Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

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

The Misdirected Mail Bag Vol. 1

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I was probably among the first wave of netizens that signed up for Gmail when it first came out years ago. I selected a personal email address that was pretty generic and therefore regularly receives email obviously meant for someone else. At lease twice a week, beautiful Indian models send me their modeling portfolios. At some point soon I will just pretend to be the famous modeling agent they must think I am.

Sepia Mutiny also receives much email that is obviously meant for someone else. I have decided to start a new (but infrequent) series here titled “The Misdirected Mail Bag.” These are all real emails we receive and politely read. Enjoy.

From: Customer

My site: http://

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Message:

the owner,

I eat your bread Moghulai Nan regularly. Now I think you are ripping of people by cutting the quantity of flour in one single bread. total weight of the packet is 795g.now which never use to be before This is completely cheating.Please correct it immediately before I take further .

Customer

I am dying to know what that “further” action might be? Burn down the nan factory?

From: Abdoulie



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Message:

Hi i want to join the Us Army but i am not a us citizenship. i am from the gambia but i dont how to work

My site: http://

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Son we only recruit for the Mutiny…not the U.S. Army. We won’t allow their recruiters to contact our readers until they allow homosexuals to serve. Oh damn. Just jeopardized my future Supreme Court nomination.

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Guest Blogger: Amitava Kumar

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It has been a while since we put a new guest blogger in front of you. So here is a treat. Author and professor Amitava Kumar will serving up some hot mutiny for you. From Wikipedia (where tired and sometimes lazy bloggers go for bio quotes):

Amitava Kumar is a writer who was born in India and is currently Professor of English at Vassar College. Kumar is the author of Husband of a Fanatic (The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I. (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India, and will appear in the US in August 2009 under the title Nobody Does the Right Thing. Early in 2009, Picador-India published his book Evidence of Suspicion, which will be published by Duke University Press in August 2009 under the title, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb: A Writer’s Report on the Global War on Terror. [Wiki]

I spent a few solid days chatting about writing, blogging and politics with Amitava at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver where he was there as press. Fantastic guy and I like how his mind works, or rather how he sees the world. Hoping in the coming weeks that you get that same glimpse.

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Results from the PA-6th: Trivedi Wins!

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Via the Swing State Project that is monitoring the results here:

12:42am: The AP calls PA-06 (D) for Manan Trivedi and PA-17 (R) for Dave Argall.

12:22am: Trivedi wins! 100% in according to the AP, and he’s up 21,338 to 20,667, a 50.8% to 49.2% victory! WOOHOO!!!! GREAT NIGHT!

12:12am: Manan Trivedi is up 672 votes, and it looks like there are very few if any precincts outstanding. Hard to tell, though, since the SoS doesn’t say, and AP is lagging. [Link]

As I said last night:

… but we know with absolute certainty that it will come down to anywhere from a couple thousand to a couple hundred votes (more likely the latter). [SM]

I can’t help but reflect on this comment from last September when Trivedi announced:

…it is not a good idea for us as South Asians to support candidates simply because of who they are. We have to be more sophisticated and look realistically at their chances at winning. Does it make sense for us to invest our time and money in a candidate who has no support locally and whose only campaign strategy is to raise money from the South Asian community? No.

As a proud supporter of Raj Goyle’s congressional run in Kansas, I know that it takes time to lay the groundwork for a political run for office. For him, and for Trivedi, the sky is and should be the limit. But, they have to be smart about planning long-term strategies to create the local and political groundwork for these races. It’s too bad Trivedi has not done so. [SM]

There is a lesson here.

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Election day in PA-Go Vote!

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Tuesday is primary day in the state of Pennsylvania. My cousin Manan Trivedi is vying for the Democratic party’s nomination against Doug Pike. The winner will face the Republican incumbent in a district that has a real chance of switching hands in November and will therefore be the focus of national attention. For obvious reasons I have been following this battle pretty closely and here are three observations:

1) Money rules, and being independently wealthy rules more. It doesn’t matter if you rack up double or triple the endorsements of your opponent. It might not even matter if you out-fundraise them. If he/she can afford to put their face up on TV more often than you then its an uphill battle until the end.

And the fundraising is going well for Trivedi. Because of the impending primary, the candidates had to filed with the FEC yesterday for their sums raised from April 1 through April 28. Here’s your totals:

Trivedi: $41,478.50
Pike: $9,381.00

In the month before the election, less than $10,000 raised? That’s Martha Coakley-level complacency not only compared to Trivedi but to other regional Dems who face no primary challenges — Bryan Lentz, in neighboring PA-07, also raised over $40,000 in April, for instance. [Kos]

2) You can enter a race “late,” “come from out of nowhere,” and have a South Asian name and still compete if you have good ideas and know how to communicate them. I believe this is the single most important thing I have learned from this race. I am not sure who will win tomorrow but it was amazing to see that sound policy knowledge resulted in such a lopsided endorsement tally and such a toss-up on election day.

