Monthly Archives: September 2004

Let’s Run an NIC on Him

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A friend of mine who works for Human Rights Watch has a floor pass to tonight’s show at the convention. I pleaded with her to not get arrested. She emailed me back, unable to understand why everyone kept telling her that. So what is it like being in NYC at the convention right now? I don’t have any way of knowing since I am stuck on the wrong coast, but I am much more interested in what’s happening outside than inside the convention hall. That’s where the real stories are at. Rediff reporter Arun Venugopal gives a pretty interesting first-hand account of his “stupididty”:

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

That’s what I was thinking to myself, about myself, as I stood just inside the entrance of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention was taking place. In the space of a few footsteps I had gone from being just another reporter on the job to possible radical activist. Large men in suits, large men likely concealing large guns, hovered around me, asking me questions about my work, my family, my place of residence, recent trips I had made out of town and out of the country. Outside, nearly a thousand protesters had been arrested for civil disobedience and vague rumors of anarchist violence were floating about – I had quite clearly picked the wrong day and place to be carrying anti-war, anti-Bush literature. Dumb.

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Pixel Pusher

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So, Vinod pinged me the other day and asked if I could chime in about once a week with an image – yeah, I am a freelance photographer – and I said sure, I would like to give it a whirl.

So, once a week or thereabouts, I’ll post an image here – I’ll leave the comments and the commentary to you. Append your best caption to the image and we’ll see how this experiment takes off.

I run my own blog – TIFFINBOX. Do come visit. And if you are aching to look at some of my photography (lately weddings in the documentary style), check out Pipal Productions.

Thanks for this opportunity to showcase some of my more personal work.

gesture.jpg

Indian state passes business hiring quotas

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The Maharashtra government has extended its caste hiring quotas into the booming private sector. Because if you happen across an avian that lays ovoids of gold, the first thing to do is to throttle her.

“We’ve already been suffering under many constraints, like socialist economic planning and labour restrictions,” says Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Auto, the world’s largest manufacturer of scooters and motorcycles and one of India’s largest companies. “If we implement reservations, we’ll have no way to become internationally competitive.”

It’s another example of legacy capture, where programs intended to be temporary are never discontinued. The system adjusts to the new baseline, the constituencies sucking on the taxpayer teat spend part of the windfall on lobbying, and the subsidies are only ever expanded (e.g. U.S. timber subsidies, weapons programs that the Pentagon doesn’t want but can’t cancel):

Many say the constitution intended reservations as a temporary measure. But the rising political clout of low-caste Indians (who make up some 50% of the population) prevented the programme from being discontinued. Instead, it was expanded to include Indians from lower-middle positions in the caste hierarchy… Singh’s reforms made a mockery of the affirmative-action policy, entitling over 90% of the population in some states to reserved jobs.

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American’s Next Top Model…could be BROWN?

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mallu girls are hot.jpg BREAKING NEWS THAT PEOPLE WHO CRAVE SUBSTANCE WILL FIND ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT:

“america’s next top model”, the UPN reality show that has almost made erstwhile supermodel tyra banks relevant again, has, for the first time in the show’s history, a brown contestant in the mix.

Julie Ann Titus is 19 years old, pulchritudinous, and a whopping 5’10”. acccording to the official “america’s next top model” website, she “…wants to create a new image for Indian women.”

judging from the extended-commercial for the “ANTM” season premiere that i just saw, which featured soundbites from all 14 contestants, our girl is SASSY!

yes, i am well aware that editing often renders our perceptions of reality tv contestants meaningless, but if what i caught a glimpse of tonight is any indication of who Julie is, she has enough attitude to make vin diesel incontinent.

i applaud her poised confidence as well as her unyielding, “anti-drama” stance, and i look forward to wasting an hour each week cheering her on this fall. go on with your bad self, jules. 🙂 oh, and did i mention that she’s malayalee? and that this fact doesn’t make me biased towards her at all? 😉 Continue reading →

Posted in TV

she’s got it, yeah baby she’s got it

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thought i should bring this to your attention, since we are brown, and it IS tennis; Shikha Uberoi, an indian american, has upset saori obata of japan in a “spectacular” first round match in the US Open. for her second match, shikha will play a tennis-“david” to Venus William’s “goliath”.

india’s Mahesh Bhupathi digs miss uberoi:

…Indian tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi complimented Uberoi on her victory, saying she would inspire players like Sania Mirza back home.
“Shikha’s excellent performance at the US Open is a very positive sign for women’s tennis in India. With (players like) Sania Mirza, the future of women’s tennis in India seems extremely bright; brighter than it has ever seemed before,” Bhupathi, who narrowly missed out winning a medal in partnership with Leander Paes at the just concluded Athens Olympics, contended.
Indian born Uberoi, 21, lives in Boca Raton, Florida.
A right-hander with a two-handed backhand, she is ranked 380 and has had a pretty good run this year.

now the dozen SM readers who love tennis can shrug and say, “duh. i already knew that”, while the other five of you scroll on impatiently because you are looking for the next installment of the manish vij book club. no matter. thanks for reading! 😉 Continue reading →

Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair

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Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon and Jonathon Rhys-Meyers, opens at theatres across the country today. Nair gave an interesting interview to the New York Times Magazine’s Deborah Solomon this past week. Actually, some of Solomon’s questions are kind of stupid–but I will let you decide that for yourself.

