Category Archives: Musings

Yay, More Hope for Men!

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I wish I were a man. Really. Their problems seem so much more…significant, no?

At least, that’s how I feel after reading a Washington Post article entitled, New Wives Bring New Hope to Sri Lankan Widowers.

sepiarantfish.jpg Thanggod! Some good news about Sri Lanka, I thought, as I clicked the link and started reading:

Plunged into despair after the tsunami killed his wife and two of his four children, Ruknadhan Nahamani passed the first months after the disaster in an alcoholic fog, drowning his sorrows in the potent local liquor known as arrack . But grief was only part of the problem, he said.

“There was nobody to wash my clothes and take care of my kids when I went out to work,” said the wiry 32-year-old fisherman, whose teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a mild stimulant. “It was really difficult.”

But Nahamani is a single parent no more. In June, he exchanged wedding vows and jasmine garlands at a Hindu temple with a woman from a nearby village. “We are very happy,” he said outside his tent at a refugee camp as his new wife, Leelawathi, heated cooking oil for the evening meal.[link]

The man survived a tsunami and lost almost his entire family and lives in a refugee camp. Of course he deserves all the happiness he can find. sepiarantwomen.jpg But the grinchy pebble I call a heart couldn’t muster more joy when I remembered all the war widows in Sri Lanka. Some 40,000 at last count.

And the fact that women drowned in massively disproportionate numbers (three times more) during the tsunami because they’re not taught to swim.

And the fact that widows are still treated like amoral harlots in most of South Asia.

Where’s the bloody community support for them? Continue reading →

More proof that Starbucks is evil? ;)

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foamy rules.jpg I must have something to read near me at all times. On those rare occasions when I have “free time”, before I leave the house, I make sure I have at least a magazine (and my moleskine, and my camera andÂ…) with me, so that IÂ’ll be able to read. Life insists on making us pause unexpectedly when weÂ’d rather be achieving, mischief-making or just crossing another item off of our to-do lists; the only reason hyperactive me doesnÂ’t mind this immutable fact is because it means I get to read.

When I was a child, if I couldnÂ’t find the newspaper, IÂ’d read the back (or side) of the cereal box while crunching away on Rice Krispies. I still do this. IÂ’ll read anything, if IÂ’m desperate enough. When I found a job in a building that sits on top of a metro stop, I was overjoyed. The Washington Post got a phone call and I got a subscription to read during my 16-minute commute, each way. Sometimes, I canÂ’t help myself, I start reading the minute IÂ’m out my front door, on the block-and-a-half walk to the subway (yes, I am aware of how lucky I am to live next to and work on top of public transportationÂ…if you want to gnash your teeth even harder out of envy, know this: home and work are on the SAME metro line. No transferring for me, no siree Babu).

Speaking of having to pause when I’d rather be “achieving”, Wednesdays are for staff meetings. Over the last few weeks, it’s become a tradition to get overpriced yuppie beverages in preparation for such events. Unfortunately for indie-coffee shop lovinÂ’ me, there are no less than four Starbucks within a half-mile radius, combined with three Cosi and not one damned other choice in sight. While I go out of my way to avoid the mer-mascotted former, the latter (RIP: x and o) isnÂ’t even worth that effort, since their coffee tastes like punishment for wasting money.

Truthfully, some of the best coffee IÂ’ve had on the right coast came from my old bodega in midtown, on 8th avenue in the theater district. IÂ’d be tickled to the point of swooning right now if I could still hand the smiling, wordless Korean guy who owned the place (and whom I adored) a single dollar for a cup that would magically never spill though it was placed in a humble little paper bag vs in one of those fancy, carefully molded egg-carton-y drink holders. That freshly brewed, unpretentious elixir was brightened with my choice of parmalat milks (which were nestled in the ice of the salad bar) and sweetened with an open pot of sugar (which offered a communal spoon); there were no sleek nissan flasks or individual packets of white dust which give lab rats cancer, nor were there little shakers for cinnamon, nutmeg and pixiedust. THAT coffee tasted like love, and it was served in an iconic container which became even more famous when SJP caressed it during every other ep of SATC. IÂ’m 225 miles from THAT perfection, hours away from a city that doesn’t frown at me when I insist on ordering with quaint adjectives like small, medium, large. Sigh. Continue reading →

