Monthly Archives: June 2006

A bunch of lawyers in ATL-NASABA 2006

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It is time once again for the annual North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA) conference. This year it is being held in Atlanta on the June 16th weekend. I have attended this worthwhile conference the past two years, 2004 in Los Angeles and 2005 in Washington D.C. No, I am not a lawyer just a lawyer groupie (although I pass myself off as a tort lawyer when mingling amongst their kind). In addition to getting to attend fantastic seminars, NASABA is also a great place to flirt with federal clerks as well as meet desi attorneys who will one day run for office. Just read my recap from last year. Unfortunately, despite their gracious invitation, I won’t be able to make it down to Atlanta this year, but all you lawyers (and lawyer groupies) should:

More than 400 South Asian judges, attorneys and law students will gather in Atlanta for the third annual national convention of the North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA), June 16-18, marking a year of progress for the South Asian legal community.

Achievements in the U.S. and Canada to be acknowledged at the conference include high-profile South Asian legal appointments, diversity strides and greater representation of South Asian concerns in business, entertainment and education. Expert speakers will cover more than a dozen topics at this year’s conference, “Networking to Influence, Influencing the Network: South Asian Lawyers Changing the Flow of the Mainstream.”

Seminars, workshops and networking events will provide thought-provoking and productive sessions for attendees to review the year’s significant strides and establish new objectives. Representing more than 5,000 South Asian American attorneys, this year’s NASABA convention is expected to be larger than previous gatherings. The Convention, for one memorable weekend, will bring together attorneys from firms, large and small, from small private companies to large public companies, like CompuCredit Corporation, a convention-level sponsor, from the public and private interest sectors, from all branches of government, and from the world of academia.

The keynote this year will be given by Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal (see previous SM posts 1,2,3,4). Here is a schedule which includes a list of all the great seminar panelists they have coming out. Continue reading →

Indian Woman Marries Snake

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Look, I love animals. I mean, I really love animals. I grew up with a dog, I have cats, and I walk some of the dogs in my neighborhood to break up my writing day. But I draw a line at this: Indian woman marries cobra.

Now, all phallic jokes aside, let’s take a look at this. This woman was sick. She started feeding the snake and got cured. Perhaps this was psychological, or coincidental, or perhaps it was indeed a religious sign. But basic questions are being ignored here.

For one, how did the snake propose? I’m assuming this Bimbala Das is a nice Indian girl who didn’t spring the question on it/him? Also:

Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives,

Then how do you know it said yes? What if it has a little cobra wife and babies already? You mean the incredible racket of an Indian wedding isn’t conducive to luring snakes into matrimony?

Second, what are the snake’s rights? Does he know own her property? Did he provide some kind of dowry? And, perhaps most important from the cobra’s point of view–does the snake have any conjugal rights? I mean, I’m just asking here, it’s a logical question.

“I am happy,” said her mother Dyuti Bhoi, who has two other daughters and two sons to marry off.

Eeeeeeeenteresting. Perhaps a trip to the zoo is in order? I’ve heard penguins mate for life….

a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India’s Orissa state

This is the most shocking of all. A cobra can get 2000 guests to come to its wedding in the heat of India in June and I can’t get half my guests to come up past 14th street on a weekday. Continue reading →

Introducing Kunjan Shah and Paul Singh

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Batman has Alfred Pennyworth. James Bond has Q. Jack Bauer has Chloe O’Brian. Sidney Bristow has Marshall Flinkman.

…and now Sepia Mutiny has Kunjan Shah and Paul Singh.

We put out a call for help recently so that SM could continue to grow and improve. Many of you answered our call and we thank you ALL sincerely. We have decided to add two people to help with site administration and also to help improve this blog with lots of new features over time. Like Lexus, we here at SM are in the relentless pursuit of perfection. So far we have been handing out the equivalent of blog cocaine. Soon we will flood the blogosphere with blog crack.

Kunjan is only 22 and lives in Kansas City. We needed some young blood in our North Dakota bunker. Everyone around here has been going around using the phrase “when I was young,” way too often. We knew things had to change. Around the bunker we refer to Kunjan by his codename: The Keymaster.

