I’ll freely admit it. I enjoy reality TV. The obsession began during summer vacation in 1992 when I would sneak peaks at the first installment of MTV’s The Real World. My mom hated the show (she despised MTV), but I thought the concept of getting to watch Julie, Eric, Kevin, Norm, Becky, Andre, and Heather B, regular people live their daily lives was amazing. To my 13-year old eyes, reality tv was an easily accessible documentary.

Well, the genre has come a long way since then, and has even taken a couple of steps back, but tonight ABC premieres what I like to call network television’s homage to the Real World for people who actually grew up watching The Real World, “One Ocean View.” The show, produced by Real World Producer Jonathan Murray and Joey Carson,

“revolves around a summer share beach house where eleven, attractive, single, career-driven New Yorkers flee Manhattan each Friday to escape the soaring city temperatures for a different kind of heat. One Ocean View is a show about people old enough to have real jobs, issues and baggage, but still young enough to leave all that behind and have a great time. Fun, flings and nights filled with romance heat up as the days grow shorter and the pressure builds to make this a summer to remember”(link.)

More importantly, this show marks the reality tv debut of a couple of semi-professional soccer playing, organic-pizza eating, twin sisters, Radha (l) and Miki (r) Agrawal. From some googling (thanks tvgasm) and their bios, which conveniently read almost the same, we learn that the two were quite popular at Cornell, where they both played soccer and were in the stage version of Cyrano De Bergerac, and quit investment banking to open up an organic pizza parlor in New York’s upper east side. Apparently, the pizza parlor, which has been featured on the food network, grew out of Miki’s lactose intolerance. I can’t say the show is going to be good, in fact everything I have read and seen about it indicates quite the opposite, but hey, it can’t be worse than divya and priya’s sweet sixteen/graduation party. One Ocean View premieres tonight on ABC at 10 pm (EDT).

On March 16th of this year, Abhi wrote about a first-in-man trial in the UK which went horribly awry for six volunteers who experienced heart, kidney and liver failure after they were given an experimental drug made by German firm TeGenero, called TGN 1412:

It is an anti-inflammatory agent makers hoped would become a lucrative treatment for rheumatism, leukaemia and multiple sclerosis.[link]

When we first posted about this nightmarish story, Doctors said they were “in the dark” and that they did not know exactly how these human guinea pigs would be affected. Unfortunately, now it seems we have an answer—and it is tragic:

Victims of the disastrous “Elephant Man” drugs trial have been told they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases as a result of being poisoned in the bungled tests. [link]

Nav Modi, 24, whose bloated face and swollen chest led to the nickname “Elephant Man”, said he did not know how long he would live.[link]

“It’s a really bizarre feeling when you discover you might be dead in a couple of years or even in a couple of months,” he said. “I feel like I’ve given away my life for £2,000.”[link]

It seems that not only were the volunteers (quite predictably) assured before participating in the trial that they would not suffer any life-threatening illnesses, they were told that after it was obvious that the test results were disastrous, too.

Four months later he still suffers from occasional lapses of memory, severe headaches, back pain and diarrhoea. (Modi) and the others had been led to believe that while their symptoms might persist for a while, their long-term future was not at risk.[link

Wrong. So very wrong.

One of the six victims was told last week he is already showing “definite early signs” of lymphatic cancer.

He and three others have also been warned that they are “highly likely” to develop incurable auto-immune diseases.[link]

The Washington Post today detailed the tragic history of Plan B (a.k.a. the morning after pill). It is crystal clear that right wing idealogy has been winning out over science for far too long. From Wikipedia:

Emergency contraception (EC) (also known as Emergency Birth Control (EBC), the morning-after pill, or postcoital contraception) refers to measures, that if taken after sex, may prevent a pregnancy.

Forms of EC include:

* Emergency contraceptive pill —referred to simply as “emergency contraception,” “ECPs,” or “ECs”, or “morning-after pill” —are hormones that act both to prevent ovulation or fertilisation, or perhaps the subsequent implantation of a fertilised egg (zygote). ECPs are not to be confused with chemical abortion methods that act after implantation has occurred.
* Intrauterine devices (IUDs) - usually used as a primary contraception method, but sometimes used as emergency contraception.

As opposed to regular methods of contraception, ECs are considered for use in occasional cases only, for example in the event of contraceptive failure. Since they act before implantation, they are considered medically and legally to be forms of contraception. However, some who are anti-abortion define pregnancy as beginning with fertilisation, so they consider EC to be a form of abortion. These claims remain controversial; see Controversy section for more detail. [Link]

The key thing to understand here is that idealogically driven elements in this country, working with the Bush Administration, have tried to equate the use of the morning after pill with abortion. When the public is misled in this way many feel they too should work against allowing over-the-counter sales of such a pill. This analogy is simply untrue. The morning after pill is a form of contraception. It works to prevent conception in the first place in cases ranging from rape and insest to when a condom breaks. It was back in 2004 that an independent FDA review board made up of scientists and health professionals recommended that the pill be sold over-the-counter:

”By overruling a recommendation by an independent F.D.A. review board, the White House is putting its own political interests ahead of sound medical policies that have broad support,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign. ”This White House is more interested in appealing to its electoral base than it is in protecting women’s health.”… [Link]

I’m currently California dreaming, so I didn’t have time to write an anniversary post for Sunday (I always forget anniversaries, so this is true to life).

However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you, dear readers. No, quite the contrary. Even though it has been two whole years we’ve been together, everything I see still reminds me of you. For example, on Saturday I was on my way to Adolph Gasser’s in San Francisco when I encountered my very first Patelco credit union.

How could I help but stop and take a snap? When I saw it I could think of nothing more than how much I wanted to share it with you, to know what you thought of it, to bask in the way you smile at me when we encounter something new.

The next day, I was out for a stroll in downtown Palo Alto and saw a BMW 325ci with the vanity plates you had always threatened to get for my Subaru. It was as if you were right there with me, laughing at our little secret joke, teasing me. I almost started to lean down to say something when I realized that you weren’t there. But rest assured that not a moment has passed when I didn’t think of you and how very lucky I am. I don’t deserve you all, I really don’t.

Just over a week ago SM commenter DesiDancer returned from a trip to Colorado and emailed me the following about a wonderful experience she had there:

I was invited to come teach dance classes at the East Indian Heritage Camp, last weekend. The organization, Colorado Heritage Camps, Inc. offers a series of ethnic camps (Latin American, Chinese, Korean, Desi, etc) every summer, for adopted children and their parents. They draw on members of the ethnic community to volunteer and help engage the families in culturally-minded activities during a 4-day camp, up in the mountains. In addition to fun stuff, there are also panel discussion with several different age groups, dealing with cultural identity, issues that may affect adoptees and their parents, and several child psychologists contribute to the curriculum. In addition to the dance classes I taught, I sat on a panel for jr. high aged kids, discussing reclamation of culture, biculturalism, and other issues…

Over the course of 4 days, several of the activities included Ayurvedic medicine, traditional dance, Bollywood dance, Rangoli drawing, traditional vegetable painting/block printing, games like Cricket and Gilli-Danda, yoga, cooking classes, music lessons, and lectures on Indian holidays, Indian weddings, travel to India, Indian history—with a weird specialty class in Freedom Fighters, and a book group. We ate desi food, and every night was a party with desi music. The closing night of camp, all the little kids (and big kids) performed dances from their classes, and the parents in my adult class performed a dance for the families, too. I’d spoken to one of the Directors of the camp about getting a DVD of “Calcutta Calling” to screen at the camp, one evening, but I think she is going to arrange it for next year instead. Though she said she watched the video stream at PBS…They loved the documentary.

Things are deteriorating pretty rapidly in Lebanon with the latest horrible incident of civilian casualties:

The UN secretary general has called on Security Council members to take urgent action after 54 Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on Sunday.

Kofi Annan asked council members to put aside differences and call for an immediate ceasefire, opposed by the US.

More than 30 children died in the Qana attack - the deadliest Israeli raid since hostilities began on 12 July when two Israeli soldiers were seized.

Israel is suspending air strikes for 48 hours, according to a US official. [Link]

Whatever tactical advantage Israel is hoping to gain with these airstrikes, it is losing strategic and diplomatic points by the day. The best way forward being discussed seems to be to a plan to deploy U.N. soldiers who are well-armed and provided with rules of engagement that would allow them to fight Hizbollah in order to control Lebanon’s southern border. Israel has said they would be okay with this as long as the U.N. soldiers would actively enforce instead of simply monitor. It is well known and openly derided that the U.N. has a very poor track record when it comes to enforcement duties. Nobody seems to want to put their soldiers into this hornet’s nest although they all agree that it’s a good idea in theory. Where do the U.N.’s Blue Helmets typically come from? It may surprise some of you:

The UN Charter stipulates that to assist in maintaining peace and security around the world, all member states of the UN should make available to the Security Council necessary armed forces and facilities. Since 1948, close to 130 nations have contributed military and civilian police personnel to peace operations. While detailed records of all personnel who have served in peacekeeping missions since 1948 are not available, it is estimated that up to one million soldiers, police officers and civilians have served under the UN flag in the last 56 years. As of November 2005, 107 countries were contributing a total of more than 70,000 uniformed personnel—the highest number since 1995.

Despite the large number of contributors, the greatest burden continues to be borne by a core group of developing countries. The 10 main troop-contributing countries to UN peacekeeping operations as of February 2006 were Bangladesh (10,172), Pakistan (9,630), India (8,996), Jordan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Uruguay, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.

About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one per cent from the United States (USA). [Link]

We went over to the multiplex in Doylestown, PA yesterday to watch Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara on the big screen. It was nicely done — relatively crisp at two and a half hours (not bad for a faithful rendition of a Shakespeare tragedy), and unpretentiously shot in rural Uttar Pradesh. It was also well-acted by a group of talented actors — Ajay Devgan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Kareena Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Viveik Oberoi (formerly known as “Vivek”), Saif Ali Khan, and Naseeruddin Shah. The standout performance is probably Saif Ali Khan’s Langda Tyagi (Iago), though I also thought Konkona Sen Sharma was quite good as Indu (Emilia).

Omkara bears some similarities to R.G. Varma’s Sarkar in that it takes the gruff realism of modern Indian gangster pictures and applies it to politics rather than the criminal world — the point being, of course, that there isn’t that much difference between the two. While Varma’s Sarkar was an allegory for the Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray, the “Bhaisahib” in Omkara is a rural political chief, perhaps a Chief Minister like Bihar’s Lalu Prasad Yadav (formerly known as “Laloo”). In his home environment, he commands near absolute authority and devotion from his followers, though the legal system at the Center (commanded by “Auntyji,” possibly a figure for Sonia Gandhi) is constantly nibbling away at his fiefdom. In Omkara, Bhaisahib is in and out of court, and he relies on his faithful “General,” Omkara, to handle his equally corrupt political rivals — sometimes by exposing them (via MMS video sex scandals, no less), and sometimes by simply shooting them down.

A few days ago I quipped to my fellow bloggers that Sepia Mutiny has now lasted significantly longer than my longest relationship. I like to think it is because I only invest my time in fruitful causes . Therefore, I may as well romance you guys. First some mood music. I was just going to quote some lines from the most appropriate song but Siddhartha found the video for it on YouTube:

I’m actually going to keep this entry short because I am sure one or two of the other bloggers will also write a post about their perspective on our second anniversary (which is tomorrow). On the internet things live and die pretty fast. I wasn’t sure if we’d last this long and we still have a ways to go to get to where some of us want to see the mutiny heading. Especially with elections coming up all of us are trying to make sure we keep a good balance between having fun and serving a purpose with what we write here. We are also trying to keep a good balance between being awake and needing to sleep (and not getting fired from our jobs or flunked out of graduate school).

What I wanted to do is to just say thank you all for this relationship. Because of this blog I have met people that my life would have been poorer without. I say that as both a reader and as a blogger. Maybe some of you can say the same. I hope you guys stick with us for at least another year and maybe its time some of you lurkers de-lurk.

On behalf of the bloggers, the intern, and the monkeys in our basement, Happy Anniversary.

For those of you feeling nostalgic here is the archive from August 2004.

I had one of those ‘whaaaaaat?’ moments reading the coverage of the latest arrests in the Mumbai 7/11 blasts investigation. Faisal and Muzamil Shaikh are brothers; Faisal is thought to have arranged for several others accused of conspiracy in the bombings to go to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) training camps across the border in Pakistan. It seems unclear exactly what Muzamil’s role was, though this paragraph in the Times article does contain a surprising detail:

Faisal Shaikh, the police said, appeared to have organized the passage of the others to Pakistan for military training. Muzamil Shaikh, on the other hand, while eager to follow his brother into a radical Islamist group, seems to have had second thoughts after being offered a position at Oracle. He had been employed on a contract basis, said a police officer who was part of the interrogations, pending the completion of company training. (link)

This is the first time I’ve heard of someone not in a movie choosing between life as a murderer, driven by a distorted kind of religious ideology, and life as a highly-paid employee in a blue-ribbon multinational corporation.

I’m also trying to parse Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s statements on Friday regarding the arrests so far:

Notwithstanding India’s assertions about the Lashker-e-Taiba’s (LeT) involvement in major terrorist strikes like the July 11 blasts in Mumbai, Pakistan has said it has no “prejudicial” evidence against the group.

Pointing out that the LeT was banned in his country, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said, “We don’t see any evidence of their activity that’s prejudicial.” (link)

What does he mean exactly by “prejudicial evidence”? Since the suspects have confessed to training in Pakistani territory, you would think that would be “dispositive” — at least on the question of whether Pakistan is doing enough to clamp down on the LeT. Perhaps he’s specifically referring to the 7/11 blasts? Even if so, this is a frustrating response: a more responsible thing to do would be to send troops to Muzaffarabad and surrounding areas, and destroy any camps that are still operating. A more responsible thing to say would be, “sorry.”

Yesterday, I wrote the first of two posts about the anomalous attention paid to (in that case) two brown actresses by the popular “Go Fug Yourself” blog. Fluffy as that post might have seemed, the discussion it prompted was by no means insignificant. My delayed epiphany about Mindy and Parminder was inpsired by their skin, specifically, how it didn’t conform to what much of the diaspora considers beautiful. It was the color of their skin and I know fellow older alt-music fans, it wasn’t black metallic.

This Friday, my thoughts move aimlessly, passing so many things: beauty, skin, pigmentation, fireworks, torture, St. Catherine of Alexandria. Perhaps your mind is similarly adrift— if so, write. Write about any and all of the above, or none of it if it doesn’t move you. The important thing is that you write a very short story, a tale so brief, it is composed of exactly 55 words. Ah, this Friday wanes, my energy with it…think of me when I’m sleeping. Of all the secrets that I’m keeping, some of which, I promise, will surface below…but only after you spill yours, my dears.

…I can see Sophia’s thigh!






Brimful brings yet ANOTHER brown fugging to our attention! This time, the fuggee is Sophia Hyatt Hayat, whom I am not so familiar with…but like I said before, that’s irrelevant when it comes to a good fugging. It’s totally possible to fug someone you don’t know. Sometimes, it’s even better. Anonymous fugging, if you will. Ah, I’ll stop fugging with you.

Unlike the previously blogged fuggings, this time Jessica was on top of things:

One of my basic rules of thumb is that, whatever you wear, you should make sure that it a) fits and b) covers your bits.

Solid.

And I mean that in the most fundamental way: this is not a screed against halter tops or mini-skirts or even (for once) shorts. I just mean that a mantilla is not a gown, and no one really wants to see your panties.

Stop hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s goin’ down…all us South Asians look alike, yaar. Thus, like Matthew Sweet once crooned, “Baby, we’re the same.”

This dress does not look alluring, nor does it make our Sexy Indian Hottie look like a mysterious flamenco dancer, or even like a contender for a role in Zorro 3: Zeta-Jones Doesn’t Do Straight To Video. It makes her look like she forgot part of her outfit.

As my beloved Father would have barked at Ms. Hayat, “GET A PETTICOAT!”

A comment on my Hindi film music post from Kush Tandon earlier in the week got me thinking:

Where do you buy India/ Bollywood music in electronic from? I have browsed Rhapsody, they seem decent. I could not find much on iTunes. Is there some other place too?

Or is it all pirated and/ or through buddies?

