Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Pavlov Auntie

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Clearly, some of you were good little boys and girls in your youth. That means that you are conditioned to associate the words “uncle”/ “auntie” and the vernacular with respect. You can’t help it. If this was just Plain Jane, the 50 year old down the street, you might be polite and pleasant, but if somebody who calls herself Bunty Auntie starts speaking to you in your mother tongue, you snap to like a pointer.

This account comes from Sleepy’s blog “Watching the Sun” but I’ll bet you have your own auntie experiences:

One morning, while back, it was 4am and I had been asleep for fifteen minutes. I was woken up by a phone call and I was a little, I don’t know, pissed off?

Me: (barely making sense through all that incredibly righteous indignation) Hello?!
Her: Hello Beta, this is Shabnam aunty!

I usually tend to wake up very quickly when someone calls herself aunty and speaks in Hindi/Punjabi/any language my twisted little psyche associates with authority. Seriously, wouldn’t you? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out whether I knew Shabnam aunty, but I wasn’t too surprised, my mom often makes friends who call me at random times to you know, chat. [Link]

Now me, I would have just hung up. Uncle, Auntie, I don’t care. Don’t call me at 4AM unless you’re blood of some sort, a close personal friend, or an early morning booty call [the last was added after Jeet reminded me of such things ]. But an auntie I’ve never heard of? Clearly, Sleepy is made up of sugar and spice and everything nice and I am not because she continued the conversation:

Me: Um Hi?
Her: How are you Beta?
Me: Good aunty, how are you?
Her: I’m fine beta, give the phone to mummy now.
Me: ????????? Um, aunty, mom’s at home, not here.
Her: hahahahhahahah, so cute.
Me: (o.k., seriously, wtf?! and I start talking in Hindi as well, cuz you know, maybe she’ll believe me) She’s at home, do you want her number?
Her: Enough now beta, give the phone to mummy. (All stern like, velvet glove/iron fist stuff, which ya know, doesn’t sit well with me, ever)
Me: Mummy isn’t here.
Her: Are you making fun of Shabnam Aunty Beta? That’s not very nice. (o.k., this is what she said, Beta, aap Shabnam aunty ka mazaak uda rahein hain? Bilkul theek baat nahin hai. It was like she was flirting with me )

So yeah, we went for a few more rounds and then I hung up. ON. AN. AUNTY. [Link]

The next morning, of course, Sleepy felt remorseful:

I don’t know, probably shouldn’t have hung up on her because what likely happened is that she called the right number and chewed out right number’s children for being cheeky, obnoxious heathens. And then had the kid’s mom chew them out, and the dad, and the grandma etc. etc. And then they probably got chewed out for bringing shame on the family cuz Shabnam aunty’s very fond of gossip… [Link]

Personally, I don’t get it. Maybe it was my particular family upbringing, maybe it’s because I’m a boy, maybe it’s because I’m just too much of a coconut. I understand what Sleepy is saying, and while I think of myself as being reasonably nice, the title “uncle” or “auntie” just doesn’t cut any ice with me. Will I be going to a hell that I don’t believe in, populated solely by aunties bent on making me miserable? How many of you salivate automatically when this particular bell rings?

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Hitting the Goldspot

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For about the past year I have been enjoying the sounds of the L.A. based band Goldspot. In 2005 NPR classified their release as one of “The Best CDs You Didn’t Hear This Year.” Here in Los Angeles they actually get radio play fairly often on KCRW (unrepentant and pretentious music-snob that I am, KCRW and KEXP are the only radio stations in America that I will allow my ears to listen to). As long time SM readers know, I don’t do reviews. I will however, post about music that I dig. Here is what the L.A. Weekly had to say about them:

“The stars aligned for Goldspot recently — after years of tilling the fringes of L.A.’s play-to-your-friends club scene — with the release of their elegantly singable debut album, Tally of the Yes Men…Gorgeously oblivious to fads and fashion, Goldspot have woven their Cure/R.E.M./Smiths patchwork with threads of exotic melody lingering from main-man Siddhartha’s [Khosla] Indian upbringing. Onstage they rightly bask in the strength of their material, and Siddhartha’s a willing focal point, complete with love-it-or-hate-it affected-eccentric demeanor. And note to bands everywhere: Goldspot reign in the instrumental volume, allowing Siddhartha to examine every nuance of his Buckley/Orbison timbre.”

