Author Archives: A N N A

Cuddling and being dirty can halt HIV?

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So I’m reading Jezebel, where they wittily illustrate their take on a certain news story with a photograph of a turtleneck…

…and I realize that obviously, what is being discussed there MUST be blogged here, because if there’s anything which is widely relevant to the brown Diaspora, it is the wearing of, ahem, turtlenecks. On your pee-pees. And for those of you who are sporting one such fleshy outfit, take heed– today’s Grey Lady has some filthy words for ya.

A study in Uganda has come up with a surprising finding about sex and H.I.V. Washing the penis minutes after sex increased the risk of acquiring H.I.V. in uncircumcised men.
The sooner the washing, the greater the risk of becoming infected, the study found. Delaying washing for at least 10 minutes after sex significantly lowered the risk of H.I.V. infection, Dr. Fredrick E. Makumbi reported on July 25 at an International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney, Australia.
The researchers do not have a precise explanation for the findings, which challenge common wisdom and the teaching of many infectious disease experts who urge penile cleansing as part of good genital hygiene. Health experts have suggested that washing the penis after sex could prevent potentially infectious vaginal secretions from entering the body through the uncircumcised penis.

A lubricious error (and what inspired the picture I chose to go with this post)!

Because of a slip-up, the researchers did not ask details of how the cleansing was done or directly about using soap, said Dr. Ronald H. Gray, a co-author from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some soaps used in Africa are more irritating than those used elsewhere.

See? That’s why you should take happy little soap’s advice and rub…never mind. Continue reading →

I feel SO much safer now!

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baby terrorist.jpg Abhi posted a link on our news tab to a story about…well, stupidity. Way to focus on the fine print, while actual, credible threats go unchecked.

For seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school.
But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist.
The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity.
The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. And Javaid’s passport now contains a sticker saying he has undergone highlevel security checks.

Little Javaid is a British citizen of Pakistani origin, which makes his “dream” of going to Florida-land as a reward for his good grades even more poignant, to me. The other Javaid is a 39-year old Pakistani who was arrested in connection with 9/11; while they convicted that Javaid of fraud and deported him, he was never charged with anything related to terrorism. His name, obviously, is a red flag for the exquisitely useful database/process which Homeland Security created…you know, the one which apparently doesn’t bother cross-checking birthdays in order to discern the difference between two or more people who share a name.

Because of this cluster, Javaid’s parents are debating a name-change for their unfortunately-nomenclated* offspring, and I don’t blame them, though I can only imagine how frustrated and resentful they might be. September 12, 2001…the day common sense commenced its slow and horrific death.

I found the reactions from people who had read the article interesting. Illuminating, even.

Said Craig from London:

Poor kid, my passport was mistakenly stamped with the incorrect stamp when transiting though Australia a few years back, the immigration bloke realised it and crossed out the initial stamp and re-stamped it correctly but I still often get asked “why were you refused entry to Australia” when going through immigration. Still if simply changing your name is enough to bypass the system it shows how utterly pointless the US no-fly list is.

Continue reading →

The Ominous-sounding, “Korean” Option

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Whose God is it anyways? posted a tip so arresting, I had to read it for myself…and then inflict it upon you. 😀 Blame him, he started it! Via The Telegraph:

Packs of stray dogs which roam the streets of New Delhi should be rounded up and sent to Korea for making soup, one of the city’s exasperated councillors has suggested.

Wow, that’s some level of exasperation. Any Delhi-area mutineers want to chime in about this?

India’s capital is suffering from a 300,000-strong plague of feral dogs who scavenge the city’s open rubbish dumps, hunting in packs and terrorising cyclists and pedestrians who venture into the city at night.
At a meeting to canvass measures to curb stray dog numbers ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games one local councillor, Mohan Prashad Bharadwaj, ventured the “Korean option” after saying he’d read that nation was fond of dog-meat.

Um, I guess that’s…innovative.

A dog-meat soup called boshintang is popular in Korea, especially on the three “dog days” of summer on the lunar calendar. Koreans believe the meat helps boost stamina and virility.

I swear, every unique food is meant to be the culinary equivalent to wiagra. This next idea is so funny, it’s cute:

Another councillor wondered if the dogs could be drugged during daylight hours “so that they keep sleeping all day long” while a third suggested rounding up the animals and trucking them into the countryside.
The extreme nature of the suggestions reflects a growing impatience with the city’s inability to combat the stray dog menace after it emerged that a three-year sterilisation drive advocated by animal rights activists had failed.

