Students in Uttar Pradesh found a new hiding place for their crib sheets (via India Uncut, appropriately enough). I wish they wouldn’t air their dirty laundry:

Invigilators at Jai Narain Degree College were baffled to find eight condoms hidden inside the underpants of a boy taking [an] examination…. Inside the condoms, chits with short answers, tips and formulae were neatly packed. When caught, one of the boys quipped, “It is a ‘condomed’ way to cheat”… The invigilators were not prepared to touch the condoms. So the college sweeper was summoned. He put the condoms in a file as proof for further action…. Another student was found hiding chits in a bandage on his leg.

Silly rabbit, prophylactics aren’t for filing. And I find this story hard to digest:

At Eram College, a girl was found hiding her chits in what the invigilators called “an unmentionable place”. When the chits were recovered, she swallowed them.

When the chits were down…

Accountant gives thieves the finger: A desi accountant in Malaysia was carjacked by machete-wielding thieves who chopped off the tip of his finger to make his S-Class’ biometric ignition lock work (via Boing Boing):

Accountant K Kumaran, 29, was walking towards his [$80K] S-Class Mercedes Benz in a Kuala Lumpur suburb on Monday when he was knocked down from behind by a car… “They forced me to put my finger on the panel and then started the car. They bundled me into the back, between the seats and used my tie to blindfold me,” he said.

Kumaran was driven to another location where the carjackers asked two other men whether they could bypass the immobiliser system. When they said they could not, Kumaran was stripped naked and ordered to put his left hand on the ground. One of the hijackers then used a machete to chop off the tip of Kumaran’s index finger.

The crime brings to life a scenario envisioned in countless Philip K. Dick novels and films, not least Minority Report’s back-alley eye transplant. And the incident, which took place in the capital city on the western coast of Malaysia, gives new meaning to the phrase ‘chopped Benz.’

In bragging rights for who’s got the biggest, impressive buildings are a frequent battleground (Erotic Gherkin, anyone?). In the old days, they were monuments stocked with semiprecious stones, and the craftsmen were blinded after completion; today, they’re miles-long malls with built-in ice rinks, Prada stores and rugrats in tow:

Menon… is embarking on his new venture - Sobha Global Mall — in Bangalore with a cost of Rs.15 billion ($345 million). “As of today, our upcoming mall project will be the largest in India, spread over 17 acres with a built-up area of 2.8 million sq. feet,” Menon said. “Apart from a shopping complex, an amusement park, 192-room plush hotel, convention centre, multiplex and smart offices, the mall will boast of an Olympic size ice skating rink, the first of its kind in the sub-continent,” Menon added.

How does that compare to the Mall of America, owned by the Iranian-American Ghermezian brothers? It will be 33% smaller, and that’s before the MoA’s expansion:

… the managing partner of Mall of America, wants to nearly double the size of the largest mall in the U.S. with a $1 billion, European-themed addition featuring boutiques, hotel towers, an ice rink, a concert hall and a casino.

It’s Tiffany vs. Bhindi Jewelers: I foresee a global charms race. It’s hard beating Middle Easterners for grandiosity, although Noida is trying. See Harrods and the Burj al-Arab — there’s a reason why Texans and Saudis get along.

The Beeb reports that Montreal's CKAC-AM has been "ordered to make a full apology" for their December 2003 broadcast of nasty remarks about the Sikh community. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), a self-regulatory body, censured the station after a listener called them out on "racism of the first order".

Psychiatrist Pierre Mailloux, host of the Doc Mailloux phone-in show on Montreal's CKAC-AM station, had referred to Sikhs as a "gang of bozos".

Want some more of the bad Doctor's magic?

"You cultural communities come from a wacko country. You live a wacko culture. Don't bring it with you. That's the message to convey," he said.

Mailloux, referring to immigrants' attitudes, said: "I flee northern India because the Sikhs are a gang, a gang of bozos, and then I bring all that with me. No, no, you really don't get it. If you flee your country because it makes no sense, then don't bring those senseless things with you."

Uh, I think YOU make no sense, Doctor Mailloux.

Why do we always find out about breeding grounds for prostitution only after they shut down:

The Indian state of Maharashtra says it is closing its numerous dance bars because they are a breeding ground for crime and prostitution. Only the state capital, Mumbai (Bombay) has been spared for now - pending further inquiries. The state has about 1,500 dance bars employing more than 100,000 women who mostly dance Bollywood numbers. [BBC News]

BBC News: Maharashtra shuts dance-girl bars

Corrupt public servants are advised to note the change of web address in future shakedown attempts:

Leading online marketplace Baazee.com has rechristened itself ‘eBay India’. This follows the completion of integration process with Nasdaq-listed $3.3 billion eBay Inc, which acquired the former for a consideration of $50 million in August last year, making it a 100% subsidiary. [The Financial Express]

The Financial Express: Baazee is now eBay

Previous post: Baazee.com CEO arrested over sex clip

Siegfried & Roy successfully exact revenge:

Indian forest officials and state governments have been scandalised at news that there is not a single tiger left in one of the country’s main wildlife reserves...Manmohan Singh, India’s low-key prime minister, has belatedly leapt to the defence of the national symbol, dispatching detectives to Rajasthan and setting up a national wildlife crime prevention bureau. It is almost certainly too late, however, to save India’s tiger economy. [Financial Times]

Not to point fingers, but detectives should take a gander at car seat covers in New Jersey. They need look no further to determine the fate of their precious tigers.

Financial Times: Scandal of Indian tigers that disappeared

The U.S. is exporting all sorts of stuff to Pakistan these days:

The U.S. military has released at least 211 detainees from Guantanamo, but many — including dozens of prisoners sent to the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — are freed on the condition they will be held by their home countries. [AP/Yahoo!]

Some could be innocent:

In Hussainabad, a clutch of mud-brick homes 185 miles south of the capital, the family of one of the prisoners said Tuesday it is desperate to see him freed, and argues the U.S. decision to let him leave Guantanamo is evidence he’s not a dangerous terrorist. Ghulam Farid — brother-in-law of prisoner Bashir Ahmad — said the family’s joy at learning of his release from Guantanamo has turned to frustration. "I have no idea why the government won’t release him. There can be no good reason," he said. "We are poor people. We can’t get any answers from our government. We are helpless." [AP/Yahoo!]

Others could be douchebags:

Bashir Ahmad was 17 years old in 2000 when he closed his video rental shop and went off to fight, his mother Jannat Bibi said. A friend of Ahmad’s said he was motivated by a local religious leader from the banned Sunni militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba, which is headquartered just a few miles away in the city of Jhang, a hotbed of militancy. Ahmad told his family he was going to fight in Kashmir, but they heard nothing from him until getting a letter in 2002 saying he was in jail in Afghanistan. A second letter arrived later from the Red Cross saying he was at Guantanamo. Two weeks ago, Red Cross officials came to tell the family that Ahmad had been returned to Pakistan, but said they had no power to get him out of jail or arrange a visit. [AP/Yahoo!]

But since no one’s sure, officials are content to indefinitely hole them up in the pokey:

More than three dozen Pakistanis who were freed from an American prison at Guantanamo Bay remain jailed in their home country, most without charge and with no sign of when they might be released, security and government officials say. [AP/Yahoo!]

AP/Yahoo!: Some Pakistanis jailed without charge

Nepal’s crazy King Gyanendra tries his hardest to make the Maoist rebels look like an attractive alternative:

Police arrested about 120 anti-government activists nationwide Monday for defying a ban on protests to show their anger at last month’s seizure of power by the king... Since the king’s power grab, many politicians have been taken into custody or driven underground. [AP/Yahoo!]

No one in the country will hear about it, since the press has been adequately muzzled:

King Gyanendra imposed sweeping curbs on the media as part of emergency rule introduced last month. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says that about half of Nepal’s newspapers had ceased to publish since the king seized power. A number of journalists have also been detained on charges of showing dissent. [BBC News]

AP/Yahoo!: 120 Nabbed for Defying Nepal Protest Ban
BBC News: Nepal journalists urge free press

Previous post: Throwing a little weight around

In an effort to help South Asian politicians seek elected office, and help educate South Asian citizens at a local level in Texas, a group headed by Dheeraj Chand has started the political action committee, Desis for Texas (DesiPAC).

We have four primary objectives:

1. Support the election of candidates who have demonstrated support on issues pertinent to S. Asians, such as immigration and civil rights.

2. Provide a community infrastructure to encourage and support S. Asians to run for elected office.

3. Ensure that every legal S. Asian voter is registered and able to vote in as many elections as possible.

4. Ensure that as many S. Asians are educated in the political process, informed on the issues and candidates and able to develop cogent perspectives. We will concentrate our efforts on elections in which we feel that our communities will be greatly impacted and those elections in which we can make a great impact.

At the national level we already have a U.S. IndiaPAC that has similar objectives. In my opinion however, they spend far too much time (or at least that’s the impression I am left with) battling the Pakistani American lobby over weapons sales on the Indian subcontinent. As an Indian American born here, India/Pakistan relations are at the bottom of the list of policies that matter to me. Where was IndiaPAC on the Modi issue?

Apul’s post yesterday demonstrated the importance of the phallus in South Asian culture. As if on cue, Delhi officials announced today that they will be going ahead with plans to build the world’s tallest building on the outskirts of their city. From The Guardian Unlimited:

Local officials said the building in Noida would be 710 metres (2,330ft) tall - 202 metres higher than Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the current tallest building on the planet.

The skyscraper, said to have been designed to resemble the peaks of the Himalayas, is scheduled to be open for business by 2013.

It will contain a 50-floor five-star hotel, a 40-storey glass atrium and 370,000 sq metres (4m sq ft) of shopping centres.

“New York in the 30s, Malaysia in the 90s and China today all have used tall buildings to showcase their countries to the world,” said Hafeez Contractor, the architect behind the building.

“We want this building to show to the world what India can do.”

Ummm. How about working on poverty and literacy first. As you can imagine not EVERYONE is happy about this:

…some experts are critical of the new wave of Indian design, which they say simply mimics what others have done before and does not take account of local conditions.

“It’s not suited for Indian conditions. We do not have enough water. We do not have the uninterrupted electricity supply,” said Balkrishna Doshi, one of India’s most respected urban designers.

“The building will need its own power plant to make sure the lifts do not stop when the electricity does.”

Let’s see if plans for the building thrust forward or end up going limp when faced with pressure from the inevitable protests.

Afternoon TV is so funky sometimes. Today, the Christian channel was not showing a silver-haired white guy with expansive hand gestures, clad in a shiny double-breasted suit. Instead, it was showing a desi couple, the guy with those huge uncle glasses, singing a ghazal in Hindi, interleaved with clips of folk dancing.

The ghazal sounded completely traditional, but instead of being about love, melancholy or a Hindu / Muslim / Sikh God, it was about Jesus and Mary. ‘Prabhu,’ which usually refers to a Hindu or Sikh God, meant Jesus in this song, ‘Yehuda’ was Judas and ‘Yeshu’ was God. The song, broadcast by the South Asian Gospel Broadcasting Network (who knew?), was subtitled so New Yorkers could groove along. Talk about using the tools of the masters — this concoction merges the ghazal (which originated in Islam), Indian folk dancing and American-style televangelism.

Pardon my parochialness, but I’ve never seen this before. Fusion? Talvin and Karsh got nothin’ on the church. Similarly, I’ve always been fascinated by how omnivorously religious many Hindus are. They practice it like metareligion where other ‘one-and-only’ deities are merely slotted into the pantheon. I often see Bollywood philms where a Hindu protagonist’s idea of the holy trinity is to pray at a temple, a church and a gurudwara all in the same day. And many Punjabi Hindus attend their local gurudwara instead of temple. I’d imagine it all drives hardcore monotheists crazy.

Watch the video: torrent (MPG, 38 MB). Free BitTorrent downloader required: Windows, Mac.

Related post: The fight for the proselyte

India prepares to drop mad coin on Qatar’s sloppy seconds (thanks, thoreaulylazy):

India’s Cabinet on Tuesday approved a US$746 million (€578 million) military spending proposal, days after an announcement that rival Pakistan will purchase sophisticated U.S. fighter jets. The defense ministry received the go-ahead to enter negotiations for 12 used French-made Mirage 2005 aircraft from Qatar, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said. [AP/Yahoo!]

Accessories sold separately:

Plans also include the purchase of nine offshore patrol vessels for the Indian Navy and upgrades for Sea Harrier planes. The Cabinet approved a proposal to buy submarine-fired torpedo decoy systems from Italian company Wass, which also includes technical transfers to India, Mukherjee said. India will also purchase 11 German-built Dornier 228 airplanes, along with spare engines and ground support systems. [AP/Yahoo!]

At least this gives Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh something to gab about when they meet in April, in case they encounter awkward silences.

AP/Yahoo!: India announces US$746 million defense spending plans

Previous post: U.S. to sell F-16s to Pakistan

The very awesome Turbanhead sent me the most deliciously evil link earlier today; it had to do with a college co-ed who needed to write a paper on "Hindu".

This stellar, morally upright young woman required a little...help. And boy, did she get some.

Laura K: hi can i ask u a quick question
Nate Kushner: what's that?
Laura K: i see in ur profile it says something about Hindu....i am a college student and i have to write a paper on Hindu is there anyway u can help me with that
Nate Kushner: I can try.
Laura K: have u ever written a paper on it before
Nate Kushner: I am qualified, seeing as how it says Hindu in my profile.
Laura K: well i am looking fro soemone to write me a paper i am more than willing to send u a check in the mail...money isn't really an object to me...

By the by...the profile they both refer to states that Nate is interested in "Eating Hindu Sculpture."

What follows, boys and girls, is a stern lesson about how you shouldn't randomly IM comedy writers and ask them to do your all-nighter work.

The BBC and several other news orgs report that Indian textile magnate Vijaypat Singhania (who seems to be a contemporary of Howard Hughes) will attempt in November to set a new hot air balloon altitude record:

The record breaking attempt will take place in November in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).

Mr Singhania, 66, will have to fly in a pressurised capsule in sub-zero temperatures to achieve a feat that he describes as MI 70K (Mission Impossible 70,000).

The 1.6 million cubic feet capacity balloon, which is being built in UK, is as tall as a 30-storey-building, according to the organisers.

The flight could take up to five hours - three hours to go up, and two hours to come down.

Officials from Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), which ratifies aviation records, will be present.

“Vijay is going for the biggest feat - this is the heavy weight championship of hot air ballooning,” UK-based adventurer, Brian Milton, who is coordinating the flight told the BBC news site.

Now for my fellow aviation geeks out there, I have a bit more. As impressive an attempt as this will be, it pales by comparison to other high altitude feats. Singhania will be in a pressurized capsule (he’d die within seconds otherwise) but a century ago, similar feats were attempted sans pressurized cabin:

BBC News describes a stimulated aspect of Bhutan’s scenic landscape:

Driving from the country’s only airport in Paro to the capital city of Thimphu, graphic and colourful paintings of penises adorn the white-washed walls of homes, shops and eateries. In many places, pictures of dragons and soft drink advertisements showing a Bollywood actress jostle for space on the walls with phallic drawings. [BBC News]

An actress jostling with a penis could just be a still frame from any Bollywood flick, instead of evidence of a phenomenon. It’s not until you go down further on the article, that you realize the almighty deeock is found in even the most remote of Bhutan’s crevices:

Next to the traditionally painted wooden windows of the 80-year-old farmer, Dema’s, house is a bright red painting of a penis. Dema tells me she hired a professional artist to do it. “It’s to protect those who live inside the house,” she says...A few houses away lives 42-year-old Kinley. A simple drawing of a phallus adorns his wall. He tells me he painted it last year when he renovated his house. “It’s to ward off the evil eye. When people envy me or say bad things about me or my family, it takes away the sting,” Kinley says. [BBC News]

Kinley is doing something horribly wrong if a penis is taking away, rather than delivering, a sting. So why is everyone in Bhutan nuts about penis? The admiration is borne of religious lore:

Legend has it that Drupka Kinley would hit errant demons over the head with his penis to subdue them and turn them into protective deities. Today, several wooden penises are kept in the monastery. The longest, a brown wooden one with a silver handle, is the most important - it is considered a religious relic and is used for blessing the devout...The monk hits three young women devotees who come to pray at the monastery on the head with it. [BBC News]

Homesick Bhutanese monks (or just about anybody else) in Los Angeles can get that service for $30-40 (per head) on Hollywood Blvd.

BBC News: Bhutan’s phalluses warn off evil

Foreign policy mandarin Fareed Zakaria has launched a new weekly show called Foreign Exchange on PBS stations nationwide (via SAJA). It’s odd to see the omnipresent guest turn host, even stranger to hear someone with a prep school, Anglicized Bombay accent hosting an American TV show. But, as always, neocons and Zakaria fans (I count myself among the latter) will wet themselves.

Watch the trailer. Here’s the show’s official site and bios of the Zakaria brothers.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4

Shashwati reports backs from the protest against Modi at Madison Square Garden (photos here):

Among the anti-Modi and anti-Hindutva signs were some anti-Indian Army in Kashmir signs… the Kashmir folks had been piggybacking on the anti-Modi protest. They were politely banished to the other side of Seventh Avenue…

The passersby hurried by in a typical New York rush, some holding up their fingers in a peace sign, without slowing down… Stan asked him if it was true that two thousand people had been killed, the man very matter of factly answered, “sometimes people needed to be disciplined and taught a lesson…” They looked like they had been herded by the more affluent Indians, who were the organizers of the show. Unlike the folks who had been bussed in, most of these people weren’t wearing a tilak, and were barking orders in their walkie-talkies, and generally looking self satisfied. I spoke to a woman in a leather jacket, I asked her what she thought of the proceedings, which she had been watching with an eagle eye, she answered with great unsmiling certainty, “Modi will be the next great leader.”

While she was chatting up the better heeled delegates, a man draped in a saffron shawl stood on top of the steps, not speaking to anyone and standing very still. He seemed to be committing every protestor’s face to memory… At that point a very large man in a trench coat and hat told me to clear the sidewalk. he was the detective in charge. He was the spitting image of Orson Welles in “A Touch of Evil.”

On my way home, I shared a bus ride with some middle aged Gujarati people who had gone to the event, they seemed like nice people. It was chilling to think that they were unmoved by the brutal killing of so many people…

‘Modi will be the next great leader’? Where do they find these people, under the same rock as David Duke groupies?

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

A sizzling performance by dance group during the Pond’s Femina Miss India 2005 in Mumbai on Sunday ( TOI Photo/ Uma Kadam. )

I'm so confused. And yes, I'm American-born. I've gone to several brown cultural shows at major Amreekan universities, and the filmi/"fusion" dancers don't look like this. Metallic hot pants and Come-prance-with-me-in-Switzerland-in-the-rain boots? What the-?

Several news orgs chime in on the latest press release from the Census Bureau. As reported on CNN:

Black and Asian women with bachelor’s degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees make more than anyone else.

A white woman with a bachelor’s degree typically earned nearly $37,800 in 2003, compared with nearly $43,700 for a college-educated Asian woman and $41,100 for a college-educated black woman, according to data being released Monday by the Census Bureau. Hispanic women took home slightly less at $37,600 a year.

The bureau did not say why the differences exist. Economists and sociologists suggest possible factors: the tendency of minority women, especially blacks, to more often hold more than one job or work more than 40 hours a week, and the tendency of black professional women who take time off to have a child to return to the work force sooner than others.

Pay up if you bet the long lines at LAX couldn’t get any worse:

Air India will now fly daily to Los Angeles, three times from Delhi and four times from Mumbai. "These flights provide the easiest connection for passengers. Incidently, the flights to LA are AI's longest flights with 20 hours of flying time and do not involve change of aircraft," said Air India's Director for Public Relations, Jitender Bhargava...An estimated two million passengers travel between India and the United States annually. No US airline currently operates a non-stop service to India. [WebIndia123.com]

WebIndia123.com: Air India commences direct flights from New Delhi to Los Angeles

Previous post: Open skies and Air India

Ms. Magazine spotlights the world’s first all woman police battalion: the Tamil Nadu Special Forces Fifth Battalion.

