Monthly Archives: November 2005

The Da Vinci Cook

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What might have happened if Columbus got it right…

This next post is going to be difficult for people to believe. It was difficult for me. The very fact that I am writing this post may put my life in danger. Many things that I do for our readers puts me in danger though, so that is okay. Somewhere in the heart of Oregon lies a secret society restaurant. Witness:

Anyone who is familiar with secret societies such as the Freemasons, Priory of Scion, Knights Templar or has read Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code will be familiar with the concept of sub rosa. What goes on here, stays here.

The Sub Rosa restaurant began in a cottage on our property that was once the caretakers quarters for a 90 acre orchard here in Dundee. It remains primarily a workshop for Talisman Stoneworks, a stone carving studio though we do whip up some tasty meals from time to time.

During the day when the workshop is humming, you can drop in from noon on for a bowl of spicy soup; an onion tart; some tasty dessert; a beer or a stiff shot of grappa. Dust flies. Music pulses. Food smells waft into the air creating a exotic blend of workshop meets hole-in-the wall cafe meets underground radio station and WiFi hotspot.

At night – well, the ‘restaurant’ is rarely open. This is an invitation only gig. If you know us or know someone who knows us – you’re in. Otherwise you just get to read about us on this web site.

I just got the shivers. It is actually kind of sadistic what these people do. They prepare virtual menus that will bring tears to your eyes, and perhaps affect your nether regions with the skills of the Merovingian. Your tongue is not allowed to taste however:

You can download recipes and music and order a t-shirt but that’s about it. We’re more a state-of-mind than an actual place to eat.

Then why, dear God why, did they send the following menu/recipes into my inbox? This is beyond even my considerable culinary skills.

Thanksgiving Dinner:
Appetizer: Curried Nuts
Greens: Gujarat Green Beans
Starch: Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Curried Yams with coconut milk
Turkey: Cumin and Coriander spice rub
Condiments: Cranberry Chutney
Cucumber Raita
Stuffing: With raisins, cinnamon, almonds, celery and of course, bread
Dessert: Chiffon Pumpkin Pie with crystallized ginger galore
Garam Masala – Classic Indian spice mixture

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It’s over

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I haven’t felt this empty inside since the last months of 2000, when many of us saw the dark clouds gathering on the horizon and knew that our country was headed in a direction that we feared. It’s over folks. The results of the Florida recount are in. Don Sherrill is the declared winner. The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Orange City’s heated City Council election ended on Thursday with a handshake and a smile after a recount failed to change the outcome.

The Seat 4 contest between incumbent Don Sherrill and Tom Abraham has been shadowed by disparaging comments Sherrill made about Abraham’s Indian ethnicity.

After the general election Tuesday, Sherrill led Abraham by 19 votes. Orange City’s canvassing board granted Abraham’s recount request despite the fact that the election was not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

On Thursday, the four-person canvassing board recounted the 746 votes cast in that race. Abraham did pick up one vote, from a wrinkled ballot that was apparently not counted on Tuesday. That reduced Sherrill’s margin of victory to 18.

“I conceded the election and he wished me good luck,” Abraham said after the results were read out loud and he shook hands with Sherrill.

What a class act Abraham has been throughout all of this:

During the one-hour recount, Abraham and Sherrill sat next to each other at a table watching the process.

The men spent much of the time talking, laughing and cracking jokes and appeared to be getting along despite Sherrill’s earlier inflammatory remarks.

Abraham said he had still not received an apology from Sherrill, but that even if he did get one, it would be too late.

It’s hard for most people to admit when they are wrong, and even harder for old people set in their ways. The Orlando Sentinel hasn’t felt moved to act by many of us that wrote in about their euphemistic reporting style, but the Daytona Beach News-Journal does carry an editorial that blasts the race and its outcome:

…And yet: Does Sherrill’s display of racism and ignorance disqualify him from office? Does it make the case for a recount? In both cases, the answer is — unfortunately, but legally and fairly — no. Voters in Orange City have had their say. A recount is legitimate in and of itself, but should have nothing to do with the tenor of the race just ended. And what this vote says is clear enough. The voters of Orange City are comfortable enough with a person of Sherrill’s racist sensibilities on their city council. Shame on them.

