The Family Gold: An open letter to South Asian parents

Earlier this week I received a phone call from my mom asking me if I had heard of the egregious criminal activity that has caused many South Asian Americans in the DC area (specifically Northern Virginia’s Fairfax and Loudoun counties) to become worried and to take steps to protect their family jewels. My mom, probably typical of most desi moms, is overly sensitive to ANY criminal activity or health hazard (seemingly anywhere in the world) that has ANY chance to impact me…by whatever stretch of imagination. If Ebola breaks out in the Congo then I receive a call from my mom that evening. She just wants to make sure I am not hanging out with friends that have recently returned from the Congo…just to be safe. She is, of course, worried about her jewelry. It has all been safely relocated to a safety deposit box at an undisclosed bank.

When Raman Kumar’s Centreville home was burglarized in late February, he became an early victim in a crime spree that has continued across the county and into Loudoun, spiking last month.

“This is no ordinary burglary,” Kumar told the hundreds of residents, as well as numerous police officers and detectives, gathered at Colin Powell Elementary School in Centreville last Thursday, Oct. 29. He said the burglars who have been targeting the homes of South Asian residents for their gold jewelry were obviously well organized and well equipped with sophisticated equipment and information.

Three similar burglaries had been carried out that day, one in Oak Hill, one in Chantilly and another in South Riding, bringing the total to around 30. Two days earlier, two homes in Lorton had been burglarized, as well as one in Centreville and another in Fair Oaks. As in previous cases, the perpetrators broke in through back doors and windows in the late morning or afternoon and ransacked the master bedrooms, making off with gold jewelry, electronics and other valuables. In cases where homes were armed with security systems, those systems have been defeated. Any fake gold has been left behind…

Police believe South Asians are being targeted because they traditionally pass high-karat gold jewelry heirlooms from one generation to the next, and the price of gold now is especially high. Some victims have reported tens of thousands of dollars in losses. [link]

Since desi gold is on our minds, I would like to take the opportunity to address some fundamental “best practices” advice regarding gold within our community. Gold holds a special significance in desi culture and thus, demands a special discussion. I believe the following discussion will be even more useful if it can generate a conversation with our parents, many who are getting up there in age (hint: forward this post to them and see what they think):

1) Take a digital picture inventory of every valuable piece of gold (or otherwise) jewelry in your possession

You have collected a lot over your lifetime, loaned a lot out, and maybe even lost a lot. Take the time to document everything so you know what you have and can communicate to others what you may have had stolen. Plus, I know some of you will like flipping through an album of all your jewelry just because you can. Don’t be ashamed.

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Straight shooters, shorts and more at SFISAFF

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It’s a good thing that the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reopened this week after freaking out unsuspecting motorists by dropping 5,000 pounds of metal last week. But even if it hadn’t Bay Area indie film fans would have found a way (BART still works, right?) to get to the Seventh Annual 3rd I San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival happening tonight through Sunday, November 5-8. That’s because the festival screenings include some very interesting short films, documentaries, and feature films from South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora. (You can view the SFISAFF trailer after the jump and all the film trailers at thirdi.org and at the end of this post.) Continue reading

BROWNSTAR Revolutionizes the Mutiny

It took me a moment before I realized that the two witty kids I was walking the late night streets of Boston with were the infamous BROWNSTAR duo. They had come to the Boston Sepia Mutiny meetup last month, and afterwards we went on a hunt for DJ Kayper. They were hilarious, and I had heard about them through the spoken word grapevine. The BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION duo is a two member poetry/theatre/performance duo, consisting of the NORTHSTAR (Pushkar Sharma) and SOUTHSTAR (Sathya Sridharan). Started in 2007, this duo has been hitting up open mics, college stages, and poetry lounges sharing their words with anyone that will listen. There performances can’t be categorized, but has all the potential to revolutionize.

BrownStar Revolution – “Unification” (August 2009) from Jon Truei on Vimeo.

