US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met [mostly desi] Muslim leaders in north-west England in a trip during which protesters expressed anger that an architect of the Iraq war was on their home turf… Dr Rice had been due to visit a mosque in Blackburn until its governors withdrew their invitation out of fear the occasion would be hijacked by demonstrators…
Cartoons lampooned the visit with The Independent carrying one showing a sign at a Blackburn Indian restaurant: “We regret we do not serve Rice.” [Link]
Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment
Navi Mumbaikar
I’m off to Bombay for a few months for a change of scene. (Switches to the deep sepia ink and sharpens the nib.) If I don’t come back in waxed chest, brown highlights and mirrored shades yelling ‘call me, yaar!’ into a trick GSM, I’ll be deeply disappointed.
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These juths were made for walkin’ |
Some of you have asked why I spend far less time slamming Bollycheese than American exoticism. The answer is that I walk past the exoticism every day. Now the lazy susan turns, the juthi is on the other foot, &c., &c. Sunil Shetty, a.k.a. Funky Hunky, you’re goin’ down.
I’ve gotten some great advice from Mumbaikars who are big fans of our ‘South Asian’ blog. They told me the best place to live is east Mumbai, stay out of Colaba because it’s not safe after dark, and if you’re on the Bandstand late at night and a policeman approaches you, pinch his buttocks — it’s a friendly Mumbai greeting. They also told me Parsis are the poorest Mumbaikars, Haji Ali sells authentic electronics, the women’s carriage is the safest way to travel and the best time to avoid traffic is from 3 to 6 pm on Marine Drive.
Please god, let me survive the Sepia readers of Bombay.
Related post: Livin’ la vida Sepia
Cyberpunk Bollywood
Sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling, a pioneer in the cyberpunk genre, is also a huge Bollyfan who designed this bumper sticker (via Boing Boing):
That’s Parineeta on the right, not sure about the one on the left. The guy’s got taste.
He’s also been blogging the ins and outs of various sex-lies-and-mirrordiscs scandals (Sanjay Joshi, Amar Singh) working their way through political parties and the Indian Parliament:
Sanjay Joshi was set up. Somebody videoed him inflagrante diplimatico with a schoolteacher — bad news if your job in a conservative religious party depends on a vow of celibacy. Days later, flamboyant socialist playboy Amar Singh, of the liberal Samajwadi Party, announced his phone had been tapped. A salacious CD of purported chats with Tolly- and Bolly-wood starlets soon began making the rounds (hey, he’s a flamboyant socialist playboy).
In quick succession, more than half a dozen prominent ministers and pols stepped forward with claims that they too had been filmed, shadowed and bugged. More than a few signs point to a dirty tricks arm of the ruling Congress Party, with rumblings of deep-pocketed corporate backing. A crew of snoops for hire, black-hat script kiddies and renegade telco underlings has been rounded up and are under the screws. Meanwhile, the Sanjay sex tape is the hottest DVD bootleg on the market, and rumors of many more discs compromising many more pols abound… [Link]
His blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Tablas against teabags
A brand-new tea bar called Tavalon just opened by Union Square in Manhattan. 
It sells high-end loose leaf teas in a microscopic but slick storefront decked out like a lounge. The founders are young corporate law dropouts, a turbaned Sikh dude named Sonny Caberwal and his biz partner John-Paul Lee. Sonny is also a tabla-ista who rocked out on a Thievery Corporation album a couple of years ago. It’s the second gen version of the ‘I’ll open a little restaurant’ dream:
There’s a new wave of Indian restaurants as lifestyle businesses being started by young, desi Manhattan professionals. Indian Bread Company, Chinese Mirch, and their granddaddy, Kati Roll Co., remind me of the second wave of upscale restaurants in London’s Brick Lane; they’re slicker than the usual desi joint… As young restaurants, owners, friends and relatives still work behind the counter… educated urbanites… A lot of the initial marketing of these places goes through word of mouth, friends of friends in the high-speed desi network; it’s the ‘I’ll open a little restaurant’ dream made real. [Link]
The place is decorated with white tile in a fabric texture like Tamarind, white orchids, uplit shelves like a cosmetics counter and menus on 32″ LCDs. It sells teas in tins and test tubes. My buddies DD Pesh spun in the DJ perch yesterday, and Sonny played stand-up tabla by the door.
