Five years ago, Abhi first brought the Mutiny’s attention to Goldspot, the Los-Angeles-based band founded by multi-talented frontman Siddhartha Khosla. Remember their first album, ‘Tally of the Yes Men?’ This past fall, Goldspot released their second full-length album ‘And the Elephant is Dancing,’ which I’ve been playing in heavy rotation on iTunes for the last few months. Their work, often described as ‘Bollywood-inspired’ and ‘Beatles-influenced,’ is getting even more attention this time around. In the past year, Goldspot has gotten play on television shows such as ‘How I Met Your Mother,’ and soundtracks including ‘Today’s Special,’ starring Aasif Mandvi and the Bollywood release ‘The President is Coming.’

It’s not that it’s a bad thing that there are South Asians on prime time television. It’s just that it seems that they are always playing the sidekick character. Fine, maybe not “sidekick” as much as “part of ensemble cast but definitely not lead actor” role. NBC Thursday night is a perfect example. You have Danny Pudi playing Abed on Community, Aziz Ansari as Tom on Parks and Recreation, Mindy Kaling as Kelly on The Office, and Maulik Pancholy as Jonathan on 30 Rock.

Not since Margaret Cho’s 1994 TV-series All-American Girl has there been an ensemble cast entirely of Asian Americans on prime time television. The show infamously imploded as cast and execs clashed and Cho has not been quiet about it. That was sixteen years ago.

Since then, we have seen the rise of Desi ensemble casting but…in other countries. You have the Kumars at No. 42 from the BBC network; Brazil’s Indian themed soap opera Caminho das India; and yes, I’m even counting Canada’s CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. Well, it looks like network U.S. network execs are finally jumping on the bandwagon.

They are the two comeback stories of this pilot season, projects developed years ago that have been resurrected and have landed orders at the broadcast networks…The two comedies — “Nirvana” at Fox and “Outsourced” at NBC — have something else in common: They both are ensemble shows about Indians and Indian Americans.

A third project, a U.S. version of popular British comedy “The Kumars at No. 42,” about an immigrant Indian family, also is poised for revival. Eight years after NBC took a stab at the format, the show’s British producers are shopping it to U.S. networks, including FX. [thr]

As I watched last night’s Academy Award presentation, I couldn’t help but think back to the 2009 awards nostalgically, a time where Slumdog mania was in full force, Bollywood stars were taking the stage, and saris were seen on the red carpet. At last night’s ceremony, though the one shoulder dress was the trend, not a sari was to be seen. Nor a desi person in the crowd. Who woulda thought - there actually was an end to the Slumdog Millionaire madness.

But there was one film. I hadn’t heard of it till last night, but as I saw the nominees scroll for short films, I saw Kavi scroll by. Though the film did not win last night, I was still curious to see what it was all about.

‘Kavi’, American director Gregg Helvey’s short film about an Indian slave boy has lost out the Oscar in the Best Short Film (Live Action) category to the Danish entry ‘The New Tenants’…The 19-minute-long fictional film in Hindi, was the only India connection at this year’s Oscars, as opposed to last year when the Mumbai based potboiler ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ bagged eight golden trophies. [ptinews]

I’m not usually a fan of shorts, but I may have to check Kavi out. I do find some of the language on the movie’s website slightly problematic though, and I wonder if the film has a similar undertone. Has anyone out there seen the movie? Also, thoughts on last night’s Academy Awards in this post Slumdog era?

Happy Humpday, SM readers! Hope you’re having a great week. Whilst stalking my friends’ Facebook pages, I came across the best music video EVER via Sugi. Behold: the Interwebz phenomenon that is Wilbur Sargunaraj, who apparently first came to attention through ‘Blog Song’ back in 2007. Since then he’s done many, many videos. But man, am I loving this beat right here. It doesn’t hurt that he has those adorable aunties self-consciously throwing it up in the back. Seriously, this song needed to be my ringtone yesterday. Enjoy!

If you’re televisually predisposed to legal-drama addiction (I think it runs in my family), you may have heard of The Good Wife, which at first glance looks like a Law & Order-style star vehicle for Julianna Margulies, who recently won a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role on it. The series debuted last fall and SM blogged that Archie Panjabi would be on it. Her role is a supporting character, but I think Panjabi’s Kalinda Sharma, the tough, mysterious legal investigator, is a bit of a scene-stealer. Fans and critics can’t get enough of Kalinda.

“I’d also like to see Kalinda’s character developed a little bit more. Right now she just pops up a few times an episode, wearing kickass boots and generally being feisty. She drinks martinis, she flips the bird, she shows off her cleavage to get the job done. Archie Panjabi is a great actress (also, gorgeous) and I am glad she’s not an Asian stereotype — but I want to see more of her.” (LA Times)

Kalinda’s sexy trademark outfits with high-heeled boots and leather jackets definitely help her stand out. Most of the other cast members are conservatively suited up to blend in at a tony Chicago law firm. In a behind the scenes clip, the show’s costume designer mentions that everyone’s “mad” for Kalinda’s blogworthy boots.

As most of you know, a couple weeks ago I trekked out the snowy mountains of Park City, UT to take part in Sundance mayhem, Taqwacore style. I was there to blog on behalf of The Taqwacores motion picture - and you can read my full experience here. I ended up having one of the best (and most surreal) times of my life, hanging out with The Kominas, getting to interview celebrities (like in the video above of Gurinder Chadha and Sendhil Ramamurthy), and watching a ridiculous amount of movies. It was also a surprisingly mutinous adventure, and by the end of Sundance week I was literally introducing myself to every Desi person at Sundance. So, let me see if I can give you a celebri-Desi mutinous rundown of what happened at Sundance 2010.

The biggest highlight to my week was getting the opportunity to interview Bollywood movie star, Aamir Khan. He was there to promote the movie Peepli Live which was being released out of his production studio. With The Kominas as my hilarious Flip camera crew, we talked to him, first time director Anusha Rizvi and actor Omkar Das Manikpuri. Peepli Live is the first Bollywood movie to make it into competition in Sundance, and I really enjoyed the movie. It was an indie comedy with a Bollywood look, but without the cheesy song and dance numbers. And Aamir Khan was super normal, sweet and nice (as well as his wife Kiran Rao, who started talking to me in Bangla when Basim, Shahj, and Imran were talking to Aamir in Hindi). Check out the first part to the interview and visit MTV Iggy for the full run down.

I was also really excited about meeting Gurinder Chadha, who directed one of my favorite movies, Bend It Like Beckhem. Of course, it should be no surprise to the mutiny how drool-worthy I find Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays the leading man in Chadha’s latest movie, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife. The interview was fascinating as the conversation revolved around the comparison of Brit Desi and American Desi film and cultures and I only lost my composure once - it was when Chadha talked about giving Mr. Ramamurthy a shirtless scene in the movie and all I could respond with was a “Thank you!”

Do you hear that? That’s the sound of the glass ceiling shattering. Yes, that’s right, there’s a desi model in the Sports’ Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Oh, and she’s a sophomore at Harvard, pre-med studying econ. Move aside Padma Laxmi, make room TMBWITW, here comes Sonia Dara.

I know I know, I can hear the objections from the nattering nabobs of negativism. Why is this photo shoot in Rajasthan? Who wears a swimsuit in the middle of the desert? Look, I’m not going to defend SI. This photograph, for example, is completely absurd. I can’t look at it without cringing.

However, what bothers me is the exotification not the objectification. I’m totally down with the latter. I actually wish desi men would get objectified in the media, instead of being portrayed as they were in the superbowl ad for Metro TV below. I mean, don’t you get tired of being appreciated for your mind all the time? Right now, even the desi sex symbols in the media are geeks first and eye candy later. I’m doing my part to try to bring sexy back, but there’s only so much I can do alone.

One day, perhaps, desis can be depicted three dimensionally by the American media. Until then. I’d rather see more Sonia Dara and less of Ranjit and Chad.

(Update) You may also be interested in Sonia Dara’s spread in Vogue India, which shows her in a different context.

Lastly, let’s keep this polite whether you like Dara or do not. If the language in the comments go beyond the bounds of polite conversation, I’ll shut it down because I don’t have time to prune uncouth comments while at work. So please don’t feed any trolls who show up.

This past fall, I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to begin teaching at the University of Michigan. One of the first people I met here was the opera singer Sean Panikkar, a University of Michigan alum who’s singing at the Metropolitan Opera in Ariadne auf Naxos this week.

I’m a bit of an operahead. (For those of you who have never been to the opera, if you want to try it affordably, I recommend my usual method: standing room tickets at the Met, which go on sale at 10 a.m. on the day of the performance. But I’m going to Ariadne courtesy of Sean. Many thanks, Mr. Panikkar!) Sean was the second opera singer I’d heard of who had some Sri Lankan background. And his tenor has gotten great reviews from the likes of The New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini, as well as a host of others. I asked him if he’d be willing to do a bit of Q&A for the Mutiny. Here’s an edited and abridged version of our interview.

Can you share a little bit about your family background?

I was born in Bloomsburg, PA, which is a small town of about 12,000. My parents are from Sri Lanka and came to the United States in 1975. My mother is Tamil and my father is Sinhalese, which is why they left.

When and how did your striking voice first come to attention? What was it about opera specifically that appealed to you? How did your family feel about it?

I had always been involved in music from the time I was little. I played piano, violin, and trombone while also singing in choirs. I never considered myself musical, but it was one of the things my parents wanted us (my brother and I) to do along with sports. My parents often thought I was lip synching during choir concerts. They never knew I could sing.

When I was in middle school a Juilliard-trained soprano named Li Ping Liu moved into our area…. She had nobody to teach because opera isn’t something people in central PA really know much about. I thought it might be interesting to take voice lessons, but I wouldn’t do it unless somebody went with me so for the first few lessons my father and I had lessons back to back. At the time I was into Michael Jackson and Billy Joel so that is what I brought to sing. She made me sing it like an opera singer and I thought it was the worst thing in the world. Just imagine singing high pitched “hee hees” like an opera singer! Needless to say that didn’t last long.

Dear Mutineers,

There are exciting happenings going on in the bunker nowadays for those interested in all news Bollywood and Hollywood. Taz just came back from Sundance (where she met Aamir Khan and Sendhil Ramamurthy) and today Cicatrix and I will be around in NYC, covering the My Name is Khan press conference featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Karan Johar. If you’ll remember, we talked about Khan’s new movie back in August, where we found out he was going to meet President Obama (played by Christopher Duncan). And of course there was that whole Newark airport incident (which some of you suspected was a publicity stunt done to promote the movie, much like his joining Twitter).

Himanshu from the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) passed on information about an event I thought mutineers around NYC and Stanford would find interesting. Tea with Chachaji is an off-Broadway family musical based on the the book “Chachaji’s Cup” by Uma Krishnaswami and directed and choreographed by Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj. It tells the story of a boy, his great-uncle and a teacup. Produced through a partnership between IAAC and Making Books Sing, the musical stars Raja Burrows as Neel, a young boy whose great-uncle, played by Tony Mirrcandani, teaches him valuable lessons about life through stories about a teacup brought over from India.

Under an odd twist of fate, I find myself for the first time in my life actually interested in the glitz and glamor of Hollywood relocating to the cold hills of Park City, Utah. As mentioned in a previous post, I have had a minuscule bit of involvement with the book-to-movie feature film The Taqwacores which will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th. I have recently been asked to join the Taqwacore madness at Utah, from staying in the rented 4 bedroom punk house with 30 other actors and/or punks, to checking out the punk rock shows in Park City and Salt Lake City featuring The Kominas and Al Thawra. I will be blogging about my Taqx experiences for those two weeks at the tumblr site Taqx at Sundance. Additionally, I will also be crossposting/blogging for MTV Iggy about movies, actors and potentially interviews.

My mind is spinning with the prospect that this little blogger now has a press pass to access one of the coolest film festivals there is. And what an amazing year to join the madness. There are a few films at Sundance which I think are Sepia Mutiny worthy to keep an eye on over the next year:

• First on my list of have to watch movie at Sundance, starring the gorgeous Sendhil Ramamurty and directed by Gurinder Chadha, is It’s a Wonderful Afterlife. I will have the opportunity to interview both of these amazing people and I will try very hard for my readers to not drool too much when Sendhil is sitting across from me.

It looks like a cute movie, and definitely is the shoe in for that one movie for this year’s Desi diaspora flick. I am really excited at the prospect of speaking to both Gurinder and Sendhil about their experience working on the film.

My friend Adnan, who I have previously blogged about, is touring the film festival circuit with his new animated short, Gul (flower). Next up is the Slamdance Festival in Utah starting Jan 22nd.

Gul, a young girl, is awakened by her mother’s dying breath. She struggles to recall her past. A child’s view illustrates conflicts between abuse, self determination, human rights, and the environment. Her world manifests through visual poetry. Raw, expressive, painted style computer animation is scored with masterful Sindhi Folk music from the villages of Pakistan. With all that she finds, can love create hope in the face of oppression? [Link]

I am really excited by this film for two reasons. First, Adnan is a phenomenal talent and I think more people should be exposed to that. When we used to go out to bars/music venues in LA he would bring his water colors. In the time it took me to down a glass of whiskey he had already completed a painting of the band on stage. Who needs a camera in their phone when you have skills like that? Second, the movie “looks” really original. I can’t remember seeing anything else that has the look and feel of the film that I am seeing in the trailer above. If I recall correctly, Adnan also worked on the 2007 film Beowulf.

If you get a chance to see this film let us know what you think.

RIGHT NOW. Well, in an hour. I’m sitting here by the service station while they set up dinner. The glamorous life of a blogger, eh? Anyway, Padma Lakshmi is on this panel. Maybe she’ll get carried away on a haute cuisine high and spill the deets on the baby daddy?

As longtime readers know, I’m all thumbs. So this should be fun! Will be liveblogging for MTV Iggy here.

Unconventional. Indian Women. Leading Culinary.
At Vermilion. January 12. 6-9pm

Food has never been so fashionable. Meet the leading women behind different facets of cuisine and beverage, all of whom have made unconventional career choices given their backgrounds and Indian origins. Learn about the ins and outs of what’s behind the “foodie” wave we’re all swept in - behind the most successful food shows (Top Chef, Check Please!), the business of opening and operating restaurants, wines and the economics of a beverage program, the art of cooking and being a chef, and writing on food & wine. More info here.

Meet Your Panelists:

Padma Lakshmi: Emmy-nominated host of  TV show “Top Chef,” award winning author, actress, and model

Alpana Singh: Master Sommelier, host of the Emmy-winning TV show “Check, Please!” and author of Alpana Pours

Rohini Dey: Owner/Founder of Vermilion Restaurant, formerly of McKinsey & Co. and the World Bank

Maneet Chauhan: Vermilion Executive Chef

Moderator: Vijay Vaitheeswaran (award-winning Editor of The Economist, author of Zoom)

Okay, so my typing is pretty crap. But this should be a fun conversation between several very sassy women. Let’s go!

6:35: Panel starts at 7:30 I’m told. Alrighty then. Hang out with me people :) I’m scoping out Padma’s bodyguard as he scopes out the place. Read live here.

She writes plays, directs and acts in comedy mime skits, moshes in punk pits and reads lips. Sabina England is a 20-something Midwest girl that fits no typecast. I stumbled across Sabina on twitter as the @DeafMuslim when all Taqwacore scenesters would retweet her plays and videos. I was already curious about the Deaf Desi community since meeting a few in DC, but was even more intrigued after checking out her site, her comedy skits and reading the stories and plays on her blog. How could I not be? I sat down (virtually) for a fascinating interview where she talks about acting as Helen Keller in a high school play, to having a Mohawk and wearing hijab, to prejudices against the deaf community by fellow Desis.

You have written a few plays, with some relatively controversial content. How do people react to your plays?

It varies. No matter what Muslims do, every time a Muslim makes a film or writes a play or whatever about Pakistanis or Indians or w/e who aren’t “typical” they still get hate about it. It makes me so mad. Some Muslims ask me why do I write about “Muslim whores” and I’m like, why the fuck not? They exist. My sister hates my plays and always complains why am I “weird” and why can’t I write “normal” plays. Some feminists are offended by my plays, but I get mostly great feedback from women about my plays because I tend to write strong, interesting female characters.

I don’t have any of my plays on videos; my videos are just comedy sketches. They’re very different from my plays, my plays are very dark; I call them “tragicomedies”. I had a play run in London on late September to early October for 3 weeks. The next project I have, my play (the same play, called How the Rapist was Born) will be staged at East 15 in England on May 2010 with a different director and cast. I am trying to get my plays produced in NYC, but the truth is NYC’s theater scene isn’t as vibrant as London so I’ve had my eyes and heart set on London for a long time. Recently I read an article some weeks ago, a lot of critics and journalists have declared that this is The Golden Age of British theater right now in London. I want to be part of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, something truly significant happened on the second of January. (No, I’m not referring to your hangover, although doubtless that was epic as well.) On January 2, Shah Rukh Khan joined Twitter. Yes, that’s right. Time for all of you Twitter-haters to finally perk up and pay attention. Shah Rukh Khan, that’s King Khan to you, joins Mallika Sherawat, Priyanka Chopra, Dino Morea and other Bollywood stars who use the social media site to connect directly with fans throughout the world. As a Twitter addict and Bollywood fan, I admit I’m a little excited about this development. When I first heard (through Twitter of course) that SRK had joined Twitter, he had a mere 1200+ followers. Right now he has 24,947 followers, a number that will no doubt double in the next few days, perhaps even hours.

Merry Christmas readers! Err sorry, Ennis. Happy Holidays lovely readers! I hope you were able to enjoy this break with friends and family. As for myself, I’m still not done making lists. No, not Christmas presents. That headache is over and I have the paper cuts to prove it. I’m referring to the lists I made this past semester - lists of books, movies, and TV shows I intended to catch up on during December/January. One of those is a list of Bollywood movies I’ve been hoping to watch in the next few weeks. (See Boston mutineers, I promised you a Bollywood post. Here it is.) I came up with a rough compilation of movies I hope to see these next few weeks and I’m selfishly hoping you can help me hone it. Because if you’re going to spend three hours watching a movie, it had better be worth it!

• 3 Idiots was released Christmas Day, and from what I can tell via reactions on Twitter, it’s already got fans. Based on the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat and directed by Raju Hiran, the movie stars Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan and Sharman Joshi as three engineering students at one of Indian’s top colleges. Plot-wise, there are the usual college-boy hijinks and romances. (By the way, the film will be available three months from now on YouTube, ostensibly to discourage piracy.) There’s no particular reason I want to watch this film. I’m not a huge Bhagat fan, but I figure I can’t go wrong with any movie Aamir Khan chooses to act in…

The results of poll #1, on the most influential Desi musician of the 2000s, are pretty clear — with about 200 votes cast, A.R. Rahman wins by a significant margin, with M.I.A. as the second most influential Desi musician of the 2000s.

The topic of the next poll was strongly suggested by the comments following the first one — sports. I tried to use what the commenters were suggesting to guide my choices.

While I am at it, however, I am also doing a poll for the best Desi film of the 2000s. Here, it seemed wrong to put artsy “diaspora” films up against commercial South Asian cinema (Bollywood, Tollywood, etc.), so I created a poll #3 — for commercial cinema — and a poll #3A — for specifically South Asian diaspora cinema.

Choosing the films for the commercial cinema category was challenging, and I kept finding that certain films had a natural pairing (for instance, Lagaan, by Ashutosh Gowariker, goes with Swades). I also realized that some of the most influential commercial films were known not for their directors, but for writers and producers; Vidhu Vinod Chopra, whose name was associated with both Munnabhai films, only wrote the first one. Similarly, Karan Johar’s name is associated with several important films he produced rather than directed. And the directors for many Yash Raj Films are unknowns, but the films have a certain “stamp” to them. So I used the idea of the “filmmaker,” which could be the writer, director, or producer.

I’m sure my approach will seem a little unusual to some folks, but hopefully it’s coherent enough, and you see something there you want to vote for. (At the very least, my approach solved the problem of how to pick just 10 commercial films from over the entire decade.) Finally, people who really know regional cinema might want to create your own “Best Of 2000s” lists in the comments — I simply haven’t seen very much Telugu cinema, for example, so I don’t have any Telugu filmmakers listed here.

All three polls after the fold.

I cannot claim credit for the eye-rollingly bad title. It appears that this is the media’s favorite play on words for this occasion. They really get a [spicy] kick out of their cleverness. The Beltway is all atwitter today in preparation for the state dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit. Many have quipped, and I agree, that it looks like a big Indian wedding tent has been built on the White House lawn. Like out of Monsoon Wedding:

The Chef: Marcus Samuelsson of NYC’s Aquavit

The Menu: Top Secret…for now. Samuelsson reportedly did not create the menu, he is just cooking it. Manmohan is vegetarian though so expect there to be several vegetarian offerings. You can follow the latest on the menu @ObamaFoodorama

The Guest List: ~400 titans of the Beltway and Hollywood, including Oprah, AR Rahman, Bobby Jindal, Nancy Pelosi, HRC sans WJC, and…Deepak Chopra. Thus far no sign of Rajan Zed on the invite list. God I hope not. And what about Padma Lakshmi. Who, if not her, will opine on the quality of the food? Er, as long as there are no hamburgers on the menu, I mean.

So what is a state dinner all about anyways? Ken Adelman at WaPo explains:

State dinners are less “symbolic signaling” than “political greasing.” Sure, they indicate who is important - those invited are on the A-List of Washington’s socialite “plum book” - and what is important - cellist Pablo Casals for the Kennedys and Country & Western music for the Bushes.

