MUTINEERS,
I am saddened to report the sudden and unexpected demise of our beloved friend, Whoa– is dating White not right? (July 28, 2007 -August 1, 2007).
Right was born in an indie coffee shop, in the heart of Washington, D.C., via the twin modern miracles of a stickered, 12″ iBook and wifi. In his short life, he profoundly affected many mutineers; Right challenged long-held assumptions, enlightened us about dozens of subjects and was a welcoming, tolerant figure in our community. He will be missed.
In lieu of flowers, Right’s grieving family humbly requests that when SM does its annual plea for donations to keep the site going, a la PBS/NPR, you contribute a rupee or two in his memory, especially since his Mother HATES ADS AND WILL NEVER AGREE TO HAVING THEM ON THIS SITE.
::
I had to close the uber-thread. 🙁
Many of you are writing to me, letting me know that you can no longer access it. Not sure what’s going on, but I can’t see new comments, either, which means I can’t moderate…so unfortunately, the party is over…not that I needed to do a lot of moderating in the first place. 🙂
I am delighted; considering the provocative subject material, there was far less ickiness, trolling or flaming than one might expect. All credit for that goes to you.
Thanks for one of the most lively, fascinating and relevant discussions we’ve ever had– and don’t fret, my pets…plenty of you left comments which could be spun off in to so many different threads, about queer dating, seduction via bharatnatyam, evaluating what’s worse– emasculation or exoticization, outting Iyengars, South Asian inter-religious/regional relationships, where to find B-Boy/punker Punjabis, how to procure puliyodarai, internalized self-hatred as evidenced by externalized comment-stupidity, whether I-Bankers are evil, where to find the mythical straight-haired, hyper-maintained desi goddesses whose knickers disintegrate for private equity types, San Francisco’s alternately sucky/fantastic dating scene and of course, HAIR.
More of all that, soon. In the meanwhile, pour a little sum’n out for “Right”, the next time libations are flowing. Sigh. Time to cue Tupac:
Rest in peace young homie, there’s a heaven for a G…
Me three, but you know what works well in summer to help curl things up (if your hair is not ridiculously long)? Fekkai Wave Spray. I love it.
that bottle looks more expensive than it is. thats always good.
An auntie was solicited by a friend of the family in an abortive attempt to hook up her pregnant white daughter with moi–on the pretext that it would be “so much easier.”
Fat chance she could fool my auntie’s highly tuned Payyan-on-the-vey radar.
Oooooooh! PRODUCT recommendation, from someone I dig, no less! Be still, my dil. 🙂
Wait…define ridiculously long? Does it = “I can maintain modesty when topless”? I’m sure I could’ve come up with a better visual but it’s 5:17 and I’m tired. 😉
thats when having a bulldog auntie that looks like this is usefull
but….i like that visual as it is 😉
Not at all, I’m just giving you a hard time. And stating, for the record, that good != unfreaky 🙂
Haha, it’s just new packaging. The old packaging was part of their “summer hair” series and was a lot less high maintenance (it looked like the very old yellow-orange and white Lancome summer product line). I know that Fekkai is $$, but their styling products are amazing.
Re: 185
Camille, I presume you had chicken pox earlier. Most cases of shingles that I have known tend to occur much later. I, of course, thanks to my protective mother, never had chicken pox as a child and caught it this year (one of the risks of working in a biomedical research/hospital community).
Puli, I only say this as your wingman.
Good job burnishing your sensitivity cred by quoting Ani DiFranco, but I would recommend using a song of soulful ambiguity like this one, instead. If you are called out on your tastes, though, you shouldn’t say these things, but rather boldly embrace your misogyny, as Divya made clear (since this is the type you’re going for).
Yes yes and yes to almost all of the above. When I first had an attack in my early 20s when I was nearly homeless (yeah stress brings it on) I ended up in the hospital with what looked like a “rash” all over my face and my face was numb. I thought I was having a stroke. It almost appeared overnight.