They were first inducted into the Indian police force in 1973, but today women are mostly confined to desk jobs. In 1992, they were allowed in the defense forces but, again, in service and support jobs. This, despite India’s history of such warrior women as Rani Lakshmibai, who fought the British army in the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion, India’s first freedom struggle.

Still, Indian women are making a comeback, starting in the southern-most state, Tamil Nadu, where Avadi (a suburb of the state’s capital city, Chennai) houses the Tamil Nadu Special Forces Fifth Battalion: the world’s first all-female battalion.

Tamil Nadu has always been progressive regarding women, electing the first female chief minister (a state chief minister holds the power of a U.S. state governor). It boasts the first women’s university, first women’s engineering college, first female-staffed police station, first all-female police commando company, and now the first women’s special-forces police battalion.

According to the article, a women’s battalion is particularly useful when dealing with crimes against women that many insensitive a*hole male cops don’t handle properly. If only certain fundamentalist states in the Arab world would adopt such practice.

According to Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha, since women constitute half the population, their problems could better be understood by policewomen. Each AWPS staffs 15 policewomen, and is focused on crimes against women.

Today, there are 188 AWPS, one in each Tamil Nadu district, along with two toll-free help lines — Woman in Distress and Child in Distress — through which anonymous complaints are pursued at the same priority level as regular complaints. The result: a 23 percent increase in reporting of crimes against women and children — and a higher conviction rate. Several other states have started pilot AWPS.

I have a great idea for a television pilot about a modern day Cagney & Lacey set in Tamil Nadu that I want to sell to American Desi TV.

Still rather prejudiced against meat-eaters, my father immediately discards responses from those with a “non-veg” diet. There is, however, a special loophole for meat-eaters who earn more than $200,000…

 

Oddly, by the end of the night, he couldn’t remember my name. Nothing fazed Juan Carlos, however. He quickly jotted off a poem explaining his lapse: “I wrote your name in the sand, but a wave came and washed it away. I wrote your name in a tree, but the branch fell. I have written your name in my heart, and time will guard it…”

 

“What are your qualifications?” I said I had a B.A. “B.A. only?” she responded. “What are the boy’s qualifications?” I flung back… She smirked: “He is M.D. in Kentucky only…” I grumbled, “Auntie, I will speak to the boy only.”

 

Afterward, I was planning to meet my best friend, who’s gay, in a store, and I asked the guy to come in and say hello. My date became far more animated than he’d been before and even helped my friend choose a sweater…

 

A few days after my 1st birthday… I fell out the window of a three-story building in Baltimore. My father recalls my mother’s greatest concern… “What boy will marry her when he finds out?” she cried, begging my father to never mention my broken arm…

 

My friend Divya… stays out clubbing on her nights off. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she was on KeralaMatrimony.com, courtesy of her mother, who took the liberty of listing Divya’s hobbies as shopping and movies. (I was under the impression her hobbies were more along the lines of trance music and international politics…)

 

My father saw my mother once before they got married… he lost sight of her at a bazaar the day after their wedding and lamented to himself that he would never find her again, as he’d forgotten what she looked like.

… my father placed matrimonial ads for me every couple of years… They read something like, “Match for Jain girl, Harvard-educated journalist, 25, fair, slim.”

Hindu and Muslim extremists share at least one thing in common: A knack for creating controversy where none should exist. The latter is up in arms over an on-screen kiss between Pakistani actress Meera and Bollywood actor Ashmit Patel in the yet-to-be-released “Nazar”:

Conservative Islamists are incensed at the thought of a Muslim woman kissing a Hindu. Some have called for an apology; others have filed a lawsuit, demanding that she be censured for an “immoral scene” — it is unclear what the court could do if it agreed - and still others have issued death threats. [The New York Times]

Not to be outdone, former BJP MP Vinay Katiyar is trying to pull an Ayodhya on the venerable Taj Mahal:

“The Taj Mahal was, in fact, a Shiva temple and was built by Raja Jai Singh. Its name was Tejo Mai Mahal (shining palace),” Katiyar said in Lucknow...“It (the Taj) actually belongs to us (Hindus) and we will do everything possible to reclaim it,” Katiyar said adding a ’Shankar Sena’ (Shiva army) would soon be formed and ‘Damrus’ (Shiva’s drum) distributed among the people to create awareness on this issue. [Hindustan Times]

Imagine the uproar from the zealots if a Hindu man and Muslim woman shared a kiss (with tongue, of course) on the steps of the Taj Mahal. Would the mere thought of it just cause their heads to explode? I hope so. Because that would mean that they’d be dead from a massive head explosion. And then we wouldn’t have to hear from them anymore. We can only fervently pray for such a peaceful fate.

The New York Times: Kiss a Hindu? Just imagine. Islamists did, with outrage (free registration required)
Hindustan Times: Taj Mahal was a Shiva temple: Vinay Katiyar

Previous post: Let sleeping Moghuls lie...PLEASE.

• Shakti Kapoor investigates allegations. Finds Bollywood casting couch doesn’t exist.
• Stars return to the scene of the crime. But what happened to the stains? (Check out the photo caption)
• Aman Verma also caught by an undercover sting. Reaction here ranged from “Aman who?” to “Aman who?”
• Producers’ Guild withdraws ban on Kapoor. Realizes it shouldn’t throw stones from a glass couch.
• Indian government takes aim at the messenger. Messenger sees its ratings soar.

Previous post: Casting couch caught on tape

A group of scientists in India announced they have created a “tea pill,” which promises to deliver the same effect as a cup of the freshly-steeped original to those who are just too damn lazy to boil or microwave water:

The four-member team based in the northeastern state of Assam -- the heart of the country’s tea industry -- said the pill was ready but it would take six months to be available commercially. “The pill is absolutely safe, (it) can be chewed or placed under the tongue,” Mridul Hazarika, director of the Tocklai Experimental Station, told AFP. It can also be enjoyed in the “conventional manner by dipping the tablet in a cup of hot water,” Hazarika said. “We are sure the tea tablets will be able to freshen and cheer up a person with nearly the same effect as having a hot cup of brewed tea.” [AFP/Yahoo!]

AFP/Yahoo!: No time to make hot tea? Take a pill

You knew it was coming: Subservient Sanjeev of the fictional Nevashut, a mini-mart at a British petrol pump (thanks, Turbanhead). Sanjeev, who’s a promo for Pringles potato crisps, is a meld of Burger King’s Subservient Chicken promo, Apu from The Simpsons and video cut scenes from those lame choose-your-own-adventure arcade games of the ’80s.

As is usual in this genre, Procter & Gamble UK strives to be inoffensive by being inconsequential. It’s not totally in-your-face, though it lays the mini-mart stereotypes down thick.

Give Sanjeev some love. Try typing: dance, run, play me a song, moustache, money, and stupid, the clips are pretty funny. I wonder whether anyone’s extracted all the possible video clips from the Web site yet.

Kittyminx thinks it’s racist viral marketing, but the humor is so corporate-colorless (try ‘punch’), I have a hard time getting my high dudgeon on:

If they did this with a black person or a Jew, a lot of people would be pissed and rightly so… The only reason why it hasn’t yet is that I’m guessing that Asians and South Asians in particular, are about the only ethnic group left that pop culture thinks its ok to make fun of. And this ad campaign probably comes from the UK… [w]here they are less concerned about “political correctness”… it also seems that the British are a lot more openly and blatantly anti-immigrant, saying things that in America are usually only said by Pat Buchanan and other wingnuts.

Update: Thanks to reader epoch, you can now see every single keyword that triggers a video clip.

Ultraliberal ‘toonista Ted Rall asks what a Parsi America would look like. Actually, that’s not really what he’s saying at all, but it’s fun to imagine a President Politicswalla.

Click here to read the whole thing.

The NY Sun blames the former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan for hindering Osama bin Laden’s capture (thanks, Prashant):

[Former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan] Nancy Powell refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America’s $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden… thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material… translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages - remained “impounded” on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004…

A single matchbook helped lead to the capture of Mir Amal Kansi, who gunned down several CIA employees at the front gates of the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters in 1993. Kansi was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 when a local fingered him for the $5 million reward…

Mr. Kirk [R-Illinois] said that he raised the issue directly with the ambassador. According to the congressman, she replied that she had “six top priorities” and finding Mr. bin Laden was only one of them. She listed other priorities: securing supply lines for American and allied forces in Afghanistan, shutting down the network of nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan, preventing a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, and forestalling a radical Islamic takeover of the government of Pakistan, a key American ally.

The conservative rag may have an ulterior motive in blaming the State Department instead of the president for making bin Laden a low priority. Either way, nailing that bastard is still my #1 voting issue — 3.5 years and counting.

In other news, Pakistani businessman Humayun Khan makes a convincing case for why he’s not buying parts for nukes:

Humayun Khan… denied any involvement with the recent shipments, saying that “someone else” ordered the oscilloscopes and the switches, had them shipped to his office, then snatched them somewhere along the way. “It’s very tragic,” Humayun Khan said. “You don’t know where these things are landing. They come through and they vanish.”

Yes, boss, ‘someone else’ charged the strippers to the company AmEx, had them sent to our office and then snatched them somewhere along the way. It’s tragic, I say, tragic.

Here. :) Enjoy some light wedding fare:

AS the sun started to set over Miami Beach on March 19, Rita Nakouzi, a consultant on fashion and lifestyle trends, and Touré, a writer and pop culture commentator, were married on the sand behind the Raleigh Hotel in the South Beach area.

"O.K., who's got the bling?" asked the Rev. Joseph Simmons, a Pentecostal minister, who was looking for the couple's wedding bands. Also called Reverend Run, he is best known as a member of the pioneering rap group Run-DMC. The crowd of 120 included his brother, the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; the CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien; and members of Miss Nakouzi's family, who had flown in from Beirut, Lebanon, where the bride was born.

..."We fit very well together," said Touré, a correspondent for CNN and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. "She's somebody who can go with me from a 50 Cent concert to a Toni Morrison reading and be equally comfortable in both places."

Wait, wait...don't tell me. I know what you're thinking-- why should you care? Aside from the fact that Reverend Run is cool, that's a fair question. Heck, why does the Mutiny care?

The answer lies within the story of how they met, during one magical night at a Lenny Kravitz video shoot at Limelight NYC:

This year's Bhangra Blowout festivities ended in tragedy, as 20 year-old Ranjit Singh was fatally stabbed outside an afterparty for the event, held at the Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington, D.C. The stabbing occurred around 3 a.m., almost an hour after the sold-out party ended according to police.

According to the story from the Washington Post,

after a fight broke out, a 5-foot-8 man of either Hispanic or Indian ethnicity, wearing a white shirt and braces on his teeth, pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed Ranjit Singh, 20, of Phillipsburg, N.J., police said. Two friends of Singh's pursued the attacker until they were stabbed by him at 12th and Pennsylvania, police said. The assailant escaped in a green car, and Singh's two friends were taken to a local hospital.

According to the Post article, and an article in the GW University newspaper the organizers capped party entrance at 1250 people, half the amount from the previous year, and had more security than required by the Old Post Office Pavilion. Partygoers also needed to pass through a metal detector because the pavilion is part of a federal complex. I am not really sure what more the organizers could have done to prevent such a tragedy.

When I was at GW, part of the reason BB was so successful was that fights and other such nonsense was checked at the door so that all could revel in the weekend. It wasn't just about the show or the party, but about people coming together as a group, as one collective, as a sea of sepia youth. Maybe I am just being nostalgic, but we didn't have to worry about being killed.

GWU said it would conduct a full review of Bhangra Blowout and decide if the event should be run differently, or if it should even continue to be held at all.

While Nepal’s king does away with elected governance, the Himalayan hamlet of Bhutan gears up to embrace it. The country just unveiled a new constitution, which will convert its monarchy into a multi-party democracy:

King Jigme Singye Wangchuk says the draft will be sent to all 530,000 citizens, asking for their views...The king told the country’s only newspaper Kuensel: “The sovereignty, stability and well-being of the country must be placed above everything else. The country is more important than the king.” King Wangchuk assumed the throne at the age 16, the fourth ruler in the Wangchuk dynasty that came to power in December 1907. The transition began four years ago when the king handed down powers of daily governance to a council of ministers and even empowered the national assembly to force a royal abdication if the motion was backed by three-quarters of its membership. [BBC News]

You can read the constitution on its official web site, presented in both Dzongkha and English. Check out Article 9, Section 2 (via Boing Boing):

The State shall strive to promote those circumstances that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness. [Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan]

Let’s hope promoting “gross national happiness” means sweet, sweet bourbon will now flow freely out of every tap in the kingdom. If that’s not the case, The New York Times’ travel section offers up a list of Bhutan’s other major selling points.

BBC News: Bhutan unveils new constitution

Could there be anything better than an orgy of sepia theatre? Yes. An orgy of lesbian strippers. Aside from that, this is tops:

Los Angeles

“The God Botherers” — Actress Reena Dutt performs in an ensemble comedy about aid workers in Tambia, a place where there’s no rule of law, the last war’s ruined everything, and the next war will ruin everything else. So it’s like a session of the U.S. House acted out on stage. Mar. 25-Apr 24, Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7:30 p.m., $15-24, Pasadena Playhouse. (via Hollywood Masala)

“Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead” — (Insert any random joke here about the title describing the dating scene in L.A.). Actor Mark Antani performs a one-man show originally written in 1994 by playwright Eric Bogosian. It’s a collection of eight pieces, with each showcasing a different character expressing rage and unhappiness in a humorous and witty fashion. Mar. 25-May 1, Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 5 p.m., $15, Third Street Theatre.

“Are You With Me? F**k the Middle East — What’s for Dessert?” — As character Vinay Khan, actor Ajay Mehta performs a solo comedy about growing up in India, moving to New York, and becoming the banquet manager of the United Nations. It’s partially based on his real life. We’re guessing that the part about the U.N. is fabricated, as Mehta’s performance demonstrates an effectiveness and efficiency rarely seen from the league of nations. Mar. 23-31, Wed.-Sat. 7:30 p.m., free, reservations required, The Complex.

San Francisco

“Mamlet” — Writer Nihar Patel’s David-Mamet-ized version of Hamlet gets a staged reading by members of the prestigious American Conservatory Theatre. It joins other winners of the 2005 "Write Like Mamet" contest. Rumor has it that Mamet himself entered, but wasn’t chosen. We’re assuming that it’s because his newest piece performs earlier in the evening, and the theatre didn’t want patrons to O.D. on pure street-grade Mamet dialogue. Apr. 2, Sat. 10:30 p.m., free, Geary Theater.

The Washington City Paper covers the M.I.A. buzz with some true musicology:

… M.I.A. [is] a battlefield acronym that’s also a play on her real name and the London neighborhood of Acton… despite being an exotic and a refugee, M.I.A. is no primitive. She found a well-worn DIY-aesthete’s path out of London’s housing estates, leading to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. As much a pop-music finishing school as anything else, Saint Martins offered an art career, but also introductions to Elastica’s Justine Frischmann, Pulp’s Steve Mackey, and electroclash diva Peaches… In her glammier shots, she looks a bit like multi-ethnic actress Rosario Dawson…

The title [‘Galang’] sounds Malay or Indonesian, not Tamil, although some experts insist that it’s actually a dancehall contraction of “go along…” “Pull Up the People” is a potential Peace Corps anthem with Baader-Meinhof attitude. “Fire Fire” name-checks the Pixies, the Beasties, and Lou Reed, but also invokes “Growin’ up brewin’ up/Guerrilla getting trained now…”

She’s been officially classified as a rapper, and though she’s no Celine Dion, that’s not quite right. M.I.A. is more of a chanter, and such vocal hooks as “Hello this is M.I.A./Can you please come get me” come as close to singing as the vocals of any monotone rocker… Arular recalls minimalist proto- and postpunk—maybe not Wire or the Stranglers, but definitely Suicide, T. Rex, and Bow Wow Wow…

There are but a handful of conspicuous samples on Arular, including the sitar bit that opens “Hombre”—ironically, given that the tune is a lustful plea to a Spanish-speaking hunk. (Sitars, by the way, aren’t prevalent in Sri Lanka, which feels almost as Indonesian as Indian, and where the dominant music is baile, derived from the Iberian dance music of the island’s former Portuguese rulers.)

Billboard reveals M.I.A.’s given name is Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam (subscription required). The magazine says she’s viewed by some as not a mere Asian, but rather the potential savior of UK rap (Dizzee Rascal has plateaued). She swaggers, saying she signed with XL Recordings because it was closest to her house, and so they’re lucky to have her. There’s this delicious little bit of braggadocio: she says she told the label, ‘Trust me, you’ve been looking for me,’ dropped off the ‘Galang’ tape, and they called her back 20 minutes later. She says her dad asked her not to use his name as the album title (maybe it increased his risk in the field?), but she refused. She’s sad he chose his cause over his family.

Despite losing Osama Bin Laden, harboring A.Q. Khan, and participating in illegal nuclear deals, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was told by the U.S. on Friday that they will reward him with a long-sought-after sale of F-16 fighter jets. In order to spice things up, the Bush administration simultaneously promised Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a chance to bid on similar U.S. fighters. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that the sales would bring stability to the region:

“What we are trying to do is solidify and extend relations with both India and Pakistan, at a time when we have good relations with both of them -- something most people didn’t think could be done -- and at a time when they have improving relationships with one another,” (she said). [The Washington Post]

Unlobotomized members of both parties aren’t buying it:

Critics in Washington assailed the decision, saying the administration would effectively supply both sides in a new arms race in one of the world’s most dangerous hot spots, even as it rewards an authoritarian government in Islamabad in conflict with Bush’s stated commitment to promote democracy around the globe...Former senator Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who sponsored the 1985 law that ultimately forced the cancellation of the original F-16 sale, called Friday’s decision “an atrocity” that goes against “everything the Bush administration has stood for.” [The Washington Post]

The administration trumpets the sale as an integral part of its revamped South Asia policy, which aims to provide both countries with better ways to annihilate each other. Economic policymakers also praised the move, saying it would offer a badly-needed boon to U.S. defense contractors, and that the resulting nuclear holocaust would effectively end corporate America’s dependence on outsourcing.

The Washington Post: Bush: U.S. to Sell F-16s to Pakistan (free registration required)

Update: “Left, Right and Center” contributor Robert Scheer decries Bush’s Pakistan folly:

The announcement Friday that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads — and thereby escalating the region’s nuclear arms race — is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration. [Los Angeles Times]

Los Angeles Times: A con job by Pakistan’s pal, George Bush (free registration required)

Spurned women and distinguished tandoori chefs agree: It’s so hard to find a good clay pot these days. When you do, you best get that piece of ceramic to the altar:

An Indian bride was married off to a pot by her relatives after her groom failed to turn up for the ceremony. Savita took her vows with a clay pot when her fiance Chaman Singh, an officer with the Indo Tibetan Border Police, reportedly got stranded on the border because of heavy snowfall, reports newspaper Deccan Herald. [Ananova]

The newlyweds honeymooned at a local Williams & Sonoma, while Singh vowed to never again date women from the nearby insane asylum.

Ananova: Woman marries clay pot

Actor Aasif Mandvi plays the role of irrational Judge Patel on tonight’s episode of “Law & Order: Trial by Jury”:

Assistant District Attorneys Kibre (Bebe Neuwirth) and Gaffney (Amy Carlson) prosecute a young nanny Katie (guest star Elizabeth Moss) who is accused of murder for shaking an infant and bashing in her head -- but they run into a stone wall when the presiding Judge Patel (guest star Aasif Mandvi) intentionally blocks every move they make. After Kibre rejects Gaffney’s desperate offer to resign to blunt the judge’s irrational ire, they discover the tough defense attorney has coached his client well and intends to point the finger of murder elsewhere. [NBC]

Some argue that placing the word “irrational” before “Patel” is redundant. I must disagree, and for no good reason.

