With statistics being released last month of India’s HIV rate of 5.7 million total infections the following news makes me want to yelp with joy. Yelp!

India plans to provide free anti-retroviral drugs to combat HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — to around 100,000 people by early next year, a top health official said, as this nation struggles with the largest number of AIDS infections in the world. [Link]

Armed with a budget of about $200 million U.S., availiability of free ARV drugs is going to expand from 52 clinics supplying 35, 000 people to a whole 100 clinics:

“By August, we will be able to reach anti-retroviral therapy drugs to around 85,000 people infected with the virus,” Rao told journalists. “But by early 2007, we will have drugs made available to 100,000 people with HIV.”

According to Sujatha Rao (Director General, National AIDS Control Organization), treatment is going to supplement a newly strengthened AIDS awareness campaign:

Among the new initiatives is a program to reach out to pregnant mothers so that mother-to-child transmission of AIDS can be controlled. So far, only 4,500 pregnant mothers had been given doses of nevrapine — a drug that prevents the transmission of the virus from an HIV-infected mother to a newborn infant.

I know Priyamvada Gopal slightly from Cornell, and I’m always happy to read something she’s written. A recent editorial she published on neoconservative imperial historians in the Guardian provides lots of food for thought. I think she makes some important points about the current conservative fad for praising British imperialism, but I wanted to supply some quotes from Niall Ferguson’s book Empire that might challenge some of Gopal’s assertions. My own goal is to use this discussion as a learning opportunity, rather than a chance to throw around more polemical language; there’s been quite enough of that as it is.

(Incidentally, there are quite a number of intelligent comments in respone to Gopal’s essay at the Guardian site linked to above [check out especially the the comments by “Sikanderji”], as well as a lively discussion at Pickled Politics.)

When I was in India last, I acquired a new pet peeve, one that irritates me far more than it should:

In the USA, sure, we’re different, we’re quaint, we’re ethnic. Salwar Kameez/Kurtas/Saris/Lehngas/Sherwanis are our traditional ethnic (read funny-looking)dress. We’ve all had this conversation with a non-desi at a desi wedding:

“Why is the bride wearing red?”
“Well, some brides wear white, but for others, wearing red or pink is our ethnic tradition.”
“Oooooh, that’s so exotic”

Ethnic means we’re different from them.

But in India, why are Indian clothes called ethnic? Ethnic connotes the other, the habits of the minority, things that are unfamiliar to mainstream society. None of this applies in India for Indian clothing. There is no them to be different from.

Why not call it “Western” vs. “Indian” clothing? Or (although this is not accurate) “Western” vs. “Traditional Clothing”? Or, if you think the term ethnic refers to the fact that various types of clothing have regional roots, why not say “Gujarati Lehngas” and “Punjabi Salwar Kameez” etc? Better yet, why not just say Sherwanis rather than “ethnic Sherwanis”? I just don’t get it.

Then again, if you consider the breadth of my ignorance about fashion, the fact that I don’t understand this one little thing is really the least of my troubles

I always ran into you on the days I least wanted to. You knew how to cut to the core of me, of everyone, of the weak- and strong-willed alike. Your bullshit detector was unsurpassed.

Foolishly, for a time, I thought I could anticipate your moves and quickly learned I would never be fast enough: you were always one step ahead. I tried valiantly to dodge your never-ending stream of inquisitions over standardized test scores, cumulative grade point averages, class rank, college major, graduate school, first job, starting salary, rent payment, home purchase, and potential spouse — I always failed miserably, stuttering, shot down and wounded on topics I would have never even thought to imagine. Like how much my student loan payments were. It always seemed easier to surrender immediately to your poison bite than to fight it and prolong my own demise, snared and tangled in a weak web woven of my own lies.

I always suspected you knew the color of my underwear, how much I’d paid for it and strongly disapproved.

I avoided Indian functions my entire senior year of high school because of you…

[Don’t you expect this post to start: “Man hit by flying pig” ? ]

Earlier this month, Fox News reported on the Toronto terrorism arrests with a story shot in front of the Ontario Khalsa Darbar, “the largest and busiest Sikh gurdwara in Canada”.

The broadcast story showed the front of the Ontario Khalsa Darbar - a Sikh Gurdwara … as the house of worship the terrorists frequented and also showed members of the local Sikh congregation. [Link]

That’s right - a story about suspects from “Somali, Pakistani, Indian, Egyptian, and West Indian backgrounds” and what do they do? They choose to shoot using a Gurdwara and Sikhs as a backdrop, misidentifying them in the process. They all look same, massah, here, use the generic other!

To be absolutely clear, I am not saying “beat them up, not us!” I find that kind of talk completely abhorrent. If I was producing the segment, I would have used one of the targets as a backdrop rather than a mosque, precisely because of the fear of hate crimes and vandalism.

To their credit, Fox News responded and apologized when contacted by SALDEF:

In an email to SALDEF, the Fox News Correspondent noted, “I did pull our entire crew into the satellite truck and explained to them the difference between a Gurdwara and a mosque. I can assure you they realized the gravity of this situation. I’m very, very sorry. “

Additionally… John Stack, a FOX NEWS Vice President, … expressed similar regret in the mistake and vowed to make a personal inquiry into the matter to assure that it would not happen again. [Link]

By the way, if you need further evidence as to why “beat them up, not us” is not just morally bankrupt but also tactically ineffective as a response to hate crimes, it turns out that even in multicultural Canada, bigots are ignorant:

Hindu temples, including those where Guyanese worship, were attacked in Toronto last week. The temples were apparently mistaken for mosques and the Hindu worshippers as Muslims. [Link]

All hate crimes are bad, people, all of them (And that includes terrorism). Don’t make Pastor Niemöller return from the dead to kick your kundi.

There is only one thing of which I am a rabid fan and that is my home city, my ancestral homestead, New York New York. This is where my heart is (although I did leave a piece in San Francisco). It is the place that I feel safest post 9/11, safest from both terrorists and violent bigots, despite the fact that both have been active there. What can I say? It’s home.

Not only is it home, but New York is what I think of when I think of America. In a freudian slip, the other day I said “when I’m in America next” when what I meant was “when I’m in New York next,” particularly ironic since I am currently based in the midwest. And why not? New York was America’s first campital and 40% of Americans are descended from at least one person who came through Ellis Island. Growing up, if somebody told me to “Go back where I came from” I would reply “After you!” We’re all immigrants here.

This is why these two news stories from this month have been sitting in my craw, and I’ve put off posting them. In the first week of June, Assemblyman Hikind introduced legislation that he had been promising for some time, legislation that would allow:

law enforcement officials to “consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors that could be used in identifying persons who can be initially stopped, questioned, frisked and/or searched.” [Link]

Hikind is very clear about who he wants stopped — brown people:

“The individuals involved look basically like this,” Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) said … brandishing a printout of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists - all with Arabic names, most with facial hair, some wearing turbans.

“Why should a policeman have to think twice before examining people of a particular group?” Hikind asked. “They all look a certain way.” [Link]

[Hikind’s website shows no reaction to recent accusation that seven black men may have plotted to blow up the Sears Tower, nor to the fact that half the London bombers were black, nor to various reports from the US government about SouthEastAsian plots.]

As we have blogged about several times before, The Supreme Court has been considering the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld for most of this year. Today the court handed down a 5-3 decision (Chief Justice Roberts had to recuse himself) in favor of Hamdan. It was also a victory for his two lawyers, Indian American attorney Neal Katyal, and Cmdr. Charles Swift. It has been the most awaited decision of the year.

A great victory...at least for now

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an effort by Congress to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the conspiracy charge lodged against him because international military law requires that prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges. [Link]

The Court split along idealogical lines and Roberts had to recuse himself because The Court had overturned his ruling on this case when he was a still a lower court judge. Thomas hasn't been this unhappy since the Coke incident:

Justice Thomas took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench, the first time he has done so in his 15 years on the court. He said that the ruling would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy..." [Link]

Hamdan's other attorney, a JAG officer, issued a statement after the ruling:

Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer assigned by the military to represent Mr. Hamdan, said at a televised news conference held outside the Supreme Court that the logical next step would be for Mr. Hamdan to be tried either by a traditional military court martial, as provided for under the Geneva Convention, or by a federal court.

He called today's ruling "a return to our fundamental values."

"That return marks a high-water point," Commander Swift said. "It shows that we can't be scared out of who [we] are, and that's a victory, folks..." [Link]

Since Abhi my colleagues at Sepia Mutiny have apparently stopped doing their earlier hourly updates on what Kal Penn is up to, I feel it is incumbent upon me to remind readers that second-gen actor Kal Penn plays one of Lex Luthor’s henchmen in the new film Superman Returns (aka, the “American version of Krrish”). Reviews have been pretty positive, though there are still some signs that the film may be a load of “Kraptonite” (or, in a nod to Manish, Krraptonite!), but how can that stop me from loyally supporting the ABCDeNiro?

And no, he doesn’t play a vaguely middle-eastern terrorist type. Nor does he speak in a bad Indian accent. In fact, in the final cut of the film, I gather, Kal Penn doesn’t have any speaking lines at all. Also, his character is named “Stanford.” Ah well: if they don’t have you playing the demonic terrorist, they’ll have you whipped as the “model minority.” Sigh.

At least he’s on the right side. From the trailers, this version of Superman seems like one of those movies with a hero so annoyingly earnest you end up rooting for the bad guys to win. Of course, with bad guys as charismatic as Kevin Spacey (or indeed, Kal Penn), that comes pretty easily. Can you think of other examples in this genre? Bad guys so diabolical and cool that you’re practically depressed when they’re finally vanquished at the end?

Renowned Iranian-Canadian scholar Ramin Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran by Iranian authorities this past May under suspicion of espionage. He has been in detention for close to two months now without access to a lawyer and without any formal charges being laid against him. Jehanbegloo had returned to Tehran just days before his arrest after completing a four month professorship at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi.

Canadian authorities have thus far been unable to secure Jahanbegloo’s release:

Ottawa’s campaign to have him either formally charged or released has consisted mainly of stern letters from Foreign Minister Peter MacKay to the Iranian minister of foreign affairs, and futile entreaties. A letter co-signed by the EU, which has greater diplomatic and economic ties to Tehran, protested the lack of due process, the fact that no charges have been laid, and that he has not been granted a lawyer. But it has made no difference. Canada has not been allowed consular visits. “Iran does not recognize joint citizenship, so they’re not in any way acknowledging his Canadian citizenship or connection,” MacKay said. “In fact, by some bizarre assessment, having Canadian or American or any other foreign connection is feeding perhaps the reasons for his detention.” [Link]

In addition to his visiting professorship at CSDS, Jahanbegloo recently published a book of dialogues with Indian thinker Ashis Nandy. Given his close ties to India, Jahanbegloo’s arrest has raised serious concern among his colleages there. CSDS director Suresh Sharma wrote an appeal to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in May:

Yet another in the everything comes from India (etymology) series. Have you ever noticed how desi college students all congregate around the punch bowl in the corner? It’s not because they’re alcoholics too cheap to buy their own brew and too goody-goody to get a fake ID (well, maybe it is), it’s really because punch comes from India. In fact, it’s not really punch, it’s paanch [Thanks Sameer]:

Originally, the word punch was a loanword from Hindi. The original drink was made from five different ingredients, namely arrack, sugar, lemon, water, and tea. Because of this it was named panch which is the Hindi for five. This name was adopted by the sailors of the British East India Company and brought back to England, from where it was introduced into other European countries. [Link]

In Germany, they call it ‘Punsch’ and it (of course) includes wine or liquor. And in Scandanavia the meaning has morphed yet further, losing the other ingredients to the point where it is just an arrack based booze. Surprisingly enough, the custom used to be to drink it with (what else?) daal:

The first ready-made punsch was sold in 1845 and initially the custom was to serve it warm, often together with yellow pea soup. [Link]

If the drink “punch” is an Indic loanword, then what about the action “punch”? Shouldn’t that be desi too? After all, it takes five fingers to make a fist in order to punch, and desis tend to throw punches after drinking too much of the same. And of course a “paunch” is what you get from drinking punch. Step aside, Noah Webster! We’re Indian givers and we want our loanwords back!

Turbanhead sends us word that Media Matters.org has posted a news clip from last Friday which clearly demonstrates why Fox News continues to be the cable news leader. It is from a program called “Your World with Neil Cavuto.” Cavuto in this segment is “interviewing” someone named Bo Dietl who is somehow important. As you watch I think you should keep in mind that this is your world he is ranting about. The title says so, remember?

One of our worker monkeys must have altered the image before it landed on my desk.

Here is a quick summary:

During the June 23 edition of Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, Bo Dietl, chairman and founder of the private investigation firm Beau Dietl & Associates, argued that the recent arrest in Miami of seven men on charges of conspiracy, which allegedly included plans to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago, illustrates that “we can’t go off … where we are going with [racial] profiling.” Referring to the men as a “crew of mutts,” Dietl suggested that “[t]he people that are coming in to our country” are “like a cancer” and “[w]e need some chemotherapy now.” He further stated that law enforcement officials should “[g]o into your 7-Elevens or go into one of these stores that keep rotating young men who are Muslims,” and say “identify yourself.” However, when host Neil Cavuto asked if “racial profiling [would] have worked” in the case of the Chicago plot, Dietl responded that it wouldn’t, because “[t]hey look like Americans.” Dietl then added: “[M]y point is that the attack will come from a Muslim person,” so law enforcement should go to Muslim communities, “knock on the door,” and say “[w]e would like you to identify yourself…” [Link]

With a wave of your hand, the acquisition of some spare folding tables and the procurement of 15 plastic table cloths, you could turn any room into a dining hall in under two minutes. At Costco, you never over- or under-bought, rather knew the exact number of bags of potato chips, 2-Liter bottles of Coke, containers of Dannon and bags of hard candies to feed a crowd of any size, plus any last-minute, non-RSVPed guests.

Those who didn’t prostrate before the altar of your vast knowledge of crowd control before birthdays, graduation or anniversary parties often paid the price in more ways than one. Functions without your fingerprints were never as good.

You weren’t scared of anyone. You had a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks and when you spoke, everyone listened. I’ve seen you go head-to-head with everyone from mess hall cooks to American wedding planners, janitors to Hindu priests, elected officials to Indian musicians, usually within the same afternoon. You always won. He who dared doubt you often felt your ire and disgust for years on end.

You never forgot the rigatoni. You were a visionary and realized early on that it was the appropriate side to every imaginable combination of Indian cuisine.

You also never forgot the thair chadam…

Well, my blogging time at Sepia Mutiny has come to an end, and it was both entertaining and challenging. I was first approached by the Bloggers-That-Be at SM after my little rant about the other Viswanathan girl, Kaavya. Soon after the plagiarism scandal of How Opal Mehta Blah B Blah hit, I set up a news alert to figure out if there was a story there. Most of the Kaavya V. news alerts were from Indian newspapers, who seemed to be taking this much harder than the American publishing industry. It has even prompted an intelligent if slightly endless letter from desi author Tanuja Desai Hidier, who criticized the idea there’s only on way to talk about the desi experience. You can read her letter here.

One might ask why Hidier feels the need to comment. My guess is that she feels she doesn’t have any choice. I have just signed with an agent for my latest book, a pop history of wicked women, and she has already made one thing clear to me: I am the “Other Viswanathan” in publishing, not Kaavya. For better or worse, she has made her mark, and the rest of us desi authors—even those without her last name—are following her checkered trail.

Since Miss Maya hasn’t done anything blog-worthy lately, I thought I’d torment you with the other Southern belle who gets assloads of Sepia space: Kaavya Viswanathan. Oh, admit it. You totally missed her. I know I did, especially since my plea for temperance in judging her brought me a few love letters with choice sweet nothings like the following:

Your defense of that plaigarist (sic) Kaavya destroys all your credibility with me. I will never take what you say seriously. You think lying and cheating is okay and you call yourself Christian? Maybe you are a plaigarist, too!

For the record, I am neither a plaigarist nor a plagiarist and I usually call myself, “you IDIOT!”. But I digress. Apparently, someone might have been inspired by the would-be author who…was…”inspired” by so many other writers. Could the saga of the other Miss Viswanathan be coming to a YA shelf near you? Via Gawker:

CHILDREN’S: YOUNG ADULT Jamie Michaels’s KISS MY BOOK, story of a teen writing sensation who gets caught plagiarizing her debut novel, but finds redemption and romance when she escapes to a small town, to Krista Marino at Delacorte, by Michael Bourret at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World). [link]

Gawker didn’t explicitly state where that blurb was from, but I’m guessing that we’d find it on Publishers Marketplace if we could get in there. Nick Denton’s flagship blog snarks on:

Surely DreamWorks is considering optioning this, if only to get back at Viswanathan for screwing them over the first time. No studio exec is above exacting revenge on a teenager. Now, does anyone know who reps that Bend It Like Beckham girl? [link]

I know, there’s only one desi actress in Hollywood (and we had to go across the pond to find her), but maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t have to play EVERY brown female role? Surely it might be possible to import another hottie from the land of Pickled Politics and give pretty Parminder a break? Casting directors might have to— the current E.R. star isn’t known for her sneer.

Begining on Tuesday night (but staggered depending upon where you live) on PBS, the series P.O.V. will be featuring a must-watch episode titled “No More Tears Sister: Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal.” This one’s a no brainer. You got to Tivo it at least.

