Monthly Archives: June 2005

Going legit at NASABA

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Note to self: The next time that you are granted a Press Pass to an event as a representative of Sepia Mutiny, at the very least you should bring a pen to take notes. That way you look more legit.

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Yesterday I attended the North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA) conference in D.C. I had to sheepishly admit to people who asked that I was not in fact an attorney like one of them. My “personal injury lawyer” cover was totally blown as evidenced by one very cute district court clerk from Chicago who called me out on it. No longer would I be able to walk amongst the lawyers and speak legalese with the reckless abandon that had served me so well in years past.

The general buzz at the conference was that the most compelling panel from Friday had been the one titled, 9/11 Commission Effects on the South Asian Community. Unfortunately I arrived in D.C. too late to attend. The panel that I was most looking forward to was the one titled, Politics, Identity, and Mobilization: South Asian Lawyers in Election 2004. This panel consisted of Democrats Reshma Saujani and Ro Khanna, as well as Republicans Dino Teppara, and Suhail Khan. The moderator was Deepa Iyer. I sat in the very front row and made eye contact just long enough to try and make the two Republicans feel uncomfortable. I kid, I kid. If I was a jerk I would have brought my laptop and started typing furiously whenever someone said something provocative or something that I disagreed with. I even thought about putting a sign on the cover of my laptop that read “I’m blogging about YOU right NOW,” but I needed people to trust me in order to get the story and cultivate future sources.

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Nusrat picks a face (Kinna Sona remix) – updated

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Three months ago, I met some friends of friends for drinks in a dimly-lit Times Square hotel lounge. The group included Nusrat Durrani, who runs MTV World and is now launching MTV Desi. Like the Bombay Dreams team, Durrani bemoaned his casting issues. Everyone and her mom had auditioned for VJ, but nobody looked ‘authentically’ desi American, whatever that is.

Until I met Durrani, my only image of a rocker past his 30s was of the dyed-haired, aging rockers showing off studded belts and butt-cracks at the gym or in the West Village. You want to throw an arm around their shoulders and say, ‘The ’60s, the ’70s and the ’80s are over, man. Let it go.’

Durrani is nothing like that. He’s the most punk fortysomething I’ve ever met. He’s got a wife and kid(s) and a spacious Brooklyn loft, but he still dresses like a rock star. In person he’s a shorter, desi version of Mick Jagger: the lips, the shaggy hair, the dog collar around his wrist.

But I still feel bad for the guy. Charismatic though he may be, we all know MTV has a terribly difficult time creating buzz 😉 So I was greatly relieved to hear that the NYT covered Durrani’s VJ auditions (thanks, Arun and Sachin).

Mr. Durrani said that he worried that Ms. Taufiq was too much of an Indian-American stereotype (beautiful overachiever) and that Mr. Usman would be straitjacketed in a V.J. role. Ms. Desai had no experience in front of a camera but she was cute, hip and sassy, and this captivated, as she put it, the Man… [NYT]

No shit — look at how these three are dressed. R&B singer Reshma is vamped to the max, MTV India-style. Comedian Azhar Usman is kitted out for the burbs. But video editor Niharika Desai’s look has Brooklyn artist all over it. Her site’s called Post-Punk Kitchen (hot PoPu, come ‘n get it!), for chrissake:

Niharika graduated from the University of Pennsylania… Some of her editing credits include… Alanis Morrissette Live! and SHARKS! (a series pilot on female Poker champs). [Post-Punk Kitchen]

Her female rival, Reshma, has a day job y’all might be familiar with. Ah yes, HP, the paragon of parking cushily. A college friend chose HP as his day job because they don’t make you work more than 8 hour days. He built and sold night job, a tech startup, for gobs of money, so who looks silly now?

Ms. Taufiq summed herself up: R&B artist who is bilingual in English and Hindi… and, well, chemical engineer now working in software development at Hewlett-Packard. [NYT]

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Kitsch Idol

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Sometimes we run across artistic works so breathtaking that we wonder whether in all the preceding years we have actually lived. Sometimes we find übermenschen who leap cultural chasms in a single bound. These artists have an intrinsic Goodness which translates in all cultures: Márquez. Rushdie. And… Mehndi?

