Monthly Archives: December 2004

Bollywood’s Brown “Terminal” ?

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The recent Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal, was based on the true story of Merhan Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian trapped in limbo at Charles de Gaulle airport. Simplify the story considerably (see the link above to snopes.com) and voila — a Hollywood movie!

Now, there’s a “Brown Terminal” story, about a Kenyan born British desi who is stuck at a Kenyan airport, having been deported from the UK. Any bets on how quickly Bollywood will bogart and bowdlerize his story? Any bets on what it will look like when it’s done?

Here’s the sitch:

A Kenyan-born British man has spent six months in Kenya’s international airport after being refused entry to the UK. Sanjai Shah has spent his time sleeping and wandering about in the transit lounge on the outskirts of the capital. He told the BBC he wants the British High Commission in Nairobi to send someone to the airport to sort it out. He told the BBC’s Muliro Telewa: “Life is very hard. You can sleep in the transit lounge, or wherever there is space. People are nice, they give me food. Others give me money. “I miss my wife and kids and they miss me. But if you want something, you must be ready to lose something.” The High Commission says Mr Shah had no automatic right to live and settle in the UK despite giving up his Kenyan passport after being awarded a British Overseas Citizen passport. His passport allows him entry into the UK but he was supposed to have a return ticket and sufficient funds to support his visit. Immigration officials suspected he planned to stay in the UK so refused him entry and flew him back. He said that he offered to buy a return ticket but was sent back, with a “prohibited immigrant” stamp in his passport, making it hard for him to travel to many countries. “This is not our problem, it is London’s,” a Kenyan immigration official told AFP news agency. “We have repeatedly told Shah to come to our offices for us to discuss his case and advise him on how to achieve his objectives, but he has refused and opted to stay at the airport,” British High Commission spokesman Mark Norton said.

Aspiring screenwriters, start your engines!

BBC: Man ‘living’ in airport terminal BBC: Life in the lounge Snopes.com: Stranded at the Airport

Just say NO to Ayurveda

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The Boston Globe and several others report on researcher’s findings that many herbal pills and powders sold in Indian stores in the U.S. are dangerously high in heavy metals.

The scientists, first alerted to the danger by reports of patients suffering seizures after taking herbs, discovered that one in five of the imported products they bought in local shops had levels of heavy metals sometimes hundreds of times higher than the daily amount considered safe for oral consumption. The same products are sold nationwide.

The herbal pills, powders, and liquids are a cornerstone in the practice of Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient holistic system of health that originated in India and that emphasizes the mind-body connection. It relies on herbs and oils to treat illness and prevent disease. An estimated 80 percent of India’s 1 billion adults and children use the remedies as a routine part of health care.

The herbs are not regulated in India, and in this country, unlike prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicines, the imported products can be sold without rigorous scientific testing, subject only to the same standards that apply to food.

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The Quaker Who Would Be King

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For all the post-colonial angst Brown folks have about the period of English Occupation, you do have to admit that the times created some fascinating history. Between the Thugees, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Gurkhas, and the Battle of Sargarhi, Victorian India created tales that rivalled practically any classical saga in adventure & intrigue.

Via the blogosphere, I came across the absolutely riveting story of the American who may have been the real life inspiration for Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King — the History News Network reports on the saga of Josiah Harlan–

