Monthly Archives: November 2004

A sportscasters nightmare

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Though Anish Shroff was recently eliminated from ESPN’s competition to become the next sportscaster there, I give him props. I only saw parts of one episode but it looks like a tough job. A lot of sports stories are coming in while these guys are already in the middle of the show and they have to improvise and think on their feet to describe whats going on. I don’t care how many years of experience you have, nothing can prepare you for this scenario though. From The Times online of UK:

FOR a commentator, it would have been a nightmare. “Patel passes to Patel, it bounces off Patel’s boot, but Patel comes in from the wing and shoots and oh, a brilliant save by Patel. Every Patel on the terraces is on his feet.”

The reason was simple: all 124 players in a weekend five-a-side charity football tournament in Leeds, and 300 of their fans, were called Patel.

For the participants, it was an extended family occasion. The Patels may not all know each other intimately, but they are all in some way related.

This is scary. It reminds me of a nightmare I had once. Pretty soon there will be Patels within the ranks of the Mutiny as well. Oh. Too late.

Patel is merely the 24th most common surname in Britain. Nonetheless, two years ago an eleven from Mr PatelÂ’s society played cricket against another Bradford-based Indian side. All 22 players turned out to be Patels

Win a date with… Vikram Chatwal?

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I must have given up my email address or dropped a biz card at some lame Desi ‘circuit party’. So, I now get spammed a couple times a week with ads for the latest “meet my mate” function and loathe to do anything to give these guys any more publicity than they already obnoxiously secure.

But this one – New Site Launch!: an exciting way to meet south asian professionals – has a twist that may be of interest to SM readers – it features a celebrity date auction with Vikram Chatwal up for grabs.

If you’re so inclined the party’s this Sunday @ 5pm in 6 cities across N. America. Other celebrity dates include Serena Varghese of Where’s the Party, Yaar fame as well as 2 of the cast members of Bombay Dreams. Continue reading →

Photos From the IAAC Film Festival

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iaac250x155.jpgHollywood Masala has a pair of photo journals documenting the recently completed Fourth Annual IAAC Film Festival in New York. The photos were taken by writer-director-actor Nikhil Kamkolkar, whose feature film Indian Cowboy screened during the four-day festival. His shots include the opening night gala, which honored Shabana Azmi, Mira Nair, Salman Rushdie and Ismail Merchant for their support of South Asian artists.

Photo Journals:
Opening Night Gala – 9 photos
Various Festival – 13 photos

Continue reading →

Another One Bites the Dust

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anishShroff300x300.jpg This fall’s once-promising crop of South Asian reality show contestants has lost another prominent member. SportsCenter-hopeful Anish Shroff failed to advance to ESPN Dream Job’s final round after losing a deciding vote among the viewing public.

Check out his concession speech (Video – Windows Media), where a disappointed Shroff employs some of the very same cliches favored by most athletes. According to the episode recap, Shroff will return “to basic training at Syracuse,” and probably develop a newfound allegiance to Fox Sports.

Update: Badmash offers the networks an incentive to put more South Asians on the air.

Continue reading →

Posted in TV

“Brown Arms White Wars”

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Since this is Veteran’s day in the United States I felt it was most appropriate to have a post about military matters. Embassy Magazine is a publication targeting the diplomat community in the Ottawa, Canada area and recently ran a piece about the often overlooked Brown soldiers of the two World Wars.

Over 1,300,000 soldiers of Indian ancestry fought in the First World War. It remains the largest volunteer army ever assembled in the history of the world. It was the largest number of soldiers fighting from the British Empire after those from the British Isles. Not Canada, not Australia, no other part of the Empire contributed as many troops.

Two and half million Indian soldiers fought in the Second World War. You might want to read those sentences again.

If this group of soldiers came from anywhere in the Western world and if they were white, there’d be monuments to them in every major Western capital in the world.

I guess thats the way of history though isn’t it? Whoever ends up in charge writes history by highlighting certain things and not emphasizing others. Continue reading →

The India-China Gap

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The latest TCS article on India v. China comes out pretty optimistic about India’s prognosis – TCS: Tech Central Station – The India-China Gap –

Despite the record of the recent past, there is reason for hope that the economic gap between these rivals will soon diminish. On the one hand, India may advance in relative terms through no fault of its own. This is because China’s storied economic growth is likely to falter under the weight of a massive default of the banking system or from political pressures arising from restructuring of state enterprises. On the other hand, India’s leaders are becoming aware that their own economy can move forward more rapidly by undertaking meaningful and aggressive reform. For example, India scores well in the area of macroeconomic conditions where restrained monetary expansion has brought inflation to a record low 2.5 percent. China’s battle with price instability has seen swings from high inflation in the mid-1990s to its current troubling bout of deflation.

