Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

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

Q: What do the Buggles have in common with Rabbi Shergill?

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I was over at the MTV Desi website today trying to figure out how to get hired. Maybe I’m a bit out of their demographic. I am pushing up on the big 3-0 but I am mos definitely cooler than Carson Daly AND my full head of hair is easily spike-able. If word gets out that I am only in it to get close to a certain VJ, my chances will be totally shot. In case you were wondering, this is what they dropped first. Video Killed the Radio Star it ain’t (thankfully):

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The video for “Bulla Ki Jaana” relects the core values of MTV Desi’s audience and captures the panaromic sweep, breathtaking variety and secular beauty of South-Asian and Indian life. Having grown up in India, Rabbi is not technically bi-cultural, but his grasp of the human condition, the ache and kick of life, influences that range from Bob Dylan to Sufi mysticism, and the struggle to sing the unsung hero’s song, qualify him as a truly multicultural artist who deserves to be heard around the world. “Bulla Ki Jaana,” like MTV Desi, is iconoclastic, trippy, mysterious and inclusive, striving to create new emotional connections between cultures.

Naturally, I immediately jumped to the lyrics to figure out MTV Desi’s “core values,” to see if I’d fit in. Continue reading →

Identity crisis

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On Monday the LA Times ran an insightful story [free reg. required] on what happens when you pretend to be an American all day:

Every Saturday morning Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It’s the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders.

Between 20 and 33 years old and keen to hide their symptoms from employers and families, the patients have significantly increased Kalyanasundaram’s workload.

“They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub.”

According to a report in the Indian Express newspaper, one in 15 people seeking counseling from a doctor in Chennai, India, works either in software or at a call center…

…”The strain of pretending to be ‘Bob’ or ‘Susan’ on the phone for weeks on end and keeping up with ‘Eastenders’ [a British television soap opera] and baseball can lead to questions of identity,”…

Yeah, I sort of saw this coming. As a former telemarketer I know full well the depression that can clutch at you when dealing with rude people all day. The other interesting issue the Times article looks at is what happens when the kids start making more money than the parents. The “as long as you live in my house” leverage just doesn’t cut it. “Mom, I’ll be at Moe’s.”

India’s work patterns also are testing traditionally close family structures. Gouhari said: “Children are earning vastly more than their parents ever did and the new disposable income is leading to a burgeoning pub culture which is causing a lot of family tension.”

Continue reading →

Say Cheese

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All day Manish has been foto-blogging (floging) highlights from the Indian State visit. He updated with this picture just a few hours ago:

This isn’t so much a post from me as it is a question to our Indian American readers. As an Indian-American, something with this picture just doesn’t sit right with me. I appreciate what the Administration might have been trying to do but…if the German Chancellor visited the U.S. would all the German American appointees be invited to pose for a picture with him? This picture (to me) smells of the unstated belief that Indian Americans somehow have a divided loyalty and are not simply American. Why the assumption that we would want to pose with “our” Prime Minister? I think I would have a hard time accepting such an invitation until I understood the logic of it. Why would I want to pose with him? Just because he is from India and so were my parents? I would most certainly want to meet and talk with him, but not in this manner. I wonder if a picture exists where the Indian American appointees were all called in to pose with just our President Bush?

I realize that I am probably over-reacting to this, but I am just curious as to what some of you think. Continue reading →

Bad News Brown Bear

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Good old Apul sends me this tip on the upcoming re-make of the Bad News Bears:

There appears to be a South Asian in the upcoming “Bad News Bear.” Don’t know much else about it.

Well, I inspected the dugout to discover one Aman Johal from Canada:

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AMAN JOHAL (Prem Lahiri) lives in Vancouver, Canada. “Bad News Bears” marks his film acting debut. Aman’s mother, who works as an actor and as a tennis instructor, always encouraged her youngest son to follow his dreams. His mother’s agent heard about the casting call for “Bears,” and Aman happily went, not expecting the fantastic outcome of being cast as one of the Bears. Aman has two older brothers, who are thrilled for their little bro. Aman has been a very competitive athlete, excelling in tennis, soccer and roller hockey. Since shooting “Bad News Bears” he has also developed a great love for baseball and quite the arm. Aman is also a big fan of music and “Star Wars.”

