More on how islands of quality are proliferating in India — the Guardian covers British medical tourism (via Political Animal):

Last year some 150,000 foreigners visited India for treatment, with the number rising by 15% a year… Naresh Trehan, who earned $2m… a year as a heart surgeon in Manhattan… said that his hospital in Delhi completed 4,200 heart operations last year. “That is more than anyone else in the world. The death rate for coronary bypass patients… is well below the first-world averages… Nobody questions the capability of an Indian doctor, because there isn’t a big hospital in the United States or Britain where there isn’t an Indian doctor working…”

“Everyone’s been really great here. I have been in the NHS and gone private in Britain in the past, but I can say that the care and facilities in India are easily comparable,” says Mr Marshall, sitting in hospital-blue pyjamas. “I’d have no problem coming again…”

As in most of India, the well-off live very comfortably after walling off the world outside:

“When I was in the car coming from the airport we got stuck in really heavy traffic… I thought, ‘Oh hell, I’ve made a mistake.’ ” But once in his airconditioned room [in Bangalore], with cable television and a personalised nursing service, the 73-year-old says that his stay has been “pretty relaxing. I go for a walk in the morning when it is cool but really I don’t have to deal with what’s outside”.

But high-end private hospitals far outstrip public ones in quality of care:

“The poor in India have no access to healthcare… We have doctors but they are busy treating the rich in India… For years we have been providing doctors to the western world. Now they are coming back and serving foreign patients at home.”

The island effect is natural, the public sector usually lags the private. But the disparity can become a flashpoint in the long run.

The Bay Area edition of Craigslist.org has been buzzing lately over one woman’s post in the Rants and Raves section. Apparently the number of responses she has gotten has inspired her to start her own blog. Normally I would never consider linking to a blog that is so young that it only has two entries, but I have a nose for controversy and thought I’d help this woman by sending some traffic her way (and start a gender war as a bonus). Yes, I am a troublemaker. From her post:

I can tell you the reason why most girls, desi or non don’t like to go for Indians. I have heard more than 100 stories in the last few years from every woman I know who has dated or tried a relationship with a desi guy.

1. There is always that, let’s have a relationship now and I love you and I want to marry you but I won’t tell anyone of my friends or family that you even exist. You are just a friend and then one fine day, make a trip to India to “visit” family and the guy either comes back married or engaged and his answer is “sorry but they forced me and now I can’t do anything.” Some get even worse and then say, I always told you my parents would never approve of anyone that I found and other b.s. things like that. My point is, desi guys tend to want to lie and are dishonest about long term futures even when things are going well and they don’t have the balls to stand up for someone even if they love them. <<<———— This is the BIGGEST reason why I know most women wont even look at a desi as a serious relationship matter.. What good is it if he can’t be a man?

2. They are too cheap. I have actually had a desi guy ask me to split a bill at Taco Bell.. I mean, hey I don’t mind going dutch but ocassionally it would be nice to see a guy actually making things a little romantic than finding the cheapest way to a date.

3. They are NOT romantic. They have no concept of how to treat a woman period. They don’t know about bringing flowers on special occassions or sometimes, just cuz. They don’t know how to show their emotions and care for someone. Their idea of a date is sitting at home or at Naz, watching a Desi movie over a dinner at an indian restaurant. They have no concept of doing something to please a woman and let’s face it.. desi or not, women love romance.

…

Have you heard enough or are you thirsty for more? Needless to say I think this girl is wrong in most of her generalizations. We are victims of our own designs when it comes to dating and love. I am also pretty sure that some Indian male is going to come up with a counter list. It won’t be me however :)

I don’t mean to generalize but most women will give you a reason or reasons between the above mentioned ones as to their experiences with a desi guy. Since there aren’t that many desis to go around, once a woman has one or two experience like this, they stay away from desis in general.. Hence, anyone who may not even fit in to this catagory will suffer because of your fellow desi men who have used and abused these above mentioned criterias too much.

You bastards!

An interesting premise that seems to have gone nowhere -

SaharaOne’s much hyped show, Kuch Love Kuch Masti, a spin off on the global hit Sex and the City may not live long enough to see its end. The show about three urban girls who have no qualms discussing love and sex started off with alot of razzmatazz.

The media and audiences were curious to see if the show lives up to the comparisons made with its foreign counterpart.

When faced with accusations of copyright violations, the show's producer responds in tres Desi fashion - indignant denial -

When asked about the show drawing inspiration from the global hit Sex and the City, he is quick to claim, “I don’t know why these comparisons are made, but the show is definitely not a take off on Sex and the City.”

Having seen Indian Superman, call me a skeptic. ;-)

“With great power comes great responsibility.” So Spiderman’s uncle tells him. Raj Bhakta knows just what Uncle Ben was talking about. From the Vail Daily:

Since starring on “The Apprentice,” local Raj Bhakta has earned some major street credit as a ladies man.

Raj was a special guest doing commentary at the ceremony where Yahoo announced its earnings. Raj was chosen because he had the most hits on Yahoo out of all the characters on “The Apprentice.” He even pinned a bow tie on the CEO.

“A group of three guys, Indian guys - who are not the smoothest guys with women, generally - come up to me afterward and they were asking me, seriously, about what to do to get girls,” said Raj. “Like I know what the hell I’m doing. I’m saying things like ‘pony up’ on national television.”

Ahh yes. I too share in Raj’s pain. What? I have street cred. Fine, whatever.

“I don’t do anything differently than what all other guys are thinking of doing. I just do it. A guy sees Anna Kournikova. Anna Kournikova is a beautiful sex symbol in America. You want to try to take Anna Kournikova out. So what the hell, try.”

In addition to disseminating advice to the young playas out there, Raj would like to continue with his political venture,

His long-term ambition is to serve the people in a political realm, inspired by his successful immigrant parents who have given him a unique perspective into the greatness of America.

“America has one sacred duty to all of its citizens and that is to give them a fighting chance. There needs to be a middle of the road, representing young people - rational people - who believe in small government and freedom. Things that we all hear about that are slowly being stripped away,” said Raj.

The New York Times recently reported that Democratic Congressman Anthony D. Weiner’s (who is running for Mayor of New York City) office has come under scrutiny for a series of suspicious mayoral campaign donations, all brokered by one Girish Soni.

Mr. Weiner collected more money orders in the last six months than any other Democratic mayoral candidate, all of them turned in by a New Jersey pharmacist, Girish Soni, who has raised thousands of dollars for Mr. Weiner’s Congressional campaigns since 1998, according to federal and city campaign finance records.

Mr. Soni gave the Weiner for New York Committee 29 money orders for $250 apiece on Nov. 24, along with two checks totaling $2,000. Each contribution was in a different name, but 25 of them included no information about the person’s profession or place of employment, as required by campaign finance laws, and several of the donors could not be located at the addresses provided.

Two people whose names appear on money orders said yesterday that they did not recall making the contributions.

Smita Parekh of Queens said she knew nothing about it and referred questions to her husband, Dilip Parekh, who expressed bewilderment at learning that he and his wife were listed as contributors to Mr. Weiner.

“I didn’t send in any money order, no sir,” Mr. Parekh said in a telephone interview from a grocery store he operates in Manhattan. “My wife works for Mr. Soni’s friend. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

The judge in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial ordered journalist Martin Bashir to testify as a government witness against the pop singer, despite his attempts to avoid participation.

From the Sunday Mail:

The TV reporter — whose documentary “Living With Michael Jackson” triggered the investigation against the star — has been called as a “necessary witness” in the trial, which starts (Monday).

Bashir, 42, had tried to get out of giving evidence by citing a law that protects reporters from having to testify about things they see while working on a story.

Bashir became the first desi network correspondent for one of the big three broadcast outlets when he joined ABC’s “20/20” in December. His debut story for the news magazine was an interview with BALCO head Victor Conte, who admitted to supplying illegal supplements to some of the sports world’s most successful athletes.

This year’s trial of the century kicked off today in southern California, and the mainstream press is in the process of wetting itself, because there really isn’t anything else of importance going on in the world.

Sunday Mail: Jacko on trial: Bashir in the box
The Smoking Gun: Bashir a government witness in Jacko trial?

The NYT reviews the latest book by Wendy Doniger, a University of Chicago professor who studies Hinduism:

Though sexual imagery is found throughout Hinduism’s baroque mythology, many groups would like to minimize its importance. They have different concerns: some with purity, some with Hindu power, some with minimizing the influence of “Eurocentric” commentators…

… threatening e-mail messages were sent to Ms. Doniger and her colleagues. And in November 2003, an egg was lobbed at her at the University of London… Scholarship about Hinduism has also come under scrutiny. Books that explore lurid or embarrassing details about deities or saints have been banned. One Western scholar’s Indian researcher was smeared with tar, and the institute in Pune where the scholar had done his research was destroyed. Ms. Doniger said one of her American pupils who was studying Christianity in India had her work disrupted and was being relentlessly followed. [NYT]

What struck me about this story is the degree to which the reviewer absolutely, unquestioningly takes Doniger’s side without acknowledging there might be another point of view. She’s pushed the envelope, to say the least, on sexual, Freudian interpretations of Hindu mythology and reportedly called the Gita ‘a dishonest book’:

Sri Ramakrishna, the 19^th century Hindu saint, has been declared by these scholars as being a sexually-abused homosexual, and it has become “academically established” by Wendy Doniger’s students that Ramakrishna was a child molester, and had also forced homosexual activities upon Vivekananda… Other conclusions by these well-placed scholars include: Ganesha’s trunk symbolizes a “limp phallus”; his broken tusk is a symbol for the castration-complex of the Hindu male; his large belly is a proof of the Hindu male’s enormous appetite for oral sex. Shiva, is interpreted as a womanizer, who encourages ritual rape, prostitution and murder, and his worship is linked to violence and destruction. [Sulekha]

This is a hairy issue, so let me tease out various threads here. I’m not in favor of right-wing Hinduism; I’m certainly against any form of academic intimidation. And there are, in fact, rich veins of sexuality in Hindu mythology. It’s one of the ways Hinduism feels more organic, less Puritan to me than the fire-and-brimstone self-abnegation of the Bible.

This post is from the files of Mr. ‘Everything Comes From India’ and the chest-thumpingly nationalist father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

An author who’s a Hare Krishna is penning a tome on how Star Wars was inspired by Hindu myths. In his formulation, The Jedi and the Lotus, the Force comes from Brahma, Yoda and Luke are guru and disciple, Jedi training is yoga and the Jedi rules are the warrior code of the kshatriya.

[J]ust as Star Wars takes place in deep space, most of the battles in the Ramayana take place in sophisticated aircrafts, and Arjuna, too, in the Mahabharata, is said to engage in many battles while in outer space… Ancient Indian myths are perhaps the earliest examples of these world myths, while Star Wars is merely among the most contemporary… I look at George Lucas’ major influences, from Flash Gordon to Joseph Campbell, and how Indian tales form the central core around which his series is modelled.

So much sci-fi rips from warrior mythology (samurai, cowboys), I find it hard to believe a claim of exclusive inspiration, although there’s an interesting argument for the ferengi and Klingons in Star Trek being desi in origin.

The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) screens the work of filmmaker Mani Kaul on Monday night, and will have the New Indian Cinema trailblazer in attendance for questions.

Some of Kaul’s more notable films include “Uski Roti,” “Siddheswari,” and “Naukar Ki Kameez.” The 60-year-old filmmaker’s work has screened at festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam and Pesaro, as well as venues such as New York’s MOMA and Paris’ Centre Georges Pompidou.

The REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. You can kill two birds (if you’re into that sort of thing) with one stone by finally visiting the architect’s recently completed and hotly-debated building.

General admission tickets for the Kaul event are $8, and are available for online purchase.

REDCAT: An evening with Mani Kaul
Indian Cinema Database: Mani Kaul

It is one thing to translate existing U.S. comics, but this project is truly what we call a “transcreation,” where we actually reinvent the origin of a property like Spider-Man so that he is an Indian boy growing up in Mumbai [formerly Bombay] and dealing with local problems and challenges. I have always believed that the superhero relates to a “universal psyche” already firmly established in India through centuries of mythological stories depicting gods and heroes with supernatural abilities …

Though we will remain true to the underlining mythos of Spider-Man, which is epitomized in the phrase “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility,” the character will be reinvented so his powers, problems and costume are more integrated with Indian culture. Unlike the U.S. origin, which is deeply rooted in science, the Indian version is more rooted in magic and mythology.

In a quest for validation-by-sticker dating back to those gold stars from third grade, desis are yet again pitching a Diwali stamp to the US Postal Service. The online petition comes with a ‘No fair! Rashid got a bigger piece’ twist, because an Eid stamp came out years ago. Since both the Diwali and Dalip Singh Saund stamps have been rejected before, the latest try shows we can take a lickin’ and keep on stickin’.

Some experts told that the stamp being issued was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’, said Kumar. “Diwali’s recognition by the US Postal Department… will also honour a civilisation that has the merit of being a continuous propagation for 6,000 years, and Diwali is celebrated not just by Hindus but also Sikhs and even Christians. It’s like Christmas,” he contended.

My assessment is a bit too flip. It’s true that in the email age, procuring a Diwali stamp is like flyering the Titanic. But it’s actually free marketing for the South Asian brand. You might not have to explain your damn holiday to your elderly neighbors any more. You might get a sponsorship from Illuminations.

You might even pull a Hannukah (eight days of presents? It’s a shanda) and leave work early every day in November. ‘Ours is a very respectful religion,’ you might say. ‘We respect the ancient tradition of shubh ghanta. Also called happy hour. We take converts.’

Sign the petition here.

Actor Sanjay Madhav recently auditioned for a part in a comedy festival promo, and was so offended by the sketch, that he shared his experience on Hollywood Masala’s message boards.

The spot entailed Mohandas Gandhi (not the part that he auditioned for) playing a prank on his followers by ordering a meat-lovers pizza. From Madhav’s original post:

I do have a sense of humor about these scenarios, however this is offensive to many, including myself. When will the non-Indian population realize that Gandhi is to many Indians, what Martin Luther King is to the African-American people. Would they dare make such a mockery of Martin Luther King without public backlash? I think we know the answer to that question.

Wait, I have a different question: What brand of pizza did he order? Since I haven’t seen the promo, it would be inappropriate for me to weigh in on Madhav’s specific complaint. However, it would definitely piss me off if Gandhi was depicted ordering some cheap, craptastic, fast food pizza. I’d like to think that if Gandhi was going to buy pizza for his followers, he would spring for something good like California Pizza Kitchen or Round Table. He was the father of an entire subcontinent — give the man some respect and portray him ordering a slab of the top shelf pie.

Not too long ago, a friend and I made our way to a nice movie theater in Los Angeles, Calif. And by nice, I mean the kind of theater that brutally charges more for tickets on weekends, and has an overpriced boutique shop in the lobby. Other than that, it was the same as any other not-quite-as-nice theater.

The boutique shop had a section with South Asian-inspired products. This was especially interesting to me because of the noticeable rise in the commercial utilization of the culture. Besides the standard new age fare — incense, books, teas — there were a couple of products that caught my eye. A candle bust of Siddhartha (struck me as a tad sadistic), and a pair of greeting cards from J&M Martinez, which are pictured to the right.

It looks like they’re trying to depict Hindu Gods, but I don’t have a clue about which ones they’re supposed to be. The blue-skinned male on the left could be Krishna, Ram or Shiva, but none of them were that fat. The female on the right could be Lakshmi, but doesn’t she have another pair of arms? Am I completely leaving someone out? And what are the inscriptions all about?

In the end, and especially after noticing the exorbitant price tag, all I could remark to my friend was, “what the f--k?!” They rolled their eyes, as if to suggest that they didn’t care. I would be forced to allow the confusion to consume me as we walked away, enrage me during a trip to the cash-draining snack counter, and finally choke me with a sanity-busting froth during an endless stream of mind-numbing trailers. Thankfully, the two-hour borefest that followed put me to sleep and out of my misery. Still, please help me make sense of my cardstock nemeses. Or at least help me make sense of this senseless post.

Inodlink’s Melvin Durai pays tribute to the last honest profession: The cab driver. What you say?!?

Perhaps all your encounters with cabdrivers have been sour. They donÂŽt stop for you, and if they do, the only place they seem interested in taking you is to the cleaners.

But before you pass judgment on the millions of cabbies in the world, you need to realize that some of them are so honest, theyÂŽll return almost anything left in their cabs, even Harry Potter books.

But wait…

Glenn Sher, a Long Island, NY, cabby, returned a womanÂŽs purse containing $13,300. ThatÂŽs a lot of money, almost enough to take Paris Hilton on a date.

“I could have used the money to pay bills or whatever,” Sher told The New York Post. “But it wasnÂŽt mine. I canÂŽt take whatÂŽs not mine.” The mayor of New York was truly impressed. “ThatÂŽs amazing,” he said. “I didnÂŽt realize we had a cabdriver who spoke English.”

Another New York cabby, Benjamin Adjepong, was commended by the Taxi and Limousine Commission for returning a bag containing $7,000. “It makes me feel good, and my wife is so excited,” he told WABC TV. Now thatÂŽs a good wife — excited about her husbandÂŽs honesty, not even thinking about the number of shoes she could have bought.

Cabbies in other countries have been just as honorable. Ashraf Qureshi, a Pakistani immigrant in Australia, drove a tourist around for three weeks, even let the man make long distance calls on his phone and eat meals in his apartment — allowed him to do everything but sleep with his wife.

The man paid Qureshi $50,000 for various expenses, according to an Ananova.com report. But after the cabby deposited the money in his bank account, he began to feel guilty about accepting so much and returned $40,000 to the man. “It was all getting too much for me,” Qureshi said. ItÂŽs a good thing heÂŽs a taxi driver, because with integrity like that, he could never be a corporate executive.

I am personally undecided on cab drivers. While traveling Jordan I hired a cab driver, who although nice at first, wanted to share a hotel room with me on the first night. Maybe if I’d known him longer. He also began to cry when I didn’t tip him at the same time I paid him for the three days. I tried to explain he’d be getting a big tip when he dropped me off at the airport, but it didn’t seem to register. That’s my taxi cab confession.