Paul is a bit of a mystery. He is currently in New York although seems to be a Californian originally. We picked Paul for his years of experience and also his great aesthetic sense. We want to give SM a bit of a makeover and he seems to be the right person for the job. Around the bunker we refer to Paul by his codename: The Gatekeeper.

Please join me in welcoming Kunjan and Paul.

We are also in the process of moving our site to a new dedicated server. SM reader Krishnan has been instrumental in helping us secure the new server and we would really like to convey our thanks to him for all the time that he has put into it so far.

Because so many readers have offered to help and seem so capable, we are going to try and create a space in the near future whereby readers can offer technical suggestions to help improve the site. Think of it as open-sourcing. Right now we use Moveable Type but we may eventually switch to WordPress. For those of you who have offered your help, look for a post about this within the next month or two and we may contact some of you by email.

Continue reading →

Silencing the “Code”

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Oh dear. Andhra Pradesh is the seventh Indian state to ban The Da Vinci Code. Why?

“We have taken the decision because the release of the movie could have led to demonstrations and trouble,” Paul Bhuyan, the special chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh, told The Associated Press. More here. Apparently, the chief secretary took Tommy Lee Jones seriously in Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid animals and you know it.”

Now, I have not seen the movie, nor have I read the book. I tried, but I didn’t like the writing. Thanks to the combination of hype and Wikipedia, I know the whole damn story, right down to the mad albino monk’s favorite method of self-flagellation. Everyone I know who has seen the movie has thought it stuffy and boring, but I will quote only my mother “That Indiana Jones was much funnier.”

Continue reading →

Deep in the heart of Desi

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We at the Mutiny don’t talk as much as we should about the desi presence in the central United States. If you’ve wandered through the heartland you know that desis are everywhere, principally thanks to the hotel business. And then of course there are the major cities like Houston, Dallas or Denver where I know we have plenty of readers.

Indian corporations are ahead of us in this regard, as witnessed by the following item from Alabama. Now, for a few years the Deep South has been a hub for foreign investment. There’s an enormous Nissan plant in Jackson, Miss., and a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Ala., that have created thousands of jobs. Part of what draws these firms is the abundance of cheap skilled labor marooned by the manufacturing recession, as well as the anti-union laws. Still, anyone who’s spent time in the South knows that foreign investment has wrought some powerful economic and cultural changes.

But Indian firms? Well, ITC Infotech has just committed to open its third US location in Birmingham, where it hopes to ramp up to $100m in annual business. And Alabama authorities hope this will start a flood of Indian investment:

ITC is the first company to announce plans to locate in the state since the establishment of the Alabama-India Business Partnership, a group set up to stimulate economic activity and investment. More are expected follow.

Automotive parts maker Span Industries has indicated it wants to come to Birmingham, as has another Indian auto parts manufacturer and a biotechnology firm, said Anil Agarwal, president of AK-Global Solutions Inc. and founder of the Alabama India Business Partnership.

“In the next five to 10 years, we will be doing the same thing we are doing for the Indian companies as we are doing for the Japanese and Korean companies today,” Agarwal said…

I’m all in favor of this sort of investment. But one thing that always amuses me in these stories is the special type of boosterism that they breed, in which the investment origin and destination are touted as perfect partners because they match up so well culturally:

Not only does Birmingham offer a geographical hub on which to build a solid Southeastern presence, Agarwal says, but culturally the two communities share several common denominators.

For instance, Agarwal says, both Alabama and India have strong agricultural backgrounds that transitioned to a manufacturing base and only relatively recently have begun to shift into research in areas such as biomedical science and biotechnology.

“They also both have very traditional family values,” making India and Alabama compatible business partners, Agarwal says.

