Monthly Archives: September 2005

Cricket: India thrashes Zimbabwe

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jai hind.jpg I know nothing about cricket. In fact, whenever someone mentions it, I’m sorely tempted to chirp, “Now THAT was a wicked googly!” a la Seinfeld repping for AmEx. Forgive me for writing this post anyway? 😉

From the Beeb:

India thrashed Zimbabwe by an innings and 90 runs in Bulawayo despite a brave lower-order resistance from the hosts on day four of the first Test.
Resuming on 67-6 and still 208 runs shy of making India bat again, Zimbabwe managed 185 in their second innings with skipper Tatenda Taibu making 52.
Harbhajan Singh finished off the tail to return figures of 4-59.
The match was over when the off-spinner trapped Gavin Ewing lbw for 34 to end the hosts’ last-wicket stand of 47.

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Want to yell at Mushie tomorrow?

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So…I just wrote about an anti-war protest in San Francisco, but if you’re on the right coast like me, you might be feeling left out of all the “Be the change you wish to see”-fun. Don’t fret, my pet. Join “hundreds of South Asian women, international human rights activists and their supporters” as they prepare for “the largest rally for womenŽs rights in Pakistan ever held outside that country.”

South-Asian womenŽs groups and international human rights organizations will demonstrate for human rights for women in Pakistan on Saturday, September 17, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City where President Pervez Mustarraf will be staying during the United Nations World Summit.
Protesters will be demanding an end to the rape, domestic violence and murder of women, often committed under the banner of religion, that have become endemic in Pakistan. They will also be calling on Musharraf to repeal Taliban-like religiously-based laws that are increasingly restricting womenŽs freedoms, such as Zina Ordinance and Hasba Bill.

Two of the women who have put a “face” on tragedy will be there, in one form or another:

Dr. Shazia Khalid was raped by an army officer who was never prosecuted, and she was forced to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. A tribal court sentenced Mukhtar Mai (also known as Mukhtar Bibi) to gang rape as punishment for an offense allegedly committed by her brother. Dr. Khalid will speak to the crowd on Saturday by speakerphone, and a statement from Mukhtar Mai will be read.

Mushie’s ears are perking up, he’s listening. In reponse to this rally and other pressure from everyone decent, his office has given an audience to Pakistani women who wish to meet him at his hotel Saturday morning. Many are planning to do that and THEN protest outside of it. Continue reading →

Brown, Loud and Proud to be Anti-War in SF

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Someone commented that we never seem to put up events which take place on the Wessss-Saeeeeed and that bothers me; northern California is where I’m from.

I remember what it was like when SM started last year and I was at home. Living on the left coast meant being left out of all the cool, cutting-edge things which only seem to go down on Amtrak’s Northeast corridor. Aside from the outstanding events produced by Dhamaal, SF seemed quiet in comparison.

Not on Saturday, September 24th it won’t be:

Why are our taxes funding the illegal war on Iraq, instead of hurricane relief, schools, and libraries? 62% of America disapproves of the war — when will our politicians notice?
Join fellow desis on Saturday, Sep. 24, as we march in San Francisco to end the war, as part of the largest peace event on the West Coast. Bring your family and friends, passion and voices, as we work toward a world free of imperial wars.

Desist coalition (with support from Organizing Youth), Friends of South Asia and the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action are all involved in this endeavor. If you need a ride, wish to help make signs or otherwise want to participate, email desist@southasianprogressive.org.

WHAT: South Asians against war, in SF peace march
WHEN: 11:00 am, Saturday, September 24
WHERE: Dolores Park, 18th and Dolores, San Francisco, CA. Meet next to the tennis courts at Dolores Park (Look for the “South Asians Against the War” banner.)

:+:

I decided to let yay area Mutineers know about this event because I think standing up for what you believe in is hot, whether I agree with what you believe in or not. Continue reading →

New blogging software

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Check out my new blog editor, RocketPost. Most of us at Sepia Mutiny use it to write our posts. A blog editor is like a word processor that publishes to your blog. If you’ve ever lost a post because your browser crashed, you should use one.