Laughs were aplenty during last night’s season premiere of Fox’s “The Simple Life,” when socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie shared their shocking blend of ignorance and helplessness with a no-nonsense desi mechanic.

The reality show inserts Hilton, heiress to the hotel fortune by the same name, and Ritchie, daughter of singer Lionel Ritchie, into fish-out-of-water situations. The past two seasons placed the bicoastal, hard-partying pair in a small farming town, and on a road trip through rural America. The current season assigns them internships in a wide range of fields.

Hilton and Ritchie’s first job landed them in Bayonne, N.J., where they were assigned the seemingly easy tasks of changing oil, customer service and moving cars at Quality Auto Center. Under the supervision of Ketan, the pair showed up late, crashed into cars, alienated customers and stole a police cruiser.

When it came time to evaluate their performance, Ketan gave them appropriate marks:
Customer service: F
Changing oil: D
Appearance: “A for that, for sure.”

“The Simple Life” next airs on February 9 at 8:30 p.m. on Fox.

While we’re freeing Jins from diyas, definitely check out the desh-hop artists who own3d the mike in the hip-hop documentary Brown Like Dat.

First, MC Kabir. The son of Nobel winner Amartya Sen, Kabir is half Italian and lives in Boston. He’s got good flow, an apropos namesake and a solid track in ‘Recognize.’ Kabir tells a great story on screen about freestyling in a dark club and pushing off an overzealous fan who was trying to grab the mike. ‘When I looked closer, I realized it was Wyclef.’ And they jammed. It’s hard to tell the story while looking humble; his lips twitched, but he had it sorted. Listen here.

Also give a listen to the Himalayan Project. Chee Malabar, who showed up to the screening, sported a gaunt frenchie and a serious ‘fro, looking for all the world like a brown Dogg.

The group’s name pays homage to their ancestral roots in India and China — the Himalayan mountain range straddles the borders of both countries. [Official site]

Listen here.

The Power99 controversy elicited several comments on our website that seemed (to me at least) to partially condone the Shock Jocks behavior because they were receiving “poor service.” The customer service representative, Tina, said “ma’am” instead of sir for example. Many Americans also seem to resent the fact that the Indian call center operators are being taught English in order to supposedly “fool” them into thinking they are talking to a representative in the U.S. The Tampa Tribune reported last week that the imperfection of these learned accents may cost some call centers their jobs:

When Sykes Enterprises began considering India for its customer service call centers a few years ago, it saw a country with many bright, hardworking and English- speaking citizens. What it didn’t anticipate was how much the Indian accent would perplex some American consumers.

On Thursday, Tampa-based Sykes said it would cut the volume of work at its Bangalore, India, facility by half. The call center, which in the past has provided customer service functions for Delta Air Lines and the Internet Service Provider MSN, generates about $4 million a year in revenue. About $2 million of that business will be shifted to Sykes call centers in other Asian countries. Sykes did not name these other countries.

Formerly controlled by the United States, the Philippines offers a more “Americanized” culture and employees with lighter accents. Also, there is less employee turnover than in India.

So let me get this straight. Slightly imperfect accent -> verbal abuse -> high turnover -> outsource the outsourced work to another country. I guess that would be considered market driven but the fact that its based more on perception than on reality makes it seem kind of silly to me. Then again, I guess everything in the business world is based upon perception.

The movie Born into Brothels isn’t the only film featuring South Asian youngsters to get an Oscar nod. So does the short film The Little Terrorist about a boy that climbs over the wrong fence in search of his cricket ball. From The Times of India:

Ashvin Kumar’s Little Terrorist has been nominated for an Oscar in the Short Film (Live Action) category. “The news hasn’t sunk in yet… I didn’t see the nomination coming but after I received a call from the Academy three weeks back, I thought I might make it,” says Ashvin, son of fashion designer Ritu Kumar.

Little Terrorist is about crossing boundaries and is based on the true story of a Pakistani boy who crosses the LoC after his cricket ball lands on a minefield in Indian territory. “The boy is given shelter by an elderly orthodox Hindu Brahmin and the relationship between them is what my film is about,” says Ashvin, pointing out that though the setting of his film is political, the essential theme is that of humanity. “The film shows how, despite artificial boundaries and barbed wires between people, the basic human instinct to give shelter to an innocent remains — no matter how many lines are drawn between people.”

Sajit did a very thorough post about the offensive Hot 97 tsunami song. I wanted to call out the lyrics of Jin tha MC’s reply track. It’s in the finest tradition of angry, political rap, and it’s actually a good track on its own merits. Listen to the track.

You got it all twisted if you think I’m here to cockblock
on a bunch of no-talent, wanna-be shock jocks (nah)
And you say it’s all freedom of speech
Well, you just lost yours, read ‘em and weep
Won’t be happy ‘til you’re fired…

Fuck the tsunami song and whoever thought of it
Matta fact, fuck the engineer that recorded it…
Anything for ratings, huh? That shit is corporate

That little bullshit statement has gotta be
The world’s most half-assed apology
Thousands are still gettin’ discovered each day
How dare you compare a life to a week’s pay?

HipHopMusic says the station issued a weird, passive-aggressive apology, and Sprint and McDonald’s have pulled their advertising for now:

At 6 AM this morning, Hot 97 announced the Miss Jones morning show is “suspended indefinitely”… Most of the calls they took were in favor of bringing Miss Jones back. Many people have reported to me that when they called to speak against bringing the show back they were screened out…. They’re not saying whether the suspension is permanent or temporary, or whether it is a paid suspension….

They also played Jin’s dis track repeatedly.

I rode the Delhi metro the week it opened its first underground route:

Extra-wide cars, fully automated driverless trains, all-electronic fare gates with magnetic farecards and cool magnetic tokens, overhead electric wires that are safer than a third rail, floor-through layout so you can walk from one end to the other without opening doors… this subway system has the finest in Indian, err, South Korean tech. The subway feels and sounds like the D.C. metro. It’s faster and wider than Boston’s, newer and more luxurious than New York’s.

Check out the photos.

The NYT profiled Saru Jayaraman, a 29-year-old activist for Manhattan restaurant workers, last week (thanks, Ms. World):

She is the executive director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, a little nonprofit that just pulled off a David-versus-Goliath feat. The center extracted $164,000 from two fashionable Manhattan restaurants - Cite and the Park Avenue Cafe - to settle lawsuits that involved charges of discrimination and failure to pay overtime to 23 restaurant employees, most of whom are immigrants from Mexico and Bangladesh.

The ‘pretty people in sales, pimply workhorses in the back office’ model is used by many, many industries (software, consulting, finance). But you can’t put it in employment ads. There’s a euphemistic hypocrisy here, but like blind auditions at symphony orchestras, it at least gives interviewees an honest shot.

“… you wouldn’t believe the ads put out by restaurant employers - ‘good-looking required, send photos’ - to be a waiter. Employers have told us that means they want good-looking white people in the front and hard workers in the back. Hard workers mean immigrants…”

Jayaraman has an interesting background:

A daughter of immigrants from southern India, a graduate of Yale Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, she was singled out and honored as one of America’s finest young people in 1995 by President Bill Clinton… Ms. Jayaraman, whose father is an unemployed software developer and whose mother is a school aide, grew up in a Mexican-American neighborhood in southeast Los Angeles… She teaches… immigrant rights at New York University… She is a soprano who used to sing with a gospel choir at Harvard.

Jayaraman’s organization is opening its own coop-style restaurant on a fashionable street in Manhattan. It’ll be an interesting experiment in a tough biz.

This fall, it plans to open a restaurant, Colors, on Lafayette Street near Astor Place, to be owned and governed by workers.

Women with supportive, well-off fathers often are often at the forefront of women’s rights in conservative nations, because they have the means. One such woman has shocked Egypt by filing a paternity suit against a well-known actor. Because it involves a woman fighting injustice before marriage, losing her privacy and being publicly vilified, it reminds me of the dowry extortion case in Delhi:

The standard three-step program for any unmarried upper-class Egyptian girl who becomes pregnant is an abortion, an operation to refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first unwitting suitor the family can snare… Instead [Hind el-Hinnawy] did the unthinkable here: she had the child and then filed a public paternity suit… Ms. Hinnawy contends that the two had what is known as an urfi [unregistered] marriage… She may well set an Egyptian legal precedent by requesting that the court order Mr. Fishawy to submit to a DNA test…

Corporate tycoons and politicians who are married have found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with everyone from secretaries to belly dancers with an Islamic seal of approval… “People prefer that a woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t become a scandal…”

… the case would help defeat the conservative Saudi values that she said had changed Egyptian society for the worse… “These values from Wahhabi Islam are completely different from our Islamic values,” Mrs. Bakr said. “This is petrodollar Islam…” [NYT]

The 2003 Nisha Sharma case in Noida:

Just a couple of hours before her wedding ceremony, Ms Nisha Sharma used her mobile phone to report her in-laws-to-be to the police. They had allegedly demanded Rs 12 lakh from Ms Sharma’s father, and had even assaulted him when he had hesitated to comply with the demand…

I haven’t caught every episode of Fox’s immensely popular “American Idol” over the past three years, but I’ve watched quite a few. During that time, I have not seen a single South Asian contestant on the program. Thankfully, that barrier came crashing down last night with a cataclysmic thud.

For those who haven’t seen it, the show is essentially a massive singing audition, where round after round, contestants are judged by the following criteria: Their ability to carry a tune, espouse plasticity befitting a manufactured pop star, and a complete willingness to kill off any part of their soul that wanted to be a real artist. The first half of the contest is judged by the show’s three stewards, and the latter rounds are voted on by viewers (mostly teenaged girls with cell phones). The winner receives a record contract.

First up was accountant Sundeep Achreja, who is admired at his office because he dressed as a “pimp” (or “punk” — his co-worker really couldn’t get her story straight) for Halloween. His height initially impressed judge Paula Abdul. His rendition of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” replete with Rocky-esque jogging, did not.

Later in the show, a male with the last name of Mendes (the announcer butchered his first name) performed a song that probably doesn’t really exist. The performance was so hard to decipher, that he earned inclusion on a segment entitled “The Incomprhensibles.”

Finally, there was some good news...sort of. During a montage of various contestants celebrating invitations to the next round in Hollywood, Calif., one of the jubilant singers appeared to be of South Asian descent. Unfortunately, the show did not broadcast his audition or offer a name, so the only thing I’m going on is a brief clip. I suppose we’ll know for sure in the coming weeks.

“American Idol” airs again tonight on Fox at 8 p.m. If you have a dish that carries Sony Entertainment Television, you can watch the Indian version, entitled, yep, “Indian Idol.”

The Washington Post Magazine published a lengthy but provocative piece by Shankar Vedantam regarding a technique which tests for racial bias. The test, known as the Implicit Association Test, was developed by three researchers including Harvard’s Mahzarin Banaji:

AT 4 O’CLOCK ON A RECENT WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, a 34-year-old white woman sat down in her Washington office to take a psychological test. Her office decor attested to her passion for civil rights — as a senior activist at a national gay rights organization, and as a lesbian herself, fighting bias and discrimination is what gets her out of bed every morning. A rainbow flag rested in a mug on her desk.

The woman brought up a test on her computer from a Harvard University Web site. It was really very simple: All it asked her to do was distinguish between a series of black and white faces. When she saw a black face she was to hit a key on the left, when she saw a white face she was to hit a key on the right. Next, she was asked to distinguish between a series of positive and negative words. Words such as “glorious” and “wonderful” required a left key, words such as “nasty” and “awful” required a right key. The test remained simple when two categories were combined: The activist hit the left key if she saw either a white face or a positive word, and hit the right key if she saw either a black face or a negative word.

Then the groupings were reversed. The woman’s index fingers hovered over her keyboard. The test now required her to group black faces with positive words, and white faces with negative words. She leaned forward intently. She made no mistakes, but it took her longer to correctly sort the words and images.

Her result appeared on the screen, and the activist became very silent. The test found she had a bias for whites over blacks.

That must suck. I think most of us are pretty sure that we aren’t racists or bigots, but its an eye-opener to see how the biases of society seep into our subconscious.

Sepia Mutiny Tipsters have been buzzing all week about another racist, ignorant and insensitive incident from the hip-hop airwaves. In this case, Radio Jockey's (RJ's) from The Miss Jones in the Morning Show, on New Yorks popular Hip Hop Station, Hot 97, recorded and played on air, the "Tsunami Song," seriously mocking the hundreds of thousands of those who perished in the devastating tsunami this past December. Miss Info, an Asian-American co-host of the show did not participate, because, duh, she found the song to be extremely offensive. If you click here, you can here a verbal spat (that might give some insight into the intentions of the hosts that did participate) that Miss Info had with Miss Jones over the airing of the highly racist and insensitive song.

If you thought the Star and Buc Wild dialogue was offensive, you might want to skip the next paragraph. From the clip, it seems that the two other co-hosts Miss Jones, and Todd Lynn, recorded the song, with some of the lyrics as follows

..All at once you could hear the screaming ch*nks and no one was safe from the wave there were africans drowning, little chinamen swept away you could hear god laughing, "swim you b*tches swim" So now you're screwed, it's the Tsunami you better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy I just saw her float by, a tree went through her head and now the children will be sold to child slavery...

If you listen to the clip above you hear Miss Jones and co-host Todd Lynn launching into an abusive tirade against Miss Info for isolating herself and not participating. When Info voices her objection to the clip, Miss Jones tells Info she's only complaining because "you feel superior, probably because you're Asian." Then, at minute 3:37 on the mp3 file, you hear Todd Lynn say, "I'm gonna start shooting Asians."

Is there any humor in that?

Thus far outrage against the station and the show is muted, although there has been some press, and even a Hot 97/Miss Jones diss track by Asian MC Jin. To me, any reaction other than the firing of Miss Jones and Todd Lynn, is muted. Hot 97 issued a weak apology here, and according to the statement, Miss Jones in the Morning, along with her entire staff, have agreed to contribute one week’s pay to Tsunami Relief efforts.

To stay updated and to find out what you can do, go to hiphopmusic.com, where there is a list of emails for the show, the hosts, and advertisers. And as always, don't forget to include th FCC on your email list.

Some addresses for Hot 97's parent company, Emmis Broadcasting are below. The first is their head honcho Jeff Smulyan:

hiphopmusic.com suggests you not use the word "tsunami" in your email as it will probably get filtered
jsmulyan@emmis.com
ir@emmis.com
rcummings@emmis.com
jsteele@emmis.com
khealey@emmis.com

Don't forget to ask Hot 97 and its advertisers, how dare you compare a life to a weeks pay?

Links to radio clips taken from 3030radio.com where there is a screen shot of the Hot 97 website featuring the now-removed tsunami song link. Click here for a story on this from the New York Post, here for the asiansinmediawatch website, and here for the story from the Billboard radio monitor. The asiansinmedia website has a form letter/email that you can send.

“Born Into Brothels,” the documentary about children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s notorious red-light district, earned a highly-coveted Oscar nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday morning.

The critically-lauded film documents the experiences of photojournalist Zana Briski, who supplied the prostitutes’ children with cameras in order to capture a glimpse of their harsh existence.

“Born Into Brothels” has already captured a slew of awards — Sundance Audience, L.A. Film Critics, and the National Board of Review — and has screened in nearly every prestigious film festival around the world.

The Academy Awards telecast airs on Sunday, February 27, on ABC.

Oscars: Documentary feature award nominations
“Born Into Brothels”: Official site
Sepia Mutiny: Kids with cameras

Turbanhead just posted a video clip of Parveen Babi in gold lame shrinkwrap, shimmying to the bouncy hit ‘Jawani Jaaneman’ from Namak Halal. It’s ’80s fabulous!

Watch the clip.

Michael Douglas, yes Michael Douglas, was in Bombay recently gearing up for his role in the third installment of the action series which includes the "Romancing the Stone" and "Jewel of the Nile" films.

The Indian Express is reporting that Racing the Monsoon , which is being produced by Sahara One Motion Pictures and Percept Picture Company, will be shot entirely in India, mostly in Sahara’s sprawling ultra-luxury Amby Valley township, south of Mumbai. Douglas, also producer of the film, is trying to get the support of the Indian Railways as a major part of the film is centered on a diamond robbery in a train. None other than TMBWITW, Aishwarya Rai, is speculated as being his co-star.

I really hope Douglas isn't the first man Aishwarya has to kiss on the silver screen. Anyway, turns out Douglas, who has seen only "bits and pieces" of two Hindi films, both of them starring Rai, has some advice for the up-and-coming Indian film industry.

Michael Douglas confesses he’s “hardly a Bollywood expert,” but he has a theory about why Indian films don’t do well internationally. ‘‘I don’t know how you guys will take it, but I think you guys falter on script and structure,’’ said the 60-year-old Hollywood actor, in Mumbai to announce his next film. ‘‘Also, the Indian process that you guys have of actors doing many movies at one time doesn’t really benefit in the long run.’’

Smart guy that Michael Douglas.

The Harvard controversy on whether women’s technical aptitudes are innate:

… [The Harvard president’s] young daughter, when given toy trucks, had treated them as dolls, naming them “Daddy truck” and “baby truck.” But critics dryly observed that men had a longstanding tradition of naming their vehicles, and babying them as though they were humans.

Lt. Neil Prakash:

You can’t beat ol’ Blinkey for armored protection.

I call my baby, Blinkey, ever since she got one of her headlights blown off in Baqubah by an RPG. The RPG had ripped open that little corner of the hull and exposed the depleted uranium armor. She’s taken so much battle-damage that we’re being told she will never return to duty after this deployment… Supposedly, she will be coded out, ripped apart and studied at a lab. If that’s true, that breaks my crew’s hearts. She has taken a pounding and kept her crew alive. She should be bronzed and placed on a concrete slab at Ft. Knox for everyone to see.

Interesting little article about a topic that always generates some heat -

I live in India and I am a proud firearm owner—but I am the exception not the norm, an odd situation in a country with a proud martial heritage and a long history of firearm innovation. This is not because the people of India are averse to gun ownership, but instead due to Draconian anti-gun legislation going back to colonial times.

