A few years back while I was still living in LA I wrote about the wonderful Project Ahimsa:

Project Ahimsa is a global effort to empower youth through music. The organization was founded in 2001 in response to the violent attacks on Sikhs and South Asians after 9/11. The organization operates under the auspices of the Patel Foundation for Global Understanding, a registered 501c3 non-profit based in Tampa, FL. Project Ahimsa’s mission is to empower youth though developing and supporting community based music education.

The vision of Project Ahimsa is to generate unity from the means to the ends. Funding to develop the “means” comes from music concerts featuring artists from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. Artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, The Doors, Nitin Sawhney, MC Rai, JBoogie’s Dubtronic Science, DJ Cheb i Sabbah, Karsh Kale, Bobby Friction, and MIDIval Punditz have all performed at Project Ahimsa benefit events. Attended by a diverse audience of non-Indians and Indians alike, Project Ahimsa events are built on a healthy collaboration between international artists, non-governmental organizations, public institutions, corporations, and promoters creating a diverse experience interesting to all ages and backgrounds. [link]

Here is one of several videos from Ahimsa’s website that explains what “empowering youth through music” means exactly:

This is sick. Out of the 41 semifinalists left standing today, 15 of the are Indian Americans. The Kenyans have running. The Cubans, baseball. The Chinese, ping-pong. Indian Americans own spelling.

It was a moment to savor. Of the record 293 participants at 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee, only 41 moved on to the nationally televised semifinals that start Thursday morning (10 a.m. ET, ESPN)…

Expected to be in that final group are several returning favorites. Fourteen-year-old Keiko Bridwell of Duncan, S.C., back for the fourth time after tying for 17th last year, had no problem with “swivel” and “mahout” (one who keeps or drives elephants) in her oral rounds and breezed into the semifinals.

Is it easier now because she’s a veteran?

“More pressure,” Keiko said. “Everybody wants me to do better.”… [Link]

When ESPN calls you the Spelling Bee favorite it is just like putting an NFL player on the cover of a Madden game. You are probably cursed. Therefore, based on my own intensive scouting I offer up the following thoughts for those people who have bookies in Vegas and want to bet on these young horses. Word of advice: always bet on brown.

The first one I want you to keep an eye on is Vaibhav S. Vavilala from Indiana. Double V as he is known on the circuit is a 4 time competitor. Experience helps, but it can also prove to be a mental block because you can better visualize past failure.

Click for full profile

The next contestant I want you to watch for is Kavya “The Destroyer” Shivashankar. Like Double V above she is a four time veteran. According to her profile the thirteen year old looks forward to becoming a neurosurgeon. The Kavyas we know stop at nothing when the smell of success is in the air.

Click for full profile

My two-year old nephew can’t get enough of Lingo the Lion and ever since I watched the DVD “Animals”, I can see why.

One of the offerings from the bilingual publisher Little GuruSkool, “Animals” is what I’d call a Desi equivalent of the immensely popular Baby Einstein series. Combining video footage of the natural world with animated characters, adorable little puppets and Desi babies, and catchy music, it promises to help the diasporic subcontinental parent “introduce their children to the Indian culture in a fun and interactive way.”

Little GuruSkool is a relatively new company, based in Chicago and founded by Pooja Pittie Goel, the mother of a preschooler who “wanted to expose her son to Indian languages, music, art and nature at an early age, but could not find any books or DVDs in the market (either in the US or in India) that were appropriate for pre-schoolers - educational and entertaining at the same time.” When she couldn’t find what she needed in the market place, she decided to create the products (DVDs, audio CDs, and illustrated, high quality board books) herself. The production quality is impressive, and after I finished watching the “Animals” DVD, I couldn’t get the song about “choti choti machliya” (little, tiny fish) out of my head.

If you’re in the market for a gift for that little desi toddler in your life, Little GuruSkool’s line is sure to be a happy discovery for you. It’s a welcome addition to the current offerings of bilingual, multimedia educational lines such as Sonali Herrera’s Meera Masi, Monika Jain’s Kahani, Rashmi Turner’s Global Wonders, and Kavita (Shah) Bafana’s Little Ustaads (Indian classical music classes), all created by moms to fill existing gaps in the Desi educational marketplace. (I certainly did not have any of these options when I was a toddler, and am glad to know my little one will!)

Below the fold: a brief interview with Pooja Pittie Goel for those interested in her story and process.

Sampurna Basu is safe.

She was found in San Francisco. Apparently, she ran away. Thank you to everyone who re-posted this story or otherwise helped with the search. More info here (thanks, RK).

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Original post, below the fold.

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…because any gloriously chubby baby who wants to crawl in to the kitchen to sneak dairy products is fantastic by me.

Since I had to shrink it a bit, the caption at the bottom of the frame says, “Adopt: You never know who you’ll bring home”. If you click the picture, you can see a slightly larger version of it.

This is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen on my Facebook feed; I’m grateful that one of you took the time to post it, and say:

a surprise punch of cuteness from the BigB’s blog: adorable psa, especially for fans of TheButterThiefInChief. [link]

The Butter Thief in Chief? Loves it. :) I couldn’t keep all that cute to myself, so I decided to inflict it on all of you. Enjoy.

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.

It is Monday, and that means it is time for a ridiculously-delayed (the last one I posted was last fall, I believe) edition of your favorite way to commence the day— The Caption Game. Since the vast majority of us are hungover, bleary-eyed, exhausted pensively contemplating our sure-to-be productive work week, captioning a funny (or in this case excruciatingly cute) picture is a gentle way to ease in to Monday.

This is little Avni and she is consuming an idli. Avni, idli, idli, Avni. Adorable, no? Avni’s mom was kind enough to allow us to imagine funny things baby might be thinking, as baby noms on one of my favorite South Indian foods. Blogger Neha Viswanathan of Global Voices Online inspired all of this when Avni showed up on her flickr stream. I thank her for securing permission from Mother, baby and idli, for this post.

Perplexed? Bemused? Hung-over? Consider previous editions of the Caption Game, awailable for your edification here: onnu, rendu, muunu, naalu, anji, aarru, erzhu , ettu, onpatu , pathu…

p.s. Backstory re: picture, after the jump. :)

Remember Ghee Happy? This was Pixar illustrator Sanjay Patel’s take on the Hindu Pantheon, done in a drawing style that was hipster crossed with the Powerpuff girls.

At the time, Manish observed that

… any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch. [Link]

Sanjay is now going from 2-D to 3-D. He has a mockup of a plush Kali doll [via BB], and is in the process of looking for a manufacturer. Presumably, he’s looking to market this as a children’s toy, although somehow I suspect it will end up in more hipster cribs than kiddy cribs.

This is where my intuitions fail me. The book and prints and apparel all seemed like things that might be purchased by (some) ABD Hindus. Certainly the remarks in the comments of the original post were pretty positive about Sanjay’s renderings.

Would the same be true about the plushy doll? If not, why not? Here, the fact that I’m not a Hindu gets in the way of my ability to imagine people’s reactions. Is there a difference between a children’s t-shirt and a doll? Hindu iconography has long been used for commercial purposes, is this any different? Is this something that you would buy?

When I saw this headline on Monday I couldn’t help but laugh a little: Four [Indian] Kids on NASA Trip Go Missing. I mean, I know NASA is occasionally accused by some crackpot (even well-respected crackpots) of covering up info about aliens, but the idea of foreign kids going missing on a NASA field trip is a whole new kind of conspiracy (wrong kind of aliens). Here is how things unfolded:

The authorities of a private school here have lodged a police complaint that two of its students, who went on an educational trip to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at its US headquarters, have gone “missing.”

The two students, Paramjit Singh and Kunal Bhandari, went as part of a 13-member delegation of the Dayanand Model School on July 22. While the other members returned, these two students did not come back. [Link]

Then there was this:

Four students from a school in Parowal village who went on a trip to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have gone missing in the US. One of the teachers accompanying them has also not returned as she reportedly got married.