Oh Oh. It’s a Patel wedding

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One of my closest friends is getting married this Thanksgiving.  We went to the same high school in Maryland and were roommates at the University of Michigan.  I know his lovely fiancé as well (she coincidentally has the same last name).  With two months to go I was starting to look for a present for them.  Then, both FOBish and Neha sent in this tip.  In Neha’s words “Kaliyug  is upon us for sure.”  The Telegraph reports:

Young Patels getting married in Britain apparently expect the most expensive wedding gifts from their guests, according to research conducted by John Lewis, the Oxford Street department store.

On their “wish list” are items such as plasma television screens — they alone cost £5,000 each — Royal Doulton crockery, champagne stoppers and top-of-the-range fridge-freezers.

John Lewis picked four of the most common surnames in Britain by consulting the Office of National Statistics — Patel, Jones, Smith and Cohen — and compared their wedding gift lists.

Ha!  Patel is the new Jones.  I’m a bit skeptical of the so-called “research” cited in this article though.  To be fair, my friend and his fiance are not at all like the couples described in this article.  If they secretly are then they are going to be sorely disappointed by their broke-ass friends.

… research done by John Lewis reveals that Indians are becoming as shameless as the English. Young Patel couples come into the store before the wedding and draw up their ideal list by choosing from the 500,000 goodies that are available. They think nothing of sticking the priciest gifts on their list…

Mr and Mrs Jones tend to ask for cheaper gifts such as hammocks, champagne buckets and coffee makers, with a £500 barbecue the most expensive item asked for.

Mr and Mrs Smith go for sofas, board games and microwave equipment for the kitchen. Although John Lewis would not dream of saying so, they seem even duller than the Jones.

Mr and Mrs Cohen request items such as fondue sets, Le Creuset pans and egg poachers from their wedding guests. Again, their taste leaves much to be desired.

I’m sorry but I’m with the Patels on this one.  If someone brings me a board game or a fondue set then they are dead to me.  Here is the take-away message:

McCulloch said: “Our latest research has highlighted some fascinating insights into wedding list preference, including the fact that couples with the same surnames are more likely to have similar wedding gifts. If you are after the ultimate and most opulent wedding lists, full of luxury goods and sensational extravagances, then it’s keeping up with the Patels that really counts.”

The Kali Yuga is upon us all.

Continue reading →

Anarchy in the US?

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Sri Lanka is a tiny place. Maybe that’s given us a Napoleonic Complex, maybe we’re tired of being compared to snot. Throw in the war, the tsunami, the suicide rates…we know we can’t play with the big boys. Ain’t no way we can show them up.

sepiaNOhurricane.jpg Until now:

President Chandrika Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, in China on a state visit, sent messages of sympathy to Washington while her government contributed $25,000 through the American Red Cross.

So sure, it might not seem like much to our corporate-dough-raking readers. (coughmyannualsalarycough.) But that would be missing the point:

In a turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance. Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel. [link]

But Condi, FEMA and the Prez seem to have differing views on accepting the aid:

sepiaNOrefugees.jpg

With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided “no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.

Still, Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”

“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”

As the news reports and first-person accounts roll in, it looks increasingly, incredibly clear that we have not been taking care of our own business well. Not well at all.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who crossed party lines to support Bobby Jindal for Governor) exploded with frustration in a local radio interview last Thursday:

I told him [the President] we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.[link]

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Lord I never drew first, but I drew first blood

