Monthly Archives: April 2005

Susan’s choice.

Posted on by

ali family.JPG“Did you read the Post yesterday?”, SM-loyalist Deepa asked me over AIM. I replied negatively and she sent me the link to a love story…

The two were as opposite as could be. Saqib is tall, olive-skinned and athletic. Susan is tiny, fair-skinned and delicate. Saqib is Muslim, the son of immigrants born in India. Susan was raised in a conservative Christian family from a small town in Pennsylvania. He’s a door-knocking community activist who hopes to run for public office someday; she’s soft-spoken and cherishes her privacy. He’s a perpetual pessimist, always managing expectations and planning for the worst; she’s an eternal optimist who’s always smiling.

Though both of their families initially balked at a desire to be with someone so “opposite”, eventually, all the in-laws came around.

After a few years together, Saqib and Susan wanted to become parents. Surely they might have thought that after the considerable struggle they survived just to get married, this next phase of their lives would be less fraught with turmoil. One would have hoped.

“It’s a girl!” the technician announced, to a round of cheers. Susan squeezed Saqib’s hand. The couple had already settled on a girl’s name: Leila. Her middle name would be Daine, a tribute to Susan’s mother, Diane, who had died suddenly a year earlier, two weeks after learning she had a brain tumor.
Leila Daine Ali. It was a name that Saqib knew he’d never tire of saying — introducing her to the world, chastising her for trying to poke her pudgy toddler fingers into wall sockets, exclaiming over her good grades in school. It was a name he knew he would scrawl countless times on the “memo” line of his checkbook. “For clown at Leila’s party.” “For Leila’s tuition.” “For Leila’s wedding dress.”

Continue reading →

Mera naam Lim Meng Sain

Posted on by

LimMengSai.jpg

Reading this story at thestar.com, I was reminded of two things. First, that old Bollywood song (to which I confess I don’t understand the lyrics) Mera naam chin-chin-chu that my parents must have played on long car rides. Secondly, I was reminded of the movie, Elf.

KUALA LUMPUR: He can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka fluently, but Lim Meng Sain was born an Indian.

And this anomaly has sometimes put him in a tight spot.

The contractor was raised as a Chinese after his biological parents gave him up for adoption when he was an infant.

Now 25 years old, Meng Sain is a true product of the community he grew up in.

Oh, I’m sure this isn’t nearly as unique as it would seem, but I still thought it was a cute story, especially when compared to this earlier post about preconceived notions based upon skin color.

Once, while parking a truck behind his house recently, he was stopped by a police officer.

“The officer asked for my identity card and when I gave it to him, he took a good look and asked me if it was a fake,” he said.

“I’ve gotten used to all the puzzled stares. Maybe it’s just God’s way of testing me,” said Meng Sain, who was baptised a Catholic when he was 12.

Continue reading →

Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai, Free Tibet Bye-Bye (updated)

Posted on by
After decades of advocating Tibetan independence, India now accepts Chinese control of Tibet, much to the chagrin of thousands of Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala. [CSM]

I’m disappointed, but not at all surprised to hear this news. Like any newly popular teenager, India is kicking its penniless lover out of bed for a wealther swain. India has ended its support for a free Tibet, and is seriously cozying up to China. It’s getting increased commerce, a new border agreement, China’s acceptance of India’s invasion and annexation of Sikkim, and China’s tacit consent of how India treats its own domestic independence movements.

The kissy-face between India and China today is a substantial change from the four decades of frosty relations between the two countries. Why? It’s all about the benjamins, ‘natch:

India’s bilateral trade with China touched $13.6bn last year with the balance of trade reportedly favouring Delhi. The two sides were surprised with the growth in bilateral trade as it was a mere $1bn a decade ago. Experts say with this rate of growth, China may soon overtake the US as India’s largest trading partner. Indo-US trade stood at about $20bn in 2004. [BBC]

Bilateral investment is going up as well, and mainly in one direction:

Indian investments in China crossed $100m last year. On the other hand, China feels the Indian economy is not opening up to Chinese investments, which remain at a mere $20m. With the Indian side now favouring 100% foreign investment in the construction sector, Beijing hopes to increase its presence in India. [BBC]

With increased commerce comes … cheesy lines from politicians:

On a visit yesterday to India’s technology capital of Bangalore, Premier Wen urged Indian software companies to come to China and take advantage of his nation’s manufacturing capabilities. “Cooperation is just like two pagodas, one hardware and one software,” Wen said. “Combined, we [India and China] can take the leadership position in the world.” [CSM]

[Somebody please get Premier Wen some game! We’re dying here.]

