Asha for Education is in the midst of its annual “Work an Hour” campaign. Seems like they are well short of their goal at the moment. Having worked in an NGO in India whose focus was also education for underprivileged children, I have a soft spot for this cause and thought I’d try and help out their campaign with a post.

What is work an hour?

Each year volunteers from around the world come together in a show of great human spirit, to help educate underprivileged children in India. Work An Hour, or WAH, as it is popularly known, is a simple concept. We ask you to symbolically contribute one hour of your time towards the cause of children’s education by donating an hour’s worth of your salary or more. The event symbolically begins on July 4, the American Independence Day, reaches an apex on August 15, the Indian Independence Day, and finally culminates on September 5, which is celebrated as Teachers’ Day in India.

How much should I donate?

You can donate any amount. We encourage you to donate an hour’s worth or more of your salary.

Where does the money go?

100% of all funds collected through Work an Hour go directly towards the selected projects. Keeping with Asha’s long-standing policy, Asha volunteers bear all administrative expenses.

If donating money isn’t your thing then consider volunteering your time for Asha or another similar organization. You can volunteer both here in the States and obviously in India. It is better than living in your parent’s basement while you figure out what you want to do with your life :)

The objectives of this group are:

-To provide education to underprivileged children in India.
-To encourage the formation of various local groups across the world to reach out to larger sections of the population.
-To support and cooperate with persons and groups already engaged in similar activities.
-To raise the required human and other resources to achieve the group objectives.
-To provide opportunities to individuals living outside India who wish to participate in Asha activities in India.
-To address, whenever possible, other issues affecting human life such as health care, environment, socio-economic aspects and women’s issues.

Indian-American model Shazia Deen recently starred in a music video for the Marc Anthony song ‘Ahora Quién.’ In cascading ringlets, silk scarf and trenchcoat, she’s dressed as an old-time starlet and looks like a million bucks. Watch the video.

Shazia was born in India, her father being part British and Punjabi and her mother born and raised in Delhi. She moved to California when she was three… she has gone on to make 15 national commercials and Ad campaigns for such major companies as Skechers, Kodak, Nike, Hanes, Payless, Diet Coke… She has been studying acting in Los Angeles for 4 years and has guest-starred on TV shows like the Andy Dick show… She has also just finished a two and a half year course in Ayurvedic medicine… [Link]

Deen may be part Anglo, but that jawline is classically Punjabi. From her demo reel, she also seems to have played Latina and Iraqi. Racial passing is actually more interesting in real life than the pixelated vacuity of the image biz. It’s part hidden talents, part undercover spook: The Bourne Identity, The Long Kiss Goodnight.

The postracial premise is interesting, I’ve lived it, meeting someone attractive who unexpectedly turns out to be desi… it’s the unfolding of hidden wings… Even funnier is when someone you meet seems fairly whitewashed, then, months later in the right context, totally busts out with a tender oldie from, say, Umrao Jaan, with flawless pronunciation and full-bore eyelash flutter. It’s a hell of a bender. [Link]

Passing was also one of the most fascinating things about Bollywood/Hollywood, a parody in two parts: a charming and very meta first half, a leaden and inept second. Casting the half-Polish Lisa Ray as Sue/Sunita, the non-desi desi, was clever on too many levels to parse. The flick proved men do make passes at a girl who passes.

Bolly/Holly also had that thrilling, swing version of ‘Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo’ and its shapeshifting singer. Sanjiv Wadhwani belts the filmi standard in a bad Amrikan accent, but he’s just playin’, dawg. He morphs into fluent Hindi and again into jazz vibrato. So hot. The song plays over the closing credits; über-grandma Dina Pathak and wrestler Killer Khalsa boogie with a drag queen (Ranjit Chowdhry) wrapped in geisha. I forgave the bad acting for this scene alone. Watch the clip.

‘Ahora Quién’ (‘Now Who’) is on Marc Anthony’s Amar Sin Mentiras (To Love Without Lies), released last year. Anthony proves the market for elegiac cheese, like a fondue pit, is bottomless.

Here’s my review of Bollywood/Hollywood. Hear more desi-Latino collaboration here.

Just a gentle reminder that we look forward to rallying the west coast mutiny this weekend.

TIME: 5pm
SPACE: Caffe Greco
PLACE: 423 Columbus Ave, San Francisco,CA

HRH Anna & I will be holding court. Come one and come all.

Last week Turbanhead wrote about how exasperating it sometimes seems when trying to get your documents in order to travel abroad (in terms of dealing with the often clueless bureaucracy). NRI worldwide recently reported on a few anecdotes that suddenly don’t make Turbanhead’s ordeal seem so bad:

An American officer manning the counter asked her if she was a singer. She replied that she was — and was shocked when the gentleman asked, “How about singing a nice song for me?” Sonali landed on her feet, though, and joked that it would cost him.

He reiterated his seriousness, and ultimately, she had to hum a line or two. It was a “funny feeling”, but that was how she got her visa three years ago.

The story goes that none other than Asha Bhosle was about to be asked to prove she could sing, had an Indian staffer at the consulate not intervened and averted the faux pas! This incident could not, however, be independently confirmed.

That reminds me of those old cartoons where Yosemite Sam would shoot his guns at Bug Bunny’s feet until he danced. Michael Higgins tips us off to yet more consulate related humor on The Renegade of Junk blogsite:

Yesterday, I sent my Indian passport off to the Consulate to be renewed. The preliminary groundwork that needed to be completed for this purpose was, to say the least, a trying experience. In fact,in general, any activity requiring interaction with my fellow citizens of this country has become a trying experience.

The BBC reports that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has ordered all foreign students, some 1,400 pupils, to leave the country’s madrassas.

Madrassas have been in the spotlight after one of the London bombers was reported to have studied at one. The move against foreigners at the madrassas also applies to Pakistanis holding dual nationality, the AFP news agency reports. Gen Musharraf also told journalists that action would be taken against any of the madrassas that did not register with the authorities. After the 11 September attacks on the United States the Pakistani government tightened the rules around madrassa visa applications, saying that the visas would become invalid once a student ceased to study at the school. [Link]

Four years after September 11th, this is a bit too little and too late. Sounds like Rumsfeld or Condoleezza must be applying the ‘camel clutch’ on him.

Herr Musharraf, whom one commenter claims is our ‘best option,’ is reportedly training the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan:

Afghan officials allege that Taliban and allied fighters who fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 are learning new, more lethal tactics from the Pakistani military at numerous training bases. “Pakistan is lying,” said Lt. Sayed Anwar, acting head of Afghanistan’s counter-terrorism department. “We have very correct reports from their areas. We have our intelligence agents inside Pakistan’s border as well… They say they are friends of Americans, and yet they order these people to kill Americans…” [Link]

Clearly Anwar hasn’t had any PR training — he has the balls to call a spade a spade. In contrast, newspapers always hasten to add the Pakistani military’s denial, injecting artificial ‘balance’ by spreading that threadbare lie.

Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani journalist who freelances for the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that at least some training camps that were closed on Musharraf’s orders have been reopened. The government denies that there are training camps. But Ali, who also writes for the Pakistani magazine the Herald, visited one camp and found armed militants with fresh recruits as young as 13 undergoing 18-day “ideological orientation” and weapons training. Several sources said 13 militant camps had been reactivated in the Mansehra region alone in the first week of May…

“Our transport fleet is back, electricity has been restored and the communications system is in place,” a militant guide reportedly boasted to Ali. The reported reopening of militant training camps in Pakistan coincides with the discovery of the high-tech bombs in Afghanistan. [Link]

The triggers consisted of long-range cordless phones attached with black electrical tape to electronic boxes… “These phones are Pakistani-made phones,” he said… “They have Pepsis in the mountains while I can’t find them here in the city,” Nooristani said. “That means they are well supported.” [Link]

Why Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian killed by British special forces in the London Underground, ran from the cops: he had overstayed his visa. The British government issued this gingerly-worded statement:

He applied and received a student visa on October 31 of that year, allowing him to stay until June 30, 2003. After that, the Home Office has no record of any further application or correspondence from de Menezes. “We have seen a copy of Mr. de Menezes’ passport containing a stamp apparently giving him indefinite leave to remain in the UK,” the Home Office statement said. “On investigation, this stamp was not one that was in use by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate on the date given…” [Link]

I don’t condone illegal immigration, but the usual response is to deport, not to execute. (Yes, it was a mistake. No, the cops aren’t blameless.)

Previous posts: 1, 2

One of the two young girls picked up by the government (on suspicion of terrorism) re-appeared in her Harlem neighborhood in May. Sixteen year old Guinean immigrant Adama Bah was released by the Feds without explanation (and she’s under court order not to talk about it). Her friend Tashnuba Hayder was deported back to Bangladesh. Her classmates missed her and let her know recently via an impressive art exhibit they prepared to tell her story. The New York Times reported a few days ago (tip from Priya):

When Adama Bah’s schoolmates decided to make a public artwork project about her case last spring, she and another 16-year-old girl were being held by the federal government after it had identified them, without explanation, as potential suicide bombers.

“We didn’t know if we would ever see her again,” said Kimberly Lane, who was then an art teacher at the school, the Heritage School in East Harlem, where many viewed Adama’s detention as unjust and incomprehensible. “This was a way for the students to use art to speak out at a time when a lot of people, including adults, were afraid to do anything.”

The result towers over anything that most people would expect high school students to produce. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, where the work is on display through Thursday, the director of art education, Prof. Judith M. Burton, says it reminds her of Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais.”

Life after being thrown in jail without explanation isn’t easy on a poor immigrant family as you can imagine:

“I asked the students why are they doing that,” Adama recalled. “They said they just wanted to let my story be heard and help me out.”

These days, Adama acknowledges that her family is in difficult financial straits. The telephone has been shut off and her mother stays late at her trinket stand in Brooklyn, trying to earn enough to buy groceries for Adama and four younger children. But Adama was bubbling over about her summer job, reading to children at Bellevue Hospital Center.

There’s a big charity drive running in New York. Its ads, splashed all over the sides of NYC buses, contain pictures of enormous backpacks. The drive’s military-sounding name? Operation Backpack NYC.

Operation Backpack benefits homeless children in the Greater New York area by outfitting them with backpacks full of new school supplies in September… A typical twelfth grader is 17-18 years old and needs a larger backpack. Look for backpacks with classic colors and sturdy builds. [Link]

They’re asking New Yorkers to equip 10,000 largely brown teens with overstuffed backpacks. But no food containers, please.

Worst… timing… ever!

In other news, V for Vendetta is releasing shortly. It’s a movie about blowing up downtown London.

Nervous Nellies got a LA-to-London flight grounded earlier this week over suspicious-looking furriners. People on the flight had to spend the night in Boston:

A flight from Los Angeles to London was diverted to Boston early Tuesday after three Pakistani passengers were reported acting suspiciously, but nothing amiss was found and the three were released after questioning… the three passengers had been “acting suspiciously and making the passengers nervous.” [Link]

All 226 passengers aboard the flight were taken off the plane while it was searched… [Link]

… the FBI also interviewed the three passengers. [Link]

What’ll get you interrogated by the FBI these days:

• Walking around the airplane to shoot the shit with your buddies
• Talking about the news
• Snapping a tourist photo
• Taking carry-ons

Federal officials said the men had spent the flight walking back and forth between their seats, one in first class, another in business class, and the third in coach. Some passengers also said they overheard the men discussing the recent London transit bombings. Some said they had another passenger take a photo of them posing together in front of the Los Angeles International Airport boarding gate. Other passengers said the men checked no luggage.  [Link]

Apparently they were ‘doing much more than just walking around.’ Lemme guess: they weren’t speaking in English. Or they had free packets of peanuts stuffed in their pockets — très desi

A spokesman for United Air Lines said the men ”were doing much more than just walking around” and alarmed the crew enough to notify the captain, but declined to provide details ”because that’s considered sensitive information…” [Link]

Snark aside, we don’t really have much info here because nobody’s releasing it. I suppose there’s a chance they were putting together bomb diagrams in Morse code while hoofing it up the aisle: one tap for red wire, two taps for green; one if by land, two if by sea. But in the absence of additional information, it does seem to be the increasingly popular triumph of suspicion over common sense.

Bombay had 37.1 inches of rain on Tuesday, a national record. It's led to lots of problems, including some deaths (as of this writing, 200 people in Bombay, 400+ people in the state of Maharashtra), as well as huge property damage.

Despite power outages, the Bombay bloggers have been whirring away. Dilip D'Souza, for instance, has been busy, with a column on Rediff and a series of posts on his blog. Amit Varma has a great piece called "Streets Like Rivers", and a great number of links up here. Sonia Faleiro has an account of getting stuck at the airport, spending the night in the lobby of a hotel, and of the strange, almost inexplicable helpfulness of strangers in a catastrophe. Uma, of IndianWriting, has these pictures, and these links. Also see Gaurav Sabnis, here and here.

But the most interesting accounts of the flooding by far are not by bloggers (though I love the bloggers), but the first-person accounts that have been showing up on Rediff. Below the fold is an account that I found to be particularly moving, warts and all.

An anonymous tipster informs me that there is but a single South Asian amongst the 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill, and he’s #48. [Via Wonkette]

The “50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill” of 2005 is finally out and we’re not sure where to begin. We do notice that none of last year’s most beautiful made it to this year’s list. It’s a tough town, one year you’re young and gorgeous, the next you’re. . Denny Hastert.

Republican staffer Dino Teppara [previous mentions 1,2] seems to have made the cut. We HAVE to do better than just one for next year people. At least one Democrat, please.

If you are a jerk like me then you will soon be forwarding this link to all your friends who work on the Hill and telling them to start working out and dressing better for a shot next year. :)

Discuss.

SM reader Cicatrix forwards us this picture (on the left) presumably taken at a Tube Station in London [Via Gawker]. But seriously people. How many of us in a rush to go to work have time to actually READ a sign. I’m not telling Tube workers how to do their jobs but I would have made it into a drawing instead of a note so you could get the gist of it faster. How about something like the one on the right instead?

September’s Atlantic magazine has a breakdown of how countries fared after the takedown of an authoritarian government.

It is by now a truism that ousting an authoritarian regime is often far easier than sustaining freedom afterward. A recent study from the human-rights organization Freedom House argues that “people power,” rather than top-down reform or armed revolt, has the best chance of achieving that result. Researchers examined sixty-seven such political transitions over the past thirty-three years, and found that those countries in which regime change was brought about by nonviolent civic resistance were more likely to be “free” or “partly free” today than countries in which political elites alone had launched the transition or opposition groups had used violence to topple the government. Five of the forty-seven countries that experienced generally peaceful transitions are currently rated “not free,” compared with four of the twenty countries in which the opposition employed violence. As for Iraq’s future, the study offers no guide: only three of the transitions examined were driven by external interventions, with one state (Panama) currently rated “free,” one (Bosnia) “partly free,” and one (Cambodia) “not free.”

View the entire report “How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy,” (pdf) here.

One of my fav milbloggers - Belmont Club - takes up the ever so interesting story of “just WTF is going on in Waziristan?”. It’s got Mushie mad at Abizaid -

The Winds of Change reports that President Pervez Musharraf warned General John Abizaid against cross border operations into Pakistan. President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday warned Pakistan would not tolerate future violations of its frontiers and would thwart infiltration into its controlled areas on the pretext of war of terror. Talking to Gen Abizaid, the chief of US Central Command, who called on him at Army House in Rawalpindi, the president said Islamabad was offering every possible support and cooperation to the US and the international community for fighting terrorism and extremism, however it could not allow anyone to violate its borders under the pretext of anti-terror campaign.

And what’s driving the incursions - the frustrating search for Bin Laden -

Operation Enduring Freedom may have given the impression that Pakistan was the highway to Afghanistan, the reverse may be true. Ahmed Rashid wrote in the International Herald Tribune of the tantalizing view southeast: Gone are the days when U.S. officials said vaguely that bin Laden was somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is and that he is not in Afghanistan - implying he is in Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who is now the U.S envoy in Baghdad, has been more blunt and said that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

And the brilliant irony of these forces carried to a certain logical ends -

by threatening the areas of weakest governance, organizations like Al Qaeda have driven those beleaguered states into the arms of the only power with means and mobility to come to their assistance. It would be the supreme irony if radical Islam’s lasting contribution to history turned out to be the establishment of a global American power.

Previous SM coverage - 1, and 2…

The August 1 issue of the New Yorker is la vie en sepia. It covers Charlie and the Chocolate Factory star Deep Roy, M.I.A.’s spinner Diplo and the Sri Lankan civil war. Roy is hilarious — I’ve never before seen an uncle in leather bellbottoms doing a KISS impersonation:

Inscrutable hybrids of Punjab and Marvin the Martian, their hair sculpted to resemble chocolate kisses, Roy’s Oompa Loompas are the film’s comic engine… As the Loompas, he sings, disco-dances, smashes guitars, and swims synchronically; he’s a chef, a barber, a shrink, a secretary, and exactly one hundred and twenty-one other things…

It took six months of fourteen-hour days to complete the filming of Roy’s four song-and-dance extravaganzas… Eugene Pidgeon, an actor and writer turned labor activist for dwarf performers [said]… “For every Deep Roy, there are a hundred and fifty of us who are forced to do wacked-out shit on ‘The Man Show…’ ” [Link]

Pop will eat itself:

[Wesley Pentz, aka Diplo] produced “Bucky Done Gun” for the British artist M.I.A.—it appears on her current album, “Arular”—and it consists in large part of chopped-up bits of a song called “Injeção,” by the Brazilian singer Deise Tigrona, which was recorded in da Matta’s studio. Both tracks incorporate a tiny sample of the horns from Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from “Rocky,” to create a stabbing, jittery effect that is both thrilling and irritating… “Bucky Done Gun” … has now been remixed by da Matta himself… [Link]

The baile funk infection spreads. All your remix are belong to us:

Pentz cued up his own remix of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.” The song was already great—sharp-edged and minimalist—but Pentz had made it better, embellishing it with cantering, syncopated drums to create a swinging dance track. Under Stefani’s vocals, you could also hear snippets of baile funk—from “Feira de Acari,” a festive track that happens to have been produced by da Matta… [Link]

The Sri Lankan war article is not online yet, but it has a useful thumbnail summary of the war: The population split between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka is approximately 75%-25%, with Tamils concentrated in the north and the east of the island. Jealousy of the prosperous Tamil minority led to institutionalized discrimination: politicians reserved jobs and education for the majority and enshrined Sinhala and Buddhism as the country’s official language and religion. Tamils went from 50% of the medical and engineering students in the ’60s to 20% by the end of the ’70s. Discrimination against a prosperous minority is commonplace; in the Philippines, it’s erupted as a high rate of kidnapping of the ethnic Chinese, while we all know what happened to desis in Uganda under Idi Amin.

[Note: the following post is a kind of indirect response to Turbanhead, from a couple of days ago]

Writing about Bollywood is incredibly difficult for an amateur fan. Many people are mainly interested in the latest filmi news and gossip, and watch current films to see whether they liked the heroine's outfits. Rani Mukherji's colorful outfits are scrutinized closely, but the quality of the film in which the outfits appear is somehow overlooked.

Then you have the retro-hipsters and nostalgists, who note the decline of the industry from its golden era in the 1960s and 70s, when both actresses and actors were impressively plump, and everything was fabulous, in that kind of “Amitabh's pants are way too tight, but the sequins on his orange vest are oh so bright!” kind of way. Yes, I concur: dishoom, dishoom.

Some retro-bollywood fans will even argue that in the old days the films were actually objectively better, which doesn't seem terribly plausible to me. There were of course some things that were better in the high-class productions from the old days. In particular there were beautiful song lyrics (many of the writers were professional Urdu poets) and the language -– one thinks especially of 'courtesan' movies like Pakeezah -- but often it was just as bad as it is today, and for the same reasons it is often bad today: very low budgets, hurried shooting, and the privileging of star-power and profit over artistic integrity.

That said, there have been some interesting changes in the Indian film industry in the last 10-15 years, which are in my opinion worth noting and appreciating. The industry is still far from perfect, but it is evolving.

I’m going going back back to Cali Cali, in preparation for BlogHer, a conference dedicated to amplifying women’s voices. I’m just giddy. What a privilege to represent this blog (and all of you!) on a panel at an event that features DOOCE. ;)

What IS BlogHer? What, the cool use of “amplify” didn’t do it for you?

