Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Ninde Achan Aara, Nel?

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Sreesanth Swinging His Bat…. Dhoom Machale?!

It’s my first time, Mutineers, so be gentle. I’m a total Cricket virgin and if you’re mean to me about what is sure to be an amateurish post, I’ll be scarred forever– whether I end up a frigid fan or not is in your hopefully kind and capable hands. 😉

After hearing about Mallu hotness Sreesanth (thanks, DTK), I had to visit ye olde YouTube to find out about this right-arm fast-medium-pace bowler, who is a right-handed tailender. Apparently, excessively lippy South African Andre Nel questioned Sreesanth’s heart/courage/skillz after Sreesanth evaded something called a bouncer. Sreesanth responded by hitting Nel for a six and then performing a dance I’d normally associate with an end zone. Oh, that was just brutal to write. I can’t imagine how many men I’ve just annoyed. 😉

I may not know a damned thing about what is arguably the most popular sport in all of South Asia, but I know the art of trash talk well and if anything could get me to fall in love with this very Brown game, it’s the video I’ve posted above. Set to some probably-famous song I’ve never heard before (“Dhoom Machale”), it’s way more fun than the other YouTube clips which came up when I searched for the new object of my lecherous (he’s eight years younger) affection. Not since I was kicked off our co-ed IM team in grad school for illegal (and may I add, utterly justified and deliciously violent) tackling during a flag-football game have I been so delighted by the immaturity of declaring “in your face!”. Gopu, I heart you. 🙂

UPDATE: The Google Video seems clearer, so I swapped it. Continue reading →

Macaca Music Poll: The Time Is NOW

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You dandies must be too busy shopping for lipstick or fretting about your naughty bits, because the volume of submissions to the Macaca Music Poll has been shamefully low. Don’t get me wrong: the quality has been high, and I’m going to need a couple of days to track down some of the picks and pull together a wrap-up post worthy of the contributions. However, there are a LOT of regulars who have yet to submit entries — yeah, y’all know who you are — and I know some of you lurkers have some cool picks to share as well.

So here it is: Last Call for the poll. Send me a list of up to five songs or albums that did it for you this year. Need inspiration? Here are my choices for the Boston Globe and for WNYC. You’ll also find picks in all categories from my colleagues at both outlets here and here. Email your suggestions here. I’ll post results by the weekend. Peace and humptiness forevah! Continue reading →

SM Memo: Nars “Hindu” is Very Brown

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The mission came my way via Abhi over a month ago, a reader had contacted our comment line with the following:

The high-end cosmetics company NARS has a new lipstick shade called Hindu…I wonder how a shade called Jew or Protestant would fare in the public eye? Is the idea that all Hindus have temptingly red lips? To be fair, there are also shades called Afghan Red and Gipsy. What do you think?

Said Abhi, “This one is ALL you.” Said me, “HELL YES!” I love Nars. If I’m not wearing Chanel makeup, I’m glowing because of the most notoriously named blush of all time. One problem– “Hindu” proved more elusive than I imagined. It was sold-out all over town. The intrigue grew; if it was so desired, I had to keep it under surveillance for the sake of the Mutiny. I finally located a tester of it at Blue Mercury Apothecary (apothecary!) and made my way to my prey.

Part of Nars’ Holiday ’06 collection, “Hindu” had sold so well, it would take a month for me to procure one for the Mutiny. “Nars just didn’t make enough,” my source said, as they prepared the tester for germ-phobic me. I loathe such situations, because I prefer to examine communal cosmetics on the back of my hand. The allegedly-disinfected lipstick was headed right for me. I started to panic, but then I remembered that every Mutiny requires pain and sacrifice.

When she was done with me, I was wearing a very brown lipstick with excellent texture, which reminded of a sheer version of Chanel’s “Very Vamp”. I expected redder tones, not the muted brown which I was studying. I also thought there would be more glitter, since it’s very visible in the tube. The staff praised the end result; I was less convinced by the “Hindu” effect. Maybe for the office, but it was too dull for my scenery-chewing tastes. I was thrilled that it looked so good on South Asian skin, though.

“Would you like to be put on the waiting list?”

I hesitated; normally I would have politely declined, but Abhi had tasked me with more than just scouting “Hindu” out:

My biggest question is can a nice Christian girl such as yourself be labeled a “heathen” if they apply this? If you kiss a nice Mallu boy with “Hindu” lipstick on, what would happen!

