I was at this bar on Friday night and as I ordered my drink I noticed that American Gangster (which came out on Friday) was playing on every television in the joint, including the one behind the bartender. Is video piracy really this rampant? Anyways, the rest of the night I tried to not watch so I could see it in its entirety next weekend. Flash forward to Saturday morning. I was sitting on my couch scratching myself and all of a sudden I thought, “What happened to that smokin’ Piper Perabo from the movie Coyote Ugly? I mean, come on! There has got to be a way to get her back into some film. So I looked her up on IMDB and noted that she will be co-starring in a movie called Ashes which comes out next year. And THAT is where this rambling story finally finds its desi angle:
ASHES follows the story of two brothers from the inner city whose lives are unraveling. As one plummets deeper into mental illness, the other, Ashes, copes by throwing himself into the dangerous New York underworld. Ashes is torn between the family he is responsible for, and the community that consumes him. [Link]
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Sepia Mutiny is currently trying to determine if the above drug use was prescribed by Doc 420 |
Click on the above image for the trailer. The film is directed by and stars Ajay Naidu of Office Space fame as the title character. All I can say is that it is about time there is an Indian American Gangsta film. I mean, the Cubans had Scarface, the Italians had The Godfather, African American’s have Denzel in American Gangter mentioned above. Why the hell has it taken THIS long for a story about the Indian American gangster experience that most of our readers have had at least minor brushes with? I know some of our readers will point to Maqbool as good Indian Gangter film but I ask you, if The Godfather had been only about Don Corleone’s time in Sicily would it be as relevant to Italian Americans? I didn’t think so. And so I eagerly await Naidu’s Ashes. It might finally take the “model” out of our minority. Plus Piper Perabo will be in it.
Clueless, that report is years old. What is the situation today in California, do you even know? And do you have anything to say about why gangs are not a problem in Toronto amongst Punjabis or any other desis like they are in Vancouver? Those are two cities in the same country. Why is that? Amongst Punjabis in the UK and Australia these problems of drug dealing gangsterism is non-existent compared to Vancouver. Why is that? And in the UK there are gangs of Bengalis and Hindu Tamils and Pakistanis (although nothing like to the same degree as the situation in Toronto, or even of other ethnic gangs in London), so what does that tell you?
Really? I live in London, where are the Punjabi gangs on anything like the scale of the ones in Vancouver or any other ethnic group? They don’t exist. Sure, there might be criminals about, but the crime rate amongst Indians is lower than the national average, if you go by the amount of Indians in prison. And why arent those gangsters in Toronto shooting each other or as entrenched as the Vancouver ones? Because it’s obvious that they’re not, and the ones I just learned about on google in Toronto are mostly of Jamaican / West Indian background in that city.
yup, there is, it’s in film production right now.
here’s the trailer/teaser:
Bobby there are punjabi gangs in Toronto, not at the level of Vancouver but there are some. One difference is that the punjabi immigrants in Toronto are more educated then in Vancouver.
oops, thought i linked it properly
let me try that again: http://www.kaatradi.com
how do you link?
Bobby I think you should look at the trucking industry in Toronto area and how many of those men arrested in smuggling drugs are punjabi’s.
So Clueless, it’s lack of education that means there’s so many Indian gangsters in Vancouver, rather than the alignment of a number of reasons like; the perpetuation and cultivation of gangs by charismatic individuals, the dissemination of guns and drugs amongst them, the atractiveness of the gangs in an urban culture as a means to making money and a form of street camaraderie, the monopoly power of particular ethnic gangs in a certain criminal activity like drug smuggling between Canada and America and the massive amounts of money in that economy leading to violent competitiveness — none of these things have anything at all to do with the phenomenon of Indian gangs in Vancouver. It’s all to do with a relative lack of education, even though you don’t know much about and have not quoted anything about the social or educational or employment levels amongst similar social groups in different cities in Canada, America or the UK, where that kind of activity is negligible. Vancouver has an abnormal problem, for sure. But you have to think a little harder to understand why. Also, aren’t the Chinese community highly educated? So why are the running the criminal underworld of Vancouver? And whilst your at it, anthropological theories for the involvment of white European and Black Africans as well as East Asians in organised crime in their respective diasporas. Are the explained by IQ levels too?