-LA Weekly (Paul Rogers)

From their Myspace page:

Imagine Paul Simon heading to Mumbai to record his next record and listening to the Cure on the flight and you’re getting close.

Siddhartha (founder, lead singer / songwriter of Goldspot) is quick to pay tribute to his early influences: “I grew up listening to whatever my parents had in their cassette decks – Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh – these were great Indian playback singers from the 1940’s and 50’s. The melodies were brilliant. And then one day when I was 14, I figured out that if you flipped the switch on the stereo from ‘tape’ to ‘radio’ you could hear music with English words. That’s when I heard R.E.M.’s Green, and it was my first introduction to Western music…” [Link]

Here is the video for the catchy Time Bomb:

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My Super Power: Invisibility

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About 10 minutes ago, one of my co-workers strolled in with an impressive Styrofoam container, filled with something pungent.

“Hey…is that Moby Dick?“, another asked. Seven of us are on this team; we share a decently sized office which is cube-free and thus collaboration-ready.

“Nah, it’s curry.” Â…annnnd my ears are pricked.

“Oh, really? From where?”

“Lunch buffet…place across the street.”

At this point, my eyes slightly bulge. He’s referring to a place I went to once, an establishment which left such an awful taste in my mouth that not only did I hate my lunch, I couldn’t even enjoy complaining about it afterwards, because my then-BF scoffed, “What were you thinking? Food from restaurants named after mausoleums NEVER tastes good. Don’t you know that only gora eat there?”

“Man, I love curry. Wish I had gone there instead of Cosi.”

“Yeah, it’s great.”

At this point, I’m engulfed by weirdness. I’ve mentioned to them in the past that the restaurant in question is blech-inducing. Hmm. Did they not believe me? Wait–is there some issue with my brown credibility? I trust my Lebanese friends when they advise me about which hummus sucks like a Dyson, what gives? I shake my head to clear it, but the discordance is rotting my brain.

The room spins a bit; did I hallucinate that entire conversation with them last week? The one in which we discussed the very difference between these two eateries? No. We totally had that talk. They know I vouched for Heritage India, which is a whopping two doors away from the hole from whence this styrofoam came. I start to feel a bizarre dissonance and I calmly attempt to explore it. Perhaps IÂ’m viewing this improperly. Despite my slight discomfort, maybe we’ve come a long way, baby, if I’m not automatically looked at every time someone utters the word “curry”. Yet oddly, I’m not thrilled. I know. Impossible to please.

This reminds me of Nike’s “Vamp like an Egyptian“-shtick. Is half-assed brown better than no brown at all? I vote “no”. Still, why do I care so much? Who appointed me Ambassador to Brownland? I watch co-worker number two dig in and I almost cringe, I canÂ’t get over my sororal proclivities, my innate bossiness. If he likes to eat sub-par desi food, why should I give a shit? I have work to do, which I attempt to lose myself in, but then… Continue reading →

A suitable boy or girl

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Although Vikram Seth has been out of the closet as bisexual for some time now, I had not been aware of his sexual orientation until he gave a lengthy interview to Outlook India on the subject. His more visible profile on the topic of his sexuality is related to his public support for the anti-Section 377 movement, the movement for the decriminalization of homosexuality in India.

The interview is fascinating, both in terms of what it reveals about Vikram Seth and in terms of what it reveals about India. My favorite part involves the interviewer grappling with the very idea of bisexuality.

I’m not sure I quite understand what bisexual means?

What do you mean you don’t understand? Supposing I have a physical attraction at some time or in a certain place to a particular woman, and another time to a particular man …I suppose if you don’t like the word, you could say I am gay and straight.

But if you can be straight, and life is so difficult as a gay, isn’t it simpler to just be straight?

Of course not. You have your feelings. You can’t just suppress or contort your feelings, either your emotional or sexual feelings. And why on earth should you, just to appease someone else’s unthought-through prejudices. [Link]

Ah yes, such a desi question. But beta, if you are attracted to vomen, then vhy do you need to be the gay? She follows that little gem up by asking “This is something that people often snigger about: has boarding school anything to do with you being gay?” which was the icing on the cliche cake.

