Technics aside, a perfect photograph usually involves both, an absorbing subject matter and an image that leaves an imprint as if it were a memory of one’s own. Take these qualities and wrap them around India’s filmi phenomena, turn the roll into a series and what you have is the stuff that dreams are made of. Bollywood dreams, to be (slightly inaccurately) exact.

Jonathan Torgovnik’s extensive travels throughout India in the early 90s led him to rural India’s nomadic cinema halls and the masala movie sets of Chennai and Mumbai. On the way he managed to create a completely riveting contribution to the study of Indian cinema in the form of Bollywood Dreams (Phaidon Press, 2003). This (unbelievably perfect coffee table) book feels like a deeply personal photo essay as well as a tribute to Indian cinema’s grass roots. All seen through the eyes of a former combat-photographer for the Israeli army.

Online exhibitions of Torgovnik’s work with the Indian film industry can be found at Digital Journalist and foto8. A short (5min.) self-narrated clip of his photographs can be found at Google viddy. His website too is chock full of goodies, like the Mumbai laughing clubs series, which is reducing me to fits of giggles just thinking about it. Or the Satosh series, which is pure breaking my heart. Either way, I can’t stop looking.

As some of you may have seen on our News tab, a Hindu temple in Minnesota was recently vandalized pretty severely:

The severed head of Andal Devi

Two 19-year-olds were arrested May 10 and charged with vandalising a partially completed Hindu temple in Maple Grove, MN, on April 5.

Maple Grove Police arrested local resident Paul Gus Spakousky and Tyler William Tuomie of Andover, MN, and charged them with first-degree criminal damage to property and third-degree burglary, both felonies…

Several of the deities were damaged in the attack, forcing the organisers to postpone the scheduled June 4 inauguration of the 43,000 square feet temple built at a cost of $9 million (about Rs 40 crore). [Link]

Punkistani follows up with more details [via Sanjay]:

That’s the head of Andal Devi, and just one of eight sacred likenesses that were defiled in a Hindu Temple set to open on June 1st. By defiled, I mean the statues were decapitated and dismembered…

It’s pretty damned recent. The scoop is that vandals punctured walls and broke into a Hindu temple, ruined some Hindu Gods and left. Property destruction is never that focussed unless it’s a deliberate attempt to intimidate. Nearby Churches went untouched.

Six hundred people attended the community meeting that followed, where reports of neighborhood Indians having their houses vandalized and egged were exchanged. The attending Police Captain, Tracy Stille, verified these stories. [Link]

The Kominas, a Muslim punk band that we have previously blogged about, have decided to rush to the aid of the temple and their fellow South Asian Americans. They are putting on a concert to raise money for rebuilding the temple and it would be cool if our New York readers could represent.

As the eminent Arnold Toynbee pointed out, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”. Here, Arundhati Roy carries her Far-Left Post-Modernism to its logical suicidal ends -

…the longer you stay [in places like Iraq], the more you’re enforcing these tribal differences and creating a resistance, which obviously, on the one hand, someone like me does support; on the other hand, you support the resistance, but you may not support the vision that they are fighting for. And I keep saying, you know, I’m doomed to fight on the side of people that have no space for me in their social imagination, and I would probably be the first person that was strung up if they won. But the point is that they are the ones that are resisting on the ground, and they have to be supported, because what is happening is unbelievable.

So, it seems she’d rather cast her lot with the barbarians who’d “string her up” than implicitly support the Western hegemony responsible for her material well being, freedom of speech and physical security. So be it.

(hat tip - DesiDudeInGotham whose submission to the News page roused me from my blog slumber)

[previous SM coverage on Roy - “Back the Resistance” and “Tunku vs. Arundhati”]

After almost an hour of traffic, I’m nearing work, though I’m furious that this succession of delays means that by the time I get there, it will be too late to get fresh breakfast. Now that I’m off donuts, there’s not much left in the “continental” spread that I feel like eating.

Wasn’t there an amazing indie coffee place around here? I remember grabbing something hurriedly before my pre-wedding mani/pedi a few days ago…I hadn’t expected much, but after my first sip of perfectly brewed espresso, I was a believer. The place had a cutesy name…there it was: The Bean Counter. Unfortunately, parking was not allowed in front of it. Fortunately, I snagged a coveted “zone two” spot right around the corner. Go me.

I knew they were famous for a Cuban sandwich or similar, i.e. something I could never eat, but I wondered if they served breakfast. As yummily necessary as coffee was, it wasn’t a proper meal. I started to read the menu which was framed to the left of the front door—

“Just go in, I’m sure it’s fine.”

I slowly turned and found a very well-dressed older black man smiling at me. In my peripheral vision I noted a gleaming black town car, illegally parked.

I started stammering, I had been in my own little world before he yanked me out of it.

“Um, yes. It, um is. It’s good—really good actually. Excellent espresso.”

“That’s what I heard from the woman down the street. Thought I’d check it out. Well, I don’t want to crowd you, so…”

“Thanks you, I mean, thank you.”

My goodness I was an idiot first thing in the morning. Fine, second thing, too.

I went back to the menu but the only thing which appealed contained nutellla, which I’m staying away from, since I’m weaning myself from sugar. Just coffee then, I guess. I went in and walked all the way to the back of the narrow space, to the register.

“How many shots are in a large?” I asked, slightly ashamed that I knew exactly how to order my desired drink in Startwat lingo. I didn’t want to betray my shameful secret, so dumb questions were in order.

“Three.” She had a rather thick accent I couldn’t place.

Madre de Dios, that’s a lot. I remembered my junior year at Davis, when I went to Roma off A street right before a final exam and ordered a triple shot drink. I spent the majority of our two hour test period puking my brains out, leaving me a whopping 20 minutes to fill a blue book with my suddenly very shaky handwriting. Thank goodness it was just poli-sci. ;)

“Large, single-shot latte then.”

“Single? You single?”

While you Amreekan desis are out winning your spelling bees and geography bees, we Canucks are out here breaking records. World records, people! Sri Lankan-Canadian Suresh Joachim is at it again and this time he’s partaking in one of my favourite activities, karaoke. Starting at 11:00 AM on the 31st and continuing on for fifty hours…:

Suresh Joachim will be singing his way into the record book. This electrifying record is organized by M.M. Robinson high school in Burlington. Suresh Joachim and the students are joining to raise fund for the Canadian Red Cross. The current karaoke world record is 25 hours & 45 minutes and was performed by Mark Pearson (U.K) in 2004. [Link]

Joachim currently holds 33 world records and since Cicatrix introduced us, Joachim has run a hundred klicks on a treadmill, crawled one mile in thirty six minutes, worked a pair of turntables for seventy six hours, moonwalked for twenty four hours, and gone on a thirty one hour couple dance marathon. [Link]

Joachim wants to break the record for holding the most current records, he’s doing it for the children:

The most remarkable demonstration of Suresh’s commitment to help suffering children will be the World Peace Marathon. This incredible journey will begin at 12:00 a.m. on December 25, 2007 in Jerusalem and end at 5:00 p.m. on June 24, 2008 in Sydney Australia. During his voyage, Suresh will travel through 88 major cities, in 54 countries passing a symbolic peace torch to dignitaries in each place. [Link]

With this marathon Joachim hopes to petition to make June 24 ‘World Ceasefire Day’ and raise $1 billion for the Universal Fund for Suffering Children.

Take a deep breath. This is not a political post. It’s another post about music.

Indo-Pak Coalition is a current trio project that includes Rudresh Mahanthappa on saxophone, Rez Abbasi on guitar, and Dan Weiss on tabla. It’s just one of a number of fascinating, adventurous collaborations taking place on the creative-music scene these days. Along with his longtime collaborator, fellow-desi and piano genius Vijay Iyer, Rudresh is a regular on this scene and his work, whether in straight-ahead jazz or cross-genre collaborations, never fails to fascinate. He’s got a wonderful tone and attack that place him in the Coltrane legacy, and he’s done very thoughtful work that injects classical Indian concepts and themes into forward-looking contemporary jazz. Read more about him here, and about Pakistani-American guitarist Abbasi here.

Indo-Pak’s new suite “Apti” premieres tomorrow night, 5/31, at Joe’s Pub in NYC, and I encourage local Mutineers to join me there.

About the new project, Rudresh says this:

Mahanthappa is excited about his upcoming gig with the Indo-Pak Coalition: “It has this weird twist to it because, okay, you have this trio and the two brown guys are playing western instruments and the white guy’s playing an Indian instrument! [laughs] So it’s kind of funny and it’s interesting because Dan is an amazing drummer, but he’s also Samir Chatterjee’s most prized student; he’s a really monstrous tabla player, but he came out playing the tabla after playing drumset. And here we [Mahanthappa and Abbasi] are: we play these western instruments. So our perspectives are very different. It’s been really great to work with that group because we can talk about everything in very Indian terms—whether it’s Karnatic or Hindustani or whatever—and then we can turn around and talk about it in totally Western terms.”

This promises to be a great show. I hope to see you there!

I was saddened hear about the death of Desmond Dekker, one of the pioneers of the original Jamaican ska music scene (hear some of his music at Myspace). Ska, which Dekker and a handful of others invented in the early 1960s, is a kind of double-speed form of calypso that is generally upbeat and celebratory. It was a pop fad in Jamaica in the early 1960s that was reborn as a kind of multicultural pastiche in England with bands like Madness and The Specials in the late 1970s. Those bands were self-consciously racially integrated — often with black lead singers and white bandmates — and they were hugely commercially successful. The lead record label in this second wave of ska bands was 2 Tone Records, which got its name from its distinctive checkered logo, though “two tone” also clearly referred to the label’s multicultural, racially inclusive vibe.

I was a big fan of this type of music in high school and college, though I grew up during the ‘third wave’ of ska — after it had been reborn yet again as a kind of offshoot of American punk rock. As I bounced along to Operation Ivy in high school, I wondered: what about desi ska? The upbeat rhythm you find in The Specials (or earlier, in Desmond Dekker himself) is also key in Bhangra, and the two genres seem almost made for each other.

In fact, there was some ska-bhangra fusion back in the day, and there still is some today. If the mainstream record label was called 2 Tone Records, the desi version was Multitone Records, and it was founded in the early 1980s, just around when Brit-Asian Bhangra bands like Achanak and Premi were first starting to make records. (This was also, coincidentally, just after the peak of the 2-Tone Records era on the British music charts.)

ArtWallah ‘06 is now less than a month away in Los Angeles. SM readers have heard me sing the praises of this organization and its annual festival before. I appreciate what they do and what they are about so much that I have been wallahnteering to help run the festival for the past three years. This year I decided to retire and actually cool out to all the artists and just enjoy myself…or so I thought. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. I’m the new “CashWallah.” I will leave it to your imaginations what that job entails.

Last year I decided to entice SM readers to come out to the festival with a little multimedia tour which made it pretty obvious why anyone within a hundred miles of L.A. (at least) should show up. I hyperlinked to some new musicians, artists, dancers etc. This year the ArtWallah Press Team has saved me the trouble and made a detailed program FULL of interesting hyperlinks to artists many of you have never heard of. It took me an hour to click through them all and appreciate what I saw. It was an hour well spent.

…this year’s ArtWallah festival [at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center] will present the works of over 40 artists through dance, film, literature, music, spoken word, theater, and visual arts - showcasing the personal, political, and cultural celebrations and struggles of the South Asian diaspora (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).

Click on “Continued” below for a quick lick.

Recently Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California spoke at the 2006 TiEcon conference in front of a large group representing the Indian American business and entrepreneurial community. The conference was held in Silicon Valley and dealt mostly with the intersection of California, business, and Indian Americans. A mash-up clip featuring the highlights of his talk are available on the internet. It is worth seeing (scroll down just a bit on the linked page) especially for the zinger that Schwarzenegger unleashes about a quarter way through the clip when he notices that all of his co-panelists are men. What’s up with that?

Over the tipline we are often asked by Indians living in India why we (as individuals) don’t blog more about certain Indian issues (especially those dominating the Indian media). The simple answer is that you most likely wouldn’t want to read what we have to say about many Indian issues. We aren’t Indian nationals, we all reside in North America, and we are all U.S citizens (except for our current guest blogger who runs our Canadian operations). This means that our opinions, at best, would provide some with a broader perspective on a given topic, and at worst could come across as ignorant or ill-informed. There are better places to read about Indian issues if that is what you are looking for. And yet, those of us who write for SM have definitely felt some resentment at times from parts of the Indian blogosphere, both when we blog an “Indian issue,” and when we don’t.

I know that the current hot topic in the Indian media is the battle over a quota system in Indian universities. I wasn’t going to write a post about it because the Indian educational system doesn’t affect me in any way. However, my mom mentioned the debate to me over the phone and we got to discussing it. I realized how similar and how different the debate in India is as compared to the affirmative action debate in the U.S. Being a graduate of the University of Michigan, the central battlefield for affirmative action in the U.S., I have some definite opinions on the subject and am generally in favor of affirmative action and the type of educational environment it leads to when implemented and executed properly.

My mom opined that she kind of supported the protestors in India. I pressed my mom on the matter a bit since I am more inclined to support a quota system of some kind. What about 3000 years of class oppression? You can’t just erase that with pithy protest slogans like:

DON’T MIX POLITICS WITH MERIT; QUOTAS: THIS CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE; MERIT IS MY CASTE, WHAT’S YOURS?… [Link]

Time Magazine Asia breaks down the central arguments in the debate:

“Modern India should be built on merit, not caste,” says Dr. Sudip Sen, 34, a Ph.D. student in biochemistry at AIIMS. “What’s next — are we going to let a slow runner represent India in the Olympics? No, we are going to send our best runner out for the 100 meters, no matter his caste. It should be the same for all fields.”

Countless other Indian medical workers who have gone on strike this week feel much the same as Sen, which is why India’s sudden battle over affirmative action makes the ongoing divide in the U.S. over racial preferences seem tame by comparison. Public hospitals across the country have shut their doors to all but emergency services; private hospitals in some Delhi suburbs are following suit; trade unions have called for a morning of civil disobedience; and students at India’s elite business schools are meeting to plan their own protests. In spite of the disruption, the government has sworn that it will not back down, regardless of who resigns or how many protest. Increased quotas, it claims, are the only way to foster social equality at the institutions that are driving the Indian economy forward.

That fast-growing economy often makes it easy to forget India’s rigidly stratified past. But any country hurtling along the path to modernization is at risk of being occasionally slowed down by the weight of its own history, and in this case, India has been yanked to a crawl by 3,000 years of a strictly codified social pecking order. [Link]

Apparently, contrary to their assurances Leela Lounge is shut today after all. Thanks to Anna’s effort and Pooja’s counsel, we are moving to: La Lanterna café, 129 MacDougal St., corner of West 3rd.

This is just a couple blocks from our original location, where hopefully one of us will have the presence of mind to leave a note… :)

Note: La Lanterna has a garden so if you don’t see folks inside, make sure to check back there. See y’all at 5:00 pm (plus inflation)!

Peace and hair grease!

As promised, during this World Cup season I’ll be serving up some desified football-related posts for that arse. Today, my bhai Davy hips me to this fascinating AFP story on “Pakistan’s Black Pelé,” Abdul Ghafoor. Apparently, he was the leading light of Pakistani football in the 1960s, a midfielder on what was a reasonably strong national team:

The midfielder was part of Pakistan’s setup when it was a credible footballing nation, grinding its way into Asia’s top 10 with players in demand from league clubs in India.

Ghafoor played in Dhaka in the 1960s and later represented Mohammedan Sporting in the Calcutta league in India.

It was in Dhaka, which became the capital of Bangladesh in 1971, where he met his wife Sabiha, who also has a penchant for football.

“My husband has been a football hero in Pakistan. There was a time when we couldn’t go out because hundreds of people would gather outside and want to see their Pelé,” said Sabiha …

In a strange new-world-order twist, Ghafoor’s son Ghani is in prison in Pakistan on terrorism charges that his father vehemently denies:

Ghani, who played football for domestic teams, was arrested in early 2004 from his home in Karachi in a crackdown against extremists and remains under lock and key.

The employee of a state-owned bank was accused of planning terrorist acts and is awaiting trial at a Karachi prison.

“My son’s only fault was that he grew a beard and he played football,” claimed Ghafoor.

With Pakistani and for that matter all subcontinental football mired in mediocrity, Abdul Ghafoor is left to reminisce about the old days and root for every Third Worlder’s default team, Brazil:

Ghafoor now stays away from football grounds but avidly stays in touch with the English Premiership and Brazilian soccer.

“Now I just watch Brazil and remember our good old days,” he said.

I tried to get some background on Abdul Ghafoor and his glory days, but found next to nothing. So here’s a call to historians, football fans, or any uncles or aunties who might have memories of Abdul Ghafoor, or more generally, sub-continental football in the 1960s.

A big current international business story is the attempted takeover of Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based steel manufacturer, by London-based, desi-owned Mittal Steel, the voraciously successful family business of Lakshmi Mittal. Arcelor is itself the result of a merger of European steel firms, a logical consolidation in its day since steel is a sunset industry in Western Europe and many firms enjoyed protections of state ownership or subsidies that EU rules no longer permit. However, European politicians have retained a bit of a proprietary cultural interest, as it were, in firms like Arcelor, since even without state ownership they possess a sort of vestigial patriotic value as “national champions,” and they still employ a fair number of people, if far fewer than before, in depressed industrial areas.

