Breaking News which is Meaningless: A brown-ish designer, Ashley Isham, is one of the four people America’s Next (Nowhere Near) Top Model contestants go on a go-see with during this episode’s “challenge” in London. Contrary to every model friend I’ve ever had, THESE hapless girls are being told to wear something in the “style” of each designer, i.e. wear preppiness to Ben Sherman versus the typical jeans and no makeup MY friends rocked whenever they did anything.

The twist? The girls have to assemble their punk, preppy, mod and BOLLYWOOD outfits at some flea market. Winner gets a photo-shoot. A Bollywood photoshoot. (UPDATE: There ‘tis, above/left.) Oh my. What any of this has to do with being a supermodel is beyond this bear of little brain. Lovely Malayalee Julie of ANTM3, we hardly knew ye, and ye would’ve rocked the shit out of this trifling test.

With the words, “so, look BOLLYWOOD” still ringing in my ears as four confused girls run off to buy something, anything sequined— but will they look appropriate for a frolic through the Swiss countryside?— I hereby notify you that this train wreck is on UPN RIGHT NOW on the east coast. You mutineers on my home coast still have 2.75 hours to get ready for this spicy jelly (Thanks, ANTM fan Rani!).

Liveblogging, after the jump…

I came over to Sepia Mutiny to write about this and discovered that something similar already is being thoroughly canvassed in comments here. Ah, well.

Recently I’ve marked the onset of each winter by complaining about the people who complain about the de-Christianization of Christmas. My last post on the matter focused particularly on the bizarre spectacle of some Christian extremists who are offended when Wal-Mart fails to greet them with Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, and who assume they are being discriminated against because Christmas, unlike Kwanzaa and Hannukah, didn’t have a section separated from Holiday on the giant retailer’s website. I found their desire to have their religion associated with trees and Barbies very bizarre, concluding “Personally, I’d be annoyed if paintball places declared themselves to be celebrating Holi.”

Then I stopped and thought about whether I’d feel differently in India, where I’d be in the majority rather than in a small minority. Maybe there I’d feel that something was being taken from me, that my place in the majority was being disrespected, if the day before Diwali, someone merely wished me “Happy Holidays” in an attempt to be inclusive of Eid (which this year came the day after Diwali). Can anyone who’s been in India more recently than I recall instances of Hindu holidays being traditionally tied to secular items, and Hindus’ being offended when the secular items were dissociated from the religious holiday?

Speaking of commercial acknowledgments of faith, I’m not offended, but I am a little puzzled that my planner notes Christian, Jewish, Muslim and even Buddhist holidays, but nothing of Hinduism. I think the maker, Quo Vadis, is based in Canada, but surely there aren’t so many more Buddhists or Muslims in the Great White North than there are Hindus?

UPDATE: Here’s one way to get a multicultural holiday — put bindis on Mary and Joseph.

While shop window designers are offending our readers by sexualizing Indian religious icons, Indian authorities are busy putting the “hi” back into “hijra” - their new hospitality guide makes it very clear to all those dirty over-sexed foreign visitors that they must behave themselves in a supremely chaste fashion when in-country.

A 20 page booklet has been prepared to instruct visitors to Ajmer, Rajasthan, in the “proper” way to respect Indian sensibilities. Here are some of the rules:

• Men should never touch women in public, even to help a woman out of a car, unless the lady is very elderly or infirm
  
• In Indian culture… men socialise with men, and women with women
  
• Married couples in Asia do not hug, hold hands or kiss in public. Even embracing at airports and train stations is considered out of the question
  
• Generally it is improper for women to speak with strangers on the street and especially to strike up a casual conversation [Link]

Hotels and restaurants have been instructed to give this booklet out to new arrivals, as if to discourage tourists from staying a moment longer than originally planned. Hotel owners have been asked to post these rules prominently, in large font, on their walls even though it’s self-touching not other-touching that leads to poor vision. A shorter version is being prepared for the back of hotel receipts, perhaps to remind post-coital couples that cuddle time is now officially over. Luckily, these rules do not yet have the force of law, and are “merely” suggestions.

Penises of Paradise: You could be forgiven for thinking a post with this subtitle refers to the prowess of the male Mutineers. Alas, our significant others demand truth in advertising. Actually, our old friend Beads of Paradise has thrown a new wrinkle into its exotica-dealing ways: it’s encircled Ganesh with a garland of penises. A dangle-sutra. A dick-lace.

I’m bemused by the dildos strewn around the feet of the idols, and the well-hung Buddhas dangling off Christmas trees. Is this Inuit-Hindu totemic mashup? Is it a newfangled fertility ritual? Are they invoking the subcontinental symbol of disgrace, the garland of shoes? Andrés Serrano would be proud.

Color me unimpressed by the gonads on display. Here’s what a real New York set looks like, from this year’s Halloween parade (NSFW after the jump).

Reader Dhaavak reports that he narrowly escaped a violent in-car mugging at the hands of a criminal pretending to be a construction worker. It’s the prototypical Good Samaritan horror story. Glad you’re safe!

I was approaching the stop light when a man with a construction worker’s safety gear stepped out of the side and waved at me to stop… The construction worker walked up to my side and said that he needs a jump for his truck… “Sure guy. Come in”, I said, asking the guy to get in.

… he caught hold of my neck with both hands and started choking me. “You are about to die”, he said as he squeezed.

It was a powerful grip and I started struggling. I had my left leg half way out and I kept trying to push the door open. He was quite strong and pulled me towards him with the neck. I used my left hand to try to pry open his hands and tried to honk the horn with my right knee. “Don’t kick open the door”, he warned, “Hand me your wallet, or I will kill you”. I got a couple of fingers open and then all of a sudden, he let go.

I leaped out of the door and turned around to face him. I noticed my lights were flashing and the horn was honking. I had inadvertently pressed the panic button… [Link]

Lesson learned:

Do not ever get into someone else’s car or allow some stranger into your own… If someone approaches you for help, lower the window just a little, offer to call on the cell-phone, but don’t let anyone enter your car. [Link]

There’s a silver lining. By nearly getting himself killed, Dhaavak pulls himself off Abhi’s list:

(13) dhaavak- This is the most boring blog EVER. [Link]

Read the whole thing.

Yesterday the Canadian government declared that two of its citizens, both humanitarian workers, had been abducted in Iraq. It decided to keep their identities secret for the time being. CBC News reported:

The Canadians were among four people - all humanitarian workers - who disappeared.

Media reports say the other two hostages are a British man believed to be in his 70s, and an American. A British Foreign Office spokeswoman has identified the missing Briton as Norman Kember.

Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Graham says the government will do everything it can to help free the hostages. He did not provide any details.

Foreign Affairs spokesperson Rodney Moore told CBC.ca on Monday that the department is “closely monitoring the situation.” It is “not giving any names,” of the individuals involved, he said, since “we have to respect the families” of the people taken hostage.

Today the identities of the two men were released (thanks for the tip Dhaavak). They are Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney:

James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, both members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, were among four aid workers abducted Sunday at gunpoint, the organization confirmed in a statement late Tuesday.

Mr. Loney, 41, a community worker from Toronto, had spent many years working with the city’s homeless before joining the organization in 2000. He had been leading the group before he was abducted.

Mr. Sooden, 32, a Canadian electrical engineer, was described by his family as being “peaceful and fun-loving and he is known to be passionate about the plight of the underprivileged around the globe.”

Back in May of 2003 Indian American Biswanath Halder went on a shooting spree on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. CBS news reported at the time:

The 62-year-old man accused of a shooting spree at a prestigious Cleveland university had military training with the Indian army and a grudge against an employee, authorities said Saturday.

Biswanath Halder, armed with two handguns, allegedly killed one person, wounded two others and held police at bay for seven hours Friday in a shiny, swirling building filled with twisting corridors that complicated his capture.

Halder wore a bulletproof vest and a wig glued on “a kind of World War II Army helmet” as he walked the halls of Case Western Reserve University’s Peter B. Lewis Building and fired hundreds of rounds, police Chief Edward Lohn said.

“There’s a trail of blood throughout,” Lohn said. “It was a cat-and-mouse game.”

Now, nearly three years later, Halder’s trial has begun (thanks for the tip Joyce J.):

“This case is about two things, arrogance and selfishness,” assistant county prosecutor Rick Bell told the jury in the Cuyahoga County common pleas court yesterday.

Halder, accused of killing student Norman Wallace and injuring two other persons during the siege on may 9, 2003, has repeatedly said information he considered vital to his own life’s work was destroyed.

The defence position is that Halder was trying to protect “mankind” from a cyber criminal. [Link]

In honor of the upcoming (Thursday),

The World Community Grid team has announced the FightAIDS @ Home project. By downloading their screensaver you donate your computer’s idle processing power to the project. The increased processing power will hopefully allow researchers to more aggressively and quickly screen possible HIV-fighting drugs. [Link]

AIDS is an increasing problem in India:

India has had a sharp increase in the estimated number of HIV infections, from a few thousand in the early 1990s to around 5.1 million children and adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2003. [Link]

This software is similar to the SETI @ home project that was popular a few years ago, no more intrusive but with (IMHO) a much higher probability of success. A full explanation of the program follows for the geeks amongst us:

This is a photo from a NYT article on the sexing up of chess. Their caption was: “The model Carmen Kass in a five-minute blitz match against Viswanathan Anand last year.” I’m sure our readers can do better than that, especially given his … interesting expression.

Sikh khanda	Star Wars Rebel Alliance	Old Mazda logo	Flag of Iran

Graphic convergence, or looking to Sikh religious tradition for inspiration?

Related posts: Khan Noonien Singh, Camping while brown

The new pope of the Catholic empire has put the rebel alliance of Assisi and its dialogue with Hindus and Buddhists in check:

Peace, love and tolerance: you disgust me

In a decree published Nov. 19, the pope placed the Franciscans in Assisi under the… control of a new local bishop… The edict overturned autonomy granted in 1969 by Pope Paul VI that in effect made the Franciscans ambassadors to peace movements and to outside cultural and religious groups… So far, [Pope Benedict’s] reign has been an exercise in the tightening of practice to match church doctrine as he sees it… [Link]

Rise, Lord Ratzinger. What bugs the new pope about those hippie-dippy Franciscan friars: respectful, tolerant interfaith exchange. Why, those reasonable bastards.

In the view of critics, few places within the church challenged Catholic certainties more flamboyantly than Assisi. In particular, interfaith meetings held in the hilltop town appeared to them to be a kind of food court of dangerous relativist thinking.

… Benedict was settling scores with the Franciscans over a “carnival-like” interfaith meeting they hosted in 1986. Voodoo priests, American Indian dancers and African animists took part… The Franciscans went beyond agreed-upon rules by allowing pagan worship practices to take place on church property, and Benedict “never forgave the Franciscan community for the excesses…” [Link]

Voodoo, Native Americans and animists are fine, but what really gets the good pope’s robes in a twist are Hindus and Buddhists:

St. Francis basilica at Assisi

“… during [the previous pope’s] voyage to India, he had given speeches of unprecedented openness toward that country’s religions, and at Bombay had even let a priestess of the god Shiva anoint his forehead with a sacred Hindu symbol…”

Some of the city’s churches were allotted for the prayers of Buddhists, Hindus, and African animists, as if these buildings were neutral containers, void of any indelible Christian value. The Buddhists set up a shrine of Buddha on the altar of the local Church of Saint Peter. The absence from Assisi of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [the new pope]… was not improperly interpreted as… self-distancing… [Link]

Hinduism, he said, offers ‘false hope’; it guarantees ‘purification’ based on a ‘morally cruel’ concept of reincarnation resembling ‘a continuous circle of hell’…… [Link]

M.I.A. says in an Urb magazine interview that she took a lot of flak for licensing ‘Galang’ for a Honda Civic ad:

Ahh, fake hipster outrage keeps me warm at night. Our own Sajit (Gandhi, not Ghandi) defends the TV spot in the story. The title’s a little familiar, too:

Read the whole thing.

Update: Another mag cover (thanks, Amardeep). Spin, spin, spin.

Related posts: Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Lolita Was a Man Eatah

Vijaypat Singhania, the 67-year-old Richard Branson of India, set a new hot air balloon altitude record in Bombay on Saturday at 69,000 feet:

Indian Vijaypat Singhania has claimed a new world record for the highest flight in a hot air balloon, after a voyage lasting several hours. The 67-year-old textile tycoon soared past 21,000 metres (69,000 feet) but fell just short of his original target. He travelled in a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon as high as a 22-storey building… [Link]

The temperature outside the balloon was expected to fall as low as minus 93 C and oxygen was negligible. Before taking off, Singhania stressed the importance of the pressurized cabin, saying that if he was exposed to such temperatures his “blood would boil.” [Link]

This is at a height no living being had been and is nearly two-and-half times the height of Mount Everest. [Link]

At least 17 aviators have attempted to beat the existing high altitude balloon record… “The aviation industry shudders at adventure flights. I chose India because it is my home and I feel [it] needs to be on the world aviation map… This flight is both dangerous and demanding…”

Most hot air balloons are powered by propane gas, but propane burners have never been tested at this altitude. [Link]

Singhania is a men’s suiting entrepreneur — I guarantee it:

Before taking off Mr Singhania, who chairs Indian textile giant Raymond Group, told the BBC that flying was in his blood. [Link]

Like SpaceShipOne’s record shot, he ran into difficulties:

The unexpectedly strong winds lifted off his balloon from its moorings prematurely, even before he was fully ready. Whereas the balloon should have taken off vertically, the gust dragged him westwards towards the sea at a dangerously low altitude. At this juncture a rescue helicopter set off in pursuit and chief co-coordinator Andy Elson radioed to Vijaypat that he should ditch the balloon into the sea. [Link]

The Toronto Jewish Film Festival ran this priceless ad in May this year (thanks, Areem):

This meshugenah has chutzpah. Remember, ‘shalom’ is just ‘salaam’ pronounced by a Bengali

Related posts: Mizo Jews, L’Shana Tovah, L’Shana Tovah Everybody, Asian invasion, white flight

I am a total Scrooge when it comes to the holidays. Halloween is the last great day of the year in my opinion. After that I just hold on until Martin Luther King Day. It's the usual rant of course. I hate that the holidays are all about consumerism. I could use a new digital camera because mine broke last week, but that is the extent to which I will participate in these holidays. Virgin Mobile is trying to sell some cell phones during the holiday crunch. In fact, they have decided that they will create a brand new holiday called Chrismahanukwanzakah that will maybe appeal to...well I don't know, agnostics maybe? There is no holiday for agnostics after all. Their ad campaign includes a cast of characters that can only be described as freaks. This includes a Hindu Santa Claus, and a pair of Hasidic Jews that sing about a dreidel made out of meat that they will eat and poop out. If you see the commercial on TV you will see that the Hindu Santa Claus plays to stereotype. The clip on the website is even lamer. Here are the lyrics:

Silent Chrismahanukwanzakah night
Holy Chrismahanukwanzakah night
Chrismahanukwanzakah is come
Chrismahanukwanzakah is bright
My new phone vibrate and tickle me
Holy guacamole it play .mp3
Can I have some chutney please
Can I have some chutney please

You know, cause a Hindu Santa Claus would be a chutney eater. Ba humbug.

Update: See last year's ad campaign.

A long way from Lake Como

The trailer is cut like an action thriller, but it’s actually a thought-provoking, 2œ hour-long film on the moral ambiguity of America’s oil dependency. The thrust of the story, based on a nonfiction book called See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, is that the U.S. uses the CIA to set up pliant dictators in oil-producing countries instead of those who might promote democracy. A Texan oil CEO utters this similarly realpolitik line (paraphrased): ‘The Chinese economy isn’t growing as fast as it could because they can’t get enough oil. And I’m damn proud of that.’

The movie opens with a shot of desi oil workers struggling to get onto a crammed Tata bus. Later in the movie, a shady oil company merger triggers layoffs. A Sikh foreman gets on a megaphone to Pakistani workers, telling them they’ve been fired, they must surrender their badges, and unless they find another job soon they have to report to immigration within two weeks and be deported.

Casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned ArabsThe Urdu-speaking Pakistanis are portrayed as naïve young villagers who just want to make a better life for themselves. Two of the young men become radicalized after racist Arab security guards beat them. They end up in a madrassa limned in sympathy, in stark contrast to the unwelcoming society around them. A striking-looking Arab evangelist preys on their insecurities and inevitably turns them into C4 fodder.

If you think that’s a spoiler, you haven’t been paying attention to desi roles in the movies these days I’m noticing an odd trend at the movies. Like The War Within, they pick Pakistanis rather than Arabs to portray suicidal terrorists. It doesn’t at all fit with recent history as most Pakistan-based suicide attackers have focused on India. They don’t seem as attached to pan-Arabism as, well, Arabs, and 2nd gen idiots in London notwithstanding, they’ve got nowhere near the presence of Arabs in global terrorism. It seems more and more like casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned Arabs. On the other hand, perhaps this casting was driven by simple plot imperative.

In 1998, Nidha Mubdi, a student at St. John’s University in New York, discovered during a routine checkup that she had leukemia. After much searching through SAMAR, a donor named Himesh Kapadia stepped forward:

The bone marrow donation saved her life, but Mubdi’s kidneys began failing because of chemotherapy, and she’s been on dialysis for the last five years. But earlier this month, Derek Ivery, a friend from Queens College, gave her one of his kidneys, a much more serious operation:

Mubdi’s family members were tested to see if they could donate a kidney, but no one came up as a match. [Link]

Ivery, of Queens, decided to step forward after Mubdi put out a call for a donor on the Internet. They had met when when they were student advisers at Queens College… Mubdi’s grateful father, Shelley Mubdi, a Bangladeshi immigrant who is president of Medina Masjid, a Manhattan mosque, called Ivery, a “courageous man…”

Ivery, 26, and Mubdi, 25, were resting comfortably at New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital last night after the nine-hour operation. [Link]

Muslims in Fatehpura burned an effigy of Sania Mirza on Tuesday. Miss Mirza’s transgression? Her publicly stated views on S-E-X. (Thanks, Raj!)

Muslim leaders said that their religion and holy book ‘Quran’ do not permit her to make such statment.[linky]

The article linked above provided no clue to the naughty view that burned poor Sania. Some googling turned up this:

She was quoted as saying that whether before or after marriage, the most important matter was that sex was safe. [linku]

Whoa, nellie. I knew SM (great initials on her, by the way) had plenty of balls, I just thought they were for tennis. Of course, there’s more to the story; Miss Thing had to recant.

In a statement issued in Hyderabad, Mirza said pre-marital sex could not be justified.
She said she was upset that her image had been maligned by misquotes and that such a non-issue had become a controversy.

We already know about the creepy effigy destruction. Check out how the tennis star’s detractors voiced their displeasure:

Some activists burned Mirza’s effigy and shouted “Sania Mirza down down”.

I’m not touching that last one. ;)

Happy holidays, sweet readers. Today is Black Friday and that’s actually a flawless description of the moment I’m typing in now. I’m feeling rather overwhelmed by the dark…mostly because I’m staying with my little sister and she’s sleeping, so I can’t turn on any lights. ;) I’m also supposed to be vewy, vewy quiet, so she can hunt wabbits in her dweams, but she’ll have to tolerate the clickety-clacketing, since I have pirated wifi and as long as I have the mighty iBook and a connection, the 55 will go on. :)

I spent my day in transit; six hours of flying through three airports (with a two-hour layover) and one misplaced, gate-checked, carry-on bag later, I was back in the state where I once played as a toddler. I arrived in mukluks, the memory of last night/the season’s first gorgeous snow fall in DC dominating my thoughts like a new crush. Still swoony for Frosty, I stopped cold once I left the artificial climate of the airport and saw…a giant cactus. In 70 degree balminess. What an amazing country this is, from one end to the other.

My ultra-vegetarian family never did celebrate Thanksgiving (“such a typically American approach…to be grateful ONCE a year”), so I didn’t mind traveling today, but I looked at my fellow passengers on each PACKED leg of the journey and wondered about them. Surely they were trying to get home to a TurDuckEn or something brined or deep-fried. Maybe it even tasted familiar.

What did you eat? Did you create your own holiday with the family you chose vs the one you were born to, or did you go home? Did anyone gobble an all “brown” feast, with nary a cranberry in sight? Where YOU responsible for all that cooking?

Thanksgiving is for family but it’s usually staged by women. My Uncle in Maryland was a rare gent who cooked with Auntie, side-by-side; she handled the Amreekan fare while he made a most excellent sambar, to go with the Mallu portion of the menu. I remember adoring him for that. Most of my friends, no matter their ethnicity, had just their mothers stressing out over creation.

Women are the keepers of traditions, the path to religion and the source of life itself, which is why the following statistic (Thanks, Kenyandesi) left me queasy:

One in six women worldwide suffers domestic violence — some battered during pregnancy — yet many remain silent about the assaults, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

:+:

Each week I throw out themes because you seem to enjoy them, but I try to emphasize that no one minds what you write your nanofiction about, so long as you just write. So go ahead, write anything, and then leave your contribution (or link) to our beloved weekly project in the comments below.

There’s an old saying that on Christmas day, the only biz going are Chinese restaurants packed with Jewish patrons. When the other 80-90% of the country is distracted by holidays, superbowls, and the like, some interesting, if otherwise overlooked, ethnic combos rise above the fold.

I’m a news / TV junkie and usually keep the feed on in the background when I’m working from home. The last 30 min may have been a milestone for desi’s on TV news.

Today’s CNN Situation Room was anchored by the dapper Ali Velshi standing in for Wolf Blitzer who was undoubtedly enjoying time at home with his family. Relative to CNN’s usual fare, Sit Room is a more “raw” up to the minute format featuring a heavier mix of live reports on the big stories.

So, instead of the same Iraq update loop that gets run on Headline News, for ex., the update goes straight to the on-the-scene reporter - in this case, Raman Aneesh - posing with mic in hand in front of a row of Hummers. And, for an update from the international desk, he turned to Zain Verjee.

20 minutes of namebrand news, an unbroken string of Desi reporting talent. Pretty cool.

A quick check on Fox News revealed anchor John Gibson interviewing Fox’s Baghdad reporter, Ms. Reena Ninan.

Now, at least when I did the quick check, MSNBC chose to deal with reporters on vacation by doing something different - they ran a documentary on the life and times of Michael Jackson

Sunkrish Bala will appear on Will & Grace tonight and Grey’s Anatomy on Sunday (thanks, Kiran):

Sunkrish Bala will be appearing on TV during Thanksgiving weekend. Look for him on “WILL and GRACE”— Thursday, Nov. 24th, 8:30PM on NBC and on “GREY`S ANATOMY”— Sunday, Nov. 27th, 10PM on ABC. These are guest starring roles and will likely feature him prominently. [Link]

Height: 6’1” [Link]

He’s previously been on CSI:NY and My Name is Earl. He had a part in Desipina’s production of Barriers and played Rama in an adaptation of the Ramayana:

… I watched Cornerstone’s production of The Ramayana float effortlessly across the David Henry Hwang’s stage… a shortened and speeded-up version tailored to hold the attention of American audiences…

There is a silly but funny scene in which Rama tells Lakshman of their need to forge an alliance with the monkey kingdom. “Uh, I don’t think they like to be called that,” Rama’s brother delicately points out. There follows an argument about the socially sensitive term to use (Vanaras), although, Rama complains, he can’t keep up with all these self-descriptions — “Why can’t they pick one name and stick with it?” And later, when he hears the Vanaras actually calling themselves “monkeys,” Lakshman points out that “It’s all right for them to call each other that…” [Link]

Romantic lead, maybe? Going from cabbie to Latin lover, exoticized though it might be, would be one step up in the reductionist sitcom pecking order.

A 27-year-old IIM grad was shot to death outside Lucknow last weekend for trying to cleaning up corruption in the gas station industry. Manjunath Shanmugam’s heinous murder shows no good deed goes unpunished:

The IIM Lucknow graduate from Karnataka paid with his life on Saturday afternoon for his crusade against corrupt petrol pump owners… Manjunathan… had become a “nightmare” for Sitapur’s petrol outlets, always dropping in for surprise checks as part of his company’s campaign against adulteration, sources said.

A month ago, he had sealed the Manu Mittal petrol station in Gola on Sitapur Road and blacklisted several others… The police believe that several petrol outlet owners had plotted together to kill Manjunathan… Adulteration of oil — especially diesel - at petrol pumps is a longstanding problem across the country. Diesel is mixed with kerosene, which is subsidised for the poor. [Link]

Nathan’s body was recovered from a vehicle in Sitapur district this morning. The vehicle, a Maruti car, reportedly belongs to… the son of Sulakshan Mittal whose petrol pump in Gola area of Lakhimpur district had been sealed by Nathan. [Link]

Having not heard from his son for three days… the father… sent an SMS: ”How are you?” … that evening, Manjunath was beaten up and then riddled with at least six bullets. His body was found in the backseat of his own car. At the wheel, were two employees of the petrol pump, on their way to dispose of the body…

“He was killed for doing his duty,” said a tearful Shanmughan after the cremation. ”He told me many times that he was working in an area with many mafia gangs and that anything could happen to him… He said it is a lawless world and for survival, one has to keep mum even if there are irregularities,” said Shanmughan. [Link]

Indians are bitter:

I am never going to ask another IIM/IIT guy to stay back in India. I always resented the fact that some of our best brains always grew wings and flew out of our country. Not any more….

Youths who dare to live for country are killed, and who live for themselves, India call them home and honors them…

It would be interesting to track what happens to the culprits… most pumps in UP are political gifts given by politicians to their goons… [Link]

Gaurav Sabnis remembers Shanmugam:

People always crib about how IIM grads never do anything for the country or don’t join PSUs. Here was one IIM grad who joined a PSU. Did his work honestly and in the right way… And he was murdered in cold blood…

Gobble-chi gobble-chi gum gum.

Related post: O Henry

Female roommates divvy up cute boys on the WB’s One Tree Hill. Sophia Bush calls dibs on ‘Narrayan,’ ‘Jabbar’ and the lead singer of the Foo Fighters. Apparently can’t spell.

Desi please. No I don’t watch, just flipping through.

The WSJ says whites are fleeing Cupertino, a Bay Area city with good public schools and thus an influx of middle class East Asian Americans (MCEAAs).

Monta Vista High School

My parents tell me the same is happening in our neighboring town of Saratoga, which was first a white retirement community and then a magnet for Silicon Valley CEOs. Five years ago, all our immediate neighbors were white; today, two families are East Asian and one is desi. When I went to high school, there were only four or five desis in the entire school. Many kids assumed that if you wanted to date, you’d only date one of the three desi girls. I studied captive markets in econ class and lived them outside. Today, I hear the dating ‘study group’ pool has gone from baby-sized to Olympic.

… the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino’s top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years. Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation — particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants — as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998…

It’s not competition that makes white parents uncomfortable, it’s competition with Asian-AmericansSome white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether… Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests. The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian…

Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School’s parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. “This may not sound good,” she confides, “but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class…”

I wanted to quickly update readers on the case of Pakistani American Tariq Khan. If you will recall, Saheli blogged about Tariq, who is a George Mason University student, last month. To recap:

Tariq Khan, now a junior majoring in sociology, said he was standing in front of the recruitment table outside the school student center—as he has often done before - during noontime with a paper sign reading, “Recruiters lie, don’t be deceived,” taped to his shirt. A student approached Khan and initiated a verbal argument, screaming in his face; he then took the flyer and ripped it up in front of him, Khan says.

The student then left and returned with another student claiming to be a Marine having recently served in Iraq, and the three continued a verbal argument that began to escalate, Khan claimed. “I asked the marine, ‘So how many people did you kill?’” Khan said. “And he answered, ‘Not enough.’” The marine student soon ripped Khan’s sign off his shirt and threw it in the trash.

… [A] staff member called campus security, at which point a police officer, Lt. Reynolds, approached Khan and demanded to see his student ID. Khan said he told the officer he was not carrying his ID and tried to walk away when the policeman tried to arrest him and then became violent. “He threw me into the stage,” Khan claimed, referring to a dance area in the student center left from an event earlier in the day, “and I just sort of raised my hands to show I’m not violent and tried to get as much attention by saying, ‘I’m being non-violent and I’m being brutalized.’” [Link]

Just this week, that shining beacon of hope, the ACLU, announced that all charges against Khan have been dropped:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia announced today that government lawyers in Fairfax County have agreed to drop their case against Tariq Khan, a George Mason University student who was arrested while protesting the presence of military recruiters on campus…

After conducting its own investigation into the incident, university officials asked Fairfax County prosecutors not to proceed with the case. The university has also announced that it will be reevaluating its campus speech and protest policies to ensure that they comply with the First Amendment.

The ACLU said it will be reviewing the campus speech policies. “This arrest should never have occurred,” said Willis. “The next step for us is to make certain that GMU does not do this again…” [Link]

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported on Greek Muslim life. Or rather, I mean Muslim Greek Life. Gamma Gamma Chi is the newest sorority house on the block. Hijabs are welcome:

The motto of Gamma Gamma Chi: “Striving for the pleasure of Allah through Sisterhood, Scholarship, Leadership and Community Service.”

The sorority, whose national chapter is in Greensboro, N.C., hopes to establish its first campus chapter at the University of Kentucky.

Taking a seat at the introductory meeting, Boushra Aghil, a 20-year-old junior in an olive green shirt and black hijab, studied the sorority’s gold brochure. She was curious about how Gamma Gamma Chi would reconcile Islamic morals with sorority life — and the party atmosphere associated with it.

“My parents would never, ever let me join a regular sorority,” Shalash said. “I don’t know any Muslim sorority girls.”

Yet many young Muslim women are intrigued by the concept. Since Gamma Gamma Chi was founded seven months ago, Muslim students from 14 states — and from Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates — have e-mailed the sorority’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The biggest response came from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, a city with a Muslim population of about 2,500.

The very idea seems like a contradiction at its face. As someone who avoided Greek Life as much as possible, I’ll admit that I am no authority on the matter. Still, it would seem to me that every possible benefit that a sorority could offer is erased by establishing such a homogeneous environment. I realize that we already have predominately Jewish houses, as well as African American, Asian, and even Indian houses. This Muslim sorority is not a whole lot different. I understand the reason that African American houses were originally established but I think that the rest of the groups are even further diluting an already broken system. I have often wondered if social fraternities and sororities are even relevant anymore? Colleges offer so many groups and programs to make the large fishbowl seem smaller, that I personally feel that the Greek system has outlived its usefulness (no personal offense to any Greeks out there who I know are quite loyal to their houses).

“The American white-bread sorority girls wouldn’t always understand our issues,” Aghil said. “We already wear a scarf, we recognize we are the odd people out, but we need a support system, a group that can support us in the Islamic way.”

Gamma Gamma Chi is not the first sorority to offer an alternative to traditional, predominantly white American sororities.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first of four major black sororities, was founded in 1908 at Howard University in Washington. In 1991, Latina-oriented Gamma Phi Omega was established; in 1997, the multicultural Theta Nu Xi; in 1998, the South Asian Kappa Phi Gamma.

Scanning through Google News before class, I noticed a piece about the “Indianisation” of the Catholic Church in India. I didn’t have time to read the whole thing before lecture started, but I kept it in a Mozilla tab because the issue of how the Roman Catholic Church, known for its inflexibility in many respects, has been adapted to other parts of the world (as with the frequency of marriage among African priests) interests me. However, when I refreshed the page later, the article, “Going the Desi Way”, had disappeared — it still shows on Google, but nowhere else. What’s more, the URL now carried a message that was on every page of the site:

Subsequent to the notices issued by the Mumbai Police to the Publisher and Editor of Mumbai Mirror and in view of the sentiments expressed by some activist NGOs pertaining to the contents in the November 12- 18 issue of Mumbai Mirror Buzz magazine, we have requested the venders and distributors of the magazine as well as our own sales colleagues to stop sales of this issue, and to return the undistributed material back to us.

