Category Archives: Musings

Apu’s got a blog!

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When I read Anna’s recent post on the desi celebrity blogger of the moment, the comments of Chick Pea and Jai Singh caught my eye:

what’s next… apu and manjula’s blog from the kwik-e-mart life?

That would be a fantastic idea for another new-topic thread here on SM — we could all just keep adding fictitious “diary entries” by Apu. Manish, Abhi etc — do you guys want to make this happen ? I think it would be a lot of fun and potentially hilarious too.

Inspired by their comments, I decided to scour the internet to determine if that most redoubtable of Indian-American television celebrities, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, was indeed a blogger.  And, um, turns out he is.  (Sorry if that was anticlimactic.) 

Of course, it’s possible that the aforelinked blog was not actually written by Apu, but rather by some sort of sick Apu impersonator.  In which case, would the real Apu Nahasapeemapetilon please stand up?  Please stand up?  Please stand up? 

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Bird Flu, Indian Reverse Engineers and Mangosteens, Oh My!

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I sometimes hang out at Brad DeLong’s blog, where apparently Razib thought I was a dude. Yesterday DeLong wrote a Cipla's Chief, Yusu Hamiedpost about Tamiflu, the Roche patented drug which is the one of the only plausible defenses against the dreaded Avian influenza or Asian Bird Flu. DeLong was mostly concerned with the domestic policy and economic ramifications of nationalizing a patent in times of emergency and stockpiling a drug ahead of time, but as with Sepia Mutiny, the comments can be most educational–and that’s how I found out that clever Cipla is at its Robin Hood reverse engineering tricks again. Bird flu is, of course, a global issue:

Cipla, an Indian producer of generic drugs, is preparing to become an alternative producer of oseltamivir phosphate, an antiviral drug better known by the brand name Tamiflu.Cipla plans to offer Tamiflu in the Indian market and in 49 less-developed countries where the company already sells AIDS treatments, Hamied says. The legality of the introduction in India, where pharmaceutical patents started to be recognized this year, is uncertain.

Hamied says he will withdraw Tamiflu from the Indian market if Roche’s patent is recognized.  (Link.)

A Roche spokesman, Terry Hurley, said that the company ”fully intends to remain the sole manufacturer of Tamiflu.” . .Making the drug involves 10 complex steps, he said, and the company believes that it’ll take another company ”two to three years, starting from scratch,” to produce it. Hamied dismissed that claim, saying that he initially thought it would be too hard but that his scientists had finished reverse-engineering the drug in his laboratories two weeks ago. He said he could have small commercial quantities available as early as January 2006. Asked if he thought Hamied was making an idle boast, Hurley declined to comment. Hamied said he would sell generic Tamiflu ”at a humanitarian price” in developing nations and not aim at the US or European market. ”God forbid the avian flu should strike India,” he said. ”There is no line of defense.” (Link.)

What does this have to do with mangosteens? I’m glad you asked!

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A Hindu symbol, misused against Sikhs in Lodi

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Some disappointing news from last week:

Vandals this week sprayed several swastikas and racial epithets on property that includes a Sikh temple at the northeast corner of Armstrong Road and West Lane.

Lodi, CA is a city that is 90 miles northeast of the bay. The vandalism went down at a site where plans for a larger Gurudwara were approved by the San Joaquin County Planning Commission. I don’t think the vandals’ choice of targets was coincidental.

Apparently there are close to a dozen groups of White Supremacists in the county. No one believes me out here on the right coast when I mention that I grew up near Klan members; they can’t get past the Golden Gate bridge/Hollywood sign in their heads. All the peaceful, flaky, uber-tolerant golden state stereotypes just make more sense, not that I can blame anyone for their disbelief. Unfortunately, stories like this validate a point I never cared to prove.

Nirmal Samra owns the 8.6-acre property and said he noticed the graffiti on his produce stand and a big-rig trailer Monday morning. The vandalism included remarks such as “killers” and “white power” along with other racial epithets directed at Muslims of Middle Eastern origin.