I knew I had to bring the BROWNSTAR to the Mutiny. I had the chance to hit up Sathya and Pushkar in a gchat interview to ask them some questions about the BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION. Here’s what they said.

Taz: For those of those of the mutiny who may not know, who exactly is BROWNSTAR?

Pushkar: We’re a performance poetry duo, two-man spoken-word show.

Sathya: We’re more than just that though. We’re theatre; we’re comedy; we’re poetry. We like to throw everything into the pot and create something that isn’t always seen on stage.

Taz: How did you get your start? Did you start doing poetry first? Or performance first?

Sathya: I’ve been performing and writing in some way all my life, mostly being a clown for my family, or friends. I was a Drama and Eng Lit major in college, where Pushkar and I met. He directed me in my first show in college. I’m pursuing acting as well as this whole Brownstar thing. Ideally, I like to think of myself as an actor who likes to write poetry on the side. Continue reading

RBI Votes Against the Dollar?

Time will tell whether this is a first step in a long stampede or a more innocuous portfolio rebalancing BUT, the Indian central bank made some pretty significant waves in currency markets yesterday. How? It unloaded roughly $7B of its US currency reserves and exchanged it for gold

Gold prices on Tuesday surged to an all-time high after India’s central bank bought 200 tonnes of the precious metal, swapping dollars for bullion as the country’s finance minister warned the economies of the US and Europe had “collapsed”.

India’s decision to exchange $6.7bn for gold equivalent to 8 per cent of world annual mine production sent the strongest signal yet that Asian countries were moving away from the US currency.

Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister, said the acquisition reflected the power of an economy that laid claim to the fifth-largest global foreign reserves: “We have money to buy gold. We have enough foreign exchange reserves.”

He contrasted India’s strength with weakness elsewhere: “Europe collapsed and North America collapsed.”

While the amount in question ($6.7B) is relatively small in currency circles (India holds $285B in reserves & China has dollar reserves >$2T), it is a highly symbolic move that their faith in the dollar and/or their need to tie their fate to it may have shifted a few notches of late. What could it mean? Continue reading

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Feather Meets Dot in a Brown Faced Way

For Halloween this year, I had an Indian friend dress up like an Indian (feather, not dot). She thought it would be ironic (in a way that I’m sure this man would not have gotten). No painting of skin tone was involved. I was thinking about her as I watched this.

The blogs are a buzz with the latest from America’s Next Top Model, Season 13. The short girl season (all the girls are under 5’7), Tyra Banks takes them to Hawaii where she photographs them in a sugar cane field. The twist? She takes the pictures of the girls as “hapas.” Hapa is a Hawaiian term for people who are of mixed race. For the shoot, Tyra gives each of the girls two races that she wants them to embody in the photo. A race other than their own. She paints them all brown and gives them props to achieve it.

The racial mixes — Laura was Mexican and Greek, Erin was Tibetan and Egyptian, Sundai was Moroccan and Russian, Jennifer was Botswanan and Polynesian. and Nicole was Malagasy and Japanese. Who were we gifted with? The model named Brittany was given “East Indian” meets Native American i.e. feather and dot Indian. Fast forward to 6.29 to see Brittany get her face painted. Her picture after the jump. Continue reading

Black Lips Are Bad Kids in India

I always wondered how it is that American bands end up touring in India and how they are received – I know that the big concerts in Delhi are usually far more hard rock bands rather than anything that the kids here are listening to today. I was surprised then to watch this short documentary of the Black Lips, a very non-hard rock band, go on tour in India. You may recognize their song Bad Kids from (500) Days of Summer. (The ending of the movie is NSFW; hat tip to rockistani).

I thought the video was amusing, raw, and fun, ending on a spectacular rock star note. And for those who want to see how the movie ended and are curious about the “NSFW” rating without watching the whole thing, I’ll tell you after the jump. Continue reading