I love this picture. I have no other reason for sharing it with you, other than that. I wondered if we might be able to use it for a caption contest, but I’m not sure how it would turn out (did I just diss your creative powers? I might have! Prove me wrong! ;)

Fantastic capture, isn’t it? It was taken by a Debasis Roy, of Asansol, India, and I felt like it deserved to be seen, in case you missed it when it was featured on National Geographic’s “Top Shots”. As for how the fishy fared, don’t fret about the poor pet:

While transferring fish from one bowl to another, science tutor Roy, 27, was inspired. He composed this scene—a baby guppy sustained by a single droplet, cradled on a grass leaf atop a wooden stool—then put the fish back. [link]

Beautiful. I sweat such talent and creative vision. A whale-sized thank you to the Barmaid, for showing me this magical image.

For Halloween this year, I had an Indian friend dress up like an Indian (feather, not dot). She thought it would be ironic (in a way that I’m sure this man would not have gotten). No painting of skin tone was involved. I was thinking about her as I watched this.

The blogs are a buzz with the latest from America’s Next Top Model, Season 13. The short girl season (all the girls are under 5’7), Tyra Banks takes them to Hawaii where she photographs them in a sugar cane field. The twist? She takes the pictures of the girls as “hapas.” Hapa is a Hawaiian term for people who are of mixed race. For the shoot, Tyra gives each of the girls two races that she wants them to embody in the photo. A race other than their own. She paints them all brown and gives them props to achieve it.

The racial mixes — Laura was Mexican and Greek, Erin was Tibetan and Egyptian, Sundai was Moroccan and Russian, Jennifer was Botswanan and Polynesian. and Nicole was Malagasy and Japanese. Who were we gifted with? The model named Brittany was given “East Indian” meets Native American i.e. feather and dot Indian. Fast forward to 6.29 to see Brittany get her face painted. Her picture after the jump.

My jaw dropped when I saw this tweet in my feed today from the renowned DJ Rekha.

@djrekha Penn Masala performing at White House. Beatboxing and singing Ayesha in Hindi n English. Box of Diwali sweets on every seat.

I quickly jumped on the White House’s live feed to see if I could see for myself. Here, watch for yourself.

What could be the occasion to bring DJ Rekha to the White House and get prime seating to see Desi a cappella group Penn Masala perform?

President Barack Obama is re-creating a federal panel to address concerns of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders and to work on improving their health, education and economic status…The panel was created during the Clinton administration. But it expired during George W. Bush’s presidency and was not reauthorized.

During the East Room ceremony, Obama also observed Diwali, or the “Festival of Lights,” a holiday celebrated across faiths in India.[ap]

I jumped online in time to see a maharaj sing ‘asato maah’ and Obama light the fire with a candle. Video from today found and posted above and the folks at AAPI Momentum have promised us videos from tonight’s celebration. I have a personal request for a photo of DJ Rekha, Penn Masala, and Kal Penn. Just FYI. Since I can’t show you the video of what Obama said, let me share excerpts of what he said (full text available here).

With regard to one of the most well documented subcultures I’ve ever seen, there are two major Taqwacore events culminating in this month: a documentary and a photography book (Past SM Taqx post here, here and here). The first would be the Canadian premiere of the documentary full length movie Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam. Documentary producer Omar Majeed in conjunction with EyeSteelFilm, follows author Michael Muhammad Knight and subsequent Taqwacore bands for four years to make this film.

In the first part of the film, Knight organizes a taqwacore tour of the U.S., bringing the Kominas, Vancouver-based Islamic riot-grrl trio Secret Trial Five, and a shapeshifting crew on the road. After documenting this Islamic twist on the typical hijinks and humiliations of the road, the chapter climaxes with an appearance at ISNA…The film’s second half is even more interesting, as Knight, Khan and Usmani travel to Pakistan, where their efforts to bring politicized rock to the people encounters a whole different form of opposition.

“To some extent,” [says Omar Majeed], “the reason I called the film The Birth of Punk Islam is because I saw this whole process as a kind of birthing. It wasn’t just that this was happening and I was filming it, but rather that by my being there and filming it, we managed to give birth to this thing. I think that kind of shows in the filmmaking, the way it’s put together. I’m not always rushing to get the other side of things, I’m not looking to be journalistic or fair and balanced. I’m really trying to tell their story in a way that I find relatable.”[montrealmirror]

The film has been well received at the Vancouver International Film Festival and The Kominas and Sarmust joined Majeed for the Montreal screening this past weekend. It looked like it was a huge success with a packed audience (watch the q&a here) and the film tour continues to Toronto this weekend. If you are in Toronto, go Saturday for the TaqwaToronto after the screenings with a fantastic line up performers including The Kominas, Sarmust, Secret Trial Five, and panel discussion including Knight.

GIVEAWAY: We have two tickets available to the October 17th Saturday night screening and TaqwaToronto concert in Toronto! Details after the jump…

Blogger Roopa Singh has posted some pictures and a brief account from the India Day Parade in New York. The pictures seem to capture the spirit of those protesting the refusal of the parade organizers to allow gay and lesbian members of the community from a visible role in the procession.

Members of SALGA (the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association) and allies met at Starbucks before today’s India Day Parade to create signs amplifying the discrimination that excluded a visible contingent of Desi gays and lesbians from the march. But good times were had by all, in the heat, in the shimmer of so many cultures right at our feet. We are all Indian, including the gays. We are all New Yorkers, all night and all day. [Link]

Credit: www.politicalpoet.wordpress.com

Her full Flickr album can be viewed here. If any of you were there please share your experiences in the comments section.

If you get a chance, check out the full slide show of the parade from this past weekend in Jersey that I wrote about in the previous post. In one or two of the pictures I observed a level of militancy and jingoism that made me feel uneasy. I am pretty far removed from such sentiment so I am not sure how strong such opinions are in Indian Americans. I believe nobody should ever parade children this way:

I want to stress that most of the pictures in the set are of perfectly appropriate displays. This one really threw me off though.

Ok you all know how I felt about this:

Today, a picture of her newborn Ikhyd popped up on her Twitter account. The kid, minus the outfit, is mad cute. But… I am totally against killing albino ladybugs just so that the baby of a wealthy singer can be dressed like this. Can we get PETA up in here or something? Acts of Fashion Fug against a child should at least be a misdemeanor. I’m just saying. And why does this look like a mug shot?

Finally, the law has changed. Congrats to at the activists in India that made it happen! Our hats off to you.

In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi’s highest court decriminalized homosexuality.

“Discrimination is antithesis of equality,” the judges of the Delhi High Court wrote in a 105-page decision that is the first in India to directly guarantee rights for gay people. “It is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,” the decision said.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861, when British rulers codified a law prohibiting “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” [Link]

From left to right, that’s Zardari, Singh and Ahmadinejad at the BRIC summit in Russia. This photo is just begging for a caption, word bubbles, or both.

From Whitehouse.gov we see some pictures from “behind the scenes” at the Summit of the Americas that just ended (thanks for the tip Siddhartha). It looks like Obama is giving some guy named Brian Lara advice on how to swing a cricket bat. I am not sure if his form is right. It might be why Tiger Woods was invited to the White House yesterday. It also looks like Obama’s wicket is wide open. You know what time it is. It is caption contest time. Go at it.

Via Mutineer Maisnon’s status message, an…um…interesting celebrity wedding:

Say Anything star Ione Skye and Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee chose an exotic location and traditional garb for their Hindu wedding in India, captured in this photo for PEOPLE.

About 50 of the couple’s friends and family members, including Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother, witnessed the Dec. 29 ceremony in a village on the Bay of Bengal. [People]

Say Anything? How ‘bout say WHAT?

My brain is short-circuiting with everything this story conjures for me: Lloyd Dobbler’s love, Chennai/Madras, Depeche Mode’s “Stripped”, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”, Claire Danes so-called ex-, possible religious/cultural appropriation, an ex-Beastie Boy-wife…yowza.

To be fair, it wasn’t an entirely random choice; Ben Lee’s spiritual advisor is Indian, and the love guru did preside over the ceremony. That doesn’t make it any less jarring to see on People magazine’s website, though.

The two-hour ceremony was presided over by Lee’s spiritual guru, Sakthi Narayani Amma. Following the ceremony, a reception was held at a nearby guest house with Lee’s friends the Kahn Brothers performing as the wedding band. Lee, 30, and Skye, 37, then gathered the entire wedding party to visit an orphanage and performed for the children there.

The couple plan another ceremony in Los Angeles to legalize their union, since the Indian nuptials were not recognized at home in California.

“We have to go to City Hall tomorrow, and I’m mildly resentful about it,” Lee told the newspaper. “You go through a huge experience on an emotional and spiritual level, then you have to go and do the paperwork. [different People link]

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t everyone have to go to City Hall, to get a marriage license? And is this ceremony all right with all of you? In my entirely unscientific survey of two of you, one of you was offended and the other wasn’t— but only because “it’s not that surprising”. Things that make you go “hmmm“…

I actually loved Heidi Klum’s Kali outfit that V.V. blogged about. If I was wealthly enough to afford putting together something like that I’d be all about it. My costume from this past Friday night only cost $15 and I had to make it myself.

Before you ask, nobody tried to open the access panel and rig votes (not that it wasn’t encouraged). So here is the deal. If you are a reader of this site and wore a costume on Friday night that is either related to the election or to anything with a desi connection (like Klum’s costume) then please email me at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com and I will paste the picture in this post. No, if you wore a sari that doesn’t count as dressing up. As for me, I’d hate to throw my costume out. I am wondering if on Tuesday I should just go stand really close to and in front of people, just to see what happens.

I found the following photo on Flickr, using a search for the “Diwali” tag (most recent):

The caption on Flickr is “Behold Srivathsan, the Magician of Fire.” If you click on the image and login to Flickr, you can see a larger version of the photo. Is it just your usual fireworks, or is something unuusal going on? What is up with the horizontal streak of light across the frame?

Whatever the case, I think it’s safe to say that this is the kind of thing that is pretty much “only in India.”

Via our tipline, Janeofalltrades sent us a story about a special garland of flowers that recently “appeared” in Queens. It isn’t quite as spectacular as the Virgin Mary appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich, but its still pretty cool:

To most people, the purple flower that sprouted between two concrete slabs in a Queens backyard would be just a hardy vestige of summer.

Sam Lal sees something more.

The Jamaica man is convinced the mysterious blossom is an incarnation of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh - and neighbors and friends are flocking to see it.

The nearly 4-foot-tall flower grew in June and began to resemble an elephant’s head and trunk in August. Lal said that the ailments that had plagued him for months disappeared.

“This formation came to heal my illness,” the 60-year-old Hindu man said of his relief from pain due to a bone spur near his spine and bulging discs in his neck. [Link]

When a garland resembling Ravana appears, then I will become a true believer.

And speaking of “Divine Visions” SM Tipster Arul sent us a great Flickr portfolio of French stencil artist C215’s work. The portfolio includes pictures taken of his artwork in the Karol Bagh District of Delhi.

New Delhi between 7th -16th October 2008. (See map with each photo if you’re ever in Delhi) Sometimes threatened, usually uncomfortable with the large crowds that gathered for the spectacle of a couple of foreigners having strayed off the tourist trail somehow and ended up in their unimaginably poor district. These pieces were mainly for the children to see and enjoy, which hopefully you can see from the India Set, they did. [Link]

After a weekend of discussing all the hate and intolerance surrounding the U.S. Presidential campaign, I just couldn’t go to bed without doing something to help cleanse our collective palate of the distasteful business. And so, let me point you to some cute pictures and a story in the Daily Mail that will help you feel all warm and fuzzy again…for a few moments.

When two white tiger cubs were born during a hurricane they had to be separated from their mother after their sanctuary flooded. However they have since found an unlikely surrogate mother in chimpanzee Anjana, who has taken on the role of caring for the cubs….

The two-year-old chimp has been helping keeper China York care for the 21-day-old cubs at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (TIGERS) in South Carolina.

‘Mitra and Shiva, were born during Hurricane Hannah,’ said Dr Bhagavan, founder of TIGERS. “During that time everything flooded in the sanctuary and they had to be moved into the house as their mother became stressed.

‘It was important for their safety that they were separated.’

Placed into the care of infant animal care giver China and her chimpanzee companion, Anjna, the cubs have become almost inseparable from their new motherly figures. [Link]

There are a lot more cute pictures embedded in the article.

White House pool reporter Goyal asked Dana Perino a question in today’s regular press briefing (I guess a few reporters still bother to show up to hear what the Bush administration has to say):

Go ahead, Goyal.

Q Two quick questions — thank you, Dana. One, as far as this deal to be signed by the President this afternoon, what you think this deal will do in the future as far as U.S.-India relations are concerned? You think this deal will strengthen —

MS. PERINO: You know what I think I’ll do? In about an hour and a half, you can hear the President himself, and he’ll say it better than I will, so I’ll refer you to him. [Link]

And with that I believe Goyal wet himself. The President himself would appear to take THAT question.

Was the Secret Service really that ok with him being surrounded by this many brown folks at once? I’m just saying.

The President signed in to law today H.R. 7081, the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. The deal was passed by Congress just last week.

