Erstwhile Sepia blogger and fanatical culture vulture Manish would be so proud! A book by a desi author with a desi protagonist without saris, bindis, mehndi, mangoes, spices, or faux indic fonts on the cover!

Cast your eyes to the right, my friends. Behold the cover for Chambermaid, by Saira Rao. Kinda boring, no? Eh…we’re a fickle bunch.

So what’s this assimilation sensation about, you ask? Well, I have no idea. The book hits shelves in July and the publicists didn’t send a review copy to the bunker (ahem) but given the pre-launch reviews I’ve spotted, this should be decent beach reading. Especially for all you desi lawyer types reading this site. Especially since Ms. Rao clerked for a Federal Appeals Court Judge in real life.

Quick summary:

Sheila Raj is a recent graduate of a top-ten law school with dreams of working for the ACLU, but law school did not prepare her for the power-hungry sociopath, Judge Helga Friedman, who greets her on her first day. While her beleaguered colleagues begin quitting their jobs, Sheila is assigned to a high-profile death penalty case and suddenly realizes that she has to survive the year as Friedman’s chambermaid — not just her sanity, but actual lives hang in the balance.link

Ooh la la! Le Scandale!!

Will this become the next Prada? Who could this eeevil Judge Friedman possibly be? Where have you heard of Saira Rao before? These, and many more of life’s mysteries, will be answered after the jump.

You didn’t think I’d just sit on the sidelines while the Greatest Show on Earth was unfolding did you? The Annual Scripps National Spelling bee wraps up in prime-time tonight! Meet the last of the brown hopefuls (who we must all now pray for as they represent the best of desi-dom):

Name: Kavya Shivashankar Favorite movie: Spellbound Favorite TV show: The View (she reportedly got into it with Rosie when she went on) Abhi’s Scouting Report: She has experience under her belt and stormed into the final rounds last year. Not to mention she plays the violin. A victory by her would also resurrect the name “Kavya” from its current place in infamy.

Because Akka loves you, she feels like nagging your misbehaving kundis about something you should not do (via the AP and one anonymous tipster on the news tab):

Smoking a hookah may be as dangerous as cigarettes, the World Health Organisation said, adding that more research was needed into the link between the use of the water pipe and several fatal illnesses. It said that a person can inhale a hundred times more smoke – a mixture of tobacco, molasses and fruit flavours – in a hookah session than in one cigarette. Hookah, or shisha, smoking is a tradition in North Africa and the Middle East. [Linkaya]

I’ve heard so many people declare that smoking a hookah is “nowhere near as dangerous” as “regular” smoking, I had to post this. I hope those delusional darlings are reading this and realigning their thoughts accordingly.

Also, while the blurb states that Shisha is popular in North Africa and the Middle East, it is also popular with brown people, especially the annoying ones who won’t quit staring at Prince Cafe in Georgetown, at 3am when all a girl is trying to do is innocently get her mirchi Aloo Chole on. What is it with our people and the shameless gawking?

It would be one thing if this were Iowa circa 1968 and two lonely Namesake-era desis were curiously gazing at each other in a room full of Amreekans, the desire for recognition, i.e. that knowing “gang recognize gang”-moment apparent on their homesick visages, but this is D.C. and out of the sixty people at Prince, the only white guy is the Romanian Orthodox dude behind the counter. We have taken over. The “Arrrre you Yindian??”-bit is thus uncalled for in this uberdesi day and age.

Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah. QUIT EFFING SMOKING. That hacking cough ain’t attractive, y’all. Back to your regularly scheduled troll-baiting, spelling bee-dissing and witty comment-making then.

Gustavo Arellano runs a nationally syndicated column titled “Ask a Mexican” which began three years ago (first as a joke) in the OC Weekly. A while back, over the tip-line, someone suggested we run a similar column. I think it’s a good idea. I think I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna be the “Desi” with the answers. So…if you have any questions for a Desi (or Indian, South Asian, whatever you prefer) I am now your man. Send them my way at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com. I will try to answer at least one question a week and I will only tackle questions sent via email and not via the comments. I will more than likely ask my bunker mates to opine on certain inquiries, especially if they are more qualified desis for a particular question. To get you in the mood, here is the latest “Ask a Mexican” column:

Q: Is it true that there are a lot more Mexicans hooking up with East Indians now? I know a few mixed Mexican-Indian couples, and I’ve heard that in some parts of the country, there are communities full of Mexican Hindus (products of Mexican-East Indian intermarriage). Is it true that this is a rising trend? If so, do you have any advice for young Indian-Americans interested in attracting Mexican girls or guys?

—El Otro Tipo de Indio

A: Dear Other Type of Indian: I try not to answer questions about interethnic amor (that’s more of a Dan Savage thing), but I’ll run yours because it allows me to plug Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans. This fascinating 1994 ethnography by University of California Irvine anthropology professor Karen Leonard studies Mexican women in the United States who married men from the Punjab region of what’s now India and Pakistan during the first half of the 20th century. There are muchos similarities between Mexican and Punjabi cultures — a love of flatbreads (tortillas and rotis), spicy cuisine and loud, drum-based music (banda and bhangra, respectively) — but Leonard concludes that American immigration policies barring most Asian women from entering this country inspired many of the unions, and that both Mexican and Indian-American communities (never mind the gabachos) discriminated against these families… [Link]

Please, ask this macaca all kinds of questions and not just cheesy relationship questions. I just want to heal. Like Dr. Phil. Or Frasier Crane.

Paranoia or Art? Bangladeshi American Hasan Elahi has decided to pre-emptively prove to the FBI (or any other shady wire-tapping federal agencies) that he is not, cannot possibly be, has never been, a terrorist. In order to do so he is doing the FBI’s job for them (quite convincingly):

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. “It’ll go public in a few seconds.” Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you’ll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

Elahi’s site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you’re on, it’s hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. [Link]

Ok, I’ll be honest. The first thing I thought of was whether or not this project is helping Elahi’s love life. I mean, I could just imagine some girl coming up to him and saying, “Wow, isn’t it funny how we just keep running in to each other like this? Must be fate!” (Abhi curses himself for not thinking of this first). Elahi’s logic for starting the project is flawless:

The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately. Plus, no ambitious agent is going to score a big intelligence triumph by snooping into your movements when there’s a Web page broadcasting the Big Mac you ate four minutes ago in Boise, Idaho… [Link]

A tragedy, in five lines;

This is Vinay and his wife Rashmi.

They were married in 2005.

He was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in 2006.

He is 28.

He needs a bone marrow transplant, in the next six weeks.

If you aren’t already part of the National Marrow Donor Program registry, please consider what you would be going through if this were your little brother, childhood friend or husband. Wouldn’t you want as many desis as possible to be in the database? Vinay’s greatest hope lies with someone like him, but the number of us who are registered is so low, it’s pathetic.

All it takes is a few minutes of your time. A swabbed cheek. And maybe, with that selfless gesture, you increase the chances that this person who probably has so much in common with you goes on to live the life we all deserve.

This is what Vinay’s parents have to say:

We cannot express in words what this is like. All we can do is implore you to close your eyes for a moment, and imagine that this is your son, your brother, your best friend. We are guessing you would move heaven and earth to help save his life…

Vinay is the world to us - he is warm, funny, loving. We have watched him grow from a little baby, to a young boy playing sports, to a fine young man determined to be a doctor, to a man marrying the girl of his dreams. Please help us help our son have a chance to live - to be with his wife, with us, and his friends. [Hema and Partha]

Drives are planned in Fremont, Cerritos, Anaheim and Livermore; additional information may be found here. Speaking of additional information, when I numbly surfed through Vinay’s website, the following three points made me cringe:

When a Caucasian is looking for a match they find 15 matches on an average where as opposed to an Indian they might find one match or none.

This can happen to anyone at any age and god forbid if you get into similar situation then this will be the only registry that will come to rescue.

There is no such registry in India and when an Indian kid is looking for a marrow match this registry is the only resort. [HelpVinay.org]

We’ve written about others whose lives were similarly threatened by our failure to represent in such a vital way. What would it take to move you to get involved? Would it matter if I told you that like every 8th desi, he’s from Fremont?

That he went to Ardenwood and eventually UCB (though not this UCB)?

That his favorite books were The Hobbit and Midnight’s Children?

That he liked The Godfather (but only 1 and 2), Garden State and Million Dollar Baby?

That he’s Seshu “Tiffinbox” Badrinath’s cousin?

He listens to Coltrane, Miles Davis and 2pac?

And yes, like every male I know, he likes to watch Scrubs and Sportscenter?

Do you identify with him yet? I pray you do. Because one of you could be his match and that would be the sweetest thing. My Uncle died of Leukemia and I’m sure each of us knows someone else who has been similarly affected.

As usual, biz has me on the road accumulating airmiles… and the usual upside is some unbroken reading time — most recently with Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound. The book is well written and covers a wide span of Indian history and issues both from Das’s direct (and apparently quite privileged) experience as well as his clearly thorough research. Emotionally laced with optimism for the future and regret for the past, this nonfiction book struck a chord in a way I imagine some find in escapist lit. Call it Bridget Jones for the econ-minded. Amartya Sen’s comments on the book are particularly interesting.

Das tackles the age old, highly politicized question of “Why was India rich, why is it poor, and when will it be rich again?” In the dozens of cases Das presents, one particularly unique example is a famous battle of antiquity and the first large scale military interaction between Desi’s and the West - the Battle of Hydaspes River in 327 BC.

The battle pitted Alexander the Great’s Macedonians against Porus (the Hellenic version of “Rama Puru”), leader of the Kingdom of Paurava in what is now the Pakistani section of ancient Punjab. Beyond the general intrigue and war narrative - feints, maneuver, logistics, and so on - Das finds a nugget of explanatory wisdom to his question - Teamwork.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do - Samuel HuntingtonDepending on your proclivities, Hydaspes may have marked the beginning of Western colonialism in India and thus the beginnings of all that ailed its 20th century history. In Samuel Huntington’s famous aphorism — “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do” — Alexander was perhaps the capstone ancient example. Thus, the Battle of Hydaspes River may have set the imperial template for hundreds more, longer lasting incursions over later millenia.

Our tip lines have been exploding about a New York incident involving a Sikh high school student who was assaulted; his turban was ripped off and then his hair, which had never been shorn, was cut against his will. Unfortunately for those of you who kept submitting the story, there were crickets chirping in the bunker this weekend. Our delay in blogging it was not a reflection of whether we feel the issue was important or not.

Here are the facts I have gleaned from the various links sent in:

• The Sikh boy was trading “Yo Mama”-like insults with two others
• Things got out of hand
• He tried to apologize
• He was informed that the only way to do so would be a haircut (WTF?)
• That’s when he was dragged in to a bathroom and cut
• Two other boys served as “lookouts”
• All the boys may or may not have been friends
• The teenaged defendant is a Muslim of Pakistani descent
• Other desi students said this was anomalous for their school.

From the Queens D.A.’s press release:

District Attorney Brown said that, according to the charges, just after 12:00 noon on May 24, 2007, the defendant, armed with a pair of scissors, approached 15-year-old Vacher Harpal in the hallway of Newtown High School, located at 48-01 90th Street, and stated, “I have to cut your hair.” When Harpal asked, “For what, it is against my religion,” the defendant allegedly displayed a ring with Arabic inscriptions and stated, “This ring is Allah. If you don’t let me cut your hair, I will punch you with this ring.” It is alleged that Harpal initially refused to go into the bathroom with the defendant because he feared that the defendant would hurt him with the scissors.

Once inside the bathroom, it is alleged that Harpal removed his dastar while crying and begging the defendant not to cut his hair, which had never been cut and fell past his waist. The defendant is then alleged to have used the scissors to cut Harpal’s hair to the neckline and thrown the hair into the toilet and onto the floor. [link]

Is this a hate crime? Or just juvenile stupidity and roughhousing gone too far?

Just got back home from the long weekend to see the Benetton advert above. It was in my inbox, posted at SAJA’s ad-savvy blog and mais oui, on our news tab, via an Anonymous Tipster who wrote:

Benetton’s Colors of Domestic Violence campaign features desi survivor? On the one hand, nice effort. On the other: color-coordinating the bruises with the sweaters? Tasteless.

I don’t know if the woman is a DV survivor or a model, but I think the image is opinion-provoking. I want to know how many of you agree with the nameless mutineer who had mixed feelings about the execution of a very important public service announcement. As a DV witness and survivor, I think anything which draws pain out in to the light where it can be confronted is a good thing.

Domestic violence is a concept in constant rotation on this blog; I can grimly recall how many of you have come forward to reveal in our comments section how you have experienced DV yourselves, either directly or indirectly. That’s not to say that this is a horror we brown have a monopoly on by any means; to that end, Benetton does have ads with other “bruised” women of various ethnicities, which you can see here.

::

On a less serious tangent: how does this make you feel about Benetton? Positive, negative, no change? Is this just more un(desi)red P.R. stunting?

I’ve worn and loved them since back in the day (16 years!) so I’m a bit biased, especially since they make my current favorite little black dress (worn to the infamous man-harem meetup, no less), but I think that even if I didn’t already sweat those United Colors, I’d be positively disposed towards a brand which tried to address DV in such an unflinching fashion. What about you?

::

THIS IS NOT A BENETTON AD CAMPAIGN! Not only did one of you direct us to a Salon blurb about this intriguing development, the original link submitted to our news tab had the following statement in its comments section:

Dear All,
this is NOT a United Colors of Benetton advertising campaign. Please don’t be deceived, see the official Benetton Group website www.benettongroup.com

Best regards,
Federico Sartor

Direttore Stampa e Comunicazione Istituzionale
Benetton Group
Tel. 39 0422 519036
Fax 39 0422 519930
www.benettongroup.com/press
www.benettonpress.mobi

Curiouser and curiouser…

There was a thought-provoking article in the SF Chronicle Sunday on the current quandaries faced by high-skilled foreign workers on H-1B Visas in the U.S. A very large proportion of these are Indian (49%), and in high-tech and computer fields (45%).

Currently, the system has problems on every side: first, representatives of software companies (chief among them Microsoft’s Bill Gates) have loudly asserted that they need for the number of available H-1B visas to be increased, as there are currently significant numbers of unfilled positions in many computer related fields (and this is even despite the explosion of outsourcing in the past five years). Secondly, there is confusion about whether H-1B should be understood as a temporary visa, or the first stage on the path to a green card; most Indians I know presume it’s the latter, while the government still seems to think it’s the former. And finally, the system clearly hasn’t been working very well for the immigrants themselves: it currently takes between 6 and 12 years for an Indian on an H1-B to be given a green card, even with employers willing to sponsor them. Confusingly, it takes much less time for H-1B workers from other national backgrounds to be given a green card once they find sponsorship.

