M.I.A. says in an Urb magazine interview that she took a lot of flak for licensing ‘Galang’ for a Honda Civic ad:
Ahh, fake hipster outrage keeps me warm at night. Our own Sajit (Gandhi, not Ghandi) defends the TV spot in the story. The title’s a little familiar, too:
Update: Another mag cover (thanks, Amardeep). Spin, spin, spin.
Related posts: Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Lolita Was a Man Eatah
Vijaypat Singhania, the 67-year-old Richard Branson of India, set a new hot air balloon altitude record in Bombay on Saturday at 69,000 feet:
Indian Vijaypat Singhania has claimed a new world record for the highest flight in a hot air balloon, after a voyage lasting several hours. The 67-year-old textile tycoon soared past 21,000 metres (69,000 feet) but fell just short of his original target. He travelled in a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon as high as a 22-storey building… [Link]The temperature outside the balloon was expected to fall as low as minus 93 C and oxygen was negligible. Before taking off, Singhania stressed the importance of the pressurized cabin, saying that if he was exposed to such temperatures his “blood would boil.” [Link]
This is at a height no living being had been and is nearly two-and-half times the height of Mount Everest. [Link]
At least 17 aviators have attempted to beat the existing high altitude balloon record… “The aviation industry shudders at adventure flights. I chose India because it is my home and I feel [it] needs to be on the world aviation map… This flight is both dangerous and demanding…”
Most hot air balloons are powered by propane gas, but propane burners have never been tested at this altitude. [Link]
Singhania is a men’s suiting entrepreneur — I guarantee it:
Before taking off Mr Singhania, who chairs Indian textile giant Raymond Group, told the BBC that flying was in his blood. [Link]
Like SpaceShipOne’s record shot, he ran into difficulties:
The unexpectedly strong winds lifted off his balloon from its moorings prematurely, even before he was fully ready. Whereas the balloon should have taken off vertically, the gust dragged him westwards towards the sea at a dangerously low altitude. At this juncture a rescue helicopter set off in pursuit and chief co-coordinator Andy Elson radioed to Vijaypat that he should ditch the balloon into the sea. [Link]
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival ran this priceless ad in May this year (thanks, Areem):
This meshugenah has chutzpah. Remember, ‘shalom’ is just ‘salaam’ pronounced by a Bengali 
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A long way from Lake Como |
Syriana is a new film about the oil industry, Middle East politics and Beltway meddling, by Stephen Gaghan and Steven Soderbergh, the guys behind Traffic. It’s also the first major movie I’ve seen which deals with the shabby treatment of desi workers in the Middle East.
The trailer is cut like an action thriller, but it’s actually a thought-provoking, 2Å“ hour-long film on the moral ambiguity of America’s oil dependency. The thrust of the story, based on a nonfiction book called See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, is that the U.S. uses the CIA to set up pliant dictators in oil-producing countries instead of those who might promote democracy. A Texan oil CEO utters this similarly realpolitik line (paraphrased): ‘The Chinese economy isn’t growing as fast as it could because they can’t get enough oil. And I’m damn proud of that.’
The movie opens with a shot of desi oil workers struggling to get onto a crammed Tata bus. Later in the movie, a shady oil company merger triggers layoffs. A Sikh foreman gets on a megaphone to Pakistani workers, telling them they’ve been fired, they must surrender their badges, and unless they find another job soon they have to report to immigration within two weeks and be deported.
Casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned ArabsThe Urdu-speaking Pakistanis are portrayed as naïve young villagers who just want to make a better life for themselves. Two of the young men become radicalized after racist Arab security guards beat them. They end up in a madrassa limned in sympathy, in stark contrast to the unwelcoming society around them. A striking-looking Arab evangelist preys on their insecurities and inevitably turns them into C4 fodder.
If you think that’s a spoiler, you haven’t been paying attention to desi roles in the movies these days 
I’m noticing an odd trend at the movies. Like The War Within, they pick Pakistanis rather than Arabs to portray suicidal terrorists. It doesn’t at all fit with recent history as most Pakistan-based suicide attackers have focused on India. They don’t seem as attached to pan-Arabism as, well, Arabs, and 2nd gen idiots in London notwithstanding, they’ve got nowhere near the presence of Arabs in global terrorism. It seems more and more like casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned Arabs. On the other hand, perhaps this casting was driven by simple plot imperative.