For your amusement, I offer Daler Mehndi’s ‘Tunak Tunak Tun’ in Flash (via Freedom Shock). There’s some charm in this badly-drawn boy (doesn’t Daler deserve a full beard?), but the original was even more craptastic. ‘East Indian,’ flying carpets and comments about bin Laden, check. Hello my crazy-eyed future girlfriend!

Here’s the white boy version, bhangra moves and all, by SUNY Buffalo. I think my family owned a buffalo by that name once. It sounds Punjabi.

Here’s a disturbing industrial version, proving that there’s nothing so saccharine that a German can’t make it depressing.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

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New Entry into the Annals of Bad Writing on South Asia

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I think we have another entry into the annals of really bad writing on South Asia. This entry comes from perennial favorite, our friends over at Condé Nast Traveler.

Those of you who have been to the region understand my initial surprise when I received my June 2005 issue to see on the cover a piece entitled Driving India. I mean, there is a reason that Hertz and Avis car rental companies aren’t on every corner (I believe there are 16 Hertz locations for the entire country of over a billion people). Ever wonder why no ingenious Indian business person hadn’t created the rupee car rental company? Perhaps because it isn’t safe for those unfamiliar with the country/roads to drive there. Like any good mutineer, I immediately flip to the story entitled “Accelerating Mayhem,” and began reading to see how crazy the writer, Stephan Wilkinson must be to take on the Indian roads. Instead I was left wondering how his article got published.

Well as soon as I flipped to page 92, I began to see the signs, not so much that he is crazy, but for bad and clichéd writing on the region. What are these warning signs you ask? Let’s have a looksee:

  1. Required discussion of arranged marriage, check. I have no idea what this has to do with a travelogue or driving India, but yes, people in India have arranged marriages. It has been written about, TMBWITW Aishwarya has explained it, and some (gasp) even prefer it.

  2. The requisite mention of the “Indian head shake,” check. To be fair, Wilkinson describes it as “a vague cock of the head.” I think we should formally rename it here as the South Asian head shake because I know they do it in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as well.

  3. Use of the word “the” before mentioning the state of Punjab, check. I never understood how this trend started, to say “the Punjab.” Writing, “From Delhi through the Punjab” is the equivalent of saying from Washington D.C. through the PennsylvaniaÂ… Continue reading →

Set a thief

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The FBI has revealed one facet of its antiterrorism strategy by its handling of the high school girl deported (‘voluntarily returned’ under duress) to Bangladesh. They’re finding neoreligious Muslim kids, those who turn to religion as a way of rebelling against their more liberal parents. They’re zeroing in on those who listen to radicals like Omar Bakri Mohammed, an infamous North London imam.

Up to this point, I agree with their strategy. Here’s where I think they go wrong: they’re deporting them under any pretext without distinguishing between actual extremists and those who are just rebellious teens.

From childhood, Tashnuba embraced religion with a kind of rebellion. By 10 she was praying five times a day – and reproaching her more secular father, a salesman of cheap watches. At 12, Tashnuba even explored Christianity. But at 14, she adopted a full Islamic veil… Her parents… rejected… an arranged marriage to an American Muslim man… When Latif suggested an elopement to Michigan, Tashnuba impulsively agreed…

… she had repeatedly tuned to sermons broadcast daily by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammed… What mainly drew the agent’s eye, the girl said, were papers from an extra-help class for home-schooled girls that Tashnuba had joined to prepare for exams. On one page was a diagram highlighting the word “suicide” – her notes on a class discussion about why religions oppose it, she said…

Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen – allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings. [NYT]

The most interesting part about this story is that the FBI agent who gets credit for the takedown of a confused 16-year-old is herself familiar with the North London fundies. Thirty-seven-year-old Foria Younis was raised a British Muslim:

Armed with her knowledge of three continents, and fluent in Punjabi and Urdu, she flies the globe with FBI teams… Younis won’t go into specific details of her work, which is often undercover, but admits to travelling to “South Asia” on missions, and to co-operating with officers from Scotland Yard. Flanked by an FBI press officer, she is allowed to confirm she has been involved in the arrests of several Islamic extremists…

