Ok, Look. I know when someone lights the SepiaSignal (TM) over the tipline for a worthwhile down-with-brown cause, and when someone hitches a ride on the I’m-brown-too!choo!choo! train. You know, takes one to know one and all that. We ain’t stoopit you know. But then this email came through:
![neel[1].jpg](http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/neel[1].jpg)
Hey guys,
my name is neel shah–i’m a writer in NYC. I’m involved in some contest for Glamour Magazine write now, and sort of need some assistance from you guys. Essentially, Glamour is trying to find their next male dating columnist, and they’ve pitted three guys against each other (me and two others). It’s hard enough getting white people to vote for a brown person in this thing, so i figured i’d try to galvanize the brown voting community as well. You guys actually wrote about me once (I used to work for Gawker), so i was hoping this might fit with your blog, too.
Anyway, I hate asking for stuff like this, but i figured it was worth a shot. It’s always been my goal to dispense love advice to white women in the midwest. sort of.
So this ‘white people reluctant to vote for a brown’ angle…yeah, not so much. This poll is for a relationship advice column, not the presidency.
But dispensing “love advice to white women in the midwest” is a goal I can fully and heartily endorse!! I’d love to see Intern Neel (as he was known on Gawker) handle questions about that guy in accounting who leans in too close, and whether visible panty lines are a turn on. Wouldn’t you? But maybe the lovely ladies of Glamor will turn their attention to him instead? Maybe he’ll get questions about tantric sex? Or where they should drop off home-made packets of bhel puri? I mean, lookit that bashful little face! He’s cuter than Knut! (Ok, not cuter, not cuter. Calm down Mr. Cicatrix.)
But he doesn’t really need our help. Go see for yourself. He’s up against an old guy and a pancake-happy Yahoo Serious (yep, just dated myself about seven words ago) so he’s got this sewn in a bag. Yes?
Previous excuse to post Neel Shah’s pic here
You remembered! That’s how we got you back π
He’s a cutie.
But of course!
(someone needs to flourish a cape right about now Abhi :D)
“That’s . . . 4/4 time!” “4/4 time! Why, that’ll drain the power out of anything!”
(god, my 10-year-old self loved ‘Young Einstein’ with all the force of split Tasmanian beer atom.)
And yeah, Neel’s super-cute, but . . . “write now”? My inner English teacher just whipped out my inner red Sharpie. But I guess that’s why Glamour’s got editors. π
He’s gorgeous. He won’t have too much trouble winning.
This is from your Intern Neel link to the size article he’s asked about.
Without firsthand experience in the realm of curry dick, we sought the counsel of an expert on the topic. So we interrupted erstwhile Intern Neel Shah at work so that we could get his opinion. The full interview is after the jump. Eww.
Anyway….
He’s gorgeous. He won’t have too much trouble winning.
can we chill on the objectification? as desis should we emulate the worst aspects of western culture, with its fixation on sex & physical attributes? A+, not T&A.
yes, as a brown man i feel highly objectified.
it’s almost as if grey goose is being poured on my head at this very second, whilst lecherous females cavort around me in a hellish, emasculating circle.
ha!
He’s got my vote and will continue to get it about 100 times a day until the end of the contest. Since it doesn’t ask to register how the hell will they know?
C’mon guys, if we didn’t objectify him you’d be complaining that desi men aren’t perceived as sexy. You gotta understand – the drooling’s hardwired into us (Editors: can we get a shot of Neel in something like that chilli skirt John Abraham was wearing in that PETA ad?)
A woman never knows these days when she’s treading on modern male sensibilities.
can we chill on the objectification? as desis should we emulate the worst aspects of western culture, with its fixation on sex & physical attributes? A+, not T&A.
I second that. I feel uncomfortable with this grotesque objectification.
ACFD is right! This objectification is chutiya! hear hear.
Lame, guys, very lame. You ain’t doing the anti-objectification rant with any real venom. You can’t just say, ‘Hey stop that objectifying! I don’t like it!’. It carries no conviction. Let me teach you fellas. You do it like this:
It is HIGH time the female commenters on this blog grew up. What are you all, a bunch of horny pre-adolescents? The man is a serious WRITER, girls, not a porn star. I can’t begin to conceive what sort of relationships you shallow-minded, sex-obsessed perverts are going to have when you finally grow up. No man with any character or intelligence is going to bestow his affections on fools like you who, obviously, blog with just one hand. Get it straight – we men are HUMAN BEINGS WHO DESERVE RESPECT.
