Author Archives: amardeep

The Chaat of Destiny

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Some paragraphs were accidentally omitted from Somini Sengupta’s recent article on Chaat and other Delhi street foods in the New York Times. Because I am a super-devoted-Somini Sengupta groupie (a “Sengroupie,” you could call me), I was sent the missing paragraphs as a gift, under strict order not to reveal my sources:

The reporter visits a lost alleyway in Mastinagar, a suburb of Delhi. In the alley are an endless variety of special chaat stalls unknown to western taste-buds and unimagined by western food tourists. This is as “street” as it gets; if pressed, the people of this alley all state that they have never been near an air-conditioner or even a piece of plastic. Indeed, it is highly unclear whether the residents of Mastinagar have ever been outside Mastinagar, or even know that their “Shehr” is in the city and state of Delhi (indeed, one resident referred to the city, rather anachronistically, as “Tughlakabad”). In the lost alley, one finds an almost infinite variety of Chaats, some of which were tasted by a reporter. A short list of the highlights follows:

Orientalist Chaat: This type of chaat will fulfill all your desires for mystical knowledge and understanding, and set your brain on fire. If this chaat is eaten, it is said, the eater will learn a thousand yoga poses (a DVD is included), a thousand Sanskrit chants that will lead to Enlightenment, and perpetual unity of mind and body in pure relaxation bliss. After eating, you will have reached the other side of the moon, tasted the stars, found the ergonomically perfect chair, and finally know the answer to the question, Why Did the Bodhi-Dharma Leave For the East? (NOTE: Insiders report that Orientalist Chaat is exactly the same as regular Chaat, only 10,000 times more expensive.)

Erotic Chaat: This chaat is an aphrodisiac composed entirely of garlic and crushed Viagra powder. Not especially tasty, but surprisingly “potent,” as a reporter subsequently discovered.

Chaat Feng Shui: This Chaat, which is composed entirely of wind, water, and garam masala, is not meant to be eaten, but rather dispersed around a room in need of redecoration. Pirated Chaat Feng Shui originates from China, which continues to flood the Indian market with inexpensive rip-offs of actual Feng Shui. Continue reading →

Russell Peters’ Deaf Jokes

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Here are some thoughts about Russell Peters, who I presume needs no introduction; Sepia Mutiny has had many posts on him over the years, and you’ll find tons of his stuff up at YouTube. (Also, see Manish’s recent post on Peters’ show in Bombay from earlier this spring. I saw him last night in Philadelphia.)

At his best, Russell Peters airs out the intra-community dirty laundry. He plays with the mixture of embarrassment and pride that tends to circulate amongst members of various ethnic groups, especially immigrant ethnic groups. While many people might feel isolated within a particular ethnic niche, Russell Peters manages to draw people out, and create a certain amount of cross-ethnic solidarity.

Because he has a good deal of “insider” knowledge about Desis, the Chinese, Jamaicans, Arabs, and Persians, Peters can usually pull off humor that works with ethnic stereotypes. It also helps that he has a good ear for accents, and usually sets up his jokes with shout-outs to members of the audience: “You in the first row, are you Chinese? [Yes] What’s your name? [Tim] Tim, what’s your real name? Anyway, thanks for coming out tonight… You know, the thing about Chinese people is…”

Of course, all of that doesn’t quite work the same way when Peters makes deaf jokes, as he did for quite some time at his show last night in Philadelphia. There are, presumably, going to be very few (if any) deaf people in the audience at a show like this — so the sense of talking to people rather than just about them isn’t there. Also, in my view humor relating to a disability by someone who doesn’t have it doesn’t work the way ethnic humor works coming from a brown comic. Some of Peters’ deaf jokes were a bit corny and stupid (i.e., wouldn’t it be nice to be deaf, because then you wouldn’t have to listen to your girlfriend/wife nagging you), while others were flat-out mean. Continue reading →

Blogger Greets the People on Occasion of Baisakhi

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Times of India

[ 13 Apr, 2007 1620hrs ISTPTI ]

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CONSHOHOCKEN: Blogger Amardeep Singh on Friday greeted people on the occasion of Baisakhi, which is being celebrated on Saturday.

The Blogger in his message said “on the occasion of Baisakhi, I extend my greetings and good wishes to all my people, particularly to those engaged in commenting, the offering of tips, and news tab links”.

He said the harvest festival is an occasion to remember readers who sweat and toil to keep up with a sometimes unwieldy torrent of entertaining and informative posts.

“On this day, let us pledge to work to develop our blog so that our mission of a developed South Asian diaspora touches the remotest parts of the blogosphere and everybody is benefited leading to prosperity of the community as a whole,” he added.