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” — Henry Kissinger

Despite their staunch alliance, relations between Pakistan and the USA are … tense. If you were a Pakistani Prime Minister, what could be more natural than … a more personal approach to break the ice, to fill the yawning gap, to closely bring together two former intimates, these two strange bedfellows?

“Shortcut” Aziz gets shot down

Aziz “tried this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: ‘Pakistan is a country of rich traditions,’ staring in (Rice’s) eyes …When Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself as a ladies’ man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone,” the book says. [Link]

Aziz was not some wide eyed naïf when it came to the ways of the West. He was a former ibanker, a VP at Citibank who had worked in London, Athens and New York. He may have had good reason to consider himself an experienced ladies man, a master of international affairs as it were, but he clearly met his match:

“He bragged — to Western diplomats, no less — that he could conquer any woman in two minutes… There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down … By the end of the meeting, he was babbling. The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed…” [Link]

He could conquer any woman in two minutes Pakistan’s response to these reports is that it’s all a cross-cultural misunderstanding:

Pakistan’s deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said that Aziz was only being polite. “The prime minister wanted to be nice with Dr. Rice,” Azeem told AFP. “Our tradition is that we should talk to women gently and decently and this was what the prime minister did…” [Link]

Poor Aziz. He completely miscalculated in his approach :

Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys… [Link]

Although her name means “with sweetness”, nice guys finish last with Dr. Rice. Manmohan Singh would never have made that kind of rookie mistake, he would have shown Condi why you can’t spell aphrodisiac without desi. This is one part of Nehru’s legacy that we can all embrace.

Back when I took yoga classes regularly there was one teacher whose classes were too early on a Saturday morning for me, but who was one of the best teachers around. She was great at explaining things, had really excellent form, was really present in the moment … oh yeah, and she was really hot.

Given how incredibly healthy she seemed, I was surprised to find out that she was 8 years HIV+ . There are a number of reasons for her health - she was an athlete before she was infected, she was on ARVs, but she gave a lot of credit to her yoga practice. She taught a class for the HIV+ which probably increased the quality and also possibly the quantity of their lives.

I concede up front that Yoga can be a very important thing for people whose lives have great challenges (as American PC-speak would put it).

Still, there’s a time and a place for everything. I’m a bit weirded out by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s proposal to bring Yoga to the war torn Iraqi city of Najaf.

That does look like Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I) to me

Maybe I’m reacting a bit harshly. The Art of Living foundation does work in a number of different war zones teaching yoga as part of their “peace work.” It’s just that people’s needs are so large, and given the opportunity costs involved I would rather see efforts directed towards the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In short, I can’t imagine teaching corpse pose to people whose main worry is avoiding becoming a corpse themselves, teaching the Art of Living to those whose worry is the Art of Dying.

On the other hand, I’m far more favorably inclined towards the Indian Army’s yoga classes in Lebanon:

In the village of Ebel es-Saqi, in the farm country of Southern Lebanon, a new subject is being taught at the local middle school: yoga. The instructors are from the Indian army, members of the U.N. peacekeeping force. Three times a week, Lt. Col. Rajesh Kumar of the 1st Battalion Punjab Regiment instructs about 50 students and their teachers at the school. [Link]

Oh. My. Gawd. Babli. Look at her blog.

It’s like, out there, I mean - gross. Look! She’s just so…FAQ.

With sincerest apologies to Sir with love, but I could not resist. I just read Uberdesi and it immediately had me reminiscing (I reminisce, I reminisce) about high school thanks to the blunt advice contained in one of its latest posts; the straightforward way it handled questions everyone wondered about but almost no one dared ask reminded me of Sassy magazine’s shocking candor. How could I not also recall furtive curiosity, the novelty of espresso drinks, 90210 and most definitely, “Baby Got Back” on auto-repeat in my Pioneer.

Yes, ladkas and ladkis. Akka be so old, her first car didn’t have no bougie CD player. Uh-uh. “Auto-repeat” meant that the stereo would smack it up, flip it and rub it down for me and by that I mean, I didn’t have to physically take out the tape and reinsert it to hear the other side, not that any of you youngsters can relate to this in any way. Haha. I said “reinsert”. (Told you I was in a puerile mood).

So there’s a reason why I’ve got fornication on the brain and it’s all Uberdesi’s fault. Their blogger Amrita wrote a post with a title so naughty, I shan’t repeat it here, but I’ll quote from it liberally because any desi with a healthy attitude towards sexuality deserves some fame and appreciation.

Here’s the deal, your juices are altered by what you eat. While I can’t get enough of mamma’s fish curry, I might have to fight the gag reflex with a mouth full of fishy swimmers. Urban dictionary defines fish curry as, “the vagina of an Indian female.” Not so yummy.

That’s just wrong. I’m really sick of the “tastes like curry” remark. Enough already. What am I not sick of? Lines like this which make me laugh so inappropriately, I forget to be upset:

Who wants to be known for having a spicy taco?

No comment. ;)

Alcohol, caffeine, drugs, and heavy spices among other culprits can cause the funk-nasty taste.

And then, because Amrita is a helpful sort of gf, she breaks it down.

Here are a few tips:

*Drink tons of water and flush out your system.

*Eat plenty of fruits. As if one needed a reason to splurge on heavenly Indian mangoes. Pineapple juice supposedly does miracles.

Omnivores! I am windicated! Amrita says so:

*Eat plenty of veggies. Stay away from foul smelling veggies like asparagus, cabbage or cauliflower. This is a plus for the non-meat eaters as vegetarians taste better.

*Cut down on chowing down on spices like garlic and onion if you want someone to chow down on you.

*Cleanse out your system with green juice (parsley or wheat grass with a pinch of cardamom, cinnamon, lemon or mint).

Wheatgrass with cardamom? I didn’t think you could make those shots of freshly shorn lawn palatable, but hey, I’ll give it a try…for my health, of course. What other reason? ;)

Oh and families of suitable boys: if you are reading this, I have no idea what I am writing, I just blog what they tell me to, okay? This proves that I have the submissive proclivities you hope for in a bahu while establishing that I am very chaste; never would I ever find blog posts about what shame shames could or should taste like interesting. Nope. Not me. I am also not going to the store for some pineapple juice nor will I be purchasing a mango anytime soon. Nooooo. I don’t do things like that. ;)

A major conflict has broken out in Punjab, between the orthodox Sikh community and a sect (which may or may not be understood as a ‘Sikh’ sect) called Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS). It’s a strange and complex issue, involving caste issues (DSS members are predominantly from what are called ‘backward’ castes), politics (DSS supporters are overwhelmingly Congress party supporters, while Punjab has for many years been dominated by the BJP-allied Akali Dal), as well fundamental questions of who gets to determine how a religion is defined.

The BBC has the basic details here:

Cities and towns across the northern Indian state of Punjab are shut in response to a general strike called by the Sikh community.

Security forces have been deployed and businesses and schools are closed for the day amid fears of violence.

Sikhs are demanding an apology from the leader of a religious sect who appeared in an advert dressed like one of the Sikh religion’s most important figures.

Sikh community leaders say it is an insult to their religion. (link)

Wednesday morning’s USA Today features a survey of the attitudes of Muslim Americans toward “extremism,” probably to show how such attitudes contrast with the views of Muslims in Europe and elsewhere. The subtext of the survey seemed to be an exploration of the likelihood of homegrown terrorists within the U.S.:

The USA’s estimated 2.4 million Muslims hold more moderate political views than Muslims elsewhere in the world and are mostly middle class and willing to adopt the American way of life, according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of this segment of the nation’s population.

The Pew Research Center study released Tuesday found that “Muslim Americans are very much like the rest of the country,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. “They do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.”

Muslim Americans, however, have a much more negative view about the Iraq war and the war against terrorism than the U.S. public as a whole, the survey found. The study also found pockets of sympathy for Islamic extremism, especially among younger people. Muslims between the ages of 18 and 29 express significantly greater acceptance than older people of suicide bombings in some cases.

The young show a greater tendency to identify themselves as Muslim first and American second. This faith-first pattern is even more pronounced among Muslims in Europe, according to previous Pew surveys. [Link]

The trend that suggests that Muslims in America are willing to adopt the American way of life is something that I expected. We’ve often discussed here on SM that assimilation is stressed within the immigrant population of the U.S., far more than elsewhere. The fact that Muslims between the ages of 18 and 29 show a greater acceptance of suicide bombing doesn’t surprise me either. If you had given the same survey to members of any other religion I am sure the acceptance of suicide bombing would correlate with age. We live in a world where extreme violence is commonplace, and the youngest among us will therefore accept such violence more readily than the older generations. However, the last highlighted finding above did surprise me as I have personally not encountered such an attitude. Then, as I read just a few sentences further, everything was put into perspective:

Previous Pew surveys show that 42% of Christians identify with their religion before their country. Among white evangelicals, 62% say they identify themselves first as Christians. [Link]

So Evangelical Christians in America (who are more likely to have been born in America) are more likely than Muslims to put their faith before their country? That’s food for thought. The final finding in the study is also a trend that we’ve discussed on SM before. African American Muslims (particularly those with a prison record) are more likely to accept extremism.

The poll found that African-Americans are the most disillusioned segment of the Muslim American population, a possible reflection of their economic conditions and experience with racial discrimination. [Link]

So maybe what this survey has really found is that people that live under poor economic conditions and face racial discrimination are more likely to be accepting of violence as a means to change their ends. Did we really need to poll Muslims in America to figure that out?

Pream Anandarajah is a Canadian born Tamil teenager whose uninsured Scarborough home was recently firebombed, sending his mother Jeyaluckshmi to the burn unit at the hospital [via UB]. And yes, this was an ethnic attack, but not in the way you might think. His attackers weren’t white, they were Sri Lankan Tamils, but FOBs recent immigrants instead of Canadian born. Is FOB as bad a word as n—er?

That’s right — there’s intragroup gang violence between CBD and recent immigrant Sri Lankan Hindu Tamils, serious violence:

Hours before the firebombing, a friend of Anandarajah’s was stabbed … He rattles off the names of gangs that he says recently arrived Sri Lankan youth have formed: EST (East Side Thugs); BNS; BNS Juniors; Tux Boys (Tuxedo Park); Tiger Boys; Gilders (Gilders Street). [Link]

The house is now largely destroyed

Touching his neck he says, “I don’t know how I got this scar. It happened after I was knocked out. They beat me up real bad. My mom couldn’t even recognize my face.” [Link]

One major beef between the groups is the use of the word FOB:

Frequently tossed around in the escalating feud between the groups is a loaded word, used to bully, label and shame. The mostly Tamil Sri Lankan youth around Scarborough who get called FOBs say the word is used as a weapon against them.

”It’s like calling a black man, n——-,” says a Grade 10 student. [Link]

Sometimes, you mutineers will see a story which you practically demand we post. After New York Magazine’s “The Look Book” slyly dissed and dismissed a brownie who works in Private Equity who emphasized,

“I love to consume. Consuming is my specialty.”

…some of you started screeching louder than the Howler monkeys in the bunker—and that’s saying a LOT.

Natasha Mitra (r) was interviewed by Amy Larocca and though I was also left smirking at the catty aftermath, I immediately heard the diminutive angel on my shoulder remind me that we don’t know how many questions were asked and then not included, whether Mitra’s words were edited to paint her a certain way, etc.

Having typed that, if my little sister sounded like this, I’d beat her with my red Ferragamo loafer. Not that there’s anything wrong with…sounding…like…this. ;)

Such big accessories!

My bag was a really special purchase. I work with this woman at Louis Vuitton—she picks things out for me, sends pictures, and tells me to pick what I like. She called one day and was like, “I picked a bag for you, and I’m sending it to your house because I know you’re going to love it.” I think it’s called the Stratus.

How old are you?

I’m 26.

Was the bag expensive?

Yes—about $3,500. I guess a lot of craftsmanship goes into it. Accessories for me are the key. I have about twenty bags, and I don’t know how many shoes. But they’re Vuitton, they’re Versace, they’re Gucci, and they’re Dior.

And your sunglasses?

They’re D&G. I was really excited to find them. They’re wild and crazy and different.

What do you do for a living?

I work in private equity. I love the sector that I work in, which is the consumer and retail group. It’s an area that I’m passionate about. I love to consume. Consuming is my specialty.

You picked the right career.

I’m going to Harvard Business School in September. Moving is definitely going to be the most difficult part of the experience.

Thoughts? After reading some of your emails, I’m tempted to respond with a “Tell us what you REALLY think”, but I’m certain you will already do that. I also look forward to the inevitable, “I know her, and, and—” which will appear below at some point. TWO DEGREES of separation, people. The fact that we couldn’t prove it with two random desi models doesn’t mean the theory is invalid, aight?

Avishkar and several other mutineers sent in a story tip from Reuters about a rather unusual wedding complication, so I realized I better post it ASAP, lest I see it in my inbox yet yanother time. ;)

When it came to our color-obsessed culture, I thought it was the girl’s complexion which mattered. I guess turnabout is fair play. Sort of.

Turned down for marriage due to his dark complexion, an Indian man staged a hunger strike outside his would be bride’s house for two days before she finally relented, an official said Saturday.

Didn’t he know they make fairness creams for the new, metrosexual, dark brown man?

Saral Prasad, the 23-year-old groom in eastern Bihar state, said he would not budge from the girl’s village home after she refused to marry him earlier this week in an arranged marriage because he was too dark.

Rajani, 19, changed her mind after two days and the couple got married, Arun Kumar Mishra, a village council official said.

“We were all taken by surprise but Rajani was finally moved by the gesture of the young man and married him,” Mishra said.

Rajani was not quoted as saying, “I just want everyone to shut up and go away already, for Pinter’s sake”.

Most Indian women, especially those in rural areas, often have no choice in matters of marriage, and are coerced into it by relatives and parents.

Yes, of course..we Indian women have no choice with regards to anything and are coerced in to everything we do. Just this past Saturday, at the meetup, I was coerced in to drinking my Madras coffee later than I wanted to, because our poor waiter was so overwhelmed with 26 people ordering at once, he forget that I asked for it. Thrice. Obviously his being an Indian male was why he oppressed me by not sating my caffeine fix. :p And yes, yes…the meetup write-up…it is coming.

