Author Archives: A N N A

she’s got it, yeah baby she’s got it

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thought i should bring this to your attention, since we are brown, and it IS tennis; Shikha Uberoi, an indian american, has upset saori obata of japan in a “spectacular” first round match in the US Open. for her second match, shikha will play a tennis-“david” to Venus William’s “goliath”.

india’s Mahesh Bhupathi digs miss uberoi:

…Indian tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi complimented Uberoi on her victory, saying she would inspire players like Sania Mirza back home.
“Shikha’s excellent performance at the US Open is a very positive sign for women’s tennis in India. With (players like) Sania Mirza, the future of women’s tennis in India seems extremely bright; brighter than it has ever seemed before,” Bhupathi, who narrowly missed out winning a medal in partnership with Leander Paes at the just concluded Athens Olympics, contended.
Indian born Uberoi, 21, lives in Boca Raton, Florida.
A right-hander with a two-handed backhand, she is ranked 380 and has had a pretty good run this year.

now the dozen SM readers who love tennis can shrug and say, “duh. i already knew that”, while the other five of you scroll on impatiently because you are looking for the next installment of the manish vij book club. no matter. thanks for reading! 😉 Continue reading →

curfew follows chaos that came because of carnage.

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yesterday, vinod had some “pulpy” advice for the nepalese government, via his Sepia Mutiny post on the unfortunate end of a dozen nepali hostages.

today, in nepal’s capital of kathmandu, outrage poured into the streets:

An indefinite curfew has been imposed in the Nepalese capital following violent protests against the killing of 12 Nepali hostages in Iraq. Angry mobs in Kathmandu attacked a mosque, government offices and the offices of two Middle East airlines.
…The news was received with anger and grief in Nepal with one official describing it as “one of the worst days” in his country’s history.
…The government is being heavily criticised for doing little to free the hostages and there have been calls for the prime minister to step down.
…The government denies the criticism and has condemned the incident as a “barbarian act of terrorism”, and pressed the international community to hunt down the killers.

i wonder if that last sentence destroys any possibility of retribution via Gurkha…

…The government said it would take action against agencies illegally sending people to Iraq.
Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, has banned Nepalis from going to Iraq, despite the relatively well-paid jobs there.
The militants said the 12 Nepalis had been killed because they “came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians”.

they came to fight the muslims? from what i’ve read, they came to cook and clean for a jordanian company. if those tasks are now considered hostile acts, i’ve got one hell of an excuse to avoid housework.

i mean no disrespect to these twelve innocents. i apologise in advance if any of you read it that way; i’m just exasperated at the lunacy that stole their lives.

as we say in the greek orthodox (and probably hated by the militants as well) church, “may their memory be eternal.”

hell, i’d have perfect attendance

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learning can be hic …fun:

A school in Orissa becomes a liquor store after classes end every day.
This came to light after a police posse raided the school on Wednesday night and found people in large numbers consuming liquor in the premises. Police also seized about 150 litres of liquor from the school premises.
The school-cum-liquor store is actually a government primary school located in Kalajamuna village in the southern district of Ganjam. It has up to class five with over 200 students. The school has about six staff members, including the teachers.
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but if getting naked is *necessary*, well, THAT’s different.

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i have no clue who bengali actress Monalisa is, but she definitely has my attention (and the attention of many of our Stuff-appreciating, red-blooded, male readers after THIS post, i’m sure):

“I know what people want from us. Although bikinis have become progressively smaller and girls have been flaunting their bare legs on screen, it’s just not enough. I think the Indian audience now wants to see actresses do topless scenes. They want full value for the money they spend,” she says.
Monalisa, who pairs up with item girl Payal Rohatgi in the sex comedy Tauba Tauba, is willing to oblige. According to the bindaas babe: “If I have an attractive figure, why should I have problems showing it off? To be honest I have no qualms about uncovering the upper half of my body, but the requirement of the story should be such.”
A breast-baring performance, insists Monalisa, has logic of its own. “Unnecessarily shedding your clothes just amounts to obscenity.”

um. wow. so many thoughts, so few of them printable. 😉 i kid.

i’m torn:

-part of me wants to support her, if that’s what she wants, since i’m not one to talk about modesty;)

-part of me would be saddened if indian film became as crassly lame and over-sexed as the rest of the world’s, i.e. amreeka’s

-part of me can’t BELIEVE that she said what i “bolded”. indian audiences want value, and that means getting nekkid? eep. 😮

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law and order-in-the-temple

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it is an issue of the separation of mandir and state. i think. read on:

A Hindu temple in Flushing, Queens, has shot into prominence with its trustees asking for an injunction on a state court order that asks the temple to conduct elections and have proper audits.
Attorneys for the Ganesh temple, the oldest Hindu temple in North America, citing the principle of the separation of religion and state, asked a federal judge on August 26 to place an injunction on the state Supreme Court order.
When the case came up for hearing at a Brooklyn court it was packed with Indian Americans, some of them with sandalwood and ash marks on their forehead, many of the women in saris, eliciting curious glances from visitors to the federal court.
…The matter, which was only a local and community issue in Queens, gained national prominence after the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty took up the case.

via HindustanTimes.com

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girl, unwanted.

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baby shalini.jpg after an operation failed to “tie” his wife’s fallopian tubes, Chhagan Singh Rathod of Rajasthan says he will kill his youngest daughter, Shalini, age 3, since he “cannot afford to support” her.

