Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

After the Namesake

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What do you do once Nam-e-sake is out and the DVD is long since released? Well, if you’re Kal Penn, you make Harold and Kumar Escape from Gitmo (link makes noise if you open it), but what about the rest of the cast?

Well, Mira Nair is bringing Irfan Khan along to a new project entitled (and I kid you not) Kosher Vegetarian:

The Namesake director Mira Nair is making another movie about intercultural relationships, this time between an Indian guy and a Jewish girl, played by Natalie Portman. In sort of a strange twist, Irfan Khan, who played the father in The Namesake, will play Natalie’s Gujarati boyfriend in the film, tentatively titled Kosher Vegetarian. [Link]

Meanwhile Tabu is opening a Bollywood acting school in London, something that sounds like a Kal Penn film in and of itself:

Bollywood stars Anupam Kher, Urmila Matondkar, Tabu and Boman Irani are opening a “Bollywood Acting School” in London, to train students for a career in Indian cinema. [Link]

I’m just picturing a class of very pasty folks diligently practicing the phrase “Arre o samba!” until they get it right. I imagine the fight instructors stand around saying, “No no no, that’s not nearly fake enough. Your punch needs to pass around 3 feet from his face from the proper Dishoom! Dishoom! fighting technique.”

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Guest Blogger: Sandhya

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This morning, I was sleeping late in my hammock in the bunker when Rajni came in and tried to wake me up. I slept through her first and second attempts. Finally she got so annoyed with me that she swung the hammock upside down, sending me crashing rudely to the hard concrete floor. “Silly bugger!” Said she, “Sandhya will be here in 30 minutes and the guest room is still a mess from the party you threw last night and … what are we going to do with Sandhya’s herd of elephants?”

Well, that got me off the floor in a hurry. You see, Sandhya is a friend from the days before this blog, heck, since the days before blogging in general. She’s one of those old fashioned writers who writes for publication on dead trees as well as live electrons, and the bunker was an absolute and total disaster. I’d like to report that I have it all cleaned up now, but that would be a lie. Instead, we have what I hope will be comfortable enough temporary accomodations for our newest guest blogger.

One other thing about Sandhya – she’s the most diasporic desi I know. You see, while my parents came from the motherland to here, Sandhya is a third generation African who grew up between three continents. Holy Gogol Ganguly! But I’ll let her tell you her own stories rather than stealing her thunder.

I hope you make Sandhya feel welcome.

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Kiss my … turban, HRC

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As the Clinton campaign has suffered one defeat after another, the advice of Hillary’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, has been consistent: go negative. So yesterday, according to Drudge, a Clinton staffer leaked a photo of Obama in a turban to the press. The photo was taken in Kenya, and seemed obviously designed to raise fears that Obama was a “Manchurian candidate” a sleeper muslim trying to sneakily infiltrate his way into the White House:

Will voters find this turban disturbin?

With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama. [Link]

Clinton’s campaign did not deny its staffers distributed the photo, and Obama’s top advisers were quick to blast what it called an underhanded campaign tactic. [Link]

OMG – he’s wearing a turban! He’s a mooo-salim! Oooooga Booooga! Oooooga Booooga!

The campaign’s desperation comes as it finds itself strapped for cash, having tapped out its major donors. The irony is that HRC might have a few more paisas in her pocket if she had not suddenly decided her long time Sikh friends had the cooties and were too uncool to be seen with any more:

Mrs. Clinton also scuttled a fund-raising breakfast at a nearby fairgrounds where Sikh leaders had hoped to raise $1 million for her presidential campaign. [Link]

Given that she’s spent only $11 million this month on ads, that extra $1 mil would have come in handy, even if only for her donut tab.

How about this one?

Honestly, I’m pretty steamed at this latest gambit. I understand that politics is a dirty business, but part of the risk of going negative is the possibility that you might piss off voters … like myself.

However, instead of spewing irate invective, I’d rather spoil her game. The best way to deal with “scary” images is to normalize them. Below the fold are a series of photos of politicians either wearing turbans or next to somebody who is wearing a turban. Let me know if you’ve got more!

[UPDATED – ptr_vivek pointed us at a great photo of Bill looking quite dashing in a Rajasthani turban. Thanks!]

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Advertising India without pimping it

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I’ve never been a big fan of the Incredible India tourism advertising campaign. I find it orientalist and tacky, like the images below:

Coffee Brown? WTF – why are they advertising india based on the “exotic” skin color of the Indians?

Still, I concede that it’s hard to advertise India without being a bit exotic, after all, you’re trying to appeal to tourists based on cultural novelty. They’re not going to India for the skiing, they’re going because the culture is different.

That’s why I was so tickled by the television advertisement below for the 15th International Pondicherry Yoga Festival [via BB]. I thought it did a good job of showcasing some amazing yoga, but doing so as incredible physical activity rather than random freak show. For some reason, I found the video appealing and it didn’t set my orientalism alarm off, even though they were showing some impressive contorsions.

Did they do something different here or did they just do it better? Or perhaps you feel these ads are just as orientalist and exotifying as the GOI’s ads … what say you?

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LA meetup Saturday 7PM @ Redwood

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Our meetup has been set – we’re meeting at the desi-owned Redwood Bar and Grill at 7PM on Saturday March 1st. It’s downtown, across the street from a metro station and it’s … pirate themed.

Arrrrr or Arre, you decide

I’ve heard left coasters talk a lot of smack about how the LA meetups are the biggest and best we ever hold, yadda yadda yadda. All I can say is: bring it. I’d love it if we could have the sort of turnout we saw in 2006, as in September 2006 and December 2006.

