Author Archives: amardeep

Simon Cowell, Meet Tigerstyle

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Chickpea has been sending us tips for this video:

This is way better than Sanjaya, or that Pakistani dude who was on “America’s Got Talent” last year. And it has to be the widest exposure that Tigerstyle track (“Nachna Onda Nei”) has ever gotten. (I wonder who, if anyone, is getting royalties — since they’re sampling both Michael Jackson AND Vanilla Ice/David Bowie).

Simon’s question at the end is prescient, though. There’s not many Bhangra/pop/hip hop tracks that work as well as this one. (I seem to remember another Tigerstyle track that channels Bell Biv Devoe — perhaps that’s what these guys should do next…? Any suggestions for Suleman Mirza and Madhu Singh on how to keep up the surprise in round 2?) Continue reading →

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Notes From a Punjabi Literature Conference in Vancouver

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I was recently in cool Vancouver to give a talk at a conference on Modern Punjabi Literature. The conference was at the University of British Columbia, and it was hosted by the Asian Studies department (where they have a strong program in Punjabi language instruction, part of which includes the study of literature in Punjabi).

The community was invited in, and they most definitely came — including a number of poets and novelists in Vancouver’s surprisingly large Punjabi language writers’ community. One of the best-known Punjabi poets in Vancouver is of course Sadhu Binning, who has also taught the Punjabi language at UBC for more than 20 years (he’s now retiring, sadly). His collection, “No More Watno Dur” is one of the very few collections of Punjabi poetry I’ve seen to be published in a bilingual edition (which is especially helpful for someone like me — a person who reads Punjabi only haltingly, and always with reference to a dictionary).

Among the many other writers in attendance, it was great to meet, for instance, the Punjabi-Pakistani-Canadian poet, Fauzia Rafiq (who didn’t mention she had a blog!). Another writer who seems well worth checking out is Ajmer Rode.

At the poetry reading on the last night of the conference, Nadeem Parmar sang a ghazal in Punjabi. I Googled him today, and was surprised to find that he’s written lyrics for many well-known singers, including Jagjit Singh. I also Googled Darshan Singh Gill, and was intrigued to find that he had actually been featured in a CBC documentary about new immigrants in Canada, back in 1958. And those were just a few of the names.

I met a Dhol player who plays for a “world music”/fusion group called “Delhi To Dublin”, which seems worth checking out. He also plays Dhol for a “pure” Bhangra group called En Karma. (There might be another post about these Vancouver bands once I’ve had a chance to listen to the music.)

Those are some links to start off. After the jump, I’ll discuss some of the more substantial issues discussed at the conference.

Continue reading →

On Unhardening the Heart

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A guy wrote the following letter to the “Dear Prudence” column at Slate.com:

I am a 25-year-old Indian-American who has been in this country since I was 5. I started dating a Caucasian classmate four and a half years ago in college. The romance bloomed, and we are still together. She is kind, loving, beautiful, and a great inspiration. I see us together for the rest of our lives. There is only one problem: My parents are very traditional Indians and have told me since I was a young boy that they wanted me to have an arranged marriage, and if I did “bring home an American girl” that they would disown me. After two years, I told them about the relationship, and they were rightfully hurt and upset I’d kept it a secret. They say now that they were “joking” about disowning me and that I should have come to them. But it is close to three years later, and my girlfriend has still never met my parents. I greet holidays with a sense of dread because I feel pulled in two different directions. Even when I bring her up in conversation, they quickly change the subject or just walk away. They say that my relationship is just “a phase” and that I will “come to my senses.” I also feel a sense of embitterment from my girlfriend for being completely shunned by her potential in-laws. My parents have told me that they will accept my girlfriend when we become engaged, but by then I fear that their attempt to build bridges will be too little, too late. I know that my parents love me and want the best for me, but is there anything I can do to unharden their hearts? (link)

Prudie’s advice in response to this was pretty good, I thought (read the column to see). But I was wondering — what would you tell this person? Would it be better for him to push his parents, and demand they accept his girlfriend, or is it better to kind of wait and see (until, say, getting engaged)? Do parents really mean it when they say “we’ll disown you,” or is it just something they say?