No one responded to the comment at the time — is it because everyone is in fact downloading pirated desi music and films over the internet, and they’re not sure they should admit it?

There are a number of good explanations for why downloading is popular. First, not everyone lives near an Indo-Pak grocery/music store, and a lot of Desi stores aren’t very serious about getting current music, or a broad range of it. Second, so much of the music is kind of crappy and derivative to begin with (Hindi film producers often borrow bass-lines and samples from western or Arabic pop songs), so why worry about making sure the artist is adequately paid for his or her work?

Third, there’s never been any attempt from Indian record and film companies to crack down on downloads of their stuff in the diaspora. Grocery/music/video stores that sell pirated material are often raided, but there’s no desi equivalent of the RIAA or MPAA suing online pirates, or shutting down BitTorrent/filesharing sites. (Note: Kazaa just settled with American record companies for $100 million.)

And finally, there’s no desi equivalent of Itunes, where you can legally buy MP3 singles from CDs and be assured that your money is going to the label and the artist who made the music (any entrepeneurs out there? go for it, buddy).

What are your thoughts on piracy? Do you yourself download pirated music (note: if you normally use your real name in comments, here I would recommend an alias)? What is your “piracy to legal consumption” ratio? Would you spend $1.00 a song if a desi version of Itunes were available?

Via our news tab, mutineer Rupa alerts us to this week’s SECOND sepia fugging on the popular (and brutal) Go Fug Yourself blog. While I don’t necessarily agree with Heather’s review of pretty Parminder, I think the girls at GFY are usually spot-on with their wit and crit.

Rupa’s tip was about Mindy Kaling, someone whom I will admit I don’t know much about because she’s on NBC’s lesser version of The Office, a show I have never been able to sit through for an entire episode. No matter. The genius of GFY is its focus on the outfit. I don’t need to be an Office-fan to grasp THAT. Or not grasp it, as is the case here…what is up with those boots?

From the knees up, she looks adorable, all set for a divine NBC-Universal booze cruise of clenched-teeth joy, where every toast to their wonderful fall schedule comes with paranoia from Jeff Zucker that people will figure out they’ve swapped the costly champagne and top-shelf liquor with well booze and sparkling cider.

But her shoes are pure “local theater revival of Xanadu.” They look like she stapled wallpaper scraps to her ankles.

They actually look like chausses to me, but vatewer. Like expert Fugger Heather, I dig everything else she’s got going on, too. Her skin is glow-y, little black dresses are always money and the coral-red beads look great on her. But the boots…oy.

A few days ago, Brimful sent us the other GFY-related news item about Parminder Nagra getting fugged. In a delightful bit of connectivity, if you search SM for Mindy Kaling, Brimful’s comment about her here is one of two results you’ll find. If you can spin some sort of conspiracy theory out of that and the fact that both fuggees are on NBC shows, bring it. ;)

On to Parminder, specifically what GFY had to say about HER threads, since Fugger Heather and I already agree on the following:

Parminder Nagra is gorgeous.

Word. Where’s the “but”?

Which is why I wish heartily that she hadn’t gone and upholstered herself…Her body looks tense, as if she’s uncomfortable or uneasy in this confusing crosshatched fabric-store nightmare. I suspect it’s because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition — you have to maintain constant vigilence when you’re dressed as something resembling a Comfy Chair, because you risk being dragged unexpectedly into their brand of comfortable torture. From there it’s a short slide down to poking some old woman with the soft cushions and wondering, “How did this become my life?”

Owie. I don’t think she looks UPHOLSTERED, but I might be a little biased; I love green, plaid and wrap-dresses, so put Parminder Nagra in all of the above and I’m rather content. I know, it’s not her best look but if this is what “fugly” means…

fug•ly (adj.)

frightfully ugly; of or pertaining to something beyond the boundaries of normal unattractiveness. Ex: “That ‘Kabbalists Do It Better’ trucker hat is fugly.”

…in that picture, she’s not fugly to me. :) Your thoughts?

Because I can safely be described as a masochist, I am always on the lookout for masochistic stories with a desi angle. This one comes to us as a tip from former SM heartthrob Apul. It seems that there is a race that takes place in New York called the The 3100 Mile Race. Allow me to explain:

The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team is proud to offer the Ninth Annual Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race. In this grand test of endurance and survival, a small group of athletes attempt to negotiate 5649 laps of a .5488 of a mile course (883 meters) in the time-span of 51 days- an amazing challenge. This is the longest certified footrace in the world; runners must average 60.7 miles per day to finish within the 51-day limit. The serious athlete must have tremendous courage, physical stamina, concentration and the capacity to endure fatigue, boredom and minor injuries. The predecessor of this very race was the 2700 Mile Race (held in 1996), in which five intrepid runners finished the distance well within the 47-day time limit. In 1997, Sri Chinmoy, race founder, upped the distance to 3100 miles. Two runners finished the inaugural 3100 Mile race in less than 51 days, showing that athletes indeed believed in self-transcendence. Last year nine finished 3100 miles out of 12 starters… [Link]

There are two things that I find particularly interesting about this race. The first is that the founder, Sri Chinmoy, doesn’t appear to have the classic runner’s build. See for yourself:

He looks like he is about to fall asleep

Second, I found the “route” to be sort of mundane. Imagine circling the same city block repeatedly for 3100 miles! After some inquiries in dawned on me that this would also be a great route if you were a pedophile. What am I implying? Nothing. It was just an observation.

As you can tell from the meetups I will be attending, I’ll be doing a fair amount of flying in the next month (not as much as Vinod, but nobody flies as much as 3V). You can see why I read the following news story with some trepidation [via BoingBoing]:

No, that’s not me but we all look alike :)

Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it. The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal. [Link]

Luckily, I’m not flying through Vegas, which is where this system is in place. It seems that what happens in Vegas stays … in homeland security databases. And even things that don’t happen at all make it there too.

I have no information about whether or not similar quotas systems have been implemented in other airports. In Vegas at least, top management issued a memo in July 2004 saying:

“Each federal air marshal is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month”… A second management memo, also dated July 2004, said, “There may come an occasion when you just don’t see anything out of the ordinary for a month at a time, but I’m sure that if you are looking for it, you’ll see something.” [Link]

An SDR is a “Surveillance Detection Report,” a secret government document with some very serious consequences.

What kind of impact would it have for a flying individual to be named in an SDR? “That could have serious impact … They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious,” [Link]

Hmmmm … imagine you’re a Marshal, under serious pressure to say you observed something fishy. Who do you think you’d write up? A white grandmother? A congressional staffer? Or a swarthy young male with a beard, even if he’s really handsome ?

Bernard Gordon at the Wall Street Journal criticizes India’s trade representative, Kamal Nath, in a recent Op-Ed:

Surprise, surprise, the WTO talks in Geneva are “suspended.” But in truth, hardly a surprise, since in May France’s agricultural minister said, “I would prefer that the negotiations fail rather than … raise questions about … agriculture.” At the G-8 summit this month President Jacques Chirac backed him up: “Only Europe has moved [and] gone to the extreme limits.”

Both were responding to America’s insistence that Europe do more to match its offer to cut farm subsidies — in order to break the logjam at the heart of the now-collapsed Doha Round. But Europe had a partner in its “my way or the highway” approach. India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, presumably speaking for the developing nations, said more “flexibility” was needed, and then gave his definition of the word: “We can’t negotiate subsistence and livelihood … we should not even be asked to do that.”

Mr. Nath had walked out of earlier trade talks, arguing “there was no point” in continuing, which prompted the press at home to fault him for throwing a “temper tantrum.” Not a bad label in this case, since India in 2004 accounted for less than 1% of world trade. And speaking after the collapse, which Mr. Nath characterized as “between intensive care and the crematorium,” he sharply singled out the U.S. as the sole culprit: the “mind-set” of the Americans was “inverted … they’re thinking only of market access.” (link; subscription required)

(Note that he’s not inventing the phrase “temper tantrum,” only citing the Indian media’s use of the term approvingly.) Gordon goes on to try and poke holes in Nath’s criticism of the U.S. for the fact that the Doha round has gone aground. Gordon mentions that the Brazil representative was actually more critical of Europe than the U.S., and cites President Bush’s promise to reduce U.S. farm subsidies by 60% in keeping with the opening of U.S. markets.

While the intricacies of world trade agreements and the workings of the WTO are, admittedly, not my area of expertise, one does note that Kamal Nath actually has plenty of company in blaming the U.S. primarily for the collapse of the talks.

The weekend is upon us, almost, perfect for a festival of some sort. Something like MASALA! MEHNDI! MASTI!…Y’ALL! In its sixth year running, M! M! M! is going large and fabulous at Exhibition Place (Toronto), starting with the opening reception tonight and continuing on till people are dropping with dance fever (for real, this happens) on Sunday. The incredibly varied programme brings together artists, authors, performers, instructors, and anyone I’ve left out from Canada, USA, UK, France, New Zealand, Trinidad, Guyana, and India.

This year’s headlining act is Trickbaby (of Bluffmaster fame) as part of the Brit InvASIAN showcase, which is presented yearly courtesy of the British Council. And if you Taraana Mutineers were wishing you could have gone to see some Rajasthani folk music tonight then hold up because Kerap is going to be on stage this Friday evening. I love me some Marwari music. Strangely enough they are also “from France!” The “Chillin’ in Your Brown Skin” seminars are back facilitating dicussion on different social issues. A spoken word fest (with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Sheniz Janmohamed and Muslim Rizvi) and book readings galore. There’s even a couple Laughter Yoga Club sessions on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Need I say any more? Check the listings for your fix.

Like I said, M! M! M! has gone big this year with an impressive corporate sponsor (Rogers) and a spangly new venue, much needed after they hit the 100, 000 people mark last year. Admission price is still a big juicy zero, thanggod. So go forth and machaao-fy some dhoom dhaam, it’s a brown town this weekend (well, actually, every weekend, but this weekend especially so :-)

SM reader “busybee” posted an absolutely fascinating link on our News Tab yesterday. It seems that somewhere deep within China, near a village called Huangyangtan, is a 900 x 700 m scale model (you need Google Earth to open this file) of a mountainous region somewhere on Earth. People…that is a model 9 x 7 football fields long! A model anywhere near this scale is usually only constructed when trying to train one’s soldiers how to conquer/hold the terrain in question.

So the million dollar question becomes, “what region on Earth could this be a model of?” Such an answer seems impossible to answer on its face, but sure enough someone with way too much time on their hands was able to solve this puzzle. We have to remember back to the 1962 Sino-India war:

Don’t, however, spend the next three days scouring the world’s mountain ranges trying to find a geographical match: the legwork has already been done for you by this enterprising Google Earth Community member who correctly identified the model as representing this [you need Google Earth to open this file] disputed area on the Chinese/Indian border.

Here’s a comparison of the Chinese model and the Google Earth image of the region in question… [Link]

It’s of territory occupied by China but claimed by India, north and south of the east end of the Karakoram range. The borders in this region are shown in red rather than yellow to indicate the dispute. [Link]

Since all the cool people are doing it, I thought I would announce one meetup, and the promise of more. Vinod and I will be holding a San Fransisco meetup on:

Sunday August 6th, 3 PM at Chaat Cafe in SOMA, SF.

We considered holding it at Greco, but figured it was bad enough to hold a SF meetup without Anna that we didn’t want to add insult to injury. That, and we wanted to make Brimful happy .

I will also try to take my anonymous kundi to the NYC meetup on August 13th, for those of you who miss me on the right coast. This meetup will have both Anna and live music, so there’s no reason for anybody not to be there.

Lastly - I’m thinking about a Chicago meetup in the middle of September or so - are there enough Midwestern Mutineers that we can hold down a table at one of the Devon Ave dives? This would be the first meetup I’d be hosting solo, so be gentle y’all

Though her life wasn’t as drastically messed up as that of her friend and contemporary, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai was definitely a born rebel. She lived her life the way she wanted, and wrote the truth in her many stories, novels, and nonfiction essays.

Chughtai’s most famous story is “Lihaf” (The Quilt), which deals with a lesbian encounter within an all-woman setting (Zenana) in a traditional Muslim household. It’s a funny and scandalous story (read it here), but actually, my favorite short story by Chughtai is called “Sacred Duty.” I came across it in a recent collection called The Quilt and Other Stories. It’s been beautifully translated by Tahira Naqvi, who has been Chughtai’s committed translator and one of her great champions.

“Sacred Duty” is not online anywhere, so perhaps I should briefly summarize it and quote a little. Samina, who comes from a respectable Muslim family in Delhi, is engaged to be married to a respectable Muslim boy. However, the day before her wedding she runs off with her boyfriend with Tashar Trivedi, a Hindu whose family lives in Allahabad. Samina accompanies Tashar to Allahabad, where converts to Hinduism and is married to Tashar in a Hindu ceremony. When her parents get Samina’s note explaining her disappearance, her mother’s first reaction (the story is told from her parents’ perspective) is “Let’s go to Allahabad and shoot them both!” Lovely.

Globalization has made many things possible including the efficient exchange of all sorts of goods and services. Among these are ideas; scientists think nothing of collaborating across borders, and musicians can lay down tracks in one city and have them a genius producer someplace far away rearrange them overnight.

Some ideas don’t travel as well, however. What makes sense according to laws and customs in one place might be absurd or abhorrent somewhere else. Advice columnists — or as the British beautifully call them, agony aunts — have yet to globalize their business. But what if there’s demand? Today in Salon (thanks, Scott!), an Indian-in-India sista seeks to outsource her relationship counseling to Cary Tennis, the online mag’s advice-giver. And Tennis… almost punts, but not quite. Check it out. Here’s the woman’s situation:

… Arranged marriages have seen a resurgence in India and I suspect it is propelled by young people’s desire to shield themselves from heartbreak. I was one of those and I agreed to marry a doctor I met just once after I returned home from the States. I thought I was taking a very sane and levelheaded decision. He came from a good family and was well liked and respected in his hospital (all this info gathered through the extended family network that goes into operation for marital missions). He had no known addictions, was reasonably good-looking according to Indian standards (not my standards, I must point out, because I like muscular, clean-shaven men and he is neither). We came from similar backgrounds and our life goals seemed to match — raise kids, earn a lot of money and make our parents proud of us.

Three months into our marriage we had our first fight. It was nasty. We are still living apart.

Now I am not sure marrying him was such a great idea. He seems immature and his anger was shocking. Staying on in a marriage just because he is a doctor seems wrong now. I thought my decision would be right because it was dispassionate. But now I think the lack of passion should have been a warning sign. The fact that I wasn’t physically attracted to him should have been enough to decide against marrying him.

How do I know if I made a huge mistake? Divorce is a big deal here, especially in my religion. But I figure the sooner we break up the easier it will be. Then again, who am I kidding? I probably won’t muster up the courage to break up the marriage until he does something really horrible…

And here are excerpts from Tennis’s reply:

I do not know what it is like to be from India but I know what it is like to live with the choices I have made. … I do not know what it is like to be in an arranged marriage but I know that all marriages are in a sense arranged — by relatives, by the rain, by smiles and secret dances; by children whose arrival can no longer be postponed, by the intersection of ripening desires, by thirsty hope meeting cool water.

So you ask an American what to do. To do what an American would do would be disastrous, I fear. …

I would try to live within what you have already done. I would attempt to carry out the plans you had when you decided to marry: Have lots of children and make a lot of money. Absent one of the limited general grounds for divorce available to you under Indian divorce law … I would try to see this thing through. …

I’ve been a bit busy, so I haven’t been able to ask you about SM Meetups, but I promise I’ve wanted to do so for several weeks. Those mutinous, offline melas are very much on my mind these days, as I contemplate the end of summer and where I will spend it. You see, not only do I think it’s high time for the second-ever live mutiny in DC, it seems that excessively homesick-me will be in the golden state for much of early September (w00t Northern California!!!). I think it’s time to overwhelm Greco once again; let’s take that possibility from tentative to definite, shall we? Let’s also hope the wifi works this time, as it usually does. ;)

Amardeep inspired me (yet again) to post once he issued his gentle invitation to Philadelphia-area readers to join him for that city’s first meetup, before a very cool-sounding concert he just blogged about. Even if you don’t take him up on his tempting offer, I want you to know that it won’t be an anomalous event— Philadelphia is a great city and I’d love to hold regular meetups there, as well as NY and SF. What say all of you, and when I type that I mean ALL of you, wherever you are. Depending on how much demand and notice we get, we may be able to coordinate sepia soirees elsewhere, since many of us travel, some of us, far too much. :D

DC: When should We Chocolate City mutineers will have our next carb-laden, veg-friendly fiesta on August 19th? August 26th. Who knows, if we don’t tell Abhi, we might be able to facilitate a “Yo Dad” appearance which ISN’T moderated! Imagine the possibilities for information-gathering!

