Question: What is hotter than the Rodeo?

Answer: The first ever Houston, TX meet-up!

When: Friday, May 18th or Saturday, May 19th (TBD)

Where: Suggestions welcome

Who: Texas boasts the third highest concentration of Sepia Mutiny readers in the world after 1) California and 2) New York. I expect y’all to represent.

Why: Because you should never underestimate the South’s mutinous potential

This is the first time I am ever hosting a meetup alone. I have always had either Anna or Taz co-host with me. Sepia Mutiny’s Houston Bureau Offices have been up and running now for four months so it is time for the bureau chief to cease with his shut-in ways. Commenters, lurkers, randoms, all welcome. And remember…everything is bigger in Texas.

Check back at this post and our Events Tab for the final date and location. I will post another reminder a few days before.

Dear Readers,

Paul and Kunjan, Sepia Mutiny’s two website administrators, have done a great job keeping the Mutiny running for this past year. Now, however, we are looking for a group of people to take over the reins from them and guide this website to the next level. We are not just looking for people who are enthusiastic and got the skillz (Movable Type, PHP, etc.) to keep SM readers happy. In addition, we are looking for people with the TIME to actually implement their vision for what Sepia Mutiny could be. This should be a hobby that you are passionate about. Here is a partial list of the things we want to do in the near term (although the full list would blow your lenghas off):

• A new News tab modeled after Digg with comments, comment rating, and registered users.
• Website re-design. We want a cool new look.
• User-submitted posts.
• Great ideas that we haven’t thought of yet that will make us among the most innovative blogs on the block.

We are looking for people who can put in as much time and effort in running the site as the bloggers put in to writing posts. Paul and Kunjan will teach you the back-end of our current website and you can take it from there.

Please email me if you are interested and meet the requirements:

abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com

If you have a technical question to determine if you are qualified then email Kunjan:

kunjan [at] sepiamutiny dot com

If you know someone who is perfect for this job then send them a link to this post.

Alternatively, if you have suggestions for how to improve our website then please click here to send it to us instead of leaving them in the comments.

Thanks all!

I know I know that right now is the worst possible time for this story. I know we’re supposed to be all “ABCD-FOB Bhai Bhai!” but this is just too funny to pass up.

He said it, I just blogged it.

A mobile phone game … will be used to help international students cope with ‘culture shock’ and university life in Britain … The game - called C-Shock - is the brainchild of University of Portsmouth academic and games technology expert Nipan Maniar who, himself, arrived in the UK from India five years ago as an international student…
Nipan said the game would act as an ‘e-mother’ or ‘mobile mummy’ for new students. [Link]

When you hear e-mother you imagine a sort of Tamagotchi in reverse right? Something that nags you to eat enough, sleep enough, and call home? [Actually, you don’t need a mobile game for that, just a mobile]

“E-mother” could be expanded with modules to help explain how you do your own laundry, something my white American roommate could have used freshman year. (When asked how he had survived in summer camp he said he just looked clueless until a girl took pity on him and did his laundry, so he had never done a single load on his own. We mocked him mercilessly).

But no, Maniar means something else. He means the culture shock that comes from seeing people kiss in public and from seeing students (especially girls) drink:

The game’s opening scenario is a student’s first day at university in the UK. The student is shown a map of the campus and is given tasks to find specific locations. Clicking on images along the way warns the student about what to expect in terms of culture shock - for example, it is acceptable for students to drink alcohol and it is okay for people to display affection in public. [Link]

Convene to Discuss Problem

NEW YORK — Indian filmmakers, authors, dancers and other artists gathered Monday at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop to discuss the community’s ongoing obsession with arranged marriage and food.

The idea for the meeting, which attracted the who’s who of artists in the Indian diaspora, was borne out of the anger and frustration author Lara Mookhey-Schmid felt after thumbing through Sonia Prasad’s newly released The Exotic Arranged Marriage Spices Club at Barnes and Noble.

“Arranged, Re-Arranged, Aloo Gobi and Me, My Vegan Arranged Marriage, Mistress of Spices, I could go on,” Mookhey-Schmid said. “I noticed that desi artists are using food and marriage as culture symbols over and over again. It’s a cop out, and it’s getting old.”

Mookhey-Schmid’s recent book, This Book is Not About Indian Food and Does Not Involve Arranged Marriages, was shortlisted for the American Book Award. The award instead went to Farha Mirza’s book, My Chicken Tikka Masala Marriage: It Was Arranged!

Meeting attendees were not shy about expressing their views on the food and marriage issue.

“The Exotic Arranged Marriage Spices Club is an intertextual study of how arranged marriage is enacted in non-Indian, non-Hindu spaces,” said NYU English professor Manorama Chugh. “Unfortunately, that’s all it is.”

Others are not so diplomatic.

“I’ve read this crap twenty times before,” said UCLA history professor Vinay Pal. “Enough!”

Participants acknowledged the growing problem, and decided to place a moratorium on weddings and certain foods.

Last week I was standing in a bookstore, looking for something trashy and utterly mindless to buy. I picked up Deborah Rodriguez’s “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.” and read the first chapter, which was around all I could handle.

I realize that I was far from the target audience for such a book. I’ve never had a haircut in my life, and I’ve never been to a spa. I’m not a very sympathetic audience for stories about how the women of Kabul felt better inside because they felt more glamorous outside (well, inside their burkas). Furthermore, I am a guy, and this was a tremendously girly book:

When Deborah Rodriguez arrived in Kabul in 2002 as part of a charitable aid mission, what she saw appalled her… It was a land of bad haircuts, poorly applied makeup and no styling gel. To Rodriguez, a Michigan hairdresser with a can-do attitude, task No. 1 was obvious: get these poor people some beauty salons. [Link]

Despite my lack of personal experience with the topic, I was willing to suspend disbelief and work with the book’s basic premise, namely:

…hairdressing … is one of the few truly viable options for would-be female Afghan entrepreneurs. There’s a huge demand for such services, as many Afghan women sport elaborate hair and makeup styles under their burqas. At the same time, it’s work that can be done entirely in female company - a necessity in a segregated society. [Link]

My problem was not the subject but the condescending tone of the book. It was “City of Joy” meets “Steel Magnolias,” the usual story of somebody in the first world who finds their calling “helping” people in the third world, where the only purpose of the poor and unfortunate is to serve as a backdrop to the protagonist’s journey.

For example, the opening chapter tells of “Roshanna,” a friend who had been raped and thus was no longer a virgin. Roshanna was terrified of her wedding night, when eager crowds await a bloody rag — the telltale sign of virginity.

Ms. Rodriguez sprung into action, whipping out nail clippers, cutting her finger, dripping blood on a handkerchief and instructing Roshanna to place it under a cushion. When the time came, she could swap it with another one. The next morning, she writes: “When I rush into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. ‘Virgin!’ she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. ‘Virgin!’ “… [Link]

C’mon now. Afghan women have never figured out how to fool their husbands with chicken blood after thousands of years? It took a spunky hairdresser from Michigan with a can do attitude to come up with this? Roshanna’s mother didn’t help her, and was even fooled by the simple deception? As if!

You normally don’t want to call your project something like Reheated Naan & Curry, because you’re setting yourself up for some clever critic (or blogger) to take the reference and turn it into something ugly, along the lines of: “‘Reheated Naan’? Sorry, Just Stale Bread.” (This game could be extended — if you wrote a highbrow novel called Ennui, a reviewer would surely title his or her review something like, “Ennui, Another Name For ‘Boring’”).

In this case, Deejay OM’s new releasee, which is being released this week on the Galapagos4 label, should be safe from “clever” put-downs by the likes of yours truly, because it’s pretty good. People who listen to a lot of retro Bollywood might in fact find the concept somewhat familiar (reheated, if not rehashed), as Deejay OM seems to be mining samples from forgotten scores from old Hindi films, and recontextualizing them with hip hop beats and loops. As such, Reheated Naan & Curry reminds me a bit of the 1998 CD by producer Dan Nakamura, Bombay the Hard Way — but for most people the approach taken by Deejay OM may nevertheless sound pretty fresh.

The standout track on the record has to be “The Arrival,” which you can hear at Deejay OM’s Myspace (if that doesn’t work, the song can also be listened to at NPR). You can also hear samples of other tracks at Amazon.

Of course, this music is just beats, and I’m often left thinking what these tracks could sound like with great rappers or singers on them.

One final thought: in case you were wondering, Deejay OM has no “substantial” connection to the Indian subcontinent — as far as I can tell, he’s an Italian American DJ and producer from San Francisco who is sampling the old Bollywood sound to create a particular effect. (That appropriation mostly isn’t an issue for me, as long as the beats are interesting. Though I suppose one could object to the revealing use of the word “curry” in the title of the CD — the incorrect western term for all Desi khana. And are there readers who also object to the use of the word “OM” in Deejay OM’s name?)

“Original” Sonia posted a link to some new AbhishwaryaPalooza pics which proved that TMBWITW really was happy on her wedding day; O.S. (like OG, but so much more hard kaur) hooked us up via last week’s “caption game”-post, which featured a picture of the Bollyest bride and groom ever looking…interesting. Since you have affirmed your love of interpreting and misinterpreting photographs AND one of you swears the reason why Little B looked so forlorn at his shaadi was because his Koffee buddy wasn’t the one on the dais at his side (scandalous! meow!), I thought you catty kittens would take to this captured moment like it was Nepeta cataria.

So? What do you think is going on between Preity Zinta and Karan Johar in the image above? You might find it amusing to learn that I wouldn’t have been able to identify these two for you had Chic Mommy not helpfully pointed out who they were under where she posted this pic on her blog. Anyway, mutineers…start your hatin’ imaginatin’!

A tip about this photograph was posted on our News tab a few hours ago by “namantra” under the title Dehli ad on Metro. It was their description of the link which interested me:

The same country that often frowns down upon public displays of affection has billboards that openly use curse words.

I must say, I was slightly surprised to see one of my favorite blue words gettin’ dropped so blatantly, but I know nothing about advertising in the Motherland. Does this ad signal a coarsening of Indian culture? Or did it not raise the threaded eyebrows of those of you who are familiar with such things? And are we comparing jack fruit with ambarellas; does one have nothing to do with the other?

When I first agreed to delve in to the World Cup for the mutiny, I did so because I knew it was important to South Asia, our diaspora and several cute commenters here…but I had no idea how powerful the sport truly is, until now.
Apparently cricket can do what diplomacy, prayers and tears cannot (all quotes via Reuters, Thanks Karthik):

Cricket fever has gripped Sri Lanka after their team secured a place in the World Cup final, diverting attention — at least for the time being — from a worsening civil war.

Cricket-mad fans sat glued to their television sets until the early hours of Wednesday morning to watch Sri Lanka defeat New Zealand by 81 runs in Jamaica.

The success of the cricket team in the Caribbean has provided a welcome distraction from the worsening military conflict between the government and Tamil Tigers, which has left a 2002 ceasefire agreement in tatters.

The two-decade civil war, which has claimed around 68,000 lives, has intensified in the past year with almost daily battles, denting business confidence and contributing to spiralling inflation.

One higher power, many paths; one fervently-desired wish, many prayers:

Multi-faith religious ceremonies are being planned in the lead-up to Saturday’s big game to bless the team, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa will even fly to Barbados for the final.

Yo, this is serious:

The Excise Department has even delayed the start of an alcohol sales ban for Buddhist Wesak holidays by one day. It will now come into effect after the World Cup final.

I got my hopes up…

Even many Tamil Tigers, who control swathes of land in the north and east of the country and are fighting for independence, are watching.

“There are people in the controlled areas watching,” rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone.

Then felt them sink, even though I’m not Sri Lankan, Tamil, or particularly conscious of this violent, on-going tragedy:

But he added: “Our activities will not change because of these matches. These matches are not going to make any difference.”

I hope he’s full of it. I stupidly and naively hope that cricket really will do for Sri Lanka what nothing else has been able to— give diverse communities a reason to stop killing each other, at least for a little while. As far as I know, it’s difficult to cheer effectively if you’re holding a gun. Yes, that was paneer-laden…but I’m serious. In 1996, Sri Lanka destroyed Australia to win the World Cup; I hope they do so tomorrow, too. If ever there were a country which deserved some cheer…

It’s almost the weekend, so indulge me a bit of crankiness leftover from the work week. I had been avoiding mentioning the arrest warrant against Richard Gere until I realized it rankled. For those of you who have managed to avoid it:

A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function “transgressed all limits of vulgarity”. [Link]

So what, right? So some busybody in Jaipur gets his or her nose bent out of shape and files a complaint “charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities” [Link] and finds some judge who agrees, saying that the incident was “highly sexually erotic” and violated India’s public obscenity laws. We blogged earlier about how Ajmer had prepared a booklet instructing tourists of the opposite sex not to hold hands or touch. It’s just more of the same.

Part of my annoyance stems from the fact that this frivolous suit will further clog a court system that can’t handle urgent matters in a timely fashion.

But mainly I’m annoyed at Shetty’s lame ass response to the incident. Instead of telling people that it was just a peck on the cheek, she replied:

I understand this is his culture, not ours. But this was not such a big thing or so obscene for people to overreact in such manner… [Link]

Was I the only one who expected her to follow that sentence with a list of activities on stage that would have been far more obscene?

Honey, just a little bit obscene is like being a little bit pregnant. Show some backbone! An embrace and a smooch on the cheek is tame compared to stuff in Bollywood lately. Why pander by arguing that it was kind of obscene but not … you know … not such a big deal.

Shetty compounded the lameness of that response by also saying:

I understand people’s sentiments, but I don’t want a foreigner to take bad memories from here. [Link]

Each player, of course, matters in every match. Jayasuriya is the most-capped one-day cricketer in history, a flamboyant opening batsman whose fearless stroke play can give an innings unstoppable momentum, and a useful spin-bowler as well. Vaas is the master of new-ball bowling who can destroy an opponent’s innings almost before they start. Murali is the unorthodox wizard of spin who bamboozles the most gifted, in-form batsmen.

Their importance on Saturday also rests on their presence in a match played 11 years ago: They are the three survivors of the team that beat Australia in the 1996 World Cup final in Lahore, Pakistan.Link

When: Tomorrow, 4/28, at 12:30

Where: Eight Mile Creek, NYC

Why: To watch SRI LANKA KICK ASS!!

The game starts around 9am EST, and a Sri Lankan crew will be there, holding it down, if you don’t want to miss a minute.

FYI: Eight Mile Creek is an expat Australian bar/restaurant, so we’re taking the meetup into enemy turf. Should be a screaming, cheering, hair-raising good time. Come ready to show your colors!

Sixteen of you showed up to one decadent brunch at Heritage India in Dupont on Sunday afternoon; afterwards, most of us meandered over to the Cosi across Connecticut Avenue because we couldn’t bear to stop listening to and laughing with each other. What a FANTASTIC meetup (click the picture above to enlarge it, if you’d like proof of that). DC’s fifth was easily its best and that’s saying a LOT.

That makes what I have to type next even worse. I know. You mutineers are disappointed in my lack of prompt meetup writingup; if it is any consolation, you can’t possibly be as irritated as the actual attendees, some of whom came all the way from New Jersey and Florida, all of whom watched me type furtively and furiously, only to later wonder, “WTF?” as references to one of the BEST events we’ve ever hosted in any city popped up on my diary blog and my ancient fotolog. Will you reduce the number of spankings I deserve if I point out that I flickr’d the album of photographs from the meetup that same night? All 72 of them? No? Damn.

Well, here’s the cringe-inducing story, morning glories. I am an idiot. I am so used to Microsoft word saving, checking and wiping my kundi for me that I have become ridiculously lazy. I no longer do any of the above on my own (okay fine, maybe I do one of them) because I just assume it will all be taken care of…and by assuming…oh, how I’ve made an ass out of you and me. Or maybe just me.

I lost everything, because I no longer HAVE MS Word on my uber-adored iBook. I have whatever no-nonsense word-processing crap it comes with…and while it worked just dandy for my purposes, it taught me a very expensive lesson by not spoiling me via auto-save. Le sigh. If only I had been able to get online to liveblog all the mischievous merrymaking…

I’m not exaggerating— this was one of the funniest seven-hour conversations this website has ever inspired and it’s awful you won’t get to read any of it.

Here’s an example of what went down:

PORN!

This still reduces me to giggles. Ok, I’m going to summarize for the benefit of the poor people who were unable to share in the joy that was Sunday’s DC Meetup. Be warned, the following description is NSFW or children.

At a certain point in the conversation, our beloved ANNA decides to STAND UP and wax eloquent about this great new reality show she’s discovered…”Debbie Does Dallas Again.” She relates this great moment wherein our favorite brown porn star, Sunny Leone, is seeking career advice FROM HER BROTHER, and actually begins to mimic a certain act. “Should I start doing boy-girl?” our Anna yells, “because if I do, it’ll mean I have to do double-penetration,” and here she pantomimes with her hands…um…well…fellatio and spelunking the small hole, if you will. One hand forward, one hand back, so to speak.

Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if we’d had the restaurant to ourselves, which we did right up until roughly that moment. But fortuitously, a largish gaggle of desis wandered in at JUST THAT POINT, children in tow. While the parents were discussing whether to park themselves at a table, two or three 8-to-10-year old boys walked to the door, then froze there, utterly stunned, mouth agape, transfixed by Anna’s enthusiastic rendering of her new favorite TV show.

