New York City has just released preliminary results of a health study that shows that more than one in eight adult New Yorkers have diabetes, while twice as many have abnormally high blood sugar that could be a sign of conditions leading to diabetes. Moreover, of the city’s diabetes sufferers, at least one-third do not know that they have the disease, while many of those who know they have it are not managing to treat it properly. Here’s the NYC health commissioner quoted in the New York Times today:

“This confirms that we as a society are doing a rotten job both preventing and controlling diabetes,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner. “We can do a much better job helping people with diabetes get their condition under better control. The fact that there are over 100,000 New Yorkers with seriously out-of-control diabetes, and over 200,000 who don’t even know they have diabetes, is a real indictment of our health care system.”

As disturbing as the overall figures are, he said, they were not unexpected. They resemble estimates made by public health officials, who expected that the disease would be more common in New York City than nationally; diabetes is less prevalent among whites than among most other groups, and New York is a mostly nonwhite city.

Which brings us to the Desi Angle (TM), and it’s a deadly serious one:

But Dr. Frieden said he was startled by some of the specific findings, including the very high numbers among Asian-Americans, especially those from South Asia. The study indicates that more than half of the New Yorkers whose families are from the Indian subcontinent have either diabetes or prediabetes.

Here’s more:

Asians have the highest rates in the city, 16 percent diabetic and 32 percent prediabetic. The city’s report does not differentiate Asians by region, but officials said that the data in their study and others show that East Asians have below-average rates of diabetes, while South Asians have by far the highest of any large group.

Diabetes afflicts about 14 percent of the city’s non-Hispanic black population, 12 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of whites.

If I can get a hold of more details I’ll update this post accordingly. Tomorrow the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC (93.9 FM in New York, and live and archived online) will be discussing this topic including the specific case of the South Asian community.

Madhavi Gavini is a student at a math/science high school in Mississippi, the Mississippi Institute of Math and Science. At age 14 she got interested in cystic fibrosis, especially the lung infections that kill many people suffering from CF:

It was that thirst for knowledge that drove Madhavi to search for a way to help a friend with cystic fibrosis. “I found out that most people who have CF die of pseudomonas infections,” she recalls, “so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” She was 14 at the time. “I guess the thought that a 14-year-old can’t really do much to help, didn’t really occur to me,” she says with a shrug.

Pseudomonas bacteria — in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis — can cause deadly secondary infections in people with immune-suppressing conditions such as AIDS, cancer and severe burns. This opportunistic pathogen forms a thick, protective layer around itself, making it nearly impossible for antibiotics to penetrate and destroy it. (link)

That’s the background. Interestingly, the technique she used to find a way to kill the Pseudomonas bacteria started with Ayurvedic medicine:

With an herb book from her grandparents as her guide, Madhavi sampled common grocery store and green houseplants, such as cinnamon, ginger and aloe. She obtained a strain of pseudomonas bacteria from the local university and began subjecting the germs to various plant extracts.

One of the common tropical plant extracts penetrated the bacterium’s protective layer. Next, Madhavi isolated the specific molecule in the extract that was able to inhibit bacterial growth. She found that the molecule was heat resistant, and resistant to pressure. “It kills the cell,” she explains, “by preventing the transcription of the genes involved in energy, metabolism, adaptation, membrane transport, and toxin secretion.” (link)

The herb she started with, incidentally, is Terminalia Chebula, known in Sanskrit as Haritaki. As for which molecule exactly kills the biofilm that protects the Pseudomonas, the coverage I’ve read doesn’t say.

Wow.

A friend forwarded me this Julian Baggini article on racism in the UK, which appeared in the Guardian last week. If I could give an award to someone for coming up with the most horribly written piece of drivel I’ve read in a while, it would surely go to this Baggini guy. No, seriously. I’m not being sarcastic.

Baggini tries to argue two things. Well, he rambles on and on and ON endlessly, but I’m taking the liberty to condense his points here. First, he argues that when some white Britons refer to us brown folks as ‘Pakis,’ they don’t really mean any harm. Second, he argues that if only we were to integrate and tolerate one another more, then people wouldn’t use the word ‘Paki’ so often. My response to him is, you’re dead wrong and, it’s not that easy.

This is how Baggini sets up his argument:

The mainstream British mind is not so much misunderstood as not seriously considered. To rectify this, 18 months ago I set out to examine the national “folk philosophy” - the set of beliefs and assumptions that informs how we live and how we think. To help me do this, I found the area with the closest match of household type - young and old, rich and poor, single and married - to the country as a whole. And so I ended up living for six months in S66, on the outskirts of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

Almost everyone [in Rotherham] used the word “Paki” when referring to British Asians, yet of everyone I got to know, only Neil - happy to be described as somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun - would merit the charge of being truly racist.

Although I don’t enjoy reality television in general, I do love that fabulous Bravo show Top Chef. I love to cook. Before I even reached our new bureau offices in Texas I had a vegetable steamer and a set of very nice (and ridiculously sharp) Ginsus pre-deployed to my apartment (via Amazon supersaver shipping). I have also invested in a fust-class set of Calphalon cookware. Meal preparation has never been this much fun! Before I took up blogging, cooking was my one and only creative outlet. It is the only right brain talent I have. Blogging and cooking are very similar when you get right down to it. You have to serve up something delicious in a short time to an an often ungrateful audience who thinks they can do better.

Oh yeah baby. Pour that ink on me.

My favorite part of the show are those “quickfire challenges.” In these fierce battles, contestants are given only like 15 minutes to prepare a scrumptious meal out of some very basic ingredients. Once the hosts sent the contestants into a Kwik-E-Mart and made them use the food available there for a gourmet entree.

Speaking of hosts, Padma Lakshmi, the host of this season’s Top Chef (as Amardeep previously reported), has been getting skewered by the cooks off-camera. Here is a sample of the many ways to cut and prepare a Padma:

According to a source who worked on the set of Top Chef, the ex-model turned trophy wife turned hostess Padma Lakshmi allegedly enjoys smoking pot on set, giving a whole new meaning to the term “Quickfire Challenge” — see, cause she’s allegedly lighting up a joint instead of a stove! Anyway. Exactly how often this happened is disputed, though we were assured it was allegedly “fairly regularly…” [Link]

Asked if he trusted Lakshmi’s culinary taste, Ilan Hall, a line cook at Casa Mono, asked a Bravo flack, “Um, are we allowed to say disparaging things about Padma?” No. “She’s beautiful,” Hall offered. “Mostly, she just explained things, and she did a good job at that.” Cliff Crooks, executive chef at Salute!, said, “Nothing she said really made a difference in my cooking.” Sam Talbot, former executive chef at Punch, said, “Next question.” He also noted that she seemed intent on stepping out of her famous husband’s shadow. “She never wanted to talk about him. I remember a time she got a phone call and she yelled, ‘You can ask me any question you want, but don’t bring up my husband!’” And then there’s the matter of her stomach-baring, kitchen-unfriendly attire. “Some of the things she wore, I wouldn’t suggest anyone wear around a working kitchen,” said Crooks. “Either she’d be a fire hazard or she’d get hurt…” [Link]

See, if I ever had the opportunity to score a trophy wife then I think I could do a lot worse than Padma. On the show she always has a very neutral tone though. She smiles often but never actually laughs. She also gives a lot of really intelligent sounding critiques to the chefs…until the real chefs nicely contradict her seconds later. I do love those outfits though, even if they are fire hazards.

Anyways the season finale of Top Chef is on Wednesday night! It’s down to that obnoxious Marcel and the saffron-happy Ilan. I can’t stand the excitement.

It’s not just “The Apprentice” with the chef Tom Colicchio subbing for the emperor Donald Trump, not just “America’s Next Top Model” with a much higher calorie count. It’s a look at the imagination, desperation, judgment and serendipity that inform any great meal. [Link]

I will close the comments tomorrow night until after the show is over on the West Coast. You East Coasters always ruin these things by blabbing too early.

While New Yorkers are known for their displays of self-flagellation, it’s usually a metaphorical exercise, one driven by old school Catholic or Jewish guilt. However, over on 3QD, Abbas Raza has some surprising photographs of Ashura / Moharram being commemorated right in the middle of Park Avenue. Ashura is marked by both Shia and Sunni, although for different reasons. For the Shia:

This day is anniversary of the battle of Karbala which resulted in martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, by the army of Umayyad caliph,Yazid I. [Link]

All of Husain’s family was massacred in front of his eyes, even his six-month old son … The followers of Ali (the Shia) said to themselves that they would never allow this horrific event to be forgotten, and that they would mourn Husain and his family’s murder forever, and for the last thirteen hundred years, they have lived up to this promise every year. This mourning has given rise to ritualistic displays of grief, which include flagellating oneself with one’s hands, with chains, with knives, etc. [Link]

Raza observes:

In front, you can see a painstakingly recreated model of the tomb of Husain…. It is a testament to the tolerance of American society that … it allows (and observes with curiosity) such displays of foreign sentiment… The procession is made up of Shias of various nationalities, with the largest contingents being from Pakistan and Iran. [Link]

I’m a native New Yorker, and I never dreamed that there was an Ashura procession in the center of the Upper East Side. It’s worth looking at Raza’s entire post — it’s a long article, with multiple photos including some of the self-flagellation.

Related posts: Fun, Frolic and Heavy Lifting

[some names have been changed]

Delhi

“What is your business in India, sir?” Police inspector sahib was looking me intently in the eyes (with what I swear was a smirk). It has been proven by the record of El Al that the single best method of revealing a suspected highjacker is by employing a thorough screening interview.

“I’m actually not staying in Delhi, but just transferring through to Nepal. My younger brother is getting married there.”

“But you are Indian, no?”

“I’m American, but yes, my parents are from Gujarat. Well, actually my mom is from Africa but she is Gujarati too. But the girl, she is Nepali.”

“But your last name is not Gujarati. You must be Bihari.”

“No, I’m quite sure of it. I am Gujarati”

“Can’t be. I have Bihari friends with the same last name.”

“I know, I tried to convince my father once that we weren’t Gujarati also…but after a half hour he got mad at me and said I was just wasting his time and that even great-great-grandfather was Gujarati.”

“I think you must be from somewhere else, not Gujarat.”

Should I have continued to argue some more? Maybe he was right. My confidence regarding this whole matter was rapidly deteriorating. I was equally troubled by the fact that I could not locate Bihar on a map. Who knows who migrated where 300 years ago? He had a gun. Most importantly, I still hadn’t been given the clearance to pass. There was a very long line behind me and I could feel stares on my moist back. Inspector sahib kept on with that smirk and his head was now cocked to the side. I don’t trust people with side-cocked heads. I gently reached for my bag without his verbal clearance. With purposely slow movements (eyes on the ground) I walked away. I hoped that airport security did not determine me to be a counterfeit Gujarati unworthy of passage. My family had gotten away with it for a few hundred years. I couldn’t now fail them all.

Before the blogosphere goes collectively gaga over Shilpa Shetty’s style and grace, I just want to show you one picture [Thanks Saheli!]

To get the full impact of the outfit, you really do have to click on it and go to the larger version.

I have no idea where to begin … never mind, when you’re a Bollywood star, you make your own rules.

And if you’re going to make a statement of personal style, why not shoot the moon?

p.s. what is it with Shetty and animal prints? Or is that too catty a question to ask?

As predicted by the markets, Shetty today won Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. The whole thing was a very big deal in some ways. It sparked intense debate in the UK and caused an international furore. Tony Blair weighed in, as did the mayor of London Ken Livingston, and at least six cabinet ministers including Gordon Brown, the man who is likely to become the next PM. The media coverage of the whole thing has been intense. It has resurrected Shetty’s career, and buried the careers of Danielle Lloyd and Jade Goody. English celebrities will probably be on their best behavior concerning issues of race for the near future, and broadcasters more careful about racist content.

Still - will this tempest in a teapot matter in a few months? Will it lead to any real changes for British Asians, or will it soon be forgotten?

Over at Pickled Politics Sunny directs our attention to an article earlier this week by Priyamvada Gopal in the Guardian. In it, the author raises a number of important questions. Firstly, how deep is our recently renewed ethnic solidarity:

For British Asians, the public display of familiar battles poked at raw wounds, inspiring large numbers to protest. I would feel a lot more excited about this apparent resurgence of anti-racist awareness if recent years had shown more evidence of a genuine activist spirit among us. Where were these tens of thousands of protesting voices when young Zahid Mubarak died at the hands of a white racist cellmate with whom he should not have been made to share a cell? When a few hundred Sikh women protested alone at discriminatory treatment by British Airways meal supplier Gate Gourmet? [Link]

How much of our response to Shetty’s treatment reflects class anxiety and aspirations?

India … is increasingly obsessed with disseminating the myth of the nation as fundamentally middle-class, professional and successful. The task has partly fallen on the feminine shoulders of India’s flourishing glamour industry.

This anxiety to belong to the global community of the economically successful explains Shilpa’s repeated protests that she is not from the “slums” and did not grow up on the “roadside”… Shilpa understands her task clearly: to show the world that India is really about beauty and entrepreneurial success, not slums and poverty. Losing neither time nor opportunity, India Tourism brought out a full-page ad last week … [Link]

I’ve had a warm feeling toward vultures, buzzards and other scavenger birds since the time I attended a wedding in Burkina Faso, the arid, land-locked West African country, back in the early 1990s, and looked up to see clusters of big, bad-lookin’ buzzards hanging around on trees, waiting for the event to be over so they could swoop in for the remnants of the dozen or so sheep that had been slaughtered for the occasion. It was one of those “hey, what’s up?” moments humans can have with animals, when you realize that we’re all in this together, that each creature serves its function, and that the social and cultural practices of one species have significant effects on the well-being of others. I want to say it “humanized” the buzzards for me, which obviously isn’t the right word, but it demystified them and made me appreciate them. Nuff respect to the scavenger birds.

Today tipster Sakshi brings to our attention a fascinating article from Smithsonian magazine on vultures in the subcontinent, which not only offers an interesting glimpse into the lives of these birds but, more importantly, shows how closely we and they — and other species — lead interwoven lives and how fragile that balance can be. It turns out that scientists, picking up on the observations of cattle herders and others in the field, have noticed a substantial decline in the long-billed vulture population in the subcontinent for some years. The disappearance of the lead scavenger has resulted in the accumulation of un-scavenged cattle corpses as well as the growth of packs of feral dogs, in ways that you can read about in the article. It has also placed a new burden on secondary scavenger birds that used to only come in after the larger, more powerful vultures. Those birds in turn have become vulnerable to whatever it is that has decimated the vultures:

… across the subcontinent all three species of Gyps vultures are disappearing. Dead livestock lie uneaten and rotting. These carcasses are fueling a population boom in feral dogs and defeating the government’s efforts to combat rabies. Vultures have become so rare that the Parsi in Mumbai have resorted to placing solar reflectors atop the Towers of Silence to hasten the decomposition of bodies. International conservation groups now advocate the capture of long-billed, white-backed and slender-billed vultures for conservation breeding.

So what’s the cause? After initially speculating it was some kind of virus, scientists now have strong proof that it’s a particular medication that herders give cattle that is toxic to the vultures. This brings into the story the Indian pharmaceutical industry and its history of reverse-engineering cheap drugs, which arguably has done a lot to save human lives but has also resulted in a proliferation of drugs on the market without necessarily sufficient regulation or understanding of appropriate use. The chain of effects goes on:

Public health officials say it’s likely that India’s rat population is growing too, sharing the bounty of abandoned carcasses with feral dogs, and raising the probability of outbreaks of bubonic plague and other rodent-transmitted human diseases. Livestock diseases may increase too. Vultures are resistant to anthrax, brucellosis and other livestock diseases, and helped control them by consuming contaminated flesh, thus removing reservoirs of infectious organisms. Some municipalities are now resorting to burying or burning carcasses, expending precious land, firewood and fossil fuels to replace what Rahmani calls “the beautiful system nature gave us.”

In all, this is a powerful story of interdependence and one that, just possibly, might have a happy ending, as the governments of India, Pakistan and Nepal have grown aware of the problem and taken remedial action. Read the article for that story as well as a rich perspective on the interconnectedness of all things, one that might, at a minimum, help us step back from some of the ridiculous disputes over trivial matters that we humans, including those of us who hang out at this site, sometimes so enjoy wallowing in. There’s also a nice sidebar interview with the article’s writer, Susan McGrath:

Well, I knew that my trip to India was going to be different than most people’s trips to India. All my friends were saying, “Oh you’re so lucky! The crafts! The clothing! The wildlife!” And I spent half my time in India in carcass dumps.

Glad you did, Ms. McGrath. And to the vultures: keep ya ugly heads up, my avian brothers and sisters, stay strong!

Like many other people, I cringe whenever I’m routinely mistaken for another brown person. When I attended graduate school in the midwest, people repeatedly confused me with another desi woman in my class, Sheila, who looked absolutely nothing like me — the obvious difference being that Sheila was much lighter-skinned than I was. At least, to me, it was obvious. To other white people, it was apparently not. Never mind that Sheila was from India and a had a bourgeois Mumbai accent, whereas I was from southern California and talked like a valley girl. As far as other people at school were concerned, we were interchangeable.

And so, because of repeated instances like that, I had figured that brown folks were just more sensitive to skin tone differences than white people were. But apparently, that’s not the case. When I was at work yesterday, I caught this news blurb:

Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be discrimination, a researcher says.

Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.

“On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education,” Hersch said.

What’s also interesting that it seems the researcher compared skin tones within immigrant groups:

Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, such as English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings.

That means that if two similar immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, came to the United States at the same time, with the same occupation and ability to speak English, the lighter-skinned immigrant would make more money on average.

I also wonder why Hersch used immigrants as her subjects, and not second, third, or fourth generation Americans. Would the results be the same? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to find this particular study of Hersch’s online, and I usually prefer to link to original sources rather than the newspaper, but still, this is food for thought.