To trace the roots of India’s anti-gun legislation we need to step back to the latter half of the 19th century. The British had recently fought off a major Indian rebellion (the mutiny of 1857) and were busy putting in place measures to ensure that the events of 1857 were never repeated. These measures included a major restructuring of administration and the colonial British Indian Army along with improvements in communications and transportation. Meanwhile the Indian masses were systematically being disarmed and the means of local firearm production destroyed, to ensure that they (the Indian masses) would never again have the means to rise in rebellion against their colonial masters. Towards this end the colonial government, under Lord Lytton as Viceroy (1874-1880), brought into existence the Indian Arms Act, 1878, an act which exempted Europeans and ensured that no Indian could possess a weapon of any description unless the British masters considered him a “loyal” subject of the British Empire.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Parveen Babi, a screen rival of Zeenat Aman, passed away prematurely a couple of days ago at home in Bombay. The actress from Ahmedabad, a Gujarati Muslim, starred in Amar Akbar Anthony, Deewar, Namak Halal and Shaan opposite Amitabh Bachchan, made the cover of Time magazine, filmed a serial in Italy with her lover Kabir Bedi and lived in New York for many years.

Hailing from the nawab family of Junagadh, Parveen Babi did her schooling from Ahmedabad… Deewar personified the new Bollywood woman through her — smoking, drinking, not shying away from a live-in relationship, and yet desperate for the sindoor in her maang. If the film made the coronation of Bachchan as the “angry, young man” official, it also established Parveen Babi as the new western face — and figure — of the desi silver screen. [Telegraph]

Her hour of glory came when Time featured her on the cover [in 1977], much to the consternation of her screen rivals. A product of the flower children, yoga, Beatles and the students’ movement of the 1960s, Babi remained an outsider in Bollywood. Her cinema career came to an abrupt end amidst reports of alcoholism and drug abuse. [ToI]

She lived in a fishbowl, reportedly suffered from schizophrenia and then turned recluse:

Some claimed it was… the release of Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth (a semi-autobiographical look at his extramarital relationship with Parveen) and her disturbed state of mind that prompted her to abandon everything. [Rediff]

[Babi] led the life of an absolute recluse because she was afraid people were trying to kill her… Babi was afraid of doorbells and phone calls. [Telegraph]

I snapped this billboard on MG Road in Bangalore last month. The celebrity televangelist is so quintessentially capitalist cheese, so ’80s camp, so late-night TV that the ad seemed utterly incongruous. ‘This town has gone completely Amrika-crazy,’ I mused.

Since the guy has brown skin, it never even occurred to me that he might not be desi. Turns out it’s the American evangelist Benny Hinn (no relation to Benny Hill), he of whom bloggeth Abhi yesterday. Hinn is a Christian Arab Israeli from Florida. There will be a pop quiz on that in 30 minutes.

Hinn kicked off his prayer meeting at an airfield outside Bangalore today. The airfield resounded with the usual miracle healings, but violent protests against the convention flooded central Bangalore with torched buses and tear gas.

I’ve seen it all before, this bubble. It’s a land grab for souls and page views, folks, and India’s perceived as a wide-open market. It’s one of the largest and most passionate markets for religion in the world, so Hinn’s hungama is nothing but a trade visit, really. American churches already outsource prayers to Kerala. And for false miracles, every American charlatan put together couldn’t hold a candle to Indian holy men. Check out Gita Mehta’s brilliant Karma Cola:

Gita Mehta details the extent of the hippie infatuation with South Asia in her classic book… Westerners seek instant salvation; Easterners the quick rupee. Gurus could pack entire astrodomes in the ’60s, levitation was believed to signal salvation, and Western disciples believed above all else in moksha through easy sex and hard drugs. At one point there were over 100,000 hippies trekking all over South Asia searching for enlightenment in woolly-minded religious platitudes and a variety of uppers and downers.

The US-India Public Action Committee (USINPAC) followed yesterday’s inauguration with a little reception for members of Congress that it hopes to woo toward it’s policy beliefs. How’d it go?

Newly elected Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-LA) (who, as an aside, met recently with Rumsfeld) observed, “USINPAC is a very important bridge between the US Congress and the Indian-American community. Their work on and access to the hill has had an impact on several issues that are important to the community. I look forward to working with USINPAC.”

Art Estopinan, Chief of Staff of Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the newly elected Republican Co-Chair of the House Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, remarked “Indian-Americans have embraced the American political system and show increasing voting power and government participation, demonstrating a magnanimous affinity for public service. Such efforts cannot be overlooked.” In a letter written specially to USINPAC and its members, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen said, “I would like to thank you and commend you for your efforts. Your organization recognizes the flourishing relationship bonding our nations together. Through our united efforts, India and America can present an inspiring example of freedom and prosperity to the world, a guiding light that I feel privileged to be a part of.”

Katherine Harris (R-FL) noted, “Thank you USINPAC on performing a very important function. The Indian-American Community will benefit greatly by your work.”

Katherine Harris? I confess, the name still makes me shudder. A full description of USINPAC’s position on various issues can be found here.

As long as we are talking about biscuits and conversion, I thought I’d point out this story by the BBC on what happens when non-biscuit based conversion is proposed:

Hardline Hindu activists in southern India have protested against the visit of American TV evangelist Benny Hinn. Some businesses in Bangalore were also shut in response to a strike call by the activists against Mr Hinn’s three-day visit to the city.

Mr Hinn is one of America’s most famous evangelists and has his own daily television show, This Is Your Day.

He is expected to hold well-attended prayer meetings on the outskirts of Bangalore on Friday.

The BBC’s Sunil Raman says there have been a few incidents of stone throwing, damage to public property and attempts to stop traffic by protestors.

Banners and posters saying “Benny Hinn Go Back” have also been put up in Bangalore, hub of India’s software industry in Karnataka state.

The BJP apparently doesn’t approve of Hinn. Who would have guessed?

Bangalore-based Hindu organisations, including a main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, say that Mr Hinn would use these meetings to convert Hindus to Christianity.

Organisers deny such allegations.

Dr Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, said this was not the first time Mr Hinn was in India.

If biscuits are passed out, all hell is going to break loose.

Lt. Neil Prakash was just awarded a Silver Star for leading his platoon through a horrific explosive gauntlet to victory against 60 Iraqi rebels.

Well done, soldier.

It took the crew about one hour to fight their way through the next one kilometer stretch of road. Official battle reports count 23 IEDs and 20-25 RPG teams in that short distance, as well as multiple machine-gun nests, and enemy dismounts armed with small arms and hand grenades.

… enemy dismounts were attempting to throw hand grenades into the tank’s open hatches… Prakash’s tank took the brunt of the attack, sustaining blasts from multiple IEDs and at least seven standard and armor piercing RPGs… One round blew the navigation system completely off of the vehicle, while another well-aimed blast disabled his turret…

By battle’s end, the platoon was responsible for 25 confirmed destroyed enemy and an estimated 50 to 60 additional destroyed enemy personnel. Prakash was personally credited with the destruction of eight enemy strong-points, one enemy re-supply vehicle, and multiple enemy dismounts…

“He’s a pleasure to command because he doesn’t require very much direction. He uses his own judgment and he’s simply an outstanding young lieutenant…” Although born in India and maintaining strong ties to the Indian community, Prakash was raised in Syracuse, New York, in what he called a very patriotic American household.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

Some missionaries have apparently been demanding conversion in exchange for tsunami aid (via Angry Asian Man):

Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village [Samanthapettai] in India’s southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion… Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.

It’s the missionaries’ right to distribute aid as they wish, but still, this seems mighty pinch-hearted. In contrast, Muslims have been aiding Dalits when some upper-caste Hindus have not:

Jamaath, a Muslim organisation… been running four relief camps in… Cuddalore district. The overwhelming majority of the victims are non-Muslims but that has not prevented the Jamaath from giving them three meals a day for over three days. Considering there are an estimated 40,000 people in these camps, that’s quite an achievement.

Power stroker Sania Mirza lost her third-round Oz Open match to Serena Williams, 6-1, 6-4, in 56 minutes. She was all nerves in the first set, which lasted just 20 minutes:

“I had butterflies in my stomach for two days. I couldn’t get to sleep last night. In the first set I was really tight…”

But she found her game in the second. Match point was an ace, the last of 12 Serena scorchers. Williams was a gracious winner:

“I was happy with the match today… I was getting girls who weren’t giving me any pace - but today she was giving me lots of hard balls… It was good to see someone from India for the first time do so well… she had a very solid game… and I see a very bright future for her.”

Here’s a shot-by-shot account. Mirza, who won Wimbledon in the junior doubles category, made $46K and is racking up endorsement deals in India.

The Times of India’s coverage was so fawningly nationalist as to be absurd. The same paper which called Mirza’s previous 50-minute win a cakewalk, treated her similarly rapid defeat like Wagner’s Ring cycle:

… it was plain that the Indian girl was stretching [Williams] to the limits of her game… Sania’s fitness was exceptional. She raced to chase down most balls hit into the corners and this really flummoxed Serena. At this level her physical training looks to be effective… In the sixth game she forced a visibly panting Serena on the back foot through power-hitting of her own…

While perusing photos of horribly degrading segregation in the Old South, I was pleasantly surprised to find a sign that could make South Asian college parties run more smoothly ;)

(via Waxy)

I had intended to write this entry at the beginning of the 109th Congress but it becomes particularly relevant in light of the reported cease-fire violation on the Indian/Pakistani border. Who are the new co-chairs of the India Caucus in Congress, and what will their priorities be? The IACFPA profiled Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Gary Ackerman (D-NY) late last year:

This will be Ackerman’s second stint at the Caucus where he served earlier between 1998 and 2000, leaving an unbeaten legacy including earlier this year when he introduced legislation requiring the CIA director to report to Congress on Pakistani proliferation activities. The measure was adopted by the full House as an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act. Now he expects to handle the newest White House decision to sell high tech military goodies to Islamabad.

On the other hand, less is known of initiatives, if any, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen might have taken vis-à-vis India, other than some letters castigating that country for violating the rights of its religious minorities. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen who is on the House International Relations Committee where she Chairs the Subcommittee on Middle East and Central Asia, and on the House Government Reform Committee where she is on the Human Rights and Wellness Subcommittee, chaired by none other than old India-foe Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana.

You snooze, you lose (an eye) -

Indian boy’s eye injured as teacher flings pen at him

NEW DELHI: An eight-year-old school boy’s eye was badly hurt when a furious teacher flung a pen at him during class to get him to pay attention in the southern Indian state of Kerala, a report said Wednesday.

Al Amin, bleeding profusely, was rushed to a hospital Tuesday where he underwent emergency surgery for a 4.5-millimetre cut in the pupil of his eye, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Doctors who performed the surgery said it was too early to say whether the boy’s eyesight would be restored to normal, the report said. The woman teacher hurled the pen at Amin to make him pay attention during an Arabic lesson at a government school in Kattakkada, near Kerala’s state capital Trivandrum, the report said. Police have filed a case against the teacher, the report added. Indian parents often complain about harsh treatment of students in schools. Many teachers and school administrations believe corporal punishment is the best form of discipline.

When I saw the headline, a little voice inside my head said "I betcha this is in Kerala."

(fyi - reason #35235)

The TV Guide Insider is reporting that Kal Penn has landed a role in Six Feet Under's final season, that begins airing in June. Penn is slated to enter the show later in the season, and play one of Claire's (Lauren Ambrose) boyfriends, who, if you don't watch the show, tend to be of the off-kilter variety.

Turns out, SFU creator Alan Ball loved [Penn's] his goofy stoner flick, which costarred Off Centre's John Cho. "You really are offering me something on Six Feet based on the character of Kumar?" Penn asked in disbelief when Ball called. The honcho's reply? Yup.

But this is my favorite line from the article...

"So far Penn (who's no relation to Sean)..."

I don't know how someone would confuse the two.

BridalBeer isn’t playing with a full deck — hers has an entire suit of jokers :) In today’s episode, she catches her SO thinking about his ex:

“Brian, you’ve been a Deviant Dick. I want six Broadway shows. One-a-day this week.”

“OK”

“And don’t go cheap on the seats. And no sneaking in the good seats after the singing and dancing has started. And I’ll check the places you pick for dinner on NYCitySearch.com. Atleast $$$, please”.

“OK”

“Thanks. And I earn Cheating Rights for a month”

“OK”

“Good. Now go carve circles” And I sung a fresh, unfamilar song in Bollywood melodies:-

    Miranda! Graduate classes at MIT
    Memories of your mouth in math
    Pointy-tit trignometry!

Chorus.

Go read the rest.

Wired says that after a long day of shaking down motorists for C notes and beating on random street kids, the average Indian cop still doesn’t make enough to buy his own computer:

In July 2001, Mumbai’s Cyber Crime Investigation Cell launched its website, and a few days later it was hacked… police squads were known to confiscate evidence… returning with monitors and leaving computers behind…. cops in Mumbai seized pirated software floppies and stapled them together as though they were documents…

Last month, a Mumbai tabloid… asked a constable to use his ATM card and photographed his every step. He did not know how to use the card and the machine swallowed it… “The cop who checks your car license does not own a car… The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card… how can he fight cybercrime?”

As the Net roars by in a bright shirt and dark shades on a brand-new Hero Honda, the government’s business babus are left with bags of mooli and karela in hand, abusing a slow-moving rickshaw-walla with a bad attitude:

When he wanted to register a firm called Pinstorm Online last year, the Registrar of Companies “refused to grant me the name because the government officials out there did not comprehend the word ‘online,’ ” Murthy said…. “I had to change the word ‘internet’ to ‘computer network’ because the officials did not think (the) internet was a credible medium for business.”

Bharat Bhushan, a MechE prof at Ohio State, is studying lotus leaves to fashion better technology. Biomimetic, how poetic — the Sanskrit gurus would approve.

The project was inspired by lotus leaves’ deceiving looks. Although they appear waxy and smooth to the naked eye, the leaves are actually covered with a series of microscopic bumps that prevent water drops from touching their surface… The idea is to use surfaces to eliminate friction between moving parts that can’t be oiled… In a few years, the development could lead to far cheaper [DLP] wide-screen televisions, [microfluidic] chips that can analyze blood samples or windshields that clean themselves…

Huh? Surely I jest. The latest poll numbers in the U.S. do not back up such a claim. I am referring to Bush’s poll numbers in India however. From the BBC:

India is one of just three countries which thinks the world is safer with George W Bush back in the White House, according to a BBC World Service poll.

The survey found that 62% of Indians thought his re-election as US president was positive for global security.

The BBC’s Nick Bryant says the poll was carried out in big Indian cities where US trade benefits may have counted.

On average, 58% of respondents in 21 countries believed another Bush term made the world a more dangerous place.

Well, I guess it’s good to be, err…different than most, but what’s the logic? Pretty obvious actually:

Our correspondent says Mr Bush’s popularity in India seems to be borne primarily of economic necessity.

People were questioned in Mumbai (Bombay), Calcutta, Delhi and Madras (Chennai) - four powerhouses of India’s fast-expanding economy.

Our correspondent says that with a growth rate of well over 6%, many Indians simply believe that the Bush administration is good for business, and that its strong desire to forge closer trade ties is a key component of India’s stunning economic success.

18-year-old Hyderabadi Sania Mirza beat her Australian Open opponent yesterday to become the first Indian woman to make the third round of a Grand Slam tournament. She won her first round 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 against Aussie Cindy Watson and her second round 6-2, 6-1 in an upset against Petra Mandula of Hungary.

The best performance by an Indian woman on the Grand Slam so far had been a second round appearance, by Nirupama Sanjeev… in the 1998 edition of the Australian Open… this is the first time any Indian had progressed this far in a grand slam since Leander Paes made it to the round of 32 at the US Open in 1998…

That’s the good news. The bad news is that she’s about to be fed to the wolves: her Friday matchup is against Serena ‘100 mph’ Williams.

In the tennis world, if you can read this, you’re already too late. Mirza started early:

“The coach at the club in Hyderabad was reluctant but after a month he went back to my parents and said he had never seen a six-year-old hit the ball so well…”

But she seems to lack a bit of self-confidence:

Most women players, especially from Europe and America, are tall and very strongly built… Sania looks fragile in comparison. When asked whether she could match the power play of Venus and Serena Williams, she says, “I am not awestruck. Undoubtedly, we Indians have a distinct disadvantage in that we are not built that way. I will have to work harder to win against them.”

The height issue is real, but the muscle concern is hogwash. It’s more about strength than about being ripped; they’re related but not identical.

Mirza entered the Australian Open as a wildcard. The last desi to hit one of the Williams sisters was Shikha Uberoi at last year’s U.S. Open. She walked out in front of the Transit of Venus with predictable results.

Update: We do not know how to get in touch with Mirza. Chances are pretty high that she doesn’t read this site.

Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh was stumped by a question about gay marriage yesterday (via India Uncut):

What is your view on same-sex marriages? Manmohan Singh seemed at a loss for words. “I am sorry, I don’t understand your question,” he told the [CBC] journalist… she elaborated. A Sikh religious head has issued an edict against Ottawa’s decision to allow marriages between people from the same sex. Singh again took a minute or so, perhaps to hide his embarrassment…  “I don’t think such a thing will have wide acceptance in our country,” the Prime Minister replied.

No same-sex, please, we’re Sikhs. Canada’s Sikh MPs are divided on gay marriage more or less along party lines. But the religious guardians in Amritsar were clear: they would snub PM Paul Martin over his pro-gay marriage bill if he tried to pay his respects at Harimandir Sahib (via Amardeep Singh).

Martin toured tsunami-stricken areas instead and remanded the former premier of British Columbia, Ujjal Dosanjh, to Amritsar to apologize for the change in plan. Their excuse for the preemptive counter-snub?

“… if Guru Nanak had been consulted — Guru Nanak who was the founder of the Sikh religion — Guru Nanak would have said that the Prime Minister should go to Phuket and to Sri Lanka.”