Eighteen students of the CBSE-affiliated Doaba Public Senior Secondary School went to NASA for a project. While 14 returned, Arshdeep, Sumit Sahni, Dalbir Singh and Baljinder Singh have not come back. The four are aged between 14 and 15 years.

“Teacher Meenu Sharma sent an e-mail to the school authorities, requesting them to extend her leave by a month as she got married,” a source said. [Link]

Everyone knows by now that I love bringing news of “freakish” (in a good way) little Indian kids to SM (see here and here as examples). SM reader Taara tipped us off to this little linguist via our tip line:

It looks like the Videographer returned a few years later to find a “grown-up” Ravi who has added even more languages into his arsenal:

Seriously, this little kid should be doing something other than selling Peacock feathers near the Hanging Gardens!

We’ve talked about it here before: In 1972, Idi Amin gave all 80,000 Asian Indians living in the Uganda 90 days to pack up and leave. As the BBC reported on August 7, 1972, “Asians, who are the backbone of the Ugandan economy, have been living in the country for more than a century. But resentment against them has been building up within Uganda’s black majority. General Amin has called the Asians “bloodsuckers” and accused them of milking the economy of its wealth.”

A new young adult novel Child of Dandelions by Canadian author Shenaaz Nanji sheds much needed light on the upheaval of Asian Indians in Uganda. It’s worth checking out, even if you don’t have a young adult in your household, or don’t normally pick up books for younger readers.

The protagonist of Child of Dandelions is fifteen year old Sabine, a girl whose comfortable life is torn asunder on August 6, 1972, the day that Idi Amin issues his expulsion order for all Indians in Uganda. Shaken by the protests she walks into while window shopping in Little India, Sabine turns to her parents for protection.

Sabine’s mother is afraid and eager to leave Uganda, but her father, a wealthy Ismaeli businessman and landowner, is determined to ignore Dada Amin’s orders:

“Nonsense!” Papa laughed his conch-shell laugh, and her little brother echoed it. … “We are even more Ugandan than the ethnic Africans. Not only were we born here, but we chose to be Ugandan citizens when other Indians remained British…

Sabine agrees with her father. She is different after all. Her best friend Zena is African. They’ve grown up together like “twin beans of one coffee flower” and Zena is just like her sister, even if others (like her Indian friends) don’t see it that way.

Narmin …Nasrin … Sabine’s hands clenched at the names of her classmates. They were prissy prunes. She’d had a big fight with them after they called Zena goli. Mixing her African and Indian friends was like mixing oil with water.

As the 90 day countdown continues, Sabine’s optimism is drowned out by the growing chants of “Muhindi, nenda nyumbani! Indian, go home.” Amidst reports of violent attacks against Indian families, the mysterious disappearance of her favorite uncle, and strained relations between her and Zena (whose uncle is a general and crony of Idi Amin), she is forced to reexamine her understandings of race and class.

The novel is what Nanji calls Faction, a mix of facts and fiction.

Cool kid alert: Teen entrepreneur Anshul Samar, age 14. This fiesty entrepreneurial spirit will be one of the key speakers at tomorrow’s Second Annual Teens in Tech Conference, sponsored by Sun, Microsoft, HP, and others.

Anshul is the founder and CEO of Alchemist Empire, Inc. He has created a fantasy role-playing chemistry board game, Elementeo: “Our aim is to combine fun, excitement, education, and chemistry, all in one grand concoction! We don’t want to create a fantasy wizard world or create a boring education textbook world, but combine the two where fun and learning come together without clashing!” [more]

MSN recently featured Anshul in “Whiz Kids: 10 Overachievers Under 21” (thanks to newstab posters garbanzobean and anmdavadi). How did he get started? In in his own words:

Entrepreneurship is cool, and so is chemistry! Both have lots of actions, reactions, explosions, experimentation, and most importantly, the joy and excitement of creating something new! Creating a company has been on my mind for a long time, but it was only in the 5th grade when the idea of a chemistry based card game struck me. I must have created and thrown away dozens of prototypes to get just the right concoction of education and fun. … Elementeo is a game where you create compounds, combat elements, and conquer chemistry… A game of battle, chemical reactions, and powerful scientists… And a game that kids, teenagers, college students, teachers, scientists, parents, and grandparents can all play and have fun.

The excitement Anshul has poured into his maiden entrepreneurial voyage (the game will be released this month!) is evident at his company’s homepage which is very much written in his voice … and in this video from Mark Coker of VentureBeat, taken at the 2007 TieCon conference in Silicon Valley.

Here’s to his motto of “Create, Combat, Conquer!”

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.

OK, Enid Blyton fans, get your hankies out. The Famous Five are getting a 21st century makeover, courtesy of Disney. Think multicultural meets technology in the new animated series “Famous Five: On the Case” which premieres in the UK next month. The crime busting gang of George, Dick, Julian, Anne, and Timmy the dog that Enid Blyton created in 1942 with the bestselling book Five on a Treasure Island is going to be replaced with characters who are the children of the original Famous Five, including a lead Anglo-Indian character.

That’s right, the team leader is the daughter of George (the tomboy and the original gang’s leader), Jo, short for Jyoti. According to Jeff Norton at Chorion, which owns the rights to Blyton’s books,

“We tried to imagine where the original Famous Five would go in their lives …Because George was such an intrepid explorer in the original novels we thought it would be only natural that she travelled to India, to the Himalayas, where she fell in love with Ravvi. That’s the back story (to Jo). We spoke to Enid Blyton’s daughter and she thought her mother would love what we have done …” [source: BBC News]

Don’t anyone try to tell me that the Disney executives don’t know how wildly popular Enid Blyton’s books are in India. I’m sure that the decision to have the lead protagonist be connected to the subcontinent somehow had a little something to do with this fact.

Other characters in the revamped series are Allie, a Californian shopaholic (and the daughter of Anne) who is sent to the British countryside to live with her cousins; Julian’s son Max, an “adventure junkie”: and Dylan, the 11-year old son of Dick. Only Timmy the dog gets to keep his original name.

I wish we were beyond this exasperating stupidity. Via TOIlet (no need to visit and catch a VTD, the entire article is quoted below:

Three-month-old Livya was rejected thrice by prospective Indian parents, who found her too dark. A year later, however, an American couple chose to adopt her and flew her to the US. She now lives with her parents and has two siblings — one from Korea and another from Vietnam.

Livya was lucky, but the story is not the same for other adoptable children. Many who are legally free for adoption continue to face discrimination as wannabe Indian parents look for a “fair and lovely” baby, though the law prevents one from picking and choosing babies for adoption.

Perhaps those overlooked children are better off without such complexion-obsessed parents. After all, there is always the Angelina effect (aside: once again, Madonna is associated with the word “wanna-be”):

But most foreign couples prefer children who are dark-skinned, older or with medical concerns, HIV positive and with special needs.

And here, the reason for my title (and the explanation for the painful noise my jaw made when it fell on my desk):

Secretary for the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), O P Sirohe, says in-country adoptions have been encouraging and there is a long list of parents waiting. But still, they ask for fair-skinned, healthy and, preferably, Punjabi child as it is usually chubby. A child is no market commodity and adoptions become meaningful only when there is a change in people”s attitude, he says.

Preferably a Punjabi child. Wow. I love chubby babies, too (my Godson’s nickname wasn’t “The Pudgesicle” for nothing)…but this just makes my stomach twist. What are you adopting? A baby or an accessory? What does this even mean? That it’s too much work to feed your new kid butter-laced everything, so you can chub them up sufficiently yourself? “Honey, let’s go shopping for a baby on Saturday—I heard they have new Punjabi models in stock!” And to my Punjabi peeps…um…how do you feel about being objectified due to such a dubious distinction?

Foreign couples are more open to adopting any child, irrespective of its age, religion, skin colour or looks. Children who are older, with special needs and medical conditions are finding homes overseas, he says.

“NRIs and couples from Italy, Germany, US, Spain and Sweden take home kids with special needs. We place such children in Indian homes too, but they are an exception,” says Dr Aloma Lobo, chairperson, Adoption Coordinating Agency, Karnataka.

And thanggawd for it.