Since we have been talking about California doctors I thought I would share a news item that just came to my attention. Do you knows which desi male is in such high demand in Hollywood for his magic hands? He’s not a yoga instructor or a masseur, instead he’s Dr. Raj Kanodia, surgeon to the stars!

What do Jennifer Aniston, Ashlee Simpson and Cameron Diaz have in common? When Aniston recently underwent rhinoplasty, she turned to Dr. Raj Kanodia, the plastic surgeon behind Simpson’s and Diaz’s new noses. [Link]

Would you trust a bald barber?

Aniston’s rep confirms the operation. “Jennifer had a procedure done to correct a deviated septum that was incorrectly done over 12 years ago,” [Link]

While the official story is that she hated her original nose job and came to Kanodia for correction, nosy parkers insist that that a broken nose is just balm for a broken heart.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that all these famous actresses are coming to a desi doctor to get demure little noses? I imagine him doing these operations with an cartoon angel on one shoulder and a cartoon devil on the other. The angel tells him to just do what the client wants, and the devil tells him to go ahead and do what he really wants - to give these women beautiful, majestic desi schnozzes instead. The poor doctor’s hands twitch, caught by conflicting impulses, until he leaves the room crying and his associates finish the surgery instead.

More on Kanodia: Champa And Tulsi Go to Hollywood

Our earlier post on him: Of Course…A Desi Doc on Dr. 90210

In India an interesting debate has broken out over what exactly is secular and what is religious. In particular, can the government promote yoga?

At issue is a measure by the Hindu nationalist-led government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, that required public school students to practice the sun salutation and recite certain chants in Sanskrit during a statewide function on Thursday. The state government, controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., said that it complied with a central government policy to encourage yoga in schools [Link]

The Chief Minister (pictured right) defended this as part of a broader a health initiative:

‘The government was committed to creating awareness about yoga, which helps to keep the body and mind in good health,’ …The yoga policy envisages constitution of a council for practising yoga in the state, provision of facilities required for setting up yoga centres, selection and appointment of yoga teachers. [Link]

However, minority groups did not see this as innocuous:

The “Suryanamaskar” programme came under attack from minority communities and opposition parties who had dubbed it as “an effort to saffronise education.” The ruling BJP was trying to “incite religious passion under the garb of yoga” among school children, a spokesman of the Catholic Church of Madhya Pradesh said. [Link]

In particular, they took issue with the use of Hindu mantras:

Muslim and Christian groups in the state took issue not so much with the yoga exercise, but with the chants, which they said were essentially Hindu and in worship of the sun. They argued in court on Wednesday that it violated the Indian constitutional provision to separate religion and state. [Link]

What time is it? It’s yoga time!

On Wednesday, the court agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that “neither the chants nor the sun salutation could be forced on students. [Link]” The MP government has responded by saying that the whole event was voluntary in the first place, but even this remains problematic as it would create a major public event from which non-Hindus would be discouraged from attending.

We’ve blogged before about how Christians in the US are concerned about Yoga, but this story reminds me more about the “War over Christmas” than anything else. It feels like the kinds of debates we have in the US about the suitability of Christmas carols for public events, or for Christmas trees for public spaces. Even in India, certain aspects of Yoga occupy a space between public and parochial.

While I do believe that Yoga can promote health, I think that the impact of doing a quick Surya Namaskar is pretty miniscule. This means that the state is either being transparently cynical, or various ministers believe in the almost mystical powers of yoga to produce health over and above the component physical movements. If it’s the latter, perhaps the opponents of this program ought to respond with some laughing yoga instead .

I think my infatuation with British Asian culture began three or four years ago, when Bobby Friction and Nihal started their radio show on BBC Radio One. In fact, it was some of the music they spun that provided me small glimpse into British Asian life. One group in particular The Sona Family and their desi remix of “Oi, Who’s That Asian Girl” got me hooked on this British Asian sound, and its accompanying slang instantaneously. I wanted to say “Bruv” in that accent, end sentences with “innit,” and have all “ma bredren know what I was chattin about.” Sure, it took awhile to understand some of the many references to British Asian life highlighted on the radio show and on the Sona Family track, but I eventually started to understand the lingo, and to the annoyance of many of my friends actually started to use (perhaps inappropriately) some of the slang.

I thought after my religious following of the British Asian scene I was sufficiently well versed in the dialogue of the British Asian. So despite all the many British reviews mentioning the strange language, (linguistically inventive is how the Times Literary section described it) I wasn’t intimidated when I picked up Gautam Malkani’s recent work of fiction, Londonstani. As soon as Manish mentioned this book I knew I needed to read it, and so when I came upon it during a recent trip to India, I snatched it up.

I turned to page one and simply put, the writing gave me a headache. How could one possibly write entirely in slang, in a “desi patois”, and get it published (and undergo a bidding war no less)? I thought it couldn’t last. Using “an” instead of “and” in every chapter? My head was pounding. I thought I liked the slang, but I found myself having to re-read paragraphs. I don’t like to re-read paragraphs, it ruins the flow. Was there an index? How were people supposed to read this? I know the American version has an index to help readers comprehend “the linguistic inventiveness,” but I got my copy, a British one, at Crosswords in India. And I can’t imagine how an Indian, or any person entirely unfamiliar with British Asian slang could understand half of the things Malkani “was chattin about” in the book, especially without an index.

“Hear wat my bredren b sayin, sala kutta? Come out wid dat shit again n I’ma knock u so hard u’ll b shittin out yo mouth 4 real, innit, goes Hardjit, with an eloquence an conviction that made me green with envy…”

A few years ago the editors of the late, great mag ego trip published a fantastic Big Book of Racism that must be one of the funniest, edgiest, most on-target treatments ever produced on the glory and ridiculousness of inter-cultural discourse in America through the ages and today. In 300 pages of over-the-top gonzo charts, lists, graphics, mini-essays, and assorted unclassifiable content, the collective turned every stereotype on its head and made fun of everyone on an equal basis using as its great leveler the power of the absurd. A precursor to Borat, in a way, but with much broader scope, knowing detail and subtlety, and without the escape hatch of the visiting-foreigner device. I wish I had my copy on hand so I could excerpt a few of its classic moments, but I don’t, so I can only encourage you to check out what’s available on the Google Books preview and, better yet, just buy the damn thing.

It seems a close reading of this book would also have benefited Chanakya Sethi, the editor in chief of the Daily Princetonian, and his colleagues at the student newspaper of Princeton University. Last week the paper ran its annual “joke issue” made up entirely of fake news and parodies, and as you may know, included a faux op-ed by “Lian Ji.” The reference was to Jian Li, a student who filed a civil rights case against Princeton for not admitting him (and went on to Yale), and the copy included passages like this:

Princeton claims that it increase diversity by rejecting an Asian-American. You make joke? My mom from same province as General Tso. My dad from Kung Pao province. I united 500 years of Rice Wars. I invented Asian glow — new color, new race. Hey, what about yellow fever? Heard that’s hot on this campus. This is as diverse as you can get.

Plus, no-color people all go to Ivy Club; I would have made Campus Club alive again. Plus, I would have created first Asian a cappella group. Plus, I would have starred in first Chinese Opera in McCarter Theater. Plus, I would have join USG, become USG president better than Rob Biederman. Who you think get better deals with Ivy Garden boss anyway? Plus, I know how to make bubble tea. Plus, I would have taken one engrish class and be liberal arts. Writing seminar count, right? Multiply, I make DDR varsity sport.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow account of the ensuing shitstorm: see the New York Times wrap, for instance, here. But there is also a Desi Angle (TM) in that the paper’s editor-in-chief, and therefore presumably the one ultimately responsible for what get published, is desi — as is, incidentally, the next editor in chief, Kavita Saini, who takes over next month.

A few months before “Uncle Milt” passed away, he granted an interview with the WSJ’s ever-excellent Tunku Varadarajan.. While the interview overall is pretty short, there are a couple good India nuggets -

India—how do you assess its prospects?

Friedman: Fifty years ago, as a consultant to the Indian minister of finance, I wrote a memo in which I said that India had a great potential but was stagnating because of collectivist economic policies. India has finally started to disband those collectivist policies and is reaping its reward. If they can continue dismantling the collectivist policies, their prospects are very bright.

Any thoughts on a China versus India comparison?

Friedman: Yes. Note the contrast. China has maintained political and human collectivism while gradually freeing the economic market. This has so far been very successful but is heading for a clash, since economic freedom and political collectivism are not compatible. India maintained political democracy while running a collectivist economy. It is now unwinding the latter, which will strengthen freedom of all kinds, so in that respect it is in a better position than China.

Color me cautiously optimistic. While in the long run I tend to agree with Mr. Friedman that political freedom and economic freedom go hand in hand, in the short term, there’s no shortage of demagoguery that readily attacks both.

Previous SM coverage on Friedman and India here.

This is a week of good news and bad. The good news is that Goldman Sachs thinks the Indian economy is growing even faster than previously expected:

India could overtake Britain and have the world’s fifth largest economy within a decade as the country’s growth accelerates, a new report says… By 2050 India’s economy could be larger even than America’s, only China’s will be bigger, the bank predicts. [Link]

The bad news is that child malnutrition rates are still startling high in India. This week the PM felt a need to deal out thapars:

“Our prevalent rate of under-nutrition in the 0-6 age group remains one of the highest in the world,” Mr Singh said. “These are startling figures and the situation calls for urgent action.” [Link]

The situation remains astonishingly dire:

Last year the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said that the average malnutrition rate in some Indian states - such as densely populated Uttar Pradesh - was 40%. That is higher than sub-Saharan Africa where it is around 30%, Unicef said. [Link]

… Unicef report said half of the world’s under-nourished children live in South Asia….”South Asia has higher levels of child under-nutrition than Sub-Saharan Africa, but Sub-Saharan Africa has higher rates of child mortality…” [Link]

Most striking is the fact that the economic growth of the past 15 years hasn’t necessarily translated into better child nutrition, and that malnutrition has actually risen in some places:

A recent health ministry survey said that the number of undernourished children below the age of three had actually risen in some states since the late 1990s, despite higher incomes and rapid economic growth. [Link]

Recently, the NYT carried an article about Dunavant Enterprises, which is “the world’s largest privately owned cotton broker” and the grassroots impact it is having on the lives of African cotton farmers. Dunavant got into the business in Uganda by buying a local company and keeping the Ugandan-Indian management intact. Indians have a long history as cotton buyers in Uganda:

Dunavant is the largest buyer of cotton in Uganda … The country … was once one of the world’s most important producers of cotton; the industry was initially nurtured when Uganda was a British possession. There were no plantations, and the British imported Indians to run gins and to collect raw cotton from small African growers. Over time, Indian brokers assumed huge power and wealth in the cotton trade.

Uganda’s independence in the early 1960s left cotton farming undisturbed until Idi Amin came to power in the 1970s. He expelled immigrants from India and nationalized the cotton gins; a succession of civil wars destroyed production. By the late 1980s, Uganda was producing virtually no cotton. … In 1995, a new government privatized the cotton sector, selling off state assets piecemeal. Among the buyers were former Indian brokers who had once owned the gins. [Link]

Europeans thought cotton plants were made of little sheep!

There’s actually far more here than meets the eye. This is not just another Missippi Masala story, it’s a tale that goes back thousands of years, one of cotton and colonialism, globalization, and empires keeping the brown and black man down.

The use of Indians as middlemen is not so strange when you consider that cotton was first cultivated in India, several millenia ago:

Cotton cultivation in the Old World began from India, where cotton has been grown for more than 6,000 years, since the pre-Harappan period. … The famous Greek historian Herodotus also wrote about Indian cotton: “There are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The Indians make their clothes of this tree wool.” [Link]

This conflation between cotton and sheep continued in Europe for over 1,000 years:

During the late mediaeval period, cotton became known as an imported fibre in northern Europe, without any knowledge of what it came from other than that it was a plant; noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. [Link]

Even today, the German word for cotton is Baumwolle or “Tree Wool.”

Cotton played a critical role in the colonial period, when the British forcibly closed down the Indian textile industry to eliminate competition, and made India export raw cotton only and buy finished cloth from England. With the industrial revolution, textiles became one of the foundations for England’s dominance in world trade.

The big news in Oscarland this morning (with a Desi Angle of course) was the inclusion of Deepa Mehta’s Water amongst the nominees for “Best Foreign Language Film.” According to Canada.com, Mehta said that she was in a state of shock over learning that her film had been nominated. Frankly, so was I. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Mehta. She clearly put a lot of hard work and time into the film. And it is clearly something she is (and should be) proud of. I just don’t think the movie was that good. As I mentioned in my quickie review here, I thought the film was a good timepass, but in the end I thought it lacked the authenticity a period film like Water should really have.

Mehta’s third film in her trilogy of elements is set in 1938 India and revolves around Chuyia, an 8-year-old Hindu widow - brilliantly portrayed by Sarala - sent to leave her family behind and live in an ashram with other widows. The movie follows Chuyia and focuses on her interactions with Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), the de facto caretaker of the widows, and Kalyani (Lisa Ray), a widow who wants to start a new life and relationship with Narayan (John Abraham), a Gandhian. While Biswas and Sarala both give really good performances, I thought the third facet of the plot, that of the relationship between Ray and Abraham, along with the misleading sets a definite contributor to the mediocrity of the film.

Water will be competing for the Oscar against Denmark’s After the Wedding, Algeria’s Days of Glory, Germany’s The Lives of Others and Mexico’s Pan’s Labyrinth. I did find it noteworthy that Water is the first non-French film from Canada to be up for a best foreign language film (link). I think that is impressive initself: think about it, Canada submitting a Hindi language film as its submission for Best Foreign Language Film. I think that is amazing.

Given that many of the reviews of Water published in the mainstream media are quite positive of the film, clearly my impression of the film is not that of the majority. Nevertheless, I am in agreement with the reviewer who wrote that the many overly positive reviews are a reflection of people confusing an honorable message with a good movie. I do wish Mehta the best at the Oscars though.

The Academy Awards air February 25 at 8 PM on ABC.

Related posts: Fun With The Reviewers: Deepa Mehta’s Water, earth, fire, WATER, Water Is Finally Here, Is Deepa Mehta Back in the Game?

Just saw this over on Beliefs, Blackness, and Bollywood…apparently Mira Nair has signed on to direct the big-budget film Shantaram, with Johnny Depp as the lead and Brad Pitt’s Plan B as producer. Shantaram — for those of you unfamiliar with the title — is based on a Gregory David Roberts novel of the same name. The story revolves around an Australian heroin addict who escapes prison, sets up a medical clinic in the slums of Mumbai, and finds himself immersed in the city’s underworld, which consists of smuggling, gun running, and working in the Indian film industry.

I haven’t read the book yet (I’m just going by what I read in wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet), so I’m withholding judgment on the project for now. However, the details of this film so far are quite fascinating.

Take, for example, the story of how Johnny Depp managed to snag the lead role. According to this article, both Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp wanted the part, but Gregory Roberts ultimately chose Depp. Apparently it came down to the fact that…

“Johnny Depp has a lot of Indian friends,” Roberts said. “The way he spoke about them has made me realise that he was the best actor who could bring that love to the film.”

Arnold Schwartzenegger has a new opponent, and this time he’s battling a desi [Thanks Chick Pea!]. The governator’s latest adversary is the head of the the California Medical Association, Dr. Anmol Mahal.

The Fremont, Calif., gastroenterologist admired Schwarzenegger’s goals—coverage for all of the state’s 36 million residents and improving health care for kids. “It’s in some ways very visionary,” Mahal said later. But Mahal’s admiration soured when Schwarzenegger revealed that his plan would force doctors to give up 2 percent of their gross incomes to help fund coverage. “We are very discouraged and disappointed,” Mahal complained. “We had no warning.” [Link]

It is strange enough for me to see two of the highest profile Republican governors in the country pick up Hillary Clinton’s banner of universal healthcare, but stranger still for me to see a turbanned face (wearing a turban almost the same shade of blue that Manmohan Singh wears) staring back at me from the pages of the MSNBC article on the subject.

The racial aspect of this is striking because this is a plan designed, in part, to cover the health expenses of illegal aliens. This is a complete about face from former Republican Governor Pete Wilson’s strategy of demonizing illegal aliens. Having a desi doctor as the face of the opposition adds another twist, framing this as a debate between wealthy legal immigrants and poor illegal ones. That makes the politics more interesting, but also more complex.

The crux of the doctors’ disagreement with the plan is the way in which it will be funded:

… nearly 30 percent of the plan’s costs [will be covered] by levying a $3.5 billion “coverage dividend” on doctors’ (and hospitals’) gross revenues. “Why not tax teachers to provide money for better schools?” complains Dr. Samuel Fink, a Los Angeles internist. [Link]

Some medical practices would suffer more than others, doctors complain. Assessed on gross revenues rather than net income, the 2 percent fee hits doctors with high overheads harder, including oncologists, pediatricians and general practitioners—whose overhead costs may amount to 50 to 60 percent of their revenues. [Link]

Last November, India Today (with AC Neilsen and others) reported on their fourth ever national sex survey [Thanks reader sohwhat!]. This time round they focussed on India’s youth. Here are some highlights (from behind the subscription wall, although you can see a summary of their findings in this Reuters article):

• “46% single 16-25-year-old males have had sex, 10% higher than the 2004 survey”
• “37% single young men have had a homosexual experience, compared to 31% in 2004”
• “The average age of first sexual encounter for men has come down from 23 in 2004 to 18.”

Some of these findings, by the way, don’t quite add up. For example, while only 46% of young males claimed to have had sex, “49% young men have had sex with sex workers. In Ludhiana, it as high as 63%.” That seems a bit bizarre. After all, if you’ve had sex with a sex worker, you’ve had sex.

Also, the idea that close to 50% of all males have had sex with a sex worker, if true, is trouble from the perspective of the spread of HIV.