Look, I’m just about as big a Michael Phelps fan as there is out there. No disrespect here. My boy is even a fellow Wolverine. However, when I saw the new cover of Sports Illustrated I thought it was a woman until I panned up to the face. I swear, with all those medals (8) it looks like he is wearing a top similar to something you’d see at an Indian wedding (picture on left). Am I going totally crazy? Am I the only one that now has this unusual image of Phelps etched into my psyche?

Truly sorry if this traumatizes anyone.

Yesterday, I attended the ASIAN AMERICANS FOR OBAMA EVENT WITH ACTOR KAL PENN, in Macacaville, VA. No, I’m not shouting at you, I’m just too lazy to reformat what I copied from the press release that uber-Dem Toby Chaudhuri was kind enough to send me. ;) Like all good desi events, it didn’t start on time, which was highly awesome for those of us who were fighting our way from DC to Farlington during rush hour, in the hopes of seeing the biggest brown actor of them all stump for Obama.

So many references were made to a certain set of movies with which you are all familiar, that I have resolved to not mention them once (not! once!) in this post; instead, I’m going to give you the highlights of what Kal Penn said, about his favorite contender for the potentially-soon-to-be-not-White House.

Penn got personal, as he speeched at us with tales of his grandfather’s involvement in the struggle for India’s freedom and a more recent influential event in his life— a phone call he received from a good friend, from Texas, asking for advice.* This friend was struggling to finance his education, and he had been offered a job with Satan with Haliburton, driving trucks through Iraq for $90,000 a year. It was a tempting, and obviously perilous offer for someone making minimum wage. Penn was deeply affected by the awful situation his friend was in and that’s one of the reasons why he’s taking the time to get involved and motivate people across the country to support Obama; he sincerely believes his man has a plan.

The actor, who is currently starring in one of MY favorite shows, “House”, commenced his entertaining remarks with “Happy Macaca day!”. Indeed, it was the second anniversary of the infamous event which transformed our community in to some monkeys with which to reckon.

The one-hundred plus people in attendance seemed to enjoy his message…and the event itself, which was lively, upbeat and well-stocked with delicious food. Seriously. While I can’t personally vouch for the chicken—which my friend had fourths of— I CAN say that after Penn was hustled in to a waiting (yet fuel-efficient) SUV, I devoured the best samosas I’ve EVER had. Toby and Ruby…who was your caterer??

There were two reasons that I was in Africa. The first one was that the mountain is there. I contend that every good journey involves a mountain high enough that it keeps a piece of you with it after you think you’ve gotten off. On top of the mountain is a doomed glacier of storied beauty that I needed to see before it melted into just a “once upon a time” memory described in a book or by an old man. The second reason I had long desired to come here was that my mother was born in East Africa (Uganda) and I wanted to feel a trace of what she once knew. Being under this sky, on this land, the pidgin that is Swahili ringing in my ears, I sought to better understand some part of her that ended when she was a teenager, a part that remained an unearthed root of my life.

Dar

The South Asian quarter (Uhindini) of Dar es Salaam is where you want to be if you have only one night in one of East Africa’s largest cities and you blog for a South Asian themed website whose readers expect you to work around the clock. It is also where the food is the best mix of Indian, Chinese, and East African. The gem dealer from Sri Lanka recognizes us as fellow guests of the dingy hotel. Your first night in a country should always be spent at a dingy hotel, otherwise you won’t learn how things in that country really work (such as how much cab fares to locations in the city should really cost). He tips us off to the fact that the best money exchange can be found next to the mosque at the end of that street. A good restaurant (I have the mutton) is directly next door to the hotel. The 34-year-old sits down with us at dinner and explains that if we want to find nice girls (why aren’t we married yet?) all we have to do is provide them with a little jewelry and some spending money. He swears that those two things will keep them satisfied and they won’t ever talk of divorce. I decide to keep my “blood diamond speech” under wraps just this once, even though Africa is the most appropriate place for it.

The Muslim friend I’m with tells me to stick with him for protection in this part of town. Five minutes later and three blocks north we pass the Pramukh Swami BAPS mandir, services just ending. “Your on my turf now,” I tell him.

Closer to the hotel again, it sounds like some bar or disco is playing Bob Marley. Sweet. I wanted to check out a bar here anyways and this one apparently has good music blaring on a Saturday night. As we get closer to the source I see that the music I am hearing is in fact emanating from a large group of women sitting on a mosque floor. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t Buffalo Soldier I was hearing. It is probably not polite for me to keep staring like this either.

When I travel to a new country, my eyes are always peeled for a desi sighting. My recent trip to Brazil was no different. This is the second BRIC nation I’ve visited (with Russia and China left to go) and having heard about Indian Oil Corp., Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum joint venture earlier this year to start ethanol production in Brazil, I thought I might spot other signs of investment. At the very least, I figured I would come across a Sindhi shopowner (the joke goes that even if you travel to the moon, you will meet a member of the diasporadic community of Indian traders, of which my family is a part).

But, there weren’t any Sindhis or Indians to speak of in Brazil. At least, we didn’t see any. (Well, there was one uncle type we ran into near the Ipanema farmer’s market, but he turned out to be a Mallu from New York, visiting his Brazilian wife’s family!)

We’d heard about Nataraj, the only Indian-run restaurant in Rio. It’s in Leblon, Rio’s most trendy residential neighborhood, and I figured we’d find a desi there. “It’s no good,” our New York uncle friend told us while he helped us shop for figs and sitaphal. “Don’t bother going.”

So we didn’t. (Now that I’m home, however, some scoping did yield a little write-up about Indian restaurants in South America here which pointed out that the restaurant is run by a family whose matriarch used to work for the British High Commission in Rio. “She had been doing special event catering for the embassy as a side interest and then one fine day she decided to open a restaurant - I’m glad she did. It takes courage to make a caipirinha with an indian twist.”

Dang. Missed opportunity for a good Sepia post. Next time I go to Rio, I’ll have to make it a point to go here.

So, Brazil is home to a multitude of skin colors, so it’s easy to mistake Brazilians for Indians and Indians for Brazilians, so much so that many times, people mistook me and my husband for Brazilians and spoke to us in Portugese. There were, however, a few exceptions.

In Salvador de Bahia, the northern city which was the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, a photojournalist came up to us during the 2nd of July Independence Day celebrations. “Are you Indian?” he asked. “Yes,” we answered. “Can I take a picture of you? First time I’m seeing Indians in Salvador,” he said.

Wow. I felt like an intrepid explorer, though I was quite certain I couldn’t be the first Indian in Salvador.

I was proven right. Later that day, in Salvador, we were at Rafael Cine Foto in Pelhorino, trying to get our camera repaired—and ahem, negotiating for a better price—when the shopkeeper (whose English was limited) asked us, laughing, “Are you Indian?” (I guess we carry our reputation as bargain makers around with us, wherever we go!) Later, my mother mentioned that her once-in-a-while Brazilian cleaning lady told her that there are lots of Indians who own shops at the malls in Salvador. I guess I should have gone to the mall!

Despite my lack of desi human spottings, there was no dearth of Indian influence—mostly of the exotic India variety—to be found in Brazil. [A brief photo essay follows below the fold.]

No. Absolutely, unequivocally he is not. He is a Christian. For months now there have been slanderous and bigoted emails circulating around the internet suggesting that he is really a “secret Muslim.” This further appeals to the most base fears of a small portion of Americans who are just scared that the potential leader of the free world might end up being a man of color with a “funny name.” Snopes.com in particular does a fantastic job at discrediting all the false Obama rumors. However, my very observant friend Arun in L.A. sent me the following email with a link to a picture in Time Magazine. Says Arun:

I spend an extraordinarily unhealthy amount of time surveying political blogs for the most minute of minutia on the election. Mostly I marvel at the absolute inanity of most punditry (see: Stephanopolous, George) and the fact I’m stupid enough to waste time reading it. Occasionally, I’m surprised by something particularly astute or though-provoking (usually the blogs at the Atlantic). However, this picture caught me completely off-guard:

Caption from Time: Amongst the things that Barack Obama carries for good luck are a bracelet belonging to a soldier deployed in Iraq, a gambler’s lucky chit, a tiny monkey god and a tiny Madonna and child.

Yes SM readers, that is correct. The Democratic nominee for President carries Hanuman with him for good luck (although to beat McCain, who carries a penny, he might need to upgrade to this Hanuman, or else use this stick that he got earlier this week).

I’ve heard many of my friends who are minorities say that they can relate to Obama because he has a multi-ethnic background like them. In addition, he has lived abroad (Indonesia) and spent time in both Pakistan and India as I previously blogged, so it isn’t all that surprising that he is aware of Hanuman. Looking into Obama’s open hands above I am reminded about a great article by David Brooks that was in the New York Times a few weeks ago. In it he coined a new term “neural Buddhism.” He writes:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. [Link]

Long-time reader Kush Tandon was in India a couple of months ago, and since then he’s been slowly putting up the photos he took on his blog and on his Flickr account. As I was perusing them the other day, one photo stood out to me:

Kush also gives a caption to the photo to explain a little about the history of IIT Roorkee:

IIT Roorkee, once University of Roorkee, and before that Thomason College is perhaps the prettiest campus in India, something like Cornell University campus in Ithaca for North America. It is a quiet, green oasis that is about 150 years old. Its history spans training engineers for canal building in India, sappers for Indian military for many wars (British India and later independent India), for huge dam making projects immediately after the independence, and now with India’s economy opening up. (link)

I personally like the photo because it defies the clichés regarding what India looks like — which probably tend to dictate what we ourselves photograph when we go there. That is not to say that there isn’t another side to life, even in Roorkee (and Kush himself has a number of photos showing poverty as well as open trash). But both kinds of images are part of the story.

Do readers have photographs in their public collections that show images of the Indian subcontinent that also defy expectations in some way? If so, we would love to see them…

A little pre-post note from Sandhya Nankani, your new guest blogger: At least once a day, I come across a link or a piece of literature or an article and I think, “That would be great for sepia!” So it goes without saying that I’m thrilled about coming aboard as a guest blogger for the next month. You’ll read ennis’s little ditty about me later today, so besides inviting you to check out my family ruminations, I’m ready to fly…

For the next month, I thought it would be fun to import a regular feature—Poetry Friday—from my personal blog Literary Safari. I’ll be putting a subcontinental twist on this. Every Friday I’ll be posting a poem by a desi writer that speaks to me.

I’ve always had a thing for elephants. My first (and favorite) stuffed animal was a gray elephant. In those days, stuffed animals were not very soft or fuzzy. Mine is rough and tough, but he has survived three decades, and continues to thrive (despite his half-fallen off trunk) alongside my collection of elephant kurtis; shell, glass, and metal elephants (including Ganeshas); elephant paintings and silkscreens, elephant magazine holder … yeah, OK, you get the point!

So, today’s poem—which I recently discovered in Billy Collins’ anthology 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day—is (brace yourselves for the long title) “Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Nez for short).

I like to pair literary and artistic selections the way people pair wine and cheese, so when I read this poem, it seemed to me a perfect accompaniment to Australia-based photojournalist Palani Mohan’s images in his new book, Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia. [click the above image to view a slideshow of his photos.]

Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’

Forget trying to pronounce it. What matters
is that in southern India, thousands are afflicted.
And who wouldn’t be? Children play with them
in courtyards, slap their gray skin with cupfuls
of water, shoo flies with paper pompoms.
When the head of the household leaves

Have at it Mutineers. Let’s see some of you drop your “lurker” status and creatively describe what is happening in these news pictures (all taken in the last 24 hours). And no, the monster from the movie Cloverfield was not spotted in Mumbai in case that is what you were thinking.

I wake to the sound of tennis balls, the sound of leisure. For New Year’s, Singapore went shopping, worshiped, and celebrated, making very little mess in the process.

Hindus, mostly from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, went to the temples here, some dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century and earlier. Families arrived in private cars and taxis, the women bedecked in silk and jasmine. Laborers came in the backs of flatbed trucks fitted with benches to seat them. They smashed coconuts and prayed for good fortune.

Earlier, they had shopped at Mustafa’s—a postcolonial Marks and Spencer, the Walmart of the East—jammed with every conceivable consumer good: electronics, South Asian and western suitings, cosmetics, jewelry, luggage, appliances, fruit, dry goods, DVDs. The store in Little India is itself a little India and larger than the Little Indias in most non-Indian cities.

Tourists enjoyed the spectacle. The Australians wore shorts and sipped Singapore Slings in commemorative glasses at Raffles Hotel, a colonial-era shrine to steamer trunks, Noel Coward, and Dicky Mountbatten. The daughter of a wealthy Chinese businessman married a wealthy Chinese businessman and had her photo taken in the courtyard of the Empire Cafe.

Singapore goes about its business, which is business.

Elsewhere, at the Malaysian High Commission, in a leafy residential neighborhood, Seelan Palay, the 23-year-old grandson of a gravedigger, stages a one-man hunger strike to protest the detention, in Kuala Lumpur, of the five leaders of an Indian minority-rights organization.

Photo above, smashing coconuts at the Ceylon Temple.

More pictures below.

