years with these kids and becomes part of their lives. Their photographs are prisms into their souls, rather than anthropological curiosities or primitive imagery, and a true testimony of the power of the indelible creative spirit.

See Sajit’s previous post.

The inaugural South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) kicked off a five-day showcase of works from the Asian subcontinent with a screening of Gurinder Chadha’s “Bride and Prejudice.”

Altogether, 38 short, documentary and fiction films will screen in New York City at the Clearview Chelsea West and Rubin Museum of Art. The festival bills itself as the biggest of its kind in the country, and will host the U.S. premieres of 14 films.

“I think when audiences come out for this year’s SAIFF, they’ll see the kind of high-standard South Asian entertainment that they’ve really been craving in this city,” said SAIFF managing director Soman Chainani.

Among the numerous films worth checking out are “The Inner Life of Shah Rukh Khan,” a documentary following the Bollywood star, and “Shwass,” India’s 2004 Oscar-entry.

The high-powered festival has some big sponsors -- Time Warner Cable and The New York Times -- and big advisors -- Shekhar Kapur and Sepia-favorite Vikram Chatwal -- overseeing the event.

Yesterday’s opening night party and screening of “Bride and Prejudice” (will anyone have not seen this movie when it officially releases in February?) was attended by Chadha, in addition to the ambassadors and consulate generals from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Rediff: New York gets a taste of India
Sepia Mutiny: Dueling film festivals in Manhattan

Update (12/20/2004): SAIFF's official web site has photos chronicling the festival.

The world’s biggest movie star, Amitabh Bachchan, will serve as a special ambassador for 46664, the global anti-AIDS campaign headed by Nelson Mandela.

Named after the former South African president’s prison number, the 46664 campaign raises awareness of HIV and AIDS, and raises funds for the prevention, testing, care and support of those infected with the viruses. Bachchan has proved to be an active participant in anti-AIDS campaigns in India, which has one of the world’s highest infection rates.

Bachchan joins current 46664 ambassadors Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt, Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey. Perhaps to distinguish himself from his fellow ambassadors, Bachchan also joined the ranks of senior citizens with blonde highlights (see photo). Population: One.

AFP/Yahoo!: Bollywood superstar Bachchan joins Mandela’s anti-AIDS campaign

Microsoft is doubling down on its India bet by announcing a research center in Bangalore, due next month, just weeks after opening a large programming campus in Hyderabad.

The company decided to add an Indian campus to take advantage of promising computer science students coming out of universities there, said Rick Rashid, a vice president in charge of Microsoft Research. The company hopes to hire a couple dozen researchers over the next year, he said.

Intel is also shifting some high-profile CPU design work (the Xeon ‘06) to Bangalore.

StrategyPage reports on the antics of a Indian soldier / Bollywood wannabees -

December 1, 2004: Twice this year, Indian soldiers have tried to use staged photographs, of non-existent fire fights, to win notoriety, medals and promotions. In the latest incident, a colonel commanding troops against tribal separatists in northwest India used civilians, pretending to be dead, and touched up with tomato sauce, to produce photos of the colonels brilliant combat leadership. The colonel was found out, court martialled and expelled from the army. The major who assisted him was suspended from the army for five years. Last May, some soldiers operating high on the Siachen glacier in the northwest, tried a similar stunt. They were also found out and punished. It is thought that similar attempts may have succeeded elsewhere, so the army is double checking past awards for bravery and outstanding performance in combat. This sort of thing is nothing new, and has been happening before the camera was invented. Especially in wars against irregulars, as India is fighting in its northeast and northwest, the temptation is always there.

Sheesh.

The director of Lagaan, Ashutosh Gowariker, was invited to join the film jury for the Academy Awards. He’s not on the foreign film jury, which is either an odd omission or a compliment. Gowariker is now advising the director of Shwaas, India’s current Oscars entry: it’s all about awareness, baby.