Josiah Harlan served as the basis of Rudyard KiplingÂ’s short story, “The Man Who Would Be King,” written in 1888 while Kipling was a journalist for the Allahabad Pioneer newspaper. The real-life Josiah Harlan was born in 1799 into a Quaker family from Pennsylvania. As an adolescent, Harland read works in botany and medicine, but above all Greek and Roman history, having taught himself Latin and Greek. He became inordinately interested in the life and adventures of Alexander the Great, after whom he would no doubt later fashion his own adventures. …In 1822 Harlan sailed for Calcutta on a merchant ship. …[In 1826] Josiah succeeded in gaining a meeting with al-Moolk [the deposed king of Afghanistan residing in Punjab], during which he offered to travel to Kabul and link up with Shah ShujahÂ’s allies in an effort to organize a rebellion against Dost Mohammed Khan, the prince who had stolen his crown. …Harlan left Ludhiana with a rag-tag army comprised of mercenaries and headed for Kabul. Along the way, he passed himself off as a religious mystic, a wealthy adventurer, and as a doctor, even treating the locals he encountered with a variety of ills. In 1828 Harlan reached Kabul and sent a message to Dost Mohammed Khan requesting a meeting, as news of a “feringhee” or foreigner having entered Kabul circulated throughout the city. Harlan wrote in his memoir that he found Dost Mohammed to be as intelligent and sophisticated as any Western ruler.

But how did he ascend the NW Indian political ladder? A drunk Punjabi raj & an interim step as the Governor of Gujrat had something to do with it. The IHT continues the story – Continue reading →

Cricket where the sun don’t shine

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Women’s sports in India are finding their toughest match taking place off-the-field and against an opponent that isn’t easily defeated — Helios, son of Hyperion and Theia (a.k.a. the sun).

The AFP reports that the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team says that the advancement of female sports is severely hindered by cultural aversion to dark-skinned brides.

“Most of the Indian men want to have a bride with a fair skin,” said captain Mamta Maben to the AFP. “Because of Indian men’s concept of beauty, so many talented players do not take up cricket because it is a gruelling sport and you are out in the sun for at least seven to eight hours.”

The much-maligned sun, which has been linked to everything from famine to skin cancer, replied with its usual foul-mouthed irreverence.

“I couldn‘t give a flying f**k about them Indian cricket b***hes. That’s right, I called them b***hes,” said the sun. “And once you puny humans destroy the ozone layer, you will all become my b***hes.”

What a jerk. Luckily, its comeuppance are in the works. Scientists expect the hot-tempered sun to burn out in 4-5 billion years. Then we’ll see who’s the b***h.

AFP/Yahoo!: Male desire for fair-skinned brides stumps women’s cricket in India
NASA: What keeps the sun burning?

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Abhishek Out, Could Kal Penn be in?

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Rediff.com is reporting that Abhishek Bachchan has officially bowed out of Mira Nair’s upcoming film effort translating Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake onto celluloid. Bachchan, who was slated to play the lead in the film, may now be replaced by Kal Penn, whom the BBC has reported “will play an important character.” The film is also slated to include Nair’s New York gang–Gabriel Byrne, Natalie Portman, Chloe Sevigny, and Steve Buscemi, among others, according to the BBC story.

This film, if done well, has the potential to place Nair in the top tier of directors, and also will hopefully go quite far in presenting certain aspects of desi-American culture to mainstream America.

The story also notes that Nair has turned down the offer to direct the next Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I am wanting my MTV

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Wow, I guess when it rains it pours. From Worldscreen.com:

MTV Networks today announced the launch of MTV World, initially consisting of three new channels in the U.S. targeting Indian-American, Chinese-American and Korean-American viewers.

The channels will feature content from MTV’s own international networks, plus original programming, promos and packaging created in the U.S. “We live in an increasingly diverse and multicultural country, where conversations at the dinner table and in the living room are more and more taking place in Chinese, Hindi, Urdu and Korean,” said MTV Networks’ chairman and CEO, Judy McGrath. “Launching these new channels is the next logical and tremendously exciting step for MTV Networks, delivering customized programming that reflects the bi-cultural identities of these audiences, not to mention providing another platform for all the great talent from these communities.”

Okay. Maybe a Sepia Mutiny blog show isn’t respectable enough to get on American Desi TV, but surely MTV will take us? I can’t wait to make an appearance on TRL with all those girls scream… Okay back to reality.

The first to launch will be MTV Desi, targeting Indian Americans. MTV China and MTV Korea will launch in 2005, with additional channels to follow. Tapped to oversee these new networks is Nusrat Durrani, as general manager and senior VP of MTV World.
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“American Desi” T.V.

