Author Archives: manish

We’ve got a live one!

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We’ve got a new inductee for the Exotica Hall of Shame. This Chicago Sun-Times review of a new Chicago pop opera called Sita Ram is out to set some kind of density record for exotica-spew on Desilandia (thanks, WGIIA):

Adding to the spicy flavor are Scott C. Neale’s brilliantly colored street signs of India, Mara Blumenfeld’s curry-tinted costumes (many imported from India), Chris Binder’s deft lighting, plus shadow puppets and exotic instruments. There are moments when it feels like you are watching a traveling troupe that has set up shop in the center of an Indian village, and you half expect a cow or water buffalo to wander through. [Link]

I see that Jai Uttal is involved in this project. Say no more.

“Sita Ram” is the creation of director-writer David Kersnar and Grammy-nominated composer and co-lyricist Jai Uttal… [Link]

Hedy Weiss, you are dead to me

Related posts: Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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Marina Budhos reading today in Manhattan

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Author Marina Budhos tackles the post-9/11 immigration crackdown in her new young adult novel Ask Me No Questions (thanks, Pooja and SAJA). She’s reading today in Manhattan at 6:30pm (note corrected time). Here’s the blurb:

For fourteen-year-old Nadira and eighteen-year-old Aisha, these are the words that define their lives. Nadira and her family are illegal aliens, fleeing to the Canadian border – running from the country they thought would one day be their home. For years, they have lived on expired visas in New York City, hoping they can realize their dream of becoming legal citizens of the United States. But after 9/11, everything changes. Suddenly, being Muslim means being dangerous. A suspected terrorist. And when Nadira’s father is arrested and detained at the border, she and her sister, Aisha are sent back to Queens, and told to carry on, as if everything is the same.

But of course nothing is the same. Nadira and Aisha live in fear they’ll have to return to a Bangladesh they hardly know. Aisha, once the academic star, falls apart. Now it’s up to Nadira to find a way out.

Budhos previously wrote The Professor of Light, House of Waiting, and Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers:

Jhumpa Lahiri and Marina Budhos

Marina Budhos was born in Queens, New York, the child of an Indo-Guyanese father and a Jewish-American mother who met in the 1950s when her father worked for the Indian Consulate in Manhattan…

She was a Fulbright Scholar in India, during which she wrote about the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India for The Nation. She has also covered international news for Ms… [Link]

… Marina Budhos’s second novel, The Professor of Light, [is] a vivid account of a young American girl’s troubled relationship with her brilliant but disturbed Guyanese-Indian father.

Born and raised in New York City, Budhos is the great grand-daughter of indentured laborers who left India for Guyana about a hundred years ago… [Link]

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Waris X

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Movie candyman A. Lane has just revealed more info about Waris Singh Ahluwalia’s part in Spike Lee’s new film Inside Man. He reports in the New Yorker that Ahluwalia plays Vikram Walia, a Sikh hostage in a bank heist who’s disrespected by the cops coming to save him. It’s his second character named Vikram:

Magazine photo shoot: two hours

Sauntering around armor room in a cape: priceless

The more it sags as a thriller, the more it jabs and jangles as a study of racial abrasion. A hostage is released, and an armed cop shouts, “He’s an Arab!” The hostage replies, “I’m a Sikh,” and you can hear the weariness at the edges of his fear…

“Grand Illusion” offered the ennobling suggestion that national divisions were delusory, and that our common humanity can throw bridges across any social gulf. To which Lee would reply, Nice idea. Go tell it to the guy who just had his turban pulled off by the cops. [Link]

… the ethnic vaudeville is pure Spike…. in-your-face all the time: Inside Man resounds with stray assertions of irate identity like… “What the fuck–give me my turban!” The latter demand, delivered by a Sikh bank employee to the cops who are questioning him, readily segues into a diatribe against post-9-11 profiling, the onrushing complaint coming to an abrupt bada-boom when [Denzel] Washington’s partner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) dryly observes, “I bet you can get a cab, though.” [Link]

There are a couple of references to institutional racism and post-9/11 angst… [Link]

Imagine that, a caper flick which discards the cliché of only casting white or black actors:

Through the main protagonists and bank hostages, Lee presents a multi-racial panoramic view of New York at present. [Link]

It may seem like a predictable cliche, especially to the director’s detractors, that he so intently underlines the ethnicity of even the most minor characters; ‘What the fuck — give me my turban!’much is made of the rainbow brigade that constitutes the hostage group: the white woman who talks loudly on her cell phone; the young Sikh hostage who, when released, strenuously complains of being mistaken for an Arab; the glam Albanian sexpot who knows how to play her cards, and the young black hostage whose ultraviolent “Kill Dat N*” computer game gives pause even to Russell. [Link]

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Team North Korea, World Cop-Outs

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North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il has just made up a new reason why he’s building nukes instead of disarming: because of the recent India-U.S. nuclear energy deal.