As for the women, some admit to having sex, but not as many, and they’re starting later than the boys:

• “In 2005… only 24 per cent single women between the ages of 18 and 30 … had had sex.”
• “42 per cent [of single women] said they had their first sexual encounter between the ages of 19 and 21.”

Despite this busyness in the sack for both sexes, both men and women say women should stay virgins until they are married:

• “63% single young men expect the woman they marry to be a virgin, 10% lower than in 2004”
• “In the 2005 survey of single women, 66 per cent agreed, saying women should remain virgins till they are married.”

The most disturbing finding was one about the prevalence of incest, which implies that a large number of females are having forced sex with family members:

• “14 per cent [of single males] claim to have had sex with family members.”

That number is horrifying enough, but when you consider that there was likely under-reporting, it’s even more disturbing.

All quotes from the India Today Sex Survey Cover Article, “Men in a Muddle”

Listen, my children to your Akka so old,
For she has a story, which today should be told.

Once upon a time, well over a decade ago
Akka received a call from a voice whispering low…

“Help. Oh my God…I don’t know what to do…”
“Wait—Gigi? What’s happening to you?”

“Anneka, I can’t take it anymore; I just want to die…”
“Shhh, stop…you’re a devout Catholic, I know that’s a lie.”

“What…no smile? That’s hilarious, G. Laugh.”

But my own laugh faltered and fell back in my chest,
This was no cry for help, this didn’t feel like a test.

“Anneka, I love you, please always remember that,”

“You stupid bitch Geee, stop, take that back!”

“I won’t let you say Good-bye, this isn’t the end,
I refuse to let you take away my best friend.

I know you feel like you are already dead,
I know about the demons in your heart and your head.

But please, don’t do this, it’s a permanent answer
To a temporary—-

She sobbed, “This is worse than cancer,”

“At least then people would feel sorry for—”
“Screw them, and if they judge you…well, fuck them more.
I know; they and your past are impossible to ignore…

But I also know that I’ve never met anyone with a purer heart,
That you are spun from light and goodness, unlike this tart.

Gigi, where are you, I’m already in my car
Damnit, this is Davis, you can’t be that far…”

“No, please, don’t. I’ve been enough of a burden to you—”

“Gee, I swear to God, I’m going to find you and slap you.”

“Anneka, please don’t hate me for what I’m about to do,
Promise me you’ll forgive me, I’m so sorry…I love you.”

Click.

“GIGI!” I screamed in to an ominously silent phone,
yanking the german car she loved over to the shoulder, alone.

Redial, redial, redial, at least twenty times
Tachycardiac beats and my breath form rhymes.

“The worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11” is what Warren Bass, senior books editor at the Washington Post (and, the byline notes, a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission), calls the latest from desi Talking Android nonpareil Dinesh D’Souza. The book is called THE ENEMY AT HOME: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, a title that begs little further explication. Indeed, Bass points out at the end of a sharp review that’s less blustering and more cutting than that of Alan Wolfe in the New York Times, the whole exercise of D’Souza’s book seems so plainly intended to cause a kerfuffle in the blogosphere that I feel tawdry even bringing it up here, despite the Desi Angle (TM). As Bass notes:

Either D’Souza is blaming liberals for 9/11 because he truly believes that they’re culpable, or he’s blaming liberals for 9/11 because he’s cynically calculating that an incendiary polemic will sell books. I just don’t know which is scarier. One has to wonder why his publisher, agent, editors and publicists went along for the ride, and it’s hard not to conclude that they thought the thing would cause a cable-news and blogosphere sensation that would spike sales — a ruckus triggered not despite the book’s silliness but because of it. This sort of scam has worked before (think of Christopher Hitchens’s gleeful broadside against Mother Teresa or the calculated slurs of Ann Coulter), but rarely has the gap between the seriousness of the issues and the quality of the book yawned as wide. This time, let’s just not bother with the flap; this dim, dishonorable book isn’t worth it.

And perhaps, indeed, it isn’t. Still, as the rituals of the publishing biz dictate, Brother D’Souza has been getting his publicity on since the book’s release last week. Yesterday he had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that begins with a piece of logical reasoning that might have done Descartes proud:

The Pelosi Democrats sometimes appear to be just as eager as Osama bin Laden for President Bush to lose his war on terror. Why do I say this? Because if the Pelosi Democrats were seeking Bush’s success, then their rhetoric and actions now and over the past three years are pretty much incomprehensible. By contrast, if you presume that they want Bush’s war on terror to fail, then their words and behavior make perfect sense.

If you are looking for an alternative take on Kenya’s Indian community, speak to Zahid Rajan, editor of Awaaz, a magazine focusing on historical, political, and cultural issues in the South Asian community in East Africa. The local Indian community traces its roots to the late nineteenth century laborers imported by the British to build the Uganda Railway and grow sugarcane and to the generations of traders who settled along the Indian Ocean coast in Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, and other port towns. The Indian community quickly prospered and became managers instead of laborers (the current issue of Awaaz has a great article on the cultural dynamics that promoted their rapid success). In short order, Indians built businesses, hired black Kenyans to do the work, and banked their considerable profits.

Today, the community in Kenya is perceived, not without justification, as wealthy and aloof. Rajan is critical of what he sees as the community’s lack of engagement with Kenya’s many challenges. ““The South Asian diaspora in Kenya is completely nonpolitical,”” he says. ““It stays behind its security fences in [the Nairobi suburb of] Parklands.””

Historically, Indians were engaged at all levels, leading labor unions, participating in the struggle against British colonialism, and building schools and hospitals, but that civic drive was sapped somewhere along the way.

Rajan attributes the Indian withdrawal from politics to three factors: the “Kenyanization” programs of the late 1960s that redistributed land, awarded contracts and licenses and reserved government jobs for black Africans; Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972; and a failed coup attempt against Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi, in 1982. Fighting during that conflict resulted in significant destruction in downtown Nairobi, where many Indians ran businesses.

“”I know Indians who have never been back to the city center,”” he says.

To counterbalance my earlier post, I decided to blog about something more fluffy today. Reader Pauravi emailed this link to the bunker with the following message:

So finally, there is a calendar us South Asian women can feast our eyes on :). Enough of the gawking at scantily clad women, check this out!

The calendar is SO worth a looksie…I went through all 50 men and honestly I don’t have any drool left yet.

I’m all for the objectification of beautiful brown men (such as this one, this one, and this one). But in this publication, I found the interviews much more entertaining than the photos. Take, for example, the priceless interview with Rehan Bhatt:

Age: 28

Drives: Lotus & BMW

Biggest turn-off: Women that judge a man by the car he drives.

Your ex would describe you as… The greatest real dream she ever had. She actually said that!

Pulling outfit? I’m not that vain but jeans, crisp shirt and my pink g-string never fails!

Most outrageous thing you’ve ever done: I got randomly attacked once so I chinned the guy, only the guy turned out to be a butch lesbian.

I’ve never seen a movie starring Shilpa Shetty. I’ve never watched Big Brother. I had no idea until this post on SepiaMutiny that Shilpa Shetty would be on Big Brother. Frankly, I didn’t read it because I didn’t care.

So why, in in the name of all that is sacred, have so many of my conversations in the past few days involved the unholy combination of a mediocre Bollywood actress and a revolting reality show?

Sajit recently tackled the growing controversy surrounding the show, so please refer to his post if you need to catch up. That’s were it began for me.

Then Mr. Cicatrix and I randomly channel-surfed our way to a ABC Nightline News segment on the how Shilpa’s quiet dignity was “Uniting India’s Warring Muslims and Hindus.” So sixty years after Partition, THIS is what finally unites?!

The House of Commons has weighed in. Tony Blair. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Indian Parliament has lodged a formal complaint with the British government. All this over remarks variously described as “girly rivalry,” “bullying,” and “racist abuse.” (link) Remarks made by people so stupid, one thought “Winston Churchill was the first black president of America.” (link)

The talking heads pontificated and culture critics scibbled op-eds. Is it jealousy? Class conflict? Bigotry? Ignorance? (link). Insecurity? Stupidity? (link). A set-up by the show’s creators? (link). Shilpa’s own fault? (Yep. Germaine Greer said it).

The semiotics of racism, of “poppadoms,” “can’t even speak English,” “Shilpa Fuckawallah” and “live in a house or a shack,” have been tossed about selectively and dissected to the point that it’s all just meaningless chatter.

So it was a relief and a surprise to read Martin Jacques’ article in the Guardian (thanks ultrabrown). Jacques, a Fellow at the Asia Research Center at the London School of Economics, roots around the muck to find a very solid reason for why this show is more than a tempest in a teapot, why it resonates so violently in Britain and abroad:

The test of our behaviour, of how racist we are, is no longer what the white British think. That started to change with the self-awareness and growing confidence of our own ethnic minorities. But the matter does not end there. The test now, in this instance, is what Indians in India think, how they perceive us.

As Goody raged and railed against Shetty on Wednesday night’s TV broadcast, she was like a cornered animal, lashing out in every direction against something she clearly detested but also feared and felt threatened by. She was confronted not only with the Other, but a hugely self-confident Other. What could be worse? It was a metaphor for the world that is now rapidly taking shape before our very eyes. (link )

I think he nails it.

My friend Ansour forwarded me this beautifully written Anant Raut article which appeared in Salon.com earlier this week. Raut is a corporate litigation attorney in DC who is representing five so-called “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo. He wrote his piece as an open letter to deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Cully Stimson, who urged the corporate clients of Raut’s firm to take their business elswhere in response to Raut’s decision to defend these individuals.

According to the article, Stimson stated,

When corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.

That all being said, however, Mr. Stimson comes off as terribly paranoid. If you have to go as far as to bully law firms out of representing certain pro bono clients, it seems as though you must be afraid of those clients receiving a fair trial.

It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole: Every time you think this “model minority” BS is swept away for good, in comes yet another set of generalizations based on wishful thinking and selective observation, deployed by some so-called expert who sets him/herself up to make claims about the community as a whole.

This time it’s Manjeet Kripalani, the Bombay bureau chief of Business Week and currently a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Kripalani, who first came to the US in the 1980s, has a piece today in the Los Angeles Times that a tipster kindly brings to our attention on the news tab. Behold the brilliant lede:

THE 2.2 MILLION Indian Americans in the U.S. constitute a model minority, highly educated and well paid. And now, following in the footsteps of earlier immigrant groups such as the Irish, the Jews and the Cubans, Indian Americans are emerging as an influential force in Washington.

I’m not going to rehash the whole critique of the concept of a “model minority.” At this point, either you get it or you don’t. Instead, I simply want to point out that by writing entirely in generalizations, some conveniently free of backing evidence and others normative and therefore unprovable, the sister not only has carried out very shoddy journalism, but also — thanks to the L.A. Times editors — been set up as an expert voice rather than a reporter investigating an issue.

According to a complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (thanks, tipster Ashwini!), in the summer of 2005 a Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife brought with them to the United States three Indian women as domestic workers. In order to obtain for the workers the appropriate visas, they presented contracts in which they promised each woman a monthly salary in the range of $1,300 for 8 hours of work per day, 6 days per week.

You know where this story is going. Once established at the residence at 7027 Elizabeth Drive in McLean, Va., according to the complaint, the couple proceeded to demand of the three women that they work non stop, 7 days a week, 18 hours a day, for which they were paid in the range of $250 each month, which they never saw as it was sent directly to their families.

The defendants, Waleed al-Saleh and his wife Maysaa al-Omar, abused the workers physically and emotionally:

They were subjected to threats and verbal and physical abuse, including one particularly violent incident in which Sabbithi was knocked unconscious after being thrown against a counter by Al Saleh. The women were often not allowed time to eat or to use the bathroom and frequently were deprived of food. Two of them were allowed one hour off a month to attend church. The workers had their passports taken away and they were isolated from contact with the external world.

“I was scared of my employers and believed that if I ran away or sought help they would harm me or maybe even kill me,” said Kumari Sabbithi, who is now living in New York. “I believed that I had no choice but to continue working for them even though they beat me and treated me worse than a slave.”

Some examples from the complaint:

There are certain honors that most lawyers aspire to such as clerking for the Supreme Court, or being selected for it. And there are others that descend unwished for, like a boon sent by the gods to the wrong supplicant. One of these is winning the annual contest for hottest law school dean. In 2006, this “honor” went to Yale Law School Assistant Dean Asha Rangappa who the sponsoring web page called “as hot as a fire in a crowded theater.(That’s a little Con Law joke for those of you who don’t remember high school civics) “

Here’s what one of the nominations had to say:

“I write to nominate Asha Rangappa in your beautiful law school dean contest. First, she’s a genius: Princeton, Yale Law, a Fulbright, a First Circuit clerk. Second, she’s totally badass: from 2002 to 2005, she worked in the FBI as a Special Agent, focusing on counterintelligence investigations in New York City. How cool is that?”

“Third, and most importantly, Asha is simply gorgeous. There hasn’t been this beautiful a woman in federal law enforcement since Jennifer Lopez pretended to be a U.S. US Marshal in ‘Out of Sight.’ This South Asian beauty — with her milk-chocolate skin, lively eyes, Julia Roberts smile, and reddish black tresses — will demolish the rest of your field…” [Link]

As if all that wasn’t hot enough, she also “founded the Yale Law School’s first theater troupe, the Court Jesters.”

For all you guys who are lining up to play George Clooney to her Jennifer Lopez, settle down, she’s taken:

Rangappa said she realizes the contest is not meant to be taken seriously. “More than anything I’m amused, because there’s some irony to winning a hottest anything contest when you’re eight months pregnant,” she said. [Link]

Her response to the award shows that the title hasn’t gone to her photogenic head:

“It’s heartening to know that, despite the terrorists’ attempts to destroy our way of life, a healthy objectification of lawyers continues unabated [Link]

Those looks, a former spy and sense of humor to boot? Smoking hot most definitely, but are you sure she’s a lawyer? [Ducking …]

BTW, in a coda to the whole story:

A month later she gave birth to a boy. Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh dubbed him “America’s hottest law baby.” [Link]

A whole family of hotties it seems …

A few outlets today picked up a report by Muneeza Naqvi of the AP on the imminent departure for Liberia of a contingent of 105 Indian women police officers (Thanks, tipster kit-and-kumari!). This is the first-ever United Nations all-female peacekeeping contingent, another achievement in the lengthy record of service that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have contributed to UN peacekeeping missions for decades.

Liberia has already benefited from a strong woman’s touch: the democratically elected president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is Africa’s first female elected head of state, and is considered to be doing quite a good job thus far dealing with some pretty intractable problems, like mass unemployment, a completely collapsed national infrastructure, and widespread trauma from the civil war. Now, some strong Indian sisters are going to be lending a hand as well:

There, they will likely be called on to train Liberia’s national police, help conduct local elections or assist with prison security as the West African country struggles to recover from years of civil war. ..

However, this is the first all-female peacekeeping team, and participants have said it would have unique advantages in conflict zones.

“Women police are seen to be much less threatening, although they can be just as tough as men. But in a conflict situation, they are more approachable and it makes women and children feel safer,” Seema Dhundia, a unit commander, said recently.

This news deserves more coverage. Here in the US though, aside from a few papers running the wire report, all we have is some ignorant and vulgar comments from… Rush Limbaugh. Here’s what America heard on talk radio today:

Well, it was on this program, if you listen to this program, by the way, you are on the cutting edge. It was a long time ago, it had to be the early nineties, during the discussions of women in combat in the military, that we came up with the unique idea of the All-American First Cavalry Amazon Battalion, a bunch of combat ready females on PMS, way to go, great tactic. … Well, the United Nations has ripped me off.

After reading part of the wire story, he continued:

Okay, well, interesting theory, keep an eye. Make a note. Keep an eye on Liberia. Let’s just see if women as peacekeepers are more approachable by women and children. You know, a lot of UN peacekeeping forces engage in rape and child rape, particularly in Africa. We’ll see if there’s any change in that behavior here with the all-babe police force.

I’m in the mood for a lathi-charge right about now.

Many of you have probably received the email. Flying around the internet, it describes a horrible attack on Ashwani Nagpal, the respected owner of Leela Lounge. I actually thought it was a hoax at first, but called the Lounge to verify and was informed that yes, it was true.

Early December 23, 2006, individuals who were present at a holiday party at Leela Lounge attacked both Mr. Nagpal and his friend and co-worker, Asheesh Mathur. Thankfully, both Mr. Nagpal and Mr. Mathur escaped the incident alive; however, Mr. Nagpal suffered injuries to the head and Mr. Mathur, a fractured nose and cracked jaw. During the course of these assaults, racial and ethnic slurs were directed to at least one of the victims. It is chilling to realize that members of the South Asian and Greenwich Village community could suffer this sort of violent crime by patrons at their own establishment.

Please see the full press release here.

So what exactly happened? Was it a private party? If yes, then how did these men get in? If it was a desi party, then who were these people hurling racial insults? Rumors and speculation have fueled this already tragic story, so in the hope of understanding what happened, I met Mr. Nagpal last Wednesday at a meeting held to discuss possible paths of action.

Following on Siddhartha’s discussion of the “Desi Angle” question, there’s an insightful piece in the Indian Express by Shubhra Gupta (thanks, SP) on a related question: is it possible that the only foreign films that have a chance at getting nominated for the Oscars are those that register as completely “other” to the West? This year, India’s official choice, Rang de Basanti, didn’t make the top 10, while the Canadian-financed Deepa Mehta film Water, did. (The final nominees will be announced next week.)

But Paint It Yellow/Saffron (that’s what its English-subtitled version [of Rang de Basanti] is called … didn’t travel too far down the road to the Oscars for that exact same reason: confused, contemporary youth exist all over the world. To a foreign viewer, the film is not ‘Indian’ enough, not in the same way as, say, a Water is: it is also, and this is not a well-known fact, very strongly reminiscent of Canadian film Jesus Of Montreal, in which a group of actors’ lives change drastically as they put on a passion play.