That pic looks very Bollywoodish. He must have watched lot of Hindi movies I am all for objectification of Desi men, we are low on hotness quotient π
Not to be too fastidious about this but could not help but notice a writer who used ‘write’ for ‘right’
I guess he’s got writing on his mind.
Hear hear Chand Bibi.
Did we not recently have the whole ruckus on the Rachel Paulose thread where the guys were panned for calling her hot in the first 10 comments. Double standards someone, eh?
ACFD is right! This objectification is chutiya! hear hear.
Well put!
What’s wrong with that?
None of our men seem to complain so what’s the problem?
Er, I think she meant that tongue-in-cheek JoaT.
Eeek missed the pretext. The guys ARE however lame π
You know what? I give good advice (ask anyone) and I like being objectified occasionally. Maybe I should write a dating advice column for SM. I used to run a repeating post on my old blog called “Ask Abhi Anything.” Anything.
Boxers or astronaut underpants?
Dude is hilarious. He’s got my vote.
Anyone remember the bit for radaronline? “cumin baron of Calcutta.” Hilarious.
MAG! A MAG
This time, definitely. Can we vote 1100 times?
Abhi question- who is the best word-search puzzle writer in the universe??
Yeah he’s cute, fo sho. But I dunno….does anyone else feel used? Maybe I’m an idealist but I don’t buy into the whole ‘white people don’t vote brown’ idea. I think if he’s a good writer with something interesting to say then he’ll win, by merit. He shouldn’t win because he’s begging the brown community to vote for him. Which, by the way, would have been nice if he’d participated here on SM once in a while (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here).
Eeeep. I feel like a traitor for saying this. But am I wrong for thinking brown shouldn’t have to vote for brown just because we’re both brown?
Ok, stepping off my soapbox. You can spank me now you Neel-ites (or dole out another suitable form of punishment for being such a bad brownie). He IS yummy man-candy though. It’s about time we had drool-worthy yumminess for us girls to objectify. Wonder if he wears boxers or briefs….
Hehe….sorry, I only just realized the boxer/brief question was already posted above. Guess I’m not the only girl here with naughty thoughts on my mind π
No, we shouldn’t vote just because he’s brown. Post (hopefully clearly) makes fun of him for asking that.
Boxers or briefs question was actually addressed to Abhi…we’re still in the Beta phase of testing “Ask Abhi Anything.”
Wait, wait don’t tell me. Is it:
WILL SHORTZ.
do we have a special place to meet up for writers in NYC….. am a writer too… can I get ur yahoo id/gmail…. need some help with the starting of my novel…
It could be. Suduku is a good thing for this world at the moment. Guy deserves to be knighted or king!
This is a good thing abhi, you should make this a weekly thing, sure fire hit. there are about 27 questions i could ask but it is 5:31 am. so i will save them.
more suduku. less glamour mags.
Objectification? Hah, please. Like there’s anything wrong with that! Besides, Indian men in America are begging to be objectified. And, hey, if they’re worth objectifying…why not?
Chand Bibi, thank you for making my evening π After hours of staring at datasets, your parody totally made me laugh. π
Abhi, I think your first column should absolutely be about sex in space. Settle the debate once and for all π
I give Mr.Shah a 50-50 chance of winning.
The one thing that can hurt him is that one of the other 2 guys used to be the singer of the band Simply Red. So if that guy can get his former fans to vote for him then he could give Mr.Shah something to worry about.
I just want to say- For the brown cause of course- that when Neel gets picked to do this dating column, that I will be the sacrificial brown lamb and partake in being a subject in one of his columns.
All for the sake of the brown writing cause, of course.
Brown-ness aside, I would vote for Neel simply based on the two other guys being old and, um, not my idea of hot. I imagine the stories written by Neal will be far more adventurous, (and adventures I would like to read where I would replace his female lead with a visual of myself) then I could imagine ‘Yahoo Serious’ and ‘Simply Red’ having. I see Neel having far less of a getting stood-up ratio.
