Monthly Archives: May 2005

Is Deepa Mehta Back in the Game?

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Indo-Canadian Filmaker Deepa Mehta has signed on to direct, according to Variety, a new documentary for Canadian Television entitled, “For Crying Out Loud,” a film focusing on four women—hailing from India, El Salvador, Nigeria and Canada—who have been victims of domestic violence.

I am glad that Mehta is coming back, especially after the poor show with Bollywood/Hollywood and The Republic of Love, but what I really want to know is, when will Water, the final film in her trilogy (Fire, 1947 Earth) be released? I liked Fire, while a little slow and odd, after Mississippi Masala, it was my first foray into contemporary (non-Bollywood) Indian cinema, and I was enthralled by Mehta’s work.

When 1947 Earth was released, not only did I first see Amir Khan as a real actor, I saw that Deepa Mehta had the potential to make a serious impact on international cinema. Earth was a huge improvement on Fire, and I was anxiously awaiting the last installment of the trilogy, Water.

Anyway, a little Google search led me to this article in India Daily which suggests an imminent release.

After causing a spark in a tinderbox, her film Water is finally complete and ready for an early release. With a new cast and new settings, the film will hit theatres in November. “I”m so glad I”ve got it out of my system. Now I feel I could just retire. I”m that satisfied with Water,” said the director. The film’s rights have been given to NRI entrepreneur Ajay Virmani.

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The Indian equivalent of Madison or Jacob

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Are you expecting a child soon? Since it’s a well known fact that all Indian kids in the U.S. look alike through college, do your kids a favor and heed the following advice so that they have at least a minor shot at individuality. DO NOT name them Arjun or Maya. The Hindustan Times reports:

Arjun, the warrior-prince of the Mahabharata, and Maya were the most popular names given to baby boys and girls respectively by Indians in the United States.

The name Arjun was given to 247 boys last year, ranking it 741 in the list of 1,000 most popular baby names in the US, compiled by the Department of Social Security Administration.

I now await hate mail from Arjuns and Mayas worldwide. Please, don’t hate the messenger. Continue reading →

An exotic princess in the south of France

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I know many of us that write on this website, as well as those who come to read it, get annoyed when western culture tries to exoticize Indians, and especially Indian women. There is more to India than Kama Sutra and Yoga we chide. Well, at the Cannes film festival actress Mallika Sherawat is taking a different approach. India Daily reports:

MallikaSherawat.jpg

Mallika wants to show the world that she is Jackie ChanÂ’s seductive Indian Queen ready boast on her skin and voluptuous body.

Embellished with Rs 4.5 crore worth jewellery, actress Mallika Sherawat is all set to dazzle at the Cannes film festival as the ‘Exotic Princess from India'”.

“I will be in Cannes to promote the Jackie Chan flick The Myth, where I enact the role of a princess from India who is rescued and later turns into Chan’s love interest,” said Sherawat.

What is The Myth about?

The Myth (GAING TIN JUEN KEI) is a film being produced by Jackie’s brand new company, Jackie Chan Emperor.

Jackie describes The Myth as totally different from Around the World in 80 Days and New Police Story; it’s more like an Indiana Jones film. In the movie Jackie will reportedly play a Qin Dynasty general and an archeologist. The film, which Jackie says includes a lot of fantasy, is being filmed right now in Shanghai before it moves to Xian, Lanzhou, Guaizhou, Yunnan, and India. A 2005 release date is anticipated.

I ain’t gonna hate. If I had a brand new production company named “Abhi the Emperor” I’d have an “exotic” Indian princess cast opposite of me as well.

Mallika continues:

“The image is going to be classy, elegant, Indian, and yes of course very sexy. I will present myself as the desi exotica,” she said adding the packaging there would be different from the one she presents at home.

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The ways of the thug

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Months ago I posted a little history lesson about the Cult of Thugee in India, from which the overused term “Thug” originated. Today Slate.com, in its dispatches, features a look at a modern day Indian thug cult of sorts, which is known as Hanuman the Monkey God’s Army.

One hundred years ago, Dharavi, which is now Asia’s largest slum, was a fishing village at the edge of Mumbai. As the growing city dumped its junk here, the salt plain turned to swampy landfill. Then, from the 1950s, as rural Indians arrived in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was then known, looking for work, they came to Dharavi. Now the teeming slum, which used to be the most marginal of all marginal communities, is right smack in the middle of Greater Mumbai.

Babalu is a clean-cut 27-year-old with a freckle embedded in the white of his right eye who works on the street hawking barrettes. He is also the head of the Lord Ram Unit of the Bajrang Dal, the paramilitary youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the religious wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is a Hindu nationalist organization that has supported a host of unsavory bigots from Adolf Hitler to Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi in 1948. Although the RSS claimed Godse was not a member of the organization at the time of the assassination, this was an attempt to distance the RSS from the scandal.

“As a member of BD, I’m a notorious troublemaker,” Babalu said as he sat at a back table in Venus, a vegetarian restaurant in the slum. The Bajrang Dal, otherwise known as Hanuman the Monkey God’s Army, is extremely violent. They claim to have 1.3 million members throughout India. I’d met Babalu through a lanky community leader who as a teenager had also been a member of the Bajrang Dal. The lanky man had left the organization years earlier because he was disgusted by their violence.

