Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Pore Some Thekalikya On Me

Posted on by

ticon.jpg

I may no longer have pink hair and my square-toe docs are 3,000 miles away, but I like to think that being punk requires more than such outward signals. I’m nowhere near as in to anarchy as I once was, but I still totally love the idea of DIY everything. In honor of that hallowed part of punk ideology, I present to you the following blurb which features advice from some desi beauty expert whom I’ve never heard of…I ganked it from the May 2006 issue of Jane, which I’m trying desperately to stay fond of, even though it is suddenly for 20-something women. WTF?

Oh, Sassy…how you are missed. You are the only reason I still subscribe to the monthly which is supposedly your phoenix.

ppicktom.jpg

DIY pore shrinkage

Here’s an easy way to minimize the appearance of enlarged pores courtesy of Anjali, who was formerly the Martha Stew of Indian daytime TV and now is head of product development at Shobha salon in NY.
Using a blender, puree one medium unripe tomato (the greener the better…) with one teaspoon of honey– this will mix the astringent power of the fruit w/the natural moisturizers in the honey. Apply the pulp to a freshly washed face, leave it on for 20 minutes, then rinse.
And if your problems go beyond skin issues, toss the remaining puree into a shaker, add some salt, a little vodka and a lot of ice. Shake, pour, drink. – Celia

Um, no, I haven’t tried it. But I was the guinea piglet for L’oreal’s latest mascara so I think I should get a pass on this little experiment. If YOU are brave enough to smear extra sweet salsa on your punim, do let us know if this results in less holes in your face, thanks . Continue reading →

Two Genres Birthing a Third

Posted on by

Awhile back, almost a year actually, I first wrote about the reggaeton track Mirame, featuring South Asian beats, Reggaeton superstar Daddy Yankee, relative newcomer Deevani, and the production of Luny Tunes. In the time since that Post, and this one by Manish, Reggaeton has gone the way of Bhangra in mainstream hip-hop, perhaps even a bit further (how many Bhangra articles reached 7 pages in the ny times arts section?) and is headed either towards the path of continued success in the mainstream, or as Bhangra has, to remain popular for the most part only amongst its orginal ethnic fan base.

For those of us that try to follow some of the trends in desi hip-hop, it’s clear that now more than ever (it took awhile, didn’t it?) that desi remixers are coming out with tunes that reflect the current reggaeton vibe that has in the last couple of years eclipsed mainstream American hip-hop. Desi DJs such as New York’s Lil Jay (hear his Reggaeton remix of Bikram Singh’s Kawan here) and Scotland duo Tigerstyle (hear their remix of Mirala Bien featuring Labh Janjua here) along with others have been incorporating popular styles into their remixes for years, but the incorporation of reggaeton with Bhangra, or Bhangraton as the name is slowly catching on, just seems to co-exist with a certain ease that I can’t seem to hear when Redman raps over an Asha Bhosle hook. With Bhangraton there seems to be a natural synergy in both the rhythmic and vocal stylings. And so it’s not too odd to think that something more, perhaps something bigger could come of a formal connection between some Bhangra and Reggaeton producers.

Continue reading →

Indian Painting in San Francisco: Anjolie Ela Menon

Posted on by

anjolie ela menon.jpg A solo exhibit by Indian Painter Anjolie Ela Menon is up at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Artdaily reports. Menon is a Delhi-based painter of mixed American and Indian heritage. She was born in 1940 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris as well as at the J.J. School of Art in Bombay (which she did not like!). Menon has had an active and successful career, winning many awards, including India’s prestigious Padma Shri.