But it’s obviously not as big a problem as it is in Vancouver because they’re not shooting each other like they are in BC. Clueless, can you name me any ethnic group that doesn’t have a criminal element amongst it? Are you saying that particular ethnic groups are intrinsically criminal? Because I don’t think you have a clue about what you’re saying.
So I just did an interview for Mehfil magazine- one of Vancouver’s Indo-Canadian mouthpieces, and talked to a young musician who had some thoughts on the gang scene in Van.
He pointed out that – the media constantly bolds out Indo-Canadian gang violence as being a huge problem in Vancouver- even when gangs are NOT involved, the media says, well, its NOT Indo-Canadian gang violence – that there are no established gangs in Vancouver insofar as they’re flashing gang signs, wearing colours, and marking out turf the way that gangs are in LA, yet that’s the way they’re being portrayed – small time petty criminals who are doing terribly stupid things to make money are being conflated with so-called “gang” violence
I’m NOT a Jatt, but one thing that I have noticed is that Jatts are among the first group to condemn themselves, be embarassed about their background, and basically hate their own communities or despise their Indian identity. I find that curious and really have to wonder why that is. Jatts are also likely to be targeted by law enforcement because they sometimes don’t have a tradition of education in their families so its pretty easy to rattle their cage and they won’t have these strong, concerned parents that can make a stink if someone’s shaking down their kids. For example, the World Sikh Organization is suing the CBC for slandering them as a terrorist organization- a move that I happen to support. There was a Facebook community that was started to address the issue and around 2500 people joined the last I saw. So some people in the group made some unflattering comments about the reporter who filed the story and said stuff like they’d like to get hold of this person who is disparaging their community. The comments were pure rhetoric, and it was basically just stuff like you see in tons of groups, with people venting. What happens but that three days ago the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police- the Canadian equivalent of the FBI) come down to one teenage kid’s house and interrogate him. They threaten him with charges and tell him that they are doing a massive operation to investigate various members of the facebook community. They had a list, and were going to be approaching the head and the admin in the group. Now I’m a member of this group, and I know the founder and admins, who are very decent people committed to social justice, and there was nothing going on that warranted this kind of attention, but here we have the RCMP doing rings over this nonsense when there are -white supremacist images on facebook communities that have yet to be removed – I have received personal threats from white supremacists on facebook in my inbox and they have never been investigated or followed up on in any capacity I mean, some of this stuff is just pure aggrandizement on the part of the mainstream.
The “get hold” part was an error on my part- I just heard from the group admin- people said things like they’d like to give the reporter a tight slap, etc.
Here is her message:
..jas, as far as I know, the comments were limited to people suggesting mock-punishments for (the journalist in question). It was nothing serious, and it had no overtones that the person was going to be hunted down or physically threatened.
Also, the kid still doesn’t know whether or not he’ll be charged.. the RCMP are “deciding”..
“Attorney-General Wally Oppal is challenging a new organization of young South Asian lawyers to help combat the “cancer” of gang violence plaguing the Indo-Canadian community.”
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=e2797f98-9e84-4b78-968d-0913ea784c61
Clueless @ #9 said:
What “type” of desi do you prefer? What “type” should be left where they are, or better yet, “go back to where they came from?” And I think you meant “their” in that second sentence.
Clueless @ #24 said:
Sounds like you really must hate yourself, then. And it’s “than,” by the way.
Classism at its finest. When will a movie be made about people who look down on others for their “lack of education” while having no grasp of grammar, spelling, or a nuanced analysis of a complex problem?