I’m sure the science-fiction geeks amongst y’all know about the lost continents of Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu. These are the “missing continents” that were submerged in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans respectively.

[The story of Atlantis has its origin in the Platonic dialogues, while Lemuria was hypothesized in the late 1800s as an explanation for why there were Lemurs in both Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East. Both are now beloved of mystics and kooks. Nobody really cares about Mu, although it is sometimes confused with Lemuria.]

However, I’ll bet you’ve never heard of the Tamil analogue, the lost continent of Kumari Kandam! Proponents say Kumari Kandam is Lemuria, different names for the same continent that once covered most of the Indian ocean:

Sri Lanka together with India, Indonesia and Malaysia were a part of this continent. Many islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are remnants of this continent that in ancient time covered the whole area of today’s ocean. [Link]

The lost continent of Kumari Kandam

It turns out that everything does not actually come from India, it comes from Kumari Kandam. And by everything, I do mean everything.

“Homo Dravida” first evolved in Kumari Kandam; it is the cradle of civilization; the birthplace of all languages in general and of the Tamil language in particular. This is where the first and second great ages (Sangams?) of the Tamils happened, not in India, but in the true Dravidian homeland, further south.

Like Tori and some rather old rodents (oh, like any of you are old enough to remember them), “I don’t like Mondays”. I thought you might feel similarly about today; if so, then perhaps you, too, will find this picture irresistibly smile-provoking. Marinate in the exuberance:

England’s Monty Panesar (R) celebrates with Ian Bell after dismissing the West Indies’ Corey Collymore during the fourth day of their first test cricket match at Lord’s in London May 20, 2007.

Now if you wanted to play our favorite caption game with this photograph, I don’t think anyone would object to such fun. And finally, to all the patient-with-a-novice, possibly-in-withdrawal cricket heads out in Sepia-land…I told you I was no fair-weather-padawan. :)

A writer to the tip line draws our attention to a terrible death in Indiana: “Nupur Srivastava was a distant relative’s daughter and my mother knew her well. Everyone is distraught over her passing, especially given the circumstances.” Srivastava died last week after being in an induced coma since April 3 with third degree burns over 80 percent of her body. She was allegedly doused with gasoline and set on fire by her boyfriend, Michael Wilson, who is now charged with murder. Both Srivastava and Wilson were 33.

Srivastava’s family has an important message:

[Srivastava] was rebuilding her life, setting herself on a road to recovery from alcohol abuse and toward a career in public relations or event management, [her sister Ritu] Adams said. Others saw Srivastava, petite at less than 95 pounds, as “drop-dead gorgeous,” but her sister’s low self-esteem prevented her from seeing herself as beautiful, Adams said.

She suspects that contributed to her sister staying in an abusive relationship. Police investigators are piecing those details together, Adams said. The family simply wants Nupur’s story to resonate with others.

“Tell them that it can happen to anybody,” Veena Srivastava pleaded.

“She was doing so good,” Adams said of her sister’s fresh start. “Maybe she was afraid to leave him. There are a lot of women who probably won’t speak out because they’re ashamed of their past, but that shouldn’t matter.

“People say, ‘It can’t happen to me.’ Guess what? It happened to my sister.”

Update: That link either moved or is now broken. For more information, please try here.

By now, even the Grey Lady knows about Provoked, the new Jag Mundhra biopic starring TMBWITW as Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Naveen Andrews as her abusive husband. The actual story behind the movie is a horrific one:

Ahluwalia arrived in Britain in 1979 from India, aged 24, following an arranged marriage… Deepak immediately began to abuse her. ” … He would push me about, yank my hair, hit me and drop heavy pans on my feet…” Deepak also raped her frequently, telling her that this was his right.

[After 10 years, in 1989] One night, when she had gone to sleep after cooking Deepak’s dinner, he woke her up and demanded money. When she refused, he tried to break her ankles by twisting them. He then picked up a hot iron and held it to her face. Eventually Deepak fell asleep and Ahluwalia was consumed with the rage she had suppressed for 10 years. Approaching him with a can of petrol, she poured it over Deepak’s feet and set them alight… [Link]

Originally convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, her case was taken up by the Asian advocacy group Southall Black Sisters (SBS) who found her new counsel and sought a retrial.

Following a campaign, led by SBS, Ahluwalia’s conviction was quashed on appeal in 1992. The court accepted some new evidence … [and] Ahluwalia admitted manslaughter at the retrial…

Ahluwalia’s successful appeal against her murder conviction set a historic precedent - that women who kill as a result of severe domestic violence should not be treated as cold-blooded murderers. As Ahluwalia says, “I never intended to kill him, I just wanted him to stop hurting me…” [Link]

Ahluwalia became a cause celebre, a household name who was later honored in an unusual ceremony that included both Cherie Blair and Spice Girl Mel B.

As usual with biopics, there is some controversy over the liberties taken in the process of making the movie. The director is entirely unapologetic:

The director ‘Jag’ Jagmohan Mundhra in his defence said “Even if you tell a true story, a true story is never really a true story. How do you define the truth? None of us were really there and obviously the recollections of people who were there have changed now. Ultimately I do have to tell an engaging story. If I can’t tell an engaging story no matter what cause is at stake, nobody will see it…” [Link]

A big thanks to everyone (~20 people) that made it out to the first southern meet-up (Texas-sized) that Sepia Mutiny has had. I kid you not, a few readers drove in from Austin (2.5 hours drive) and San Antonio (3 hours drive). The weather was as absolutely perfect as it ever gets in Houston (we sat outside) and the Hobbit Cafe had great beer that kept coming (as you’d expect in The Shire). The official meet-up lasted until 9 p.m. but the unofficial meet-up went well past 1 a.m. It might be a couple more months until the next Texas meet-up, but it will either be in Austin or at the SM Bureau Offices in Houston. Hope to see some more of you next time.

Earlier this week the band Bamboo Shoots, and unsigned college band out of New Jersey (finally, something good about Edison), won an MTVU sponsored contest beating out over a 1000 other bands (thanks for the tip Anmol):

Propelled by votes from college students nationwide, the foursome from New Jersey emerged as the top choice of the more than 1,300 unsigned college acts registered on mtvU’s BestMusiconCampus.com. Bamboo Shoots - fusing upbeat, danceable rock, electro and South Asian/Indian sounds - was announced as mtvU’s inaugural “Artist of the Year” via a network debut performance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” a platform which has helped launch countless up- and-coming bands to superstardom. The band will now set out on an unprecedented journey that will see them record a full LP with Epic Records, premiere two music videos on mtvU/mtvU.com, perform on tour dates with top national artists and collect a $50,000 cash advance - all of which will be documented in an original mtvU series premiering in the fall. [Link]

Even though word was out that the group had won the MTVU contest, the official announcement came during their live performance on the Conan O’Brien Show:

Once upon a time Indian cinema could rest secure in the loyalty of its large domestic base. Even if Indian audiences didn’t always like local movies, they were unlikely to defect to American (or other foreign) movies. However, this is all changing, as Hollywood sets its sights on the domestic Indian movie market:

… only a few years ago, Hollywood films warranted only about 100 prints, and if there were dubbed versions, they were often released after the English-language version finished its run. The tactic made most Indian moviegoers feel like second-class citizens …

The turning point, experts say, was last year, when some 400 prints of the James Bond film “Casino Royale” were released in India - including three versions in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu - simultaneously with the global debut. [Link]

In 2005, foreign films had only around 5% of the $1 billion dollars in theater tickets sold in India each year. However, Hollywood profits are now growing at 35% per year as they aggressively roll out dubbed movies as part of a global release. Despite Bollywood’s size (more people buy tickets to Bollywood films than Hollywood ones, world wide), it doesn’t have Hollywood’s deep pockets:

Movie tickets in many part of India cost $1, meaning Bollywood’s global revenues are about 2 percent of Hollywood’s, says Mr. Bose. “Hollywood can spend 8 percent of its normal marketing budget for a film and get the same amount of exposure as a top Hindi film,” says Sanjay Ram of BusinessofCinema.com in Mumbai.

The most lavish Bollywood films rarely cost more than $10 million. “Spider-Man 3” is thought to have cost $260 million. [Link]

The new release of Spiderman3 has local moguls scared:

The film opened to Rs 19.17 crore on it’s opening weekend in India, making it a likely contender for the highest earning film of 2007 — Indian or otherwise. [Link]

“Spider-Man 3” has already been blamed for taking the momentum from one of the few major Hindi releases this year, “Ta Ra Rum Pum” (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”). [Link]

Sequels to “Shrek”, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Harry Potter” are all also due out later this summer.

Questionable Content is a cult webcomic that is a cross between Friends and Seinfeld, except for Indie music snobs instead of mainstream audiences. It’s a “slice of life” story about 20-somethings in Northampton, Massachusetts. Recently, author and illustrator Jeph Jacques introduced Meena.

Meena works at the morgue, and flirts by making Ebola jokes. (This is realistic - I do know desi women in real life who flirt by making jokes about horrible diseases). She also has all the normal tribulations of a desi woman:

Yup. It’s slice of life, alright.

A “crude” bomb exploded at the 17th century-era Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad during Friday prayers, killing five and seriously injuring at least 25 others (Thanks, Red Snapper and Tamasha):

Minutes after the blast, Muslims angered by what they said was a lack of police protection began chanting slogans — a situation that quickly devolved into mobs throwing stones at police, who responded with baton charges and tear gas.

Some reports I’ve read state that the tear gas was used to clear the area, to help ambulances rush to and from the scene.

The bombing and ensuing clash between worshippers and police raised fears of wider Hindu-Muslim violence in the city, which has long been plagued by communal tensions and occasional spasms of religious bloodletting.

Many of those injured in the explosion at the 17th-century Mecca Masjid were severely wounded, and the city’s police chief, Balwinder Singh, warned the death toll could rise.

Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, appealed for calm between Hindus and Muslims.

Reddy called the bombing, which killed at least five people and wounded 25, an act of ”intentional sabotage on the peace and tranquility in the country.” [NYT]

Mecca Masjid, so named because some of its bricks were brought from that holy city, took 8000 masons almost eight decades to complete; it is the largest mosque in Hyderabad.

Developing…

…via SAJAforum. This ran in the WSJ today, as we were still discussing caste on this blog. What excellent timing for a barely-mediocre cartoon.

What do you think? Over at SAJA, commenter Sendhil had the following to say, which left me giggling:

If this is from the WSJ’s “Pepper… and Salt” spot, it’s not unusual that it’s not funny. Those cartoons are funny less often than “Fred Bassett”. I have concluded that they must serve some other, hidden, purpose, like sending coded messages about tomorrow’s Dow performance to the members of the Trilateral Commission.

Fred Bassett? Ouch.

After much kvetching about it, I will cave and put up a post so you aren’t tormented by South Indian perfection everytime you hit F5.

I find it wickedly hilarious that the only thing I had “ready-made” was also about…food. :) Don’t worry— these Naan looked a lot better than they tasted, which was not very good. How do you cook something with ghee in a tandoor and STILL have it taste like a pita?

::

I keep it fobulous, y’all.

No, really. I’m going to. By my conservative estimate, we have people from twelve different countries working on my project; several of them bring food from home every day, which they nuke in the microwave, which means the fragrance/reeking odor permeates the entire office suite.

When my Pakistani colleague heats something up, it smells vaguely familiar. Same for the Turkish food. But everything else…seriously, someone needs to pass a law which prohibits the reheating of SEAFOOD in microwaves. Vomitacious. That’s what that is. So, I am no longer going to be considerate to the point of paranoia about eating brown food at work, especially not when the Pakistani food comes here in big plastic dabas to facilitate multiple servings— people love desi food, so the man sweetly brings extra. That’s how I got some unexpected halwa a week or so ago. He was walking around the same way my Mom does at home, at the end of lunch, looking for someone to finish the last portion (whether they want to or not), so he could wash the dish. I was already full and in no mood for sooji halwa, but I got a big ass serving of it and you best believe I cleaned my plate in time to pass his inspection 20 mins later. :)

So. This is naan I found at Whole Paycheck on Sunday. I had absolutely no hope of it being good, especially since it has “BEST New Food Product in America” stickered upon it. I mean, it’s at Whole Foods. How authentic could it be? Still, stupidity springs eternal, innit?

Well, it is not the real deal or even remotely close, despite the fact that it is made (allegedly) in a tandoor, with ghee no less. But after the first two disappointing bites, I found myself going back for more. It tastes like really soft pita bread. Or a cross between pita and naan. As long as it doesn’t taste like Bisquick (I’m looking at you, lazy desi restaurants!!!), I’m open to destroying something pickled with it. I’m surprised to report that the “regular/white” type tasted much better than the whole-grain-loaded version pictured above left. Too bad, too. The wheatish ones looked somewhat like my mom’s puris…but they taste even more like pita bread than the “white” naan do.

Since I was already in an experimental mood, I tried a DIFFERENT brand of Kaduku Manga pickle: “Nirapara”. Verdict? Not bad at all. Tastes more home-made than my belowed Grandma’s brand, but that is because it has an edge I can’t quite determine the origin of— and imperfection feels homely. No matter. It’s my “work” kaduku manga. I’ve got half a case of the real deal safely squirreled away at home, where it belongs.

Actually, it’s less than three days away, but who is being pedantic…not me, especially not when there is gluttonous dosa and vada consumption to anticipate in my near future.

D.C.’s sixth meetup will occur this Saturday at Amma’s Vegetarian, in Georgetown at 1 o’clock isharp. Since none of you read that, I’ll restate it, this time with formatting:

WHERE: Amma’s Vegetarian Kitchen, 3291 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20007, 202-625-6625

WHEN: Saturday, 1pm

WHY: Because you asked for it!

Lakshmi, MuraliMannered, Ashu, Arun, Coffeeface, Portmanteau, Sriram and at least three others have all tentatively RSVP’d— what about you? For all of you who are thinking, “There’s always next time”, don’t. There may not be. Besides, brunch this weekend sounds enticing, doesn’t it? Yum. Carpe dosa!

It’s hard to imagine something worse for a parent than having to cremate their own child. Today Sukhdeo Hardat of Queens has to do just that after his daughter’s policeman ex-fiancé shot her to death in the middle of the street with his service pistol.

