Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

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

Another late/lonely night

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I am so ashamed of myself today.  I was up late last night watching TV.  As usual I was all alone.  After a long days worth of hard blogging I look forward to consuming several drinks and plopping down in front of the TV to consider my numb state.  As I was flipping channels a commercial caught my eye.  Admit it.  You guys watch these commercials too.  Usually I just change the channel after about 10 seconds, but last night I was just mesmerized.  I actually picked up the phone to order the product.  Someone named Jenny answered.  I realized that it was all a ruse.  I felt so ashamed.  So dirty…

Image from Badmash.org
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Separation of Burger and State

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Dave Sidhu at the great blog DNSI has a very illustrative example of what stinks in the ethnic ghettos of Europe in my opinion.  It turns out that Muslims that have the munchies can now satiate their cravings at their own Beurger King Muslim (BKM).  The BBC reports:

Parisian Muslims can now enjoy halal meals in an atmosphere that mimics US fast-food joints after BKM, or Beurger King Muslim, opened its doors.

BKM has set up in the northern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, where many locals are first or second generation Muslims from former French colonies.

And half of the suburb’s population of 28,000 are aged under 25, the Agence France Presse news agency reported.

Beur is slang for a second generation North African living in France.

So let me understand this.  It mimics the atmosphere of the U.S. by essentially being a segregated establishment?  I’m torn.  I HATE this idea because all it does is serve to further segregate a community whose children sometimes seem to turn fanatical because they feel segregated against.  At the same time however it helps fight the poverty that leads to and maintains the segregation:

For most of BKM’s employees, the restaurant had “ended a long period of unemployment”, Mr Benhamid said.

One BKM worker called Hakim explained that “young people in these suburbs have trouble finding work and this restaurant will allow the hiring of young people who have no diplomas or are looking for apartments”. 

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5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, North Dakota

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Quizman sends us the following message over our tipline:

[Here is an] Article on Aamir Khan and The Rising. How can The Sepoy(ia) mutiny refuse to carry it? 🙂

How indeed?

Circa 1857. A wounded soldier arrives at a doctor’s clinic after a skirmish with his British superior. The sepoy has challenged his senior’s order to shoot opium farmers who were agitating against the English East India Company’s monopoly. As he is being treated, the sepoy meets a courtesan, Heera, played by Rani Mukherjee. While the woman admires this young sepoy for his bravery, he snubs her. Heera shoots back: “Sepoy saheb, we prostitutes sell our bodies, but you sell your souls.”

The courtesan’s words stir the sepoy’s conscience. And Mangal Pandey turns a rebel. It eventually leads to a chain reaction which triggers off the first war of Independence in 1857, described by the British as the Sepoy Mutiny.

Director Ketan Mehta is bringing alive on an epic scale the story of Mangal Pandey, the sepoy of the 5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, Barrackpore. And who better to play the rebel who roused society to challenge imperialism than a rebel himself.

“He is one of the few actors who stand by their convictions,” said Ketan, who hails Aamir Khan’s portrayal of Mangal Pandey as his finest ever. “A revolutionary and a rebel in his own way, Aamir is a contemporary Mangal Pandey in many ways. Only he would have given everything to a venture of this magnitude.”

Mangal P. even has a profile up on MySpace MSN Spaces complete with a blog.  If Kal Penn can do it why not Aamir Khan? Continue reading →

Surviving a crash

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The first lesson I learned as a pilot is that airplanes are incredibly forgiving beasts.  Seriously, you almost have to try to crash them on purpose.  This runs counter to conventional beliefs because movies and the media always play up the stewardess being sucked out of the cabin angle, or the gremlin on the wing angle.  Learning how to crash-land a plane is one of the most interesting lessons that a begining pilot is taught.  Flying is not nearly as spontaneous as one thinks.  There is a checklist for everything.  My checklists were always on a clipboard that wrapped around my right leg, secured with a velcro strap.  If you think that’s kind of silly you should see the volumes of checklists that astronauts have to follow to do anything. 

