Monthly Archives: February 2006

Keeping tabs on your clan

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I have often wondered where the rest of my kind spread to once they hit the U.S. shores. My branch of our larger clan (which arrived in the mid-60s) started in Illinois and then spread on to California and elsewhere. I recently came upon the website of the Gens Project [via Dexterous Doings]. Plugging in my last name, I was surprised to see that my kind is also numerous (if you count <100 as numerous) in Texas and New York:

It’s just like an outbreak map

The Gens project is born by the initiative and the experience of a team of graduates in Humanities at the University of Genoa – Italy, who have specialized in history, demography, statistics, archive-keeping and librarianship.

Originally it was a research project about the distribution of surnames across Italy, but after the first realization and the first impact with the public, we decided to make it available to others. [Link]

Just for fun, I entered in some other notable last names… Continue reading →

Saturday55: The “Late vs. Never” edition

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I passed out after work yesterday, with this very window still open and a pending 55Friday languishing. My bad. I would normally feel a lot worse about this, but such an unintended delay means one thing: I can publicly wish someone whom I adore a very Happy Birthday. If you don’t already read Venial Sin, you are depriving yourself of some of the best blog on the internets. He’s an erstwhile resident of my Chocolate City who currently makes London an even hotter place to be and his blog is genius. (No pressure!) Happy Birthday, gorgeous. 🙂

Since I’ve slobbered all over him virtually, let’s start my run-down of the best examples of flash fiction from last week with Sin himself. He had no need to self-deprecate before introducing the following:

“No!” the lawyer yelled into the phone. “I don’t care if it WAS Valentine’s Day, “life partner” was not meant to apply to a cellmate. This isnÂ’t the path to true love, no matter how slim your options may seem.”

Pause.

Beat.

Sigh.

“Fine, I’ll bring you candy on the 14th for…”Big Mick” is it?” [link]

Next up, one of Nina’s 55s made me smirk happily:

The painting was titled “Agape,” and depicted the God of Trite having intercourse with the God of Sexual Starvation, nude. The Valentines Fundamentalists rioted, but the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Atheists finally united in common cause, cancelling out this most cancerous religion. The work sold for $2 billion, and everyone lived happily ever after. [link]

Fellow spelling-stickler Sirc penned a scathing 55:

Good mourning babe :), she texts. Still swimming or Barely stayin afloat in a sea of cheapnfree champagne reveries, He writes back, What’s so Good about Mourning? She writes back that, Every day is the First day of your life 😉 Why are Bad Spellers so drawn to unfounded optimism like lice to immigrant public school kids? [link]

Anyone who drops the k-bomb is going to get mad love from me ;), DDiA:

EvEr SiNcE wE stalked each other on Xanga You gave me anon. eprops; filled my Dreams with kaleidoscopic manga, I’ve wanted to buy you dil-shaped balloons. Now you will call me yo babydaddy, yayy! And me you snookums. Hug, kiss, And stop traffic with aww-inspiring PDA. Common bayyybee shake that kundi I’ll be your munda, you my mundi.[link]

This week? Write whatever you please. I toyed with different themes, ranging from “Jeopardy” (where I was going to have you all end your 55s in the form of a question) to “Crime and Punishment” (where you 55 regarding suitable punishments for Salman Khan). In the end, I chose none of the above. As always, leave your masterpiece or a link to it in the comments below. We’ll love it, promise. Continue reading →

Jail Time for Salman Khan?

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For those of us in America, high profile hunting continues to be part of the regular news cycle. After all, our Vice President did shoot, by accident of course, his hunting partner Harry Whittington in the face and body just last week (guns don’t kill people right, its people that kill people?).

