Henna hands on subway stops, brought to you by the bankers of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Oh look, it’s just like South Asian fiction covers 
Trite but cute. The first ad actually sets up an artificial duality. I’ve got female friends who’ve flirted with a Delhi wedding while living among the Japanese hipsters of that ‘hood. The punks of St. Marks Place are more taken with piercings — mehndi is no longer mutinous.
Beads of Paradise is a small furnishings shop by Union Square in Manhattan. Earlier this year, it sold random old photos of a Rajasthani family for six hundred bucks as nothing more than visual texture for interior design. This struck me as comical. Now they’re selling Hindica for the same purpose:
The most egregious in this vein is actually ABC Home, a giant imports store down the street (Moroccan lanterns go for thousands) with expensive Krishna and Nataraja icons in its sidewalk displays.
Religion and art are closely linked, of course; churches in Italy feel to me like shared art galleries. But you generally won’t find secular furnishings stores in the U.S. selling pricy Christian icons because of the disrespect that implies. On the flip side, you can get Ganesh idols at many stores in Jackson Heights, but most of those selling anything larger than a keychain are religious artifacts shops. New Jersey has elevated the metallic dashboard Ganesh to an art form.
R.I.P. Rosa Parks (thanks, Razib).
Martin Luther King Jr…. was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, who led the peaceful struggle for India’s independence from Great Britain. King’s work was helped in the civil rights movement by such people as Rosa Parks who served as a catalyst for the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. [Link]40,000 people walked, some more than 20 miles, during the Montgomery bus boycottOn Montgomery buses, the first four rows were reserved for whites. The rear was for blacks, who made up more than 75 percent of the bus system’s riders. Blacks could sit in the middle rows until those seats were needed by whites. Then the blacks had to move to seats in the rear, stand or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Even getting on the bus presented hurdles: If whites were already sitting in the front, blacks could board to pay the fare but then they had to disembark and re-enter through the rear door…
“When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ And he said, ‘Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.’ I said, ‘You may do that.’ ” [Link]
You can now listen to Salman Rushdie’s mellifluous British tones in an interview on NPR (thanks, Abhi). 
The PR tufan bears all the hallmarks of a practiced public speaker: note the near-total absence of fillers like ‘um.’
Now that I think about it, although I’ve bumped into him at Midnight’s Children the play, I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice before. As usual, it’s not quite how I imagined it.
Here’s a lame, anti-epic review of Shalimar the Clown, which I rather enjoyed, in the NYT. I place it far above Fury and just a hair below his best work, but it’s a clear return to form.
Cascading clauses are a Rushdie trademark; they can be taken as a manifestation of abundant imagination or as a symptom of poor writerly discipline.. It’s hard, though, to see them as anything but laziness when they’re misapplied…
As a rule, Rushdie’s characters lack a plausible inner life; instead they have bizarre quirks, unusual looks or magical powers, like the figures in a fable… For the creation of such a description-mad writer, Rushdie’s Pachigam remains stubbornly hazy: How big is it? How developed? How many rooms do the houses have and what are they made of? Do they have electricity? Are the roads paved? Your guess, even if you haven’t read the book, is as good as mine. [Link]
Yes, and please specify the width of the caulking in the bathrooms. Reviewer please. This kind of dis on Rushdie is not only widespread, it’s absurd. Don’t hate on the book just because you don’t dig the genre. Westerns don’t have a lot of interior dialogue either. Rushdie’s style is very male, and his stories, like Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain, are sweeping, masculine epics with strong, idealized women. Sometimes you’re in the mood for circumscribed domestic weepies, sometimes you’re not.
Congrats to our hottie stepsister Pardon My Hindi for finally launching a tee and tank store featuring Raag*’s luscious designs. Unlike our graphically-challenged asses, they actually feature original artwork:
He’s also posted a beautifully designed online magazine with photos of a Bombay circus, his exploits tagging the LES with babu stickers and an interview with Koushik Ghosh, who’s got a new downbeat album coming out on the same label as Peanut Butter Wolf:
Koushik specializes in making that hazy, hip-hop-based downbeat sh*t that you could easily compare to contemporaries such as Four Tet (who released Koushik’s first single on his Text label), RJD2, and DJ Shadow. What sets Koushik apart from the others is a beautiful ’60s psych-pop element that tends to pervade throughout. [Link]
Man with rubber fetish keeps the hits coming: Would it surprise you to learn that the world’s leading condom designer is Indian?
Dr. Alla Venkata Krishna Reddy is the designer of at least three successful specialty condoms (the Pleasure Plus, the Inspiral and the Trojan Twisted Pleasure) and one female condom (the V-Amour). The tragedy of his head-onistic genius is that he’s completely wrapped up in I. Pee litigation (via Boing Boing). He’s getting shafted by his own patents — it’s autolitigious stimulation.
