Monthly Archives: June 2010

What better film for a dance sequence?

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The world media are buzzing with news of “Dear Friend Hitler” a new bollywood film about the romance between Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun, starring Anupam Kher as Hitler and former Miss India, Neha Dhupia, as Eva Braun:

The director of the film characterizes it as a “romance,” and … “[r]eports have suggested that the script includes a scene where Hitler and Miss Braun are in bed–although this has not been confirmed. [link]

The movie’s title comes from letters sent by M.K. Gandhi to Hitler, which addressed him as “Dear Friend” [link]. As we’ve noted previously, Mein Kampf has long been popular in India, most lately as a management book in the same mold as “Who moved my cheese” so nobody in India will object to the idea of Hitler as friend to the nation.

Kher has been cast for his supposed resemblance to Hitler, and Dhupia for the scintillating wisdom and insight she brings to bear, such as this product of her extensive research:

“How do you marry the most hated man in the world? I think it’s by taking each day at a time,” [link]

Luckily, we already know how Hitler feels about Bollywood:

Lastly, all the news stories agree that there are no plans for any dance sequences in this film, which is a shame because (a) I suspect that the dancing is the only thing that would make this film watchable for me and (b) I’d love to see the love dances from this movie performed at a wedding. (Mutineers, you are warned!) Since there’s no word yet about whether there will be any songs (without the dance) I remain hopeful. Continue reading →

Aarti Sequeira Brings her Paarti to The Next Food Network Star

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Attention, foodies! There’s a contestant who specializes in Indian food on the current season of The Next Food Network Star (Sundays 9p/8c.)

Aarti Sequeira is a Los Angeles-based food blogger and the host of Aarti Paarti, her own Internet cooking show. After working as a journalist for a few years, Sequeira’s life took a Julie and Julia-esque turn after her marriage:

A few years later, a freshly-married Aarti moved to Los Angeles, with no job prospects. Cooking dinner for her husband, actor Brendan McNamara (director and cameraman on Aarti Paarti, as well as fellow popcorn jig-er!) became the highlight of her day. She worked her way through both The Joy of Cooking and her mum’s carefully typed out recipes, each dish turning out just a little better than the last. She began to fantasize about each night’s dinner, usually as soon as she had finished her lunch, which she had fantasized about when she finished breakfast, which she’d fantasized about since going to bed the previous evening (seeing a pattern here?).

(Here’s an interesting fact about Sequeira’s journalism career: she was the co-producer of Sand and Sorrow, the 2007 documentary about Darfur that was produced and narrated by George Clooney.)

Watch a clip from the season premiere below. During her introductory package Sequeira said that her goal is to “simplify Indian cooking and make it easy for the average person. I cook rustic family meals with a lot of specific Indian spices: garam masala, turmeric, cardamom pods.”

It gets a bit emotional at 1:48 as Sequeira describes what winning would mean to her parents, who live in India:

I am very curious to see the kinds of recipes Sequeira will come up with over the course of the season. The first dish she made on the show was a very simple rasam. You can find the recipe she used here. Continue reading →

So THAT’S the Domain of the Sri Lankan Police

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Last September, the Asia Society held a talk by Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who was then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. It was around the time of the United States General Assembly session – you know, the one during which all talk was about Gaddafi setting up a tent on Donald Trump’s property.

Although he had attended and addressed the General Assembly at its three previous sessions, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse ducked this one – the first after the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 – and sent his Prime Minister instead.

Anyway, back to the Asia Society. Sitting front and center in the audience were members of the Sri Lankan delegation, including Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapakse, and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.

During the question and answer session, the moderator pushed Wickremanayake on the issue of foreign aid organizations’ restricted access to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (specifically the Red Cross). After evading the questions as much as he could, the Prime Minister eventually referred aid organizations to “the Ministry of Defence, which is in charge of maintaining law and order” (40:50 in the video linked above), glancing frequently at and gesturing toward Gotabaya Rajapakse.