I haven’t yet seen Lagaan. The combination of cricket and Bollywood is an enumeration of boredom. You start with baseball, the sport of paunch and waiting. Slow it down further and you end up with cricket. Now play the game over multiple days and film it as a bladder-busting, four-hour Bollywood movie. It all makes Gujarati wedding rites or a flight to Moscow seem like a blessed relief.

Gowariker’s latest movie, Swades, releases Dec. 17. It’s about a desi NASA astronaut but does not star our in-house rocket scientist. Abhi wants you to know that…

Yes. I am VERY bitter.

Personally, I can’t believe Sonali filmed Kal Ho Na Ho in my daily haunts and ‘forgot’ to call me. What’s up with that?

How do you solve a tragic, decades-old sort of hatred? Fashion! Well, and cricket…

Friends Ali Khan, a British Pakistani, and Yash Singh, a British Indian, were surprised at the level of animosity between Indians and Pakistanis in Britain, and decided to do something about it themselves.

So, they thought long and hard about the problem and, finally, they had their eureka moment: what love do the two countries have in common? They asked themselves. Answer: Cricket. So, they thought, how can we, in our own small way, harness that common love? Again, they thought long and hard - and came up with an answer: half and half shirts.

That means half the shirt in Pakistani colours and half in Indian colours.

The duo took the “half” concept very seriously:

It was important to us to show the collaboration between our two families, so half the shirts were sewn together by my mum and my sister, and half by Yash’s mum and sister, which meant we had 100 half-halfs to sell at Edgbaston”.

They sold the lot, and could have shifted a lot more, and that meant that the successful day at the match was not the end of the story by any means. The two families went on to make more shirts in time for the Mega Mela in Birmingham in October.

Apparently there’s an under-served market for this unique “couture”:

Again, they were amazed at the response they received from other British Asians. As Ali said: “One lady even asked me if there was a range for babies. She was a Hindu from India and her husband was a Pakistani Muslim, so she said her children were literally half-halfs like our shirts”.

Diplomacy-shlomacy. All they are saying, is give tees a chance.

(You can stop your groaning, I know that one hurt.)

via HT

The land of my ancestors once again makes me proud:

Kerala has become the first state in the country to supply free antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients.

“We are proud of this achievement because no other state has this programme. We began this supply last month through the five government medical colleges,” said Health Secretary E.K. Bharat Bhusan.

Like the rest of India, AIDS is a concern for Kerala:

There are 2,003 cases of AIDS in Kerala while 613 people have died of the disease. The state has close to 100,000 HIV patients.

I love how Uncle Bhushan takes great pains to point out that we’re better than those OTHER, more AIDS-y South Indian states:

Secretary Bhushan pointed out that while Kerala was classified as a low AIDS prevalence state, its neighbours Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were in the high prevalence category.

Whatever. Just do something, and do it now.

In a weird twist on the usual east borrowing from west, especially with regards to film, Hollywood is now borrowing from Bollywood for one of its films.

Believe it. The trade publication Daily Variety (Subscription required) has announced that Mira Nair will be directing Gangsta MD, the Hollywood adaptation of Raju Hirani's mega Bollywood hit -- Munnabhai MBBS. Mira Nair has teamed with "Bringing Down the House" scribe Jason Filardi on "Gangsta M.D.," a Bollywood remake that's been set up at 20th Century Fox.

The story focuses on a low-level gangster who keeps his criminal life a secret from his mother by telling her he is a medical doctor, what else? When his mom discovers his criminal lifestyle and threatens to disown him, he's forced to do the one thing that would make her proud: become a doctor.

The original film was 2003's Hindi-language blockbuster "Munna Bhai, M.B.B.S." A second version was produced this year, "Shankar Dada, M.B.B.S.," which was essentially the same film shot in India's Telugu language.

In a first for Bollywood, Fox bought the script rights for the Hindi film earlier this year, and Chris Rock's name has been mentioned several times during initial speculations.

Gangsta MD is expected to hit movie halls in early 2005.

Here is the rediff.com story summarizing the Variety article.