If love is the first inspiration of a social revolutionary, as has sometimes been said, no one better exemplified that idea than Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Love for her people and her newly independent nation, and empathy for the oppressed of Sri Lanka — including women and the poor — led her to risk her middle-class life to join the struggle for equality and justice for all. Love led her to marry across ethnic and class lines. In the face of a brutal government crackdown on her Tamil people, love led her to help the guerrilla Tamil Tigers, the only force seemingly able to defend the people. When she realized the Tigers were more a murderous gang than a revolutionary force, love led her to break with them, publicly and dangerously. Love then led her from a fulfilling professional life in exile back to her hometown of Jaffna and to civil war, during which her human rights advocacy made her a target for everyone with a gun. She was killed on September 21, 1989 at the age of 35. [Link]

You can view a trailer of the episode on the website. I recommend switching it to Quicktime mode as it seems to stream better.

There are a host of interviews on the site including one with the filmmaker, Helene Klodawsky:

I’m very interested in subjects that we don’t hear about often in the normal press. So I was very, very interested in ethnic nationalist war from the point of view of women. We’re always hearing about wars between different factions, different ethnic groups, but rarely do we hear about those wars from the point of view of women. And I was interested in Sri Lanka — it’s one of these wars that have gone on forever and nobody understands it. I knew that Sri Lanka was entering a peace process, so I was curious to see how women would be engaged in that peace process.

Once I started looking at the conflict, someone said, if you really want to understand Sri Lanka and ethnic war, you must look at the work of the University Teachers for Human Rights. [Link]

After you watch this episode come back and leave comments here. I think it could be an interesting discussion. Check your local listings here.

See related posts: All-American girls in Calcutta

A couple of weeks ago Kansan Raj Goyle filed the necessary papers to take a run at a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives (thanks for the tip AK). The Wichita Eagle reported:

Taking back Red States one at a time :)

Flanked by family, friends and supporters, Raj Goyle announced his bid for a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives on Tuesday at Wichita State University.

Goyle, 30, is the only Democrat to file against incumbent Bonnie Huy for the 87th District seat.

Huy, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 2000, has filed for re-election.

Goyle grew up in east Wichita and graduated from Duke University in 1997 and Harvard Law School in 2000. A lecturer at Wichita State University, Goyle said he will push for more education funding, improved health care, better jobs and neighborhoods and alternative energy sources.

Goyle has worked as a constitutional lawyer and a policy analyst. He was an intern at The Wichita Eagle during the summers of 1992 and 1993.

He also has worked for the Maryland ACLU on post-Sept. 11 immigration issues and voting rights, and was an advocate for homeland security issues in Washington, D.C. [Link]

Those are the type of credentials I like to see in a desi candidate. Harvard Law followed by work with the ACLU will hopefully get him the win, although a democrat running in Wichita obviously has his work cut out for him. We have also learned that the more qualified candidate can still fall short sometimes. There is more about Raj on his website:

My life in Wichita began at the tender age of nine months old and it wasn’t long before I was bringing people together to help improve our community. When I was 15, I helped organize a community-wide recycling program that saved hundreds of pounds of garbage from the county landfill and led to a large cleanup of the Arkansas River downtown. As a reporter for the Wichita Eagle, I worked with U.S.D. 259 to produce the annual ‘back-to-school’ issue and wrote a column on each high school in the city…

In high school, I was active in sports, debate, and newspaper, and was honored to graduate as both valedictorian and student body president. [Link]

He may be the “muslim Martin Luther” but author and activist Tariq Ramadan has been the object of controversy in the post 9-11 climate. In 2004, his visa was revoked by the department of homeland security because of the fear that he would use his

“position of prominence…to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

Despite all the suspicion, most evidence pointed to Ramadan being a scholar, not a terrorist. Furthermore, Ramadan is a Swiss citizen, and taught all over Europe, including at Oxford, with no mishaps or accidental bombings. So why the stall on the visa? Obviously, the feds didn’t enjoy Ramadan’s vocal criticism of the war against terrorism.

Recently, however, federal Judge Paul A. Crotty ordered the government to stop stalling on Ramadan’s visa for teaching at the University of Notre Dame. I went to school with Judge Crotty’s daughter and vaguely remember hearing him speak at a conference, but my respect for him doubled with this decision, but he is clearly not immune from the dreaded Legalese Virus.

Allowing the government to wait for ‘possible future discovery of statements’ would mean that the government could delay final adjudication indefinitely, evading constitutional review by its own failure to render a decision on Ramadan’s application. The Court will not allow this…

crikey. basically, the decision also slaps the knuckles of the DHS for assuming that there would be no judicial review of the visa denial. translate, if you will:

While the Executive may exclude an alien for almost any reason, it cannot do so solely because the Executive disagrees with the content of the alien’s speech and therefore wants to prevent the alien from sharing this speech with a willing American audience.

Take that, Patriot Act! And Professor—welcome to Indiana. Enjoy the football.

More about the decision can be read at PEN American Center, an organization which works to preserve the freedom to write and be read all over the world. For the hardy, here is Judge Crotty’s full decision in its technical, DHS-bashing splendor.

William Dalrymple, a British travel writer and scholar of Indian history, sometimes gets himself into hot water with Indian critics. He was attacked by Farrukh Dhondy a couple of years ago for criticizing V.S. Naipaul’s pro-communalist comments, and then more recently by Pankaj Mishra for lamenting the state of non-fiction writing in and about India. But whatever you think of his role in these arguments, Dalrymple as a historian is the real deal: his book Delhi: City of Djinns is an amazing historical travel narrative, which blends Dalrymple’s experiences in modern Delhi with a great deal of careful research into Delhi’s formidable past.

The current issue of Outlook India has a nice essay by Dalrymple on the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857 (thanks, Indianoguy!). The essay is really in three parts: one is a fresh look at the fall of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the “last Mughal” — whose sons were all executed (murdered) by the British after the Rebellion. The second part is a discussion of “Mutiny papers” in the National Archives of India that Mahmoud Farooqi has been translating from Urdu. These documents show the Indian perspective on the events of 1857, where one finds, among other things, that the rebels were motivated by religious rage to a very great extent. Finally, there is a discussion of contemporary Delhi — in which preserving the emblems of this past is of very little interest to most people.

Someone posted a Learning Channel documentary called “The Lost Temples of India” on Google Video. (From News; thanks Rasudha!) Click “play” above or see the larger version at Google.

It exploits many of of the annoying clichés you would expect, including repeated references to elephants and a near obsession with the phallic symbolism of the Shivalingam.

“Lost Temples” also plays a bit of a geographic and historical trick on viewers, by starting and ending with the erotic temples at Khajuraho (which it insists are “lost,” “forgotten,” and “shrouded with secrecy”), and shots of the Taj Mahal. But in between it is actually mainly about the South: the temples built by Rajaraja Chola, the city/kingdom of Vijayanagar, and the Meenakshi Temple at Madurai. The attempt to link the Hindu temples of Southern India with Khajuraho is nonsensical, but I suppose the producers felt they had to sex it up a bit (elephants alone = too academic).

Despite its many flaws, it must be said that the cinematography in “The Lost Temples of India” is quite good — there are some beautiful shots of the temples in question. And there are actually a couple of facts in the documentary, though they’re carefully hidden (“shrouded”) by the steaming Orientalist cheesefest.

Freshly back from Germany where he attended several first-round matches, reader “Farouk Engineer” shares this photograph of an Australia fan encountered amidst the swirling hordes of international merrymakers currently roaming the land of Goethe and Bratkartoffeln.

In just a few hours from this writing, we’ll know whether the sister’s impossible dream of seeing the Socceroos hoist the World Cup lives another day. Australia takes on heavily-favored Italy at 1700 CET. But the result is no foregone conclusion. Australia have earned admirers for their fluent, enthusiastic football. Made up mostly of journeymen who play for not-quite-marquee European sides (Middlesbrough, Alaves, Dresden…) Australia are a sort of deluxe version of the US team that held Italy to an ill-tempered 1-1 draw. Their coach, flying Dutchman Guus Hiddink, was the artisan of the 2002 South Korea side that rampaged through a series of upsets of highly rated Mediterranean sides including Portugal, Spain, and, yes, Italy. Meanwhile, Italy will play without their veteran defensive anchor Alessandro Nesta. I still like gli Azzurri to take this one, but if Australia can drag it into extra time, a famous upset could be in the making.

In other news, yesterday’s Netherlands-Portugal slugfest had to be one of the uglier matches ever, with Russian referee Valentin Ivanov losing control of proceedings early and reduced to gallivanting about the field brandishing yellow and red cards. Sixteen of the former and four of the latter amounted to a disgrace of a game in which the referee’s card-happiness provoked the players into great petulance, and vice versa.

Amid all this Holland lost 1-0 and they had it coming to them. The Dutch are much-loved in the football world, but much of it is based on past glory (the 1970s “Total Football” side anchored by the great Johann Cruyff), more recent elegant but underachieving sides, and good public relations. At the same time, Holland has some of the roughest hooligans (the pitched battles between Ajax and Feyenoord ultras are legendary) and vulgar, inebriated supporters. “Farouk” reports running into squadrons of middle-aged Dutch men in Germany dressed in nothing but clogs and orange women’s bikinis with their private parts casually dangling out. Lovely!

Today’s business news had me thinking of two things: Andrew Carnegie and whether there are any significant brown philanthropists.

Carnegie was a self-made man who went from rags to riches, creating a steel empire which made him the wealthiest hombre alive. Three men in today’s paper might be seen as present day Carnegies — Laxmi Mittal, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — the three richest men around. Laxmi Mittal is the most literal aspirant to the title since Arcelor-Mittal will soon be the largest steel company in the world. However, the other two capture what is to me Carnegie’s best attribute, his philanthropy.

Just as Carnegie gave away 90% of his fortune [he built a university, several thousand libraries around the world, and did various other good works], Warren Buffet announced that he will be giving away 85% of his wealth with most of it going to more than double the endowment of the Gates Foundation, now the largest charitable foundation in history.

Are rich brown people simply more selfish than rich white ones?Compare Buffet and Gates to Mittal, the next richest man in the world. Mittal is famous for his personal spending. He owns the world’s most expensive house, which he purchased for $128 million. He recently spent more than $55 million dollars on his daughter’s wedding. But his charitable giving rarely (never?) makes the news, and is not in the same league as either his personal consumption or the donations of his “peers”.

The question is, why not? Mittal competes on every level with his white counterparts except that of his charitable giving. Is this a desi thing? Are brown philanthropists as generous as white ones? Who are the major brown philanthropists anyway?

When I want to feel good about charitable giving in South Asia, I look to ordinary people, not the super rich. Despite religious and cultural taboos against organ donation, there is one town in India where tens of thousands of people have pledged to donate their eyes when they pass away. And it’s not just talk, the people of Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh have already given sight to 3,000 others across India.

This large scale kindness to strangers started out in a more modest and typically desi way, with a gift of a cornea within a family:

Neemuch’s reputation as the town of eye donors began some three decades back when a venerable local politician Shyammukh Garg pledged his eyes before passing away at the age of 55. Mr Garg had pledged his eyes for a simple reason: his grandson had lost his vision after his birth, and he was keen that the little boy should try regaining his sight with his grandfather’s corneas… his grandson … received his grandfather’s eyes and got his vision back.

Inspired by Mr Garg, all his family members donated their eyes. [Link]

Where this story becomes unusual is that this tradition went beyond the family, and prevailed over superstition to become a local tradition:

The Garg family persuaded a local club to push a campaign for eye donation - newspapers, billboards, door-to-door visits - were used to extol its virtues.

It was not an easy mission. There were religious taboos to counter, including one that held that an eye donor is born blind in his next birth. The club members were also attacked by family members when they turned up at homes where somebody had died with a plea to donate the deceased person’s eyes.

But people soon began converting to the good cause - so much so that even the police began allowing removal of eyes before post mortems were conducted on people who had died unnatural deaths. [Link]

I spent the entire day yesterday at the Artwallah Festival in Los Angeles. Since many of you couldn’t be out here for the festival I thought I would do my part to relate the experience through some pictures that I took. I bought a new camera recently so forgive me for going overboard with the colors. :)

Micro Pixie soothes the crowd with her ambient sound.

Adnan does his thing while Micro Pixie does hers.

A correspondent passes on the news that a 20-year-old Nepali sister who has gone missing in Estes Park, Colorado, for a week. The Rocky Mountain Friends of Nepal has an alert and contact phone numbers for anyone with information on the whereabouts of Pratishta Budathoki. Here is some background information from the Rocky Mountain News:

The 20-year-old was last seen about 9:30 a.m. Sunday as she left for a new job at the Munchin’ House, an ice cream parlor on the main drag of this tourist town.

Budhathoki headed out of her apartment door wearing a white Munchin’ House T-shirt, jeans and white shoes.

The woman, who doesn’t own a car and was walking, was carrying a black backpack, police said. But she left other valuables, such as her passport, at home, friends said.

Family members and friends said it is extremely uncharacteristic for Budhathoki to disappear without telling someone where she was going. Friends reported her missing Monday after becoming increasingly worried when she didn’t return home Sunday night. …

“She’s the kind of girl, if she’s late to work five minutes, she’ll give me a call,” said Ashwin Pandey, another Nepali friend and her boss at the Subway sandwich shop where Budhathoki has worked for the past two summers.

Khakurel said she last saw her friend about 2 a.m. Sunday when the two shared a cigarette at Budhathoki’s apartment. She said it didn’t seem like Budhathoki was depressed.

Budathoki is a student at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Her parents live in Kathmandu. There are contact numbers for her family and the Estes Park police department on both of the pages linked here.

While browsing the deeply-discounted “remaindered” aisles at my local Barnes & Noble, I came across Satish Grover’s Masterpieces of Traditional Architecture. It’s a coffee-table book with beautiful photographs and appreciative descriptions of fourteen of India’s ancient and medieval architectural masterpieces.

In his introduction, Grover points out that the ancient sites in India are all religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Muslim), not because India was traditionally especially devout. In fact, only the religious structures were carved in stone, so they are the only edifices to survive. The secular architecture of ancient India might have been pretty wonderful too, but those brick and timber buildings have all vanished.

Since I can’t do any real traveling this summer because of work, I thought I would link to images on the web of the various monuments in Grover’s book as a kind of vicarious travelogue. A lot of people have tagged these sites in their Flickr photos, though for slightly more obscure places like the Karle Caves you have to search on the open internet to see what comes up.

Usually, an article related to the process of sex selection would sadden me because I think the brown preference for boys blows, but this one which was submitted to our news tab (Thanks, Premii!) had me laughing, because I immediately thought of celebrity evidence to back it up. Apparently, it is possible to choose whether you are going to have a male or female…calf:

Want to have a baby boy? Tuck into the burgers, fries and ice cream. Want a girl? Then go on a diet and lose some weight.

It works for cows, according to John Roche, a scientist at New Zealand’s dairy research organisation Dexcel. “And we would expect what holds true for one mammal will hold true across the board,” he said.

Also, if it can be applied to celebrities, it must be true. Angelina stayed rather sleek while incubating the most attractive celebrity baby possible, to the point where useless weeklies which cost $1.99 and all run the same story (though with slightly different covers) speculated that based on the lack of fat around her elbows, the lippy star was way too skinny. (I kid you not. I read this while waiting for my train.) Angelina, the magazines screeched, was “dangerously thin”. She had a girl, in case you haven’t had access to television, radio, newspapers, the internet, carrier pigeons, flaming arrows etc.

Meanwhile, Kate Hudson put on an amount which was almost equivalent to my mother’s entire body weight pre-pregnancy-with me; Hudson gave birth to a boy, Ryder. Britney…well, we all know about Britney. Do not read anything in to the fact that the quote I’m about to use contains the word “heifers”. I am establishing no connection between Britney and one of those. If you are currently thinking that thought, it’s your bad, not mine. ;)

They found that cows that gained weight before conceiving were more likely to give birth to bull calves. Those shedding kilos before conception had a better chance of producing heifers (females).

Roche told the Waikato Times , published in Hamilton at the heart of New Zealand dairying country, the research underlined the theory that humans had some control over the sex of their children…Roche said it was not clear exactly why weight affected the sex of a cow’s offspring.

I hope you’re sitting down for this news flash: “Poll Finds Discord Between the Muslim and Western Worlds,” headlines the New York Times. But said poll comes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which is one of the most reputable and interesting polling projects out there. And there is some interesting material beneath the uninformative headline. For instance, “only” 43 % of Americans said Yes to the question “Are Muslims fanatical?” 50% of French agreed, as well as a rather amazing 83% of Spaniards.

Meanwhile, asked whether non-Muslims were fanatical, 68% of Jordanians and a surprising 67% of Turks said yes. Only 24% of Pakistanis felt that non-Muslims were inherently fanatical.

Perhaps the most discouraging number cited in the article is that anti-Jewish sentiment reached 98% in Jordan and 97% in Egypt.

But don’t get too depressed about the clash of civilizations, for direct citizen action may yet save the day. ABC’s “Good Morning America” has featured the uplifting story of Michigan teenager Katherine Lester, who fell in love with Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old Palestinian, over… MySpace:

A Michigan teenager who met a man on the Internet and secretly flew to the Middle East to meet him before being captured by the FBI still plans to marry him, she says. Lester, who turned 17 on Wednesday, first met Abdullah Jimzawi, 20, seven months ago on the popular Web site MySpace.com. She said she fell in love with him, and together they devised a plan so the two could be together. Lester lied to her parents, told them she needed a passport to go to Canada with friends, and then disappeared from her mother’s home on June 5.