In the exhibit are ten major paintings as well as a large a triptych called “Yatra,” which you can see in small form here. See if you can rectify the painting itself with the explanation offered in Artdaily:

This triptych depicts various figures that can be identified as participants in a particularly well-known north Indian Hindu pilgrimage, or yatra. MenonÂ’s interest in these pilgrims stems from both a sense of admiration and from her view of their devotional act as an unbroken bridge linking IndiaÂ’s ancient past with its rapidly modernizing present. (link)

(Incidentally, the image on the right is a portrait of Menon I found on the Flickr site of a brilliant photographer calling herself “50mm.” Check out the rest of 50mm’s amazing photos here.) Continue reading →

Posted in Art

The saga continues in Lanka

Posted on by

Things in present day Sri Lanka have been taking a depressing turn of late:

At least 150 people have fled the village of Allaipiddy in the northern Sri Lankan peninsula of Jaffna.

It follows last weekend’s murder of 13 Tamil civilians. The navy has been accused of the killings – they deny it.

Police and international truce monitors have both launched investigations into the incident.

The killings came only two days after Tamil Tiger rebels launched a suicide assault on a naval convoy in which 18 sailors died. [Link]

To take your minds off of the grim reality of the present I feel that I must point you to animator and SM commenter Nina Paley’s website. She has just released the newest segment of the her multi-part saga, Sita Sings the Blues. It is titled “Battle of Lanka.”

A pivotal scene from “Battle of Lanka”

Battle of Lanka was made about a year ago, and is chapter 4 in Sita Sings the Blues, after Hanuman Finds Sita and before Trial By Fire. In this episode, Rama, Hanuman, and the monkey armies cross the sea to Lanka to conquer Ravana and the rakshasas, and rescue the captive Sita. Assisting me was Jake Friedman, the only animation apprentice I’ve ever had. Jake wanted to learn Flash and had excellent animation chops and a good eye, so he came to Brooklyn almost every day for a month. Jake animated much of the monkey-on-demon violence: monkey swinging axe, monkey throwing axe, monkey bashing demon with club, monkey kicking demon, etc. A panorama of Jake’s animation occurs at 1:28, in which I took pretty much everything he’d animated on the project and composited it into a single scene. It’s worth multiple viewings, to catch all his lovingly considered variations. Thanks Jake… [Link]

Continue reading →

Greetings and Salutations

Posted on by

Well, thanks to everyone for the lovely welcome, I’m very happy to be here–if a little nervous about suddenly bloggint to a large audience. My blog the lawyerwriter seems to generate a few hundred hits a day, which pretty much sums up my known friends, enemies, family and ex-boyfriends. From what I can tell, Sepia Mutiny gets about 16,000 hits a day. So this is a little like having a spotlight thrown on you while you’re singing in the bathub. You’re glad for the attention, of course, but you really wish you’d had a few more lessons to prepare yourself for the sudden publicity. Continue reading →

SAWCC Conference Highlights and Links (Updated with pictures)

Posted on by

Amitav Ghosh

The SAWCC conference that Anna mentioned last week ended up being a lot of fun. One thing that really stands out at a conference like this is the way the South Asian writers and artists in the U.S. across a number of different media are using the internet. So instead of writing a gossip-columnish summary, for this post I’ve collected links to sites by people who were on panels, or who were involved in the conference in some way.

First off, photos! Preston Merchant is, we established, definitely no relation to Ismail Merchant, but he did take lots of beautiful pictures of the conference here. He’s also working on a book of photography of the South Asian diaspora.

Amba, who I don’t think I’ve met in person, blogged about Friday night’s event with Amitav Ghosh and Vijay Seshadri (Sara Suleri Goodyear couldn’t make it); it’s a pretty detailed and accurate description of the conversation. Also check out Mitali Perkins’ report here. The highlight might be this sentence: “And in ten years, Pooja Makhijani and Anna John of Sepia Mutiny will both be famous.” Nice prediction! (Try: sooner.) Incidentally, Mitali has written a couple of young adult novels that look like they might be fun: The Not-So Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen just came out last year on Little, Brown & Co.

