Author Archives: A N N A

Meetup May 28th in Manhattan? YES.

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Ennis and Anna.jpg This past weekend at the fantastic SAWCC conference, several mutineers had helpful suggestions about Sunday’s potential meetup. I relayed my concerns about not being rushed, being able to have audible conversations AND whether we’d be able to fill our bellies with something a little more appetizing than a T-bone Steak, cheese eggs and welch’s grape. Saucy Pooja assured me that whether at The Pink Pony or Leela Lounge, we’d be fine (ain’t that right, Boo? True?)

I’m leaning towards Leela Lounge, which is on 3rd between Broadway and Mercer because another saucy lady named Yesha raved about the atmosphere. The menu wasn’t bad, either…I’m always ready to eat chaat and if a place serves cocktails with Old Monk? You KNOW they keep it real. 😉

Erstwhile guest Cicatrix had a third suggestion which I helpfully can’t remember nor find in my GMail. I add the latter situation because apparently, I got an invite to this shpot when Bongbreaker was in town…so if Bongsie, Cica or the Vij have any idea what I’m going on about, put me out of my misery via comment, spanks.

So, beyond venue we need to decide on a time. Perhaps something in the afternoon would be ideal, since I will be highly hungover after a raucous wedding in Lawn Guy Land. Also, this way people can show without missing church. How’s THAT for contrast? 😉

What say all of you? Do you have a preference between pink equestrian joints, cool new lounges and places I can’t recall? Would 3pm sound better than 5? Will Pooja not show since it’s her birthday and thus, I shall be throwing her over my knee so we can each give her a solid birthday whack? 😉 Tune in next time, for…hopefully more specific information. Continue reading →

Pore Some Thekalikya On Me

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I may no longer have pink hair and my square-toe docs are 3,000 miles away, but I like to think that being punk requires more than such outward signals. I’m nowhere near as in to anarchy as I once was, but I still totally love the idea of DIY everything. In honor of that hallowed part of punk ideology, I present to you the following blurb which features advice from some desi beauty expert whom I’ve never heard of…I ganked it from the May 2006 issue of Jane, which I’m trying desperately to stay fond of, even though it is suddenly for 20-something women. WTF?

Oh, Sassy…how you are missed. You are the only reason I still subscribe to the monthly which is supposedly your phoenix.

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DIY pore shrinkage

Here’s an easy way to minimize the appearance of enlarged pores courtesy of Anjali, who was formerly the Martha Stew of Indian daytime TV and now is head of product development at Shobha salon in NY.
Using a blender, puree one medium unripe tomato (the greener the better…) with one teaspoon of honey– this will mix the astringent power of the fruit w/the natural moisturizers in the honey. Apply the pulp to a freshly washed face, leave it on for 20 minutes, then rinse.
And if your problems go beyond skin issues, toss the remaining puree into a shaker, add some salt, a little vodka and a lot of ice. Shake, pour, drink. – Celia

Um, no, I haven’t tried it. But I was the guinea piglet for L’oreal’s latest mascara so I think I should get a pass on this little experiment. If YOU are brave enough to smear extra sweet salsa on your punim, do let us know if this results in less holes in your face, thanks . Continue reading →

Meetup May 28th in Manhattan? Maybe!

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Rumor has it that the most mysterious mutineer of them all (hint: it sure as hell ain’t ME) might be in Manhattan on May 28th…so maybe we should have a mini-meetup? Maybe I should overcome my Malayalee proclivity to massacre sentences via massive amounts of alliteration.

Maybe.

I know everyone who LIVES in New York City will leave town, but that just means that this post is dedicated to those mutineers who, like me, will be visiting the area for the holiday weekend; I’ll be in Lawn Guy Land for a wedding on Friday and Saturday. I know I’m not the only one who’ll be there, if only because this wedding has 800 guests.

Anyway, I’m happy to postpone my return trip to DC on Sunday from lunch-ish to something a little later on, if there’s good reason to and I can’t think of better reasons than you.

I shouldn’t say this, but if we do meetup, there’s the possibility of a mutineer mole, i.e. someone who blogs for us but wants to just hang back at his first live SM orgy. So it’s possible that three mutineers will be in Manhattan on May 28th, though considering the moley-moley-mole (Thanks Austin Powers!), maybe it’s more like 2.5. 😉

Comment away if we should seriously consider this. Some of us have Amtrak tickets to book. 😀

P.S. That picture is from the September 11, 2005 meetup at the Indian Bread Co.

P.P.S. Yes, we will have another DC meetup shortly. Or longly. Vatewer. Continue reading →

Brown Authors, Bloggers and Readers…What More Do You Need?

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All right, stop whatcha doin’, ’cause I’m about to ruin the image and the style that ya used to.

