Author Archives: manish

Desis in Trinidad

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The NYT on desis in Trinidad:

When slavery was abolished on the island in the 1830’s, the planters looked to India for workers, and the first ship, bearing more than 200 Indian indentured servants, arrived in May 1845. Over the next 75 years, some 143,000 Indians came to Trinidad, mostly from Calcutta, and mostly Hindu.

On one man’s struggles in the name of religion:

The Waterloo Temple was first built near the coast in 1947 by a devout laborer named Seedas Sadhu. Problem was, he didn’t own the land, so the bulldozers rolled in to level his creation. Undaunted, he commenced a 25-year project of hauling rocks and concrete several dozen yards offshore at low tide; there he single-mindedly set about constructing his own island where a new temple could stand unmolested… the Trinidad government commissioned a more permanent artificial island, connecting it to the mainland by a pedestrian causeway.

Seeda-sadhu is an ideal name for a priest. But since his artificial island was constantly eroding, maybe it should’ve been Sisyphus. Another devotee built a supersized statue of the monkey-king to rival the Bamiyan Buddhas:

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Three new desi Rhodes Scholars

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It’s our favorite scheme by a racist diamond magnate to civilize the natives by re-educating them in jolly old England! Three desis are Rhodes Scholars this year:

Who School Hometown Major How saving the world
Ian Desai Chicago Brooklyn, NY Ancient studies South Asia Watch
Swati Mylavarapu Harvard Gainesville, FL Human rights Nicaraguan democratization
Kazi Rahman Harvard Scarsdale, NY Social studies Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee

Mylavarapu is an ex-debater. Word.

Although technology drives history (fire, metal, stirrups, guns, electricity, airplanes, computers…), technologists are usually excluded. I’m not bitter, really.

The ‘big bang’ launch

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Among Bollythemed entertainment, Bombay Dreams on Broadway and Bride and Prejudice in the UK have both trended sharply downward after strong openings. Two other desi (but not Bollywood) projects, Vanity Fair and Harold and Kumar, also did weak box office.

It’s tempting to conclude from the business torpor that America is not yet ready for desi culture, that the existing revenues reflect mainly interest from niche, culture-sampling subcultures. But take a look at it from the perspective of the ‘big bang’ launch: the $1B marketing campaign for the presidency, the $250M spent on the Windows 95 launch and so on. Creating a market via customer education is far more expensive and time-consuming than just selling into existing positioning slots (Spiderman 2). The former is a long-term campaign, while the latter is straightforward, tactical awareness-raising: hit the magic 7+ impressions per customer, and you’ll get higher sales.

I’m pretty sure fusion desi culture in the U.S. is not a fad. It’s a strong subculture with intense palettes, a supporting South Asian American population and rising awareness. So each desi cultural product, no matter how it performs, is also an in-kind contribution to the ‘big bang’ launch for Desis in America. This launch is being done in pieces, as befits a small, innovative product growing organically. The endgame is probably similar to the awareness and saturation of desi subcultures of the UK or Canada, albeit more dilute.

So while Meera or Mira or Gurinder or Kal may be nibbling discontentedly on their numbers, they can take some consolation in their contributions to a larger campaign, no matter how unintentional.

Shooting from the hip

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American actors in Bollywood find it famously disorganized and star-centric (the Brit actors in Lagaan complained bitterly):

[T]he industry is chaotic, in part due to film-makers being secretive about films and where they are shooting, in order to avoid others stealing their ideas. There are no call sheets, no shooting schedules and no shooting scripts. Crew are rung up the night before. In India labour is cheap, but there is a lack of organization; it is the biggest organized chaos in the world.

American actors in Japan think it’s spookily efficient and down-to-earth:

Shimizu looked at us, smiled and said, ‘Okay.’… Then I turn around and notice that the camera tracker’s already moved, the camera has shifted and everyone was already in place. It was the most efficient crew I have ever worked with.”… “For actors, the American film system is medieval. You’re either working and coddled or unemployed and ignored. But in Japan actors are just another member of the crew…”

But there are a couple of things both cultures agree on, the muharrat…

“In Japan, there is always a purification ceremony to ensure safety of the filming and the crew,” says Ichise. “We also pray for the success of the film…”

… and the shoes:

“There’s something wonderful about everyone paying their respects on the set by taking their shoes off when they enter,” observes [Sarah Michelle] Gellar.

‘Mera joota hai Japani, phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.’

