That straight-talking maverick from Arizona is living up to the hype once again. John McCain, in an interview with the outstanding website Beliefnet.com, said the following about Muslims who might one day seek to be President of the United States. From the NYTimes:

Senator John McCain said in an interview posted on the Internet on Saturday that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation and that his faith is probably of better spiritual guidance than that of a Muslim candidate for president…

“I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, that’s a decision the American people would have to make, but personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith,” Mr. McCain said in response to a question about the possibility of a Muslim’s running for president. [Link]

Mr. McCain, what are your views of the Constitution exactly?

Q: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?
A: I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.[Link]

I saw the headline yesterday on Drudge and I couldn’t believe it: “60 Injured in ‘INDIAN IDOL’ Protests…” At first I rolled my eyes thinking that maybe a fan favorite got booted off and the viewers decided to riot in their displeasure. “Only in India” I thought. Opening the link however, I discovered there was more to this story:

More than 60 people were injured and dozens of vehicles set ablaze in eastern India when an angry mob demonstrated after a radio host made derogatory comments about the winner of the popular television show “Indian Idol,” officials said Saturday.

The violence broke out Friday when supporters of Prashant Tamang, the recent winner of the TV singing competition, took to the streets of Siliguri, a town in the eastern state of West Bengal, to protest what they perceived as a radio show host’s ethnic slur against Tamang, said state police official R.J.S. Nalwa. Tamang is an Indian citizen of Nepalese origin.

The protesters apparently blocked a road and refused to let an ambulance carrying a patient pass, which led to clashes between Tamang’s supporters and a group accompanying the ambulance, said Nalwa. [Link]

Naturally, I wanted to know the contents and context of the ethnic slur uttered by the DJ. Last night I checked about a half dozen news stories and not one of them bothered to report on this crucial fact. Is the Indian media really that inept or do they think that reporting the text of the actual slur would cause more violence? I had to go to a blog entry linked to our News Tab to get to the bottom of this mystery [via BPO Tiger]:

Verbatim from Red FM Radio Jockey (RJ) [named Nitin] on Indian Idol Prashant Tamang Radio-Jockey-Nitin-Prashant-Tamang

“Aaaj Prashant Tamang ‘Nepali ladka from Darjeeling’ [Today Prashant Tamang, Nepali boy from Darjeeling] has become Indian Idol [laughs sarcastically] and we have a [cricket] match tonight so we need to guard our house / malls / restaurants by ourselves as there will be no Nepali people to guard these place and whole night we need to say Jagtay Raho [stay awake].” The RJ also added that all the Footpath Momo shops will remain closed as Nepali guy has become Indian Idol. [Link]

I’m not going to even pretend I have a clue about all the ethnic stereotypes in India. I know us gujus are supposed to be cheap and my mom always tells me South Indians are smart because they eat fish :) That is basically where my knowledge of Indian stereotypes ends. Now that I have a Nepali sister-in-law though, this particular stereotype is something I wanted to understand better.

The Himalayan Project, consisting of the duo Chee Malabar and Raymond “Rainman” Lie (see some previous posts here, here, here, and here) recently released their third album, titled Broken World.

Himalayan Project’s third studio album, Broken World, is finally available for audible consumption!… The crew would like to thank everyone who’s waited patiently for this labor of love to get done, you won’t be disappointed. For those of you who would prefer do legally download your copy, hang tight, it should be a couple weeks tops before it gets to your favorite digital distributor.

One last note/favor, if you like what you hear, don’t be shy… hit up the comments page of the store you bought it from (CDbaby, itune, Rhapsody, etc.) and write a review. Hell, if you didn’t like it, write one too and let us know what you didn’t like (if you really don’t have a life and like stomping out the dreams of independent artists just trying to do their thing ;). [Link]

Here are the lyrics of the track Manchild (which can be heard on their MySpace page):

I read brown’s the new black, thanks to henna and bhangra,
Shit, I’m thinking lock-up in a Guantanamo slammer,
Geronimo Pratt style, panther type stances,
To keep raisin’ questions till they can’t suppress the answers,
Camphor based prose, C10-H16-0 flow,
I brandish the stress my pops’ handsome face shows,
Homes I don’t dance for dough or pamper hoes, case closed
No rest haven, I’m Wes Craven when they bring the breaks in,
Murderous Raven, staving off your blocks’ onslaught,
Playa, break down lines like Ray Lewis and make music,
That’s makes Buddhists embrace Uzi’s,
And let the spark from their shot light the darkest region in your
heart. [Link]

Following upon the stunning artistic and commercial success of “The Last Legion” (1, 2, UB40), co-stars Sir Ben and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have agreed to team up again, this time as Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Colin Firth is rumored to be considering the role of Aurangzeb .

My fans will watch me in anything because I am TMBWITW

The casting of Sir Ben is, in my mind, absolutely perfect. Shah Jahan’s marriage to Mumtaz at 19 has become a symbol of eternal love. Sir Ben also is a man who never stopped believing in love, having married his fourth wife at age 63, after the following:

“three failed marriages, four children by two different wives, a long-term live-in lover who was replaced by wife No 3 (also nearly half his age), whom he then jettisoned after discovering her embracing her lover in a photograph on the internet in 2005.” [Link]

Shah Jahan built a giant marble tomb to house his wife’s remains, as if she was a figure from ancient Egypt. Sir Ben feels the same way about wife #4:

“Daniela is like an ancient mythological princess. She has great deep dignity. She moves like an ocean liner…” [Link]

October 31, 1984

“Mummy, Daddy can I dress up for Halloween this year?”

“No.  You are not allowed to participate in this ritual begging for candy.”

“Daddy, I meant for school…we’re supposed to…”

He eyed me suspiciously.  “I thought fifth grade would mean the end of such nonsense, but if you are supposed to…what do you need to wear”

I had thought about this.  Based on what the popular girls were last year, I decided…“I want to be a cheerleader!”

“Absolutely not.  Those skirts are indecent.”

“Caroline Auntie was a cheerleader!”

“In college.  When you’re in college, I’ll forbid you then, too.”

Nine-year old me promptly burst in to tears.  Later, my mother came to my room and helped me match a v-neck sweater from my old Catholic school uniform with a pleated skirt I usually wore to church—i.e. one which went to the middle of my knee.  She unpacked a box in my closet and wordlessly handed me my toy pom-poms.  My six-year old sister glared at her indignantly, so Mom rolled her eyes and did the same for her.  I was so excited.  Finally, a “cool” costume, one which didn’t involve an uncomfortable, weird-looking plastic mask to secure with an elastic band, from a pre-packaged ensemble.  I went to sleep feeling giddy.

The next morning, for the first time ever, I was tardy for school.  I don’t remember why, but I was.  When I walked in to class just before recess, everyone froze and stared at me.  The hopeful smile on my face dissolved; this year, the popular girls were all babies in cutesy pajamas with pacifiers around their necks.  I thought the weirdness in the air was due to my lame costume, but within a few minutes I discovered it was caused by something else entirely. 

The moment the bell rang, my desk was surrounded.  This couldn’t be good.  Was I going to get locked in a closet or a bathroom again? 

“Why are you here?”
“Yeah, we thought you weren’t coming.”
“Shouldn’t you be at home crying?”
“Mrs.  Doyle said you wouldn’t come in today.”

The questions assaulted me one after the other.  I was baffled. 

"Why…would…Mrs. Doyle say that?” I stammered.

“DUH, because Gandhi’s daughter got killed.”
“Isn’t she like your queen or something?  Or a Hindu God?”
“No you buttheads, she’s like the president of her country.”

At the end of the last sentence, the boy speaking gestured towards me.  When did they get so enlightened?  Last week, they asked if I was Cherokee and said “How” whenever I walked by, or pantomimed yowling war cries with their hands and mouth.

“She’s not the president of my country.  I’m…I’m from this country.  My president is Ronald Reagan.”

They got impatient and vaguely hostile.

“No, you’re Indian.  Mrs. Doyle said you were in mourning.”
“Did you not like her or something, is that why you don’t care?”
“I heard they dip her in milk before they burn her up.”
“Duh…that’s because they worship cows.”

I put my head down on my desk, as if we were playing “heads up, seven up”.   

“See?  She’s crying now…she is Indian.”

And with that they walked off, to do whatever it was that popular fifth-graders did.

The following two paragraphs from A.O. Scott encapsulate pretty well why I’m not rushing out to see The Darjeeling Limited:

“The Darjeeling Limited” amounts finally to a high-end, high-toned tourist adventure. I don’t mean this dismissively; it would be hypocritical of me to deny the delights of luxury travel to faraway lands. And Mr. Anderson’s eye for local color — the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum in particular — is meticulous and admiring.

But humanism lies either beyond his grasp or outside the range of his interests. His stated debt to “The River,” Jean Renoir’s film about Indian village life, and his use of music from the films of Satyajit Ray represent both an earnest tribute to those filmmakers and an admission of his own limitations. They were great directors because they extended the capacity of the art form to comprehend the world that exists. He is an intriguing and amusing director because he tirelessly elaborates on a world of his own making. (link)

Are people planning to stand in line for this one? I’m not; after four quirky films (and one amusing AmEx commercial), I’m bored of Wes Anderson’s whole approach to filmmaking, which I call “quirky for quirky’s sake.” It’s not that quirky is always bad; I found Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, for instance, pretty compelling — and that was a damn quirky film. But I often feel like Wes Anderson’s approach to filmmaking is to simply think, “wouldn’t it be funny if the old Indian manservant stabbed Bill Murray with a pen-knife at this point?” And then do it, just for the excitement that comes with absurdity.

And as much as I was intrigued by Anderson’s use of Waris Ahluwalia in The Life Aquatic (he’s credited in Darjeeling Limited as well), the non-speaking part in that film made the striking Ahluwalia into a sort of exotic turbaned curiosity. Ahluwalia’s role in Spike Lee’s Inside Man, though brief, was much more provocative and engaging. Even if audiences didn’t sympathize with Ahluwalia’s character as much as one would have liked, at least that role led to a meaningful reaction.

Incidentally, there is another travel film with India as a destination coming out. Though from the review, Outsourced does seem to flirt a bit with cliches, I’m much more interested in it than I am in Darjeeling at present.