Beyond that, however, relationships are heightened and debts are deepened by State Dinner invitations. That’s more critical, since personal relationships are central to achieving results in politics, as in most endeavors of life. House Speaker Sam Rayburn once quipped that anyone who couldn’t size up another person in five minutes “doesn’t belong in my profession.” That clueless fellow probably doesn’t belong in many other professions, either. [link]

Politico.com has a convenient live feed set up for those that want to follow.

As most SepiaMutiny readers know by now, I work for MTV Iggy. And I don’t mean to keep pimping that stuff over here, but whenever something that might interest you comes up, it seems a shame to not share it. A new special feature just went up on the rock music scene in India, with interviews, live performance footage, music videos, slideshows, and more. Arjun S. Ravi, the editor of a Mumbai-based site that tracks the Indian rock scene, contributed fascinating article on the highs and lows of being a rock music fan in India:

The easiest way to sneak alcohol into Rang Bhavan was to hide it under a girl’s jacket. The notoriously long queues of people waiting impatiently to enter Mumbai’s legendary open air theatre were predominantly male, which meant that the security guards at the gate would only frisk guys. A girl, depending on her stature and the size of the jacket, could slip in anywhere between four to eight cans of Kingfisher beer. Inebriation was as crucial to the Rang Bhavan experience as the Metallica-inspired, ’90s metal cover bands.

[snip]

In India, rock is a much maligned genre, mostly because it is totally misunderstood. India’s Bollywood-loving masses generally accept and believe the particularly damaging stereotype that rock music is overrun by dudes with knee-length hair screaming into microphones and groaning like cats being tortured by pitchforks. And until the late ’90s, Indian rockers did very little to change that impression.

He goes on to trace the changes (fan attitudes, new kinds of venues, advent of the internet, bands stopped noodling around) that contribute to the fact that Indian rock bands were recently invited to the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, and SXSW in Austin, TX. It’s long(ish) but you can read it in full here. The full special feature is here.

An video introduction to some of the bands (Jalebee Cartel, Shor Bazaar, Them Clones, etc.) is after the jump.

If, like me, you’re addicted to “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, then Aasif Mandvi needs no further introduction. If, for some reason, you don’t watch the show (what’s wrong with you? The internets flattened the world, remember? Click here to watch!) then you’ve seen him in everything from “CSI” to Spider Man 2, generally as a fleeting and funny brown presence. And if you happen to be a theater-going sort of person, you’ve seen him in all sorts of things, and may even know that he won two Obie Awards for his one-man play Sakina’s Restaurant. Multi-talented, is our Mr. Mandvi.

Anyway, the play was recently remade into a film (Today’s Special, also starring Aasif Mandvi) that’s been well-received in international film festivals. He was besieged by other press people (damn you, BBC!) at a screening in NY, but he kindly let me email questions which he promptly answered via Blackberry. Get ready for a formal exercise in true journalism (by that I mean ridiculousness):

What was it like to translate your play, Sakina’s Restaurant, into the film Today’s Special? Was anything lost in the process? Yes, we lost all the Monologues, and the fact that it was a one-man show, and we lost most of the characters in the play, and we came up with all-new characters and a new storyline and all-new lines for the characters to say and… come to think of it, I don’t think the two things are related at all.

Hmm… awkward.

[snip]

Your family left India for England when you were one, then moved to the US when you were 16, according to Wikipedia. How much did it suck to move as a teenager? Have you been back to India? It did suck, and yes I have been back to India…But don’t tell Wikipedia cos he doesn’t know yet…Shhh.

What’s the most offensive thing anyone’s ever said to you? I don’t remember the most offensive thing, but the second most offensive thing anyone ever called me was: a motherf@ckingdotheadtalibanterroristeatingpu##yfacedc@$ksuckera$$holesh!tstaincoloreddotragheadsandnegropakiwalacurrybreathingsh!tlicker.

Which I definitely thought was inappropriate.

(More with Aasif on being Muslim, the secret to getting hired at The Daily Show, sleeping with Margaret Cho, and light sabers. After the jump.)

It took me a moment before I realized that the two witty kids I was walking the late night streets of Boston with were the infamous BROWNSTAR duo. They had come to the Boston Sepia Mutiny meetup last month, and afterwards we went on a hunt for DJ Kayper. They were hilarious, and I had heard about them through the spoken word grapevine. The BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION duo is a two member poetry/theatre/performance duo, consisting of the NORTHSTAR (Pushkar Sharma) and SOUTHSTAR (Sathya Sridharan). Started in 2007, this duo has been hitting up open mics, college stages, and poetry lounges sharing their words with anyone that will listen. There performances can’t be categorized, but has all the potential to revolutionize.

I knew I had to bring the BROWNSTAR to the Mutiny. I had the chance to hit up Sathya and Pushkar in a gchat interview to ask them some questions about the BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION. Here’s what they said.

Taz: For those of those of the mutiny who may not know, who exactly is BROWNSTAR?

Pushkar: We’re a performance poetry duo, two-man spoken-word show.

Sathya: We’re more than just that though. We’re theatre; we’re comedy; we’re poetry. We like to throw everything into the pot and create something that isn’t always seen on stage.

Taz: How did you get your start? Did you start doing poetry first? Or performance first?

Sathya: I’ve been performing and writing in some way all my life, mostly being a clown for my family, or friends. I was a Drama and Eng Lit major in college, where Pushkar and I met. He directed me in my first show in college. I’m pursuing acting as well as this whole Brownstar thing. Ideally, I like to think of myself as an actor who likes to write poetry on the side.

It’s a good thing that the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reopened this week after freaking out unsuspecting motorists by dropping 5,000 pounds of metal last week. But even if it hadn’t Bay Area indie film fans would have found a way (BART still works, right?) to get to the Seventh Annual 3rd I San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival happening tonight through Sunday, November 5-8. That’s because the festival screenings include some very interesting short films, documentaries, and feature films from South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora. (You can view the SFISAFF trailer after the jump and all the film trailers at thirdi.org and at the end of this post.)

She’s young, talented, cute, and smart. Serious about what she does, no ego, respects the roots of the music she loves. In short, she’s amazing, and sepia loves her.

>>burning envy<<

Seriously, though, it’s hard to hate DJ Kayper. She’s just too amazing. We squeed back in September, when Abhi blogged about her gig at the House of Blues in Houston. Taz and the rest of the beantown mutineers tried to catch her Boston show a few days later as the final touch on an fabulous night. Her skills are ridiculous, her taste is excellent, and she’s so low-key it’s always sort of exciting to get to know anything about her.

So of course I tried to get to know all about her. Recently fired off a batch of unconscionably inquisitive questions…and to my immeasurable delight, she answered them all! Even about being a DJ with breasteses!!

So let’s start with the obvious question — how did an Indian girl from Croydon get into hiphop?

I grew up during the golden era of hip hop and was influenced a lot by what my older brother was listening to. He listened to all types of music but in the early ’90s everyone was a fan of hip hop so that’s really how it all started for me.

“No more news, please. No more news.” That’s been my early-morning refrain while checking news websites ever since 9/11. But inevitably, there is news from Pakistan. This past year, very few mornings have gone by without Americans waking up to read “Ten Taliban Members Killed in Pakistan” or “Militants Take Over Swat Valley, Close Girls’ Schools.” There is always news and it is always bad.

A new movie, Slackistan, wants to change that perception of Pakistan. Directed by British-based Hammad Khan, Slackistan is about a bunch of bored rich kids in Islamabad. And that’s it. That’s the plot. But that’s okay because they’re all hot. Oh yeah, and there’s probably an existential crisis or two thrown in for good measure. So basically your average American stoner movie sans the weed. At least that’s the impression I get. Watch the trailer for yourself and tell me if you see anything other than glamorous side-profiles of perturbed-looking young adults.

Finally! The day I’ve been waiting for. TGIAED. Thank God It’s Amelia Earhart Day. Today marks the release of Mira Nair’s Amelia, a biopic on the record-breaking aviatrix herself. And the reviews are…not so great. (Washington Post calls it “historically safe and cinematically dull.”) Roger Ebert implies that this is because Earhart herself was a bit…boring.

That’s the trouble with Amelia Earhart’s life, seen strictly as movie material. What we already know is what we get. To repeat: She was strong, brave and true, she gained recognition for woman flyers, and she looked fabulous in a flight suit. She flew the Atlantic solo, she disappeared in the Pacific, she died too young, and there was no scandal or even an indiscretion. She didn’t even smoke, although Luckys wanted her for an endorsement.

But who cares if she was a prude? It’s Amelia Earhart, the girl crush from my childhood. The flying femme phantom of my fantasies! And Mira Nair! The one who made Denzel famous in Mississippi Masala, brought us Monsoon Wedding and finally gave Kal Penn a serious role in* The Namesake*. Okay, I’ll stop with the hyperbole.

So our favorite Sri Lankan rude girl tweeted her surprise about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize:

“Obama winning the nobel peace PRIZE? he should give it back like john Lennon sent back his MBE” — @_M_I_A

GROAN. Really, Maya? The sitting U.S. president should give back a Swedish (decided by Norwegians) prize because it’s like a British citizen receiving a British honor… how, exactly? And the Nobel carries the taint of its dynamite origins, sure, but is that the same as the bloody history of the British Empire?

And speaking of history!! Lennon DIDN’T give it back until FOUR YEARS AFTER he accepted it:

Imaad Wasif worked with Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) on the Spike Jonze directed Where The Wild Things Are movie. (Btw, excitement level for that movie? So incredibly high. But are only hipsters hyperventilating over it? Thoughts in the comments, please!)

Anyway, back to Imaad. From the Iggy blog:

Wasif grew up in Palm Springs, California, transplanted by two Indian parents who had eloped. They were both artists, natch and in the boat from India, their classical Indian records got drenched. The covers all melted together-but they still played. In the desert, he grew up listening to those and all the pop tunes that would warble in faintly over an old Sears radio. It’s those aesthetics that Wasif has since sought to combine-classical trills, pop weighed down by static, and the psych-folk inherent in a hippie-dippie desert upbringing.

His new album is due on October 13th. Check out his video for “Oceanic.” He’s backed by Two Part Beast:

Uh, so that mask is pretty terrifying. Photos of his uncovered face and other videos here.

What the people want, the people get!

(Sorry, Joolz, not Keegan Singh.)

Due to popular demand I’ve got three more segments of the MTV Iggy interview with Naseeruddin Shah. Looking back, I can’t believe we asked some of these questions. He continued to be gracious, thoughtful, and startlingly candid:

What’s the difference between theater and film? Legendary Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah explains to us why the two should be starkly delineated. “I can’t understand why they remake movies as plays — and then do them exactly like movies!” he says, referring those well-known Broadway plays in which helicopters crash and ships sink onstage. With his theatrical company, Motley, Naseeruddin is bringing back the lost art of Dastangoi, the ancient practice of storytelling in which the end of one story leads to the beginning of the next — bringing theater back to its original intent: one actor, one audience:

So naturally the comments in the Oprah/Ash/Abhi thread devolved into an argument about skin color. Naturally. It’s like the Godwin’s Law of all things desi-related.

I don’t know about you, but I’m heartily sick of the topic. But listening to dark-skinned model talk about it? A dark-skinned desi model? A famous international dark-skinned desi model?

[OMG. Before you even think about arguing whether she’s dark or not, just. stop. She thinks she is, mmkay?]

From the MTV Iggy blog archives:

If you’re a non-white woman, how many skin whitening products have you come across? Quick, GO!! (You all thought of Fair & Lovely, didn’t you?) Want to know what a fabulous international supermodel thinks about this?

Meet Lakshmi Menon, runway star, fashion editorial darling, face of Hermès, and a native of Bangalore, India. When it comes skin color and beauty, she would know of what she speaks. And sweet heavens above, does she ever!! Post-colonial hangups, “wheatish” complexions, Lakshmi lays it out:

Yeah. TMBWITW is now one-half of TMFCITW. Ash and Abhi flew in from Mumbai to chat with the talk show Queen today, and sadly, it was still a clusterf*ck of embarrassment:

It was as if she didn’t believe in the Bollywood titans’ fame. Or had to put it in terms that Westerners understood.
“They’re the world’s most famous movie-star couple. More famous than Brad & Angelina, anybody…”
Some pictures flashed onscreen of Justin Timberlake skirting paparazzi as he flung himself into an awaiting limo.
“Now imagine that kind of attention times 1000.” She showed footage of them with some Dutch girls in the stereotypical peaked Dutch caps. “They have FIVE! BILL-YON! fans. In Asia, Europe…” etc.
Then, of course, she had to explain that Julia Roberts had called Aishwarya the most beautiful woman in the world, as if only the opinion of a white celebrity could mean anything to her audience. And she couldn’t let them on without mentioning the issue that tickled her last time Aishwarya was on. “Here’s the best part,” Oprah said, gleeful. “They live at home with his parents.”

Aishwarya was wearing a sari and was gorgeous, etc. Abhishek was his handsome self in a velvet suit. Behind them, Oprah’s set background showed an image of shooting stars, upon which the phrase: “Famous Around the World” had been printed. It looked like the banner you sign at someone’s bat mitzvah. When she tried to make a big deal of how this was their first American national TV interview, Abhishek wasn’t buying it. “We sit together all the time.”

He explained how he had proposed to her on the same balcony where he had first longed to marry her. You could hear the “ahhhh…cute” sighs in the audience.

For some reason, the host thought it would be a good idea to keep talking not about the content of their work or Bollywood versus Western cinema types, but just about how amazingly famous they are.

More on the Oprah Bachchan segment on the MTV Iggy blog, and a full recap of the show (the Julia Roberts/Daniel Craig of every country!) in a second post.

Well, he was really incredibly nice…but he certainly had little patience for stupid people asking stupid questions, so the possibility that he would lose his temper lent a certain charge to the proceedings.

I’m talking about Naseeruddin Shah, of course. The yin to Big B’s yang, the iconoclast, the evergreen, the lion of Indian cinema with over 150 films to his credit. From Umrao Jaan to Monsoon Wedding to Omkara, he disappears into a role so thoroughly, I usually have to check IMDB frequently to make sure it’s really him.

It’s just so refreshing when famous people turn out to be intelligent and really engage in a conversation. All too often it’s just rote PR fluff. Many mutineers seemed to like the Vik Sahay interview for that reason, so I thought I’d bring over these two Naseerudin Shah interview clips:

“Most of the roles you get are not Polish…You don’t seem like a typical Pole,” Jimmy Kimmel joked while interviewing comic actor Danny Pudi on his late night show. The lanky Chicagoan and Polish-Indian American Pudi was sitting in a chair autographed by Rod Blagojevich.

And indeed, his role on the new TV series “Community,” is not Polish either. He plays Abed, a half-Palestinian character.

Pudi, whose mother immigrated from Poland and his father from India, acknowledged that portraying Polish characters was not his “wheelhouse.” Playing South Asian characters is.

“I played three Sanjays…Haven’t played any Polish characters yet.”

You can watch his Kimmel interview after the jump.

Do you watch “Chuck”? That TV show about the secret, CIA-protected life of a tech dork who works the Nerd Herd desk at a Best Buy like electronics store? The first season was cute, the second sort of lost me, then they got Scott Bakula to play his dad and I’m hooked again. (Quantum Leap forever!)

One of the more amusing aspects of the show is that Chuck’s real world life at the Nerd Herd desk is as drama-filled as his intelligence/espionage secret life — courtesy of a scheming nemesis, Lester, played by desi actor Vik Sahay.

It’s a small role, but Sahay really owns it, milking every line for humor and dimensionality. So when MTV Iggy interviewed him, we vaguely thought he would be this, like, funny cocky guy and we’d edit it down to the best 2-3 bits. We certainly had no idea it would turn out to be one of the most searching, intelligent, thought-provoking interviews I’ve seen in years.

We ended up cutting something like 14 segments because all of it was interesting. That’s a ridiculous number, by the way. No one’s ever gotten that much play. Six clips were aired while we try to figure out what to do with the rest.

Oh, sh*ts. I’ve been remiss about so much. I’ve got a backlog of things both shiny and smart to share with you, so please bear with me as I suddenly haunt the mutiny.

The first thing on my list: MTV Iggy’s special feature on Bollywood’s “new wave” of filmmakers. The idea is that, much like the French new wave of the 50s, Indian cinema is facing a radical change, with auteur directors leading the way with a new influx of talent, money, professionalism and creativity. And the audience in India is ready for it. Anuvab Pal (friend of Sepia alum Manish Vij) is now a screenwriter in Mumbai, and his funny, engaging, and very revealing article is a must read:

In fall 2003, I was asked by a friend of mine, the director Manish Acharya, to co-write a film with him. It would be about a Bollywood singing contest in New Jersey. We were influenced by the movies of Christopher Guest and Woody Allen, and had lived in New York for a numbers of years. At some point, in various coffee shops in Manhattan, as we wrote, I asked Manish who our audience might be. He intelligently remarked that we shouldn’t write with audiences in mind but just try to tell a good story. That’s the sort of answer auteur film directors give at film festival Q&As and grave audiences nod in agreement. It had a sort of nobility to it. I was far more interested in a petty middle-class answer.

“Still, who?” I insisted.

“Whom” he corrected, adding, “New India. This is a film for new India.”

As much as I love Philadelphia, I know it’s not always a hub of desi activity. But we do have one thing. Or should I say, one man. We have M. Night Shyamalan. All right, fine. Maybe given his recent string of flops, that’s not much to be proud of, but we take what we can. One of the reasons why Shyamalan remains beloved by Philadelphians is because he continues to base his productions in and around the City of Brotherly Love. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Lady in the Water and his upcoming film, The Last Airbender, were all filmed in and around Philadelphia.

With the combination of Shyamalan and the recent spate of Bollywood films that were shot in Philadelphia, Philadelphia desis didn’t have to go far to see some of their favorite South Asian stars. (Which reminds me, Dev Patel, please come back to Philadelphia.I promise I’ll stop stalking you.) But today, it was announced that Shyamalan is leaving Philadelphia for the budget-friendly shores of Canada to film his latest production, Devil.

Like an alliance between a homely, fair, slender, God-fearing maiden and a Doctor, it’s ON!

TONIGHT, at 9pm EST we’ll start the live-blogging party (like we did for the Slumdog-sweepin’ Oscars) for the newest season of Top Chef.

Like last season, there is a brown girl in the ring— San Francisco’s Preeti Mistry. She’s 33, a graduate of the Cordon Bleu, a locavore and the executive Chef at God’s own empire, I mean, teh Google. More:

Yes, Denver has jalwa. Hey, we’ve even got the original Dhak Dhak girl in our midst! (And yes, I know some of you are Bollywood haters. Go wreak havoc on another post, ok?) When I moved to Colorado a few years ago, I was amazed to discover that I could watch many Bollywood films on opening night. There’s tea and samosas at the concession, and hoots from the girls whenever Salman takes off his shirt. They hoot. I cringe. If he had better moves, he would refrain from such tasteless exhibitionism.

And that’s where Renu Kansal comes to the rescue.

Old-timers may recognize her from her previous avatar, but over the last three years, Renu has enrolled over 630 students at her studio, Bollywood West, and now serves as the semi-official Bollywood ambassador of Colorado.

The cover of the upcoming summer issue features a middle class white American woman holding several items that represent work and family life in a multi-armed Hindu deity’s pose. I get the juggling metaphor, and the sour look on her face informs that she’s not too pleased with her conflicting situation. What I’m conflicted and not pleased about is the frequency with which American media and pop culture icons are co-opting South Asian religion to suit their aesthetic fancy.[bitch]

This cover reminds me of the Sotomayor cover that the National Review did (and that Abhi covered here). I’m conflicted in both these covers. On the one hand, neither cover excessively pokes fun at the religion but uses the iconography to express some deeper message they are trying to convey. I believe deeply that art should be given the freedom to express.

But on the other hand, can we really call the Ms. Magazine cover ‘art’? It is the advertising front page of a magazine for commerce. And truthfully, I am discomforted by the fact that Ms. Magazine caters to a middle class liberal white women clientele. Question is, would I have felt different if they had depicted a brown woman in the same image, or if it had been a different magazine? Probably.

It’s completely inappropriate to utilize Hindu iconography in this context, mocks the religion, and diffuses the imagery of its “true” meaning. When a cultural or religious symbol is used for marketing purposes by cultural or religious outsiders that fail to convey respect for and understanding of the intricacies of that culture or religion, it is offensive.[bitch]

What we wind up with is more Orientalist perspectives circulating through movies, magazines and stores, more South Asians having to answer for an entire group of individuals about everything from food to yoga, and more ignoring national, gendered, class and sexual differences within the community…I also find it completely unacceptable for a feminist publication to blatantly marginalize women of color as a result of their appropriation of culture. It is a reminder of the divided nature of the feminist movement, and the continued tendency of white feminists to participate in the exoticization or “Othering” of women of color. [Feministing]

What does your gut tell you when you see this image?

A while back we asked for artists to submit their work to SM for inclusion in our new site redesign. We have decided to dedicate the header area of our website to feature South Asian American artists (up-and-coming or well established). Within the next month our website administrator Chaitan will be integrating the artwork of two artists, the first of whom is Namita Kapoor. As luck would have it, Kapoor’s exhibit is opening in San Francisco in just a couple of weeks:

…Kapoor draws from her backgrounds as a South East Asian and American. “I use imagery from Indian myths, Bollywood posters, and vintage commercial advertisements and abstract them with a variety of materials such as sari fabric and appliqué, henna prints, silkscreen and acrylic and oil paint.” Kapoor works her way in and around these various materials, infusing a dance between mediums that explodes off the canvas in a rhythm of brilliant colors. In these paintings, remnants of traditional Indian iconography contrasts with her expressionistic modern brush strokes, creating new environments for her dual cultures to co-exist, thematically and stylistically.