Here’s your line: My Dad is a Dhillon and my mom is a Dhaliwal, so you can’t be any more of a Jatt than me. 😉
62 42 seconds
I think you need to understand that there is a real lack of leadership in the Vancouver South Asian community. When 2010 Vancouver Olympic Committee member Bruce Allen recently stated that Sikhs need to leave off wearing their turbans in Canadian public service or “there’s the door.. hit it! you have a place to go, its called home”, Oppal stated that Allen was a “close personal friend” and that we needed to “understand him” and “accept” why he made such comments. That’s not to say that his statement on mentoring people in the community isn’t valuable, but his posturing on behalf of Indo-Canadians can sometimes be deeply flawed.
try 3 in the great brown grammathon.
My Dad is a Dhillon and my mom is a Dhaliwal, so you can’t be any more of a Jatt than I.
i really don’t think it is neceesary to pick on clueless’s grammar/spelling, it’s really the ideas that are forthcoming that we should be discussing, and i think clueless and bobby are both debating on the ideas, which is the point of this forum. not to berate an individual. clueless has every right to use this forum to put forth his/her ideas and let’s discuss those instead of giving grammar lessons.
65 I am shocked to hear this from a public figure in a place where Sikhs have won rights to wear the turban as RCMP officers. So basically those rights should be reversed in Allen’s opinion?
i think you meant: i really don’t think it is necessary to pick on clueless’s grammar/spelling.
(i am just kidding. i was only riffing off the earlier comment, and agree with you.)
i really don’t think it is necessary to pick on clueless’s grammar/spelling.
It’s not even necessary to pick on how clueless’s comments indicates the source is without clue.
69 darn lack of spell check on sm! 🙂
i think clueless has made a fair effort…
Wha-? He said that!! Go Home! Fighting words that… a threat to person’s right to liberty and sanctuary. Also FYI – For those canadians who tune in to cbc ideas now and then, i heard Karim Karim ‘s essay on multiculturalism last Friday. He laid bare was the mendacity in this article published in the G&M. If one were to read the article, it would be that visible minorities did not consider themselves canadian. However, the ACTUAL survey question asked people to identify themselves in respect to their ethniity – a totally different question. Hark! stormfront brewing. Keep the pipes clear and be prepared to shout back.
db, khoofia:
not only did he say that, he included “burqa wearing Muslim women” and people who chose to keep the last names “Singh and Khan” which he later amended to Kaur, in his rant. He was completely unrepetant in its aftermath, offered a weird, slap in the face apology that reaffirmed much of what he was saying. A massive groundswell brewed in response to his comments, which was met with opposition from his radio station (he first made his comments on his radio show), as well as certain elements of the mainstream media, even tacitly including the Globe and Mail. The entire debacle has been utterly underreported, and I am just about to pen a story for the Canadian edition of India Abroad on the issue. I will try to get it put up at New American Media or someplace on the net after its reported because the IA doesn’t have a web edition. Its a really stunning tale, with so many twists and turns and players, and it needs to be heard. BTW- as yet, he is still on the Olympic Committee, and still on the air. khoofia, G and M is getting more and more conservative by the day. I always thought of it as centrist, but I think because of the presence of NP, it can say just about anything these days and yet minorities have no choice but to read it. In BC, there is ONE independent publication- the web paper, the Tyee- yet its run by a white editorial board and has expressed some fairly antediluvian points of view. I’d like to see India Abroad gain some muscle and become the paper of choice for Indians in Canada so that they have a reliable, unbiased source of news, but although it has what one estimate pegged as 70,000 subscribers in NA, its failed to pick up market share when one considers how many Indians there truly are in this region. I suspect its bad marketing 😉
db: yes, absolutely. Allen referred to the “Sikh Mountie problem” in the preface to his comment.
harbeer,
machaan, you are obviously le writer extraordinaire, so lay off on ole Clueless–it’s like mauling a fish monger with his product while screaming, “it stinks, you know!”