Incarcerated widows in a pre-Independence Indian ‘ashram’. Oooh, that’s Indian. Where else would you find little girls and beautiful young women and old crones with tragic backstories and cruelly shaven heads? It’s another matter that even today, Vrindavan’s widows lead lives of quiet desperation. It’s also another matter that major portions of the film had to be shot in Sri Lanka, which masquerades as Varanasi. But Water has the backdrop of the British ‘raj’, the horror of child marriage and ‘sati’, and brutal oppression. Can’t get better, can it? (link)

Gupta is right on many counts here. Rang de Basanti does have urban, middle-class kids speaking liberal amounts of English (as well as a white girl, speaking Hindi). What she’s overlooking, of course, is that while Rang de Basanti is a lot of fun, it just isn’t that serious a film. It doesn’t have the sense of gravity or “prestige” that makes a film a plausible Oscar contender. A much better choice, by far, would have been Omkara — which has the three A’s: it’s Arty, “Authentic” (though still legible to western audiences, via Othello), and most importantly, Adult. (I often feel that NRIs or ABDs should pick India’s official Oscar selections, since the Board that currently makes this selection clearly has no idea what it’s doing. Paheli?)

Still, I fear that the three Indian films that have reached the nomination phase over the years — Mother India, Salaam, Bombay, and Lagaan — do all fit a pattern: they focus on desperate poverty. While this is undeniably an important (and continuing) part of Indian society, it’s sad that only the exotic, impoverished India of street urchins or rural desperation is likely to make an Oscar-worthy film.

Someone might object: why should Indians care about the Oscars? No Satyajit Ray film was ever nominated (though I must admit I don’t know how many of his films were officially submitted). And isn’t this is the same Academy that gave Best Picture to A Terrible Bore A Beautiful Mind? But, whether or not it’s justified, there always seems to be a great deal of interest in the Indian media about the Oscars — despite rampant evidence that Americans simply don’t get Indian cinema.

Perhaps we should start our own awards? The Mutinies?

Red or green? It isn’t just the state question of New Mexico anymore. But we’ll pick up on that in a moment. As some of you may have noticed, I have a fairly liberal personal definition of what constitutes a Desi Angle (TM) for your consideration. Perhaps this is due to my own mixed-up background — subconsciously, I probably worry that if you define desi too narrowly, there won’t be any room left for my mongrel ass. But it’s also that desi angles pop up in the darndest places. For example…

I have been working almost everyday on the drive to the double-wide. The last couple days I moved 53 tons of #2 gravel onto the drive. I believe I will need one more load to have everything covered good on the drive and to have enough to put a few around the entrances to the barns. It gets really muddy anywhere the animals gather up in the winter. At the ends of the barns is a soupy mess. Mud doesn’t bother the cows, but it is a breeding ground for worms. Goats are very succeptable to parasites so they don’t do well in moist places. It’s also hard on the horses’ shoes. It seems to suck them right off. Not to mention I hate walking in it.

Monday I noticed someone had used my tractor while I was at work. Turns out BJ had to feed hay to Mamaw and Papaw Staley’s cattle. Papaw said she did it like she had been doing it all her life. I told him it was just that she had a good teacher. Today I went and set out some rolls of hay to the same cattle. Same story where he has their cattle. Pretty much a soupy mess. They have rented my great uncle Fred’s old place and have about 25 head running on it. A few weeks back someone shot two of his cows. They must have done it in the night and just left them to die. There is enough loss in farming without such senseless things as that.

Let’s play Spot the Desi Angle, shall we? In the preceding quote, the Desi Angle is…

(a) Great-uncle Fred is Hindu, and his cows were sacred

(b) The writer is a share-cropper at the Maharishi’s farm in Iowa

(c) The writer is a blogger for an Indian farm equipment company

(d) Don’t be fooled by the names. This story takes place in Madhya Pradesh.

And the answer is…

The bunker is expanding! Things are about to change here at the bunker, and we could sure use some extra hands.

We are in the process of implementing some new features on the site. The whole Sepia gang has got some neat ideas in store for you. Unfortunately, with mine and Paul’s growing commitments we haven’t been able to focus on the overhaul of the design, and adding other new features at the rate we expected to.

The new feature that we are working on at this moment, is a pretty standard php/mysql app [the exact details are classified ;) ]. Some of the ground work has already been laid. However we need some PHP hackers that can help us speed up the development. We are looking for someone who can program in php proficiently, knows a bit of mysql, and can handle a bit of CSS.

So if you can volunteer some time, then email admin [at] sepiamutiny.com, and we will get back in touch with you.

I want to start by emphatically stating (for the record) that I DO NOT WATCH American Idol. I would rather admit to drinking toilet water. However, I really was flipping channels when I came across the cutest sister (19)/brother (17) from Washington trying out for the show in Seattle. I had to stop and watch. Whatever. I do hate myself. [Pics via Uber Desi from American Idol]

Shyamali sang Summertime. Paula Abdul said she was very nervous, but didn’t need to be. Simon Cowell wasn’t impressed, but both Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul said “yes.” Her brother Sanjaya Malakar sang Stevie Wonder’s “Sign, Sealed, Delivered.” Simon Cowell said he was a lot better than his sister. All three judges agreed on putting Sanjaya through to Hollywood. [Link]

You can tell already that the Idol editors are going to play up the whole sibling rivalry angle which is unfortunate since I’ll bet that these two are as close as a sister and brother can get. Even though the judges thought Sanjaya had a better voice (but his sister better stage presence) he didn’t rub it in on camera. Since I am never watching the show again, I’ll count on some of you readers to let us know what happens with these two. I think they are both too shy but if Clay Aiken could get as far as he got then anything is possible.

There have been a lot of desis on TV this week. Good stuff.

I took this photo on January 3rd, in the train station in Granada, the day after the entire town celebrated the anniversary of the Reconquista in 1492. [It’s the one day of the year that anybody can ring the bells in the fortress portion of the Alhambra.] Needless to say, I was highly amused. It’s like the song “Do they know it’s Christmas” which was, at the time, the UKs best selling single ever. It assumes that a Sadhu and a Muslim Tuareg celebrate Christmas just because people in the west do. It’s Christmas-centrism!

Vijay Prashad has a nice review of a new collection of Urdu poetry up at this month’s issue of Himal Southasian. The book is called Anthems of Resistance, and it’s edited by Ali Husain Mir and Raza Mir, two brothers from Hyderabad who now teach at universities in the U.S. (While it’s not for sale in the U.S. yet, this Indian book-seller will send it to you for $7.00 USD + postage.)

Prashad’s opening by itself raises some interesting questions (and memories):

In 1981, the cinema theatre near my home in Calcutta became a mehfil-e-mushaira. At the end of each show, majnoohs walked out of the darkness humming tunes and reciting ghazals. Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan allowed non-Urdu speakers to revel in the richness of Urdu culture, which most of us non-Muslims saw as exotic and attractive, yet distant. (Muslim culture would be further rendered exotic in 1982 in two films, Nikaah and Deedar-e-yaar.) These are all films of decline, where a supposedly homogenous Muslim culture is rife with problems – some easy to overcome (divorce rates), and others intractable (the demise of the kotha culture). The elegance of the language thrilled many urbane Indians, who enjoyed the patois but felt uncomfortable with the working-class and rural sections that actually spoke it. (link)

This is an interesting analysis of the appeal of Ghazals and the musical Mehfil culture of to many non-Muslims. Of course, the cinematic culture (i.e., the tawaif, or courtesan film) he’s referring to is now long dead, as the writers who wrote the songs and scripts of Bollywood’s early Urdu films are now gone (Kaifi Azmi died in 2002). Recent films like Fanaa have temporarily revived popular interest in Shayari (the recitation of poetic couplets), but in my view it’s more a gimmick than anything else. (I frankly don’t know what to make of Aishwarya Rai’s recent remake of Umrao Jaan.)

The rest of Prashad’s review is about the poets themselves — the writers of the Progressive Writers’ Association — who wrote as much about politics as they did about love. (I wrote about another PWA writer, Ismat Chughtai, here. Also, see Saadat Hasan Manto, who was not a member of the PWA as far as I know, though he did have certain things in common with them)

In a proper Hindu spiritual life you must wake up long before dawn each morning and perform several hours of austerities to center yourself before you engage the tawdry goings-on of the material world. Well this morning I woke up before dawn and contemplated mystical concerns to do with Lords Vishnu and Shiva, as made manifest in my life by the writing of one Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that tipster AfroDesiAc brought to our attention yesterday.

And I feel much wiser for the effort. Consider these insights:

As Democrats change the drapes on Capitol Hill and relegate Republicans to minority status, both parties would do well to look to the ancient East for advice on how opposites should — and should not — work together.

In Hinduism, two of the main gods are Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver. They are not enemies but partners in the governance of the world, and Shiva’s “destruction” is really change, as in the change of seasons or of generations. Another Eastern tradition, the Manichean religion of ancient Persia, holds that the forces of good and evil eternally battle for control of the universe, and we humans get hurt in the process.

Which of these two models is most appropriate for our two-party system? It ought to be Hinduism.

Oh no! It’s the Ancient East again! I will let you read for yourself the full development of this argument — the article, by the way, is entitled “The Spirit of Dharmacracy” — but I ask that you consider whether, in your participation in American political and cultural life, you speak for Shiva or Vishnu:

Robert F. Kennedy spoke for Shiva when he said, “I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’” … The conservative philosopher Irving Kristol spoke for Vishnu when he said, “Institutions which have existed over a long period of time have … a collective wisdom incarnate in them …”

If I want to see Professor Haidt confronted by a frothing-mad female superhero waving instruments of destruction in her numerous arms and hissing at him with a pitch-black tongue, does that mean I speak for Ma Kali? The professor inquires:

How can we make our two-party system more beneficial for the nation? What can we do to become more “Hindu?”

(Insert joke about fistfights in the Lok Sabha here.)

But wait! There’s science behind all this:

In my research on the role that emotions play in morality, I have found that acts of virtue, nobility and honor create feelings of moral elevation in those who witness them.

Alert the IgNobel committee! This is some (sacred) bullshit.

We reported earlier on Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty’s venture into the Celebrity Big Brother house in the UK. We thought things were going smoothly for her when reader Jai informed us that Shilpa was part of a reshuffle in the house where

“8 housemates voluntarily transferred into an adjoining, and significantly dodgier, “servants’ quarters”, with the intention that the 3 remaining celebrities would be treated like royalty by them. It appears that they all selected the lucky 3 on the basis of them having the highest status in the real world — Shilpa was one of them, along with Jermaine Jackson and a famous director called Ken Russell. So that’s an interesting indication of how they view her.”

Jai signed on again, despite starting a new job (congrats jai!), to let us know how things were progressing for Shilpa and the gang. It seemed she had bonded with the other major stars on the show, especially Jermaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict (Face from the A-team) who was crushing hard core on the Bollywood star. At the same time it seems, Shilpa was also the victim of a lot of bullying and even some acts of racism from some of the housemates (especially the ladies). Over the past few days, fellow participants have called Shilpa “dog, “”The Indian,” and have even mocked her accent. One of the Bullyers according to the Daily Mirror is previous Big Brother winner Jade Goody. Goody, who supports Act Against Bullying, an anti-bullying charity, was swiftly given the boot by the the charity because of her actions. Act Againts Bullyying called Goody’s behaviour “unforgivable”.

Jade’s mother Jackey too got in on the anti-Shilpa act. According to Caroline Malone, who was recently evicted, “Jade’s mum Jackiey hated Shilpa and constantly referred to her as “The Indian” which I found horribly insulting. Jackiey made life purposely difficult for Shilpa - shouting at her for no reason, criticising her cooking, attacking her for being bossy.” (link)

Hey, you don’t like someone? Call them names, use their race, ethnic origin, or anything that makes them different and mock that as well. Have your mom call them names, and have your boyfriend call them names too. That solves everything. It turns out Jade’s boyfriend Jack Tweed— who is also currently in the house, and was alleged to have called Shetty a “paki” when Jade’s mother was evicted last week; Channel 4, the channel on which Big Brother airs, has confirmed that Tweed didn’t call Shetty a Paki, but instead the clearly more civilized, “cunt.” Last night Shetty was in tears and is quoted as saying: “I’m the only one they are mean to, I don’t know why. Nobody is mean to anyone else except me.” (link)

If you’re a brown, black, diasporic, immigrant, mixed-race, or otherwise socially and culturally hybrid, globalization-era American, it looks like someone is seriously getting into the 2008 presidential race who has more in common with you, identity-wise, than any previous presidential candidate. This is going to be interesting!

Intentblog, the weblog aggregation of the Chopra spiritual-aspirational empire, is a strange mishmash of largely desi-written key-issues insight (Sepia friend Dave Sidhu), New Age preening (nympho-striver Saira Mohan), and general bloviating (too many to list), generating awkward, fawning comments, many of which seem to be from Polish guys named Marek looking for a date.

Amid all this are entries from the Chopras themselves, including the big man and his progeny. Of these, the oddly-spelled Gotham has earned some visibility for his own projects and initiatives beyond the family business. These include the Virgin Comics line of desi superhero tales, which I’ve seen a couple of copies of and look pretty damn cool, even to my untrained eye, and more dubious ventures like the midtown Manhattan “Kama Sutra-themed” K Lounge, which one astute Citysearch user reviewed as follows: “Pros: easy jersey booty; Cons: bad bartenders, bad jersey booty.” We’ve also mentioned Gotham here in the mutiny’s early days, smoking out various fans, haters and impersonators in the process.

Lately Gotham’s been waxing worried about the decline of desi cultural identity in the multiculti American stew, having traveled to the belly of the beast — the notorious SASA conference which Abhi roundly dissed yesterday — and been horrified by the brown binge-drinking buffoons and playa and hoochie wannabes he found setting the tone of the proceedings. Gotham was so alienated that he had to move out of the conference hotel to a more spiritually centered location. After several days of processing, he wrote this cri de coeur, and though I admit I’m vacillating in my tone here between snark and sympathy, I have to say I feel for the brother. Here’s what he saw:

I, myself, am only 30 years old but found myself so shockingly displaced from the South Asian community congregated down at the conference that I’ve been unable to articulate my thoughts the last few days and even blog about it. This is my best shot.

Thr primary focus, it seemed, amongst the over 1000 20-somethings (and yes, this is a broad generalization so take it for what it is) was oft articulated by the attendees themselvs, was to ‘get drunk and hook up.’ Not unlike, their other generational brethrens of any other cultural or racial background…

Not surprising in itself, he says, but here’s the real problem:

I have never sat through an entire episode of “24” before, but I felt compelled to watch the sixth season premiere after learning that Kal Penn would be playing a supporting role. So I watched all four hours of it on Sunday and Monday. And afterwards I felt pretty queasy. For those of you who missed any of it, I’ll give a you synopsis of what happens to Kal Penn’s character over those four hours. (If you have watched it, you can skip the next two paragraphs.)

Kal plays Ahmed Amar, a teenager living in suburban Los Angeles. A suicide bomber has just blown up a bus downtown. We meet Amar when the FBI arrives in the suburbs to take his father away for reasons unknown to viewers. A drunk neighbor, Stan, watches Amar’s father being taken away and proceeds to attack Amar, calling him a terrorist. The kind liberal Mr. Wallace, who lives across the street, witnesses the attack and intervenes, gently saying, “Stan, he’s no more of a terrorist than you or me.”

The Wallace family takes Amar in. Ironically, Amar then receives a phone call from (gasp) an evil Muzzie terrorist, Fayed, the cartoonish archvillain of the show. Amar proceeds to hold the family hostage, demanding that Mr. Wallace deliver a package to Fayed. (He can’t do it himself, because he’s injured from the hate crime.) When Mr. Wallace’s teenage son asks, “Why are you doing this? We’re friends,” Amar responds, “We’re friends?! You can’t even pronounce my name. It’s not Aw-med. It’s ACCCCCCH-med.” (And it’s not Kal Penn, it’s Kalpen Modi.) Mr. Wallace later proclaims, “Stan was right. You are a terrorist.” Mr. Wallace then leaves to deliver the package. A little while later, counter-terrorist agents enter, killing Amar and saving the Mrs. and younger Wallace. But it’s too late. The delivered package helps set off a “suitcase nuke,” presumably killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.

I just wanted to remind you students out there, particularly those who live in the Midwest, that you can still sign up for the SAAN 2007 Conference at the University of Michigan on the January 26-28th weekend. I spoke at last year’s conference (along with current guest blogger Preston Merchant) and re-capped the fabulousness of it all here.

SAAN’s primary function is to establish an annual South Asian conference for South Asian and non-South Asian students alike. SAAN 2007: Reveal, Rethink, Realize will be the fifth annual holding of this conference, and we hope to continue setting a precedent that all future SAAN conferences will follow. SAAN 2007 will be held January 26-28th at the University of Michigan Union. [Link]

For those of you who are wondering, SAAN is like the anti-SASA. No crazy partying, no SWAT teams, no drunken fights. Just good people, good learning, and great networking. Here is this year’s line-up. I am sure you will recognize many of the names on the list. Among them is Dr. Rajmohan Gandhi, the biographer and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. Some of the workshops look pretty interesting also. These two stand out (for me at least):

Do Nice Guys Finish Last? - Does leading an ethical life limit your ambitions? As we climb the ladder, should we hush our ethical voice for personal gain? For instance, if you see your boss engaging in sexual harassment, will you stay silent? Will you be totally honest on your resume? Or will you start a pseudo-student group just so you can add another leadership position on your resume? This workshop will examine the interplay between ethics and ambition in our lives…

Mohammad, Vishnu, and Darwin - We always hear about the conflict between the Bible and evolution. But how do South Asian religions reconcile religious and scientific beliefs?… [Link]

Don’t be lazy. Sign up here. It’s cheap and if you don’t like your experience you can totally rip me a new one in the comments section without being banned. I’m that confident in my recommendation.