He refused to let go

Harry Rupnarine joined the NYPD two years ago as a transit police officer. Soon thereafter, while in uniform, he met Guiatree Hardat and became her first serious boyfriend. She had just come to the USA from Guyana, and was studying at Queens College to become a math teacher. He was older, possessive and controlling:

The possessive cop wanted to keep so close an eye on his girlfriend that he often called her a dozen or more times a day. Rupnarine, 37, constantly nagged Guiatree Hardat, 22, to marry him. He was angry that she wanted to wait until she finished college. [Link]

They broke up, but got back together again. Unfortunately, things hadn’t changed much:

Just a week ago, he flipped out when she asked him to come in the kitchen and talk to her while she did some household chores.”Your attention can’t be in two places at once!” he told her, according to Hardat’s relatives. “You must listen to me!”. [Link]

They went out to dinner last Thursday, as Rupnarine tried to patch things back up, but it didn’t work. She called her father at 7:08 PM to ask for a ride, then called him back to say she would take the bus home. He worried:

But Hardat, 46, felt uneasy about his daughter and headed out to find her. Her cell phone kept going straight to voice mail, and when she finally picked up, he heard her final words. “Go away!” the father remembers her daughter yelling at Rupnarine. “I hate you! I hate you!”

The call ended at that point, and by the time Hardat arrived at the scene, just past 7:45 p.m., Rupnarine was in handcuffs and Hardat’s daughter was dead on the ground in a pool of blood. [Link]

A bomb exploded in the Peshawar restaurant where a “close relative” of Mullah Dadullah—the charismatic leader of the Taliban who was killed this past weekend—had been arrested, though there is no confirmation that said arrest provided the intelligence which helped us find Dadullah. The attack is especially ominous because it indicates that the war in Afghanistan is spreading to Pakistan [via PI].

The suicide bomber’s severed leg, found in the rubble of a restaurant where he killed 25 people, was wrapped with brown tape used to seal packages. On the tape, scrawled in the Pashto language, was an ominous warning.

“Those who spy for America will face this same fate,” it said.

The bomb went off yesterday in the four-story Marhaba Hotel in an old quarter of this frontier city, which served as the main staging point for mujahedeen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s and is still synonymous with violent Islamic radicalism and political intrigue…

In addition to the warning for those who spy for the United States, provincial police chief Sharif Virk said, the parcel tape bore the Persian word Khurasan - often used in extremist videos to describe Afghanistan.

The timing of the attack is noteworthy:

The bomb went off shortly after the restaurant’s Afghan owner, Saddar Uddin, returned from a trip outside with some relatives, said waiter Hassan Khan. Uddin, his two sons, two other relatives, and seven employees were among the dead, he said.

A local intelligence official said Uddin, an ethnic Uzbek, had links to the party of anti-Taliban warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, part of the Northern Alliance that helped the United States topple the old regime.

Former SM blogger Apul tipped us off to the fact that Menton, France has a lemon festival every year (this year’s was back in February):

The Lemon Festival is a celebration of all things related to the small yellow fruit.

Menton is the lemon capital of the Cote d’Azur and is very popular with both locals and tourists.

Large constructions and floats that are made mostly of lemons parade down the streets.

Everyday throughout the festival these sculptures can seen around the town and sometimes include popular cartoon characters. [Link]

The theme this year was India:

What might have happened if Shah Jahan’s love for Mumtaz had soured with age…

Quick— read the following paragraph and tell me what you think:

The women legally arrived…in 2002; (their employers) then confiscated their passports and refused to let them leave their home, authorities said.

Domestic slavery? Nightmarish abuse of Sri Lankan maids, at the hands of Arab employers? That’s what I thought. I was only half right (Thanks, KXB).

Two Indonesian women were subjected to beatings and other abuse and forced by a couple to work in their home in a swank Long Island neighborhood without pay for several years, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Authorities said they uncovered the abuse after one of the women was found by police wandering outside a doughnut shop on Sunday morning, wearing only pants and a towel…[IHT]

Apparently, employees at the store thought the woman was homeless, until she started slapping herself and trying to utter the word “master”.

Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 35, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, both from India, entered not guilty pleas at their arraignment in U.S. District Court and were ordered held pending a Thursday bail hearing. Their attorney did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. [IHT]

The women were only allowed outside of the house if they were taking out the garbage; when anyone visited, they were stashed in a 3x3’ closet. That’s pleasant compared to this:

The women were subjected to beatings, scalding water thrown on them, and forced to climb up and down stairs as punishment for misdeeds, prosecutors said. In one case, they said, one of the women was forced to eat 25 hot chili peppers at one time.

One of the women also told authorities she was cut behind her ears with a small pocket knife and both were forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen. They were fed so little, they claimed, that they were forced to steal food and hide it from their “captors.”[IHT]

It’s just so depressing. What quirk of destiny relegates one South Asian woman to endure the beatings of her Arab mistress while halfway around the world, her desi— albeit privileged— counterpart metes out similar viciousness to another brown human being? Sri Lankan and Fillipino maids get abused in the middle east, the Indonesian survivors from this cringe-inducing story were enslaved by people our parents might associate with, right here in the U.S and desperate, option-less women everywhere are exploited by those who should know better but don’t care. For shame.

Anna’s thought-provoking post on caste yesterday generated a few links to defenders of the institution which I found intriguing. One defender argues that caste is nothing but cultural pluralism:

… as a truly pluralistic society, the Hindu India allowed each ethnic group, regardless of how numerically small it was, to retain its identity…Caste is a result of this spirit of freedom and pluralism. It is something to be proud of… I pointed out that in the casteless Christian West, the minorities have been forced to abandon their identities and instead have been made to imitate the dominant group in every aspect of life [Link]

This is disingenuous because it entirely ignores the hierarchy and separation at the root of the caste system. What he’s trying to imply is that the caste system creates groups that are “separate but equal” except that he can’t even say that they’re even nominally equal (and we know how the whole “separate but equal” thing worked out).

Another author goes the opposite direction and embraces the idea that caste is all about inequality but says this is good:

… jati and varnam are merely a codification of the fact that all humans are not born equal in their endowments: some are tall, some are fat, some are musically talented, and so on. Caste is about the ruthless Bell Curve, and is about as inescapable as race. It is neither good nor bad; it just is (casteism, however, is reprehensible, just as racism is.) In fact, caste must be useful, which is why it has survived for so long… [Link]

Of course he doesn’t come out and say that it’s about groups being better than others, but when somebody says that “all humans are not born equal in their endowments” it’s hard not to conclude that they’re talking about a hierarchy. His social darwinism comes out loud and clear when he argues that the survival of caste as a social institution is evidence of its usefulness; he’s saying that caste must be a beneficial adaptation for it to have persisted.

Every weekday morning as I make my way towards the looooooong escalators which lead to red lines, I smile at the man who is employed by the Washington Post to hand out their freebie paper The Express (a.k.a. WaPo Lite). It’s stapled and tabloid-sized which makes it convenient to manage but more importantly, it’s interesting enough to make the trip to work fly by; I especially like the back pages, where they choose pithy quotes from blogs, mention things like FREE Haagen-Dazs and update us metro-riding DCists on celebrity-related crap.

I don’t read Trent or Perez because I’m not THAT interested in whether Britney is wearing knickers (Shamita Shame Shame on the other hand…) but I don’t mind learning enough to keep me clued in to what might be considered conversational fair-game. That’s why I skimmed the following blurb about Junior Combover and his spouse, while waiting for the next train:

Donald Trump became a grandfather over the weekend, 14 months after he became a dad all over again. The baby girl, Kai Madison, was born to Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Vanessa, both 29, on Saturday in New York, according to published reports. She weighed 6 pounds, 14 ounces. Trump Jr. said the girl’s name comes from her maternal grandfather, a Danish musician. Kai will grow up alongside her uncle Barron, born to Trump and his third wife, Melania, in 2006.

Fine, fine…but what caught my attention was the title:

Family Tree Irrevocably Mangled by Trump Scion

I was so perplexed by this, I didn’t hustle like a normal person and I almost missed my opportunity to evade Sliding Doors. Seriously? Wasn’t “mangled” a bit much? I know, the writers at Express are delightfully snarky, but this immediately and consummately reminded me of all the times when I was younger and my classmates were weirded out by my byzantine family tree:

It’s kind of a famous line now, uttered by former Virginia Senator George Allen to a young political staffer named S.R. Sidarth. Many of us think it was probably responsible for bringing down the former Senator and shifting the Senate to the Democrats in the 2006 elections. It turns out that Allen’s statement would have been MUCH more appropriate if he had uttered it just under 400 years ago. On today, the 400-year-anniversary of the founding of Jamestown and the birth of what would one day become America, Francis Assisi and his fellow reporters at Indolink bring us this news culled from historical research of the last several years:

The best evidence suggests that the people from India arrived in colonial America in one of two ways. They were taken aboard as lascars or helpers aboard the trading ships of the British East India Company from Indian ports, and, on reaching England, succumbed to the promises of agents who were taking indentured workers to the New World. Or else they were taken as servants by the British “Nabobs” who amassed their fortunes in India and subsequently returned home to England and thence to the newly established colony in America - where they took their servants with them as a sign of their status.

A 2003 study prepared by Martha W. McCartney, a project historian for the National Park Service’s Jamestown Archaeological Assessment reveals that Captain George Menefie, who was assigned 1200 acres of land in Jamestown in 1624 used “Tony, an East Indian,” as a headright. This is further confirmed in a 2006 report from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation which identifies Menefie as a wealthy English merchant who arrived in Virginia in 1622, and obtained legal right to the land by paying passage for 24 immigrants, including an East Indian.

At the heart of the early migration to colonial America was the headright system designed to encourage immigration. Every Englishman who “imported” a laborer or servant to the colony received a fifty-acre land grant.

What the evidence from Jamestown/Williamsburg suggests is that the first East Indians were brought to Virginia within less than a generation of the arrival of European settlers in Virginia - and within a decade after the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. [Link]

Of course, as we know from history, Jamestown began to flounder and descended into chaos until they started profiting from growing John Rolfe’s tobacco, harvested by the first slaves in North America. After the first batch of African slaves, East Indians soon followed:

Social historian Thomas Brown, a faculty member at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas has corroborated this in a 2004 research paper. Brown explains that many East Indians were imported to the American colonies by way of England, arriving already Christianized and fluent in English. Others arrived as slaves who had been captured and sold. “It is impossible to confidently estimate the size of the South Asian population in the Western Shore counties, but “East Indians” outnumber “Indians” in the extant colonial records after 1710 or so,” acknowledges Brown.

Furthermore, he claims: ‘In 18th century Chesapeake, South Asians stood out from sub-Saharan slaves both in culture and appearance. Since South Asians were a minority among the slave population, the community’s perception of their distinctiveness persisted for a longer period of time.’ And most surprisingly, Brown adds: ‘there was a significant contingent of “East Indian” slaves in the colonial Chesapeake.’ [Link]

You might not believe this, but we’re not really a vain bunch here at the mutiny. There’s barely a single full length mirror in the entire bunker, and it’s hard for me to move Rajni the monkey (who loves to watch herself preen) away when I need to tie my turban in the morning. We’re quite bashful really, and say awwww shucks a lot, as befits people of our rank and station in life.

This would explain why blogger Vinod failed to tell the rest of us about his latest honor (Thanks Manish!). Vinod was nominated for “The Bay Area’s Most Eligible Bachelor Contest” !!!!

We’re not asking for your votes, Sanjaya fans, they closed the polls on Friday. Instead, we’re asking you to collectively hold your breath until the winner is announced at some point tomorrow. If he wins, our very own man meat mutineer will receive an invitation to participate in the Guardsmen Bachelor Auction on May 17. That’s right … if we’re lucky, Vinod could be auctioned off to the highest bidder, thus demonstrating his strong belief in the efficiency of the market.

Just one complaint, yaaar. Whoever pimped you out used this photo when I think that this photo shows your good side. And if you win, remember, I’ve got dibs on one of the two VIP tickets and the pimp costume. A man has to look his best …

I think I found this after reading an email sent out on the ASATA listserv; it asked for participants for a survey on caste and Sikhism. Since I’m interested in both, I decided to take a quick look. The first notes wafted tentatively through my iBook’s wee speakers and I smiled: Van Halen. I knew exactly what kind of video this would be. We used to make ones just like it for JSA’s Fall and Spring “State”, usually to open the conference. Well, it was either that or we’d blare Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power“…

After watching it, I was moved, because I felt like so much of it was applicable to all of us, not just Sikhs. Someone Malayalee needs to make one of these, stat, I muttered…and then I realized that they didn’t. Maybe they should just watch this, I thought and that’s when I knew it belonged here, in a space where it would get the attention it rightly deserves.

Ravidasia // Khatri // Jatt // Tarkhan…The labels that divide us are endless. Caste, gender, class, and power tear apart our Qaum, our Gurdwaras, and our Pariwars. How do we overcome? How do we forge unity without silencing voices? [Jakara]

My closest friend in college was a Sikh girl from Fremont, who happened to be Tarkhan. My boyfriend from Freshman through Junior year was Jatt. So were all of his friends. They made fun of her when she wasn’t around and ignored her when she was. This baffled coconut-flavored me. “Why are you so mean to her?” I’d ask him, over and over. “She’s nice.”

“Because she’s…Tarkhan. They’re lower class. And so backwards— didn’t you say her parents tried to get her married when she was 17, that they didn’t even want to send her to college? Who the hell does that?”

“That’s not her fault, why are you taking it out on her?”

“Look, it’s a Sikh thing…it’s probably difficult to understand. Don’t you have a sorority thing to go to?”

::

I’m amazed at how often caste shows up on our comment threads, among second gen kids who should know better. Then I am humbled as I remember that I’m complicit in this too, when I tease my best friend about doing TamBrahm stuff or when I embroider stories from bygone UC Davis days with an extra adjective which probably isn’t necessary:

“Well a lot of students were from the Central Valley or Yuba City…so a good number of the desis I befriended were Jatt Sikh.”

It’s so insidious, the way this need to inform others of where we are in some dated hierarchy persists. Right now, we need to ask ourselves…why?

I’m a little nervous about hosting my first meet-up solo. So far every meet-up I’ve attended has been co-hosted by Anna or Taz (who are far better organizers and bring name tags). I think my fear is that at the meet-up I will be expected to give a speech like William Wallace did right before he yelled FREEDOM! I can’t be expected to sound mutinous on demand. In truth, we don’t really talk much about Sepia Mutiny at meet-ups. We do share good eats, merry drinks, and take scandalous pictures (none of which shall ever see the light of day) with good peoples. All bloggers, commenters, and lurkers (and friends of the three-aforementioned groups) are welcome. The meet-up details have finally solidified and it is time for Texas to represent.

