Well.
All I have to say is thanggod Shodan-san commented all off-topic in the wrong thread, because if he hadn’t, I would’ve never seen this delicious bit of Punjabi mancandy. MeOW. The second Sikh to play cricket for England after Monty??? That TOTALLY deserves a post. Well, that and I would like to stare at his picture some more; I’m sure other mutineers will too.
FYI- all of the below is from his wiki entry (because it’s Holy Wednesday and I’m late for church!):
Ravinder Singh (“Ravi”) Bopara (born 4 May 1985, Forest Gate, Newham, London) is an English cricketer who plays for Essex. Although originally a specialist batsman, he is now improving his medium-pace bowling and developing into an all-rounder. He is the second Sikh to play cricket for England, after Monty Panesar.
Bopara made his first-class debut for Essex in May 2002. In 2003 and 2004, he played several matches for England Under-19s, including in the Under-19 Cricket World Cup 2004.
In the 2005 season, he scored 880 first-class runs, including his first first-class century. He also hit 135 in a non-first-class match against the touring Australians, putting on 270 for the second wicket with Alastair Cook…
In January 2007 Kevin Pietersen sustained a rib injury in England’s first One-Day International against Australia, keeping him out of the remainder of the series. Bopara was called up as his replacement, and made his ODI debut on 2 February. Later that month, he was named in the England squad for the 2007 Cricket World Cup,[2] and he played his second ODI in England’s second match of that tournament.
More soon…if only so that there can be more pictures of cricket-playing yumminess. 😉
Great innings by Bopara, wish England had won.
Well played Nixon-Bopra. So close. Anna, your mind reading skillz are on fire. I was just about to forward you this link on brother Bopara.
Oh how damme sad. They lose by three runs 🙁 but good performance by Bopara.
Eh HELLO however he’s a child….1985????????? Shit I graduated high school in the 80s!
So who else besides Bopara and Monty have desi origins? I mean on teams left in the super 8’s.
That would mean that I’m a “child” as well…
So who else besides Bopara and Monty have desi origins? I mean on teams left in the super 8’s.
All of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh 🙂
Jeetan Patel – NZ
Chanderpaul, Ramdin, Sarwan – Windies
Saj Mahmood who did pretty well earlier in the game. He was heckled by Pakistani fans in his appearance against Pakistan (Eng-Pak series). He was sensible enough to shrug it off. “You can’t root for Pakistan now” he jokingly said to his dad.
Doesn’t he look like a desi Jay Leno?
Uhhhh…hot. drool. 1985? It’s not robbing the cradle if it’s half your age plus seven right? i’m all good…
Opening up Sepia Mutiny and having that delicious smile looking right back at me was a delight. Thank you!
the second most exciting match of the world cup so far, after sa-sri lanka. glad sri lanka won, but a part of me would have been satisfied with a tie, given the brilliant effort of bopara and nixon.
oh hello Mr. Meow. I may have discovered a newfound passion for this thing they call cricket.
Apparently Mr Bopara’s nickname is “Puppy”; ahem, I will leave it to all his lady admirers to make suitable comments.
Yummy. =)
I caught the late stages of the match this afternoon in a Guyanese bar in Queens. It was great. Incredibly exciting finish, and though Anna’s new boyfriend did a great job in a tough situation, I was happy that the Sri Lankan brothers held on for the win.
Wow, cricket is soo dominated by South Asians! England, West Indies, Kenya, New Zealand, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa… all of them have or have had Indians in their teams at some point. I won’t be surprised if in a few years it’ll be Indians playing one another in every game.
If the breakaway series proposed by Zee TV takes off, we could be watching a lot of cricket.
And since it has provisions for international players, Neyyappam would have more competition. Now if someone could get the BCCI to sign off on this one…
“You can’t root for Pakistan now” he jokingly said to his dad.
Thats sounds so bad, “root” means f–k down under.
yes, isn’t he lovely. and his cricket is lovelier.
Er…Meanwhile, Sri Lanka seals victory against Englaaannnd… (focus, people, focus!)
No, he was heckled by British fans of Pakistani origin. I don’t think Pakistanis had any problems in his playing for England. The heckling points to some issues within British society, but that’s a different topic.
I was there at Headingley when Saj was being booed; from what I could tell, many of the hecklers did seem to be British Asians. However, he shut them up by putting in one of his best test bowling performances so far.
Thanks Suresh, TajUK. You are right. Those bright folks even called him a traitor.
Bopara…kya mara!! Nailbiter, Bopara was brilliant and was rewarded with MOM.
I’m still not sold on Sri-Lankans being included in the ‘desi’ category. I dislike such catch-all terms in that their application often results in unhelpful simplification of of very real ethnic, historical and linguistic differences.
Bopara batted a fine innings–after the sixth wicket feel there was really no hope on the English side and, to their credit, they never gave up. However Fernando is not being given the credit he is due. He was so nervous he had to rebowl the last ball–his death-grip upon the ball resulted in it never leaving his hand–and bowled a perfect fast one, right up the block hole. Whenever the Sri-Lankans win, and a good side is on the losing end, the justifications start with the other side’s poor performance and not the Lankan’s brilliance.