The one we use uploads photos automatically and checks spelling. It also lets you link to old posts quickly, adds source cites to quotes, links to Google, Wikipedia and Flickr quickly, adds those big, fat pullout quotes and so on. I use it to post to Sepia Mutiny and my personal blog at the same time.

If you’re an active commenter here or have donated to the blog before today, email me and I’ll hook you up with a free copy. Otherwise, it’s totally free if you use Blogger. It also works with Movable Type and WordPress, and TypePad is coming soon. It’s Windows only for now, but we’re looking for a good Mac developer.

This frickin’ thing has been my personal project for a year and a half. It’s my nerd novel, my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the blogosphere. Please check it out and tell all your blogging friends!

P.S. A certain sharp-eyed mutineer spotted it yesterday…

Update: Please post technical questions here so as not to bother the good people of the Mutiny.

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Wah, po’ Maya

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The WaPo harps on our favorite word here at Sepia Mutiny: not M.I.A., ‘exotic.’ Ain’t nothing unusual about Maya’s phenotype (thanks, Turbanhead):

… that hasn’t stopped some critics from dismissing her as “the love child” of Neneh Cherry and Che Guevara and harping on her exotic runway model looks… [Link]

But her aesthetic was also intimately familiar: her small-faced, tousle-haired cutenesss resembles my female Berkeley classmates; the South Indian hip-hop fans at Berkeley are legion. [Link]

Arular is to Maya what Ravi Shankar is to Norah, more or less:

After reading about M.I.A. in the Sri Lankan Times, Arulpragasam sent her a note saying, “I’m very proud of you, but you have to change the name of the album. Dad.” She didn’t. “What can you do?” she asks pointedly. “There’s many things I’m not pleased about that he’s done, so hey. . . . ” [Link]

MTV turns out to be prudish. Who knew? (And uninformed in Sri Lankan cuisine.)

MTV also questioned the subtext of “salt and pepper my mango,” which turned out to be culinary rather than sexual… [Link]

This, from the channel that put ‘Freak-a-Leak’ on heavy rotation:

I need a girl I can freak with, and wanna try shit, and ain’t scared of a big d–
And love to get her p– licked, by another bitch, cuz I ain’t drunk enough ta do dat.
[and so on… Link]

Journalism is going to the dogs. First they quote Nirali, next thing you know they’ll be quoting blogs  (Congrats…)

M.I.A. told the South Asian online magazine Nirali that she “wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing.” [Link]

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Hey Ram, the world is repetitive

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NYT columnist Tom Friedman continues to whip it:

Some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program started in Chennai… some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program called HeyMath, which was started four years ago in Chennai, India, by two young Indian bankers… If you were a parent anywhere in the world and you noticed that Singapore kids, or Indian kids or Chinese kids, were doing really well in math, wouldn’t you like to see the best textbooks… HeyMath… which has been adopted by 35 of Singapore’s 165 schools, also provides an online tutor, based in India, to answer questions from students stuck on homework. [Link]

That’s right: instead of sending your kids to Exeter, you import mean Miss Thomas. I can tell you what’ll cure your innumeracy: six by six multiplication drills for five-year-olds. It’s joy inchoate.

Previous posts: ek, do, teen, cuatro, cinco, catorce

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Desiburg

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My Brooklyn ‘hood is on the water facing Manhattan. Aside from being musician central, Williamsburg is a half-blue collar, half-gentrifying neighborhood with four ethnicities: Polish-stan, Hasidic-stan, Latino-stan and Hipsterville (Diesel denim with red stitching, messenger bag in earth tones, fauxhawk bed-head and a big gay belt buckle). It’s also got a high PQ (poseur quotient.) I swear upon your grandma’s shriveled National Geographics that I’ve seen people sell pink trucker hats by the subway entrance with an airbrushed ‘Bitch’ on the front.

