Monthly Archives: May 2006

The saga continues in Lanka

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Things in present day Sri Lanka have been taking a depressing turn of late:

At least 150 people have fled the village of Allaipiddy in the northern Sri Lankan peninsula of Jaffna.

It follows last weekend’s murder of 13 Tamil civilians. The navy has been accused of the killings – they deny it.

Police and international truce monitors have both launched investigations into the incident.

The killings came only two days after Tamil Tiger rebels launched a suicide assault on a naval convoy in which 18 sailors died. [Link]

To take your minds off of the grim reality of the present I feel that I must point you to animator and SM commenter Nina Paley’s website. She has just released the newest segment of the her multi-part saga, Sita Sings the Blues. It is titled “Battle of Lanka.”

A pivotal scene from “Battle of Lanka”

Battle of Lanka was made about a year ago, and is chapter 4 in Sita Sings the Blues, after Hanuman Finds Sita and before Trial By Fire. In this episode, Rama, Hanuman, and the monkey armies cross the sea to Lanka to conquer Ravana and the rakshasas, and rescue the captive Sita. Assisting me was Jake Friedman, the only animation apprentice I’ve ever had. Jake wanted to learn Flash and had excellent animation chops and a good eye, so he came to Brooklyn almost every day for a month. Jake animated much of the monkey-on-demon violence: monkey swinging axe, monkey throwing axe, monkey bashing demon with club, monkey kicking demon, etc. A panorama of Jake’s animation occurs at 1:28, in which I took pretty much everything he’d animated on the project and composited it into a single scene. It’s worth multiple viewings, to catch all his lovingly considered variations. Thanks Jake… [Link]

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Greetings and Salutations

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Well, thanks to everyone for the lovely welcome, I’m very happy to be here–if a little nervous about suddenly bloggint to a large audience. My blog the lawyerwriter seems to generate a few hundred hits a day, which pretty much sums up my known friends, enemies, family and ex-boyfriends. From what I can tell, Sepia Mutiny gets about 16,000 hits a day. So this is a little like having a spotlight thrown on you while you’re singing in the bathub. You’re glad for the attention, of course, but you really wish you’d had a few more lessons to prepare yourself for the sudden publicity. Continue reading →

Guest Blogger: Neeraja Viswanathan

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Somebody told me that this blogosphere was small
we use to live in the same city, go to the same high school
and never met before
until I’m blogging on Sepia Mutiny
and peep this Indian queen from NYC
writing on her blog
while she’s practicing street law,
said she workin’ on a post and
could my click check her out,
she said she loved my posts from near Fargo
and that Kaavya sucks,
and now she’s stepping on this stage
to take a piece of our hearts…

My deepest apologies to both our readers and to The Roots. Sometimes I forget that I’m just a blogger and nothing more.

Our newest guest blogger is a lawyer, a blogger, and a published author, BUT NOT related to the disgraced chick-lit author. She’s the real deal. It turns out that we went to the same elementary, middle, and high school at the same time but have never met. Crazy.

But what really “got me” was this entry. Sublime. Please help me welcome Neeraja.

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Highway 106 Revisited

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Upon departing this earth for the higher cosmic plane, the late Yogi Bhajan, leader of the Happy, Holy, Healthy Organization (3HO), left not only his spiritual legacy but also a range of holy business endeavors such as Akal Security and the Yogi Tea line. The YogiÂ’s contribution to our holistic well-being now receives its due recognition from the authorities of the secular realm, to the elation of the Indian press, always on the lookout for such triumphs:

In a rare gesture, the New Mexico State Transportation Commission has renamed a state highway — Highway 106 — as ‘Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway’ in memory of the late Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji. An Indian-American, he was known to his followers as Yogi Bhajan.

State Highway 106! One imagines, perhaps, a shimmering strip of tarmac stretching into the pristine New Mexico wilderness, amid a cascade of desert wildflowers, lightning storms illuminating the majestic silhouette of the Sangre de Cristo mountainsÂ… A place of peace and insight, as befits the YogiÂ’s life work and the wisdom of the counsel he afforded the leaders of the land:

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in his remarks on the occasion said: “Yogiji was not only a spiritual leader, but was a business and social leader as well. And he kept a hand in politics too. I know many of the elected officials here today often sought his counsel in professional and personal matters, as I did many times…”

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SAWCC Conference Highlights and Links (Updated with pictures)

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Amitav Ghosh

The SAWCC conference that Anna mentioned last week ended up being a lot of fun. One thing that really stands out at a conference like this is the way the South Asian writers and artists in the U.S. across a number of different media are using the internet. So instead of writing a gossip-columnish summary, for this post I’ve collected links to sites by people who were on panels, or who were involved in the conference in some way.