Young’uns Shefali Chowdhury and Afshan Azad play Parvati and Padma Patil in the latest Harry Potter movie, the one with a goblet of masala pani. They’re Harry and Ron Weasley’s backup dates for Hogwarts’ Yule Ball:

Born in London in 1989 and brought up in a conservative Muslim family, Shefali is of Bangladeshi origin. Her parents had migrated to England from Sylhet, Bangladesh… She plays the role of Parvati Patil in the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film. Prior to that her only recorded film appearance was an uncredited role in Kannathil Muthamittal in 2002.

She plays Harry Potter’s Yule Ball date in Goblet of Fire. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the film… told This Is London: “I had a dance scene with Shefali. She was completely gorgeous.” [Link]

I counted ~8 British Asian kids in the movie, one with a long closeup. Somewhere between installments two and three, casting got the diversity clue.

This movie was lovely and lots of fun, it held my attention. Numbers three and four have both been much better than the slow, dumbed-down numbers one and two. Favorite scene: underwater with the merpeople. What is it about smart girls named Emma? The movie obliquely referred to 9/11, King Kong and being misquoted by the press. The over-the-top reporter reminded me of the purring, Eartha Kitt-like gossip maven, Kitty DaSouza, from Bombay Dreams.

Yesterday when I was watching Oprah spoil people who selflessly gave up time, money and jobs to head South and volunteer with the victims of Katrina, the moment I broke down was right after a woman in the audience was lauded for her work in rescuing emaciated, terrified dogs who had been locked in closets. I mourn for all of Katrina’s casualties, but something about an animal being unable to scrawl, “HELP” on a roof makes me extra farklempt.

When I was in college, before I had my first german shepherds, tigers were what I adored. I took an International Law class at Davis just because we were going to focus on the CITES and Biodiversity treaties. I did all of my assignments on India’s tigers, and winced as I learned more about their situation. That was over a decade ago, but this story from ye olde BBC still makes me happy:

Four alleged poachers in the western Indian state of Rajasthan have confessed to killing tigers in the Ranthambore National Park, police say.
The hunters, who were arrested last week, have admitted to killing nine tigers and one leopard, police said.

Mock it if you care to, but it’s a start. The government of Rajasthan has also transferred two senior park officials for their inability to protect the only cats I’ve ever loved. We haven’t much time:

Tiger numbers at Ranthambore dropped to 26 from 47 last year, a census showed. Urgent action is needed to stop Indian tigers becoming extinct, activists say.

At least Ranthambore still HAS tigers. According to environmentalists, Rajasthan’s Sariska sanctuary has all of zero, down from over a dozen in the May before last’s census. Restocking the park is under consideration.

What’s depressing is that a few turtles (another animal I find sweet) might have been sacrificed for the aforeblogged arrests:

Police in the town of Kota near Ranthambore, about 200km (125 miles) south of the city of Jaipur, told the BBC the arrests resulted from information obtained during another investigation.

In the post below, Manish introduces us to young actor Neil Patil. I went through the images he has posted on IMDb, and was dismayed to find the photo below of Patil with what looks like a sweater tied around his head.

Let’s deconstruct this image, shall we? Photos on IMDb are carefully selected for the consumption of casting agents. It is unlikely that this is simply a snapshot of Patil clowning around with his buddies that got accidentally posted; it is one of only five photos deliberately chosen for display.

Why would he want to show this to casting agents? I’m trying to be as sympathetic to his aims as possible, but the only thing I can think of is that he wants to show people both that he’s willing to wear any type of silly headgear and that he’s capable of looking debonair doing so.

I have a lot of sympathy for young desi actors. The American film industry is a hard one to break into, and he’s just starting out. Nor am I offended by the picture - he’s not claiming to be a Sikh or anything else. He’s just a guy with a sweater around his head.

I’m simply confused. As somebody who has been called “raghead” more times than I can count, I don’t understand why he would want to put this picture up. Black actors don’t put up minstrel photos in their IMDb profiles, why would Patil choose to portray himself in this way?

p.s. Also - what’s up with the whip?

In Wedding Crashers, actress Naureen Zaim plays the credulous babe on the other end of this exchange:

Hindu woman: French Foreign Legion?
John Beckwith: Yeah, we lost a lot of good men out there. [Link]

She soon falls into bed, bouncy and topless, with Owen Wilson. Like Yasmeen Ghauri and Rhona Mitra, she’s part desi, part white:

I am originally from Chicago. I am half Pakistani, and 1/4 Irish, and 1/4 German. [Link]

She has an advanced degree in glass blowing, like mine in home ec and underwater basket weaving:

I blew glass at University of Illinois, and actually received a degree in it. [Link]

After teaching the The Republic by Plato at an Ivy League university, she shoots a TV show: model boxing.

Also from Wedding Crashers, actor Neil Patil’s resume shows Hollywood offers desis lots of ground-breaking, non-stereotypical roles without accents:

• Terrorist
• Cabbie
• Limo driver
• Valet
• Indian wedding groom
• Exchange student
• Waiter

So here we’ve got Hollywood’s gender-specific treatment of desis neatly encapsulated in a single movie. Desi women are cast as random babes, men as servants and terrorists. It’s tribal: kill the men, fuck the women. About the only role I remember where the desi guy was neither mocked nor feared was Kal Penn’s in the little-seen A Lot Like Love.

I know we mutineers have been pushing Quake relief and donations for helping manage the response to the the various disasters that have struck around the world this year. It is just hard to imagine, that in a little over a month (December 26), it will be a year since the Indian Ocean tsunami, what seems like the first tragedy in a cycle of monstrous natural diasters hit. Hopefully the South Asian Quake will be the last we’ll see from mother nature for a LONG time.

What’s making me pontificate you ask? Well, my friend Roshan Loungani, founder of desivision (I did want to, at some point, properly blog this interesting on-line Desi television channel) pointed me to a short film (free subscription required) desivision is hosting by Rohit Gupta. The five-minute plus montage, accompanied by Nitin Sawhney’s classic Homelands, has some poignant images from the South Asian Earthquake and makes clear the need for continued international assistance.

Even if you don’t intend or cannot donate, please check out the video. Perhaps it will change your mind.

Over the tip line we got word from runyolarun about an organization up in Toronto that is promoting itself with a new set of agency posters:

"The Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention is a community-based, non-profit, charitable organization committed to providing health promotion, support, education and advocacy in a non-discriminatory manner for those who identify as South Asian living with and affected by HIV/AIDS."

ASAAP is a Toronto based AIDS service organization. It was founded in 1989 as a result of the voluntary efforts of members of Khush (a social group for South Asian gays and lesbians that has since closed down), in a community response to a request for support for a South Asian couple infected with HIV/AIDS who died in isolation, unable to access services in their own language. Our catchment area is greater Toronto and all the surrounding suburbs/towns. Our services include preventative education, support to South Asians infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS, outreach, and advocacy. Services are available in Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Bengali. You may need to call ahead to arrange assistance in South Asian languages.

Seems like they do great work. I realize that I am about to possibly get myself labeled as a prude with the following comments (which I assure you is not true), but I'm just not that into their new posters. In my opinion AIDS education has always been difficult because too many people continue to associate AIDS with homosexuality or otherwise "deviant" behavior. In truth, as we all know, AIDS can affect anyone, and an important part in trying to educate people about the disease should be to reach out to populations who think they are above risk. With that in mind I feel like these posters are a bit too racy. I can't help but feel that many people will think, "Oh, I'm not like the people in those posters (even the one of the straight couple). This doesn't concern me." To be specific, the first poster, which seems to be that of an orgy, has several buzz words on it which include "Slip n' Slide," and the poster of the Lesbian couple includes the single word, "fist." Are orgies popular in South Asian communities in Canada (if so I am leaving Jesusland tomorrow)? Also was it necessary to use a clichéd Come/Cum pun on the poster of the straight couple? Am I just getting old? Do most of you like these posters?

The Thai clothing retailer Jaspal, which the NYT calls ‘Thailand’s Gap,’ is currently running a big ad campaign with OC actress Mischa Barton. It’s one of those cushy, overseas-only gigs so ably flèched by Bill Murray, who shilled Suntory whiskey in Lost in Translation. The company’s name implies its founder is Sikh. It’s probably another incarnation of India and Thailand’s long history of mixing:

The Thai alphabet is based on Mon (Burmese), Khmer (Cambodia) and South Indian scripts, and the language has many Sanskrit words… It is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power… [Link]

The Thai language is liberally sprinkled with words from Pali and Sanskrit (the classical languages, respectively, of Theravada Buddhism and Indian Hinduism). [Link]

Thailand, which is 95% Buddhist, seems tolerant of minority religions, with Hindu shrines as good luck charms in downtown Bangkok (thanks, Mark IV):

Ramakien statue at Wat Phra Kaew temple

“This temple [in Chiang Mai] is one of the biggest in Thailand. We also have one big Sikh gurudwara here which is 120 years old. The same devotees go to both the gurudwara and the temple. On Tuesday, for our weekly satsang, you will find a large number of Thai devotees here…” I spoke with one Thai devotee here, Anuma, who said she was a “Buddhist Hindu” and a devotee of Mother Durga…

… the Sri Mariamman temple [in Bangkok]… was built by South Indians who migrated from the Thanjavur District in Tamil Nadu to Thailand about 150 years ago. It was the first Hindu temple built by the immigrant Indian community… “The reason why so many Thai people are visiting the Mariamman temple is that She is considered to be the Goddess of Protection. During World War II, when a lot of places here were destroyed in the Japanese occupation, the temple remained absolutely safe.” [Link]

Here’s the latest in socially conscious accessories:

Ragbags are fashionable products made from recycled plastic bags collected by ‘ragpickers’ in the slums of New Delhi. Plastic rags are collected, washed, dried and separated by colour. The plastic bags then go into a machine, which presses them into thicker and more durable sheets. No dyes or inks are required. It takes about 60 plastic bags to make one sheet. The sheets are then cut, lined with cloth and stitched or moulded into the various products. [Link]

The collection includes shoulder bags, backpacks, shopping bags, organizers (large and small) and wallets. The shoulder bags come in a variety of different color schemes including “Pakistan” and “India”, neither of which matches either country’s flag.

Most of the stores carrying these goods are in the Netherlands, but Americans can purchase them in Brooklyn and Mendocino, or they can go online. Check the shop locator for an outlet near you.

Once upon a time, US dollars went a long way in India. Even weddings, long expensive in local terms, could be staged far more cheaply in India than in the US. Not any more. The wedding planners have arrived, and everybody wants a big extravaganza:

India’s burgeoning middle class - now 300 million strong - are turning weddings into showcases of their growing disposable incomes and newfound appetites for the goodies of the global marketplace.

The largesse has spawned an $11 billion wedding industry, growing at 25 percent annually and beginning to rival the US industry valued at $50 billion.

The minimum budget for a wedding ceremony is $34,000, say wedding planners, while the upper-middle and rich classes are known to spend upward of $2 million. (The average American wedding costs $26,327.) This doesn’t include cash and valuables given as part of a dowry. [Link]

The latest fad is to stage the whole shebang on pontoons, putting family and friends on a veritable flotilla of flaunted wealth

If you consider the fact that India’s middle class are those considered to be earning “$4,545 to $23,000 a year”, weddings are priced comparably to an Ivy League education in the US. To “help out” banks are offering specialized wedding loans (at high rates, I’m sure):

GE Money India has introduced an “auspicious” personal loan, a quick and easy loan exclusively for weddings. [Link]

Serendipity is a pretty lame romantic comedy that’s a staple of cable reruns, where I had the misfortune of running into it this morning. Like Bollywood, it peddles soft-headed romantic fatalism in a one-joke script.

It does, however, do a very funny New Age parody. John Corbett (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) hams it up as Lars, a self-absorbed New Age musician. This schmuck in a silk kurta plays an instrument ubiquitous at Indian weddings while his hype men play tabla and sitar.

As Lars watches the cheesy, Yanni-like music video his record label put together, he complains, ‘You can’t fight off an army of bloodthirsty Vikings with a shehnai. It’s illogical.’

This little fudge cake of brilliance is probably the only shehnai joke in Hollywood history, and definitely the only one involving Vikings.

Thanks to Manish and the rest of the Sepia Mutineers for welcoming me to guest-blog here.

There’s a new Bollywood film out carrying the same name as one from the early ’80s. However, while the old movie was directed by Shyam Benegal and is a modern take on the Mahbharata, the new one is a Mahesh Bhatt production, directed by Mohit Suri, about the international pornography trade. The 2005 version of Kalyug follows the idea of an age of decline, but focuses on sexual degeneracy specifically. At least in the (intentionally?) punningly titled article “Kalyug exposes porn trade,” the movie is entirely negative about this industry. Says Bhatt,

I got the idea of making Kalyug after reading the India Today article on a honeymooning couple, whose lovemaking scenes were recorded in a hotel and distributed throughout the world. People all over the world want to see reality sex, not fictional sex. Human trafficking has become big business everywhere; it’s the third largest international crime after drugs and the arms trade. Desi Indian women and porn sites are a huge craze abroad. That’s why victims of natural disasters like famines and earthquakes are sold for these pornographic rackets. They are drugged, brutalised and blackmailed into joining the flesh trade.

Please join me in welcoming our next guest blogger, PG of Half the Sins and the De Novo group blog. The law groupies here at SM have been atwitter over her smart vivisection of political critters and policy wonkery for some time. From time to time, she also applies her prodigious talents to pawning exotica indien:

I don’t think there will be anything for the next generation of Indian kids to unify around, unless we go through a collective midlife crisis and decide to impose the same expectations on our offspring that our parents put on us.

So far today, I’ve been wished a happy Diwali by a white person and my mom, and my white Property professor was wearing a punjabi dress- style top in class. I was intending to celebrate it properly, but then I realized I was having a bit of iron deficiency, so I ate a hamburger. [Link]

Last night as we were waiting to get into the Lido, a Vegas-style club in Paris’s otherwise elegant Champs Elysees district, I kept pretending that we were going to a strip joint and quoting Chris Rock jokes about how no one would want to eat the food. “Titties and tater tots don’t mix!..”

… then come out the girls with the boobie verison of a punjabi dress/ salwar kameez. By boobie version, I mean that it looked about right, the loose pants and all, except the top didn’t cover their tits. Which was what most of the costumes in this show were like, but you don’t expect to see the same outfit that your mama can wear exposing boobs. That just ain’t right.

But that was only a little appetizer… Shiva with tits was a showgirl wearing a big headdress that looked like the traditional representation of many-armed Shiva, except Shiva doesn’t have tits, on account of Shiva is a MAN.

It wasn’t enough to have Shiva with titties. Nope, then we had to have half a dozen Ganeshas in ass-pants and no shirts. These were the showboys wearing elephant masks, complete with trunk. They came out on a stage set done up to look like a temple. A TEMPLE! Complete with gold paint. They also trotted out a big fake plastic elephant for one of the showgirls to ride…

Did I mention the giant fake lotus blossom that came out of the floor?… [Link]

Welcome, PG!

India is the biggest net beneficiary of money sent home by migrants:

Officially recorded remittances worldwide exceeded $232 billion in 2005, with India receiving almost 10% of the amount ($21.7 billion). China came second with $21.3 billion, followed by Mexico ($18.1 billion), France ($12.7 billion), and the Philippines ($11.6 billion). [Link]

To put this into context, remittances worldwide are roughly the same as the GDP of Sweden, and remittances to India are roughly equivalent to the entire national output of countries such as Latvia or North Korea. India makes even more foreign exchange from sending its workers abroad than it does from exporting software.[Thanks Hammer_Sickel!] Remittances to India are roughly equivalent to the entire national economic output of Latvia. India generates more foreign exchange from sending its workers abroad than it does from software exports.

