Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Fasting, feasting

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On this unholiest of days, I thought I’d share 2.0 passages about coupling from 1.5-gen books. Lavanya Sankaran takes joy in the idea that dilly-dallying men deserve what they get in The Red Carpet:

And certainly, a convent-educated accent was an asset… This involved, primarily, keeping our knees together… Innocent of the depredations of Man (or Boy), at least until their parental duty was done. Delivered, one girl, unsullied, to the marital bed. Her price far above rubies…

For a decade, it seemed, [the bachelors] had been festooned with women, all sorts, from the cute, the silly, the please-domesticate-mes, to the independent, the fiery, the I’ll-sleep-with-but-won’t-love-yous, and further beyond, to the Plainly Bizarre. And they had frolicked and gamboled with happy abandon, and no awareness of the fate that quietly awaited them…

All those women, those sillys, those feistys, those Saturday-night mainstays, had simply vanished. All of them. Together. Birdlike, in a great migratory movement… these chicks had flown. They had married, dispersed, dehydrated. [Link]

In Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s East Village/Karachi romance ends more happily:

I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one had wanted to believe he was the first so badly)…

The scene is the East Village, a little before midnight, on the steps of a fourth-floor walk-up on Avenue A. The date is important… Halloween… So there I am, trudging up the steps… when I see this cute desi guy in a white shirt and black trousers, looking ridiculously out of place but very comfortable at the same time… He catches my eye as I pass and says “Hi,” but I ignore him, because the last thing I want to deal with tonight is some conservative boy from the homeland with nothing to say…

But at some point (you saw this coming) I find myself on the fire escape with the brown boy I’d seen before. We’re dancing, just the two of us, and his name is Ozi and he’s wickedly sexy, and what the hell, we spend the night together…

He proposed during a snowstorm in March, looking cold as only a Pakistani man in America can… Before I knew it, I was showing him off at South Asian Student Association parties, enjoying the horrified jealousy on the faces of my prim and proper colleagues. Yes, Mumtaz, that slut, had bagged herself a prince, which meant there was one less out there for them…

The summer after we graduated… we were married in Karachi by the sea. [Link]

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Temple Lady says…

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In King Kong, a powerful ape crosses the sea to rescue a beautiful woman held by his enemy on an island. He enters the capital city, leaping to great heights and leaving destruction in his wake. Where have I heard this before?

Could it be… Ravana?

In the 1933 movie, King Kong varied noticeably in height. At different times, he might be as small as twenty feet, or, in the city, as tall as fifty. [Link]

He could grow as big or as small as he wished… Hanuman grew tall and mighty and with one giant leap began to fly through the clouds to the walled city on the island. [Link]


And check out this issue of The Incredible Hulk. A buff, loincloth-clad beast with the initial ‘H’ leaps back to the mainland to return to his leader. Well, isn’t that special?


I’m accepting royalties on behalf of sage Valmiki. You can send checks to my home address.

Related posts: Yeti kitsch, My Thais, ‘Sita Sings the Blues’

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Some Hate, Some Don’t?

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As an update to Manish’s post below, I opened today’s Washington Post, surprised to find this item in the Names and Faces column – – DC’s answer, if there is one, to New York Post’s Page 6.

A Bollywood Love Connection

Two of Bollywood’s brightest stars, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, are planning to wed, and according to the Times of India, astrologers say they are a perfect match. Rai, 32, is one of Bollywood’s most recognizable ladies, a former Miss India who starred in the movie “Bride & Prejudice.” Bachchan, 30, is the son of legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan. The couple have been in the news with a series of high-profile relationships — Rai dated heartthrob Salman Khan and actor Vivek Oberoi, and Bachchan was previously engaged to actress Karisma Kapoor .