Finally, do people have experiences of their own along these lines they want to share? Continue reading →

Harold and Kumar 2 — An Early Review

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Well, Cicatrix and Sandhya have given us much of quality to chew on today with their posts on Love Marriage, so leave it to the English professor to do a review of a gross-out comedy, the much-anticipated (well, by me) Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. The film opens nationwide this coming Friday, 4/25.

My wife and I saw the film for free — thanks to an invite to a press screening/sneak preview in downtown Philadelphia. (I know the serious journalists in the house must cringe every time a blogger gets thought of as equivalent to “press,” but oh well.)

My first thought is — I wouldn’t be surprised if the film opens at #1 in the U.S. box office over the coming weekend. I’ve been seeing quite a number of ads for the film on TV this past week, suggesting that New Line Cinema thinks the film will open big (bigger, anyway, than Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, four years ago. Bigger than Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama? I’m not sure).

As for the film itself, there my response might be a bit more idiosyncratic.

Continue reading →

Caption This

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The Washington Redskins’ cheerleaders recently performed in Hyderabad Bangalore, during an Indian Premier League cricket match. A Washington Post reporter took the following photo:

redskins cheerleaders india.jpg

(Click on the photo to see the faces of the men a bit more clearly.)

There is also a detailed Washington Post article about the event here. Also, we wrote about the rival Twenty20 cricket league, the ICL, here; cheerleaders seemed to be a part of the mix there as well. Continue reading →

Maoist Victory in Nepal — A Good Thing?

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Journalist Siddharth Varadarajan was in Nepal for the past couple of weeks, covering the recent Constituent Assembly elections there first-hand, and he’s written some marvelously informative articles about where the country seems to be going at this decisive moment of reformulation.

In a piece published in The Hindu on April 16, Varadarajan argued that the recent Maoist victory in Nepal might end up as a good thing for both Nepal and India:

By the time of the Jan Andolan of 2006, it was the Maoist demand for an end to the monarchy and the election of a Constituent Assembly which had captured the imagination of the people, even if the Maoists were not at the head of the mass movement in Kathmandu.

Over the past two years, the Maoists succeeded in pushing the envelope further, winning popular acceptance for their slogans of an inclusive, federal republic as well as for a more equitable voting system. Nepal’s political elite and sections of the Indian establishment who feared losing control of the entire process sought to derail the momentum the former rebels had built up. The proposal for a fully proportional election system was blocked and the Madhesi agitation encouraged as a means of weakening the Maoists. None of these efforts succeeded. The Maoists contested the CA election as the creators of the new mainstream. And it is hardly surprising that the people of Nepal should have chosen them to lead the process of writing the country’s constitution. (link)

This goes against the conventional thinking on Maoists, who in other parts of Asia have tended to be more comfortable as guerilla fighters/terrorists than as fair leaders in democratic republics. From the rest of the article, I gather that Varadarajan trusts them because 1) the other political parties in Nepal have thoroughly discredited themselves over the years (read the article for more), and 2) since coming above-ground, the Maoist leadership (Prachanda) has behaved in ways that suggest it really is committed to the democratic process, including cooperation with other parties. I must confess that despite Varadarajan’s work I remain uneasy about this — Maoists just do not have a good track record in terms of human rights, anywhere in the world. (I first wrote about the Maoist ceasefire in December 2006.)

I would also recommend an earlier article by Varadarajan from just before the elections (April 6), where he explains the ethnic/communal tensions that are part of this story. (The Maoists have traditionally supported the Madhesis, who are ethnically ‘Indian,’ but who have in the past been the victims of discrimination by the Nepalese majority. Recently, however, there have been conflicts between the Maoists and armed/militant Madhesi groups.) Continue reading →

The “Great Khali” Attempts to Make Peace; Receives Sucker Punch

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I know, I know — there are numerous absurd things happening here. How Boston Bhangra got involved, for one thing, is a puzzle. The “Poonjabi Peace Offering” sounds, to my ear, like it’s been delivered in Hindi. Indeed, The Great Khali is ethnically not Punjabi at all, I don’t think. (His real name is Dalip Singh Rana.)