SF: What about you, oh citizens of Baghdad-by-the-bay? How many of you will be around for Labor day weekend? I was assuming your answers would be a sea of “not me”s, so I was tentatively glancing at September 9. Thoughts?

Finally, as for you New Yorkers, any weekend you want to shriek and giggle until the Manager yells at us (cough LaLanterna cough) is fine with me. ;)

:+:

Update #1: The people have spoken. DC’s meetup will be on August 26th. :)

:+:

Update # 2: NYC’s loveliest saves the date and suggests something fantastic to meet up for— SummerStage at Central Park with a whole lotta brown choons. Pack your pick-a-nick baskets for Yogi and Booboo to plunder; New York’s meetup will be on August 13th!

The big news from the business world today is that Disney is going to be establishing a couple of new children’s entertainment channels in India as a way to strengthen its foothold on the subcontinent. Forbes reports:

What? It could happen.

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied “Because that’s where the money is.” Andy Bird has a similar rationale for The Walt Disney Company’s move into India: “If you’re in the children’s business, you want to be in the place where there are more children than anywhere else in the world,” the president of Walt Disney International explained in a telephone interview from Mumbai.

Bird has just handled the $30.5 million acquisition of Hungama, a children’s television channel in the country that broadcasts in Hindi, and that joins the Disney Channel and Toon Disney on the subcontinent.

Part of the deal will see The Disney take a 14.9% stake in UTV Software Communications, an Indian conglomerate that owns film and television assets, including - until now — Hungama. It means the next step for Disney could be into India’s glitzy movie industry. “We are actively working in the film business and looking for Disney branded movies in the Bollywood market,” said the British-born Bird. [Link]

This moves seems like a good one for Disney for exactly the reason mentioned in the first paragraph above. The growing middle class has a lot of children and children love being exposed/corrupted by western culture (even wholesome western culture). Why not be part of the delivery device, especially given that the advertising dollars that follow could end up being quite lucrative?

Time Warner has already benefited from first-mover advantage among U.S. media companies in India, controlling half the market share for children’s TV with its Cartoon Network and Pogo Channels. But Bird is not worried. “The Walt Disney Company is looking at a broader perspective in growing in India,” he said. “We’re more focused on building up franchises and brands across different sectors than in what our competitors are doing…” [Link]

Personally I hope that the possibility of domestic “foreign” competition will make Bollywood movies watchable better. I have to believe that the scripts that Disney backs will be a little better than the usual stuff I am exposed to out of Bollywood (*Abhi tries to stifle laugh*). Before you point it out I realize that I am a Bollywood curmudgeon. Please don’t recommend any films to me.

Bollywood, the popular name for the Hindi language film industry, also beckons as Disney will now co-produce UTV’s films.

“We have access to an important film-making capital, which is exciting because Bollywood’s family values resonate with Disney’s,” said Andy Bird, president, Walt Disney International. [Link]

Public Radio’s Marketplace has a nice summary of this deal as well as its implications. It also mentions that India isn’t yet ready for a Disney World-Delhi. Phew!

I’ve been trying to make sense of the progress of the Mumbai blasts investigation, and it’s not easy going. The latest news is the arrest of a local Mumbai man named Tanvir Ansari. Ansari is a traditional Muslim healer who practices ‘Unani’ healing in Mumbai. The Mumbai Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) claims he went to Pakistan in 2004, where he received training in bomb-making. He also has a criminal record — for an earlier arrest for possessing an AK-47 from some years ago.

Ansari’s arrest has led to the arrest of two associates, Suhail Sheikh and Jameer Ahmed. Like Ansari, Jameer Ahmed seems pretty unassuming: he owns a key shop in Mumbai city. Suhail Sheikh lives in Pune; I haven’t been able to find out what he does for a living.

Last week, the arrest of a man in Kenya is looking a little confusing. The man arrested there is not Said Abdul Karim (‘Tunda’), but a British national of Nigerian descent named Ismoila Olatunde Rufai. Rufai is still wanted by Kenyan police on suspicion of involvement with terrorism, but he’s not the person the Indian government was looking for. ‘Tunda’ worked for Dawood Ibrahim, and is known to have lost a hand from a bomb-making accident. Ismoila Rufai has no connection to ‘D’, and has both hands intact.

The three men arrested earlier have similarly complex identities (one of them had even worked as a police informer!). Two are Bihari villagers, and one lives in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay). Though one of the three has stated that he received training at an LeT camp in Pakistan, police are suggesting their main contacts are in Nepal and Bangladesh, and only “indirectly” in Pakistan. (This last point is somewhat vague in the news reports I’ve read.)

For columnist Rudroneel Ghosh at India Enews, the pattern of arrests thus far just doesn’t add up, which could mean one of two things:

I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the lameness we possess insiiiiide. Give them an over-developed sense of pride, to make it easier. Let the children’s prejudice remind us how we ought not be…

From the news tab, an anonymous tipster points us to a blog which took an amusing and slightly dil-warming look in to what tweens and teens in Hong Kong think of other Asian people:

When you think about Filipinos, what comes to your mind?

"Tak-shing Building!"
"They know how to sweep the floor!"
"I see them in Central all the time."
"Bun-bun.  Filipina girls.  But I have never met a Filipino guy yet."

Do you feel that you disrespect them by calling them such names?

"Hey, they come here to work.  We have more money than they have.  They are getting paid, so wouldn’t you say that they can be ordered around?"

Someday, you will be working and earning money too, and you will give spending money to your mother.  Does that mean that you can order your mother around?

"But how can that be the same?  My mother is not a Filipina."

Awesome. And now, on to the germane part (aside: does anyone know what “Ah Cha” means?):

When you think about Indians, what comes to your mind?

Musafir is a band from Rajasthan (and France!) who just performed with A.R. Rahman in Hollywood, California last week. This week (Wednesday), they’re coming to the prestigious Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, to headline a show with local DJs Darshana and Chetana Borah in a supporting role.

According to the product review at Amazon, Musafir originally formed with the idea of reconnecting European Gypsy (Roma) music with the South Asian folk music it derived from hundreds of years ago. (There is very strong linguistic evidence that the primary language spoken by the Roma, Romany, has specifically Indic roots. According to Wikipedia, Punjabi is the strongest influence.)

But in recent years, Musafir appears to have moved away from the “Gypsy” theme, and now they seem to perform a potpourri of traditional Rajasthani folk styles (with a little filmi music thrown in for good measure). From what I’ve heard it isn’t clear that Musafir is necessarily “authentic,” but whatever they are, they have been doing a good job in recent years entertaining music festival crowds in the U.S. and Canada, judging from notices here, here, and here (that last link has a couple of MP3s available).

Unfortunately, none of Musafir’s music appears to be available via ITunes, though you can listen to songs for free at Rhapsody, as well as here and here. (The song available at the Kimmel Center website actually comes from the unrelated Hindi film Musafir; a bizarre mistake.)

Fewer than 300 Sri Lankan domestic workers have made it out of Lebanon so far, and the effort seems stalled at this point:

Sri Lanka’s Lebanon ambassador M.A. Farrok admitted in a BBC’s Sinhala language service interview that the steady dispatch of war refugees to Sri Lanka has broken down after the first batch has been flown home.

He said after sending nearly 300 people home monetary difficulties faced by an international organization in sending them home, prior engagements of Sri Lankan Airline planes for different jobs and difficulty of reaching Southern areas of Lebanon have all contributed to the break down of dispatching refugees to Sri Lanka.

Several hundred women have taken refuge at the Sri Lankan embassy. Some of the women don’t have valid papers, either because they overstayed their contracts or because they couldn’t get their documents back from their employers. Some employers refuse to release their workers, while others have fled leaving them high and dry:

Terrified Sri Lankan maids who spoke to Gulf News from their embassy in Beirut said they had no alternative but to run away from their sponsors’ houses.

A few among them said they had been left behind by their sponsors, who were either on vacation or had fled the country.

“The Lebanese family for whom I used to work fled leaving me behind. I asked them to help me get out of the country as well but they just gave me $75 (Dh275) and asked me to get in touch with my embassy. I am scared. I want to go back to Sri Lanka where I have a four-year-old daughter and a husband. I am unable to keep in touch with them. The last time I spoke to them was eight days ago,” said Jayanti Gunasekara.

The Ambassador is keeping busy:

With roughly 400 stranded Sri Lankan women sleeping in his offices as they try to escape Lebanon, Amanul Farouque, the country’s ambassador was out yesterday morning, going from bakery to bakery to buy them bread. “This is an unusual assignment, but we are in an unusual situation,” he said wryly.

The embassy promises that it will give travel documents to all Sri Lankans regardless of legal status. But how many will be able to get to the embassy, let alone leave the country?

My favorite fashion writer, Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, has a story on the desi entrepreneur who has devoted his life to solving the following problem:

“I see a guy with a great suit on and nasty socks, I think, ‘Come on, finish the job!’” he says.

Great suit, nasty socks: truly one of the great fashion missteps of our time and one that many of our gentlemen readers will surely recognize. You know the feeling when you’re getting ready for a big meeting and realize all you have is holey, lumpy or mismatched socks? Well, Vivek Nagrani is here to help, at a mere $125 a pair. Hey, that’s only $62.50 per sock!

Nagrani makes a “Gatsby” sock with the image of a woman sipping a martini, strategically resting along a man’s Achilles’ tendon. “She’s holding him up,” he explains. Another pair of socks named “Luther” have a floral pattern winding up the inside of the calf; the flowers are revealed only when a man sits down and crosses his legs. He named another pair of socks “Brian,” after a customer who is attached to his dog Bottle Cap. The socks have stylized paw prints all over them.

You can read all about Nagrani in Givhan’s article. Meanwhile, I took a look at his corporate website, to learn more about this captain of industry, and found this description of the Nagrani brand:

The V.K. Nagrani label is privileged to create products for the diplomatic, scientific, military, artisanal and financial elite. With no surprise, men who define themselves by their distinct character rather than their possessions remain our most loyal customers and become our revered friends. Whether named by collection or by connoisseur, we grace such men of influence with our name. After all, the spirit of V.K. Nagrani is a sine qua non of any depiction of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or, quite simply, a life of luxury and elegance.

The day you see the “Churchill” — “lemon yellow with stripes of coco and blue” — haughtily peeking out beneath the impeccable cuff of my bespoke pantaloons, you’ll know that I no longer have time for plebeians like you.

I found Krrish and Fanaa entertaining enough to watch, though I instantly forgot the songs to both films, and haven’t had reason to go back for a second listen. I’ve also been sampling some of the other Hindi film music this summer via Raaga, and with a couple of exceptions the songs all sound like they were produced by robots who hate music. The Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna songs in particular are atrociously bad. (Kabhi Repeat Naa Karna.)

One big exception from what I’ve heard are the songs to Omkara, the new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello by Vishal Bhardwaj. Bhardwaj directed another rendition of Shakespeare in Maqbool (Macbeth). Maqbool (Irfan Khan, Tabu, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri) was artfully done and well-acted, though I was a little confused about the obsessive focus on religion in the film. In Omkara, Bhardwaj is working as both director and music director, and the soundtrack benefits from the close attention to detail he evidently paid to it. The title track (“Omkara”), with Sukhwinder Singh’s vocals, is wonderful: it has that early A.R. Rahman happiness, the “Chaiya Chaiya” magic: Sukhwinder has a lot of power in his voice, and this tune celebrating the warrior “Omkara” allows it to come through. “Beedi” is also quite catchy — with a Qawwali sound — as is “Naina” (with vocals by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan). I’m a little less enthusiastic about the album’s slow songs, “Jag Ja,” and “O Saathi Re,” though they are still good — folksy and semi-classical rather than simply slow and pseudo-emotional (as in most Bollywood slow songs these days).

In short: sounds like A.R. Rahman, but much better than Rahman has been lately.

In the previous post I commented on the story of an apparent racist incident, that things are not always what they seem. On the other hand, sometimes things are very much what they seem. Today British authorities are trying to determine whether the stabbing death of an Asian man in a public housing estate after a pitched battle between whites and Asians armed with knives and baseball bats could possibly have had a racial component:

Police and community leaders in Preston, Lancashire, appealed for calm last night after 20-year-old Shezan Umarji was stabbed to death amid running battles between white and Asian youths early yesterday.

The young man was attacked outside his home in Fishwick View, on the city’s deprived Callon housing estate.

Racist abuse was involved:

Det Supt Graham Gardner, of Lancashire police, said racist abuse was used during the confrontation.

“There are racist elements to this murder. As such it has been declared as a racist murder investigation.”

But community leaders seem eager to downplay the racial dimension:

Community leaders played down any suggestion the attack may have been racially motivated but police sources said it appeared the battle was between Asian and white youths, some armed with baseball bats.

Councillor Taalib Shamsuddin denied racism was involved. ‘There were two groups. It was a hot night and there were people who were drunk. It’s as simple as that … The early indications are that this wasn’t a systematic racial issue. It was a disagreement between two guys that got out of hand.’

And this:

Ch Insp Cath Thundercloud, head of community relations for Lancashire Constabulary, insisted Preston was not troubled by racial disharmony, despite figures which placed it at the top of a chart for incidents of racial abuse. …

“We’ve got a lot of mixed races on that estate, and they live together in harmony all year long, and they’ve grown up together and they live together, so this is very rare indeed.”

In a sense they have a point: to reduce this incident to a hate crime risks diminishing the importance of other factors in play, such as poverty, joblessness, depressing housing conditions, and a generalized culture of booze and violence. Still, deploying the idea of “a lot of mixed races” “living together in harmony” seems quite a preposterous move at this time. I’d love to hear from the British massive on all this.

Eight weeks ago, relaying news of the harassment of a Hindu family in Wayne, NJ, our own A N N A made a prescient comment. Remarking on the verbiage of the reported written threats (“We Kill U,” “We will Fire your house,” “Watch Your Kids”) she said:

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”?

Her hunch was correct. It was an inside job. In what an email from SAJA delicately calls a “twist” in the story, it turns out that the perpetrator of six months’ worth of threatening letters and spray-painted messages was the family’s own son, now 17.

The ensuing investigation — which included DNA, fingerprint and computer analysis — brought together Wayne police, the Prosecutor’s Office, the state Division of Criminal Justice and the FBI.

Avigliano said the boy had recruited several friends to help with his campaign, which began with a series of hate letters in late January. Several teenagers have been interviewed, and more will be questioned in the next few days, the prosecutor said. Criminal charges are imminent, he said.

Reached by phone, the boy’s father said Friday that he was overwhelmed with pain as he tried to elicit answers from his son. The Record has withheld the family’s name at their request.

“My heart is breaking right now,” he said. “I can’t figure out why my son would do something like that.”

Indeed, the motive remains unclear, with police speculating only that the young man was upset at the family’s having recently moved to Wayne from another New Jersey town.

This would simply be a garden-variety family drama featuring a teenager alienated from his parents for reasons not ours to know, were it not, of course, for the ethnic and religious dimension of the threatening language, which raised the alarm of community organizations as well as the authorities:

There were also ethnic slurs — “I HATE INDIANS,” for example — and others too vulgar to print that targeted Hindus.

No doubt there are various morals to this story that people will put forward from different points of view. Suffice here to note that this is a sad story and a reminder that in all aspects of life, things are often not what they seem.

I’m sure we are all praying right now that humanitarian supplies including food and medicine are able to reach the civilian Lebanese population. Not to take away at all from that situation but since it is being thoroughly discussed elsewhere in the news and on the web, I thought I would divert the attention of SM readers for just a few minutes by speaking out about the looming crisis here in America and among other Diasporic desi communities. Folks, we have a daal shortage that hasn’t received nearly enough attention and it’s not going to be pretty when it all plays out. India West reports:

Soon to be more precious than gold?