New York City-area Mutineers (and all those green-tinged brown people who, like me, wish that they were): cancel your weekend plans. These are better, I PROMISE.

The South Asian Woman’s Creative Collective is sponsoring some temporary nirvana this Friday through Sunday, as they present M I X E D M E S S A G E S, a sepia-colored festivus for the literary-minded rest of us at Marymount Manhattan College. It’s their fourth conference, so you know it’s going to be as smoove as I am when slightly tipsy.

A three-day series of readings, panels and workshops, “Mixed Messages” will explore non-mainstream genres, highlight writers who use new media, and focus on writing communities. [SAWCC]

Not one, but TWO Mutineers will be there: Amardeep is moderating Friday night’s reception and I’m speaking on a panel on Sunday afternoon. Details for both of those chunks o’ heaven are below, the entire schedule (which I demand you peruse, because it’s THAT hot) is available here.

Friday, May 19: Kick-Off Reading and Reception 7PM, $15
Amitav Ghosh (Incendiary Circumstances, Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
Vijay Seshadri (The Long Meadow: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2005)
Sara Suleri Goodyear (Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy, University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Moderated by Amardeep Singh (Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University)
Sunday, May 21: 3PM-5PM, FREE Panel Discussion: Mixed Messages: South Asian Literature and New Media
Anna John (SepiaMutiny)
Ravi Shankar (editor of DrunkenBoat.com)
Yesha Naik (podcaster and performer)
Ram Devineni (filmmaker and publisher of Rattapallax Press)
Amitava Kumar (Husband of a Fanatic, New Press, 2005) (moderator)

For you bargain-minded desis who noticed the wee $15 cost for Amardeep’s sure-to-be fantastic event– just know that breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday are free, as are most of the other activities during the day. Que bueno el deal-o, as the President would not say.

I just feel sorry for our rock star of a guest blogger Neha; the poet whom she profiled here, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, is part of Sunday night’s showcase of brown female writers, so I’m sure she wishes she could attend. I could go on and on and tell you more tantalizing tidbits, like how long-time mutineer Pooja Makhijani helped put this phenomenal weekend together AND is a part of the first panel on Saturday (South Asian Youth Lit), but I don’t want to rub it in for those of you who can’t go. We’ll take plenty of pictures for you, how’s that? Not good enough? Um…well, this is awkward. May I suggest an eleventh hour road trip? Even with painful gas prices, it would be totally worth it and really, how many things can you say THAT about these days? Continue reading →

Fighting Words- UPDATED

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Q: What kind of person publicly threatens to hunt down and rape his rivalÂ’s four-year old daughter?

A: One of Clear ChannelÂ’s (former) finest: DJ Star, a.k.a. Troi Torain

Go ahead. Absorb. Let the nausea subside.

Yesterday, I received glad tidings of StarÂ’s termination (Thanks, TAN), but my relief quickly dissolved when I discovered just WHY he had been fired; during one of TorainÂ’s pathetic, IQ-reducing morning shows, he took a dispute he had with a nemesis– DJ Envy–to unprecedented levels of hatred by describing exactly how he wanted to hurt his rival’s innocent little girl. Wow. It is a truly special, powerful man who threatens to defile a child. If anyone needed further proof that Clear Channel was concomitantly useless and evil, look no further than their taste in employees and their amazing ability to reclassify hate as entertainment.

I understand that beef makes for tasty ratings, but apparently TorainÂ’s favorite meal came from a Mad Cow. Only a wasted, sick brain could conceive of and enthusiastically rant the following:

Star continued to digress about Envy’s child, saying, “Yes, I disrespected your seed. If you didn’t hear me, I said, I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed, on your little baby girl. I would like to tinkle on her.” Even more, the now-removed radio jock stated, “I’m coming for your seed. Did you hear me? I want to do an R. Kelly in the mouth of your seed, fam… I want to put some mayonnaise in between your baby girl’s ass crack and take a bite.”

Quite predictably, Torain was relieved of his duty to shock listeners by spewing filth, but I want to know what took them so long. And I donÂ’t just mean the many hours which Clear Channel enjoyed before canning his ass, I mean these many months. I guess when your transgression involves an innocent Indian call center worker, itÂ’s easier to forgive and forget. No respect please, weÂ’re rat-eaters.

