Today is Friday and that means that at some point in the next 21 hours, I’m going to write 55 words which contain an entire story. I’m not that big on memes but this one (“55 Fiction Fridays”) is precious to me, because it reminds me of writing exercises and workshops and english minor-y goodness. Por ejemplo:

She nervously adjusted her sari, hoping no one noticed. So far, the night had gone flawlessly; she had made a good impression on everyone, she could just tell.

The older woman at the table noted how silk was tugged upwards. Taking a delicate sip of tea, she thought, “She’s not good enough for our family.”

I’ve consistently written one of these uber-short shorts for weeks now, but last week was the first time a fellow mutineer noticed. Abhi’s interest in the concept of nanofiction made me ponder the possibility that some of YOU would find it fascinating as well. If I further needed to justify making a mutiny out of it, know this: the good Professor Guest Blogger himself reads my “55” and I am aware of this because he referenced one at the last NYC meetup. Not that I need to defend it or anything… ;)

Flash fiction, also called sudden fiction, micro fiction, postcard fiction or short-short fiction, is a class of short story of limited word length. Definitions differ but is generally accepted that flash fiction stories are at most 200 to 1000 words in length. Ernest Hemingway wrote a six-word flash: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” Traditional short stories are 2,000 to 10,000 words in length.[wiki]

That Hemingway example is ridiculously inspiring. One day I want to write a short that short. I don’t even know if there is a name for a short so short. There is, however, a name for the type of writing this meme encourages:

One type of flash fiction is the short story with an exact word count. An example is 55 Fiction or Nanofiction. These are complete stories, with at least one character and a discernible plot, exactly 55 words long.[wiki]

The virus is spreading throughout the brown blogosphere. SM readers Maisnon, Andrea and Chai are the three whom I go out of my way to check on (hee! no pressure, kids!), but if you decide to try it, please leave a link to your work of art in the comments. I’ll be happy if you flash me. :)

peepshow, creepshow…where did you get those eyes?”

:+:

Earlier today, I was at the most forlorn CVS in downtown DC, stalking my unbelievably elusive prey (one, just one OTC elixir without Pseudoephedrine, i.e. that which I have a horrific reaction to) when I saw this…eye-catching display.

I love makeup and while my proclivity to purchase two lip glosses a week would lead you to believe that my all-consuming obsession involves THAT, it doesn’t.

Mascara.

I am as fanatically devoted to mascara as Abhi is to that evolution stuff. ;) Eyelashes are so important, that’s why the right curler is key; it’s also why every model, actress, pageant winner, celebutante and drag queen wears fakes…in Jennifer Lopez’s case, MINK fakes.

I like my eyelashes. I wasn’t born with eyebrows, but I lucked out on the lash tip and girlfriend, you best believe I work it. All I wear is L’oreal mascara. Because it is the best. So, like some unstoppable force pulling me towards the mothership, I was brought to this display.

I noticed two things: a brand-spanking-new type of mascara in a curiously-fat container and one flawlessly beautiful woman channeling Maria Callas, in that exact order. She looked slightly familiar but I couldn’t place her immediately. A second later, I remembered seeing Aish’s face by L’oreal’s lipsticks and that’s when it hit me— she IS one of the faces for the brand. Yes, it was TMBWITW. I’ve never seen her in a movie, which is probably why I had to arrive at my conclusion in such a strange, round-about way. One look at the fine-print, which always tell you who’s in the ad confirmed it.

The walking P.R. disaster who is Pakistan’s president can’t get a break. Nor should he, since he is a dick AND a weasel. I hate to throw two slang references to the male anatomy in the same paragraph, but damn Gina…if you’re going to front like you’re cold-blooded, have the balls to follow through with that unwise approach. Pervez, denying that you made a heartless comment which the entire world heard is only soiling the bed you made and have to lie in…no pun intended.

Care for some background, in case you’re just joining us?

Almost two weeks ago, I posted that the clue-free President of Pakistan was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC and that a protest was planned outside of it, to shame Mushie into owning his country’s pathetic approach to human rights for women. Later, I blogged about his sputtering reaction to the vocal horde outside his temporary Manhattan quarters.

As the human rights and women groups protested outside the Roosevelt Hotel against the treatment of rape victims in Pakistan, Gen Musharraf said that such protests should be held in and not outside Pakistan.[link]

Well, today he got his wish.

In my continuing quest to blog about hot, desi rocker-girls until one of them reads my flattery and marries me, I bring your attention to Shonali Bhowmik, the lead singer of the New York indie rock band Tigers and Monkeys [via Gothamist]:

Shonali Bhowmik straddles several lines, living in two different worlds with perfect ease, and whether it’s music and comedy, the law and rock n roll, or balancing her Southern roots and East Village hipness, she does it with style, making it all look effortless. Having grown up in Nashville, Tennessee, the “30-ish” Bhowmik started her acclaimed band Ultrababyfat while in law school in Atlanta, and has continued to play in New York as leader of her band Tigers and Monkeys, who’ve opened for Sleater-Kinney and, most recently, Ted Leo at South Street Seaport. Armed with bluesy rock songs that highlight Bhowmik’s sultry drawl that can border on a sneer, the band rocks with tracks like “Loose Mouth” and “Something’s Gotta Give,” and are set to release their debut EP in November. She’s also part of the offbeat movies/music/comedy show Variety Shac, along with Heather Lawless, Andrea Rosen and Chelsea Peretti, hosting the monthly Williamsburg event and taking part in their hilarious video shorts, about everything from a potluck a workout. When Bhowmik spoke with Gothamist about being an Indian-American woman in indie rock, the power of being onstage, and playing for thousands of people, her enthusiasm for her musical career rang through loud and clear.

I mean come on.  The names of the two songs available for download on the Tigers and Monkeys website are called “Vampire in a Dirty City” and “I’ll Ruin Your Thoughts.”  How hot is that?  Perfect for me since I live in a dirty city and I ruin lots of peoples thoughts on a daily basis.

Q: What do your parents think of your career now?
A: They have been completely supportive of whatever I do, they fully approve now that I’ve been using my law degree to an extent. I definitely think that they’re surprised that I’ve stuck with music and it’s what makes me the happiest. They totally are a rare find when it comes to traditional Indian parents. I’m sure they’re wondering if I’m gonna just keep dating boys, they want me to get married. If they had an idea of my social life, they’d probably flip out. They come from such a different culture, they probably would never understand what I consider it to be a success in terms of music.

There is hope!  Check out the video as well.  VH1’s description of her previous band Ultrababyfat gives more info on her musical roots.

Q: How would you describe your sound? There’s something very Southern about it to me, in part because of your accent, but even the rock songs seem a little slower, a little more sensual or something.

A:  Tigers and Monkeys is a bluesy pop rock band in the vein of the Pixies and the White Stripes, mixed with country, and there’s a darkness to it. There’s a haunting sound beneath it all. Most recently I used minor chords a lot and I used to use major chords a lot and that’s a little more of a positive sound, so there’s a darkness that I’m grasping onto that makes me feel good.

Following up on their account of South Asians in the American Civil War, Francis C. Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen describe the life and times of one Conjee Rustumjee Cohoujee Bey (a.k.a. Anthony Frank Gomez).  The story is so rich with detail due to the fact that Bey/Gomez wrote letters throughout his life to Henry Ward Beecher who mentored him after he entered this country.  Henry was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  From the account:

For the purpose of our story, Henry Beecher takes on a pivotal role because it was his family that befriended the Indian prince, later converting him to Christianity and renaming him Anthony Frank Gomez. In the course of next two years, the Indian prince not only learned about Christianity from Beecher but went on to become his protégé. He was a regular visitor to the Beecher household. He became an avid reader. He listened as Beecher preached against slavery, for political candidates, women’s rights, evolution, and his own idea of romantic Christianity that recognized God’s love for man and the availability of salvation for all. He engaged in intellectual discourse with the Beecher sisters.

Gomez, the scion of an Indian princely family, was at ease in that elite company. His British education, aristocratic bearing, and close links with the Beecher family, endeared him with major New York figures of the day, a group that included abolitionists, writers, and social theorists, as well as national and international personalities.

Beecher was a Reverend in the Plymouth Congregational Church and spoke with great vigor and conviction that slavery was a sin.  Guided by his mentor and his new religion, Gomez joined up:

26-year old Antonio Gomez answered the call of President Lincoln, and began his service in the US Navy: aboard the USS North Carolina at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on 8 February 1862, as Ward Room Steward.

His next assignment was with the steam sloop USS Dacotah. Gomez was on board when she served in the waters around Hampton Roads. Assigned to the James River Flotilla, she had several skirmishes with the Confederates including those in which a company of her sailors destroyed a Confederate battery of 11 guns at Harden’s Bluff, Virginia, on 2 July, and one of 15 guns at Day’s Point, Virginia, the next day. She joined the blockading forces off Wilmington, North Carolina, on 8 December and served there until 11 June 1863 when she was ordered into quarantine at New York the next month when several cases of smallpox were discovered on board…

While serving aboard the first USS Iroquois, a sloop of war in the United States Navy, Gomez saw action at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where she prepared for attack on New Orleans, Louisiana. On 24th April 1864, under Captain Henry H. Bell, Iroquois moved abreast the Forts Jackson and St. Philip, guarding New Orleans, and, after a spirited engagement, helped capture the South’s largest and wealthiest city, and key to the Mississippi Valley…

Just as the Civil War drew to a close, Beecher was the main speaker when the Stars and Stripes were again raised at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, site of the war’s first battle. The private papers and personal correspondence of Henry Beecher reveal that Gomez was present on that occasion when the Union victory resulted in a grand celebration in the former “cradle of secession.” On April 14, 1865, Union officers and dignitaries gathered at Ft. Sumter. A band played, several nearby Navy warships, including the Niagara on which Gomez was serving, fired salutes, and there were hymns and prayers as the Union flag was transformed into a symbol of a restored and victorious United States.

The rest of the article is an absorbing read detailing his life in San Francisco and his eventual burial at the Presdio with full military honors.

My singer-songwriter buddy Shaheen Sheik just got her first video onto MTV Desi. Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!

We cut a video for ‘Wildflower World.’ MTV came to the set to shoot some behind the scenes footage and an interview with me. I even got to hold the MTV microphone! It’s all so surreal… the segment is airing on MTV Desi News every day this week at 6:50am, 10:50am, 2:50pm, 6:50pm, 10:50pm, 2:50am.

She’s a law school dropout, classical dancer and blogger. Afreen afreen, eh, Nusrat?

… i have literally grown up on stage. since the time i can remember, i have been rehearsing or performing… maybe there are folks who’ve never had to strip down on the side of the stage to make a 45 second costume change with the tech guys politely turning their heads and your fellow dancers frantically tucking things and wrapping you in costumes while you can feel the sweat running down your body…

there is not another thing in my life that i’ve experienced that has given me the kind of high from dancing with abandon. not drugs, not sex, not even a first kiss with a new beau. [Link]

Amen, sistah. Listen to ‘Wildflower World’ from her new indie album, Rock Candy. I promise you she’s better than the last singing phenomenon from Berkeley  Taking struggling-artist dedication to new heights, she’s even singing the national anthem tomorrow night for the hockey team with the implausible name, the Anaheim Los Angeles Mighty Ducks.

Previous posts: one, two, three.

Upcoming Sepia meetups:

Toronto, Sunday, Oct. 2, 6 pm. I’ll be in Toronto this weekend — let’s do a meetup at Bombay Bhel (1411 Gerrard St. E.) I’d also appreciate hearing about desi arts events, great food and creative ‘hoods to check out. You can comment or email me here. Toronto represent!

Brooklyn, Sunday, Oct. 16, 12:30 pm. Mutineer / architect Arzan has generously offered to introduce y’all to the pleasures of Parsi food. Please RSVP via email [disabled] (mandatory, since only ~20 people fit in his living room):

A crowd of 10-12 people would be ideal… Sunday afternoon is traditionally the time when every Parsi household in the world has dhansak. It’s a dal and rice dish. Brown rice with a masala daal which has a lot of different ingredients. It’s accompanied by mutton kebabs and chilled beer. In fact this is one of the few Parsi traditions followed religiously anywhere and everywhere in the world…

Dhansak can be both veg and non-veg. I generally always make both…..I put the meat in last, thus I can have a veg dal and a non veg daal. Same with the kebabs…..will have the veg variety.

Thanks, Arzan!

I recently dismissed an upcoming Sarita Choudhury effort because she plays yet another brown terrorist.

But the high-def production, now called The War Within, also stars cutie-patootie Nobel scion Nandana Sen, who played the sister in Black. It also stars our cereal Cyrano, Aasif Mandvi. Although the Village Voice pans the Mark Cuban-financed movie, now I have to see it. That’s a double chocolate fudge sundae of pillow lips, subcontinental curls and attitude, and if anyone tells you they don’t see questionable movies just for the stars, they’re lying.

Pillow lips, subcontinental curls and attitudeThe War Within follows in the introverted footsteps of Hassan (co-writer Ayad Akhtar), a Pakistani wrongly imprisoned and tortured for terrorist affiliations… The film’s title may seem to spill the beans—will the watchful Hassan carry out his mission or renege after enjoying America and flirting with Sayeed’s ravishing sister (Nandana Sen)?—but in fact, whatever inner conflict rages looks to us like moping and staring blankly out at the East River. (Time killed gazing from the beach or dock is a telltale sign of indie floundering.)

Shot in DV by Lisa Rinzler, Joseph Castelo’s modest drama struggles for verisimilitude, but it wears clichés like concrete boots… [Link]

Here’s a plot summary:

… Hassan undergoes a radical transformation and embarks upon a terrorist mission, surreptitiously entering the United States to join a cell based in New York City. After meticulous planning for an event of maximum devastation, all the members of the cell are arrested, except for Hussan and one other. With no alternative and nowhere else to turn, Hassan must rely on the hospitality of his former best friend Sayeed, who is living the American dream with his family in New Jersey… Hassan takes advantage of Sayeed’s generosity while plotting his strategy and amassing materials to create explosives. Eventually, Hassan’s skewed religious fervor clashes with his feelings for Sayeed and his family, especially Sayeed’s sister Duri. [Link]

The movie opens in NYC this weekend and in LA next weekend.

Previous post here. More on Sarita Choudhury here, Aasif Mandvi: one, two, and Sen’s brother Kabir: one, two, three.

The DC Arts Commission presents the Dance Festival DC 2005, which opens tomorrow with A Bhangra Dance Party: A children’s dance workshop celebrating South India at the Sitar Center on 1700 Kalorama Ave, NW. The free festival will feature performances and interactive workshops showcasing a wide array of folk and traditional dance forms throughout the city.

And yes, I noticed. While I am of course excited about the inclusion of South Asian dance forms in this year’s festival, I wish the description of the events would match the titles. Bhangra is indigenous to North India and Pakistan, so the correct title, if the folk dance in question was Bhangra, would be a dance workshop celebrating North India/Pakistan or Dancing in Punjab even. Yeah, it might not be as catchy or succinct, but accuracy should perhaps be more important. I know Bhangra is better known than say Kuchipudi, but Kuchipudi is actually represented in the second workshop, Global Fusion: A Kaleidoscope of dance, music, and song from around the world. Maybe they meant a children’s dance workshop celebrating South Asia? Alas, this is a minor quibble.

South Asia will also be represented by the Natyabhoomi School of Dance at a 2 pm performance on Saturday October 1, at the National Zoo.

View the entire schedule here, and watch a 30 second preview clip of the dance festival here.

This story left me conflicted.  On the one hand I hate to see ignorant people (tourists in this case) taken advantage of.  On the other hand I feel like all those wanna-be hippies that slurp up exoticised “Indian” culture deserve what they get.  The Guardian reports:

India has always had an embarrassment of riches for the traveller: marble Moghul tombs, grand palaces, palm-fringed beaches and Himalayan treks. Now the country has a new tourist attraction on offer: the village.

To anyone who has spent time in India’s villages, paying to sun oneself while cattle loll and cowpats dry under the sky might seem a little far fetched. But for Renuka Chowdhury, India’s tourism minister, the villages can easily be repackaged as exotic destinations where foreign tourists can enjoy rural pursuits such as drawing well water and churning butter.

“We will encourage people to come and stay with Indians - the way Indians live - and learn from the masters … This will bring the world to the villages,” Ms Chowdhury told Reuters.

The more adventurous tourists can sample the army camps of Kashmir, a state that has been wracked by an insurgency since 1989 and where more than 80,000 people have died.

“Sample” army camps in Kashmir.  That’s rich (although not unprecedented). I bet they charge extra if you want to be introduced as a Dalit into your chosen village.  Don’t get me wrong, there ain’t nothing wrong with slumming it.  Just do it for the right reasons.

A while back Jon Stewart of the Daily Show ran a clip demonstrating how often people overuse references to Adolf Hitler when talking about some political move they disagree with.  I would like to forward that Gandhi references are similarly thrown about with reckless abandon.  Former SM heart-throb Apul (who will be performing tomorrow night at 10p.m.) brings to my attention the latest such reference:

It’s nearly a year since Tara Reid popped out of her dress at Diddy/ Puff Daddy/ P Diddy/ Puffy’s 35th birthday party - and she’s finally spoken out about Taragate.

The American Pie star promises she’s finally got her “hooters under control” and says she can’t believe the storm it caused - as if her boob “popped out and shot Gandhi”.

Tara was left blithely exposed as the cameras flashed at Sean Combs’ bash, exposing a pretty major nipple scar.

I am actually stunned that she knew Gandhi was shot but that doesn’t make the statement any less idiotic.  Here is ESPN’s Dan Patrick (DP) interviewing Dallas Mavericks (now Suns) point guard Steve Nash (SN) a few years ago:

DP: Gandhi is your hero, right? Is there a Gandhi-like player in the NBA?
SN: Gandhi-like player in the NBA? I don’t know a Gandhi-like person in the world.
DP: Well, what position would Gandhi have played?
SN: He would definitely have been a point … but you can make a case for every position, because I think the man had a lot of power. He was definitely small, so probably point guard. But I think he would have been the most versatile player in league history.

Sheesh.  Anyone have other examples?

Fifteen years ago, I fell for an oddly-coiffed Belgian boy named Tintin. I was Anna-Johnny-come-lately; the object of my affection had been loved by people all over the world for 75 years. I met Tintin in India, where his English-language comic books have always been popular. Looks like the cub reporter who has starred in more than 120 million books 200 million books (Thanks, Avi) is about to make a whole new set of friends:

for the first time, DVDs and Video CDs (VCDs) of “Adventures of Tintin” have been launched in Hindi too…

Saibal Chatterjee, a media critic, says the move is driven by pure commercial sense.

“When you do something in English, you’re only reaching out to a certain number of people, a certain percentage of the audience,” he says.

Herge, the nom de plume of Georges Remi, Tintin’s creator, imagined up some charming friends for our boy with the unique hair. They included:

Tintin’s loyal dog and partner-in-adventure, Snowy, and Captain Haddock - famous for his love of whisky and colourful expletives

I guess some words just don’t translate well:

For the curious, Captain Haddock’s “blistering barnacles” translates unexpectedly as “bhadakte hue baingan” (literally, “angry aubergines”). “Thundering typhoons” comes out as “toofani lehren”.

It’s so strange, if Amazon.com were to compile a list of MY statistically improbable phrases, “barnacle” would be one of the anomalous words they’d notice— suddenly, I’m struck by one of those “eureka” moments which occurs when something I’ve always done has a new and logical explanation. ;)

When I commenced grad school at GW, new-to-DC-me spent a lot of time in “J street”, a food court so egregiously expensive and depressingly mediocre, I have NEVER complained about airport food since. One night, while gagging down waffle fries from Chik-fil-a, I was yanked away from my deep-fried poo by a popular Bangladeshi kid whom Sajit probably remembers. :D

“Come on, come with me, RIGHT now!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but I need your help!”

Intrigued, I closed my textbooks and followed him, chucking Chik-fil-ewww on the way. Within minutes I was somewhere I had never been, looking at super hot boys in soccer togs.

“What is this?”

“IM soccer. You’re on our team.”

I chortled, but he was serious. Since he was heading a co-ed team, he needed a certain number of women on the floor and they were one short. Never mind that at that point in my life, I was more of a futbol spectator than a participant, I was suddenly a player. They told me to just stand there, so that they wouldn’t have to forfeit. I stayed in my corner while the footie fiends whom I had befriended kept the ball far away from me. Their efforts were wasted; the other team destroyed them.

I’ll say this much for my friend— at least he used a “live” woman to achieve his ends.

:+:

One cold and rainy night, Manish and Abhi were going to White Castle when they found me shivering under the hedges that surround the ND HQ. Thinking I’d just lost my way, they offered me a blanket and a Slyder, and decided to let me stick around for a month. But once I tasted the shweet shweet intoxicating nectar that is Admin Privileges, I found myself trying to wrangle a more permanent invite. To that end, dear readers, you won’t believe the things I’ve done. I’m ashamed to say that I:

• Reorganized Anna’s closet (the shoes! the shoes!)
  
  
• Agreed earnestly when Vinod discussed Milton Friedman’s theories in a Libertarian context (I lied! I lied!)
  
  
• Asked Ennis if he’d like to be Mr. October in my Topless Turbaned Hotties Calender (Fauja Singh is Mr. January, but Ennis doesn’t know that yet)
  
  
• Made a collage of MIA, Sania Mirza and Mohini Bhardwaj for Manish to contemplate as he Rocketposts in the darkness of his lair. (No comment! No comment!)
  
  
• Bought Abhi a 5-pack of Astronaut underwear (plus an extra one that glows-in-the-dark!)

I gave up on Sajit cuz he never came out of his room. Also, I was too afraid to face him after the Marmite incident. He’s like Bruce Banner - you don’t want to make him angry.

They saw right through me though, cuz I’m being booted outta the bunker. But never fear, SepiaReaders…there is so much lowe, sweet lowe, in the air…I can’t help but paraphrase Ali McGraw’s famous line to the rich dude when I say I’ll still be around.

The Sepia Music Edition continues…Last week, Adnan Y. left a comment about post-punk desi musicians. Specifically, Nirmala Basnayake of controller.controller. Smelling a fellow Sri Lankan, I tried to verify my hunch…but…nada. Ms. Basnayake apparently doesn’t see the need for a compelling backstory.

Once again though, Sepia readers came through.Mephistopheles1981 compiled a list of arty-farty Lankans in the North American diaspora, and called her out. Here forthwith, is a quick review of controller.controller’s debut album History:

Five-piece Toronto outfit, Controller Controller, are the latest mob to join the post-punk rat race. More than just another punk-funk band, though, they seem immediately capable of overriding the hype….The usual old school references are dotted throughout this debut (PiL – check, Gang Of Four – check, Joy Division – check), but distinctive female vocals (courtesy of Nirmala Basnayake), some serious attitude, dancefloor-aimed death grooves and a sense of the apocalyptic all make for a thrilling ride. [link]

More? Why not:

Recalling the best of female rock vocalists from Debbie Harry to Chrissie Hynde, Nirmala’s voice alternates from anxious and angry to pure sonic tenderness as the four boys behind her laydown seriously solid songs of punishing rhythm and dueling angular guitar work. Bust out your dancing shoes because with their nonstop four-on-the-floor disco beats and raging basslines, you won’t be able to stand still for long.[link]

Sisterfriend really gives my fav post-punkers Bloc Party a run for their angular danceability. I dare you to check out “Disco Blackout” and not twitch your feet!