I am most definitely not a morning person. I prefer working into the night when things are quiet and nobody can bother me. Consequently it makes it very difficult to get out of bed in the morning. About four years ago I perfected a technique that serves me well to this day. I set my clock-radio to NPR a half hour before I need to be out of bed. I set the volume so that it is just loud enough to first wake me, and then allow me to fall back into stage-one brainwave activity. A half hour later, there is a second alarm clock across the room which has a shrill beeping sound. It will not be pacified until I am fully up. Within that half hour however I am able to induce dreams based upon NPR’s stories, to actually live out, the days news. Over the past year I have battled insurgents in Iraq, sat in during Supreme Court hearings, and walked through tsunami devastated villages. I do all of this before even brushing my teeth. After experiencing so much at dawn everyday it becomes a little easier to get out of bed. The problem is that my technique isn’t patentable. I simply advise friends to try it. 25 year old inventor Gauri Nanda of MIT’s Media Lab has her own method of waking up that’s gotten her some publicity lately.

Clocky is, quite simply, for people who have trouble waking up.

When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects on the floor until it eventually finds a spot to rest. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for Clocky. This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Small wheels that are concealed by Clocky’s shag enable it to move and reposition itself, and an internal processor helps it find a new hiding spot every day.

I don’t like being told when to wake up but I’ve come to terms with the idea that I have to. In designing Clocky, I was in part inspired by kittens I’ve had that would bite my toes every morning. Clocky is less of an annoying device as it is a troublesome pet that you love anyway. It’s also a bit ugly. But its unconventional looks keep the user calm, and inspire laughter at one of the most hated times of the day.

I’ve been known to hit the snooze bar for up to two hours or even accidentally turn it off. I’ve known people who put the alarm clock in the living room, but then forget to set it before going to sleep. Others say they are trying to wean themselves off of snoozing, as if it was a bad habit like smoking or drinking. In the foggy logic of our drowsiness, we disable the very device that is meant to wake us up. Having the alarm clock hide from me was just the most obvious way I could think of to get out of bed.

Clocky is not trying to solve all of the problems of alarm clocks—for example how they disrupt other people in the room—but I think maybe someday it can. I think the answer rests in the usage of multiple Clockies. Let’s say there are two people with different sleep schedules sharing a room. Maybe one person’s Clocky can tell the other to hush up if it has sounded off one too many times. Or, maybe they can form an alliance and simultaneously target the offending over-sleeper. I have adopted the philosophy that when two devices communicate, they can solve more problems—that is, two Clockies are better than one.

Also check out the rest of Nanda’s website. It’s very cool. I must confess that I surfed away with a little crush.

See also: New York Daily News article

Playwright Anuvab Pal has a new play in staged reading this Saturday, March 26th, 7pm at the Queens Museum of Art. The play is ‘a historical comedy set in a Savile Row suit shop.’ He writes:

It’s called Out of Fashion and it’s an hour long comedy about British tailors, Indian fashion designers, Irish patent clerks and Indian freedom fighters. It attempts to be funny. Would be great to see you there.

The QMA is currently hosting art exhibits from both American desis and the subcontinent. Here’s the rest of their theater schedule:

• Saturday, 6:30-7pm, preview of Seven.11
• Sunday, 4:15-5pm, staged reading of Deepa Purohit’s Exile: ‘a story of a South Asian woman’s journey through memory which spans two continents in search of lost loves’

The museum is also hosting dance performances throughout this weekend. Full details here.

Update: Vernacular Body reviews Out of Fashion:

The play was good fun, despite the absence of props and an abundance of wild accent shifts: neither the upper-crustish (fathers) nor the Dublinish was particularly convincing, and the cockney (sons) was a complete cock-up.  Had a good mind to send them tapes of David Beckham talking, innit?  But there was much wild punnery to be had, Alfred J. Prufrock played a major role, andapt indeed was the nudge-nudge wink-wink cleverness of the Monty-Python-meets-Falstaff variety (which I happen to like) as the play was set in a Saville Row tailor shop.  I confirmed with the playwright afterwards that Wilde and Stoppard were major influences on his sensibility.

In one of DC's outlying suburbs, 52-year old Kiran V. Kadian was murdered yesterday.

Her husband, Dr. Rajesh Kadian--who has written books about India, Pakistan and Kashmir, angered Gurmit Singh Aulakh, lobbied on behalf of India and appeared on TV for his subcontinental expertise-- found her body when he arrived at their home. Kadian was described by neighbors as "a lovely woman, a very devoted mother. She was very religious, spent a lot of time going back to India in the summers."

From WaPo:

Kiran Kadian was stabbed several times in the upper body, Fairfax police spokeswoman Mary Mulrenan said last night. The couple has lived in the brick house on Thompson Ridge Court, just off Walker Road, since 1992, according to land records and neighbors, and they have two daughters and a son.

The daughters, both college graduates, do not live with their parents, but police said their brother, Jayant, does. Mulrenan said police were looking for the son to be sure he was safe. But the homicide detectives huddled outside his house last night were hoping to ask him questions about more than just his health.

A news report mentioned that there is some concern that Jayant Kadian might "harm himself", adding to the urgency regarding finding him. The same neighbor who praised Mrs. Kadian stated that she had been trying to secure help for her only son's mental health.

Police described Jayant Kadian as 6 feet 1 inch tall and 130 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. They said he may be driving a black 1994 Geo Prism with Virginia license plate ZHL-1262.

StrategyPage reports on the latest goings-on in Nepal and India's response -

March 25, 2005: India is threatening to blockade Nepal, to force the king to reinstate elected officials in the government. India has used blockades before to force Nepal to do what India wants. There was a blockade in 1989, to force Nepal to not buy weapons from China. In 1974, there was a blockade to force Nepal to stop protesting India’s annexation of nearby Sikkim. But in this case, India does not want to aid the Maoists. It is pretty clear that the Maoists want to establish a radical dictatorship in Nepal, which would be less democratic than the king, and a lot more prone to violence against the Nepalese people. India also has its own Maoist rebels, and knows how violent they can be. But the actions of the Nepalese king are very unpopular in India, and everyone knows that India has the final say, by cutting off the flow of vital supplies to Nepal.

Peace marches and "not in my name" rallies to protest India's threats have been scheduled by Western activist groups.... details to follow. In the meantime, an earlier Stratpage entry provides some of the background on the 3-way civil conflict engulfing Nepal -

March 9, 2005: Nepal is becoming a mess. The country is split by a three way civil war. There are the monarchists, which include wealthy land owners, and many poor rural people. The country is a constitutional monarchy, but the king still has emergency powers, which not everyone agrees on, but which are being used now. There are the democrats, who are largely urban and educated, who currently cannot figure out how to cooperate with each other on how to deal with the Maoists. Then there are the Maoists, who are led by educated urbanites, and used armed, brainwashed teenagers to terrorize the rural, and then urban, population into support a communist dictatorship. The Maoists want to destroy the ancient pattern of feudal land ownership.

Straight from your druggie aunties and uncles, here are some traditional recipes for Holi bhang. The Hindustan Times even tells you how to make pot laddoos and green halva!

Bhang, or cannabis, is freely associated with the splash of assorted Holi colours. During this season, bhang is prepared and served according to age-old traditions throughout the Himalayan foothills.

With a simple mortar and pestle, the buds and leaves of cannabis are squashed and ground into a green paste, to which milk, ghee and spices are added. This base can be mixed with the nutritious, refreshing drink, thandai… This can also be mixed with ghee and sugar to make a tasty green halvah, and into peppery, chewy little balls called [golis].

I’m cracking up just thinking of aunties hanging out around shady parks after midnight trying to score Shiva’s herb for their Holi parties. Mistress of Spices indeed. Like Bhang for Chocolate. Maybe desis’ popularity in stoner flicks is justified — I’ll never look at pista barfi the same way again.

The adult Holi is the desi Halloween, a day for masks, flirting and outrageous fun. Meanwhile, bhangra aficionados are busy denying that its name derives from bhang:

Cecil Beaton described the ‘concoction of milk of almonds, rosewater, carminum nuts and eight ingredients of which hashish, or Bhang, was the principal’. (‘One of the effects of Bhang,’ he further reported, ‘is that it makes everything appear humorous. Another is that strange things happen to one’s sense of time.’)

Brimful’s amphora runneth over as she tells a hilarious tale about an auntie, an airport and a dime bag:

… her brother-in-law, V mama, puts in his request, asks her to get him some of that stuff that goes into bhang. She puts it on the list, describes it exactly that way when she seeks it out in India.

So there she is, waiting in the customs line at Logan, carting along two rather young kids, bags filled to the point of bursting, and the customs inspector decides that her bags should be inspected…. The inspector does his thing, until he comes to a bag of dried leaves. “What’s this?” he asks.

Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan (better known by his first initial and/or his chosen middle name "Night") has fled the magic kingdom.

Walt Disney has lost one of its brightest directors, M Night Shyamalan, to Warner Bros. Shyamalan was also one of its biggest moneymakers. His four films in a row for Disney have grossed?over $2 3 billion worldwidein theatrical receipts and video sales.

Creative differences over Shyamalan's new project, Lady In The Water, led to the parting, Hollywood's trade papers reported.

The uber-talented Philadelphian is a unique force in Hollywood; even his...um...critic-deemed flops (ahem, "The Village") earn almost a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide. Speaking of that paranthetically mentioned flick, no major stars lent pixie dust to that production. As the linked article notes, it was our boy Manoj who drew moviegoers in, and that's something that deserves props.

Shyamalan has steadily built a reputation for making films on medium size budgets of $50-$75 million by offering the stars part of the film's gross. There was speculation last year that Fox had offered him to direct the Booker Prize winning novel Life Of Pi the studio had acquired about three years ago.

Perhaps he'll cast someone vaguely Asian-looking to play pool-named protagonist Piscene Molitor Patel. One fervently hopes. After all, that comment thread is FUN.

I'll close by enclosing the following priceless tidbit; apparently Rediff knows something about Pennsylvania that we don't.

Shyamalan's first film, a coming of age cross-cultural story, was shot in India. His subsequent films have been made in his home state of Philadelphia. The new movie would also be shot there. But if he takes up Life Of Pi, which has some of its crucial sequences set in India, he might have to visit the country of his birth and shoot there after nearly 14 years.

Hey, that's fine with me. Philly's the only part of PA I go to... ;)

So what’s your logical next move when the leader of the free world has just humiliated you by revoking your visa and ending any chance of career advancement? Answer: Invite his brother over for…ummm dinner?? From ExpressIndia.com:

Chief Minister Narendra Modi has invited Florida Governor Jeb Bush to visit Gujarat.

Sounding more like a salesman selling Gujarat to the world, more that a wronged Chief Minister who was denied entry to the US, Narendra Modi made the invitation while addressing the members of the Asian American Hotel Owners’ Association in Fort Laurendale, Florida, from his official residence in Gandhinagar on Thursday evening.

He made it a point to avoid unneccessary controversy and mainly spoke about role expatriates in helping Gujarat flourish. Modi said his invitation to Jeb Bush, the brother of the US president, was to give him ‘‘a taste of real hospitality’’.

A tip from SM reader Santosh Daniel leads us to believe that Modi may have better luck enticing some distant cousin of Bush.

He’s young, dynamic and pleasant looking. He’s an entrepreneur who heads America’s second largest medical billing company. Qualities enough to make you sit up and take notice of Jonathan Bush. But what makes this Boston-based businessman even more of a special visitor to Hyderabad is that he’s President George Bush’s younger cousin. While here to look into setting up outsourcing offices, he exclaims, “I love the entrepreneurial spirit here. People are creative, passionate and look you in the eye when they speak. There are no wheels turning in their head.” It’s his first visit to India and he grins, “I took several pictures of me with cows on the road!”

His cousin is not aware that he is in India, as the last time he met him was at the inaugural ball. “Bush had just enough time to enquire about my children. We were much closer as kids. Now he’s this distant older brother who’s busy being President and taking care of his family,” says Jonathan. But he undoubtedly loves his President cousin — “We are a loving and supportive family… [source: Times of India]

Note: a helpful commenter pointed out that this story is actually several years old. I misread the date. Because it is still an interesting story I am posting it back up.

A couple weeks ago Slate magazine asked the question “Who is Robert Klingler?” This led to the larger question, “How do you know the person on the other side of your email conversation isn’t a dog?” [thanks for the tip Sanjay]

In the famous New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, a dog seated in front of a PC turns to his canine colleague and boasts, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Although dogs have not logged onto the Internet in the numbers Web visionaries predicted in the early ’90s, Steiner’s lesson still stands: You can never be too sure that your fascinating e-mail correspondent isn’t a barking imposter. Last week, Slate got taken by an Internet dog when it published the diary of “Robert Klingler,” an individual who claimed in e-mails and on the telephone to be the CEO of BMW’s North American operations.

Slate published two installments of Klingler’s projected weeklong diary before discovering his ruse on Tuesday, March 5. When told by BMW that no Robert Klingler worked there, Slate disavowed both diary entries, and I published this mea culpa, “Slate Gets Duped.” I explained that Klingler had “spoofed” his e-mail address to make it appear that it had originated from the car manufacturer.

So who was Robert Klingler? I unfortunately can’t do this article justice and strongly urge you to read it for yourself but, I will attempt to summarize enough of it to give you a flavor.

With spring here, Indian organizations around the U.S. will be getting ready to celebrate Holi so as to “keep it real” and stay attached to the customs of the homeland. Back in the homeland, people are buying up supplies for Holi as well. As reported at NewKerala.com:

An array of Chinese coloured powder and squirt guns have flooded the Indian market ahead of the Holi festival Saturday. “Rain Storm”, “Super Soaker” and “Water 3000” are some of the Made in China water guns that are attracting Holi revellers, who retailers say are slowly but steadily giving up the traditional squirt guns called ‘pitchkaris’.

So why are wholesalers going for Chinese goods? “They are definitely better than the Indian products,” said Amir Ullah Khan, a wholesaler, pointing to a fashionable water gun.

The gun, called “Rain Storm”, has two barrels that can supposedly shoot jets of water up to a distance of 50 metres. The best part is it comes with a portable water tank that can be worn on the shoulders.

There are also “Made in China” guns that are small enough to be concealed in one’s palm and cost as low as Rs.30, while the larger ones could cost anywhere above Rs.500 ($11).

Don’t have plans for Holi? Why not join NetIP-LA for some paintball? Come out for a day of fun and excitement at SC Village, one of the most popular paintball parks in Southern California. The park has up to 20 different themed courses, ranging from jungles with rivers to cityscapes to military camps.

That’s right. That’s how we do. Some real guns. West Siiidddeee for life. I don’t think I have ever actually participated in a Holi activity. After reading Wikipedia’s description I feel like I am missing out:

The first day, a bonfire is lit at night to signify the burning of Holika. The second day, known as Rangapanchami, people go around throwing colours at each other. A special drink called bhang is also consumed, which actually contains small amounts of marijuana to make the festival more enjoyable.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Jesus, a sex guru, a ballet dancer and Superman’s girlfriend walk into a casting call…

Indian-Canadian director Vic Sarin is putting together an indie film called Partition (thanks, sd). The Sepia Films (wha?) script seems more than ‘inspired’ by the Bollywood megahit Gadar. Both films show a Sikh villager rescuing a Muslim girl during Partition and guiding her safely into Pakistan:

Partition is a sweeping, historical drama set against the partition of India and based on the real life experiences of director Vic Sarin’s family. Partition tells the story of a former British army Sikh officer, Gian Singh, who rescues a young Muslim girl, falls in love with her and must travel to Pakistan to save her… Production on the film will begin next April in South Africa, India and United Kingdom…

The film features Jimi Mistry (East Is East, The Guru), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ), Neve Campbell (The Company) and Kristin Kreuk (Smallville). Mistry will take the lead, and Campbell will play his British friend, fitting neatly into the Candice Bergen role in Gandhi. She even has a similar jawline.

Kreuk will play the 17-year-old Muslim love interest, Naseem. Her parents are Chinese and Dutch, but I suppose it’s walking distance from Smallville to the Punjabi pind.

“I’m so excited about Partition,” KK told TV Guide…

That’s right, she told TV Guide… that she’s excited… about… Partition. Isn’t that kind of like telling Soap Opera Digest that you’re excited about the Holocaust? I doubt those in my family who survived it were in their happy-happy-fun-fun place at the time. Here’s an idea: how about Kal Penn the henchman shooting death rays from his eyes at Superman’s girlfriend. Now that’s exciting.

Oooh La La La...It's the way that they rock when they're doing their thang, oooh La La La...it's the natural La that the Refugees bring...oooh La La La La La La Lalala La Lah...

In Kuala Lumpur, it was a sweet thing:

Former Fugess Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean reunited onstage on Friday at a concert in Malaysia to raise money for tsunami-devastated communities.

On the set list: hits like "Killing Me Softly," "Ready or Not" and "Fu-Gee-La." When I read the line-up of acts, I was reminded of last year's Coachella; a reunited Pixies dominated the buzz there, I can see the Fugees doing the same at this show.

The pair joined performers including actor Jackie Chan, the Backstreet Boys, Black Eyes Peas and Boyz II Men before 15,000 fans at the seven-hour Forces of Nature event.

"Forces of Nature" raised $2.6 million dollars for tsunami-affected nations like Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. Take a lesson, jack-asses at Hot 97.

...During an emotionally charged gig, Jean lead the crowd in a chant of "We'll never forget the tsunami victims" and instructed the stadium lights to be turned off while crowd members waved lighted cell phones.

From his lips to our ears.

Patch Adams, he of the eponymous (and lousy) Robin Williams movie, has gone to Sri Lanka to visit the survivors of the tsunami.

Dr Adams brought a troupe of 30 clowns performing juggling, unicycle riding and puppet shows to hospitals and relief camps in the country's south. The troupe sprayed wards with soap bubbles and performed a puppet show for children suffering from cancer.

As he bounded into children's wards, one doctor asked: "Is that man looking for the psychiatric ward?"

Dr Adams has also taken his clowns to Bosnia, Africa and Afghanistan. [Note: this text is exercepted and rearranged compared with the original BBC article ]

While Adams may be a ... wee bit eccentric, other studies confirm the claim that laughter is good for your health. It turns out, for example, that laughter improves your cardio-vascular capacity. Unfortunately, there is no news from the laughter club movement, even though it started in India a decade ago, and now has 3,500 clubs world wide.

The BBC has another series of excellent photographs that may be of interest to you. Unlike the last series I brought to your attention, the subject matter isn't as joyful; these pictures depict life in a Tsunami camp.

To the left, a shrine that a fisherman created for his lost loved ones. To the right, 40-year old Parameswari builds a fence around her new home. She is the only person in her family to survive the tragedy.

Click either photograph to see the original story.

I had just finished commenting on how many weird death stories we find in India when I came across this story that takes the cake... well, for today at least -

Woman kills herself so blind sons can see

But corneas of little use to her children, doctors say

NEW DELHI, India - An Indian woman committed suicide so her two blind sons could receive her eyes and see, a newspaper reported Monday.

...Doctors in the southern city of Chennai say Kumar’s condition cannot be helped with a cornea transplant and also suspect his elder brother does not have a cornea defect.

“We had told the family earlier itself that a corneal transplant was not needed for the younger son,” the Express quoted hospital official G. Seethalakshmi saying.

Between the Mother's obvious love and the utter Maji-like tragedy of the whole thing, I'm just speechless.