While I cringed to read her asking these questions, I was still glad she did. Even if she knows better, I imagine these are questions that your average person on the street is thinking of, so it’s far better to give Seth a chance to respond than to leave them unsaid. Continue reading →

Is it time to break fast yet?

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Saturday marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, a month of daytime fasting for Muslims around the world. From sunrise to sunset Muslims abstain from eating or drinking, including chewing gum or cigarettes. It’s a month of self-control and self-reflection as well as a month of ‘being extra nice’ and staying away from all things haraam. But the nicest thing I remember from the month of Ramadan, is of course, the food.

It’s customary to break the fast together at sundown with a meal called iftaar. Tables are laden with dates, fruits, nuts; the hosts prepare their most elaborate dishes, such as biryani, homemade couscous or a leg of lamb…

My mother would vie to be one of the first to host the Saturday iftaar. She would say that there is great blessing in feeding a person who is fasting. She would toil singlehandedly in our kitchen for days to prepare a meal that would feed at least 100 people. For women like my mother, an immigrant from India, a potluck was unthinkable, counter to everything she had been taught about hospitality.

Most of the people from our center were from Hyderabad, India, and the weekly meals were remarkably similar. First, we would break our fast with appetizers: samosas, channa daal, dahi bades, fruit chaat, rosewater milk, and of course the requisite date (with pits). After the sunset prayer and with a sated stomach, we would dive into the biryani, curries and kebabs. We’d top off our meal with kheer, a rice pudding-like dish, and chai.[link]

Growing up in my parents house we had a similar spread with an additional spattering of pakoras, muri, juices, and fried eggplant. When we lived in Saudi Arabia, a country of scheduled nap times and stores open from 6pm to 4am during Ramadan, the food spread was even more spectacular at iftaar time — the small shacks would fill the streets with aromas of fresh bread, sharmas and other savories. But now, since living on my own, making an iftar feast for myself always seemed rather pointless. Not to mention that I can’t really cook. Iftar this week has been dates, water, and whatever cereal is in the cupboard.

Last night while grumpily eating my cereal, I vowed to break fast with at least one ‘traditional’ item for the rest of Ramadan — I have even toyed with the idea of having an iftaar potluck for my friends. Luckily there are plenty of websites out there to help me out with recipes: Iranian Iftar, Arab Iftar, and of course, Desi Iftar. Drooling yet? I am and I’m heading to the kitchen with these recipes in hand for tonight’s iftar. To all that are fasting, Ramadan Mubarak!

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The Love Goat

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Imagine, if you will, that the following fictional conversation took place between myself (in my best Jon Lovitz voice) and a girl named “Preeti:”

Abhi: Hey Preeti.

Preeti: Whad up?

Abhi: You know we’ve been together for two whole months now. I just wanted you to know that I’m really excited about us. I think we make a good couple. You complete me. I think we are helping each other grow, both together and as individuals.

Preeti: Uh huh. That’s sweet.

Abhi: Well, since it is our two-month anniversary I thought I would get you something special.

Preeti: Cool, did you get me a brown Zune?

Abhi: No darling. Check this out though. I just had a star named after you. I wanted you to know that my love for you will shine brightly forever.

Preeti: Forever?

Abhi: Foreva-eva. Just think! Every time you look up there in the sky at the star formerly known as ZX56C92 you will think about how much I burn for you!

Okay, has anyone vomited yet? I am willing to bet that at least one reader out there has had a star named after them or named a star after someone. Admit it! We’ve all done things we are ashamed of. This is definitely not how I’d go about declaring my feelings for someone. Then again, I’m not sure I have ever developed a really good method for showing someone I care. The fictional conversation above leads me to a real conversation that took place over this past weekend.

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Burnt Cork and Grease Paint

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bamboozled.jpegThere’s a powerful scene in “Bamboozled,” Spike Lee’s most difficult and underappreciated movie, in which the street-actor characters played by Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson, having been recruited into a scheme that involves staging a deliberately outrageous, racist pilot for a TV show, find themselves in the dressing room applying blackface. The camera lingers as the cork burns and the grease paint is prepared, and pulls back to show us the characters as they see themselves in the mirror, watching their natural brown hues turn to a shiny, oily black.