The Blogger in his message said “may Baisakhi, Vishu, Tamil New Year and Mesadi this year usher in peace, pseudosecularism, prosperity and happiness for all”.

He said these harvest festivals symbolise hope and celebration of hard work by farmers. “They also give us an occasion to express our thanks and gratitude towards the farmers, without whom we would have neither dal-chawal, nor Hakka noodles, nor — and this would be especially sad — chicken kabobs from that Pakistani takeaway place in Bensalem,” he added.

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PIX: Manmoothy is Big B * Ash-Abhi: good chemistry * Mandira spotted in NY * Mike Tyson in Bollywood * CALL INDIA FOR FREE TODAY! Continue reading →

Misadventures in Government: Delhi and Nandigram

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The dream of speeding India towards globalization and economic liberalization has encountered quite a number of hiccups over the past year, though two failed government policies in particular stand out: the sealing drive in Delhi, and the Special Economic Zone plan in rural Bengal.

The state government Municipal Corporation of Delhi had elections over the past few days, and the Congress Party lost heavily, while the BJP gained the majority of seats, primarily because of “sealing,” which is the process of closing down illegal commercial enterprises in residential areas. The government’s mismanagement of the sealing drive, which has led to repeated interventions by the Indian courts, can be compared to what happened recently in Nandigram. There, a group of villagers gathered to protest the conversion of their farmland into a “Special Economic Zone” (SEZ) found themselves under fire by police. Fourteen people died in the violence, and in the subsequent uproar the Communist government of Bengal has been forced to suspend (temporarily?) its plan to develop a massive chemical factory and the four-lane highway that would lead to it.

There are of course ironies in both instances. It’s remarkable, for instance, that the Communist government of Bengal is so pro-globalization that it was ready to force several thousand people in Nandigram to relocate to make way for an Indonesian corporation (the Salim group). But it seems to me that what is happening here isn’t so much about conventional ideology (left vs. right) as it is about pro-development policies, that might make sense in principle, being terribly mismanaged.

Both issues are incredibly complicated, and alongside your opinions and arguments, I’d like to humbly request that readers suggest links that shed light on the different sides of each issue. Continue reading →

Mohsin Hamid Media Coverage

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Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is getting quite a lot of publicity this week. I’ve been an admirer of his first novel, Moth Smoke, which I think of as giving a fresh, entertaining image of the changes occurring in urban Pakistan in the globalization era. It also has an irreverent, off-beat style, somewhat reminiscent of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August. When I’ve taught it in courses on South Asian literature, I’ve found that students really tend to latch onto it — often more than writers like Ghosh, Rushdie, or Mistry.

Initially, I’ve been less than enthused about picking up Hamid’s new novel, along the lines of: do I really need to read another book about the tension between fundamentalism and modernity? This ground has been covered so many times already — starting with The Satanic Verses — that one doesn’t expect to be surprised. But the more I hear about the novel, the more interested I’ve become.

A good place to start might be the 20 minute interview Hamid did this week with Terry Gross, where (among other things) they spent a fair amount of time discussing how having or not having a beard affects how you’re perceived, in both Pakistan and the UK/US. Apparently this is a major theme in the novel as well; as a dariwalla (bearded person), I approve. I gather that Hamid’s point here is, if you want to grow a beard, grow a beard — don’t shave just because others might perceive you as a religious extremist. Continue reading →

Conversational Excursions — Faculty Lounge Edition

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Intellectual$ingh3141592: Good afternoon, Sudo-Ji.

SudoSecularSAsian: Greetings, my good fellow. How goes it? I trust all is well on your end?

Intellectual$ingh3141592: Today I am, I must confess, a tad jealous of our colleague over at MIT.

SudoSecularSAsian: Please elaborate, if you would be so kind. I am, as they say, all “ears” — though what precisely that means in the context of Internet Messaging is an open question.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: It appears that Professor Deb Roy, of MIT’s Cognitive Machines Group, is pursuing a gargantuan project oriented to the study of language acquisition in human infants. What is most impressive is, he is using his own son as the source of the data!

SudoSecularSAsian: His partner must be outraged — I know my own spouse places strict rules on the degree to which I can allow my academic projects to interfere with our personal lives. In my occasional forays into the world of “weblogs” — with which you are well-acquainted — I have been asked to delineate a fairly sharp line between matters of public discussion and our own private affairs.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: I completely understand. However, in this case, the baby’s name is being shielded from participants in the study (he is merely referred to as “Dwayne,” after a character in a popular Ridley Scott film). Moreover, Roy’s partner, the eminent speech pathologist Rupal Patel (Northwestern), is apparently fully on board with the project.