Practicing crash landings is like a dress rehearsal for a performance you never wish to be in.  At the last minute you pull up of course, otherwise you have to explain to farmer John why there is a Cessna burning in his field.  The closest I ever came to an accident was in fact a landing.  I took a friend up for her birthday.  While landing, the plane bounced several times, several meters up off the runway.  She didn’t realize how badly I had botched it.  Never during all my instruction had such a thing happened but having memorized my checklist I was able to recover.  That brings me finally to Flight 358.  Science Daily reports:

All 297 passengers and 12 crew survived a catastrophic airliner fire Tuesday at Toronto’s international airport, a Canadian airport official said.

The official stressed he was quoting “unconfirmed reports.” He said there appeared to be only 14 minor injuries, but could not confirm that one of Air France Flight 358’s pilots had been taken to the hospital

He refused to speculate on the cause of the fire. The airliner after a flight from Paris.

Earlier, flame and smoke were pouring out of the passenger airliner at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport shortly after an accident around 4 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

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Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

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Writer, director, actor, and comedian Albert Brooks is working on a new film set to be released next year (tip from Srinath).  IMDB has only the most basic details about it (including cast), but Ain’t it Cool News has more (with spoiler warnings):

Okay, so I went to a screening in Pasadena of the new Albert Brooks film. I love this guy’s movies, but I wasn’t crazy about The Muse (I’m with Moriarty on that one). However here’s the truly excellent news: The Albert Brooks I know and love is in fact back!

The title is indeed: Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World and the premise is essentially the title. Albert Brooks, playing himself again – brilliant! (For any of you who haven’t seen Real Life, first, you’re lame. Second, run, don’t walk). So he gets called up by the powers that be, i.e. real life ex-Senator, and current day Law & Order cast member, Fred Dalton Thompson – who too is playing himself, to go to India and Pakistan and find out what makes the Muslims laugh. This is a late in the game attempt by the government to try something other than the “usual methods of spying and fighting” to figure out what the hell is going on on that side of the world.

Mr. Brooks appears somewhat incredulous. He even stops the meeting to point out that India is largely Hindu, not Muslim. To which the one of the suits responds that there are 150 million Muslims in India, and Fred Thomson says, “Is that enough for ya?” Hilarious.

DANGER DANGER SPOILER AHEAD!!!

So much happens once he’s in India, but so much doesn’t too, I mean this is really the brilliance of the movie, but let me save that for a minute. Albert spends the whole movie asking people what they think is funny and never gets any real answers. It turns out that Muslims (and Hindus) are pretty much like Americans; their sense of humor is completely idiosyncratic and doesn’t tell you jack shit about what the country as a whole might consider funny.

I can understand this last point.  Only a few people find funny the things I do.  I’d love to hear some stories of jokes that didn’t go over so well due to cultural differences from our readers.  There is more to the review above in case you aren’t too worried about spoilers.  Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is set for wide release in January 2006.  Let’s hope that for Brooks sake it doesn’t inspire any Van Gogh type critical reviews.

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Tracing my roots

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Some of the comments on SM of late have disturbed me greatly.  I am begining to realize that a lot of people are very confused about who they are.  Even worse they seem obsessed with trying to convince people who they are not.  While sitting in a jury pool all day last Tuesday I did a little bit of reading.  I learned of National Geographic’s Genographic Project which attempts to trace the path of humans as they left Africa.

[Spencer] Wells, 36, is a population geneticist using science in global pursuit of the greatest story not yet told: the story of how humankind traveled from its origins in Africa to populate the planet. The most telling clues lie with isolated, indigenous tribes like the Tubu, for their DNA remains, in a sense, the purest. Their unique genetic markers, characteristic mutations in a defined sequence of DNA, are like flags waving from the place their ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years–the starting point for ancient migrations. Any venturesome Tubu who crossed the Sahara to see the outlying world, and propagated in the process, passed on one or another of those genetic markers to his or her offspring. Any traveler who came through the Tibesti and intermarried did the same. Wells might take a cheek swab from an investment banker in Boston and find that same genetic marker: proof that one of those Tubu created a family line that leads, in some circuitous way, over continents and generations, from the Tibesti to an oak-paneled office in Back Bay. It’s in the hope of tracing myriad journeys such as this that Wells, a newly named National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, is undertaking one of the most ambitious and expensive research adventures in the National Geographic Society’s 117-year history: the grandly named Genographic Project.