Nirmal Uncle is a grape farmer who

has never before experienced prejudice in his 30 years living in Lodi…

And I want to stress the following point: my experiences aren’t meant to be a blanket statement regarding racism or ignorance in the bay area or NorCal. Use Mutineer Manish’s statements for that. He went to the better school. 😉 Continue reading →

Blogging India at the Washington Post

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With all this mutinous talk of Toral’s recent demise on the Apprentice the past couple of days (1,2,3)  and the really excellent discussion that has ensued, it has been really hard to find focus on other areas.  Despite that, the mutiny must go on, and part of our progression is the appearance of Washington Post Staff Writer, author of Suburban Sahibs and (former SAJA President) S. Mitra Kalita’s ongoing Washington Post blog, India 2.0, chronicling her eight week trip to India.  Accompanied by photographer Andrea Bruce (see her recent WP Photo Exhibit here), Kalita departed for her trip before the recent earthquake disaster in India and Pakistan.  The scope of her blog looks to be very interesting and falls very-much into line with some of the things we like to focus on here.  Since her departure, and subsequent arrival in Delhi, Mitra has blogged on the departure pangs that many of us go through before leaving for the country of some of our parent’s birth, especially post liberalization of the early 1990s. 

“Yet again I am surrounded by suitcases and piles of clothing — the bright pinks and oranges and magentas of East and the tans and blacks and navys of West — and engaging in the giving and taking that foreshadows the semiannual rite of my hyphenated life: a trip to India.  Will I really wear these jeans? Or should I pack another salwar kameez? What’s the point of taking so many saris if I still can’t wrap myself in them properly.  These are familiar questions, posed since I was a little girl spending summer vacations in the land of my parents’ birth. But as I look around my bedroom, I am struck by a stark difference between then and now.  There are no Nikes. No Walkmans. No Tang. No Pringles. No Guess. No Gap. No Minoltas. No socks. No razor blades. No microwaves (I swear we took one once.) In fact, I am taking no gifts, just a few requested items for my husband’s cousin’s family, who are hosting me. Among them: a Bose iPod speaker and Livestrong wristbands. I do not have an iPod and didn’t know what the heck those bands were. Already, this American cousin feels she has been living in the Dark Ages.”
  She has also blogged on the South Asian earthquake and, the burgeoning mall culture that has taken over, not just India, but from my recent travels to South Asia, Sri Lanka as well.  She writes of a recent mall opening,
“Make no mistake about the “mall” moniker. In India, that means marble floors and glitzy storefront displays. Like many conveniences taken for granted in the West, the Indian counterpart tends to be equally rooted in providing the customer experience. (McDonald’s, for example, might have a worker who pumps your ketchup.) So the opening of M.G. 2 (named for its location on Mehrauli Gurgaon Road and because it is adjacent to M.G. 1) served up a heavy dose of pomp and importance alongside glasses of Coke and mineral water, with trays of tofu triangles and asparagus bruschetta circulated by waiters.” 

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Serendipity

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Like an incestuous college dorm, this alternadesi hothouse of a ‘hood keeps yielding interesting hookups.

This past summer, I wandered home late one Friday night, sharing the building elevator with a gaggle of desis heading to the roof. I dumped my stuff in my room, walked upstairs and stumbled into a large yet strangely chill party: an indie rock band, a DJ rig, beer, Christmas lights, extension cords and lots of people dancing, drinking and enjoying the NYC skyline. That party nearly got the entire building banned from the roof (much respect), but I didn’t know whose party it was.

A few months later, I went shopping for my first Mac in years to build a fruit-friendly version of the blog editor we use. The font of all things Mac here is the Apple temple in SoHo. Because it abuts all manner of modeling agencies, it’s usually packed with offhandedly striking women, those for whom beauty is merely a Mendelian byproduct. Like the Nano, they’re shiny, costly and impossibly thin.

I got to talking with a random sales guy in a hoodie. Here’s what turned up:

  • He spins house music and is an amateur photographer
  • He was in my loft building that same morning
  • He was visiting two DJ friends who live right downstairs from me
  • The DJs and the rockers were the very same guys who threw the mother of all parties on our roof
  • And, they’re all desi

The next couple of posts came from this serendipitous connection…

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Breaking the Girl: IIPM’s Virtual Thugs Bully Rashmi Bansal

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This post is about IIPM‘s deplorable, misogynistic, retaliatory attacks on Rashmi Bansal, a female blogger who runs a magazine (JAM) which gave IIPM, a B-school in India, a less than stellar review. If you’d like, you can skip the Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics and vignette below them; Rashmi’s story commences right before the jump.

