Monthly Archives: September 2010

Brown men. Tight shorts.

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Personally I think an epic Bollywood love story centered around kabbadi would have made for a better movie than one about Cricket.

In a recession, are brown men in modest shorts in?

The crowd seemed subdued — at least compared with fans of American sports — and there was little shouting or cheering. Typically, many devotees are Sikhs, and the crowd on Sunday included many men with beards and traditional turbans. Women sat in separate bleachers, many under umbrellas as shields against the sunny heat.

Yet in keeping with the sport’s international appeal, Sunday’s competitors also included a London team of white blond women and an Australian crew with two African-American men from California, one of whom described himself as a mercenary of sorts. [NYTimes]

Mercenaries? A team of blond women? Oh behave you New Yorkers.

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Mile High Meetup! – September 23

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The wonderful city of Denver, Colorado is exactly 5280 feet above sea level. (And you thought we were talking about something else? Chhi!) We’re holding our first meetup in the Mile High City this coming Thursday the 23rd. Sepia’s web wizard Kunjan will be in Denver this week, and though it’s a school night, I promised him I’d drive an hour north on I-25 to see him.

Date: THURSDAY, September 23rd, 2010

Time: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Place: Indiä’s Restaurant

We’ll be meeting at Indiä’s Restaurant because it satisfies some minimum requirements: decent food, easy access from I-25, plenty of parking, and a respectfully stocked bar.

I was half hoping that one person would join us and then go next door for a 2.5-hour Hindi/Telegu/Tamil cinematic extravaganza— so we could crown that person the brownest person in the room, but it doesn’t look as if anything is playing that night. We’ll still take nominations though. I’m rooting for the person who figures out why our restaurant has an umlaut, which means that it should be pronounced “Indi-yehs.” (But maybe it’s more like Häagen Dasz).

When I first moved to Colorado, I thought it was the whitest place I had ever been. Then I got stuck in the airport at Salt Lake City. Now that I have lived here a while, I know there are many of you around. I’ve met a fair number of South Asian American 2nd-gens like me in Colorado, but I’ve also met people from every single South Asian country (including the Maldives) except Bhutan– though I know you’re around too.

Come on out, and say hi! If you can join us, let us know by leaving a comment, and I can book a table for all of us before we arrive. Continue reading →

Bhai, Bhai, Bhai

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I finally got to see Hari Kondabolu perform a couple of weeks ago when Laughter Against the Machine brought him through Oakland. It was my first time watching him live, and I couldn’t help but notice how even though our table of brown folks was laughing hysterically, there were definitely a few jokes on our racist society where the white folks in the room were squirming uncomfortably. He took it there, and then some.

Since I can’t take you there, I’m going to take you here.

In this clip, Hari and his brother Ashok i.e. Dapwell (“Dap” of Das Racist) do a read outloud of the infamous Joel Stein article “My Own Private India” (can we call it “Stein-gate”?). We had quite an active week when that article came out (Anna’s response here) and though Kalpen Modi’s article in the Huffington Post my favorite response, The Kondabolu’s response comes in a close second. The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, which is basically what you get when these two hit the stage together, perform in NYC about once a month.

We’ve been doing our show for a little over a year now. It’s a loosely structured talk show. I need structure, but Ashok doesn’t like that so much, so we have set pieces with jokes I’ve written but enough room for him to go off on tangents. Watching Ashok roam is the spectacle. Whether it’s funny or not, it’s always interesting….People seem to love the dynamic between two brothers arguing and discussing pretty much anything in the World. The show is very natural to us and it really ends up being a conversation we could have anywhere. [mtviggy]

If your in NYC, check their next set of antics on September 15th at 7:30 pm at The Tank (354 West 45th Street). I’m sure you’ll laugh. 99%. Continue reading →

U.S. Open Men’s Doubles Finals (open thread)

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Today Indian Rohan Bopanna and his Pakistani doubles partner Aisam-Ul-Haq Quresh try and make history! The Men’s Double Finals will be carried on CBS this afternoon. They will face the American Bryan brothers (twins), who they beat last month. Any of you fortunate enough to be able to watch it can leave your observations in the comments thread here (note: all jingoistic and non-secular comments will be deleted).

NPR featured the dynamic duo this morning.
And the two ambassadors are bhai-bhai.
“There’s always the potential,” the Pakistani ambassador, Abdullah H. Haroon, said. “Hardeep [Indian Ambassador] and I are in the New York area and we’re always looking for avenues to open and this is a magnificent one. The message going back to Pakistan is, here’s a team seeded 16th, and they’re in the finals for the first time at the U.S. Open. That’s great news.” [link]
Let’s hope for a good match.

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Sri Lanka’s New Social Contract

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“I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner…” And he that carryeth this person is called sovereign, and said to have sovereign power; and every one besides, his subject. – Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan

If you happened to be in the vicinity of Ault Hucknall, England earlier today and felt the Earth move slightly, there is no cause for alarm; it was just Hobbes shifting in his grave. I’ll leave it to the theorists to figure out in which direction.

