Author Archives: amardeep

The Importance of Being Arranged (A Literary Remix)

Posted on by

Add one part AC and one part Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Mix well, plagiarize liberally, and try not to try too hard. And voila…

Note on characters: Deepak and Varun are two nondescript desi guys in New Jersey, in their late 20s.

Varun: Chandramukhi Baba says, ‘These days unnecessary things are our only necessities.’
Deepak: I thought that was Oscar Wilde.
Varun: The British steal all our best lines. Anyway, he is referring to the transient nature of material possessions, and encouraging their immediate acquisition in the interest of achieving inner peace. I think it makes a lot of sense, actually.
Deepak: All that religious talk gives me a headache. So, anyway, what happened last night?
Varun: With Smiti? Yaar… what can I say? (smiling, smug)
Deepak: Really? Man, you seem to have really hit the jackpot with this ApniShaadi thing.
Varun: I know. A different kuri every week! Too bad you gave up the game, married guy. This internet thing is fantastic.
Deepak: I don’t miss it. I actually don’t think I could be happier. Incidentally, how do you work it?
Varun: How do I work what?
Deepak: I mean, the desi scene in New Jersey isn’t that big. Aren’t you worried you’re going to run into some girl from the Bridgewater mandir on one of these dates?
Varun: Oh — different names. On the internet I’m Arjun.
Deepak: Arjun, huh? Nice. And the picture?
Varun: It’s called Photoshop, dude. Arjun has a big nose and puffy cheeks…
Deepak: And no zits, presumably? Don’t the girls notice that?
Varun: No, definitely no zits. And they don’t say anything, ’cause all their pics are doctored too.
Deepak: I like my system better.
Varun: I know, it’s crazy. You must be the only guy to have met the girl of his dreams on an arranged marriage date in some remote village in central Punjab…
Deepak: Word — but you know, it was time to pull the plug. I was tired of the bars, the soul-killing NETIP scene, the websites… I was even tired of having to fork over $100 a week just to get my hair done by some puffed up dude who calls himself a “stylist.”
Varun: Hey, I like Jorge. As Chandramukhi says, ‘Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ What’s $100 if you end up with hair as good as mine? (runs hand through hair) But don’t forget the most important thing: you were tired of your mom calling every five minutes…
Deepak: …With the email of some random desi girl studying dentistry in Iowa, yeah, that too. But really, it was just time to roll the dice, and say, ‘it’s going to just be this one girl, no more waffling.’
Varun: You don’t miss being single? The thrill of the chase?
Deepak: Let me put it this way: my sex life has never been better. What about you? Don’t you get tired of lying to all these girls?
Varun: Lying, who’s lying? As Chandramukhi says, ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’ Actually I sometimes think I’m more myself when I’m Arjun. I’m so bored with just being Varun.
Deepak: Wait, isn’t that Oscar Wilde again?
Varun: What’s with all the Oscar Wilde? And hey, is your cousin sister coming over tonight?
Deepak: Gayatri? You still have the hots for Gayatri?

To be continued, possibly. (Along these lines) Continue reading →

An Exhibit at the Asia Society

Posted on by

There’s an ambitious exhibit of Asian American art at the Asia Society in New York, called “One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now.” saira wasim buzkushi.jpg The New York Times has a detailed review. Among the 21 artists whose works are being exhibited, at least two are desi, Saira Wasim and Chitra Ganesh.

Saira Wasim, who is from Lahore, trained in painting classical Mughal miniatures before moving to the U.S. recently. She was part of the “Karkhana” group that had its own show in New York not too long ago (see Manish’s post from last year). She does these great collage-like miniatures that often parody either political figures or scenes of cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Among the images of Wasim’s I’ve come across on the internet, my favorite so far is “Buzkashi” (Goat-grabbing), pictured above (click on the image to see the full picture). Here is how Wasim characterizes the painting on her website:

So this painting depicts ‘One Man’s show’ of Military Dictator of Pakistan, Perverz Musharaff sitting on a presidency throne and his imperialism is shown with four arms like Hindu god Shiv.

The basic constitutional structure of the country evolving around his regime; army generals are celebrating ‘martial law’ by dancing and wearing Hawaiian sandals.