On the young adult novel tip, I was also quite impressed by the excerpt Marina Budhos read from her new book Ask Me No Questions. Given the fluffiness of Opal Mehta (and most of the books KV plagiarized from), it’s refreshing to see a work of young adult fiction that makes a serious political point about the experience of South Asian immigrants in the U.S. This novel addresses the ‘dark’ turn for civil liberties since 9/11, and is partly based on Budhos’ own firsthand experience talking to undocumented (or “overstayed”) Bangladeshis in the U.S. (Manish profiled Marina Budhos here)

Continue reading →

The Pleasure, The Privilege Is Mine

Posted on by

After ManishÂ’s departure, the bunker basement has been full of weeping, moaning, mewling sounds. A pouting face appears around every corner as inhabitants go through their stages of loss. The monkeys, they loved him so.

Rajni, my roommate, has turned into an insomniac. Baboon Scotty smashes one bottle of Jager an hour against the common room wall. Yazad, the Mountain Gorilla, shaved off all his fur and is running around naked and morose after declaring that hair is the sole cause of all strife. Rochelle, the Orangutan who used to leave anonymous love notes in ManishÂ’s mail box, read something about marriage in the comments and is now wandering the halls with a broken keyboard, yelling, “IÂ’ll CUT that wench!” Bonobos Rohan and Junaid finished two bottles of kaju feni and are starting to reek like rotting garbage. Kinjal, a wee Spider Monkey, is lying face down on my hammock, simply butchering “Bucky Done Gone” in her screechy voice, on repeat. And the worst reaction of them all comes from Mithun the Rhesus Macaque, sweet Mithun, he ripped his red sequined jumpsuit to shreds and has sworn off dancing forever!

In my life, I have encountered a fair bit of human sadness but this is too much to bear. Oh lordy, I am weaker than ever in the face of monkey melancholy. Wanting to help my new friends, I decided to buck up and enlist the help of Dino, a wise Chimpanzee and a distant relation of Nim Chimpsky. We rigged massive sets of speakers in every room and are hoping to produce enough sound to blow the roof off this sucka depression. Manish should be thought of with coy smiles and appreciative laughter only, no? Our plan is simple. Choose one tune that is so bloody sad it makes grown adults cry on a good day and play it nonstop at a very high volume for five hours straight. We call it, “Operation: Tough Love”. Continue reading →

In Which The Head Meets the Body

Posted on by

Thanks to an anonymous tipster, I read this article in the Independent about a strange happening at the Musée Guimet in Paris involving a statue of one of Shiva’s wives (whose name is unspecified). The headless statue, which had been recovered from the Bakong temple in Cambodia in 1935, was reunited with its head after nearly six hundred years.

The temple was built in 881, during the Khmer dynasty, and is one of many ancient Hindu temples scattered around Southeast Asia (today, the vast majority of Cambodians are Buddhists). The statue was decapitated in 1431, though exactly why or who did it I do not know. The body of the statue came to Paris in 1935, and the head remained in the museum affixed to the nearby Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s most famous tourist attraction.

The reunification of head and body happened completely by accident. John Gunther Dean, an ambassador to Cambodia in the 1970s, known for protecting Cambodian art from the Khmer Rouge, decided to give the museum a present from his personal collection: Continue reading →

Posted in Art

15 Park Ave Comes to the DC Metro

Posted on by

Tipster Jenny informs of us of an upcoming screening of Aparna Sen’s 2005 film, 15 Park Avenue. The screening, a fundraiser benefiting the group Chai, Counselors Helping (South) Asians/Indians, an organization that provides education, advocacy, counseling and referral services to the South Asian community about mental health issues in the Baltimore / Washington metropolitan area, will be held at the Laurel 6 Cinemas, this Saturday (May 20) beginning at 1:30 p.m., in Laurel, Maryland. Konkona Sen Sharma (Page 3, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer), Aparna Sen’s daughter and one of the stars of the film will be in attendance for both a question and answer session, and the dinner that follows. More information and details on the screening can be found here.