Oh, that is smooth. Claim better divine guidance than the clerics — Hitch has nothing on Dosanjh.

Sajit posted about a version of Bombay Dreams set to open in Bombay itself.

The show may have the opposite problem in Bombay from the one it had on Broadway. Would it seem the least bit novel in the city that serves as its muse? Or would Bombayites give it a collective shrug, like Delhiites did with Monsoon Wedding: ‘That’s a documentary, not a musical’?

I had the damnedest time getting my cousins who grew up in India to see Bombay Dreams with me. ‘This is a play about Bollywood?’ they said. ‘But we watch that every day only. Isn’t it?’

The Indian Express is reporting that everyone's favorite Bollywood inspired Broadway musical will be heading to the city that named it, Bombay. The show, which did a lot better in the UK, than it did in New York, will be heading to Bombay before heading to China and Hong Kong.

A.R. Rahman, the genius behind some amazing Bollywood soundtracks and the music for Bombay Dreams, sounded a bit annoyed by the response his show received in the States, suggesting that we Americans aren't as able to think outside of our culture.

‘‘Americans are always talking about their own culture, so they can never be at the receiving-end and accept something from outside,’’ he said, adding that the musical moved to America at the wrong time. ‘‘This was the time when Americans felt that Indians were stealing their jobs, though I’m not at all disappointed.’’

I wonder if Star and Buc Wild saw Bombay Dreams?

I don’t drink coffee, I drink tea, my dear… Sting is giving a concert at Delhi’s Nehru Stadium on Feb. 6th. Be still my beating heart.

On the occasion of his concert, a special Limited tour Edition of his latest album Sacred Love , which contains his rare singles, is being put together. The single, Sacred Love also has an Indian touch since it features Anoushka Shankar on the sitar.

With Sting’s long-standing interest in yoga (he owns a studio in New York) and professed mastery of tantric sex, it’s surprising he doesn’t play India more often. Maybe his Englishness gets in the way.

“… I mentioned to Bob [Geldof] I could make love for eight hours. What I didn’t say was that this included four hours of begging and then dinner and a movie.”

Please don’t label this the highlight of his career:

Sting’s career hit a real high note in ‘94, when he, together with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart, performed All For Love for the film, The Three Musketeers… [ToI]

What a repugnant thought. Sting, like Bono, is that rarest of birds, a thinking rocker with fractal lyrics that unfold. I spent many delicious hours on a bus through the USSR listening to ‘Russians’ and ‘Fortress Around Your Heart.’ U2’s ‘Vertigo’ has bite, but they’ve both been putting out geriatric stuff lately which makes the young’uns look askance when you admit to being a fan. Plus there’s the whole megagroup thing, hipster ammo; screw it, I sometimes drink Starbucks.

The BBC reports on the European Union being urged to ban the swastika after Prince Harry got caught last week brandishing one on his arm:

The EU has been urged to ban the swastika because of its Nazi associations with hate and racism. But the symbol was around long before Adolf Hitler. The swastika is a cross with its arms bent at right angles to either the right or left. In geometric terms, it is known as an irregular icosagon or 20-sided polygon.

The word is derived from the Sanskrit “svastika” and means “good to be”. In Indo-European culture it was a mark made on people or objects to give them good luck.

It has been around for thousands of years, particularly as a Hindu symbol in the holy texts, to mean luck, Brahma or samsara (rebirth). It can be clockwise or anti-clockwise and the way it points in all four directions suggests stability. Sometimes it features a dot between each arm.

Shashwati tells a railroad tale:

The last time I was on a train in India was a few years ago, traveling from Baroda to New Delhi, in an unreserved “Ladies” compartment. It was terribly crowded, and I had to share my berth with a rather plump housewife from Karol Bagh…  It turned out she came from a family of fruit merchants, and told us proudly, “My son has married into Apples, my daughter has gone to the Bananas, and we are thinking of a Guava family for the youngest son.”

… Squashed in a corner was a skinny, quiet woman… The woman came from a village in Karnataka… and had been abandoned by her only son and daughter in law. She was going to Delhi in the hope of… perhaps working as a domestic.

The next morning, the plump fruit merchant’s wife, after loudly cursing the world… gave the woman a generous amount of money so that she could fend for herself till she got on her feet. Then the merchants wife farted loudly and left with the youngest son (promised to the Guava family)…

I actually do know a desi fellow who ‘married’ into a family of Apples.

The world is paying attention.

From the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal:

Expletives Undeleted: An Indian call center gets a rude introduction to American vulgarity.

Friday, January 14, 2005 12:01 a.m.

A nasty radio-show phone prank directed at a call center in India is the latest proof that abusive language is the last resort of the impotent. Something to remember when any of us is confronted on the low road to incivility.

The call in question was played Dec. 15 on Philadelphia's WUSL-FM, which bills itself as "Bangin' Hip-Hop and R&B" Power 99. Morning DJ Star, aka Troi Torain, dialed the number of a company advertising a hair-beading device for kids and was connected to a lady at an ordering service in India. After ranting rudely about outsourcing, the DJ turned on the operator, calling her a "dirty rat-catcher" and a "bitch" before threatening to "come out there and choke the eff out of you."

Just another day for the lead host of the syndicated "Star and Buc Wild" show, who promotes himself as "The Hater." But when a station employee posted the recording on WUSL's Web site this month, it spread like wildfire among Indians around the world. On sites like Turbanhead and SepiaMutiny, people got their first taste of American shock-jockery, and were appalled.

"For all those who talk about publicity, come here, get your hands dirty. Sleep four hours every night, walk around in the daily sun, run around in this fear of epidemics, come and do it, put your life at risk here. Then we'll talk." [CSM]

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Bollywood pretty boy Vivek Oberoi has left Bombay for Devanampattinam where he is taking a hands on approach to Tsunami relief. Instead of simply writing a check, or sending relief supplies south, he's in the effected area, going house to house, handing out supplies.

India and the U.S. finally drafted an open skies agreement. This means $700 airfares, more direct flights, more flights from smaller airports, and more flights from U.S. carriers, so you don’t always have to fly via Lufthansa, KLM, Singapore or Air India. The agreement eliminates all kinds of crufty protectionism dating back to the national carrier-dominated era of air travel: Air India is not currently allowed to fly to both Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example, and only three carriers are allowed direct flights; all others have to route via a third country. India’s domestic air travel is surging 20% a year, international at nearly the same rate. The agreement will probably be signed next month.

(Note to the savvy: Turkish Airlines from NYC to Delhi is beautiful and inexpensive; you fly in nearly a straight line, plus you get to see gorgeous Istanbul and the palaces and mosques of the Ottoman Empire.)

While we’re modernizing air travel, will someone please update Air India’s hokey, ill-conceived jet paint? The tagline in goofy Curlz script reminds me of the shabby Indian restaurant in Where’s the Party Yaar? (‘When you can’t afford the Palace, come to the Place!’)

The Mughal arches surrounding the windows are cute, but ‘antique’ is the last thing you want to associate with an airplane from a developing country. Think modernist. Think Virgin Atlantic. Maybe use the stylized Air India centaur . Graphics department — futtafut!

Previous post.

I usually don't post refs to other blogs until they've been around for a while and generated a good body of consistently high quality material. But the premise behind this blog is just too interesting for Sepia Mutiny to ignore -

When I was a child, I imagined death as being a collective experience. As the lion roared for one last time and the monsoon clouds ripped their chests for the last July shower, we would suddenly drop to the ground, hands extended, toungues out. Dead. As a young adult, death seems too trivial an encounter. What casts shadows of fear is life. Especially if you are on the verge of an impending engagement with a guy you don't particularly want to kiss-and never have. (Assuming you are a woman. Or a man.) He was "26 yrs computer professional, Brahmin, 5' 10'', Ivy-educated looking for family values working girl bride of reputed North Indian family, no dowry, willing to settle in US". Soon he will father my children and be the financer of my groceries. We will share toothpaste and possibly memories. In an arranged marriage, the premise is that you kiss a frog on the first night(and for the first time)- to convert him into a notional prince. Which reminds me of a video about illegal activities between a woman and two frogs. Can I bring my ex-boyfriend's porn collection as dowry? I stole them when we broke up and I'm too sentimental to E-bay away those romantic Tuesday nights.

Follow BridalBeer as she navigates from the ex-boyfriend in NYC into an arranged marriage in India.

The Canadian immigration minister resigned yesterday, accused of offering asylum to a desi pizzeria owner in exchange for feeding her campaign staff. Harjit Singh of Toronto, a devout Mennonite convert, is also an alleged credit card forger subject to deportation. He says the minister, Judy Sgro, approached him for free food for her campaign volunteers last year in exchange for blocking his deportation, then reversed herself when word leaked out. Sgro denies all.

As scandals go, anchovies-for-asylum is so very… Canadian. No worries, we’ve got your back. Sgro was also accused of fast-tracking a Romanian stripper’s visa. Canadian women aren’t flocking to high-paying pole positions any more, so an exotic dancer visa is now an automatic ticket into Canada.

So while we’re bringing over Romanian quants for Wall Street, Canada’s importing Romanian strippers for Queen Street. Gee, I just noticed I bleed maple red ;)

Indian and Pakistani soldiers living together? Must be a Bollywood film, no? From the Indo-Asian News Service:

A contingent of Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel being sent to join the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo will serve alongside Pakistani soldiers.

IAF officials said the contingent, comprising 285 personnel and six Mi-17 transport helicopters and four Mi-35 helicopter gunships, would be deployed at Bukavu to provide cover to Pakistan infantry troops.

It is a region that rebel forces recently captured.

“Our forces will live and operate with the Pakistani peacekeepers at Bukavu,” an IAF official told IANS.

Will it become the begining of a beautiful friendship, or a rumble in the jungle? Regardless, I doubt their behavior could be any worse than that of the UN troops already there.

A new CIA report titled ‘Mapping the Global Future’ projects that India will overtake major European countries by GDP within 15 years:

By 2020, China’s gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services, will be greater than that of any Western country except the United States, and India’s GDP will have overtaken or will be about to overtake European economies.

The National Intelligence Council, a division of the CIA, makes some very interesting comparisons:

… the NIC said China and India, probably along with Brazil and Indonesia, should emerge as “new major global players,” comparing their expected impact to that of a united Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century. “In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the ‘American Century,’ the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own…”

The NIC is confident in its projections:

“Barring an abrupt reversal of the process of globalization or any major upheavals in these countries, the rise of these new powers (China and India) is a virtual certainty,” it predicted.

There will be a geopolitical realignment…

As India’s economy grows, governments in Southeast Asia — Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries — may move closer to India to help build a potential geopolitical counterweight to China, it said… Dubbing China, India, and perhaps others such as Brazil and Indonesia, as ‘arriviste’ powers, the report said they “have the potential to render obsolete the old categories of East and West, North and South, aligned and nonaligned, developed and developing.”

M.I.A. is playing NYC on Feb. 5, along with partner in crime Diplo (via SAS). Tickets are just $12. She’s also rockin’ L.A. on Feb. 3. I think I’m having an Arulpragasam.

From the last time she performed in NYC:

… her super-limited debut UK single featured fuzzy, electro-tinged dancehall beats, vaguely political raps, and one of the most unexpectedly catchy hooks in recent memory. Completely modern urban music that didn’t sound the slightest bit forced or space cadet about itself (sorry Dizzee); I was captivated on the first listen…

Check out the ‘Sunshowers’ video and the remix MP3s. Here’s a previous post on M.I.A./Maya.

The normally reliable cypherpunk cool-hunters at Boing Boing discover a strange new delicacy called ‘paan.’ They’ve linked to bloggers who, in typical geek fashion (I mean that as the highest compliment), have catalogued its production with step-by-step photos and reference objects for scale. Spitting contests with laser ranging can’t be far behind.

In related news, I’ve spotted an obscure Western dessert called ‘canoli.’ A mass spectrographic analysis will follow.

Here’s what I say: leave the paan, take the canoli.

Zadie Smith, she of the Bangla-Jamaica mashup White Teeth, got married last September; they met at Cambridge. I ran into her at a small London birthday party at an age when she was considered precocious, well before I’d read her. She was all biting wit, creeper hair and privacy. Authors never look like their jacket photos, nor friendsters like theirs.

She’s due out with a third novel, On Beauty, in September. Autograph Man was studiedly trivial, seemingly an entire chapter devoted to Alex-Li’s body fluids. You’ve gagged on the wealth and hype jalebi, now toss me some more of that fine, fine namkeen.

Rushdie dogged my steps all through this India trip via the gossip columns. He returned to his eternal muse, Bombay; worked the press in that quintessential writer’s city, Calcutta; and held court at a fashion designer’s nightclub in that most elegant of settings… a Noida mall. Avoid-a the New Okhla Industrial, y’all.

Kitabkhana drolled on about Rushdie’s Delhi reading:

“That story, man, that story, it has the touch of genius, pure, jaano, calibre aachey. Each line has the stamp of a Master.” (Displaced Bong intellectual wannabe who spent most of the reading with eyes closed in ecstacy that would have been more convincing if he hadn’t snored once or twice in between.) … Sleepy photographer… wanted to go home but had been told by his editor to stay till the bitter end. “In case,” the editor apparently said, “Rushdie gets shot or something.”

… my last glimpse of the Rushdies was of them using upturned plastic chairs to hold at bay hordes of… squeaky-voiced journalists asking original questions (“Mr Rushdie! Are you writing a new novel?” “Padma, what’s your favourite food?”)

This Friday, ABC's Nightline, one of the better known newsmagazines, will be doing a show highlighting, surprise, surprise, Bollywood. The episode, senior produced by Madhulika Sikka is dubbed as "an introduction to Bollywood for the novice," and will feature Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, and of course, Bollywood crossover Hottie-to-be, and oh yeah, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Aishwarya Rai.

I wonder if SM can patent that phrase, or if soon Ash will be like Michael Jackson, and be announced T as TMBWITW, Aishwarya Rai. Maybe we should patent both.

Prunes get no respect I tell you. The Pacific News Service reports on the woes of Sikh prune farmers in central California. Yeah, I had no idea either.

Prune growers in California’s Central Valley, which stretches from Fresno north to the Yuba City-Marysville area, are facing their worst harvest on record, following an extremely hot spring, which left little time for pollination.

Jaswant Bains, one of the area’s largest growers, said this year’s harvest has been “just about the worst crop ever.” Hot and dry weather during pollination resulted in a lack of fruit setting, he explained to India-West. Additionally, he said, high winds during the summer contributed to a heavy fruit drop during the picking season.

The Yuba City-Marysville area produces 99 percent of the nation’s prune orchards and about 70 percent of the world’s supply of prunes. Sikhs - many farming the land of ancestors who migrated here in the late 19th century - account for roughly 30 percent of prune farmers in the United States. Overall, the “dried plum” industry, as it is now known, could lose more than $100 million this year, as farmers said they harvested from 25 percent to 45 percent of a normal year’s crop.

I wish I had known all these years that so many Indian farmers harvested prunes. I would have totally drank more prune juice in solidarity. Prune juice has many benefits. Anyways, is there any relief in sight for these farmers?

I think I speak for all Mutineers and rational humans when I ask for your civility here. We are ALL outraged, but we’re trying to act constructively. Hate speech is NOT constructive, nor is it welcome on this site. That doesn’t mean that we’re censoring you, telling you to take it like a bitch or turn the other cheek.

We do appreciate irreverent, funny commentary…

But RACISM and BIGOTRY are neither of those things. If you have something to say, please feel FREE to say it. If, however, it’s homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Black, anti-Amreekan, …please start your own blog and spew venom there.

You don’t fight hate with hate; you fight it with righteous indignation, moral superiority and passionate activism.

We will delete hate speech.

This project was created for many noble reasons; the content of certain comments does not honour those beginnings at all, indeed, it makes us sound like hypocrites who don’t deserve the victories we are struggling for.

If we want respect, not only must we demand it, we must conduct ourselves with it as well.

Be the change you wish to see.

Thank you.

The Philadelphia Daily News is reporting that Lee Daniels, director of the highly acclaimed film "The Woodsman," (starring Kevin Bacon) has cast an SM Favorite, Aishwarya Rai to star in his next film, a musical Ladies Night. Daniel's describes the film

"like 'Waiting to Exhale' meets 'Chicago' meets animation."

Right now, there are only a few things that outrage me more than hate-spewing sucka MCs. However, the thought of criminal acts being perpetrated against children just obliterates my livid reaction to mocking shock jocks.

Just what kind of monsters walk this planet? What manner of despicable @$$^0)# could inflict more pain on innocents who have already lost everything they’ve ever known in an epic tidal wave and quake?

This sickens me:

SRI LANKA:…A 60-year-old man tried to sell children, ages 12 and 13, in Balapitiya, near the hard-hit southern city of Galle, said police officer W.D.T. Wijesena. Police were tipped off of the sale and arrested the man on Tuesday, he said.

…The fate of the children was not immediately clear. The children are among scores who lost their parents in the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed about 31,000 people in this island country.

The United Nations and international aid agencies have expressed concerned that child traffickers could take advantage of the situation and try to sell orphans into forced labor or the sex trade.

I pray that Sri Lanka’s stringent rules regarding adoption are enforced during this tragic moment of vulnerability.

I’ve heard some infertile couples decry the “maze of red tape” they have encountered in their bid to create a family; I’m sure those legitimate, deserving, would-be parents welcome such red tape now, as it attempts to serve as an imperfect wall between fragile young survivors and the horrid exploitation some sub-human deviants wish to inflict on them.

I'm putting out a call to desi college students in the Philly area: come up with a list of companies that advertise on Power 99's Star and Buc Wild show.

Why? Well, let's take a little tour through social science, an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.

First stop: Anthropology

Anthropology directs our attention to the use of discourse in the construction of meaning.
Huh?
In simpler language, Anthropology teaches us to listen closely, not just to what somebody is saying but to how they say it.