Well then shit, if you go by that criteria, who IS desi? North Indians? If so, let’s make sure that those coconut-oil chugging, Maundy-Thursday-Church-missing Mallus like Vinod and Anna know that they can’t self-identify all “desi”, since there are very real ethnic, historical and linguistic differences between them and say, sexy sardars like Ennis or Amardeep who are “desi”. Perhaps you are new here. This has all been bitched about, hashed out and heatedly argued over before.
Everyone here is desi. And brown. PERIOD.
Some of us are browner than others. ;>)
Our adoption and assimilation policies are very liberal 🙂
To continue my now two-post long tradition of veering slightly off topic, does anyone here know anything about Harpal Singh? (See, sticking with the hotness topic, but leaving cricket behind, though it’s still sports related). He is ADORABLE.
http://www.kickitout.org/index.php?id=241
Psssst. Within the bunker, there’s some talk of an entire series of athlete-hotties. 😉 Stay tuned.
Harpal Singh is from my neck of the woods, therefore, I feel able to share in the halo of his hotness. In fact, all desis from West Yorkshire are gorgeous and athletic. I always thought it was intriguing that he came through the ranks at a club, Leeds United, whose fans were fairly notorious for having bigoted enclaves. Thankfully, Leeds are now known for spectacular collapses in both their performance and financial status. It’s a shame that he didn’t quite reach the top tier of football consistently. If I remember correctly, he was on loan to my (and his) hometown team, Bradford City, for a while. He seemed a fairly nifty player from what I saw of him; quite good at taking free-kicks. According to Wikipedia, he now plays for Bohemians in Ireland; a team who I desperately hope play in sun-glasses and berets (whilst smoking Gitanes cigarettes). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpal_Singh
TajUk, you’re hilarious. “whilst smoking Gitanes” Love it.
i see SM intern has internalized more than a little hate for all those who don’t follow their dear leaders into an etymological ravine.
how many sri-lankans and nepalis do you see at “Desi Events”? Yes I am new here but I’ve run down the “hmm which identity do i pick today” road many times and being a Sri-Lankan Tamil I can certainly feel the allure of shading myself under the ‘desi’ umbrella. It’s my belief, however, that this is false shade and claiming that all who comment here subscribe to this idea (strikingly similar to Lee Kwan Yew’s ridiculous ‘pan-asian values’) is foolish. I cannot count how many times i’ve met north indians in the workplace, and in social settings, (usually those who have some memory of ‘how it was at home’) who do not consider me to be a ‘desi’ at all–irrespective of my years of bharata natyam experience and inculcation in the details of Hindu life that many born to the faith can cheerfully elude without risk of exclusion.
Do you not know the stark differences in how Tamil is spoken in south and how it is spoken in Jaffna? Do you not know that there is a few thousand years of geographically separate development for Tamil populations in India and Sri-Lanka? It is all fine and well to assume that people hailing from the mainland would identify as desi but not someone who has run into incredible numbers of NRIs who don’t see the difference between Indian and Sri-Lanka–let alone the rest of the brown region.
who the hell are you to tell anyone which Identity they may choose?
I’m sure that taking a dismissive tone works in the many arguments you must have with dogs and cats, but when you discuss an issue with a human being, reason is the preferred mode.
Ah, but there’s the rub: reason may be preferred, but it’s only effective when communicating with someone else who is capable of that mode themselves.
Go ahead vent your spleen– but make sure you hate on Uberdesi too, while you’re at it. They are another DESI group blog and get this– one of THEIR bloggers is Sri Lankan and Tamil, just like you! The mind boggles!
Instead of addressing my point about Punjabis and Malayalees being utterly different from each other and yet shockingly BOTH desi, you went on a self-righteous rant which displayed nothing more than your own issues plus your newness to the site. I don’t care what you say or how much you sputter when you type it– a Tamil from SL has far more in common with a Tamil person from Madras than a Malayalee will EVER have with someone from Ludhiana…and yet, the latter two are desi. The system works.
the point is, madayan, that the idea of grouping all under a banner so devoid of meaning as ‘Desi’, is foolish and that primarily north indians have assumed that this is okay for every south asian.
In using Desi automatically, you do a disservice to anyone who enlightens a passerby with the knowledge that all brown people don’t speak ‘Indian’ and don’t all defecate in floor-level holes.
why don’t you dig into your bounty of reason and tell me exactly what makes a person a “Desi.” In fact, tell me why they didn’t name this site “Desi Mutiny”?
and on a lighter note… This fellow’s pretty and all, but I’ll take Rahul Dravid over him any day. Except after the India/SL match. That was a disapointment. Reminds me of Ol’ Jimmy (P)Adams from the Windies, back in the day.
If you RTFFAQ instead of running your mouth on this thread VIA MULTIPLE HANDLES, you’d know the very obvious answer to that question, but since you seem unable:
Now it’s down to semantics. How are you so comfortable with “brown?” Do we need to stratify into shades of tan, umber, sienna, ochre and so on?
ahh, the freedom of those unencumbered with the facts. Sri-Lankan Tamils, for your obviously uninformed benefit, have far more in common, in regards to daily life, with their Singhalese neighbors, than they do with Tamils on the mainland.