But if you’re worried about those minor inaccuracies, you’re really REALLY missing the point of the eight glorious minutes of “entertainment” contained herein. Continue reading →

The Price of Rice

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On the News Tab, KXB posted a link to an article in Time about the skyrocketing global price of rice, which has the potential to destabilize economic conditions (and governments) all over Asia. For those who haven’t been following it, the price of rice has more than doubled in the past six months, peaking recently at more than $23.00 per hundred pounds. (See this Guardian article for more detailed numbers. Incidentally, the rising price of food has already led to riots in Haiti.)

The Time article points out that the problem isn’t that rice production has fallen (though part of the reason for the tight supply in Bangladesh in particular is the destruction caused by last year’s cyclone). Rather, the global demand simply seems to be rising faster than the supply, and many individual nations have been banning rice exports, destabilizing the market.

In India, the interaction between state regulators and the recently liberalized market is particularly complex:

Take India, for example, where rice prices are rising fast, contributing to 7% inflation last month, the highest in more than three years. The country is not suffering from a classic case of tight supplies. National rice production this year should hit 94 million metric tons, up more than 2 million metric tons from last year and more than 20 million metric tons from 2003’s crop, which was devastated by a bad monsoon. Nor have shortages hit a government-run rice-distribution program that helps feed India’s poor. That program bought 20.6 million metric tons last year. This year, procurement, from both domestic growers and importers, is expected to rise to 25 million metric tons, according to Manoj Pandey, a senior government official. “It’s not a question of low production or low procurement,” says Pandey.

What has changed is that, because of economic reform, the government has gradually eased its control over the rice trade during the past 15 years. India is now more open to the world — and more exposed to global price fluctuations. Farmers and traders across India are now selling to the highest bidder. That means a lot of Indian rice that was once sold domestically is instead sold abroad for higher prices — which in turn drives up domestic prices. The government, in an effort to keep as much rice as possible at home to quell inflation, has banned exports of nonbasmati rice and adjusted price controls to discourage exports of aromatic basmati rice.

(link)

The measures aren’t working. As the article goes on to state, instead of pushing the price of rice back down, the government’s ban on exports has led to hoarding on the part of sellers, who would rather not sell than sell at reduced prices.

The question I have for those who understand these issues better than myself is this: what should the Indian government do, keeping in mind that the vast majority of Indian consumers of rice cannot afford the current price? Continue reading →

HipHopistan — upcoming in Chicago

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(Link stolen from PTR.) I have no idea what the song is about [translation help, anyone?], but I love the video, beats, and the sound of the rap.

People in Chicago this week might want to head down to the University of Chicago for a Desi Hop Hop Conference, HipHopistan (April 17-19). It’s a mix of performances, roundtable discussions, and hands-on workshops. Among the performers present will be Yogi B & Natchatra (featured in the video above), as well as Chee Malabar, Kabir, Abstract/Vision, and the ubiquitous DJ Rekha.

I must admit I’ve stopped aggressively following developments in Desi Hip Hop and Bhangra/hip hop fusion somewhat lately. (Have I been missing much?) If I were in Chicago, I might show up at this event just to see if anything these guys are doing might inspire renewed interest. Continue reading →

In Defense of Pakistan’s Hindus

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Ali Eteraz has an informative column on Comment is Free about discrimination against Pakistan’s 3 million Hindus.

The immediate inspiration is a recent lynching of a Hindu factory worker in Karachi, after it is alleged that he uttered blasphemous words about Islam and the Prophet Muhammed. The family of the man who was murdered have suggested that he may have been killed for other reasons, and his co-workers have merely invoked blasphemy as a convenient ruse for a murder committed for more prosaic reasons. It is unclear whether his killers will be prosecuted, though there does appear to be some legal interest in doing so.

In his column, Ali Eteraz rightly condemns the institutional discrimination that exists against religious minorities in Pakistan, including the establishment of separate electorates for Hindus (dating from 1973), and an anti-Ahmadiyya blasphemy law that was first instituted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and then enhanced by Zia ul-Haq in 1982.

One of the commenters on Comment is Free also linked to this article in the Washington Post, which describes Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws in greater depth. Reading that article reminded me how complex Pakistan’s legal system is. I think Ali Eteraz’s sincere hope is that the Blasphemy Law in particular ought to be immediately repealed. For my part, I must admit I have no idea whether that is a realistic possibility or not. However, we might remember that Pakistan’s legal community took a heroic stance last fall in the face of Musharraf’s anti-democratic actions. Perhaps they can do so again. Continue reading →