Ah, Padma.
Padma, Padma, Padma.
Potentially Mallu (I thought you were TamBrahm!) beauty, accomplished author and Television ish-tar, you speak so uniquely and that takes some talent. What sort of talent, I haven’t a clue, but I’ll credit you anyway, because I’m fond of you like that.
A few years ago, you made every Desi man’s heart beat a little bit faster, from the joy of the improbable occurring; if a supermodel would marry an award-winning, uber-protective, “distinguishedâ€-looking author, then everyone had hope (as long as they did something extraordinary. Or had a looooot of paisa). It was the ultimate Revenge fantasy and that’s exactly what it was, because the dream, it died. You and the man who defended your intellect, who insisted that you were being shortchanged by the focus on your outsides, you are…kaput.
So, what to do, except to follow the well-established mores of our culture. You don’t recall? I am happy to remind. Now comes the time when you cast your eyes downwards, marinate in the somber reality of failure and wait an appropriate time before you are back on the scene, the ultimate “Innocent Divorcee, no issueâ€. It is imperative that you be seen alone, that you not be photographed with strange men touching you, because if a potential groom from Madras or Bangalore sees that, chee, vat he vill think?
So it is paining me, Padma-akka (chechi?!) to see you emulate the controversial example of that Sarita Denzel Masala of Mississippi, especially since you chose to do that in the front row of the Marc Jacobs show, where everyone could see you! Aiyo! What’s the one thing your Amma told you, edi?
“Don’ bring home a Kala or Muslim.â€
Stop lying, you aren’t special, she totally said that. [Aside: whenever I hear that oft-repeated phrase, I wonder what would happen if one chose to bring home a KALA MUSLIM, but I digress]. I’m well aware that all of our parents ignorantly shouted this rather nonsensical order at us, in an attempt to be helpful (though I’m sure for our Muslim friends it was “Don bring home a Kala or a Hindu!â€, since the hate goes both vays).
So, what are you doing? Yes, this Russell, he is healthy, wealthy, wise. He does yoga. He is a vegan (unlike you! Naughty, naughty omnivore!) and he seems kind. BUT. He has two children! And his ex-wife will smear Vaseline on her face, take her bamboo earrings (at least two pair) off, hand them to her assistant and then CUT YOUR ASS UP. Have you not seen Life in the Fab Lane, starring Kimora Lee Simmons? Put down the bong and pay attention: you should be terrified!
Worst of all, when I was watching the Today show this morning, I saw your “friend” Russell. He was wearing his “uniform†of baseball cap, sweater, shirt, jeans, sneakers. Ek tiny problem: there was an OM symbol on his jeans pocket. Now I am both Christian and a quondam lover of status denim (Diesel, Blue Cult, James et al), so I am just slightly, less offended than half of those who are sure to comment AND I get that the kundi pockets must have some elaborate design on them, to show people you have rs.5500+ to burn on a pair of pants which was once worn by the working class…to WORK, but I was taken aback when I saw that, much as I was when I viewed this commercial. Someone who is so entranced with our culture should know better than to put a sacred image on a back pocket!
Om on pocket? Home with two kids, and a fiercely mean ex-? Far too friendly hand on your leg? What are you thinking? Who will want you, if you continue with such shenanigans? They will burn you in effigy, I tell you. Or worse. They will call for strikes. The sweatshops in Bangladesh will stop stitching Phat Farm and Baby Phat crap! There will be chaos!
I only say all of this to be nice. I am concerned for you! If you ask me, you should try to be more homely and make sure you fast on Fridays for a good husband; perhaps your kinda-boring cooking show can tape on other days? Vatewer. I care, so I advise. I am like this only. You should be, too. Hangari!
Photo via NYT. A big, juicy “thank you” to Rumor Monger, for the tip. 🙂
not 1/2, 1/8. Sheridan was born in Worthing, West Sussex, England to British actress Sally Sheridan (a.k.a. Sally Adams). Her great-grandmother was of Punjabi Indian descent
et voila. Miss Universe 2000.
oh. but somehow i always thought she looked indian. once you get over the blondeness.