Well, ever since Mittal made his first overtures to Arcelor shareholders (which Manish blogged here in January), followed by a formal takeover bid once he got permission from competitive authorities, Arcelor has done everything possible to wriggle away from its suitor. Fair enough – that’s what companies threatened by hostile takeovers do, especially when it becomes clear that their management don’t enter into the buyer’s plans for the future. But with investment analysts lining up in favor of the Mittal bid, there’s also been, of course, speculation that even though Mittal is a London-based, London-quoted firm, it may just be a little too brown for the comfort of the European industrial bourgeoisie.

All this could be dismissed as reading-ethnicity-into-everything, and to some extent probably is. (Though…) Still, it’s remarkable to see that this week the board of Arcelor found themselves rushing into the arms of what is known in business lingo as an, ahem, white knight, in the form of a Russian firm of the new-oligarch variety. The merger deal with Severstal is framed as a purchase by Arcelor… except that it is funded by an increase in Arcelor’s capital via investment by Alexei Mordachov, Severstal’s 38-year-old chairman. By funding Arcelor’s purchase of his firm, Mordachov takes a 32 percent interest in the merged firm, which would become the world’s largest steel producer, ahead of Mittal.

The London business writers are having a field day with this one. “The putrid stink of hypocrisy hangs in the air,” says The Observer’s Richard Wachman, noting that Arcelor, having criticized Mittal for non-transparency in past business dealings, has found its savior in the land where opaqueness and favoritism are essential components of business success. And The Independent’s business columnist Jeremy Warner cold lays down the card:

Is it cos I’s brown? The Arcelor board appears so appaled at the prospect of takeover by the Indian-born steel magnate, Lakshmi Mittal, that it will do almost anything to avoid his clutches - right down to surrendering control to the Kremlin. Okay, so I’m exaggerating to make the point, but only a little.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Leela Lounge, the venue for tomorrow’s sophisticated, singular soiree— they do not open until 5pm, so that’s when we shall meet. The kitchen opens at 6, so there will be a full hour of getting faded before anyone fills their bellies with mushroom samosas to soak up all that intoxication; in other words, 5-6pm shall be a dangerous hour for the mutiny, as lycheetinis and Old Monk flow freely. Loose ships sink lips and all that. ;)

If you’re coming, leave your information in the comments, pacifically if you’ll be dragging along otras personas. The good news is, thanks to the long weekend, Leela is going to be very chill— they shooed me away from making reservations. So if you’re feeling like a “maybe”…go with that. There will be space at the table for you. Especially after one of us falls over and out of our chair, from laughing excessively loudly (Kenyandesi— that one’s for P).

Questions? Requests? Complaints which don’t contain any of the following words: Chicago, Midwest, pandits, auspicious, washcloths, plagiarism, Oregon, geography, bees? ;) Well, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll see you tomorrow, tiny creator of incriminating evidence in hand. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few saris to tie and a wedding to flog!

WHAT: Sepia Mutiny Meetup #7

WHEN: May 28, 5pm

WHERE: Leela Lounge, 3rd between Mercer and Broadway

I was browsing William Makepeace Thackeray’s wonderful and strange The Book of Snobs (1848), and I came across the following odd passage in the midst of a rant about a lady-friend’s poor table manners:

I have seen, I say, the Hereditary Princess of Potztausend-Donnerwetter (that serenely-beautiful woman) use her knife in lieu of a fork or spoon; I have seen her almost swallow it, by Jove! like Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler. And did I blench? Did my estimation for the Princess diminish? No, lovely Amalia!

But, my dear fellow, who precisely is “Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler”? It turns out he was a real person, who came to England around 1819, and lived there with his wife (identified only as “Mrs. Samee”) until his death in 1851. The juggling history website I looked at also speculates he may have gone to the U.S. and performed as “Sena Sama,” in 1817, though that’s only speculation. Ramo Samee is considered by some the first modern professional juggler in England, and he was far and away the most famous practitioner of the art in his era. He inspired royalty, journalists, and famous essayists like William Hazlitt. And yet, when Ramo Samee died he was so poor that his wife needed to advertise for financial assistance just to have him buried (cremation, I suspect, was probably not an option). Today he is, aside from the appreciation he gets on a handful of juggling history websites, completely forgotten.

Needless to say, I am pretty ambivalent about Ramo Samee (or “Ramaswamy,” probably the more accurate spelling), just as I am about Sabu, Dean Mahomed, and scores of other Indian artists and hustling “Gurus” who work “exotic” stereotypes for western applause. In the African-American tradition this type of performance is called minstrelsy, and it is seen as a shameful kind of pandering to other people’s stereotypes.

But Ramo Samee might be a slightly different case at least in the sense that the kind of sword-swallowing and juggling he did is in fact a real historical profession in India, which goes back hundreds of years. So while clearly part of Ramo Samee’s appeal was his exotic otherness, he was doing what he did best — what he had been raised to do. And observers like Hazlitt really did find him to be a performer of astonishing skill. So even if I can’t exactly celebrate Ramo Samee’s life as a triumph, he is nevertheless an interesting figure to learn about and consider.

This past weekend at the fantastic SAWCC conference, several mutineers had helpful suggestions about Sunday’s potential meetup. I relayed my concerns about not being rushed, being able to have audible conversations AND whether we’d be able to fill our bellies with something a little more appetizing than a T-bone Steak, cheese eggs and welch’s grape. Saucy Pooja assured me that whether at The Pink Pony or Leela Lounge, we’d be fine (ain’t that right, Boo? True?)

I’m leaning towards Leela Lounge, which is on 3rd between Broadway and Mercer because another saucy lady named Yesha raved about the atmosphere. The menu wasn’t bad, either…I’m always ready to eat chaat and if a place serves cocktails with Old Monk? You KNOW they keep it real. ;)

Erstwhile guest Cicatrix had a third suggestion which I helpfully can’t remember nor find in my GMail. I add the latter situation because apparently, I got an invite to this shpot when Bongbreaker was in town…so if Bongsie, Cica or the Vij have any idea what I’m going on about, put me out of my misery via comment, spanks.

So, beyond venue we need to decide on a time. Perhaps something in the afternoon would be ideal, since I will be highly hungover after a raucous wedding in Lawn Guy Land. Also, this way people can show without missing church. How’s THAT for contrast? ;)

What say all of you? Do you have a preference between pink equestrian joints, cool new lounges and places I can’t recall? Would 3pm sound better than 5? Will Pooja not show since it’s her birthday and thus, I shall be throwing her over my knee so we can each give her a solid birthday whack? ;) Tune in next time, for…hopefully more specific information.

Some of you may consider it good news that the top three finalists in the the Geography Bee, hosted by the great Alex Trebek himself, were Indian American. I do not. Some of you may also think fondly on the fact that the last four contestants in last year’s Spelling Bee were also Indian American. I do not.

“Well Abhi,” you say. “Aren’t you at least happy that the top Intel Science Award ($50,000) went to an Indian American?”

No.

I am afraid. I am afraid that most Americans aren’t able to tell us apart anymore. We aren’t all “the same.” I come from a vastly different culture and tradition than those people. I am nothing like them and I am tired of all the “so-called intellectuals” that are all “bhai-bhai” and want to give us all a common label. They don’t care about us so why should we be friendly to them? Ever since Indian-American kids started winning these types of competitions I get strange looks on the subway when I am reading a book. I can hear their whispers and their suspicions. “I know what he is up to,” they think. “All those people are the same. They just sit and study vocabulary lists and almanacs. They just come to ‘our country’ to win our competitions.” Nobody sits next to me sometimes, even during rush hour, all because they think we are all the same. I’m sick of it. I can’t even take pictures at tourist attractions anymore. Park security always comes up to me and asks me if I am forming a database of important geographic sites. Last time a guard mentioned to me that his son had “lost to one of you guys in a preliminary round.”

The solution is clear to me but will take some time to implement. Through forums like this we need to do a better job of educating the public. They need to know that some of us can’t spell and instead rely on readers or co-bloggers to point out spelling errors in their blog posts. They need to know that some of us don’t know which river the Port of Rotterdam lies on. Most importantly they need to know that they having nothing to fear from the vast majority of us.

I don’t know if you guys are like me but every time I read about another “incident” in the news I think, “Great. Now they will think that we are all capable of this kind of thing.” Here was the latest:

A woman teacher in Bhubaneswar has been arrested for inflicting three children with burn injuries on finding mistakes in their homework, police said on Sunday…

On Friday evening, Kabita allegedly lost her temper after she found mistakes in the home work of the kids. She punished them with a hot iron, a police official said. [Link]

Moderates in the community need to come forward and speak out against these types of heinous acts. We can no longer afford to remain quiet while a radical minority dictates our image. We should denounce this sort of thing immediately and work to educate the community by pointing out that a lot of us are only average in intelligence and will work to demand the same from our children.

I just wanted to get a dialog started on all of this before next week. In fact, usually I am a little afraid to even leave the house during this period which I often refer to as “hell week.”

Thank you all for your attention. I look forward to a productive dialog.

In March of this year, MTV Canada was relaunched after a failed attempt on digital cable a few years ago. Many rolled their eyes and chose to swear undying allegiance to their beloved Much Music, but I was rather looking forward to the Big Satan taking over Toronto’s Masonic Temple as headquarters. Heck yeah I want to know what those pretty kids on 8th and Ocean are up to. More earth-shattering relationship how to’s on Laguna Beach, s’il vous plait. Most importantly, I wanted to see if they would hire any desi VJs, which they did do in the form of one Aliya-Jasmine Sovani. She doesn’t get much air time while sharing the MTV Live stage with six other VJs and what I have seen has been aptly described as “a woman so perky she makes Kelly Ripa look like Sean Penn in mourning.” Sadly, I don’t gel too well with perk peddlers on TV.

Sovani used to produce for Much Music and switched over to MTV to work in front of the camera. This left me wondering why Much wasn’t adding any brown to the VJ payroll. After all, they hired my supremely cool childhood idol, Monika Deol, in the late 1980s. My mum was never as horrified at my solitary whinin’ to Shabba Ranks videos if Monika announced them. Oh Monika, you were everything and everything was you. A Canadian music channel is nothing without proper Canadian representation.

Everyone knows the ‘brain drain,’ I presume — the flight of educated professionals from the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s to the west. A number of the immigrants were doctors, who were in desperately short supply at a time when the U.S. population was spiking. My own family was part of that event, which admittedly must have hurt the progress of health care in India itself (though I don’t know if this has ever been formally studied).

And while there now are, perhaps, too many doctors in the U.S., there aren’t enough nurses. According to one statistic in today’s New York Times, there were 118,000 nursing vacancies in U.S. hospitals last month, and the deficit could reach as high as 800,000 in the next decade. Now the U.S. Senate’s immigration bill contains a clause that will remove the immigration cap entirely for qualified nurses from India, the Philippines, and China.

The lack of qualified U.S. nurses is due mainly to the lack of places to train them; nursing schools turn away scores of applicants since there simply aren’t enough Professors of Nursing around. But despite the severe shortage, the American Nurses Association is opposed to the current measure, which it calls “outsourcing.”

The repercussions on the health care systems of the affected countries could be severe, even if there is some overall benefit to the local economy:

The flight of nurses from the Philippines, a former American colony, has provided a huge boost to a weak economy, through remittances. Some government agencies there have encouraged the export of nurses, who send home billions of dollars each year to their families.

A nurse in the Philippines would earn a starting salary of less than $2,000 a year compared with at least $36,000 a year in the United States, said Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, a medical professor at the University of the Philippines who led the country’s National Institutes of Health.

He said the flight of nurses had had a corrosive effect on health care. Most Filipinos died without medical attention in 2003, just as they had three decades earlier. (link)

For the Philippines, there’s already a care drain. The same may be in store for India if this bill passes and goes through the House, as seems likely.

Incidentally, there is already a recruiting company, called RNIndia, that specializes in bringing Indian nurses to U.S. hospitals. And Abhi talked about another side of this issue here.

I’ve always loved comic books—actually, any illustrated book. It seems insane that you wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t you want words and pictures to work together, in harmony? But many people don’t. They think the pictures are a shortcut, that the words cheapen the images.

Bonny Jain, of Moline Illinois, won the 2006 National Geographic Spelling Bee. He’s twelve years old, and he’s also a spelling champ and a violin player when he’s not naming mountain ranges in Wales.

He beat — no surprise — two other Indian American kids to take home the prize:

Neera Sirdeshmukh, 14, of Nashua, New Hampshire, came in second place, while 13-year-old Yeshwanth Kandimalla from Georgia came third.

For the winning question, his 26th out of 27, Jain correctly answered ‘Cambrian Mountains’ to the question ‘Name the mountains that extend across much of Wales, from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel.’

Jain, who is still in eighth grade, won $25,000 and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society for his efforts. (link)

That’s right, the three top contestants in the top U.S. Geography Bee are all Indian Americans. (Incidentally, Jain came in in the top 10 last year, and was mentioned by Sepia Mutiny here)

Think you can run with the geography whizzes? Try this quiz — written by Jain himself — at the Chicago Tribune. (Remember, no cheating! I got 7/10)

I know that I am truly blessed for having a website like Sepia Mutiny to blog on. So few people are granted the chance on a daily basis to voice their thoughts and opinions on the type of megaphone that SM has turned into. Every so often though something comes across my desk that makes my skin tingle, puts everything into focus, and reminds me why I do this every day…why I blog. Today something like that came to my attention. Instead of a story that was particularly newsworthy, or some important cause involving persecuted individuals faceless to me, this one hit home. This one involved a close friend. I may not be able to save the world by blogging for SM but at least I can help to try and right a wrong for my friend.

This morning my old roommate Sandeep emailed me this article featuring another old roommate of mine, Eric Amin:

If civil-liberties-minded New Yorkers were already annoyed by the USA Patriot Act, the recent arrival of the worst allergy season in 50 years (this month, the city jumped from 88th to 11th on the list of worst U.S. cities for allergies) has really made it hit home. The revision of the act, signed by President Bush on March 9, takes aim at an insidious threat to our nation: Sudafed, Claritin-D, and Children’s Motrin. These over-the-counter meds use the decongestant pseudoephedrine (PSE), which is also used to make crystal meth. The revamped Patriot Act, which went into effect in April, limited each sale of PSE-containing drugs to 3.6 grams (about 120 pills) per person per day. In September, drugstores will be required to move them behind the counter and enter the buyer’s name in a registry that tracks sales. Many larger chains are already requiring I.D., turning checkout into something Soviet-esque. Within days of the new regulations, parents were already getting sniffly (“I hate that I can’t buy more than one box of Claritin-D at a time; I missed out on a great sale”) on Urbanbaby.com. New York DEA agent Matthew Barnes explains that it takes about ten packages of Sudafed, combined with ingredients such as antifreeze, lye, battery acid, and fertilizer, to produce one ounce of meth. Despite the fact that 70 percent of meth is smuggled in from Mexico-border “superlabs,” Barnes says that the new restrictions will help hinder meth production in “small toxic labs” throughout the country. Lawyer and Rite Aid customer Eric Amin worries the government registry could be used to track and deport sneezy immigrants. To avoid the hassle of giving his information, he bought nasal spray. [Link]

With the article Sandeep included the following note that he emailed to our common friends, including Eric:

the story below made you look like a total p*ssy

“ohhhh, i’ve fallen and i can’t get up…..”

I may no longer have pink hair and my square-toe docs are 3,000 miles away, but I like to think that being punk requires more than such outward signals. I’m nowhere near as in to anarchy as I once was, but I still totally love the idea of DIY everything. In honor of that hallowed part of punk ideology, I present to you the following blurb which features advice from some desi beauty expert whom I’ve never heard of…I ganked it from the May 2006 issue of Jane, which I’m trying desperately to stay fond of, even though it is suddenly for 20-something women. WTF?

Oh, Sassy…how you are missed. You are the only reason I still subscribe to the monthly which is supposedly your phoenix.

DIY pore shrinkage

Here’s an easy way to minimize the appearance of enlarged pores courtesy of Anjali, who was formerly the Martha Stew of Indian daytime TV and now is head of product development at Shobha salon in NY.

Using a blender, puree one medium unripe tomato (the greener the better…) with one teaspoon of honey— this will mix the astringent power of the fruit w/the natural moisturizers in the honey. Apply the pulp to a freshly washed face, leave it on for 20 minutes, then rinse.

And if your problems go beyond skin issues, toss the remaining puree into a shaker, add some salt, a little vodka and a lot of ice. Shake, pour, drink. - Celia

Um, no, I haven’t tried it. But I was the guinea piglet for L’oreal’s latest mascara so I think I should get a pass on this little experiment. If YOU are brave enough to smear extra sweet salsa on your punim, do let us know if this results in less holes in your face, thanks .

The Senate recently passed a series of bills regarding the status of the English language that no one quite understands. Senate Republican James Inhofe of Nebraska Oklahoma proposed a bill defining English as the “official language” of the United States, and gave a fiery speech about it on the Senate floor, where he claimed that elminating all traces of bilingualism from government services would save taxpayers $1 to $2 billion a year.

But that’s not the end of the story. First, Inhofe himself softened the bill, changing “official language” to “national language,” which means something quite different. The measure passed. Then, senate Democrats countered and proposed an amendment which defined English as the “common and unifying” language, and that also passed. So which is it to be? Well, it’s not a law until it also goes through the House, so the whole thing could get changed again in Committee.