But London, in my own opinion, has a better developed desi organized crime scene mainly because they have a much longer history of significant numbers in the country, ethnic enclaves were encouraged and funded by the UK gov’t and that sort of segregation persists in housing and education in the some parts of the city.
So he wants a Canada in which peoples names have to be standardised? Whose names though? Aren’t there Italian or German or Portuguese Canadians? What about the Chinese? Don’t they have names reflective of their ethnic background? Or is it only South Asians and specifically Sikhs or Muslims who have to change their names according to this bona fide racist? Don’t get mad, get scientific. Be cool headed, and pull his arguments apart like a sample under a microscope, disseminate it wide, and confront him with it when you can.
I’ve been looking up articles on indo canadian crime. It seems to be more of the ‘dis-organized’ crime variety. however i remembered this post in sepiamutiny
and this youtube clip
http://youtube.com/watch?v=H-eDLdYUC2I
It seems to be pretty strong in the canadian communities and my friends tell me of tamil gang violence too. Desi immigrant crime is prevalent in South East Asia and Dubai, i guess over there its more of a escape poverty or fly-kill-buy duty free scotch variety.
I guess for many kids in USA/UK/Canada its a part of growing up, I’ve met a couple of them and six years ago as a FOB who lived in the middle east it was (to me) amusing at first and they seemed pretty hostile when i met them. I became a fitness trainer in the local gym and once i got to interact with them when they made visits, the attitude dropped and the desiness came to surface when talking about which protein shake is scientifically proven to enhance muscle growth. The kids are all right most of the times.
Look at our deshi tough guys — Dawood and his Pancho Villa like cherubness, Prabhakaran and his armpit holster( kudos to abhi for that caption). They don’t look the part. I doubt if first world tough guys can hold their own against third world tough guys?. They are scary people and so are law enforcement officials like K.P.S Gill http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1975997.stm
I guess in the end its more of a economic factory and it always will be.
Nothing like what is happening in Vancouver. The big gangs of criminals in London are the Jamaicans, Nigerians, the Turkish, the white English families of cockney gangsters, and now lots of eastern Europeans, Polish, Albanian, Romanian and Russian. Have you heard about David Cronenburg’s new movie ‘Eastern Promises’? It’s all about the Russian mafia in London. Desi crime such as it is, is not organised to the same extent as other clans and cartels are, and is mostly low level drug dealing or fraud by individuals or small crews.
typo I mean economic factors in the last line
The entire Bombay underworld and much of Karachi’s too is run from Dubai. Dubai is dripping in dirty money.
i worked on sound for this movie, ashes. haven’t heard much about it since, but i will say that ajay naidu is a true desi gangster. he’s like 5’3″ but struts like a pimp. there is another movie ‘the war within’ which stars a lot of the same folks (unfortunately no piper) but really good. not so much a gangster flick, but rockin nonetheless.
the ones that end up in the newspapers are generally the stupid criminals who get caught. The LTTE raises anywhere from $200-300 million from the diaspora population every year, of which a good portion must come from London. It may be ‘low-level’ but there is a tremendous amount of money leaving the country from criminal activity and it can’t all be from selling eighths on the corner or shaking down Chandravel at the local convenience store.
jasmine: won’t mehfil cover this? i have not heard anything about this until i read your comments. can we send him back to his Home?? maybe the deep south…. i think with the indo-cdn political power something can be done about this, such as getting him off of the Olympic Committee/demoted, something. Is this the voice of the 2010 Olympics the Canadaians, and specifically British Columbians want reflected as representing them? all of those, “canada is so accepting and liberal” comments will soon be going out the window. go get him. look fwd to your article and spreading the word.
Got a link and source for that? Some Sri Lankans got busted for doing credit card fraud at some petrol stations they owned in London a while back, I seem to remember.
bobby,
the $300m figure may even be on the short side.
methods detailed here.
bobby,
the petrol station fraud wasn’t small-time in the least, they recruited scammers at 200 stations. I’m not sure that this one was connected to the Tigers, however.