The following concern isn’t exclusive to India; American “waiting” children don’t have much luck when they are in their teens, either. Everyone wants a baby. And sometimes, a chubby one.

Another hurdle in the adoption of children is their age. For instance, Lakshmi, who is 13 years old, has still not found a home as her age is a major deterrent.

As desis we feel that the burden of meddlesome parents is uniquely ours. Exhibit A, an email from Yo Dad to Abhi:

Also please try and select life partner before next January !! Good luck !! Love…. Dad… [Link]

How typical, right? How very … African. The text that follows is from a BBC forum on the proper role of parents in childrens’ love lives in Africa:

Should African parents stay out of their children’s love lives? Or should a happy medium be reached between traditional match making and modern dating? … Is a marriage between two people or between two families?… [Link]

That’s right, it’s not just brown parents that like to … help their children and who view marriage as being a partnership between two families, it’s African families as well. There’s a reason why Bollywood fillums are so popular across Africa.

Similarly, we feel that pressures to be pragmatic about relationships are uniquely desi. Well, what about these quotes from a first world writer:

What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5’4” and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail:

I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway). [Link]

Marriage isn’t a passion-fest …It’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. [Link]

Title says it all. Here is something to think about on the drive home or to discuss with your friends over a beer tonight:

Roller-skating under cars might seem impossible, but it is the latest craze among kids in India and requires the flexibility, strength and balance of a gymnast.

Six-year-old Aniket Chindak holds the unofficial world record for ‘limbo-skating’ and speeds along no more than eight-inches above the ground.

Unfolding his body from his eye-watering position, the wonder-kid explained proudly how he is training to break his own world record of skating under 57 cars in 45 seconds. [Link]

He is like a human transformer. He goes from upright human to some sort of crazy airplane looking thing. Unfortunately, like all other successful child freaks, he will probably go on to face disappointment in a business that exploits youth to provide blog and media fodder.

Who hearts the News tab? I totally do and since I had a few moments, I managed to do what I always intend but never get around to— I checked which story was currently “most interesting” as measured by the “top in 24 hr” link. Eleven of us thought the following tip, which was submitted by Condekedar a few days ago, was important:

Indian children boycott school lunches cooked by ‘Untouchable’

Condekedar wrote this rather attention-getting summary…

A sad reminder of the continued existence of caste-discrimination. This story is even worse, because it’s children who are showing their bigotry, not just prejudiced older people.

Via The Independent:

By her own admission, the lunches cooked by Phool Kumari Rawat may not always be the tastiest food the pupils at her school have ever eaten. And with more than 300 students to cook for, getting the proportions right can be a struggle.

But the children of Bibipur Primary and Junior High School near Lucknow have not launched a boycott of Mrs Rawat’s food because of its taste, but because Mrs Rawat is a Dalit, a so-called Untouchable. As a result, they say, the food is unclean.

A whole new generation, India’s best generation yet with regards to opportunity, learning the worst about others. Condekedar is right; it is extra-disheartening to read about such sentiments from little kids.

Such incidents are not uncommon in India, where caste remains a debilitating and divisive phenomenon, especially for those 75 per cent of people who live in rural communities. But the boycott at Bibipur is especially noteworthy because it is taking place in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the state which this year elected a Dalit woman, Mayawati Kumari, as its chief minister. Campaigners say that despite Mayawati’s poll victory, Dalits still suffer widespread discrimination.

First, they did right by the woman:

When the boycott of the meals began last week, local officials stood by Mrs Rawat, a widow with three children, and tried to persuade the students that there was nothing unhygienic about her food. Officials who inspected her cooking said there were no problems and one even ate the lunch – vegetables and rice – in front of the students to persuade them to end their boycott.

…but they didn’t stay strong:

But The Indian Express newspaper reports that with the children not backing down from the boycott, the authorities are now poised to sack Mrs Rawat.

Two issues are being conflated; the quality of the lunches and the hands which cook them. If it were merely about the former, I don’t think anyone would fault the kids. The revolt might even be framed as a cute rebellion by pigtailed and cow-licked children, standing up for their right to yumminess. But…

Tellingly, children who live in Mrs Rawat’s neighbourhood are still eating the lunches, while those involved in the boycott have reportedly made little effort to hide their reason for refusing to eat. “I will not eat anything cooked by that lady. I have heard my family members say that she is from some low caste. So I bring my own lunch box,” said one pupil, Shivani Singh Chauhan.

Today, companies like Kridana.com are selling bad-ass Hanuman action figures like the one above. This isn’t your father’s Hanuman. This one looks like a professional triathlete/MMA Fighter. There are two types of parents that would buy a toy like this for their child. The first is the young, second-generation couple that is worried that they aren’t doing enough to familiarize their child with their religious Hindu roots. It would be bad if Hinduism became irrelevant to the next generation so Hanuman, and similar action figures, can serve as a good stop-gap measure. The other kind of parent (the kind that I one day hope to be) would buy this for themselves. Check it out, here is the scenario. You could buy the Hanuman above and also a barrel of monkeys. Then you could pretend that Hanuman was a great general and that under his leadership the barrel of monkeys were able to sweep forth and stem the tide of evil monkey attacks currently taking place in Indian cities like Delhi. The people of India would be grateful and a beautiful woman would fall for him (not just because of his muscles but because of his virtue, good soul, and leadership abilities). Speaking of which, I have to hit up the gym.

Does anyone else think that Hanuman looks a bit like a brown Panthro?

Since we’ve already had one depressing story about child slave labor in India today I thought, why not end the day with an…errrrrr, uplifting story about child slave labor? Thank goodness for the Seattle Times for reporting on this gem to take some of the earlier slime off:

As a 7-year-old girl in southern India in 1978, she was taken from her parents and sold into slavery.

At the same time, a 9-year-old boy in Southeast Asia was surviving alone in a cave, after the fishing boat on which he was fleeing Vietnam became shipwrecked.

Rani and Trong Hong would eventually be rescued from their separate childhood nightmares and brought to safety in Washington state. They would meet as adults on a blind date, fall in love and marry…

Now, motivated by the pain of their early years to help others, they are renovating a home exclusively for victims of human trafficking — people recruited, transported and harbored for sexual exploitation or slave labor. [Link]

Talk about a power couple! Click on their names in the passage above to read about their unfortunate childhoods. The non-profit they’ve established, partly on the profits from their lucrative home-building business in Olympia Washington, is called The Tronie Foundation (and it could use your donations):

Rani works with victims who have been abused by all forms of Human Trafficking. Whether the victim was part of a mail-order bride schemes, sold into servitude, sexual slavery or victimized as part of an international adoption ring, Rani because of her own personal experience has a heart for these women and children. She shares openly her own personal story, in hopes that they too can be restored and live a productive life, free from the pain of their past.

“No woman and child should be so severely abused that they end up looking like they are mentally and physically ill. As a survivor of human trafficking, I personally have chosen to speak publicly to give hope and encourage those of you that may be afraid to come forward. [Link]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abhi posted a link on our news tab to a story about…well, stupidity. Way to focus on the fine print, while actual, credible threats go unchecked.

For seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school.

But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist.

The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity.

The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. And Javaid’s passport now contains a sticker saying he has undergone highlevel security checks.

Little Javaid is a British citizen of Pakistani origin, which makes his “dream” of going to Florida-land as a reward for his good grades even more poignant, to me. The other Javaid is a 39-year old Pakistani who was arrested in connection with 9/11; while they convicted that Javaid of fraud and deported him, he was never charged with anything related to terrorism. His name, obviously, is a red flag for the exquisitely useful database/process which Homeland Security created…you know, the one which apparently doesn’t bother cross-checking birthdays in order to discern the difference between two or more people who share a name.

Because of this cluster, Javaid’s parents are debating a name-change for their unfortunately-nomenclated* offspring, and I don’t blame them, though I can only imagine how frustrated and resentful they might be. September 12, 2001…the day common sense commenced its slow and horrific death.

I found the reactions from people who had read the article interesting. Illuminating, even.

