Monthly Archives: July 2005

Q: What do the Buggles have in common with Rabbi Shergill?

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I was over at the MTV Desi website today trying to figure out how to get hired. Maybe I’m a bit out of their demographic. I am pushing up on the big 3-0 but I am mos definitely cooler than Carson Daly AND my full head of hair is easily spike-able. If word gets out that I am only in it to get close to a certain VJ, my chances will be totally shot. In case you were wondering, this is what they dropped first. Video Killed the Radio Star it ain’t (thankfully):

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The video for “Bulla Ki Jaana” relects the core values of MTV Desi’s audience and captures the panaromic sweep, breathtaking variety and secular beauty of South-Asian and Indian life. Having grown up in India, Rabbi is not technically bi-cultural, but his grasp of the human condition, the ache and kick of life, influences that range from Bob Dylan to Sufi mysticism, and the struggle to sing the unsung hero’s song, qualify him as a truly multicultural artist who deserves to be heard around the world. “Bulla Ki Jaana,” like MTV Desi, is iconoclastic, trippy, mysterious and inclusive, striving to create new emotional connections between cultures.

Naturally, I immediately jumped to the lyrics to figure out MTV Desi’s “core values,” to see if I’d fit in. Continue reading →

Identity crisis

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On Monday the LA Times ran an insightful story [free reg. required] on what happens when you pretend to be an American all day:

Every Saturday morning Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It’s the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders.

Between 20 and 33 years old and keen to hide their symptoms from employers and families, the patients have significantly increased Kalyanasundaram’s workload.

“They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub.”

According to a report in the Indian Express newspaper, one in 15 people seeking counseling from a doctor in Chennai, India, works either in software or at a call center…

…”The strain of pretending to be ‘Bob’ or ‘Susan’ on the phone for weeks on end and keeping up with ‘Eastenders’ [a British television soap opera] and baseball can lead to questions of identity,”…

Yeah, I sort of saw this coming. As a former telemarketer I know full well the depression that can clutch at you when dealing with rude people all day. The other interesting issue the Times article looks at is what happens when the kids start making more money than the parents. The “as long as you live in my house” leverage just doesn’t cut it. “Mom, I’ll be at Moe’s.”

India’s work patterns also are testing traditionally close family structures. Gouhari said: “Children are earning vastly more than their parents ever did and the new disposable income is leading to a burgeoning pub culture which is causing a lot of family tension.”

Continue reading →

Anchors away

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MTV Desi chief Nusrat Durrani picked Brit TV personality Tim Kash for male anchor. As a fellow well-known Sri Lankan Brit, Kash is like the male M.I.A. — if she were as lame as Carson Daly. (That’s a slam on Daly, not Kash, whom I’ve never watched.)

Since Kash isn’t an American, I’m guessing Durrani didn’t find a male anchor he liked by launch time and had to go to the UK bench. I’m also guessing that he’s champing at the bit to get an American. But maybe he just wanted one of the anchors to be an old hand at MTV.

On the right is Niharika Desai, their female face. Here are the anchors’ official bios:

Of Sri Lankan heritage but born and raised in the UK, Tim Kash hosts the daily MTV UK News show… Tim began his career at MTV at age 19, becoming the youngest MTV VJ in history. Most recently, Tim co-hosted the MTV US/International coverage of the recent Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park that was beamed across the world.

Niharika is a film editor with a background in photography… [from] Poughkeepsie, Mumbai and Brooklyn… Niharika is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in Psychology and South Asia Regional Studies. She is conversant in Marathi, can read and write the Devanagari script.

MTV Desi apparently didn’t get the ‘must refer to self as Indian’ memo. Damn you, South Asian Studies! Anil Dash says Desai may beat Apu as the most famous desi American within the next 12 months. That would be a relief, but Miss MTV Desai only beams for satellite at the moment.

… I can’t wait for the day when there’s enough Indians in the mainstream media that we can complain about the offensive way in which we’re depicted. Somewhere between Temple of Doom and Apu’s appearance on the Simpsons…

Lilia asked me the other day who the most famous U.S.-born Indian American is, and I had to think a bit. It’s not Deepak Chopra, because I don’t think he was born in the U.S., and I was told [Ed.: by the friend who asked the question] Norah Jones doesn’t entirely count, since she’s half Indian. My guess was that maybe it’s Tony Kanal from No Doubt, but apparently he was born in the U.K. Maybe by this time next year it’ll be Niharika Desai.

