Author Archives: amardeep

Filmiholic Interviews Kal Penn; They Discuss This Here Blog

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Wow, go Filmiholic — this week she has interviews with both Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri coinciding with the imminent release of The Namesake.

She and Kal Pann actually discuss Sepia Mutiny in Part 1 of their interview, with regards to the SM debate over desis playing terrorists in hollywood, and specifically Kal Penn’s role as a terrorist in a recent episode of 24. I gather he’s sympathetic to the fact that people are having a discussion, but not entirely sympathetic to the “blogging = people yakking at each other endlessly” part:

The point that I was trying to make was that I’m glad that people are discussing it, why I’m glad that people are getting pissed off about it is that I think that one of the things that’s happened since September 11 is we feel like we don’t have control over our representatives in government, especially as people of color, and I think it’s important to take that back.

It’s important to write letters to your Senator, your Congressman, to the guys who are actually voting on the issues that come up fictitiously on 24. The things that happen on 24 are so far-fetched, but there’s an under layer of reality to them that applies to things like the Patriot Act and racial profiling.

These are things that I hope people don’t just blog on Sepia Mutiny and whine their asses off, I hope that they take that a step further and take the passions they explain in those blogs and send a letter to Hillary Clinton, send a letter to whoever your usual rep is and it does have a remarkable effect when you do it as voting block and I hope that it motivates people to take that a step further. (link)

(A little ouch there… two quick responses: first, it should be pointed out that in several instances — Power 99 and Hot 97 come to mind — SM has done a bit more than whine. Second, just watch what we do on the 2008 elections, mofo!)

Anyway, the question stands: on the question of whether to do something like “Van Wilder,” I have to admit I have no idea what I would do in his shoes — how can one make the best out of a rather limited array of options for an Indian-American actor? Especially several years ago, before we had Harold and Kumar, Lost, E.R., and Heroes.

Still, as a counterpoint, I would encourage people to read the recent New Yorker profile of Joel Surnow, the guy behind 24. I was especially disturbed about Surnow’s blithe embrace of the use of torture in the show, contrary to American law and all existing human rights conventions. Once one knows that justifying torture is a pattern in the show — or, put more forcefully, a specific ideology it is promoting — it might be easier to see where to draw the line. Continue reading →

Inside Dharavi

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Last year I did a post on a poverty tourism experiment happening in Delhi. In both my own assessment and in the comments, opinion on the program was mixed: one the one hand, some people are offended by this concept, as it smacks of voyeurism. Others (like Bong Breaker) pointed out that the people who run these tours put money back into charities that support the community, and perhaps the people who go on these tours could benefit by added awareness and sensitivity. And John Thompson, who founded Salaam Baalak Trust, actually chimed in with his own defense of the program.

Now the Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article on another poverty tourism program happening in Dharavi, Mumbai. John Lancaster acknowledges the controvery over Reality Tours and Travel, but also goes beyond it, to tell us what he learned from the tour itself. Some of what he has to say is surprising:

Dharavi stretched before us like a vast junkyard, a hodgepodge of brick and concrete tenements roofed with corrugated metal sheets that gleamed dully in the sunshine. Poojari gave us a moment to take it all in. “We’ll show you the positive side of a slum,” he declared.

In the face of such squalor, his words seemed jarring. But Dharavi’s industriousness is well documented. Its businesses manufacture a variety of products—plastics, pottery, bluejeans, leather goods—and generate an estimated $665 million in annual revenue. In other words, Dharavi is not just a slum, it is also a node on the global economy.

Dharavi’s industries are arranged geographically, like medieval guilds, and the first alley we visited belonged to recyclers. In one small “godown” (as warehouses are known on the subcontinent), men were disassembling old computer keyboards. In another, men smeared from head to toe in blue ink stripped the casings from used ballpoint pens so they could be melted down and recycled. A few doors down, workers used heavy chains to knock the residue from steel drums that had once contained polyester resin. Poojari told us that some of Dharavi’s empty plastic bottles come from as far away as the United Kingdom. “People from a rich family, when they drink from a plastic bottle, they don’t know what happens to it afterwards,” he said. “Here, you see.” (link)

And it continues in that vein: Dharavi as a hive of light industrial activity. He acknowledges the smell, the open sewage, and the crampedness, but he doesn’t dwell on those things so much. And he ends with a telling reflection:

