Author Archives: siddhartha

Off the Market

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600_bolly.jpgWhen the hell did I become a chronicler of Bollywood? I barely know a damn thing about the films. But the pulsating worldwide buzz of matters Ash and Abhishek is so intense right now, it has penetrated even my cortex. I surrender to the glamour and the glory. Consider how our dashing duo have spent the last three days:

Thursday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in Toronto.

Friday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in New York City.

Saturday: Travel, presumably.

Sunday: Oh, I don’t know… how about we get engaged at a private ceremony at Daddyji’s Juhu crib?

A couple of days ago the Indian press was still reading the tealeaves based on Ash and Abhishek’s “hand-in-hand” appearance in Toronto — actually, the pictures show Ash demurely at her gentleman’s elbow —

The buzz about the marriage of Aishwarya and Abhishek has become almost a belief now after Ash has been spotted more frequently in the company of the Bachchans in the recent days thereby adding more fuel to the gossip mills.

Well, mill no more! It’s official. Sorry, Neha and Chick Pea and the rest of you lovely ladies… Thank God we know another superfine Abhishek who might still be available. Having U.S. passport even! Continue reading →

Right Cross, Left Coast

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poshbecks.jpgIt’s well known that washed-out crooners and comedians end up in Las Vegas. The same role is played in the international soccer world by a few wealthy backwaters where once-glamorous players on the far side of their prime can poke the ball around a few more years against subpar opposition. For some reason Qatar, principally among the Gulf states, has been such a haven for a decade or more. Japan is another such venue. But the place you really want to end up if you’re a footballing once-great is — following the path that Pelé and Beckenbauer once trod — the good old U. S. of A.

Before you pounce: Yes, I know that the U.S., Japan, even Qatar are all soccer powers on the rise in an international scene where talent is more and more evenly spread. And it’s arguable that some of these early retirees have contributed to this leveling, although I’m more inclined to believe that when they get off their arses and coach (like Zico for Japan last year), as opposed to collect large checks and come on in the seventy-fifth minute to please the adoring masses.

In light of these considerations I guess we should refrain from judging in advance the impact that the arrival of Golden Balls himself, David Beckham, in the U.S. to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy will have on the development of the sport. But considering the amount of money that’s being shelled out for him — $250 million over five years, the richest contract in American professional sports — it’s fair to say that someone out there has great expectations.

One constituency that has to be happy is Los Angeles realtors, as the establishment of a West Coast Beckingham Palace is sure to reflate the market for Beverly Hills mansions. Victoria Beckham (I know, how did I manage to take this post so far without mentioning her?) has been spotted scoping out properties in the company of Katie Holmes, the latest Tom Cruise brainwashee spouse. It seems Katie and Posh are BFFs — who knew? — and so I suppose we can expect numerous stories ahead of TomKat and Posh & Becks double-dating shenanigans, hopefully in all possible permutations.

p1_beckham.jpgBut what does it mean for the desis? Tipster Kamala is on the case. She sent us a link to this picture that Sports Illustrated ran a couple of days ago on its website. She notes:

observe Beckham’s left hand. If my hindi is right, his tattoo says Victoria in Hindi, in huge letters. It’s so clearly visible. Hmm.

Hmm is right, my sister! Well, it’s been documented before that Posh and Becks like to get their India on — it’s apparently a common malady among the Brit celebrity set — and beside, who could resist that sinewy Devanagari script, it’s so sensuous and exotic. Between this and the whole Bend-It thing, perhaps Posh and Becks could help us re-open our recently-shuttered Los Angeles bureau.

We’re also going to need some investigators and paperazzi of our own (Taz, Shruti, I’m looking at you). For now we’ll have to make do with this Los Angeles perspective from Defamer, which has opened a new category (“Celebutard Immigration Issues”) to mark the event and offers here its “official position” on the arrival of Posh & Becks:

We are wholeheartedly against the idea of foreign attention whores stealing away scarce Lohan-diddling and vagina-flashing opportunities from our homegrown celebutards, and we’d rather see our native paparazzi burn down Los Angeles rather than forfeit their turf to the coming wave of alien guerrilla photographers who will soon be dispatched to document the Beckhams’ every Starbucks visit.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas just got a whole lot closer. Spice Girls reunion tour, anyone? Continue reading →

Idli in Sulaimaniya

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alencheril.jpgHere’s a military item in honor of the “surge” and courtesy of a tip from frequent commenter Maurice. It’s about the (presumably) first Indian husband and wife to both serve in the U.S. military. Sgt. Cyriac Alenchril, 35, is a supply sergeant in Iraq. Wife Fixie Alencheril, 31, recently completed basic training and is headed to Iraq as a human resources administrator. India Abroad has the story.

