Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Good writers finish last

Posted on by

There are times when we on Sepia Mutiny are happy when a desi loses. For example, when a desi author makes the short list for “one of the world’s least-coveted literary prizes – the Bad Sex in Fiction Award” [Link] (thanks Pooja!).

This year, Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal joined luminaries like former Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell and Thomas Pynchon (and five others) for consideration by the London based Literary Review for the 14th annual dishonor. I’m sure they all heaved a sigh of relief when the award went to first time novelist Iain Hollingshead instead. If you’ve never heard of the prize,

… the award’s mandate is “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”. [Link]

Embarassingly, this is not the first time a desi writer has been nominated. In 2003, Aniruddha Bahal won the award for his novel Bunker 13. The very next year, Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi was nominated for The Last Song of Dusk, Nadeem Aslam was nominated for Maps for Lost Lovers [thanks Red Snapper], and two non-desi writers were nominated for desi themed stories — Gregory David Roberts nominated for Shantaram and Will Self for Dr. Mukti.

That means that a full 50% of the nominees in 2004 were either desi or writing on desi themes! The Guardian has quotations from all of the 2004 nominees [Not Safe For Work] so you can see exactly how bad the writing was. We’re talking really really bad, people.

I’m a bit perplexed about the connection between South Asia and bad sex. Is it the Kama Sutra thing that attracts preposterous sex writing? Do exotification and bad sex come not so chastely hand in hand? Is it India’s own fascination with purple prose?

That said, I’d rather that desis were associated with writing about bad sex rather than having actual bad sex. Bad sex writing is funnier, and I’m all about the laughs.

Continue reading →

Old folk can still dance

Posted on by

I was thinking about the fact that, as an over 30, I am now officially old. I mean, James Bond is now a 30-something, which makes this the first time in my life that I have been in the same decade as a Bond actor.

However, between popping arthritis medicine and obsessing about the fact that I have to settle down before it’s too late, I remembered something. Old folk can still dance. I don’t just mean gorgeous professional dancers like DesiDancer, I mean ordinary uncles and aunties. I’m not saying that they can grind, freak or krump (although I’ll bet DD can krump like a clown) I mean that they can dance which is to me a far more beautiful thing.

Herewith, exhibit A [via Vinod], Gurdas Maan’s Babe Bhangra Pounde Ne:

If I can dance like that, when I’m that age, I’ll be a happy man.

Continue reading →

Lo Tek or High Tech?

Posted on by

Chiraag from Pardon My Hindi recently posted a video onto YouTube of his harrowing experience flying Air Deccan (via BoingBoing). Says Chiraag:

I dug up this video I shot back in December ’04 when I was aboard an Air Deccan flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. Looked out my window and what did I see, A group of guys repairing the wing with some sort of muthafcukin’ duct tape. There’s some more repairs to the left of the one they are working on with what seems to be the same technique. Crossed my fingers, tossed back a shot of Black Label, and stayed on the flight. [Link]

Honestly, I probably would have reacted the same way, sans Black Label. It looks like a typically desi “Kam Challao” scene – equal mixtures of ingenuity and utter disregard for the principles of safety, like a bus patched together with baling wire, careening down a Himalayan road.

However, looks can be deceiving. This isn’t a 19th century desi solution, it’s a thoroughly modern one. As the comments on Turbanhead reveal, that isn’t duct tape it’s “Speed tape” – it’s specially formulated for use on airplanes (and racing cars and possibly even nuclear reactors). Those employees were actually doing what they would have in any first world airport!

“What you see is the perfectly safe and legal application of some heavy-duty aluminum bonding tape, called “speed tape” in the mechanic’s lexicon. Depending on what a plane’s maintenance manual stipulates — according to the dictates of the FAA — certain noncritical components can be temporarily patched with this material, embarrassing as it sometimes looks. It’s extremely strong, durable, and able to expand and contract through an extreme range of temperatures…” [Link]

Here’s a similar story of a passenger freaking out after watching the application of speed tape on a plane in Seattle.

Poor desi aircraft workers – even when they’re using the most expensive, cutting edge products, we still suspect them of cutting corners and endangering our lives.

Continue reading →

The cost of illness

Posted on by

A friend working in public health once told me that while mortality rates were highest in Africa, morbidity rates (the rate of non-fatal illness) were highest in India. If I remember correctly, she told me that this had to do with relatively high rates of innoculation – which cut all the nasty childhood diseases that lead to low life expectancy at birth – but a poor health system over all.

While I’m not sure if this is still true, what I do know is that getting sick is expensive, anywhere. Consider the impact of illness on financial health in the USA:

50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses… Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem. [Link]

And this is even though “68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance” [Link].

If illness wipes out the savings of relatively high (by world standards) earning Americans, you can imagine what it does to the poor in India. While the cost of medical care is cheaper in absolute terms in India, it is still a large share of already meager resources. Couple that with lost earnings, and the impact can be dire.