No one gave us a second glance, and I had to wonder about the motives of those in the Indian media and elsewhere who claimed on behalf of the Dharavi residents to be offended by the tours. Surely their ire could have been better targeted at the municipal authorities who had failed to provide the community with basic sanitation. I wondered whether the critics weren’t simply embarrassed by the slum’s glaring poverty—an image at odds with the country’s efforts to rebrand itself as a big software park. In any case, it seemed to me that the purpose of the tour was not to generate pity, but understanding. That’s not to say that it made me an expert—I was only there a few hours, after all. Were the people I saw in Dharavi the victims of globalization, or its beneficiaries? I still don’t know. But at least the question had been raised in my mind.(link)

Does this article change your opinion of “poorism,” as poverty tourism is sometimes called? Or is Lancaster’s account of a few hours spent in Dharavi too “sanitized” to be of value? Continue reading →

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Controversy over “Nishabd,” RGV’s “Lolita”

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Just when you thought the old geezer couldn’t possibly have any surprises left in the bag, Amitabh Bachchan has walked into a controversy for the part he plays in the new Ram Gopal Varma film Nishabd. nishabd small.jpg

The photo to the right says most of what you need to know. Big B. plays a 60 year old man who falls in love with his daughter’s eighteen-year old friend (played by newcomer Jiah Khan). He’s tortured about it, but it appears that nothing untoward happens between the two of them. Still, his wife finds out, and I gather from reviews that the film after intermission becomes a typical family melodrama — guilt, shame, etc. While the general scenario is roughly similar to Nabokov’s “Lolita,” the story is actually quite different: there’s no abduction, no marriage to and then murder of an inconvenient mother, and no insane cross-country chase involving witty pseudonyms. On the whole, the film seems to be an order of magnitude less twisted than Nabokov. (And that’s probably a relief.)

As for the quality of the film? Not great, by most accounts. (I haven’t seen it.) The best review I’ve seen is Baradwaj Rangan’s (via DesiPundit), and he is far from thrilled. He says Nishabd isn’t as good as Naach, which means it must be truly bad, since Naach was itself pretty crappy.

Congress government party officials in Uttar Pradesh want the film banned, on account of it being “against Indian values.” But does it really make sense to ban a film for flirting with a taboo — and not crossing it? We’re in strange territory here: somewhere between Minority Report and the Immaculate Conception. Anyway, it’s yet another example of a plea for censorship that is incoherent.

There has been a major protest in Allahabad over the film, where protesters have claimed the film is bringing in “Western values.” And here it might be noted that while Nishabd does seem to have a western feel for it, India does have a tradition of mature men and young women (or girls) getting together — it’s called child marriage. (That, incidentally, is a subject that the great V. Shantaram condemned some 70 years ago, in his film Duniya Na Maane. So this is not a new thing). Continue reading →

Like Skin

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Sonny Suchdev, of the band Outernational, has a nice personal essay up at RaceWire, the blog for the magazine Colorlines (thanks, Dave).

It’s a story describing an experience that many Sikh guys have had — having the dastaar (or pagri, or turban) pulled off as someone’s idea of a joke:

I’m riding the F train like usual in Brooklyn when dozens of kids – perhaps in junior high – get in my subway car on their way home from school. The train is bustling with adolescent energy.

As the train stops at 4th Avenue, I hear a boy yell “Give me that!” as he and his friends run out the train door. The next thing I realize, my dastar has been yanked completely off my head. My uncovered joora dangles, and I am in complete and utter shock. Everyone on the train is staring at me. Other kids from the school are both laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. Not knowing how to react, I stand up quickly, look out the doors of the train car and see a group of young boys of color running down the stairs. Startled and confused, I pick it up my dastar from the grimy platform and get back in the train. (link)

The part that I found most thought-provoking was the following:

I get off at Smith and 9th Street with my dirty dastar in my hands, not knowing what to do. My eyes fill with tears immediately. I feel naked and exposed, so small, so humiliated, and so so alone. . . . I get to a corner of the platform and break down in despair, remembering fifth grade vividly, feeling so angry and exhausted from living in this country. The twenty something years of this shit is going through me at once – the slurs, the obnoxious stares, the go back to your countries, the threats, the towel/rag/tomato/condom/tumor heads, all of it. But somehow pulling off my turban hurts more than anything. Maybe it’s the symbolism of my identity wrapped up in this one piece of cloth that, like my brown skin, I wear everyday.(link)

