Monthly Archives: November 2007

Kiran Chetry on the “South Asia” Question

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Just in case you were unaware of it, Kiran Chetry, the CNN anchor, is half-Nepali, and was born in Kathmandu. kiran-chetry.jpg

In an interview in Nepal Monitor recently posted on our News Tab, Kiran is asked, predictably perhaps, a number of questions relating to her background. For me, her most interesting response came following a question about her “South Asian” identity:

Question: And this is about being a “South Asian.” Because you don’t really seem like a South Asian unless somebody does some research on you! There are very few South Asians actually doing major shows on cable television in the US. What does being a “South Asian” mean to you?

Kiran Chetry: I define it in a more narrow term. I feel that being half-Nepalese is my heritage, something I have always grown up being proud of and living with. It’s never been something that I dwell on a lot; I think that it’s just my life, it’s who my family is, it’s who my father is. My cousins, many of them that are my age, are here in the US, either studying or now have jobs here. And that is just a part of our culture. And I have lived straddling both.

Fair enough — much of what she said there should resonate with many SM readers. Even if your family isn’t bi-cultural, growing up in the U.S. forces you to always in some sense “straddle both” cultures. But it’s when Chetry gets to terminology beyond “helf-Nepali” (or as she says, “Nepalese”) that she starts to hedge:

But you are right, when people look at me they don’t necessarily say, “Wow, Kiran must be Asian” or “Kiran must be from Nepal.” But I think that when you get to really know me and you spend any time with my family, you see what an influence it is. Since my father is from Nepal and that is what I grew up around. It’s just me.

And there are not a lot of South Asians, if you want to put it that way, that are represented in the news. However, there are a lot more at CNN, which is interesting. We have our special correspondent Sanjay Gupta, also Betty Nguyen, who is on our air and Alina Cho, one of our American Morning correspondents. All of them are Asian, or South Asian. So I think it is wonderful to be able to see more faces of diversity. And, I am one of them, even though I may not look like I am! I think I understand what being part of the Asian culture is like, not to put everybody into one big generalization. But I definitely understand a perspective because it is part of how I grew up. (link)

She seems a bit uncomfortable with the term “South Asian,” preferring the more narrowly national “Nepali” or the more general term, “Asian.” And while she mentions Dr. Sanjay Gupta, she’s also quick to mention Alina Cho and Betty Nguyen.

While most desis I know do define “South Asian” as a subset of “Asian,” I’ve never met anyone who wanted to deemphasize (or reject) the “South” in favor of a more generalized “Asian” identity — to be defined as just Asian, and not South Asian.

What might be behind Chetry’s terminological discomfort? (Unfortunately, we kind of have to speculate here, since I don’t think Kiran Chetry has done any other interviews where she’s discussed these kinds of identity issues.) Continue reading →

SF: Movie & a Meetup; Sat Nov 17

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Hello SF Mutineers, just a gentle reminder that the SF South Asian Film Festival kicks of today. Our movie + mini-meetup is tomorrow, Saturday, November 17.

The Movie –

2:00 pm, Saturday, November 17th, Castro Theater, San Francisco
Admission: $10
Director: Manish Acharya
Country: India (2007)
Running Time: 88 mins, 35mm, Color

Synopsis & Tickets

The Meetup – After the movie, a drink at Samovar Tea Lounge, just a couple blocks around the corner.


View Larger Map

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Tropical Cyclone Sidr

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Bangladesh is being hit with a Category 4 cyclone/hurricane right now, with winds up to 150 miles an hour:

tropical-strom-sidr-banglad.jpg

It’s called Tropical Cyclone Sidr:

Sidr, a Category 4 hurricane with wind velocity of 135 knots and a heading due north, is on a trajectory that will envelop the heavily populated southern coast before it moves on toward the capital, Dhaka. It is expected to make landfall sometime around midnight local time Nov. 16. Waters in the rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal along parts of the southern coast already are rising to critical levels. Some 10 million of the country’s 140 inhabitants live along this coast.

The vast majority of the population lives in the broad Ganges Delta, which sits at about 1 meter above sea level. The storm surge is likely to inundate everything within miles of the coast — and the subsequent flooding is likely to be of biblical proportions. (link; subscription required)

Unlike, say, the Tsunami of 2004, there was some advanced warning that this thing was coming; the BBC reports that hundreds of thousands of people living along the shore have been evacuated. Have the preparations been sufficient to fend off major loss of life? I hope so.