There is a very embarrassing picture from my youth that looks just like the one above. I was also bad news. Continue reading →

The next generation rickshaw

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When I worked for a few months in Delhi at the end of 2002 I was pleasantly surprised by my daily commute. I had heard that the Delhi air was absolutely choked with automobile exhaust fumes and made commuting unbearable. Having converted many buses and rickshaws over to natural gas (CNG) seemed to have done a pretty good job in cleaning up the Delhi skies. Los Angeles, where I live, is still playing catch-up. In the near future though, Indian cities may surge ahead again thanks to the most reliable form of transportation. Indianexpress.com explains:

The great Indian autorickshaw may have just shifted to the eco-friendly CNG but itÂ’s ready for the generation-next fuel.

Taking a major leap towards Indo-US co-operation in the energy sector, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have helped develop a hydrogen-run three-wheeler for Indian roads.

The Rochester Hills (Michigan)-based Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) has successfully converted and developed a CNG-run three-wheeler of Bajaj Automobiles into one run on hydrogen fuel.

Converting over to a hydrogen economy in the U.S. would be a massive undertaking that would span a couple decades. Some analysts think that China and India who have a smaller oil infrastructure could make the switch more easily, and also become more competitive economically, if they start with an alternative energy source while their economies are still developing. I know the critics will say that a hydrogen economy is pie in the sky but I’ve always had a saying: If it’s good enough for the Space Shuttle then its good enough for me (Tang and Velcro included). Continue reading →

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

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As all eyes focus on the meetings between Bush and Singh, I am still desperately hoping that there will be some sort of drama at the formal state dinner. You know, what if Rumsfeld gets drunk and decides to have a few choice words with a certain someone? The Telegraph is the only publication that seems to share my previously stated (mischievous) hopes:

Amrit Singh, the Prime Minister’s New York-based daughter, is expected to join her father as part of the “VVIP family” during the current Indian state visit to Washington. There is nothing unusual about this: except that Amrit is a perennial thorn on the sides of Bush and his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the strongest advocates in the present US administration for closer ties with India.

Amrit is an attorney with the ImmigrantsÂ’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She is a stormy petrel of civil rights in America and has taken on the Pentagon for abusing prisoners in IraqÂ’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison as well as the blackhole US detention camps in Guantanamo, Cuba, where suspected al Qaida terrorists are imprisoned.

Amrit has also taken on American airlines for allegedly discriminating against passengers with brown skin in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More recently, she got involved in allegations against US soldiers that they knowingly desecrated the Quran.

By all accounts though, the Prime Minister’s daughter is very down-to-Earth and prefers to stay out of the political spotlight when it concerns her family.

At the time of writing, it was not certain whether Amrit, who is viewed by thousands of Americans as a formidable and high profile adversary of the Bush administration, will accept official US hospitality and stay at Blair House.

Amrit has consistently refused to speak with reporters about her relationship with the Prime Minister, but is readily accessible to the media on cases she is pursuing against the US government or corporations.

Those in New York who know her — and Indian government officials — speak of her as the finest prime ministerial offspring India ever had because she has no airs, she does not throw her weight and she never speaks about her family connections.

Hmmm. I can only hope that maybe she’ll decide to follow in her father’s footsteps someday. Continue reading →

The redemption of Karan Takhar

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Since we’ve had so many posts on kids lately, thus taking our mind off more troubling matters, I thought I’d throw a post into the mix as well. Remember Karan Takhar? He came in second place a few months ago in the National Geographic Bee. Indian Americans were denied a coveted “bee” crown. Well, on Thursday in Budapest, Hungary, Karan redeemed himself with the help of two teammates. Voice of America reports:

A team of three American school students has won the National Geographic World Championship in Budapest, Hungary Thursday. The team from Russia came in second and Canada was third.