SudoSecularSAsian: Singh-saab, I just checked the link you forwarded and I have to ask you… Do you really think this type of grandiose, pie-in-the-sky study is really a worthwhile usage of resources? Is it really likely that the scattered attempted phonemes of an infant in the earliest stages of language acquisition will offer significant new data? Isn’t it possible — or I daresay, probable, given Chomsky’s universal grammar — that the real root of language is to be found not in the “babble” of a child attempting to mimic adult sounds but in the neural-cognitive framework on which the linguistic capacity is built?

Intellectual$ingh3141592: I must concede I am not qualified to respond to your conjectures, though I should perhaps remind you that Chomsky’s thesis has been widely discredited in the field of linguistics. However, one thing you say does ring true — the sheer expenditure of electricity required to support the massive arrays of hard disks (1.4 petabytes!) is deeply irresponsible in this era of imminent global warming. Did you have the chance to peruse the latest tidbit in the Times about the responsibility the wealthier countries have to the global south?

SudoSecularSAsian: Yes, and it’s quite distressing. I’m afraid our beloved South Asia may bear the brunt of the developed world’s resource profligacy. The Himalayan glaciers are in trouble, and a “brown cloud” of pollutants is steadily building up over the Indian Ocean, with results on the climate-scenario that are extremely difficult to foretell, though the consequences are unlikely to be pleasant.

Intellectual$ingh3141592: :-(. (Please forgive the emoticon — it’s a childish expedient, but sometimes an eloquent one.) Well, I must be off, I’m afraid.

SudoSecularSAsian: 😉 All is forgiven. This is the brave new world of lexico-typographical expressivity! Au revoir! Continue reading →

A Rather Cheery Article in the NYT on the Decline of Sikh Turbans

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The Sikh community has survived wars with the Mughals and then the British, the terrible bloodbath of the Partition, and then 1984 and its aftermath.

But according to a recent New York Times article, what is really weakening the defining symbol of Sikh community in India is just… well, laziness:

Like many young Sikhs, he found the turban a bother. It got in the way when he took judo classes. Washing his long hair was time-consuming, as was the morning ritual of winding seven yards of cloth around his head. It was hot and uncomfortable. (link)

And:

The dwindling numbers of turban wearers reflects less a loss of spirituality than encroaching Westernization and the accelerating pace of Indian life, Jaswinder Singh said.

He puts the start of rapid decline at the mid-1990s, as India began liberalizing its economy, more people began traveling abroad and satellite television arrived in the villages of Punjab. Working mothers are too rushed to help their sons master the skill of wrapping a turban, he said, and increasingly they just shrug and let them cut their hair.

“Everyone is working harder to buy themselves bigger cars,” he said. “They don’t have time to teach their children about the Sikh heroes. Boys take film stars as their idols instead.” (link)

Anecdotally, talking to cousins and other relatives, I’ve had the same impression: young Sikhs in India see the turban and beard as 1) hot and 2) unfashionable. It’s also interesting in this passage that busy working mothers are cited as part of the problem. (Quick poll for the Sikhs reading this: who taught you how to tie your pagri? Many Sikh men I know were taught by women in their families.)

Though she does have quotes from people who are unhappy about the phenomenon, I must confess that on an emotional level I do find Amelia Gentleman’s article a shade too cheery considering how much anxiety this trend causes amongst traditional Sikhs. Indeed, as the defining symbol of the Sikh tradition declines, it’s hard not to think of the core of the religion as declining as well.

Oddly, one of the factors named here — India’s hot climate — is less of a factor in places like the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Continue reading →

5 Things Happening in South Asia Unrelated to Cricket

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There’s been quite a raft of South Asia-related coverage in the New York Times this past week or so.

Perhaps most importantly, the Times finally gets to Musharraf’s ugly confrontation with Pakistan’s legal establishment. Perhaps what’s most striking in the current instance is the fact that Pakistan’s rioting lawyers are only now getting the message that Mushie may not be good for business.

In business news, New York’s Citigroup offices are going to see a major round of layoffs soon, while the company’s Indian back office is going to continue to grow. A few thousand formerly well-paid bankers have suddenly grown quite enthusiastic about Lou Dobbs’ brand of anti-outsourcing populism, and are suddenly pining for John Kerry.