Skin is a good metaphor in one sense, though the sense of shame entailed in this type of experience is actually more like having a private part of your body exposed — in other words, it’s like being forcibly disrobed. Part of what makes it complicated is the fact that the perpetrators generally don’t know the symbolism of the turban, though they definitely know that what they are doing is going to result in humiliation. But maybe the sense of hurt Sonny is talking about is not about symbolism or Sikh theology, but about the more contemporary concept of “identity”: this turban, irrespective of why I wear it, is who I am. It’s what I wear every day; it’s what makes me, me. It’s about having that sense of self dismantled and disrespected for no apparent reason — for someone’s idea of a joke.

I think this story, while definitely unique in some ways to the Sikh experience, is an experience that other people who are visibly marked as different (either for ethno/religious reasons or for any other reason) can also identify with. Also, I wonder if being vulnerable in this way is at least partially analogous to the way the threat of sexual harassment can affect women. (Note the phrase “partially analogous” — as opposed to “exactly similar”) Continue reading →

“Samjhauta” Thwarted: Another Senseless, Horrible Bombing

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It’s difficult to know what to say sometimes after terrorist attacks like the recent bombing of the Samjhauta Express. 68 innocent people lost their lives — and for what? If it turns out to be an attack planned by Kashmiri militants or other Islamists, this kind of attack seems particularly bizarre, as it appears that the majority of the people who died were in fact Pakistanis. (If another motive or ideological agenda was behind the attack, it’s not as if it would be any better.) And needless to say, if this follows the pattern of some other recent terrorist attacks in India, it’s entirely possible — likely, even — that weeks will go by without any satisfactory answers appearing. (I’m perfectly happy to be proven wrong if this turns out not to be true.)

Here are some of the issues I’ve seen people discussing with regards to this attack:

  • At Outlook, there is an interesting article that describes in depth the general lack of security on the Samjhauta Express train. Hopefully, both governments are going to seriously revamp this.
  • A big question that people are asking is, were the doors locked from the inside, preventing people who survived the original explosions from escaping the two burning cars? Some witnesses have claimed they were, but India has denied it. At Bharat-Rakshak, however, I came across a commenter who has a good explanation for why this might have been done:
    In north India, when travelling overight, train compartments are usually locked from inside to prevent entry of people who do not have reservations in that compartment. The TT opens them at stations to allow entry only the passengers that belong to that compartment.

    With intense heat, the locked door latches must have jammed. It is difficult to open these latches even otherwise. Women and kids have to ask other passengers to help then open the door.

    The windows in trains are barred to prevent ‘chain snatching’ and other types of burglaries. (link)
    Those sound like good reasons, but I hope after this tragedy officials are thinking about possible failsafe mechanisms, so nothing like this happens again.
  • Sketches have been released of the suspects. They were apparently speaking the “local Hindi language.” That doesn’t tell us much, however.
  • What was the explosive used? The bombs are being described as IEDs with kerosene and other “low intensity” fuels — in other words, not RDX or other material obtained through transnational networks. These sound like materials that are very easily available, but still incredibly deadly for people in a confined space. A witness at the BBC mentions that the explosions did not force the conductor to stop the train right away — indeed, he may not have known about them until several minutes after the fires started.

Continue reading →

MTV Desi, RIP

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Back in 2005, bloggers at Sepia Mutiny (and me, on my own small blog) announced with some excitement the advent of MTV Desi, a channel geared to NRIs and Second Gen South Asian youth. Now there are news reports that MTV Desi is getting axed, along with its sister diasporic channels MTV Chi and MTV K, as Viacom is undergoing a restructuring. Hollywood Reporter has an MTV executive making the following statement:

“Unfortunately, the premium distribution model for MTV World proved more challenging than we anticipated in this competitive environment,” the company said. “As a result, MTV has decided to shut down its linear MTV World operation. However, we remain steadfast in superserving multicultural youth, and we are continuing to investigate ways to integrate the MTV Desi, Chi and K brands online and on our other screens.” (link)

Well, duh, if it’s only available via Satellite TV, you can bet that “Cheap Ass Desis” (to rip off a former SM commenter’s moniker) aren’t about to shell out a hefty monthly fee for it. I believe I’m the only blogger here who actually subscribes to MTV Desi — and it’s only because my in-laws came to stay with us for a few months, and the channel came packaged with the channels they really wanted — Star One, Star Plus, Star News, and NDTV. Still, I’ve actually spent some hours watching the channel, so maybe I’m the best person to do a little mini-elegy. (By the way, it’s worth noting that the channel is still on the air as of today.)