Said Craig from London:

Poor kid, my passport was mistakenly stamped with the incorrect stamp when transiting though Australia a few years back, the immigration bloke realised it and crossed out the initial stamp and re-stamped it correctly but I still often get asked “why were you refused entry to Australia” when going through immigration. Still if simply changing your name is enough to bypass the system it shows how utterly pointless the US no-fly list is.

I think it was Camille who originally alerted us to the horrific discovery of a baby in Bombay, who had been stabbed almost to death, before being thrown in the garbage.

A newborn Indian baby found abandoned with 26 stab wounds has survived, doctors said on Wednesday, despite a cracked skull and exposed intestines.

The baby boy, who doctors said was aged between one and two days, was discovered soaked in blood at a garbage dump in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Tuesday, they said.

His intestines were hanging out from a deep wound on his back and he had dirt and garbage stuck on him.

“When he was brought in he looked pale from blood loss,” said Ramesh Hatti, a doctor at a city hospital.

“He is still in a lot of pain but is now stable.”

Police have not been able to trace the baby’s parents or establish a reason for the attack.

Babies are sometimes abandoned by unwed Indian mothers, who fear severe social repercussions for having a child out of wedlock. [CNN]

Today, another tipster emailed us an update— via The Mumbai Mirror:

The good news is that the infant is doing well…Dr Oak said he has been taken off the ventilator. “He is able to breathe on his own but he is too young and vulnerable to infection. So, we may keep him in the ICU for a few days,” he said.

The phone has been ringing off the hook, at the hospital.

Many callers were eager to adopt the little one. A woman called up the Mumbai Mirror office and said, “How can I adopt the baby? What is the procedure. How can I help this child?”

According to Madhuri Mhatre, a social worker with an adoption agency called Bal Anand, “Adoption takes a lot of time because we have to be sure that the child goes into a good family. We check the legal, financial and domestic background of all prospective parents.”

In any case, doctors said, it is too early to speak of adoption.

This tiny little fighter is so lucky, so fierce:

A milkman saw the bleeding child in a garbage dump outside Lokhandwala complex at Kandivli (W) on Tuesday morning. He rushed the baby to Bhagwati hospital in Borivli. But since Bhagwati was not equipped to take care of the injured infant, he was sent to B Y L Nair Hospital. Doctors carried out a two-hour operation on Tuesday night to close the wounds and replace lost blood. He was then put on a ventilator.

I get chills every time I read that. How many times did this child slip through death’s fingers…

The state government plans to inquire about the miracle baby now recuperating in B Y L Nair Hospital…

Since government-run children’s homes do not often handle newborns, the department will contact NGOs who have the expertise to do so.

“At the same time, I have instructed my officials to check out if the government-run children’s homes in Mumbai and Pune have the facilities to take care of the baby,” said Dr Singh, who is unhappy about too much publicity being given to the baby’s wounds.

Wait, why?

He says such images can cause distress among citizens.

Oh, boo-hoo. There can’t be enough publicity, if it inspires much-necessary outrage and reasserts the power of shame. The elderly and the newly-born are not garbage, to be disposed of when inconvenient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cash also acts like elevator shoes for our shorter brothers:

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

Don’t cry, little one.

We heart you, dear Sanjaya.

May your haters rot.

::

Have you a haiku for Sanjaya, too?

One of my dearest friends has an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post (page A29). Nitya, I’d be proud of you even if “Longing to Join in Christmas” hadn’t been published, but now that it has, Akka loves you even more, because obviously, like all good South Asian elders, my affection for you is directly tied to your achievements. ;) I can’t think of a more perfect post for today (so let me get out of the way):

Christmas is the season when you are most likely to find yourself on a street of beautiful homes with twinkling lights, warm fireplaces and happy families outfitted in festive holiday sweaters, only to be filled with a yearning to possess not just the house but the lifestyle inside.

For my whole Indian American childhood in the early 1980s, I wanted a Christmas tree that way. And it wasn’t for the presents. It was for the lifestyle.

I wanted the Santa Claus, I wanted the holly wreath and I wanted the jolly elves who toiled in a workshop all year long. I wanted the sleigh bell-wearing reindeer on my roof. I wanted the colorful stockings hung by the chimney. And I wanted the jolly fat man to wiggle down our (nonexistent) chimney before he ho-ho-hoed his way across the night sky in a triumphant journey back to the North Pole.

From the warmth of my Hindu home, I always longed for that good old Christian magic — and not a holiday like Christmas but Christmas itself. I wanted to belong to the classroom party hosted by homeroom mothers in Santa hats, to know the words to the holiday songs that everyone knew, to feel the evergreen anticipation that never faded or fell from branches needle by needle.

My immigrant father, who’d recently come to America as a University of California grad student, was a man of little sympathy and extra principle when it came to the wants and woes of my childhood.

The reason why no ideology has ever created, let alone sustained, the world it envisioned, is that by definition it could not account for unintended consequences. The same is true of more modest ventures. A war meant to be short and sweet turns out anything but. A campaign meant to steamroll the opposition clears the field of all rivals but one, the most dangerous and unexpected. Observing something alters its nature; naming it alters its meaning. If you’ve ever planned anything – a career, a vacation, a party – you know this already.

And so, when things happen – interesting things, significant things, things that surprise us and thus lead us to feel – they result only partly from deliberate action, and as much from the gremlins of serendipity, who can inhabit any of us for any period of time. Thrust into greatness, we signify; the moment passes, the world changes, we fade to obscurity.

Are you having a macaca moment yet? In 2006, desis were thrust into greatness in the person of S. R. Sidarth. Senator Allen’s view of Sidarth’s ethnic happenstance differed so radically from that of a majority of Virginia voters, that the (near-) accident of the brother being there set in motion events leading, it is argued, to the change of power in Congress.

Macaca was about revealed perception. The perception was Allen’s; but the revelation stems from Sidarth. Without Sidarth, the perception would not have been revealed. The tree might have fallen in the forest, but no one would have heard.

This is old news to us; in this community at least, we’ve followed the macaca story from the start and have no disagreement as to its significance. Where we differ is in what we make of it for ourselves, the extent to which we identify with Sidarth or the fate we wish on the word macaca itself.

Old news, yes. But this weekend Sidarth was made to reappear, once more in his capacity as the embodiment of macaca, as two news outlets produced their round-up of people who mattered in 2006. Salon names Sidarth its Person of the Year. Time’s Person of the Year is You – you, the diffuse and disparate emanators of content, the users who generate that which is user-generated – and Sidarth is one of the Yous the magazine profiles.

It’s interesting to compare the interpretations that each of these outlets apply to Original Macaca. Salon, the established survivor of first-generation Web journalism, sees in him less the agent of a brave new world of representation than an embodiment of an America undergoing demographic and attitudinal change. Time, a behemoth of a pre-Internet era when The Press told The Public what to know and believe, now celebrates Sidarth as one of a non-organized army of little people upending the plans and certitudes of the great.

Both treatments have in common, however, that ultimately they are not about Sidarth – not the “real” Sidarth, biologically and spiritually unique, but what he seems through various filters. It was the year of You perceived and revealed, by your own doing and by that of others. That trend will continue, as attested by the fact that you read this blog, perhaps comment, perhaps have established an identity here and elsewhere on the Web.

We are learning that representation matters. We manage our identities lest others manage them for us; in a way the two processes are dialectically the same. What remains is spirit: mercurial, contradictory, and if we will it, potentially free.

The son also rises

Desi families like to provide well for their children. Parents give their kids money, cars, businesses … and now it seems that some even help procure girls for their darling little boys. That’s right - having Salman Rushdie as your father helps you score chicks. While this isn’t a huge surprise (Duh!), I was made a bit queasy by the way the famous family discussed the matter.