So it was kind of humorous to see the parallels between bad boy vice president, and our own Bollywood bad boy Salman Khan, who this week (thanks Bong Breaker) was found guilty of killing two blackbucks, a protected species of antelope, in the western state of Rajasthan in 1998, and sentenced to one year imprisonment. (link)

Salman Khan and Fans

Charges against Khan were pressed by the local Bishnoi community in Rajasthan where the killing took place… “The court can hang me. I am tired of such lengthy proceedings,” Khan told the court. The poaching case is not the actor’s first brush with the law. He is also facing trial in Mumbai (Bombay) in a 2002 hit-and-run case. One person was killed and three others injured when Khan allegedly drove into a group of homeless people sleeping on a pavement. Khan faces 10 charges, including causing death by negligent driving which carries two years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

It was unclear if Khan was drinking while he was allegedly poaching blackbuck, but he was I believe, driving under the influence when he allegedly hit and killed the homeless people. As an aside Vice President Cheney when asked if they had been drinking while hunting noted in his interview with Fox News correspondent Brit Hume: “No. You don’t hunt with people who drink. That’s not a good idea.”

In that same interview with Fox News, Cheney did later indicate that he had had a beer with lunch earlier in the day. Maybe I am dumb, but doesn’t that constitute drinking? Hell a few months ago, you could get arrested in Washington DC for drinking and driving after having only one drink.

A BBC correspondent says the actor, who has also been fined 5,000 rupees ($111) has a month’s time to appeal.

Continue reading →

Artless Art

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The Daily Show just posted some disturbing clips from a new anti-American blockbuster in Turkey, a pretty Westernized country. In Kurtlar Vadisi Irak / Valley of the Wolves Iraq, American soldiers (including Billy Zane) machine-gun children and sell them to a Jewish doctor (Gary Busey) who harvests their organs.

Jon Stewart compares the repugnant Turkish screenplay, redolent of Spielberg’s monkey brains, with the fact that Arabs are the go-to villains in Hollywood. One of the clips he shows is True Lies with Brit Asian actor Art Malik, middle name ‘Complicity,’ playing yet another Middle Eastern bad guy.

Art Malik (born as Athar Ul-Haque Malik on November 13, 1952) is a Pakistani-born British actor… Malik also played the villain Salim Abu Aziz opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994)… He also played the role of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Path to Paradise, a 1997 made-for-TV film about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. [Link]

Watch the clip, it’s at 5:30. There’s also a funny bit immediately preceding about astroturf ‘rioters’ in Pakistan torching a KFC over the Danish cartoons instead of a perfectly delectable CBH next door. ‘CBH,’ of course, would stand for ‘Copenhagen Boiled Herrings’

Related posts: White guys in turbans, Fire licks wood in Pakistan, The Danish cartoon controversy

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Spy Princess

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A new book to be released on March 1st (in the U.S.) will detail the life of Noor Inayat Khan, a spy of South Asian heritage (her father was Pakistani) that worked for the Allies during WWII:

The life and times of Noor Inayat Khan – a descendant of Tipu Sultan and the only Asian secret agent to work for the Allied forces during World War II – have been captured in a fascinating new book to be launched on March 1.

The book, titled “Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan” (Sutton), is authored by journalist Shrabani Basu, the London-based correspondent for the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group.

Based on extensive research and interviews with Noor’s relatives, descendants and friends, the book presents a graphic account of her life till Sep 13, 1944, when she was shot dead by German forces at Dachau. She was 30.

Born in Moscow, Noor was raised in the Sufi style of Islam and joined Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war. She was one of three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross and was also honoured with the Croix de Guerre. [Link]

I had once mentioned Khan in a previous post. Comments following the post seemed to indicate an interest in her story. For those of you that enjoy fiction more than non-fiction, author Shauna Singh Baldwin has previously written a novel inspired by Khan’s life called The Tiger Claw:

From the author of What the Body Remembers, an extraordinary story of love and espionage, cultural tension and displacement, inspired by the life of Noor Inayat Khan (code name “Madeleine”), who worked against the Occupation after the Nazi invasion of France.