At a cost of 40 million dollars over five years, the brunt of it borne by National Geographic, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation, the Genographic Project under Wells’s direction is establishing 11 DNA-sampling centers around the world, with the goal of collecting 100,000 cheek swabs or blood samples from mostly indigenous peoples like the Tubu. A sense of urgency infuses the project: Year by year, at an ever quickening rate, the outside world is crowding in on, and at the same time absorbing, indigenous peoples. A Tubu who moves to Paris will still have the genetic markers that distinguish him as a Tubu, but the geographical context for his markers will be gone. As for the Tubu who remain in the Tibesti mountains, they may marry more with outsiders as modern technology makes contact more likely. Generation by generation, tracing the last routes of historical migration of such isolated people grows that much harder. Wells wants to map as many routes as he can while their geographical origins are relatively intact.

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More than a Brimful

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My favorite quartet (yes, I have such a thing) will be dropping a new CD on August 23rd.  I first fell for the eclectic sounds of Kronos because of the soundtrack to the 1995 movie Heat.  SM tipster Niraj informs us that the group’s new album titled You’ve Stolen My Heart: Song’s from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood will feature Asha Bhosle.  Take a listen.

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From the fantastical land of India’s “Bollywood,” the world’s largest film industry, comes the music of the Kronos Quartet’s latest CD-a vibrant homage to the pre-eminent composer of classic Bollywood, Rahul Dev “R.D.” Burman. In more than 300 film scores, Burman entranced audiences with melodies steeped in intrigue, festooned with jewels, and stained with tears and henna-an eclecticism mirrored in ever-surprising combinations of Indian classical and folk music, swing jazz, psychedelic rock, circus music, can-can, mariachi, and more. You’ve Stolen My Heart finds Kronos in the eminent company of Bollywood playback singer Asha Bhosle, Burman’s wife and the most recorded artist in the world, who contributes new vocal performances to 8 of the CD’s 12 tracks. Inspired by the chameleonic spirits of Burman and Bhosle, Kronos ventures into novel instrumental territory on this disc-the first to be produced by quartet founder David Harrington-augmenting its acoustic sound with keyboards, gongs, cymbals, mouth percussion, and more. Kronos is also joined by longtime collaborators Zakir Hussain (tablas, trap drums) and Wu Man (Chinese pipa), completing this musical masala of eras and cultures.

1. Dum Maro Dum – Take Another Toke
2. Rishte Bante Hain – Relationships Grow Slowly
3. Mehbooba Mehbooba – Beloved, O Beloved
4. Ekta Deshlai Kathi Jwalao – Light a Match
5. Nodir Pare Utthchhe Dhnoa – Smoke Rises Across the River
6. Koi Aaya Aane Bhi De – If People Come
7. Mera Kuchh Saaman – Some of My Things
8. Saajan Kahan Jaoongi Main – Beloved, Where Would I Go?
9. Piya Tu Ab To Aaja – Lover, Come to Me Now
10. Dhanno Ki Aankhon – In Dhanno’s Eyes
11. Chura Liya Hai Tum Ne – You’ve Stolen My Heart
12. Saiyan Re Saiyan – My Lover Came Silently

Kronos will be playing in the UCLA Live concert series on Sat Sept. 24th in case anybody would like to go see them with me. Continue reading →

Work an Hour

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Asha for Education is in the midst of its annual “Work an Hour” campaign. Seems like they are well short of their goal at the moment. Having worked in an NGO in India whose focus was also education for underprivileged children, I have a soft spot for this cause and thought I’d try and help out their campaign with a post.

What is work an hour?