LOCATION: BoConcept: 101 Townsend, San Francisco, 94103

EXHIBITION DATES: June 27-July 31, 2009

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, June 27, 6:00-8:00 PM

VIEWING HOURS: Monday through Friday 10am-7pm; Sun 11am-6pm

You can view some of her additional work here. If you want to go to the reception with other SM readers then you guys can use the comments area to plan. Please forward to your friends in SF.

While the spotlight shines on Barack Obama’s long-awaited speech to the Muslim World, closer to home, I’ve been seeing lots of posters and advertising for the upcoming Muslim Voices Festival in New York City which begins this Friday, June 5 and runs through the 14th of this month. Featuring concerts, lectures, film screenings on PBS, and even, a souk, the ten-day festival is designed to celebrate the arts and culture of Muslim societies. It is the culmination of three years of organizing by the Asia Society, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and NYU”s Center for Dialogues.

Below the fold is a listing of a few of the South Asia-related events coming up over the next fortnight. Don’t let your exploration stop there. There’s tons more on the calendar worth checking out.

But first, I want to tell you about a book that I’ve been reading which ties in well to the theme of this festival: Kavitha Rajagopalan’s Muslims of Metropolis which was published by Rutgers University Press late last year.

Muslims of Metropolis is a sensitive and thoughtful examination of international migration and the social construct of identity. Rajagopalan spent nearly 7 years researching and writing her first book which tells the stories of the journeys of three families from majority-Muslim countries to three major Western metropolises. In London, she follows a Palestinian man from Jerusalem and his Syrian wife. In Berlin, a Turkish Kurdish community. And, in post 9/11 New York, and a Bangladeshi man and his daughter who married an undocumented Pakistani man.

As Rajagopalan puts it in her introduction:

These families come from different socioeconomic, political, and ethnic backgrounds, but they are all Muslim. It should be noted, however, that this is not a book on theology or Islamic history. Although the stories in this book will refer to the ways in which characters relate to Islam as they construct their identities, cope with adversity, or understand their roles in the world, this is not ultimately a book about Muslims but about immigrants … I have chosen to write about Muslim immigrants because I believe that the social identity of Muslim immigrants stands under the greatest pressure of misunderstanding and mistrust throughout the world.

Over the past several months, Rajagopalan has been touring the country doing multimedia presentations and readings from her book. I attended one reading right here in NYC and was struck by her ability to weave together multiple human narratives with solid research in a manner that was penetrating and insightful, at once literary, journalistic, and accessibly academic.

Mindy Kaling could quite possibly be the next brown Tina Fey.

Under terms of the two-year, seven-figure deal, Kaling will continue to write for and appear on “The Office” next season while simultaneously developing a comedy in which she would also star.

Much like “30 Rock” star-exec producer Fey, Kaling is known for both her writing and acting skills. Behind the scenes, Kaling is a co-exec producer on “The Office,” having written notable episodes including “The Dundies,” “Diwali” and this season’s “Golden Ticket.”

In kicking around different development ideas, Kaling said she’s drawn to workplace comedies but is also interested in buddy shows in the vein of “Flight of the Conchords.”[variety]

Buddy show, huh?

Hi Mindy. Let me introduce myself. My name is Taz. I have great comic timing and we could get into fun twitter/blogger hijinx together. We’re born a week apart from each other. We are both brown. My Indian accent sucks too. We could do a Diwali meets Eid show. The only thing that sets us apart is about seven figures. But I’m sure we can work something out in that arena. ;-) Call me! I’ll be following you on twitter in the meantime!

I went to Coachella on the wrong day it seems. Had I known this trio would be a trio, I would’ve trekked desert-ward one day sooner…(Hat tip to Aziz’s twitter).

I was at Coachella on Sunday and played ‘Spot the Alterna-Desi’ the entire day — critical mass of Browns for the K’Naan set, if that. Did anyone else go to Coachella this weekend and get to see M.I.A. perform on Saturday night? Any other Desis (famous or otherwise) spotted?

Russell Peters isn’t just the biggest desi comedian in Canada, he’s arguably the hottest comedian period (no, he’s not Tamil). For the second year in a row, he was tapped to host the Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys and the most popular award show north of the border. The Junos were held Sunday night at General Motors Place, home of the Vancouver Canucks.

Peters made a colorful entrance with a group of Punjabi dancers and two drummers.

Once the group disappeared, Peters showed off some of his other moves, amid roars from the crowd.

You can watch Peters’ entire monologue here (cue to the 5 minute mark).

At least one observer, Leah Collins of Canwest News Service, wasn’t crazy about Peters’ entrance or some of his jokes.

Maybe we’re just suffering Slumdog Millionaire fatigue, but Russell Peters’ Bollywood entrance was pure cheese — even by Juno standards. However, once he started popping and locking on the “grow-op” set, we couldn’t deny the comedian has some skills. If only the opening monologue was as tight. West-coast pot-head jokes? Sigh … You know what else Canadians are known for? Tired regional humour. [Link]

Nandan Nilekani, co-chair of Infosys, faced a blizzard of tongue-in-cheek questions last night from a curious and genuinely respectful Jon Stewart. Nilekani has a new book coming out on Friday, Imagining India, and the interview roamed widely over huge swathes of sociopolitical terrain.

Stewart asked why India would be a more preferable overlord for the U.S. than China (“don’t be modest!”), about the month-long elections in India (“if a voting machine breaks down, do you call someone in the United States?”), the biggest detriment to India’s future (NN says getting education right), whether U.S. is a good example for India or not, and how Nilekani inspired Thomas Friedman to title his book The World is Flat…JS: “did you think to yourself, I’ll walk across it and kick his ass for some royalties?”

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are fast becoming the only TV outlets to regularly (several times a week!) feature authors as guests. That, coupled with incisive questioning and cut-the-crap clarity…is it still fake news if they’re getting laughs for pointing out the ludicrous aspects of real events?

Anyway, check out the clip. Nilekani ends up wowing Stewart, and as Jim Cramer can attest, these days that’s no easy task.

Ickitt.

Our bittersweet SepiaIcon(TM), (aka M.I.A., aka Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) and her musician/son-of-billionaire partner Benjamin Brewer welcomed a bouncing baby boy on February 11th. And then proceeded to name him…Ickitt.

Ickitt Brewer. I suppose it’s better than Bronx Mowgli. And as Shitals, Anoops, Chitranis, Vishalis, Gurpreets and so many more, we are not in a position to judge. Are we?

CUE debate over traditional inherited jaw-breakers v. attention-getting “creative” monstrosities.

So which is lickle Ickitt? I’m Sri Lankan, and I have to say I’ve never heard of it. But, to be fair, on my last visit in 2006, newspaper editorials were bemoaning the fact that new parents were ignoring traditional names in favor of made-up mash-ups. Yeah, there are Sri Lankan equivalents to Pilot Inspektor and Audio Science. (Ok, not really. I just wanted to throw those out there. The Sri Lankan parents were stringing together nonsensical syllables that sounded pretty, not naming kids after curriculum subjects from a technical college.)

I leave it to you, dear readers. Ickitt - have you heard of it? Does it harken to the desh?

Ah, screwitt, I guess it does have a certain ring to it.

UPDATE: It’s a hoax, I was had…now I’m off to tell the blog that broke this where to stickitt.

Ever wonder what Padma Laxmi’s boudoir looks like? Well, stop your fevered imaginings and take a look at this recent issue of Harper’s Bazaar (how apposite) which showcases the 38 year old model/actress/author/jewelry designer/TV personality’s East Village apartment. (Courtesy of limeduck, who reads apartment therapy so that I don’t have to)

The decoration that has received the most attention is the giant painting of Padma herself right above her bed:

(The portrait was painted by her friend Francesco Clemente, an Italian painter who splits his time between New York, Italy, and Madras.)

It’s not just the painting though. It also looks like Padma uses her own picture as either screen saver or background image on her computer.

While I would never decorate with enlarged pictures of myself, Padma’s work product is her image, and so she’s simply surrounding herself with her professional output, like a movie producer decorating with posters from films that they made. On the other hand …

Oscar season is upon us once again, and with it the opportunity to make some money by betting on the home team. Gambling on the Oscars is as venerable tradition as gambling on Diwali, making this the third biggest betting day of the year.

The sole uncontroversial topic about Slumdog is that it’s the odds on favorite tonight for both best picture and best director. The only surer bet out there is Heath Ledger for best supporting actor (you have to put down $25 to see even $1 of return) and he’s dead!

Furthermore, as we get close and closer to Oscar time, the odds keep improving in these two categories. Right now, Paddypower is giving 1-14 odds for best picture (bet $14, make $1 profit if Slumdog wins) and Danny Boyle 1-10 odds for best director (bet $10, make $1 profit if Boyle wins).

Boylesports is offering better odds for bestpicture and worse odds for best director, but in both cases, the certainty of a Slumdog win is higher today than it was just a few days ago.

Even at these odds, Slumdog is still a good investment. King of Elections Quantgeekery Nate Silver says that Slumdog has a 99% chance of getting best picture and a 99.7% chance of getting best director, estimates based on how well previous awards (which Slumdog has swept) predict the Oscars.

The chance to win big might also stem the anti-Slumdog tide of public opinion in India. Right now there is already over Rs. 2 billion ($41 million) staked on the film, so a lot of Indians will be rooting for the same film that they objected to.

Last summer, I posted about my experiences Desi Spotting in Brazil and observed that “despite my lack of desi human spottings, there was no dearth of Indian influence—mostly of the exotic India variety—to be found in Brazil.”

I’m revisiting this topic today, thanks to Sepia reader Vijay, who shot me an email from Rio a couple of weeks ago. “Omg—have you heard of this Brazilian soap opera about an indian family?” he wrote. “A sepia investigation is in order.”

It certainly was! And, here’s what I dug up, with a little help from Vijay.

Since January 19th, Brazilian TVs (approximately 60,000 households just in Sao Paulo) evenings have been tuned to a new telenovela six nights a week. Camhino das Indias (Path of India) “examines beliefs and values that differentiate the Eastern and Western world” and follows the story of a forbidden love between a Brazilan man (whom I understand to be a yoga instructor) and an Indian woman from a conservative family. The drama was filmed with a budget with a mostly Brazilian cast on a budget of $80 million in Jaipur, Agra, Dubai, and Rio (where two Indian towns were constructed for production purposes!).

Backpacking Ninja, a desi blogger traveling through India describes it thus:

With Portuguese actors all dressed in extremely jatak (gaudy) Indian clothes (looking thoroughly North Indian), speaking Portuguese, it’s a total riot. I laughed so much watching one episode. The episode was a wedding….. the background music that was playing in the wedding as they did the saath phere (sacred walk around the fire symbolizing marriage) was Kajra re (one of the most popular songs to play in dance bars in India). It’s almost like playing Shakiras ‘Hips dont lie’ when someone is walking down the aisle in a church. In another scene, the heroine Maya (Juliana Paes) walked over to the buffet table and made eye contact with the hero Bahuan (Marcio Garcia, and trying to be Indian in all ways possible, they showed a dream sequence of them holding hands… not in person.

The opener features Sukhwinder Singh’s “Beedi” and is intended to show off the “cultural diversity that exists in the country,” according to creative director Roberto Stein. I’ll let you be the judge of that. Whatever your opinion (“this exoticizes India yet again” or “this is great for Indian tourism” or “wtf?”), I think that you’ll agree that your eyes will stay glued to it.

For those who want more (I certainly did!), beneath the fold, I’ve added clips from episode one.

Move over, Papaya…now there’s someone talented. AND cute. Introducing the latest (and easily greatest) brown singing hopeful— UNC’s adorable Anoop Desai, a.k.a. Noop Dawg (I heard Randy loved that). I may actually have to start watching American Idol again. What am I saying, you will watch American Idol and feverishly send in tips or post stories about it to the news tab. I will watch YouTube, where there is aural gorgeousness like this:

I first saw that vid on VH1 blog, which goes on to say:

Simon Cowell may have been turned off by Anoop Desai’s nerdy appearance at his American Idol audition (”you look like you came from a meeting with Bill Gates“), but we have a feeling this guy’s going to be a contender for the top spot after checking out some of his work with the UNC Clef Hangers, an a capella group at the University of North Carolina, where Desai studies Southern Folklore. Watching this guy croon everything from Brian McKnight’s “The Only One For Me” (above) to T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank,” it’s clear that this nerd is a heartthrob. They’re already shrieking for him at school, so just wait until he gets to Hollywood. Anoop Dogg is hot! Fire! [VH1]

Dear Simon, kindly STFU. A college kid shows up to audition in shorts and you automatically think, “Microsoft”? That doesn’t even make sense. You’re about as worthless as the dozens of “all-look-same”-fools who type, “omg he luks like kal pen!” under his pictures and video clips. Sure he does.

I love that Anoop was the soloist for this song, mostly because I have always loved “The Only One For Me” but hated Brian McKnight; now I can enjoy this joint without hating myself! McKnight made quite the impression on me in 1998, when he played pool with my friend at a DC club, lost, and then sportingly threw the cue stick at the man who pwned his kundi so publicly (incidentally, the friend who humiliated him was also desi).

So, yeah…Sanjaya who? Anoop’s a cutie who sounds like he could make Stupid Simon eat his words. You know, that might actually be worth watching shit-tay American Idol for…

This post really doesn’t require an introduction after THAT title, but I’ll include one anyway, to answer your question(s) (which I’m already receiving via Facebook* and Twitter), preemptively.

Q: Why didn’t you tell us this craziness was going to be on?? Now it’s too late to record it!

A: I didn’t tell you this fustercluck would be airing because I didn’t know anything about it. I have long considered LIVE With Regis and Kelly to be a rather annoying TV program which rarely features anything I’m interested in— and I love the Today Show, so I’m not exactly difficult to please. Since I never watch the show…I had no way to know.

I’m at home, at my Mom’s house, and while I was getting ready to go out, I thought I’d watch the “third hour” of Today; in DC, we get all four hours of the show, so I assumed that it might be on here, as well. When I turned on the television, I heard unfamiliar theme music and mentions of Regis…and just when I was about to turn the set off, I heard, “Anil Kapoor!” being announced. “Oh. Because of Slumdog,” I thought.

Now I had a choice to make. I could do the responsible thing and finish my breakfast so that I would not be late for my full slate of appointments in the city today…or I could frantically pause the show, twitter a rhetorical question about whether I should blog it for SM and make coffee while pondering all of the above. When I returned to my iBook, I had my answer, as delivered by the pleas of several of you to not let this opportunity go by unblogged. Well, so much for making my appointments!

“Our next guest is one of the most successful and popular actors in Indian film history and has been blowing away audiences with his role as a game show host— a role that is near and dear to me— it’s in the hot movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which is nominated now for ten Oscars…now please welcome— Aneel Kapore!”

M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” starts playing and the man walks out. I curse the remote for not being as useful as Comcast’s (never, ever did I think I’d type the words “useful as Comcast” btw) is, back home. I miss the “30 seconds back” button something fierce. I’m already having second thoughts about this. ;)

“Kapore” strides out in a suit and light-colored tie like he’s got tickets to the gun show…and by that I mean that he’s doing the “I am victorious!”-arm-thing. He immediately growls something like, “Hey!” and proceeds to grope Regis via a bear hug which lifts Reeg off the ground.

Here are two Obama tunes to get you humming as you drink your Sunday morning coffee or chai.

We’ve blogged here about Bollywood Obama and I’ve written about the Japanese town of Obama’s boppy theme song “Obama is beautiful world.” Now, a couple of young musicians in Surat—Chirag Thakker, Jayesh Gandhi and Anita Sharma—have welcomed Obama into their hearts with this catchy song that praises our new president.

We have dedicated this song to Obama and uploaded it on Youtube, so that the world could see our attempts to honor him. His down-to-earth personality, faith in Lord Ganesha and great respect for Mahatma Gandhi made us feel that he is very close to us,” said Chirag, adding that they have used names of Lord Ganesha and Gandhi in the song. [full story]

The song has elements of a bhajan (the lyrics have devotionalism), but also features the djembe, which the artists chose to include in honor of Obama’s African heritage! The video is granted, a bit amateur, but it also has subtitles (so that Obama can understand it) and was shot in various parts of Surat, including the banks of the Tapi river and the city’s municipal gardens. Overall, the three artists devoted three months to it from start to finish.

I was going to wrap up this entry, but then found this Punjabi poem by California based poet and singer Pashaura Singh Dhillon. I was moved. But then again, I get weepy pretty easily these days.

I can’t contain myself, I HAVE to live-blog the Golden Globes. That statement itself might be a spoiler, I know. If you’re on PST, have this isht on DVR or otherwise loathe learning something before you’re supposed to, don’t go past the jump.

[And if you are a Wesssssider, then come on. You’re used to this, so no need to complain…I’m from there, I remember the feeling, but there’s nothing to be done. Except move here. Which is what I did. ;)]

If you’re on the right coast and feel like gettin’ your Mutiny on…party over here!

A break from politics and world news (and my crazy workday) to share this short, sweet video that I just caught wind of via my daily VSL fix.

It’s called “Rewind City” and is a French TV ad currently airing for Orange’s DVR service in France. Watch as the unexpressed wish of a tearful backpacker comes true when the traffic and people in a Goan village conspire to reverse direction.

Filmed in village of Assonora, 15km east of the town of Mapusa (a hub for bus travel) in North Goa, it’s directed by British director Ringan Ledwidge. The main characters came from Paris, the 250 extras came from Mumbai, and the other backpacker types came from Anjuna, home to the famous Goa hippie flea market.

The ad asks the question, “What if you could rewind a memorable moment in your life?” Not a bad question to ask of oneself every now and then.

I’m playing a new online video game today. It’s called “Homeland Guantanamos” and it has transformed me into an undercover journalist whose task is to unearth clues about the mysterious 2007 death of Boubacar Bah, a Guinean tailor who was held at a detention center in Elizabeth, NJ for overstaying his visa.

“Homeland Guantanamos” is the latest multi-media offering from Breakthrough, the human rights organization which uses media and popular culture to raise awareness here and in India. [Abhi covered their video game “I Can End Deportation” or I.C.E.D. earlier this year. ]

We’ve all heard stories about immigrants (illegal and residents) being detained without explanation or for prolonged periods of time. At the website, I got to see what life might be like on the other side of the fence. I took a tour of a simulated immigration detention center and collected clues to help solve the mystery of Bah’s death (he died of a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages). Along the way, I saw other detainees (eg: a pregnant woman kept in shackles during labor) and witnessed conditions of the facilities, including the solitary confinement room, the bathrooms, and the dining hall. Though this is a simulated experience, the content is based on factual sources such as news articles, court documents, and interviews.

Why call the site “Homeland Guantanamos”? According to Malikka Dutt, executive director of Breakthrough, “the Department of Homeland Security is violating the human rights of legal and undocumented immigrants” and some of the inhumane conditions of detention centers where these immigrants are being held are not all that different from the facility at Guantanamo Bay.

I get an email from Salon daily; with over 2,690 pieces of unread mail* in my beleaguered GMail account, I’m likely to open these newsletter-y missives approximately twice a week. Those two instances hardly ever coincide with Sunday’s “I like to watch”-edition, but I was feeling peevish while waiting for the laaaast loooooad of laundry to dry at 2:30 am, so I thought, “why not peek…it might mention my beloved ‘Mad Men’, which was the best show ever until season two started and kind of weirded me out, man.”

Right.

So I’m skimming “Critics’ Picks”, and I see no shout-outs to AMC’s finest, but my finely-honed browndar immediately zooms in on the following blurb, about Bravo’s tatti-est reality show:

Jaclyn Smith on “Shear Genius”

“Shear Genius” (Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EDT) may be the weakest of Bravo’s professional reality competitions — the contestants are almost uniformly uninteresting, and the hairstyles they create are almost uniformly ugly. Even so, its host, former “Charlie’s Angels” star Jaclyn Smith, stands out as a kinder, gentler alternative to Bravo spokesmodels Heidi Klum and Padma Lakshmi. For some crazy reason, Smith has great wells of compassion for these bad people with their bad hairstyles. When she informs a hairstylist that it’s his or her “final cut” at the end of each episode, Smith’s eyes invariably well up with tears and her voice wavers as she carefully chooses a few comforting words as a send-off. Forget Klum’s curt “auf Wiedersehen” and Lakshmi’s indifferent “Pack your knives and go” — Smith’s tearful goodbyes seem to remind us, “What could be more human than empathizing with the untalented?” — Heather Havrilesky

Whoaaaa, there HH. I know that all girls are supposed to lose their minds over Charlie’s Angels (the inspiration for a million mediocre facebook pictures) and Grease (I will never understand the obsession with that film or its annoying-as-soulja boy-soundtrack), but are we giving the gorgeous Jaclyn a bit too much credit? Let’s not so soon forget or forgive that unfortunate casual line she released years ago— there’s a reason why so many pairs of elastic-waist pants give “mom jeans” a run for fug and part of that responsibility lies with the otherwise glamorous Jaclyn Smith.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with Heidi. If anything, far too much is right with that woman. She has squeezed three babies out of that ridiculous body and she has the cutest, most impish smile. As for pulchritudinous Padma, girl, she ain’t indifferent or cold…she’s HIGH. The Mutiny could’ve told you that, last year:

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

That explains the sloooow, slightly slurred speech and her gracious, always-ready appetite to try potentially smack-nasty food— it also provides an explanation for why she doesn’t share Ms. Smith’s penchant for saltwater…she’s happy!