This led some of us to comment that Anna had more-or-less kick-started puberty in a few kids that day, and that there would be some interesting Q&A sessions with the parents in the Accord / Camry on the way home that night. “Mommy, I feel funny…in my pants.”

I still get the giggles when I think of the total expressionless intent stare on the faces of those kids while watching you, AJ. Pure gold!

HL Menken famously said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” That’s true not just of customers, but of corporate employees as well.

If I managed a gym and I was hiring somebody to do sales, I would care about how much experience they had, maybe how fit they looked, but I can’t imagine caring about the nationality or religion of the applicant. And this would especially true in a place like Fresno which is one of the most diverse counties in the state of California. Still, that’s just what one Bally’s in Fresno did - out and out discriminated against a Sikh man:

Sukdev “Devin” Singh Dhaliwal applied for a sales job with one of Bally’s five Fresno fitness centers in 2004. An interviewer quizzed Dhaliwal, who was born and raised in California, about his religious and ethnic background, and then denied him a job and hired non-Sikh, non-Indian applicants with less experience, according to the commission.

”He was basically asked where he was born, where his parents were born, what religion he subscribed to and whether he was a Muslim,” said EEOC program analyst Linda Li. “He’s very American.” [Link]

Why bring up news from almost 3 years ago today? Because it took that long for Bally’s to face justice and … lose:

Under the consent decree approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White, Bally must pay Dhaliwal $24,000 in damages and provide training in equal opportunity hiring practices to managers at its Fresno locations. Dhaliwal said he plans to donate some of the money to his alma mater, California State University, Fresno, where a business law professor steered him to the EEOC after hearing about the interview. [Link]

It’s not a lot of money, but it should send a message. Sadly, it’s a message that still needs sending.

A soon to be published genetic study of the population of Northern India is sure to get the attention of some right wing groups who like to come up with their own alternate “theories” with regards to the history of Hindu/Muslim interaction on the sub-continent.

Scientists have confirmed what historians have known.

Genetic studies have suggested that Muslims in northern India are mostly descendants of local people who embraced Islam rather than repositories of foreign DNA deposited by waves of invaders.

The studies by scientists in India, Spain and the US indicate that while the Shias and the Sunnis in Uttar Pradesh are mostly descendants of converts, the former have some elements of paternal foreign ancestry…

“In the mtDNA, we do not see discrete signals from outside India,” Rene J. Herrera, a biologist at Florida International University in the US and one of the collaborators, said. “Thus, both are, for the most part, descendants from local caste groups,” he told The Telegraph.

However, the Shias do show some signatures of foreign DNA from southwest Asia and North Africa in the Y chromosome, Herrera said. [Link]

Within the last decade it has continued to amaze me how some strands of DNA can help corroborate or disprove decades worth of historical investigation. As the techniques become quicker and cheaper I’m sure we’ll be unlocking all kinds of secrets about the movements of humans and whether they mated with each other or killed each other.

Principal component analysis (PCA), a statistical tool that separates individuals on the basis of differences in their properties was employed to place each social group on a plot. According to this plot Shias and Sunnis are much closer to Brahmins, Bhargavas, and tribals from Karnataka than people from UAE, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and or Central Asian countries. PCA generated a plot that showed three clear clusters- Souther Arabian Peninsula, North East African population in upper left quadrant, East Central Asian and Middle Eastern group in the lower right hand corner, and all Indian groups can be found closer to each other to the right. [Link]

A while back I blogged about this National Geographic Project that is looking to systematically trace the movement of humanity’s genes. Have any readers swabbed their cheeks and sent in their DNA yet? Want to share your results?

One of the great pleasures of following the Cricket World Cup this past month has been the chance to spend time with cricket fans and glimpse the global and diasporic affinities that simultaneously connect them and set them apart, in a metropolis like New York, from the mainstream culture of the city. Cricket is a niche sport even in immigrant-rich New York, since, after all, only a fraction of those immigrants come from cricket-playing countries. Yet the diversity of the cricket community, drawn as it is from all corners of the former British Empire, and the fact that all those places have a critical mass of expatriates or immigrants in New York, has produced in this World Cup season a kind of hyper-cosmopolitan sub-culture; one that, in its own way, illustrates the cross-hatching of differences and solidarities that makes life in the city complex and stimulating.

I’ve tried to capture some of that joyous complexity in a radio story that ran yesterday. The reporting (only a fraction of which made it into the piece, radio being like film a craft where most of your work ends up on the cutting room floor) led me to such arduous research environments as the Australian pub 8 Mile Creek, where expats of various nationalities were toasting the home side’s demolition of England with six-dollar bottles of Cooper’s Sparkling Ale. But it also gave me an introduction to the Indo-Caribbean community in Richmond Hill, Queens; and the revelation to my new-to-New-York eyes of the sheer size of that community, let alone its history and apparent present dynamism, will be the lasting memory of this World Cup in my personal experience.

All over the greater diaspora, Aunties bemoan that desi children are picky. How will they ever be satisfied? How will they ever settle down and start popping out the requisite grandkids?

Aunties can sleep better at night now that SCIENCE is on the job. Examining peoples’ behavior in online dating settings (which is equivalent to looking at biodata), they’ve noticed a few clear patterns:

Men are easy - they are generally interested in hotness above all.

Women are choosier, but it turns out their preferences are fungible. This is good news for aunties because it gives them a metric with which to translate different suitor’s attributes to a common scale, allowing them to rank apples and oranges. They can tell, for example, whether an average woman (in this study) is likely to prefer the not quite as handsome, shorter i-banker or the more gorgeous, slightly taller, high school English teacher.

What is this common scale? Money. According to these researchers, women will forgive men’s flaws if (gasp) they earn more.

Consider looks. A guy can compensate for ordinary looks with more moola, which tells us what he has to reveal in his biodata if he wants to be a playa:

Suppose you’re an ordinary-looking guy whose online picture is ranked around the median in attractiveness… And suppose you’d like to be as successful with women as a guy whose picture is ranked in the top tenth. Then you’d need to make $143,000 more than him. If your picture is ranked in the bottom tenth, you’d need to make $186,000 more than him. [Link]

Cash also acts like elevator shoes for our shorter brothers:

… a 5-foot-0 guy would need to make $325,000 more than a 6-foot-0 man to be as successful in the online dating market. [Link]

When I was little, I went to India for my Mamaji’s wedding. At that point, we still drank the water, although it was very the last time we did so. I got very sick and lost enough weight that my ribs were visible. In fact, I became so emaciated that I could tickle my bottom few ribs from the inside, much to the horror of my parents. To make things worse, it was hot in Amritsar that year, over 100 degrees, and we were in an old house without air conditioning.

Throughout it all, as the adored foreign child, I was coddled and comforted. It wasn’t that bad for me. Still, it gave me some compassion for those who have to drink water far worse, such as the 2 million children who die each year for want of proper water and sanitation.

The big policy debate over water privatization seems to have ground to a halt. In poor countries, governments do a lousy job of getting water to their people (maybe 30% of Indians have access to clean water), and while de facto privatization proceeds apace, formal privatization schemes seem to have done poorly enough to reduce earlier corporate enthusiasm.

Still, two of the more imaginative schemes I’ve seen in the past year have argued for extreme privatization, decentralizing the provision of clean water down to the sub-village, or even personal level.

For example, the Lifestraw is designed to give each person their own personal water purification system:

… a plastic tube with seven filters: graduated meshes with holes as fine as 6 microns (a human hair is 50 to 100 microns), followed by resin impregnated with iodine and another of activated carbon. It can be worn around the neck and lasts a year.

Lifestraw isn’t perfect, but it filters out at least 99.99 percent of many parasites and bacteria, the demons in most fatal cases of diarrhea. [Link]

The original Lifestraw was field tested amongst the earthquake refugees in Kashmir.

Although the idea is pretty cool, it has its detractors. Critics argue that there is no market for such a product - that at $3.50 (or possibly even $2), it is still multiple days work to pay for each person’s straw, and it still only lasts a year. They also argue that it doesn’t reduce the long distances people have to travel to get water, thus reducing its appeal, and that local water projects are more effective because of economies of scale [Link].

If you want to learn Devanagri without too much blood sweat and tears, fear not! There are two ways to make your learning easier.

The first is watching music videos of various sort at DesiLassi, a site put together to showcase the next generation of Dr. Brij Kothari’s Same Language Subtitling approach to increasing literacy. If you’re the kind of person who knows all the words to the songs in the Bollyflicks you watch, you’ll be fluent in no time:

The idea builds on people’s existing knowledge of lyrics, enabling early literates to anticipate the subtitles and read along; the inherent repetition in songs makes them an ideal vehicle for practice. The use of subtitling is a simple approach that leverages popular culture to encourage the sizeable population of India to read. [Link]

They have some great examples of this approach being used with songs, trailers, promos and albums. Unfortunately, perhaps for copyright reasons, I can’t actually embed any of their actual Bollywood videos, so do click through.

If you use this approach, then Aishwarya can be your personal reading tutor, much as Morgan Freeman (in reruns) was mine, back in the day. Short of learning Hindi by smoking crack, it’s probably the best modern science will ever do.

The other approach uses your knowledge of English to teach you the Devanagri alphabet, like below [Thanks Blue!]:

The lessons start simply, teaching you to recognize characters from their context in English words, and get a good deal harder.

Related Posts: Mass literacy can be fun

When I was younger, I was always jealous of the other Asian kids. Why? Because they had kick-ass unarmed martial arts. A Chinese kid could say “Hey, don’t mess with me - I know Kung Fu like Bruce Lee!” What was I going to say in response - “Well, I know Ahimsa like Gandhi?”

And it wasn’t just the Chinese kids. If you were Korean, you could say you knew TaeKwanDo. If you were Japanese, obviously you could claim to know Karate. Sure, India does have martial arts like gatka, wrestling, and Kalaripayattu but nobody had heard of those and I couldn’t even pronounce “Kalaripayattu.”

In fact, the physical activity that India is most known for is Yoga. I like Yoga but it’s not very macho, and how on earth are you going to use it to defend yourself?

In fact, this amazingly paneer filled clip from Yoga vs. Kung Fu is the only time I’ve seen Yoga used in a movie to beat somebody up:

[Yes, it’s dubbed into French. IMHO, that just makes it all better.]

You shoot better when you realize that your soul is a leaf falling through time, and that work shouldn’t equal struggle. And yoga never aligns you with the universe better than when your forearm is still tingling from the buck and recoil of a .357 bullpup.
Someone needs to open a combination shooting range and yoga studio. I’m serious. Maybe I should do it. Hose off a few clips of Glaser safety slugs, then see how deep you can go into Warrior II. The murder rate would go down. No, wait — it would stay the same, but people would realize it’s all part of a bigger plan. [Link]

Maybe that’s the best way to make Yoga more effective as a tool for avenging the wrong done to your master - do Yoga softly, but carry a big Dandasana.

An “anonymous” tipster [Thanks, gf.] passed on a link to the Cornell American, which seems to be a free newspaper available on campus up there in gorge-us Ithaca. Apparently, it is a publication so desirable, you are limited to one copy per person, but I’m keeping you from the relevant background info so I’ll give you a sec to peep the following blockquote about the awesomeness which is The Cornell American:

Founded in January 1992, its mission is to “raise a traditional American perspective, so as to balance debate on campus and to further conservative ideals.” The opinions presented in the Cornell American are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the advertisers or persons listed as staff.[link]

The alert mutineer who blew up our hotline asked this salient question:

Satire or “Ivy Twerps [being] Ivy Twerps” to quote Siddhartha?

She posed that query regarding a mock schedule of events for “Islam Awareness Week 2007!”, a piece so significant, it didn’t have a byline more specific than “staff”. How thoughtful! How helpful.

Here’s what I have to say to that— and by responding thusly, I have now officially turned in to my parents, but I think their take on such things is appropriate in this case, especially— if you have to hide something, doesn’t that tell you you’re doing something wrong? Eh, edi?

Highlights of the agenda after the jump.

…is Abhi? Not our Abhi of course, but the other Abhi, the one who vedded TMBWITW on Friday, as millions of far-less-fortunate people cursed his luck for snagging such a delicious piece of barfi [Thanks, Sushma :)] . Since you mutineers just loooove engaging in conjecture regarding what’s actually going on in random paintings in Indian restaurants, I thought you might also yenjoy deciding what on earth Big B’s little B was thinking at this moment.

While you do that, I’m going to try and give the outstanding, fifth DC SMeetup the sort of write-up it deserves. And after I do THAT I’m going to tell you why 80% of the people who read Perez Hilton deserve to be sterilized, lest they reproduce more racist idiots…

Given what happened last week in Virginia, the events described in this post might seem trivial, but I feel quite strongly that they are not. What’s at issue is a fundamental question of civil rights — the right to live one’s life without being harrassed, investigated, or needlessly spied on.

The Indian-American poet Kazim Ali teaches at Shippensburg University, which is a little west of Harrisburg, PA (and not too far from where I myself teach).

On his website, he recently described how his “suspicious” behavior led to his entire campus being shut down. The behavior in question? Recycling. He was doing nothing other than dropping off a stack of printouts of poems to be recycled when someone from the campus ROTC called the police:

A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a threat by my very existence, a threat just living in the world as a Muslim body.

Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white Beetle with out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has New York plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty parking sticker and the other, which I just don’t have the heart to take off these days, says “Kerry/Edwards: For a Stronger America.”

Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state police came. Because of my recycling buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us safe. […]

One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description—a Middle Eastern man driving a white beetle with out of state plates—and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on the faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, “What country is he from?”

“What country is he from?!” she yelled, indignant. (link)

Now, I normally try and avoid the “rant” voice, but I must say, I’ve had just about enough of these incidents. Don’t the campus police at Shippensburg U. have a minimum criterion for “suspicious”? Was it necessary to call the state police and the bomb squad? A faculty member dropping off a box of papers by a recycling bin at a semi-rural university simply ought not to have to deal with this kind of nonsense. It’s just insane.

I wore burnt orange and maroon today, did you? I almost feel guilty hosting a flash fiction fete on a day which is dominated by vigils and remembrance. But maybe this is exactly what we need, maybe this will be an outlet or a distraction or a comforting little bit of familiar. There is no theme this week; the title song is there for an entirely different reason than “usual”. It is one of my favorite songs of all time and it means quite a bit to me. It conjures youth, loss, sadness, faith and eternity the moment I hear its first few notes. It is what I listened to when I wrote a letter to Minal Panchal on Tuesday. It’s a song which moves me, which breaks my heart a little whenever I hear it and that is why I can’t get it out of my head.

::

Write 55 words about whatever moves you and post it below. If you can’t do that, but you can write a poem, a haiku or a slightly shorter or longer piece of flash fiction, feel free. While I usually try and insist on adhering to the 55-word shape, this is a week for inclusion, sharing and acceptance, so whatever you want to leave is welcome.

You may have heard that recently a desi furniture retailer in Toronto got into a bit of hot water for selling a sofa with the tag shown below to a black family (Candians of Ghanaian origin). As paragons of racial sensitivity and spin, we thought Sepia Mutiny should offer some public relations advice to our Canadian brethren.

1. Respond to the customer’s complaints right away

The day after the discovery was made, Moore says that she called Vanaik Furniture and Mattress store, where the purchase was made, to address the issue. But her phone call was unreturned. At least three other calls were made to the store. Those were unreturned as well. [Link]

Don’t make the customer chase you, it looks bad. And don’t leave the sofa with a customer who is offended by it. Instead, offer to take the sofa back right away. Remember, this is one of your best selling pieces of furniture and you can charge a notoriety premium if you auction it on eBay. Put the tag proudly on display and sell it to the highest bidder. The only color that matters is green.

2. The best defense is a good offense

Your response thus far has been to pass the buck, which is OK for a start. So Romesh Vanaik, owner of Vanaik Furniture, blamed his supplier, Paul Kumar of Cosmos Furniture, who blamed the Chinese manufacturer, who blamed the company that made the auto-translation software, which blamed the out of date dictionary it was using [Link].

You really should go a lot further, though, and seize the initiative. Mount a press conference, stating that you are gravely offended that the Chinese have wrongly appropriated this term when they should have used “Macaca Brown” or “In need of Fair-and-Lovely Brown” instead. Use this press conference as an opportunity to announce your new dining sets, offered in Chinky Yellow, Redneck Pink and Lazy Injun Red.