International flows of labor are now becoming economically critically, like flows of capital in the decade before before:

… remittances sent through informal channels could add at least 50 per cent to the official estimate, making remittances the largest source of external capital in many developing countries. [Link]

With the number of migrants worldwide now reaching almost 200 million, their productivity and earnings are a powerful force for poverty reduction. [Link]

For today’s Science Friday I wanted to talk about crap. Dinosaur crap that is. About two years ago I came across the word “coprolite” in a paper I was reading. I have a bookmark set to Dictionary.com so I tend to look up many words throughout the day (mostly because unlike most desis I am a shockingly poor speller). To my surprise “corpolite” was yet another name that humanity has provided for feces:

The Indus Valley Civilization could have used a few of these

cop·ro·lite n.
Fossilized excrement. [Link]

Well okay then. I am quite sure several of you will be sharing this new knowledge with someone tonight. You see, corpolite is a paleontologist’s dream. Not only can you figure out if the animal that “dropped” it was a carnivore/herbivore/omnivore, but you can also tell which plants existed at the time. An article in the Journal Science today is titled, “Dinosaur Coprolites and the Early Evolution of Grasses and Grazers,” and has Dr. Vandana Prasad of Lucknow as the first author (paid subscription required):

Silicified plant tissues (phytoliths) preserved in Late Cretaceous coprolites from India show that at least five taxa from extant grass (Poaceae) subclades were present on the Indian subcontinent during the latest Cretaceous. This taxonomic diversity suggests that crown-group Poaceae had diversified and spread in Gondwana before India became geographically isolated. Other phytoliths extracted from the coprolites (from dicotyledons, conifers, and palms) suggest that the suspected dung producers (titanosaur sauropods) fed indiscriminately on a wide range of plants. These data also make plausible the hypothesis that gondwanatherian mammals with hypsodont cheek teeth were grazers.

Translate to English please: this means that ~70 million years ago a lot of really large dinosaurs were grazing on grass all over the chunk of land that eventually broke away from the supercontinent Gondwana to become the Indian sub-continent (before it once again recombined like the present day). We can always rely on good old National Geographic to break it down for the laymen:

Coprolites are very common in the area and are often found in rocks that have been worn down by weather. Based on their common association with titanosaur bones, many of the dung fossils probably come from the massive plant-eating reptiles.

The finding is the first indication that grasses evolved before the dinosaurs went extinct.

Fossil evidence had suggested that grasses evolved along with early plant-eating mammals. Hoofed animals with high-crowned teeth suitable for chewing grass first began to appear about 25 million years ago.

But the grass minerals in the Indian coprolites were much older than the hoofed mammals and were already diverse. Five different species were evident, which means that grasses likely diversified substantially before the end of the late Cretaceous.

Imagine that. Dinosaurs were doing almost the same job millions of years before the sacred cow began eating grass all over India (and tilling the fields), thus sustaining the Indus Valley Civilization. This immediately caused me to imagine a Flintstones type universe in which the dinosaurs may have gone on to become sacred, if only they had survived extinction and been domesticated.

Bollywood films constitute roughly 50% of all new films added by Netflix this week!

This week alone, Netflix announced 79 new Bollywood releases in their All DVDs Releasing This Week section. That’s more Bollywood films than films of any other sort of individual genre, probably almost as many films as released in all other categories combined. To give you an idea of how significant this is, just imagine if half the new releases at Blockbuster were Bollywood flicks!

The new films are pretty eclectic, with movies from the 1950s to the present, including golden oldie Shree 420 and compilation DVDs like Dance Songs Forever.

This comes in the same week that GV Films announced their intent to create a legal Bollywood (and Tamilwood [is that even a word? - ed]) film downloading system:

Film buffs worldwide will soon be able to download digitised versions of Indian movies from an online channel that will be launched in Mumbai in 2006. Movie lovers can download the movies by paying between $1-5 a movie, depending on how old the film is and whether it was a big hit — apart from its running time. GV Films is known for hit productions in Tamil like Mouna Ragam (1986), Nayakan (1987) and Anjali (1990). It has also bought rights of hundreds of other movies in various other Indian languages. Though the production house has a large library of nearly 6,000 films to pick and choose from, it is in the process of acquiring more movies. [Link]

What’s going on here? While GV films is targetting their offering specifically at NRIs, it’s not entirely clear to me who is renting the Bollywood films from Netflix. Is this clear evidence of the mainstreaming of Bollywood as “serious foreign film” or are these suburban uncles and aunties who don’t want to drive to little India to rent their desi DVDs any more than they want to drive to Blockbuster to rent their American films? One way or another, it’s a fascinating trend. For those of you interested in Bollywood (I’m afraid I rarely watch the movies, so the titles mean little to me) the list of films is below the fold.

Indolink.com takes a look at a new book, Sexual Naturalization, by Indian-American scholar Susan Koshy, which highlights the historical role of sex (or rather the prohibition of) in U.S. immigration policy:

“…Antimiscegnation laws worked in conjunction with immigration and naturalization laws to impede the reproduction of Asian immigrant communities, position Asians as racial aliens and sexual deviants, and secure the future of the United States as a white nation.” Susan Koshy.

For nearly fifteen years, Indian-American scholar Susan Koshy has been probing certain key historical elements that impact South Asians in America. For instance, she prods the racial undercurrent that define whiteness, ethnicity, gender, color, and citizenship as it is reflected in the American response to Asian immigrants.

I thought this book might make an interesting read for many SM readers. Judging from comments left following previous posts on our site, many white people that are one half of a white/South Asian couple have enjoyed our website because it has provided them with even a little bit of extra insight into their significant other’s culture. History books that outline what it took to enjoy the freedoms we have today are always interesting to me at least.

…the law claimed that interrracial sex was deviant and dangerous and viewed the sexuality of non-whites in opposition to white middle class sexual practices and family values. Koshy goes on to reveal how, for Asian Americans, including South Asian Americans, the antimiscegnation laws reaffirmed their status as perpetual foreigners, as racial and sexual aliens. Not only were sexual relationships between the predominantly male Asian immigrants and white women outlawed, but American women who married noncitizen Asian men were denaturalized. What’s even worse, popular discourse identified Asian women as prostitutes and “bachelor ” communities of Asian migrants as aberrant and pathological sexual formations.

Koshy shows how the presence of large numbers of new immigrants often concentrated in urban centers triggered fears of lawless and deviant sexuality, the proliferation of vice and prostitution, and the contamination of American genetic stock.

Some things never change I guess. Large concentrations of immigrants in urban centers seem destined to trigger fears of vice and contamination, and now terrorism in contemporary times.

Koshy reveals that laws that originally banned sexual relations between blacks and whites were eventually extended to prohibit marriages between whites and “Indians” (native Americans), “Mongolians” ( Chinese , Japanese, and Koreans), “Hindus/Asiatic Indians” (official term for south asians) and “Malays” (Filipinos).

Actually the earliest antimiscegnation laws that were passed in 17th century Maryland and Virginia affected the first South Asians who were brought as indentured slaves by the East India Company to the American colonies. Thus, records from the Maryland State Archives reveal that a daughter born in 1680 to an East Indian man and his Irish wife, was branded a mullato and sold as a slave in Maryland — as a result of antimiscegnation law.

Bubble boy Ram Sabnis helped an inventor complete his decade-long quest to create a new kids’ toy: the first bubbles with disappearing color, so they won’t stain your kids or your floor (see photos). Like sticky notes, their impermanence is their selling point (via Boing Boing). I knew that textile industry would come in handy someday!

Ram Sabnis is a leader among a very small group of people who can point to a dye-chemistry Ph.D. on their wall. Only a handful of universities in the world offer one, and none are in the U.S. (Sabnis got his in Bombay). He holds dozens of patents from his work in semiconductors (dying silicon) and biotechnology (dying nucleic acids)…

Sabnis told them he’d have it ready to market in a year… “This is the most difficult project I have ever worked on,” Sabnis says now… For months, he ran 60 to 100 experiments a week, filling notebooks with sketches of molecules, spending weekends in the library studying surfactant chemistry, trying one class of dyes after another…

He synthesized a dye that would bond to the surfactants in a bubble to give it bright, vivid color but would also lose its color with friction, water or exposure to air… go away completely, as though it had never been there. When one of these bubbles breaks on your hand, rub your hands together a few times and look: Poof. Magic. No more color… [Link]

Since I’m experiencing worrisome technical difficulties AND I’m in transit, I’m going to err on the side of paranoia caution, break with tradition (if we can define seven weeks as such) and post this week’s nanofiction orgy early.

I went back and forth with regards to what I should do about this situation, since I am 99% sure I won’t be near my prrrecious iBook at 3am EST, when I usually come up with some hackneyed way to express my incredulity about how fast the week has gone by…blah yadda blah. I couldn’t bear to be tardy with our 55-fiesta, which is just uproarious because I am never punctual to ANYTHING. Shocking. I guess it’s love.

Since the “only city in the world” (does anyone else remember the Barney’s ad which stated this? I can’t find it on Google) is half the reason for all my fretful feelings, I think I’ve found our theme. New York. Or, your New York. My New York is heaven. There’s no place I’d rather be. Perhaps your New York is London, Bombay, Kampala…you get the idea.

Of course, you are welcome to write exactly 55 words of flash fiction about ANY topic your heart sweats; leave it or a link to where we might find it below, please. Spank you very much.

Watch Omi Vaidya rockin’ the pug in the American version of The Office airing Nov. 22 (thanks, Kiran):

He plays a Sikh IT Tech that helps Steve Carell’s character with some computer issues. [Link]

A bunch of us auditioned for this role. It started out as a “Pakistani IT Tech” wearing a turban. They seemed to get some of the culture right, but the joke centers around Steve Carell’s character wearing a giant “Karnak” type turban. [via email]

Vaidya previously created the reality dating show ‘Prem or Not to Prem.’

URB Artist of the Year- - Mathangi

Its been awhile since we have had an MIA post, and since I know most of you have been waiting with baited breath, here goes. URB Magazine contributor Scott Sterling informed us late last month that mutinous MIA, aka Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam has been named URB magazine’s artist of the year. I am not really surprised, are you? No, it isn’t that she is desi, I just can’t think of one other artist that has been as innovative and influential this year. MIA’s music has been everywhere, from SXSW and Central Park to a Honda commercial and the O.C., and her influence is easily seen in the resurgence of electro-pop in the mainstream: drum machines and synthetic beats all intertwined with elements of various international flavors and hip-hop. Its not that hip-hop his dead, but it is almost as if MIA has added to this new genre of post Hip-Hop. Music with a message, but with danceable, stranger, hip-hop like beats . This sound has been kickinng around the indy hipster scene for awhile—look at bands like Supersystem on Touch and Go, and LCD Soundsystem. This trend seems to now be making its way slowly towards the mainstream. One of the first indicators, Madonna’s latest release, Confessions on a Dance Floor. Scott has promised us he would be posting the full cover story soon. You can of course find more SM on MIA here, and my first post on her here.

This, by the way, wasn’t all we got out of Scott. He gave us the scoop on how DJ Quik found the sample of Kaliyon Ka Chaman, for the first big hip hop record featuring a desi sample. Yeah, I am talking about Truth Hurts featuring Rakim’s—Addictive [click here for a sample] from 2002.

The Daily Show’s resident ranter Lewis Black riffed on today’s Sri Lankan election. Watch the clip, it’s at 2:20.

In Sri Lanka, presidential candidate Victor Hettigoda has promised to give a free dairy cow to every family in the country if he wins. Finally, a candidate who’s ready to say no to government pork and yes to beef! [Link]

They’re not just any old cows, they’re Malayalee:

A wealthy Sri Lankan presidential candidate said he will use his personal fortune to buy a cow for every home if he is elected.

“Every Sri Lankan home will be gifted with a high milk-yielding cow from (the Indian state of) Kerala which could be expected to yield 10 liters (2.5 gallons) to 16 liters (four gallons) of milk every day,” Victor Hettigoda was quoted as saying by The Island newspaper on Friday. “Even families who live in flats, who could make suitable arrangements to look after a cow, will receive a gift of cow,” he was quoted as saying. [Link]

A Sri Lankan presidential candidate promised a free cow to every family in the country‘A chicken in every pot and a cow in every garage.’ More to the point, the independent candidate, a successful entrepreneur, is Tamil Tiger-friendly:

He also said the LTTE are “a prudent lot” who have not resorted to corrupt practices, and he pledged to offer the LTTE a number of key ministerial portfolios in his government if his talks with them are successful. [Link]

“It was our own narrow minded party politicians who went around the world and said that they were terrorists. If they said they (LTTE) are our own sons and daughters, then the world would have not cornered them as terrorists. So who created this situation? We ourselves…

On the wrong side of the country for kulfi?

Don’t fret, my pet- the mutiny has even more ways for you to help donate to the victims of the brown quake (Thanks, Yasmine and Raj). If I were back home on the left coast, there is no doubt about what I’d be doing this Saturday night (after getting two sublime mango lassis from VIK’s, that is):

—————————————————————————

BEYOND BORDERS A Benefit for the Survivors of the South Asian Earthquake

—————————————————————————

Saturday, November 19th, 7PM
Wheeler Auditorium
University of California Berkeley

100% of the proceeds go towards grassroots earthquake relief efforts in Pakistan and India - specifically, Edhi Foundation (Pakistan), Sungi Development Foundation (Pakistan), & Association for India’s Development’s Jammu and Kashmir Fund (India).

Get your tickets, visuals and other info here. The line-up looks as good as the aforementioned lassi:

Featuring

Farah Shaikh - Kathak Dance
Chhandam-Chitresh Das Dance Company
Shailja Patel - Spoken Word
Arshad Syed - Santoor
Shabi Farooq - Tabla
Rita Sahai - Hindustani Vocal
Vivek Anand & Ferhan Qureshi - Tabla
Kamal Hyder & Nasir Syed - Sitar Duet
Ferhan Qureshi -Tabla
Domestic Crusaders -
Pakistani American Theatre

A night of solid culture and the opportunity to help people who need it, who are the victims of a vicious natural disaster AND donor fatigue? That’s some cocktail of goodness. May you get intoxicated and then donate even more.

If you’re a desi in your thirties, you’ve probably got fond memories of Depeche Mode, New Order and the Cure. You might also be nostalgic for the desi songs your parents used to play at home.

Realizing this, an indie band in Dallas got peanut butter in their chocolate and chocolate in their peanut butter (thanks, midwestern eastender). The members first met at UC Berkeley:

… I’ve also recently gotten a CD from the Amrikan Kundalini Shock Attack (I actually found them just by typing in “indotrash” after a conversation with Shiva Soundsystem one night), which has been amusing me all week. Imagine Depeche Mode singing in Hindi and you’d be in the ballpark of their old-school techno-disco style. [Link]

The songs evoke an energy that is lysergic, kaleidoscopic and Rangolian. It will blow the saris off all mofos! [Link - PDF]

That pseudo-PoMo humor, however, is pure Berkeley.

Actress Archie Panjabi has a small role in a new film with Russell Crowe:

Panjabi in another film, Yasmin

Archie Panjabi, to my mind the best Indian actress in Britain, is currently filming in A Good Year, which is an appropriate title because she has had a pretty good year. The film, directed by Ridley Scott and based on a book by Peter Mayle, is about an investment banker (played by Russell Crowe) who swaps London life for a vineyard in France. [Link]

An Englishman (Crowe) inherits a vineyard in Provence. Upon arriving at his new property, he meets an American woman who claims that the land is hers. [Link]

The film co-stars French actress Marion Cotillard. Here’s the book upon which the movie is based:

The caper in A Good Year revolves around a mysterious small-batch cult wine that never makes it to the wine store and trades as an investment. [Link]

Panjabi’s last project was a tawdry teledrama about former British Home Secretary David Blunkett:

… Archie was in A Very Social Secretary, a television dramatisation of the events surrounding David Blunkett’s affair with Kimberly Fortier, the American publisher of The Spectator magazine… An outraged Blunkett tried unsuccessfully to stop the broadcast on Channel 4 on the grounds that his privacy was being invaded. [Link]

Related post: The spy who loved me

Is there anything schlockier than this fiber optic, snow-flocked Om tree? For just 50 quid, you get the same emotional, uh, ‘appeal’ of an interreligious wedding where not only are both religious ceremonies conducted simultaneously, they’re physically merged. I’m thinking a pandit with a yarmulke. Syncretic-alicious!

