Monthly Archives: May 2005

Abramoff’s Pakistan connection

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The New York Times reports that Jack Abramoff, the same lobbyist whose shady dealings with Congressman Tom Delay have been all over the news recently, has been brokering shady deals for many years:

Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of a federal corruption investigation, led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan in 1997 but failed to tell the group’s sponsor or the lawmakers that he was a registered lobbyist for the Pakistani government, according to the sponsor and the two House members on the trip.

Lobbyists for foreign governments are required to register with the Justice Department. Disclosure statements filed by Mr. Abramoff and his former firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, show that the firm was retained by Pakistan in May 1995 to lobby to overturn sanctions barring delivery of American weapons to Pakistan if its government continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The initial six-month lobbying contract paid the firm a retainer of $165,000, plus expenses. A spokesman for Preston Gates had no comment.

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Witches and pirates dealt blows

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A couple of news items remind us that we’re not that far removed from the days of flattened globes and foppish robes. In Assam, an angry mob does what angry mobs do best — irrational accusations followed by violent consequences:

A Tribal mob in northeastern India lynched and decapitated two women accused of practising witchcraft, threw their bodies into a river and paraded their heads as trophies, police said … Villagers believed the women “had cast evil spells,” the police official said, and afterwards paraded the heads “as trophies.” Eight people have been arrested over the attack. [The Courier-Mail]

And on the high seas near Bangledesh, government crackdowns have led to a drastic decline in old-school, non-digital piracy:

… the number of attacks has fallen from 58 in 2003 to just 17 in 2004. The (International Maritime Bureau) has praised the Bangladesh authorities, saying that the fall in attacks shows that when governments “are committed to tackling piracy and provide the necessary resources, the attacks would eventually reduce.” [Jane’s]

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Magical accounting

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Desi novelists are renowned for their fantastical tales, so it’s only fitting that a desi was chosen as White House CFO. Gopal Khanna was plucked from obscurity in Minnesota as the Peace Corps CFO and trustee of a Hindu temple to become the latest fiction-spinner for the Executive Office of the President, managing a $750M budget. Three quarters of a bil for an office? That’s a lot of sticky notes.

With kids named Rohun and Rohini (and Hrithik?), he carries on desi parents’ all-consuming attraction to alliteration and risible regard for rhyming rubrics. It’s those damn storytelling genes.

Update: Word on the street is that Khanna has been pressing the flesh, converting D.C. desis to the dark side. The Imperial Guard has put out the Help Wanted sign. Ennis says, ‘Did you hear the rumor that he’s dropping the last two letters of his first name?’ Ah, now I grok the attraction.

Khanna reportedly whipped the Peace Corps’ finances into shape, but I’ve got no idea how he’s going to deal with being a marginalized minority. After all, it can’t be easy being the first fiscal conservative in the administration 😉

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Sri Lankan maids abused in Middle East

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Some stories of struggle are so dispiriting, so mismatched in power between attacker and victim, you can barely get through them. This one’s about widespread abuse of Sri Lankan maids in the Middle East:

More than a million Sri Lankans – roughly 1 in every 19 citizens – now work abroad, and nearly 600,000 are housemaids… In Saudi Arabia, the most common destination, they call Sri Lanka “the country of housemaids.”

… 15 to 20 percent of the 100,000 Sri Lankan women who leave each year for the gulf return prematurely, face abuse or nonpayment of salary, or get drawn into illicit people trafficking schemes or prostitution… Hundreds of housemaids have become pregnant, often after rapes, producing children who, until Sri Lanka’s Constitution was recently amended, were stateless because their fathers were foreigners. More than 100 women come home dead each year…

Some of the more horrific stories:

The young scion of the Kuwait house where she worked had repeatedly tried to molest her, finally pushing her to the ground and breaking her wrist… Thangarasa Jeyanthi… had a face as purple and puffy as a plum, eyes swollen shut, burn marks on her body and dried blood still around her ears. The husband and wife she worked for had assaulted her daily… They had cut her with a knife, kicked and stomped on her, tied her hands with rope and denied her food…

For Sri Lankan women, long hair is a source of pride, its absence, a source of shame. Ms. Manilariatne’s employer – her “mama” – had cut boy-short [her] hair…

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Angelina Jolie expresses opinion for some reason

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Angelina Jolie isn’t a big fan of Pakistan’s plans to push U.N. refugee camps back into Afghanistan:

Actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency, said that Pakistani plans to relocate refugee camps from Pakistan to Afghanistan would not help the Afghans living in them. “I don’t think it is a good idea,” Jolie told reporters at a press conference on Saturday when asked to comment on remarks made by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf about relocating the camps. [AFP/Yahoo!]