The worldÂ’s seventh nuclear state in spite of her national debt over forty billion dollars and spending on defense budget over 3.5 billion dollars a year. Here goat is symbolized as innocent public. (link)

Wow. I’m surprised there hasn’t been an outcry about her work yet (maybe there has been one, and I missed it). Continue reading →

Posted in Art

NC State Mein Swagat hai (Welcome to NC State)

Posted on by

There’s an article (thanks, Neale) in the Chronicle of Higher Education that follows the experience of a group of Indian graduate students who come to U.S. universities to do graduate work in engineering schools. This particular case study deals with NC State in Raleigh, North Carolina, a town I got to know pretty well from my days at Duke.

Because support for foreign students isn’t part of NC State’s “land grant” mandate, the university gives very little support to these students, most of whom are entering the U.S. for the first time at RDU airport. As a result the students themselves organize an extensive support organization called Maitri, which provides online support to the students before they come, arranges airport pick-ups, and even shares housing temporarily until proper dorm or apartment housing is available. But what struck me was the orientation volunteer arranged by the university:

Last they went to the Office of International Services for a brief informational session delivered by a blond, ruddy-cheeked volunteer, whose first announcement was to make clear that she was not being paid to do what she was doing. “I’m doing this because I love you,” she emphasized. “I don’t know you, but I love you.”

She commenced going over a printed schedule for the coming week. “On Friday, August 18, will be orientation. You. Must. Be. There,” she said slowly, closing off the final consonants. “I want you to take your pen and underline that.”

Then she drew the students’ attention to a flier for the yard sale that was soon to be held by the International Bible Study group. The same group, she pointed out, was also sponsoring a free tour of Raleigh. Among the other fliers in the packet the newcomers had received at the door were one for an “International Student Welcome Dinner” held by the Baptist Student Union International Ministry and one for a $50 bus trip to Washington, D.C., hosted by Providence College Ministry.

Mr. Bustle, director of the Office of International Services, says that he appreciates the help from religious groups —- so long as they sign an agreement not to proselytize —- because “as a state institution, it’s not always politically correct to be spending N.C. State dollars on international students.” (link)

Is it just me, or is this not really an acceptable explanation for why the university is providing no support whatsoever for new international graduate students? These students contribute a lot to the research reputations of the universities where they study, so it’s not just a matter of “spending N.C. State dollars on international students,” as if NC State doesn’t benefit. It’s also ironic that the organizations that step in to fill the gap are Christian groups. Yeah, they’re not proselytizing, but I’m pretty sure that religious groups providing vital services to students isn’t in NC State’s mandate either. Continue reading →

“Dude, I was at this Indian Wedding over the weekend…”

Posted on by

Technophobic Geek recently overheard the following at his middle eastern drum circle:

Instructor: So I was playing the tablas at this very fancy and HUGE Indian wedding last weekend. It was really quite fascinating. I haven’t seen a wedding this big in a while.
Other guy: How many people?
Instructor: At least 400, maybe 500 people. It was a really traditional wedding. Not only in terms of the ceremony, but it was also an (with dramatic pause) arranged wedding.
Everyone else: (awestruck) Wow!
Instructor: In fact, it was so arranged that the bride did not smile at all through the entire wedding, not one time.
Other guy: Was she at least over 18, I mean, she wasn’t like 12 or something, right?
Instructor: No, not at all, she was in her early 20s, at least that’s what they said.
(Everyone heaves a palpable sigh of relief). (link)

Our technophobic friend says he was rendered speechless by this (“I had no idea where to even start bridging this cultural chasm…”), so let’s help him out. The first thing he could say is that it’s striking that arranged marriage is still such a stigmatized practice in the U.S. — especially amongst “laid back dudes” in one’s social circle. Come on guys, get over it: learn something about the culture of the people who invented the tabla you’ve learned to play.

Second, it’s not necessarily the case that it was an actual, no-prior-meeting, arranged marriage (actually pretty rare these days in the diaspora). Any help from websites and/or parents is often construed as “arranging” by people outside the loop, when in fact “assisting” might be a more accurate way to describe it.