Katherine made it as far as Amman, Jordan, before the FBI picked her up. Both she and Abdullah remain adamant that they are destined for each other. For now they are communicating under family supervision, and a judge has confiscated Katherine’s passport. But next year Katherine turns 18 and if she still wants to marry the brother at that point, she can’t be stopped. Apparently, she feels no need to meet dude in person before they marry:

Lester says she doesn’t intend to try to meet Jimzawi in person until she is 18. She hopes he will come to the United States to marry her. “Now that our relationship is out in the open, I feel like I don’t have to go there to talk to him or to be with him,” she said.

And here’s my favorite part:

Lester did not say whether she would convert to Islam to marry Jimzawi, but said she was researching the Middle East and its culture at her parents’ suggestion.

I think this sort of citizen diplomacy is just what we need to avert the clash that extremists on all sides so desperately want to see go down. Thank you Rupert Murdoch, owner of MySpace, for opening these channels for new-millennium Romeos and Juliets to reconcile their warring tribes, even if their own love perishes in the process. Though to hear Abdullah, the romance is eternal:

Jimzawi also says talking is enough for now but sooner or later they will be together. “No one can stop us, you know,” he said. “I can wait forever and ever and ever. … Till the end of the world.”

Hail the power of green cards love!

All of a sudden the desi comic book scene seems to be blowing up. It has led me to pose the timely question, “is the world ready for a brown Justice League?”

Let’s meet some of the candidates. First we have Sonic. No, not the hedgehog. This one is all woman as you can see. Sonic is featured in the new comic book series titled Guardian Heroes by Kevin Grevioux, who was one of the folks behind the movie Underworld.

There are three questions that immediately came to mind:

1) Does this woman workout at Manish’s gym in Mumbai?
2) What are the tunes she be spinning from those long fingered hands?
3) Does the oversized bindi have any special powers associated with it?

I’m always curious to see how people justify or explain official corruption. How do some societies end up corrupt while others are “clean”? I don’t believe for a moment that it’s some kind of inbuilt genetic (sorry Razib) or cultural thing, nor does religion have anything to do with it (sorry, Max Weber). Also, how much damage does small-scale corruption really do? Slate has an article by Joel Waldfogel summarizing a recent study that was done with 800 people who needed drivers’ licenses in Delhi. Right off the bat, Waldfogel gives us a possible advantage to corruption while waiting in line:

The Department of Motor Vehicles, here and in many foreign countries, is a place of long lines, sour bureaucrats…, and bleak interior decorating. By the time you get to the front of the photo line, you need to shave again. Since access to government clerks is normally allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, people pay with their time rather than their money. This is inefficient: Suppose you’re in a big hurry and would be willing to pay a lot to avoid waiting, while I don’t mind waiting. Then you could go ahead of me, making you a lot better off and me only a little worse off, which reduces our collective frustration. One way to achieve this efficiency would be to charge a higher price for expedited service. Yet, an expedited government service option typically does not exist. So, in some countries, the offer of a bribe in exchange for quicker processing is a common form of corruption—reducing the social cost of waiting in line. (link)

There are some real advantages in that, just as there are to the “Lexus Lanes” many American cities are thinking of introducing on highways to give drivers the option to get out of traffic jams on the regular highway if they’re willing to pay to be on a specially constructed, parallel toll lane. What if you really need to be somewhere, and you’re willing to spend $10 to get there?

Today’s featured picture of mictyris longicarpus captured my attention for two reasons:

1) I am absolutely terrified of crustaceans and think eating them is just gross. They remind me of insects and one of you more useful (read: non-poli-sci major) types told me that the two groups of ickiness are actually related.

2) LOOK at those COLORS. Have you ever seen a prettier icky creature?

Here, learn something:

The light blue soldier crab (Mictyris longicarpus), inhabits beaches in the Indo-Pacific region. Soldier crabs filter sand or mud for microorganisms. They congregate during the low tide, and bury themselves in a corkscrew pattern during high tide, or whenever they are threatened.

I googled a bit more and found out that this thing (more formally known as the “soldier crab”) scurries about the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This proves my E.C.F.I.-Uncle-esque theory that everything South Asian is prettier. ;)

“Yo Dad” informs me that the local free paper in the D.C. suburb where he lives has been advertising a new beverage called Café Sepia.

Experience the finest in coffee with ITO EN’s new CAFÉ SEPIA (TM). Each ready-to-drink coffee delivers an artful balance of aroma, body and flavor. Our beans are specially selected for their unmistakable character…to create a truly exceptional coffee encounter. [Link]

I wish we had thought of this first. It would have solved our funding problems. My mom says we should sue them. The question is, “is it any good?” I hate the taste of coffee so I am going to rely on the blog Air Massive to give us a review:

We’re sad to report that Café Sepia tasted weak. It was too watery and diluted than we like. In fact, it lacked the coffee punch of even most established major brands of Japanese can coffee. (Personally, the Boss brand is our gold standard in this East Asian drinks sub-genre.) Café Sepia didn’t taste “bad,” mind you. It was actually pleasant to the tongue. But we expect more — much more — from anything that a drinks maker dares call coffee. [Link]

Via our News tab (thanks WGiiA) we get a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been if only India had fielded a World Cup Team…of Hindu ascetics. From the Associated Press:

Peep the footwork on the right. Put this guy in for Ronaldo.

If I worked for Addidas I would have my new ad campaign right here. Those feet just need some free shoes.

Thank you again to everyone that donated cash over the last 36 hours to keep this blog running for the next year and to allow us to make some cool new improvements. I just want to give you all a big sloppy hug. We are taking the thermometer and the Paypal link down for now. Counting the people who had asked to mail in checks, we will make our $1000 goal for the year Whether you sent in $1 or a $100 we appreciate your contribution and will try and live up to the high expectations.

Despite the fact that even the smallest of donations means a lot to us, we wanted to single out the following people for going well beyond the call of duty in the amount they were able to donate this time around:

1) Brimful- Given her donation this year and last year she would own a substantial amount of stock in SM if we went public.

2) Seema K.- A dedicated reader and tipster from the East Coast. You rock.

3) DesiDudeinAustin/Gotham- He will be co-hosting the first Texas meet-up with me in a few months.

4) Yo Dad- I promise to mow the lawn next time I’m at home.

5) Vijay C.- We appreciate the love.

6) My attorney in Chicago- You know how I’m going to thank you.

7) VMN Rao- Drinks are on me this weekend.

8) Mahesh G.- Much thanks and please come to a meet-up if you can.

9) Our favorite Canadian (a.k.a. Neha)- We are giving you a second monkey and making you the SM colonial governor of the territories of Canada.

Now, ideally I would post all your names as gratitude but I know that some of you want to keep your privacy. Please try and make it to a meet-up so that we can thank you properly and feel free to email us with any suggestions for improving the site (we might already be working on your idea ;).

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled Mutiny.

If this were a face-to-face conversation, our sassy Barmaid would be telling me about her Ritu Beri entry and I would follow up with…

It’s funny that you should mention Beri’s rubbish ideas on Indian design, Barmaid, particularly the bit about how it is limited. Just the other day I was partaking in some retail therapy and I happened upon my most bank-breaking pleasure, a little Queen West shoppe called ‘Delphic’. Of course I had to go in for a teensy look, maybe try on a little of this and that, drool over some sneaks.

I took a tentative step through the door and what did I see? A lone mannequin wearing a twisted ‘Little Black Dress’, the shape of which looked eerily familiar. I mean really familiar. My eyes then darted right and on the rack there was a coat. A grey coat. With painful-looking needlework that I have only before seen in the kurtas I used to wear (back when I lived in a warmer climate). But the pattern did not resemble anything I had ever seen before, here or in that yonder homeland. Delicately I moved the lapels aside to reveal a name: Rashmi Varma. Ahhh, it made me feel good.

The nice shop lady informed me that Varma spends her time between Toronto and Delhi, where most of her pieces are made. I asked to see all the RV items they had, held up top after top to see if I could find even a hint of that proverbial ‘mango’. And you know what? Nothing. Just beautiful, expressive pieces like the Bihari dress, or the Kantha trench, or (my personal fav) the Dogri jersey pants. Hammertime.

Yes I do have faith in Indian fashion, perhaps not in Beri’s world of regurgitated design but efforts made in cloth have never been limited to haughty architects who like to point fingers while their own blinders are fastened in place. Hmph!

I read this article: “We Have No International Designers” in the Times of India.

First, I was annoyed that Ritu Beri seems to be chasing the ideals of a postmodern colonialist landscape.

The West doesn’t even recognise the Indian fashion industry, just individual designers…

Then, I felt like she might have a point…

In fact, Ritu feels that the West wants fashion with a distinct Indian edge from us. “We should restrict ourselves to Indian wear because we do that best…”

Then, I was annoyed again:

Her take on the Indian fashion weeks is also quite dismal. “Indian fashion weeks will not take the industry anywhere as we don’t exactly know what is happening outside our four walls…”

Then I wondered why I’m ever surprised that India still gets so exotified by the West for its spiritual swamijis and silken sensuality and, now, ruffled cotton petticoats:

So, that’s why Ritu herself prefers phoren to Indian fashion weeks. “For them, India is a very exotic land. From spirituality to people - everything attracts them. For them, even a petticoat and a saree is Indian fashion,”says Ritu.

India did make it to the world cup, once. Kind of. Well, not really:

No, don’t rub your eyes in disbelief. India did make it to the 1950 World Cup finals. Well sort of. Four countries from Asia were invited to participate in the qualifiers. Burma, Philippines and Indonesia all withdrew, so India qualified automatically.

India was placed in Group 3 with Sweden, Italy, and Paraguay. But their request to play barefoot was turned down by FIFA and they withdrew! [Link]

Sadly, this was back in the hey day of Indian Soccer, too. Until some South Asian team makes it to the world cup, we’ve always got Vikas Dhorasoo and his action figures, right?

“We don’t know which — which country. But we’re looking at different countries. And we’re — I’m just— it’s gonna be the balance of what would be the best for Mad and for Z right now. It’s, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids,” she said, referring to her adopted children.

The Jolie interview will air Tuesday as part of CNN’s entire day of programming devoted to World Refugee Day.

Hmmm… The tsunami is so 2004, and those earthquake villages are kind of hard to reach. Still, can’t you imagine a darling little wheatish tyke amid the United Colors of Brangelina? We can always dream.

You’d be surprised at how often we get these kinds of questions come in over our “Contact Line.”

Message:

hey where did you buy the vikash dhorasoo jersey from? i’ve been looking for it everywhere

What do we look like…Google? Someone want to help this dude out? In the meantime I have another item that may interest Vikash Dhorasoo (a.k.a The Great Brown Hope) fans. The official Dhorasoo action figure from his regular team Paris Saint-Germain:

Now I know it may not look exactly like him. The skin color should be darker. But who really cares? A few years ago I actually looked into making bobble-head dolls and action figures of me. I thought, “what a great gift to give to friends.” Who couldn’t use a bobble-head Abhi to kick around? My action figure would have been extra-muscular though. And I’d finally have perfect hair. You have to buy in bulk though and I just don’t have that many friends.

This is the most kickin’ weekend of the entire year to be in Los Angeles if you love desi arts. I have already told you that Artwallah is THIS Saturday. You should be buying your ticket now in case it sells out (note: the after-party on Saturday is NOT sold out despite what the website says and goes until 5 a.m…and so will I). If you are a student then I’d recommend that you volunteer for a few hours to get a massive discount.

The weekend kicks off this Friday night with a little bit of a British Invasion. BBC Radio 1’s own Bobby Friction will be in Los Angeles hosting a kickoff party with Artwallah and for Project Ahimsa at the Standard on Sunset Blvd. For those of you who haven’t heard Bobby Friction and his partner DJ Nihal spin, you can listen to their latest shows online.

Sajit has covered the duo before on his own blog. Here is a snippet from the 2004 article that Sajit cites:

The fact that Friction and Nihal’s show has a primetime slot on national radio also speaks volumes for the rising profile of British Asian culture. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable to hear a Radio 1 DJ play an unreleased bhangra track to a nationwide audience. Then, in 2003, Panjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke, with its sample from the theme tune to Knight Rider, became a national hit. A huge and vibrant culture, that had hitherto remained isolated, was exposed to the wider world…

While Friction grew up in an Asian community in Hounslow, Nihal was the only non-white pupil at his comprehensive school at Chelmsford, Essex. He found a sense of belonging in hip-hop culture. “When I was a teenager in the mid-80s it was fashionable to be a racist skinhead,” says Nihal. “Hip-hop completely saved me, because within a couple of years it was cool to have brown skin and be into hip-hop. Almost overnight I went from being a geeky Asian kid, who people called a Paki for no apparent reason, to being someone who people wanted in their crew to help them tag the sides of buses…” [Link]

The tunes they will be spinning should be very new to most people that represent on Friday. I’m going of course.

If anyone was wondering what exactly it takes to transform female infanticide from the morally judgmental, ethically reprehensible “evils of sex selection” into a kinder, gentler “medical tourism for designer babies,” this week — somewhere between the crossed wires of the Associated Press and the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer — we had the answer printed for us in black-and-white typeface on crisp, clean newsprint:

$20,000

:::Insert eyeroll here:::

Dear SM Readers,

It is time once again for us bloggers at Sepia Mutiny to extend our empty cups and ask for donations to keep this website running. Remember, every time you visit our site it costs us money. We have recently purchased a dedicated server because we plan on greatly expanding our services. Just be patient a while longer and we will start to slowly roll out new features one at a time. The master plan is top secret right now but has been codenamed Operation Sepia Utopia.

Much like NPR and PBS hold an annual pledge drive, we are asking you to donate whatever you can via our Paypal link. If you don’t want to use Paypal but rather mail in a check then contact us for a mailing address. Donations will keep our website ad-free and distraction-free. The thermometer on the sidebar will disappear once we have met our goal of a $1000 for the next year of service. If enough of you give just a few dollars we might be able to meet our goal in under a week. Thanks in advance everyone! As you can see in the pictures below, we have a lot of supporters rooting for us.

Not long ago Abhi, fresh from watching Al Gore’s documentary, alerted us to the consequences of global warming for the subcontinent. And they are as dire as he predicted. In a crisis that has mobilized India’s High Altitude Warfare School (HAWS) and Snow and Avalanche Studies Establishment (SASE), the Shiva lingam at Amarnath has failed to form this year. The glacier cover of the cave has receded by 100 meters, and there has been insufficient snowfall. At the onset of the annual pilgrimage season, when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims trek up to the cave to see the lingam, temple officials faced a major problem. Consider the two pictures below. The first shows the lingam in a normal year. The second shows the lingam site on May 6, 2006:

But when pilgrims and journalists arrived, a full five-foot lingam had mysteriously appeared in place even though there had been no snowfall. It was immediately evident that this lingam was a crude fake:

Yesterday Sudesh Mahto (pictured), the home minister of Jharkhand, wed fiancee Neha, a law student, in her home village of Dimbudih. The “VVIPs” were out in force:

Many of the ‘Who’s who’ of the state along with some of the political bigwigs of the country including Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad [Yadav] and senior BJP leader L K Advani graced the occasion but, Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda did not attend the function as he was indisposed.

State Road Construction officials worked overtime to construct new roads, Energy Department employees erected electric poles, intelligence sleuths and senior police personnel made tight security arrangements at the venue, which falls in the Naxal-infested zone, with STF jawans keeping a hawk eye vigil.

The festivities, which continue tomorrow with a reception for 50,000 in Mahto’s village Lagam, have brought a flurry of rural development activity to the area. To accommodate the minister’s 300-vehicle motorcade, an all-weather road was constructed between the two hamlets. Places along the route have received electricity for the first time.

‘Thanks to the marriage of the minister our village got connected with roads and we saw electricity,’ said Ganesh Mahto, a resident of Silli.

The villagers are happy for more than one reason. Besides roads and power, many have also got short-term employment thanks to the construction work. Incidentally, the home minister is also in charge of road and construction, so there was no problem in getting funds.

‘We had been making rounds of offices to get electricity connection for the past decade. But the minister’s marriage brought electricity to the village,’ said another villager.

Indeed, the wedding has alerted villagers to a whole new development strategy:

But the best part of the marriage was the glittering, almost blinding electric lights, which villagers saw for the first time since Independence. “May every daughter of this village be married to a VIP,” prayed one of them.

The villagers should not to count on those lights glittering too often. Jharkhand’s power situation is dire. The state electricity board is mired in dispute over reforms, and its two thermal plants generate no more than 10% of their installed capacity. Even importing power from outside, Jharkhand is plagued with power cuts.

Then again, Mahto, a former footballer, has also vowed to “wipe out Naxalism through games and sports.” So perhaps he has an integrated theory of social progress, not just an over-reliance on pixie dust. Social scientists would be wise to stay on the case.

This week’s edition of Time Magazine includes a cover story about the world’s next great economic superpower: India (via the News Tab). The cover features a worker from the industry that Americans are most familiar with. She is a representative from the ranks of those much abused call center workers. Similar to Manish’s fine entry, The Anatomy of a genre, I thought I’d take a shot at examing the nuances of this cover picture.

Despite the fact that it is now Father’s Day, only EIGHT of you have thus far contributed a picture to The Desi Dad Project. To those eight, I appreciate your contributions. Now, I understand that many of you don’t live anywhere near your parents’ basement and that it may be difficult to scan a picture of your father right away. I know that you will when you finally can. The rest of you though are just lazy wankers. Even those annoying Canadians who begged and pleaded to be allowed to upload their fathers were just talk. Perhaps just like George W. Bush’s struggle to promote his social security plan, I am now engaged in a struggle to promote a plan for which I have not yet created enough blog capital. If this is my third rail then so be it. It is a shame though. The eight pictures we have gotten so far are fantastic and the descriptions are even funny to read through (note: you need to open a Flickr account to see all eight).