Friends, when I heard him say that, my ears nearly jumped off my head. In every democratic state with which I’m familiar, law and order is the domain of law enforcement and civil judiciary, not the military. If the Ministry of Defence is in charge of maintaining law and order in Sri Lanka, I thought, what exactly is the role of the police? Well fear not, for that question has been answered!

Continue reading →

“I didn’t like all of the junk [they] were saying about the lady”

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nikki haley june 9 2010.jpg

As many people may have heard, Nikki Haley came out with a commanding lead in the South Carolina governor’s primary last night (49% to 22% for the second place finisher), though she was just shy of enough votes to avoid a runoff. I thought some of the quotes in the New York Times’ article about it speak to some of the issues that Ennis raised last week:

If she wins the general election in November, Ms. Haley would be the first woman and first racial minority elected governor of South Carolina. In a speech to supporters on Tuesday night, Ms. Haley said she has challenged the status quo — but less through her age, race or gender, and more through her political views. (link)

At first that might not be so surprising, but consider this: South Carolina is 30% African American.

But in terms of her personal upbringing, Ms. Haley is without precedent for South Carolina. The state has the lowest percentage of women elected to office of any state in America. And Ms. Haley is the only Indian-American elected official in the state. (link)

While the “raghead” comment was disgusting, the fact that she’s a woman has also been a huge factor in the campaign, with two men, both political operatives, claiming to have had affairs with her.

Sometimes American politics is maddening. But sometimes a certain passion for fair play asserts itself:

“It has become a referendum on whether you think she was treated fairly,” said Danielle Vinson, the chairwoman of the political science department at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. Indeed, Sonny Hulon, 74, a retired grocery store employee who was voting at a senior citizen center in Columbia, said he had changed his support to Ms. Haley. “I voted for the lady,” he said, referring to Ms. Haley. “I was going to vote for McMaster but I didn’t like all of the junk that the other campaigns were saying about the lady.”

Allen Cuthrell, 52, an electrical engineer from Greenville, said he thinks the attacks benefitted Ms. Haley, whom he supports. “It exposed the good old boy machine,” he said. “People didn’t realize how bad it was until they saw Nikki getting attacked.” (link)

I like that: “I voted for the lady.” It’s interesting that he doesn’t say her name. And there are similar kinds of quotes in the Washington Post’s coverage.

Nikki Haley’s political views are not my own. But it is impressive that she has withstood these attacks, and even — improbably — benefited from them. Continue reading →

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The Chaiwallas Behind the BOOMbox

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cwbblogo2.jpgI’m not quite sure how I stumbled into Chaiwalla’s BOOMbox, but it quickly became my blog addiction. I looked forward to posts like like a fat kid to cake – I was guaranteed good music tinged with Desi flavor, sometimes with a video and more often than not with a free music download. I was beyond curious to see who were the chaiwallas behind the BOOMbox and to figure out how the heck they had found enough addictive music for daily doses. Little did I know that the six-month long project had taken off, going from blog to record label, with their first album by San Francisco based DJ Janaka Selekta dropping this July.

I got the chance to interview Umar Akbar and Tarun Nayar, the duo behind the BOOMbox for the mutinous horde. And for your listening pleasure, the chaiwallas are providing a FREE DOWNLOAD off of Janaka Selekta‘s forthcoming album “Pushing Air” EXCLUSIVELY for Sepia Mutiny readers.

Reborn by Janaka Selekta from the album “Pushing Air” by chaiWalla’s BOOMbox

What is Chaiwalla’s BOOMBox? Why did you choose to use blog as format?

Well CWBB is the story of a Boombox that’s been put under a spell by a Shaman. Unfortunately the boombox is still only 80 watts, so its not that loud but the blog can be heard on millions of computer speakers simultaneously, which is why we did it.

Who are the two chaiwallas behind the BOOMBox? Where are you based?