Norah and Dolly’s double-E’s

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Part-desi songstress Norah Jones and Dolly Parton teamed up for ‘Creepin’ In’ on Jones’ album Feels Like Home. Ennis notes that the lyrics can be read as coarse double entendres:

There’s a big old hole
Goes right through my soul
Oh that ain’t nothin’ new

So as long as you’re around
I got no place else you’ve found
There’s only one thing left for you to do

Just creep on in
Creep on in
Creep on in

There’s a silver moon 
Came a little too soon 
Oh for me to bear 
It shines brightly on my bed and the shadow’s over head 
Won’t let me sleep as long as it’s there

And once you have begun don’t stop until you’re done 
Sneakin’ in…

But then, Ennis is a long-time Norah perv, seeking filth in that innocent hit ‘Don’t Know Why’:

I feel as empty as a drum
I don’t know why I didn’t come

For shame, dude. Jazz, that last bastion of civility, has always been wholesome and clean.

Suketu Mehta on Bollywood

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Suketu Mehta scribes in the magazine of another maximum city about the film industry of the Mumbai (via Amardeep). He describes it as a love affair with an international beauty:

The Soviets gave us arms; we gave them our kitsch movies in return. Israelis watch them. Palestinians watch them… Dominicans and Haitians watch them. Iraqis watch them. Iranians watch them. In a building full of immigrants in Queens, an Uzbek man once cornered me in a dark stairwell… As he towered over me, he started singing, “Ichak dana, bichak dana…”

The initial flush of romance, often consummated in what used to be a porn theater, the Eagle in Jackson Heights:

Why do I love Bollywood movies? To an Indian, that’s like asking why we love our mothers; we don’t have a choice. We were born of them.

The unreality of the affair:

My aunt’s family emigrated to Uganda from India a century ago; she now lives in England and has never been to India… none of the children under 5 in her extended family spoke English… The children, two or three generations removed from India, were living in this simulated Indiaworld.

Falling out of love:

It was not until graduate school that I became cynical about Bollywood movies. I too began to think that the plots were weak, melodramatic. At the University of Iowa’s student-run movie theater, the Bijou, I could see two movies for five dollars, most of them European. I was introduced to Renoir, Fellini, Fassbinder, De Sica… the Indian movies seemed pointless and absurd to me…

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‘Did my Indian balls come in?’

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Mira Nair writes in the New York Times Magazine about the chaat-fueled filming of Hysterical Blindness. We apparently share a favorite snack, kachoris from Jersey City’s Little India:

As others tucked into Krispy Kremes, I’d pop the just-made almond kachori in my mouth, no cutlery needed, licking the sour-sweet taste of tamarind chutney off my fingers… Uma [Thurman] would sidle over to me in her ripped Joan Jett T-shirt and blue eye shadow to ask, “Is it samosa time yet?”… I would pop kachoris directly into Juliette Lewis’s rosebud mouth so not to disturb her lipstick. The gaffers and grips would holler across to me, “Did my Indian balls come in?” Soon the little box of snacks from Rajbhog grew into a stack, and kachoris conquered Krispy Kremes.

Batman and Rushdie

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The ever-illuminating Shashwati has a precious find: the Hot Spot reviews International Gorillay, a paranoid Lollywood fantasy about assassinating Salman Rushdie (circa 1990). With disco. And batsuits. Aw, yeah! Praise the Lord and pass the cheese.

Rushdie plans to drive the final nails into the coffin of Islam by opening a new chain of Casino’s and Disco’s spreading contemptable vice and debauchery. Mustafa Qureshi… decides to call it a day with his day job at the Police station and induct his unemployed brothers to create a Mujahid (God’s soldiers) trio whose sole aim is to seek out and destroy the despised Salman Rushdie before he manages to destory all virtue and decency on the planet. The trio have a personal axe to grind as their beloved family cherub was recently slaughtered by Rushdie’s men while protesting Satanic Verses… The direction is sledgehammer subtle as is the norm for Punjabi cinema and the one-liners have to be delivered slowly and deliberately and sometimes even three times in a row so as to not miss their point!

Rushdie is eventually offed by a laser beam to the head from four flying Korans (watch the cheesy special effects). The Koran as a directed-energy weapon: Isn’t that, um, a bit sacrilegious? But wait, there’s a subtext — the film functions as sly literary criticism:

… Rushdie… is of course a man of unsurpassed evil and tortures his hapless victims by forcing them to listen to chapters from his fatwa-inducing book…

I can think of several desi authors, the reading of whose works would qualify as torture. Rushdie ain’t one of them. Ironically, this film was banned in the UK, a country which defended Rushdie against censorship for years. The ban was eventually lifted at the behest of the author himself. Apparently, Rushdie wasn’t too worried about death by killer lasers from levitating religious screeds.

Don’t miss Bubonic Films’ archive of cheesy Bollywood clips and Lollywood horror films. The scariest things about these movies are the hairstyles.