Monthly Archives: December 2005

Desi Fly Chicks at the Grammy’s

Posted on by

Even though the award is probably one of the ones announced at an event held prior to the televised Grammy Awards, I am still excited to see both Anoushka ShankarÂ’s Rise and Asha BhosleÂ’s You’ve Stolen My Heart- Songs From R D Burman’s Bollywood up for one of the prestigious awards. It is just too bad they are up for the same one. Announced this past Thursday, it turns out both Bhosle, sister of the illustrious Lata Mangeshkar, and Shankar, whose half-sister Norah Jones is also up for a Grammy, have each been nominated in the category of “best contemporary world music album.” While the Grammy category groups these albums together, I don’t think the albums could be more different.

From what I have heard of these two records, both are great, just in very different ways. ShankarÂ’s Rise is an interesting effort: traditional Indian classical meets contemporary that is sometimes touched by electronic via the Midival Punditz’s Gaurav Raina. Bhosle’s YouÂ’ve Stolen My Heart , which was done with the Kronos Quartet, is pure filmy, but a nice musical reworking of classic Bollywood.

Also nominated in the same category are Amadou & Mariam for Dimanche A Bamako, Gilberto Gil for Eletracústico, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo & The Strings Of The English Chamber Orchestra for No Boundaries. The Grammy’s air on CBS on Wednesday February 8. Let’s hope for a mutinous outcome, after all, there is a two out of five chance.

More mutiny on Asha/Kronos here and here. Also, here is a link to a piece the Village Voice did last week on YouÂ’ve Stolen My Heart, and some other Bollywood music. I donÂ’t really like the article because I canÂ’t take it when critics who cover South Asian music always make food metaphors.

The music is an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings playing a blend of devotional music and action film motifs.
Can someone tell me what exactly an electric curry of sweeping overdubbed strings is?

Continue reading →

An Oriental Gives Up

Posted on by

When an Indian television station insists on titling a finance program “Oriental and Occidental,” it is time for me to expend no more energy on protesting such terms’ use as racial descriptives. oriental.gif

I had thought that having American Heritage Dictionary recognize “oriental” as problematic was a step forward, but I suppose I can count on the thick-brown-skinned folks at CNBC-TV18 to maintain the status quo. Nonetheless, I will complain that the subject of the show doesn’t even seem relevant to the name; what does foreign investment in India have to do with that old binary of “Oriental” versus “Occidental”? Particularly when some of the global market gurus include non-Occidentals like Ayaz Ebrahim, the Asia-Pacific CEO for Asia-based HSBC. The explorers of the exotic East, at least when it comes to the international flow of capital, no longer are solely Caucasians.

The prompt for an economics writing competition when I was an undergraduate was something like, “Free trade contributes to peace.” I don’t know if that is true, but I would think that genuinely free trade — in contrast to the protectionist economies of 18th and 19th century imperialism, against which Adam Smith wrote — might erase some of the old ways of Orientalist thinking. Continue reading →

Rage Down Under

Posted on by

As I flip through channels, words like violence break the silence, they come crashing in, in to my little world via an Australian reporter being phone-interviewed on FOX news: sydney_riots_wideweb__470x313,0.jpg

What we’ve seen here is that these locals are attacking anyone with a different color skin.

Shudder

Since FOX news helpfully changed the subject right after that incendiary quote, I am left to frantically type “Australia” and “race” in my Google toolbar. I’m dismayed by what I find; tensions between “local” Australians and those who are of Lebanese descent have exploded. Apparently a few of the Lebanese-Australians attacked innocent lifeguards on the beach and “locals” retaliated, much to the delight of Aussie Neo-Nazi retards.

Hordes of vigilantes who had marinated in sun and alcohol sought vengeance against the “Lebs” for this and other, more disturbing offences. No good can come of this revenge race. I cringe at the way “Middle Eastern appearance” is being tossed around, because I am just waiting for some brown person to get caught up in this tragic mix, since we look more “Middle Eastern” than, well, Middle Eastern people do.