We subscribe to two ‘general interest’ magazines in my house — one is The New Yorker (my choice), and the other is Fortune (my wife’s choice). For awhile I used to boycott Fortune and stick to 10,000 word articles by Louis Menand, Adam Gopnik, and co. But over time I’ve started to flirt more with the other side — especially when I only have a few minutes to read. Over cereal this morning, I came across an article in the ‘other’ magazine about American Pizza chains competing in India, which contained the following paragraphs:

It’s not all that surprising that pizza is big business in India. The product itself is similar to India’s native cuisine. Unlike Chinese and Japanese, Indians eat leavened bread (naan), and a popular traditional version slathers it in butter and garlic - not unlike garlic bread, the most often ordered side dish at both Domino’s and Pizza Hut franchises in India.

Cheese (paneer) is ubiquitous in India’s northern cuisine. Tomatoes and all kinds of sauces are prevalent everywhere. Combine these ingredients into one gooey, oily, tasty dish that you can eat with your hands - as Indians traditionally do - and you have a hit.

It’s estimated that 80% of Indians are vegetarians, so pizza suits that Indian cultural aspect too. Both chains are scrupulous about keeping “veg” from “non-veg” in their kitchens and invite people in to see the separate prep areas. There are even pizza options for India’s 5.2 million Jains, followers of a religion that prohibits eating onions or garlic. And stores in heavily Muslim areas don’t offer pepperoni. (link)

First of all, I don’t think 80% of Indians are vegetarians in the absolute sense (i.e., no fish), probably not even close. (I remember seeing someone pose 50-60% and falling in a comment thread some time ago).

Secondly, mozzarella cheese is like paneer? And: “A gooey, oily, tasty dish” that Indians like, because they eat with their hands? The author is on thin ice with some of this stuff. Instead of coming up with these questionable sociological stereotypes, she could just as easily speculate that pizza is popular in India because it’s new, and different from what people are used to/bored with.

(Anyone hungry for pizza now? I am. I think I might get a slice, and eat it while reading The New Yorker.)

On Monday Rahul Gandhi became Congress General Secretary and consequently a likely future candidate for Prime Minister. At 37 he is the same age as his Rajiv Gandhi was when Rajiv first started his political career. If Rahul succeeds in becoming Prime Minister, that would make him the fourth generation from his family to have held the top leadership post, something I believe would be a record for any democracy.

India’s obviously not the only country with a political dynasty. The United States has two examples where a father and son held the Presidency in over 200 years: John Adams (2) and John Quincy Adams (6); George H.W. Bush (41) and George W. Bush (43).

There are other dynasties in the American Congress or in various governors’ offices. Just off the top of my head I know there were two generations of Gores, two generations of Dodds, and three generations of Kennedys in Congress (although more than three Kennedys in those generations).

Outside the US, Pakistan has two generations of Bhuttos, Bangladesh had Rahman and Sheikh Hasina, and Indonesia has had Sukarno and Sukarnoputri. I’m sure there are others.

Still, we’re talking about 3 generations of Gandhis as PM in a mere 40 years, and the possibility of a fourth generation being raised within 60 years. It reflects quite poorly on the quality of India’s institutions. What does it say that Congress thinks Rahul will give it an advantage in the next elections, despite his poor political showing in UP where he got schooled by the BSP?

Burma is in the midst of its largest protests against the military junta since 1988, when the government crushed the pro-democracy movement by killing at least 3,000 people.

The current wave of protests reached its peak on Monday, when red-clad monks led a demonstration of over 50,000 people in the capital, with protests happening in 24 other towns around the country as well. In response, the junta imposed a curfew and has shot at least two protestors who defied the orders.

The only countries with real influence over Burma are its neighbors: China, India and Thailand. Neither China nor Thailand are democratic, so I hadn’t expected much from them, but I have been really disappointed in India’s response.

“It is too early to say anything,” said an Indian Foreign Ministry official, who did not want to be named. [Link]

India is not just staying quiet, it’s supporting the Burmese government economically and militarily:

India’s biggest company, the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, is to invest £75m in exploring for gas off the coast of Burma, despite the swell of pro-democracy protests against the country’s military regime. The deal signed on Monday highlighted how Burma has exploited the energy needs of its two biggest neighbours, India and China, to weaken western sanctions. [Link]

That’s right, the state run oil and gas corporation signed a deal with the Burmese government on the very same day when 50,000 demonstrators were in the streets of the capital. That sends a very clear message about which side they’re on. Here’s an in-your face interpretation of India’s actions in a political cartoon (also below the fold).

Despite the relatively short notice, it looks like we’ve got enough interest to do a small meetup in London. The Hoxton Bar & Grill is new to me but got good reviews from commentors and it appears to be conveniently located near a zone 1 tube stop (Old Street), so we’ll give it a shot…

Thursday, September 27	London, England
Hoxton Bar & Grill 7:30 pm London, N1 6NU 2-4 Hoxton Square one review + details here

Enough pix of me have graced the pages of the mutiny that y’all should be able to find me — but just in case, I’ll be the dopey, always-smiling American, sitting in one corner, having trouble finishing off his pints

Writing over at Slate.com today, Reihan Salam breaks down a family of dilemmas that many of us are facing in this increasingly, “I need a cool profile” world:

Last week, I launched the Great Facebook Purge of 2007. In one fell swoop, I whittled down a list of 274 “friends” to a more manageable … um, 258. Even weeding out this tiny amount of people was difficult and unpleasant. Almost every subtraction made me wince. While my intention had been to de-friend every hanger-on and casual acquaintance, I just couldn’t do it. All I could stomach is eliminating everyone I’ve literally never met in my life. I still have three “friends” I know only via e-mail, though given that we’re firmly in the Digital Age, I figure this is acceptable. [Link]

Anna wrote a bit about taking the plunge into Facebook a few weeks back and also mentioned that Sepia Mutiny now has its own group. Like everyone else, SM started with Friendster and then briefly flirted with the idea of that idiotic, EvErYoNe HeRe SpElLs LiKe ThIs, Myspace site. Now it seems Facebook is the place to be. For South Asian Americans, who still number only a few million strong in the United States, a profile of you is that much easier to dig out by anyone looking specifically for you, and therefore more relevant I would argue.

How do you decide whether it’s OK to friend someone?

After all, it’s always better to be the rejecter rather than the rejectee. I will now contradict myself: Friending strangers is permissible. If you are going to approach a stranger, don’t do it out of the blue. Never, ever send a random friend request without undergoing some preliminaries, such as trading a few wry observations. The beauty of this “Facebook foreplay,” to use an unfortunate analogy, is that you can always refuse to respond. [Link]

At this point I face a Hobbesian choice: either evolve or perish. After gathering just over 175 friends on Friendster, I woke up one recent morning to realize that I would have to start from scratch again, this time in a younger man/woman’s world. The pit that left in my stomach was unbearable. In this brave new world the men are funnier with their descriptions of themselves, and the women list themselves as Class of ‘07…just beyond my considerable reach. Then there are all the customized “plugins.” I have to list all my favorite bands and tell people all the countries in the world I’ve been to, etc. It’s hard enough picking up chicks at a bar. Now I have to worry whether my world map plugin is sufficiently full (which is why I already counted Guatemala even though I’m not going for another two months ;)

The problem is it doesn’t just stop at Facebook. There is also a social network for book lovers, one for business folks, and even one for your portly cat. When you come home you have to check them all to see if you are still relevant. Sartre would be able to write a masterpiece about this were he still alive. Ask yourselves this simple question: If you don’t have a profile, do you really exist? If I have a profile does it mean I’m just another one of the baying sheep? If I don’t have a profile that sufficiently distinguishes me, how will people know that I’m not a sheep?

But please, don’t let any of this useless pontificating dissuade you from befriending Sepia Mutiny, or me. Even baying sheep need friends.

With hazaar apologies to Information Society, Spock and everyone else who remembers 1988 (which is when I graduated from Junior High— I throw that in because one of you recently lamented that you were like, the oldest person? On, like, Sepia Mutiny? So put that in your Bengali and smoke it). Behold, an unforgivably mangled version of that unforgettable dance classic with the Star Trek sample (you know you had the 12”…don’t lie): What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy)

Here I am in silence,
Looking round without a clue.
I find myself alone again
without input from you.
I see 89 comments
but there are things that I don’t know.
If you hide your thoughts from me,
How can our meetups grow?

I want to know
What you’re thinking.
There are some things we can’t hide.
I want to know
What you’re feeling.
Tell me what’s on your mind.

I saw the first installment of Ken Burns’ eagerly anticipated “The War” last night and was not disappointed in the least.

The Kohima Memorial: “When you go home, tell them of us and say; For their tomorrow, we gave our today”

These battles are important primarily because they marked the furthest advance of Imperial Japanese forces onto the Indian mainland. By holding back the Japanese in the highlands of Nagaland, combined British and Indian forces handed the imperial war machine its largest defeat thus far in the war and, perhaps more importantly, probably saved India from the savagery that had fallen upon China and Burma earlier.

In British war annals, the battle has a place in the history of WWII akin to America’s recollection of Guadalcanal. Earl Mountbatten referred to it as:

“probably one of the greatest battles in history… in effect the Battle of Burma… [was] the British/Indian Thermopylae”.

For desi’s, the historical record is somewhat controversial as the battles held the dubious honor of being the highpoint of activity by Subhash Bose’s Indian National Army in their alliance with the Axis powers.

If it’s Monday, you must be as hung-over…err… depressed…tired as I am— but wait! It’s a brand new week and surely there will be much fighting/gnashing of teeth/troll-feeding to do in the days ahead. Isn’t that daunting? Well, fret not, my pets.

The best thing about Mondays at the Mutiny is being able to play The Caption Game, a nice, easy warm-up for the week. You may not be able to touch your toes, but you can injure your funny bone trying to outwit Dravidian Lurker, MoorNam, PingPong et al. (Rahul…I’m pouring out some Old Monk for you, son. You are the missed.)

This picture, which was thoughtfully submitted by Jeet a few days ago (thanks!), is just pleading for a different label— look at what it’s been saddled with:

Harbhajan Singh’s joy is apparent as he catches Kevin Pietersen, England v India, Group E, ICC World Twenty20, Durban, September 19, 2007. [link]

Oh, come now. You mutineers can do better than that! Especially since the boys in blue have made some of you verrrry happy, right? :)

Confused?

Irritated?