From your second link:
I knew about this gang violence between Tamil gangs but a lot of the fundraising seems to be extortion, bootlegging DVD’s, taking control of Tamil Hindu temples and accessing contributions. Off the radar almost. Authorities are being very firm here in cracking down on terrorist fundraising in the UK, mostly for the Al Qaeda type stuff but I’m sure this must be on their agenda too. But the informal nature of the money transfers and lower priority and the method of fundraising probably makes it more difficult to crack.
You’re telling me it wasn’t small time. My friend got burned by the bastards after filling up with them and got steamed for two grand on his card.
I haven’t read all the posts but I will say this, the scene in Vancouver is totally f@cked! A lot of young punjabi guys just want to be part of this ‘gang-culture’ for the obvious reasons. Me being punjabi myself I saw a lot on my few visits to vancouver and was exposed to some sh!t that made my jaw drop. I mean its so easy to become part of this drug-trade. And it has nothing to do with caste, I seen all sorts of punjabis involved. With full fleged beard/turban and some even who have taken ‘amrit’. I just couldn’t believe what i saw. I thought having tables and chairs in the gurudwara were bad enough but they just take it to the next level.
In Toronto its not like that, well not at least. Although when I grew up in the 90s we did have some high-school gangs namely: Punjabi Mafia, P.L.W (Pange Lain Wale), M.R.T (Muslim Run Tings), Palace Boys (Muslim gang). The so called gangs just fought with each other basically muslim vs. sikhs. This was all cool (lol), usually a stabbing or 2 or just someone going to the hospital, until…. UNTIL tamil population started growing. The tamils now seem to ‘run’ this gang shit. THey took the names from their respective affiliation from back home (AK Kanan (translated AK47) vs. VVT (i forgot what this stood for). Thats when bodies started dropping. Couple of Singalese guys started getting beaten up or stabbed for no apparent reason. 2 guys who I grew up with victim of this, both shot due to some internal problems. And by this time the muslim and sikh guys kinda just grew up and left highschool sh!t and moved on. A lot of black and asian gangs are scared of tamils right now.
But there was a case of a sikh guy running a car-theft ring from the airport which was considered very sophisticated. He was known as “The General” he had all sorts of people working for him, from Russians to Jamaicans.
I think people here need to realise there are some bad “desis” out there. What i find more disturbing is how people are quick to point out each desi’s background and point out that it is “them” “They are the cause of it”. You just need to realise that not everyone has the same opportunities as many of you here. You are quick to judge these folk and blame their parents or just label them as ‘wanna-bes’. Sometimes it is not that simple, some families are poor and want their children to work and sometimes the kids just get caught up in street life. Thats just the way it is. Not all of us have the luxury to sit in starbucks with an apple laptop and be judgemental towards all those who are not doctors, lawyers, computer engineers.
so there was no refund or mulligan rule in effect? he just had to eat the charge? (geez, thats over $4K in american currency!)
I was sitting with him in a sandwich place when he got a phone call from the CC company. They have an alarm system when each card does abnormal transactions. They asked him where he was and what he was doing and if he’d just made this transaction. He said I’m eating a ham salad sandwich and I haven’t used that card all day. Within 24 hours they’d steamed him. They cancelled and he’s covered with Barclaycard so it’s OK but it’s the hassle, police statement, tracing his transactions prior to the fraud. He filled up in a station in Edmonton north London with some brown man on the till.
HaHa! every gas station in this neighborhood, and the neighborhoods to the neighborhoods of this neighborhood has a brown man attending the till.
Yeah but this one looked shifty and suspicious my friend said, in retrospect. The funny thing was he offered a description and could only say he had a moustache. Brown man with moustache on petrol station till, hahaha, narrows it down eh.
