Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Asha Rangappa: hottest female law school dean 2006

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There are certain honors that most lawyers aspire to such as clerking for the Supreme Court, or being selected for it. And there are others that descend unwished for, like a boon sent by the gods to the wrong supplicant. One of these is winning the annual contest for hottest law school dean. In 2006, this “honor” went to Yale Law School Assistant Dean Asha Rangappa who the sponsoring web page called “as hot as a fire in a crowded theater.(That’s a little Con Law joke for those of you who don’t remember high school civics) “

Here’s what one of the nominations had to say:

“I write to nominate Asha Rangappa in your beautiful law school dean contest. First, she’s a genius: Princeton, Yale Law, a Fulbright, a First Circuit clerk. Second, she’s totally badass: from 2002 to 2005, she worked in the FBI as a Special Agent, focusing on counterintelligence investigations in New York City. How cool is that?“

“Third, and most importantly, Asha is simply gorgeous. There hasn’t been this beautiful a woman in federal law enforcement since Jennifer Lopez pretended to be a U.S. US Marshal in ‘Out of Sight.’ This South Asian beauty — with her milk-chocolate skin, lively eyes, Julia Roberts smile, and reddish black tresses — will demolish the rest of your field…” [Link]

As if all that wasn’t hot enough, she also “founded the Yale Law School’s first theater troupe, the Court Jesters.”

For all you guys who are lining up to play George Clooney to her Jennifer Lopez, settle down, she’s taken:

Rangappa said she realizes the contest is not meant to be taken seriously. “More than anything I’m amused, because there’s some irony to winning a hottest anything contest when you’re eight months pregnant,” she said. [Link]

Her response to the award shows that the title hasn’t gone to her photogenic head:

“It’s heartening to know that, despite the terrorists’ attempts to destroy our way of life, a healthy objectification of lawyers continues unabated [Link]

Those looks, a former spy and sense of humor to boot? Smoking hot most definitely, but are you sure she’s a lawyer? [Ducking …]

BTW, in a coda to the whole story:

A month later she gave birth to a boy. Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh dubbed him “America’s hottest law baby.” [Link]

A whole family of hotties it seems …

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Have yourself an orientalist Christmas!

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I took this photo on January 3rd, in the train station in Granada, the day after the entire town celebrated the anniversary of the Reconquista in 1492. [It’s the one day of the year that anybody can ring the bells in the fortress portion of the Alhambra.] Needless to say, I was highly amused. It’s like the song “Do they know it’s Christmas” which was, at the time, the UKs best selling single ever. It assumes that a Sadhu and a Muslim Tuareg celebrate Christmas just because people in the west do. It’s Christmas-centrism!

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Illegal traffik

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It’s a story that I am sure will find it’s way to Bollywood soon. Two brown brothas, one desi and one latino, tied together by a common passion, risked everything to stick it to the MAN and got caught. Tipster RP alerted us to the story of “Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo [who] pleaded not guilty to felony charges Monday” in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive… officials took the threat seriously

Patel and Murillo were members of a shadowy brotherhood, an organization I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of, called the “Engineers and Architects Association, ” a city union devoted to the dark arts of engineering and architecture. By going on strike, the union grabbed the city of Los Angeles by the golis. They warned:

“Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive.” City officials took the threat seriously. [Link]

You bet your rims they took the threat seriously! The only things that Angelenos fear more are disruptions to its cocaine and its silicone supply.

These two men were the elite of their organization, the special ops as it were:

one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, [and] the other a computer whiz who helped build the system. [Link]

They executed their daring plan with steely nerves. This scene will need to be scored delicately, with a whole song written for it by A.R. Rehman:

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, … [the MAN] temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair … allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days. [Link]

“Tied traffic up”?? No, dear readers, these two did far far more than that. They used an ancient technique known to brown people in India and Mexico to bring the MAN to his knees. They didn’t merely stop traffic at a few lights. No, they were far more subtle than that. Using their ancient cultural wisdom, they selected the most vulnerable locations in the city, its vital nerve clusters, and hit them with a strike that didn’t paralyze … it just slooooooowed everything down. Now traffic was moving like Bombay or Mexico city!

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Who does and doesn’t meat eat?

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I’ve long been fascinated by the demographics of vegetarianism. I’m an omnivore, but one who eats a lot less meat than my peers, so they confuse my insistence that we order a vegetable dish (when eating out family style) with an unwillingness to consume animal flesh.

In the UK, it seems that vegetarians are smarter:

… those who were vegetarian by [age] 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10. [Link]

Although this study is flawed by its overly broad definition of vegetarian:

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian – although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken. [Link]

Unfortunately, they don’t report adjusted scores, so really what they’re talking about here is an unwillingness to eat beef, which makes them … well, like many Hindus I know.

With the definitional caveat, in general, this is what they find about veggies:

Vegetarians were more likely to be female, to be of higher occupational social class and to have higher academic or vocational qualifications than non-vegetarians. [Link]

Researchers find something similar in India, where vegetarians are more likely to be female and of higher social status.

Vegetarianism is declining in India, to the point where vegetarians are now a minority, with only 40% of the population. This is apparently a major shift from the recent past.