Where: Hobbit Cafe

When: Sat, May 19th @ 6.p.m.

PLEASE RSVP BY THURSDAY SO I CAN MAKE ACCURATE RESERVATIONS:

abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com

The reason for meeting relatively early in the evening is so those that want to (count me in) can move on to a second venue to continue the good times in a less “Shire-like” environment. Perhaps something more like the dive bar at the “Inn of the Prancing Pony.”

Now, the real question is have I scared people away by all my Lord of the Rings allusions?

This is insane.

I’m sitting in front of the television, one eye on the screen, the other on my laptop, feeling like a hysterical drama-queen because despite everything that I’ve grown up with in Karachi across the years, I don’t know if I can handle this. And I feel a bit stupid for being so affected by it—I’ve seen and lived through worse, and I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of town that will (most likely) not be affected by what is happening, but I can’t help it.

Karachi seems to have gone completely mental. Dozens of cars on fire. Even more people dead and/or injured. And no one knows why.

There are about a hundred different conspiracy theories flying around about what has prompted this day-long blood-bath in Karachi, but from what I’ve managed to glean, the basic story goes something like this: the (fired) Chief Justice of Pakistan was supposed to come to Karachi this morning to address his supporters and the MQM, a political party that has historically controlled Karachi since inception decades ago, and is more of a cult than anything else, decided to hold “rallies” to counter his speeches. The current opposition parties, held rallies in the city to welcome the ousted CJP, and not to be outdone, the MQM decided to support the government.

How they’re managing to support the government by gunning down strangers on the streets, setting fire to vehicles, firing at apartment buildings in which defenceless mothers with six-month-old children cower, and threatening to storm private television channels—well, that’s beyond me. There are over fifty people dead—I have friends who work in the hospitals where people have been taken; the gunmen have fired on ambulances carrying injured people to the hospital and riddled them with bullets; there are snipers atop apartment buildings and lurking in junctions leading off of Shahrah-e-Faisal, which is effectively a transport artery for Karachi and a route that is almost impossible to avoid using if crossing any significant distance in the city, and all through it, the mother-fucking police are lying on benches taking naps, their shoes off, socks rolled down, moving their cars out of the area, and frog-marching unarmed men into the hands of these violent SOBs, standing there and watching as they beat the shit out of some poor guy with the butts of their rifles, and not doing a damn’ thing to stop it.

Say THAT five times fast. Anyway, am I the only one who had a terribly silly Auntie refer to her kids’ naughty bits as their “shame shame”? Thankfully, my parents always said, “that…you know…” while vaguely nodding in my midsection’s general direction or “kundi”, which is optimal compared to what Silly-Auntie called it. Way to instill healthy feelings about one’s body, there. Obviously anything labeled “shame” is going to be thought of positively. Oh, wait. We’re desi. My bad.

Aside: At one of the best Kahani workshops ever hosted in DC, somehow one of the writing exercises (d)evolved in to a brief discussion of what one was taught to call their “shame shame”, after Turbanhead’s adorable youngest sibling read aloud her draft, which mentioned how she referred to that area as…wait for it…wait for it…

…her happy-no-no place.

Ah, I love wannabe fiction writers and their fantastically fecund minds. :D

I swear I had a point…but it’s Friday and I’ve missed happy hour…what…was…I…OH YES! Shamita. Dear sweet Shamita. Shamita whom I had never heard of before yesterday, who is younger sister to the woman whose effigy was still a top-seller, as of last week. I’m referring to Big Brother star and Richard Gere-magnet Shilpa Shetty, of course.

Well, Shamita pulled a Britney, though in my day, it was called a Basic Instinct. She showed up somewhere all of two of you care about in a mini-dress without her chuddies on (Thanks, UberDesi). That’s the big deal. Hahaha. Now you know. Yo slick, blow.

While you do that, I’m going to ponder whatever happened to Bel, Biv and DeVoe and whether one should trust a big butt and a smile (I’m inclined to say yes, but I’m biased). Happy Weekend, y’all.

It’s Friday, which means another work week is over and it is time for some flash fiction-fabricating.

Between the last post I wrote, the edifying discussion on hair which spontaneously occurred when we failed to identify a brown model, AGAIN (Sorry, Sree) and the most precious Gmail I’ve received in weeks (which contained this query-via-wideo from a four-year-old) well, The Papaya, he is playing on my mind. One of you messaged me regarding your surprise that I hadn’t voted for Sanjaya, a secret I revealed here, but American Idol has nothing to do with my passion for papaya. I sweat him because he’s so kind and ingenuous, because of his sweet nature.

I’m thinking in particular about Papaya’s last performance (available in the video above), which took him from tears to a tiny bit of triumph when he customized the chorus of Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About” to “other than haaaaaaaair”. That was the moment when my affection for him became solid, when I realized that it wasn’t just idle amusement; he had put up with so much and he was still smiling in his typical, good-natured way. I was amazed, mostly because I’ve never been a fan of this song, but also because he seemed so poised for a teenager. “My hero,” I thought. All those detractors piling on him in addition to the biggest hater of them all—Simon—plus the blatantly racist slant to much of the criticism he received (uh…where were the anti-Italian comments?) equaled humility and niceness, not bitterness or resentment. When I grow up, I want to be a papaya.

::

This week, write about gossip, the blues, papaya, fanjayas or continue the week’s trend and 55 away about hair, ‘pooed, oiled or otherwise. If none of this tickles your knickers, pick your own plot to flash some fiction with, but please play along anyway. I’m sure you have something to talk about, how about packaging it in a mere fifty-five words?

According to information received by the expatriate Bangladeshi organization Drishtipat, the journalist, blogger and researcher Tasneem Khalil may be released from military custody in Dhaka this evening after being taken last night from his home by the military. Drishtipat is running updates here. Tasneem writes for the Bangladesh Daily Star, is a stringer for CNN and has also carried out research for Human Rights Watch. He is also a blogger, and his site offers interesting perspectives on the political upheaval Bangladesh is currently undergoing, as well as features on social and environmental issues. Tasneem is 26 years old, married and a father of one. We stand in solidarity.

Tasneem’s work with international news and advocacy organizations has resulted in a very rapid spread of the news of his detention, which will be an embarrasment to the Bangladeshi military authorities. HRW has released a statement with an account of the nocturnal visit from agents claiming to be with the “joint task force.” HRW links to a 2006 report on torture and extrajudicial killings by the Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion to which Tasneem contributed. All this contributes to the obvious fears for him and reminds us of the peril faced by others who may not have the benefit of such a rapid international outcry.

UPDATE: Tasneem Khalil was released this evening, local time. Per Drishtipat:

Update 9:11:33 pm BDT
Tasneem is meeting with Mahfuz Anam in his office alone. Staffers in office say he looks physically ok, but badly shaken up. He is being taken home to his wife by DS staff after the meeting with MA.

Note also this earlier update:

Update 7:10:15 pm BDT
Senior Daily Star office are huddled in office, including Mahfuz Anam. MA has released a statement. Excerpts: ” “I contacted the authorities concerned and was informed that him being questioned was not due to his journalistic work and had nothing to do with his functions at The Daily Star…. In fact, it was because of the contents of his personal blog and some SMSs he had sent recently…. Following my discussions with the authorities and because of the caretaker government’s commitment to the policy of freedom of the media, it was agreed that he would be released tonight.” Full statement is not online on DS website yet.

A raccoon, a turtle and a squirrel walk in to a bar…and nothin’. But this procyonid, testudine and rodent are a bit more useful than that—they’re amusing. Via Sajaforum:

Sigh. This Sanjaya free-existence is almost unbearable.

Come back, little papaya, with or without those bees. We long to know what directions your tresses could have taken next, what conditioner you use, and whether you ‘poo. No, really…do you? And where do you stand on hair oil? Perhaps we’ll never know…

If we had a tradition of open threads here, I would just open one here today and ask all of y’all to share your thoughts on the Sepoy Mutiny, a.k.a. Rebellion, a.k.a. First War of Independence, a.k.a. perhaps some other name, depending on your viewpoint and the importance you assign to nomenclature in history. I know shamefully little about this fundamental event in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, and even less about the debates that it has spurred among historians, except that I know that these have been complicated and sometimes heated.

But today marks the official sesquicentennial commemoration of the start of the Mutiny/Rebellion/War, and by way of launching the conversation, I present three different takes that are in the news today. First we have Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, who gave the official start to a youth march from Meerut to Delhi a couple of days ago. His remarks to a RediffNews correspondent emphasized the secular nature of the uprising; he observed that India today can learn from the uprising the importance of pluralism, secularism and religious understanding:

The significance of 1857 for today’s youth is that it makes you realise that we all are one people in spite of our diversity.

The freedom-fighters who revolted against the British in 1857 were mostly Hindus in Meerut. After disobeying their British superiors they went straight to the Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and made him their king.

They had no ill-feeling for the Mughal king though he was a Muslim. This is the kind of secular bonding these soldiers had in them.

Our young generation must remember that united we stand, and though we are a diverse people we have to maintain our unity. That is what the message of 1857 was to all Indians. …

This is another message that Bahadur Shah Zafar and the freedom-fighters of 1857 wanted to pass on to the future generations. No matter what your religion and region be, respect all religion and maintain harmony. …

We have to remember the fact that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. We have more Muslims than in Pakistan and Bangladesh but we Indians live together peacefully and I am proud to say all Muslims are my brothers.

Did you grow up combing your Barbie’s blinding blond locks? Rooting around a Crayola box for the “Burnt Umber” or “Ochre” since “Flesh” looked nothing like your own? Ahh…those self-conscious days are over (for the most part) since that crayon is now “peach,” Bratz dolls come in all shades of colors (and flavors of sluttiness), and there’s even a magazine for young South Asian kids (Kahani) that’s as awesome as Highlights! (OK, fine. Kahani’s a lot smarter. If IQ=DQ aka “desi quotient,” I wouldn’t be writing in this space, mmkay?)

Anyway, adding to this glorious list for sepia kids - longtime Sepia commenter, meetup regular, and all-around lit-star Pooja Makhijani just published another book! Mama’s Saris is a beautifully illustrated children’s book about a young girl mesmerized by her mother’s luscious sari collection, yearning to play dress-up, to grow up to be like just like her mother.

Pooja is already well-known as the editor of the sensitive essay collection Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America and has written for many youth/teen magazines. Most remarkably, she writes about universal childhood themes (such as wanting to wear your mother’s clothes to feel grown up) in a South Asian context, with very specific desi details.

While most of us look back on our childhoods with adult eyes, Pooja somehow retained the uncanny ability to delve into the past and write about it with a childlike sensibility intact.

Reading this book, I remembered my mother helplessly shooing me away as I tried to catch the gold lights in her party saris with my grubby hands…and the time we went shopping for the first sari I could call my very own…

I think I’m going to buy another copy as a gift for Mother’s Day. I’m keeping this one for a daughter I may have someday.

SM Reader 3rd Eye posted an interesting stat from my corner of the RealWorld on the News Tab -

Desi’s head up 4 of 12 2007 IPO’s from Mass State

In the past two months alone, four Massachusetts based companies with Indian chief executives have registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public: Starent Networks Corp, Netezza Corp, BladeLogic Inc and Virtusa Corp.

They represent a third of state companies that have filed for initial public offer (IPOs) this year.

Now Desi tech entrepreneurship is not only alive and well but also well-discussed here on the Mutiny. For a host of reasons, as the article notes, Desi’s have done an admirable job in Tech (and particularly, it appears, in MA 2007). Still, there’s an interesting angle revealed by the firms profiled here. The theme is probably quite familiar to Desi’s who live / breath the tech biz and less so to those outside of it —

Most of you have heard about the tainted pet food, right? A simple Google search yields more than 7,800 stories about the Chinese rice and wheat gluten that contained melamine to increase the apparent protein content of the food. While American pets may have died, the risk to humans posed by this, even if used as feed for chickens or fish, is pretty low.

Contrast that with the tainted cough syrup that has probably killed thousands children in the Third World. What? You haven’t heard about this? Of course not. It’s not as sexy a story. There are over 40 times as many stories about the tainted pet food in America than about tainted cough syrup overseas.

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world … Researchers estimate that thousands have died… Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India. [Link]

The Bangladesh incident happened 15 years ago, yet this kind of mass poisoning continues to happen in different parts of the world, most recently in Panama:

In Bangladesh, investigators found poison in seven brands of fever medication in 1992, but only after countless children died. A Massachusetts laboratory detected the contamination after Dr. Michael L. Bennish, a pediatrician who works in developing countries, smuggled samples of the tainted syrup out of the country in a suitcase. Dr. Bennish … said that given the amount of medication distributed, deaths “must be in the thousands or tens of thousands…” [Link]

The bones of the story are the same in both cases. FDA issues recent warnings after a Chinese manufacturer cuts corners and substitutes a cheaper lethal ingredient for a more expensive one. With the cough syrup it was diethylene glycol for glycerine.

So Sree emailed me a grin-inducing link to the SAJAforum blog, where once again they are trying to…

test the “all desis know each other” theory and see if one of you can identify this model. [linkaya]

While the Microsoft billboard which inspired our original WTG post is apparently gone, there is no need to mourn the thrill of emulating Scooby-Doo while we attempt to solve a mystery. You see mutineers, we have ANOTHER model to play Kevin Bacon with!

…yesterday, as I walked into the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and 59th St with my wife and kids, we were greeted by the poster (above)…Come on, folks, let’s ID her and give the theory a second chance.[linkaya]

Sree was basically asking the Mutiny if we were “in” when he sent me that GMail. I was all like, “Oh, we’re HELLA in!”, except I didn’t say that since I’m the only Northern Californian who refuses to hella anything.

Just to chime in on the same theme as Abhi’s post below, I get a kick out of these Sikh Park cartoons from SikhChic.com:

It has been a while since we’ve received any Badmash in our inboxes. That’s because the Badmash crew has gone on a semi-permanent hiatus (as each of them moves on to other endeavours). Two Sundays ago anyone watching King of the Hill may have noticed that the lead writing credit for the episode went to former Badmash-er Sanjay Shah. The plot involved Hank Hill as the protagonist hooligan in a Grand Theft Auto-style shoot-em-up game called Pro Pain. Only fans of the show (living in Texas this is required viewing) will get why the title of the video game is so funny.