Faced with an unexpected crunch in supply of dal and lentils, the staple item of the Indian meal, that’s the advice hapless store owners are giving to worried customers after an Indian ban on exports of lentils (I-W, June 30) has sent prices soaring and supplies dwindling. The Indian government has banned the export of dals and lentils until March 2007 to curb rising commodity prices.

”We advise customers to concentrate more on the vegetable than the dal,” Dinesh Kumar of India Cash and Carry, a busy Indian grocery store in Sunnyvale, Calif., told India-West.

No Indian meal is complete without dal, and it is a critical source of protein for vegetarians. Over the weekend, customers have been flocking to the aisle that stores dal, Kumar said. [Link]

The advice they are giving us is to “concentrate more on the vegetable than the dal?” That’s like asking someone to concentrate more on their job than on love, or to concentrate more on a blogger instead of the doctor or the finance guy. It just isn’t going to happen. As the article points out, daal is a CRITICAL source of protein for vegetarians. Is this some sort of bad karma for when all the vegetarians poked fun at the beef eaters for their mad-cow friendly ways? Now the chief protein source of vegetarian desis has come under threat.

“People are in a little panic for dals right now, even though we are requesting them to not take too many packets,” said Kumar, whose store has set a limit of a four-pound pack per household. People were cooperating, he said.

Prices have shot up. Toor dal, which retailed for less than a dollar a pound a couple of weeks ago, has shot up to almost two dollars a pound. [Link]

When I went to the Indian grocery store on my block last weekend I saw a little boy get trampled by three aunties who all reached for the same package of daal on the shelf. As the paramedics loaded him onto the ambulance he kept crying, “why Bhagwan, why?”

“Demands have gone up way high. Everybody is looking for dal and there is not enough in the market,” Parmar told India-West. “We have to supply each and every store; we have limited quantity to supply…” [Link]

Because of my blogging duties I knew about this looming crisis before most in the media and public. I have been steadily stocking up on daal by filling up one of the storage rooms here in our North Dakota bunker. Even my co-bloggers have remained in the dark about my grand designs. My power and influence in the blogosphere and the world in general will no doubt rise as knowledge of my new wealth spreads.

It’s hard to tell how this would play out, he said. “As of now, the market is in a period of uncertainty,” Soni said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the course of the next month…” [Link]

In a post-apocalyptic world where daal is scarce I will have my choice of a beautiful desi bride in search of protein…or perhaps several brides.

PBS’ Frontline Roughcut series lives up to its name with its latest on-line film. You might remember that I have linked to their on-line film series before. The latest one tracks the human kidney trafficing business in a slum near Chennai nicknamed “Kidney-vakkam.” The 10 minute film is titled, A Pound of Flesh: Selling kidneys to survive.

Traveling between Bangalore, India’s thriving technology center, and the slums to the south, Grant spoke to government officials, doctors, kidney brokers and donors to try to find out why so many people are still getting paid to give up their kidneys even though a law was passed 12 years ago to heavily regulate the practice. When Grant arrived in the slums of Chennai, about eight hours south by train from Bangalore, someone offered to sell her their kidney on the spot. “I was stunned,” she says.

A New York Times Magazine article recently asked the question, “Why not let people sell their organs?” From an economic point of view, the article explains, demand for kidneys is far outrunning supply around the world. If people could legally sell, economists argue, more people with kidney disease might be saved, and the poor people willing to sell would have a chance to get badly needed funds.

As Grant reveals, the problem is especially acute in India, where demand for kidney transplants is increasing along with the country’s growing numbers of diabetics, a health problem that has been directly linked to India’s recent prosperity and rise in obesity. Those who can afford medical care are much more likely to receive a new organ, often because inside India’s impoverished slums, many are desperate enough to sell a kidney for as little as a few hundred dollars. [Link]

The film points out that as Indians increasingly adopt a western diet they are becoming more susceptible to kidney disease, thus increasing the demand for illegally sold kidneys.

Above all, Grant’s story shows a vicious cycle among India’s poorest — particularly among women, the family members traditionally expected to sell their kidneys. Holding out her original donor card, one woman tells Grant that she has been waiting 17 years for the rest of the money promised her. [Link]

As the film explains, the quickest way to close down this practice is to limit kidney donations to between blood relatives, but nobody seems incentivized to do this.

The recent and still developing conflict between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist group Hizbollah has caused many analysts and pundits to point out the great disparity in arms between the two combatants:

The State Department’s 1993 report on international terrorism lists Hizbollah’s “strength” at several thousand. Hizbollah sources assert that the organization has about 5,000-10,000 fighters. Other sources report that Hizbollah’s militia consists of a core of about 300-400 fighters, which can be expanded to up to 3,000 within several hours if a battle with Israel develops. These reserves presumably are called in from Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs. The number of members involved in combat activity in southern Lebanon is under 1,000. But it has many activists and moral supporters. After the Israeli withdrawal Hizballah reduced the number of full time fighters to about 500, though estimates range from 300 to 1,200. There are also several thousand reserves, but these lack training or experience. Hizbollah’s militia is a light force, equipped with small arms, such as automatic rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and Katyusha rockets, which it occasionally has fired on towns in northern Israel. Hizbollah forces are shown on television conducting military parades in Beirut, which often include tanks and armored personnel carriers that may have been captured from the Lebanese army or purchased from Palestinian guerrillas or other sources. [Link]

versus:

The IDF [Israeli Defense Force] is considered to be one of the most high-tech armies in the world, possessing top-of-the-line weapons and computer systems, Some of it American-made or indigenously modified (such as the M4A1 assault rifle, F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon jets and Apache helicopter). Israel receives more than US$2 billion per year in military aid from the United States, and much of it requires that American equipment be purchased with it. In spite of this however, Israel also has developed its own independent weapons industry. Weapons such as the Merkava battle tank, Kfir jet series, and various small arms such as the Galil assault rifle and Uzi submachine gun have all proven to be very successful.

The IDF also has several large internal research and development departments, and it purchases many technologies produced by the Israeli security industries including IAI, IMI, Elbit, El-Op, Rafael, Soltam and dozens of smaller firms. Many of these developments have been battle-tested in Israel’s numerous military engagements, making the relationship mutually beneficial, the IDF getting tailor-made solutions and the industries a very high repute. [Link]

This post is filed under, “Another thing that Indians invented that you probably didn’t know about.” In this case however, the invention might be viewed by some as a rather dubious honor. The only weapon of any significance in Hizbollah’s arsenal is the Katyusha rocket. Can this single weapon threaten to defeat the IDF? No. But it was the Indians that invented the use of rocket artillery in battle, and the father of rocket artillery, Tipu Sultan (the Tiger of Mysore), was celebrated for his use of rocket artillery in defeating the superior British army in the 1792 Srirangapatna War.

…Tipu Sultan achieved a grand victory, whereby the whole British detachment lead by Colonel Baillie was destroyed and 3820 soldiers were taken prisoner (including Colonel Bailli). the contributory cause being that one of the British ammunition tambrils was set on fire by Mysorean rockets.

At the Battle of Seringapatam in 1792, Indian soldiers launched a huge barrage of rockets against British troops, followed by an assault of 36,000 men. Although the Indian rockets were primitive by modern standards, their sheer numbers, noise and brilliance were said to have been quite effective at disorienting British soldiers. During the night, the rockets were often seen as blue lights bursting in the air. Since Indian forces were able to launch these bursting rockets from in front of and behind British lines, they were a tremendous tool for throwing the British off guard. The bursting rockets were usually followed by a deadly shower of rockets aimed directly at the soldiers. Some of these rockets passed from the front of the British columns to the rear, inflicting injury and death as they passed.[Link]

Love posting stories on the News tab? But hate copying-pasting multiple times? Well, I have something for you!

There is a new "bookmarklet" for the news tab. Look under the “Post story” link. Just drag that link to your bookmarks/favorites toolbar, and next time whenever you are reading a news story that you want to post on the news tab, just select the summary and click "Enlighten the Mutiny" on your bookmarks/favorites toolbar. Two clicks and be done! It's that simple!

How to add this bookmarklet to Firefox:

1. Make sure your Bookmarks toolbar is visible (View menu > Toolbars > Bookmarks toolbar)
2. Drag "Enlighten the Mutiny" link from the news tab to your Bookmarks toolbar.
3. Goto to a story you want to tell the Mutiny about.
4. Select a summary from that story.
5. Hit "Enlighten the Mutiny" on the bookmarks toolbar, and then hit Post!
6. All done!

How to add this bookmarklet to Internet Explorer:

1. Make sure that View menu > Toolbars > Links is checked
2. Right click on "Enlighten the Mutiny" link on the news tab and select "Add to Favorites"
3. Depending on your security settings, Internet Explorer may complain that it may be unsafe, ignore it, click yes.
4. Click "Create In", if its not already open. Select the Links folder. Click Ok.
5. Goto to a story you want to tell the Mutiny about.
6. Select a summary from that story.
7. Hit "Enlighten the Mutiny" on the Links toolbar, and then hit Post!
8. All done!

This bookmarklet should work in all major browsers, including Opera and Safari. If you have any problems using this feature, just post a comment below.

Sometimes blogging lands you up in funny places. SM's own Abhi and Patrix from Desipundit were recently quoted in an excellent San Francisco Chronicle regarding the new Indian comic books. A mystery man named "Ennis Singh Mutinywale" was quoted all over the place after dropping this bombshell. Manish Vij had, as mentioned earlier, a quality piece in Salon after the Mumbai blasts. And a number of bloggers (naturally) were quoted in mainstream media coverage of the Indian blog ban -- not surprising since several prominent desi bloggers are also professional journalists. Today it was my turn, albeit in a smaller way -- the Times of London called for a comment on Sonia Gandhi's attempt to suppress Jag Mundhra's planned biopic about her (starring Monica "Mary Magdalene" Belluci as the young Sonia Gandhi). I blogged about it two months ago, and somehow that turned into this:

Despite priding itself on a constitution that guarantees freedom of expression, India has a history of censorship. It was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and the Central Board of Film Certification regularly uses the fear of civil unrest between its Hindu and Muslim communities to demand cuts from directors or to keep certain films out of cinemas. Only yesterday, a ban was lifted on 17 websites that ministers claimed were fanning religious hatred after the bomb blasts in Bombay on July 11.

Amardeep Singh, assistant professor of English at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, was not surprised by Mrs Gandhi’s attempts to stop the film. "There is a knee-jerk censoriousness in Indian politics and it is a sad reaction to try to suppress the film before it has even been produced," he said. "It is meant to be a respectful biopic, but I think they’re just nervous because the director has a reputation for the unsavoury." (link)

Admittedly, that last statement was pure speculation on my part (one always wishes the reporter quoted the other thing you said...). But this censorship problem is, as Dilip D'Souza has ably argued, a systemic problem we need to be continually vigilant about. India would be a better place if the default were to allow people to have their say rather than block, ban, and censor. (And it's not just a Congress Party thing; the BJP were no slouches when it came to censoring views they weren't happy about.) Sadly, the filmmakers here have apparently decided to shelve the film rather than insist on their right to make it.

A tipster on the News page alerts us to the following very odd column by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle. The tipster comments: “Personally I think this article is in poor taste, but I’ll let others decide for themselves. I don’t want to be accused of jingoism.” A wise display of circumspection! So let’s take a look for ourselves. Carroll begins:

Occasionally over the years I have reprinted examples of English written by people for whom English is not their native language. Many of the examples appeared to be translations prepared by somebody with a whatever-to-English dictionary and a keen will to succeed. The earnest author would often, perhaps unknowingly, have a fit of fancy, often landing in magical territory unvisited by native speakers.

Okay… So, where are we going with this?

People often accused me of making fun of the writers. Not at all. I loved the writers. They were demonstrating how flexible English can be, something that professional writers tend to forget. It’s nice that the grammar police exist, but they mustn’t be allowed to rule. Language is not just a tool or a blade; sometimes it’s a springboard or a trampoline or a balloon.

Tool, blade; springboard, trampoline, balloon. Right. Anyway:

English as spoken in India is not a mistranslation; it’s a different dialect. Most written Indian English is made for domestic consumption, so it can follow rules that make intuitive sense to the audience.

Ah! We’re going to make fun of Indian English! Sure, why not.

The work below was prepared by a friend of a friend.

The old friend-of-friend move. Convenient when you write a daily column. (No columnist should ever write daily.)

All the sentences are reported to be actual quotations from one issue of True Crimes magazine

Reported to be actual! (Columnists don’t have to fact check either.) Now, onto this Indian English of which you speak:

Her husband clipped her ambitions with the instrument of refusal. The pangs of separation from her paramour made her to suffer….

When he retired to his bed that night, he tried to analyze latent import of her expressions; his body got thrilled….

Vijay’s friends had cars, in which stereos were fitted and they used to insert cassettes in the decks and then enjoy melody of recorded songs. “Come, let us go to the lake and listen to melodies of songs there….”

Geeta smelt a revolting odour in what he spoke. But Vijay was influential and also commanded much muscle power. Although he was in love with another girl called Lucy, a modern and highly fashionable dame, love messages were started exchanging through visual contact. Geeta put a bewitching and killing smile on her lips. Vijay didn’t find her unsuitable for an immoral act. “My business pertains to counterfeit currency and alongside I also do swindling. I will indulge in such novel acts of sex that your spirits will blossom and cheer you up and you will not feel sorry….”

Geeta: “Would I prepare for celebration?”

And so on. Anyway, here’s my question: as odd as Indian English can get, is this at all representative? Maybe I’ve just been sheltered from the worst of it. If so, feel free to rupture my illusions, preferably supplying your favorite examples. But if not, what exactly was the purpose of this column?

Time Magazine (hat tip: Julie) this week has a story about a couple who got married in a Hindu ceremony recently in upstate New York, Carrie and Sujeet. But this isn’t your ordinary cross-cultural wedding — both Carrie and Sujeet have Down Syndrome. Carrie and Sujeet are the first generation of DS individuals to be healthy and functional enough to consider marrying. They’ve benefited from full social assimilation, new therapies, and close medical attention that mitigates the health complications of DS:

This generation of young adults with DS has shattered old ideas about what is possible for people who carry an extra 21st chromosome in their cells—the cause of DS—and what opportunities society owes them. They came of age in an era of early-intervention programs to spur physical and mental development—Desai began one at 7 weeks. Once in school, they were included in regular classrooms when possible and were offered tutoring and special classes when needed. Both bride and groom are high school graduates. Just as critical, this generation has benefited from medical care addressing the heart and gastrointestinal defects, eye problems, thyroid issues, obesity and other health woes that, for reasons that are poorly understood, often tag along with mental retardation as part of Down syndrome. The result: their average expected life span has doubled, from 25 in 1983 to 56 today.(link)

Carrie and Sujeet met, started dating, and he popped the question publicly after performing at a music recital. I think the whole thing is pretty wonderful. Check out Sujeet’s home page, which has video footage of him proposing and pictures. And Carrie has a website too. Also, Wikipedia on Down Syndrome for more on the science of the genetic condition.

The Indian Government’s recently imposed ban on all Typepad and Blogspot blogs will soon be over and may already be over in some places. Earlier today, Rediff reported:

The blocking of blogs hosted by sites such as Blogspot, Typepad and Yahoo! Geocities by Internet Service Providers is likely to be lifted within 48 hours. [Link]

In fact, both the government and the ISP umbrella group are claiming that they never planned a blanket ban in the first place, they just wanted to ban 17 blogs:

Amitabh Singhal, a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) … said … some ISPs — he insisted it wasn’t all — mistook the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) notice and blocked entire blog domains, adding that it was technically feasible to block a sub-domain and leave others still accessible. [Link]

According to an email sent to SAJA by the Deputy Counsul General in New York, the ban was imposed because:

A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well-known search engines

However, here’s the actual list of blogs that the government was trying to block. I’ve just skimmed them, but I can’t see the “two page write up” that they’re referring to [a copy of the original order is below the fold]:

1. www.hinduunity.org
2. mypetjawa.mu.nu [American right-wing blog]
3. pajamaeditors.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
4. exposingtheleft.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
5. thepiratescove.us [American right-wing blog]
6. commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com [This is isn’t even in English!]
7. bamapachyderm.com [American right-wing blog]
8. princesskimberley.blogspot.com [Long defunct]
9. merrimusings.typepad.com [Defunct American right-wing blog, but now at http://www.merrimusings.mu.nu ]
10. mackers-world.com [American right-wing blog]
11. www.dalistan.org [They actually mean www.dalitstan.org which is currently down]
12. www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
13. www.nndh.com [Dead URL]
14. bloodroyaltriped.com [Dead URL]
15. imagesearchyahoo.com [Dead URL, but it wouldn’t be a blog!]
16. www.imamali8.com [They probably mean imamali.com but somebody mistyped]
17. www.rahulyadav.com [Computer geek at IU Bloomington - not a blog at all - banned merely for his links to the BJP, RSS, etc]

A few of the blogs mentioned do have some very offensive photos of the Koran, but that’s not the offense that the government was using to justify its ban. Seven of the seventeen blogs are right wing blogs that are strongly anti-Islamic in that LGF-clone way, but again, the government didn’t announce that it was trying to ban all blogs that were harshly critical of Islam. Most importantly, none of them are linked to recent terrorist attacks at all !