I’ve come a long way since. It manifests itself often now, once in a year or so (not normal but neither is my life) and I take Valtrex for it. I don’t find anything embarrassing about it because Valtrex has a wide range of ailments it treats but is only advertised for Herpes. Technically the Zoster virus is the same one that causes herpes and same one that causes chicken pox. Your body sometimes under deep stress triggers the virus and makes it active and it attacks it’s host. The virus always exists in your body.
IT IS A NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE. Don’t take it lightly and always always always treat it. I get symptoms long before the actual blister comes so I know right away and start medication right away.
More info here and here and here.
hmmm….my mom would put out a fatwa on you for that advice. but sure. i can play the i-banking d!ck for the ny ladies. btw…ill let you know how that goes on friday!
Found it! Here’s the old product. The only downside is that, while it could withstand humidity/beach/salt water and wind, it left your hair a bit crunchy.
best…..wingman….ever
A N N A, if you’re going with the Hinglish, may I recommend “Be still, my dhadking dil“?
Damn, PindaUSA, first you ask me for my age, now you put my photo on the Interwebs?
I am writing to overcome my embaressment for not recognizing Satya as a woman!!! My closet is that I am not just ABD — I am half-and-half, and I grew up more white in most respects than Indian. A friend turned me on to Sepia Mutiny and I’ve been enjoying it immensely, apart from making such a fool of myself… Sorry again to Satya, and for my naughty mouth and opinions. I will try to clean then up for you in the future. Now that I’ve admitted this, I already feel better 🙂
Divya
“You know…they have the internet on the computer now” -Homer
Divya, what kind of grovelling post is this? At this rate, you’ll be going home with Pankaj this Friday, instead of my main man, PindaUSA.
camille, i caught it from myself, as well (i am a walking physical manifestation of stress). so basically there as no reason to put me on valtrex and i got some emotional scarring in the process 🙂 btw, is that FF spray conditioning (i.e. can it replace conditioner)?
this is the opposite of the divya i have come to know any love. the one with the confidence to say that she knows commenter XYZ would beg to f-ck her on the side….
Your visual was great! Or at least, I understood it, haha. I mean like my hair used to be — over 3′ long. If your hair is mid/upper back to chin-length, this should be just fine 🙂 I also really like their volumizing mousse, because my hair tends to go flat in humid weather or when I slick it back in the morning (when it’s wet). The best part is that you don’t feel like you have product in your hair — none of that sticky, icky buildup.
Shaad, yes, I caught chicken pox along with my whole school when I was 8. The campus health center folks had mentioned that it is rare, although not unheard of, in my age demographic and that the chance of catching it goes up by about 10% points every 10 years (so your chance of getting it at 80 is about 70% versus when you’re 20, when it’s about 10-15%). That’s what happens when you live with your cousins as a child. One kid gets it, and the whole house gets it 🙂
Thanks JOAT for the explanation and clarification. The mention of shingles as a form of herpes WAS a bit scary, but is also medically accurate (and is of course not the same as the genital variety). I mean, I was definitely stressed out when I got them, and my immune system had been stress-suppressed at that point anyway (I always get sick when I’m super stressed out). I just remember when the docs said that it would have taken up to 6 weeks to heal without some kind of medical intervention and that it would have spread a lot more (I went in on the second day of having it). It was seriously one of the more painful diseases to have, way more painful than poison oak or even childhood chicken pox. Mine were on one of the nerves that radiates from your spine outwards and across your ribs — I still have scars. Ugh, just the thought makes me itch/ache.
OK girl alert…For summer hair tamers try:
For thin hair: Aveda Phomollient foam or Aveda Volumizing Tonic For curly or wavy hair: Redken Outshine Anti Frizz Polishing milk or B&B Defrizz For thick straight hair: Matrix Sleek Look #4 Smoothing System Sealing Serum
can you get shingles if youve never had chicken pox?
does the average grl know this much, or is that like the chick version of metro..