Everybody? Get out your Turbanhead.coms, we're going to do a close reading:

Community-affairs director Loraine Ballard Morrill, is quoted as saying "Essentially [we're] apologizing for things on our Web site that were racially inflammatory and insensitive, saying, 'We took it off our Web site and it won't happen again.' " She said the more serious matter was posting the clip on the Web site. "That probably made it a much more - just a worse situation. Then people could click on it and hear it. That was not cool... . He made a big ol' mistake in judgment."
[snip]
Secondly, the Inquirer story tries to diminish the scope of the problem by taking Morrill's word that "Most of the e-mails came from people who do not listen to Power 99, whose audience is mainly African American. What does the demographics or geographic location of the offended have to do with this offending clip?

Let's try to answer Turbanhead here. Why is Power99 apologizing for putting the clip on the web rather than for having recorded it in the first place? Why do they keep mentionining that the people complaining are not their listeners?

I think their language reveals their notion of "fairness." In their world, a company's job is to make its audience laugh. In their minds, there would have been nothing wrong if the skit had simply aired as planned, heard mainly by their on air listeners. The mistake was putting the clip on the web, and exposing it to a broader audience who might be offended by it. That is, they're not sorry they did it, they're sorry we're offended. They're trying to be gracious.

You see something similar when they protest that we aren't their regular listeners. They don't think it's fair that we, who are not their core audience, are getting upset. They've done their job, namely entertaining their audience. We shouldn't be butting in. The fact that they butted into our realm by calling India, using lewd language and threats is not really of importance to them. They can call India, but we can't call Philly, home of M.Knight himself.

Boston University professor Stephen Prothero writes a pretty acerbic commentary today in the Los Angeles Times:

The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Not anymore. With a Jesus lover in the Oval Office and a faith-based party in control of both houses of Congress, the United States is undeniably a nation of believers ruled by the same.

Things are different in Europe, and not just in Sweden. The Dutch are four times less likely than Americans to believe in miracles, hell and biblical inerrancy. The euro does not trust in God. But here is the paradox: Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can’t be bothered to read what he has to say.

I can’t argue with any of the main points in his commentary. I’m not sure what his agenda is though. Is he being critical of religious ignorance because of its deleterious effects on society, or because he wants people to become more religious?

A few days after 9/11, a turbaned Indian American man was shot and killed in Arizona by a bigot who believed the man’s dress marked him as a Muslim. But what killed Balbir Singh Sodhi (who was not a Muslim but a Sikh) was not so much bigotry as ignorance. The moral of his story is not just that we need more tolerance. It is that Americans — of both the religious and the secular variety — need to understand religion. Resolving in 2005 to read for yourself either the Bible or the Koran (or both) might not be a bad place to start.

I’ll take that advice.

Power99’s response to their racist broadcast controversy is a textbook example of corporate weaseling. First, they told the press that the real problem was that they got caught — that they posted the audio clip to their Web site. Then they ducked responsibility by saying the complaints are coming from non-African Americans (duh) and non-Philadelphians.

As pressure mounted, they buried a Web apology on the bottom of the second screen, well below the fold, and refused to apologize on air. And they simply changed the date of an already-planned radiothon and tried to pass it off as a DJ ‘suspension’:

On Wednesday morning, the station broadcast a radiothon for tsunami victims in place of Star and Bucwild. The radiothon was previously scheduled and was only advanced to the show’s slot, Morill said.

Here’s the text of the apology:

The Star & Buc Wild Show prides itself on walking on the edge. On December 15th, we crossed it. We know the pain racial slurs cause and apologize that this comedy segment went too far.

At the same time, it’s also become clear that the abuse of call center workers is more widespread. Check out the Is Your Job Going Offshore? forums (via Times of India):

“… we’re up and running with our call campaign against the BP Motor Club. There are three of us calling on a daily basis to express our displeasure with oursourcing [sic] to the Indian phone center workers. There’s room for you!… Usually, I limit the calls to 60 seconds anyway, so I can call back and really hammer them. I’ve been doing this about 20 minutes a day. It’s great fun!”

Because that’s the rational thing to do when you’re jobless: spend your unemployment benefits on phone calls to India.

This is just downright brilliant -

‘Apprentice’ cruise to set sail

...An eight-night cruise with the theme of the hit NBC show will sail from New York to the Caribbean on Sept. 26, after a bon voyage party in Manhattan with a send-off from Donald Trump.

Cast members from the show — including Bill Rancic, the first Apprentice, and Stacie Jones Upchurch, Jennifer Crisafulli and Raj Bhakta from the second season — will be on board. The trip will take place on the Carnival Legend cruise ship.

A ship full of women, most of whom have seen you on TV - methinks Raj will be thoroughly entertained. Stay tuned for the "Cruise with the cast of Sepia Mutiny."

A little out of season but still funny -

Golfer Vijay Singh may lose the services of the caddie that accompanied him during his record-setting year on the the PGA Tour.

Caddie Dave “Buddy” Renwick, who spent 18 months carrying Singh’s bag, complained that the world’s top golfer was unduly harsh on him, and rarely friendly.

“My heart just wasn’t in it, even at the end of last year when we were winning nearly every week. I just wasn’t getting the respect I deserve,” said Renwick to The Scotsman. “I never got a ‘good morning’ from Vijay. Or ‘good club’ after a shot. Or ‘have a nice night’ at the end of a day.”

What did Renwick get from Singh?

One million dollars…to carry a bag…select appropriate clubs…and travel to some of the most beautiful places in the world.

Kudos to Renwick for freeing himself from slavedriver Singh’s laborious death grip.

Luckily for the rest of us, this opens the door to a wonderful opportunity: Mr. Singh, even though my experience with golf has only come in miniature and video game form — for a million dollars — I will do your bidding, gladly accept a copious amount of abuse, and even throw in an interpretive disco dance for your amusement. My resume is on its way.

The Scotsman: Caddie sings a sad song

Veteran actor Amrish Puri died Wednesday morning at a hospital in Bombay. He was 72.

Various reports indicate that Puri suffered a brain hemmorage, and was in a coma at the time of his passing. He was also undergoing treatment for malaria, and was in the hospital just one week earlier for a surgical procedure.

Puri, who started acting at a late age, is best known for his roles in “Mr. India,” “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

He is survived by his wife, son and daughter.

Rediff: Amrish Puri is dead

At the tender age of 28 I have already become a bitter old man. Kids these days, I just don’t understand. When I was young we played Pacman and Frogger on the Atari. Now they have Halo and Grand Theft Auto. I used an AM/FM Walkman and now they have these Ipod things. This news however just pushed me over the edge. Now you can actually outsource your algebra homework if you were to properly abuse a new tutoring service by Growing Stars Inc.

Twice in a week, Ann Maria, a sixth grader at Silver Oak Elementary School, California logs on to the internet from home after school hours. Ann is not chatting up her friends.

She is connecting to her personal tutor, already online, armed with headset and a pen mouse sitting in a call centre like cubicle almost a timezone away in Panampillynagar, Kochi, Kerala.

Your neighbourhood tuition teacher, riding on the Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) wave, has gone global and his monthly pay packet turned meatier - the 17 teachers who work with the Growing Star Infotech (P) Ltd will testify. The firm a subsidiary of California-based Growing Stars Inc went online in January last year.

Ok, I know I am being unfair. This is a legitimate service. The testimonials are glowing. Still, you guys can see the potential for abuse by crafty kids can’t you? If my memory serves me correct though, Indian parents teach math with a rolling pin in one hand to smack you if you don’t properly carry out addition. THAT’S going to be hard to pull off virtually.

It sounds like a joke right? So, Bruce Springsteen, a Rabbi and a Sufi walk into a bar? Well, I did take some liberties, he's not a Rabbi, he's a Sikh (oh, that makes it simpler) named Rabbi Shergill who recorded a song commonly referred to on the web as the "Bulla ki Janna" number (I have no clue, I just found him b/c Mira Nair compared him to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.)

Shergill is a crossover fusion artist who combines Western and Eastern music, but the articles I've read aren't precise. Sometimes they say he draws upon Heavy Metal, and othertimes Rock. Sometimes they say he employs Punjabi Folk, other times Sufi Music (which is punjabi, and not classical, but hardly folk either). Here's his backstory:

Shergill fell in love with music after he went to a Bruce Springsteen concert while at school. Now he has a fan following that includes the likes of Amitabh Bachchan and V.S. Naipaul. [cite]

I like his look and attitude:

But why an album in Punjabi? "Did you know Punjabi is the ninth most spoken language in the world?" is his swift retort before he adds, "It is my pride." [cite]

He clearly has the ambition to match:

He asserts that he aims big - big stadiums, a large audience and loads of fame. "My father's anonymity, despite his talent, made him scream aloud. I want to be heard. I use my ego to further my cause." [cite]

Aishwarya’s crossover plan is running on IST: old-time starlet Ava Gardner, who’s currently being impersonated in The Aviator, crossed over way back in the ’50s. Gardner starred in Bhowani Junction, a 1956 film about an Anglo-Indian struggling with identity in post-Partition India.

I haven’t seen it, so I’ve got no idea whether it was more respectful than Gunga Din and its ilk. The character does try ‘going native,’ and she does wear brownface, though it seems subtle. Money quote: ‘I thought I could overcome my guilt by becoming a Sikh!’ Reel Movie Critic has the plot summary:

Ava Gardner delivers a stellar performance of a ravishing nurse in the English army in India in 1947… She initially is romantically involved with another “chi-chi” (half-breed)… She is the victim of an attempted rape by her brutal co-worker, Lt. McDaniel (Lionel Jeffries), which sends her into the safe and strict arms of a traditional Indian, Ranjit [Singh] Kasel (Francis Mathews).  Draped in a sari, she makes bold political/racial statements by showing up at various military events dressed in traditional Indian attire. But she seems to appear to her British colleagues to be trying too hard to claim her new ethnic identity… Ultimately she has a romance with a stoic, brave Anglo-Saxon British Officer… she realistically declines to return with him as his wife to live in England, certain she will be treated like a half-breed outsider in that society.

Chowk fills in the backstory:

… it is quite similar in theme to Deepa Mehta’s ‘Earth 1947’ which also deals with Partition through the eyes of a Parsi girl, another outsider to Indian society… Fifty years on, people still talk about when Ava Gardner came to Lahore to film this movie. I think every man of the previous generation fell in love with her then… it says a lot about an actor or actress who is willing to take on a complex role in a different culture - like Christopher Lee who took on Jinnah back in 1997.

Besharam!

A steamy adult movie screened on television sets at the international airport in New Delhi has baffled authorities, who had installed them for entertainment of passengers.

"I have conducted preliminary inquiry of staff in the electronics department. They said the movie was part of an AIDS awareness programme," Indira Gandhi International Airport officiating director Mandeep Lal told the agency on Saturday. The adult film appeared on all television sets installed in the airport, prompting passengers to complain to the authorities. But it was taken off the air only after 20 long minutes.

GASP! Didn't they get the memo? THERE IS NO SEX IN INDIA! All of those humans come from a highly sophisticated form of Vedic cloning. The Kama Sutra is a trick by Westerners to weaken young, pure, Indians and take their mind off of schooling.

I know what happened. These guys were watching a video, and accidentally tripped a switch and ... no?

Lal ruled out the possibility that the staff in the electronic department were clandestinely viewing the adult film in the cable operator's room without realising it was being screened on all TV sets.

"We don't allow any such things (adult films) to come even near our office," he said.

Well. Allrighty then. Any ideas?

[Via Amardeep, story from the HT]

The PR machine formerly known as Mira Nair says fast and cheap is where it’s at (via India Uncut):

When you have a big budget, like a Harry Potter, you have that many more people to answer to. You are simply one part of the machine that takes it over. It’s actually the freedom, the creative freedom, that is imperative for me. It comes only when the stakes are really low financially. That’s why I had total freedom to make a Salaam Bombay, or to make a Monsoon Wedding or to make a Namesake… If you have a big budget, you have that many more men in suits to deal with…

I like to do things unobtrusively and quietly, without much fanfare. People often don’t know what we are up to until it’s over. And that’s the secret.

She whips out her population and lays it on the table:

Let’s just face facts: our Indian cinema audience is now bigger than the Hollywood audience. So it’s not about wanting to be what they are, it’s about them opening their eyes to us…

On desi provincialism:

The extraordinary irony in making Mississippi Masala was that the African-American community and the Indian community were remarkably similar — in their love for family, in their communal sort of way for operating, in religion even, in that sort of emphasis on family bond and God for instance. But would an Indian ever cross the track into an African-American family? No way.

How you livin’, readers? Are you fine? Or are you just okay? More importantly, has your ire gone away?

Well get ready, I’m about to stir it up again. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

WUSL-FM (Power 99) conceded yesterday that an on-air routine by morning shock jocks Star and Buc Wild was “racially inflammatory” and pulled an audio clip of it off the station Web site.

Community-affairs director Loraine Ballard Morrill, who has fielded more than 130 angry e-mails and phone calls, said the station reprimanded the employee who posted the clip on the Web…

Please understand— I’m THRILLED that mainstream media is picking up on this very important story. I’m also heartened by the fact that Power99 is…um…starting to pay attention.

They are partially correct; the employee who chose to post that clip on the Power99 site wasn’t wise to do so, and it is nice to see the station doing…something.

But something is not enough.

Power99 “conceded”? I don’t need concessions, I need responsibility. Honour. Integrity. If Loraine Ballard Morrill was the ideal Community Affairs Director, she’d sincerely own the station’s gaffe, she’d get it, she’d make amends. But nothing regarding this incident is ideal…

Indians are routing around their ineffectual local governments:

Fareed Zakaria agrees in Newsweek that India really feels like a boomtown right now… Tired of waiting for the government, some desis are running parallel local services…

There’s little regulation by private tort… because the courts take 30 years to resolve cases. So you see exposed wires hanging from strip mall ceilings, parking lots using barbed wire at toddler level and outdoor barbers using straight razors. You still risk stomach upset or worse by eating food from unlicensed street vendors, which makes you want to just shake the local babus and say, ‘Come on, guys, this is just so basic. Nothing should come between me and my kachoris…’

I have new respect for government regulation of food, transportation safety and public health. If ‘there are no atheists in foxholes,’ I’d add that there are no pure libertarians in developing nations. If ‘no revolution on empty bellies,’ I’d say that libertarianism is uniquely a rich person’s vice :)

Because the legal system doesn’t work, it forces people to turn to the parallel legal system, gangsters. Any time you see a country with a parallel legal system, a parallel black economy, parallel power generation and parallel street sweeping, you know its government is dysfunctional.

Read the full piece.

Reader & frequently thoughtful commentor KXB wrote into the Tip Line with a link to War Nerd's column on the Kargil incident. The writing is entertaining and provocative to say the least -

Some guy in India asked me to write about the 1999 Indo-Pakistani fighting in Kargil, a patch of high-altitude ice in Kashmir at the northern tip of the Subcontinent. This is some of the most worthless and fought-over ground in the world, up where the borders between Pakistan, India and China smear together like the middle of a pie sliced by a spastic.

... hand-to-hand fighting 18,000 feet up in the Himalayas makes me tired just thinking about it. It must've been some pretty slow-motion combat, like Tom and Jerry on valium. Lunge, take a five-minute breathing break, lunge again.

...Kargil was the only time two modern armies fought at such an insane altitude.

...And that's where losing 400 men in a high-profile, harmless little war like Kargil comes in handy. Those websites I mentioned list the names of every single Indian soldier killed up there. When you consider how many Indians die every day, with nobody giving a damn at all, it's pretty amazing that these 400 dead guys get so much adoring press.

When you look at the list of names, you see why. Some of the names are obviously Sikhs (Sikhs love armies), but there are plenty of Hindu names, Muslim names -- for all I know there are Zoroastrian names in there too. It's a chance to sob together over those dead integrated units -- like those good old corny WW II movies where every platoon has this melting-pot roll call: "OK, lissen up, Bernstein, deNapoli, O'Brien, Kowalski, and Running Bear!"

Heh. For a more balanced discussion, there's always Wikipedia's entry on the Kargil War.

Salon writer Stephanie Zacharek loves how Harold and Kumar shows unremarkable, assimilated hyphen-Americans instead of relegating minorities to ethnic curio shops (thanks, Razib):

“Harold & Kumar”… may have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year. .. [W]hat’s most impressive about “Harold & Kumar”… is that it didn’t dawn on me until the movie was nearly over that its two protagonists weren’t your usual average white kids… There’s something freeing in the way “Harold & Kumar” treats its characters’ ethnic backgrounds not as a novelty, as a stumbling block or even as an advantage, but as a simple fact… Race is an issue in “Harold & Kumar,” but it’s not the issue…

Of course, Zacharek is using Spanglish as her benchmark, so make of that what you will. I think we know her inspiration for the story:

“Harold & Kumar” is a reminder that our great land is made up of people from many nations, and a few of them are quite stoned. Let he who is without sin light the first joint.

Here’s more on how Harold and Kumar deals with race.

I thought the desi accent was good for cutting tension?

More customers now ask to speak to an American after they hear an operator with an Indian accent… “In India, the operators are doing a lot of the courtesies they are trained to do,” … but they often miss the nuance of conversations.

I didn’t know you had a choice in voice. I’ll take an Eartha Kitt with a side of Scarlett Johansson, please. Silly Americans! You can request a native, but all your call are belong to us:

[M]onitoring is also moving offshore. HyperQuality, which is based in Seattle, has 100 call monitors in New Delhi who eavesdrop on call center workers around the United States.

Eavesdropping on American call center workers probably leads to some interesting conversations in Delhi. ‘Eh, Seema, vat does it mean, “I am all crunked up”?’

Tyler Cowen reports that, in a step backwards, "Lasagne has replaced chicken tikka massala as the favourite dish of Britons." [The step backwards is Tyler's interpretation, not mine. I've always been fond of Lasagna, and indifferent towards CTM]

Although Tyler is quoting the Beeb, he fails to quote the whole three sentences of the passage, which would explain their methodology for arriving at such a conclusion:

Lasagne has replaced chicken tikka massala as the favourite dish of Britons. Sainsbury's sold 13.9 million lasagne ready meals and just 7.4 million chicken tikka massalas last year. Tesco sold 9.8 million lasagnes and 6.3 million chicken tikka massalas.