ALan Keyes
and all others above who have passed various comments on pairing african-american & desis here are some photographs of the beautiful daughter of TamBram mother and Caribbean-African-American Kamala Harris -first woman district attorney of San Francisco !
Pardesi Gori!
Oops I meant African American father in the above statement. Some facts about her
The daughter of an Indian mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, a renowned breast cancer specialist, and an African American father, Donald Harris, a Stanford economics professor, Harris was raised in Berkeley.
Try MGR and Jayalalitha – both as light skinned as one can imagine a desi to be.
A light skinned person is often worshipped although many a dark dravidian man will not marry a light skinned woman even when he can get one. Will fornicate though. This is anecdotal and am happy to be proven wrong. Any ‘petta pistas’ who can confirm?
You must be ignorant of the fact that in america, asian = oriental. White men are much more likely to date african women than desi women. Just look at the intermarriage rates in the UK, where asian = desi. And when whites do date or marry desi females its usually not the “wheatish” ones they go for but the “dark” ones.
They are both a few shades lighter than your average south asian gal. And a few shades darker than your typical bollywood starlet. Which highlights the bollywood disconnect with reality.
India’s most prominent godman Sathya Sai Baba sports a 70s afro.
William Maragh, known as Supercat, also has an Indo-Caribbean father and a Afro-Caribbean mother.
a few weeks ago i was at a house party in LI, and an aunty asked me if i saw her purse. I said; “yes aunty, right under that picture of jimmy hendrix.” (sorry jimi)
Oh dear God, I thought only my crazy mom said stuff like that outloud. Which I have never, ever, ever repeated to anyone. But yes, I too dreamed of finding my perfect Black Panther/ black Muslim one day. Nation of Islam, wo0t!
As per Padma…. what IS up with that ambiguous accent??
As per Padma…. what IS up with that ambiguous accent??
she was raised both in brownland and USA on & off. she did a lot of her early work in southern europe (especially italy).
So are you saying that it’s good for the Afro or bad for the Afro?
Speaking of Jimi Hendrix, this guy sounds like Jimi Hendrix back from the dead: video. Except he makes the guitar sounds with his mouth. If Sai Baba did that, he might have many more devotees. Or many more interesting devotees anyway.
Chilli from the group TLC, is also of Afro-Indian descent.
To #133: The difference between AAs and asians color complex is unlike other groups, the “lighter is better” mindset was beaten (literally) into the African slaves in the US. It wasn’t just accepted overnight as part of a cultural norm, Pravin. That’s the difference.
Hair straighteners? Because having straight hair is considered the “norm”, especially when you live in a nation where the population is over 65% white. I’m quite sure that black women would LOVE to wear their hair in their natural state and save Thousands of dollars every year from avoid the hair salon, but many companies would fire them just because their hair is too “ethnic” (i.e. too African/Black [rolls eyes]). That’s why you don’t see Afros anymore, at least in corporate America. It scares white people.
The movie “School Daze” is a fictional movie about how petty to belittle somebody for skin color, hair texture, weight, etc…kinda like not liking someone because of race, type of job, income?
Blacks in the US have skin/hair issues, which is true, but at least no one in the media is telling them to buy tons of “Fair and Lovely” to lighten their skin.
Correction: “many of their employers would fire them because their hair is too ‘ethnic.'”
Sathya Sai Baba has a nice fro but his industry has space for the unconventional. Moi, I prefer Meghnad Desai and his various states of fromage.
That’s probably right. That’s why Maniratnam got a bomb thrown into his house by “Al-Umma”. Apparently, Sharia/Quran dictates that Muslim women cannot marry non Muslims.. And looks like he has got the message.
And from politics:
MA Jinnah – Ratni (Parsee) Indira Gandhi – Mr Gandhi (also Parsee) Rajiv Gandhi – Sonia
Literature
Sir VS and his Pakistani wife
Hmm, I thought I had more. Telling.
Speaking of inter-racial pairings: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=481601&in_page_id=1811
Cute overload, really.