In the name of the Mutiny, I gladly put myself on the line to complete this mission; alas, I did not find a suitable partner for such a life-or-death covert operation. Abhi, forgive me. Continue reading →

Thrust into Greatness

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The reason why no ideology has ever created, let alone sustained, the world it envisioned, is that by definition it could not account for unintended consequences. The same is true of more modest ventures. A war meant to be short and sweet turns out anything but. A campaign meant to steamroll the opposition clears the field of all rivals but one, the most dangerous and unexpected. Observing something alters its nature; naming it alters its meaning. If you’ve ever planned anything – a career, a vacation, a party – you know this already.

And so, when things happen – interesting things, significant things, things that surprise us and thus lead us to feel – they result only partly from deliberate action, and as much from the gremlins of serendipity, who can inhabit any of us for any period of time. Thrust into greatness, we signify; the moment passes, the world changes, we fade to obscurity.

salonsidarth.jpgAre you having a macaca moment yet? In 2006, desis were thrust into greatness in the person of S. R. Sidarth. Senator AllenÂ’s view of SidarthÂ’s ethnic happenstance differed so radically from that of a majority of Virginia voters, that the (near-) accident of the brother being there set in motion events leading, it is argued, to the change of power in Congress.

Macaca was about revealed perception. The perception was AllenÂ’s; but the revelation stems from Sidarth. Without Sidarth, the perception would not have been revealed. The tree might have fallen in the forest, but no one would have heard.

This is old news to us; in this community at least, weÂ’ve followed the macaca story from the start and have no disagreement as to its significance. Where we differ is in what we make of it for ourselves, the extent to which we identify with Sidarth or the fate we wish on the word macaca itself.

timecover.jpgOld news, yes. But this weekend Sidarth was made to reappear, once more in his capacity as the embodiment of macaca, as two news outlets produced their round-up of people who mattered in 2006. Salon names Sidarth its Person of the Year. Time’s Person of the Year is You – you, the diffuse and disparate emanators of content, the users who generate that which is user-generated – and Sidarth is one of the Yous the magazine profiles.

ItÂ’s interesting to compare the interpretations that each of these outlets apply to Original Macaca. Salon, the established survivor of first-generation Web journalism, sees in him less the agent of a brave new world of representation than an embodiment of an America undergoing demographic and attitudinal change. Time, a behemoth of a pre-Internet era when The Press told The Public what to know and believe, now celebrates Sidarth as one of a non-organized army of little people upending the plans and certitudes of the great.

Both treatments have in common, however, that ultimately they are not about Sidarth – not the “real” Sidarth, biologically and spiritually unique, but what he seems through various filters. It was the year of You perceived and revealed, by your own doing and by that of others. That trend will continue, as attested by the fact that you read this blog, perhaps comment, perhaps have established an identity here and elsewhere on the Web.

We are learning that representation matters. We manage our identities lest others manage them for us; in a way the two processes are dialectically the same. What remains is spirit: mercurial, contradictory, and if we will it, potentially free. Continue reading →

Who does and doesn’t meat eat?

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I’ve long been fascinated by the demographics of vegetarianism. I’m an omnivore, but one who eats a lot less meat than my peers, so they confuse my insistence that we order a vegetable dish (when eating out family style) with an unwillingness to consume animal flesh.

In the UK, it seems that vegetarians are smarter:

… those who were vegetarian by [age] 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10. [Link]

Although this study is flawed by its overly broad definition of vegetarian:

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian – although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken. [Link]

Unfortunately, they don’t report adjusted scores, so really what they’re talking about here is an unwillingness to eat beef, which makes them … well, like many Hindus I know.

With the definitional caveat, in general, this is what they find about veggies:

Vegetarians were more likely to be female, to be of higher occupational social class and to have higher academic or vocational qualifications than non-vegetarians. [Link]

Researchers find something similar in India, where vegetarians are more likely to be female and of higher social status.

Vegetarianism is declining in India, to the point where vegetarians are now a minority, with only 40% of the population. This is apparently a major shift from the recent past.

The older generation remains more vegetarian than the younger, women more so than men, Brahmins more than other castes, and religious Hindus more than non-religious Hindus, Muslims, or Christians.