In the meanwhile, people are trying to figure out what the heck it means.

Tony Snow, the new Whitehouse Press Secretary, got a strange question on Tuesday at the daily briefing. I am not sure who asked it (perhaps the Foil?), and I am not even sure if I understand the question. I thought it was kind of funny though. Anyone care to shed some light on this for me?

Q A question on Iran. As far as Prime Minister of Israel’s visit is concerned, here at the White House is the first meeting after so many threats from the Iranian President — Iranian President and Hamas work on one, they are both friends and — so what do you think that is possible to have peace in the region when Iran President making so many threats, even today, that nuclear weapon he is making is supposed to be used on Israel?

MR. SNOW: Well, again, we’re engaged in ongoing diplomatic efforts to try to make sure that the government of Iran not only becomes a good neighbor in the region, but also renounces any nuclear ambitions.

Q On the economy, what message you think the President has for small investors and small businesses, because 20 years ago I invested $1,000 in an Indian-American Liberty National Bank in Washington. Today the value is $180, after 20 years — $1,000. I bought it from a credit line, 21 percent. So what advice will he have today for small investors as far as the economy is concerned?

MR. SNOW: You’re asking me what advice the President should have because you put your money in a bank account 20 years ago? I think I would encourage you to contact your personal investment counselor.

Q Today, what advice the President will have for me. Should I put $1,000 elsewhere? Should I invest it?

MR. SNOW: The President does not engage in handing out personal investment advice. [Link]

Come on. This is funny people! What the hell was all that about? Is Liberty National even an Indian-American owned bank?

Awhile back, almost a year actually, I first wrote about the reggaeton track Mirame, featuring South Asian beats, Reggaeton superstar Daddy Yankee, relative newcomer Deevani, and the production of Luny Tunes. In the time since that Post, and this one by Manish, Reggaeton has gone the way of Bhangra in mainstream hip-hop, perhaps even a bit further (how many Bhangra articles reached 7 pages in the ny times arts section?) and is headed either towards the path of continued success in the mainstream, or as Bhangra has, to remain popular for the most part only amongst its orginal ethnic fan base.

For those of us that try to follow some of the trends in desi hip-hop, it’s clear that now more than ever (it took awhile, didn’t it?) that desi remixers are coming out with tunes that reflect the current reggaeton vibe that has in the last couple of years eclipsed mainstream American hip-hop. Desi DJs such as New York’s Lil Jay (hear his Reggaeton remix of Bikram Singh’s Kawan here) and Scotland duo Tigerstyle (hear their remix of Mirala Bien featuring Labh Janjua here) along with others have been incorporating popular styles into their remixes for years, but the incorporation of reggaeton with Bhangra, or Bhangraton as the name is slowly catching on, just seems to co-exist with a certain ease that I can’t seem to hear when Redman raps over an Asha Bhosle hook. With Bhangraton there seems to be a natural synergy in both the rhythmic and vocal stylings. And so it’s not too odd to think that something more, perhaps something bigger could come of a formal connection between some Bhangra and Reggaeton producers.

“outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards.”- Sir Sydney Kentridge QC

A British court has just issued a decision that has significant implications for both the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia and for the U.S. military:

In a decision that could have ramifications for the huge US airbase on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, a British high court ruled earlier this month that attempts by the British government to keep the former residents of the Chagos islands from returning to the islands (which include Diego Garcia), even after they had won a court ruling in 2000 to do so, were “outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards.”

The British government expelled the Chagossians, the original inhabitants of the islands, some 40 years ago so the US could build the airbase at Diego Garcia, but a British court ruled in 2000 that the islanders had a right to return to their home. After the decision, then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the British government would not appeal the ruling.

But under pressure from the US, London changed directions in 2004, using what was called “Royal Perogative” to overrule the original decision. Government lawyers had argued that in a territory like Diego Garcia, the Queen (and her ministers) have unlimited power and can use Royal Perogative powers in these territories, despite the fact that she lost the right to use such powers in Britain in the 17th century. [Link]

NPR’s Morning Edition also featured a story about this on Tuesday morning. Roughly 2000 people were forced to leave Diego Garcia at the hands of the British in the 1960s. Domestic animals were gassed and most inhabitants were relocated to slums in the nation of Mauritius. The expulsion by the British involved a deal that would lease the island to the U.S. who needed it as a strategic base during the Cold War (good place for long-range bombers to take off from). The trade? The U.S. gave the Brits the Polaris missile system. About 2000 U.S. military personnel now live there. Ironic when you consider the number of people forced to leave was almost exactly the same.

In a tiny country on the Arabian Gulf, 2006 could go down in history as pivotal in the struggle for recognition among a largely South Asian migrant labour force. Earlier this year, a short while after the Ports fiasco threw a spotlight on all things Dubai, 2,500 Asian construction workers rioted in Dubai at the site of what will be one of tallest skyscrapers on the planet. This was only the tip. Kicking off the aftermath Human Rights Watch released a condemning report on worker abuse in the U.A. of E:

One of the world’s largest construction booms is feeding off workers in Dubai, but they’re treated as less than human,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s no surprise that some workers have started rioting in protest. What’s surprising is that the government of the UAE is doing nothing to solve the problem.”

Migrant workers comprise nearly 90 percent of the workforce in the private sector in the UAE. They are denied basic rights such as freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. [Link]

In addition, they urged countries to involve improvement of labour practices when negotiating free trade agreements with the U.A.E. This type of international media coverage has put a considerable amount of pressure on government to amend existing labour laws. Though the U.A.E. Minister of Labour, Dr. Ali Bin Abdullah Al Ka’abi, denied all claims present in the Human Rights Watch report it took him a heartbeat’s worth of time since to announce that worker unions could be legal by end of year.

A solo exhibit by Indian Painter Anjolie Ela Menon is up at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Artdaily reports. Menon is a Delhi-based painter of mixed American and Indian heritage. She was born in 1940 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris as well as at the J.J. School of Art in Bombay (which she did not like!). Menon has had an active and successful career, winning many awards, including India’s prestigious Padma Shri.

In the exhibit are ten major paintings as well as a large a triptych called “Yatra,” which you can see in small form here. See if you can rectify the painting itself with the explanation offered in Artdaily:

This triptych depicts various figures that can be identified as participants in a particularly well-known north Indian Hindu pilgrimage, or yatra. Menon’s interest in these pilgrims stems from both a sense of admiration and from her view of their devotional act as an unbroken bridge linking India’s ancient past with its rapidly modernizing present. (link)

(Incidentally, the image on the right is a portrait of Menon I found on the Flickr site of a brilliant photographer calling herself “50mm.” Check out the rest of 50mm’s amazing photos here.)

During the Kaava debacle last month, and whatever you made of the whole story, one of the secondary plot lines had to do with the high-end college-prep tutoring business, which has always been around but has apparently now expanded to the extent that anxious parents will fork over up to $30,000 to make sure that their offspring gets into that place that starts with an H, or maybe that other place that starts with a Y. If you recall, we learned that Kaavya’s parents bought for her the services of a firm called IvyWise, and its founder, Katherine Cohen, was repeatedly quoted at the crest of the scandal defending her former client, and thereby, one infers, her own integrity and that of her firm.

Now, from New York magazine’s recent annual compilation of “The Influentials” – the two-hundred-odd most influential people in the city, in that magazine’s judgment, we learn thar the person considered the father of this whole hyper-prep industry is desi. Here is Arun Alagappan’s citation in the mag:

Arun Alagappan Founder, Advantage Testing, Inc. Like it or not, high-end, one-on-one academic tutoring is a fixture of contemporary New York, and Alagappan is the father of the business. Twenty years ago, Alagappan, a Princeton philosophy major and Harvard Law grad, left the white-shoe law firm Sullivan and Cromwell to found Advantage Testing, a boutique tutoring service for college-bound high-school kids. Today, Alagappan and 100 fellow tutors work with up to 2,000 kids each year in subjects ranging from core academics and essay writing to SAT prep. Despite law-partner rates (Alagappan charges $685 for a 50-minute hour, although staff tutors charge less), a year’s wait is not uncommon for Alagappan’s services. Alagappan insists he doesn’t track test scores; regardless, Advantage has inspired dozens of high-priced imitators, and, for better or worse, transformed the precollege landscape.

Alagappan has a remarkably low-key public identity: Googling produces not much more than a sampler of stories from various years in the past two decades, where the only interesting change is the rising dollar cost of an hour of his services. Advantage Testing doesn’t have an active website, just a phone number. I guess they have plenty of business on the word-of-mouth circuit, and they don’t really need publicity.

The other desi that New York magazine saw fit to include in its “Influentials” was labor activist Saru Jayaraman, whom Manish blogged about here a long time ago. Here’s the commendation:

Things in present day Sri Lanka have been taking a depressing turn of late:

At least 150 people have fled the village of Allaipiddy in the northern Sri Lankan peninsula of Jaffna.

It follows last weekend’s murder of 13 Tamil civilians. The navy has been accused of the killings - they deny it.

Police and international truce monitors have both launched investigations into the incident.

The killings came only two days after Tamil Tiger rebels launched a suicide assault on a naval convoy in which 18 sailors died. [Link]

To take your minds off of the grim reality of the present I feel that I must point you to animator and SM commenter Nina Paley’s website. She has just released the newest segment of the her multi-part saga, Sita Sings the Blues. It is titled “Battle of Lanka.”

A pivotal scene from “Battle of Lanka”

Battle of Lanka was made about a year ago, and is chapter 4 in Sita Sings the Blues, after Hanuman Finds Sita and before Trial By Fire. In this episode, Rama, Hanuman, and the monkey armies cross the sea to Lanka to conquer Ravana and the rakshasas, and rescue the captive Sita. Assisting me was Jake Friedman, the only animation apprentice I’ve ever had. Jake wanted to learn Flash and had excellent animation chops and a good eye, so he came to Brooklyn almost every day for a month. Jake animated much of the monkey-on-demon violence: monkey swinging axe, monkey throwing axe, monkey bashing demon with club, monkey kicking demon, etc. A panorama of Jake’s animation occurs at 1:28, in which I took pretty much everything he’d animated on the project and composited it into a single scene. It’s worth multiple viewings, to catch all his lovingly considered variations. Thanks Jake… [Link]

Well, thanks to everyone for the lovely welcome, I’m very happy to be here—if a little nervous about suddenly bloggint to a large audience. My blog the lawyerwriter seems to generate a few hundred hits a day, which pretty much sums up my known friends, enemies, family and ex-boyfriends. From what I can tell, Sepia Mutiny gets about 16,000 hits a day. So this is a little like having a spotlight thrown on you while you’re singing in the bathub. You’re glad for the attention, of course, but you really wish you’d had a few more lessons to prepare yourself for the sudden publicity.

Somebody told me that this blogosphere was small
we use to live in the same city, go to the same high school
and never met before
until I’m blogging on Sepia Mutiny
and peep this Indian queen from NYC
writing on her blog
while she’s practicing street law,
said she workin’ on a post and
could my click check her out,
she said she loved my posts from near Fargo
and that Kaavya sucks,
and now she’s stepping on this stage
to take a piece of our hearts…

My deepest apologies to both our readers and to The Roots. Sometimes I forget that I’m just a blogger and nothing more.

Our newest guest blogger is a lawyer, a blogger, and a published author, BUT NOT related to the disgraced chick-lit author. She’s the real deal. It turns out that we went to the same elementary, middle, and high school at the same time but have never met. Crazy.

But what really “got me” was this entry. Sublime. Please help me welcome Neeraja.

Upon departing this earth for the higher cosmic plane, the late Yogi Bhajan, leader of the Happy, Holy, Healthy Organization (3HO), left not only his spiritual legacy but also a range of holy business endeavors such as Akal Security and the Yogi Tea line. The Yogi’s contribution to our holistic well-being now receives its due recognition from the authorities of the secular realm, to the elation of the Indian press, always on the lookout for such triumphs:

In a rare gesture, the New Mexico State Transportation Commission has renamed a state highway — Highway 106 — as ‘Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway’ in memory of the late Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji. An Indian-American, he was known to his followers as Yogi Bhajan.

State Highway 106! One imagines, perhaps, a shimmering strip of tarmac stretching into the pristine New Mexico wilderness, amid a cascade of desert wildflowers, lightning storms illuminating the majestic silhouette of the Sangre de Cristo mountains… A place of peace and insight, as befits the Yogi’s life work and the wisdom of the counsel he afforded the leaders of the land:

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in his remarks on the occasion said: “Yogiji was not only a spiritual leader, but was a business and social leader as well. And he kept a hand in politics too. I know many of the elected officials here today often sought his counsel in professional and personal matters, as I did many times…”

Amitav Ghosh

On the young adult novel tip, I was also quite impressed by the excerpt Marina Budhos read from her new book Ask Me No Questions. Given the fluffiness of Opal Mehta (and most of the books KV plagiarized from), it’s refreshing to see a work of young adult fiction that makes a serious political point about the experience of South Asian immigrants in the U.S. This novel addresses the ‘dark’ turn for civil liberties since 9/11, and is partly based on Budhos’ own firsthand experience talking to undocumented (or “overstayed”) Bangladeshis in the U.S. (Manish profiled Marina Budhos here)

An article by Reuters provides us a contrasting perspective on all the phone tapping and data mining that has been causing many of us here in the U.S. heartburn of late. India, where civil liberties may not be as pressing a concern when compared to terrorism, has found tapping quite useful:

Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.

A few hours later, troops smashed the door of his hideout and arrested the militant “commander” after a brief gun battle.

Indian intelligence officers credited the bust in south Kashmir to the tracking of his mobile phone.

Until a few years ago, intelligence officials resisted attempts by the federal government to lift a ban on cell phone services in the region, fearing mobile phones would aid militants in planning attacks.

Now they know better and security officials say troops have eliminated many militants by tracking their mobile phones and tapping conservations, citing the example in south Kashmir.

“Such a quick strike operation was just impossible three years ago,” a senior intelligence official told Reuters.[Link]

Not only is India using wiretapping to capture terrorists and prevent terrorism, it is also disseminating cell phones in order to help win the hearts and minds of those who they may eventually end up tapping. Huh?

In 2003, New Delhi allowed mobile services, eight years after the rest of India, now the world’s fastest-growing market for cellular services.

At that time, India said it was a move to win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris, weary and alienated after years of conflict in India’s only Muslim-majority state which is also claimed by neighbor Pakistan.

After three years, there are now more than 850,000 mobile phone users in a state of 10 million people. And the spin-off for anti-insurgency operations has enthused security officials.

“So far, we have arrested or eliminated dozens of them (militants) including many senior commanders through mobile-tracking,” the intelligence officer said. [Link]

After Manish’s departure, the bunker basement has been full of weeping, moaning, mewling sounds. A pouting face appears around every corner as inhabitants go through their stages of loss. The monkeys, they loved him so.

Rajni, my roommate, has turned into an insomniac. Baboon Scotty smashes one bottle of Jager an hour against the common room wall. Yazad, the Mountain Gorilla, shaved off all his fur and is running around naked and morose after declaring that hair is the sole cause of all strife. Rochelle, the Orangutan who used to leave anonymous love notes in Manish’s mail box, read something about marriage in the comments and is now wandering the halls with a broken keyboard, yelling, “I’ll CUT that wench!” Bonobos Rohan and Junaid finished two bottles of kaju feni and are starting to reek like rotting garbage. Kinjal, a wee Spider Monkey, is lying face down on my hammock, simply butchering “Bucky Done Gone” in her screechy voice, on repeat. And the worst reaction of them all comes from Mithun the Rhesus Macaque, sweet Mithun, he ripped his red sequined jumpsuit to shreds and has sworn off dancing forever!

In my life, I have encountered a fair bit of human sadness but this is too much to bear. Oh lordy, I am weaker than ever in the face of monkey melancholy. Wanting to help my new friends, I decided to buck up and enlist the help of Dino, a wise Chimpanzee and a distant relation of Nim Chimpsky. We rigged massive sets of speakers in every room and are hoping to produce enough sound to blow the roof off this sucka depression. Manish should be thought of with coy smiles and appreciative laughter only, no? Our plan is simple. Choose one tune that is so bloody sad it makes grown adults cry on a good day and play it nonstop at a very high volume for five hours straight. We call it, “Operation: Tough Love”.

Thanks to an anonymous tipster, I read this article in the Independent about a strange happening at the Musée Guimet in Paris involving a statue of one of Shiva’s wives (whose name is unspecified). The headless statue, which had been recovered from the Bakong temple in Cambodia in 1935, was reunited with its head after nearly six hundred years.

The temple was built in 881, during the Khmer dynasty, and is one of many ancient Hindu temples scattered around Southeast Asia (today, the vast majority of Cambodians are Buddhists). The statue was decapitated in 1431, though exactly why or who did it I do not know. The body of the statue came to Paris in 1935, and the head remained in the museum affixed to the nearby Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s most famous tourist attraction.

The reunification of head and body happened completely by accident. John Gunther Dean, an ambassador to Cambodia in the 1970s, known for protecting Cambodian art from the Khmer Rouge, decided to give the museum a present from his personal collection:

An article out today in the NYTimes describes the exploits and background of a young Muslim Bangladeshi American who is a deep-cover NYPD officer (thanks to a tipster on the NEWS tab). This is like Donnie Brasco meets 21 Jump Street meets Alias.

