Monthly Archives: February 2009

Cat’s Out of the Bag

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The Times/UK launches a brilliant piece of investigative journalism that confirms what we’ve already known – that US forces have been pursuing the Global War on Terror from inside Pakistani territory as early as October 2001. What they judiciously add to the global knowledgebase is an exact location within Pakistan and composition of those forces –

Attention Brave Taliban! The Infidel Are Here!

The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, a Times investigation has found.

The Pakistani and US governments have repeatedly denied that Washington is running military operations, covert or otherwise, on Pakistani territory — a hugely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country.

…Shamsi lies in a sparsely populated area about 190 miles southwest of the city of Quetta, which US intelligence officials believe is used as a staging post by senior Taleban leaders, including Mullah Omar. It is also 100 miles south of the border with Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand and about 100 miles east of the border with Iran.

Aiding theTimes/UK’s hunt was the array of investigative tools more generally available to an ambitious first world reporter than a trapped-in-a-cave Jihadi – Continue reading →

Dear Anu Lentils: Advice for the second generation

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DEAR ANU: I’m tired of the dating scene and have decided that I’d like to have an arranged ask anu.jpg marriage, but my parents insist that I have a love marriage. They don’t want me to end up like them. “A love marriage may not last, but at least you will be happy for a short time,” my father said. “With an arranged marriage, you may be unhappy forever.”

I cried and pleaded with them to arrange my marriage. Finally, my mother said, “Okay, then. We will arrange a love marriage for you.” They want to arrange it with the son of my father’s dentist. They want me to date him for six months and try my best to fall in love with him. “He is a good boy,” my mother said. “He will not expect you to sleep with him on the first date.”

I just about screamed when I heard that. “I’m saving myself for the right man!” I said. My father, who happens to be a banker, smiled and nodded his head. “Saving is good,” he said. “But boys these days, before making any investments, they like to do some checking.”

Please help me! I don’t know what to do. — SoConfused in SoCal

DEAR SO CONFUSED: Yours is a common complaint I’ve been getting from the younger generation. Many parents aren’t totally happy with their arranged marriages and want something better for their children. But the children have been through the dating process and want something better for themselves, something that doesn’t involve being dumped.

I think the idea of arranging a love marriage is a good one, but so is falling in love with an arranged marriage. The important thing is to end up with the right person, someone who will love and cherish you, someone who’s interested in a long-term investment, rather than a quick withdrawal. Continue reading →

Speak Hindi? Join the army and become a citizen in 6 months

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It’s not easy to get a green card in America, and harder still to become a citizen. However, under a new recruitment program for the armed forces, if you’ve been in the US for 2 years and have the skills the military needs, you can get your citizenship in as little as six months from the day you begin service. While in the past recruitment was open to green card holders (with 8,000 a year signing up for the military) this is the first time recruitment has been opened to temporary immigrants.

The program targets two groups: medical professionals and those with language expertise including speakers of “Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo (a tongue spoken in Nigeria), Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashto, Russian and Tamil. [link]” In other words, this is a program tailor made for desis (although not exclusively so)

The only catch is that you have to serve out your time in the military honorably, or you might lose your citizenship (!) even if you received it in the first six months of service:

Language experts will have to serve four years of active duty, and health care professionals will serve three years of active duty or six years in the Reserves. If the immigrants do not complete their service honorably, they could lose their citizenship. [link]

Continue reading →

It wasn’t just Lupercalia yesterday

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I know most of you were too busy yesterday celebrating the orthodox feastday of Saint Brigid of Kildare to think of anything else, but it was also the 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Back then Rushdie was already a literary hotshot, having won the Booker in 1981 for his second novel, Midnight’s Children. This was long before Padma, when Rushdie was newly married to Marianne Wiggins and could walk down the street without being recognized.

However, it was the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses that really put him on the map, making him both notorious and a cause celebre all over the world, granting him immortality while putting his own body and that of others into mortal peril.