Lookatme: You bring up some valuable points which i wanted to elaborate on as well. I think what sort of fired me up on this issue is the whole, punjabi jatts are so uneducated, blah blah blah. i am so tired of hearing this stereotype. i think it really begs the question of what is education? [ok, just to put a disclaimer in here front and center, my immediate family all have graduate degrees, so i am not acting out of defense for my immediate circle.] however, as i had said earlier, my extended family all have varying degrees of education, and i want to know what is it that we value about the educated lot? inteligence, higher tolerance, financial success? b/c i can make quite a few arguements on how i have found more of those characteristics amongst the “uneducated” of my brethren. i also believe the constant negative protrayal of cdn jatt sikhs in the media has contributed a lot to the view the u.s. diaspora have of this community.
🙂
Lookatme<
Great post!! I agree with you on almost everycount.
No offense, but the people on these boards are getting so damn boring.
A topic filed under humor has exactly ZERO humorous comments about it!
“OHHHHHHHH no!! Out of a billion plus south Aisans, some of them are not doctors and are in gangs! What are we going to do?”
db, you said it, brudda. I’ve actually been twisting in the wind with this story after offering to a number of organizations (naming no names) and finally I harassed India Abroad cause I write for them all the time, and they seem quite into it now. Its not really professional of me to talk about other news groups/ editors so I won’t, but I really appreciate your inquiry and you are certainly welcome to draw your own conclusions.
Lookatme, you opined:
What is it with this whole table and chair madness? The Guru Granth Sahib is clear on the issue- everyone should be seated at the same level- with no one above or below everyone else. Its a symbolic position..no one Sikh should lord it over others. Tables and chairs have virtually NOTHING to do with it. If we were to reject every innovation in our Gurudwaras on the strength of the old ways, we should chuck out the dishwashers and force the Gurudwara kitchens to do the dishes in a creek behind the building with their bare hands. Its all such foolery, this table and chair agitating, and we have so many actual issues that could gainfully be addressed with this misplaced righteousness and its attendant waste of time. Its embarassing. BTW, the Victoria Gurudwaras use benches, rode the floor squawkers out of Dodge on a rail, and the elderly babis (and their knees) downright bless us for it.
I agree. And thanks for that inspiring info about Piper’s dating life!
db: “b/c i can make quite a few arguements on how i have found more of those characteristics amongst the “uneducated” of my brethren. i also believe the constant negative protrayal of cdn jatt sikhs in the media has contributed a lot to the view the u.s. diaspora have of this community.”
I agree with you completely. A lot of my friends are truck drivers (and no they are not drug traffickers) and many are just hands-on types of dudes, like machinists and auto-mechanics. THey just didn’t want to be sitting behind a desk. But yet, they are more financially well off than me. I dont have a degree either but I think i’ve done well for myself considering the group of people i grew up with. And i do not think of any less than any other educated person. ANd i find it constantly irritating that i come on this site and some idiot book-worm starts mouthing off at all “jatt-punjabis” just from a few wikipedia or cnn news-stubs he/she has read. Just because some of these guys aren’t computer savy and cannot defend themselves against these attacks in cyberspace, these nerds take advantage just get all wordy and statistical. But these same idiots have no problem supporting likes of M.I.A who is an avid supportor of LTTE but label her revolutionary. Meanwhile no tamil i know can understand her lyrics or care for her so called “agenda”. That is a topic on its own though. I might just get banned for this last statement alone.
Anyways I just think american desis need get off this “model-minority” high-horse mentality and grow some balls. Sometimes signing petitions and aligning to some political parties doesn’t help. Sometimes you need to break bones and let them know who they are dealing with. Such is the case with Tamils in Toronto, nobody dares messes with them, because they know the outcome. And who knows maybe one day these “Gangster-Desis” will one day help out your law-abiding-flag-waving-model-minority-parents, when they being harnessed by some ignorant racist americans.