Meaning vaat exactly, Agarwal-saheb? I know some families down South that are anything but traditional. And those Baptist churches every twenty yards don’t leave much room for masjids and mandirs. What the regions really share is humidity, verandas, and big ol’ flying cockroaches. I trust Agarwal-uncle wasn’t trying to allude to something more sinister — Old times there are not forgotten — and instead look forward to a growing desi role in the cosmopolitan revitalization of the South. Continue reading →

The dark side of gym rats

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I self-identify as a gym rat. My body begins to feel ill and lethargic if I go even a week without working out. I have been working out at a gym regularly for the last eleven years. I consider going to the gym an almost spiritual duty. I believe in a personal philosophy that you must keep your body in the best shape you possibly can at all times so that it will be clean and ready if called into service for a greater cause (whatever that might be). I know that might seem silly to a lot of people but I really mean it. It isn’t about vanity. I actually eat four servings of fruits a day also, because being in shape isn’t just about going to the gym but about taking care of your health in general.

When I am at the gym I do not socialize. I only know the first names of one or two people at my gym. I always workout alone, I wear headphones, and 80% of the time I am there I don’t even make eye-contact with anyone. The gym is my “me” time. It is where I meditate on the things bothering me as well as on the things I am happy about. I toss around ideas for blog posts and also consider whether I should ban that one commenter who has been bugging me for months. It is my hour and a half of refuge from the storm outside.

An article published this week at Slate.com has got me reconsidering everything. Far from living a good example, maybe I, and those of you like me, are just a bunch of freaks in the making:

There have been three major terror attacks in the West over the past five years–9/11, the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and the 7/7 suicide attacks on the London Underground. For all the talk of a radical Islamist conspiracy to topple Western civilization, there are many differences between the men who executed these attacks. The ringleaders of 9/11 were middle-class students; the organizers of the Madrid bombings were mainly immigrants from North Africa; the 7/7 bombers were British citizens, well-liked and respected in their local communities. And interpretations of Islam also varied wildly from one terror cell to another. Mohamed Atta embraced a mystical (and pretty much made-up) version of Islam. For the Madrid attackers, Islam was a kind of comfort blanket. The men behind 7/7 were into community-based Islam, which emphasized being good and resisting a life of decadence.

The three cells appear to have had at least one thing in common, though–their members’ immersion in gym culture. Often, they met and bonded over a workout. If you’ll forgive the pun, they were fitness fanatics. Is there something about today’s preening and narcissistic gym culture that either nurtures terrorists or massages their self-delusions and desires? Mosques, even radical ones, emphasize Muslims’ relationships with others–whether it be God, the ummah (Islamic world), or the local community. The gym, on the other hand, allows individuals to focus myopically on themselves. Perhaps it was there, among the weightlifting and rowing machines, that these Western-based terror cells really set their course. [Link]

Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Love and Marriage” Edition

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Spring has long sprung and like several of you, I was at a wedding last weekend. ‘Tis the season for bridal registries, trips out-of-town and getting faded on Black at receptions (via trunk bar or open, natch). Even though it has almost been a week since I saw a priest recite ancient exhortations at the Cathedral of the Incarnation, I’m still very marriage-minded on this Friday. You would be too, if you had been at an Orthodox ceremony; I had several hours to ponder tradition, obligation and tying the knot (both literally and figuratively).

Then there’s the Mutiny’s role in keeping the vedding bells ringing in my head; I had read the “Modern Love” essay penned by Sarita James when it came out, but Amardeep’s post from earlier today prompted me to visit it again, since I knew it would be a hot topic (I predict 300+ comments). It’s mildly amusing to me that the one issue which can bring this entire community together/rouse lurkers from their anonymity/stir up so much drama is marriage. Not politics, not Arundhati, not spelling. Marriage. It’s a testament to how much angst and weirdness we all feel about this rite of passage, that whenever we feature a post like this latest, every F5 will bring you a brand new comment.