Badmash, however, isn’t the only example of a periodic desi comic strip. Readers of India Currents might also be familiar with a strip titled Small Hands, inked by Bay Area artist Nidhi Chanani. Here is an example of her cute strip:

Not being brown is no protection against being profiled as brown [via UB]. You don’t have to be Muslim, you don’t have to be desi, you can even be Jewish and you can still be physically attacked by a vigilante passenger acting in the name of “security”:

Seth Stein is used to jetting around the world to create stylish holiday homes for wealthy clients… As he settled down with a book and a ginger ale, the father-of-three was grabbed from behind and held in a head-lock.

“This guy just told me his name was Michael Wilk, that he was with the New York Police Department, that I’d been acting suspiciously and should stay calm. I could barely find my voice and couldn’t believe it was happening,” said Mr Stein.

“He went into my pocket and took out my passport and my iPod. All the other passengers were looking concerned.” Eventually, cabin crew explained that the captain had run a security check on Mr Stein after being alerted by the policeman and that this had cleared him. The passenger had been asked to go back to his seat before he had restrained Mr Stein … He has since been told by airline staff he was targeted because he was using an iPod, had used the toilet when he got on the plane and that his tan made him appear “Arab”. [Link]

Tan + toilet use + iPod = suspicious passenger.So Wilk felt Stein was acting “suspiciously” because he was swarthy, used the toilet and had an iPod. Wilk complains to the Captain who runs a security check and says the passenger is OK. Wilk still attacks him anyway!

Are the other passengers concerned about this vigilante passenger who doesn’t listen to the Captain and who attacks innocent architects? No - they’re happy to have him on board, making them safer from the dark skinned man:

“This man could have garrotted me and what was awful was that one or two of the passengers went up afterwards to thank him,” said Mr Stein… Mr Stein said: “The other passengers looked and me and said, ‘What did you do?’ It was so humiliating. The fact is he [the police officer] was told I was OK and should have left me alone. [Link]

What, you thought I was a fair-weather cricket pupil? ;)

Mutineer Sandeep sent in this tip after having one of those, “Hey. What the-? Brown??” -moments in front of his television:

Saw this commercial while watching NBC primetime TV, and thought I recognized that typical Dravid earnestness saying “actually, it’s 229 million…”. was kind of surprised when I paused and found desi cricket ishtars Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni part of reebok’s new ad campaign…

As for other notables in the ad:

Stevie Williams rides his skateboard. Cricket players MS Dhoni and Rahul Dravid run together. Soccer player Thierry Henry and actress Emmanuelle Chriqui are paired. Tennis player Nicole Vaidišová is on the cell phone. Football players DeAngelo Hall and Chad Johnson run together. Track athlete (heptathlon) Carolina Klüft runs in yellow. Basketball player Allen Iverson and football player Vince Young run together. Track athlete Aries Merritt runs across a skywalk. [splendAd]

Finally, something about Reebok to appreciate. :D

Someone needs to make a Bollywood movie about this; to naive me, that’s the fastest way to reach the masses and start a dialogue about ignorance regarding “black magic”. Somewhere between a jarring, music video-like interlude and a montage of Swiss images, let a flat-screen TV show a fake news story about this, after which Aishwarya turns to Abhishek and says,

“My God, that is terrible!”

“When will people realize black magic is not real?”

“And that doing something like this is murder!”

Etcetera, etcetera. I’m not trying to make light of what I’m about to post, but I do wish there was an immediate way to communicate how heart-breakingly wrong the following is, to the maximum number of people possible…via Reuters and the “Oddly Enough” feature at the top of my GMail inbox:

An elderly Indian husband and wife were burnt to death after villagers accused them of practicing black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire, police said Thursday.

“The aged couple died screaming for help,” said police superintendent P.V. Sunil Kumar.

Well, where the hell were you Superintendent Kumar?

Sayanna, 70, and his 61-year-old wife, Pochamma, were set ablaze after being doused with kerosene.

Both were farm laborers near the southern city of Hyderabad who also practiced traditional medicine. Police have arrested six villagers for the incident.

At least there is an attempt at justice. And now, for some cringe-inducing words…

Belief in black magic is common in some parts of rural India, despite the country’s robust economic growth and cutting-edge high-technology industries.

Hmmm. Belief in misguided, hawkish jingoism is common in some parts of America, despite the country’s robust educational system and cutting-edge technology industries. (Yeah, like THAT will ever get printed.)

Siddhartha covered this almost exactly a year ago:

Dozens of women are murdered each year after being accused of witchcraft.

The following reminds me of the bible story about Abraham and Isaac, though there was no mercy, divine or otherwise for this little boy.

Last year, a barber in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh killed his four-year-old son by slitting his throat with a razor after the man started seeing visions of the Hindu goddess Kali demanding a sacrifice.

Ok, Look. I know when someone lights the SepiaSignal (TM) over the tipline for a worthwhile down-with-brown cause, and when someone hitches a ride on the I’m-brown-too!choo!choo! train. You know, takes one to know one and all that. We ain’t stoopit you know. But then this email came through:

Hey guys,
my name is neel shah—i’m a writer in NYC. I’m involved in some contest for Glamour Magazine write now, and sort of need some assistance from you guys. Essentially, Glamour is trying to find their next male dating columnist, and they’ve pitted three guys against each other (me and two others). It’s hard enough getting white people to vote for a brown person in this thing, so i figured i’d try to galvanize the brown voting community as well. You guys actually wrote about me once (I used to work for Gawker), so i was hoping this might fit with your blog, too.

Anyway, I hate asking for stuff like this, but i figured it was worth a shot. It’s always been my goal to dispense love advice to white women in the midwest. sort of.

So this ‘white people reluctant to vote for a brown’ angle…yeah, not so much. This poll is for a relationship advice column, not the presidency.

But dispensing “love advice to white women in the midwest” is a goal I can fully and heartily endorse!! I’d love to see Intern Neel (as he was known on Gawker) handle questions about that guy in accounting who leans in too close, and whether visible panty lines are a turn on. Wouldn’t you? But maybe the lovely ladies of Glamor will turn their attention to him instead? Maybe he’ll get questions about tantric sex? Or where they should drop off home-made packets of bhel puri? I mean, lookit that bashful little face! He’s cuter than Knut! (Ok, not cuter, not cuter. Calm down Mr. Cicatrix.)

But he doesn’t really need our help. Go see for yourself. He’s up against an old guy and a pancake-happy Yahoo Serious (yep, just dated myself about seven words ago) so he’s got this sewn in a bag. Yes?

Previous excuse to post Neel Shah’s pic here

Who dat? Why, that’s your girl M.I.A., doin’ the damn thing in Jamaica during a video shoot last week; a tipster on the news tab blessed us with a link to this and several other photos from the shoot posted at hip arbiter Pitchfork Media. Apparently the sister’s new album, called Kala, drops in August; we’ve already gotten down to “Bird Flu” a few months ago, and now if you check the Pitchfork item you’ll find a link to a MySpace page that offers a stream of another new song (though not on the album), called “Hit That.” The topic is, um, exactly what it sounds like — a pure sex/party jam, containing interpolations of previous classics of the genre like Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Shake Your Rump.” Anyway make of the music what you will, but I’m digging the pan-Third World aesthetic that M.I.A.’s been putting forward of late in her videos and indeed, her choice of settings; she’s a reverse ambassador of mash-up globalization, bringing it back to its multiple sources, and the brown skins, big butts and ramshackle backdrops express a politics far more creative, democratic and satisfying than the tired and tendentious tigers of her first go-round.

We’re starting to see real signs that Pervez Musharraf’s hold on power in Pakistan may not be absolute. Pakistan’s suspended Supreme Court Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry gave a speech in front of thousands of supporters in Lahore yesterday, expressing dissent with the current government. Chaudhry has been under house arrest in Islamabad since March, and it isn’t completely clear to me how he was permitted to address the public on the grounds of the Lahore High Court. But he’s clearly become a popular icon of secular dissent with Musharraf’s rule, and his speech has to be making authorities nervous:

Speaking to the crowd, including many lawyers, the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, said, “The concept of an autocratic system of government is over.” He added, “Rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution, basic human rights and individual freedom granted by the Constitution are essential for the formation of a civilized society.

“Those countries and nations who don’t learn from the past and repeat those mistakes get destroyed,” he said.

He said the government had no right to impose laws that violated basic human rights.

Mr. Chaudhry spoke at the compound of the Lahore High Court, under the scorching Lahore sun. Seventeen judges from the Lahore High court also attended. Many of the supporters covered their heads with newspapers to escape the heat. Banners urging the independence of the judiciary and denouncing the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, hung on boundary walls surrounding the compound. Political workers, who were not allowed inside, listened to the speech outside the boundary wall. (link)

Chaudhry was also greeted by thousands of cheering bystanders on the side of the road between Islamabad and Lahore; the fanfare was so intense that what is normally a four hour journey took twenty-five hours!

A Son’s Sacrifice is a 27-minute documentary about a halal slaughterhouse in Ozone Park, Queens, run by a Bangladeshi immigrant and his son, Riaz and Imran Uddin; the film, by Israeli-American Yoni Brook and Kashmiri-American Musa Syeed, who met while studying at NYU Film School, has just won Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Beyond the clear Ibrahim/Abrahamic allusion, the title refers to son Imran’s decision, at age 27 and holding a degree in communications from Clark University, to return to Queens and take over the family business. From an article in the Queens Times-Ledger:

The film is not just about a live meat market, according to its makers. It is a metaphor for the immigrant experience. Brook described the proliferation of live markets in and around New York City as an act of defiance against assimilation. It is an opportunity for immigrants to allow their American-born progeny to experience directly the culture of home by witnessing halal ritual slaughter.

I don’t know that I’d call that “defiance against assimilation” — it might just be evidence of a different kind of assimilation or, since the whole idea of “assimilation” is both so imprecise and so loaded, maybe we should just be talking about the constant process of formation of metropolitan culture in the era of globalization. In any event, the film earned an item in yesterday’s New York Times, in which the reporter visits the slaughterhouse:

When you next encounter everything-comes-from-India Auntie or Uncle, you can turn their fixation to your advantage.

Beti: Auntieji, you know, there is another area where India was ahead of the rest of the world.
Auntie: Yes, beti?
Beti: And it was mentioned in the Vedas, ages before any western source mentioned it.
Auntie: Yes yes, that is how it always is. What area of scientific advancement are you talking?
Beti: Auntieji, I am referring to kissing. Snogging. Mouth Mashing. Tonsil Field Hockeying. Two desis each kissing the apple sequentially in a Bollywood movie, except there is no apple and there was no Bollywood.
Auntie: Hai Ram! Chi!
Beti: But it’s in the Vedas, Auntieji! The very first written references to kissing. It was written about, in Sanskrit, long before it was written anywhere else! How can it be a bad thing then?

Unsurprisingly, this news isn’t something that is coming out of a BJP research center, it’s coming from Texas A&M University anthropologist Vaughn Bryant who says:

The earliest written record of humans’ kissing appears in Vedic Sanskrit texts — in India — from around 1500 B.C., where certain passages refer to lovers “setting mouth to mouth,” [Link]

“References to kissing did not appear until 1500 BC when historians found four major texts in Vedic Sanskrit literature of India that suggested an early form of kissing. There are references to the custom of rubbing and pressing noses together. This practice, it is recorded, was a sign of affection, especially between lovers. This is not kissing as we know it today, but we believe it may have been its earliest beginning. About 500 to 1,000 years later, the epic Mahabharata, contained references suggesting that affection between people was expressed by lip kissing. Later, the Kama Sutra, a classic text on erotica, contained many examples of erotic kissing and kissing techniques.” [Link]

“When circumstances throw an American country boy and a Himalayan village belle together, the ‘apple pie’ gets a smattering of ‘masala,’ only to prove that ‘You Can’t Curry Love!’”

That’s from the official synopsis of a film called Americanizing Shelley that’s being released this weekend. It’s a production of something called American Pride Films, and stars Namrata Singh Gujral. It had its premiere at the Nashville Film Festival (wonderfully known as NAFF) a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the trailer:

In the video post here, Michelle Malkin endorses the film, describing a scene that is “highly unpopular in HollyWeird” and says that “for once, it will be worth shelling out the big bucks… to support a movie that supports America.” According to this website, the film is “riling the hate-America brigade.” It interviews Singh Gujral, who says she’s “not a political person,” although as Vinod noted here two years ago, she’s certainly been, er, honored in a political setting. As for the early reviews, the LA Weekly calls the film “minor but sweet,” while the Washington Post dismisses it for “embarrassingly low-rent production values.” Finally, although the film appears made for the mainstream U.S. commercial market, Variety opines that “screenwriter and star Namrata Singh Gujral will probably find her most appreciative aud among young Indian moviegoers who want something outside the arthouse.” Your thoughts?

This past week, on May 1st to be precise, our country witnessed a second wave of immigration reform rallies that were noted more for their violence (by the police) than for their size. These rallies weren’t nearly as large as those held to influence the mid-term elections last year. Those rallies were also in response to particularly harsh anti-immigration positions by some members of Congress (positions far less likely to pass with Democrats in charge). However, these demonstrations increasingly pose a problem for me. They are no longer just about immigration (to be fair I wonder if they ever were). They are rallies by the working class against the elite. I worry that conflating these two separate battles will lead to a maelstrom. I worry more that these battles will increasingly become inseparable and that we will start to move toward a culture as in Europe where class and race seem to be inextricably tied and often lead to violence. Our strongest defense against self-immolation as a nation is to fight to de-couple race and class.

It might be useful to first understand what happened at one of these rallies. Here is a good clip that will give you a feel for what it was like to be on the ground in L.A. both before and after things turned bad:

As most of you know, SM’s readership is quite diverse. We have 13-year-olds that read us and sometimes send us nice comments. We also have older readers who might enjoy our unfiltered perspective. One such reader, Ruchira, emailed me about her daughter. Here is an excerpt from her blog:

Most of you have by now seen news reports of the May Day rally at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles which turned violent when some demonstrators threw bottles and cans and the LAPD opened “fire” with rubber bullets and charged into the crowd with batons (the CNN report here). Although the incident is reported in the media as an “immigration rally,” the afternoon event at the park was an International Workers’ Day gathering where undocumented workers too demonstrated for their rights.