In continuing the mutiny’s hommage to the UK today, an in trying to steer clear of the all MIA all the time, I salute the Sheffield-based South Asian producers, the Kray Twinz, who were scheduled to make an appearance at the recent Music of Black Origin (MOBO) awards show to promote their latest single, What We Do.  Yes the two British sardars who (silently) co-produced Panjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke and Backstabbers are at it again. This time however the silencers are off, and Sepia Friendly MC Twista along with grime specialist MC Lethal Bizzle and ragga rapper Gappy Ranks are dropping the lyrics on top of a tabla and kanye west influenced sped-up-vocal-hip hop beat.  The tune, What We Do, which is getting some heavy airplay in the UK, and is also being dropped in American clubs could mean the resurgence of desi production in mainstream hip-hop.  Or it could just mean the Kray Twinz are finally getting some recogntion for their production.  Regardless, What We Do is only the first single off of the Kray Twinz forthcoming debut album, Indian Summer and if the Twinz photogallery is any indication of who they will collaborate with on Summer, lookout for appearances from the Pharcyde, Truth Hurts, and DMX.

Check out the music website pitchforkmedia’s mention of What We Do here, and check out the video for the track, here.

I’ve got a hot-off-the-press issue of GQ in my hands, and guess who I see? Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, staring right back at me.

The article is titled “British Rule” (hmm…somehow so familiar, so soon) and it’s a style spread:

The hair, the sounds, the suits. For more than 40 years, the Brits have consistently defined the style of rock’n’roll. In this exclusive decade-spanning portfolio, photographer David Bailey proves that they’ve never looked sharper. [link]

David Bailey is, of course, an important figure in the music-fashion-celebrity matrix, seeing that a film was based on him and all. But who the hell are these musicians? Let’s see…we’ve got Pulp, and Blur. Beatles/Stones mentions: Eight. From the closest thing to a Brit OG (Paul Weller) to the youngest of the new tarts (Razorlight) everyone agrees that the Kinks were bloody marvelous and underappreciated. Sure, whatever….pleez. I could say more, but my fangs are already bloody.

Into this sea of insular uniformity they’ve thrown in the Sepia Idol herself, and she doesn’t disappoint:

Can’t stereotype my tingo: As a huge fan of neologism, the poetry of idiom and general language geekery, it gladdens my heart to hear of a new book collecting words with no precise English equivalents. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s The Meaning Of Tingo sounds like linguistic jalebi (via Boing Boing):

The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front. Then there’s a nakkele - a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (from Tulu, India). [Link]

Wayne’s World fans already have ‘scud,’ a bakku-shan equivalent dating back to the first Gulf War. Tulu is, of course, Aishwarya Rai’s native tongue. Mmm, lickable dishy.

You know how poets, writers and Mr. Everything Comes From India sit around at desi parties and smoky cafés bemoaning what they miss about the old country? ‘Beta, how can you explain the meaning of x? It’s not translatable. Only a true x would know about x~ness.’ Here’s to moody linguistic ethnocentrism, this from Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk:

The key, he said, is to understand the concept of huzun. This Turkish word describes a kind of melancholy, he says, not so much a personal state as one shared by an entire society, a mood of resigned despair for the great past… “The thought behind huzun was: People in Europe are happy, but we are doomed…” [Link]

I’ll throw one out: in Punjabi, nakhreli, a finicky woman (from nakhra karna, to turn up your nose at everything). In the highly functional, less ornamented American culture, there’s no exact equivalent. Or in Spanish, the idiom ‘dar calabazas’ — to give pumpkins, meaning to jilt or ignore.

… nakhur, Persian for “camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils are tickled”… tsuji-giri is Japanese for “trying out a new sword on a passer-by”… [Link]

I wonder whether nakhur is related to nakhreli. Here are other poignancies:

The French have Saint-Glinglin to mean a date that is put off indefinitely… Madogiwazoku… Japanese window gazers (office workers who sit at desks with little to do)… [Link]

Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating…

Tired of Harold and Kumar? Want a desi film that asks more than “Where’s the Party, Yaar?” You’re in luck if you live in NY, because ImaginAsian Theater is screening Kaya Taran tonight at 7pm, followed by a discussion with the Director, Shashi Kumar. From the website (thanks Saurav!):

The film straddles two traumatic events in recent Indian history: the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the anti Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002…The film essentially deals with the dilemma of identity in a multicultural society that, every so often, turns volatile. Many aspects of the highly charged contemporary discourse find resonances in the film: the religious divide, the tyranny of the majority, the issue of religious conversions, the alienation of tribals from their hereditary land.[link]

Kaya Taran won the Aravindan Puraskaram award in 2004. If the description above sounds a bit heavy, check out the cast! The 100% fresh Bandit Queen stars:

The 107-minute-long film…is based on the Malayalam writer N. S. Madhavan’s short story titled “When Big Trees Fall”, set in the background of the anti-Sikh riots in 1984. The cast includes Seema Biswas, Angad Bedi, Neelambari Bhattacharya and Neetha Mohindra.[link]

TODAY, 7pm, @ImaginAsian Theatre, 239 59th Street NY, NY 10022.

Two years ago Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York issued Executive Order 41.  This order was issued…

to ensure that immigrants, and other New Yorkers, can access City services that they need and are entitled to receive. The policy protects areas of confidentiality, such as immigration status, sexual orientation, status as a victim of domestic violence, status as a crime witness, receipt of public assistance, and information in income tax records.

The New York Times reports on how that order, which “essentially codified a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for city workers,” (obviously including those of South Asian heritage) is now being tested:

Waheed Saleh says he was smoking a cigarette outside a doughnut shop at the rough edge of Riverdale in the Bronx when a police officer handed him a summons for disorderly conduct. He protested, he says, and the officer yelled at him to go back to his own country.

Mr. Saleh, a Palestinian, worked as a gypsy-cab driver illegally seeking fares and was used to tickets for infractions like double parking, making U-turns and picking up passengers. But he believed that this officer, Kishon Hickman, was harassing him. So he complained to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which examines complaints against police officers.

Before he heard back from the board, however, he heard from federal immigration authorities. About a year later, outside the same doughnut shop on the night of Dec. 20, 2004, he was confronted by a federal immigration agent and local police officers. The police took him into custody on administrative immigration violations, sending him into deportation proceedings. Mr. Saleh believes it was retaliation for his civilian review board complaint.

What complicates this case is that there is a possible loophole:

There are exceptions written into Executive Order 41: Illegal immigrants suspected of criminal activity or terrorism are not protected. Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said that Mr. Saleh’s host of summonses amounted to illegal activity, just as a single parking ticket would.

In an interview at a diner near the same doughnut shop, Mr. Saleh said he left his hometown of Jenin, on the West Bank, after his wife died of brain cancer, to find a better way to support his two young children, who stayed behind with his parents.

He arrived in November 2000 on a visitor’s visa, got a valid driver’s license and stayed on illegally to work at gas stations in Rockland County and as a landscaper in Yonkers. But after 9/11, he said, it became much harder to get work without a Social Security card, and he joined other Arabic men driving gypsy cabs.

If I were in Baghdad by the Bay next month, I would go to this very cool event:

Narika presents our fourth annual Midnight Masquerade, a benefit event supporting our domestic violence helpline for South Asian women. Enjoy a festive evening of dancing, enchantment and celebration. Featuring music by Dhamaal, dance party, silent auction, tarot card reading, henna designs, palm reading and cash bar (non alcoholic options available).

Here’s more on Narika:

Narika was founded in 1992 to address the problem of domestic violence in the South Asian community. Embracing the notion of women’s empowerment, Narika set out to address the unmet needs of abused South Asian women by providing advocacy, support, information, and referrals within a culturally sensitive model. We serve women who trace their origins to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and diasporic communities such as Fiji and the Caribbean.

If, by some ridonkulous confluence of fortune and destiny I am in SF, catch me in the wee eye pee:

VIP tickets include standard ticket, private event from 7-8 p.m. with appetizers, drinks live music and two free drinks after 8 p.m.

Time after time er, date:

Friday, Oct. 21, 2005
7:00 PM - 11:55 PM

Cinderella, in a mad rush to not pumpkin, will leave her glass slipper outside:

Dog Patch Studios
991 Tennessee Street
San Francisco, CA 94107-3013

Click the picture to purchase your tickets. I’m sure they won’t last long— any event with a Dhamaal soundtrack attracts hordes of people with good taste in music.

Desi-related snippets in American TV ads:

• M.I.A.’s ‘Galang’ is the soundtrack for a flying Honda Civic (1MB DivX), previous post here
• T-Mobile wireless ad, ‘Rajni Gupta!’ (1 MB Divx)
• Aasif Mandvi in Honey Nut Cheerios ad (0.7 MB Divx), previous post here
• Random desi actor in Kellogg’s Honey Crunch ad (2 MB Divx)

A 60 Minutes segment tonight on the search for Osama bin Laden needled Musharraf and the head of Pakistan’s ISI on their strategy to play the U.S. for arms and aid.

The reporter asked if they would hold bin Laden’s capture back for maximum publicity or move him to Afghanistan so Dubya could take credit. Musharraf laughed uncomfortably and stuttered a reply. He then wisecracked, ‘But we would like to take the money part.’

The interviewer asked, ‘The $25 million [reward]?’

Musharraf: ‘Not bad. Good money.’

Check out the subtitle during the bin Laden discussion. Is that a show promo, or political commentary?

Watch the clip (19 MB DivX; you need a BitTorrent downloader: Windows, Mac). Here’s the press release.

Update: Here’s who CBS misidentifies as Musharraf on their Web site. Apparently they’ve been taking lessons from both the Times of India and George W.:

Interviewer: “Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?” …

Bush: “General. I can’t name the general. General.”

Interviewer: “And the prime minister of India?”

Bush: “The new prime minister of India is - (pause) No… Can you name the foreign minister of Mexico?”

Interviewer: “No sir, but I would say to that, I’m not running for President…” [Link]

The usual image is of Western nations swooping in with a whirlybird and saving their expats from a banana republic disaster. But last week, Infosys airlifted its employees from Houston in advance of the hurricane (thanks, Sumita):

With Hurricane Rita hurtling towards the Texas coast, Indian IT major Infosys has evacuated over 86 people including employees and their families from Houston on a chartered flight… Infosys officials at the company’s headquarters in Bangalore said that the decision to charter a plane for the evacuation of employees and their families was made after reports that roads from Houston were blocked as scores of people attempted to flee. [Link]

In a similar vein, for Texans fleeing Rita, that friendly voice on the telephone may be desi (via SAJA):

A call centre in Gujarat has been fielding scores of distress calls from Texas residents about Hurricane Rita, the unit’s director said on Sunday. The call centre located in Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar, started fielding around 20 calls an hour…

“I received a frantic call from Robert Hurst, a senior judge in Texas on Friday night,” Jim Iyoob, the centre’s director in Gujarat and a resident of Texas. “He requested me to set up a helpline at the Business Process Outsourcing centre to help evacuees in Texas find a temporary shelter from the hurricane… All calls from our Texas office are being diverted to India,” says Iyoob who is helping anxious callers and updating them on the situation by monitoring various Web sites and maps. [Link]

And, of course, India and Sri Lanka offered aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Related posts: one, two, three, four, five

Manhattan celebrates Diwali next Sunday, October 2nd at the South Street Seaport. Come enjoy bhangra, chaat, Air-India fireworks (not the Flight 182 kind) and life insurance booths next to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The chilly Seaport is a moorage for tall ships in the shadow of azure skyscrapers by Wall Street. It’s both an anachronism (a mall these days) and an odd spot for the celebration, evoking the Americans dressed as Indians who dumped tea in Boston Harbor.

Real Indians would never waste perfectly good tea. And it would probably be Lipton.

Previous post here. Related posts: one, two, three.

Break out your copy of Hatful Of Hollow, I’m about to depress you with this story from the BBC:

A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee - two US cents - for a school meal.

Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.

Sania usually starved at school; her widowed mother, Jainab Bewar, provided for her by bringing home food from the houses she worked in as a maid. On Friday, Sania

was tempted by the sight of classmates eating puffed rice and oil cakes.

When Sania asked her mother for a rupee, she was rebuked because the family couldn’t spare it:

She and her sons never earn more than $13 a month combined, she says.

Sania’s mother later found her hanging via a sari.

This is all I can think of, when I read stories like this:

India has seen unprecedented economic growth in recent years but many remain untouched by the improvements.

Decades ago, my parents were factually correct when they guilted me into finishing my dinner by reminding me of all the starving children in India:

A recent UN report said half of India’s children were still malnourished.

Tragic. No other word for it.

Time Magazine’s Asia edition features an article on the ambitions of multinational media conglomerates and their efforts to grab a piece of the the Indian newspaper market, which has always been difficult to penetrate:

It’s a sign of the times that one of the hottest IPOs in India this year was that of a newspaper company. Shares in HT Media—which publishes Hindustan, a major Hindi daily, the Hindustan Times, an English-language newspaper, and two magazines—listed on the Bombay stock exchange on Sept. 1 after raising about $90 million through a public stock sale. The IPO marked the climax of an extraordinary year for the Indian newspaper industry, which has seen new editions launched, turf wars fought and sensational stories broken. All this exuberance is a heart-warming sight for newspaper publishers. In most countries, sales and profits of dailies have been declining for years, a slide that has been hastened recently by a surge of fresh competition from the Internet and TV. That’s why, as a newspaper boom rages in India, investors and media executives across the world are looking for a way to penetrate what is probably the world’s last great newspaper market.

Watching the Indian newspaper scene is like taking a trip in a time machine to early 20th century America, when newspapers ruled life and politics. Sales of most Indian newspapers are increasing, and advertising is soaring. There are some 50,000 newspapers in this country of more than 1 billion inhabitants. Although circulation data is often controversial and hard to verify, one recent survey suggests that the number of Indians who read a daily newspaper shot up by 14% in the past three years to 176 million. (Most of them are reading newspapers in languages other than English—the Times of India, the top-selling English newspaper, is only the 12th largest.) It’s not hard to see the reasons for the boom: literacy is still expanding in India, and has increased by 21% over the past three years. A growing readership has combined with India’s other strengths—a vital economy and democratic culture—to make it a serious rival to China for the attention of global media investors. While there’s more advertising money in the Middle Kingdom, “India is less regulated than China and it’s easier to make money here,” says Vivek Couto, executive director of Media Partners Asia, a Hong Kong-based industry consultancy.

It’s obvious that if Times of India, with its often shockingly poor quality, is the top-selling English newspaper in India, then there is plenty of money to be made if the government loosens enough restrictions.  Current restrictions include the requirement that foreign media can sell only international editions that don’t contain local content or advertising and that foreign owners can only maintain a 26% share of the company.

And speaking of penetrating the Indian media market, via Tiffinbox (thanks for the tip Sendhil) we learn that Media Transasia is launching an Indian edition of Maxim.  I am bitter because I thought of this idea YEARS ago but I had no capital to make it happen.

Media Transasia is all set to bring international titles to India. First off their list is ‘Maxim’, the general interest magazine for men. ‘Maxim’ is targeted exclusively at men and will be launched by the end of 2005…

Commenting on the magazine, Sharma says, “The Indian edition of ‘Maxim’ will be similar to the international edition in terms of design, layout and tone, but the content will be adapted to suit Indian sensibilities…” [Link]

The Pacific News Service spotlights the stories of some foreign South Asian students who are coping with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.  Specifically the story focuses on their fears of being deported if they are unable to stay enrolled in a school that has been knocked out of commission, or if they seek out help from FEMA in these post-9/11 times:

"We're homeless. We cannot work off campus. We are in a bad situation. Everyone is trying to survive. We are moving from place to place."

Tulane University student Azad, who wouldn't give his last name lest "I get into trouble," was not just mouthing off. He meant every word of what he said, and what he said was an echo of what a number of other immigrant students from the Indian sub-continent were saying in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast earlier this month turned Azad's life upside down, along with everyone else's. Only, in the case of immigrant students like Azad, especially those from predominantly Muslim countries like his, many are wondering whether to seek help from federal agencies, or just lie low and continue banking on the uncertain help of friends and acquaintances.

"The fear they are experiencing is understandable," Artesia, Calif.,-based South Asian Network's executive director Hamid Khan told India-West. "It's because of how South Asians, and particularly how Muslim students have been demonized" in the wake of 9/11. "Students with Muslim names face a higher degree of scrutiny. That's why even in times of need they are afraid to reach out so that they don't show up on the radar screen."

This is when you often hear the oversimplified advice, "well if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear."  That advice doesn't mean much to these students who, because of the fear of getting caught in the system, would rather keep their heads down even if it means enduring hardship.  The U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement office announced last week that it was temporarily lifting the restriction that binds a student visa holder to a particular institution.

Forbes magazine says audiophiles are apeshit over a cheap, $30 amp which sound as clear as high-end competitors. It’s the audiophile version of Two-Buck Chuck:

… the T-Amp was nothing to brag about, just a… battery-powered amplifier that hooks up to chintzy cardboard speakers. A firm called Sonic Impact Technologies introduced it to no acclaim in 2003. Then orders suddenly took off last fall, surging from a hundred to a thousand units a week…

… audiophiles were raving about the T-Amp on the Internet, claiming this tiny plastic wedge produced music as sweet-sounding as amplifiers costing thousands of dollars. The customer had “hooked it up to an $18,000 pair of speakers and a $6,000 CD player,” Bracke says. A reviewer on a Web site in Italy called the T-Amp the most amazing product in 25 years. And an online cottage industry had sprung up around the T-Amp, with companies such as Red Wine Audio, in Auburn, Massachusetts, stuffing the electronic guts of the plastic amps into sleek metal cases and selling them for up to $1,200… [Link]

The secret to this amp is an innovative audio chipset designed by an entrepreneur named Adya Tripathi. Is he the new Amar Bose?

Tripath’s founder, Adya Tripathi, figured out a way to make a digital amplifier that produces very little distortion. Tripathi, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and a veteran of National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices and IBM, found that part of the trick involves pulsing on and off at far higher rates—millions of times per second… Tripath’s higher pulse rate creates more chances to offset signal distortion by applying feedback… The T-Amp uses Tripath’s lowest-end chip… which puts out 15 watts of power and costs $3… [Link]

Tripathi is from Benares:

The advance comes from a little chip produced by Tripath Technology Inc., a 150-employee company in Santa Clara, Calif. It was founded in 1995 by Adya S. Tripathi, a 48-year-old engineer from the holy city of Varanasi… Before taking the company public… Tripathi secured $50 million in funding from such high-tech heavyweights as Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. [Link]

This is when I expect a certain mutineer to roll into Adya uncle’s office as a long-lost relative and then bounce, saying goodbye to the sucka mutineers who fly economy

The bloggers here would like to thank every single person that donated money to us over the past month to keep this blog running through next September.  As you can see the thermometer has been removed from the right hand column as we raised just over a $1000.  The bill for server space was getting $too large$ as our readership grew larger.  The only alternative that we saw was to write really bad entries so that some of you would be disgusted and surf away, thereby lowering our readership.  Luckily it didn’t come to that (although I had some bad entries on standby).  Most of you also wrote really kind notes along with your donations and I wanted to let you know that each note was read and appreciated.

I also wanted to especially thank five individuals who individually donated more than we could have hoped for:

MD, Brimful, my dad, Dhrumil, and Siddhartha.

When Sepia Mutiny eventually offers an IPO and raises a ton of cash, and then buys and NFL Team as an investment, each of these five people will get a skybox.  I promise (except for Brimful who doesn’t like the 49ers).

Raghubir Goyal the Foil, the One-Track Uncle called on by White House press secretaries to evade tough questioning, shows up in a Daily Show segment. ‘Go ahead, Goyal,’ says the spokesman.

‘My question is in connection with the Prime Minister of India’s visit on Monday…’ he begins, sidetracking the preceding questions about domestic politics. Old faithful.

Watch the clip, he’s at 4:29.

Keep watching to see the other reliable escape hatch. Lester Kinsolving is the resident crank from WCBM Radio. A female reporter sits behind him, smirking and exchanging looks with other reporters while he asks a long, bizarre question about whether Dubya agrees with emperor Constantine’s fourth-century Christian theology.

Dude, have a little respect. I think we can safely assume POTUS knows about Constantine.

It had Rachel Weisz and Keanu Reeves and, like, totally rawked.

Previous post here.

In case you missed it in hardcover, Maximum City will be out in paperback next Tuesday.

I will spare you my opinion of the book since Suketu Mehta appears to be Sepia regular, but just for those who can’t get enough, the Columbia Journalism Review runs a highly entertaining interview with Mehta in next month’s issue.

His interviewing technique:

I was writing as I was speaking to these people. I’d bring out my laptop.. one of their hit men might say, ‘You know, we had a job to kill somebody for their laptop last week.’ And I’d say, ‘Yes, I’m aware of that” …. I noticed this subliminal thing started happening where as they spoke, I was literally typing. My fingers were dancing, and they would look at me and pick up these cues from when I’m typing or not. Now, in India the problem isn’t getting people to talk, it’s getting them to shut up or to stick to the topic. And I didn’t have to tell them to stick to the topic, but..when they wandered off into a tangent I’d still be nodding, but my fingers weren’t dancing. And so they would, without my ever having to say anything to them, come back to the topic that I was interested in…

Each chapter was a journey into myself, into my weaknesses and my strengths. And I asked myself, Why was I attracted to these tough boys? And it’s because in school I was a weedy kid, and I always looked up to the tough boys. The short and the smart sat at the front of the class….in the back were the people who had failed the grade and were taking it again or the really tall kids and we called them the LLBs — the Lords of the Last Bench. And I always looked up to these guys. These were the ones who were good at cricket, could get the girls. And here they were — they were grown up, and they were my protectors.

I remember one of the hit men saying, ‘It used to happen that after I killed, the soul of the man I kill will come and sit on my chest. But then a Muslim gangster taught me to sleep in a fetal position with my back to the door, so the soul doesn’t have access to my chest so I can sleep peacefully.’ Each one of them had different rationalizations, including the police.

This American television season-premiere week for some reason has been filled with an unprecedented number of desis. Not including the various desis already appearing as regulars on television series, the week began with Indira Varma on Rome, Toral on the apprentice, and relative newcomer Maulik Pancholy on the new Showtime series Weeds, which airs Monday’s at 10 pm.   Pancholy, who was previously seen in Hitch, and appeared as various generic brown characters in a handful of sitcoms (including Jack and Jill and the hilarious Tracey Takes On), scored a recurring guest role on Weeds, which stars Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Nealon. A bit early to say, but could Pancholy be the next Kal Penn?

Incidentally, Pancholy is starring in the off-Broadway play, India-Awaiting, which opens for previews on October 15, 2005 at the Samuel Beckett Theater.

See Manish’s previous post on Pancholy here.

Don’t forget to set those TiVos because tonight marks the debut of Season IV of The Apprentice.  As previously reported, Toral Mehta will make her debut.  Guess who just decided to steal the spotlight?  That’s right. The Raj is back (thanks for the tip “Bella”):

Raj Bhakta, former contestant on Donald Trump’s reality show, said he is contemplating challenging Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz in next year’s election for the 13th District.

“I think Allyson Schwartz is a formidable opponent, clearly. At the same time, I think she’s beatable,” Bhakta said, adding that he wants to run “because I think it’s very important to have a fresh, progressive, conservative voice representing the parts of the country that are not necessarily blue and not necessarily red.”

Bhakta, a 29-year-old businessman from the Fort Washington area, is a Republican. He said he has talked to Montgomery County GOP chairman Ken Davis and Philadelphia GOP leader Vito Canuso and plans to go to Washington, D.C., next week to talk to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Davis - who said he never watched “The Apprentice” - said he had no trouble taking Bhakta seriously.

“Any candidate who decides to do this and is as organized and as thoughtful as I think he is, you have to take them seriously,” Davis said Tuesday. “He has a lot of ideas, and he’s a very bright young man. I think he is a serious candidate.”

What would Raj stand for?  If you remember I previously blogged about his political venture the Coalition for the Advancement of the Republic.  Doesn’t seem like he has added much to the website though.

Before he can hammer his opinions into a campaign platform, however, Bhakta said he knows he has a monumental task: figuring out where the cash will come from.

“Everywhere I’ve gone, even before they ask me what I believe, they ask how much money I can raise,” Bhakta said. “For one district in Congress, to know that $10 million could be spent on the election, aggregately. Well, something’s wrong there.”