First there is Rushdie, fils, talking about his dad:

Zafar Rushdie, 27, often accompanies his father on nights out because the pair are usually swamped by attractive girls keen to impress the literary genius. He says, “Most people who go to a party with their parents try to run away from them. Not me. If I want to meet girls, I just stand near him. “All the beautiful women want to talk to Dad, so I stand close and bask in the sunlight. Beauty loves brains…” [Link]

Then there is Rushdie, pere, engaging in mutual admiration:

“Every time I see a picture of him in the paper, he has four girls around him, so I think he’s not doing badly,” the author tells the paper. “He’s absurdly charming - lethally, disgustingly charming. He has it like a weapon…” [Link]

A weapon, huh? Really, we don’t need to hear about your son’s Louisville Slugger. Just tell the researchers and leave us out of it.

In addition, Salman says, his son is a “red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted.” [Link]

I know the family that pimps together stays together, but can’t the Rushdies save the meddling in their Zafar’s sex life until he’s ready to get married, like decent people? Or is this just a further extension of the same principle - they’ll help puttarRushdie find his wife, his girlfriends, and even his short term flings.

Please understand that my reaction isn’t one of pure prudishness - we are firmly pro-groupie here are Sepia Mutiny. We just believe that groupies should be earned, not inherited.

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]

I want to start by saying that I DO NOT condone child marriages. In this case however, for the good of Mother India, I think we should all consider the merits of such an arrangement. In the past we have blogged about young (4 year old) Budhia Singh who was running upwards of 30 miles on an average non-competition day. Some overly cautious adults banned him from running marathons in the state of Orissa and charged his coaches/handlers with abuse. Officials said that they didn’t want him to be exploited but I’ll bet it was to protect the other runners (who may have had friends in the government) from embarrassment. Now we get word of another young runner. Meet the hard charging Anastasia Barla:

A 10-year-old tribal girl from a remote village in Sundargarh district ran 72 km in eight hours on Monday but failed to break Budhia Singh’s record.

Five-year-old Budhia had run 65 km non-stop on May 2 in his bid to enter the Limca Book of Records, while Anastasia took a five-minute break after running 58 kms.

Anastasia Barla’s target was to cover 105 km. She began her marathon run from Sundargarh stadium at exactly 5 am amid cheers from a large crowd.

But she stopped at Rambahal near Rajgangpur at around 1 pm, after covering 72 km.

Her coach Dominque Lakra said Anastasia could not achieve the target today as she had ran on hard surface. “The girl is comfortable on soil which is soft…” [Link]

Look, if India wants to get serious about competing athletically on a global stage then they need to start making some tough decisions now. Even if Budhia and Anastasia are held back by the corrupt Indian system, at least their offspring might have a chance to be the great brown hopes. Can you imagine the running abilities of their kids given the genetic stock of Budhia and Anastasia? An arranged marriage seems to this blogger to be the most reasonable course of action. Damn any caste differences if they exist. A modern India calls for pragmatic solutions.

We at Sepia Mutiny would like to extend a very snarky hearty welcome to the newest Sepia Macaca: Puran Singh. That’s right - Deep is a daddy! [Mothers everywhere want to know what the rest of us are waiting for]

Puran Singh (“Master P,” as my brother is already calling him) was born yesterday at 8pm. He’s 8 pounds, 2 ounces (3.7 Kg), and both he and his mother are doing well. We have lots of family around helping us out and giving support (thanks, everyone), and the hospital experience has been pretty good, though the final stage of labor was difficult (I guess it always is).

The name means “fulfillment,” “completion,” or “perfection.” No one in our family has been named “Puran,” but there are a couple of famous people who have had this name: including Bhagat Puran Singh and also a famous Punjabi poet. In the Sikh tradition, the first letter of a baby’s name is usually chosen by opening the Guru Granth Sahib at random, and taking a “Vakh.” The first letter of the page opened is supposed to be the first letter of the baby’s name. In our case, we got “P,” and I immediately thought of “Puran…” [Link]

P is for Perfection

A few weeks ago we discussed a new kind of camp for Indian children adopted by white American parents. Today, via a tip on the news tab, I came across an article on Alternet by a Jewish New Yorker who adopted an Indian baby as a single mother, and was somewhat taken aback by the darkness of her child’s skin:

The first photo I received of Vaishali showed her with fair skin. I was surprised, because from what my adoption agency told me, the child assigned to me would be much darker. After I got over that surprise, I had another: I felt relief. Suddenly — guiltily — it was a comfort to know that she would not look so different from me, and even more important, that her light skin would save her from a lifetime of prejudice.

But ah, the magic of flashbulbs. A few months later I received several more photos and gaped at them in shock. The baby was much, much darker. (link)

Lisa Lerner has, initially, a lot of anxiety to deal with about the gap between her skin tone and that of her adopted daughter (read the whole article for examples: the kicker is the diaper change). She gets over it, but is still often surprised by the fact that no one in her social circle — including her Indian and Black friends — is as dark as her daughter:

Very soon, my daughter will have a lot to process. She’s adopted, she’s the child of a single mother, she’s an Indian Jew by conversion. We spent the summer with my father in upstate New York, and she was nearly always the darkest child in music class, gymnastics and day care. In New York City, even Blacks and Indians in Vaishali’s and my social circle are lighter than she. Over and over I see how light skin equals privilege. Now that I have become Vaishali’s mother, I realize: We need darker friends. (link)

I’m sure there will be some folks who will be offended that Lisa Lerner is publicly stating some of these things she says in this article. I personally am not: she’s expressing the shock she felt along with her embarrassment about that shock, and describing how she got past it. Yes, her initial reaction to her baby’s skin tone betrays “racism,” but it looks to me like she’s recognized and dealt with it.

Still, I wonder what people think about the solution she outlines: “We need darker friends.” Is it really damaging to a child (the baby has grown up some now) not to be around anyone who physically resembles her? And wouldn’t it be slightly strange to seek out “friends” on this basis?

[Oh, and one more thing: the Times recently had an interesting article on the growing number of cross-racial adoptions in the U.S.]

That precious, happy little girl you see above is Nirali. She has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (Thanks, bean). According to the following,

Despite overall improvements in outcome, the prognosis for patients…is poor. Their estimated event-free survival (EFS) is only about 30%. [link]

her life is very much at stake, so the way I titled this post isn’t sensational or an exaggeration of any kind. After losing an Uncle to Leukemia two years ago and having an even closer family member go to the hospital this week because of the looming possibility of cancer, Nirali’s story makes me want to weep.

She needs a bone marrow transplant.

She needs that transplant from someone who is brown.

There aren’t anywhere near enough desis in the National Marrow Program database.

We have no excuse for this.

I am terrified of needles, I’ve said this many times. I avoid flu shots, because I find them so traumatic, but even I sacked up and then felt like the biggest baby for being afraid of the “typing” process which put me in the database of potential donors. Apparently, they’ve even taken care of THAT obstacle; now you can just get your cheek swabbed and that is enough.

Look here for a desi-centric list of opportunities to join the database, nationwide. Go. Give a tiny part of your physical self. And then pray, if you are inclined to do so, that we follow-up this post with some joyful news.

It’s hot outside. So hot, these days, you want to curl up next to a fan with a cup full of ice water and allow your brain to regress to an almost womb-like state of slushee-induced, heat-transcending peace. The local papers here in Philly have had nothing very exciting to say about the curent heat wave, but the BBC has an amusing article on the rest of the British media’s penchant for “climate porn” (the BBC, of course, only participates in the phenomenon by discussing how everyone else participates in it). Still, “climate porn”: you might want to rethink how much time you spend at work checking the weather.

Speaking of returning to the womb, or something close to it, did you hear about the new, designer desi-themed baby food?

HappyBaby, which sells colorful cubes of frozen vegetable and fruit purées through FreshDirect and Gourmet Garage, flavors puréed peas with fresh mint, and potatoes and red lentils with coriander and cinnamon in their savory dahl, an Indian staple.

“This is how my parents fed me,” said Shazi Visram, co-founder of HappyBaby, which began on Mother’s Day and is expanding its line this month. “Why shouldn’t babies, of all people, get to eat delicious things?”(link)

No more vanilla, canned Gerber for today’s stylish babies. At HappyBabyFood, you get organic Baby Dhal. It comes in frozen, baby-sized cubes, and is sold at health food places in the New York City area. (Because it’s frozen, they can avoid having to put in preservatives.)