Where are the women bloggers? We’re right here… www.blogher.org

BlogHer Conference ‘05 will be the first of its kind, an opportunity for the female blogging community to meet in person. It will set the agenda for future BlogHer networking and enhance women’s influence in the blog community.

The event will include onsite mixers and informal meet-ups for attendees seeking to network in their areas of interest. BlogHer will even set aside a “Room of Your Own” to enable attendees to form impromptu sessions. A pre-event mixer will be held in close proximity to the conference site the evening before. Also, BlogHer will designate space for vendor demonstrations, where bloggers can explore which solutions work best for their needs.

Word.

Speaking of mixers, I’d love to mix with some of our Northern California-based Mutineers. If you missed Manish and Vinod in New York, come hang out this Sunday, though I’m a sad consolation prize in comparison to the man who was featured at our right-coast line up. :D

What say you? I’ll be exhausted, but on fire from BlogHer and I’d love to give you all the dirt from Saturday’s conference—in person. Who’s in?

TIME: 5pm
SPACE: Caffe Greco
PLACE: 423 Columbus Ave,San Francisco,CA

Knowing that I am a lifelong die-hard 49ers fan, my friend Sandeep S. tips me off about the ambitious young Paraag Marathe. Who is he and how did he end up in the 9ers front office at the age of 28? The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Anyone following the 49ers’ upheaval the last month [NSFW] ran across the name of Paraag Marathe. The assistant to the general manager’s rapid ascension within the 49ers caught the notice of the rest of the league during the team’s recent shakeup.

Who is this 28-year-old whiz kid? How did this man with an MBA from Stanford with little grounding in football become one of four people choosing the 49ers’ next coach and establishing the direction of an organization adrift? Because nobody knew the answers to these questions, Marathe became a lightning rod for the general dismay with the organization among columnists, radio talk-show hosts and even the NFL set, who openly wondered what he was doing in the team’s brain trust.

Marathe (pronounced mah-RAH-tay) became the unwitting victim of what many perceived as co-owner John York’s NFL ignorance. It’s a fact this business consultant from San Jose, via Cal and Stanford, impressed York after then- general manager Terry Donahue brought him in and was a big influence on the coaching search. But he is not expected to play a major role, as yet, in the organization.

A colleague told me this and I hope it brings us up from all the recent doom and gloom. Yes, it has a few of the hallmarks of an urban legend but the punch line doesn’t involve severed limbs, hastily scrawled messages on a mirror, or anyone winding up in a bathtub full of ice and a missing kidney.

“My girlfriend’s best friend’s boyfriend works for a ‘famous online travel agent’. They outsource their IT to Delhi in India. The UK office has been forwarding IT related emails to the Delhi office with the subject line ‘FYI’ and for the last 6 months, the Delhi office has replied with messages entitled ‘FYE’. No one at this ‘famous company’ knew what this stood for, so finally today someone questioned it…”

Poor Pervez. Too much pressure!

Two or three of the four London bombers may have visited Pakistan last year. Musharraf’s response? Blame the UK and tell it to get it’s own house in order.  Problem solved!

But the Little General didn’t get even one moment to rest. After Saturday’s bombings, the Egyptians started to look for six Pakistanis and things got uncomfortable again. Even after the Egyptians stated that the Pakistanis are not suspected of the bomb attack (it’s a “routine security check”) it still left a bad taste.

So “Our Man in Pakistan” decided to settle the matter once and for all. He called a press conference and told the world that “Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan any more.”

Got that? Stop blaming Pakistan! No more hatin’!

Pakistan has destroyed al-Qaeda’s ability to operate on its soil, President Pervez Musharraf has said. He said the network could not have orchestrated deadly bombings in London, Egypt or elsewhere from his country. President Musharraf said al-Qaeda “sanctuaries” in Pakistan had been over-run, and that Pakistani security forces had arrested 700 of the movement’s fighters.

“We have shattered and eliminated their command system there,” he said. Al-Qaeda’s communications system had been reduced to a “courier network”.

“Is it possible in this situation that an al-Qaeda man sitting here, no matter who he is, may control things in London, Sharm al-Sheikh, Istanbul or Africa? This is absolutely wrong,” the president said.  [cite]

I feel so much safer now that he’s clarified all of this. Don’t you?

UPDATE: Radio Open Source has a show “at bat” on this subject, so you should check out their entry …

July has been a tough month. Besides the bombings in London, the shooting of an innocent man in London, the terrible bombing at a resort in Egypt, and the ongoing bombings occurring daily in Iraq, there have also been important developments involving terrorism that is home-grown to India.

The news is both good and bad. The good news is, Indian Express reports that the Punjab police have arrested more than 60 members of a Sikh militant group called Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), many of them with large caches of arms and explosives, including 53 kilograms of RDX and PETN (as specified here). The arrests took place mainly in Chandigarh and Delhi. The key arrest might be that of Jagtar Singh Hawara (pictured left; photo from Frontline), who masterminded the murder of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh some years ago. Hawara is clearly a brutal man bent on killing — a sort of criminal mastermind (he committed his first murder — of a Sikh Granthi — at the age of 15). He had escaped from a Chandigarh prison in February 2004, when he dug a 60 foot tunnel over several months that prison authorities claim they didn’t notice. He is, perhaps most importantly, the ringleader of BKI in India; we should all be glad this guy is behind bars again. Hopefully this time he will stay there.

The bad news is, there may be more terrorists as well as explosives out there. Since the BKI has been quiet since 1997-1998, when it initiated a bombing campaign in Punjab, Indian police hoped that the organization had gone defunct. Its current global leadership is based in Pakistan, where the leader, Wadhawa Singh is reportedly ailing. But the current arrests tell a different story. Not only is BKI not defunct, the police readily admit there are still known members as well as an alarming quantity of explosive material in India that has not been recovered.

‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

(via Harry’s Place; thanks, Punjabi Boy)

It’s becoming a sickeningly familiar story; a young man who seems at home in the “western world” ends up fundamentally altered. This. This is what terrifies me. Someone who had the same $70k/year programming job which so many people whom we all know do, someone who was a Yankees fan, incredibly, someone whose own mother escaped one of the towers before it fell…is someone who hates us. When a man can sympathize, nay, enthusiastically support and participate in a movement that almost killed his own mother…we’re fcuked.

From today’s WaPo:

It is safe to assume that most people would not react to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in quite the same way as Mohammed Junaid Babar. After all, the longtime resident of Queens, N.Y., told a Canadian television network that his own mother had been one of the survivors — barely escaping from the ninth floor of one of the towers before it collapsed.

Yet, Babar said in that same interview from Pakistan in the fall of 2001, his “loyalty is to the Muslims, not the Americans.”

“I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and while I am in Pakistan, if I see them in Pakistan, I will kill every American soldier I can in Pakistan,” he said during the interview with ITN Five News.

Abhi wrote an SM post about Babar almost a year ago, after the erstwhile New Yorker attended a “terrorist summit” in Pakistan:

from Queens in New York City came Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who arrived with cash, sleeping bags, ponchos, waterproof socks and other supplies for the mountain-bound jihadis.

The “boy scout” of Al Qaeda also brough along night-vision goggles, helpfully enough. In that SM post, Abhi mentioned that Babar was wanted in connection with a “future terrorist attack”. As of two weeks ago, that future is here. This naturalized U.S. Citizen turned Jihadi joined al Qaeda just so he could battle U.S. soldiers…and civilians in Britain. Such bravery.

At least the Son-of-a…woman who is apparently expendable is useful:

Now in U.S. custody after pleading guilty to terrorism charges last year, Babar has proved invaluable to U.S. and British investigators probing this month’s attacks on the London transit system, numerous officials said. He has identified at least one of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, through photographs and has provided other details that may be helpful in unraveling the plot, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources.

Some kids wanted to be Bollywood stars. I on the other hand wanted to be the location scout and production assistant. Even though “exotic” locations and sets are de rigueur in most Bollywood films today, the location scout and PA positions still look appealing to me.

I can picture it now; some fat cat producer and a sweatshop of screenwriters churn out the same old pap then decide to inject some excitement into the plot when the hero/heroine/villain decides to train/prance/meet somewhere other than India.

“I want skyscrapers! Lots of them, and maybe some bridges, they have railings that come in handy for the dance sequence. Get me some damn railings!” says the director.

“And cars, sleek fast sports cars – convertibles, they have to have the top down for the song sequence!” Get me some fast convertible cars dammit.” (I’m picturing the Indian version of the 1940s Hollywood executive here barking these in Hindi)

This is when a producer usually chimes in since he has a good chunk of change invested.

“Can we get some gardens or amusement parks in the sequence?”

“Yeah, get me some g**damn amusement parks!! If we need to reserve Six Flags in New Jersey for a whole week, just do it!”

An innocent bystander is dead, shot by the good guys. Now the London mayor is claiming that Jean Charles de Menezes, the ‘South Asian-looking’ guy shot by British special forces, was actually a victim of terrorism rather than the cops. It’s Livingstone, I presume:

London Mayor Ken Livingstone described Mr Menezes as a “victim of the terrorist attacks”. [Link]

More innocent people could be shot dead by police… Scotland Yard’s chief admitted yesterday. [Link]

Livingstone’s statement is faulty moral calculus and actively blocks the solution. First and foremost, you must assign responsibility accurately, otherwise you’ll never fix the problem. The terrorist attacks are a contributing cause. The primary cause is the commando who held him down and shot him seven times in the head.

Shoot to kill is indeed a good policy when you’re highly certain the suspect is a suicide bomber. But the criteria have to be tightened and the threshold for action tweaked. We have empirical proof of it: it’s de Menezes’ body. ‘He ran’ and ‘he had brown skin’ aren’t reason enough to kill someone. The criminal justice system doesn’t execute or even imprison people for those reasons.

This is an issue apart from the terrorists, who are obviously mass murderers. It’s of interest because society holds sway over its government’s shoot-to-kill criteria in a way that it doesn’t over deluded, nihilist 19-year-olds. We grant governments a monopoly on the use of force precisely because they have the duty and the means to use it correctly.

Several nonlethal weapons which might work exist today: bomb jammers, stun guns, beanbag guns, rubber bullets, plastic bullets, pepperball guns, sticky shockers, immobilizing goo, veiling glare lasers, flash bang grenades, pain-inducing microwaves and millimeter wave body scanners for detecting explosives.

Even more advanced solutions such as electromagnetic pulse guns and microwave guns which only affect electronics are under development. Many waves (electromagnetic and laser) affect different materials in different ways, for example by discriminating between the human body and explosives or detonators. X-rays, CAT scans, surgical and dental lasers, and luggage scanners rely on a variety of these effects.

But when you say ‘it wasn’t our fault,’ when you go into denial, you immediately truncate the search for a fix and the R&D investment needed to solve the problem. Western militaries have invested significantly in technology to curtail friendly fire. It’s worth doing so for law enforcement as well.

Previous post here.

‘Cooperate, or we’ll throw you in a hole so deep that no one will even remember your name.’ Inspired by the Soviet gulags, variations of that line are a staple of trite Hollywood screenplays.

Unfortunately, it also happened in real life. A villager from Assam was just released after spending 54 years imprisoned (thanks, Kool). He’s been held for almost as long as India’s been independent.

Seventy-seven year old Machang [Machal] Lalung was arrested in 1951 from his native village of Silsang… Police said that Mr Lalung… was booked for “causing grievous hurt”…. police said there were no evidence to support the allegation, so within a year of his arrest, he was transferred to a psychiatric institution [for schizophrenia]. “It seems the police just forgot about him thereafter,” says Assamese human rights activist Sanjay Borbora…

In 1967, the authorities at the institution certified Mr Lalung as “fully fit” and said that they intended to release him. But instead of being freed, police transferred him to another jail… Last year, local human rights activists brought Machang’s case to the attention of the National Human Rights Commission, which took up the case immediately and sought his release. [Link]

… the court papers wrongly mention the name as “Machang”… he had been languishing at Tezpur Mental Hospital… Machal, however, doesn’t remember what his crime was. “They say I hit someone,” he said… [Link]

The Medical Superintendent has stated that he has not been on any psychotropic medicine for several years and is free of any signs of mental illness. [Link]

I wonder whether someone will teach Lalang the words ‘compensation’ and ‘lawsuit.’ He could buy himself some chamak-chamak, ‘cause that’s the way he rolls. Imagine the adjustments this Kumbhakarna has to make after being so long away from the world: audiotapes, nuclear power, PCs, video games, the Internet, the moonshot, space stations, cloning, the Berlin Wall, disco, the Indian wars with Pakistan and China, ‘India Shining,’ Zeenat, Shabana, Amitabh and Aishwarya. But no — at his age, it’s all about the water and the loo.

“I don’t like the kutcha toilet or people having to draw water from wells…”

Fear and paranoia continue to sweep the land. I suppose if you have nothing to hide it’s not a big deal though. The New York Daily News reports (thanks for the tip Brian):

New York was fear city yesterday as heavily armed police swarmed a double-decker bus packed with tourists in Times Square…

In a dramatic sign of the city’s edginess since the London transit bombings, cops evacuated buildings, shut midtown streets and forced about 60 terrified tourists to march off the double-decker bus, with their hands up, in the heart of Broadway.

Cops in riot gear handcuffed a group of apparently harmless South Asian-looking men with British accents after a jittery tour bus worker reported they seemed suspicious.

The men were forced to kneel on the sidewalk, with their hands bound behind their backs, between 50th and 51st Sts. in front of the Winter Garden theater on a sunny summer Sunday with the city packed with tourists.

Here is a checklist I have been working on for myself. Life runs more efficiently when you use checklists for everything I have found:

1) Don’t sweat
2) Don’t carry a large bag
3) Conceal any accent of any kind
4) Read a newspaper (someone about to blow himself up probably wouldn’t be reading the news)
5) Do not pack your lunch in a plastic container

The five men in yesterday’s incident quickly were freed after cops determined they were tourists - not terrorists.

“We just want to clear our heads of the whole thing,” one of the men told the Daily News. “We were humiliated enough.”

“We just want to go,” added another.

Oh wait. I forgot the most ironic part:

“I was definitely frightened from the beginning,” said the driver, Mohammed Stout, 43, of the Bronx. “That’s human nature.”

Buried within a BBC article about the Police naming two suspects in last Thursday’s bombing in London was a tidbit that caught my attention…but first, the news:

Officers are looking for Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, and Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27. Ibrahim is being linked to a house in north London, which is being raided…

Two more people have been arrested, taking the total number held to five.

Now exactly what did I find so fascinating? This:

“All five of these bombs had been placed inside dark colored rucksacks or sports bags. All of them were made using the same type of plastic food storage container. These were manufactured in India, and are exported through one company into this country and then sold in approximately 100 outlets across the United Kingdom.”

“The type we are interested in is this six and a quarter liter-sized container with a white plastic lid,” he said. “It has a label describing it as a ‘Delta 6250 with Lid,’ and also has another colored label with the description ‘Family Containers, Delta, Superior Quality.’ Please note that we are only interested in the white lid variety. They are also produced in other colors.”

Who keeps the labels on those things? I peel them off. Anyway, of course, now authorities are appealing to shop owners who remember selling several containers all at once…which sounded logical to me at first…until I remembered that my own saintly Mother never buys these things one at a time. :)

All you Aunties out there (as well as those of you who merely shop like them)…quit acting so suspicious. ;)

[The segment which aired between 2:24-2:30a.m. GMT can be listened to here.]

The BBC Radio Network-Five Live, has a segment called “Pods and Blogs” which discusses topics currently hot on the blogosphere and then Podcasts them. They have invited Sepia Mutiny on tonight to discuss various issues surrounding the London Bombings that we have written posts about. I will be representing SM. They will also inquire about comments readers have left on our site. This will be an interactive live segment. Questions and comments during the show can be sent to:

IM: podallnight (on all major IM networks)
EMAIL: podallnight at hotmail.co.uk

The segment will be on air between roughly 6:15-6:30p.m. PST Monday night. You can listen live over your computer by visiting here, or download it at a later time onto your computer or pod. If anyone IMs in a difficult question or uses the opportunity to ask if I am the one who leaked Valerie Plame’s name, I will ban you tomorrow :)

Slate’s wonderful “Explainer” series had an informative article detailing your rights while riding the trains (or buses) in New York and D.C. “Are Subway Searches Legal?” This is a particularly relevant topic given the current state of paranoia:

Depends on how it’s done. The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches or seizures.” As a general rule, the government can’t search your baggage without a reason to believe you’re a criminal. But according to legal precedent, a random search is acceptable if it fulfills special needs like public safety. If New York’s subway screenings are challenged in court, the city’s lawyers could argue that the program’s primary purpose is to protect the city from terrorism.

Unless a judge agrees that they fulfill a special need, the screenings will be on shaky legal ground. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that a roadblock used to screen drivers for drug crimes was unconstitutional, since its primary purpose was to apprehend drug traffickers. On the other hand, roadblocks that screen for drunk drivers have been deemed OK, since they promote highway safety. (The court did say in the 2000 ruling that “a roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack” would almost certainly be constitutional.)

The key legal point here seems to be that such an extreme curb on privacy rights has to come with both a sunset clause and a geographical constraint:

Let’s assume the courts believe the subways searches are an effective deterrent for terrorism and that the recent subway bombings in London make them reasonable. Then a judge would have to consider whether the scope and duration of the searches is appropriate. The first random subway screenings occurred last summer in Boston during the Democratic Convention. A district court ruled that searches on trains that ran beneath the convention center were acceptable since they took place in a restricted area for a limited amount of time. The New York City searches, though, are taking place all over the system and seem to be of open-ended duration.

The judge must also consider how individuals are selected for screening. If police officers have too much discretion, they might single out certain kinds of people for “random” searches. To prevent profiling, cops are sometimes given a strict formula—in Boston, for example, every 11th passenger was pulled aside at some commuter rail stations. The NYPD says “numerical criteria” are being used, but spokesmen also say that large or suspicious-looking bags can be red flags.

I’ve been musing about the cult of the “strong man” and how we think of masculinity. Two examples, a personal anecdote, and some thoughts on the subject of what it is to be a man.

In Gujarat, history textbooks that praise Hitler were re-issued this year:

A Jesuit priest and social activist, Cedric Prakash, says the books contain more than 300 factual errors and make little mention of the holocaust. In the chapter entitled “Internal achievements of Nazism,” one textbook quoted by AFP states: “Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time, establishing a strong administrative set-up.”

The Gujarat government has dismissed the charges as baseless. [BBC]

Similarly, in Kanpur, a Hindu manager at ICICI-Prudential decided to use OBL to motivate his employees to sell more insurance:

A branch manager and staff of ICICI-Prudential in the city of Kanpur allegedly dreamed up the scheme to sell 275 policies in three days. Staff were told of Osama Bin Laden’s “focused determination” and would be rewarded glass tumblers for “kills”. A police official in Kanpur, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said the staff organised a sales promotion meeting last week, putting up banners and posters on the wall. A flag of Pakistan was also allegedly used in the show. The promotion was called “Mission Jihad”.

But as the initiative attracted media publicity, staff panicked and tried to burn the publicity material. Police searching the company’s premises say they found a half burned banner and a few posters containing slogans such as “Mission Jihad: kill one enemy and take home a beautiful crystal glass. Kill more, take more.”  [BBC]

As Americans, we are often puzzled by the way in which America’s enemies often show up as folk heroes abroad, even in countries that love the US. Osama T-shirts sold well in Thailand, a hedonistic paradise that idolizes America. Despite our head scratching, it’s not all that hard to understand. Everybody wants to be a badass; everyone wants to emulate the alpha-male.

In 1999, I was travelling in a very pro-American Third World country and would get incensed when locals would call out to me “Hey, Gaddafi! Hey Bin Laden!” The sister of a close friend had died in Lockerbie, and OBL had already attacked the WTC once and killed many in Tanzania and Kenya. I was not amused.

To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, what we had here was a failure to communicate. The guys on the street thought they were complimenting me. To them, Gaddafi and Bin Laden were strong men, and that was good in and of itself. Might makes right, after all.