First, the positive. The best thing I ever saw on MTV Desi was the following inspired rant by Parag Khanna.

There are some statements he makes that miss the mark (India isn’t the poorest country in the world by the indices I’ve seen), but I appreciate the energy. Instead of being the embarrassed, cautious ABCD — do we really know enough about India to comment on corruption? shouldn’t we stay “positive”? — he’s taking a strong stance. (Parag Khanna might make a good blogger.) If MTV Desi is really dead, it’s too bad we’ll get less stuff like this. Continue reading →

Posted in TV

Begum Nawazish Ali Running For Parliament

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So, there was a big article in the New York Times recently (thanks, TechnophobicGeek) about how Indian TV is supposedly entering this golden age of innovative programming. Some of the shows mentioned have actually been talked about before at Sepia Mutiny, including “Galli Galli Sim Sim.” There’s also an interesting segment on a new reality show oriented to teenagers, called “Dhoom Machao Dhoom,” about four girls who want to start a band. One of them is a “returned” ABCD from New York, which makes for interesting drama when she says they should write their own songs instead of just doing Bollywood numbers…

Anyway, it’s a decent read, but it strikes me that Indian TV remains a narrow-minded backwater as long as Pakistan has Begum Nawazish Ali. Via 3 Quarks Daily, I came across a new profile at MSNBC of Pakistan’s famous celebrity drag queen and talk show host. Among other things, the Begum freely admits her “bisexuality,” though I’m not sure she means it the way we might think she means it. (Venial Sin, the former SM guest blogger, wasn’t thrilled about her performance, as you may remember: “I mean, kudos to Begum Nawazish Ali for getting to pull a tranny routine on TV, but how necessary is it to reiterate the stereotypes of a gay man as an effeminate ‘woman stuck in a male body’ or as a hijra?”)

But now comes the news that she plans to run for Pakistani Parliament:

Then Saleem dropped a bombshell. “You are the first person I am announcing this to, but I have decided to file my papers for the upcoming general elections,” he exclaimed. “I am going to run for a parliamentary seat as an independent from all over Pakistan and I am going to campaign as Begum Nawazish Ali!” The note of triumph and excitement in his voice is unmistakable.

“I want to be the voice of the youth and for all of Pakistan,” he continued. “The idea was always to break barriers and preconceived notions, of gender, identity, celebrity and politics and to bring people closer. In any case, I think Begum Nawazish Ali is the strongest woman in Pakistan!”

Whether Pakistanis agree or not, the elections at the end of the year are likely to be one of the most uproarious in recent times. (link)

Interesting — we’ll see if her political career (is she really serious?) is going to be as groundbreaking as her showbiz career has been.

There are many theories about how it is the Begum can get away with it in conservative Pakistan. She’s been careful not to be crude in the Dame Edma vein, but still — there are some serious social taboos being transgressed here. What do you think?

In case you’re wondering what the fuss is about, I might recommend this 10 minute Youtube clip of the Begum doing her thing. The jokes are corny, but the sari and make-up are exquisite. Continue reading →

Posted in TV

Aish Marries Tree(s)–A Setback for Feminism?

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Aishwarya Rai, who has been in the news lately because of her engagement to Abhishek Bachchan, has apparently been ritually married to not one but two trees before her real marriage (thanks, Antahkarana). The aim is to counter the astrological effects of being born a Manglik:

But Ash is reportedly blighted with what in astrological terms is described as “manglik dosh,” which means that the planet Mars (mangla) and possibly even the planet Saturn are in the seventh house. People with manglik dosh are prone to multiple marriages, according to San Francisco Bay Area Vedic astrologer Pandit Parashar. That means Ash’s marriage to Abhishek could either end in divorce or his death.

In Hindu tradition, in order to offset the evil influence of manglik dosh, a woman should marry a peepal or banana tree before she ties the knot with her fiancé. Or she could even marry a clay urn, which should be broken soon after the nuptial ceremonies, signifying that the bride has become a widow, and the manglik dosh problem has been solved.

