Monthly Archives: September 2005

A trove of illustrated history

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A few times we’ve posted a link (1,2,3,4) to some political cartoon in the newspaper that hasn’t been quite down with the brown (i.e. often times an illustration of someone South Asian is filled with obnoxious stereotyping).  Barficulture.com recently reported that a new website has compiled nearly a hundred years of newspaper articles and cartoons about the Punjabi community in the UK, which includes some amazing illustrations of life in the19th century:

Launched by the UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), Punjab Archive is an online collection highlighting the extensive body of material relating to the Punjab, as reported in illustrated and non-illustrated Victorian age newspapers.

The material graphically illustrates the shared heritage and contribution of Punjabis in world history, especially in relation to the building of the British Empire in the second half of the 19th century.

Nearly all of the newspapers are illustrated with woodblock engravings and photographs, and cover a range of events and characters, many significant, some curious, but nearly all little known. The archive was put together by an agency of young Asian designers in Birmingham, Macro Juice, who devised the site in a way that takes a high quality scan, breaks it up into sub images and then stitches them back together in a format that loads quickly but makes it difficult to steal the image, thus resolving copyright issues.

It’s really a trip just looking through some of the great illustrations (although the website is a bit slow).  If you can spare the time also read through a few newspaper clippings by zooming in.

“This is a site of historical documents and news stories from over 100 years ago. At a purely recreational level it allows users to quickly and effortlessly delve into their own personal heritage finding new stories that resonate with themselves and their personal history. At a more scholarly or professional level it provides a bank of material that can be used by journalists, writers and historians for writing assignment and projects.”

UKPHA hopes the website will become a regular citation in Indian & colonial history PhDs in the future.

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Mad Cow’s Desi Origins?

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Now here’s a topic that’s guaranteed to make folks squirm.   A group of Brit scientists think they’ve discovered the root cause of their country’s recent bout with Mad Cow disease.   Cynics, upon hearing the proposed theory, might argue that this whole thing amounts to a massive deflection of blame to the brown nether world –

LONDON – Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists said on Friday.

…Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent in England says it may have been caused by the tons of animal bones and other tissue imported from India for animal feed which also may have contained the remains of humans infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

…In a report in the Lancet medical journal, Colchester and his daughter Nancy, of the University of Edinburgh, explained that many human and animal corpses were disposed of in rivers in India in accordance with Hindu custom.

The remains washed ashore in poor areas where bone collectors work.

“We are aware of a considerable risk of the incorporation of human remains with the animal remains that are collected. They are processed locally and some have been exported. In 10 years, more than a third of a million tons of material from these areas was imported into the UK,” Colchester said.

Needless to say, other scientists advise that these are waters upon which one should tread lightly –

“Scientists must proceed cautiously when hypothesizing about a disease that has such wide geographic, cultural and religious implications,” Shankar said.

Your old, crazy aunty from back in da homeland may have found yet another way to haunt her Western son from beyond the grave.    

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A Desi by any other Name would smell like Me

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You either convert (atleast give yourself a nice hindu name on this blog) or stay out.

Would you actually be pompous and arrogant enough to suggest that Indian Christians (and there are quite a few of them) not post here unless they use a “Hindu name”? Sorry, rhetorical question. [linky]

Mind if I cut in, Eric? Thank you, you are too sweet.

Ah, the politics of nomenclature, a subject I am completely sick ofÂ…whether it involves self-identification or the process and meaning behind my own name, it all makes me so weary.

I wonÂ’t delve into the former, but I will heroically belly flop into the latter. My name isnÂ’t good enough for anyone. Malayalees wonder why I have my “house” name, since apparently thatÂ’s uncommon among my “I-have-two-to-three-first-names-but-no-surname” cohort, people who arenÂ’t Brown wonder why I have an “American” or “Western” name, when IÂ’m obviously part of a more exotic faith and non-Mallus, especially Northies for some bizarre reason, wonder what my REAL name is, because it canÂ’t possibly be Anna, even if I am a Jesus-freak from the dirrrty South (of India. Y’all).

The best situation is when I am rebuked for my “obvious”, self-hatred. Predictably, the disapproval usually comes from non-Desis but I once notably received similar treatment from two recent South Asian immigrants. Here’s what a convo with the unBrown sounded like:

“No, really, what’s ‘Anna’ short for?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, just tell me. ‘Anna’ can’t be your REAL name.”