So the NYT runs one of those stories explaining Bollywood to Upper West Siders (thanks, Yamini). Normally they’re highfalutin’ expositions on cult film theory. But this one’s just hilarious:

Sonia starts to undress him, whispering, “Show me you are an animal.” When he refuses and walks away, she screams: “I’m not asking you to leave your wife. I just want a physical relationship. If I don’t have an objection, why should you?” The actress Priyanka Chopra had a difficult time playing this scene… Ms. Chopra broke down and cried. The directors… had to spend a few hours convincing her that she was only playing a character. [Link]

First they print a piece by a Bombay film reviewer more suited for a filmi gossip rag. Then the story tries to pass off the idea that a global beauty queen has a nervous breakdown at the merest hint of fictional sex. Oh, her delicate ears! This is the same Miss World who apparently last posed as a member of the Divinyls.

I’m all for educating film hipsters, and far be it from me to to sound like a fanboy razzing the shamans of popularization (‘Everyone knows the Human Torch didn’t get his powers that way. Duh, it’s in issue 16!’). But come on, nobody’s gonna buy this wampum.

Then we get this tidbit:

Ms. Sherawat made her leading-lady debut in 2003 with “Khwahish” (“Desire”), which grabbed headlines for its 17 kisses… (For Ms. Sherawat, it also has a downside: She says her father refuses to speak her.) [Link]

Maybe it’s not about the canoodling, maybe her dad just hates bad acting

At least I have a new bedroom line, delivered in a thick desi accent: ‘Show me you are an animal, boss.’ It’ll go great with my disco ball, mirrored ceiling and leopard-print sofa.

After the London bombings, Jon Stewart summoned Fareed Zakaria back to The Daily Show to explain ‘his people.’

In this clip, Zakaria edges away from the neocon thesis that democracy alone can end terrorism, since the British bombers were born in a democracy. He claims the fundies have very low support throughout the Muslim world, pointing out the fundamentalist parties got under 5% in Indonesian and Malaysian elections (but he ignores the provincial elections in Pakistan).

Zakaria says the disaffected youth in Europe don’t feel socially integrated and are latching on to the ideology of the moment; today’s Islamic fundies would have been Marxists or Maoists 30 years ago. But he thinks the core of fundie support is gone in the Muslim world, and the virus will take some time to die out in Europe. In contrast, in the U.S. he says Muslims have done well economically and are much better assimilated.

Zakaria is right that the fundies have little public support, but only if you exclude some mighty key regions, such as Pakistan. And lack of support for fundamentalist political parties is not the same as lack of support for bin Laden or terrorist tactics.

Watch the clip.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! …
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war; …
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

— Billy Shakes, Julius Caesar

Wired’s August issue prominently features Lt. Neil Prakash of the U.S. Army in a story about milbloggers called ‘Blogs of War.’ The Silver Star-decorated tank platoon commander has a striking full-page photo in camouflage, glowering as hard as a 28-year-old can glower.

The story says Prakash was born just outside Bangalore, the son of two upstate New York dentists. He’s quite pyro about firing the tank’s main gun and other testosterone sports. Prakash says his favorite sound is an F-16 strafing run: it sounds like a cat in a blender or as if God were ripping up a phone book in the sky (all quotes paraphrased). He also says something like, ‘I’d rather be commanding a tank than sitting in a call center telling someone in Bumfuck, U.S.A. how to reformat their hard drive’ :)

His platoon has been rotated out of Iraq and is currently recuperating in Germany. Prakash used the downtime to get married in Denmark.

Check it out on the newsstands. Here’s Prakash’s blog.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Update: The story has been posted.

By the crude light of a small bulb and the backlit screen of his Dell laptop, Neil Prakash, a first lieutenant, posted some of the best descriptions of the fighting in Fallujah and Baquba last fall:

Terrorists in headwraps stood anywhere from 30 to 400 meters in front of my tank. They stopped, squared their shoulders at us just like in an old-fashioned duel, and fired RPGs at our tanks. So far there hadn’t been a single civilian in Task Force 2-2 sector. We had been free to light up the insurgents as we saw them. And because of that freedom, we were able to use the main gun with less restriction.

Prakash was awarded the Silver Star this year for saving his entire tank task force during an assault on insurgents in Iraq’s harrowing Sunni Triangle. He goes by the handle Red 6 and is author of Armor Geddon. For him, the poetry of warfare is in the sounds of exploding weapons and the chaos of battle.

“It’s mind-blowing what this stuff can do,” Prakash tells me by phone from Germany, where his unit moved after rotating out of Iraq earlier this year. One of his favorite sounds is that of an F16 fighter on a strafing run. “It’s like a cat in a blender ripping the sky open - if the sky was made out of a phone book.” He is from India, the land of Gandhi, but he loves to talk about blowing things up. “It’s just sick how badass a tank looks when it’s killing.”

Prakash is the son of two upstate New York dentists and has a degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins. He’s a naturalized American citizen, born near Bangalore, and he describes growing up in the US and his decision to join the military as something like Bend It Like Beckham meets The Terminator. He says he admired the Army’s discipline and loved the idea of driving a tank. He knew that if he didn’t join the Army, he might end up in medical school or some windowless office in a high tech company. With a bit of bluster, Prakash claims that for him, the latter would be more of a nightmare scenario than ending up in the line of fire of insurgents. “It was a choice between commanding the best bunch of guys in the world and being in a cubicle at Dell Computer in Bangalore right now helping people from Bum-fuck USA format their hard drives.”

It’s taken some adjustment, but Prakash says his parents basically support his Army career, although his father can’t conceal his anxiety about having a son in Iraq. Prakash says he blogs to assure the folks back home that he’s safe, to let his friends all over the world know what’s going on, and to juice up the morale in his unit. “The guys get really excited when I mention them.”

By the time Prakash left Iraq early this year, the readers of Armor Geddon extended far beyond family and friends. He still posts from his base in Germany and is slowly trying to complete a blog memoir of his and his fellow soldiers’ experiences in the battle for Fallujah…

Blackfive himself has degrees in archaeology and computer science and avidly follows the postings of fellow bloggers. He describes Neil Prakash as “borderline Einstein…”

Prakash remains in Germany, awaiting orders to jump back into his beloved tank, which he calls Ol’ Blinky. He says he has no plans to resume his study of neuroscience, although it wasn’t completely useless in Iraq. “Neuroscience actually came in handy when I had to explain to my guys exactly why doing ecstasy in a tank when it’s 140 degrees out on a road that’s blowing up every day is a really bad idea.”

SM tipster Chaina alerts us to the fact that we may have an heir apparent to Raj Bhakta. NBC will soon debut its new reality show, cleverly titled The Law Firm:

Real lawyers. Real cases. Real consequences. Executive producer David E. Kelley (The Practice, Ally McBeal) brings a real legal drama to television. Trial attorney and legal analyst Roy Black will manage 12 actual lawyers competing against each other while trying real court cases with judges and juries, resulting in outcomes that will be final, legal and binding. Each week, one legal eagle is eliminated and the top attorney will receive a prize of $250,000. With plenty of drama inside and outside of the courtroom, the result is riveting entertainment.

The compelling cases range from First Amendment issues to neighbor disputes to wrongful death. Distinguished judges will decide some of the cases, while a jury determines the others. In the end, the top attorney will win a prize of $250,000.

Meet Deep Goswami. This UT graduate will look to fix his horns on the competition.

Why do you think you are a better lawyer than the other associates?
I would consider myself a better lawyer than the other associates because I have more passion, drive, and sincerity in the courtroom, which allows me to better connect with juries. I’m willing to do whatever it takes, within the ethical boundaries, to win the case, and I genuinely care about my clients and their cases. More importantly, I’m much more entertaining in the courtroom than the other associates - I don’t put people to sleep when I argue a case, which some of the others are guilty of doing.

What’s your verdict on reality TV?
Reality shows are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of turning average Joes (no pun intended) into quasi-celebrities who will do anything to ride out their 15 minutes of fame. I hope to be able to count myself among such an esteemed group of individuals.

What, in your opinion, is the biggest misconception people have about lawyers and why is it a misconception?
The biggest misconception about lawyers is that they are lazy and don’t care about their clients. Unfortunately, for the most part, it’s true, which is why I’ve dedicated myself to challenging these stereotypes when I’m in the courtroom, which you can see for yourself when you see me in action on the show.

Plainclothes British special forces chased and killed a supposedly South Asian-looking man on the London tube yesterday whom they suspected of being a suicide bomber (thanks, Ravi):

… he saw a man in a black bomber jacket and jeans running towards him being chased by the officers… The suspect, described as being of Asian appearance and wearing a thick, bulky jacket, vaulted over a ticket barrier when challenged by police and ran down the escalator and along the platform of the Northern Line…

As waiting passengers and those already on a train that had pulled into the station dived to the floor, the suspect jumped on the train. Two witnesses said that as he entered the train he tripped, ending up half in and half out of the carriage, on all fours… the officers caught up with the man and pushed him hard to the floor. Witnesses said that they then fired up to five bullets into him at close range, killing him instantly. [Link]

“As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified. He sort of tripped but they were hotly pursuing him and couldn’t have been more than two or three feet behind him at this time. They unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He’s dead, five shots, he’s dead…” [Link]

Police are describing him as an “intimate accomplice of the cell”. His name and address were thought to have been found among the possessions left by the would-be bombers on Thursday… [Link]

Now they say it was all a mistake (thanks, Abhi):

It is understood that he was found not to have been carrying a bomb… After the suspect had been shot police sent a robot to examine the man, because of fears that any device could still prove a danger. But it is understood that no device was found… [Link]

The man shot dead by police at Stockwell Underground station yesterday morning had nothing to do with Thursday’s abortive London bomb attacks, Scotland Yard said tonight… The Met said in a statement this afternoon: “We believe we now know the identity of the man shot at Stockwell Underground station by police… We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday…” [Link]

This is a Rashomon-like story. The cops’ version: they followed him from an apartment complex which they’d staked out in connection with the recent London bombings. He was wearing a suspiciously thick jacket on a temperate day and heading for the subway, so they decided to arrest him. He did not comply with their warnings and instead ran into the tube station, vaulted the gates and made it onto a train. Under those circumstances, it was their duty to stop a potential suicide bomber, so they tackled him to the floor of the train and shot him dead.

From the victim’s point of view, he left the apartment to go to work, got on a bus and got off at his tube station when he noticed he was being followed by men in street clothes. They started yelling at him and pulled guns, which British cops normally don’t carry. Believing his life was in danger, he bolted into the nearest escape vehicle, the tube, and he almost survived. The cops are saying he had no link to the bombings.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that collecting contemporary Indian art is the new rage in the art world. Some pieces are fetching anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000.

“The market for Indian contemporary art is turning bullish and aggressive,” says Anuradha Mazumdar of Sotheby’s. “India is now recognized as a major growth market, forcing international auction houses to pay more attention to it.”

I guess the big bucks that NRIs and Indian dot-commers are raking in have to be spent on something. But it isn’t all FUBU (For Us By Us). Demand for these pieces is coming in from various parts of the world including France, Germany, Japan and the Middle East.

I’m getting in on the ground level on a promising young surrealist. He’s going to be big some day.

Longtime SM readers know that I enjoy making occasional forays into the past, so as to connect to the present. History is the most spiritual of subjects, more so than even religion in my eyes. Those who believe in reincarnation and karma will find as much wisdom in the recurring motifs of a history book as in any sacred text.

Yesterday we awoke to what may have been yet another attempted suicide bombing. The first words I heard this morning on NPR as my eyes opened were that police had shot “a South Asian man” in the Tube. About two months ago University of Chicago Professor Ropert Pape (who heads the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism) released his book Dying to Win on the history of suicide bombings. Here is an excerpt from his New York Times op-ed re-published on Truthout.org:

Over the past two years, I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003 - 315 in all. This includes every episode in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks authorized by a national government (like those by North Korean agents against South Korea). The data show that there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think.

The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27). Even among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.

What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause

You might not know that Rabindranath Tagore’s first sustained experience of America was not New York or San Francisco, but the farming/university town of Urbana, Illinois. He went there in 1912, to visit his son Rathindranath, studying at the University of Illinois. Father Rabindranath had wanted his son not to study literature or the arts at a place like Oxford or Cambridge (or London, as Rabindranath himself had done), but rather agricultural science in the service of what Tagore hoped would turn into a program for village development.

You might expect this small-town Illinois experience in 1913 to have been a lesson in culture shock for the cosmopolitan (soon to be world-famous) Tagore, who just a few weeks earlier had been dining with the cream of the crop in literary London. But no, Tagore fit right in, impressing the local Unitarians and making friends as he would do wherever he went in those years. He quickly moved from Urbana to Chicago, where he was a hit with the literati there, and from Chicago he started getting invitations to lecture at some major universities, which he accepted.

Tagore actually made five trips to the US, starting in 1912, and ending in 1930, according to his biographers Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, in their excellent (but out of print!) book Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man. (Note: Their book is the source for most of the information in this post.) By looking at those trips in particular, we can get an image of the man rather different from the aristocratic ‘Gurudev’ that most people know. Tagore came to America, first, to visit his son (who did not stay long), then to raise money for his new university at Shantiniketan. But above all, he came to argue with Americans about American business, industry, and war. What he said and how it was received tells an interesting story about both Tagore and the U.S. in those days.

Please welcome guest blogger Amardeep Singh, he of the excellent blog eponymous. On his keyboard of prolificness, Amardeep has fisked exoticism, the Brit Asian music scene, puffy hair and guru shirts, Parineeta and Sarkar, Suketu Mehta and Monica Ali, Vijay Iyer, singer Kiran Ahluwalia, immigrants in London, and Gandhi’s views on the British Raj. In his spare time, he spins records and teaches lit.

I’ve nicked more post ideas from Amardeep’s insightful writing than I care to tally. Finally, I succumbed to the inexorable logic of laziness: why not bring the mountain to the Mutiny?

Dr. Krishna Ella is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin and the founder of Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad. MIT’s Technology Review recently covered the unique challenges he faced when doing business in India. His first challenge, before the Indian economic boom: desis skeptical of returnees.

Ella and his wife had to spend the first months convincing banks to loan them money. It didn’t help that Ella was a repatriate. “Nobody could understand why someone would come back to India,” Ella says. “Everyone’s first question was: ‘What went wrong in America? Did you break some sort of law?’” [Link]

That’s actually still a good question, given that the former chairman of U.S. Airways left that collapsing company and is launching an Indian airline. Ella’s second challenge: routing around the famously inflexible Indian labor market.

As Ella’s business blossomed, though, he faced a classic Indian problem: how to avoid becoming dependent on local labor unions. His solution was practical — and radical: “We chose a poor village in three of the poorest states of India and offered training to their best students, with a promise of at least two years’ employment…” Today, much of the company’s skilled labor force is made up of people who sometimes can support an entire village with their salaries… [Link]

Third challenge: preparing dossiers on which bureaucrats were the least corrupt.

“It was my experience that 90% of the bureaucrats were just in it for the bribes and 10% were really interested in using their position to help the people and the country,” Ella says. He did background research on the employees of an agency from which he needed permits or regulatory approvals, then concentrated his paperwork on the most honest clerk in the department. Further, if a bureaucrat was rude or unhelpful, Ella approached them like he would a potential customer, returning several times to explain his situation in polite and persuasive language. [Link]

Russell Peters jokes that the only thing the desi accent is good for is cutting tension, while Vikrum Sequeira has decoded how the desi head wiggle signals affability. Indeed, you can usually count on desis to be friendly and amiable.

So when a certain Francis Devandra Raj dug a tunnel from Canada to the U.S., it was purely to promote cross-border comity. The three-by-five tunnel was fortified with rebar and concrete, lit and ventilated. In fact, this undercover brother’s purposes were so peaceful that he was using the tunnel to send serene B.C. bud into the grateful arms of American stoners everywhere.

I just can’t see why the U.S. government doesn’t agree ;) They arrested Raj and two buddies from Surrey, B.C. yesterday on charges of drug smuggling. But one thing remains the same, desis’ pioneering nature. The tunnel is the very first cross-border subterranean passage between Canada and the U.S ever known to exist.

Federal agents have shut down an elaborate, 360-foot drug-smuggling tunnel dug underneath the U.S.-Canadian border — the first such passageway discovered along the nation’s northern edge… The tunnel ran from a quonset hut on the Canadian side and ended under the living room of a home on the U.S. side, 300 feet from the border. Built with lumber, concrete and metal reinforcing bars, it was equipped with lights and ventilation, and ran underneath a highway…

Francis Devandra Raj, 30; Timothy Woo, 34; and Jonathan Valenzuela, 27, of Surrey, British Columbia, were arrested Wednesday… Raj owns the property under the quonset hut. [Link]

The smugglers were apparently religious. I’d give anything to know which saints were found inside the tunnel — Bob Marley? Lakshmi, goddess of wealth? Or, more appropriately for a tunnel, Ganeshji, remover of obstacles?

That tunnel was 3 feet wide and 5 feet high with a concrete floor. It had wood-beam supports, fiberglass walls, ventilation, video security and groundwater-removal systems. Several altars with flowers and pictures of saints also were found inside. [Link]

The police used some pretty high-tech methods to find the tunnel. But really, all they had to do was look for a bunch of dudes with red eyes giggling hysterically.

Investigators used a machine that can “see” underground, a video-equipped robot, a drug-sniffing dog and an air horn to find it. [Link]

You know what I hate? When someone that isn’t me thinks of a good idea that I would be infinitely better suited to carry out. :) Take Amma “the Hugging Saint,” (a.k.a. Mata Amritanandamayi) for example. People flock to her for a hug and give her money. I give good hug too. The Boston Herald reports:

On the road to enlightenment, no shoes are allowed. Hugs, however, are OK.

At least 3,000 devotees tossed off their footwear before gathering in the lotus position before the smiling Indian spiritual leader known as “Amma,” or mother, revered around the world as “The Hugging Saint.” At the Best Western Royal Plaza Trade Center, truth-seekers engaged in group meditation, then each grabbed a token, like deli counter tickets, to get their hugs.

Amma’s hugs have healing power, some said. Her fund-raising, meanwhile, has allowed her to pledge $22 million to tsunami relief, providing 81,000 meals a day, adopting 350 orphans and sheltering more than 6,000 survivors.

Okay, so here is my vision. We have Sepia Mutiny “hug-ins.” I will announce what city I am in and any reader can come by for a hug. Then we’ll see if our hugging spreads. Not at our North Dakota headquarters though. I don’t want people knowing where we live. After reading this article I suddenly wondered if Dave Matthews and Badly Drawn Boy are fans of Amma. Their respective videos for “Everyday” and “Year of the Rat” would indicate so. Whatever your opinion of Amma, AT LEAST she’s better than this guy.

Ananthan points us to a new music video for M.I.A.’s ‘Bucky Done Gun.’ The mix she uses, the official one from Arular, is so spare that it can hardly sustain a video, leaving me squirming during the long gaps when nothing’s happening musically. The version from Piracy Funds Terrorism is much higher energy.

The video is beautifully filmed, though, black and white recolored in pastels, much higher production values than her early efforts. It’s strange seeing gritty radical chic, itself poseur, turn glossy like a high end photography mag. The video recolors a pair of loudspeakers to match the Palestinian flag, and M.I.A.’s checkered tights evoke the PLO kaffiyeh. Its firebomb-throwing young men are porn for the ultra-left, but the images are carefully sanitized: you see colored Holi smoke streaming from bottles, but you don’t see any actual explosions or maimings. In another bid for hip-hop authenticity, the label surrounds Maya with a swarm of backup dancers who are black.

In M.I.A.’s attitude you can already see the shift from awkward ingénue to sexually confident diva. The video opens with M.I.A. in a boxer’s hood, mike dangling from the ceiling. A clear homage to ‘Mama Said Knock You Out,’ it’s the very definition of aggression. The gaze from beneath the bangs covering half her face is no longer diffident, it’s brassy, painted and unblinkingly heavy-lidded. Her previous videos have been much more playful; this one’s simultaneously more serious and more trashy, with Maya and her main backup dancer pole-writhing against a chain-link fence.

I should cheer for a performer coming into her own, but it feels like a Miltonian loss of innocence. Yeah, I’m already nostalgic for M.I.A. circa 2004 ;)

Watch the video.