A young police detective testified yesterday at the Herald Square bombing plot trial that he was recruited from the Police Academy 13 months after 9/11 to work deep undercover in the Muslim community to investigate Islamic extremists.

The detective, a Muslim who came to America from Bangladesh when he was 7, testified that he was a 23-year-old college graduate when he was plucked from the academy in October 2002. He took an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where, he testified, his assignment was to be a “walking camera” among Muslims there.

He said he had no regular contact with the department other than through his handler, to whom he reported by e-mail at first. During two years of living in Bay Ridge, he was involved in “numerous” investigations, he testified, and was at times shadowed by a field team to ensure his safety. [Link]

They seriously need to make this into a movie if they haven’t already started. The existence of this undercover agent came to light at the Herald Square bombing plot trial in which a U.S. citizen and a Pakistani national are accused of plotting to bomb a subway station in New York. More about the detective now:

The detective testified that he graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and entered the Police Academy in July 2002. In the middle of October, roughly halfway through his academy training, he left early when he was recruited to join the Intelligence Division, where he was assigned to the Special Services Unit, which runs the undercover program.

Within three weeks, according to his testimony, he made his first appearance at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a mosque on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, next door to the Islamic bookstore where Mr. Siraj worked. He testified that he spent time there periodically. Mr. Stolar, while questioning the detective, indicated that his reports showed he had seen Mr. Siraj 72 times over the two years, mostly in the bookstore. [Link]

Wait a minute. Is this for real? I don’t recall there being a show called Law & Order: Special Services Unit.

Tipster Jenny informs of us of an upcoming screening of Aparna Sen’s 2005 film, 15 Park Avenue. The screening, a fundraiser benefiting the group Chai, Counselors Helping (South) Asians/Indians, an organization that provides education, advocacy, counseling and referral services to the South Asian community about mental health issues in the Baltimore / Washington metropolitan area, will be held at the Laurel 6 Cinemas, this Saturday (May 20) beginning at 1:30 p.m., in Laurel, Maryland. Konkona Sen Sharma (Page 3, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer), Aparna Sen’s daughter and one of the stars of the film will be in attendance for both a question and answer session, and the dinner that follows. More information and details on the screening can be found here.

15 Park Avenue, which stars Sen, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, and Shefali Shetty (I loved her in Monsoon Wedding), is the story of two sisters and their struggle to cope with schizophrenia after a traumatic event triggers a delusional world for one of the sisters and is yet another example of the new cinema coming out of India. Indian film: it’s not just Bollywood anymore.

I haven’t yet seen the film, but from the other work that I have seen, either featuring Konkona Sen Sharma, or the direction of Aparna Sen, 15 Park Ave should be worth your while. Hey, its even been called “hauntingly beautiful.” (link)

An article in Indolink today caught my eye because it examines something very familiar to most SM readers, Christian Evangelicals attempting to convert Hindus, except in a very different context than usual. The setting of these conversions isn’t rural India but American college campuses:

…there is increasing evidence that Christian evangelical groups are aggressively targeting Hindu students in American college campuses for conversion.

In fact, a sampling of Asian American-identified evangelical fellowship websites reveals mission statements targeting Asian and Asian American students for outreach and membership, while simultaneously affirming a non-race-specific evangelical identity.

There is evidence that large numbers of Asian American college students are turning to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the encouragement and support of national and local prayer and Bible study organizations. Alongside the large national organizations, there are numerous local bible studies and fellowships that are often sponsored by local churches and are ethnic specific…

One reason for the present renewed aggressive effort is that, unlike other Asian Americans, Hindu-Americans have staunchly resisted efforts at conversion. Also, unlike other Asian Americans who are becoming increasingly associated with evangelical Christianity on college campuses, Hindu-Americans have their own campus groups such as Hindu Students Federation.

Nevertheless, evangelical “parachurch” organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), The Navigators, and IVCF are soliciting large numbers of students to their weekly bible studies, prayer meetings, and social events. There is no doubt that Asian Americans - especially Korean and Chinese - are becoming increasingly associated with evangelical Christianity on the college campus. The hope is that Indian-Americans will follow suit. [Link]

I don’t particularly care if someone that follows Hinduism decides to convert to Christianity. The idea that someone is born into a religion has always seemed rather silly to me, as does a notion I have previously read on our comment boards which declares that “white people can be real Hindus.” Religion should be a personal choice. In the context of America you definitely can’t accuse Evangelicals of taking advantage of poor or illiterate people. College students aren’t typically poor (although most are now illiterate). The real reason I found this article interesting is that it contained strategy advice on how-to, and how-not-to convert a Hindu.

Dear Readers,

For those of us that started Sepia Mutiny it has always been a labor of love. As most of you probably know THIS is not what any of us do full-time (although it may often seem like it). I am writing my Ph.D. dissertation right now and only get about 6 hours of sleep a night, Anna has a new demanding job, Vinod is on almost constant travel, Sajit just got married, and Ennis, Amardeep, Sidd, and Fofatlal are very busy as well. With Manish moving on to pursue other endeavours we are asking readers for help in keeping Sepia Mutiny going. Manish was not only a prolific blogger but also the person behind the technology that created this website. We need help now that he is gone. We are reaching out to our readers to recruit a few of you to join us in our North Dakota Bunker. You don’t have to be a blogger to be a Mutineer. This is what we need ASAP:

1. Somebody who is very skilled in Moveable Type and PHP. Manish was the best at this but if you think you are pretty competent then he will be able to go over our site’s infrastructure with you so that at least you can understand most of it and take over his duties of site administration. Ideally we would like not only someone who can understand most of the current code, but also someone with ideas of their own. This includes technical improvements (e.g. the latest web technology trends like Digg) that can be incorporated into this site. We are looking for someone who has good ideas and a vision for improving Sepia Mutiny. Ideally this person would be based in North America because it makes communication times easier (which is very important for this particular task).
2. Our hosting costs are getting too expensive. Please remember that we don’t have any annoying ads with which to generate revenue. We pay for the site with reader donations, selling t-shirts, and Amazon affiliate fees (if you buy a book off of Amazon by following a link within a post we get a small commission). Every time you visit our site it costs money. For the techies: Right now we use ~202 GB bandwidth a month. We need to upgrade to about 400 GB a month but that would cost us ~$300 a month with our current service provider. We just can’t afford that. Is there anyone out there who is a fan/dedicated reader of SM who can host us for free or knows someone who can (a reputable and reliable provider of course)? Please contact us if you can help out. If we don’t find a solution then we will probably have to implement some sort of ads for revenue.
3. It is time to upgrade our website’s design. We want a sleek, sexy, creative new look without sacrificing page load time. If you are talented web designer and would like to donate your time and skills to the Mutiny then we have a set of bunker keys for you. Email us a web portfolio.

For numbers one and three above you will be putting in a lot of time and effort for no pay. You will however be a part of something that you hopefully love. You will also be able to display your skills and put your face and business logo up on our site (in a manner similar to the RocketPost logo you see on the right-hand sidebar.)

Please use the “Contact us” link at the top of the right-hand column if you can help out with any of these three.

Lastly, please bear with us for the next month or two. We have a virtual “Sorry for the Inconvenience Caused by Renovations” sign up. Thanks again everyone for your support of SM.

Rumor has it that the most mysterious mutineer of them all (hint: it sure as hell ain’t ME) might be in Manhattan on May 28th…so maybe we should have a mini-meetup? Maybe I should overcome my Malayalee proclivity to massacre sentences via massive amounts of alliteration.

Maybe.

I know everyone who LIVES in New York City will leave town, but that just means that this post is dedicated to those mutineers who, like me, will be visiting the area for the holiday weekend; I’ll be in Lawn Guy Land for a wedding on Friday and Saturday. I know I’m not the only one who’ll be there, if only because this wedding has 800 guests.

Anyway, I’m happy to postpone my return trip to DC on Sunday from lunch-ish to something a little later on, if there’s good reason to and I can’t think of better reasons than you.

I shouldn’t say this, but if we do meetup, there’s the possibility of a mutineer mole, i.e. someone who blogs for us but wants to just hang back at his first live SM orgy. So it’s possible that three mutineers will be in Manhattan on May 28th, though considering the moley-moley-mole (Thanks Austin Powers!), maybe it’s more like 2.5. ;)

Comment away if we should seriously consider this. Some of us have Amtrak tickets to book. :D

P.S. That picture is from the September 11, 2005 meetup at the Indian Bread Co.

P.P.S. Yes, we will have another DC meetup shortly. Or longly. Vatewer.

A couple of western media sources recently profiled a Maoist revolutionary from Andhra Pradesh, who calls himself “Gaddar,” after the anti-Imperialist revolutionary movement from the 1910s. Through his powerful folk songs about poverty and political repression, Gaddar has become the police’s biggest nightmare as they attempt to squelch the seemingly bottomless (or at least very deep) well of sympathy for the Maoists in India’s impoverished rural areas.

Maoists have been engaged in a longstanding civil war in rural areas in eastern and southern India, which stands as a stark rejoinder to recent upbeat developments in the cities. It started as “Naxalbari” in the late 1960s, but it has been reborn in the 2000s as the People’s War. It has, by any measure, been an extremely bloody insurgency, which has left thousands of people dead in the past few years. PM Manmohan Singh recently described the movement as the current greatest threat to India’s internal security.

You can hear Gaddar singing in this NPR segment. You should really give it a listen; the guy has a voice. And there is a print version of the article with many of the same details and background at the VOA.

It’s not clear to me whether Gaddar is himself an active “soldier” in the People’s War, or simply a Maoist sympathizer; most articles on him describe him as the latter. What to do about him? On the one hand, his singing ought to be protected as freedom of speech, and the lyrics of the songs in the NPR piece are all about suffering, not incitement to war. On the other hand, isn’t he indirectly inciting people to commit acts of violence simply by supporting the Maoist movement?

I don’t know about you, but my attention next month will turn to Germany, host of this year’s football – yeah, yeah, soccer – World Cup. The 32-team tournament kicks off June 9 with Germany vs. Costa Rica; the final is a month later. To succeed Brazil as world champions, the bookies favor the Brazilians themselves, at 9/4. Argentina and Germany follow at 7/1. Asia’s four entries get little respect: Japan and Korea are at 150/1, Iran at 250/1, and should Saudi Arabia win it all, you’d pocket 500 times your bet.

Oh. You were looking for a desi angle?

Well, there barely is one – no thanks to the South Asian teams, which lived down to their reputation as doormats in the Asia qualifying rounds. India got a 6-0 spanking from Japan and lost 5-1 to Oman. At least it had one win, against Singapore; the same cannot be said of Sri Lanka or the Maldives, which finished last in their groups. Pakistan didn’t even make the group stage, falling by a total 6-0 in a playoff against Kyrgyzstan.

Yet despite this abysmal performance, you can be sure that TV screens across South Asia will be bursting with football. And fans seeking a tiny taste of sepia glory will be rooting at least in part for France, which fields the competition’s only desi. Standing a mighty 5’6” and weighing in at 140 lbs., midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo is our Great Brown Hope.

We Sepiaites recently had a facial hair contest down in the North Dakota bunker in honor of our one-year-and nine-month anniversary. Ennis and Amardeep went all uncley (‘you young pups’) and were excluded for obvious reasons. The womyn were granted compassionate dispensation. Vinod dropped out early, muttering something about ‘Malayalee genetics’ and ‘evolution into hairless geniuses.’ The rest of us sported five o’clock shadows by eight o’clock in the morning.

Siddhartha broke down under the strain of the face-off and admitted to having his back waxed this one night in Tijuana. Neha looked ready to leap in with war stories, but something in Anna’s look said ‘unh-unh, don’t go there, girlfriend.’ The legend of Cooch Behar is apparently not, repeat not about royalty.

Finally it was down to Sajit, Abhi, Fofatlal and me. Sajit flexed his square jaw thoughtfully and instantly sprouted whiskers. Abhi downed some freeze-dried astronaut food and grew a Mangal Pandey before our very eyes. Fofatlal misheard the goal of the contest. He had his eyebrows singed off with incense and honey and pranced around yodeling ‘Ya-hoo!’ like Shammi Kapoor.

I, having out-hirsuted the Greeks, out-grown the Sicilians, out-whiskered the Iranis, was now faced with my own private I-da-ho’: geek stubble from the Punjab was beaten by astronaut stubble from Houston. Abhi once bragged:

I haven’t met a person alive that has more lethal stubble than I. Any girl I might date would have friends thinking I was abusing her because her face would be left raw.

Unable to bear the shame, I went down to the SMU, passed out some endangered bananas and whispered a stoic farewell to my fine-furred friends. And then left the bunker for the last time, the pneumatic doors closing in the distance. Unlike Star Trek, they don’t say ‘shhhhhhhh’ when they close, they say ‘Desi please!’ with sass in the neck and quiver in the booty. Goddamn back-talkin’ bunker doors.

Days like today the wanderlust sets in and I feel like getting away for a while. Unfortunately, until my wealthy Uncle Sam starts providing me with cash (~seven months from now) I will remain as broke as a joke. In the meantime I will be gazing longingly at the pages of Time Magazine Asia. Their current issue features The Best of Asia. Did you know that the best Red Light District Experience in Asia is at…Cooco’s Den & Café in Lahore, Pakistan (note that Time currently has the wrong description here)? What I really wanted to know is where I could go to just blow out for a few days.

“You must be crazy” is the response you tend to meet with when announcing an intention to vacation in Afghanistan. But for the courageous traveler willing to overlook the backdrop of simmering warfare between U.S. forces and Taliban insurgents, the country offers astonishing rewards—none more uplifting than Band-i-Amir. These five connected lakes in the central Bamiyan province are among the world’s least visited yet most dramatic natural wonders. Spilling like a string of sapphires across golden desert canyons, buttes and mesas, the lakes of Band-i-Amir (the name means “jewels of the king”) are fed by an underground source, rendering them preternaturally pristine. Their purity and extraordinary depth give the lakes a blueness of indescribable intensity. Local legend has it that a plunge in these waters is a cure for madness. Possession by djinn, or demons, is a standard Afghan explanation for insanity—but djinn hate swimming, the reasoning goes, especially in a holy lake said to be carved out of solid rock by the magic sword of warrior-saint Hazrat Ali. Local faith in the healing powers of these waters is evident in a small shrine at the first lake, where the recently exorcized leave discarded clothing and tokens of thanks. If they’re right about the waters, then you’re in luck: even if you were a little crazy to vacation in Afghanistan, Band-i-Amir will restore your sanity. But you don’t have to believe in the folklore to rejoice in the fact that you ignored the naysayers and ventured here: the surreal beauty of these lakes is a balm for every soul. [Link]

Now for this next “Best” I felt a little guilty for imagining myself there. We shouldn’t be happy about bargains brought about by unrest…err, right?

Visiting violence-wracked countries isn’t everyone’s idea of a vacation, but local unrest can be a boon for the bargain hunter. Nepal, which has endured 10 years of civil war, is a perfect example. Although foreigners haven’t been targets in the conflict between the government and Maoist rebels, the U.S. Department of State asks Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Nepal; the British government tells its citizens to remain vigilant. But if you can live with a moderate level of risk, you’ll come across fabulous hotel and restaurant deals and have some of Asia’s most iconic sights, like Durbar Square and Everest, virtually to yourself. [Link]

I still don’t understand the next “Best.” What the hell is a “Democratic Dreamscape?” It is hard to imagine that a place where politicians spend their days arguing can be considered a “Dreamscape.”

It is a wonderful irony that one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies should be housed in its most ethereally elegant parliament building. But such is the case in Bangladesh, where the Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, or National Assembly—flooded by natural light and ringed by the still waters of an artificial lake—is the official arena for politics of breathtaking malignancy. Situated on a 200-acre site in the center of Dhaka, this giant gray octagon of a building at first looks like it was hallucinated by Isaac Asimov, or that it came to George Lucas in a dream. In reality, it is the deeply thoughtful work of American architect Louis Kahn. [Link]

If you’re reading this, you are reading a poem, and you are worried it will be one of those poems, the kind that is confusing, precious, and obscure. The kind someone makes you read.

If you’re reading this, you’re choosing to do so, probably wondering whether poetry is worth your time and energy, since “normal” writing is much more rewarding, and the weekend is coming up. It is a good question to ask while you’re reading this.

If you’re reading this at work, you are thinking about your boss discovering that you spent the whole afternoon dawdling on the internet. But your timepass is our business, so please keep dawdling. Your boss needs to read this too.

If you’re reading this, and I hope you are, you may be waiting for me to get to the point.

Hear ye, hear ye, the time approaches for SM’s first meetup of 2006 in Ka-ney-da, the True North strong and free. The womb that is Toronto shall play host to an enchanting evening of food, drink, witty banter, and dance fights. Vive la revolution!

Date: Sunday, May 21, 2006
Time: 6:00 PM
Place: Little Tibet – 712 Queen West

We shall feast on momos and po jha. Tibetan food is veggie-friendly and delicious. If you have any hard and fast objections to place or time please shout them out in the comments. I am open to compromise if you threaten with absence :-)

Pretty please to be making RSVP before I make reservations on Saturday, my email addy is currylingus[at]gmail[dot]com. I want to make sure we can all snag a seat without the wait wherever we end up going. By all I mean ALL. I know you’re out there…give me a holler and come out to play! I was the onliest attendee at last year’s Toronto meetup, which was hosted by Manish. Shame shame! You have a lot to prove T-dizzy, like how many momos you can eat in one sitting, how long you can go without saying the “K” word, and how many pictures you can pose for while making “SM” gang signs.