First off, photos! Preston Merchant is, we established, definitely no relation to Ismail Merchant, but he did take lots of beautiful pictures of the conference here. He’s also working on a book of photography of the South Asian diaspora.

Amba, who I don’t think I’ve met in person, blogged about Friday night’s event with Amitav Ghosh and Vijay Seshadri (Sara Suleri Goodyear couldn’t make it); it’s a pretty detailed and accurate description of the conversation. Also check out Mitali Perkins’ report here. The highlight might be this sentence: “And in ten years, Pooja Makhijani and Anna John of Sepia Mutiny will both be famous.” Nice prediction! (Try: sooner.) Incidentally, Mitali has written a couple of young adult novels that look like they might be fun: The Not-So Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen just came out last year on Little, Brown & Co.

On the young adult novel tip, I was also quite impressed by the excerpt Marina Budhos read from her new book Ask Me No Questions. Given the fluffiness of Opal Mehta (and most of the books KV plagiarized from), it’s refreshing to see a work of young adult fiction that makes a serious political point about the experience of South Asian immigrants in the U.S. This novel addresses the ‘dark’ turn for civil liberties since 9/11, and is partly based on Budhos’ own firsthand experience talking to undocumented (or “overstayed”) Bangladeshis in the U.S. (Manish profiled Marina Budhos here)

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The cell phone as an anti-militancy weapon

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An article by Reuters provides us a contrasting perspective on all the phone tapping and data mining that has been causing many of us here in the U.S. heartburn of late. India, where civil liberties may not be as pressing a concern when compared to terrorism, has found tapping quite useful:

Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.

A few hours later, troops smashed the door of his hideout and arrested the militant “commander” after a brief gun battle.

Indian intelligence officers credited the bust in south Kashmir to the tracking of his mobile phone.

Until a few years ago, intelligence officials resisted attempts by the federal government to lift a ban on cell phone services in the region, fearing mobile phones would aid militants in planning attacks.

Now they know better and security officials say troops have eliminated many militants by tracking their mobile phones and tapping conservations, citing the example in south Kashmir.

“Such a quick strike operation was just impossible three years ago,” a senior intelligence official told Reuters.[Link]

Not only is India using wiretapping to capture terrorists and prevent terrorism, it is also disseminating cell phones in order to help win the hearts and minds of those who they may eventually end up tapping. Huh?

In 2003, New Delhi allowed mobile services, eight years after the rest of India, now the world’s fastest-growing market for cellular services.

At that time, India said it was a move to win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris, weary and alienated after years of conflict in India’s only Muslim-majority state which is also claimed by neighbor Pakistan.

After three years, there are now more than 850,000 mobile phone users in a state of 10 million people. And the spin-off for anti-insurgency operations has enthused security officials.

“So far, we have arrested or eliminated dozens of them (militants) including many senior commanders through mobile-tracking,” the intelligence officer said. [Link]

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The Pleasure, The Privilege Is Mine

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After ManishÂ’s departure, the bunker basement has been full of weeping, moaning, mewling sounds. A pouting face appears around every corner as inhabitants go through their stages of loss. The monkeys, they loved him so.

Rajni, my roommate, has turned into an insomniac. Baboon Scotty smashes one bottle of Jager an hour against the common room wall. Yazad, the Mountain Gorilla, shaved off all his fur and is running around naked and morose after declaring that hair is the sole cause of all strife. Rochelle, the Orangutan who used to leave anonymous love notes in ManishÂ’s mail box, read something about marriage in the comments and is now wandering the halls with a broken keyboard, yelling, “IÂ’ll CUT that wench!” Bonobos Rohan and Junaid finished two bottles of kaju feni and are starting to reek like rotting garbage. Kinjal, a wee Spider Monkey, is lying face down on my hammock, simply butchering “Bucky Done Gone” in her screechy voice, on repeat. And the worst reaction of them all comes from Mithun the Rhesus Macaque, sweet Mithun, he ripped his red sequined jumpsuit to shreds and has sworn off dancing forever!

