Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

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

Dastaar

Posted on by

Dot from over at Ishbadiddle informs us of a new documentary titled, “Dastar: Defining Sikh Identity.” The Panthic Weekly reports:

Kevin LeeÂ’s documentary shows the struggle of the American-Sikh community to overcome the hatred, fear and intolerance it faces from fellow Americans due to its wearing of the essential symbol of the Sikh faith — the “dastaar” (turban), a press release by the Sikh Coalition stated.

The film also explores how media imagery fuels association of the turban with terrorism, leading to widespread discrimination against Sikhs. This documentary has already been screened in Chicago at the 2005 Asian American Showcase event and at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. It is scheduled to be screened in July at the AAIFF before being part of its national tour.

Dot points out that “the film features interviews with several people mentioned previously on SM, including Kevin Harrington the MTA subway operator, and footage of the guy who was sentenced to do community service at three Sikh temples after attacking a Sikh.”

You can view the entire film online by clicking one of the links below. If you live in NYC however I suggest instead that you view it at the 28th Annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) :

Small file .wmv

Large file .avi Continue reading →

They got me sittinÂ’ in the state pen

Posted on by

I have been thinking about prison a lot lately while the lyrics to Black Steel echo in my mind. If I were to be incarcerated how would I get by? I am a pretty small guy compared to all the big guys in there. I have always felt that I would be the Andy Dufresne of my cell block, keeping hope alive. Lately, in order to calm my prison fears, I have been reading up on how to make prison weapons. Ever since that 60 Minutes episode showed how to make a lethal crossbow using underwear and a plastic knife I haven’t been able to sleep. I bought a bunch of tighty whiteys and have been taking some of them apart to practice making the crossbow. Prison is tough. The LA Times and several others have been reporting on a lawsuit that the ACLU and ENSAAF filed against the Yuba County, CA Sheriff’s Department:

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of a Sikh asylum seeker who says his religious rights are being violated because jail officials refuse to let him wear a turban at all times.

Harpal Singh Cheema, 47, an Indian national, was detained by immigration authorities in 1997. He has been held at the Yuba County Jail since September 2002.

It’s troubling that he has been detained for as long as he has and, at the same time, that he is not being allowed to comply with the fundamental requirements of his religion,” said Robin Goldfaden, an ACLU staff attorney.

“He has been subjected to conditions that go against constitutional and statutory guidelines that are there to allow freedom to exercise one’s religion.”

Perhaps there is some way in which a turban can be used as a weapon? It has far more fabric than mere underwear.

Yuba County Counsel Dan Montgomery said head coverings were generally allowed as long as they were “consistent with safety and security and the orderly operation of the facility” and were not “perceived as posing a threat.”

He noted, however, that a turban could be used to conceal a weapon or contraband.

“Approaching a male Sikh and taking his turban off is a great affront, so the ability to search is impaired,” Montgomery said.

Continue reading →

Donna Goonda?

Posted on by

Last week, 65 year old Dr. Gulam Moonda, of Hermitage, PA (an Indian-American physician) was executed on the side of the Ohio turnpike (a well traveled highway) while his wife and mother in-law sat helplessly in the car. This has been a pretty well-publicized story due to the brazen nature of the killing. The Toledo Blade reported:

DonnaMoonda.jpg

Gulam Moonda, 65, of Hermitage, Pa., died from a single gunshot wound in the head during a roadside robbery. Lt. Rick Zwayer, a spokesman for the Ohio Highway Patrol, said the incident occurred at 6:38 p.m. Friday after Dr. Moonda and two other people in his 2000 Jaguar stopped along westbound I-80 to exchange drivers.

The lieutenant said the suspect allegedly stopped behind Dr. Moonda and demanded money. He complied, but the suspect shot him and fled the scene. Authorities are searching for a dark-colored van but have not released a further description of the vehicle or of the suspect.

According to a Good Samaritan who was first upon the scene, his wife was described as frantic and waving her hands wildly to flag down a passing car for help. WKCY.com reported:

The Good Samaritan doesnÂ’t want to be identified until the killer is caught. But he wonÂ’t be silenced about what he saw. He will never forget, a wife trying to save her husband.

