Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

Abhi lives in Los Angeles and works to put things into space.

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and…

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By the title alone I think I’m going to like this book. Little Brown & Company has offered Kaavya Viswanathan a $500,000, two book deal. The Financial Express provides the details:

YouÂ’re 17 and want to get into USÂ’ Harvard University, but first what do you do about those infernal jumping hormones that every gal goes through post-teens. Being an Indian, you donÂ’t indulge your sex-oriented daydreams (study first, pleasure later). So the next best option is to pen them to paper and get rid of the hots.

In a huge first, US born Kaavya Viswanathan did exactly that and more. Little Brown & Company, a respected 109-year-old publishing house offered Kaavya a $500,000 two-book deal with the first one to be out next spring titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got In. Considering that first-time writers get $10,000, Kaavya sure made a killing.

Writing is also the way I get rid of my “hots.”

The New York Sun (registration required) goes into more detail:

Ms. Viswanathan began writing the novel while still at the Bergen County Academy at Hackensack. She’s the only child of her Indian-born parents, Viswanathan Rajaraman, a neurosurgeon, and Mary Sundaram, a gynecologist.

“Everybody in my family, including my parents, won science prizes,” Ms. Viswanathan said. “I was the one with the writing gene – and I’ve no idea where that came from. My parents are still in a state of shock. When I’ve gone home on some weekends, they look at me working at my computer and surely wonder, ‘Who is that strange person?'”

What I can’t help noticing is that a 17-year-old writer, seems to like writing about day-dreams and possibilities, and getting wild, whereas older writers like to focus on why Indian men (or women) suck.

“The main character is a girl of Indian descent who’s totally academically driven, and when she senses from a Harvard admissions officer that her personal life wasn’t perhaps well-rounded, Ms. Mehta goes out and does what she thinks ‘regular’ American kids do – get drunk, kiss boys, dance on the table,” Ms. Viswanathan said.

Can I get a “hell yeah?” Please, anyone? 🙂

Desilit Daily comments: I can’t tell if this is more likely to sell to desi high school students applying to colleges, or to the parents desperate to get them in to Harvard…

Continue reading →

Here we go again

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Honestly I’m soooo tired of the following topic. I know that I should be completely jaded by such things already, but I like to think that they can still bring out the fight in me. The same mob mentality over the radiowaves that we have seen in the past has happened once again. SM tipster “Ayyner” alerts us to yet another racist outburst by some East Coast on-air personalities. The following is a partial transcript (a longer transcript here) of the Jersey Guys Radio Show on NJ 105.1 FM. The Jersey Guys are Craig Carton and Ray Rossi.

[Caller]: You just said it all, the last couple of Â… callers, I guess they donÂ’t know that they live in America and weÂ’re being overrun. I had just moved out of Edison because of what has happened in the past 10 yearsÂ… Orientals are all along, the whole complete route 27. And Indians have taken over Edison in north and all over.

[Carton]: Damn Orientals and Indians.

[Caller]: I..i moved out..36 years IÂ’ve lived in Edison

[Carton]: And what was the biggest problem you had with the Orientals and the Indians ?

[Caller]: I canÂ’t handle them! ThereÂ’s no American people anymore.

[Carton]: Eh..

[Caller]: There shoving us the hell out!

[Carton]: ItÂ’s like youÂ’re a foreigner in your own country isnÂ’t it?

In my opinion the above excerpt is rather tame compared to the rest. Their ignorant invective seems to be particularly focused on East Asians. Unlike previous on-air incidents, this seems to have occurred in the middle of a “political discussion” instead of one meant to be funny. Specifically, the conversation centered around the upcoming race for mayor of Edison, NJ. The discussion basically degenerated into Carton bashing liberals who he thinks care too much about getting minority votes. You should be concerned with the majority (“me”) to paraphrase Carton. According to an article from a few weeks ago this duo has a large audience.

Touted as the most listened to FM talk show, the afternoon program commands nearly 1 million listeners a week, said Ray Handel, director of marketing and promotions for the station.

Of course this is really nothing new. Limbaugh gets away with this kind of crap all the time but is clever enough to not be so blatant. If you can’t even be clever enough to veil your racism [sarcasm] you deserve to be smacked off the airways. In any case, we’ve been informed that “South Asian legal organizations are coming together again to craft a concerted response.”