Update: Here are the lyrics:

They’re comin through the window
They’re comin through the door
They’re bustin down the big wall
And sounding the horn

What you want
The bucky done gun
What you want
The fire done burn
Get crackin, get get crackin

Time to spit new shit
I’m rocking on this new bit
I’m hot now you’ll see
I’ll fight you just to get peace

Heavy weight wrestler
Fight me in your comforter
Let you be superior
I’m filthy with the fury ya

I’ll hard drive your bit
I’m battered by your sumo grip
Lucky I like feeling shit
My stamina can take it

Gymnastics super fit
Muscles on the gun clip
Bite, teeth, nose bleed
Tied up in the scarf piece

Can I get control
Do you like me vulnerable
I’m armed and I’m equal
More fun for the people

Physical, brute force
Steel, iron, you’re the boss
Yeah, you’re so do-able
Grind me down sugar salt

Fresh bagels, Starbucks™ coffee, foot massages – the SM main office is indeed posh. Thanks for having me, just remember, I expect to be paid in cash.

So let me begin with a personal anecdote, For what better way is there to endear yourself to your readers but with something that will tug at their heartstrings or at least get them frothing at the mouth.

In order to prepare for our upcoming trip to London, the Mrs. and I went to get an American passport for our two year old son at the county clerk office here in Brooklyn. (I must mention here that I have been on vacation for the past week and have not shaved during the time. A quick glance at me in the CCTV puts me high on a lot of freedom-lovin’ people’s wanted list). The guy behind the counter was a big old queen, I’m talking rings on each finger, dyed hair, in his early 60s looking like Tony Curtis and talking like Paul Lynde queen.

“Well, well” he says, “looks like another form printed from the internet, let me see if this is the right one they always screw it up.”

“Is it the wrong form?” I ask

“No, it’s the right one, but usually people screw it up” he replies.

He started to fill out other paperwork then asked for our I.D. (the US passport office suggests you bring a state-issued driver’s license as a form of I.D.). As he continued to write down information from our ID he looked up and says “Now you don’t have a Resident Alien card do you?” (I don’t since I am an US citizen, but he was talking to me.)

My wife interjected “Yes, I do, but I didn’t bring it.” (she’s Welsh with a UK Passport).

“Well, I don’t have to accept this application you know” he says with a flourish of his many-ringed fingers.

“I mean he (speaking to me, the swarthy looking one) looks like he doesn’t belong here but here, you are the one with the resident alien card. You really should bring it with you when you come for something like a passport”.

We both bit our tongue. Telling him to stuff it for that comment meant we would have to go back home, come back with more paperwork and go through this process all over again on the hottest motherchucking day of the year.

As Sepia Mutiny’s first anniversary nears, we thought we’d mix things up a little by bringing in friends of the Mutiny to guest blog for a month each. We could think of no more appropriate person to take our guest blogging cherry than the O.G. Bollykitsch blogger. He’s inspired many of our posts and video-blogged oodles of cheesy ’70s item numbers for our milk-snorting pleasure.

Introducing the man who needs no introduction: DJ Spin Boldak, the Stetson from Crooklyn, Turbanhead.

The strict and often inflexible immigration rules that have been in effect since 9/11 continues to be displayed as yet another irrational story surfaces. In fairness though, maybe we can just attribute this to good old fashion government bureaucracy. GG2.net reports:

AN ORPHAN girl from India, visiting the US as part of an international goodwill trip, is now battling for life in a US hospital.

Eleven-year-old Shyamala Peddibotla, was admitted to the National Children`s Hospital in Washington, DC with complications from what appears to be diabetes and an infection.

Despite antibiotics having been administered, she continues to suffer from high fever. Apprehension about the girl`s illness is compounded by the fact that three care-takers who were to accompany Shyamala and her eight friends, are still awaiting visas to the United States.

Apparently the Real Deal heard and stepped into the ring to help. The Washington Times reports:

Former heavyweight champion and philanthropist Evander Holyfield showed up at the State Department yesterday with eight Indian orphan girls in tow, pleading for a visa for the caretaker of a ninth orphan fighting for her life at Children’s Hospital in Washington.

“One of the little girls has diabetes and is in critical condition. Her caretaker needs to come but can’t get a visa,” Mr. Holyfield said in a telephone interview as he stood outside the State Department’s doors.

The hospital has said it cannot release the child without training her custodian in how to monitor 11-year-old Shyamala Peddibotla’s blood sugar level and administer shots of insulin, according to a hospital letter made available to The Washington Times.

If the caregiver — a woman who has tended to Shyamala for the past five years — does not receive a visa, Mr. Holyfield said, the child’s position “is kind of bleak.”

Holyfield is still feared. Someone at the State Department started making some calls on late Tuesday after his visit.

Isolated by the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges, Ladakh (the largest district in Jammu and Kashmir) is the sort of place that requires planning ahead, thinking strategically and being prepared. Mountains aren’t the only obstacle to carefree living; challenges from snow mean the Manali-Leh highway from Himachal Pradesh is only open for a few months a year. So, if you are trying to sustain a community of a few thousand, it’s important to receive necessary supplies during that brief, crucial window when transporting them is possible. Ahem. I said it’s important:

The army of the Northern Command found seven tankers supposed to be carrying diesel to the Ladakh region had been filled with water instead.

Well, so much for THAT bit of strategery.

The army thinks middlemen sold off the fuel en-route from the filling depot.

The case has embarrassed the army, which needs to stock up on fuel before snows cover the mountain passes.

Colonel R.K. Sen, the spokesman for the Northern Command at Udhampur stated that a tip was received regarding the filched fuel. With the help of police, a raid proved the tip to be true. According to the Colonel, this sort of thievery is unheard of…apparently, no one ever thought to make off with several thousand litres of fuel before.

“It appeared the contents of these tankers were sold off either at Ambala [in the northern state of Haryana] itself or en-route to Leh.

“The incident has caused serious concern for the army as it needs to stock diesel, petrol and kerosene for the winter months before the mountain passes close in September and October.”

While promising a thorough investigation into the case, Police have already zeroed in on the drivers of the tankers, for their inability to pass gas successfully to Ladakh.

I was over at the MTV Desi website today trying to figure out how to get hired. Maybe I’m a bit out of their demographic. I am pushing up on the big 3-0 but I am mos definitely cooler than Carson Daly AND my full head of hair is easily spike-able. If word gets out that I am only in it to get close to a certain VJ, my chances will be totally shot. In case you were wondering, this is what they dropped first. Video Killed the Radio Star it ain’t (thankfully):

The video for “Bulla Ki Jaana” relects the core values of MTV Desi’s audience and captures the panaromic sweep, breathtaking variety and secular beauty of South-Asian and Indian life. Having grown up in India, Rabbi is not technically bi-cultural, but his grasp of the human condition, the ache and kick of life, influences that range from Bob Dylan to Sufi mysticism, and the struggle to sing the unsung hero’s song, qualify him as a truly multicultural artist who deserves to be heard around the world. “Bulla Ki Jaana,” like MTV Desi, is iconoclastic, trippy, mysterious and inclusive, striving to create new emotional connections between cultures.

Naturally, I immediately jumped to the lyrics to figure out MTV Desi’s “core values,” to see if I’d fit in.

On Monday the LA Times ran an insightful story [free reg. required] on what happens when you pretend to be an American all day:

Every Saturday morning Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It’s the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders.

Between 20 and 33 years old and keen to hide their symptoms from employers and families, the patients have significantly increased Kalyanasundaram’s workload.

“They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub.”

According to a report in the Indian Express newspaper, one in 15 people seeking counseling from a doctor in Chennai, India, works either in software or at a call center…

…”The strain of pretending to be ‘Bob’ or ‘Susan’ on the phone for weeks on end and keeping up with ‘Eastenders’ [a British television soap opera] and baseball can lead to questions of identity,”…

Yeah, I sort of saw this coming. As a former telemarketer I know full well the depression that can clutch at you when dealing with rude people all day. The other interesting issue the Times article looks at is what happens when the kids start making more money than the parents. The “as long as you live in my house” leverage just doesn’t cut it. “Mom, I’ll be at Moe’s.”

India’s work patterns also are testing traditionally close family structures. Gouhari said: “Children are earning vastly more than their parents ever did and the new disposable income is leading to a burgeoning pub culture which is causing a lot of family tension.”

 

MTV Desi chief Nusrat Durrani picked Brit TV personality Tim Kash for male anchor. As a fellow well-known Sri Lankan Brit, Kash is like the male M.I.A. — if she were as lame as Carson Daly. (That’s a slam on Daly, not Kash, whom I’ve never watched.)

Since Kash isn’t an American, I’m guessing Durrani didn’t find a male anchor he liked by launch time and had to go to the UK bench. I’m also guessing that he’s champing at the bit to get an American. But maybe he just wanted one of the anchors to be an old hand at MTV.

On the right is Niharika Desai, their female face. Here are the anchors’ official bios:

Of Sri Lankan heritage but born and raised in the UK, Tim Kash hosts the daily MTV UK News show… Tim began his career at MTV at age 19, becoming the youngest MTV VJ in history. Most recently, Tim co-hosted the MTV US/International coverage of the recent Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park that was beamed across the world.

Niharika is a film editor with a background in photography… [from] Poughkeepsie, Mumbai and Brooklyn… Niharika is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in Psychology and South Asia Regional Studies. She is conversant in Marathi, can read and write the Devanagari script.

MTV Desi apparently didn’t get the ‘must refer to self as Indian’ memo. Damn you, South Asian Studies! Anil Dash says Desai may beat Apu as the most famous desi American within the next 12 months. That would be a relief, but Miss MTV Desai only beams for satellite at the moment.

… I can’t wait for the day when there’s enough Indians in the mainstream media that we can complain about the offensive way in which we’re depicted. Somewhere between Temple of Doom and Apu’s appearance on the Simpsons…

Lilia asked me the other day who the most famous U.S.-born Indian American is, and I had to think a bit. It’s not Deepak Chopra, because I don’t think he was born in the U.S., and I was told [Ed.: by the friend who asked the question] Norah Jones doesn’t entirely count, since she’s half Indian. My guess was that maybe it’s Tony Kanal from No Doubt, but apparently he was born in the U.K. Maybe by this time next year it’ll be Niharika Desai.

Mathangi Mian made the shortlist for the UK’s most prestigious music award, the Mercury Prize, today (thanks, brimful). The Kaiser Chiefs are favored to win. Coldplay’s also on the list, but rumour is that this year’s da bomb in Englistan: M.I.A. has a shot to balance out last year’s pick, the already established Franz Ferdinand.

Previous winners include Dizzee Rascal, PJ Harvey, Badly Drawn Boy, Portishead and Talvin Singh, for his groundbreaking OK in 1999. Sometimes the Prize gives me the heebie-jeebies. They once nominated the Spice Girls, which is neither desi nor kosher.

Proving yet again just how much cooler the UK is, there have been loads of desi nominees out of the 10-12 bands shortlisted each year. In fact, from 1998-99 there were two Asian bands each year. It’s like NYC where you’ll often have multiple desi parties or arts events on the same day because the market can support them.

• M.I.A., Arular, 2005
• Susheela Raman, Salt Rain, 2001
• Nitin Sawhney, Beyond Skin, 2000
• Talvin Singh, OK, 1999 (winner)
• Black Star Liner, Bengali Bantam Youth Experience!, 1999
• Asian Dub Foundation, Rafi’s Revenge, 1998
• Cornershop, When I Was Born for the 7th Time, 1998
• Apache Indian, No Reservations, 1993

Asians in Media complains that Singh’s win didn’t have coattails:

Remember the infamous ‘Asian underground revolution’ that was supposed to happen when Talvin Singh won a Mercury prize in 1999? Vivek Bald’s excellent documentary Mutiny Sounds showed how that fell apart when industry executives could not grasp how to sell it. Raghav seems to be in a similar bind. One the one hand he seems to be marketed only for Asians. At the same time faces resistance from those who don’t know what to do with an Asian artist. [Link]

48 hours. It’s the name of a show no one watches. It’s also the amount of time it takes for a pirated version of HP6 to show up on the streets of Mumbai. And of course, what a bargain it is:

Hawkers and street book stalls are offering JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for $6, compared to the legitimate stores’ $20.

Penguin India—whose goal is to report knock-offs, not confiscate them—is obviously on the case, though I’m sure that means nothing to the guy who’s selling Hari Puttar next to pirated movies and software.

Pirated Harry Potter copies started appearing on Monday, following the worldwide release in the early hours of Saturday.

At almost every major traffic junction the book was being offered by hawkers.

How convenient! For now, that is. The BBC reports that police raids should occur soon enough.

Like everywhere else in the world, HP is unstoppable:

Genuine book stores say they have already sold more than 100,000 copies in Mumbai alone, smashing all previous records.

Those numbers are still on the small side compared to the US and UK:

In its first 24 hours, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 6.9m copies in the US and more than two million in the UK, beating all previous Potter records.

And in the next 24 hours, it was knocked off! How’s that for efficiency?

All day Manish has been foto-blogging (floging) highlights from the Indian State visit. He updated with this picture just a few hours ago:

This isn’t so much a post from me as it is a question to our Indian American readers. As an Indian-American, something with this picture just doesn’t sit right with me. I appreciate what the Administration might have been trying to do but…if the German Chancellor visited the U.S. would all the German American appointees be invited to pose for a picture with him? This picture (to me) smells of the unstated belief that Indian Americans somehow have a divided loyalty and are not simply American. Why the assumption that we would want to pose with “our” Prime Minister? I think I would have a hard time accepting such an invitation until I understood the logic of it. Why would I want to pose with him? Just because he is from India and so were my parents? I would most certainly want to meet and talk with him, but not in this manner. I wonder if a picture exists where the Indian American appointees were all called in to pose with just our President Bush?

I realize that I am probably over-reacting to this, but I am just curious as to what some of you think.

Good old Apul sends me this tip on the upcoming re-make of the Bad News Bears:

There appears to be a South Asian in the upcoming “Bad News Bear.” Don’t know much else about it.

Well, I inspected the dugout to discover one Aman Johal from Canada:

AMAN JOHAL (Prem Lahiri) lives in Vancouver, Canada. “Bad News Bears” marks his film acting debut. Aman’s mother, who works as an actor and as a tennis instructor, always encouraged her youngest son to follow his dreams. His mother’s agent heard about the casting call for “Bears,” and Aman happily went, not expecting the fantastic outcome of being cast as one of the Bears. Aman has two older brothers, who are thrilled for their little bro. Aman has been a very competitive athlete, excelling in tennis, soccer and roller hockey. Since shooting “Bad News Bears” he has also developed a great love for baseball and quite the arm. Aman is also a big fan of music and “Star Wars.”

There is a very embarrassing picture from my youth that looks just like the one above. I was also bad news.

When I worked for a few months in Delhi at the end of 2002 I was pleasantly surprised by my daily commute. I had heard that the Delhi air was absolutely choked with automobile exhaust fumes and made commuting unbearable. Having converted many buses and rickshaws over to natural gas (CNG) seemed to have done a pretty good job in cleaning up the Delhi skies. Los Angeles, where I live, is still playing catch-up. In the near future though, Indian cities may surge ahead again thanks to the most reliable form of transportation. Indianexpress.com explains:

The great Indian autorickshaw may have just shifted to the eco-friendly CNG but it’s ready for the generation-next fuel.

Taking a major leap towards Indo-US co-operation in the energy sector, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have helped develop a hydrogen-run three-wheeler for Indian roads.

The Rochester Hills (Michigan)-based Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) has successfully converted and developed a CNG-run three-wheeler of Bajaj Automobiles into one run on hydrogen fuel.

Converting over to a hydrogen economy in the U.S. would be a massive undertaking that would span a couple decades. Some analysts think that China and India who have a smaller oil infrastructure could make the switch more easily, and also become more competitive economically, if they start with an alternative energy source while their economies are still developing. I know the critics will say that a hydrogen economy is pie in the sky but I’ve always had a saying: If it’s good enough for the Space Shuttle then its good enough for me (Tang and Velcro included).

As all eyes focus on the meetings between Bush and Singh, I am still desperately hoping that there will be some sort of drama at the formal state dinner. You know, what if Rumsfeld gets drunk and decides to have a few choice words with a certain someone? The Telegraph is the only publication that seems to share my previously stated (mischievous) hopes:

Amrit Singh, the Prime Minister’s New York-based daughter, is expected to join her father as part of the “VVIP family” during the current Indian state visit to Washington. There is nothing unusual about this: except that Amrit is a perennial thorn on the sides of Bush and his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the strongest advocates in the present US administration for closer ties with India.

Amrit is an attorney with the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She is a stormy petrel of civil rights in America and has taken on the Pentagon for abusing prisoners in Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison as well as the blackhole US detention camps in Guantanamo, Cuba, where suspected al Qaida terrorists are imprisoned.

Amrit has also taken on American airlines for allegedly discriminating against passengers with brown skin in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More recently, she got involved in allegations against US soldiers that they knowingly desecrated the Quran.

By all accounts though, the Prime Minister’s daughter is very down-to-Earth and prefers to stay out of the political spotlight when it concerns her family.

At the time of writing, it was not certain whether Amrit, who is viewed by thousands of Americans as a formidable and high profile adversary of the Bush administration, will accept official US hospitality and stay at Blair House.

Amrit has consistently refused to speak with reporters about her relationship with the Prime Minister, but is readily accessible to the media on cases she is pursuing against the US government or corporations.

Those in New York who know her — and Indian government officials — speak of her as the finest prime ministerial offspring India ever had because she has no airs, she does not throw her weight and she never speaks about her family connections.

Hmmm. I can only hope that maybe she’ll decide to follow in her father’s footsteps someday.

Take THIS, you…wankers:

Indian police forced around 200 people caught watching pornography to do sit-ups in public to shame them and keep them away from theaters that illegally screen smutty movies.

Apparently, police in Orissa’s Balasore district raided a theater that was showing a flesh flick. After collecting the perverted perps (some of whom were as young as 17), authorities forced them to work on their abs in the town square. No females were apprehended during the raunch-raid.

As if having to vow that they wouldn’t watch porn again (ha!) wasn’t bad enough, parents of the perps were invited to watch the public spectacle. Eye-witness accounts haven’t corroborated my assumption that these mummies and deddies waited for their precious sons with chappals firmly in hand. It’s safe to assume that asses all over Balasore were…sore…later. ;)

Police officer Sanjeev Panda said authorities carried out the public shaming after attempts to get theatres in district not to show pornography had failed.

“So we decided to crack down on the audience,” Panda was quoted in the newspaper, which also reported that police in Orissa planned to integrate such public punishments into their general campaign against pornography.

You can prevent porn from being screened in theaters, but you can’t get it off mobile phones:

The latest craze is pornographic Multi-Media Messaging clips, some of which allegedly show Bollywood actresses engaged in sexual acts.

Thanks Srinath, for the tip.

Manmohan Singh and Dubya are frolicking together like puppies. Bush even matched his tie to Singh’s turban, although G. Kaur couldn’t talk Laur into a sari. It’s all happening right now.

Bush rolled out full pomp and pageantry for Singh’s visit, with a bewigged fife and drum corps marching across the South Lawn during the welcome ceremony…

Administration officials say the pomp was designed to emphasize the growing importance to the United States of India, a rising economic and military power whose newfound affinity for the United States is something Bush considers a major foreign policy success. [Link]

An American army band played the Indian and American anthems, and Singh will address Congress tomorrow. In return, Singh promised Bush a reenactment of the Salt March, with be-lungi’d freedom fighters marching across the lawn to a fountain at Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Elapsed time: 30 seconds.)

Some sweeeet justice for those @$$h0!e$ who continue to annoy my spam filter:

A Nigerian court has sentenced a woman to two and half years in jail after she pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the country’s biggest e-mail scam case…

Typically fraudsters send out junk e-mails around the world promising recipients a share in a fortune in return for an advance fee. Those who pay never receive the promised windfall.

Scams have become so successful in Nigeria that antisleaze campaigners say swindling is one of the country’s main foreign exchange earners after oil, natural gas and cocoa.

Anajemba’s sentencing by a Lagos High Court on Friday is the first major conviction since the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was established in 2003 to crack down on Nigeria’s thriving networks of e-mail fraudsters.

The agency said in a statement that the judgment was a “landmark achievement by EFCC in the fight against advance fee fraud, corruption and other related crimes.”

When they say “thriving” they mean it; 200 junk e-mail/scam suspects have been arrested in the last two years, $200 million worth of loot has been confiscated and ten other people have been convicted.

Here’s my main point— After wading through all of this justice via CNet, I read THIS about Nigeria. Apparently, it is

Ranked the world’s second most corrupt country after Bangladesh by sleaze watchdog Transparency International

What?! What the hell is Bangladesh doing? I don’t get email scams from any enterprising Bongs. Why does THIS have to be the one contest Bangladesh wins?