Reading through Slate’s dispatch I couldnÂ’t help but see similarities between this “Army of the Monkey God” and the notorious American prison gang Nuestra Familia.
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Possessed by yoga

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Does yoga cause demonic possession? That would explain the The Exorcist, which, little-known fact, features an obscure asana called the ‘spinning wheel.’ Beware that Hindoo voodoo (thanks, RC):

“… [yoga is] aimed at transforming human consciousness to experience the Hindu god, which is a false god.” … She also… instructed her students in astral projection, or “stepping outside” of the body, which Laurette says poses a serious spiritual danger. “If there’s nothing in your mind, you’re open to all kinds of deception… I wondered who–or what–came into my body when I ‘stepped out.’ “

Next up: PraiseFu, drunken master style:

She’s developed a prominent presence on the Internet, largely due to her new exercise program, PraiseMoves, which she calls “a Christian alternative to yoga.”

My name is Laurette and I’m a recovering New Ager. This is like abstinence videos from the 1950s:

… her family never suspected this seemingly innocent exercise would open the door to a New Age lifestyle that would affect Laurette for the next 22 years… As an adult, Laurette immersed herself in every New Age and metaphysical practice she came across: chanting, crystals, tarot cards, psychics, channeling spirits.

Let The Eagle soar:

There’s “The Eagle” stretch, where the arms are pulled back to resemble a bird in flight. While students hold this stretch, Laurette reads Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles”…

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Yoga fusion run riot

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Just the other day, a female friend lamented, “I wish there was a workout that combined the grace of ballet, the balance of yoga, and the thunderosity of my booty.” Exasperated reply: “Woman, please! You need to get your fine ass down to Swerve on Sweetzer and 3rd.”:

Yoga Booty Ballet (1hr) – Reservations Reccomended
60-90 minutes– Signature class. A hybrid of all the good stuff from ballet–grace, beauty poise, power and lithe lean lovely limbs: the POWER of Yoga. Sun salutes, balancing poses and breathing–enough to bliss you out: the BOOTY aspects of fitness–original moves to enhance your fine muscular ass! Live Drumming as listed. [Swerve]

Can’t make it to L.A.? Buy the videos here, and then join along as we sing, “there’s no fusion like confusion” (with sincere apologies to Irving Berlin’s ghost).

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Queer India

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You might not know this, but it is illegal to be gay in India.

While “there is no explicit mention of homosexuality or homophilia in any of the statute books,” in practice Section 377 of the colonial era Indian Penal Code (written in 1860) effectively criminalizes homosexuality by criminalizing gay sex. The Indian government stands by this law, saying

Indian society, by and large, disapproves of homosexuality and justifies it being treated as a criminal offence even when adults indulge in private [BBC]

A recent effort by activist groups to have the law reframed to legalize sex between consenting adults (the law also bans pedophelia and bestiality) failed on technical grounds, with the Delhi High Court saying that third parties have no right to bring such challenges. The Indian Supreme Court is now looking into the matter, but it is unclear what will happen next.

Even though being a lesbian isn’t criminalized by Section 377 (“unnatural acts” are defined by penetration and it is claimed that “Queen Victoria refused to include the lesbianism clause in the law because she could not imagine ‘such a thing existed’“), as with most things desi, it’s still harder to be a woman than a man:

In a largely patriarchal society, lesbians bear the brunt of social ostracisation and the law more than gay men. In many states, lesbians have taken their lives after facing harassment at home and outside.[Many women] …  have been forcibly married off by their parents. When they tell the truth, they are thrown out of their homes by their spouses, parents and relatives.  [BBC]

In one case, the father of a 31 year old teacher kicked her all the way down from the third floor when he learnt of her sexual preference [cite]

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This is the way the world ends…

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StrategyPage offers it’s analysis of what the first stages of a war between India and Pakistan might look like –

May 14, 2005: Can India ever fight a war against its nuclear armed neighbor and rival Pakistan without provoking a nuclear holocaust? The Indian Army (IA) thinks it has an answer to this question. Until now the India’s doctrine for war against Pakistan consisted of combat divisions advancing across the Rajasthan desert border into Pakistan, eventually cutting off Pakistan’s population centers in the north from the only port and economic lifeline of Karachi…

(click quickly! Stratpage’s permalinks are notoriously not so permanent)

Interesting reading if you’re of a macabre / war-nerd sort. Personally, I’m an optimist and believe that, short of an improbable Pakistani state implosion, a Hamiltonian peace will be the long term outcome between the 2 nations. Of course, the path from here to there is rarely a straight line. Continue reading →

Sociology + Econ in One Sentance

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Tyler Cowen @ Marginal Revolution, has the following quote about Indonesia which could just as easily apply to India –

Then Suharto looked at [James] Wolfensohn. “You know, what you regard as corruption in your part of the world, we regard as family values.”
That is from Sebastian Mallaby’s The World”s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

How true it is. Continue reading →

The Flying Sikh

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Air India has started international flights to Amritsar from Toronto and Birmingham on a new Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto route. Given that 50% of the passengers flying through Delhi’s airport are Punjabis, this should be an improvement in service for those passengers and help boost tourism as well.

 

The flights will be operated with state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire Boeing 777-222 ER aircraft on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. [webindia]

Sunday’s inaugural flight was flagged off by the federal civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, and Punjab’s chief minister, Capt Amarinder Singh. To handle the increased air traffic, the airport at Amritsar is being given a $15m makeover which includes a new terminal building and modern landing aids. [BBC]

This is just the first step. These flights will be upgraded to daily in the upcoming months and additional flights from Amritsar to the Gulf and other western countries are planned.

Air India isn’t the only airline increasing its flights through Rajasansi Airport; everybody wants a piece of the NRI action. In 8 years, the number of flights has increased from 3 to 56 per week:

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