Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Ceding the war on xmas

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Every year the media floods us with stories about the “war on Christmas.” On one side are liberal secularists, multicultarists and minority groups who wish to undermine this nation’s proud Christmas tradition by saying things like it’s really a pagan solstice festival, Christ wasn’t born in the winter, early Christians and early Protestants banned Christmas, St. Nick was a heretic, and modern Christmas is heavily influenced by Charles Dickens. On the other side are muscular Christian conservatives who grab their Christmas balls in sympathetic pain every time they hear the holiday being castrated by store clerks saying “Happy Holidays”.

Over in England, Christian conservatives are claiming a major victory – the support of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and even liberals for more Christ in Christmas:

Muslim leaders joined Britain’s equality watchdog Monday in urging Britons to enjoy Christmas without worrying about offending non-Christians… Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Shayk Ibrahim Mogra said, “To suggest celebrating Christmas and having decorations offends Muslims is absurd. Why can’t we have more nativity scenes in Britain?”…
Sikh spokesman Indarjit Singh said: “Every year I am asked ‘Do I object to the celebration of Christmas?’ It’s an absurd question. As ever, my family and I will send out our Christmas cards to our Christian friends and others.” [Link]

What they’re missing here is that by making Christmas more Christian, religious minorities no longer need to worry about their youth being seduced away by Santa’s siren song. Uncles and Aunties want more Christ in Christmas because then it becomes the holiday of funny looking white folk who say things like “wassailing” and drink things called “eggnog” and spend all month listening to music you can’t even dance to. It becomes the holiday of other folk, but without the coolness of forbidden fruit.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me. GGM tells the story of some desis eager to reclaim the lost role that Punjabis played in the original Nativity:

If you’re a non-Christian desi, how did your family deal with the holiday? If you’re a Christian desi, did your family embrace American Christmas or distance itself from it? Continue reading →

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Ivy-league admissions racket

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The NYT ran a story yesterday about how aspiring Ivy league parents are trying to get their children admitted as athletic recruits … in squash:

Squash pros and coaches say that in the last few years the sport has seen a sharp increase in participation by children and teenagers, some of whose parents seem to have one eye on the ball and the other on college applications. [Link]

Grey lady, please. This is so Opal Mehta meets the Spice Girls, that is, this is old news for subcontinental strivers. Here’s an article from the TOI from 5 years ago:

Do you know the easiest way to book a free seat in an American Ivy League college? No, you do not have to secure the highest marks in your GRE/GMAT examinations. Just being a good squash player, should suffice… over a dozen squash players from Mumbai have made it to the American Ivy League, purely on the strength of the racquet sport…Indians stand the best chance with squash, because, there is little competition in this sport. [Link]

Siddhartha Suchde is the top player at the top Ivy School (Harvard has won 13 out of the last 16 squash championships) where he squashes his opponents with gusto:

Siddharth Suchde ’07 has played at number one in every Harvard men’s match since his sophomore year. Last season he went undefeated in all his regular-season matches and was named Ivy League Player of the Year…

“A turning point came when I was 16 and I got a call from the Indian Squash Federation asking me to play in the world junior championships,” he says. He trained hard and became captain of the Indian junior national team, which finished fifth at the tournament, the best result in India’s history. Suchde has remained on the Indian national team for the past five years. Last December he played at number three for the Indian senior national team at the world men’s team championships in Islamabad, Pakistan. (It meant missing three weeks of classes.) India finished eleventh in the tourney, one of its best performances ever. [Link]

If squash becomes an Olympic sport in 2016, we’d finally have a sport that either India or Pakistan would have a chance of medalling in! w00t!

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Bone(s), thugs ~n~ western medicine

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If you’re a scientist, you say that your own understanding of the world comes from standing on the shoulders of giants. If you’re a doctor, it turns out that your knowledge comes from standing on the pilfered graves of dead Indians:

Alas poor Yorick

Medical students across the world rely on anatomical models to become informed doctors. What many don’t realize is that a large number of these models are stolen from graves in Calcutta, India. For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. Throughout parts of Calcutta, many of the cemeteries have been empty for generations. [Link]

Last week Scott Carney broke the story of the human bone trade in West Bengal, with accounts at Wired, NPR and his own blog [Photos here].

Why Indian bones? Well, skeletons are hard to get in the west, so medical schools look elsewhere:

In the US, for instance, most corpses receive a prompt burial, and bodies donated to science usually end up on the dissection table, their bones sawed to pieces and destined for cremation. So most skeletons used for medical study come from overseas. [Link]

In 1985, the Chicago Tribune reported that India had exported about 60,000 skulls and skeletons the year before. The supply was sufficient for every medical student in the developed world to buy a bone box along with their textbooks. [Link]

See, everything really does come from India! Continue reading →

What Vivek would really say

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Those of you who use gmail and gchat will have seen the news that gchat has gone from monogamous chatting only to full on orgy mode:

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

My reaction to this news is that it’s about time! Not the move to group chat, but the use of Vivek in an example. I mean, if you go into one of the many googleplex fine dining establishments and holler “Yo – Vivek!” you know how many people would turn around? So what took Google so long?