Looking relieved three teenagers of the United States received the golden medals in an Olympic style ceremony at the end of the National Geographic World Championship in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest.

They received them after a nerve wrecking hour, which included burning questions on the capital of Slovakia, an egg-laying mammal, and questionable election practices in Zimbabwe.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that one of the three Russians walked up to Karan before the bout and whispered, “I will break you.” This made their eventual loss all the more difficult.

Less impressed with the American victory was the Russian team, which came in second.

The two boys and one girl wearing silver medals found it difficult to smile. 15-year old Ivan Prokhorov from Murmansk, explained why Russia should have won. “From one hand I am happy because it is the best result in Russian history. But from the other hand I feel upset a little bit, because we could be the first. Because we are intelligent enough to win this competition but something happened, I don’t know what,” he said.

The Globe and Mail asked Karan what he thought of the experience:

“It’s such a great experience but once you’re done, it’s really tiring,” said Karan, adding that his plan was to “sleep first, then celebrate.”

Think you got what it takes? Try for yourself. Continue reading →

My son the fanatic

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Following the comment thread on my last post it quickly became apparent that folks were going to fixate on the wrong labels and thereby detract from the more important discussion that needs to take place. “They weren’t South Asian, they were Pakistani.” “They weren’t Pakistani, they were Kashmiris.” “There is no such thing as South Asian.”

Allow me to propose that we put semantics aside to focus on the one label that really matters. There is one label that we can hopefully all agree on: They were Second-generation. Born and raised in a western country with all the freedoms and opportunities they could want. In this instance the pejorative “confused” really does apply.

When I was a child my mother told me a story that her mother had told her. I can only re-tell the story as it was told to me:

“Once when mami was young she was at a train station. There was a strange man there who simply looked at her and hypnotized her. The man was a Fakir. She followed him unable to control herself as he led her away. Fakir’s have magical powers. Really Abhi (I was shaking my head in disbelief). They are Muslim and they kidnap and convert you to Islam. Luckily the family got her back before she walked too far off. She didn’t remember anything that happened afterward and said she couldn’t control herself. A Fakir can just look at you and you’ll forget everything, your whole life.

Now bear in mind that my family is from Gujarat, where bigotry has persisted for generations. My mom is not a bigot but she believed (and still does) that a Fakir has mystical powers that can brainwash a normal person and get them to walk away from their life and convert to Islam (even though not all Fakirs are Muslim and the Sufi order is the least fundamental). I actually asked her to tell me this story again when I went home just last month.

Most of us know at least one person that is a “born-again” into some religion. Various things motivate these people. Many of them (like at least one of these bombers) were described as being out-of-control before their conversion (or re-discovery of their family religion). Others feel overwhelmed by the influence of the world they live in and retreat back to a basic set of instructions that they think will bring order to the chaos they feel. Some take this “order” too far by trying to impose their interpretation of that order on others. Most born-agains however are perfectly sane and choose to practice their new beliefs in private without a harmful thought toward anyone. How do we recognize in our second generation peers which path they have chosen to walk? Continue reading →

They came from second-gen Pakistani families

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Months ago Manish wrote about the ethnic slur “Paki.” In Britain this is the slur of choice when referring to all people of South Asian ethnicity. Brace yourselves. SM tipster Prem Khalon has been sending us the latest news clippings on the London bomb blasts. From the Timesonline:

Four friends from northern England have changed the face of terrorism by carrying out the suicide bombings that brought carnage to London last week.

It emerged last night that, for the first time in Western Europe, suicide bombers have been recruited for attacks. Security forces are coming to terms with the realisation that young Britons are prepared to die for their militant cause.

Three of the men lived in Leeds and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.

The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named last night as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.

Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.

Police are still trying to identify the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he comes from Luton.

Continue reading →