Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

And you thought your nephew/niece’s name was bad

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This unfortunate baby was born on February 22, 2005 in the tiny little town of Roseburg, Oregon (Population 21,000). Why do I say that she’s unfortunate? It has nothing to do with the dress she’s wearing, that’s really not her fault. And all babies look like boiled aloo when they’re born. Nor was she born too small or too large; at 9 lbs 3 oz, she’s well within normal parameters.

The unfortunate thing about this baby is her name: Aryan Justice. This poor little girl is going to have to go through life with the name of a political cause that frankly, hasn’t been on the winning side of many battles lately. Probably the last time the Aryans won anything was when they invaded India, thousands of years ago. They would have been better off naming her “Christian Right” (assuming they shared those values, many Aryan Nation folks are Pagans [NSFW], and talk about the “brutal dictatorship of Christian tyrants” [NSFW]), at least then she could have been called “Chrissie” by her schoolmates.

Also, it’s unfortunate this this girl looks so … well … tan. She looks more like she fits the earlier definition of Aryan as “Indo-Iranian” than the revisionist definition of “blue eyed, blond haired, supremacist puke.”

Lastly, I love the hospital’s little helpful name explanation guide. Aryan, they tell us, is a name of French origin, and means Holy. Riiiiiiiight. And if you believe that, I have a Reich to sell you. Here’s hoping that this poor baby grows up at least as sane as Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa ……

UPDATE: Runnerwallah points out that the name was no mistake [NSFW], and that her parents really are White Supremacists. I hope she tells people it’s pronounced “Arianne”, and that her parents named her after the European space program. Then she can move to India when she grows up, where her name isn’t so unusual, and marry somebody of her own skin tone.

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Ok Arun, I’ll marry you, but only if I can ride an elephant to the wedding!

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Liz Hurley and Arun Nayer are finally getting hitched. The wedding is planned for February of next year, and will be held in Rajasthan. This will be a “spectacular affair with no expense spared to show the world how much she loves Arun,” and she has warned guests that they should keep the entire month free.

Liz, who turned 40 this weekend, is whole heartedly embracing the whole mirch-masala desi spirit of her wedding even though

… she gets horrifically ill whenever she sets foot in her lover’s country. Liz said she was sometimes left so weak doctors put her on a drip for days and has to take special care when eating, drinking – and even showering. She said: “I have a dry flannel right across my mouth like a gag when I take a shower. When I take my make-up off at night I don’t let water touch my lips. ” [cite]

Despite her Howard Hughes like ordeal in India’s five star establishments, she is very enthusiastic about the ceremony. She’s ready to trade in safety-pinned dresses for red wedding saris and to show up at her wedding riding an elephant. An elephant?

Liz has made up her mind that she wants an Indian princess-style wedding. She loves the colourful traditions of the country and wants to embrace them…. [and] is very keen to involve elephants in some way and hopes to arrive on one … It wouldn’t be the first time Liz and Arun have used an elephant as part of a celebration. The couple arrived side by side on one at his 40th birthday party last year. [cite]

While this same source also claimed that the use of elephants “depends on logistics and whether it actually fits in with the ceremony,” I’ll bet this is actually the first line of the pre-nup. You want me to get married in your germ-ridden country? I’m riding an elephant or we can call the whole thing off! Oh, she’s a real Indian princess already …

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Fauja Singh finishes another marathon!

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Fauja Singh is a stud. The man is 94 and he just finished yet another marathon, this time in Edinburgh. There he led a team (named “Sikhs in the City”) of five Sikh runners with a combined age of 397 years between them. Said Fauja Singh:

I hope we will inspire young people to keep going and older people never to give up [cite]

If this is the first time you’re hearing about Fauja Singh, here’s the (very) skinny:

  • He rediscovered running at age 81 (because he was bored sitting around his son’s house) and ran his first marathon at 89.
  • The next year he set a world record for 90 year-olds
  • He has been getting faster as he has gotten older!
  • He’s a poster boy for Adidas (like David Beckham) and he gave a large chunk of the money to charity
  • He’s a vegetarian, and has been in a PETA ad

Honestly, I’m amazed that he ran even one more race. My father met him recently, and from their conversation I had gotten the impression that Fauja Singh was considering hanging up his sneakers and calling it a day. If he had been thinking about retirement, it looks like the idea suited him around as well as it did Michael Jordan. I’m pretty selfish about this – I hope he stays healthy and competes for years to come. I need all the inspiration I can get.