Continue reading →

The transit of Venus in Mercury

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Mathangi Mian made the shortlist for the UK’s most prestigious music award, the Mercury Prize, today (thanks, brimful). The Kaiser Chiefs are favored to win. Coldplay’s also on the list, but rumour is that this year’s da bomb in Englistan: M.I.A. has a shot to balance out last year’s pick, the already established Franz Ferdinand.

Previous winners include Dizzee Rascal, PJ Harvey, Badly Drawn Boy, Portishead and Talvin Singh, for his groundbreaking OK in 1999. Sometimes the Prize gives me the heebie-jeebies. They once nominated the Spice Girls, which is neither desi nor kosher.

Proving yet again just how much cooler the UK is, there have been loads of desi nominees out of the 10-12 bands shortlisted each year. In fact, from 1998-99 there were two Asian bands each year. It’s like NYC where you’ll often have multiple desi parties or arts events on the same day because the market can support them.

  • M.I.A., Arular, 2005
  • Susheela Raman, Salt Rain, 2001
  • Nitin Sawhney, Beyond Skin, 2000
  • Talvin Singh, OK, 1999 (winner)
  • Black Star Liner, Bengali Bantam Youth Experience!, 1999
  • Asian Dub Foundation, Rafi’s Revenge, 1998
  • Cornershop, When I Was Born for the 7th Time, 1998
  • Apache Indian, No Reservations, 1993

Asians in Media complains that Singh’s win didn’t have coattails:

Remember the infamous ‘Asian underground revolution’ that was supposed to happen when Talvin Singh won a Mercury prize in 1999? Vivek Bald’s excellent documentary Mutiny Sounds showed how that fell apart when industry executives could not grasp how to sell it. Raghav seems to be in a similar bind. One the one hand he seems to be marketed only for Asians. At the same time faces resistance from those who don’t know what to do with an Asian artist. [Link]

Continue reading →

Pssst…wanna buy a Harry Potter?

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pirated HP.jpg 48 hours. It’s the name of a show no one watches. It’s also the amount of time it takes for a pirated version of HP6 to show up on the streets of Mumbai. And of course, what a bargain it is:

Hawkers and street book stalls are offering JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for $6, compared to the legitimate stores’ $20.

Penguin India–whose goal is to report knock-offs, not confiscate them–is obviously on the case, though I’m sure that means nothing to the guy who’s selling Hari Puttar next to pirated movies and software.

Pirated Harry Potter copies started appearing on Monday, following the worldwide release in the early hours of Saturday.
At almost every major traffic junction the book was being offered by hawkers.

How convenient! For now, that is. The BBC reports that police raids should occur soon enough.

Like everywhere else in the world, HP is unstoppable:

Genuine book stores say they have already sold more than 100,000 copies in Mumbai alone, smashing all previous records.

Those numbers are still on the small side compared to the US and UK:

In its first 24 hours, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 6.9m copies in the US and more than two million in the UK, beating all previous Potter records.

And in the next 24 hours, it was knocked off! How’s that for efficiency? Continue reading →

Say Cheese

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All day Manish has been foto-blogging (floging) highlights from the Indian State visit. He updated with this picture just a few hours ago:

This isn’t so much a post from me as it is a question to our Indian American readers. As an Indian-American, something with this picture just doesn’t sit right with me. I appreciate what the Administration might have been trying to do but…if the German Chancellor visited the U.S. would all the German American appointees be invited to pose for a picture with him? This picture (to me) smells of the unstated belief that Indian Americans somehow have a divided loyalty and are not simply American. Why the assumption that we would want to pose with “our” Prime Minister? I think I would have a hard time accepting such an invitation until I understood the logic of it. Why would I want to pose with him? Just because he is from India and so were my parents? I would most certainly want to meet and talk with him, but not in this manner. I wonder if a picture exists where the Indian American appointees were all called in to pose with just our President Bush?

I realize that I am probably over-reacting to this, but I am just curious as to what some of you think. Continue reading →

Bad News Brown Bear

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Good old Apul sends me this tip on the upcoming re-make of the Bad News Bears:

There appears to be a South Asian in the upcoming “Bad News Bear.” Don’t know much else about it.

Well, I inspected the dugout to discover one Aman Johal from Canada:

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AMAN JOHAL (Prem Lahiri) lives in Vancouver, Canada. “Bad News Bears” marks his film acting debut. Aman’s mother, who works as an actor and as a tennis instructor, always encouraged her youngest son to follow his dreams. His mother’s agent heard about the casting call for “Bears,” and Aman happily went, not expecting the fantastic outcome of being cast as one of the Bears. Aman has two older brothers, who are thrilled for their little bro. Aman has been a very competitive athlete, excelling in tennis, soccer and roller hockey. Since shooting “Bad News Bears” he has also developed a great love for baseball and quite the arm. Aman is also a big fan of music and “Star Wars.”

There is a very embarrassing picture from my youth that looks just like the one above. I was also bad news. Continue reading →

The next generation rickshaw

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When I worked for a few months in Delhi at the end of 2002 I was pleasantly surprised by my daily commute. I had heard that the Delhi air was absolutely choked with automobile exhaust fumes and made commuting unbearable. Having converted many buses and rickshaws over to natural gas (CNG) seemed to have done a pretty good job in cleaning up the Delhi skies. Los Angeles, where I live, is still playing catch-up. In the near future though, Indian cities may surge ahead again thanks to the most reliable form of transportation. Indianexpress.com explains:

The great Indian autorickshaw may have just shifted to the eco-friendly CNG but itÂ’s ready for the generation-next fuel.

Taking a major leap towards Indo-US co-operation in the energy sector, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have helped develop a hydrogen-run three-wheeler for Indian roads.

The Rochester Hills (Michigan)-based Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) has successfully converted and developed a CNG-run three-wheeler of Bajaj Automobiles into one run on hydrogen fuel.

Converting over to a hydrogen economy in the U.S. would be a massive undertaking that would span a couple decades. Some analysts think that China and India who have a smaller oil infrastructure could make the switch more easily, and also become more competitive economically, if they start with an alternative energy source while their economies are still developing. I know the critics will say that a hydrogen economy is pie in the sky but I’ve always had a saying: If it’s good enough for the Space Shuttle then its good enough for me (Tang and Velcro included). Continue reading →

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

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As all eyes focus on the meetings between Bush and Singh, I am still desperately hoping that there will be some sort of drama at the formal state dinner. You know, what if Rumsfeld gets drunk and decides to have a few choice words with a certain someone? The Telegraph is the only publication that seems to share my previously stated (mischievous) hopes:

Amrit Singh, the Prime Minister’s New York-based daughter, is expected to join her father as part of the “VVIP family” during the current Indian state visit to Washington. There is nothing unusual about this: except that Amrit is a perennial thorn on the sides of Bush and his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the strongest advocates in the present US administration for closer ties with India.

Amrit is an attorney with the ImmigrantsÂ’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She is a stormy petrel of civil rights in America and has taken on the Pentagon for abusing prisoners in IraqÂ’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison as well as the blackhole US detention camps in Guantanamo, Cuba, where suspected al Qaida terrorists are imprisoned.

Amrit has also taken on American airlines for allegedly discriminating against passengers with brown skin in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More recently, she got involved in allegations against US soldiers that they knowingly desecrated the Quran.

By all accounts though, the Prime Minister’s daughter is very down-to-Earth and prefers to stay out of the political spotlight when it concerns her family.

At the time of writing, it was not certain whether Amrit, who is viewed by thousands of Americans as a formidable and high profile adversary of the Bush administration, will accept official US hospitality and stay at Blair House.

Amrit has consistently refused to speak with reporters about her relationship with the Prime Minister, but is readily accessible to the media on cases she is pursuing against the US government or corporations.

Those in New York who know her — and Indian government officials — speak of her as the finest prime ministerial offspring India ever had because she has no airs, she does not throw her weight and she never speaks about her family connections.

Hmmm. I can only hope that maybe she’ll decide to follow in her father’s footsteps someday. Continue reading →

Abs-olutely amusing

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Take THIS, you…wankers:

Indian police forced around 200 people caught watching pornography to do sit-ups in public to shame them and keep them away from theaters that illegally screen smutty movies.

Apparently, police in Orissa’s Balasore district raided a theater that was showing a flesh flick. After collecting the perverted perps (some of whom were as young as 17), authorities forced them to work on their abs in the town square. No females were apprehended during the raunch-raid.

As if having to vow that they wouldn’t watch porn again (ha!) wasn’t bad enough, parents of the perps were invited to watch the public spectacle. Eye-witness accounts haven’t corroborated my assumption that these mummies and deddies waited for their precious sons with chappals firmly in hand. It’s safe to assume that asses all over Balasore were…sore…later. 😉

Police officer Sanjeev Panda said authorities carried out the public shaming after attempts to get theatres in district not to show pornography had failed.
“So we decided to crack down on the audience,” Panda was quoted in the newspaper, which also reported that police in Orissa planned to integrate such public punishments into their general campaign against pornography.

You can prevent porn from being screened in theaters, but you can’t get it off mobile phones:

The latest craze is pornographic Multi-Media Messaging clips, some of which allegedly show Bollywood actresses engaged in sexual acts.

Thanks Srinath, for the tip. Continue reading →