Yes, Raj now knows that in the world of politics the only thing that matters is how much cash you can raise.  He should also know to stay on Karl Rove’s good side if he wants Roves operatives to help him out.  Recently Raj, and other semi-celebrities, were asked to suggest a reading list for President Bush while he vacationed at Crawford.  Here was Raj’s advice:

” ‘Empire,’ by Neil Ferguson. He should read it with an eye towards realizing that as we stumble further into ‘empire,’ we should avoid the inevitable fate of them all.” - Raj Bhakta, former contestant, “The Apprentice”; chairman, Coalition for the Advancement of the Republic

Rove has an all seeing eye.  That kind of teasing could get you in the GOP’s dog house.

See previous Raj posts.

SM reader Kiran wrote:

I went to the show last night. Amazing!
But our camera crapped out. Did anyone get any good shots? I would love to see them..

Kiran, my dear…the Mutiny is ALWAYS in the front row, dead center baby, especially at the 9:30 club. Last night, I took 333 pictures of Miss Arulpragasam— that’s M.I.A. if you’re nasty— they are unedited and up on flickr, right this second. Check the slideshow of her show here.

If I weren’t so busy working for the (wo)Man, I’d cull the current set of 283 further, caption some of them and then write a post which told you an enchanting story called, “The Concert that was Worth Respraining my Ankle for”. What a show.

Hurricane fatigue set in, so I’m horrified to admit now that I haven’t followed the latest developments on Hurricane Rita. Until I heard this morning that it had been upgraded to a Category 5 storm, headed directly towards Houston. That’s where my Ammi lives!!

Several desperate phone calls later, Ammi intrepidly reports from my sister’s place in California:

They evacuated people from Galvaston and Corpus Christi. And they told people living near the coast, or near the bayous to leave. For everyone else, they kept saying not to panic…but if you can leave, go. But not to panic..it was really confusing.

Rita was downgraded to a Katrina-level Category 4 a few hours ago:

The National Hurricane Centre said the path of Rita, with top winds dropping slightly to 265 kph and is now a Category 4 storm, had shifted toward the north. It appeared to be headed toward Galveston and Houston…forecast to hit Texas as no less than a Category 3 storm with winds of up to 209 kph.

1.3 million Texans told to evacuate…Bumper-to-bumper traffic jams filled the region’s highways. Area stores were scrambling to keep supplies on the shelves while gas stations with fuel to sell dwindled to a precious few.

Maj. Gen. Charles Rodriguez of the Texas National Guard told CNN they have 3,500 troops on the ground and expect to have 5,000 by Friday evening and Saturday morning.[link]

The 3HO group of Sikh converts in the U.S. has made a small fortune on health food (thanks, commenters). Now, with real corn!

So the ginger asked the almond, “Could you make me a snack?” and the almond said, “Kazam! You’re a snack.”

What did the peanut say to the cashew? Gesundheit! [Link]

Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki granola bar? I gotta say, their sense of humor is authentically desi. Let’s not forget Yogi Tea, which tells us you don’t have to work your way into exotique, you can just drink it (via Tilo). On camelback in front of the Taj, apparently.

Exotic Teas: Savor the enchanting flavor and sweet aroma of spices from around the world… [Link]

Peace Cereal, a million dollar biz, pitches nirvana via breakfast cereal. It’s a Ben & Jerinder’s business model:

Peace Cereal has promoted the transformative power of peace by donating 10% of our profits to peace building organizations, resulting in more than $1 million in donations. [Link]

They even have a warm and fuzzy founder story like the one on every package of Mrs. Fields. When Yogi Bhajan baked his first batch of authentic guru cookies…

In 1969 Yogi Bhajan began teaching Kundalini Yoga in America, sharing the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda and healthy living that he had mastered in India. After each class he would serve his students a special spice tea based upon this healing science, which they affectionately named Yogi Tea… Golden Temple (bulk granolas), Peace Cereal (packaged cereals), Wha Guru Chew (candy bars), Herbal Gems (capsulated herb formulas), Sunshine (body care products) and Soothing Touch (professional massage products), were some of the companies… [Link]

Other parts of their empire: Ancient Healing Ways, Yogi Botanicals.

The whole thing strikes me as a cross between the friars who support themselves with wine, fruitcake and Web design and the same consumer couture which gags my bullshit sensor on Solano Ave. I’m more impressed with their business savvy. At least they have a sense of humor about it.

Related posts: one, two, three

My favorite festival with a faux-Muslim name starts in just a week. SALTAF, the South Asian Literary and Theatre Arts Festival, will indulge your culture-vulture proclivities in D.C. this October 1st weekend (thanks, Pooja). It sounds remarkably highbrow for a NetSAP/NetIP event.

The list of numinaries includes poet filmmaker Deepa Mehta, Vijay Seshadri, Nadeem Aslam (Maps for Lost Lovers), Anita Desai, M.G. Vassanji (Toronto South Asian Review and my fave title ever, Amriika) and Shyam Selvadurai. With that literati-centric lineup, maybe they should just name it SAJA Delhi and call it a day

This documentary on the parallels between kathak and flamenco looks interesting:

Firedance by Vishnu Mathur

Two renowned Toronto performers… each [tell how]… Kathak and flamenco shared an ancient history. Soon they started working together… Joanna and Esmeralda demonstrate in the documentary how similar the foot and hand movements of these two dance forms are - and they trace the evolution of the differences that came about in the course of time; Flamenco using shoes for sound and subtle nuance, Kathak bells and bare feet for its rhythmic expressions.

Here’s the festival schedule.

The title of this post needs no explanation if you have even an ounce of cool in you (like me).  Has a more famous word ever been uttered in a 20th century movie?  I think not.  Here is quick background on the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for you virgins:

Khan, a genetically engineered “superman” prone to megalomaniacal delusions, was exiled years ago to the barren planet Ceti Alpha 5. He blames Admiral Kirk for his hard fate, as well as for his son’s death, and vows revenge. When Commander Chekov mistakenly beams down to Khan’s lair, the villain finally has a means of escape. Using a parasitic creature that allows him to control the minds of his victims, Khan seizes command of the Starship Reliant. From there he hopes to lure Kirk to his death, using equipment stolen from an experimental research project. These devices allow him to trigger something known as the “Genesis Effect” — a means of generating new life from existing matter. Khan plans to use the creation machines as weapons, because the same fire of life that creates new worlds must destroy what existed before. Kirk and crew need all the courage and cunning they can muster in order to save their friend and silence Khan forever. [Link]

For those wanting a more detailed background (and you really should) please read here and here.  One important detail I had not known (or more likely forgotten until Punjabi Boy reminded us this morning) is that the most brilliant villain in science fiction history was a Punjabi Sikh.  You have to delve deep into Star Trek fiction literature to find the background on Khan.  Luckily there happens to be an entire website (I shit you not) about Sikhs in Science Fiction.

The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox

Although Khan Noonien Singh is the title character of this novel, he is not mentioned by name until more than half-way through the book. The last third focuses primarily on Khan, who is explicitly identified as a Sikh character herein. Prior to the Khan scenes, there are scenes in India with Sikh guards. But the Sikh-related material that is most prominent is in a chapter set in 1984, when Khan is just fourteen years old and living in Delhi. The Indian military has brutally attacked Amritsar, at the command of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who has subsequently been assassinated by her Sikh guards. Khan gets caught in the middle of the resulting anti-Sikh violence, as he must flee an angry mob intent on killing him.

Yes, yes.  Those who are immersed in violence at an early age often regrettably turn to violence.  How popular a villain was Khan?  There are poems about him, and you can also take a quiz to see how much you know about him.  Also, for any girls (or boys) who had a crush on Khan (played by actor Ricardo Montalban) in the 80s, here is a fun fact:  his breasts are fake, a prop.  He ain’t really that cut. They ARE real.

I’ve done far worse than kill you. I’ve hurt you. And, I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me—as you left her [Khan’s wife]—marooned, for all eternity, in the center of a dead planet: buried alive…       -Khan [Link]

If you were the owner and director of an aquarium, what better name could you possibly have than “Moby.”  Dr. Moby Solangi, owner and director for the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, MS, is a very happy man today.  The Times explains why:

Amid all the stories of devastation and death emerging from Hurricane Katrina, one happy chapter was written yesterday — courtesy of eight bottlenose dolphins.

They had lived in a marine aquarium for decades and were domesticated — three were born in captivity — but were washed miles out to sea when the hurricane hit Mississippi. Their owner feared that they lacked the skills of the wild to survive in the Gulf of Mexico.

But in a feat of navigation that has stunned their trainers, all eight have been discovered huddled together in fetid water a few hundred yards from land, having found their way back to the site in Gulfport where their aquarium once stood.

Their owner, Moby Solangi, speaking to The Times from a boat as he fed the dolphins last night, said: “We thought they were lost. They have all been in captivity for between 30 and 40 years. We didn’t think they had any navigation skills, and yet they are back here. We never thought we would find them, all together, so quickly.”

The chart on the right displays body weight vs. brain weight in some common animals.  The farther to the northwest of the solid central line, the more intelligent the creature.  As you can see there isn’t much of a difference between the owner of the aquarium and his prized dolphins.  These dolphins did exactly what I would have done: wait out the storm in a pack and then try to find my way home.  They’ve lost weight and they’ll get no help from FEMA (although you can help), but at least they survived and are now chillin’ at the Holiday Inn (sippin’ some Hen’).  Voice of America has the video.

As you requested, some family friendly fare. Yes, sometimes the cliches are true:

From Kerim’s set of recent India photos (2004-2005) on Flickr. These are really quite good, y’all.

As in all things, advertisements depict a rosier world than the one we actually live in. The Kama Sutra references in Manish’s post below make it seem like India is becoming more sexually liberal, but a recent story from the BBC points out that India is still quite repressed. In this case, a couple was threatened with jail for public indecency.

What did they do? They kissed … at their wedding:

An Israeli couple being married in India have found that you may not kiss the bride - the pair were fined $22 for indecency for their wedding embrace. A court in Rajasthan imposed the fine after Alon Orpaz and Tehila Salev had decided to get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Pushkar. Priests were offended when the couple kissed and hugged during the chanting of religious verses. The apologetic couple said they were unaware public kissing was banned.

The couple, who had met in India while travelling separately, paid the 1,000-rupee fine for “committing an act of indecency” to avoid a 10-day jail sentence. [Link]

[UPDATE: Reader Dhaavak points us to a recent AFP file photo of a young couple making out in a Delhi park. Check out their body language: he has his hands on his hips, and she’s fixing her dupatta.]

Nor is this the only case of legal action for absurdly minor PDA. Three years ago, Pune university enacted a ban on kissing, hand-holding or even cuddling on campus:

An Indian university has declared its campus a strict “no love” zone, declaring a ban on kissing and hand-holding on its grounds. The vice chancellor of western India’s Pune university, Ashok Kolaskar, says courting couples could damage the reputation and social values of the 100-year-old institution.

”Action will be taken against couples found holding hands, kissing or indulging in any form of public display of affection,” warns a notice signed by [sic] the Mr Kolaskar.  [Link]

Commenter Angie went beyond the call of duty and scanned in this bit of whimsical pop surrealism from Cadbury:

… you’ll notice some very odd accessories in the drawing: a bbq, a duck flotation device, barnyard, and of all things a PLOW in the background. Maybe this appropriately 5 o’clock shadowed brown fellow plans on hooking up his lady to the plow later on… I don’t think he’d want to ruin his sheer silk chiffon shirt and capris with any dirty field work.

I love the musical anachronism, not that it’s a boombox but that it’s not an MP3 player. The two feet pressed together are a randy reference to a sexual position used to much effect by Indira Varma in Mira Nair’s soft-core raspberry, Kama Sutra.

Exploitative? Surely there’s a straight line from chocolate to eroticism. It’s much more tasteful than Raymond’s raunchy KamaSutra condom ads. Oh, yes: the conservative, Indian men’s suiting company covers everything that might pop up.

Highway signs from Ladakh:

Himank is responsible for construction of GS roads and other related infrastructure for Army, Air Force and government organisations located within the Ladakh region consisting of Leh and Kargil districts. Project Himank looks after the famous areas of Drass, Kargil, Batalik, Siachen Glacier and Chushul. The project sector encompasses world’s second coldest region of Drass, world’s highest motorable road astride Khardung La, world’s highest battle-ground of Siachen Glacier and Pangong Tso Lake at 14500 ft located across India-China border. [Link]

(thanks, Ankush)

The BBC discusses freshly-released camera footage which reveals that the London bombers did a dry-run nine days before their terrorist assault. Their July 7th attack murdered 52 people and injured 700 others.

CCTV images show three of the bombers entering Luton station, before travelling to King’s Cross station where they are also pictured…The three, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay, were conducting a carefully planned reconnaissance exercise, police said.

Someone finally got around to claiming evil. Why the delay?

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda has said for the first time the group carried out the attacks.

In a videotaped message aired on Arab television station al-Jazeera, al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said the group had the “honour” of carrying out the attacks.

For shame. There is no honor in the slaughter of innocents.

:+:

Previous SM coverage: here, here, here, here…

We may now have our own MTV Desi, but all of a sudden we also have a bunch of desis on MTV.  Sonia points us to a new MTV reality show, ingeniously (from a minimalist perspective) titled The Reality Show, that debuts tonight at 10:30p.m.

Are you a reality TV junkie? Then it’s time to take your addiction to the next step. Help MTV choose the next big star on The Reality Show.

Basically 10 final contestants or duos will compete for 9 weeks.  At the end of that period the person(s) with the most interesting “real life” will get their own reality show.  Why not?  In the running are two cousins from Virginia Beach named Karishma and Bansri.  See, it seems our dynamic duo, that apparently come from well-off families, told their parents they were coming to L.A. to work at internships.  In reality they came here just to party!  And party some more.  In fact, if they get their own show it will be a show about Indian girls partying in L.A.  Will hilarity ensue when their parents find out that they are not in fact “good Indian girls?”

Will these two party monsters have their life come crashing down when their parents show up? Will they find the hot parties and keep their parents placated with the lies? Or are they headed for a train wreck? Follow the all the cross-cultural chaos in “Karma Chameleons.”

Holla at yo’ boy.  I live in LA.  I like to party hardy too.  My parents used to think I was a hard working student but then they uncovered my double life as a blogger (among other things), and all the booze and women such a life involves.  Maybe these girls will invite me out with them some time.  I know people.  Come to think of it, why isn’t there a reality T.V. show based on my life? 

“We’re Karishma and Bansri and we like the boom…”

This morning, the NYC Council Committee on Transportation held a hearing in relation to the suspension of alternate side of the street parking rules on the Hindu festival of Diwali.

This is a big deal. Alternate side of the street parking is rarely suspended, and affects anyone looking for a place to park in NY. Only 32 legal and religious holidays are recognized by the City. Scroll down here for a list. From the petition organizers:

The first step in the process is the proposed legislation to get approved at the hearing on September 20th. Then, the Mayor will have to sign it into law. It is critical that the Council Members and, in turn, the Mayor appreciate the interest in and support of this legislation. The more support shown for the legislation at this stage of the process, the more likely it is that the Mayor will not veto it.

According to the NYC Department of Planning,there are over 600,000 foreign-born persons of South Asian descent in the NYC metro area; this does not even include those of South Asian descent born in America…If NYC takes this step, other cities and municipalities throughout the country will have the precedent to do the same.[link]

The legislation will be voted on by the full NYC Council at the Stated Meeting on Wednesday, September 28. [If they] approve the legislation it will then go to Mayor Bloomberg to be signed into law. Then the Mayor will have 30 days to sign or veto the legislation…press conference at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, September 28, on the steps of City Hall.

Related posts:1, 2, 3.

Ever since those floppy Beatles and hip-wiggling Stones stormed our Atlantic coast, American music mags lurve warbling on about the newest “Brit Invasion!” like retarded canaries in a perfectly oxygenated coal mine. Remember Blur? Pulp? The Verve? Ah, ‘twas a Bittersweet Symphony indeed, Richard.

Coldplay is doing its best to launch a one-man (you know it’s true) full-frontal assault…but Mr. Martin sounds too intent on supporting Gwyneth and the Appletini to make anything really fresh these days.

So it’s with much interest that I’ve noticed that Brit-based Bhangra seems to be stealthily making unheralded inroads in the US. “Get ur Freak On” seemed to trigger something cuz soon after we had that Jay-Z rapping on Panjabi MC’s “Mundian to Bach Ke,” and no less than three (3) dancehall tracks with the Diwali Riddim. Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” being the best known.

Now, I’m pretty clueless about the Sardaar-scene, and know I’m a bit out of my depth here, so please refrain from tugging your beards and whipping your karas at me. please? I can’t do any worse than this Popmatters review that describes bhangra as:

dance music with the tabla beat at its base, sounding very much like drum’n’bass, sometimes with rapping but usually with Indian pop as its melodic focus.

Well, I hope.

At any rate, (and thanks Punjabi Boy) the previous post illustrates viral marketing at its finest:

The Xbox game, which is expected to hit the streets in November 2005, will feature two tracks by Achanak…taken from their forthcoming album, Bhangra-ology, which is due for release on 19th September 2005. Tigerstyle will have three tracks…lifted off their forthcoming, yet to be titled album, which is scheduled for a November 2005 release.[link]

May I draw your attention to the timing? Brilliant, I think. Besides, I hear there was a call for more turban-ed hotties…….Way to work it boys ;)

Related posts: 1, 2, 3.

British bhangra label Nachural has announced that five of its tracks will appear on a Microsoft racing game for the Xbox 360:

… Nachural has taken bhangra onto another level in announcing the placement of tracks from its catalogue onto [Project Gotham Racing 3], the game to be launched by Xbox [360]… in the winter of 2005…

Two tracks by Achanak (‘Teri Muhabbatan’ and the ‘Lak Noo’ remix) and three tracks by Tigerstyle (‘Boliyaan,’ ‘Akh Mastani’ and ‘Maan Doeba Da’)… This is the first time that bhangra tracks… have been placed [in] any interactive game… [Link]

Art finally imitates life: First bhangra tracks in a console game?Vinod and I used to car-dance to Achanak while jamming from sterile Seattle up to rockin’ Vancouver on the weekends. Personally, I can’t wait to play berserker bhangra while fragging demons asuras in the next version of Doom. Bhangra’s raw energy is like Nine Inch Nails’ Doom soundtrack, only less sadist. Bow to the power of the turbanator!

In other news, Microsoft plans to release an even deadlier version of Halo (screenshot). It will also one-up Super Mario with Super Patel Brothers, where players must collect cheap vittles from an Indian food superstore in Jackson Heights.

Sikhs from New Orleans used equipment popular with Navy SEALs to rescue their copy of the Guru Granth Sahib from a gurdwara under nine feet of water (via Amardeep):

… the United Sikhs sought the help of one of its volunteer Ranbir Kaur, a US Army National Guard [soldier], to hire the rescue services of SRT, a private helicopter special response… firm… [The] operation… lasted over a period of 22 hours…

Zodiac boats equipped with underwater cameras and rescue equipment were used to reach the flooded gurdwara, which was completely damaged inside, but [the] Guru Granth Sahib was on the ‘palki’ (palanquin) and floating on water. “I was amazed, looking at the Guru Sahib’s ‘sukhasan’ on the palki, floating on 5 feet of water and untouched by the flood waters,” Hardayal Singh was quoted as saying. [Link]

The immense value the Sikhs place on this religious artifact reminds me of synagogues’ ingenious solution to the theft of Torah scrolls. To protect priceless ancient work, they’re using digital watermarking:

Like many Torah scrolls in active service, the one stolen from Temple Sholom last month is an antique, and is believed to have been crafted in the Middle East several hundred years ago… With a fair market value of around $50,000 for a new scroll, $9,000 for a used one, Judaism’s sacred text is in some ways a perfect underground commodity… Torah scrolls are inherently anonymous. Jewish law dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah’s text. That means no “property of” stamps, no serial numbers, no visible identifying marks of any kind…

Check out the cool Indian flag reference in this MC Kabir promo shot (via AiM). If you don’t see it at first, look at it from a distance.

Previous posts: uno, dos

Ever since Cicatrix made herself at home here in our North Dakota HQ there has been a plethora of attractive men featured on our website.  Consider this a push back.

Meet Canadian rocker Priya Thomas- "Hot body-check"

PRIYA THOMAS may well be one of Canada's best-kept secrets. Long considered bold and innovative, Canadian songstress, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist PRIYA THOMAS has built a solid reputation for her work by bucking trends and never underestimating her audience. And hers is a rabid audience that just keeps growing.

On a recent tour of the UK, Thomas was hailed by the BBC for her jaw-droppingly intense live show and highly original songwriting. A suicide blonde with an adrenalin-charged stage presence and unusual lyrical complexity, she's been likened to an odd cross between Debbie Harry and Neil Young, not to mention countless other artists such as Tom Waits, Pj Harvey, Madonna and even Mick Jagger. Originally trained as a dancer, Priya Thomas' live show is a force of nature to be reckoned with; as Priya steers the audience through her uniquely kamikaze performance energy. And with The blast of 7, a kicking 5 piece band behind her, the live presentation of the new record is a sonic assault of blazing rock riffs, post-punk trash drum loops, crafted melodies and Priya Thomas' charismatic performance.

Priya Thomas grew up the daughter of a Syrian Orthodox minister and a phycisist mother who gave up working as a professor after moving to Montreal, Canada from the Southwestern state of Kerala in India.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing cooler than a lady rocker.  Best of all her website features videos of her live performances as well as audio clips.  There is none of that hopping in place.  She appears to rock the stage.  You can check out her old CDs here.  There is also an article about her in August's issue of Elle Magazine Canada.  She has a parrot named Magnus who keeps her company while she writes her songs.  Sigh...

A new history of the KGB alleges that the Soviets had deeply infiltrated Indira Gandhi’s government in the 1970s. Based on the KGB’s own documents, the book argues that:

Russia’s feared KGB spy service penetrated all levels of the Indian government under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and became a major cash backer of her Congress (R) party.

The KGB operation in India during that period was its largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc and it even had to create a new department to handle it… suitcases of money were regularly taken into Gandhi’s house to fund the Congress party, and in the 1977 poll which she lost, nine party candidates were KGB agents.[Link]

“It seemed like the whole country was for sale” — Former KGB general Oleg KaluginThe general argument here is nothing new, but these details had not been heard before and they’re causing quite a kerfuffle in India.

There is the claim, for example, that the KGB convinced Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency in 1975.

The book also points out that the CIA had tried to infiltrate the Indian government as well:

The inquiry “uncovered two occasions” during Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministry when “the CIA had secretly provided funds to help the Communists’ opponents in state elections, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal.” …  ”Both times the money was given to the Congress Party which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs Gandhi herself, who was then a party official. [Link]

The internets were alive this morning with the news that Sri Lanka was about to drop its age of consent from 16 to 13 (thanks Enivhsay):

government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva, who is also the minister of health, told a weekly Cabinet briefing on Friday that the government was planning to lower the age of consent. He gave no reason, but said the proposal was approved “after much debate and a long review.” [link]

Ah, yes. Debate and review. Ve have heard the words, but the meaning is escaping us still. However, in a startling turnaround of events:

The government reversed its decision after a flurry of telephone calls from incensed citizens following the announcement, The Sunday Island newspaper said.

“There is no proposal, whatsoever, to reduce that to 13 or to any other age,” it quoted Dhara Wijayatillake, a secretary in the Ministry of Justice, as saying Saturday. [link]

Que rapido!! When did the Sri Lankan government start pay attention to “incensed citizens”? Did I miss something important during my time here in Amrika?

The Minister [Justice Minister John Senevirathne] said that the government is concerned of the increased number of young men detained in remand prisons as a result of sexual encounters with their girlfriends.