Is this a good idea for India? Should it trust China even as it plans to build a jet fighter with Pakistan? How much does India in fact trust China? Well … Continue reading →

Banana Birth Control

Posted on by

Remember how everybody in 7th grade would snicker in SexEd when the teacher would put a condom on a banana? Well, Indians are far thriftier than that. Instead of wasting a perfectly good condom on a banana, they use the condoms to weave a sari, and use just the banana as birth control. Well, kinda:

India’s western state of Maharashtra has told banana and sugar cane farmers they will not get water for irrigation if they have more than two children. The state’s water minister says the move will help curb the rising population and solve water shortages. The bill also requires all banana and sugar cane farmers, regardless of child numbers, to use drip or sprinkling systems of irrigation within five year or lose their supply. The bill is targeting the crops because of the large amount of water they require. The upper house of the state’s parliament has backed the bill and it will go to the lower house on Monday. If the bill is approved into law it will not apply to farmers who already have more than two children. Maharashtra is agriculturally one of India’s most advanced states but has suffered bad droughts … that have led to hundreds of farmers committing suicide. [Note: Quotes out of order from the original BBC article]

Would this have been half as funny if I had posted about sugar cane? Continue reading →

Fortune cookies

Posted on by

The NYT reports that some Chinese intellectuals and officials have kind words for India:

“India is a far more diverse country… a place with the second largest Muslim population in the world, and lots of ethnic minorities, and yet it organizes regular elections without conflict. China is 90 percent Han, so if India can conduct elections, so can China.” [Pang Yongzhing, a professor of international relations at Nankai University in Tianjin]

India, a paragon of manufacturing efficiency?

“To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India.” [Pan Yue, China’s environment minister]

Respect for intellectual property? He’s probably never visited a pirate desi Blockbuster store.

“In India there is a lot more room to move around… their capital markets are good, their banking sector is better than in China, and there is entrepreneurialism everywhere in India, along with well-protected intellectual property rights. All of these are things that China lacks.” [Zhang Jun, director of the China Center for Economic Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai]

Some desis have a disturbing attachment to authoritarian government, or perhaps (not so disturbing at all) just plain effectiveness:

There is constant talk these days of turning Mumbai, the southern commercial metropolis formerly known as Bombay, into a new Shanghai, China’s most glitteringly modern city… Such contrasts have left some Indians to remark, sometimes despairingly, about a “democracy price” that slows development… “I’m often approached by friends returning impressed from China, saying how our airports in Bombay and Delhi can’t compare,” said G. P. Deshpande, a longtime China scholar at Jawaharal Nehru University in Delhi. “When I tell them that these things come in a package, that you don’t just get the new airports, and I describe the package, though, they say no thank you.”

Finally, perhaps India too will get its Mideast invasions:

“As far as exporting democracy, it is only a matter of time before India gets the self-confidence to begin doing this.” [Subramanian Swamy, president of India’s Janata Party and former minister of law, commerce and justice]

Continue reading →

Brief film updates

Posted on by

A whole bunch of stuff going on in the world of movies. Some we’ve missed; some yet to come:

  • Amitabh Bachchan — Film Society of Lincoln Center pays tribute to the actor by screening 12 of his films (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). The undisputed king of Bollywood also appears in person on April 15 to talk about his long and storied career (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). (via BBC News)
  • “Mughal-E-Azam” — Bollywood’s biggest film of all time is restored, colorized, re-recorded, and possibly molested (I mean, c’mon, they’ve done just about everything else to it). Film purists aren’t crying foul though. The production company behind the colorization says it was merely completing the unfulfilled dream of its creator. Playing in theaters now.
  • “Continuous Journey” — Ali Kazimi’s film won the Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at the 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It documents a period when Canadians weren’t as nice as they are today:
    Continuous Journey is an inquiry into the largely ignored history of Canada’s exclusion of the South Asians by a little known immigration policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908. Unlike the Chinese and the Japanese, people from British India were excluded by a regulation that appeared fair, but in reality, was an effective way of keeping people from India out of Canada until 1948. As a direct result, only a half-mile from Canadian shores, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by immigration boats and the passengers were held in communicado ­ virtual prisoners on the ship. Thus began a dramatic stand-off which would escalate over the course of two months, becoming one of the most infamous incidents in Canadian history. [Continuous Journey]
  • “Morning Raga” — In their own words:
    Morning Raga is about the meeting of worlds. It is a story that brings the modern and traditional together, unites the past with present, Carnatic music with Western music, the comic with the tragic, fate and coincidence with individual choices. It is a story of our times where our worlds are interacting with each other. [Morning Raga]
    Even tougher to figure out is where it’s playing. As far as we can tell, it’s slowly popping up in theaters around the country.
  • “Bomb the System” — The title screams, “movie about the digestive consequences of a bad batch of pani puri.” The official web site says, “first feature in over 20 years to delve into the world of graffiti art.” Let’s hope they read this, and find some way to combine the two. The film (Exec: Kanwal Rekhi, Prods: Ben Rekhi, Smriti Mundhra) opens in L.A. and N.Y. on April 22. (thanks, Abhijay Prakash)
  • Kal Penn — Yahoo! Movies hosts production stills from the actor’s new flick, “A Lot Like Love.” Gawker, a Manhattan gossip blog, published this Penn-sighting from one of their readers:
    on the afternoon of sunday the 3rd, i saw kal penn (from the new superman sequel, the lead role in the movie adaptation of jhumpa lahiri’s bestselling book “the namesake” and the role of kumar in “harold and kumar go to white castle”) at whole foods in Columbus circle. he was wearing a knit wool cap, a black fleece patagonia jacket and a vest over the fleece. was it really that cold? he noticed me squinting at him, so i asked him, “what’s your name?” he replied, “kal.” i then asked him, “were you in a movie?” he said, “yes.” then, i asked him if the movie had been “harold and kumar go to white castle.” he replied in the affirmative and asked me if i had seen it. i replied honestly that i had not. He seemed to be annoyed and bewildered at the same time by my answer. i guess his annoyance was compunded by the fact that i am asian and the movie i asked about was supposed to be the movie that proved asians could produce a mainstream hit. well, it bombed at the box office. at least he has now gotten those two nice roles that i just mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. [Gawker]

