Author Archives: manish

Manipur’s Bamiyan

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The fundamentalists claiming to preserve their cultures are often the ones responsible for torching them:

Protesters demanding the introduction of Manipur’s ancient Mayek script set fire to the Central Library in Manipur’s capital Imphal on Wednesday. Officials say many of Manipur’s most ancient texts were among the books destroyed by the fire… Analysts say… the library was burnt because almost all Manipuri books preserved in it were written in Bengali script.

The Cauvery riots, the Karnataka cinema shakedowns — language stirs intense passions in India. But wishing that history were different doesn’t make it so. I could close my eyes and wish away the British Raj. Open them, and there lies Victoria Terminus still.

Previous post here.

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Midnight’s child

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Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf is finally getting his birth certificate — from a New Delhi hospital:

Officials are set to present Pervez Musharraf with a certificate showing that he was born on 11 August 1942 at a maternity hospital in the city… “Begum Zarin became very emotional during her visit to the hospital and she could even recall the name of the medical superintendent of the hospital in those days and some of the staff members,” said hospital medical superintendent Indira Yadav. Delhi’s city council confirmed that an entry for the Pakistani leader’s birth had been found in the hospital’s records and a certificate was being drawn up.

August 11, eh? It’s a pity he was born four days early, or no one would’ve ever forgotten his birthday. Besides, his punctuality virtually disqualifies him from being desi 🙂

Like Rushdie’s protagonists, Musharraf also has superpowers. Only his came from sacking the judiciary and rewriting the constitution.

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Neobans

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The Neo-Taliban running Pakistan’s fundamentalist parties aren’t content with banning food at weddings. Now they’ve figured out how to recruit more sexually-repressed young men. They want to ban all ads featuring women:

Last week the six-party religious alliance that constitutes one-fifth of the country’s parliament, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) introduced a bill in parliament seeking a complete ban on women in advertising… It proposes one-year imprisonment for any ad agency that uses women models…

The neobans (for banning is what they do) want to turn the clock back to when only men could perform in public, teaching an entire generation of boys to dress in drag. They yearn for when NAMBLA-like encounters were the norm as long as female chastity was protected. Of course, women were treated as mere property and were at much higher risk of rape and murder, but it was all in the name of purity, right? It was all for the noble goal of keeping people’s minds off sex… by depriving them of it.

Yeah, that worked out well. About as well as another movement which went against fundamental human nature.

Of course, the neobans won’t be content with banning female images. They’ll go after the right of women to drive, then to vote. All Pakistan would be left with is rifle-toting bullies in pickup trucks beating up men without beards and women without burqas. Been there, done that, seen it on F*dCountry.com.

The more that a religious strain teaches personal spirituality, the less that political middlemen can manipulate the faithful.

Previous posts: 1, 2

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Sending jobs to America

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The F-16 debate to date has focused on the military balance between India and Pakistan. Many SM commenters have noted that even though India will be allowed to buy U.S. arms, it’s unlikely to do so because the U.S. has been an unreliable supplier.

Today a NYT story took the opposite tack: F-16 sales to India are good because they’ll keep the production line open in case the U.S. military ever places another order.

“The reopening of sales to Pakistan and the opening of sales to India extends the life of the production line, the Fort Worth operation and the entire F-16 supply chain throughout the country. It also provides the Air Force with a warm production line should it want extra F-16’s.”

Lockheed is talking like a business, not saber-rattling like the U.S. government:

“If India’s requirements are beyond any existing fighters, we are prepared to make upgraded F-16’s to India’s specifications with complete transfer of technology,” Mike Kelly, a Lockheed senior executive said in an interview last month with the Press Trust of India, a New Delhi news agency. “We have, in the past, taken up building of such exclusive fighters for the U.A.E. and we are prepared to manufacture F-16’s to India’s special requirements.”

India already writes software for Boeing and Lockheed :

Boeing… is already relying on Indian companies to provide software for its new commercial jet, the 787 Dreamliner…

The U.S. as hopeful suitor: it’s a newly respectful tone in the media’s handling of this story. Continue reading →

Kitsch-mish

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For your kitschy pleasure:

‘Indian God.’ A music vid of Ganesh as petulant recording artist.

I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, baby that’s a fact
I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, girl I want you baaack
How can you leave an Indian god, baby that’s fucked up…

Fuckin’ Indian god, man, you can’t leave that.
It’s too good, mmm!

He said he’s an Indian god, baby, not a fuckin’ songwriter. Watch the video.

‘Handy Hindus’ finger puppets. They’re Hindu gods done up Elmo / Sesame Street style in cheap plastic.

‘Hindi Bendy’ toy. Here’s a quick way to make money: take a boring old toy, slap on a bindi and add some extra arms.

Here’s their entire section of Hindu products; Archie McPhee sells novelty products by mail-order:

“I study customer’s actual orders. I see 100 voodoo dolls going to a software firm in Palo Alto. What does this mean? A Manhattan buyer wants every nun and Catholic religious item we carry and wants them by air. What’s the rush? And here’s yet another order to Japan. What are they doing over there with all this glow-in-the-dark string they order?”

Lest you think they specifically tweak Hindus, you should see the rabbi punching puppet and the bobble-headed Jesus. They don’t sell Islamic novelties, can’t imagine why.