This is a seismic cultural shift for India. While India will remain far more veg friendly than the US or UK for a long time to come, I’m wondering about the cultural ramifications that accompany the situation where vegetarianism is associated with a narrow minority. Once upon a time, you could not get meat on the streets of Ahmedabad, now the road by IIM is lined with little 3 wheelers selling chicken.

What happens to Indian society and culture when it undergoes a fundamental shift in its eating habits? How will it change?

Continue reading →

Who’s your daddy? Say it! (corrected)

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The son also rises

Desi families like to provide well for their children. Parents give their kids money, cars, businesses … and now it seems that some even help procure girls for their darling little boys. That’s right – having Salman Rushdie as your father helps you score chicks. While this isn’t a huge surprise (Duh!), I was made a bit queasy by the way the famous family discussed the matter.

First there is Rushdie, fils, talking about his dad:

Zafar Rushdie, 27, often accompanies his father on nights out because the pair are usually swamped by attractive girls keen to impress the literary genius. He says, “Most people who go to a party with their parents try to run away from them. Not me. If I want to meet girls, I just stand near him. “All the beautiful women want to talk to Dad, so I stand close and bask in the sunlight. Beauty loves brains…” [Link]

Then there is Rushdie, pere, engaging in mutual admiration:

“Every time I see a picture of him in the paper, he has four girls around him, so I think he’s not doing badly,” the author tells the paper. “He’s absurdly charming – lethally, disgustingly charming. He has it like a weapon…” [Link]

A weapon, huh? Really, we don’t need to hear about your son’s Louisville Slugger. Just tell the researchers and leave us out of it.

Lastly, step-mom and fourth wife Padma also agrees that Zafar, a mere 9 years younger, is a stud:

… actress Padma Lakshmi, 36, is equally complimentary of Zafar, talking him up as a red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted. [Link]

In addition, Salman says, his son is a “red-hot ladies man who can’t be resisted.” [Link]

I know the family that pimps together stays together, but can’t the Rushdies save the meddling in their Zafar’s sex life until he’s ready to get married, like decent people? Or is this just a further extension of the same principle – they’ll help puttarRushdie find his wife, his girlfriends, and even his short term flings.

Please understand that my reaction isn’t one of pure prudishness – we are firmly pro-groupie here are Sepia Mutiny. We just believe that groupies should be earned, not inherited. Continue reading →

The 2006 Macaca Music Poll

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Sacrificing to a year-end ritual, I’ve been compiling my “best of 2006” music lists for various outlets. It’s a cool exercise as long as you don’t take it too seriously; when you’re in the arts writing business, you have the chance to check out oodles of new releases, and you need to employ filters like genre, or label, or simply your own whimsy, just to sort through the pile let alone pick your favorites. Despite this, I get value from learning what other critics enjoyed, and I do my best to make my own picks useful and interesting, in particular by looking for sounds that folks might have missed, yet are not so obscure as to be un-findable in stores or online.

Still, they say everyone’s a critic, and (to endorse what Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd stated in the comments I quoted here) these days technology and the emergence of online communities makes everyone even more of a critic than before. It’s easy to set up your soapbox, and there’s even a chance someone will hear, maybe even respond. So since we’re all critics, and I know there’s some serious, multi-faceted, all-over-the-place music listening that goes on out there in Sepia-land, I am proud to bring you the MACACA MUSIC POLL.

Here’s how it works. I can’t be bothered to figure out how to code a poll, and besides, I have something much simpler in mind. I would like everyone to tell us five pieces of music that they would recommend to the community. Each piece can be an album or an individual song. All genres are included, and there is no desi criterion. Just as long as it came out in 2006 (or late 2005), if it moved you, grooved you, or soothed you in ’06, tell the world about it.

Email your list of 5 picks to this address. I will stop taking entries in one week, Wednesday, December 20, and I will compile the results and present them in some fun manner in the following days.

