Monthly Archives: September 2005

They come baring gifts

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Check out how this Brit-influenced Bollywood review reads in American English:

[Salaam Namaste] has a frothy first half and an emotion-filled second half with the climax that warms the very cockles of your heart. And, as a bonus, there is a cameo by Abhishek Bachchan at the fag end. [Link]

Someone needs to take a rubber to the end of that review. It’s the kind of movie review-cum-double entendre which I’d never plunge into. At least not without a safe word.

Not that Americans don’t do the same, only it’s intentional. Ang Lee’s new gay cowboy Western is entitled Brokeback Mountain. The subtlety of the encoding is truly humbling. Heath Ledger and Donnie Snarko stare longingly at each other for the entire length of the trailer, but heaven forbid that they act. The love that dare not, is the wet sari that must not.

I say let the rainbow flag fly. Bollywood has long repaid the compliment.

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Update on Jayant Patel / Dr. Death

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In Australia, an inquiry is slowly proceeding into the actions of Dr. Jayant Patel who has been accused of causing some 80 deaths amongst his patients. He arrived in Australia after he had gotten into trouble in both New York and Oregon. There he:

[performed] unnecessary operations, removed healthy organs and “revealed a lack of up-to-date knowledge in many aspects of medical practice.” Eight of his patients died after he performed complex operations that he had been ordered not to perform in Oregon …
An anesthesiologist referred to Dr. Patel as “Dr. Death,” and another doctor told nurses not to allow Dr. Patel to operate on his patients. One surgeon who had examined about 150 of Dr. Patel’s former patients told the commission that all surgeons have problems with patients, but he said of Dr. Patel’s problems: “They’re not 10 times what you might expect. They’re more like 100 times what you might expect,” [NYT]

How did he get hired in the first place? He lied about his history, had good recommendations, and nobody bothered to check his story:

A simple inquiry would have discovered Dr. Patel’s disciplinary problems, the report says. They were found, and made public, by a reporter at The Courier-Mail of Brisbane on the basis of a Google search. [NYT]

[Can you imagine? An organization not checking the credentials of its employees?] Continue reading →

Do unto others

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Following Sri Lanka’s lead (when was the last time you read those words? ), India has offered sakat / succor in N’awlins, and Uncle Sam has accepted (via Boing Boing):

India, which regularly is hit by flooding from monsoon rains, has said it has a planeload of supplies waiting. The United States said Thursday night that it has accepted $5 million in aid. [Link]

Post-tsunami, India was criticized by some for rejecting assistance, perhaps out of national pride:

It was told by the U.S. Embassy that “at this moment, the U.S. government is not asking for international assistance.” [Link]

Sweden and others are getting stiff-armed by the famous bureaucratic sense of urgency:

For four days, a C-130 transport plane ready to lift supplies to Katrina victims has stood idle at an air base in Sweden. The aid includes a water purification system that may be urgently needed amid signs deadly diseases could be spreading through fetid pools in New Orleans… The one thing that stands in the way of takeoff? Approval by U.S. officials… Poland, Austria and Norway said they had not heard back on their aid offers, and countries outside Europe said they were also waiting for replies. [Link]

And one member of the axis of heck got nothing but pumpkins:

Tehran offered to send 20 million barrels of crude oil if Washington waived trade sanctions, but Thomas said the offer was rejected because it was conditional. [Link]
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"Maybe God is unkind and sends less water in the river…”

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As I have stated on this blog before (met by derision from some), when I think about my future and the future of my eventual offspring, terrorism and the rise of fundamentalism has a considerably smaller profile on my radar screen when compared to what I consider larger dangers.  Global climate change and natural resource mismanagement being the largest.  I only compare the two because often, when deciding where taxpayer dollars go, this is an either/or competition.  CNN reports:

Imagine a world without drinking water.

It’s a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50 years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region’s main water source.

The glaciers supply 303.6 million cubic feet every year to Asian rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, the Ganga in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and Burma’s Irrawaddy.

But as global warming increases, the glaciers have been rapidly retreating, with average temperatures in the Himalayas up 1 degree Celsius since the 1970s.

A World Wide Fund report published in March said a quarter of the world’s glaciers could disappear by 2050 and half by 2100.

