Rum-based lubricant

TTG reminisces about the good old days before liberalization:

Option 2 was a bribe at the beginning of it all, a one year wait, and then a monthly bribe (usually in the form of a bottle of ‘Old Monk’ rum, presented to the local linesman) to ensure the smooth working of your phone. Everytime it rained, you knew your phone would die, along with your connection to the outside world. And every once in a while, somebody would bribe the linesman, who would then… allow the briber to make calls on your line, for free.

Who knew it took rum to lubricate the Indian phone system?

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Pop Quiz – Whaddya do about Badistan?

And old-ish, but new to me article by Daniel Drezner posits questions about a hypothetical country called Badistan – a rather thinly-disguised Pakistan –

Pop quiz: You’re in charge of protecting the national security of the United States. There’s a pivotal country–let’s call it Badistan–that plays a crucial role in advancing American interests. But elements within that country–including some who work for the government–are abetting actors that virulently oppose America. The leader of this government has pledged to cooperate with the United States, but the two attempts on his life over the past month suggest his domestic position is precarious. What approach do you take to Badistan?

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A silver paisa in her shoe

Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a silver sixpence in her shoe.
 
You know how family members at Indian weddings make lists of the gifts being exchanged? BridalBeer says it’s not merely the crass and mercenary:
I used to wonder why the bridegroom’s grandfathers, his uncles, took the gifts while the bride looked to her painted toes… Men who took these gifts made a list, who gave what. And today, after years, I found the answer in legal text…

THE DOWRY PROHIBITION… RULES, 1985

… The list of presents which are given at the time of the marriage to the bride shall be maintained by the bride.

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“You people”

I’ve been reading this interesting new blog the last few days. Its called Discrimination & National Security Initiative (which in my opinion is a very un-bloggy name). One of the bloggers, Dave Sidhu, writes,

The focus of the research is the mistreatment of minority communities during times of war (e.g., the post-9/11 backlash against Sikhs, South Asians, Arabs, and Muslims). The project will gather information (like cases, articles, statutes, reports, etc.) and also perform original research on the human consequences of this mistreatment (like Muslim families not traveling or flying, Sikh males cutting their hair, etc.).

One story that they reported on last week was this one on CNN about discrimination at Denny’s:

Seven Arab American men filed a $28 million lawsuit against a Denny’s restaurant in Florida saying the manager kicked them out and told them, “We don’t serve bin Ladens here,” their lawyer said on Thursday.

They sued the restaurant owner, Restaurant Collection Inc., and former manager, Eduardo Ascano, saying they were harassed, humiliated and refused service at the Denny’s in Florida City, southwest of Miami, in January 2004.

Lawyer Rod Hannah said the men had not ruled out an additional lawsuit against the Denny’s chain, which paid about $54 million in 1994 to settle a discrimination suit filed by black customers.

The Florida lawsuit said the men visited the restaurant early in the morning of January 11, 2004, and, after long delays, were seated, given menus and served drinks.

After waiting more than an hour for their food while later customers were served, they asked twice about their order. The lawsuit said Ascano told them “Bin Laden is in charge of the kitchen.” Asked about the reference to the al Qaeda leader, he swore and told them, “We don’t serve bin Ladens here” and ordered them to leave, the lawsuit said.

This morning a Sepia Mutiny reader, who I will call “S,” sent us an email asking us for a sanity check. We get tips all the time but nobody asks us for advice. Suddenly I felt the need to step into a phone booth, transform, and fly forth from our North Dakota headquarters and into the “real world.”

How do you KNOW that you have been the victim of discrimination and that it’s not just your “overly-sensitive” perspective skewing things, was her general query? I think most of us who grew up in the U.S. tend see the glass half full in instances of possible discrimination. I know I do. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt even in instances where a neutral third party would clearly label it as bigotry. Let’s look at her situation and see what we think.

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AnarCapLib on Indian Econ Growth

Yazad Jal of AnarCapLib got a piece published in Rediff about market liberalization and it’s quantitative and qualitative impact on Indian poverty

…We’ve had cell phones in India for around ten years only (started in September 1995). At that time, it was looked upon as be an expensive toy made for the rich to indulge it, one more luxury. Just a decade later, there are more cell phones than land lines in India. … India’s GDP per capita in 1990, before liberalisation, was $1,300. Today it’s $2,830, more than double. It’s increased at around 5.33 per cent per year.

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Kill the TV, Cut her throat, Spill her blood

TVFuneral.jpg
Blogging has become a real family affair for me of late. My parents and brother keep sending me interesting tips. This one comes from my dad. He writes:

Abhi: This is from Ahmedabad’s today’s Gujarat Samachar. An old fashioned school established in Ahmedabad few years ago called “TAPOVAN”. Middle and elementary school kids decided that TV has been a bad influence lately, so they decided to have “Funeral” for the TV on the street and took a TV to the cremating place and burned it. Only in India.

