A couple of days ago a Twin Donut shop burned down in the Bronx. This sort of thing happens frequently enough, of course — grease fires, arson, incidents of unknown causation. But not in this case. It turns out the fire was set by the owner of the Kennedy Fried Chicken outlet immediately adjacent. The chicken joint shares a wall and a roof with the donut shop, but it was barely scathed. The owner was quickly suspected and apprehended. Why’d he do it? Because the donut store had started selling chicken, undercutting his business.

Yeah, yeah, you want a desi angle. Well, hold your horses. Let’s get some local color first:

“I think he was a fool,” said a HuntÂ’s Point resident who identified himself as “Rhino.” “To burn down a store, this place has been here for many years, is stupid.” …

“He punched a hole in the wall between his store and the donut shop,” explained Assistant Chief Fire Marshall Robert Byrnes. “He introduced some gasoline. He used a pressurized container that you use with insecticide. He ignited the fire and left.”

People in this neighborhood who bought chicken from Kennedy Fried Chicken say it is hard for them to believe the owner would do something crazy like this. They say he was a good guy who cared about the community.

“Why would he do something like that,” added another local resident, Kesha Nelson. “That doesn’t make sense, he was trifling like that. I thought he was a nice guy. I buy chicken from here all the time.”

“Kennedy Chicken had the best chicken,” concurred local resident Frank Jones. “I don’t know about Twin Donuts because I never had their chicken.”

And now your desi angle. Judging from the names at least, both chickenwalla and donutwalla appear to be desi:

Kabeer Ahmad also was charged with reckless endangerment and remained in custody because he was unable to post $250,000 bond. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Bronx food fight began when a Twin Donut shop started competing with Ahmad’s Kennedy Fried Chicken by adding legs, wings, breasts and thighs to its menu and selling plates of food for 50 cents cheaper. …

Ahmad had accused Twin Donuts of violating a noncompete clause by selling chicken at the shop. But the owner of the doughnut shop, Mike Chhor, said he didn’t know why his neighbor set the fire and destroyed his business, which he bought three weeks ago.

“I don’t know why he burned the store,” Chhor said. “I had no problem with him.”

If convicted, Ahmad faces upward of 25 years in jail. This brother-on-brother violence must end. What a senseless waste of entrepreneurial initiative. Why couldn’t they just get together an open a Chicken & Waffles joint? Continue reading →

I shed no tears for the passing of Saddam Hussein, although I oppose the death penalty. Of course, just as disturbing has been the danse macabre in the past few days around his impending execution — what to show? how to cover? — so perhaps it’s just as well they got it over with rather than drag it out. In order to retain my sanity I won’t be checking out Fox News to see what gloating may be going on. However, the eagle eyes at SAJA note some of the first coverage in the more responsible press has been by desis. Aneesh Raman of CNN broke the news of the execution minutes ahead of MSNBC and Fox. (Trivial as it might seem to the outside world, that’s an important metric in newsland.) The coincidence that lead coverage at the Washington Post, Time.com, and CNN, has all been by desis is noteworthy in the context of our discussion, following Abhi’s post yesterday, of what professions are “traditional” or “non-traditional” for desis in America.

A list of desis working the Iraq beat (and its various spinoffs) for US media is at the SAJA website. Continue reading →

I know you all are extremely busy today launching software companies, studying for doctorates, curing terminal diseases, acquiring hotel chains, preparing court challenges to the government’s terrorism policies, and writing the great desi novel (preferably all at once), but you’ll still want to take a moment out of your schedule at 11:45 AM EST today, when Kris Kolluri, age 38, native of Hyderabad, takes the oath of office as Governor of the State of New Jersey.

The brother’s term will extend through the remainder of December 28th and perhaps into December 29th, making this the longest tenure yet of an Indian-American as chief executive of an American state. The Indian press is aflutter with excitement, expressed in felicitous prose:

Good things come in small packages. No one better than Kris Kolluri, who will be the first Indian American to become the governor of a US state for only a day, seems to know this.

And:

News of his pending 24-hour promotion already went international, according to Kolluri, who said his father was visiting relatives in India and called to say he saw his son on television.

The ominous charge of steering the ship of state has befallen Brother Kolluri as New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, Senate President Richard Codey, House Speaker Joe Roberts, and Attorney General Stuart Rabner have all scandalously abandoned their post of duty in favor of such frivolities as annual vacations and the Rutgers-Kansas State Texas Bowl college football game being held tonight in Houston. (Our own Abhi will be there picketing the event.)

This mass dereliction of duty leaves Kolluri to juggle the stewardship of the state’s business with his already considerable duties as state Transportation Commissioner, responsible for the management and upkeep of the Garden State’s roads and railways, without whom the classic “What exit?” joke about New Jersey would become a hoary atavism.

Sepia Mutiny extends a hearty “Zindabad!” to Kris Kolluri. Your achievement elevates us all! Enjoy your day at Drumthwacket. How about throwing a party tonight? Continue reading →

The ABC News blog The Blotter reports that the ISI did a number on an American news correspondent and her Pakistani photographer sometime recently:

New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall tells ABC News she was assaulted by plain-clothed government security agents while reporting in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the Afghan frontier where NATO suspects the Taliban hides its shadow government.

Akhtar Soomro, a freelance Pakistani photographer working with Gall, was detained for five-and-a-half hours. According to Gall, the agents broke down the door to her hotel room, after she refused to let them enter, and began to seize her notebooks and laptop. When she tried to stop them, she says one of the men punched her twice in the face and head.

“I fell backwards onto a coffee table smashing the crockery,” she recalled in a written account of the incident. “I have heavy bruising on my arms, on my temple and my cheekbone, and swelling on my left eye and a sprained knee.”

Gall says the agents accused her and Soomro of trying to meet the Taliban. They identified themselves as working for Pakistan’s Special Branch, an undercover police department, but Gall said other local reporters identified them as employees from one of the country’s two powerful spy agencies: Inter-Services Intelligence or Military Intelligence.

The Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Pakistan the “third most dangerous” place in the world to work in 2006, after two journalists died in violent circumstances, and more than a dozen others were abducted or assaulted by state authorities.

In its annual report, Reporters without Borders complained that in Pakistan “investigative journalists are constantly targeted by military security services, which have no hesitation in harassing anyone they find troublesome.” It was the first reported incident of Pakistani agents belting a female reporter.

Gall said the Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem Khan, apologized for the incident and helped secure the release of the photographer and Gall’s belongings. But she says he told her to inform Pakistani authorities ahead of future visits to Quetta “to avoid such difficulties.”

I will limit my comments, many of which would be obvious anyway. It is worth pointing out however that this incident should remind us that as difficult as it is to be a foreign correspondent in a country where political conditions are dodgy, local freelancers such as Ms. Gall’s photographer are even more exposed. I commend the brother for his courage and I hope he stays safe. Continue reading →