The teas themselves mimic vitamin water with frou-frou, we’re-not-Lipton themes like anti-aging, energizing and balancing. The bar also carries some wicked-looking paraphernalia including a tea stick, a perforated, stainless steel cylinder which you fill with loose leaf tea; stainless steel honey spoons shaped like honeycombs; and sinuous, double-sided sugar spoons. It’s all very SoHo-boho chic (tongue-in-cheek).
They’ve got a blend called Ceylon King for the days you’re feeling Ravanous. Thankfully, they don’t carry any redundant-dundant ‘chai tea,’ but do stop by and give Sonny shit for his ‘secret Indian spices’ 
Kama Chai Sutra: … teas just don’t get any more flavorful than this organic chai, made with a secret blend of Indian spices.
The Guardians of the British Raj
A new book by historian David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006), “helps explain how [the British civil servants in India] pulled it off.”
In yesterday’s Washington Post, noted author and UN official Shashi Tharoor gave a generally favorable review of The Ruling Caste. In Tharoor’s view,
The Ruling Caste paints an arresting and richly detailed portrait of how the British ruled 19th-century India — with unshakeable self-confidence buttressed by protocol, alcohol and a lot of gall…. [For example,] one 24-year-old district officer found himself in charge of 4,000 square miles and a million people [Link]
The arrogance of the British administrators and the paternalistic means by which they viewed their Indian subjects is upsetting, though not unsurprising. One viceroy is quoted by Gilmour as saying:
“We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.”
According to Gilmour:
Few shared Queen Victoria’s “romantic feelings for ‘brown skins….'” Well into the 20th century, they spoke and wrote of the need to treat Indians as “children” incapable of ruling themselves.
Despite Gilmour’s insights into the personal lives and thoughts of these administrators, Tharoor is critical of the book’s failure to examine the Indian response to the British public officials, who were “members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS)”:
What is missing, though, is any sense of an Indian perspective on these men and their work. What did the subjects of their administration think of them? Gilmour does not tell us. He glosses over the prejudice and casual racism of many ICS men.
The tao of Steve
Last weekend I saw Inside Man, currently the top movie in America. In Spike Lee’s excellent caper mystery, actor Waris Singh Ahluwalia explains the significance of the Sikh turban, covering your head in the presence of god, to the largest American audience to date. It’s very cool of Lee to carve out screen time for this exposition, and more such movies might reduce Sikh harassment in America.
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The hollow men |
On the other hand, Denzel Washington’s rejoinder (‘Bet you can catch a cab…’) feels like shuffling, not dancing. I didn’t catch Ahluwalia’s smack-back because the audience was laughing too hard at the turban-cabbie joke. Ick. Ahluwalia gets the lion’s share of the desi actors’ screen time. Reena Shah has a couple of seconds as a hostage, and Jay Charan is barely seen as a bank teller.
The movie opens with ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya‘ from Dil Se, and Punjabi MC raps over an orchestra-enhanced mix during the closing credits. The inclusion of ‘Chaiyya’ has nothing to do with Hindi samples in hip-hop or Bombay Dreams — Lee draws directly from the source (thanks, mallika). At some point desi influence in American pop culture will melt in so thoroughly, it won’t even be worthy of remark. Then the Uighur-Americans will start blogging about how poorly they’re represented in popular American culture. Viva la Uighur Mutiny.
Viva la
Uighur MutinyThe flick reminds me of Gurinder Chadha’s newer movies: it’s a thoroughly commercial film, a bid for mainstream relevance which still shouts out to the brotherhood (minorities, blue-collar workers, Brooklyn and polyglot NYC). It finesses the task of melding social commentary, such as a violent Grand Theft Auto parody, with product placements galore. As unfocused as it is, just one of Lee’s movies gives you more to chew on than three normal Hollywood flicks. Unlike Chadha’s work, Inside Man objectifies women as much as She Hate Me reportedly did, with an extended joke about big tits.