Update (4/27/05): The reaction. Continue reading →

Abercrummy & Fitch settles

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SM tipster Chai Shenoy, brings it to our attention that there has been a settlement in the discrimination lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch. From the New York Sun:

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge yesterday approved a $40 million settlement of employment discrimination lawsuits charging that a popular clothing chain, Abercrombie & Fitch, avoided hiring minorities and women nationwide in order to preserve the “all-American look” cultivated by the company in its catalogs and advertisements.

After a brief hearing, Judge Susan Illston gave a strong endorsement to the settlement. In addition to offering cash compensation, the deal requires the company to set up a diversity office and to cease the practice of limiting recruiting to certain fraternities and sororities.

“I think this is excellent work,” Judge Illston said. She heaped praise on attorneys for both the company and the class. The judge also paid tribute to the “courage” of Abercrombie employees who were named plaintiffs in the case. “I do think you’ve done a public service,” she said.

The lawsuits alleged that Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos who were hired by the company were often relegated to stockrooms where those staffers could not be seen by customers. An attorney for Abercrombie referred questions to the officials at the company’s headquarters, who offered no comment. In court filings, the company has denied any systemic discrimination.

Incidentally, A & F is also known for its T-shirt “humor”, which pokes fun at minority stereotypes.

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“like radioactive fallout in an arable field”

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Perhaps to build enthusiasm for its annual book festival that took place this past weekend, The LA Times Op-ed section featured a moving ode to books (free registration required) by one Salman Rushdie (tip from Apul).

Books, since we are speaking of books, come into the world and change the lives of their authors for good or ill, and sometimes change the lives of their readers too. This change in the reader is a rare event. Mostly we read books and set them aside, or hurl them from us with great force, and pass on. Yet sometimes there is a small residue that has an effect. The reason for this is the always unexpected and unpredictable intervention of that rare and sneaky phenomenon, love. One may read and like or admire or respect a book and yet remain entirely unchanged by its contents, but love gets under one’s guard and shakes things up, for such is its sneaky nature. When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives, and those books become parts of the way we see our lives; we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds become mixed up with ours — they become ours.

That’s some deep stuff. Walking around the festival yesterday I stumbled across a modest line of people waiting for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni to sign her book at the Artwallah table. Artwallah incidentally just released their book Shabash! which they refer to as “the hip guide to all things South Asian in North America.” The highlight of my day was when I made it over to listen to Jared Diamond speak about his book Collapse. Fascinating. Book festivals kick ass. Continue reading →

Kama Sutra to prevent STD’s?

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According to a short audio clip on NPR’s Weekend Edition, the Indian government has authorized Kama Sutra playing cards to be distributed in order to promote monogamy and prevent sexually transmitted diseases. To understand the logic of this you can listen to NPR’s clip (with “exotic” music in the background). However, I think NPR may have made a reporting error. First of all this idea isn’t new. The BBC reported on the use of Kama Sutra to prevent STDs (although by different reasoning) two years ago, pointing to a program in Calcutta.

The government in India’s West Bengal State is supporting a programme that offers prostitutes an ancient solution to modern concerns about safe sex.

“Kama Sutra has many postures that can give men the highest pleasure without consummation and that is what the prostitutes are being taught.

“They are learning something very useful,” says Rajyashree Choudhuri, chief of the Institute of International Social Development (IISD), who designed the project.

Furthermore a 1993 journal abstract in Global AIDS News mentions the following:

…the Indian Health Organization, a nongovernmental organization founded 11 years ago in Bombay, is promoting the teachings of the Kama Sutra as an alternative to condom use in preventing HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The basic message that sex with one partner in many positions is safer than sex in one position with many partners is proclaimed on T-shirts and in a series of explicit postcards. This approach is promoting openness, communication, and equality between the sexes.