Going into the final full week of campaigning during the primary election season, Manan Trivedi has received the endorsement from two very influential women and an organization devoted to advocating for women’s equality.

The National Organization for Women (NOW/PAC) chair, Terry O’Neill stated that “Manan Trivedi has demonstrated to us that he will stand up for the full equality of girls and women. We are looking forward to joining forces with him in that pursuit.” [Link]

3) Anything can happen in a primary (see Bob Bennett). Primaries are ruled by the most hard-core activists in the party. The people that vote are the ones that probably vote in every election or the ones that feel passionately about a particular candidate or their policies. There aren’t any real polls that have attempted to predict the outcome of this race but we know with absolute certainty that it will come down to anywhere from a couple thousand to a couple hundred votes (more likely the latter). If you live in PA-6th and were debating whether or not to vote then I’d tell you that a primary vote is where your voice will be heard the loudest.

If you live in the PA-6th and vote, please tell us about your voting experience in the comments below.

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The soft bigotry of fake license plates

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I was horrified upon reading this. While growing up in diverse northern California in the early 80s this is the one thing that really stuck out to make me feel like a minority. 25 years later it seems this continues to be a problem for our peoples.

HAYWARD, CA– Dinesh Parekh, 9, continues to struggle to find a bicycle license plate with his name on it, the Indian-American child reported Monday. “This is the third store I’ve checked today,” said a dejected Parekh, exiting a Toys “R” Us near his Hayward home. “Derrick, Diane, Dillon and Dylan, Dirk… no Dinesh.” Parekh, who has pedaled his brand-new Schwinn to more than a dozen stores during his three-week search, said he plans to ask his mother to drive him to the KB Toys in San Leandro next weekend. [Onion]

Can’t we just ask prison inmates to add a bit of diversity to their plate making assembly lines? Until at least Fremont, Edison, Sugarland and other U.S. cities start carrying “Dinesh, “Rahul,” “Ravi,” etc., we will never really be accepted.

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Chemical Cremation?

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A bill headed to the California State Assembly, and expected to pass, will be of special interest to our Hindu readers, especially “environmentally conscious” ones. The question is, should chemical cremation be legalized as an alternative to combustion cremation (the latter having a larger carbon footprint)?

Funeral homes and crematoria want to use a liquid chemical process to dissolve bodies instead of cremating them with fire.
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“It’s green. It’s clean. It’s environmentally friendly and it reduces the carbon footprint,” said California state Assemblyman Jeff Miller (R-Corona), who wrote legislation to make the so-called bio-cremation method legal.

Miller said his bill was prompted by a funeral home director in his district who might may buy a bio-cremation machine. The measure would broaden the definition of cremation to include the use of either both fire or and water. Two committees already have approved the measure unanimously, and the full Assembly must pass it before it goes to the Senate. [LAT]

Chemical cremation is properly known as “resomation.” The website of a Scottish company explains the process and benefits:

The coffin is placed in a special chamber and, instead of fire, resomation uses a water and alkali based method which uses the same chemistry as in natural decomposition but is much quicker…

The resomation process takes roughly the same time as cremation and the funeral ceremony will be the same. However, it uses less energy than cremation and produces significantly less CO2 and avoids putting mercury and other harmful contaminants into the atmosphere…

After resomation, bone remains are left behind in the form of pure white ash. As with cremation these remains can be placed in an urn and returned to the loved ones. Relative to cremated ash, resomated ash is fine and pure white as can be seen in the photographs on the right of the page. [Link]

So far only one state, Florida, has passed a law legalizing this form of cremation (although services are not yet operational).

So what do the Hindus out there think? The resomated ash does look finer and should be easier to disperse. This process has the side benefit of making it really difficult to go all Sati. But in all seriousness, part of the point of cremation is that you are doing away with your body because it is a discarded piece of nothing once your eternal soul has left. The act of turning the body to ash aids in releasing the soul. If one believes that, then resomation should be no problem. Right?

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Who was “The Great Oom?”

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The Houston bureau of Sepia Mutiny (our southernmost outpost) has shuttered its doors, a casualty of the economic upheaval. The Houston bureau chief (me) has returned to Los Angeles to rejoin our offices there. One of the things I will miss most about Houston in my yoga teacher/class. A good yoga place is hard to find (even in the “yoga capital” of the U.S.). And isn’t it wonderful how so many of you nodded your heads in agreement just now. For many of us, finding the right yoga class is as important, and as difficult, as finding the right doctor. On the airplane to Los Angeles last night I read a blurb in a magazine that made me aware that many of us owe a debt of gratitude to one Pierre Arnold Bernard (a.k.a. The Great Oom). He had a significant hand in ensuring that Yoga is now essentially a part of everyday American culture:

… men and women came to his ashram on the Hudson River, two hundred acres of leafy real estate in Nyack, New York, that included a zoo, a yacht, airplanes and a dozen mansions that Mitchell could only describe as the “English countryside estates one sees in the moving pictures.” Bernard had made his fortune teaching yoga, and his students made up a Who’s Who of American life: college presidents, medical doctors, ministers, a spy or two, theologians, heiresses, a future congresswoman, famed authors and composers — some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. Doctor Bernard, they called him, and like a benevolent physician he ministered to their needs, body and soul. He sheltered them, entertained them and gathered them together to teach them the art of living. They stood on their heads for him, worked in his fields, sang in his theatrical productions and performed in elaborate, professional-level circuses for his approval. Some of them came to delve deeply into hatha yoga and the philosophy behind it, some for romance and fresh air, some for the Bernard cure, having been abandoned by hospitals and mental institutions. These he literally led back from ruination — from ledges of despair, lethal addictions and Great War nightmares. How he managed to do this has remained his closely guarded secret…

But who was he, really, this uneducated savant who could lecture extemporaneously for three hours on the similarities between the philosophies of ancient India and the Gnostic heresies of the early Christians? This same man was known to stage a three-ring circus, manage a semi-pro baseball team, train a world-class heavyweight boxer, repair a Stanley Steamer automobile and whoop it up on fight nights at Madison Square Garden with nicotine-stained reporters. This last was where he was most at home, some said, shouting, swearing, happily chomping on a cigar. Who was this man of such wild contradictions, a name as familiar to headline writers of the 1920s as Charles Lindbergh? The answer depended to a large degree on who was doing the asking. [NYT]

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Should Indians worry about this scary infographic?

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Yes. I think so. They should be absolutely terrified by what it implies

According to this graphic, India is doing pretty well in avoiding packaged food (but also eating a lot less total food…not always by choice) relative to America and some other western cultures. Yet here is the inescapable fact about where India is headed (and China as well):

After an extensive nationwide survey, China has more than doubled the estimate of its diabetic people to 92.4 million from 43.2 million in 2009, thus replacing India as the country with the maximum number of diabetics in the world.

India has 50.8 million people with diabetes.

The China study, published in New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday pushes up the global diabetes estimates from 285 million to 334.2 million.

Diabetes was almost 1.4 times more common among urban residents than rural ones, the study found, sampling 46,239 adults above the age of 20, from 14 provinces and municipalities.

“The ageing of the population, urbanisation, nutritional changes and decreasing levels of physical activity, with a consequent epidemic of obesity, have probably contributed to the rapid increase in the diabetes burden in the Chinese population,” wrote Yang Wenying, head of endocrinology, at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, who carried out the study between June 2007 and May 2008. [Link]

We Americans are likely to continue to export our food culture around the world. Or rather, countries like India and China will continue to enthusiastically import it and are probably even less equipped than us to deal with the repercussions.

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Timothy Geithner’s India trip

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I had no idea until the NYTimes reported it earlier this week that our Treasury Secretary once lived in India:

Geithner was born in New York City but spent most of his childhood in other countries, including present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, India and Thailand where he completed high school at the International School Bangkok. [Link]

Here is a picture of Geithner when he was a kid in India. For the love of…why didn’t some local teach him some cricket??

And while in India, Geithner needed some ironing done. Why can’t we buy those big ol’ irons here? My shirts are never pressed as well as they are in India.

Actually, this man is the local ATM machine. Click on the picture for an explanation

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Some friendly Census competition

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Amardeep has already broached the topic of the U.S. Census in his recent post about question number 9. I’d like to follow up by making an important appeal to all of our readers: PLEASE encourage every South Asian American you know to get this form filled out and turned in as soon as possible. I am serious. When you are at the bar/restaurant/movie this weekend, ask your friends if they have filled it out already. If your mom and dad call and ask how your day was, ask them if they filled it out. Nag. Incessantly. They will all thank you for it later. From the U.S. Constitution:

Clause 3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. [Link]

The New York Times recently featured an article about the efforts of the Indian American community in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of New York City:

Kulwinder Singh, a 52-year-old Punjabi Sikh who works as a tow-truck operator, approached a young community organizer who was taping a promotional poster for the 2010 census to a wall inside his temple in Richmond Hill, Queens. Mr. Singh looked perplexed.

“Population count,” the organizer, Herminder Singh, 19, explained in Punjabi, before launching into a detailed explanation of the survey.

The older man listened intently, finally declaring, with a resolve that would warm the heart of any census official: “My family has 10 to 15 members. When the form comes, I’ll fill it out.” [Link]

How about the rest of you?

I wanted to survey the progress thus far in census form return rate from the top 10 U.S. voting districts by South Asian American population. But shockingly, nobody can say with certainty what they are. Maybe they will do that analysis for the 2010 cycle because it seems like something important to know. I have decided to pick 5 U.S. voting districts where I know there are a ton of brown folk. Let’s see what’s up using their really cool interactive map:

Edison, NJ:

Fremont, CA

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