Although Rushdie had always courted controversy, having mocked Indira Gandhi, the Bhutto family, and American foreign policy in previous books, he claims that he had no idea what a hornet’s nest The Satanic Verses would stir up:

Rushdie … said “I expected a few mullahs would be offended, call me names, and then I could defend myself in public… I honestly never expected anything like this.” [link]

Instead the book was banned within a month in India, followed by Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore and lastly Venezuela in June 1989. A large number of threats were made to bookstores in the US and UK. Daniel Pipes claims that “[t]he bombings meant that hardly a single bookstore sold Rushdie’s novel openly in the UK” [link]

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Flight from Dubai

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SM enjoys occasionally keeping tabs on diaspora members worldwide and the brothers-in-arms in the Gulf are a particularly interesting, if occasionally sad case. Lured by much greater economic opportunity but often forced to deal with 2nd class citizen status (and worse) – their tales really help show the lengths some folks will go to to eke out a few bucks for the fam.

Fewer Lights in the Future?

Now, with the global collapse of the closely intertwined construction and finance industries, the Gulf has been particularly hard hit. An interesting leading indicator of sorts is the shape of traffic at the airport –

For many expatriate workers in Dubai it was the ultimate symbol of their tax-free wealth: a luxurious car that few could have afforded on the money they earned at home.

Now, faced with crippling debts as a result of their high living and Dubai’s fading fortunes, many expatriates are abandoning their cars at the airport and fleeing home rather than risk jail for defaulting on loans.

Police have found more than 3,000 cars outside Dubai’s international airport in recent months. Most of the cars – four-wheel drives, saloons and “a few” Mercedes – had keys left in the ignition. Some had used-to-the-limit credit cards in the glove box. Others had notes of apology attached to the windscreen.

Not surprisingly, Desis are a large % of the folks fleeing–

Continue reading →

Contest: Write a Six-Word Memoir of Love or Heartbreak for V-Day (and win a free book)

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It’s almost that time of the year when big pink hearts take over storefronts, over 190 million cards are exchanged, and the average U.S. consumer will spend $103 on gifts, meals, and entertainment,. Yup, St. Valentine’s Day. The day of L-O-V-E.

I’m not one to make a big hoopla about this holiday – I’m one of those people who prefers to receive flowers or a gift on random days rather than on a day when there are such high expectations. But, a handwritten card or a poem, ah, that I will never turn away. swm_love.jpg

This year, my Valentine’s Day gift to my husband is a copy of SMITH magazine/Harper Perennial’s Six Word Memoirs of Love and Heartbreak: By Writers Famous and Obscure. It’s a pocket-sized paperback (4X6, a little smaller in size than your average Valentine’s Day Card, but chock full of so many more wishes and reflections on matters of the heart).

This book is the second offering from SMITH Magazine whose initial invite to writers two years ago was a simple one (inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn): Everyone has a story. Can you tell yours in six words? The submissions poured in like crazy and soon enough they had published the NYT bestselling Not Quite What I Was Planning. (

The book features my very own six word memoir on page 13:

Sleeping, our foreheads touch. Fates mingle.

As I was flipping through the book, I came across another one-liner by our very own mutineer V.V. on page 70:

My book title makes dating awkward.

There were several more six-word desi memoirs that made it into the book:

Girl beautiful. No Mercedes. No love. – Sujoy Kumar Chowdhury
I fixed him but broke myself. – Amal Khairul
Proposal. Dowry. Bethrothal. Marriage. Children. Love. – Mitali Perkins
Arranged marriage now sounding pretty good. – Saleem Reshamwala

Add your own six word memoir (consider it your Valentine’s day greeting to the world) in the comments section before midnight on Sunday, February 15th. V.V. (author of the Washington Post choice for one of the best books of 2008, Love Marriage will pick two winners who will each receive a free copy of Six Word Memoirs of Love and Heartbreak. And, that’s our V-Day gift to you.

Below the fold, check out a book trailer for inspiration. Continue reading →

The GOP to Piyush back against Obama

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This ain’t yo daddy’s GOP no more. Not only is the Chair of the RNC a black man (Michael Steele, who owes his victory to the majority-minority terroritories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa) but Jindal is the new televised face of the party, set to issue its rebuttal to Obama:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, widely seen as a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, will deliver the Republican response following President Obama’s nationally televised Address to the Nation on Feb. 24, Republican congressional leaders announced in a joint statement today. [Link]

Has the GOP decided to embrace multiculturalism as a demographic necessity? Was 2008 the last year that contenders for the top RNC spot will send out CDs of such chart topping hits as “Barack the Magic Negro,” and “The Star Spanglish Banner“?

Not exactly. Nativists remain both a significant constituency within the party and a significant source of amusement for those of us outside of it, offering insights like:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.” [Link]

Continue reading →

Let the “brainy Indians” come in?