My daughter was present at the afternoon protest rally as an observer on behalf of the National Lawyers’ Guild along with other attorneys. She was caught in the middle of the melee when she tried to help move the back of the crowd away from the advancing police line. During her efforts, she was charged and beaten by a policeman. (full report on Indymedia here.) Some other attorneys, journalists, photographers and other non-protesting bystanders too were beaten and injured…

According to my daughter who reported Tuesday’s incident to her parents only on Wednesday (!!!), the Indymedia reports are a bit breathless and somewhat erroneous. She did not receive a blow to her kidneys. The policeman slugged her with his baton at least four times in the stomach. Oh, the report left out another detail. My daughter was also shot in the back with a rubber bullet! She is shaken, angry but otherwise okay and did not need to make a trip to the hospital.[Link]

There’s the makings of a nice suspense novel in a recent New Yorker piece on one of India’s greatest — and most evil — contemporary antiquities smugglers, Vaman Narayan Ghiya. Ghiya operated a transnational smuggling network out of Jaipur, which included three Swiss shell companies that bought and sold smuggled vast quantities of Indian antiquities, ultimately so the priceless works could be acquired by London auction houses — and “legally” sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Ghiya, who was extremely cautious in his business operations, was brought down by a dedicated police officer, Anand Shrivastava, who essentially dedicated years to learning about the workings of the international antiquities market in order to better understand the criminal side of it. Almost miraculously, Ghiya wasn’t able to bribe his way out of prison, nor was bail allowed in his case — and his case is currently in process. Just to give you a sense of scale, here’s what the police found when they raided Ghiya’s house and his various warehouses:

Then Superintendent Shrivastava and his men searched the house, spending hours rummaging through the elegant rooms. Behind the wood panelling of Ghiya’s private study, the officers discovered a set of secret cupboards, which held hundreds of photographs of ancient Indian sculptures: graceful stone figures of the deities Vishnu, Shiva, and Parvati and Parvati’s elephant-headed son, Ganesha; Jain Tirthankaras and Chola bronzes; dancing goddesses with many arms and melon breasts, festooned with delicately rendered ornaments. The photographs were color snapshots, and the objects pictured sat outdoors, in patches of grass or mud. Many evidently had been roughly pried away from temple walls and were missing limbs or heads. The police also discovered sixty-eight glossy auction catalogues from Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London and New York.

This stash seemed to confirm Shrivastava’s suspicion that Vaman Ghiya operated one of the most extensive and sophisticated clandestine antiquities rings in history, and that he had grown rich in the past three decades by smuggling thousands of Indian antiques to auction houses and private collectors in the West. The police found no sculptures in Ghiya’s home. But, in the days that followed, Shrivastava’s men raided half a dozen properties that Ghiya owned around Jaipur, his farm outside the city, and various godowns, or storage facilities, in Mathura and Delhi. They discovered antique paintings, swords and shields, marble panels, stone pillars, three hundred and forty-eight pieces of sculpture, and a dismantled Mogul pavilion the size of a small house. (link)

I am glad that this song is now so old, I can cop to liking it without wincing from the “trendiness” of it all. You see little minnows, in 1988— which is when ancient me commenced high school —if someone random noticed a Smiths bumper sticker on a Spanish text book (ahem), it wasn’t surprising if they exclaimed, “OMG, I LOVE that ‘sun and air’ song, you know?” Mmm, yeah. I know.

Like all bands, The Smiths had one song which everybody knew; I always gnashed my teeth at the fact that it had to be this one. After all, I needed this one, damnit. But when you’re 13 and a painfully shy freshman in high school, all you’ve got is your indie/goth cred. So I’d just nod and be all like, “Yeah.” Then they’d leave me alone, lest they be seen with the weird kid and have their ranking on our school’s popularity index decline dramatically.

It always makes top-whatever lists (lyrics, songs, guitar tracks) but I think the real significance of How Soon is Now lies in its status as an anthem for the alienated. Beyond that, HSiN has the greatest intro ever, as far as I’m concerned. Goddess bless Johnny Marr, for his oscillating wildly. But I digress. Then again, that’s just what I do, innit?

Today is Friday and last week, we didn’t have a nanofiction orgy. I wanted to make sure that we got right back on that uber-short story riding horse, lest we all forget how delightful it is to zip up an entire tale in a mere 55 words. Our theme is “shyness”, but as always, you are free to digress…it’s only fair, if I get to do it…

I know I’ve built this flash fiction tradition around the songs that saved my life, but this one is extraordinarily special; it’s akin to breaking out the big guns, to battle the forces of evil. I woke up to some awful news in the wee hours of this morning, so I think it’s okay to dust off the greatest cannon in my canon. Leave your brilliance in the comments below; it’ll get my mind off of casualties, senseless violence and collateral damage, thanks.

Ravi Kishan, Voice of Spidey

Though Hollywood films currently only take a modest slice of the Indian film market, Hollywood studios are working harder than ever to “colonize” Indian film audiences. The latest strategy is to move past Hindi dubbing — and release films dubbed in regional languages as well as Hindi.

This is the fruition of a long process of evolution, beginning with the “unofficial” dubs back in the day. Then, as more Hollywood films were being released in India, blockbuster films started getting officially dubbed — the peak of which might have been last year’s hugely successful Hindi version of Night at the Museum (Museum Ke Andar Phans Gaya Sikander, which is actually much catchier than the non-rhyming western title). And the Hindi release of The Incredibles also made waves a couple of years ago, when it was announced that the “dad” character’s voice was going to be dubbed by Shah Rukh Khan.

Now, Spiderman 3 is getting the official dubbing treatment — in Bhojpuri. The Bhojpuri film industry is the fastest growing segment of India’s different, language-based film markets. Last year, 76 Bhojpuri films were released, which is still less than other languages (245 Telugu films; 225 Hindi films), but with a captive audience of 100 million+ Bhojpuri speakers in UP and Bihar, the fan base is vast.

Here Spidey’s voice is being dubbed by Ravi Kishan (pictured right), a “Bhojywood” superstar responsible for hits like Panditji Batayie Mera Byah Kab Hoi. The budget for the dubbing alone was $250,000 (Rs. 1 Crore), which is about three times the entire budget for a regular Bhojpuri film, and Ravi Kishan says he spent 12 days doing it (on his normal films, he normally does all vocal dubbing in a single day).

Kishan seems to have a sense of humor about his dubbing work:

“No, this isn’t a nightmare. I’m dubbing for ‘Spiderman’ in Bhojpuri.”

The last such film from Hollywood to be dubbed in India by a star was “The Incredibles” in which Shah Rukh Khan gave voice to the main character.

“Well they don’t call me the Shah Rukh of Bhojpuri cinema for nothing. I’m doing this because I wanted my Bhojpuri fans to enjoy ‘Spiderman’ in the voice that they love - mine!

“Wait till they hear me saying ‘Hum makad manav hain, ud kar aayab aur tohar tetuwa dabaa deb’ (I’m Spiderman, I’ll fly to you and throttle you).” (link)

Well, at least he’s not shy about it.

I’d been waiting for this Evite from SAFO-DC for over a month now because I’d been tipped off that it was coming:

Host: South Asians for Obama (SAFO)
Location: Karma, 1919 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC
When: Friday, May 18, 8:30pm
Phone: 202.331.5800

South Asians for Obama (SAFO) would like to invite you to our first official OBHANGRA!!

As you may have guessed, Obhangra is a clever combination of Obama and Bhangra! Bhangra fever has taken over the country and we want to give you an opportunity to learn and dance at Obhangra! So whether you support Senator Obama or are still undecided, we hope you will join us and many others to learn some Bhangra moves and dance the night away!

I must say that I am REALLY worried about the appropriation of bhangra for use in overtly partisan politics. In the same manner that K-street lobbyists are corrupting our political process by lavishing money on politicians, I believe that soon our desi customs and food will be used as a cheap tool to battle for the attention (and money) of the pivotal South Asian vote. Let me just give you all a glimpse of the future. It is scary:

Jalebis for Giuliani: A fundraiser organized by “Law-and-Order” browns.

Henna for Hillary: A fundraiser organized by feminist browns.

Raas for Romney: A fundraiser organized by Gujarati Mormons.

Bindis for Biden: A fundraiser organized by 7-11 and Dunkin Donut employees.

Katha for Kucinich: A fundraiser organized by religious browns who want a “Department of Peace.”

Masala for McCain: A fundraiser organized by Independent (maverick) browns who love good curry.

PLEASE, let’s not participate in any attempts to use our culture, traditions, or food to raise money for politicians.

Hmmmm. I wonder if there will be any cute, politically active, single women at the Obhangra. Balle Balle.

[NB: Men, small children and intellectuals- pretend to look elsewhere and feign a lack of interest, even though I know you’re going to read every esoteric word.]

Well-maintained humans, I have a problem.

I hate my tweezers.

I have every right to, they came in one of those awful pre-filled manicure kits that no one deserves to receive for Chrismukkah, no matter how evil they’ve been. I have been able to “get by” because I only used them once in a while. That’s why I never really noticed how worthless they are. How is this possible, you wonder incredulously? I have a shameful secret which is so hideous, none dare to believe it once it is revealed.

I have no eyebrows.

No, I didn’t over-tweeze like we all did when we were eleven. I didn’t lose them in an unfortunate smelting accident, nor did I singe them off while learning how to use that stove thingy with the…fire…and stuff. Uh-huh, I was born with no eyebrows, courtesy of my dear Father’s genetics, though considering everything else he gave me, I guess I’d be an ungrateful little shit if I dwell on this for too long.

My father had sparse eyebrows but he also started to grey at 30, so by the time I could even notice his brows, he was in his early 40s. Bare as they were, white hair on dark brown skin is ultra-obvious, so he wasn’t affected by his browlessness. I on the other hand, have had my chin grabbed and my face ruthlessly examined by Auntie after Auntie, who if I’m lucky, muttered something about how I once looked a bit like Hema Malini before I got all black and if I’m REALLY lucky…well, they declare something about how a face is useless unless the eyes are beautiful and the eyes, they are the worthless as the Manolo would say, without the brows. “Sho! Kashtam. No wonder you aren’t married.”

So I haven’t had to use tweezers all that much and whenever I did, I’d just borrow my Mom’s because hers worked. But now…I don’t know if mine have gone dull or if my hand-eye coordination is poo; they don’t grip a thing. I just can’t see the point of getting my brows “done”, not when they barely grow in the first place. In the picture you see above, which was taken during the only trip to Devon Avenue I’ve ever made, I got threaded.

Why? I was caught up in the brownosity of it all; Devon Avenue seemed way more desi than University Avenue, though it wasn’t quite Jackson Heights. After buying a new sari and bangles, eating fantastic chaat and drinking far too much good stuff, I wanted to experience the only part of the street I hadn’t thus far— the beauty parlors. Much like the first time my awe-stricken kundi trudged through Queens, I was amazed at the fact that there were salons that were staffed with and served just desis; as a righteous and deprived thenga, I found such a concept inconceivable.

So, in I went and when I requested getting my brows threaded, the woman pointedly asked, “Why?”. “Please,” I implored “I have to go to an engagement in two hours!” and she shrugged. After all, an idiot and her rupees are soon threaded. And a few seconds after this shot was taken, she stood back and announced, “done!”

I had felt a little something and noticed no discernable difference, but I was tickled anyway. Threaded! I got threaded! I finally, fleetingly felt at one with the South Asian “experience”.

So, unless it’s an adventure in beauty like that was, I’m not getting my brows done and that is why I need new tweezers. Now quit holding out on me— what do YOU use? Share your wisdom, so that other clueless fur balls will find it when they google this embarrassing topic in the years to come. ;)

…because one date or the other, it’s going to happen. In solidarity with the twangier mutineers who are going to paint the dirty dirty all Sepia and whatnot, DC will be hosting its sixth meetup on the very same weekend. If you missed the last one, you are lucky because that means you didn’t laugh so hard that you wet your pants a little and really, who wants to smell like soo-soo? That’s a trick question; you TOTALLY do. I’m practicing my Sunny Leone-impersonation right now, just so I can treat everyone, new and old, brown and white, pre-pubescent and post-pubescent to the goodness of PORN.

You have the choice of Saturday, May 19th or Sunday, May 20th. If it’s the former, we’ll probably do thayir sadham and sambar vada (and MADRAS COFFEE!) at Amma’s; if it’s the latter, brunch at Heritage sounds nice enough to do thrice. Unfortunately, Heritage India only does brunch on Sunday or we’d be contemplating just one venue and two dates.

I’m open to other suggestions beyond Amma, but if you hate on that venerable font of Malayalee goodness, when I give you your inappropriate hug at the meetup, I’ll cut you. So be nice. And just so you know— I stick with these two places not because of the food, but because they are the most indulgent of rowdy-kundi’d mutineers and they have always treated us so graciously.

You may not realize it when you’re sitting there, giddy from giggling and happily making new friends, but doing so would be much more challenging and far less fabulous if we were constantly getting interrupted or badgered to shut up or, well, leave. After hosting nearly a dozen of these in three different cities, I can truly appreciate how special such a chill attitude towards us is (ahem…La Lanterna in NYC) and I want all of you to stuff your pretty faces and be worry-free…that’s how these six-hour marathon conversations work best.

So, vote for your preference in the comments below. 12:30 pm on either May 19th or May 20th (or much later on a Saturday), what do you-all say?

This mango business is no joke! Despite my best efforts and those of my fellow mutineer Ennis to steer the whole mango conversation in absurd and salacious directions, it seems that out among the high and mighty, the triumphal return of the Indian mango to the American market is proving to be a very serious deal. Mango Diplomacy is being discussed at the White House, courtesy of none other than…

Raghubir Goyal of the India Globe held up a basket wrapped in colored cellophane. “Mangoes from India arrived, and here is a basket for President Bush,” the reporter offered. “My question is: What message does mangoes bring, as far as India-U.S. relations are concerned?”

In return Snow had only this:

For one of the few times during the briefing, Snow smiled. “I don’t know. It is my first mango-related inquiry,” he admitted.

Undaunted by this callous official indifference, however, Mango Nationalism is, um, ripening among proud Indians and Indo-Americans here, if submissions from Fareed Zakaria, David Davidar, and Shashi Tharoor to SAJAforum are any indication. Apparently Tharoor thinks that American ignorance of true mangoes, while surely just as grave as our ignorance of cricket, is a more redeemable condition:

After years of penury, where what passed for mangoes in American supermarkets was a travesty of the term, we at last have the real thing! I used to believe that true mango lovers could sue American groceries for false advertising — the tasteless, fibrous, tart and flavor-challenged fruit they sold did not deserve the name of mango. Now we should urge every American we know to try a real Indian mango. They’ll never think of mangoes the same way again.