ItÂ’s not known if Ash has married, or plans to marry, an urn, but she reportedly has married a peepal tree in the holy city of Varanasi, and a banana tree in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. (link)

The Indian media is reporting that a case has been filed against the Bachchan family by lawyer Shruti Singh to the effect that these types of practices promote untouchability. She has also suggested that it’s offensive to women.

There has been some discussion of this event on the blog Feministing, and one commenter there points out that the practice of marrying a tree can also be recommended for men, though I haven’t been able to confirm that. (If true, that would definitely weaken the case that this is a misogynistic ritual.) Other commenters have suggested that this is probably pretty harmless in the big scheme of things — especially since honor killings, dowry killings, child marriages, and forced marriages are still problems in Indian society.

What do readers think? Is this “backward” practice part of a slippery slope (only one step away from things that are much more problematic), or something basically harmless? What do you think of Shruti Singh’s claim that this practice promotes untouchability? I must admit I don’t know very much about Hindu astrology, and so can’t say what role caste plays in these practices in general. Continue reading →

Crosswords, Crossing swords, and Another Brainy Desi Guy

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One of the side characters in the recent documentary Wordplay is a desi crossword puzzle aficionado named Kiran Kedlaya, who came in second at the 2006 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (the Crossword Superbowl, if you will). Kedlaya is an MIT mathematics professor who specializes in polynomial equations. According to the interview on Cogito.org, he started competitive crossword solving in graduate school, and says the skill works the same part of the brain math does:

Is there a connection between math and crosswords? Dr. Kedlaya thinks that math, music and computer science – popular professions among “solvers” – tap into a similar part of the brain. Wordplay, says Dr. Kedlaya, suggests that the link is using language in unique way. In a crossword, figuring out the word from the clue is not sufficient; decoding how the letters cross is vital, too. (link)

This is corroborated in the film Wordplay, where it’s pointed out that a disproportionate number of the top crossword puzzle-solvers are people with computer science and mathematics backgrounds. It makes a certain kind of sense — though I might have expected verbal types to have a leg up in some ways.

The obvious issue this might raise for people is, to what extent is crossword puzzle solving a kind of adult version of a spelling bee? I tend to think the skills involved are somewhat different: while doing the NYT Sunday Crossword requires a large reservoir of arcane knowledge, it doesn’t require (or benefit from) rote memorization.

After the jump: a super-easy Sepia Mutiny themed Crossword I myself created, using a free service. Continue reading →

17 Year Old Desi Girl Makes Scientific Breakthrough

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Madhavi Gavini is a student at a math/science high school in Mississippi, the Mississippi Institute of Math and Science. mahdavi-scope.jpg At age 14 she got interested in cystic fibrosis, especially the lung infections that kill many people suffering from CF:

It was that thirst for knowledge that drove Madhavi to search for a way to help a friend with cystic fibrosis. “I found out that most people who have CF die of pseudomonas infections,” she recalls, “so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” She was 14 at the time. “I guess the thought that a 14-year-old can’t really do much to help, didn’t really occur to me,” she says with a shrug.

Pseudomonas bacteria — in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis — can cause deadly secondary infections in people with immune-suppressing conditions such as AIDS, cancer and severe burns. This opportunistic pathogen forms a thick, protective layer around itself, making it nearly impossible for antibiotics to penetrate and destroy it. (link)

That’s the background. Interestingly, the technique she used to find a way to kill the Pseudomonas bacteria started with Ayurvedic medicine:

With an herb book from her grandparents as her guide, Madhavi sampled common grocery store and green houseplants, such as cinnamon, ginger and aloe. She obtained a strain of pseudomonas bacteria from the local university and began subjecting the germs to various plant extracts.

One of the common tropical plant extracts penetrated the bacterium’s protective layer. Next, Madhavi isolated the specific molecule in the extract that was able to inhibit bacterial growth. She found that the molecule was heat resistant, and resistant to pressure. “It kills the cell,” she explains, “by preventing the transcription of the genes involved in energy, metabolism, adaptation, membrane transport, and toxin secretion.” (link)

The herb she started with, incidentally, is Terminalia Chebula, known in Sanskrit as Haritaki. As for which molecule exactly kills the biofilm that protects the Pseudomonas, the coverage I’ve read doesn’t say.

Wow. Continue reading →