That most excellent of libertarian/econ blogs, Marginal Revolution, reports on a situation in India -

India receives 90% of its rain during monsoon season so forecasting monsoons is critical for productive farming. Fortunately, according to an article in Nature (subs. req.), the Indian Meteorological Department has found a way to make its forecast better than any other available - they have suppresed publication of the other forecasts. The Indian government says this is necessary to prevent “confusion.”

…[a competitive] Institute, for example, forecast that rainfall would be 34% below average in June and 12% below average in July while the government forecast “normal or above normal rains.” The rainfall in June? 35% below average.

Sigh. Good thing Indian farmers have entrenched bureaucrats with guaranteed paychecks scraped off taxpayer backs watching out for them.

I’m so fascinated by the whole sidestory about US troops doin’ some GWOT Biz inside of Pakistan. As an IR geek, there’s just so much drama when you mix up semi-failed states, egg shell diplomacy, tenuously legitimate state leadership, semi-autonomous regions, nukes, and age-old rivalries…. Stir and you get something like this -

MIRAMSHAH (North Waziristan), July 16: Thousands of emotionally charged tribesmen, raising anti-US slogans, buried on Saturday 24 suspected militants killed inside Pakistan by US forces operating from across the border in Afghanistan.

And, of course, the standard retort / backlash -

…“These 24 people are martyrs and our entire Waziristan region is ready for jihad (holy war),” Maulana Abdur Rehman, a local prayer leader, said at the funeral of two suspects.

Open, combat ops within a non-combatant state. What a world. Stratpage gives us an idea of what this this looks like from the front line -

July 18, 2005: Heavy losses have caused most Taliban fighters to flee into Pakistan, where Pakistani troops are becoming more active in going after them. But the Taliban refuges in Pakistan are still largely intact. Once the Taliban reach their camps, which are usually under the protection of local tribes, they are still safe. But if the Pakistani troops catch the Taliban in transit, it’s another story.

Since we’ve had so many posts on kids lately, thus taking our mind off more troubling matters, I thought I’d throw a post into the mix as well. Remember Karan Takhar? He came in second place a few months ago in the National Geographic Bee. Indian Americans were denied a coveted “bee” crown. Well, on Thursday in Budapest, Hungary, Karan redeemed himself with the help of two teammates. Voice of America reports:

A team of three American school students has won the National Geographic World Championship in Budapest, Hungary Thursday. The team from Russia came in second and Canada was third.

Looking relieved three teenagers of the United States received the golden medals in an Olympic style ceremony at the end of the National Geographic World Championship in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest.

They received them after a nerve wrecking hour, which included burning questions on the capital of Slovakia, an egg-laying mammal, and questionable election practices in Zimbabwe.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that one of the three Russians walked up to Karan before the bout and whispered, “I will break you.” This made their eventual loss all the more difficult.

Less impressed with the American victory was the Russian team, which came in second.

The two boys and one girl wearing silver medals found it difficult to smile. 15-year old Ivan Prokhorov from Murmansk, explained why Russia should have won. “From one hand I am happy because it is the best result in Russian history. But from the other hand I feel upset a little bit, because we could be the first. Because we are intelligent enough to win this competition but something happened, I don’t know what,” he said.

The Globe and Mail asked Karan what he thought of the experience:

“It’s such a great experience but once you’re done, it’s really tiring,” said Karan, adding that his plan was to “sleep first, then celebrate.”

Think you got what it takes? Try for yourself.

On Saturday night, yummy Sepia athlete Amir Khan destroyed his opponent David Bailey in what is being hailed as “a stunning debut to his professional career” (thanks, Ananthan). The fight lasted all of 109 seconds. You can’t beat that with a bat, Salman.

Khan floored his opponent almost as soon as the bell went and knocked him down again very quickly.

The towel appeared to come in from Bailey’s corner but the referee seemed not to notice and the fight continued.

Bailey threw a couple of punches but was caught by another fierce delivery from Khan and the referee stepped in.

A previous SM post discussed Khan’s reaction to the London bombings. His point of view seemed especially significant; like those who carried out the attacks, he is a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Any similarities to the suspected terrorists end right there, however. Khan made his sympathies clear then (during an interview the day before his match) and at the main event itself:

Khan entered the ring to “Land of Hope and Glory” and dedicated his victory to the victims of the London bombings.

How did the teenager with the Olympic Silver Medal for Boxing feel about his debut?

“I was a bit nervous because it was my first fight - I’m going to go home and watch the video and see how it was,” said the teenager.

“I want to be one of the youngest British world champions ever and hopefully it will happen.”

Word, Amir. Show ‘em how it’s done.

Following up, the BBC reports that 13 year old Trisha Mittal, from Delhi, was India’s representative to the great Hari Puttar Gala in Scotland for the official release of the book of the book. She beat out 2,500 other children from India (is that all?) for the honor:

“We are supposed to be brought into the castle in carriages and ushered into a great hall on the launch night to meet Rowling and get an autographed copy. It sounds so exciting,” she says.

After speed-reading the book through the night, Trisha will be present as one of the 70 “cub reporters” from around the world at Rowling’s press conference the next day, asking questions and filing a report for the Indian paper. [BBC]

She’s a Hari Puttar drama geek, acting out her own plays and movies based on the characters:

Trisha is an active member of a flourishing Potter sorority in her housing block in Delhi. Along with friends, Neha, Rachita, Shanoo and Esther, they go around doing pithy Potter skits and plays, enacting roles and borrowing lines from the books. They even tweak a character “to make it funnier or grimmer” and videotape their homegrown contribution to the Potter mania that is sweeping India. [BBC]

You may not realize this, but the Hari Puttar launch was simultaneous around the world for countries that were ahead of the UK - bookstores released their copies at midnight BST. [Some places in India, as usual, were two hours late] Because of the logistical complexity of the task and the need for tight security, the company that handles Indian exam papers was chosen to distribute the book:

Safexpress’ experience of handling earlier projects of such high profile like CBSE question papers, PMT exam papers, UGC papers and earlier book releases including Harry Potter have come in handy for bagging this project. For Safexpress, the logistical feat here is the simultaneous delivery nationally to hundreds of outlets in over 50 Indian cities, as the India launch is to coincide with the worldwide launch. The simultaneous delivery impact gets higher considering the time of delivery to stores is to match the midnight of 15 - 16 release of the book in London.

With reports of leaks coming in from different parts of the world, Safexpress has implemented stringent measures across its warehouses. In every city, the books have been placed under constant electronic surveillance with guards manning storage centers. All kinds of electronic equipments like phones; cameras etc are prohibited inside the premises. [cite]

Though I’ll never, EVER share in your ecstasy, I sincerely hope that all of you Harry Pot-heads out there (ahem, achoo, cough, Ennis) are enjoying your weekend of magic and mediocre prose. I keed, I keed!

All over the world, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is dominating the news, most stores and quite a few lives right about now. On the right, these two bespectacled little boys in New Delhi who are holding their prized “bricks” are so cute, I’ve forgotten to smirk.

Meanwhile, this gaggle of adorable children attended a Harry Potter party in Calcutta. And the rest of you? Did you don capes and wave magic wands at similar? Or are you too busy reading through the sixth HP to admit to such activities? :D

Oh, and before you hurl it at me below, of course I agree with the oft-proffered declaration that “at least it gets kids to read”, though I’m astonished that you have to get them to do so in the first place. As a child, my parents punished me by taking away my library card. I did not require Dumbledores, muggles, quidditch or other J.K. Rowling-created concepts to inspire me to pick up a book. But whatever. (Cue the comment thread where we all attempt to out-do each other with tales of bibliophilia/nerdery and…begin.)

The comment threads on this blog are ablaze with flaming hot conversation (not to be confused with those uber-yummy flaming hot cheetos, please).

Everyone has an opinion regarding last week’s devastating attack on London, especially when it comes to the issue of how to react to terror. A few of you have exhorted moderate, if not all Muslims to speak up and out about their horror over what a few fundamentalists wrought.

Someone famous seems to be reading your minds; Olympic-Silver Medal-Boxer Amir Khan is the son of Pakistani immigrants, he is considered by some to be “Britain’s highest profile Asian-Muslim sportsman”. As a British Muslim, he feels especially called to react to the bombings. He made the following statements today, the day before his debut as a professional boxer:

“The worst thing about last week was that some people will tar all Muslims with the same brush,” the 18-year-old told the Daily Mirror newspaper.

“The Asian community has been appalled with what has happened. I hope that by stepping into the ring I can show all young kids in Britain that there are better things to do than getting into trouble and mixing with bad people.

“The world Islam means peace.”

Indeed. Rather than misdirecting hostility towards innocents, puree a punching bag. Hell, IMO any extra-curricular activity is preferable to growing glassy-eyed and hypnotized by a charismatic terrorist mastermind.

At age nine, Arfa Randhawa from Faisalabad, Pakistan, became the youngest person ever to pass a Microsoft certification exam in programming (via Slashdot):

Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn’t hire people her age…

She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language… The institute instructors assumed it would take Arfa about a year to go through the process of certification for developing Windows applications. But after four months… she passed the required exams….

“I saw her doing something extraordinary, making presentations,” said her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa and came with his daughter to Microsoft this week… he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age…

Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. “Soma” Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car. [Link]

BillG evinced some curiosity:

… he asked her at what age Muslim women start wearing the “Hijab”… Arfa… extended an invitation to him to visit… The Microsoft chief reportedly accepted the invitation and said that he would visit Pakistan in the near future. [Link]

Arfa says she wants to build satellites or software. She has stiff competition in Mridul Seth of Bangalore, who at age eight became the youngest to pass the Microsoft system admin exam.

Somasegar blogged their meeting here. Related post here.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences revealed the nominees for the 57th Annual Emmy Awards today…and would you look at who got props:

Supporting Actor, Drama Series : William Shatner, “Boston Legal,” ABC; Oliver Platt, “Huff,” Showtime; Naveen Andrews, “Lost ,” ABC; Terry O’Quinn, “Lost ,” ABC; Alan Alda, ” The West Wing,” NBC.

Can our boy beat Captain James Tiberius Kirk? Does the latter pronounce “I’m Denny Crane” a lot on Boston Legal? ;)

Eeeek, how exciting— “Lost” is also up for “Best Dramatic Series…and before you ask, no, I don’t know what the other nine noms are for. :D

The only even remotely un-fun part about this is the fact that there are dueling-“Lost” nominees in the same category. I hate it when that happens, though I’m not exactly torn about whom I prefer in this instance. Now if it were the “Lead Actress” contest…

The guy who played Cooter on The Dukes of Hazzard complains that the new Dukes movie has too much humpin’ ‘n cussin’:

“… to take a classic family show and do that is like taking ‘I Love Lucy’ and making her a crackhead or something…” [Link]

“… the “Dukes” movie is a sleazy insult to all of us who have cared about the “Dukes of Hazzard” for so long… I think the whole project shows an arrogant disrespect for our show, for our cast, for America’s families, and for the sensibilities of the heartland of our country… Sure it bothers me that they wanted nothing to do with the cast of our show, but what bothers me much more is the profanity laced script with blatant sexual situations that mocks the good clean family values of our series.” [Link]

Cooter then took a big bite of apple pie, saluted the flag, and then rolled himself back underneath a replica of the General Lee. [Link]

Good clean family values? These good clean family values? :)

Cooter says the song ‘Dazzy Dukes’ is a church hymn, cameltoe is what you find on a dromedary, and Bo and Luke’s ass-tight jeans are heartland values. So director Jay Chandrasekhar, stoner flick impresario, is now officially the first desi to corrupt Hollywood. And he’s Tamil, no less.

All right, stop what you’re doing, ‘cause I’m about to ruin…the substance and the style that you’re used to… ;) Kindly allow me get your mind off that toxic Us vs. Them, anti-ABCD debate. Instead of feeding trolls, peep THIS Hindustan Times article with shotacon overtones :

A 45-year-old Indian woman who operated a telephone sex service has been jailed for five years for seducing a 16-year-old boy, a report said on Wednesday.

Persis William was also fined 2,000 rupees (46 dollars) for having “illicit intercourse with a minor” and using him for “immoral purposes” in a house in Mumbai, a leading newspaper said.

The impressionable youth first called the sex line in 2000. After several months of chee-chee talk, the pervy Mrs. William upgraded from phone call to booty call. Or…perhaps “sugar momma” would be a more apposite term:

She gave him a gold chain, a shirt and three pairs of jeans. The boy stayed with her for 16 days during which time they had sexual intercourse, the newspaper said.

When the boy’s concerned parents contacted the authorities about their missing son, the police found him with his Ephebophiliac lovah. Now before you flame-broil me over it…yes, yes…I feel mildly guilty for my amusement at this story, because if the genders were reversed, I surely would’ve raised an arch. Still, if you think I’m depraved for that inexcusable double-standard, then just remember— I once voted and worked for the GOP. Now that’s some hard-core evil, right thurr. ;)

I have been recovering from my hectic weekend at the Artwallah festival in Los Angeles. After four days of South Asian Arts and three straight nights of afterparties, I needed a break. I took a lot of pictures though. Rather than provide a long winded re-cap I thought I’d just flog a few highlights so you can live vicariously.

The Himalayan Project break it down

When I was in Chicago for the fourth of July holiday, I made my first (and most assuredly not last) pilgrimage to Devon Avenue. I got there early, scouted the boutiques and took pictures of anything that caught my attention. Still, despite my attempts to take it all in, I almost missed the most significant thing I ended up seeing that saturday— the small brown sign that read “Gandhi Marg”, to the left of the regular “W Devon Ave” designation.

This may seem like an odd thing to be fascinated by, but in my defense, I’ve never seen an American street that was named after someone desi. To me, it was a big deal. I remember feeling a distinct sort of awe while gazing at that very official metal rectangle. If I go to Edison, NJ, and visit the intersection of Oak Tree Road and Wood Avenue, I will be overwhelmed there, too.

Four years after 57-year-old structural engineer Prem N Jerath died in the 9/11 terror attacks while saving a fellow worker’s life, a street here has been named after him…

“This corner reflects him. We chose this place because earlier we used to live around here. We passed from here everyday; even now I pass from here. I will get a chance to see this every day,” Meena Jerath, widow of the deceased said.

Edison City Councilman Parag Patel dedicated the intersection to Jerath, as the honoree’s family and friends looked on. Jerath’s widow thought the gesture was “touching”. I think it is as well. I also can’t think of a better person to celebrate:

Meena said her husband was always helping others. She said he lost his life while trying to help a person on whose leg a wall had fallen.

“He was helping him to go back to office and call for help…but…they didn’t realise the scope of the situation.”

In the Greek Orthodox church, we take the act of remembrance seriously; the chant that is sung at memorial services is “May his/her memory be eternal.” Prem Jerath was an engineer who worked for the Port Authority on the 82nd floor of Tower 1. Without hesitation, he sacrificed his own life for another’s. Such selfless love should be remembered forever.

As I mourn newly-stolen victims of terror, celebrating this life which was also lost in a senseless act of hatred provides me with a tiny bit of comfort. If I ever visit Edison (haven’t yet), I’m taking a picture of that intersection, for an everlasting reminder of Love.

Earlier, somebody asked if the incidence of hate crimes in the UK was worse now than in the past. The short answer is yes, immensely so:

In the three days after the bombing, police in London recorded 180 racial incidents. A total of 58 faith-related crimes were recorded, compared with one in the same period last year.

Attacks have also been reported on mosques in Tower Hamlets and Merton, both in London, Telford, Leeds, Bristol, Birkenhead and Gloucester, and on a Sikh temple in Kent. [Guardian]

Today’s BBC Worldservice radio broadcast indicated that there have been additional reports of backlash related violence, but gave no further details. Before some of you start frothing at the mouth and comparing this to the violence of the bombings, there is no comparison. I was livid when the bombings occurred. Since then, it has only become more personal - my cousin was one of those lucky enough to dodge the bullet, passing through only 10 minutes before the bombs went off. There is no reason to mix the two issues though. The bombing does not justify anti-brown violence afterwards.

Following the comment thread on my last post it quickly became apparent that folks were going to fixate on the wrong labels and thereby detract from the more important discussion that needs to take place. “They weren’t South Asian, they were Pakistani.” “They weren’t Pakistani, they were Kashmiris.” “There is no such thing as South Asian.”

Allow me to propose that we put semantics aside to focus on the one label that really matters. There is one label that we can hopefully all agree on: They were Second-generation. Born and raised in a western country with all the freedoms and opportunities they could want. In this instance the pejorative “confused” really does apply.

When I was a child my mother told me a story that her mother had told her. I can only re-tell the story as it was told to me:

“Once when mami was young she was at a train station. There was a strange man there who simply looked at her and hypnotized her. The man was a Fakir. She followed him unable to control herself as he led her away. Fakir’s have magical powers. Really Abhi (I was shaking my head in disbelief). They are Muslim and they kidnap and convert you to Islam. Luckily the family got her back before she walked too far off. She didn’t remember anything that happened afterward and said she couldn’t control herself. A Fakir can just look at you and you’ll forget everything, your whole life.

Now bear in mind that my family is from Gujarat, where bigotry has persisted for generations. My mom is not a bigot but she believed (and still does) that a Fakir has mystical powers that can brainwash a normal person and get them to walk away from their life and convert to Islam (even though not all Fakirs are Muslim and the Sufi order is the least fundamental). I actually asked her to tell me this story again when I went home just last month.

Most of us know at least one person that is a “born-again” into some religion. Various things motivate these people. Many of them (like at least one of these bombers) were described as being out-of-control before their conversion (or re-discovery of their family religion). Others feel overwhelmed by the influence of the world they live in and retreat back to a basic set of instructions that they think will bring order to the chaos they feel. Some take this “order” too far by trying to impose their interpretation of that order on others. Most born-agains however are perfectly sane and choose to practice their new beliefs in private without a harmful thought toward anyone. How do we recognize in our second generation peers which path they have chosen to walk?

  

Confirmed desi victims of the London bombings (via DBS):

Bank worker Shahara Islam, 20, was travelling towards Liverpool Street on the Tube on her way to work at [Angel station]. She is British, of Bengali origin. The family are practising Muslims. Her uncle Nazmul Hasan, 25, said: “We are absolutely desperate. Her father has broken down several times but has spent hours at all the hospitals searching for her. “The bizarre thing is that I missed a call from her at 9.45am yesterday, approximately an hour after the explosion (near Liverpool Street) went off.” [Link]

Her mother Romena is riddled with guilt because she insisted her daughter should go to work on that fateful day even though she was a little reluctant. Shahera wanted to take the day off because she had an appointment with her dentist in the afternoon. [Link]

… Islam… was a model Muslim and attended the mosque every Friday. [Link]

Shyanuja Parathasangary, 30, has not been seen by her parents since she left the home they share in Kensal Rise on Thursday morning to go to work. Her mother, Ruth, said she boarded a train at Kensal Green at 8.55am and arrived at Euston station at 9.08am. Mrs Parathasangary believes her daughter may have then got on the route 30 bus to take her to work at the Royal Mail offices in Alder Street. She said: “She did not say anything when she left, she just gave me a sweet smile.” [Link]

Still unconfirmed:

IT worker Neetu Jain, 38, is also feared dead in the No 30 blast. She had been evacuated from Euston station and caught a bus. She made a mobile call 10 minutes before the explosion. Her Muslim boyfriend Gous Ali, 32, said: “Neetu is a very spiritual, down-to-earth, loving person and she would not hurt anybody. Her family are of Indian origin but she is British and she embraces all faiths and cultures. I am a Muslim but nowhere in the Islam of the Koran does it say that this is acceptable…” [Link]

Jain apparently narrowly escaped a subway bomb only to succumb to the bus bomb:

It is ironic that the 37-year-old computer analyst, who could not take the tube as she was evacuated from the Euston Tube Station, decided to take a bus. She never reached her office. [Link]

Here are photos of all the missing.

When growing up desi, you learn through painful experience to avoid One-Track Uncle at family parties. Whether it’s the greatness of fifth-century India, the importance of religion, American politics or the problem with ‘yooth’ these days, One-Track Uncle has a favorite harangue which he’s made his own soliloquy. And there are usually several of them at a party. With a little samosa and a little beer, you can usually get a circle of uncles launching monologues at each other and pretending to listen. They’ll politely ha-ha and not so subtly change the subject back to their own particular obsessions.

If only they had blogging back in the day.

