Spinning heads spit sambar

Exorcism: it’s not just for Bobby Jindal (see liberal blog DailyKos) any more. Faith healers in the UK are fleecing depressed Muslim women by vending talismans and djinn exorcisms:

A victim of exorcism, eighteen-year-old Sureha Begum, from Manchester, attended the conference. She suffered from chronic depression and was self-harming after an arranged marriage in Bangladesh. When she became ill her parents were told that she was possessed by jinns. They spent over £3,000 on faith healers and exorcisms…

Said Sureha: “Faith healers told my parents that I was possessed and the more my mental health deteriorated the more these faith healers convinced them it was the work of the jinn… These faith healers know your weaknesses as soon as you open your mouth and they use it to con people out of hundreds of pounds.”

If I were to be the property of a djinn, let that djinn be Barbara Eden.

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Desi Culture March – Worldwide

lisa4.jpgYou guys probably know or can guess that I travel quite a bit for work. When you’re the lonely business traveller, you end up spending a fair number of your jetlagged hours channel surfing the local TV. In between dubbed reruns of TJ Hooker in various languages, one ofthe things that’s surprising me more and more is how much Desi culture I’m running into in random countries.

I was impressed, for ex., with the Desi quarter of Singapore (one of the cleanest cities in the world, and yet, Desi’s have managed to make an entire street smell like Garam Masala ;-). But I think most folks generally expect to see (and smell?) the Desi presence there.

The spate of more surprising examples began about a year ago when I was in Stockholm and flipped out when I saw the video for Mundian To Bach Ke on Swede MTV.

A little over a month ago, I was in Amsterdam and Russell Peters was on TV (with Dutch subtitles). He appeared to be delivering his usual desi-themed material to a UK audience and the show was rebroadcast on a local TV station.

And now, I’m in Sao Paolo, Brazil and just a few minutes ago, a total 3rd tier ABCD movie – Bollywood/Hollywood was on the boob-tube complete with Portugese subtitles. The movie still sucked but it was sorta interesting to see a Brazilian announcer say something about the flick afterwards with a headshot of Lisa Ray in the corner of the screen.

Revenge of the nerds

NYT columnist Thomas Friedman says Americans need to emulate Asian and desi nerds:

The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they’ll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid’s idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way.

Outsourcing role reversal in NJ

If I believe what I am told then the Republicans support outsourcing and the Democrats are against it, right? That’s not entirely true as we all know. The Dems are exploiting outsourcing as a wedge issue, sometimes unfairly as Vinod pointed out in a previous post. How many times did we hear during the debate, “we outsourced the Tora Bora fight to Afghan Warlords.” The Dems know that use of the very word can exploit the anger many Americans feel, and they use this to their advantage. I doubt there would be huge differences in the policy either man would pursue as President.

What is happening in New Jersey’s 6th Congressional District is sort of backwards however. The Indian American Republican challenger Sylvester Fernandez, is going after the Democrat incumbent Frank Pallone with great vigor using outsourcing as the wedge issue. From the Ashbury Park Press:

Sylvester Fernandez, the Republican challenger in the 6th Congressional District race, blames incumbent Democrat Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr. for the outsourcing of jobs to India.

But Pallone, of Long Branch, insists his voting record in the House of Representatives reflects his anti-outsourcing stance. And he pointed out that jobs are outsourced to countries other than India, which appears to be his opponent’s singular focus.

Let me get this straight. A first generation Indian American is attacking a Democrat for supporting outsourcing of jobs to India? Does this seem backward to anyone else? Looking at Fernandez’s platform on his website we see what his main issues are: Continue reading

Can an American Idol save a Bombay Dream

Playbill.com reports that singer Tamyra Gray, who shot to stardom in the first edition of TV’s “American Idol,” will make her Broadway debut in the struggling Bombay Dreams on Nov. 9.

Gray, who placed fourth in the hit TV singing competition in 2002, will assume the role of Priya, the earnest film director in the Bollywood-themed musical, for a limited engagement of 12 weeks. Priya is currently being played by young desi actress Anisha Nagarajan.

“I have been an admirer of Tamyra Gray from the start and am thrilled she’s joined the Broadway Company of Bombay Dreams. She’s going to be wonderful”, said the composer of the show, A.R. Rahman.

Playbill.com is also referring to a Variety story that suggests Bombay Dreams is headed for celluloid. Variety reports that the musical, originally produced on the London stage by Andrew Lloyd Webber, may make the stage-to-screen leap via Really Useful Films. In fact, a motion picture is currently being developed, and shooting will most likely be done in India. Austin Shaw, the managing director of Really Useful Films, told the industry paper, “It’s effectively a Bollywood film in a Western style, so it makes sense to shoot it in India.” Farah Khan, the co-choreographer of Bombay Dreams, is in the running to helm the motion picture.