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Several news services carry a press release announcing the creation of a new 24-hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America:

American Desi, the first and only 24- hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America, today announced the appointment of senior management, advisors and on-air talent who among them represent over 125 years of relevant experience at such media companies as ABC, NBC, ESPN, FOX, PAX-TV and major corporations, including American Express, among others.

The new network’s senior management will lead a team of executives, producers, directors, writers, on-air talent and production personnel who have received many of the U.S. television industry’s top honors — including more than ten Emmy Awards.

Well its about damn time. What can we expect in terms of content? It looks like they are putting together a great team:

American Desi today also unveiled several featured on-air talent appointees, including Divya Ohri, Vice President of Production and Sree Sreenivasan, WABC-TV reporter and South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) co-founder. Ms. Ohri becomes American Desi’s Senior Vice President and host of “American Desi: Prime Time Live,” the flagship show of the network; “Bollywood Fix;” and co-host of “Points of View.” For his part, Mr. Sreenivasan is executive producing and hosting American Desi’s new “Live Wire; The Pulse; The Voice” in-depth affairs programming. “We are extremely proud of the unprecedented and unparalleled team we have assembled both behind and in front of the camera. Never before has such a senior assemblage of Western and South Asian executives and on-air talent been assembled to launch a comprehensive media venture for the Desi community,” said Mr. Verma.

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Eying ’08

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Oh, come on. Everyone knows Hillary is going to run in ’08. It’s inevitable. She is busy putting together her crack team (ostensibly for her ’06 Senate Run), which includes Neera Tanden of NY. From the Hindustan Times:

Senator Hillary Clinton has chosen an Indian American and several other long-time advisers as part of her inner team to gear up for her 2006 re-election bid.

Neera Tanden, who joined the Democrat from New York last year as her legislative director, worked in former President Bill Clinton’s White House and with Hillary Clinton in various capacities for many years.

…Tanden, who was born and brought up in the US, is a law graduate. She worked as Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. She focused on healthcare, education and juvenile crime for then first lady Hillary Clinton. Even before that, she worked on the Clinton-Al Gore campaign in California in 1992 and 1996.

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School, Tanden was on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as deputy campaign manager in her run for Congress in 2001.

So what kind of team is Clinton putting together?

Roll Call magazine called Clinton’s team “a small, ethnically diverse stable of advisers dominated by women,” which is supposed to help “chart her political course over the next four years.”

Makin’ coffee

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Lt. Neil Prakash tells us how the military makes coffee:

Mr. Abrams the coffee maker… slip the lid into the back grill of the exhaust. Then set your canteen cup for about 2 minutes. Let the 900 degree exhaust of your jet engine heat that puppy up and BAM – hot water for shaving, Ramen noodles, coffee…

There’s a certain combination of brute force and delicacy here that I find very appealing 🙂

Classical singer Subbulakshmi passes away

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Indian classical singer Madurai Shanmugavadivu “M.S.” Subbulakshmi died late Saturday in Chennai at the age of 88 (via Sreenath Sreenivasan).

From Rediff:

“The vocalist died peacefully in her sleep,” Dr. C.V. Krishnaswamy, who treated her at the St. Isabel hospital, told PTI.

The musician was admitted to the hospital on December 2 following a bout of viral infection, which later developed into broncho pneumonia.

Her condition worsened on Friday night and she lapsed into a coma as she developed cardiac irregularities. The end came at 23:45 IST.

She was also a chronic diabetic for nearly four decades.

Born as Kunjamma in the temple city of Madurai on September 16, 1916, Subbulakshmi made her debut as a singer at the age of eight and went on to perform in concerts, a domain traditionally reserved for males.

The vocalist immortalized many songs, including “Vaishnava Janatho,” a favorite of Mahatma Gandhi, Meera bhajans, Annamacharya kirthans and the like.

Rediff: M.S. Subbulakshmi passes away
SAJA: Coverage of Indian singer M.S. Subbulakshmi

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