So it surprises me not at all to find that One-Track Uncle also appears at the grandaddy of all circle jerks, the presidential press conference. Meet Raghubir Goyal, an Indian reporter whose obsession with Pakistan has become the subject of much humor inside the Beltway:

“The 32-minute pummeling was perhaps the worst McClellan received since he got the job two years ago… [he] robotically refused to answer no fewer than 35 questions about Rove and the outing of the CIA’s Valerie Plame.”… Pummeled by tough questions, McClellan time and again reached for a lifeline. His first… was “Raghubir Goyal of the India Globe, who reliably asks about Pakistan — and did so again…” That gambit had a payoff for McClellan: Once it seemed clear that the mumbling Goyal was just warming up, CNN chose to cut away from its live coverage of the briefing. [Link]

The idea is it becomes a feeding frenzy in the press room — you’re just getting hammered with question after question you don’t really want to answer, but if you’re careful you can call on somebody like Mr. Goyal, who’s known to all as Goyal, who will predictably ask you about isn’t it time we start bombing Pakistan, because he’s representing an Indian point of view… you can pretty reliably change the subject… [Link]

Months ago Manish wrote about the ethnic slur “Paki.” In Britain this is the slur of choice when referring to all people of South Asian ethnicity. Brace yourselves. SM tipster Prem Khalon has been sending us the latest news clippings on the London bomb blasts. From the Timesonline:

Four friends from northern England have changed the face of terrorism by carrying out the suicide bombings that brought carnage to London last week.

It emerged last night that, for the first time in Western Europe, suicide bombers have been recruited for attacks. Security forces are coming to terms with the realisation that young Britons are prepared to die for their militant cause.

Three of the men lived in Leeds and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.

The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named last night as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.

Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.

Police are still trying to identify the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he comes from Luton.

A number of years ago my younger brother went to study in Egypt. While there he decided to climb Mt. Sinai alone. My mother has been blessed with two nature-loving yet slightly imbalanced sons. Upon returning to the U.S. he told me that while on Sinai he got lost and took several of the wrong trails. Eventually he found himself trapped on a cliff in cold weather without a visible means to get back on to surer footing. He thought he was going to die and started yelling for help. Eventually, from out of nowhere came a shepherd and pulled him off the cliff. Months Two years later, back in Cairo, a stranger approached my brother on the street and hugged him. He wondered why a strange man would be hugging him until he realized it was the same shepherd.

Time magazine has an exclusive account of the heroics of a South Asian shepherd and his village, once again proving that sometimes the most modest of men/women are needed to guide the way:

A crackle in the brush. That’s the sound the Afghan herder recalls hearing as he walked alone through a pine forest last month. When he looked up, he saw an American commando, his legs and shoulder bloodied. The commando pointed his gun at the Afghan. “Maybe he thought I was a Taliban,” says the shepherd, Gulab. “I remembered hearing that if an American sticks up his thumb, it is a friendly gesture. So that’s what I did.” To make sure the message was clear, Gulab lifted his tunic to show the American he wasn’t hiding a weapon. He then propped up the wounded commando, and together the pair hobbled down the steep mountain trail to Sabari-Minah, a cluster of adobe-and-wood homes—crossing, for the time being, to safety.

What Gulab did not know is that the commando he encountered was part of a team of Navy SEALs that had been missing for four days after being ambushed by Taliban insurgents during a reconnaissance mission in northeastern Afghanistan.

After taking the SEAL to Sabari-Minah, Gulab called a village council and explained that the American needed protection from Taliban hunters. It was the SEAL’s good fortune that the villagers were Pashtun, who are honor-bound never to refuse sanctuary to a stranger. By then, said Gulab, “the American understood that we were trying to save him, and he relaxed a bit.”

The Taliban was not so agreeable. That night the fighters sent a message to the villagers: “We want this infidel.” A firm reply from the village chief, Shinah, shot back. “The American is our guest, and we won’t give him up as long as there’s a man or a woman left alive in our village.”

…Gulab now fears that his act of compassion may mean his death warrant. After returning the SEAL, he went back to grab his family and flee before the Taliban would come round seeking revenge. In the mountains of Kunar, fear is rising again.

Ironic isn’t it? The same Pashtun honor code that some believe allows Osama Bin Laden to evade capture, also saved the life of one of our NAVY SEALS.

Time Magazine Asia wonders if the saffronists are losing their influence in India and if the hope for peace is turning the people off to their message:

If India and Pakistan are to make peace, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted a few days ago, people have to want it. An attack by six suspected Muslim militants on a contested religious site at Ayodhya in northern India triggered protests last week, as Hindus marched in New Delhi shouting “Down, down Pakistan!” and forced roads and shops to close across the country. Police used water cannons to disperse demonstrators and arrested some 3,000 people. “I have always maintained that we need to carry public opinion to make a success of the peace process,” Singh warned as he appealed for calm. “Anything that comes in the way of public opinion—and certainly these incidents, if they get repeated—has the potential to disrupt the peace process.”

The potential, yes. But not, as used to be the case, the probability. Despite the attack and ensuing protests—far from the worst India has seen—the mood on both sides of the border finally seems to be moving beyond a half-century of confrontation. Today, Indians and Pakistanis meet as friends in business, on movie screens and on the cricket pitch. And in contrast to the murderous outrage that used to follow suspected Islamic attacks on Indian soil, there were no reports of reprisals against Muslims in India last week.

Many ascribe this relative amity to the fading appeal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that won general elections in 1997 and 1998.

As if on cue, The RSS has delivered its promised message to BJP president L.K. Advani. The Hindu reports:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Monday delivered its promised stern message to the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, especially the president L.K. Advani, that it would not tolerate any deviation from its ideology or any “ideological erosion”.

Party sources said the message was unambiguous: No deviation would be allowed from the Sangh ideology and Mr. Advani should go for having shaken the very foundations of those beliefs with his Jinnah formulation during his Pakistan visit. It was now for the BJP to act.

Despite pressure from the RSS till late in the night, Mr. Advani did not oblige it with his resignation.

Goodness gracious me, I’ve got NO love for the gulf today. First the barbaric evil that is ab-using little boys for Camel-racing, now this?

In a bid to create more jobs for its nationals, Saudi Arabia has passed a new law banning the employment of non-Saudis as security guards at private companies and organisations.

Huh. I wonder…who…might…be affected.

No, really, what I should be wondering is “whom are they going to look down on and abuse, if they aren’t importing brown people for that”?

It’s so gut-twisting (though that could also be the OJ I just had)— I refuse to visit family members in the gulf, because there’s so much odious injustice going on there…even as my cousins swear that it’s worth all the hardship and anxiety, since the opportunities are so plentiful. If laws like this continue to be passed, then that’s one way to ensure that Indians aren’t getting shat on. You can’t get mistreated in Saudi Arabia if you aren’t allowed to work there.

I want people in India to have a chance at the material success we all crave, but I can’t stand the second- and third-class…hell, no-class treatment we get in oil-y places. I can’t wait for India to become really successful; then my cousins can just stay home, and the Saudis can keep their damned jobs.

In my pleasant daydream, right after India becomes that kind of powerhouse, Pakistan grows a set and gives would-be Arab hunters the bird— and I don’t mean the beautiful ones with feathers which they already shamelessly and hypocritically provide.

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth (‘Freedom is slavery’) could hardly have done better than the neo-Taliban running Pakistan’s nuttiest province. Americans are familiar with daft states. We call them ‘Florida’:

A controversial new law critics say will seek Taleban-style moral policing has been presented in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province… The proposed law calls for the establishment of a new department to “discourage vice and encourage virtue.” … hardline religious parties have enough seats in the provincial house to pass the bill.

It will be headed by a cleric called “mohtasib” - one who holds others accountable - to be nominated by the government. The principal duty of the cleric will be to “ensure adherence to Islamic values in public places”… the mohtasib will be required to ensure people pay adequate respect to azan (call to prayers), pray on time and do not engage in commerce at the time of Friday prayers. The mohtasib will also stop unrelated men and women from appearing in public places together and discourage singing and dancing… [Link]

Having already banned alcohol and wedding feasts, they’re now trying to persuade people to like their fundamentalist sect better by beating them in public. It’s motivational genius!

The “B” word continues its reign of terror. Across the pond, the tally thus far:

• One serious injury
• One gurudwara in Kent set on fire
• Three attacks on mosques in east London and Bristol
• Four arson attacks on mosques (Leeds, Belvedere, Telford and Birkenhead)
• 19 windows smashed at the mosque in east London
• Bottles thrown at the windows of a gurudwara in south London
• Arson in Southall, reported at the home of an Asian family

Then there was the poor Asian woman from Middlesex who, on the day of the bombings, recognized the unmistakable scent of petroleum while “liquid” dripped down her door. Remind me to add “attempted arson” to the bullet points above.

Commander Brian Paddick, a senior spokesperson for the police had this to say:

“We have had a number of incidents of hate crime, racially and religiously motivated offences, and we take these types of offences very, very seriously,” he told reporters.

So the good guys are on the case. But whose case are they on? When I first posted about vandalized mosques and gurudwaras, a fast and furious comment thread decayed in to race-baiting madness. The flames have been put out, but a remaining comment makes me shake my head.

We don’t actually know that the gurudwara attack was fomented by white people, do we? For all we know it could have been Hindus, but this board is full of remarks about British and American skinheads, etc., which simply assume the racial identity of the evil-doers.

Right. Except I don’t have to assume Jack when I repeatedly read facts like this:

The same day, five white men were arrested after bottles were thrown at the windows of a gurdwara in south London.

Maybe they were white Hindus. One can never be sure.

The Arab sheikhs on their annual bird hunts in Pakistan also run side errands: kidnapping or buying little boys for use in sport.

Intense media interest forced many of the Gulf kingdoms to ban the use of children under 15 for camel racing. “The move failed miserably because child traffickers simply got fake passports which stated a four-year-old’s age as 16,” says Mr Burney.

Most of the repatriated children hail from the south-east Punjab districts of Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rahimyar Khan… These districts are the preferred hunting grounds for Gulf sheikhs, some of whom go there every year to hunt the houbara bustard… The three districts are also home to the Cholistan - one of Pakistan’s two main deserts and one of the few areas in the country where camels are regularly used for travel and trade. [Link]

These 40,000 kids are imprisoned, and many are raped:

… the boys are kept in terrible prison-like conditions where they are deliberately underfed to keep them light so the camels can run faster. [Link]

It is not uncommon for child jockeys to fall off and be injured while racing, and their illegal status means race track owners are often reluctant to take them to hospital… the boys often arrive with broken hands or broken legs. And many, he says, have been sodomised.

One boy shows me the scar he was left with after being trampled by a camel. Crudely stitched, it stretches from his chest down to his hips… “There was a child in the camp, and because he wanted to leave the camp and go to Dubai, one of the racetrack owners ran over the child in a truck and killed him,” he tells me. [Link]

Toronto’s fifth annual South Asian arts festival, Masala Mehndi Masti, just posted a lengthy schedule for this year’s event (thanks, jo). You can also see it by day or by category.

The free festival runs from August 3-7 at Harbourfront Centre in the shadow of the CN Tower. With 80,000 attendees in 2004, it’s the the largest such festival in North America. Toronto’s desi population of 500K is 2 œ times the size of New York’s. It may be the city outside the subcontinent with the most desis.

Just a few of the events:

• Lots of new bands
• Kathak-flamenco fusion
• Brits: Sonik Gurus, Rhythm, Dhol and Bass
• Kalapani, a play about the Indian middle passage to the Caribbean
• Your Palace in the Sky, a performance piece about the Air India bombing
• Tina Sugandh
• American Daylight, an indie film about Indian call centers, featuring Koel Purie
• Sam and Me, Deepa Mehta’s first feature film
• Short films
• Sketch comedy
• Spoken word
• Shayari

Neha comments about last year’s fest:

… I found the music portion incredibly varied, from Rishi Rich to qawwali parties… The Filmi festival was on at the same time, which focused on South Asian Canadian films… if you get lost just let the Hondas lead the way.

Related post on the Artwallah festival here.

Suketu Mehta provides his take on the outsourcing debate in Tuesday’s New York Times:

The outsourcing debate seems to have mutated into a contest between the country of my birth and the country of my nationality. Of course I feel a loyalty to America: it gave my parents a new life and my sons were born here. I have a vested interest in seeing America prosper. But I am here because the country of my ancestors didn’t understand the changing world; it couldn’t change its technology and its philosophy and its notions of social mobility fast enough to fight off the European colonists, who won not so much with the might of advanced weaponry as with the clear logical philosophy of the Enlightenment. Their systems of thinking conquered our own. So, since independence, Indians have had to learn; we have had to slog for long hours in the classroom while the children of other countries went out to play.

When I moved to Queens, in New York City, at the age of 14, I found myself, for the first time in my life, considered good at math. In Bombay, math was my worst subject, and I regularly found my place near the bottom of the class rankings in that rigorous subject. But in my American school, so low were their standards that I was - to my parents’ disbelief - near the top of the class. It was the same in English and, unexpectedly, in American history, for my school in Bombay included a detailed study of the American Revolution. My American school curriculum had, of course, almost nothing on the subcontinent’s freedom struggle. I was mercilessly bullied during the 1979-80 hostage crisis, because my classmates couldn’t tell the difference between Iran and India. If I were now to move with my family to India, my children - who go to one of the best private schools in New York - would have to take remedial math and science courses to get into a good school in Bombay.

Outsourcing is sure to be an issue in the midterm elections next year, even more so than the last Presidential election. The Democrats shamelessly pander to their base while the Republicans avoid the issue like the plague. Nobody bothers to admit that fixing our education system is the best way to prevent the “problem” in the first place. Mehta describes that the “logical philosophy of the Enlightenment” that allowed Europeans to dominate in the first place is now being ignored by them. He beautifully points out that turnabout is only fair:

There is a perverse hypocrisy about the whole jobs debate, especially in Europe. The colonial powers invaded countries like India and China, pillaged them of their treasures and commodities and made sure their industries weren’t allowed to develop, so they would stay impoverished and unable to compete. Then the imperialists complained when the destitute people of the former colonies came to their shores to clean their toilets and dig their sewers; they complained when later generations came to earn high wages as doctors and engineers; and now they’re complaining when their jobs are being lost to children of the empire who are working harder than they are. My grandfather was once confronted by an elderly Englishman in a London park who asked, “Why are you here?” My grandfather responded, “We are the creditors.” We are here because you were there.

For the last seven years I have kept this picture in a frame on my desk. It is a picture I took of the Astronaut memorial wall in Florida. I’m sure my family isn’t going to appreciate the fact that there are no pictures of them :)

After nearly two and a half years NASA will be launching a shuttle back into space (scheduled for Wednesday). Anna emailed me the fact that the shuttle will be carrying symbolic mementos of the seven astronauts that perished aboard Columbia in February of 2003. The Hindu reports:

Countdown began today for the launch of Discovery, the first shuttle to be launched since the Columbia crash two years ago, which will carry a photograph of India-born astrologer Kalpana Chawla, and mementos from her colleagues who perished in the tragedy.

Jean P Harrison, widower of Chawla said he was sending a photograph of his wife aboard Discovery, which is poised for liftoff day with five-man, two-woman crew on Wednesday.

The picture of Kalpana is from her college days in India, where she is sitting in her dorm room surrounded by photographs of aircraft and one of a space shuttle.

Wow. I never even knew she was an astrologer as well.

The ubiquitous Aasif Mandvi is in a new televised cereal ad running in the States. General Mills, maker of Wheaties, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cheerios, is touting its switch to whole grain. The ad is filmed faux documentary style with washed-out colors. Mandvi plays a man-on-the-street having a hysterical paroxysm (NSFW) over cereal.

O Cheerios,
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more fibrous and more laxative…

I last saw Mandvi in Spiderman 2 playing Tobey Maguire’s demanding pizzeria boss. He’s got one of those faces which directors turn to for immigrant flava: he was in Analyze This as a doctor, Mystic Masseur as the lead, Die Hard 3 as ‘Arab cabbie’ (natch), American Chai and ABCD. He’s been all over the boob tube with guest appearances on CSI, Law & Order and Sex and the City, and he did a popular one-person play a few years ago called Sakina’s Restaurant.

Previous post here.

Something depressingly predictable has gone down in the wake of last week’s terror attack on London (thanks, RC). The backlash we worried about has commenced:

Arsonists set a mosque in northwest England on fire on Saturday, police said, two days after a string of bomb attacks across London killed at least 50 people.

According to the Hindustan Times, authorities are searching for two white men in their early 20s, who were spotted near the mosque before it was vandalized. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only religious edifice that was harmed:

There were also reports in the Indian media Sunday that a Gurudwara — a Sikh temple — had been vandalised in an arson attack in Leeds.

According to the spokesman, two Sikh temples were attacked.

The attack on a mosque is awful enough, but going after a Gurudwara…that stings in a different way. You know, I had naively hoped that this wouldn’t happen across the pond. Contrary to America, where Sikhs are more scattered and less understood, I thought that in England, people were more knowledgeable about Sikhism, that they could tell the difference between al-Qaeda and an innocent group of people who had nothing to do with transportation treachery. Perhaps some, if not most of the English can…but much to my alarm, there are quite obviously a dangerous few who can’t. To them, a turban is a turban is a turban. Bend it like Beckham and bomb it like someone ignorant.

“Such attacks are an affront not only to the great Sikh religion but to entire humanity,” the spokesman said.

“The Sikh community in the United Kingdom has carved out a highly respected place for itself in the British society through its industriousness and commitment,” the spokesman said.

None of that matters. We are foreign and we wear turbans, just like that bastard Osama. Thanks to a coincidence of complexion, we are complicit and we will pay.

SM reader Ravi Swami is an animation designer, and I love what little of his work I’ve seen. His demo reel includes retro desi artwork, war propaganda-style satire, psychedelic flying Bugs and a kitschy robot that’s a cross between Sky Captain and Futurama.

Swami mashes up kaleidoscopes, lotus mandalas, Indian revolutionaries and multi-armed deities. Behind a Bollywood theater, London’s Erotic Gherkin lurks erect. It’s all set to the moody atmospherics of Domenico Modugno’s original recording of ‘Volare,’ popularized again by the Gipsy Kings. Watch the demo reel.

The Spitfire beer ad is quite witty: pouring a draught becomes a visual pun about rolling a fighter plane. Brill! The reel also includes a snippet of an animation called ‘Mr. and Mrs. Singh.’ Its visual style is tremendous, 3D with a watercolor look:

A few years ago Ravi developed a short film with Gurinder Chadha which was to be shown before the film Bend it Like Beckham. When the Channel 4 animation department folded, so did the short. A real shame because… such a high profile film [could] have helped to resurrect the feature film trailer as a legitimate forum for quality animation shorts… [Link]

Most of the desi bits in the demo reel are from his short film ‘Blood Sutra,’ with director Rajesh Thind and a title shared by a Vijay Iyer album. As part of a public health campaign, the short fights desi superstitions about donating blood. Paper doll doctors dance bhangra at the hospital; a phillum poster announces the debut of an Indian starlet, ‘Heema Globin.’

… Rajesh and Ravi have also gone for a rapid-fire episode series… Shorts within a short if you like. This approach may have something to do with Ravi’s early obsession with Zagreb School Animation and the ‘Mini-mini’ series. The influence of the animated one-minute gag can certainly be seen in ‘Blood Sutra.’ Ravi’s views on the irony of the communist Zagreb School evolving into the capitalist Red Bull adverts could spawn a whole Ph.D. thesis… [Link]

Most who mine old Indian health propaganda (‘An Ideal Boy’) do so purely for art’s sake, winkily adorning a coffee table book or T-shirt. But Swami re-applies the parody to the source. What can you say about making doctor cutouts do a silly dance, then sticking them back in a hospital? It subverts without subverting. I’ve never had so much fun watching a health film. Watch the short (3:01).

I know it seems like we only post cool things to do in NYC, L.A. or D.C. but yay urrea readers, take dil: this one’s for you. Next week, you should totally drag your friends and frenemies to Mutineer Manish’s old stomping grounds, for an evening at the theater.

You’ll be watching The Domestic Crusaders, a two-act play which takes place on a single day in the life of a multi-generational Pakistani-American family—a day, by the way, that happens to be the “baby’s” 21st birthday:

With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans, the tensions and sparks fly among the three generations, culminating in an intense family battle as each “crusader” struggles to assert and impose their respective voices and opinions, while still attempting to maintain and understand that unifying thread that makes them part of the same family.

