Category Archives: Musings

On the Road to Sundance

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Under an odd twist of fate, I find myself for the first time in my life actually interested in the glitz and glamor of Hollywood relocating to the cold hills of Park City, Utah. As mentioned in a previous post, I have had a minuscule bit of involvement with the book-to-movie feature film The Taqwacores which will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th. I have recently been asked to join the Taqwacore madness at Utah, from staying in the rented 4 bedroom punk house with 30 other actors and/or punks, to checking out the punk rock shows in Park City and Salt Lake City featuring The Kominas and Al Thawra. I will be blogging about my Taqx experiences for those two weeks at the tumblr site Taqx at Sundance. Additionally, I will also be crossposting/blogging for MTV Iggy about movies, actors and potentially interviews.

My mind is spinning with the prospect that this little blogger now has a press pass to access one of the coolest film festivals there is. And what an amazing year to join the madness. There are a few films at Sundance which I think are Sepia Mutiny worthy to keep an eye on over the next year:

It looks like a cute movie, and definitely is the shoe in for that one movie for this year’s Desi diaspora flick. I am really excited at the prospect of speaking to both Gurinder and Sendhil about their experience working on the film. Continue reading →

Light skinned…with no dialect

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Over at Wonkette today they were asking a real brain teaser. Which one of these is not like the others?

Hey, they do it in every single Bollywood movie or Indian channel serial drama. Why not the official Louisiana Governor’s portrait too? As a comparison, here is his official portrait from the 109th Congress (also seen in the middle left photo). Over at The Root they are wondering if Harry Reid was right?

Research strongly suggests that white voters do favor lighter-skinned black candidates. Political scientist Nayda Terkildsen studied the effect of skin color on white voting preferences in her 1993 paper, “When White Voters Evaluate Black Candidates: The Processing Implications of Candidate Skin Color, Prejudice, and Self-Monitoring.” In an experimental study, she presented a random sample of adults descriptions of “one of three fictitious candidates running for governor.” Each candidate was described in identical terms with the only difference being an attached photograph of either “a white male, a light-complected black male, or a dark-complected black male.” Terkildsen found a statistically significant effect that “black candidates were penalized by white voters based on the candidate’s race, skin color, and individual levels of racial prejudice.”

Put another way, when presented with otherwise identical candidates, white voters generally preferred the white candidate to the black candidates and the lighter-skinned candidate to the darker-skinned candidate. (Terkildsen’s analysis only looked at white voters, but perhaps Reid’s remarks will encourage someone to study the effect of skin color on candidate preferences among blacks, Latinos and Asians, too.) [Link]

I bet you, as alluded to in the last sentence, that studies will show that African, Latino, and Asian voters will either conciously or subconciously vote for the lighter skinned candidate too. Like I said, all I have to do is turn on Zee TV to prove this. So I am not going to be overly critical of Jindal for the lighting guy he chose. I am however, going to bow my head in disappointment.

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No Google suggestions for what I think you are thinking

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As most of you are aware, when typing a search term in to Google, the omniscient search engine usually helps you with a slight assist: it lists a bunch of guesses for what it thinks you intend to type even before you are done typing. It prognosticates based on other people’s searches. Go try it yourself. Type in “Sepia” and see what suggestions it offers you.

Often times the suggestion are really silly, often times scary.

I simply could not believe that the following was true so I tried it myself. It was true. I found this at Digg.com today. Click to enlarge the image.

Understand what I am showing you here? Either by their own decision or at someone’s request, Google is actively suppressing its own suggestions feature when someone types in “Islam is…” None of the other religions seem to get such special treatment. Interestingly, the suggestions are also suppressed if someone types in “Christians are,” “Hindus are,” “Muslims are,” etc. My point? This sort of selective suppression is incredibly stupid. People, however bigoted in their intentions, should be able to search for anything they want. This is akin to a form of censorship in my view. It is also kind of patronizing. Does Google think followers of Islam need extra shielding from bad intentions? I don’t want this same treatment given to the other religions either. I should be able to search for hateful terms if I want to.

It looks like Wired.com saw the same Digg post I saw and decided to ask Google. Here is the response they received:

But Google says it’s just a software problem.