But shame, too, is no disqualifier of public will. Elections are free. They’re no guarantee of decent representation. In that sense, Sherrill’s victory is hardly unique.

How true.

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Proud of ‘Prejudice’

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Did you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your timing? From the first moment I met you, your derivativeness made me realize you were the last movie in the world I could ever love. But I’ve come to make confession: you have bewitched me body and soul.

I entered the new Pride and Prejudice movie with extreme prejudice and exited a believer.

Nimbooda in a wig

As cultural crossover, the new flick has outdone Mira Nair: it’s the new Vanity Fair, it’s British Bollywood. It’s truer to the form than Bride and Prejudice, which was preoccupied with Stiff White Guy and tongue-in-cheek cultural mashup. Namely this: A family with five daughters must spend its time snaring men. One daughter’s elopement means utter family ruination. Musical interludes. Cheesy picturesque cliff scenes. Melodramatic mom. Full-on bawling. No kissing. Its own Johnny Lever. All it needed was an item number.

The producers were going for Gone With the Wind, but they ended up with Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. It’s the same Bollywood lighting, the same night scene with the romantic leads sitting before water, lit in gold. British group dances were like dandia raas and served the same virtuous end, hooking up the young’uns. The dance scene was like that amazing, flirty song in in HDDCS, ‘Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan.’ Keira is sharper, Aishwarya prettier. Rai with that John-Cusack-lookalike-in-a-wig would have been ideal.

HDDCS was more emotional, but this was definitely lump-in-throat territory. I rarely see intelligent romantic sparring any more, the last was Clooney and Zeta in Intolerable Cruelty. And the gender role inversion at the end is delicious. The beseechers and hand-kissers are not whom you’d expect.

Elna Bannat and Dharsi sahib

This film left me misty-eyed despite the ’70s Bollycheese: the man walking through morning field in fog, a near-kiss with sunrise strategically positioned between the lips. It had showy, fluid camera work reminiscent of Brian De Palma. Its memorable piano theme was repeated in variations through the score, another Bollywood signature. Balle balle, they’ve out-Bollied Bolly! I rarely feel anything human in mainstream Hollywood flicks, they’re afraid of mashing the emotional buttons. This movie pulled me out of my life entirely.

Someone stop me before I play some South Park Chef.

Watch the trailer. Here’s the A. Lane review, less snarktastic than usual.

Related posts: Ivy jive, No runaway ‘Bride’, Fisking the ‘Bride and Prejudice’ campaign, The UK crowns a new Queen, ‘Bride and Prejudice’ trailer

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Indo indie

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The NYT takes a look at new wave Indian cinema:

Being Cyrus

Lately, a third type of Hindi cinema has emerged. It’s composed of smaller, offbeat films that are more realistic than Bollywood tales and edgier than art-house ones. The films have an urbane, uniquely Indian sensibility. Many, though not all, are in Hinglish, the hybrid of Hindi and English that is spoken in metropolitan India.

These films have none of the overt glamour or sunny disposition of mainstream movies. Emotions are messy, characters have pasts and endings aren’t always happy. But neither are the movies treatises on social issues far removed from the filmmakers’ own experience, like so much art-house cinema was… Grimness is no longer box office poison, however. The first hit of 2005 was “Page 3,” the director Madhur Bhandarkar’s scathing look at high society in Mumbai. It featured pedophilia, drug-fueled rave parties and unabashed nastiness… [Link]

Distribution is key:

But the current crop of Indian independents can count on far wider release, thanks in large part to the arrival of more multiplexes. The first Indian multiplex, the PVR Anupam, opened in New Delhi in June 1997. Until then most filmgoers patronized cavernous theaters with 1,000 to 1,500 seats…

After the PVR Anupam opened, some state governments announced entertainment tax exemptions and prompted a multiplex boom. There are 73 multiplexes in India, with 276 screens and about 89,470 seats. The numbers are expected to increase to 135 multiplexes with more than 160,000 seats by the end of 2006…

The more affluent multiplex viewers have given filmmakers new fiscal and artistic freedom. “A film is a conversation,” said the director-producer Ram Gopal Varma… “The multiplex gives me flexibility and enables me to have a conversation with my intended target audience without worrying about small towns and villages…” [Link]

Related comments: Third I film fest

Related post: ‘Everybody Says I’m Fine’ playing in NYC

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N.Y. Giants games are no fun

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Some of you may have heard that last week five Muslim fans alleged racial bias while attending a New York Giants game. The Boston Globe reported:

Five Muslim football fans were detained and questioned during a game [Sep. 19th] at Giants Stadium because they were congregating near an air duct on a night former President George H.W. Bush was in the stadium, the FBI said yesterday.