After today The Desi Dad Project logo will come off of our sidebar but the project will remain open indefinitely. Maybe some of you will finally upload your dads. Lazy wankers.

Happy Father’s Day!

Here are a couple of desi-related Father’s Day links (1, 2).

Many decades ago, in my grandfather’s generation, a branch of the family moved to Ahmedabad, Gujarat. My “grand-uncle” had a hard time getting a place for the family to stay because they were (correctly) presumed to be omnivores. Ahmedabad was Gandhi’s town, and nobody wanted meat eaters around. When the family ate chicken, they did so in secret, with my grand-uncle secreting out the bones in the newspaper to dispose elsewhere during his morning walk. If a carcass had been found in the trash, they would have been summarily ejected from their dwelling, with no bones made about it.

Fast forward to today, where in secular Sodom-and-Gomorrah Bombay the one thing you can’t do is eat meat:

Never mind pets, smokers or loud music at 2 a.m. House hunters in Bombay increasingly are being asked: “Do you eat meat?” If yes, the deal is off…

In constitutionally secular India, there’s no bar to forming a housing society and making an apartment block exclusively Catholic or Muslim, Hindu or Zoroastrian. Vegetarians say they too need segregation.

Rejected home-seekers have mounted a slew of court challenges to the power of housing societies to discriminate, but last year India’s highest tribunal ruled the practice legal. [Link]

I’m having trouble reconciling this news with the fact that 70%-80% of Hindus in India are non-veg (thanks Ponniyin) and even the streets of Ahmedabad are full of little three wheeled trucks that sell chicken in Ahmedabad there is a line of 10 or so three wheeled lunch trucks selling chicken outside of the IIM campus.

Maybe it’s because I’m an omnivore, but I honestly I don’t understand the deep emotional resonance of this issue. While I recognize the ethical implications of various diets, I’ve never tried to define my personal identity according to what I eat.

However, for others, this goes far beyond a lifestyle choice. I know atheists for whom this is a dogma, something that encapsulates who they are and where they stand in the world more than any other set of beliefs they hold.

Furthermore, not only do people care passionately about what they eat, they also feel strongly about what others eat as evidenced above. This is something I especially don’t understand. I’m missing something here, something about what meat eating means both personally and socially. What is it about food that leads people to be offended by the lifestyle choices of others?

For those of you who feel your food choices strongly - what does your diet mean to you? How do you feel about the diet of others? If we are what we eat, how does that matter?

Selected related posts: Food for Ogling, er, I mean, Thought, Ravi Chand, melon eater, That Silver Isn’t Vegetarian, Meat without murder?, Holy Cow: Yet another school textbook controversy

There are many sacrifices that I make in order to do my duty as an SM blogger. I can’t always hang out with my friends when I want to, I can’t always stay for dessert because I have to rush home to blog, and sometimes, like today, I have to really sacrifice my mental well-being and take one for the team. It seems that the second episode in season number four of the Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie car-wreck-of-a-show features the ladies living with a Pakistani American family:

Domestic bliss with Nicole

Episode 2: The Ghauri Family
Paris and Nicole trade in their designer dresses for traditional saris when they take over the responsibilities of a traditional Pakistani mom. With the patient help of their “husband” and Americanized fifteen-year-old “son,” the girls manage to dress, speak and dance like conservative Pakistani housewives…or at least their version of it. But things don’t go as well when Paris and Nicole decide to share their experiences, namely how they like to party. [Link]

Yeah, I saw you cringe behind your computer screen just then. Reuters has more:

…here they are with Season 4, on a new network (hullo, E! Bye-bye, Fox), after having struck a unique compromise: They’d do the show, but not at the same time.

The subtitle “‘Til Death Do Us Part” alludes to the celebutantes’ infiltrating families for crash courses in marriage and motherhood. The first episode, which wasn’t supplied for review, finds Paris and Nicole (separately) taking the place of a nine-months-pregnant woman, wearing a suit to duplicate her condition, cleaning house and babysitting a 3-year-old. The second episode, which was provided, has them infiltrating a traditional Pakistani-American family to trivialize their religion, ruin their kitchen and corrupt their very Americanized teenage son. It’s all very contrived but harmless and less offensive than stultifyingly superficial. But then, that pretty much always has been “The Simple Life…” [Link]

Even more painful than this episode is this clip available on the internet where a bunch of women sit around and talk us through it discussing its “finer” points. It’s like The View on crack. This episode will be replaying on E! if you want to watch and get a feel for how painful the life of a dedicated blogger can be. :)

I absolutely love animals: sometimes I feel that I’ve learned almost as much from animals as from human beings about how to live and conduct myself in the world. So a tip on the News page (thanks, WGIIA) about the recent passing of one of the three elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo has got me deeply saddened. Gita suffered from foot ailments, as apparently many captive elephants do. She’d undergone surgery earlier this year and was making what zookeepers believed was good progress toward recovery. But last Saturday they found her in her area lifeless, with her legs folded beneath her. She was 48 years old and had lived at the zoo since 1959.

The photo shows a priest from the Malibu Hindu Temple (lately of Britney Spears fame), Krishnama Samudrala Charyulu, giving prayers last Wednesday at a service for Gita (she was an Asian elephant) held at the entrance of the zoo. The service was the idea of activists who oppose keeping elephants in captivity and who have been waging a battle against the city of Los Angeles. Apparently Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa failed to veto a $50m improvement in the elephants’ lodgings. The activists believe elephants should be kept in wildlife sanctuaries, not zoos, which seems reasonable enough; so they actually exposed the expansion of the zoo exhibit on grounds that it would still be too small and that the city had more pressing needs for the money.

There seems to be some disagreement as to how the elephants are protected from foot ailments that stem from walking on hard surfaces. From the Los Angeles Times article:

But she also had become a symbol for impassioned animal rights activists who argued that her crippling problems were the result of treading on concrete surfaces in the zoo for years, and that she would never completely recover. (All the zoo’s elephants now pad around on soft dirt surfaces.)

And from the Last Chance for Animals press release:

It has become evident that the LA Zoo cannot provide the space, exercise or social enrichment needed to preserve the elephants’ health and well being. They are kept in woefully inadequate quarters and are forced to stand on hard surfaces such as concrete or hard-packed earth.

The first Indian Mutiny was organized by spreading a coded message with the help of a lotus. But for this mutiny, you don’t need any lotus flowers. An email will suffice!

Yes, now you can email a post from Sepiamutiny to anyone you want! Just click on the “Email post” link under each post.

Go ahead, spread the mutiny!!

I have no idea how we managed to go even this long before this issue which plagues the Indian business community finally came to the forefront. All of us have known about this problem for a long time but have chosen to ignore it. No more:

What’s in a name?

A lot if you’re an Indian grocer, it seems.

Especially if you’re a Patel.

The surname — which is as common among people of Asian-Indian descent as Smith or Johnson is among Anglos - has sparked a brief but bitter dispute involving one of the largest vendors of specialty foods to the Indian community.

A suit filed by Patel Brothers, a Chicago-based food distributor with a chain of 27 stores, accuses an Iselin-based store of violating a trademark when it opened last month using the name “Patel Food Market.” A Patel Brothers grocery — Patel’s Cash & Carry — is across the street.

The case was settled last week, and both sides declined to comment. But the court papers offer a window into the fierce competition among Indian grocers, the importance of the Patel name, and the issue of whether companies can legally protect common names or words. [Link]

You guys got to suck it up and just read this whole article. It is filled with priceless gems like this one:

Swetal Patel filed an affidavit saying he hired two off-duty Woodbridge Township police officers to handle the expected heavy flow of traffic during the Memorial Day weekend. But the officers mistakenly reported to Patel Food Market, where they worked and were paid by the owner, the affidavit said. [Link]

Relax folks, this one has nothing to do with California textbooks. It seems that certain Hindu groups in India have succeeded, after a three-year campaign, in erasing all references to Hinduism’s meat eating past from school textbooks [via Desitude]. Whether you believe that eating meat is prohibited in Hinduism, or like me believe that it is a millenia old scam, you can nonetheless see why the distortion of historical fact is wrong.

Any references to the beef-eating past of ancient Hindus have finally been deleted from Indian school textbooks, after a three-year campaign by religious hardliners.

For almost a century history books for primary and middle schools told how in ancient India beef was considered a great delicacy among Hindus—especially among the highest caste—and how veal was offered to Hindu deities during special rituals.

The offending chapters have been deleted from new versions of the books which were delivered to schoolchildren last week. However, the National Council of Educational Research and Training [NCERT], which bears responsibility for the texts, now seems to be unhappy with the changes, which were agreed to by a former NCERT director.

NCERT counsel Prashant Bhushan said that ancient Hindus were indeed beef-eaters and the council should not have distorted historical facts by deleting the chapters.

“NCERT has committed a mistake by dropping those facts from the textbooks. It is a victory for Hindu fundamentalists who have lodged a misinformation campaign. Historians should unite against this cowardice by the council [NCERT],” said noted Kolkata historian Ashish Bos. [Link]

I thought surely the following quote must be the same brand of satire one of SM’s commenters is fond of writing. I was wrong of course. People actually do say stuff like this:

“Some low-caste Dalit [untouchable] Hindus used to eat beef [but] Brahmins [high caste Hindus] never ate it. Mr Sharma [Ram Sharan Sharma, author of the textbook chapters] had not researched well before writing the piece,” said firebrand Hindu leader Praveen Togadia.

There has been a great deal of scuttlebutt in the last twenty four hours speculating about a proposition I blogged about on SM almost two years ago. UN Official and author Shashi Tharoor has been nominated by India for the position of Secretary General of the United Nations once Kofi Annan’s term ends:

India has decided to nominate a career UN diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, for the post of UN secretary-general.

The Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi says that Indian missions abroad have begun seeking support from member nations to back Mr Tharoor’s candidacy.

Mr Tharoor is currently the under secretary-general for communications and public information in the UN.

He has worked in the world body for nearly three decades since completing his PhD at Tufts University in the US… Mr Tharoor, an Indian national, has written several novels, including a political satire, The Great Indian Novel. [Link]

UN watchers have long speculated that the next Secretary General will come from Asia, since it seems to be Asia’s turn to have a go at the job of herding cats.

There are three other Asian candidates are in the running - Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and the South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

However observers in India say Mr Tharoor’s long association with the UN works to his advantage. [Link]

A Indian blogger in Malaysia named Sharanya Manivannan recently posted an open letter to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to take a stand on the Hindu temple demolitions that have been occurring in the country:

But I ask you this: when temples that stood for over a century are destroyed, what really dies? Not stone and statues. Not bells and prayers. Not — thankfully and thus far — people. You see, what frightens me is not the loss of these temples themselves, though architecturally speaking, that too is often a disappointment. What frightens me is what these temples are taken to represent, and by extension, what their demolitions therefore represent. (link)

[Note: if the link doesn’t work, try going to Sharanya’s blog]

Elsewhere in the letter she points out that the Indian government did send a letter of “official displeasure” to the Danish government following the publication of the anti-Islamic cartoons. Why the silence so far on the “temple cleansing” in Malaysia? She also makes some poignant comments about how Indians are treated as a whole in Malaysia, which I’ll quote below the fold.

Some background: In the past few months, Malaysian authorities have demolished a number of Hindu temples in different parts of the country, stating that they were built without a proper permit. But local Hindus have complained that they had applied for permits, sometimes waiting as long as 30 years for a response! Moreover, according to the BBC, at least two of the temples destroyed were more than a century old, which clearly suggests that getting a permit to build is not at all the issue driving the demolitions. Indeed, it seems pretty clear that these demolitions are part of an organized campaign in a country that is growing increasingly intolerant of religious minorities. (Churches and other religious structures have also been demolished along the same lines.)

Indians make up about 8% of the settled population of Malaysia, which amounts to about 2 million people, and the majority are Hindus. For the most part they have lived in Malaysia in peace (communal violence is very rare), but Indian Malaysians do often complain of discrimination and mistreatment. They have traditionally been a working class population, who came to Malaysia initially to work on rubber plantations.

In this Pride season, a salute goes out to all the organizations and individuals working for community-building, wellness and recognition of non-heterosexual desis. The queer community is one of the most vibrant sites where today’s culture of the desi diaspora is being developed, just as queer communities, by force or by choice, have blazed new trails for cultures through the ages. And I’m not just talking about better parties and clothes, though I’m certainly grateful for those elements. Over dinner a few nights ago in a group that included four “desi dykes” — one Muslim ABCD sister and her European partner, and a Hindu ABCD sister with her FOB Pakistani partner — I was moved by the way this assembly both reaffirmed and challenged at the same time any number of ideas about the subcontinent and its diaspora.

In a few days the Bay Area group Trikone holds DesiQ: From Visions to Action, a major conference for what the organizers call “the diverse South Asian GBT community and our allies.” The conference will be held on the UCSF campus and has the support of major sponsors like AT&T. The queer Tamil Sri Lankan-American performance artist D’Lo will host the gala on Friday the 23rd. The conferene immediately precedes San Francisco’s Dyke March and SF Pride parade.

The list of workshops to be held at DesiQ offers a powerful picture of the issues at play in the desi queer community. Some workshops are meant to be purely fun, which is great; others look like they will delve into the arcana of queer academic cultural theory, which is an acquired taste but cool for those who dig it. But most illuminating are the workshops with straightforward issue-oriented titles like:

• Marriage Equality in a South Asian Context: the Debates, the Issues
• Hidden Voices: The Lives of Queer Muslim South Asians
• Fuzzy Boundaries: Gender, Sex and Sexuality among South Asians
• Understanding the Psychological Needs of South Asian GLBT Clientele

The presenters include desi activists, academics, doctors, psychotherapists, artists and others. It looks to be one of the most exciting gatherings of desis around, and anyone who makes it to this and then hops down on Saturday morning to Los Angeles for ArtWallah is sure to emerge drenched in creative and mutinous desitude. The only downside is that you’ll miss a few World Cup games, though I am sure there will be a footie-watching caucus amid the DesiQ participants.

There’s a whole other post to be written on queer and allied desi academics’ contributions to thinking about the diaspora, and another on queer desis online, but there’s time for that. Just as Black history need not be confined to “Black History Month” in February, the conversation within the community about gender and sexuality need not be confined to the annual Pride season. Still, Pride is about, well, pride, and I’m proud of my sisters and brothers and gender-indeterminate siblings for the growth of their movement(s), their increased visibility, and their contributions to the ongoing desi conversation. Have fun y’all, and enjoy the season!

Roll Curtis Mayfield, Little Richard and Amrish Puri’s accessories in ‘Temple of Doom’ together and you end up one of NXNE ‘06’s most charismatic personas. From all reports, King Khan, along with his sensational Shrines, made a serious impression on Toronto’s indie-philes last weekend. Irrelevant was the fact that all three of their shows were held in the SKETCHIEST corner of my fair city. One messiah, eight musicians, and a go-go dancer with only one vision: To rock your soul!

King Khan’s unusual backstory begins in Quebec:

King Khan is born in Montreal in 1977, being the son of immigrants from India. The Khan siblings (his majesty, Lil’ Brother Gumbo and Sister Cocobutter) inherit far more than mere musical talent: “My great grandfather was the Johnny Thunders of the sitar. He played but never recorded anything and became a serious opium addict. My father tried to play sitar but chose the fast life over that and wound up down and out and addicted to cocaine. My mother can play harp like Bob Dylan.” [Link]

After being kicked out of the household at 17 by his father, Khan ends up being taken in by the Mohawk Indians on the Kahnawake Mohawk Reservation (near Montreal):

I learnt lots about being a punk from my Indian friends. We used to get drunk, smash cars, go hunting for white women. The Indians taught me about survival, being a real warrior, even it if involved drinking Budweiser, smoking Marlboro Reds and getting really high. They showed me the truth and then I met a big bad wold who told me that rockin’ and rollin’ is all that I can do. I saw the light. Even learned how to chew Red Man Tobacco, America’s Best Chew. The Mohawk Indians put the savage back into my soul, even gave me a home, for that I will always be grateful. [Link]

He had me at “Red Man Tobacco”.

Maybe it’s just me but when you travel to foreign locales isn’t there some kind of charm to having the “commoner” experience? Of going somewhere and moving (as my father says) “with the people”?

The Wall Street Journal called it “VIP Travel on the Cheap” but I think a better name might be (with all due respect to the anonymous maharaja in question) “People Who Want To Visit Foreign Countries Without Having to Interact with Anyone Who Actually Lives There”.

One of the hottest concepts in travel right now is the “insider” experience, where travelers are promised a chance to hobnob with celebrities, go behind the scenes where other tourists are barred and be treated like visiting dignitaries.

Companies are selling tours of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entertaining room, visits with Olympic athletes and drinks with an Indian maharaja — complete with an elephant parade.

Now, I’m not saying you have to go to India and tan in the Dharavi slum or drive an auto rickshaw around Queen’s Necklace during rush hour or do a load of whites under the oppressive third world sun. But, if you’re going to sit in a plane and make the commitment and fly all the way around the world to India, shouldn’t you actually try to see some of it?

The people have spoken! And they want more Brazilian hotties World Cup coverage. Armed with this unambiguous mandate, I offer you the Sepia Mutiny update on the World Cup, now that one-third of the first round is over and we have seen every team in action at least once.