He said: “Many girls are requesting to release them saying the encounter happened with their consent.” [link]

Holy Mammajamma! I’ve missed so much!! Here I was, happily warbling away my speculative fantasies that Sri Lanka may be one of the more progressive South Asian countries…but this much? When I was a wee kella (er, ladki. Indocentric, what?) sex did not exist, no one had ever heard of it, and even if those damn suddhas (goras) couldn’t keep in in their pants, that was still no reason why we Sri lankans couldn’t quietly continue asexually budding. Encounter, bencounter! Sekshuval is a vestern invention, no?

So vat the bluddy hell is going on?

On the heels of the recent outreach by Howard Dean, the website of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announces the creation of an Indian American Council (IAC):

[On Sept. 15th], the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced the formation of an Indian American Council to provide the party with valuable insight on a broad range of issues important to the Indian American community.

Ro Khanna, appointed as chair of the Council by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said “The creation of this council is a historic step for the Indian American Community, and attests to the party’s appreciation for what the community has contributed to this country. Leader Pelosi has once again demonstrated her extraordinary vision in harnessing the talent, passion, and energy of the community…”

The Council will be sponsoring an inaugural issues conference entitled “Innovate America: A Vision for the 21st Century.” The conference will initiate a dialogue between leaders of the community and the Congressional leadership about ensuring that our country remains competitive and generates high quality jobs and new opportunities throughout the 21st century. It will take place on October 1, 2005 in Fremont, California. [Link]

NewKerala.com has more:

The council has been launched as part of the party’s Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on the eve of the 2006 elections for the US Congress where it has no majority in the House or the Senate.

But with controversial issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme where some Democrats accuse India of soft-pedalling, and US-India civilian nuclear cooperation against which a number of Liberal Democrats have spoken out, the party is going to be hard put to bring Indian Americans around.

Prior to the 2004 presidential elections, the Democratic Party had formed an Indian American Leadership Council at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It is a sign of the increasing clout of this community that the Democrats have established the IAC as part of the more powerful DCCC.

See, this is where I get frustrated.  I am a young liberal Democrat and I think India is soft-pedalling on Iran.  I support some of the Democrats who are taking a hard-line against India on the nuclear issue.  If this new IAC caters to older first generation Indian Nationalists living in America (there is no reason yet to believe they will), they will not have my support.  As an American I want India to cut off support of Iran on all nuclear issues.  Period.  I do not want this newly formed committee giving into the demands of old Indian uncles living here simply because they control the purse strings for congressional donations.  Khanna is also young and I hope his strategy shuns old first generation money AND issues if they run counter to American interests.

Peter Sellers outsold actual desis at the Emmy Awards last night. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, an HBO biopic of the guy who made a career of mocking the desi accent, won three awards. Naveen Andrews was nominated but Lost.

“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” an HBO movie, won three awards early in the ceremony, including one for Geoffrey Rush as best actor…

“Lost,” which helped vault ABC’s prime-time ratings by fusing elements of the film “Cast Away,” “Survivor,” “The Twilight Zone” and even a dash of “Gilligan’s Island,” had received 12 nominations, including two for supporting actors - Naveen Andrews and Terry O’Quinn. (They lost to [William Shatner, for Boston Legal].) [Link]

Geoffrey Rush is a fine, fine actor, but it’s an interesting contrast. By the way, check out the chunni Barbara Hershey’s sporting. Stand by your man indeed.

Previous posts: one, two, three, four

MTV Desi has posted a dilatory yet strangely hypnotic video clip of their launch. The fetching Niharika Desai speaks a single line in an Amrikan accent.

0:04: Hard Kaur raps ‘Glassy’
1:07: Psychedelic Bollywood tabla clip (can you ID the movie?)
2:53: Talvin Singh beat-boxes a tabla tal
3:00: Skinny uncle type says, ‘the boogie-voogie blaster’
3:04: Niharika yells, ‘We’re live!’
3:05: Eerie, screaming glasses man
3:11: A clip from Indian Cowboy, I think
3:31: Running sadhu, naked and in ashes
4:01: Bhangra troupe dances under the Williamsburg Bridge to the MTV theme (reverse fusion, cheeky!)
4:31: Tim Kash says, ‘Our first video of the night’
4:35: Clip of Karmacy’s ‘Blood Brothers’
4:39: M.I.A. massacres the word ‘desi’ (says ‘dessy’ instead of ‘they-see’)

Interspersed are some random Green Day and Madonna filler clips.

As Abhi posted earlier, you can also watch Rabbi’s ‘Bulla Ki Jana’ video. It has a beautiful, washed-out humanist palette and wiggly English supertitles in black marker on clear plastic.

The images would be postcard-trite in a Red Cross ad. But with the handsome Sufi Sikh dressed all in white, the track comes across as spiritual, a folk bhajan with a bass track and synth. It feels less snarky than earnest, less ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (Buggles) than ‘Fragile’ (Sting).

London calling and speak the
slang now, boys say wha,
go on girls say wha wha

66 hours until MIA destroys the 9:30 club, kiddies. That picture was taken at her last concert in DC; without a doubt, it was one of the greatest shows I’ve EVER been to, and I saw the Pixies final gig at Hammerstein Ballroom last year, so I don’t sling such words sans souci.

People who are new to the Mutiny often out themselves by leaving a comment like, “I don’t get it…why is she successful?” when that subject has been debated and dissected every time we post about her. I’d like to add another dimension to the discussion.

I firmly believe that groups who give good show should be recognized— and that it’s possible that a band you normally dislike can impress you live. Case in point: Smashmouth at the 9:30 club, 1999. I do NOT like Smashmouth, but I was surprised at how their concert didn’t blow. So, even if you can’t stand exoticized, objectified, overexposed Mathangi and you think her music is beyond lame, you should know that she is AWESOME on stage.

I’m thrilled she’s playing the 9:30 club again; it’s such a wonderful, intimate venue, easily my fave place for a concert in swamp city. When MIA opened there for LCD Soundsystem, I was four feet away from her, wishing I had remembered earplugs because the screams were even louder than what was spilling out of the speakers. Oh, and speaking of LCD Soundsystem…I totally dig them, but after the party Miss Arulpragasam threw on stage, they bored me to the point that I left early. I never leave concerts early, yo.

Anyway, unbelievably (and unlike sold-out, Craig’s list-desperate last time) tickets are STILL available, not to mention affordable. The next time she plays DC, it may be a different, bigger venue; she’s blowing up. Anyone catch the advertisement for the newest Civic Si? Sick animation, executed flawlessly to the unmistakable thrum of “Galang”. You love it. And even if you hate it? I’m not trying to hear that, see. ;)

:+:

I’m watching VH1’s “Best Week Ever” as I type this and what are they playing in the background of one of their segments? Yup. “Galang”. That song is tighter than a hoochie ‘fit at a Bhangra party. :D

Ah, I love synchronicity. :)

I don’t understand the practice of hiding women away somewhere dirty while they’re menstruating. Men say a woman’s “impure” then. Hello? If she didn’t bleed, you never would have been born. If you’re going to have a segregation practice, shouldn’t it at least be something nice for a woman, like a Mikvah?

Women’s rights activists in Nepal have hailed a Supreme Court order to end discrimination against women during their menstrual cycle. 
Women in poor villages in much of western Nepal are forced to stay in dirty cow-sheds outside the home for four days during their monthly period. They are often given unhygienic food and suffer verbal abuse.
The Supreme Court has ordered the government to declare the practice as evil and given it one month to begin stamping the practice out. [Link]

That’s plain wrong, just like hitching a woman to a plow. You’ve still got a long way to go baby, and honestly, a legal change is just the first step.

p.s. Take it from me, Nepali men, yelling at a woman who has the cramps is just not a good idea.

Even though many recent roles in Hollywood that are accessible to Desi actors are generally geared more towards terror or medicine, there are some actors of South Asian origin landing non-traditional and non-South Asian characters.  British Asian actress Indira Varma, of Kama Sutra and Bride and Prejudice fame is one of these actors as highlighted by the very prominent character she portrays in the new HBO series, Rome.  Varma, who played Naveen Andrew’s sister Kiran in Bride and Prejudice, takes on the role of Niobe,

“the wife that Vorenus has not seen for nearly eight years. A peasant princess from a large and influential Roman clan. Proud, beautiful, selfishly devoted to the interests of herself and her family.” If you don’t get HBO, click on the video button here to see a preview of Rome (again, featuring Varma)   If you do get HBO, the show airs Sunday evenings, from 9-10 in the evening.  More on Varma available over at IMDB.

If you’re on the east coast, consider turning off the Emmies and switching to Turner Classic Movies, right now. Sabu’s “Black Narcissus“— I wrote about it in May— is on! Maybe some of you on the west coast will be able to catch it…

IMDB provides a plot summary:

Anglican nuns, led by the stern Sister Clodagh, attempt to establish a religious community in the Himalayas, and must battle not only suspicious locals and the elements, but their own demons as well.

Enjoy the “exotic” accents. They sure as hell ain’t South Asian.

On Friday, I posted about a coalition of activists who were planning on calling out Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by protesting in front of his Manhattan hotel yesterday. Did any of our New York-area mutineers attend? If you did, tell us what you saw— it sounds like it was pure DRAMA (Thanks, Manish):

Pandemonium broke out at a meeting organized to promote Pakistan’s soft image when after a confrontation with human rights activists an irate President Pervez Musharraf declared that those who opposed his policies were the enemies of Pakistan. [link]

You are against me and Pakistan, said the president when a human rights activist referred to his alleged comments in a Washington Post interview which quoted him (Gen Musharraf) as saying that women exploited rape to get visas.[link]

Wow. Way to keep your cool, there Sir.

CNN has more about how Mushie backpedals furiously:

“I am not that stupid to say that kind of thing,” he said. “I know that rape is happening in Pakistan. I know there is violence against women.”

But, he said, “I am supportive of all women, all actions to emancipate the women, against violence against women, and gender equality,” and he said his government has done more for women than any in the past 50 years.

“I have protected them, I have provided finances, I have provided them judicial support.”

He’s provided judicial support to women but he can’t provide his own open ears. More from Dawn:

Provoked by a single question, the president allowed an event held to promote his government’s pro-women policies to degenerate into a bout between himself and part of the invited audience.[link]

I’m scared of you, General Musharraf:

I am a fighter, I will fight you. I do not give up and if you can shout, I can shout louder, said Gen Musharraf.[link]

He’ll especially shout louder if you cite the wrong sources. How Professor-y! Also, if you have something to say, say it to his FACE…when he’s in Pakistan.

Don’t these people have anything better to do with their time than pick on a teenager?

Police will provide a huge security detail for Indian tennis star Sania Mirza during a world tennis tournament in Calcutta next week.

The heavy security follows rumours that a radical Islamic group threatened to stop her playing in the tournament unless she changed her on-court dress.

Awesome. Let’s harass one of the few decent athletes India has, it’s a fantastic way to thank her for reaching the fourth round of the US Open.

The radical Islamic group in question is the Jamiat-e-Islami, they claim they haven’t threatened her at all.

“These are rumours, we have not threatened to stop Sania or anybody else from playing,” he said.

“Though it is true that the kind of dress Sania wears offends us - we don’t expect a Muslim girl to wear such skimpy clothes in public.”

Look. If you want to be offended by something Sania wears while playing tennis, go after what’s REALLY outrageous— those horrid black socks she likes. Priorities, people!

Understandably, Sania’s safety is important to the authorities who are taking all threats very seriously.

“We cannot take a chance with the security of someone like Sania,” Calcutta’s additional police commissioner Gautam Chakrabarty said.

“We have deployed the best of our women police, nearly a hundred of them, to guard her both on and off the court and we have made special arrangements to frisk all spectators attending the tournament,” he said.

What does sweeeet Sania have to say about all this nonsense?

Sania Mirza has refused to be drawn into the controversy, merely asking forgiveness “for whatever I have to do on court as an 18-year-old.”

She didn’t write something irreverent about the Prophet Muhammad. She didn’t molest a mullah. She doesn’t have strange hair and a penchant for criticizing Islam. Don’t get it twizzy— she is not the enemy.

I believe I lead a call for more sexy sepia men on the Mutiny, but now that a reader sent in some pics, (thanks Ananya) I’m not sure what to think. (mental note: research loopholes and plausible deniability)

Over on the right, we have John Abraham, the 6’1”, half-Keralite/half-Parsi, 1999 winner of Gladrags Manhunt India. Let me hasten to add that he’s now fast becoming an established Ahctor with roles in Dhoom, Water, Viruddh and the soon-to-be released Baabul, among others. The last two with none other than the Daddy-O of Hindi cinema, his excellency Amitabh Bachchan.

As an avowed vegetarian, Abraham recently posed for a PETA India campaign to release caged birds, (see the sexy results below), but it’s this latest poster promoting vegetarianism that caught our tipster’s eye. “Abraham appears dressed in green onions, chilies and what looks like green peas,” s/he succinctly writes. Am I the only one rather turned off by this pic? I dunno, but a scallion grass skirt covering a man’s tender parts entirely makes me lose my appetite. For anything. And what’s with that highly ridiculous crown of chilies? Is this a pun on hotness?

“I’m against cruelty of any kind. That’s why I’m associated with PETA and work against cruelty to animals. Though I’m not the moral police, I’d like people to be considerate to other living beings,” he says. [link]

Sure, sure, but what about cruelty to men, eh? I think forcing a man to wear vegetables surely counts in that category.

The new Brit blog Pickled Politics links to a funny story that you just have to see to believe:

The design on the lid apparently looks like the word ‘Allah’ in Arabic.

One customer told the Sun the design was “sacreligious”. BK says: “As a result of feedback our supplier is amending the design.” MCB’s Inayat Bunglawala: “We commend the sensitive and prompt action to prevent any hurt being caused to the religious sensibilities of others.”

It beggars belief that the Muslim Council of Britain keep giving credence to these stupid stories with their own quotes. For god’s sake, it only gives the impression that all Muslims are hyper-sensitive. BK should never have changed this, I haven’t seen a single campaign or email about this issue.

The Scotsman fills in the ridiculous details:

The offending lid was spotted in a branch in Park Royal last week by business development manager Rashad Akhtar, 27, of High Wycombe.

He was not satisfied by the decision to withdraw the cones and has called on Muslims to boycott Burger King. He said: “This is my jihad. How can you say it is a spinning swirl? If you spin it one way to the right you are offending Muslims.”

A Muslim Council spokesman said: “We commend the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King has taken.”

Mmmmm.  Softserve ice cream.  Obviously Akhtar has never got his swirl on otherwise he’d know that, that is in fact what a tight spiral on a softserve cone looks like.  My college dorm at UMich had a softserve ice cream machine.  Every day I’d come back from the gym and make two glasses of softserve milkshakes with dinner.  Intending no offense I ask you, is it so wrong to be reminded of God when contemplating the goodness of ice cream?

Stratpage has a roundup of some interesting news from the Pakistan front -

September 16, 2005: Pakistan has compiled a list of 173 clergymen, believed to be active in supporting terrorist activity. Pakistan has lost patience with religious leaders who support terrorism, and is cracking down.

September 14, 2005: In Pakistan, troops raided an al Qaeda base, a religious school, arresting 28 terrorist suspects, most of them foreigners. Weapons, bombs and other equipment were seized, including a small Chinese UAV. That was unusual, and the terrorists were apparently using the UAV to scout routes for infiltrating people across the nearby Afghan border, and to spot troops or police operating near their base. That didn’t work, as the UAV was on the ground when the troops swooped in. The army had been tipped off by a local tribesman. The base was also used by the Taliban, to recruit local men for raids across the border in Afghanistan….

A friggin’ UAV? Sheesh. Makes you pause.

Sorry sorry…wery short notice, thousand apologies, but I just saw this in Flavorpill:

Launching their latest anthology and a new, more svelte format for the magazine, Review editor Philip Gourevitch hosts this evening, featuring Rushdie on the mic and a performance from that precious, precocious kook Miranda July.

That would be the Paris Review, and Miranda July of Me and You and Everyone We Know fame.

Good times are sure to be had by all, so head on over:
Sat 9.17 (7pm) Celeste Bartos Forum, New York Public Library (5th Ave at 42nd St). $15

Rajiv Chandrasekaran used to be the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief.  That’s some major street cred right there.  He has just been named as the Post’s “Continuous News Editor,” a job that gives him editorial control over what breaking news makes it to the Post’s website.  He is the newspaper’s first Asian American assistant managing editor.  Who else but the Washington Post reports:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post reporter who started as a summer intern 11 years ago and subsequently covered local and financial news and served as the newspaper’s Baghdad bureau chief, has been named assistant managing editor for continuous news, the paper announced yesterday.

In his new job, Chandrasekaran, 32, of Washington, will head the department responsible for feeding breaking news to The Post’s Web site. The announcement was made by Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Managing Editor Philip Bennett.

“Ever since he started as a summer intern, he has been one of the most energetic, smart and hard-driving journalists in the newsroom,” Downie said. During the selection process, Chandrasekaran “demonstrated real vision about the future relationship between the newspaper and its Internet site,” Downie said.

Chandrasekaran became the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent in 2002 and moved to Baghdad on the eve of the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Rajiv was actually outspoken in his criticism of what he judged were missteps by the administration in rebuilding Iraq.  He was interviewed by NPR for this great article in the Post from last year.  The best part of this is that Chandrasekaran is young enough that he probably sees the symbiotic relationship that blogs and newspapers can have and will seek to foster that relationship.

We almost had a shot last year at having South Asian characters in a prominent role on network television...but it fell through.  According to reports, Russell Peters has just inked a deal to have his own sitcom on a major American network.  The Canoe Network reports:

For a guy who's just inked a deal to star in his own sitcom for a major American network, comedian Russell Peters is remarkably calm.

"I just signed the deal with Warner Bros. this week. They want to build a show around me," Peters says over the phone from Los Angeles. "I'm working with the guys who produced The Cosby Show and In Living Colour, so it's pretty cool. I guess I'll be shopping for real estate in L.A."

While it's too early to say precisely what the series is about, the 35-year-old knows his East-Indian roots will play a big part of the comedy.

"My heritage is a big part of my comedy," he says bluntly. "Frankly, I'm open to it. As long as they don't make me the 7-11 guy or the taxi driver."

We asked for just one little thing: stop it with the crappy FOB parodies. But no, you just had to make another one, didn’tcha

This new one by parodists MC Vikram and Ludakrishna is pretty cute: ‘Curry Rice Girl’ is ‘Hollaback Girl’ as a cry of matrimonial despair (thanks, Anita). This shit is bananas, B-I-O-D-A-T-A!

The sad thing is, this slapstick in-joke is indistinguishable from most ABCD movies on fast forward.

Watch the video. Here’s a backup torrent (you need a BitTorrent downloader: Windows, Mac).

Similar parodies: one, two, three, four

I know nothing about cricket. In fact, whenever someone mentions it, I’m sorely tempted to chirp, “Now THAT was a wicked googly!” a la Seinfeld repping for AmEx. Forgive me for writing this post anyway? ;)

From the Beeb:

India thrashed Zimbabwe by an innings and 90 runs in Bulawayo despite a brave lower-order resistance from the hosts on day four of the first Test.

Resuming on 67-6 and still 208 runs shy of making India bat again, Zimbabwe managed 185 in their second innings with skipper Tatenda Taibu making 52.

Harbhajan Singh finished off the tail to return figures of 4-59.

The match was over when the off-spinner trapped Gavin Ewing lbw for 34 to end the hosts’ last-wicket stand of 47.

So…I just wrote about an anti-war protest in San Francisco, but if you’re on the right coast like me, you might be feeling left out of all the “Be the change you wish to see”-fun. Don’t fret, my pet. Join “hundreds of South Asian women, international human rights activists and their supporters” as they prepare for “the largest rally for womenŽs rights in Pakistan ever held outside that country.”

South-Asian womenŽs groups and international human rights organizations will demonstrate for human rights for women in Pakistan on Saturday, September 17, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City where President Pervez Mustarraf will be staying during the United Nations World Summit.

Protesters will be demanding an end to the rape, domestic violence and murder of women, often committed under the banner of religion, that have become endemic in Pakistan. They will also be calling on Musharraf to repeal Taliban-like religiously-based laws that are increasingly restricting womenŽs freedoms, such as Zina Ordinance and Hasba Bill.

Two of the women who have put a “face” on tragedy will be there, in one form or another:

Dr. Shazia Khalid was raped by an army officer who was never prosecuted, and she was forced to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. A tribal court sentenced Mukhtar Mai (also known as Mukhtar Bibi) to gang rape as punishment for an offense allegedly committed by her brother. Dr. Khalid will speak to the crowd on Saturday by speakerphone, and a statement from Mukhtar Mai will be read.

Mushie’s ears are perking up, he’s listening. In reponse to this rally and other pressure from everyone decent, his office has given an audience to Pakistani women who wish to meet him at his hotel Saturday morning. Many are planning to do that and THEN protest outside of it.

Someone commented that we never seem to put up events which take place on the Wessss-Saeeeeed and that bothers me; northern California is where I’m from.

I remember what it was like when SM started last year and I was at home. Living on the left coast meant being left out of all the cool, cutting-edge things which only seem to go down on Amtrak’s Northeast corridor. Aside from the outstanding events produced by Dhamaal, SF seemed quiet in comparison.

Not on Saturday, September 24th it won’t be:

Why are our taxes funding the illegal war on Iraq, instead of hurricane relief, schools, and libraries? 62% of America disapproves of the war — when will our politicians notice?

Join fellow desis on Saturday, Sep. 24, as we march in San Francisco to end the war, as part of the largest peace event on the West Coast. Bring your family and friends, passion and voices, as we work toward a world free of imperial wars.

Desist coalition (with support from Organizing Youth), Friends of South Asia and the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action are all involved in this endeavor. If you need a ride, wish to help make signs or otherwise want to participate, email desist@southasianprogressive.org.

WHAT: South Asians against war, in SF peace march
WHEN: 11:00 am, Saturday, September 24
WHERE: Dolores Park, 18th and Dolores, San Francisco, CA. Meet next to the tennis courts at Dolores Park (Look for the “South Asians Against the War” banner.)

:+:

I decided to let yay area Mutineers know about this event because I think standing up for what you believe in is hot, whether I agree with what you believe in or not.

Check out my new blog editor, RocketPost. Most of us at Sepia Mutiny use it to write our posts. A blog editor is like a word processor that publishes to your blog. If you’ve ever lost a post because your browser crashed, you should use one.

The one we use uploads photos automatically and checks spelling. It also lets you link to old posts quickly, adds source cites to quotes, links to Google, Wikipedia and Flickr quickly, adds those big, fat pullout quotes and so on. I use it to post to Sepia Mutiny and my personal blog at the same time.

If you’re an active commenter here or have donated to the blog before today, email me and I’ll hook you up with a free copy. Otherwise, it’s totally free if you use Blogger. It also works with Movable Type and WordPress, and TypePad is coming soon. It’s Windows only for now, but we’re looking for a good Mac developer.

This frickin’ thing has been my personal project for a year and a half. It’s my nerd novel, my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the blogosphere. Please check it out and tell all your blogging friends!

P.S. A certain sharp-eyed mutineer spotted it yesterday…

Update: Please post technical questions here so as not to bother the good people of the Mutiny.

The WaPo harps on our favorite word here at Sepia Mutiny: not M.I.A., ‘exotic.’ Ain’t nothing unusual about Maya’s phenotype (thanks, Turbanhead):

… that hasn’t stopped some critics from dismissing her as “the love child” of Neneh Cherry and Che Guevara and harping on her exotic runway model looks… [Link]

But her aesthetic was also intimately familiar: her small-faced, tousle-haired cutenesss resembles my female Berkeley classmates; the South Indian hip-hop fans at Berkeley are legion. [Link]

Arular is to Maya what Ravi Shankar is to Norah, more or less:

After reading about M.I.A. in the Sri Lankan Times, Arulpragasam sent her a note saying, “I’m very proud of you, but you have to change the name of the album. Dad.” She didn’t. “What can you do?” she asks pointedly. “There’s many things I’m not pleased about that he’s done, so hey… . ” [Link]

MTV turns out to be prudish. Who knew? (And uninformed in Sri Lankan cuisine.)