I’m always a bit hesitant to write what might be viewed as a “personal” entry on these pages. I used to have my own personal blog for those types of musings but decided to give it up because of the pressures of a full time job and this blog. I also don’t want to be presumptuous and assume that the vast majority of SM readers care about my life (as opposed to my writings highlighting something of interest or importance to the South Asian American community). That being said, today is a holiday (when SM readership plummets for obvious reasons), and so I figured I’d get away with some personal blogging. Since many of you seemed to enjoy my previous entry about my arduous toils in my basement, I thought I would serve up one more entry based on the booty recovered from the nine tons of refuse we removed from down there over the last three days.

First off, I know some of you don’t believe me when I say I’m a Grinch. Do these pictures finally convince you? I could tell even at a young age that this new-fangled Santa Claus was an imposter:

Leave this one alone. He’s bad to the bone. (Age 1)

And Frosty? Please. The only large snowball I care to associate with is a snow cone with watermelon syrup:

Where is Frosty’s left hand?

India and China are just about to wrap up joint military exercises, 45 years after the border war which put an end to the phrase which serves as the title of this post. The CSM reports:

The decision to hold joint Army exercises, ending tomorrow, in China’s Yunnan Province, is admittedly a small measure. But it is the first time the two armies have cooperated in such a way, and it comes on the heels of rapidly expanding Sino-Indian ties in business and politics…

This being the first Army exercise between the two countries, it has been small. Only 95 Indian soldiers have traveled to Yunnan Province, where they are participating in counterterrorism drills. But the joint exercise is expected to become an annual event, helping each side become better acquainted with the other.

“These are building blocks being put in place,” says Rahul Bedi of Jane’s, a London-based military analysis firm. “It’s a part of the learning process…” [Link]

And what did they name these exercises? Operation Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Sadly, no. That would have been the name if only I were in charge. Instead, the name given to these joint training exercises was “Hand-in-Hand 2007.” Hand-in-Hand? These are supposed to be warriors not playmates. For your viewing enjoyment I have posted some of the most exciting pictures from the the last several days:

Chinese soldier teaches Indians that the best way to defend against a sledge hammer to the head is by using the nearest pile of bricks for protection. They swear it works and that Indians should try.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This print advertisement by Intel has been causing quite a stir of late [via Huffington Post]. It seems to convey the idea that owning an Intel chip will help you tackle the same amount of work as you could with a ship of slaves (while making you feel powerful):

I almost fell out of my seat when I saw Intel’s new advertising campaign. It shows six bowing African American athletes before a chino-clad, oxford-shirted white manager with the slug: “Maximize the power of your employees.” This ad reminds me of a slave-ship, and it’s hard to imagine the same imagery did not come to mind for the savvy ad exec that created it…

Intel is not just promoting insensitive images, it’s also leading a signature drive for a California ballot measure that would eliminate class action lawsuits over civil rights issues. Intel’s board of directors have been sent 25,000 faxes calling upon the company to withdraw that pending ballot measure. [Link]

Those who are persistent eventually defeat even the steeliest resolve to procrastinate. I keed. DC’s last meetup was massive and most definitely fun. We descended upon Amma like a Mongol horde, pillaging every bit of delicious Southie food we spied. Oh, wait…the Mongols ate North Indian foo-…never mind.

Amma made like old skool Vanessa and went and saved the best for last— even though he wasn’t there, YoDad arranged dessert for everyone at the meetup. We gobbled gulab jamuns, much to our collective surprise and delight, thanks to his thoughtful planning. New York may have the cool factor, SF may be hipster heaven, but DC has Abhi’s father, a.k.a. the Grandfather of the Mutiny. Take THAT, other cities!

And now, the moment one of you named No Desh has been waiting for: tabla roll, please…the Flickr photoset for D.C.’s seventh meetup has been hurriedly finished (i.e. the pics were split between two cameras, and for the last 20 mins, I was frantically DLing two dozen files, only to immediately upload them to the “official album”).

All evidence which could destroy potential Senate campaigns is available for your amusement via this “public” link. Aw, come on, people…it’s only six weeks late. Unless you’re a girl and in college, that’s never a huge problem. ;)

SM Meetups in DC— hot like your Amma’s meen kari, ya heard?

Oh, we zimbly HAVE to play the caption game with the picture below. It was thoughtfully submitted via a tip to our news tab from Msichana (thanks!)

Granny, get your gun: Ladies of the Village Defense Committee squeeze off a few AK-47 bursts during training by the Indian army in Sariya, India. [SFgate]

I don’t mean to make light of serious issues like empowering women or self defense and I wish I didn’t have to explicitly declare that in my post, but there you go, in case you needed me to do so. Having reluctantly typed all that, I will return to the gleeful state I was in when I first gazed at this— what a capture! Now you all caption away. :)

Previous editions of caption-palooza: onnu, rendu, moonu, naalu…

Several of you have written to us regarding the grand opening of Canada’s Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (that was fun to type!). The pictures, which you can view in a slideshow here, are gorgeous. Were any Canadian mutineers there on July 22? If so, please let us know, below.

After 18 months of construction and millions in fundraising efforts, a one-of-a-kind Hindu temple opened Sunday in Toronto.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on-hand to celebrate the official unveiling of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir.

Harper said the $40 million architectural marvel represents India’s and Canada’s embracement of spiritual and ethnic pluralism.

“Canada’s accommodation of diversity is not without precedent,” Harper said, addressing a large crowd.

“There have been forerunners — and of these perhaps none is as note-worthy as India.”

Located at Hwy 427 and Finch Avenue in north-west Toronto, the temple is an architectural masterpiece. Built with Turkish limestone and Italian marble, the temple was built by artisans armed with chisels, hammers and ancient Hindu doctrine outlining how a holy place should be constructed. [CTV.ca]

By the numbers:

-24,000: the number of pieces sculpted in India, marked with a barcode and then reassembled to create the mandir.

-July 22, 2007: official opening

-$40 million: cost of construction, majority of which came from the community

-400: the number of volunteers who devoted their time to such an awesome project.

::

As giddy as such architectural perfection makes me, my inner %$#@< is wondering if Dubya would have made like Harper, had this mandir been constructed somewhere in this great nation…

Said Vishal on our News Tab:

Not a story this, but…A farmer passes bunches of paddy to another to sow in a field at Kunwarpur village near Allahabad on Saturday, July 21, 2007. Beautiful. Courtesy : Hindustan Times.

Hey, it’s okay that it isn’t a “story”; it’s an evocative photograph and you know what THAT means— it’s time to play caption that picture! Have at it, Mutineers. :)

Previous editions of the game: onnu, randu, moonnu, naalu. (I’m always struck by how different those are from ek, do, teen, char…)

Sunita Williams has returned safely to Earth after setting the record for the longest time in space by a woman.

Praying for a safe Earth entry

“Welcome back,” Mission Control told Atlantis. “Congratulations on a great mission.” Controllers praised the crew for providing a “stepping stone to the rest of NASA’s exploration plan…”

Astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams returned to Earth on Atlantis after spending more than six months at the space station. She set an endurance record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 195 days. During her stay, she also set the record for most time spacewalking by a woman. [Link]

More cute pictures after the fold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The theme this year was India:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t cry, little one.

We heart you, dear Sanjaya.

May your haters rot.

::

Have you a haiku for Sanjaya, too?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evil Abhi: Oohhh, look at the hobbittses.

Abhi: Dude, Sri Lanka just whooped new Zealand.

Evil Abhi: Hit it brown. Hit it.

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

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

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

Sanjaya-kutta,

Why?

You make it so hard to cheer you on, when you do ugly things with your pretty, pretty tresses. It’s just not okay. At all. Don’t you care about the greater desi community? How will THEY be affected by your reckless decision to have bad hair? You represent our hopes and assimilative aspirations— be careful out there. We’re counting on you and if you fail, we will never forgive you. Ever. Unless you go to medical school.

Sanjaya Malakar performed “Bath Water.” Randy Jackson said “Listen, the hairdo is definitely interesting. I like the kind of Mohawk look.” Paula Abdul said “To watch it on stage and not go for it, it’s kind of like we’re going ah, come on.“ Simon Cowell said “I presume there was no mirror in your dressing room tonight.” Sanjaya replied “You’re just jealous that you couldn’t pull it off.” Simon said “I couldn’t I agree. Sanjaya, I don’t think it matters anymore what we say, actually. I genuinely don’t. I think you are in your own universe and if people like you, good luck.” [linkosity]

Still, I wish you only the best— I just do so with my eyes closed, until someone tells me it’s safe to open them again.

Sanjaya zindabad,

A K K A

Cricket mania in India has produced a new Indian superhero, ‘Sachin Tendulkar - the Master Blaster’:

India’s Sachin Tendulkar is set to appear as a superhero in a new range of comic books, animation and games. The cricketing legend has linked up with Virgin Comics and his character will wear body armour and wield a flaming cricket bat. [Link]

Ummmm …. guys? You’re not helping the rep of desi men any. He’s short, has a stiff bat on fire, and is associated with Virgin? Great … But wait, it gets even better:

… two years ago had a stage musical about him called Main Sachin Tendulkar [Link]

Just imagine little Rajiv, playing in an American sandbox with his Sachin Tendulkar action figure.

Joe: I’ve got a GI Joe! What’s that short geeky looking thing?
Rajiv: I’ve got a Sachin Tendulkar! He plays cricket!
Joe: GI Joe has a gun. See, he can shoot bad guys with it.
Rajiv: Sachin has a flaming cricket bat! And when I play, I sing songs from his musical. Isn’t he awesome?

Doesn’t Gotham Chopra know how many years of therapy poor Rajiv is going to have to pay for?

Shilpa Shetty blah blah racism blah reality show winner blah. ;)

…Shilpa was in London to meet Elizabeth II at Commonweath Day on Monday, celebrated at Westminster Abbey.

The actress delivered a speech on — you guessed it — racism.

Shilpa — reportedly wearing an intricate purple velvet Tarun Tahiliani sherwani — curtseyed before the Queen, and then almost slipped in her high heels. Apparently Prince Philip smilingly told her to be careful about the shoes, averting the fall. [linkypoo]

In other news, yesterday, Pakistan should have stuck with spinners, but decided otherwise. ;)

In other other news, Since I don’t talk cricket walk cricket and laugh cricket, I have no clue what the previous statement involving Pakistan means. I’m just shamelessly flirting with all you cricket-fiends.

Finally, for those of you who might be wondering why on earth I posted this if I was obviously sooo not interested in it, it’s really just because I thought sherwanis were for boys and I wanted to consult my kitchen cabinet. Well?

I bring to your attention two pictures taken yesterday near Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It’s a striking reminder as to the source of the deliciousness of Indian cuisine:

“Must remember to not touch my eyes…must remember to not touch my eyes…

And in related news:

India’s Bhut Jolokia chilli has been confirmed as the world’s hottest pepper by The Guinness Book of Records, a US researcher said.

Bhut Jolokia comes in at 1,001,304 Scoville heat units, a measure of hotness for a chilli. It is nearly twice as hot as Red Savina, the variety it replaces as the hottest. By comparison, an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000.

Paul Bosland, a regents professor at New Mexico State University, recalls taking a bite of the chilli pepper and feeling like he was breathing fire. He gulped down a soda, thinking, ”That chilli has got to be some kind of record.” [Link]

Before the blogosphere goes collectively gaga over Shilpa Shetty’s style and grace, I just want to show you one picture [Thanks Saheli!]

To get the full impact of the outfit, you really do have to click on it and go to the larger version.

I have no idea where to begin … never mind, when you’re a Bollywood star, you make your own rules.

And if you’re going to make a statement of personal style, why not shoot the moon?

p.s. what is it with Shetty and animal prints? Or is that too catty a question to ask?

I took this photo on January 3rd, in the train station in Granada, the day after the entire town celebrated the anniversary of the Reconquista in 1492. [It’s the one day of the year that anybody can ring the bells in the fortress portion of the Alhambra.] Needless to say, I was highly amused. It’s like the song “Do they know it’s Christmas” which was, at the time, the UKs best selling single ever. It assumes that a Sadhu and a Muslim Tuareg celebrate Christmas just because people in the west do. It’s Christmas-centrism!

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently those words appeared at the bottom of a poster hanging on the wall of Royal Nepal Airlines’ offices in Delhi. The poster featured this lovely picture:

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently neither has Royal Nepal Airlines.

It took a sharp-eyed tourist from Peru to notice the obvious error and tattle to his countryman before the world was made aware of this sinister plot. To that tourist I can only say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

“The airline … offered apologies to Peru for using the picture of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary on a poster to promote their country and assured that the lamentable error has been corrected,” the statement said.

“As a consequence, the Nepalese airline fired an employee in the rank of a manager … It is concluded that it was an isolated error,” it added. [Link]

I wish this news would have broken a week later! I’ve hiked to Machu Picchu and will be in Delhi next Saturday en route to Kathmandu, Nepal. What a coup it would have been to pose in front of this poster for the entertainment of SM readers (although perhaps “coup” is the wrong word in this context). I’m wondering if I can take a lot of pictures in Nepal and use them in a poster encouraging tourism in North Dakota where SM’s headquarters are based. By the way, do we have any Nepali readers in the house? Should we even consider a meet-up?

I know this picture is a few days late but I could only get to it now. The question is will Hindu Nationalists see this as an assault against Hinduism or only an assault against fashion? Santa Claus comes to deliver gifts. Sadhu Claus comes asking for them.

If he came down my chimney I’d freak. Be honest. You would too.

