Author Archives: manish

Over my head

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This post is about part-desi actresses who pass for white or Arab in mediocre movies which you’ve actually seen, whose ethnicity you learn later, then feel a really big d’oh! coming on, like Homer Simpson missing the email about an overturned tanker-trailer full of jelly donuts.

Exhibit A: Zuleikha Robinson, the Bedouin love interest in Hidalgo and daughter of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

My father is English and my mother is mostly Indian and a little bit of Burmese and a little bit of Arabic… I was born in England and then I moved to San Francisco, then we moved to Malaysia, and Thailand, and Singapore. By this time I was thirteen and I left to go to boarding school in England.

I hope she means Arab. Robinson is currently filming the part of Moushmi, the love interest in The Namesake.

Exhibit B: Rhona Mitra, the New York friend in Sweet Home Alabama (and Lara Croft).

… my dad is from Calcutta. But I’m also part Irish. It’s a confusing heritage. I never know if I want to be running across the fields with no clothes on or sitting in the pub drinking Guinness… we used to nick holy wine from the church and drink it in the potato patch at the back of the school.

Hmm, yes, that’s definitely convent school behavior. Whether Indian or Irish, I can’t say. Here’s a fun quote out of context (thanks, Chandni):

Q: But you have had your breasts enlarged.

A: Yes, but my dad had nothing to do with it… apparently a load of people phoned up the hospital where he works, the next day asking for tits like Rhona Mitra.

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Fear and loathing in Austin

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The infamous Ajai Raj is an English major and campus journalist who idolizes Hunter S. Thompson and swears like Cartman. He complains about being busted for pot:

The Pigfucking Establishment had other plans. My roommate and I were awakened at 3 A.M. by two grinning Austin Police Department officers and a greasy-haired fat fuck of an RA who gets his jollies by hanging around with his thumb in his ass until he smells marijuana so he can inform the Justice League in exchange for a free raffle ticket. No shit– as the cops cuffed me for having an ounce of grass, this fucker got a chance to win a free microwave. Or to suck off a sheriff, as far as I know or care.

I was led in handcuffs into a waiting room full of crazy yelling degenerates, wife beaters, whores, thieves, and contemptible crying cunts… my balls were fondled by leering criminals posing as representatives of justice… according to our “justice” system, a straight-A college kid holding a bag of weed is as bad a criminal as a guy who beats his wife and kid. I learned that in Texas, a cop can decide to arrest you for no reason at all and you can sit in jail for 72 hours before you’re even charged with a crime…

The law is sticking all kinds of fingers in my asshole right now, but with a few savvy business deals, I can plow through this shit and come out smelling like roses. Ironic, really–to get out of this drug charge, I’m forced to arrange bigger drug deals than I ever intended to. C’est la vie, non?

Raj worships the original gonzo journalist…

Hunter S. was, and is, my hero. No other writer has had a greater impact on my way of thinking…

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Thugs on film

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The Daily Show covered a UK campaign event, contrasting the fully-scripted campaign commercials Dubya passes off as town halls with the brutal British ones. A desi guy in the audience virtually yelled at the British prime minister about the Iraq war:

That is a lie. You lied to this country, and that’s why we can’t support you the following election.

Wow, actual political commentary instead of rear entry and a hand job. So Ajai Raj continues to squat on his dubious throne.

Watch the video. The back of the hand is at 2:03 in the clip.

Separately, Raj got his mug splashed all over Fox News. Ann Coulter started off gracious:

He asked one of the more intelligent questions from the liberals… I like question and answer… It was no worse than the other ones…

But then her tone turned nasty:

Challenging questions are a little more fun than someone standing up and engaging in Tourette’s syndrome at the mike, but that’s kind of funny too… Who was he trying to persuade with that?

She added sarcastically:

Oh, and he’s attractive… I can’t really tell them apart. Good-lookin’ guy like that doesn’t really stand out in any leftist crowd…

Watch the video.

Previous Ajai Raj posts: 1, 2, 3

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Russian Bollywood

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Amitabh Bachchan said on The Charlie Rose Show last week that Bollywood has crazed fans in Africa and Russia:

… very surprisingly… the entire northern belt of Africa. So Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, down to Egypt… And Russia. Massive. Massive… When I first went to Moscow for the first time, I was received by Russian female fans, who were actually dressed in our Indian dress and wore the bindi and the jewelry and everything, and spoke Hindi… and said that they were going to university to study the language so that they could follow our films. Remarkable.

When I visited Mockba, a young couple I had dinner with proudly opened a video drawer with nearly a hundred Hindi movies filed meticulously.

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M.I.A., fashion victim

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M.I.A. is now officially overexposed, but this Pitchfork interview is fascinating (via Chapati Mystery). A musician with something real to say: she’s making some PR flack very happy right now. She’s the anti-Anna Kournikova, with a story that’s more substantial than her stage presence.