Not everyone is thrilled with the masalafication trend:

But some parents remain skeptical. “Moms ask me, ‘Can babies really have that?’ ” said Anni Daulter, co-founder of Bohemian Baby, which delivers meals like Vegetable Korma, made with coconut milk, for 12-month-olds, and purées of fruits like pomegranates and figs for infants. “And I say, of course! What do you think they feed babies in India?” (link)

Wait, you mean they feed babies in India something other than American baby food?

For more frozen organic baby food porn, click on this image, from New York Magazine. And a bit more on HappyBaby Food co-founder Shazi Visram, who has an MBA from Columbia and has worked in real estate in Brooklyn, can be found here.

Just over a week ago SM commenter DesiDancer returned from a trip to Colorado and emailed me the following about a wonderful experience she had there:

I was invited to come teach dance classes at the East Indian Heritage Camp, last weekend. The organization, Colorado Heritage Camps, Inc. offers a series of ethnic camps (Latin American, Chinese, Korean, Desi, etc) every summer, for adopted children and their parents. They draw on members of the ethnic community to volunteer and help engage the families in culturally-minded activities during a 4-day camp, up in the mountains. In addition to fun stuff, there are also panel discussion with several different age groups, dealing with cultural identity, issues that may affect adoptees and their parents, and several child psychologists contribute to the curriculum. In addition to the dance classes I taught, I sat on a panel for jr. high aged kids, discussing reclamation of culture, biculturalism, and other issues…

Over the course of 4 days, several of the activities included Ayurvedic medicine, traditional dance, Bollywood dance, Rangoli drawing, traditional vegetable painting/block printing, games like Cricket and Gilli-Danda, yoga, cooking classes, music lessons, and lectures on Indian holidays, Indian weddings, travel to India, Indian history—with a weird specialty class in Freedom Fighters, and a book group. We ate desi food, and every night was a party with desi music. The closing night of camp, all the little kids (and big kids) performed dances from their classes, and the parents in my adult class performed a dance for the families, too. I’d spoken to one of the Directors of the camp about getting a DVD of “Calcutta Calling” to screen at the camp, one evening, but I think she is going to arrange it for next year instead. Though she said she watched the video stream at PBS…They loved the documentary.

From the news tab, an anonymous tipster points us to a blog which took an amusing and slightly dil-warming look in to what tweens and teens in Hong Kong think of other Asian people:

When you think about Filipinos, what comes to your mind?

"Tak-shing Building!"
"They know how to sweep the floor!"
"I see them in Central all the time."
"Bun-bun.  Filipina girls.  But I have never met a Filipino guy yet."

Do you feel that you disrespect them by calling them such names?

"Hey, they come here to work.  We have more money than they have.  They are getting paid, so wouldn’t you say that they can be ordered around?"

Someday, you will be working and earning money too, and you will give spending money to your mother.  Does that mean that you can order your mother around?

"But how can that be the same?  My mother is not a Filipina."

Awesome. And now, on to the germane part (aside: does anyone know what “Ah Cha” means?):

When you think about Indians, what comes to your mind?

Many thanks to the tipster who posted a link on the news tab to this column by Errol Louis in the New York Daily News. Louis, whose columns often focus on ear-to-the-street developments in New York’s immigrant communities and communities of color, devotes today’s piece to the launch, this afternoon, of a report on safe learning for immigrants in the NYC public schools. It’s a broad, holistic understanding of safety that means fewer cops, more resources, and protection from immigration authorities.

What’s remarkable is that this report, based on two years of fieldwork supported by a prestigious non-profit called the Urban Justice Center, is the work of desis — the young brothers and sisters in DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) Youth Power. These young desi activists are taking on subjects that are important to all immigrant families and indeed to any family with kids in the New York schools.

It’s an encouraging example of identity politics used for inclusive, coalition-building purposes: the desi identification gives a group like DRUM its base and stability, but the work reaches far beyond the narrow interests of that base.

You can agree or disagree with this approach, or for that matter with the overall “Education Not Deportation” umbrella theme of this action, but it’s nice to see the DRUM Youth Power work give an opportunity for a major tabloid columnist to educate the city about desis:

The slang term Desi refers to immigrants from South Asia - including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and parts of the diaspora including Africa, England and the Caribbean.

They are part of the backbone of our city - including the cab drivers, domestics and restaurant workers who collectively form our largest and fastest-growing immigrant group.

Working-class Desi kids, according to a survey summarized in the DRUM report, are sick of seeing metal detectors, armed cops and bullying administrators prowling school halls.

“A climate of fear is being created,” says Refat (Shoshi) Doza, a 20-year-old Queens College student. “That’s not the way to teach a child.” Raquibul Alam Nayeem, a 17-year-old student at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens, agrees.

To Louis at least, the sisters and brothers in DRUM are setting an example for all to emulate:

The Department of Education should listen closely to DRUM’s youth leaders, particularly the explosive allegation that some schools, in violation of longstanding city policy, may be turning over students’ citizenship information to immigration officials.

By standing up and complaining, these kids are learning lessons that will prepare them to be the kind of outside-the-box thinkers our city and nation need.

The report launches this afternoon at 5 PM at a community meeting in Jackson Heights, for anyone interested in attending. Congratulations and Big Up! to the DRUM crew for their hard work.

Bonny Jain, of Moline Illinois, won the 2006 National Geographic Spelling Bee. He’s twelve years old, and he’s also a spelling champ and a violin player when he’s not naming mountain ranges in Wales.

He beat — no surprise — two other Indian American kids to take home the prize:

Neera Sirdeshmukh, 14, of Nashua, New Hampshire, came in second place, while 13-year-old Yeshwanth Kandimalla from Georgia came third.

For the winning question, his 26th out of 27, Jain correctly answered ‘Cambrian Mountains’ to the question ‘Name the mountains that extend across much of Wales, from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel.’

Jain, who is still in eighth grade, won $25,000 and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society for his efforts. (link)

That’s right, the three top contestants in the top U.S. Geography Bee are all Indian Americans. (Incidentally, Jain came in in the top 10 last year, and was mentioned by Sepia Mutiny here)

Think you can run with the geography whizzes? Try this quiz — written by Jain himself — at the Chicago Tribune. (Remember, no cheating! I got 7/10)

In 2005 much of Ohio politics was dominated by the controversy surrounding a scandal dubbed “Coingate” by the media:

Coingate is a nickname for the Thomas Noe investment scandal in Ohio revealed in early 2005 in part by Ohio newspaper Toledo Blade. The Ohio government’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation fund (BWC) invested hundreds of millions of dollars in high risk or unconventional investment vehicles run by people closely connected to the Ohio Republican party who had made large campaign contributions to many senior Republican party officials.

A rare coin investment fund has attracted particular scrutiny after it was reported that two coins worth more than $300,000 had been lost. Further investigation then revealed that coins worth $10-$12 million were missing and that only $13 million of the original $50 million invested could be accounted for. [Link]

As you would expect, politicians, especially Democrats running for office this year, find it beneficial to point to the Coingate affair as another example of Republican corruption and a reason to vote to change the status quo. One of those politicians is a Democrat named Subodh Chandra (see previous SM mention here) who is running for Attorney General of Ohio. Subodh recently talked about the Coingate affair to drum up support at one of his fundraisers. Well…he didn’t so much “talk” about Coingate, rather he…well you’ll see:

Apparently it was a “kid friendly” fundraiser. What? Kids in pre-school really do dig politics. The man is providing a valuable service to a segment of the population that lacks a voice in their government. His puppeteering skills aren’t bad either.

Something smells down in Georgia and young Pranav Mahadevan is being forced to take a deep breath of the stink in. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on an exclusive investigation which takes a look at the seedy underbelly of spelling bee competitions in this once great country:

Pranav Mahadevan, a serious speller since second grade, had one final shot at the state spelling bee, where a win would finally give him his ticket to the national stage in Washington.