For those of us who are so wishing that the public’s fascination with arranged marriages was over, well … it’s not. Back in 2005, there was a lot of buzz [including here] around financial writer Anita Jain’s New York magazine article “Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?” So much so that she got a book deal out of it.

Next month, her memoir Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India will be published in the UK, US, and India by Bloomsbury. The book is being pitched as a “witty, confessional memoir” that simultaneously records Jain’s romantic quest and the story of “a country modernizing at breakneck speed.” The big question it asks: Is the new urban Indian culture in which she’s searching for a husband really all that different from America? Has globalization changed the face of arranged marriage

I want to groan, but I’m trying to be openminded and wait till I’ve actually read the book. I can’t help it though. The red flags go up in my mind when I hear about another arranged marriage book. And, now, this one combines that with another buzz word “globalization.” Is this the chick lit version of Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”?

[Below the fold, glimpses of an excerpt which appeared at the Guardian last weekend.]

Last night, Sir Salman appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his new book The Enchantress of Florence and his bit-part in the movie And Then She Found Me.

Given the fact that the book seems written in a post-Padma haze of vituperation, the following exchange was particularly funny:

Colbert: “I bet the women just fall at your feet.”
Rushdie: ” I wouldn’t bet against it.”

Here’s Rushdie on the “lotions and potions” women use, why the fatwa made him feel like Tippi Hedren, why video games and YouTube will change the world (“when people see what garbage everyone else is consuming, they want it too”) and why playing Helen Hunt’s gynecologist appealed to him:

Previous SM Rushdie coverage.

Trailers for books are pretty commonplace nowadays, but bestselling author Robin Cook (mastermind of the medical thriller) and former Disney head Michael Eisner have cooked up (no pun intended!) an online plot that takes this concept a step further: Foreign Body, a “50 episode exotic thriller” (each two-minute episode can be watched for free on your computer or downloaded to your cell phone) that’s essentially serving as a prequel and promo for Cook’s forthcoming novel of the same title, which will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in August.

A doctor by training, Cook began writing medical thrillers 36 years ago, and has made his name with books such as Terminal, Shock, Seizure, and his most popular Coma , which was published in 1977.

In recent years, he began noticing that his readers weren’t getting any younger. “The trouble is, now there are so many other things trying to get people’s attention – in particular, the younger people — and rather than try and fight it, you really have to kind of use it,” Cook told NPR’s Nate DiMeo. [see full NPR story ] last week.

To the rescue is this low-budget ($500,000 budget) “exotic thriller” which zig zags from Malibu, California to New Delhi, India and has at its heart a plot of intrigue and drama about outsourcing—of the medical kind. That is, the growing industry of medical tourism in India, which brought over 500,000 foreign patients to India for medical care in 2005. (Estimates project medical tourism could bring India as much as $2.2 billion per by 2012).

The story:

A group of dangerous Indian beauties, brimming with hope and desire are brought to the sunny shores of Southern California and are promised the American dream. They are taken in by a group of young, cutthroat medical entrepreneurs who hope to train them and cultivate their nursing skills for their own mysterious ends. The women soon become seduced by the brash and ambitious charmer who lords over them, but for him, his lust for the one, mysterious, unattainable beauty threatens to unravel the very conspiracy he built. But who is seducing whom and what exactly are the women really being trained to do? With freedoms in America they could never imagine, the girls discover they just might get what they want, no matter the consequences or the risks involved.

If you’re rolling your eyes or arching your eyebrows already, don’t stop. The first episode has a bunch of bikini-clad Indian nurses frolicking in the Southern California beach and the second or third episode has a scene where a US-based entrepreneur is interviewing candidates to come to the US. The opening scene has a quote from the Bhagavad Gita.

I started watching the series as soon as I heard the NPR story on its launch date. My impression so far: Think Baywatch meets ER meets Zee TV drama meets daytime soap with a twist of “here’s another reason to vilify globalization and outsourcing” thrown in. Of course, I don’t know how this will end, but it’s leading up to a novel about a “sinister, multilayered conspiracy of global proportions” so, need I really say anymore?

Here’s a compilation of week one’s episodes.

Rafta Rafta The New Group Through June 21, 2008 Tickets $55 ($41.25 with promo code)

When I was in London last year, there was one West End production that I was determined to see—Ayub Khan-Din’s “Rafta, Rafta” at the National Theatre. Of course, as my luck would have it, the one weekend I was there was when the play was on a hiatus, so I returned stateside without having watched the stage event which was described by the Daily Telegraph as “’an irresistible mixture of bonhomie, bumptiousness and egomania…irresistibly comic.” It goes without saying that when “Rafta, Rafta” made its off-Broadway debut at the Acorn Theatre in NYC earlier this month, I was eager to see how it had survived its journey across the Atlantic.

“Rafta, Rafta” is brought to us by Ayub Khan-Din, he who is best known for the brilliant “East is East,” which shone a spotlight on middle class British-Indian family in the 70s. While “East is East” also addressed themes of race and cultural adjustment—i.e. political issues outside the home, “Rafta Rafta” is much more of a comedy and drama about domestic politics.

Based on Bill Naughton’s 1963 play “All in Good Time,” “Rafta, Rafta” (directed by Scott Elliot who also directed the 1999 production of “East is East” and the original “Avenue Q” production at The New Group) is a comic yet poignant look at the challenges of extended family living in contemporary UK. [read the rest of this review below the fold]

I really wish I could have been playing the new video game Grand Theft Auto IV this week. Unfortunately I don’t own a gaming system. I used to be an obsessive gamer as a kid so its best that I don’t go near one now that I have real responsibilities (like blogging). I can however, get my fix online. I’ve been trying my hand at a game that looks similar to GTA-IV. Instead of smacking hos and jacking cars, I’ve been learning about “my” rights as an immigrant child. The game is I.C.E.D. (I Can End Deportation):

Breakthrough’s video game, ICED, puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.

ICED has been featured in overwhelming amounts of press including: MTV News, Game Daily and has been covered on popular blogs including, Gothamist and The Huffington Post. To get a full list of media, please look at the left-hand tool bar.

How do you play?

THE OBJECT OF THE GAME IS TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES

Game Play:
As an immigrant teen you are avoiding ICE officers, choosing right from wrong and answering questions on immigration. But if you answer questions incorrectly, or make poor decisions, you will be detained with no respect for your human rights. [Link]

Is your knee jerk reaction that you think this game might exaggerate the plight of immigrant kids, especially those brought over by undocumented parents? Think again. More about that later, after the fold.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I thought I’d feature South Asian women poets on Poetry Fridays for the remainder of March. Today’s selection is “Shilling Love,” by Kenyan-Indian-American spoken word artist Shailja Patel. Her work “Migritude” premiered last fall in the San Francisco Bay area to packed audiences—it uses her collection of saris, passed down by her mother (another take on Mama’s Saris!), to unfold hidden histories of women’s lives “in the bootprint of Empire, from India to East Africa.”

“Shilling Love” is the first poem from “Migritude” that I came across a couple of years ago, and it has stayed with me since.

Shilling Love
By Shailja Patel

They never said / they loved us

Those words were not / in any language / spoken by my parents I love you honey was the dribbled caramel / of Hollywood movies / Dallas / Dynasty / where hot water gushed / at the touch of gleaming taps / electricity surged / 24 hours a day / through skyscrapers banquets obscene as the Pentagon / were mere backdrops / where emotions had no consequences words / cost nothing meant nothing would never / have to be redeemed

My parents / didn’t speak / that / language

1975 / 15 Kenyan shillings to the British pound / my mother speaks battle

Storms the bastions of Nairobi’s / most exclusive prep schools / shoots our cowering / six-year old bodies like cannonballs / into the all-white classrooms / scales the ramparts of class distinction / around Loreto Convent / where the president / sends his daughter / the foreign diplomats send / their daughters / because my mother’s daughters / will / have world-class educations

She falls / regroups / falls and re-groups / in endless assaults on visa officials / who sneer behind their bulletproof windows / at US and British consulates / my mother the general / arms her daughters / to take on every citadel

1977 / 20 Kenyan shillings to the British pound / my father speaks / stoic endurance / he began at 16 the brutal apprenticeship / of a man who takes care of his own / relinquished dreams of / fighter pilot rally driver for the daily crucifixion / of wringing profit from business / my father the foot soldier, bound to an honour / deeper than any currency / you must / finish what you start you must / march until you drop you must / give your life for those / you bring into the world

It’s difficult for me to wake up once I hibernate for this long in our North Dakota Bunker, but for few things, like good music, I’ll tend to get out of my bunk for awhile. The thing that woke me up this time was the familiar sound of musical adventure in the form of bhajans (Devotional Songs).

I disliked bhajans growing up. I don’t know if it was the monotonous/repetitive tone of the vocals or my inability to understand the words or meanings of the songs. I was able to avoid bhajans from the time I left home for college until a trip to India (I know, in India, how cliché?), four years ago, when the songs just seemed to click as a natural soundtrack to my travels. I started to appreciate the songs more. Maybe it was the place and time, or maybe I was able to contextualize the songs more, but I think I was finally able to grasp the intent of the song, of its purpose as a tool for Bhakti (Devotion).

So it was with much excitement when I saw the most recent musical release from one of my favorite global music pioneers, San Francisco based producer/DJ Cheb I Sabbah, entitled Devotion. This album, his seventh on six degrees records, is his fourth album focused on religious music from India — the first three, also available on Six Degrees Records are Shri Durga (1999), Maha Maya: Shri Durga Remixed (2000), and Krishna Lila (2002)-and while mostly similar in content, Devotion features music from three religious traditions found on the Indian Subcontinent, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Sufi Islam.

It’s important to note that Cheb i Sabbah’s work is not a “remix” album, of bhajans simply reworked electronically. The eight songs on Devotion are entirely organic creations of Cheb and various artists, including Master Saleem, classical songstress Shubha Mudgal, and the bhajan maestro Anup Jalota. The album opens strong with Jai Bhavani (Praise to Durga) with vocals by Jalota, in a typical “call and response” structured bhajan that builds slowly into a frenetic ending. Other highlight tracks include Morey Pya Bassey, featuring an inspiring Mudgal vocal, and Qalanderi, featuring the vocals of Riffat Sultana, and reinvented by Cheb I Sabbah to create a from of contemporary qawwali. (Click here for a free download of Qalanderi, courtesy of Six Degreees).

Cheb is in in typical form on Devotion, intricately weaving modern sounds with ancient vocals, without losing the music’s underlying intent, Devotion. His production, is as always, impeccable. I should be clear, the songs on Devotion are slower than those on his other albums, and unlike Shri Durga , Maha Maya, or Krishna Lila, I can’t picture hearing any of these tunes on the dancefloor, outside of Qalanderi. As Anna mentioned last week, Mutineers in DC will have a chance to find out what songs Cheb i Sabbah plays at one of his shows when he takes the stage at the famed DC venue, Bohemian Caverns. Joining him for the show will be one of my favorite turtablists Janaka Selekta, V:shal Kanwar, DJ Darko, and Julez. Bohemian Caverns is located at 2001 Eleventh Street N.W. Washington, D.C. Hope to see you there.

As somewhat of a Bharatanatyam supremacist, I often fail to appreciate the grace, economy of movement and a whole host of other subtleties that dancers of Manipuri, Mohiniattam, Odissi, Kathak, Kathakali and Kuchipudi display in such abundance. It’s also been far too long since I’ve seen a live dance performance. Well, the wait for dance-starved patrons/critics/dancers is over (at least in my neck of the woods.) The very renowned Nrityagram dance ensemble is currently touring the US.

The troupe recently performed at the Joyce Theater in New York (encores performances to follow), which earned yet another mildly positive yet utterly clueless review from the Grey Lady (which I will dissect later), and will continue on to the following locations: Feb 19-24, 2008 - The Joyce Theater , NYC

Apr 13, 2008: Stony Brook University , NY

Back in October I posted Kenneth Cole’s casting call for Sikh models. Just yesterday my brother-in-law texted me with a photo of the ad which covers the entire storefront of their 5th Ave flagship store, so the model is almost 20 feet tall. The model in the ad is Sonny Caberwal, a Duke and Georgetown Law grad who runs Tavalon, a high-end hipster tea “lounge” whose opening we covered earlier. Both the ad and the video below are from the Kenneth Cole website.

Here’s the blurb for the ad campaign:

Kenneth Cole, one of the world’s leading fashion designers, has launched a worldwide campaign to mark the brand’s 25th anniversary. The focus of his ad campaign is that “we all walk in different shoes”. [Link]

Most of the reaction to it in the Sikh blogosphere has been … well, positively gleeful (chortle, kvell, rejoicing). The one hesitant note comes from the new Sikh group blog The Langar Hall which wonders:

Something else makes me uncomfortable about this ad. Is something that’s supposed to be a symbol of high ideals, if not sacred itself (a sardar’s appearance), being commodified? If it is, is it inevitable that everything will one day be commodified?… [Link]

To Reema, I reply - ooooh baby, exotify me, commodify me. I can handle it . [And actually, as somebody who has been photographed a fair amount for similar reasons, I will admit it gets weird at times, but c’mon, doesn’t Sonny look fly 20 feet tall in Rockefeller Center?]

Bollywood must be reeling from the disrespect paid to it by its smaller cousin in California. It’s not bad enough that the Hindi version of Spiderman 3 broke box office records in India, outgrossing domestic productions with a clear ripoff of Indian cinema complete with Tobey Maguire’s Bollystyle costumes, dancing, and hair acting. But to make matters worse, Disney has been muscling in on Bolly’s home turf, the absurd movie musical.

In an audacious move akin to bringing coals to Newcastle, Disney released High School Musical (1) with songs and dialogue dubbed into Hindi in 2006. The new release involved a few subtle changes that revealed how well Disney understands Indian film audiences:

Consider “Bop to the Top,” the title of a song from the first movie. In India, one of Disney’s most important foreign markets, the phrase was changed to “Pa Pa Pa Paye Yeh Dil,” which the company said roughly translates to “the heart is full of happiness” in Hindi. A Hindi translator contacted by The New York Times said: “It’s sort of like a Duran Duran song. The words sound sexy but mean nothing…” [Link]

The dubbed version of HSM did well enough that now Disney is releasing the sequel, High School Musical 2, with an entirely Indian cast. It’s just one of many versions of HSM2 with local casts - you can see them displayed in this medley of different adaptations of HSM2 from around the world.

Below is the climatic song in the all-desi HSM2, Aaja Nachle, the replacement for “All for One” in the American version of HSM2:

The song is a hit worldwide:

According to Nielsen Media Research, more than 1.5 million children age 6 to 11 watched “Aaja Nachle.” Even in a foreign language, children “can feel what they’re saying,” Ms. Sweeney said. [Link]

The Indian film industry is taking Disney’s blatant neo-imperialism very seriously, and is launching a counter-strike. They have announced that SRK will star in a completely naturalistic biopic of Dalip Singh Saund’s life to be released for American markets, saying that anything Miramax can do, they can do better.

Straight Outta Compton my inbox, an invitation to the first Subcontinental Drift of 2008. This event/collective is one of my favorite things about living in DC. Come find out why for yourself:

2007 sure brought some of the district’s talents out of the basement and into the spotlight. It was nothing less than inspiring to witness the expressive potential of our collective South Asian community.

Subcontinental Drift is excited to be back with the first open mic night of 2008 on Monday, January 28th at 7pm. Come bless us in this new year with your art, your thoughts, your ideas, your presence. The mic will be open from 7-9 pm (to sign up for a spot, shoot an email with your name and performance genre to subdriftdc@gmail.com). And stay for the after party with some chill beats and groovin’.

Where?

Bohemian Caverns, at the corner of 11th and U. We’ll be upstairs. www.bohemiancaverns.com

When?

Doors open at 6:30pm.

More info?

myspace.com/subcontinentaldrift or email subdriftdc@gmail.com

I never go out on Mondays or Tuesdays because those are my most challenging (read: no lunch) days at work, but I’m about to do some serious juggling in order to attend this— THAT’S how amazing Subcontinental Drift is. It is worth the stress and exhaustion. ;) If you are in DC, please come out so that you, too, can babble beatifically about all the awesomeness. And if you are not in DC, remember that it is a new year; resolve to start something similar where you are. Abhi did it fabulously in Houston, so can you. Everyone deserves to drift.

What is it about Princesses and Pakistanis? First Jemima Khan converted to Islam to marry Imran Khan. Then there was a whole drama between Princess Diana and her one true love, “Mr. Wonderful”, Dr. Hasnat Khan. Diana was reportedly considering conversion and possibly even a life in Pakistan. And now, the ever reliable Sun reports that Britney Spears is also considering converting to Islam and moving to Pakistan to be with her current boyfriend, paparazzi Adnan Ghalib.

But let’s back up to the Diana story first, because it’s the most interesting. According to her butler, Diana begged Khan to marry her:

“This was her soul mate,” he said. “This was the man she loved more than any other. It was a very deep and spiritual relationship.” Khan would often visit Diana and her boys at Kensington Palace, Burrell added, because the Princess was “adamant” that William and Harry get to know and grow to like Khan.

Burrell revealed that he and Diana discussed giving Khan his own quarters at the Palace and that the Princess was so serious about marrying Khan she asked Burrell to find out if it was possible for them to have a private wedding.[Link]

She even met his family in Pakistan and kept in touch with his mother:

[Said Khan’s mother] “She was so nice, so friendly and down to earth. She met my mother, Hasnat’s grandmother, my nephews and nieces, all the family.” [Link]

Meanwhile she stopped speaking to her own mother because of her mother’s opposition to the relationship:

“She called the Princess a whore and said she was messing around with eff-ing Muslims and she was disgraceful and said some very nasty things.” It was after that conversation, he said, that Diana decided she didn’t want to speak to her mother ever again. [Link]

Nobody would ever accuse desis of being quiet folk. You get a few desis together and pretty soon the volume of the chit chat rises; you get them excited and all the white people in the room start giving them dirty looks. We are voluble people.

So it’s not surprising that young desi bikers in Queens are making their presence known. Out where I live, white men on motocycles remove their mufflers and rev their engines, the aural equivalent of pissing on a tree. In Richmond Hill, young Indo-Carribeans mark their territory more euphoniously using huge speakers … on their bicycles, a tradition brought over from Guyana and Trinidad.

That’s right, this desi biker “gang” is real old school, eschewing newfangled innovations like the internal combustion engine for the purity of gears and sweat.

A new biker gang is roaming the streets of Richmond Hill, Queens. This crew of mostly teenagers can be seen riding along 103rd Avenue just west of the Van Wyck Expressway. The bikes roar… these contraptions look and sound more like rolling D.J. booths.

“This one puts out 5,000 watts and cost about $4,000,” said Nick Ragbir, 18, tinkering with his two-wheeled sound system, with its powerful amplifier, two 15-inch bass woofers and four midrange speakers. It plays music from his iPod and is powered by car batteries mounted on a sturdy motocross bike. [Link]

When I started reading the article and noticed all the names were desi, I was hoping for families of four on scooters or mopeds, women riding side saddle, but bicycles are almost as good.

Let other teenagers cruise around in low riding automobiles with the trunk and backseat full of woofers, burning dinosaur juice, bringing us Indian summer year ‘round. We’re rolling rickshaw style, moving our bodies to propel the music up and down the streets, dancing in the saddle as we pedal and peddle.

Who needs an iPod when you live in a desi neighborhood?

Slideshow with pictures here. The other photos are even better.

As those of you who are fans of House M.D. know already, Kal Penn will be joining the series as a regular next season. This is positive news all around - more screen time for the Penn brother from another mother, which is great because even though he can headline and sell a movie, young actors need all the exposure and steady acting gigs they can get. And this should be good for audiences, because his character seems like a real pataka, and Mr. Modi has no problems keeping viewers amused when you give him material like this:

Bend over and laugh

… [Penn’s character] caught House’s attention in the episode by resuscitating a patient and suggesting that they get her drunk to better diagnose her rare neurological condition. “… [The character] is a fan of trying random methods of exploration and life saving, and isn’t afraid to break the rules a little bit,” [Link]

Lastly, this should be good for brownz all around because we’re finally getting another desi doctor on TV to match the high number of desi doctors in the real world:

By mid-1997 it is estimated perhaps 4% (22,000) of the entire nation’s medical doctors are South Asian immigrants from India or of South Asian descent. It has been claimed that many inner city public hospitals simply could not function if South Asian medical personnel were unavailable as they can constitute as high as 40% of the staff physicians and 50% of the nurses. In Ohio, one out of six physicians is South Asian and several other states approach that ratio. [Link]

Except that I don’t think his character is desi. I haven’t seen the show, so I don’t know for sure, but his character’s name is Lawrence Kutner which doesn’t sound desi to me. In fact, there were two desi actors in the “try out for House’s team” episode — Kal Penn and Meera Simhan — and their characters were named “Lawrence” and “Jody.” Neither one had a clearly desi name, both were probably cast for a character of unspecified race.

