Author Archives: manish

Portuguesa flips the ‘Bird’

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Desi iPod parody: hot

Nelly Furtado bhangra remix: hot

iPod parody with remix: priceless!

Watch this kick-ass video (via Badmash).

Update: By the way, Furtado dances bhangra and sings in Hindi:

Furtado, a second generation Portuguese-Canadian, grew up in Toronto and Victoria, British Columbia. She was inundated with different cultures. One weekend, she would join friends in Latin dance; the next at an Indian bhangra party; the next celebrating the Chinese New Year.

DJ John von Seggern also did a Nelly vs. Asha Bhosle remix of ‘I’m Like a Bird.’ Some odd remixes are described here, including Enrique Iglesias vs. Asha and Barry White done Bollystyle.

Best of the Best college dance competition (bhangra, raas and fusion), April 2, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Manhattan; details TBA

‘Disappeared’ in ‘Fatal Love’

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‘Disappeared in America,’ a multimedia installation about American Muslims detained in the post-9/11 dragnet, is opening at the Queens Museum of Art this Sunday. A friend of mine has a short film playing at the installation, whose title sounds like a reference to Pinochet’s Chile. Suketu Mehta and Meena Alexander will read at the opening reception, which also features a discussion with artist Shahzia Sikander, refreshments and a DJ.

Since 9/11, approximately 3,000 American Muslim men have been detained in a security dragnet. To date, none have been prosecuted on terrorism charges. The majority of those detained were from the invisible underclass of cities like New York. They are the recent immigrants who drive our taxis, deliver our food, clean our restaurant tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers…

Already invisible in New York, after detention, they have become “ghost prisoners.”  In this, there are eerie parallels to… the 1919 detention of 10,000 immigrants after anarchists bombed the Attorney General’s home; the 1941 internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans… and the HUAC Black-listing under Senator Joseph McCarthy.

DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA is a walk-through installation that uses video, soundscapes, photos, objects, and the audience’s interactions to humanize the faces of the “disappeared.”

The installation is part of a major desi art double-header at the Queens Museum. One show is ‘Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now,’ the other is ‘Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India,’ in conjunction with the Asia Society. Very worth checking out.

Fatal Love features contemporary photographic, print, video, web-based and installation works by 28 emerging and established American artists of South Asian descent… because of tumultuous political state of the subcontinent, diaspora artists are again considering the ways in which the legacy of South Asia’s Independence and partition is manifest both in the local (US) communities and “back home.”
Opening reception on Sunday 2/27: 3pm, artist discussion, readings, refreshments; 4:30, dance performances, ghazals, DJ; free shuttle leaves Asia Society (725 Park/70th) at 2:30pm; or take 7 train to Willets Point/Shea Stadium and follow the yellow signs; show runs until 6/5

Gentlewomen, start your Jimmy Choos

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I’ve run across a few friends in the big city recently with dreams of writing a desi Sex and the City, something about our lives rather than visas, spices and weddings. As utterly compelling as immigrant stories are, they’ve been done, and done well; it’s odd to me that The Namesake and Brick Lane are about their authors’ parents. There’s a different story waiting to be written about impressionists who cross seas with ease, The Talented Mr. Ripley minus the creepy criminality.

Meera Syal’s novel Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee is like that. It’s one of the two prosaic, non-literary novels I’ve most closely identified with. (The other is Love, Stars and All That by Kirin Narayan.) I’ve exchanged breathless words about this book with perfect strangers. Like hip-hop lit, it wasn’t the craftsmanship of the work I responded to, it was the familiarity; Syal was writing people I already knew.

As is usual in cultural matters, the UK is our Paris Hilton: those sods have not only done it, they’ve even filmed it, and soon they’ll post it on seedy sites all over the Internet. Syal has now filmed her novel as a miniseries which is airing on BBC1, the main Beeb channel, the first week of April (via Desi Flavor). It’s set in Ilford, an East London suburb which is the cultural equivalent of New Jersey.

… [Meera Syal] was “pleased” that a drama featuring three Asian women characters in lead roles was getting primetime positioning on Britain’s most popular channel. That she said was “a real breakthrough.”