MTV also questioned the subtext of “salt and pepper my mango,” which turned out to be culinary rather than sexual… [Link]

This, from the channel that put ‘Freak-a-Leak’ on heavy rotation:

I need a girl I can freak with, and wanna try shit, and ain’t scared of a big d—
And love to get her p— licked, by another bitch, cuz I ain’t drunk enough ta do dat.
[and so on… Link]

Journalism is going to the dogs. First they quote Nirali, next thing you know they’ll be quoting blogs  (Congrats…)

M.I.A. told the South Asian online magazine Nirali that she “wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing.” [Link]

You know the comic strip which still features a big guy named ‘Punjab’ with East Asian eyes, a genie turban and pirate earrings? Now it’s saving desis from the tsunami. Chutzpah, thy name is Annie:

But don’t worry — Daddy War-Rupees still blames ‘the crooked locals’:

Previous post here.

NYT columnist Tom Friedman continues to whip it:

Some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program started in Chennai… some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program called HeyMath, which was started four years ago in Chennai, India, by two young Indian bankers… If you were a parent anywhere in the world and you noticed that Singapore kids, or Indian kids or Chinese kids, were doing really well in math, wouldn’t you like to see the best textbooks… HeyMath… which has been adopted by 35 of Singapore’s 165 schools, also provides an online tutor, based in India, to answer questions from students stuck on homework. [Link]

That’s right: instead of sending your kids to Exeter, you import mean Miss Thomas. I can tell you what’ll cure your innumeracy: six by six multiplication drills for five-year-olds. It’s joy inchoate.

Previous posts: ek, do, teen, cuatro, cinco, catorce

My Brooklyn ‘hood is on the water facing Manhattan. Aside from being musician central, Williamsburg is a half-blue collar, half-gentrifying neighborhood with four ethnicities: Polish-stan, Hasidic-stan, Latino-stan and Hipsterville (Diesel denim with red stitching, messenger bag in earth tones, fauxhawk bed-head and a big gay belt buckle). It’s also got a high PQ (poseur quotient.) I swear upon your grandma’s shriveled National Geographics that I’ve seen people sell pink trucker hats by the subway entrance with an airbrushed ‘Bitch’ on the front.

Sometimes you run into desis with pierced eyebrows and mutton-chop sideburns. You know those signs on Disneyland rides, ‘You must be this tall to ride?’ The L train has a sign, ‘You must be this hip to move here.’ I’m totally dragging down the curve as a stealth sinc duppie (single-income-no-colonialism desi-urban-professional). Tonight a thin brown girl in a black sack dress rode a big Huffy with wide handlebars down the sidewalk, the kind of bike you see in pre-WWII photos. We exchanged subtle, curious glances while trying not to let the other intrude on our indie brown singularity.

>> Read the whole thing

Lawd, what will these crayzee Sri Lankans do next?!

The answer, my friends, is glowing on TV, the answer is glowing on TV.

Tune in this morning to watch Suresh Joachim try to set the Guinness World Record for marathon TV viewing by watching ABC for 75 hours straight. He broke the current record of 50 hours, 7 minutes yesterday on “Live with Regis and Kelly,” during the Guinness World Record Breaker Week. Yes, watch ABC to watch a desi watching ABC. How meta.

Live webcam feed here.

But let’s back up a sec. Who here knew “Live with Grouchy and Yappy” had a Guinness Record Breaker Week? Raise your hand, you uber-desi, you! Suddenly the Reeg’s yorkiepoo face looks an awful lot like that of my Tedious-Know-It-All-Uncle who wouldn’t shut up about the girl who balanced a teacup on her nose for days, or the boy who barked for a week. What the hell did any of that have to with Medical School anyway?

Amazingly, Suresh Joachim does have a method to his madness. From his website, a statement of purpose:

“I, Suresh Joachim, am deeply disturbed and stirred by the ongoing violence and its direct impact on children…all my endeavors will be designed to help suffering children all over the world.

To spread my message in World I am attempting new world records with the aim of spreading world peace and to create an awareness of suffering children. The UFFORSC (Universal Fund For Suffering Children) branch has been inaugurated in Australia, Canada for helping millions of suffering children in Asia and Africa.

My ultimate aim is to carry a peace torch commencing in 2006 from Jerusalem (Jesus Birth Place) to Australia…covering 6,000 km to raise one billion dollars for my purpose.

My homeboy ain’t foolin’, you know. He already holds some thirty Guinness world records, including:

Four years ago today, Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot to death in Mesa, Arizona by a man named Frank Roque.

On Sept. 15, Balbir drove to Costco, searching for an American flag to display at the gas station. On his way out, he donated $75 to the Sept.11 victims’ fund. At 2:45pm, Balbir was stooped outside the gas station, planting flowers, when the shots rang out. Leaving Balbir drenched in a pool of blood, his assailant sped off, tires squealing, in a pickup truck. [cite]

This killing was both pre-meditated and racially motivated. As the prosecution pointed out, “Roque had practiced shooting and reloading before killing Sodhi.” When he was arrested the next day, Roque brazenly wrapped himself in the flag:

When police arrived at Roque’s mobile home he yelled, ‘I’m an American patriot, arrest me and let the terrorist go wild!’ [cite]

Roque also told the police that he was “’standing up for his brothers and sisters’ in New York” by his actions which included shooting at a gas station owned by a Lebanese man and a house occupied by an Afghani family after murdering Sodhi.

Roque’s actions generated a reaction. 3,000 people showed up for a service commemorating Sodhi’s death, and more than 10,000 sent letters of support and condolence.His killer said, “I’m an American patriot, arrest me and let the terrorist go wild!” Prime Minister Vajpayee of India called President Bush to express concern and ask him to protect Indian citizens in the US from further violence. Roque himself was convicted and sentenced to death.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family again less than a year later when Balbir Singh’s brother, Sukhpal Singh Sodhi was killed in mysterious circumstances. Sukhpal, a San Francisco taxi driver, was shot and killed while driving in the Mission. Nothing was taken, leading to suspicion that this may have been another hate crime as well. All in all, as many as 19 people may have been killed in 9/11 related hate crimes.

It pays to be on SAJA-DC’s list— look at this event(I’m considering missing church for it!):

A talk and inter-active session with Vanita Gupta, an accomplished lawyer and a young leader. Vanita works at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and won the release of 46 wrongly-accused African Americans in Tulia, Texas. Recipient of the Soros Justice Fellowship, India Abroad Special Award for Outstanding Achievement, 2004 Reebok Human Rights Award, Upakar Foundation Community Ambassador award and American Red Cross “Rising Star” award.

Though some of you male commenters are fighting over a torrid reality show contestant, if I were a guy, Vanita would be the girl for me. Beatiful inside and out AND she works for liberty and justice for all. Damn. Just typing that makes me consider a love that dare not speak its name, she’s that amazing.

The event is FREE, open to the public and at my (and Mutineer Sajit’s!) alma mater. Oh, and there are snacks, yo.

Date / Time: Sunday, September 18, 2005, 11 A.M.

Venue: Marvin Center, George Washington University,
800 21st Street, NW, Washington DC.

Metro: Foggy Bottom, Blue or Orange lines.

Several countries are miffed at Google right now.  Its new service Google Earth makes it possible for any Joe Blow to obtain satellite pics of say…the layout of a military installation.  The Register reports:

The recent news that South Korea is to take the US to task over Google Earth images which expose its military installations to close Commie scrutiny has provoked a mini stampede of other peace-loving nations eager to protect their assets from prying eyes.

Enter stage right Thailand, which says it may ask Google to “block images of important state buildings vulnerable to attack”. Armed forces spokeschap Major General Weerasak Manee-in told Reuters: “We are looking for possible restrictions on these detailed pictures, especially state buildings. I think pictures of tourist attractions should do, not crucial places which could threaten national security…”

Manee’s Sri Lankan counterpart, Brigadier Daya Ratnayake, admitted it was a “serious concern if anyone could get detailed images of sensitive installations and buildings”, but added: “This is a new trend, we will first have to see whether, in this day and age, if this a considerable threat to national security…”

India agrees. Reuters quotes an anonymous security official there as confirming that “the issue of satellite imagery had been discussed at the highest level but the government had concluded that ‘technology cannot be stopped’…” [Link]

I love that last line “technology cannot be stopped.”  It has a very Terminator-esque quality to it.  I however agree with all of the above sentiments but for selfish reasons of my own.  You see, I have been using satellite images for over FIVE years now.  Websites like Globeexplorer.com have been making satellite pics available for those that wanted them for years.  I’ll tell you what, there is nothing that will make a girl take you more seriously than emailing her a satellite picture of her house the morning after your first date.  I have done this after more than one date.  Seriously.  Also, why do you think we chose an underground complex for our Sepia Mutiny world headquarters in North Dakota?  It certainly isn’t because North Dakota is safe.  It is in fact anomalously perilous.  No.  We chose it so as to avoid prying eyes.  Your prying eyes.  Our Los Angeles Bureau offices on the other hand can easily be spotted from the sky (in case anyone wants to keep the LA Bureau Chief company).

To beard or not to beard, that is the question:

A group of D.C. firefighters in jeopardy of losing their jobs for refusing to shave their beards are suing the department for violating their right to religious liberty.

Just last month a federal judge ordered the department to allow three firefighters who wear long beards for religious reasons to continue working, as long as their masks fit properly, despite a department policy prohibiting facial hair.

Apparently THOSE three are fine, but the fire department didn’t extend such tolerance towards other firefighters in a similarly furry predicament. The ACLU was called:

“Disdaining this court’s action, the fire chief has announced that he will now proceed to discipline and discharge all other members of the department who wear beards, no matter how sincere their religious reasons for doing so,” ACLU attorney Arthur B. Spitzer wrote in the complaint filed last week in Washington’s U.S. District Court.

I’m most intrigued by the last group mentioned in this list:

In this case, two of the plaintiffs are Muslim, two Nazarite, one Jewish and a sixth adheres to a strict Caribbean spiritual heritage that does not permit shaving.

What happens when you never have to face an election: you lose your gaffe inhibitor (via Arzan):

“You must understand the environment in Pakistan,” Musharraf added. “This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.” [Link]

Because Mukhtar Mai represents the millions of high-rollin’, Canada-based gang rape queens. Why, I hear the villagers do it for fun these days:

1. Get gang-raped in the morning
2. Fax a press release in the afternoon
3. Profit!

It’s par for course in a legal system which not only does not take crimes against women seriously, it re-victimizes them for their loss of ‘purity.’ But don’t you dare try to fix anything if you live in Pakistan — it may offend Musharraf’s pride. He closes with this chest-thumping chaser:

“Leave the developing world aside; I think we are better than all of them,” Musharraf declared. “Bring the developed world and let us compare Pakistan’s record, under me, a uniformed man, with many of the developed countries. I challenge that we will be better off.” [Link]

Manmohan Singh just met with Musharraf in NYC Tuesday night. One wonders whether Singh had to speak in the grunts and howls of a silverback male.

More at Reality Cafe.

Update: The WaPo has it on tape (via Arzan). Listen here.

SM reader tef sent in a story from the BBC about a woman who plowed a field, while harnessed right next to a bull. Sigh. :(

The move was ordered by village elders who said she had angered the rain god by breaking a taboo on women touching ploughs, thus risking a drought.

Apparently, this taboo has existed for hundreds of years; some villagers saw the 25-year old woman touch a plow at the end of last month and my goodness, it hasn’t rained since. Obviously, there’s a connection between the two events.

Predictably, the woman is from a minority caste and refuses to press charges. Police can’t do anything unless she does.

Police have been seeking legal opinion on whether a formal criminal case could be framed under a law which bans witchcraft and such activities in the state, the police chief said.

My inner cynic doesn’t believe that a criminal case will change such ingrained superstitions, but it’s a good first step. What else can you do?

My favorite example of an unexpected turban is the one on the head of jazz keyboardist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who bears more than a passing resemblance to my father (even my dad has remarked upon this).  [Photo on the top right]

Who is Lonnie Smith?

Dr. Lonnie Smith is internationally known as one of the premier jazz keyboardists in the history of the idiom. A dominant talent and pace-setting proponent of the Hammond B3 Organ and widely recognized and gifted pianist, Lonnie has been at the forefront of the jazz scene since 1969 when he was named Top Organist by Downbeat Magazine. Most recently, Dr. Smith has been awarded the Organ Keyboardist of the Year award in 2003, 2004 and 2005 by the Jazz Journalist Association.

Interestingly, when asked about the turban, he makes reference to Sikhism. He also keeps his hair long and in a top-knot, like Sikh men do. You can see it in the photo quite clearly. It is unclear to me whether he is a convert to Sikhism, however. There’s only one interview I can find where Sikhism is mentioned, and the writer doesn’t pass along any information of use. He certaintly looks like a Sikh, and that’s a very Sikh style of turban, but nobody (not even a friend who is in 3HO) seems to know.

There’s actually quite a tradition of (mainly black) musicians in the 1950s and 1960s wearing turbans. The bottom photo on the left is of a group that even called itself the Turbans:

The Turbans were a Philadelphia based R&B vocal group that had chart success in the mid-50…. the Turbans are credited with performing the first hit record to include the phrase ‘doo-wop’. [cite]

Personally, I’m looking forward to a time when my local racist assholes decide to yell “Lonnie Smith” at me as they drive by, rather than “Osama” or “Saddam” or “Raghead” or “Diaperhead” or “Sand N—er” whatever the f- - - floats into their minds at that moment. Then I’ll know that turbans have really made it. Until such a time, I’ll have to content myself with the fact that Lonnie Smith is one damn fine looking man with his turban and beard, and that the racists here hate me (in part) because I’m beautiful .

You can see a whole bunch of photos of Dr. Lonnie Smith, or read an interview with him in Jazz Times Magazine.

Work & biz travel has been kicking my butt the past few months so I haven’t been able to uphold my end of the Sepia Mutiny bargain of late.   I was however, in Amsterdam last week (on business!) and had a few moments of (sober) time.  ABCD dork that I am, it’s always fun to look for the little signs of desi influence…

Honors for Desi “pride of place” in the US probably goes to Bombay— it ain’t too hard in most good sized cities to find a Bombay Palace, Bombay Bazaar, Bombay Place, etc.    In Amsterdam, on the other hand, the Desi city that secures branding is Goa - the apropos name for one of the city’s many famous, euphemistically named, “coffeeshops”
	It’s well nigh impossible for a desi techie to observe the “bicycle rickshaws” peddling tourists up and down the streets & demur that not all technological progress is, uh, monotonic. These poor, exploited Dutch cyclists, if only they could afford a noxious 2 stroke, soot-spewing engine to alleviate their burden.

You always hear about our American special forces training the best of soldiers of foreign armies in the latest and greatest methods of killing terrorists and insurgents.  It turns out that one of the finest killing schools in the world is in the jungles of Mizoram.  MSN has a story about our troops attending the Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS):

An Indian army commander said Thursday the two-week training in unconventional warfare at the Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) at Vairengte in Mizoram in northeastern India begins Sep 13.

“Apart from a rigorous drill on how to tackle an unconventional war or low intensity conflict, the training module would have a session of simulated anti-insurgency operations for the American soldiers,” a commander at the CIJWS told IANS requesting anonymity.

The school at Vairengte is considered as one of world’s most prestigious anti-terrorist institution with troops from several countries getting counter-insurgency training.

“The motto of this institute is to fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla,” the commander said. “The training module is non-conventional and once a soldier undergoes training here, he can face all deadly situations anywhere in the world.”

So what exactly will our American soldiers be faced with?  A quick Google search finds this article from April of last year:

US troops are being fed venomous vipers, dogs and monkeys as part of military exercises to sharpen skills in jungle combat in India’s insurgency-torn northeastern state of Mizoram.

Ummm.  Yeah.  In all seriousness though I think it would be cool to train there.  I couldn’t find any website for CIJWS, and that is probably how they like it.  I did however find this website by a reporter(?) who visited the school:

However, a school is just a school - it ain’t quite a story. Unless it has functioned as the premier and only institution of its kind in the country for 30 years - and hardly any reporter has heard of it, let alone visit it. Then, it becomes a scoop. When we got a whiff of it, our martial ears tingled; we put out feelers among our khakied friends, who said they had no clue what we were talking about.

Sure that we were being rebuffed, we became Ophelia, and brightened only after a CIJWS officer exclaimed, “How did you hear about the school? Hardly anyone in the army itself knows of us!” He immediately launched into we-are-completely-transparent-nothing-is-classified blah blah, but the point is, training in CI ops hinges on research, analysis, strategy and tactics. And therein lies the sensitive nature of this lean & mean institution.

Here is another interesting link.

Commenter Angie points us to Sandy Dalal née Sanjiv Agashiwala, a competitive fencer from Penn who got turned on to fashion at his mom’s import-export business and ended up a menswear designer in Manhattan. He’s also qui’ fi’, as the Brits might say, and his light-colored peepers made People’s beauty list in ‘98.

Bronx-born Sandy Dalal has followed in the footsteps of other famous northern-borough fashion designers Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren to become one of the hottest men’s wear designers around. Dalal won the 1998 CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for Menswear while still attending the University of Pennsylvania. [Link]

He was also named as one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” in the same year. Sandy Dalal’s clothing can be found in prominent stores like Barney’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue… [Link]

Bjork, Beck, Wyclef Jean and members of Duran Duran, Foo Fighters and Third Eye Blind wear his clothing during performances. [Link]

Once brown, always brown:

He is known for using beautiful and luxurious fabrics and for mixing patterns — unusual in a men’s wear line. [Link]

The double standard between male beauty and female — male models and ‘manhunts’ are not taken seriously:

How does it feel to know you’re known for your face as much as for your clothes?
Dalal: Right now it’s a cool gig where I can feed off the clothes and the clothes can feed off me, and rightfully so…

It seems like you don’t take yourself too seriously, despite the awards and fame. How come?
Dalal: How seriously can you take it? Clothes don’t talk back to you. [Link]

On the late-night community access channel, Dr. Khemfoia Padu, who appears to be black, dons a saffron turban and shills pills with whale tails.

Dr. Padu is the Director of The Natural Healing Foundation… He is a licensed Chiropracter, Herbologist, Nutritionist, as well as a Theologian and Martial Artist. [Link]

I’m not sure whether the pagri pitches desi mysticism, evokes black musicians who wore turbans or references turbans in Africa.

Erykah Padu’s turban may be genuine, but I’m thoroughly irritated that desi culture is associated in the U.S. with hippies and New Age. You can’t go to an all-veg pizza place without drowning in ads for crystals and tarot cards. That ain’t right. A subculture has branded a billion and a half people, the tail wags the wog.

In one freakish conflation of the Indian revolutionary movement with American hippies, a town in Massachussetts actually banned a Gandhi statue. It was the absolute height of clusterfuck ignorance:

Gita Mehta details the extent of the hippie infatuation with South Asia in her classic book, Karma Cola. Westerners seek instant salvation; Easterners the quick rupee. Gurus could pack entire astrodomes in the ’60s, levitation was believed to signal salvation, and Western disciples believed above all else in moksha through easy sex and hard drugs. At one point there were over 100,000 hippies trekking all over South Asia searching for enlightenment in woolly-minded religious platitudes and a variety of uppers and downers. Religion and opium for the masses: no wonder Sherborn, Massachusetts, would have none of it.

We’ve received a few tips (Thanks, Mytri and Brimful!) about an article entitled “A Flair for the Unconventional”, which ran in the New York Times on Sunday. Following your links, I expected to be slightly bored by something dealing with outsourcing or tech or consulting blah blah blah. I was prepared to let one of the staff entrepreneurs/business titans tackle it, so I could get back to writing a more ANNA-esque post. ;)

But when the page loaded, I was slightly startled to see a striking Brown woman whose picture sat atop a sidebar of “important details” about her: her title (Chief Executive of Rose International, an IT services company in the Midwest), her birth date, her nickname (Himanshu became “Sue”), even what she likes to do in her spare time (nature walks). The last bold, highlighted, impossible-to-miss bit of information contained…

her weight-control regimen?

Are you kidding me?

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

-The Gettysburg Address, Nov. 19, 1863

Indolink’s Francis C. Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen have done a great bit of investigative journalism to uncover the details of the men of South Asian ancestry that fought during the American Civil War, mostly with the Navy.

The untold saga of people from the Indian subcontinent, who enlisted and served in the US Civil War of the 1860s, has been uncovered through the National Archives and the newly set up database, Civil War Soldiers System (CWSS) in Washington, D.C.

We have obtained additional evidence from the muster rolls (service documentation) of civil war veterans, which reveal that at least 50 South Asians enlisted and served in the US armed forces at the height of the US Civil War (1861-1865). Research over the past three years provide the bare outline about these South Asians who chose to fight for America at a critical point in the country’s history, then settled in the United States, raising families and receiving their war service pensions.

This is the first time that the extant of South Asian participants in the US Civil War is being revealed. The work continues as we examine pension files in order to supplement the list of names with a more complete record of information about the experience of these enlistees and their families throughout the Civil War era. Efforts are also underway to locate their surviving family members through genealogical resources.

Fascinating.  I just don’t know what else to say.  I mean there weren’t enough of us to form an infantry brigade or anything but I had no idea that South Asians were involved in the Civil War. 

Because many of these South Asians had anglicized their names on coming to the U.S., it is often difficult to confirm their nativity from the name alone. But fortunately the military archives and the records relating to them provide enough information about their place of birth along with some physical features.

Records reveal that the South Asian servicemen who came from India were born in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Burhampur, Pondicherry and Bangalore. And their complexion was categorized variously as mulatto, creole, negro, swarthy, bronze or dark. They came from a variety of backgrounds: sailors, mariners, machinists, farmers, cooks, laborers, as well as the occasional student. They had enlisted in the Navy, the Cavalry, Artillery, and Infantry, serving in various capacities — from Sergeant and Seaman to Fireman, Steward, and Cook.

Uncleji’s comment about “A boy named Sue” led me to Wikipedia, one of the sites I adore most on the interweb.

Whenever someone leaves a wiki-fied link, I gleefully click through and then I always check the “main page” to see what’s up. Without fail, I find something fascinating to read and learn. Today? No exception. :)

Raj Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi is a simple black marble platform that marks the spot of his cremation on 31 January 1948. It is left open to the sky while a flame burns perpetually at one end. It is located on the banks of the river Yamuna in Delhi, India. A stone footpath flanked by lawns leads to the walled enclosure that houses the memorial. Two museums dedicated to Gandhi are located near by. The memorial has the epitaph Hey Ram, the last words uttered by Gandhi, meaning, Oh Lord!

Read the rest here, if you desire edification. :)

I wish I were a man. Really. Their problems seem so much more…significant, no?

At least, that’s how I feel after reading a Washington Post article entitled, New Wives Bring New Hope to Sri Lankan Widowers.

Thanggod! Some good news about Sri Lanka, I thought, as I clicked the link and started reading:

Plunged into despair after the tsunami killed his wife and two of his four children, Ruknadhan Nahamani passed the first months after the disaster in an alcoholic fog, drowning his sorrows in the potent local liquor known as arrack . But grief was only part of the problem, he said.

“There was nobody to wash my clothes and take care of my kids when I went out to work,” said the wiry 32-year-old fisherman, whose teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a mild stimulant. “It was really difficult.”

But Nahamani is a single parent no more. In June, he exchanged wedding vows and jasmine garlands at a Hindu temple with a woman from a nearby village. “We are very happy,” he said outside his tent at a refugee camp as his new wife, Leelawathi, heated cooking oil for the evening meal.[link]

The man survived a tsunami and lost almost his entire family and lives in a refugee camp. Of course he deserves all the happiness he can find. But the grinchy pebble I call a heart couldn’t muster more joy when I remembered all the war widows in Sri Lanka. Some 40,000 at last count.