(via the Calcutta Telegraph)

Related posts: Krishna for Christmas, Happy Diwahanukwanzidmas

16-year-old Kiran Matharu, a third-gen Brit Asian, is a budding golf star from Leeds whom some call the best female amateur golfer in the UK (thanks, midnight toker):

[Amarjit Matharu’s] daughter, Kiran, is the best female amateur golfer in the country. She plays off plus 3.4 - compared to Michelle Wie’s plus 4.2 - and she is only 16. Kiran is off to Texas this week, having been invited to a training camp by Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods’ former swing guru. Nike, Ping and Red Bull are all keeping a close watch. Serious money is just around the corner…

[Her father] was a keen sportsman, playing golf off four before switching his attention to cricket, but he never quite made the big time. He runs a bar in central Leeds and follows sport as a fan. He feels hard done by that Kiran is not given more attention. ‘Everyone raves about Michelle Wie,’ he says. ‘I know that if Kiran was American, she’d be red-hot news…’

Her practice swing is a thing of artistic beauty. So smooth, so relaxed, so natural. She bangs the ball 260 yards down the middle of the fairway without appearing to make any effort…

Kiran Matharu could be the most exciting female golfer to emerge in this country since Laura Davies started scorching the hide off the ball. Let’s hope she makes it, not just to repay the £50,000 her family has already invested in her career, but for her sake. [Link]

She will play in the Curtis Cup next year — the youngest member of the squad — and then turn pro. [Link]

Waris Singh Ahluwalia is the young actor and Urban Turban designer last seen in, and airbrushed out of the ads for, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic. He’s currently shooting Spike Lee’s The Inside Man, which also stars Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Christopher Plummer (thanks, zimblymallu):

The Inside Man tells the story of a cop (Washington) who must outsmart a professional bank robber (Owen) during a bank robbery turned hostage situation. [Link]

As negotiations grow more strained, a powerful lawyer with mysterious ties (Foster) becomes involved in the crisis… Dafoe will be playing the role of a police captain while Ejiofor plays a detective… [Link]

Waris plays a bank clerk… there you have Spike Lee wearing House of Waris. In the end he bought the horn ring and the enameled skull. On his right hand he is wearing the white gold and diamond skull ring. He’s totally decked out in House of Waris. [Link]

The movie, parts of which were shot at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, is due out March 24 next year. What fresh hell is this, to be green-eyed man-meat like Clive Owen and yet be cast opposite Waris ‘the S. is for sexayyy’ Ahluwalia

Related posts: Wes hearts Waris, Waris’ star turn: The Life Sikhquatic, Sikh fashionista in ‘The Life Aquatic’

A British ad agency’s animated demo reel uses ‘Jaan Pehechaan Ho’ as its cinematic score (via monika). Thanks, Ghost World!

[C]heck out the showreel of studio aka - an animation studio based in london.. http://www.studioaka.co.uk (follow the ‘overview’ link and then click on ‘showreel montage’).. enjoy!

Related post: Gadget blog speaks Hinglish

The December issue of Harper’s contains a short story called ‘Lost in Uttar Pradesh,’ more exoticized claptrap about oddness in India. One could pick a much less prosaic state than U.P. for the title; this is sort of like Louis Leakey traipsing around the mystical badlands of Cleveland.

This week’s New Yorker includes a cover story on the Pakistan quake aftermath:

Musharraf seized power in a coup, six years ago, and at the time he described the Army as… the only body disciplined enough to fix the country’s ills… yet, when the earthquake hit, the Army appeared neither efficient nor consumed by any sense of urgency… ten days after the earthquake struck, Musharraf’s government signed a billion-dollar contract for Swedish military surveillance aircraft, a bewildering priority… “If you were a Westerner asked to provide humanitarian financial assistance to a country led by a military government obsessed with the regional ‘military balance,’ what would you think?”…

“The villagers, when tensions run high, can’t even do free farming out on their terraces, because the Indians fire at them,” he said. “They and their animals are often wounded.” Half a mile up, a section of the gorge wall had collapsed. Small tombstones protruded at odd angles from a mound of dirt. A bloated corpse wrapped in a black shroud lay on top of the mound. Apparently, the person had been killed by a falling graveyard…

As we approached the Line of Control, Abbas lost his way. He made a U-turn in the gorge, swung right into another canyon, and then hurriedly made a second U-turn. A soldier assigned to spotter duty pointed down at a tricolor Indian flag flapping directly underneath the helicopter… It’s hard to imagine how the two militaries keep track of the line in any event. The border twists from side to side and up and down, as if tracing the fingers of a very thick hand. [Link]

If you thought Russell Peters’ material was too stereotypical in New York, watch what happens when a desi comedian plays Cincinnati. Rajiv Satyal, a moonlighting P&G’er, plays to stereotype up the yin-yang with threadbare jokes about camels, Kwik-e-Marts, Slurpees, terrorists and ‘thank you, come again.’ Wince.

He even calls himself Razheev. It’s my pet peeve, the weird American idea that Indian languages pronounce ‘j’ like in French. If you’re foreign in the movies, you’re given a British accent; if you’re foreign in real life, you’re assumed to be French. Sometimes it seems the only countries we know are the ones which fought here 250 years ago. Over New Jersey.

So take back your ‘Veezh,’ please. It’s Vij, just like it’s spelled, thankyaverramuch. Like Spanish, we’re into phonetic spelling down on the subcontinent. For your confusion, thank the French:

Send these, the confused, pronunciation-challenged to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Related posts: Russell Peters strikes again, Russell Peters show online, Paul Varghese delivers on ‘Last Comic Standing’: God’s own comedy, God’s own comedy

Set aside an hour for this one. Funnyman Russell Peters strikes again in this stand-up clip, and once he lets rip, you’re not gonna want to stop (thanks, Aizaz). Politically incorrect, but he’s just sayin’ in public what y’all say in private.

Update: At 21 minutes, he goes self-referential with his old punchline, ‘Somebuddy gonna get hurt real bad.’ Half the audience gets it and laughs. ‘Downloading m*f*s… that’s 45 minutes of material you won’t be hearing today.’

Update 2: Dwarf and deaf person jokes? The old show was better.

Related posts: Veezher, Russell Peters show online, Paul Varghese delivers on ‘Last Comic Standing’: God’s own comedy, God’s own comedy

Today is the 536th birthday of Guru Nanak Dev ji, the founder of the Sikh religion.

Sikh pilgrims celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, in Nankana Sahib, Pakistan.

Here is an article about the life and contributions of Guru Nanak.

Here is a description of how the event is usually celebrated.

Here is a very nice slideshow of images from the celebrations in India.

Blog Quake day came and went, but so much more still needs to be don(at)e(d).

Mushie was on NBC’s Today this morning, as Ann Curry asked him how much more his country needs; his answer was measured in the Billions.

My cousin Lisa sent me a forward with an easy way Mutineers in DC can help TOMORROW:

BEN & JERRY’s in Dupont Circle has graciously agreed to donate 25 % of your tab towards the South Asia Earthquake Relief Effort. The money will go directly to the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA). Please mention the cause when you purchase your ice cream.

An estimated 70,000-80,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million left homeless in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake that hit Pakistan, Kashmir and India on October 8th. With the harsh Himalayan winter rapidly approaching, death tolls are expected to double.

You CAN make a difference. Your contribution will be used on the ground in Pakistan to assist doctors and nurses treat the injured and prevent the spread of disease.

When: Wednesday, November 16th, 7:30-8:30p

Where: Ben & Jerry’s, 1333 19th Street NW

This is a wonderful idea— if any of you are coordinating similar fundraisers, please let us know. Mo’ notice, mo’ betta.

Those helmets are fierce!

I have been pretty bummed about football this season. My Michigan Wolverines are not going to be national champions (not even close), my 49ers are hapless, and even my fantasy football team has seen a sudden downturn. I had just about lost all hope in the sport until SM tipster Aliya sent us a heads up about a football game being played on Thanksgiving Day. Screw the Cowboys and the Lions. I had to look no further to remember my love for the game than the city of my birth: Skokie, Illinois. The 6th Annual Indo-Jew Bowl is on, and if you don’t know, now you know:

Five years ago, in the bitter chill November air, best of buddies, yet bitter rivals, made a pact. They agreed to a competition of courage, endurance, strength and will that would soon prove to be the pinnacle of events in the Greatest Village in the World that is Skokie. The two most dominating Super-Powers met to determine the true leaders of the community the only way they knew how: in a field of play. The Indians fought the Jews, both honorary and true, with all of their heart and gave the fine Village of Skokie some newfound pride. Sadly only one group of men were victorious that day. The Indos left as champions, but the real story was this was just the beginning of something special.

Something special has now it has turned into the annual zenith in all that is Indian and Jewish Life. That first afternoon also displayed a gust of diversity that can never be matched, and is always attempted to be replicated each and every Thanksgiving from here on out. Pride is at stake and another year of bragging rights are in order. Only at Indo Jew Bowl can you say hello to an old buddy, friend, or pal in the most serene of settings. Attend a perhaps run into a “Local Celebrity,” but attend and expect to garner a slice of history that will go unmatched. Suffice it to say this is one chapter of a classic novel that has to be read.

Can we get a satellite feed please! After winning the first Indo-Jew Bowl, the Indians have been dominated. They are down 4 games to 1. This year is about salvaging some pride. Here are the rosters:

Indos - Keyur Vora, Pranil Vitha, Sonesh Shah, Trushar Naik, Nirav Dedhia, Ajay Mehta, Nilay Vora, Bub Vitha, Ash Soni, and a mystery player!

Jews - Amit Klass, Michael Wenger, Steve Feder, Christopher Shermach, Danny Spitz, Adam Federman, Bobby Wenger, Yochai Eisenberg, Daniel Engelman, Matthew Robins

Aliya, informs us that the word on the street is that the Indo’s mystery player may in fact be one Penny Hardaway of the New York Knicks. Ringer. (update: there is no confirmation of this rumor. See comment #1)

A new study shows that meditation lets you close popup ads faster (via Boing Boing):

The test involves staring at an LCD screen and pressing a button as soon as an image pops up. Typically, people take 200 to 300 milliseconds to respond… meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.

“Every single subject showed improvement… Why it improves performance, we do not know.” The team is now studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice. [Link]

Not to mention bigger head muscle:

They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.

“You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing”. [Link]

A ToI reporter showed up to a small Delhi blogger meetup several days ago under an assumed name and did a Page Six/Page 3-style takedown of our very own TTG:

Most mainstream Indian papers are glorified scandal rags.. the active blogging community in India is a shockingly tiny group… Their preoccupation nevertheless continues to be slamming and analysing a very wide variety of things in an attempt to display their intellectual might… Their favourite pastime remains MSM (blog speak for mainstream media) bashing, often without caring to provide substantiations and taking cover behind free speech platitude…

… the 3rd annual Delhi bloggers meet just proved how big (or small) is the Indian blogosphere. Just four bloggers attended it, counting the host… ”I have booked the entire section of the restaurant,” he added, pointing at the empty sofas reserved for an army of bloggers that he had expected…

The Indian blogosphere has a long way to go before it even comes near to achieving the influence of the American bloggers… We are yet to see the Instapundit of India or an Andrew Sullivan. And this is not lost on them. ”We are the elite bloggers of India,” announced Tarun… [Link]

There’s no law against snark, but the aggrieved organizer says the story is full of inaccuracies:

Barista is not a restaurant. I hadn’t booked the “entire section” of it. And there was ONE sofa, which could hold 2 people, and ONE chair that was empty…

I SAID I WASN’T one of the ELITE bloggers of India, and went on to roll off a list of all the A-list dudes…

Now I know how celebrities must feel when they see their quotes in print. Is anything in the paper the truth? [Link]

Once I finally decided to get my license at age 17, I made up for lost time with a vengeance. I had an amazing car and that alone seemed like a mandate to drive as if I were preparing to audition to be a stunt driver in movies like this. My father, who in thirty years of driving NEVER got a ticket or caused an accident, who thought cruise control was for dilettantes with poor muscle control, who regarded driving as one of the most serious responsibilities a person had, was predictably livid by the evidence of my passion for velocity; beyond the interesting wear pattern on my tires and my underwhelming fuel efficiency, the ever perceptive service staff at my dealer let him know that his daughter was certainly enjoying herself.

He was unable to impress upon me how vital it was to slow the fuck down until one day, while making me anxious by inhabiting the front passenger seat, he exhorted me to drive as if he weren’t in the car at all. Like every other teenager, I tended to drive as if I were in the car with a DMV official whenever a parent was with me. “Spare me your bullshit discipline, edi. I know you don’t really drive like this.” Smarting, I sulked for a moment instead of devoting all of my attention to the four-way stop we were at…I had given a cursory look to my right and left and my lead foot was approaching the accelerator, to zip through the auto-free intersection.

I can still barely recall what happens next, and that is astonishing, considering my freakish ability to recount information like what my best friend “Eileen Perfume” was wearing during our Senior-year broadcasting class in high school, when we found out that LA was burning after the Rodney King verdict.

I still hadn’t mastered the art of accelerating without causing people’s heads to snap backwards in to the headrests, so I know the car must have lurched forward, thanks to a lethal combination of my impatience and an uber-responsive engine.

My father, who had a voice so powerful he never needed a microphone when he was up on the altar, shouted “STOP!”, the noise of his command more overwhelming than usual since we were in such a small space. I still shake and go weak when I think of what would have happened, had I made the same mistake my little sister made ten days in to HER career as a driver, when she accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes at a stoplight. It’s so easy to do, especially when you are young, all the more so when you are in a panic. The lead foot landed in the middle of the floor, not the right and the familiar Antiblockiersystem pulse was as apprehensible as my own at that terror-filled moment. We lurched forward before being thrown back, seatbelts locking so tightly I felt like I was being strangled.

Amitav Ghosh penned a harrowing essay on the organized anti-Sikh riots of ‘84 (via DesiLit Daily):

The first reliable report of Mrs. Gandhi’s death was broadcast from Karachi, by Pakistan, at around 1:30 PM. On All India Radio regular broadcast had been replaced by music… The motorcade of Giani Zail Singh, the President of the Republic, a Sikh, had already been attacked by a mob…

A stout woman in sari sitting across aisle from me was the first to understand what was going on. Rising to her feet, she gestured urgently at the Sikh, who was sitting hunched in his seat. She hissed at him in Hindi, telling him to get down and keep out of sight. The man started in surprise and squeezed himself into the narrow footspace between the seats.

Minutes later, our bus was intercepted by a group of young men dressed in bright, sharp synthetics. Several had bicycle chains wrapped around their wrists. They ran along beside the bus as it slowed to a halt. We heard them call out to the driver through the open door, asking if there were any Sikhs in the bus. The driver shook his head. No, he said, there were no Sikhs in the bus. A few rows ahead of me, the crouching turbaned figure had gone completely still…

As you know, Indian-American city council candidate Tom Abraham was smeared as a potential terrorist for being desi.