Sometimes you run into desis with pierced eyebrows and mutton-chop sideburns. You know those signs on Disneyland rides, ‘You must be this tall to ride?’ The L train has a sign, ‘You must be this hip to move here.’ I’m totally dragging down the curve as a stealth sinc duppie (single-income-no-colonialism desi-urban-professional). Tonight a thin brown girl in a black sack dress rode a big Huffy with wide handlebars down the sidewalk, the kind of bike you see in pre-WWII photos. We exchanged subtle, curious glances while trying not to let the other intrude on our indie brown singularity.

>> Read the whole thing

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Quixotic (for a) cause – Updated

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sepiaTV.jpg Lawd, what will these crayzee Sri Lankans do next?!

The answer, my friends, is glowing on TV, the answer is glowing on TV.

Tune in this morning to watch Suresh Joachim try to set the Guinness World Record for marathon TV viewing by watching ABC for 75 hours straight. He broke the current record of 50 hours, 7 minutes yesterday on “Live with Regis and Kelly,” during the Guinness World Record Breaker Week. Yes, watch ABC to watch a desi watching ABC. How meta.

Live webcam feed here.

But let’s back up a sec. Who here knew “Live with Grouchy and Yappy” had a Guinness Record Breaker Week? Raise your hand, you uber-desi, you! Suddenly the Reeg’s yorkiepoo face looks an awful lot like that of my Tedious-Know-It-All-Uncle who wouldn’t shut up about the girl who balanced a teacup on her nose for days, or the boy who barked for a week. What the hell did any of that have to with Medical School anyway?

Amazingly, Suresh Joachim does have a method to his madness. From his website, a statement of purpose: sepiasuresh.gif

“I, Suresh Joachim, am deeply disturbed and stirred by the ongoing violence and its direct impact on children…all my endeavors will be designed to help suffering children all over the world.

To spread my message in World I am attempting new world records with the aim of spreading world peace and to create an awareness of suffering children. The UFFORSC (Universal Fund For Suffering Children) branch has been inaugurated in Australia, Canada for helping millions of suffering children in Asia and Africa.

My ultimate aim is to carry a peace torch commencing in 2006 from Jerusalem (Jesus Birth Place) to Australia…covering 6,000 km to raise one billion dollars for my purpose.

My homeboy ain’t foolin’, you know. He already holds some thirty Guinness world records, including: Continue reading →

R.I.P Balbir Singh Sodhi 1949-2001

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Four years ago today, Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot to death in Mesa, Arizona by a man named Frank Roque.

On Sept. 15, Balbir drove to Costco, searching for an American flag to display at the gas station. On his way out, he donated $75 to the Sept.11 victims’ fund. At 2:45pm, Balbir was stooped outside the gas station, planting flowers, when the shots rang out. Leaving Balbir drenched in a pool of blood, his assailant sped off, tires squealing, in a pickup truck. [cite]

This killing was both pre-meditated and racially motivated. As the prosecution pointed out, “Roque had practiced shooting and reloading before killing Sodhi.” When he was arrested the next day, Roque brazenly wrapped himself in the flag:

When police arrived at Roque’s mobile home he yelled, ‘I’m an American patriot, arrest me and let the terrorist go wild!’ [cite]

Roque also told the police that he was “‘standing up for his brothers and sisters’ in New York” by his actions which included shooting at a gas station owned by a Lebanese man and a house occupied by an Afghani family after murdering Sodhi.

Roque’s actions generated a reaction. 3,000 people showed up for a service commemorating Sodhi’s death, and more than 10,000 sent letters of support and condolence.His killer said, “I’m an American patriot, arrest me and let the terrorist go wild!” Prime Minister Vajpayee of India called President Bush to express concern and ask him to protect Indian citizens in the US from further violence. Roque himself was convicted and sentenced to death.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family again less than a year later when Balbir Singh’s brother, Sukhpal Singh Sodhi was killed in mysterious circumstances. Sukhpal, a San Francisco taxi driver, was shot and killed while driving in the Mission. Nothing was taken, leading to suspicion that this may have been another hate crime as well. All in all, as many as 19 people may have been killed in 9/11 related hate crimes.

Thanks to Valarie@DNSI for reminding me of the anniversary of this event with her own post on the subject. Continue reading →