If you come across any current news links or updates from Bangladeshi blogs regarding the impact of Cyclone Sidr (which will be continuing over the next day or two as the storm moves inland), please post them in the comments. Continue reading →

And all she got was a bun.

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Wow, more weird India news! Yay!.jpg

Allow me to preempt someone from asking why I chose to write this story. No, really, let’s get it out of the way, this nimisham:

• Did this really have to be blogged?

• Slow news day?

• Aren’t X,Y and Q more important?

• And furthermore, doesn’t your lack of blogging X,Y and Q indicate that you are a heartless bitch who doesn’t care about Pakistan/the Nuke Deal/the environment/immigration??

Yes,

maybe,

perhaps and

refer to my finger, for that last one. It’s an extra-challenging week at work, so I can’t write anything dazzling, not that the performances which I usually phone in are sublime. I don’t have much time, but when something’s on my mind, it’s easier (read: cathartic) to type, so a “Musings” post it shall be.

Unless you were the last person to be found during hide and seek yesterday, you have heard the cringe-inducing-on-so-many-levels news about an Indian man “marrying” a dog (thanks, Aggiebabe). It is somewhat like the whole “Aish weds trees…twice”-fiasco…except in TMBWITW’s case, she was doing it to compensate for her apparently unfortunate nakshatram and not because she had killed two trees.

An Indian man has “married” a female dog, hoping the move will help atone for stoning two other dogs to death.
P Selvakumar, 33, said he had been cursed since the killings, suffering paralysis and a loss of hearing.
The wedding took place at a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu state. The “bride” wore an orange sari with a flower garland and was fed a bun to celebrate.
Superstitious people in rural India sometimes organise weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses.[BBC]

Buried among the hundreds of jokes which punsters are giddily guffawing over (enjoy your free pass to bitch about how the bride is a bitch…but more on that later) is to me the most appalling aspect of this story; this man killed two innocent, defenseless creatures.

I didn’t know how he killed them until I settled in to my seat on the subway this morning and found out that he had stoned them. That detail bothered me so much, because my imagination doesn’t need any assistance in recreating actual events. Have you ever seen an animal cowering in front of a human? Yelping and whimpering out of fear and pain? It’s heartbreaking, but that’s what this so-called man saw, as he brutally stoned two dogs. I remember the way our late German Shepherds looked terrified and anxious, when they were merely being scolded…and that was after they had committed capital offenses, like uprooting our only curry leaf plant. Continue reading →

Review: Nikita Lalwani’s “Gifted”

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The debut novel by Nikita Lalwani, Gifted, makes for quite enjoyable reading. It’s about an Indian girl’s coming of age in Cardiff, Wales, as a math prodigy pushed and prodded by an overly controlling father. nikita-lalwani-gifted.jpg

The father’s obsession with having his daughter achieve a very rigid kind of academic greatness should ring a bell with second gen/ABD readers, especially given the apparent desi fascination with things like Spelling Bees (often discussed here at Sepia Mutiny) and World Records. For most middle class desi kids growing up in the west, childhood is often (whether you like it or not) all about “studies” — and Lalwani’s book shows a case of that parental obsession taken to an extreme.

That said, Lalwani’s Rumi (short for Rumika) is in fact genuinely interested in math and numbers from an early age, and Lalwani does a good job of taking us into her head without drowning the reader in math problems. Though I’m not particularly mathematically inclined myself, I do remember there being a certain luminosity to math problems as a child/teenager — something beautiful in algebraic abstractions, or the spiraling concept of infinity in calculus. (Unfortunately for me, I tended to be more enthusiastic about the aesthetics of the math than in actually solving the problems at hand…)

Here’s a short passage from early on in Gifted, where Rumi (age 8 at the time) is chatting with her relations while on a trip to India. They are discussing real-life math prodigy, Shakuntala Devi, who was able to multiply two thirteen digit numbers in her head: Continue reading →

Shah Rukh’s Abs Conquer Global Box Office

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Bollywood film Om Shanti Om brought in about $1.8 million at the U.S. box office over the weekend, which puts it at a respectable #11 on the U.S. chart (on only 114 screens). It’s certainly the highest U.S. opening for a Bollywood film I’ve seen in recent years; it may be the highest ever (anyone know for sure?). The film also did very well in India and other markets, coming in ahead of the Tom Cruise war flick, Lions for Lambs, internationally.

