Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Brown V-day Haikus

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I wanted to tell you about an cool V-day haiku contest that my friends over at Breakupgirl.net have put together (yes, there are prizes). Being me, I’m naturally informing you about it on IST, right up against the deadline. Submit your best valentines day efforts here, according to these rules:

The 411 on 5-7-5

With this contest, we honor the noble Japanese poetic form — the demure yet powerful haiku — as the only literary vehicle with the suppleness to master the depths and breadths of woo and rue that blossom at this black/magic time of year. Turn your insights and/or outrage into subtle poly-syllabic philosophies that follow this timeless equation: 5 + 7 + 5 = 17. To demonstrate:

First, five syllables.
Then, seven in the middle.
See? That’s seventeen!

Entries will be accepted until Saturday, February 11 at 12 midnight, and the winning haikus will be unfurled on February 14 for all to see. [Link]

Submit your entries to the contest and leave your submissions in the comments as well. I’m playing around with a few desi-themed ideas:

Her dal was tasty
Hungrily, I married her
It was all takeout

Spicy! Exotic!
Was this a personals ad,
or a Times story?

Not great, but I just came up with them now. You might find greater inspiration by looking at some of the past winners:

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Brown civil liberties update

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From DNSI, three stories about both significant violence and institutional discrimination that we wouldn’t face if we were in the “mainstream.” For those of you who’ve asked if I still feel threatened as a brown Sikh living in America, the answer is, yes I do. Stories like this are why.

First, an 80 year old Sikh man was assaulted in California and fractured his pelvis:

The attack took place … on January 21 when Harbans Singh, a turbaned Sikh, was riding a bike from Guru Nanak Sikh Temple … to his home… According to Singh, four or five occupants of a maroon-colored Chevrolet Tahoe sports utility vehicle hurled rocks and racial epithets at him from the back. Fortunately, the rocks did not hit him, so he ignored it… The men were described as Hispanic or white between 25 to 30 years old, she said…

The vehicle overtook Singh’s bicycle and stopped at a corner, where one man got out and pushed Singh off his bicycle. A bystander called an ambulance, assuming this was an accident when she saw him lying on the road. [Link]

The attack is a major surprise given the size and deep roots of the Sikh community in the Yuba-Marysville area:

A hate crime against an 80-year-old Sikh in Yuba City in California has taken the community there surprise and shock, given that it is the first time such an incident has happened there, where 10 percent of the residents are Sikhs with a history of almost a century behind them in the city. [Link]

Now I know that people can be cruel and enjoy the suffering of others, but it makes my blood boil to think of people making sport out of causing harm to an 80 year old man!

Furthermore, the attackers were dangerously foolhardy. Yuba City is the closest you can come to rural Punjab in the USA. Although only 10% of the population, Sikhs have been there for a long time, and own a lot of the land. They are not afraid of asserting themselves. I hope the perpetrators turn themselves in or are caught by the police before somebody local catches up with them and meets out rough justice, village style.

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Artist attacked for blasphemy (Updated with images)

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I was just reading about a painter whose work was called blasphemous and whose house was attacked by a mob of 90 militants as a result. They also attacked an art gallery that was showing his paintings and destroyed 28 of his canvasses. Two other painters whose work was displayed with his at a different gallery were also attacked. He has been the subject of repeated police investigations in the past, and was just booked by the police yesterday for offending religious sentiment.

It might surprise you to know that this is not a story of Islamic intolerance. Instead, this is a story about Hindu religious sensibilities offended by the work of one of India’s most famous painters, Muqbool Fida Husain, a man whose paintings were recently auctioned by Christie’s for $2 million a canvas.

Hindu groups objected to Husain’s pictures of Saraswati, Durga and Draupadi naked in 1996, when militants rioted, and are currently objecting to a painting of “mother India” naked:

Acknowledged as one of the living legends of Indian art, Maqbool Fida Hussain created a public furore by painting Hindu goddesses in the nude in 1996…. Hussain later apologised and said he had not meant to hurt the sentiments of any religious group. He even expressed his willingness to go before a committee of three persons – an art critic, a lawyer and a representative of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad – that could scrutinise his entire collection. Hussain said he would immediately destroy anything that the committee found objectionable. That suggestion was brushed aside as members of members of hard-line Hindu organisations ransacked the painter’s house in Mumbai and also manhandled artists outside a gallery in Delhi that had Hussain’s works on display. [Link]

… the Shiv Sena … endorsed the Bajrang Dal’s attack on Husain’s home… Bal Thackeray said: “If Husain can step into Hindustan, what is wrong if we enter his house?”… [Link]

IN the October 11, 1996 incident, a group of Bajrang Dal activists forced their way into the Herwitz Gallery in Ahmedabad’s Husain-Doshi gufa, the well-known art complex. Armed with tridents and wearing saffron scarves, they intimidated a lone guard and destroyed about 23 tapestry items and 28 paintings which were on display there. The work destroyed included Husain’s series on Hanuman, a depiction of the Last Supper and the famous Madhuri Dixit series. [Link]

WARNING: Thumbnail versions of the offending images below the fold, click to see larger versions

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One tough mofo

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Earlier, people were saying that desis were just not tough enough to play in the NFL. You want tough? This guy makes pro-football players with all their padding and helmets (and cups) look like toddlers having a pillow-fight in a moonbounce.