In anticipation of the Georgia Independent Schools Association spelling bee in Macon last month, the Dunwoody eighth-grader pored over word lists and studied word roots in Greek, Latin and French. But he was eliminated when the judges said he spelled the wrong word. He spelled “ivy”; the judges were looking for “ivied.”

Pranav, a student at Our Lady of the Assumption School in north Atlanta, said he misunderstood the pronouncer. He spelled the word he thought he heard, a word he repeated for the judges before he started spelling. His mother, Kalpana Mahadevan, appealed her son’s dismissal immediately, as is her right under the bee rules. But she said the judges refused to replay the tape to see whether the pronouncer had clearly articulated the word. Instead, they ruled that Pranav was out and proceeded with the contest.

This is personal. First they screw us by misrepresenting Hindus in California textbooks and now they go after our kind in Georgia. Is it Pranav’s fault that Georgians can’t properly articulate the “-ed” at the end of their words? My personal advice would be to set up a commission to look into this. Scientists could come and quantify the acoustics of the competition room and speech therapists could assess the so-called “pronouncer.” Both could later testify as expert witnesses in front of the congressional committee which overseas these matters.

All hope is not lost however. After Hurricane Katrina, the city of Houston demonstrated its limitless generosity by taking in the vast majority of Katrina victims. On a recent trip to Houston, Pranav’s mom learned that the city was also known for taking in those abused by the Spelling Bee System and the incompetent federal and state officials who are responsible for its breakdown:

In Georgia, few students pursue spelling as diligently as Pranav, who has broadcasts of past National Spelling Bees on tape and can rattle off the winning words for the past several years.

His mother networked among parents in Texas, where the Indian-American community is very active in spelling bees. They advised her to move to Texas, saying that Georgia didn’t have a reputation of taking spelling competition seriously.

Georg…ia hates brown people.

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.

We go from the strangely disturbing to the just plain strange today on the Mutiny. Right on time for dinner!

An Indian boy considers his rare birth defect to be an advantage. Devender Harne, 10, was born with 25 fingers and toes — six fingers on each hand, six toes on one foot and seven on the other.

Video of the child here. Of course he’s going to take the brown view of things:

Though it would be considered an abnormality to some, Devender says it allows him to work faster than the average child.

Despite his super powers, Devender is a pretty ordinary kid:

The extra digits on his hands and feet don’t hinder his daily life. Like any normal 10-year-old, he goes to school, plays sports and spends time with his friends.

As tipster BJ said— another one twenty-five for the world of Guiness. Brilliant!

The Guinness Book of World Records has contacted the boy’s family and is investigating whether he has the most useful fingers and toes in the world.

Thanks to an anonymous tipster, I now know what happened to Abilass Jeyarajah, the child who came to represent the heartbreak of the tsunami. You might remember the excruciating circumstances he survived, before being reunited with his family:

Initially, eight other couples had tried to claim him, sparking a drama that captured hearts around the world and became a symbol of the tragedy that killed nearly 31,000 people on the island.[msnbc]

Technology made the sword of Solomon unnecessary:

Abilass was given to his mother and father by hospital officials after a local court ruled that DNA tests confirmed he belonged to the couple, who lost him in the Dec. 26 tsunami.[msnbc]

Here lies the caption to the Reuters picture above, which leaves me wanting to pinch chubby cheeks (but all I get is screen):

Would that every morning commenced with such gur at my front door. This bundle of adorable is named Darshi Shah and yesterday, she was on WaPo’s front page for a story about how schools are working fitness back into their students’ lives.

Many schools in the area, and across the country, are combating the trend toward child obesity by extending physical education beyond gym classes.

Walking, running and jump-rope clubs are popping up, even for the youngest children, before and after school. Students are wearing pedometers and learning to calculate their heart rates. And fitness gear designed to help kids improve upper body strength and agility are complementing slides and swings on school playgrounds.

The article didn’t contain any quotes from the precious little runner above, to my disappointment. Then again, her game face says it all doesn’t it?

I had to bring this to your attention: a five-year-old Kashmiri girl named Lishba who lived in one of the areas that was most affected by the quake spoke to the BBC about her memories of the tragedy and what she felt during and after it. I wish there were a picture of her; even without one, she’s captivated me. I don’t remember being this eloquent when i was five…

Where she was when the quake hit:

I was at home watching television and my sister was playing outside, my parents were in at home as well.

I felt the house shake and I got scared and ran to my father.

My sister was playing outside and at first we couldn’t find her, then my father went and got her home and all of us came out into the garden.

At first both my father and I thought the painter doing up my room must have broken something since the house shook, but then my father said this was an earthquake.

After the earthquake everybody was out of their houses and there was confusion everywhere.

Lishba, like so many others, is now homeless:

My house is completely broken all over.

We are now living in a field near my grandfather’s house.

When it rains, we all take shelter in the balcony of my grandfather’s house. It’s all broken and there are cracks everywhere but we all sit there.

The internets were alive this morning with the news that Sri Lanka was about to drop its age of consent from 16 to 13 (thanks Enivhsay):

government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva, who is also the minister of health, told a weekly Cabinet briefing on Friday that the government was planning to lower the age of consent. He gave no reason, but said the proposal was approved “after much debate and a long review.” [link]

Ah, yes. Debate and review. Ve have heard the words, but the meaning is escaping us still. However, in a startling turnaround of events:

The government reversed its decision after a flurry of telephone calls from incensed citizens following the announcement, The Sunday Island newspaper said.

“There is no proposal, whatsoever, to reduce that to 13 or to any other age,” it quoted Dhara Wijayatillake, a secretary in the Ministry of Justice, as saying Saturday. [link]

Que rapido!! When did the Sri Lankan government start pay attention to “incensed citizens”? Did I miss something important during my time here in Amrika?

The Minister [Justice Minister John Senevirathne] said that the government is concerned of the increased number of young men detained in remand prisons as a result of sexual encounters with their girlfriends.

He said: “Many girls are requesting to release them saying the encounter happened with their consent.” [link]

Holy Mammajamma! I’ve missed so much!! Here I was, happily warbling away my speculative fantasies that Sri Lanka may be one of the more progressive South Asian countries…but this much? When I was a wee kella (er, ladki. Indocentric, what?) sex did not exist, no one had ever heard of it, and even if those damn suddhas (goras) couldn’t keep in in their pants, that was still no reason why we Sri lankans couldn’t quietly continue asexually budding. Encounter, bencounter! Sekshuval is a vestern invention, no?

So vat the bluddy hell is going on?

Express India reports -

New Delhi, August 18: A teacher stabbed a pencil into the head of a four-year-old after she caught him sleeping. An incision had to be made to remove a piece of lead from the boy’s head.

…The incident occurred when class teacher Kalpana Kumari found Anas, a student of Prep I, napping in class. She snatched his pencil and hit him on the head.

This passage brings to mind Maoist Chinese justice where the family of the condemned is charged for the bullet used to execute him -

…The family of the boy alleged that Green Field Convent School did not even provide first aid. Anas, the victim, lives with his aunt as his parents are at Moradabad.

Since we’ve had so many posts on kids lately, thus taking our mind off more troubling matters, I thought I’d throw a post into the mix as well. Remember Karan Takhar? He came in second place a few months ago in the National Geographic Bee. Indian Americans were denied a coveted “bee” crown. Well, on Thursday in Budapest, Hungary, Karan redeemed himself with the help of two teammates. Voice of America reports:

A team of three American school students has won the National Geographic World Championship in Budapest, Hungary Thursday. The team from Russia came in second and Canada was third.

Looking relieved three teenagers of the United States received the golden medals in an Olympic style ceremony at the end of the National Geographic World Championship in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest.

They received them after a nerve wrecking hour, which included burning questions on the capital of Slovakia, an egg-laying mammal, and questionable election practices in Zimbabwe.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that one of the three Russians walked up to Karan before the bout and whispered, “I will break you.” This made their eventual loss all the more difficult.

Less impressed with the American victory was the Russian team, which came in second.