Think this silliness is something new for the mutiny? How wrong you are, my sleepy friends. Lo, previous editions of the captioning game will prove that this isn’t a one-time timesuck: Ikk, Dhoe, Tinn, Char, Panj, Chhay, Suth, Utt…

Hey folks - my notorious volume of biz travel continues & I’m going to be across the pond this week for a conference + some meetings in Central London.

Because one of the oft-repeated requests has been more meetups in more cities, I thought I’d post a shoutout and see if we had any readers over there to try and schedule a pub night or something.

Anyone up for drinks on Thursday night? Suggestions for locations?

I’m staying at a hotel off of Oxford street but know London pretty well and can travel just about anywhere.

In response to Abhi’s appeal from last year, there was a desi entrant in this year’s World Beard & Moustache Championships. Meet 30 year old Rundeep Singh, from the UK.

Can you believe Rundeep lost to Jack Passion (on the right) who took first place in the “natural beard” category? C’mon now - which is the better beard? What an outrageous call!

Heck, Rundeep Singh didn’t even place - this guy got second (for what is admittedly a very impressive beard) but this guy got third place. I dunno - neither the first nor third place winners seem as impressive to me as brother Rundeep.

What gives? Next time I want to see a desi who wins by more than a whisker .

As loathe as I am to admit it, jobs in finance look very sexy on paper. Managing a small business involves running to OfficeMax, the post office, or the bank – nothing that will grab one’s attention. There are no million dollar deals, or headlines in the newspaper announcing the bonus levels of other office managers. During a lunch break, I’ll come across a story about some new merger, or read those stories about the year-end bonuses that will exceed my salary by several degrees. Being a good capitalist, I understand the role that a vibrant financial sector plays in a modern market – allocating capital efficiently, allowing entrepreneurs a new source of investment funds, and rewarding investors who are taking risks with their money.

What I’ve always wondered though, is how prominent should finance be in a nation’s economic profile? You can even go down to the city level – how much role should Wall Street play in New York’s local economy? What role do the futures exchanges play in Chicago today, and what role will they play 20 years from now? For a developing nation like India, how prominent a role can financial firms play? Should the rules governing their behavior be different than in a developed country?

I think someone owes Sikh people an apology [via India West].

When Los Angeles right-wing talk radio host Al Rantel referred to a turbaned Sikh as wearing a “diaper” on his head last week, one local Indian American man decided that he’d had enough.

“If he does not correct himself, on the air, we’re going to put pressure on him,” Navraj Singh told India-West by phone Sept. 17. “I’m getting calls from around the country, and Sikh temples are collecting signatures,” said Singh, adding that he was ready to lead a protest outside the radio station

Rantel is a conservative host whose show airs on KABC 790AM every weekday in Los Angeles. During his Sept. 10 show, Rantel was discussing airport security, and said that if his own 80-year-old mother had to take off her shoes during a security screening, “… then why shouldn’t a Sikh be required to take off the hat that looks like a diaper they wear on their heads?” recalled Singh. [IndiaVest]

When contacted, Rantel’s accomplice producer eloquently stated that this @$$#o!#’$ words were “taken out of context”. Awww. Of course they were! Because there obviously exists a context wherein diapers and turbans nestle innocently in the same sentence. Maybe Rantel was saying, “I saw a nice Sikh man changing his baby’s diaper…it’s great to see Fathers taking such an active role!” Yeah, no…as my little cousin would say.

See? They DO exist:

Singh describes himself as a semi-regular listener to the show, and says he himself is a conservative Republican.

In a strongly worded letter he sent to KABC Sept. 12, Singh challenged Rantel to an on-air debate. Rantel’s team has not yet responded to him. [IndiaVest]

coughCHICKENcough. Gosh, I really need some Ricola. Must be the weather. Seasons change, feelings change, (and now I have Expose in my head, as I fume over this latest example of disrespect).

This Uncle has weathered b.s. in the past:

After a successful career as a decorated officer in the Indian Army, Singh immigrated to New York in 1974, and says he has faced discrimination as a turbaned Sikh in the United States. He says he was laughed at when he started a job as a door-to-door vacuum salesman that year (he later became the company’s top seller, he said), and maintains that he was forced out of another successful sales job in 1979 because his boss was afraid of anti-Iran sentiment during the Iranian hostage crisis.

For those of you in the L.A. area, Singh is the man behind India’s Oven/Tantra. One of his restaurants (the original “oven”) was destroyed during the ‘92 riots. But I digress.

Gabbar Singh: You have a lot of strength left in your arms, don’t you? Remember what you said to me that day? ‘These aren’t arms, they’re your noose’. Look at you now, the noose has opened! You still have alot of strength in your arms, don’t you? Give me your arms, Thakur.

Gabbar Singh: How do you plan to fight me Thakur? I’ve long cut off, and discarded, your arms.
Thakur Baldev Singh: One uses their feet to crush a snake Gabbar, not the hands. [imdb]

The highest grossing Bollywood film ever, and still one of the best, is the 1975 film Sholay. [Film synopsis.]

As a boy, my favorite part of the film was the (original) ending, where Thakur Baldev Singh confronts his nemesis, the dacoit Gabbar Singh. The Thakur has no arms, Gabbar Singh having cut them earlier, but he still manages to fight and kill Gabbar Singh using just his feet.

It’s perfect bolly. The scene rings true emotionally, but makes little sense as a fight. I mean, who could believe a man with no arms could defeat somebody who was built like Amjad Khan? Clearly I was overly skeptical:

Snelville, Georgia police are investigating whether William Russell Redfern, who has no arms, may have caused the death of his neighbor after head-butting and kicking him in a fight.

… Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother. “They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could,” said Elliot. [Link, via 3V]

OK, head butting somebody until they have a heart attack lacks the potent symbolism of killing them by “trampling him with spike-soled shoes” but it seems that the movie was more “realistic” than I had thought.

Film clips of the fight on the other side of the fold.

As brown people we constantly urge greater authenticity in fiction films about brownistan. But authenticity comes at a price, as the producers of The Kite Runner movie have found out as some people are alleging that it may endanger the life of one of the main actors in the film. [SPOILER ALERT]

The novel The Kite Runner was written by an Afghani-American from Fremont about two boys growing up in Kabul: a wealthier child (the protagonist) and his servant who is also his best friend.

The producers of the movie went out of their way to try to make the movie as authentic as possible. They filmed in nearby Kashgar (in China, for security reasons), filmed in the vernacular, and they tried to use mainly local kids.

The problem comes because a critical scene in the novel involves a rape, in particular the rape of the protagonist’s best friend. This made the father of the actor playing the best friend uneasy:

“When I told them I would not let Ahmad Khan take part in this film, they said: ‘We won’t film that scene’,” … [the father] says. [Link]

However, what the producers did was to shoot the scene without showing very much:

Because this key scene was filmed in a non-explicit way, it seems that at the time Ahmad’s father did not even realise it had happened. I called up one of The Kite Runner’s producers, Rebecca Yeldham, in Los Angeles… “The scene contains no nudity. It’s rendered in a very sort of impressionistic way. But it’s also important in being faithful to that story - that there’s no confusions that the attack in the alley that took place on that child was a sexual violation…” [Link]

So…despite what some might allege, I do NOT keep dosa pr0n up on the main page for an extra long, torturous time, not on purpose, at least. To prove this, I wanted to publish something newer for you mutineers. Off to the News Tab I went…and then I saw this:

Karunanidhi calls Lord Ram a ‘drunkard’, Advani fumes

WOW. Look, I don’t pretend to know about either the Ram Setu controversy OR politics in India, but like any idiot with half-a-functioning brain, I do know (Mandink-aaaa) that it would be disrespectful and hurtful to call a revered religious figure a “drunkard”, especially in uber-devout India. Some of you may be asking, what is going ON over there? Well, for those of you at home who haven’t been following this controversy (coughguiltycough), here’s a brief explanation:

The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project proposes linking the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar between India and Sri Lanka by creating a shipping canal through the shallow sea sometimes called Setu Samudram, and through the island chain of Rama’s Bridge, also known as Adam’s Bridge. This would provide a continuous navigable sea route around the Indian Peninsula. The project involves digging a 44.9 nautical mile (83 km) long deepwater channel linking the shallow water of the Palk Strait with the Gulf of Mannar. Conceived as early as 1860 by Alfred Dundas Taylor, it recently received approval of the Indian government. [wiki]

According to the Hindu scripture Ramayana and beliefs, Sri Rama and His Vaanar Sena built a bridge from Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka thousands of years ago. Some Hindu organizations and religious figures, including the Shankaracharya of Puri, have opposed the project, pointing out that it would destroy the “Ram Setu”.

Others have opposed the project on environmental grounds, and fears of the effect it will have on the livelihood of some 20 million fisherfolk in the coastal districts.

The Union government admitted in late 2007 that there was no historical evidence to establish the existence of Ram or the other idols in Ramayana. In an affidavit filed before the apex court, the Archaeological Survey of India too rejected the claim of the existence of the Ram Sethu bridge in the area where the project was under construction. A day later, the affidavit was withdrawn under pressure from Hindu fundamentalist parties. However, the State government of Tamil Nadu continue to maintain its official stance and refused to review the project. [wiki]

Got all that? Good.

The Chief Minister of Lemuria, Karunanidhi, is an atheist. That is why he is extra vexed about any religious-based objections to this shipping canal. A Senior Leader of the BJP, Lal Krishna Advani, thinks Karunanidhi has got some nerve on him.

Every year, at Ramadan, Hawk draws comics showing how his alter-ego is dealing with the challenges of fasting. These trippy comics are some of my favorites:

If you click on it, it’s the first in a sequence of Ramadan fasting themed strips.