“This is a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com.

The suggestion feature relies on your previous searches and searches from users globally. Google says it filters out “pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms.”[link]

I’m not sure I buy the “software bug” explanation.

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Flying While Brown Deja Vu

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airport-security-line.jpgWith news that the failed Nigerian underwear bomber was an actual real threat, the international community is rumbling in rapid reactions. My plans of going to South Asia this next month went awry when just a couple of weeks ago India suddenly changed their visa regulations; all people holding a tourist visa to India now need to wait two months before re-entry, leaving many tourists who use India as a home base to travel around South Asia in flux. The reasoning given? American Headley’s support in the Mumbai bombing. (FYI, rules changing daily on this, so keep updated if you will be traveling soon).

In addition to heightened visa security, the world is experiencing heightened airport security as well.

TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening. The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S. bound international flights.[tsa]

I haven’t had to travel on an airline yet but have been following tweets of my world traveling friends and it seems that there is no consistency to airport security. I am quickly reminded of how in the post 9/11 backlash racial profiling at airports were rampant and I needed to have a special phone call made each and every time I flew because I had the classic Muslim last name. It seems like the new TSA regulations are setting up racial profiling to be acceptable all over again.

According to information currently known about the new standards, all passengers traveling to the United States from 14 countries will be subject to heightened security screenings, including full-body pat-downs and luggage searches. These countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

> The new standards will undoubtedly lead to the targeting of passengers from Muslim-majority countries. Rather than developing more effective policies that focus on behavior, the new standards categorically target individuals for additional scrutiny based upon ethnicity, religion, and country of origin. Moreover, the measures promote existing misperceptions about these communities as threats to security and harm the U.S. government’s reputation, both domestically and abroad, towards ensuring civil rights and equality.[[saalt](http://saalt.org/attachments/1/South%20Asian%20Organizations%20Express%20Concerns%20About%20New%20Airport%20Security%20Screening%20Standards.pdf)] Continue reading →

Did someone “Indian” help the Nigerian bomber in Amsterdam?

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I left work later than I intended to tonight, and this concerned me because I’m in the middle of a rather difficult move from one apartment to another here in Chocolate City. Moving. Ugh, right? Anyway, while worrying that I now had even LESS time to sort and pack my crap, I overheard something important on NPR. “Maybe I was meant to run late”, I mused to myself…maybe, indeed.

What I ended up listening to had me riveted to the news [though it wasn’t quite a driveway moment— that would be challenging here in the city :)]. NPR’s All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel was interviewing a Michigan-based attorney named Kurt Haskell; Haskell was aboard Northwest flight 253, along with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attempted to blow it up on Christmas day.

While all of you are aware of this horrifying incident, a few of you may be unaware of some disturbing additional information pertaining to that attack. On NPR, Haskell described a scene he witnessed with his wife prior to boarding that ill-fated flight home to Detroit. He recalled seeing terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab escorted to the gate by a “well-dressed Indian man”, who tried to intervene on Abdulmutallab’s behalf and browbeat an airline employee in to overlooking the fact that the wanna-be martyr lacked a passport. WTF? Who gets to board anything without a passport, these days? And also, uh, INDIAN? I think he meant South Asian, because if Mr. Haskell is anything like me, he was born here and probably can’t tell the difference between a Pakistani and a Sri Lankan from a mere glance.

Let me perfectly clear: I did not come out of semi-hiding to write this post for the purpose of moaning that now “we” look “bad”, nor am I digging in my heels and protesting this “slur” against all good Yindians from Yindia. Continue reading →

Desi Women of the Decade: Poll #4

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Back in my younger mutinous days, when I was the youngest in the bunker, I wrote this post on “cool” desi women under the age of 30. I wrote it because I wanted to highlight other Desi American women in my age range who were “doing something”. A list like that didn’t exist then. We have since had many more young folk added to the mutinous blog roll in the bunker and there are even more Desi women than ever doing amazing things.