If the best way to find a country's national dish is to look at their choice of frozen food entrées, then clearly we are losing ground to the Italians. Still, I doubt that curry will be easily dislodged from that special place in a Briton's heart: even racist yobs eat curry before going out to work it off with a spot of PakiBashing. I suspect that curry has simply become so British to most Brits, that to them Lasagne is a far more exotic food item, one with a bit more pizzazz. They'll be back. If not, we'll deploy our secret weapon: Gobi Aloo.

Speaking of frozen CTK, when I spent a few weeks living in London I conducted a taste test by trying different frozen versions from different supermarkets. What I found was that the higher end supermarkets (like Sainsbury's) had used superior ingredients (thus accounting for the higher cost of their entrée) but fewer spices, and that the best frozen CTK came from the lowest rent supermarket, a rather shady Safeway in a place I didn't want to be caught after dark.

p.s. anybody know how to get accents above my "e"s, I'm embarassed to say "entree" Thanks Andrea. And merci for letting my spelling error pass unremarked!
p.p.s. I have no idea what stat means, I've just always wanted to say it

Here’s a chance to catch one of my favorite plays by one of my favorite playwrights while scratching your desi sense of economy at the same time. A free staged reading of Chaos Theory by Anuvab Pal is taking place Mon 1/17 and Tue 1/18 in Manhattan.

Chaos Theory is an intensely romantic, delayed-gratification talkie for people who dig wordplay — you Before Sunset, Raincoat, Tumhari Amrita, Woody Allen fans. Y’all know who you are, you silver-tongued scoundrels.

The reading is being put on by Pulse Ensemble Theatre; Rajesh Bose, Sanjiv Jhaveri and Rita Wolf (My Beautiful Laundrette, Homebody / Kabul) star, Alexa Kelly directs.

Last October I reported here on how the Justice Department laid the smack down on the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority for attempting to require Sikhs and other religious minorities to discard any head coverings while on the job. Well it seems as though the MTA is trying to be “cute” in how it complies with the Justice Department’s wrath. From Reuters:

A Sikh subway driver is being forced to wear a badge on his turban or face being demoted and sent to the stock yards, his lawyer said on Thursday.

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (news - web sites), which operates the subways, told motorman Kevin Harrington to wear the MTA badge or he cannot not work with customers.

“If he wears it, he can operate in customer service areas, if not then he’s relegated to yard duty,” said Charles Seaton, spokesman for the MTA’s Transit Authority.

“I feel wearing the patch violates my religious freedom,” Harrington, 53, told The New York Daily News. “The turban is a sacred space, so it’s like asking a priest to wear a logo on his vestments.”

Harrington’s lawyer, Amardeep Singh, said his client had always worn the turban in his 25 years on the job, but it was only after “9/11 that the agency tried to get its Sikh and Muslim employees to stop wearing their turbans and hijabs.”

There's the high tech approach to minimizing tsunami deaths -- a global alert system that tries to predict tsunamis -- and then there's the low tech approach -- mangrove swamps. This should not be a surprise - wetlands are very effective at combatting flooding, for example, far more so than levees and dams. And while it is anthropomorphic to say that "the wetlands are nature's method of protecting people," it is useful to observe that wetlands have preserved many lands and try to cultivate them for that purpose. The Christian Science Monitor reports [snippets only]:

Mr. Selvum says that 172 families were saved from the tsunami in the fishing village of Thirunal Thoppu in India's Tamil Nadu state only because the mangroves are thriving and dense there. He also mentions three other Tamil Nadu villages where damage had been minimized by the aquatic trees. "Every village has more than 100 families, so just think of the number of lives saved," he says.

"Even though the mechanical impact of a tsunami is enormous, and is bound to destroy the first line of mangroves, the water suddenly slows down as it moves farther in," Selvum says.

Sepia Mutiny has just received its first mention in the REAL news. Journalist Francis Assisi (whose stories we have referenced here before) writes an article regarding the Power99 Fiasco (see here and here) for IndoLink.com:

Spewing hate and vitriol at Indians and at outsourcing may make good comedy shows for Americans. But not for Indian Americans. Not anymore.

Thanks to alert American bloggers (notably Turbanhead, Sepiamutiny, Herstory and Moorishgirl) Indian Americans are raging mad at the racism and sexism displayed by a Philadelphia radio station last week when its African-American DJ, phoned an India-based call center worker, showering her with obscenities on-air, and then offering her humiliation to his listeners as entertainment.

Some Sepia Mutiny readers will note their comments in the story. Does this mean that the Mutiny is now legit? Never!

Just days ago I mentioned that a bunch of wacky conspiracy stories have emerged recently in order to explain the origin of the tsunami. Although this one has nothing to do with the tsunami, it was just too good to pass up. From India Daily:

Kongka La is the low ridge pass in the Himalayas (the blue oval in the map). It is in the disputed India-China border area in Ladakh. In the map the red zone is the disputed area still under Chinese control in the Aksai Chin area. The Chinese held northeastern part is known as Aksai Chin and Indian South West is known as Ladakh. This was where Indian and Chinese army fought major war in 1962. The area is one of the least accessed area in the world and by agreement the two countries do not patrol that part of the border. According to many tourists, Buddhist monks and the local people of Ladakh, Indian Army and Chinese Military maintain the line of control. But there is something much more serious happening in this area.

According to the few locals people on the Indian and Chinese side, this is where the UFOs are seen coming out of the ground, According to many, the UFO underground bases are in this region and both the Indian and Chinese Government know this very well.

Now please keep in mind that UFO stands for “Unidentified Flying Object” and so it doesn’t necessarily equate to aliens, but what else might it be?

Recently, some Hindu pilgrims on their way to Mount Kailash from the Western pass, came across strange lights in the sky. …The pilgrims at that stage started quizzing the Indian border petrol personnel. According to them, the security personnel told them that they are ordered not to allow any one near the area of interest and it is true that strange objects come out from under the ground with amplified and modulated lights. India’s Special Forces and possible visit the area by intelligence agencies.

But why in this area? Is it due to the remoteness, or something else?

The Arizona Republic is reporting that both John Cho and Kal Penn have signed on for two more sequels to the wildly popular (at least with the Sepia Mutiny crowd), Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle film. The writing has begun on the first sequel with the internet rumors being correct, it is entitled "Harold and Kumar Go to Amsterdam."

Whether or not it's going to be made depends on the financial receipts from DVD sales and rentals," Kal Penn adds. "If you liked the movie, please rent or buy it - it'll assure that we'll bring you another one next year."

As indicated in another SM post, the "Extreme Unrated" DVD of the film went on sale this past Tuesday, so go out there and buy it now!

Although it appears a Kerala baby girl was not named Tsunami after all, a newborn boy from the Andamans has swiped the sobriquet (via Boing Boing). Meet Tsunami Roy:

“It was early morning Sunday, when I made my pregnant wife a cup of tea and woke her up. She was just about to take a sip when we felt the first jolt of the quake…” After hoisting his injured wife and [older] son on to the rickshaw, Roy pedaled and pushed the rickshaw as fast as he could up and away from the shore toward a nearby rocky slope…

The nurse… rigged up a makeshift curtain, laid the 26-year-old Namita down on a bed of dried leaves and grass and ordered the men to get some clean cloth, thread and a bowl of hot water. “A few hours later the child was born…

“It was the doctors who suggested we name the boy Tsunami and we also liked the name and decided to call him that. After all it is a name everyone will instantly notice and remember.”

It’s a little bit morbid and a little bit poetic. It’s not quite like naming him Bubonic, but much more eyebrow-raising than just plain Venkat. Ah well, people will never forget his birthday.

Of course, they’ll also be in mourning. No matter the name, there’s nothing he can do about the date per se. He joins all those poor saps born around Christmas, New Year’s, final exams and 9/11 as people cheated out of their own remembrances.

Days after being sworn in to office, Bobby Jindal has received his congressional committee assignments. Chief amongst them will be his presence on the Homeland Security Committee, which is a newly created one. From Sunnetwork.org:

“I am thrilled by my committee assignments,” Jindal, only the second Indian American to be elected to the US House of Representatives, said after receiving his official committee assignments yesterday. “I have been given three great opportunities and in each capacity I will have the chance to hear and weigh-in on issues of great importance to this country and the people of Louisiana” (his contituency).

“In this post 9/11 world, there is nothing more important than ensuring the safety of America and Americans,” Jindal said. “We need to make sure America is a country where our children don’t have to grow up and live in fear of terrorism.”

His other assignments include the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Resources. These assignments took me by surprise considering the fact the Jindal has been known mostly for his healthcare expertise (best applied to the Health Committee). An assignment on a prominent committee probably means that the “Big Tent” party will be grooming him for high visibility.

On a much more light-hearted note, Sepia Mutiny is now on Friendster!

Whether you just want to seem more popular by having loads of friends (cough! guilty!) or you want another way to access our RSS feed, add us. When controversies like the Power99 outrage go down, we can use the Bulletin Board feature to alert you or disseminate information, if appropriate. SM is starting to feel like a little community and this development is a natural extension of that.

Uf-oh. Enough with the serious merits of such a maneuver…just add us already. All the other cool kids are doing it. Besides, you know you can never have enough fake relationships on social networking programs… ;)

The U.S. version of the Bride and Prejudice trailer was recently released (thanks, Abhi). It’s getting heavy promotion, it runs before The Aviator in New York City.

What happened in the marketing speaks volumes about how the world perceives Americans. The trailer has been recut not as a musical but as a romantic comedy. The U.S. version cuts down the bhangra centerpiece and the pajama song from the international trailer. The plot has been simplified, like the U.S. version of Bombay Dreams; the subplot with the second male lead has been removed.

In a nod to the U.S., Martin Henderson gets a lot more lines, the R&B artist Ashanti is featured prominently in the voiceover, Indira Verma makes a crack about American Idol, and there are a couple of Baywatch, L.A. and surfer shots that weren’t in the international trailer. India’s Third World-ness is played up for comic effect, there’s no mention of Amritsar in the subtitle and there are precious few turbaned guys for a film set in Punjab (the ones who do exist hurry by, out of focus).

I watched the trailer live last night and heard very little audience reaction. Either it fell flat, or the audience didn’t know what to think. The serpent dance sequence at the very end drew a few titters. It wasn’t what I expected from a New York crowd, which is generally pretty down with desi culture.

There is always a lot of junk science and numerous conspiracy theories that follow any great disaster. The tsunami in Asia is no different. From the Jerusalem Post:

The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated,” an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday.

According to Al-Osboa’, India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear know-how from the United States and Israel, both of which “showed readiness to cooperate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind.”

Since 1992, the magazine argued, leading geological centers in Britain, Turkey and other countries, warned of the need “not to hold nuclear experiments in the region of the Indian Ocean known as ‘the Fire Belt,’ in which the epicenter of the earthquake lies.

Wealth, in India, is spreading from the big cities into the smaller ones. And with it comes an expansion of demand for Western goods, stoked by advertisements. Now desis in smaller cities want KFC, blue jeans, Fords (huh?) and (of course) premium alcohol. I wonder how many of star's advertisers are making big bank in India? Maybe we should spread a list of their names to the Indian press -- that would get their attention fast! Nobody wants to stumble in an emerging market. [Anybody have that list yet?] Read the whole article on the NYT (no permalink avail, unfortunately), snippets provided below:

KFC's parent, Yum Brands, now has 100 KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in India, 30 opened in 2004, and a goal of 1,000 by 2014. To realize such growth, the chains have begun a seemingly inexorable march into the country's smaller boomtowns, cities like Coimbatore and Cochin in the south, and Jaipur and Meerut in the north, where middle-class Indians - who increasingly crave localized Western foods, regional flavors and ingredients infused into the pizza, pasta or poultry - have hailed their arrival.

As India's galloping economy has extended to its smaller cities, a younger population with expendable income is finding many Western and upmarket domestic products, brands and services increasingly accessible.

Nearly 35 Indian cities have a population exceeding a million, and proliferating shopping malls cater to the rapidly growing consumer class.

You might think the hardest working shrink in the world would be in LA or NYC, dealing with rich neurotics. Or, perhaps this person is working with the armed forces, helping soldiers deal with the tragedies of war.

But you would be wrong. The clear winner for the hardest working shrink in the world goes to ... [tabla roll please] ....

Ganesan, the "only psychiatrist for 1.3 million of the world's most traumatized people. His roving practice along this island nation's eastern shore stretches over 150 miles, all of it devastated by last week's tsunami."

Huh? These people don't need to be asked about their mothers, they need somebody to patch up their bodies! Well, that's what he thinks too:

"To talk about psychological needs when you've got thousands of people using one toilet in a refugee camp -- it's absurd," says Ganesan, who goes by one name as is common here, talking above the din in the office where he is coordinating medical supplies for refugees. "It's not what a doctor should do."

In these traumatic days, Ganesan has tossed dozens of corpses into the back of his pickup, distributed medicine to children, coordinated efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers from dozens of countries, buried a friend and, just for a moment yesterday, had a quiet session with a violently psychotic young man crippled by delusions and drug addiction.

Richard Lewis & Thea Mitchem
Power99 WUSL-FM
440 Domino Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19128

Dear Power99/Clear Channel/lowly radio intern,

How are you? I hope you are well rested and relaxed, that way the contents of this letter will be better absorbed. How am I? Why thank you for not asking! I’ll bluntly tell you; I am MAD.

Earlier this week, your prized morning “talent” Star thought it would be funny to call an Indian Customer Service agent for the sole purpose of threatening her with assault while verbally abusing her. His justification for this outrageous lack of decency was her race; she was foreign, “a rat-eater”, potentially involved with outsourcing, and that made her okay to target.

Wrong.

This was inappropriate, disrespectful, violent and below you. It was below all of us. That didn’t stop you from publicizing a clip of Star’s verbal assault on your station’s website before hastily retracting it a few days ago.

Since you took the mp3 off of your site, you must be at least slightly aware that you were in trouble. Please allow me to dispel any confusion regarding this matter: you ARE in trouble. You are in trouble with me and every other good American.

Our soldiers are dying to protect our freedom and our values. Those values don’t include hate.

You can make amends.

You can take responsibility, and own your error in judgment.

You can reach out to the South Asian community and apologize for this unconscionable incident.

You can apologize to the woman that Star and his amoral crew harassed so wantonly.

You can discipline the DJ, as well as the staffers who perpetrated this revolting act.

You can clean up your own mess by airing PSAs that speak out against the ignorance and hate that YOUR programming may potentially incite.

I will conclude by stating that if you do not respond to this letter or its requests appropriately, you should consider yourself on notice: your unprincipled behavior will have social, public and fiscal ramifications and I swear to you, they will hurt. Stop the violence. Change starts with you.

With hope that you will do the right thing,

listen: all you people who were or are moved by this bullshit situation, who think, “yeah…i should do something”, right before you succumb to inertia and to-do lists and daily life…

that was for you.

you didn’t even have to write a letter. i did it for you. now do something for me. do it for “steena” who suffered through Star’s hatred for no reason. do it for your dad, because someone heckled him like that thirty-five years ago, when he came here to get rich for you. do it for your mom, who was afraid to wear indian things in new jersey, in 1987, for fear of attack from “dot-busters”. do it for them all, i implore you.

however.

if you don’t feel a familiar sadness whilst reading the paragraph i just wrote, if you are one of the lucky ones and you walk on streets paved with gold, and you live somewhere where it never rains, and you have always been accepted, respected and treated kindly…then may you always be so blessed. may one of us live in nirvana, where it is safe. may one of us not suffer the humiliation, the pain, the isolation that hatred brings. may one of us be so lucky.

so if you get some time in your golden, respect-laden nirvana, do it for those of us who aren’t as fortunate as you.

do it for all of us.

in other words, do it for you.

As I posted earlier, the hit British Asian comedy series The Kumars at No. 42 is now showing on BBC America.

I ran into the lead, Sanjeev Bhaskar, at Bombay Dreams on Broadway soon after its premiere. He’s a great sketch comedy guy who first made his name on Goodness Gracious Me.

So, it was mighty strange to turn a corner next to my apartment and see his big mug staring back at me :) Apparently the Beeb is putting a few pounds behind their debut, and this desi comedy is one of their flagship programs. Very cool!

We recently reported about some idiot DJ who threatened and insulted a call center operator, to boost his ratings. [I'm waiting for Indian DJs to reciprocate] But the life of a call center operator is varied, and also includes moments like this one, from Conan's show. It turns out that lonely, horny Americans are coming to the same conclusions that our parents want us to come to - that Brown Lovin' is good Lovin' [Either that or they're to cheap to pay for phone sex]:

Nineteen-year-old Kajal aka Jessica Taylor could not help smiling when her admirer on the line questioned "Do you look like the Indian beauty Aishwarya ?. [sic]Come with me for a hot date tonight." At 6 in the morning, Kunal aka Oliver Stone was just wrapping up for the day, when his last call earned him a kiss and a passionate dinner invitation.

Note - these are outbound rather than inbound call center operators, and since they are "breaking the bubble" of the person being called, the recipient may feel better about taking liberties.

Whole article posted below b/c it is only available as a cached copy and will probably soon disappear:

This one seems hard to believe but I am sure it will elicit several comments from those gnxp’ers:

Genes may account for more than 40% of such charitable behavior as the massive outpouring of donations following the recent South Asian tsunamis.

A study comparing the social responsibility of identical and non-identical twins showed that genes account for 42% of individual differences in attitudes while common environment accounts for 23% and other factors account for the remainder.

Conducted by Canadian researcher J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario, the study also found that genes have a stronger influence on males than females (50% to 40%) while home upbringing has a stronger influence on females (40% to 0%), suggesting that parents may more closely watch the behavior of daughters than of sons.