If Clear Channel had any kind of soul, they would have dumped Torain after that example of his intrinsic cruelty, but they donÂ’t, so they continued to remunerate him lavishly, thus ensuring that even more fecal matter would leave his worthless mouth. Much like children who have tortured kittens and puppies are practicing for future, human victims, I think that this descending spiral was predictable and thus, preventable. Shame on you Clear Channel. I rebuke you because your erstwhile star is shameless.
Continue reading →

Saturday55: “The Mercy Seat” Edition

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What a week it has been, for printed pages, for brown people, for the Mutiny. Kaavya and Opal, Kaavya and Katie, Kaavya and Megan. The teenager from Harvard turned Mutineers against each other while energizing idiots on Yahoo! to diss desis– there’s nothing like a brown scandal to unleash smug, ignorant racism.

The most important aspect of the whole fustercluck might just be our collective, unexpected education about the process of publishing. For some, this was cause for disillusionment; many of us had indelible visions of a solitary artist, sacrificing themselves to merge imagination and soul in to a pristine, sacred creation. Learning about production companies shocked us in to a deep dismay. Wasn’t it supposed to be about the writing? Has EVERYTHING become a commodity, an image, a focus-group-tested myth? Were books being produced instead of written? Suddenly the idea that words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm is stuck in my head, all to a wistful electronic beat.

Though the vast majority of you were reared better than to admit such things in public, I know that hundreds of you read about “Opal’s” backstory and thought to yourselves, “I could do that. How hard can it be?” Well, why don’t you find out? Leave a concentrated, concise story containing no more than fifty-five words, in the comments below.

Write about whatever you feel like, don’t let my memories of Nick Cave songs force you in to feeling some mercy. If you don’t want to 55 here, leave a link to where we can see your flash fiction elsewhere. You might not get half-a-million dollars, but isn’t the love and appreciation from other Mutineers worth so much more? Continue reading →

Kaavya is Innocent, Until Proven Otherwise

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Dear Kaavya,

This is your Akka writing. The fact that you have never met me is immaterial; we are brown and we don’t live in the land our parents were born in—that alone means that you probably have relatives you’ve never met, just like I do, so Akka it easily is.

Paavum Kaavya (letÂ’s call you PK for short), there is something I want you to know, but before I disclose that, I have to admit a fault of which I am rather ashamed, a fault which I hope youÂ’ll forgive your imperfect Akka for.

I was jealous of you.

Just a bissel, but it was enough to make me loathe myself for a few minutes. Green looks fabulous on me, but envy surely does not flatter. Wait, don’t frown—I promise that once I was aware that I was being a twat, I earnestly called myself out on it and owned my jealousy. Long before I admitted that my “unlikely-fantasy-if-wishes-came-true” job was acting, I cherished what to me seemed an even more far-fetched aspiration: to write. Getting a book deal seemed like the greatest thing which could possibly happen to someone. To get paid to write? Wow. And that you did, with a stunning advance, which everyone bandies about ad nauseum, since it makes your “fall” all the more violent.

Sigh. How I wished that my parents had been savvy enough to enroll me in an Ivy-League-Prep-Camp-Thing. Where my counselor, who just happened to be a published author, would discover me as if I were some naïve starlet in a ‘40s era soda shop and then pluck me out of the sweaty, freaked-out ranks of cloned overachievers and marvel at my genuine uniqueness. My parents made me turn down Columbia for U.C. Davis. My parents are SO not your parents. Your parents gave you everything, including an inadvertent star-making opp that made me want to howl. You’re nearly half my age. It’s like watching your little sister get married before you do. It’s a little humiliating to endure, in this obsessed with chronological-milestones culture we share.

So, whenever this group blog of mine did a post about you, I’d look down and notice that my skin suddenly looked wayyy more olive than usual. Then I’d take a deep breath and tell myself that you deserved it. That you had hustled for it, working on your writing when in comparison, 17-year old me probably would’ve been brooding over which Smiths or Ultravox LP to spin next. My skin would go back to the shade my mother calls “irrantharam” and I’d exhale with relief. It felt good to be silently proud of you.

Here’s the thing my little PK: I still am. And I’m a little appalled at how many people are crowing elatedly about your alleged toppling. The first thing I thought of when I read the “Crimson” writing on the blog was that tragically accurate, snarktastic story about the pet shop with international crabs. You’re looking at me blankly. I’m sure you haven’t slept. Tut-tut. That won’t do. You know brown girls are predisposed to developing those nasty under eye circles. Take a benadryl, bachi. Your skin and, well, everything will thank you. Hell, take a nap right now. I’ll dispel your probably non-existent curiosity about crabs for you, like a wee bedtime story.

Continue reading →

(My Dream Girl is) Guest Blogger: Neha

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IÂ’ve spent the last five days at the cathedral for Greek Orthodox Easter and as anyone who knows anything about the Orthodox Church is aware, this means that I spent close to twenty hours in a haze of frankincense and liturgical chanting. Sometimes, an hour would pass which didnÂ’t require much participation on my part and my thoughts would predictably wander.