Story via DNSI. Thanks to SM reader dot for the tip!

 

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Blaming the Victim: the latest twists in the Mukhtar Mai saga (updated)

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_40931749_meerap.jpg Some of you might remember the amazing story of Mukhtar Mai / Mukhtaran Bibi who fought back after having been savagely raped on the orders of her village jirga. Instead of staying silent, she took her rapists to court, and used the compensation awarded by the government to open a school for girls.

Mukhtar Mai’s bravery made her a cause celebre. Time Magazine (Asia) profiled her as one of “Asia’s Heros.” She was recently invited to the United States to speak by Amnesty International, and had an American speaking tour scheduled as well.

Last week, the Pakistani government decided that she was drawing too much attention. First they banned her from travelling, then they put her under house arrest, then they kidnapped her and detained her incommunicado.

In phone conversations in the last few days, she said that when she tried to step outside, police pointed their guns at her. To silence her, the police cut off her land line… Ms. Mukhtaran continued her protests by cellphone. But at dawn yesterday the police bustled her off, and there’s been no word from her since. Her cellphone doesn’t answer. Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who is head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said she had learned that Ms. Mukhtaran was taken to Islamabad, furiously berated and told that President Pervez Musharraf was very angry with her. She was led sobbing to detention at a secret location. She is barred from contacting anyone, including her lawyer. [NYT]

The US government has made it clear that it doesn’t care:

… on Friday, just as all this was happening, President Bush received Pakistan’s foreign minister in the White House and praised President Musharraf’s “bold leadership.” [NYT]

Meanwhile, the GoP (Government of Pakistan) baldly lies (surprise!) and tells the world that its actions are designed to protect Mukhtaran Mai:

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in Islamabad that any security measures in place were for the protection of Ms Mai. [BBC]

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Mirchi is more than a metaphor

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As snarky desis, we use mirchi constantly, in both our writing and our food. However, there is a human face to all this heat:

In temperatures of over 45 degrees, 80 year-old Rajima sits under an asbestos roof preparing chillies for export to Britain. For eight hours at a stretch her aching fingers pluck the stalks from the red chilli pods, releasing a pungent dust that fills her nose and throat making her cough and sneeze. For this, she earns 30 rupees, the equivalent of 40 pence, or less than a third of the cost of a small jar of chilli powder in a British supermarket. Rajima and her 50 co-workers are the hidden face of India’s spice trade. [BBC]

Think about the effects to Rajima’s health from all of this exposure to pepper. Pepper farmers and processors go through alot and earn very little:

Watching his produce weighed at Warangal market, one farmer complains that the 800 rupees he’s getting for each 40 kilo sack is too little to cover the growing costs. “I took huge loans for agricultural investment – mostly pesticides,” he says. “Now there will be no alternative for me but to commit suicide”. [BBC]

Furthermore, demand for pepper is down, due to a recent food scare concerning a food coloring carcinogenic additive. Bad weather has spoiled much of the Indian pepper crop, causing desi farmers to lose business to those in other countries. It’s a rough life for farmers from Andhra Pradesh.

According to state records, 4,500 farmers have killed themselves in the past seven years, driven to despair by poor harvests and financial worries, and that figure would be far higher if other family members were included. The epidemic of suicide started with cotton farmers but it is now spread to spice growers. Ironically, most die by swallowing the pesticides that have helped get them into debt.[BBC]

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You have to kiss a lot of humans …

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CNN reports that:

Two giant toads were married in a traditional Hindu ceremony in eastern India … Some 400 people cheered and blew conches as women put streaks of vermilion on the female toad’s head while a band played music and priests solemnized the marriage to the chanting of Hindu hymns.

toadshaadi.jpg This was an arranged marriage for the bufonidae, they were “picked up from separate ponds” and had never met each other before being “dressed in bright red clothes and brought to the marriage venue in a decorated palanquin.”