While we already had a Friday nanofiction orgy which featured a few 55-word biodatas, I think that the time is right to “go there” again. We haven’t 55’d in a while, might as well get reacquainted via a subject which inspires all of us to say something. As always, you may flash us with fiction about whatever you wish, just be kind enough to leave your words (or a link to them) in the comments below. I know, I usually name our 55Fridays after music I listened to in college, but no wedding reception is official until you’ve played Frank (though to be clear, the couple I just celebrated with danced to U2’s highly awesome “With or Without You”.) What are you waiting for? Nanofiction, already. Continue reading →

More ABCD Arranged Marriage Melodrama

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I’m sure everyone is sick of reading “my parents want me to have an arranged marriage, and I’m like, totally annoyed and stuff” stories in the American papers. Officially I am annoyed by them too, though I actually find these stories curiously addictive even in their predictability — like bad pop songs on the radio, or celebrity gossip.

Sarita James has one of these pieces in the New York Times “matters of the heart” column from the Sunday Style section. Though she initially resisted her parents’ attempts to have her arranged off, at the merry old age of 19 she decided she liked a boy they had picked out for her (he was 26) and got engaged. Even at the time of the engagement, the boy’s family indicated that he still had to “see” two other girls, in order to avoid “formally offending” their families.

So he goes off to India, and doesn’t call for a week or two. Oh oh. The family soon finds out the boy got engaged to an engineer in Bangalore! And Sarita gets these emails:

Dear Sarita, I am so sorry for what happened. I wish I had gotten married to you. Matters were taken out of my control. I want to apologize profusely both to you and your family. Unfortunately, I can never explain what happened.

A second e-mail message, posted five minutes later, read:

Dear Sarita, I regret my indiscretion in that first e-mail. Could you please delete it? Please trust that my apologies are sincere. (link)

The snake! But the explanation is even worse than the content of those emails:

A few years later, I learned that a large dowry had been exchanged as part of his wedding. Most of it had been passed along to his sister’s bridegroom when she was married the same year. Not only had the suitable boy let me down, he had also perpetuated the injustices of the dowry system. (link)

So not only is the boy a flagrant yellow-bellied wus, he’s a sell-out to the dowry system. At the end of the article, Sarita indicates that she’s still single, and she’s not doing the arranged marriage thing anymore. Good for her; hope she never gets an email like that again.

Anyone out there have comparable war stories they want to share (anonymously, if you prefer)? I’m particularly curious about nutty things that happen to people because of the internet. Continue reading →

Desi Family Terrorized in Wayne, NJ

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The words in the subject line of Sree’s SAJA email blast made me cringe. HATE CRIME: NJ Record on Hindu family targeted

Oy.

I’ll take the tentative exotification over blatant intimidation any day, thanks. What puzzles me most about this crime is the syntax of the spray-painted hate:

We Kill U.
We will Fire your house.
Watch Your Kids.

Feel free to scream at me for this, but I know desis who sound just like that, not that I’m in any way implying that it’s an inside job OR that asshat racists are usually articulate. “We will Fire your house”? To quote OMC, how bizarre.

More from the Bergen record:

Those threats and other profanities — spray-painted on a two-story house in black and orange and neon green — are terrorizing a Wayne family of five who police say have been singled out for their Hindu beliefs and Asian Indian roots.

Continue reading →

Live-blogging the 2006 Bee (updated)

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Tonight a Spelling Bee champion will be crowned in America. Unlike the Kentucky Derby there is no chance that one of the competitors here will be shot if they come up lame. Most likely. This competition marks the annual pinnacle of Indian American intellectual flexing, and we can almost guarantee a Thomas Friedman op-ed tomorrow.

Tonight we (Indian Americans) make up for all of the incidents where we got picked last in gym class or that one time we didn’t make the high school badminton team because we cut our head open and had to get like a whole bunch of stiches the night before tryouts and were in the emergency room until very late at night and the doctor said that we should stay away from all strenuous physical activity for at least a week but we tried out anyways…and got cut, from the badminton team, which even our other more nerdy friends made it onto.

Throughout the rest of the day please check this post for updates. I might be a little behind some of you during parts of the day but I will hopefully be online for the championship round this evening which will be televised on ABC.

Here are the desi horses in the race starting from Round 4 onwards. This is how it works. If you see a word appear under their picture it means they have been eliminated and should be banished forever from our thoughts. There is an ages old Scottish saying that is quite appropriate here: “There can be only one.”

Continue reading →