Author Archives: V.V.

Q&A: Interviewing Jhumpa Lahiri

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Jhumpa Lahiri and her work (and its film adaptation!) have long been a subject of discussion here at the Mutiny. And this Friday night, I am interviewing her as part of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective’s Literary Festival, “Stranger Love.”

I just checked, and the Lahiri event is sold out (!), but I thought that this might be an opportunity for SM readers get two cents in. Got a question? Put it in comments, and I may ask it… She’s been much interviewed, obviously, so I’d like to try to ask her things that haven’t been asked before, as well as things that relate particularly to the festival theme.

One question that I usually like to ask writers: What are you reading now? The answer to this changes, and is usually pretty interesting… I’m rereading Unaccustomed Earth right now, and will ask some questions about specific stories, too. If there’s a character or story that made you think longer than the others, please let me know!

(If I ask a question submitted here, I’ll mention that it came from SM. If you put something resembling a real name on it, I’ll try to credit you specifically.) Continue reading →

Everyone Loves A Winner: V-Day Contest Results

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Hey y’all,

I appreciate your indulging my travel and jetlag. Here, without further ado, are the results of our V-Day contest. I was excited to see so many entries. Seems like you guys really got into it. This was hard to judge. Thanks so much for participating!

Some thoughts on my judging process. I read what Sandhya had written, and realized I was looking for verbal inventiveness and something that touched multiple emotions—not just funny, but funny and sad; not just angry, but angry and funny; etc. etc. How much did the entry achieve in six words?

This decided, I waded in. Now, before I announce the winners, a few comments on the other entries. Continue reading →

Chennai Meetup?

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UPDATE: Chennai Meetup at Ponnusamy Hotel, Royopettah, 55/1, Gowdia Mutt Road, Royapettah, Chennai – 600014

@ approximately 8 p.m., after the reading at Landmark (see details for that below).

Hi Mutineers,

I’m reading at the Landmark in Nungambakkam on Friday. I was thinking… meetup after? What location would be convenient? The reading is at 6:30 p.m., so I figure that I’ll be freeish by 8 at the latest. Somewhere in that same neighborhood would be good.

Please put any ideas in comments if you are interested.

Thanks… Continue reading →

Indian, Indian, Indian!

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Happy New Year, Mutiny! It is not possible to hyperlink a post title, so I offer this as my inspiration for the headline above.

Sometimes, when people assume I’m of Indian origin, I get grumpy and I think, I know just how Jan feels. I mean, I like Marcia. I understand that she’s the biggest sister and everyone in school knows her. But I am special too. 🙂

As a result of this feeling (and arguably, my background as a sometime member of the Fourth Estate), I read media descriptions of desis pretty closely. Indian is NOT a racial or ethnic descriptor. But sometimes it’s used as such.

I recently wrote an e-mail to an editor at [ed: The New York] Times about three articles in which this came up. Continue reading →

Kali Klum

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Thanks to Alex Carnevale at Gawker, I saw this today. Heidi Klum as Kali for her Halloween party.

What think you, desis? My initial thought was that I should be offended. Then I thought, why? Is that reasonable? People dress up as versions of evil a range of characters, including ones with religious connotations, every year on Halloween. And this Kali is a pretty awesome costume. Klum certainly pulls it off with panache. Maybe that’s easier if you’re twelve feet tall and a model. She’s got all the details–look at what’s around her neck and waist!

If you click on the picture, you’ll see a gallery that includes her husband, Seal. (Gallery from ohnotheydidn’t.)

UPDATED: Previous Sepia coverage of Halloween.

Here and here. Continue reading →

Happy Deepavali. We Will Let You Go Free on Bail (Malaysian Redux)

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Picture by Preston Merchant.

Happy Deepavali! Today I am wearing a new shirt and eating truffles. (Delish.) What a pleasant time! Other people are having a lovely Deepavali too, I hope and assume. Probably including the ten Malaysian Hindraf activists sprung on bail just in time for hols.

Per The Economic Times:

“A police spokesman said all of them were freed to enable them to celebrate Deepavali. “Although the police, under the law, could extend their remand orders to facilitate investigations, yet on humanitarian ground they were released to enable them to celebrate the festive occasion,” the spokesman added.