She highlights the perils of highlights:

I have brown bits in my hair, and my Mom was practically on her knees screaming, “Nooo! You have to dye your hair before you leave the house or I’ll kill myself!” I’d be like, “What are you freaking out about?” and she’d explain the Tamil Tiger girls have been in the jungle for so long that their hair goes brown, and if you walk out like this, you’re going to get shot because people will think you’re a Tamil Tiger girl…”

Why bikes are banned in LTTE-controlled areas of Sri Lanka:

Bicycles are banned, gasoline’s banned, there’s no motor transportation… because they think you can use the inner bicycle tubes to make landmines. They banned rubber bands, so the Tigers apparently used inner tubes to make rubber bands. So they banned the whole bicycle! And that, to a Sri Lankan, is the main mode of transport…

Her dad is a Dylan fan, and terrorist is too crude a label:

When I watch President Bush on the telly going, we need to fight the axis of evil and kill these terrorists by all means necessary, I just go, “Shit, poor Dad.” In the 70s all he wanted to do was be a revolutionary like Bob Dylan. He had idealistic views about changing the world for the better and fighting for people who don’t have a voice– the same thing that Bob Dylan wanted to do. Now, he’s like this straight-up, evil terrorist; a gunned masked man with a semi-automatic ready to take down and behead people. It’s not like that; it’s really not. It’s so much more complex. They’ve made a cartoon character out of a terrorist…

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What Would Rushdie Do?

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Salman Rushdie recently jawboned a NYT reporter for calling his wife a common hustler. Today, that same reporter wrote about India Fashion Week. The good news: Delhi is in the NYT. The bad: Guy Trebay sounds like the condescending love child of Lord Macaulay and Rudyard Kipling:

On one hand there are the neo-minimalists, deploying traditional handicrafts with restraint and confidence. On the other are designers whose response, when presented with a blank slate and access to those same crafts traditions, takes the form of horror vacui. More is more, in other words, with a dollop of too much. For every even marginally subtle designer like Mr. Varma, there are five others whose work looks as if it is destined for a camel fair in Rajasthan…

Earth to Trebay: it’s an ornamented culture. You don’t see people dinging the Chinese for silk mandarin jackets. And when Tamarind goes with an all-beige, Ralph Lauren-meets-Sears comforter theme, some of us see that as a downgrade.

Trebay expands:

“I’m here to see clothes that speak to a larger, more global vision,” said Michael Fink, a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue. “I keep saying to people: ‘Designers come from abroad, take your fabrics and crafts and present extraordinary clothes. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you doing that here?’ ” Mr. Fink was not alone among those hopefuls who made the trek from the United States or Europe only to find disappointment in collections not yet likely to translate for foreign markets…

Translation: we do Indian clothes better than the Indians. Yes, people, why can’t you rip off your shit for Kmart like we do? You water down your milk, we water down your yoga. You dilute your petrol, we dilute your tunics. By the time we’re done, nobody’ll remember they were ever called anything else. What’s a little bastardized fashion between friends?

But wait, he’s not done yet:

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The power of the purse

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India’s top court is urging that the government make male new hires who are married disclose whether they accepted dowry and threaten gaol time if they did:

… a candidate aspiring for a government job, and those already in service, would have to provide information about any dowry taken by them. Under the anti-dowry law, the custom is punishable by a jail term.

This is another example of governments influencing markets through their own purchasing power, e.g. 55 mph speed limits, education testing, minority set-asides, open source software and so on. The public University of California system even forced a rewrite of the venerable SAT test. To the poor kids struggling through the new essay section this spring, y’all can thank Berkeley and UCLA for that.

It’s not clear to me how the anti-dowry plan would be enforceable. Ideally, it would work better than mandatory drug testing, which created a cottage industry in fake urine samples. At its best, it could save future Nisha Sharmas from dowry plight by changing what’s socially acceptable and giving grooms a legitimate excuse to turn aside demands by their families.

I approve of government using market incentives in addition to blunt, sometimes ineffective legislation. Maybe they can issue tax credits for Bollywood Costume Design That’s Not Blindingly Tacky. Or the Padmashree for Novels Without Saris or Mehndi on the Cover.

Now that’s government to be proud of.

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Rum-based lubricant

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TTG reminisces about the good old days before liberalization:

Option 2 was a bribe at the beginning of it all, a one year wait, and then a monthly bribe (usually in the form of a bottle of ‘Old Monk’ rum, presented to the local linesman) to ensure the smooth working of your phone. Everytime it rained, you knew your phone would die, along with your connection to the outside world. And every once in a while, somebody would bribe the linesman, who would then… allow the briber to make calls on your line, for free.

Who knew it took rum to lubricate the Indian phone system?

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