The mission came my way via Abhi over a month ago, a reader had contacted our comment line with the following:

The high-end cosmetics company NARS has a new lipstick shade called Hindu…I wonder how a shade called Jew or Protestant would fare in the public eye? Is the idea that all Hindus have temptingly red lips? To be fair, there are also shades called Afghan Red and Gipsy. What do you think?

Said Abhi, “This one is ALL you.” Said me, “HELL YES!” I love Nars. If I’m not wearing Chanel makeup, I’m glowing because of the most notoriously named blush of all time. One problem— “Hindu” proved more elusive than I imagined. It was sold-out all over town. The intrigue grew; if it was so desired, I had to keep it under surveillance for the sake of the Mutiny. I finally located a tester of it at Blue Mercury Apothecary (apothecary!) and made my way to my prey.

Part of Nars’ Holiday ‘06 collection, “Hindu” had sold so well, it would take a month for me to procure one for the Mutiny. “Nars just didn’t make enough,” my source said, as they prepared the tester for germ-phobic me. I loathe such situations, because I prefer to examine communal cosmetics on the back of my hand. The allegedly-disinfected lipstick was headed right for me. I started to panic, but then I remembered that every Mutiny requires pain and sacrifice.

When she was done with me, I was wearing a very brown lipstick with excellent texture, which reminded of a sheer version of Chanel’s “Very Vamp”. I expected redder tones, not the muted brown which I was studying. I also thought there would be more glitter, since it’s very visible in the tube. The staff praised the end result; I was less convinced by the “Hindu” effect. Maybe for the office, but it was too dull for my scenery-chewing tastes. I was thrilled that it looked so good on South Asian skin, though.

“Would you like to be put on the waiting list?”

I hesitated; normally I would have politely declined, but Abhi had tasked me with more than just scouting “Hindu” out:

My biggest question is can a nice Christian girl such as yourself be labeled a “heathen” if they apply this? If you kiss a nice Mallu boy with “Hindu” lipstick on, what would happen!

In the name of the Mutiny, I gladly put myself on the line to complete this mission; alas, I did not find a suitable partner for such a life-or-death covert operation. Abhi, forgive me.

Senate candidate Jim Webb (D-Va), surrounded by macacas, makes a dosa.

SM reader Anup tips us off to the fact that Jim Webb (who is of course running against George Allen in Virginia) tried his hand at dosa-making in an obvious move to appeal to the macaca voting bloc.

In Richmond, Webb was also subdued, campaigning with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a fellow Democrat, at the Festival of India.

Webb sipped drinks indigenous to India and posed for photos, stopping at one booth to help pour the batter to make a masala dosa, a spicy South Indian crepe.

“Jim just made the best dosa anybody has ever made,” Kaine told hundreds of festival visitors. Webb did not address the crowd.

Webb’s presence left the festival co-chairman, Ranjit Sen, to reflect on remarks Allen had made in August that belittled a 20-year-old Webb volunteer of Indian descent at an Allen campaign stop. [Link]

But the question is did he have have a bowl of sambar on the side? Failure to have sambar with his dosa may cost him many desi votes. It is the same way that John Kerry lost a bunch of Pennsylvania voters when he stupidly ordered Swiss cheese on his Philly cheesesteak. If I ever run for office I will never be seen eating dosas. If word got out that I don’t like sambar and that I spread equal parts ketchup, sour cream, and green chutney on my dosa I’d be finished.

Each Friday NPR’s Morning Edition features a StoryCorp Project interview. You may recall that I had previously blogged about an interview between a Sri Lankan American husband and wife. This morning’s interview featured a really cute story (only ~1 minute long) from a Sri Lankan woman who came to the United States in 1969. I recommend that you guys stop reading this post right now and listen to this clip first. For those of you too lazy to follow my recommendation I will give you the lead in below:

Two friends interview each other in Pittsburgh

When Juliet Jegasothy came to the United States from Sri Lanka, she had already heard many stories about what life was like in America.

“We came to America in 1969, we were just newly married, and we came to Brooklyn, New York.” Jegasothy recently told her friend Sheena Jacob.

“I was so terrified to even open the door, because I had heard all these horror stories about crooks, and gangsters, and guns, in New York.”

Jegasothy soon encountered an American tradition that she was not prepared for… [Link]

I realize that I am jumping the gun and that Halloween isn’t until next Tuesday. However, most of you have probably been invited to some Halloween party this weekend (unlike some grad student I know who will be writing alone in his apartment dressed up like a blogger) and if you are a procrastinating slacker like me you could really use some costume advice STAT! After the jump I will provide you with some last minute ideas.

WARNING There is some scary sh*t past this point.

This morning, while I was tying my turban, I was thinking about All Mixed Up’s postcard from a few weeks back. In particular, I was trying to figure out why I didn’t understand the basic conundrum that people were wrestling with… that is, why I couldn’t imagine that being white would make me like everybody else.

Let me explain with a Gedankenexperiment. Imagine that I, as a teenager, had awoken one morning to find that myself a person of pallor. I was now pink rather than brown. Who would I be?

I would like to think that I would be the guy on the left. To be honest, I was never as cool as he was. I never dressed like a Nihang, nor did I travel around India at that age. Still, I’d like to think that’s who my white doppleganger in an alternate universe would have been, even if I had been dorkier.

Now imagine that a decade later, the machine that had transformed me reversed polarity, flooding me with extra melanin. Perhaps this is my melanin plus a decade of interest. Or perhaps it is sucked from somewhere else - from some other poor soul who wakes up paler than when they slept. It doesn’t matter.

Now, all of a sudden, I’m not white but black. In this case, I’d like to think that I would be like Sri Chand Singh on the right. Sri Chand is not a convert - he (and his twin brother) have been Sikhs their whole lives. Again, I doubt I’d ever be as cool as either of them [Look at the photo of Laxmi Chand beating the Nagara drum below the fold for a photo of a supercool Sikh], but I hope I would try.

Ranjit Bhatnagar of moonmilk.com just got a solo photography exhibit at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue subway station, showcasing his art in 8 4’x6’ lightboxes.

What makes this exhibit extra cool is how it came about:

The MTA’s curator found my photos by searching Flickr and we used Flickr to choose and narrow down the photos for the exhibit. [Link]

I now have a new goal in my pseudo-internet-life -- to somehow get my picture into the new addictive blog, Brown People. What is this "Brown People Blog"? Why it is almost the best form of wasting a Friday work day ever (second only to creating 55Friday Fictions.)

random photos of brown people.

(thats it. that's the concept.)

How you use it up to you. . .as a reminder that different brown people are doing their thing, use it as detox from reading 17 magazine, use it to find ideas for a haircut, to remind yourself you're not an invisible freak, to procrastinate on your postcolonial studies paper...whatever you please.)(this is of course not one of those stupid rating things though.). [link]

The bloggers on this site are anonymously fabulous in their selections of brownz ranging from the SM (in)famous Kal and Parminder all the way to the non-famous brown faces on flickr. Our very own ANNA has even made an appearance to the site. I liken this site much to a desi version of the high school yearbook -- you never quite know how to get your picture in the yearbook, but you know it's significant to your popularity when your photo is in it.

Come on, it's a Friday. Check out the site. They source all of the pictures so it has a real potential to suck you into hours of brownz web surfing. To quote Ismat, how are you going to use this site?

When I was last in India, around new years, I took a lot of photos of signs (Posts: 1, 2, 3) Of all the ones I saw, however, these two were my favorites. I spotted them at a Reliance truck stop / Dhaba on a toll road in Gujarat, late at night.

The first sign clearly indicates a ladies room, but in a very desi way. This is what I’d always hoped for from modern India; not a straight forward cloning of the west, but instead a bollystyle mashup, a “blend of eastern and western” tackyness. Yes, I know that not all Indian women wear saris, I’m Punjabi. But it’s still more apposite than a woman in a dress, and for Gujarat, it’s dead on many Gujarati women wear saris, albeit in the local style.

The second one I love because it takes the mickey out of the western name for the facilities, the “bathroom”. You know, if you’re doing #2 in a tub, I really don’t want to know about it. Toilets are for p*ssing and sh*tting in, bathrooms are for bathing in. And better still, this icon doesn’t show a western style shower (which many truck drivers may never have used) but instead an Indian style bath (or a very confused man using a lota wrongly ). It’s a shame these signs aren’t available for import here …

Oh yes, in case you were curious, the men’s room was spotless (unlike this: 1, 2) My nostalgia for traditional dhabas only goes so far …

I don’t monitor it regularly, but when I do, PostSecret inevitably offers at least one confession which gives me chills; on September 30, a few of you shivered, too.

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

Dear Nidhi M.,

Thank you very much for sending Sepia Mutiny a story idea via our tipline three hours ago. It was so kind of you to think of us as you went about your day.

Since you have demonstrated your generosity already, I feel emboldened enough to wonder if you’d be willing to go a bit further in showing your devotion to this mutinous cause. Do you bleed Sepia? If so, would you graciously consider donating one of your eyes to me? I lost mine when I clawed them out, after watching the link you helpfully enclosed with the following succinct statement:

Nike teaming up with 24 hour fitness mixing and mucking up classical indian dances with bollywood and strange robotic aerobic moves.

Mein Gott, that’s almost poetic. You were right. And now, I am in so much pain because of it. I’d gouge away at the intern’s face, but she took one look at me and ran screaming to Rajni the lemur’s room. At least she didn’t have to watch Jamie King train three mostly wooden dancers in his “Rockstar workout” of “far-East funk”. Nor did she have to hear his priceless wisdom, which I feel I must contradict fervently after watching this entire fiasco:

There are no rules. If you’re feeling the music, you can’t go wrong.

TRUST me. You can indeed go wrong. Especially when you employ that uber-abused cliche which has appeared on browndating dot com so many times, my friends have turned it in to part of a drinking game (“OMG, he prefaced it with ‘good blend of’…DOUBLE SHOT!”).

Of course, I am referring to that bi-cultural, directional claptrap which automatically disqualified all otherwise-promising candidates from suitable debauchery; Mr. King’s spin on it didn’t prevent the gagging, not after what I saw. “East meets West on the dance floor”? Come to any random desi party and you can abuse “South” as well, i.e. “when East meets West on the dance floor, two rabidly horny underage hormones often move South in order to simulate an act which MummyPapa would spank them unconscious for, for even pondering”. Anyway. When this man who has choreographed Madge exhorts us to “just get out there and show your Bollywood style!”, I don’t think he realizes what fresh hell he is inviting the world to suffer through by doing so.

Chick Pea? Are you out there? Have you done your surgical rotation yet??? That faint, scratchy squawking you hear is Abhi, frantically paging you to the bunker’s painfully rustic OR. Go, scrub your hands already! My anesthesiologist Dr. Walker is already prepping me for surgery. As for the rest of you, just know this and remember it well— when you dance like that, you make the baby Jesus cry. Worse than that, you also piss off our Desidancer.

Blindly yours,

A N N A

:+:

(more pictures after the jump, click to enlarge them…if you dare)

Two things are going to happen here that you never imagined you would see coming from me. One has already happened. Yes, I did in fact quote Crazytown in the title of this post. The second? I am writing a post about Fashion! Let me transport you fabulous readers to Fashion Week in London. In particular, I want to focus your attention on the hottest Indian designer in town: Manish Arora. Here is a snippet (with pictures) from last year’s Fashion Week:

As the special guest of the British Fashion Council, Delhi-based designer Manish Arora was undoubtedly under some pressure to make his mark on London Fashion Week. Although on of India’s best loved designers - his shows are nigh impossible to squeeze into - over here he’s the new boy and performing to an audience which is undoubtedly harder to please.

He seemed to pull it off. Although more costume than fashion, he gave us a spectacle that won’t be easy to forget. Models, who looked like they’d spent too much time at the village fete face-painting stall, came out in frou frou skirts buoyed by layers of coloured netting. Indian motifs and imagers covered the surface of bright fabrics, vying for position with gold embroidery, tassles and metallic discs. [Link]

So how would Manish top the buzz he created last year? How would he make his gorgeous models memorable to all the buyers? One word. Butterflies.

Damn girl. Your butt-is-err-fly!

There are a great many serious issues I want to write about this week but my time is scarce and I will leave it to the other bloggers to tackle them. Instead, I offer you terrific news out of New York from this past weekend. As most of you probably heard, Indian tennis player Leander Paes and his doubles partner Martin Damm (a Czech) won the U.S. Open Tournament.

Leander Paes won his first Men’s doubles title at a grand slam in five years by wresting the US Open crown with Martin Damm of the Czech Republic here on Saturday.

Paes and Damm scored a shock 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 6-3 victory over second seeds Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden and Max Mirnyi of Belarus in the final at the Flushing Meadows. Paes, 33, last registered a grand slam triumph in 2001 at the French Open with Mahesh Bhupathi, with whom he also won the French Open and the Wimbledon in 1999.

This is also Damm’s first ever major title. Paes has also won three mixed doubles titles in grand slams. Paes and Damm pocketed $400,000 as winner’s prize money. The lengthy opening set was a power struggle that stayed on serve to force a tiebreak. [Link]

Paes’ previous Grand Slam victory came at Wimbledon in 2003 where he won the mixed doubles championship partnering with tennis goddess Martina Navratilova. As you can see from the pictures below, when you got love for your teammate(s) you are nearly impossible to beat. Congrats to Paes and Damm!