Eccentric mathematics rock star Srinivasa Ramanujan, who died at age 33, postulated a combinatorics problem almost 100 years ago that’s just been solved (via Slashdot). The breakthrough may yield better cryptography, meaning more secure documents and transactions.

Any integer can be broken down into sums of smaller numbers (‘partitions’). A University of Wisconsin researcher has extended Ramanujan’s theorem and shown that the number of partitions in any large integer are divisible by all prime numbers.

The truly interesting bit is Ramanujan’s Indian Idol story. He was recruited to Cambridge from an underdeveloped farm system like a pitching prodigy from Puerto Rico:

… in 1913, the English mathematician G. H. Hardy received a strange letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The ten-page letter contained about 120 statements of theorems on infinite series, improper integrals, continued fractions, and number theory… Every prominent mathematician gets letters from cranks… But something about the formulas made him take a second look… After a few hours, they concluded that the results “must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them…” [Hoffman]

The next Einstein working alone in a room, surfacing out of nowhere to overturn the accepted paradigm: it’s every institution’s nightmare. The self-taught Ramanujan had flunked out of school in Tamil Nadu and run away from home because he obsessed over math and only math. Over time, he was granted an honorary doctorate by Cambridge and elected to the Royal Society of London, Valhalla for mathematicians.

Ramanujan was an intuitive thinker who disdained formalism:

Hardy was a great exponent of rigor in analysis, while Ramanujan’s results were (as Hardy put it) “arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account…” He was amazed by Ramanujan’s uncanny formal intuition in manipulating infinite series, continued fractions, and the like: “I have never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi.” [Hoffman]

India Abroad magazine just ran an excellent cover feature (zipped PDFs) on desi rockers and rappers in America, covering Stubhy of Lucky Boys Confusion, M.I.A., Karmacy, Chee Malabar of the Himalayan Project, Shaheen Sheik, Jungli and Funkadesi. They also shout out to ancestral rockers dating back to Freddie Mercury: Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Ashwin Sood (Sarah MacLachlan’s drummer-husband) and Tony Kanal of No Doubt. There are others, of course, such as Dave Baksh of Sum 41.

Stubhy, lead singer of 100K-selling ska-punk band Lucky Boys Confusion, vents his parental issues in his music:

… the artist formerly known as Kaustubh Pandav was something of a vagabond, sleeping on roofs and behind couches in Chicago… he had to decide exactly what he would have to sacrifice to pursue a music career. At the time, he figured it would be his college education. The parents weren’t happy. “They said, ‘Get the hell out of the house,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ ” What followed was a long string of “odd, crappy jobs,” like doing the midnight shift in a parking lot, or whatever else inspired him. “I threw parties,” said Stubhy. “Bought a keg. It was one grand scheme to the next. ‘Let’s go steal comic books from that kid and sell it.’ That would make about $15. Stupid stuff.”

… the song ‘Fred Astaire’ [is] a terse dialogue between a demanding parent and a son who can’t live up to expectations. The title, he said, could have just as well been “Amitabh Bachchan”… he still gets e-mails from Indian kids who thank him for writing the song.

I am a nerd. Due to this immutable fact, I love checking the Wikipedia main page on a near-daily basis.

Today, under the "Did you know..."/newest articles section, the following blurb immediately owned my attention:

...Skeleton Lake in India is named after the remains of approximately 600 people who died there in a sudden hailstorm...

Skeleton Lake?

Skeleton Lake is a lake in Roopkund in Uttaranchal (itself formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, India), the location of about three to six hundred skeletons in the Himalayas. The location is uninhabited and is located at an altitude of about 5,029 metres. The skeletons were discovered in 1942 when stumbled upon by a park ranger. At that time it was believed that the people died from an epidemic, landslides or a blizzard. The carbon dating from samples collected at that time in the 1960s vaguely indicated that the people were from the 12th century to the 15th century

Here's a little sum'n from Salon. But I must ask...frappe? What the hell?

Wealthy singles in Bombay are getting their first taste of speed dating, which works by bringing together a group of the unattached, and giving them three minutes to impress one another before moving on to the next potential date:

Organisers feel Mumbai was the right venue as it is India’s most liberal and cosmopolitan city. “Mumbai accepts a lot, its very tolerant city,” says Sandeep Shetty, one of the local organisers. Another organiser, Maha Khan, 25, a London-based British Asian who runs the Asian Speed D8, believes India is ready for speed dating. “I think cities like Mumbai are ready for a safe, informal way of getting to know each other face-to-face with a view to finding partners.” [BBC News]

Experts say the western phenomenon of speed dating is bound to find success in India, as it perfectly complements its centuries-old tradition of speed marriage.

BBC News: Speed dating comes to India
Speed dating sites: Asian Speed D8, BombaySpeedD8

Number of Blog Posts on Sepia Mutiny: 1000+ as of today

Number of Comments: 5900+

Number of Fundamentalists (of one cause or another) that now hate us: 3598

Number of times my mom has started speaking in Gujarati because she thinks my phone is bugged because of SM: 6

Number of bomb threats at SM headquarters: 3

Number of times either Apul or I have met Rohini Reese after becoming bloggers: 0

Number of dates/lovin’ ANY of us have gotten because of SM: 0

Your continued visits to our site: PRICELESS (until you are hopelessly addicted and we can find a way to charge a price for this)

We at Sepia Mutiny would like to continue to thank our wonderful readers (except the prick that mailed us a picture of the Voodoo dolls of the seven of us). Earlier today we blogged our 1000th post. We STILL haven’t jumped the shark. We will all be getting s*it-faced in the basement of our North Dakota headquarters tonight. If you can find us you are more than welcome to join.

Just north of Manhattan’s Union Square (17th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.), a small shop called Beads of Paradise has a big India display in the window. It’s the same old exotic schtick: saris, elephant statuettes, beads, you know the shpiel.

But the centerpiece of the display caught my eye: they’re selling some random desi family’s photos for half a G apiece so they can grace a Union Square trust-funder’s mantelpiece. Just imagine that poor family, the Griswolds of Rajasthan, cleaning out their attic and realizing some hippie’s snuck off with their family memories.

And what if we’d done it in reverse? Tourist in Delhi: ‘Thelma, come quick! I think I found cousin Edna’s bat mitzvah photos!’

Seen in San Francisco: here.

Pencil or Outlook in the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles from April 20-24, 2005. The organizers haven’t released the schedule yet, but they’re showing the newly colorized Mughal-e-Azam as well as Morning Raga (Shabana Azmi, Lilette Dubey; playing in New York at the Imaginasian).

Here’s the photo gallery from 2003 with indiephreaks Rahul Bose and Koel Purie, and the festival home page.

A former coworker of mine from Microsoft just launched Masala Downloads, which lets you legally download and watch Bollywood films and cricket matches. The price is $2.99 for a 3-day rental, and the downloaded files come DRM’d (locked) in Windows Media format with a 3-day expiration.

The idea is convenient for people with fast Net connections who don’t live near an Indian movie rental store. And since those stores often rent out pirated copies, this concept is potentially as legit a rental as you can get. It’s similar to MovieLink and CinemaNow, which offer downloadable Hollywood flicks, and CrimsonBay, which serves up desi music downloads.

The films are high-quality rips of DVDs they’ve purchased. The site says it enforces DVD licenses; I imagine they have a ripped version on a server, buy several DVDs and block over-limit downloads until at least one outstanding rental expires. I can’t imagine they’ve negotiated with film companies for authorization directly, but maybe they’ve spoken with distributors.

The site is pretty young — it’s got limited selection and only takes credit cards via PayPal — but the concept seems sound, and the trial movie, a 15 MB snippet of Veer-Zaara, downloaded quickly. Check it out.

The bane of a blogger’s existence is that once you become one, once you descend into such a depraved state, EVERYTHING around you becomes a potential post. If you see a puppy you think, “how cute, but where is the blog angle?” Do something noteworthy puppy.

Last week I returned to my barber shop to get a much needed haircut (which by the way looks like ass today because my building seems to have no hot water for a shower). You guys seemed to like the story of my previous trip, so I thought why not post this one also. I sat down in the chair and proceeded to drift off. The buzz of clippers against my head makes me sleepy. I happened to have a very talkative barber though. After ten minutes he starts,

Barber: So man, what ethnicity are you

Me: I’m Indian actu…

Barber: Yeah that’s what I thought. I knew you were Indian. Were you born here or did you come over?

Me: I was born here. In Chicag…

Barber: Yeah I knew you were born here. You know how I knew? The Indians from India won’t let me anywhere near their head with a pair of clippers. They like big hair.

Me: Hmmm. You’re right actually.

Barber: Yeah. I don’t know what it is. At the most they will let me use clippers to clean up their neckline. That’s why I knew you were born here.

Me: Yeah, as a matter of fact when I went to India I stood out a lot because I have short hair.

I swear, every time I am at the barber shop I grow wiser.

Last Friday’s episode of “Nightline” featured an in-depth profile of attorney Azhar Usman, an Indian-American Muslim who performs stand-up comedy. The segment focuses on the role of religion in his act, and the reaction he’s received from his family, the Muslim community, and audiences on the club circuit.

“Nightline”: Azhar Usman Torrent (Quicktime, 19 MB, 18 mins.)
Requires a BitTorrent downloader — PC, Mac

Usman’s official web site hosts some choice cuts from his act: FBI Follows Me, Patriotic American Muslim, Spread by the Sword, Middle Eastern Characteristics and Criminal Defendants

Was walking through downtown SF earlier this evening and passed by this sign for the ubiquitous Club One fitness chain. Entry #1 under group exercises was mos def a hoot.

Pretty cool to see Masala Bhangra go from an "ain't that special" sideshow into the leading entry on the advert posters for a major fitness chain. San Franciscans can now enjoy sweating to Daler every Tuesday Evening -- any ClubOne mutineers in downtown SF willing to give us a first hand report?

I have grown tired of blogging about right wing Hindu fanatics and responding to ignorant comments so I am going to come back to some Jucier issues. Like Daisy Dukes for example. Sonia Kaur tips us off to the fact that the director of the upcoming Dukes of Hazard movie starring Jessica Simpson, will be one Jay Chandrasekhar who is also credited with the script.

In other movie news, tipster Deepa Menon sends us a San Francisco Chronicle article about Ash filming in San Francisco. I am breaking my self-imposed ban on writing anything about Ash because my only alternative is to write about Modi.

Crews transformed a historic section of downtown Oakland into a tableau of bright lights and cameras this weekend as Indian super star Aishwarya Rai, the queen of Bollywood, filmed her latest American movie, “The Mistress of Spices,” about an Oakland shop owner trained in the art of healing with spices.

On Sunday, Old Oakland became a veritable outdoor set — complete with adoring fans clamoring for autographs — as the Legogo bargain store at 8th and Washington streets was dressed up as the lead character’s spice shop and an adjacent postal store did its duty as a taqueria. A parked taco truck played itself.

Some passers-by were enamored of the 31-year-old Rai, who was crowned Miss World in 1994 and whom actress Julia Roberts — with whom Rai is compared in India — proclaimed “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

All you Gurinder Chadha fans can rest assured that a very handsome white gentleman will be playing opposite Rai. Oh come on. Actor Dylan McDermott is such a hottie. But the real question is, “will they kiss on screen?” I so care. NOT. Now I will reinstate my ban on blogging about Rai. The only thing that will get me to break my pledge is if a story comes out that says her passport has an “E” on it.

For those of us often feeling a little jealous b/c our cities, specifically every city except New York and LA, don't get cool desi talent to come and perform can find salvation now that some of my favorite dj's spinning desi influenced drum-and-bass, breaks, and electronica, are bringing their New York night to DC's Bossa Lounge (Adams Morgan) this Friday. Kollektiv DC, headlined by Karsh Kale (Six Degrees), Zakhm (Mutiny), dk/bollygirl (avaaz), dimmsummer (ethnotechno.com), and DC's own Vishal Kanwar on the paint and canvas, is one night not to be missed. This also happens to be taking place on one of the best Desi weekends in DC, Bhangra Blowout weekend, so you have no excuse not to be there, I will be. The party starts at 10.

Newsweek reports on an unlikely heroine emerging in Pakistan -

Soon after Mukhtar Mai was savagely gang-raped on the orders of a village council three years ago, she considered her options. She had never been accused of any crime. (The rape was carried out as supposed retribution for an alleged and implausible affair between Mai's teenage brother and a 30-year-old woman.) But according to rural Pakistan's strict Islamic code, she was forever "dishonored." The local Mastoi clan, which dominates the village council, expected her to keep her mouth shut or simply disappear. Her own Gujar clan refused to support her. "My choice was either to commit suicide or to fight back," Mai recalled last week. "I decided to fight back."

...Mai also has become a model for Pakistani women pressing for more rights. She's been a guest speaker at women's forums across the country, and has even taken her message to Spain and India. By broadcasting her case, she has embarrassed authorities. The Pakistani government, aiming to show its support, has paved the dirt road leading into Mai's village and is now connecting local homes to the electricity grid. "The U.S. civil-rights campaign had Rosa Parks, who helped to spark an entire movement," says Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani activist and opposition member of Parliament. "We have Mukhtar Mai."

Somehow, a "you go girl!" just isn't enough in cases like these. Still, as a technologist myself, I can't help but notice the degree to which broadcast media, the Internet, and cheap/easy air travel transformed this case into an icon when undoubtedly so many before her were simply lost in a sea of statistics.

Michael Dell personally opened a campus for his eponymous computer company in Mohali, a suburb of Chandigarh, today. The campus will house both sales and support:

The company employs more than 7,000 people in India, its largest work force outside the United States…. “Certainly the scale of India is pretty awe-inspiring,” [said Michael Dell]. Dell has one call center in the southern city of Hyderabad and another in India’s technology capital, Bangalore… [News.com]

Dell Inc., which had revenues of over $45 billion last year, would be the first major company to set up its centre in the Quark City complex being built here… by [a] software giant - Quark. Many other leading IT and software companies from India and abroad are expected to locate at the Quark City complex that is being planned with office spaces, residential areas, complete underground parking, 100 percent power backup and a lively entertainment area with shopping malls and multiplexes. [ToI]

We welcome Dell to the land of sardars in shades on scooters with sidesaddle Sikhnis, wax-tipped moustaches and mooli parantha. And we offer this unsolicited advice: the 12-step program for keeping your Punjabi workers happy is, the dhaba should be no more than 12 steps away.

The Washington Post reports that the U.S. may have misled its Allies into thinking that North Korea was actively helping build a new nuclear weapons state (Libya) instead of simply supplying an existing one (Pakistan):

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride — which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium — to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Pakistan’s role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington’s partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.

Of course, this may shed light on exactly what some of Condoleezza Rice’s OTHER business was on her trip to India and East Asia.

In an effort to repair the damage, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is traveling through East Asia this weekend trying to get the six-nation talks back on track. The impasse was expected to dominate talks today in Seoul and then Beijing, which wields the greatest influence with North Korea.

And let’s end with the obligatory conclusion,

“The administration is giving Pakistan a free ride when they don’t deserve it and hurting U.S. interests at the same time,” said Charles L. Pritchard, who was the Bush administration’s special envoy for the North Korea talks until August 2003.

24-year-old Ram Kolli just won the U.S. Memory Championship, quickly memorizing decks of cards, names and faces, poems, and long numbers.

… when Cooke sees a three of clubs, a nine of hearts, and a nine of spades, he immediately conjures up an image of Brazilian lingerie model Adriana Lima in a Biggles biplane shooting at his old public-school headmaster in a suit of armor… To keep all this information in order, memorizers have to link their images together in a chain. Some… use what’s called the “journey method.” They place their images at predetermined points along a route that they know well… When it comes time to recall, he simply takes a mental stroll through his old college town and is able see each of the images in the place where he put it.

Evolutionary selection has favored sharp navigational memory, ranging from ‘dude, where’s my food?’ to ‘dude, where’s my wife?’:

… this method of using visual imagery as a mnemonic device was first employed by a Greek poet named Simonides in 477 BC. Simonides was the sole survivor of a roof collapse that killed all the guests at a large banquet he was attending. He was able to reconstruct the guest list by visualizing who was sitting at each seat around the table. What Simonides had discovered was that people have an astoundingly good recollection of location… this same technique was later used by Roman generals to learn the names of thousands of soldiers in their command and by medieval scholastics to memorize long religious tomes.

Slate has a fascinating followup on memory formation as portrayed in one of my favorite films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:

… some scientists now believe that memories effectively get rewritten every time they’re activated, thanks to a process called reconsolidation… instead of simply recalling a memory that had been forged days or months ago, the brain is forging it all over again, in a new associative context. In a sense, when we remember something, we create a new memory, one that is shaped by the changes that have happened to our brain since the memory last occurred to us. Theoretically, if you could block protein synthesis in a human brain while triggering a memory, you could make a targeted erasure.

Shashwati brings our attention to the news that the Indian passport will now recognize a third sex:

The new “Passport Information Booklet” relating to instructions for filling up application forms, states, “In case of Male / Female option, please write M or F in the box space provided. For eunuch, please write ‘E’ in this box.” ...

“Sexuality today is no longer restricted to male and female,” said Vivek Diwan, of Lawyers Collective. “Earlier, when hijras applied for a passport, their applications would be rejected on grounds that they were neither male nor female. This is a step in the right direction.” [cite]

But can they get insurance in Tamil Nadu? More seriously, what happens when they get to a country that doesn't recognize a third sex - how will they be classified there? Will they be classified into Male or Female and let in, or turned away for the very same bureaucratic reasons that stopped them from getting passports in India earlier?

India isn't the same place it used to be. Literally.

A seismologist in India says that the country has moved closer to Indonesia due to the massive earthquake which triggered the tsunami in December.

Dr Vineet Gahlaut said that India had shifted a few centimetres eastwards.

The expedition reveals the geographical distance between India and Indonesia - the epicentre of the deadly earthquake - has been reduced by between five metres and 15mm.

The amount of movement depended on the closeness of different areas to the epicentre of the quake, Dr Gahlaut explained. [BBC]

You see? The tsunami has brought the people of India and Indonesia closer together.

Amul Butter parodies the world of entertainment (via Boing Boing and Avi Solomon). Click each ad for a related post.

Some of the political parodies are in questionable taste, but always feature delightfully dorky desi punnery:

Check out the full archive, which dates back to 1976.

The Asian American Hotel Owners Association is canceling its invitation to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi:

[AAHOA chairman Mike Patel] said Gujaratis settled in USA have decided to stand by the decision of the US administration on the visa issue. He said, “We support the decision of the American government on this issue.” Patel pleaded with Modi to expedite the process of justice for the riot victims in the state…

Modi’s search for the real killers will proceed about as quickly as Robert Blake’s and O.J. Simpson’s. But the Association of Indians of North America wouldn’t know a losing cause if it bit them in the ass. It’s hosting Modi via satellite feed at Madison Square Garden on Sunday:

[The Association of Indian-Americans of North America (AIANA)], the organiser of the public meeting in the Madison Square Garden in New York, said they plan to put up a huge screen in the hall to telecast Modi’s speech live from Gandhinagar… An [AIANA] spokesperson claimed that the organisation represented the point of view of the majority of Indian-Americans in the United States.

AIANA is feting the man behind the abbatoir of Ahmedabad. They sure as hell don’t speak for me. ‘Aina’ means mirror in Hindi — they need to take a good, hard look at what they really stand for.

In related news, desi Christians have set a new record for longest acronym: the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America applauded the visa denial.

John Prabhudoss, the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee of FIACONA, said, “I applaud the decision of the State Department and I thank the US Congress for standing with us in the effort. Those who invited Modi to honour him in the US have done so in total neglect for the pain and suffering he has caused to hundreds of thousands of people in Gujarat and elsewhere…”

Update: Here’s a good way to show someone you disagree: torch an unrelated party’s godown.