When I first read this article, I wondered about the “Bob Barker“-option, i.e. spaying and neutering…until I got to that part.

Mindful of Mahatma Gandhi’s adage that “a country is known by the way it treats its animals” the city is hoping to avoid the kind of brutal cull that Athens resorted to ahead of the 2004 Olympic Games.

So shipping dogs to Korea for soup is a better way for India to be known? Not judging, just surprised, that’s all.

However the dogs are a serious health hazard, with more than 200 Delhi residents dying every year from rabies contracted through dog bites.

Yeah, I don’t think drugging them during the daylight hours or shipping them off to the “country” (wtf, like people in rural areas are immune to rabies?) is going to work. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved. Continue reading →

Galvanized

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This is the best tip I have ever received (a million thanks, Zuni). From Vinay, himself:

Good news everyone. I found a match. It is not a perfect match but it is a 9/10 match. The donor is extremely committed. His commitment is so strong that he was willing to pre-pone his stem cell donation to fit my doctor’s recommendations. I can’t express how much this means to me. In the past I wrote about how one of the potential donors became “unavailable” due to a lack of family support. This is not the case here. You, as volunteers and activists, deserve the credit in the change in our community’s mentality and their conviction to be a COMMITTED DONOR.
Tomorrow morning I will begin my journey into the transplant process. I will be admitted and have several procedures done, including placement of 2 Hickman catheters. The transplant will be a long and arduous process but your support and well wishes will get me through these difficult times. I love reading all the “show of support” comments and it really brightens my spirits.
Team Vinay should be proud of all it has accomplished. In the short few months that you all have been active, we have registered over 23,000 South Asians. This is clearly over a 20% increase to the existing number of S. Asians on the registry. And as you may know a few of the marrow registrants through Team Vinay drives have already been contacted as being potential donors for others in our community. Through your tireless efforts we have also achieved a few more significant goals. Team Vinay, working along with NMDP, is responsible for implementing a protocol for culturally competent callbacks for potential S. Asian donors. Another wonderful outcome is the creation of a S. Asian specific website that will serve as a sustainable informational and educational tool for our community for the years to come. The content of the website is growing and will include input from key Team Vinay members – it should be up and running next month!
This past week has been amazing. I have enjoyed my short yet fulfilling week at home, spending time with Rashmi and other family and friends. We watched Rush Hour 3, had a BBQ and played dominoes. Thank you all again for your unwavering support and well wishes. Much love to you all; Vinay. [HelpVinay.org]

What an exquisitely emotional moment.

Put aside, for a mere second, the pain of division among the diverse strains of our community, the separateness of our faiths, the suspicion and cynicism with which we behold and other each other.

We did it.

Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujurati, Kashmiri, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali…I saw it with my own eyes. At event after event, you stepped forward, to give the tiniest bit of yourself, with the intention of saving a stranger’s life. The power of this community is breathtaking, when we are willing to come together, for a cause. Thank you, mutineers. For every tiny thing which you do, which affects the world in ways you may never or cannot possibly know, thank you. Continue reading →

Stop stepping on books, Payless, BOGO be damned [UPDATED]

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[Update: Uberdesi kindly sent us the link for the ad which inspired it all. Now you can freak out, too!]

The commercial barely disturbed my reverie; I’m thinking about how much I hate moving, and that is exactly what I’ll be doing at work tomorrow, as we prepare for some renovating which couldn’t come at a worse time. At first, I can’t figure out what this spot is advertising, it looks like college kids, seems to focus on shoes and just as I decide that it must be something to do with the latter, I see it.

A girl, in somewhat cute, patent, MaryJane-esque shoes, in a library like setting…using a stack of exactly and approximately half-a-dozen books four books to step on, to reach a higher shelf. Or something. My brain shorts, because I’m so shocked and my inner pragmatist is all, “That’s so unstable! You’re asking for a sprained ankle.” The thought which immediately chases that maternal scolding is, “Eeeek, that’s not very respectful.” And that is why the shoes are “somewhat” cute; I can’t disassociate their shiny happiness from the taboo, the disrespect.

It wasn’t always like this.

Believe it or not, despite all the other random Hindu-lite rituals I grew up with, I never was scolded for touching a book with my feet. I think this had to do with two things:

1) I loved books so much to begin with and was very careful with them, since I’m vaguely OCD about things getting dirty or ruined

2) My room wasn’t so cramped that books were ever on the floor. They were on shelves. Or my desk. Or my bedside table. The floor was for my clothes, much to my parents’ disgust.

I’m surprised that this is also something I didn’t learn from my sundry collection of Hindu ex-boyfriends, though I vaguely remember hearing about it once in a while. For whatever reason, it wasn’t expanded upon or elucidated.

It was you who informed me of this prohibition against disrespect, and it is you whom I think of, in my tiny studio apartment, when I’m trying to re-organize my bookshelves. I take everything out and stack it on the floor, because there’s no other place to put anything and then I dust, rearrange, etc…but once in a while, especially now when I’m hobbling so awkwardly, if my feet even graze the tiniest part of a book or magazine, I freeze, feel guilty and then think of these cultural mores.

Thanks, mutineers. You’ve given me one more thing to get neurotic about…aww, you shouldn’t have. 😉

My high-level point is, this website has changed how I consider or interpret things, in a significant way. I will never think of the Sepoy Mutiny, the word “mutineer”, paneer dosas, Lemurians, ketchup, Scythians or a thousand other things without being reminded of this space.

That’s why when one of you emailed us a tip, which said:

A quiz on Indian independence and the first question is quite, ahem, mutinous.

…which pointed us to a brief, enlightening quiz in the Economist, I smiled and had to see it for myself. Indeed, the first question was special and it’s why I wrote all of this, because I love words and I find them powerful.

When a word’s definition is altered so dramatically, it’s not trivial, not to me. The last word of the first question of that quiz now means something very precious, and it always will. I thought you should know that, because I’m grateful to you for amending the dictionary in my brain, to accommodate such a delightful mutation.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I got a “seven”. 😉 Continue reading →

DC SMeetup: a Tardy Writeup of Lucky no. 7

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Those who are persistent eventually defeat even the steeliest resolve to procrastinate. I keed. DC’s last meetup was massive and most definitely fun. We descended upon Amma like a Mongol horde, pillaging every bit of delicious Southie food we spied. Oh, wait…the Mongols ate North Indian foo-…never mind.

Amma made like old skool Vanessa and went and saved the best for last— even though he wasn’t there, YoDad arranged dessert for everyone at the meetup. We gobbled gulab jamuns, much to our collective surprise and delight, thanks to his thoughtful planning. New York may have the cool factor, SF may be hipster heaven, but DC has Abhi’s father, a.k.a. the Grandfather of the Mutiny. Take THAT, other cities!

And now, the moment one of you named No Desh has been waiting for: tabla roll, please…the Flickr photoset for D.C.’s seventh meetup has been hurriedly finished (i.e. the pics were split between two cameras, and for the last 20 mins, I was frantically DLing two dozen files, only to immediately upload them to the “official album”).

All evidence which could destroy potential Senate campaigns is available for your amusement via this “public” link. Aw, come on, people…it’s only six weeks late. Unless you’re a girl and in college, that’s never a huge problem. 😉

SM Meetups in DC– hot like your Amma’s meen kari, ya heard? Continue reading →

Watch out now!

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Oh, we zimbly HAVE to play the caption game with the picture below. It was thoughtfully submitted via a tip to our news tab from Msichana (thanks!)

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Granny, get your gun: Ladies of the Village Defense Committee squeeze off a few AK-47 bursts during training by the Indian army in Sariya, India. [SFgate]

I don’t mean to make light of serious issues like empowering women or self defense and I wish I didn’t have to explicitly declare that in my post, but there you go, in case you needed me to do so. Having reluctantly typed all that, I will return to the gleeful state I was in when I first gazed at this– what a capture! Now you all caption away. 🙂

Previous editions of caption-palooza: onnu, rendu, moonu, naalu… Continue reading →

Some Idol News, for Idle Mutineers

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An anonymous tipster (thanks!) updated our news tab with the following story, which I found quite interesting:

After the Chinese-made kirpans (daggers) nearly wiped out local manufacturers of one of the five ‘K’s of Sikhism, it is the turn of Guru Nanak Dev’s idols with ‘Chinese characteristics’ to flood shops across Punjab. [link]

Yes, apparently the figurines make the Guru look like a “Lama”, i.e. Tibetan. But more on that (and the Kirpans!) later.