Related posts: ‘Applegeeks’

Since today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day (y)aarr, I wanted to blog about Kanhoji Angre, an African-Indian who became the most powerful “pirate” of his era in the world:

Yaarrrrrr

Kanhoji … Angira[’s] …operations off the west coast of India developed into what was probably the most successful piracy endeavor of the 17th or 18th century. [Link]

He was the first pirate who dared to extort money from Indian and British shipping. In 1712 he seized the armed yacht of the East India Company’s governor and held it for a sizeable ransom. Several years later he repelled the British … using specially built gunships. His success drew pirates from India and Europe and by the 1720’s his captains commanded hundreds of well-armed vessels. By 1722 his repeated humiliations of the Company led to their cessation of attempts to destroy Kanhoji. [Link]

While Kanhoji is considered a pirate by the western world, he’s a national hero in India. The Indian Navy named a major naval base after him, and a memorial was due to be erected in his honor in Alibag. In the Indian narrative, he is “the great Admiral of Marathas,” Shivaji’s naval commander:

British historians have described Kanhoji Angre as a pirate, ignoring that he was appointed by the Maratha king. [Link]

You all recall me blogging back in March about the Alberto Gonzales-installed U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis right? Indian American Rachel Paulose, at only 33 years of age, was one of the loyal “Bushies” picked to replace the apparently disloyal outgoing attorney (Tom Heffelfinger) from that region. Right away news began to surface that Paulose’s staff couldn’t stand her reportedly imperious ways. Well now it seems that the largely ignored Office of Special Counsel is investigating formal complaints against Ms. Paulose [via Eric Black Ink]:

The federal Office of Special Counsel is investigating allegations that Rachel Paulose, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, mishandled classified information, decided to fire the subordinate who called it to her attention, retaliated against others in the office who crossed her, and made racist remarks about one employee.

Paulose did not return phone calls seeking her comment. Black Ink will publish any response that she makes.

The investigation has been under way since June. The Office of Special Counsel, which handles complaints about retaliation against whistleblowers and prohibited personnel practices by political appointees such as Paulose (that’s her at the podium in the photo at right), appears to be taking the allegations seriously. Investigators from two of its regional offices have been to Minnesota to interview witnesses and may be back for more. I could not find out when the OSC, an independent executive branch agency that is not part of the Justice Department, might complete the investigation. [Link]

It should be noted that this is an on-going investigation that is little more than he-said she-said right now. Here are a couple of the specific allegations being made, however:

*Paulose committed large and small acts of retaliation against others in the office whom she accused of disloyalty to her. In one instance, after changing the job assignment of one employee, Paulose allegedly said that she would make the woman so miserable that she would want to quit. In some instances, Paulose allegedly ordered those in charge of performing job evaluations to downgrade the reviews of those she considered disloyal, or turned down requests that they be allowed to perform work outside the office. The allegation is that Paulose took these actions against employees for reasons other than the quality of their work, but rather for offenses like advising her that some actions she was contemplating would exceed her legal authority.

*Paulose allegedly denigrated one employee of the office, using the terms “fat,” “black,” “lazy” and “ass…” [Link]

I don’t think using the four words above necessarily means you said anything wrong or that you are racist (as the allegations seem to imply). For example, I think it is perfectly acceptable to criticize a subordinate like this:

“When you sit in that black chair eating non-fat yogurt when you should be working as hard as a four-legged ass it makes me think you are a bit lazy.”

Can anyone else come up with a possible non-controversial sentence that Paulose might have uttered using those four words?

The outlook may not be favorable for Paulose. With Alberto out the knives will be coming out and Democrats will be applying some pressure to clean-up what they see as a crony-filled Justice Department.

This past weekend I ended up seeing the Jodie Foster movie, The Brave One, which co-stars Naveen Andrews of Lost fame. Was the movie any good? Well no, not really, but that is what you get when you ignore the all-powerful tomato meter. The synopsis of the flick is as follows:

For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show “Street Walk.” At night, she goes home to the love of her life, her fiancé David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). But everything Erica knows and loves is ripped from her on one terrible night when she and David are ambushed in a random, vicious attack that leaves David dead and Erica close to it.

Though Erica’s broken body heals, deeper wounds remain—the devastation of losing David and, even more overwhelming, a suffocating fear that haunts her every step. The city streets she had once loved to roam, even places that had been warm and familiar, now feel strange and threatening.

When the fear finally becomes too much to bear, Erica makes a fateful decision to arm herself against it. The gun in her hand becomes a tangible way to protect herself from an intangible enemy…or so she thinks. [Link]

As a couple, Foster and Andrews have zero chemistry. The one brief “sex scene” between them actually made me want to vomit (for reasons that are all too obvious if you watch the film). Still, my companion to the film noted that Andrews’ character was not exoticized in any way. The fact that he was desi was barely even acknowledged in the film. In fact, the only two references I caught included one quip about his mother worrying about the wedding invitations and a “Mughal” ring which served as an engagement ring and was pertinent to the plot of the story. So, even though the movie kind of sucked, I found it really refreshing that a desi actor was cast to play a character that was not required to “act Indian.” Unless you count the fact that he plays a doctor.

There is one other little coincidence (planned??) worthy of pointing out. The soundtrack to The Brave One features the luscious voice of Sarah McLaughlin at various points throughout the movie. She is married to a brown dude too. I’m just saying.

Thirty-five years ago, today, the first wave of South Asians who were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin landed in the UK.

At the time Amin gained power, Uganda’s Indian community, numbering approximately 80,000 in total, was comprised of Hindis, Muslims, and Ismalis(sic). [link]

Here’s why they left:

President Amin has denounced the Ugandan Asians as “bloodsuckers”, and warned that any remaining in the country after 8 November risk being imprisoned in military camps. [BBC]

Bloodsuckers, eh? Takes one to know them, or imagine them, I guess. Consider this horrific story:

A 75-year old retired chartered accountant Natubhai Shah, who is living in Ahmedabad, recalled Amin’s reign of terror in an interview with ‘The Times of India’, “Here I was, on an official tour with Idi Amin’s entourage, trying to cross the Nile River when a military van stopped me from going ahead.

One of the army men discreetly handed me a pair of binoculars. It was a chilling sight. Amin was standing beside the river, cutting flesh off an Asian man and feeding it to crocodiles in the river.” [HT]

Also, what exactly were Uganda’s desis threatened with? The BBC article states “imprisonment”, but a case study I found, which focuses on one woman’s personal account of this nightmare, suggests something far more heinous.

Dr. Sunita Sundaram, an ethnically Asian Ismali(sic), was a medical student in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, when Amin announced that all Asians must leave the country within three months time or be killed. [Harvard]

Even as Ugandans followed Amin’s outrageous directions and fled, they were terrorized:

Kassem Osman - who arrived with his wife, two brothers and their families - said they had been robbed by the soldiers.

“On the way to the airport the coach was stopped by troops seven time and we were all held at gun point,” he said. [BBC]

If it is Monday, then it is time to segue back in to Sepia timepassing gently. After all, you’ve had quite the weekend, I’m sure. Exercise your commenting skillz by playing the caption game! Don’t you know that working out without a proper warm-up isn’t wise? ;)

Many thanks to Paul, who guaranteed we’d be able to play today by sending in this tip (“a great candidate for a caption contest”); if any of you spot similarly interesting, “Brown” photographs, pass them along! This picture accompanied an article, some of which is available after the jump.

So, just what is going on here? I’m sure that a few of you already know (and may have witnessed the spectacle yourselves!), but if you don’t recognize the hotstepping, here’s the relatively-somber caption the L.A. Times gave this image:

A Pakistani guard, left, and an Indian counterpart march during a nightly border-closing ceremony. It’s an elaborate, almost comical, show of martial bravado and chest-puffing that has gone on for nearly 60 years. [LAT]

Not sure how to play? Peep these previous editions of captioning fun: Ondhu, Eradu, Mooru, Naal’ku, Aydhu, Aaru, EyLu…

Religion and politics in India make for a combustible combination, but a recent article in The Wall Street Journal on Azim Premi entitled Secular Engineer: How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India raises the matter of religion and economic advancement. The article profiles Premji, and gives a brief history of Wipro – transforming it from a seller of vegetable oil to the IT powerhouse of today.

A couple of things about the article rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it was the mention of religion in the title. Does anyone know of the religious background of billionaires from China, Japan, or Western nations? Only recently did I find out the owner of the Marriott hotel chain is a Mormon.

The article repeats one of the standard explanations of why Indian Muslims are under-performing their neighbors – that after partition, the best and brightest Muslims left for Pakistan. If that is the case, then Pakistan should be further along the development path than India, and there should be a number of world-beating Pakistani (or Bangladeshi) companies. Such is not the case – while both nations certainly have wealthy families, they are more likely to have garnered that wealth through methods usually seen in many developing nations – graft, monopolized markets, government favors, feudal relationships, etc.

As we said back in the day, nothing beats a good, solid success story. Well, I’m happy to report to the Mutiny that in BOTH Vinay and Sameer’s case, we’ve got some pretty solid success.

Team Vinay reports - Hello everyone, this is Bharath (Vinay’s brother). Sorry for keeping many of you in the dark about Vinay’s progress. …Day Zero is fondly known as “your new birthday”. That day was August 24, and the day Vinay received his transplant. …For the good news…it appears that the bone marrow transplant is “engrafting”. His counts are showing signs of recovery and it is clear that the wonderful donors cells are now taking seed in his own marrow.

Sameer reports - …Ladies and gentlemen, I was informed today that, through a miracle of God, a 10 out of 10 match has been found for me!! Let that sink in for a second…this is truly a miracle that came through literally at the last minute. If this match had been found even next week, it’s not clear that it would have been in time given that I need some sort of transplant within 4 weeks. …This match appears to have come from the 400+ bone marrow registration drives that Teams Vinay and Sameer have put forth, registering nearly 24,000 donors to-date. …The result? An increase of South Asian representation in the national bone marrow registry by 20%.

A hearty SM congrats to both of them.

Mutineers - keep your fingers crossed and these guys in your thoughts & prayers — as far as they’ve come, they’ve still got a long way to go and can use the help. And, for every Vinay and Sameer that we write about, there are thousands of others we don’t so if you haven’t been swabbed yet, there are still opportunities to get it done.

Ganapati Bappa Morya:

An important festival honours Ganesha for ten days starting with Ganesh Chaturthi, typically in late August or early September. This festival culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi when images (murtis) of Ganesha are immersed in the most convenient body of water.

Hindus celebrate the Ganapati festival with great devotional fervour. While it is most popular in the state of Maharashtra, it is performed all over India. The festival assumes huge proportions in Mumbai and in surrounding belt of Ashtavinayaka temples. On the last day of the festival, millions of people of all ages descend onto the streets leading up to the sea, dancing and singing to the rhythmic accompaniment of drums and cymbals.