Serious cinephiles (and some not-so-serious ones) have reviewed the film and dissected its merits and flaws. But the director, Farah Khan, has essentially credited the film’s success to one thing — Shah Rukh Khan’s exposed torso:

“The entire credit for the film’s success goes to Shah Rukh,” director Farah Khan told Reuters over phone on Sunday. “He is the film’s main attraction and the shirtless song is definitely one of the main reasons for the film’s hit. It is the scene to watch out for.” The bare-chested act by the 42-year-old actor who underwent rigorous training sessions to develop a six-pack, has helped the song “Dard-E-Disco” reach the top of the charts across television channels and FM radio stations. (link)

See the following hard-hitting report from Star News, for a more behind-the-scenes look at Shah Rukh’s abs:

The segment opens in Hindi, but after about 30 seconds there are English subtitles. It’s worth staying at least until Shah Rukh makes that comment about his cleavage (!); there’s also a sneaky little insinuation about Karan Johar there at the end. Continue reading →

Just Your Typical, Slightly Snarky Arranged Marriage Post

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A column (thanks, Fuerza Dulce) from the women’s magazine Marie-Claire on Anjali Mansukhani’s enthusiasm for arranged marriages (including her own), didn’t really start in what seemed like the best possible way:

By age 26, after attending more than 150 weddings, I was fast approaching my “expiration date.” (link)

“Expiration date” at age 26? That’s pretty young; personally, I think women get “expired” these days at around 27 or 28…

But it gets so much better. Anjali, a Bombayite, meets a guy who seems like Mr. Right — a New York based banker — and moves to his 40th story Manhattan apartment after three dates (and a marriage). Life there is blissfully happy:

While I craved privacy in India, the lack of neighbors and family dropping in left a shocking void every day as I ate breakfast and lunch alone. My husband worked late most evenings, and I sat in front of the TV, unable to call home because it would be 2 a.m. there.

After a few weeks, I learned that I’d married a “jetrosexual.” He had an exhausting travel schedule (four cities in four days). I joined the ranks of corporate wives who saw every show, opera, and ballet in town, just to fill the hours.

To make friends, I joined a gym, went to the library, and took Italian classes. I discovered that having an arranged marriage was a great icebreaker, and my social circle mushroomed each time I retold my story.

Marriage, I soon learned, wasn’t easy — especially to a modern man. My husband had acquired a mistress, and her name was BlackBerry. She had the power to stop discussions midsentence, her red signal lighting up his face in the way I only dreamed of doing. (link)

Such happiness. It really brightens your day.

Off to a great start, no doubt. But Anjali’s new life really takes off when she learns to name-drop consumer goods and lifestyle choices like a professional New Yorker:

As peers in India opted for motherhood and worked on post-baby waistlines, I took Spinning and pole dancing at the gym to work off exotic dinners of sweetbreads, foie gras, chocolate mousse. After reading about America’s obsession with Venti decaf skim mochas, I went to try one — but came back instead with a spiced chai latte. Amazingly, Starbucks was providing my childhood drink on every corner.

I found a job as a financial consultant. The New York Times in one hand, coffee in the other, I realized that my saris of bright pink, violet, and salmon were not exactly subway wear. Quickly, I succumbed to Levi’s and Ralph Lauren.

I started to realize that I just might have the best of both worlds. I marinated my Indian marriage in the flavors of Manhattan. I kept the sari and bought the Jimmy Choos. I made fabulous curries, seasoned with spices from Dean & Deluca. And after months of enjoying decidedly non-Indian experiences of seders, Saks, and sake, I felt confident enough to direct Indian guests to a hotel, occasionally throwing in a MetroCard.

I’m not hating, really I’m not. In fact, I’m thrilled she’s so happy — with those Jimmy Choos that she got from Bloomie’s, drinking Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks (which is just like the Chai in India, isn’t it?), before her pole-dancing class, where she’ll burn off the foie gras from the night before. Arranged marriage can be great that way. Continue reading →

The campaigns through a brown lens

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You’d have to be living in a hole to not know that the Presidential races are heating up. With Al Gore out of the race I’ve been finalizing my decision as to who I will be supporting when I vote in the Texas primary in mid-March. Unfortunately, because of where I live, my primary vote might be marginally more meaningful than my general election vote when it comes to electing our next President. I will have much greater say over state and local politics though, so I absolutely will vote. If I am in the midst of finalizing my decision then I expect that some of you are as well. Therefore, here are some political angles that might be of interest to our largely South Asian American readership as we come down the stretch. First off is a survey from DiversityInc.com that some friends of mine were emailing around [via Mercury Rising]:

As you can see, the Democratic candidates’ campaign staffs seem considerably more diverse than the Republican staffs (if you are willing to believe this survey without questioning the details of the poll). I am not sure though if I believe that Guiliani’s campaign doesn’t have a single minority. There is obviously some margin of error in a poll like this but Diversity.com attributes some of that error to the following:

While DiversityInc.com was able to get extensive feedback from the people involved in the Democratic candidates’ campaigns, nobody on the Republican side would talk to them despite repeated efforts on DiversityInc.com’s part to contact them. [Link]

You notice how Clinton seems to have the most overall diversity and also the most Asian Americans? If Bill Clinton was America’s first African American President can we expect that Hillary would be the first Asian American one were she to win?

Continue reading →

TimesOfIndia.com Has Advanced Adware/Malware

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A web security service called ScanSafe has investigated the Times of India website (note that I’m not providing a link), and discovered that its advertising is stuffed with advanced Adware and Malware (thanks, Voiceinthehead):

Visitors to the IndiaTimes website are being bombarded by malware, some of which appear to target previously unknown vulnerabilities in Windows, a security researcher warns.

In all, the English-language Indian news site is directly or indirectly serving up at least 434 malicious files, many of which are not detected by antivirus software, according to Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at ScanSafe. She said at least 18 different IP addresses are involved in the attack.

“The end result of the compromise is that the user, going through their normal course of activities, is subject to a really massive installation of malicious files,” she told us. “Coupled with the low detection by antivirus vendors, it does put the end user in a very vulnerable position.”

Visitors can be infected even if they have up-to-date systems and they don’t fall victim to tricks to install software or browser add-ons, she said. She urged people to avoid the site until it’s been cleaned up. (link)

A slightly more technical version of the report is at the ScanSafe website, here.

Frankly, I find it appalling that a “respectable” news agency would be using these tactics, and I won’t be linking to the TOI in any blog post unless and until I hear that this has been stopped. I also hope the report gets picked up by the general Indian news media, and TOI is called to account. This is simply not a business policy that is entered into by accident — somebody at The Times of India had to knowingly enter into agreements with these Malware vendors to begin with. (If this were a U.S. company, you can bet there would be a class-action lawsuit by users forced to waste time and money cleaning up their computers.)

One qualification: I’m a little unsure about how much of a danger this really is to people who are running Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, or computers with good spyware protection — ScanSafe may be magnifying the danger a little to drum up business.

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Musharraf: “Extremists have become very extreme”

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Over the past week, we’ve had both the “Musharraf: bad” and the “Musharraf: not so bad” points of view represented at Sepia Mutiny. What we haven’t had is the “Musharraf: seriously weird, yo” point of view, which strikes me as a grave omission. Fortunately, here is a column from Mohammed Hanif (via Amitava Kumar), who has been reporting on the coup-within-a-coup for the BBC from London.

Hanif was disturbed after watching Musharraf’s 40 minute speech last Saturday announcing the state of Emergency. The speech had a long Urdu section and a brief English section directed at the west. The English section was more or less unexceptionable (Abraham Lincoln was mentioned), but the part of the speech that was in Urdu was apparently quite the opposite:

[H]e only occasionally glanced at his notes and for 40 minutes talked, well, gibberish; the kind of stuff that only journalists and think-tank-wallahs would take seriously. I was so unsettled, not by what he was saying, but by the way he was saying it, that I listened to the entire speech again last night.

I have been accused of punctuation abuse often enough to take these things in my stride, but for the 40 minutes that General Musharraf spoke in Urdu, he didn’t use one proper sentence.

He replaced his verbs with hand gestures, nouns slipped off his shrugged shoulders, adjectives quivered under his desk.

And when he said, “Extremists have gone very extreme,” it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound – if you would only pour him one last one. (link)

It gets better:

Consider this; in the middle of his speech when everyone was silently urging him to get to the point, losing the thread of his diatribe about how judicial activism was responsible for the rise of jihadis in Pakistan, he abruptly said, “I have imposed emergency,” then looked into the camera, waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and said, “You must have seen it on TV.”

He forgot to mention that he had pulled the plug on all television channels except the State-run television. (link)

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