When Noor Khan’s father, a teacher of mystical Sufism, dies, Noor is forced to bow, along with her mother, sister and brother, to her uncle’s religious literalism and ideas on feminine propriety. While at the Sorbonne, Noor falls in love with Armand, a Jewish musician. Though her uncle forbids her to see him, they continue meeting in secret.

When the Germans invade in 1940, Armand persuades Noor to leave him for her own safety. She flees with her family to England, but volunteers to serve in a special intelligence agency. She is trained as a radio operator for the group that, in Churchill’s words, will “set Europe ablaze” with acts of sabotage. [Link]

Additionally, a 2001 film titled Charlotte Gray featured a title character who was a composite of women like Khan:

CATE BLANCHETT plays the title role of Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman who is unexpectedly drawn into a special operation with the French Resistance when her lover, a British pilot, is shot down over France.

An interesting section of the film’s website has pictures of newspaper clippings about Khan’s exploits.

Continue reading →

Aussie drugrunner gets death in Bali

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A 24-year-old Aussie from the Sri Lankan Tamil community was sentenced to death this week for running a ring smuggling heroin from Bali to Australia:

Myuran Sukumaran

Bali Nine “enforcer” Myuran Sukumaran today joined Andrew Chan in being condemned to death by firing squad for attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia. [Link]

I doubt the codename helped their credibility:

The court heard that Sukumaran assisted Chan in strapping bags of heroin to the legs and bodies of Renae Lawrence, Czugaj, Martin Stephens and Scott Rush… On April 5, it is alleged, Sukumaran gave Lawrence $500 and a Nokia mobile phone. He instructed her to call an Australian contact codenamed ‘Pinocchio‘, the court heard. [Link]

I bet they prefer the sound of ‘hakuna matata‘:

Cheers from some Indonesian anti-drug activists echoed in the court as the judges announced the words “hukuman mati“, meaning death sentence. [Link]

Maybe they should’ve read the fine print:

During the trial [a drug mule] said he was so excited at the offer of an overseas holiday in Bali that he was blind to the possible reasons behind the free trip. [Link]

I don’t think this is the judge they had in mind when they made Judge Dredd:

Judge Suryowati said she looked down at the bench in front of her, tears welling in her eyes, as [the chief judge] announced Sukumaran would be executed. [Link]

Continue reading →

Where the mandirs are

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Harvard University’s Pluralism Project has many interesting resources concerning minority religions in the USA. Here, for example, is their map of mandirs across America:

To some extent, this map can be read as a proxy for the distribution of Hindus across the country, although only crudely. Because the map indicates the number of temples and not the size of their congregations, a state with a large number of small temples will show up as darker brown (I love their coloring scheme) than one with a smaller number of large temples. That is, there might be more Hindus in Illinois than New York, but they simply worship at a few very large temples.

Despite this limitation, there is still much to be learned from reading these maps. I was surprised to see, for example, that there were more mandirs in Georgia than in the state of Washington, or Michigan. Who knew there were so many mandirs in the south?

The site also includes maps of the 89 Jain temples, 236 Sikh gurdwaras, 2039 Buddhist temples, and the 1855 Islamic mosques that they have catalogued.

Continue reading →

World’s largest turban!

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Major Singh, a Nihang Sikh in India, is hoping to qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records with the world’s largest turban (via Mr. Sikhnet):

A Sikh cleric from Amritsar is all set to make it to the record books for wearing what he claims is the largest turban in the world… Major Singh… wears a huge tower-shaped turban using 400 meters of cloth, some 100 hairpins, and embellished with 51 religious symbols made in metal. [Link]

This style of round turban is known as a dumaala and is common to Nihang Sikhs. Most Nihangs wear a smaller turban than this, but there is a tradition of competing to see who can wear the largest. Major Singh’s 400 meter turban weighs around 35 kg, or roughly 77 lbs. Nobody else is in his weight class, the next largest turbans are 10 kg smaller.