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On Wednesday’s NYTimes op-ed page Tom Friedman forwarded on a novel solution to our financial mess and housing crisis:

Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration.

“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.” [Link]

Once you get past the model minority stereotyping in the first paragraph, he does have a good point. In all the talk of bailouts, stimulus, bad banks, etc., the one thing nobody is talking about (not even the Obama administration) is immigration policy. Now may be the best time to swing the doors open so highly skilled immigrants can enter the U.S. and help stimulate the economy:

… the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.

Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D…

If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it’s this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it “Great.” From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60 percent — and we were all worse off.

We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centerpiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs. [Link] Continue reading →

Don’t be Loose

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India’s religious right has been taking a public relations beating this past week. The newly formed Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women (which, by the way, is the greatest name for a group since the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) has organized the Pink Chaddis Campaign to oppose the Sri Ram Sena’s despicable actions last month and their impending Valentine’s Day protests:

The group says it will give the pink underwear to Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on Valentine’s Day on Saturday.

[SRS] was blamed for the bar attack in the southern city of Mangalore last month.

Pramod Mutalik, who heads the little known Ram Sena and is now on bail after he was held following the attack, has said it is “not acceptable” for women to go to bars in India.

He has also said his men will protest against Valentine’s Day on Saturday. [Link]

Let’s just hope that the SRS leaders don’t have a fetish for women’s underwear or this campaign will not have its intended effect.

In other news (perhaps not entirely unrelated) the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s Hindu nationalist group, has decided to start marketing a soft drink that contains cow urine. They see it as a refreshing alternative to Coke or Pepsi. I am sure they would rather young women kick back with a six pack of these instead of be loose at a bar with a beer:

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called “gau jal”, or “cow water” – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”.

“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,” he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. “Its USP will be that it’s going to be very healthy. It won’t be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins.”

The drink is the latest attempt by the RSS – which was founded in 1925 and now claims eight million members – to cleanse India of foreign influence and promote its ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness. [Link]

I am curious, does anyone know how the cow urine aftershave splash has been doing in sales?

Continue reading →

Beating a Brazilian Path to India

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Last summer, I posted about my experiences Desi Spotting in Brazil and observed that “despite my lack of desi human spottings, there was no dearth of Indian influence—mostly of the exotic India variety—to be found in Brazil.”

I’m revisiting this topic today, thanks to Sepia reader Vijay, who shot me an email from Rio a couple of weeks ago. “Omg–have you heard of this Brazilian soap opera about an indian family?” he wrote. “A sepia investigation is in order.”

It certainly was! And, here’s what I dug up, with a little help from Vijay.indias.jpg

Since January 19th, Brazilian TVs (approximately 60,000 households just in Sao Paulo) evenings have been tuned to a new telenovela six nights a week. Camhino das Indias (Path of India) “examines beliefs and values that differentiate the Eastern and Western world” and follows the story of a forbidden love between a Brazilan man (whom I understand to be a yoga instructor) and an Indian woman from a conservative family. The drama was filmed with a budget with a mostly Brazilian cast on a budget of $80 million in Jaipur, Agra, Dubai, and Rio (where two Indian towns were constructed for production purposes!).

Backpacking Ninja, a desi blogger traveling through India describes it thus:

With Portuguese actors all dressed in extremely jatak (gaudy) Indian clothes (looking thoroughly North Indian), speaking Portuguese, it’s a total riot. I laughed so much watching one episode. The episode was a wedding….. the background music that was playing in the wedding as they did the saath phere (sacred walk around the fire symbolizing marriage) was Kajra re (one of the most popular songs to play in dance bars in India). It’s almost like playing Shakiras ‘Hips dont lie’ when someone is walking down the aisle in a church. In another scene, the heroine Maya (Juliana Paes) walked over to the buffet table and made eye contact with the hero Bahuan (Marcio Garcia, and trying to be Indian in all ways possible, they showed a dream sequence of them holding hands… not in person.

The opener features Sukhwinder Singh’s “Beedi” and is intended to show off the “cultural diversity that exists in the country,” according to creative director Roberto Stein. I’ll let you be the judge of that. Whatever your opinion (“this exoticizes India yet again” or “this is great for Indian tourism” or “wtf?”), I think that you’ll agree that your eyes will stay glued to it.

For those who want more (I certainly did!), beneath the fold, I’ve added clips from episode one. Continue reading →