“You must have had chickenpox, even a mild case, to get shingles.” [webMD]
Shingles. Anal sex. Hair curling. What next?
Re: 223
No.
Shingles sounds like a great name for a band. Or at least for one-off songs that Sean Connery croons.
this is Puli, with no work ethic. signing off for the day!
I gotta drive my rents to “who cares” stage and then I am GOLDEN!
This is simple. Stay single for as long as possible while disingenuously entertaining their efforts to get you hitched. Repeatedly complain about the lack of “chemistry” OR say that you want to focus on your studies/career for a little while longer. Act sympathetic when they fret about your lack of a mate. Savor sweet victory when they tell you to get married to ANYONE, as long as you just do it soon.
delirium tremens: you are certainly not the only desi MFF/MMF-er around! i personally think it’s frustrating that so many guys profess to be against monogamy/all about threesomes/don’t want commitment/etc. at the beginning of a relationship, but a few months in, they “couldn’t fathom being with anyone else but you.”
I’d never realized straight hair was the cardinal sign of absolute evil.
No, Rahul, straightened hair. Not straight hair. Cheez.
Rahul, I would vote for this or this or this or this or this or this instead.
Ugh, girl, I feel you. My aunt goes so far as to call me a stress-addict (wtf!!!). I don’t think the FF spray is conditioning, but I bet if you went with a light conditioner that the curl spray would hold well.
Sorry I should clarify, the spray still makes my hair wavy, but it’s already semi-wavy if I towel dry it. The FF spray makes it go into loose curls for shorter hair, but just maintains a smoother wave for longer/heavier hair.
218 · Rahul Divya, what kind of grovelling post is this? At this rate, you’ll be going home with Pankaj this Friday, instead of my main man, PindaUSA.
Pankaj Rules!!
And all this while, I thought you were faking it.
Rasam travesty Dear god, mine eyes!
No. But you can catch chicken pox if you’ve never had chicken pox 🙂
JOAT is a fashion diva (right, JOAT? don’t you work for a beauty company?) That said, I love the product recommendations! Ooo, speaking of, I think I visited your blog like months ago and there was a recommendation for C&O Bigelow lip gloss. I just wanted to give a resounding “hell yes!” to that as well. They came out with a Shea Butter/Almond Oil SPF-15 lip gloss that is so great. The only downside is that it tends to wear quickly (whereas my Body Shop SPF 15 Orange lip chap persists a bit longer).
Well, on what basis? If your parents (and other OL members) were superdesi enough to shatter the doublestandards I brought up, what was the straw that broke the camel back? that women should keep their chests covered and men don’t necessarily have to?
Don’t be so hasty, I said Im conducting a survey, where you know, normal people congregate. (not that I like normal people per se, I just know how they operate)
Honey, I never fake it.
Ah, you meant more Ted Haggard, less George Clooney.
Oh My GOd! they killed WIDWNR! You bastards!!
Ohh look who we have now ..mini-WNR..Love it! bring it on….AGAIN!
HMF, usually on their standards for dating and going out with friends. I’m sure part of this is b/c I’m the oldest (and parents generally are stricter with older siblings), but a lot of it was b/c I’m a girl.
Oooo sex toys! I’m kidding, but wouldn’t be surprised.
Re: 230
Er, that’s probably because at the beginning of the “relationship” (I use scare quotes because I doubt the average guy considers it a relationship at that stage), the average chap is only in it for the sex, and wants to be able to leave if something “better” presents itself. It’s only after a certain amount of time has passed that he gets to actually know the girl as a person, and then, far too often, falls for her like a ton of bricks.
more Ted Haggard,
i enjoyed the L&O haggard-themed episodes. esp. the one with tim daly as the minister. yum.