First, the Desi Angle (TM): your Great Brown Hope, the Mauritian-Indian French midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo, came on for the final ten minutes of an insipid and stultifying France-Switzerland match that produced the two teams’ third draw in their last three confrontations. Brought on to give France some much-needed energy, Dhorasoo did well in the short time he had, and nearly scored with a searing shot from range that just missed the far post. Watching amid a thin, pessimistic French crowd on the otherwise lovely rear patio of Brooklyn restaurant Jolie, Mr Kobayashi and I nearly choked on our merguez sandwiches as we watched the potential First Desi Goal in World Cup History skim barely wide. It was not to be, but with the French first-stringers not showing much verve, the Hope may well see more playing time in the next two matches against South Korea and Togo.

Via that brother at Ultrabrown, here is a YouTube video of Dhorasoo’s entrance and shot. I couldn’t find a still photo — if anyone out there has found one, holla at me.

And that concludes the Desi Angle (TM). Now for the true heads, here’s an appreciation of the tournament so far, with a Daljit Dhaliwal tie-in for those who read all the way to the end.

No, not Dubya — actually the real Humpty Dumpty, who has been banned from government schools in the state of Madhya Pradesh. According to the BBC:

The Madhya Pradesh government has banned the teaching of English nursery rhymes in primary schools to “reduce Western influence” on children.

Indian rhymes will now replace their popular English counterparts.

“There is no need for English rhymes when there are Indian rhymes to infuse patriotism in children,” says state education minister Narrotam Mishra.

He has asked government primary schools from now on to teach Indian rhymes and tales from the life of Ahilya Bai, the legendary ruler credited with building a number of leading temples in India. (link)

Because obviously, Humpty Dumpty is the Trojan Horse of cultural imperialism. Just think of the infamous lines: “All the king’s horses/ and all the king’s men/ couldn’t put Humpty together again.” They seem to suggest the monarchy is incompetent — making the seemingly innocent nursery rhyme into subversive Leftist agit-prop that criticizes the government.

Incidentally, I wonder why Education Minister Narrotam Mishra didn’t cite the fact that Mr. Dumpty is an egg in his decision to ban the him from schools in MP. Isn’t an egg a feminine entity, and isn’t Humpty Dumpty therefore a female in drag — and consequently in probable violation of sections 294 and 377 of the Indian Penal Code?

(Just kidding, yaar. Still, anyone interested in translating ‘Humpty Dumpty’ into Hindi or other South Asian languages for us? Or even in English: can we desi-fy him so perhaps Mr. Mishra might consider reinstating him? If we get some good ones, I will email them to the MP government. (Hint: Start with “Hum pati / dum pati”)

Slate.com has a great Explainer series that I have referenced in several previous posts. Readers can write in with both serious and trivial questions alike, and Slate will find the best answer for them. A recent query inquired about what seems like a question that everyone should know a good answer to: Are Muslims Allowed To Kill Themselves?

The two Saudi detainees who reportedly hanged themselves at Guantanamo Bay must have been the victims of foul play, their relatives said on Monday. Since the men were strict Muslims, the families reasoned, they would never have taken their own lives. “It’s impossible for Yasser to commit suicide,” said the brother of one of the inmates. Are Muslims allowed to kill themselves?

No. There’s a clear prohibition on suicide in the collected sayings of the Prophet, known as the hadith. In particular, anyone who kills himself must spend an eternity repeating the act in the afterlife: “He who commits suicide by throttling shall keep on throttling himself in the Hell Fire (forever) and he who commits suicide by stabbing himself shall keep on stabbing himself in the Hell Fire.”

You won’t find as clear a statement in the Quran. This passage provides the closest thing to a ban: “Do not consume your wealth in the wrong way—rather through trade mutually agreed to, and do not kill yourselves.” But the word for “yourselves” could just as well be translated as “each other”—which would make this a ban on homicide, not suicide. [Link]

I love taking a look at the linguistics of religion. It seems almost amusing (if not for the great consequences) how a mistranslation or misinterpretation of a word (ancient vs. modern) can propogate down through all of history. Remember my earlier quoted reference pertaining to the role of the sacred cow in Hinduism?

The scriptural reason for this obsession with cows and their protection is even stranger. Vedic Sanskrit is not the classical Sanskrit that exists today. It is an older, more difficult form of the language and one of the words for “light” that is used there is “Go.” Now Go primarily meant “light,” but it also meant “cows.” In classical Sanskrit, the word means only the bovine friend. Thus, on the basis of a forgotten meaning of a word, Indian culture has wrapped itself round the protection of the cow and rendered it a sacred taboo. “Protector of the Go,” in the Vedas meant the keeper of the light—not a cowherd! And all the admonitions about protecting the Go mean something else altogether, and makes a great deal more sense, too. However, it was too late, and the word came to mean, with all its nuances, cow protection and cow reverence! A change in language renders a single word archaic, but the impact on a society is amazing. [Link]

Alamo Rent A Car, one of the largest rental car agencies in the United States, recently got smacked down for blatant anti-Muslim discrimination [via DNSI]. In essence, Alamo tried to claim that it was OK to discriminate on the basis of religion to pander to the anti-Muslim bigotry of post 9-11 customers. This case was so clear cut an example of discrimination that the court didn’t even put the case to the jury.

Alamo meets its waterloo pandering to predjudice

Bilan Nur was hired by Alamo in 1999. With Alamo’s permission, she wore a head scarf during Ramadan of 1999 and 2000. However, after September 11th, Alamo said that wearing a scarf was against their dress code. Nur even offered to wear an Alamo scarf, but that that compromise was refused. In the end, she was fired.

According to the EEOC, here’s how the law works:

… the law allows employers to avoid accommodating [religious] requests if they can show undue hardship. And that has been defined in law to include financial considerations other than insignificant amounts. But … a company that argues it will lose customers because of its workers’ religious garb will lose in court — even if it could conceivably show some monetary harm ….the exception in the law does not apply to the discriminatory preferences of customers. [Link]

In this case:

the company’s regional manager admitted under questioning that the only hardship Alamo might suffer is the image that the firm has with customers. [Link]

And therefore,

The judge rejected a series of arguments by the company, including its contention that allowing her to wear the scarf — a clear sign of her religion in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — would cause the firm undue hardship. [Link]

What appals me about this case is that

Alamo disciplined, suspended and terminated her employment following consultation with regional level human resources officials and in-house counsel. [Link]

This was not some irrational gut decision by a low level manager acting alone. This was a corporate decision - they seem to have felt a need to pander and furthermore, they seem to have believed that the courts would back their bigotry up. I’m glad to see that they were wrong, at least on the second point.

Ladies: Sure our bras can push-in, push-up and push-out…create curves and decolletage where there might not have been otherwise…support us steadfastly through athletic events, bad days at work and first dates alike…and, by sheer ergonomic design, make us sinfully sexy seductresses in the crucial moments when it matters most but, as ever-prepared, forward-thinking members of the Mutiny, let’s get down to brass tacks — what can it really do to help advance our studies?

Just ask Ashish, a telecommunications graduate from India’s Pune University. He was caught cheating on his final-year exam - he diagrammed an elaborate electronic circuit on the underside of his calculator - and kicked out. But he returned and passed the next term, and freely admits to cheating on most tests at university.

“Cheating sounds too grave,” he says, insisting that his family name not be printed. “Everyone does it.” He has written formulas on his ruler and smuggled notes up his sleeves and inside his shoes. Women have it easier, he claims, as modesty affords protection. “If I were a woman, I’d try smuggling them in my bra,” he says.

LINK

I find this great for several reasons.

A month ago the Washington Post reported that:

Nearly half of the nation’s children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly [Link]

Gandhi was once asked what he thought about Western civilization. “I think,” he replied, “it would be a very good idea.”

This news sent the right-wingnuts into conniptions [Thanks Saheli]. The next day, John Gibson, the host of Fox News’ “The Big Story” told his (largely white) viewers to:

“Do your duty. Make more babies… You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic.” [Link] [Video clip].

He later stuffed his foot further into his mouth by “explaining” that he was not bigotted against Hispanics, but instead, against Muslims (and all non-Christians by implication):

“My concern was simply that I didn’t want America to become Europe, where the birth rate is so low the continent is fast being populated by immigrants, mainly from Muslim countries, whose birth rate is very high … I said … it was also a good idea if people other than Hispanics also got busy and have more babies. Those people would include both blacks and whites. I suppose Asians, too… 50 years from now, Europe will be brown and Muslim, and America will be brown and Christian. I am fine with that, America, and I’ve said so many times. I’d rather live with the Christians here than live … under Sharia law in Europe” [Link]

Notice his ambivalence about Asians, even though he’s probably thinking of the yellow kind, many of whom are Christian. What might he feel about the brown kind, many of whom are neither Christian nor Muslim? And will he have a heart attack if he sees the latest brilliant inaccuracy from the TOI which states that:

The Indian diaspora is estimated at 20 billion. [Link]

As Manish points out, “the earth’s population is around 6.5 billion today,” which means the desi diaspora is over 300% of the world’s population. Getting scared yet, Mr. Gibson?

The moral of the story? Get your news from an accurate source and you’ll sleep at night

…and we’re back! You’re reading this now and so you’ve made it over to our new home.

Welcome to the new and improved Mutiny. If everything looks exactly as it did before, then we’ve done our jobs well.

While the other Mutineers are busy fighting over bathrooms and the most luxuriously appointed living quarters, Kunjan and I will be napping blissfully in our king-size master suites (having arrived first, we naturally staked out the prime real estate in advance).

Thanks for your patience during this transition and please let us know if you notice anything strange.

It’s probably not a surprise that I’m a Simpsons fanatic, and have been since the first days (we collected Matt Groening cartoons in junior high) but it was the evolution of the character of Apu that really clinched it for me.

Now, the first reaction upon encountering or hearing about Apu Nahasapeemapetalan is invariably a groan—yet another stereotypical 7-11 manager/operator—whether when he debuted, or today. But Apu evolved, as most Simpsons’ characters, into someone complex, worthy of both ridicule and empathy. He has a PhD, entered into an arranged marriage (but not before a stint as Springfield’s most happening bachelor, Trans Am and all) with the witty Manjula, sired octoplets, revealed his veganism and his illegal immigrant status, which he fixed by getting that long-awaited H-1 Visa. His worst sins are quirky saying in accented English, his two instances of infidelity to his wife and a tendency to overcharge (nothing compared to miser Mr.Burns or desperate Moe). Despite repeated attempts to run away from the overwhelming demands of his family of octoplets, Apu remains an excellent vehicle for Simpsons writers to explore desi issues. I highly recommend Wikipedia’s detailed biography of Apu here.

But Apu was absent in the most recent Simpsons exploration of desi culture, when Homer gets outsourced to India. Desi culture has become too big even for Apu.

If there’s one thing we here at the Mutiny have learned from our peers, it’s how to roll in style. After all, what’s the point of being a super-secret group of revolutionaries, if you don’t take full advantage of the perks. So while our tendencies still most definitely gravitate towards Cristal and Beluga, the truth of the matter is that recent growth has left more than a little to be desired in our present diggs.

A stagnant mutiny is a dead mutiny, and so it is that we are moving on to a bigger, phatter and more secure crib… still, of course, somewhere deep in the heart of North Dakota. We’ve been busy packing, the monkeys are ready, and tonight, at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, Sepia… (eh, sorry.. got a little carried away there).

We will be transitioning to a new server tonight at midnight (Tuesday, 12:00AM EST) and depending on where on the internet you call home, the changes could take as long as 24 hours or more to take effect, but for the majority of you, things should be back to normal by the time you get to work on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, you will see a read-only version of the site with comments turned off.

Rest assured, the Mutiny will be back, stronger than ever… plus, we’ve just now learned that the North Dakota historical society has designated our current home a state monument which will be open to visitors beginning next month.

There was a funny but true quote from a woman interviewed for this article (thanks, Technophobicgeek) on World Cup mania in India:

A young woman sold on soccer pointed out: “I like soccer because the men playing the sport are strong, fit, aggressive and much better-looking. Cricketers on the other hand are softies in comparison, and it is quite incomprehensible how 10 people can just stand and watch while one bowls and the other bats,” she argued.

In her view, the only exception is Dhoni, who combines strength with sensitive looks and style, the ultimate Beckhamesque combination. She said Dhoni started off being a soccer player, in any case. (link)

My significant other, who is very knowledgeable on these matters, agrees on the question of the appeal of cricketers vs. soccer players. (The question of which sport is better may be a different matter, of course.) The article also mentions the predicted 150 million (cumulative) Indian viewers for the games, which will be broadcast in Hindi all over the country, bringing in scads of advertising revenue. And incidentally, the “Dhoni” the interviewee mentions is Mahindra Singh Dhoni, and he’s the most eligible batchelor in Jharkand, apparently (also, pictured right). A bit Beckhamesque, is he not?

There’s a similar comment (minus the cricket) in a Slate piece by Bryan Curtis where he explains why intellectual American men seem to be drawn to soccer. Part of it is that they’re (ok we’re) “internationalist” coffee-drinking, Richard Linklater-worshipping poseurs, of course. But maybe it also has to do with this:

In a weak moment, the soccer intellectual might even admit that the sport’s stars are aspirational male role models. Most soccer players are not human grotesqueries like NFL stars or attenuated beanpoles like NBA players. They’re possessed of attainable physiques, strong and compact—the kind that might impress intellectuals and the women who love them. (link)

Yes, I always prefer my sports to have aspirational role models — and maybe voiceless velar plosives as well.

I realize that CSM staff photographer Andy Nelson was trying to make the outdoor laundries of New Delhi romantic and palatable to a highbrow, upper-crust Western audience. I do.

And when the Monitor hits the stands tomorrow, complete with the colorful photographic spread of hard-working countrymen like Harichand Kanojiya…

…I’m sure there’s part of me that will feel thrilled that these manual laborers who comprise such an essential vertebrae in India’s backbone got their due by way of a clever title and a thoughtful profile in a National Geographic kind of way.

But…

And when, late on a weeknight, you are wakened by short, meaningful raps at the door and open it to find Anna in a hooded, velveteen robe, eyes dark and mysterious, blindfold in hand: you know your time has come and you follow without question.

She picks up your laptop and waits for you at the door, reminding you not to leave home without ample snark, a few good literary jabs and shimmery, sparkling eye makeup.

Your heart races. You swallow down parental warnings to avoid using fuck as a verb, drinking homemade punch out of crystal goblets handed to you by good-for-nothing “bois” and bringing sepia-colored Shame on the family.

You are sweaty-palmed and slightly nauseous over urban legends about hazing, mutinous readers and the potential for an unruly comment thread to turn into an impromptu session of Circle the Fat.

But mostly, you feel jittery and excited. Hoping against hope as she blindfolds you, that when the cool, silky fabric is ultimately removed you’ll find yourself at the intersection of Good Storytelling, Meaningful Prose and Cultural Context, but that until it is you have to go out on faith, friendship and sisterhood because you won’t know for sure till you get there what’s in store for you down the road ahead.

One of the things which fascinates me about this community of blogginess we inhabit is the randomness of connections and the chain of events which must transpire in order for someone to find blog X. Those of you who know me in real life know that this is a question I always pose, because before SM, I always wondered, “How on earth did you know I was alive?” The vast majority of the answers I’ve received boil down to three syllables: Manish Vij.

My FAVORITE new (to me) blog of the past year belongs to a fellow DCist and I would like to thank erstwhile SM regular and current legal eagle Maisnon for indirectly introducing me to one insightful and addictive personality: The Barmaid. I can’t imagine my life without one. ;) She’s half-woman, half-amazing. Finding her exceptionally well-written blog resulted in one of the rarest activities I might choose to do: reading an entire archive. To get all power chord-y Aerosmith on your kundis, I didn’t want to miss a thing. I think we can all agree that when you’ve forsaken all others and forgotten what it was that you were supposed to do because you are voraciously consuming someone’s back catalog, that’s a sign that you’ve stumbled on to one hell of a blog.

Perhaps it would be easiest if I counted down the reasons why the most talented blogtender ever makes me reconsider my addiction to NYC (Yes. She single-handedly puts all the hotness in swamp city. And if you don’t know, now you know):

10) She was a Theta, so she gets this DG’s reliance on Greek speak (I almost rushed that house, so good taste on her). She’s like the grand-little I forever wanted and never had.

9) She, too, adores Amma. Respect her authority as she taxes the Dahi Vada before leaving for the Mysore Masala Dosa. Then fall a little bit in lurve as she matches you, cup for cup of Madras Coffee, at a Saturday morning brunch which is the closest I’ve ever come to those unrealistic-to-me morning-ish meals which went down on every ep of Sex and The City.

8) She appreciates my powerful love for the wackiest news show on television: World News Now. Hail its wonderful weirdness with me even if its most recent source of brownitude is no longer holding court.

7) Malayalees do it better. ;)

6) Her drink specials are so tasty, intoxication occurs quickly and inevitably. Yet…there’s never a hangover.

5) If you end up at Sephora with her, she will exhibit no hesitation or self-consciousness when it comes to testing out vivid metallic Chanel lipsticks or four varieties of bronzer/glitter. She will also loyally assist you with shooting stink-eye at those useless @$$h073$ at MAC. Hisssss.

4) She is wise enough to use TYPEPAD, like someone else we know. ;)

3) Her inclusion of her soon-to-be-as-legendary-as-Yo-Dad parents, “Lester” and “Sally” in her blogging life is inspiring, heartwarming and fodder for some of the most exquisitely priceless, “OMG, me too!” or “Omg, I wish.”-moments I’ve had this year.

2) Remember that personal bravery she displayed at Sephora? She’s just like that online, dissecting heartbreak, regret and lessons learned with a selfless candor which makes you want to hug her and thank her. Repeatedly.