It’s ba-a-ack. We now know what the default political smear is going to be for Americans with brown skin for the next quarter-century. Hint: it’s identical to racist insults spewed by yahoos in 4x4’s:

Fliers that denounced [Prospect Park, NJ] Councilman Mohamed Khairullah as unpatriotic and a criminal were anonymously sent to borough residents last week… The message, delivered in a white envelope with no return address, was written in English and Spanish. It characterized Khairullah, a Muslim, as “a betrayer living among us” who would “try to poison our thoughts about our great country” and had ties to people responsible for the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. [Link]An anonymous attack flier claimed a Muslim candidate was ‘a betrayer living among us’ with 9/11 ties

The mailing said Mohamed Khairullah “should not be living in our clean town…” [Link]

Khairullah [is] a Syrian native and former Saudi Arabian resident… Arab-Americans and Muslims make up about 15 percent of this half-square-mile borough’s population of nearly 5,800; Hispanics account for about 40 percent, with Caucasians and African-Americans representing most of the remainder…

He said the flier… misrepresented… comments he made at a pro-Palestinian rally in Paterson last year in which he said American Muslims need to do their part to affect change in the Middle East, either through political activism or economic boycotts… [Link]

This is exactly the same smear an American shell company tried to use to prevent Jet Airways from flying to America. And it sometimes works. A desi candidate in another NJ town was smeared last year for being foreign-born, a classic political tactic. You get the sense that outside California, where that was never explicitly made a political issue with (cough, cough) Governor (I can never keep a straight face) Terminator, politics are pitched to the reptilian sub-brain and argued with the subtlety of a junior high playground fight:

The mailing is similar to one that went out the night before the 2004 election to voters in Bedminster, accusing township committee candidate Zaheer Jan and his running mate of being funded by “foreign nationals, not local residents.” Jan, who was born in India and grew up in Pakistan, said it was a scare tactic designed to make people fear he might have terrorist ties; he lost the election by 14 votes out of nearly 3,600 cast. [Link]

The Great Bongmeister chronicles the sexual revolution on Indian cable TV with the fondness of a grandfather sharing his stash of classic Playboys:

Sushma Swaraj, Minister of Virtue

The cable revolution of the early 90s came as a blessing from heaven (or hell) for the raging hormones of my generation who were henceforth liberated from the oppressive censorship of state-owned television… ladies with Sachin Tendulkar shoulders and Ramesh Krishnan waistlines heaved and thrusted away. As a result, Silk Smitha, Nylon Nalini and the other goddesses of the wet sari pantheon became part of our nightly vocabulary… [Link]

Alas, the uprising was choked nightly by a minister inappositely named Swaraj:

In the north rose a fell presence, an evil Eye that never slept… minister Sushma Swaraj.. launched a war against flesh tones on the airwaves! Soon she was passing one dictat after another—Star Movies censored all their sugar and spice, Sun TV followed suit… [Link]

One frustrated victim of fowlstrangulum interruptus commented:

Uff, Sushma Swaraj… how we cursed her… [Link]

But the sexing up of daily media soon made blue channels and pr0n sites irrelevant:

People stopped going to websites for their porn—instead they started making them themselves armed with… camera phones and webcams. School kids in respectable institutions were shooting their own sex videos and marketing them through auction sites… Who would go to Desibaba [a porn site] to watch digitally morphed pictures when people like Tanushree Dutta were going topless in songs in reality…

Indians were being sexed up too fast and Desibaba was now a relic of a more innocent bygone era… I would like to believe that Desibaba is still alive—spread out over thousands of hard drives where pictures and stories from it have been downloaded over the years… there is a little bit of Desibaba in each of us—in the memories we carry. [Link]

Related posts: Delhi sex clip portends sexual revolution?, Baazee.com CEO arrested over sex clip

I have watched phil-ums that made me want to gouge out my eyes with hot forks of displeasure, but I’ve never felt homicidal because of celluloid. According to my beloved Beeb, I OBVIOUSLY have nothing in common with Somali militia men:

Calm has returned to the Somali capital Mogadishu after 11 people were killed and 20 wounded in weekend fighting.

The clashes pitted militia belonging to the Islamic courts against owners of cinemas showing dubbed Bollywood films.

Obviously this horrible violence has nothing to do with the quality of a flick, but an extreme culture war over the qualities of the films and the activities related to them:

The Islamic courts have been attempting to control the activities of the cinemas - accusing them of fuelling crime, drug abuse and immorality.

Somalia has essentially been lawless for 14 years. What’s a little more immorality on top of THAT?

Last month, the court’s militia stormed a studio where Bollywood films were being translated and destroyed equipment.

I’m not quite sure what the honorable chairman from the state of fundamentalism means by the following quote:

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the chairman of the Islamic courts, says they open from early in the morning showing “scandalous movies to children even not allowed by producers in their home country”.

First and last of all, what scandal? The flouncing around gardens, peeking out from trees, getting close enough to sniff your dance partner but not kissing them even though the cut to a flower blooming might suggest exactly such fornication? Sheikh, please.

Mahajan: The South Asian Soprano

“Welcome to Catfish Row. In this poignant tale of love found and lost, the disabled beggar Porgy wins the beautiful but troubled Bess from her macho thug boyfriend Crown only to lose her to “happy dust” and the bright lights of New York.”

This isn’t even close to Mahajan’s first big-time performance, and I am a little surprised we hadn’t heard too much of her until now, although I guess opera circles are a bit different than ones many of us belong to. Here is some more on Mahajan from her bio…

Acclaimed for her portrayal of Musetta, she appeared in the Opera Omaha production of La bohème conducted Hal France and returned to Dallas Opera in the Garnett Bruce production which was conducted by Claus Peter Flor. Recognizing her command of the role, the soprano was invited to perform “Quando me’n vo” in the prestigious Richard Tucker Gala at Lincoln Center. Having performed Mimi for the first time in the Dayton Opera production, Miss Mahajan was invited to repeat the role at Royal Albert Hall marking her opera debut in the United Kingdom. The production was directed by three-time Olivier award-winning director Francesca Zambello and conducted by David Parry. Following her debut, Miss Mahajan was recognized for her “substantial voice” in The London Sunday Times. She will reprise the role at Royal Albert Hall in spring 2006.

What might have happened if Columbus got it right…

This next post is going to be difficult for people to believe. It was difficult for me. The very fact that I am writing this post may put my life in danger. Many things that I do for our readers puts me in danger though, so that is okay. Somewhere in the heart of Oregon lies a secret society restaurant. Witness:

Anyone who is familiar with secret societies such as the Freemasons, Priory of Scion, Knights Templar or has read Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code will be familiar with the concept of sub rosa. What goes on here, stays here.

The Sub Rosa restaurant began in a cottage on our property that was once the caretakers quarters for a 90 acre orchard here in Dundee. It remains primarily a workshop for Talisman Stoneworks, a stone carving studio though we do whip up some tasty meals from time to time.

During the day when the workshop is humming, you can drop in from noon on for a bowl of spicy soup; an onion tart; some tasty dessert; a beer or a stiff shot of grappa. Dust flies. Music pulses. Food smells waft into the air creating a exotic blend of workshop meets hole-in-the wall cafe meets underground radio station and WiFi hotspot.

At night - well, the ‘restaurant’ is rarely open. This is an invitation only gig. If you know us or know someone who knows us - you’re in. Otherwise you just get to read about us on this web site.

I just got the shivers. It is actually kind of sadistic what these people do. They prepare virtual menus that will bring tears to your eyes, and perhaps affect your nether regions with the skills of the Merovingian. Your tongue is not allowed to taste however:

You can download recipes and music and order a t-shirt but that’s about it. We’re more a state-of-mind than an actual place to eat.

Then why, dear God why, did they send the following menu/recipes into my inbox? This is beyond even my considerable culinary skills.

Thanksgiving Dinner:
Appetizer: Curried Nuts
Greens: Gujarat Green Beans
Starch: Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Curried Yams with coconut milk
Turkey: Cumin and Coriander spice rub
Condiments: Cranberry Chutney
Cucumber Raita
Stuffing: With raisins, cinnamon, almonds, celery and of course, bread
Dessert: Chiffon Pumpkin Pie with crystallized ginger galore
Garam Masala - Classic Indian spice mixture

I haven’t felt this empty inside since the last months of 2000, when many of us saw the dark clouds gathering on the horizon and knew that our country was headed in a direction that we feared. It’s over folks. The results of the Florida recount are in. Don Sherrill is the declared winner. The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Orange City’s heated City Council election ended on Thursday with a handshake and a smile after a recount failed to change the outcome.

The Seat 4 contest between incumbent Don Sherrill and Tom Abraham has been shadowed by disparaging comments Sherrill made about Abraham’s Indian ethnicity.

After the general election Tuesday, Sherrill led Abraham by 19 votes. Orange City’s canvassing board granted Abraham’s recount request despite the fact that the election was not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

On Thursday, the four-person canvassing board recounted the 746 votes cast in that race. Abraham did pick up one vote, from a wrinkled ballot that was apparently not counted on Tuesday. That reduced Sherrill’s margin of victory to 18.

“I conceded the election and he wished me good luck,” Abraham said after the results were read out loud and he shook hands with Sherrill.

What a class act Abraham has been throughout all of this:

During the one-hour recount, Abraham and Sherrill sat next to each other at a table watching the process.

The men spent much of the time talking, laughing and cracking jokes and appeared to be getting along despite Sherrill’s earlier inflammatory remarks.

Abraham said he had still not received an apology from Sherrill, but that even if he did get one, it would be too late.

It’s hard for most people to admit when they are wrong, and even harder for old people set in their ways. The Orlando Sentinel hasn’t felt moved to act by many of us that wrote in about their euphemistic reporting style, but the Daytona Beach News-Journal does carry an editorial that blasts the race and its outcome:

…And yet: Does Sherrill’s display of racism and ignorance disqualify him from office? Does it make the case for a recount? In both cases, the answer is — unfortunately, but legally and fairly — no. Voters in Orange City have had their say. A recount is legitimate in and of itself, but should have nothing to do with the tenor of the race just ended. And what this vote says is clear enough. The voters of Orange City are comfortable enough with a person of Sherrill’s racist sensibilities on their city council. Shame on them.

But shame, too, is no disqualifier of public will. Elections are free. They’re no guarantee of decent representation. In that sense, Sherrill’s victory is hardly unique.

How true.

Did you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your timing? From the first moment I met you, your derivativeness made me realize you were the last movie in the world I could ever love. But I’ve come to make confession: you have bewitched me body and soul.

I entered the new Pride and Prejudice movie with extreme prejudice and exited a believer.

Nimbooda in a wig

The producers were going for Gone With the Wind, but they ended up with Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. It’s the same Bollywood lighting, the same night scene with the romantic leads sitting before water, lit in gold. British group dances were like dandia raas and served the same virtuous end, hooking up the young’uns. The dance scene was like that amazing, flirty song in in HDDCS, ‘Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan.’ Keira is sharper, Aishwarya prettier. Rai with that John-Cusack-lookalike-in-a-wig would have been ideal.

HDDCS was more emotional, but this was definitely lump-in-throat territory. I rarely see intelligent romantic sparring any more, the last was Clooney and Zeta in Intolerable Cruelty. And the gender role inversion at the end is delicious. The beseechers and hand-kissers are not whom you’d expect.

Elna Bannat and Dharsi sahib

Someone stop me before I play some South Park Chef.

Watch the trailer. Here’s the A. Lane review, less snarktastic than usual.

Related posts: Ivy jive, No runaway ‘Bride’, Fisking the ‘Bride and Prejudice’ campaign, The UK crowns a new Queen, ‘Bride and Prejudice’ trailer

The NYT takes a look at new wave Indian cinema:

Being Cyrus

Lately, a third type of Hindi cinema has emerged. It’s composed of smaller, offbeat films that are more realistic than Bollywood tales and edgier than art-house ones. The films have an urbane, uniquely Indian sensibility. Many, though not all, are in Hinglish, the hybrid of Hindi and English that is spoken in metropolitan India.

These films have none of the overt glamour or sunny disposition of mainstream movies. Emotions are messy, characters have pasts and endings aren’t always happy. But neither are the movies treatises on social issues far removed from the filmmakers’ own experience, like so much art-house cinema was… Grimness is no longer box office poison, however. The first hit of 2005 was “Page 3,” the director Madhur Bhandarkar’s scathing look at high society in Mumbai. It featured pedophilia, drug-fueled rave parties and unabashed nastiness… [Link]

Distribution is key:

But the current crop of Indian independents can count on far wider release, thanks in large part to the arrival of more multiplexes. The first Indian multiplex, the PVR Anupam, opened in New Delhi in June 1997. Until then most filmgoers patronized cavernous theaters with 1,000 to 1,500 seats…

After the PVR Anupam opened, some state governments announced entertainment tax exemptions and prompted a multiplex boom. There are 73 multiplexes in India, with 276 screens and about 89,470 seats. The numbers are expected to increase to 135 multiplexes with more than 160,000 seats by the end of 2006…

The more affluent multiplex viewers have given filmmakers new fiscal and artistic freedom. “A film is a conversation,” said the director-producer Ram Gopal Varma… “The multiplex gives me flexibility and enables me to have a conversation with my intended target audience without worrying about small towns and villages…” [Link]

Related comments: Third I film fest

Related post: ‘Everybody Says I’m Fine’ playing in NYC

Some of you may have heard that last week five Muslim fans alleged racial bias while attending a New York Giants game. The Boston Globe reported:

Five Muslim football fans were detained and questioned during a game [Sep. 19th] at Giants Stadium because they were congregating near an air duct on a night former President George H.W. Bush was in the stadium, the FBI said yesterday.

Some of the Muslims said they did not know they were in a sensitive area, and said they were subjected to racial profiling while they were praying, as their faith requires five times a day.

”I’m as American as apple pie and I’m sitting there and now I’m made to feel like I’m an outsider, for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed,” said Sami Shaban, a 27-year-old Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway.

Come on, they are probably just being oversensitive, right? I was willing to give the FBI the benefit of the doubt:

FBI agent Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the bureau’s FBI office, said the men had aroused suspicion because they were congregating near the main air intake duct. Bush was in the stadium that night as part of a fund-raising campaign he and former President Bill Clinton were leading for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The site is now fenced off and is no longer accessible to fans.

Ok, no harm no foul. Then I read this article yesterday. Seems like this might be a pattern at Giants games, at least when there is a Bush in the house:

Two more men stepped forward Friday accusing authorities at Giants Stadium of racial profiling.

Mathew Varughese, 26, of Port Chester, and Pierre Mainville, 28, of Stamford, Conn., said they and four other men were unfairly questioned and detained by stadium police and the FBI during a Sept. 19 Giants-Saints game.

The incident happened the same day that five Muslim men were detained and questioned by authorities. Those men, who accused authorities of violating their religious rights, are considering whether to file a lawsuit. [Link]

‘The Boondocks,’ a leftist, angry-black-man comic drawn like anime, reeeeeeaches for a punchline. This is more puerile than its usual fare and conflates Hinduism with Islam, though it’s more a comment on the grandfather character’s bumbling.

Mohandas Gandhi’s hunger strikes have long been the object of derision in cultures without ascetic tradition. Churchill dismissing Gandhi as ‘nauseating’ and a ‘half-naked fakir’ wasn’t just the poisoned fruit of an embittered colonialist, it was also gut-level cultural revulsion which transcends political orientation. When Jon Stewart makes fun of ululating Arabs on the Daily Show, or show alumnus Stephen Colbert cracks a Gandhi starvation joke, they’re expressing culture clash. Personally, I draw the line at the Shi’as’ bloody self-flagellation during the Ashura festival and the self-mortifying skin hooks for the Thaipusam festival shown in the ‘Mundeyan To Bach Ke’ video (thanks, jeet).

But dissidents like Mandela have long gone on hunger strike, and many African countries are much poorer than India. The American shorthand for starvation used to be Ethiopian famine — why now Gandhi?

I blame Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing you can teach an American about what’s outside our borders that we can’t make fun of

In 2003, Maxim beat up an icon.

Related posts: Fatty fatwa, New evidence uncovered about Gandhi’s assassination, Promo’s pizza leaves bad taste in actor’s mouth, Gandhi didn’t wear Armani

Update: Ennis points out that pork chops are Southern food, like yams and greens. But pork is still laden with cultural connotations with which I’m sure Aaron McGruder is familiar, and he uses it for comic effect.

Veterans day has its roots in Armistice day, the holiday that once marked the end of the “Great War” (WWI) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 [Link].

Over 138,000 Indian troops fought in Belgium and France during World War I, many of them Sikhs. More than one quarter of these soldiers would became casualties.