Last week, the never ending drumbeat of biz travel took me to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The show was, to put it mildy, a zoo - even by Vegas standards. If you aren’t a fan of the teeming throngs of humanity (over 150K in this case), then CES probably isn’t your schtick. First, take the surrealness that’s Vegas any other time of the year. Then, crank it up by putting a substantial portion of the export sales of East Asia on the line. Sprinkle in “kick off the year” business frenzy and you end up with the pomp and circumstance that’s CES.

While the show itself borders on obscene with the high end electronics, walls o’ plasmas, booth babes, audio equipment, cars, cellphones, computers and so on…. the real craziness happens after convention hours. There, Fortune 100 companies revert to playground one-upsmanship but on a multi-million dollar scale with dinner banquets, parties, concerts and the sorts of gala’s you can only have in Las Vegas. Like many things related to biz travel, it sounds like it might be sorta fun — and it is, at first — but the whole thing becomes a little numbing after a while.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogposts, my company is heavily involved in the nascent “mobile broadcast” space — put simply, it’s where television and mobile phones intersect. And the CES-highlight for our space was Verizon’s announcment that their MobileTV service will launch in late 1Q / 2007.

To celebrate this & a few other announcements, Verizon rented out the world famous Nobu restaurant at the Hard Rock. Their party was first class all the way with Nobu’s reknowned sushi chefs taking guests’ orders in realtime and hand filling them on the spot — ensuring no more than a few precious seconds from when the roll is expertly patted closed to landing in your convention starved mouth.

So, in the midst of all this mass market, Vegas-kitsch tinged, first-class-ness, imagine how cool it was to discover they had hired DJ Rekha to lay down the beat in the main tent…

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment [December 1964] when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, December 10, 1964

Swamini A. C. Turiyasangitananda, who passed away on Friday in Los Angeles, was a working-class, African-American daughter of Detroit who embraced her spiritual calling nearly 40 years ago:

During the end of 1968, Swamini, directed by God, entered a most significant period of isolation. The Supreme Lord provided wisdom, knowledge, guidance, and instruction consonant with and essential to her designated life’s tenure… Swamini received her initiation into the renounced order of sannyas directly from the Supreme Lord. … Swamini took mantra initiation with Swami Satchidananda.

It was a time of great cultural turmoil and motion in American society, and Swamini had found herself at the heart of it. Known to the secular world as Alice McCleod Coltrane, she met John Coltrane in 1962, married him in 1965, and joined his band, playing piano and other instruments, in 1966. After his death of liver disease in the summer of 1967, she continued on both tracks of the path they had traveled together: the musical and the spiritual. Journey in Satchidananda, the album she released in 1970 featuring among others Rashied Ali, Charlie Haden and Pharoah Sanders, is an early document of her progress and the depth of her research and dedication. It still listens well today, one of the strongest surviving documents of the sincere fascination the creative music scene had with both Indian music and Hindu spirituality at that time, a far cry from the more superficial flirtations of the Beatles or the ephemeral Haight-Ashbury philosopher-kings.

For the rest of her life Alice was considered a recluse, recording at a limited pace and rarely appearing in concert; her vow of sanyas and commitment to the spiritual life meant that she spent most of her time at home with her family, at the ashram she founded in the Santa Monica Hills, or traveling to India to worship with Sri Satya Sai Baba.

In 2004, Alice Coltrane released a spectacular album called Translinear Light. It features sons Ravi and Oran on saxophones, Jeff “Tain” Watts and Jack DeJohnette on drums, and once again Charlie Haden — a veteran of the final Coltrane bands and a deep humanist, in addition to a master of his instrument — on bass. (The group conducted a rare tour last fall, and I am sad that I missed their October gig at NJPAC in Newark. It’s a reminder that one must never miss an opportunity to see a great master perform as you never know when she will be taken from us.)

The passing of Alice Coltrane is a sad moment for jazz. It is also an chance for those of us who live at the intersection of American and South Asian cultures to honor someone who embraced that conversation at a very deep, creative level. On the day we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., who learned so much from Gandhiji, it’s another fitting reminder that the conversation has a rich history, and that its potential is far from exhausted.

The middle of an academic’s winter break is the perfect time to be saddled with irritating errands. In this case, I had been commissioned to stay home on a Friday afternoon so a SatTV (fake name) technician could fix the problems we’ve been having with our Hindi-language channels.

SatTV is essentially a hive of incompetent technicians. A previous technician had come a month earlier. He spent five minutes looking around, cursed the installation guy that had preceded him, and declared there was nothing he could do. Though Yahya too would also accomplish nothing in the three hours he spent in my house, he was at least more interesting to talk to.

When he told me his name, I said, “oh, like the famous Pakistani general” (fortunately, I did not say “dictator”). He was impressed, it seemed, by my knowledge of history, and it started us on a good footing. He said he was from Sialkot, and industrial town in a Punjabi speaking area. Yahya himself was Punjabi, though to my relief he seemed perfectly happy to speak in English — his English was confident and effective, though lacking in the grammatical niceties that come with years of English-medium schooling. To begin with, he came to the U.S. fifteen years ago, to work as a chef. Yes, a chef: he said he had studied at a culinary institute in Lahore, and then worked as an executive chef at a “five star hotel” there before coming to Philadelphia with his wife.

Hello again, my Sepia friends! I’m delighted to say our mutinous overlords invited me back as a part-timer here at the bunker, and I promise not to abuse the privilege. (But did you feel that shudder? Those were standards being dropped.)

So as I cast about for something to write about besides boys and terrorist envoys, I found this item in the news tab (thanks Gujulicious): Sri Lanka hosted a literary festival this weekend in Galle, a beautiful city on the Southern coast with a uniquely Dutch heritage.

Attended by non other than the freshly minted Booker winner, Kiran Desai, The Galle Literary Festival billed itself as “Sri Lanka’s first literary festival” and announced noble goals:

Our objectives are to raise the awareness of the increasing depth and diversity of Sri Lankan writings in English, to give Sri Lankan writers an equal platform to their international colleagues, to encourage the use of English among young people and to attract visitors from overseas to visit Galle and the Southern Province.link

But Sri Lanka already has a National Literary Festival, as bureaucratic and stodgy as it may be. And the founder of this Galle festival appears to be an Anglo-Australian hotelier, Geoffrey Dobbs, who has a vested interested in drawing affluent tourists to his Galle hotels and resorts. And this same Geoffrey Dobbs also founded a a tsunami relief organization, AdoptSriLanka.com that is supposedly the source of funding for the Galle Literary Festival.

So as exciting as it is to imagine Kiran and Suketu Mehta and Romesh Gunesekera trading bon mots under a sacred Bo tree, something seems a little…not-so-right…no?

When the topic of Iraq comes up in conversations with my friends and acquaintances these days (which is sadly increasingly rare) I generally encounter one of two types of attitudes. The first one, from people on the political left and center, is one of utter exasperation and hopelessness. Not only have we lost, we’ve failed so badly that we may as well leave the stadium and get to our cars as fast as possible to avoid the traffic jam and the inevitable rowdiness soon to be displayed by the opposition. The second attitude, from those who still inexplicably cling to the right-of-center view on Iraq, is one that features mindless tu quoque utterances: “Well, at least it is better than Saddam.” What I fear, however, is that both sides are so frustrated that they no longer care what is going on over there. Even as Bush’s poll numbers plummet, more American soldiers die, and death squads roam Baghdad’s streets (something that even laymen easily predicted two full years ago), the conflict is ever evolving. It is imperative that we recognize that evolution and not think that it is simply business as usual over there. It is in fact getting far worse every day, and in historically predictable ways.

Three articles published on Sunday collectively do a fine job of bringing us all up to speed on where things stand at the present and why adding 20,000 additional troops is nothing but the final desperate maneuver of a man who was always ten steps behind. The first article comes to us from Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City. In it he describes how the Bush administration is rounding up all the people that it originally thought didn’t understand the situation in Iraq, and is now asking them to salvage what little they can of the mess.

Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn’t fazed by chaos. He’d been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia’s civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, “was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them.”

He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned…

Desperate for new approaches to stifle the persistent Sunni insurgency and Shiite death squads that are jointly pushing the country toward an all-out civil war, the White House made a striking about-face last week, embracing strategies and people it once opposed or cast aside. [Link]

Now that the Neocons and “swamp drainers” have been discredited, it is time for the pragmatic adults to clean up their mess. These are the same pragmatic adults who were accused of not understanding the real threat of terrorism by the idealogues who lost their reason to fear, post 9/11. Part of the new plan for Baghdad is what the people worth listening to were saying all along. That is what makes the present bloodshed even harder to witness:

The plan unveiled by Bush last week calls for many people who lost their jobs under Bremer’s de-Baathification decree to be rehired. It calls for more Sunnis, who were marginalized under the CPA, to be brought into the government. It calls for state-owned factories to be reopened. It calls for more reconstruction personnel to be stationed outside the Green Zone. It calls for a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes providing security to the civilian population over transferring responsibility to local military forces.

Carney believes such measures could have been effective three years ago. Today, he worries they will be too little, too late. [Link]

The New York Times Magazine published a Chandra Prasad article (thanks, Tamasha) over the weekend on her quest to save her cousin from an arranged marriage in India. Her solution? Arrange her cousin’s marriage herself. To an Indian American, that is.

Let’s do a play-by-play of Prasad’s reasoning, shall we?

Even among my many pretty female cousins in India, bright and lovely Neet stood out. Like most of my father’s relatives, she lived in Bihar, a volatile region in the northeastern part of the country, and at 23 was sheltered in ways that I, born and bred in the U.S., had trouble comprehending. Neet never left the house alone; she had never even shopped for her own saris. But she had studied rigorously, earned a master’s degree in computer science and was working as a software-development intern. When I asked her by phone if I’d have to start calling her “Dr. Neet” soon — a nod to the possibility of a doctorate — she laughed and said, in her tentative English, “I like the sound of that!”

In truth, further educational aspirations were at odds with Neet’s circumstances, and when I learned last year that her parents were considering arranged-marriage options, I felt sorry for her.

A Connecticut-bred Yale grad, I’m not really an advocate of arranged marriage.

But it occurred to me, and to my like-minded father, that we might be able to bring Neet into the U.S. and broaden her opportunities if we could find a suitable Indian husband for her here. With her parents’ permission, we set to work.

When the hell did I become a chronicler of Bollywood? I barely know a damn thing about the films. But the pulsating worldwide buzz of matters Ash and Abhishek is so intense right now, it has penetrated even my cortex. I surrender to the glamour and the glory. Consider how our dashing duo have spent the last three days:

Thursday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in Toronto.

Friday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in New York City.

Saturday: Travel, presumably.

Sunday: Oh, I don’t know… how about we get engaged at a private ceremony at Daddyji’s Juhu crib?

A couple of days ago the Indian press was still reading the tealeaves based on Ash and Abhishek’s “hand-in-hand” appearance in Toronto — actually, the pictures show Ash demurely at her gentleman’s elbow —

The buzz about the marriage of Aishwarya and Abhishek has become almost a belief now after Ash has been spotted more frequently in the company of the Bachchans in the recent days thereby adding more fuel to the gossip mills.

Well, mill no more! It’s official. Sorry, Neha and Chick Pea and the rest of you lovely ladies… Thank God we know another superfine Abhishek who might still be available. Having U.S. passport even!

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently those words appeared at the bottom of a poster hanging on the wall of Royal Nepal Airlines’ offices in Delhi. The poster featured this lovely picture:

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently neither has Royal Nepal Airlines.

It took a sharp-eyed tourist from Peru to notice the obvious error and tattle to his countryman before the world was made aware of this sinister plot. To that tourist I can only say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

“The airline … offered apologies to Peru for using the picture of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary on a poster to promote their country and assured that the lamentable error has been corrected,” the statement said.

“As a consequence, the Nepalese airline fired an employee in the rank of a manager … It is concluded that it was an isolated error,” it added. [Link]

I wish this news would have broken a week later! I’ve hiked to Machu Picchu and will be in Delhi next Saturday en route to Kathmandu, Nepal. What a coup it would have been to pose in front of this poster for the entertainment of SM readers (although perhaps “coup” is the wrong word in this context). I’m wondering if I can take a lot of pictures in Nepal and use them in a poster encouraging tourism in North Dakota where SM’s headquarters are based. By the way, do we have any Nepali readers in the house? Should we even consider a meet-up?

It’s well known that washed-out crooners and comedians end up in Las Vegas. The same role is played in the international soccer world by a few wealthy backwaters where once-glamorous players on the far side of their prime can poke the ball around a few more years against subpar opposition. For some reason Qatar, principally among the Gulf states, has been such a haven for a decade or more. Japan is another such venue. But the place you really want to end up if you’re a footballing once-great is — following the path that Pelé and Beckenbauer once trod — the good old U. S. of A.

Before you pounce: Yes, I know that the U.S., Japan, even Qatar are all soccer powers on the rise in an international scene where talent is more and more evenly spread. And it’s arguable that some of these early retirees have contributed to this leveling, although I’m more inclined to believe that when they get off their arses and coach (like Zico for Japan last year), as opposed to collect large checks and come on in the seventy-fifth minute to please the adoring masses.

In light of these considerations I guess we should refrain from judging in advance the impact that the arrival of Golden Balls himself, David Beckham, in the U.S. to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy will have on the development of the sport. But considering the amount of money that’s being shelled out for him — $250 million over five years, the richest contract in American professional sports — it’s fair to say that someone out there has great expectations.

One constituency that has to be happy is Los Angeles realtors, as the establishment of a West Coast Beckingham Palace is sure to reflate the market for Beverly Hills mansions. Victoria Beckham (I know, how did I manage to take this post so far without mentioning her?) has been spotted scoping out properties in the company of Katie Holmes, the latest Tom Cruise brainwashee spouse. It seems Katie and Posh are BFFs — who knew? — and so I suppose we can expect numerous stories ahead of TomKat and Posh & Becks double-dating shenanigans, hopefully in all possible permutations.

But what does it mean for the desis? Tipster Kamala is on the case. She sent us a link to this picture that Sports Illustrated ran a couple of days ago on its website. She notes:

observe Beckham’s left hand. If my hindi is right, his tattoo says Victoria in Hindi, in huge letters. It’s so clearly visible. Hmm.

Hmm is right, my sister! Well, it’s been documented before that Posh and Becks like to get their India on — it’s apparently a common malady among the Brit celebrity set — and beside, who could resist that sinewy Devanagari script, it’s so sensuous and exotic. Between this and the whole Bend-It thing, perhaps Posh and Becks could help us re-open our recently-shuttered Los Angeles bureau.

We’re also going to need some investigators and paperazzi of our own (Taz, Shruti, I’m looking at you). For now we’ll have to make do with this Los Angeles perspective from Defamer, which has opened a new category (“Celebutard Immigration Issues”) to mark the event and offers here its “official position” on the arrival of Posh & Becks:

We are wholeheartedly against the idea of foreign attention whores stealing away scarce Lohan-diddling and vagina-flashing opportunities from our homegrown celebutards, and we’d rather see our native paparazzi burn down Los Angeles rather than forfeit their turf to the coming wave of alien guerrilla photographers who will soon be dispatched to document the Beckhams’ every Starbucks visit.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas just got a whole lot closer. Spice Girls reunion tour, anyone?

I’m here in Mombasa on the coast. Mombasa is Kenya’s second largest city and a popular holiday spot for its beaches and laid-back lifestyle. It’s also a different culture from the interior. Here, the Swahili, Arab, Indian, Portuguese, and British colonial influences blend into something uniquely Indian Ocean. It’s tough to tell where one culture stops and another begins, or which person belongs to which group, or even if such concerns matter at all.

There are auto-rickshaws plying the streets (called tuk-tuks here), people in every variety of Islamic garb from skullcaps and robes for men, to scarves and full purdah for women—or no special dress at all. With its colonial architecture, palm trees, blue ocean, and cultural melange, Mombasa seems a lot like Pondicherry. The tourist development is elsewhere, so the place is surprisingly “local,” and the people are friendly. In the late afternoons the streets are full of schoolkids in uniforms. Mildew grows on the yellow and white apartment blocks, with laundry drying outside.

I took a tour of the Old Town and have posted some tourist snaps below. It’s the poorer quarter of the city but the most interesting, with architectural flourishes from all the contributing cultures. My guide was Mahir Mohammed (who also goes by Ali Mohammed and Ali Baba). Photography wasn’t particularly welcome in Old Town, but he smoothed most things over. The issue seemed to be that I would make money off the photos and was therefore exploiting people commercially, so I didn’t take many pictures or press the issue. At one point, we were in a narrow lane looking at a coop of pigeons. Ali was telling me about them and clucking at them (I wasn’t photographing), and a woman came out of the house and yelled at him. We walked on. He told me she was accusing him of using her pigeons for his business.

The Indian presence is very strong in Mombasa. All the restaurants serve more than one Indian dish (curry, biryani, somosas, chapatis, etc.). There are Hindu temples and Ismaili mosques. Well-off Indians own shops in town and estates on the ocean, but there are poor people in the mix in Old Town. My hotel, a colonial-era three-star with mosquito nets, a fan, and a dipper in the bathroom, has Preity Zinta calendars at the reception desk and behind the bar. (There are also a large number of a craggy old single European men in shorts, and this is the tourist off season, which makes me wonder how Mombasa figures in the sex trade.)

Some tourist snaps from Old Town and the rest of Mombasa are on the flip.