Some of the Muslims said they did not know they were in a sensitive area, and said they were subjected to racial profiling while they were praying, as their faith requires five times a day.

”I’m as American as apple pie and I’m sitting there and now I’m made to feel like I’m an outsider, for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed,” said Sami Shaban, a 27-year-old Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway.

Come on, they are probably just being oversensitive, right? I was willing to give the FBI the benefit of the doubt:

FBI agent Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the bureau’s FBI office, said the men had aroused suspicion because they were congregating near the main air intake duct. Bush was in the stadium that night as part of a fund-raising campaign he and former President Bill Clinton were leading for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The site is now fenced off and is no longer accessible to fans.

Ok, no harm no foul. Then I read this article yesterday. Seems like this might be a pattern at Giants games, at least when there is a Bush in the house:

Two more men stepped forward Friday accusing authorities at Giants Stadium of racial profiling.

Mathew Varughese, 26, of Port Chester, and Pierre Mainville, 28, of Stamford, Conn., said they and four other men were unfairly questioned and detained by stadium police and the FBI during a Sept. 19 Giants-Saints game.

The incident happened the same day that five Muslim men were detained and questioned by authorities. Those men, who accused authorities of violating their religious rights, are considering whether to file a lawsuit. [Link]

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Mortified

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‘The Boondocks,’ a leftist, angry-black-man comic drawn like anime, reeeeeeaches for a punchline. This is more puerile than its usual fare and conflates Hinduism with Islam, though it’s more a comment on the grandfather character’s bumbling.

Mohandas Gandhi’s hunger strikes have long been the object of derision in cultures without ascetic tradition. Churchill dismissing Gandhi as ‘nauseating’ and a ‘half-naked fakir’ wasn’t just the poisoned fruit of an embittered colonialist, it was also gut-level cultural revulsion which transcends political orientation. When Jon Stewart makes fun of ululating Arabs on the Daily Show, or show alumnus Stephen Colbert cracks a Gandhi starvation joke, they’re expressing culture clash. Personally, I draw the line at the Shi’as’ bloody self-flagellation during the Ashura festival and the self-mortifying skin hooks for the Thaipusam festival shown in the ‘Mundeyan To Bach Ke’ video (thanks, jeet).

But dissidents like Mandela have long gone on hunger strike, and many African countries are much poorer than India. The American shorthand for starvation used to be Ethiopian famine — why now Gandhi?

I blame Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing you can teach an American about what’s outside our borders that we can’t make fun of

In 2003, Maxim beat up an icon.

Related posts: Fatty fatwa, New evidence uncovered about Gandhi’s assassination, Promo’s pizza leaves bad taste in actor’s mouth, Gandhi didn’t wear Armani

Update: Ennis points out that pork chops are Southern food, like yams and greens. But pork is still laden with cultural connotations with which I’m sure Aaron McGruder is familiar, and he uses it for comic effect.

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Armistice day

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Veterans day has its roots in Armistice day, the holiday that once marked the end of the “Great War” (WWI) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 [Link].

Over 138,000 Indian troops fought in Belgium and France during World War I, many of them Sikhs. More than one quarter of these soldiers would became casualties.

In the first battle of Ypres at Flanders in 1914 a platoon of Dogra Sikhs died fighting to the last man, who shot himself with his last cartridge rather than surrender.

After the bloody battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915 the Sikh regiments had lost 80% of their men, 3 regiments stood at only 16% of their original compliment. [Link]

Encarta: Indian Soldiers in France

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A double whammy

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Another VERY patriotic South Asian American

Last week when I was live-blogging the incoming polling data from around the country, I didn’t list every South Asian candidate. Manish posted a link to some additional results in the comment section of my post. A race to be on the Fairfield City Council in Solano County, CA turned out to be one of the most dramatic races of the night. The Indian American candidate, Democrat Iqbal “Paul” Randhawa, lost with a meager 5% of the vote. There was drama nonetheless:

As voters cast ballots Tuesday afternoon, Fairfield City Council candidate Paul Randhawa, his wife and son were in court.