To preserve the spirit of the exercise, please don’t enter your list in the comments to this post; email it to me instead. (I will keep all addresses in confidence, of course.) More general conversation is welcome, however, about the directions music went in ’06, the value or otherwise of year-end lists, criticism and its pitfalls, or anything else that comes to mind. C’mon, let’s play! Continue reading →

Brimful Youtubology, the Fatboy Slimification Version

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One of the difficulties in being a non-Christian in a predominantly Christian country is the relentless onslaught of Christmas jingles you hear around this time of the year. The latest culprit in my mindspace is the JCPenney’s ad featuring Bing Crosby’s voice and Fatboy Slim’s beats, which makes for a ridiculously catchy breakbeat version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” (via Tamasha). Earlier, we talked about “Songs for the Sleepless”; this is more like “songs for the hyper-caffeinated.”

The “original” video to the Fatboy Slim song is here, but it’s so bad I actually prefer this Youtube-ified anime remake.

Speaking of Youtube and Fatboy Slim, I was reading a Jon Pareles article about the phenomenon over the weekend, and thinking about the possible desi connections. The paragraph that stood out to me was this one:

In the process, another thing users generate is back talk. Surfing YouTube can be a survey of individual reactions to pop culture: movie and television characters transplanted out of their original plots or synched to improbable songs, pop hits revamped as comedy or attached to new, unauthorized imagery. (Try searching for Justin Timberlake on YouTube to see all the variations, loving and snide, on his single “Sexyback.”) (link)

While Youtube has millions of teenagers doing dance karaoke with varying levels of skill, as far as I can tell the current younger generation of desis hasn’t really taken advantage of it as much as one might expect. Part of the problem, of course, is that there aren’t really very many iconic desi figures to “personalize” (or travesty) to begin with. Continue reading →

Diverse voices

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You know what the world needs more of? It needs more desi boy bands.

We have plenty of desi doctors, lawyers, engineers, I-bankers, actors, astronauts and rappers, but there’s a real deficit in the boy band category. This is why I love the idea of the Montreal based boy band JoSH (that’s a long O, like Joe, not like Joshua). [The band’s slick webpage; their myspace page]

The group is actually only the duo of Q (Qurram Hussain) and Rup (Rupinder Magon) – Q is the one who looks like Lenny Kravitz, and Rup is well, the one in the turban.

This raises an important question – can you have a boy band with less than four members? Don’t you need the cute one, the sensitive one, the goofy one, and the quiet one? I don’t really know how the band is marketed – do they double up attributes? Can one of them be cute and sensitive and the other one be goofy and quiet? I was never a teenage girl, so I don’t know how to answer such esoteric questions.

Musically, they’re also a bit different from a traditional boy band – they’re more of a desi/hip-hop fusion band that a traditional pop-ballad heavy quartet. This makes sense since their fan base is largely in the subcontinent:

While largely unknown in their home country of Canada, JoSH is extremely popular in South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan. Their sophomore album, Kabhi, as well as its title track, remained in both Indian and MTV World Top 20 lists for 26 weeks from October 2004 to January 2005. Additionally, JoSH was awarded MTV India’s 2004 “Immie” award for Best New Non-Film Artist. [Link]

They may be getting their biggest break ever when they open for Nelly Furtado in Bombay New Years Eve as part of a 5 city tour. This is probably an outgrowth of their remix of Furtado’s Powerless that seems to have boosted their profile:

They come from Canada and their bhangra mix of Nelly Furtado’s “Powerless” has made them powerful. Soon after radio’s all over the planet started flooding the airwaves with Josh’s version of “Powerless,” the duo from Montreal started receiving offers from various artistes and labels. [Link]

I’m not crazy about most of their music – I like the idea of an Indo-Pakistani-Canadian boyband more than I like their execution. I like Mahi Ve, a song from their new album, better than some of their other material:

Continue reading →

Read On

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“Actually, Dilip couldnÂ’t make it, he ate too much paaya last night, and his stomachÂ’s upset.” Those were the words preceding my introduction to Shobha Dé this past weekend, at a book-launch for a new author from Karachi, someone named Nadya A.R. (like E. E. Cummings, only the other way around), who has written what promises to be yet another opus to my home-town. This one, since Kamila Shamsie seems to have used up all the other referential titles, is entitled Kolachi Dreams. I havenÂ’t read the book just yet, nor have I been able to find myself arsed enough to look up reviews, but IÂ’m working on the premise that more desi writers is a good thing, so IÂ’m hoping itÂ’ll be a good read. IÂ’m a little annoyed by the elements that went into the publication, but weÂ’ll get to that in a second. Continue reading →