Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Youthwallah’s “Desi Factor”

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I have failed SM readers in Los Angeles. I should have blogged this a couple of days ago to give you some more notice, but it’s better late than never. The Artwallah organization has two more performances of it’s Youthwallah program “Desi Factor,” Saturday at 8:30p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 2:30p.m. YouthWallah is an arts mentorship program supporting emerging South Asian artists in the pursuit and creation of powerful artistic work. It’s an incubator for young talent that could potentially breakout into the mainstream. The performance last night in an intimate little theater in Santa Monica was a perfect blend of music, dance, comedy, literature, and film. Here are some of the highlights from my attendance last night:

  • Ashwini Srikantiah sang a jazz song at the piano while particular scenes from the Bollywood classic Sil Sila played on a screen in the background. It was a giggle inducing crowd pleaser.
  • Young filmmaker Sabina Shamdasani previewed a film she is working on with a potentially hilarious concept: imagine the Bad News Bears meets the Bhangra Blowout competition. The laughter went on even after the trailer ended.
  • There were two sisters with the name Vivekaanandamorthy. One sang and the other read a piece about traveling through rebel-controlled Sri Lanka. When else are you going to get to see a performance where the MC has to introduce two Vivekaanandamorthys?
  • Shalini Rehil of Blu Soul sang while Aditya Rao from Lovely played the guitar for her.

The cost of the performance is only $16 (or $14 if you are a student) and the parking is plentiful around this Westside location. Here are the directions to the Highways Performance Space. The program lasted for about two hours. Info at: 310-315-1459. Be sure to call ahead for reservations as Artwallah events are usually well attended.

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Fatty fatwa

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From the showing-up-on-the-radar dep’t: The Colbert Report, a Daily Show spinoff, satirizes religious outrage:

My fatwa was issued by certain religious leaders because… I happened to say that Halloween was a better holiday than Romadon…

After I slammed Gandhi for his eating disorder, the Hindus came after me with an eight-armed Sheeva squeeze…

I got the Dolly Lama to take a punch at me just because I said Boodism is a religion for chubby chasers…

Nazi pope Benedict the 16th wanted to excommunicate me just because I called him a Nazi pope.

(The names are spelled the way he pronounced ’em .)

That’s not a Shiva image I recognize, though maybe it’s a style I’m unfamiliar with. The reference strikes me as a bit Temple of Doom-ish — Americans make a beeline for death cults. But hey, a funny mention is better than no mention. Watch the video.

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Ivy jive

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Good taste becomes him

Yale has an entire course this semester dedicated to South Asian lit. And we didn’t even have to donate a million bucks for a South Asia chair destined for a non-South Asian Not even As-Am torchbearer Berkeley had one of these back in the day:

FALL 2005: ENGL 347a, CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN FICTION
William Deresiewicz…

Contemporary fiction by writers of South Asian birth or descent… Authors include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Bapsi Sidwa, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Average reading load: 250 pages/week. [Link]

Sure, it’s 250 pages/week — if you leave out A Suitable Boy Why is the prof fascinated with these themes?

William Deresiewicz is the author of Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets… [Link]

The redcoats are coming

Ah yes, soap operas with Victorian morés, a perfect match. It’s that blasted Pride and Prejudice again. After jonesing for Bridget (twice) and Bride of Gurinderstein, the new Keira Knightley version seems superfluous. The horse has not only been beaten, it’s died and been reincarnated as a hack. Ennis has been pitching me the book, but I’m in sucrose overdose.

· · · · ·

Deresiewicz talks smack about Jhumpa Lahiri’s work:

Interpreter of Maladies… exhibit[s] a high degree of competence, but it’s the kind of competence that makes you want to call for the abolition of writing programsIt’s the kind of competence that makes you want to abolish writing programs… The pieces in Interpreter of Maladies are crafted–no, machine-tooled–to within a millimeter of their tiny, calculating lives; their writing-handbook devices–the inciting event, the governing symbol, the wry turn, the final epiphany–arrive one after another, exactly on time, with the subtlety of a pit bull and the spontaneity of a digital clock. Lahiri has since published The Namesake, a dull, studied, pallid novel that says remarkably little about the immigrant experience while elaborately fetishizing the consumption patterns of the liberal upper-middle class. [Link]