Ask Abhi Anything: What is your best pickup line?
while i would like a good looking brown guy to do well in the world, the first born male in me feels self-righteously envious. what to do what to do.
Ask Abhi: What’a Clipper? Do fish believe in Water? You landed on Mars – and are dehydrated – A cutie offers you a sip of water from her bottle.(Don’t ask me how she got there) Would you drink it?
I actually used to read Neel’s work on Gawker quite often and am a big fan. I’ll be happy to support him. But I couldn’t help but note that he wrote “write” and not “right” in the first line of this request. Did anyone else notice and judge the glarring typo? As a member of the media relations industry, in my experience I’ve seen an error like that put a qualified candidate straight in the reject pile.
That or I could just be a very anal proofreader. If there’s any type of support group for this disorder, please let me know!
Did anyone else notice and judge the glarring typo?
Is this some sort of special irony? π
Oh man, an internet grammar criticizer’s worst nightmare–berating someone’s mistake while making your own. Loves it.
I’ll vote for him because I remember him over at Gawker, I liked his profile that made him seem very ‘dateable’ to me, he seems very open-minded and frank and funny, and, yes, I’ll say it, because he is really, really, really, really, really ridiculously good-looking.
HAHA. Guess so.
Seriously? Have you looked at his competition? It would be pretty sad if he didn’t win!
OMG Yo Dad I nearly spit my bagel all over the screen. I want to know the answer to this now too.
he’s not just cute but HOT. id vote for him because there i bet there is a correlation between good advice and hotness (more female attention). and a chutney bottle to boot!
on the other hand id need to know more about him-whether hes one of those lame mainstream desis. i suppose he is a gawker writer, which puts him a step above doctor or engineer.
i actually like the other guy’s blog better, Adam. From what I recall, from reading Glamour when I was 17 – his blog seems more like “Jake” then all the others. Besides back then, it didn’t really matter if the “Jake” in question was hot or not because he was completely anonymous and represented by a cartoon or something. ahh, what you remember from your teen phase when you devoured magazines with headlines like, “Sex Up Your Look in Ten Simple Ways!” or “Get Your Dream Guy Now!”
I trust you had his permission to publish this email? Cause I feel like some non-progressive types could use his request to you against him. Hopefully that just unfounded paranoia on my part. =)
I was thinking the same thing. I doubt Neel would have wanted his “ItΓ’β¬β’s hard enough getting white people to vote for a brown person” line out there for public consumption. Or his “write now” typo either.
Regarding the other contestants, if 35 makes you an “old guy,” then some of us should be making reservations at the nursing home.
I can’t speak for the other mutineers, but in general, we don’t publish emails that come through the tip line. We certainly would never reveal the name of a confidential tipster.
But this is Neel Shah (semi-public figure who runs in NY gossip media cirles and is written about in Gawker, Jossip, etc.)tipping us about himself. Maybe this could be used against him, but I think his hotness will overwhelm most finger-waggers π
(Also, please note that this post is under “humor.” Nothing in it is supposed to be taken seriously.)
Btw, did anyone see this post on Gawker?
Neel Shah Begs For The “Brown Vote” Hey guys, my name is neel shah–i’m a writer in NYC. I’m involved in some contest for Glamour Magazine write [sic] now, and sort of need some assistance from you guys. Essentially, Glamour is trying to find their next male dating columnist, and they’ve pitted three guys against each other (me and two others). It’s hard enough getting white people to vote for a brown person in this thing, so i figured i’d try to galvanize the brown voting community as well. You guys actually wrote about me once (I used to work for Gawker), so i was hoping this might fit with your blog, too. Anyway, I hate asking for stuff like this, but i figured it was worth a shot. It’s always been my goal to dispense love advice to white women in the midwest. sort of. That’s the email our former Intern Neel sent to South Asian-themed blog Sepia Mutiny. We support him in his vote-garnering efforts, but we have to second the site’s questioning of his logic: “So this ‘white people reluctant to vote for a brown’ angle… yeah, not so much. This poll is for a relationship advice column, not the presidency.” ΓΒ’Γ’β¬Òβ¬ΒEmily