She knows that when she enters a Muslim household, even on a raid, the sight of her has an electrifying effect, especially on the women and girls of the home. In many households, women are “held hostage” by their men’s radicalism, she says… Britain has changed in 20 years, she says, especially the corner of the East End in which she grew up. “I grew up in a very South Asian community, so I didn’t get full exposure to all of what England had to offer…”

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Other reasons “Why They Hate Us”

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The situation in Uzbekistan utterly frustrates me. After 9/11 people asked, “Why do they hate us?” Uzbekistan is a perfect example of why. The Uzbeks are ruled by a despot who does not believe in Freedom (which is supposed to be the one value that we are trying to spread). Uzbekistan however has an airbase that is of vital importance as a staging ground for combat operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. makes the choice to support a government that massacred its own people. American dollars keep that regime in power, thus setting the stage for the possibility of blowback. It would be a mistake to think that this most recent massacre is just a one time thing that surprised our government. Over a year ago I blogged about this article (a MUST READ) reporting on a prison in Uzbekistan. Gulags are “in” right now.

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Time Magazine’s Asia edition features Kishore Mahbubani’s new book, “Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World,” which offers other reasons to explain how we squandered our once glorious reputation, and what we can to do change our course (although this second part is reportedly not very substantive):

Some of the ground Mahbubani covers is familiar enough, but much is not. One of his arguments is that the loss of trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world started years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq “unilaterally.” Mahbubani is particularly astute about how the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 damaged America’s image overseas. He writes, for example, about how disillusioned Thais were when the U.S. did not bail them out after it had bailed out Mexico during a similar currency crisis in 1994. The reason the U.S. spurned Thailand may seem obvious to a lot of Americans—”you’re not on our border,” one U.S. Treasury Department official supposedly told the Thais. But for a country that had followed the global financial rules as dictated by Washington—opening itself up to large capital flows from abroad, only to get hammered as that same money flew back out in a matter of days—the truth hurt in ways that most Americans still don’t get. The perception was that the U.S. would prop up another nation if threatened with a massive wave of illegal immigration, but otherwise cared only that big American banks should be able to get their money out of Thailand ASAP. Is it any wonder, Mahbubani writes, that China—the one major country that didn’t play by Washington’s rules back then—now sees its influence gaining steadily, probably at America’s expense?

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A time to kill?

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Vinod ended his post on the poor woman who was ordered to marry her despicable, rapist father-in-law with a “We’ll see” regarding the Indian police’s plans to get involved with the outrageous situation.

Have a look:

Police in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have arrested a man accused of raping his daughter-in-law.
The arrest follows reports that a Muslim council of community elders had ordered the victim to marry her father-in-law.
But the order was criticised by a top Muslim body which said it was not valid under Sharia (Islamic) law.

According to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, the council that issued the bullshit verdict was NOT authorized to do so.

India’s National Commission of Women has also become inovlved, by requesting a report from the UP government and declaring that

“We have requested the government to take action against the guilty and also pay compensation to the victim,” NCW president Girija Vyas told the BBC.

The original ruling in the case stated that the victim should marry her rapist and transform her relationship with her husband to a maternal one, after being exiled for seven months and ten days for purification purposes.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has a better idea, one which it derives from Islamic Law:

“Under the Sharia law, whatever happened with the victim is wrong and if her father-in-law has raped her, he should be sentenced to death,” the representative, Zafarab Geelani, said.