‘I’m so lonely’

Last week, [North Korea] warned that it had the right to launch a pre-emptive strike… The spokesman also said it would be a “wise” step for the United States to cooperate on nuclear issues with North Korea in the same way it does with India… The accord was reached even though New Delhi has not signed the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. North Korea has withdrawn from the treaty and condemned the United States for giving India “preferential” treatment. [Link]

So he claims he’s going to continue the North Korea nuclear weapons program, begun over 13 years ago, because of a two-week-old treaty. Fabricating facts out of thin air to fit a pre-determined policy — where have I heard this before?

The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. [Link – former CIA senior analyst for the Middle East in Foreign Affairs]

And no, I’m not comparing Dubya with the dictator of an internationally isolated police state. As an American, Dubya would never condone torturing and locking up people without trial.

Related posts: How they learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb, The worst of ‘Times’

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IndianDonating.com

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This NYT story about single women attempting artificial insemination explains what happens when a 38-year-old, blond, female advertising exec starts browsing sperm donor profiles. Yup, one of them turns out to be desi:

She loves dandy lions

As I sat across her desk, she pulled up the donors’ descriptions on her computer. One was Indian: “He’s got black straight hair,” she told me, “brown eyes, he’s six feet but he only weighs 150. Which is good. If I have a girl, she wants to be skinny, and if she can eat what she wants, that’s perfect. You don’t have to get in fights about food.” The Indian donor’s complexion was described as “medium/dark,” and he had proven fertility. He had a master’s degree in business. He was bilingual, Hindu, single and liked traveling and music. His family-health history looked good. [Link]

I can see their first meeting now. He comes out of the kitchen in a salwar kameez with a dupatta over his head, tea tray in hand, eyes downcast and shy. She ticks ‘wheatish complexion’ on her clipboard and says, ‘Beta, please walk around the room’ to make sure he’s not lame. She opens his mouth and checks his molars, hocks and withers.

Sure, everything looks good on paper now, but what happens 18 years down the road? They need to put out a public health warning:

YOUR TALL, STUDLY HADESI CHILD
MAY GROW UP ADDICTED TO
BADMINTON, PAAN AND TEEN PATTI

This story shouldn’t surprise anyone though. With the conservative public morés of traditional desi culture, hundreds of millions of desi men happily spill surplus gametes outside the regular channels. But this chap was the only one enterprising enough to get paid for it.

Is he desi? Oh, indubitably.

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Sniff ’n scratch

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A new breed of NYC subway card vending machines which can sniff trace amounts of explosives on customers’ hands is about to be tested in Baltimore.

K9 agent

Automatically scanning all subway riders is definitely the way to go, but IMO this is the wrong technical approach:

Two companies have teamed up to develop a machine that can detect whether the straphanger who just touched the start button or screen has recently handled explosives. Alerts – including a digital image of the person at the machine and the type of substance detected – can be quickly transmitted to law enforcement officials, company officials said. The device can be programmed to lock turnstiles at the station… A pilot project to test its effectiveness in a mass transit system is expected to be launched in Baltimore in the coming weeks. [Link]

The companies involved may be going this way because there are fewer card vending machines than subway turnstiles, and there’s more space inside each one to cram in sniffers. But this method so indirect, it’s like looking for a lost quarter under a streetlight instead of where you actually dropped it.

First, a terrorist smart enough to build a bomb is probably smart enough to buy a subway card from any newsstand or convenience store. Second, trace sniffing seems like it could be easily circumvented by using gloves and changing clothes (pure conjecture, this is not my field). Third, there’s a risk of false alarms from people who work with explosives-like substances, such as gardeners who use fertilizer, and those who work with explosives as part of their jobs, such as the mole-men currently digging new water tunnels in NYC.

NYC’s bag check security theater seem to have faded away after the post-7/7 hysteria, but subway cities still need to scan for actual bombs, not indirect conjectures of WMD-related program activities. Entrances and turnstiles are the right places to put these scanners, not easily-bypassed vending machines. And profiling is just as useless — based on actual empirical evidence in NYC, we’d be targeting white male software developers and Latino ex-cops:

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Post your events here

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Since the News tab turned out so well, here’s a new Events tab for your pleasure (thanks, Abhi). Readings, plays, premieres, your own mini-meetups — feel free to post away.

Unlike the rest of the blog, events are sorted forward by time. That means upcoming events are shown first so you can see what’s happening in the next couple of days. Click the address to get a map to the event. Past events expire automatically.

The subscription feed will be up in the next few days.

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Dancing, not shuffling (updated)

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A new Cartoon Network series, Minoriteam, aims to be a sendup of racism. But it’s not clear whether it’s mocking stereotypes or just profiting off them. I’m going to assume the humor just doesn’t come across well in print:

‘By chutney, you’re right!’