Nearly 150 activists barged into the warehouse of U.S.-based PepsiCo in the western city of Surat, smashed bottles and set fire to the place…

Update 2: AAHOA is sending mixed signals about whether it still wants Modi to speak.

Previous posts: 1, 2

Reading the comments following my post yesterday on Modi, as well as following the comments on other websites, I have decided to do a follow up post on the situation so that I may forward a theory. Several of you think of it as a “snub against India” the way the U.S. seemingly bipassed normal channels in order to issue this censure of Modi. The word “hypocrisy” has also been thrown around quite liberally. Some of you ask, why deny Modi but not the President of China or the heads of states of other countries that have been known to commit religious or human rights violations? Let us look at the political ramifications of what happened yesterday by assuming for a moment that the U.S. and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (or his representative) HAD discussed the issue PRIOR to the Modi decision and that this WASN’T a surprise at all but a carefully planned political bushwhack.

Let’s first look at this article in Rediff:

Though sources close to the Gujarat government in Gandhinagar and the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in New Delhi indicated to rediff.com correspondents that the decision to deny Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi a visa to visit the United States was taken at the embassy level in New Delhi, without consultation with the State Department in Washington, DC, senior Bush administration officials have told rediff.com that this is not correct.

The officials said the decision to deny Modi a visa was taken at the highest levels and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was apprised every step of the way during her travels in Asia.

“She is the Secretary of State,” the officials said, “and she knows all about what is going on that is important at the State Department.”

The officials acknowledged there were security concerns over the visit because of the large protests that were being organised and also because some of the cities where Modi was slated to speak had not been aware what a controversial figure he was and may not have been taking the necessary security precautions in terms of assigning police personnel and taking other preventive measures.

Okay, so she never said that. But as her self-appointed advocate, I'm going to brazenly make that statement on her behalf. Oh, whatever. Just read it.

She's very happy and flattered by the attention she's getting in the US for Bride, especially after the bashing the film and Ash got back home. "But we all know that was premeditated. Now, after seeing the response in the US, I feel like I'm back to where I was when I was starting out as Miss World ten years ago -- the same attention and the unbiased critical overview. It feels wonderful and comforting.

"...The US has been wonderful. When I landed there for the promotion of Bride, everything happened so quickly! I was on David Letterman's show, and then in Chicago recording for Oprah Winfrey.

"They wrote about my clothes and appearance, but not about my giggling which a part of the Indian press seems to be obsessed with. Honestly, this is how I've been all along!In fact, (photographer) Gautam Rajdhyaksha wrote about my giggling habit in his book several years ago. So it isn't an overnight affectation which I've acquired as part of my image. Please! Grant me more substance than that!"

Substance is what Ash is looking for in her roles as actress and brand ambassador. Does it feel good to be carrying Bollywood to the West? "It sure does! But wasn't I doing that all along, even when I was a model and Miss World?"

Of course you were, Aishu. Do your thang, girrrl, do your thang.

Tipster Amy H. alerts us to news of a settlement between 15 year old Amandeep Singh and the Greenburgh Central School District in Westchester County, New York that will now allow him to keep wearing his kirpan. As reported on the website of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty which helped broker the agreement:

For peacefully observing the commands of his Sikh faith, fifteen-year-old Amandeep Singh was suspended for eight school days last month from his school in the Greenburgh Central School District in Westchester County, New York. Despite the ninth-grade honor student’s exemplary academic and disciplinary records, Principal Michael Chambless initially determined that Amandeep’s kirpan, an element of Sikh religious expression, was a “weapon” and suspended him. Today, after the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty intervened in his case, Amandeep received a letter from School Superintendent Josephine Moffett expunging his record of the suspension and allowing him to wear his kirpan at school.

The Becket Fund—an international, interfaith, public- interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions—worked with the international civil rights organization United Sikhs to convince the school to obey the requirements of the First Amendment and allow the kirpan.

…
Amandeep agreed to wear a smaller kirpan of two inches in length that would be securely fastened under his clothes in a cloth pouch. He also agreed to allow school officials to make reasonable inspections to confirm his adherence to the conditions. The school agreed to expunge Amandeep’s record of the suspension and to ensure that no disciplinary action remains on his record. Today, Superintendent Josephine Moffett gave her final approval to the agreement.

“It’s a shame that a student, rather than the school, had to deliver a lesson on respecting the values of the Free Exercise Clause,” said Gaubatz. “But we applaud the school for eventually recognizing that sensible school policies that protect student safety need not—and must not, consistent with the First Amendment—compromise the religious beliefs of their students.”

A desi girl from South Africa was rejected by a med school, but her desi friend with lower grades was accepted. Keeping up with the Junejas, the family filed a lawsuit. In court, the med school admitted it had mistaken the friend to be black:

A doctor of Indian origin in South Africa has filed an appeal in Cape Town High Court after his daughter was refused admission to a medical school… He pointed out that [the University of Cape Town med school] had accepted Sunira’s friend, also of Indian origin, although her result was not as good. The friend was accepted because the university believed she was African… [Telegraph]

Due to South Africa’s discriminatory history, the UCT med school has explicit racial quotas for admissions. It even mandates that 2/3rds of its students be female, which must be a major bonus for male applicants:

… UCT’s “target equity mixes” for first-time-entering medicine undergraduates were set at 42 percent black, 28 percent white, 16 percent coloured and 14 percent Indian. Gender targets required 65 percent of these students to be female and 35 percent male. [Pretoria News]

The parents objected to assuming a disadvantaged background even of wealthy blacks:

They pointed to documents that showed that all African and coloured students who applied to study medicine at UCT were considered to be “educationally disadvantaged” even if they attended private schools. [Cape Argus]

Although you may have already seen it in the comments on the sidebar, this is an important enough issue that I’m elevating it to a full post. A spokesman at the US Embassy in New Delhi announced that Chief Minister Modi has had his Visa DENIED [see previous posts 1,2]. This is a huge victory for grass roots activism (props to CAG) and I hope it will serve as a great example of Hindu/Muslim unity within the U.S. From Rediff:

The US has denied visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to visit the country, apparently because of Gujarat riots.

Modi has been denied diplomatic visa and his tourist/business visa already granted has also been revoked as per the US Immigration and Nationality Act, a spokesman of the US Embassy in New Delhi said.

The CM was to pay a five-day visit to the US from March 20.

Modi is expected to address a press conference at 1400 IST to give his reactions.

“We can confirm that Chief Minister of Gujarat state Narendra Modi applied for, but was denied, the diplomatic visa under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was not coming for the purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa,” the spokesman said.

“His tourist/business visa was revoked under Section 212 (a) (2) (g) of the Act, which makes any government official who was responsible for, or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom, ineligible for visa,” he added.

Assuming that the U.S. Embassy in India was working under orders from the Bush Administration, this means that Bush and the State Department are officially recognizing Modi as someone who committed a “violation of religious freedom,” thus acknowledging the validity of the State Department’s own assessment. If Karen Hughes is as on the ball as we expect her to be, then she better “use” this.

The Christian Science Monitor highlights the healthy goings on in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park. Apparently you can jog while sporting a Sari instead of FloJo-like spandex:

Many wear saris. Some don salwar kameezes, knee-length Indian tunics with loose pants. Others sport track pants and tees. One or two can’t leave their burqas behind for religious reasons. These women have come to a 300-acre wooded haven in the heart of congested Bangalore to walk and jog - minus any contour-hugging lycra or spandex.

The concern for modesty rubs off on men as well. They’re attired mostly in baggy shorts and tees, though some wear slacks. One or two are wrapped in an Indian white dhoti, the costume favored by Gandhi.

Jogging and walking are catching on in India, but few places can match the zeal and camaraderie found in Cubbon Park. In other parts of the world, fitness is a grueling, lonely experience, with i-Pods or perhaps a personal trainer for company. But here, there’s little that’s personal about personal fitness. Working out is an outing - with sons, uncles, brothers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, daughters, cousins, and family relations only Indians could invent.

NPR’s excellent news magazine “Day to Day,” leads today’s broadcast with a comprehensive audio profile of M.I.A.:

...music critic Christian Bordal relates the inspirational story of M.I.A -- a young hip-hop artist who grew up in Sri Lanka and South London. Her music bridges the gap between her war-torn past and her urban present...M.I.A says she had an idyllic childhood until the civil war intervened -- her father joined the Tamil fighters, and she and the rest of her family relocated to Britain, settling in a housing project in the south end of London. She blossomed in art school as a teen, and developed her own unique style of music -- a "do-it-yourself" aesthetic inspired by the British club scene, with stripped-down bass and drum rhythms driving catchy melodies. [NPR]

Meanwhile, BoingBoing reports that her father’s ties to the ’Tigers may have caused her to miss a scheduled appearance in Seattle:

...reader Pablos says: "M.I.A. was scheduled to perform at Chop Suey in Seattle tonight. Apparently she is having some kind of Visa trouble and her show has been cancelled." Some speculate the incident may relate to her father’s affiliation with a Sri Lankan rebel group designated as a terrorist organization by the US. No news on her site or newsfeeds yet, but she’s also scheduled to play at SXSW this week. [BoingBoing]

Previous posts: M.I.A. signs with Interscope, M.I.A.: step up to blow up, Steel balls and pots, M.I.A. looked directly into my eyes!, and Military chic

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf travels to India in April to attend a cricket match between the rival neighbors, and will hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Pundits are hailing it as the latest example of the revival of “cricket diplomacy”:

Gen. Musharraf’s decision to attend echoes the “cricket diplomacy” of former Pakistani leader Gen Zia-ul Haq, who watched a match in Jaipur in 1987 during a time of strained bilateral relations. The two countries have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and went to the brink of a fourth in 2002. Last year, Pervez Musharraf paid a brief visit to the northern Pakistani city of Rawalpindi to watch part of a cricket match between his country and the visiting Indian team. Sporting ties are an important bellwether of bilateral relations and suffered in recent years before a rapprochement instigated by former Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee in April 2003. [BBC News]

Keeping with tradition, the two leaders have struck a friendly wager over the upcoming match. Winner takes Kashmir. Loser gets stuck with Bihar. Believe it.

Salman Rushdie will be speaking at the Dallas Museum of Art. The venue is, well, an interesting one I suppose but, the real hook to the story is this small catch - the airlines won't fly him -

Salman Rushdie has apparently been denied a flight to Dallas, where he is scheduled to speak tomorrow night to 800 people at the DMA for Arts & Letters Live. Mr. Rushdie is apparently too dangerous to board an airplane. Well, he's not dangerous, he's a pussycat, but you get my meaning.

But, luckily, the spirit of volunteerism is alive and well -

Salman Rushdie will make it to Dallas tonight for his Arts & Letters Live appearance, courtesy of the indefatigable editor of Texas Monthly who already had a plane flying in from New York to Austin bringing some celebrities for the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards. Turns out he had an extra seat.

So instead of being sandwiched in the center seat between a crying baby and smokaholic, Rushdie will share a private plane with Lauren Bacall, Marcia Gay Harden, and Dennis Quaid. Note to Mr. Quaid - think carefully before speaking of Padma.

(hat tip - Virginia Postrel's Blog)

The Beeb has an evocative series of pictures that illustrate scenes from the 75th anniversary of Gandhi's Salt March. Thankfully, I didn't spot any trucker hats or other played-out gear.

Click the image on the right and peruse all seven as you ponder how something as humble as NaCl helped topple an empire.

The Times of India, whose Web edition is rife with inaccuracies, cut ‘n paste stories and jingoism, has pressured a media critic into shutting down his blog by threatening to sue for libel (thanks, H.):

… when one of the few noted [Indian] media critics, Pradyuman Maheshwari, criticized the Times of India on his Mediaah Weblog recently, the Times looked to squash him with a seven-page legal threat for libel. The threat worked, and Maheshwari decided to close his site, as he has a day job running the daily Maharashtra Herald in Pune…

“… if this goes where I think it’s going, it should go down in history as ‘The Great Indian Blog Mutiny,’” Gupta told me via e-mail. “The Times of India has simply shown how far they’ve come from being a respectable newspaper to being a common school bully…”

One of the ToI’s most criticized practices is selling front page space to PR firms for their clients’ publicity shots. The newspaper allegedly auctions off this space without disclosing that it’s pay-for-placement:

Maheshwari says much of what upset the Times was his criticism of its MediaNet initiative where businesses can actually buy photos and profile stories in the Times’ editorial section — what it calls “edvertorials.”

Here’s an example in the Bombay Times, a tabloidish paper owned by the ToI:

A McDonald’s spokesperson on the front page picture of Malaika Arora posing to announce McDonald’s home delivery service in Bombay Times dated April 12, 2004: “Yes, the photograph was paid for.”

Here’s a mirror of the offending posts and the ToI’s legal threat.

To follow up on my previous two posts [1,2] regarding the Justice Department battling the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, the New York Daily News provides us with the latest [thanks for the tip Ankur K.]:

The Transit Authority may be cracking down on workers wearing turbans, but the agency is ignoring secular headgear - everything from Russian-style winter hats to Mets caps to do-rags, a federal survey has found.

Conducting surveillance at subway stations, bus stops and terminals, the Justice Department, which has accused the TA of discrimination, spotted 208 TA employees blatantly violating dress-code regulations, the Daily News has learned.

The offenders wore hats that were not issued by the TA and lacked the agency logo.

The TA, meanwhile, has penalized a Sikh worker who wears turbans and Muslim employees clad in head scarves called khimars.

“These observations confirm that the TA has gone [and continues to go] out of its way to selectively enforce its uniform policies against a handful of Muslim and Sikh employees, while ignoring rampant and easily observable violations by a large contingent of its employees,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote to the TA late last week.

To give credit where credit is due, I want to point out that this is more than likely the same Civil Rights sub-division of the Justice Department that I last week criticized for its position with regards to the Salvation Army.

AFP photographer Indranil Mukherjee brings us this gem from a fashion preview in Bombay:

How does one manage to consume food with that thing in the way? Does it come with an assistant who will hold it up while you stuff your eathole? It probably doesn't matter — buying such a pricey item will leave its slow-witted buyer with little money left to spend on food. This means that they will starve to death, which is ultimately good for the species, because it prevents their moronified genes from passing on.

A Canadian judge declared today that two men were not guilty of murdering 331 people who died when bombs exploded in 1985 aboard an Air India plane over the Atlantic, and at Tokyo’s Narita Airport:

Spectators in the courtroom, including dozens of victims’ relatives, gasped when the verdicts were read. Some started wailing...The defendants — Ripudaman Singh Malik, 58, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 55 — were immediately removed from the courtroom. Malik sat impassively while the verdict was read, wiping his beard with a scarf. Supporters slapped his son on the back. [AP/S.F. Gate]

British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson explained that the two-year trial of Canada’s worst case of mass murder had failed to produce credible witnesses. The bombings stood as the largest terrorist strike before Sept. 11, and are believed to have been retaliation by Sikh separatists for a deadly 1984 raid by Indian forces on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

The decision stunned Canada’s Sikh community, which reacted to the verdict with surprise and dissapointment:

“Who did it?,” Mr. (Sarwan Singh) Rahawa asked. “Who put the bombs on the plane? This is not fair for those families whose loved ones are lost.”...“There should be a public inquiry. Every Canadian has the right to an answer. Something went wrong. Everyone’s disappointed after 20 years,” he concluded. [Globe and Mail]

AP/S.F. Gate: Indian-born Sikhs cleared in plane bombs
Globe and Mail: Decision stuns community

Snoop Dogg releases a simple black and white video for his song, “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” A pair of UC Irvine students create a send-up of the piece called, “Drop It Like It’s Chaat.” Simultaneously, a trio of Northwestern students lampoon Indian immigrants with a video entitled, “Drop It Like a FOB.” Now, offended “FOBs” fire back with a piece labeling the three males from Northwestern as a bunch of girls (via Badmash). Apul shoots himself after realizing cruel world will never stop spoofing that damn video.

McDonald’s is routing drive-through orders to a remote call center in the U.S. Can Gurgaon be far behind?

Company officials said the idea, being tested at a small number of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, is aimed at reducing the number of mistakes at the drive-thru window… “You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders,” said Matthew Paull, the chief financial officer. Paull said a “heavy percentage” of complaints the company receives are from drive-thru customers who got the wrong order.

The commando elves who man our secret North Dakota headquarters have been spotted wearing phone headsets and glazed expressions.

This reminds me of the Pakistani company in D.C. which outsourced its receptionist to Lahore (thanks, Parag). You walk in and interact with a webcam and a floating head, very Oz.

Poon-jab? Can you say ign’ant throwback? This guy’s supposed to be some kind of Arab genie? And where’s his beard? It’s like some bad Borat sketch, only it’s syndicated throughout America. Today. In 2005.

Yeah, the Annie strip is retro, but so is Little Black Sambo.

Like a pair of star-crossed lovers, the words “Bollywood” and “sex scandal” just can’t keep their hands from going down each other’s pants (or something like that). The latest hullabaloo erupted after the broadcast of famous villain actor Shakti Kapoor purportedly soliciting sex from a reporter posing as an aspiring actress:

A video clip, which the station said was taken earlier this year, purportedly shows Kapoor in a Bombay hotel room telling the undercover reporter, “I want to make love to you ... and if you want to come in this line (of business), you have to do what I am telling (you) to do.” Kapoor is heard on the 40-minute recording telling the woman that he will put her through acting and dance classes before introducing her to top directors. He also names three Indian actresses who allegedly had sex with top producers and directors in exchange for roles. [AP/Yahoo!]

Kapoor denies any wrongdoing, claims it’s a frame-up, and accuses the broadcaster of altering the clip. See, when he said “I want to make love to you,” the unedited version actually had him saying, “I want to make love to you, mom.” So really, there’s nothing tawdry about what he said. Oh, wait...

AP/Yahoo!: Sex scandal embroils Bollywood

Update: Saurav points us to a download site that has a copy of the video (5.1 MB).

Update 2: DesiDancer directs us to a pair of Sify articles (1, 2) that name names. Kapoor’s spin is almost as hackneyed as his pick-up lines:

Kapoor found himself deeper in trouble because he named leading film personalities to have used the casting couch to enter the film industry. “With folded hands I have apologised to the entire film industry, including Subhash Ghai, Preity Zinta, Aishwarya Rai and Rani Mukerji, who are close to me,” he said. “I had no intention to hurt them. The whole thing was doctored and tampered and, in case they still feel hurt, I am ready to apologise again.”...“I have been framed so badly that I could suffer a heart attack,” he said. “They could have pushed me to the brink of committing suicide.”...“I suspect I have been framed by a political party. I had supported the Congress and my opposing rivals would have found this the right opportunity to settle scores for having backed the party. The said channel (India TV) which has pulled through this ’expose’ is known to have the backing of the rival party. Hence, I strongly suspect that the whole thing had been framed,” he said. [Sify]

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and for the first time in its 229-year existence as an independent nation, America is fighting a war with a military machine that is dependent on women.

The women span a universe of backgrounds. There are women like Ranbir Kaur, a 19-year-old part-time college student from the obscure San Joaquin Valley town of Earlimart. By summer’s end, Kaur expects to trade her textbooks for an M-16 rifle and head for Iraq.

What were Kaur’s motivations for joining the Army? No surprise here. She joins for the same reason that many Americans (men or women) join up. A possible ticket out of a small town and to a better life:

It was the limits of life in a comatose San Joaquin Valley farm town that spurred Ranbir Kaur to join the California National Guard in late 2002, two days after her 17th birthday and more than a year before she graduated from Delano High. That, and the $3,000 bonus for enlisting.

The daughter of Sikh grape farmers, Kaur emigrated at age 7 from India to the Bay Area, then moved to Earlimart, a dusty burg of 6,600, about 40 miles from Bakersfield, 70 miles from Fresno and light-years from the kind of things that would interest most teenagers.