Here’s the location:

The Redwood Bar and Grill
316 W. 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Vinod, Taz and I will all be there, so there will be a lot of mutiny all in one room. I’m looking forward to meeting the best and brightest that the LA mutiny has to offer.

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LA Meetup Saturday March 1st

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I will be travelling to the City of Angles (when you’re that skinny, the only curves are silicon) over leapday weekend, and thought a meetup would be in order, hosted by yours truly and Taz. I’ve heard stories about the LA meetups, so here’s your chance to show me that you can party better and harder than your brethren and sistren in NYC, DC, SF and Chicago. The meetup would most likely be on the westside, at a location TBA.

Please RSVP so we have a sense of how many people will be coming, and also suggest good venues. I’m not from LA, and Taz is hyper-busy with the election season and all, so while we’ll be there with bells on, we need your help in choosing a location and getting a head count.

UPDATE:

We’ll be meeting at 7PM @ the Redwood Bar and Grill

The Redwood Bar and Grill
316 W. 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

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All love is brown love

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As desis we feel that the burden of meddlesome parents is uniquely ours. Exhibit A, an email from Yo Dad to Abhi:

Also please try and select life partner before next January !! Good luck !! Love…. Dad… [Link]

How typical, right? How very … African. The text that follows is from a BBC forum on the proper role of parents in childrens’ love lives in Africa:

Should African parents stay out of their children’s love lives? Or should a happy medium be reached between traditional match making and modern dating? … Is a marriage between two people or between two families?… [Link]

That’s right, it’s not just brown parents that like to … help their children and who view marriage as being a partnership between two families, it’s African families as well. There’s a reason why Bollywood fillums are so popular across Africa.

Similarly, we feel that pressures to be pragmatic about relationships are uniquely desi. Well, what about these quotes from a first world writer:

What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5’4″ and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail:

I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway). [Link]

Marriage isn’t a passion-fest …It’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. [Link]
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Crown vs. Turban: Unravelling the truth

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I am often amazed at the claims that so-called experts make, even in a court of law. For example, the government of Ontario recently defended its policy that Sikhs riding motorcycles should wear helmets (not a requirement in BC or Manitoba) by claming that turbans would unravel in the breeze, thus posing a risk to other motorists.

Born to be wild

… the Crown declared that an expert it had hired proved that turbans unravel rapidly in 100 km/h winds. The Crown’s test had been carried out by a professional engineer who purchased a mannequin head, mounted it on a stick and then placed the assemblage in a wind tunnel. [Link]

Say what? Turbans unravel at 60 mph? Have they ever seen a Sardar riding a motorcycle? Or riding a roller coaster? Or even sticking his head out of a moving vehicle? The paag stays on tight my friend.

To test this claim, the plaintiff, Baljinder Badesha of Brampton (can you say that 10 times fast?), tried to replicate the study. He drove down the Cayuga Speedway at … gasp, 110 kmh. Did his turban unravel and flutter into the wind like a wayward plastic bag? Ummm … no. It was fit to be tied.

Mr. Hutchison [Baljinder Singh’s lawyer] was unable to find a documented case anywhere in the world where a Sikh motorcyclist’s turban had unravelled. Skeptical, he persuaded the OHRC to authorize its own test. After he confronted the Crown with the dramatically different test result, prosecutors conceded that their engineer had grossly miscalculated the force of the wind he had generated to batter the imitation head, Mr. Hutchison said.

In fact, the device had been subjected to a 300 km/h wind. [Link]

That’s right – they used 180 mph winds in their test, more of a gale than the stiff breeze you get at 60mph. And even so, I’m not entirely convinced. I’ll bet if they used a real person with a real turban going 180 mph, it might still stay on. But in any case, given that driving at 300 kmh is illegal, the point is moot. Continue reading →

Vin Gupta, Indian Giver? (updated)

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Remember this cringe-worthy Superbowl ad about the stereotypical desi salesman who is about to be fired by his cranky white boss? [Update – changed from the Panda ad to the Ramesh ad, thanks VV]

It was written by the CEO of InfoUSA himself, Vin Gupta. The ad was not just offensive, it was a total waste of money:

The panda ad ranked 45th out of 55 ads shown during the Super Bowl. The other Salesgenie ad, with a salesman who thinks he is going to get fired, ranked 50th. [Link]

Gupta doesn’t seem to mind spending money though, as long as it gets him visibility. Gupta is an FOB, a Friend of Bill that is (although he is also a DBD). Gupta is generous to Bill not just with his own personal money, but also with the company’s resources as well:

Gupta’s Clinton connection came into the spotlight last year, when angry shareholders of InfoUSA filed a lawsuit in a Delaware court; claiming that the CEO had wasted millions of dollars of the publicly-traded company to get into Clinton’s good books.

They seem to have good cause. The plaintiffs have alleged that Gupta misused the company jet to fly the Clintons to vacations. Gupta is believed to have paid Bill Clinton $2 million for vaguely-defined ‘consulting services’. In addition, he is alleged to have spent close to a million dollars to fly Bill Clinton around the world for his Presidential Foundation work; and to fly Hillary to campaign events. [Link]

After the Clintons left the White House, Gupta hired Bill Clinton as a consultant. It’s one of two continuing business relationships he has had since leaving office, and it has been worth $3.3 million, in addition to the options on 100,000 shares of stock. [Link]

But here the story shifts, and becomes stranger.

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