Created by Adam de la Peña, Todd James and Peter Girardi — all alumni of the ribald Comedy Central puppet series “Crank Yankers” — “Minoriteam” is a provocative animated show that sends up bigotry. It makes its debut tomorrow night on Cartoon Network’s late-night “Adult Swim” block of animated shows…

Non-Stop is the alter ego of Dave Raj, an Indian, former professional skateboarder turned convenience store clerk who is incapable of being killed by firearms. After having been shot 235 times during various attempted robberies, his skin is saturated with lead, which serves as a bulletproof armor of sorts; when necessary, his skateboard morphs into a flying carpet. [Link]

If you’re keeping score at home, we have one half-naked, turbaned Indian convenience store clerk on a flying carpet, one Chinese laundry owner with a thick accent, one Mexican gardener who can’t speak English, one angry, promiscuous black man and one avaricious Jew. How subversive.

The team’s leader, Dr. Wang, is an Asian, wheelchair-bound mathematical genius with a freakishly large brain. He speaks with a heavy Chinese accent and is in the laundry business…

Landon K. Dutton, a black man awkwardly teaching women’s studies at Male University, turns into Fasto, the world’s fastest man. His extreme rage propels him to travel at breakneck speeds. When not fighting crime he spends his time “studying” the opposite sex; during one episode, it takes him only seconds to satisfy a roomful of Thai prostitutes.

Richard Escartin, a Mexican oil baron, trades his tailored suits and silk ties for a giant sombrero and a leaf blower when he becomes El Jefe, Minoriteam’s hardest working member. El Jefe’s blower is no ordinary garden tool. It can suck and blow with deadly force and rip holes through time and space. His kryptonite? Tequila. “I think a lot of people can relate to that,” Mr. de la Peña said.

Neil Horvitz may be a wimpy mail clerk in his early 20’s, but his alter ego, Jewcano, is a muscle-bound 62-year-old who sports an XXXL yarmulke and has all the power of the Jewish faith and a raging volcano. Watch him shoot molten lava from his wrists (move over, Spider-Man)…

Surely someone will be uncomfortable watching a Jewish superhero get aroused while chasing a giant glowing nickel, they said. “But who exactly will it offend?” Mr. de la Peña asked. “I have no idea…” [Link]

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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Mr. Everything Comes from India breaks down the origins of the Irish flag:

Dressing up in color and molesting people while tipsy:

This Holi week
She must be Asian Irish

The official plant is a widely-available magical weed:

Bhang
Shamrock

More specifically, the Irish are like the Punjabis. One is a farming culture where people are warm, like to drink and like to fight. Its men are famed both for toughness and for being mama’s boys. The other sits around singing farmer songs in an unintelligible accent. It used to host a religion-based separatist movement and is now a magnet for outsourcing. I even know of several Irish-Punjabi marriages. No, nothing like each other at all

Éireann go Brách, chak de phatte and belated happy Holi!

Update: Check out these Irish-Indian fusion tracks: ‘Punjab Paddy‘ by Gaelicstorm and Butterflies by conFusion (thanks, Saheli and niki).

Update 2: Post was accidentally deleted, taking the comments down with it. Mea culpa, sorry!

Related post: Holi Day munchies

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S for Sample

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Ignore, ignore, the flick’s a bore. V for Vendetta, an otherwise preposterous, pompous movie, does play an interesting Hindi remix over the closing credits, ‘BKAB‘ by Ethan Stoller. Listen here. Also check out a fellow Chicago musician, Arthi Meera of the luscious voice.

The track mashes up covers of ‘Churake Dil Mera’ from Main Khiladi Tu Anari and ‘Pardesi Jana Nahin’ from Raja Hindustani. It’s all set to a thrash metal beat straight out of a video game, or the video game called XXX which masqueraded as a movie. It reminds me of the Sanskrit track over the credits in Matrix 3, ‘Navras’ by Juno Reactor (thanks, WesternGhaat).

Adapting an earnest graphic novel requires a lighter touch than the Wachowski brothers can muster. Subtlety and allegory demand a fictional veneer. The movie assaults the abuses of Dubya, but it’s almost entirely literal: prisoners wear black hoods and orange jumpsuits, the Koran garners sympathy, there’s a Bill O’Reilly stand-in, the V is an upside-down anarchy symbol, the evil regime’s logo is St. George’s Cross in black. Its treatment of discrimination against gays and lesbians (but not transsexuals) is thoroughly and probably unintentionally camp.

The filmmakers talk down to the audience by dissolving from the present into identically-framed flashback and back again. It’s like those action shots repeated three times in Bollywood flicks, just in case you didn’t get it the first time. The dialogue is full of leaden, soapy howlers, and the audience was unforgiving. Some lines can only be pulled off in noir, not in a brightly-lit room by a Shakespearean fop in a pageboy wig and a geisha mask. A key plot twist is so ludicrous, it had the audience groaning. The action is minimal, V has no real super powers, Natalie Portman coasts on her looks. John Hurt goes way over the top as a raving, spittle-flecked dictator. Poor Hugo Weaving spends the entire film behind masks and prosthetics — scale plus ten for that one.

In the words of the film, these artists use badly-penned lies to show the truth. Like walking in on someone fisting his ham, that’s just awkward all around. It’s the W’s, those exhibitionists again.

Watch the trailer. Here’s the NYT review.

Update: Slate links (thanks, Michael).

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