It’s telling that speculation regarding two Bollywood stars is making its way into a mainstream American newspaper. Ten years ago, I would never have dreamed of finding an item on two Indian film stars in any newspaper, let alone one of the preeminent papers in the country. That national American dailies are detailing the sordid love lives of Indian film stars (with photos) is kind of groundbreaking and reflects not just a growing American interest in Bollywood and Indian cinema, but also that Bollywood is not just a fly-by night fad and here to stay. Sure the average American may have heard of, if not seen Aishwarya, but do they care, or even know who Salman Khan, Karisma Kapoor and Vivek Oberoi are? I think the Washington Post is encouraging them to find out.

As an aside, sure Ash is TMBWITW, but the paper gets it wrong. Ash was never Miss India, but instead a Miss India runner-up in 1994, and subsequently went on to win the title of Miss World. The Miss India title that year (1994) went to Sushmita Sen, who subsequently became Miss Universe.

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Don’t drop the soap

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SM readers that have been with us since the beginning know that I am always inspired to blog about some unique topic after I have gone to get a haircut. In fact, one

The Sepia Redemption

of our readers insisted that I write a post after every visit to my barber. First, a bit of backstory for those of you unfamiliar with what I am talking about. I LOVE my local barbershop. I can honestly say that when I leave here in one year, my barbershop is among the top three things I will miss most about L.A. You see, my whole life, hair “specialists” have messed up my hair which is very thick and very straight. Most novices attack it with a blind fury, just wanting to get it over with while copping the occasional feel and commenting on its softness. The barbers at this shop however, take one whole hour cutting my hair. This is impressive when you consider the fact that I usually get a military-short haircut. But as much as the haircut, I really like the barbers at this shop. Quite a few are ex-southside Latino gang members and they often talk to me about gang culture. They have totally welcomed me with open arms, and even tell me all about the “b*tches” they be working, and describe to me the finer aspects of said “b*tches” anatomies. I listen so as not to be rude. Yesterday my barber and I had a riveting discussion about a topic that I had been thinking about just the day before. For the past two weeks there have been race riots in the California prison system. The Latino inmates and the Black inmates are at war, shanking each other left and right.

Jail officials in Los Angeles County separated black and Hispanic inmates, began transferring troublemakers and brought in clergy to try to restore peace after a week of racially charged brawls that they feared would continue to erupt through the weekend.

“It’s got momentum,” sheriff’s Chief Marc Klugman, who oversees the nation’s largest jail system, said yesterday. “They’re battle-hardened. They’re angry.”

Thousands of Hispanics and blacks clashed Feb. 4, and a black inmate was beaten to death, at the biggest jail at the Pitchess Detention Center, a 6,500-inmate complex outside the city limits. Brawls then broke out during the week at the two smaller jails at Pitchess. About 90 inmates have been injured. [Link]

My barber, who has spent time in the joint, broke it down for me: Latinos and Blacks try to kill each other. Whites usually join the Latinos because they don’t fit with the Blacks. Asian brothers get shanked unless they keep their heads down and stay among themselves. If the Koreans ever do business outside of K-town then they are dead on arrival. Even worse, if you are Latino or Black and don’t want to join in the violence, your own people will shank you for not standing up for your brothers. Now, I know what you are all thinking right now. So I asked for you:

“Ummm. What about the Indian brothers? Where do they fit in this system?”

“You guys? Yo, sorry bro but you guys get your ass passed around. You know what I mean”? Continue reading →

Why they hate Bollywood

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I recently debated the future of Bollywood among American desis with a couple of second genners who aren’t fans of the cinema. ‘Asoka’ thinks assimilation will make Bollywood irrelevant in the U.S. desi community, because the movies are poorly-written. I argue improvements in quality, distribution and filtering point to a bright future. The ever-reasoned ‘Birbal’ split the difference. Names have been changed to protect them from the Bollyfans who walk among us.

· · · · ·


‘Asoka’
Bollywood will vanish among desi Americans

“I‘ll bet you $20 it doesn’t change. U.S. desis, especially the new generations, are more assimilated. They (and I’m one of them) will never be into Bollywood. I view Bollywood as an example of the excesses and frivolity of our culture and not something I am interested in preserving for myself or my offspring. I can count the number of friends I have that like Bollywood films on one finger (men and women)… even the girls I know don’t like Bollywood, and I have as many if not more female friends than male friends.