:+:

Twisting and turning
Your feelings are burning
You’re breaking the girl
She meant you no harm
Think you’re so clever
But now you must sever
You’re breaking the girl…{rhcp}

:+:

After I finished my last degree, my next step–like every other desi who didn’t feel like going to medical school or being an engineer– was law school…or so I thought. I took Kaplan, took the LSAT and took obscene amounts of time filling out applications and writing essays, like everyone else who applied to be a 1L during the 2001-2002 school year.

My heart wasn’t in it.

I refused to go unless I was accepted at a school I loved because frankly, Mr. Shankly, I didn’t need to be a lawyer (and $100k in debt) that badly.

Out of the blue, I got a scholarship to a school I had no interest in…my Mom forced me to keep an open mind and at least visit it with her when she came east for my graduation.

“Fine, Mummy. For you, I will”, I said.

The materials made the campus sound fantastic; the truth was, ’twas a hole. I didn’t really hold it against them though– we all bullshit a little bit to make reality seem more fabulous. I’ll accept that proclivity– within limits.

Exactly a year later, when I was tending to my interns, I told them all about my experience with the law school suitor I had rejected. I felt like it was the right thing to do; almost half of them were in the process of applying themselves and a guest speaker who had graciously enriched their time with a speech was an Alum of the school I had found so hole-y. As I tried not to wince, he talked it up ridiculously. If I had had the time to blog during the summer of 2002, when I was working 70+ hour weeks, I would’ve told the world my story, in an honest, unflinching way. Aside from potentially getting flamed via comment, I wouldn’t have had anything to worry about, after posting my opinion.

Lucky me.

:+:

Rashmi Bansal, the blogger behind “Youth Curry” runs Just Another Magazine or JAM. JAM did brown youngsters in the Amma-land a favor by discussing B-schools, a topic which must be quite popular judging by my daily updates from Rediff.com, which inevitably include an article on the subject.

Here’s what JAM had to say about IIPM, a somewhat controversial school that reminds me of that sleazy guy at the bar who talks a good game– i.e. they’re full of shit. The bar-scum doesn’t have a porsche and IIPM isn’t a 10 ten school which is better than IIM, in fact IIPM has been removed from B-school rankings for misrepresenting itself. Though I’m a St. Thomas Christian, I don’t have to go to a sleazy garage to place my hands in the hole where the ultimate daily driver should be nor do I have to visit one of the “plush” IIPMs to tell you that they lied, too. Some things, you just know are true. Continue reading →

I’m not from around here

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This billboard of TMBWITW sits at the corner of Dundas and Yonge St. in downtown Toronto. Ironically, I was in that city attending the wedding of a man who’s infamous because of the same kind of billboard.

My buddy ‘Milind Das’ (not his real name, for reasons which will become clear) is a Canadian-born desi living in London. He used to work in India as a toney management consultant with an expat package. He often flew between Delhi and Bombay for business meetings at dawn. Early one morning, before sunrise, Milind witnessed an ethereal phantom in a white sari emerging from the fog at Indira Gandhi International. She was a young woman with large eyes, pleasant-looking but not overpoweringly so. She’d covered her hair and much of her face with the end of her sari and was accompanied by an elderly, glowering Cerberus.

Milind settled into his first class seat, pulled out his laptop and began working on a spreadsheet. The watchdog positioned herself grimly between him and her ward. Over the next two hours, her expression changed. At first it was, ‘Don’t even think about talking to my daughter.’ As the minutes ticked by and Milind remained oblivious to her beauty, it became, ‘Why the hell aren’t you talking to my daughter?’

Milind noticed the flight attendants were especially attentive that morning. When the flight ended, he shared a ride into town with one of the attendants whom he’d befriended. (Modesty forbids us from asking about that tale.) She asked him excitedly whether he’d seen the actress.