“I can’t quit you.”

While looking through some press photographs I have come to learn of a Hindu diety of whom I was previously unaware. Behold Biswakarma, the Hindu god of architecture and machinery:

Biswakarma, or Vishkarma, was the architect of Dwarka, the city that was built for Lord Krishna. Today he is commemorated all over India, and particularly in the industrial cities, by those who work with tools and factory machinery. [Link]

He seems to be somewhat of an equivalent to the Roman God Vulcan (or the Greek God Hephaestus).

What caught my attention however was the freaky-ass picture you see below. It is of an artist getting things ready for the Biswakarma Puja on September 17th. I’ve actually had a few nightmares that looked something like this.

I would HATE to be in this room when they turn off the lights

People worship the implements with which they earn their daily bread and artisans clean their tools and repaint old machines. Shop floors and factories are decorated for the occasion, loud speakers blare out music and the image of Biswakarma and his faithful elephant can be seen everywhere.

Biswakarma is the divine architect of the whole universe, regarded as the supreme worker and the personification of the creative power that holds heaven and earth together. He has four hands, carrying a water-pot, a book, a noose and craftsman’s tools. All the divine weapons such as chariots that are traditionally possessed by the gods are his creation. [Link]

Yes, you guessed it. As professional bloggers we will be worshiping our computers and will have our monkeys re-paint the bunker on September 17th.

For the past week I have been absent from this website while on an anthropological excursion for SM (like anyone but my monkey assistants even noticed). Sometimes a blogger just needs to get out of their bunker and talk to the real people. The question I was seeking an answer to was a profound one. Do those states…you know, the ones up there near the Canadian border…do they even have any desis that live there? For my excursion I needed a field assistant. My brother (we will call him P to protect his real identity) has lived in Idaho for the past two years and served as a good travel companion.

From L.A. I flew to Portland, Oregon where I had a layover. While walking from one gate to the other I had my first desi sighting. It was a Sikh man with a long flowing beard and an unusually large turban who I spotted in the TSA security line. Upon closer inspection however, two things became clear. First, the man was white and not desi. Second, he was a TSA screener and not a passenger.

Four hours later (damn airline delays) I landed in Spokane, WA where I collected my possessions at baggage claim. I began to re-arrange some of my gear when a woman walked up to me holding a sign.

Woman: Excuse me but are you Mustafa?

Abhi: Heh. No, sorry.

Woman: I’m sorry but you are the only one that looked like he was…lost.

“Lost” of course was a very clever euphemism for “brown.” I didn’t mind though. The name “Mustafa” reminded me of a powerful figure with a glorious mane. For just a minute I forgot about my military short haircut and hummed a little Hakuna Matata as I waited on the curb for my brother to drive up.

Like peas in a pod.

The picture above (emailed to us as a tip) was snapped at the “Stop the U.S.-Israeli War” rally in San Francisco on August 12, 2006 (via Zombietime). It features a large mpuppet of Gandhi holding up a poster carrying perhaps his most famous quote. To the right is a large picture of Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. One of these men called for a long non-violent struggle against a military oppressor and a colonial economy, and the other calls for unguided rockets to be rained down upon the enemy and civilians. I keep hoping that at least some people at the rally may have been disgusted by this. I believe protesting the war of the past month is a very worthwhile activity but this kind of image just undermines the cause and negates the relevance of some of these protests.

A new coffee table book illustrates the architecture of, and the sculptures of deities within, temples across America. The Hindustan Times reports:

There are 53 Hindu temples in 33 American states, says a just published coffee table book that details the history, architecture, deities and other salient features reflecting the growing spread of Hinduism in this country.

Titled Bharat Rekha In America, the book by former Indian management consultant K. Panchapakesan, was released by Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, a member of the House of Representatives’ committee on international relations at the Capitol Hill.

Recalling his close personal ties with India and the role he played in the establishment of a Hindu Temple in South Carolina, Wilson lauded the efforts of the author to meet a long felt need of the Indian American Community. [Link]

Very kind of Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) for backing this effort. It is probably a great way to get a good part of the Hindu vote in the next election.

I’m a picture man myself, especially when it comes to coffee table books. As long as the pictures look good who cares about the rest, right? Here is a description of the book from their website:

In the USA anyone can follow any religion by choice. Very secular. So Hinduism found a place in the society many years ago. Did Hinduism arrive 40,000 years ago in the geographic region, which is currently USA? So says an interesting report. Mr.N.Ganesan, a known writer on the subject of History of Hinduism has referred to it in his article in a popular magazine of USA, backing it with data from Text Books of reputed Book Publishers. [Link]

Surely there are reputable Hindu scholars among our audience that can comment on these claims. All I know is that Columbus arrived in 1492.

The USA has Hindu Temples in almost all the States. The number of Temples ranges from one or two in a state to five or six in some others. There are many traditionally built Temples. The Sri Venkateshwara Temple in Pittsburgh is said to be one of the earliest traditionally built Temples in recent times. There are many other Temples built in similar South Indian Style. The Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, Maryland, the Sri Meenakshi Temple in Peerland, Texas, the Hindu Temple of Atlanta, the Sri Venkateswara Temple of Greater Chicago and the Mahavallabha Ganapati Temple, Flushing, to name a few. There are also Temples of North Indian style. The rest of the Temples are housed in independent buildings. Some of these Temples are being converted to traditional. Appearance with the construction of towers or gopurams. [Link]

As you could probably have guessed, there is no large temple in North Dakota where SM world headquarters is located.

Priced at US$ 49.95 and INR 2500/-, it has the initial print run of 1500 copies and expected to go unto 10,000. However, it will be sold at a discounted price especially at US $ 35 or INR Rs 1200/- during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. The publishers are targeting to sell about 10,000 copies in its very first year of publication. [Link]

I’m currently California dreaming, so I didn’t have time to write an anniversary post for Sunday (I always forget anniversaries, so this is true to life).

However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you, dear readers. No, quite the contrary. Even though it has been two whole years we’ve been together, everything I see still reminds me of you. For example, on Saturday I was on my way to Adolph Gasser’s in San Francisco when I encountered my very first Patelco credit union.

How could I help but stop and take a snap? When I saw it I could think of nothing more than how much I wanted to share it with you, to know what you thought of it, to bask in the way you smile at me when we encounter something new.

The next day, I was out for a stroll in downtown Palo Alto and saw a BMW 325ci with the vanity plates you had always threatened to get for my Subaru. It was as if you were right there with me, laughing at our little secret joke, teasing me. I almost started to lean down to say something when I realized that you weren’t there. But rest assured that not a moment has passed when I didn’t think of you and how very lucky I am. I don’t deserve you all, I really don’t.

…I can see Sophia’s thigh!






Brimful brings yet ANOTHER brown fugging to our attention! This time, the fuggee is Sophia Hyatt Hayat, whom I am not so familiar with…but like I said before, that’s irrelevant when it comes to a good fugging. It’s totally possible to fug someone you don’t know. Sometimes, it’s even better. Anonymous fugging, if you will. Ah, I’ll stop fugging with you.

Unlike the previously blogged fuggings, this time Jessica was on top of things:

One of my basic rules of thumb is that, whatever you wear, you should make sure that it a) fits and b) covers your bits.

Solid.

And I mean that in the most fundamental way: this is not a screed against halter tops or mini-skirts or even (for once) shorts. I just mean that a mantilla is not a gown, and no one really wants to see your panties.

Stop hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s goin’ down…all us South Asians look alike, yaar. Thus, like Matthew Sweet once crooned, “Baby, we’re the same.”

This dress does not look alluring, nor does it make our Sexy Indian Hottie look like a mysterious flamenco dancer, or even like a contender for a role in Zorro 3: Zeta-Jones Doesn’t Do Straight To Video. It makes her look like she forgot part of her outfit.

As my beloved Father would have barked at Ms. Hayat, “GET A PETTICOAT!”

Via our news tab, mutineer Rupa alerts us to this week’s SECOND sepia fugging on the popular (and brutal) Go Fug Yourself blog. While I don’t necessarily agree with Heather’s review of pretty Parminder, I think the girls at GFY are usually spot-on with their wit and crit.

Rupa’s tip was about Mindy Kaling, someone whom I will admit I don’t know much about because she’s on NBC’s lesser version of The Office, a show I have never been able to sit through for an entire episode. No matter. The genius of GFY is its focus on the outfit. I don’t need to be an Office-fan to grasp THAT. Or not grasp it, as is the case here…what is up with those boots?

From the knees up, she looks adorable, all set for a divine NBC-Universal booze cruise of clenched-teeth joy, where every toast to their wonderful fall schedule comes with paranoia from Jeff Zucker that people will figure out they’ve swapped the costly champagne and top-shelf liquor with well booze and sparkling cider.

But her shoes are pure “local theater revival of Xanadu.” They look like she stapled wallpaper scraps to her ankles.

They actually look like chausses to me, but vatewer. Like expert Fugger Heather, I dig everything else she’s got going on, too. Her skin is glow-y, little black dresses are always money and the coral-red beads look great on her. But the boots…oy.

A few days ago, Brimful sent us the other GFY-related news item about Parminder Nagra getting fugged. In a delightful bit of connectivity, if you search SM for Mindy Kaling, Brimful’s comment about her here is one of two results you’ll find. If you can spin some sort of conspiracy theory out of that and the fact that both fuggees are on NBC shows, bring it. ;)

On to Parminder, specifically what GFY had to say about HER threads, since Fugger Heather and I already agree on the following:

Parminder Nagra is gorgeous.

Word. Where’s the “but”?

Which is why I wish heartily that she hadn’t gone and upholstered herself…Her body looks tense, as if she’s uncomfortable or uneasy in this confusing crosshatched fabric-store nightmare. I suspect it’s because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition — you have to maintain constant vigilence when you’re dressed as something resembling a Comfy Chair, because you risk being dragged unexpectedly into their brand of comfortable torture. From there it’s a short slide down to poking some old woman with the soft cushions and wondering, “How did this become my life?”

Owie. I don’t think she looks UPHOLSTERED, but I might be a little biased; I love green, plaid and wrap-dresses, so put Parminder Nagra in all of the above and I’m rather content. I know, it’s not her best look but if this is what “fugly” means…

fug•ly (adj.)

frightfully ugly; of or pertaining to something beyond the boundaries of normal unattractiveness. Ex: “That ‘Kabbalists Do It Better’ trucker hat is fugly.”

…in that picture, she’s not fugly to me. :) Your thoughts?

I’ve been thinking for a while of starting a side blog where I put up an entry every day featuring another sign of the end times. This picture below isn’t quite Cats and Dogs mating but it is kind of cool (via Ashwin our News Tab). My sources in Lucknow tell me that the Rickshaw-wallahs are striking again and so the mouse had no other choice except to hitch a ride on slower moving transportation. Last we heard he was on his way to stay with his cousin in the countryside for a few days.

It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.

Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow…, a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.

So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this year’s monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year’s deluge killed some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone. Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster among the city’s roughly 17 million inhabitants.

In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer. [Link]

Giddy-up!

President Bush today held one of his extremely rare press conferences. Hey, lay off. If you were going to get asked a bunch of depressing questions about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea you wouldn’t want to be up in front of the press either. Later on in the evening he even went a step further and gave an interview to someone named Larry King. What is the occasion? It’s his 60th birthday of course! Birthday or not, if you were a hard-nosed reporter and had a deadline on your story, you’d go for the jugular…wouldn’t you? To avoid any uncomfortable questions Bush decided to have a photo-op with any of the White House correspondants who “happend” to share his July 6th birthday. Anyone? Yes good readers. You know where this is going already don’t you? Even the President knows that when you want to dodge tough questions it is time to go to Raghubir “The Foil” Goyal. “Coincidentally” July 6th is his birthday as well. Yeah right (tip via my Mom).

Bush celebrated his birthday with friends on Tuesday at a White House party on Independence Day and there weren’t supposed to be any festivities on Thursday. Still, the occasion was noted in a long day of meetings and public appearances, including a press conference with Harper.

The president received birthday greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin who talked with Bush on the phone Thursday morning about North Korea’s missile tests.

As Bush closed his news conference, a reporter in the audience, Raghubir Goyal, called out that it was his birthday, too. Bush invited him to the podium for a picture. The president asked if anyone else had a birthday and invited them to come up. Two others, reporter Richard Benedetto and State Department employee Todd Mizis joined the birthday celebration. [Link]

I think this is like when you pretend that it is your birthday so that you can get free cake at the restaurant.

See related posts: A wtf? moment at the Whitehouse press briefing, Goyal’s toils, One-Track Uncle, Scott McClellan feels the heat, Who let brown folks aboard Air Force One?

Filed under “signs of the Kali Yuga,” this next story comes to us from India where crowds are gathering to see a man who is sporting a skull for a hairstyle (via the News Tab):

I say we expose this villain for who he really is.

Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off.

Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy’s skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood.

“When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull,” Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy told Reuters Wednesday.

“Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to lack of blood supply to the affected area, which can happen in such extensive burn cases.”