Handshake of iron, groin of steel

A two-time Guinness record holder is hoping to enter the record book for the third time by completing 114 fingertip push-ups in 60 seconds… His previous records are for breaking three concrete slabs on his groin and the most back-hand push-ups in an hour…. He already holds several national and international records for completing 133 palm push-ups in a minute, 819 back-hand push-ups in one hour and 1,448 stomach crunches in one hour. [Link]

With all these records, which one is his favorite? He’s a guy, the answer should be pretty clear:

… he is most proud of his Guinness record for breaking three concrete slabs on his groin. He said: “I was sent a letter by the Guinness authorities saying that this was my best record but they will not allow or encourage more people to attempt this one because it is potentially dangerous…” [Link]

Honestly? It’s not even clear to me what this record means. Presumably it means holding a concrete slab on his groin while somebody else breaks it with a sledgehammer (I’ve seen this in martial arts demonstrations). I can’t imagine it means anything else, but the image it creates generates all sorts of interesting nicknames for this guy …

His training routine for the fingertip pushup record was both intense and ascetic, involving an almost anorexic diet (presumably to lower his weight): He is most proud of his Guinness record for breaking three concrete slabs on his groin

“I did at least 4,000 fingertip push-ups for about six hours every day [since July]. “I would do a part of the routine in the morning and then a few hours in the evening,” he said. Mr Nayak also monitored his diet and survived on white pulses, one vegetarian meal and at least 15 litres of water a day during the training period. [Link]
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Good Blend of East and West

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Lunar / “Asian” New Years is always an occasion for me to reflect on how different South (brown) Asians are from East and Southeast (yellow) Asians. However, there is an area in which we, apparently, are a mix of both African/European and East Asian genotypes. The area in question is earwax:

Earwax comes in two types, wet and dry. The wet form predominates in Africa and Europe, where 97 percent or more of people have it, and the dry form among East Asians. The populations of South and Central Asia are roughly half and half. [Link]

This is evidence, apparently, of some yellow in the woodpile:

The dry form, the researchers say, presumably arose later in northern Asia, because they detected it almost universally in their tests of northern Han Chinese and Koreans. The dry form becomes less common in southern Asia, probably because the northerners with the dry earwax gene intermarried with southern Asians carrying the default wet earwax gene. [Link]

There must have been a lot of intermarriage if half the populations of South Asia have the East Asian gene. It turns out that the earwax gene is also related to that other, oh so polite topic of conversation, body odor:

Since it seems unlikely that having wet or dry earwax could have made much difference to an individual’s fitness, the earwax gene may have some other, more important function. Dr. Yoshiura and his colleagues suggest that the gene would have been favored because of its role in sweating. They write that earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, since populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, while the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have more body odor. [Link]

This would imply that half of all South Asians sweat little and have little B.O. Having recently ridden the Delhi metro, my question is … where are they ?

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Poison Pills

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The image at right is from a recent flyer campaign launched by the Nutritional Health Alliance (NHA) depicting Senator Durbin wearing a turban with the words, “Keep Congressional Terrorism at Bay.” What is this all about? Believe it or not, this flyer was put out by a lobbying group for the makers of dietary supplements, i.e.vitamin pills, who are upset over recent legislation proposed by Durbin to make manufacturers of supplements report serious side effects of their products.

Hate mongering is the last refuge of scoundrels

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and over 100 other groups have come together to protest this odious flier. In their response, SALDEF states:

We are outraged that the Nutritional Health Alliance (NHA) would be engaged in the production of such a racist flyer that serves to perpetuate an increased environment of prejudice and hate against the Sikh, Muslim and Arab American communities…The depiction of the turban as a terrorist symbol, or individuals who wear turbans as terrorists, as your flyer explicitly shows, is baseless and reprehensible…The flyer serves as nothing more than hatemongering [Link (pdf)]

SALDEF and its allies call for:

NHA to remove the flyer from any further distribution immediately. We further ask that a public apology be made and posted on the NHA’s website. Legitimate public debate must not be tainted with images that continue to create a dangerous environment of xenophobia and hate against innocent Sikh, Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans. [Link]

The NHA has a little shame, but not much. They’ve replaced the flyer with one that talks directly about their opposition to the legislation, but they defend their right to use xenophobic lies to make their point: If I sound to you like a hate-monger, then I can’t help it

Even Jerry Kessler, director of the Nutritional Health Alliance, chief executive officer of N.Y.-based Natural Organics and designer of the circular, said it was a purely political response to regulations proposed by Durbin. He also agreed the flier was “not fair” and “in bad taste.”

“Desperate times require desperate actions,” Kessler said. “I’m certainly going to do what’s necessary to call attention to our cause. If I sound to you like a hate-monger, then I can’t help it.”