3. Never plead ignorance, it makes you look weak.

Romesh Vanaik, owner of Vanaik Furniture … added that he had not known the meaning of the N-word. “It’s amazing. I’ve been here since 1972 and I never knew the meaning of this word,” said Vanaik, a native of India. [Link]

Big mistake. Ignorance is no excuse and who will ever believe you’ve been in Canada for 30 years without knowing what that word means? Instead, advertise your racial behavior proudly. Tell them that it doesn’t matter when a macaca does it, since we’re not white we can’t be racist! Furthermore, point out that this is proud part of Indian culture. Then announce a “West Indian week” where all the workers show up in blackface, just like in this Indian TV show [via UB]:

Some paragraphs were accidentally omitted from Somini Sengupta’s recent article on Chaat and other Delhi street foods in the New York Times. Because I am a super-devoted-Somini Sengupta groupie (a “Sengroupie,” you could call me), I was sent the missing paragraphs as a gift, under strict order not to reveal my sources:

The reporter visits a lost alleyway in Mastinagar, a suburb of Delhi. In the alley are an endless variety of special chaat stalls unknown to western taste-buds and unimagined by western food tourists. This is as “street” as it gets; if pressed, the people of this alley all state that they have never been near an air-conditioner or even a piece of plastic. Indeed, it is highly unclear whether the residents of Mastinagar have ever been outside Mastinagar, or even know that their “Shehr” is in the city and state of Delhi (indeed, one resident referred to the city, rather anachronistically, as “Tughlakabad”). In the lost alley, one finds an almost infinite variety of Chaats, some of which were tasted by a reporter. A short list of the highlights follows:

Orientalist Chaat: This type of chaat will fulfill all your desires for mystical knowledge and understanding, and set your brain on fire. If this chaat is eaten, it is said, the eater will learn a thousand yoga poses (a DVD is included), a thousand Sanskrit chants that will lead to Enlightenment, and perpetual unity of mind and body in pure relaxation bliss. After eating, you will have reached the other side of the moon, tasted the stars, found the ergonomically perfect chair, and finally know the answer to the question, Why Did the Bodhi-Dharma Leave For the East? (NOTE: Insiders report that Orientalist Chaat is exactly the same as regular Chaat, only 10,000 times more expensive.)

Erotic Chaat: This chaat is an aphrodisiac composed entirely of garlic and crushed Viagra powder. Not especially tasty, but surprisingly “potent,” as a reporter subsequently discovered.

Chaat Feng Shui: This Chaat, which is composed entirely of wind, water, and garam masala, is not meant to be eaten, but rather dispersed around a room in need of redecoration. Pirated Chaat Feng Shui originates from China, which continues to flood the Indian market with inexpensive rip-offs of actual Feng Shui.

A fascinating group of news stories discusses the goal many auto companies have of building the next generation of really cheap cars for the 3rd world mass market.

Singing and Dancing into the Future

Renault-Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn is betting that for autos, the magic number is under $3,000. At a plant-opening ceremony in India Apr. 4, he was already talking up the industry’s next challenge: a future model that would sport a sticker price as low as $2,500—about 40% less than the least expensive subcompact currently on the market. Renault-Nissan is the first global automaker to take up the gauntlet thrown down in 2003 by India’s Tata Motors, which plans to launch a $2,500 car next year.

India is target #1 on all fronts — design, manufacturing, marketing, and, of course, the ultimate consumer. Instead of looking outside for economic growth, this is a story of internally sourced, created, and most importantly executed growth.

A couple weeks ago I was standing on the train during my morning commute, my arm stretched all the way up so my finger could curl about the ceiling pole, idly twisting about on my toes in a half-turn to survey the crowd and eye-scape their morning reading for titles, authors, snatches of prose. What are they reading? I always wonder, like a ghost watching a feast. These days it makes me ill to read on the train, and I feel like I never have time to read real books—spoiled by my steady diet of magazines and blogs, I can’t quite digest those bricks of literature. That morning there were some romance novels, a Crichton, Guns Germs & Steel. A woman shifted, and behind her a gray-suited man’s folded back New Yorker came into view, the familiar Deco font, and like my mother’s voice the desi words sharpened into focus:

Karma, by Rishi Reddi, Harper Perennial; $12.95: Each of the stories in this startlingly mature collection shows first- and second-generation Indian-Americans attempting to manage the disconnect between cultures. The premise is hardly a new one, but Reddi’s understated prose and her choice of details give her revelations a quiet power.(link.)

. . Shankar and Neha were deposited on the threshold of their new life.

We’ve had some rough times in the bunker…when Manish and Vinod first broke up…when Ennis was told he couldn’t smuggle anymore adoring groupies in and pass them off as interns…when Manish and Vinod broke up again…when the lemurs went on strike to protest the lack of parties…when one of our guest bloggers developed a very rare allergic reaction to…ah, never mind.

My point is, what we faced before were minor challenges; this has been a rather difficult week, as we confronted far more sobering matters, which affected us all. This week, we dealt with real pain, as tragedy reminded us of how fleeting life actually is. Such “big news” always means more traffic, which means more moderating and more possibilities for this or worse, this.

So, I’m a little down right now and I know many of you are, too. This is what I propose to lift our sepia spirits: an eleventh-hour sort of meetup at reliable and hospitable Heritage India this weekend. Perhaps what this community needs is…more community. Let’s bond, y’all! You know you want to. All are welcome: trolls, lurkers, smurfs and elves included. Vogons, however, will not be tolerated, since it’s highly possible that they might be feeling poetic and no one deserves that.

We can do brunch like we did the first time we were there, at the third DC Meetup or we can have dinner like we did the last time we were there, at the fourth DC meetup which was also our first-ever SM Channukah extravaganza. No, that wasn’t convoluted at all. ;) The more significant issue is that we haven’t met up in FOUR MONTHS.

Dinner on Saturday, April 21 at 8ish

or

Brunch on Sunday, April 22 at Noonish it is!

Either way, I feel like it is an apposite time to revisit Heritage; I’ve had a sad sort of craving for Golgoppas and I’d like to sate that, in memory of someone else who loved them.

FYI: Heritage is Metro accessible (Red line).

Heritage India Brasserie
1337 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 331-1114

Don’t cry, little one.

We heart you, dear Sanjaya.

May your haters rot.

::

Have you a haiku for Sanjaya, too?

One of the two major keynote speakers at this year’s NASABA conference in San Francisco is going to be Rachel K. Paulose, United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota [Thanks Maisnon]. Yes, that Rachel Paulose.

On the one hand, this makes sense - she’s a very prominent desi legal figure. As we said before, at age 33 she is:

the youngest serving U.S. Attorney, the first woman to hold that position in Minnesota and the first U.S. Attorney of South Asian descent. [Link]

So of course she’d make a great keynote speaker. The other speaker will be Kamala D. Harris, the District Attorney of San Francisco, so Paulose is the bigger fish of the two.

Then again, there has been a lot of controversy around her. Since our last post about her, which dealt with her credentials and swearing-in ceremony, a number of other problems have cropped up, including an unprecedented vote of no confidence from her subordinates who demoted themselves rather than work for her:

On April 5, 2007, three of her top administrators — First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Marti, second in command; civil division head Erika Monzangue and criminal division head James Lackner — voluntarily resigned those positions, reverting to simple assistant U.S. attorney status, reportedly in protest over Paulose’s management style. [Link]

This is very highly unusual since the key people in her office took a rank and pay cut both to avoid working directly under her. It’s strange enough that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee may even investigate.

And just recently, to top it all off, the Republican Senator from Minnesota, Sen. Norm Coleman, has done a 180 in terms of his support for her. Whereas earlier he took credit for her nomination, now his office is claiming that the Senator never nominated her at all.

Paulose is clearly a hot potato, which should make for a lively convention. If anybody is going, let us know if she gets asked anything interesting when she speaks, OK?

When I first interviewed for my current position, I had to do so at Starbucks. This was not a fortuitous accommodation of my addiction to milky coffee, it was an acknowledgement that I was a risk, a threat until proven otherwise. Why was I so suspect? Well, for once, this had nothing to do with my pumpernickelish skin or brown subcontinental roots; I was risky business because I wasn’t cleared. And until I was, I would not be allowed more than five feet beyond the very beginning of a large lobby which contained a metal detector, an x-ray machine an imposingly high desk and several cameras. Five feet from the doors I had entered, that’s where I waited for almost 20 minutes, to meet the hiring manager who would sheepishly later ask if I minded conducting such an important interview at…Starbucks.

While I waited for aforementioned manager, my nerves invaded my stomach, from where it staged a coup attempt on the rest of my body. I felt like I was going to suddenly reacquaint myself (and everyone else in this very busy, very important lobby) with the protein shake I had chugged for breakfast. Horrified, I turned to one of the four guards and beseeched him to edify me regarding the location of the closest bathroom.

“Can’t do that, miss. You’re not allowed past this line.”

“But I think I’m going to be sick…”

“Yeah, you don’t look so good…hold on—Jay!”

“What’s goin on’…is she all right?”

“No. Do you think we can let her use the bathroom…”

“I don’t know man…she ain’t allowed back there-“

“But she’s going to get sick right here!”

“True, true…all right, just this once. Miss! Come with me.”

And with that I was escorted past two different checkpoints, down a hallway, to a door I have never been happier to see.

Once inside, I washed my hands. It’s a reflexive thing, in part because I’m a clean-freak, partially because I find the sound and texture of water soothing. I tried to be mindful, to focus on the bubbles and the hand-wringing and everything else, to distract myself from my hyper-anxious state. It was starting to work. I took deep breaths. I felt a bit better. I checked myself out in the mirror—I looked horrid. Well, might as well touch-up my makeup since I’m—

“MISS! PLEASE BE AWARE WE ARE ENTERING THE BATHROOM-“

“Damnit, where is Sadie? Oh, there she is…Sadie, you go in there, I hate goin in the women’s’ room!”

What on earth? And just then, the door exploded open and a very irate woman accosted me.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I…I was just putting on…lipgloss?”, I stammered.

“You are NOT even allowed to be back here.”

“Oh, well, I thought I was going to puke, so—“

“I am aware of the situation! You have taken too long—if you were going to get sick, it would’ve happened already.”

Monday was Patriot’s day, the date of the annual Boston Marathon. While the streets of Boston were wet, the most famous desi entrant was shielded from inclement weather in her special climate controlled gym. While some had to pound hard pavement, she ran the marathon many times higher than a kite, floating on air. And while it took her 4 hours and 24 minutes to cover the 26 miles, in that same time she circled the globe twice.

I refer here to Sunita Williams, of course, who unofficially ran the marathon with bib 14,000. Although she was spared Heartbreak Hill, her race wasn’t just a walk in the park. In order to complete the run she had to be harnessed in place (so she didn’t just float away) on top of the Space Station’s Treadmill Vibration Isolation System, which, believe it or not, served to keep the space station steady while she ran:

you know when you run on the ground or on a treadmill at the gym, you are stomping on the ground/treadmill pretty hard - right? Well, the ISS can’t really take that stomping around. We’ve got huge solar arrays, radiators, module attachment systems, etc., which will feel the load of that stomping… The engineers came up with a vibration isolation system for both the treadmill and the cycle. The treadmill rides on a gyro which spins up and takes the loads of the runner. [Link]

This apparently isn’t easy on her body:

“That harness gets hard on her back and her shoulders or her hips …. Her foot was going numb because the strap was on her hip so much…” [Link]

But honestly, the hardest part of this experience would seem to be the inability to bathe or shower afterwards:

… astronauts wash their hair with no-rinse shampoo, their bodies with cleanser-soaked gauzy fabric, and their hands with baby wipes. [Link]

Wow. And she’s not going to be able to shower until she returns to earth, at the end of summer at the earliest. I guess the good news is that they won’t be able to smell the atomized wasabi any more.

Welcome to Sepia Mutiny. If this is your first time visiting and you found us by reading the MSNBC/Newsweek article which commenced with:

The bodies had barely been removed when the racial epithets started pouring in. Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old identified as the killer of 32 on the Virginia Tech campus, may have lived in the state since his elementary school days, but to the bigots in the blogosphere it was his origins in Korea that mattered most. “Koreans are the most hotheaded and macho of East Asians,” wrote one unnamed commentator on the Sepia Mutiny blog. “They are also sick and tired of losing their Korean girlfriends to white men with an Asian fetish.”

then please understand two very important truths:

1) Four out of the five comments which followed that quoted ignorance repudiated it consummately…

For shame.

This entire post decried stereotyping, and look at what you wrote about Koreans. My thoughts are with anxious students facebooking each other, heartbroken family members and everyone else affected by this tragedy. How can yours even go there? [SM]

2) “one unnamed commentator” does not speak for or represent this amazing, progressive, close-knit community

In fact, the views in the soundbite which MSNBC/Newsweek opportunistically and irresponsibly highlighted are NOT shared by the vast majority of those who write, comment or lurk here; they are the exception, not the rule on a blog which was created to enlighten, not divide. We are saddened that such a reputable and established source of news would misrepresent our site’s purpose and imply that the words of a rogue commenter are somehow indicative of the work we tirelessly try to do.

The bitter irony of this situation is that this website exists to create positive change and yet we were mischaracterized by an article about the valid concerns of the Korean American community after Monday’s massacre; as South Asian Americans, we sympathize and understand such issues because we are far too familiar with the concept of “backlash” ourselves.

We pray that Korean Americans are spared what Balbir Singh Sodhi suffered, that the rage which is to be expected after something so senseless isn’t misdirected so that it harms even more innocent people.

Just as one anonymous person who isn’t even a regular contributor here shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of an entire blog, one troubled, lost soul who took his pain out on innocents shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of an entire ethnic community. We are all suffering; let’s put aside the generalizations, stereotypes and impotent rage and work instead towards healing ourselves, our communities, our world.

::

This is what they have to say for themselves:

Dear Mr. Reeves,

I appreciate your note. Our intention was not to chastise Sepia Mutiny in any way—many blogs have been receiving derogatory comments, and Sepia is just one example. I think that anyone who visits the site will quickly find out what you speak of: that it’s an open forum for commentary, and with that comes the possibility of potentially-hateful comments. We would hope that our readers who are concerned about this site check it out and find that out for themselves. Unfortunately, unless we’ve introduced factual errors into a piece we do not print retractions, and we stand by this piece. I appreciate your input and interest and will keep it in mind as we move forward in our coverage.

Respectfully,
Jessica Bennett

Thanks for writing them, Maurice. We appreciate your efforts to rage against the useless, sloppy, too-proud-to-admit-they-erred machine.

While eating my lunch, I received an email from a name I sort of recognized. Wait a nimisham…could it be?

Anna: The attached file is what I just received from one of my High School buddy (a Parsi) from Ahmedabad. Abhi told me several times how to link something and post it to your blog, but I have not done it yet. Could you please put this on your blog. It would remind all of us - in the aftermath of VT massacre - how important this message is!! ……….Take Care —- YO DAD

When my own beloved Father was alive, he asked me to do a dozen things a day: make him coffee, play his favorite MS Subbulakshmi or KB Sunderambal vinyl, read an Op-Ed with which he agreed passionately, see why the dogs were barking, retrieve something from upstairs, since he could no longer do something as simple as climb a flight…I am so ashamed and heartbroken that I often did these things begrudgingly, rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath or worse, sighing dramatically at the tediousness of it all.

Once, my father looked at me sadly and said, “One day, you will even miss this. You will wish for the days when I asked you for a simple cup of kappi.” He knew, because our relationship mirrored the exact same tempestuous, love-hate dynamic he shared with my Grandfather; he expressed his regret over what he couldn’t do for my Appachan daily. “You know, there is a certain pleasure one can derive from doing what is asked…” he said to my useless back, as I returned to whatever fashion magazine, phone call or French assignment he must have roused me from. I can still hear that last sentence, trailing away because I chose to leave and not pay attention.

Eight years have passed and not a day goes by when I don’t re-live that moment. I wish I could make you your coffee, Daddy. But I can’t. It is too late. What I can do is obey someone else’s Daddy, and pretend for a moment that snapping to attention and enthusiastically following through is how I always did things, when you and I know that I didn’t.

::

Mutineers of mine…from what I have read, it seems like we are all reeling while poorly dealing with the senseless tragedy which commenced this week. Non-stop news coverage about every possible detail only adds to the stress and turmoil many of us feel. We all cope differently; my preferred method involves mindfulness, gratitude and love. The support of friends and family— that’s a potent cure for this malaise. I’ve been pensive about many things since researching and writing that post about Minal yesterday…the “message” that Yo Dad wanted us all to see is a large part of what I am clinging to during these bleak hours. It’s a powerpoint presentation and it’s available here: seven wonders. If you are so inclined, take a few moments to see it.

Thanks for thinking of all your “other children” right now, Yo Dad.

Dearest Choti Behan,

Mint chocolate Ice Cream and pretty earrings, that’s my wish for you little Minal.

surabhi: minu is nothing like neone u wd hv met b4,..she is unique..one in a zillion..shes the greatest friend..u dont know her well enough if u havent heard her brilliant witty jokes..she has a style of her own…she is fun..she wants so much from life..a beach of her own..a bike..a musician guy..chocolate-mint icecream…lots of pretty earrings…and i wish that she gets all of it. i have learnt so much from her..i am just blessed to have a friend like her..i am so proud of her..of what she has achieved and i absolutely love her!!!! [orkut testimonial]

I hope you thrill to the crisp sweetness of white cream flecked with chocolate chips for all of eternity (white because if it’s green ice cream, it’s artificially colored, and I would only let you eat the finest). I hope that when you set your spoon down by your old-fashioned ice cream dish at whatever celestial cafe you are at, it is only so that you may open little boxes, filled with glittering earrings so lovely, they steal your breath and replace it with delight. I hope that every little box which is tied with a perfect bow is given to you by a “musician guy” as your friend Surabhi would put it, since that’s what you like. And I hope he looks at you with eyes brimming over with love, because you must know this by now— you are loved. So very loved. I cried at how loved you are, when I scrolled through every single scrap left at your Orkut profile.

I felt my throat constrict when I read

Hearing ur name from yesterday dear. 1 Billion n more people prayers r with you along my prayers. Hope you are found soon. Oh God help her.