Another thought strikes me– sure enough, you tipsters are on it. Mutineer Ananthan points me towards the following, massively disturbing words in the Sydney Morning Herald:

A BARE-CHESTED youth in Quiksilver boardshorts tore the headscarf off the girl’s head as she slithered down the Cronulla dune seeking safety on the beach from a thousand-strong baying mob.
Up on the road, Marcus “Carcass” Butcher, 28, a builder from Penrith, wearing workboots, war-camouflage shorts and black singlet bearing the words “Mahommid was a camel f—ing faggot” raised both arms to the sky. “F— off, Leb,” he cried victoriously.

Indeed, victory is yours, you idiot. Continue reading →

Desi pak

Posted on by
Found inside a medicine bottle:

DESI PAK

The technique used to cram entire extended families into a single Ambassador or Bajaj. Related expression in Hindi: ‘ghusna,’ to squeeze in quickly, quietly and off the books before the train leaves, your shady money-making scheme is shut down or the government babu cuts off the subsidies. Not to be confused with ‘Pak Desi.’

PERFORMANCE PACKAGING

I don’t suppose they’re referring to latex. No s-hecks please, we’re desi.

HARMLESS

Harmless, fatalist and philosophical. A non-conquering, non-converting subcontinent with a Hindu rate of growth and long, whinging, political addas. Then everyone goes home and returns the current party to power.

ADSORBENT

Attracts liquids — either Old Monk or Señor Walker.

DO NOT EAT

Please do not eat the desis.

(UNLESS WE BEG FOR IT)

It’s all good then.

Continue reading →

Another election, another loss

Posted on by

Another racist election, another heartbreakingly close loss: Jay Aiyer lost to Sue Lovell for Houston city council by the whopping margin of… 1.6%.

Lesson? Allegedly calling your desi opponent a terrorist probably works. With these kinds of margins (18 votes against Tom Abraham, 1.6% here), it can’t hurt.

In the closest and most heavily voted contest, Sue Lovell beat opponent Jay Aiyer by one percentSue Lovell beat opponent Jay Aiyer by one percent…

Calling your desi opponent a terrorist works for the At-Large Position 2 on City Council. [Link]

In the race for Houston City Council at-large Position 2, Jay Aiyer has raised more money than Sue Lovell. Since the Nov. 8 general election, when the two emerged from a field of five to make the runoff, Aiyer has raised $89,000 and Lovell $56,000…

But Lovell has had outside help. The Service Employees International Union contributed $10,000 to Lovell’s campaign and sent three mailings on her behalf during the campaign leading to the Nov. 8 election. It sent two more during the runoff campaign. Aiyer said the mailings by SEIU violate a city ordinance prohibiting “coordinated campaign expenditures” — direct work on behalf of a candidate by an organization whose expenditures aren’t listed on the candidate’s campaign finance reports. [Link]

One long-time Aiyer supporter wrote:

It is difficult for me to believe that a Council seat can be bought by one of the largest labor unions in the country. Shame on you voters of Houston. Shame on you Democratic Party of Houston. I expected more of you. It is so transparent that Sue did not spend any money on direct mail and she herself admitted that SEIU was going to do an Independent Expenditure. [Link]

Related posts: Teach racists a lesson for five bucks (updated), Today is Jay Day, It’s over

Continue reading →

Hench-desis

Posted on by

Hench-desi #1

Kiran Shah, who’s 4’1″ tall, plays Ginarrbrik the White Witch’s dwarf henchman in The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe. And it’s a pretty big role. He gets to gasp theatrically when he’s eventually nailed with an arrow. The moment drew big laughs.

It’s interesting seeing a henchman with an obviously desi accent, though not new. Shah also played scale double for all four hobbits in Lord of the Rings.

[Born] 28 September 1956 [in] Nairobi, Kenya… Because of his size, versatility, and willingness, Shah is much in high demand as a perspective stunt-double for long-shots in action scenes. Auditioned for the part of R2-D2 in Star Wars (1977), narrowly losing out to Kenny Baker. Worked as a tailor’s apprentice for six months before seriously starting his acting/stunt career. [Link]

You know how you can tell in the first 10 minutes that a movie is going to deeply suck, and all you can do is sigh and settle in? That’s Narnia, and its 76% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a joke. I can only assume reviewers are paying deference to the excellent novels and don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of another mega-franchise. The script has all the anachronistic smarminess of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Its fundamental problem is you’re stuck watching bad child actors for nearly three hours. The movie is slow, the editing slack, the lines cheesy.