The piece came off Sunday and hundreds of people and dozens of doctors now crowd around his bed, where he lies holding the bone. [Link]

Poor guy. It is bad enough that he got burned but to have people staring and pointing at your skull?? You can’t even put a cast on that thing. At least then you could hope to make friends when people asked to sign it.

Bandyopadhyay said the skull’s inner covering and the membrane which helps produce bone was miraculously unaffected, allowing fresh bone to grow…

“Doctors say a new skull covering has replaced the old one, but I am not letting go of this one,” he told Reuters.

He intends to keep his prized possession for life and not hand it over to the hospital when he leaves: “My skull has made me famous,” he says. [Link]

I spent the entire day yesterday at the Artwallah Festival in Los Angeles. Since many of you couldn’t be out here for the festival I thought I would do my part to relate the experience through some pictures that I took. I bought a new camera recently so forgive me for going overboard with the colors. :)

Micro Pixie soothes the crowd with her ambient sound.

Adnan does his thing while Micro Pixie does hers.

Today’s featured picture of mictyris longicarpus captured my attention for two reasons:

1) I am absolutely terrified of crustaceans and think eating them is just gross. They remind me of insects and one of you more useful (read: non-poli-sci major) types told me that the two groups of ickiness are actually related.

2) LOOK at those COLORS. Have you ever seen a prettier icky creature?

Here, learn something:

The light blue soldier crab (Mictyris longicarpus), inhabits beaches in the Indo-Pacific region. Soldier crabs filter sand or mud for microorganisms. They congregate during the low tide, and bury themselves in a corkscrew pattern during high tide, or whenever they are threatened.

I googled a bit more and found out that this thing (more formally known as the “soldier crab”) scurries about the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This proves my E.C.F.I.-Uncle-esque theory that everything South Asian is prettier. ;)

Via our News tab (thanks WGiiA) we get a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been if only India had fielded a World Cup Team…of Hindu ascetics. From the Associated Press:

Peep the footwork on the right. Put this guy in for Ronaldo.

If I worked for Addidas I would have my new ad campaign right here. Those feet just need some free shoes.

Despite the fact that it is now Father’s Day, only EIGHT of you have thus far contributed a picture to The Desi Dad Project. To those eight, I appreciate your contributions. Now, I understand that many of you don’t live anywhere near your parents’ basement and that it may be difficult to scan a picture of your father right away. I know that you will when you finally can. The rest of you though are just lazy wankers. Even those annoying Canadians who begged and pleaded to be allowed to upload their fathers were just talk. Perhaps just like George W. Bush’s struggle to promote his social security plan, I am now engaged in a struggle to promote a plan for which I have not yet created enough blog capital. If this is my third rail then so be it. It is a shame though. The eight pictures we have gotten so far are fantastic and the descriptions are even funny to read through (note: you need to open a Flickr account to see all eight).

After today The Desi Dad Project logo will come off of our sidebar but the project will remain open indefinitely. Maybe some of you will finally upload your dads. Lazy wankers.

Happy Father’s Day!

Here are a couple of desi-related Father’s Day links (1, 2).

From our News Tab we learn that one of India’s Top Guns was flying high over the skies of Pune earlier today. The 74-year-old Indian President APJ Kalam demonstrated why the chicks still jock him. Check out the pictures:

“I am so going to get in the pants of that hottie Kelly McGillis tonight.”

The past month or so has taught me that there are a lot of people out there that want to see this blog, and what it is all about, succeed. The emails we recently received offering technical support, as well as the offers of financial support we have gotten, have led me to conclude something similar to what one forward looking American politician once said. To paraphrase:

“We’ve earned capital in this blogosphere, blog capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.”

So with that I am announcing the creation of The Desi Dad Project.

For the past six months I have been mulling this idea over in my head. Photographs, even without any words or explanations, can convey a tremendous amount of information and history. Just look through these pictures of some of the first Indian Americans that came to the U.S in the early 20th century, most of them Sikh Punjabis. Recently, with the immigration debate in this country raging on, we have discussed the signifigance of the 1965 Immigration Act and how many of our fathers immigrated to the U.S. as a result of this act. Eventually this led to many of our births. :)

So this is what I am proposing, particularly in light of Father’s Day which is just two weeks away. I want you guys to upload a single picture of your dad. I want a photographic archive that captures the spirit of what it meant to be an immigrant in this country as part of the second wave. I want to capture that part of our collective history before it rots away in old albums in our basements, attics, and closets. This project won’t end with Father’s Day though but will keep accepting phtographs.

Here are the criteria you must meet before uploading a picture of your father into this new archive I am proposing:

• Your father immigrated to the United States between 1965 and 1985. If he arrived a couple of years before 1965 it is okay, but please do not upload pictures taken after 1985. I am looking for pictures that capture the experience of a SPECIFIC generation for the purposes of this project.
• Your father came from a country in South Asia (e.g. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.) or from ANY other country so long as his ethnicity can be traced back to a South Asian country.
• The picture you upload has to have been snapped in America.
• I strongly prefer that your father should be the only person visible in the photograph (feel free to crop the original picture). Pictures of individuals tell a different story than pictures of families. If you don’t have ANY pictures of you father alone then maybe you have one with the two of you together.

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

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

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

A cloud-darkened sunset carried the light in at a rich angle on the shore of the Arabian Sea. You can eyedropper some of my favorite hues right off these sheets, like blowing smoke.

Related posts: Night Watch, She sells seashells, Navi Mumbaikar

Singer-songwriter Shaheen Sheik, a friend from college, just signed with Times Music in Bombay and is on a promo tour here this week. (Watch her video.) Last night she sang on a TV show with a name that’s a paragon of ridiculously nontransitive branding, the Tuscan Verve Zoom Glam Awards. Other nights she slums with the plebeians. That’s usually when I get to see her.

A few of us went to see her first performance at a downtown Bombay club called Prive, which is around the corner from the Gateway of India. It’s decorated like a Southern strip club (black lacquer ceilings, gold bead curtains and lap dance seats), albeit one with floating roses. It was an odd venue for folk-pop ballads, but Shaheen sang four gorgeous melodies and encored with a cover of ‘In Your Eyes.’ Like most desis of a certain age, the duet guitarist provided by the label knew Pink Floyd, the Eagles and Led Zep but was baffled by Peter Gabriel.

There’s an interesting tradeoff when Indians in the diaspora come back to promote their wares (Apache Indian, Salman Rushdie…) On one hand, the potential market is huge with a built-in cultural interest. On the other, the middle class is limited in size, and you earn less per unit than in your home market after currency conversion.

Ballads at Prive

The snack ads on the train say ‘Chowpatty ka maza, ghar baithe’ (the pleasure of Chowpatty Beach, sitting at home). But nocturnal futon noshing isn’t quite the same as littoral manœuvres in the dark.

Human-powered Ferris wheel

Something wikkid this way comes

Meetups might just be the most delightfully unexpected dish which is made from all this flavorful brownness (which conveniently is contained in one savory packet). When liveblogging isn’t possible, sometimes the best substitute is looking at all the wacky, joyful pictures which inevitably get captured by the half-dozen or so cameras which tend to be around (80% of which are Canons— you read it here first).

Now that we’ve had several meetups in four Amreekan cities, I just know that there are potentially hundreds of pictures moldering away on your computers, pictures which could find a home in the Flickr group created just for the Mutiny. LA Mutineers, this is a gentle plea to share your pictures with the rest of us via this outlet. If you are already a member of Flickr, you may comment on the 100 photographs which are already up, all from last month’s fantastic DC meetup. If you’re not a member, you can still view all pictures by clicking here.

I PROMISE you’ll want to see what’s hiding after the jump. ;)

Juhu Beach is mobbed on Sundays:

Pao bhaji on the beach (in the U.S., this qualifies as a riot :) )

Kalakhatta walla

On Bombay’s Bandra seashore:

Autorickshaw driver slumbers by the Bandstand wall, which is covered in Gaudí-like cracked ceramic

No Romancing, Sitting in Obscene Postures or Kite Flying — well, there go my Bombay plans

Indian Americans have been trying for a long time to get the U.S. Postal Service to issue a Diwali stamp. The Aussies on the other hand have gone the extra kilometer. They have featured Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan on one of their postage stamps. See for yourself:

Saif Ali Khan who has danced his way to Australian history with his performance in Commonwealth Games. He became the first Indian to feature on a postage stamp published in Australia.

50-cent stamp has Saif among those released on March 27. It shows him on stage in a green kurti with other dancers. Rani Mukherjee and Aishwarya Rai had no such luck who were with Saif from Bollywood. [Link]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met [mostly desi] Muslim leaders in north-west England in a trip during which protesters expressed anger that an architect of the Iraq war was on their home turf… Dr Rice had been due to visit a mosque in Blackburn until its governors withdrew their invitation out of fear the occasion would be hijacked by demonstrators…

Cartoons lampooned the visit with The Independent carrying one showing a sign at a Blackburn Indian restaurant: “We regret we do not serve Rice.” [Link]

“In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals.

All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth.When they molted, millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born….”

I went to an amazing exhibit of sepia photographs earlier today at a “nomadic museum,” four stories high and made of cargo containers, on the Santa Monica pier. The exhibit was titled “Ashes and Snow,” and will be in Los Angeles through May:

Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, three 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary, unscripted interactions between humans and animals.

His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert had mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores and Borneo…

On my Yahoo start page this morning the picture below stared back at me:

An Indian girl holds a placard during a protest against President Bush in the southern Indian city of Bangalore March 1, 2006. REUTERS/Jagadeesh Nv

I had two thoughts. First, isn’t it just precious how an Indian kid would attach the honorific “uncle” to even a protest sign? I had to laugh out loud at that. Second, I felt conflicted. I don’t approve of children at protests. I feel that taking a child to certain types of protests is like giving a child a gun without teaching them proper gun safety. I believe it is more important to properly educate a child in all aspects of an issue and encourage them to investigate it on their own, rather than take them along to mindlessly protest something. I think it is VERY important to teach a child about the realities and injustices in the world and when to stand up for a principle, but I often see images in the media that hint at the fact that the children holding signs are mostly a form of propaganda. Out of curiosity I did a quick search for some other recent protest pictures featuring young children.

The Beeb is running some absolutely gorgeous photos of a major Jain festival which only comes around every 12 years. Jains from all over India and the diaspora gathered in Shravanabelagola, Karnataka for the Mahamastakabhisheka festival. They washed and anointed a 58-foot-high, 1,000-year-old statue of Bahubali with haldi, kumkum and rice flour.

[Bahubali] is considered to be the originator of the concept of ahimsa or non-violence by the Jains, the basic tenet of their religion… he was the first to have attained salvation…

One thousand and eight small metal vessels containing water are placed neatly in the courtyard below the gigantic sculpture, considered divine. At day break, a select group of priests, chanting hymns, arrange the pots in a traditional geometrical pattern. Devotees then lift these vessels and climb up the 600 stairs to the top of the enormous statue… The statue is bathed with unending quantities of milk, sugarcane juice, pastes of saffron, sandal wood, and therapeutic herbal lotions. Powders of coconut, turmeric, saffron, vermilion and sandal wood are then sprayed on the statue. Precious stones, gold, silver, petals and coins are offered in reverence. The spectacular finale to this 10-hour ceremony is a shower of flowers from a helicopter. [Link]

The digambara (nude) form of Bahubali represents the complete victory over earthly desires… [Link]

Perhaps it was to prevent these charismatic scenes of religious ecstasy that the Puritans to the west took a rocket launcher to the Bamiyan Buddhas.

As I tried to catch some shut-eye at Chicago O’Hare yesterday, I kept hearing Indian music playing in the background and finally tracked down the source. This very slick ad for Indian tourism is running endlessly on CNN’s airport network. It’s part of the Incredible !ndia campaign, which used to be Incredibly L^me.

I agree with this critique:

Not bad but they need to do a few more urban-themed things… they all seem to focus on rural women spinning around with pots on their heads… There’s nothing wrong with pushing our history (indeed it is a big tourist draw), but by dropping in some stuff from modern India we can really change people’s perceptions. Remember, this is a bit like what Japan did with its Shinkanshens… India must be marketed as a nation where futurism runs alongside tradition. [Link]

The Turkey Welcomes You campaign shows off a modern subway system (watch clip), though it uses a lot of cheesy, Daler Mehndi-esque, gratuitous greenscreen.

Sudarshan Patnaik, an Indian artist who notably recreated the Taj as an “ultimate sand castle”, is cocky about his next endeavor (via the BBC):

(Patnaik) has built a huge sand sculpture of a rooster on a beach in Puri city, a resort in Orissa state, to create awareness of bird flu…

It took him five hours and eight tons of sand to create the sand rooster.

As Abhi already posted, the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus was discovered in Maharashtra a few days ago. I’m curious as to how well this sandy approach will actually work:

“This sand sculpture is basically to create awareness about bird flu because a lot of people don’t even know about this disease. And a beach is a place where a lot of domestic and international tourists come,” Mr Patnaik told the Reuters news agency.

Patnaik, who made a similar artistic statement after the tsunami, isn’t stopping with just a rooster— hens and eggs are planned, as well.