“I’m not, I have nothing TO tell and I promise you, it is.”

“Come on…you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are.”

“Do you do this to White people named ‘Anna’ as well? I’m massively curious…”

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The spy who loved me

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My first memory of Brit Asian actress Archie Panjabi is of her in East in East and pigtails, kicking a soccer ball around the back yard. I next saw her burnishing her Asian cred as the bride in Bend It Like Beckham. So it was a pleasant surprise when she popped up in The Constant Gardener, a John Le Carré thriller adapted for screen by the director of the wonderfully fluid City of God.

Like Sarita Choudhury in A Perfect Murder, Panjabi plays yet another desi Tonto. Her character Gita, a member of the British High Commission in Kenya, is sidekick and confidante to Tessa Quayle, played by lovely, googly-eyed Rachel Weisz in a mummy suit. Ralph Fiennes’s self-effacing diplomat spends the movie decoding his wife Tessa’s secret life and eventual assassination. His British accent turns ‘Gita’ into the German ‘Gitte’; in the screen credits it’s massacred again as ‘Ghita,’ acolyte of ghee. Aside from the appellation snafu, Panjabi gets to turn up in a sari and plays the vulnerable diplomat quite serviceably.

The movie itself suffers in comparison with City of God. It’s just as long (around 2:10) but not nearly as light on its feet: blame the patient English for that. It’s a Big Pharma conspiracy theory intercut with an ad for Africa aid. Several passages are filmed in grainy Primer green with buzzing fluorescent lights and very un-starlike blood and grime. Other passages are stylistically familiar, filmed in extreme close-up with a shaky, handheld camera, the colors supersaturated and grainy. Fernando Meirelles turns a lake bed into red and blue abstract art. The couple-play is as natural as can be expected when the stiff English mate in a Calvin Klein linen closet; unlike Meirelles’ earlier film, by the end the protagonists have been thoroughly sainted.

Also unlike the kinetic CoG, this one takes the notion that movies should start with a bang and turns it on its head. The rest of the film keeps up that languid pace, so all the ad blurbs claiming it to be a thriller are overblown, to put it kindly. On one level, the über-boring title is truth in advertising; slack pacing is the enemy at these gates. On another, this is a visually inventive and deeply serious movie about the cat’s cradle between Western governments, African corruption and MNCs, with ordinary Africans caught in the middle — not to mention a posthumous, detective-story romance.

· Â· Â· Â· Â·

Ithought of the movie when I heard how a femme fatale penetrated the British High Commission in Islamabad:

Britain has removed its defence attaché in Pakistan… Red-faced and tight-lipped British officials said they were not ready to provide any details… Durcan had been recalled because he had been “tricked into a close friendship by the attractive woman”… But it described the woman as a “defence academic” who was “also believed to be an undercover agent for rogue elements within Pakistan’s intelligence services”. [Link]

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South Africa out of Sunali’s Nose! (slightly updated)

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Philadelphia, September of 2002.

“OhMyGod”, was the greeting my mummy blurted out instead of her customary, “Hi, mone”. “When did THAT happen?”

“Two weeks ago, Ma.”

“But…why?”

I shrugged. “Felt like it.”

“You know that’s not something a Christian girl should do,” she replied, eyebrows undulating with disapproval and consternation.

“Only Hindu girls can get their noses pierced?”

“Only Hindu girls SHOULD get their noses pierced.”

“Pashu tatti. It’s a cultural thing, Ma. Not religious.”

My mother snorted before telling me where I could store my opinions on culture and religion. “It IS a Hindu tradition. Maybe even a Muslim one. Try it with someone dumber than your Mother, edi.”

Anne Martin, the principal of Durban Girls High School in South Africa should have called my mom when she needed an expert opinion on whether piercing one’s nose is a “culturally-based rather than religious” practice. 😉

Who is Anne Martin? Why should she defer to my almighty Mom? Read on:

Sunali Pillay, 16, took her case to the Durban Equality Court claiming that she was being unfairly discriminated against by her Durban Girls High School which was not allowing her to wear a nose ring in accordance with her religious beliefs.

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