And it’s fundamentally The Passion of the Simba. The movie, paid for in part by a wealthy Christian religious activist, is awash in Biblical allegory. Its climax is a lame, in-your-face re-enactment of Jesus’ resurrection that had my Jewish theater mates groaning. The New York audience laughed openly at all the unintentional camp. There’s also some jarringly bad CGI (mismatched lighting against a green screen, an obvious transition from glowing graphical fur to fakey, inert stuffed animal). After the movie, I overheard much griping outside the theater, in the bathroom line and on the subway.

Continue reading →

Nailed for embezzling 9/11 funds

Posted on by

You just know that anyone caught embezzling money in any way related to 9/11 is going to be nailed. Rediff.com reports on one such individual:

An Indian-American has been arrested for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from a fund meant to help identify victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

Prosecutors alleged that about $5.5 million had been transferred to bank accounts in India at the instance of Natarajan R Venkataram, a former administrator in the New York city medical examiner’s office…

The fund had been set up to buy computer hardware and software to help in the identification of victims.

Apparently he was in this together with his co-worker/girlfriend Rosa Abreau. Let’s see which one will be the first to flip and turn state’s evidence against the other. If you threw in a murder this would make a good Law & Order episode.

Following Sept. 11, the duo steered an $11.4 million contract to Comprehensive Computer Resources, controlled by a close associate of Venkataram, who’s been cooperating with investigators in an effort to lessen his punishment.

While Comprehensive Computer Resources did work for the medical examiner, city officials determined it could have been done for a fraction of the cost, and have vowed to recover the millions lost.

Money was transferred out of Comprehensive Computer Resources accounts by Venkataram with blank checks signed by a Venkataram associate at the company. Some $400,000 was deposited in the account of a shell company controlled by [Rosa] Abreu’s stepmother and another $86,000 to a company controlled by Venkataram’s roommate, authorities say. [Link]
Continue reading →

Today is Jay Day- VOTE

Posted on by

jay aiyer.jpg
Attention Houston-area Mutineers: Today, Saturday December 10th is the day– get out and VOTE for Jay Aiyer. Donating money is fantastic, and I’m thrilled we inspired many of you to do so, but at the end of election day, the only thing which counts is VOTES. So move it. I know, it’s out of your way, it’s not what you had planned for your Saturday, you need more time to peruse their platforms, you don’t think you should vote when you haven’t…save the excuses for another, less important day.

Today you take a stand against ignorant, pathetic, politics-as-usual. We are not dot-headed terrorists and we do not fly planes in to buildings. When people cravenly suggest such outrageous things, we call them out on their bullshit as they scurry behind technicalities which don’t matter to anyone with a functioning brain.

Don’t live in Houston? No problem. You and I are going to engage in that most important aspect of political campaigning– Getting out the VOTE. I have a few dozen relatives in Houston, so do you. Today’s the day you make a phone call and tell them to get to the polls to vote for Jay. What are you waiting for? Continue reading →

Tufteing the subcontinent

Posted on by

Map of the world with each country scaled by population size

Above is a map of world populations: “the larger the country, the bigger its population. Each grid square represents a million people.” [Link]

When you eyeball the map, a few things leap out at you in a way that they don’t when presented with a table of numbers:

  • India has 1 billion people, or roughly 1/6th of the world’s population
  • Pakistan and Bangladesh together have slightly more people that the US. If there was still a “United Pakistan” it would displace the US as the world’s third largest country.
  • There are more people living on the subcontinent than there are on most other continents. More South Asians than Europeans, Africans, North Americans or South Americans. As a matter of fact, there are more Indians than people in these other continents.

The same website also presents similar maps of past and future population levels of the world from 100,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 350 years ago (1650), 100 years ago (1900), and even a projection of the world’s population 150 years from now in 2150. [via BoingBoing]

Continue reading →