“He is so sexy. Sexy man!” she screamed. [Link]

And this was no tween pining from behind a roadside barrier. The ‘she’ in question paid upwards of $100 for a ticket to the premiere of Mani Ratnam’s Guru, held at the gorgeous Elgin Theatre last night. As in, she was inside. And still screaming. Frenzy does not even begin to describe the spectacle that is a Bollywood West premiere. Short video of the madness here. Had TMBWITW not discovered my (sizzling) relationship with Abhishek (call me!) perhaps I too would have been a part of this much-hyped affair. Kaash…

Last September, when Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, the story goes that far more people turned up at its screening than at the Babel screening which happened on the same day. Brad Pitt in the flesh could not conjure crowds like the Bachchans and SRK. The year before, Lisa Ray and John Abraham appeared on an Eye Weekly cover after Water’s debut. Eye is a highly popular Toronto magazine that provides excellent insight into arts and culture happenings. Its covers are usually dedicated to indie bands and other hippy shit. To think that John Abraham, he of little faith in barbershops, is now actually a part of that hippy shit…It makes me proud.

If there’s one thing Toronto does well it is luring film dollars to town. Hence the frothy excitement generated by Guru’s premiere among suits on both sides. Numerous Bollywood productions have used Hogtown as their backdrop and City Hall is finally realizing that there’s more to film than production. With South Asians poised to become the largest minority group in Canada within ten years, the domestic market for such films is - to put it lightly - huge. Ever so in love with all things multiculti, our Mayor Miller personally extended an invitation to Bachchan and Rai to grace the premiere with their fairy dust.

The ping came from the right-most tab of my browser; soon, the unavoidable flashing would commence, alerting me to someone’s attempt to chat from within GMail. I avoid AIM like it’s meat, I don’t even have Yahoo or MSN screen names, but Google…ah, you still own a little bit of my heart. Just who was interrupting my intense reverie? It was one of you.

“Shawty… today is Friday.”

”?”

“55s”

“ah…watching Ronin. maybe it will inspire me…”

“Ronin!”

I hope it’s not a side effect of turning 32 (as my relatives in Kerala loved to point out— an unmarried woman in her 30s is a CRAZY woman), but I have had blogger’s block sum’n fierce for the past week, which is why I’ve been all Mathangi on your kundis. Unfortunately, Ronin didn’t provoke anything besides salivation over the prowess displayed by a certain M-propelled E34.

But, I miss you and I miss this exactly-55-words-thing we do, so I left “Freude am Fahren” behind and turned to what I should have in the first place for some inspiration— music. I grabbed my ancient shuffle and resolved to use whatever song played first as motivation. Et voila, Goldfrapp. It is an apposite choice and not just a random one; this is the first nanofiction orgy of 2007 and I concur with Alison when she sings, “You’re my favourite moment, you’re my Saturday”. I already told you that you were.

This Friday, collect 55 words and arrange them in to the shortest of stories; create nanofiction about your “firsts”, about digits, about whatever your number one might be. Leave your first-rate short-short in the comments below (or let us know where we should go, in order to find it). Happy new year, mutineers…here’s to much fiction and fun with my number ones in ‘07.

For folks who follow these sorts of things, one depressing, ongoing set of statistics from the Indian Air Force (IAF) has been it’s horrible, almost Soviet safety record. For example, back in 1999, Rediff headlined -

IAF has one of the highest accident rates in the world

The staggeringly high number of crashes involving Indian Air Force planes, especially the MiG variant fighters, is due to the lack of advance jet trainers, inadequate maintenance and inefficient technical upgradation of the fighters, say senior air force officials. The air force has lost at least 20 fighters in the last nine months, most of them being MiG-21s flown by young officers just out of the Air Force Academy.

…Air force sources admitted that IAF has one of the highest accident rates in the world and that most of the ill-fated pilots - it has lost over 85 pilots in the last one decade - were very young officers.

When it comes to the complex relationship between a military and the underlying society & culture that support it, I’m a classicist — I don’t necessarily believe the trite aphorism that Might makes Right. And I certainly don’t agree with the reverse, victim-glorifying post-modern formulation - Might makes Wrong. But I do contend that the Right can build physical Might.

It looks like Bangladesh is at a critical point politically right now. The interim President, Iajuddin Ahmed, recently declared a state of emergency, and then abruptly resigned as interim leader.

The central issue seems to be the accuracy of the country’s voter rolls, which has on it the names of 13 million people who shouldn’t be there — out of a total population of 150 million. The voter rolls also excludes most minority voters, though that doesn’t appear to be as big a problem politically for either party. The best summary of what is happening is probably Naeem’s at Drishtipat:

The controversy around Jan 22 elections center around few things:

i) Voter List: Subject of raging court battles for last 2 years. BNP defied a court order to update existing voter list (created by AL in 2000), and instead created a brand new voter list. An NDI survey found 13 million extra names on the Voters List. Minority voters (esp, Hindu+CHT Pahari voters) are of course wholesale missing from this list–– par for the course. The total voter count was 93 million, a mathematical impossibility from 2001 census. In face of mounting domestic/international pressure EC finally agreed to correct the voters list, but the work was incomplete when opposition boycott began.

ii) CTG (Caretaker Government): This was a system instituted after the 1996 vote-fraud marred elections, whereby, 3 months before each election the gov’t steps down, and a CTG takes over to conduct “fair”elections. This worked in 1996 and 2001, but by 2006, surprise surprise, the CTG itself has become super-controversial. The AL alleges it is now full of BNP partisans. After a long campaign to remove a partisan candidate, the chess move was placed by Iajuddin who took over as head of CTG bypassing the normal process. Since taking power Iajuddin proved to be a horrorshow autocrat. He repeatedly bypassed and ignored his advisors in taking decisions about voter list, election date and army deployment. A month ago, 4 of his advisors quit in protest. (link)

The two main political parties in Bangladesh are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which leans Islamist, and the Awami League (AL), which has been historically more secular/left (though recently they have been making overtures to some Islamist parties). The BNP is currently dominant, but the AL has been putting pressure on them to run the upcoming elections fairly, and had been threatening a boycott unless the voter rolls are corrected. Drishtipat’s Naeem and others have suggested that the inability of the two parties to negotiate a way to manage elections might well lead the military to take matters into their own hands in the next couple of weeks. That isn’t a good thing, but clearly things can’t continue much longer as they are.

About 40 people have died thus far in the violence that has accompanied the current political standoff. I’m crossing my fingers that, however, this is resolved, that number doesn’t go any higher. Do readers have suggestions for readings that might shed more light on what is happening in Dhaka right now? I’m especially curious to see ‘on the ground’ blog reports of what is happening, if there are any.

Salim Lone turns the car down a winding driveway in Nairobi’s diplomatic enclave to a bright bungalow with a terraced garden. The house is separated from the thick overgrowth in the back by a high fence topped with electric wire. There’s a gate and guard.

“”When I was a young journalist,”” he says, “”I never came back here. This area was all white.””

Today, he says, he lives here by accident. He and his wife, Pat, rented this house because it was one of the few they could find that had a downstairs bedroom, which they needed for his mother. But it is a peaceful spot for a man who has spent his forty-odd years in journalism making other people uncomfortable.

For his political commentary and muckraking style, he ran afoul of both the Kenyatta and Moi regimes in the 1970s and ’80s. He was jailed, stripped of his Kenyan citizenship, exiled in 1982, and made stateless. He went back to the United States, where he had attended Kenyon College in the 1960s and where he had worked for the United Nations. Later, President Moi sent word that all had been forgiven and that he was free to return. He did so, only to find himself in jail again.

Kenya has matured politically since the return of multi-party elections in 1992 and the end of Moi’s reign a decade later, but Lone still takes to the pages of the Kenya’s Daily Nation to criticize the current president for failing to complete his promised reforms and to call for greater participation in opposition politics.

I was in the middle of a meeting at work this morning when a co-worker (a meteorite expert no less) forwarded me an article about the strange goings-on in a New Jersey bathroom. I knew that I would have to write a post about it before going to bed:

A hole in the roof, a bathroom full of debris and a strange, silvery rock near the toilet — the Nageswaran family soon realized they needed an astronomer, not a contractor, to fully explain what damaged their house.

Scientists determined it was a meteorite that crashed through the roof of their central New Jersey home more than a week ago.

While extraterrestrial rocks fall to the Earth with some regularity, it is rare for them to strike homes.

“The fact that something from outer space hit our house … it’s overwhelming,” said Shankari Nageswaran in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. [Link]

Apparently the grandma heard sounds in the bathroom that didn’t sound like those she typically associated with her son:

On the night of Jan. 2, Nageswaran walked into his bathroom and spotted a hole in the ceiling and noticed small chunks of drywall and insulation littering the room.

His mother, who has been staying with the family, recalled that she had heard a loud boom and thought it was a post-New Year’s fireworks explosion. But that didn’t explain the mess in the bathroom. [Link]

Like many other browns I know, my name seems to bring out the worst in other people. When I taught elementary school in Brooklyn, an older colleague insisted on calling me “Ms. R.” “I don’t mean to offend,” he explained, “but if I try saying your last name, I know I’ll just sound silly.” Well, now you just sound like an idiot, I thought. A similar encounter occurred during my first week of graduate school, when the Dean approached me and introduced herself. I told her my name, and she asked, “Why couldn’t your parents just name you Molly or Jane?” Yes, I know, Naina Ramajayan…so difficult to pronounce, that even I just call myself ‘The N.’ It’s all pretty ironic, actually; considering that I’m a southie Hindu, my name is about as simple as it gets.

Thankfully, the baggage that comes with my name is fairly harmless, and I’m able to laugh it off. No one has ever looked at my name and suggested that I be targeted for homeland security. Some of my friends from college, however, haven’t been as lucky. When my friend Rahul Shah introduced himself to his co-worker a while ago, she responded, “Like, as in, the Shah of Iran, that Holocaust denier?” (Oh yes, she did.) Another friend felt pressured to start using his middle name at work because his boss joked that his first name, Amit, sounded like ‘Ahmed.’ And so what if does? “Dude,” he explained, “Three of the 9-11 hijackers were named Ahmed.” Amit, Ahmed, Shah, Iran…looks like the code is finally getting cracked.

I used to think these issues concerning names were a burden only for us brown people. But then I learned that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is in a similar predicament. CNN did a nice story a few weeks ago (you can view the clip here) on the “controversy” surrounding the Senator’s name. Since Obama rhymes with Osama, Barack rhymes with Iraq (and Chirac), and Hussein is his middle name, he’s evidently a newly-discovered threat to the United States. After watching that clip, I felt guilty for thinking my buddy Amit was just being paranoid of his boss all these years. In fact, now I’m even more paranoid than I ever was before. Of rampant stupidity, that is.

As SM readers know, we recently closed down our Los Angeles bureau offices. Apparently the California congressional delegation was pissed at the loss in state revenue attributed to our closure. They couldn’t take our money through taxation no more and all the local restaurants that popped up to feed our large staff are now without customers. As retribution the Mutiny was being threatened with increased congressional oversight unless we threw California a bone. Well folks, both California and our readers are in luck. Our newest blogger comes to us straight from Sacramento (Sac-town I think it’s called). Please welcome Naina Ramajayan of the blog Peter Sellers is Dead. What do they blog about over there?

We don’t have a running theme. We’re just here to talk trash — about people in the news, or people we know, or sometimes even each other. [Link]

We could always use a little more trash talk in the bunker.

Here’s a military item in honor of the “surge” and courtesy of a tip from frequent commenter Maurice. It’s about the (presumably) first Indian husband and wife to both serve in the U.S. military. Sgt. Cyriac Alenchril, 35, is a supply sergeant in Iraq. Wife Fixie Alencheril, 31, recently completed basic training and is headed to Iraq as a human resources administrator. India Abroad has the story.

He says:

“I was told it would be an interesting news that my wife and I have committed ourselves to this war on terror, whereas many immigrants just enjoy only the fruits of the blessed land,” Cyriac said.

She says:

“It was not easy for an Indian woman to do all that the Caucasian or African-American women do. More than the physical struggle, the mental stress was too much. I am happy that I completed it successfully,” said Fixie…

Can’t you just hear the intonation? (I don’t mean that in a derisive way.) The article is full of other interesting tid-bits including this surreal scene of a Mallu herding Punjabis to perform for Americans in Iraq:

Cyriac said his proudest moment in Iraq was on last August 15, “when I gathered some 15 Punjabis to sing the Indian national anthem in Sulaimaniya before an American audience.”

And the taste of home:

Guarding 3,000 detainees in Sulaimaniya and training Iraqi correctional cadets are not easy tasks. But he felt at home in Iraq because of the many good curries he got to eat, thanks to the many benevolent Kerala cooks he met there.

Cyriac is a true believer. He intends to stay in the military 30 years, and he wants more Indians to emulate him:

“Currently, there are very few Indians in the army. Those who are in the services are mainly medical personnel. This needs to change,” Cyriac said.

The couple’s two young children are with Fixie’s parents back in India. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe, surge and all.

It’s a story that I am sure will find it’s way to Bollywood soon. Two brown brothas, one desi and one latino, tied together by a common passion, risked everything to stick it to the MAN and got caught. Tipster RP alerted us to the story of “Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo [who] pleaded not guilty to felony charges Monday” in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive… officials took the threat seriously

Patel and Murillo were members of a shadowy brotherhood, an organization I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of, called the “Engineers and Architects Association, ” a city union devoted to the dark arts of engineering and architecture. By going on strike, the union grabbed the city of Los Angeles by the golis. They warned:

“Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive.” City officials took the threat seriously. [Link]

You bet your rims they took the threat seriously! The only things that Angelenos fear more are disruptions to its cocaine and its silicone supply.

These two men were the elite of their organization, the special ops as it were:

one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, [and] the other a computer whiz who helped build the system. [Link]

They executed their daring plan with steely nerves. This scene will need to be scored delicately, with a whole song written for it by A.R. Rehman:

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, … [the MAN] temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair … allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days. [Link]

“Tied traffic up”?? No, dear readers, these two did far far more than that. They used an ancient technique known to brown people in India and Mexico to bring the MAN to his knees. They didn’t merely stop traffic at a few lights. No, they were far more subtle than that. Using their ancient cultural wisdom, they selected the most vulnerable locations in the city, its vital nerve clusters, and hit them with a strike that didn’t paralyze … it just slooooooowed everything down. Now traffic was moving like Bombay or Mexico city!

“Kind of like the Indian Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, only crank up the handsome and rip off the knob.” That’s how Stephen Colbert described Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in a segment Tuesday evening making fun of celebrity feuds. (Apparently there’s some ruckus about Big B not turning up at SRK’s New Year’s Eve party.) Trump v. Rosie and Angelina v. Madonna were the other two targets, but with a full half of the segment devoted to Bollywood clips and mangled names of Indian stars (“Let me tell you something: If Pree-etty Zinta is there, you better fucking show up”), the item — which wasn’t all that funny to begin with — came out in a weird space between derision and, ultimately, a kind of respect. Watch for yourself, but to my eyes this was a more sophisticated intro to Bollywood than anyone in the studio audience might have expected. I suspect we have an alternadesi mole somewhere on Colbert’s writing staff.

As you might expect the Indian press is all over it. “The short spoof may also have been aired keeping in mind the fact that the show is extremely popular amongst Indian Americans,” this report speculates.

This is so true. Just so damn true that I had to bring it to the attention of SM readers. Just read what Jason Neffler has to say about a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention:

I’m really glad I decided to go to my current school. I can’t think of an American college with such balanced and complementary diversity. While any old school can boast of their Indian dance groups, few can say they have the perfect number of them. Well, this one can. Yeah, you could say I have it good when it comes to Indian dance groups. Or, more accurately, I have exactly the right amount when it comes to Indian dance groups.

Three.

I checked out a few other schools before coming here, and the choice wasn’t too difficult. Some of these schools have upwards of seven Indian dance groups. That undercuts the cultural importance of the dancing with petty competitiveness, and dilutes the experience with oversaturation. Meanwhile, a bunch of the other schools have only one or two, which is equally unacceptable. Try coming away with any informed appreciation of Indian dancing with only two Indian dance groups on campus. It’s completely ridiculous—insulting, even.

No, three is dead-on… [Link]

By the time most of the people who read this website have kids, I think that this elusive balance of three Indian dance groups per campus will be a thing of the past. I forsee a day when somewhere between 7-10 troupes have established themselves at every college (except maybe community college). This development, combined with the ever-quickening pace of global warming, has got me thinking as to whether children are even a good idea. Is this the world we want to bring them into? One where Bollywood-style dancing is done by everyone?

Like a proper Bharatnatyam, Neffler’s wisdom kept flowing:

… if I’m looking to take a break from my economics studies with a little Bharatanatyam or Odissi, I can always check out Eternal Bhakti when they perform at the commons. When it comes to bringing to life the ancient theories put forward in the Natya Shastra Of Bharata, I believe I speak for the entire student body when I say that there’s no room for improvement in that department.

Of course Eternal Bhatki’s not for everyone. But at this school, it doesn’t need to be. We also have Saraswati, for those who like their Manipuri slow and relaxing. No pressure here. Just Indian dancing with no frills. [Link]

Just share this with someone. The Onion continues to be America’s finest news source.

It sounds pretty simple:

1) Put up a website called “India’s Hottest College Chick Contest”

2) Sit back in Chandigarh, Punjab (where the owner of this site resides) and collect all the “hot chick” pictures emailed in.

It makes me wonder why we didn’t call our website “America’s Hottest Desi Blog-Lurker Contest” (although I may still lobby my bunkermates for this change).

Does anyone actually fall for this kind of crap? I had questions:

1. What is India’s Hottest College Chick Contest?

- India’s Hottest College Chick is an all-online contest. The contest shall take place totally online. The contest shall be full of interactive content, contestant related stuff, games, debates, interviews, clips, podcasts, vote-outs, attitude and loads of masala! The winners shall be adjudged on the basis of voting only. The contestants shall actively interact with the audience.

2. Who wins the contest and how?

- As stated earlier the contestants who remains till the end i.e the one who survives throughout the vote-outs and the contests shall be the winners. The top five shall be awarded prizes. The last remaining shall win the grand prize of Ddamas Jewelry set….