Fox News Channel launched a new Business Network today, creatively named Fox Business Network (FBN), and available in almost 30 million homes. In the ever-competitive cable news market, Fox is trying to fish for viewers in a most unusual way:

Fox News Executive Vice President Kevin Magee, who’s in charge of FBN’s day-to-day operations, says it doesn’t want to trade blows with CNBC, (GE) or even Bloomberg TV, the current channels of choice for financial market watchers…Instead, his new business channel aims to draw viewers “from soap operas, game shows — any place we can.”
FBN executives hope to do that with personality-driven programs heavy on personal finance and with stories offering business insights into general interest news. There is some traditional market news, along with an on-screen crawl showing the latest stock prices.link

But you know what they really have? What they’re using to chum the waters?

Hot chicks, duh.

Almost all of the on-air talent that’s plugged on the site are skinny, youthful beauties like Shibani Joshi (a former model in India), Cheryl Casone (a former flight attendant), Jenna Lee (she played Division One softball in college), and Nicole Petillades (she loves slalom waterskiing!). link

Of course, the foxy ladies are also quite talented. Take Ms. Joshi, for example:

Shibani Joshi, based in New York, joins from her role as a reporter covering breaking news for News 12 Westchester. Before this, Joshi was a producer for Reuters Television and TIMES NOW, the joint venture news channel with The Times of India, where she was responsible for producing news packages and interviews broadcast all over India. Joshi has also served as a contributing writer for ABCNews.com and ABC News Now covering business and technology stories. She began her journalism career as a news production assistant at CNNfn where she contributed to Lou Dobbs Moneyline and CNN Money Morning. link

I think I read about an MBA from Harvard to cap that sweet resume, so, you know, I’m not hating the beautiful. Much. And networks are notorious for playing up the youth and sex appeal of female anchors. But this crew is exceptionally young, and Fox is blatantly plastering their glamor shots everywhere. Is this sort of business plan a harbringer for Naked News (NSFW!!) on network TV? Doesn’t seem so far-fetched, does it?

More on the the FBN at Adweek, USAToday, Forbes, DealBreaker, etc.

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?

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.

On our News tab, Haldiram writes:

Noureen DeWulf (of “Americanizing Shelley”) is featured in a new spoof of sports movies (a la ‘Not Another Teen Movie’) called “The Comebacks” - while she plays a football player (who wears part of her sari over her uniform in one shot??) her character’s name (why do people think confusing American Indians and South Asian Indians is funny?) and the other bizarre scenes in the preview do not make one optimistic. Time will tell if it’s another Harold & Kumar-like breakthrough - or just offensive.

In The Comebacks, Noureen plays Jizminder Featherfoot.

Wow.

There are so many things wrong with that character’s name, my head is paining. But it gets better— they don’t just mash up Native Americans with desis; one scene depicts faux athletes training…while Jizminder gyrates like a belly dancer, up on a platform.

Maybe I am getting anxious about further filmy humiliation for no reason. Over at WorstPreviews, they don’t even mention Noureen/Jizminder, despite her memorably madcap adventures on the field, during which she tackles someone while wearing her helmet AND a chunni!

Eh, what am I so upset about…East is all East, right? Aladdin, turbans, Ayatollahs, Jasmine, Ali Baba, Taj Mahal. I wonder, since we’re conflating everything, could we claim Esther as one of our own? I have always loved her. Persian, Indian…close enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must wrap up this post. I’m running late— I was supposed to bhangra outside my teepee, for no discernible reason, a full hour ago.

From Fuerza Dulce comes this video clip of a contestant trying to get on VH1’s Flavor of Love:

I sputtered. I laughed. I frowned. Honestly - I’m confused. It’s a pretty bizarre mish-mash of orientalist cliches, done in a ham handed way. It’s neither hilarious nor completely unfunny, although she does act like she’s in on the joke.

Here’s the question - is Orientalism OK when we do it? Or does one desi’s 15 minutes of fame in brownface make the rest of our lives harder by not just reinforcing these tired tropes, but making them seem OK?

Time magazine asked mostly-desi* actor Krishna Bhanji ten reader-submitted questions in their August 13th issue; on their website, there were several more “online extras”. I picked the eleven most mutinous inquiries for you to procrastinate with— the entire interview is on their website, where incidentally (for all my fellow Lego-lovers) this Picture of the Week should inspire smiles. Now let’s get back on topic and learn about the actor who, for better or worse, is part of every ABD’s childhood.

1. What do you look for in a role? —Catherine Raymond, BELLINGHAM, WASH.

I look for the echo inside me. Maybe we’re all born with our future coiled up inside us like a spring, and we just unravel this coiled spring and work it out. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit bizarre. I’m trying so hard not to be pretentious because I’m always called pompous and pretentious.

First Gandhi-related inquiry:

2. How would Gandhi play the role of Ben Kingsley? —Mills Chapman, VILLANOVA, PA.

He was an astonishingly quick and witty judge of character, so I bet he could have done a very good impersonation of me.

3. Would you change anything about your acting career? —Grant Curtiss, ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.

No. It’s a bit like The Butterfly Effect, that amazing science-fiction novel, where if you go back and alter one molecule of your past, the present that you’re enjoying will disintegrate.

4. Have you ever felt compelled to pursue any political issues? —Ross Davenport, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

I’m only strong as a storyteller. I’m not strong as a politician. Hopefully, with my journeys around the world, having visited the Pakistan earthquake zone, a girls’ school in Afghanistan and some refugee camps in the Palestinian areas, then I’ll be stronger as an actor at choosing the right kind of material.

What’s in a name?

5. Why did you change your name (from Krishna Bhanji)? —Andrew Lawrence, FAIRFIELD, CONN.

It was a way of getting to my first audition. My dad [who is Indian] was completely behind it. My first name, Ben, is my dad’s nickname. My second name, Kingsley, comes from my grandfather’s nickname, which was King Clove. He was a spice trader. It’s a bit late to change it back now.

An anonymous tipster left a link to an “awww”-inducing story from Beijing, China, on our news tab.

After Bollywood films, classical Indian dance has caught the imagination of the Chinese, with a young woman actively promoting Bharatnatyam among her compatriots, especially the tiny-tots.

For 33-year-old Jin Shan Shan, a Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, it has always been a passion to become an exponent of Bharatnatyam. She has established a school for Bharatnatyam here. [The Hindu]

Like Amreekans, the Chinese are dabbling in many things desi, like Bollywood, yummy food and of course teh yoga. Can’t forget that yoga.

Aside: Is there a better cultural ambassador? We have millions of confused, middle-aged, New Year’s Resolution-keepers all across this land, taking Yoga at Bally fitness and the like, trying not to fall over when they’re attempting an Ardha Chandrasana. ;) Now people can add incense and twisty poses to the pottu, when they assemble a stereotype. :D Don’t get your chuddies all twisted, yaar. I’m just high off the cuteness in that picture (that’s Jin Shan Shan and her adorable daughter Jessie, in Beijing).

While Bollywood films, Indian cuisine and yoga have become popular in China, learning classical Indian dance is also gaining ground here, Ms. Jin said. Around 50 Chinese children were attending classes every week to learn the intricacies of the classical dance. [The Hindu]

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the arts accomplished what the Panch Shila couldn’t? Yes, yes it would be. Then again, will hundreds of stomping little kids have any effect on China’s “take” on Arunachal Pradesh?

In November 2006, China and India had a verbal spat over claim of the north-east Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. India claimed that China was occupying 38,000 square kilometres of its territory in Kashmir, while China claimed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh as its own.

Recently, China denied the application for visa from an IAS officer in Arunachal Pradesh, saying that since Arunachal Pradesh is a territory of China, he/she won’t need a visa to visit his/her own country. [viki]

An irresponsibly naive idealist can hope, right? Be the change you wish to see?

Via my Auntie Valsa’s kid, Jasmin, over at ASATA, news of an upcoming free M.I.A. show at Amoeba Records in Berkeley, this Saturday at 2pm.

I “hella” thought those of you in the yay area who have reconciled your inner turmoil regarding her connection with/representation of/grahpic allusions to the LTTE might want to know. Me? I’m still conflicted, so I’ll keep humming

Let you be superior

I’m flithy with the fury ya

…it’s easy being morally inferior when there’s such a sick soundtrack to feel shame to. I keed, I keed.

This has been forwarded to me ~15 times and you are all right, it’s some seriously funny shiznit. “Yo Momma” is an MTV series that looks for the best trash talkers around the country. I watched last season end to end (ah, the miracle of Tivo) and it was ridiculously good. This time around, the show’s been infiltrated by a desi dude who’s donned the character “Pak Attack” and if he can keep the gimmick going, he’s actually got what it takes to go all the way & win the show.

You smell so bad that people would rather sit next to me on an airplane…

In this clip over at MTV.com, he DESTROYS his yo momma competitor, Osa. Set aside ~10 min of your life to watch a Russell Peters worthy performance. Except, of course, there’s a much higher improv quotient here & Pak’s strictly amateur. (His myspace page indicates that in real life, he’s probably a GeorgiaTech engineer. )

Now I’ll warn you, gentle mutineers, that there’s a certain brand of humor you’ve gotta be ready to accept on any show called “Yo Momma”… with that caveat in mind, a couple of Pak’s laugh lines -

“It is true, it is true, I work at 7-11, but just like my store, yo momma’s legs are open 24-7”

“The only difference between my camel and your momma, my camel spits”

Social commentary?

Rollin’ down Venice with Squishee in hand

I haven’t done any hard-nosed-journalism-type posts on SM in a while. Saturday night, when I found myself driving down Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles, I knew it was time to change all that. Out of the corner of my eye, on the errrr…corner, I spotted a Kwik-E-Mart with a huge line running around the building. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to film an undercover exposé with such a large crowd present so I determined that I would come back at a later time. On Monday I did just that. I casually walked past the bouncer who was shorter than me. What I found inside was shocking. Absolutely shocking! Indians were running the store and making a ton of money selling Squishees, hot dogs, and donuts. There were three brown dudes working the register and a really tall guy of uncertain ethnic origin pouring Squishees. I am happy to bring this exclusive hidden camera footage to our valued readers:

Back in SM’s youth, we brought you the story of Indian Superman (posted in 2004! We was the OG playas on the Desi Blogging scene yo).

It takes a lot of brylcreem to get that curly lock just so…

[Indian Superman] is one of those rare movies that manages to offend on every level. It is badly acted, badly directed, badly filmed, and makes no sense whatsoever. And just to add that extra level of offensiveness, the whole project is probably illegal.

Why Illegal? Well, here’s the most direct / literal reason -

The movie starts with thundering music playing over the sight of a cityscape from some advanced alien civilization - hey, wait a minute! That music is from the American Superman movie! So are those special effects shots!

Ah, the beauty of cut & paste

‘04 was the pre-YouTube Internet and, at the time, we weren’t able to post any clips of the flick. Luckily, the world has evolved and clips are now far easier to find (here’s one, presumably from the film’s climactic ending where Superman saves an otherwise-doomed Indian Airlines flight).

Of new interest to long time mutineers, however, it appears that Puneet Issar and Dharmendra Deol have passed the Superman baton on to a host of desi sequels…

Okay, not sure how many of you are watching Fox’s kinda awful reality show “The Lot” right now, but I have to say, I’m actually glad I am. One of you let us know that our girl Shalini is up this week. This time, Shalini had to make a comedy, in just five days. Since she’s more of a documentary/serious filmmaker, this quite understandably freaked her out. However, once I saw the montage of her having trouble directing her short and then heard one of her actors disparage her, I knew she must have done a brilliant job, since that’s how transparent these stupid shows are.

Shalini’s film is called “Dr-in-law” and it made me do that “LOL”-thing those whippersnappers are always exclaiming. It really is funny— and extra awesome because the two main characters are both Asian…and neither of them are the doctor. I don’t require it, but if I can see myself in or otherwise relate to a piece of art, it’s that much more precious. Somewhere, a put-upon brown kid dreams of doing what she shot. ;)

Anyway, when the show is over, it will be time to vote— and if I’m not mistaken, there is just a two hour window after “The Lot” airs in your time zone in which to do so. Shalini went first, so her phone number will end in “01” (and isn’t that fortuitous? I always feel like numbers ending in “01” are superior, but I’m fobulous like that)…but who uses a phone these days, if there’s a way to do something online? What, you like your phone? Fine, dial 1-88-The Lot-01.

Some of us may be skeptical about Shalini’s skills, but compare her work to second, third and fourth the rest of the films in the competition (which, except for the last one, were all kinds of lame), and it’s hard to dismiss her talent; I found myself cheering at the TV repeatedly for the brown girl in the ring. It’s also hard to dismiss her glittery make-up, which inspired the title of this post. Feel free to discuss it (or her film, even) below.

…random men everywhere who aren’t Aish/Bips/Shabana-devotees gnash their teeth and shake their fists at the sky impotently. Or not.

Oooooh, DRAMA! An anonymous tipster leaves juicy news on the…well, news tab (via SAWF):

Bollywood star Rani Mukerhee, 29, is all set to marry film maker Aditya Chopra, 36, son of Yash Raj Chopra. A commitment ceremony or “Roka” was held Monday at the Chopra bungalow in Bombay.

A source close to the family told the Hindustan Times: “The roka took place at the same Chopra bungalow where Chandni was shot. Around 60 people (family and friends) attended the ceremony that included Rani’s parents Ram and Krishna Mukherjee, brother Raja and his wife. Present from the Chopra clan were brother Uday, dad Yash Chopra and mum Pamela Chopra.”

Awww, that’s so cute! My last two german shepherds, who were litter-mates, were also named Raja and Rani. And no, I didn’t name them, so shut up.

“Rani wore a maroon saari with silver embroidery and Aditya wore a kurta-pyjama, both designed by designer Pallavi Jaikishan. Pam aunty didn’t seem very happy, as she has a soft corner for Adi’s ex-wife, Payal. Another function will take place at Rani’s house next week,” the source added.

Why do I care, when I am a clue-free Mallu ABCD who has gone on record as not paying attention to Bollywood? Because it’s JUICY. Duh.

Aditya was recently divorced from Payal Chopra, whom he married in 2001.

Ah, so THAT is why anonymous tipster namechecked Angelina Jolie! Apparently, Rani is a homewrecker, but my half- third- quarter-hearted googling found nothing. If the girl Big B got creepy with in KKKG really did break up this guy’s marriage, I’m sure one of you will edify us with confirmation of such sordid details.

According to the Mumbai Mirror, Aditya’s decision to divorce Payal, who is the daughter of a close friend of father Yash Raj, has strained relations between the father and son.

I can’t be the only one thinking…all this would make a great Bollywood movie? Life imitates art…? Annnnnd, I’m bored again. Who wants to talk about Obama, caste or saffron balls? Anyone?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previous excuse to post Neel Shah’s pic here

It is a picture that I imagine many who read this blog have a variation of in one form or another. You know, that image of the the nuclear desi-American family— returned to the sub-Continent for a long (summer) vacation— of mom, dad, brother, sister posing in front of the Taj Mahal. The group is huddled close on that bench hoping for the perfect portrait. And really, how can the picture be bad? That grand marble monument towering in the background, its skewed reflection glimmering in the rectangular pond. Observing that familiar image reflected on the movie screen and understanding that feeling of closeness and comfort of being together in a foreign place, put a big smile on my face, as did most of Mira Nair’s latest film The Namesake.

I know we’ve previously blogged a review of the film, but this was a very personal book for me, I think for most of us. I even made my mom, who doesn’t usually read “English novels” read the book, and she loved it. So I think the movie merits more than just one review. In any case, I’ll do my best not to repeat too many of the things cicatrix mentioned earlier, and promise to stay away from the word timepass. The film was “just too good yar,” to merit the use of the word to describe it.

I find it hard to have high expectations for movies based on books. I have been burned too many times. With that in mind, my expectations for the movie were upward leaning, but not over reaching. I didn’t know how Nair could add visuals to a novel that was for me already so vivid. As the stunning opening credits blurred between Bengali and English, I immediately knew Lahiri’s story was in good hands. Nair and her longtime collaborator Sooni Taraporevala’s treatment stayed true to the novel while also providing an original point of view. Their take does a fine job of including the highlights of the book, but in their attempt to hit all the major points, the movie misses some of the extras that made the story so poignant. (Warning: Spoiler Alert, especially if you haven’t read the book)

The inclusion of the Ashima and Ashoke’s early years was good, but I wanted to see more of their early married life, more of Ashima’s struggle adjusting to life in America. To life without her family. To life without the familiar. I wanted to see her overcome that struggle, and grow into her life in America, as we saw in the novel. I think that is an important part of the story, and not spending enough time on some of these nuances took away from the story’s gravitas. The significance of the late night/early morning phone call for example, how was the audience supposed to know that odd-timed phone calls only meant significant news from India, usually bad?

Apparently the only surprise about Deepa Mehta’s Water losing out on the Best Foreign Film award last night was that the eventual winner wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth, the consensus favorite, but rather The Lives of Others, by an impossibly tall German director with an impossibly aristocratic Prussian name. So there’s little gnashing of teeth or rending of garments in the Indian press today, simply matter-of-fact recognition that “India’s Oscar jinx” carries on. It’s also apparently a known fact (I never get to the movies, so I’m just repeating what I read) that the entire field for the foreign-film award was extremely strong. So no injustice here any way you cut it.

However, I am rather exercised at the Monday morning snub from the newspaper round-ups of red carpet fashion, which roundly ignore the gorgeous heirloom gold-threaded Banarasi sari in which Mehta graced the ceremony. Los Angeles Times, New York Times — no one paid the slightest notice, positive or negative, to the passage across the red carpet of the Water crew. Even my mellow Hank Stuever in the Washington Post — political, worldly, and queer as the proverbial three-dollar bill — ignored the desi contingent, his confessed ogling of Ryan Gosling affording John Abraham no residual love.

Oh well. Perhaps it’s all for the best that our peoples passed by under the radar, considering the standard-issue snark that’s become de rigueur in such coverage. Or perhaps coverage was the point — body coverage, that is: with so much exposed bosom and leg to take in — let alone Jack Nicholson’s creepily depilated dome — those who took cover in dignified, discreet outfits necessarily condemned themselves to oblivion in the morning news.

Deepa could have joined the flesh parade, had she wanted to match up against Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren in the “do they still got it?” division, a bit of a rigged fixture for a director against two actresses. The dresses were there for the wearing, but the sista had a much better plan:

They must have been throwing clothes at Mehta once the nominations were announced.

“Yes, they were,” she admits. “Chanel, Armani, Prada etc. … approached me. `No, thank you. I’m wearing my mother’s sari.’ For one thing, I’ll never wear a dress in my life: I’m more blue jeans and cargo pants. It was just a question of what sari.”

Her mother’s sari was part of her trousseau.

“My paternal grandmother gave it to my mom when she got married,” she recalls. “It’s gold but because it is so old (from the ’40s), it’s burnished. It’s very subtle. The gold thread is a weave not done anymore. It’s gorgeous and it’s personal. It’s Mom’s.

“And Bulgari wanted to do my jewellery. But I’ll wear my antique Indian jewellery because it goes with the sari.”

Read the full, friendly feature from the Toronto Star here. As for the Oscars, if you’re feeling the pain of desi exclusion, the Economic Times offers you here a kind of consolation.

Alright, macacas. We don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s only because we’ve all been crazy busy lately that we haven’t gotten to this one yet. We certainly don’t want you to think that we here at the Mutiny consider ourselves too high-brow(n) to address the strange case of Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, a.k.a. the “meth doctor” who has found himself in the limelight due to his involvement in the now-ended life of Anna Nicole Smith.

Question One: Is that T-shirt for real, or is it Photoshopped? Either way it’s a remarkable image. Almost as remarkable as the image the gossip sites had of the brother sans shirt, apparently launching into woozy canoodle with Ms. Smith on a couch in a club before some other sycophant shoves a hand on the camera lens. Almost as remarkable as that of the brother astride a West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade “float” — actually a black Saab convertible — gazing fondly down at Ms. Smith while she — oh, just click the link. (I have absolutely no idea whether it’s SFW or NSFW, by the way. I can’t gauge these things anymore.)

One of my Sepia colleagues commented to me that the brewing controversy over Dr. Kapoor, who is now under investigation by the California medical board for his alleged role in supplying Ms. Smith with the alleged pharmaceutical products that are alleged to have contributed to her demise (I think we’re safe with that phrasing), is actually good for the race, in that no one has commented on Kapoor’s ethnicity, leaving his incompetence and general gross-ness to speak for itself without racial qualifiers — he is being judged, if you will, not on the color of his skin but on the content of his character. Well, my co-Mutineer didn’t actually phrase it that way; I’m embellishing, but it’s still his basic point. Which means: Yay! Desis are now so normalized into the field of medicine that they are expected to be insane, incompetent, quacks at no greater or lesser rate than found in the general medical population.

The gossip sites also inform us (caution: clothed but scary picture) that Dr. Kapoor advertised at some point for a position (chick pea, are you listening?) in which he describes one of his practice’s specialties as Entertainment Medicine. This is, apparently, a hitherto-unknown field. He also does travel immunizations and (ahem) “several national and international clinical pharmaceutical trials.” I don’t know about Entertainment Medicine, but when it comes to Medicine Entertainment, this brother’s gotta be a shoo-in for the Oscar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, with great frequency, we find it necessary to become the news, to participate in it, to deliver it. Perhaps this impulse is our only defense; reality television, the blogosphere and YouTube are but a few examples. These are the new narrative forms of our life. Digital reportage, punditry, and testimony are now integral to the way we define ourselves.