In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak transformed the annual Ganesha festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. He did so “to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropriate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them” in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra. Thus, Tilak chose Ganesha as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule because of Ganesha’s wide appeal as “the god for Everyman.” Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavilions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day.[wiki]

So…one could say that Ganapati was quite mutinous. :) Extra celebrating is in order, I think. What are you doing today? Over the past three years, I’ve found that when some of you describe childhood memories of holidays which were important in your family, it’s as sweet as this. Speaking of sweet, eat a ladoo for me, would you? Thanks.

The American magazine has been running a series of profiles of the newest crop of bright, young economists. Their latest profilee is Raj Chetty, associate professor of Econ at Berkeley (although now on loan to Stanford’s Hoover Institution).

Raj Chetty

Raj began his promising econ career by proposing and investigating - at a wee age - an intriguing thesis: in some situations, the demand curve for capital might be upward sloping -

Raj Chetty, now 28, was a sophomore at Harvard University when he came up with the theory that higher interest rates sometimes lead to higher investment. It was a counterintuitive idea. Usually, companies invest less when rates rise because the higher rates increase the cost of capital. But Chetty found that some companies, in fact, invest more because they want to get revenue-generating projects off the ground sooner, rather than later, in order to pay down that costly capital more quickly.

Put another way - when money is more expensive, and the time crunch is on, firms actually accelerate investments in certain, less risky, faster time-to-revenue projects. It’s sort of a “Sorry boys, the first bank payment is due next next week, so stop planning a coast to coast franchise, and start building the first, local Bombay Palace right now….” And building costs more (in the short run) than planning….

Today is both the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and the first day of the Muslim month of Ramadan. To begin with, let me just wish L’Shana Tova and Ramadan Mubarak to all readers who celebrate these holidays.

At Beliefnet, Shahed Amanullah has some salient thoughts:

This Ramadan happily coincides with the start of the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah, which I feel is particularly serendipitous because of the similarity of both holidays. Both have a focus on seeking forgiveness and spiritual renewal, and both feature an extended period of soul-searching. And for one day, on Yom Kippur, both Jews and Muslims will be fasting until the sun sets.

I hope both faith communities take this opportunity to share at least part of this time celebrating under one roof. After all, this opportunity only comes around every 33 years. Two years ago, during my last year in graduate school at Georgetown, I organized a joint Rosh Hashana-Ramadan celebration for our fellow students, who enjoyed baklava, apples & honey, stuffed dates, challah, Turkish delight, and Indo-Pakistani sweets in between classes. It went over very well and help bond our communities together. (link)

As is common when bloggers get into religious holidays, the theme quickly turns to food, which is just fine with me; I’d rather have ‘taste diplomacy’ than more disputatious arguments over matters of religion. (All we are saying, is give sweets a chance…) Appositely, Sepoy at Chapati Mystery, has some intense memories of rising before dawn to eat before the fast as a teenager growing up in Lahore. Again, I just can’t get over the food:

The blast of the anti-aircraft guns to signal the breaking of the fast. The mounds and mounds of dates. The fried foods and fresh fruits piled on the same table. The 7Up in Milk cold drink. The pakoras. The uncle sneaking a cigarette smoke behind the tree. The unexplained weight gain on certain people. The never-ending taraveeh. Qur’an on a loop on the telly. The fetishization of color. And an ever-growing sense of invincibility in my 14 year old self. (link)

And one more: here is a blog post about Ramadan from a Sunni Sister in Jordan that’s worth checking out.

Ah, Padma.

Padma, Padma, Padma.

Potentially Mallu (I thought you were TamBrahm!) beauty, accomplished author and Television ish-tar, you speak so uniquely and that takes some talent. What sort of talent, I haven’t a clue, but I’ll credit you anyway, because I’m fond of you like that.

A few years ago, you made every Desi man’s heart beat a little bit faster, from the joy of the improbable occurring; if a supermodel would marry an award-winning, uber-protective, “distinguished”-looking author, then everyone had hope (as long as they did something extraordinary. Or had a looooot of paisa). It was the ultimate Revenge fantasy and that’s exactly what it was, because the dream, it died. You and the man who defended your intellect, who insisted that you were being shortchanged by the focus on your outsides, you are…kaput.

So, what to do, except to follow the well-established mores of our culture. You don’t recall? I am happy to remind. Now comes the time when you cast your eyes downwards, marinate in the somber reality of failure and wait an appropriate time before you are back on the scene, the ultimate “Innocent Divorcee, no issue”. It is imperative that you be seen alone, that you not be photographed with strange men touching you, because if a potential groom from Madras or Bangalore sees that, chee, vat he vill think?

So it is paining me, Padma-akka (chechi?!) to see you emulate the controversial example of that Sarita Denzel Masala of Mississippi, especially since you chose to do that in the front row of the Marc Jacobs show, where everyone could see you! Aiyo! What’s the one thing your Amma told you, edi?

When the topic comes around to traditional vs. western medicine, I tend to side pretty consistently with the western medicine camp. It’s not that I’m anti-Ayurveda in particular; I just believe in a firm line between science and faith. In my view, one or another medicine cited in Ayurveda might actually be effective, but until it’s been tested in a well-designed double-blind trial, and the results published in a rigorously peer-reviewed journal, I’m generally not interested in using it as anything other than a supplement.

Now, however, the line between eastern “folk remedy” and western science is getting just a bit blurrier, as accredited scientists have recently begun to formally study the effects of things like Turmeric using the scientific method, and blogger Ashutosh has an interesting post at Desipundit summarizing a recent article in Cell on the active ingredient in Turmeric, Curcumin. First, the hype, which is considerable:

Turmeric’s beneficial effects as recorded in Ayurveda are impressive. It is a multitalented molecule, and in its particular case, many of its effects have stood up to the hype. It shows among other things, potential antiinflammatory, anticancer, digestive, respiratory, pro immune system, and cardio and neuroprotective (anti-Alzheimer’s) effects. With such a profile, curcumin would be extremely alluring as a drug, almost seeming like a magic cure. (link)

That’s a lot of potential benefits! Emphasis on “potential”: there are some serious scientific hurdles that have to be jumped before the drug’s effectiveness can be fully understood, or deployed to best possible use, and Ashutosh outlines those as well. Indeed, the fact that Curcumin’s benefits are so generalized might actually be part of the problem:

Yesterday I was hosting a meeting at work for some co-workers spread out across the country, including some high-level managers within my organization. My laptop was hooked up to project on to a screen in our conference room as well as wired to broadcast its contents out over the internet for the remote meeting participants. The mail program I use is Microsoft Outlook. As Outlook users are probably aware, when you get a new message a tiny box fades in at the bottom right hand corner of your screen that has the name of the sender and the subject line of the email (yes, I realize now I can turn it off). After about five seconds it fades back out. In the middle of the meeting, overlaid on top of the most important Powerpoint slide, popped up the following message notification:

From: Mona
Subject: a way to solve abhi’s girl problems…..

The blood rushed to my face and I think I went deaf for a few minutes after that.

So what was this article that was going to solve my “girl problems?” I wasn’t aware I needed any help.

Desperate to reverse a steep decline in their numbers, Russians are coming up with some bold ideas on how to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis.

A Russian feminist has proposed a radical solution to the falling birth rate — importing Indian bridegrooms for Russian girls. Maria Arbatova, writer and TV moderator, who married an Indian businessman a few years ago “after 25 years of keeping marrying Russians”, thinks Indian men make ideal husbands.

“They are crazy about their family and children,” she said presenting her new book, ‘Tasting India’, here. “What is more, Indians, like Russians, are Indo-Europeans, and many Sanskrit and Russian words have the same roots.”

Indian bridegrooms can help ward off a Chinese demographic invasion in Russia, says the feminist: “If we do not balance off the Chinese with Indians, Africans or aliens, by 2050 China will annex Russia’s Siberia up to the Ural Mountains…” [Link]

Was my friend right? Is this what I need?

Mmmm, snark:

Leger poll shows Sikhs are the least liked religion in Canada (liked by only 53% of Canadians). Jews are the most liked minority religion (78%), Muslims at 61%. No data on Christians, or on people who commission really stupid polls. [Ikram]

But what about Jewish Sikhs? Feh. Fresh from the News Tab, some meshugge story in the Montreal Gazette which deserves Ikram’s (and perhaps your) scorn; Canadians apparently respect Sikhs less than members of other religions, and the amount of contact a Canadian has with a person influences their perception of them. Shocking, but true.

Asked whether they had a favourable opinion of each group, the 1,500 people surveyed by Léger Marketing across Canada said they hold Jews in the highest esteem (78 per cent), Muslims considerably lower (61 per cent) and Sikhs least of all (53 per cent).

And in each case, how much a person approves of one of the minority religions depends on how much contact he or she has had with them. The more contact, the higher the esteem, the poll found.

Forty-five per cent of Canadians are in contact with Jews often or occasionally, according to the poll. Only 37 per cent are in touch with Muslims, and only 21 per cent with Sikhs.

One thing to keep in mind— there are fewer Jewish people than Muslims, in Canada (pronounced Kuh-NAH-da, natch).

According to the 2001 federal census (religion data from the 2006 census are not yet available), there are 330,000 Jews in Canada and 580,000 Muslims. Sikhs number 278,000.

Y’all need to hold some Bhangra Blowout-esque event in Quebec. ;)

There’s an article in the New York Times about the problems faced by doctors in India who want to prescribe morphine to terminally ill patients, especially those who are suffering from cancer.

The centerpiece of the article is a Dr. Rajagopal, who runs a palliative care clinic in Kerala, the one Indian state where morphine tends to be accessible. Dr. Rajagopal has been lobbying to make morphine more accessible to ordinary Indians nationwide.

About 1.6 million Indians endure cancer pain each year. Because of tobacco and betel nut chewing, India leads the world in mouth and head tumors, and has high rates of lung, breast and cervical cancer. Tens of thousands also die in pain from AIDS, burns or accidents.

But only a tiny fraction — Dr. Rajagopal estimates 0.4 percent — get relief.

Clinics dispensing morphine are so scarce that some patients live 500 miles from the nearest. Calcutta, a city of 14 million, has only one. (link)

Ironically, India grows the poppies from which much of the morphine used in western countries is derived. But government regulations (a highly familiar villain, in the Indian context) make it virtually impossible for ordinary people who are seriously ill to get access to it:

This was a post a long time coming. Not because it contains some scoop on current events – just that after Vinod invited me, and then checking with the rest of the Mutiny, I wanted to be sure that whatever I eventually wrote would be timely. So with time running out, I sat down to post on the unintended consequences of a higher profile for brown folks in the U.S. Most of the focus will be on Indian-Americans specifically, because that is what I am more familiar with. But, in past postings, one idea that has often been tossed about is that IA’s should adopt the stance of more prominent minority groups to garner more attention to its own causes. However, on of the advantages of being a relatively more recent arrival is that you get to learn the consequences of earlier methods – both planned and unintended.