1) She is hysterical. Witty. Rare. Consistently awesome. In short: perfection.

Kindly welcome the latest knockout to grace our bunker as a cherished guest: The Barmaid. If you are mean to her, I will cut you, like any good Akka/Chechi would. I can’t for the life of me see why I would need to do that, though. I predict you’ll end up just as enchanted as the rest of us.

As more information comes to light about the possible atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Iraqi town of Haditha, I thought I would mention that one of the main journalists that helped bring the story to light is Aparisim Ghosh, chief international correspondent for Time magazine. It was back in March of this year that whispers first began to emerge about what may have happened in Haditha:

Since the revelation this [March 2006] week that U.S. Marines may have been responsible for the death of 15 civilians in the western Iraq town of Haditha, first reported by TIME, there has been a major outcry but little action. But now that the Haditha tragedy is out in the open, the U.S. military must act quickly and decisively to reassure Iraqis that the killing of innocents by American arms will not be lost in the fog of war.

In an environment where insurgents and terrorists routinely massacre civilians without remorse or restitution, it is vital that Iraqis know the U.S. military holds itself to a higher standard — that when American soldiers kill (by accident or intention) non-combatants, the military investigates the matter rigorously and punishes anybody guilty of wrongdoing. This is what separates the good guys from the bad guys…

It will not be easy to persuade Iraqis that a cover-up is not already under way. After all, the Marines’ first report of the incident claimed that the civilians had been killed by a roadside bomb, and not by the Marines themselves. Nor does it help that the military waited months before launching a serious investigation. But every effort must be made to undo that damage and allay suspicions. [Link]

In the last couple of weeks the words in the article above by Ghosh have been viewed as almost prophetic. He continues to produce outstanding articles from the war zone, such as this insightful one titled Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber:

One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn’t know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. “First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans,” he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list. [Link]

Oy, I almost don’t want to write this— but I took so many pages of notes during my disastrous dinner at Tandoori Nights in Clarendon, that all that information deserves to be used. I know you’ll appreciate reading some of it, since our threads on dining, fine or otherwise are consistently popular. So let’s get this over with.

I’ve recently become an addict of EMS. I know, I’m the only one who has ever entered the store in stiletto heels, but what can I say? You can only spend so much time underground with Abhi before he begins to influence you. While I work up my nerve to (gulp) actually go camping for the first time, I’m going to keep frequenting EMS; for some reason, it makes urban-me want to be outside. Powerfully magical, I know. So between my forays to gear mecca and the container store (and yet— my apartment is still disorganized), I noticed that a potentially brown restaurant had opened on the second floor of the ritzy Market Common at Clarendon, just outside of D.C.

Yesterday, I decided to give it a shot, even though I was a little put off by the restaurant’s font. Yup, I’m that kind of dork. Why wouldn’t I be? If words are my life, the shapes of the letters which create them matter, too. I looked down at my outfit, which I had worn earlier to the amazing lecture Sajit blogged about at the Smithsonian. It was casual, but to me, so was the font. So imagine my shock when I tentatively walked through the front doors and saw a lounge sleek enough to impress, a distinguished man in a well-cut suit who looked like the manager and a mural of brown women on the ceiling which made me want to faint because I spent so much time craning my neck back to memorize it. “WOW,” I thought to myself, “it’s GORGEOUS.”

I simultaneously regretted my clothes while planning a meetup or party that just had to take place in this space. Much like it jinxes the shit out of my crushes on boys to imagine my first name with their surname, all of my moony swooning, my counting parties before they were hatched…well, it virtually guaranteed doom. :(

My friend and I were seated in a beautiful, semi-private room and were asked if we wanted still or sparkling. I opted for the first and the busboy blurted out, “it’s bottled”. Um, okay. I wasn’t sure what to do with that so I asked him what brand. He didn’t know. When he came back, he said “Voss” and my pretentious-meter went off so hard it broke. How very glam. And everything on the menu was spelled properly! Well played.

The secret organization of illuminati known as the Priory of Sion (that you read about in The Da Vinci Code) is a hoax, of course. What isn’t a hoax however, is the shadowy and ultra-powerful Bilderberg Group who are meeting in Ottawa, Canada this weekend:

It’s like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists.

A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination…

It’s not the Freemasons.

Forget those fabled U.S. military men who tucked away UFOs in the Arizona desert.

These guys, you’ve probably never even heard of, and if you believe the camera-toting followers who attend all their meetings, they control the world.

They’re called the Bilderberg group.

They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies. [Link]

If you happened to be at the airport in Ottawa yesterday you may have noticed a bunch of limo drivers holding up a single letter. That would have been a sign that a Bilderberg attendee was near at hand:

Greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter “B” signs, global luminaries such as Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands began arriving in Ottawa Thursday for the annual gathering of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group. [Link]

Abhi mentioned the documentary An Inconvenient Truth earlier this week. I just saw it, and I think it’s beautifully done as well — I would strongly recommend it. Even if you don’t think much of Al Gore as a politician, the science is convincing and all the pictures of vanishing glaciers and dried-up inland lakes (Lake Chad!; the Aral Sea!) are terrifying.

In the film, Gore refers several times to the potential catastrophic consequences of Global Warming in the Indian subcontinent. It’s somewhat ironic, because countries on the Indian subcontinent are far smaller contributors of greenhouse gases than the developed countries (India’s per capita emissions are one sixth the world average) but you can be sure that the subcontinent will feel its effects. As I understand it, there are two major consequences of global warming for the Indian subcontinent that are essentially guarantees, and a third which seems to me to be a maybe:

Every four years, the entire world pauses to watch very hot athletes play a game I find irresistible. We could get all armchair (or, more likely, office chair) psychologist on my kundi and consider that Soccer was the only sport my august father ever played, but it’s also the only sport I ever played.

One glorious summer a few years ago, I decided to sack up and work through all the issues I still had with forever being picked last to do anything in elementary school P.E. I played my heart out four nights a week and I had bruises the size of watermelons on my legs (playing indoors can be brutal) and a permanent ankle injury to show for it. Despite being black, blue and purple in addition to my usual brown, I’ve never been prouder of myself or my resolve to do the impossible: front like I’m actually coordinated.

This Friday, if you are so inclined, write exactly 55 words about: FIFA, footie, Footballers’ Wives (whose most memorable star from this past season was half-desi hotness Laila Rouass, pictured left), soccer camp, Adidas gear…whatever floats your World Cup boat. As always, kindly leave your flash fiction in the comments below or provide a link to where we can find some. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to attend to my mobile; Ennis keeps blowing up my spot with text messages which say “Goooooooooooooaaaaaaaal!” :D

P.S. If you haven’t been watching Footballers’ Wives on BBC America, you’re so missing out. Laila Rouass plays “Amber”, erstwhile Bollywood star and sort-of-estranged wife of a Beckham-ish “Conrad Gates”. I won’t spoil the rest for you since they recently commenced re-running the entire season on Sunday nights at 10pm and 1am (at least that’s how Comcast does it here in D.C…YMMV, obviously). Watch. You won’t be disappointed. ;)

On July 29, 1911, the gentlemen to the right lifted their first IFA Shield as Mohun Bagan defeated the East Yorkshire Regiment by two goals to one. Founded in 1889, Calcutta’s Mohun Bagan are Asia’s oldest football team, and to this day a major force in Indian soccer, along with perennial in-town rivals East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting. Calcutta remains a hotbed of Indian football, with the most famous clubs and the most ardent and knowledgeable international football fans.

A memory: Midway through the US-hosted 1994 World Cup, I learned that my grandmother was ill and unlikely to survive. I flew to Calcutta from Boston, where I had attended two 1st-round matches and one 2nd-round (the Nigeria-Italy of tragic memory). For two weeks, my father and I held death watch in the family house. Our sole distraction was the World Cup matches that beamed in to the ill-tempered black-and-white television at ungodly hours of the night. In this nether state we saw the heroics of Romania’s Georghe Hagi, Sweden’s unlikely run, and Branco’s 30-meter free-kick that broke the Brazil-Netherlands tie. At 8 a.m. the armada of doctors would appear. They too had risen at 3 to watch the games. We’d analyze Colombia’s strange collapse or Brazil’s atypically dull style as they hovered over my grandmother, our own drama sadly easier to predict than, say, the fact that Brazil would beat Italy in the final on, of all things, a missed Roberto Baggio penalty.

Minutes away as I write this, Germany and Costa Rica will kick off this year’s tournament. In Calcutta, LCD and plasma television sales have doubled, says the Telegraph. The paper provides its readers with an invaluable feature on World Cup viewing tips which will be useful to sepia aficionados worldwide.

It covers dress:

The price may be a little steep at Rs 2,700, but Adidas is seeing team jerseys of Argentina, Germany, Spain and France fly off the shelves in city stores. Ditto for Nike jerseys of Brazil, Portugal and Holland, priced at Rs 2,495.

Posture:

The TV set should be at eye level, at a distance of at least five to six feet. Sit upright in straight-backed cushioned chair with head and lumbar support….

That Calcutta is becoming more conscious of the cramp and the cringe is clear from the queries reaching gyms about what to do during World Cup viewing.

“An erect posture should be maintained while sitting for such long hours because if the posture is faulty back trouble is inevitable. Reclining chairs are not advised,” says Divya Himatsingka of Gold’s Gym.

Exercise:

Ziauddin Sardar, a prolific left-leaning political writer based in London, has been going after Salman Rushdie lately, calling him a “brown sahib” — the postcolonial equivalent of an Uncle Tom. I find Sardar’s attacks upsetting (I side with Rushdie here, as I’ll explain below), but more generally I am so over this habit of brown intellectuals tearing each other to shreds on the question of their loyalty to the “cause.” Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a traitor or a coconut, needing to be “flushed,” as a certain desi blogger is fond of saying. There’s something pathological and deeply self-destructive about the way minority writers do this to each other, and I wish it would stop.

The current feud is a bit of a convoluted story, starting most recently with Sardar’s review of a book on Islam/terrorism by Anthony McRoy called From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain. It looks like your basic, “Watch out, Muslims in Britain have become very radicalized!” type book.

In the review, Sardar says some harsh things about McRoy’s book that might or might not be accurate, as he tends to argue more from insinuation than evidence. I don’t know, as I haven’t read McRoy’s book. But he says this about Rushdie:

For example, he suggests I labelled Rushdie as a “brown sahib” because I feared that the new generation of Muslims would become “contaminated” with “infidel ideas”. This is laughably absurd. The “brown sahib” is a recognisable sociological type on the Subcontinent: an uncritical Anglophile. My point was that Muslims should not be surprised by what Rushdie had done. A brown sahib, somewhere, sometime, was bound to do just that. (link)

Now when this story broke last week, I searched the papers looking for what Sardar had originally said about Rushdie, and why. I couldn’t find it — it could either have been Rushdie’s approving noises on the War in Iraq, or the act of writing The Satanic Verses itself. (But do you ever need substantial justification to call someone a race traitor? No — you just do it, and you expect it will stick.)

We are all at least somewhat familiar with the phenomenon of Indian migration to Africa, mostly in the form of persons of Gujarati origin working their way to East Africa, but little has been publicized about the opposite, about Africans migrating to India. I wasn’t even sure something like this existed until I read an advertisement for a lecture, “African Elites in India,” which is being given this Saturday, June 10 at 2 PM at the Smithsonian’s Meyer Auditorium by Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod, editors of the book African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat. The book focuses on the story of sub-Saharan Africans who migrated, beginning around the 15th century, to India and subsequently gained positions of power and status on the sub-Continent. Who knew hyphenated identities went so far back?

“Known as Habshis, the Arabic word for Abyssinian or Ethiopian,” the duo’s book tells the story of a “little-known group of elite sub-Saharan African-Indian merchants, soldiers, nobles, statesmen, and rulers who attained prominence in India in the fifteenth to twentieth centuries but also on the Africans who served at the courts of Indian monarchs as servants, slaves, eunuchs, or concubines.”

It turns out the Africa-to-India phenomenon is not all that limited. In 1996, the Anthropological Survey of India reported sizeable communities of African ancestry in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Gujarat, and the metropolises of Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai (link). For those of you who count yourself among the South Asian history geek-squad like I do, this lecture sounds fascinating. If you need more information, or to RSVP, you can call 202 633 0444. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Perhaps this answers why Anna, and so many other desis are often mistaken for Ethiopian. Incidentally, the Freer Gallery is also screening a few Sri Lankan films this month. The remaining two are Flying with One Wing (2002), which is showing tomorrow, and Guerilla Marketing (2005) which is screening on Sunday.

Our invaluable H-town correspondent technophobicgeek alerts us on the News tab to a Houston Press exposé on K. A. Paul, my favorite Indian religious huckster of the moment. Brother Paul, né Anand Kilari or by some accounts Kilari Anand, was blogged here not too long ago, and I see a lot of you have checked out the article, so I’ll limit the priceless quotes to this one, on how Paul’s church conned a pro-Israel group (“Friends of the Israel Defense Forces,” yikes) out of $850,000 which it used to repair the leader’s decrepit 747, Global Peace One:

In the e-mail to FIDF Chairman Larry Hochberg, Dodson [Paul’s factotum] writes: “Israel’s arrogance toward us stands in stark contrast to the 51 presidents who have attended our rallies or have come to meet Dr. Paul in other venues. A perfect example is Israel’s neighbor Ethiopia, whose 80 year old president, His Excellency President Girma, broke all rules of protocol to come to personally meet us at the airport with a red carpet welcome.” (According to one passenger on that voyage, it was Kilari who brought his own red carpet.)

Without the multi-entry visa, Dodson wrote, the Jewish group had three options: Get off in Poland and find its own way to Israel, fly with Kilari to Syria before going to Israel, or cancel outright. The group called the bluff and chose Door No. 3. Because the $850,000 was a “donation,” Global Peace Initiative refused to refund the money, which was sunk into the plane. Less than a month after Kilari stood up the Jewish group, the plane took a last-minute jaunt to Canada, where it confused officials at the tiny Thunder Bay, Ontario, airport, which hadn’t serviced a 747 in years. It sat there for about a week, at which point the Federal Aviation Administration deemed it unairworthy. Yet for some reason, the administration permitted Kilari to fly the plane to Tijuana, where it is now collecting dust in a vacant lot.

Classic stuff. OK, one more, from the Press’s attempt to interview the holy man:

This is why he shouts, “You’re asking stupid questions!” and adds, “You write that story, boy, you write that story and you wait for the response…Benny Hinns and TD Jakes are becoming millionaires and billionaires, and you’re now talking to a village preacher, broke completely, can’t even pay his own salaries anymore, and doesn’t own a $100 property anywhere in the world—”

At which point we had to ask Kilari, “You don’t own a $100 property anywhere in the world, but you own a freaking 747?”

“No, I don’t own freaking 747, you idiot. I don’t own!”

“Who owns it?”

“It is the organization owns it, you chicken!”

From our News Tab we learn that one of India’s Top Guns was flying high over the skies of Pune earlier today. The 74-year-old Indian President APJ Kalam demonstrated why the chicks still jock him. Check out the pictures:

“I am so going to get in the pants of that hottie Kelly McGillis tonight.”

Ah, mysterious India, ever in flux yet steadfastly the same! While greenbacks, terabytes and bushy-tailed MBAs woosh back and forth between Bangalore and Wall Street, the eructations of Tom Friedman speeding them across the Flat World like some kind of ill pneumatics, the doings of the superstitious masses still supply orientalists correspondents with fare for cutesiness and condescension. As Henry Chu sat barricaded at the crib contemplating his balls, Jonathan Allen of the New York Times was bravely setting off into Delhi’s diesel dawn to document the queer customs of the Hindoo:

the creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it’s a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade.

After noting that the temple is inspired by Disneyland (“We visited five or six times. As tourists, I mean,” the temple’s PR officer clarifies), Allen goes on to, let’s see, analogize Indian temple-goers to people waiting for the toilet, and Indians in general to dogs, amongst whom he is like an unflappable elephant…

Wait, you think I’m making this up?

Here are the toilets:

The appeal of this might at first be lost on visitors to India, who are usually coming to see the country’s abundance of genuinely ancient buildings [say wha…? - ed.]; Indians, who are surrounded by them, will generally grab any opportunity to escape from all that decrepitude for the afternoon, ideally to a place with musical fountains. The crowds here aren’t pilgrims; they’re day trippers. (…)

And so, although Western tourists are welcome, they can expect to receive the occasional look of benign giggly bemusement, the same kind a gentleman receives upon joining the line for the ladies’ toilets. (…)

The dogs:

Sometimes the allegorical power of elephants is overestimated, as in the tableau which, according to the caption, claims that: “One problem elephants never face is the generation gap.”

The one that most strikes me is the creature shown “equipoised and nonchalant amidst barking dogs”; for the tourist sometimes overwhelmed by the colorful chaos of India, this could well be the most relevant elephant.(…)

Portrait of the author as a patient pachyderm:

People cut in line and tread on my toes, which strike me as things Bhagwan Swaminarayan would not do. It seems the combined efforts of the Akshardham’s robots, elephants and talking boats in relaying BAPS’s essential message of humble compassion may still not have been enough.

As I leave the temple, a horde of rickshaw drivers surrounds me, loudly and physically hustling for my business. I again try to adopt the posture of the unflappable elephant.

But unlike Henry and the hijras, this elephant has balls. Jonathan gets all New York on motherfuckers:

Then it occurs to me that that elephant must get ripped off all the time, and I argue furiously with the drivers until one of them relents and agrees to take me back to central Delhi on the meter.

Balls and all!