And the fact that women drowned in massively disproportionate numbers (three times more) during the tsunami because they’re not taught to swim.

And the fact that widows are still treated like amoral harlots in most of South Asia.

Where’s the bloody community support for them?

In a development that will not surprise anyone, mammoth retailer and purveyor o’ crap Wal-Mart is getting sued for ignoring the conditions of the factories from whence their ultra-cheap merch comes (via the BBC):

The class-action suit has been filed in Los Angeles on behalf of 15 workers in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua.

Each claim they were paid less than the minimum wage and not given overtime payments. Some say they were beaten.

Wal-Mart promised that the beatings were merely for morale and didn’t leave any marks. I keed, I keed. America’s superstore said it would investigate the claims, duh.

The lawsuit mentions the obvious; the evil yellow circle who zigs and zags about Wal-Mart’s commercials wantonly dicing and slicing numbers is to blame. If they’re going to sell merchandise for unbelievably low prices, they’ll make up for those sales somehow, somewhere— Gunga Din is the easy choice, it seems.

The superstore is predictably vague in its response:

“It’s really too early for us to be able to say anything about this particular complaint,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Beth Kath.

“It involves a number of companies and manufacturers and we’re just beginning our research to learn more.”

Research away.

I hate running.  I ran yesterday and my knees are pissed at me today.  I only run if I have to in order to quickly get in shape for something.  A high-altitude hike in two weeks unfortunately qualifies.  I have just never been able to develop that “runner’s high” that so many people get.  Although I love physical challenges of any kind, a marathon is out of the question.  After reading this article in the BBC I hang my head in shame:

He runs seven hours at a stretch, sometimes as much as 48km (30 miles). On a daily basis.

And Budhia Singh is just three and a half years old.

When Budhia’s father died a year ago, his mother, who washes dishes in Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern Indian state of Orissa, was unable to provide for her four children.

She sold Budhia to a man for 800 rupees ($20).

But the young boy came to the attention of Biranchi Das, a judo coach and the secretary of the local judo association.

Mr Das said he noticed Budhia’s talent when scolding him for being a bully.

“Once, after he had done some mischief, I asked him to keep running till I came back,” Mr Das told the BBC.

“I got busy in some work. When I came back after five hours, I was stunned to find him still running.”

I think if they send him to Kenya to train for a few years Budhia could be a serious contender.  The kid is a beast.  His hobbies include eating an running.

Budhia is enjoying his stay at the judo hostel. “I can run and eat to my heart’s content here,” he says.

I hope they don’t end up taking advantage of his talents though.  It would be a shame if Budhia burns out before his time.

The President finally accepted some blame for the failed Hurricane Katrina response today (for those of you who still care).  To varying degrees, state an local officials have been showing contrition as well, knowing that their jobs may be in jeopardy.  But, only one person responsible has cried real tears (as far as I know).  The buck stops at Madhu Beriwal’s desk.  Time Magazine reports:

Madhu Beriwal equates disaster planning with marathon running. “You train and time yourself and figure out what you need to do to achieve it,” she says. As the president of Innovative Emergency Management, Inc., in Baton Rouge, La., Beriwal knows about training for marathon-size catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina. Her company played a role in the Hurricane Pam simulation, which involved almost 300 officials getting ready for a major-category storm hitting New Orleans. But after witnessing the devastation left by Katrina and the blundered response from relief officials, Beriwal wonders if the training needs to be rethought. “The system failed,” she told TIME when asked who in the end was to blame. “We all share the blame.” After saying this, she begins to cry.

Beriwal is a native of Calcutta, India, who came to the U.S. 25 years ago. After earning a master’s degree in urban planning, she gained a reputation in Louisiana as an expert in disaster preparation. Like many others in similar roles, Beriwal feels a measure of guilt when watching the images of flood victims. She’s also aware that some of the tragedy was because of the “disaster sub-culture” of any population—which is a certain level of resistance to pre-storm evacuation. Some people simply won’t evacuate.

It’s worth noting that I.E.M.’s Pam preparedness plan, which FEMA contracted for almost $1 million, helped 80 percent of the population of the New Orleans area evacuate before Katrina made landfall on August 29th—one of the highest rates ever for a hurricane.

I couldn’t help but click on the “products and services” link at IEM’s website.  We have been meaning to implement a disaster plan here at our North Dakota HQ for some time now.  We just don’t trust local officials here.  One product I found was a master “Guidebook.”  What does this “Guidebook” do?

-The Guidebook combines state-of-the-art analysis with an efficient decision-making process, allowing emergency managers to proceed with confidence as they take the steps necessary to protect their communities.
-The Guidebook is comprehensive—it provides recommendations for millions of possible events.
-The Guidebook makes the technical details involved in the decision-making process invisible to decision-makers, greatly reducing the time required to make the right protective action decision.

I think we could all use a “Guidebook” in our lives.

Yeah. Keeper of his Brother’s WIFE, that is. (Thanks Kar, DesiDancer and Sonia):

An Indian college girl has temporarily married her teenaged boyfriend’s elder brother so she can live in the same house as her lover until he is old enough to marry her, the Indian Express reported on Tuesday. [MSNBC]

Sneha Patel, 19, a resident of the western Indian state of Gujarat, was in love with Yash Kishan Parmar, also 19, and wanted to marry him despite her parents’ opposition to the match, the newspaper said.[MSNBC]

In India, the legal age for men to marry is 21, while for women, it’s 18. The law has good intentions; it’s meant to prevent child marriage. But then again, you know what the road to hell is paved with. ;)

Patel and Parmar eloped briefly but, not wanting to be on the run until Parmar was 21, Patel proposed that she would marry his elder brother and divorce him two years later.[MSNBC]

You might think George Ka Pakistan (George’s Pakistan) is a straightforward description of the political relationship between Dubya and Musharraf. Instead, it was recently Pakistan’s #1 reality show (via Uncleji):

The premise was simple: could a Gora (white man) become a Pakistani? Over 13 weeks, Fulton, a 27-year-old former public schoolboy, travelled the country to find out. He sampled Pakistan’s many delights - moseying through the tribal areas, dancing at slick Karachi parties, speaking bad Urdu and arguing with his electricity company… Fulton squeezed into tiny taxis, milked a buffalo and tried on a dhoti… [Link]

George Fulton, a TV and theater producer, ended up becoming a Pakistani citizen. Why? Lowe, twu lowe:

The ministry of the interior was so impressed with Fulton’s efforts that it offered him Pakistani citizenship… The downsides included the potential of being be conscripted into the Pakistani army in the event of war with, for example, India. But now, he says: “I’m going through with it”… he has fallen in love with a Pakistani woman, also a TV producer, and they plan to get married next November. [Link]

To paraphrase the National Front, if he’s a loyal Pakistani, why does he still root for England’s cricket team?  To be a true Pakistani, all he needs to do is obsess over India and talk nostalgically of his years in New York.

Fulton received… six marriage proposals (he politely refused them all). Then, in the final episode, the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, received him in Islamabad and the show’s producers polled viewers about whether “George Sahib” had succeeded in becoming a Pakistani. Sixty-five per cent said yes. [Link]

Tacky, tacky, tacky. Last week, sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling got snarky about India’s hurricane relief offer. I’ll be generous and speculate he was criticizing the U.S.’ tardy disaster response. But get this — he did so by quoting Rudyard Kipling’s colonialist landmark, ‘Gunga Din’ (via Amardeep):

Thank Goodness, Here Come the Brave and Generous Indians to Rescue Louisiana
Mood: incredulous
Now Playing: take up the white man’s burden, send forth the best ye breed…

Where’s bloomin’ Rudyard Kipling when we need ‘im, eh?

… I was chokin’ mad with thirst,
An’ the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din.

… ‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to pore damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!

Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! [Link]

Incredulous is right. You thought Indra Nooyi was tone deaf? A middle finger reference is nothing compared to ‘Gunga Din.’ This is like praising Savion Glover’s dancing skills by comparing him approvingly to Little Black Sambo.

It’s possible, I suppose, that Sterling is slyly calling hurricane relief the brown man’s burden. But that would be pretty oblique given the plain meaning of the ‘belted an’ flayed’ Indian servant saving a white man’s life. I don’t think this interpretation holds water, pardon the pun.

Some bloggers are also criticizing a sarcastic Boing Boing title (‘Katrina: whew, here comes India to save us, at last!’), but Xeni, a huge Bollywood fan, issued a pretty straightforward clarification.

Here’s more reaction by Uma, Shashwati and Club810, and previous posts on India’s aid offer, Gunga Din, the white man’s burden and racist caricatures.

The magic kingdom of Singapore just charged two bloggers with sedition for posting rants against minorities including Indians, Malays and Muslims:

According to court documents, Lim’s forum message began with: “The masses are idiots. ‘Nuff said”. He went on to make disparaging remarks about Muslims. Then, turning his attention to the Chinese and Indians, he wrote that listening to the complaints of “Chinese and Indians … was no less irritating”.

Koh was more pointed. Peppering his blog entry with vulgarities, he directed his tirade at Malays and Muslims. His blog had a picture of a roasted pig’s head with “a Halal look-alike logo”, according to court documents…

Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, and Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, were arrested and charged under the Sedition Act. [Link]

The tiny Southeast Asian city-state is 80 percent ethnic Chinese, while Malays make up around 15 percent of the country’s 4.2 million populace. [Link]

Racist rants which don’t aim to incite violence are best dealt with by civil society, commercial boycotts or a good blog-whuppin’ rather than the legal system. But in the hypersensitive nation-state of Singapore, even jaywalking can get you arrested. It’s a place devoid of both street litter and truly free expression:

Visitors should be aware of Singapore’s strict laws and penalties for a variety of actions that might not be illegal or might be considered minor offenses in the United States. These include jaywalking, littering, and spitting. Singapore has a mandatory caning sentence for vandalism offenses… There are no jury trials in Singapore, judges hear cases and decide sentencing. [Link]

Newsweek columnist Christopher Dickey reviews a provocative analysis of suicide bombings that seeks to characterize and combat them as if they were a contagion:

The most useful way to understand how terrorism became so grimly commonplace may be to think of this slaughter as a pathology, like a contagious disease that began with small outbreaks here and there, and has developed into an epidemic. Suicide as such—without the bombing or the terrorism—has been studied as a pathology by social scientists at least since the 19th-century work of Émile Durkheim, which focused on the societal factors likely to increase the risk that people will kill themselves. And while suicidal terrorism may be distinctive, when you demystify it and put aside the Bush administration’s misleading obsession with a “murderous ideology” in the “Global War on Terror,” the similarities with other forms of suicide are instructive.

In the 1980s, for instance, the suicide rates among young people in several European countries rose dramatically. By the early 1990s, studies showed that in several countries more young Europeans were taking their own lives than were dying on the highways. Dutch researcher René Diekstra, then at the University of Leiden, identified the break-up of extended families and the increasing rootlessness of European life as forces behind these trends. Based on a comparative study of suicide in 20 countries over two decades, he determined in the early 1990s that divorce rates, unemployment, the rising number of working mothers, the declining importance of religion, the diminished number of children, all helped to predict the trends in suicide rates.

I am always ready to listen to people who take a shot at demystifying “evil.”  When leaders overuse words like “evil” they sometimes undermine the pursuit of a real solution to the problem.  For example, one of the best articles I have ever read broke down the motivations of the Columbine killers in a way that finally made sense to me.  Returning to the Newsweek article:

No, there’s something more: the contagion. History is full of suicide outbreaks where first a few, then many people kill themselves.

The savagely cynical leaders of Hizbullah, the Tamil Tigers, Hamas, Al Qaeda and other groups have worked to spread the plague of suicidal terror by denying the taboos against self-destruction while romanticizing the young men and women willing to blow themselves away. Hence the video testaments like Khan’s [London Underground bomber].

“Once a specific form of suicide takes place, it becomes part of the thinking and, if you will, the repertoire of people who can identify with that person who killed himself,” says the Dutch researcher René Diekstra, now at Holland’s Roosevelt Academy. “We know that what we call ‘suicide contagion’ is particularly prevalent in the late teens and early adult age. There is a search for identity, and for heroism.”

Tomorrow night, PBS stations in the U.S. are airing a documentary on the human impact of outsourcing on call center workers (via SAJA):

1-800-INDIA
Tuesday, September 13 at 9 P.M.

… “1-800-INDIA” explores the experience of young Indian men and women who have been recruited into these new jobs requiring long hours, night shifts, and westernized work habits. The film reveals the human and cultural impact of a sweeping global trend, exploring its effect on Indian family life, on the evolving landscape of Indian cities and towns, and on the aspirations and daily lives of young Indians, especially women, entering the workforce.

Blogger Daniel Drezner penned an introduction:

Ironically, India itself now has some other pressing concerns because of the expansion of the global market for outsourcing services. Wage rates in Bangalore are starting to rise dramatically, and India has bottlenecks in its educational infrastructure that will limit the growth of the labor force. So other countries — the Philippines, Indonesia, Ghana — are beginning to compete. Nowadays you can even find Europeans and Americans working — if only temporarily — in India. Backpackers hiking through India stop off in Bangalore and work in call centers for a few weeks to pay their way…

Wow! I feel … represented, and I barely can read or write in Gurmukhi. Still, it tickles me pink to realize that my grandmother could now Google me, if only she could use a computer.

This is incredible [I’m such a gushing fan-boy] ! Here are some of the other South Asian orthographies that one can google in: Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telegu, Urdu, Bengali (Bengla), Bihari, Malayalam, Sindhi. Interestingly, the source for this list also included Uighur as one of the languages associated with India. I thought the Uighur were Turkic peoples living in China, their big muslim minority. Are there any in South Asia?

UPDATE: As Saheli points out in the comments, these are only languages for which Google has an interface, as distinct from languages that Google indexes.

In unfortunate news, particularly since it comes on the four year anniversary of 9/11, a NYC fire-fighter was arrested for a possible hate crime against a Bangladeshi immigrant.  CNN reports:

Hours after many New York firefighters gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a firefighter was arrested for attacking an immigrant worker and telling him he looked “like he’s al-Qaeda,” police said.

Firefighter Edward Dailey was arrested Sunday afternoon on charges of criminal mischief and felony second-degree assault, Police Sgt. Kevin Farrell said. It had not yet been determined whether the charges would be upgraded to a hate crime, he said.

Dailey, 27, is accused of breaking a piece of Plexiglas off a curbside news stand and throwing it at a 51-year-old man who works there, Farrell said. Dailey had said the man, an immigrant from Bangladesh, looked “like he’s al-Qaeda,” Farrell said.

So discouraging to hear this type of thing happen at all, but even worse on the anniversary.  I’m sure they’ll be a case made make a case for PTSD.  Newsday.com has more:

Dailey, who lives on Long Island and works in Jamaica, Queens, was valedictorian of his Fire Academy class last year, according to the Daily News.

The arrest came on a day when many New York firefighters gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. Police said Dailey had been drinking after attending the memorial service for a fallen firefighter he had known from their previous jobs as emergency medical workers.

In  related news, filmmakers  Valarie Kaur, who blogs at DNSI, and Sharat Raju have a trailer of their upcoming film titled “Divided we Fall.”

A turbaned Sikh man was murdered four days after Sept. 11, 2001 by a man bent on eliminating anyone “Arab-looking.” He screamed: “I am a patriot!” Similar stories of hate crimes swept across the nation in the aftermath.

Armed with only a camera and a question, an American college student journeyed into the heart of a suffering nation in search of answers. She met people, some born and raised in America, others who came seeking a better life and adopted a new land as their own home. All believed in the American dream. Captured on film are their stories — hundreds of them. Stories of sadness. Of unimaginable loss & fear. Of hope, resilience & love.

Two filmmakers. One camera. 14 American cities. Four months on the road. 100 hours of footage. And the question: WHY?

It has been 75 years since Lux soap was first manufactured in India. To mark the occasion, Hindustan Lever is making its first ad for Lux staring a male Bollywood actor. In it they present Shah Rukh Khan in a bathtub full of rose petals. Equal opportunity objectification for men is beginning; you’ve come a long way baby!

It seems that the actor had long wanted to star in a Lux ad:

A spokesman for Hindustan Lever, the Indian arm of the multinational Unilever, said the firm had learnt of Shah Rukh Khan’s desire to star in a Lux commercial, following in the footsteps of actresses Hema Malini, Juhi Chawla, Madhuri Dixit, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai.

“Our advertising agency somehow managed to hear that Shah Rukh had told his co-stars Juhi Chawla and Hema Malini while shooting for a movie that they are the real stars as they get to sit in elaborate bathtubs and advertise for Lux,” the spokesman, Paresh Chowdhury, told the BBC. [BBC]

And of course, a sudsy SRK made perfect sense for the manufacturer as well: Will desi men start threading their chest hair to emulate SRK?

“The target audience, which is basically women between six and 60, love him because he comes across as vulnerable,” he told the BBC. “You could have had some macho actor get in tub but he would seem unreal.

“Shah Rukh Khan is a man with a very strong female side - he is not ashamed of not having any hair on his chest - yet he is a man’s man.” [BBC]

Is Shah Rukh Khan the metrosexual desi man for the next century or just a passing fad? Will desi men start threading their chest hair to emulate SRK? One thing is for certain, Indian TV will never be the same again.

The U.S. Open home page is featuring an in-house, ‘Off-Court Spotlight’ interview with Sania Mirza taped after her loss to Maria Sharapova. The interviewer mentions that her player bio has gotten more traffic than any other. Ah, the magic of server logs

Watch the interview (streaming WMV).

Previous posts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

The Washington Post features (thanks Maisnon) the hottest new band from straight out of my ‘hood.  The H1Bees have earned plenty of street cred in their Gaithersburg, MD area.  Now it’s time to go national:

The computer programmers arrived in the United States unknown to each other but united in their quest to rock.

On the surface, they were not unlike many others who have left India over the past decade on the H-1B visa, a guest worker program for highly skilled professionals. They wore glasses and mustaches and collared shirts. They could exterminate Y2K bugs and code Java and link Unix.

But as they toiled in cubicles, they dreamed of banging on keyboards of a different sort, of a world where C-sharp is just a musical note, not computer code.

And then their worlds became one.

“H1Bees,” an album recorded in a Gaithersburg basement-turned-studio, will be released today, its music a mix of Indian and Western beats with lyrics exploring the high-tech immigrant’s experience in the United States.

I wonder if they have a manager yet.  I know the area well and have been looking for the right horse to back.  They got a funky throwback type of sound.  To be quite honest I like them better than M.I.A., whose stuff is just noise to me. 

The languages differed: Tamil, Hindi, COBAL, BASIC. The journeys seemed parallel: Young man leaves India to earn U.S. dollars, works hard, buys car, returns home to marry, gets green card, buys townhouse, has kid, decides to stay.

“H1Bees,” Devarajan said. The album, which will be sold via South Asian Web sites and stores for $6, boasts songs in English, Hindi and Tamil. By setting their sagas to music, they hope to duplicate the success of other immigrant artists catering to diasporas, much of it via the Internet.

Listen to a sample track here. For those about to rock, we salute you.

Oh nooooo…..just two weeks ago, Jhaan mentioned Satya Paul: Indian fashion designer, creator of beautiful saris, a man who didn’t rush to the tacky embrace of East-meets-West “fusion” clothing, the very antithesis of my favorite whipping boy, Anand Jon.

Well, apparently succumbing to the siren song of “global presence,” Satya Paul presents his April 2005 India Fashion Week collection in NY tonight. From the press release:

Satya Paul, the premier Indian designer label recognized internationally for its haute couture, saris, fabrics, neckties and accessories, is unveiling a dazzling new collection of apparel and drapes in New York. The collection will be modeled by Indian beauty queens and film stars at a gala benefit at the Broadway Ballroom of the Marriot Marquis, on Saturday, September 10, at 7:00 pm.

But wait! Before you grab your wallet and run out the door - there’s more:

The multi-media show will highlight a fusion of the East and West. The mythological Sita - heroine of the Indian epic, the Ramayana - will be “teamed” with Madonna, the entertainment legend. The Madonna who appears in Satya Paul’s collection mirrors the star in her self confidence and sophistication. At her core is Sita, the woman of timeless elegance, mystery and purity. Satya Paul’s collection brings out the sensuality of the East, blended with the gritty worldliness of the West.

Just so you don’t miss this fusion, the collection is named Madonna Meets Sita. The timeless Eastern elegance of Sita, wrapped in the Western confidence of Madonna….get it?

(I wonder if they’ll play “Like a Virgin” as the models strut the ramp…..I’m sure Madonna wouldn’t resist a man with ten heads, either…..j/k!! don’t send Hanuman after me too!! )

Anna’s visiting Manhattan this weekend. Come by Indian Bread Co. this Sunday at noon if you want to nosh on paneer naanini and meet the doyenne of schmooze. It’s on Bleecker between 6th Ave. and Macdougal. Afterwards, we’re traipsing over to a free reading of Anuvab Pal’s Life, Love and EBITDA at 2pm.

Check out how this Brit-influenced Bollywood review reads in American English:

[Salaam Namaste] has a frothy first half and an emotion-filled second half with the climax that warms the very cockles of your heart. And, as a bonus, there is a cameo by Abhishek Bachchan at the fag end. [Link]

Someone needs to take a rubber to the end of that review. It’s the kind of movie review-cum-double entendre which I’d never plunge into. At least not without a safe word.

Not that Americans don’t do the same, only it’s intentional. Ang Lee’s new gay cowboy Western is entitled Brokeback Mountain. The subtlety of the encoding is truly humbling. Heath Ledger and Donnie Snarko stare longingly at each other for the entire length of the trailer, but heaven forbid that they act. The love that dare not, is the wet sari that must not.

I say let the rainbow flag fly. Bollywood has long repaid the compliment.

In Australia, an inquiry is slowly proceeding into the actions of Dr. Jayant Patel who has been accused of causing some 80 deaths amongst his patients. He arrived in Australia after he had gotten into trouble in both New York and Oregon. There he:

[performed] unnecessary operations, removed healthy organs and “revealed a lack of up-to-date knowledge in many aspects of medical practice.” Eight of his patients died after he performed complex operations that he had been ordered not to perform in Oregon …
An anesthesiologist referred to Dr. Patel as “Dr. Death,” and another doctor told nurses not to allow Dr. Patel to operate on his patients. One surgeon who had examined about 150 of Dr. Patel’s former patients told the commission that all surgeons have problems with patients, but he said of Dr. Patel’s problems: “They’re not 10 times what you might expect. They’re more like 100 times what you might expect,” [NYT]

How did he get hired in the first place? He lied about his history, had good recommendations, and nobody bothered to check his story:

A simple inquiry would have discovered Dr. Patel’s disciplinary problems, the report says. They were found, and made public, by a reporter at The Courier-Mail of Brisbane on the basis of a Google search. [NYT]

[Can you imagine? An organization not checking the credentials of its employees?]

Following Sri Lanka’s lead (when was the last time you read those words? ), India has offered sakat / succor in N’awlins, and Uncle Sam has accepted (via Boing Boing):

India, which regularly is hit by flooding from monsoon rains, has said it has a planeload of supplies waiting. The United States said Thursday night that it has accepted $5 million in aid. [Link]

Post-tsunami, India was criticized by some for rejecting assistance, perhaps out of national pride:

It was told by the U.S. Embassy that “at this moment, the U.S. government is not asking for international assistance.” [Link]

Sweden and others are getting stiff-armed by the famous bureaucratic sense of urgency:

For four days, a C-130 transport plane ready to lift supplies to Katrina victims has stood idle at an air base in Sweden. The aid includes a water purification system that may be urgently needed amid signs deadly diseases could be spreading through fetid pools in New Orleans… The one thing that stands in the way of takeoff? Approval by U.S. officials… Poland, Austria and Norway said they had not heard back on their aid offers, and countries outside Europe said they were also waiting for replies. [Link]

And one member of the axis of heck got nothing but pumpkins:

Tehran offered to send 20 million barrels of crude oil if Washington waived trade sanctions, but Thomas said the offer was rejected because it was conditional. [Link]

As I have stated on this blog before (met by derision from some), when I think about my future and the future of my eventual offspring, terrorism and the rise of fundamentalism has a considerably smaller profile on my radar screen when compared to what I consider larger dangers.  Global climate change and natural resource mismanagement being the largest.  I only compare the two because often, when deciding where taxpayer dollars go, this is an either/or competition.  CNN reports:

Imagine a world without drinking water.