In the first battle of Ypres at Flanders in 1914 a platoon of Dogra Sikhs died fighting to the last man, who shot himself with his last cartridge rather than surrender.

After the bloody battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915 the Sikh regiments had lost 80% of their men, 3 regiments stood at only 16% of their original compliment. [Link]

Encarta: Indian Soldiers in France

Another VERY patriotic South Asian American

Last week when I was live-blogging the incoming polling data from around the country, I didn’t list every South Asian candidate. Manish posted a link to some additional results in the comment section of my post. A race to be on the Fairfield City Council in Solano County, CA turned out to be one of the most dramatic races of the night. The Indian American candidate, Democrat Iqbal “Paul” Randhawa, lost with a meager 5% of the vote. There was drama nonetheless:

As voters cast ballots Tuesday afternoon, Fairfield City Council candidate Paul Randhawa, his wife and son were in court.

After confirming the charges against each of the owners of Fairfield-based M&K Travel Services, Solano County Superior Court Commissioner Barbara James told the trio they could post a collective $2 million bail once they appear in court in San Francisco.

They were then returned to Solano County Jail.

“Is my lawyer here?” a confused Iqbal “Paul” Randhawa asked before he was led from the courtroom. He told The Reporter during a Monday jailhouse interview that he hoped to post bail following Tuesday’s hearing.

Randhawa, his wife, Gurdev “Debbie” Randhawa, and son, Manjinder “Manny” Randhawa, were arrested Monday at their Dynasty Drive home on San Francisco-issued warrants alleging fraudulent business practices.

Paul Randhawa, 52, faces 15 counts of grand theft, 15 counts of failing to refund money and one count of conspiracy. His bail is $1 million. [Link]

Damn. Way to kick a man when he is down. Not only does he get creamed in the election, but he has to spend election day in jail with his family. What kind of game was Paul running?

According to the authorities the Randhawa family which operates M&K Travels with offices in Fairfield, San Francisco and San Jose allegedly failed to deliver more than $50,000 worth of discounted air tickets to India; and in two instances clients received refund cheques that bounced.

Randhawa, his wife and son face 31 counts of conspiracy and grand theft, they said.

According to the District Attorney’s Office, Paul Randhawa, if convicted, could face 13 years and four months in a state prison along with a fine of $375,000. [Link]

Desis know that the seat of all emotions isn’t the heart but the belly - why else would we spend so much time catering to its needs? Based on that principle some clever desi-americans have come up with a better truth test, one almost as effective as having your mother look you in the eye and tell you that she knows what you did, so you better be honest about it. Instead of a polygraph, they used an electrogastrogram to measure changes in the digestive tract associated with stress.

Manish reluctantly posed for this photo …

… when 16 volunteers were hooked up to heart and digestive tract monitors, the researchers were surprised to find that lying had a closer correlation with stomach changes than with heart changes.

When the subjects lied, their heart rates increased, but it also did so at other times. On the other hand, lying was consistently associated with a decrease in the slow waves of the digestive tract. [Link]

Why is a stomach test more accurate? Because, as any auntie will tell you, the heart is a fickle creature, led around by hormones:

“The heart is unreliable because it’s affected by not only by your brain, but by many other factors, such as hormones,” says Pankaj Pasricha, who is leading the team. “The gut has a mind of its own - literally. It has its own well-developed nervous system that acts independently of almost everything except your unconscious brain.” [Link]

The Pasricha Family: Where nobody dares tell a lie!

The study began as a high school project for Dr. Pasricha’s daughter, Trisha, who is listed as an author. (Dr. Pasricha’s wife is a former F.B.I. agent.) [Link]

Her mom’s a former F.B.I. agent and she just helped her dad come up with a better lie detector test? Boy, she’s really not planning on dating in high school, is she?

Legions of gastrophilic blurb writers drown South Asian lit in a very nice béarnaise sauce with a hint of tarragon:

Choli ke peechhe kya hai? (What’s behind the choli?)

ALSO BY ROHINTON MISTRY: … Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new. Swimming Lessons is an intoxicating literary experience, as elegantly composed as a classic raga and as intensely flavored as a lamb korma.

Yes, and it’s as exciting as baseball and as delicious as a BLT. Pardon me while I light a few sticks of air freshener, put on some Christian rock and bask in exawtique, mystical Occidentalism.

Guess what borders the Vintage Books softcover edition of Mistry’s Family Matters:

Photograph… from Traditional Indian Textiles…

A Rajasthani choli. Sit down, the shock could kill you.

Related post: Buzzword bingo

For today’s Science Friday, I want to jump right into the center of the culture wars. From Tuesday’s elections, two results in particular will affect the way that science is taught in parts of our country. First, the Kansas Board of education voted 6-4 to weaken evolution teaching in its classrooms. Second, voters in Dover, PA swept eight pro-Creationist school board members out of office and replaced them with eight anti-creationists.

The Kansas Board of Education has approved science standards that support the theory of intelligent design and cast doubt on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The final vote was 6-4 in favor of intelligent design. [Link]

Voters in rural Dover, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday ousted eight school board members who favor mentioning the concept as an alternative to evolution. The newly elected board members are opponents of the concept, which critics say promotes the Bible’s view of creation and violates the constitutional separation of church and state. [Link]

The latter action prompted this from good ‘ole Pat Robertson:

Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design” and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck…

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club” [Link]

This week’s Time magazine features a very clear and concise appeal from commentator Eric Cornell, calling all scientists to action:

…as exciting as intelligent design is in theology, it is a boring idea in science. Science isn’t about knowing the mind of God; it’s about understanding nature and the reasons for things. The thrill is that our ignorance exceeds our knowledge; the exciting part is what we don’t understand yet. If you want to recruit the future generation of scientists, you don’t draw a box around all our scientific understanding to date and say, “Everything outside this box we can explain only by invoking God’s will.” Back in 1855, no one told the future Lord Rayleigh that the scientific reason for the sky’s blueness is that God wants it that way. Or if someone did tell him that, we can all be happy that the youth was plucky enough to ignore them. For science, intelligent design is a dead-end idea.

My call to action for scientists is, Work to ensure that the intelligent-design hypothesis is taught where it can contribute to the vitality of a field (as it could perhaps in theology class) and not taught in science class, where it would suck the excitement out of one of humankind’s great ongoing adventures.

The New York Daily News reports today of one Karnail Singh, a Queens, NY resident who is currently recovering in Weill Cornell Medical Center’s burn unit since being seriously burned on October 28. How was he burned, you ask? Well, he hasn’t been convicted or anything, but it turns out Singh, 48 apparently set himself on fire while trying to set a deathtrap for his daughter-in-law by torching her basement apartment. The cause of his anger (according to fire officials): Singh claimed his daughter-in-law wasn’t sending money to his son in India. Oh, and he also also accused her of seeing other men. Thankfully Singh’s daughter-in-law Gurpreet Kaur, was rescued unharmed by firefighters who had to cut through metal bars on a basement window to get her out. In a weird twist of fate, as Singh was fleeing, he mistakenly set himself on fire. What goes around, perhaps really does come around.

We all know what today is and rather than prattle on about how I’m flummoxed that yet another week has raced past me and here we are, ready to write nanofiction, I’d rather focus on the significance of this day. In addition to 55Friday, today is Veterans day.

I learn something new every day. Here’s my chewable vitamin for today:

Q. What is the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day?

A. Many people confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, particularly those who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained in battle. While those who died are also remembered on Veterans Day, Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military - in wartime or peacetime. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served - not only those who died - have sacrificed and done their duty. A complete history of Veterans Day, and why it is observed on November 11, can be found on our Veterans Day History Web page.

Though I tend to cringe whenever I’m exposed to the oeuvre of this holiday’s pneumatic spokesperson (who decides such things?) I am loyal to our military for a million reasons, most of which are inspired by my sole sibling who has spent almost a decade in active duty in the Air Force. Thank you, Veena, for all of your leadership and sacrifice. Thank you for giving yourself to a country that has given us so much. Most of all, thank you for putting a face on an organization which our family never really understood, appreciated or paid attention to until your courageous decision to serve. P.S. Please tell all of your friends, especially those who have been or are in Iraq and Afghanistan that I sweat them, too.

In addition to keeping you informed and occasionally amusing you, SM has often served in the past as an Amber Alert-type site for missing persons of South Asian descent. I know that lots of people go missing and that posting it here may not make a difference…but maybe it might. The San Jose Mercury news reports on a missing mom (thanks for the tip Zahir):

It was 5.2 miles from Dr. Zehra Attari’s west Oakland office to a meeting she wanted to attend in Alameda.

The 55-year-old San Jose pediatrician left her office about 5 p.m. Monday. It was dark and it was raining hard.

Somewhere between her clinic office at 2700 International Blvd. in Oakland and the meeting conference room at 1240 South Loop Road in Alameda, Attari disappeared.

Three days later, Attari is still missing — one of 5,500 missing person reports San Jose police receive each year. Most of those people make it back home. But this case has investigators worried…

Attari’s family was able to confirm that she never signed in at the medical conference she had planned to attend. Her badge was still on the sign-in table.

“About 10 or 11 o’clock on Monday morning, she talked to my dad and said she was going to the meeting,” said her daughter, Dr. Ruby Attari Ali, who is a medical resident at the University of California-Davis.

Attari’s daughter in particular as asked for help in getting the word out. Anyone that has any information as to the whereabouts of Dr. Attari should get in touch with the authorities:

Attari was driving a 2000 gray Honda Accord with the California license plate 4MUH810. [Link]

The family has offered a $10,000 reward for any information that could help locate Attari. Anyone who would like to help in the search is asked to call (408) 476-6723 or (510) 557-6695.

As Abhi posted earlier, here’s how the Orlando Sentinel reported the results of the Don Sherrill - Tom Abraham election. You’ll recall this is the race where Sherrill called his Indian-American opponent a potential embed and 9/11 terrorist, purely because of Abraham’s ethnicity:

With a difference of less than two dozen votes, a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday. [Link]

The ‘off-color’ statements in question:

“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.” [Link]

Statements calling an Indian-American an embed and a 9/11 terrorist: ‘off-color.’ Same statements about blacks or Hispanics: ‘racist’ and ‘bigoted.’ The difference? Visibility. Those ethnicities show up on the cultural radar. This kind of revisionist euphemism in the press is itself a kind of racism.

Send your own email now:

To: Charlene Hager-Van Dyke (reporter), chagervandyke@orlandosentinel.com
Cc: Manning Pynn (public editor), mpynn@orlandosentinel.com; Letters to the Editor, insight@orlandosentinel.com

Subject: Re: Sherrill wins by 19 — Mahoney waltzes in

I enjoyed your story about the results of the Don Sherrill - Tom Abraham election. However, I am dismayed by the story’s inappropriate use of the phrase “off-color”:

“… a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-voc09_105nov09,0,673927.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-volusia

The statements which Don Sherrill made:

“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.”
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Neighbors/West/03WVolV01POL102805.htm

Let’s call it what it is. These statements aren’t “off-color,” they’re openly racist.

Previous posts: My opponent is undecipherable and probably an “embed”, Abraham vs. Sherrill to the Supreme Court???

Singled Out [by New Light Productions] will be an hour-long documentary exploring… [the lives of] single South Asian thirtysomethings in North America… To many elders… that many not-so-young people are remaining unmarried is puzzling, worrisome, and even scandalous… Singled Out will… examine the… anxieties and coping mechanisms of this often stigmatized group.

South Asian Singles Research Survey

We wish to capture the experiences of single, never-married South Asian Americans from 30-49. Jumpin’ jehoshaphat, you’re old. Here, have a Prozac.

1. As a single person, are you looking to meet people for dating or marriage?

Yes
No
What is this ‘dating’ you speak of?

2. Do you feel pressure to get married?

Yes
Yes

3. If yes, where is this pressure coming from?

My S.O.
My psycho ex
Sad fatty aunties
Gay marriages
Circus clowns

Gurkhas repelled a pirate attack on a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia on Monday:

Keep ya head down

“They launched two rocket-propelled grenades in our direction, one of which hit the ship about 10 feet from our cabin…” [Link]

… the world’s largest cruise line didn’t carry firearms, but had defenses like pepper spray. He said the company’s security staff recruited heavily among Gurkhas, elite Nepalese soldiers renowned for their fearlessness. [Link]

“This time the head of security was an ex-Gurkha from Nepal, and he made some good quick decisions…” [Link]

The stealthiest soldiers now man the loudest weapons:

“On the back of these ships they have a sonic deflector (which can send) out sonic waves which when they hit you on the chest… pound you,” Mr Meagher said. “It’s like being hit with a big rubber bullet and it bursts your ear drums… This device was being manipulated on the rear of the ship by a security guard - a former Gurkha soldier… He was, fortunately for him, kneeling down behind this device because the device was hit and shrapnel from the hit took him in the head… He’s recovering okay. He was the only individual who had any injury. (He was) a very brave man standing by his post…” [Link]

More on the sonic device:

Also known as an LRAD, the recently developed long range acoustic device is a crowd-control and combatant-deterrent sonic weapon… The warning tone is a high-pitched shrill tone similar to that of a smoke detector, only somewhat louder…. being within 100 yards (90 m) of the device is extremely painful…… sound could be reflected from a solid surface, and redirected back to the originator. [Link]

Hindu Squatting

When I was younger, I would inadvertently get into trouble for a many number of things, teasing my younger cousin, not coming home when my mom would call for me (picture an Indian aunty in suburban central Pennsylvania standing outside the front door of her house, screaming for me (in my embarrassing nickname) to come home like she was still in Ahmedabad), or for jacking that extra blow-pop. Like all kids, I knew I would get in trouble, but I did it anyway because it was fun. What wasn’t fun was the punishment. We called them “Ootbes”, which translates into stand (oot) sit (bes) and as an added incentive, we had to hold our ears while we did it, thereby looking like a robotic monkey, doing weird squats. Thanks to tipster, Nalina, I learned that I was not alone in having to do these. While some in the West have found yoga to be great excercise, others have discovered the Ootbes or Bethak, and renamed it the “Hindu squat.” It seems “Politically Incorrect Fitness & Fighting” instructor Matt Furey is using the Hindu Squat, and even the Hindu push-up (also known as downward facing dog in yoga circles) as conditioning exercises for weight loss and as a technique for building muscle. From Furey’s website..

Hindu squats (bethaks) are an exercise, like Hindu pushups (dands), that have been used by Indian wrestlers for centuries to build explosive lower body strength, power, speed and endurance. Can you get stronger doing this so-called “free hand” leg exercise while also staying away from barbell and dumbbell squats? Absolutely. Can you develop greater muscle mass with this bodyweight exercise? Again, absolutely. The Great Gama of India was 5’7” and 260 pounds of streaming steal, with thighs so heavily muscled they resemble the proverbial “tree stumps.” Legend has it that Gama of India, who never lost once in 5000 matches, did 4,000 bethaks or Hindu squats each day. These numbers are grossly inflated - but the fact of the matter is that Gama did do this exercise daily and he was unstoppable.

Google search results for Hindu Squat, Google search results for Hindu Pushup

Former SM blogger and political pundit Cicatrix, accurately predicted last night that the tight race down in Florida was headed for a contentious recount battle. Don Sherrill, the “off-color” incumbent, beat upstart challenger Tom Abraham by only 19 votes. To quote Cicatrix: “hey Florida! reeeeeeecount!!” The Orlando Sentinel reports:

With a difference of less than two dozen votes, a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday.

Don Sherrill, who has served on Seat 4 of the council the past four years, is the apparent winner after garnering 51 percent of the vote against his opponent, Tom Abraham.

Election officials said 19 votes cast Tuesday and some provisional ballots, which were not included in Tuesday’s total, separated the two at day’s end.

Sherrill did not return calls Tuesday night. Abraham, who said he was “totally confused with the election process,” asked for a public-records inspection of the votes. Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall said Abraham could have an inspection of the ballots sometime next week with Sherrill present.