…which was left by someone who actually changed their screen name to “Pray For Minal”, just for you. All for you. I acknowledged the faith you inspired

hi ya.. just got messages from my friend.. hope you are well.. I am not hoping; I belive you are all right.. reply…take care..

and then I saw the following, which is what forced the tears that had merely been hovering in front of my eyes to spill down my cheeks, in to my lap—

Heyy minal wassup - ! i’l get ya pani - puri’s wen r ya back. take care

But you’ll never gobble another golgoppa, will you? You won’t giggle when water streams down your chin if you weren’t careful, you will never again hear a glorious crunch while salt/sweetness/spice/sourness collide in your happy mouth. This gentle “bribe” for your reply wasn’t successful. But the mere fact that it was made destroyed me, even as I knew I must be feeling nothing relative to the pain your pani-puri-profferer is in.

And then there was this, which encapsulated a truth which filled me with wonder, because I knew in my gut it was true, that instead of being glued to India vs. Pakistan (which you would have watched, yes, you would), a whole, huge nation was horrified by the words and pictures streaming out of Virginia.

Hey Minal,
The entire country is praying for your well being!
Take care

Once, when someone fell in love with me, they created an entire Orkut community based on a very precious inside joke, so I know how significant such a thing is, in the wonderland-like world of social networking programs. Someone who loves you did the same, but I wish with every cell in my body that they were doing it for any purpose but…

We started a community for Minal Panchal, the Indian missing @ Virginia Tech….Do join it and pass it on to ur friends

To view the ‘Praying for Minal’ community page, visit: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=30876137

So what I am looking at is a love story, as told by virtual bits and pieces of care left by strangers on a pale blue page created by a Googler during his “20 percent time”. When Orkut Buyukkotken pondered connecting others as he roamed about the Googleplex, could he have possibly known that thousands of Indians would flock to your profile and write prayers for your safety, pleas for your very life? My eyes touch the screen as if it were braille, as I try to understand who you were by being mindful of what you chose to reveal about yourself, what you might have been attempting to convey. A Web 2.0 timesuck transforms to become a 24-hour a day vigil for a girl from Bombay, then it serves as her memorial in cyberspace.

who wants to go to school with classmates packing heat [link]

My son did. A second-grader brought gun to school because she wanted to be more popular. Oh, and her mother was a cop. Eight years ago, my coworker’s baby boy was shot dead by another kid at his baby-sitter’s house. I see one or two pro-gun comments here. I want to know their take on this and what solutions they have. Respectful dialogue appreciated. I have no intention of derailing this thread. [link]

Fret not about derailing that thread, kind Shodan-san. I have felt sick ever since I read your comment and I think this discussion about guns is relevant and necessary. I can’t even imagine what you felt like as a parent, when you discovered that your precious baby was at school with another child who had naively brought such danger with her. As for what happened to your co-worker, that must be every gun-owning parents’ nightmare.

I once ended a relationship with someone which had some “promise” (i.e. an Orthodox Malayalee etc etc) because he insisted on keeping guns in his home. Even if he had children. I just think the potential for tragedy is too high when you mix the two; not everyone is always as careful as we all should be and children are inherently curious and often, quite clever. He wouldn’t compromise and neither would I. That’s how strongly I feel about the issue— and I know many of you have passionate views on it, too.

One of you had this to say, on the same thread:

I wouldn’t call myself pro-gun but I can’t go as far as saying “ban guns”.

I’m uncomfortable with laws that make it easy to obtain guns, getting them at the local superstore, Kmart Walmart etc is what makes me uncomfortable. I’d prefer to see stricter laws and federal laws to govern the right to bear arms and a person who wants to take up arms and it could be in a lot of different capacities, not always law enforcement, would have to go thru stringent regulations and requirements and training in order to qualify for it. [link]

What do the rest of you think? Several of you are so respectful, you are worried about derailing the original VT thread with this nascent discussion, so I thought I’d open a space for your dialogue here.

::

And one final brown angle to a post on guns in America; PSUBrown wrote in to ask if Andrew Arulanandam, the Public Affairs Director of the NRA was desi. When Abhi played provocateur and wrote about the “potential” need for gun ownership post-Katrina, this question came up in our comments section and the consensus was that he might be of Sri Lankan origin, but there was no confirmation. Other mutineers have asked me about this in the last 24 hours, so if one of you knows more about Mr. Arulanandam, speak up and enlighten us. And if you will permit me to end this post on a slightly lighter note, I put that question to you, our wise crowd because I’m sure one of you is related to or dated him; all Mutineers are two degrees apart, except for this notable mystery woman. :)

Unfortunately Engineering Professors never get their proper due in life…

Professor G V Loganathan of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering was teaching in a class in the Norris Hall - one of the crime scenes - when the gunman went on rampage.

His colleague Prof Raman Kumar confirmed the news of Loganathan’s death to CNN-IBN.

According to Raman, Loganathan was taking a lecture when the second shooting occurred. He was killed around 0915 hrs (local time), Raman confirmed.

When CNN-IBN contacted a shaken Raman, he was at Lognathan’s residence and said he got the confirmation from the authorities at the University. [Link]

If you click on the picture above it will take you to a video clip of reporters in India going into more detail about the Professor.

Loganathan first became a member of the Virginia Tech community in 1982 and has since earned several honors, including the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Civil Engineering Education. Loganathan has also served the academic community as a member of the faculty senate, a counselor on the honor court, and as associate editor of the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering.

Loganathan received his bachelor’s degree from Madras University, his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, and his doctorate from Purdue University. [Link]

I went to “Rate My Professor” to learn about Loganathan from the student’s perspective. Just one rating there:

He is God of his subjects… [Link]

And let him be remembered that way.

Remember Demi Moore in the movie G.I. Jane? Wuss. Remember Jennifer Garner in Alias? Total pan-sy. Remember Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby? Lazy. I now have a new idol for bad-assness who is not a fictional character. She’s a teacher, a boxer, and about a dozen other things…and she does them all in a single day. You know who I’m talking about? Frequent Sepia Mutiny commenter Coach Diesel. She’s also a blogger. This morning before work I read her entry about her stint as a foster kid with an Indian family. Here is an excerpt (but if you don’t read the whole thing then you’re gonna’ miss the point):

The first thing I thought about the Patels was how weird their house smelled. It was a strange smell but I liked it too. I thought it might be the incense they burned, like at church. My own house smelled like dogshit because the dog was old, had issues and, of course, we had to walk the dog. I had known Indian people and gone to school with them. I’d had Punjabi friends, but these people were different than anyone I had met in my life before. Their house was super clean. You had to take your shoes off before going inside from the hallway. The people liked to explain things to me, which noone ever had done before.”We put our shoes here because…”The parents spent a lot of time writing.They were vegetarians. They had a lot of rules and Mr. Patel would take forever to explain, in great detail, what each rule was for and why it was in existence. I felt he talked an awful lot.

“Number one, You must wash your own dishes to respect the work that the chef has put into the meal. Water is expensive, so please wash like this…” Oh gawd, not this shit again…I look around and Mrs. Patel is standing behind me with her arms crossed over her chest, watching me, not smiling. She is a tiny woman, thin and about my height. She has a gold earring through her nostril, wears a ballcap with a Mets insignia on it and has a pencil behind her ear. I think to myself, my grandmothers would hate you, you Mets loving bitch. [Link]

Despite being a blogger I don’t actually read a lot of blogs (gasp…my secret revealed). I only read like five, and Coach’s is the newest one. Anybody that can make me feel lazy has got to be spouting some wisdom up in their space that is worth reading. Her back-story has also has me thinking about adoption and foster homes in the South Asian American community. You always hear about white couples going to India to find a child but you seldom hear of South Asian families adopting or taking in children of other races. Anybody have any stories they want to share? I for one am grateful to the “Patels” because if it wasn’t for them perhaps Coach wouldn’t have been interested enough in South Asian culture to visit this blog.

I’m going to stop here because she’s probably already embarrassed that I wrote even this much about her. Sorry Coach. Ohhh, except one more thing. I bow.

Maybe Bobby Jindal is just destined to become the next governor of Louisiana. A few weeks back I wrote that the influential Democrat, former Senator John Breaux, had decided to enter the race and turn Jindal’s previously assured victory into an uphill battle. No more (thanks for the tip Manan):

Former U.S. Sen. John Breaux decided against entering the Louisiana governor’s race Friday, hours after the state’s attorney general declined to rule on whether he was eligible for the post after having moved to Maryland.

“I said I would be guided by the attorney general’s opinion, and therefore will not be a candidate for governor,” said the Democrat, who represented Louisiana for 32 years in Congress.

Earlier in the day, Attorney General Charles Foti said a court should rule on the question of whether Breaux was eligible to run in the Oct. 20 primary…

At issue was a requirement of the Louisiana constitution that requires candidates for statewide elected office be a “citizen” of the state for “at least the preceding five years.” Breaux has been a Maryland resident since 2005. [Link]

Carpetbaggers never were much liked in the South, even if originally from there it seems. So who will be next to step up to the Jindal machine? The Dems can’t just give up on Louisiana all together. The Washington Post blog looks at some potential candidates but none of them really have Jindal’s street cred. Stay tuned and I will keep bringing you the twists and turns associated with this potentially historic race.

In further American Idol Idiocy news, Senator Bharat Obama isn’t the only Democratic Presidential contender being linked to our papaya Sanjaya! I am telling you, I can’t make up shit this good:

During a radio call-in on WOKQ-FM, Sen. Hillary Clinton was asked what the United States can do about Malakar, the Fox television show’s underdog candidate who critics say lacks any shred of talent.

“That’s the best question I’ve been asked in a long time,” Clinton said. “Well, you know, people can vote for whomever they want. That’s true in my election, and it’s true on ‘American Idol.’ “ [linkaya]

That’s right, America.

YOU ARE FREE TO VOTE FOR OUR PAPAYA!

In unrelated idiocy, it seems the utterly uncalled-for, haterade-fueled hunger strike against our cutie-patootie wasn’t pathetic enough; someone has exiled themselves to the roof of a car dealership, to protest Sanjaya’s winning streak:

The producer of “Chio In The Morning” on WRDW-FM in Philadelphia has been living in a little tent on top of the roof of a local Toyota dealership for the last week.

He’s battled rain and wind — but swears he won’t leave while Sanjaya remains on “Idol.” [linkaya]

No matter where you stand on Papaya, can we all just send Sanjaya Malakar a rousing chorus of “THANKS, FOR THE MEMORIES”? You must admit, this is ridiculously entertaining.

More power to you SM. And I’m not just saying that because you have bomb initials. ;)

Sadly, this pattern of looking to attribute motivation to the characteristics of a particular ethnic / religious group goes waaaaay back [Thanks Saheli]. While today’s attack in Virginia is the worst ever school shooting incident in US history, it is not the worst ever school killing. That bloody honor belongs to an incident almost 80 years ago, involving a suicide bomber and victims in elementary school:

The Bath School disaster was a series of bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. The bombings constituted the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. [Link]

The killer planned his attack very carefully for at least a year. Hundreds of pounds of explosive denoted but luckily enough an additional 500 pounds of explosive did not, thus limiting the damage. The terrorist filled his vehicle full of shrapnel and then detonated it, with himself inside, killing the school superintendent and some of the rescuers who had started to gather.

The killer was a school board member who blamed his financial problems on taxes levied to pay for the new school. The KKK spun this in a religious direction, saying that Catholics were opposed to paying for secular schools since it was against their religious beliefs. They provided multiple quotes from Catholic authorities strongly opposing “Protestant or godless schools” as evidence that Catholics thought that public schools were a tool of Satan (I give only two):

These forty-five lives were sacrificed to satisfy the lust of a shrewd mind, poisoned by intolerant, religious dogma. It is a self-evident fact that the Roman Catholic church, from the moment of birth, assumes the self-appointed duty of shaping and developing the mind of the Catholic born child… as the following quotations will show:

“We don’t want to be taxed for Protestant or godless schools. Let the Public School system go to where it came from - the Devil.” - Freeman’s Journal. (Catholic).

“The children of the Public Schools turn out … well versed in the schemes of deviltry… Catholics stand before the country as the enemies of the Public Schools” [Link]

Sound like a familiar tactic? They also produced quotes arguing that according to Catholic doctrine, the children at school were heretics and gave a quote from a priest in New York where he said:

“Heretics should be put to death and that if the Catholic church was strong enough, the Catholic people would hinder even by death, the spread of such error among the people.” [Link]

You see how the game is played? Nobody would believe it about white Catholics today, but they would believe it about brown Muslims. Same game, different players, and people just keep falling for it again and again.

Unfortunately, the horrific shooting rampage at Virginia Tech (240 miles from D.C.), which is now being described as the deadliest in U.S. history may does have a brown angle, if only to further a reckless agenda. The death toll is up to 32 33; at least 22 28 people are injured. Tipster Hema emailed us about Debbie Schlussel, a blogger who didn’t waste any time before irresponsibly blaming “Pakis” for the tragedy (I have quoted most of it so you don’t have to go to the site— it doesn’t deserve the traffic):

Who is the “Asian” Mass Murderer at Virginia Tech?

Here’s what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today:

* The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as “a young Asian male.”

* The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).

* Pakis are considered “Asian.”

snip

If I were Asian, I’d be legitimately upset with this broad generalization of the mass murderer’s identity.

Why am I speculating that the “Asian” gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?

And the ass-covering finale:

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.

So far, there is no indication that she might be right. I pray no one decides to indulge their inner-vigilante after reading her hate-spew. Enough people have been hurt by this nightmare.

May the memory of those students whose lives were stolen be eternal. This is just heart-breaking. I’ll update this story as it develops…

::

UPDATE 8: Minal Panchal is confirmed among the lost (Thanks, brown_fob).

Information about Minal’s death came in late because no immediate family member was present on campus.

Okay, I lowe my Yindia and all, but these are the sorts of “news” stories which make me want to smack a few hundred million people upside the head. Come ON, Eileen. Yes, it was the wrong thing to do. Yes, it was crass. Yes, Indian culture demands modesty and decorum blah blah blah. But listen, shining India— if you want the world to take you seriously, try learning methods of protesting shit which do NOT involve screaming death threats and effigy burning, aight?

Pretty please? No? Sigh. I tried. Via the BBC (Thanks, JPT):

Actor Richard Gere has sparked protests in India after kissing Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty at an Aids awareness rally in New Delhi. Demonstrators in Mumbai (Bombay) set light to effigies of the Hollywood star, while protesters in other cities shouted “death to Shilpa Shetty”.

The protesters said Gere insulted Indian culture by kissing the hand and face of the Bollywood actress.

Indian culture was later overheard stating, “Gimme a frickin’ break. There are hundreds of other things I find far more insulting— Anand Jon, for example.” ShameShameShilpa responded thusly:

Shetty downplayed the incident, saying “it was not so obscene”.

“This was not such a big thing for people to over-react in such a manner,” the actress told the Press Trust of India news agency.

“I understand people’s sentiments, but I don’t want a foreigner to take bad memories from here. I understand this is his culture, not ours,” she added.

I don’t know Shilpaji…I think the “his culture, not ours” strategery is the wrong approach; everyone already knows that his culture is all cheee! . Why not enlist the Dalai Lama’s help or something? Isn’t that the whole reason Gere is down vith the brown?

Anyroad, if India had remained in the world cup, would the media give two tattis about this? A Cricket dilettante would love to know:

The kissing scenes were regularly played on Indian TV, with some viewers commenting on Gere’s actions, while Indian newspapers carried the picture on their front pages.

Now you know why the song in my head is…in my head (and in our title!):

Protesters said his embrace of one of the country’s leading ladies had been “vulgar” and demanded an apology from the film star.

Ha! Typical blame the victim/blame the woman mentality. What next, because of that flimsy outfit and all that lipgloss, she was asking for it? Oy, my head hurts.

It’s Monday morning, tax day, crummy weather, and lots of work to do, so I’m not going to make things worse by posting here the photo that the New York Times splayed across the front of its Sunday Styles section yesterday, and that made me (and probably many of you) go ICK! EWWWW! EWWWW EWWWW EWWWW! At the very least, the photo, which depicts disgraced “fashion designer” Anand Jon in the company of two very, very young-looking models somewhere out on the party circuit, is the kind of woozy tableau that reminds you that the lower rungs of the fashion and celebrity world are saturated in vulgarity and creepiness whether or not actual crimes are committed. Of course, given the multiplying legal charges of rape and molestation that Jon now faces, the photo’s prominent placement, beneath the headline “The Designer Who Liked Models” and accompanying a spare-no-tawdry-detail article by Hollywood correspondent Sharon Waxman, makes for quite the indictment in the court of public opinion. It does so, in fact, to an extent that made me uncomfortable, though I’ll go out on a limb and say that this brother is clearly a grade-A, bona fide creep and I’d be highly surprised, given what’s coming out, if he was cleared of all charges.

Meanwhile the article has raised hackles in other quarters, as I discovered while checking our news page to see if anyone had posted it. Indeed: an anonymous tipster linked the story as “NY times ignorant report,” quoting this line from the piece: “Mr. Jon is well known in his native India, and national newspapers like The Hindustan Times and Calcutta Times follow every development with interest,” and commenting in response:

Actually he is unknown in India.The is no newspaper called Calcutta Times. And this Jon story has never appeared in The Telegraph. Indian media has not any given attention to Anand Jon.