After confirming the charges against each of the owners of Fairfield-based M&K Travel Services, Solano County Superior Court Commissioner Barbara James told the trio they could post a collective $2 million bail once they appear in court in San Francisco.

They were then returned to Solano County Jail.

“Is my lawyer here?” a confused Iqbal “Paul” Randhawa asked before he was led from the courtroom. He told The Reporter during a Monday jailhouse interview that he hoped to post bail following Tuesday’s hearing.

Randhawa, his wife, Gurdev “Debbie” Randhawa, and son, Manjinder “Manny” Randhawa, were arrested Monday at their Dynasty Drive home on San Francisco-issued warrants alleging fraudulent business practices.

Paul Randhawa, 52, faces 15 counts of grand theft, 15 counts of failing to refund money and one count of conspiracy. His bail is $1 million. [Link]

Damn. Way to kick a man when he is down. Not only does he get creamed in the election, but he has to spend election day in jail with his family. What kind of game was Paul running?

According to the authorities the Randhawa family which operates M&K Travels with offices in Fairfield, San Francisco and San Jose allegedly failed to deliver more than $50,000 worth of discounted air tickets to India; and in two instances clients received refund cheques that bounced.

Randhawa, his wife and son face 31 counts of conspiracy and grand theft, they said.

According to the District Attorney’s Office, Paul Randhawa, if convicted, could face 13 years and four months in a state prison along with a fine of $375,000. [Link]

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A Bellygraph Test to Ascertain the Gut Truth of the Matter

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Desis know that the seat of all emotions isn’t the heart but the belly – why else would we spend so much time catering to its needs? Based on that principle some clever desi-americans have come up with a better truth test, one almost as effective as having your mother look you in the eye and tell you that she knows what you did, so you better be honest about it. Instead of a polygraph, they used an electrogastrogram to measure changes in the digestive tract associated with stress.

Manish reluctantly posed for this photo …

… when 16 volunteers were hooked up to heart and digestive tract monitors, the researchers were surprised to find that lying had a closer correlation with stomach changes than with heart changes.

When the subjects lied, their heart rates increased, but it also did so at other times. On the other hand, lying was consistently associated with a decrease in the slow waves of the digestive tract. [Link]

Why is a stomach test more accurate? Because, as any auntie will tell you, the heart is a fickle creature, led around by hormones:

“The heart is unreliable because it’s affected by not only by your brain, but by many other factors, such as hormones,” says Pankaj Pasricha, who is leading the team. “The gut has a mind of its own – literally. It has its own well-developed nervous system that acts independently of almost everything except your unconscious brain.” [Link]

The Pasricha Family: Where nobody dares tell a lie!
This discovery had classically desi roots, it started with a father helping his daughter with a science project (the final version was called “Liar, Liar, Your Stomach’s on Fire”):
The study began as a high school project for Dr. Pasricha’s daughter, Trisha, who is listed as an author. (Dr. Pasricha’s wife is a former F.B.I. agent.) [Link]

Her mom’s a former F.B.I. agent and she just helped her dad come up with a better lie detector test? Boy, she’s really not planning on dating in high school, is she?

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M-m-me so hungry

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Legions of gastrophilic blurb writers drown South Asian lit in a very nice béarnaise sauce with a hint of tarragon:

Choli ke peechhe kya hai?

(What’s behind the choli?)

ALSO BY ROHINTON MISTRY: … Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new. Swimming Lessons is an intoxicating literary experience, as elegantly composed as a classic raga and as intensely flavored as a lamb korma.

Yes, and it’s as exciting as baseball and as delicious as a BLT. Pardon me while I light a few sticks of air freshener, put on some Christian rock and bask in exawtique, mystical Occidentalism.

Guess what borders the Vintage Books softcover edition of Mistry’s Family Matters:

Photograph… from Traditional Indian Textiles…

A Rajasthani choli. Sit down, the shock could kill you.

Related post: Buzzword bingo

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