Turbanhead and Anna post about a Philly radio DJ who abused an Indian call center worker on air (listen to the audio clip, courtesy of Edward Champion):

STAR (morning DJ on Power 99): I was surprised when I got somebody on the line in East India… [on phone] This call has been outsourced to India?
TINA: That’s right.
STAR: Well, ma’am, what the eff would you know about an American white girl’s — uh, uh — hair? And quick beads.
TINA: Just to inform you, ma’am, we’re a national chain services company. And we’re just taking calls on the opposite…
STAR: Listen, bitch! Don’t get slick with the mouth! Don’t you get slick with me, bitch!
TINA: Now if you continue to speak this language, I will disconnect the call.
STAR: Listen to me, you dirty rat eater. I’ll come out there and choke the eff out of you. (laughter) You’re a filthy rat eater. I’m calling about my American six-year-old white girl [Star is black]. How dare you outsource my call? Get off the line, bitch! (laughter, applause)

Yeah… hilarious. It’s several cuts below Beavis and Butthead. Shock jocks have spewed racist bullshit on air for years, getting away with it when the minority group they cuss out is small or disorganized. This is nothing new.

But, this time it’s personal: on my trip to India a couple of weeks ago, I just learned that my niece and my sister-in-law, two beautiful, intelligent women in their mid-20s, are working in call centers in Gurgaon. One remarked drily that she handles metro Manhattan, ‘so if you’re a Citibank customer, gimme a ring.’ The thought of some racist asshole insulting my sweetheart of a niece makes me want to beat the shit out of him.

Even worse, the hit show is getting picked up by a New York station on Jan. 17, 2005 at a cost of $17M. Like stand-up comedy 50 years ago, it’s racial abuse for profit.

Here’s what the DJ said a couple of years ago when Jennifer Lopez casually used the N-word:

“Why is she using a word that’s derogatory to blacks?… If you’re a so-called role model, don’t spit in the face of African-Americans.”

Hypocrite.

In economic freedom.... I'm personally a little skeptical of this result - surely India's in better shape than 118? The Financial Express reports - Mostly unfree -

That India still ranks in the last quarter of a world ranking on economic freedom with an index score of 3.5 illustrates the extent to which we are inured to clamps on our rights to trade and invest. One needn’t agree with all the details of this ranking of 155 countries by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal to go along with its basic thrust. The notion of economic freedom is only a theoretical ideal — like perfect competition — and its finest expressions are found in small trading bastions like Hong Kong (which topped the 2005 index for the 11th year running)followed by Singapore.

...This global ranking should set aside a lingering delusion among India’s officialdom that one major advantage we have vis-a-vis our emerging economy rivals like China is our wider range of economic freedoms — rule of law and all that! Far from it. China occupies the 112th place when compared to India’s 118th and the report notes that the dragon has reduced tariff barriers since joining the WTO, cut government expenditure and privatised some companies. India, by contrast, has wound up the disinvestment ministry altogether under the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.

The Indian Express also covers the story...

Ever been annoyed by not having a holiday for Diwali, Eid or Guru Nanak’s birthday? Samantha Bee, resident wag on the Daily Show, tells us what Christmas really means (at 2:20 in the clip):

‘But really, let’s face it: all other days bow down to the 25th, Christmas. It’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of separation of church and state.’

A new, high-end French-Indian fusion restaurant, IndeBlue, just opened in Washington, D.C. with two tandoori ovens, a wine bar and a lounge. The chef, Vikram Garg, was formerly the head chef at the Leela Kempinski Palace in Bangalore.

The style sounds fusion rather than the Indo-French cooking of Pondicherry, as exemplified by London’s La Porte des Indes. Quick, we need a food scout from the lowland swamp. DCist went and made me even hungrier:

Coldren told us in October that Garg is a master at “controlling spices” and the menu marries the best of French and Indian cuisine. Some examples: Petite Provencal naan with sundried tomato chutney; wild mushroom dosa… with bleu cheese gratin with white truffle oil; scallops scented with cumin on a bed of braised chicory; and veal-stuffed gnocchi served with chanterelles and infused with a fenugreek-chardonnay sauce.

More from the WaPo’s Tom Sietsema (any relation to the Village Voice food critic?):

One quiet thrill follows a request for saffron-and-cardamom-flavored ice cream. A waiter shows up at the table with a potato ricer filled with the cold stuff; a powerful squeeze of the ricer’s handles pushes it through dozens of tiny holes, creating a plateful of creamy noodles.

It’s definitely not a traditional restaurant — beef samosas, anyone?

It was perhaps one of most lavish non-political parties Washington has seen in quite some time… at least one woman, painted as a forest nymph, walked about the place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream-esque fashion.

Of the dishes, the beef samosa was the most interesting. Since using beef is traditionally prohibited in Indian cuisine, the combination tasted rather novel… we only had a chance to sample the lychee and mango martinis. Both were worth the wait…

Hemant Lakhani, a British Asian who’s spent decades in London’s clothing industry, was put on trial in New Jersey today for trying to sell anti-aircraft missiles to terrorists. Here’s the twist: unbeknownst to him, his supplier was from Russian law enforcement, his buyer was an FBI agent, and the only missile he actually got his hands on was a dummy. He’s arguing entrapment:

[I]n London’s West End rag trade, people, who have known him for over 35 years, describe him as more a Del boy, a character in the BBC’s popular comedy serial Only Fools and Horses. Del Boy in the serial tries out all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes, risking brushes with law, but invariably fails. Lakhani is truly the same character, say a large number of people here. “He is truly a complete loser.”

Lakhani tried to duck responsibility:

Mr Lakhani claims he was entrapped by the US agent, who kept offering more money whenever he failed to find any missiles. “He’d say I’ve got $20m (£10.6m), I’ve got $10m, I’ve got so many million. All these temptations and temptations.”

But he completely incriminated himself with his anti-U.S. statements:

“He spent more than a year and a half trying to smuggle 200 missiles into the United States, all the time issuing advice on how to shoot planes out of the sky to shake the US economy.”… Lakhani, a Hindu, had allegedly told the agent: “You must target 10 to 15 different airports at the same time,” and added: “If Allah blesses us we can finish this.” He also offered a “dirty” bomb for £1.6 million.

The odd thing about this case is that Lakhani is a 69-year-old, long-married Hindu with no prior terrorist ties. That suggests a mercenary motive more than an ideological one. The central question is, was he a Walter Mitty, or was he for real?

The last few days I have read a string of articles that reiterate in my mind the close connection between sex and disaster. I remember reading a book once in my 20th Century American Wars class in college, which talked about the relationship between sex and the brutal savagery of war. For some reason in the midst of an inhuman situation, a significant portion of the population becomes aroused and often times crosses the line into sexual deviancy. If anyone can point me to a specific study I’d appreciate it but in my view there is already anecdotal evidence in the wake of the Tsunami disaster. From the AP (thanks for the tip Julie T):

A teenager who escaped death but was left orphaned and homeless by the Asian tsunami met yet one more agony: gang rape, one of several cases of child abuse being investigated in the disaster zone, an official said.

Of all the human tragedies emerging from the worst natural disaster in decades, sexual abuse of vulnerable children in refugee camps must be among the most shocking.

… But psychological and behavioral problems are certain to become more important as the authorities gain control over the life-threatening issues.

De Silva said his governmental agency already is investigating several complaints of sexual abuse in centers housing tens of thousands of survivors.

So far, the cases of suspected abuse have been isolated. But officials are concerned that the trauma of the catastrophe, coupled with the close quarters in the refugee centers, could spawn many more cases.

“In the aftermath of displacement and shock you do see an increase of abuse and violence against women and children,” said Ted Chaiban, head of the U.N. children’s agency in Colombo.

With the huge number of orphans, the worst elements of society are out and practicing their trade:

Text messages offering to sell hundreds of Indonesian orphans into sexual slavery are fueling fears that pedophile rings are prowling the tsunami-ravaged region.

“Three hundred orphans aged 3-10 years from Aceh for adoption,” read the message that appeared yesterday on the cell phone of a UNICEF worker in nearby Malaysia.

“All paperwork will be taken care of. No fee. Please state age and sex of child required.”

Yes folks, it is true. Raj Bhakta, one of SM's favorites, will be headlining this year's annual SASA conference. As if Gurinder Chadha, Saira Mohan, and Anish Shroff were not enouigh. Oh, and how I could I leave out fashion designerAnand Jon, the hordes of desi thugs and wannabee gangsters wreaking havoc in LA, and the threat of a hotel boycott from the list of enticements.

An OpEd in the Boston Globe tackles an issue which is part of the reason we put so much energy into Sepia Mutiny - Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Living / Arts / Deliver us from faraway evil

Human apathy toward mass deprivation is legendary. Aid organizations know this. For decades, the relief organization Save the Children has urged first-world donors to underwrite the well-being of a specific child somewhere in the Third World. Why? Because no one cares about saving children in the abstract. But people do care about saving Marzina, an 8-year-old from Bangladesh, who is currently seeking a sponsor.

The media likewise know that gargantuan disaster stories have to be correctly packaged to capture readers' attention. There is an old, politically incorrect saying in newsrooms: How do you change a front-page story about massive flood devastation into a 50-word news brief buried inside the paper? Just add two words: ''In India."

Back in the early 90s, a round of cyclones / floods in Bangladesh killed almost 140k folks -- a comparable number to the Tsunami's toll (for now). This situation was possibly more acute because all the carnage was concentrated in a single, dirt-poor nation with 140M people and few resort beaches. Needless to say, that story appeared & disappeared from our headlines pretty darn quickly.

Still, I don't fault the newspaper editors of the world too much - it's human nature for Americans to care more about Americans & Swedes about Swedes (be they on Phuket resorts or down a well in Midland, Texas). My takeaway is that it's an important reaffirmation of the importance of micro-media outfits like Sepia Mutiny, desi blogs, and vast collaboration media like the Internet.

The 92nd session of the Indian Science Congress is taking place right now in Ahmedabad and the U.S. is hinting at closer cooperation with India in space exploration as reported by IndiaExpress.com:

“India is working on a mission to moon. We are looking at collaborations with India in this,” Dr Lee Morin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science at the US Department of State, Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs and a NASA astronaut, told reporters in Ahmedabad at the 92nd session of the Indian Science Congress.

“US is also looking at collaboration in the area of telemedicine,” he said.

One of Bush’s main legacy projects will be an ambitious space agenda, including the first steps in a return to the Moon and preparations for a manned mission to Mars (although both will occur long after he has left office and would be subject to the whims of future administrations). The International Space Station was created with the help of 16 countries, of which India was not one. Baby steps like this could pave the way for India to be an active partner in such ambitious undertakings allowing Indian nationalism to be inspired by something other than nuclear weapons. Let us hope though that scientists such as this guy at the SAROUL (Scientific Advance Research of Universe and Life) conference in New Delhi don’t get to participate in space exploration:

When water was there in Mars, there was a definite life; small insects, reptiles and fishes were the natural life, fishes used to live in small, medium and big lakes.

There were no seas or oceans on Mars, only lakes were available, where the river used to end their journey by dropping water, particularly in the big lakes.” Dr. Baldev said.

Ummm. No. That statement is absurdly false on so many levels, and the worst part is that some of the press won’t know any better.

When I was a wee girl, my parents brought home one of what would be a scant handful of Malayalam phil-ims; the plot involved an extremely loved child who drowns and the inevitable emotional Sturm und Drang that accompanies such tragedies.

I almost don’t remember anything about the movie: not the actors, not the words, not the setting…I blank when I try and reach back for those details. I only remember one thing, and that thing is so big, it seemingly takes up all of the space my mind has allotted for this memory; I remember the recoil, the vomit in my throat and the gasp I made when they retrieved the boy’s “corpse”, tattered and grotesque, from his watery grave.

:+:

They are the “untouchables”; the lowest of the low in India’s ancient caste system. No job is too dirty or too nasty, and they are the ones cleaning up the rotting corpses from last week’s killer tsunami.

Apparently, the vast majority of men who are working 24 hours a day to clean the “poor south Indian fishing town of Nagapattinam” are Dalits (untouchables); members of this caste comprise about 16 percent of India’s population.

These “lowest of the low” are municipal sanitation workers who have migrated to the chaotic aftermath of the tsunami— 40 percent of India’s total fatalities occcurred in Nagapattinam—from nearby areas, drawn by the promise of “an extra 50 cents a day and a meal.”

A Silicon Valley company with a Hyderabad office has started bringing in the parents of their new hires for a schmooze session. Impressed with the respect accorded them, the parents tell their kids to stay with the company rather than quitting and joining Microsoft.

In a culture where parents yield enormous influence over their adult children’s decisions, pitching the parents is a novel way to retain talent in a brutally competitive environment… “The managing director of the company himself welcomed our parents,” says Beeraka. “Once [my father] heard from the company, he insisted that I stay…” Sixty percent of the 35 new recruits brought at least one parent to the orientation in August, and, for the first time in several years, Sierra has experienced no turnover.

You’ve found our hidden exhaust port, Luke. In desi culture, there’s no end to this. At a recent wedding, I just heard a 90-year-old man refer to his 65-year-old son as ‘the boy.’ Next thing you know, realtors, car companies and wireless carriers will be asking mom and dad to pick your goodies :)

Heck, if they already pick your mate…

Virgin Mobile’s latest promotion is a fine example of South Asian-inspired surrealist kitsch. Not to mention the visions you had the morning after the New Year’s party. No, Virginia, those weren’t sugarplums dancing through your head.

For art that so prominently features a Hindu motif, it sure is strange to extirpate Diwali from the name (Chrismahanukwanzakah). So, I’ve re-christened it, so to speak.

Happy Diwahanukwanzidmas, and watch the animation!

Related posts: A very Om-ly Christmas, Krishna for Christmas, The peacock, The tao of Manschot, Blood brother, Kitsch Idol, Blog bidness, Kitsch-mish, Camping while brown, Wild Bollywood art project, Indian kitsch: Artist does Indian theme for Diesel, TV ad satires on India, Hinduism as kitsch, Warmth and Diesel: The selling of Indian kitsch

Georgia’s Khabar Magazine features what I found to be a humorous little account by KALPITA C. SARKAR, of what happened when a group of South Asian women (some visiting from India), who are perhaps a little too old to be going to da clubs, let their hair down in an American one:

As someone visiting from India, I had done all the routine stuff. Gorged myself at exotic restaurants, danced all night at private parties, even splurged on some expensive clothes and accessories at the Mall of Georgia. It should have made anyone deliriously happy. But I felt like doing something different. Something bold?something I had never done before?

Emboldened by the seemingly outgoing gang of friends including my host and sister-in-law Maya, I voiced my adventurous ambitions. I soon discovered that such aspirations were on the minds of the others too ? though no one had voiced it. But it was there ? a nagging, taunting inner voice that said, “You are another year older. You are over the hill, past its fascinating peak. The view from now on is only downhill ? a devastating, frictionless slide that will gather momentum as you hit the bottom?”

We were eight women; all over thirty, some over forty. Married, with kids, and coming from fairly conservative, middle class backgrounds. Each working, with decent jobs. University lecturers, software engineers, legal secretaries and a physiotherapist. And we were all Indians. The only difference was that the others lived in Atlanta while I was visiting.

So what happens once they finally get to the club?

Five dollars per head ? no tickets ? just a stamp; we coyly put our wrists forward. You can get it stamped anywhere on your bare skin, I hear. I’m reminded of the Kaanta laga video where the girl gets it on her breast. A big guy asks for our licenses. I cringe. Do we look like we are below eighteen? Take it as a compliment, winks Prema.

Inside, at least fifty people are dancing shoulder to shoulder in an elevated, lighted dance floor that is barricaded by a sort of railing. All around folks are standing and watching. A bar on the right is doing brisk business. Skimpily clad waitresses are doing the rounds with drink trays balanced in their hands. The roof is high with funny cages hanging from above. I even see a few people dancing in the cages. The place instantly gives me the creeps.

All of us stand for a moment wondering what to do. Heads were turning and we begin to see why. We look like a group out on a school picnic rather than one at a nightclub. Naiveté and curiosity are writ large on our faces. It is warm inside and we have all these bulky jackets and big purses with us. We realize suddenly that we couldn’t dance carrying them. We keep the jackets in a chair. “What if someone pinches them?” I ask suspiciously. “Don’t be a FOB. No one pinches clothes here!” I get rebuked.

We hold on to our purses though. “Girls, let’s not waste time twiddling our thumbs, come on,” Shelley leads us to the dance floor. The rest of us squeeze in gingerly. The whole crowd is doing a synchronized number ? two to the right, two to the left, shake it all about ? something to that effect.

Director Wes Anderson did right by Sikhs in his latest film:

I saw The Life Aquatic last night, a hilarious, laid-back Jacques Cousteau parody… The director was very respectful of the handsome, turbaned actor / fashionista Waris Singh Ahluwalia: it was not a token role, the Sikh was a bona fide character. He had an American accent. He had a real name, Vikram Ray (though Ray is a Bengali name, perhaps a play on Satyajit). He was addressed by name several times, he had plenty of lines, he was an integral part of the crew. He even had three glamor shots in the submarine scene at the end, close-ups with light reflecting off his eyes. There was an Asian-American on the crew as well, and assorted Europeans; the casting was like the Star Trek bridge minus the aliens…

On the flip side, the marketing campaign cropped Ahluwalia out. It’s a shot of the submarine scene, where Ahluwalia was seated at far left. On the U.S. poster, the guy in the turban and the black guy are missing.

In this particular case, it’s probably because Ahluwalia… isn’t a recognizable star. However, in many movies (e.g. Sandra Oh in Sideways), minorities don’t figure in the marketing campaigns, even if they have substantial roles… The kinds of people you’ll see [featuring minorities] are producers at the top and the bottom: those who are either already successful enough to take the risk, such as Wes Anderson and his cult of fans, or so indie that they don’t care.

Read the full piece.

As Sepia Mutiny mentioned, the NYC run of the London hit musical Bombay Dreams closed this past weekend. Rediff reports, however, on an interesting, far more long-term development within the cast -

As Manu Narayan, Tamyra Gray, Sriram Ganesan and Anjali Bhimani joined 34 of their peers in Bombay Dreams to take the final Broadway bow on New Year's Day, at least one actor was taking home more than memories and an impressive resume.

Aalok Mehta, part of the ensemble cast, is now engaged to Anisha Nagarajan who played Priya, the idealistic movie director, in the musical for about six months.