In the frantic moments after the shooting, Dr. Gulam MoondaÂ’s wife and his mother-in-law desperately tried to flag down other drivers for help.

Continue reading →

The bird man of Ghaziabad

Posted on by

Cruel and unusual punishment? From NRI-worldwide (scroll down past the article about the bobbitised penis):

In confinement for the last two years on charges of theft, inside cell number 11 of the Ghaziabad district jail his only companions were the 120 white pigeons whom he met once a day to feed grains and corn.

But not any more.

Bringing an end to what many inmates believed was “an immortal friendship”, perverted jail authorities caught 100 of Chandra’s pigeons and broke their necks, one by one, in front of him on May 16.

This was done by jailer R.C.Singh and his men on instructions from the jail superintendent Rajesh Kesarwani, as a way to make Chandra admit to his crime.

Continue reading →

Time’s Top 100 Movies

Posted on by

pyaasa.jpg

The 1957 Indian film Pyassa (which I have neither seen nor even heard of) has made Time Magazine’s “All Time 100 Movies.” This isn’t surprising given that reviewer Richard Corliss is a Bollywood fan:

Like Japan, India had a golden age in the 1950s. Independence from Britain sparked a robust, questioning artistry. While Satyajit Ray was pioneering the nation’s art cinema, commercial filmmakers such as Raj Kapoor (Awaara), Mehboob Khan (Mother India) and Bimal Roy (Do Bigha Zamin) were grafting influences from Hollywood melodramas and Italian neo-realism onto the Indian tradition of musical narrative. Pyaasa, which means thirst, is the most soulfully romantic of the lot. Vijay (Dutt) is an unpublished poet, dismissed by family and office colleagues but befriended by a prostitute (Waheeda Rehman). In a twist out of Sullivan’s Travels, Vijay is believed dead and his poetry “posthumously” lionized. The writer-producer-director-star paints a glamorous portrait of an artist’s isolation through dappled imagery and the sensitive picturizing of S.D. Burman’s famous songs. And Rehman, in her screen debut, is sultry, radiant—a woman to bring out the poet in any man, on screen or in the audience. —R.C.

Other Indian films that made the list included The Apu Trilogy, and Nayakan.

Continue reading →

Manchester United?

Posted on by

The Hindustan Times reports on the first Asian mayor of the England’s second largest city, Manchester.

Afzal Khan who came from Pakistan to Britain at the age of 12 had nothing to look forward to. He had no education and no money, but now 35 years later at 47, he has become the first Asian Mayor of Manchester, the second biggest city in Britain.

He said his appointment reflected the diversity of Manchester’s ethnicity and demonstrated the contribution immigrants can make. “They can provide a city with an infusion of energy and creativity,” he said.

There was this one line that caught my eye,

Khan has a reputation for taking firm stands on ethnicity. He has supported the idea of celebrating Englishness through a patron saint as a way of enforcing community cohesion and, although he is a former assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, he has not adhered to its policy of boycotting National Holocaust Day Remembrance services.

Continue reading →

I will break you

Posted on by

turley.jpg

You know what? There ain’t no shame in my game. I’ll be the first to admit it. If I ever end up doing hard time in prison, I’d end up as this guy’s bitch. In the segregated prison system, brown-folk got to stick together. Dalip Singh will co-star in the Adam Sandler re-make of the film “The Longest Yard” which opens on May 27th. He will play a convict named Turley Lobo Sebastian.

Unique in his giant-sized 7′ 2″ stance, wrestler DALIP SINGH commands attention amongst all people in every part of the world. He was born into a poor family in the village of Dhirana in Himachal Pradesh of Punjab, India and is the third of eight siblings. At a young age, he earned a daily wage as a roadside stone breaker to help provide for his family.