‘What actress?’

At that very instant, the cab was passing below a supersized Bollywood billboard. The aeronymph stared at him incredulously and pointed up in the air. And that’s how our young swain met The (Second) Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

I trust it’s clear why we must mask Milind’s identity. Otherwise, half a billion desi men would hunt him down for his Bolly ignorance. Of course, he found his own TMBWITW and, 96 hours ago, married her. I’m happy to report that ‘Mrs. Das’ lives up to the name.

Related post here.

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“Golly jeepers, where’d you get those peepers…

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ash

peepshow, creepshow…where did you get those eyes?”

:+:

Earlier today, I was at the most forlorn CVS in downtown DC, stalking my unbelievably elusive prey (one, just one OTC elixir without Pseudoephedrine, i.e. that which I have a horrific reaction to) when I saw this…eye-catching display.

I love makeup and while my proclivity to purchase two lip glosses a week would lead you to believe that my all-consuming obsession involves THAT, it doesn’t.

Mascara.

I am as fanatically devoted to mascara as Abhi is to that evolution stuff. 😉 Eyelashes are so important, that’s why the right curler is key; it’s also why every model, actress, pageant winner, celebutante and drag queen wears fakes…in Jennifer Lopez’s case, MINK fakes.

I like my eyelashes. I wasn’t born with eyebrows, but I lucked out on the lash tip and girlfriend, you best believe I work it. All I wear is L’oreal mascara. Because it is the best. So, like some unstoppable force pulling me towards the mothership, I was brought to this display.

I noticed two things: a brand-spanking-new type of mascara in a curiously-fat container and one flawlessly beautiful woman channeling Maria Callas, in that exact order. She looked slightly familiar but I couldn’t place her immediately. A second later, I remembered seeing Aish’s face by L’oreal’s lipsticks and that’s when it hit me– she IS one of the faces for the brand. Yes, it was TMBWITW. I’ve never seen her in a movie, which is probably why I had to arrive at my conclusion in such a strange, round-about way. One look at the fine-print, which always tell you who’s in the ad confirmed it. Continue reading →

Desiburg

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My Brooklyn ‘hood is on the water facing Manhattan. Aside from being musician central, Williamsburg is a half-blue collar, half-gentrifying neighborhood with four ethnicities: Polish-stan, Hasidic-stan, Latino-stan and Hipsterville (Diesel denim with red stitching, messenger bag in earth tones, fauxhawk bed-head and a big gay belt buckle). It’s also got a high PQ (poseur quotient.) I swear upon your grandma’s shriveled National Geographics that I’ve seen people sell pink trucker hats by the subway entrance with an airbrushed ‘Bitch’ on the front.

Sometimes you run into desis with pierced eyebrows and mutton-chop sideburns. You know those signs on Disneyland rides, ‘You must be this tall to ride?’ The L train has a sign, ‘You must be this hip to move here.’ I’m totally dragging down the curve as a stealth sinc duppie (single-income-no-colonialism desi-urban-professional). Tonight a thin brown girl in a black sack dress rode a big Huffy with wide handlebars down the sidewalk, the kind of bike you see in pre-WWII photos. We exchanged subtle, curious glances while trying not to let the other intrude on our indie brown singularity.

>> Read the whole thing

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An Angle too Conventional

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himanshu bhatia.jpg WeÂ’ve received a few tips (Thanks, Mytri and Brimful!) about an article entitled “A Flair for the Unconventional”, which ran in the New York Times on Sunday. Following your links, I expected to be slightly bored by something dealing with outsourcing or tech or consulting blah blah blah. I was prepared to let one of the staff entrepreneurs/business titans tackle it, so I could get back to writing a more ANNA-esque post. 😉

But when the page loaded, I was slightly startled to see a striking Brown woman whose picture sat atop a sidebar of “important details” about her: her title (Chief Executive of Rose International, an IT services company in the Midwest), her birth date, her nickname (Himanshu became “Sue”), even what she likes to do in her spare time (nature walks). The last bold, highlighted, impossible-to-miss bit of information contained…

her weight-control regimen?

Are you kidding me? Continue reading →