I have numerous jobs in addition to my writing, one of which involves working with new technology. I know it’s a stereotype to say that Indians are good with computers, but I welcome it in my case, mostly because it’s hilariously untrue. I’ve avoided technology as much as possible—I didn’t have an email address until 1996, and it’s still a crapshoot if my cell phone is working—despite coming from a family of technophiles. What they actually do to these computers, I have no idea, but despite being voted Most Likely to Spill Coke On the Keyboard Again, I find myself reasonably skilled at this new IT-oriented gig. Nature or nurture? Or dumb luck? Discuss.

But what about those who are not just computer illiterate, but actually unable to read or write? Microsoft has a plan: make computers that don’t depend on words. This March 2006 USA Today article talks about how a new breed of computers can help often-illiterate domestic servants:

Working with a local advocacy group, Microsoft has developed a prototype of a system that would connect illiterate domestic workers in India with families seeking their services. The system uses pictures, video and voice commands to tell women what jobs are available, how much the jobs pay and where they are.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? For one thing:

they [the domestic workers] had trouble seeing why a computerized system for finding work was better than traditional word-of-mouth

Additionally, the computer’s images and pictures had to bridge language and cultural gaps, such as this one:

the women associated neighborhoods with landmarks rather than addresses, so an interactive map and verbal directions had to be tweaked to represent that.

Finally—the big hurdle: implementation. This CNET article discusses the difficulties poorer areas of India have getting computer literate. Apart from the most obvious issue of languages, there is problem of power:

To save power, the PCs run on car and truck batteries. Unfortunately, the batteries regularly need recharging and the public electrical power system can’t always handle the demand.

and crime:

Three weeks ago, the village transformer blew because too many people tapped into it illegally, a chronic problem here. The government refused to rebuild the transformer until the villagers promised to punish anyone who stole power.

and bad freakin’ luck:

The day after it was rebuilt, the transformer blew again.

From the always interesting Marginal Revolution -

One third of the value of Indian fruits and vegetables ends up destroyed or spoiled on the way to market, mostly because of bad infrastructure, most of all bad roads.

A commentor @ Marginal Revolution notes that the “spoilage” rate in the US is 1/10 of this - or nearly 30% more food available en toto for a given amount of production. As Amartya Sen famously pointed out, modern hunger ain’t about growing more food, it’s about getting it to the market.

…or just of wads of rupees?

This one is so easy I’m (almost) embarrassed to blog it, but our duty of chronicling the ongoing encounter of Western and South Asian cultures requires that we note this first-person piece by the Los Angeles Times’ new India correspondent, Henry Chu:

On a recent afternoon, as I stood surrounded by a dozen workers hammering, sawing and drilling in my new apartment, they materialized out of nowhere, two sari-clad women with suspiciously mannish features.

The taller one had a broad face, a big nose and a purple sari — a color I like, but not on her. The other was thin, almost bird like, in every way: face, body, voice. Something about their manner, or their rather harsh, heavily made-up look, put me on guard.

I’ll let you read the piece, noting only that although it certainly possesses a sensationalist edge, the author does note the historical background of hijras and recent status victories, such as the third-sex option on government forms. (How many other countries offer that, I wonder?)

In any case, Henry was shaken up by the shake-down:

The short one continued to appeal to me directly, gazing at me meaningfully and sprinkling her Hindi with unmistakable English phrases like “a thousand rupees” (about $22). At one point she knelt down and touched my feet in a sign of obeisance or importunity. Then, growing frustrated by my stinginess, she drew up the hem of her sari, perhaps to warn me that she was ready to flash her mutilated parts, a common tactic among eunuchs to hurry horrified partygoers into forking over cash to get their uninvited guests to leave.

I won’t spoil the ending. But I will issue a politically-correct tsk, tsk, at Chu’s sign-off line:

When I see them through the peephole, I don’t answer the door.

Instead, I tiptoe back and huddle quiet as a mouse, praying that they’ll go away, while an annoying voice in my head snickers, “Who’s the eunuch now?” I don’t answer that either.

Stay long enough in India, brother Henry, and you’ll surely grow a saffron set of your own!

Flame away, people. It’s a rainy day where I am right now, and we could use the heat.

In the latest issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria examines what many Americans have recently been wondering: “How Long Will America Lead the World?”

…Americans have replaced Britons atop the world, and we are now worried that history is happening to us. History has arrived in the form of “Three Billion New Capitalists,” as Clyde Prestowitz’s recent book puts it, people from countries like China, India and the former Soviet Union, which all once scorned the global market economy but are now enthusiastic and increasingly sophisticated participants in it. They are poorer, hungrier and in some cases well trained, and will inevitably compete with Americans and America for a slice of the pie. A Goldman Sachs study concludes that by 2045, China will be the largest economy in the world, replacing the United States.

It is not just writers like Prestowitz who are sounding alarms. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, reflects on the growing competence and cost advantage of countries like China and even Mexico and says, “It’s unclear how many manufacturers will choose to keep their businesses in the United States.” Intel’s Andy Grove is more blunt. “America … [is going] down the tubes,” he says, “and the worst part is nobody knows it. They’re all in denial, patting themselves on the back, as the Titanic heads for the iceberg full speed ahead…” [Link]

I find many parallels between this and the long denied facts surrounding global warming. I saw Gore’s fantastic powerpoint presentation/movie two weekends ago and it struck me how slow to react people can be even when they know they are on the losing side of time. Zakaria goes on to point out the same thing that I mentioned in an earlier post and that Vinod tried to push back on a bit:

The national academies’ report points out that China and India combined graduate 950,000 engineers every year, compared with 70,000 in America; that for the cost of one chemist or engineer in the U.S. a company could hire five chemists in China or 11 engineers in India; that of the 120 $1 billion-plus chemical plants being built around the world one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

There are some who see the decline of science and technology as part of a larger cultural decay. A country that once adhered to a Puritan ethic of delayed gratification has become one that revels in instant pleasures. We’re losing interest in the basics—math, manufacturing, hard work, savings—and becoming a postindustrial society that specializes in consumption and leisure. “More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees,” says Immelt. “So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we’re well on our way…” [Link]

I woke up on Saturday morning, rolled out of bed and made a cuppa tea. “Terror plot near Toronto”, screamed my first email of the day and I almost choked on my chai masala (thanks, Abhi!). My blood pressure grew worse as I scoured the web for more and found only speculation, fabricated tie ins with Al Qaeda and fictitious “targets”. My five simple ‘W’s remained unanswered. Three days later a story has finally emerged in bits and pieces.

A report by the Toronto Star says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service began monitoring internet sites, which the suspects allegedly used, and in 2004 brought the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in on the case to facilitate a criminal investigation. Toronto mayor David Miller was informed of the investigation this past winter due to growing concerns about the group’s activity. Upon learning of their plot to build a bomb using ammonium nitrate, investigators intercepted the delivery of three tons of fertilizer to certain group members in a massive sting operation. There have also been reports of a connection between the Toronto group and two U.S. citizens, one was indicted while the other was arrested on terror charges earlier this year.

Shortly after the operation, on Friday night, RCMP officers arrested 17 Canadian residents on terror-related charges in a raid on their homes. Many of these suspects are long-time Canadian residents, five of them are teens under 18 years of age while the oldest two in the group are 30 and 43 years of age.

Details of the suspects are being revealed slowly as trusty journos bang on doors and beat on windows to answer that one as-yet elusive ‘W’. Who?

Many thanks to the tipster who posted a link on the news tab to this column by Errol Louis in the New York Daily News. Louis, whose columns often focus on ear-to-the-street developments in New York’s immigrant communities and communities of color, devotes today’s piece to the launch, this afternoon, of a report on safe learning for immigrants in the NYC public schools. It’s a broad, holistic understanding of safety that means fewer cops, more resources, and protection from immigration authorities.

What’s remarkable is that this report, based on two years of fieldwork supported by a prestigious non-profit called the Urban Justice Center, is the work of desis — the young brothers and sisters in DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) Youth Power. These young desi activists are taking on subjects that are important to all immigrant families and indeed to any family with kids in the New York schools.

It’s an encouraging example of identity politics used for inclusive, coalition-building purposes: the desi identification gives a group like DRUM its base and stability, but the work reaches far beyond the narrow interests of that base.

You can agree or disagree with this approach, or for that matter with the overall “Education Not Deportation” umbrella theme of this action, but it’s nice to see the DRUM Youth Power work give an opportunity for a major tabloid columnist to educate the city about desis:

The slang term Desi refers to immigrants from South Asia - including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and parts of the diaspora including Africa, England and the Caribbean.

They are part of the backbone of our city - including the cab drivers, domestics and restaurant workers who collectively form our largest and fastest-growing immigrant group.

Working-class Desi kids, according to a survey summarized in the DRUM report, are sick of seeing metal detectors, armed cops and bullying administrators prowling school halls.

“A climate of fear is being created,” says Refat (Shoshi) Doza, a 20-year-old Queens College student. “That’s not the way to teach a child.” Raquibul Alam Nayeem, a 17-year-old student at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens, agrees.

To Louis at least, the sisters and brothers in DRUM are setting an example for all to emulate:

The Department of Education should listen closely to DRUM’s youth leaders, particularly the explosive allegation that some schools, in violation of longstanding city policy, may be turning over students’ citizenship information to immigration officials.

By standing up and complaining, these kids are learning lessons that will prepare them to be the kind of outside-the-box thinkers our city and nation need.

The report launches this afternoon at 5 PM at a community meeting in Jackson Heights, for anyone interested in attending. Congratulations and Big Up! to the DRUM crew for their hard work.

Since I can’t top Greatbong’s review of Fanaa, let me just offer three thoughts and a comic ghazal.

First, I missed Kajol, and I’m glad she’s back. She sure beats Preity Zinta.

After the exciting snowmobile chase through the mountains of Kashmir (filmed in Poland, of course), I thought Kajol was the best thing in Fanaa. She was certainly more interesting to watch than Aamir Khan, who was just phoning it in most of the time. (He also looked pallid in the close-ups. Everything all right, Aamir? Hope you’re staying off the white stuff; you don’t want to go out like Fardeen)

Second thought: Most big-ticket Hindi films use foreign locations as a visual gimmick. They give you landscapes and cityscapes that simply don’t exist in India, so you aren’t stuck looking at the same old smoggy skylines. (Some popular spots in recent films have been Thailand, Australia, and Mauritius.)

For its part, the special locale in Fanaa is… the city of Delhi! The first half of the movie is largely shot around the Red Fort, Jantar Mantar, Qutub Minar, Purana Qila, and Lodhi Gardens (and yes, I stole that list from Wikipedia). Delhi’s attractions actually looked pretty nice.

The domestic setting means there are no item numbers in Fanaa with scores of scantily clad white women gyrating on a beach. (I hope that means you’re more likely to go see the movie.)

Third thought: our tickets cost $10 each. I hope that goes some of the way to countering the ridiculous ban on the film in Gujurat. (Naachgaana reports that one theater in the state is now showing the film after the Supreme Court ruled the state must provide police protection to the theater.)

From the News Tab (thanks, Aliya), a link to an article in the New York Daily News: “Bhangra dance workout is a sweaty fitness celebration.” It’s a profile of Sarina Jain, whose “Masala Bhangra” aerobics classes have been mentioned at Sepia Mutiny before. The highlight has to be this passage:

Jain infuses her classes with elements of both Indian and American cultures, alternating shouts of “Balle Balle!” - a Punjabi expression of joy - with very American exclamations of “Sexy arms! Sexy arms!”

The steady beats of Bhangra and shouts of encouragement from Jain keep the energy level up, even as students’ faces get pink.

Jain’s students - women and one man at a recent session at a Manhattan gym — pulse their arms and follow her footwork as she instructs the class using a headset microphone.

“Her enthusiasm is quite infectious,” said Pradyot Dhulipala, a 26-year-old programmer and the only man in the class. Dhulipala said he mentioned Jain’s workout in his blog and got 30 to 40 additional hits that day. (link)

30 to 40 additional hits on his blog, huh? I wonder if we can do a little better: here. Pradyot’s comments on his experience at Masala Bhangra are pretty entertaining, and might bear comparing to Abhi’s own gym obsession:

Since I’ve written a lot on Indian writers from Bengal (and lately, the South), I often get emails from people saying, “when are you going to write about Punjabi literature? And what about Sikh writers?” My response is pretty simple: a person needs to be inspired. Ethnic and religious loyalty ought to take a back seat to the quality of the writing, and the effect it has on you as an individual reader. If that means Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, or Zadie Smith get more of one’s critical attention than Amrita Pritam, so be it.

But I was recently invited to give a talk on Sikh writers at a small Sikh Studies conference at Hofstra University, so I started reading authors that I didn’t know very well — and I was, in fact, quite impressed. So over the course of this summer I hope to profile some Punjabi writers, including some that are Sikh, starting with Ajeet Cour, Kartar Singh Duggal, and Khushwant Singh (who writes in English). Incidentally, many of these writers’ works are accessible in North America and the UK, through sites like Indiaclub.com or Amazon Marketplace sellers.

The past month or so has taught me that there are a lot of people out there that want to see this blog, and what it is all about, succeed. The emails we recently received offering technical support, as well as the offers of financial support we have gotten, have led me to conclude something similar to what one forward looking American politician once said. To paraphrase:

“We’ve earned capital in this blogosphere, blog capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.”

So with that I am announcing the creation of The Desi Dad Project.

For the past six months I have been mulling this idea over in my head. Photographs, even without any words or explanations, can convey a tremendous amount of information and history. Just look through these pictures of some of the first Indian Americans that came to the U.S in the early 20th century, most of them Sikh Punjabis. Recently, with the immigration debate in this country raging on, we have discussed the signifigance of the 1965 Immigration Act and how many of our fathers immigrated to the U.S. as a result of this act. Eventually this led to many of our births. :)

So this is what I am proposing, particularly in light of Father’s Day which is just two weeks away. I want you guys to upload a single picture of your dad. I want a photographic archive that captures the spirit of what it meant to be an immigrant in this country as part of the second wave. I want to capture that part of our collective history before it rots away in old albums in our basements, attics, and closets. This project won’t end with Father’s Day though but will keep accepting phtographs.

Here are the criteria you must meet before uploading a picture of your father into this new archive I am proposing:

• Your father immigrated to the United States between 1965 and 1985. If he arrived a couple of years before 1965 it is okay, but please do not upload pictures taken after 1985. I am looking for pictures that capture the experience of a SPECIFIC generation for the purposes of this project.
• Your father came from a country in South Asia (e.g. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.) or from ANY other country so long as his ethnicity can be traced back to a South Asian country.
• The picture you upload has to have been snapped in America.
• I strongly prefer that your father should be the only person visible in the photograph (feel free to crop the original picture). Pictures of individuals tell a different story than pictures of families. If you don’t have ANY pictures of you father alone then maybe you have one with the two of you together.

It is time once again for the annual North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA) conference. This year it is being held in Atlanta on the June 16th weekend. I have attended this worthwhile conference the past two years, 2004 in Los Angeles and 2005 in Washington D.C. No, I am not a lawyer just a lawyer groupie (although I pass myself off as a tort lawyer when mingling amongst their kind). In addition to getting to attend fantastic seminars, NASABA is also a great place to flirt with federal clerks as well as meet desi attorneys who will one day run for office. Just read my recap from last year. Unfortunately, despite their gracious invitation, I won’t be able to make it down to Atlanta this year, but all you lawyers (and lawyer groupies) should:

More than 400 South Asian judges, attorneys and law students will gather in Atlanta for the third annual national convention of the North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA), June 16-18, marking a year of progress for the South Asian legal community.

Achievements in the U.S. and Canada to be acknowledged at the conference include high-profile South Asian legal appointments, diversity strides and greater representation of South Asian concerns in business, entertainment and education. Expert speakers will cover more than a dozen topics at this year’s conference, “Networking to Influence, Influencing the Network: South Asian Lawyers Changing the Flow of the Mainstream.”

Seminars, workshops and networking events will provide thought-provoking and productive sessions for attendees to review the year’s significant strides and establish new objectives. Representing more than 5,000 South Asian American attorneys, this year’s NASABA convention is expected to be larger than previous gatherings. The Convention, for one memorable weekend, will bring together attorneys from firms, large and small, from small private companies to large public companies, like CompuCredit Corporation, a convention-level sponsor, from the public and private interest sectors, from all branches of government, and from the world of academia.

The keynote this year will be given by Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal (see previous SM posts 1,2,3,4). Here is a schedule which includes a list of all the great seminar panelists they have coming out.

Look, I love animals. I mean, I really love animals. I grew up with a dog, I have cats, and I walk some of the dogs in my neighborhood to break up my writing day. But I draw a line at this: Indian woman marries cobra.

Now, all phallic jokes aside, let’s take a look at this. This woman was sick. She started feeding the snake and got cured. Perhaps this was psychological, or coincidental, or perhaps it was indeed a religious sign. But basic questions are being ignored here.

For one, how did the snake propose? I’m assuming this Bimbala Das is a nice Indian girl who didn’t spring the question on it/him? Also:

Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives,

Then how do you know it said yes? What if it has a little cobra wife and babies already? You mean the incredible racket of an Indian wedding isn’t conducive to luring snakes into matrimony?

Second, what are the snake’s rights? Does he know own her property? Did he provide some kind of dowry? And, perhaps most important from the cobra’s point of view—does the snake have any conjugal rights? I mean, I’m just asking here, it’s a logical question.

“I am happy,” said her mother Dyuti Bhoi, who has two other daughters and two sons to marry off.