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Diwali, Diwali, Everywhere

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It is getting out of hand. Not that I am complaining of course, but I think the Western media has finally caught on to Diwali mania. And in perfect IST fashion, the New York Times chimes in with their addition to the Diwali-themed articles, focusing on one of the most important facets of the Diwali holiday: mithai (Indian sweets). Yeah, many first and second geners claim to not like them, complaining of their over-sweetness or their unnatural colors. And then what is the deal with that silver stuff that covers so many of them (FYI it is actually real silver). The article, aptly titled “Festival of Lights, Parade of Sweets,” does a good job of getting into the nitty gritty of the role of mithai in Diwali and Eid and in South Asian society in general.

This week, in a coincidence of calendars, Hindus and Muslims from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are celebrating the most joyous holidays of the year. Hindus observe the festival of lights, Diwali, or Deepavali, which ushers in the new year; Muslims finish the holy month of Ramadan with Id al-Fitr, which signals the end of the monthlong daytime fast and a return to the sweetness of daily life. The two holidays, Hindus and Muslims here say, are utterly soaked in sugar. “You cannot go to anyone’s house at this time of year without a quarter-pound of something sweet,” says Padma Dasgupta, a writer in Jericho, N.Y.

Related post: Diwali Updates: Diwali Parking, India 2.0, Congressional Legislation, Sparklers, and Diwali Schlock Contest!

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I Heart Our Readers: SF Meetup Wrap-up

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Oct 30 meetup.JPG

The verdict was unanimous;’twas the best meetup EVER. Photographic evidence of that here.

October 30th, 2005, San Francisco: four current SM bloggers and six Bay Area mutineers met at North Beach’s yummy, caffeinated, iconic, no-worries-no-matter-HOW-long-we-stayed Caffe Greco and didn’t leave for six hours. Well, it was SEVEN for a certain guest blogger who forgot that daylight savings time commenced at 2, on Sunday. 😉 Hey–that’s what she gets for being so unbrown, i.e. on time. Had she been the standard I.S.T.-mandated hour late, she still would’ve been on time, except this time, with the rest of us. 😉

I attempted to live-blog the merriment, like I did the last time it was held in San Francisco; sadly, an unexpected lack of wireless prevented that. Forgive me for making you wait 48 hours? 🙂

Unpolished transcript, after the jump… Continue reading →

John McCain on Gandhi

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It turns out Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) in the middle of all his wonderful work in the Senate has finished writing another book (I think this is his third). This latest publication, entitled, “Character Is Destiny : Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember,” is a collaborative effort between McCain and his longtime colleague Mark Salter, and is a book comprised of 34 profiles of varous public figures: anyone from Winston Churchill and George Washington to one Mohandas Gandhi. I haven’t read the book so I can’t really comment on the work. But what I can comment on is the interview that McCain gave last night on the Charile Rose show (thanks Sudin), where the Senator discussed a range of current events including the new book.

In the interview, Rose, after discussing his own political future and the Supreme Court among other things, discussion turned to the book. From the transcript of the Charile Rose Show,

CHARLIE ROSE: You sure seem to have the energy to do it.

This is a book called “Character is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young
Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember,” written with Mark Salter, your longtime colleague. Honor, purpose, strength, understanding, judgment, creativity and love. Profiles here of a whole range of people, from Thomas Moore to Gandhi. Respect. Just give me one small example of Gandhi and respect.

JOHN MCCAIN: Gandhi demanded respect. I wrote about him in his time in India — in South Africa, before he left for India, where he stood up for the rights of the, quote, “coloreds,” as they called the Indian people. And he fought, and he developed this non-violent opposition that he –that later won independence for India. He was jailed. He was mistreated. He was beaten. And he demanded the respect that are due to all human beings. And he was an incredible, powerful player, and unfortunately, murdered by, as you know, by a Muslim.