In 1993, Dalip was still working as a road laborer in the Himalya Hills when his life’s circumstances began to change. By this time he had tried his hand at many sports. He excelled in all of them, but showed exceptional talent in body building. The Director General of the Punjab Police Department took notice of Dalip and helped him join the police force. The change in employment allowed Dalip to further his body building training and he subsequently won titles of Mr. India in 1997 and 1998. His success and hard work led him to train as a wrestler in the U.S. in 1999, where he developed the skills necessary to compete on a global stage, enabling him to win numerous wrestling titles in Japan, where he is currently a very popular figure. Dalip’s training schedule consists of two hours of weight training, morning and evening, every day. His chest measures at 65 inches and he weighs in at approximately 400 lbs. Maintaining his size requires a strict and intimidating daily dietary regimen: one gallon of milk, five chickens, and two dozen eggs, along with chapatis, juice, and fruit.

Dalip is very religious and adamant in his stance against ethnic violence. He is a true humanitarian. His goal in life is to support his family and aid the entire village that is his home. He hopes to benefit the welfare of disabled persons and children born into poverty. He is an active mentor to young people, encouraging them to stay away from drugs and urging them to find discipline, health and success by taking up sports. Dalip was married February 27, 2002 to Harpinder Kaur in a Hindu ceremony with the blessings of his Guru, Shri Ashutosh Maharaj Ji. He still serves as a member of the police force having recently been promoted to Sub Inspector of Punjab Police. Dalip is proud to make his debut as an actor in the US with a role in “The Longest Yard.”

FIVE CHICKENS! Continue reading →

The “Slum of All Fears??”

Posted on by

I was enjoying Slate’s coverage of the “Army of the Monkey God” until today. This is the lead picture on Slate.com today. Its one thing to report on the activities of adults but its another thing entirely to “exploit” young kids for an attention grabbing money shot like this one. Little kids all over the world will ape the adults around them. That’s common knowledge. To pass this off a militancy amongst the youth by referencing a Tom Clancy novel about a nuclear terrorist attack, is more than a bit lame. “Look at the hateful litte brown kids.” You see these same types of exploitive pictures from Palestine all the time.

slumofallfears.jpg

Hmmmm. Come to think of it though it would make a good banner for our site.

Previous posts: 1,2

Continue reading →

Of all the stupid…

Posted on by

An operation to rescue endangered sharks from poachers went horribly wrong recently when the rescuers…oh I can’t even explain it. From the BBC:

An effort to save nearly 50 live sharks from poachers in the Sunderbans area of the Indian state of West Bengal appears to have gone disastrously wrong.

Wildlife officials say that although the sharks were initially recovered alive, several mishaps meant that they all died as the poachers were arrested.

Okay so here is the ridiculous punchline:

They say that the raiding party which intercepted the poachers – afraid of the dangers posed by the sharks – ordered them to throw the sharks from the deck of their vessel onto the sand by a jetty.

Ummm. This is what happens when you sit in front of the television and watch Shark Week all…week. Then the officials try to play it off all smooth like:

“The raiding part made a mistake. In the chaos that followed the seizure and the arrests, they were busy with other things, and forgot to preserve the sharks,” Continue reading →

Helloooo Nurse!

Posted on by

Sheba Mariam George, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, is set to release a book next month titled, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration:

mallunurses.jpg

With a subtle yet penetrating understanding of the intricate interplay of gender, race, and class, Sheba George examines an unusual immigration pattern to analyze what happens when women who migrate before men become the breadwinners in the family. Focusing on a group of female nurses who moved from India to the United States before their husbands, she shows that this story of economic mobility and professional achievement conceals underlying conditions of upheaval not only in the families and immigrant community but also in the sending community in India. This richly textured and impeccably researched study deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story.

When Women Come First explains how men who lost social status in the immigration process attempted to reclaim ground by creating new roles for themselves in their church. Ironically, they were stigmatized by other upper class immigrants as men who needed to “play in the church” because the “nurses were the bosses” in their homes. At the same time, the nurses were stigmatized as lower class, sexually loose women with too much independence. George’s absorbing story of how these women and men negotiate this complicated network provides a groundbreaking perspective on the shifting interactions of two nations and two cultures.

I think this might be a good stocking stuffer during Christmas for many Mallu moms. Apparently it wouldn’t be a good idea to let any men in the house see it though. You know, bruised egos and all. Continue reading →