I’m really busy today but I still want to put a topic out there that is worth discussing. This means that I’m going to have to resort to some lazy blogging. Please forgive my complacence. Every blogger knows that a good picture is worth a thousand words and can bail you out from time to time:

A good poster for vegetarianism

A veterinarian doctor puts chickens into a pit for burial at Navapur, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, Monday, Feb. 20, 2006. Farmers burned their dead chickens and health officials went door-to-door Monday in western India for signs of people infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus as a massive poultry slaughtering operation entered its second day. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)… [Link]

The slaughter seems pretty bad already and may get a lot worse:

The bird flu is taking grip of the world slowly and steadily. Because of massive population density in India and to some extent china/South East Asia, these countries may plunge into a deep deflationery depression cycle. According to some experts, in India, people and poultry live close to each other. In the country side most families keep poultry for eggs. With a serious break out of bird flue, India can lose 18% of its population within the first year. If the outbreak is not controlled, 38% of the population can be affected.

According to media reports, a poultry farmer has died of suspected bird flu in western India, where the country’s first outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus has been confirmed. [Link]

Dhaavak and AB tell us that Tamil script is found not just on Indian and Sri Lankan banknotes, but also on those of Singapore and Mauritius:

Anyone know whether other South Asian languages are found on banknotes outside the subcontinent? I would have guessed Trinidad (40% desi), Guyana (44%) and Fiji (38%), but not so.

Trinidad: According to the 1990 census, Indo-Trinidadians make up 40.3% of the population, Afro-Trinidadians 39.5%, Mixed-race people 18.4%, Whites 0.6% and Chinese and others 1.2%. [Link]

Guyana: … the three largest groups are the Indians or Indo-Guyanese (43.5% in 2002) who have remained predominantly rural, the Africans or Afro-Guyanese (30.2%) who constitute the majority urban population, and those of mixed origin (16.7%). [Link]

Fiji: The population of Fiji is mostly made up of native Fijians, a people of mixed Polynesian and Melanesian ancestory (54.3%), and Indo-Fijians (38.1%), descendants of Indian contract labourers brought to the islands by the British in the 19th century… A 1990 constitution guaranteed ethnic Fijian control of Fiji, but led to heavy Indian emigration; the population loss resulted in economic difficulties, but ensured that Melanesians became the majority. [Link]

Guyanese notes carry the signature of Bharrat Jagdeo, former finance minister and current president:

Bharrat Jagdeo (born January 23, 1964) is the socialist president of Guyana (since August 11, 1999). He had previously been a member of Janet Jagan’s cabinet, and became president after Jagan resigned for health reasons. He is the youngest head of state of the Caricom countries…

After obtaining a Master’s in Economics in Moscow in 1990, Jagdeo returned to Guyana and worked as an Economist… In March 2001, Bharrat Jagdeo won a second term in elections that underscored Guyana’s bitter racial tensions. The reelection of Jagdeo, a member of the Indo-Guyanese majority, caused rioting among the minority Afro-Guyanese, who claimed widespread election fraud. [Link]

Yesterday was Thai Pusam - the most important festival for the Indian community in Malaysia. The festival is celebrated in honor of the Hindu God Karthikeya - the younger son of Shiva and falls around the full moon day in the Tamil month of Thai. There is some dispute about what Thai Pusam actually commemorates - several versions exist, but the most popular one is that it is the birthday of Karthikeya.

Thai Pusam is a giant carnival - an long stretch of road leading to the local Karthikeya temple is cordoned off, and a large number of people - wearing equally large quantities of jewellery - congregate for a few hours of fun tinted with devotion. In Penang, in spite of the constant drizzle, this year's celebration was apparently one of the best attended - at least a hundred thousand people showed up. The street leading to the Waterfall Temple was lined with makeshift "water tents" - most sponsored by multinationals - that provided colorful liquids for free to anyone that showed up.

Among the visitors that passed on the refreshments were the Western tourists armed with Sony Handycams and increasingly incredulous expressions - because Thaipusam has another side to it. Belief has it that Karthikeya would grant the wishes of people who visit His temple on Thaipusam bearing burdens (called Kavadis) and over the years people have interpreted the belief as meaning that the more pain you inflict on yourself - increasing the burden - the more the odds are of your wish being granted.

At its simplest [the kavadi] may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common. The most spectacular practice is the vel kavadi, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back. Fire walking and flagellation may also be practiced. It is claimed that devotees are able to enter a trance, feel no pain, do not bleed from their wounds and have no scars left behind. However, some of the more extreme masochistic practices have been criticized as dangerous and contrary to the spirit and intention of Hinduism.

The largest Thaipusam celebrations take place in Malaysia and Singapore. The temple at the Batu Caves, near Kuala Lumpur, often attracts over one million devotees and tens of thousands of tourists. The procession to the caves starts at the MahaMariamman Temple in the heart of the city and proceeds for 15 kilometers to the caves, an 8-hour journey culminating in a flight of 272 steps to the top. In Malaysia, although rare, scenes of people from different ethnic groups and faiths bearing "kavadi" can also be seen. Interestingly, Thaipusam is also increasingly being celebrated by the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. [Link]

An elaborate refreshment tent; there must've been several hundreds of these along the street.

I am a very patient man. Still, even I sometimes get tired of explaining to people who I am, what I am, where I come from, and what I am not. I found this on flickr, and think it would be perfect for those days when I just don’t want to go through the song and dance. It would make a great t-shirt:

I’m going to let you in on a terrible vice of mine. It’s a habit that just may turn me into a pauper: photo surfing. Give me pretty women, aerial photography or Friendster, and I can blow hours just clicking through.

If you too are gluttinous in your vision, stay away from the photos of mutineer Preston Merchant. A documentary photog, Merchant apparently goes to every desi event and destination you’ve ever wanted to see:

• Artwallah
• Kiran Desai reading
• Vikram Seth reading
• SAJA convention
• Trinidad
• Guyana
• Miss India Georgia
• Desilicious party
• Azim Premji ringing the NYSE closing bell

Some of the photos that caught my eye:

• Hanuman statue in Trinidad
• Kite flying in Guyana
• Vanita Gupta
• Shaheen Sheik
• Comedian Vidur Kapoor hanging out with Rekha

Look, buddy, I’ve got Desai photos too… from, uh, outside the Rubin Museum (it was sold out ).

Here at SM headquarters we have quite an intricate system for vetting which stories make it to our website. Most of our stories are unearthed by the army of ex test-monkeys (retired from military, space, and medical research) that we house in our basement. They are the ones who scour the internet all day and feed important stories to our bloggers, while we spend most of our time at our full-time jobs. We also have the tipline, by which dedicated readers send in tips. Later, in our conference room, we ask ourselves three main questions about a prospective post:

1. Can I do this story justice/am I knowledgeable and interested enough to write about it without sounding ignorant?
2. Does the story have an angle highlighting South Asians?
3. Does the story have an angle of interest to North Americans?

The reason you haven’t seen us post on this topic before is because not all of us were convinced that we could answer yes to all three questions. After attending the SAAN Conference this past weekend (which will be summarized in my next post), I have become convinced that we have missed the relevance this issue has to our community, and that the answer to all three questions is yes. I am speaking of course of the controversy surrounding a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb as his turban.

Arab foreign ministers have condemned the Danish government for failing to act against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
At the Arab League conference in Cairo, they said they were “surprised and discontented at the response”.

Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, in one of which he appeared to have a bomb in his turban. [Link]

I see great irony in this situation that doesn’t seem to have registered in the press (as far as I know). Muslims around the world are protesting this cartoon (often violently) because it is forbidden in Islam to depict the Prophet, especially in such a vulgar manner as this. Muhammad, in his boundless wisdom, wanted to make sure that his image would never be used or treated as an idol, and that men would never worship him as one. In Christianity for example, many most sects now worship Christ as God, instead of seeing him as only a mortal prophet. It was the message of Islam, and not Muhammad the man, that was to better the world. By violently protesting this cartoon, it could be argued that Muslims around the world are acting as if an idol has been desecrated. Using violence to protest this “desecration” legitimizes that which the Prophet cautioned against in the first place. He has become an idol to be defended and avenged in the eyes of many.

Riffing off of Siddhartha’s post, here’s a photo of the most prominent mixed Black-Brown American family that I know of:

The auntie in the center might have been America’s first desi First Lady!

Can you guess who this is? Answer after the fold.

Muhammad Ali and Shabana Azmi

Honorees Ali, Azmi, Michael Douglas, Gilberto Gil

… veteran actress Shabana Azmi has been honoured by the World Economic forum… at Davos in Switzerland. The Bollywood actor was honoured with the prestigious Crystal Award… alongside Hollywood actor Michael Douglas. The honour places Shabana in the league of… Paulo Coelho, Peter Gabriel, Richard Gere and Nikita Mikhalkov, who have won the award in previous years. [Link]

See more photos.

Related post: Browns take over Davos

This is wicked cool [via Sandalwood Swara]. I wonder how one goes about requesting this at a pre-wedding mendhi party with all your female realtives around. I’m sure the groom will dig it.

Kama Sutra Mendhi (click for larger picture)

My dad forwarded me the picture below. It is of a mural that serves as the centerpiece at the “Dharma Sansad,” a two day meeting at a Swaminarayan Temple at Vadtaal town near Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It is a meeting of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the ultra-conservative Hindu Nationalist group. Divine justice??

Durga takes care of Musharaaf and Shiva takes care of Osama Bin Laden

The Imagineers at Disney World in Florida have erected a mandir to the abominable snowman next to their new Himalayan-themed roller coaster. Expedition Everest opens in spring (via Boing Boing):

Yeti another mandir

The artificial mountain is not a reproduction of Mount Everest; it is the fictional “forbidden mountain” guarded by the yeti… One of the highlights of the attraction is an encounter with an enormous audio-animatronic yeti… Although moderate by contemporary roller-coaster standards, Expedition Everest is unique for having its trains travel forward and backward as a result of the yeti’s interference…

Riders approach the attraction through the remote village of Serka Zong in the fictional kingdom of Anandapur, which is located in the foothills of the Himalayas. Several village buildings that had been used by the Royal Anandapur Tea Company have been repurposed… the legend of the yeti is communicated vividly through a mandir… and a makeshift museum that documents yeti sightings, the yeti’s significance in Himalayan cultures and a so-called “lost” expedition that ran afoul of the yeti many years before… [Link]

Disney is taking over Times Square immediately after Valentine’s Day:

Disney plans to transform the exteriors of the W Hotel and the adjacent Argent building at Broadway and 47th Street into a gigantic backdrop of Mount Everest. An aerial acrobatic troupe will perform there Feb. 15 and 16 on a stage 57 stories high, rappelling down the mountain and coming face to face with a Himalayan yeti — the legendary abominable snowman. [Link]

I’ve never felt entirely at ease in simulacrum cities like Orlando and Vegas, miniature Matrices. There’s something odd about Imagineers daubing tilaks onto idols of yeti which look like ‘roid-crazed Hanumans, leaving offerings of plastic fruit and hanging a poster of Krishna stealing butter. Disney movies like Aladdin and Pocahontas often mince cultures into purposely inaccurate baby pap which plays to stereotype.

(And in the other direction of mashup done badly, I can’t stomach the weak-ass rap in Bollyflicks. French and Spanish rap has coalesced as the language of the barrios, but Little B rapping is as silly as Nic Cage going gangsta.)

But let’s not be yenta about yeti. At first glance, the props around this roller coaster look pretty cute. I love the hand-painted signs.

BREAKING NEWS (well, sort of) via PEREZ HILTON (and tipster Simran):

Casually dressed erstwhile pop superstar Britney Spears attended an event at a Malibu mandir yesterday, Feder-spawn never out of her arms. More pictures of her doing so are available here.

At least this is one occasion where it was appropriate and not disgusting for Brit-Brit to be shoe-free.

Seriously though, motherhood agrees with her— and so does going to mandir. While I have NEVER been a fan and I am gloating that she’s not wearing her ring (DUMP HIM! You still have a chance! Turn your future “Behind the Music” ep around NOW!), I sincerely hope she got something out of her trip to temple.

Anyone have any idea why she was there? After some lazy googling, I haven’t discovered further details so I leave it to you, Mutineers. Kindly call your religious cousins in or near Malibu and beg them for deets, thanks. ;)

Fresh from the little red phone which rings whenever I get a tip:

This is probably the stupidest ‘tip’ I’ve ever sent to a blog, but…If you look at the cover of Gwen Stefani’s latest album, and sort of squint your eyes, doesn’t it look just like a picture of Ganesha’s head? Am I nuts, or do others see this too?

Hmmm. How many other blogs you tippin’? How long has THAT been going on? ;) Anyway, I’ve squinted enough that I now need creme de la mer eye balm, but I still don’t see it. Don’t be surprised though— I could NEVER see the “hidden” pictures in those magic-eye-annoying posters, either.

And the rest of you lot? Is our “anon” nuts or do you see the face of a beloved deity, too?

If only you knew what goes on behind the scenes here in North Dakota— the GMail arrives constantly and furiously, let me promise you that. No, it’s not easy to foment a mutiny, but we try our damnedest.

Without going in to too much detail, since I love you all too much for such carnage (it involves someone exhorting others to give his caruthu kundi an ooma), I’ll just let you know that I ended up at a verrry interesting website, which scanned a picture I uploaded before telling me which celebrity in its database I resembled. Mutineers, I present to you a most inapposite result:

See whom YOU don’t look like by going to MyHeritage.com y’self.