Third, unrelated to outsourcing, it seems the Indian publishing industry has been doing quite well in the past couple of years, even as conventional publishing in the U.S. has struggled. There is an editorial in the Hindustan Times by Peter Gordan to that effect, but more importantly, see the article in the Business Standard from a couple of weeks ago on the subject. Apparently blogs have been part of the growth of the industry:

What has given the industry the much-needed charge and brought about these changes? Says Pramod Kapoor, publisher, Roli Books, “The reading habits of people are seeing a lot of change and there is more thirst for gaining knowledge.” Kapoor feels a lot of the credit for this should be given to the media as well as the Internet boom.
“People on blogs talk about books and there is more awareness about the titles released. The media too has played its role by giving more space to the publishing industry.” Literary festivals too have helped interest in books and authors grow. (link)

This is good news. Societies with vibrant book publishing are generally ones with bright futures. (Yes, I am saying something upbeat about India. Someone must have put something in my Kool-Aid.)

As for the positive role played by blogs, I am sure that Manish’s exhaustive coverage of the effect of Shakira’s abdominal muscles on the Mumbai stock exchange must be the culprit. Continue reading →

What did Guru Nanak look like?

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In California, the Times reports that the School Board unanimously voted last week to alter a seventh grade textbook image relating to Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion (or panth), after protests from the Sikh community (thanks, Chick Pea). 10nanak textbook newyorktimes.jpg

The controversial image isn’t the big one pictured, but the small one (I’ve added a circle to make it clearer). The image is a 19th century painting of Guru Nanak wearing a crown and what looks like a somewhat cropped beard. Both the crown and the beard shape are troubling to Sikhs, who are accustomed to seeing images of Guru Nanak more along the lines of the bigger image to the right — flowing white beard, and humble attire.

Though the New York Times has helpful interviews with community members on this, the Contra Costa Times actually spells out the issue more clearly:

The image is taken from a 19th-century painting made after Muslims ruled India. The publisher used it because it complies with the company’s policy of using only historical images in historical texts, said Tom Adams, director of curriculum for the Department of Education.

After Sikhs complained that the picture more closely reflected a Muslim man than a Sikh, Oxford offered to substitute it with an 18th-century portrait showing Guru Nanak with a red hat and trimmed beard. But Sikhs said that picture made their founder look like a Hindu.

The publisher now wants to scrap the picture entirely from the textbook, which was approved for use in California classrooms in 2005. There are about 250,000 Sikhs in California.

Sikh leaders say they want a new, more representative image of Guru Nanak, similar to the ones they place in Sikh temples and in their homes. The publisher has rejected those images as historically inaccurate. No images exist from the founder’s lifetime, 1469 to 1538. (link)

All of this raises the question — what, in fact, did Guru Nanak look like? We don’t have any images from his lifetime, and the later ones are clearly products of the values of their eras. What, historically, do we actually know? I went to Navtej Sarna’s recent book, The Book of Nanak, to see what I could find out. Continue reading →

Comparing “Heroes” to “Midnight’s Children”

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While we’re on the subject of television, am I the first person to think of shows like Lost and Heroes as the television equivalent of “magic realism” in the novel? These shows have elements of science fiction and fantasy, but remain grounded in realistic narration, human relationships, and a world that more or less resembles our own (with certain quiet variations). As a result, they can achieve mainstream respectability and broad popularity, while true Sci-Fi remains somewhat of a smaller, niche market — the “outer space” of basic cable, if you will.

This is going to sound blasphemous, but Heroes in particular actually reminds me a little of Midnight’s Children in some ways. Remember this delightful passage from Rushdie’s novel:

From Kerala, a boy who had the ability of stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through any surface in the land–through lakes, and (with greater difficulty), the polished bodies of automobiles . . . and a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish . . . and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhvas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischievously) been the cause of wild panic and rumors of the return of Giants . . . from Kashmir, there was a blue-eyed child of whose sex I was never certain, since by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she (or he) pleased. Some of us called this child Narada, others Markandaya, depending on which old fairy story of sexual change we had heard . . . near Jalna in the heart of the parched Deccan I found a water-divining youth, and at Budge-Budge outside of Calcutta a sharp-tongued girl whose words already had the power of inflicting physical wounds, so that after a few adults had found themselves bleeding freely as a result from some barb flung casually from her lips, they decided to lock her up in a bamboo cage and float her off down the Ganges to the Sunderbans jungles (which are the rightful home of monsters and phantasms); but nobody dared approach her, and she moved through the town surrounded by a vacuum of fear; nobody had the courage to deny her food. There was a boy who could eat metal and a girl whose fingers were so green that she could grow prize aubergines in the Thar desert; and more and more…

Ah, Rushdie: the old passages don’t disappoint. Of course, the different magical powers don’t map precisely to the characters in Heroes, but there are certain overlaps:

Continue reading →

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