Eeeeeeeenteresting. Perhaps a trip to the zoo is in order? I’ve heard penguins mate for life….

a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India’s Orissa state

This is the most shocking of all. A cobra can get 2000 guests to come to its wedding in the heat of India in June and I can’t get half my guests to come up past 14th street on a weekday.

Batman has Alfred Pennyworth. James Bond has Q. Jack Bauer has Chloe O’Brian. Sidney Bristow has Marshall Flinkman.

…and now Sepia Mutiny has Kunjan Shah and Paul Singh.

We put out a call for help recently so that SM could continue to grow and improve. Many of you answered our call and we thank you ALL sincerely. We have decided to add two people to help with site administration and also to help improve this blog with lots of new features over time. Like Lexus, we here at SM are in the relentless pursuit of perfection. So far we have been handing out the equivalent of blog cocaine. Soon we will flood the blogosphere with blog crack.

Kunjan is only 22 and lives in Kansas City. We needed some young blood in our North Dakota bunker. Everyone around here has been going around using the phrase “when I was young,” way too often. We knew things had to change. Around the bunker we refer to Kunjan by his codename: The Keymaster.

Paul is a bit of a mystery. He is currently in New York although seems to be a Californian originally. We picked Paul for his years of experience and also his great aesthetic sense. We want to give SM a bit of a makeover and he seems to be the right person for the job. Around the bunker we refer to Paul by his codename: The Gatekeeper.

Please join me in welcoming Kunjan and Paul.

We are also in the process of moving our site to a new dedicated server. SM reader Krishnan has been instrumental in helping us secure the new server and we would really like to convey our thanks to him for all the time that he has put into it so far.

Because so many readers have offered to help and seem so capable, we are going to try and create a space in the near future whereby readers can offer technical suggestions to help improve the site. Think of it as open-sourcing. Right now we use Moveable Type but we may eventually switch to Wordpress. For those of you who have offered your help, look for a post about this within the next month or two and we may contact some of you by email.

Oh dear. Andhra Pradesh is the seventh Indian state to ban The Da Vinci Code. Why?

“We have taken the decision because the release of the movie could have led to demonstrations and trouble,” Paul Bhuyan, the special chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told The Associated Press. More here. Apparently, the chief secretary took Tommy Lee Jones seriously in Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid animals and you know it.”

Now, I have not seen the movie, nor have I read the book. I tried, but I didn’t like the writing. Thanks to the combination of hype and Wikipedia, I know the whole damn story, right down to the mad albino monk’s favorite method of self-flagellation. Everyone I know who has seen the movie has thought it stuffy and boring, but I will quote only my mother “That Indiana Jones was much funnier.”

We at the Mutiny don’t talk as much as we should about the desi presence in the central United States. If you’ve wandered through the heartland you know that desis are everywhere, principally thanks to the hotel business. And then of course there are the major cities like Houston, Dallas or Denver where I know we have plenty of readers.

Indian corporations are ahead of us in this regard, as witnessed by the following item from Alabama. Now, for a few years the Deep South has been a hub for foreign investment. There’s an enormous Nissan plant in Jackson, Miss., and a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Ala., that have created thousands of jobs. Part of what draws these firms is the abundance of cheap skilled labor marooned by the manufacturing recession, as well as the anti-union laws. Still, anyone who’s spent time in the South knows that foreign investment has wrought some powerful economic and cultural changes.

But Indian firms? Well, ITC Infotech has just committed to open its third US location in Birmingham, where it hopes to ramp up to $100m in annual business. And Alabama authorities hope this will start a flood of Indian investment:

ITC is the first company to announce plans to locate in the state since the establishment of the Alabama-India Business Partnership, a group set up to stimulate economic activity and investment. More are expected follow.

Automotive parts maker Span Industries has indicated it wants to come to Birmingham, as has another Indian auto parts manufacturer and a biotechnology firm, said Anil Agarwal, president of AK-Global Solutions Inc. and founder of the Alabama India Business Partnership.

“In the next five to 10 years, we will be doing the same thing we are doing for the Indian companies as we are doing for the Japanese and Korean companies today,” Agarwal said…

I’m all in favor of this sort of investment. But one thing that always amuses me in these stories is the special type of boosterism that they breed, in which the investment origin and destination are touted as perfect partners because they match up so well culturally:

Not only does Birmingham offer a geographical hub on which to build a solid Southeastern presence, Agarwal says, but culturally the two communities share several common denominators.

For instance, Agarwal says, both Alabama and India have strong agricultural backgrounds that transitioned to a manufacturing base and only relatively recently have begun to shift into research in areas such as biomedical science and biotechnology.

“They also both have very traditional family values,” making India and Alabama compatible business partners, Agarwal says.

Meaning vaat exactly, Agarwal-saheb? I know some families down South that are anything but traditional. And those Baptist churches every twenty yards don’t leave much room for masjids and mandirs. What the regions really share is humidity, verandas, and big ol’ flying cockroaches. I trust Agarwal-uncle wasn’t trying to allude to something more sinister — Old times there are not forgotten — and instead look forward to a growing desi role in the cosmopolitan revitalization of the South.

I self-identify as a gym rat. My body begins to feel ill and lethargic if I go even a week without working out. I have been working out at a gym regularly for the last eleven years. I consider going to the gym an almost spiritual duty. I believe in a personal philosophy that you must keep your body in the best shape you possibly can at all times so that it will be clean and ready if called into service for a greater cause (whatever that might be). I know that might seem silly to a lot of people but I really mean it. It isn’t about vanity. I actually eat four servings of fruits a day also, because being in shape isn’t just about going to the gym but about taking care of your health in general.

When I am at the gym I do not socialize. I only know the first names of one or two people at my gym. I always workout alone, I wear headphones, and 80% of the time I am there I don’t even make eye-contact with anyone. The gym is my “me” time. It is where I meditate on the things bothering me as well as on the things I am happy about. I toss around ideas for blog posts and also consider whether I should ban that one commenter who has been bugging me for months. It is my hour and a half of refuge from the storm outside.

An article published this week at Slate.com has got me reconsidering everything. Far from living a good example, maybe I, and those of you like me, are just a bunch of freaks in the making:

There have been three major terror attacks in the West over the past five years—9/11, the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and the 7/7 suicide attacks on the London Underground. For all the talk of a radical Islamist conspiracy to topple Western civilization, there are many differences between the men who executed these attacks. The ringleaders of 9/11 were middle-class students; the organizers of the Madrid bombings were mainly immigrants from North Africa; the 7/7 bombers were British citizens, well-liked and respected in their local communities. And interpretations of Islam also varied wildly from one terror cell to another. Mohamed Atta embraced a mystical (and pretty much made-up) version of Islam. For the Madrid attackers, Islam was a kind of comfort blanket. The men behind 7/7 were into community-based Islam, which emphasized being good and resisting a life of decadence.

The three cells appear to have had at least one thing in common, though—their members’ immersion in gym culture. Often, they met and bonded over a workout. If you’ll forgive the pun, they were fitness fanatics. Is there something about today’s preening and narcissistic gym culture that either nurtures terrorists or massages their self-delusions and desires? Mosques, even radical ones, emphasize Muslims’ relationships with others—whether it be God, the ummah (Islamic world), or the local community. The gym, on the other hand, allows individuals to focus myopically on themselves. Perhaps it was there, among the weightlifting and rowing machines, that these Western-based terror cells really set their course. [Link]

Spring has long sprung and like several of you, I was at a wedding last weekend. ‘Tis the season for bridal registries, trips out-of-town and getting faded on Black at receptions (via trunk bar or open, natch). Even though it has almost been a week since I saw a priest recite ancient exhortations at the Cathedral of the Incarnation, I’m still very marriage-minded on this Friday. You would be too, if you had been at an Orthodox ceremony; I had several hours to ponder tradition, obligation and tying the knot (both literally and figuratively).

Then there’s the Mutiny’s role in keeping the vedding bells ringing in my head; I had read the “Modern Love” essay penned by Sarita James when it came out, but Amardeep’s post from earlier today prompted me to visit it again, since I knew it would be a hot topic (I predict 300+ comments). It’s mildly amusing to me that the one issue which can bring this entire community together/rouse lurkers from their anonymity/stir up so much drama is marriage. Not politics, not Arundhati, not spelling. Marriage. It’s a testament to how much angst and weirdness we all feel about this rite of passage, that whenever we feature a post like this latest, every F5 will bring you a brand new comment.

While we already had a Friday nanofiction orgy which featured a few 55-word biodatas, I think that the time is right to “go there” again. We haven’t 55’d in a while, might as well get reacquainted via a subject which inspires all of us to say something. As always, you may flash us with fiction about whatever you wish, just be kind enough to leave your words (or a link to them) in the comments below. I know, I usually name our 55Fridays after music I listened to in college, but no wedding reception is official until you’ve played Frank (though to be clear, the couple I just celebrated with danced to U2’s highly awesome “With or Without You”.) What are you waiting for? Nanofiction, already.

I’m sure everyone is sick of reading “my parents want me to have an arranged marriage, and I’m like, totally annoyed and stuff” stories in the American papers. Officially I am annoyed by them too, though I actually find these stories curiously addictive even in their predictability — like bad pop songs on the radio, or celebrity gossip.

Sarita James has one of these pieces in the New York Times “matters of the heart” column from the Sunday Style section. Though she initially resisted her parents’ attempts to have her arranged off, at the merry old age of 19 she decided she liked a boy they had picked out for her (he was 26) and got engaged. Even at the time of the engagement, the boy’s family indicated that he still had to “see” two other girls, in order to avoid “formally offending” their families.

So he goes off to India, and doesn’t call for a week or two. Oh oh. The family soon finds out the boy got engaged to an engineer in Bangalore! And Sarita gets these emails:

Dear Sarita, I am so sorry for what happened. I wish I had gotten married to you. Matters were taken out of my control. I want to apologize profusely both to you and your family. Unfortunately, I can never explain what happened.

A second e-mail message, posted five minutes later, read:

Dear Sarita, I regret my indiscretion in that first e-mail. Could you please delete it? Please trust that my apologies are sincere. (link)

The snake! But the explanation is even worse than the content of those emails:

A few years later, I learned that a large dowry had been exchanged as part of his wedding. Most of it had been passed along to his sister’s bridegroom when she was married the same year. Not only had the suitable boy let me down, he had also perpetuated the injustices of the dowry system. (link)

So not only is the boy a flagrant yellow-bellied wus, he’s a sell-out to the dowry system. At the end of the article, Sarita indicates that she’s still single, and she’s not doing the arranged marriage thing anymore. Good for her; hope she never gets an email like that again.

Anyone out there have comparable war stories they want to share (anonymously, if you prefer)? I’m particularly curious about nutty things that happen to people because of the internet.

The words in the subject line of Sree’s SAJA email blast made me cringe. HATE CRIME: NJ Record on Hindu family targeted

Oy.

I’ll take the tentative exotification over blatant intimidation any day, thanks. What puzzles me most about this crime is the syntax of the spray-painted hate:

We Kill U.

We will Fire your house.

Watch Your Kids.

Feel free to scream at me for this, but I know desis who sound just like that, not that I’m in any way implying that it’s an inside job OR that asshat racists are usually articulate. “We will Fire your house”? To quote OMC, how bizarre.

More from the Bergen record:

Those threats and other profanities — spray-painted on a two-story house in black and orange and neon green — are terrorizing a Wayne family of five who police say have been singled out for their Hindu beliefs and Asian Indian roots.

Tonight a Spelling Bee champion will be crowned in America. Unlike the Kentucky Derby there is no chance that one of the competitors here will be shot if they come up lame. Most likely. This competition marks the annual pinnacle of Indian American intellectual flexing, and we can almost guarantee a Thomas Friedman op-ed tomorrow.

Tonight we (Indian Americans) make up for all of the incidents where we got picked last in gym class or that one time we didn’t make the high school badminton team because we cut our head open and had to get like a whole bunch of stiches the night before tryouts and were in the emergency room until very late at night and the doctor said that we should stay away from all strenuous physical activity for at least a week but we tried out anyways…and got cut, from the badminton team, which even our other more nerdy friends made it onto.

Throughout the rest of the day please check this post for updates. I might be a little behind some of you during parts of the day but I will hopefully be online for the championship round this evening which will be televised on ABC.

Here are the desi horses in the race starting from Round 4 onwards. This is how it works. If you see a word appear under their picture it means they have been eliminated and should be banished forever from our thoughts. There is an ages old Scottish saying that is quite appropriate here: “There can be only one.”

Up from the news tab: Sonia Gandhi is going to be played by Italian actress Monica Belluci in an upcoming (apolitical) biopic called Sonia. In his comment on the article, Bongopondit points out that director Jag Mundhra has made his mark as a filmmaker doing a string of sleazy ‘skinemax’ flicks, with titles like Tales of Kama Sutra, Tropical Heat, and the memorably-titled Wild Cactus. Perhaps not by accident, on a number of these ventures Mundhra has worked with Producer Ashok Amritraj, who became the Harvey Weinstein of the genre before officially graduating to mainstream Hollywood mediocrity. (Though actually, I thought Raising Helen was a pretty decent romantic comedy, and it did have Sakina Jaffrey…)

The story gets more interesting: interspersed with spicier fare, Mundhra has also done a number of serious (but minor) Hindi films along the way, some of them with heavy-hitting actors (Kabir Bedi in Vishkanya! Nandita Das in Bawandar!). Most recently, of course, Mundhra directed TMBWITW Aishwarya Rai and Naveen Andrews in Provoked. The film gains some legitimacy from the cast, from the soundtrack by A.R. Rahman, and from the true story it is based on: a British court case that tested the legal definition of ‘provocation’ (Regina v. Ahluwalia; the Southall Black Sisters played a major role in her defense). There is a serious legal question here: can prolonged experience of severe domestic violence be considered sufficient provocation for a kind of defensive homicide? I would tend to think not, but as I understand it the British court finally decided in Kiranjit Ahluwalia’s favor. (Update: the court reduced her sentence to time served, but they did not reverse the guilty verdict.)

As a final note, there’s an irony in Jag Mundhra’s schizophrenic directing work that I can’t quite understand: many of Mundhra’s serious films protest crimes against women (Bawandar is about a woman who has been raped, and Provoked is about domestic violence), while his erotic thrillers obviously feature the exploitative display of women’s bodies. Interesting…

Up until recently, I had always assumed that I was one of the few desis who seriously considered herself a goth. No, I don’t walk around in black lipstick and white powder—and that’s one of the misconceptions that I want this post to refute. The Desi Goth is a rare, largely nocturnal species that does not always associate with other desis, or goths. Here are a few simple guidelines.

1. I do not claim to universally define “Desi Goth.” I leave that to the comments section of this post. In my experience, both desis and goths are very touchy about labeling, which leads to some interesting problems of self-identification. That said, if you’re a Desi, and you find yourself influenced, moved or interested in goth culture, welcome aboard.

2. A brief history of goth culture here. There are an infinite number of types of goths. Marilyn Manson is not considered goth culture, but don’t tell that to his followers. Victorian goths, with their affinity for cognac and opium, their penchant for wearing ruffles and velvet in summer, their gramaphones and their oil paintings, have very little in common with the punk goth, who wears torn tee’s, squats in a basement apartment, plays in a death metal band, and is covered in Celtic tattoos.

3. Goth culture never goes away. It goes underground. From the tortured antiheros of Byron’s poetry, to Goethe’s Faust, to tecno-goth masterpieces like Blade Runner and Metropolis, to Noseferatu, Lestat, Dracul and all the other famous vampires, goth culture pops up in cycles in art, literature, pop culture and public consciousness. Particularly in troubled times. (The term gothic originates from the late 18th century, to describe popular and high culture reacting to political and social uncertainty. An excellent resource to the history of the gothic .; note the limited information from a Desi perspective. here

4. Misconception One: Not all goths work in video stores. There is such a thing as corporate goth. They work from within the system. Admittedly, their attire is restricted, but you do what you can.

I just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that AIDS “turns” 25 this week. India now has the largest number of infected people and is still trending downhill:

Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases were reported, there is no sign of a halt to the pandemic which is likely to spread to every corner of the globe, the head of the United Nations’ AIDS agency said.

Peter Piot was speaking as UNAIDS released a report which declared that the world’s response to the disease, that has infected about 65 million people and killed 25 million, has been nowhere near adequate. Five years after a special U.N. session pledged its commitment to halt the AIDS pandemic, only a few countries have met the targets laid down…

India has the largest number of people living with the virus. With 5.7 million infections, it has overtaken South Africa’s total of 5.5 million. But, the epidemic is still at its worst in sub-Saharan Africa, where 90% of the world’s HIV-infected children live. [Link]

The first reported case in India came nearly 5 years after the first reported case in the U.S.

The first case of HIV infection in India was diagnosed among commercial sex workers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in 1986. Soon after, a number of screening centres were established throughout the country. Initially the focus was on screening foreigners, especially foreign students. Gradually, the focus moved on to screening blood banks. By early 1987, efforts were made up to set up a national network of HIV screening centres in major urban areas. [Link]

The statistics are grim:

The UN Population Division projects that India’s adult HIV prevalence will peak at 1.9% in 2019. The UN estimates there were 2.7 million AIDS deaths in India between 1980 and 2000. During 2000-15, the UN has projected 12.3 million AIDS deaths and 49.5 million deaths during 2015-50.

A 2002 report by the CIA’s National Intelligence Council predicted 20 million to 25 million AIDS cases in India by 2010, more than any other country in the world. [Link]

So you guys tell me. We know what some of the problems are. What more can be done to stop this boulder from rolling?