Please join me in welcoming the latest guest blogger to Sepia Mutiny, frequent commentor KXB. Unlike previous guest bloggers who’ve generally had their own prolific personal blogs, KXB’s presence has mostly been felt in his numerous, well-thought comments as well as his *several times a day* posting to the SM News Tab.

Well, you did it again, President […]

Your opponents are flummoxed, perhaps even a little humiliated after your latest political demonstration. They thought they had you in a tight spot, but you played your cards carefully, and you showed everyone you know how to use your authority. You used your people well. Yes, you say, you’re a little diminished now, but who wouldn’t be, after so many years in charge of a large and fractious country?

You certainly know the art of political self-preservation, and you have a talent for putting on a show. You have little interest in democracy, but you have always known how to use the media when it suits you, and the latest incident is no exception. Your opponents call you all kinds of names, but they have always underestimated your talent.

Of course, there are the courts. The lawyers and judges will come after you and your friends — they have been doing so already — and you may lose a few important allies along the way. Necessary sacrifices! And yet in the end, judges merely wear robes, and their words of condemnation do not carry force by themselves. (Judges can also easily be replaced, as you have shown.) Justice, in short, is merely a word, a debating point for powerless intellectuals like myself. Unqualified, absolute Power — that is where you deal.

It comes down to this: you have the support of the military, and the military is everything. The needs of security and the projection of strength carry great emotional force for most citizens. The fact that you have weakened your country’s democratic institutions does not particularly worry you. It is doubtful that your citizens will demand their return; democracy can always be sacrificed in the name of security, can it not? The simmering resentment of the masses, in all except extreme cases, can be managed, can it not? (That is what tear gas is for.)

You may win this round — indeed, by quieting your opponents, it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. You may or may not stay in power much longer yourself, but you have a good chance of seeing a friendly successor continue your policies. If you are as smart as you have seemed to be thus far, you will avoid the disgrace that ended the careers of many of your predecessors.

History, however, will still judge you. It will always be there, staring back at the waste of these years, casting an unblinking eye on the mess you’ve made.

[Which President, of which country?]

Six years ago, after the attacks, a Humvee rolled up to my apartment building, which was seven blocks from the White House; we were not allowed to leave, for our own safety.

Six years ago, we entered an age of terror which we are also not allowed to leave, ostensibly for our own safety.

Six years ago, 3,000 innocents boarded a plane or went to work, as if it were any ordinary day; they never returned home.

At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads. [NYT]

Let this be a space for remembrance, for respect and for grieving, if you need. Everyone who reads this blog lost something six years ago, even if they didn’t “directly” lose someone in New York, D.C. or Pennsylvania; this space is for your thoughts, on this appositely grim day.

Longtime Mutineer Desi Dude in Austin left a tip on our news tab, which immediately got my attention:

Rajnikath don’t need no Fair and Lovely…not when he has 25 CGI artists lighten his complexion frame-by-frame for a song-and-dance sequence in his latest sambaar-mix potboiler Sivaji.

Say what?! I neither know nor care about either Sivaji the fillum or its rotund ishtar, but following the link DDiA left took me here:

If you have watched Sivaji..You have observed the fair complexion of Rajinikanth in the song Oru koodai Sunlight.Everyone thought it was make-up that made Superstar Rajinikanth look like a European in that song, but the secret is something else. [Naachgaana]

Yindeed, the secret is far more time-consuming and technologically advanced than some pancake from Max Faktor.

The secret of actor Rajinikanth’s ‘white’ tan in the song sequence “Style” in the ‘Sivaji’ was not the result of any fairness cream or cosmetic touch-up but an entire year of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) work by city-based firm Indian Arts.

The colour tone of one of the U.K.-based dancers in the background of the song was used to turn up the tone of the actor, frame by frame. The post-production for the 6,000 plus frames took a year to complete, as computer graphics artists from Indian Arts toiled to make Rajinikanth the “Vellai Tamizhan”. [The Hindu]

According to the article from our new tab, a total of 6,700 frames were painstakingly altered, to give the second-highest paid actor in Asia skin as pale as the complexion of one of his Gori backup dancers. Okay, that sentence was awkward as kundi. I’ll just quote something, instead, yes?

If it’s Monday, it must mean that it is time to caption a vaguely funny photograph. Yes? Yes.

Please be nice, children. Akka doesn’t know what was in the “Bohemian lemonade” she had at Subcontinental Drift last night, and now her head hurts, despite several liters of water and two rapid-release tylenol. Shhhh. Be good. Caption quietly. And if you can hit the lightswitch on your way out, I’d be sooo grateful. ;)

Regarding the picture, which I ganked from the BBC…read on:

On the Jammu-Srinagar highway in India people feeding the local monkeys has become a real problem. The animals now swarm towards vehicles, causing many road accidents.

Previous editions of captioning fun: ein, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sex…yes, I know I counted in German last time, but I’m easily amused by the fact that the word for six, “sechs”, sounds like…well, you know. That and I’m not sure we decided what the proper spelling of “ein/eins” is. Yenjoy!

I’ve known for a while that India does poorly in the Olympics, but I had never realized exactly how poorly:

The world’s second most populous nation … ranks dead last worldwide in the number of Olympic medals won per capita. Paraguay, Niger and Iraq have done better. [Link]

This statistic seems to only count countries that have won at least one medal, which leaves India better off than countries without medals, but that’s slim consolation.

Now it may be unfair to compare medals on a per capita basis since that pits India against countries much smaller in population size and Olympic winnings are hard to scale up. However, even if you look at the two largest countries in the world, China has won over 100 times as many medals as India in the past few decades:

Since 1984, when China rejoined the Olympic Games after decades of isolation, the Asian superpower has won 320 medals. India, its political and economic rival, has won three… [Link]

And in a century of Olympics, India has won just 16 medals (fewer than that other nation of a billion, China, typically wins at a single [sic] Games) and only eight in the last 50 years. [Link]

But, you object, China has a communist-era olympic medal factory which even tries to breed athletes. Fair enough, but even amongst Commonwealth countries in general, India lags so far behind that the officials of the Commonwealth Games have scolded India for not doing enough to avoid embarrassment when it next hosts the games in 2010 [Link]. No matter how you cut it, India is at the bottom of sporting countries worldwide.

It is true that India does better in some sports than in others, but India’s best sports all require little physical exertion:

“India is doing very well in chess. And pretty well at cue sports like billiards and snooker. And for the past couple of years, Indian golfers have done very well on the Asian circuit…” [Link]

The WSJ has an interesting (and somewhat fawning) interview piece with Bobby Jindal, desi front-runner in the Louisiana Governor’s race. The now standard intro on Jindal lauds his technocratic skills -

WSJ’s famous thumbprint pix are so last century. Now a watercolor portrait signals you’ve made it.

Mr. Jindal, 36, is an affable policy wonk with a quick mind and a fascination with the details of governance. Before our interview, an aide emailed me a series of press releases announcing his 28-point anticrime agenda, his 31-point anticorruption agenda and his 25-point agenda to curb spending.

And significant time is spent on his wonkish roots, which include a tale familiar to many ABCD’s -

…In high school, Bobby aspired to be a doctor. But he sought out a well-rounded education, and this eventually led to a change in plans. As an undergraduate, he served an internship in the office of Rep. Jim McCrery, a Shreveport Republican. He earned a master’s in political theory, then went to work as a health-care consultant at McKinsey & Co. While there, he read an article in the Washington Post about Louisiana’s troubled health-care system. “It seemed to me that they were going to make a bad problem worse. They were going to have more government-run health care, more spending. So I wrote up an analysis of what I thought they should do.”

It was 1995, and Republican Mike Foster had just been elected governor. Rep. McCrery and then-Sen. John Breaux were impressed with Mr. Jindal’s report and recommended him to Mr. Foster’s transition team. Eventually he met the governor-elect, who proclaimed Mr. Jindal a “genius” and offered him the top job in the state’s Health and Hospitals Department. He was 24. “I realized: ‘Well, I guess I’m not going to medical school anymore.’ “

The remainder of the piece goes into more detail on the origins of Jindal’s politics, religion, Louisiana’s political & economic history, and perhaps most importantly, his program for post-Katrina Louisiana. An interesting read indeed.

Is it already that time again? As if my weekend couldn’t get any better, Subcontinental Drift, DC’s singular South Asian music/dance/open mic night, is back this Sunday.

If Subcontinental Drift sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote about this rapture on SM before, here. If you live in DC, you are fortunate that your comrades in browndom have come together to create such a fantastic event; support their considerable efforts, come out and play, you’ll be thrilled you did.

This Sunday night a recently-hatched event is descending again on the district. If you’ve been before, you know it is not to be missed; if you haven’t, don’t miss it. It was born early in 2007 when a handful of the District’s desis (Mona, Munish, Nabeel, Nina, Sophie, Surabhi & Vishal) graciously took it upon themselves to fill an artistic void in our community. Thus was born Subcontinental Drift: a creative experiment in open space(s) where artists, poets, songwriters, lyricists & others can share and showcase their talents with the local South Asian/South Asian American diaspora.

Join us this weekend. Observe, absorb, listen, learn, encounter, experience, perform (really, you can - email subdriftdc@gmail.com)! Indulge. [quoted from an awesome email]

Every edition of SD is precious, but this one is more so— Seema Patel, a.k.a. SM commenter “SP”, a.k.a. one of the forces behind Team Vinay (and the heart of their DC operations) is leaving the right coast to go home. Join me, Sunday, as I gnash my teeth at our misfortune. Baltimore/D.C.’s loss is California’s gain. Sigh.

Subcontinental Drift

Sunday, September 9, 2007

6 PM - 11 PM - (Cost: Free)

Bohemian Caverns
2001 11th St. NW
Washington, D.C.

Metro: Green + Yellow- U Street station

It wasn’t just standing room only, last time— we took over the street. This event, let’s do the same. Finish your Art…there are kids starving in cities with less Desis.