The older generation remains more vegetarian than the younger, women more so than men, Brahmins more than other castes, and religious Hindus more than non-religious Hindus, Muslims, or Christians.

This is a seismic cultural shift for India. While India will remain far more veg friendly than the US or UK for a long time to come, I’m wondering about the cultural ramifications that accompany the situation where vegetarianism is associated with a narrow minority. Once upon a time, you could not get meat on the streets of Ahmedabad, now the road by IIM is lined with little 3 wheelers selling chicken.

What happens to Indian society and culture when it undergoes a fundamental shift in its eating habits? How will it change?

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Who’s your daddy? Say it! (corrected)

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The son also rises

Desi families like to provide well for their children. Parents give their kids money, cars, businesses … and now it seems that some even help procure girls for their darling little boys. That’s right – having Salman Rushdie as your father helps you score chicks. While this isn’t a huge surprise (Duh!), I was made a bit queasy by the way the famous family discussed the matter.

First there is Rushdie, fils, talking about his dad:

Zafar Rushdie, 27, often accompanies his father on nights out because the pair are usually swamped by attractive girls keen to impress the literary genius. He says, “Most people who go to a party with their parents try to run away from them. Not me. If I want to meet girls, I just stand near him. “All the beautiful women want to talk to Dad, so I stand close and bask in the sunlight. Beauty loves brains…” [Link]

Then there is Rushdie, pere, engaging in mutual admiration:

“Every time I see a picture of him in the paper, he has four girls around him, so I think he’s not doing badly,” the author tells the paper. “He’s absurdly charming – lethally, disgustingly charming. He has it like a weapon…” [Link]

A weapon, huh? Really, we don’t need to hear about your son’s Louisville Slugger. Just tell the researchers and leave us out of it.

Lastly, step-mom and fourth wife Padma also agrees that Zafar, a mere 9 years younger, is a stud:

… actress Padma Lakshmi, 36, is equally complimentary of Zafar, talking him up as a red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted. [Link]

In addition, Salman says, his son is a “red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted.” [Link]

I know the family that pimps together stays together, but can’t the Rushdies save the meddling in their Zafar’s sex life until he’s ready to get married, like decent people? Or is this just a further extension of the same principle – they’ll help puttarRushdie find his wife, his girlfriends, and even his short term flings.

Please understand that my reaction isn’t one of pure prudishness – we are firmly pro-groupie here are Sepia Mutiny. We just believe that groupies should be earned, not inherited. Continue reading →

Diverse voices

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You know what the world needs more of? It needs more desi boy bands.

We have plenty of desi doctors, lawyers, engineers, I-bankers, actors, astronauts and rappers, but there’s a real deficit in the boy band category. This is why I love the idea of the Montreal based boy band JoSH (that’s a long O, like Joe, not like Joshua). [The band’s slick webpage; their myspace page]

The group is actually only the duo of Q (Qurram Hussain) and Rup (Rupinder Magon) – Q is the one who looks like Lenny Kravitz, and Rup is well, the one in the turban.

This raises an important question – can you have a boy band with less than four members? Don’t you need the cute one, the sensitive one, the goofy one, and the quiet one? I don’t really know how the band is marketed – do they double up attributes? Can one of them be cute and sensitive and the other one be goofy and quiet? I was never a teenage girl, so I don’t know how to answer such esoteric questions.

Musically, they’re also a bit different from a traditional boy band – they’re more of a desi/hip-hop fusion band that a traditional pop-ballad heavy quartet. This makes sense since their fan base is largely in the subcontinent:

While largely unknown in their home country of Canada, JoSH is extremely popular in South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan. Their sophomore album, Kabhi, as well as its title track, remained in both Indian and MTV World Top 20 lists for 26 weeks from October 2004 to January 2005. Additionally, JoSH was awarded MTV India’s 2004 “Immie” award for Best New Non-Film Artist. [Link]

They may be getting their biggest break ever when they open for Nelly Furtado in Bombay New Years Eve as part of a 5 city tour. This is probably an outgrowth of their remix of Furtado’s Powerless that seems to have boosted their profile:

They come from Canada and their bhangra mix of Nelly Furtado’s “Powerless” has made them powerful. Soon after radio’s all over the planet started flooding the airwaves with Josh’s version of “Powerless,” the duo from Montreal started receiving offers from various artistes and labels. [Link]

I’m not crazy about most of their music – I like the idea of an Indo-Pakistani-Canadian boyband more than I like their execution. I like Mahi Ve, a song from their new album, better than some of their other material:

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It’s not easy being green

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A few weeks ago, six imams were removed from an USAIR flight originating from Minneapolis where they had just been attending a conference of Imams held at the Mall of America on building bridges. Their suspicious behavior? Praying out loud while they waited and asking for seatbelt extensions. (Here’s an argument that their behavior was truly suspicious and here’s an argument saying it wasn’t). Coulter: Profiling Muslims is … like profiling the Klan

Before they knew it, airport police swarmed onto the plane, and the six imams were herded out, handcuffed and interrogated for hours… After the FBI cleared them, US Airways still refused to allow them to fly. The imams bought tickets on Northwest Airlines and flew back to Phoenix… [Link]

The event has produced widely differing reactions. Ann Coulter piped up to argue that it is good to profile Muslims and Arabs (she makes little distinction), saying:

After the attacks of 9/11, profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan. [Link]

Washington DC area talk show host Jerry Klein went the other direction, staging an event to demonstrate how deep bigotry towards Muslims was. First he suggested that “all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band,” a suggestion that was supported by manycallers. One went further, saying:

… that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans…” [Link]

At the end of the hour long show, where many people had called in to argue that visual identification of Muslims would make other Americans safer, the host turned the tables on his callers:

Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. … “I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience … “For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.