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As I’ve watched the news over the past week I’ve started to consider if I should purchase a gun.  I hate guns.  I’ve only held one once.  I have had one too many dreams where I was not only shot, but mutilated by gunfire.  I’ve convinced myself that I must have died from a GSW in my past life and so I’ve wanted nothing to do with them.  Indian families don’t really own guns.  Am I wrong?  Maybe I am just sheltered but I just don’t know any Indian families that own guns.  Most of my first generation relatives have never even mentioned gun ownership.  In India my family didn’t own a gun…well except for an air gun which they used to shoot geckos off the wall.  I could imagine that South Asian hoteliers, convenience store owners, and wannabe thugs are probably packing, but outside of that I’d be surprised.  How many South Asians do you know that either hunt or are members of the NRA?  Not many I’ll bet.  Recently I tried to talk my younger brother into buying a weapon.  In the state in which he resides you aren’t a man without a piece.  People wear them in plain sight on their waist he tells me.  Two weeks ago a man in a pick-up truck pulled up beside him as he walked along the road and asked if he was packing.  “No,” my brother replied.  “You should be,” advised the man.  It isn’t only bears and wolves but some crazies (everyone tells him so) where my brother lives that makes a gun a good idea.

So why aren’t brown folk strapped?  Part of it must be that many South Asian immigrants (and even those born here) don’t understand the technical details of the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd Amendment.  They didn’t need a gun in India so why would they here?  Why does it seem like we have a “duty” to carry guns in America?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Link]

The founding fathers in their infinite wisdom and fresh from the Revolutionary War, wanted to make sure that the populace had armed state militias that could rise up against the federal government if it made a move toward autocracy.  The phrase “well regulated Militia” however, was a loophole as wide as a football field and has led to the largest rate of gun violence in the world (guns do kill people).  The founding fathers also worked in another rule into the Constitution that also has bearing on this past week’s events in New Orleans.  Many people don’t know that the U.S. military is forbidden by the Constitution from acting (using their guns) within the borders of the United States.  A friend of mine who spent 8 years in the U.S. Army (and who was born and lived in India until she was twelve) asked me earlier this week why the military didn’t just take over down there.  I explained to her about habeas corpus (which is incidentally my favorite Latin phrase).

The right of habeas corpus has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject.

Continue reading →

A Desi by any other Name would smell like Me

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You either convert (atleast give yourself a nice hindu name on this blog) or stay out.

Would you actually be pompous and arrogant enough to suggest that Indian Christians (and there are quite a few of them) not post here unless they use a “Hindu name”? Sorry, rhetorical question. [linky]

Mind if I cut in, Eric? Thank you, you are too sweet.

Ah, the politics of nomenclature, a subject I am completely sick ofÂ…whether it involves self-identification or the process and meaning behind my own name, it all makes me so weary.

I wonÂ’t delve into the former, but I will heroically belly flop into the latter. My name isnÂ’t good enough for anyone. Malayalees wonder why I have my “house” name, since apparently thatÂ’s uncommon among my “I-have-two-to-three-first-names-but-no-surname” cohort, people who arenÂ’t Brown wonder why I have an “American” or “Western” name, when IÂ’m obviously part of a more exotic faith and non-Mallus, especially Northies for some bizarre reason, wonder what my REAL name is, because it canÂ’t possibly be Anna, even if I am a Jesus-freak from the dirrrty South (of India. Y’all).

The best situation is when I am rebuked for my “obvious”, self-hatred. Predictably, the disapproval usually comes from non-Desis but I once notably received similar treatment from two recent South Asian immigrants. Here’s what a convo with the unBrown sounded like:

“No, really, what’s ‘Anna’ short for?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, just tell me. ‘Anna’ can’t be your REAL name.”

“I’m not, I have nothing TO tell and I promise you, it is.”

“Come on…you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are.”

“Do you do this to White people named ‘Anna’ as well? I’m massively curious…”

Continue reading →

To Forgive is Divine

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Almost two weeks ago, fellow Mutineer Abhi wrote

Really, what kind of a soulless bastard do you have to be to kill someone while they are praying?

when he posted about the tragic murder of Houston-resident Akhil Chopra, which took place on August 11.

What kind of a bastard? Perhaps, this kind? (Thanks, RC.)killer.jpg

This is Howard Dale Bellamy, aka “Peanut”. As in, it takes testicles the size of peanuts to murder a man who is peacefully communing with nature, with his eyes closed. Chopra meditated daily during his lunch break in the park where he was gunned down.

True to his stellar character, Bellamy is not cooperating with authorities. “Peanut”‘s luck ran out when someone else who was using Chopra’s purloined credit card was caught; that person promptly snitched while being interrogated. Six other people who are linked to the robbery-turned-murder are also in custody, under fraud charges.