I’d pay BIG money for one of those T-shirts. Getting back to my point however, I think NPR mistakenly believed that the Indian Health Organization, which it mentions in the audio clip, is a branch of the Indian government and that this is a state sponsored national program. I don’t think the Indian government would be passing out Kama Sutra cards nationally. Am I wrong? If so, someone in India please correct me (and send me a deck of those cards…for reporting purposes). Continue reading →

Tharoor, not Kidman, is the Interpreter

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Director Sydney Pollack’s new film The Interpreter, which opened this weekend, is the first film ever to be allowed access to the halls of the United Nations in New York. The film stars Nicole Kidman’s character who, while performing her job as an interpreter for a fictional African nation, overhears a murder plot. The current United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, like his predecessors, was very sensitive about the image of the U.N. and wanted to make sure it was portrayed in a positive light and not maligned. He therefore appointed his trusted deputy, and author, Shashi Tharoor to interpret the script (and modify it if necessary). Rediff.com reports:

…Pollack could not take a no: the script demanded that much of film had to be shot inside the UN. He must have been aware that recreating the interiors of UN on a soundstage would cost nothing less than $5 million. And for a film budgeted at about $50 million, it would have been a burden.

‘I started calling anybody and everybody that I knew who had any connections and eventually, I was able to arrange a meeting with (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan,’ he recalls in the production notes of the movie that opens on April 22.

The film has already opened in a handful of countries including Britain, Spain and Australia where it is shaping into a sizeable hit.

Pollack says he had no idea that the key to arranging the make-or-break meeting would be the novelist and movie buff Shashi Tharoor, who is also the under secretary-general for communications and public information at the UN. Tharoor was at once sympathetic to Pollack.

Tharoor says he felt the ban was ‘not terribly wise.’ The UN ‘is an institution we need to demystify a little bit,’ he says in the production notes. ‘We are an organisation of governments but we work for the peoples of the world, and I think it is important to make the UN more accessible to those people.’

Before Annan gave his approval, he asked Tharoor to consult the heads of the General Assembly and Security Council. Once they gave their assent, Pollack received the first-ever access to shoot at the General Assembly and other UN interiors. The Interpreter then became the first film to be shot inside the UN buildings, which are over five decades old.

An NPR interview with Pollack where he discusses the approval process and Tharoor’s involvement can be found here. Continue reading →

Gypsy Rajas

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Beginning today, Delhi will play host to its first ever Salsa festival. Hips will be swaying and spins will be attempted. The BBC reports:

Kaytee Namgyal, the president of the Salsa India Dance Company and festival organiser, says he opened his first salsa studio in Delhi four years ago.

With the growing demand for salsa lessons, he now runs nine centres in the city. He is hoping to open a school in Mumbai (Bombay) soon.

Kaytee says he’s taught close to 1,500 students in the past four years and the number of those wanting to join his studios is ever growing.

So what makes salsa so appealing?

“Salsa is funky and fancy,” Kaytee says.

I think this introduction of Salsa into the motherland is just plain wrong. Hear me out. Picture if you will a guy and a girl. They are in love but the girl is being coy and evasive. Suddenly, they start singing, and dance…the Salsa. Now I ask you quite simply, what would their friends in the background do? Hindi-film dancing provides opportunity for these background hang-arounders to just do their thing. It’s very individualistic. I can’t imagine all those extras hip grinding as well. That would be scandalous!

And now for the zinger:

“Indian people are not great at salsa. That’s because they are so attuned to dancing to Bollywood lyrics. They can’t dance to beats. And salsa is totally based on beats.”

And that’s not the only problem Indian dancers have.

“Indian men don’t lead well,” says Jaquelin, who learnt salsa in Geneva.

“And it’s not really the music they listen to all the time. Also, there’s a cultural problem here. In salsa, you have to touch the woman. And it’s not always easy for the men here to do so. They have to learn to do that.”

Ouch. Luckily there are boot camps for this sort of thing. Continue reading →

Going Nuclear

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Okay everyone. Get ready. With all this Pope business firmly behind us, the press will be looking for the next big story to dissect to death from every angle. The pundits will be out in full force (including me). The next big story (which will begin Sunday) will be that of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, invoking the Nuclear Option. From Wikipedia:

The “nuclear option,” as used in American politics circa 2005, is a catchprase referring to a political manuever that would allow the Senate majority (currently Republicans) to prevent the minority party (currently Democrats) from filibustering judicial nominees. By U.S. Law, certain judicial appointees, particularly Supreme or other federal court Justices, must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking the bench. Under current Senate rules, a minority of senators are able to prevent the confirmation of judges via filibuster unless a supermajority can be reached to ‘break’ the filibuster. The ‘nuclear option’ refers to the technicality that only a simple majority is necessary to change this rule. That is, although a supermajority is currently necessary to break the filibuster, a simple majority could alter the Senate rules so that only a simple majority would be required to break the filibuster. The term is often used derogatorily by Democrats because of the term’s bad connection with nuclear war.

