I’m Not Vinod But I Play Him on TV

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For folks outside of the tech biz, my job is a little hard to explain… but one way of summarizing it is that my startup (www.roundbox.com) is involved in next generation delivery technology for television to cellphones. To use one of my oft-invoked phrases, the gig’s a little bit geek (there have been multiple physics / EE / CS PhD’s minted in the devilish minutae here) and a little bit glam (it’s TV afterall). One interesting aspect is that I end up rubbing shoulders with folks around the globe who spend way more time watching TV than I do….

Twins Separated At Birth?

So… I’m at an international TV conference this week in NYC (hence the scheduled meetup on Saturday) and a guy from the Canadian Broadcast Corp (CBC) comes up to me in a sheepish, “I’m honored to meet you” sort of way and asks if I’m “Shaun Majumder.”

Since he’s now directly in front of me, the guy has a chance to read my name tag and can clearly see that I’m not Shaun. And despite being one of the guys who’s “in the know” when it comes to arcane tech specs & industry consortia, I’d never even heard the name…. My new Canuck colleague was taken aback and said “Man, my friend and I back there could have sworn that you were this big TV star in Canada named Shaun Majumder…”

It turns out that Shaun Majumder is a bonafide celebrity up north complete with a fanpage. He’s currently a regular on Canada’s Saturday Night Live – a variety show called “This Hour has 22 Minutes“. One recurring skit is a DailyShow meets Borat format where the anchors pretend they’re serious news reporters, go into the field, and

Raj Binder… A more likely match

interview politicians, athletes, celebrities, and the like while pushing as deeply as possible into absurd, inside-joke-with-the-audience territory.

Like perenniel SM favorite Russell Peters, Shaun is considered a bright spot in the frigid north’s young comic scene and has a rather healthy set of credits on both sides of the border to his name –

Gemini award-winning actor/comedian Shaun Majumder’s feature film credits include Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Ladies Man, Pushing Tin, and Purpose.

A regular cast member of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Shaun’s TV career has also included roles on Fox’s 24, Relic Hunter and John Woo’s Once a Thief. Shaun was also a regular cast member on Cedric the Entertainer Presents and Hatching, Matching & Dispatching.

Shaun is a favorite of Montreal’s Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, having hosted the Just For Laughs TV series for three seasons…

His professional and personal websites showcase some of his work… but the first stop should be CBC’s video vault which has several of Shaun’s highlight clips on line.

Raj Binder “Probes” a Sex Shop

One of his recurring characters is “Raj Binder” – a good natured, bumbling FOB who, again like Borat, probes the nooks and crannys of polite Canadian society at their comic expense. Be forewarned ye who view the videos, Binder isn’t quite a desi media role model.

Much like that loaded, age old inquiry does this make me look fat?, perhaps do I really look like that? is a question you can never truly answer for yourself… but when *I* look at a picture of Shaun,

Straight Outta Da Pind, Yo

*I* don’t exactly feel like I’m looking in a mirror. I did, however, get opinions from colleagues sitting next to me on Shaun’s headshot vs. mine as well as a host of Google image results (here and here, for ex.). In a word, they were *shocked* at the resemblance. Given the predominantly gora audience at this particular conference, maybe it’s cuz all us brown dudes look alike?

Scary.

Still, instead of asking “why”, methinks I should capitalize and make a quick romp up to Vancouver. Anyone know how hard it is to get a Fake ID up there?

35 thoughts on “I’m Not Vinod But I Play Him on TV”

  1. canadian content… so i got to comment.

    quick profile – majumder is hades – brought up by mum when dad took off – doesnt have much by way of desi roots except for binder who’s a convenient foil – is a newfie – relates more to folks swigging moonshine down by the bayou than latte-sipping techno-geeks – you should have committed a fixation on screech and the cbc dude would have been sold on your alter-ego – about his work – one of the not so fine productions he hosts is a battle of humorists on radio called master-debater.

  2. he hosts is a battle of humorists on radio called master-debater.

    huh, huh you said “master-debater”

  4. ….do I really look like that?

    Handsome guys; the both of you, but Vinod if I didn’t know better I would have said you speak more Tigrinya than Punjabi

  6. Given the predominantly gora audience here, maybe itÂ’s cuz all us brown dudes look alike?

    To me, many browns look alike. All Bollywood actresses look alike. All whites look alike, all blacks look alike and ditto for all asians. It’s a serious problem. That’s why I love movies where everyone is clearly recognizable (Departed, for example).

  7. Binder isnÂ’t quite a desi media role model.

    Yeah, any man who shoots a mock suicide video (look on his professional website) doesn’t earn any respect from me. Let’s hope your semi-resemblance ends with the one headshot.

    Anyone know how hard it is to get a Fake ID up there?

    I think the real question is how much would your ID go for? The going rate back in my day was $50-60 Canadian, I wonder if the prices have changed at all since then.