In my life, I have encountered a fair bit of human sadness but this is too much to bear. Oh lordy, I am weaker than ever in the face of monkey melancholy. Wanting to help my new friends, I decided to buck up and enlist the help of Dino, a wise Chimpanzee and a distant relation of Nim Chimpsky. We rigged massive sets of speakers in every room and are hoping to produce enough sound to blow the roof off this sucka depression. Manish should be thought of with coy smiles and appreciative laughter only, no? Our plan is simple. Choose one tune that is so bloody sad it makes grown adults cry on a good day and play it nonstop at a very high volume for five hours straight. We call it, “Operation: Tough Love”. Continue reading →

In Which The Head Meets the Body

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Thanks to an anonymous tipster, I read this article in the Independent about a strange happening at the Musée Guimet in Paris involving a statue of one of Shiva’s wives (whose name is unspecified). The headless statue, which had been recovered from the Bakong temple in Cambodia in 1935, was reunited with its head after nearly six hundred years.

The temple was built in 881, during the Khmer dynasty, and is one of many ancient Hindu temples scattered around Southeast Asia (today, the vast majority of Cambodians are Buddhists). The statue was decapitated in 1431, though exactly why or who did it I do not know. The body of the statue came to Paris in 1935, and the head remained in the museum affixed to the nearby Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s most famous tourist attraction.

The reunification of head and body happened completely by accident. John Gunther Dean, an ambassador to Cambodia in the 1970s, known for protecting Cambodian art from the Khmer Rouge, decided to give the museum a present from his personal collection: Continue reading →

Posted in Art

Dawud Brasco

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An article out today in the NYTimes describes the exploits and background of a young Muslim Bangladeshi American who is a deep-cover NYPD officer (thanks to a tipster on the NEWS tab). This is like Donnie Brasco meets 21 Jump Street meets Alias.

A young police detective testified yesterday at the Herald Square bombing plot trial that he was recruited from the Police Academy 13 months after 9/11 to work deep undercover in the Muslim community to investigate Islamic extremists.

The detective, a Muslim who came to America from Bangladesh when he was 7, testified that he was a 23-year-old college graduate when he was plucked from the academy in October 2002. He took an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where, he testified, his assignment was to be a “walking camera” among Muslims there.

He said he had no regular contact with the department other than through his handler, to whom he reported by e-mail at first. During two years of living in Bay Ridge, he was involved in “numerous” investigations, he testified, and was at times shadowed by a field team to ensure his safety. [Link]

They seriously need to make this into a movie if they haven’t already started. The existence of this undercover agent came to light at the Herald Square bombing plot trial in which a U.S. citizen and a Pakistani national are accused of plotting to bomb a subway station in New York. More about the detective now:

The detective testified that he graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and entered the Police Academy in July 2002. In the middle of October, roughly halfway through his academy training, he left early when he was recruited to join the Intelligence Division, where he was assigned to the Special Services Unit, which runs the undercover program.

Within three weeks, according to his testimony, he made his first appearance at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a mosque on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, next door to the Islamic bookstore where Mr. Siraj worked. He testified that he spent time there periodically. Mr. Stolar, while questioning the detective, indicated that his reports showed he had seen Mr. Siraj 72 times over the two years, mostly in the bookstore. [Link]

Wait a minute. Is this for real? I don’t recall there being a show called Law & Order: Special Services Unit.

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15 Park Ave Comes to the DC Metro

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Tipster Jenny informs of us of an upcoming screening of Aparna Sen’s 2005 film, 15 Park Avenue. The screening, a fundraiser benefiting the group Chai, Counselors Helping (South) Asians/Indians, an organization that provides education, advocacy, counseling and referral services to the South Asian community about mental health issues in the Baltimore / Washington metropolitan area, will be held at the Laurel 6 Cinemas, this Saturday (May 20) beginning at 1:30 p.m., in Laurel, Maryland. Konkona Sen Sharma (Page 3, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer), Aparna Sen’s daughter and one of the stars of the film will be in attendance for both a question and answer session, and the dinner that follows. More information and details on the screening can be found here.

15 Park Avenue, which stars Sen, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, and Shefali Shetty (I loved her in Monsoon Wedding), is the story of two sisters and their struggle to cope with schizophrenia after a traumatic event triggers a delusional world for one of the sisters and is yet another example of the new cinema coming out of India. Indian film: it’s not just Bollywood anymore.

I haven’t yet seen the film, but from the other work that I have seen, either featuring Konkona Sen Sharma, or the direction of Aparna Sen, 15 Park Ave should be worth your while. Hey, its even been called “hauntingly beautiful.” (link)

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