It’s a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50 years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region’s main water source.

The glaciers supply 303.6 million cubic feet every year to Asian rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, the Ganga in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and Burma’s Irrawaddy.

But as global warming increases, the glaciers have been rapidly retreating, with average temperatures in the Himalayas up 1 degree Celsius since the 1970s.

A World Wide Fund report published in March said a quarter of the world’s glaciers could disappear by 2050 and half by 2100.

“If the current scenario continues, there will be very little water left in the Ganga and its tributaries,” Prakash Rao, climate change and energy program coordinator with the fund in India told Reuters.

And keep in mind that the “disappearing” water will find the lowest ground…the ocean.  The ocean will then rise of course.  That means you will have many more cities in the same geological predicament as New Orleans.

Tulsi Maya, a farmer on the outskirts of Kathmandu, has never heard of global warming or its impact on the rivers in the Himalayan kingdom, but she does know that the flow of water has gone down.

“It used to overflow its banks and spill into the fields,” the 85-year-old farmer said standing in her emerald green rice field as she looked at the Bishnumati river, which has ceased to be a reliable source of drinking water and irrigation.

“Maybe God is unkind and sends less water in the river. The flow of water is decreasing every year,” she said standing by her grandson, Milan Dangol, who weeds the crop.

A moment of silence, please — I have truly depressing news to report. Long years of eating English food have wreaked havoc upon the visage of an Oscar-winning desi actor:

Ben… Kingsley… plays… FAGIN! Aww yeah! That’s like Samuel L. Jackson as Ravana or Hanuman vs. the Rock. (And I think we know which one wins.)

Kingsley hams his way through an Oliver Twist revival by pedophile filmmaker Roman Polanski due out this month. Charles Dickens meets a suitable boy — the paid-by-the-word weepies collide in copyright-free drama nirvana. But seriously, after the melo-hungama of Dickens, surely Ben-ji could find it in his heart to pay Bollyrespects?

Polanski struggled with the eternal, Shylockian question of ‘who is a Jew’:

Born in 1837, Dickens’s Fagin The paid-by-the-word weepies collidewas larded with ethnic stereotypes from his first appearance as “a very old, shriveled Jew… Alec Guinness, in David Lean’s 1948 version, spoke in a droning lisp and appeared with hooded eyes and an enormous prosthetic hook nose… it also resembled anti-Semitic caricatures in… Nazi Germany. At a theater in Berlin the audience was so offended by Fagin’s characterization that it rioted… in Carol Reed’s 1968 film version… he played with gay stereotypes, mincing his way through “Pick a Pocket or Two” and twirling a frilly pink parasol in “I’d Do Anything.”

I bet you are all wondering (well at least those that swing from a particular side of the plate) what’s under that forbidden black box (who says SM only features pics of hot women?).  Seyd tips me off to yet another one of those “I can’t believe they put a Hindu icon on that,” controversies (see previous 1,2).  Now my position on this is that I personally don’t care one way or another since I don’t concern myself with religious icons.  Other people get upset and sue over this stuff and it’s their prerogative to do so.  So what is the situation here?  Rainbownetwork.com has the details:

DNA Magazine, Australia’s top gay publication, has censored their latest cover in an effort to quell outrage from the Hindu community.

The cover features male fitness star Matt Walch wearing a Roberto Cavalli brief that is screen printed with an image of the Hindu goddess Laxmi.

In a letter to the Hindu community, Editor Andrew Creagh, apologized for the offence and let it known that the magazine had no “deliberate intention to cause offence, antagonize or show disrespect to people of the Hindu faith.”

He added that the magazine was “unaware that the garment portrayed a specific Hindu deity.”

That sounded like a pretty sincere apology.  I mean he’s not going to pull the magazine off the shelves or anything because then they’d lose money, but at least on their website there is a black box over the bacon.  What truly offends me is that the picture is of the goddess Laxmi.  If they had even half a brain they would have more appropriately offended the Hindu community by using an iconic image of the Hindu diety that is associated with the Lingam.

Also, although I’ve been meaning to invest in a good thong, I don’t think that I would buy this design. The last thing I need is for a conflicted Hindu girl to re-discover religion at the…ummm…wrong moment.

So you guys want to see what is under that black box?  Click below (might not be safe for work).

According to Shashwati, three Indian universities are considering imposing a dress code on their students. Of course, this dress code applies only to their female students.  Bombay University says the dress code will protect women from violent crime, according to the age old Indian principle of  “she was asking for it”:

Bombay University plans to ban women from wearing mini skirts, tight tops and shorts, saying this will help prevent rape. Officials at the university say they would prefer to see women students in a traditional salwar-kameez with no deep neckline. [cite]

Officials at Bombay University also claim that this will benefit the men on campus:

“An attire should be such that it should not be offensive or cause distraction to fellow students and lecturers,” Vice Chancellor Vijay Khole told reporters.  [cite]

At Delhi University, the discussion took on an ethnic dimension. Perhaps it is more acceptable to impose a dress code if you can blame it on ‘outsiders’:

A furious debate is going on among the students of Delhi University ever since Kirori Mal College vice principal Virender Kumar’s remarks that “revealing dresses” allegedly worn by girls from India’s northeast triggered angry responses. Although a chastened Kumar has apologised, girl students, particularly those from the northeast, are still furious. [cite]

Howard Dean sat down with India Abroad Editor Aziz Haniffa recently to convince you Indian Americans out there that the Dems will lead you to the promised land if only you take their hand.

The new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dr Howard Dean, believes the Indian-American community should find the Democratic Party more attractive as it is not only more favourable toward immigration, but also is a more diverse and welcoming than the Republican Party.

In high school English class I learned that a concise thesis statement is the difference between an A and a B grade.

Q: Why should the Indian-American community vote for the Democratic Party?

A: We are friendlier on immigration issues than the Republican Party. We are a truly multicultural, diverse party. We welcome everybody. We have been very, very pleased first of all, by the support we got from the Indian-American community, and secondly, we are the party that has a history of reaching out to people, instead of pushing them away.

Indian Americans will feel more comfortable in our party.

I like Dean.  The kid’s got spunk.  Surely he could come up with a better answer than that though.  I don’t want him to pander to me but if you take a look at the above question and answer, you could replace “Indian-American” with say “Mexican-American,” and not skip a beat.  I want depth and nuance.  All the things that the Republicans can’t provide to the masses.

I feel like typing “Happy Ganesh Utsav”, but I’m 99.9% certain that’s incorrect, inapposite and just plain inane. Surely I will suffer a beat-down for my cheekiness; I implore you to bear in mind (while you are paddling me) that I’m just a simple Christian girl from Coconut land/God’s own country who has no idea what this snack even IS. ;)

It’s well-established that I’m reading whenever I’m on the metro and half the time I’m doing that, I’m actually scanning the articles for sepia-tinted stories which I can bring you here. :) Normally, I find brown down ‘round the front page; yesterday, I was slightly surprised to see that my “local” paper’s Food section was where the mutiny was at. Et voila, an article by Priya Phadke to coincide with a certain deity’s partay. I’ve seen hundreds of recipes in WaPo, but this is the first desi one that I’ve noticed.

Priya is the assistant art director for The Post’s Sunday Source, a.k.a. the section I love most and thus save for Georgetown, Dean and Deluca and cappuccino-soaked Sunday afternoons. Here’s what our dear artiste had to say about what you guys are going to be making (and then sending to North Dakota, please. Thanks!):

In the three years since I moved to the United States from Mumbai, as Bombay is now called, I get most homesick during festive seasons. My maternal grandmother nani would make comfort food, and her karanjees are what I miss most.

Karenjees are dough stuffed with soft, shredded coconut that is flavored with cardamom, saffron, sugar and Gulkand, a rose petal jam that lends a distinctive flavor and fragrance and sets my nani’s karanjees apart from all others.

She had to lose him, to do him harm:

Police in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have detained a mother who they accuse of drowning her adopted son. The mother tied the baby to a heavy stone and threw him down a well after villagers told her that he might be suffering from Aids, police say. [BBC]

The ten-month old child didn’t have a chance; coughing and feverish, he was in the coastal village of Gurripudi, a place full of idiots whose idle, tragically incorrect speculation carried more authority than, oh, I don’t know, ACTUAL HIV TESTS. Gurripudi, which is in the East Godavari district, is an area where HIV is rampant, where it would be easy to stupidly, hysterically assume the worst about a baby who isn’t yours.

The murderess is in police custody, her husband hasn’t been charged. The couple adopted the little boy from a nearby village to complement their family, which already included three obviously lucky daughters.

Congressman Bobby Jindal weighs in on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial section (thanks for the tip Olinda).  The man ain’t happy:

There have already been a number of instances in which an overly inhibitive bureaucracy prevented an appropriate response to the disaster. For example, on Wednesday of last week a company called my office. With only three hours before rising waters would make the mission impossible, they were anxious to send a rescue helicopter for their stranded employees. They wanted to know who would give them a go-ahead.

We could not identify the agency with authority. We heard that FEMA was in charge, that the FAA was in charge, and that the military was in charge. I went in person to talk with a FEMA representative and still could not get a straight answer. Finally we told the company to avoid interfering with Coast Guard missions, but to proceed on its own. Sometimes, asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission.

The first half of his op-ed seems to rail against big government and bureaucracy.  It’s hard to accept a Republican doing that when his traditionally government-hating party has been in charge for so long.  Maybe this means we should cut even more taxes to make the government even more efficient.  I agree with the other side in believing that years of undermining the importance of the federal government in the lives of people (especially the poor) is what contributed to a disastrous response. 

Spending my days on the ground in Louisiana last week, I did not see much television. But I understand that some media let the violent and destructive acts of a few overshadow the many acts of compassion and heroism.

Contrary to the pictures you may have seen, the vast majority of New Orleanians did not take to the street with weapons—far more risked their own safety to help neighbors and strangers.

I’m glad he set the record straight.  This past weekend while on a long car ride, I had the misfortune to listen to AM radio.  Every conservative crackpot radio show host seemed to be obsessed with the “widespread crimewave” in New Orleans.

As I struggle to explain to my 3-year-old daughter why her prayers that the hurricane spare our hometown were unanswered, we as a nation must make sure that we learn from our initial mistakes and cut through the red tape to help people rebuild their homes, their hopes and their lives.

Ahh the obligatory reference to their young child.  A politician wouldn’t be a politician without this trademark.

Immediately after the London terrorist bombings there were plenty of comments left on numerous SM posts that all seemed to express a particular opinion that was VERY distasteful to me, and to some other readers.  To paraphrase, the opinion went like this: “We need to educate the public better so that when a racist or bigoted backlash occurs following a terrorist attack, they will be wise enough to target Muslims instead of people that only look like Muslims.”  I thought that such an opinion would find no support at all but I learned that I was wrong.  Dave at DNSI points to an article in the Guardian that shows just how wrong I was.  Some Sikhs and Hindus facing the prospect of a backlash are taking unusual approaches:

The explanation as to why Sikhs and Hindus are targeted…is quite simple: “your average hate-crime perpetrator isn’t going to stop and ask what religion you are before attacking you - or even care, for that matter, about such distinctions.”

If you travel on London’s public-transport system you may have spotted them: stickers and T-shirts with “Don’t freak, I’m a Sikh” written across them. On the tube, they tend to be greeted with wry smiles, but they have sparked heated debate on Sikh online message boards. “Don’t wear these T-shirts, they’re anti-Muslim,” writes one contributor. “We should wear the T-shirts,” says another. “We need to think of ourselves first - let the Muslims take care of themselves.”

In the weeks following July 7 it was widely reported that hate crimes against Asians had increased dramatically. They were not just attacks on Muslim Asians, of course: they were attacks on Asians of all faiths. The fact is that your average hate-crime perpetrator isn’t going to stop and ask what religion you are before attacking you - or even care, for that matter, about such distinctions. But this point seems to have been lost on the media. There’s been a huge focus on the impact on Britain’s Muslim community, but the plight of Britain’s 560,000 Hindus and 340,000 Sikhs has been largely ignored.

Sure, it’s easy for me to judge.  I sit here safe and don’t have to endure suspicious eyes checking me out on the Underground every day.  Still, this rubs the very heart of me.  I think these t-shirts should all be burned.  Prior to WWII, Hitler forced the Jews to wear the Star of David on their clothes so as to single them out with ease.  Here it seems some citizens are volunteering for that sort of indignity in order to make their lives a bit easier, at the price of a higher ideal.  We shouldn’t be declaring that we are different from Muslims.  If anything we should be educating people on how similar they are to us.  I fully support declaring that you are Sikh, loud and proud.  To do so in order to differentiate yourself from a Muslim, specifically to avoid a potential hate crime, is just loud without the proud.

I offer you a roundup of the ovation vocation. Zadie Smith’s On Beauty made the Booker shortlist; she’s a Booker virgin (thanks, Neha). It’s out next Tuesday, but you might find it shelved stealthily in the fiction section as early as Saturday.

Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, an homage to EM Forster’s Howards End, has received mixed reviews from critics. [Link]

Zadie Smith, On Beauty*
Julian Barnes, Arthur and George*
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way
John Banville, The Sea
Ali Smith, The Accidental [Link]

It is a story about Sherlock Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… The George in the title is George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor and the son of a country vicar from Bombay who was a converted Parsee… in 1903, Edalji was convicted of maiming horses in his father’s parish of Great Wyrley in Staffordshire. The ‘Great Wyrley Outrages’, as they were known, became a cause célèbre when Doyle took up the cudgels in order to correct what he regarded as legal injustice and racism. Doyle became to Edalji what Emile Zola was to Dreyfus. [Link]

M.I.A. lost the Mercury Music Prize to Antony and the Johnsons (thanks, PB). Gayest thing ever recorded? Nuh-uh. It’s gotta be ‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ by the Cocteau Twins. Gayest thing ever recorded? ‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ by the Cocteau TwinsAnything by an artist who’s actually gay is too obvious (sorry, ‘YMCA’).

“It’s like a contest between an orange and a space ship and a potted plant and a spoon.” … His voice has been likened to Nina Simone and gay magazine Attitude described his album as “the gayest thing ever recorded”… [Link]

The drama of defining second gen continues apace. Come on, yaar, it’s a simple vada pav test. If he doesn’t know marmite, fish and chips, bangers and mash, he’s not a true deshi:

Although he holds a British passport… Hegarty, 34, has spent most of his life in America after his parents relocated to California when he was 12. Earlier this month, Kaiser Chiefs accused Hegarty of sneaking on to the shortlist through a “technicality”. “He’s an American, really,” said Nick Hodgson of Kaiser Chiefs, who hail from the rather less exotic Leeds. “It’s a good album, but it’s daft he’s got in on a technicality.” [Link]

Previous posts: one, two, three, four, five, six

* Sepia-fied

I must have something to read near me at all times. On those rare occasions when I have “free time”, before I leave the house, I make sure I have at least a magazine (and my moleskine, and my camera and…) with me, so that I’ll be able to read. Life insists on making us pause unexpectedly when we’d rather be achieving, mischief-making or just crossing another item off of our to-do lists; the only reason hyperactive me doesn’t mind this immutable fact is because it means I get to read.

When I was a child, if I couldn’t find the newspaper, I’d read the back (or side) of the cereal box while crunching away on Rice Krispies. I still do this. I’ll read anything, if I’m desperate enough. When I found a job in a building that sits on top of a metro stop, I was overjoyed. The Washington Post got a phone call and I got a subscription to read during my 16-minute commute, each way. Sometimes, I can’t help myself, I start reading the minute I’m out my front door, on the block-and-a-half walk to the subway (yes, I am aware of how lucky I am to live next to and work on top of public transportation…if you want to gnash your teeth even harder out of envy, know this: home and work are on the SAME metro line. No transferring for me, no siree Babu).

Speaking of having to pause when I’d rather be “achieving”, Wednesdays are for staff meetings. Over the last few weeks, it’s become a tradition to get overpriced yuppie beverages in preparation for such events. Unfortunately for indie-coffee shop lovin’ me, there are no less than four Starbucks within a half-mile radius, combined with three Cosi and not one damned other choice in sight. While I go out of my way to avoid the mer-mascotted former, the latter (RIP: x and o) isn’t even worth that effort, since their coffee tastes like punishment for wasting money.

Truthfully, some of the best coffee I’ve had on the right coast came from my old bodega in midtown, on 8th avenue in the theater district. I’d be tickled to the point of swooning right now if I could still hand the smiling, wordless Korean guy who owned the place (and whom I adored) a single dollar for a cup that would magically never spill though it was placed in a humble little paper bag vs in one of those fancy, carefully molded egg-carton-y drink holders. That freshly brewed, unpretentious elixir was brightened with my choice of parmalat milks (which were nestled in the ice of the salad bar) and sweetened with an open pot of sugar (which offered a communal spoon); there were no sleek nissan flasks or individual packets of white dust which give lab rats cancer, nor were there little shakers for cinnamon, nutmeg and pixiedust. THAT coffee tasted like love, and it was served in an iconic container which became even more famous when SJP caressed it during every other ep of SATC. I’m 225 miles from THAT perfection, hours away from a city that doesn’t frown at me when I insist on ordering with quaint adjectives like small, medium, large. Sigh.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor takes a closer look at the 500 bomb blasts that rocked Bangladesh last month:

For years, they gathered in hidden training camps, mosques, and madrassahs, learning how to use weapons and build bombs. In their diaries they scrawled slogans of political alienation. On Aug. 17, their ideology culminated in a series of nearly 500 bomb blasts that shook the nation and killed three people.

 In the aftermath of the attacks, Bangladesh is confronting a realization long suspected but consistently overlooked: Islamist militant groups have taken firm root here, demonstrating a widespread, highly coordinated, and well-funded network. The government, after consistently denying the threat, recently blamed Jama’atul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), for the attack.

Bangladesh is not supposed to be a breeding ground of extremism. Although one of the world’s poorest countries, it is often lauded as a development success story. Poverty rates have declined, life expectancy is up, and the economy has consistently grown by 5 percent annually for years - above average for most developing nations.

But remarkable development and extremism are not mutually exclusive.

I feel a bit ignorant right now.  I didn’t know that the word on the street was that B’desh was considered a “success story.”  The only time I ever hear about it in the news is when some Typhoon wipes it out.  Seriously, I’ve always felt that it’s one of the most underreported on countries.

Abdur Rahman, the spiritual head of the organization, told the press last year that he admired the Taliban and had traveled to Afghanistan. He claimed his organization had been operating underground since 1998, with the aim of founding an Islamic state. His network was active across the country, he said, with 10,000 trained full-time operatives, and 100,000 part-time activists, funded with a payroll of more than $10,000 a month, a huge sum by Bangladeshi standards.

I’m sorry did he just use “admired” and “Taliban” in the same sentence, and then say that he went to Afghanistan?  People are going to start calling for his assassination real soon now.

One of my closest friends is getting married this Thanksgiving.  We went to the same high school in Maryland and were roommates at the University of Michigan.  I know his lovely fiancé as well (she coincidentally has the same last name).  With two months to go I was starting to look for a present for them.  Then, both FOBish and Neha sent in this tip.  In Neha’s words “Kaliyug  is upon us for sure.”  The Telegraph reports:

Young Patels getting married in Britain apparently expect the most expensive wedding gifts from their guests, according to research conducted by John Lewis, the Oxford Street department store.

On their “wish list” are items such as plasma television screens — they alone cost £5,000 each — Royal Doulton crockery, champagne stoppers and top-of-the-range fridge-freezers.

John Lewis picked four of the most common surnames in Britain by consulting the Office of National Statistics — Patel, Jones, Smith and Cohen — and compared their wedding gift lists.

Ha!  Patel is the new Jones.  I’m a bit skeptical of the so-called “research” cited in this article though.  To be fair, my friend and his fiance are not at all like the couples described in this article.  If they secretly are then they are going to be sorely disappointed by their broke-ass friends.

… research done by John Lewis reveals that Indians are becoming as shameless as the English. Young Patel couples come into the store before the wedding and draw up their ideal list by choosing from the 500,000 goodies that are available. They think nothing of sticking the priciest gifts on their list…

Mr and Mrs Jones tend to ask for cheaper gifts such as hammocks, champagne buckets and coffee makers, with a £500 barbecue the most expensive item asked for.

Mr and Mrs Smith go for sofas, board games and microwave equipment for the kitchen. Although John Lewis would not dream of saying so, they seem even duller than the Jones.

Mr and Mrs Cohen request items such as fondue sets, Le Creuset pans and egg poachers from their wedding guests. Again, their taste leaves much to be desired.

I’m sorry but I’m with the Patels on this one.  If someone brings me a board game or a fondue set then they are dead to me.  Here is the take-away message:

McCulloch said: “Our latest research has highlighted some fascinating insights into wedding list preference, including the fact that couples with the same surnames are more likely to have similar wedding gifts. If you are after the ultimate and most opulent wedding lists, full of luxury goods and sensational extravagances, then it’s keeping up with the Patels that really counts.”

The Kali Yuga is upon us all.

Here’s yet another story, this time in the NYT, about Malayalees tutoring American juvenile delinquents using porncams instant messaging and headphones. Where’s the fire button in this game? It ain’t real until desi teachers can simulate stabbing you in the head with a pencil. It’s not the Montessori method, it’s the belan method:

Greeshma Salin swiveled her chair to face the computer, slipped on her headset and said in faintly accented English, “Hello, Daniela.” Seconds later she heard the response, “Hello, Greeshma.” … Ms. Salin, 22, was in Cochin, a city in coastal southern India, and her student, Daniela Marinaro, 13, was at her home in Malibu, Calif…

They must go through two weeks of technical, accent and cultural training that includes familiarization with the differences between British English, widely used in India, and American English… “They learn to use ‘eraser’ instead of its Indian equivalent, ‘rubber,’ and understand that ‘I need a pit stop’ could mean ‘I need to go to the loo…’ ”

… she was “floored at first when 10-year old American students addressed me as Leela. All my teaching life in India, my students addressed me as Ma’am,” she said.

Fussy Americans, we shall school your haraam zaday spawn in ye olde English:

Dr. Marinaro said that he had misgivings when he first considered enrolling his daughters for English tutoring. “I thought, how could somebody from India teach them English?”

There’s something very reverse colonialist about this. Now instead of wealthy families importing teachers to provide a proper English education, we have… wealthy families importing teachers to provide a proper education in English. I can just hear the anti-Macaulay bruting about over Skype: ‘Your native culture is worthless! Jonathan Safran Foer, I spit on him! You sawdust-for-brains natives— read Rushdie, Roy, Khushwant Singh if you want to be proper Indian gentlemen.’

This part is actually true — we probably get more 1st gen - 2nd gen interaction on this blog than face-to-face, because it’s in text and only the essence remains:

Eliminating factors such as skin color, appearance, gender and accent made the Internet “more egalitarian than most classrooms,” he said.

Previous post here.

Vikram Chatwal’s One Dollar Curry finally posts a trailer and makes its lumpy appearance in London Sep. 23rd, a full year after its Paris debut (via AiM). Nip-slip dictates that we pixelate, you pervs.

Chowhounds take note — the concoction this character vends is true Punjabi-style curry. The plot is a Paris-based, cooking-centric takeoff on The Guru, the trailer features ‘Kamasutra’ body oil nestled in a leopard-print bikini, the site uses a cloying, annoying faux-Indic font, and Chatwal seems to have both a cross and ‘waheguru’ tattooed to his right arm.