According to our top secret source (call him Deep Croak) the groom spent the whole time surreptitiously checking out the bride’s legs and wondering if she could cook as well as his mom. The bride, on the other hand, complained that she had no interest in brown toads since they were all chauvinists who cared about nothing other than amplexus and food cooked the way their mother used to. The mothers of the bride and groom spent the entire time coming up with names for all their future tadpoles, and planning their weddings out too.

SepiaMutiny sends the newlyweds a copy of the uncut Harold and Kumar DVD and a year’s membership in the South Asian Sisters. We wish them our mutinous best. Continue reading →

Other commencement speeches

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SM reader Manoj directed us to Conan O’Brien’s 2000 Harvard Commencement Speech. There are two desi references right up front. First Paragraph:

I’d like to announce up front that I have one goal this afternoon: to be half as funny as tomorrow’s Commencement Speaker, Moral Philosopher and Economist, Amartya Sen. Must get more laughs than seminal wage/price theoretician.

Second Paragraph:

I especially miss Harvard Square – it’s so unique. No where else in the world will you find a man with a turban wearing a Red Sox jacket and working in a lesbian bookstore. Hey, I’m just glad my dad’s working.

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Queer India

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You might not know this, but it is illegal to be gay in India.

While “there is no explicit mention of homosexuality or homophilia in any of the statute books,” in practice Section 377 of the colonial era Indian Penal Code (written in 1860) effectively criminalizes homosexuality by criminalizing gay sex. The Indian government stands by this law, saying

Indian society, by and large, disapproves of homosexuality and justifies it being treated as a criminal offence even when adults indulge in private [BBC]

A recent effort by activist groups to have the law reframed to legalize sex between consenting adults (the law also bans pedophelia and bestiality) failed on technical grounds, with the Delhi High Court saying that third parties have no right to bring such challenges. The Indian Supreme Court is now looking into the matter, but it is unclear what will happen next.

Even though being a lesbian isn’t criminalized by Section 377 (“unnatural acts” are defined by penetration and it is claimed that “Queen Victoria refused to include the lesbianism clause in the law because she could not imagine ‘such a thing existed’“), as with most things desi, it’s still harder to be a woman than a man:

In a largely patriarchal society, lesbians bear the brunt of social ostracisation and the law more than gay men. In many states, lesbians have taken their lives after facing harassment at home and outside.[Many women] …  have been forcibly married off by their parents. When they tell the truth, they are thrown out of their homes by their spouses, parents and relatives.  [BBC]

In one case, the father of a 31 year old teacher kicked her all the way down from the third floor when he learnt of her sexual preference [cite]

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The Flying Sikh

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Air India has started international flights to Amritsar from Toronto and Birmingham on a new Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto route. Given that 50% of the passengers flying through Delhi’s airport are Punjabis, this should be an improvement in service for those passengers and help boost tourism as well.

 

The flights will be operated with state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire Boeing 777-222 ER aircraft on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. [webindia]

Sunday’s inaugural flight was flagged off by the federal civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, and Punjab’s chief minister, Capt Amarinder Singh. To handle the increased air traffic, the airport at Amritsar is being given a $15m makeover which includes a new terminal building and modern landing aids. [BBC]

This is just the first step. These flights will be upgraded to daily in the upcoming months and additional flights from Amritsar to the Gulf and other western countries are planned.

Air India isn’t the only airline increasing its flights through Rajasansi Airport; everybody wants a piece of the NRI action. In 8 years, the number of flights has increased from 3 to 56 per week:

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Did ‘Indians’ colonize Europe?

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If I tell a white man to go back where the came from, will he have to travel to Africa via India?

A team of geneticists … conclude that there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa – that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia … because the mitochondrial lineages of everyone outside Africa converge at the same time to the same common ancestors … people from the southern migration, probably in India, must have struck inland to reach the Levant, and later Europe, the geneticists say. [NYT]

So why can’t we all just get along? Continue reading →