Now the “Calcutta Times” thing tripped me up too; I chalked it up to shoddy Googling by Waxman to make a point that, while tangential to the story, might give it some extra oomph. I maintain that view, especially upon finding that “Calcutta Times” is the name of the Times of India’s Calcutta supplement (similar to those it runs in other cities); Waxman must have just grabbed something that ran there to support her claim.

But of course, the tipster had to go and assert that the Jon story has not even despoiled the virginal eyes of the Indian newspaper reading public, and that, of course, is a load of bollocks. In fact, the very Telegraph, which the tipster claims has never run a story on Jon, did exactly that on March 14, with a piece by K. P. Nayar that begins as follows:

Washington, March 14: Anand Jon, whose Indian-American success story is the stuff of dreams, is in a Los Angeles jail, arrested on rape charges.

So even if Waxman’s technique was shoddy, you can hardly fault her for claiming that Indians are paying attention to the case given this kind of treatment.

Anyway, this is inside baseball, and I would like to explain for the benefit of any mainstream media or bloggers coming here to find the “official” desi reaction to the latest developments in the Jon case, that the point I’ve just raised is totally tangential to the case itself, and that as far as I know, reaction among American desis remains the same combination of “innocent until proven guilty… I guess” and “EEEEWWWW ICK ICK ICK” that it’s been from the beginning.

I had heard about, made a mental note to blog about and then promptly forgotten Tanqueray’s newest offering— Tanqueray Rangpur Distilled Gin —until one of you alkies Sena X thoughtfully reminded me of it via our News Tab. Sena X posted a link to YouTube, where a mini-movie starring Tony Sinclair (who always reminds me more of Austin Powers than a “highly-esteemed socialite”) had been deposited in what I’m guessing is a bit of viral marketing (though the YTer’s other videos seem to have nothing to do with Tanqueray, liquor or other products, in general).

I watched the 9:53 extended commercial, which is a bit of a parody of one of my favorite shows, Globe Trekker, except in this spoof, it’s “Globe Probe”. When it was finished, I experienced a cocktail of mixed emotions, none of which I shall list, lest I somehow dilute the experience of watching it for yourselves, like one too many ice cubes in my Gold and coke. How many cliches can you spot? The winner gets…something. ;)

Seriously though— are any of you offended by this video? Amused? Indifferent? Is it as disrespectful as deities on knickers or nowhere close? I am sincerely curious as to what the Mutiny’s take on this is, considering the video’s plethora of orientalist stereotypes which got my eyes-rolling…do y’all think it is zimbly cute or utterly obnoxious?

p.s. For a ten-minute alcohol ad/movie that gets the job done so well, it ends up on our banners, get nostalgic with Mulit, here.

Here are some thoughts about Russell Peters, who I presume needs no introduction; Sepia Mutiny has had many posts on him over the years, and you’ll find tons of his stuff up at YouTube. (Also, see Manish’s recent post on Peters’ show in Bombay from earlier this spring. I saw him last night in Philadelphia.)

At his best, Russell Peters airs out the intra-community dirty laundry. He plays with the mixture of embarrassment and pride that tends to circulate amongst members of various ethnic groups, especially immigrant ethnic groups. While many people might feel isolated within a particular ethnic niche, Russell Peters manages to draw people out, and create a certain amount of cross-ethnic solidarity.

Because he has a good deal of “insider” knowledge about Desis, the Chinese, Jamaicans, Arabs, and Persians, Peters can usually pull off humor that works with ethnic stereotypes. It also helps that he has a good ear for accents, and usually sets up his jokes with shout-outs to members of the audience: “You in the first row, are you Chinese? [Yes] What’s your name? [Tim] Tim, what’s your real name? Anyway, thanks for coming out tonight… You know, the thing about Chinese people is…”

Of course, all of that doesn’t quite work the same way when Peters makes deaf jokes, as he did for quite some time at his show last night in Philadelphia. There are, presumably, going to be very few (if any) deaf people in the audience at a show like this — so the sense of talking to people rather than just about them isn’t there. Also, in my view humor relating to a disability by someone who doesn’t have it doesn’t work the way ethnic humor works coming from a brown comic. Some of Peters’ deaf jokes were a bit corny and stupid (i.e., wouldn’t it be nice to be deaf, because then you wouldn’t have to listen to your girlfriend/wife nagging you), while others were flat-out mean.

Evil Abhi: Oh no. Not another f*cking cricket post. Just kill me now.

Abhi: Come on, don’t be so mean. Some SM readers actually like cricket.

Evil Abhi: Why? Unless you trying to save your rainless Indian village from the British Empire, cricket sucks.

Abhi: Dude, you need to chill. You are insulting a game loved by millions as well as its fans.

Evil Abhi: All these cricket posts are ruining our prrrecioussss blog.

Abhi: Ok fine. I’ll just post an interesting picture then. I know you’re cool with pretty pictures.

Evil Abhi: Oohhh, look at the hobbittses.

Abhi: Dude, Sri Lanka just whooped new Zealand.

Evil Abhi: Hit it brown. Hit it.

I am drained.

It is not because I’ve fought a cold all week, nor is it due to what had to have been one of the busiest Fridays I’ve spent at any job. No, it is this. This site. This ever-growing, always challenging, far-too-smart-to-be-left-alone (much like my German Shepherds, when they were puppies) community/blog/baby/project which I cannot abandon, no matter how many times it makes me cry, rant or mope. I did all of the above, btw. I cried when I re-read a certain infamously raw post about my past, because it is a trigger. I ranted right here, just a few posts below where you are now. And I moped, ohhhh did I mope.

I felt despair. I had been warned that at some point, this blog would grow so big that we would not be able to contain it, control it, corral it…keep it. The writing may have been on the wall, but it was not in our comment threads; some of our oldest readers, loyalists who had been with us forever, people we met online and then later IRL via meetups, whom we cherished…they no longer comment or visit us. They don’t want to be here and it breaks my heart; “that’s the price of success,” one of you told me. No, not that. I want it to always be like this, exactly as rare and wonderful and mutinous as this…

But for a good chunk of the afternoon, exhausted from moderating and well, caring, I gave up. I started to drink the rotten kool-aid and it upset my stomach and more important things, like that squishy mushy, weak, red thing in my chest. What was the point? The mean people who suck would win. And I for one would not welcome our new troll overlords.

I couldn’t take being 16 when I was 16, so feeling that morose, melancholy, weepy bleh-ness was extra untenable as a 32-year old. What did I do when I was that age and this miserable? Ah yes, THE SMITHS. Because as perverse as it reads, they cheer me, yes they do. Within seconds, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now wafted through noise-cancelling phones and by the second line, I was smiling for the first time all day. I smiled wider when I realized that I had “my song” and thus, my theme for Friday’s nanofiction orgy.

Write exactly 55 words about what makes you miserable, what feels like heaven, Caligula (my favorite despot!), How Soon is Now or anything else that the lyrics which are pasted below evoke. Hell, write about whatever you feel like burying or praising, just make sure you do and that you post your mistresspiece below, yes?

Yes.

Now that I am impossibly chipper (just listened to Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me!), I’m ready to go home. I hope I have yummy 55s to read when I get there.

…and obviously, that is why the bunker’s Malayalee Christian mutineer should post about it. ;)

Between Chachaji’s reminder and Ismat’s tip to our news tab (which lead me to this adoooorable picture on the left which I stole from Nirali’s The Daily), I was reminded to show some love to the most visible desis of all— the few, the proud, the hot, the turbaned. :D

The point is, with two Sardars in the bunker constantly bickering over who called which color (Ennis is really protective of his pink!) and bragging about whose dari smells best (we lost our impartial judge), it is incomprehensible to me that today should pass without commemoration from the mutineers. What could be more punk, more mutinous than a turban!

Now, yenjoy these three fast facts about today, as distilled from this BBC article:

1) The point of World Turban Day is to foster awareness.

2) “Traditional, hand-tied turbans” > “casual under-turbans and half-turbans”, i.e. don’t half-kundi it. Tie on a proper one, aight?

3) WTD is celebrated today because it’s the eve of Baisakhi.

Any questions? Kindly post them here, because Amardeep is better at turban-ing than I shall ever be. ;)

I am heartsick. I want no part of what has been occurring in “my house” as of late.

When Abhi approached me about starting a group blog to highlight “brown” aspects of the 2004 presidential race, I immediately agreed to take part. Why wouldn’t I? This project would seek out and illuminate that which the mainstream media couldn’t be bothered with— discrimination against a journalist with a South Asian name, the disrespect shown to our culture by a state branch of a major political party, essentially, the desi angle to everything around us. We would light the political and social night. We could be a beacon to every other South Asian American who felt exactly what we felt, lived through what we had, questioned what we did.

As an Orthodox Christian, the concept of “light” is sacred to me; I stood with almost a thousand people last Saturday night, waiting for our priest to throw open the doors to the altar, holy fire held high. The altar boys would take bits of that flame for their own candles, then fan out and pass the light on to the first row of parishioners, who would turn and continue the cycle, one pew lighting the candles behind it until everyone was bathed in the glow that only comes from flame and wax. The ritual which had taken place for over a millennia demonstrated how consummate darkness would always be destroyed by light. Light, a symbol of hope, a symbol of truth. Light, a visual reminder of the triumph of good over evil.

Evil does live in the dark. It lurks in shadows where it ensnares victims of rape, gagging them with shame while concomitantly extinguishing their inner flames.

One of the reasons why rape survivors do not come forward is because they are terrified that they will be doubted. They will be humiliated again, this time by those who should know better, who work for justice. Bruised and broken, they are forced to relive their ordeal while relating it to cynics and skeptics. The burden is on the survivor and that isn’t right. Yes, sometimes people lie and manipulate sympathy but that never justifies being unkind.

Once, in my Freshman-year theology class, Sister Veronica was asked about whether one should always provide alms for beggars. “Sister…isn’t it true that these people are bums? That they are going to just spend the money on drugs or booze? That’s what my Dad said and that’s why I don’t give them money anymore.” Sister Veronica’s face became serene.

“Child, you have been taught since kindergarten to see the face of Christ in everyone you meet, no matter who they are. Yes, even those whom you refer to as ‘bums’ have a divine inner light because just like you, they are children of God. They deserve to be treated that way.”

“But sister-“

“No buts. Even if they are going to use the pennies you give them for something else, even if they are lying about how they need money for food, even if they plan to buy drugs, you must believe that they are truly in need. Only God is allowed to judge others. And that unfortunate soul really might be in need—how would you know if they weren’t? And wouldn’t it be awful if you let your preconceived notions, your assumptions prevent you from doing what is right? From helping someone who truly needs it? You never know someone else’s story, so don’t act as if you do. Act as if you don’t. And act as if the best, not the worst is what is true.”

Times of India

[ 13 Apr, 2007 1620hrs ISTPTI ]

NRIS! 10 Years NO MINIMUM BALANCE! SMS ‘GIMME’ TO 8832 NOW!

CONSHOHOCKEN: Blogger Amardeep Singh on Friday greeted people on the occasion of Baisakhi, which is being celebrated on Saturday.

The Blogger in his message said “on the occasion of Baisakhi, I extend my greetings and good wishes to all my people, particularly to those engaged in commenting, the offering of tips, and news tab links”.

He said the harvest festival is an occasion to remember readers who sweat and toil to keep up with a sometimes unwieldy torrent of entertaining and informative posts.

“On this day, let us pledge to work to develop our blog so that our mission of a developed South Asian diaspora touches the remotest parts of the blogosphere and everybody is benefited leading to prosperity of the community as a whole,” he added.

The Blogger in his message said “may Baisakhi, Vishu, Tamil New Year and Mesadi this year usher in peace, pseudosecularism, prosperity and happiness for all”.

He said these harvest festivals symbolise hope and celebration of hard work by farmers. “They also give us an occasion to express our thanks and gratitude towards the farmers, without whom we would have neither dal-chawal, nor Hakka noodles, nor — and this would be especially sad — chicken kabobs from that Pakistani takeaway place in Bensalem,” he added.

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Violence over the fate of a Ugandan rain forest erupted in Kampala yesterday. Four people are dead; two of them, who were desi, were stoned to death. Via the IHT:

…a protest over a prized Ugandan rain forest exploded into racial violence, forcing military police in armored vehicles to fire tear gas into the crowd, authorities said.

Police arrested 20 people suspected of being the ringleaders of the melee and offered special security to Asians in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, said Information Minister Kirunda Kivejinja. Police were guarding some Asians in their homes…

The crowd burned cars, attacked a Hindu temple and chanted, “We are tired of Asians!” and “They should go back to their land!” Dozens of Asians, fearing for their lives, took refuge in police stations.

Tension between black Ugandans and those of Asian origin has a long history in this African country. In the 1970s, dictator Idi Amin expelled South Asians, saying they were trying to dominate the economy.

This is why people are dying:

A subsidiary of the Mehta Group, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda, wants to use 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) — nearly a third of the Mabira Forest Reserve — to expand its sugar plantation. The Ugandan government owns a 51 percent stake in the company, and recent indications that it will allow the forest to be axed have enraged residents here…

The forest is home to 50 species of monkeys, along with bird and plant species only found in Mabira…

My inner environmentalist cringes at any threat to biodiversity, but I’m also horrified by the footage I just saw on the BBC World service, of a motorcycle engulfed in flames; the man riding it had “looked Asian”, so he was dragged off of it and beaten so severely, he later died. When they interviewed members of the raucous crowd, I heard words which are uttered far too frequently; “Maybe they’ll go back to where they came from.” If any of you have family in Kampala, my prayers are with you.

Allow me to sum up the Slate article I’m about to blog in four words:

Arranged marriages don’t suck.

There, was that so difficult to admit?

Dear Prudie,

I am a 30-year-old single woman who has been living in the United States for the past few years. I am considered smart, successful, and attractive and have an interesting and fulfilling life. But my family, who live in India, are worried that I’m still single, and have been trying to arrange my marriage. While I do want to be married, I’ve had a couple of relationships that didn’t work out; I’ve been very independent and have lived life on my own terms—so I now find it hard to go through the arranged marriage setup. I know my parents will never force me to marry someone I don’t like, but the idea of having an arranged marriage seems archaic and almost mortifying. I’d also like to believe that marriages should be based in love and there should be an element of romance involved. My mother thinks that as long as two people have a certain compatibility and mutual respect, love can happen later. What should I do?

—Confused

Wait- wot’s this? Someone who isn’t second gen can be “confused”? Shocking. Utterly astonishing, I tell you. ;) I thought we American Born-types had a monopoly on bewilderment.

As many of you already know, Kalpen Modi will be teaching two undergraduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania in spring of 2008, one on Asian Americans in the Media and the other on American Teen Films. But unlike Hetal and Kapila, it looks as though some Penn students aren’t too crazy about the idea. The Daily Pennsylvanian even ran a staff editorial recently, arguing that Mr. Modi lacks the qualifications to teach there:

The University brings in guest professors who are qualified to teach students because of extensive experience in a field. Pennsylvania governor, former mayor of Philadelphia and career politician Ed Rendell teaches a course on elections, for instance. Kal Penn simply does not have those kind of credentials when it comes to film and the field of Asian American studies…Bringing in a popular actor as a means of promoting Asian American Studies undermines the academic value that should attract students to the field in the first place.

Standards should be set high for anyone who teaches at Penn. To set a lower bar for guest professors sends the wrong message to graduate students and professors, as well as to students, about what the University values as academically credible.

Mr. Modi will offer a first-hand account of how the current internal structure of Hollywood works to limit roles available to women and ethnic minorities. I don’t think anyone else at Penn is more qualified to teach such a course…As a tenured member of the Sociology faculty and director of the Asian American Studies Program, I am not someone who takes his appointment lightly. We are fortunate to have someone like Mr. Modi on campus for an entire semester. He will not get rich by doing this, and I think that says a lot about his dedication to actively engage with the academy.

I get her point, and I’m sympathetic to people like her who have given their lives to the academy and have difficulty finding teaching positions, only to hear of people with lesser qualifications like Mr. Modi secure these jobs fairly easily. On the other hand, he’s only teaching two classes as an adjunct. It seems kind of harsh to argue that Mr. Modi undermines Penn and Asian American Studies, considering that he’s only going to be there for one semester. It’s not as though they’ve given him a tenured-track position. If that did happen, then I probably would agree with these concerns. But until then, I’m curious to see what comes out of Mr. Modi’s teaching assignment.

Last week (or the week before it, perhaps?) when American Idol’s cameras panned across the audience, I saw a “fanjaya” holding a sign which proclaimed: “Sanjaya is my Papaya”. Love it. It’s delightfully absurd, innit?

Last night, our half-brown wonder achieved what I thought impossible— positive reviews from three judges who are now extra cautious about everything they say, lest they offend young master Malakar’s ardent base of 12-year old girls and grandmothers, since doing so would only mobilize a GOTV effort that the Democrats probably have wet dreams about…and if they don’t, they should.

My papaya (what’s hilarious is I HATE PAPAYAS) crooned “Besame Mucho” and he did it rather well [Thanks, Murad], though I for one could’ve done without his attempts at growing facial hair. But Jennifer Lopez kinda predicted his success, didn’t she? She seemed slightly smitten with our kitten. Speaking of, does anyone remember when J. Lo’s hair and lips were distinctly darker and redder than her extremely bronze skin? No? Just me? Damn. Anyroad, I’d love to tell you what happens to the call centers’ choice, but I remember what it was like to live on the left coast and be salty about such things, so I’ll refrain from dropping spoiler bombs on y’all. ;)

Seen any good plays recently? Yeah, didn’t think so. If you’re like me, you tend to fall asleep during big Broadway production numbers, but small “experimental” theaters leave you cringing with embarrassment or irritation. You know, all that minimalist white (or black) space, with some dudes dressed all in black (or white) rattling off non-sequiters.