Unlike Ash, JoAT is the original L’oreal girl and Ash consults her blog for advice…
not as tragic as microwave idli!
unless we’re all blessed with perfect everything (and even then) the search for the right beauty products can occupy a good part of a girl’s life. one of my guy friends once saw me putting frizz-ease in my hair, and he asked me what that product was, and i told him it was for the frizz. and then he asked me, what is frizz i couldn’t believe my own ears…
ANNA, this has to be a post. beauty mags never cover desi beauty issues (they don’t even tell you what’s good for black hair, always stopping just short of brunette)
The picture I want your collective opinion on is of a non-desi. I reeeeally want to know if she’d be considered “skinny” and if Puliogre, Rob et al would hit on her at all these lounges which are near Lemon bar (I think?? My memory of Manhattan fades…) or find her too zaftig. That “skinny” just keeeeps popping up…
e-mail me the pic!
I know A N N A ‘s age, and I know my age. Which is only 6.5 years in excess of A N N A’s. That is less than half a generation away. Yet I have no idea what you are all talking about. I am so lost here. I feel so, so… old?
So I am going to go and beat up Karthik. Hopefully, he would have obliged and opened the door wide for me by making some silly blanket put-down statement about DBDs.
Actually, i agree. I know there are tons of recommendations out there for desi women, and that there is a growing number of desi e-mags devoted to these topics, but it would be interesting to see what kind of super specific things we could find. Especially given that those of us who are an NC-45 on the Mac scale don’t get enough coverage (in my opinion) on product options. I wonder if I can find anything on the hippie listserv I’m on re: earth-friendly products, as well.
malathi, with respect to what part(s)/topics of the thread?
Anna, I was wondering if we could explore this dynamic a little – if only to help me get a handle on some things that happened in my own life 🙂 (As a graduate student I had the most major crush on an Indian girl who had pledged DG when DG first colonized the campus.) I had always felt that sororities, and fraternities for that matter, were largely white, ‘exclusionary’ institutions. When the first male Indian undergrad at that campus was accepted by a frat, it was an event – everybody knew and talked about it, even the grad students! The poor chap had endured a real ordeal of a hazing too, he had been dipped in what can only be called white-body-face, that (semi-permanent) dye-thing ‘whitened’ his body, his face and his (jet-black) hair, and he had to walk around like that on campus for like a month. That’s why when he was finally ‘tapped’, everyone on campus knew. Of course, this boy-man carried his self-hatred to an amazing extent – like he had no Indian friends whatsoever, he would avoid making eye-contact with you, for example, if you passed him and were Indian. When I think about it, his particular hazing ritual carries a lot of symbolic meaning – he had to become white, not that he wasn’t like, a total ‘coconut’ anyway before. So frats were white institutions, and they didn’t care who knew it – like no frat ever had a black member. So anyway, when this Indian girl pledged DG, she was the only Indian in their entering class – and the next year another really cute Indian girl got in (they published the entering class lists in the paper). So sororities were exclusionary – they weren’t just another club that anyone could join. It seemed like you had to be a certain type (‘really cute’) to get in to DG, and of course they would have dances and semiformals with some specific frat, and not just any frat either. So that at the bottom of it all, there was a clear attempt to make distinctions and draw social hierarchies, and often the ‘axis of identity’ (a memorable phrase from another thread) was, if not exactly drawn on racial lines, was roughly parallel to it with a tiny offset. To a large extent, becoming Greek then – late 80s and early 90s – meant bailing out of the whole ethnic identity thing.
So the people who were Greek – frats or sororities – (BTW, what’s a pan-hellenic sorority?) – they were ‘different’, and wanted people to know that they were different from ‘non-Greeks’. So as such the Greeks were resented by the others, for being exclusionary, and for being, let’s face it, racist.
And it struck me as I was typing this – that while you went Greek by joining a frat, you’re alleging that your detractors also went ‘Greek’ 😉
So some questions to frame a response:
1.) When you did join a largely white sorority, why did you care so much what others thought, especially other Indians? (You said only two girls out of two thousand sorority girls were Indian)
2.) What were you looking for when you pledged, and pledged DG? At the time, were you nearly as comfortable with your ethnicity as you clearly seem to be now?
Rob, I just did. 🙂