Ayesha Dharker, the temptress in Bombay Dreams on Broadway, plays the simple, lovelorn protagonist, Chila. The ravishing Laila Rouass (Bombay Dreams London) plays her friend Tania, an idealized vixen who’s stepped outside the bounds and bonds of Asian-ness. Syal herself plays the author’s voice, the progressive lawyer Sunita who’s stuck in an unfulfilling marriage to her college sweetheart.

This is a female bonding story; the peripheral male characters are played by Sanjeev Bhaskar, Raza Jaffrey (Bombay Dreams London), Ahsen Bhatti and comedian Inder Manocha. Other members of the cast include Indira Joshi (The Kumars), Lalita Ahmed (Bhaji on the Beach) and Rani Singh.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4

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Is your computer vegetarian?

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To y’all 220 million vegetarian desis: Is your favorite Asian restaurant’s idea of vegetarian food ‘yes, it has veggies too’? Do you marvel at how many ways some insidious bastards work meat into veggie dishes (pepperoni in pasta salad, rice cooked in chicken stock)? Are you sick of throwing away soup you bought without parsing the ingredients like a copy editor? Bored of restaurant menus that read meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, sprig of parsley?

Soon, you may also have to check whether your PC is made from animal products. Researchers are turning chicken feathers into computer motherboards:

To turn feathers into a usable product, they are first plucked from the birds at chicken-processing plants and then the hot, wet feathers are immediately hauled to Emery’s plant. There the “undesirable parts” like chicken heads, feet, windpipes and fecal matter are sorted out from the truckload of feathers. “They’re not a nice sight, to put it mildly…”

… Emery converts the feather fiber into keratin mats that resemble paper towels. They are then placed into a mold, layered on top of one another and infused with a soybean resin that hardens and forms the composite. The material is then put through the circuit-printing process to become a circuit board.

This gives new meaning to the expression ‘my new machine really screams.’ Ironically, the same people who think Gandhi, Jim Morrison and John Lennon drinking their own urine is disgusting, think eating cows fed chicken poop is perfectly ok.

But things are looking up for those who steer clear of digestive recycling: instead of ordering mu shu, you can now order Moo Shoes.

Brothers in arms

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The U.S. may sell Patriot II missile defense systems to India, and Pakistan is anxious (via the Acorn):

A US defence team began briefing Indian officials in New Delhi on Monday on the Patriot missiles. In Washington’s diplomatic circles the visit is seen as a prelude to the sale… “If the Patriots are delivered to India, it will seriously imbalance Pakistan’s strategic capabilities and can trigger an arms race in the Subcontinent,” said the South Asian defence expert… India will be the sixth country with which Washington has shared this technology after Israel, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. [Dawn]

Why do I get the feeling that the big kids are selling switchblades to the little ones?

Thanks to the support from China and North Korea, Pakistan now enjoys a huge lead over India on the development and deployment of missiles… It is to plug this missile gap that India has been focusing on possible cooperation with Israel and the United States on missile defence, with emphasis on proven systems like the Arrow and the Patriot. [Indian Express]

Jet chases away the Blues

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An Indian airline is now worth more than American Airlines and United Airlines combined. Jet Airways’ IPO on the Bombay stock exchange last Friday was like a hipster concert: sold out in ten minutes and 50% oversubscribed (via Varnam and Winds of Change). The ~$400M IPO (~$1.2B in buying power) values the company at ~$2.2B at a price-to-earnings multiple of 21.5. That’s a higher valuation than NASDAQ darling JetBlue ($1.9B), American Airlines ($1.5B), Delta ($653M) and the bankrupt United ($142M), but lower than Southwest ($11B).

Meanwhile, the airline with ridiculously attentive service just got clearance to fly New York to Bombay starting in April. The route stops in Brussels, which is my nominee for having the most useless currency left over after a layover, the Belgian franc. Also thanks to the open skies agreement, state carrier Air-India can now fly out of San Francisco.

It’s not clear whether Jet’s bought the JFK landing slots yet, but I’m so looking forward to flying Jet again. And if they ever launch a discount airline, they can nick the sobriquets of the American carriers, calling it Tedwinder or Gana. Like United’s discount cousin, they could chop off the first part of their name and just call it T; or, since they’re a transport company, maybe even T Mobile.

With desis’ legendary respect for intellectual property, it might even fly 😉

Previous post on Jet Airways here.

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Would you turn down a quarter million dollars?