That’s from the introduction to their new work Still Life with Commentator, by Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd, and Ibrahim Quraishi. The show premiered earlier this year in Chapel Hill and Salzburg and has its first major run this week, December 6-10, at BAM in New York City. The album on Savoy Records will appear in March.

Still Life involves many of the artists who appeared in Iyer and Ladd’s tremendous 2003-04 project In What Language? with the addition of avant-garde vocalist Pamela Z. I’ve heard the music and it’s terrific; Vijay has also posted this preview on YouTube.

More on this next week, but I encourage NYC-area macacas to check this show out; it’s a big deal. And considering that the artists call the piece as “an oratorio about our virtual surroundings,” it may prove fodder for discussion here in the virtual surroundings we share.

It has been some time since we’ve mutinied over Ms. Aishwarya Rai, the Bollywood bombshell who in her past couple of film ventures hasn’t had too much luck conquering the western film market. Rai, who made her Hollywood debut in the somewhat successful English ode to Bollywood, Bride and Prejudice and flopped in the poorly executed (yet visually exciting) Mistress of Spices, may have scored a nice role and hopefully a better foray into the west with her role as Mira, a sword-wielding warriorete, in Doug Lefler’s, The Last Legion. The film, which stars Sir Ben Kingsley and Colin Firth —Rai impressively receives third billing — is the story of twelve-year-old emperor Romulus Augustus, who in the midst of the fall of the Roman Empire, escapes to join up with a small band of survivors who make their way to Britain in search of the chotu ruler’s ultimate legion, one of which I take is Miss Rai.

“Dare to Be Daring”

I have to say after seeing the trailer (I know, it is just the trailer) Aishwarya’s performance looks quite good (link). The role is completely different than anything she has been in before, the cast is stellar (Ben Kingsley was Gandhi!), and Ash as an ass-kicking, sword handling fighter is a nice contrast to the usual, happy-go-lucky, Bhangra-circle dancing Ms. World that we are used to seeing. It can only be a good thing that she is moving away from doing the strictly desi themed film and towards playing a non-ethnic role. A well-received performance here, in an actual mainstream film, has the potential to really catapult her to the Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz levels, and on top of all that, Rai has extra incentive for this film to be successful, she bought the Indian rights. The Last Legion rated PG 13 is being distributed by MGM and the Weinsteins, and is set to release sometime in 2007 (I’ve seen both January 19 and April 27 as potential release dates).

Who cares if there is no stamp commemorating Diwali when NBC’s Emmy Award winning comedy The Office has an episode commemorating the Hindu holiday. The episode, written by Mindy Kaling, born Vera Chokalingam, (also author of the Diwali song (link via nirali magazine)-, the Hindu answer to Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song) airs tonight on NBC at 8:30 EST. Tonight’s episode, simply titled “Diwali,” has Michael played by Steve Carell, urging all the staff to support Kelly Kapoor, played by Mindy Kaling, and attend a local celebration of the Hindu Festival of Lights. As Ryan (B.J. Novak) nervously faces Kelly’s family at the event, Michael, his new girlfriend Carol, and the staff sample a range of Indian culture and cuisine. Since the episode hasn’t aired yet, we can’t say too much about the content, but the fact that the show is happening is pretty cool. I hope some YouTube links will pop up in the comments after the show airs. Check out Nirali Magazine’s blog for an exclusive look at the show.

The suspicious-looking individual to the right is a Muslim. Would you feel nervous if you saw her on an airplane?

The reason I ask is that my attention was drawn to the NBC game show “Deal Or No Deal,” which I haven’t actually seen on television, but appears to involve suitcases that may or may not be filled with large amounts of cash, presented to contestants by a bevy of hot models. The show’s website emphasizes the models, and when I checked it out the featured model to appear on my screen was this one, #13, name of Leyla. It struck me from her name and her visage that she might just be, you know, one of them, even though the web bio supplied for her only told me that she came from Toronto. And that she has “the face of an Angel and the drive of a tigress,” and was once a tomboy but is now “no longer a tomboy by any stretch of the imagination,” if you get my drift, phwarrr phwarrr. Fortunately the Persian Mirror was more forthcoming in identifying Leyla Milani and claiming her as one of their co-ethnics, which means in all likelihood she’s Muslim as well.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with the price of chapatis? Well, not much, really, except that the reason I was investigating “Deal or No Deal” in the first place was because of this Craigslist ad that was picked up today by Gawker:

Do you get nervous when you see a Muslim on an airplane? Have your opinions about Muslims changed since September 11? Do you have family or friends that get nervous around Muslims?

A NEW SHOW SEEKS New York families who have traditional family values but are uneasy around Muslims.

The show will profile families in different communities across the country. This one hour documentary-style series from the producers of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Deal or No Deal” will take a look at the people and cultures that make up America.

This series will also explore other issues that families from varied backgrounds face in their day-to-day life and provide opportunities to them that they might not have access to otherwise. This is not a home makeover show.

This is a paid opportunity.

If you are interested or have any questions about this show, please e-mail the following information to AshtonRamsey@Yahoo.com.

I repeat: THIS IS NOT A HOME MAKEOVER SHOW. So even if your closets are jammed full of last year’s hijabs and were decorated in Saddam-era 1980s Arabesque kitsch, do not apply. It’s also not a game show, presumably — or is it? what do the suitcases contain? are there airplanes involved? — although it is a “paid opportunity.” I guess you can email Ashton if you want to know more.

I so called this story (thanks, Jai!) a few weeks ago and not one of you Mutineers took me up on the friendly wager...!

Angelina Jolie is adopting an Indian baby to add to her growing international brood, according to US reports.

Sources say the big-hearted actress and partner Brad Pitt have already applied to adopt a tot from an Indian orphanage. An insider said: "They hope to be able to bring the child home by Christmas.[...] She has said: "I want to create a rainbow family. That's children of different religions and cultures from different countries." [link]

And the disturbing cherry on top...

The source told US magazine Globe: "Whichever they end up with, they'd like to name the child India to honour its homeland." The pair are rumoured to have visited the Priva Darshini orphanage in the last month. [link]

Seriously?!?! It's not like they went around and named the other kids 'Cambodia' and 'Ethiopia.' How come they get cool names like Maddox, Shiloh and Zahara, and you want to name the desi kid 'India?' Like she isn't going to be teased enough...

I once had this girl in my class, a Latino woman, whose name was Asia. I found it confusing. Now that I think about it, I may have met an India or two in my lifetime and I was always left feeling a little ... put off. Being named after a country just never seemed, um, meaningful. But INDIA, really? Brangelina, don't you think you could name the desi kid something else, while still honoring his birth land? Those poor children will be raised with such identity issues...

Maharani Prem Kumari aka Anita Delgado

While there may be no direct desi connection to the Desi(red) campaign featuring Penelope Cruz that Ennis wrote about below, Cruz certainly has at least one strong connection to the Des. It turns out Cruz in her directorial debut, will put on celluloid the story of Anita Delgado, the flamenco dancer from Andalucia who created a stir when she agreed to marry an Indian king -Maharaja Jagatjit Singh Bahadur- in 1908. The film, based on the the book Pasion India by Javier Moro is tentatively titled The Princess of Kapurthala, and much of the shooting will reportedly occur in the congested and oh-so-regal streets of Old Delhi and in the palaces of Kapurthala in Punjab. Cruz will play the part of Delgado, while the rest of the Indian cast is scheduled to be finalized when she heads to India in January to scout for locations.

Sounds promising, right? Well according to the IBNnews website, the film project seems to have rubbed the Kapurthala royal family the wrong way, even before casting has begun. The website reports that…

“The heir of the [Kapurthala Royal] family, Tikka Shatrujit Singh, is ready to go to court over the issue to seek an injunction on the movie, which is based on his grandfather Maharaja Jagatjit Singh.”

The wiki suggests the family opposes the film because they feel Javier Moro’s novel, on which the film is based, distorts the truth, especially the allegations of the Maharajah forcing Anita to have an abortion. I don’t know what is going to happen, but if you think about it, the screenplay almost writes itself. An Andalucían flamenco dancer, after refusing the advances of an Indian Maharaja, finally gives in to his charms and shifts from Spain to live in India in 1908, during the heyday of British rule. I really hope the film gets made. Just think of the potential of some wicked latin influenced bollywood dance sequences, a la Shakira’s Bollywood-influenced rendition of Hips Don’t Lie from the 2006 VMAs.

Related: India in Andalucia

It isn’t quite North Korea versus the world, but the celebrity arms race between Angelina and Madge escalated this week, as Madonna and hubby Guy Ritchie visited Malawi to launch a charity for orphans that will base its activities on Kabbalah. Actually, the better analogy is the Cold War: just as the United States and Soviet Union did in their time, the celebs are collecting the allegiance of various third-world countries, which gain publicity in exchange for putting up with the antics of their new patrons. Ethiopia and Cambodia, the native countries of her two adopted children, are in Angelina’s sphere of influence. Now Namibia, which provided seclusion, and guard against paparazzi for the birth of Shiloh Nouvel earlier this year, is firmly lodged in her column. Now Madonna and Guy have made their own Southern Africa play.

Of course, they can’t just start up a charity for those poor Malawian orphans; they have to have one of their own! The lucky son-elect is David Banda, age 1, whose mother died after his birth. David’s father is in the picture, and has given the adoption his blessing:

“They are a lovely couple. She asked me many questions. She and her husband seem happy with David. I am happy for him. Madonna promised me that as the child grows she will bring him back to visit,” he said.

And the Malawian High Court has awarded Madonna and Guy an exemption from the country’s law against cross-border adoptions:

Malawian law does not allow for inter-country adoptions, and generally requires people who want to adopt to spend 18 months being evaluated by Malawian child welfare workers. But it seems even this is no obstacle for the Material Girl after Malawian officials, who refused to elaborate, indicated that such restrictions would be waived for the couple.

The best part of this is that the government of Malawi is going to send its own social workers to check on the child’s well-being:

“Government in this instance will use our Washington office (embassy) to monitor the progress with the couple (Madonna and Ritchie),” said Andrina Mchiela, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

“And also government will appoint a welfare officer from Malawi to liase with our Washington embassy and make visitations to where the child will be,” she added.

For more serious analysis of celebrity adoptions from Africa, check out this article from today’s Washington Post.

The news wires are all abuzz with desi-related gossip about the couple we love to hate, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Pitt and Jolie, along with their three children, are in India to shoot scenes for the upcoming movie A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie stars as slain journalist Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane. Pitt's Plan B production company is coproducing the film...Relentless paparazzi coverage of the Jolie-Pitt clan's visit has led the couple to remain holed up in Pune's Le Meridan Hotel almost nonstop since they arrived by private jet late last week. [link]

Brangelina starring in The Great Rickshaw Escape

Brangelina in India has created all the frenzy that the Hindustan Times Page Six thrives on. First, we had Angelina Jolie wishing she were filming in Pakistan instead, where Daniel Pearl's abduction had originally taken place.

Meanwhile, Jolie says she and Pitt are disappointed they are not shooting the film in Pakistan. Security concerns there caused officials to suggest they work elsewhere. So with the exception of a few background scenes shot in Pakistan, A Mighty Heart will be made in Pune.

"I am disappointed that we could not shoot the film in Pakistan, a country that I love and have visited three times," said Jolie in a statement issued on Saturday by Trevor Neilson, an adviser to the couple.

"They talked with people from all levels of the Pakistan Government and there's certainly no hard feelings. But it became clear that it was preferable to film in India," Neilson said. [link]

Now, we have Brangelina's security with an (almost) killer choke hold...

A bodyguard for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie manhandled a British photographer as he tried to take their picture at a hotel in western India, an incident caught on video by an Indian television station. On Saturday afternoon, when Pitt and Jolie tried to leave the hotel, one of their security guards caught a British photographer trying to take their photo, grabbing the man by his neck and verbally abusing him. [link]

And the infamous rickshaw escape...

The couple were chased by photographers, cameramen and reporters, forcing them to turn back after a 20-minute ride that took them past stores in downtown Pune, in western India.[...] Several traffic signals slowed their short rickshaw ride. At every red light, security men traveling in a rickshaw behind jumped out and surrounded the three-wheeler to prevent the media from snapping pictures of Pitt and Jolie. [link]

Oh, Brangelina. Welcome to the motherland. I'm placing bets that the next baby in their internationally adopted clan is going to be desi. Any takers?

Update: You can watch The Attack of the Brangelina Security Guard here! (Thanks, Manish!).

Witness the following horrific string of events:

I know it isn’t pretty and I hope that I haven’t ruined anyone’s lunch hour. The Christian Science Monitor has an article about the puppets of “No Strings,” and that organization’s mission to teach the children of Afghanistan about the dangers of landmines:

“Bang!” The little puppet boy steps on a mine, and now he only has one leg. The Afghan children watching the video at a school on a Kabul hillside gasp.

Puppets have long been used to entertain and to teach children basic lessons such as how to count and the letters of the alphabet

“The Story of the Little Carpet Boy,” loosely based on Pinocchio, is the brainchild of No Strings International, a British charity set up to reach children in war-torn areas and teach them vital life lessons through puppetry.

“It’s hard to get a crowd of children to listen to an adult, but the minute you bring a puppet out, kids just light up,” says Johnie McGlade, founder of No Strings.

Mr. McGlade worked for more than a year with two of Muppet-creator Jim Henson’s original team, Kathy Mullen and Michael Frith, to create a culturally sensitive film using characters from Afghan folklore to teach children about the dangers of minefields.

About 60 Afghans a month are killed or injured by mines and unexploded ordnance around the country, and almost half of them are under 18 years old, according the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan (UNMACA). [Link]

A quick-hit/public service post concerning two of the major annual events on the American desi cultural circuit. First, the South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) opened last night in New York City, and runs until Sunday. The films and events are taking place at venues around Manhattan; you can buy tickets online or just show up at the door. Here are some film synopses to whet your appetite:

“My Cultural Divide” - A three month visit to Bangladesh becomes a discovery of family and home that runs parallel with the filmmakers attempt to tackle the complex issue of global trade. Accompanied by his ailing mother, he takes us on a very personal journey to bridge the gap between his heritage in Bangladesh and his life in Canada. He connects his politics with his humanity, and weaves together a story that is both thought provoking and touching.

“Driving in India” - There are no traffic regulations and much like survival of the fittest, the biggest vehicle on the road wins unless you’re an elephant. Shot all over Northern India, “Driving In India” is about a sudden and fast-paced economical environment that has contributed to this challenging way of transportation, but it also shows the relentless optimism and humor of the people and the unwavering need to survive.

“A Cry in the Dark” - This film captures an extraordinary succession of abuses of authority and culminates in a horrifying, desperate act. She was an ordinary village girl but the popular movement that rose up in the wake of Thangiam Manorama’s death shook the foundations of a government. Reportedly raped and killed in police custody her death shook the foundation of local government and barely made the world news.

“Quarterlife Crisis” - Dumped on his 27th birthday by his college sweetheart Angel for being indecisive, Neil makes a silly bet that takes him on a wild ride through New York’s singles scene, accompanied by four testosterone-packed imbecile buddies and one crazy scheming New York taxi driver. On these madcap adventures Neil journeys from life choice paralysis to real life manhood. [w/ Lisa Ray and Russell Peters]

…and lots more feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Many of the films are by emerging or first-time filmmakers. Ali at Eteraz has an interview with one of the latter, Shripriya Mahesh.

On a less happy note, we hear from Sarita Vasa of ArtWallah, the decade-old Los Angeles desi arts festival, that the organization and festival are in jeopardy. They are launching an appeal for emergency funding. Sarita writes:

My sister Anjali, an occasional commenter here, attended the “Kathak at the Crossroads” conference that was held last weekend in San Francisco. She passes on these thoughts.

I have just returned from an international kathak festival and symposium, organized by the Chitresh Das Dance Company in San Francisco. I’m having trouble refocusing on the mundane trivialities of day-to-day life. This was a rare gathering of a majority of the names and legends of kathak, with close to fifty artists, both dancers and musicians, attending from around the world. Some, like Birju Maharaj and Krishna Mohan Mishra, are descendants of long lines of dancers whose forefathers performed in the Moghul courts. Kumudini Lakhia is a dancer who broke the mold and, in the 1950s, injected “Western” notions of choreography into kathak, beginning a long discussion as to what is and is not traditional. Madhuri Devi Singh is one of the last living baijis (courtesans) of Benares, whose difficult life, etched in lines along her face, nonetheless produced a dancer of almost divine grace and tangible kindness. Other masters and grandes dames of kathak included Tirath Ram Azad, Chitresh Das, Sunayana Hazarilal and the sisters Saswati Sen and Vaswati Mishra. And then there were dancers of a younger generation (and by “younger” I mean close to or in their 40s) such as Rajendra Gangani, Aditi Mangaldas and the members of the Chitresh Das Dance Company.

There were presentations and panels. There was talk of fusion and confusion, of traditional versus contemporary, of authenticity, of accessibility. And there were performances. For a student of dance, this was a treat beyond treats. With three or four hours of performances every evening and additional showcase events during the days, I felt like a child with a bucket of my favorite candy and someone standing over me telling me I had to finish it all at once. It was almost too much. I wanted more time to savor each performance before being swept into another one. I watched in amazement the fastest and most precise footwork I have ever seen, the most deep-seated perfection of rhythm and timing, and the total devotion to an art form that one rarely encounters today.

Edison, NJ just can't seem to get out of the news. Seems that filmi starlet Bipasha Basu was recently harrassed there this month by a couple of the organizers at Indian Business Association. And as any woman of my disposition a like-minded desi woman that doesn't take crap lying down anymore, she made sure that she was not silenced.

Girl Powered Bipasha Basu

Bollywood star Bipasha Basu has publicly accused two organisers of an India Day parade at Edison Township, New Jersey, of harassing her physically and mentally. The movie star was scheduled to lead the parade -- organised by the Indian Business Association -- on Sunday, August 13, through Oak Tree Road, a centre of Indian businesses, as Grand Marshall.

Before the parade... Bipasha appeared on stage. "I wanted to attend the parade, but I could not," she said, adding that she was harassed physically and mentally in the car by two people who were taking her to the parade. [link]

Girlfriend was angry, and partial footage of Basu on stage enraged into a girl power frenzy almost brought a tear to my eye. (The entire tirade was shown on Asian Variety Show this weekend, but I couldn't find it online). Though the IBA said they were going to do an investigation, they are also doing what every good American does. Suing her.

Officials said the IBA, which instituted an inquiry into the allegations, will sue Basu for an undisclosed amount for violating the contract and making such an allegation. Though officials were not willing to talk till the inquiry was over, sources said it could sue her for $5 million. The legal action is expected to be initiated in a New Jersey court. [link]

[Bipasha] claimed she had received some bruises, which were photographed... [link]

Bipasha has not made a formal complaint to the organisers, he said. The alleged incident could cause a criminal investigation, but she has not lodged any complaint with the police either.[link]

So IBA, your volunteer organizers pick up this woman, they don't 'molest' her but she does get bruises from the incident, and your step is to sue her for breach of contract? Seriously? Too bad Basu doesn't blog anymore, I'd love to hear what she has to say.

Edison as we know, has the fifth largest desi population, and the most significant concentration of desis in the U.S. With police brutality and now this incident, the desi community of Edison has their community organizing work cut out for them.

Abhi left a fluffy tip on our news tab, which indicated that the most famous rondure in Hollywood will no longer grace Gurinder Chadha’s (struggling?) remake of Dallas. Like I could let THAT go without a post:

Jennifer Lopez has dropped out of the big screen remake of the hit 1970s TV series ‘Dallas’.

The ‘Wedding Planner’ star was set to act opposite John Travolta in the movie to be directed by ‘Bend it like Beckham’ director Gurinder Chaddha.

Lopez had been cast for the role of Sue Ellen – the alcoholic wife of Travolta’s character JR Ewing.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, my parents loved to reminisce about how I’ve adored Dallas since I was a tot. According to them, and usually while at parties where the possibility for my humiliation is quite high, I used to hum the theme song to the ultimate primetime drama while standing in my crib, waiting for a parent to wake up. So I obviously dig the show sum’n fierce and only want the best for it. On the other hand, I must confess that to my undying shock, I have mildly enjoyed every movie I’ve seen which starred Jeniffer Lopez (four come immediately to mind: out, planner, maid, monster…). I know. I am wincing in anticipation of your derision.

My point is, I actually could see her as Sue Ellen Ewing. I wonder why she left? Is there trouble in Chadha-ville?

Lopez is not the only one to pull out of the movie, for ‘Legally Blonde’ director Robert Luketic quit the project earlier this year citing “creative differences”.

Innnnnteresting. Incidentally, someone infamous ALSO opted out of this flick, which might just be the BiLB’s waterloo— I’ll give you a hint as to whom: “raccoon”

Paris Hilton has declined the offer to enact the character of Lucy Ewing in the upcoming Dallas movie, as she considers herself a novice in the field of acting…

“But the truth is the role is too demanding for me. I told them I need to make a few more smaller movies first, then take it from there,” she added.

Ugh. Guess what I have in common with the nocturnal omnivore?

“I was a huge fan of the show and never missed it when I was a kid - more for the hair and fashions than the storylines,” Contactmusic quoted the hotel heiress, as saying.

In other news, I am going to require confession for finding a certain part of the following paragraph so amusing:

Hilton launched her career in Hollywood with ‘House of Wax,’ but despite being lucky enough to bag such a prestigious role with only one hit in her kitty, the budding actress took no time in turning down the chance, as she wants to cut her teeth in smaller films before she hits the blockbusters.