What has happened to Indian American media culture? Just yesterday it seemed like things were going so well. Indian Americans were winning Jeopardy semifinals, patrolling the streets of Kabul, and getting cast as genetics professors with supernatural powers on network television. And there’s even talk that Indian American women are much in demand on the U.S. dating scene (the talk has been generated by journalists in India, but never mind!).

But then there was KaavyaGate, which got so big that President Bush was forced to address both Houses of Congress to condemn the evils of “Plagierrorism,” and suddenly everyone was looking at us like we’re all plagiarists. And now they’re debating requiring “Plagiarism free” biometric certification cards for all future immigrants from the Indian subcontinent with literary ambitions, and … well, people are freaked. As far as assimilation goes, the Indian American community is evidently back to ground zero square one.

By contrast, folks in India seem to have a much healthier relationship to important issues like religion, plagiarism and the entertainment industry. There are now religious shrines for the ‘Visa Mata’ as well as for a pressure cooker that sacrificed its life pressure to save an army platoon from a heat-seeking missile. Both of these are clearly important facets of India’s world famous spiritual masala, which the post-eminent pop songstress Britney Spears has been known to dabble with, though she has apparently not yet heard of the obscure mystical sect called “Hinduism.”

But by far the most important thing happening in India is the government’s relentless drive to stand up for what is right in the face of pseudo-secularist cinematic sleaze. And I’m not talking about how Muslims and Christians have banded together to suppress the Indian release of The Da Vinci Code; indeed, I’m actually a little confused about why a film that shows albino priests doing sinister things is so offensive. (Personally, I find the plot a little ludicrous — I doubt many Americans will be interested in such a far-fetched story! Well, at least it’s original) No, I’m actually referring to the blasphemous piece of trash known as Tickle My Funny Bone, the story of a “naughty, bold, and sexy nun.” Thank the Visa Mata that the Censor Board is on the case to protect Indian sorta-secularism from the ravages of Bollywood Nunsploitation.

A cloud-darkened sunset carried the light in at a rich angle on the shore of the Arabian Sea. You can eyedropper some of my favorite hues right off these sheets, like blowing smoke.

Related posts: Night Watch, She sells seashells, Navi Mumbaikar

All right, stop whatcha doin’, ‘cause I’m about to ruin the image and the style that ya used to.

New York City-area Mutineers (and all those green-tinged brown people who, like me, wish that they were): cancel your weekend plans. These are better, I PROMISE.

The South Asian Woman’s Creative Collective is sponsoring some temporary nirvana this Friday through Sunday, as they present M I X E D M E S S A G E S, a sepia-colored festivus for the literary-minded rest of us at Marymount Manhattan College. It’s their fourth conference, so you know it’s going to be as smoove as I am when slightly tipsy.

A three-day series of readings, panels and workshops, “Mixed Messages” will explore non-mainstream genres, highlight writers who use new media, and focus on writing communities. [SAWCC]

Not one, but TWO Mutineers will be there: Amardeep is moderating Friday night’s reception and I’m speaking on a panel on Sunday afternoon. Details for both of those chunks o’ heaven are below, the entire schedule (which I demand you peruse, because it’s THAT hot) is available here.

Friday, May 19: Kick-Off Reading and Reception 7PM, $15
Amitav Ghosh (Incendiary Circumstances, Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
Vijay Seshadri (The Long Meadow: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2005)
Sara Suleri Goodyear (Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy, University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Moderated by Amardeep Singh (Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University)

Sunday, May 21: 3PM-5PM, FREE Panel Discussion: Mixed Messages: South Asian Literature and New Media
Anna John (SepiaMutiny)
Ravi Shankar (editor of DrunkenBoat.com)
Yesha Naik (podcaster and performer)
Ram Devineni (filmmaker and publisher of Rattapallax Press)
Amitava Kumar (Husband of a Fanatic, New Press, 2005) (moderator)

For you bargain-minded desis who noticed the wee $15 cost for Amardeep’s sure-to-be fantastic event— just know that breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday are free, as are most of the other activities during the day. Que bueno el deal-o, as the President would not say.

I just feel sorry for our rock star of a guest blogger Neha; the poet whom she profiled here, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, is part of Sunday night’s showcase of brown female writers, so I’m sure she wishes she could attend. I could go on and on and tell you more tantalizing tidbits, like how long-time mutineer Pooja Makhijani helped put this phenomenal weekend together AND is a part of the first panel on Saturday (South Asian Youth Lit), but I don’t want to rub it in for those of you who can’t go. We’ll take plenty of pictures for you, how’s that? Not good enough? Um…well, this is awkward. May I suggest an eleventh hour road trip? Even with painful gas prices, it would be totally worth it and really, how many things can you say THAT about these days?

After my recent post on early Bengali science fiction, Desiknitter suggested in a comment that Sultana’s Dream (1905) by Rokeya Hosain ought to be on the list. She was right: Sultana’s Dream is an intriguing example of a feminist utopia — an imagined world where women are socially and politically dominant over men, and that dominance is seen as natural. Other examples of it include Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1917). Rokeya Hosain led a fascinating, activist life, which bears some looking into. Oh, and the story alludes to a fascinating problem in optics — parabolic mirrors used as weapons — which I’ll talk about a little at the end.

Rokeya Hosain wrote Sultana’s Dream only a short while after learning English. She and her sister showed a remarkable early proclivity for books and ideas even though, as girls, they weren’t actually allowed to learn how to read (eventually, Rokeya’s sister was forced to give up the habit by embarrassed family members). Hosain was married in a ‘love match’ at the age of sixteen to a progressive Bengali Muslim, who fortunately supported women’s education and taught her English. Rokeya wrote Sultana’s Dream, the story goes, when he was away on business. Her goal was to impress him with her skill in English, and by all accounts she more than succeeded. The biographical note in the Feminist Press edition of Sultana’s Dream describes his reaction to the story: he read the whole thing standing up, and uttered, “A splendid revenge!” The story was soon published in a Madras journal.

He meant, of course, “revenge” on men for the repressive system of gender-segregated Zenana (aka ‘Purdah’). For Rokeya Hosain’s Sultana’s Dream is set in a realm where women rule and men are kept away in segregated quarters: the Mardana. This is Hosain’s coinage; it comes from the Urdu word ‘Mard’, meaning ‘man’.

In what can only be described as poetic injustice, the most priapic fruit in the world may go extinct within five to ten years for lack of sex. I feel for you, brutha. India’s glorious, 12” long banana fruit has been neutered by the cruel, cruel world (thanks, tipster):

The world’s most popular fruit… is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed…

The main hope for survival of the Cavendish [variety] lies in developing new hybrids resistant to the [black sigatoka] fungus, but… the seedless modern fruit does not reproduce sexually and has to be bred from cuttings.

… wild banana species are rapidly going extinct as Indian forests are destroyed… In fact many of the genes that could save the Cavendish may already have been lost… One variety that contains genes that resist black sigatoka survives as a single plant in the botanical gardens of Calcutta… [Link]

The banana’s problem is that it is the seedless, infertile mutant cousin of a wild herb. The absence of seeds makes its fruit edible, but also genetically vulnerable… They have survived only because for some 10,000 years banana-lovers have propagated the fruit by taking shoots from the base of the plants…

The most widespread banana disease currently is a leaf fungus called black Sigatoka. It cuts yields by 50 percent or more on hundreds of millions of small farms across the tropics. Commercial banana plantations keep up production with weekly applications of fungicides - the most intensive application of chemicals on any major food crop. But now a new strain of an old disease, Panama disease, threatens to make even fungicides useless…

“In the 1970s we controlled Black Sigatoka by spraying 10 to 12 times a year…” That frequency has jumped to almost weekly… [Link]

AIM and M.I.A. are forever mated in palindrome, but the news site is reporting that Her Highness of Baile Funk has been denied entry into the U.S. (thanks, tipster). Visa officials aren’t hip to terror chic by either Modi or Maya.

Speed bump courtesy of the Tamil Tigers

London rapper M.I.A. has been denied a visa to visit or work in the USA by immigration officials… Sources close to the British Sri-Lankan MC said that her lawyers are frantically trying to resolve the situation… She is hoping to get back to the USA as soon as US immigration will allow for a collaboration with producer Timbaland on her next album. [Link]

… Arulpragasam doesn’t downplay her Tiger connection, she flaunts it, it’s integral to her marketing. She did a mix album using unauthorized samples called Piracy Funds Terrorism. Her song ‘Sunshowers’ refers to suicide bombs (‘And some showers I’ll be aiming at you’), her first album bears her dad’s [LTTE] codename. Jungle guerrillas are all over the ‘Sunshowers’ video, there’s a large running tiger in her excellent concert visuals, she does a soldier step on stage and a shoutout to the P.L.O. [Link]

Arulpragasam’s blog is littered with misspellings, but her interview video clips have that sexayy, husky voice, a confidence which shows up on screen but not always on stage. Does your starcrush survive? Roll again.

THEY TRY SHUT MY DOOR!

Roger roger do you here me over!!!!
the U.S immigration wont let me in!!!!!
i was mennu work with timber startin this week, but now im doin a Akon “im locked out they wont let me in” im locked out! they wont let me in! Now Im strictly making my album outside the borders!!!! so il see you all one day, for now ill keep reportin from the sidelines
to my people who walk wiv me in the America, dont forget we got the internet! Spread the word! or come get me!!!!!! ill be in my bird flu lab in china! liming and drinkin tiger beer with my pet turtel. I love everyone for the support, now i need it more. ill stay up spread out else where. [Link]

im in india right now, hurding cows, theres some minister staying at my hotel, and his body guard has a a.k 47. me and my brother just caught him knockin on peoples doors askin for money. the police body guard that it. [Link]

The last time U.S. immigration turned back a pop star, they nailed international archvillain Cat Stevens. I sleep so much better at night knowing they foiled the plot to threaten America with music from the ’70s. Playing ‘Where’s Osama?’ pales in comparison.

Related posts: M.I.A.: Step up to blow up, The Modi protest, Modi gets B*slapped, Ain’t no junk in her trunk, Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Wah, po’ Maya, I coulda been a contendah, Hello, this is M.I.A., Grind me down sugar salt, Fire Fire (updated again), Tinted Tilly, Bucky Done Underwhelmed, The transit of Venus in Mercury, New York, quieten down…, Acid-washed genes, M.I.A., fashion victim, M.I.A. now a role model?, Missing in Acton, Monsters of rock

Ever since Steven Colbert invented the word “Truthiness” I have been desperately searching for a word of my own to invent so that I too can become a pop culture reference and get a shot out on VH-1’s Best Week Ever. I would humbly like to submit to you all the word “Plogging” (which is the verb form of the word “Plog”). It means blogging your paintings or other works of art. We already have the word “Flog” for Foto-weblog, a place where one can display their photography. Instead of Paint-Blog (the origin of “Plog”) I thought of Art-Blog (Alog) but the second one reminded me of something dirty. In any case here are two examples of fine Plogs. The first one belongs to my friend Adnan Hussain. The guy is crazy prolific and seems to be putting up new stuff almost every day, whereas most bloggers struggle to write just one post every day. Hopefully he will forgive me for snagging two (1,2) of his works as examples (click on thumbnails for larger pictures):

Be sure to leave him comments if you like his stuff, it’s pretty addictive.

The second example of a Plog that I will share with you is the one that belongs to Gautam Rao.

I’m an artist living in Indianapolis, Indiana. In this blog, I’ll be posting new paintings regularly. My goal is to challenge myself, and to seek the extraordinary in everyday life.

All paintings are oil on masonite. [Link]

Here is an example of one of his works. My own interpretation of it is that many of us are beginning to see ourselves as viewed through the window of a computer. Nah, I’m just kidding…just trying to sound smart.

If you guys know of any other South Asian “plogs” then please leave them in the comments. Also, keep your fingers crossed that I get on to Best Week Ever.

As some of you may know, today is the day that many across the world celebrate the birthday of Lord Buddha:

Buddha Poornima, which falls on the full moon night in the month of Vaisakha (either in April or May), commemorates the birth anniversary of Lord Buddha, founder of Buddhism, one of the oldest religions in the world. Notwithstanding the summer heat (the temperature routinely touches 45 degrees C), pilgrims come from all over the world to Bodh Gaya to attend the Buddha Poornima celebrations. [Link]

Sarnath seems to have been rocking on Saturday:

Click for a larger (more enlightening) picture

Sarnath — the site where Buddha ignited the light of knowledge among five disciples centuries ago was this evening bedecked with 20,000 diyas (earthen lamps).

Marking the 2550th Great Parinirvan of Buddha, this festival of lights started off at 1840 hrs today evening in the lines of Dev Deepawali — the evening when all 84 Ganga ghats of Varanasi are decorated with diyas.

While Dev Deepawali is held every year to mark the Hindu festival of Kartik Purnima, this evening’s twinkling delight coincided with Buddha Purnima at the world famous Buddhist pilgrimage of Sarnath. [Link]

Over 2500 years after the Buddha walked the Earth there is still proof all around us of his tremendous influence and teachings. As a matter of fact I am here to tell you that those Ipods which many of you cling to so dearly (I have never owned one) are like so passé. The hottest trend to hit the streets is the divinely inspired (and powered??) Buddha Machine:

The controls are simple: There’s a volume dial on top that doubles as an on and off switch, which is next to a headphone jack and a power adaptor input (the Buddha Machine also runs on two AA batteries). A red LED on the side indicates whether the box is on, and an adjacent two-way switch allows users to flip between recorded loops. It’s available in six different colors, but you don’t get to choose - they ship randomly to mail orders from online sites such as forcedexposure.com.

So what the hell do you use this thing for?… [Link]

Good question young one, but the answers that you seek in life don’t always come simply because you demand to know them.

As most of you surely know, USA TODAY broke the story yesterday that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been sifting through all of our phone records in order to see if they can establish “patterns” of terrorist activity. This post serves as a follow-up to my post last December.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews…

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added. [Link]

The ACLU, which defends our civil liberties, was not happy:

“Both the attorney general and the president have lied to the American people about the scope and nature of the NSA’s program,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s clearly not focused on international calls and clearly not just focused on terrorists… . It’s like adding more hay on the haystack to find that one needle.” [Link]

Oh, and by the way, did you guys know:

One government lawyer who has participated in negotiations with telecommunications providers said the Bush administration has argued that a company can turn over its entire database of customer records — and even the stored content of calls and e-mails — because customers “have consented to that” when they establish accounts. The fine print of many telephone and Internet service contracts includes catchall provisions, the lawyer said, authorizing the company to disclose such records to protect public safety or national security, or in compliance with a lawful government request. [Link]

I for one defend President Bush’s data mining program wholeheartedly. A person who cares about and is entrusted to maintain the security and success of ANY institution the way George W. Bush obviously cares for the United States of America, is expected, nay…duty-bound I should say, to keep track of their “organization.” If you guys disagree with this view then you obviously don’t understand the fact that with great power comes great responsibility.

My tremendous sense of responsibility is the very reason that I have been data mining and tapping the telephone calls of my fellow-bloggers here in our North Dakota headquarters for the past two years. Let me tell you a bit of what I’ve learned from this patriotic tool.

I recently picked up Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science in a bookstore in Philly. I thought I already had a favorite Indian doctor-writer in Abraham Verghese, but Gawande gives Verghese a run for his money in this excellent, thought-provoking book.

My buddy Chiraag of Pardon My Hindi has just posted a kick-ass second issue of Samachar, a superpremium, arty site which is the Häagen-Dasz of 2nd gen desi mags:

• A scandalous, side-by-side audio comparison of ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart,’ a Black Eyed Peas Grammy winner, with the song it plagiarized, ‘Ae Nau Jawan Sab Kuchh Yahan’ from Apradh. The catchy melody is a shameless copy. Listen for yourself.
  
  It’s not a sample, it’s the entire melodic backbone of the song, almost entirely unchanged. Royalties? Nope. Americans really are learning from Bollywood.
  
  
• A video clip of NYU dosa man Thiru Kumar composing his mirch-e-frisbees while wearing a jacket with a big, LTTE-esque airbrushed tiger on the back

  Out-of-Office Tiger

  . Yes, he listens to M.I.A.
  
  
• A stylish trailer for call center documentary John and Jane:

  The most startling character is the re-named Naomi, a Gujurati girl who bleaches her skin and hair and speaks with an American accent even outside working hours. [Link]

• A self-promotional photo essay of PMH stickers pasted throughout San Francisco by friends of the artist

I really love this site’s aesthetic. The photos are ginormous and animated in a flipbook format. Raag loves his fabric textures and Billyburg blue-on-brown palette. The Meena Kumari (?) sticker still looks like she’s post-orgasmic. He’s got some new shirts big-upping ’70s Bollycomposer duo Anand-Kalyan (licensing issues?), who composed the song the Peas lifted.