In 1998, Nidha Mubdi, a student at St. John’s University in New York, discovered during a routine checkup that she had leukemia. After much searching through SAMAR, a donor named Himesh Kapadia stepped forward:
The bone marrow donation saved her life, but Mubdi’s kidneys began failing because of chemotherapy, and she’s been on dialysis for the last five years. But earlier this month, Derek Ivery, a friend from Queens College, gave her one of his kidneys, a much more serious operation:
Mubdi’s family members were tested to see if they could donate a kidney, but no one came up as a match. [Link]
Ivery, of Queens, decided to step forward after Mubdi put out a call for a donor on the Internet. They had met when when they were student advisers at Queens College… Mubdi’s grateful father, Shelley Mubdi, a Bangladeshi immigrant who is president of Medina Masjid, a Manhattan mosque, called Ivery, a “courageous man…”
Ivery, 26, and Mubdi, 25, were resting comfortably at New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital last night after the nine-hour operation. [Link]
Sunkrish Bala will appear on Will & Grace tonight and Grey’s Anatomy on Sunday (thanks, Kiran):
Sunkrish Bala will be appearing on TV during Thanksgiving weekend. Look for him on “WILL and GRACE”– Thursday, Nov. 24th, 8:30PM on NBC and on “GREY`S ANATOMY”– Sunday, Nov. 27th, 10PM on ABC. These are guest starring roles and will likely feature him prominently. [Link]Height: 6’1″ [Link]
He’s previously been on CSI:NY and My Name is Earl. He had a part in Desipina’s production of Barriers and played Rama in an adaptation of the Ramayana:
… I watched Cornerstone’s production of The Ramayana float effortlessly across the David Henry Hwang’s stage… a shortened and speeded-up version tailored to hold the attention of American audiences…There is a silly but funny scene in which Rama tells Lakshman of their need to forge an alliance with the monkey kingdom. “Uh, I don’t think they like to be called that,” Rama’s brother delicately points out. There follows an argument about the socially sensitive term to use (Vanaras), although, Rama complains, he can’t keep up with all these self-descriptions — “Why can’t they pick one name and stick with it?” And later, when he hears the Vanaras actually calling themselves “monkeys,” Lakshman points out that “It’s all right for them to call each other that…” [Link]
Romantic lead, maybe? Going from cabbie to Latin lover, exoticized though it might be, would be one step up in the reductionist sitcom pecking order.
A 27-year-old IIM grad was shot to death outside Lucknow last weekend for trying to cleaning up corruption in the gas station industry. Manjunath Shanmugam’s heinous murder shows no good deed goes unpunished:
The IIM Lucknow graduate from Karnataka paid with his life on Saturday afternoon for his crusade against corrupt petrol pump owners… Manjunathan… had become a “nightmare” for Sitapur’s petrol outlets, always dropping in for surprise checks as part of his company’s campaign against adulteration, sources said.
A month ago, he had sealed the Manu Mittal petrol station in Gola on Sitapur Road and blacklisted several others… The police believe that several petrol outlet owners had plotted together to kill Manjunathan… Adulteration of oil — especially diesel – at petrol pumps is a longstanding problem across the country. Diesel is mixed with kerosene, which is subsidised for the poor. [Link]Nathan’s body was recovered from a vehicle in Sitapur district this morning. The vehicle, a Maruti car, reportedly belongs to… the son of Sulakshan Mittal whose petrol pump in Gola area of Lakhimpur district had been sealed by Nathan. [Link]
Having not heard from his son for three days… the father… sent an SMS: ”How are you?” … that evening, Manjunath was beaten up and then riddled with at least six bullets. His body was found in the backseat of his own car. At the wheel, were two employees of the petrol pump, on their way to dispose of the body…
“He was killed for doing his duty,” said a tearful Shanmughan after the cremation. ”He told me many times that he was working in an area with many mafia gangs and that anything could happen to him… He said it is a lawless world and for survival, one has to keep mum even if there are irregularities,” said Shanmughan. [Link]
Indians are bitter:
I am never going to ask another IIM/IIT guy to stay back in India. I always resented the fact that some of our best brains always grew wings and flew out of our country. Not any more….
Youths who dare to live for country are killed, and who live for themselves, India call them home and honors them…
It would be interesting to track what happens to the culprits… most pumps in UP are political gifts given by politicians to their goons… [Link]
Gaurav Sabnis remembers Shanmugam:
People always crib about how IIM grads never do anything for the country or don’t join PSUs. Here was one IIM grad who joined a PSU. Did his work honestly and in the right way… And he was murdered in cold blood…Continue reading
Female roommates divvy up cute boys on the WB’s One Tree Hill. Sophia Bush calls dibs on ‘Narrayan,’ ‘Jabbar’ and the lead singer of the Foo Fighters. Apparently can’t spell.
Desi please. No I don’t watch, just flipping through.
The WSJ says whites are fleeing Cupertino, a Bay Area city with good public schools and thus an influx of middle class East Asian Americans (MCEAAs).
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Monta Vista High School |
My parents tell me the same is happening in our neighboring town of Saratoga, which was first a white retirement community and then a magnet for Silicon Valley CEOs. Five years ago, all our immediate neighbors were white; today, two families are East Asian and one is desi. When I went to high school, there were only four or five desis in the entire school. Many kids assumed that if you wanted to date, you’d only date one of the three desi girls. I studied captive markets in econ class and lived them outside. Today, I hear the dating ‘study group’ pool has gone from baby-sized to Olympic.
… the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino’s top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years. Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation — particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants — as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998…It’s not competition that makes white parents uncomfortable, it’s competition with Asian-AmericansSome white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether… Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests. The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian…
Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School’s parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. “This may not sound good,” she confides, “but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class…”
