Monthly Archives: March 2005

Salman and Padma

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I guess Salman Rushdie and his supermodel turned cook-book author-wife Padma Lakshmi are of the school that there is no such thing as bad publicity. After their most recent appearance in the New York press, you know when Rushdie threatened to beat NY Times writer Guy Trebay with a bat, Rush and Molloy are reporting in the New York Post that Rushdie will be writing his wife a screenplay.

Rushdie told Webster Hall’s Baird Jones: “I am working on a script for Padma to direct. It starts as a comedy, then becomes tragedy and finally ends in horrendous violence.”

This wouldn’t be that unusual, but the thing is, Padma can’t really act (Have you seen the Mariah Carey bomb Glitter or Kaizad Gustad’s Boom?). What makes him, or anyone, think she can direct?

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Russian dolls: diaspora within diaspora

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My friend Santhosh Daniel emails:

So, I was tooling around, looking for designs, and I dropped in or “on” [Tamil Nation].  As you can guess or tell from the address, it’s a site devoted to the Tamil diaspora, which got me thinking about the concept of diaspora not in terms of nation, but state…

My father is a Malaysian Tamil, my mother an Indian Tamil and I, an American Tamil and, my sense of ‘place resides in all three regions and often supersedes my sense of being Indian and/or “desi…”

In the States there is incessant discussion about the Indian diaspora, and I feel wholly disconnected from it… I am part of the Tamil diaspora as defined by Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka-Malaysia-U.S. just as a Punjabi is part of his diaspora as defined by Punjab-Pakistan-Canada-U.S. and a Gujarati via Gujarat-Africa-U.S. There is a cultural history to each of those things that is both separate and part of the “Indian diaspora”… Each group has its own values, transgressions, literature, heroes, migrations…

My life tends to be guided by the Tamil diaspora, I notice, as I get older.  Doesn’t mean I don’t see myself as part of the Indian gaggle, it’s just that I notice more and more how much I am also part of something else. (posted with permission)

Great observation. To the Punjabi diaspora, I’d add the U.K. To Gujaratis, add Antwerp. To Tamils, Singapore. And you see micro-diasporas in the U.S. with clusters of different ethnicities in different cities.

And it’s simultaneously more and less profound than Santhosh describes: every person is a morass of fault lines and microcommunities on axes like sexual preferences, hobbies and musical taste.

How to become a bubblegum pop star

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Step 1: Be born to cave-chested parents. Or purge.

Step 2: Hose on some primer and paint. Pluck out your eyebrows so they’re Filipino nail salon thin. Erase all personality, standardize your face so you look like every other club birdie.

Step 3: Make sure your belly’s showing. Don a booty mini. Can’t do much about the cleavage (see step 1).

Step 4: Shoot a skank vid. Grab yourself as much as possible. Tacky eyeshadow is a plus.

Step 5: Do a fawning interview with a British or Canadian desi Web site.

If you get around to it: Oh yeah, cut a track too. Just jack the beats from someone else, I’m sure she won’t mind.

If you have any, get rid of it: originality, singularity, musical talent

See also: D’Luscious, Sneha Mistri, Deeyah

As Jin tha MC said, ‘Don’t take this in a (personal) fashion. Nope, it’s just a good ol’ lyrical bashin’.’ Just how boring is bubblegum pop?

(thanks, sd)

Ya don’t say?

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The first step to solving a problem is admitting you’ve got one –

`Proper sanitation will boost Indian tourism` There is a need for a hygienic environment with a well-regulated sanitisation mechanism to boost the Indian tourism industry as it has good prospects even in the face of stiff competition from neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

It seems that fed-up tourism officials are raising a Sepia Mutiny of a different sort. Continue reading →

Bad Indian Boy

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I don’t know quite how to break this news so I’m just gonna come out and say it. It turns out all the bitter Indian-male bashers that left comments here were right. As reported in the Hindustan Times [Tip via Suvendra D.]:

BadApu.jpg

Married men in India proved to be the most unfaithful, where an astonishing 49 per cent actively seek sexual relationships on the web.

Pakistan was only second to India in the love rat stakes, with seven per cent of husbands using the Internet to seek extramarital sex, according to a newly published global study by dating site CupidBay.com.

This was followed by men from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, at six per cent and five per cent respectively.

Research found that UK men make some of the world’s most faithful partners, with only one per cent visiting dating websites in search of extramarital liaisons.

American men proved to be devoted to their wives, with just two per cent looking to cheat, although they were still twice as likely to do the dirty as their UK counterparts.

May God have mercy on our bad brown souls.

[disclaimer: of course keep in mind that the survey was taken on a dating/sex site thus introducing an inherent bias] Continue reading →

The Army needs a “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy

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The Los Angeles Times (free registration required) sheds light on one of the Justice Department’s well kept open secrets: It’s religious police.