Cody’s, a landmark, 43-year-old indie bookstore in Berkeley, is closing July 10 due to declining sales (thanks, Saheli). It was attacked during the Satanic Verses fatwa in 1989:

Cody’s Books, Berkeley, California was firebombed about 4:30 a.m. when a pipe bomb was hurled through a back window just thirty seconds before a similar attack occurred at a nearby Waldenbooks store. One of the world’s finest general bookstores, Cody’s was bombed just fourteen days after Khomeini [issued a fatwa against Salman Rusdhie]… During the cleanup another bomb was found on the floor in the poetry section of the store. The owner of the store… stood across the street while the bomb squad worked with the bomb and as it exploded. [Link]

… the store announced that it would continue to sell Salman Rushdie’s controversial “Satanic Verses” — a decision that Ross called “our finest hour.” [Link]

Rushdie was pithy as ever:

“Rushdie came to the store once, a surprise visit when he was still in hiding,” Ross said. The author gave the bookstore 5-minutes notice to announce that he was in the store and would sign books. “There’s a hole above the information desk from the bombing. Someone scribbled ‘Salman Rushdie memorial hole.’ When Rushdie was here, he looked up and said, ‘Some people get statues, others get holes.’ ” [Link]

Cody’s blames the closure on competition from online textbook and academic bookstores and the general decline of Telegraph Ave., a street which rocks out with revolutionary flava but isn’t all that safe at night.

After two years of market research, Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL) is ready for a commercial launch of the female condom in India. It will be distributed under the brand name ‘Confidom’. The condom is manufactured in the U.K. by the Chicago-based Female Health Company (FHC). In addition, the FHC announced this week that it has received an order from the National AIDS Control Organization of the Government of India for over 500, 000 condoms. [Link, in PDF]

Research conducted by HLL last year indicated an interest in the product from commercial sex workers as well as from college girls [Link]. While HLL is eying the moolah in upper middle class spheres the Indian government is giving them a helping hand by working with NGOs to reach sex workers:

Positioned as a high-end lifestyle product targeted at the segment of women aged between 18 to 35 years, the product has been priced at Rs. 250 for a pack of two. It expects to sell five lakh units in the first year. Meanwhile, the government has already ordered about five lakh pieces to be distributed free through NGOs or at a subsidized price of Rs. 5 to sex workers. [Link]

Female condoms are unique because they give women simultaneous control over STD prevention and contraceptive technology. Their influence on HIV prevention programs dealing with sex workers, such as Kolkata’s Sonagachi Project, could be huge. While promoting HIV awareness in the Sonagachi brothels, public health scientist Smarajit Rana found some very basic obstacles preventing the use of male condoms:

It transpired that if a prostitute insisted on condom use, her customer just went to someone else. Unlike AIDS, starvation posed an immediate threat, and the program seemed doomed. “Counseling, educating—it just doesn’t work,” Jana states. “Higher up in the social hierarchy, people are able to act on the information given to them. Not so in the lower levels.” [Link]

Confidoms could drastically reduce such difficulties faced by sex workers but at Rs. 5 a pop I wonder how accessible this method really is to them. HLL is looking at negotiating a deal with the FHC that would allow them to manufacture the condoms domestically, which would lower the price, but no word of a definite agreement as yet.

Q: What kind of person publicly threatens to hunt down and rape his rival’s four-year old daughter?

A: One of Clear Channel’s (former) finest: DJ Star, a.k.a. Troi Torain

Go ahead. Absorb. Let the nausea subside.

Yesterday, I received glad tidings of Star’s termination (Thanks, TAN), but my relief quickly dissolved when I discovered just WHY he had been fired; during one of Torain’s pathetic, IQ-reducing morning shows, he took a dispute he had with a nemesis— DJ Envy—to unprecedented levels of hatred by describing exactly how he wanted to hurt his rival’s innocent little girl. Wow. It is a truly special, powerful man who threatens to defile a child. If anyone needed further proof that Clear Channel was concomitantly useless and evil, look no further than their taste in employees and their amazing ability to reclassify hate as entertainment.

I understand that beef makes for tasty ratings, but apparently Torain’s favorite meal came from a Mad Cow. Only a wasted, sick brain could conceive of and enthusiastically rant the following:

Star continued to digress about Envy’s child, saying, “Yes, I disrespected your seed. If you didn’t hear me, I said, I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed, on your little baby girl. I would like to tinkle on her.” Even more, the now-removed radio jock stated, “I’m coming for your seed. Did you hear me? I want to do an R. Kelly in the mouth of your seed, fam… I want to put some mayonnaise in between your baby girl’s ass crack and take a bite.”

Quite predictably, Torain was relieved of his duty to shock listeners by spewing filth, but I want to know what took them so long. And I don’t just mean the many hours which Clear Channel enjoyed before canning his ass, I mean these many months. I guess when your transgression involves an innocent Indian call center worker, it’s easier to forgive and forget. No respect please, we’re rat-eaters.

If Clear Channel had any kind of soul, they would have dumped Torain after that example of his intrinsic cruelty, but they don’t, so they continued to remunerate him lavishly, thus ensuring that even more fecal matter would leave his worthless mouth. Much like children who have tortured kittens and puppies are practicing for future, human victims, I think that this descending spiral was predictable and thus, preventable. Shame on you Clear Channel. I rebuke you because your erstwhile star is shameless.

It’s interesting how peoples’ devotion to free speech changes when it’s their sacred cow getting gored. Celebrated advocate for free speech Salman Rushdie once threatened another writer saying, “If you ever write mean things about my wife again, I’ll come after you with a baseball bat.”

Similarly, while Catholics have not had a violent reputation for at least a century, the movie version of the Da Vinci Code is getting many of the pious hot under the collar. Cardinals at the Vatican first advocated a boycott against the movie, then unspecified legal action against the movie and the book, arguing:

“This is one of the fundamental human rights - that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected,” [Link]

In India, the Catholic faithful are going further still. In Bombay, demonstrations call for the banning of the movie, and one former city official has even gone so far as to put a bounty on Dan Brown’s head:

The movie on the right has the tagline “story of a naughty nun”

Days before the film based on Dan Brown’s bestseller hits cinemas in the country, the Catholic Social Forum has called people of all faiths in Mumbai to fast unto death from May 12 if the government fails to ban the “anti-Christian” film. If that were not enough, a former corporator Nicholas Almeida, has done a Haji Qureishi, announcing a reward of Rs 11 lakh for anyone who “brings the author dead or alive before him”. [Link - thanks WGIIA]

[Interestingly, the HT has removed this story from their news archive, but it’s still available through the link above]

The head of the Catholic Secular Forum has also issued a veiled threat / warning about the consequences of releasing the Da Vinci Code movie:

“You can’t make fiction on a religious figure. Tempers are already running quite high and there’s no way of saying what could happen if the movie is released,” he said. [Link]

Google Trends reveals the most sexually repressed (and Internet-literate) nations in the world by showing who spends the most time searching for the word ‘sex’ (via Andrew Sullivan).

The #1 city: Delhi. The #1 country: Pakistan.

Three of the top six cities are in India: Delhi, Chennai and Bombay.

The top U.S. city: Salt Lake City. Then Chicago.

The top language: Arabic. Was it really a surprise?

Also check out who searches for the word ‘pornography’ and the word ‘desi.’

One of the ultimate ironies of the traditional Indian gender roles is that, although they strive to keep chastity on every cherubic mind, they accomplish quite the opposite… every interaction is viewed through the filter of gender… it’s a perversion that the platonic part of our lives is defined by the sexual. If chastity were the objective, repression is clearly not the answer. [Link]

Related posts: Everyone’s having sex except you, No sex please, we’re Indian, Bad Indian Boy, There is no place to hide it in India

For years I have been telling friends that what the U.S. needs more than ANYTHING right now is an Indian fast-food chain. If I am going to be convinced by advertisers to slowly poison myself with grease then I would much rather do so

Puff puff…give

The Hot Breads chain has had great success in India, but the company is really hoping to put the hot in Hot Breads as it begins franchising in the United States.

“We have great plans of opening up Hot Breads here,” said M. Mahadevan, who first launched the Hot Bread chain in Chennai, India, in 1988. “We have a plan here for nice growth.”

With over 20 locations in India in cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi and Pondichery, two in Bangladesh, four in Nepal, one in Paris and about 40 in the Middle East, there is no reason to think Hot Breads won’t fly in the United States…

Hot Breads features bakery items such as croissants and pastries with an Indian twist. In India, Hot Breads is touted for its French baking traditions, but in the United States it is the connection with India, and its pastries filled with spicy vegetables and meat fillings, that have connected with the India American customers. [Link]

Now please don’t get me wrong. Looking at their menu you will see that this is just a baby step. The food they serve seems to be sort of an Indian-French hybrid. The Taj Mahal wasn’t built in a day however. If enough people eat this stuff then maybe an establishment like Kati Roll will decide to franchise as well. Just imagine a bouncer at every highway truck stop trying to fend off paneer lovers and keep the peace.

Mahadevan said that Hot Breads has scored as a brand that Indian Americans are familiar with from India. He added that it gives Indian Americans a sense of belonging here because they can visit a store, smell the curry and Desi coffee and be reminded of Hot Breads they have visited in India. [Link]

The Beeb reports that Afghanistan’s Supreme Court once criticized godless liberal Charlton Heston for wearing shorts 40 years ago in a movie:

… [Afghanistan’s] Supreme Court sought to ban [a TV channel] for showing the Charlton Heston sword and sandals epic, The Ten Commandments, during Ramadan in 2004. “It showed the prophet Moses with short trousers and among the girls,” Wahid Mujdah, a Supreme Court spokesman, said at the time. “He’s a very holy person and Islam respects him. This is wrong.” [Link - thanks, WGIIA]

And that was when Heston was playing bearded ol’ Moses. I wonder what they’d make of Heston’s other works featuring homoerotic bondage and hot monkey love:

But after a little bronze-limbed tussle, I’m sure the Afghan judges and the former NRA president could have a heart-to-heart about the virtues of widespread AK-47 ownership.

Goodness Gracious Me mastermind Sanjeev Bhaskar is now Sanjeev Bhaskar, OBE. Of the medal, Bhaskar wisecracked, ‘As an Asian bloke, it’s another thing I can stick on eBay.’

“It’s great for my parents. They’re of that generation that came over here with nothing. My ancestors would never have believed that their offspring would be at the Palace.” [Link]

Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal, who recently had a baby together, are currently filming for the next series of Kumars at No 42… confirmed guests include Cybill Shepherd… [Link]

Life’s sometimes ha-ha-hee-hee

No matter how much I love Bhaskar’s stuff, once a comedian has been knighted, he’s officially jumped the scepter. There’s nothing mutinous about a medal of the British Empire, a street cred slasher. Whereas the medal goes well with Sir Kingsley’s Shakespearean presence, even when he’s playing a goofy vampyre king.

There is one thing I love about the award. Can you keep a secret? Many Bhaskar sketches make fun of English people and their stereotypes about desis (thanks, BB and ksk). Shhh, don’t tell the queen.

Related post: Twee, innit?

The following post is brought to you by the good folks over at rubbish TV. Sandwiched between such mullet-tastic gems as Full House (Uncle Jesse = hot, just sayin’) and Roseanne there was born a shiny new talent. A Great Brown Hope, if you will. Ladies and ladas, I present to you Rubi Nicholas, America’s Funniest Mom:

Rubi Nicholas’s mouthful of a life became her comedy routine. She’s a Pakistani Muslim with a Greek Orthodox, stay-at-home husband who converted to Islam. They live in a Denver suburb with their daughters. They fit in just fine. “Except,” she says in her stand-up routine, “every time my daughter leaves her Barbie Jeep in someone else’s driveway they call the bomb squad.”. [Link]

The Nickelodeon show consisted of six weeks of Apprentice-style comedy challenges set in a New York City penthouse. Episodes are available on the Nickelodeon website.

When she was a child she enjoyed calling her school and pretending to be her mother with excuses for absences, she says in her routine. She grew up in Pottsville, Pa., a coal region in the central part of the state. “Calling to let you know that Rubi will not be in school today. For today we celebrate the holy festival of the blind goat,” Ms. Nicholas says in a heavy Pakistani accent. And did somebody mention airports? “So a little bit about me,” Ms. Nicholas said in the final show. “I married a white guy to improve my airport cred. Yeah, and he had to become a Muslim to marry me, and he had to marry me because you know what they say. Once you go Pak … that’s right, you’ll never eat pork again.”

To read the latest Sepia Mutiny post on your mobile phone, open this address on your phone’s Web browser:

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/index.wml

The city of Newark, New Jersey just elected its first new mayor in 20 years. Known for its high rate of violent crime, Newark suffered a nasty campaign between golden boy Cory Booker and the candidate anointed by outgoing mayor Sharpe James.

Hizzoner Booker T. Coryngton

Cory Booker swamped his nearest challenger, state Sen. Ronald L. Rice, taking 72 percent of the vote compared with 24 percent for Rice in the nonpartisan election. [Link]

Mr. Booker, a chatty former Rhodes scholar who developed his oratorical talents at Yale Law School, has been tagged by fellow Democrats as a rising star in the party. [Link]

Booker is a vegetarian who doesn’t drink… [Link]

… a Democrat who cites the Republican mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, as a political model, and a churchgoing Baptist who meditates and quotes from Hindu texts… [Link - thanks, Randompedia]

Booker won by a landslide, but the campaign was marred by naked racial gibes from his black opponents. Red in tooth and claw, the ‘insufficiently black’ smear sounds a whole lot like desi racialists who question candidates’ authenticity (e.g. Bobby Jindal) and lob the grenade of Selling Out.

Booker is talking about the blacker-than-thou themes that James has been hammering on for weeks… “Sharpe James is running a campaign that uses every attempt possible to distract voters from the issues. He’s making racial allegations; he’s appealing to people’s worst fears…

“Four years ago, they said I was a tool of the Jews and a member of the KKK.” [Link]

… the battle pits the young challenger against an old-style political machine capable of using any means necessary—including personal harassment and police intimidation—to crush its opponents. Though both candidates are African-American, the race becomes racially charged when the mayor accuses Booker—a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School grad—of not being “really black…” [Link]

… Sharpe James described him — though they are both African-American Democrats — as Jewish, gay, a Republican and a proxy for the Ku Klux Klan… At Oxford, after wandering into a meeting of L’Chaim, a Jewish student organization, he joined the group and was eventually elected its president…

Witch hunts remain a persistent scourge in rural parts of Jharkand state and adjoining areas of Chhatisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal. Periodically there are reports of a woman accused of causing misfortunes through black magic. Once accused, a woman faces hideous treatment, banishment and possibly death:

Recalling the trauma she faced, Ramani narrates: ‘I was tortured and forced to eat human excreta just because I was branded a witch by the ojhas (witch doctors).’ (…)

Vaisakhi, in her 50s, had also been brutally beaten up by a villager, who branded her a witch.

There are scores of women who have been branded witch by villagers and tortured. Many were killed, sometimes by beheading or dismembering their limbs.

Many like Ramani Devi are forced to drink urine or consume human excreta. Some are ostracised and thrown out of their villages. [Link]

These occurrences are most common in adivasi (or “tribal”) communities; but they have also been reported in non-adivasi settings. The victim may be a vulnerable woman, such as a widow, or one who has made herself inconvenient to the village power structure by asserting an economic or political right:

In Bijli village in Raipur district of Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit woman, Lata Sahu, contested against a backward-caste woman in the panchayat elections. Lata was prone to epileptic attacks. The Yadavs and Patels, who belong to the land-owning castes, got Lata’s sister-in-law to condemn her as a tonahi (witch). Lata was stripped of her clothes and paraded in the village.

In another case, in Tarra village in Raipur district, a woman was hacked to death after being branded a witch by her brother-in-law after she sought a right over her deceased husband’s land. In yet another case, in Gaandi village in Angara Block in Ranchi, two Dalit widows were tortured, resulting in the death of one of them, who was 75 years old. It began with the death of two children due to malaria and jaundice in September. An exorcist told the father of the children, Mahavir Baitha, that the two widows, Jeetan Devi and Dubhan Devi, were responsible for the deaths. In front of the son, the mother was tonsured, beaten, paraded and burnt. Earthen pitchers were broken on the heads of the two widows. [Link]

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered is running a three part series this week that takes a look at the 1965 Immigration Act. As mentioned at various times on SM, this is the law which is responsible for many of our parents being allowed to legally enter the U.S., as well as the reason many of us are born citizens. The series by NPR is particularly relevant because one can draw comparisons between the immigration debate then and now. There are three to four million people standing in line waiting to get into America legally right now.

The FULL story is an audio story (and contains rich detail in the form of short interviews-12 min long). I am excerpting the abridged transcript below, although you are much better off listening to the whole story. First, one must remember the immigration laws before the 1965 Act:

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. “It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then “nearly intolerable…” [Link]

So Kennedy and the Democrats saw the political advantages to updating the racist laws in order to give an equal shot to everyone in the world, but Kennedy died before the ‘65 act was passed. When Lyndon Johnson signed it into law he went out of his way to state that he didn’t think anything would come of it. Neither Johnson, nor most of the government, thought that people would really line up to come to the United States:

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. [Link]

NASA has inked a deal to launch two scientific instruments on an Indian rocket bound for the moon within the next two years. Even space is being outsourced:

The picture either means ‘satellite’ or ‘no head-in parking’

U.S. space agency NASA entered into an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday to send two scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-I, the country’s first unmanned moon mission scheduled for 2008…

[The U.S. instruments include] a mini synthetic aperture radar (miniSAR), developed by the agency’s applied physics laboratory and a moon mineralogy mapper, built by [NASA] Jet Propulsion Laboratory…

Chandrayaan-I will be launched from… Sriharikota on the east coast of Andhra Pradesh, using the new polar satellite launch vehicle… [Link]

The first payload will look for polar ice on the moon and the other will study the moon’s surface mineral composition. [Link]

NASA won’t be the only hitchhiker in the galaxy — the Europeans are also aboard:

… the Chandrayaan payload… will have 15-20 instruments, including 11 from India and three from the European Space Agency. [Link]

India’s own payload is a lunar surveyor:

The instruments will perform photo-geological mapping of the lunar surface apart from mineral content. [Link]

Via Albert Krishna Ali at The Other India, a Guardian article about a new tourism phenomenon in India: slum tours. It’s apparently a common enough practice in places like Soweto and Rio, but new to India. For 200 Rupees, tourists get a guided tour of the areas around Delhi’s railway station, where a few thousand homeless children live:

The tour guide instructs visitors not to take pictures (although he makes an exception for the newspaper photographer). ‘Sometimes the children don’t like having cameras pointed at them, but mostly they are glad that people are interested in them,’ Javed claims, adding that the friendly smiles of the tourists are more welcome than the railway policemen’s wooden sticks and the revulsion of the train travellers. He hopes the trip will get a listing in the Lonely Planet guides. Nevertheless there is something a little uncomfortable about the experience — cheerful visitors in bright holiday T-shirts gazing at profound misery. (link)

Last week, a Sikh woman was confronted by an angry racist mob while walking in a park in Southeast London with her daughter and friend:

[They] were out on a walk and … decided to go home when a crowd of around 20 boys and three girls started shouting racist abuse… The three made their way to their car but were confronted by the rabble minutes later. They hurled sticks, full beer cans and stones at the car causing slight damage to the windscreen. [Link]

The BNP is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples” While they got away unscathed, the racists also avoided punishment:

They escaped unhurt and called police. The victim says police told her no arrests could be made because officers said they were “outnumbered” by the horde of teenagers. [Link]

The victim was petrified because Southeast London was where, in 1993, 18 year old student Stephen Lawrence was beaten to death in a racist attack:

“All I could think during the attack was, ‘This is something like Stephen Lawrence went through. It feels like we’re going to get killed’. [Link]

Here’s my question to our British readers out there and those in the know - is this an isolated incident, or part of the rising tide of xenophobia? Is this incident part of the same phenomenon that led to the British National Party (BNP) doubling the number of council seats in the last election?

For those of you just tuning in, the BNP is a right wing nationalist party in the UK that was once a fringe party but which has ominously gained strength recently as anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has grown:

The BNP declares itself “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples.” It seeks to restore the overwhelmingly white makeup of Britain before 1948; its leader has called Islam a “wicked, vicious faith” [Link]

Are you a woman, lady, dame, womyn, broad, chick, butch, babe, femme, and/or girl in your 20s or 30s of South Asian origin?

Is writing a hobby, passion, interest, craft and/or obsession of yours?

Are you creative, intelligent, insightful, and dedicated enough to write your own damn words?

Do the words “Opal Mehta” make you want to hibernate in cold storage for at least a year while hooked up to an IV of rosé?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions then, girl, it is time to get yours! Boys, you get to cheer loudly (including, but not restricted to, well-meaning tapori whistles). Zubaan, an independent feminist publisher based in New Delhi is accepting submissions for their “Book of New Writing by Young Women”, via Zigzackly, their criteria are as follows:

• The focus of the book will be on young writers in the 20s and 30s.
• The writers should be women of South Asian extraction, but may be based anywhere in the world. We are interested in non-resident Indian writers as well as those based in India.
• Stories can be of any length up, ideally anywhere between 2-5,000 words and should be complete stand-alone narratives.
• All submissions must be in English.
• The anthology will be of fictional writing, and we are keen to include a variety of genres – from humorous pieces to science fiction, fantasy, detective stories, and other forms which may fall under the general rubric of ‘speculative fiction’.
• Preference will be given to unpublished stories. [Link]

Emphasis on that brilliant sentence is mine. All submissions (along with a short bio) are to be emailed as word attachments to either Zubaanwbooks[at]vsnl.net or contact[at]zubaanbooks.com with the subject line reading “Submission for Young Writers Anthology”. Submissions are due by July 31st, 2006. That’s one week less than three months from today…plenty of time to fix up some old pieces, create new ones, or turn that excellent blog entry of yours into short fiction. These SM pages are rife with prime examples of women whose writing deserves to be displayed within the pages of a freshly bound book. You know who you are, I am waggling my finger suggestively in your direction.

Four-year-old running prodigy Budhia Singh collapsed due to low blood sugar during a 40-mile run last Tuesday:

The Running Man

Diagnosing Budhia’s collapse during Tuesday’s 65-km run as hypoglycemia, where blood sugar level falls, a doctor feared the boy could suffer serious injuries by the time he reaches 15 if there is periosteal tear on the bones. [Link]

Doctors have examined him and said he should not be allowed to ultramarathon until he’s older:

… the panel headed by the chief medical officer of Capital Hospital… is said to have noted that the boy’s serum urea, potassium and ALKP (alkaline phosphatase) levels were on the higher side. “Signs of under-nourishment, vitamin deficiency and pallor have been noted. The boy should not run, as reflected by the abnormal parameters of health…” [Link]

Heeding the doctors, the Orissa government has banned Budhia from marathoning or being coerced to run marathons:

Orissa government has barred him from running marathons and threatened action against anybody who makes the four-year-old participate in long distance runs… Budhia’s cardiological system was under stress and he was under-nourished with anaemia and angular stomatitis, the [doctor’s] report had said. [Link]

Some activists, disbelieving Budhia’s 40 mile feat, wonder whether he’s living up to his name:

… he may earn another distinction by becoming the youngest in athletic world to go through dope test. “The doctors have suggested dope testing for Budhia who ran such a long distance…” [Link]

I wanted to provide SM readers with a quick update on the trials of the ice cream truck driver and his son from Lodi, California. As you may remember the father’s prosecution resulted in a mistrial due to a hung jury, while the son was convicted on one charge of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI (he faces up to 39 years in prison). Last Friday the U.S. Attorney’s office said that it will have another go at the elder Hayat:

Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they will retry a Lodi man whose first trial on charges that he lied to FBI agents during a terrorism investigation ended in a mistrial last month after half the jury voted for acquittal on one of the counts.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. set June 5 as the new trial date for Pakistani American Umer Hayat, 48, on two counts that he made false statements about his son’s training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003-04 and about his own knowledge of such camps.

“In the post-9/11 environment in which we live,” said U.S. Atty. McGregor Scott, “lying to the FBI in the course of a terrorism investigation is serious misconduct. False information may result in agents losing valuable time to foil a deadly plot, or perhaps bringing the wrong person or persons under suspicion.”

After deliberating for more than a week, jurors in the first trial reported April 25 that they were hopelessly deadlocked. According to prosecutors, the jurors split 7 to 5 in favor of conviction on one count and 6 to 6 on the other. [Link]

This wasn’t about just one holdout juror. Half the jury thought that there was reasonable doubt, especially considering the fact that the father was accused of providing misleading statements in order to protect his own son AND the fact that the FBI used shady interviewing techniques. Umer Hayat’s attorney sounded confident with respect to the outcome of a second trial:

“Continuing to pursue Umer Hayat on the charge of lying will have a chilling effect on people in the community coming forward and talking to the FBI,” Griffin said. “Umer Hayat did not have to go to the FBI. He voluntarily went to the FBI to talk with them and then found he was being accused of being a terrorist. When they couldn’t prove that, they accused him of being a liar.” [Link]

As a side note, Hayat’s homecoming upon his release was bittersweet:

Hayat’s homecoming was a mixture of joy and sorrow: Moments after learning of his immediate release Monday morning, Hayat’s attorney told him that his father, who had lived with him in Lodi, died Saturday. [Link]

In our earlier discussion about immigration reform, many readers asked “What does this have to do with us?” and “Why should legal South Asian-Americans care about illegal immigrants?” The short answer is an apparent non-sequitur: Ahnold Schwarzenegger.

Once an illegal, now a governor, someday a President?

Ahnold’s immigration history is similar to that of many illegal desis. Like them, he didn’t wade across the Rio Grande. Instead he entered the country legally and then violated the terms of his visa.

Ahnold first came to the US in 1968 on a B-1 Visa with the following rules:

“a non-immigrant in B-1 status may not receive a salary from a U.S. source for services rendered in connection with his or her activities in the United States” [Link]

However, in his own autobiography, Schwarzenegger said that bodybuilding supremo Joe Weider gave him an apartment, a car, and a salary of $200/week during this period.

A year later, Weider was able to sponsor Schwarzenegger for a H-2 visa, which allowed Schwarzenegger to work, but only in the area related to his visa. However,

…he violated the terms of his H-2 work visa by launching this bricklaying business in 1971… immigration attorneys across the country said Schwarzenegger would have been barred by visa restrictions from starting his own business… “That would be considered a violation of your status, and he would have been subject to deportation.” [Link]

None of this caught up with him though. We all know the Schwarzenegger Cinderella story - he made it big in bodybuilding, endorsements, real estate, and movies. He was never deported, and instead became a US citizen in 1983 (he still retains Austrian citizenship on the side). He married a Kennedy, hobnobbed with Reagan and Bush, was elected Republican governor of California, and is now angling to become the President of the United States. All of this was possible precisely because his previous immigration irregularities were overlooked. However, if the Sensenbrenner bill (1, 2) becomes law, others will be denied this chance and become felons.

Speaking of Satyajit Ray, I thought I might risk going out on the limb of historical obscurities and share an article by Debjani Sengupta (PDF) I came across that talks about early Bengali science fiction writing.

The article is from the journal Sarai, which is published in Delhi. Some of the articles offer some truly impenetrable jargon -– even with writing on familiar topics (Bollywood, Call Centers, and so on). But there are also a number of well-written and informative articles on things like Parsi theater in Bombay in the 1800s that I would highly recommend.

On to Bengali science fiction. Even the fact that it existed as early as the 1880s may be a little shocking, since most studies of Bengali literature tend to center around Tagore — who was extremely doubtful about modern technology. (Read his account of flying in an airplane here.) But the effects of the industrial revolution were being felt in urban India in the 19th century just as keenly as they were in Europe and the U.S., and at least some Indian writing reflected that. Probably the best, most enduring writing in this genre came from a single family –- Sukumar Ray (in the 1910s and 20s) and his son Satyajit Ray, who was a highly accomplished writer when he wasn’t making making world class art films.

If you find yourself a connoisseur of good cinema or have a thing for really good art-house Indie (as in Indian) films, and are in the Washington D.C. area, make sure you try and stop off to see the National Gallery of Art’s screening tomorrow (May 7) of the 1955 Satyajit Ray classic, Pather Panchali, a story of an impoverished family in a Bengali village circa 1919, and the movie that many would say placed Satyajit ray on the international film map. In celebration of the film’s fiftieth anniversary (which would have actually been in 2005), Partha Mitter, research professor at the University of Sussex, will discuss the work of his friend Satyajit Ray. The lecture will be followed by a screening of a 35 mm archival print of Pather Panchali from the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This event is free, open to the public, begins at 4 PM, and should last around 2 hours and 15 minutes. Amazon.com calls this film an “essential video” in its editorial review, and goes on to say,

“this truly remarkable feat of storytelling is a must-see kind of movie. Ray reveals a gift for presenting stories that unfold gently, one engaging scene at time. This film delivers an amazing emotional punch that will linger in your consciousness for some time, not in spite of, but because of its simplicity.”

While I was sitting in the mandap during my wedding a couple of weeks ago now, I was a bit concerned about all of the Indian sweets I was consuming. It seemed that every two minutes another mithai was being prodded in my direction, and the thought of all the ghee, the sugar, the gor (molasses) etc that I must have inhaled was a bit frightening. It wasn’t until last week when I read these articles in India-West (Link 1 and Link 2), I realized that as a vegetarian, I should have been concerned with something else. According to the story,

Varak, that gossamer-thin silver sheet that covers Indian mitthai, is made by placing thin metal strips of silver between the steaming intestines of a slaughtered animal or its hide and hammered into a thin foil. A substantial number of cattle, sheep and goat are killed specifically for the industry, according to animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi.

I used to think it was real silver that was just wittled down, perhaps by a machine? Apparently, there is no such thing as machine-made varak, so chances are, if you are vegetarian and you eat mithai or anything else with that silver gossamer on it, you are unwittingly eating an animal by-product. It pains me to think that many unknowing vegetarians, who perhaps think Indian sweets are vegetarian-friendly, have been consuming an animal by-product all these years. What’s worse is followers of the Jain religion, a religion that holds the notion of ahimsa or nonviolence in high regard, and the strictest of whom will wear a face-mask so as to not kill any living thing by breathing, have been using varak to decorate their “religious idols and the tirthankaras in their temples.”

I was enraged following the McDonalds controversey a few years back in which it was found that McDonalds was wrongfully telling customers their french fries were vegetarian, when in reality, the fries were frozen with a beef tallow additive, and the news in this article doesn’t make me much happier. While we all know that gelatin is found in marshmallows and gummy bears, I was surprised to see that certain cereals like Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats, actually contain gelatin, as does a now-former favorite of mine Lucky Charms. With the increasing popularity of vegetarianism, one would think a vegetarian friendly substitute for gelatin would have been created by now.

I was quite sad all day yesterday after I learned that the rights of a Hindu family in a small town in upstate New York had been trampled upon. It seems that in every direction that we gaze these days someone else in America is losing a fundamental right that our founding fathers believed in and bled for. In this case it is the right to bear cows for protection. The New York Times recently reported on this gripping story:

The Voiths lament on their front porch. Their cow may now be fifteen minutes away, but they still have their faith and each other.

To Stephen and Linda Voith, keeping cows at their home on Main Street in Angelica, N.Y., a tiny rural village, is a central facet of their Hindu beliefs.

To local officials, though, keeping the Voiths’ growing herd outside village limits is a matter of law, not religion.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester recently agreed, upholding a lower court ruling that prevented a lawyer for the couple from raising the issue of religious freedom when the village won an injunction against them. In 2003, an acting State Supreme Court justice found the Voiths in violation of a law against keeping livestock on parcels smaller than 10 acres.

“We’re being denied our right to practice our religion, because it seems like such a threat to the status quo in this country,” Mr. Voith said, calling attention to a dairy farm across the street behind their home.

The village attorney, Raymond W. Bulson, said the law does not single out any religion and described the dispute as a quality-of-life matter.

“You move to a village because you want the amenities,” Mr. Bulson said. “If you move there to have those amenities, you don’t want a cow next door. I’m sure their religious beliefs are sincere, but that was never an issue…” [Link]

Bigots. They aren’t even ashamed. They just come out and say it. “You don’t want a cow next door.” I guess it doesn’t even matter to Mr. Bulson that the cow in question is both young and in love. This isn’t just a story about religious discrimination but also one about forbidden love.

America’s most celebrated practitioner of ayurveda has fallen afoul of his employer again. Ricky Williams, running back for the Miami Dolphins, has been suspended for a year following a violation of the NFL’s drug policy. To many fans this is a same-old-story: Williams only recently returned from a previous supension, and the court of sports talk radio has found him guilty of self-indulgence, narcissism, and letting down the team.

What’s different this time, however, is that the suspension is not for marijuana (“according to a source” — the league won’t give details). Williams was a known pothead at the University of Texas, with the New Orleans Saints (where he alienated teammates and press with his reclusive behavior, before getting treatment for social anxiety disorder), and during his first stint with the Dolphins. It didn’t stop him from barreling through D-lines, and for a moment in Miami he looked on track to become one of the sport’s greats.

But the weed habit finally got him kicked out, and during his year off he hung out in Australia, India, and eventually studied at the California College of Ayurveda in (yes) Grass Valley. Ricky returned to the league not just clean but cleansed – vegetarian, versed in yoga and ayurveda, wearing only white, and apparently pot-free. (He was in India studying yoga when the offending test results came in.)

So if it wasn’t pot, what was it? The buzz is that an ayurvedic herbal supplement may have gotten him busted this time. In 2004 Abhi blogged that these supplements may not be all that pure. Perhaps Ricky should have chosen this supplier:

A new theory in cosmology sounds much like the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist concepts of cyclical creation and mind-boggling timescales. I don’t mean to sound like Religious Uncle, rather to evoke a neat coincidence (via Slashdot):

The universe is at least 986 billion years older than physicists thoughtThe universe may be 986 billion years older than previously thought, and creation may be cyclical and is probably much older still, according to a radical new theory. The revolutionary study suggests that time did not begin with the big bang 14 billion years ago…

The standard big bang theory says the universe began with a massive explosion, but the new theory suggests it is a cyclic event that consists of repeating big bangs and big crunches - where every particle of matter collapses together…

“I think it is much more likely to be far older than a trillion years though,” said Prof Turok. “There doesn’t have to be a beginning of time. According to our theory, the universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large…” [Link]

… According to Steinhardt and Turok, today’s universe is part of an endless cycle of big bangs and big crunches, with each cycle lasting about a trillion years. At every big bang, the amount of matter and radiation in the universe is reset, but the cosmological constant is not. Instead, the cosmological constant gradually diminishes over many cycles to the small value observed today… the cosmological constant decreases in steps, through a series of quantum transitions. [Link]

As I’ve noted before, the Hindu concept of time is so over-the-top that it beats even the Chinese long view quoted sanctimoniously by bestsellers on the business shelves:

… the life cycle of Brahma is… 311 trillion years. We are currently in the 51st year of the present Brahma and so about 155 trillion years have elapsed… [Link]

Urban development in North America is easily synonymous with suburbs, highways and cars but cities like New York and Toronto seem to lie a little differently. Their saving grace - as NY to TO import Jane Jacobs (rest in peace) pointed out - is multiplicity. Variance within structures, streets and neighborhoods in a city creates a sense of community and keeps the downtown core from stagnating…and turning into, say, downtown Miami after dark. No offense if you’re repping Miami, love the vibe overall but that core is scary at night, for real!