Perhaps the Gurinder should stick to films where ve brown vomen get rescued by the not-brown man?

As much as I love Bollywood and the genre’s dance sequences, it is definitely important to recognize that Indian cinema encompasses more than just mainsteream Bollywood film. Not only is arthouse cinema on the up-and-up, but regional language film has always been a strong contributor to the entertaining of the masses. So, it is with great pleasure (thanks flats) that I present to you one of the coolest examples of a brownsploitation-film dance sequence EVER. It’s from a Tamil film entitled “Ellam Inba Mayam” (1981) and the song is Solla Solla Enna Perumai. Enjoy.

Click for the BEST. VIDEO. EVER.

Dolomite, eat your heart out. Can any of our Tamil speaking readers tell us what the song is about?

Since Abhi my colleagues at Sepia Mutiny have apparently stopped doing their earlier hourly updates on what Kal Penn is up to, I feel it is incumbent upon me to remind readers that second-gen actor Kal Penn plays one of Lex Luthor’s henchmen in the new film Superman Returns (aka, the “American version of Krrish”). Reviews have been pretty positive, though there are still some signs that the film may be a load of “Kraptonite” (or, in a nod to Manish, Krraptonite!), but how can that stop me from loyally supporting the ABCDeNiro?

And no, he doesn’t play a vaguely middle-eastern terrorist type. Nor does he speak in a bad Indian accent. In fact, in the final cut of the film, I gather, Kal Penn doesn’t have any speaking lines at all. Also, his character is named “Stanford.” Ah well: if they don’t have you playing the demonic terrorist, they’ll have you whipped as the “model minority.” Sigh.

At least he’s on the right side. From the trailers, this version of Superman seems like one of those movies with a hero so annoyingly earnest you end up rooting for the bad guys to win. Of course, with bad guys as charismatic as Kevin Spacey (or indeed, Kal Penn), that comes pretty easily. Can you think of other examples in this genre? Bad guys so diabolical and cool that you’re practically depressed when they’re finally vanquished at the end?

“We don’t know which — which country. But we’re looking at different countries. And we’re — I’m just— it’s gonna be the balance of what would be the best for Mad and for Z right now. It’s, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids,” she said, referring to her adopted children.

The Jolie interview will air Tuesday as part of CNN’s entire day of programming devoted to World Refugee Day.

Hmmm… The tsunami is so 2004, and those earthquake villages are kind of hard to reach. Still, can’t you imagine a darling little wheatish tyke amid the United Colors of Brangelina? We can always dream.

This is the most kickin’ weekend of the entire year to be in Los Angeles if you love desi arts. I have already told you that Artwallah is THIS Saturday. You should be buying your ticket now in case it sells out (note: the after-party on Saturday is NOT sold out despite what the website says and goes until 5 a.m…and so will I). If you are a student then I’d recommend that you volunteer for a few hours to get a massive discount.

The weekend kicks off this Friday night with a little bit of a British Invasion. BBC Radio 1’s own Bobby Friction will be in Los Angeles hosting a kickoff party with Artwallah and for Project Ahimsa at the Standard on Sunset Blvd. For those of you who haven’t heard Bobby Friction and his partner DJ Nihal spin, you can listen to their latest shows online.

Sajit has covered the duo before on his own blog. Here is a snippet from the 2004 article that Sajit cites:

The fact that Friction and Nihal’s show has a primetime slot on national radio also speaks volumes for the rising profile of British Asian culture. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable to hear a Radio 1 DJ play an unreleased bhangra track to a nationwide audience. Then, in 2003, Panjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke, with its sample from the theme tune to Knight Rider, became a national hit. A huge and vibrant culture, that had hitherto remained isolated, was exposed to the wider world…

While Friction grew up in an Asian community in Hounslow, Nihal was the only non-white pupil at his comprehensive school at Chelmsford, Essex. He found a sense of belonging in hip-hop culture. “When I was a teenager in the mid-80s it was fashionable to be a racist skinhead,” says Nihal. “Hip-hop completely saved me, because within a couple of years it was cool to have brown skin and be into hip-hop. Almost overnight I went from being a geeky Asian kid, who people called a Paki for no apparent reason, to being someone who people wanted in their crew to help them tag the sides of buses…” [Link]

The tunes they will be spinning should be very new to most people that represent on Friday. I’m going of course.

Oh dear. Andhra Pradesh is the seventh Indian state to ban The Da Vinci Code. Why?

“We have taken the decision because the release of the movie could have led to demonstrations and trouble,” Paul Bhuyan, the special chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told The Associated Press. More here. Apparently, the chief secretary took Tommy Lee Jones seriously in Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid animals and you know it.”

Now, I have not seen the movie, nor have I read the book. I tried, but I didn’t like the writing. Thanks to the combination of hype and Wikipedia, I know the whole damn story, right down to the mad albino monk’s favorite method of self-flagellation. Everyone I know who has seen the movie has thought it stuffy and boring, but I will quote only my mother “That Indiana Jones was much funnier.”

Technics aside, a perfect photograph usually involves both, an absorbing subject matter and an image that leaves an imprint as if it were a memory of one’s own. Take these qualities and wrap them around India’s filmi phenomena, turn the roll into a series and what you have is the stuff that dreams are made of. Bollywood dreams, to be (slightly inaccurately) exact.

Jonathan Torgovnik’s extensive travels throughout India in the early 90s led him to rural India’s nomadic cinema halls and the masala movie sets of Chennai and Mumbai. On the way he managed to create a completely riveting contribution to the study of Indian cinema in the form of Bollywood Dreams (Phaidon Press, 2003). This (unbelievably perfect coffee table) book feels like a deeply personal photo essay as well as a tribute to Indian cinema’s grass roots. All seen through the eyes of a former combat-photographer for the Israeli army.

Online exhibitions of Torgovnik’s work with the Indian film industry can be found at Digital Journalist and foto8. A short (5min.) self-narrated clip of his photographs can be found at Google viddy. His website too is chock full of goodies, like the Mumbai laughing clubs series, which is reducing me to fits of giggles just thinking about it. Or the Satosh series, which is pure breaking my heart. Either way, I can’t stop looking.

I’ve always loved comic books—actually, any illustrated book. It seems insane that you wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t you want words and pictures to work together, in harmony? But many people don’t. They think the pictures are a shortcut, that the words cheapen the images.

Tipster Jenny informs of us of an upcoming screening of Aparna Sen’s 2005 film, 15 Park Avenue. The screening, a fundraiser benefiting the group Chai, Counselors Helping (South) Asians/Indians, an organization that provides education, advocacy, counseling and referral services to the South Asian community about mental health issues in the Baltimore / Washington metropolitan area, will be held at the Laurel 6 Cinemas, this Saturday (May 20) beginning at 1:30 p.m., in Laurel, Maryland. Konkona Sen Sharma (Page 3, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer), Aparna Sen’s daughter and one of the stars of the film will be in attendance for both a question and answer session, and the dinner that follows. More information and details on the screening can be found here.

15 Park Avenue, which stars Sen, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, and Shefali Shetty (I loved her in Monsoon Wedding), is the story of two sisters and their struggle to cope with schizophrenia after a traumatic event triggers a delusional world for one of the sisters and is yet another example of the new cinema coming out of India. Indian film: it’s not just Bollywood anymore.

I haven’t yet seen the film, but from the other work that I have seen, either featuring Konkona Sen Sharma, or the direction of Aparna Sen, 15 Park Ave should be worth your while. Hey, its even been called “hauntingly beautiful.” (link)

All right, stop whatcha doin’, ‘cause I’m about to ruin the image and the style that ya used to.

New York City-area Mutineers (and all those green-tinged brown people who, like me, wish that they were): cancel your weekend plans. These are better, I PROMISE.

The South Asian Woman’s Creative Collective is sponsoring some temporary nirvana this Friday through Sunday, as they present M I X E D M E S S A G E S, a sepia-colored festivus for the literary-minded rest of us at Marymount Manhattan College. It’s their fourth conference, so you know it’s going to be as smoove as I am when slightly tipsy.

A three-day series of readings, panels and workshops, “Mixed Messages” will explore non-mainstream genres, highlight writers who use new media, and focus on writing communities. [SAWCC]

Not one, but TWO Mutineers will be there: Amardeep is moderating Friday night’s reception and I’m speaking on a panel on Sunday afternoon. Details for both of those chunks o’ heaven are below, the entire schedule (which I demand you peruse, because it’s THAT hot) is available here.

Friday, May 19: Kick-Off Reading and Reception 7PM, $15
Amitav Ghosh (Incendiary Circumstances, Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
Vijay Seshadri (The Long Meadow: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2005)
Sara Suleri Goodyear (Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy, University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Moderated by Amardeep Singh (Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University)

Sunday, May 21: 3PM-5PM, FREE Panel Discussion: Mixed Messages: South Asian Literature and New Media
Anna John (SepiaMutiny)
Ravi Shankar (editor of DrunkenBoat.com)
Yesha Naik (podcaster and performer)
Ram Devineni (filmmaker and publisher of Rattapallax Press)
Amitava Kumar (Husband of a Fanatic, New Press, 2005) (moderator)

For you bargain-minded desis who noticed the wee $15 cost for Amardeep’s sure-to-be fantastic event— just know that breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday are free, as are most of the other activities during the day. Que bueno el deal-o, as the President would not say.

I just feel sorry for our rock star of a guest blogger Neha; the poet whom she profiled here, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, is part of Sunday night’s showcase of brown female writers, so I’m sure she wishes she could attend. I could go on and on and tell you more tantalizing tidbits, like how long-time mutineer Pooja Makhijani helped put this phenomenal weekend together AND is a part of the first panel on Saturday (South Asian Youth Lit), but I don’t want to rub it in for those of you who can’t go. We’ll take plenty of pictures for you, how’s that? Not good enough? Um…well, this is awkward. May I suggest an eleventh hour road trip? Even with painful gas prices, it would be totally worth it and really, how many things can you say THAT about these days?

Maybe it’s because I live in Los Angeles. But I’ll be the first to admit it. I love celebrity gossip. Imagine my surprise when I heard this report on the news this morning.

Mother Teresa. Totally see the resemblance.

Paris Hilton is on the short-list to play beatified nun Mother Teresa in an upcoming bipoic of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner. Film director T. Rajeevnath said his idea to cast the 25-year-old celebutante after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between “The Simple Life” simpleton and the Albanian-born holy woman. “(Hilton’s) features resemble Mother Teresa’s,” Rajeevnath said. [link]

Waaaaait a second. Didn’t we just play the ‘who’s famous face matches mine’ game using a computer-generated image facial matching website here on Sepia Mutiny only a few months back?

I’ll just let you know that I ended up at a verrry interesting website, which scanned a picture I uploaded before telling me which celebrity in its database I resembled. See whom YOU don’t look like by going to MyHeritage.com y’self. [link]

I mean, Rajeevnath is Indian. Maybe he reads Sepia Mutiny and maybe, just maybe, that is what compelled him to pick Paris Hilton. That, and this:

But it was when the director read an article in which Hilton said she had turned down the chance to pose nude for Playboy maggie that he believed he had found the woman to emulate Mother Teresa’s good works. Shooting in several countries, including West Bengal will begin early next year.

Proceeds from the film will benefit the Missionaries of Charity.

Missionaries. Paris Hilton. Hmm… I wonder how familiar she is with that line of work…

According to Karsh Kale, the London born and New York raised producer/dj/musician, the title of his third studio release (and most recent album) entitled Broken English, was based on the concept of trying to

“create songs in English, but to give them a sentiment and a sense of universality, so it works in places where English is not their first language. But at the same time, you still understand the sentiment of the songs. That was the original idea of Broken English (link).”

I must admit, I was really looking forward to this third album. To this day Kale’s debut Realize continues to be one of my favorites, and I love its remixed incarnation Redesign. I was however slightly disappointed with Liberation, the follow-up to Realize. For me, Realize had set the bar so high that no follow-up could have topped it. Don’t get me wrong, Liberation was good, just not great. Perhaps it was Kale’s departure from the familiar drum and bass and dance vibe that I was used to, or maybe it was that I thought the cinematic feel of the album was a reach.

In any case, I approached Broken English anxiously, mainly because I had found many recent diasporic desi releases to be trite and mechanical. I was hoping Broken English would be different, and different it was. Wait, is that innovation and musicanship I hear? When I first started listening, I heard hints of Nitin Sawhney through the innovative and non-overtly desi touches in the production, vocals, and instrumentation. Yes the album has Bollywood and Bhangra, as well as the tablatronica that Kale is known for, but it also incorporates hip-hop and rock. All of which work surprisingly brilliant together. While overall, the album presents an eclectic and lush soundscape, Kale stayed true to his roots and kept a few tracks purely South Asian, including among others, the nicely paced “Drive,” and the beautiful duet “Some Things are O.K,” featuring vocals by Sabiha Khan and longtime Kale collaboratorVishal Vaid.

This album is clearly no East meets West hybrid, and there is no American curry or other Indian food adjectives available to describe the sound. It is what it is: purely American in every complex way that makes an American, an American. You get that sense immediately with the opening track, Manifest (click here for free official download): where MC Napoleon raps alongside Vaid’s vocal, while a dhol loop echoes in the background. This is followed by one of my favorite record’s on the album, “Dancing at Sunset,” featuring Todd Michaelsen’s English vocals alongside Carnatic strings and an eloquently placed tabla break and Hindi vocal.

For those of you into ethnic drum and bass, british-asian hip hop, or good live music in general, and if you are in New York this Friday night (3/17), I highly recommend attending the upcoming New York Sub Swara show featuring some of the top south asian musicians/producers around, including State of Bengal (best known for that Flight IC 408 track from Talvin Singh’s Anokha record), Navdeep of Mutiny fame, DK aka Bollygirl (Avaaz/Kollektiv), and DJs Bobby Friction and Nihal (BBC Radio 1), among others of course. Click on the image for more information, but rumor has it that pre-release copies of State of Bengal’s upcoming album, along with some of the most innovative in diasporic desi sounds will be available at the show.

Sitting in the Hirshhorn museum’s Ring Auditorium after waiting for over an hour on Saturday, I really wanted to like Water, Deepa Mehta’s last in her trilogy of films based on the elements. I wanted to write a glowing review of it for you all, but after sitting through it (and the really, really long introductory conversation between Mehta and the Smithsonian’s Manjula Kumar) I came away simply underwhelmed. It wasn’t that the movie was horrible, it wasn’t. It was just unimpressive. I think back to Mehta’s Fire, it was unique for the time of its release and blessed with the presence of Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das; I found Earth, the second installment of the trilogy phenomenal, visually stunning, musically evocative, and well directed. Contrastingly in Water, I saw a cast of mostly uninspired acting, drab sets, and music that just faded into the background (perhaps by design?).

The film was shot in Sri Lanka, and while watching the movie, Sri Lanka’s lush landscapes easily gives the non-India locale away. I can’t say for sure that in 1938 there were no palm trees in Varanasi, but I am not buying that the city’s ghats were surrounded by them. I found Seema Biswas (Shakuntala) of Bandit Queen fame and the relative newcomer Sarala (Chuyia) playing the young widow excellent, but the beautiful Lisa Ray (Kalyani) was mediocre at best. Shakuntala’s dutiful strength and Chuyia’s naïve intelligence were indeed stark contrasts to the rather forgettable Kalyani (spoiler warning: one of my favorite scenes shows Chuyia sitting amongst the praying widows, fearlessly blurting a question to the pundit asking, “what happenned to male widows?”).

I wanted to be moved by the climactic scenes featuring MK Gandhi, but I found them artificial and contrived, which only added to the hokey vibe of the movie. The film, it’s not bad, but I didn’t find it great. For the curious however, it’s a decent timepass.

File this under “It’s only offensive if somebody else does it.”

Only desis could get away with making a video game about Emperor Ashoka that uses figures from Hindu mythology and art just to give you something to fight:

Kali is appearing in the forthcoming Emperor Ashoka … which recreates battles from the life of a legendary Indian king who lived in the third century B.C. The game allows players to engage in bloody historic battles based in ancient temples and other antique environments. Some mythical creatures are also thrown in — in addition to Kali, there are gargoyle-like interpretations of the voluptuous female statues that adorn sacred buildings in India, who come alive and fight. “We wanted to have an edge,” says Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal. “It’s a storyline that hasn’t been seen before” [Link]

If the game makers had been white, the blogosphere would have been up in arms with people yelling “Temple of Doom, never again!”

As an update to Manish’s post below, I opened today’s Washington Post, surprised to find this item in the Names and Faces column - - DC’s answer, if there is one, to New York Post’s Page 6.

A Bollywood Love Connection

Two of Bollywood’s brightest stars, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, are planning to wed, and according to the Times of India, astrologers say they are a perfect match. Rai, 32, is one of Bollywood’s most recognizable ladies, a former Miss India who starred in the movie “Bride & Prejudice.” Bachchan, 30, is the son of legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan. The couple have been in the news with a series of high-profile relationships — Rai dated heartthrob Salman Khan and actor Vivek Oberoi, and Bachchan was previously engaged to actress Karisma Kapoor .

It’s telling that speculation regarding two Bollywood stars is making its way into a mainstream American newspaper. Ten years ago, I would never have dreamed of finding an item on two Indian film stars in any newspaper, let alone one of the preeminent papers in the country. That national American dailies are detailing the sordid love lives of Indian film stars (with photos) is kind of groundbreaking and reflects not just a growing American interest in Bollywood and Indian cinema, but also that Bollywood is not just a fly-by night fad and here to stay. Sure the average American may have heard of, if not seen Aishwarya, but do they care, or even know who Salman Khan, Karisma Kapoor and Vivek Oberoi are? I think the Washington Post is encouraging them to find out.

As an aside, sure Ash is TMBWITW, but the paper gets it wrong. Ash was never Miss India, but instead a Miss India runner-up in 1994, and subsequently went on to win the title of Miss World. The Miss India title that year (1994) went to Sushmita Sen, who subsequently became Miss Universe.

While roaming about online, I came across a blog which quoted us— nothing scintillating, I know— but then I noticed the blog’s name: Beliefs, Blackness & Bollywood. The subtitle elaborates:

I talk about faith. I talk about the black experience in America. I talk about Bollywood. You’re welcome to join in.

The question is not, “Is Hrithik hot?” The question is, “Would I scream in his face if he tried to shake my hand, or burst out crying?”

Excellent question, t. For the record, I’d probably do a triple-take if he tried to test my ex-debater grip. But then, subtlety thy name shall never be ANNA. ;)

She found the way to Bombay after a trying break-up:

It was around this time I discovered Bollywood. I suddenly found myself able to appreciate a movie like Dil Se. It is a story of heartbreak and a story of love. Melodrama aside, the film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham impacted me deeply by the very idea that someone would ever go to such great lengths to bring their family back together. While I realize these are just films, they are based in an ideal, in a consciousness that organizes itself around love. In the words of India Arie, “I am ready for love.” At least for now I have Bollywood.

Follow her thoughts here; see her nod in agreement with erstwhile guest blogger Amardeep on the subject of unrealistic-looking Bollywood stars here.

The front/main page of Wikipedia imparts something new and interesting, yet again.

Did you know…that Kishan Shrikanth, age ten, is in the process of directing a Kannada-language feature film, C/o Footpath, which will almost certainly make him the youngest director ever to release a commercial feature film? [wiki]

Kishan Shrikanth (born 6 January 1996), professionally known as Kishan or Master Kishan, is a Kannada-language actor from India. As of January 2006, having acted in some twenty films, he is in the process of directing a feature film, C/o Footpath (Care of Footpath), about an orphaned boy who wants to go to school. The cast includes prominent Indian actors Jackie Shroff, Saurabh Shukla, and Thaara.[1] Kishan will, himself, play the lead. [wiki]

The Guinness Book of Records currently lists Sydney Ling as the youngest person to direct a professional feature film. Ling was thirteen in 1973 when he directed the Dutch film Lex the Wonderdog.[wiki]

“I prefer directing to acting because of the creativity it affords me. From the beginning, I used to ask my directors about the technical aspects of the film, and hound the cameramen to show me their art. I want to continue directing and have already finalised the script for my next film, which will be a Hindi film,” he says.[rediff]

This diminutive auteur is the real deal:

“He is such a genius that I had to work in his film,” Jackie says. “He is constantly thinking about his next shot, constantly innovating to make it better. He is only nine years old, but he is sure about what he wants from his actors.”[rediff]

Now THAT’S impressive.

Besides the notable exception of our Lost boy Naveen, the following nominations are only mildly desi (i.e. it’s the show or movie which got recognized, BUT the aformentioned program or flick has a brown cast member). You know, it’s almost like they enhanced this exotic soup of international Golden Globe nods with…I don’t know…curry powder? Fenugreek? Asafoetida? ;) Perhaps they wanted to emulate the Village Voice and concoct an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings.

The just barely sepia aspects of all this aside, any day I get to post a picture of le hottie to the left—Weeds’ Maulik Pancholy—is a veddy good day, indeed.

Via Gothamist and AnkG:

Best TV Comedy: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Desperate Houswives, Entourage, Everybody Hates Chris, My Name is Earl, Weeds

Best TV Drama: Commander in Chief, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Prison Break, Rome

Supporting Actor, Miniseries or Movie: Naveen Andrews, Lost; Paul Newman, Empire Falls; Jeremy Piven, Entourage; Randy Quaid, Elvis; Donald Sutherland, Commander in Chief.

