Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

SuperModi

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Since Abhi my colleagues at Sepia Mutiny have apparently stopped doing their earlier hourly updates on what Kal Penn is up to, I feel it is incumbent upon me to remind readers that second-gen actor Kal Penn plays one of Lex Luthor’s henchmen in the new film Superman Returns (aka, the “American version of Krrish“). Reviews have been pretty positive, though there are still some signs that the film may be a load of “Kraptonite” (or, in a nod to Manish, Krraptonite!), but how can that stop me from loyally supporting the ABCDeNiro?

And no, he doesn’t play a vaguely middle-eastern terrorist type. Nor does he speak in a bad Indian accent. In fact, in the final cut of the film, I gather, Kal Penn doesn’t have any speaking lines at all. Also, his character is named “Stanford.” Ah well: if they don’t have you playing the demonic terrorist, they’ll have you whipped as the “model minority.” Sigh.

At least he’s on the right side. From the trailers, this version of Superman seems like one of those movies with a hero so annoyingly earnest you end up rooting for the bad guys to win. Of course, with bad guys as charismatic as Kevin Spacey (or indeed, Kal Penn), that comes pretty easily. Can you think of other examples in this genre? Bad guys so diabolical and cool that you’re practically depressed when they’re finally vanquished at the end? Continue reading →

Paanchdrunk

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Yet another in the everything comes from India (etymology) series. Have you ever noticed how desi college students all congregate around the punch bowl in the corner? It’s not because they’re alcoholics too cheap to buy their own brew and too goody-goody to get a fake ID (well, maybe it is), it’s really because punch comes from India. In fact, it’s not really punch, it’s paanch [Thanks Sameer]:

Originally, the word punch was a loanword from Hindi. The original drink was made from five different ingredients, namely arrack, sugar, lemon, water, and tea. Because of this it was named panch which is the Hindi for five. This name was adopted by the sailors of the British East India Company and brought back to England, from where it was introduced into other European countries. [Link]

In Germany, they call it ‘Punsch‘ and it (of course) includes wine or liquor. And in Scandanavia the meaning has morphed yet further, losing the other ingredients to the point where it is just an arrack based booze. Surprisingly enough, the custom used to be to drink it with (what else?) daal:

The first ready-made punsch was sold in 1845 and initially the custom was to serve it warm, often together with yellow pea soup. [Link]

If the drink “punch” is an Indic loanword, then what about the action “punch”? Shouldn’t that be desi too? After all, it takes five fingers to make a fist in order to punch, and desis tend to throw punches after drinking too much of the same. And of course a “paunch” is what you get from drinking punch. Step aside, Noah Webster! We’re Indian givers and we want our loanwords back!

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An Ode to My Favorite Auntie

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With a wave of your hand, the acquisition of some spare folding tables and the procurement of 15 plastic table cloths, you could turn any room into a dining hall in under two minutes. At Costco, you never over- or under-bought, rather knew the exact number of bags of potato chips, 2-Liter bottles of Coke, containers of Dannon and bags of hard candies to feed a crowd of any size, plus any last-minute, non-RSVPed guests.

Those who didn’t prostrate before the altar of your vast knowledge of crowd control before birthdays, graduation or anniversary parties often paid the price in more ways than one. Functions without your fingerprints were never as good.

You weren’t scared of anyone. You had a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks and when you spoke, everyone listened. I’ve seen you go head-to-head with everyone from mess hall cooks to American wedding planners, janitors to Hindu priests, elected officials to Indian musicians, usually within the same afternoon. You always won. He who dared doubt you often felt your ire and disgust for years on end.

You never forgot the rigatoni. You were a visionary and realized early on that it was the appropriate side to every imaginable combination of Indian cuisine.