I too am jumping on the ’00 decade list making band wagon. In the past decade, I went from being a nascent 20 year old to a pseudo-mature 30 yr old. But more significantly, I think of how in 2000, as a desi girl in the U.S., I didn’t have any South Asian American females that I could turn to – as role models, as women breaking barriers, as women in the media. It was alienating and isolating, to not see Desi women breaking glass ceilings. I didn’t realize that there were things that desi girls could do outside of the “model minority job list” – I had no one really to look towards. In these past ten years, the South Asian American community has grown with leaps and bounds. Strong desi women have coming out of the wood works. They are on big screens, on the shelves of major book stores, and profiled in the news. Desi women are running for office, going to space, starting and directing non-profits, and running companies. I am so proud of to be a Desi woman of this decade, to be a part of a community giving the next generation of Desi girls role models to look up to.

So here is my mutinous list of the top 20 most influential South Asian American Women of the Decade (in alphabetical order). Please vote on the woman that you feel has been most influential to you in the poll at the bottom of the post. Continue reading →

Are vigilant parents the first line of defense?

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In case you missed it this morning, it was announced that five young Muslim men from the Virginia suburbs were arrested in a jihadi safehouse in Sargodha, a city in northern Punjab. Trying to get in to Al Qaeda is kind of like trying to get in to the mob it seems. If you don’t have someone to vouch for you and you don’t know how to act the part, then you may be shit out of luck:

The men contacted extremist organizations, including two with links to al-Qaeda, and proudly told their Pakistani interrogators that “We are here for jihad,” said Usman Anwar, the local Pakistani police chief whose officers interrogated the men, all Muslims from the Alexandria area.

Anwar said police recovered jihadist literature, laptop computers and maps of different parts of Pakistan when the men were arrested near Lahore on Tuesday. The maps included areas where the Taliban train. The men first made contact with the two extremist organizations by e-mail in August, officials said, but the groups apparently rejected their overtures because they couldn’t find people to vouch for them. [Link]

Also,

They were rebuffed in both places because of their Western demeanor and their inability to speak the national language, Urdu, an investigator said… [Link]

The Washington Post identifies the five men:

The men, who range in age from 19 to 25, were identified by Pakistani officials and sources close to the case as Umar Chaudhry, Waqar Khan, Ahmad A. Mini, Aman Hassan Yemer and Ramy Zamzam. Chaudhry’s father, Khalid, was also arrested in Pakistan and is being questioned, authorities said. [Link]
Continue reading →

Man Builds Shed

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Everyone (well every guy I know) seems to be talking about the Walden-esque profile of former TARP Czar Neel Kashkari in Sunday’s Washington Post. The article/profile is a thing to behold. More a short story than article really. It is difficult to ascertain whether the author is satirizing an Icarus-like fall from grace with her ridiculously over-the-top description of Kashkari’s self-exile into the woods, or whether she is being earnest. If the former, “bravo” I say. You have brilliantly portrayed our South Asian male, 30s-mid-life-crisis angst. If the latter, then…well, where to begin? The stubble would be a good place. A man’s stubble, more often than not, has a good story behind it:

He wears no coat though it’s freezing, shines no light though it’s near midnight, carries no shotgun though he’s tramping on the pine-needled tracks of black bears….

The moon hits his stubble, which is six days old. And the sweater he hasn’t changed in three or four days. His BlackBerry — he can’t kick it — rang once today. A year ago in D.C., it buzzed every few seconds. All night, he’d roll over to its bluish glow. His Treasury Department assistant slept with hers, powered up, on her pillow. [Link]

The article goes on to describe a young and gung-ho aerospace enginerd, who first goes into the heart of Wall Street, and then on to Oz (a.k.a. Washington D.C.) with his powerful mentor. They had me hooked at the aerospace enginerd part. Kashkari is a man we can all get behind. He is the everyman in a $700 billion story. But our hero begins to learn that Oz is nothing but a shimmering illusion and all the knives are soon drawn upon him:

Congress savaged him. Wall Street Journal editorials doubted him. His home-town buddies urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches. His wife spoke to him so rarely, she described them as “dead to each other.” He lost sleep, gained weight and saw a close adviser, Don Hammond, suffer a heart attack at his Treasury desk. On May 1, after serving seven months under Presidents Bush and Obama, he resigned. [Link]

Continue reading →

“Children of a Lesser Google”

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Hey, remember when Google’s motto used to be “don’t be evil?” Vaht, you thought they still had it? I did too, but this…might not be evil, but it certainly seems a little unfair:

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Google India had launched a ‘Doodle 4 Google – My India’ contest in August. The Doodle is the logo design you see on the Google homepage. The theme of this competition was ‘My India’. On November 12, Google India announced at Taj Ambassador Hotel that tech hub Gurgaon based 4th standard school kid Puru Pratap has won the competition…a laptop computer for himself, a t-shirt with his doodle and Rs. 1 lakh (approx 2100 US dollars) for his school.