So even if you think that censorship should sometimes be imposed by the government, and you accept the government’s reasoning that this “two page write up” is one of those things that should be censored, you’d still be hard pressed to justify this ban.

The chaos in Lebanon has left a large number of South Asians stranded or endangered. Today four Indian Navy ships entered Beirut harbor to begin evacuating nationals to Cyprus:

Over 1,000 Indians assembled at the jetty as Israeli operations against Hezbollah militia intensified in Lebanon.

The warships — INS Mumbai, INS Betwa, INS Brahmaputra and auxiliary tanker INS Shakti — anchored overnight off the Lebanese coast, moved into the port to pull out the anxious Indian nationals and shift them to camps in Larnaca in Cyprus, Navy sources said.

There are about 12,000 Indians in Lebanon, according to press reports. And while India has the capability to mount its own evacuation, other countries with large numbers of nationals in Lebanon are in a more difficult position. The International Organization of Migration (IOM) has a team in Lebanon on behalf of the governments of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Moldova and Ghana. There are at least 10,000 Bangladeshis in Lebanon, and up to 40,000 Filipinos.

But the case that stands out is Sri Lanka, with an estimated 93,000 nationals in Lebanon of whom 86,000 are women employed as domestic labor.

In the daily Whitehouse press briefing a few hours ago, Tony Snow was getting some tough questions about the happenings in Lebabon and whether the U.S. was taken by surprise at some of the developments there:

Q If the reports are correct, and we, in fact, didn’t know about the weapons advances that Hezbollah has made, is there some frustration or embarrassment within the intelligence community at the moment?

MR. SNOW: Well, you’ve asked me one of those “ifs,” and then the answer is, I don’t know what the knowledge was about intelligence; therefore, I can’t answer it. Sorry, Victoria.

Q Well, it seems certainly according to the reports that we didn’t know that they had made significant advances.

MR. SNOW: Again, I don’t know. [Link]

So what do you do next if you are Snow? I am disappointed by ANY SM readers that don’t already know the answer:

Goyal.

Q Tony, two questions. One, last night celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Indian-American Friendship Council, Dr. Krishna Reddy he got over 120 members of Congress from both sides — senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill — and they were all supporting the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement. And which yesterday you mentioned that G8 also — Prime Minister of India and the President had discussion on the same issue.

So now next month, there will be voting — final voting in the U.S. Congress. So where is the President now? How he is taking this approach —

MR. SNOW: The President supports the agreement. He made it clear to Prime Minister Singh. He’s made it clear to members of Congress. So far the votes have been overwhelmingly in favor in committee, and we’ll just have to see how it proceeds. I mean, that’s a no-brainer. [Link]

Was Snow subtly implying that Goyal’s question was a no-brainer? Snow soon found out that even Goyal, when backed into a corner with his pride on the line, can take a swing by asking a tough question. You won’t like him when he’s angry.

A heads-up: Radio Open Source is doing a special show on class relations in India tonight at 7pm Eastern Time. It’s partly inspired by the recent Pankaj Mishra Op-Ed we discussed a little last week, which challenged the myth of the booming “new India.”

This isn’t more “negative” talk about India’s poverty or backwardness. I talked to the show’s producer (Robin) a bit on the phone last week, and what I got from her is that they don’t really want to do either a “negative” or “positive” spin on India. They also don’t want to throw around a lot of general economic statistics (GDP, economic growth indicators, etc.), since those things don’t tell you very much about how and whether people’s lives have been affected by the changes that have been occurring since the early 1990s. Rather, they simply want to explore the changes socially, culturally, and historically, and understand it as realistically and completely as possible. And to do that, they want illustrative anecdotes and first hand testimony from a range of sources and perspectives.

It’s a very noble and unusual approach for a radio show to take, and I’ll be listening in to see how it goes. ROS is unique in that they often take comments posted on the blog and cite them in the on-air discussion. So if you have something to say on this topic, I suggest you go to their site and leave some comments; they might quote you on the air.

Incidentally, if you miss the show, they generally put up podcasts a few days after the show airs.

Here is a snippet of South Asian focused children’s literature, from the website of the dedicated magazine Kahani:

Kayan’s grandfather walked in. He held something shiny in his hand.

“What is it, Ajoba?” Sarika said. Their grandfather held up a silver coin.

“It’s just a coin,” Kayan said.

Ajoba shook his head. He placed the coin on one palm and rubbed his hands together quickly. Then he held up his hands. The coin was gone.

“Wow!” Sarika said. “Neat.” Kayan’s eyes widened.

“A magic coin,” Ajoba said.

Another snippet and some illustrations are available at the magazine’s website. One of its contributors is SM regular Pooja Makhijani, who has a nice personal essay on the topic of desi children’s lit at PaperTigers.org, a website on Asian-American writing for kids:

As I was growing up, I would search library shelves in the hopes of finding a character “like me”. I never had much luck. One day, my elementary school librarian excitedly handed me a tattered copy of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. “It’s set in India,” she squealed. “It’s the perfect book for you!”

Shockingly, Pooja did not find herself identifying with Mowgli. But one day at the library, she ran into a book called Dancing Princess:

Dancing Princess was a historical novel set in 16th century India during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Although Allaedi, the main character, wasn’t exactly like me, she was close enough. We were both brown haired, brown eyed, brown skinned girls and we both loved to dance. I renewed that book again and again, carefully scrawling my name onto the index card pasted on the inside back cover each week.

Coming out hot and fresh on the heels of Donutgate, The Delaware News Journal has done some great investigative reporting to corroborate Sen. Joesph Biden’s disturbing claim that, “You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent.” There are in fact a lot of Indian Americans working at donut shops in Delaware, and signed affidavits suggest that some of them do in fact have Indian accents. It is therefore not inconceivable that some of them may in fact bar entry to non-Indian accented speakers.

In the 16 years since Nilesh “Nick” Patel’s family bought their first Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, they’ve built a string of a dozen shops in northern Delaware and southern Pennsylvania.

“It’s been a great business for us,” said the 32-year-old Patel, whose family moved to the United States from India when he was 10 to carve out a middle-class lifestyle. “We all have cars and houses and mortgages now. Our kids are getting a good education.”

Delaware’s Indian population has nearly tripled in recent years, and a big chapter of their story is being played out in the state’s doughnut shops, liquor stores, gas stations and hotels, business owners and experts said. The owners of those businesses are adding a middle-class flavor to an immigrant community that once was composed mainly of doctors, engineers and scientists, they said. [Link]

My sources in the Justice Department tell me that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was considering launching an investigation into the veracity of Biden’s earlier claims when the Delaware News Journal supplied the FBI with a smoking gun of sorts: desis holding warm and fresh donuts but denying them to non-Indian accented customers.

The evidence caught on film

Toronto Mutineers, hitch up your lungis and roll those kurta sleeves because the Indian Electronica festival is coming to your town. Festival mastermind Qasim Virjee, he of Dishoom fame, has brought together some choice performers like LAL, Omnesia ensemble, dancer Monkia Monga, and of course himself, as his badass alter-ego, Abdul Smooth.

Hot deets, get your hot deets right here:

When? Thursday, July 20th
Where? El Mocambo (464 Spadina, just South of College)
How? Tickets are $10 online, $15 at the door
No really, when? Keynote on ‘Developments in South Asian music since the Asian Underground’ at 8 pm, first act is up at 9 pm
What should I bring? A camera if you’ve got one because that SM flickr group is looking kinda skimpy.
Will Neha be there even though she has a deadly meeting at 9 on Friday? Hell yes!

+++

For those on the other side of the pond, take in the festival’s August installment in London town. Featuring the likes of Pathaan, Bobby Friction, DhakFu, Eagle-i, Ges-e, Nerm/the Shiva Soundsystem, Fusing Naked Beats, Yam Boy, and Visionary Underground.

I guess I’m behind the times: It hadn’t occurred to me that cellphone ringtones might be a medium for propagating nasty messages. But of course upon thinking about it, it makes sense. Here’s an unpleasant little situation from South Africa, as reported today by the BBC:

A racist mobile phone ringtone has been condemned by South Africa authorities in the city of Cape Town.

The lyrics are in Afrikaans and advocate violence against black people in derogatory terms. …

The lyrics of the song, according to a local newspaper, refer to a black person as a “kaffir” - an outlawed and derogatory term in South Africa.

It describes how such a person should be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged around while driving.

The chorus has a blatantly racist tone and ends with a call to set dogs on the black person.

Shades of Jasper, Texas: lovely. Intrigued, I wondered if other racist ringtone incidents were on record, especially in the United States. I found an entirely different kind of story – one that illuminates in several ways the limitations of the political conversation in America today. Back in May, Cingular had to pull an offensive ringtone after protests by Latino organizations:

The ringtone played the sound of a siren and then a voice that said: “Calmate, calmate, this is la migra. Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I’m deporting you back home-o.” Cingular says it will put more efforts in reviewing ringtones that are submitted to them by a variety of providers.

Up-and-down case, no? Except that the provider of this ringtone was… a Miami company, Barrio Mobile, staffed by Latinos and aimed at the Latino market. Gearlog picks up the story:

Community leaders from Tower Hamlets, London have started a campaign against the filming of Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a big commercial and critical success. Reactions by many South Asian readers I heard from were mixed, mainly because of Ali’s use of a kind of pidgin English in the letters from the main character’s sister in Bangladesh, Hasina. (Our blog-friend DesiDancer also had a succinct review: “utter crap”, were her delicate, carefully chosen words)

Of course, the quality of the book is mostly irrelevant to the censorship campaign under way. This campaign seems to be an extension of the campaign against the book itself in 2003, and includes some of the same players and the same sad rhetoric of outrage and offense that is routinely trotted out these days in response to something or other:

In an echo of the controversy which surrounded the initial publication of the book, set partly in the east London borough, the novel is accused of reinforcing “pro-racist, anti-social stereotypes” and of containing “a most explicit, politically calculated violation of the human rights of the community”.

Community leaders attacked the book on its publication in 2003, claiming that it portrayed Bangladeshis living in the area as backward, uneducated and unsophisticated, and that this amounted to a “despicable insult”. (link)

The misguided attempt to protect the community’s honor through censorship will be ineffective, and the censorship campaign itself has the ironic effect of making the community look really, really bad.

June’s terror raids in Toronto that ended with the arrest of 12 men and 5 youth came as a shock to the general Canadian public. In my household it raised more than few questions on how exactly the RCMP came to know minute details of the group’s activities, which resulted in some very specific terror-related charges. What we decided as the best answer is not much of a surprise. Attempting to charge someone with plotting to blow up the CBC and beheading the Prime Minister becomes easier with a pair of ears and eyes on the inside.

Mubin Shaikh is the 30-year-old son of Indian immgrants who spent six years in the Royal Canadian Army Cadets and embraced Islam 10 years ago, after taking in trips to South Asia and the Middle East. He is a fierce supporter of Sharia law in Ontario and runs Canada’s only Sharia law arbitration centre. He is about as orthodox as Ontario Muslims come. Mubin Shaikh is also a mole.

The publicity build-up for M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, The Lady in the Water (opening this coming Friday), has begun with some shatteringly bad buzz. It’s too bad, because I’ve been a fan of Shyamalan’s four major films, even the ones that haven’t had a great critical reception. (The Village, for instance, offered a nice critique of religious fundamentalism, I thought. And isn’t The Sixth Sense really a film about reincarnation and the Hindu/Buddhist concept of Moksha, albeit explored through the proxy of Catholicism?)

Some of the publicity isn’t so bad. To begin with, Shyamalan’s got two profiles in the east coast papers today, one in the New York Times and another in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer likes him, because he’s a local boy and he’s stayed local: he owns a house in Gladwyne (not far from where I live, actually), and created a monster set in nearby Levittown for Lady in the Water. The Times is a little more lukewarm, focusing on a silly trick documentary shot (with Shyamalan’s approval) to accompany the release of The Village, and on Shyamalan’s apparently rampant narcissism.

Shyamalan has probably helped to undo his mystique a bit by taking himself too seriously. There is a sketchy-looking biography of him coming out this Thursday, called The Man Who Heard Voices: How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career On a Fairy Tale. From this New York Times review, the book looks highly embarrassing. Among other things, it details Shyamalan’s split with Disney during the early phase of script-writing. And while some of the reasons Shyamalan gives for the split seem like good ones (Disney “wasn’t allowing it to be visceral”), others seem pretty trivial: he apparently wasn’t happy with how his assistant was treated by Disney’s executives; and he was annoyed they didn’t want him to cast himself in one of the major roles.

Kevin Garnett, the long-suffering anchor of the never-quite-there Minnesota Timberwolves, has been pumping up India’s basketball prospects while on an Asian publicity tour. (Thanks, tipster Kumar!) Garnett said he felt a lot of enthusiasm for the sport in India, and suggested the country might emerge into the world game in the same way that China has started to do behind Yao Ming.

Of course, until some Indian school or club produces a 7-foot freak of nature with half decent ball handling skills, this scenario will lack a crucial component for take-off. Better perhaps to take the grassroots approach, as another major American sports organization, Major League Baseball, is doing. In November, after the US season is over, MLB’s Envoy Program will send a team of coaches to conduct a month of baseball clinics in five Indian cities: Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, Calcutta, and Imphal.

Uh… Imphal?

I know you don’t need me to tell you where Imphal is! It’s the capital of Manipur, of course, a largely “tribal” state in India’s far northeast. Seems like baseball has been thriving in Manipur for several decades, ever since (it is thought) American troops deployed there introduced it during World War II.

“Thriving” is a relative term, of course, since there isn’t a single dedicated baseball diamond in the state. However there are 26 organized men’s baseball clubs, 4 women’s teams, and a governing association; they play a regular season, improvising diamonds on fields borrowed from other sports.

A New York and Imphal venture called First Pitch is working on promoting Manipur baseball and raising funds to build a dedicated baseball stadium and equip the teams. A local club has already donated land. The project’s American chair, Muriel Peters, and Manipuri executive director, Somi Roy, both come from the film world. Director Mirra Bank is filming a documentary. A five-minute promo by a Manipuri director set to a translation of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is here.

Perhaps a part of this venture’s appeal in the philanthropic world is that it’s just that little bit hokey. But who knows? Perhaps a generation from now, Manipuri players will be commonplace in the American game. That’s why they call it Field of Dreams…

…because now, you can’t read Blogspot or Typepad-hosted blogs in India. That means no Barmaid, no Abhi, no MD, no Brimful, no Badmash, no Maisnon. Erstwhile Mutineer Manish has more (natch) on Ultrabrown:

For all the talk of India’s freedom and democracy, the Indian government has apparently just censored all of Blogspot and Typepad. For shame. Blogspot- and Typepad-hosted blogs are inaccessible from my Bombay ISP and many others and seem to be blocked at the Airtel Internet backbone in Delhi. Geocities is reportedly blocked as well.[link]

Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf pointed out the utter lameness of this action via the ASATA mailing list:

As I was saying all along, unenlightened Internet policies are not a Pakistani monopoly; the Indian establishment can be just as “efficient” in the matter. First it was only Pakistan blocking most blogs, now it seems the Indian establishment is getting into the act…

Apparently, terrorists are using blogs to communicate, but Ultrabrown notes that Dr Gulshan Rai, Director of the Computer Emergency Response Team—India (CERT-IN) feigned cluelessness when asked about this unwelcome development:

“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?“…

Awesome.

