Author Archives: manish

V-V-Veronica

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A Singapore-based desi art studio is launching four new Indian comic books in India and Southeast Asia (thanks, Rage). The four titles are Bollywood, Mythology, Santa Banta & Trendy and Hawk.

“Focusing on the 25 million strong Indian diaspora, Illustrated Orchids started developing the comics based on Indian characters. Of course there is a huge market at home, but the Indian staying overseas always want to have something which can keep their kids attached to our culture.” [Link]

While the Mythology title looks like a higher-quality, manga-style competitor to Amar Chitra Katha, the Bollycomic looks like Archie come to life. Shah Rukh Khan would be Archie (but not Panjabi), Rani Mukherjee is Betty, Aishwarya Rai is Veronica, Aamir Khan is Jughead and plug-haired Salman Khan is definitely Reggie.

A lot of lame Sikh jokes revolve around Santa and Banta Singh, so it’s a bit surprising to see a sardar involved with that title.

More art after the jump.

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Tai-pan tries paan

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This is so cute — a non-desi journalist tries paan for the first time, with all the variness of a wegetarian trying a Chicken McNugget.

A rush of unfamiliar flavors flooded my tongue. After a few moments, I got nervous and spit it into my napkin. While I hoped that I wouldn’t later be punished by days in my hotel bathroom, part of me regretted the fact that I hadn’t had the full paan experience…

“What’s its appeal?” I asked. He looked at me as if I were crazy, like I was asking him why people liked chocolate. “It’s good. Everybody likes it…”

The first taste was one of overwhelming sweetness–from the rose syrup–and then I got a tang of menthol. The contents were crunchy, and the rose petal scent was strong. As I continued to chew and as the sweetness subsided, I began to taste the licorice flavor of the fennel and the warm spiciness of the cardamom…

It was strange and jarring, kind of how I remember very dark chocolate or Marmite tasting when I was a kid. But it wasn’t just the taste, it was also the mix of unusual textures–the feeling of chewing some mulch, twigs and gooey gel wrapped up in a leaf… [Link]

You can’t really use a clichéd food metaphor when you’re already reviewing food, but you just know this tai-pan has a plan B:

… it woke up my tired nose and jaded taste buds, like a walk through a crowded market in India… [Link]

The subtitle is ‘The new hot treat from India.’ This paandemic is new, didn’tcha know?

Related posts: Boing Boing discovers paan, Candy Cain

Kenara Paan Shop, 134 E. 27 St. & Lexington Ave., Manhattan, 212-481-1660

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Barbershop

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The comedy Barbershop relied on the fact that black-owned barbershops are male watering holes, informal congregations based on gossip and habit. Now New Delhi is hoping the smell of shaving cream and menthol will not only bring in the shearlings, but also help fight AIDS. Barbers have begun handing out prophylactics and pamphlets (thanks, Saurav):

Eighty-five barbers in [Delhi’s] congested southern district of Lajpat Nagar are currently involved in a programme to promote safe sex and spread the message of prevention against HIV/AIDS to their customers…

“… sometimes when I feel awkward, I point them to the posters in the shop. I have also trained others in my shop…”

… sometimes customers say they are aware of the importance of safe sex but find condoms “too expensive”. “But when I told them that they can collect condoms from various government hospitals and my shop free of cost, they readily agreed to use them. Now they even ask for them on their own…”

Eleven thousand packets of condoms have been distributed by the 85 barbers in the past six months in Lajpat Nagar alone. [Link]

Call me crazy, but I don’t like mixing straight razors with the family jewels. Eventually I saw the appeal of it. When you come in, they take a little off the top. When you leave, they give you something to put back on. I’ll never look at a barber pole the same way again.

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Crisp or Not

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One of my college buddies was mired in a highbrow Ph.D. program for many long years. The next time I saw him, he’d put the degree on hold and gone into business with a mutual friend, and they seemed to be doing well. ‘What happened?’ I asked. And Jim and James told me the story behind Hot or Not.

As you know, that site inspired has lots of imitators, some parodies, some not. From fertile brown minds came RateDesi. Now there’s a new contender to help you winnow your beard-sniffing dreams. It’s called Rate My Turban (via Ash Singh).

I don’t think I give anything away when I say that the top-ranked specimen perches atop the cranium of a Nihang Sikh:


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Candy Cain

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Here at the Mutiny, we’re reduced to excerpting former guest bloggers on slow news days Because, y’know, they’re good. Spake Saheli on Snarkmarket about those who dislike Indian food:

It just reminds me too much of schoolchildren pointing and going, “eww, smelly Indian food.” It’s one thing if you don’t like the taste of cumin–you aren’t going to like Indian food. It’s another thing if you insist that it’s foul and anyone who likes it has issues. It’s not the idea that “Wow I really didn’t like this,” that I object to. It’s the implication that, therefore, neither will you, dear reader…

I hated fried bitter melon when I was a child, for instance, and now it’s one of my favorite foods. But I’d be insane to just dump a bowlful on your plate, you’d probably gag. I ate one at time, very slowly, over the course of many years until I liked it. And it’s a bad idea to force things on small children, b/c their sense of smell isn’t that well developed and is much more geared towards rejecting things. (Makes sense–keeps them from eating random stuff they don’t yet have the knowledge to reject.) [Link]

One of the bloggers adds that he dislikes Indo-Caribbean tamarind balls:

Tamarind balls were a particular sticking point. Our rejection of our parents’ delicacies was always taken as a full-on betrayal of our culturesMy Guyanese parents, aunts, and uncles all insisted they were an unparalleled taste treat; elder siblings and cousins sympathized with my disappointment. Our rejection of our parents’ delicacies was always taken as a full-on betrayal of our cultures, and met with sad diatribes about how Americanized we’d become.