He says:

“I was told it would be an interesting news that my wife and I have committed ourselves to this war on terror, whereas many immigrants just enjoy only the fruits of the blessed land,” Cyriac said.

She says:

“It was not easy for an Indian woman to do all that the Caucasian or African-American women do. More than the physical struggle, the mental stress was too much. I am happy that I completed it successfully,” said Fixie…

Can’t you just hear the intonation? (I don’t mean that in a derisive way.) The article is full of other interesting tid-bits including this surreal scene of a Mallu herding Punjabis to perform for Americans in Iraq:

Cyriac said his proudest moment in Iraq was on last August 15, “when I gathered some 15 Punjabis to sing the Indian national anthem in Sulaimaniya before an American audience.”

And the taste of home:

Guarding 3,000 detainees in Sulaimaniya and training Iraqi correctional cadets are not easy tasks. But he felt at home in Iraq because of the many good curries he got to eat, thanks to the many benevolent Kerala cooks he met there.

Cyriac is a true believer. He intends to stay in the military 30 years, and he wants more Indians to emulate him:

“Currently, there are very few Indians in the army. Those who are in the services are mainly medical personnel. This needs to change,” Cyriac said.

The couple’s two young children are with Fixie’s parents back in India. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe, surge and all. Continue reading →

More Triumphant Cultural Inroads

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“Kind of like the Indian Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, only crank up the handsome and rip off the knob.” That’s how Stephen Colbert described Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in a segment Tuesday evening making fun of celebrity feuds. (Apparently there’s some ruckus about Big B not turning up at SRK’s New Year’s Eve party.) Trump v. Rosie and Angelina v. Madonna were the other two targets, but with a full half of the segment devoted to Bollywood clips and mangled names of Indian stars (“Let me tell you something: If Pree-etty Zinta is there, you better fucking show up”), the item — which wasn’t all that funny to begin with — came out in a weird space between derision and, ultimately, a kind of respect. Watch for yourself, but to my eyes this was a more sophisticated intro to Bollywood than anyone in the studio audience might have expected. I suspect we have an alternadesi mole somewhere on Colbert’s writing staff.

As you might expect the Indian press is all over it. “The short spoof may also have been aired keeping in mind the fact that the show is extremely popular amongst Indian Americans,” this report speculates. Continue reading →

Posted in TV

Little Mosque on the Prairie

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As SM regular Badmash notes on the news page, the new sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” has its debut this evening on the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting network. I hope that many of you Canadian mutineers will check it out and report back on what, from the clips available on the show’s site and news reports, looks like a smart comedy that takes on anti-Muslim prejudice without straying from the tried-and-true writing and directing approaches that make situational comedy work. Here’s the synopsis:

LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE is a new comedy from CBC Television about a small Muslim community in the prairie town of Mercy, many of whose residents are wary of their new, more “exotic” neighbors. The series takes an unabashedly funny look at the congregation of a rural mosque and their attempt to live in harmony with the often skeptical, even down right suspicious, residents of their little prairie town. The sitcom reveals that, although different, we are all surprisingly similar when it comes to family, love, the generation gap and our attempts to balance our secular and religious lives.

You can get a sense of the show from the CNN report linked above. (If you can’t stand Paula Zahn, forward to 00:38 for the start of actual piece.) The airport scene is classic. The humor is pretty direct and there’s lots of room for slapstick but that’s what makes the format work. Also check out this story about the show from the CBC itself. It’s mercifully Zahnless but shows fewer clips.