Some interesting financial info & hope for a Bombay Dreams road tour -

Most among the cast of Bombay Dreams are hoping to join the road tour that could start this summer, provided the producers, who have lost about half of their $14 million investment in the Broadway production, are able to raise fresh investment and get good backing from regional promoters.

Yep, that’s right. The DVD all you sex-crazed ignorant South Asian men have been waiting for has arrived, and it’s dirtier than ever…or is it? From The Houston Chronicle:

Now’s your chance to catch up on ketchup hounds Harold and Kumar. The only question is, do you get the film’s “Extreme Unrated DVD” or its original R-rated theatrical cut?

In truth, it hardly matters — just as it didn’t for The Girl Next Door and Eurotrip. Like Harold and Kumar, each came to DVD in R-rated as well as unrated versions, with the latter suggesting more raw and revealing material. Yet in each case, it was tough to tell the difference.

The fact is, Mary Poppins would be “unrated” if Disney added several more seconds of kids flying kites and didn’t resubmit the altered film for a new ratings review. “Unrated” doesn’t mean the equivalent of an NC-17. It just means unrated.

In Harold and Kumar’s case, it means a bit of incidental footage was added to a film already riddled with sex and vulgarities. But unlike Harold and Kumar, we don’t need to gorge.

More enticing are the unrated edition’s unique bonus features. These include another commentary track, a music video and more outtakes.

Playbill.com has a preview of Gheri Dosti which is a series of five short plays with a “South Asian bent,” opening tomorrow in NYC:

The red-hot issue of same-sex marriage became a sticking point during the past election year in the United States. It’s no secret, however, that this controversial topic extends well beyond American soil to even the most remote reaches of the planet. Circle East, a New York-based company, will present Gehri Dosti, a collection of five short plays exploring same-sex relationships in South Asia, beginning on Jan. 6.

Playwright and director Paul Knox has conceived the work, which had its world premiere last fall at Harvard University’s Leverett Old Library. Prior to that production, the individual sections that comprise Gehri Dosti: 5 Short Plays with a South Asian Bent had been developed in festivals the world over, from New York to Cape Town, South Africa. The Harvard production represented the first time the pieces was combined to form a full evening of exploratory theatre.

With the AIDS epidemic spreading exponentially through developing countries, Gehri Dosti is as much about spreading knowledge as it is about civil rights advocacy. In addition to serving as Circle East’s executive director, Knox is the co-founder of the Tides Foundation’s India Fund, an organization that facilitates community building efforts and educational initiatives among South Asia’s gay groups. He has also conceived and co-produced Mela: A South Asian Festival of performances on the Indian subcontinent. For his work with the Russian Academy of Theater Arts, Mr. Knox has been a co-recipient of the United Nations Society of Writers Award.

A 34-minute documentary called Brown Like Dat: South Asians and Hip Hop is screening Jan. 15 in Manhattan.

… gives a voice to South Asian MCs, beatboxers, spoken word artists and producers. With hip-hop as its lens… these artists speak on everything from racial profiling post-9/11 to identity in second-generation immigrant communities… Featured Artists: Abstract Vision Humanity, Chee Malabar from Himalayan Project, D’Lo, Jugular, Karmacy, and MC Kabir.

Saturday, January 15th, 5pm and 7pm, Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East 3rd Street (at Avenue A), $9, advance tix strongly recommended (they usually sell out)

The great science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, 2001: A Space Odyssey) is perhaps the most famous foreigner living in Sri Lanka. Long considered a visionary for his works, Clarke published a book about Sri Lanka in 1957 titled, The Reefs of Taprobane. As noted in the Hindustan Times:

In an open letter sent to his friends, the British author says that in Chapter 8 of the book he had described a tidal wave attack on Galle harbour in 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa, in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean as the epicentre of the December 26, 2004 sea quake, namely, off Sumatra in Indonesia.

The loss of life in Galle harbor is nearing 8000 and is one of the worst hit areas. Another claim in the article is the following:

In more recent times, he is said to have predicted, in one of his numerous science-fiction/futuristic writings, the Al-Qaeda attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

This quote is not backed-up however, and I can’t think of which work they might be referring to. If any reader knows, then please comment.

The above quote is one of the most poignant soliloquies in film history, and many of you may recognize it from 1996’s Independence Day starring Will Smith and Bill Pullman. Well at least one person isn’t as stirred by these words as you and I. He is quite enraged. Veda Naik has been seething for nine years and he ain’t gonna take it no more. From Sify.com:

An NRI film scriptwriter has dragged Hollywood studio giant Twentieth Century Fox to the Supreme Court [Indian] for allegedly stealing his script to make the mega blockbuster Independence Day (ID).

Veda Naik has moved the apex court against a Karnataka High Court judgement refusing to direct the Los Angeles-based studio to pay damages for infringing the copyright of his film script Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM).

Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM)? Geez, with a name that bad it deserved to be stolen.

Mango Swami elucidates the sexual repression behind the Delhi sex clip scandal:

After all those years of aspiring and shamelessly emulating, the citizens of India have finally made it to the Western world… These two kids will go down in history. [It’s] the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This is the shock beginning of a sexual revolution…

[The Baazee.com CEO] was arrested because millions of parents in India don’t know what to do now that they’re confronted with the reality that their kids have sex. Scapegoat a businessman with Western ties because demanding a citizenry to no longer live in denial is out of the question.

He gives us too much information:

I actually saw my first porn movie in New Delhi. We rented it from a local candy-shopkeeper who had to run back to his flat (and probably had to tip-toe around his wife and children) to retrieve an unlabeled VHS tape of seemingly German origin. The candy&porn shop was located right next door to, of all places, the local temple.

But we have our go-to excuse, our favorite scapegoat:

[U]nderneath all the posturing of purity and morality, Indians are a horny lot. And now it’s been made public that demure girls with long braids have sex! What is a nation of a billion to do?! A suggestion: Blame the British!

A popular gadget blog starts a post with ‘Jaan pehchaan ho!’ That’s Hindi for ‘recognize!’ If I were drinking a pint of old-skool chocolate milk, it would be spraying out my nose right now. Thank you, Engadget blogger Phillip Torrone.

Jaan Pehechaan Ho! This week’s show is chock full of goodness.

Previous posts on Hinglish: 1, 2

Update: As Chaitanya points out in the comments, it may be a reference to a bouncy Mohammed Rafi tune from Gumnaam (Anonymous) which was featured in Ghost World:

Remember my previous posts (here and here and here) on the drive to get the first (and up until recently, the only) Indian American Congressman onto a stamp? Well our boy has met with some resistance and the IACFPA reports that the stamp proposal has been defeated:

The U.S. Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee was recently reported to have rejected the proposal to issue a stamp commemorating Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian to be elected to Congress in 1956. But Indian Americans and various legislative bodies have not given up the effort to garner recognition for the late Congressman.

Okay so what’s the next step? How to recover from this devastating news? What’s plan B?

We’re all aware that the Tsunami has meant tragedy for millions. I know people who can’t bear to watch another news report, because they know it will merit a saltwater response. This post is for them (and you).

From Rediff.com:

A 18-month-old Kazakh baby, apparently unharmed, has been found in Thailand’s Khao Lak tourist resort in southern Phang-nga province which has been devastated by the killer Tsunami last Sunday.

The baby, who was discovered floating on a mattress in the sea by an Indian national a few days ago, was handed over to the Kazakh ambassador on Saturday.

It was not until Saturday that officials were alerted to the miraculous discovery of the young survivor by the Indian national, who had been caring for the baby for the past few days, sources said.

Almost reminds me of the story of Moses, another miracle baby, although one from an ancient time. I hope they find more odds-defying survivors daily.

Like the rest of you, I’ve been swamped with holiday and family obligations these past few weeks. My Bloglines feeds have piled up and it’s going to take me forever to catch up on what some of you (supplesomething, Brimful, J …) have written. I devoted my surf-time today to reading the 200 (!) posts that had accumulated from Om Malik on Broadband.

Om—whom I sweat ridiculously—had an interesting tidbit over at GigaOm; it stated that India is “Truly, a Cell Phone Nation”. He goes on to state:

There are 44 million cell phone users in India, versus 43 million land lines. India’s mobile market will grow 40% every year through 2007.

I don’t know why that statistic captured my attention so completely, but it did. More cell phone users! I guess it makes sense now that I think about it…

This article has more:

India has also emerged as the second-largest market after China for mobile handsets. Mobile phone makers such as Nokia , Siemens, Sony Ericsson , South Korea ‘s LG and Philips are racing to offer newer models to keep pace with demand.

I think one of my favourite things about India is the juxtaposition of future with past, forward with backwards. I’m ridiculously excited (especially after reading posts like this) to see what develops…

One of my most popular blog posts ever dealt with the…um…”unique” names that Malayalee parents bestow on their helpless offspring. Most bloggers get a large number of hits via Google searches for all sorts of random things; HERstory is visited daily by people who wish to marvel at the ad hoc list of contrived and tortured nomenclature I compiled during one ennui-laced jaunt through Friendster.

I think I might have to amend the list:

Tsunamis are associated with death and destruction. But that has not stopped a couple in Kerala’s Alappuzha district from naming their new-born baby girl after the killer waves.

Kutten and Priyanka of Valiyazheekal in the district, where several people have been killed by the disaster, named their child Tsunami following her miraculous escape from the killer waves.

Priyanka and her daughter were rescued by a relative.

I have no words.

Okay, that’s a lie. I have a few. I guess they can call her…”Tsu”? As a nickname?

Oh, it’s all so wrong…

Via Rediff.

:+:

Update!

Sepia Mutiny reader “JK” points us to an article where “Kutten”, Baby Tsunami’s father, states that he did nothing as foolish as naming his kid after the worst natural disaster in years. Apparently the kid is named “Nakshatra”. So Baby Nakshatra’s Daddy didn’t do it, got that? Yeah, me neither. ;)

Rediff.com is reporting that Ella Gabriella, the daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, plans to marry her Indian boyfriend Aatish Taseer. Ella, 23, the 30th in line to the throne, was studying Spanish and English literature at Brown University, when she met 24-year-old Aatish, a Mumbai-born Sikh, who occasionally dresses up as Captain Condom to promote the importance of safe sex. Taseer's marriage to Lady Gabriella, both of whom are aspiring journalists, will certainly help to put to rest accusations of racism that have dogged her mother since she allegedly told a table of black diners in a Manhattan restaurant to "go back to the colonies" after they ignored her request to quiet down.

Maybe Taseer can do something to get all those items taken by the Brits from India returned. (The Padshahnama, The Kohinoor Diamond etc.))

Jet Airways, the leading private airline in India, is far more luxurious than American ones: brand-new Airbus jets, hot face towels, nimbu pani and watermelon juice, coffee candies, sumptuous red and orange linen napkins bound in velvet rope, a choice of North or South Indian meals (ever had hot idli sambar and utappam on an airplane?), and a never-ending stream of tea and coffee. And all this on short-haul domestic routes rather the overseas ones served by Singapore and Virgin.

The Indian government will now allow Jet and Air Sahara to fly international routes, although it continues to shelter the lucrative Middle Eastern routes from competition. The airlines are presumably on their own for buying landing slots.

Indian airports are also in dire need of investment. On a recent trip, I could get wireless Internet access at the Delhi and Bangalore airports. However, they otherwise still resemble small regional airports in the U.S.: open-air gates, buses instead of jetways and a vanishingly small distance from gate to parking lot. They’re like the old terminal at San Jose before the tech bubble.

But with an astonishing 20% annual growth in air traffic, India just signed off on a plan to upgrade 80 airports throughout the country, including brand-new airports for Bangalore and Hyderabad. They’re partying like it’s 1999.

And in the tech-heavy cities, it pretty much is. Driving through Bangalore, I saw buildings that looked exactly like U.S. tech campuses, though smaller. Intel, Dell, Oracle, Accenture and Macromedia buildings abound; on one corner, with a shock of recognition, I came face-to-face with a company started by a friend. I couldn’t help but feel late to the party. With the number of South Indian programmers already working at Oracle, why not hire ‘em straight from the motherland :)

Just a reminder: A 12-minute segment on Aishwarya Rai, entitled ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Woman?,’ airs tonight at 7pm on 60 Minutes (CBS). Here’s Apul’s post on the interview.

The press release is incredibly disingenuous, asking the questions usually done by trashy film mags:

Rai’s first movie kiss, should she do it, will be a minor scandal among her fans, especially in India… The country that gave the world the Kama Sutra, one of the oldest known sex manuals, isn’t prudish, just not into public displays of intimacy… Rai… dances delicately around the subject of screen sex. “We’ll cross the bridge when we reach it,” says Rai of the inevitable love scene in her American film future.

Kama Sutra reference, check. Desperate bid to boost viewership, check. Aishwarya’s ever-so-precious virginal mugging for Stardust, Filmfare and Cineblitz, check.

A 31-year-old actress/model will have done a hell of a lot more than a public kiss, and more power to her. No matter how much fans may confuse reel life with real life, the Britney Spears impression isn’t necessary, discretion works fine. But the fault probably lies more with the interviewers than the actress. It’s the kind of tissue-thin softball usually tossed underhand by Baba Wawa.

Update: Watch the first 2:45 of the video: mirror 1, 2; torrent. Aishwarya seemed extremely nervous, her humor strained, this is her big U.S. launch. Her answers seemed unrehearsed and forced, her giggling a touch shrill; she was like a liquored-up Cameron Diaz on Craig Kilborn, truly cringeworthy. The interviewer spent a third of the segment on ‘you’re so hot,’a third on explaining Bollywood (pretty decent — they clipped her best films) and a third on ‘why won’t you kiss on screen?’ Ahh, hard news — I thought I’d escaped the Hindustan Times, but 60 Minutes dragged me back in.

As I type these very words, Bombay Dreams on Broadway is finishing up the final performance of its eight-month run. Its closing unleashes a horde of desi actors with Broadway experience. May they find their way to productions far beyond these comfortable shores.

Richard Corliss of Time analyzes Bombay Dreams’ short run:

[Meera] Syal, a writer and performer on the Anglo-Indian sitcom Goodness Gracious Me, could assume that the London audience would be knowing too — they’d be familiar enough with the genre to get the jokes poked at it. Bollywood films get a fairly wide release in the U.K., often making the weekend box-office top ten. Because the South Asian community is proportionately larger in Britain than in the U.S., the Bollywood culture more deeply permeates the official culture. Indian films can gross millions in the States and not be seen by anyone outside the subcontinental diaspora…

Essentially, he had to write a primer on Bollywood: explain the genre, then rack some jokes about it. Most of Syal’s best lines vanished. The show became soft and lumpy. The New York Bombay Dreams was a desperate, failed reworking of the London version… The Indo-American audience wasn’t large enough to keep it afloat, and it didn’t attract the idle non-Desi curious.

The outreach to critics was a disaster for this straightforward, unironic ’50s-style show. The London show had a better book and more physically striking actors, though the New York version had stronger singers and a slicker production.

And what is the sound of one critic’s heart breaking? Corliss has found his guru, and it’s the show’s composer A.R. Rahman:

Rahman is not just India’s most prominent movie songwriter… but, by some computations, the best-selling recording artist in history. His scores have sold more albums than Elvis or the Beatles or all the Jacksons: perhaps 150 million, maybe more.

There’s finally some good news about the desi diet to balance out all the heart disease. A compound in the haldi (turmeric) used in desi cooking may help prevent Alzheimer’s (via Boing Boing):

The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and also breaks up existing plaques. The research team also determined curcumin is more effective in inhibiting formation of the protein fragments than many other drugs being tested as Alzheimer’s treatments.

The rate of Alzheimer’s in India is 4x lower than in the U.S.

Here’s a copy of the full research paper.

In reviewing the myriad of organizations that are now collecting for the Tsunami relief, I wondered (a bit cynically) how many stories we will come to hear about scam organizations that will use this tragedy just to fleece generous donors. Another concern I had (which may be shared by other readers) is the “baggage” that is sometimes included with your donation, when giving to certain groups. A friend pointed me to www.stopfundinghate.org which points out that donations to some religious organizations in India may be funding communal violence and Hindu Nationalism in addition to providing the help promised.

Are the charity dollars generously provided by American companies, including some of our leading corporate citizens of the high technology world, being used to fund violent, sectarian groups in India? The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (SFH) launched Project Saffron Dollar in November 2002, to bring an end to the electronic collection and transfer of funds from the US to organizations that spread sectarian hatred in India.

The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (SFH) is a coalition of people-professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals-who share a common concern that sectarian hatreds in India are being fueled by money flowing from the United States. SFH is committed to an India that is open, tolerant and democratic. As the first step, SFH is determined to turn off the money flow from the United States to Hindutva hate groups responsible for recurring anti-minority violence in India.

This is not something that only affects individuals but large and small companies as well.

Many large US corporations such as CISCO, Sun, Oracle, HP and AOL Time Warner match employee contributions to US based non profits. “Annual Giving” programs normally happen once a year in late Fall-timed to occur between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Unsuspecting corporations end up giving large amounts of money as matching funds to IDRF [India Development and Relief Fund] as employees of these firms direct funds to IDRF. For instance, in fiscal 1999, Cisco Foundation gave almost $70,000 to IDRF - placing IDRF among the top 5 of Cisco grantees. In comparison, a well-regarded mainstream institution like the Nobel Peace Prize winning Doctors Without Borders received only $2,560. Also, other Indian-American development organizations such as Asha ($1,417), CRY-Child Relief and You ($4,427) or the Maharashtra Foundation ($2,000) all fared much worse than IDRF. Clearly, at least among Cisco employees, the IDRF has come to occupy much of the giving space. When you add Cisco’s matching grants to the original amounts given by its employees, a total of at least $133,000 went through Cisco to IDRF in 1999-2000-this is more than 5% of IDRF’s total cash collections for the same time period.

Just to clarify, this website and campaign existed long before the Tsunami, and nothing on it pertains directly to the current crisis, but I thought it would serve to remind readers that even though they should definitely GIVE, they should be thoughtful about it.