That’s more like it. Continue reading →

Reparations

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The Shinnecock Indian tribe said on Wednesday it was seeking billions of dollars for 150 years of back rent on land it inhabited for 12,000 years in New York state… The Shinnecock tribe… said they have inhabited the shores of Long Island for 500 generations and were swindled in an 1859 deal they say was forged with a group of unnamed private investors, wherein members of the tribe signed over their claim to the disputed land. [CNN]

[Scene: Big desi guy with a Brooklyn accent walks in. He approaches a flat and starts pounding on the door.] ‘Queenie! Hey, Queenie! You owe me back rent! Yeah, for India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. You’re 58 years overdue. What, eviction didn’t teach you anything? Fuggedaboutit. I know you’re in there. I’m slidin’ a bill under the door. It’s for damage to the place. You gotta pay me back for the gems you stole from the Taj Mahal. That’s right, tack that onto the back rent. Yeah, I know you added permanent fixtures. But that was with my money, labor and materials. So don’t go gettin’ all holy on me. I’m taking my chicken tikka masala back. And my Farokh Bulsara records. What? You actin’ like you nevah heard of an Indian giver before. My lawyah will be comin’ by in the morning.

‘Lemme let you in on a little secret. Yeah, you stole a lot of stuff from the place before leavin’. It’s a pretty long list. Truth is, I only want one thing, and it ain’t even on the list. So listen up before the lawyahs get involved. It’ll save you a lotta grief. Here it is:

‘All I really want is… an apology.’

Sadly for the Shinnecock, the account books of history are kept in a palimpsest, not a journaling file system.

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The Myth of Indian Liberalization

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Instapundit reports that Amit Varma of India Uncut has a piece in the Asian Wall Street Journal today. For the benefit of non-subscribers, Varma has the full text available on his blog.

In his piece, Varma comes down pretty skeptically on India fabled market liberalization –

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to visit Washington in a few weeks, and editorialists and commentators have already started writing about the emerging economic power of India. New DelhiÂ’s decision to start liberalizing its economy in 1991 is touted as a seminal event in IndiaÂ’s history, the moment when it threw off the shackles of Fabian socialism and embraced free markets. It is the stuff of myth–and to a large extent, it is exactly that.

He cites a study which was undoubtedly inspired by a favorite book of mine – Hernando De Soto’s Mystery of Capital. Varma notes –

Entrepreneurs can expect to go through 11 steps to launch a business over 89 days on average, at a cost equal to 49.5% of gross national income per capita.” Contrast the figure of 89 days with two days for Australia, eight for Singapore and 24 for neighboring Pakistan. …In Bombay, for example, an urban land ceiling act and a rent-control act make it virtually impossible for poor migrants to rent or buy homes, and they are forced into extralegal housing. The vast shantytowns of Bombay–one of them, Dharavi, is the biggest slum in Asia–hold, by some estimates, more than $2 billion of dead capital.

Varma fingers the 2 usual suspects – Continue reading →

Ok Arun, I’ll marry you, but only if I can ride an elephant to the wedding!

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Liz Hurley and Arun Nayer are finally getting hitched. The wedding is planned for February of next year, and will be held in Rajasthan. This will be a “spectacular affair with no expense spared to show the world how much she loves Arun,” and she has warned guests that they should keep the entire month free.

Liz, who turned 40 this weekend, is whole heartedly embracing the whole mirch-masala desi spirit of her wedding even though

… she gets horrifically ill whenever she sets foot in her lover’s country. Liz said she was sometimes left so weak doctors put her on a drip for days and has to take special care when eating, drinking – and even showering. She said: “I have a dry flannel right across my mouth like a gag when I take a shower. When I take my make-up off at night I don’t let water touch my lips. ” [cite]

Despite her Howard Hughes like ordeal in India’s five star establishments, she is very enthusiastic about the ceremony. She’s ready to trade in safety-pinned dresses for red wedding saris and to show up at her wedding riding an elephant. An elephant?

Liz has made up her mind that she wants an Indian princess-style wedding. She loves the colourful traditions of the country and wants to embrace them…. [and] is very keen to involve elephants in some way and hopes to arrive on one … It wouldn’t be the first time Liz and Arun have used an elephant as part of a celebration. The couple arrived side by side on one at his 40th birthday party last year. [cite]

While this same source also claimed that the use of elephants “depends on logistics and whether it actually fits in with the ceremony,” I’ll bet this is actually the first line of the pre-nup. You want me to get married in your germ-ridden country? I’m riding an elephant or we can call the whole thing off! Oh, she’s a real Indian princess already …

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