“The U.S. model will never mimic the UK model unless we start forming ethnic ghettos here. If that happens then I think you’ll be right. What it comes down to is that most Bollywood stories suck by western standards. Production value means nothing when the best Bollywood film would be a C-list Western film.

“The reason that smart Bollywood commentary is lacking is because there isn’t much coming out of Bollywood that can be considered smart… The last Hindi film I saw was Mr. and Mrs Iyer, which I thought was decent. The last Bollywood film I saw was in India and Toral from The Apprentice was in it. I’ve seen Devdas and KKKG and thought they were so bad I wanted to rip my eyeballs out. The only Bollywood film I actually liked was Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and by American movie standards it was just okay… Yes, if you are [non-desi] it is exotic and quaint…

“I go to [Indian film festivals]… they have some great Hindi language film and Tamil language films. I both enjoy them and would take my kids to see them someday. They are not, however, Bollywood films, which in my view tend to advocate materialism and shallowness, bigotry against other races, and bigotry in their representation of 2nd gen Indians living abroad. For those reasons I would not expose my children to Bollywood films.

“I still think it’s about the ghettos. We will see in 10 years. I think if you [polled] under-26 Sepia Mutiny readers, they [would] overwhelmingly be non-Bollywood watchers.”


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Secret Angry Asian Men

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From time to time, Ennis and Vinod remind me of the awesomeness of the Secret Asian Man comic strip. They’re drawn by Boston artist Tak Toyoshima, and although only a few are specifically about desis, there are tons of parallels.

Jet Li and Aaliyah in ‘Romeo Must Die’

If Secret Asian Man hooked up with Angry Asian Man, we’d have Secret Angry Asian Men. And where you find Secret Angry Asian Men, mutiny hangs thick in the air. (Whereas around Fat Happy Asian Men, you find muttony hanging. Very different.)

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Fun, Frolic and Heavy Lifting

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Yesterday was Thai Pusam – the most important festival for the Indian community in Malaysia. The festival is celebrated in honor of the Hindu God Karthikeya – the younger son of Shiva and falls around the full moon day in the Tamil month of Thai. There is some dispute about what Thai Pusam actually commemorates – several versions exist, but the most popular one is that it is the birthday of Karthikeya.

Thai Pusam is a giant carnival – an long stretch of road leading to the local Karthikeya temple is cordoned off, and a large number of people – wearing equally large quantities of jewellery – congregate for a few hours of fun tinted with devotion. In Penang, in spite of the constant drizzle, this year’s celebration was apparently one of the best attended – at least a hundred thousand people showed up. The street leading to the Waterfall Temple was lined with makeshift “water tents” – most sponsored by multinationals – that provided colorful liquids for free to anyone that showed up.

Among the visitors that passed on the refreshments were the Western tourists armed with Sony Handycams and increasingly incredulous expressions – because Thaipusam has another side to it. Belief has it that Karthikeya would grant the wishes of people who visit His temple on Thaipusam bearing burdens (called Kavadis) and over the years people have interpreted the belief as meaning that the more pain you inflict on yourself – increasing the burden – the more the odds are of your wish being granted.

At its simplest [the kavadi] may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common. The most spectacular practice is the vel kavadi, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back. Fire walking and flagellation may also be practiced. It is claimed that devotees are able to enter a trance, feel no pain, do not bleed from their wounds and have no scars left behind. However, some of the more extreme masochistic practices have been criticized as dangerous and contrary to the spirit and intention of Hinduism.

The largest Thaipusam celebrations take place in Malaysia and Singapore. The temple at the Batu Caves, near Kuala Lumpur, often attracts over one million devotees and tens of thousands of tourists. The procession to the caves starts at the MahaMariamman Temple in the heart of the city and proceeds for 15 kilometers to the caves, an 8-hour journey culminating in a flight of 272 steps to the top. In Malaysia, although rare, scenes of people from different ethnic groups and faiths bearing “kavadi” can also be seen. Interestingly, Thaipusam is also increasingly being celebrated by the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. [Link]

An elaborate refreshment tent; there must’ve been several hundreds of these along the street.