Literary bettors rejoice for the shortlist for the 2007 (Man) Booker prize is out. Last year, Kiran Desai won for Inheritance of Loss. This year there are two brown authors, both expats like Desai, on the shortlist: Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Indra Sinha for Animal’s People.

My book is not recommended in-flight reading

When the Man Booker longlist was announced last August, pundits were somewhat surprised that many of the year’s biggest authors - Sebastian Faulks, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje - were left off. [Link]

The remaining four books have sold an average of less than one thousand copies a piece in the UK, so they are hardly popular favorites. Other than On Chesil Beach, The Reluctant Fundamentalist has sold the most copies, with 1,519 books moved, and Animal’s People has sold the least, with only 231 copies sold in the UK, despite the sales boost from longlisting it. [Link]

I once translated the Kama Sutra

The Reluctant Fundamentalist … explores the conflict experienced by a young Muslim who has been educated in the US, worked on Wall Street and fallen in love with an American woman, who finds himself treated with suspicion in the aftermath of 9/11. [Link]

Animal’s People … draws on the real-life events surrounding the Bhopal chemical plant explosion, seen through the eyes of Animal, a boy whose spine was twisted and so must walk on all fours. When an American, Ellie Barber, arrives to seek justice for the victims, he investigates her motives. [Link]

Do you know which Indian dude’s debut is the most hotly anticipated one of this Fall’s television line-up? No, it isn’t Sendhil “I can’t figure out how to speak in an Indian accent even though I’m Indian” Ramamurthy of Heroes. Nor is it Naveen “torture solves everything” Andrews of Lost. The dude that South Asian Americans have their collective eyes on is 12-year-old Anjay Ajodha of Texas. The question is, can he succeed in wresting the reigns of power away from the simpletons within a newly created society known simply as Kid Nation?

40 Kids have 40 days to build a brave new world without adults to help or hinder their efforts. Can they do it? These Kids, ages 8-15, will turn a ghost town into their new home. They will cook their own meals, clean their own outhouses, haul their own water and even run their own businesses including the old town saloon (root beer only). Through it all, they’ll cope with regular childhood emotions and situations: homesickness, peer pressure and the urge to break every rule they’ve ever known.

Will they stick it out? In the end, will these Kids prove to everyone, including their parents, they have the vision to build a better world than the pioneers who came before them? And just as importantly, will they come together as a cohesive unit, or will they abandon all responsibility and succumb to the childhood temptations that lead to round-the-clock chaos? Don’t miss this intriguing series. [Link]

SM readers, let me be blunt. Anjay is the best chance we currently have to demonstrate to the American public how utopian our society might become if super smart desi people were in charge of everything. The governor’s mansion in Louisiana just won’t cut it. More people will tune in to Kid Nation than will pay attention to Louisiana. The question on all our minds is, “will a group of young children between ages 8-15 allow a kid (that reminds us a lot of ourselves at 12) lead the way when left on their own?” Just look at Anjay’s answers to some questions CBS posed. I dare anyone to find more concise and honest answers in any recent Presidential debate:

Who have been some of the best U.S. presidents, and why?
George Washington - he managed to lead a young nation, and headed the conventions to develop the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln - he abolished slavery, and led the nation through the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt - he established the New Deal which got the economy working during the Great Depression and instilled confidence in citizens during his fireside chats.

Who have been some of the worst U.S. presidents, and why?
The US president that comes to mind, due to recent events, is George W. Bush, because I don’t agree with the way he is handling the Iraq war. [Link]

Also, is Anjay Libertarian? And does he know more about government than Fred Thompson?

If you had the power to change one or two things about our country right now, what would it be?
I would create a law that eliminates all budget earmarks - useless bits of spending. If earmarks are eliminated, approximately 78% of the US budget will be freed up to be utilized in areas where there is a more urgent need, such as the national deficit. I would also eliminate paid lobbying in an effort to give all parties involved in a dispute an equal voice. [Link]

Holy crap. 78%? Draft Anjay (or the parents that helped him write this stuff).

Not that you care, but I almost named this post A Salmagundi of NPR. However, I’m smitten with the way some Desis say “potpourri”, so I couldn’t resist the allure of that word. Oh, how do they say it? Like so: pottu-puri

None of these stories feels substantial enough to merit their own post; what does feel significant is perking up FOUR times during Morning Edition, because there are four different sepia-colored stories! That’s almost a fifth of the program! Here is what I (and undoubtedly fellow NPR-phile-Abhi, as well) heard:

1) Moray Eels are toothy!

Scientists in California have reported that Moray eels have a set of teeth within a second set of jaws, called the pharyngeal jaws, that help them capture their prey.

Once the Moray eel secures its prey with its first set of jaws, the pharyngeal jaws reach up from its throat, grabbing and pulling the prey down through its esophagus.

One of you already has an itchy-trigger-comment finger, I know it, so stop it— the brown angle is a-comin’…

Rita Mehta is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California Davis who studies the evolution of diversity in eel feeding behavior.

Like, whoa. Not only is there a female scientist to celebrate, this has to do with my alma mater as well! w00t Davis! We study Moray Eels!

“What we discovered is that the pharyngeal jaws of Moray’s have the greatest mobility of any pharyngeal jaws ever documented,” Mehta says.

Someone posted a link to Mukul Kesavan’s recent column in the Telegraph on our News Tab. It is, I think, the first full-frontal attack on the desi blogosphere that I’ve seen published in an Indian newspaper.

And it’s so, so wrong. Let’s start at the beginning:

Every English-speaking Indian man between 25 and 60 has written about the Hindi movies he has seen, the English books he has read, the foreign places he has travelled to and the curse of communalism. You mightn’t have read them all (there are a lot of them and some don’t make it to print) but their manuscripts exist and in this age of the internet, these masters of blah have migrated to the Republic of Blog. A cultural historian from the remote future (investigating, perhaps, the death of English in India) might use up a sub-section of a chapter to explore the sameness of their concerns. Why did a bunch of grown men, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, write about the same movies, novels, journeys and riots? Why Naipaul? Why not nature? Or Napier? Or the nadeswaram? Why Bachchan? And not Burma? Or Bhojpuri? And, most weirdly, why pogroms and chauvinism? Why not programmes on television? link)

First, my biggest complaint with Kesavan’s piece is his refusal to name names. The “Republic of Blog” is for him guilty of a mind-numbing sameness, but if he doesn’t tell us what blogs he’s reading, it’s impossible to verify what he says.

Second, why only men? Aren’t there lots of Indian women bloggers? Indeed, there are too many to list, so let’s just name one good one: Rashmi Bansal’s Youth Curry. (Readers, feel free to name other Indian women bloggers based in India that you would recommend.)

Third, why not acknowledge that people are blogging in various Indian languages? In addition to its English “main page,” Desipundit links to blogs in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bangla, and Marathi. (Sadly, no Punjabi…)

Then the substantive question — amongst Indian male bloggers writing in English, is there in fact a deadening sameness? Do people really only talk about, as Kesavan suggests 1) Hindi films, 2) English novels, 3) various and sundry travels, and 4) Communalism? And do the comments on communalism all take a left-center approach (commonly derided as “pseudo-secular”)?

Long have I bemoaned the often-fugly nomenclature of my people…but I was ignorant as to how good we have it, until I received a tip from one of you (thanks, M).

It turns out that Malayalees have nothing on Venezuelans, though if legislators in the land of OOogo Chavez have their way, we thenga-addicts will go back to being the undisputed world champions of weirdness (take that Lovelypreets and Pinkyjeets of the world! You wish you could be part of a set of siblings named Mincy, Quincy and Finsy):

Goodbye, Tutankamen del Sol.

So long, Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, Nixon and Yurbiladyberth. The prolifically inventive world of Venezuelan baby names may be coming to an end.[NYT]

Inventive? That’s no exaggeration:

A glance through a phone book or the government’s voter registry reveals names like Taj-Mahal Sánchez, Elvis Presley Gomez Morillo, Darwin Lenin Jimenez…Other Venezuelan first names, which roll off the tongue about as easily in Spanish as in English, include Yusmairobis, Nefertitis, Yaxilany, Riubalkis, Debraska, as well as Yesaidú and Juan Jondre — transliterations of “Yes, I do” and “One hundred.” [IHT]

If electoral officials here get their way, a bill introduced last week would prohibit Venezuelan parents from bestowing those names — and many, many others — on their children. [NYT]

Oh, my. I need to pause for a giggle. Thanks. Okay, so what this means is that parents of newborns would have the pleasure of choosing a name for their baby, from a list of a scant 100 or so choices, which are all approved by the government, ostensibly to protect these fragile youngsters from a lifetime of mockery:

The bill’s ambition, according to a draft submitted to municipal offices here for review, is to “preserve the equilibrium and integral development of the child” by preventing parents from giving newborns names that expose them to ridicule or are “extravagant or hard to pronounce in the official language,” Spanish.

Okay. But why is this even an issue?

The debate over names starter last year when opponents of President Hugo Chavez questioned the accuracy of the voter rolls when it was found that a Superman was on the list.

The beauty of being an “non exempt employee” is that you work as long as it takes to get the job done. So while the rest of the country was celebrating Labor Day, I was in the office, working more than 14 hours to meet a deadline. Tuesday was the same.

I was driving blearily to work this morning, thinking about the union movement and the 8 hour workday when I heard the news about the latest alleged terror plot in Germany. The name of the group they think is responsible? The Islamic Jihad Union.

It should tell you something about my state of mind that my first reaction was “There is a terrorist union? I wonder what benefits they get?”

This segued into a reverie in extremely poor taste about two Jihadi managers, sitting in Pakistan (where those arrested were allegedly trained), complaining about the new German recruits who came in and unionized their operations.

Manager one: Unions are really playing havoc with our operations. Now they’re asking for 3 suicide bombers when one will do. One to carry the bomb, one to set it off, and another to supervise!

Manager two: Yeah, and if they’re asked to attack after 5PM, they want overtime. They’re demanding 50% more virgins! Their slogan is “fewer hours, more houris!”

Maybe this could be the west’s secret weapon in the “GWOT”: Unionization! “I’m very sorry sir, but this is strictly a union shop. We only accept attacks by unionized terrorists here.” That should slow things down considerably.