Your new film, ”Vanity Fair,” is based not on the magazine but on the great English novel. Reese Witherspoon plays Becky Sharp, one of the most conniving heroines in literature. As someone once said of Becky, she is not just a social climber; she’s a mountaineer. Becky Sharp was a girl who bucked the system. She didn’t like the cards that society gave her. So she created her own deck, and created it at a time when a woman was supposed to sit still in a drawing room and hope a guy was going to come and propose. You grew up in India and set films like ”Salaam Bombay!” and ”Monsoon Wedding” there. Were you drawn to Thackeray because he was also born in India? When I was young, I spent summers in Calcutta and worked in political protest theater. And every morning, walking to my theater company, I would pass Thackeray’s bungalow. There is still a crooked board there saying, ”William Makepeace Thackeray was born here.” As an Indian citizen living in New York, do you see the U.S. as a force for good? No. Islamophobia has completely raged in the Western world since 9/11. Americans are only given one very biased point of view about the Islamic faith. You seem to be suggesting that Americans view all Muslims as terrorists. Living in New York, we never felt foreign. After 9/11, we felt foreign.

Click here to read the full NYT interview.

A review of the film from the San Francisco Chronicle can be found here, and here is a larger profile of Nair from MSNBC.

Incidentally, rumor has it that Mira Nair has been offerred to direct the next in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Terrorists, Murderers, and…Thugs

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Over the past three years I have heard the term “Thugs” used countless times in American politics, especially by our leaders:

Like Bush here:

The world changed on a terrible September morning. And since that day we have changed the world. Before September the 11th, Afghanistan served as the home base of al-Qaida, which trained and deployed thousands of killers to set up terror cells around the world, including our country. Today, Afghanistan is a rising democracy. (Applause.) Afghanistan is an ally in the war against these thugs. (Applause.) Many young girls now go to school in Afghanistan for the first time. (Applause.) Afghanistan is becoming free, and America and the world are safer for it. (Applause.)

or here:

At every stage of this process, before and after the transition to Iraqi sovereignty, the enemy is likely to be active and brutal. They know the stakes as well as we do. But our coalition is prepared, our will is strong, and neither Iraq’s new leadership nor the United States will be intimidated by thugs and assassins.

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The Acorn on Indian Hostage Drama

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Great Post – The Acorn: Indian hostages released

A collective sigh of relief masks the grave damage done

Antaryami, Tilak Raj and Sukhdev Singh have been set free in one hostage drama that comes with a happy ending, and without recourse to Asha Parekh after all.

…The Indian government has already paid too high a price for their release, allowing a bunch of armed thugs to dictate its emigration policy. For the time being every Indian passport will carry a stamp of shame – making them invalid for travel to Iraq…

curfew follows chaos that came because of carnage.

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yesterday, vinod had some “pulpy” advice for the nepalese government, via his Sepia Mutiny post on the unfortunate end of a dozen nepali hostages.

today, in nepal’s capital of kathmandu, outrage poured into the streets:

An indefinite curfew has been imposed in the Nepalese capital following violent protests against the killing of 12 Nepali hostages in Iraq. Angry mobs in Kathmandu attacked a mosque, government offices and the offices of two Middle East airlines.
…The news was received with anger and grief in Nepal with one official describing it as “one of the worst days” in his country’s history.
…The government is being heavily criticised for doing little to free the hostages and there have been calls for the prime minister to step down.
…The government denies the criticism and has condemned the incident as a “barbarian act of terrorism”, and pressed the international community to hunt down the killers.

i wonder if that last sentence destroys any possibility of retribution via Gurkha…

…The government said it would take action against agencies illegally sending people to Iraq.
Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, has banned Nepalis from going to Iraq, despite the relatively well-paid jobs there.
The militants said the 12 Nepalis had been killed because they “came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians”.

they came to fight the muslims? from what i’ve read, they came to cook and clean for a jordanian company. if those tasks are now considered hostile acts, i’ve got one hell of an excuse to avoid housework.

i mean no disrespect to these twelve innocents. i apologise in advance if any of you read it that way; i’m just exasperated at the lunacy that stole their lives.

as we say in the greek orthodox (and probably hated by the militants as well) church, “may their memory be eternal.”