You also never forgot the thair chadam… Continue reading →

So Long, Farewell

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Well, my blogging time at Sepia Mutiny has come to an end, and it was both entertaining and challenging. I was first approached by the Bloggers-That-Be at SM after my little rant about the other Viswanathan girl, Kaavya. Soon after the plagiarism scandal of How Opal Mehta Blah B Blah hit, I set up a news alert to figure out if there was a story there. Most of the Kaavya V. news alerts were from Indian newspapers, who seemed to be taking this much harder than the American publishing industry. It has even prompted an intelligent if slightly endless letter from desi author Tanuja Desai Hidier, who criticized the idea there’s only on way to talk about the desi experience. You can read her letter here.

One might ask why Hidier feels the need to comment. My guess is that she feels she doesn’t have any choice. I have just signed with an agent for my latest book, a pop history of wicked women, and she has already made one thing clear to me: I am the “Other Viswanathan” in publishing, not Kaavya. For better or worse, she has made her mark, and the rest of us desi authors–even those without her last name–are following her checkered trail. Continue reading →

Art Imitates Kaavya’s Life

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Since Miss Maya hasn’t done anything blog-worthy lately, I thought I’d torment you with the other Southern belle who gets assloads of Sepia space: Kaavya Viswanathan. Oh, admit it. You totally missed her. I know I did, especially since my plea for temperance in judging her brought me a few love letters with choice sweet nothings like the following:

Your defense of that plaigarist (sic) Kaavya destroys all your credibility with me. I will never take what you say seriously. You think lying and cheating is okay and you call yourself Christian? Maybe you are a plaigarist, too!

For the record, I am neither a plaigarist nor a plagiarist and I usually call myself, “you IDIOT!”. But I digress. Apparently, someone might have been inspired by the would-be author who…was…”inspired” by so many other writers. Could the saga of the other Miss Viswanathan be coming to a YA shelf near you? Via Gawker:

CHILDRENÂ’S: YOUNG ADULT Jamie MichaelsÂ’s KISS MY BOOK, story of a teen writing sensation who gets caught plagiarizing her debut novel, but finds redemption and romance when she escapes to a small town, to Krista Marino at Delacorte, by Michael Bourret at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World). [link]

Gawker didn’t explicitly state where that blurb was from, but I’m guessing that we’d find it on Publishers Marketplace if we could get in there. Nick Denton’s flagship blog snarks on:

Surely DreamWorks is considering optioning this, if only to get back at Viswanathan for screwing them over the first time. No studio exec is above exacting revenge on a teenager. Now, does anyone know who reps that Bend It Like Beckham girl? [link]

I know, there’s only one desi actress in Hollywood (and we had to go across the pond to find her), but maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t have to play EVERY brown female role? Surely it might be possible to import another hottie from the land of Pickled Politics and give pretty Parminder a break? Casting directors might have to– the current E.R. star isn’t known for her sneer. Continue reading →

No More Tears Sister

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Begining on Tuesday night (but staggered depending upon where you live) on PBS, the series P.O.V. will be featuring a must-watch episode titled “No More Tears Sister: Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal.” This one’s a no brainer. You got to Tivo it at least.

If love is the first inspiration of a social revolutionary, as has sometimes been said, no one better exemplified that idea than Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Love for her people and her newly independent nation, and empathy for the oppressed of Sri Lanka — including women and the poor — led her to risk her middle-class life to join the struggle for equality and justice for all. Love led her to marry across ethnic and class lines. In the face of a brutal government crackdown on her Tamil people, love led her to help the guerrilla Tamil Tigers, the only force seemingly able to defend the people. When she realized the Tigers were more a murderous gang than a revolutionary force, love led her to break with them, publicly and dangerously. Love then led her from a fulfilling professional life in exile back to her hometown of Jaffna and to civil war, during which her human rights advocacy made her a target for everyone with a gun. She was killed on September 21, 1989 at the age of 35. [Link]

You can view a trailer of the episode on the website. I recommend switching it to Quicktime mode as it seems to stream better.