Well the real Mr. Chaiwalla is actually out saving the world from really bad music and villain’s, so he has entrusted us, Tarun Nayar and Umar Akbar with his sacred mission. We are based out of Western Canada.

Do you guys make your own music?

Yes, 1/2 of CWBB does. Tarun Nayar is a band member in Delhi 2 Dublin and is currently touring there new EP Planet Electric. Tarun is also scheduled to release his solo project sometime this Fall under CWBB. Continue reading →

14-year-old Desi Girl Wins Spelling Bee

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Congrats, Anamika Veeramani!

The fourteen-year-old eighth grader from North Royalton, Ohio became the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion last night. Anamika won the trophy and $40,000 in cash and prizes after correctly spelling “stromuhr.” (If, like me, you weren’t familiar with that word, it’s “an instrument for measuring the velocity of the blood flow.”)

Anamika is the third consecutive Indian-American spelling bee champion (following Kavya Shivashankar last year and Sameer Mishra in 2008.) An astonishing 8 out of the last 12 spelling bee champions have been Indian-American. Slate’s Explainer column thinks the phenomenon can be attributed to the community’s “minor-league spelling bee circuit”:

The [North South Foundation] circuit consists of 75 chapters run by close to 1,000 volunteers. The competitions, which began in 1993, function as a nerd Olympiad for Indian-Americans–there are separate divisions for math, science, vocab, geography, essay writing, and even public speaking–and a way to raise money for college scholarships for underprivileged students in India. There is little financial reward for winners (just a few thousand dollars in college scholarships) compared with the $40,000 winning purse handed out each year by Scripps. Still, more than 3,000 kids participated in NSF’s spelling events this year due in part to what NSF founder Ratnam Chitturi calls a sort of Kavya Effect. “Most American kids look up to sports figures,” he says. “Indian kids are more interested in education, and they finally have a role model.”

For their part, Anamika’s family told the AP that they don’t know why Indian-Americans thrive at the bee:

[Anamika’s father Alagaiya Veeramani] guessed it has something to do with a hard-work ethic.

“This has been her dream for a very, very long time. It’s been a family dream, too,” said Veeramani, explaining that his daughter studied as many as 16 hours on some days. “I think it has to do with an emphasis on education.”

16 hours a day! Here’s hoping you have a relaxing summer, Anamika. You earned it. Continue reading →

Winking at Aziz at the MTV Movie Awards

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Hey Aziz Ansari! I’m gonna be one of those infamous seat fillers at this year’s MTV Movie Awards 2010 on June 6th! You better be winking at a brown face you see in the audience, because I’ll be winking back…!

First of all, how did Aziz Ansari get a gig like hosting the 19th Annual MTV Movie Awards? I mean we’ve written about his rise in fame here, and here, and here… but damn! A national awards show? Is it possible that he could just be the first Desi to host a national televised award show? Moving up. Second, how precious are those baby pictures? (h/t Ami)

Stephen Friedman, the general manager of MTV, said Mr. Ansari’s pop-cultural tastes made him an ideal embodiment of the millennial-generation viewers whom the channel wants to reach.

“He’s playing with music, our sweet spot, but doing it in a way that creates a visceral connection with everyone in our audience,” Mr. Friedman said. “This guy gets us in a much more immediate way than other comedians. He’s grown up with the audience.”

What Mr. Ansari won’t do is exploit his minority status for laughs, or make it the focus of his comedy. You won’t hear him opining about his parents’ background as Tamil Muslims from India, and he said he’s tired of people’s assumptions that he encountered rampant racism growing up in the South. [nyt] Continue reading →

The Manchurian Gobi Candidate

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There is so much to love about Senator Knott’s recent ode to ragheads in America. I mean this seriously.