I can’t improve on Manish’s response to that:

As the world’s back office, for India to blame overzealous techies would hardly be credible. It’s not yet clear which blogs the government was targeting, but the tactic of banning Blogspot is nothing less than outright repression — mimicking the tactics Pakistan used to shut down discussion of Danish cartoons critical of Islam. India is now in the august company of some of the world’s least free nations…

…because I’m too busy freaking out over the possibility he raises at the end of his post:

These repeated incidents are also a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on Web apps centralized on a small handful of domains. What’ll you do when your government blocks Gmail?

Shivam Vij has a detailed and worrisome post about his telephonic attempts to figure out what the hell is going on, here. He also has a grim sort of workaround, since not all platforms are censored equally:

Is there a moral of the story? Yes, there is. Shift to your own domain and your own hosting and most of all, to Wordpress. [link]

…or, click your ruby slippers together thrice and chant, “There’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like…

Dear readers, we know you want the good stuff and nothing but. It’s all about style and celebrity! So here’s the inside skinny on this weekend’s sizzling SAJA session, live from prestigious Columbia University!………All these phantastic photos are by regular commenter Preston Merchant, the desiest white guy you’ll ever meet………Heck, he lives in Jackson Heights and he’s even got a Parsi name! We love you Preston!

Prolific New York Times-man Vikas Bajaj, the convention’s president, sure made the most of his position. Let’s just say the cherubic correspondent won attention from some not-so-Gray ladies!………He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere – SAJA spiritual leader and networking machine Sree Sreenivasan was the host with the utmost. The J-school juggernaut jabberwock and new media maven lived all the way up to his rep. He even hosted a packed panel on blogging for beginners! Powerhouse wife and rifle champ Roopa and terrific twin tykes Durga and Krishna made this a family affair!

Dashing Riz Khan showed why he’s the face of Al-Jazeera’s new English-language channel. The tall caramel smoothie kept the crowd in stiches and reddened the cheeks of at least one lady! He’ll need to keep his mind out of the Qatar if he wants to top those Emi-ratings!………We missed some of the other plenaries, but our trusted sources tell us NBC anchorman Brian Williams was a barrel of laughs!………No, seriously! Guess he must not have talked about the future of network news!………Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs Richard Boucher broke from the Bush band’s behavior with a candid conversation on US foreign policy!………Not! Survivors said his soporific speech produced little more than Zzzz’s! The Mumbai bombings were barely discussed!

Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me this morning made reference to a recent foot-in-mouth remark by White House Spokesman Tony Snow (who used to be at NPR):

“One of the problems with NPR is that there is so much political correctness that if you’ve got a name that looks like it was made up by Rudyard Kipling , you’ve got a better chance of getting hired. I’m a white guy named Tony Snow for heaven’s sake. That’s as white as it goes.” [Link]

This remark got very little coverage by either mainstream or blog media and took some digging to find. It seems to have slipped by most people’s radar screens.

I’m aghast at the very casualness of the race baiting involved in that sentence. Oh yes, those brown people with the funny names, the ones who are taking over NPR by virtue of their skin color, not their talent (How many desis are at NPR anyway?). At the same time, I recognize that it is clearly less of a deal than Joe Biden’s recent remarks, which to me were just a minor kerfuffle I recognize that this is a minor rather than major political sin.

Still, Snow’s remarks are eminently cringeworthy and the sort of thing that brown people should both remember and remind him about, just so that he learns the utter gaucheness of what he said.

“Mr. Snow, this is Somini Sengupta from the Times … one of those reporters with a “Kipling Name” … I’d like to ask you about the President’s policy on …”

…. Sikh? Or a Hindu? Or a Muslim? Goodness Gracious Me explains it all very simply …

Because we could all use a laugh, heading into this weekend.

This marks the second time that fellow Mutiny-organizer Amardeep has inspired the theme for our Friday 55 Flash Fiction orgy; what might be even more amusing is that as with last time, today’s post is about…relationships. Hmm. I think I’ll start calling him Dr. Drew instead of Dr. Deep. ;)

Seven hours and over 100 comments later, the discussion roars on about Blacks dating Asians, Asians dating Whites, Whites dating Blacks…yet curiously enough, no one seems to be dating Latinos. :D Silly rabbits, don’t you know your roots are in the sand?

I keed. What I am consummately serious about, however, is nanofiction. Tiny little stories with exactly 55 words— what could be better? Ah yes…one from YOU. As always, you are welcome to write about topics of all colors, shapes and sizes, but for those of you who like the bondage of instructions, you’ve got ‘em. Please leave your mini-masterpiece in the comments below; meanwhile, I’m going to try and get one catchy INXS tune out of my head.

Since I don’t watch these television shows, it’s a bit dicey to comment on the spate of shows featuring romances between black men and asian women, so I’ll let Rinku Sen do it for me:

The sugary romance between the excessively noble characters played by Parminder Nagra and Shafiq Atkins on ER follows the much hotter one between Ming Na Wen and Mekhi Phifer that ended two seasons ago. Grey’s Anatomy features Sandra Oh in an up-and-down relationship with Isaiah Washington.

What accounts for such interest? It’s as though these couples have been pouring out of medical schools and producers decided to capture the trend.

The representations tread the line between cultural authenticity, sometimes considered stereotype, and colorblindness. The women exhibit some level of conflict with their cultures and are slightly neurotic: Ming Na dreaded telling her immigrant parents that she was having a baby out of wedlock; Nagra quit her job in a bout of rebellion against family expectation to work as a convenience store clerk. The men are dangerous but tender. Phifer grew up without a father and has a temper; Gallant went off to serve in Iraq. I did laugh at the effort to bridge cultures, though, when Nagra’s character got married wearing a white sari. White is the Hindu color of mourning.(link)

If it’s on TV, is it a reflection of a real sociological trend, or simply a convenient image of happy multiculturalism from television fantasy-land?

I’ve been thinking about what sort of systems should be put into place to try to prevent further attacks as in Mumbai. I don’t mean this to be callous. I too have family in Bombay, and while they’re OK, my heart still aches for those whose family is not. But the trains are running once more and need to be protected. [This is also some very abstract thinking, so I might be and Mumbaikar reveals, in the comments, that I am entirely talking out of my kundi.]

One solution, as Manish argues, would be to close the entire system and control access:

What it would take to solve the bombs-on-trains problem: money, lots of money. Indian Railways needs to run more frequent trains so they’re not jammed all the time. The stations need to be fully enclosed so entrance can be precisely controlled. And, like on Eurostar high-speed trains, every passenger needs to be scanned for explosives. [Link]

Something like this is done in the New Delhi Metro system. Although there was no mechanical sniffer, at many stops passengers were patted down or wanded by bored jawans. However, it strikes me that this is the wrong path, similar to trying to create a computerized tiffin system in Bombay. Sure it might work, but you’d need continuous electricity and literate tiffin carriers. Instead, India currently has something better. Using a system of painted symbols on each tiffin carrier:

Five thousand tiffinwallas deliver 175,000 hot lunches from home to work every day, and empty tiffins back home, with only one error every 16 million deliveries. [Link]

India works best when its ample semi-skilled labor applies simple rules repeatedly and rigidly. I’m trying to think about how to best reduce security risk by applying India’s comparative advantage, rather than imposing an alien solution.

It was my intention to go out in Style&Snark, involving some kind of LiveBloggingEvent or Recap of Priya&Divya’s Super Sweet 16. But in light of Tuesday’s gripping events on a subcontinent where the Innocent&Hardworking cram 15-per-square meter traveling to and from work in order to put food on the table in the pursuit of better tomorrows, the trivial voyeuristic judgment of affluent, ill-mannered, hyphenated-American teenagers and the parents who indulge them suddenly seemed all the more irrelevant.

In my Sepia denouement, it seemed appropriate to disclose one small confession: I’m scared of Indians. Like, terrified. Like, if everyone in the last comment thread was standing together in a room, it would take me several cocktails to muster the courage to enter. And one of those cocktails would probably have to include some ratio of 151.

Seriously.

It is comforting to note that in these times of terror, hard-headed businessmen still make their investment decisions undeterred by threat. My newest hero is that Titan of Industry, the Captain of Capitalism, Laxmi Mittal. It seems that the world’s richest Indian is increasing his investment in India-na:

Mittal Steel Co. plans to begin a $10 million expansion of research and development laboratories in East Chicago. The first phase, to start this week, would add 22,000 square feet to a laboratory. It is expected to be completed within a year. The company is based in the Netherlands, but its U.S. operations are run from Chicago. [Link]

This announcement came the day after it was revealed that India-na is the state in the union most densely populated with potential terrorist targets:

Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation. [Link]

That’s 11% of all targets on the National Asset Database. This is a state so hated by terrorists that even a rural popcorn factory with five employees is considered a target! Clearly Mittal is a man of steel, a hombre without fear, somebody who does not blanch even in the face of terrorists as confused as Christopher Columbus. Who needs Hanu-man, Indian Super-man, a brown Justice League, or any other Indian superheroes when we have a Mittal-man of our own ?

On Monday of this week I wrote this post (Lingering Tension in Gujarat) examining a Christian Science Monitor article on the growing powder keg of tensions in the Indian state of Gujarat (where my family emigrated from). The very next day the Mumbai Train Attacks occurred. Could these two seemingly unrelated topics be somehow related? I am the LAST person to jump to conclusions involving terrorism but I do want to point out some facts that the media is now reporting. In the passages below I have highlighted facts so as to separate from rumor:

Gujarat appears to loom large over the Mumbai blasts. That’s apparently why terrorists targeted only the Western Railway tracks and that too only first-class coaches.

Sources said the aim apparently was to hit moneyed Gujaratis, many of whom stay in suburbs of Vile Parle, Kandivli, Malad and Borivli along the Western Railway and travel first class.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba, intelligence reports suggest, has recruited local youths saying that they should take revenge for the atrocities heaped on the minority community in Gujarat where the Narendra Modi government is heavily funded by the rich Gujarati businessmen of Mumbai.

It is not for nothing that Modi is coming here early next week to meet community leaders. [Link]

What else do we know?

The aftershocks of Tuesday’s serial blasts in Mumbai shook Gujarat deeply. A large number of people killed and injured were Gujaratis.

At least seven people, mostly diamond traders, were killed in the blasts, while another eight diamond traders were reported to be missing till Wednesday evening. [Link]

Here is more:

The Railways on Wednesday cancelled the Shatabdi Express from Ahmedabad and Mumbai and three trains originating from Mumbai.

The 2010 Shatabdi from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and its counterpart from Mumbai Train 2009, the 9023 Ferozepur Express, the 9215 Saurashtra Express from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and the 239B Ahmedabad passenger train have also been cancelled for the day. [Link]

Disclaimer: Some good lovin’ from time to time is also required.

Because I am blessed and in good health, I only require my fish oil supplement and my multivitamin to get me through each day. I am definitely one of the lucky ones though. For those living with AIDS it is not nearly so easy. The most effective way to slow down the ravages of AIDS has been via a triple cocktail of drugs such as Sustiva, Viread, and Emtriva.

The triple-cocktail treatment for HIV involves taking three different drugs to combat the infection. These medications are two nucleoside analog drugs, such as AZT and 3TC, and a protease inhibitor, such as Crixivan. The drugs drastically reduce the concentration of viri in the bloodstream to undetectable levels by affecting enzymes in the virus itself. The drugs do not completely eliminate every virus in the body and probably never will. It is not certain whether patients taking the drugs may still be able to transmit HIV to other people. In addition, the drugs are not a vaccine which can be prevent a person from being infected with HIV.

The total cost of the medication may be as much as $12,000 a year, although some health insurance companies cover the drugs.[Link]

Some positive news announced late today for those suffering from AIDS:

The first once-a-day AIDS pill that combines three current medicines won U.S. approval on Wednesday, offering patients a more convenient alternative to current multiple drug cocktails.

Atripla, which contains Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s drug Sustiva and Gilead Inc.’s medicines Viread and Emtriva, is the latest step in making it easier for AIDS patients to keep the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in check — a process that once included dozens of daily pills.

“It’s one thing to have medicine available, but it will only be effective when people can indeed take it as they are supposed to,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Murray Lumpkin told reporters. [Link]

The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) holds its 12th annual convention, this Thursday through Sunday, in New York City. For more information on SAJA and the convention click here. SAJA has become quite a formidable organization. The convention will gather 1,000 media desis and desiphiles, which should be an interesting scene on a number of levels, and the outside speakers are quite a high-power group, from the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs to the head of the Associated Press.

I will be attending the convention and covering it on behalf of the Mutiny. I don’t know what this will mean in practice, nor what tack or tone I’ll take — I like to improvise — but I’ll be there and filing reports for you.

Quite a few SAJA-ers and associates read Sepia Mutiny, so here’s an open invitation for anyone attending the conference to get in touch. E-mail me and include your cellphone so I can send you a text during the event.

Any questions or suggestions from readers, please leave them in the comments or feel free to drop me a line.

While trying to deal with the tragedy in Mumbai, I have been wondering what the coverage of the story tells us about ourselves.

I was not surprised by MSM coverage in America: poor in local papers, better in papers with a large desi population or those with an international audience. I was pleased to hear that CNN and CNBC had decent cable news coverage, perhaps because they’re well established in India.

What has baffled me, however, is the relative silence from the world of blogs. The blogosphere is supposed to be the cutting edge, far more advanced than the MSM, yet they’re spending less time on the story.

To be more precise, Technorati’s rankings of popular news stories shows us that average bloggers are paying some attention to the bombings; the fourth, sixth and twentieth most reblogged news stories are the BBC, CNN, and Fox News versions of this story. It’s currently less important than the death of Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett, or coverage of Zidane’s press coverage, but more important than Bob Novak and the big dig.

Where we see a distressing lack of coverage most clearly is amongst political blogs in the top 100 list [Thanks Manish]:

• #5 Daily Kos: no story
• #9 The Huffington Post: short news story, no commentary, just 2 sentences cross-posted from CNN
• #14 Michelle Malkin: Brief post which starts “9/11. 3/11. Now 7/11?”
• #15 Crooks and Liars: 2.5 lines on the subject. However, they do link to a thoughtful analysis elsewhere
• #18 Instapundit: 8 different links to stories
• #43 Talking Points Memo: Nothing A link to this post. [Welcome TPM readers!]
• #44 LGF: 3 stories on the subject
• #47 Powerline: Story about Miss Universe (with a photo of Miss Sri Lanka) but nothing on the bombings
• #64 Newsbusters: Nothing
• #75 Captains Quarters: One detailed story with two updates, fairly early on in the news cycle
• #87 Andrew Sullivan: One article a day after, on the spirit of Mumbai

Amongst other major politics blogs, Atrios did a one line link while travelling and WashingtonMonthly covered black hair but not blacker events.

What gives? I emailed the following question to three significant political bloggers:

No opinion on the Mumbai bombings?

I’m surprised. Many more have died than did in London a year ago, and the death toll is currently just a little under the death toll from Madrid. Yet the blogosphere is largely quiet. Why?

I’m kind of tired of reading comments right now. Instead, I am going to put up some pictures. When lots of big words make my head spin I like retreating to pictures. The first one is the cover of Time Magazine from this week:

The second picture is from this t-shirt titled “Cowboys and Indians” that an SM reader tipped us off to:

“Cowboys and Indians”

In the dimly-lit opium den that is my head, I thought these two pictures kind of went together given the evolving geopolitical situation.

Bombay may or may not be the Maximum City, but maximum respect goes out to local writers Dilip D’Souza and Mutineer Emeritus Manish Vij for their pieces in Salon today. Dilip offers a reporter’s chronicle of the day; Manish, a very elegant urban essay centered on the railway.

Props to Salon for having reached out to these brothers. It’s well worth the small annoyance of watching a Stoli Blueberi (sic) ad — talk about irrelevant! — in order to read the online mag’s content today.

[I found the following in the Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry. It’s by Adil Jussawalla.]

Sea Breeze, Bombay

by Adil Jussawalla

Partition’s people stitched
Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.
An opened people, fraying across the cut
country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,
Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,
Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work
Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,
Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,
come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,
Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,
Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,
Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,
Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

Did you make sure to hear some music last night? I did.