Whenever we disdained one of her many Guyanese or British comfort foods, my mom would launch into wonderful stories about her childhood, how she loved tamarind balls, how she used to cry when her mother told her she couldn’t have any more of the sticky, spicy, sweet, sour snacks. And here we were, fêted with tamarind balls to our hearts’ content, and we refuse?! What could be wrong with us?… [Link]

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Office politics

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Asok corrects the boss

In the latest Dilbert, Asok the intern puts the pointy-haired boss in his place.

I’ve often heard from uncle types that desis don’t advance up the U.S. corporate ladder because they’re bad at office politics. But business in the motherland is highly political. I think it’s partly that they’re unfamiliar with American office politics, and partly that many of the straight-arrow types emigrated precisely to get away from it.

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Selling race

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Hong Kong: make your teeth as white as black people’s.

This is apparently widely sold as Black Man Toothpaste in Cantonese:

Darlie toothpaste is a popular brand in much of Asia… it used to be called Darkie, complete with a stereotyped logo of a minstrel man. Apparently its founder had come to the US in the 1920s and seen Al Jolson in his blackface show, and had been impressed with how white Jolson’s teeth looked…

… its racist name and logo were still intact in 1985 when Colgate bought the brand… only the English was changed. The Cantonese name (“Haak Yahn Nga Gou”) still stayed the same, and the Chinese-language ads reassured users that, despite a cosmetic change to placate those inscrutable Westerners, “Black Man Toothpaste is still Black Man Toothpaste.” [Link, via Big White Guy]

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The cost of progress

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Anti-development protest in China last week: at least 20 people gunned down by authorities, total news blackout.

403 Forbidden: You don’t have permission to speak freely in this country

… the police violently suppressed a demonstration against the construction of a power plant in China… the stories told by villagers… insisted that 20 or more people had been killed by automatic weapons fire and that at least 40 were still missing…

In the wake of the biggest use of armed force against civilians since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Chinese officials have used a variety of techniques – from barring reports in most newspapers outside the immediate region to banning place names and other keywords associated with the event from major Internet search engines, like Google – to prevent news of the deaths from spreading… an overwhelming majority of the Chinese public still knows nothing of the event…

… Fang Sanwen, the news director of Netease.com, one of China’s three major Internet portals and news providers [said], “I can’t speak. I hope you can understand.” Li Shanyou, editor in chief of Sohu.com, another of the leading portals, said: “… It’s not very convenient to comment on this…” “I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn’t do any searches.”

“I don’t dare to talk,” another blogger wrote. “There are sensitive words everywhere…” [Link]

Anti-development protest in India a few years ago: nobody killed, lots of celebrity distractivism all over TV.

A group of activists led by best-selling Indian author Arundhati Roy is on its way back to Delhi at the end of a six-day rally to protest against a controversial dam project [Narmada Dam]… The group [was] made up of some 500 activists, artists and celebrities… [Link]

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Why isn’t gold farming big in India?

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Maybe get a blister on your little finger,
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way to do it

For some time I’ve been keeping an eye on gold farming, the business of paying kids to build up loot in online games and then selling it for real money to Western marks. Although some entrepreneurs use automated scripts, most use humans: 100,000 kids in China, South Korea and Indonesia supposedly work in the industry. In a recent crossover into real life, someone in Shanghai murdered his buddy for selling a virtual sword he wasn’t supposed to sell.

Most of the players here actually make less than a quarter an hour, but they often get room, board and free computer game play in these “virtual sweatshops…” “They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 percent of the players are actually Chinese farmers.” [Link]

The economist Edward Castranova has calculated that if you took the real dollars spent within EverQuest as an index, its game world… would be the 77th richest nation on the planet, while annual player earnings [per capita] surpass those of citizens of Bulgaria, India or China. [Link]

Most stories I’ve read treat gold farming as a curiosity, which is a bit of a paradox. One, journalists think of valuable property in games as an oxymoron, even though they earn their own living from intellectual property. Two, many journalists are non-technical, even though their work is often published online:

The idea that sums of money are being paid for what appears to be an unproductive economic activity will cheese off traditionalists who believe that unless a job is located in an industrial factory, it serves no good purpose. [Link]
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The cultural implications of Questiongate (updated)

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As Abhi posted, several Indian members of Parliament were caught taking bribes to ask questions on the Parliament floor. Because some of the journalists involved are also bloggers, one of the questions asked included the name of our blog.

Abhi has the summary of events. What interests me are the cultural implications:

  • Sepia Mutiny is now on the floor record of the Indian Parliament (thanks, Aaj Tak and Cobra Post!) Ahhh, to be a footnote in Indian political history.
  • Sepia Mutiny is now, apparently, British
  • You can now legitimately mention Sepia Mutiny in your poli sci classes
  • Ennis says:

    Often statements are read into the record for constituents and donors, and these are usually not checked over. Causes embarassment when the “freedom fighters” mentioned are later reclassified by the US govt as terrorist groups, but nobody really cares.
    But has there ever been a U.S. political scandal where prima facia nonsensical questions were purchased for the Congressional record?

The sting was called ‘Operation Duryodhana,’ which has some interesting connotations from the Mahabharata. This one is a pun on Cobra Post and ‘sting operation’:

[Duryodhana’s] chariot bore a flag depicting a hooded cobra… [Link]

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