Full quotes from all three eminences plus a comment thread here. Mango pride is sweeping across the land. Will there be a backlash?

I know I should probably save this for either Sunday or Monday, when you are all hung over, exhausted, grumpy or all of the above, but I am in a playful mood and can’t resist.

According to an Anonymous Tipster on our news tab, picture number four in Fortune magazine’s online exhibit of photographs which starred in an offline exhibit in Manhattan entitled, “Fortune Celebrates India” is “awesome”. I wholeheartedly concur with that sentiment; I couldn’t stop smiling after seeing the image to the left. What a fantastic capture!

These pictures got some well-deserved (especially in this case) attention in preparation for the 10th Fortune Global Forum, which will be held in New Delhi later this fall. But none of this matters, because you are all well aware of why I have posted this picture. Wot? You have no idea? Of course you do! That’s right ladkas and ladkis…it’s time to play the “caption” game.

While the two desis in this photo aren’t as glamorous as Karan Johar and Preity Zinta, the stars of our last episode, I find them infinitely more interesting. :)

How ‘bout you? Leave your impressions of what’s going on in the comments below. If you’d rather see the rest of the photographs in the exhibit— I believe there are almost two dozen— click here. And if you want to suggest pictures for future editions of the caption game, then click here. And if you want further relief from ennui, deadlines or constipation…well, I have nothing for you to click (thanggawd!).

According to the BBC [thanks, Sena X], the following ad is running in several major Urdu-language newspapers in Pakistan:

BBC translates as follows:

The adverts urged members of the public to inform officials if they found any “lost or stolen” radioactive material. They were published in major Urdu-language newspapers in Pakistan.

A spokesman for the nuclear authority said that there was a “very remote chance” that nuclear materials imported 40-50 years ago were unaccounted for. (link)

That’s right — they don’t even know whether the material described in the advertisements is actually even missing. Which should make us even more confident that they know what they’re doing, right?

But officials say they need to heighten public awareness of nuclear issues to ensure that decades-old nuclear material is fully accounted for.

“This could have been before the creation of Pakistan, and may relate to nuclear material that could not be taken under our charge,” Zaheer Ayub Baig, information services director of Pakistan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, said in a letter to the BBC.

Mr Baig said that the adverts were merely a public awareness campaign to make people aware of the dangers of radiation from material that might have been used in hospitals and industrial plants.

He said the advertising campaign was being expanded.

“There is nothing to worry about,” Mr Baig said. (link)

Thank you, Mr. Baig. I feel very reassured that you don’t know about an unspecified quantity of radioactive material that might have potentially gone missing at an unknown date, and which might now be in unknown hands — or even, for that matter, mixed into the cup of chai some guy is drinking at this moment in Lahore.

Thank you very much, indeed.

Growing up, I never understood why some people found it necessary to use a bagel guillotine. It’s easy enough to cut a bagel with a sharp knife, and it avoids squishing the bagel the way a slicer does. Part of my rejection of the tool is probably New York Jewish snobbishness (coupled with fear that if I ever embraced such a shanda, I’d be required to return my virtual circumcision and fountain pen). But it also comes from a sense that using such tools makes the whole process of bagel eating less sensual and more antiseptic.

As such, I’m agnostic about the Oxo mango slicer until I actually get a chance to try one out for myself. On the one hand, if you watch the video below, you’ll see that it makes very quick work of a mango, turning it into two halves and the seed in no time flat. And honestly, I’m better at and more interested in mango eating than mango cutting.

On the other, I wonder if the tool exists because of the big deal that non-desis make about how messy mango eating is. I remember once somebody on the radio solemnly intoned “mangos should only be eaten naked and in the ocean.” My mother scoffed and replied “White people don’t know how to eat mangos, otherwise they wouldn’t make such a mess.” Sometimes I lose the fruit under all of the “exotic” subtext going on and I don’t know how much of this machine’s appeal lies in this myth of the messy, untamable mango.

Will any of you admit to having used a tool to (ahem) split the mango? If so, did it increase or decrease your pleasure?

Related Posts: Mmmmmmmangoes!, Flesh for Fantasy

What “luscious, incomparable mangoes” you have! Now people can “go mad for the beautiful, supple flesh,” which we have “denied [ourselves] too long.” The subtext of articles and quotes from restaurateurs and political dignitaries about the re-legalization of U.S. imports of Indian mangoes is positively… fruity.

On less sweet a note, it seems that between production and transportation costs and the stranglehold exercised by Mexican mangoes (how dare they!) on U.S. distribution channels, Alphonsos may cost up to 10 times more than the plebeian mangoes currently available at your local yuppie food mart, tropical store or bodega. The pleasure of the Indian mango, it seems, shall be known by elite mouths only.

File this in the short & interesting category. Mohandas Gandhi’s grandson has recently had to turn down an offer to run Gujarat University because of a dress code violation -

Rico Suave: The Next Generation

A grandson of Mohandas Gandhi has turned down a request to head a university established by his grandfather, saying he does not always wear simple cotton clothing as required by the school dress code.

Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the governor of West Bengal state, said in a letter to the vice chancellor of Gujarat University that he does not always wear the hand-spun or woven cotton called “khadi” that is mandatory for anyone associated with the institution, the Hindustan Times reported Tuesday…

‘Tis an interesting observation on cultural relativism that while Gandhi’s bare chest and barely-there bottoms would no doubt violate norms at universities across the West, his grandson’s attire is becoming downright fashionable these days…

UPDATE — an interesting error in the original article that some sharp eyed / knowledgeable Mutineers pointed out - Gujarat Vidyapeeth University is the university in question, not Gujarat University.

Do you remember those school exercises in which you look at the same news events through the coverage of two or more different newspapers, to show how devices such as placement, framing and choice of words make a big difference in the overall effect of the story? It’s an old-school method but a good one, and for any teachers out there looking for material, a story in today’s New York Times that has gotten picked up in a number of other papers offers a fine case study. Let’s read it together, shall we? The headline is: U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons. We begin with the statement of the problem:

LONDON, May 1 — Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.

But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.

The next graf is where the action is. In two tight sentences, it provides the scoop (Chertoff’s recent talks) and describes the problem as a “loophole,” a framing that, as you can see, percolated up to the headline, and thence to other papers, Google News links, and so on.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

We proceed now to some analysis. The article plainly suggests that the reason Britain is resisting Chertoff’s proposals is that accepting them would be damaging to the governing Labour Party. Don’t take my word for it:

At the moment, the British are resistant, fearing that restrictions on the group of Britons would incur a backlash from a population that has always sided with the Labor Party. The Americans say they are hesitant to push too hard and embarrass their staunch ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair, as he prepares to step down from office.

Ardy sent us a link to an excellent story in the Christian Science Monitor on the ongoing conflict with the Naxalites in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

The story is by Mark Sappenfield, who is also briefly interviewed by another reporter at the CSM. Sappenfield was recently in Afghanistan, but he found the mood in Chhattisgarh actually much more depressing:

War zones can take their toll on the outlook of civilians caught in the conflict. Staff writer Mark Sappenfield was only in Chhattisgarh, India, for 10 days, yet he struggled with the dark mental climate there. In India, fighting between Maoist insurgents and Indian security forces has gone on for three decades (see story). He found Chhattisgarh more depressing than Afghanistan.

“In Afghanistan, there remains a fierce pride and strength of will, ” says Mark. “Perhaps these qualities cause their fair share of trouble, but they also produce an iron defiance in the face of the most terrible atrocities – an unyielding resolution to be unbowed.”

“In the jungles of Dantewada district I saw a people utterly broken. Whereas Afghans looked you directly in the eye, chin resolute, the people at the refugee camp had all but conceded, slump-shouldered and speaking softly, staring at nothing.” (link)

The depression amongst villagers is caused partly by displacement: the intensifying conflict has resulted in thousands of tribals coming out of the forest (where the Naxalites operate) to live in government-run camps. The camps aren’t run very well (malnutrition is rampant), and life for many of the people living there seems to have drifted into a kind of limbo: they can’t go home until the fighting ends, and there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. Meanwhile, their entire way of life has been disrupted.

Along similar lines, check out this YouTube video by Neil Katz, an independent reporter who went to one of the camps in Chhattisgarh, and put together an informative video story on it [update: see Neil Katz’s blog here]. One of the issues that comes up in both Katz’s YouTube video and the CSM story is the controversial role played by the Salwa Judum, a government-backed “peace” movement composed of tribals against the Naxalites. But it’s possible that some of the actions of the Salwa Judum — particularly the clearing of tribal villages, and the resettlement of tribals in camps — have actually exacerbated the problem. Also, it’s not clear how “peaceful” this peace movement actually is. In the CSM article linked to above, Salwa Judum head Mahendra Karma talks about the organization as a “Gandhian peace movement.” But elsewhere he has called for tribal youth to be trained and armed to fight the Naxalites as a kind of paramilitary force. In my view, this would be a dangerous development.

(Earlier SM post on Maoists/Naxalites here)

Remember Kenneth Eng? He’s the young gentleman whose column in a San Francisco Asian-American paper headlined “Why I Hate Black People” caused a certain amount of agitation back in late February and early March. Though it was that article that led to his column being pulled, it turned out that in previous writings he had also lobbed large quantities of idiotic, racist invective at any number of other ethnic and cultural groups — whites, Latinos, Muslims, working-class people, fellow Asians accused of self-hatred — on grounds, apparently, of some combination of inherent inferiority and complicity with some kind of conspiracy to devalue and degrade Asian people in America.

So then the Virginia Tech massacre happens and, returning to the Eng thread here, commenter “A Black Muse” asks the following question:

Ok, now, I’m just waiting for the Cho/Eng connection. Did you read about the disturbing behavior Cho exhibited prior to his rampage? Did it remind you of anyone? About two weeks ago, Eng posted reply to the FoxNews video to drone on about a concept he has no understanding, and in the middle of it states that the killing of cashiers, teachers and lawyers would make little difference to the world as they are people of limited awareness and impact on the world. (wtf?) […] The day after the shooting, Eng posted another video LAUGHING about it and congratulating Cho!

Well, now the connection is complete, per this article in the Village Voice today that contains comments in which Eng gives props to Cho for his actions and suggests that Cho may have read Eng’s “works” for inspiration. Behold:

As an ABCD, I want things both ways. In the USA I want to be recognized as fully American; hyphenated American to be sure, but still just as American as any pink-skinned Mayflower descendent. This is especially true when I need consular support or when I am re-entering the country.

I once had an INS agent look at my face and tell me that the line for foreign nationals was elsewhere. When I showed her my passport, she proceeded to treat it as fraudulent and grilled me (improperly) until she was satisfied. Ironically, she was a Filipina with a thick accent herself.

But in India, I usually want to pass. I was really proud when a Delhite came up to me on the street and asked me for directions in Hindi. The only time I’ve been amused to hear “You speak English really well” was when it came from an Eastern European tourist at Fatehpur Sikri. [I ruined the illusion by responding “Thanks. I watch a lot of American television” whereupon he recognized the American sense of humor.]

Heck, last time I was in India, I passed too well. I was wearing a khaddar kurta and had my beard open and some guard at the Delhi domestic airport decided I was too pendu to belong and demanded that I produce my ticket. I responded in very American English that my ticket was with my “Daaaaad” (it was) and walked off, having asserted myself as an NRI.

Is Jamie a modak? A manju?

I mean, we don’t even have a word for the opposite of coconut. What would we call somebody who is white on the outside, but brown (and hairy) on the inside? A pickled egg? A rotten egg? What’s the correct term for somebody like Jamie Alter?

A day in the life of Jamie Alter is not easy. He takes the bus to office … and is stared at all the way. Teenagers snigger and point… But Jamie, son of actor Tom Alter, isn’t a tourist or long-term expat. He’s Indian and it says as much on his passport. Having grown up in Mumbai and Mussoorie, Jamie understands references to Chitrahaar, not American sitcoms. When he went to the US for his undergraduate degree, he thought he’d blend in. And he did — as far as appearances go. Until he realised his heart was in India. “I missed the chaos of Mumbai. I love cricket, not American culture. I came back because I’m happier here,” says the 25-year-old. [Link]

To me, the correct term for Jamie Alter is Indian.

I love living in the middle of Washington, D.C. I love walking everywhere (only three miles to work!) and being able to run all my errands within minutes of my apartment, which is an extra fantastic place to live because the building manager is a sarcastic, blunt, eyeliner-and-nicotine-addicted mother hen of a woman who has me on lockdown (“Uh, no…of course I didn’t take some random young man upstairs, just because I’ve gone on seven dates with him!”) because she dotes on me more than my own Mother does. That kind of affection is priceless and it more than compensates for tiny kitchens or ancient bathrooms.

In the dark days of 2006, when I still lived in fArlington, I dreamed wistfully of such city living; I left Manhattan in 2002 and have never quite gotten over that loss. I haven’t felt the exhilarating, unstoppable happiness I am only able to experience when I overhear four languages on one city block, when cabs are plentiful 24/7 or when ambulances are screeching by at all hours, serenading me to sleep (when I visit my Mother at home in “quiet” NorCal, I sleep in the living room with the TV on because the silence is too eerie).

I was ecstatic when I found my new home (which I did thanks to one of you!) and I gleefully pictured myself walking down Connecticut Avenue to the metro every morning; I’d have a “drip” coffee in hand and I’d be beaming uncontrollably while humming the “These are the people in your neighborhood!”-song from Sesame Street as I “commuted” a whopping eight-minutes to work.

I love coffee. I have loved it since I was 18-months old. I am picky about it, as much as I am about everything else. That’s why I adore the fact that there is this little place which no one seems to be aware of, tucked away even while in plain view of one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. I don’t know what kind of beans they use and I don’t care, their coffee is outstanding. The only thing which could possibly taste better is the elixir which my detail-obsessed Father used to make after freshly grinding beans every morning (gawd, I love engineers and the precision with which they seem to do everything).

I didn’t think I could feel such affection for a coffee place unless it was venerable Caffe Greco in North Beach, a joint which is the closest thing I will ever know to Cheers, since everybody knows (and shouts) my name when I walk in, even though I only go there once or twice a year now. But like Greco, my coffee-pushers now pour my drink the moment they see me through the window; it’s a beautiful way to start my day, to feel that seemingly inconsequential bit of recognition from the young man behind the counter who knows exactly how much space to leave in order to fulfill my ridonkulous addiction to half-and-half. He is Asian and if you’ve read this essay this far, I’ll reward you by telling you that he is the point of my entire post.