Theater - playacting before a live audience - is a quaint and arguably archaic form. But I have to say, when done right, it can leave you feeling deliciously voyeuristic, like you’ve peered into another life with an immediacy that no book or movie could ever provide.

So imagine the excitement then, of theater written by a melange of browns and yellows, about them browns and yellows, for the Bs & Ys (and the people who care for them). I’m terribly late (only 3 days left!) in posting this review, so you should stop reading now and scoot off to buy tix to the Fifth Annual Seven.11 Convenience Theater. The talented folks at Desipina created seven short plays, each eleven minutes long, each set it that haven of desi-ness, the 7-11 convenience store.

Date: March 29 - April 14 [Wednesday - Saturday 8pm, Sat/Sun matinees 3pm ] Cost: Tickets are $18

Location: The Abrons Arts Center. 466 Grand St at Pitt Street, NYC. www.henrystreet.org

If you care to know more, join me as I wear my Ben Brantley hat after the jump.

I have had a fever for most of the day, so when I woke up and checked my GMail, I thought I was hallucinating while reading something sent out via ASATA (Alliance of South Asians Taking Action). SALDEF (The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) just issued a press release regarding an incident which makes me sick; Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American VETERAN was assaulted by the Joliet police, in front of his six-year old child and wife. His crime? Parking a van with expired tags in his driveway. What. The. Fuck.

I can’t find anything beyond a useless mention of Nag’s arrest on a “police blotter” type of article, so if any of you know of further developments, please let us know. The following is from SALDEF:

On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.

Mr. Nag then came outside to answer the officer’s questions regarding the van. The Joliet police officer then demanded that Mr. Nag park the van inside his garage and not on the driveway, to which Mr. Nag responded to the officer that it was not possible and that regardless, the van is parked on his private property and he has a right to park it on his driveway.

At this moment, the officer pulled out his pepper spray and attacked Mr. Nag. As Mr. Nag screamed in agony, the officer removed his baton and violently struck Mr. Nag numerous times until he fell to the ground. While the assault ensued, the officer was reported by both Mr. and Mrs. Nag as saying, “You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!”

Mr. Nag’s wife and six year-old child both witnessed the violent assault, which resulted in Mr. Nag immediately being admitted to the hospital where he stayed for five days due to complaints of intense pain and head trauma. Mr. Nag also received numerous bruises and a serious head injury which have caused him to go blind for several minutes at a time.

I join SALDEF in calling for an immediate investigation into this brutal crime. Kuldip Singh Nag served the very nation this xenophobic police officer screamed at him to leave and while a few of you may question my emphasis on his military service, I just think it adds an extra ungrateful, deplorable angle to an incident which is already appalling.

“This case seems to be a clear incident of police misconduct in Illinois,” said SALDEF Managing Director Kavneet Singh. “We are horrified at the anti-immigrant sentiment the officer allegedly used as he violently accosted Mr. Nag, and further that his six year old son was a witness to this violent assault. We call upon both Joliet and Illinois officials to investigate this incident and for the Illinois community to stand in solidarity with Mr. Nag.”

Illinois desis, where you at? And will there ever be a point in my lifetime when someone doesn’t tell a South Asian American to go back to where they “fucking came from”?

UPDATE [By Ennis]: I spoke to somebody at SALDEF who said that Mr. Nag’s legal counsel can indeed verify that he is a Veteran.

I know this is highly random, but ever since I read the email Sree sent out via SAJA, I’ve been curious about “her”, too. That and I truly believe that every brown person in Amreeka is two degrees apart:

You know your wife indulges your South Asia obsessions when she calls you from a cab to alert you to a pretty desi woman on Broadway. A pretty, very tall desi woman - over 15 feet tall, actually. See the photos below to see who my wife called me about (it’s a billboard for Microsoft’s Office 2007 on Broadway between 50th and 49th Street in Manhattan, near Times Square). Now, let’s test the “all desis know each other” theory and see if one of you can identify this model. [SAJAforum]

Bigger picture of our mystery model after the jump. Click to enlarge both images. Or not.

There’s an interesting interview with “Rebel Scientist” Freeman Dyson over at TCS (the longer version of it is here). Desi angle? I particularly liked this blurb where he points out the similarities between the technological mood of India / China today and an emergent US of the 1930’s -

…the western academic world is very much like Weimar Germany, finding itself in a situation of losing power and influence. Fortunately, the countries that matter now are China and India, and the Chinese and Indian experts do not share the mood of doom and gloom. It is amusing to see China and India take on today the role that America took in the nineteen-thirties, still believing in technology as the key to a better life for everyone.

Now, when Dyson speaks of a “western academic world” that’s losing power and influence, it’s really one specific Old Skool corner that brashly found the answer to man’s Tragedy in more / bigger / cooler tech . In its stead, there’s no shortage of academic influence amongst the segment that’s apt to equate economic growth with Global Warming / Consumerism / Corporate Tyranny and that finds the answer not in exuberance but in restraint. Luckily, it appears that message doesn’t sell so well in India.

Q: What should one do if one really needs to get laid?

A: Go to Kerala, of course! ;)

Via the Mumbai Mirror:

Nine months after he went on a rampage while in heat, destroying his enclosure at Byculla zoo, Rajkumar, the 18-year-old elephant, is finally leaving town today to mate with his chosen partner, a similarly-charged teenager at Thiruvananthpuram zoo, appropriately called Rani.

No having the sex before the marriage, thank you:

In the best Indian tradition, their relationship will be duly solemnised and the two are to get married after Rajkumar completes his five-day journey on an open-back Tata truck.

Unlike most of my manwhores, Raju does NOT dig older vomen:

However, the road to love has not been easy for Rajkumar. Though the two other elephants at Byculla zoo were females, they are 45 and 50 years old each, and no match for the young stripling. When zoo authorities resolutely ignored mild sulks and tantrums, Rajkumar decided that a full-scale rebellion was called for and in June last year the mast haati went on a rampage, breaking open the steel gates of his enclosure and running amok through the botanical gardens, before coming out on the open road.

This bit reminds me of Madagascar, one of my favorite animated movies, ever:

He was caught by the desperate mahaout and the zoo authorities near Byculla station.

He’s from the North, she’s from the South…can they make it work? Language might be an obstacle:

Rajkumar will be accompanied by chief mahaout Jamal Khan and an assistant. At Thiruvananthapuram they will apprise the zoo keeper there of his hobbies and also train them how to give order, for Rajkumar only follows orders in Hindi.

The dream of speeding India towards globalization and economic liberalization has encountered quite a number of hiccups over the past year, though two failed government policies in particular stand out: the sealing drive in Delhi, and the Special Economic Zone plan in rural Bengal.

The state government Municipal Corporation of Delhi had elections over the past few days, and the Congress Party lost heavily, while the BJP gained the majority of seats, primarily because of “sealing,” which is the process of closing down illegal commercial enterprises in residential areas. The government’s mismanagement of the sealing drive, which has led to repeated interventions by the Indian courts, can be compared to what happened recently in Nandigram. There, a group of villagers gathered to protest the conversion of their farmland into a “Special Economic Zone” (SEZ) found themselves under fire by police. Fourteen people died in the violence, and in the subsequent uproar the Communist government of Bengal has been forced to suspend (temporarily?) its plan to develop a massive chemical factory and the four-lane highway that would lead to it.

There are of course ironies in both instances. It’s remarkable, for instance, that the Communist government of Bengal is so pro-globalization that it was ready to force several thousand people in Nandigram to relocate to make way for an Indonesian corporation (the Salim group). But it seems to me that what is happening here isn’t so much about conventional ideology (left vs. right) as it is about pro-development policies, that might make sense in principle, being terribly mismanaged.

Both issues are incredibly complicated, and alongside your opinions and arguments, I’d like to humbly request that readers suggest links that shed light on the different sides of each issue.

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: lol…r u that Abhi guy from Speia Mutiny

Abhi Mutineer: My sn would indicate so, but yes, I am “that Abhi guy” from SEPia Mutiny

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: LOL u r funy. k, so I like asked a comment on ur blog but it got dleted

Abhi Mutineer: Could you be a bit more specific? About everything? We delete dozens of comments daily.

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: lol my bad, I was asking u for help w/my assinment on space bc ur an asstronaght and shit. OH SHIT, i didnt mean to curse!!

Abhi Mutineer: Right, well as you may not have noticed, our comment policy specifically states that “Requests for celebrities’ contact info or homework assistance…may be deleted.”

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: i like how u have that dramatic pause wthe dotdotdot lol oh so thas y i got deleted. well do u mind if i jus ask u a few ?s

Abhi Mutineer: I’m more than willing to help, if I have time. Email me your questions and I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything.

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: o ok can u like get it to me tonite?

Abhi Mutineer: Its 9pm.

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: ya but its due tomorow

Abhi Mutineer: Well…that’s a bit short notice.

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: welll u guyz deleted my comment!

Abhi Mutineer: When did you leave it?

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: like a while ago…at 7.

Abhi Mutineer: 7pm TODAY?

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: ya

Abhi Mutineer: May I ask what grade you are in or what class this is for?

Indolink has an article summarizing a recent study, conducted by a group of undergrads in the Department of Medical Informatics at Columbia University, that is sure to invoke a juicy discussion here. Titled, “Sexual Decision-Making of Immigrant East Indians: Risky or Not?” (password may be required unless you use the abstract link to the PDF), the study, by my own slightly irreverent estimation, is a survey that examines the question, “who is sexually looser: ‘ABCDs’ or ‘FOBs’?” I mean really, after years of increasing ABCD/FOB solidarity, do we really want to see this type of hand-grenade thrown into the mix? Sometimes statistics are better left unexposed. From the abstract:

As immigrants in the United States, young South Asians face cultural shock when it comes to sexuality and sexual behavior. Consequently, a tension exists between the belief systems of the country of origin and the individual’s belief system, influenced by American culture. The objective of this study is to understand the socio-cultural influences on individual decision-making regarding the sexual activity of a South Asian (specifically, Indian) immigrant population, using theories and methods from cognitive science. Twenty first- and second-generation, heterosexual, male and female Indians living in New York City were interviewed regarding their sexual activity. Results show that 55% of participants engaged in sexual activity, of which 22% were first-generation and 82% were second-generation. [Link]

Okay, right off the bat I want to object to their sampling method. I mean, COME ON. Everyone knows that desis (both genders) from New York City are on average more slutty than the general desi population (Abhi looks for a place to hide from a couple of his bunker-mates). From the Indolink article:

“Using cognitive analysis, we documented distinct patterns of safe sex behavior and specific reasoning strategies associated with these patterns” reports [Neeti] Joshi and her colleagues Nicole Yoskowitz and Kelley Urry. They also state: “We have identified a pattern of low sexual activity in a sample of first- and second-generation young-adult immigrant Indians, with significantly less sexual activity in the first generation”…

Throughout the study, Joshi explores the decision-making processes, attitudes, and belief systems of young Desis with respect to their sexual behavior, and, in the process, identifies the socio-cognitive factors that push young immigrant adults to move towards risky sexual behavior in the American environment.

The beliefs and attitudes surveyed included: information related to condom use beliefs, family expectations related to marriage, participant’s preferences related to marriage and beliefs pertaining to HIV. And as for sexual behavior, each participant was categorized into one of three groups related to the level of sexual activity: (1) no sexual activity, (2) sexual activity but no intercourse, and (3) sexual intercourse according to condom use practices.[Link]

While some of our readers exchange well wishes today, PETA India reminds us that Easter, a day traditionally associated with searching for hidden eggs, isn’t a joyous day for everyone [via Nirali]:

The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in have drummed up a new campaign in Kerala. They want eggs banned in the state since they feel eating eggs amounts to committing murder.

“We are showing that eggs signify life and that we should not be eating eggs because chickens also feel the pain,” said Roshini D’Silva, PETA activist…

“Be it Sunday or Monday; don’t eat ‘ande’. From shell to hell” - these slogans will help gain publicity, especially when Easter is nearing. But are there any takers for the ‘anti-anda’ campaign?… [Link]

Have you ever noticed how PETA protests often involve some sort of nudity or semi-nudity? No word on whether or not the “chick” they refer to below was naked, but one can only imagine.

By having a human-sized chick emerge from an egg and distribute leaflets, volunteers People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will seek to draw attention to the cruelty meted out to chickens in modern animal factories and to how people can help stop it.

Easter, a press note issued here said, is traditionally associated with Easter eggs. But PETA has a different and more humane idea… “Eggs are as vegetarian as your chicken tikka or mutton biriyani. They are apart of the chicken’s reproductive system. To produce eggs, the birds spend their entire lives in battery cages housed in dark, crowded sheds were they are treated as egg-laying machines. Baby birds have their beaks cut off with a red-hot blade. Young `layer hens’ are kept in complete darkness except at feeding time. [Link]

PETA India’s website also reveals that they recently had another tiger-in-a-bikini protest to bring attention to abusive circuses. Anyways, in a show of solidarity I am only going to consume vegetarian eggs on this Easter Sunday.

I’d like to give massive props to my Bengali brothers for their epic smacking of South Africa yesterday. “When the Banglas bat well, they’re just briliant,” wrote the Guardian’s over-by-over commentator toward the end of Bangladesh’s innings, in which they scored 251 led by a fantastic 87 from 22-year-old Mohammad Ashraful, pictured here doing his thing. That set up South Africa with a sizeable target to chase in the afternoon, and instead they disgracefully folded, surrendering four wickets by the 20th over and two more in the 27th, and playing out the rest without spark nor art to a total of 184 all out.

The win not only confirms that Bangladesh are no longer by any standard “minnows” of the game — in case their win over India at the start of the cup and previous successes hadn’t already made that clear — but it also injects some new excitement into a competition that was first quieted by the early exit of two of the main contenders with the largest and most enthusiastic global support, India and Pakistan; then stunned and embarrassed by the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer (still unresolved officially, with no theory ruled out, including that of an accident); and then dulled by the tudding superiority of title holders Australia and the emergence right behind them of New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa, outclassing everyone else and hurtling toward the semi-finals.

No longer. Now with the eight-team round-robin Super Eights about halfway through, the remaining matches have regained excitement thanks to the Bangladesh victory, as South Africa no longer look inevitable semi-finalists, and three sides — England, Bangladesh, and host West Indies — are all very much back in the tournament. Which means that we are looking at several huge games coming up. Today, England go up against titanic Australia, a tall order but not out of the question; Tuesday, West Indies face South Africa with the winner taking a serious option on the semi-finals, and most of the world will be rooting for the hosts, who are due for a breakout performance; and Wednesday it’s England versus Bangladesh.

For today’s match England have won the toss and decided to bat first. The Guardian’s over-by-over is here. Just like their football live commentaries, it’s funny and worth checking out whether you understand the game or not. If you want to geek out with the technical details you’ll want to follow the Cricinfo OBO here, but in that case you probably know that already. If you’re at all curious about the game and eager to understand it with a little context, today is Sunday and a fine day to head to your local desi, Trini, Guyanese, Jamaican, English, Australian, or Kiwi pub, tavern, lounge, jerk shack or roti spot and check out the game on television. If you’re in New York chances are Eight Mile Creek is already packed with soon-to-be-inebriated Ozzies. But Brooklyn and Queens have numerous Caribbean and desi joints that are showing the matches. I’m sure that in any of the major US cities you can find a spot without too much sleuthing. Feel free to pass on tips in the comments!

Chachaji’s beautifully kind comment inspired me to post this “aww-inducing” picture for Easter. It’s from the BBC, it’s a year old and it captures this moment I am contemplatively marinating in perfectly. This is the caption it had last year:

A young Christian girl holds a candle during Easter celebrations at midnight mass in St Mary’s Church in Secunderabad, India.

When I was her age, my little sister and I would have been attired similarly (to her and each other!) in fluffy Easter dresses, tied with bows, trimmed with lace. My dress would have been a different color if on Good Friday I had had the honor of “guarding” Christ’s tomb while holding a basket of flowers as a myhrr bearer, dressed in pure white.

In a few hours, I’ll be holding a white candle at a midnight service as well, though since I am not Catholic, it is never called “mass” (that’s what mutineer Vinod avoids, not me). Easter liturgy in the Greek Orthodox church is a thrilling experience; pure darkness will be illuminated by one, ten, and soon a thousand candles (in large cities like this, yes) which glow and move as the faithful make the sign of the cross, while singing “Christos Anesti” (Christ is risen).

I’ll tell you more if you’re interested, but for now, I must go get ready. Only amateurs show up at the Cathedral at 11pm thinking they’ll get to sit, not when it’s standing room only by 10:30. It’s going to be a very long night, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. To all who were thoughtful enough to wish me a Happy Easter, here and elsewhere- thank you. I’m lucky to know you.

The thing I’ve missed most about L.A. since I left is the live music (and my barber). Seriously, there is no better place to get an introduction to new sounds. I’m especially kicking myself because I didn’t get to see two bands that I really wanted to see live. The first was Goldspot. The second one was Rupa and the April Fishes. An Indian girl that sings in fluent Spanish and French and can stop you from bleeding out if you’ve been shot? That is absolutely hot enough to fry fishes!