As for why the bride wasn’t smiling: uncomfortable outfit? Awkward hair? Cultural expectation? Continue reading →

A Blogger’s Response to the NYT on Parsis

Posted on by

By now many readers will have read the admirable article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times about the declining numbers of the otherwise highly successful, globalized Parsi community. The main problem seems to be the core community’s reluctance to accept intermarriage of any kind because of a blood-based definition of what makes a Parsi a Parsi, though there are other factors (such as low birth rates, high levels of professionalization, and diasporic scattering).

Of course, there’s an obvious historical connection here that Laurie Goodstein doesn’t make, which has to do with the role of the Parsis before Indian independence. A new blogger called Strange Loops has a well-phrased response:

While I think the article gets most of the nuances and issues facing this very small, but historically significant, community correct, a few further points bear some exposition. First, the Parsi community pre-1947 (and to a lesser extent, afterwards) was undeniably Anglophilic in bent. Exceptions abound of course, including Dadabhai Naoroji, who became the first Indian MP in the British Parliament in 1892, and a father figure to a generation of Indian nationalists. The Anglophilic inclinations of many Parsis were encouraged by the British from early on for pragmatic and ideological reasons. The British sought to cultivate an indigenous elite with a vested interest in the preservation of Empire, and further saw Parsis as more ‘whiteÂ’ … and thus culturally closer to Europeans. Indeed, the British often referred to Parsis as the ‘Jews of IndiaÂ’ (a somewhat ironic statement given the rich history of several Indian Jewish communities). All this made the transition to an Independent India an awkward and stilted affair for many (but by no means all) Parsis in Bombay and elsewhere. (link)

Perhaps the reluctance by more conservative Parsis to accept intermarriage has to do with exactly the kind of internalized racial thinking the blogger (who is not a Parsi him/herself) is talking about. Personally, I’m rooting for the Parsis; I hope the faction that favors allowing people who’ve intermarried to remain in the community prevails.

For more on Parsi-related news, check out Arzan Wadia’s excellent Parsi Khabar blog. Continue reading →

A Closer Look at Dean Mahomet (1759-1850)

Posted on by

Though I’ve known about Dean Mahomet for a long time (and Ennis did a post on him last year), it wasn’t until recently that I actually read through the free online version of edition of The Travels of Dean Mahomet, for a class I’m teaching. For people who haven’t heard of him, Dean Mahomet is the first Indian writer to have published a book in English, The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794). Having moved first to Cork, Ireland, and then London and finally Brighton, Mahomet opened first the first Indian restaurant in England, The Hindoostanee Coffee House, and then started a profitable business doing “shampoo baths” at the shore resort town of Brighton. He married an Anglo-Irish woman, and was treated with respect by English and Anglo-Irish society around him.

The following is a bit of a dry academic/history type of post. I’m not so much interested in celebrating Dean Mahomet as a “hero” (I don’t think he necessarily is one), nor would it mean much to condemn him as some kind of race-traitor. Rather, the goal is simply to think about how we might understand his rather unique book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet, in historical context. What can be learned from it? Continue reading →

Desi Sesame Street (w/video)

Posted on by

There’s now a Hindi-language version of Sesame Street being broadcast on Indian TV, called Galli Galli Sim Sim. It’s filmed in Delhi, and it appears to be the second twenty-seventh adaptation of the Sesame Street idea . And no, I don’t know what the heck Laura Bush is doing there. galligallisimsim.jpg

After the jump, you’ll find a Youtube link with a clip that I think you’ll enjoy. But first, an introduction to the “muppet” characters on Galli Galli Sim Sim:

*Boombah, a hedonistic lion who believes he is descended from one of India’s historic royal families. Coincidentally, Boombah bares a resemblance to Goleo VI from the 2006 Fifa World Cup, a puppet constructed by The Jim Henson Company.
* Chamki, a schoolgirl dressed in the uniform of an Indian government school
* Googly, Chamki’s best friend, named after the cricket delivery and with a cricket ball-like nose
* Aanchoo, a storyteller who is transported to other places when she sneezes (link)

Any show with a hedonistic lion is all right with me. I also like both “Googly” and “Aanchoo” as character names. Though I don’t think they’ve got anything yet to compete with the name “Snuffleupagus”. Continue reading →

Posted in TV

Bhaizone, or the Tapori With a Heart of Gold

Posted on by

(Note: I swiped the title(s) of my post from Shortpurge and Amit)

munna bhai.jpgIn Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Sanjay Dutt has a visitation from “Bapu,” and afterwards starts trying live in a more Gandhian way. The film is technically the sequel to the superhit from 2003, Munna Bhai, M.B.B.S., but wisely goes off on a completely different direction from the first film (you don’t need to have seen Munna 1 to enjoy this). The “dadagiri” is the same (just wanted an excuse to use the word “dadagiri”), as is the “everyman triumphs against heartless bureaucracy” theme, but the story and the shape of the two films couldn’t be more different.