Each year volunteers from around the world come together in a show of great human spirit, to help educate underprivileged children in India. Work An Hour, or WAH, as it is popularly known, is a simple concept. We ask you to symbolically contribute one hour of your time towards the cause of children’s education by donating an hour’s worth of your salary or more. The event symbolically begins on July 4, the American Independence Day, reaches an apex on August 15, the Indian Independence Day, and finally culminates on September 5, which is celebrated as Teachers’ Day in India.

How much should I donate?

You can donate any amount. We encourage you to donate an hour’s worth or more of your salary.

Where does the money go?

100% of all funds collected through Work an Hour go directly towards the selected projects. Keeping with Asha’s long-standing policy, Asha volunteers bear all administrative expenses.

If donating money isn’t your thing then consider volunteering your time for Asha or another similar organization. You can volunteer both here in the States and obviously in India. It is better than living in your parent’s basement while you figure out what you want to do with your life 🙂

The objectives of this group are:

-To provide education to underprivileged children in India.
-To encourage the formation of various local groups across the world to reach out to larger sections of the population.
-To support and cooperate with persons and groups already engaged in similar activities.
-To raise the required human and other resources to achieve the group objectives.
-To provide opportunities to individuals living outside India who wish to participate in Asha activities in India.
-To address, whenever possible, other issues affecting human life such as health care, environment, socio-economic aspects and women’s issues.

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Consulate humor

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Last week Turbanhead wrote about how exasperating it sometimes seems when trying to get your documents in order to travel abroad (in terms of dealing with the often clueless bureaucracy). NRI worldwide recently reported on a few anecdotes that suddenly don’t make Turbanhead’s ordeal seem so bad:

An American officer manning the counter asked her if she was a singer. She replied that she was — and was shocked when the gentleman asked, “How about singing a nice song for me?” Sonali landed on her feet, though, and joked that it would cost him.

He reiterated his seriousness, and ultimately, she had to hum a line or two. It was a “funny feeling”, but that was how she got her visa three years ago.

The story goes that none other than Asha Bhosle was about to be asked to prove she could sing, had an Indian staffer at the consulate not intervened and averted the faux pas! This incident could not, however, be independently confirmed.

That reminds me of those old cartoons where Yosemite Sam would shoot his guns at Bug Bunny’s feet until he danced. Michael Higgins tips us off to yet more consulate related humor on The Renegade of Junk blogsite:

Yesterday, I sent my Indian passport off to the Consulate to be renewed. The preliminary groundwork that needed to be completed for this purpose was, to say the least, a trying experience. In fact,in general, any activity requiring interaction with my fellow citizens of this country has become a trying experience.

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The Burghers of Harlem

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One of the two young girls picked up by the government (on suspicion of terrorism) re-appeared in her Harlem neighborhood in May. Sixteen year old Guinean immigrant Adama Bah was released by the Feds without explanation (and she’s under court order not to talk about it). Her friend Tashnuba Hayder was deported back to Bangladesh. Her classmates missed her and let her know recently via an impressive art exhibit they prepared to tell her story. The New York Times reported a few days ago (tip from Priya):

When Adama Bah’s schoolmates decided to make a public artwork project about her case last spring, she and another 16-year-old girl were being held by the federal government after it had identified them, without explanation, as potential suicide bombers.

“We didn’t know if we would ever see her again,” said Kimberly Lane, who was then an art teacher at the school, the Heritage School in East Harlem, where many viewed Adama’s detention as unjust and incomprehensible. “This was a way for the students to use art to speak out at a time when a lot of people, including adults, were afraid to do anything.”

The result towers over anything that most people would expect high school students to produce. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, where the work is on display through Thursday, the director of art education, Prof. Judith M. Burton, says it reminds her of Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais.”

Life after being thrown in jail without explanation isn’t easy on a poor immigrant family as you can imagine:

“I asked the students why are they doing that,” Adama recalled. “They said they just wanted to let my story be heard and help me out.”

These days, Adama acknowledges that her family is in difficult financial straits. The telephone has been shut off and her mother stays late at her trinket stand in Brooklyn, trying to earn enough to buy groceries for Adama and four younger children. But Adama was bubbling over about her summer job, reading to children at Bellevue Hospital Center.

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Posted in Art