About one-fourth of hospitalized Indians fall below the poverty line as a direct result of their hospital expenses, according to a 2002 World Bank report. Many people take out steep loans or sell their homes in order to pay. And for the poor, losing even a day’s wages while waiting in the hospital can be devastating.

“A health event is a bigger risk to farmers than an unsuccessful crop. Once they sell their land or livestock, they become indentured laborers. That takes a generation to fix,”… [Link]
Continue reading →

Straight eye for the guerilla guy

Posted on by

Inspired by Anna and Sin, I thought that I would try my hand at fashion criticism. But where to start? I’m straight, and hardly fashion forward. I needed somebody who was in greater need of assistance than myself somebody like … Prabhakaran. While I may not be able to wage a decades long war against the government in Colombo, and I don’t have a cult of personality of my own, I can certainly dress better than him. [Yeah, I’m brave, blogging behind an anonymous handle and making fun of the head of the Tamil Tigers.]

So, ‘Tamil Eezha Desiya Thalaivar’ (how could I call him Thambi?) Velupillai, if you’re listening, here’s what I learned from reading GQ in the gym:

  1. Stocky guys should not wear horizontal stripes. And what’s with the camo tiger stripes? That was never in.
  2. Avoid mixing different kinds of stripes. For example, don’t have a sunburst coming out of your head while wearing a hat and shirt with the aforementioned camo tiger stripes.
  3. While hipster, ironic, trucker caps were in a few seasons ago, they’re not any more. And a thundercats type logo cap is only appropriate for a press conference if you’re Ashton Kutcher.
  4. If you have to have a big grimacing cat on your flag, don’t stand in such a way as to make it seem like the cat is taking a big bite out of your arm. It’s distracting, although not as distracting as the camo tiger stripes or the sunburst coming out of your head.
  5. Belts belong close to your waist level, not up above your navel. And a wide belt like that, worn so high? It makes you look fat. Also, try to match your belt with your shoes.
  6. Don’t wear a pistol under your armpit. It makes it harder to draw, and leaves the butt smelling … like armpit.
  7. Cyanide necklaces are out this season.
  8. Don’t shoot the messenger. Or blow him to smithereens.

More images of the man on the Tiger webpage.

Continue reading →

Just add curry

Posted on by

Lately I’ve come across a number of recipes where desi “fusionification” occurs by just adding garam masala. Is this the culinary equivalent of a “princess costume” for Halloween?

For example, one of the regional finalists in the Build a Better Burger competition was Daljeet Singh from Coral Springs, FL. His entry was “Masala Burgers with Tangy Tamarind Sauce and Red Onion-Mint Relish” [Link]. You saw that one coming, didn’t you?

Unfortunately, he lost not because his burgers were too hot, but because his buns were too cold (who ever heard of a Punjabi with cold buns?).

The NYT coverage of the event makes it seem like Singh had some sort of unfair secret weapon, writing that the “overpoweringly spicy scent now wafting across the lawn from the Masala Burgers” [Link] did not distract the eventual winner. (?!?!)

Similarly, there are a number of versions of (ahem) Punjabi haggis out there, all of which involve garam masala. I love how this one group markets their version as healthier than either traditional haggis or traditional punjabi food:

By using an exotic blend of fresh tomatoes, green chilli and garam masala, the women of an Edinburgh community group believe their dish will appeal to Scots looking for a healthy alternative this Burns Night… They hit upon the idea of curried haggis while trying to come up with ways of making the traditionally high-fat Sikh diet healthier. [Link]

Both the women who invented the Punjabi haggis believe they have lost more than two stone since switching to a healthier diet less than a year ago. [Link]

For those of you who aren’t familiar with haggis:

Haggis is a blood pudding, stuffed with minced sheep’s organs, onions, oatmeal and suet (beef fat), then sewn in a sheep’s stomach and boiled or baked. The blood from the meat soaks into the oatmeal, mixes with the beef fat and turns the inside a dark brown, richly grainy colour. [Link]

Lamb offal is healthier than dal/roti/sabzi? Riiiiiight …. Continue reading →

Dalits liberated by English?

Posted on by

Dalit activist Chandrabhan Prasad just celebrated the 206th birthday of Lord Macaulay, with a party in New Delhi [via Shashwati]. Why celebrate the face of English imperialism? Because for some groups domination by a foreign overlord was better than domestic oppression.