One of my favorite bits: at one point, Munna is getting smacked around by a security guard employed by his nemesis, the heartless builder Lucky Singh. After getting slapped once, he gamely turns the other cheek. After getting slapped twice, he gives the guy a big, “baap re baap” punch in the gut, which knocks the guy across the street. Munna’s sheepish explanation: “Bapu never said what to do after they’ve hit both of your cheeks.”

Now that’s the kind of Gandhianism I like. And indeed, this is the kind of Bollywood I like. (Manish, who is pretty choosy with regards to Bollywood, also liked it; in fact, we went to see it largely on his recommendation). The humor is sweet, the songs are energetic and relatively “traditional,” and everything is actually in good taste for once. Moreover, the Mahatma Gandhi part of the plot is the excuse for an admirable, relatively non-dogmatic social message. At the theater where I saw it last night, in Doylestown, PA, the audience all came out looking well-pleased. Continue reading →

Conversions

Posted on by

Two Fox News Reporters were recently forced to convert to Islam as part of negotiating their release from Palestinian captors (the other part of the package was a monetary ransom paid in American dollars, said to be in the six figures). In the video they made of the event, the captors made the bizarre claim that the conversions weren’t under duress. Yeah, right. (Interesting Slate.com essay on this here)

That surreal spectacle led to an interesting column in the Wall Street Journal by David Aikman, where he mentions India in conjunction:

Under the sheltering wing of the First Amendment and a core civic belief that religious faith is a private matter and a private choice, religious Americans have overwhelmingly made the selection of their private faith as normal as choosing a breakfast cereal. Sometimes the selection seems to be as inconsequential as well. . . .

In the Hindu and Islamic worlds, the conscious choice by someone of a new religious conviction is very serious business. There are family pressures to overcome, community prejudices and, often enough, threats of violence if a conversion is actually made. Even in India, where there is a strong legal tradition since British times of religious freedom, advocates of Hindutva (“Hinduness”) do everything possible to prevent people defecting from Hinduism to join other faiths. In much of the Islamic world it is technically a capital offense under Sharia, or Muslim religious law, to change one’s faith. But even if it weren’t, the prevailing response to a suggestion to alter one’s religion would be: “Why would I want to?” (link)

Continue reading →

A Little Xenophobic Nastiness from Sen. Conrad Burns

Posted on by

Conrad Burns, Republican Senator from Montana, recently said the following:

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who “drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.”(link)

Looks like a garden variety anti-immigrant slur — they seem to be coming hot and heavy this year (the theme this campaign season seems to be brown-baiting: Latinos and Middle Easterners/South Asians). I suppose it would be possible to say, “well, he’s just talking about terrorism, he never said ‘immigrants’ or ‘South Asian immigrants.'” First, as far as I know no taxi driver is currently being accused of a connection to terrorism, so he’s not literally talking about taxi drivers, but the types of jobs working class immigrants usually start off with when they reach the U.S. Second, this is in fact a slur because it attempts to demonize those same immigrants by lumping them (us) in with genuine threats to American democracy. According to Conrad Burns’ thinking, immigration is terrorism. Wonkette says it with admirable succinctness: “Racist and Insane!”

By the way, it’s not the only WTF caliber comment Senator Burns has made recently:

He has drawn criticism in recent weeks for calling his house painter a “nice little Guatemalan man” during a June speech. Burns, whose re-election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, also suggested that the man might be an illegal immigrant. The campaign later said the worker is legal.(link)

Hm, I think I might go give my $25 to Jon Tester for Senate. Apparently it’s a close race; I vote we Macacatinate** him.

**Macacatinate: (v.) to inflict a mutinous, internet-based critique than can cause poll numbers to shift once the mainstream media grabs hold of it. Continue reading →