The world wide Masala march continues – Now, France succumbs to the taste of Indian chutney : HindustanTimes.com/UK: News for UK Asians –
The enthusiasm for Indian food is touching such heights that even the French food snobs can no longer resist its lure. The age-old Indian chutney, which is believed to have found its way to France through Britain, is being hailed as a symbol of modern cuisine by the French.
I like to follow the exploits of old Indian men that do crazy things. Earlier I brought you the misadventures of a man that survived upon a diet of staring at the Sun. Now I bring to you the Rolling Saint. I saw this guy on TV many years ago (there is a 1994 documentary on him). From Outside Magazine:
October 1994: Covered in blisters from lying down and rolling along the roadside for 2,485 miles, Indian holy man LOTAN BABA reaches Jammu, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, eight months after departing his home, in Ratlam. Now, he’s on the roll again, covering 1,500 miles on his way to Lahore, Pakistan.
Well, it seems Baba has run into a little hitch. As reported at NewKerala:
A maverick saint who travels by rolling his body along the road has vowed to enter Pakistan Saturday to visit several religious places in the neighbouring country.
But there is a serious hitch in Lotan Baba’s plans to roll into Pakistan through the border check post at Wagah, 30 km from here, and the saint from Maharashtra knows it well.
For the record, he cannot cross into Pakistan easily as he has neither a passport nor a visa.
“I have appealed to the Indian government to issue me a passport and visa. It is up to them to complete the formalities so that I can undertake my journey smoothly,” he said Friday.
The saint, who claims to have rolled over 25,000 km, said he would start rolling from this Sikh holy city to reach the Wagah border Saturday morning.
Roll on Baba. Roll on.
A new Asian entertainment newspaper that is being distributed by Urban Media Ltd. of Birmingham will go on sale today in England as reported by Asians in Media:
Editor Reena Combo says: “Desi Xpress is the type of publication the young Asian community is crying out for at this moment. The Asian music scene has never been so popular so it’s not only great to give our stars a platform to reach their fans, but for our readers to keep up-to-date with the latest events in the world of Asian showbiz.”
Although I don’t envision this publication gaining any significant readership in the U.S. for quite some time, if ever, I thought some of the more dedicated music buffs would appreciate the heads up.
Also recently launched was Nirali Magazine:
Nirali, which means “different” in several South Asian languages, is just tha–a different kind of magazine for today’s modern South Asian American woman. Published monthly online, Nirali Magazine reflects the identity, needs and interests of South Asian American women all over the United States.
Nirali is your complete one-stop source for all things South Asian. It’s not your typical women’s magazine: While you’ll find the requisite fashion and beauty stories within Nirali, you’ll also see stories on politics, trends in the South Asian community, profiles of strong, smart South Asian women, and introspective pieces about what it means to have an identity that is both South Asian and American. Nirali’s stories are like the smart and supportive conversations you’d have with your girlfriends over lunch.
Nirali does have a feature article on some of the current young politicos in the South Asian community that is worth checking out.
An interesting multi-part article @ The India Times about the life of Desi Gen-X.
There’s the techie who can’t get da ladies –
After having spent his formative years in an all-guys boarding school, Brijesh Pandit thought that he would get lucky with girls when he enrolled himself in college. However, much to his dismay, the ratio in his engineering college in Manipal was 1:10.
Ruchita Kumar, a single web designer, says that techies are a strict no-no for her. Ask her why and she replies with a smile,” belonging to the industry myself, I don’t find any of my techie comrades exciting. Some of them can be really boring, going on hours at end about Linux and Open Source,” she complains.
For software engineer Ambarish Sen Sharma, life has not been easy. After spending six years in Sacramento, the 34-year-oldÂ’s Sundays are now devoted to checking out prospective brides with his family. Although he is not too keen on an arranged marriage, there does not seem any other option available to him.
The “want it all” career girl –
A workaholic colleague at the next cubicle, a ‘coming soon’ hike, a loving boyfriend , a new music system-DVD-VCD player, the Da Vinci code – these are just a few things that keeps Ameeta Singh going. For the 27-year-old art director in an international advertising agency, life is about striking the right balance.
The emasculated older guy –
Mohan Ojha, 33, realized this when his manager retired and he became answerable to his 28-year-old boss. For Ojha things got complicated further when it turned out that his superior was a woman and his junior from B-school.
The country bumpkin who goes to the big city–
“I never used to wear branded clothes or drink mineral water when I stayed in Agra. I was also very stuck up on pre-marital sex and could never identify with women who smoked or drank. Call me old-fashioned, but after living for 2 years in Dallas, my attitude changed,” Animesh Dutta, US-returned programmer, said.