15 Park Avenue, which stars Sen, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, and Shefali Shetty (I loved her in Monsoon Wedding), is the story of two sisters and their struggle to cope with schizophrenia after a traumatic event triggers a delusional world for one of the sisters and is yet another example of the new cinema coming out of India. Indian film: it’s not just Bollywood anymore.

I haven’t yet seen the film, but from the other work that I have seen, either featuring Konkona Sen Sharma, or the direction of Aparna Sen, 15 Park Ave should be worth your while. Hey, its even been called “hauntingly beautiful.” (link)

Continue reading →

Getting away for a while

Posted on by

Days like today the wanderlust sets in and I feel like getting away for a while. Unfortunately, until my wealthy Uncle Sam starts providing me with cash (~seven months from now) I will remain as broke as a joke. In the meantime I will be gazing longingly at the pages of Time Magazine Asia. Their current issue features The Best of Asia. Did you know that the best Red Light District Experience in Asia is at…Cooco’s Den & Café in Lahore, Pakistan (note that Time currently has the wrong description here)? What I really wanted to know is where I could go to just blow out for a few days.

“You must be crazy” is the response you tend to meet with when announcing an intention to vacation in Afghanistan. But for the courageous traveler willing to overlook the backdrop of simmering warfare between U.S. forces and Taliban insurgents, the country offers astonishing rewards–none more uplifting than Band-i-Amir. These five connected lakes in the central Bamiyan province are among the world’s least visited yet most dramatic natural wonders. Spilling like a string of sapphires across golden desert canyons, buttes and mesas, the lakes of Band-i-Amir (the name means “jewels of the king”) are fed by an underground source, rendering them preternaturally pristine. Their purity and extraordinary depth give the lakes a blueness of indescribable intensity. Local legend has it that a plunge in these waters is a cure for madness. Possession by djinn, or demons, is a standard Afghan explanation for insanity–but djinn hate swimming, the reasoning goes, especially in a holy lake said to be carved out of solid rock by the magic sword of warrior-saint Hazrat Ali. Local faith in the healing powers of these waters is evident in a small shrine at the first lake, where the recently exorcized leave discarded clothing and tokens of thanks. If they’re right about the waters, then you’re in luck: even if you were a little crazy to vacation in Afghanistan, Band-i-Amir will restore your sanity. But you don’t have to believe in the folklore to rejoice in the fact that you ignored the naysayers and ventured here: the surreal beauty of these lakes is a balm for every soul. [Link]

Now for this next “Best” I felt a little guilty for imagining myself there. We shouldn’t be happy about bargains brought about by unrest…err, right?

Visiting violence-wracked countries isn’t everyone’s idea of a vacation, but local unrest can be a boon for the bargain hunter. Nepal, which has endured 10 years of civil war, is a perfect example. Although foreigners haven’t been targets in the conflict between the government and Maoist rebels, the U.S. Department of State asks Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Nepal; the British government tells its citizens to remain vigilant. But if you can live with a moderate level of risk, you’ll come across fabulous hotel and restaurant deals and have some of Asia’s most iconic sights, like Durbar Square and Everest, virtually to yourself. [Link]

I still don’t understand the next “Best.” What the hell is a “Democratic Dreamscape?” It is hard to imagine that a place where politicians spend their days arguing can be considered a “Dreamscape.”

It is a wonderful irony that one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies should be housed in its most ethereally elegant parliament building. But such is the case in Bangladesh, where the Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, or National Assembly–flooded by natural light and ringed by the still waters of an artificial lake–is the official arena for politics of breathtaking malignancy. Situated on a 200-acre site in the center of Dhaka, this giant gray octagon of a building at first looks like it was hallucinated by Isaac Asimov, or that it came to George Lucas in a dream. In reality, it is the deeply thoughtful work of American architect Louis Kahn. [Link]

Continue reading →