3. Can I participate?

- Ofcourse! You must follow the minimum eligibility criteria of being a girl first(Phew!). [Link]

If I use the phrase “kids these days!” does that mean I’m officially old? But seriously, what the hell? Can any dude with a web address become the next Hugh Hefner? And this little entry from their blog made me squirm:

Just a 48 hours after opening up with the registrations and a few (Indian)Broadband issues later we’re finally on! With nearly 57 registrations the moderators Raman and Ish are having a busy time compiling and reviewing profiles and sending approval mails. [Link]

“Compiling and reviewing?” Is that what they call it nowadays?

While growing up my mom would do ravivar, which translates into Sunday in Gujarati. This was a tradition passed down to her from her mother, and basically every Sunday my mom would only eat once during the day. When I was a kid, it sucked for Sunday lunch because it meant eating a full-on Gujarati feast, when all I really want to eat was a grilled cheese and some bugles. Things looked up for dinner though, when my sister and I were allowed to choose our poisons. This often led to a visit to Burger King for a Veggie Whopper and onion rings. The Veggie Whopper, for those of you that haven’t had the pleasure of having it is different than the BK Veggie which was only recently added to the menu, and is essentially Burger King’s signature Whopper without the meat patty. As ridiculous as it may sound, it was one of my favorite foods order. I know that for most vegetarians, a fast food burger joint doesn’t quite fit the bill as an ideal place to grab a bite, but my sister and I loved Burger King. And that Burger King presented some semblance of a vegetarian option set it apart from its competition. While I was always on the fence about allying myself strictly to Burger King or McDonalds - you never know when you will crave a McFlurry - when the news came out a few year’s back that McDonalds had been deceiving its vegetarian customers by incorporating that unnecessary beef tallow ingredient into its french fries, I moved completely into the Burger King camp.

So I was glad when I saw the news that fast food eaters in India would soon be getting a choice in where they can hang out and munch on American style burgers and fries. From this story in the Economic Times, it seems Burger King will soon be joining the burger wars in India as it begins to scout out locations and business partners with which to start its joint burger venture in India. And with its opening,

Burger King is likely to shake McDonald’s monopoly in India by launching its own brand of burger restaurants. The company, best known for its price war with Big Mac in the US, has mandated Kotak Mahindra to scout for a partner in what is a growth market for global fast food companies. Industry sources feel that even though McDonald’s is firmly established in metros like Delhi and Mumbai, Burger King’s entry is likely to start a burger war of sorts. Innovation in product offerings and location of outlets would play a crucial role in drawing customers in the long run. In the short term, McDonald’s would lose some customers to Burger King out of the sheer curiosity factor. However, this would happen only if both are located in the same catchment area,” said an industry source.

As SM regular Badmash notes on the news page, the new sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” has its debut this evening on the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting network. I hope that many of you Canadian mutineers will check it out and report back on what, from the clips available on the show’s site and news reports, looks like a smart comedy that takes on anti-Muslim prejudice without straying from the tried-and-true writing and directing approaches that make situational comedy work. Here’s the synopsis:

LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE is a new comedy from CBC Television about a small Muslim community in the prairie town of Mercy, many of whose residents are wary of their new, more “exotic” neighbors. The series takes an unabashedly funny look at the congregation of a rural mosque and their attempt to live in harmony with the often skeptical, even down right suspicious, residents of their little prairie town. The sitcom reveals that, although different, we are all surprisingly similar when it comes to family, love, the generation gap and our attempts to balance our secular and religious lives.

You can get a sense of the show from the CNN report linked above. (If you can’t stand Paula Zahn, forward to 00:38 for the start of actual piece.) The airport scene is classic. The humor is pretty direct and there’s lots of room for slapstick but that’s what makes the format work. Also check out this story about the show from the CBC itself. It’s mercifully Zahnless but shows fewer clips.

Both segments introduce us to the show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz. This sister is no joke! She’s a British-born, Toronto-raised practicing Muslim mother-of-four, who “had a Bachelor of Science degree from U of T in her hands when she realized that medical schools had screening committees to keep people like her out of the health care system.” She went on to broadcast journalism and film, and has lived for the past ten years in cosmopolitan Regina, capital of Saskatchewan:

“Tasty curry might have a fringe benefit,” headlines USA Today… today. The article is more specifically about the reported health benefits of turmeric. It’s not exactly a scoop, as a scientific paper on the topic was published two years ago and picked up by Manish in this January 1, 2005 post. Still, given the attention span of the typical USA Today reader (and who is that reader, anyway, other than the nameless masses of khaki-panted, cellphone belt-clipped, laptop warriors waking up each morning in the Marriotts of the land?), I suppose it’s information worth recycling from time to time. Plus we get a heart warming story to go with it:

Then Jayne took an Indian cooking class that emphasized fresh vegetables and curry spices.

She began to whip up an Indian dinner once or twice a week — and soon she noticed she wasn’t always looking for a late-night snack. And the curry in the food offered her a bonus: It seemed to ease the pain and swelling in her joints.

“I have arthritis,” says Jayne, 55. “But I’m moving better now.”

Preliminary research suggests Jayne may be right. A study in the November issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism suggests turmeric, one component of curry spice, almost completely prevented joint swelling in rats with arthritis. Other studies have suggested that the spice could protect against diseases such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s…

Tipster Adi points us to the article as picked up on the news aggregator site RedOrbit.com, where we get the benefit of reader comments. Made-up Indian names, comparisons of desi food to the excrement of various animals, and discussions of desi body odor and penis size are all on the menu. I won’t reprint any of it here but those of you who think racism against desis is no big deal might find it instructive to take a look.

Meantime, pass the lime pickle.

The new issue of Foreign Policy Magazine has an interesting essay by Daniel Kahneman, a former Nobel Prize winner in economics. In the essay Kahneman points to known factors in human psychology to explain why the hawkish view of a given conflict is usually viewed by leaders as more favorable than the more dovish or pragmatic view. It is interesting to consider the points he makes in light of many current conflicts around the world, including Iraq and the impasse between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

National leaders get all sorts of advice in times of tension and conflict. But often the competing counsel can be broken down into two basic categories. On one side are the hawks: They tend to favor coercive action, are more willing to use military force, and are more likely to doubt the value of offering concessions. When they look at adversaries overseas, they often see unremittingly hostile regimes who only understand the language of force. On the other side are the doves, skeptical about the usefulness of force and more inclined to contemplate political solutions. Where hawks see little in their adversaries but hostility, doves often point to subtle openings for dialogue.

As the hawks and doves thrust and parry, one hopes that the decision makers will hear their arguments on the merits and weigh them judiciously before choosing a course of action. Don’t count on it. Modern psychology suggests that policymakers come to the debate predisposed to believe their hawkish advisors more than the doves. There are numerous reasons for the burden of persuasion that doves carry, and some of them have nothing to do with politics or strategy. In fact, a bias in favor of hawkish beliefs and preferences is built into the fabric of the human mind. [Link]

This is interesting because most of us like to believe that before leaders make decisions they seek advice from a variety of smart people, reviewing all the facts, regardless of their preconceived notions. Many competent decision-making organizations even set up a red team/green team approach to pick apart opposing view points over major decisions. And yet, as many of us have seen, the use of force somehow ends up being the preferred course of action.

About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average. In situations of potential conflict, the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favorable estimates of the outcomes of war. Such a predisposition, often shared by leaders on both sides of a conflict, is likely to produce a disaster. And this is not an isolated example.

In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses—only a few of which we discuss here—incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end. [Link]

Cannibalism, necrophilia and organ trafficking are among the rumors swirling around the serial murders that have come to light in recent weeks in Noida, the industrial suburb of Delhi home to numerous technology and outsourcing companies, and are now the subject of international coverage, for instance with a New York Times article today.

What seems established is that the killers were able to abduct, sexually abuse, murder, and dismember upward of 30 young people over more than two years, with reports of missing persons going back at least to 2004.

Also clear is a pattern of police inaction. This Hindustan Times article reports that the police were directed to investigate disappearances in September 2005 but did little. This NDTV report details how a victim’s father suspected Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surinder Kohli immediately, and how the police responded:

NDTV has the information that on May 6 [2006] when the girl, Payal, went missing, Surinder had made a call from his mobile phone to her.

The girl had gone to their house that day but never returned.

The next day, her father went to police with a complaint against Moninder and Surinder but the police refused to register his complaint.

Later he went to Noida’s Chief Judicial Magistrate requesting him to get the police to register his complaint.

The CJM ordered the police to register a case of kidnapping against Moninder and Surinder.

But, on 29th of June, the police registered a mere missing person’s report, which doesn’t involve any arrests.

The same day, the police interrogated Moninder and his servant Surinder but decided not to press any charges against them.

NDTV has a copy of the Noida CJM’s order dated September 29, 2006 where he has clearly ordered the police to register a case of kidnapping against the two.

In the enquiry report submitted to the CJM court of which NDTV has a copy, Noida police gave a clean chit to Moninder and Surinder and said Payal had eloped.

Payal’s father then moved the Allahabad High Court and in November 2006, the High Court directed the Noida Police to register a case of kidnapping against Moninder and Surinder.

Six months after Payal’s father first went to the police the complaint was finally registered on November - the FIR no 838/06 under sections 363, 366 of the Indian Penal Code.

The Circle Officer Dinesh Yadav, who was to conduct the enquiry, didn’t touch the case at first and handed over the enquiry to his junior.

On November 29, the junior, a second Circle Officer also refused to conduct the enquiry saying that the case did not fall under his jurisdiction.

So, the case came back to Dinesh Yadav and all this while Moninder and Surinder were roaming free going about their business.

Sources have told NDTV that Moninder and Surinder were questioned at least five times in the course of the enquiry but they were let off each time.

The case has all the ingredients for legitimate outrage about two-tier law enforcement and the lack of recourse for marginal, migrant workers, among whom the killers picked their victims. I’m also disturbed/fascinated by the employer-servant relationship of the perpetrators. It goes back to a feudal conception of household employment that a servant would be expected to — and consent to, perhaps even aspire to — join his employer in criminal activities, let alone ones this awful.

Meanwhile, how many other such cases are out there, the press wonders? Not just in India of course. At least this case has a more positive outcome than the 400+ murders of women maquiladora workers in Juarez, Mexico, which the government gave up investigating last August.

P.S.: From the Noida police department website, this wisdom:

Police and Public are the two participants in the system. They should meet each other half way – only then, the encounter becomes a feast. The mission of Noida Police Force is to ensure that the resultant outcome of the interaction between Police and Public is positive and their synergy leads to overall social benefit.

Kenya is one of those rare Commonwealth countries that has a large Indian diaspora population but where cricket isn’t so popular. It used to be. Kenya is only an associate member of the International Cricket Council, as is the United States, and so does not play test cricket, but thanks to some good qualifying tournament play, it has made it to the World Cup. It did so in 1996 and 1999 under the leadership of Aasif Karim. The spin bowler came out of retirement when his side qualified again in 2003 for the last world cup in South Africa. He had served as captain of the 1999 side.

When I met him in his home, we tried to determine if his Indian descent and national team captaincy represented any sort of “first.” We wondered if he was the first desi to captain a national team (other than a team from the subcontinent) in a world cup (any cricket-mad mutineer know differently?).

Kenya won total of five matches in 2003, and Aasif was named Man of the Match for his performance against Australia (the world champions), even though his side lost. He enjoyed playing at the highest level but after the cup decided it was time to move on. Kenya’s commitment to cricket was small (professional sport here is hardly funded at all; even soccer, the most popular sport, lacks facilities, organization, and a commitment to development). But wouldn’t he like to be Kenya’s Brian Lara, perpetual captain and national cricket icon? “Better to go when they ask, ‘Why did you retire?’ and not ‘When are you going to retire?’”” he says.

Like many desis, I love me some deals. I know I am playing into stereotypes here, especially because I am Gujarati, but come on EVERYONE likes good deals. The enjoyment for me isn’t just finding a good deal, but the whole process: it is the hunt, the chase, and the glory in opening the mail and finding that rebate check that you thought might not ever come. Suffice it to say, I spend a good percentage of my time on the internets perusing some favorite deal sites.

But while I like finding good deals, one of my pet peeves is really poor customer service and the feeling that I have been taken advantage of. So when I was visiting one of my new favorite deal/consumer rights blogs, The Consumerist, (part of the Gawker family of blogs) I was a bit dismayed to hear the tale of our desi brethren, Mahesh, who reported on his parent’s really poor experience on United Airlines.

Mahesh’s parents flew from Omaha, Nebraska to Colombo,Sri Lanka, but at LAX, United Airlines (UAL) refused to honor their tickets, saying that they had not “been approved, authorized and authenticated.” The family ended having to pay $2860 extra to complete their journey. Apparently, Sri Lankan Air Lines, a United code-share partner, could not find the reservation Mahesh’s parents made. Mahesh wrote three letters of complaint to UAL and so far his parents have only received two $300 coupons in return. When Mahesh scoffed at the sum, United wrote, “our policy does not permit us to respond with the generosity you had anticipated. (link)

It seems that instead of writing letters, which I am a big fan of, now when desis are wronged, we blog. So as a good South Asian, Mahesh has started his own blog detailing his battle with United Airlines’ Customer service at evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com. His story is really messed up and I hope the airlines eventually do the right thing and refund the extra three grand his recently operated-on parents had to hand over to get home.

Beneath the horrendous headline “Gangsta Raj,” New York Times reviewer Paul Gray opens his treatment of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games with the kind of snark that will dissuade anyone who only reads the first paragraph from buying the book:

This immense, demanding novel can be recommended, with scarcely a cavil, to well-educated Indians who have lots of free time, are fluent in (at the very least) English and Hindi, and have a thorough knowledge of South Asian politics; Hindu, Muslim and Sikh religious practices; and the stars and story lines of hundreds of Bollywood films. Longtime Bombay residents will have an extra advantage, since they will know, without consulting a gazeteer or Google, why the city is now called Mumbai. Prospective readers who don’t fit this profile will have some catching up to do.

In the end, it’s a positive review, though the term “damning with faint praise” sure came to my mind several times as I went through it. And do the Gray Lady’s editors know they just printed the words sisterfucker and motherfucker?

So it goes here. Those who plunge into the novel soon find themselves thrashing in a sea of words (“nullah,” “ganwars,” “bigha,” “lodu,” “bhenchod,” “tapori,” “maderchod”) and sentences (“On Maganchand Road the thela-wallahs already had their fruit piled high, and the fishsellers were laying out bangda and bombil and paaplet on their slabs”) unencumbered by italics or explication.

Seriously though, I still haven’t read the book (the US edition comes out this week, hence the review) but one thing I appreciated about Chandra’s last book, the amazing collection Love and Longing in Bombay, is precisely how he manages to introduce large amounts of local color and vocabulary in ways that connect even if you don’t know what exactly every term means. Surely the review could have taken a more productive approach than to lead with this literalist harping?

This is brilliant. Via SAJA, here’s the story of the Pakistani-American brother who has bought land in Lahore, Virginia, and has great plans for its use:

We spoke to the present American owner of a portion of the town’s land, and also the Pakistani American who has recently bought that piece of land to develop it to match the Pakistani town of Lahore. The new Lahore will have a school, a museum, an airport, and a replica of the famous Shalimar gardens in Lahore, Pakistan.

The report, for the Voice of America’s Urdu TV service, is by journalist Imran Siddiqui and features great local characters who are interviewed in English.

This opens up a lot of possibilities. For instance, there is a Delhi in New York, Delaware, California and Ohio. There’s an Agra in California and Kansas, and another in Oklahoma where there seems to be no shortage of land to build your miniature Taj. There’s also a Bombay in New York, population 1,192, with a tantalizing but undeveloped backstory:

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb’s purchase and. all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legislature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May following. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India.

There are also Calcuttas in Ohio and West Virginia, a Madras in Oregon, and even a Lucknow in western Ontario. I couldn’t find a Thiruvananthapuram.

I know I’m plowing a slightly old furrow here (Manish blogged about this product when it launched back in ‘05), but in light of the Guardian commentary today by Sarita Malik that Red Snapper posted on the news tab, and the latest round of skin-ism and politics-of-appearance debates on the comment threads, I thought it might be useful to reproduce the scientific chart to the right. It’s an analysis by Emami Ltd., the makers of “Fair and Handsome” skin lightening creme for men.

The product website is a gold mine of manipulation, insecurity generation, and odd Indian advertising lingo, complete with a list of “free sample receivers” and “hey gals! give your opinion also” exhortations. It’s also, obviously, testimonial that at least in Desh, skin-ism is still in deep effect.

We all know intutively that the phenomenon extends to the diaspora, but how much, and with what consequences, is a matter of (endless) discussion. I have to say that although I found Malik’s commentary well written and to the point, she offered little concrete evidence of skin color discrimination among desis in the UK, and she undermined her piece by referring to Fair and Handsome as a Hindustan Lever (makers of Fair & Lovely) product, which it isn’t.

This is a sister called Shakti who is making commercially-oriented urban pop music and is based as far as I can tell in New York (thanks tipster Sonia!). She’s another MySpace-era striver who has a single on iTunes, a website with more bells and whistles than she has material to fill it, an embryonic line of fashion accessories, and a producer-songwriter-laptop wizard behind her looking to become the next Timbaland. (He has another artist called Asia Minor.)

She’s also generous with the Indo-flavored exotica, announcing “Namaste” on her website and putting forward, in her various materials, the full complement of noserings, silk scarves, saris, and the like, combined with the racy iconography of today’s commercial R&B. There’s also a Kama Sutra reference and a camel (not together). And there’s some really ugly short promotional clips online that truck in cab driver and 7-Eleven nonsense.

And the music? It’s pretty good on balance, although the single for sale (and yo, what kind of viral marketing strategy is it to put your first record out and charge folks for it?) called “Do the Thang Thang,” hardly does justice to Shakti’s extensive classical and jazz training AND Berklee School of Music bachelor’s degree AND Chicago Music College master’s degree with lyrics like this:

Do the thang thang
Freak your body body
Don’t hurt nobody body
Let’s get naughty naughty.