And India wasn’t conquered by lighter skinned foreign armies over the years???? You do know some of the Hindu Gods are dark. I seriously doubt Afros are an impediment in the corporate world these days. And you see the straighteners even in places where there is no need for corporate blandness.
I know School Daze was not a documentary. But I remember Spike Lee being interviewed at the time, and while it is not commonplace, it was indicated at the time that School Daze wasnt unrealistic.
I think at some point in the future, the fairnlovely nonsense in India will lose popularity.
“Chilli from the group TLC, is also of Afro-Indian descent.”
I don’t believe that’s true. Alot of black girls lie and say they’re part Indian (if from South, they mean american indian, if from new york they mean us) because they want people to think their processed hair is somehow “natural.” You’ll see this on any of those online dating sites where the girl is clearly black and nothing but but her thing says “Indian.” I think it’s not only about a sad sort of shame of being black that still exists but also a way of being a bit different.
Same with Jamaicans. Yes there are Indians in JA, and yes, there are lots and lots of mixed people from all over the West Indies, but almost every single black girl from Jamaica says she’s part chinese or part Indian, and most will tell you about their grandmother with the “long long long hair, straighter than yours.” Men rarely make such claims.
so? the president of city college wrote a book about how he went from seeing himself as white to seeing himself as black. wentworth miller still sees himself as mixed.
but i agree that indo-caribbeans are probably more ok mixing with black people if they’re also caribbean. oh i thought of another example: within a few months of landing in the U.S., my father’s friend got married. his friend was afro-guyanese, his bride indo-guyanese (both christian). my father just said we’d be going to an ‘indian wedding,’ so my mother wore a sari and i wore a langa-oni. but we get to the wedding and there are all these brown folks wearing regular party dresses and tuxedos, and at the reception they’re dancing to ‘murder she wrote,’ and i feel like the odd one out. (yeah, this was the first time that i realized indo-caribbeans existed.)
um, what? i WAS talking about asians in the U.S., which i’m aware means East Asian. I was comparing media depictions of black women with those of [east] asian women–going back to what i said in comment #130 (er, where ‘media’ means porn industry). i don’t have trouble believing that whites intermarry more with blacks than browns in the UK, considering the different demographics there, but i’m pretty sure it’s different in the U.S. (someone else is free to pull up statistics for this). also, i’ve lived in the U.S. for the past 10 years, so i’m pretty sure i knew what i was saying. please don’t call me ignorant if you don’t understand the context of my comments.
people keep saying that white guys won’t judge a brown chick on her skin color, but i’ve never noticed a particular ‘trend’ among white-brown relationships of the girl being darker than would be considered attractive in south asia. then again i’m lucky enough that i haven’t gotten close to any guy stupid enough to tell me that i’d be prettier if i were lighter.
Hey… what’s wrong with Sai Baba’s devotees??
Kamala Harris sounds bada$$.
Chilli: While growing up, she was picked on because she was of mixed-race, having been called harsh names such as “half-breed” and “black-jap.” aww, poor chilli. 🙁 also, according to imdb, her father was mixed, too – arab & indian. and going upthread, rachel roy is mixed indian (father from chennai who was also a seventh-day adventist apparently) & dutch. but i guess she looks more brown, so her + damon dash make another black-brown couple.
second quote should be:
That reminds me of some of my cousins favorite bad food- deep fried grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup.
Really bad for you, but kind of tasty.
you’d be prettier if you were lighter.
noblekinsman: how, um, clever of you!
more specific examples: if it wasn’t clear from one of my previous comments, my brother has dated black chicks (more specifically, latina chicks who look black or at least part-black). i went out with a puerto rican boy last summer who probably has mixed ancenstry (ugh, it’s so weird to think of people like this!). aside: one of my mother’s friends asked me what the racial make-up of my friends at college was, and one of the comments she made in response was, ‘oh spanish? they’re good people, very nice!’ so perhaps desi racism toward blacks doesn’t manifest itself toward latin@s in the same way? dare i say, something positive?