Blackface was both insult and injury. Used by white actors, it offered literal cover for the most offensive caricature; used by black actors, it represented a negation of oneself that was demanded to earn a living as a performer, and worse, the prerequisite of dehumanization in order to represent those portrayed as one’s own community, one’s own self. More than any law or repressive policy, it sent the message that black people were simply not human.

kate_1.jpgOver the weekend, I was shown a tube of grease paint of a make used back in the blackface heyday. A small, banal object, yet one invested with so much and so troubling a meaning. Well it turns out that just a couple of days earlier, the British daily The Independent ran this front-page image in honor of its “Africa issue” with half of the day’s revenues to help fight AIDS on the continent. The depiction is of Kate Moss, the decidedly non-black British fashion model and alleged onetime cocaine/heroin fiend, not only blackened but Blackened — bigger lips, thicker brows, fleshier cheeks. “NOT A FASHION STATEMENT,” the headline blares, while an inset on the sidebar promises a poster of the image inside.

Here’s a British term: BOLLOCKS! That’s also the view of Sunny from Asians in Media and Pickled Politics, our sister-from-another-mother site from across the pond, who puts it succinctly:

Could they not find a black model to represent Africa?

A particularly typical example of liberal guilt “we-feel-sorry-for-you” racism. You see they would have liked to to put a black model on the front but she just would not have sold as many copies. So they used a druggie.

It would have been better for the Indy to not even bother.

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That’s NOT How You Do The “Head Thing”

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never do that again please.JPG Dear Nidhi M.,

Thank you very much for sending Sepia Mutiny a story idea via our tipline three hours ago. It was so kind of you to think of us as you went about your day.

Since you have demonstrated your generosity already, I feel emboldened enough to wonder if you’d be willing to go a bit further in showing your devotion to this mutinous cause. Do you bleed Sepia? If so, would you graciously consider donating one of your eyes to me? I lost mine when I clawed them out, after watching the link you helpfully enclosed with the following succinct statement:

Nike teaming up with 24 hour fitness mixing and mucking up classical indian dances with bollywood and strange robotic aerobic moves.

Mein Gott, that’s almost poetic. You were right. And now, I am in so much pain because of it. I’d gouge away at the intern’s face, but she took one look at me and ran screaming to Rajni the lemur’s room. At least she didn’t have to watch Jamie King train three mostly wooden dancers in his “Rockstar workout” of “far-East funk”. Nor did she have to hear his priceless wisdom, which I feel I must contradict fervently after watching this entire fiasco:

There are no rules. If you’re feeling the music, you can’t go wrong.

TRUST me. You can indeed go wrong. Especially when you employ that uber-abused cliche which has appeared on browndating dot com so many times, my friends have turned it in to part of a drinking game (“OMG, he prefaced it with ‘good blend of’…DOUBLE SHOT!”).

Of course, I am referring to that bi-cultural, directional claptrap which automatically disqualified all otherwise-promising candidates from suitable debauchery; Mr. King’s spin on it didn’t prevent the gagging, not after what I saw. “East meets West on the dance floor”? Come to any random desi party and you can abuse “South” as well, i.e. “when East meets West on the dance floor, two rabidly horny underage hormones often move South in order to simulate an act which MummyPapa would spank them unconscious for, for even pondering”. Anyway. When this man who has choreographed Madge exhorts us to “just get out there and show your Bollywood style!”, I don’t think he realizes what fresh hell he is inviting the world to suffer through by doing so.

Chick Pea? Are you out there? Have you done your surgical rotation yet??? That faint, scratchy squawking you hear is Abhi, frantically paging you to the bunker’s painfully rustic OR. Go, scrub your hands already! My anesthesiologist Dr. Walker is already prepping me for surgery. As for the rest of you, just know this and remember it well– when you dance like that, you make the baby Jesus cry. Worse than that, you also piss off our Desidancer.

Blindly yours,

A N N A

:+:

(more pictures after the jump, click to enlarge them…if you dare) Continue reading →

Jagshemash!

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Borat_happy_time.jpgSo maybe this is a stretch, but surely those who hold that Vedic civilization stems from nomadic people from Central Asia will accept that we desis therefore have a vestigial family tie with Borat, the absurd, allegedly Kazakh TV reporter who’s a creation of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen. As you may know, Borat’s movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, opens in a few weeks, after a rapturous welcome at the Toronto Film Festival and at various sneak previews.