Jagdish Bhagwati is a sterling economist whose work I’ve run into several times over the years. Some say he’s a contender for the next Desi Nobel Prize in Econ. Perhaps.
A compendium of some of his work can be found in his recent book In Defense of Globalization.
Daniel Drezner has a couple of excerpts from WSJ and interviews with Prof. Bhagwati up on his blog today – Daniel W. Drezner :: Jagdish Bhagwati –
If we look at the offshoring of online services like call centers or basic accounting, we’re talking about a maximum loss of 100.000 jobs a year to countries like India. That is nothing for an economy this size. The US is a major hyperpower, and yet every time it gets into competition with Mexico, China and India, we work ourselves into a panic. It’s like a rottweiler getting scared because a French poodle is coming down the road.
Read it all…
A new collection of South Asian diasporic short stories has been put together by editor Shyam Selvadurai under the title Story-Wallah as reported by The Globe and Mail. This might be a great way to get your diasporic writing fix if you are like me and find a full novel much too depressing to read through.
Indo-American writer Bharati Mukherjee, one of the contributors in this collection, believes that the diasporic posture is fraudulent and self-serving. “In literary terms,” she writes, “being an immigrant is very déclassé. There is a low grade ashcan realism implied in its very material.” In Karima, one of the stories in the collection, Pakistan’s Aameer Hussein writes of a character who is alienated both from Bangladesh and Pakistan: “With pride we assume the mantle of the dispossessed.”
The contrary view, held by writers such as Salman Rushdie, asserts that the immigrant is a cultural nomad, an Everyman in a world of shifting values and cultures — an interpreter of maladies (to quote the London-born, U.S.-raised Jhumpa Lahiri). Selvadurai, closer to this latter group, mentions the importance of this cultural clash to his own plots. And this is the theme running throughout the stories in this anthology.
No way! It will never happen. I don’t think it is very likely that a brown man will become the leader of Germany, nor is this mayor even considering it. I just wanted to put it out there to see how it sounded. Still, the thought of a brown mayor in the heart of former East Germany raised my eyebrows. From AFP:
Altlandsberg in eastern Germany has long been known for its medieval church and its stork nests, but today it is known, above all, for its long-serving Indian mayor Ravindra Gujjula.
On Sunday, Gujjula will put his popularity here to the test for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling Social Democrats (SPD) in the state of Brandenburg, in a neck-and-neck race with the successors of the former communist rulers.
He presents himself as Germany’s “only mayor of colour” and he is also one of the country’s most appreciated town leaders. Last year, electors in this town of 8,875 residents returned him to office with 80 percent of the vote.
Various news organizations including the Asia Times report on a poll sponsored by New California Media:
The survey was carried out in August by several national polling firms. Interviewees could respond in English or their choice of eight Asian languages. The poll found that Kerry’s strongest support came from Chinese and Indian-Americans, while Vietnamese and Filipino-American voters are the most supportive of incumbent President Bush and of his Republican Party as a whole.
Overall, Kerry leads Bush among Asian-Americans by 43% versus 36%, a significant gap in favor of the Democrats, but a good deal smaller than the 14% margin of the 2000 presidential race. In that election, former vice president Al Gore won 55% of the Asian-American vote to Bush’s 41% and Ralph Nader’s 3%.
The closing of the gap between 2000 and 2004 is what is of most interest. Have the Republicans made better progress than the Democrats in recruitment during this time? I am also sure that SM readers will be more than willing to contribute their theories as to why Chinese and Indian-Americans trend differently than Vietnamese and Filipino-Americans. The other number that jumps out in the poll is that 20% of the Asian vote is undecided. The overall undecided vote has been repeatedly characterized in the media as miniscule.
By far the largest group of undecideds were “Asian Indians” (30%).
A more in-depth analysis of at least the Indian-American aspect of the poll numbers can reportedly be found in the print edition of India-West magazine.
Amardeep Singh reports that Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh is visiting the UN in New York this weekend, followed by meetings with Bush and Musharraf and some quality time with his youngest daughter, Amrit.
Now here’s what’s really interesting: Amrit Singh works for the ACLU in NYC fighting both the Pentagon on Abu Ghraib and airlines on anti-brown discrimination while flying.
Many years ago, my now-retired uncle was an Indian diplomat. Whenever my cousin and I stepped out of the family apartment, we were trailed by Indian men in dark suits, packin’ heat. So here’s what I want to know:
Maybe they need to hire this woman.
Miss India 1997 Nafisa Joseph hanged herself on July 29, distraught over an argument with her already-married fiancé. The 25-year-old model and MTV VJ had locked her mother and a friend into an adjacent room in her Bombay flat. The publicity over her death may have sparked a wave of copycat suicides in Bombay.