Mo’ mehndi, mo’ problems

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Night of Henna claims to be the first-ever Pakistani-American film, which if true would be remarkably overdue (thanks, Turbanhead). It looks to be more arranged marriage with bad accents yadda yadda. Will she marry a desi, or will she stay with her white beau? It’s what we all struggled with — back in the days of Motley Crue.

Pooja Kumar, the print ad model for Bombay Dreams, stars. Craig Marker, from the most excellent Neil LaBute play The Shape of Things, co-stars, as does male model Suhail Tayeb. DJ Cheb-i-Sabbah did the soundtrack, which is promising; he does a soulful take on ‘Kaise Kaise.’

Watch the trailer. Here are showtimes. The film plays NYC’s Imaginasian starting Apr. 22.

Reclaiming Apu

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Seven.11 turned out to be insanely good, and if you’re in NYC you have only five days left to see it. This series of seven short plays, each 11 minutes long is absolutely hilarious, and the performers were obviously having a blast.

I love this deeply about NYC, you can see desi American scripts you can’t see performed anywhere else: it’s custom culture. Anuvab Pal’s piece was good, as usual, but the consistency was surprising — maybe five or six of the seven microplays were really, really good, or at the very least funny, and the rest is forgivable. The off-off-Broadway aspect of the whole endeavor lowers expectations, but I could see some of these, fleshed out, doing well on a large stage.

Soonderella is destined to be a cult hit. It’s definitely the only desi parody musical I’ve ever seen. Debargo Sanyal’s stammering, braying swain F-F-Fofatlal brought down the house. Pal’s Paris is a sharper, more malignant Before Sunrise; as in Chaos Theory, he has quite the ear for the advance and reverse of flirtation, it’s love as war zone. My only real complaint is the purely classicist flavor of the references, Sartre is no longer a young Turk.

Color Me Desi is a takeoff on Goodness Gracious Me’s rude boyz, and S.A.M.O.S.A. (South Asian Men Organizing Sci-Fi somethings) is a gut-busting Asian version of Napoleon Dynamite. And the in-jokes were fabulous. One actor had a line in the first piece, ‘C’est la vie — it’s your line.’ In the final play, the same actors: ‘C’est la vie.’ ‘Deja vu?’ Winky tone, blink and you missed it. 

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Happy Vaisakhi!

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Amardeep has a rundown of this harvest festival and Sikh New Year. Lohri is another favorite festival of mine: baking like the planet Mercury, searing bonfire on one side, frigid night on the other and bhangra all around the fire.

Here’s a snapshot I took at the 2003 Sikh Day parade in NYC. It’s the Madison Square Park tower in a playground mirror. This year’s parade will be held on Sat., Apr. 30.

Flaming purple Kali

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Sounds like a cocktail, no? Pixar artist Sanjay Patel illustrates Hindu mythology in a style reminiscent of Suck, Demian 5, Virgin and Bewitched (thanks, Turbanhead). It’s gorgeous work, although his Rama does look a bit much like Hrithik Roshan, and any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch.

Patel’s site says he came up with its name, Ghee Happy, via obscure analogy: reducing the rich strokes of Hindu iconography to their essence is like clarifying butter into ghee. He self-published a children’s book of Hindu gods and also sells 11″x17″ prints on his site. Check it out if you have any little ones in need of full-color indoctrination or just dig the visual style.

Update: Drawn has more (thanks, Harry). A commenter there says:

We were actually joking with Sanjay that he SHOULD do this with every religion, but I guess the problem with the monotheistic religions is that there would only be ONE page in the book…

Mamma!

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We at Sepia Mutiny are in favor of equal opportunity boobage. A couple of years ago, this oddity went out over the wire (via BridalBeer and Gene Expression):

Mr B Wijeratne, from Walapanee, near Colombo, took to breastfeeding her soon after his wife died three months ago while giving birth to their second child.

His elder daughter, 18-month-old Nisansala Madhushani, was so used to her mother’s milk that she would not take formula milk. Mr Wijeratne told Sinhalese language newspaper Lankadeepa: “My child would reject the powdered milk I tried feeding through a bottle. “Unable to see her cry I offered my breast. That’s when I discovered that I could breastfeed her…”

Dr Kamal Jayasinghe, a spokesman for the hospital, said: “Men with a hyperactive prolactine hormone can produce breast milk.”

Wikipedia explains:

It is not so often understood that [human males] also have mammary glands… Under the appropriate hormonal stimulus… the mammary glands of human males can also produce milk… The volume… will be small relative to the amount that a female can produce.

The most common circumstance under which lactation is induced is when hormonal treatments are given to men suffering from prostate cancer… Male-to-female transsexuals may also produce milk due to the hormones they take to reshape their bodies. Extreme stress has also been known to be a cause of male lactation, as evidenced upon the return of American POWs from the Korean and Vietnam Wars… It is also possible for males (and females) to induce lactation through constant massage and simulated ‘sucking’ of the nipple over a long period of time (months).

From an engineering standpoint, this is actually fairly cool. Just think of all the unused capabilities your body’s hiding away for when hormonal switches are flipped. It’s a pity none of them are superpowers. Beyond suckling, that is.

There’s a more disturbing story in this vein from India here (not for the squeamish). Now can we get back to posting Aishwarya photos?