There are a couple of remixes that make things a bit more interesting, thanks in part to the singer on the bhangra version (a free copy of which is floating around online).

The song on the YouTube clip here, “Let Me Dance,” I like a lot more. Now the Orientalism police (which I occasionally roll with, I admit) won’t be feeling Shakti’s thang thang overall, but if you suspend that reservation for a minute the sinewy groove and bedroom themes might just get to ya.

What I can’t figure out is the end of the line that begins “Just like the Kama Sutra…” It occurs twice in the song. Any sharp ears out there able to decode it? Conferral of the official Sepia Mutiny seal of approval might just depend on those hard-to-make-out words…

If anyone in Bollywood needs a big brother to watch over her, one of my first guesses would be item-number girl extraordinaire, Shilpa Shetty. And lucky for her (and for us too), Big Brother will be watching her, and by Big Brother, I am referring to the UK television show’s ongoing celebrity version (thanks Jai).

The BBC reports yesterday that Ms. Shetty (31) was the sixth of eleven stars to enter the Big Brother house, wearing a pink sari. Because Shetty, who has appeared in over 30 Bollywood films, is an unmarried Indian female, attractive, and over the age of 30, it appears that they are going to focus on her love-life (you know, being single, desi, and over 30, the horror, the horror).

The film icon will reportedly have a dinner date with another housemate, in which she will be encouraged to flirt and reports say Ms Shetty - often the subject of marriage speculation - will dine at a later stage in the show with the housemate she finds the most attractive. Inevitably, Indian coverage of the show will focus on romance in Shilpa Shetty’s life.”

But it isn’t likely that any shaadi will result from the show. When responding to a love-life related query from one newspaper in the run-up to the show, Shetty kept it fashionably coy saying, “I shall marry but after three years. There is no-one in my life as of today. And, I am very happy living single, at present.” (link)

Correspondents, like always, are saying that Shetty’s appearance on Big Brother is bound to be hugely controversial in India where many would question its standards of morality. Maybe so, but these correspondents must then have missed some of her more risque-scantily clad-and-in-the-rain dance numbers that Shilpa has participated. Morality, Shmorality, it is Big Brother, and by the look of things already, this season sounds like it is going to be interesting. I know I will be watching, and with Shilpa on, I bet many of the two million plus British Asians will be too. You can see videos of the show here, Shilpa’s page here, and Shilpa big brother news here.

Indolink.com reports on a study released today that breaks down the impact of Indian immigrants on several key U.S. economic sectors. Titled, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” the document is full of interesting pie and bar charts that reveal the disproportionate influence that Indian immigrants have had in the last couple of decades. However, I’m here for those of you who don’t like pie and bar charts (slackers).

The joint Duke University - UC Berkeley study reveals that Indian immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies from 1995 to 2005 than immigrants from the U.K., China, Taiwan and Japan combined. The report also shows that Indians have overtaken the Chinese, albeit marginally, as the leading group of immigrant entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

The immigrant contributions must be viewed as part of a “U.S. global advantage” and provide a pointer to what “the U.S. must do to keep its edge,” the study says. In addition the study reveals that the patents awarded to non-citizen immigrants - typically foreign graduate students completing their PhD’s, green card holders awaiting citizenship, and employees of multinationals on temporary visas - increased from 7.8% in 1998 to 24.2% in 2006.

It’s “a report that will without doubt rock the boat,” claims Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University, the primary author of the study. [Link]

Some more musings from Nairobi …

One thing a photographer likes to be able to count on is the presence of his subjects in public spaces: streets, parks, shopping malls, out in front of their homes, etc. In other countries where I have worked, Indian people are out in the open, going about their lives, so photographing has been relatively easy. I meet people, we chat, drink tea, I take some pictures, maybe I come back again the next day, etc. I don’t really like photographing strangers, so getting to know people is essential to the way I work.

In Nairoboi, where the Indian community is fairly small, it’s harder to find people. Since security is the ever-present issue, city dwellers here avoid public spaces. This is not a city of walkers [edit: except by necessity]. People drive or are driven. Houses are gated and guarded. This is true for everyone who can afford the trappings of security, which includes the vast majority of the Indian community.

So I am concentrating on taking portraits of people in their homes.

Photography is all about space—in both the metaphysical and the physical senses. Space defines the subject in the frame. What’s included vs. what’s omitted are important questions the shooter has to ask himself before he trips the shutter.

So the matter for discussion here is, What does it say about community when its cultural expression occurs outside the public sphere? Does the space help define the culture?

Indian culture as I have witnessed it in India and elsewhere is all about the public space: parades, wedding processions, music, long-winded speakers at the public address system, big family events that draw in a larger community.

Granted, in Nairobi, the fact that much of the community here is Muslim has something to do with the reticence of expression, as do the obvious facts of minority status and the presence of crime.

Things are different here. Being Indian is different here from the way it is in other parts of the world, including other countries in Africa. There is no sense that Indian culture has to be hidden or subdued—just that it doesn’t seem to fit comfortably in the public realm.

Your thoughts? (I’ll post some portraits in the next few days).

A couple of days ago a Twin Donut shop burned down in the Bronx. This sort of thing happens frequently enough, of course — grease fires, arson, incidents of unknown causation. But not in this case. It turns out the fire was set by the owner of the Kennedy Fried Chicken outlet immediately adjacent. The chicken joint shares a wall and a roof with the donut shop, but it was barely scathed. The owner was quickly suspected and apprehended. Why’d he do it? Because the donut store had started selling chicken, undercutting his business.

Yeah, yeah, you want a desi angle. Well, hold your horses. Let’s get some local color first:

“I think he was a fool,” said a Hunt’s Point resident who identified himself as “Rhino.” “To burn down a store, this place has been here for many years, is stupid.” …

“He punched a hole in the wall between his store and the donut shop,” explained Assistant Chief Fire Marshall Robert Byrnes. “He introduced some gasoline. He used a pressurized container that you use with insecticide. He ignited the fire and left.”

People in this neighborhood who bought chicken from Kennedy Fried Chicken say it is hard for them to believe the owner would do something crazy like this. They say he was a good guy who cared about the community.

“Why would he do something like that,” added another local resident, Kesha Nelson. “That doesn’t make sense, he was trifling like that. I thought he was a nice guy. I buy chicken from here all the time.”

“Kennedy Chicken had the best chicken,” concurred local resident Frank Jones. “I don’t know about Twin Donuts because I never had their chicken.”

And now your desi angle. Judging from the names at least, both chickenwalla and donutwalla appear to be desi:

Kabeer Ahmad also was charged with reckless endangerment and remained in custody because he was unable to post $250,000 bond. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Bronx food fight began when a Twin Donut shop started competing with Ahmad’s Kennedy Fried Chicken by adding legs, wings, breasts and thighs to its menu and selling plates of food for 50 cents cheaper. …

Ahmad had accused Twin Donuts of violating a noncompete clause by selling chicken at the shop. But the owner of the doughnut shop, Mike Chhor, said he didn’t know why his neighbor set the fire and destroyed his business, which he bought three weeks ago.

“I don’t know why he burned the store,” Chhor said. “I had no problem with him.”

If convicted, Ahmad faces upward of 25 years in jail. This brother-on-brother violence must end. What a senseless waste of entrepreneurial initiative. Why couldn’t they just get together an open a Chicken & Waffles joint?

[Note: I was trying to use the “embed video” feature now offered by IBN-CNN in India, but it was taking way too long to load. So here’s a link.]

“This is making the South Asian women’s circles headlines,” advises an anonymous tipster. Thanks for alerting us to the extremely ugly incident that took place during New Year’s Eve at the Gateway of India in Mumbai, where the crowd gathered in the same way it does in Times Square in New York City or similar plazas worldwide. Only here, there was an attack on a young couple in the middle of the crowd in which a mob of about 60 men molested the young woman for ten minutes with no one coming to her and her friend’s aid. A photographer for Mid-Day, Shadab Khan, witnessed it all:

On New Year’s Eve, I was supposed to click pictures of revellers at the Gateway of India, but what I witnessed instead has left me shaken.

A young woman was groped by some 60 perverts in plain public view, while her male friend, who tried to protect her, was pushed aside violently.

The 10 harrowing minutes the helpless woman cried for help as the perverts abused her, shook my faith in the city I have lived in all my life. I thought such things happened only in Delhi. I was clearly wrong.

I was at the place at 11.35 pm with my camera, taking pictures that captured the mood of the New Year celebrations. I was atop the temporary watchtowers erected by the cops.

After a few minutes, as the crowd grew larger, I could vaguely make out a youth aged around 25, surrounded by a mob of around 60 to 70 people.

The perverts tore off her dress in the middle of the teeming crowd When I zoomed in, I saw the girl of about the same age being groped by the crowd.

The girl was screaming for help but her voice was drowned in the commotion. Her companion tried to shield her but found himself helpless.

The presence of 50-odd policemen at the site did not deter them. Even as she cried pitifully, I saw them pull at her dress, leaving it torn from below the waist.

In the middle of this pushing and shoving, the girl fell down. The wild men, taking advantage of her, pounced on her with even more venom. After an agonising 10 minutes, the two managed to extricate themselves from the crowd and leave the venue.

Numerous Indian outlets have now picked up the story. I’m waiting for Mumbai’s strong female bloggers like Uma and Sonia to contribute their thoughts; it seems they are still on vacation. Amit Varma has an item on the incident, and picks up on some idiotic interpretations being distilled by so-called experts:

The Times of India brings us some bizarre reactions on the incident. First, Dr Mahinder Watsa, “an expert in sexual medicine,” says:

This is a rage attitude of devil-may-care.

And then, Dr Harish Shetty brings capitalism into it:

[T]here is this global selling of ecstasy pushed forward by a market-driven economy, and so, the line of demarcation between fun and ecstasy is getting blurred. Hence, we find some youngsters indulging in such behaviour.

As disgusting as incidents like this one are, it’s just as repulsive when the (men in the) so-called “responsible media” deploy horseshit such as this from (male) so-called experts to explain away actions that are just plain violent, ignorant, criminal and wrong. How is there ever going to be any progress?

The debates about secularism we’ve had over the months I’ve been on Sepia Mutiny have sometimes gotten stuck due to differences in terminology. People have different ideas of what “secularism” means, and not simply because one party is “right” and the others are “wrong.”

In fact, there is some slipperiness in the way many people use the term on a day-to-day basis. Some people think of secularism as a cultural attribute, indicating the opposite of religiosity. A society where people are not very religious might be termed secular, and under this terminology, Europe would be very “secular,” while the U.S. would be less so, even if (and Razib has often pointed this out) there is actually more religion taught in public schools in most northern European countries than is allowed in the U.S. system. India is a society that is also very non-secular by this definition, partly because the overwhelming majority of its citizens would identify themselves as belonging to one or another religious community. Moroever, one of the unique features of life in the Indian subcontinent is the fact that a person’s religious identity is often publicly visible to others –- it’s built into one’s name, as well as various kinds of bodily markings and religiously-coded attire. A Bindi might mark a woman as a Hindu; a turban and beard might mark a man as a Sikh; and any number of identifying marks are possible for Muslims. (Christians and Buddhists, interestingly, are less visibly marked.)

The problem with the cultural definition of secularism is that it seems very difficult to think of changing anything. If the people in a given society are seen as religious, one could claim that there’s no need for a legal or political system that requires separation of church and state. Nor need there be any particular incentive to reform aspects of a traditional culture that are incompatible with the idea of civil rights. Also out the window are specific protections for religious minorities, as well as vigilance about protecting individuals (as in, women) from religious coercion. If a woman (or even, as is often the case, a girl) is being pressured by her family to accept a marriage she doesn’t want, under the culturalist definition of secularism there isn’t really justification to help her: that’s simply the culture, one could say.

Dance monkey. Dance.

About this time of year we all go about making our resolutions for the coming year. I, for example, have resolved to be in the best physical shape of my life and also to have the best year of my life (God willing). The latter includes using my free will to make proper decisions based on the experience gained from bad past ones. Resolutions seem to be an acknowledgement of the hope that we do indeed possess the free will to determine our fate, regardless of what has happened to us in the past or what some “magical power” wishes upon us (but just to be safe some throw in a “God willing” whether or not they are believers). To quote Swami Vivekananda on the subject:

Each one of us is the maker of our own fate. We, and none else are responsible for what we enjoy or suffer. We are the effects, and we are the causes. We are free therefore. If I an unhappy, it is of my own making, and that shows that I can be happy if I will. The human will stands beyond all circumstance. Before it — the strong, gigantic, infinite will and freedom in man — all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb and become its servants. This is the result of the law of Karma. [Link]

An article in the New York Times, however, throws us a curve ball. Perhaps we have as much free will as a monkey standing backward while riding a tiger with a mind of its own. Perhaps free will is an illusion also:

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place. [Link]

Red Snapper wrote me and suggested a post reviewing the books of 2006. This is of course somewhat difficult to do, because unlike some readers I tend to spend most of my time reading books written years and years and years ago — and I often let new works of fiction simmer into paperback before venturing to sit down with them. In this case, I haven’t actually read several of the books on the list below, and the list is as much a “to read” as it is a “best of.”

Secondly, the ordering isn’t especially significant. The list is more about the group as a whole than it is about putting X above Y or Y above Z. As I mentioned, I haven’t read some of the titles, and anyway ranking books isn’t usually a very intelligent exercise, especially when you’re talking about different genres of writing.

Third, I’m curious to know what was on your list in 2006. What am I leaving out?

GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY.

phew There we go, I just had to get that out of my system.

Oh hang on. Gay Pakistani male! Gay Pakistani male!

Right, I think we’re done on that front.

And on this particular front as well. My time at Sepia Mutiny has—at long last—come to an end, and I can say without a single doubt that I’m glad I got to close out 2006 on such a bright note. It has been an experience, tumultuous and otherwise, and at the risk of loading up on the frommage, I think I’d be the poorer without it.

It gives me hope, sometimes. This community—because that’s what it is, a community, not just a place to write about brown-people-stuff—isn’t just dynamic and interesting and occasionally thought-provoking; it’s all of those things AND the whole damn’ bag of chips. It thrives on everything (clusterfucks be damned!—and secretly enjoyed!), and it makes me glad that I was incredibly, incredibly wrong when I thought to myself at its inception, wow, I wonder how long it’ll take for that site to tank, it’s a good idea, but I just don’t think enough people will be interested.

In case you were wondering, it’s taking me a while to write this post because I’m single-finger-typing while trying to get my ankle out past my molars with the other hand.

It was one of the things I felt most keenly while at university in the US. A lot of us homeland desis tend to automatically assume that just because we were born in South Asia, we’re somehow better-informed and more capable of analysing/providing information about the region than people of desi origin who weren’t necessarily raised there. And I can’t speak for everyone, but some of us also felt very marginalised in the sense that we didn’t think or feel that we had enough of a presence to be a viable social group beyond the simple stereotypes (OK well, I like men and make no bones about that so I definitely stood out, but you see where I’m going with this) that everyone’s so well-aware of.

And once again, I was wonderfully, gloriously, terrifically wrong. The mould has been broken, the restrictions shattered and a bhangra danced all over them while Amitabh comes out of retirement once more to chew the scenery and Nusrat’s voice soars.

It’s utterly delightful, it really is.

Greetings from Nairobi. Many thanks to Abhi and the gang for letting me guest-blog, so here begins a short series (illustrated!) about Indo-Africa.

Amardeep’s recent post about Indo-African writers brought up the big question about Indians (East Asians, as they are called here) and the other communities:

And indeed, anecdotally, one hears that the Asians in Africa tended to hold themselves aloof from “native” Africans, at least before Idi Amin.

That question is a good place for me to start since, quite coincidentally, it’s where I started.

Visiting a place for the first time, especially one defined by a confluence of cultures, requires peeling back the layers of the onion, at least rhetorically. What is said or not said, and how it’s said, can reveal a great deal about a place, and it’s important for a journalist to get a handle on the terms of the discussion if he wants to engage it in any meaningful way.

Best way to orient yourself to the local situation? Ask a cab driver.

Daniel, a black cabbie in his forties attached to my hotel, took me to Diamond Plaza, a shopping center in Parklands, the Indian section of Nairobi. He said he had grown up nearby. I told him why I wanted to go there.

“”Indians are rich,”” he said. “”They don’t come from farms. They are in business.”” It’s always a little dicey when a person of one race makes comments about another to someone who belongs to neither. But I thought he sounded admiring. “”They are good employers,” he said. “”They hire cooks, housekeepers, drivers, guards, lots of staff.””

And then we reached something close to the center of the onion: ““They don’t hire their own people. They hire Kenyans.””

Every good mutiny needs a photographer or two associated with it. Someone needs to document the “grand struggle,” just as Henri Cartier-Bresson documented some of Gandhi’s. To start off 2007 we have a little treat for you. Preston Merchant, the photographer shooting away at many of our NYC meet-ups, is traveling in Kenya right now and will be training his eye and camera on the Indian diaspora there. Before he proceeds we should clear up a few questions you might have:

Statement: Oh, Merchant! Way to represent the Parsees. Finally, some more diversity on SM.

Response: Nope. Preston is white. He is not Parsi (not that you can’t have a white Parsi).

Statement: Whoa. What’s up with letting a colonialist in the house?

Response: Remember the movie Lagaan? How all the villagers banded together to play cricket and won over the hearts of their colonialist oppressors, and how Amir Khan even won the eye of that one white British lady? It is the same thing. SM is like that cricket team but Preston thankfully doesn’t sing.

Preston isn’t just over there taking pictures for no reason. He is working on a book titled IndiaWorld about the Indian diaspora and has already visited South Africa, Dubai, Trinidad, and Guyana, in addition to his work here in the States. In Kenya he will be focusing especially on the Ismaili Muslim community. I’ll let him explain to us about that though. Get ready for a good flogging.

Happy New Year to all of y’all!