The red shoe diaries
It has recently come to my attention that amateur phone sexologist Salman Khan endorses Red Tape shoes:
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Try walking a mile in his shoes |
Khan launched the new collection from Red Tape… In sync with international fashion trends, Red Tape shoes spell attitude and are a style statement for all those who wear them. [Link]
Oh, they make a style statement, all right:
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You have to apply to own them
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There’s an 18-year waiting list
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You have to bribe a salesman to get them
- Communists prefer them
- The pair delivered is always the wrong size
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They trip you up when you wear them
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They breed in darkness
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You can’t discard them, you can only add to your collection
The Dutch like wooden shoes, Sicilians wear concrete shoes, but India Shines in Red Tape shoes. A spokesman said:
Added Mr. Pant, “… There are synergies between himself and the Red Tape brand and he is the right fit, we believe.” [Link]
Man, talk about bad branding. First of all, where’s Mr. Sandal? And second, I think you’ll agree that Khan makes a better spokesman for Blackbuck Jerky.
Related post: Jail Time for Salman Khan?
Coffee cant
How many times have you seen a desi profile begin with a sexualized coffee metaphor?
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Amir Khan, Starbucks menu item |
[Boxer] Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. [Link]
That particular style was original before Starbucks was big, when light-skinned black girls calling themselves ‘Mocha’ showed up on prime time to tease the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Only thing is, everyone now knows that coffee beans are actually harvested by poorly-paid brown people. Awkward.
Personally, I say we bring the brewless fuck back in style. It’s so darn cute, so dang-diggly underused, that the NYT should apply it to everyone they profile. And the metaphor should evaluate whether the subject is bangable, through coffeerotica.
‘Oscar de la Hoya is a 33-year-old with skin the color of espresso.
‘Avril Lavigne is a 21-year-old with skin the color of a double tall, no-whip vanilla latte.
‘Alan Greenspan is an 80-year-old with skin the color of curdled whipping cream.’
Hey, if you’re good, kick it up a notch into cocoarotica: milk chocolate, caramel, dark chocolate with almond bits. Make the paper of record sound as subtle as hip-hop lyrics. Bam, now we’re cookin’ with gas.
We’ve got a live one!
We’ve got a new inductee for the Exotica Hall of Shame. This Chicago Sun-Times review of a new Chicago pop opera called Sita Ram is out to set some kind of density record for exotica-spew on Desilandia (thanks, WGIIA):
Adding to the spicy flavor are Scott C. Neale’s brilliantly colored street signs of India, Mara Blumenfeld’s curry-tinted costumes (many imported from India), Chris Binder’s deft lighting, plus shadow puppets and exotic instruments. There are moments when it feels like you are watching a traveling troupe that has set up shop in the center of an Indian village, and you half expect a cow or water buffalo to wander through. [Link]
I see that Jai Uttal is involved in this project. Say no more.
“Sita Ram” is the creation of director-writer David Kersnar and Grammy-nominated composer and co-lyricist Jai Uttal… [Link]
Hedy Weiss, you are dead to me 
Beards are back!
Don’t blink or you might miss my 15 seconds of being hip and cool, but the Grey Lady’s fashion section informs us that the hottest look today is a full beard:
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A bearded Ralph Lauren model. I look just like him, but more handsome, and with brown skin and a turban. |
At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons. At New York Fashion Week last month at least a half-dozen designers turned up with furry faces… [at] the John Bartlett show… more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy. [Link]
Wow. For the last three decades, Americans have seen the beard as anathema. The very word means a person who diverts suspicion from someone in both the contexts of betting and sexual orientation. To grow a beard is seen as dishonest, or at the very least, career suicide:
… [A] study in Australia showed that 92% of women and 79% of men would rather not work with people who have facial hair. It also found that senior managers think beards make men look shifty, unattractive and too old. [Link]
Remember Al Gore? He grew a beard to signal the fact that he was a private person who had left public life, and he shaved it to signify that he was once again a political actor. Unlike in India, the American public doesn’t trust a bearded politician:
The last president to sport a mustache was William Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913, while the last bearded president, Benjamin Harrison, left office in 1893. [Link]Continue readingWe have female senators and black senators, but we do not have a bearded senator… I believe that we will have a female president and a black president before we have another bearded president. [Link]