The Dark Side of Desi Matrimonial Sites

Indiandating.com / Shaadi.com / etc. members beware – Delhi man dupes Indian girl in US – Sify.com

New Delhi: A Delhi-based computer salesman who duped an Indian girl, working with Motorola in US, of 39,000 dollars by contacting her through a matrimonial website has been arrested, police said…

But, that Delhi-based supermodel who contacted me said she really did need the $3000 for a ticket to visit on my b-day. It was just that her mother was sick so she had to postpone and then there was her PhD dissertation defense in Neuroscience, followed by…

The new Northern Ireland

A story about Northern Ireland must deal with the IRA or Protestant/Catholic violence right? That was the old Northern Ireland. Is this indicative of the new? From Scotsman.com:

Politicians today slammed thugs who targeted members of the Turkish and Indian communities in the latest act of racial violence in Northern Ireland.

Police were trying to hunt down those responsible for damaging cars and daubing racist slogans such as “Turks Out” on their victims’ homes in Comber, Co Down.

The ironic part is that it seems from this article that many of the Indian and Turkish immigrants in this community work in the medical services industry. Thus, these criminals are committing violence against a people that can be of aid after the fallout of a Protestant vs. Catholic clash.

“This sort of activity is reprehensible and it is seemingly happening everywhere in Northern Ireland.

“Many people from abroad are living in the Province and working in vital jobs like medicine. I am confident the Health Service couldn’t cope without them.

“This is supposed to be a free society and everybody ought to be free to live where they want no matter where in the world they’re from,” he said.

Art of the Mutiny

themutiny.jpg

Visitors to The Museum of London will now be treated to two brand new paintings that have been described as two of the most important works of mid-Victorian England. From 24hourmuseum.org:

Painted by Henry Nelson OÂ’Neil, Eastward Ho! (1858), and companion piece, Home Again (1859), show soldiers boarding a ship bound for the Indian Mutiny (1857-1859), and returning to their families again over a year later.

Ahh, yes. That is the same Sepoy Mutiny (or Rebellion depending upon which side you were on) that our blog’s name took inspiration from.

“As well as being exceptional examples of OÂ’NeilÂ’s work,” explained Sue Bowers, Regional Manager for the HLF in London, “these paintings are important for the stories they tell about Victorian London, when the Thames held world status as the gateway to the heart of the Empire. ”

A picture of both paintings can be seen on the Museum’s website.

Posted in Art

Responding in unison

The New York Daily News runs a story on the success of immigrant children. This sounds all well and good but I personally was left with a sense of glass-half-full dismay. Here is how the story starts:

Ask 13-year-old Amarnath Kuppannan and his 10-year-old sister, Aarthi, what they want to be when they grow up and they respond in unison: “A doctor.” Both youngsters, the New York-born children of Indian immigrants, spent their summer at the Elite Academy on 39th Ave. in Flushing.

I fought back nausea at the fact that yet another generation of immigrant kids would be brainwashed down certain paths, and I continued to read trying to focus on the overall positive message in the article.

Starting at 8:30 a.m. and some days finishing as late as 2:30 p.m., the youngsters were drilled and quizzed four days a week in higher mathematics and the complexities of English grammar and composition.

But who am I to judge these parents’ ambitions for their children? As the article points out the father is from a rural Indian village and didn’t get educational opportunities. The article lauds the success of New York’s immigrant children:

A dramatic 62.4% of New Yorkers younger than 18 are foreign-born – the so-called 1.5 generation who come here as children and are reared and educated here.

“These immigrants and their children are the future,” said Prof. John Mollenkopf, director of City University’s Center for Urban Research. “How well they do is critical.”

It seems that the future is in good hands.

“Foreign-born students outperform native-born students on traditional measures of academic achievement,” according to a 2003 study by New York University’s Taub Urban Research Center. “Immigrants have higher reading and math scores … despite their higher poverty rates, limited English skills and newness to the U.S. schooling system.”

The License Raj Returneth

Sad but true article over @ TCS (TCS ROCKS!) about the latest instance of economic idiocy coming out of India – TCS: Tech Central Station – Wheels of Fortune?

It is rare to find a single story that illustrates, in exquisite detail, all of the varied pro- and counter- arguments for free trade as opposed to managed or protected trade. I am therefore grateful to Peter Foster who filed this piece in the Daily Telegraph from New Delhi. In a nutshell, the Indian Railways Minister, a Mr Prasad, has refused permission to import railroad wheels into India, preferring to establish a factory in his home state of Bihar to make India self-sufficient in their production.

Outsourcing & IT might make the headlines but when it comes to the nitty-gritty improvement of per-capita GNP, lifestyles, health, and so on, it’s the boring stuff like logistics that make all the difference.

The cost of not allowing imported train wheels? Well, one of the many costs is quantified –

Analysts predict that it will be many years before India can produce enough wheels to meet demand. The shortage has left 20,000 carriages awaiting wheels, and a similar number of old ones requiring replacements.”

This makes my blood boil on so many levels. Idiots.