As a doctor by day and a singer by night, third-year UCSF internal medicine resident Rupa Marya, MD, is living her dream…

Marya, 30, is an Indian woman who grew up in the Bay Area, France and India. She has known that she’s wanted to be both a physician and a performer since childhood, and has found ways to achieve balance while pursuing both passions.

“My kindergarten teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, ‘a surgeon and a ballerina.’ She said I had to choose one. But I couldn’t choose, and now I find I’m a better doctor when I’m an artist and I’m a better artist when I’m a doctor. The passion for both comes from the same source,” says Marya… Previously part of an American folk duo, Marya has gone back to her multicultural roots, tapping into several cultural genres and singing most of the songs in French. “What is created is a living music and lively performance which gives voice to the fluidity of experience moving between different places, a sonic examination of being at the edge of different cultural identities,” according to her website.

The six band members bring together an eclectic assortment of music traditions — mixing French chanson with Gypsy waltzes, Indian ragas, sultry tangos and bossa nova — to create a romantic and lyrical sound reminiscent of bohemian Paris. [Link]

The group’s sound has a Devotchka-esque eclectic-ness to it. Enough talk! Bring out the music:

* une américaine à paris

* c’est moi

* wishful thinking

Their MySpace page has even more music. I especially like the song “Poder.” While I am listening to it I imagine myself kicking ass and taking names in a shady Mexican bar, like Antonio Banderas in the movie Desperado. And then Rupa could come along and heal them all because…ummm…she’s a singing doctor. Okay, maybe that was too much info to put out there.

No, I am not referring to Sanjaya Malakar, because I wouldn’t want American Idol commentators to think that desi-Americans are monolithic in their support of him (we’re not), and I am not referring to me because well, desi never left my life. What I am getting at is the attempted resurgence of desi influences in mainstream American popular music, and surprisingly (or not so surprisingly depending on how you look at it) the current effort by producer extraordinaire Timbaland to bring desi back by featuring two desi-ish tracks on his latest release, Timbaland Presents Shock Value. The first of the two is “Bombay” featuring British-Asian songstress Amar, and the other “Come Around” with our girl M.I.A., which for some strange reason is only available in the U.S. as an import.

Like much of the album, both tracks are solid. Bombay is a straight up Hindi track, it features Amar’s vocal (rather than simply using it as a hook), its addictive, and makes good use of the “Bollywood of Yore” effect. The track has additional production by long-time Timbaland collaborator Jim Beanz, who recently released a couple of sanctioned remixes of two Nelly Furtado Tracks featuring Amar, Promiscuous Girl and Maneater, both of which are available for free download on Amar’s myspace page. Many of you might remember Amar for her hauntingly awesome vocal on the opening track Jaan of Talvin Singh’s groundbreaking compilation Anokha. On the heals of Anokha, she released a solo album, Outside, produced by Nitin Sawhney, but then seemingly fell off, until Beanz’s remix of Promiscuous started to make the rounds. For now anyway, it seems Amar may be the new Raje Shwari, the singer Timbaland and many others used for their Indian hooks a few years ago (Indian Flute, Bounce, Disco etc.), but hasn’t really been heard from since. I hope things work out better for Amar then they did for Raje.

As for the M.I.A. track, I don’t know, I can’t get enough. It’s got M.I.A.’s grimey rapping style, Timbaland’s typically solid production, and desi beats, incorporating and flipping the hook from a recent indi-pop hit “Let the Music Play.” The only thing wrong with this track is it isn’t on the American release.

Do I think Timbaland can bring desi back? I hope so. He’s gonna need help though, and by the lack of really good records from the desi diaspora over the past couple of years, it is going to be tough. For too long the desi music scene has relied upon British-Asian talent to bring the heat. I love British-Asian music, but its sound has gotten stagnant and it is time for desis on this side of the Atlantic to step up. From the word on the street and from what I’ve been hearing, I’m hopeful.

I wanted to get to this story earlier today, before the rest of the blogosphere jumped on it, but it is still worth discussing here. Early this morning Manish tipped me off to the fact that the U.S. Attorney from Minnesota that I had blogged about two weeks ago was back in the news:

It’s a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

Deputy U.S. Attorney John Marty is just one of the people dropping themselves in rank to simply a U.S. Attorney position. Also making the move are the heads of Paulose’s criminal and civil divisions and the top administrative officer.

The move is intended to send a message to Washington - that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head. [Link]

But here is the most important tid-bit in my opinion. I should have suspected something like this earlier:

She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling - the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress. [Link]

Best buds with Monica Goodling?? Usually I’m not one to believe in guilt by association, but suspending that belief here sure makes for an interesting hook! Goodling is the same woman currently in the news (she just resigned today) because she wants to plead the 5th in front of a Congress that is demanding to question her over her involvement in the recent purge of U.S. Attorneys. She hasn’t even said what questions she is pleading the 5th for! Is it a coincidence that a fellow “believer” ended up becoming the new U.S. Attorney from Minnesota?

Well, well, well…looky here at what gossip blog Wonkette done uncovered:

There’s growing evidence that American Idol sensation Sanjaya Malakar and Decision 2008 sensation Barry Hussein Obama are the same person. If it’s not obvious that “Sanjaya” (right) is the same dude as Obama (left), here are some other striking similarities:

Both are accused of being all style and no substance.

Both are far better looking than normal Americans and the normal fugly contestants in their respective fields.

Both are “really cute kid[s] with a unique look and an incredibly dreamy smile that can get thirty 12-year old girls to vote a million times apiece on speed dial.”

Both are competing in a “silly, fun, really well-produced talent competition and you never quite know what’s going to happen.”

Both will end up outrageously rich, whether they win the talent show or not. [wonkette]

Wonkette forgot to add “Both of them have white Mothers” to that list; we’ll go ahead and do that for them, since we are Brown and we’re allowed to get down all incorrect and naughty like that.

Somewhere, “Everything-is-Indian”-Uncle is crowing about this surprising discovery to a long-suffering friend or relative like so: “I told you Bharat Obama was Indian! He went to the Harvard Law school, didn’t you know? Of course he is Indian!”

Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is getting quite a lot of publicity this week. I’ve been an admirer of his first novel, Moth Smoke, which I think of as giving a fresh, entertaining image of the changes occurring in urban Pakistan in the globalization era. It also has an irreverent, off-beat style, somewhat reminiscent of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August. When I’ve taught it in courses on South Asian literature, I’ve found that students really tend to latch onto it — often more than writers like Ghosh, Rushdie, or Mistry.

Initially, I’ve been less than enthused about picking up Hamid’s new novel, along the lines of: do I really need to read another book about the tension between fundamentalism and modernity? This ground has been covered so many times already — starting with The Satanic Verses — that one doesn’t expect to be surprised. But the more I hear about the novel, the more interested I’ve become.

A good place to start might be the 20 minute interview Hamid did this week with Terry Gross, where (among other things) they spent a fair amount of time discussing how having or not having a beard affects how you’re perceived, in both Pakistan and the UK/US. Apparently this is a major theme in the novel as well; as a dariwalla (bearded person), I approve. I gather that Hamid’s point here is, if you want to grow a beard, grow a beard — don’t shave just because others might perceive you as a religious extremist.

When I’m not listening to Accuradio at work, the wee leetle iPod, it is on the shuffle. Like all other gadget-addicted fruit-lovers, I marvel at how the seemingly random is the utterly awesome, since I like every tune that gets served up, every time.

This, despite the fact that I am the one who chose to load all my favorite songs on to Suitable iPod in the first place, thus making me an ingrate for feeling so much wonder at what I, not shuffle, hath wrought. Maybe it’s the timing of it all, i.e. how the perfect song always seems to play at the exact moment it should? How else to explain why Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant” blares when I’m reading about Dick Cheney and Dubya… ;)

Anyway, I’ve heard the song which inspires this week’s nanofiction orgy 2-3 times a day, every day this week thanks to shuffling. It’s one of my favorite joints of all time, in part because I sweat Natalie Merchant’s voice so so very much. So, since I already had mancandy on the brain and there is ALWAYS candy in my tummy, this week is dedicated to sweet stuff, which seems especially apposite when baskets everywhere are being filled with goodies which will make dentists rich in a few months.

Write about sugar, peeps, sour patch kids or that totem of my childhood which is pictured to the left, Cadbury fruit and nut. I’ve had everything from Hershey’s to handmade, exorbitantly-priced truffles and no chocolate is more delicious or makes me feel more loved; if it’s from England (where it tastes better!) I feel positively adored.

Write 55 words (exactly 55 words, no need to be Hemingway) inspired by the lyrics to “Candy Everybody Wants” or about your own sugar-fix in the comments below. If you are in a salty mood, disregard the weekly theme. We just want to read, so get typing.

It’s not just Good Friday today, it’s also National Tartan Day so greetings and felicitations to all you national tarts out there.

I’ve been waiting for this day all year, and have managed to store up a large number of desi angles for this story, most of which, oddly enough are Sikh. The bagpiper at right is easy enough to explain - bagpipes came with the British army all over the world. It’s just a great image, as is this.

But the connections go far deeper than just bagpipes. For example, there is actually a Sikh Laird in Scotland, Baron Sirdar Iqbal Singh, who commissioned his own family tartan:

Mr. Singh, 67, who lives in Little Castle, a turreted Elizabethan mansion in Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, and holds the title Lord of Butley Manor, Suffolk, said … “I remember thinking ‘I’m in Scotland, so why not have my own tartan?’”

The new plaid, which is on display at Paisley Museum, incorporates the Singh family colour of blue, yellow for peace, green to represent the landed gentry and red as a tribute to Gertrude, his Swiss wife. [Link]

Here is the plaid as registered with the Scottish Tartans Society.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, a prayer was offered in the Texas Senate by a Muslim cleric.

Yesterday, a republican Senator named Dan Patrick was as much of a hypocritical jerk as he possibly could have been with regards to that historic occurrence.

He pointedly and publically boycotted the event, handed out a two-year old Dallas Morning News editorial which vaguely outlined something “troubling” about the cleric in question and THEN, in a stunning moment of massengillosity, he utilized personal privilege in order to end the Senate session by spouting bullshit about tolerance while smugly, condescendingly reminding us all that we are lucky to be here in Amreeka, where we’re free. Gosh, Massa we sho is lucky to be here wit you! (Thanks for the tip, Margin Fades)

Witness the awesome tolerance below (all quotes from the Houston Chronicle unless otherwise indicated):

“I think that it’s important that we are tolerant as a people of all faiths, but that doesn’t mean we have to endorse all faiths, and that was my decision,” (Patrick) said later.

Either you believe in it or you don’t, make up your damned mind. Wtf does this even mean?

“I surely believe that everyone should have the right to speak, but I didn’t want my attendance on the floor to appear that I was endorsing that.”

While it’s true that other Senators missed Imam Yusuf Kavakci’s invocation (which was in English, btw), Patrick was the only one who tried to educate his fellow legislators about the nefarious, dangerous nature of the Turkish cleric and his poopy views:

But he was the only senator known to have passed out to other senators copies of a two-year-old newspaper editorial criticizing Kavakci for publicly praising two radical Islamists.

I couldn’t find the editorial via the Dallas Morning News website, so I’m borrowing the following from LGF, since they had a post which featured the text:

The mosque’s imam, Dr. Yusuf Kavakci, has publicly praised two of the world’s foremost radical Islamists, Yusuf Qaradawi and Hasan al-Turabi, as exemplary leaders. Dr. Kavakci also sits on the board of the Saudi-backed Islamic Society of North America, described in congressional testimony as a major conduit of Wahhabist teaching. Yet Dr. Kavakci tells The Dallas Morning News he rejects Wahhabist teaching. Something doesn’t add up. [LGF]

When I googled the Islamic Society of North America, I found this:

The ISNA was one of a number of Muslim groups investigated by US law enforcement for possible terrorist connections. Its tax records were requested in December 2003 by the Senate Finance Committee. However, the committee’s investigation concluded in November 2005 with no action taken. Committee chairman Charles Grassley said, “We did not find anything alarming enough that required additional follow-up beyond what law enforcement is already doing.” [wiki]

Back to the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of the Senator who believes in concepts which he can’t, as a good Christian, endorse (p.s. I’ve never been more relieved to be a bad Christian):

Patrick’s political ally, Harris County Republican Chairman Jared Woodfill, had sharply criticized the fact that the Muslim prayer was scheduled during the week before Easter.

What if it were TWO weeks before Easter? This reminds me of the Sex and The City episode I saw last night, when the girls were at Vera Wang for final bridesmaids’ dress fittings and Charlotte advised a confused, conflicted Carrie, “Don’t tell Aidan you’re a cheating whore now, do it after my wedding, this is MY WEEK”, to which Miranda brilliantly replied, “you get a DAY. Not a week. A day.” Exactly.

Earlier today Boing Boing blogger David Pescovitz wondered out loud about this picture he saw hanging on the wall of an Indian restaurant:

My friend Mike Love and I saw this print hanging on the wall of an Indian restaurant in Palo Alto. The composition makes it look like that woman is about to smash the guy’s head with a sledgehammer. [Link]

I thought SM readers could have a little fun with this. The person who provides the best back-story or conversation interpreting this picture wins!

This week NPR has been running a series on the “War against Meth ” as part of Morning Edition. These stories state that new laws restricting the retail sale of Sudafed — the same laws that gave birth to the “Operation Meth Merchant” prosecutions (see 1, 2, 3, 4) — have have been effective and meth production has drastically plummeted. With 44 states restricting the sale of various meth precursors, and a new federal law on the books:

The impact on meth labs was swift and dramatic, especially in the Midwest, where meth makers were especially prolific. Meth lab seizures are down 55 percent in Missouri, 73 percent in Iowa and Kansas and 88 percent in Nebraska [Link]

However, with a decline in domestic meth production has come an increase in imports of more dangerous crystal meth from Mexico:

Meth seizures at California’s ports of entry rose 40 percent in the last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Meth seizures at the border at El Paso, Texas, jumped 479 percent since 2002. [Link]

The Mexican government recently recovered more than $205 million from a safe house in Mexico City as part of a crackdown. Interestingly enough, they found the safe house while trying after busting a company importing pseudoephedrine … from India:

Prosecutors said the raid was part of an investigation into a pharmaceutical company suspected of importing chemicals to make the drugs from India. The investigation began with the seizure of 19.5 metric tons of pseudoephedrine in the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, they said. [Link]

So US cops are blaming Indians for supplying American meth producers and Mexican cops are blaming Indians for supplying Mexican meth producers. We’re lucky that in Canada they’re just blaming Indians for bhang.

Dana Parsons, the Los Angeles Times columnist whose recent column Naina critiqued last week took notice of her post on Sepia Mutiny, as well as some of your comments that followed. He decided to use more print space to defend himself against comments from some foreigners that bruised his ego. In the old days, “the good ol’ pre-blogosphere days,” pompous columnists could say whatever they wanted without being called out, unless the editor of the paper decided it was ok. Parsons is waking up to the fact that this isn’t the case any longer. Let’s take a look at part of his rebuttal to Naina’s post. The column was titled “Write locally, insult globally:”

Readers in Newport Beach complained years ago because I let a local resident sound off on his town…

In another column, I upset Stanton residents with some chippy remarks, all meant in good fun. Was it a cheap shot to call the city “the Gateway to Garden Grove?” Yes, but we’re all friends here.

The point is, I expected to be ripped in Newport Beach and Stanton. After all, this column runs in Orange County. They’re part of the local audience.

But those were the 1990s, the good ol’ pre-blogosphere days.

What I didn’t expect was to be clobbered last week by readers of a blog known as Sepia Mutiny that focuses on South Asia issues. That is not what I normally think of as my target audience, although I heartily welcome them if Orange County news is to their liking.

What upset some of its readers were two columns highlighted by blogger Naina Ramajayan. I’m going to guess the website is U.S.-based, because its homepage says “We work out of a top-secret bunker in North Dakota with a passel of trained monkeys…” [Link]

It is okay to counter Naina’s points but the insinuation he makes here is clear. Parsons is attempting to get his local audience to sympathize with his plight. How dare these foreigners offer their opinion on a local OC matter. In the age of the blogosphere such things are bound to happen, he muses (winking at the audience). In case the xenophobic undertones here aren’t clear, how about the following:

Naina is free to spin the columns however she wants, although I appreciate spin much less when it touches a global audience.

Well.

All I have to say is thanggod Shodan-san commented all off-topic in the wrong thread, because if he hadn’t, I would’ve never seen this delicious bit of Punjabi mancandy. MeOW. The second Sikh to play cricket for England after Monty??? That TOTALLY deserves a post. Well, that and I would like to stare at his picture some more; I’m sure other mutineers will too.

FYI- all of the below is from his wiki entry (because it’s Holy Wednesday and I’m late for church!):

Ravinder Singh (“Ravi”) Bopara (born 4 May 1985, Forest Gate, Newham, London) is an English cricketer who plays for Essex. Although originally a specialist batsman, he is now improving his medium-pace bowling and developing into an all-rounder. He is the second Sikh to play cricket for England, after Monty Panesar.

Bopara made his first-class debut for Essex in May 2002. In 2003 and 2004, he played several matches for England Under-19s, including in the Under-19 Cricket World Cup 2004.