Of course, if they’re going for versimilitude here, Vivek would probably not be going camping with Todd (not unless they were a couple) but instead with a truckload of other desis, especially if Vivek is an IBD. The example should really say something like “Group chat – so 10 desi couples can coordinate their camping plans!” The chat would show people discussing who was bringing the dal, who was bringing the chaval, how many kinds of pickles were necessary for an overnight camping trip, whether a pressure cooker will work over a campfire, etc.

Actually, on second thought, I think we’re better off with the example provided. I don’t think even Google’s mighty servers could survive the surge in load from brown people going camping alone, not to mention brown people coordinating movies, dinners, or weddings. Back to Todd and Vivek it is.

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Your money’s no good here

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First the world’s richest supermodel stopped taking the dollar as payment for services rendered:

The catwalk star’s twin sister and manager Patricia told Bloomberg in September that: “Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros because we don’t know what will happen to the dollar…” [Link]

Rupees only please – this is a quality establishment, we only take hard currencies here

Then rapper Jay-Z switched his fetti from Franklins to purple euronotes, choosing gouda over american cheese:
Jay-Z … is seen cruising the streets of New York in Bentleys and Rolls Royces (now owned by Germany’s Volkswagen and BMW) with a briefcase of 500 euro notes. [Link]

But now comes the final low blow for the beleaguered greenback – you can no longer use it to pay the white man’s tax at Mumtaz’s tomb:

Foreign tourists to many of India’s most famous landmarks will no longer be able to pay the entrance fee in dollars, the government says. The ruling is aimed at safeguarding tourism revenues following the recent falls in the dollar. Until now, foreign tourists to sites such at the Taj Mahal have had the option of paying in dollars or rupees. The ruling will affect nearly 120 sites of interest run by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). [Link]

That’s right gringos – put away your cheddar and feed sarkar some paneer, you gotta use rupees if you wanna license to skrill.

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Brown Bikers’ Big Beatz

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Nobody would ever accuse desis of being quiet folk. You get a few desis together and pretty soon the volume of the chit chat rises; you get them excited and all the white people in the room start giving them dirty looks. We are voluble people.

So it’s not surprising that young desi bikers in Queens are making their presence known. Out where I live, white men on motocycles remove their mufflers and rev their engines, the aural equivalent of pissing on a tree. In Richmond Hill, young Indo-Carribeans mark their territory more euphoniously using huge speakers … on their bicycles, a tradition brought over from Guyana and Trinidad.

That’s right, this desi biker “gang” is real old school, eschewing newfangled innovations like the internal combustion engine for the purity of gears and sweat.

A new biker gang is roaming the streets of Richmond Hill, Queens. This crew of mostly teenagers can be seen riding along 103rd Avenue just west of the Van Wyck Expressway. The bikes roar… these contraptions look and sound more like rolling D.J. booths.

“This one puts out 5,000 watts and cost about $4,000,” said Nick Ragbir, 18, tinkering with his two-wheeled sound system, with its powerful amplifier, two 15-inch bass woofers and four midrange speakers. It plays music from his iPod and is powered by car batteries mounted on a sturdy motocross bike. [Link]

When I started reading the article and noticed all the names were desi, I was hoping for families of four on scooters or mopeds, women riding side saddle, but bicycles are almost as good.

Let other teenagers cruise around in low riding automobiles with the trunk and backseat full of woofers, burning dinosaur juice, bringing us Indian summer year ’round. We’re rolling rickshaw style, moving our bodies to propel the music up and down the streets, dancing in the saddle as we pedal and peddle.

Who needs an iPod when you live in a desi neighborhood?

Slideshow with pictures here. The other photos are even better.

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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Although Musharraf says he declared martial law to protect the country and not his political future, there is a curious preoccupation with dignity and name calling in his words and actions. Although this is a very serious situation, I can’t help but see him as a child who threatens to stop everybody from playing unless they stop making fun of him.

Verboten?

For example, the following complaint was part of the official Proclamation of Emergency, offered forward as a justification for suspending the judiciary:

Whereas the humiliating treatment meted out to government officials by some members of the judiciary on a routine basis during court proceedings has demoralised the civil bureaucracy and senior government functionaries… [Link]

Similarly, a new law was passed to stop the media from mocking the President or his friends in government:

Are we making fun yet?