I adore how he’s open about this feelings for “f#!king ragheads.” This guy is a Southern Conservative straight out central casting, he’s racist, bigoted, xenophobic and stupid although not uninformed. He actually knows who Sikhs are and where India is, that just doesn’t stop him from saying “We’re at war over there,” demonstrating he’s not a bigot because he’s ignorant, he’s ignorant because he’s a bigot. This can’t be cured by education. All ragheads are the same to him, and before the non-Sikh readers get too smug, he probably hates you as well.

But all of this is just the sundae. The cherry on top, my absolute favorite part is this:

Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. [link]

ZOMG! She’s the Manchurian Candidate, the sleeper Sikh!

What I can’t figure out is what he’s so afraid she’s do once she’s activated. After all, the original Manchurian Candidate tried to whack the POTUS, and something tells me you wouldn’t be unhappy about that at all.

What will she do that would make you unhappy? Will her father attend her inauguration in a turban? Will she take down the confederate flag and replace it with the Indian one? Will she start teaching evolution in schools? Will she refuse to be sworn in with her hand over the bible and hold an ardaas instead?

Or maybe … she’ll invite DJ Rekha to the Governor’s mansion to play … Bhangra! Whoops, sorry Senator, the Raghead-in-Chief has already done that in the White House, the nations’ political bhangra-virginity has already been lost:

“I want to thank DJ Rekha who’s been spinning a little East Room Bhangra for everybody mixing a hip-hop beat with the sounds of her heritage; making a uniquely American sound that may not have been heard in the White House before,” Obama said amidst laughter and applause. [link]

Although, maybe you do have a point. That first Bhangra in an executive residence was soo good, that we want to do it again and again, promiscuously, with different executive residences, in all fifty states around the country! Next stop, Louisiana, where Piyush is going to Bhangra the BP blues away!

Sorry Senator, you lost the civil war and you’re going to lose the culture war too. In fact, your raghead comment just caused the former county GOP chair to declare her 2012 challenge to you [link]. But thank you for playing, and thanks for all the laughs! Continue reading →

SM’s paper bag test

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I would think it’s obvious that Nikki can pass much better than Jindal can. In case you need convincing, look at the two images below. They’re grabbed at random to show each candidate side by side with somebody white.

Here’s Bobby, clearly much darker than Kenneth the Page:

Here’s Nikki in a girl scout troop:

Nikki pretty much fits in, while Bobby stands out.

Continue reading →

Nikki’s pagan past and pious present

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[UPDATE: See a fuller copy of Knott’s remarks where she alleges Haley is a secret Sikh who is being elected by a cabal of Indian interests [link]]

One of the interesting differences between Jindal and Haley, two politicians with so much in common down to their Punjabi parents, is that Jindal makes his conversion central to his political identity whereas Haley does not.

1 One reason for this is color. Bobby Jindal is very clearly brown, he is married to a brown woman with a “foreign” name. He couldn’t hide his ancestry if he tried, so instead he emphasizes his conversion from the alien Hindu faith to the more familiar Catholic one.

Haley doesn’t have that burden, she’s a light skinned woman married to a white man, with a familiar sounding name. Heck, I got a number of emails last week from friends (desi and non-desi) all saying “Nicky Haley’s desi?” For her, talking about her conversion is not just unecessary, it would remind people of what’s alien about her and so it would be counter-productive.

I think this is why the attacks on her religion have been fairly tame in the past (in 2004 anonymous fliers claimed she was a Hindu but she still went on to beat the most senior member of the State House [link]) and present [link], they just have a hard time sticking, even though this is a state where anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon attacks have worked in the past [link].

2 The other reason why she doesn’t stress her conversion as much is that it doesn’t seem to have been as abrupt. Her campaign strongly stresses her Christianity today, but this was not true in 2004 and reflects a strong increase in Christian language in her campaign materials [link].

In 2004, seven years after her conversion, she was quoted as saying she attended both Methodist and Sikh services [link] and even now her spokesman will admit that “She attends Sikh services once or twice a year in respect for her family… Like millions of others, she honors her mother and her father” [link].

Continue reading →