Reddy’s great contribution to the universe of condom design… [was that] Reddy viewed them as devices that could help enhance male pleasure…
… Reddy’s first condom company failed in the mid-’90s and he lost control of his patents in a bankruptcy auction… He returned to his native India and continued to tweak his innovative designs, and with the help of partners in the United States, soon reentered the American market, first with the Inspiral, and then with the [Trojan] Twisted Pleasure… So, tragically, Reddy is being sued for violating his own patents. [Link]
Randy Reddy [was] dubbed the ‘Leonardo’ of condomsReddy started with a condom with a pouch at the end, progressing to an unholy spiral and then two in the latest incarnation. It’s like Gillette razors, pretty soon there’ll be five spirals with built-in vibration 
They’ve sold well and won awards from such paragons of hard news as Cosmo, Men’s Health and Maxim:
“When I rolled it on, my penis looked like Marvin the Martian,” says a staffer. “But when I took a look in the middle of things, the extra fabric had twisted itself into a pinwheel shape. It actually lives up to its name…” [Link]Dr Reddy [was] dubbed the “Leonardo” of condoms by Adam Glickman, president of Condomania… [Link]
(NSFW after the jump) Continue reading
SAJA presents
 |
| West Indies Records |
Building Bridges – The Indo-Caribbean Diaspora
… a panel discussion about the culture of the Indian communities in Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, New York City, and beyond. With photography, Caribbean food…
- Rohit Jagessar, owner RBC Radio, historian, film director, “Guyana 1838″…
- Ramin Ganeshram, journalists & author of “Sweet Hands: Island Cooking From Trinidad and Tobago”
- Preston Merchant, documentary photographer
- Annetta Seecharran, executive director, South Asian Youth Action! (SAYA!)
- Karna Singh, director, Heritage & Preservation Program, Rajkumari Cultural Center
- Darrel Sukdeo, freelance journalist (moderator)
Also check out this gallery of 45s sung by Indo-Guyanese musicians.
I know of only a few people in the world doing pop art or Web design 
incorporating Bollywood kitsch, and we had at least two of them at the wonderful Brooklyn meetup on Sunday. (Arzan the hobbyist chef played heeeero. He slaved over the stove for four hours making dhansak, kebabs and delicious flan-like custard.) An ill-fated piece of Skylab could have taken out a significant part of the worldwide Bollykitsch talent pool. And then where would we be without snarky, arty, phillum-referencing tees?
There’s a dark side to all this. Like the children of atheists and their relationship to religion, Turbanhead’s babies will never know Bollywood irony-free. Like the preacher’s daughter, Pardon My Hindi’s future kids may rebel and turn into weepy Chunky Pandey fans. How ironic that would be. I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with K. There’s no escaping the ferric fate of the children of the kitsch.
I bring this up because one of my very favorite Bollykitsch artists, a Dutchman named Johan Manschot who did Diesel’s kitsch Indian theme a couple of seasons ago, has just sold out published a mainstream coffee table book on Bollywood. It’s called Behind the Scenes of Hindi Cinema:
… I’ve published a brand-new book… about Indian Cinema… [it] has been launched on the international press conference of the IIFA awards in Amsterdam… [I] was the one who [presented] the book to Mr. Amitabh Bachchan! And… presented the first signed copy to the alderman of Amsterdam…
The Web site, which uses a Bombay street scene theme, has song snippets and video clips from some of the classics. Here are some book samples. You can buy the glossy, $35 book here.
Whether or not you’re into the coffee table format, you must check out Manschot’s art.
Taut, tested arguments falling into place at long last are beautiful to behold. 
Like any good debater, Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys, has finally got his case down. First, talk smack about India’s place in the world:
Q. Are you worried about the outcry over outsourcing in America?
A. What’s happening is pretty fundamental. If you go back to the 1830’s, India and China were 50 percent of the world’s G.D.P., and then they missed the entire revolution of industry. So if you take a long view of this game, it’s just part of the process. [Link]
That ‘missed the revolution’ turn of phrase is a nice little euphemism for the Gothic horror of the British Raj.
Second, deftly position the inevitable outsourcing question as non-unique, overheated arm-flapping:
Q. What do you say to people who think that globalization will inevitably harm the United States work force?
A. Every time Wal-Mart replaces a person at a checkout counter with an automatic machine they’re eliminating thousands of jobs. This is one more facet of that, except it’s more emotional because instead of a checkout counter machine replacing Steve Smith, some kid in Bangalore is replacing Steve Smith. You can point to that kid and say, “He took my job.” [Link]
If you go back to the 1830’s, India and China were 50 percent of the world’s GDPFinally, remind Americans of their own core values:
Q. Does it feel odd to find yourself lecturing Americans on the joys of capitalism?
A. You guys told us for so many years to cut out this socialist rubbish and go to free markets. We came to free markets and now you’re telling us, “Stop, don’t come…” [Link]
This guy is better at jawboning than the politicians. Next step: mayor of New York?
Abhi posted earlier about Sri Lanka objecting to high-res satellite imagery of sensitive government sites on Google Earth.
At the time, Indian officials were also worried but had given up trying to block it. Ironically, the post came on one of India’s two biggest military parade holidays:
India agrees. Reuters quotes an anonymous security official there as confirming that “the issue of satellite imagery had been discussed at the highest level but the government had concluded that ‘technology cannot be stopped’…” [Link]
There’s apparently been a change of heart behind the red sandstone in Delhi. You can’t stop technology, but you can lean on companies. India has escalated the issue to the man who used to run India’s missile program:
Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam expressed concern Saturday about a free mapping program from Google Inc., warning it could help terrorists by providing satellite photos of potential targets… The Google site contains clear aerial photos of India’s parliament building, the president’s house and surrounding government offices in New Delhi. There are also some clear shots of Indian defense establishments… [Link]
India’s not the only one complaining:
The governments of South Korea and Thailand and lawmakers in the Netherlands have expressed similar concerns… South Korean newspapers said Google Earth provides images of the presidential Blue House and military bases in the country, which remains technically at war with communist North Korea. The North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon is among sites in that country displayed on the service. [Link]
This issue is similar to that of the deliberate error injected by civilian GPS satellites to prevent use by enemy missiles. On one hand, Google fuzzes out sensitive U.S. sites, so why not let other legitimate governments submit these requests as well? On the other, the public has a right to know, and foreign providers of satellite data will always step into the gap.
I come down on the side of consistency. As a private company rather than an extension of the U.S. government, Google should act even-handedly, no matter which approach it takes.