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Here are two stories of anti-Sikh discrimination which I seem to have missed over the past couple of years (disclaimer: the attorney in both lawsuits is a friend). In ’03, a software executive sued Delta Airlines after a flight attendant told passengers he was a potential terrorist:

Thomas began to harass [Hansdip] Bindra after he stood to retrieve a magazine. He contends that the attendant, who is white, told him that “here in America we have rules” and that “because of the situation in the Middle East, you have to keep a low profile.” Bindra, a native of India, said other passengers on the flight later told him that Thomas had warned them that “the man up front with the turban” might be “trouble” and that with no justification, she told them: “When I give you a signal, come help subdue him.”… Bindra said he and about a half-dozen other passengers on the flight filed written complaints about Thomas with the airline, but that none received a reply. [NJ Star-Ledger]

In ’02, a turbaned Burger King franchise owner sued Fleet Bank for refusing a quarter million dollar deposit before 9/11. Interestingly, the New Jersey teller ordered to reject the customer is also desi:

… [Inderjeet Singh] Chowdhary contacted the branch over the phone after the bank advertised an attractive interest rate… for [a] certificate of deposit. Chowdhary said he spoke to a bank employee, Jaya Balasubramanian… On the appointed day, July 30 of [2001], Chowdhary claims to have visited the bank with all the documents he was required to produce. While Balasubramanian was processing the his application, Alicia E. Eagleston, the branch manager and a defendant in the case, called Balasubramanian aside. “When she returned, she looked visibly upset, and said I would not be permitted to open the account,” Chowdhary told News India-Times. He also claimed that Eagleston said, “We look at the customer and decide.” [News India-Times]

I’m sure Balasubramanian was thinking either a) ‘That’s cold, making me discriminate against a fellow desi’ or b) ‘There goes my commission.’

Fleet Bank was also accused of terminating Muslims’ accounts after 9/11 without cause. The bank settled with Chowdhary in ’03 and pledged not to discriminate against Sikhs.

Previous posts on anti-Sikh discrimination: 1, 2, 3; and discrimination by airlines and cops.

Ramesh Ponnuru stirs the teakettle

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Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean took his famous blandness for a stroll by being flippant about minorities in the GOP (via Political Animal):

“You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room?,” Dean asked to laughter. “Only if they had the hotel staff in here.” [Detroit News]

Black Republicans were outraged at a statement that sounds borderline racist. It’s like Hillary Clinton’s wisecrack about Gandhi and gas stations:

Both Republicans calling for the apology are prominent black leaders, JC Watts and Lt. Gov. Steele… [Dean’s comments] are based on a fairly stereotypical premise that blacks are likely to be found washing dishes and bussing tables. If a Republican had come close to making this sort of comment, he’d be slaughtered. [National Review]

But conservative pundit Ramesh Ponnuru calls it a tufan in a teakettle, saying it’s an accurate comment on political tokenism:

Give me a break. Dean is saying, hyperbolically, that there aren’t many blacks or other nonwhites in the Republican party. He’s right. I’ve been to many, many Republican dinners where most nonwhites present have been serving the food. (Or giving the keynote.) [National Review]

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An orgy of sepia prose

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SAJA is hosting a remarkable literary festival, an evening of readings in Manhattan.

Those reading include Suketu Mehta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Tharoor, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Kamila Shamsie, Manil Suri and Meena Alexander. Those mingling include Akhil Sharma, Jonathan Franzen, Kiran Desai, Marina Budhos, Pooja Makhijani, Meera Nair the author, and S. Mitra Kalita. Park Slope is apparently emptying out for the evening.

And the wine and samosas are for a good cause: SAJA is putting together fellowships to report the tsunami in-depth well after the initial reports fade.

The idea is to help a group of journalists… from the U.S. and Canada cover the affected areas SIX TO NINE MONTHS after the disaster and have their reporting available to a wide global audience… A New York Times story… explains it all… “All too often when disaster strikes, the relief mission seems to last only as long as the media attention.”

Buy tickets here.

Update: Please note the new schedule, which has been moved up by two hours.

SAJA Authors Day: Saturday, March 12, Manhattan; $35; CUNY Grad Center’s Proshansky Auditorium, 365 Fifth Ave. / 34th St.; 1:30-2:30pm registration, 2:30-4:30 readings, 4:45-6:00 tipsy schmoozing