They do not defecate in the street (a common sight in any TN city). They do not grow up knowing that it’s quite alright to learn only Tamil. They do not grow up singing the Indian national anthem. They do not grow up with an entitled sense of security–either the LTTE or the Government are always available to ruin a life.
Simply obvious, unless you’re not a Sri-Lankan Tamil (or you had the misfortune of growing up in an area where there are absolutely no people of another ethnicity.)
HOHO! The intern’s gander is raised.
We ban for handle-switching in the same thread. That’s pathetic troll-behavior. Please choose either Smart@ssMadras or MuraliMannered and stick with it; you have been warned. I don’t mind discussing this with you, but I refuse to debate you and your imaginary friend.
full disclosure: smartassmadras is my friend (xtian) from madras and I am the joyful heathen from sri-lanka. so much for your Sherlockian efforts.
I very much agree with MuraliMannered. By the way who in the world told Indians to put the Lankans in the “desi” category? Like my Singhalese friend said, “desi” sounds like it came from “Days Inn”…one of those things the Guju made up and now everyone thinks it is cool.
Of course! Why didn’t I think of that–the old, “my friend/roomie/lover/german shephered is, like, using my computer/my broadband/stealing wifi with me”-excuse. Nooo, we’ve NEVER heard THAT bullshit before.
If you had any integrity whatsoever, you would have fully disclosed that BEFORE, not when you were quite validly threatened with being banned. The Sherlockian efforts you stupidly mock are what keep this site a spotless place for people like YOU to come defecate in. How’s THAT for a relevant visual?
i could go into all the ways i’ve enjoyed the elegant trajectory of your rising ire, but i must play the spoiler here. Those who walk the dangerous path and comment on blogs at WORK where there is ONE IP ADDRESS generally will not display TWO UNIQUE ones.
did you notice how smartasmadrass CONTRADICTED every one of my posts? Smartass doesn’t buy into my agreement 100%. but you would be too furious and self-righteous, in your own way, to realize that.
Because you have not seen them, does not mean that they do not. One of my best friends is Lankan and he refers to himself as Desi. As much as he has trouble with the fact that the word has an Indian origin, he knows that our cultures share a lot in common.
If you want examples, the coconut sambol which you Lankans love is very similar to our Thengai Thogayal, which is close to Thenga Samandhi over in Neyyappam land. We share more than just food and you should know this.
I am sorry that you work with a bunch of morons who do not see the bigger picture. But if we were to make generalizations based on what we see in our backyards, we would still be picking insects off of each other’s backs.
It must be awful not to have credibility. But until you do have a smidgen of that very necessary social currency here, i.e. you’ve become a regular commenter who has proven they aren’t a troll (hey, we all had to get jumped before we could join the gang), I don’t really believe you and years of moderating this blog tell me that I’m probably right. I have to act in the interests of the community.
You BOTH decide to start commenting on the same day, from the same IP? What a convenient coincidence. The burden of proof isn’t on me, my potential new friends. I’m not the one potentially trying to cloak “shady” so cleverly. If what you say is true, you’ll be back, you may even log on from home, from other IPs, you’ll continue to engage, because you’re in the right and I’m so very wrong. Now please prove me wrong or do troll elsewhere. We have more than enough poo to clean from the monkeys, as it is.
karthik. very reasonable. i wish sm intern had taken the same tone at first. civility is not beyond me. Sambol, in fact, was not a south asian invention. It came to sri-lanka via the Dutch, as they had considerable economic interests in the Indonesia at the time.
Look, by dint of my upbringing (anybody raised in an american ashram…anybody?…still waiting…”) my bharatanatyam teaching mother (not a hobbyist but one who did only that) i think i can see more than a few similarities. I just refuse to refer to myself as anything but a sri-lankan tamil when asked for easy-to-remember group identifiers.
And to go back to your original point, if we start picking differences, my neighbors back in India were different in every one of those ways. The ethnic, historical and linguistic differences existed. Hell every person I have known in my life has a different background, but we do have a lot in common as compared to people who are not from the sub-continent. Care to refute?
refute i will, good fellow.
I grew up in a community populated by majority reform-jew hippies who moved to rural Virginia, had kids and followed a brown guru. My childood friends all had sanksrit or Tamil names, prayed to Vishnu/Krishna/Siva/Brama (as well as Christ, Allah, G-D, Ahura Mazda and who knows else), believed in the common currency of all religions, devalued material possessions as a measure of social worth and, for the most part, did not partake in legal or illegal drugs.
after moving out, and encountering many brown people, i found, for the most part, people who were contemptuous, and often ignorant, of the multifarious nature of Hinduism (mostly the importance of oral tradition and lifestyle over dogma and doctrine), had cutesy anglicized names, could not conceive of 10 minutes without starbucks or a lifetime without Coach/Fendi/Prada/Chanel bags and the possibility of being a non-judgemental teetotaller.
That’s the least judgmental thing I’ve read in a long time.