Of course, I’m one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t on any of those trains that set off from Churchgate. I knew no one on them, not directly; though my dear friend’s wife’s cousin was on board, and he escaped unharmed, and his friend merely needed some stitches.

Doubly lucky, because I could, after a long day of small frustrations, step from the sticky street into a room where there was taking place, in a relaxed off-night way, jazz.

Quiet. Sound.

Could it have been more apposite? When Rez shifted to his hybrid guitar, the one with sympathetic strings, and Kiran stood at the mic in her kurta top, and they launched into their song called “Pearl” – as in, homage to Daniel?

As she worked through the scales against the organ and hi-hat, intently pulling the notes from thin air, by hand, in that geometric way Indian singers have, there seemed a moment of formal lamentation. Sorrowful, and wise.

Later, with two desi sistas – cousins, in fact – we spoke of mosaics of hundreds of tiny shiny tiles that make up, if not life, at least a livelihood. Of missing chunks, ripped out by invaders or worn away by time.

Testing the metaphor, we imagined a workshop where we – I – stay up late, polishing new pieces, some to partly fill the gaps, others to extend the composition.

I remembered that I’ve struggled, albeit in small ways.

The sound filling me still, I remembered: the possibility of tiles, the necessity of stitches.

Breaking News in Bombay via AP:

Seven explosions rocked Bombay’s commuter rail network during Tuesday evening’s rush hour. The blasts ripped apart train compartments and reportedly killed dozens, police and Indian media said.

Though the chaos makes it difficult to ascertain exact numbers, how many have been injured, Indiant tv reports said that “the death toll could be in the dozens.” 40 80 100 105 137 163 172 200 people have died and 300 464 700 are injured. I’m sure that before I can even update this post, one of you will comment with the latest numbers; I sincerely hope that they are not high. I know, I’m excessively idealistic, but whenever I hear “Breaking News”, “Bombs” or “Trains” or similar, I screw my eyes shut and pray for miracles.

Television images showed injured victims sprawled on train tracks, frantically dialing their cell phones. Some of the injured were being carried away from the crash site. The force of the blasts ripped doors and windows off carriages, and luggage and debris were strewn about.

Pranay Prabhakar, the spokesman for the Western Railway, confirmed that seven blasts had taken place. He said all trains had been suspended, and he appealed to the public to stay away from the city’s train stations.

Bombay, India’s financial center, and New Delhi, the capital, were reportedly on high alert. Bombay’s commuter rail network is among the most crowded in the world.

Developing… :(

My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. :)

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

Somewhere near the Sundarbans, a teenager cancelled a Royal Bengal tiger’s dinner plans. Using nothing more than a row boat oar, she kept the ferocious cat at bay for ten minutes. Unbelievable. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ve heard of mothers lifting cars off of their trapped children in order to save them. Maybe when the person in danger is a loved one…anything is possible. Via the BBC:

A woman in Bangladesh…fended off a Royal Bengal tiger which was attacking her husband, police say…

Eighteen-year-old Nazma Akhter and her husband Anwarul Islam, 25, were fishing for shrimp on Sunday in a canal on the fringes of the Sundarbans…

After biting Akkhter’s husband, the tiger tried to abscond with him, as Bengals are wont to do with their quarry; that’s when the fierce animal had to reckon with a fiercer woman.

Police chief ASM Zahid said…”This woman is extraordinarily courageous, because she alone fought the tiger and saved her husband,” he told the BBC.

“I salute her for her courage.”

Approximately 20 people are killed by tigers each year in Bangladesh; last week alone in the Sunderbans, two women died because of attacks from the lethal carnivores.

Local newspapers reported that such was the beating it received from the paddle that it was forced to beat a retreat into the forest.

Such a beating!

I had guessed that pressures from humans impinging on the Royal ‘hood were the cause for all of these deaths by Tiger, but apparently, there’s another reason:

Despite the fact that the last remnants of my family (on both sides) emigrated from India twenty years ago, the happenings in Ahmedabad, Gujarat are always of concern to me. All of my relatives (on both sides) have returned to purchase homes in Ahmedabad. It is part of an economic boom over there from what I understand. In Ahmedabad, my family will spend a significant amount of their retirement years. I will also probably make several trips there. The Christian Science Monitor featured an article on Friday that caused me worry:

… religious segregation is expanding not only to places of worship, but also neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. At the entrance of some villages, gaily painted message boards have sprung up since the riots that read: “Welcome to this Hindu village in the Hindu nation of Gujarat.”

Expressing concern over this increasing polarization, a recent report by a high level committee from the Indian Prime Minister’s office, to be tabled in the Indian Parliament in October, states that Gujarat still hasn’t recuperated from the riots in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. The committee noted that several Gujarati cities and towns are sharply divided into Hindu and Muslim ghettoes. Muslims, a minority in the state, face social and economic boycott from society at large. The committee also observed that dropout rates of Muslim girls have risen. And there’s a dismal representation of Muslims in public-sector jobs.

“There’s a state of fear and insecurity among Muslims,” says a member of the committee. “The state government has done little to end the state of alienation…” [Link]

I think that it is naturally important to look at the source of any claims pertaining to ethnic relations in Gujarat. In the paragraph above a study was conducted at the behest of the Prime Minister. In this excerpt below you will note that the examination was done by one of India’s mainstream newspapers:

The Indian Express, a national daily, reported last month that Muslims are being sidelined from the Indian government’s ambitious antipoverty project that promises the country’s rural poor 100 days of employment every year.

“Where the communal divide was hardened, where violence led to murder and widespread arson … Muslims are nowhere on the employment rolls,” the newspaper reported after touring six districts within Gujarat where the scheme is being implemented. Not just are there information blackouts, even those Muslims who enquire about jobs are turned away, the report said.

In response, Bharat Barot, Gujarat’s minister of state for rural development, said that in villages “the majority community called the shots.” The state was probing whether the alienation of Muslims was deliberate, and, if so, “it’ll be fixed immediately…” [Link]

Indian author Raja Rao passed away in Austin, Texas, at the grand old age of 96. He’s best known as the author of Kanthapura, and is one of those authors so strongly identified with the 1930s and 40s that it was actually a little surprising to find out he was still alive. (But then, his contemporary Mulk Raj Anand only passed away fairly recently himself.)

Rao lived a nomadic, complicated, 20th century life. He was born and raised in Mysore, and oddly enough for a South Indian Brahmin boy, he received his education mainly at Muslim schools in Hyderabad (his father worked for the local government, I believe). According to excerpts of his memoirs here, he also studied at Aligarh Muslim University until he received an invitation to come to a university in Montpellier, France, from a visiting French professor. This was around 1928; he ended up staying in France for more than a decade, studying, again surprisingly, Christian theology, and marrying a French woman who was also in academia. The marriage soon fell apart, and Rao returned to India on the eve of the Second World War, becoming more and more religious. He spent a great deal of time in ashrams in the 1940s, though he was also active in the independence movement. Though Rao later returned to France, he finally settled in Austin, Texas, where he taught in the Philosophy department (alongside G.V. Desani) until he retired in 1980.

A couple of hours from now, 22 handsome men of various shapes and hues will peel off their sweat-drenched jerseys and exchange them, amid hugs and kisses and mussing of hair, before a crowd of tens of thousands and a television audience of billions. And just like that, the World Cup will be over.

As the sporting winner emerges from the final pairing of France and Italy, so shall the competition’s winning narrative, the storyline of storylines that best succeeds in taking events on the field and giving them interpretive power to tell us something about the world we live in.

It is interesting that we are having discussions right now at the Mutiny about nationalism, jingoism, patriotism, anti-nationalism, and matters of that sort, at the same time that the world’s quadriennial celebration of national identities wraps up. The World Cup is a curious beast, it is a time when national loyalties are expressed, loudly and even virulently, yet in a choreographed manner and by universally recognized rules of engagement and fair play, for a limited duration and all at the same time.

It’s as much a celebration of the porousness of national barriers as it is of their continued relevance. It’s an event that inherently applauds globalization – the demographic flows, the internationalization of the business of sports, the diffusion of popular culture, the technological advances that permit billions of people to watch the same high-quality image feeds, the ease of travel that permits delegations of supporters to travel from the far corners of the planet. And it’s also an opportunity to wrap oneself in one’s flag – or that of another country to which one feels loyalty, or kinship, or just a whimsical fancy.

For a while now I have been meaning to write about a topic that has been of great concern to me (I am pretty sure most of my co-bloggers are as disturbed by it as I am). I have noticed that the blogosphere, with its ability to confer an anonymous voice to anyone, is often the venue for ignorant and naked jingoism. A blog like ours, which mostly covers items about, and of interest to North Americans of South Asian origin, offers a particularly unique window into what I am referring to. All of the bloggers who write for SM live in North America. Some were born here and some were not. The resulting mix of loyalties, the perception of mixed loyalties, our readers expectation of mixed loyalties, or our readers anger at a lack of loyalty toward the lands of our “origin,” results in a perfect storm. SM and a few other sites like it are being viewed by some as a sort of virtual ideological battlefield where the hearts and minds of several thousand readers hang in the balance.

Jingo: (n) One who vociferously supports one’s country, especially one who supports a belligerent foreign policy; a chauvinistic patriot. [link]

In its traditional use the word “jingo” (a pejorative term) means something far different than the word “patriot.” A patriot loves their country or geographic region and is ready to defend it…but is not above questioning it or beyond introspection. A true patriot is willing to defend against all enemies both external and internal. A jingo is the worst kind of nationalist (even worse when mixed with religion). They lash out at the tiniest hint of criticism directed at “their own.” A few days ago a reader commented on what he saw transpiring on our News Tab:

Off topic, but also in a strange way, slightly related to this topic, is the way in which the news tab here on Sepia Mutiny is used as a repository for anti Muslim chauvinism. This goes beyond the legitimate posting of stories on Muslim extremism and runs to the extent of posting articles from the RSS newspaper, posting about Little Green Football style documentary screeds about ‘The Truth About Islam’. I have noticed how these posts amazingly get large numbers of ‘Interested’ clicks in a short amount of time. Amazing!

Amusingly, someone has now posted a ‘Trouble with Hinduism’ article in response to this bigotry as a means of showing how it works both ways. Good. Chauvinists are using the news tab for their bigoted agenda. You should at least be aware of it. It is so tedious to see these monomaniacs waging their campaign and abusing what is an open and useful facility on SM. [link]

Yes, we are well aware of this phenomenon and will work to stamp it out as best we can. You can accuse us of censorship if you’d like but this isn’t about censorship but about remaining true to belief that communication is more important than simply being heard. A few weeks ago Anna sent her co-bloggers the following email:

Subject: I find the popularity of this news item a bit disturbing

The article linked reads like a SpoorLam rant…except it’s not funny.

That was one of the most popular articles in terms of number of votes we had that day…and it was little more than anti-Muslim propoganda.

After a long day spent playing Pauly Shore to my Stephan Baldwin in the bunker Biodome, my roommate Rajni likes to unwind by smoking her funny-smelling monkey cigars. The cigars usually arrive once a month in an unmarked brown box from I dunno where. Initially I thought Cuba but I’ve had my fair share of those and these are definitely not those.

Anyway, once she’s good and stoned ready we break out the Myst and get to work. Rajni likes to control the mouse while I scribble furiously in our Myst journals and thumb walkthroughs for hints. This is a terrible arrangement. I swear, those cigars turn Rajni into a space-monkey. Not spaced out like her celebrity crush Baker (heee!) but spacey as in staring at every little leaf and rock for minutes on end. While all I want to do is solve the puzzles. In this life sometime.

Last night we fought about this arrangement. Well, I fought; she was just like, “Got any bananas, pathetic human?” So, I’ve given up Myst and started a new hobby. No, pyaare people, not smoking cigars. I’ve started making dreadlocks out of Rajni’s fur while she zones. She looks a hot mess now but whatever, you doob you lose. Read that, Rajni? The soundtrack I use to keep our dopey dwarf in check while I tease and tangle is Kush Arora’s wicked new album, ‘Bhang Ragga: Dancehall, Bhangra, in Future Dub’.

Last month my one and only XLR8R mag had the following to say about this boy from the Bay:

Yesterday, Abhi blogged about the unfortunate remarks that The Senator From MBNA made about desis in Delaware; today, Biden’s case of foot-in-mouth syndrome is still a hot topic. SD pointed to just one of the stories about donut-gate via our news tab— this one is from the grey lady:

Facing criticism, potential 2008 presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday defended his recent remark that ”you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

I wouldn’t have advised the Senator to go that route, but okay.

The Delaware senator said his words were taken out of context.

Aren’t they always? Quelle tragédie. Here’s what I heard: one needs to have a “slight” Indian accent in order to order a glazed, as if the person behind the counter wouldn’t understand you otherwise. That’s garbage.

You know, the only proverb I ever memorized as a child was “Pride goeth before a fall”. Boast and you’re toast, y’heard? I’m saddened that the Senator seems too proud to own his faux-pas.

Oh, and if you need to F5 your memory— here’s what started all the drama, Mama:

On a recent edition of the C-SPAN series ”Road to the White House,” Biden is shown in New Hampshire boasting about his support among Indian-Americans.

”I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking,” the senator said.

When I was very young, I used to say that I wanted to grow up to be a Congresswoman from California, so that I could live and work on both coasts; to my very simple mind, it was the only way to do such an impressive and unique thing.

I fell in love with the east coast after a childhood trip to both New York and Washington, D.C. and the right side of the lower 48 has never loosened its adamantine grip on my heart. But, unlike some of my loved ones who have swtched sides, I am not happiest when I’m across from where I’m from. I wish that were the case, but as giddy as I am to live somewhere where the Smithsonian is mine for the wandering and New York is but a cab ride and Amtrak trip away, I’m haunted by homesickness far more often than I prefer to admit. If anything, I’ve made my uneasy choice because when I’m here, I miss Northern California slightly less than when that situation is reversed— but we’re talking about a 55/45 split, so it’s nowhere near an ideal situation.

Listening to Dinosaur Jr. last night certainly didn’t ameliorate the situation, but making tentative plans for a possible journey home did. I think I’ll take a few days off at the beginning of September to hug my Mother, check on my Godson, THROW AN SF MEETUP, get pedicures from people who know what they’re doing, drink plenty of Peet’s, dodge marriage queries, eat real sourdough, hold office hours, irritate my Mother and otherwise bliss out as I zip about Davis and Snob Hill in my much-missed sick civic.

I know that I’m not unique, that many of you are also far from your ‘hood, where the food is fantastic and pure love flows freely; if you care to follow a 55Friday theme, write about home, the sickness it evokes or just plain missing someone whom you love. As always, you are welcome to flash us with a story (and nothing else!) on any subject under the sun, just be thoughtful enough to leave your nanofiction below. 55 words about distance, where you grew up or the sweet thrill of “goin’ home”. Ready, steady…go.

Kenyandesi posted this story on the News tab yesterday and then Ruchira kindly reminded me of it via email today, (Thanks, ladies!) so I thought I should probably blog about the latest bit of stupidity regarding arranged marriages:

Citing the potential bride’s protruding teeth, bad complexion and poor English, a family in Massachusetts called off an arranged marriage and filed a lawsuit for damages.

The Hindu family, residing in Belchertown, Mass., had agreed to an arrangement proposed by Hindu friends in Maryland to marry their niece, who lives in India, the Springfield Republican newspaper reported.

But the father of the groom-to-be, Vijai B. Pandey, 60, filed suit after family members saw the selected bride in New Delhi last August. The Pandeys, according to the lawsuit, were “extremely shocked to find … she was ugly … with protruded bad teeth, and couldn’t speak English to hold a conversation.” The woman’s complexion also was cited. [linkage]

There is no sphere of life that is safe from the internet, not even in India. As proof, I bring you paan.com the website of Bombay’s most famous brick-and-mortar paanvala [via Amitava Kumar].

He’s probably the city’s most famous paanwala. It’s uncertain whether (as rumours suggest) he drives a Merc, but it’s clear for all the world to see that Prem Shankar Tiwari, the owner of Muchhad Paanwala paan shop on Warden Road, has his own website. It was built in 1998 by a devoted customer Vivek Bhargav. At paan.com, not only can you order paan online (a minimum order of 10 is required), you can also play a game that requires the participant to run from one end of the screen to the other to catch blobs of paan spit in a virtual bucket. [Link]

While you can order your paan online, there’s no word about whether you can spit it online once you’re done chawing it. [Whether ironically or not, right under the name of the store, the website exhorts the user to keep Bombay “clean and green”]

The website is quite amusing, and answered my burning question - why name a paan shop after facial hair?