Taz seemed to be a hit with our readers— and that meant that the pressure was on. So, who should our next honored guest blogger be? She should obviously be a she, but which witty woman could we borrow, who could hang with the incorrigible XYs in the bunker, beat them at pool and Xbox AND do it all backwards while in high heels?
133933513_8c3ced2c63_m.jpg The chanting continued and I looked up towards the mosaic-adorned dome. My wish listing continued shamelessly, despite the fact that greed is a sin.

My dream girl would adore Almodovar yet choose to further shrink the pathetic amount of space we provide guest bloggers in their cells by unpacking books she canÂ’t live without, by Rand and Rushdie, no less. (I can see that IÂ’m going to get no rest any time soon, not with having to stand outside her door to keep the Vij and Vinod at bay.) When I ask her why on earth sheÂ’d bring thousands of pages to a place where sheÂ’d be expected to write feverishly, sheÂ’d reply that she couldnÂ’t, nay, wouldnÂ’t be forced to choose just one tome to take with her to the barren land where our bunker lies.

SheÂ’d have to be okay with musical snobs who make Pitchfork-ers seem humble; we play a ton of conscious hip-hop, loopy trip hop and even a smattering of pop. If she can stump us by dropping something unfamiliar in the mix, sheÂ’ll be golden. What am I typing…sheÂ’s my dream girlÂ…sheÂ’ll school us mercilessly, probably with something addictive like Spank Rock.

The chanting grew appropriately mournful and so did I. My dream girl was just that, an apparition, an apsara, an absolutely impossible cocktail of coolness. I sighed audibly and the austere yia yia to my left glared at me. Time to focus on gettinÂ’ saved. I had been a bad girl, after all.

Suddenly a light pierced the church, as if heaven itself was opening and I heard what sounded like a celestial chorus of angels in perfect harmony. Eureka. I have found her. Continue reading →

Everything’s More Fun in a Group

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Meetups might just be the most delightfully unexpected dish which is made from all this flavorful brownness (which conveniently is contained in one savory packet). When liveblogging isn’t possible, sometimes the best substitute is looking at all the wacky, joyful pictures which inevitably get captured by the half-dozen or so cameras which tend to be around (80% of which are Canons– you read it here first).

Now that we’ve had several meetups in four Amreekan cities, I just know that there are potentially hundreds of pictures moldering away on your computers, pictures which could find a home in the Flickr group created just for the Mutiny. LA Mutineers, this is a gentle plea to share your pictures with the rest of us via this outlet. If you are already a member of Flickr, you may comment on the 100 photographs which are already up, all from last month’s fantastic DC meetup. If you’re not a member, you can still view all pictures by clicking here.

I PROMISE you’ll want to see what’s hiding after the jump. 😉 Continue reading →

55Saturday: The Poetry of Math Edition

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Our resident bean left us a comment which reminded me that we wrote haikus to celebrate a rather obvious holiday two months ago. This, of course, made me feel guilty for being tardy with the 55Friday flash fiction free-for-all, so to distract myself from the shame, thoughts of a third writing exercise which employs “resource constraints” came to mind. Behold, a “Fib”:

Blogs spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry? [linky-poo]

What is a “Fib”? It’s a six-line poem inpired by the Fibonacci (Cough! Hemachandra Cough!) sequence, which controls how many syllables can be in each line.

The allure of the form is that it is simple, yet restricted. The number of syllables in each line must equal the sum of the syllables in the two previous lines. So, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, which is also 1, 2 comes next, then add 2 and 1 to get 3, and so on…Fibs…top out at line six, with eight syllables.[linky-poo]

According to the afore-linked NYT article, April just happens to be National Poetry Month AND Mathematics Awareness Month, so the sudden craze for “fibs” seems especially appropriate. Know what else is apposite?

The earliest known reference to Fibonacci numbers is contained in a book on meters called Chhandah-shāstra (500 BC) by an Indian mathematician named Pingala. As documented by Donald Knuth in The Art of Computer Programming, this sequence was described by the Indian mathematicians Gopala and Hemachandra in 1150, who were investigating the possible ways of exactly bin packing items of length 1 and 2. [wiki]

Paging “Everything-is-Yindian”-Uncle!

I know I usually name our nanofiction-orgies after some much-adored song in my catalog of tunes which I cried to in high school and or watched on “120 Minutes”, but I’m so fascinated by this “new haiku” that I’ll refrain from capping this post with an angst-ridden hat. Everything else is the same as it ever was, so leave your bit o’ brilliance (or a link to where we can find it) in the comments below. 55-word gems which tell a story, haikus which reference mezze and poetry which reminds me of that mindless Da Vinci code…come fifty-five, come all. Continue reading →