How’s that for salient? If you’re worried about whether or not it will be good, here’s what the Contra-Costa Times had to say about it:

Wajahat Ali didn’t set out to write an earthshaking play. The Berkeley student was taking a short story course from Pulitzer Prize nominee Ishmael Reed. When his professor pulled him aside and told him he was a natural playwright, Ali couldn’t believe it. “I thought it was pure nonsense,” Ali says. Reed encouraged Ali to write a Muslim-American response to 9-11. “All I wanted to do was pass a class,” says Ali, who succeeded in doing much more than that.

Hey. All you readers who have totally reasonable gripes with the media, for not covering a broader, more accurate world— this blockquote’s for you:

“Domestic Crusaders” represents Muslim-American voices that have not been heard because we are living in a country whose media is censored…

“In the largely Pakistani-American audience at the premiere of the play, people were roaring and falling off their chairs,” says Blank. “It’s the kind of audience most original playwrights would kill to be able to contact,” Blank says, laughing.

Oh, dear. Are they fixing what isn’t broken?

His recent hit film starring the Bachchans was an ode to one of his favourite films, The Godfather. Now, filmmaker Ramu is all set to remake one of India’s cult hits – Sholay. “More than The Godfather, Sholay is my favourite film. I entered movies because of the film and owe my career to it. I remember having seen the film 27 times. With Godfather, I did not exactly do a remake. But now, I want to remake Sholay in all its essence,” the filmmaker said soon after procuring the rights for the remake from the Sippys.

Well, she-it…I’ve seen The Sound of Music 92 times, but I’m not about to re-cast the family Von Trapp… ;)

There’s a reason why I loathe cover songs, they almost never measure up to the original. Aside from Dinosaur Jr’s explosive rendition of “Just like heaven”, I can do without remakes, thank you very much. Movies are no different. Sabrina? Pffft. But what do I know? Why buck a trend?

Reworking older hits seems to be the order of the day. After yesteryear hits like Devdas and Parineeta being remade, plans are on to remake films like Don, Teesri Manzil and Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam.

How do you replace a legend? You don’t. (Or can’t, in my snarky opinion):

…he is unlikely to cast Abhishek Bachchan for Amitabh’s role. “The casting is still open. I do not plan to work with any direct descendant of the Bachchans and the Deols for this movie,” he says.

Well, now that THAT’S decided…book ‘em, Dhann-o. Or perhaps just say “no”. To remakes, ;) that is:

As for the setting of the film, he said, “The new Sholay will be set in contemporary Mumbai and the two heroes will be fighting against Samba, the underworld don. And Basanti will be the city’s first woman cab driver and her cab will be called Dhanno!”

The film will be called Ram Gopal Varma ka Sholay. He signed off saying, “People might say this is the height of arrogance. They might even think I’ve lost my head after my recent success.”

I don’t know about arrogance, but I’d vote for quixotic. What say you, SMers? And has anyone seen the brown Godfather?

This little chestnut has been on CNN’s front page since Friday, in the bottom left corner (thanks, chick pea). It’s also on the current Time home page.

The Time magazine story is not only part of MTV Desi’s PR launch (sow widely, eat phat), it’s part of the South Asian brand launch in the U.S. It’s the usual hype and Mercedes-driving uncles, but hey, we’re narcissists:

… during the 1990s the number of Indians in the U.S. more than doubled—making them the fastest-growing Asian minority. There are some 2.5 million desis in the U.S., and the vast majority are Indian…. consider how premium a customer a South Asian is: Indians alone commanded $76 billion worth of disposable personal income last year… median household income is nearly $64,000—50% higher than the national average. The U.S. has always welcomed the world’s poor and working classes. India has sent its professionals… 64% of Indians in the U.S. hold a bachelor’s degree, vs. 24% of the overall population… “We make up one-fifth of the population of the world. Imagine that.”

Jay Sean explains why he picked Bipasha Basu for his video. What the other reason could possibly be escapes my mind.

Sean is miked and seated in front of an MTV logo reminiscent of the Taj Mahal… “This is your boy Jay Sean,” he says, “and you’re watching MTV Desi…” Sean, in typical eyebrow-raising rock-star fashion, picked actress Bipasha Basu for his music video in part because she was racy enough to have had an onscreen kiss…

Ah yes, now I remember. It’s because she looks like this:

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4

Thanks to my Salon subscription, whenever I want to, I get to read a publication I’d normally ignore —The New Republic Online. On the 8th, an article about the attack on London caught my attention. I’ve often said that the comments on this blog are what captivate me, that the discussions which spontaneously erupt under a post are the best part of the Mutiny. This week has proven no exception, as I am surprised and provoked by what some of you have said.

Your words made me think that a few of you might also want to read “Response Time”, by Joseph Braude, an essay about how Muslim groups responded to the terrorist attack on London, especially since SM regular Al Mujahid was repeatedly asked to provide “proof” that Muslim groups had denounced the terrorist bombing that rocked London’s transit system; he responded here and here. With that in mind, I found Braude’s piece even more salient.

Yesterday’s attack on the British people gave Muslims everywhere a chance to distance themselves from the radical Islamists who claim to have perpetrated it. While Muslim governments have taken the opportunity to speak out against the killing of innocents, Muslim Brotherhood offshoot groups failed to rise to the challenge. What they offered instead were statements full of equivocation—in marked contrast to other Arab politicians.*

Among Muslim heads of state, condemnation of the Al Qaeda “raid” was just as severe as the rest of the world’s. Jordan, the Gulf states, and Egypt as well as Syria and Iran all sent official condolences on behalf of the nation. Some went further: Egypt, whose ambassador to Iraq was also murdered by an Al Qaeda affiliate yesterday, called in its official press for seamless counterterrorist coordination between Arab countries and the West. In Europe and the United States, Muslim community organizations like Britain’s Muslim Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) were absolute in their condemnation: “barbaric crimes” which “can never be justified or excused,” according to CAIR; “hateful acts” which only “strengthen our determination to live together in peace,” says the Muslim Council.

The response from Hamas was predictable:

Hamas, on the other hand, laid ultimate blame for the attack on aggression against Arabs and Muslims. In an official communiqué from Gaza, the movement declared:

We call upon all states and influential international societal forces to bring about an end to all forms of occupation, aggression, oppression, and discrimination directed against the Arab and Islamic nation—particularly in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan—because the continuation of these acts offers an environment of tension and repression which naturally leads to a continuance of the likes of these acts and explosions.

The talented artist behind Ghee Happy just published a short graphic story in a new comic anthology with fellow Pixar employees (via Boing Boing). Sanjay Patel’s story, ‘Loopholes,’ is in an anthology called Afterworks. The coworkers call their venture E-Ville Press, named after Pixar’s Emeryville location. Patel is selling the anthology and a new T-shirt at Comic Con in San Diego, July 13-17:

In case you’re confused, the artwork suitable for toddlers is the one on the left. I figured that out all by myself despite, I swear, never having been to a comic book convention in my life.

Previous post here.

The BBC is running a pictorial on members of the pheasant family in South Asia which are being hunted to extinction. This spectacular-looking family includes the Indian, green and white peafowl, the satyr tragopan, the Himalayan monal, the Western tragopan and the Koklass pheasant, among others.

Last October, the Acorn covered the hunting of another South Asian bird. Arab sheikhs fly into Pakistan every year to hunt the endangered houbara bustard, carving the deserts into exclusive playgrounds. Believing the bustard to be an aphrodisiac, the sheikhs use the C-130 Hercules, one of the biggest airplanes in the world, to airlift deli trucks into the desert to store their meat.

Some have built personal airfields… Some have constructed large desert palaces… Some live in elaborate tent cities, guarded by legions of Bedouin troops… Totally closed off to outsiders, these hunting fiefdoms are, in effect, Arab principalities. They sprinkle the vast deserts of Balochistan, Punjab, and Sind… the late King Khalid of Saudi Arabia transported dancing camels in a C-130 to join him on his hunt… The sheikhs normally spent between ten and twenty million dollars for a typical royal hunt…

“… while Pakistanis are being arrested and prosecuted if they’re found to be hunting the bird, Arab dignitaries are given diplomatic immunity… It’s slaughter, mass slaughter. They kill everything in sight.” When I asked him why the government of Pakistan had done so little… he replied, “Because we lack the moral fibre…”… The Pakistanis see the Arabs breaking Pakistan’s own laws, yet there are huge sums of money involved… [Link - PDF]

In the bustard hunt, some see an allegory for Pakistan itself:

Like the houbara bustard, Pakistan too has been the prize in many people’s elaborate games. It has been used by the Gulf States to house and train their Islamists, the fodder for the war in Afghanistan, and by the United States as a conduit for arms and money for anti-Soviet forces. It was given the cold shoulder by both once the last Russian tank departed. Like the devastated desert after a houbara hunt, Pakistan was left a wasteland of heavily armed and angry militants and a socio-economic situation that threatens to turn the country completely towards militant Islam. [Link]

After every terrorist attack in the Western World I look for the “B” word in the news the next day. Here we go:

The San Jose Mercury News- Among London’s Muslims, fears of backlash linger, but quietly

Newsday- U.S. Muslims denounce London bombings, brace for backlash

Vive le Canada- Canuck Muslims dread backlash

Monsters & Critics- Australian Moslems fear backlash after London bombs

India Monitor- Muslims cower in fear of backlash

See, here is the thing. Whenever a terrorist attack like this occurs, the cold, dispassionate, analytical side of me asks, “why is the average citizen so afraid to get back aboard that plane, train, or bus the very next day?” The attack was temporally and spatially isolated and not something they must continue to cower in fear of. Aside from not giving the terrorists what they want, the probability that there will be another attack within days or months of the original is just not backed up by the data. The compassionate side of me realizes however, that humans are humans. Fear, real or imagined, is part of who we are and keeps us alive.

For people with brown skin, and especially Muslims, the actual attack is just the beginning of a terrorist incident however. For this group an attack is not a temporally or spatially isolated event. The moment that the physical attack ends is when the real fear begins for a sizeable portion of the population (as shown by the headlines above). With a terrorist attack you don’t know when it’s going to come. You realize that you shouldn’t live your life in fear so you go about your day quite normally, perhaps being slightly more attentive. The general population has a Homeland Security Department to warn them of a possible terrorist attack by means of a color coded system. After a terrorist attack however, if you are brown or Muslim, you need your own system. You have knowledge of credible but unspecified threats.

My point? This is exactly what Reza Aslan stresses. This isn’t a war between Islam and the West. This is a war between Islam and Islam. Brown-on-Brown violence. The West is often just caught in the crossfire because they provide the most dramatic field of battle.

The BBC reports that Pakistan is trying a new strategy to catch militants associated with Al-Qaeda. They’re using a classic technique from spy movies, so hoary it’s almost a staple Bollywood plot:

The game plan involves letting loose dozens of suspects known to have been affiliated with or at least sympathetic to al-Qaeda, in the hope that they would eventually lead the authorities to some top wanted figures in the terrorist organisation.

Top security experts admit that it is a dangerous game but argue that a similar approach in the past has reaped rich dividends. Security experts say former Guantanamo detainees - released by the Pakistan authorities on being returned - unwittingly led security agencies to many previously unknown hideouts used by local and foreign militants… Pakistani authorities have now clearly decided to extend this strategy on a scale that some feel could lead to unexpected results. [BBC]

The Pakistani government claims that this strategy has led to important arrests in Waziristan, Balochistan and Karachi.

I have no idea whether to believe the Pakistani government, because they have plenty of other incentives to want this strategy. From a political standpoint, this is convenient. The Pakistanis obtain the domestic benefits of getting their citizens out of gitmo without the headaches of locking them up in Pakistan:

In immediate terms, the strategy means easing some of the restrictions imposed earlier on top Pakistani militants. The visible part of the plan unfolding in recent weeks came in the shape of the release of about 150 Pakistanis who had returned from Guantanamo Bay. After extensive debriefing lasting between nine to 10 months, most of these men were allowed to go free.  [BBC]

More importantly, it also gives the Pakistani government an excuse for not cracking down harder on certain extremist groups at home. They can say that it is all part of their grand strategy.

Some security analysts in Pakistan have been critical of the government’s seemingly soft stance in relation to Harkat and Jaish - wondering why they have not been dealt with as severely as some of the other groups. [BBC]

We’re leaving these groups intact, not for any political benefit, but so we can catch Osama. Really. That upsurge of violence in Afghanistan? The attempt on the life of the US Ambassador there? It’s all part of our grand plan …

A couple of us will be in Manhattan this weekend & thought it would be cool to call a mutineer meetup. So come one and come all and find out if the other beloved commentors / readers and the bloggers themselves are as dumb / smart / mean / funny / lame in real life as we appear on your computer screens -

What: Lazy afternoon desi snacks and barely witty repartee with bigger geeks than yourself
When: Sunday, July 10, 3pm
Where: The Indian Bread Co in the village - 194 Bleecker St.

If you can make it, leave a comment or drop us a note so we know to look out for you & to give us a rough idea of how many folks to expect.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself in LA this weekend, you may be interested in chasing down Abhi who’s helping put on the Artwallah festival.

Terrorists have struck London, just a day after the city jubilantly reacted to winning the 2012 Olympic games. Explosions in the Tube, a.k.a. London’s subway system and on a signature red, double-decker bus murdered dozens while leaving hundreds injured. The death toll has climbed to 38 50. Responsible: the “Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe”.

The BBC discovered a brief statement claiming ownership of the horrific attacks; I’ll never understand how the words “God”, “merciful”, “compassionate” and “peace” can be used right before a proud admission of guilt.

Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

Sick, sick, sick. Blessed raid? Does anyone else want to cry?

A shaken Tony Blair left the G8 summit to attend to his city. Here’s what he had to say:

“They are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do,” he said in a televised statement from Downing Street.

They “should not and they must not succeed,” he said.

“We know that these people act in the name of Islam but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor those who do this every bit as much as we do,” he added.

Indeed, there is much concern about vigilantes exacting revenge and undermining the safety of Muslims in England. Muslim Association of Britain president Ahmed Sheikh is especially worried about women who wear headscarves. Sheik advised that they limit their travel due to their visibility. Apparently, there has been an upward trend of attacks on Muslim women on buses recently. I had no idea.

Jazz Vocalist Sachal Vasandani will give a concert at the unbelievably gorgeous National Cathedral in DC tomorrow evening at 7:30pm. (Thanks, Kiran!)

With a flair for infusing the familiar with a fresh, original sensibility entirely his own and an ability to write songs of a diverse and popular style, Vasandani has captured the attention of the jazz world over the past few years from coast to coast and is quickly climbing towards the top of the music scene.

“Sachal Vasandani’s singing reveals emotion and intellect,” says Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Versed in the blues, standards, and modern jazz…his sound is consistent and unique.”

Get there a bit early if you can; the grounds of the Cathedral are just swoon-worthy (and perfect for picnics). Check out the Bishop’s Garden, to the left of the massive edifice— it’s one of the most beautiful parts of DC, IMO

In case you didn’t click one of the earlier links, I’ll quote Mutineer Manish’s review of the talented Mr. Vasandani right herre:

Because of the friend connection, I wasn’t expecting more than a pleasant evening out. And though I love jazz classics, I’m not fan enough to dig the dissonance of an improv jam session. Vasandani emerged from the gloom of rear stage. He was tall and floppy-haired and stood a bit stiffly, like a pre-makeover John Mayer. He wore a blazer, but he wasn’t as natty as chart-topping young fogies like Harry Connick Jr. and swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. We plunged into our sidecars and lemon drops and waited for the show to begin.

When Vasandani opened his mouth, we utterly forgot about the drinks. The first time you hear a magnetic singer pull from his bag of vocal tricks, it’s like falling in love. Those who hadn’t heard him before were shocked.

Manish noted that Sachal sounds like other popular artists and I actually think this can be a good thing. A lot of people are either intimidated by or unsure of Jazz— though they’ll dance happily to standards at weddings and the like. If the location (like I said: swoon) and price (free) weren’t attractive enough, then the knowledge that you aren’t going to be subjected to something terribly difficult to listen to should close the deal.

Pictures of the venue, after the jump.

My friend Anji M. alerts me to the case of Gokal and Sheila Kapoor. The couple and their son came to America in 1997 illegally in order to escape persecution by the Taliban. Gokal then filed papers appealing for political asylum. Surely a Hindu fleeing from a brutal fundamentalist regime would qualify, no? Newsweek reports:

…four years after his case first made its way into the system, it was finally dismissed on the basis that the Taliban’s removal from power meant that the family did not have a well-founded fear of future persecution. By then the septuagenarian had a Social Security number, worked as a baggage handler at Dulles Airport, paid taxes and had hoped to be included in a U.S. program that routinely granted asylum to Hindu refugees from Afghanistan. What he didn’t take into account was the extra scrutiny he would receive in the post-9/11 world.

The immigration judge who initially turned down his application was critical of the fact that Kapoor’s prominent brother, Dr. Wishwa Kapoor, chief of general internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, did not attend the immigration hearing. For this reason, the judge apparently believed he must have aided and abetted his brother’s illegal entry into the United States.

The judge was wrong on both counts. Hindus do not believe they can live in Afghanistan without being persecuted, and there are so few left in the country it’s hard to prove otherwise. And Dr. Kapoor didn’t testify because his older brother, now 70, was too proud to ask him. The judge could have summoned the doctor to testify, rather than smear him, a man of impeccable reputation who was not there to defend himself, let alone his brother.

Ten days ago, Dr. Kapoor got a 10 p.m. call from his sister in Virginia to say that their brother and his wife, Shiela, 69, had been taken from their home by immigration officials. The officials told the couple’s son—who had graduated from high school earlier that day—that his parents would be back in a few hours. They were not, and it took two days before a lawyer hired by Dr. Kapoor found out that the couple were in Pamunkey prison, north of Richmond, Va.

Well sure. Everyone knows we’ve won the war against terror in Afghanistan so they should be just fine.

Abhi posted earlier about the India-Pakistan fight over the high-altitude Siachen glacier. Let’s take a closer look at the economic aspect: the 23-year-old Siachen conflict is the epitome of inefficient war engineering, even worse than the kill ratio of musket warfare in the 18th century. The enemy here isn’t the other nation, it’s the territory you’re purportedly saving. It’s like fighting on Mars or the ice planet Hoth (photos):

Ninety-seven per cent of casualties here are due to the extreme weather and altitude, rather than fighting. “On the glacier you have to first survive the elements and then you fight the enemy,” says a senior officer…. [Link]

… with winter temperatures of 70 degrees below zero, the inhospitable climate in Siachen has claimed more lives than gunfire. [Link]

India has lost more than 2,500 men in Siachen, most of them to the hostile weather. [Link]

Every ounce of supply is hauled on specialized high-altitude helicopters and snowmobiles. The cost has been $10B (extrapolated), or $30B adjusted for purchasing power. The cost of supplies is a hundred times more expensive than on a normal battlefield, and India’s paying platinum rates to airlift human feces. Instead it could have bought fourteen Russian aircraft carriers:

… a chapatti delivered to a soldier there cost Rs 500. Even the excreta of soldiers manning these posts has to be lifted by helicopters and brought to base for disposal… [Link]

Islamabad political analyst Hussain calculates that it costs the Indians $438 million a year to fight for Siachen (Indian officials claim it is less than $300 million), while Pakistan’s bill is estimated at $182 million… [Link]

Marginal Revolution (tongue-in-cheek-ly) wants to know-

Conservatives love to rant about the evils of Hollywood. Too much sex and violence. Inappropriate for the family. Religion gets short shrift. Fair enough, a lot of Hollywood fare isn’t fit for the 13 and under crowd. Here’s my question: why aren’t conservative media critics rushing en masse to sing the praises of Bollywood films? Michael Medved, where are you?

Consider the following Bollywood film conventions:

1. No sex. If you’re lucky, you might see some wet sari.

2. The films often revolve around finding a wonderful spouse and getting married.

3. The bigger the wedding, the better…

Read the rest. ;-)

I have been intently following the plight of the four missing U.S. Navy SEALS over the past weekend. Knowing that they were out there on the 4th of July just trying to survive in the mountains was pretty moving. As of today, one of them has been rescued, the bodies of two were recovered, and a fourth is still missing. I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who exhibit such extreme self-discipline and self-reliance. Soldiers in mountainous areas epitomize these qualities regardless of the rationale behind their orders.