His father Shyam Charan Tiwari established the shop thirty years ago. The shop was named Muchhad because his father Shyam Charan Tiwari had mustache so big and long that it touched his ears. And now it’s become a family tradition, all the four brothers have long mustache. [Link]

Click here to play the aforementioned game. It involves the player, holding a bucket at street level and trying to catch disgusting human head sized blobs of paan spit dropping from Bombay windows. Step aside Dante, I now know what hell looks like.

Related Posts: Tai-pan tries paan, Boing Boing discovers paan, Candy Cain

I’ve been thinking for a while of starting a side blog where I put up an entry every day featuring another sign of the end times. This picture below isn’t quite Cats and Dogs mating but it is kind of cool (via Ashwin our News Tab). My sources in Lucknow tell me that the Rickshaw-wallahs are striking again and so the mouse had no other choice except to hitch a ride on slower moving transportation. Last we heard he was on his way to stay with his cousin in the countryside for a few days.

It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.

Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow…, a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.

So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this year’s monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year’s deluge killed some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone. Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster among the city’s roughly 17 million inhabitants.

In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer. [Link]

Giddy-up!

Even in translation, the writings of Saadat Hasan Manto are blindingly good. Manto published about 250 short stories in a very brief career — alcoholism killed him at the age of 42 — and countless nonfiction pieces for newspapers and magazines. Much of Manto’s nonfiction writing is witty and sharp, though he also has a dark side that comes out in some of his best work. Partly because they’re available online, today I’d like to point readers to a series of rhetorical “Letters to Uncle Sam” Manto wrote in the early 1950s. There were nine in total, and four of them have been put online at Chowk: one, two, three, four.

If you know Manto well, you might want to skip down a bit for quotes and comments on the “Letters.” For those who don’t know Manto: the stories are amazing, often horrifying. The Partition stories Manto wrote are about the darkest you’ll ever see. Several of them deal explicitly with the psychic effects of rape, on both men and women, perpetrators and victims. Even Manto’s pre-partition writings (stories like “Khushia,” for instance) seem deeply preoccupied with the problem of masculinity and the objectification of women, from a perspective that’s only partly feminist.

Manto was in Bombay through the Partition (in 1948, he decided to move, with his family, to Lahore), so it’s unclear to me whether he personally knew people who had experienced this kind of violence. But stories like “Open it!” and “Cold Meat” (both of which provoked obscenity trials in Pakistan) seem to be inspired by a very personal awareness of the effects of traumatic violence. Whether or not he was personally there, Manto’s partition stories keenly capture the dehumanization that follows communal violence.

(As a place to start, I would recommend the collection Black Margins, though pretty much any collection will do.)

President Bush today held one of his extremely rare press conferences. Hey, lay off. If you were going to get asked a bunch of depressing questions about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea you wouldn’t want to be up in front of the press either. Later on in the evening he even went a step further and gave an interview to someone named Larry King. What is the occasion? It’s his 60th birthday of course! Birthday or not, if you were a hard-nosed reporter and had a deadline on your story, you’d go for the jugular…wouldn’t you? To avoid any uncomfortable questions Bush decided to have a photo-op with any of the White House correspondants who “happend” to share his July 6th birthday. Anyone? Yes good readers. You know where this is going already don’t you? Even the President knows that when you want to dodge tough questions it is time to go to Raghubir “The Foil” Goyal. “Coincidentally” July 6th is his birthday as well. Yeah right (tip via my Mom).

Bush celebrated his birthday with friends on Tuesday at a White House party on Independence Day and there weren’t supposed to be any festivities on Thursday. Still, the occasion was noted in a long day of meetings and public appearances, including a press conference with Harper.

The president received birthday greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin who talked with Bush on the phone Thursday morning about North Korea’s missile tests.

As Bush closed his news conference, a reporter in the audience, Raghubir Goyal, called out that it was his birthday, too. Bush invited him to the podium for a picture. The president asked if anyone else had a birthday and invited them to come up. Two others, reporter Richard Benedetto and State Department employee Todd Mizis joined the birthday celebration. [Link]

I think this is like when you pretend that it is your birthday so that you can get free cake at the restaurant.

See related posts: A wtf? moment at the Whitehouse press briefing, Goyal’s toils, One-Track Uncle, Scott McClellan feels the heat, Who let brown folks aboard Air Force One?

Of all of the potential 2008 presidential candidates on the Democratic side, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden has been in my top 5 (Gore, Warner, and Edwards being one through three). Biden always comes across as very articulate, often times blunt, and usually seems more knowledgeable about issues across the board than almost any other senator. The biggest dent in Biden’s armor (until today that is) has been the fact that he had Kavvya’ed someone during a previous presidential run:

Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also contributed to Biden’s withdrawal: a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians. [Link]

Today he may have topped that blemish, at least for a certain segment of the voters, by shoving his foot all the way up his mouth [via the News Tab]:

C-Span cameras caught him telling an Indian-American activist that Indian-Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in Delaware.

In fact, Biden said, “You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent…” [Link]

You will remember that another presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, made a similarly stupid remark in 2004.

Update: Please don’t start an email or letter writing campaign :). This may have just been a very poorly executed joke on Biden’s part.

For the past two weeks, since I picked it up at Artwallah, I have been listening to Chee Malabar’s new solo effort on my .mp3 player. It went on sale on-line today. Malabar is one half of the duo known as the Himalayan Project. He actually debuted the title track “Oblique Brown” at the SAAN conference to an audience that was floored by the raw (and ultimately sad) story. Here is a snippet from the title track about an incident that happened to Malabar in New York City:

It was the, moment I feared, the corner was clear,
or so I thought then a fucking cop appeared,
in my rearview, red-blue berries was flashing,
flagged me to the side of the road, started askin’
for “License, Registration”, stayed silent and patient,
waitin…as the cop ran my plates,
he came back moments later, scanning my face,
disappointed, “Ain’t no warrants in my name,
and this ride’s clean man, I got it in my mama’s name,
“What I do?”, “You ran a red, illegal U, that’s two tickets!”
“Cool, pass em over, i’d love to stay and kick it,
but I’ll catch you in court, you know I’ma fight it!”
“What! Hold up Osama, don’t be so near-sighted!”
Before I snatched the ticket, the cop got excited,
clutched his glock and screamed, “Don’t even budge bitch!”
Thought he’d call Tom Ridge to tell him “flip the color switch”
A white boy rocks a beard, he’s consided rugged,
and If I sport one, I’m a threat to the public!…

[Listen to Oblique Brown on Myspace]

Filed under “signs of the Kali Yuga,” this next story comes to us from India where crowds are gathering to see a man who is sporting a skull for a hairstyle (via the News Tab):

I say we expose this villain for who he really is.

Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off.

Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy’s skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood.

“When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull,” Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy told Reuters Wednesday.

“Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to lack of blood supply to the affected area, which can happen in such extensive burn cases.”

The piece came off Sunday and hundreds of people and dozens of doctors now crowd around his bed, where he lies holding the bone. [Link]

Poor guy. It is bad enough that he got burned but to have people staring and pointing at your skull?? You can’t even put a cast on that thing. At least then you could hope to make friends when people asked to sign it.

Bandyopadhyay said the skull’s inner covering and the membrane which helps produce bone was miraculously unaffected, allowing fresh bone to grow…

“Doctors say a new skull covering has replaced the old one, but I am not letting go of this one,” he told Reuters.

He intends to keep his prized possession for life and not hand it over to the hospital when he leaves: “My skull has made me famous,” he says. [Link]

You may have fooled the others Roy, but I know who you are. That brown skin and somber expression is just a facade for the evil that lurks beneath. When I find my Battlecat I shall come for you.

The Times has an intriguing story on Shiva Brent Sharma, an Indo-Trinidadian from Richmond Hill, Queens. At the age of 20, he was convicted three times for identity theft, and he was the first person to be indicted under New York state’s special identity theft law.

Sharma was studying at Brooklyn Tech when he started to get interested in making money through identity theft. He learned the ropes of it through hacker sites, and started sending out “phishing” emails to thousands of AOL users to secure banking and credit card information via spoof websites. He used the money to buy cars and car parts, and stayed at upscale hotels in New York before he got caught. No one knows for sure how much he stole, but it’s in the range of $150,000.

Sharma made quite a number of illegal purchases almost immediately after being released on bail for an earlier infringement. Sharma is also married to a woman he met in high school, and has a kid; he only graduated high school in Rikers Island prison.

From the Times article, it’s hard to figure Sharma out. What made him do it? Drugs, gambling, a need to impress? Not necessarily any of the above:

Since Ennis mentioned superheroes, I wanted to point out that Samit Basu has put together a wonderful series of essays and interviews on the subject of contemporary Indian speculative fiction (“speculative fiction” is an umbrella term, which includes sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and alternative history).

It’s really a small encyclopedia rather than a blog post, so here are a couple of pointers to start you off. First and foremost, Samit deals with the question of Indian speculative fiction in the context of the recent flourishing of “literary” Indian Writing in English here. He deals with the question of “authentic” Indian superheroes (as opposed to the bad, but familiar, ripoffs of western superheroes) here. Both are highly recommended links. Basu also gets into some questions about the publishing industry and the current dominance of diasporic writers here, though that may be of interest more to people interested in publishing questions.

Red-white-and blue, flying across the sky with his underwear on the outside … it’s hard to think of anything more American than Superman, right? Manish alerts us to an interesting claim made in an article by the “IndiaFM News Bureau” that Superman is nothing more than a Kaavya’ed Hanuman:

Word is that, that the original creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel were inspired from none other than the Indian mythological hero Hanuman and that is how Superman got his flying powers. [Link]

Sure there are some similarities between the two fictional characters: neither is human, they’re both super-strong, they can both fly, and both have names than end in -man. But that’s it, really. Much as I would love to claim Superman as desi, this claim makes as much sense as the claims that Vedic civilization had both airplanes and atomic weapons.

People (scholars even) have written a lot on the origins of Superman.You can find entire articles on this topic in the highly obscure internet source Wikipedia:

Because Siegal and Shuster were both Jewish it is thought that their creation was partly influenced by the Jewish legends of the Golem, a mythical being created to protect and serve the persecuted Jews of 16th century Prague and later revived in popular culture in reference to their suffering at the hands of Nazis in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Another influence could be Hugo Danner, the main character of the novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie. Danner has the same powers of the early Superman (as do many other pulp characters of the twenties and thirties)… However, the sources sited by Jerry Siegel himself were Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars and Tarzan, Johnston McCulley’s Zorro and E.C. Seegar’s Popeye. He also appears to have been influenced by Jack Williamson’s “The Girl From Mars.” [Link]

See - no reference to Hanuman made, ever. While it’s impossible to prove a negative (I cannot show definitively that they were not influenced by Hanuman), how would two Jewish kids in the 1930s know about Hanuman anyway? [And why would they need to know about Hanuman to come up with the idea of a flying hero? What, nobody in the west had ever thought of flying people before? This is after Peter Pan, for crying out loud.]

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright has a new book titled “The Mighty and the Almighty : Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs.” Any book by a former Secretary of State is sure to contain interesting new insights but this one also contains a bombshell in the book’s introduction (via Pickled Politics). As he is often prone to do, former President Bill Clinton steals some of the show with this statement:

During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States. The nature of America is such that many people define themselves—or a part of themselves—in relation to it, for or against. This is part of the reality in which our leaders must operate. [Link]

The incident, in which ~40 Sikhs were killed has come to be known as the Chittisinghpura massacre. The Indian government blamed it on the Pakistan-based Lashkar e Taiyba terrorist group:

Suhail Malik of Sialkot, interviewed by a New York Times correspondent in an Indian prison, has said he had no regret that he participated in the massacre, which coincided with US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India.

Malik said he had opened fire because he had been ordered to do so by his commanders and that he knew nothing about the plot to kill the Sikhs until he stood in an orchard where the 35 people were killed.

“I used my weapons when commanded… We are told what to do and not why. Afterwards, we were told not to talk about it,” 18-year-old Malik said. [Link]

Come the Fourth of July, I often wonder what my life would be like if I was British. My father worked in the UK before he came to the US for graduate school, his only brother still lives in Zone 2, London. As a result, I have both literal and metaphorical cousins across the pond.

“Chaz Singh” as St. George

To their credit, Brits are the only westerners who assume that I must be one of them rather than a foreigner. When I’m travelling abroad (outside of India or the UK), British travellers will go out of their way to say hi, while Americans look right through me. In the London, I’ve had people make eye contact with me when they rolled their eyes in disapproval at the noisy tourists who just entered the tube. “Boy, aren’t those foreigners noisy” they telegraph silently to me, while I try to keep a straight face and signal back proper stiff-upper-lip sympathy.

In that vein, I bring you “Chaz Singh” [I suppose that is his real name] who I discovered via DNSI.

Chaz Singh is one of the recipients of the BBC Breeze bursaries that has enabled him to … a collection of images that portray his identity as both Sikh and British. The verses also reflect the image as a verbal translation.[Link]

The St. George photo is my favorite of the lot. The verse … well, it’s in rhyme, and I don’t find it quite as interesting as the photos. More examples of his words and pictures below the fold, including his paired compositions concerning being both “Chav and Goth”.

Move over Louis, there is a Fat White Lady working your corner on the streets of New Delhi.

The AP reports that “Cocaine May Be the New Status Symbol in India”.

Says Kiran Bedi, good cop extraordinaire:

“Cocaine is expensive. You’ve got to have money for it, and now more people have money. It becomes a matter of keeping up with the Joneses.”

Among all the things that it is, it is another great example to add to the Class Matters series The New York Times did last year of how the material ways once used to define class have both changed and stayed the same.

And though I would argue that the social ripple effects of designer handbags and addictive stimulants are decidedly different, I suppose there is some parallel between Louis Vuitton and Lady Caine.

Last week several newspapers revealed the fact that the U.S. has been monitoring worldwide money transfers as part of its anti-terror measures:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials…

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. [Link]

Well okay. I guess looking at how money gets transferred isn’t as bad as listening to our conversations on the telephone. This seems like a pretty good idea. What could go wrong?

Money transfer agencies like Western Union have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company officials said.

In one example, an Indian driver here [in Dubai] said Western Union prevented him from sending US$120 to a friend at home this month because the recipient’s name was Mohammed.

“Western Union told me that if I send money to Sahir Mohammed, the money will be blocked because of his name,” said 36-year-old Abdul Rahman Maruthayil, who later sent the money through UAE Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer service.

In a similar case, Pakistani Qadir Khan said Western Union blocked his attempt this month to wire money to his brother, Mohammed, for a cataract operation.

“Every Mohammed is a terrorist now?” Khan asked.

Western Union Financial Services, Inc., an American company based in Colorado, said its clerks simply are following US Treasury Department guidelines that aim to scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed a few hours. Some are blocked entirely. [Link]

Perhaps Uncle “all things desi are good for your health” was right. Turmeric may prevent Alzheimer’s. Mangosteens may combat bird flu. Ice in your soda may be bad for you. And now it turns out that pomegranate juice may reduce the risk of heart disease and even fight off prostate cancer.

Seeds of life?

Although Persephone’s consumption of pomegranate may have consigned her to the land of the dead, it looks like the fruit may have the opposite effect on us:

Scientists in Israel have shown that drinking a daily glass of the fruit’s juice can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Pomegranate juice contains the highest antioxidant capacity compared to other juices, red wine and green tea,” said Professor Michael Aviram, who led the team. [Link]

Drinking a daily eight ounce glass of pomegranate juice can significantly slow the progress of prostate cancer, a study suggests. Researchers say the effect may be so large that it may help older men outlive the disease. Pomegranates contain a cocktail of chemicals which minimise cell damage, and potentially kill off cancer cells. [Link]

No word on whether cooking with anardana has a similar effect. Of course, you know where the best anardana in the world comes from, don’t you?

Pomegranate seeds are sometimes used as a spice, known as anardana … The seeds of the wild pomegranate daru from the Himalayas is considered the highest quality source for this spice. [Link]