Continue reading →

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Posted on by

While there’s considerable debate as to whether residents of Los Angeles read books, at the very least, we hold big festivals celebrating them. The tenth incarnation of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books lands later this month on the UCLA campus, and offers tons of signings, readings and discussion panels. Chitra Divakaruni, Pico Iyer and Ved Mehta are among the authors expected to hold court on the following topics:

Saturday, April 23

10:30 AM – The Challenges Facing Latin America: Politics & Art
Moderator: Marjorie Miller. Panelists: Ann Louise Bardach, Pico Iyer, Alvaro Vargas Llosa and Tom Miller.

11:00 AM – Writers in Exile
Moderator: Karen Stabiner. Panelists: Chris Abani, Ved Mehta and Loung Ung.

Sunday, April 24

11:30 AM – Fiction: Searching for Our Ideal Reader
Moderator Paula Woods. Panelists: Elizabeth Berg, Chitra Divakaruni, Janet Fitch and Lisa See.

Continue reading →

I’m a hustler, baby

Posted on by

I’m a hustler, baby
I just want you to know
It ain’t where I been
But where I’m ’bout to go

–Jay-Z, ‘I Just Wanna Love U’

British author Preethi Nair self-published after her first novel was rejected everywhere (thanks, Punjabi Boy). She invented a PR persona out of whole cloth so publications wouldn’t catch on she was a one-woman band. She landed a three-book publishing deal, and the Beeb is filming one of her novels. Here’s the kicker: her fake PR persona was shortlisted for Publicist of the Year. Not content, Nair then turned her fictional life yet another novel. Meta, shameless, impressive!

Preethi Nair was born in Kerala, South India in 1971 and came to England as a child… she worked as a management consultant but gave it up to… become a writer… Jobless and having been rejected by most publishers, Preethi took the deposit out of the flat she was about to buy and set up her own publishing company… Not having enough money for a PR agency, she… appointed… Pru Menon (her alter ego) to shamelessly hype the book… she signed a three-book deal with HarperCollins. Preethi won the Asian Woman of Achievement award for her endeavours and Pru was shortlisted as Publicist of the Year for the PPC awards.

“100 Shades of White”, her first novel with HarperCollins has been bought by the BBC for a television adaptation and her third novel “Beyond Indigo” will be published in August, along with the reissue of “Gypsy Masala”. [Her own bio, natch]

Continue reading →

With a little help from my friends

Posted on by

A Citibank call center worker in Pune allegedly stole $350K from NYC customers’ accounts via electronic transfer (via Slashdot). It sounds like he and 11 of his closest friends may have done the nasty via online banking:

Thomas, who worked in the callcentre for six months… had the secret pincodes of the customers’ e-mail IDs… In January, he roped in his friends and transferred money from four accounts of the bank’s New York-based customers into their own accounts, opened under fictitious names… The customers, from whose accounts the money had been withdrawn, alerted the bank officials in the US, after which the crime was traced to Pune…

… police sources said some of those arrested were employees of Msource [a subsidiary of Mphasis], Kalyaninagar. Police sources said the alleged mastermind [was] Ivan Samuel Thomas (30) of Sangamnagar…

Mphasis, which owns the call center, is a multinational with an office on Park Ave. It’s not known whether Thomas actually uttered the line, ‘Thank you, come again.’ Indian cops are gently questioning the suspects with their special brand of TLC.

ARR: DEL STOPS: 0

Posted on by

Continental Airlines will add the first nonstop flight from the U.S. to India beginning Nov. 1, contingent on approval from the Indian government (via SAJA). The Newark (NYC)-New Delhi route will cosset passengers in the belly of a 777.

The only other nonstop from this continent is Air Canada’s Toronto-Delhi route. Also, Air India just added an LA-Frankfurt-Delhi flight. Thanks, open skies agreement!

See flight nerds’ discussion here. Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4