The only restaurants in town are a mom-and-pop burger joint and a Mexican bakery that sells tortas and burritos. The high school is in Delano, eight miles away. There is no movie theater, no bowling alley, no nightspot.

The article profiles several other women as well. Still no women NAVY SEALS though. :)

To view more pictures of Kaur you can click on the slide show.

The Washington Post carries an uplifting story about the counter-counter demonstration in Lebanon on the one month anniversary of Hariri’s assasination. Not to be one-upped by the Hezbollah’s counter protest last week, the Lebanese people showed up in enormous numbers (by some estimates a quarter of the population of the country).

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese rallied at the grave of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri on Monday to mark the one-month anniversary of his assassination and to intensify pressure on Syria to immediately withdraw its troops from a country that appears split into two rival political camps.

The demonstration covered wind-swept Martyrs’ Square and stretched for blocks into side streets, likely surpassing the size of the rally organized last week in Beirut by Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Muslim movement at the forefront of support for Syria’s three-decade presence here.

In a crowd that Lebanese police officials estimated at close to 1 million people, some demonstrators waved placards that read “100 percent Lebanese,” a direct challenge to Syria’s supporters here and the delicate balance among Lebanon’s sectarian parties that has prevailed since the country’s civil war ended more than 15 years ago.

Slate’s daily news round-up however, points out an interesting sentence buried deep within the story:

Many opposition members contended Monday that Hezbollah’s Beirut rally was populated mostly by Syrian intelligence agents and poor Shiites from the south. “They didn’t come by their free will,” said Charles Kanaan, 23, a systems engineer and Maronite Christian from Beirut. “And they weren’t 100 percent Lebanese. This is free will. This is the real Lebanon.”

In an apparent response, Hezbollah’s satellite channel, al-Manar, focused its coverage of Monday’s rally on the maids from South Asian countries who attended with their employers.

I get it. It isn’t patriotic Lebanese that want the Syrians out of their country. It is those dirty South Asian immigrant maids who make up the majority of the crowd. This is just another example that as bad as FOXNEWS is with their propaganda, it’s still nothing compared to the propaganda machines in the Arab world.

You’ve probably heard about Warner Bros.’ plans to makeover their beloved Looney Tunes characters into a crime-fighting gang of edgy superheroes entitled the “Loonatics.” Instead of making us wait for the show to premiere this fall, animator Niraj Shah offers a glimpse of what to expect from the new “Buzz Bunny” (thanks, Sanjay Shah).

TLG Media: “A New Bunny” (NSFW)

A high-speed chase down Highway 101 in South San Francisco ended with police killing a man believed to have beaten his spouse. It all took place last week when Kamal Lal punched his wife Shelly in the face following a dispute over a pile of trash. Shelly called 911, and Kamal fled from the scene in his truck. When authorities tracked him down, Kamal led them on a chase at speeds as high as 100 mph. His car eventually ran off the road and into a ditch. Kamal emerged from it and began throwing rocks at CHP officers. When he threatened them with a concrete slab, they pumped him full of bullets. Court records show that Kamal had a history of domestic abuse, and had plead guilty to misdemeanor battery against his wife in 1996. Like many battered spouses, Shelly defended her husband of 16 years:

“Everyone has their problems, but where this went, it totally doesn’t make sense,” said Lal, 37, of her husband. “I’m just mad that he was killed in such a barbaric way”...Lal described her husband as a warm, generous man who loved playing with his son and often bought homeless people meals. She said their relationship was strong enough, she thought, to withstand Sunday’s domestic violence. “It just seemed like a little dispute between husband and wife,” Lal said. [San Francisco Chronicle]

San Francisco Chronicle: ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ says wife of man shot by CHP, Man killed by CHP had battery record

My initial reaction was, "you have GOT to be kidding me."

An Indian Muslim charity has laid claim to the ownership of the world's most famous monument to love, the Taj Mahal.

The Sunni Waqf Board controls all Muslim graveyards in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the spectacular marble monument is located.

Since Muslims who AREN'T royals are buried at the Taj AND it contains a Mosque, the Sunni Waqf Board has a reason to pursue this obviously innocent and well-intentioned claim.

Whom can we blame for this latest bit of eye-roll-inspiring controversy? Wait for it...

The Sunni Waqf Board (SWB), a Muslim trust, was given ownership of Uttar Pradesh's Muslim graveyards by the Indian government itself.

Right.

There wouldn't be some financial motivation for this surprising development, would there? Noooo. Couldn't be.

Mr Usman said once the ownership issue had been decided, the board would demand that 7% of the total earnings from tickets should be transferred to its coffers.

Here's my favorite part:

He said the board did not stake a claim to the monument earlier as it had not wanted to enter into any controversy.

They were correct! There is no controversy at all. My ocular muscles (and my potential for disbelief) are taxed. Oh, Shah Jahan...what has your legendary love wrought?

Babu, a new restaurant in Greenwich Village which serves food from Calcutta, apparently made up its menu according to Black Sheep’s hip-hop classic, ‘The Choice Is Yours.’ The formerly price-list-free restaurant sits below Kati Roll Co. and is by the same owner (thanks, Turbanhead):

… the menu came without prices. Instead, guests were invited to eat, enjoy, and then, at the end of the meal, pay what they thought it was worth. “I’d rather work out the kinks in the kitchen first,” Payal Saha, the restaurant’s owner, explained the other day, sitting at a corner table of Babu, which was about a quarter full of couples quietly eating and mentally calculating the value of their experience…

Payments range from generous (foodies) to parsimonious (Midwesterners):

 “We had one couple who paid two hundred bucks for an eighty-dollar meal,” Saha said… “We talked to some people before sending them their check, asking if they would pay fifty dollars for this meal,” Jung said. “The people mostly said yes, except for one couple from Minneapolis. They were shocked at that price.”

In classic desi fashion, our fine young cannibals took advantage of the price-free policy:

A rowdy group of ten young Indians walked in one Friday evening and occupied the restaurant’s large central table. Their response to no prices was to leave no money; they didn’t even tip the wait staff.

But all good things must come to an end on the credit card slip, top copy:

A few weeks ago, prices were finally written into the menu: a three-course meal with wine comes to about fifty dollars a head.

The New Yorker also covered M.I.A. recently — is Eustace Tilly crushing on cumin?

Answer: They are both dominated at the top by white men. That fact, which seems obvious when one thinks about it, is one of the reasons that this blog got started. Just think back to the bloggers who were (or weren’t) invited to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Newsweek expounds:

At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the “comments” space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, “we will throw out some of the best … journalism of the 21st century.” The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. “It has taken ‘mainstream media’ a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion,” Jenkins wrote. “My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere … will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one.”

But WHY? The Blogosphere at face would seem to be the ideal example of a meritocracy. If your writing sucks you’ll get no readers. If you don’t like what someone writes then either move on or start your own blog. THIS blog exploited the fact that there weren’t many South Asian American blogs providing YOU with what YOU wanted to read.

For those of you who have never had the privilege of listening to the radio program This American Life, you are missing out on quite simply the best radio program on U.S. airways. If you have listened to the program, in your car perhaps, you are sitting in front of your computer nodding your head in agreement right now. This past weekend one of the three acts in a program titled “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” featured a young man from Pakistan making his first trip home after traveling to the United States for an education. He reflects on the freedoms and opportunity he has been given in the U.S. versus the desire to return home and to be with his family. He has changed a great deal, as has the society he had left behind. He attends a party with vodka flowing and 50 cent’s music playing, and yet is shunned when he goes to speak to a girl at the party (you can’t go up to a girl in an Islamic culture he explains). At the heart of this story is a choice. Does he return to his native Pakistan and “serve his country,” or does he explore his full potential in the U.S? Should he stay or should he go? By the end of the story he decides and gives the rationale for his decision. Put your headphones on right now. Tune out work, and tune in to his story.

Note: the story is in the first act of the radio program and starts at 4 min and 45 sec and ends at 25 min and 15 seconds.

Satisfy the voyeur in you by peeping the literary orgy in Manhattan:

	Pankaj Mishra, in puffy shirt and boho beard, was the absolute star with a hilariously barbed passage from Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.
	Only two of the authors reading were second-gen: Jhumpa Lahiri and Vijay Seshadri, the O.G. ABCD in his 50s who teaches at Sarah Lawrence. ‘Thelma,’ a love poem from The Long Meadow: baritone wit, a thatch of gray hair and vulnerability.
	Read his iconic passage on the Bombay monsoon from Maximum City.
	Spying a courgette in his ex-lover’s hand, Shamsie’s protagonist asked, ‘Is that domesticity or a dildo?’
	Flip-haired, moddish diplomat with the rich tones of a British lord read aloud about book markets in Baghdad.

Update: DesiLit has more.

Burglars in Silicon Valley have been targeting desi homes recently, perhaps through property records or personal contacts (thanks, Sonya). If they were truly smart, they’d be looking for the stock options, not yo mama’s mangalasutra:

Of the 50 home burglaries that have occurred in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the last couple of months, 10 have happened in the homes of Indian Americans… [India-West]

Since December, the homes of at least 14 Indo-American families have been burglarized on weekend nights in Silicon Valley. The families fear they are being targeted because of their preference for 22- and 24-karat gold jewelry… “It looks like they know where to look. There are some subcultures in India where it’s pretty common to hide jewelry in the kitchen, and these burglars are also looking in kitchens…”

… they said they wanted to speak out to alert other families — and to tell them to store their jewelry and other valuables in safe-deposit boxes instead of at home. [Mercury News]

A 52-year-old father from Guyana was beaten by an 18-year-old from Mexico on March 3 and died of a heart attack. Jagat Ram Balram of Queens was a marine engineer in his homeland:

A police source said Roque downed a number of drinks in a friend’s home, then hit the streets of Richmond Hill, confronting residents. After several confrontations, including one with a man who wouldn’t back down, Roque pounced on Balram, who was heading home from his job as a bus mechanic just before 1 a.m., police said.

The 120-pound Roque knocked the victim, who at 5-foot-10, 175 pounds towered over the suspect, to the snow-covered ground in front of Balram’s Jamaica Avenue home, then kicked him into unconsciousness, police said… Roque, who emigrated from Mexico… attends Richmond Hill High School and works as a busboy at nearby Alfies Pizza & Pasta. [MSNBC]

Two witnesses dialed 911 and ran to help Jagat Balram while another good Samaritan chased the fleeing suspect to Jamaica Ave. and 118th St. and flagged down a patrol car… Jagat Balram’s hard-earned savings will now be used to send his body back to South America, instead of bringing his 25-year-old son, Chateran, to New York.  [Daily News]

Keri Dowd, a history teacher at Richmond Hill HS, said Roque had a reputation as having “a discipline problem,” and said a fellow teacher — who had him in her class — said he was “disturbed, violent and aggressive.” [NY Post]

Bride and Prejudice has done just $3M in the U.S. so far, $17M worldwide. With a production budget of $7M and likely a similar marketing budget, it’s probably just crossed break-even.

A couple of months ago, the film increased its U.S. presence by 400% to 156 theaters, but its revenues jumped only 100%. To some degree, that’s to be expected as it expands out of culture vulture cities. But the dropoff has been quite severe.

Bride has the same marketing problem as Bombay Dreams: an old-school plot with the trappings of exoticism. The foreign element brings in film critics who are disappointed with the unironic plot. At the same time, it scares off mainstream viewers.

You have to have some affection for a movie that melds mariachi, gospel and filmi music and throws Nitin Ganatra around in an American flag thong. There’s some serious novelty value there. But the final cut felt messy and unfinished. And not all fusion works: Hindi tunes sung in English can be jarring, especially with a desi accent, and the novelty of hearing them for the first time in Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral has long since worn off.

A much better attempt is the Bollywood/Hollywood version of ‘Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo.’ The singer seems to switch effortlessly between ’20s swing and Hindi, it’s a marvelous mix.

Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax, showed up in person at the Bride and Prejudice New York premiere and said he was looking for the next Moulin Rouge ($70M invested, $178M gross). Bride and Prejudice did well in the UK, but in America he’ll still be looking.

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... Lakshmi Mittal are numbers one, two and three in this year's Forbes' billionaires list.

In raw dollars, no one had a better year that Lakshmi Mittal.

The London-based, Rajasthan-born steel baron was the biggest dollar gainer on this year's listing of the world's billionaires, adding $18.8 billion to his net worth.

That took him to $25 billion, sufficient to vault the 54-year old Mittal a full 59 places up the billionaire ranks, making him the third-richest man on the planet. [cite]

That puts him just ahead of Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud and the head of Ikea. He is roughly 35 times as wealthy as the Queen of England. Rumors persist that he is planning to marry Famke Jansen and change his last name to Onatopp. Similar rumors persist that you can get in touch with Mr. Mittal by leaving a comment in this blog asking for his email address, and that Bill Gates is giving away money to anybody who forwards chain emails claiming to be from him.

Read Forbes on Mittal, or see our previous posts about him: World’s biggest steel company will be desi-owned, Forbes names India’s richest.

…to make Dubya hip. Enjoy this little gem from tworoots.org. It will be the hottest thing since JibJab. [Thanks for the tip Vidya S.]

Tworoots writes:

Holi (March 25, 2005) is a Hindu festival where people throw colored powder and water at each other. But really, anyone can play Holi. Neither Rep. Bobby Jindal nor President George W. Bush are Hindu, but perhaps they might be interested in funding our holi animations as a type of faith-based initiative.

A global study of sleep habits found that most Indians can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning:

Top 10 Early Birds - out of bed by 7 a.m.

	Country	Before 6 a.m.	Between 6-7 a.m.	Before 7 a.m.
1	Indonesia	72%	19%	91%
2	Vietnam	55%	33%	88%
3	Philippines	41%	28%	69%
4	Denmark	21%	45%	66%
5	Germany	29%	35%	64%
6	Austria	25%	39%	64%
7	India	24%	40%	64%
8	Japan	21%	43%	64%
9	Finland	20%	43%	63%
10	Norway	21%	41%	62%

What’s got them waking up so damn early? Awesome jobs? Too much water before bedtime? Unbearable spouses? We’ll never know. It’s unexplained by the ACNielsen Consumer Confidence and Opinion Survey, which also found that Indians are more likely than others to make home improvements, purchase fashionable clothes, and take weekend trips.

In an effort to amend the salt tax without breaking the law, on March 2, 1930 Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin: “If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil.”

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and approximately 78 male satyagrahis set out, on foot, for the coastal village of Dandi some 240 miles from their starting point in Sabarmati, a journey which was to last 23 days. Virtually every resident of each city along this journey watched the great procession, which was at least two miles in length. On April 6th he raised a lump of mud and salt (some say just a pinch, some say just a grain) and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” He then boiled it in seawater to make the commodity which no Indian could legally produce—salt.

Reader RJ points out that this week's (month's?) GOP Babe of the Week is Namrata Singh Gujral. Namrata is the second Desi babe to receive the, uh, honor in a row - taking the crown from prior winner - Ms. Govindini Murty. Sepia Mutiny profiled Ms. Murty before she hit it big in one of the more memorable earlier posts.

Namrata is an actress / producer and, in true Hollywood fashion, plugged her production company in her acceptance speech -

"I am so honored to be on your site. We set out to make pro-America movies. We knew this was going to be a long, uphill battle. So encouraging to know it's not a going to be a lone battle. Thank you, America - for your love and support. Please visit American Pride Films often. Thank you, again!"

Her company - formed with Naval aviator Lt Cdr Joe Cooper - attempts to provide positive media portrayals of day to day life in Amrika -

The company’s mission is to make movies that showcase the reality of average Americans, who are not interested in global domination and have a human and compassionate side. With this positive message, APFG hopes to overcome some of the negative American sentiment overseas and at home, changing hearts and minds along the way.

Namrata's personal website can be found at the modestly titled NamrataWorld.

(why is it called "Babe of the Week" when the last one was named in Feb?)

Authorities in the city of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh state are sending drummers around to create a noise outside homes until [tax] evaders cough up.

Officials say they recouped 200,000 rupees ($4,600) on the first day.

Harried residents emerged from their homes to be told by accompanying tax collectors to pay up or continue facing the music.

[The Municipal commissioner] ... said he was confident people would pay up to avoid embarrassment as everybody now knew that the drums meant there was a tax evader inside. [BBC]

If this fails, they can always play classical music, rock or rap to pound the scofflaws into submission.

Earlier we pointed you to Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith’s latest novels, due this fall. Bibliophile Punjabi Boy has tracked down the plot synopses. Whoever bowdlerized these vigorous authors managed to strip most appeal, like film trailers badly cut. Or both authors really are succumbing to that artistic curse— damn you, marital bliss.

Shalimar the Clown (Rushdie): Maximilian Ophuls, former Resistance hero, postwar economics guru, counter-terrorism expert and a popular US Ambassador to India whose tenure was abruptly ended by a scandalous liaison with a dancer, is murdered in his old age on his daughter’s doorstep in Los Angeles - his daughter India, who dislikes her name. ‘She didn’t feel like an India, even if her colour was rich and high and her long hair lustrous and black. She didn’t want to be vast or subcontinental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World.’ The assassin is Max’s driver, who goes by the name of Shalimar, a handsome Kashmiri man in his forties, a former tightrope-walker and clown in a band of travelling players. Salman Rushdie’s new novel is the story of the dead man, his killer and his daughter; the story of the violent termination of an extraordinary life stretching from Nazi-occupied Strasbourg to Hollywood via India, Kashmir, and many of the world’s most dangerous places. [Amazon UK]

Avoiding Lahiri-itis and Mukherjee syndrome (taking ‘write what you know’ as the Eleventh Commandment), On Beauty will be Smith’s first novel set mainly in America.

On Beauty (Smith): Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn’t like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering Professor at Wellington, a New England Liberal Arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists… Then Jerome, Howard’s oldest son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps. Increasingly, the two families find themselves… enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. [Smith’s agent]

From mobile ultrasound units that determine if a baby needs to be extinguished to bribery for keeping them, India now offers it all;

Families having a single girl child in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh will be given 100,000 rupees ($2,300) in an attempt to boost the female population...

...The state government says it is concerned at the falling female-to-male ratio - in 2001 it was 943 to 1,000.

The only-child receives the money as soon as she turns 20. In addition to that payola, from ages 14-17 (9th through 12th grade), a yearly grant of Rs. 1,250 will be available for the girl's educational expenses. If either parent passes away, Rs. 50,000 is provided immediately. See? Attractive!

To ensure that the girl is a couple's ONLY child, both parents must be sterilised;

...both parents would have to undergo operations certified and verified by government hospitals to qualify for the scheme.

Oh, and what's a scheme without some PR?

The Andhra Pradesh government says it is also planning a major publicity campaign to promote female children.

It has named the rising Indian tennis star and local girl, Sania Mirza, as the "ambassador of the girl child of Andhra Pradesh".

I'll never bitch about spending Rs. 435 at the Sony Metreon ever again;

According to the cinema index from market researcher Screen Digest, tickets in India cost an average of 19 cents which means moviegoers here have to work for just 16 minutes to earn enough to buy a ticket, reports BBC.

In India, workers earn an average of 70 cents an hour, whereas, across the globe, the average working time needed to pay for cinema admission is 57 minutes.

Cheapest countries for cinema tickets, according to the survey, are:

1. India - 16 minutes' wages

2. US - 24 minutes' wages

3. China - 26 minutes' wages

4. Luxembourg - 28 minutes' wages

5. Ireland - 30 minutes' wages

The most expensive countries? Well, I wouldn't worry your pretty heads. Four out of the five are Eastern European nations that are rather Orthodox places. The fifth? Thailand, where nothing is orthodox. ;)

via Rediff.

Alternative community/pin-up site Suicide Girls features a blog and photo collection from a U.K.-based desi named “India” (NSFW). She’s an aspiring mathematician, and daydreams about numbers:

FANTASY: to solve one of the clay institutes seven prize math problems (http://www.claymath.org/millennium/)...