The Borat character is quite brilliant, as you can see on any of the video clips here. Of course, if you were Kazakh you might not feel the same way. Unfortunately, Borat had to come from somewhere, and it seems that Kazakhstan drew the short straw. I feel bad for the Kazakhs; Borat tests their patience and sense of humor, and now, with the movie about to open in the US and Europe, the Kazakh government is highly agitated about the prospect that Borat will become their country’s global image. Here’s the spokesman of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry:

“We understand that Borat is a kind of satire, but it is just a pity that Mr Cohen chose Kazakhstan as the origin of his hero,” Mr Ashykbayev told The Times. “As far as I know, he has never been to Kazakhstan, although there have been efforts on the part of some people here to invite him so that he can see what our country is really like.” …

Mr Ashykbayev said that there were no plans to ban Borat from Kazakhstan. But he added: “I hope the companies responsible for screening this movie will show some responsibility and not show it.

“It is quite insulting to the people of Kazakhstan and it may create some accusations from the public against the Government for letting such things come to our country.”

That’s from an article today in The Times, which reports that the Kazakh government is bankrolling a film of its own, Nomad: Continue reading →

The original Indian American lobby

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We’ve had a few posts in the past on the growing influence of the Indian American Lobby (see 1,2,3), particularly with regards to the U.S./India nuclear deal. However, a new book set for release stateside next month takes us old school. Long before Indian Americans were lobbying for a nuclear deal with India they were lobbying for the basics, such as civil rights here and freedom for India. Indolink.com has a very informative review:

“Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies: the India lobby in the United States, 1900-1946” is the title of a new book, authored by veteran South Asian scholar Dr Harold Gould, of the University of Virginia, and scheduled for release later this month by Sage Publications.

The subtitle suggests that it deals with the pioneers who confronted racism and opened America to South Asians, reflecting, as Joan Jensen informs us in her earlier classic study ‘Passage from India,’ “The story of how Indian immigrant pioneers settled in a hostile land and struggled to enjoy rights equal to those of Euro-Americans.”

That’s certainly a part of the historical confrontation between desis and non-desis in North America. It should be remembered that this was a time when the process of becoming an American citizen was one from which Indians were excluded through an increasingly complex maze of laws and regulations. Indeed, Indians were the only class of people whose citizenship was revoked because they did not neatly fit into the then commonly accepted racial categories of Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro.

This was also a time when the chief of the bureau of naturalization notified all United States attorneys to oppose actively the granting of naturalization to “Hindoos or East Indians” and to instruct clerks of courts in their districts to refuse to accept declarations of intention or to file petitions for naturalization. Attorneys were also asked to file motions for orders to cancel declarations of intention already filed by Indians.

That’s why, in 1907, when Bengali student Taraknath Das was refused an application for citizenship in San Francisco, he wrote to the attorney general: “May I ask you if the Hindus who belong to the Caucasian stock of the Human race have no legal right to become citizens of the United States, under what special law the Japanese who belong to a different stock are allowed to declare their intention to become citizens of the United States.” [Link]

By that last paragraph I can see that solidarity with other Asian Americans definitely wasn’t in vogue at the time. According to review, the book takes a very close look at the efforts made throughout North America to drum up support against the British occupation in India:

Most of the India associations had high aims and objectives. For instance, the Hindustanee association of United States, founded in Chicago in 1913, stated its aims as follows: “To further the educational interests of the Indian students, to gather or disseminate all kinds of educational information, to seek help and cooperation from people at home and in the country.” As I.M.Muthanna observes in his book ‘People of India in North America,’ “Though outwardly it posed as a cultural organization, the real aim of this association was to preach sedition against the British.”

The ‘Hindu’ Associations organized in the U.S. had the following objectives: ‘Receipt of vernacular papers from India in order to keep Hindus fully informed of the events in their country, importation of youths from India to America for their education and for preparing them for developing their nationalist outlook, and to hold weekly meetings and discus politics.’

Apart from the Ghadar weekly, some of the pamphlets that were widely circulated include New Echo, Gadar di Goonj, Gadar di Karak, Gadhar Sandesh etc. The editor Ram Chandra wrote: “The ghadar conveys the message of rebellion to the nation once a week. It is brave, outspoken, unbridled, soft-footed, and given to the use of strong language. It is a lightning, a storm and a flame of fire ..we are the harbinger of freedom…” [Link]

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