Non-existent sources report that Musharraf responded in-kind, saying he didn’t think Jolie’s move from sexy bombshell to sexy homewrecker was all that good of an idea either, but you didn’t see him complaining.

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Piracy, Desi Arts, and DJ Sanj

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It is a well-known fact in the South Asian community that one of the main reasons desi artists do not do well at the box office or in record stores is because of our community’s acceptance of piracy. Why pay full price for something, when you can get a rip-off of the original for half the price, right?

I know there have been some raids on Indian stores in the US, more for pirated dvd’s than music, but it seems that the meteoric rise of the British Asian music industry has sparked British law enforcement into action. Last week, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), began raiding Indian stores to try and stop the sale and distribution of the album “Authorised” by DJ Sanj which was released on bootleg records but who is signed to EnvyRoma records, mainly for its illegal use of uncleared music samples and vocals, a problem that seems to be a regular occurrence in Asian music—think PMC’s Mundian to Bach Ke biting from busta rhymes, who bit from Knight Ryder. That sample was eventually cleared, but most of the samples aren’t.

The BPI confirmed it was investigating complaints by some of its members surrounding the remix album, released by Bootleg Recordings and distributed by the Birmingham based Hi Tech Music label. BPI Director of Anti-Piracy David Martin said: “We believe that this remix album uses lengthy samples of our members’ sound recordings without permission.” He added: “Of course we take every complaint we receive in relation to our membersÂ’ rights very seriously, and we are investigating the situation.”

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Charlie and the Brownie Factory

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will star Mr. Soggybottom himself, the little person Deep Roy, playing every single Oompa Loompa at once (via Hollywood Masala). Thank goodness for CGI. I refer not to Roy’s hectic shooting schedule but to the SAG overtime pay scale.

Shelley Conn from the British Asian miniseries Second Generation also has a role, as does a new actor named Ray Verma. Multiple desi roles in a mainstream movie? I smell Brits.

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Even Gogol’s got a blog

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Sometimes being a movie star sucks because you’ve got a lot of down time between seeing all your wardrobe options (no sarcasm intended). What would YOU do with said downtime? Well Kalpen Modi (a.k.a. Kal Penn) does the same thing that I would do were I an actor with down-time (besides using my popularity to hit on girls of course): he blogs as if he were born to. [thanks to Kunal Bhaumik for the tip]

In the glamorous world of filmmaking, I am sitting on the floor in a corner of a bedroom at 1:20 in the morning, waiting to try on wardrobe options. Think about that next time you see an actor on the street, romanticize what we do because you watch too much “Extra” and read too much “US Weekly”.

I shot a scene with my mom and sister (Tabu and Sahira, respectively), and was about to leave for the day. But we havenÂ’t found the right wardrobe for a few upcoming scenes, so Arjun (our energetic and talented costume designer) asked me to hang around for a while. I brought my laptop with me, and was emailing a little bit; then I realized this is probably what they meant when they said they wanted me to do a bit of blogging about how films are made.

Okay, but I do have one self-centered question? Why isn’t Sepia Mutiny on his blogroll? Surely a blog isn’t a blog without a proper roll? I know he reads us (well at least once).

April 1, 2005– Hello! Welcome to the Namesake weblog. If youÂ’re reading this, it probably means youÂ’re a fan of the novel, “The Namesake”, and are curious about the film adaptation weÂ’re shooting. This afternoon, I was asked by James (the Fox Searchlight Publicist in charge of “The Namesake”) if IÂ’d be up for keeping a sort of online journal through the shoot, so here goes…

I guess we should give my parents credit for birthing and raising me. Oh, and my guidance counselor, for inciting rebellion in me when she said that the biggest mistake I could ever make would be to “throw your life away by trying to do this whole acting nonsense, Kalpen!”

Wow. That’s what my “counselor” told me about blogging as well. I was a rebel too.

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