So I like chocolate everyone once in while. Eh!
Is it just me, or does anyone else think Padma should pair up with the single/divorced Shashi Tharoor? He’s old, a writer and a mallu. A match made in God’s own country…
Regarding Manju’s #142:
I don’t agree. Malcolm was picked because of his ability to start/organize mosques–as well as to speak. NOI probably would have been a fraction (a sliver) of the size without his non-stop organizing. (I re-read the autobiography the last two nights. On that note, it’s time to make an anti-Fair and Lovely site.)
Heh, I myself had a huge Afro twice in grad school, each time for about a year. I can’t tell you how much fun it is. But then I lost it for the sake of sports. Swimming is a lot harder with it and heat dissipation in squash is also severely impeded. Of course, it’s not a good thing if you are interviewing for jobs either. Can’t imagine having a hairstyle like that in my current job.
does anyone else find this a bit ridiculous? offensive? racist, even?
Tharoor vs. Simmons…hmmm… let me see how I can say this…YOU CRAZY??
Define “this”. I don’t want to assume anything before I get my bitch on.
In her cookbook, Padma states that she was raised in Kerala and Tamil Nadu; she states that she has relatives in both places. It is also stated here. http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/jul/06us1.htm
After leaving India where she went to grade school, she grew up in NY and California. She went to college at Clark University and spent some time abroad in Spain studying. During her time in Spain, she was discovered. Afterwards, she began an acting and modeling career in Italy. She is the first Indian American model to make it big in the US. She has been featured in (US & international editions) Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Maxim and appeared on the cover of Cosmo over nearly 15 years ago! She may not be the typical genius indian doctor/engineer type, but she is smart. She speaks 4 languages fluently. She got an award for her last cookbook. She has an impressive modeling career. She’s acted in the Ten Commandments and Sharpe’s Challenge as well as numerous Italian dramas. She’s currently in her second season of Top Chef.
Rachel Ray, you mean? She is the cutest thing to have lifted a baking pan in a long, long time..
Nope ..this is who they meant
When it is filed under humor, I kinda doubt it mate.
To #133: The difference between AAs and asians color complex is unlike other groups, the “lighter is better” mindset was beaten (literally) into the African slaves in the US. It wasn’t just accepted overnight as part of a cultural norm, Pravin. That’s the difference.
Since Indians come in all colors – and it isn’t b/c of a recent mixing with a white group – it’s a little bit easier for me to understand the color conciousness. I’m dark but my mother is very light-skinned as are so many of my cousins, and this color-skin difference isn’t b/c of a recent history with mixing with white people. Nobody know where the light color skin preference comes from, but the reason why I find it more understandable in my South Asian community, is b/c light skin comes “naturally” among desis. I don’t think the attitude is good in anyway, but it doesn’t prevent dark-skinned Indians from excelling from what they want to – they generally don’t grace the cover of any beauty magazine, but there’s no institutionalized prejudice against dark South Asians, especially, when you can be light-skinned and your uncle dark as a coconut.
Hair straighteners? Because having straight hair is considered the “norm”, especially when you live in a nation where the population is over 65% white. I’m quite sure that black women would LOVE to wear their hair in their natural state and save Thousands of dollars every year from avoid the hair salon, but many companies would fire them just because their hair is too “ethnic” – I really have an issue with what you are saying here, maybe b/c in my personal experience I have experienced many AAs stare me down and try and touch my hair and in my DC neighborhood was once harrassed by a group of AA young girls who grabbed my hair and made some snark comment about it; been called an indian bitch while passing a group of young AA girls. From my experience hair is a big issue and inferiority complex in the AA community ( I remember Oprah saying something like, don’t complain about your hair to a black woman) and this issue, among some AAs that have come across my way, has been expressed to me in a belligerant and hateful way. I remember after I was harassed by those group of AA girls, the black security guard that was talking to me, told me that they were jealous of me b/c of the way I looked and b/c of my hair..and then she said, they needed to go home and read the bible (which I thought was a funny conclusion to the days events.) And today in America, wearing your hair natural wouldn’t be a problem ;– It’s my opinion that it’s an internal problem from many AAs
And India wasn’t conquered by lighter skinned foreign armies over the years???? – yeah, somehow Huey missed that in apologizing for some in the AA community’s internal biases on skin color, features or hair color.
not quite sure where i got this from, but it wasn’t his autobiography. i think there is a video out there of elijah muhammed saying he picked his 2nd in command very carfully, and mentions “right skin color” and i think certain facial features.