“If the current scenario continues, there will be very little water left in the Ganga and its tributaries,” Prakash Rao, climate change and energy program coordinator with the fund in India told Reuters.

And keep in mind that the “disappearing” water will find the lowest ground…the ocean.  The ocean will then rise of course.  That means you will have many more cities in the same geological predicament as New Orleans.

Tulsi Maya, a farmer on the outskirts of Kathmandu, has never heard of global warming or its impact on the rivers in the Himalayan kingdom, but she does know that the flow of water has gone down.

“It used to overflow its banks and spill into the fields,” the 85-year-old farmer said standing in her emerald green rice field as she looked at the Bishnumati river, which has ceased to be a reliable source of drinking water and irrigation.

“Maybe God is unkind and sends less water in the river. The flow of water is decreasing every year,” she said standing by her grandson, Milan Dangol, who weeds the crop.

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Monster’s ball

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A moment of silence, please — I have truly depressing news to report. Long years of eating English food have wreaked havoc upon the visage of an Oscar-winning desi actor:

Ben… Kingsley… plays… FAGIN! Aww yeah! That’s like Samuel L. Jackson as Ravana or Hanuman vs. the Rock. (And I think we know which one wins.)

Kingsley hams his way through an Oliver Twist revival by pedophile filmmaker Roman Polanski due out this month. Charles Dickens meets a suitable boy — the paid-by-the-word weepies collide in copyright-free drama nirvana. But seriously, after the melo-hungama of Dickens, surely Ben-ji could find it in his heart to pay Bollyrespects?

Polanski struggled with the eternal, Shylockian question of ‘who is a Jew’:

Born in 1837, Dickens’s Fagin The paid-by-the-word weepies collidewas larded with ethnic stereotypes from his first appearance as “a very old, shriveled Jew… Alec Guinness, in David Lean’s 1948 version, spoke in a droning lisp and appeared with hooded eyes and an enormous prosthetic hook nose… it also resembled anti-Semitic caricatures in… Nazi Germany. At a theater in Berlin the audience was so offended by Fagin’s characterization that it rioted… in Carol Reed’s 1968 film version… he played with gay stereotypes, mincing his way through “Pick a Pocket or Two” and twirling a frilly pink parasol in “I’d Do Anything.”

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Apology issued for mislabeled “package”

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I bet you are all wondering (well at least those that swing from a particular side of the plate) what’s under that forbidden black box (who says SM only features pics of hot women?).  Seyd tips me off to yet another one of those “I can’t believe they put a Hindu icon on that,” controversies (see previous 1,2).  Now my position on this is that I personally don’t care one way or another since I don’t concern myself with religious icons.  Other people get upset and sue over this stuff and it’s their prerogative to do so.  So what is the situation here?  Rainbownetwork.com has the details:

DNA Magazine, Australia’s top gay publication, has censored their latest cover in an effort to quell outrage from the Hindu community.

The cover features male fitness star Matt Walch wearing a Roberto Cavalli brief that is screen printed with an image of the Hindu goddess Laxmi.

In a letter to the Hindu community, Editor Andrew Creagh, apologized for the offence and let it known that the magazine had no “deliberate intention to cause offence, antagonize or show disrespect to people of the Hindu faith.”

He added that the magazine was “unaware that the garment portrayed a specific Hindu deity.”

That sounded like a pretty sincere apology.  I mean he’s not going to pull the magazine off the shelves or anything because then they’d lose money, but at least on their website there is a black box over the bacon.  What truly offends me is that the picture is of the goddess Laxmi.  If they had even half a brain they would have more appropriately offended the Hindu community by using an iconic image of the Hindu diety that is associated with the Lingam.

Also, although I’ve been meaning to invest in a good thong, I don’t think that I would buy this design. The last thing I need is for a conflicted Hindu girl to re-discover religion at the…ummm…wrong moment.

So you guys want to see what is under that black box?  Click below (might not be safe for work).