The two boys and one girl wearing silver medals found it difficult to smile. 15-year old Ivan Prokhorov from Murmansk, explained why Russia should have won. “From one hand I am happy because it is the best result in Russian history. But from the other hand I feel upset a little bit, because we could be the first. Because we are intelligent enough to win this competition but something happened, I don’t know what,” he said.

The Globe and Mail asked Karan what he thought of the experience:

“It’s such a great experience but once you’re done, it’s really tiring,” said Karan, adding that his plan was to “sleep first, then celebrate.”

Think you got what it takes? Try for yourself.

Following up, the BBC reports that 13 year old Trisha Mittal, from Delhi, was India’s representative to the great Hari Puttar Gala in Scotland for the official release of the book of the book. She beat out 2,500 other children from India (is that all?) for the honor:

“We are supposed to be brought into the castle in carriages and ushered into a great hall on the launch night to meet Rowling and get an autographed copy. It sounds so exciting,” she says.

After speed-reading the book through the night, Trisha will be present as one of the 70 “cub reporters” from around the world at Rowling’s press conference the next day, asking questions and filing a report for the Indian paper. [BBC]

She’s a Hari Puttar drama geek, acting out her own plays and movies based on the characters:

Trisha is an active member of a flourishing Potter sorority in her housing block in Delhi. Along with friends, Neha, Rachita, Shanoo and Esther, they go around doing pithy Potter skits and plays, enacting roles and borrowing lines from the books. They even tweak a character “to make it funnier or grimmer” and videotape their homegrown contribution to the Potter mania that is sweeping India. [BBC]

You may not realize this, but the Hari Puttar launch was simultaneous around the world for countries that were ahead of the UK - bookstores released their copies at midnight BST. [Some places in India, as usual, were two hours late] Because of the logistical complexity of the task and the need for tight security, the company that handles Indian exam papers was chosen to distribute the book:

Safexpress’ experience of handling earlier projects of such high profile like CBSE question papers, PMT exam papers, UGC papers and earlier book releases including Harry Potter have come in handy for bagging this project. For Safexpress, the logistical feat here is the simultaneous delivery nationally to hundreds of outlets in over 50 Indian cities, as the India launch is to coincide with the worldwide launch. The simultaneous delivery impact gets higher considering the time of delivery to stores is to match the midnight of 15 - 16 release of the book in London.

With reports of leaks coming in from different parts of the world, Safexpress has implemented stringent measures across its warehouses. In every city, the books have been placed under constant electronic surveillance with guards manning storage centers. All kinds of electronic equipments like phones; cameras etc are prohibited inside the premises. [cite]

Though I’ll never, EVER share in your ecstasy, I sincerely hope that all of you Harry Pot-heads out there (ahem, achoo, cough, Ennis) are enjoying your weekend of magic and mediocre prose. I keed, I keed!

All over the world, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is dominating the news, most stores and quite a few lives right about now. On the right, these two bespectacled little boys in New Delhi who are holding their prized “bricks” are so cute, I’ve forgotten to smirk.

Meanwhile, this gaggle of adorable children attended a Harry Potter party in Calcutta. And the rest of you? Did you don capes and wave magic wands at similar? Or are you too busy reading through the sixth HP to admit to such activities? :D

Oh, and before you hurl it at me below, of course I agree with the oft-proffered declaration that “at least it gets kids to read”, though I’m astonished that you have to get them to do so in the first place. As a child, my parents punished me by taking away my library card. I did not require Dumbledores, muggles, quidditch or other J.K. Rowling-created concepts to inspire me to pick up a book. But whatever. (Cue the comment thread where we all attempt to out-do each other with tales of bibliophilia/nerdery and…begin.)

At age nine, Arfa Randhawa from Faisalabad, Pakistan, became the youngest person ever to pass a Microsoft certification exam in programming (via Slashdot):

Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn’t hire people her age…

She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language… The institute instructors assumed it would take Arfa about a year to go through the process of certification for developing Windows applications. But after four months… she passed the required exams….

“I saw her doing something extraordinary, making presentations,” said her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa and came with his daughter to Microsoft this week… he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age…

Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. “Soma” Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car. [Link]

BillG evinced some curiosity:

… he asked her at what age Muslim women start wearing the “Hijab”… Arfa… extended an invitation to him to visit… The Microsoft chief reportedly accepted the invitation and said that he would visit Pakistan in the near future. [Link]

Arfa says she wants to build satellites or software. She has stiff competition in Mridul Seth of Bangalore, who at age eight became the youngest to pass the Microsoft system admin exam.

Somasegar blogged their meeting here. Related post here.

This unfortunate baby was born on February 22, 2005 in the tiny little town of Roseburg, Oregon (Population 21,000). Why do I say that she’s unfortunate? It has nothing to do with the dress she’s wearing, that’s really not her fault. And all babies look like boiled aloo when they’re born. Nor was she born too small or too large; at 9 lbs 3 oz, she’s well within normal parameters.

The unfortunate thing about this baby is her name: Aryan Justice. This poor little girl is going to have to go through life with the name of a political cause that frankly, hasn’t been on the winning side of many battles lately. Probably the last time the Aryans won anything was when they invaded India, thousands of years ago. They would have been better off naming her “Christian Right” (assuming they shared those values, many Aryan Nation folks are Pagans [NSFW], and talk about the “brutal dictatorship of Christian tyrants” [NSFW]), at least then she could have been called “Chrissie” by her schoolmates.

Lastly, I love the hospital’s little helpful name explanation guide. Aryan, they tell us, is a name of French origin, and means Holy. Riiiiiiiight. And if you believe that, I have a Reich to sell you. Here’s hoping that this poor baby grows up at least as sane as Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa ……

UPDATE: Runnerwallah points out that the name was no mistake [NSFW], and that her parents really are White Supremacists. I hope she tells people it’s pronounced “Arianne”, and that her parents named her after the European space program. Then she can move to India when she grows up, where her name isn’t so unusual, and marry somebody of her own skin tone.

When I was a kid there were no cartoon characters that looked like me on TV. Well, there may have been one that kind of did, but we won’t get into that.

An anonymous tipster directs our attention to Nickelodeon’s site where a cute round-faced little Indian girl named Maya is on a mission to bring cultural awareness to today’s kids through short animated clips. There are two clips you can click on to enjoy: Happy Holi Maya and Maya the Indian Princess. The animator is Kavita Ramchandran, who I couldn’t seem to find a whole lot about on the web. I presume that these clips run on live television.

In what is surely a symptom of my need to find a woman, I thought the animated mom in the clips was kind of cute.

Got a desi young’un in your house who loves reading, or one who’s brown-friendly? Author Pooja Makhijani has put together a great bibliography of children’s literature with desi connections (disclaimer: she’s a friend). Check it out.

How these series come back to haunt me now, with their sense of ownership over the world, with the ways in which they defined a world… With all the ways in which they owned words. Strawberry blonde. We read these books, but there was no one like us in any of them. [Betsy, Stacy, Sejal, Tib by Sejal Shah]

Sadly, this plot summary of a picture book for drooling infants could just as easily be a blurb for the books of the mango/mehndi genre ;)

Chachaji’s Cup
Uma Krishnaswami, Illustrated by Soumya Sitaraman

A boy learns about his family history and the Partition of India from his great uncle, through stories told over a beloved old teacup.

Previous posts: Haroun, Ghee Happy

Sounds like a cocktail, no? Pixar artist Sanjay Patel illustrates Hindu mythology in a style reminiscent of Suck, Demian 5, Virgin and Bewitched (thanks, Turbanhead). It’s gorgeous work, although his Rama does look a bit much like Hrithik Roshan, and any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch.

Patel’s site says he came up with its name, Ghee Happy, via obscure analogy: reducing the rich strokes of Hindu iconography to their essence is like clarifying butter into ghee. He self-published a children’s book of Hindu gods and also sells 11”x17” prints on his site. Check it out if you have any little ones in need of full-color indoctrination or just dig the visual style.

Update: Drawn has more (thanks, Harry). A commenter there says:

We were actually joking with Sanjay that he SHOULD do this with every religion, but I guess the problem with the monotheistic religions is that there would only be ONE page in the book…