There are a host of interviews on the site including one with the filmmaker, Helene Klodawsky:

I’m very interested in subjects that we don’t hear about often in the normal press. So I was very, very interested in ethnic nationalist war from the point of view of women. We’re always hearing about wars between different factions, different ethnic groups, but rarely do we hear about those wars from the point of view of women. And I was interested in Sri Lanka — it’s one of these wars that have gone on forever and nobody understands it. I knew that Sri Lanka was entering a peace process, so I was curious to see how women would be engaged in that peace process.

Once I started looking at the conflict, someone said, if you really want to understand Sri Lanka and ethnic war, you must look at the work of the University Teachers for Human Rights. [Link]

After you watch this episode come back and leave comments here. I think it could be an interesting discussion. Check your local listings here.

See related posts: All-American girls in Calcutta

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Today’s Carnegies? [Was “More money for karmaceuticals”]

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Today’s business news had me thinking of two things: Andrew Carnegie and whether there are any significant brown philanthropists.

Carnegie was a self-made man who went from rags to riches, creating a steel empire which made him the wealthiest hombre alive. Three men in today’s paper might be seen as present day Carnegies — Laxmi Mittal, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — the three richest men around. Laxmi Mittal is the most literal aspirant to the title since Arcelor-Mittal will soon be the largest steel company in the world. However, the other two capture what is to me Carnegie’s best attribute, his philanthropy.

Just as Carnegie gave away 90% of his fortune [he built a university, several thousand libraries around the world, and did various other good works], Warren Buffet announced that he will be giving away 85% of his wealth with most of it going to more than double the endowment of the Gates Foundation, now the largest charitable foundation in history.

Are rich brown people simply more selfish than rich white ones?Compare Buffet and Gates to Mittal, the next richest man in the world. Mittal is famous for his personal spending. He owns the world’s most expensive house, which he purchased for $128 million. He recently spent more than $55 million dollars on his daughter’s wedding. But his charitable giving rarely (never?) makes the news, and is not in the same league as either his personal consumption or the donations of his “peers”.

The question is, why not? Mittal competes on every level with his white counterparts except that of his charitable giving. Is this a desi thing? Are brown philanthropists as generous as white ones? Who are the major brown philanthropists anyway?

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Postcards from the 2006 Artwallah Festival

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I spent the entire day yesterday at the Artwallah Festival in Los Angeles. Since many of you couldn’t be out here for the festival I thought I would do my part to relate the experience through some pictures that I took. I bought a new camera recently so forgive me for going overboard with the colors. 🙂

Micro Pixie soothes the crowd with her ambient sound.

Adnan does his thing while Micro Pixie does hers.

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Traditional Indian Architecture: Vicarious Traveling via Flickr

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While browsing the deeply-discounted “remaindered” aisles at my local Barnes & Noble, I came across Satish Grover’s Masterpieces of Traditional Architecture. It’s a coffee-table book with beautiful photographs and appreciative descriptions of fourteen of India’s ancient and medieval architectural masterpieces.

In his introduction, Grover points out that the ancient sites in India are all religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Muslim), not because India was traditionally especially devout. In fact, only the religious structures were carved in stone, so they are the only edifices to survive. The secular architecture of ancient India might have been pretty wonderful too, but those brick and timber buildings have all vanished.

Since I can’t do any real traveling this summer because of work, I thought I would link to images on the web of the various monuments in Grover’s book as a kind of vicarious travelogue. A lot of people have tagged these sites in their Flickr photos, though for slightly more obscure places like the Karle Caves you have to search on the open internet to see what comes up. Continue reading →

A brown Justice League?

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All of a sudden the desi comic book scene seems to be blowing up. It has led me to pose the timely question, “is the world ready for a brown Justice League?”

Let’s meet some of the candidates. First we have Sonic. No, not the hedgehog. This one is all woman as you can see. Sonic is featured in the new comic book series titled Guardian Heroes by Kevin Grevioux, who was one of the folks behind the movie Underworld.

There are three questions that immediately came to mind:

1) Does this woman workout at Manish’s gym in Mumbai?
2) What are the tunes she be spinning from those long fingered hands?
3) Does the oversized bindi have any special powers associated with it?

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