First Navi Rawat, and now “India.” When did math become the new black? One thing’s for sure — she shouldn't have any trouble finding an algorithmically-inclined South Asian suitor. Oh, and for the record, I was on Suicide Girls in order to read a scintillating interview with the always-hilarious David Cross.

Following up on my earlier post about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to speak at the conference of the Asian-American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) meeting in Fort Lauderdale, FL, tipster Anuj G. alerts us to the fact that Chris Matthews of Hardball has canceled his speaking commitment after being pressured by Muslim groups. The New York Sun reports:

A prominent talk show host has canceled a speech to a conference of Indian-American hoteliers after coming under pressure from Muslim organizations and human-rights groups, who said another speaker invited to the meeting has a record of condoning anti-Muslim violence.

The host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Chris Matthews, announced yesterday that he would not appear as planned on March 24 at the Asian-American Hotel Owners Association meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“Due to a scheduling conflict, Chris Matthews has canceled this appearance,” an MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said. He would not elaborate on the nature of the conflict.

In recent days, Muslim activists and others flooded the network with calls, letters, and e-mail urging Mr. Matthews to distance himself from the group. An Indian official billed as the “chief guest” at the meeting, Narendra Modi, has been accused of tolerating anti-Muslim violence in the state of Gujarat, where he is chief minister.

The president of the Indian Muslim Council-USA, Dr. Ashwini Rao of New York, said he does not credit the official explanation for Mr. Matthews’s action. “Most likely, that’s not correct, because we’ve been talking to him for the last week and a half, at least, and they’ve never said it’s a scheduling conflict,” Dr. Rao said. “I was hoping he’d take a more moral stance.”

There is another interesting twist to this story however. Apparently the way the press found out that Matthews was backing out was via a PENTAGON mailing list. What the heck does the Pentagon have to do with Matthews and Modi?

A Muslim Lawyer who "claims she has been meeting Lord Shiva off and on in her dreams for the past six years" has built a Hindu temple for the "libertarian" deity;

Noor Fatima, who laid the foundation for the Shiva Temple, claimed that Shiva had visited her in her dream, prompting her to build the temple. Although Fatima's faith strictly prohibits idol worship, she decided to build the temple out of respect and tolerance for Hinduism.

The paradigm of secular harmony started her project in Varanasi with a mere five thousand rupees, but others pitched in to make her dream come true.

The temple opened a few days ago (March 5) for Maha Shivratri.

P.S. Thanks Pooja, for the tip :)

My friend Atul R. at HBS emails me about a recent alumnus from his program coming up with the hottest game since Star Wars-opoly: The Filmigame

THE FILMIGAME is a fun and exciting experience for all Bollywood Movie Lovers. With over 1200 trivia questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Dances, Dialogues and Movie Clips. THE FILMIGAME is packed full of fun for everyone.

Play THE FILMIGAME, the first ever Trivia Game on DVD!

The Best of Bollywood comes right to your living room! Watch your favorite movie moments from blockbusters like KABHI KHUSHI KABHIE GHAM and KAL HO NAA HO to all time favorites like NAMAK HALAAL and SHARAABI!

See how much you know with over 1,200 questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Singers and Dances – All on DVD!

Challenge your friends and family to a night of unforgettable fun and entertainment!

This sucks actually. I am super competetive. If any cute girl invites me over for game night to play this thing, I will totally lose. I know jack about Bollywood films. Hmmmm. Maybe I could use it as a tutorial instead. They should totally market it that way.

THE FILMIGAME has been designed and developed by two dynamic Asian women based in the US, Sunaina Anand and Prita Uppal. Their main goal as UNAMEDIA is to bring people the most innovative and creative, culturally targeted entertainment. They aim to do this through advanced gaming and entertainment techniques, such as THE FILMIGAME.

Both Sunaina and Prita feel very passionate about this new game and are confident that it will be a hit with movie lovers all around the world. Ms Anand says: “We are developing cultural connections between people in a fun, entertaining and unique way. Our goal is to help people understand and enjoy Indian culture and traditions. And we believe THE FILMIGAME is a giant step in that direction.”

SM reader, Kikali K. sends me this humorous send up of Snoop Dogg’s inane song, Drop It Like It’s Hot. I normally don’t support FOB humor but this is pretty funny. Looks like it was shown at the 2005 SASA conference. Check it out.

The Gray Lady discovers chaat. Next, they’ll be telling their readers about this great new thing called roti :) But then the piece goes all sensual on you:

The contrasts are, as one fan said, “a steeplechase for your mouth,” with different sensations galloping by faster than you can track them… Chaats can be made with almost anything crispy: … fresh ginger, mung bean sprouts and spice-dusted toasted lentils. Chaat masala usually includes amchoor, a tangy powder made from green mangoes, mint, cumin and pomegranate, but it must always include kala namak, a black salt with a pleasant whiff of sulfur… “In India a guy might have a Mercedes and live in a house on a hill, but he still puts on his slippers and goes to eat chaat…”

A fine tribute to pani puri… by Ganghadar Gopal Gadgil… “In that state of beatitude the Maharashtrians stop being surly, the Marwaris look at the millions of stars without being reminded of their own millions, the Sindhis admire the horizon without any intention of selling it, the Gujaratis speculate on the moon instead of the scrips they should have sold, the North Indians dream of things other than Hindi as the official language of the United Nations, and even the Parsi ladies stop nagging their husbands.”

Be still my gurgling stomach. And, more importantly, the story tells you where to get your fix, though Dimple’s been open for years:

… two popular, top-quality chaat specialists have opened in Midtown Manhattan: Dimple Fast Food and Sukhadia’s Sweets. Manhattan has lately been seized by a craze for Indian snacks, with upscale new places like Spice Market, Bombay Talkie, Von Singh’s, Devi, Lassi and Babu all claiming Indian street food as an inspiration…

… Chowpatty Foods [of Iselin, NJ]… has just imported a chaat cart from India in the red-and-white color scheme of the Chowpatty chaat wallahs… a traditional chaat wallah sits surrounded by his mounds of dry ingredients… and his own mix of jal-jeera, the “firewater” that is used to fill the habit-forming pani puri.

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Tipster Suresh V. points us to this post on Instapundit. Within the post, an ill-informed commenter compares Lord Shiva’s destructive tendencies to those of whack-jobs like Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Before we could set the record straight by posting a critique on this site, an Instapundit reader named Srikanth Bellalacheruvu did so in a rather unusual manner:

Shiva is not simply a “destroyer”, and if he was, Indians wouldn’t worship him. They have several million Gods to choose from - it’s a free market out there.

Shiva is, to be accurate, the “Renewer”. Shiva destroys a world when it is beyond all hope of reform, in order to allow creative energies to build a better world. His anger is that of a righteousness, not that of hatred.

And Vishnu is not a “creator”. To be accurate, he “maintains order” in world that already exists.

If we were to use business terminology, Shiva’s rage would be “gales of creative destruction” and Vishnu would be a brilliant CEO adding to shareholder value.

If this analogy holds then that means Vinod is going to Heaven and I’m going to Hell.

I guess Salman Rushdie and his supermodel turned cook-book author-wife Padma Lakshmi are of the school that there is no such thing as bad publicity. After their most recent appearance in the New York press, you know when Rushdie threatened to beat NY Times writer Guy Trebay with a bat, Rush and Molloy are reporting in the New York Post that Rushdie will be writing his wife a screenplay.

Rushdie told Webster Hall's Baird Jones: "I am working on a script for Padma to direct. It starts as a comedy, then becomes tragedy and finally ends in horrendous violence."

This wouldn't be that unusual, but the thing is, Padma can't really act (Have you seen the Mariah Carey bomb Glitter or Kaizad Gustad's Boom?). What makes him, or anyone, think she can direct?

My friend Santhosh Daniel emails:

So, I was tooling around, looking for designs, and I dropped in or “on” [Tamil Nation].  As you can guess or tell from the address, it’s a site devoted to the Tamil diaspora, which got me thinking about the concept of diaspora not in terms of nation, but state…

My father is a Malaysian Tamil, my mother an Indian Tamil and I, an American Tamil and, my sense of ‘place resides in all three regions and often supersedes my sense of being Indian and/or “desi…”

In the States there is incessant discussion about the Indian diaspora, and I feel wholly disconnected from it… I am part of the Tamil diaspora as defined by Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka-Malaysia-U.S. just as a Punjabi is part of his diaspora as defined by Punjab-Pakistan-Canada-U.S. and a Gujarati via Gujarat-Africa-U.S. There is a cultural history to each of those things that is both separate and part of the “Indian diaspora”… Each group has its own values, transgressions, literature, heroes, migrations…

My life tends to be guided by the Tamil diaspora, I notice, as I get older.  Doesn’t mean I don’t see myself as part of the Indian gaggle, it’s just that I notice more and more how much I am also part of something else. (posted with permission)

Great observation. To the Punjabi diaspora, I’d add the U.K. To Gujaratis, add Antwerp. To Tamils, Singapore. And you see micro-diasporas in the U.S. with clusters of different ethnicities in different cities.

And it’s simultaneously more and less profound than Santhosh describes: every person is a morass of fault lines and microcommunities on axes like sexual preferences, hobbies and musical taste.

Step 1: Be born to cave-chested parents. Or purge.

Step 2: Hose on some primer and paint. Pluck out your eyebrows so they’re Filipino nail salon thin. Erase all personality, standardize your face so you look like every other club birdie.

Step 3: Make sure your belly’s showing. Don a booty mini. Can’t do much about the cleavage (see step 1).

Step 4: Shoot a skank vid. Grab yourself as much as possible. Tacky eyeshadow is a plus.

Step 5: Do a fawning interview with a British or Canadian desi Web site.

If you get around to it: Oh yeah, cut a track too. Just jack the beats from someone else, I’m sure she won’t mind.

If you have any, get rid of it: originality, singularity, musical talent

See also: D’Luscious, Sneha Mistri, Deeyah

As Jin tha MC said, ‘Don’t take this in a (personal) fashion. Nope, it’s just a good ol’ lyrical bashin’.’ Just how boring is bubblegum pop?

(thanks, sd)

The first step to solving a problem is admitting you've got one -

`Proper sanitation will boost Indian tourism`

There is a need for a hygienic environment with a well-regulated sanitisation mechanism to boost the Indian tourism industry as it has good prospects even in the face of stiff competition from neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

It seems that fed-up tourism officials are raising a Sepia Mutiny of a different sort.

I don’t know quite how to break this news so I’m just gonna come out and say it. It turns out all the bitter Indian-male bashers that left comments here were right. As reported in the Hindustan Times [Tip via Suvendra D.]:

Married men in India proved to be the most unfaithful, where an astonishing 49 per cent actively seek sexual relationships on the web.

Pakistan was only second to India in the love rat stakes, with seven per cent of husbands using the Internet to seek extramarital sex, according to a newly published global study by dating site CupidBay.com.

This was followed by men from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, at six per cent and five per cent respectively.

Research found that UK men make some of the world’s most faithful partners, with only one per cent visiting dating websites in search of extramarital liaisons.

American men proved to be devoted to their wives, with just two per cent looking to cheat, although they were still twice as likely to do the dirty as their UK counterparts.

May God have mercy on our bad brown souls.

[disclaimer: of course keep in mind that the survey was taken on a dating/sex site thus introducing an inherent bias]

The Los Angeles Times (free registration required) sheds light on one of the Justice Department’s well kept open secrets: It’s religious police.

One of the main jobs at the Justice Department is enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws. So when a nonprofit group was accused of employment discrimination last year in New York, the department moved swiftly to intervene — but not on the side one might expect.

The Salvation Army was accused in a lawsuit of imposing a new religious litmus test on employees hired with millions of dollars in public funds.

When employees complained that they were being required to embrace Jesus Christ to keep their jobs, the Justice Department’s civil rights division took the side of the Salvation Army.

Defending the right of an employer using public funds to discriminate is one of the more provocative steps taken by a little-known arm of the civil rights division and its special counsel for religious discrimination.

The Justice Department’s religious-rights unit, established three years ago, has launched a quiet but ambitious effort aimed at rectifying what the Bush administration views as years of illegal discrimination against religious groups and their followers.

The U.S. having religious police sounds really foreign, huh? To be fair though, the religious police have scored many a victory for the good guys:

For example, the Justice Department prevailed last year when a Muslim girl’s right to wear a head scarf to class was upheld — she had been suspended for violating the dress code at a public school in Oklahoma. The department also has challenged the practice of making residents at some youth detention facilities in the South participate in religious activities.

The March 4th issue of Science Magazine (paid subscription required) features an essay by Raghunath A. Mashelkar, director general of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research and president of the Indian National Science Academy. The essay is part of Science Magazine’s “Global Voices” series. [Tip via Francis Assisi]

Five years ago, during my presidential address to the Indian Science Congress, I made a prediction: “The next century will belong to India, which will become a unique intellectual and economic power to reckon with, recapturing all its glory, which it had in the millennia gone by,” I told the gathering of 5000, among them the country’s prime minister.

…In this essay, I focus on the importance of returnees to poor countries such as India. I will examine how demographic shifts are creating shortages of skilled scientists and engineers in developed economies and leading to a new dynamic in human capital that is enabling some developing countries to emerge as “global R&D hubs.” I also address ways in which global funding sources can be leveraged in such countries to create new knowledge devoted to the global good.

Because most readers won’t have access to the full article I will quote liberally (about a quarter of the article) for your benefit.

Regular Sepia Mutiny commentor Santhosh Daniel points us at the decidedly less than flattering special report at the Seattle Times documenting the rise and fall of Infospace & it's Rock Star CEO - Naveen Jain -

In spring 1999, Jain and his wife went on a house-shopping cruise around Lake Washington, docking at several multimillion-dollar mansions for sale. One home, owned by saxophonist Kenny G, had, among other touches, an automatic toilet-paper dispenser.

The Jains preferred something different and latched onto a 1.3-acre Medina estate called Diamanti — Greek for diamond — buying it for $13 million. The mansion boasted 16,500 square feet of space and a two-story garage. The garage shared a glass wall with the house so the owner could display an auto collection.

If the stuff in the story is even half true, Naveen deserves lock up time that would make Martha Stewart's 5 months seem like a quaint vacation.

Just to round out your celebrity trivia for the day -

Former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan is reportedly so fed up with American food, that he is planning to open an Indian restaurant in Los Angeles.

According to femalefirst, the Irish actor is frantically searching in India for a chef worthy of cooking at the Indian restaurant he plans to open later this year.

First the Capitol building, now Bangalore? Taking a page from 9/11, Kashmiri militants may be targeting a powerhouse economic sector:

Documents seized from three members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist group killed in an encounter with police on Saturday revealed that they planned to carry out suicide attacks on software companies in Bangalore… Most of the technology companies in the city have already set up disaster recovery plans and special disaster recovery sites that could be used in the event of a terrorist attack… [ComputerWorld]

There are fears that Bangalore may have become a safe haven for Naxalites, the LTTE and also terrorist organisations and that the high-profile IT companies are the soft targets. [NDTV]

A 20-member team armed with automatic weapons… was rushed to the spot. They also took along the newly acquired bullet proof Rakshak jeep which can fire teargas shells from within… One such company whose name has been found in a diary seized from the militants is Polaris. Shams apparently had visited the Polaris office last year to prepare a map of the office. [ToI]

There’s no Polaris office listed in Bangalore, so take that with the usual Times of India helping of salt.

I gotta say, it’s the height of stupidity to attack a city that quarters defense contractors. You’d only make it personal. Do ya think the next generation of weaponry would specifically be designed to jam a warhead right up their crevices? Chakde phatte, Dr. Strangelove.

McMansions in Bangalore powered by the Indian tech boom may now be topping the $200K mark. That’s ~$600K, adjusted for buying power. According to a woman from Portland now working in Bangalore:

… we went to visit two of my colleague’s new homes that are being built… I was shocked to see the model of the contemporary home; it looked like it came straight out of San Diego, Rancho Cucamonga area. It resembled a typical Southern California cookie cutter home. I was amazed to see that here. Those homes cost [Rs.] 1 crore… I cannot wait to see this place 10 year from now.

Bangalore is aping SoCal now? I’ve got some new tunes in my woofers. Bangalifornia… knows how to party. Just hit the east side of the IIT, on a mission tryin’ to find Mr. Varun-ji. Regulators! Stand down.

The NYT had more last year:

Snigdha Dhar sat in the echoing emptiness of her new home, her husband off at work, her 7-year-old son prattling on about Pizza Hut. The weather outside was California balmy. Children rode bicycles on wide smooth streets. Construction workers toiled on more villas like hers - white paint, red roofs, green lawns - and the community center’s three pools…

Ever wonder what it would be like to join 70 million of your closest friends as they find their way to spiritual bliss? The new documentary, opening in limited release on a city-by-city tour, Shortcut to Nirvana tries to clue you in, just in case you couldn't be there. The documentary chronicles the 2001 Kumbh Mela festival, one of the oldest, largest, and most fascinating festivals on earth. Kumbh Melas are typically held every 12 years, and the mela held in 2001 was an extra special mela as it was technically a Maha Kumbh Mela, which only occurs every 144 years, where the Ganga and Yamuna rivers meet, in Allahabad, India.

The film, by Maurizio Benazzo and Nick Day, attempts to offer a snapshot of the festival, and I think to try and do more would be an impossible task for a documentary. To view the trailer, click here and for news and theatre listings, click here.

To find out more about Kumbh Mela's click here.

Earlier this week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Van Orden v. Rick Perry (Governor of the Red State of Texas). Slate explains in their “oh so irreverent” manner:

Imagine a bunch of elderly, black-robed medieval clerics absorbed in a scholarly dialogue on the number of angels (better make that “secular” angels—candy stripers or maybe Hell’s Angels) able to dance on the head of a pin. You’d have a good idea of how oral argument went this morning in the pair of cases involving displays of the Ten Commandments on state property.

At one level everything appears scholarly and doctrinal. Until you realize that the doctrine is a mess, and the justices are so tangled up in old tests, old glosses on old tests, and new glosses on new tests that they don’t even know how to talk about the Establishment Clause cases, much less how to resolve them. Perhaps the court is waiting to resolve the chaos until there are as many different Establishment Clause tests (legal scholars currently count about seven) as there are commandments.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” That ban has been interpreted to sweep in state and local governments as well. The disaster-on-stilts the court has used to determine whether such an establishment has taken place is known as the “Lemon test,” vomited forth upon the land in a 1971 case called Lemon v. Kurtzman. That test asked whether the government’s conduct had: (i) a secular purpose; (ii) a principal or primary effect that neither enhances nor inhibits religion; and (iii) did not foster excessive entanglement with religion.

Among the many groups that had their day in court was the Hindu American Foundation.