…. Prasad … hails Macaulay as the Father of Indian Modernity, for it was after the introduction of his English system of education in 1854, that Dalits got the right to education, he says. [Link]

Bhan has three reasons for revering Macaulay – his insistence to teach the “natives” English broke the stranglehold of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic teaching, a privilege of only the elite castes and, he argued,for the European kind of modern education, with focus on modern sciences. “Imagine, if we had only followed indigenous study,” said Bhan, “we would be like Afghanistan or Nepal today.”… [Link]

These activists go further than celebrating Macaulay’s role in the past, however, and call for English to be central to Dalit education in the future. They unveilled a portrait of “English, the Dalit Goddess”:

Dalit poet Parak sang a couplet to the portrait – a refashioned Statue of Liberty, wearing a hippie hat, holding a massive pink pen, standing on a computer, with a blazing map of India in the background – Oh, Devi Ma/ Please Let us Learn English/ Even the dogs understand English, to cheers and laughter, …

Bhan … declared … “Hereafter, the first sounds all newborn Dalit and Adivasi babies will hear from their parents is – abcd. Immediately after birth, parents or a nearest relative will walk up to the child and whisper in the ear – abcd,’… [Link]

Is English a tool of liberation? Are indigenous Indian languages oppressive?

The remedy … is to … become English speaking at the earliest. Goddess English is all about emancipation. Goddess English is a mass movement against the Caste Order, against linguistic evils such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telgu and Bangla for instance. Indian languages as more about prejudices, discrimination and hatred and less about expressions and communications. [Link]

Or is this just a PR stunt, to stick a finger in the eye of the local intelligencia? Is the best path for Dalit advancement to reject Indian languages in favor of English? Lastly, should they learn International English or Desi Hinglish?

Continue reading →

Showing his appreciation

Posted on by

UPDATE: Comments from people who say they know Sidarth indicate that this is not him. Thank you very much for the correction.

Webb showed a classy touch during his “victory” speech last night – standing behind directly behind him is S.R. Sidarth! [OK, no ID for sure, but the source I cite claims its him]

It’s a nice way for Webb to show his appreciation. Whether the Macaca incident was large or small in and of itself, it was the turning point for the Webb campaign. I’m happy to see that he remembered the little people who helped get him where he is today …

[Via TPM ElectionCentral]

Continue reading →

Colonel Sekhon runs for Congress

Posted on by

We blogged earlier about the congressional races of Jindal, Bhakta and Nigam. However, we neglected to tell you about Colonel Sekhon’s campaign for Congress in California’s Second District (thanks big bhapa!).

Sekhon is an MD, and a Colonel in the Army Reserves. He’s also one of only two turbaned and bearded Sikhs in the US military (grandfathered in from an earlier time when there was no outright ban). Like many other veterans and reservists running for office, he’s opposed to the war in Iraq and running as a Democrat.

Sekhon started the race strong, with a surprise win in the Democratic primary against favorite Bill Falzett. He’s also running in a district with a large desi population, even if it is still 75% white:

The Punjabi population in the Yuba-Sutter area has grown to be one of the largest in the United States and one of the largest Sikh populations outside of the Punjab state of India. [Link]

However, the incumbent, Wally Herger, has been in office for nearly two decades and has loads of money. Herger has spent almost 11 times what Sekhon has spent, and has almost 7 times as much cash as Sekhon has remaining. For this reason, most pundits and prognosticators think Herger is likely to be re-elected.

Here’s what Esquire Magazine has to say about the race

For someone who has been in Congress for 20 years, Herger seems not to do much more than issue press releases. To wit: “I strongly support the Pledge Protection Act because Congress must not stand idle and let activist judges remove ‘under God’ from our Pledge.” We agree with this small point. But the larger point is: Herger’s pathetic. His opponent is an MD and an Army Reservist. Esquire endorses: Sekhon. [Link]

Continue reading →

Rano Singh

Posted on by

Rano Singh is the Democratic candidate for state treasurer in Arizona. Singh was “catapulted … into public service” by the racist murder of Mesa based gas station owner, Balbir Singh Sodhi, after the September 11th attacks. (Singh is also Sikh.)

“For me, it was definitely the 9/11 situation that propelled me to give service… for the future of the country, the future of our children,” Singh told News India-Times. “Our leadership here in Arizona was incredible and made sure hate crimes were stamped out immediately. I was very involved after his killing. He was our friend and was known to everyone in the community…” [Link]

She joined the state attorney general’s Hate Crimes Task Force that year, became president of the India Association of Phoenix and in 2002, was appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano to the Citizens Finance Review Commission. In 2004, Singh ran for the state Legislature. [Link]

Although Singh lost in 2004, she was undaunted, and won the Democratic primary unopposed.

Although a newcomer to elected office, her chances were boosted considerably when the Republican incumbent was forced to agree to step down as part of his plea bargain. This allows her to run as an outside candidate who will clean up an office that has repeatedly been embroiled in scandal:

“We must restore integrity and trust to the office by providing ethical and professional leadership,” said Singh… “There must be internal controls in place so conflicts of interest and collusion are eliminated…” [Link]

The last Treasurer lost $131 million dollars due to the alleged fraud and mismanagement of National Century Financial Enterprises. Lance Poulsen, the CEO of National Century Financial Enterprises, was a high flying campaign donor. Too many politicians have seen the Office of Treasurer as an opportunity to give jobs to political cronies, friends and even family members.(Arizona Republic 2/24/2006). I am not a politician. I will always place competence first. [Link]

Continue reading →