“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous…” [Link]
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Little black dress

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The little black dress (actually a long black dress) worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s has just been auctioned off for a record $924,588 dollars at Christies in London, on Tuesday. This was roughly six times the highest estimate for the amount of money that the dress would bring in.

The dress was designed by Givenchy, who later donated it for a sale to help the famous “City of Joy” charity in Calcutta:

The dress, an iconic piece of cinematic history, was designed by Hubert de Givenchy, who became Hepburn’s life-long friend in 1953. He donated the dress to Dominic Lapierre, founder of the charity City of Joy Aid, which helps India’s poor…

Hepburn, who died in 1993, devoted much of her time in her later life to her role as Ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

City of Joy Aid is supporting the work of more than 1,000 social workers, doctors, nurses, therapists and educators in India, helping more than four million sufferers of tuberculosis, cholera and leprosy. [Link]

Givenchy made 3 such dresses for Hepburn – the other two are in museums. The charity was founded by novelist Dominique Lapierre who wrote a book of the same name which later became a movie starring the incomparable Om Puri and also Patrick Swayze.

Hepburn was one classy dame. Her commitment to helping others lives on long after she’s dead and gone.

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First Miss Great Britain of Indian origin

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We have reached yet another milestone as a community, one that was critical to our development. A desi of Indian origin has seized the coveted Miss Great Britain title!

With so few beauty pageant titles left unclaimed by the rising tide of brown in swimwear and heels, it was very important that we capture each of the remaining tiaras:

British-born Preeti Desai has become the first person of Indian origin to win the Miss Great Britain title replacing original winner Danielle Lloyd after she was stripped off the award for reportedly dating Judge Teddy Sheringham and agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine. [Link]

As with many winners, she has a heart-warming story behind her victory, one of filial piety:

Preeti gave all credit to her mum, who is recovering, from a serious illness. “When she was crowned Miss Great Britain she rang to tell me and said, ‘The crown is for you.’ I burst into tears. I felt as if I won that crown. I felt as if I am Miss Great Britain. She only wants to see me happy – both my girls do. They want to see me smiling thanks to them I was able to overcome that dreadful illness,” Hema said. [Link]

Like all good desi children, Preeti is multi-talented and ambitious. She worked for years in hair and beauty, before making a career switch to the family fireworks business and she may now be trying to get into property investment. In what I think are her own words:

She then started, and is currently working for the family business G2 Fireworks full time and was made Jr partner, which she built up after years of working for G2 Fireworks from being a child… Recently she decided to move to London and work as a model until she raised enough money to eventually get into the property business. [Link]

If you’re a fan, you can read her myspace page and personal website.

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Smoke on the vater

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Bangalore is about to have one of it’s largest live concerts ever, courtesy of aging 1970s rockers Deep Purple.

Who are/were Deep Purple? For our readers who like to listen to music originally recorded in their lifetime, Deep Purple were part of the the holy Trinity that founded Heavy Metal, along with Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath.

Their biggest hit was probably “Smoke on the Water” which reached #4 on the Billboard charts in 1972, and which is “#426 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. If you’ve got a friend learning to play electric guitar, you’ve probably heard him or her attempt to play it, along with Stairway to Heaven.

It is commonly the first song learned by many beginner guitarists, it’s also noted for it’s extreme difficulty. However, it’s main recognisable riff is not difficult and consequently is constantly played by learners.
In fact, it’s so popular, that one famous guitar store in Denmark Street, London, used to sport a sign on the wall reading ‘If auditioning a guitar, please refrain from playing Smoke on the Water, as this is causing our staff mental torture’… [Link]

Events like this contribute to this peculiar retro-quality that parts of Indian culture have. I suppose it’s good that Indians still appreciate the retro given that they’re still receiving visits from bands whose biggest hits were over 30 years ago. Heck, Deep Purple first broke up in 1976.

Bangalore is the only Asian stop on the reconstituted band’s tour. The group will fly in from South America to play one night in India before flying on to Europe, so in some ways it’s a big deal.

But (and I’m wrinking my nose here) … don’t you think that India should be receiving more up to date acts now? I know that tickets are expensive for the average Indian, but Bangalore should have more than enough young employees of multinationals that they’re willing to pay something close to international prices for a ticket. Why is it that, despite India Rising and all that, that India attracts only 3rd string western bands on international tour? I’m sure I’m missing something.

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