One of the main jobs at the Justice Department is enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws. So when a nonprofit group was accused of employment discrimination last year in New York, the department moved swiftly to intervene — but not on the side one might expect.

The Salvation Army was accused in a lawsuit of imposing a new religious litmus test on employees hired with millions of dollars in public funds.

When employees complained that they were being required to embrace Jesus Christ to keep their jobs, the Justice Department’s civil rights division took the side of the Salvation Army.

Defending the right of an employer using public funds to discriminate is one of the more provocative steps taken by a little-known arm of the civil rights division and its special counsel for religious discrimination.

The Justice Department’s religious-rights unit, established three years ago, has launched a quiet but ambitious effort aimed at rectifying what the Bush administration views as years of illegal discrimination against religious groups and their followers.

The U.S. having religious police sounds really foreign, huh? To be fair though, the religious police have scored many a victory for the good guys:

For example, the Justice Department prevailed last year when a Muslim girl’s right to wear a head scarf to class was upheld — she had been suspended for violating the dress code at a public school in Oklahoma. The department also has challenged the practice of making residents at some youth detention facilities in the South participate in religious activities.

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Research and Development in India

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The March 4th issue of Science Magazine (paid subscription required) features an essay by Raghunath A. Mashelkar, director general of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research and president of the Indian National Science Academy. The essay is part of Science Magazine’s “Global Voices” series. [Tip via Francis Assisi]

Five years ago, during my presidential address to the Indian Science Congress, I made a prediction: “The next century will belong to India, which will become a unique intellectual and economic power to reckon with, recapturing all its glory, which it had in the millennia gone by,” I told the gathering of 5000, among them the country’s prime minister.

…In this essay, I focus on the importance of returnees to poor countries such as India. I will examine how demographic shifts are creating shortages of skilled scientists and engineers in developed economies and leading to a new dynamic in human capital that is enabling some developing countries to emerge as “global R&D hubs.” I also address ways in which global funding sources can be leveraged in such countries to create new knowledge devoted to the global good.

Because most readers won’t have access to the full article I will quote liberally (about a quarter of the article) for your benefit. Continue reading →

Naveen’s Wild Ride

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Regular Sepia Mutiny commentor Santhosh Daniel points us at the decidedly less than flattering special report at the Seattle Times documenting the rise and fall of Infospace & it’s Rock Star CEO – Naveen Jain – naveen.jpg

In spring 1999, Jain and his wife went on a house-shopping cruise around Lake Washington, docking at several multimillion-dollar mansions for sale. One home, owned by saxophonist Kenny G, had, among other touches, an automatic toilet-paper dispenser. The Jains preferred something different and latched onto a 1.3-acre Medina estate called Diamanti — Greek for diamond — buying it for $13 million. The mansion boasted 16,500 square feet of space and a two-story garage. The garage shared a glass wall with the house so the owner could display an auto collection.

If the stuff in the story is even half true, Naveen deserves lock up time that would make Martha Stewart’s 5 months seem like a quaint vacation. Continue reading →

Bhatt, James Bhatt

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Just to round out your celebrity trivia for the day –

Former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan is reportedly so fed up with American food, that he is planning to open an Indian restaurant in Los Angeles. According to femalefirst, the Irish actor is frantically searching in India for a chef worthy of cooking at the Indian restaurant he plans to open later this year.

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Aliens vs. Predators

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First the Capitol building, now Bangalore? Taking a page from 9/11, Kashmiri militants may be targeting a powerhouse economic sector:

Documents seized from three members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist group killed in an encounter with police on Saturday revealed that they planned to carry out suicide attacks on software companies in Bangalore… Most of the technology companies in the city have already set up disaster recovery plans and special disaster recovery sites that could be used in the event of a terrorist attack… [ComputerWorld]

There are fears that Bangalore may have become a safe haven for Naxalites, the LTTE and also terrorist organisations and that the high-profile IT companies are the soft targets. [NDTV]

A 20-member team armed with automatic weapons… was rushed to the spot. They also took along the newly acquired bullet proof Rakshak jeep which can fire teargas shells from within… One such company whose name has been found in a diary seized from the militants is Polaris. Shams apparently had visited the Polaris office last year to prepare a map of the office. [ToI]

There’s no Polaris office listed in Bangalore, so take that with the usual Times of India helping of salt.

I gotta say, it’s the height of stupidity to attack a city that quarters defense contractors. You’d only make it personal. Do ya think the next generation of weaponry would specifically be designed to jam a warhead right up their crevices? Chakde phatte, Dr. Strangelove.

Continue reading →