PS, while you raise a very good point: that some of the skin color variation in desis arises from the natural genetic variability in such a large population; it is also true that there were lighter skinned ‘conquerors and invaders’ who left their genetic imprint on the population, and some of the lighter skinned Indians of today have their genes. And these light skinned ‘conquerors’ have been coming in for a very long time, both over land and by sea. So there may be a slightly higher western Indian (coast as well as hinterland) skew to the distribution of those genes.
So ‘lighter skin’ = rarer, ‘exotic’, different in India, therefore preferred. But also, ‘ligher skin’ = color of past conqueror and their descendants, color of ‘people with power’ therefore preferred by people with power, therefore preferred by many others.
In India, both are true. (I’m sure Razib will be all over this in a minute.)
To SkedMod,
Is it just me, or does anyone else think Padma should pair up with the single/divorced Shashi Tharoor? He’s old, a writer and a mallu. A match made in God’s own country…
Tharoor vs. Simmons…hmmm… let me see how I can say this…YOU CRAZY??
No, I was comparing Tharoor to Salman Rushdie, not Simmons:-) Old authors seem to be her type. She was married to one. Unfortunately, I saw Tharoor not too long ago, all hand in hand with a non-Padma at GOBO–the cool vegetarian place in the Village.
Tharoor vs. Simmons…
My very mature reaction to both these men is yuck.
I’m all over Salman Rushdie – I know he looks funny, but his brilliance (to me) makes him look like a Daniel Day Lewis or I hate to say it (ever since the Fair and Lovely ad) but that other Khan bollywood hero.
from the rediff blurb: “She may not be the typical genius indian doctor/engineer type, but she is smart.”
PS, while you raise a very good point: that some of the skin color variation in desis arises from the natural genetic variability in such a large population; it is also true that there were lighter skinned ‘conquerors and invaders’
Yeah, but when did this happen? Theories on the Aryan invasion and such happened such a long time ago. Mughals coming into India was more recent but still a long time ago. The British, sure, but not so much intermarrying and before the British came there were plenty of indigenous light-skinned South Asians. People’s memories are very long. I’m reading a book on Bosnia, and amazing to see people shape their identity to what happend in the 13th century in that area. I know we have talked before on SM on the stupidity of some Indians, to claim their Scythian status as opposed to the other Lemurian status – but part of what makes this so funny is that whatever mixing in India happened, much happened so long ago and no one is quite clear (at least from sources I read) on when the lighter-skinned people first came through India.
I’m sure Razib will be all over this in a minute.) – I hope so, it’d be interesting to get his comment.
Rachel Roy is the cutest (and I love her clothes) – she looks to me like a stereotypical desi, even though she is part Dutch white and South Asian.
People, this is all for nothing, Russell has long been rumored to be playing for the other side. I hate to see Padma stoop to being a beard for him though
It’s never a waste, if a blogger can milk a post out of it. 😉
Also, re: Russell…the other side? Really??
“crystalle: Werd on the street tells this tale a little differently.
So, I heard that R.Simmons lost his blackberry. Some woman found it and demanded a reward for its return. Appearantly there were some hot, steamy messages being sent and received from a man to Mr. Def Jam. He paid the chick a hefty reward for his blackberry to keep his secret controlled. Russell gay?”
Anna, nothing you write can be a waste! I just meant that I don’t see this relationship panning out, so why argue about it. And, yes, according to the approximately 473 gossip blogs I read, Russ has been rumored to be gay, and Kimora is, allegedly bi. Or just gay, I don’t remember.