  9. I always thought you looked like my favourite anchorman Ravi Baichwal, yup another Canuck… maybe a lil older version of you, but definetely a great to watch anchoring live news. I miss Vancouver, and as far as fake id’s… just head onto the basement of UBC’s CS building… you should get them for $20 max, more than that and they are ripping you off :). And who knows maybe when you are up there in Vancouver you might find your Sonja Nordahl 🙂

  12. Really good and important post, Siddhartha. Amazing how almost disorienting it is to see the Global South focus on the Al-Jazeera web site. No wonder we can’t watch it in the U.S. yet. It might just get people thinking about what the rest of the world is up to…including what ‘they’ think of ‘us.’

  13. Really good and important post, Siddhartha. Amazing how almost disorienting it is to see the Global South focus on the Al-Jazeera web site. No wonder we can’t watch it in the U.S. yet. It might just get people thinking about what the rest of the world is up to…including what ‘they’ think of ‘us.’

    Hehe…wrong post 🙂

  14. You guys look totally like each other – is cool! makes me think about all those 80’s hindi movies about siblings getting lost in childhood and reuniting when they are adults.

  15. makes me think about all those 80’s hindi movies about siblings getting lost in childhood and reuniting when they are adults.

    Like this one?

  16. Sorry but your look-alike (facesake ? ;)) sucks. Raj Binder is no Borat. It’s just a lame attempt at milking Apu’s fame.

  18. My celebrity look alike is Andy Pettite but he’s got 60 pounds and 5 inches on me. I can’t pitch either.

  23. Yes he was definitely Kumar’s pasty lookin’ older brother.
    I didn’t think he was pasty. Stop hatin’ bidi!

    y’all stop picking on bidi. he’s a good guy. 🙂 That being said… it’s always a good time for karataayy..

  24. y’all stop picking on bidi. he’s a good guy. 🙂

    Who was ever questioning bidi’s goodness? I was just pointing out his sincere lack of class and civility in mentioning Shaun Majumder’s complexion. It was derogatory and quite unnecessary.

  28. sorry i mean to say “i hate side-by-side comparisons in the context of racial profiling.” i don’t know why i said garlic. hm.

  30. Naina,

    I was just pointing out his sincere lack of class and civility in mentioning Shaun Majumder’s complexion. It was derogatory and quite unnecessary.

    Quite right. I can imagine the outcry on this blog if someone made a similarly derogatory remark about a dark-complexioned South Asian. It would probably (correctly) trigger a stream of responses accusing the commenter of racism, along with the offender quite possibly finding his post deleted and himself banned.

    There’s a little too much tolerance for the reverse situation on SM these days. No double-standards, please.

  31. I suppose we can only hope that the SM moderators and fellow readers don’t buy into the ‘ligher skin = more beauty and respect’ and therefore subconsciously do not take offense to such a comment. For some, perhaps that way of thinking is so ingrained into their psyche that they even tend to be bitter and resort to insults. And no one seems to flinch!

  32. Naina, unfortunately that’s exactly what it is (in the case of many commenters here, if not necessarily the moderators themselves). These things have been known to get pretty nasty here. It’s understandable that some of the more unpalatable aspects of “traditional” desi culture have obviously been unfair to some people, and no doubt many commenters here have also been adversely affected by that on a personal level if they’ve been on the receiving end of such behaviour too…..but it’s not right to replace one form of racism with another. There is such a thing as excessive overcompensation in such matters.

  33. I think the most disturbing part of the entire situation is that a racist comment is being delivered with such a dualistic undertone. I would venture to guess that if one were to confront such a comment, the response would be, “What, like being called ‘pasty’ or ‘light-skinned’ is such a bad thing?” The same goes for thin women who are called “anorexic” by others, and expected to not take offense, since thinness is supposedly such a coveted body type.

  34. I’ve mentioned this before to some other commenters during previous SM conversations on the same topic. This appears to be something specific to desis in the US — I’m from Britain and this kind of behaviour generally doesn’t happen here. There have actually been bloggers/commenters from some British desi blogs who’ve quietly observed the past fireworks on SM and they’ve found it all quite bemusing too. Possibly it’s because of the whole “brown” thing — non-existent in the UK, at least not in the same sense. Desi guys in Britain tend not to think of themselves in terms of their skin colour, apart from having a general awareness of it. (Some of the women do, though).

    There have been some efforts recently to redress the balance, most notably the thread about that Persian model, but yes in some quarters of SM’s commenting populace the attitude is indeed “light skin = bad, dark skin = good”. It’s okay to glorify darker complexions and comment favourably on the latter, but it would be very unwise indeed for someone here to make equivalent comments about the lighter types (especially if it’s a woman).

    This stance is understandable considering the historical/traditional negative attitudes within desi culture concerning such matters, and if the viewpoints described above are part of an effort to (finally) redress the balance, but it is possible for the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction and to take political correctness to unnecessary extremes. Racism is racism, regardless of whether the prejudice is against darker people or lighter individuals.

  35. (especially if it’s a woman).

    Meaning, if the person they’re talking about is a woman.