Shut UP! Malaysian government dudes, you guys are SO nice! SO generous! Especially considering what they did, gathering outside the PM’s office to deliver a memo…

To review, Hindraf (the Hindu Rights Action Force) is a group in Malaysia that protests what The Economic Times calls “perceived discrimination against the [country’s] estimated 2.6 million ethnic Indians, a bulk of them Tamil Hindus.”*

And as of earlier this month, Hindraf is banned in Malaysia. Longer backgrounder here, via SAJAForum.

*(Don’t get me started on my rant about news organizations using the word “perceived” for something they can damn well report on. Aren’t you supposed to be government watchdogs? Is there discrimination? Or isn’t there? Hint: there is.) Continue reading →

@ Writers for Obama

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This past weekend I returned to NYC for an event I knew would be too good to miss: Writers Speak Out for Obama, featuring an all-star line-up.

Considering this blog’s longstanding interest in matters both literary and political, I figured SM readers would want to see the scene. So here we go. Six literary giants came out to read for the benefit, which was the brainchild of Meera Nair (the writer) and emceed by Mira Nair (the director). It was not an official Obama event, but rather, as Meera noted, “community organizing.”

Above, the luminaries themselves. Thanks to Preston Merchant for letting me use his pictures, which, predictably, are awesome. Left to right: Mira Nair, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Suketu Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Akhil Sharma, Manil Suri. Yes, really. All of them. Together. Continue reading →

Naan Fromage, S’il vous plaît

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Hurray for traveling, but also: hurray for airports with sweet, stable and FREE (!) Internet connections. I have a brief interlude here in Kansas City on my way back from a reading, so I thought I’d tell you about a trip I took last month. After attending a desi wedding in Georgia (the American one!) I took the Delta nonstop to Paris (the French one!) for another wedding. And in France, I did a little desi-spotting, in the part of Paris known as La Chapelle.

So, in this blissful hiatus from the security line (as Kumar says, “random search, huh?”), I bring to you tales of gastronomie and naan fromage!

I can’t pretend that I had an exhaustive look at La Chapelle—time did not permit—but you know me, I managed to eat. And take pictures. Neither can I pretend to be Preston Merchant, but I did try to get some of the signs that captured the French-Indien-Srilankhan (!) vibes. Continue reading →

Black July At 25

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This weekend marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of war in Sri Lanka, which is commonly dated to the anti-Tamil riots there in 1983—a time now known as Black July. The immediate catalyst for the violence: the death of 13 Sinhalese soldiers at the hands of Tamil militants. The longer story: ethnic tension that had simmered for decades, under British colonial rule and beyond.Sri_Lanka-CIA_WFB_Map.png

On the 24th of July, rioting began as news spread about the deaths of the soldiers. The government was obviously complicit in the pogroms. (This link is to a Sri Lankan government website.) People with voter lists directed the mobs to the homes and properties of Tamils, which they destroyed. Thugs stopped vehicles on the streets, and, ascertaining the Tamil identities of the people within, set them aflame. When the violence finally ended, days later, as many as three thousand Tamils had been killed. Thousands and thousands more were left homeless. Shortly after, Sri Lanka saw a flood of Tamil emigration.

The 25th anniversary of such a hellish hour in the country’s history should not pass unnoticed on the Mutiny. Sri Lanka is Mutinous; it’s Mutinous in all the wrong ways: fostering ethnic hatred, distrust, violence, censorship, betrayal, and rootlessness in its own people. And it’s Mutinous in all the right ones: Sri Lanka and its diasporas are full of people who resist easy definition and boundaries, who refuse to cede to what they believe to be wrong, and who still fight, after twenty-five years, for a just home in the most beautiful place on earth. This is not a country that can be seen in black and white. This is a country in which authorities helped Sinhalese civilians to attack their Tamil neighbors. And this also is a country in which the people who saw that what was happening was wrong took their Tamil countrymen in and tried to protect them from the chaos. The best of human nature beginning a long battle against the worst of human nature.

Continue reading →

Some Like It (Ridiculously) Hot

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As long as I’ve been on here, I’ve blogged about food. And I love hotttttt food. I always thought Amma’s cooking was spicy enough. Apparently not!

A restaurant in London is out to set the record for the world’s hottest curry. Naga_Jolokia_Peppers.jpg

The Bollywood Burner contains the hottest chili pepper in the world: the Naga. From the story:

[It’s] a lamb-based dish with a fierce kick.

The curry is so hot that diners are asked to sign a disclaimer confirming they are aware of the risks involved before daring to eat it.

The Bollywood Burner is being submitted to Guinness World Records for verification of its status as the planet’s hottest curry.

Continue reading →