More than a million copies of the flier were sent to vitamin and supplement buyers, and Kessler said he’s responded personally to phone calls and letters from people he has offended. [Link]

Jerry Kessler, hate monger

It doesn’t look like he’s going to apologize any time soon. You can contact Kessler in the following ways:

Via email, via his company’s Contact Us web page, or via snail-mail:

NHA

PO BOX 649

Melville, NY 11747 – 9806

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Guarding the Pope

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Although there is no desi pope, there is one desi member of the Swiss Guard. Dhani Bachmann was sworn in as the first ever non-white Swiss guard four years ago. Private Bachmann was adopted by a Swiss family at 5 and speaks only German, which helps explain how he could join an elite group whose members are comprised solely of Catholic Swiss, mainly recruited from a handful of small villages.

At the time, one news source snarkily reported the story in the following way:

First Black Man Ever To Protect The Pope

For the first time in the more than 500 year history of the Swiss Guards, the group of 200 soldiers who protect the Pope in Rome, a non white man has been allowed to take his place in their ranks. Private Dhani Bachmann was born in India but adopted by a Swiss family and taken to live there when he was 5. He therefore is eligible to join the guards as he is Swiss. He is now apparently trying to learn Italian so that he can explain to people in Rome why he is not white. [Link]

The Swiss Guard are the Pope’s private army, founded 500 years ago on January 22nd, 1506. They had their origins in the “Swiss mercenary detachments that served as bodyguards and ceremonial guards at foreign European courts from the late 15th century on” and once guarded the Royalty of France and Austria as well. Soon after they were founded, in 1527, “147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander, died fighting the forces of Charles V during the Sack of Rome.”

Today, they are half their original size, with only 100 soldiers. After the 1981 attempt to assasinate Pope John Paul, their non-ceremonial duties and training have been beefed up; their training involves unarmed combat and the use of modern weaponry in addition to the traditional Halberd. Still, they’re best known for their colorful uniforms which, according to legend were first designed by Michaelangelo.

This job combines tradition and religious service in the short term with the potential to make a lot of money in the long term – how typically Swiss!

Swiss Guards sign on for a minimum of two years. Many leave the Pope’s military service for lucrative jobs with some of the world’s best-known security services and banks. [Link]

Dhani Bachmann being sworn in or Vinod making a gang sign?

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Brown takes over Davos

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Each year, the world’s movers and shakers — business leaders, politicians, journalists and others — meet in Davos, Switzerland for the meeting of the World Economic Forum. In past years, this has been a relatively pale assemblage of melanin deficient men and women, but no longer. India has arrived on the world stage, and like any debutante, wants to throw a coming out party to show it. Said Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, the head of a $3 million public-private promotional campaign called “India Everywhere,”

“The Indian economy was doing well. We were becoming the world’s back office. Our democracy is robust, yoga is globalized, Bombay Dreams ran on Broadway, Bollywood is hot, and spirituality is all the rage. So why aren’t we everywhere at Davos?” [Link]

Like any good promoter, the Indians know the importance of the goodie bag, although ironically they’re using old India to sell new India:

Waiting for visitors at their hotel rooms will be gifts from India — a pashmina shawl, an Apple iPod loaded with Indian pop and classical music, a piece of traditional art, some ayurvedic oils — along with a CD packed with all sorts of economic information about the country. [Link]

They’re also throwing a big party at the end of the conference. I wonder if they can get Elizabeth Hurley to show up in a sari?

Our democracy is robust, yoga is globalized, Bombay Dreams ran on Broadway, Bollywood is hot, and spirituality is all the rage. So why aren’t we everywhere at Davos?A highlight of the weeklong brain fest will be the gala soiree on Saturday, the conference’s closing evening. That’s when the contemporary and hip allure of the new India will be showcased in all its boisterous, vibrant glory. There will be dances by Bollywood choreographer Shaimak Davar, music by DJ-of-the-moment Aqueel, and songs by oldie-goldie Usha Uthup. Don’t forget to pack your Nehru jackets and satin saris, folks — Indians dress to the nines, and the style and flash of the country’s new designers will be on display. [Link]

While some people are calling for more modesty, the Indian executives plan to be as modest here as they are when planning a wedding:

Some see a sign of hubris in India’s new swagger. How can the country rightfully lay claim to the status of an emerging superpower when it still faces so many glaring problems, from massive poverty to deficient infrastructure to a huge public-sector deficit? What happens if the boom turns to a bust overnight, as has happened in places like Russia and Brazil?

[Infosys CEO] Nilekani brushes aside such concerns: “Yes, it could be an ego trip for India,” he says, “but you gotta be heard!” [Link]

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Pakistan tries to suppress Muktar Mai again

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Once again, the Pakistani government has decided to show just how petty it is. Instead of respecting Mukhtar Mai’s courage, or even just looking the other way while she goes about her business, it has gone out of its way once again to block Mukhtar Mai from speaking.

Ms. Mai had long been scheduled to make an appearance called “An Interview With Mukhtar Mai: The Bravest Woman on Earth” in the United Nations television studios, sponsored by the office for nongovernmental organizations, the Virtue Foundation and the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights.

But on Thursday night the organizers were informed that the program would have to be postponed because of Pakistan’s objections.

Ms. Mai is leaving New York on Saturday so the effect was to cancel her appearence [Link]

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