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Dress Code (Update 1)

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According to Shashwati, three Indian universities are considering imposing a dress code on their students. Of course, this dress code applies only to their female students.  Bombay University says the dress code will protect women from violent crime, according to the age old Indian principle of  “she was asking for it”:

Bombay University plans to ban women from wearing mini skirts, tight tops and shorts, saying this will help prevent rape. Officials at the university say they would prefer to see women students in a traditional salwar-kameez with no deep neckline. [cite]

Officials at Bombay University also claim that this will benefit the men on campus:

“An attire should be such that it should not be offensive or cause distraction to fellow students and lecturers,” Vice Chancellor Vijay Khole told reporters.  [cite]

At Delhi University, the discussion took on an ethnic dimension. Perhaps it is more acceptable to impose a dress code if you can blame it on ‘outsiders’:

A furious debate is going on among the students of Delhi University ever since Kirori Mal College vice principal Virender Kumar’s remarks that “revealing dresses” allegedly worn by girls from India’s northeast triggered angry responses. Although a chastened Kumar has apologised, girl students, particularly those from the northeast, are still furious. [cite]

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Howard Dean wants you bad

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Howard Dean sat down with India Abroad Editor Aziz Haniffa recently to convince you Indian Americans out there that the Dems will lead you to the promised land if only you take their hand.

The new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dr Howard Dean, believes the Indian-American community should find the Democratic Party more attractive as it is not only more favourable toward immigration, but also is a more diverse and welcoming than the Republican Party.

In high school English class I learned that a concise thesis statement is the difference between an A and a B grade.

Q: Why should the Indian-American community vote for the Democratic Party?

A: We are friendlier on immigration issues than the Republican Party. We are a truly multicultural, diverse party. We welcome everybody. We have been very, very pleased first of all, by the support we got from the Indian-American community, and secondly, we are the party that has a history of reaching out to people, instead of pushing them away.

Indian Americans will feel more comfortable in our party.

I like Dean.  The kid’s got spunk.  Surely he could come up with a better answer than that though.  I don’t want him to pander to me but if you take a look at the above question and answer, you could replace “Indian-American” with say “Mexican-American,” and not skip a beat.  I want depth and nuance.  All the things that the Republicans can’t provide to the masses.

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How to make Karanjees via WaPo

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karanjee.jpg I feel like typing “Happy Ganesh Utsav“, but I’m 99.9% certain that’s incorrect, inapposite and just plain inane. Surely I will suffer a beat-down for my cheekiness; I implore you to bear in mind (while you are paddling me) that I’m just a simple Christian girl from Coconut land/God’s own country who has no idea what this snack even IS. 😉

It’s well-established that I’m reading whenever I’m on the metro and half the time I’m doing that, I’m actually scanning the articles for sepia-tinted stories which I can bring you here. 🙂 Normally, I find brown down ’round the front page; yesterday, I was slightly surprised to see that my “local” paper’s Food section was where the mutiny was at. Et voila, an article by Priya Phadke to coincide with a certain deity’s partay. I’ve seen hundreds of recipes in WaPo, but this is the first desi one that I’ve noticed.

Priya is the assistant art director for The Post’s Sunday Source, a.k.a. the section I love most and thus save for Georgetown, Dean and Deluca and cappuccino-soaked Sunday afternoons. Here’s what our dear artiste had to say about what you guys are going to be making (and then sending to North Dakota, please. Thanks!):

In the three years since I moved to the United States from Mumbai, as Bombay is now called, I get most homesick during festive seasons. My maternal grandmother nani would make comfort food, and her karanjees are what I miss most.
Karenjees are dough stuffed with soft, shredded coconut that is flavored with cardamom, saffron, sugar and Gulkand, a rose petal jam that lends a distinctive flavor and fragrance and sets my nani’s karanjees apart from all others.

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“Oh help me Jesus, come through this storm”

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She had to lose him, to do him harm:

Police in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have detained a mother who they accuse of drowning her adopted son. The mother tied the baby to a heavy stone and threw him down a well after villagers told her that he might be suffering from Aids, police say. [BBC]

The ten-month old child didn’t have a chance; coughing and feverish, he was in the coastal village of Gurripudi, a place full of idiots whose idle, tragically incorrect speculation carried more authority than, oh, I don’t know, ACTUAL HIV TESTS. Gurripudi, which is in the East Godavari district, is an area where HIV is rampant, where it would be easy to stupidly, hysterically assume the worst about a baby who isn’t yours.

The murderess is in police custody, her husband hasn’t been charged. The couple adopted the little boy from a nearby village to complement their family, which already included three obviously lucky daughters. Continue reading →