Despite these less-than-stellar atmospherics, the soundtrack is catchy, and the movie doesn’t seem as bad as it so richly deserves to be given the hackneyed plot and inexperienced cast. It’s got an adorable, Ganesh-painted three-wheeler, the incantation of a six-degrees family tree is dead on, and Gabriella Wright is surely one of the cutest English-Irish-Portuguese-Mauritians out there.

Watch the trailer or listen to the soundtrack. Here’s the official site. Previous post here.

Almost a century ago, my great grandmother was married to a boy of her family’s choosing. This would be totally unremarkable (not to mention irrelevant to the post I’m commencing) except she was a seven-year old bride. When she was eighteen and suitably “womanly” (read: able to reproduce), she went to live with her husband of more than a decade; though he is now gone, she still loves him very much. I remember being very disturbed by this story the first few times I heard it. My mother would always soothe me and say that it all occurred during another time, that the practice of marrying off children wasn’t a part of modern India*.

*When I was a bit older, she explained the asterisk which was visible only in the guarded look her face took on whenever she said the phrase, “Modern India”; that fleeting change in her eyes represented the inevitable and unfortunate truth that “bad things” might still occur, but “only in rural, backwards places” which were still living in the shade of ignorance.

I was reading yesterday’s WaPo when I thought of all of this. The article I knew I’d write up for SM was about Savita Chaudhry, a striking 22-year old who at age 3 was arranged to marry a five-year old. Her matchmaking grandfather sealed the deal with a coconut and perplexed toddler-Savita spent the night with her new in-laws, to “consummate” the marriage symbolically before returning home with her parents. Everyone expected that Savita would willingly stand by her man once she was an adult, like my great-grandmother did.

I wonder if there were signs, when she was a wee three, that two decades later she’d grow up to be someone fierce.

Last year, the willowy young woman with the flashing dark eyes refused the entreaties of her “husband” and his family to join them in their village, several hundred miles from this small city in western India where she runs the family grocery shop. She is paying a steep price.

The Romans pioneered today’s victory and ticker tape parades in their Triumph ceremony.  Post-war, a long procession of captured loot, slaves, musicians, and, of course, the Legion in its finest regalia marched through the city for all citizens to lavish their praise.  The victorious General followed this procession in a priceless chariot waving to the audience like the beauty queen of his day.  Ever cognizant of human nature, the Roman council enlisted a slave who stood by the side of the general whispering the reminder that “all glory is fleeting”.  

Perennial SM television favorite Raj Bakhta may have to hang up his golden leaf crown as he confronts the newer, younger model this fall.   The latest season of the Apprentice will unveil the newest Desi reality-TV star, Ms Toral Mehta -

Toral, 29, currently a Vice President in the Capital Markets group of a major investment bank in New York City, is among the handful of officer level women in her group responsible for originating, structuring, negotiating and closing multi-million dollar business deals. Fluent in French, Hindi and English, Toral has traveled to more than 15 foreign countries over the course of her career, working with top business leaders in both the public and private sectors. A graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Toral has worked for some of the country’s leading financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and American Express. In addition, Toral is a skilled day trader and self-made multi-millionaire. Her recent investments include luxury real estate and upscale restaurant projects in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Toral now resides in New York City, and likes to spend her free time at her homes in Miami Beach and London.

A few Penn alums who know her mentioned that Toral has the chops to give Omarosa a run for the money in the drama and tension category.   Delicious.   Her interview Q&A certainly reveals she’s a PC-be-damned type -

When will you consider yourself “a success”?
I already do.

Have any previous Apprentice winners motivated or inspired you? If so, who and why? If not, what did you think of the winners?
No, and I don’t think about them.

Would you rather be stranded on a desert island with Donald, George, or Carolyn, and why?
I would take my chances floating at sea.

Heh.   She sounds charming.   Unlike Raj, for whom charm appeared to be just about the only thing in the show he had going, Toral’s victories sound rather less fleeting.  Let history and the history about to be made be the final judge whilst the denizens of Sepia Mutiny lavish ratings.

With all the bad news about the weather, I thought I would try to lighten things up a bit. It turns out that some people really like the rain, and South Asian countries are creating a monsoon tourism industry around them:

The Indian tourist industry has created tours and activities aimed at rain-starved Arab visitors. Open-air discotheques are billed as “rain dance floors.” Tour operators peddle sight-seeing trips, or “rain walks,” as relaxing excursions for “introspection” and “family bonding.”

The Indian state of Goa first started marketing itself as a monsoon destination about five years ago. Resorts in India and northern Pakistan began seeing more Arabs eager to experience the novelty of rain. Posters went up in travel agencies in the Gulf nations of U.A.E., Qatar and Kuwait, beckoning residents to “Come Feel the Rain.” Goa, on India’s west coast, says it attracted 55,000 Arab visitors during last year’s monsoon season, nearly three times as many as two years earlier.

“We’ve seen steady growth in business from them, all of it during the monsoon months,” between June and early September, says Pamela Mascarenhas, deputy director of Goa’s state department of tourism. [cite]

This is very clever counter-cyclical business development. Usually resorts are only bustling during the dry season, and have to make enough money then to cover their expenses during the rainy season. Now they can use their capacity year round, thus increasing their earnings and dramatically cutting their exposure to risk.

As a child, my father would have loved to go on a vacation like the one described. He grew up in a very dry part of Punjab and was fascinated to discover that there were places in the world that got over 10 feet of rain a year. He instantly wanted to move to one of these places and was disappointed when my grandfather wasn’t ready to uproot the family and move to a tropical rainforest!

I would’ve swore at the ref, too. (Thanks, Mankanwal):

Parents and coaches of a Calgary junior soccer team are angry after a Sikh player was barred from a game for insisting on wearing his religious head scarf.

Northwest United was competing in a tournament in this Vancouver suburb when a referee told 17-year-old Gurindar Durah he could not wear his patka, which young, religiously observant Sikhs are required to wear.

Mr. Durah swore at the referee and was ejected from the game. Then his team decided to walk out in protest.

Mad props to his team for standing up and walking out for their boy. Durah’s Coach, Mario Moretti supported his players, calling the tournament “done” the moment the ref brought up Gurindar’s patka:

“This is a decision our players made, not me. I supported my players. They all supported Gurindar, which was a no-brainer for us.”

Of course the people behind the tournament, in a dazzling display of deluded, oblivious lameness stated that Durah was barred from the tournament for “swearing”. Way to address the issue, there.

I’m somewhat shocked that it all went down north of us; I always thought of Cah-naw-duh as being literally and figuratively more chill. Beyond that, the Sikh community there is so accomplished and visible when compared to Amreeka. I unlearn something new, every day.

The acid-tongued, Yale-educated purveyor of limn places Shalimar the Clown above Rushdie’s ineffectual Fury but below his earlier works (thanks, Rani):

Although the novel is considerably more substantial than his perfunctory 2001 book, “Fury,” it lacks the fecund narrative magic, ebullient language and intimate historical emotion found in “Midnight’s Children” and “The Moor’s Last Sigh.” [Link]

She doesn’t buy the fundamental, near-magical-realism conceit of the protagonist, and without that buy-in the rest of the novel is colored:

Worse, “Shalimar the Clown” is hobbled by Mr. Rushdie’s determination to graft huge political and cultural issues onto a flimsy soap opera plot… But his clumsy suggestion that the title character becomes involved with a group of terrorists inspired by Al Qaeda because he has been jilted by his wife feels farcical in the extreme - unbelievable in terms of the actual story…

The main problem with this novel, however, is its title character, Shalimar… who emerges as a thoroughly implausible, cartoonish figure: an ardent lover turned murderous avenger, a clownish performer transformed into a cold-eyed terrorist. Whereas the other characters’ motives are complex and conflicted, Shalimar is depicted in diagrammatic, black-and-white terms. Indeed, he often seems like a reincarnation of the cardboardy Solanka from “Fury”… These are the sort of words spoken by mustache-twirling, snake-eyed villains in old cartoons…

Rushdie is ‘all about the extended, witty aside, the original, snarky insight,’ which she doesn’t seem to dig:

But others are thoroughly gratuitous asides, included, it seems, simply for the sake of emptying out the author’s archive of recorded and imagined images, and they weigh down the story, diminishing its focus and its momentum.

I’m left wondering whether this review is more a criticism of the genre and Rushdie’s fundamental style than the individual tome. We’ll know soon — the book is officially out tomorrow, though you may have nabbed a copy this weekend.

Previous posts: one, two, three, four, five, six

Per his wishes, slain U.S. citizen and Army soldier Hatim Kathiria was laid to rest in his home town of Dahod in the state of Gujarat.  The BBC reports:

Thousands of mourners have attended the funeral in India’s Gujarat state of an Indian-born US soldier killed in Iraq.

Hatim Kathiria, a 23-year-old Muslim, who died in a rocket attack in Baghdad on 22 August, was buried in his home town of Dahod.

I hate to sound cynical on such an occasion but this is the first time I’ve seen such a large public Muslim funeral reported in the media that was not for a “martyr” or an innocent victim of collateral damage.  I know this is because such “regular” stories are not as sensational and so the media is uninterested, but it’s good to see an actual soldier being honored for giving his life in battle. 

His mother, Shirin, said: “He was my only son. His ambitions took him to the US and then to Iraq. We lost him, but he died a martyr’s death.”

Damn, maybe I spoke too soon.  It sucks that the word martyr has been co-opted by terrorists to the point where it’s hard to distinguish a true martyr (and I’m not sure if I know what qualifies a true martyr).

Of course there was also some drama that took place at the funeral.  Kathiria’s parents apparently didn’t know he was married.  Probably because the girl wasn’t Indian:

The crowd fell over each other to catch a glimpse of his Anglo Indian widow Lisse Jean Pierre, who reached Dahod along with the body.

Amid rumours that Kathiria’s family was unaware about the marriage, which took place earlier this year, a jeans and T-shirt clad Ms Lisse - also a US army specialist - met her in-laws. However, sources said the women of the Bohra community were not allowed to talk to her. She was also kept away from the media, which was present in large number to cover the incident.

So tight was the security around the Hussaini Mosque, where the last rituals took place that not even his close relatives were allowed inside. “Normally, Bohra community is better known for its trading prowess but we are proud of Hatim as he joined the US Army and laid down his life for a cause,” Kathiria’s cousin Abuzar Mirchiwala said.

Sigh.  Some things never change.

The late American astronaut Kalpana Chawla is the subject of the newest comic book (or graphic novel) in the Amar Chitra Katha series (thanks for the tip Cecilia).  The BBC reports:

The life and achievements of an Indian-American astronaut who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003 has now been illustrated in comic form.

An Indian publishing house has released the comic book based on Kalpana Chawla, the first American female astronaut of Indian origin to have gone on a National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) mission…

“If Kalpana Chawla inspires even two more students to go out there and achieve what they are dreaming for, well, then that’s our job done really,” she said.

About 437 titles have been released under the comic series and 90 million copies sold.

That should be an interesting read.  I am curious as to how much fiction might be added into her real story to play to the young Indian audience that is most likely to pick up this book.  Likewise, I want to see how much nationalism might be displayed by the comic book character.  Bottom line though is whatever gets young kids interested in space and science is good to see.

Fifteen-year old Meghna Pithadia says her ambition is to become an astronaut.

She says a comic on Chawla’s life is a great way of introducing her to small children.

“They can come to know about her, what was her life, what was her history. It’s a good thing, they can learn from her.”

Nine-year old Sakina Machiswalla said she read a little of the comic book and realised that girls can do everything that boys can do.

“She wanted to become an astronaut and she went out there and became one. If boys can do it then so can girls. Now I have a goal that I must do something big in life.”

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Just about any way you slice it, life presents us all with some pretty heavy challenges.  Especially in India.  Especially in Kerala.  And especially if you’re, uh, short.   The Beeb reports -

Dwarfs in the southern Indian state of Kerala have come together to fight for their rights.

The Kerala Small Men Association has 300 members across the state and is demanding what it calls “special recognition” from the government.

Why the crisis?   Well, apparently a former, primary avenue of employment has been beat down due to shifting consumer tastes and globalization -

“Earlier, we were getting opportunities to work in the circus but that industry has collapsed and most of us are out of a job.”

The universe finds ways to create balance.   And politics always finds ways to create conflicting special interests -

The [small men] association’s height limit is 135cm (54 inches - [4’ 6”])…The state also has a Tall Men of Kerala association with 600 members over six feet (1.82) metres.

6 feet qualifies you as a Tall Man in Kerala?   Dang, the Punjabi’s are gonna kick our butts.

‘Could you please come get me?’ M.I.A. says she used to work in a telemarketing call center selling software over the phone (thanks, Punjabi Boy). Could you get any more desi?

… she was working in a call centre selling computer software to people in Ohio. She’d once worked the same job in LA.

The strain of being so mainstream drove her into Compton

… having fallen in love with hip-hop, she was going to move to South Central LA and become a gangsta’s bitch. It was a move both rebellious and reactionary. ‘I’m glad I went that far into it. I was the best hoochie on the West Coast at the time. I had the best clothes ‘cos I was coming from England and really good at shoplifting. I had Versace on before Lil’ Kim started rapping about it ‘cos the only place I could steal at was Harvey Nicks, where it was sooo easy. So I studied, like, the whole thing out in Compton: how the best you could do is be there for your man, be really good at sex, throw barbecues in the park, have babies and keep that unit together with the money that you get.’

Sadly, her black audiences aren’t getting her — she’s not quite Maya Vanilli, but gangsta isn’t totally prêt-à-porter:

This audience don’t understand why she’s covered head to toe in a baggy Sri Lankan print blouse and billowy trousers with its flashes of green in the print, which turn out, on closer inspection, to be the Incredible Hulk’s fist.

But she does have compelling memories of poverty in Sri Lanka:

… malnutrition had left Maya without most of her teeth. One of her last childhood memories of Sri Lanka is having her gums cut open with rice grain. ‘They don’t even do it fast, it took 45 minutes. But I wanted teeth so bad … you don’t understand.’ She came to Britain waiting for them to grow in and would hold her lips over her gums, staring long hours at herself in the mirror.

I suppose ‘terrorist’ isn’t usually mentioned in the biodata:

… her mother met her father through an arranged marriage, having been told he was an engineer. ‘Ever since she was a baby she was raised to be the housewife that all Sri Lankan women are meant to be. She couldn’t play out the fantasy ‘cos she didn’t have a husband. Him going away was worse for her. All the women were like, “He didn’t even die? He just left you with two children, what’s wrong with you? Fuck him starting a revolution, he isn’t at home!”’

Bold strides by Muslim women this weekend. First Sania Mirza, now Hammasa Kohistani, who was just crown Miss England (thanks, Punjabi Boy!):

Hammasa Kohistani, 18, said she was delighted to have been selected to represent England in the Miss World championships.
The brunette, who speaks six languages including Russian, Persian and French, looked ecstatic as the crown was placed on her head before a cheering crowd in Liverpool’s Olympia Theatre. [link]

Well, the BBC says five languages, but who am I to quibble. The Times of India deluged the poor girl in a typical purple gush:

LONDON: Move over our very own, Miss India. Miss England is on her way to Bollywood, the big time and beckoning stardust, now that a Muslim teenager with central Asian roots and a British accent has been crowned England’s most beautiful woman.

But stepped back for sociological analysis:

Kohistani, who was born in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, after her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan, is being touted in a less-than-overwhelmed Britain as the first Muslim to be crowned Miss England.

With beauty contests increasingly regarded as a politically incorrect and chauvinistic relic of a darker British age of cruising for seaside holiday entertainment, Kohistani’s victory has been kept off the Sunday front pages and the slender television news agenda.

But some commentators have expressed an interest in the social and ethnic change represented by Kohistani’s extraordinary win of the England crown, over and above 38 other peaches-and-cream complexioned ‘real’ English roses. [link]

Of course, this wouldn’t be a story about Islam without controversy somewhere:

Among those Miss Kohistani beat was another Muslim entrant, Sarah Mendly, 23, who was voted Miss Nottingham.

Miss Mendly had been among the favourites but her entry caused controversy when Liverpool’s Islamic institute called on her to pull out because contestants are often scantily clad. [link]

If you squint, doesn’t Hammasa look a bit like Julia Roberts?

Related posts: 1, 2

In a battle of 18-year-old millionaires, Sania Mirza lost to Maria Sharapova 6-2, 6-1, in what seemed like the world’s shortest match at just 59 minutes. Ouch. She couldn’t get her first serve in and relied on a soft second serve. Sharapova slashed that serve down the line for winners over and over, like a boxer who’s found an opponent’s weakness and just keeps riding it.

Mirza committed twice as many unforced errors as Sharapova. She didn’t do enough cross-court shots, sticking with lots of straight, fastball returns; Sharapova moved her all over the court. On the plus side, Mirza hit harder than Sharapova, who let lots of fast returns by her, even those within forehand range.

The uncle-commentator tried to put a positive spin on Sania’s showing after the match; meanwhile, I rocked back and forth: ‘ouch, Elliot…’ CBS showed a dorky fan sign straight out of Bride and Prejudice: ‘Sania: our precious Indian jewel.’ And man, the Sharapova squeal is annoying.

>> Watch the match
(196 MB DivX; you need a BitTorrent downloader: Windows, Mac)

Previous posts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine

The Sania Mirza - Maria Sharapova match will be broadcast on CBS today after 3:15 pm (U.S. Eastern). Mirza’s last matchup of this caliber was against Serena Williams at the Australian Open. With Sharapova the #1 U.S. Open seed and #2 worldwide, Mirza is a classic underdog:

Sharapova didn’t seem too concerned about the occasion. She’s never seen Mirza play and doesn’t know anything about her. Though her father, Yuri, and hitting partner, Michael Joyce, have done some scouting, Sharapova said she’s unlikely to heed their advice. [Link]

Sharapova said she doesn’t know much about her opponent’s feisty personality or her game. (Note to Maria: Keep it away from Sania’s forehand.) Sharapova also can hit a pretty good forehand. When she strikes the ball with her racket, she puts an exclamation point on her velocity by making a screeching noise that resonates throughout Arthur Ashe Stadium. [Link]

The broadcasters have even gotten the memo on how to say Mirza’s name, though I heard ‘Mrrr-zuh’ a few times on Friday. The U.S. Open’s resident Eeyore mopes:

This first-time match up between two personality-laden and fiery youngsters could be a prelude to many great matches to come. Mirza owns one of the biggest forehands on the women’s tour… But Sania had bigger holes than Maria does: a mediocre first serve, questionable conditioning and movement and a general lack of decision-making. Sharapova has a much better serve, a more solid backhand and more experience in big matches.

The only way that Sania can win this match is if Maria has a very down day on her serve, because Mirza returns with incredible ferocity. Essentially, if Mirza zones early and often, she has a minor chance at an upset, but Sharapova will make mincemeat of Sania’s serves, own her from the backhand side and not give her a chance to breathe. [Link]

Sri Lanka is a tiny place. Maybe that's given us a Napoleonic Complex, maybe we're tired of being compared to snot. Throw in the war, the tsunami, the suicide rates...we know we can't play with the big boys. Ain't no way we can show them up.

Until now:

President Chandrika Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, in China on a state visit, sent messages of sympathy to Washington while her government contributed $25,000 through the American Red Cross.

So sure, it might not seem like much to our corporate-dough-raking readers. (coughmyannualsalarycough.) But that would be missing the point:

In a turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance. Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel. [link]

But Condi, FEMA and the Prez seem to have differing views on accepting the aid:

With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided "no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.

Still, Bush told ABC-TV: "I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."

"You know," he said, "we would love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well, and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed. And there's no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city."

As the news reports and first-person accounts roll in, it looks increasingly, incredibly clear that we have not been taking care of our own business well. Not well at all.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who crossed party lines to support Bobby Jindal for Governor) exploded with frustration in a local radio interview last Thursday:

I told him [the President] we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.[link]

As I’ve watched the news over the past week I’ve started to consider if I should purchase a gun.  I hate guns.  I’ve only held one once.  I have had one too many dreams where I was not only shot, but mutilated by gunfire.  I’ve convinced myself that I must have died from a GSW in my past life and so I’ve wanted nothing to do with them.  Indian families don’t really own guns.  Am I wrong?  Maybe I am just sheltered but I just don’t know any Indian families that own guns.  Most of my first generation relatives have never even mentioned gun ownership.  In India my family didn’t own a gun…well except for an air gun which they used to shoot geckos off the wall.  I could imagine that South Asian hoteliers, convenience store owners, and wannabe thugs are probably packing, but outside of that I’d be surprised.  How many South Asians do you know that either hunt or are members of the NRA?  Not many I’ll bet.  Recently I tried to talk my younger brother into buying a weapon.  In the state in which he resides you aren’t a man without a piece.  People wear them in plain sight on their waist he tells me.  Two weeks ago a man in a pick-up truck pulled up beside him as he walked along the road and asked if he was packing.  “No,” my brother replied.  “You should be,” advised the man.  It isn’t only bears and wolves but some crazies (everyone tells him so) where my brother lives that makes a gun a good idea.

So why aren’t brown folk strapped?  Part of it must be that many South Asian immigrants (and even those born here) don’t understand the technical details of the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd Amendment.  They didn’t need a gun in India so why would they here?  Why does it seem like we have a “duty” to carry guns in America?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Link]

The founding fathers in their infinite wisdom and fresh from the Revolutionary War, wanted to make sure that the populace had armed state militias that could rise up against the federal government if it made a move toward autocracy.  The phrase “well regulated Militia” however, was a loophole as wide as a football field and has led to the largest rate of gun violence in the world (guns do kill people).  The founding fathers also worked in another rule into the Constitution that also has bearing on this past week’s events in New Orleans.  Many people don’t know that the U.S. military is forbidden by the Constitution from acting (using their guns) within the borders of the United States.  A friend of mine who spent 8 years in the U.S. Army (and who was born and lived in India until she was twelve) asked me earlier this week why the military didn’t just take over down there.  I explained to her about habeas corpus (which is incidentally my favorite Latin phrase).

The right of habeas corpus has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject.

Folks the inevitable has happened.  As more people visit SM (thanks!) our hosting costs are rising.  Every time someone clicks on one of our postings it takes up bandwidth on the servers that host our site.  Last month’s bill spiked to an amount much larger than we can handle.  Some of us are poor students.

We feel a bit guilty for having to ask for donations right now, especially since we’d rather you gave to a charities in support of disasters like Katrina and Niger, but if you can spare a few dollars (whatever you think we are worth) we’d appreciate it. If a bunch of you just donate $1 to $5 that might be enough to do the trick.  That’s less than a beer at the bar tonight.  Just click this button:

We aren’t yet ready to sell out to the man! Thanks in advance!

As of 1 pm ET, this is the lead story on the U.S. Open’s home page (thanks, Sania spazz):

7-6, 6-4: she rides lions, not wings. It’s the furthest Mirza has come in any major tournament to date. Congrats! She’ll face her most difficult test yet in the next round, Maria Sharapova. I nominate myself for the après tennis

The Beeb has the play-by-play. For snarky commentary, we turn to the ToI:

Eighteen companies offered her sponsorship deals worth one million pounds in the span of a week, when she was still ranked No 134… As one leading sports journalist pointed: “Sania Mirza’s serve won’t win any awards for design, and her toss is so high you can have a cigarette waiting for it to come down. She is a few biryanis heavier that an elite athlete can afford to be, and her acceleration on court is more Ford than Ferrari… But no big deal; this you can teach an 18-year-old. What you can’t is chutzpah, and toughness, and Sania Mirza has both.” [Link]

One expert’s prophetic guess:

Mirza goes for forehand winners like an alley cat to a wounded mouse… It’s all power, all the time… Both serve well, but Mirza still needs to improve her conditioning… just the chance of getting a shot at Maria Sharapova in the next round is enough to fire up these two to go to the wall in an attempt to win this contest and get to play on a show court against the blonde princess. Mirza wants it more… [Link]