The scene above looks quite Lord of the Flies-ish to me. I would not want to cross the path of this bloodthirsty mob. My contacts on the Indian Street (our family is from Ahmedabad) inform me that this violence was precipitated in part by frustration over the plot twists of this season’s ALIAS. My sources in the State Department tell me that, as of now, it looks as if the Prime Minister will call upon KPS Gill once more, to end this before more blood is shed.

I think this whole affair is especially depressing in light of the latest “research” proving definitively that television makes you smarter. When violence such as this breaks out it’s important to keep things in perspective. Just because you see a picture of yet another brown mob DOES NOT mean that brown people are naturally violent. This simply shows that the cut-throat competition that is considered “education” in third world countries does not allow for these kids to have enough time to know the joys of good tv. I am convinced that given a choice, free from an opressive regime, all men/women would choose to watch t.v. God wants this even. Do you think this scene would have unfolded if Nanny 9-1-1 or the Surreal Life aired in India? I will let you think about that.

The silver lining here is that all of us TV loving Americans can breathe easy knowing that this wave of violence won’t spread here. These kids will surely have their Travel Visas denied if they come to preach their hate here. Continue reading

Posted in TV

A.B., baby

Like doctoral dissertations on hip-hop, here’s a highfalutin’ take on the original Bollywood ass-kicker by David Chute of Film Comment. It was written in honor of the Amitabh retrospective at Lincoln Center last month (via Hollywood Masala):

… he is most fervently admired for his verbal gifts: the sonorous baritone that makes all his setpiece speeches sound like Mosaic proclamations, and the flair for mimicry he exploits as one of the first Bollywood actors to adopt authentic Bombay street slang in his gangster roles… In contrast, Bachchan’s typical terpsichorean style is about as basic as it gets, a sort of blue-eyed Punjabi variant on one of Zorba the Greek’s “hoop-hah” strut ‘n’ shrug routines… Decked out in what looks like a gaucho outfit in Don (78), prancing and preening next to the staggering Zeenat Aman (India’s answer to Claudia Cardinale), he looks less like a performer working through a carefully choreographed routine than a man enjoying himself, and enjoying life…

… even when Bachchan was playing proletarian characters he always walked “with the posture of an aristocrat.” … this guy never feels outclassed. “You see a certain grace about that character… So many other actors have tried to ape Amitabh, but they’ve failed. Because they don’t have the sophistication and the tehzeeb [culture] that he grew up with. As an actor, Amitabh’s anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. Amitabh’s anger was mixed with hurt and tears…”

In an ironic reversal, Bachchan has begun playing establishment roles against Shah Rukh’s angry young man:

… in Mohabbatein, he looks more like something carved from granite… the ne plus ultra of all the stern father figures his Vijay characters rebelled against in the Seventies.

The reviewer too lightly skips over the intense Ajay Devgan, who starred in just this kind of role in Yuva:

… as no one in the current crop of younger actors has anything like Amitabh Bachchan’s moral authority… there was really only one viable choice for the voice-of-reason title role, an honest policeman fending off both Muslim and Hindu demagogues.

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Suphala’s tabla fusion

A well-connected young tabla player named Suphala Patankar plies the waters of New York society:

The setting was the Greenwich Village town house of Diane Von Furstenberg, where, at the behest of the author Salman Rushdie, a fan, Suphala had been invited to play the tabla with her band at a party honoring the writers’ organization PEN. The crowd of around 200 quieted briefly as Padma Lakshmi, Mr. Rushdie’s wife, introduced Suphala as a new talent worthy of their ears…

The writer Suketu Mehta, long a friend of Suphala’s, said that for a young Indian woman with musical aspirations the tabla was an odd choice. “It’s the equivalent of finding a female drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band,” he said. “It’s not unheard of, but it’s unusual…”

She’s got a Forrest Gump-like ability to connect with the famous:

Last year at a party at Bungalow 8, Suphala met Mr. Rushdie, Ms. Lakshmi, Mr. [Sean] Lennon and Harper Simon, the son of Paul Simon. Within days she was jamming in the studio with Mr. Lennon, the younger Mr. Simon and Edie Brickell, the singer, who is married to Paul Simon. Mr. Rushdie offered to help promote her music…

After hearing Norah Jones, the daughter of Ravi Shankar, sing at the Knitting Factory in 2002, Suphala introduced herself and asked the singer if she wouldn’t mind stopping by her apartment to record some vocal tracks. Ms. Jones obliged, not long before her first album orbited her into international stardom…

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