The Sri Lankan Parliament passed the 18th Amendment to the country’s Constitution, essentially codifying absolute power in the Executive. What else do you call it when term limits are removed and the election commission’s appointment is moved to the executive branch? Right. It swings the balance just a nooooooodge in favor of the incumbent (not that the election commission seems to have much by way of teeth anyway).

In addition to facing no term limits, the President now gets to appoint (after considering the “observations” of the Prime Minister, the Speaker, and opposition leaders):

The Election Commission
The Public Service Commission
The National Police Commission
The Human Rights Commission
The Permanent Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption The Finance Commission
The Delimitation Commission (draws electoral district boundaries)

The Chief Justice and the Judges of the Supreme Court
The President and Judges of the Court of Appeal
The Members of the Judicial Serviec Commission, other than the Chairman

The Attorney-General
The Auditor-General
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman)
The Secretary-General of Parliament

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“Indo-Pak Express” doing well at U.S Open

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Hey tennis fans, have you been paying attention to the nice run by Indian Rohan Bopanna and his Pakistani doubles partner Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi at the U.S. Open in New York [thanks for the tip, Abe]? Can I get a “South Asia, represent” from the crowd?

Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi looked around the perimeter of the court Tuesday and saw what he’d hoped for. They were sitting together.

Pakistanis and Indians, blurred along the bleachers, one just like the other. They were clapping for the same thing. Cheering in unison…

“There was a lot of Pakistanis and Indians in the crowd cheering for us,” Qureshi said. “And you couldn’t tell the difference, who was Pakistani and who was Indian, they were all mixed together and supporting the same team.” [Link]

And they won their match yesterday to advance:

Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi progressed to the men’s doubles pre-quarterfinals of US Open with a straight-set win over German-Finn pair of Michael Kohlmann and Jarkko Nieminen.

The 16th seed Indo-Pak pair defeated their opponents 6-4 6-4 in the second round of the season’s last Grand Slam. [Link]

Were any of you there at the Open? Anyone see the match? Would love to see some pictures of the crowd.

The duo next play second seeds Daniel Nestor of Canada and Serbia’s Nenad Zimonjic in the third round.

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Interview: The Animal Days Are Gone for Tasneem

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It started to drizzle as I waited for Tasneem on the Santa Monica Pier early on a July summer day. I couldn’t believe it. It never rains in Southern California but here it was, middle of summer and it had started to rain. Luckily, by the time Tasneem arrived, guitar and all, it had turned into a beautiful day for a ferris wheel ride.

Tasneem, otherwise known as Jungli, is back for a brand new edition with a whole new sound. A New York transplant to California, she’s taken the coastal change and reinvented herself and her singer-songwriter sound into a new Cali-vibin’ freshenss. She’s working on a new E.P. The Animal Days Are Gone set to be released in the next few months. Check out my one-on-one ferris wheel interview with the infamous Tasneem. She talks about why she makes conscious music, how she loves Bat for Lashes, and how her dad would make them listen to Afro-Pop on the drive to weekly prayer.

I realize the interview is kind of long, but I had a hard time editing it down. We had a lot of fun on our quasi-date and Tasneem is very personable. Conducting interviews on ferris wheels are my new favorite thing to do, and getting a personal concert while in a ferris wheel bucket was one of the highlights of this summer. Check out the following video where Tasneem sings “Mark Wahlberg” and you’ll see just what I mean. Continue reading →

Why is no one donating?

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One month after monsoon rains caused flooding in the northern mountains, relief efforts were still in emergency mode. On Sunday, the Indus River, surging at 40 times its normal volume, breached levees near the southern city of Sujawal. Evidence is growing that the river’s path of destruction has stunted, if not annihilated, social and economic systems across Pakistan.

The effects, from increased hunger to obliterated schools, are likely to force Pakistan and the United States – which last fall earmarked billions of dollars in aid to build up Pakistan’s civilian government – to retool their development plans… Unlike the deadly jolt of the 2005 earthquake that previously ranked as Pakistan’s gravest natural disaster, the flooding metastasized like a cancer, submerging an area nearly as large as Florida. With much of the south still underwater, assessing the damage remains guesswork. Where the waters have receded, officials bandy about figures in the sums of millions and billions of dollars.

But there is little doubt that the losses are colossal. The government says 1.2 million houses, 10,000 schools, 35 bridges and 9 percent of the national highway system have been were damaged or destroyed. Even as emergency workers in the northern mountains build temporary bridges, landslides smother more roads. [Link]

But by all accounts, nobody is giving:

The amount of foreign donations given per flood victim is very low compared to other such disasters. The figures for the Haiti earthquake, tsunami, and Kashmir earthquake were $1087.33, $1249.80, and $388.33 respectively. For the Pakistan floods, the world has given only $16.36 per victim. [Link]

So the question on everyone’s mind is why? Why were we able to open our wallets when faced with such staggering tragedy in all those other instances but not now? Continue reading →