Quite frankly, I am not sure how this will go down if it ends up at the Supreme Court. John Roberts and Samuel Alito (who I predict will be confirmed) tend to yield to states rights. At least Katherine Harris is out of the picture…we hope.

Sherrill’s comments, which ranged from being unable to understand Abraham to comparing him with a Sept. 11 terrorist, drew out some, including neighbors from his Country Village retirement community who voted against him and others who credited him for speaking out.

I’m gonna offer to drive the truck.

Tony Blair’s idea of throwing British Muslims in jail for three months without charge has been resoundingly rejected.

Hecklers shouted, ‘We aren’t a police state!’The House of Commons rejected a crucial provision of the government’s anti-terrorism bill today by a vote of 322-291, handing the once-invincible Prime Minister Tony Blair his first Commons defeat since he came to power eight years ago…

49 Labor members broke ranks and helped reject the government’s proposal, which would have increased to 90 days the time that terror suspects can be held without charge… Immediately after defeating the 90-day plan, the House of Commons passed an alternative proposal… to extend the detention period to 28 days…

To jeers and heckling from his opponents, one of whom shouted out, “We aren’t a police state!” Mr. Blair made it clear he believed that extreme times called for extreme measures… “Let’s not pretend that we can win the war on terror by passing every single law the government throws up,” Mr. Davis said. [Link]

I would have taken great pride in writing, ‘England learns well from its former colony,’ but that was only true before massive spying on ordinary Americans, legalized torture, secret CIA prisons, secret evidence, gag rules, suspension of jury trials and the Fascist Act.

How very un-American America has become worshipping the false god of political advantage. In casting off one draconian ruler, how did we become its student? In fighting another evil empire, did we become one ourselves? Stripping away what makes this America is a mark of weakness, not strength. The real problem is not police powers, it’s bureaucratic ineffectiveness. ‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’

Related post: Every little helps

So I’ve finished up all the popcorn and the lime soda here at the North Dakota headquarters. I looked for Ennis’s magic mirror, but the only one I found cracked. I broke into Abhi’s weight room and accidentally dialed up the poundage—hopefully he’s as prepared for two gees as zero. I rifled through Sajit’s files but could not find the combo to the safe and ended up breaking the drawer. I tried to steal Anna’s cranberry pickle, but just ended up leaving finger prints all over the mango. I snuck into Manish’s marble bathtub, but spilled his sandalwood oil all over myself.  I tried to nap in Vinod’s comfy bed, only to realize he has surveillance cameras. In other words, I better get the hell out of here before they paddle me again.

But not without leaving a present for the gracious hosts and readers. There’s one blog that I never managed to mention in a post. I just never found the right hook. But it’s a great blog and it’s got a lot of South Asian talent on it. It’s called 3 Quarks Daily, and it’s edited by Pakistani-born Manhattanite Abbas Raza. Much of the time it’s just a filter blog, citing amazing articles with one line comments. Very geeky, very worldly, very artistic, and veddy veddy good.  For that alone it’s valuable. On Mondays, however, they post all original material. This last Monday, for example, Abbas’s sister Azra wrote up part I of a report on the War on Cancer. Azra and Sughra Raza figure in a moving tale of Desi American collaboration which is described here and here. 

On Halloween Abbas remembered a scary return to JFK from Pakistan three years ago. It doesn’t quite go where you think it’s going.

Hmm, that sounds like Abhi pulling in with the pick-up. And I think Manish has caught the trail of escaped perfume. I better run! Tata, hosts and readers, and thanks for all the spicy snacks!

 Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been keeping an astonished eye on the car-burning in Paris and France that is approaching the fortnight mark. Saurabh at Rhinocrisy has noted that a certain segment of the blogosphere, headed by Internment-Cheerleader-In-Chief Michelle Malkin, is having a field day.  What an opportunity to clumsily conflate France’s antipathy towards  certain war policies with imagined Gallic championship of any and every liberal cause as articulated in America. Just because the French have embraced the same notions of universal health care that some American liberals have, obviously they epitomize the multicultural state American liberals champion. Since Democrats like French bread and wine they must love French cultural policies.  /sarcasm.  But as those of us who actually pay attention to identity politics in France know, the French model is not quite the California-cuisine tossed diversity salad that American cultural purists love to hate on. Saurabh and the Francophilic Phoebe Maltz call a spade a spade:

I hate to be trite, but this picture is simply at odds with reality. France has been anything but multiculturalist, and in fact has been quite uniform in demanding that its Muslim minority conform, damnit, to the standards of French culture.(Link.)

Despite its shunning of hyphenated identity and insistence that all of its citizens are equally—and nothing but—French, France has a problem: whenever a minority group in country is involved in a conflict—one its members started, of which its members are victims, or a combination—the possibility of that group up and leaving is immediately brought up.(Link)

(It is, of course, as absurd to lump together all of France as to lump together all of India—the land that gives us LePen also gave us Zola.) Many observers  warn that it is a mistake to view these (so far relatively non-injurious) rioters as Islamic or Arab or Brown or Immigrant so much as poor  and unemployed. But I have to wonder if, by shunning the hyphen, France has forced the French children of immigrants to make an overly stressful choice. We affiliates of Sepia Industries might be considered connoisseurs of the hyphenated life-style. A hyphen is a useful prop, like a towel, that you can move about and rework as the situation demands. Sometimes you want it out, front and center, and sometimes it can stay in your purse. Immigration is hard, and tools can help. It was Hyphen Magazine’s blog which reminded me of the South Asian connection to the Parisian riots.

Canadian resident Parminder Singh Pannu is not a happy man. He misses his new bride who is still stuck in India. The Canadian government won't let her into the country to live with her man because they don't believe the two are legitimately married. Why the suspicion? Well, just look at their wedding picture. They don't look very happy. The Vancouver Sun reports:

Delta resident Parminder Singh Pannu thought his luck had changed when he married his second wife Ranjit in India in November 2002.

Almost three years earlier, his first wife Anupinder died of breast cancer at 43, leaving him a widower. And three years before that, he nearly died when he was sliced from head to hip by a dagger at Surrey's Guru Nanak temple during a protest by fundamentalist Sikhs.

But Pannu is more frustrated than ever now because the federal Immigration Department is refusing to allow his 36-year-old bride into the country, calling the marriage bogus...

"Your marriage is not genuine and was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring permanent residence in Canada," a 2005 rejection letter states...

One of the government rejection letters said the pair looks too stiff in some pictures to be a real married couple.

Pannu tried to explain to the Immigration people that Sikhs aren't down with PDA. THAT is why they look so stiff:

Family friend and community activist Gurnam Singh Sanghera said the comment is outrageous and shows the Canadian official does not understand Sikh culture, in which public shows of affection are not typical.

"I have probably never hugged my wife in public," Sanghera said Sunday. "How can they tell this from a picture? Are they psychic?"

Pannu's son Byron is getting married pretty soon:

Byron is getting engaged in December and was hoping his stepmother could finally be here to perform the role of mother in the ceremony marking his pending marriage.

I have just one piece of advice for Byron: Smile during the wedding pics.

You’re probably familiar with State of Bengal’s iconic drum ‘n bass fusion track, ‘Flight IC408,’ on Talvin Singh’s Anokha. The airport sample below was good for one correct answer on Amardeep’s quiz. Listen here.

[In thickly accented English] Your attention please… Your attention please… Indian Airlines announces the departure of their flight IC408 to Calcutta.

This kickass DJ is spinning at a live show tomorrow in Manhattan. It’s in honor of the third anniversary of Third I New York, the screening group for desi indie films.

Sam, aka State of Bengal… [was] a cutting edge producer/DJ at the infamous ‘Anokha’ club nights… His eruptive tracks ‘Flight IC408’ and ‘Chittagong Chill’, featured on Talvin Singh’s Anokha compilation… remain anthems. State Of Bengal is finalizing his new… album, Skip-IJ… His [set will include] his new tracks.

Also playing: videos for M.I.A., Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation, Karmacy, Lal, Geto Boys, Gurpreet & Jugular.

An article in Indian Express discusses the barriers to transforming the world of work something we’ve long suspected -

”Companies are finding that despite India’s one-billion population, the effective employable pool for white-collar workers is smaller than anticipated. This is causing salaries to ratchet upwards”. At the same time, there is a large mass of educated and unemployed people or those stuck in jobs well below their skill and qualification.

Educated and yet unemployed / underemployed? The article asserts that the core reason is English language skills and provides a startling figure -

…Salary differences between equally qualified (non-professional/technical) candidates can be as high as 400 to 500 per cent. In fact, the more fancied jobs in airlines, hotels, media, banks and financial services only to those who know English, the rest are forced into less fancied assignments.

…The best jobs with the upmarket shopping malls, multiational fast-food chains and tony restaurants go to those who can speak English along with the mandatory fluency in local languages. The job market in the services sector is likely to expand furiously as malls, multiplexes, food courts, and large retail chains expand operations across India, moving from the cities to larger towns. This growth will only accelerate if the government eventually permits Foreign Direct Investment in the Retail Sector, letting in large retail chains such as Wal-Mart.

The English advantage really drives home the cultural globalization at work within India. Such a large pay differential implies - particularly when seen in retail & services sectors - that there are domestic, well-to-do desi consumers who pay a premium to interact with confident English speakers as part of their business experience. Message to your bro’s back home - Learn English - 400-500% is a far bigger differential than, for ex., the diff between undergrad and grad degrees.

On the flip side, I suppose some sorts of anti-globalization advocates would wipe out the 400 to 500% differential by keeping the Wal-Mart’s out and keeping everyone equally poor.

Candlelight vigils for the Pakistan earthquake were held in 25 cities worldwide tonight. In NYC’s Union Square, chic midtown suits sold fundraising bracelets, listening somberly and flirting subtly. One white paramedic who volunteered in the relief effort spoke of doing amputations in the open air without anesthesia, of villagers hoisting near-dead relatives upon their backs and hauling them seven hours down the mountains to the paramedic camp. After the speeches, Nusrat sang quietly in the background.

A buddy of mine, Monis Rahman, penned this first-person account of volunteering in the mountains:

Two weeks earlier, a Sungi volunteer named Tariq took a helicopter filled with relief supplies to one of the mountain villages. The villagers rushed the helicopter, which was hovering slightly above the ground… Amidst the chaos, one fell to the ground. As Tariq reached to help him up, the rear rotor blade of the helicopter struck his head. He died instantly…

… we saw smoke coming out from a distant peak. Yasir casually asked Farooq if it was a volcano erupting. Our village guides immediately stopped, clearly terrified by the possibility of another catastrophe. There had been rumors in these areas that a volcano would erupt to further punish the villagers for their sins. Most of them believed that something they did as a community was responsible for the devastation they faced… I quickly pointed out that it was just a man-made fire… [Link]

I am a HUGE Tim Russert fan. I’ll admit it. I want to grow up to be like him someday. No time like the present to begin. So here goes. For the next 24 hours, with my virtual whiteboard in hand, I will be Live Blogging election results from around the country. I may declare a winner with only 5% of the precincts reporting in some areas of the country, but it doesn’t matter. Because this is a blog I can correct myself in real-time and nobody will ever know. Check back at this post for frequent updates and results for additional candidates. You can send me the links to any South Asians who I am missing over our tip line.

Virginia State Assembly

Supriya Christopher ((D)) 6,605 44% lost
Sal Iaquinto ((R)) 8,271 55%
Officially: 15 out of 15 precincts reporting

Houston City Council:

John Elford 19,699 14%
Sue Lovell 44,939 32%
Jay Aiyer 36,101 26%
James B. Neal 13,721 10%
Poli Acosta 24,663 18%
Runoff Election
Officially: 677 out of 677 precincts reporting

John Shike 1,691 17%
M.J. Khan 6,989 69% won
K.A. Khan 1,403 14%
Officially: 41 out of 41 precincts reporting—> All three candidates were of Pakistani origin!

We go from the strangely disturbing to the just plain strange today on the Mutiny. Right on time for dinner!

An Indian boy considers his rare birth defect to be an advantage. Devender Harne, 10, was born with 25 fingers and toes — six fingers on each hand, six toes on one foot and seven on the other.

Video of the child here. Of course he’s going to take the brown view of things:

Though it would be considered an abnormality to some, Devender says it allows him to work faster than the average child.

Despite his super powers, Devender is a pretty ordinary kid:

The extra digits on his hands and feet don’t hinder his daily life. Like any normal 10-year-old, he goes to school, plays sports and spends time with his friends.

As tipster BJ said— another one twenty-five for the world of Guiness. Brilliant!

The Guinness Book of World Records has contacted the boy’s family and is investigating whether he has the most useful fingers and toes in the world.

Singapore’s hangman is a semi-retired 73 year old desi named Darshan Singh. This man, who looks like any other jolly uncle on the street, has executed over 850 prisoners in his 46 years at the job.

Darshan Singh holds the world’s record for executions: 18 men in one day, three at a time. He takes real pride in his work, bragging that he has never botched an execution. The government pays him $312 for each execution and he gets to dress casually at his job, “often just a T-shirt, shorts, sports shoes and knee-length socks.” [Link]

His next execution is likely to be that of convicted Australian drug trafficker Van Tuong Nguyen.

Nguyen will meet Mr Singh a few days before he is executed and will be asked if he would like to donate his organs.

On the day before his execution, Mr Singh will lead him to a set of scales close to his death-row cell to weigh him.

Mr Singh will use the Official Table of Drops, published by the British Home Office in 1913, to calculate the correct length of rope for the hanging. “I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you.”

On the day of Nguyen’s execution, Mr Singh will be picked up by a government vehicle and driven to the prison, arriving at 2am local time (0400 AEST) to prepare the gallows.

Shortly before 6am, he will handcuff Nguyen’s hands behind his back and lead him on his final short walk to the gallows, just a few metres from the cell.

… Darshan Singh will place a rope around the 25-year-old’s neck and say the words he has spoken to more than 850 condemned prisoners during his 46 years as Singapore’s chief executioner.

“I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you.”

[According to his colleague:] “Death has always come instantaneously and painlessly. In that split second, at precisely 6am, it’s all over.” [Link]

Previously profiled Sikh comic Sody Singh Kahlon is at it again. Kahlon first made waves in the UK with a well received one-man act titled “Sikh in the City” (get it?) and stage/screen performances with his comedy group, the Funjabi’s -

Sody Kahlon first came to prominence as co-founder of The Funjabis, making their name in west London by selling out performances at Watermans theatre.

The group was behind hit comedy plays such as ‘The Funjabi Show’, ‘This Is Your Life, Mr Funjab’ and ‘Don’t Worry Be Funjabi’ at venues around the UK.

…his one-man play ‘Sikhs in the City’ toured internationally to almost 6,000 fans, featured on BBC2, Radio4, BBC World Service and is being released on DVD; he co-wrote the short film ‘We Are One’ with Sarbjit Bakshi, which formed part of a Channel 4 film scheme; and has done various acting stints on BBC and ITV.

Kahlon’s back with a new show titled “Soul Sikher”. Reports from across the pond indicate that Kahlon is using the tried and true country-bumpkin —> big city —> country-bumpkin / clash of cultures plot -

Few stories with the words “rock” “band” “huge stone” and “high” are news, but this piqued my interest. Recently, five british musicians, from five different bands, joined together for a charity gig at Everest Base Camp, 5,545m above sea level.

The 40-minute concert, in front of about 100 mountaineers, was to raise money for children victimised by armed conflict in Nepal…. [It] raised almost £30,000 overall to help Nepalese children…. a shelter and skills centre will be set up for the conflict-affected children at Dhulikhel, east of capital Kathmandu…

Rights groups say almost 400 children have died in the nine-year-old armed conflict in Nepal. [Link]

The concert was the highest rock concert in the world. This was actually the second world record set by the organizing charity, British charity The Nepal Balabalika Trust (Trust for Nepalese Children). In September, another group of musicians set the world record for the longest concert by “by performing continuously for almost 44 hours in a bar in London’s Soho district.” [Link]

For more on this story, see their webpage: The Worlds Highest Gig - October 2005

Author Vikram Seth just did a live audio interview with S