Both segments introduce us to the show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz. This sister is no joke! She’s a British-born, Toronto-raised practicing Muslim mother-of-four, who “had a Bachelor of Science degree from U of T in her hands when she realized that medical schools had screening committees to keep people like her out of the health care system.” She went on to broadcast journalism and film, and has lived for the past ten years in cosmopolitan Regina, capital of Saskatchewan: Continue reading →

Live Longer, Smell Worse [Was: Pour Some Haldi On Me]

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“Tasty curry might have a fringe benefit,” headlines USA Today… today. The article is more specifically about the reported health benefits of turmeric. It’s not exactly a scoop, as a scientific paper on the topic was published two years ago and picked up by Manish in this January 1, 2005 post. Still, given the attention span of the typical USA Today reader (and who is that reader, anyway, other than the nameless masses of khaki-panted, cellphone belt-clipped, laptop warriors waking up each morning in the Marriotts of the land?), I suppose it’s information worth recycling from time to time. Plus we get a heart warming story to go with it:

Then Jayne took an Indian cooking class that emphasized fresh vegetables and curry spices.

She began to whip up an Indian dinner once or twice a week — and soon she noticed she wasn’t always looking for a late-night snack. And the curry in the food offered her a bonus: It seemed to ease the pain and swelling in her joints.

“I have arthritis,” says Jayne, 55. “But I’m moving better now.”

Preliminary research suggests Jayne may be right. A study in the November issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism suggests turmeric, one component of curry spice, almost completely prevented joint swelling in rats with arthritis. Other studies have suggested that the spice could protect against diseases such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s…

Tipster Adi points us to the article as picked up on the news aggregator site RedOrbit.com, where we get the benefit of reader comments. Made-up Indian names, comparisons of desi food to the excrement of various animals, and discussions of desi body odor and penis size are all on the menu. I won’t reprint any of it here but those of you who think racism against desis is no big deal might find it instructive to take a look.

Meantime, pass the lime pickle.

Continue reading →

The Noida Serial Murders

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Cannibalism, necrophilia and organ trafficking are among the rumors swirling around the serial murders that have come to light in recent weeks in Noida, the industrial suburb of Delhi home to numerous technology and outsourcing companies, and are now the subject of international coverage, for instance with a New York Times article today.

What seems established is that the killers were able to abduct, sexually abuse, murder, and dismember upward of 30 young people over more than two years, with reports of missing persons going back at least to 2004.

Also clear is a pattern of police inaction. This Hindustan Times article reports that the police were directed to investigate disappearances in September 2005 but did little. This NDTV report details how a victim’s father suspected Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surinder Kohli immediately, and how the police responded:

NDTV has the information that on May 6 [2006] when the girl, Payal, went missing, Surinder had made a call from his mobile phone to her.

The girl had gone to their house that day but never returned.

The next day, her father went to police with a complaint against Moninder and Surinder but the police refused to register his complaint.

Later he went to Noida’s Chief Judicial Magistrate requesting him to get the police to register his complaint.

The CJM ordered the police to register a case of kidnapping against Moninder and Surinder.

But, on 29th of June, the police registered a mere missing person’s report, which doesn’t involve any arrests.

The same day, the police interrogated Moninder and his servant Surinder but decided not to press any charges against them.

NDTV has a copy of the Noida CJM’s order dated September 29, 2006 where he has clearly ordered the police to register a case of kidnapping against the two.

In the enquiry report submitted to the CJM court of which NDTV has a copy, Noida police gave a clean chit to Moninder and Surinder and said Payal had eloped.

Payal’s father then moved the Allahabad High Court and in November 2006, the High Court directed the Noida Police to register a case of kidnapping against Moninder and Surinder.

Six months after Payal’s father first went to the police the complaint was finally registered on November – the FIR no 838/06 under sections 363, 366 of the Indian Penal Code.

The Circle Officer Dinesh Yadav, who was to conduct the enquiry, didn’t touch the case at first and handed over the enquiry to his junior.

On November 29, the junior, a second Circle Officer also refused to conduct the enquiry saying that the case did not fall under his jurisdiction.

So, the case came back to Dinesh Yadav and all this while Moninder and Surinder were roaming free going about their business.

Sources have told NDTV that Moninder and Surinder were questioned at least five times in the course of the enquiry but they were let off each time.

The case has all the ingredients for legitimate outrage about two-tier law enforcement and the lack of recourse for marginal, migrant workers, among whom the killers picked their victims. I’m also disturbed/fascinated by the employer-servant relationship of the perpetrators. It goes back to a feudal conception of household employment that a servant would be expected to — and consent to, perhaps even aspire to — join his employer in criminal activities, let alone ones this awful.

Meanwhile, how many other such cases are out there, the press wonders? Not just in India of course. At least this case has a more positive outcome than the 400+ murders of women maquiladora workers in Juarez, Mexico, which the government gave up investigating last August.