The figurines, which have been in the market for some time, are available for Rs 100-150. They are popular gift items, with the smaller ones finding a perch on car dashboards “since it reassures the driver of divine protection”, as one user put it.
The larger versions are seen in restaurants, stacked along with statuettes of deities of other faiths. Not everybody, though, is pleased. In fact, the Sikh clergy have issued directions to the community to refrain from buying these idols.
The order ostensibly stems from the fact that idol worship is banned in Sikhism. Idol worship, including performing of ‘aarti’, was prohibited by Guru Nanak himself, while Guru Gobind Singh even declared that those indulging in such practices would be ostracized from the faith. [link]

The fantastically-named Sikhi Wiki has this to say regarding idolatry:

Idol worship was heavily discouraged by all sikh Guru’s. This was believed to have been a manipulation by the preistly (sic…no pun intended) caste to keep the power in their hands. The concept of ‘worship’ does not exsist (sic) in Sikhism, sikhs may only bow down to Guru Granth Sahib for respect, and may mediate on God’s name (nam simran). [link]

What I’m wondering is, who is buying these figures? Maybe they aren’t Sikh? Or is that irrelevant?

Is this the real source of conflict and potential teeth-gnashing:

Moreover, the Chinese-made idols sport a Chinese look, like slanted eyes and Mongoloid features. [link]

Continue reading →

Hyderabadis in Blackface?

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It’s been an adjustment, to experience this website’s growth and witness our readership change. People leave, others join, many lurk. While I miss some of our now-absent personalities who were prolific with their pondering (Punjabi Boy, Jai Singh, DesiDancer and Espressa come to mind), I’m thrilled about our new commenters, who are expanding our discussion and bringing their unique points of view to our cacophonous, rowdy, online adda. I’m especially looking at our first-gen contributors, like Runa and Malathi, because for stories like the one I’m trying to blog, I think their perspective is invaluable, for helping us find nuance and context. What I’m trying to say is, HELP.

Al Mujahid for Debauchery left this on our news tab:

Unbelievable. Pakistani actor Moin Akhtar (a muhajir/Indian origin himself) plays Hyderabadis from India in blackface in this ‘comedy’ show.

Wait, WHAT? And here is where the DBDs come in, because I don’t understand the clip below or know who these actors are, and as I’ve stated before, I like to get as much information as possible before I get my outrage on– and believe me, I could rage about actors in blackface.

What on earth is going on? And would someone who watches desi tv please tell me that this an uncommon practice? I fast forwarded through the clip, but I don’t get the greasy, huge-black-glasses-equipped, buck-toothed character, and by “don’t get”, I mean my spider sense is tingling. What, if anything, do all of you know? Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Enter Sandman”* Edition

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This Friday, after reading a few of your comments on my last post about Sir Ben, I was struck by how many of you fervently appreciated his work in The House of Sand and Fog. In fact, I was so affected by your opinions, I was inspired to put up (finally) a new edition of the 55Friday.

I love creating an open space for all mutineers to get creative and if you care to grace our thread with a perfect little gem of nanofiction, which spans just 55 words, I eagerly await reading what you’ve imagined.

If, however, you feel like doing something different, perhaps we can do a little “writing exercise” to clear away the cobwebs, since it’s been a wee while since we 55ed. Sometimes, when my English teacher wanted to stir things up, she’d write a sentence on the board and then one-by-one, we’d have a few minutes to add to whatever came before us. At the end of this process (there were only 12 students), she’d read our ad hoc story.

So, I found a sentence from The House of Sand and Fog, and if you’d like to, you may write one to come after. And then someone can follow you, and so on. Normally, I’d say “leave an ‘I got next’ comment” if you want the subsequent turn, so we don’t have two writers scribbling simultaneously, but I get the feeling that won’t be necessary. 😉 If by some miracle you all like this, then you might want to start doing that, with the caveat that if it’s been more than 10 minutes, you lose your turn.

Alternatively, if reading all that exhausted you, you can use our THoSaF sentence as fodder for your 55-word flash fiction. Just let your mind meander so you can exercise your atrophied creativity, and write something. That’s the entire point. 🙂

Here’s your prompt:

My daughter, Soraya, was married on Saturday and I feel already there is a hole in my chest with her gone.

Ready, Betty? Continue reading →