In each of these locations, there was a weird juxtaposition of things sited. In the first and second locations, a gym was right along side some form of educational institute, in the third the municipal gym was between a gurudwara on the left and a mandir on the right. Incidentally, the first and third places were closed (I tried to join while I was here … start the new year right and work off all the gulab jamun I’ve been eating). The third place, the municipal gym, saw all of its equipment break from overuse so the city just closed it down. It was a shame, but this is the risk inherent in overly subsidizing a service.

I am in India right now, “helping” my baby sister with her preparations for her impending nuptuals. This is what a bridal show looks like, Indian style :

Does this lehnga make my hips look large?

[Excuse the photoblogging - it’s hard to get the peace and quiet necessary to string two words together around here and the DSL is unreliable to boot.]

UPDATE: The photo above was taken at Frontier (sic) Bazar in Karol Bagh, Delhi. My sister bought none of the lehngas above, they were being shown to somebody else (and most Sikh weddings are done in Salvaar Kameez suits, which is what she bought). She did, however, buy her suit material at Frontier, which she heartily endorses, after having done the tour of most of the South-Ex boutiques (selection is small, and unless you want what is in fashion at that moment you’re out of luck).

Where everything I see reminds me of you, our loyal readers, and the rest of the mutineers:

(Look at the doorknob)

The New York Times today examines Playboy’s designs on India in greater detail. In order to penetrate the Indian market they must tread carefully. There definitely isn’t going to be any kissing on the first date but I’m sure the end goal will remain the same.

…there is another story behind Playboy’s discovery of India. The magazine once saw itself as America’s gateway to a sexual revolution. Now, with that revolution won and its societal impact fading, Playboy has a chance to renew itself as a magazine of high living in a country that celebrated sex in antiquity, then grew prudish, and is now loosening up again.

Ms. Hefner has said that an Indian version of the magazine “would be an extension of Playboy that would be focused around the lifestyle, pop culture, celebrity, fashion, sports and interview elements of Playboy.” But the magazine would not be “classic Playboy,” she warned. “It would not have nudity,” she said, “and I don’t think it would be called Playboy.”

In the U.S., Playboy Magazine’s fortunes have been declining for quite some time because their content isn’t considered “daring” enough anymore. Americans aren’t really shocked by anything on the pages of Playboy when compared to its raunchier competitors. If they want to find success with this magazine in India I would think that the name “Playboy,” and all the heritage the name carries, would help it compete with Maxim India and some of the filmi magazines which are already fairly risque. If there is no nudity then what can Playboy offer besides its brand name? Therefore, it makes no sense to me why they would name the magazine something else in India except to fool the censors.

Indian law prohibits the sale or possession of material that is “lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest” and that is without redeeming artistic, literary or religious merit. Soft-core pornographic magazines are available in India, but are taboo. They lurk behind other publications at newsstands, available only by whispered request. They also attract few lucrative advertisers.

“There would only be a few brands that would look at these magazines,” said Paulomi Dhawan, who runs advertising for Raymond, a leading Indian apparel maker. “We would probably be more in the business or news magazines or the male-oriented serious magazines.”

There is another problem: if you are 26, living with prying parents, where do you hide your stash?

A great many tipsters are informing us that People Magazine has included an Indian American as one of its Sexiest Men Alive. Yeah, he’s half Indian and he is “sexy.” So what, I say? That doesn’t really seem that blog-worthy to me. However, what eventually convinced me as to the importance of getting this story out to the people isn’t the fact that he is representing Indian Americans, but rather that he is a proxy for the previously unacknowledged sexiness of all geologists in the Earth and Space Sciences Departments of schools in the University of California system. Meet Michael Manga:

People magazine has featured a geophysicist of Indian origin alongside the likes of U2 frontman Bono in the ‘Smart Guys’ section of its ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ issue.

Michael Manga, a 37-year-old geology professor of UC Berkeley, who won the $500,000 MacArthur ‘genius’ grant earlier in 2005, shares pages with stars like Matthew McConaughey, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Orlando Bloom among others.

“My first inclination, of course, was to say no, because that’s not how I perceive myself,” Manga, father of two boys, said. “But it is a way to let people know about science and that it is OK to be a scientist.” [link]

I think it is a particularly sad commentary on the decadence of our culture that it has taken THIS long to point out that there are in fact “sexy” Indian geologists that deserve to share the same page as Bono.

Manga was one of only two men in academia admitted to the ranks of America’s dreamiest dudes. “That’s why I agreed to do this,” he explains.

“I wanted to get information out to people who wouldn’t normally hear or see anything about science.”

My roommate just brought in the paper and exclaimed, “LOOK!”. I thought I was going to see a picture of an adorable little angel in some DC-area Christmas pageant, a put-upon dog wearing antlers or Santa water-skiing on the Potomac…what landed in my lap was a lot cooler (and way unexpected). I knew Redskins mania had been taking over my city, and NFL fans are a devoted lot, but I think it’s extra cute to sport Redskins Red this way. :)

After posting this a few minutes ago, I thought, “I’ll bet someone sent this in as a tip”. Ah, but you readers never disappoint. A full hour ago, AM wrote:

The print edition of the post features a big photo from the redskins game yesterday showing Santana Moss after leaping into the stands - nearly in the center of the picture is a man in a sporty burgundy dastar. I was at the game as well and was impressed by the variety of fans - no longer the homogeneous crowd of the early years of the NFL.

I’m impressed, too. But I’m still a Niners girl, now and always. ;)

Here’s a Dutch photo project posing members of subcultures (rockers, surfers, ‘ecofreaks’ and so on) in similar clothes:

“By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity…” [Link]

The project includes desi women in Rotterdam:

When desis finally get their own high school clique name, it’ll be in some flick called Pretty in Pink, Orange, Red, Purple and Blue, and the name won’t be as lame as the ‘Massalas.’

On the other hand, the dike-desi look is similar to the British Asian bird uniform of London circa 2001: hip-huggers and three-quarters length fitted jacket with frock collar. Black.

See the entire photo project here.

Canadian PM Pauljinder Martin pays his respects before a Guru Granth Sahib at a gurdwara (via Ash Singh). I’m not sure of the date on this photo, but his government is facing a new election in January after a loss of confidence vote, so maybe he should’ve stuffed a few more rupees into the donation box

I’m straining in vain to imagine Dubya doing a courtesy bow in front of a Koran or Torah, or a Hindu or Buddhist scripture. If you have a photo, do share.

Hong Kong: make your teeth as white as black people’s.

This is apparently widely sold as Black Man Toothpaste in Cantonese:

Darlie toothpaste is a popular brand in much of Asia… it used to be called Darkie, complete with a stereotyped logo of a minstrel man. Apparently its founder had come to the US in the 1920s and seen Al Jolson in his blackface show, and had been impressed with how white Jolson’s teeth looked…

… its racist name and logo were still intact in 1985 when Colgate bought the brand… only the English was changed. The Cantonese name (“Haak Yahn Nga Gou”) still stayed the same, and the Chinese-language ads reassured users that, despite a cosmetic change to placate those inscrutable Westerners, “Black Man Toothpaste is still Black Man Toothpaste.” [Link, via Big White Guy]

DESI PAK

The technique used to cram entire extended families into a single Ambassador or Bajaj. Related expression in Hindi: ‘ghusna,’ to squeeze in quickly, quietly and off the books before the train leaves, your shady money-making scheme is shut down or the government babu cuts off the subsidies. Not to be confused with ‘Pak Desi.’

I don’t suppose they’re referring to latex. No s-hecks please, we’re desi.

HARMLESS

Harmless, fatalist and philosophical. A non-conquering, non-converting subcontinent with a Hindu rate of growth and long, whinging, political addas. Then everyone goes home and returns the current party to power.

ADSORBENT

Attracts liquids — either Old Monk or Señor Walker.

DO NOT EAT

Please do not eat the desis.

(UNLESS WE BEG FOR IT)

It’s all good then.

Map of the world with each country scaled by population size

Above is a map of world populations: “the larger the country, the bigger its population. Each grid square represents a million people.” [Link]

When you eyeball the map, a few things leap out at you in a way that they don’t when presented with a table of numbers:

• India has 1 billion people, or roughly 1/6th of the world’s population
• Pakistan and Bangladesh together have slightly more people that the US. If there was still a “United Pakistan” it would displace the US as the world’s third largest country.
• There are more people living on the subcontinent than there are on most other continents. More South Asians than Europeans, Africans, North Americans or South Americans. As a matter of fact, there are more Indians than people in these other continents.

The same website also presents similar maps of past and future population levels of the world from 100,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 350 years ago (1650), 100 years ago (1900), and even a projection of the world’s population 150 years from now in 2150. [via BoingBoing]

Farrokh Chothia and Atul Kasbekar are two well-known Indian commercial photographers. A lot of their fashion photography is vacuously pretty, but they’ve posted a handful of intriguing photos in their online portfolios:

My former boss visited the big don today. I got these Bill and Melinda Gates pictures in email followed by a message from ‘Hotmail staff’ telling me ‘your account is nearly full.’

Xbox Diwali Extreme is amazingly lifelike in high def

Cappuccino with Sonia

I wasn’t really paying attention to the Billboard Music Awards until my browndar started dinging rather violently; I looked up and saw “Lost” actor Naveen Andrews with BMA host LL Cool J.

East Village denizen Anil Gupta is one of the best tattoo artists in the U.S. (thanks, Ennis). He’s known for his miniature reproductions of fine art. Here’s Seurat and a quarter. It’s sly, painting pointillism at the pinprick end of a tattoo pen:

Gupta draws a straight line from gaudy to Gaudí, from Bollyboards to nipple art:

This is a photo from a NYT article on the sexing up of chess. Their caption was: “The model Carmen Kass in a five-minute blitz match against Viswanathan Anand last year.” I’m sure our readers can do better than that, especially given his … interesting expression.

Sikh khanda	Star Wars Rebel Alliance	Old Mazda logo	Flag of Iran

Graphic convergence, or looking to Sikh religious tradition for inspiration?

Related posts: Khan Noonien Singh, Camping while brown

Candlelight vigils for the Pakistan earthquake were held in 25 cities worldwide tonight. In NYC’s Union Square, chic midtown suits sold fundraising bracelets, listening somberly and flirting subtly. One white paramedic who volunteered in the relief effort spoke of doing amputations in the open air without anesthesia, of villagers hoisting near-dead relatives upon their backs and hauling them seven hours down the mountains to the paramedic camp. After the speeches, Nusrat sang quietly in the background.

A buddy of mine, Monis Rahman, penned this first-person account of volunteering in the mountains:

Two weeks earlier, a Sungi volunteer named Tariq took a helicopter filled with relief supplies to one of the mountain villages. The villagers rushed the helicopter, which was hovering slightly above the ground… Amidst the chaos, one fell to the ground. As Tariq reached to help him up, the rear rotor blade of the helicopter struck his head. He died instantly…

… we saw smoke coming out from a distant peak. Yasir casually asked Farooq if it was a volcano erupting. Our village guides immediately stopped, clearly terrified by the possibility of another catastrophe. There had been rumors in these areas that a volcano would erupt to further punish the villagers for their sins. Most of them believed that something they did as a community was responsible for the devastation they faced… I quickly pointed out that it was just a man-made fire… [Link]

It’s syncretic, it’s pretty, it’s callow. I don’t see Jesus and Mary lounging among the loofahs, I don’t see Moses parting the Listerine. But you can buy ‘spicebodhi,’ capsaicin enlightenment in a bar. Symbols my parents revere become interior design props. Mild, tolerant, ‘cardamom-scented’ Hinduism and Buddhism are gussied up and vended. We gave you Manhattan, you give us beads.

Indian soldiers in WWI were remembered at a reopened German graveyard today:

Until recently there was nothing to identify the quiet, leafy spot where Jafarullah Mohammad and Mata Din Singh were buried. The two servicemen were among thousands of Indian volunteers who fought for Britain in the first world war, and were captured at sea or on the western front.

For more than 80 years the German graveyard where Mohammad, Singh and 204 other Indian volunteers are buried was forgotten. But today the war cemetery in Wünsdorf, in a forest 40km south of Berlin, is to be officially reopened… Diplomats from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will attend today’s rededication ceremony…

The restoration is a recognition of the role played by troops from undivided India, who fought in the bloody battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle and Loos. Many died. Others ended up interned in German prisoner of war camps. “Very few people are aware of the role Indian troops played in both world wars,” Peter Francis of the Commonwealth Graves Commission said. “In some Indian units the casualty rate was 80%. In three days’ fighting in Neuve Chapelle in 1915, for instance, some 4,200 Indian soldiers perished…” [Link]

Fewer still care to remember those who fought in the second great war on the other side, to evict the British. The ally in that cause was… inconvenient:

• Photos of the Free India Legion
• Photos of Sikhs in the Legion

Henna hands on subway stops, brought to you by the bankers of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Oh look, it’s just like South Asian fiction covers

Trite but cute. The first ad actually sets up an artificial duality. I’ve got female friends who’ve flirted with a Delhi wedding while living among the Japanese hipsters of that ‘hood. The punks of St. Marks Place are more taken with piercings — mehndi is no longer mutinous.

Related post: The subway series: The Bombay Dreams ads don’t feature the leads