The most brutal mountain fighting in the world has been along the India-Pakistan-China border at 19,000 ft. high on the Siachen Glacier, in the Karakoram. This classic 2003 article in Outside Magazine is essential reading for anyone who is a student of the absurdity of war:

Here’s what is beyond dispute: Never before have troops fought for such extended periods in such extreme physical conditions. At least twice a week a man dies, occasionally from bullets or artillery, but more often from an avalanche, a tumble into a crevasse, or a high-altitude sickness—perils usually faced only by elite climbers. Not surprisingly, the men who serve in the war regard it as the supreme challenge for a soldier.

“Minus 50 at 21,000 feet—it’s beyond anything the human body is designed to endure,” an Indian officer on the Siachen told me. “This is the ultimate test of human willpower. It’s also an environmental catastrophe. And—no doubt about it—things can only get worse.”

…Life at such forward positions is brutal, and the Indians begrudgingly admit that the Pakistanis are tough customers. “They are sitting right underneath us on an 80-degree slope,” one Indian officer who was stationed above Tabish would tell me later. “We can throw grenades just like pebbles on top of them. It really takes guts to be there.” Captain Waqas Malik, 26, who served at Tabish, grimly described the hopeless feeling of such positions. “Once a ridge has been occupied,” he said, “you require a heart with the capacity of the ocean to accept the casualties you will incur in the taking of it.”

If it weren't for the rash of "punishing the victim" stories of late, this story would seem just plain medieval. But with that thoroughly depressing context, I suppose it's just sadly bittersweet - Primitive justice: Father killed for raping daughter -

Manju was raped by her father, Rajvir repeatedly for the last 6 months and even though her mother and brothers knew about it, they were helpless.

...Fed up with this daily abuse, one evening when Rajvir dragged Manju into a room, her mother called her uncles for help.

The mother however, could not have anticipated what happened next. In a bid to protect Manju's honour, the uncles beat Rajvir to death.

...The police have arrested both men on charges of murder and booked them under IPC section 302...In a country where it takes years to solve a rape case and where the rapist often goes scot free, this was an instance where the victim's family took the law into their own hands and meted out what they called justice.

Even though I am in Sri Lanka away from all of the juicy news stories, I have been keenly made aware of the lack of multicultural representation in the originally planned musical lineup for the groundbreaking Live8 concert in support of debt relief for the various struggling economies of Africa. As of June 11, according to this protest letter/press release, only one confirmed act for any of the six international events was from a developing country.

Is it that uncalled for to ask that a couple of Asian or African bands be included in the line-up, it can't be, can it?

Perhaps Live8 heard the complaints, because before I could get too worked up, I received a press release highlighting the involvement of pioneering Asian drummer, Johnny Kalsi, of the Dhol Foundation in the LIVE 8 Africa Calling concert with the legendary Peter Gabriel at the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK. The Africa Calling show, ran for more than ten hours and featured over 200 African artists as part of the worldwide LIVE 8 celebrations and afforded Kalsi the opportunity to pose with Angelina Jolie.

And if you don't know about Kalsi, you should, because he has been on the scene for a long time. Kalsi is a former member of the legendary Asian Dub Foundation, and has, and continues to play an active part as member of the Afro Celt Sound System. His group, The Dhol foundation has released two full length albums Big Drum, Small World, and the newly released "DrumBelievable," and Kalsi's music has appeared on the official soundtracks for The Hulk and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

I am always keeping an eye out for that next rush, even during the periods of my life where the money isn’t all that available. The key to any great adventure is long term planning, patience, and positive visualization. Visualization in my case includes marrying rich. Time Magazine’s Asia edition has a list of the best adventures in Asia. Two of them in particular stood out (thanks for the tip Punbaji Boi):

In the Indian hill resort of Manali, Tibetan Peter Dorje runs an operation dedicated to the most implausible extreme sport in the world: yak skiing. In winter, he takes up to five skiers and his herd of beasts to the hills above town, making overnight camp. Come morning, Pete heads to a high slope with the yaks, trailing out a rope behind him. You wait below, wearing your skis and holding a bucket of pony nuts. When Pete reaches the top, he ties a large pulley to a tree, loops the rope through it and onto a stamping, snorting yak. Now it’s your turn—and this is the important part. First tie yourself onto the other end of the rope, then shake the bucket of nuts and quickly put it down. The yak charges down the mountain after the nuts, pulling you up it at rocket speed. If you forget yourself in the excitement and shake the bucket too soon, you’ll be flattened by two hairy tons of behemoth. Or as Pete says, “Never shake the bucket of nuts before you’re tied to the yak rope.” This piece of Himalayan sagacity can be restated in many ways that apply to everyday life: do things in their proper order, make adequate preparations before embarking on a risky venture, and so on.

Yak skiing not your thing my friend? Well how about Discharging Firearms in Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan?

Forty kilometers south of Peshawar, deep inside Pakistan’s tribal belt, lies the village of Darra Adam Khel. It’s an area few foreigners will ever visit—unless, of course, they are surreptitiously waging the U.S.-led war on terror or trying to elude it. Yet for anyone else who manages to pass through the roadblocks to enter Darra, it’s the perfect place to release pent-up stress. The village has just one industry of note: ordnance. Darra is the arms factory of the tribal areas, and pumps out everything from pistols to anti-aircraft weaponry. Wander into any of the many mom-and-pop-style workshops, choose your weapon, haggle over the price of bullets or shells, and stroll out with the equipment into the bush. Besides being rather nice to look at, the surrounding rocks and trees also make for excellent target practice. Once you’ve finished debarking a tree with an AK-47, you can head back to civilization a better, calmer person for this cathartic experience. Think of it as a harmless outlet for the warrior that lurks within you.

Ummm. No. I’ll pass thank you. It is true that a warrior does lurk within me, however, I already got pre-selected for additional security screening both to and from Atlanta this past weekend. I have no intention of making things worse for myself.

As we mentioned earlier, this weekend 94 year old marathoner Fauja Singh decided to try his hand at some shorter distances, namely the 100m, 200m, 300m, 800m, 1500m, 1 mile, 3,000m and 5,000m. How’d he do?

In the senior category, he not only set a new 200m title, but halved it from 76.8 seconds to a mere 49.28 seconds. He has also set the UK record for the 400 meters, 800m, 1 mile, and 3000m.

“He is an inspiration because he has set five UK records. He has achieved more in one day than an athlete normally does in a lifetime,” said Bridget Cushen, Secretary, British Masters Athletic Federation. If that wasn’t enough, he attempted all the records in under 94 minutes. [cite]

Unfortunately, it looks like Haraguchi’s new 100m record will stand for another day. It’s a bit much to take a distance runner and expect him to set a world record in all the shorter distances over night.

Lest you think that Fauja Singh isn’t mutinous enough, the races had an explicitly political purpose. They were called the “Turban Records,” they aimed to raise the profile of Sikhs and wearing turbans and incidentally to stick it to the French:

Fauja has … [been] chosen as the Olympic torchbearer through London …. However, Sikhs in England warn that if Paris wins the 2012 Olympic bid, stories like Fauja’s may never be told.

This one’s for all the Wikipedia fans in the house (here’s lookin’ at you, Anna): they have a seven-month-old topic on Indian-Americans and a two-month-old one on Pakistani-Americans.

The topics aren’t all that fleshed out yet, and some of the sections have glaring misspellings and errors. You can click the edit link to correct anything, so head on over and edit away. I love that I can immediately fix whatever’s broken in a wiki. That instant gratification is bloggity goodness.

Strangely enough, they also have a topic on this blog. Be gentle — it’s our first time ;)

Harper’s magazine, July 2005, reports a horrific statistic: 44% of fatal or wounding terrorist attacks last year took place in India, only 32% in Iraq. Israel isn’t even close, nor Sri Lanka. But with the prevalence of large car bombs in Iraq, that country may have a higher body count. Macabre, I know, but sometime it’s to our benefit that India’s still a handicraft country.

Keeping that in mind, six terrorists were killed in Ayodhya today after storming the infamous temple complex with assault rifles and grenades:

A shootout between police and unidentified gunmen at a Hindu temple at a disputed religious site in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya ended with six attackers dead and one in custody, a source said. Machine guns and grenades were found with the bodies of the gunmen, said district magistrate Markhande Singh. Yashpal Singh, director general of police, described the incident as a suicide attack. [Link]

Today, the temple’s attackers apparently hired a car in Ayodhya, less than 400 miles southeast of Delhi, and drove it around the fence surrounding the temple compound. In defiance of rigid security protocols that prevent people from approaching the temple compound, the attackers used a second vehicle, a white Jeep packed with explosives, to tear open a hole through the yellow metal perimeter fence…

The driver of the hired Ambassador car, who had been held for questioning, said in a nationally televised police interrogation that his passengers had requested to see the holy sites of Ayodhya. The driver said the men had offered a prayer at another local temple before attacking the temple. [Link]

The gunmen were surrounded by armed police as they tried to enter the inner area of the complex, and a gun battle lasting nearly two hours followed. [Link]

… the security personnel surrounded the terrorists near a room of the Sita Rasoi area of the disputed site. The terrorists reportedly entered the Ayodhya complex from the Ved temple area. [Link]

‘America the Beautiful’

… Thine alabaster cities gleam
undimmed by human tears…

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free! … (Did Ayn Rand know about this?)

Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

Happy birthday, sweet land of liberty. I love my country tremendously, but the intertwined backstories of the good ol’ U.S. of A. and desi Americans are replete with historical irony. The übermutinous Declaration of Independence was signed 229 years ago on this day:

Prudence… will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes… But when a long train of abuses… reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government… The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries… the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States…

Asian Indian students who were supporters of independence from the British Empire were expelled from the country by order of President Theodore Roosevelt… [Link]

When [Gen. Dyer, who executed the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre] was felicitated — not censured — in the British House of Lords, even Mahatma Gandhi, that apostle of tolerance, was moved to suggest that “co-operation in any shape or form with this satanic government is sinful”. [Link]

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…

 A geographical criterion was used to exclude Asian Indians, because their racial or ethnic status was unclear… The 1917 immigration act denied entry to people from a ‘barred zone’ that included South Asia… [Link]

… sustained political attacks against Asian Indians… culminated in the imposition of the 1917 Barred Zone Act. Asian Indians joined other Asian country nationals… who were excluded from immigrating to the United States… [Link]

In 2001, a 15-year-old named Nicholas Minucci allegedly beat an elderly Sikh gentleman with a baseball bat while spitting racial epithets against ‘Arabs’ (via Turbanhead). He allegedly lay in wait outside the main gurudwara in Queens and shot several people with a paintball gun.

Because the attack happened the day of 9/11, Attar Singh chose not to press charges, saying it was a time for healing. Another Sikh did press charges, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Singh’s 62-year-old grandfather, Attar Singh, who wore a turban, was walking to a Richmond Hill temple when Minucci and two other teens assaulted him as the twin towers burned… Mistaking Singh for an Arab, they screamed: “Go back to your own country!” the sources said. Two of the teens shot paint balls at Singh, and when he turned to run, one of three beat him with a bat… “F- Arab, why don’t you blow this up,” Minucci allegedly screamed, the sources said…

“It was Sept. 11,” the grandson said. “The country was in mourning. He didn’t want to make it a big deal…” [Link]

Mistake. Attar Singh’s magnanimity, when he was just five months from death by cancer, turned into his own version of Spiderman’s origin myth. Minucci was encouraged by the slap on the wrist. A year later, he allegedly stabbed another teen in the stomach. Before the victim could testify, he ‘accidentally’ stepped in front of a subway train. Nobody saw nothin’. In that case, the unusually lucky Minucci skated by with probation.

He then made a guest appearance on (surprise, surprise) Growing Up Gotti, the show about Mafia kids. The unemployed teen managed to get ahold of a $60K Cadillac Escalade through his family. For the coup de grace, Minucci, now 19, is accused of beating and critically injuring another man with a baseball bat a couple of days ago.

Minucci’s got a long criminal history, so why is his face all over the papers now? Because he was too dumb to realize that beating a black man in a neighborhood notorious for race riots would land him in the NYT and guarantee the mayor’s attention.

 A group of white men set upon three black men on the streets of Howard Beach, Queens, early yesterday, beating one with a baseball bat and fracturing his skull… One of the black men, Glenn Moore… tripped over a lawn. There, his assailants beat him with a metal bat, stole the sneakers off his feet and ripped an earring from one ear, the police said. [Link]

We’ve had a string of posts (1, 2, 3) concerning Imrana, the poor woman in UP who has been ordered to marry the man she accused of being her rapist. Most of the discussion on this topic has blamed Islamic law and the lack of a uniform civil code in India for this horrifying outcome. Well, guess what - here’s a very similar case, except that the rapist and victim were Hindus:

The Chhattisgarh Government on Thursday ordered a probe into a village panchayat’s alleged directive to a rape victim, who was delivered of the child of the accused, to stay with his family until she reached marriageable age and then get married to him. [cite]

In this case, her parents demanded that the rapist be punished but the local council over-ruled them:

Though the victim’s family members were demanding action against the accused, the panchayat directed the boy’s family, also a Dalit, to keep the girl as his wife. It asked both sides to enter into an agreement, signed on a stamp paper, that the boy’s family would keep the girl and her child, villagers said. [cite]

Very twisted stuff here. I wonder how widespread this very messed up rural desi practice is?

Thanks to stupid attitudes towards gay people, an apparent allergy to condoms, prostitution, intravenous drug use and little if any testing, "there will undoubtedly be an explosion of Aids" in Asia, sayeth the UN AIDS Director, Peter Piot.

The UN estimates 8.2m people in Asia have HIV, of whom 5.1m are in India.

The risk of the disease spreading further in the region was now higher than ever, Mr Piot told a conference in the Japanese city of Kobe.

5.1 million, eh? I'm sure it's a bit more than THAT. I hardly think that they managed to count everyone, or that people are happily volunteering such info...and that's assuming they're even AWARE of what they bear.

If concrete steps are taken now, the effect on future rates of infection could be dramatic:

Twelve million extra people could be infected in Asia within the next five years - an increase of 150% - he said.

But, "with major political will", this could be reduced to six million.

I think a goal such as this deserves major everything, political will included. Education must be part of the solution-- the stigma attached to being HIV+ means that the infected avoid getting treated and are in denial about their dire situation. Case in point:

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the problem for Asia is that many people think Aids is not a big issue there.

No, it's definitely not a big issue. Denial may not be in Egypt, after all...

That's the estimate for how much Indians paid en toto to various bureaucrats up and down this most murderous of food chains.

Amit Varma quotes a piece from the Hindustan Times -

For those who believe that corruption in India is almost an industry, here’s proof. A survey conducted by Transparency International India (TII) says Indians paid bribes amounting to Rs 21,068 crore [US$ 4843 million appr] in the past year. And no one would have guessed it, but the biggest chunk of this money goes to schools till the Class XII level.

...This is not to say that schools are the most corrupt. That honour goes to the police who have been ranked the most corrupt according to a ‘corruption index’ prepared by the CMS. The reason schools receive the biggest chunk of bribe money is that “(the) proportion of citizens interacting with schools is much more than the police or municipalities,” said Sarangpani.

Varma's analysis for "why" -

...the biggest reason is discretion. Too many public servants have too much discretion over our activities, which is, in many areas, an unwarranted intrusion into our personal freedom. The more power the state has over its citizens, the more inevitable corruption is. Other factors do matter, but this is the grandma of them all.

I heartily agree with Varma - an interventionalist government, its intentions cloaked by social cause de jure creates its own license for corruption. For all its objections, freedom & growth maximization have the advantage of being relatively objective vs. the far more abstract goals of "equity", "preventing labor displacement" or "preserving identity".

But even while being pared down via privitization and deregulation, Indian governance will still suffer from a famously lacking public service ethic. Some things will always require a government license (like setting up a corporation) or some level of government operation (infrastructure, transportation, etc.). In the US and many western countries, we take it for granted that folks joining the public sphere are never going to get rich. Unfortunately, in India and many other dysfunctional countries, a public appointment is, more often than not, the path to getting rich.

As India globalizes, there are signs of progress but, it ain't fast enough for many.

Everybody knows that being Secretary of State means you never have to say you’re sorry. Therefore, I was very surprised to hear an “apology” from Henry Kissinger:

Mr Kissinger, 82, has now told a the private Indian television channel NDTV that his comments did not reflect American policy during the 1970s.

“I regret that these words were used. I have extremely high regard for Mrs Gandhi as a statesman,” he said. “The fact that we were at cross purposes at that time was inherent in the situation but she was a great leader who did great things for her country.” [BBC]

I find this “apology” completely unsatisfying. I really don’t care what language Nixon and Kissinger used to discuss Indira Gandhi in private. The fact that they used similar language about virtually everybody else — American or Foreign, Democratic or Republican, member of the administration or outsider — makes me care even less.

I care far more about the 500,000 to 3 million who died, and the 6 million to 12 million who were made refugees. [National Geographic uses the 3 million dead and the 10 million refugees figures]. These were not accidental deaths. This was an intentional mass slaughter of civilians by the Pakistani government, coupled with a campaign of ethnic cleansing. In Bangladesh, they call this genocide:

On February 22, 1971 the generals in West Pakistan took a decision to crush the Awami League and its supporters. It was recognized from the first that a campaign of genocide would be necessary to eradicate the threat: “Kill three million of them,” said President Yahya Khan at the February conference, “and the rest will eat out of our hands.” (Robert Payne, Massacre [1972], p. 50.)

On March 25 the genocide was launched. The university in Dacca was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning. “Within a week, half the population of Dacca had fled, and at least 30,000 people had been killed. Chittagong, too, had lost half its population. All over East Pakistan people were taking flight, and it was estimated that in April some thirty million people [!] were wandering helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the grasp of the military.” (Payne, Massacre, p. 48.) Ten million refugees fled to India, overwhelming that country’s resources and spurring the eventual Indian military intervention. (The population of Bangladesh/East Pakistan at the outbreak of the genocide was about 75 million.) [cite]

Half of Bangladesh’s population were refugees, either within the country or outside it!

As we blogged earlier, State Department cables reveal the US government knew full well what was going on. What was the American response? They asked the French to sell more arms to the Pakistanis and they asked the Chinese (one of the largest mass murderers in history) to threaten India:

"Mint", who reads my diary left a link in its comments section to an "important story" they wanted to bring to my attention. I didn't think anything of it or have any expectations; I pasted the URL and gave it a cursory skimming. It seemed to be about a woman taking a journey by train in India...

At 3:30 a.m., my Upper Berth neighbour reaches and touches my breast. I don't know what he was expecting. That I would simper coyly and turn away? That I would ignore him? Encourage him? Mind boggling possibilities.

I'm hugely sensitive to men touching me, often stopping calling people who even casually throw their arm around me (it's just a thing I have), so this was trauma for me. I was up like a shot; my mind blank in my half-sleep and all I did was scream. It was strange, thinking back on it. I wasn't angry, I wasn't yelling expletives, or hell, even sentences or words. It was just like an animal-in-pain screaming. Shrill, loud, repetitive. No words, just screaming and screaming till the lights were flicked on, people hurriedly woke up, the TC came running.

WHOA. Suddenly, woman-in-the-train had my undivided attention. She provides, in exquisite and riveting detail, a transcript of her inner monologue as she considers what's happening to her and how she should react.

Upper Berth man says loudly aggressively, "Kya hua? Kya hua?" ("What happened? what happened?") and then slowly words formed in my head; the shock, the outrage, the sense of violation was replaced by a hysterical screaming, "Kya kar rahe ho?" ("What are you doing?") Again and again and again.

The TC, sensing Upper Berth Man's apparent complete shock turned to me, still shaking in my berth. I could barely see anything, compounding my sense of disorientation. "Madam, you must have been dreaming," says the TC. No one else is talking. I realised in an instant that the whole episode could quickly turn against me. Everyone would be annoyed at being woken up by a silly, hysterical girl, the Upper Berth guy would be glad to evade responsibility, the TC glad to avert a potential nuisance.

This isn't just some tale of woe-- it's a story about emotions and epiphanies, guilt and justice. We all know how hard it is for survivors of sexual abuse to come forward in this country, I've never thought about what that terrifying experience might be like in India. Consider what came AFTER the victim was abused: I was disheartened by the number of obstacles put in her way, as she tried to "do the right thing".