The orders prohibit coverage that “brings into ridicule or disrepute” General Musharraf and other officials, he said. [Link]

When defending his actions to the nation in a televised broadcast, the little General compared himself to the tall President in a stovepipe hat:

He … quoted Abraham Lincoln, saying that America’s 16th president had broken laws, violated the Constitution and trampled on individual liberties to keep the country together during the Civil War. [Link]

So why does he sound so much like Rodney Dangerfield?

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State of Emergency

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President Musharraf has declared a state of emergency, blaming the judiciary and militants for creating a crisis in the country. He insists his actions were necessary in order to save Pakistan democracy from destruction. Of course, I’m sure his actions had nothing to do with the growing feeling that the judiciary were about to invalidate his recent election, nothing at all. (See Anil @ dorfblog for more legal analysis)

A new supreme court has been put into place and the old supreme court taken away because they refused to ratify the state of emergency as constitutional:

The justices were ordered to sign a “provisional constitutional order” enabling the emergency decree … At least 6 of the court’s 11 justices gathered in the court and rejected the order… [Link]

Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and seven other Supreme Court judges were taken into custody after they termed the provisional constitution illegal. Troops took them away to an undisclosed location. [Link]

Troops are on the streets and the broadcast media (radio and TV) have also been shut down. The purpose of this action seems to be to stop news inside the country more than to stop news from going out. International media seem to have a fairly good picture of what is going on, and of course the Pakistani blogs are still up.

If you want to follow along at home, your best bet are the metroblogging blogs: Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. And I hope to have an update from our blogger on the street, Venial Sin, in a while. Until then, the best we’ve got are clips of the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, talking to journalists on the phone, while under arrest, from the toilet [Hat tip, Anil].

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Don’t count your chickens

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In our new and improved news tab, I saw a story posted by Chachaji about how Mukesh Ambani was now, at least temporarily, the richest man in the world!

Not actually the richest man in the world, but he is in the top five.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani today became the richest person in the world, surpassing American software czar Bill Gates, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and famous investment guru Warren Buffett, courtesy the bull run in the stock market.

Following a strong share price rally today in his three group companies…the net worth of Mukesh Ambani rose to 63.2 billion dollars (Rs 2,49,108 crore). In comparison, the net worth of both Gates and Slim is estimated to be slightly lower at around 62.29 billion dollars each, with Slim leading among the two by a narrow margin. [Link]

If this was true, I thought, it was a meteoric rise. In 2006 he was ranked 56th richest in the world according to Forbes, in March of 2007 he was still only number 14. That got Rajni the monkey fact checker curious, so she poked around further.

It turns out that Ambani isn’t the really richest man in the world, although he may be in the top 5 along with Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lakshmi Mittal:

Reliance Industries moved swiftly on Tuesday to deny a report that company chief Mukesh Ambani has become the world’s richest man thanks to a surge in stock market. An agency report putting his wealth at $63.2 billion hailed his rise as another triumph for the nation’s booming economy. But Reliance said Ambani was not quite so rich after all, with a net worth of somewhere in the region of $50 billion. [Link]

This is still a huge increase, seeing as he was worth only $20 billion in March, but it doesn’t put him at the top of the heap either.

Honestly though, to me this is all arcane like counting angels on the head of a pin. Once you’re wealthier than Midas, it doesn’t matter to me how much you have. My question is, when will Ambani and Mittal become philanthropists at the level of Buffett and Gates?

Related posts: Today’s Carnegies?, Forbes names India’s richest, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and …

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Maurauding Macacas Murder Municipal Minor Mayor

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By now everybody has seen the news that the Deputy Mayor for Delhi, S.S. Bajwa, died over the weekend:

The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys. SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys. [Link]

The coverage I’ve seen has generally been smirking, with photos like the one at right. The caption of that photo reads “Angry animal … a monkey in India”, even though it shows a monkey acting cute, and it’s above an article about Bajwa’s death.

I understand the urge to crack a joke about the matter in part because the whole story sounds implausible. That said, I want to resist the temptation to make light of this. Firstly, a person did die here. Secondly, it’s condescending, as in “Look and the wacky and quaint ways people die in India!” sort of like an Indian newspaper juxtaposing a photo of a cute puppy next to an article about Michael Vick’s Ving Rhames’ groundskeeper getting mauled to death.

Furthermore, this isn’t just about nature red in tooth and claw, it’s the actions of humans as well. Partly, this is the story, familiar in the west, about growing cities encroaching on the natural habitats of wildlife. But the bigger problem would seem to be that the monkeys are being fed by humans, which encourages their population to grow, and makes them far more aggressive:

Baiwa’s house is near a temple dedicated to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, where hundreds of monkeys gather every day to be fed offerings by devotees…human residents of the capital have long tolerated the monkeys, whose natural habitat is the surrounding forest, and many revere and feed them, believing them to be incarnations of Hanuman. [Link]

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