P.S.: From the Noida police department website, this wisdom:

Police and Public are the two participants in the system. They should meet each other half way – only then, the encounter becomes a feast. The mission of Noida Police Force is to ensure that the resultant outcome of the interaction between Police and Public is positive and their synergy leads to overall social benefit.

Continue reading →

Hee Hee! He Said “Bhenchod!”

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Beneath the horrendous headline “Gangsta Raj,” New York Times reviewer Paul Gray opens his treatment of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games with the kind of snark that will dissuade anyone who only reads the first paragraph from buying the book:

This immense, demanding novel can be recommended, with scarcely a cavil, to well-educated Indians who have lots of free time, are fluent in (at the very least) English and Hindi, and have a thorough knowledge of South Asian politics; Hindu, Muslim and Sikh religious practices; and the stars and story lines of hundreds of Bollywood films. Longtime Bombay residents will have an extra advantage, since they will know, without consulting a gazeteer or Google, why the city is now called Mumbai. Prospective readers who donÂ’t fit this profile will have some catching up to do.

In the end, it’s a positive review, though the term “damning with faint praise” sure came to my mind several times as I went through it. And do the Gray Lady’s editors know they just printed the words sisterfucker and motherfucker?

So it goes here. Those who plunge into the novel soon find themselves thrashing in a sea of words (“nullah,” “ganwars,” “bigha,” “lodu,” “bhenchod,” “tapori,” “maderchod”) and sentences (“On Maganchand Road the thela-wallahs already had their fruit piled high, and the fishsellers were laying out bangda and bombil and paaplet on their slabs”) unencumbered by italics or explication.

Seriously though, I still haven’t read the book (the US edition comes out this week, hence the review) but one thing I appreciated about Chandra’s last book, the amazing collection Love and Longing in Bombay, is precisely how he manages to introduce large amounts of local color and vocabulary in ways that connect even if you don’t know what exactly every term means. Surely the review could have taken a more productive approach than to lead with this literalist harping? Continue reading →

“Ji Hain! Lahore!”

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This is brilliant. Via SAJA, here’s the story of the Pakistani-American brother who has bought land in Lahore, Virginia, and has great plans for its use:

We spoke to the present American owner of a portion of the town’s land, and also the Pakistani American who has recently bought that piece of land to develop it to match the Pakistani town of Lahore. The new Lahore will have a school, a museum, an airport, and a replica of the famous Shalimar gardens in Lahore, Pakistan.

The report, for the Voice of America’s Urdu TV service, is by journalist Imran Siddiqui and features great local characters who are interviewed in English.

This opens up a lot of possibilities. For instance, there is a Delhi in New York, Delaware, California and Ohio. There’s an Agra in California and Kansas, and another in Oklahoma where there seems to be no shortage of land to build your miniature Taj. There’s also a Bombay in New York, population 1,192, with a tantalizing but undeveloped backstory:

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb’s purchase and. all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legislature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May following. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India.

There are also Calcuttas in Ohio and West Virginia, a Madras in Oregon, and even a Lucknow in western Ontario. I couldn’t find a Thiruvananthapuram. Continue reading →

Oil of Ofay

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yourface_chart.jpgI know I’m plowing a slightly old furrow here (Manish blogged about this product when it launched back in ’05), but in light of the Guardian commentary today by Sarita Malik that Red Snapper posted on the news tab, and the latest round of skin-ism and politics-of-appearance debates on the comment threads, I thought it might be useful to reproduce the scientific chart to the right. It’s an analysis by Emami Ltd., the makers of “Fair and Handsome” skin lightening creme for men.

The product website is a gold mine of manipulation, insecurity generation, and odd Indian advertising lingo, complete with a list of “free sample receivers” and “hey gals! give your opinion also” exhortations. It’s also, obviously, testimonial that at least in Desh, skin-ism is still in deep effect.

We all know intutively that the phenomenon extends to the diaspora, but how much, and with what consequences, is a matter of (endless) discussion. I have to say that although I found Malik’s commentary well written and to the point, she offered little concrete evidence of skin color discrimination among desis in the UK, and she undermined her piece by referring to Fair and Handsome as a Hindustan Lever (makers of Fair & Lovely) product, which it isn’t. Continue reading →