Mr Rathod has filed a case against the doctors in the state’s High Court and wants compensation from the hospital, which denies wrongdoing.
He recently sent an e-mail to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, saying that if something was not done about his case soon he would kill Shalini – although he later withdrew the threat.
…The child in the middle of all the fuss, Shalini, is oblivious to the controversy surrounding her birth and continues to live happily in her own world.
Her father is still waiting to hear from the chief minister.

he’ll always be Gandhi to me

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if scary movies are your bag, baby, be sure to check out the latest film starring Krishna Banji (aka ben kingsley):

Kingsley’s presence in “Suspect Zero” tells us it must be one of those brainy serial-killer movies in which the killer is much smarter than the FBI agent who has been hired to track him…”Who’s the pursuer and who’s the prey?” we ask ourselves, thoughtfully tugging our beards (imaginary or real) as we observe the agent-killer tête-à-tête and ponder the gnarled, twisted roots of humanity.
…”Suspect Zero” was directed by E. Elias Merhige, who previously made the inscrutable “Shadow of the Vampire.”…Kingsley plays Benjamin O’Ryan, a serial killer: That’s not a spoiler, since we know he’s a lunatic in his first scene. (When he makes his entrance, Merhige shoots him upside down, in the rain, so the drops drip upward from a door frame — please don’t bump your head on the symbolism on your way out.) Kingsley does lots of silent-movie eye-flashing in this picture — he’s monstrously good at it, too.

via Salon.

Satyajit Ray’s “Pather Panchali” turns fifty.

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i think that “pather panchali” was the greatest film to come out of india, ever. yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of its premiere:

KOLKATA: It was May 3, 1955. The debut film of one Satyajit Ray opened a week-long festival at New York’s MOMA. On August 26 the same year, Pather Panchali opened to Indian audiences at Basusree.
And, in a near-repeat of the phenomenon, four months after Cannes conferred an award on it, the film won the President’s Gold. That prompted the 35-year-old Ray to give up a handsome monthly salary of Rs 1,013 and shoot the sequel, Aparajito. And it changed the face of Indian cinema.
As the film steps into its 50th year, it’s time for flashbacks…
…Soumitra Chatterjee saw it the next day, “and was stupefied.” Till then, he’d weigh every Bengali film against How Green Was My Valley, or Bicycle Thieves. So disappointment was inevitable.
Pather Panchali dispelled that, “it spelled hope for Indian cinema. No, we’d not seen anything like it,” the actor repeats. “Aparajito, Jalsaghar, Charulata were better crafted, but the raw emotion of Pather Panchali has no parallel.”

sense and sensitivity

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oh my. according to the san francisco chronicle, pakistan’s “Drama Hour” dares to “go there”:

One recent Sunday evening at midnight in a town near here, Kohsar Riaz sat down eagerly in her favorite living room chair for her weekly dose of ARY One World network’s “Drama Hour” and was instantly engrossed in the depressing tale of a hijra (cross-dresser) disowned by family and friends, desperate for acceptance and hopelessly in love with a young man who used him solely for money.
…Tens of thousands of South Asian night owls who stayed up to watch the popular television show got a rare glimpse from the other side of one of the region’s most ostracized groups.
…”These are good things,” 56-year-old Riaz, a mother of five, said after the program. “All our Pakistanis should watch and understand that if people have problems, it doesn’t make them bad, and maybe it means they need some help, and we should listen to them.”

besides compassionately examining the plight of hijras, “Drama Hour” has also taken on taboo subjects ranging from divorce to the age-old debate between love and arranged marriages.

Each week viewers get an understanding-driven treatment of sensitive social issues that, while often poorly filmed and acted out with over-the-top melodrama (accompanied by unbelievably cheesy soundtracks), try to promote a moderate, tolerant outlook.
“It’s all about exploring and examining who we are and how we want to live,” says Lahore social worker Humaira Qureshi. “To move forward, we as an entire society have to take a deep look inside at painful, unpleasant issues and decide what we want for ourselves and our children.”

suddenly i want something pink with goose in it…

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if you’ve ever wasted an hour or five surfing Friendster, you’ll see that the women who patronize it often list “Sex in the City” under “favorite TV shows”. i could write an entire post about how it is actually “Sex AND the City”, but i’ll refrain. that’s what my own blogs are for. 😉

anyway, there’s a reason why the interweb’s greatest timesuck popped in to my head: sex AND the city? meet the league of women voters.

Jean Seo of san francisco decided that what america needs right now is a site “dedicated to showing why voting makes single women FABULOUS!!!”. carriethevote.com also bills itself as a “ladies guide to demystifying voter registration”.

i say “bravo”– i think we can all be in favour of whatever it takes to get people to the polls. my favourite page of the site deals with the “F” word:

Why are We So Fabulous?
We’re fabulous because we have the power to decide this year’s election. And everybody knows it…
…Unmarried female voters have the potential to become the most incredible agents of change in America. After all, we control 21 percent of America’s voting power.
We didn’t know that we had this strength until recently. It’s like when Luke Skywalker finally realized his own actual power. (Yes, voting let’s the force be with you.)
When we didn’t vote in 2000, we were just saving our secret powers for 2004, right?
If we can get our girlfriends to register and vote, we will have the power to make the world pay attention to us.

by the by…true to the character this URL pays tribute to, a pair of Manolos WILL be given away. if that isn’t reason enough to click, you don’t know shoes. 😉

via feministing