Call me a skeptic but I’m personally not that hopeful about the nearterm. The previous article on the sad plight of Varanasi silk weavers is another little datapoint that adds to my fear that –

Both populaces are fed up with their respective governments. But I can’t help but feel that for many Indians-still-in-India, their disillusionment is with the *current* government instead of a deeply shaken belief in the ability of government to solve problems and make things better for them. The question is between 2 different governmental initiatives to create wealth rather than between government and non-government. The Chinese, by contrast, seem much more willing to throw caution to the wind and embark on decidedly non-governmental initiatives. A young 20-something Chinese person fresh from university is more likely to see his livelihood being made in creating a new garment factory or a construction business vs. many Indians who still harbor a post-colonial distrust towards business. A 20,000 person shoe factory breeds awe in China but a type of anti-globo-inspired fear in India.

Tyler Cowen – should you give to beggars?

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I promise this will be my last knee-jerk crosspost of material from Marginal Revolution. There’s so much of it and it’s such great quality. But today, Tyler gives us the economists-eye view of a question that has plagued Desi’s for generations – Marginal Revolution: Should you give money to beggars? –

In Calcutta I confront this question every time my cab stops. Put aside the usual debate about selfishness and altruism, assume you will give something away. To whom should it go? Why not give it to the gentleman sleeping under a piece of cardboard who is poor but not begging?

Tyler’s answer elegantly waltzes between Game Theory, Public Choice, and classical economics all in the space of less than 200 words. Fantastic.

The sorry plight of Varanasi weavers

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Varanasi

As someone who collects and wears saris eagerly, I was surprised and interested to learn that international trade with China has severely affected the artisans who create the iconic Benares/Varanasi sari;

“With our business coming to an end my six children have turned into beggars,” says Razia Biwi, wife of a silk weaver in the northern city of Varanasi. “They move from door to door with a bowl each and eat whatever the kind neighbours give them.”
The Varanasi silk industry is in turmoil.
For centuries it has produced exquisite handloom silk. Of India’s 10m weavers, this city – also known as Benaras – in Uttar Pradesh boasts nearly 13%.
…The problems started in 1995, when demand for Varanasi silk suddenly dwindled.
There was a sudden influx of Chinese silk traders, who imported cheap yarn to the local market.
They even competed against Varanasi traders by hiring local weavers from the city.

The extreme poverty has caused some to resort to drastic, disturbing measures; Ghulam Rasool of Kotwan sold his two-month old child to a wealthy family “where he would get his daily meals”. Rasool’s choice got some attention;

Their story touched the village and with its help, along with police intervention, they got back their son along with a sum of 10,000 rupees ($220) compensation from the government.
Rajan Bhal, general secretary of the Varanasi Cloth Industry, says: “This was one isolated case in the entire town where the government came to the family’s rescue.
“The government otherwise seems uninterested in reviving this traditional art in the city.”

I’ll never look at my saris in quite the same way again.

via the beeb.

I wish it were a Bollywood plot…

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In a horrifying court case being tried across the pond, three men, Kenneth Regan, William Horncy and Peter Rees are accused of murdering an entire family because they wanted to steal their Southall-based freight business, to use for smuggling narcotics.

Describing the deaths of Amarjit Chohan, 45, Nancy Chohan, 24, Devinder, 18 months, Ravinder, eight weeks old and Charanjit Kaur, 51, Richard Horwell, prosecuting, said: “Some crimes are beyond belief and on any view these horrific murders fall into that category.”
He said: “Three generations of a family were executed, deliberately killed, because of the greed of these three defendants.” He told the court that Regan lured Chohan to a meeting in Stonehenge on February 13, 2003, ostensibly to meet a potential buyer for his fruit freight business, CIBA Freight.
“Mr Chohan walked into a trap. Thereafter he was used and controlled by the defendants and held against his will for several days before being murdered. To make his disappearance appear genuine it was, or became, necessary for his family also to be murdered.
…The bodies were initially buried on farmland near Tiverton, Devon…When (Regan) realised police were closing in to exhume them he and Horncy bought a boat which was used to dump the family in the sea on Easter Sunday last year.
Two days later, Chohan’s body was found near Bournemouth pier. In July, Mrs Chohan was found in a fisherman’s net between Dorset and the Isle of Wight. In November, Mrs Kaur’s remains were washed up on the Isle of Wight. The boys have never been found.

Businessman Chohan had previously served time in prison for tax evasion, and this allowed his alleged murderer to craft a suitable lie in an attempt to cover his tracks; he tried to make it seem as if Chohan wanted to avoid his business partners and the government by taking his family to hide abroad. If it weren’t for Nancy Chohan’s skeptical brother, Regan and his accomplices might have gotten away with murder.