The debate between strip mall and neighborhood market, in growing cities like Toronto, often turns into an outright cars vs. public transit fist fight. The main point of contention that puts public transit at a loss is money. So it’s about time someone paid heed to successful transit systems in cities where skrilla is not only scarce but is only a portion of the problem. Toronto’s one-stop read for all things concerning public space, Spacing mag, has a new transit issue out and they are beefing it up with special transit-related articles on their site. The first of such articles is a report by Robin Rix on the things Toronto can learn from amchi Mumbai. This piece is 100 % curry free! Oh, wait, there is a cow but it’s…charming:

Can you imagine buying a cup of chai for 11 cents while on your morning commute from Finch to King? Clutching a handrail while sticking your head out of the Lakeshore GO train? Waiting on the Dundas streetcar for a cow to pass? While such occurrences are unimaginable in Toronto, they’re a part of everyday life in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), India. Here in Toronto, we tend to look to such cities as London, New York, or Tokyo when coming up with ideas for improving our own system. But is that necessarily the best approach? If we’re looking for innovation and resourcefulness, wouldn’t we be more likely to find them in cities where they must make do with much less? [Link]

You might have decided to skip this one, perhaps on the basis of Sajit’s negative review from a couple of months ago. Or you might go with the positive reviews in half a dozen respectable newspapers (and USA Today) as well as the 88% reviewer approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and risk your $9.50 to support a highly respected Desi filmmaker. Personally, I will probably go see it.

Meanwhile I’ve been surprised by some culturally clueless and simply inaccurate comments from reviewers.

First, the hands-down most facile, offensive, goofy comment I’ve seen in any movie review this year comes from “Metromix,” affiliated with the Chicago Tribune. At the tail end of an almost laughably abbreviated summary, the reviewer tries to gear up readers for the film with a fashion-oriented tagline: “Bonus: Gear up for that summer ‘do: The widows all have buzz cuts.”

“The widows all have buzz cuts.” Wow. That one sentence couples the triviality of the film review business with a shocking level of ignorance. I know these folks have short deadlines for copy, but could they at least look up something on the subject of Hindu mourning rituals before publishing a review of a film on Hindu widows?

On the other hand, it might be offensive, but at least “All the widows have buzz cuts” is pithy and sharp — the kind of outlandish thing you expect the “naughty” character in a Salman Rushdie novel to say. I’ll leave it to readers to give the final verdict.

Yesterday I went mattress shopping with C., a Bombay blogger who swore I would forever impair his prospects of sex and progeny if I posted this story with his actual name, which is Chandrahas. This dude is stylish and brilliant in all respects except his choice of blog friends, who are apparently complete bastards. We didn’t mean to go mattress-shopping together. I needed furniture; he had the day off; he was young and needed the money.

We ended up at Foam Palace, a typical Bombay roadside shop where they make custom mattresses. This was a novel concept for me. The salesman dragged a pad onto the sidewalk and made a great show of squeezing the soft edges sensuously. But my ideal mattress has sturdy edges like a grilled cheese sandwich. The mattress was still covered in plastic like all good Indian appliances years after purchase. I lolled around under the stars next to some bemused pavement dwellers while dirty water dripped out of a drainage pipe overhead.

I asked C. to try out the mattress. The salesman looked on skeptically. ‘We’re not, uh, together,’ I said. C. flopped backwards and concocted a story about how some competitor made them twice as soft at half the price. It was only good for a few bucks off. You only lie convincingly when it’s your own money you’re defending.

Down the street was a shiny new American mattress showroom — let’s call it Kinky Koil. The sales guy pretended his system wouldn’t let him give me a discount.

‘What system?’

‘The spreadsheet is password-protected.’

It was Excel. ‘Dude, I designed that feature,’ I said, exaggerating a bit. ‘I’ll unlock it. Now give me that discount.’

The FBI’s king techie, Zalmai Azmi, is an Afghani-American who got the job after gigs as an auto mechanic, military intelligence in the Marines, the DoJ and the Patent and Trademarks Office:

Zalmai Azmi is CIO of the FBI. He was born in Afghanistan, but emigrated to Germany with his family as a teenager in the early 1980s… He attended a vocational business school, which helped him find a job as an auto mechanic. Azmi joined the Marines in 1984, working in the IT-intensive areas of radio communications and military intelligence. He served for seven years. [Link]

Azmi talks about how people looked at him differently after 9/11:

Have you found your Afghan background to be a deterrent or a problem in any way?‘They were showing pictures of the terrorists on TV and they looked something like me’

… I’ve probably experienced that kind of problem less than five times since I’ve been here.

One of the toughest times was just after 9/11. I put a taskforce together to go to New York and help get our offices there back on line. I spent ten days there, and all the time they were showing pictures of the terrorists on TV and they looked something like me. My face was a constant reminder.

That was probably the only time I noticed that people were looking at me differently, and fortunately it didn’t last long. [Link]

My friend (and fellow Michigan Alum) Sharat Raju will have his short film American Made featured on PBS stations across the nation next week. The film, originally shown beginning in 2003 at various film festivals (including Artwallah while I was serving on the film committee), features a Sikh family on the side of a desert road trying to get their broken down car running again.

American Made began with a trip through the desert by writer/director Sharat Raju. While driving along Highway 14 north of Los Angeles, he noticed a car pulled over on the side of the desert road and began to wonder what would happen if no one stopped to help. What if there was someone who looked suspicious? What if it was a family who looked foreign, not American? What does an “American” look like? This internal debate was the seed for American Made, and Raju easily found real-world examples of the xenophobia that swept through the country in late 2001. His Indian-born parents, although having lived in the United States longer than they lived anywhere else, suddenly felt like outsiders in their own home. Although they were American, being “American” now seemed to mean something different, something less inclusive than it had been. This feeling of alienation was not exclusive to a single race or group. One community in particular felt this change in the social climate perhaps the most — the Sikh religion in America. [Link]

Kal Penn (credited as Kalpen Modi for this film even though he was already going by Kal Penn) has a supporting role in the film where his character spends most of the time trying to get his cell phone to work. PBS has been good at featuring stories about South Asians on its nationwide networks. This film is being shown starting on May 9th as part of Independent Lens program. In addition, you can find a slew of South Asian related films on the PBS Frontline page. Hell, last month a PBS show even had me in it (yes, that was an absolutely shameless plug :) .

In any case, I hope SM readers get a chance to check out this film next week. Sharat is also the director and co-producer of the movie Divided We Fall which we have covered before.

Readers interested in what has been happening in Nepal recently might find Samrat Upadhyay’s The Royal Ghosts a worthwhile read.

Upadhyay is a Nepali who teaches at a university in the U.S. He is, I think, the only Nepali publishing his fiction in the U.S. at present. Though his stories as a rule tend to focus more on personal issues and relationships than on poitics, in this latest book of stories he has for the first time tackled the effect the “Maobadis” (Maoists) have had on Nepali life. Even here the treatment of the ongoing civil war is a little bit oblique: these are middle-class, urban, Kathmandu stories, and the violence that ravages countryside is as far away from the metropolitan consciousnes as Delhi is from the tribal regions of Bihar (see English, August, which Siddhartha blogged about recently).

Recently, I read a story about South Asian workers mistreated by military contractors in Iraq. They were lied to about where they were going, the terms of their contracts were violated, they weren’t paid, they had lousy working conditions, and their passports were withheld so they couldn’t leave. As a result, the US military has had to spend its time cracking down on conditions in its kitchens when it has larger fish to fry:The man told them they would not get any more food. “We bought you,”

The U.S. military said Tuesday that it had issued new orders to private contractors in Iraq to crack down on violations of human trafficking laws involving laborers … at American bases and other sites. An inspection completed in late March uncovered evidence that it was widespread practice among firms providing services to the military to take away their workers’ passports to keep them in place… Hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers, many from South Asia, are employed by contractors at U.S. bases and elsewhere in Iraq as cooks, food servers, janitors, construction workers and in other menial jobs.

Human rights groups have reported complaints by some workers that they were tricked into coming into Iraq. After they paid fees to recruiters in their home countries for jobs said to be in the Gulf, their passports were taken and they were forced to go to Iraq, the workers said. The groups have also reported complaints of withheld pay and overtime and unsuitable working and housing conditions. [Link]

This is deja vu all over again. Almost exactly the same stories first came to light 2 years ago this month when four men from Kerala came back from Iraq after working for a subcontractor for Kellogg, Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton):

First published in 1988, at the dawn of the desi-lit craze, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August, has been a secret touchstone for later desi authors and for readers fortunate enough to get their hands on a copy. This April, it was finally released in the U.S., by New York Review Books, in a handsome paperback edition with an introduction by Akhil Sharma. Not only has it not aged a bit, but it far outshines many recent works in its wry, thoughtful, and dare I say authentic portrayal of major aspects of Indian life.

The book is the story of Agastya Sen, a newly minted member of the Indian Administrative Service who receives his first posting, per IAS practice, in the deep boonies — in a fictional town called Madna, which is vaguely set in central India and is known for record temperatures and nothing else. Agastya, who was at loose ends to begin with, is now at even looser ends; he improvises his way through the torpor, and by the end we too have been to Madna, eaten the cook’s disgusting preparations, amused ourselves spinning outrageous tall tales to local dignitaries, shirked on all of our work obligations, and spent endless hours lying on the bed staring at the ceiling fan, watching for lizards.

Chatterjee went on to write several other books, none of them quite at this level; English, August is one of those perfect pieces that result from some fortunate blend of authorial talent, mood, and just plain serendipity. Chatterjee is an IAS officer himself, and stayed in the service rather than become a Famous Writer. Now he’s been in the odd position of coming to the U.S. for a book tour to promote a work he penned two decades back.

Last Friday Chatterjee was on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC public radio; you can listen and download here. Asked to respond to Suketu Mehta’s comment that English, August is “the ‘Indianest’ novel in English that I know of,” Chatterjee replies: “It speaks of a world that we — we Indians — are all familiar with, but at the same time it’s a world that hasn’t been reflected in fiction. India tends to be romanticized, and English, August is anything but romantic.”

Many people have probably heard that BJP leader Pramod Mahajan passed away yesterday after being shot by his brother in a family dispute. From the obituaries I’ve been reading and from the Wikipedia page, an image of Mahajan as a very complex and interesting figure emerges — an icon both for some positive shifts in the Indian political system as well as of some of the problems that have come with it. Rather than dwell on the negative, in this post I’m going to talk a little about Mahajan’s role as the architect in the deregulation of India’s mobile phone industry in the early 2000s. I view this as something positive Mahajan did that may actually have been against the law at the time he did it.

Mahajan’s political record is somewhat mixed. Widely acclaimed as a brilliant campaign organizer, Mahajan was credited with helping the BJP rise to power in 1998, and with the consolidation of its power in state elections in 2003. But Mahajan is also blamed for the BJP’s shocking electoral loss in 2004, and indeed, he publicly accepted the blame for making strategic mistakes in that campaign.

In December, the BBC suggested that he was one of a handful of people being considered to take over the reigns of the BJP party. But the same article describes him as part of a new breed of “technocrat leaders who lack a grassroots base,” suggesting that Mahajan perhaps wasn’t quite of the stature of people like Vajpayee or Advani.

I. Introduction

II. Conflict

In Ohio’s statewide primaries yesterday, Democratic attorney general candidate Subodh Chandra of Cleveland, lost to Ohio state Sen. Marc Dann. He didn’t just lose by a little, but by a lot (3-1 margin). It is enough to make me wonder why it ended up being such a lopsided contest. First, let’s go to a pre-election article to explain my surprise at the ultimate results:

Dann has been endorsed by the Ohio Democratic Party and labor unions, while Chandra has received the majority of major Ohio newspaper endorsements and is supported by a long list of elected Democrats and former officeholders.

Their match-up has not been exactly friendly. Chandra has attacked Dann’s legal skills, pointing out a reprimand Dann received from the Ohio Supreme Court for mishandling a divorce case, plus a criminal case in Warren in which one of Dann’s clients pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor no longer on the books, spent four months in jail and later sued Dann. [Link]

On election day the Cleveland Enquirer told its readers:

Subodh Chandra, a former Cleveland law director, is our recommendation for the Democratic nomination for attorney general. Chandra ran Cleveland’s legal office efficiently and aggressively, going after fraud and waste, using a management style that fostered communication and motivation. Also on his resume are stints as a federal prosecutor and as a legal ethics professor at Case Western Reserve University. [Link]

At a debate two weeks ago Chandra scored some points with the following:

The debate turned contentious after Chandra claimed that Dann would have failed the FBI background check that Chandra passed.

“I say this with regret because as a Democrat, I don’t like to say anything ill of a fellow Democrat, but we’d better have an honest conversation right now,” Chandra said. “My primary opponent could not become an entry federal-level attorney with a Supreme Court reprimand [and] with a case in which somebody went to jail for four months for a nonexistent crime…” [Link]

Here is one take on why Chandra got thumped so badly:

A political newcomer, Chandra, 38, impressed audiences with his legal acumen, rhetorical skills and the humorous and disarming manner with which he addressed questions about his Indian-American heritage.

He repeatedly criticized Dann’s legal work but ultimately suffered from a lack of name recognition outside of Cuyahoga County, where he spent most of his time campaigning. [Link]

So was it due to a lack of name recognition or due to a hard to pronounce name? I guess only Ohio voters know for sure.

See previous post: Ohio’s newest puppetmaster

As seen on our News Tab, NASA officially announced the crew of Expedition 14 on Tuesday. The crew, which will be the next one rotated in to live aboard the International Space Station, will consist of mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin serving as flight engineer, and Sunita “Sunny” Williams (formerly Pandya) who will also serve as a flight engineer.

Williams will join Expedition 14 in progress and serve as a flight engineer, after traveling to the station on space shuttle mission STS-116. This will be Williams’s first space flight.

Selected as an astronaut in 1992, Lopez-Alegria flew his first shuttle mission, STS-73, in 1995 and later visited the station on shuttle missions STS-92 in 2000 and STS-113 in 2002, conducting five spacewalks during the station assembly complex. He has logged more than 42 days in space, including 34 hours spacewalking. Lopez-Alegria is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and received a Master of Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Williams was selected as an astronaut in 1998. She also is a graduate of the Naval Academy and received a Master of Science degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. Williams was designated a Naval aviator in 1989 and graduated from the Naval Test Pilot School in 1993. She has logged more than 2,770 flight hours in 30 different types of aircraft. At NASA, Williams has served as a liaison in Moscow supporting Expedition 1 and has supported station robotics work.

Tyurin was selected as a cosmonaut in 1993 and was a flight engineer aboard the station for Expedition 3 in 2001. He has spent 125 days in space. Tyurin is a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute. [Link]

Attentive SM readers will remember that I have covered Williams in a prior post. She is a Navy test pilot who specialized in rotary-winged vehicles (helicopters). Additionally, she is only the second rookie (Edward “Mike” Fincke of Expedition 9 having been the first) to be assigned as an ISS crew member. This is a big deal since in the shuttle era you’d never have more than one or two rookies on a given flight. Astronauts aboard the ISS have almost every minute of every day tasked out. Experience is key to making sure that everything keeps running smoothly up there. Williams has been serving as the astronaut liaison to Moscow so she is used to working with the Russians and is probably fluent in Russian. You will also note that with the current backlog of flightless astronauts, Williams has had to wait eight years for her first shot. Lesson: Get picked up by the Corp when you are still pretty young.

Every mission patch (like the one on the right) tells a story. I haven’t completely translated this one yet (I’m working on it) but the red dot may represent Mars, probably as a reminder that they are keeping an eye on the ultimate prize.

Good News: Got Another One In Pakistan

Bad News: Why are so many of them in Pakistan?

A top al-Qaida leader whose links stretch from Osama bin Laden’s training camps to extremist networks in Europe has been captured in Pakistan, a U.S. law enforcement official confirms for the first time.

Pakistani officials also told The Associated Press that Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a dual Syrian-Spanish national with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, had been flown out of the country to an unspecified location.

Nasar was captured in a November sting in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta that left one person dead,

…It would not be the first time Pakistan _ a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism _ has detained al-Qaida terrorists and turned them over to the Americans.

Pakistan says it has captured more than 750 al-Qaida suspects since the Sept. 11 attacks and has handed most of them to the United States.

Now adjusting for reportage (e.g. folks captured elsewhere are less likely to get the press conference treatment than Pakistani’s seems to give), it says a lot about the state of governance in Pakistan that the Northwest Frontier is somehow a more hospitable place for these folks than… say… Afghanistan.

A ToI editorial today bemoans the instability of the U.S. dollar and suggests creating a unified Asian currency as an alternative to the euro. Several years ago, Asiaweek suggested the same:

… it took Europe 10 years to produce the euro, building on three decades of efforts at economic i