The primary argument forwarded by Republicans in defense of invoking the nuclear option and ending filibusters was a legal argument written by Martin B. Gold and a moonlighting 26 year old Justice Department attorney, Dimple Gupta.

To make it as succinct as possible (and there really is no fair way to do so), Gold and Gupta point out that according to the law the majority HAS THE CONSTITUTIONAL OPTION to change the rules.

Continue reading →

Moms know best

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Despite the fact that I get paid the big bucks (I wish) to be a blogging maven and learn desi related stuff first, so that I may humbly bring it to the attention of SM readers, there are some stories that an Indian mom will ALWAYS know about before us savvy internet users. This one comes from first time SM tipster, my Mom. Diamondbackonline.com, a University of Maryland school paper, reports on missing person Arvin Sharma:

A 22-year-old university student was reported missing following an evening of clubbing with friends in Southwest Washington Saturday, officials said.

District Police are looking for Arvin Sharma, a recent transfer from Temple University who lives in Greenbelt. He was last seen near the 1800 block of Half Street near the Lime Night Club, police said. Officials had few details yesterday regarding what may have happened to Sharma or what he was doing when last seen.

Sharma’s family searched his condominium Saturday morning and found his car parked outside, said his brother, Ashish Sharma. He left his car at home Friday evening and rode to the club with friends.

The family has sent e-mails and photos to media throughout the Washington and Baltimore areas, family members said.

“He’s not answering his cell phone; he hasn’t made any withdrawals from his bank account,” Ashish Sharma said.

So why is it that an Indian mom would know about this news first? It’s just the kind of example my mom uses every time I go home to the D.C. Metro area and decide to meet up with some friends in the city. “Be careful, its dangerous.”

My mom also pointed out the fact that the police will attempt to use their brand new anti-terrorism surveillance system, which consists of cameras on practically every D.C. street (more on that here), to figure out what became of Sharma.

Sharma’s family described him as a light-complexioned Indian male with brown eyes and black hair.

He is 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs about 190 pounds, they said.

District police are asking anyone with information to contact them at (202) 727-9099.

NBC4 has a video report of the story with full details. Continue reading →

K-street Kid

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Think Pennsylvania Avenue is the seat of power in D.C.? Wrong. It’s K-street. Desi-Talk introduces us to Raj Mukherjee, a twenty year old lobbyist from Jersey who may end up there soon:

Most people would think for a 20-year-old being a lobbyist is an unusual career choice. Traditional choices for Indians have been engineering or medicine. But Raj Mukherjee doesn’t think it is so atypical. It is understandable considering since the age of 10 Mukherjee claims he has been making web sites to attract politicians. Today, he is a partner in the New Jersey-based lobby firm, Impact NJ, which is a full-service government affairs firm with an emphasis on lobbying in the Garden State.

Mukherjee told News India-Times that politics is a disease, “when it bites you can’t shake it away.” Initially his parents didn’t want him to do business or enter politics. “They wanted me to do school work. They believed in the power of academia,” he said.

Mukherjee is currently working with U.S. Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) on his campaign for governor. “I feel he can restore public trust. He is a good friend of India on the India caucus. In the Senate, he will work with Frank Pallone and Congressman Bob Menendez to represent the interests of Indian Americans in New Jersey, which has the largest Indian population in the U.S.” said Mukherjee.

Pretty impressive, right? Not everyone is going to be “elect-able,” especially at such a young age, but there are other ways to influence policy while he bides his time. Mukherjee already has an impressive resume.

He gained critical acclaim in N.J. political circles when at the age of 16, he became the vice chairman of the Publius Group (where he was previously director of technology & security), which owns and operates the state’s heavily trafficked political news source (PoliticsNJ.com), receiving approximately 4 million gross hits per month.

Mukherjee, who speaks four languages, joined the Marines at 17 two weeks after September 11. It is difficult to establish how long he spent time in the Marines considering he is an undergraduate student at Rutgers, majoring in counterintelligence. It is an inter-disciplinary major that combines political science, Middle Eastern studies and military studies.

Damn. Now I feel like I haven’t done enough today. Continue reading →