In the 2005 season, he scored 880 first-class runs, including his first first-class century. He also hit 135 in a non-first-class match against the touring Australians, putting on 270 for the second wicket with Alastair Cook…

In January 2007 Kevin Pietersen sustained a rib injury in England’s first One-Day International against Australia, keeping him out of the remainder of the series. Bopara was called up as his replacement, and made his ODI debut on 2 February. Later that month, he was named in the England squad for the 2007 Cricket World Cup,[2] and he played his second ODI in England’s second match of that tournament.

More soon…if only so that there can be more pictures of cricket-playing yumminess. ;)

Since a few of you mutineers adore the artfully tressed, usually well-dressed, remarkably unstressed SANJAYA, perhaps one of you would like to create an online shrine in his honor? The perfect domain is still available (but act soon!). Via UberDesi and eBay:

Do you love Sanjaya Malakar from American Idol?? In almost every broadcast Ryan say’s “Malakar Mania” and NOW YOU CAN OWN IT on the WEB!

This URL / Domain name is guaranteed to get 1000’s of hits!

This Domain name / URL has been appraised at over $2,500 due to the popularity of Sanjaya, thanks to Howard Stern and the craze called American Idol!

Bidding starts at ONLY $9.95

Have at it— and don’t say we didn’t get you anything for Christmas/Channukah/Diwali/Eid/Nowruz/Onam. ;)

[Warning: Spoilers!]

People who feel that The Namesake was too unrealistic might have to reconsider now that the “real” Gogol has emerged [via UB]. Vishaan Chakrabarti is a New York City architect. His father was a Professor (at Harvard, the book was set in Boston unlike the movie) and his mother a librarian who became a classical Indian singer. And yes, he had a nickname that he disliked enough that he legally changed his name while in college.

The Namesake’s Namesake?

Chakrabarti … has good reason to believe he’s the inspiration for Gogol, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel (Kal Penn’s role in the movie). “Maybe it’s just coincidence that nine-tenths of the book is the same as my life,” he says, “but it was my friends who pointed it out. Anyone who knew me well saw the similarity immediately.” [Link]

[NOTE: Chakrabarti wasn’t trying to grab the headlines, a friend of his told NYMag, which then contacted him to inquire further.]

He met Jhumpa because, in real life, she was the proto-Moushumi figure:

He dates non-Indian women, to his parents’ chagrin, and, after his father’s death, shaves his head and lets his mother set him up for the first time with an Indian girl—which is how Chakrabarti met Lahiri. [Link]

However, as Chakrabarti himself points out, there was no grand drama between them, just a set-up that went nowhere:

Chakrabarti … does note many differences between himself and Gogol. Most important, he and Lahiri dated only briefly, not getting hitched and divorced, as in the book. Chakrabarti, who’s now married, says they simply never hit it off. [Link]

In fact, neither of them married Bengalis. I guess just being Bengali wasn’t enough .

Then:

KFC Popcorn Chicken using MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit”
This commercial ran during the early 90’s on american television. It puts Hammer in a back stage stand-off. Hammer refuses to go on stage for some reason, then someone holds out a box of popcorn chicken to Hammer. Hammer takes a piece, flicks it up, catches it in his mouth and says “Now that’s popcorn”. Hammer then takes the stage performing “2 Legit 2 Quit”.

Now:

An open letter to Sanjaya Malakar:

Congratulations on catching America’s ears…and eyes.

Over the past month, you’ve wowed the world with your original performances. And, your ever-changing hairdos have made you almost as famous as KFC® Original Recipe® Chicken and Colonel Sanders himself.

On behalf of Kentucky Fried Chicken®, I want to serve up to you a tasty offer. If you don a bowl hairdo during one of your next nationally televised performances, KFC will grant you a free lifetime supply of KFC Famous Bowls®. We’re sure America will be as ‘bowled-over’ by your take on this classic look as they are by our KFC Famous Bowls.

From wavy to Mohawk to now the classic bowl – who knows, your bowl cut could start a trend as big as KFC Famous Bowls, which consumers ranked as THE most memorable new product of 2006.

In addition to free KFC Famous Bowls for life – if you sport a bowl cut, KFC will cut a check in your name to Colonel’s Scholars, a charity providing young people with much needed college scholarships. We’re confident that helping students afford college is something that even the toughest of judges would stand and applaud.

Your Fan,
Gregg Dedrick
President of KFC

Join the legacy. [Thanks, tipster Sonia!]

Every now and then I come across an article that seems to pack in as many social issues as possible. This particular story on the impending deportation of a 25-year-old Indian man in Utah has several interesting angles on the subject’s predicament. International adoptee? Check. Religious minority? Check. Juvenile delinquent? Check. Confused young person who made some really bad decisions and tried to play the victim card? Errr, check, check, and uh, check.

Samuel Jonathan Schultz was born in India and adopted at age 3 by a Utah woman. His adopted mother apparently failed to complete his application for US citizenship upon his arrival to the US.

As a teenager, Schultz got in trouble with the law on numerous occasions. At the age of 18, he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle (he claims that his friend stole the car and that he was simply on his way to return it). A year later, he was convicted again for car theft. Then there are the offenses that he committed as a juvenile:

Samuel Schultz has a juvenile record of theft offenses and engaged in altercations as a teen with his stepfather that occasionally required police intervention.

But wait, there’s more. Schultz sought to appeal the deportation order because:

As a Christian in general, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular, he believes he will be targeted for persecution [in India].

The 25-year-old knows little about the nation of his birth, speaks only English and believes he would have to live on the streets there, according to court documents.

“He has not shown that people of the Mormon faith are routinely persecuted by the government or people operating outside the government,” Vandello stated in his ruling. “There are random acts of persecution of Christians and also of other religions, as far as that goes, even the majority religions on occasion.”

An NYU Professor of graduate and undergraduate courses in statistics, probability and analysis at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Studies has won the Abel Prize for 2007. It’s kinda like the Nobel, but for maths and he’s the first desi to win it. In other words, this is a big deal (thanks, karmakong and Sanjiv).

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2007 to Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York. He receives the prize “for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviation”. [link]

As for the caption under the good Professor’s picture: don’t you ever see an Uncle or an Auntie and just want to hug them? Especially if they seem to be radiating wisdom and kindness? Ah, I’ve been taking what Saheli is on, so pardon us as we skip through flower-laden fields, seeing the absolute best in people. He just seems like the kind of Uncle I’d love to have (as opposed to most of my Uncles, whom I have to love). Well, that and my devotion to people who are fantastic at math is probably responsible for some of this effusiveness. :D

Back on topic:

Probability theory is the mathematical tool for analyzing situations governed by chance. The theory of large deviations studies the occurrence of rare events. This subject has concrete applications to fields as diverse as physics, biology, economics, statistics, computer science, and engineering. [link]

Unfortunately, there is a typo in the above definition, “my love life” should immediately follow “computer science”.

Varadhan’s theory of large deviations provides a unifying and efficient method for clarifying a rich variety of phenomena arising in complex stochastic systems, in fields as diverse as quantum field theory, statistical physics, population dynamics, econometrics and finance, and traffic engineering. It has also greatly expanded our ability to use computers to simulate and analyze the occurrence of rare events. Over the last four decades, the theory of large deviations has become a cornerstone of modern probability, both pure and applied.[link]

For more information on this dazzling desi, peep his biography here. Next up at SM: why Anna is the only South Indian person ever to have never taken calculus. Cause for shame or America is to blame? You decide.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: Good afternoon, Sudo-Ji.

SudoSecularSAsian: Greetings, my good fellow. How goes it? I trust all is well on your end?

Intellectual$ingh3141592: Today I am, I must confess, a tad jealous of our colleague over at MIT.

SudoSecularSAsian: Please elaborate, if you would be so kind. I am, as they say, all “ears” — though what precisely that means in the context of Internet Messaging is an open question.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: It appears that Professor Deb Roy, of MIT’s Cognitive Machines Group, is pursuing a gargantuan project oriented to the study of language acquisition in human infants. What is most impressive is, he is using his own son as the source of the data!

SudoSecularSAsian: His partner must be outraged — I know my own spouse places strict rules on the degree to which I can allow my academic projects to interfere with our personal lives. In my occasional forays into the world of “weblogs” — with which you are well-acquainted — I have been asked to delineate a fairly sharp line between matters of public discussion and our own private affairs.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: I completely understand. However, in this case, the baby’s name is being shielded from participants in the study (he is merely referred to as “Dwayne,” after a character in a popular Ridley Scott film). Moreover, Roy’s partner, the eminent speech pathologist Rupal Patel (Northwestern), is apparently fully on board with the project.

SudoSecularSAsian: Singh-saab, I just checked the link you forwarded and I have to ask you… Do you really think this type of grandiose, pie-in-the-sky study is really a worthwhile usage of resources? Is it really likely that the scattered attempted phonemes of an infant in the earliest stages of language acquisition will offer significant new data? Isn’t it possible — or I daresay, probable, given Chomsky’s universal grammar — that the real root of language is to be found not in the “babble” of a child attempting to mimic adult sounds but in the neural-cognitive framework on which the linguistic capacity is built?

Intellectual$ingh3141592: I must concede I am not qualified to respond to your conjectures, though I should perhaps remind you that Chomsky’s thesis has been widely discredited in the field of linguistics. However, one thing you say does ring true — the sheer expenditure of electricity required to support the massive arrays of hard disks (1.4 petabytes!) is deeply irresponsible in this era of imminent global warming. Did you have the chance to peruse the latest tidbit in the Times about the responsibility the wealthier countries have to the global south?

SudoSecularSAsian: Yes, and it’s quite distressing. I’m afraid our beloved South Asia may bear the brunt of the developed world’s resource profligacy. The Himalayan glaciers are in trouble, and a “brown cloud” of pollutants is steadily building up over the Indian Ocean, with results on the climate-scenario that are extremely difficult to foretell, though the consequences are unlikely to be pleasant.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: :-(. (Please forgive the emoticon — it’s a childish expedient, but sometimes an eloquent one.) Well, I must be off, I’m afraid.

SudoSecularSAsian: ;-) All is forgiven. This is the brave new world of lexico-typographical expressivity! Au revoir!

In today’s New York Times, this recollection of a classic desi coming-of-age dilemma:

Both his parents are physicians, he added — his father a urologist and his mother a pediatrician — and growing up in Athens, Ohio, he tried hard not to follow in their footsteps. “This idea that a bright Indian kid is supposed to be a doctor — I resisted that,” he said. “I wanted to be a rock star. I played guitar and wrote songs and even had a couple of club shows. I was just terrible.”

So Atul Gawande became… a surgeon. A celebrity surgeon, in fact, thanks to his side practice as a writer; he’s a regular presence in the New Yorker, his book Complications came out last year to critical acclaim — Amardeep wrote about it here — and a new book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, is out this week.

So now that he’s, like, this author, we get to accompany him into the operating room where we learn that the brother never gave up his love for music; indeed, he gets to inflict his musical taste on the O.R. personnel, though, he allows, “You can’t play anything hard-hitting if there’s anyone over 45.” Thus:

On a recent day, when he took out a gallbladder, two thyroids and what was supposed to be a parathyroid gland but maybe wasn’t, the playlist included David Bowie, Arcade Fire, Regina Spektor, Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, the Decemberists and the Killers.

My favorite bit in the article, however, isn’t about the music but rather about how Gawande found himself becoming a writer, shaking off a dismal experience in college when a writing instructor, in a moment of brilliant teaching technique, “told him that he could write a sentence but had nothing to say.” At some point Gawande started contributing to Slate, and his characterization of writing for that particular outlet is a masterpiece of damnation with faint praise:

“Slate was perfect for me,” he explained, “because it enabled me to fly under the radar. It was just like going through surgical residency. I did 30 columns for them, and it was like doing 30 gallbladders. Then I had to learn how to get comfortable with 4,000-word and then 8,000-word essays for The New Yorker.”

Okay, so he’s had a charmed life; I know plenty of writers who would die for a Slate commission, and the “advance directly to New Yorker” scenario is not exactly commonplace. Oh, did I mention he also has a MacArthur grant? Still, in my book at least, anyone who likens writing for Slate to extracting a gallbladder — and can back it up with actual experience — earns a toast of love, not Haterade.

At a time when a desi male singer is in the news for all the wrong reasons, it’s good to remember that there’s such a thing as the art of the song, and nice to come across a desi brother who is honing his craft like a devoted apprentice: slowly, steadily, and with growing success.

Sachal Vasandani, 28, has been singing on the New York jazz circuit for a few years now: he’s performed with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, and he has a regular early-evening gig at Zinc Bar in Greenwich Village. That’s where Manish heard him almost two years ago now, which resulted in this post; and the fact that it’s taken this long for Sachal to drop his first album, which comes out tomorrow, and that the disc features the same core trio (David Wong on bass, Quincy Davis on drums, and Jeb Patton on piano) that Manish heard that night, tells you a lot about the consistency and hard work and constant plugging away that it takes to develop your sound and make your move in the real music world, as opposed to freakshows like American Idol.

The album is called “Eyes Wide Open” and is out on Detroit label Mack Avenue. It’s really an album of songs, by which I mean, songs with lyrics, verses and refrains, melody and exposition — this is not free jazz, in fact it’s not even what most listeners would consider edgy, and that centrist disposition makes it eminently accessible, perhaps more so than some heads would be willing to cop to liking. Three of the compositions are Vasandani’s own; the remainder divide among standards and covers from sources as diverse as Sade and Iron & Wine.

I sat down with the brother recently for a story that you can find here. It will give you the rundown on his life story and all the usual profile elements. Here’s a little excerpt that will give you an idea of his approach and sensibility:

Going on a hunger strike because you didn’t like Sanjaya Malakar was asinine. Way to make America look even lamer with your priorities there. No, don’t fret about the homeless, the environment or I don’t know, THE WAR. Worry your empty head about a child on AMERICAN IDOL. My contempt runneth over.

P.S. Regarding those whom you “thanked” for starving with you on this pathetic crusade: I cannot believe that there were others who were mentally impaired enough to join you in this foolish campaign against a contestant on reality television. I wish a lack of reproductive success upon the lot of you, so that your alleles won’t create defective little humans who would grow up to pull similarly inane stunts, lest they annoy MY descendants, who, if anything, will be even MEANER and less patient than I am.

P.P.S. Shlok, thanks for the tip.

P.P.P.S. Sanjaya Zindabad!!!! For no other reason than to irk everyone I cursed above. As our favorite teens Hetal and Kapila would eloquently say, FEEL R BROWN WRATH, HATERZZZZ.

It’s not the timeliest bit o’ World Cup mutinousness (oy, I meant to have it up last Wednesday…sorry Anonymous Tipster), but once I realized that a) the cricket stadium I’m about to discuss had already been mentioned on SM almost two years ago, by one of our earliest readers and b) it dealt with Guyana, a part of the diaspora we don’t get a chance to cover all that often, I couldn’t resist blogging it, tardy though I may be. :)

Read all about India and Guyana’s construction-lovechild, via this article in the Malaysia Sun:

Inaugurated by Indian Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat during his official visit to Guyana in November last year, Guyana’s new international cricket stadium, which will hold as many as half a dozen matches in the Super Eight stage, has been billed as the stadium of friendship between India and Guyana.

India gave the Guyanese government a grant of $6 million and a concessional line of credit of $19 million for the purpose.

The new facility was built by Mumbai-based firm Shapoorji Pallonji.

It sounds impressive:

The new picturesque Guyana National Stadium is set on the east coast of the majestic Demerara river, which flows into the mighty Atlantic just a few miles away.

The new stadium seats over 10,720 spectators and accommodates another 4,280 on a grassy mound…The wide area around the stadium has seen hotels sprouting up which are expected to boost Guyana’s tourism industry.

Even numismatists get some love ;)

The Bank of Guyana has also issued a special gold coin to mark the opening of the new stadium.

From the NYT, a story about how “one pristine town in some of Britain’s most untouched countryside” voted to allow an unused Methodist church to become a mosque (thanks, Ardy):

The narrow vote by the municipal authorities marked the end of a bitter struggle by the tiny Muslim population to establish a place of worship, one that will put a mosque in an imposing stone Methodist church that had been used as a factory since its congregation dwindled away 40 years ago…

Britain may continue to regard itself as a Christian nation. But practicing Muslims are likely to outnumber church-attending Christians in several decades, according to a recent survey by Christian Research, a group that specializes in documenting the status of Christianity in Britain.

The mosque will exist because of one “passionate young professional of Pakistani descent”, who sounds tolerant and moderate in the article:

“We’ve been trying to get a place of worship for 30 years,” said Sheraz Arshad, 31, the Muslim leader here, his voice rattling around the empty old Mount Zion Methodist Church that will house his mosque. “It’s fitting it is a church: it is visually symbolic, the coming together of religions.”

GujuHottiee120586: u there

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GujuHottiee120586: :(

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: wats rong

GujuHottiee120586: i was studyin for my physix quiz but then i got sooo upset n i had to stop. know i cant concentrate :( :(

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: wait wats ur quiz on

GujuHottiee120586: faradayz law of reduction or something

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: eww. physics is soooo fuckin hard

GujuHottiee120586: N E WAY

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: lol. my bad.

GujuHottiee120586: LOOK. Look at wat someone wrote on this blog about kal! What a fowl ignornt racist bitch!!!1

sexxy5@biPrinc3ss: k. gimme a sec