But his counterparts in USA and UK won substantially more. According to Google their US winner “will win a $15,000 college scholarship to be used at the school of their choice, a trip to the Google New York Office, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle. We’ll also award the winner’s school a $25,000 technology grant towards the establishment/improvement of a computer lab.”

So let’s see: Indian winner = laptop + T-shirt + $2100 (for his school) + $0 (for himself)
US winner = laptop + T-shirt + trip to NY + $25,000 (for his school) + $15,000 (for himself)

Let me see…let me do the math…I dunno, maybe you need a special algorithm or something to make these two things equal? Because to my eyes, it looks like the Indian kid is getting royally screwed. It looks like the same contest, run by the same company, is rewarding a far lesser prize to the winner from one country than to the winner from another country.

The writer of the quoted piece goes on to point of various other prizes that are awarded equally to winners from all countries. She concludes:

Are we children of a lesser Google? Or is the Indian market less important? Perhaps Bing has the answer.

Dammit. I like Chrome. Continue reading →

The Family Gold: An open letter to South Asian parents

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Earlier this week I received a phone call from my mom asking me if I had heard of the egregious criminal activity that has caused many South Asian Americans in the DC area (specifically Northern Virginia’s Fairfax and Loudoun counties) to become worried and to take steps to protect their family jewels. My mom, probably typical of most desi moms, is overly sensitive to ANY criminal activity or health hazard (seemingly anywhere in the world) that has ANY chance to impact me…by whatever stretch of imagination. If Ebola breaks out in the Congo then I receive a call from my mom that evening. She just wants to make sure I am not hanging out with friends that have recently returned from the Congo…just to be safe. She is, of course, worried about her jewelry. It has all been safely relocated to a safety deposit box at an undisclosed bank.

When Raman Kumar’s Centreville home was burglarized in late February, he became an early victim in a crime spree that has continued across the county and into Loudoun, spiking last month.

“This is no ordinary burglary,” Kumar told the hundreds of residents, as well as numerous police officers and detectives, gathered at Colin Powell Elementary School in Centreville last Thursday, Oct. 29. He said the burglars who have been targeting the homes of South Asian residents for their gold jewelry were obviously well organized and well equipped with sophisticated equipment and information.

Three similar burglaries had been carried out that day, one in Oak Hill, one in Chantilly and another in South Riding, bringing the total to around 30. Two days earlier, two homes in Lorton had been burglarized, as well as one in Centreville and another in Fair Oaks. As in previous cases, the perpetrators broke in through back doors and windows in the late morning or afternoon and ransacked the master bedrooms, making off with gold jewelry, electronics and other valuables. In cases where homes were armed with security systems, those systems have been defeated. Any fake gold has been left behind…

Police believe South Asians are being targeted because they traditionally pass high-karat gold jewelry heirlooms from one generation to the next, and the price of gold now is especially high. Some victims have reported tens of thousands of dollars in losses. [link]

Since desi gold is on our minds, I would like to take the opportunity to address some fundamental “best practices” advice regarding gold within our community. Gold holds a special significance in desi culture and thus, demands a special discussion. I believe the following discussion will be even more useful if it can generate a conversation with our parents, many who are getting up there in age (hint: forward this post to them and see what they think):

1) Take a digital picture inventory of every valuable piece of gold (or otherwise) jewelry in your possession

You have collected a lot over your lifetime, loaned a lot out, and maybe even lost a lot. Take the time to document everything so you know what you have and can communicate to others what you may have had stolen. Plus, I know some of you will like flipping through an album of all your jewelry just because you can. Don’t be ashamed.

Continue reading →