If you’ve ever seen or met a Nihang Sikh, all dressed in blue, you’re not likely to forget:

Nihang Singhs belong to a martial tradition … Their way of life, style of dress, and weaponry has remained little changed since … three hundred years ago. Nihangs are a semi-nomadic people. They are organized into “armies” and live in camps known as “cantonments”. Men and women both train in horsemanship, swordsmanship, and in the Punjabi martial art known as gatka. During times of persecution in the past, the Nihangs defended Sikh shrines and the Sikh way of life and become known for their bravery against all odds. In times of peace they travel to festivals and fairs throughout India, staging displays of horsemanship and martial skills. [Link]

For those inquiring minds, my own turban is considerably more modest in size. It’s not the size of the turban on the man, it’s the size of the man in the turban, and that’s all I have to say on this topic . [Major Singh is, I’m sure, a lot of man in a very large turban.]

Related Sepia Mutiny Posts: Crisp or Not, As American as Gatka, Justice Department smacks MTA over turban ban, Da Star in dastar, This turban’s disturbin’

Related Articles: Nihangs, Learn How To Tie Different Sikh Turbans

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End of the line

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3-offload.jpg

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine has a spectacular photo essay by Brendan Corr on shipbreaking in Bangladesh: huge ships driven at full speed onto the beach at high tide, armies of workers trudging out to strip them with bare hands. The physical danger is intense; the health and environmental consequences are potentially dire, as these tankers and container vessels and cruise liners are loaded with asbestos and other contaminants.

In Bangladesh, according to the text, shipbreaking employs 200,000 people. Amazingly, it yields 80 percent of Bangladesh’s steel production. So this massive and hazardous recycling effort generates a vital input into the economy. You can provide your own comment about macroeconomic trade-offs.

Shipbreaking has been a major activity in South Asia for years now; here is a 2000 article by uber-reporter William Langewiesche on the Alang beach in Gujarat, which favorable tidal conditions have turned into a surreal junkyard of corroding behemoths. Now, though, it seems that Chittagong has outflanked Alang with even cheaper labor.

This week, the Clemenceau, once France’s biggest aircraft carrier, was forced to break its journey to Gujarat after legal challenges in both countries. President Chirac has now ordered the Clemenceau back home.

Meanwhile the 315 meter-long cruiseship France, is reported to be on its way to Chittagong though the Bangladesh government has demanded it be decontaminated first. Now called Lady Blue, the ship is registered in the Bahamas by a Norwegian company owned by a Malaysian company owned by a Hong Kong company. This opaqueness, standard in the shipping industry, makes accountability hard to enforce. Continue reading →

Waiter, there’s a fly …

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Whether sanctimoniously single or smugly encoupled, I find that most people suffer from a post-Valentines hangover. I don’t mean a literal hangover, although copious quantities of champagne are commonly consumed, I mean a reaction to the intensely saccharine and unidimensional portrayal of love. As a homemade remedy, I offer the hair of the dog that bit you – a reminder that love takes many forms.

Saheli tipped us off to this article by an American desi who went back to Karnataka to work as a medical volunteer at the “largest Tibetan refugee colony in the world,” an encampment of over 10,000 Tibetans:

I found out quickly that I had entered a place with entirely different notions about life purpose and productivity. Soon after I arrived I pointed out to a monk that a mosquito was sucking his blood. He nodded in acknowledgement and said something brief about the accumulation of merit and allowing another being to nourish itself off your own. (Luckily, we were in a region where the prevalence of malaria is low).

The second day I was there, a monk took me to the local Indian restaurant. A fly fell into my daal. The monk’s reaction took me by surprise. I wrote this poem about it.

There are those who
When a fly drops Plop! into yellow daal
it is not their bowl of food they worry about.
It is the fly and her wings
The ability of fire and spice
To sear wings
And with so much kindness
They place the fly in their palm
Unfold a white creased napkin
Clean the wings and the space
Between the wings
with water rinse away
Any hot yellowness
Place the fly gentle
On the edge of the table
Until
by the end
Of our meal
The fly has flown
made her way
Back into the world. [Link]

Continue reading →