Best Film, Drama: Brokeback Montain, The Constant Gardener, Good Night and Good Luck, History of Violence, Match Point

Best Director: Woody Allen (Match Point), George Clooney (Good Night and Good Luck), Peter Jackson (King Kong), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Fernando Mereilles (The Constant Gardener), Steven Spielberg (Munich)

Related mutinousnesssss: eka, dva, tri, chatur

Thanks to Manish and the rest of the Sepia Mutineers for welcoming me to guest-blog here.

There’s a new Bollywood film out carrying the same name as one from the early ’80s. However, while the old movie was directed by Shyam Benegal and is a modern take on the Mahbharata, the new one is a Mahesh Bhatt production, directed by Mohit Suri, about the international pornography trade. The 2005 version of Kalyug follows the idea of an age of decline, but focuses on sexual degeneracy specifically. At least in the (intentionally?) punningly titled article “Kalyug exposes porn trade,” the movie is entirely negative about this industry. Says Bhatt,

I got the idea of making Kalyug after reading the India Today article on a honeymooning couple, whose lovemaking scenes were recorded in a hotel and distributed throughout the world. People all over the world want to see reality sex, not fictional sex. Human trafficking has become big business everywhere; it’s the third largest international crime after drugs and the arms trade. Desi Indian women and porn sites are a huge craze abroad. That’s why victims of natural disasters like famines and earthquakes are sold for these pornographic rackets. They are drugged, brutalised and blackmailed into joining the flesh trade.

URB Artist of the Year- - Mathangi

Its been awhile since we have had an MIA post, and since I know most of you have been waiting with baited breath, here goes. URB Magazine contributor Scott Sterling informed us late last month that mutinous MIA, aka Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam has been named URB magazine’s artist of the year. I am not really surprised, are you? No, it isn’t that she is desi, I just can’t think of one other artist that has been as innovative and influential this year. MIA’s music has been everywhere, from SXSW and Central Park to a Honda commercial and the O.C., and her influence is easily seen in the resurgence of electro-pop in the mainstream: drum machines and synthetic beats all intertwined with elements of various international flavors and hip-hop. Its not that hip-hop his dead, but it is almost as if MIA has added to this new genre of post Hip-Hop. Music with a message, but with danceable, stranger, hip-hop like beats . This sound has been kickinng around the indy hipster scene for awhile—look at bands like Supersystem on Touch and Go, and LCD Soundsystem. This trend seems to now be making its way slowly towards the mainstream. One of the first indicators, Madonna’s latest release, Confessions on a Dance Floor. Scott has promised us he would be posting the full cover story soon. You can of course find more SM on MIA here, and my first post on her here.

This, by the way, wasn’t all we got out of Scott. He gave us the scoop on how DJ Quik found the sample of Kaliyon Ka Chaman, for the first big hip hop record featuring a desi sample. Yeah, I am talking about Truth Hurts featuring Rakim’s—Addictive [click here for a sample] from 2002.

Mahajan: The South Asian Soprano

“Welcome to Catfish Row. In this poignant tale of love found and lost, the disabled beggar Porgy wins the beautiful but troubled Bess from her macho thug boyfriend Crown only to lose her to “happy dust” and the bright lights of New York.”

This isn’t even close to Mahajan’s first big-time performance, and I am a little surprised we hadn’t heard too much of her until now, although I guess opera circles are a bit different than ones many of us belong to. Here is some more on Mahajan from her bio…

Acclaimed for her portrayal of Musetta, she appeared in the Opera Omaha production of La bohème conducted Hal France and returned to Dallas Opera in the Garnett Bruce production which was conducted by Claus Peter Flor. Recognizing her command of the role, the soprano was invited to perform “Quando me’n vo” in the prestigious Richard Tucker Gala at Lincoln Center. Having performed Mimi for the first time in the Dayton Opera production, Miss Mahajan was invited to repeat the role at Royal Albert Hall marking her opera debut in the United Kingdom. The production was directed by three-time Olivier award-winning director Francesca Zambello and conducted by David Parry. Following her debut, Miss Mahajan was recognized for her “substantial voice” in The London Sunday Times. She will reprise the role at Royal Albert Hall in spring 2006.

I have failed SM readers in Los Angeles. I should have blogged this a couple of days ago to give you some more notice, but it’s better late than never. The Artwallah organization has two more performances of it’s Youthwallah program “Desi Factor,” Saturday at 8:30p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 2:30p.m. YouthWallah is an arts mentorship program supporting emerging South Asian artists in the pursuit and creation of powerful artistic work. It’s an incubator for young talent that could potentially breakout into the mainstream. The performance last night in an intimate little theater in Santa Monica was a perfect blend of music, dance, comedy, literature, and film. Here are some of the highlights from my attendance last night:

• Ashwini Srikantiah sang a jazz song at the piano while particular scenes from the Bollywood classic Sil Sila played on a screen in the background. It was a giggle inducing crowd pleaser.
• Young filmmaker Sabina Shamdasani previewed a film she is working on with a potentially hilarious concept: imagine the Bad News Bears meets the Bhangra Blowout competition. The laughter went on even after the trailer ended.
• There were two sisters with the name Vivekaanandamorthy. One sang and the other read a piece about traveling through rebel-controlled Sri Lanka. When else are you going to get to see a performance where the MC has to introduce two Vivekaanandamorthys?
• Shalini Rehil of Blu Soul sang while Aditya Rao from Lovely played the guitar for her.

The cost of the performance is only $16 (or $14 if you are a student) and the parking is plentiful around this Westside location. Here are the directions to the Highways Performance Space. The program lasted for about two hours. Info at: 310-315-1459. Be sure to call ahead for reservations as Artwallah events are usually well attended.

Soon it will be time to get your filmi on—Third I, the Yay Area’s own promoter of South Asian independant film—has put out the schedule for it’s third film festival, bringing desi masala, fine art, and social commentary to The Roxie and The Castro. Here are some of the descriptions that grabbed my interest:

What does it mean to be an American Muslim? This revealing and engaging documentary follows Pakistani American Rock star Salman Ahmed of Junoon, as he explores stories from a community as diverse as the progressive “Allah made me Funny” comedy troupe, to a prominent family that founded the “Muslims for Bush” campaign. (Link)

On May 23rd, 1914, the Japanese shipping vessel Komagata Maru, chartered by Sikh businessman Gurdit Singh, arrived in Canada’s Vancouver Harbor. Aboard were 376 migrants of Indian origin, citizens of the British Empire who believed it their right to move and settle freely within its domain. Upon anchoring, however, the passengers were prevented from disembarking by local Canadian officials, whose decision reflected a growing nationwide resistance to non-white immigration. (Link.)

This documentary explores the little known ethos of neighborhood photo studios in Indian cities, discovering entire imaginary worlds in the smallest of spaces. Tiny, shabby studios that appear to be stuck in a time warp turn out to be places throbbing with energy. As full of surprises as the people who frequent these studios are the backdrops they enjoy posing against and the props they choose - affording fascinating glimpses into individual fantasies and popular tastes. (Link.)

And of course there will be some Bollywood—-our man Shah Rukh in a really big turban:

When it comes to music in the diaspora, there a few names that of course come to mind (Talvin Singh, Panjabi MC), but one of the most consistent and visible musicians evolving from the South Asian diaspora, and who is not universally from the UK Bhangra or the Asian Drum and Bass scene, is without a doubt, Nitin Sahwney.  DJ, producer, musician, and activist extraordinaire, Sawhney whose most recent studio-album Philtre, which has to be listed amongst his best work, is now slated to score Mira Nair’s production of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, and is reported to be working as a producer on Indo-Canadian British transplant pop-star Raghav’s unfinished second album.  In fact, Bobby and Nihal, on their October 12 radio show on the BBC offerred up a bit of a preview of the Raghav/Nitin collaborative work entitled “Seasons,” which draws heavily on the heavenly ‘Mausam’, which appears on the Philtre album.  After having heard the original Mausam, the version featuring Raghav admittedly sounded a bit cheecky, but knowing that Nitin is producing some of the record makes me dizzy with anticipation.  Well, maybe not dizzy, but excited for sure.

Incidentally, Sawhney, who has also worked with Sting and Spanish collective Ojos de Brujo among others, seems to be in demand lately. Former Beattle Sir Paul McCartney, in an interview with Rolling Stone published earlier this month, said he initially wanted to make a record influenced by Nitin’s sound, 

“I liked the idea of toying with a kind of Asian thing, a one-chord thing. There’s an artist called Nitin Sawhney who I like — he’s a British-Asian guy. It was just a vibe I was into at the time

More SM on Nitin here.

Sadly, no mutineer can claim that distinction now that this Bonny lass is blogging.

Like Gogol before her, Bipasha has found a new way to concomitantly combat boredom and promote her new flick. I know, I know. It’s not a “real blog”. It’s a PR stunt. Still, her first post received 186 comments. Watch out darling Ennis, your record may not stand… ;)

Being a star is HARD:

In the past, I’ve had some very ugly experiences in Jaipur — people wanting to touch, wanting to be physically near…
I’m very scared of the mob-like mentality of the people.

Good thing she didn’t have that problem while making this phill-um. Another problem she didn’t have? A sore kundi from sitting in the makeup chair for hours.

…but I can write it. So can all of you, apparently.

Dear, excessively creative readers writers, since we commenced our sweet Friday festival of nanofiction fun, it feels like someone put a chip and new exhaust system in that vehicle called time. Those around me will attest that I can often be found muttering, “Where do the hours go?” several times a day; thanks to this delightful ritual, I’m even more incredulous. It’s Friday? AGAIN? Didn’t I just write this post? Yowza. It’s like Groundblog’s day.

In any case, indulge me in my disbelief, that it is already time to write an uber-short story and leave it or a link to it in the comments section below.

If you’re just tuning in, you might want to read this and then this, so you learn what I’m going on about, as well as how you can join in the chant. That second link established yet another tradition I’m sticking to— I like the idea of selecting the three short-shorts that made me swoon. Without further blathering, here they be:

When Jai Singh said, “I guess I may as well kick this off….” he wasn’t playing, y’all. The following gem left me daydreaming with a wistful smile on my face, as I concomitantly recalled my fond days in History 196A AND a certain battle scene from LOTR. Suh-wooooooon.

60,000 Rajputs waited in the crisp dawn, armour glinting in the sunlight, horses battle-ready. The track down the mountainside twisted ahead, the green flags of the approaching legion already visible.
With a thundering evocation to the Almighty, they raised their curved swords skywards in unison. The black smoke from the pyres billowed above the fortress.

Jay’s 55 was adroit; it captivated all of us, as we attempted to solve the ingenious riddle he posed:

Ice broke under the ankle. In a hospital room they conspired friendship. Set to work, she fumbled at the remote clumsily. In the boardroom she spat venom as they cornered her – then unbelievably granted reprieve. From the loft she saw the little woman walking towards the cab. She knew that it should have been her.

I blogged awhile back about the imminent release of the last film in Deepa Mehta’s elemental trilogy, Water. The film, whose shooting was forced to relocate secretly to Sri Lanka, stars Lisa Ray (Bollywood/Hollywood), Seema Biswas (Bandit Queen), and Bollywood hearthrob (and Peta Spokesman) John Abraham. It is finally making its way through the film fest circuit, recently playing to a full house at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival, and appearing at Washington D.C.s recent SALTAF. The preview screenings, and the audiences reactions’ to the film must have been great because it turns out the film will be distributed in the in the U.S.by Fox Searchlight (MongrelMedia has Canadian distribution and is set to release the film on November 4), the house that distributed wildly successful Bend It Like Beckham. What does this mean for us, the audience? We’ll actually be able to see the movie without having to travel far and wide to find the one theater in our state showing it.

View the trailer for the film here. Incidentally, those of you lucky enough to have access to Canadian Bravo will have the opportunity to catch two special episodes of Scanning the Movies, which will focus on the making of Water with part one airing on October 28 and part two on November 4.

There I was, shivering in the winds of the great plains, trying to figure out how, exactly, the Mutineers were going to haze me. Downing a glass of sweet and salty lime water to calm my fluttery stomach, I tried to imagine the worst. Would Abhi race me in rappelling down the face of the North Dakota headquarters? Perhaps Vinod and Manish might make me read aloud from the works of Ayn Rand while standing on one leg? Might Anna challenge me to a literary write-off?  Could Sajit make me play some hyped up diasporic version of the Filmigame? Perhaps in the mountain headquarters’ darkened corridors, Ennis would torment me with a tantalizing, mirrored glimpse of a single eye, stirring up Sepia speculation about the rest of his mysterious visage. 

Somehow, all these were not so scary. The Ig Nobel prize post, however, reminded me of last year’s peace prize—and the dreaded combination of Karaoke and Antakshari. What could possibly be worse than being made to perform in public like that?

Except, I suppose, that’s what blogging is. Hey, look at me, I’ve got something to say. Well, might as well make it an entertaining group activity. If I had to describe the culture of the South-Asian American community in a single sentence, I might very well hit on this: We’re very supportive—perhaps too supportive—of our children’s performance-related self-esteem. It only takes two or three Diwali shows with a hundred klutzy butterballs bouncing around the stage, adorably off-beat, to realize that we start drinking in theater with our mothers’ milk. This season brings a fresh batch. 

This American television season-premiere week for some reason has been filled with an unprecedented number of desis. Not including the various desis already appearing as regulars on television series, the week began with Indira Varma on Rome, Toral on the apprentice, and relative newcomer Maulik Pancholy on the new Showtime series Weeds, which airs Monday’s at 10 pm.   Pancholy, who was previously seen in Hitch, and appeared as various generic brown characters in a handful of sitcoms (including Jack and Jill and the hilarious Tracey Takes On), scored a recurring guest role on Weeds, which stars Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Nealon. A bit early to say, but could Pancholy be the next Kal Penn?

Incidentally, Pancholy is starring in the off-Broadway play, India-Awaiting, which opens for previews on October 15, 2005 at the Samuel Beckett Theater.

See Manish’s previous post on Pancholy here.

Even though many recent roles in Hollywood that are accessible to Desi actors are generally geared more towards terror or medicine, there are some actors of South Asian origin landing non-traditional and non-South Asian characters.  British Asian actress Indira Varma, of Kama Sutra and Bride and Prejudice fame is one of these actors as highlighted by the very prominent character she portrays in the new HBO series, Rome.  Varma, who played Naveen Andrew’s sister Kiran in Bride and Prejudice, takes on the role of Niobe,

“the wife that Vorenus has not seen for nearly eight years. A peasant princess from a large and influential Roman clan. Proud, beautiful, selfishly devoted to the interests of herself and her family.” If you don’t get HBO, click on the video button here to see a preview of Rome (again, featuring Varma)   If you do get HBO, the show airs Sunday evenings, from 9-10 in the evening.  More on Varma available over at IMDB.

If you’re on the east coast, consider turning off the Emmies and switching to Turner Classic Movies, right now. Sabu’s “Black Narcissus“— I wrote about it in May— is on! Maybe some of you on the west coast will be able to catch it…

IMDB provides a plot summary:

Anglican nuns, led by the stern Sister Clodagh, attempt to establish a religious community in the Himalayas, and must battle not only suspicious locals and the elements, but their own demons as well.

Enjoy the “exotic” accents. They sure as hell ain’t South Asian.

Bold strides by Muslim women this weekend. First Sania Mirza, now Hammasa Kohistani, who was just crown Miss England (thanks, Punjabi Boy!):

Hammasa Kohistani, 18, said she was delighted to have been selected to represent England in the Miss World championships.
The brunette, who speaks six languages including Russian, Persian and French, looked ecstatic as the crown was placed on her head before a cheering crowd in Liverpool’s Olympia Theatre. [link]

Well, the BBC says five languages, but who am I to quibble. The Times of India deluged the poor girl in a typical purple gush:

LONDON: Move over our very own, Miss India. Miss England is on her way to Bollywood, the big time and beckoning stardust, now that a Muslim teenager with central Asian roots and a British accent has been crowned England’s most beautiful woman.

But stepped back for sociological analysis:

Kohistani, who was born in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, after her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan, is being touted in a less-than-overwhelmed Britain as the first Muslim to be crowned Miss England.

With beauty contests increasingly regarded as a politically incorrect and chauvinistic relic of a darker British age of cruising for seaside holiday entertainment, Kohistani’s victory has been kept off the Sunday front pages and the slender television news agenda.

But some commentators have expressed an interest in the social and ethnic change represented by Kohistani’s extraordinary win of the England crown, over and above 38 other peaches-and-cream complexioned ‘real’ English roses. [link]

Of course, this wouldn’t be a story about Islam without controversy somewhere:

Among those Miss Kohistani beat was another Muslim entrant, Sarah Mendly, 23, who was voted Miss Nottingham.

Miss Mendly had been among the favourites but her entry caused controversy when Liverpool’s Islamic institute called on her to pull out because contestants are often scantily clad. [link]

If you squint, doesn’t Hammasa look a bit like Julia Roberts?

Related posts: 1, 2

The blazing hot publicity machine for Shalimar the Clown rolls out another feature on Salman Rushdie, this time in GQ. The cheapskate mag offers only 2 (out of 20!) sections from the print version online, so despite protestations from the Sepia Legal Dept., I transcribe the juicy bits below. Without further ado, here’s the ever-quotable Salman on:

3. Comics

He liked Batman the most – “because he was the weirdest,” Rushdie says. “Strange thing to do, you know, hang upside down dressed like a bat and go out at night.” He was always happiest when Batman came unaccompanied. “I didn’t like Robin the Boy Wonder at all,” he explains, his voice still leaking some youthful annoyance. “I thought he was completely redundant and had a silly uniform.”

4. Perceptions of his character after the fatwa, and Indira Gandhi bashing

”The thing that happened to me had certain characteristics - it was theological, it was humorless, it was difficult to understand – and all those characteristics got transposed onto me. So because it was humorless, I must be.”…

Some were stung by the account of the previous few decades of Indian history in Midnight’s Children. Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister at the time actually sued him for suggesting that her son Sanjay blamed her for the death of her husband, his father. Rushdie eventually yielded to pressure from his publishers to remove the passage, as long as she agreed that there was nothing else in the book – a book fairly critical of her – that she considers objectionable, and he says that the Indian press concurred with his view that this settlement was more a humiliation for the prime minister than for the author.

[The Iron Lady picked that over the transistors-for-sterilization bit? Color me surprised.]

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences revealed the nominees for the 57th Annual Emmy Awards today…and would you look at who got props:

Supporting Actor, Drama Series : William Shatner, “Boston Legal,” ABC; Oliver Platt, “Huff,” Showtime; Naveen Andrews, “Lost ,” ABC; Terry O’Quinn, “Lost ,” ABC; Alan Alda, ” The West Wing,” NBC.

Can our boy beat Captain James Tiberius Kirk? Does the latter pronounce “I’m Denny Crane” a lot on Boston Legal? ;)

Eeeek, how exciting— “Lost” is also up for “Best Dramatic Series…and before you ask, no, I don’t know what the other nine noms are for. :D

The only even remotely un-fun part about this is the fact that there are dueling-“Lost” nominees in the same category. I hate it when that happens, though I’m not exactly torn about whom I prefer in this instance. Now if it were the “Lead Actress” contest…

I have been recovering from my hectic weekend at the Artwallah festival in Los Angeles. After four days of South Asian Arts and three straight nights of afterparties, I needed a break. I took a lot of pictures though. Rather than provide a long winded re-cap I thought I’d just flog a few highlights so you can live vicariously.

The Himalayan Project break it down

Toronto’s fifth annual South Asian arts festival, Masala Mehndi Masti, just posted a lengthy schedule for this year’s event (thanks, jo). You can also see it by day or by category.

The free festival runs from August 3-7 at Harbourfront Centre in the shadow of the CN Tower. With 80,000 attendees in 2004, it’s the the largest such festival in North America. Toronto’s desi population of 500K is 2 œ times the size of New York’s. It may be the city outside the subcontinent with the most desis.

Just a few of the events:

• Lots of new bands
• Kathak-flamenco fusion
• Brits: Sonik Gurus, Rhythm, Dhol and Bass
• Kalapani, a play about the Indian middle passage to the Caribbean
• Your Palace in the Sky, a performance piece about the Air India bombing
• Tina Sugandh
• American Daylight, an indie film about Indian call centers, featuring Koel Purie
• Sam and Me, Deepa Mehta’s first feature film
• Short films
• Sketch comedy
• Spoken word
• Shayari

Neha comments about last year’s fest:

… I found the music portion incredibly varied, from Rishi Rich to qawwali parties… The Filmi festival was on at the same time, which focused on South Asian Canadian films… if you get lost just let the Hondas lead the way.

Related post on the Artwallah festival here.

I know it seems like we only post cool things to do in NYC, L.A. or D.C. but yay urrea readers, take dil: this one’s for you. Next week, you should totally drag your friends and frenemies to Mutineer Manish’s old stomping grounds, for an evening at the theater.

You’ll be watching The Domestic Crusaders, a two-act play which takes place on a single day in the life of a multi-generational Pakistani-American family—a day, by the way, that happens to be the “baby’s” 21st birthday:

With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans, the tensions and sparks fly among the three generations, culminating in an intense family battle as each “crusader” struggles to assert and impose their respective voices and opinions, while still attempting to maintain and understand that unifying thread that makes them part of the same family.

How’s that for salient? If you’re worried about whether or not it will be good, here’s what the Contra-Costa Times had to say about it: