Manhattan celebrates Diwali next Sunday, October 2nd at the South Street Seaport. Come enjoy bhangra, chaat, Air-India fireworks (not the Flight 182 kind) and life insurance booths next to the Brooklyn Bridge.
The chilly Seaport is a moorage for tall ships in the shadow of azure skyscrapers by Wall Street. It’s both an anachronism (a mall these days) and an odd spot for the celebration, evoking the Americans dressed as Indians who dumped tea in Boston Harbor.
Real Indians would never waste perfectly good tea. And it would probably be Lipton.
Previous post here. Related posts: one, two, three.
Wow — not to be a tight-ass, but the Air India parenthetical is in pretty poor taste…
That said, this is a great event and the fireworks are pretty spectacular.
~Bow~ Always happy to oblige. One might also call it
brownblack comedy.what time does it start? i know it’s all-day, but still. some of us have travel arrangements to contemplate. 😉
Not sure exactly. It probably starts noon-ish, and ends after dusk falls and the fireworks show, around 8.30-8.45pm.
What’s with the vessel called Peking?
C’est tres Chinois, non?
THE JOKE ABOUT FLIGHT 182 IS IN VERY POOR TASTE AND FRANKLY SICK AND PATHETIC. GROW UP!
Am sure there is a serious reason one thinks Flight 182 is a comedy (of some hue)
Am willing to learn. Can someone explain?
Sumita
They would buy Tetley, not Lipton.
Tetley is the tea sipped by the Tata conglomerate, which purchased the company a while back. Though I can’t remember the last time I saw a Tetley commercial.
Buy Indian!
The last Tetley ad I saw had “Lovely Day” is it’s tune. What a great song. Stupid Twista tried to ruin it.
#Then ah look at you…and I know it’s gonna be…a Diwali daaaayyy!#
Manish old boy, it was in rather poor taste but I’ve never disapproved of bad taste. When Joan Rivers made 9/11 jokes soon afterwards, most people jumped on her (don’t worry, she’s made of 65% teflon) but comedians applauded her, and I was with them. We have to be able to laugh at everything life throws at us. I got in trouble for making this joke the day after 7/7 (bear in mind I & my gf were in the thick of things):
The trouble with suicide bombers, is they’re a dying breed.
I think that black comedy is great. Maybe this was just a bad joke, period.
Are people actually planning to attend this event?
Real Indians I guess 🙂
Bah– if you can’t laugh in the face of death twenty years later, there’s no point in living.
Manish
Thank you for the link. It was definitely a good reminder(am aware of the genre and have mixed feelings about it. I feel only one who has subjective experience of tragedy is allowed to laugh at himself/herself.Then its fine and even transcendent of the darkness of death.)
Are you aware of Draupadi’s humor and Doryodhana’s reaction to it. I dont have a link but it may be a good refernce in this context
Sumita
The entertainment portion starts around 1:00pm. Please be aware that there are TWO very different stages that run entertainment: the big stage, on the seaport pier-side, runs only classical “old skool” stuff. If you want a real party, cross the street away from the water and find the little stage with more contemporary entertainment.
(I don’t know yet what time we go on, exactly. It should be no earlier than 2-ish. IST and all that)
Some things just don’t have mass appeal…just like them holocaust jokes.
I haven’t been to this in a few years, mainly b/c of the desi thug factor. Used to be a nice Autumn Sunday activity back in the day…
It probably would have been better to have omitted the Flight 182 joke, considering the large number of people who died and of course the on-going controversy regarding who was responsible…
Having said that, Manish I am normally a big fan of your posts and you do come across as a genuinely nice guy, so let’s just regard this as a one-off bad joke, okay ?
DesiDancer — Very best of luck for the party next week, and kudos to you for taking part (not exactly a shy & retiring wallflower, huh ? laughing). There’s been some good Bollywood songs over the past year for you to boogie to — the remix version of “Dhoom Machale”, “Deedar De” from Dus, and so on — you’re pretty spoilt for choice. Have fun.
Isn’t Diwali in November?
Isn’t Diwali in November?
Um, seriously. My calendar says Nov 1. This is about a month early. WTH?
They hold it early so they can feasibly do it outdoors.
yay i’m excited, my bharatanatyam group is performing there
So will this be on the cool stage (where DD will be twitching her hips) or… ?
I read this post and was miffed about the Air India 185 reference.
Was just gonnacomment and see that people have already jumped on Manish’s gut !!
Anyways, Manish how about selling SM tee-shirts at the mela !!
I figured I’d skip this until I read DesiDancer will be performing. And is Anna hinting she’s attending as well? Will there be another SM meetup? If not, could someone send me a clue as to how to ID DesiDancer (just curiousity and desire to put a face – or in this case a body seen from 300 feet away – to a handle and all that). nina_paley at plain ol’ yahoo dot com.
DesiDancer, now Google Video is up and running, there’s no excuse for you not to upload some footage! Then again…there’s also no excuse for me, as per your request. Well good luck with it anyhoo. And Nina are YOU performing then? Good luck as well!
Jai Singh – Dhoom Machale is your suggestion eh? I quite fancy Tata Young. Half Thai half American I think. Yet another hot half Asian half white chicks. If I had been a girl I’m sure I’d have fancied myself. She’s not jaw-droppingly stunning, but there’s something very foxy about her. Oh yeah it’s her rolling around in a bikini in mud and porridge in Dhoom Machale. I never found porridge arousing before. John Abraham is my hero, he gets to grope Tata Young and rutt Bipasha Basu.
I’ve realised I talk about girls a great deal and I’m sorry about that. I trace it all back to that thread about ages. When I realised I was a young’un compared to you aunties and uncles, I suddenly fell into this puerile, smutty teenager role on SM. Now I’m off to snog Michelle behind the bikesheds – she said she’d let me get to second base.
So fun!
Bongsy and Jai– Dhoom Machale is SOOOOOOOOO last year 😉
Our selections will be: Dil Dooba (the aunties like it), Ishq Kabhi Karion Na, Dus Bahane (yeah boyee), Naach Balliye, Le Gayi (classic), and Kahin Aag Lage from Taal.
We’d have done a heavier set, but we nearly broke the stage last year. Seriously, no exaggeration. We went stomp and the stage swayed like a boat in a storm. It was quite scary. While my goal is to break it, just on principle, we decided to take a more tame route this year…
I don’t know all of those songs. And in my defence, I wasn’t suggesting the song, just salivating over Tata Young. But if you’ve got Kahin Aag Lage, Dil Dooba and Le Gayi (OK it is a classic) then who’s out of date gurhlfrand?
I was in a show once where one of my dances was a South African gumboot dance, have you seen those guys? It’s a dance created by the miners shaking all the mud of their boots – hence it’s all about stamping. The choreographer wanted a big impact so we had about 30 dancers on stage, stamping. In wellington boots. Not only did the stage break, but it caught fire from one of the spots!
Ah, happy days.
Bong Breaker,
I thought the Tata Young remix was better than the original version. Great video too — and it was good to see Abhishek in there, he’s very good in music videos these days. I suspect he quite enjoyed that lapdance too laughing.
Isn’t Tata Young actually Malaysian or Singaporean ?
John Abraham has turned out to be a suprisingly excellent actor and, from what I’ve seen in interviews, also seems to be a very good guy — very chilled-out and easygoing. He’s a good match for Bipasha in terms of their respective personalities, I think; they both come across as very calm and relaxed.
DesiDancer — Glad to hear you’re doing the title track from Dus; Prince’s ex-wife did a great job in the video for “Deedar De”, so I thought that might be a possible choice for your performance too — it’s a really thumping song, very catchy.
Nina P’s asked a good question with regards to wondering what you look like (be careful about the details though — you don’t want Bong Breaker to have yet another one of his “stalker” episodes and jumping on the first flight to JFK); with all the item-number references, I’ve got an image of some kind of Shila Shetty-Yana Gupta hybrid in full item-song mode ! Getting an approximation of your appearance would also enable those of us who won’t be at the party to imagine what you look like when you finally go crashing through the floorboards on that stage 😉
Which reminds me: Beware of turning into Item-Number Auntie in 20-30 years’ time — someone who insists on jumping on the stage for an unsolicited solo performance at every formal desi function and shakes her booty to the latest Bollywood item song despite being in her 50s and having grown-up children (usually hiding at the back of the room trying to look invisible). My family does actually know someone like that 😉
As Pervert Uncle and I do a creaky and highly un-sexy version of Choli Ke Peeche at the pooja of the month club dinner? That’s going to be scary… 😐
Funny you should mention that — I’ve actually seen the aforementioned auntie dance to this song on the stage a few years ago at one of the desi functions. This was during the “Madhuri era”.
wry smile What can you say, eh ?!
Well, apart from turning to your own mother, of course, and whispering “For God’s sake, please don’t ever do that yourself !”
I know what women want. They want you to lavish attention on them. Sure, some may call it ‘stalking’, and yeah the police might arrest me and the woman may demand ‘a restraining order’ but I know that’s just her playing hard to get.
When I’m 50 I want to be pissed uncle who flirts with item number auntie and then gets a chappal around the head from Mrs Bong Breaker.
Well, as any reputable Bollywood hero would tell, you, she just wants you to break down her oh-so-chaste barriers and prove to her how much you love her. So what if it involves a 20-year prison sentence locked up in a small cell with a sexually-frustrated murderer called “Big Al”. If Shahrukh Khan could stick it out for a few decades in a Pakistani jail in Veer Zaara, so can you.
Well….The problem is that Item Number Auntie isn’t necessarily particularly hot, although I’m sure Desi Dancer will be the notable exception in her “mature” years (that goes withough saying, of course), given her probable borderline-Wild Aunty tendencies at the time 😉
By the way, that should have said “Shilpa Shetty” in my earlier post, but I’m sure you realised that anyway.
[blushing] tee-hee.
I think I’ll be Hip & Hot Auntie, who has the figure to wear clothes that none of the other aunties can. And they’ll hate on me behind my back at all the parties and events, because the Ekta Kapoor tv serial watching Aunties are just sour that their lives aren’t fun & exciting 😉
We actually know a real-life version of that too, as I mentioned in the original Aunty/Uncle thread — the very tall and very leggy type who keeps turning up at desi get-togethers wearing short mini-dresses, with all the other jealous, and more traditional, aunties commenting on it behind her back.
In fact, I’ve just had a thought….
Are you going to be Hoochie Auntie ?
lol (just kidding — don’t throw your 4-inch-heel strappy sandles at me….)
oooh, now you’re gonna get it, Jai! dishoom! thadaak!
Presumably that was the sound of one of your stilettos bouncing off my head…;)
Be careful where you throw that — you know that Bong Breaker has a weird fetish for collecting these things (amongst others) as part of his ongoing transatlantic stalking activities…..
Don’t worry — Hoochie Auntie is the one all the Desi Aunties secretly want to be in their old age (but don’t have the nerve to be), and the one all the Uncles fantasise about in between their rounds of golf and trips to the dentist to get their removable dentures checked….
or don’t have the nutritional information and exercise regimen to be 😉
Too many bonbons while watching Kyonki Saas Kabhi Bahu Thi…
You’re starting to worry me now Jai. You knew about my stalking conviction (well, one of them anyway) and now you know about my women’s shoe collection.
Thank God I haven’t told anyone about how I’m called Wilhelmina and wear a tutu at the weekend. That secret’s safe. Phew.
DesiDancer,
Probably. Laying off the ghee and doing some step aerobics would be a better use of time than watching another one of Ekta Kapoor’s psychotic serials and getting weird ideas about how to harass one’s close relatives….
Bong Breaker,
I haven’t told anyone about that secret basement under your house where you’ve got massive blow-up pictures of DesiDancer and where you talk about her with imaginary deceased relatives.
And give DesiDancer her missing shoes back. It’s not fair to make her hobble about all over New York in just one shoe, even if it is a Manolo Blahnik with a spiky heel and a tasteful little ankle-strap.
It’s a sling-back Jimmy Choo, gosh you’re so uncouth.
Quite an imagination there, I love the dead relatives bit. But if they’re imaginary, why are they deceased? You know with all this talk of DesiDancer (note: you’re doing most of the talking, has someone got a crush? 😉 ), I actually know what she looks like, teehee!
I just wanted to get teehee into a comment.
yes. and I know where you live. buuuaaaahahahaha
Bong Breaker,
Er, it’s the script from an early 90s Bollywood flick called Darr, starring Shahrukh, Juhi, and Sonny Deol. K-K-K-Kiran etc — you know the one 😉
I didn’t want to offend you by making some tasteless joke about your (hopefully still present) real-life parents.
I was implying that you were “hearing voices”, ie. having full-scale two-way conversations with (deceased) people who weren’t even there.
Well, who wouldn’t, eh ? wink
Go on then mate, spill the daal…..Purely for academic purposes, of course, I’m sure you understand…..
Desi Dancer,
Aha….The stalker has become the stalkee….;)
Bong Breaker, I think you’re about to have your very own Fatal Attraction-Bunny Boiler experience….
watch as thread after thread becomes; i agree with you, no i agree with you, no, no, i agree with you
I agree with you.
No I agree with you.
No no, I agree with you.
Sorry, just trying to fulfil Raju’s prophetic words.
Jai, don’t joke about certain things. Not relatives, say what you like there. But bunny-boilers. I honestly had the whole works. She was a Pakistani girl a few years older than me. I can laugh now, but back then it was scary stuff.
I’d clean forgotten Darr. It was one of the first Hindi films I ever watched.
As for DD’s looks, I am (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary) a gentleman and my lips are sealed.
keep going
Making fun of victims of terrorism is unfortunate. I guess it’s fashionable among liberals to do that. Not surprising why so many liberal minded people after 9/11 crossed over to republican party to vote for Bush.
No brain… tragic. Proving it… priceless. Say, let’s protest Throw Momma From the Train. The nerve! Throwing your patriotic momma from a moving Amtrak!
Raju,
It’s just some light-hearted fun, buddy, join in if you want to. Not every thread on SM has to be deadly serious and about some life & death issue. We’re allowed to joke around once in a while.
Bong Breaker,
Congratulations for giving the “right” answer to my question about DD’s looks. I would have said exactly the same thing in your place. “Gold Star”, as a certain backpacking and ex-blogging Punjabi dude from London would say 😉