The Washington Post has an in-depth exploration of the long-term connections between Bill and Hillary Clinton and Sant Singh Chatwal, a New York based businessman.

Alongside outsourcing, the connection to Chatwal is another of the issues raised by the Obama campaign memo back in June. Funny how that won’t go away.

I suppose there are two questions that come to mind. One is, is Chatwal merely a bad businessman, or an actual “crook”? He’s settled his debts to the IRS ($4 million), forfeited a building he owned that had a lien on it, and the $12 million loan he didn’t pay to the Bank of New York was eventually resolved in court (Chatwal had to pay $125,000). The Indian banks that had accused him of bank fraud eventually dropped the case against him. Chatwal’s lawyer puts it like this:

“The man came to this country, accumulated an empire, lost it during the time of real estate [softness], and has struggled and worked to try to pay off his debts,” said A. Mitchell Greene, Chatwal’s lawyer for 25 years. “It has been a long battle, but he has cleared up all of his obligations, and in the process he is trying to accumulate his wealth again.”

To my mind, he’s somewhere in between “failed investor” and “crook” (where “crook” admittedly isn’t so much meant as a legal term as it is a kind of moral judgment), partly because at the peak of his troubles he and his family continued to live pretty extravagantly — as if nothing were amiss.

The second question is, what is wrong with Hillary Clinton accepting campaign contributions from (and more importantly, through) Chatwal? If we presume that he’s now out of legal and financial trouble, is it unethical for Clinton to be involved with someone who was once in this kind of trouble? Most of the real pull that someone like Chatwal has comes through his connections, not his actual bank account (which may or may not have much dough in it); if Chatwal is accepted by the Indian-American community, how relevant are his personal financial and legal troubles? If you look at the bloggers who are most excited by this story, it’s mostly Republican blogs like “AgainstHillary.com”; clearly the right is going to want to spin this a certain way: Clinton accepts dirty money from crooked “foreign” businessmen (the Norman Hsu situation doesn’t help).

Is it possible to rise above the cloud of partisan spin, and evaluate this openly and honestly? How would we react to this if we were talking about a Republican candidate like Giuliani, rather than Clinton? Incidentally, the WaPo article I linked to above does mention some of the campaign contribution controversies that have come up with both Obama and Edwards, though the emphasis is really on Clinton.

…and he shall redeem us, Amreeka.

As many of you may recall from the “Aviyal” post, I am fascinated by Facebook, and once again, I must insist that it’s not for the usual reasons (though I do enjoy throwing sheep at several of you). No, when I’m not discovering groups which specifically support inter-religious, inter-regional desi relationships, I’m reading this about Giuliani or planning to restock my iPod with these choons. I’m also discovering potential reality TV stars, via my News “feed”:

The show that Sam is auditioning for is called Tontine (Achtung! Pseudo-mystical yodeling awaits you, if you click that link…and you wonder why I went with wiki…wiki is silent AND it lets me copy text…take that official site!):

A combination of Survivor and The Amazing Race, Tontine follows 15 contestants as they travel to all seven continents and contend for the $10 million prize. Contestants each begin with a key, the final contestant who posses all 15 keys unlocks the prize. The show is hosted by “Boston Rob” Mariano, who was a contestant on both Survivor and The Amazing Race before signing on for Tontine. [wiki]

Doesn’t that sound like something our Abhi should have done? :D

Here’s what the show’s casting director wrote in an email to Sam (and perhaps a few others):

One of you kind souls, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent me this picture of “India’s Brangelina”, because you were hoping we might play The Caption Game with it (ji, thanks!). Absosmurfly! What better way to draw off-topic commentary away from the Maximum Nerdery thread? ;)

Without further ado, let’s get snarky. To the left we see Abhishek Bachan and his bride strutting down the red carpet at Cannes.

Most of you are aware that Aishwarya is sometimes known by the unwieldy acronym TMBWITW. Well, now that she is part of a pair, I propose that her hubby get an acronym, too. It’s only fair, right? Damnit, I don’t want to propagate the hegemony of the pasty. Err, I meant…it’s only dark? Whatever.

How about TMFHITW? I’m sure you can guess what the third and fourth letters stand for, but in case you haven’t had two cups of coffee like I have, I’ll spare you from wondering— FH = fugly hair.

Unless your name is Esthappan and you’re rocking a puff, COMB YOUR HAIR. I’m guessing Abhishek get it from his Mama? Big Daddy Amitabh’s tresses seem a bit more manageable. Anyway, the entire point of this debacle of a post is to offer you tired, grumpy, three-day-weekend-missing mutineers a chance to play the caption game! You know how we do, and if you don’t, check out previous editions: ein, zwei, drei, vier, funf…

So, just what is Aish saying? What is her spouse thinking? Why are there suddenly so many Tamil people on SM? The answers to all this and more, will most probably not be found below, not that you’re disappointed at that. Now get to captioning!

We’re heading into an election year in the U.S., which means facts are largely going to be irrelevant to most public discussions of issues for the next fourteen months. Instead, we’ll be treated to spin, counterspin, and more spin. The big Indian software & services companies realize this, and the Times reports that they’ve decided to hire lobbyists to counterspin the inevitable protectionist rhetoric (the original spin, as it were) that “outsourcing is costing America jobs.”

The economic impact of outsourcing is complicated, far too complicated to be given justice in a 30 second ad or crowd-pleasing stump speech. While it’s hard to argue that no jobs have been lost to outsourcing, there’s no reliable number on how many jobs are actually being lost (it’s certainly nowhere near 3.3 million, as was predicted earlier). There’s also some evidence that “insourcing” creates far more jobs than outsourcing takes away (the U.S. remains a net exporter of business services, for instance). And yes, some Indian companies are now opening up decent-sized offices in the U.S., and hiring American workers. (As you’ll recall, this came up back in June, with the infamous Obama campaign memo on Hillary Clinton’s purported connections to India.) See the conservative Heritage Foundation for more; and see this article at IHT for why it may not matter anyway.

The lobbyists quoted in the Times article are even adding some new arguments and approaches to their arsenal:

But the core of the Indian vendors’ new strategy appears to be removing themselves from the limelight. Outsourcing is not about us, goes the new pitch to lawmakers, it benefits Americans, including ones in your district.

The Washington lobbyist who asked not to be identified said that a focus of the campaign was to collect data on Indian companies’ investments in the United States and then to lobby members of Congress from districts where those investments have created jobs.

For example, a lawmaker from Washington State might be told something like this: Indian outsourcing companies may funnel some Seattle-area technology jobs to India, but with the affluence that creates in India, more and more Indians are flying. That has made India a huge buyer of Boeing aircraft and thus a creator of jobs in the Seattle area, where Boeing does much of its manufacturing.(link)

I don’t know — the tradeoff described here seems awfully indirect, and I’m not sure a politican could really sell the rising Indian middle class as a positive to an American middle class that’s currently dealing with economic uncertainty. Readers, do you buy the argument above? Can people think of other instances where the trade-off works this way? What about cases where it doesn’t?

This is the post, for which five of you have been patiently waiting. Finally, you get to dissect Maximum City, the first work chosen for the brown book club which I am horrible at coordinating.

If it’s any consolation, I have cringed and felt guilty that my work + ankle have delayed our exploration of MC, especially after reading two-months worth of comments and emails which asked about the fate of our summer nerdery. I know several of you couldn’t wait for this discussion which is so late, it is later than IST-late, and that is late my friends, yindeed.

Well, since I couldn’t get the job done, I got creative (read: desperate). I outsourced it to Uberdesi blogger Karthik. ;) Here are his thoughts on MC; I look forward to reading yours in the comment thread below.

After weeks of procrastination and a few days of grim determination, I can finally, happily strike Maximum City off my list of books to read. I had borrowed a friend’s copy, and I left their house wondering why they were so enthusiastic about handing it to me, since they were supposed to be reading it for SM, too. Now, I know.

After putting myself through that, I was ready to express my thoughts, and so like many of you, I emailed ANNA about when we were going to start discussing the book. She said that if I wanted to “get the party started”, I was welcome to do so, since she still hadn’t been able to finish it herself. I know she’s busy, but that itself is telling, people.

One question kept popping up in my head. Why did he pick these people to write about? The answer was buried in the final chapter of the book; I wish Sukethu had chosen to add this to the introduction.

At times, Sukethu goes into details that in my opinion are not needed, and some are very violent. There is also a very haphazard way in which the book is written. I find this maddening, people come and go and scenes change quickly. Before you comprehend certain pieces of information, you are presented with new ones. Everything is a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.

There was also a lot of unnecessary repetition, reminding me over and over again of my old grandfather, who is like Mehta- also fond of telling us the same thing, repeatedly.

Vanaja is an art film, which is to say, the director, Rajnesh Domalpalli, doesn’t come out of the “Tollywood” world of commercial Telugu cinema (he actually has an M.F.A. from Columbia, and the script for this film was submitted as his Master’s Thesis). Domalpalli’s primary actors are nearly all amateurs — people he found on the street. Carnatic music and Kuchipudi dance play important, but not overwhelming, roles in the film, and even there, it appears the actors actually spent months training in these rigorous arts.

This is a film about caste and class relations in a village setting, but Domalpalli doesn’t take the familiar route seen in many other films about village life (i.e., villagers are exploited, landowners are inherently evil). Here, the rich people, though they do not always behave sympathetically, are as human and complex as Vanaja herself. I don’t want to get too bogged down in plot, but suffice it to say that the romance in the film follows a surprising course.

Throughout, Domalpalli pays very close attention to details, including sets and staging, and the result is a film that feels very natural, yet is full of visual pleasures. The colors are rich, though not unrealistically so, and the acting is much better than one would expect from an all-amateur cast and a novice director.

I’m very curious to know how this film might be received in India, in particular in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike the films of, say, Deepa Mehta, who I’ve now come to feel makes her movies primarily for western audiences, Domalpalli’s Vanaja might actually be popular with Desi viewers. (My mother-in-law, who is visiting us from Bombay, liked it.)

One other thing, since Anna (rightly) wants us ignorant northies to learn a bit more about South Indian culture, the set of cymbals on the right side of the photo above is called a Nattuvangam. (The word of the day is Nattuvangam. Say it. Good.) Though I’m a little confused, because this site defines Nattuvangam a little differently; I gather that “Nattuvangam” refers both to the cymbals and to the act of conducting the dance by playing the cymbals?