Following up on Abhi’s post on PETA’s sexiest vegetarian: Ravi Chand, one of the contestants, is exhibit A in why the de facto draft of military reservists is a bad idea. What happens when you take a pacifist from the liberal enclave of UC Santa Cruz and send him to Iraq? Snake eaters turning vegan and naked kissing in the streets, that’s what. Chand makes love and war:

Chand served as a corporal on the crew of an Amtrack amphibious tank. His unit came under direct fire when it was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, he said… Chand said six Marines went vegetarian and one went vegan. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]

Chand, a vegan U.S. Marine, claims vegetarians are sexier and slimmer because they don’t clog their arteries by eating saturated fat. “There’s nothing sexy about gnawing on the corpse of a dead animal,” Chand said. [New Haven Advocate]

Before going vegan, Ravi did only nominally on… a grueling test in which only the top 1% of the Marine Corps are physically equipped to score perfect on. However, just weeks after going vegan, he noticed huge endurance and strength gains… he scored perfect on the test. He ran the 3 mile run at an avg of 5 min 40 second miles, did 30 pullups, and aced the situp portion. [Animal Voices]

Chand, now a triathlete, is involved in a typical PETA stunt in which he gets paid to make out with a rotating selection of models (ok, I’m slightly jealous):

A crowd gathered… to watch a partially clothed man and woman on a mattress as part of PETA’s 10-city “Live Make-out Tour.” [Lansing City Pulse]

SM tipster Flogging Mona directs my attention to the website of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Get Your Hot Tamales Here-
A picture is worth a thousand words, but after reviewing the pictures of the hundreds of sultry soy boys and Tofutti cuties who entered our “Sexiest Vegetarian” online photo contest, only one word comes to mind—HOT! The results are in, and our PETA panel has narrowed down the field. It’s time for you to pick the best from this crop of cruelty-free hotties and crown one guy and one gal the “Sexiest Vegetarian Alive.” Let us know which of the hot potatoes below lights your fire by choosing one woman and one man (don’t forget to click “Vote” at the bottom of the page). We’ll tally the votes and publish the winners’ photos in PETA’s Animal Times. Both winners will also receive a terrific cruelty-free prize package!

Thank you to all who entered. For those who missed the deadline, don’t despair—come back soon to GoVeg.com, where we’ll post details about how to strut your stuff in next year’s contest.

I am a little disappointed to see that despite the fact that Indians invented wegetarianism there is only 1 (maybe 2) brown person on the list. Next year we will submit Anna’s profile.

With every prison blown to dust,
My enemies walk free… [Sting]

Mukhtaran Bibi’s rapists, who received approval to gang-rape from a village panchayat, were set free by judges in Multan today. In some ways this outcome is hard to believe, in other ways all too easy:

The victim of Pakistan’s most notorious rape case wept bitterly after a court in the southern city of Multan overturned the verdict against three of the four alleged rapists and two tribal elders, and quashed the death sentence against the sixth… five of the men prepared to walk free…

… she has maintained the 24-hour police guard at the gate of her remote farmhouse after several death threats. She believed the threats stemmed from her refusal to entertain repeated clemency pleas from the Mastoi, who still live just 100 metres away…

… the panchayat system… has no legal standing but is still prevalent in many rural towns. Last week elders in another Punjabi village ordered that a two-year-old girl be married to a man 33 years her senior. The betrothal was in compensation for an adulterous affair committed by her uncle. [Guardian]

The wisdom of the elders indeed. Previous post here.

Update: In the herky-jerky, stop-start fashion of a desi criminal justice system, the rapists have been re-arrested (thanks, SD).

Desipina is again hosting its low-rent, highwire theater collection Seven.11 in Manhattan, and Anuvab Pal is contributing a new piece called Paris. The schtick is that playwrights of all colors contribute seven tales of 11 minutes each, all set in convenience stores. It sounds much like 11.9.01: September 11, a collection of short films 11 minutes, nine seconds and one frame long by filmmakers including Mira Nair, Sean Penn, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros), Samira Makhmalbaf and Youssef Chahine.

As far as creative gimmicks go, this is a good one: even the Manhattan Project found creative benefit in time constraints, although nuclear incineration has been known to be motivating. This is the third year of Seven.11, so it’s clearly a successful franchise. The quick-witted Lethia Nall, who was so good in Alter Ego’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, appears in both Paris and Soonderella.

Anuvab Pal’s PARIS: Paris is a play about an 11 minute conversation without consequence on a lazy Paris afternoon…

Samrat Chakrabarti/Sanjiv Jhaveri’s new musical SOONDERELLA: a fairy tale of a different colour… The only way to follow up with last year’s wildly successful A Very Desi Christmas, a pop musical adaptation of Scrooge, is with another 11-minute musical set in the convenience store…

It’s also a clear demarcation between Right and Left Coast desi stereotypes; the Left Coast analogue would be 80 tales of 86 engineers, but who’d go see it? Bugaboo and nerdcore call my bluff.

This one is dedicated to all you out there right now, slaves to your computers, wishing that instead you had a powerful beast between your legs and the warm desert wind blowing through your hair. Outside Magazine recently awarded its 2005 Best Trips Award (Asia category) to Alexander Souri, the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI). As reported by NewKerala.com:

“Alexander Souri, who has worked on “The Matrix” and “X-Men”, is the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI) whose members made the trip in October last year to provide medical and relief supplies to people.

When I created Relief Riders International I never dreamed we would receive such international recognition so soon,” said Souri after winning the Outside Magazine’s Best Trips 2005 award.

“I dreamt of a new way to travel, a chance to see new lands and an opportunity to transform both the visitor and the visited. I am so honoured that Outdoor Magazine appreciated our vision.”

With nearly a million subscribers, New York-based Outside magazine is one of the best-known adventure travel magazines in the world. The magazine recognized RRI for its successful aid component, emphasising the high point of the trip was seeing villagers receive knowledge such as AIDS education plus food and supplies that they desperately need.

RRI is now making final preparations for its second Rajasthan Relief Ride, which begins Feb 25.

The inaugural 15-day ride, created by Souri to establish a living memorial to his Indian father, began at the majestic Imperial Hotel with a bus ride to historic Fort Mukandgarh.

So. J.Lo does German TV wearing a very unique outfit; embroidered on the cuff of her white dead-animal-skin with more dead-animal fur-hooded jacket, there is a logo that includes an Iron Cross, a lightning bolt and skulls.

I don't expect any of you to connect the dots THIS late in the day, so I'll just TELL you what's up-- the design resembles patches that were once worn by SS troops during WWII. Thanks to Adolf Hitler, the Iron Cross transitioned from a "proud symbol of courage among German soldiers" to something that represented the Third Reich.

Many of you are aware of another symbol that was tragically misappropriated by Hitler-- the swastika. Well, the way that Hitler ruined the Iron Cross was by--you guessed it (assuming you intellectuals are still reading about our gen's liz taylor)--slamming a swastika on it. Heil Assh@le.

J.Lo's taste in clothing always gets attention, but this time Drudge and the pajamahadeen are on her like a potential husband.

From Drudge's site:

The designer of the one-of-a-kind, $2,300 jacket, Jeff Sebilia, says his imagery not only doesn't endorse Nazism, but is meant "to make people aware of just how powerful imagery can be. We all know the swastika was a peaceful Hindu image, and we know what the Nazis did to that. I think we can use imagery that has stark emotion and make it our own."

Suuuuuure. Hide behind the "Hindu" explanation. I have no doubt that when people see this swastika-less coat of his, they are thinking, "oh, isn't it sad that something good from Hinduism was so misused?" :p

I'm positive that's what J.Lo had in mind, too; she was obviously reclaiming symbols-- for all of us.

Billboard.com reports that powerhouse music label Interscope Records has signed U.K. rapper M.I.A., and will release the controversial musician’s upcoming album “Arular” in the U.S. by mid-April (via Nirali Magazine). She’s currently touring the country, and will appear at the immensely popular Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in May.

Billboard.com: Sources: Interscope signs M.I.A.
Previous posts: M.I.A.: step up to blow up, Steel balls and pots, M.I.A. looked directly into my eyes!, and Military chic

Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) is organizing a rally on Saturday, March 5th at noon in Queens “to protest attacks on immigrant communities and to demand that Governor Pataki and other political representatives recognize all immigrants’ right to a driver’s license.” This according to their press release:

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles initiated plans last year that would result in the suspension of nearly 300,000 immigrants’ driver’s licenses and inappropriately use the DMV as an immigration agency. Over 40 organizations, mostly based in Queens and many belonging to the New York Coalition for Immigrants’ Rights to Driver’s Licenses, have come together to form the Queens Drivers’ License Coalition and will march in opposition to this policy. They are demanding that the right to drive be recognized as an immigrant worker rights issue, that all drivers be granted one license (no separate driving permits for immigrants), that DMV not act as immigration enforcement, and that Governor Pataki and other elected officials stop pushing immigrant workers underground.

Obviously this issue is of great importance to the South Asian community, many of who make their living as drivers:

Moni Alam, a Bangladeshi mother of two and family organizer at DRUM, expresses, “My husband, who is also a target of Special Registration, is very worried that his driver’s license will be taken away and that the DMV will help the Department of Homeland Security to deport him. He drives a taxi six days a week and if he can’t do his work, our family will have no income and we’ll be pushed further underground. I want to ask Governor Pataki and the DMV, ‘How will we survive?’”

SM tipster Vipur Andleigh (by the way, a great stand-up comedian) turns us on to a report in the San Jose Mercury News about the arrest of kabaddi pro — yes, you read that right, kabaddi pro — Kuljeet Singh:

Coming home after a grueling winter season of Kabaddi matches in East India, Kuljeet Singh arrived at San Francisco International Airport two weeks ago with a suitcase full of trophies, neatly folded designer jeans and a stash of syringes and steroids in his shoes.

He got as far as customs.

Singh obviously isn’t the sharpest raider on the kabaddi circle. Everybody knows that the best way to smuggle illegal drugs into the country is by stuffing them up your ass, or ingesting a sealed bag of them. Hiding them in your shoes is so 1998.

Voice of America gives a little preview of what many of us will be doing through the spring and summer months: going to the elaborate Indian weddings of people younger than us.

The bride is always beautiful.

And Sumit Arya’s job is to make sure she looks perfect. Originally from India - he’s a wedding planner.

“I’ve been raised half over here and half in India, so I do combine a lot of the ideas when it comes to wedding planning,” says Mr. Aray.

Sumit and his wife Shika make a bride’s dreams come true. Their Expos are one-stop shopping trips, where a traditionally-minded bride can find everything from jewels and exquisite silk, to a Hindu clergyman to officiate.

Vimesh Thakkar, a Hindu pundit says, “I go all around the U.S.A. As a matter of fact, next month I am going to Puerto Rico. Nowadays, people want the ceremonies in resorts. So I go to Mexico and other places to do [weddings].”

Must be nice. Maybe I shall become a clergyman. What?
The transcript of the videoclip can be found here.

Of the many entertaining shows on VH-1--The Surreal Life, Strange Love, Fabulous Life of..., etc.--My Coolest Years--Rich Kids, features our own ABCD version of Paris Hilton--Vikram Chatwal.

My Coolest Years is 10 episodes of fun teenage reflection. Each hour episode dedicated to the personal stories of a particular clique. If you grew up in America in the last 30 years, you'll recognize the types. We all had to pick one. To hang out with. To hook up with. To torment. To be. (Or not to be!) We'll hear from the Metalheads, Geeks, Hippies, Bad Girls, B Boys, Jocks & Cheerleaders, the Rich Kids, the kids who were In The Closet, their "First" Times (wink wink), and their Summer Vacations.

Where did he grow up and what did he drive?
Vikram resided in a 10,000 square foot penthouse apartment and drove Porsche's, Mercedes', and BMW's. Cliche, isn't it?

Did he have a nanny?
While the other rich kids were being watched by Olga the swedish exchange student, or Marie the French Au Pair, Vikram was reared by Raju, the male nanny, who would come to school to serve Vikram lunch.

What was his secret stash?
When other kids were hiding porno mags, alcohol, and cigarettes, Vikram like a good little desi-boy, hid gaudy jewelry from his parents.

To watch Vikram, and the other rich kids in all their splendour , check out the next episode of My Coolest Years--Rich Kids on VH-1 airing next on March 22.

More Sepia Mutiny on Vikram here, here and here.

Sepia Mutiny reader JT writes into the tipline with an event for DC area Mutineers -

Hi, I thought the DC area SP readers might be interested in attending the March 7 Literary Series at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Chitra Banerjee Divakruni will be reading from _Queen of Dreams_ and will sign the book at the reception following the reading.

Admission is $10 general, $8 visitors 60 and over, $7 NMWA members and $5 students. For tickets and reservations, call 202-783-7370 or email reservations@nmwa.org. For more information, check out
www.nmwa.org/calendar. The NWMA is located at 1250 New York Ave, NW,
which is 2 blocks north of Metro Center.

Manish's literature site has more info on Banerjee.

Tipster Dhrumil directs our attention to a new and entertaining little website: Bad Indian Girl.com

Welcome to BadIndianGirl.com. This is a one stop destination where Indian women who are mislabeled by their overbearing relatives can come together and vent. We at B.I.G. believe that there are many stereotypes within the Westernized Indian Community and such stereotypes should be approached in a humorous way. Some may feel that this site is desecrating Indian value systems that have been carefully brought upon us by our parents. Some may feel this site is poking fun at elderly Indian folks and disrespecting the Indian culture. And some may even feel that they can directly relate to the profiles of Raju, Payal, Pervert Uncle and the Nosy Auntie. It is not our job to protect people’s emotions that may be offended by the material. Our job is to take a funny approach to some frustrating issues prevalent in the general Indian Community. Of course there is no such thing as a “Bad Indian Girl” or even a “Good Indian Girl”. These are labels that are brought forth by community members who are quick to judge an individual based on her lifestyle. This site is designed to make you laugh. If it does anything other than that you are free to express your opinion on our forum or send us an email. In any case, please enjoy this site for what it is and remember a BadIndianGirl is as fictitious as any other character on this site.

Among the difficult issues covered on this site are:
-How to tell off your nosy auntie

-Top 10 signs that your family has secretly posted your profile on an Indian Matrimonial site

-How to handle the Pervert Indian Uncle of the Indian Community

The one that I am looking forward to is:
-How to prevent yourself from having Auntie Butt and Sari Rolls (coming soon)

By now most SM readers have gotten used to my frequent posts [1,2,3,4,5,6] on Louisiana Congressman Piyush “Bobby” Jindal. The main motivation for my posts isn’t because I want to rail against his right wing beliefs or because I care about his religion. I am mainly interested in Power and Politics in the U.S. government. The fact that Jindal is South Asian allows me to explore THOSE themes in front of THIS audience in a way that I feel may be both interesting and hopefully educational. If we want to see how the system works so that more South Asians might enter national politics, what better way to get smart than to study the rise of Jindal?

Last week Jindal was named an assistant Whip in the 109th Congress. As reported at BayouBuzz.com:

Congressman Bobby Jindal (LA-1) took a larger step into prominence in the United States House of Representatives this week. Recently he was invited to the White House for a special briefing with the President. Additionally, he was asked to join a special budget whip team, set up to work through potential concerns with the budget. Finally, he was asked by the Speaker of the House to serve as Speaker Pro Tempore on Wednesday.

“It has been an exciting few days,” Jindal said. “I have been given some great opportunities to meet with the President and work with the leadership. My job now is to turn these opportunities into advantages for Louisiana.”

Congressman Jindal was asked to attend a special briefing at the White House on Wednesday, February 16. The session was an opportunity for the 11 members present to offer their input to the administration. It took place in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing and was attended by both the President and the Vice President.

So what exactly is a Whip? Since some of you don’t watch The West Wing I figured I’d explain:

The use of the term “whip,” in the U.S. Congress comes from the British House of Commons. In the British practice, the “whipper-in” plays an important role in the sport of fox hunting. He whips the dogs to keep them running after the fox as a pack, preventing them from running off on their own. Similarly, the “whipper-in” of both the government and opposition parties in Parliament is tasked with encouraging Members to vote with their party, and not stray off on their own.

“Encouraging.” I like that.

What happens when a radio station ignorantly insults Chinese people over something that happened in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand (wha?): public rallies (thanks, Saurav), dis tracks, government officials baying for blood:

 

“If the FCC was able to fine CBS $550,000 for a wardrobe malfunction, then it can certainly penalize WQHT-FM radio for the really sick stuff coming out of the mouths of their shock jocks,” stated [NYC] Council Member John Liu… “WQHT-FM Radio and Emmis Communications need to terminate Miss Jones and Todd Lynn… Emmis fostered an atmosphere that aided and abetted these individuals in their deplorable conduct, and we intend to hold the corporation accountable.” [Vibe]

What happens when a radio station calls up desis at their workplace and insults them directly:

It’s another law of large numbers. So get out there and procreate! This message brought to you by Humpin’ for a Browner America.

Several news organizations including ABC News, report the story captured in the Reuters picture shown here.

Alongside life-size posters of Hindu nationalist leaders, Indian political activists can now buy lotions, potions and pills to cure anything from cancer to hysteria to piles - all made from cow urine or dung.

A new goratna (cow products) stall at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) souvenir shop is rapidly outselling dry political tracts, badges, flags and saffron-and-green plastic wall clocks with the face of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

“You won’t believe how quickly some of the products sold out,” Manoj Kumar, who runs the souvenir shop along with his brother, Sanjeev, said.

“The constipation medicine is a hot seller.”

But the biggest seller is a “multi-utility pill” that claims to cure anything from diabetes to piles to “ladies’ diseases”.

But what business does the BJP political party have in selling cow piss?

BJP spokesman Siddarth Singh says the stall aims to promote village industry, one of the biggest employers in India.

“If you go back in the history of India, this belongs to our culture,” he said.

“There’s no commercial value to us. Village industry in this country needs to be promoted.”

Who would have ever suspected that cow piss could be used to garner votes? If U.S. politicians ever find out…

Rohini grew up in Northridge, where she lived with her dad—who is Indian and worked for Boeing—and her mom, who is British, until the couple’s marriage difficulties overwhelmed them and Rohini followed her mother at 16 to a small apartment in Sherman Oaks…

… They were amazed at this gift who wore no makeup, who could smoke massive amounts of pot and still beat them on Super Mario or Zelda…

… in L.A. a woman so inclined can arrive out of nowhere… and insinuate herself into the highest echelons… They are fresh arrivals like Christie Prody, who left Minnesota to stand outside O.J. Simpson’s gate until he came down off the Exercycle to take her number… Rohini and Jessica were over the rope, smiling past the paparazzi who shouted, “Who are you? Let us take your picture!” and into the club…

The anthropology of dating inside the L.A. Scene, on the other hand, is as complicated as a structuralist’s interpretation of a Balinese cockfight. As Rohini explained it once over lunch, there are four major motifs: (1) Men (and some women) are always attempting to have sex with as many partners as possible; (2) No one wants anyone else to know who they are sleeping with; which leads to (3) Couples passing as single people in clubs to avoid detection; and finally (4) The Slut/Angel/Slut typology…

DJ’s in Philadelphia are not alone in lobbing verbal assaults at Indian call center agents. Industry executives and analysts say abusive hate calls are commonplace, and a primary cause of workplace stress. The Washington Post reports:

Rohail Manzoor thought he had what it took to work in a telephone call center. All he had to do was pick up the phone and answer queries from American customers about their long-distance bills. He was armed with lessons on how to speak English like the Americans -- adjust the r’s, say “zee” instead of “zed,” “mail” instead of “post.”

He even called himself “Jim,” and figured he would pretend to be an American customer service agent.

But nothing prepared him for the shower of curses that came his way when he picked up the phone one night on the job.

“‘You Indians suck!’ an American screamed on the phone,” recalled a soft-spoken Manzoor, 25. “He was using a lot of four-letter words, too. He called me names left, right and center.”

As a result, some call centers now offer classes on stress-management, meditation, breathing, yoga, and even how to be more American:

Industry watchers say some call centers have giant TV screens showing the weather in different U.S. cities, the scores from latest New York Knicks game or news about the latest play on Broadway. The agents use the information on the screen to make small talk with the caller and mask their location in India.

The training given to the call center aspirants not only involves diction, but also a crash course in American culture. Maneesh Ahooja, a voice and accent trainer for call center employees in Bombay, often makes them watch popular TV shows such as “Friends” and “Dharma and Greg.”

Obviously, part of the problem is with the training itself. After all, when was “Dharma and Greg” ever considered popular? And does anyone really ask about the score of the Knicks game? These days, isn’t it safe to assume that they’re losing? Of course, most of the problem, say executives, finds its source in American anger over outsourcing, and Jason Alexander.

The Washington Post: India call centers suffer storm of 4-letter words (Free registration required)