Houston police, which had earlier announced a award of $10,000 (about Rs 4.5 lakhs) for tip offs leading to Bellamy’s arrest, would soon initiate trial against him for capital murder. If convicted, he might get a death penalty as Texas has provision for this. [link]

Continue reading →

Jaisim Fountainhead

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I’m unapologetically modernist. To me, history only runs forward, and yesterday is usually an embarrassing old version 1.0. If you saw my questionable fashion choices from years past, you’d hasten to agree.

Given my technobarbarian predilections, this NYT story extolling the virtues of housing Bangalore tech workers in former tobacco warehouses strikes me as nothing more than the romanticization of poverty:

In contrast to these unabashed clones of buildings in Palo Alto or San Jose is a 37-acre campus in the heart of the city whose granite- and terra cotta-adorned buildings are set among decades-old trees and painted in vibrant Indian shades of brick red and deep green. The buildings have names from the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, while the rooms within are named after the ancient books of learning, the Vedas. Every morning the Indian flag is ceremonially hoisted on a central flagpole, an unusual practice for businesses here… most of the streets have been paved with local stone… walls made of hollow terra-cotta blocks, flat stone tables and acoustic-friendly ceilings that are fashioned out of earthen pots. The giant century-old chimney, ancient trees and even an old fire station have been left standing… [Link]

Crappy old clay buildings, unpaved streets, giving buildings names in local languages? In India that’s not called ‘environmentally friendly’ architecture. That’s called all architecture  The NYT’s spin feels to me like the wealthy patting the pre-industrial on the head. It’s a yearning you only get after industrializing:

… Galapagos Bar… reminded me a hell of a lot of a cement factory in India, with a dank pool taking up most of the space, stone walls with hand-lit candles mounted in odd places, not the least behind rows of expensive vodkas. The charms of the torture castle, the provincial, it’s the classic example of art defining itself as other. Even when other means pre-industrial… in developing countries this would not have been recognizable as a chi-chi place in the art sense, handmade is the order of the day and not as admired as standardized and mass-produced… [Link]

The renovating architect drew inspiration from The Fountainhead. Ironically, the illustrations on Ayn Rand’s popular edition covers are not about building for human scale at all. They’re soaring neo-Gothic works which draw inspiration from the spires of Soviet universities, albeit stripped of communist symbols. They’re Rockefeller Center. Skyscrapers move books, even when they contradict the book’s aesthetic Continue reading →

If he was brown, we woulda heard about it, right?

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More news on the double-standard front. In March of last year, the feds arrested somebody who had the components for both hand grenades and ricin in his basement. The perp lived in Hyattsville, Md, just a few miles from the DC border:

The manhunt, according to court documents and investigators, led last year to a suburban home in Hyattsville, Md., its basement stocked with parts for makeshift hand grenades and ingredients for ricin, one of the most potent and lethal biological toxins….. has since pleaded guilty to charges of extortion and possession of toxic materials. [NYT]

How deadly is Ricin?

If injected or swallowed, the toxin penetrates the body’s cells. It then knocks out the cells’ protein production machinery, leading to cell death. If ricin is inhaled, acute respiratory collapse occurs as the fragile lining cells of the air passages and lungs are destroyed. Once a person is exposed to ricin, there is no known antidote. Minute quantities of ricin are lethal, and they vanish from the victim’s body in hours with barely a trace, making it a notorious stealth murder weapon. [cite]

You’d think this would have been front page news instead of the middle of a long article about cyber extortion in the NYT Magazine. A dangerous criminal was arrested a stone’s through away from the nation’s capital with the precursors to a biological weapon! This guy was more of a threat than Jose Padilla: ricin is more dangerous than a dirty bomb, and he was far closer to creating a WMD than Padilla ever got.

However, this guy wasn’t brown. His name was Myron Tereshchuk. He was a 43 year old white guy, a tech entrepreneur. If his name had been Sandeep Patel, with the same profile and biodata, you can bet that his mug shot would have been plastered all over the evening TV news shows. As is, it got buried below the fold.

Continue reading →