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Gettin’ Sikhi wid it

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The last thing you want to hear in bed: ‘Smallville’

The Partition trailer is now online, and it’s giving me déjà vu (thanks, Jay):

Partition: In the midst of one such massacre, Gian [Singh] finds Naseem, a 17-year-old Muslim girl, and takes her under his protection. They gradually find themselves drawn to each other but, as their remarkable story plays out, the obstacles to their happiness prove all but insurmountable… [Link]

Gadar: During [Partition], Tara Singh, a truck driver, rescues a young woman named Sakina, both fall in love with each other and get married. When things calm down, Sakina decides to travel across the border to Pakistan to visit her father… [who] tries to separate her and Tara… [Link]

From the trailer at least, it looks like a straight rip, but like Gangsta M.D., it’s in the reverse direction from usual. Director Vic Sarin’s pitch: Gadar meets The English Patient, minus the anti-Pakistan jingoism. He’s even kept the scene where Sunny Deol goes apeshit in front of his home to defend the girl from a raging mob.

Jimi Mistry plays a hot turbanwala, Neve Campbell stars as a Brit. Kristin Kreuk’s bare back is seamless, her desi accent not. She actually sounds a whole lot like Sheetal Sheth attempting the accent, which says something about assimilation.

I have zero problem with a non-desi lead actress here. This looks like a tightly-focused young love story (the score reminds me of trifling period romances like A Knight’s Tale), not an epic history of Partition. There are plenty of light-eyed Muslim women, and it’s not like they cast Jessica Simpson as Indira Gandhi.

No, my question is: Kristin Kreuk?! Undeniably cute, but so chirpy she makes Tweety Bird sound like Droopy Dog.

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Community cable, the gift that keeps on giving

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Some Black Israelites wear very Sikh-looking turbans and beards (thanks, Ennis):

Remember that Marley song?

African American and African Caribbean Christianity had long developed a comparison of their experience in the New World with that of the Jews held in slavery in Egypt, particularly as regards the Book of Exodus… [Link]

We know where we’re going; we know where we’re from
We’re leaving Babylon, we’re going to our fatherland

Exodus, movement of Jah people…
Send us another Brother Moses gonna cross the Red Sea…

— Bob Marley, ‘Exodus‘

A small number took the analogy literally and moved to Israel:

The African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem is a small religious group whose members believe they are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. With a population of over 2000, most members live in their own community in Dimona, Israel. The Black Hebrews practice polygamy. [Link]

In contrast, the guy on TV was ranting against Israel even while sitting beneath a Star of David:

Some Black Hebrew Israelites, like Israelite Heritage, are anti-Semitic, and focus on Jews, as Edomites and Khazars acting on behalf of Satan and secretly controlling the United States. [Link]

Related posts: Da Star in dastar, Everyone recycles

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White guys in turbans

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More white guys in badly-tied turbans, no beards, speaking in that bad simulacrum of a non-existent accent, folding their hands and calling each other Akmed, wearing nametags that say ‘Singh.’ That’s Scott LaRose with a very complicit Art Malik on the left (thanks, BB).

It’s like an entire generation modeled their insulting stereotypes on Peter Sellers. And, like Bollywood, TV and film for black audiences tend to be even more casually racist about desis and East Asians than mainstream media.

But then you should never take a movie like Booty Call (1997) seriously, not even in reruns It’s got characters named Lysterine, Yoyo, Ug Lee and Bunz.

Watch the clip (12MB; you need a BitTorrent downloader: Windows, Mac).

Related posts: Peter Sellers still outsells actual desis, Giants, dwarves and lemurs, Goodness gracious, Peter Sellers is alive, Mr. Birdie Num-Num gets a biopic, ”The Party” remake

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