I hope he didn’t put that last bit in his book, you know, the part about Gandhi being murdered by a Muslim, because well, that would be factually incorrect. Now, many of you out there, and most of you I assume haven’t researched for a book which discusses Gandhi, know that Gandhi wasn’t assasinated by a Muslim, but was killed by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu. Continue reading →

The Empire Kind of Strikes Back

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Even as some people are finding more and more tasks to outsource to the subcontinent, a few wily Brits are bucking the trend:

Beyond the four-mile-long driveway, and the shaded path named “Lady’s Walk” and the soft fields of purple rhododendron and grazing Holstein cows, Jonathan Jones walked among waist-high rows of rich green plants. With loving precision, he plucked off two perfect green leaves and a bud and held them proudly in his hand.

“English tea should be grown on English soil,” he said, running his fingers over what he called a victory for horticulture and also for British culture: the first commercial crop of tea ever grown in this tea-mad nation.  [link]

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The heat of Night

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Director M. Night Shyamalan went retro last week by slamming the idea of putting out new movies on DVD at the same time they’re released in theaters. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a director who works in old-fashioned, well-crafted films which pay homage to Hitchcock.

Film studios make a huge chunk of their profits on DVD sales and are chafing at having to duplicate marketing campaigns, one for the theaters and another four months later for the DVD. Customers are asking why they can’t buy a movie when and how they want. Directors like Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Videotape, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic) and entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban are banding together to experiment with the new biz model:

Soderbergh… announced last spring that he planned to make six high-definition movies for simultaneous release in theaters, on DVD and on pay cable… “The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.” [Link]

Manoj don’t play that:

“When I sit down next to you in a movie theater, we get to share each other’s point of view… That’s the magic in the movies… If this thing happens, you know the majority of your theaters are closing. It’s going to crush you guys… If I can’t make movies for theaters, I don’t want to make movies… I hope this is a very bad idea that goes away.” [Link]

Actually, what we share is the top of your big freakin’ head blocking the screen and the Goobers the kid behind me keeps throwing into my lap. Sure, opening night at a blockbuster is fun, but otherwise, not so much. The movies are great, it’s the moviegoers I could do without.

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It’s official. Candidate Bhakta.

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It’s official. I mentioned in September that Raj Bhakta from the Apprentice’s first season was contemplating a run for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 13th district. Newsweek reported this weekend that it’s a go:

As a contestant on “The Apprentice,” Raj Bhakta was famous for his grand gestures: the bow ties, the walking stick, the time he hit on Donald Trump’s receptionist. So it’s not surprising that for his next act Bhakta is aiming for something big: Congress. Bhakta, 29, has never been elected to anything but project manager. But the real-estate developer thinks he’ll defeat incumbent Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Allyson Schwartz in ’06. “People would be remiss to think, ‘Who is this guy from a television show?’ We’re not talking like I made it on ‘The Real World’.”

Beyond the prospect of Omarosa stumping for him, Bhakta is an unusual candidate. He’s a pro-choice Republican with reservations about President Bush’s policies toward Iraq and the economy. “One of the reasons I’m getting involved in politics is an overall platform of reform, reform, reform,” Bhakta says. “Our government needs to begin focusing on education, health care and the environment.”

Pro-choice Republican? Maybe we can get him to give a quote on his opinion of the Alito nomination? It is going to be especially difficult to run against an incumbent Democrat if you sound like you have reservations about Bush’s policies. Why not just leave the Democrat in office?

See previous posts.

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“It’s My Duty To Help Them Out”

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Desai Praying Going over a package on poverty in the New Jersey Herald News, completed a couple weeks ago by my friend and former classmate Tom Meagher, I just realized that Tom had done more than write policy analysis and work and live as a temporary laborer for a month–he had also profiled several more regular members of the working-class poor, including two immigrants. One is a Peruvian father and husband named Julio, who has left his family behind in Lima. The other is a 20-year old son named Priyank Desai, arrived from India at the age of 16 and determined to help out his family:

Every week, Priyank Desai carries his paycheck home to the Passaic apartment he shares with his family, sets it before a makeshift shrine and prays to his Hindu deity.

“No matter how much money I make by working hard, it will all belong to you.”

Only after praying will he cash the check, which usually amounts to no more than $80 for two days of temporary work. He gives half to his parents to help pay for phone cards to call their extended family left behind in India, and for rides to work. The rest he spends on movies or lunch. He also pays for transportation to classes at Passaic County Community College that he hopes will lead him to a career as a Spanish teacher.(Link)

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