NPR’s “All Things Considered” has an audio report about the modern-day usage of the Chitravina (Real and Windows Media, 7 mins.):
The slide guitar is a beloved voice in blues, country and rock music. In India, slide musicians favor an ancient instrument called the Chitravina. N. Ravikiran, one of the country’s best-known players, hopes to expand the instrument’s popularity and push its musical frontiers. [NPR]
Dot from over at Ishbadiddle informs us of a new documentary titled, “Dastar: Defining Sikh Identity.” The Panthic Weekly reports:
Kevin LeeÂ’s documentary shows the struggle of the American-Sikh community to overcome the hatred, fear and intolerance it faces from fellow Americans due to its wearing of the essential symbol of the Sikh faith — the “dastaar” (turban), a press release by the Sikh Coalition stated.
The film also explores how media imagery fuels association of the turban with terrorism, leading to widespread discrimination against Sikhs. This documentary has already been screened in Chicago at the 2005 Asian American Showcase event and at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. It is scheduled to be screened in July at the AAIFF before being part of its national tour.
Dot points out that “the film features interviews with several people mentioned previously on SM, including Kevin Harrington the MTA subway operator, and footage of the guy who was sentenced to do community service at three Sikh temples after attacking a Sikh.”
You can view the entire film online by clicking one of the links below. If you live in NYC however I suggest instead that you view it at the 28th Annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) :
How two brothers from Delhi went from serving H-addled clubgoers to serving coke-addled agents:
The L.A. segment of their story began when the newly arrived Sean G, now a fit, head-shaven 34-year-old, was working as a parking attendant at Tower Video on Sunset. A regular customer often chatted with him. Sean G enjoyed the talks but was curious why this young man always drew a crowd. He soon realized he’d been talking to Johnny Depp, who got him a job in the cashier’s booth at the Viper Room, which Depp owned at the time. The idea of Sean G greeting habitues of the Viper Room has a certain Candide-like charm. He is hardly the image of perdition. He runs upwards of ten miles a day, has never been late for a job or called in sick. Even the way he came to work at Barney Greengrass is based on the desire for self-improvement that night workers occasionally flirt with. “I should do something with my days,” Sean G remembers thinking. “I should learn something.” A Viper Room barman brought him to the deli and showed him the ropes. “I never ate this food,” Sean G says. “I didn’t know what a bagel was, or nova, or cream cheese.” He got his brother a job there, too. [Los Angeles Magazine]
Professional Indian women are trading one type of pleated garment for a far less attractive substitute (unless they’re choosing “flat-fronts”, that is):
A survey of Indian women’s preferred daily clothing has shown that more female professionals are choosing trousers over the traditional sari. The study results show that sales of women’s trousers have surged by almost 10% over the last two years.
Why all the drama?
“Let’s face it, the sari is not an easy garment to deal with. Women find it difficult to work in it with all the pleats and it does tend to be cumbersome,” fashion writer Hindol Sengupta told the BBC.
Worry not, traditionalists. Regular old Indian clothes still account “for three-quarters of the women’s apparel market”. Huzzah. Continue reading
You know what? There ain’t no shame in my game. I’ll be the first to admit it. If I ever end up doing hard time in prison, I’d end up as this guy’s bitch. In the segregated prison system, brown-folk got to stick together. Dalip Singh will co-star in the Adam Sandler re-make of the film “The Longest Yard” which opens on May 27th. He will play a convict named Turley Lobo Sebastian.
Unique in his giant-sized 7′ 2″ stance, wrestler DALIP SINGH commands attention amongst all people in every part of the world. He was born into a poor family in the village of Dhirana in Himachal Pradesh of Punjab, India and is the third of eight siblings. At a young age, he earned a daily wage as a roadside stone breaker to help provide for his family.
In 1993, Dalip was still working as a road laborer in the Himalya Hills when his life’s circumstances began to change. By this time he had tried his hand at many sports. He excelled in all of them, but showed exceptional talent in body building. The Director General of the Punjab Police Department took notice of Dalip and helped him join the police force. The change in employment allowed Dalip to further his body building training and he subsequently won titles of Mr. India in 1997 and 1998. His success and hard work led him to train as a wrestler in the U.S. in 1999, where he developed the skills necessary to compete on a global stage, enabling him to win numerous wrestling titles in Japan, where he is currently a very popular figure. Dalip’s training schedule consists of two hours of weight training, morning and evening, every day. His chest measures at 65 inches and he weighs in at approximately 400 lbs. Maintaining his size requires a strict and intimidating daily dietary regimen: one gallon of milk, five chickens, and two dozen eggs, along with chapatis, juice, and fruit.
Dalip is very religious and adamant in his stance against ethnic violence. He is a true humanitarian. His goal in life is to support his family and aid the entire village that is his home. He hopes to benefit the welfare of disabled persons and children born into poverty. He is an active mentor to young people, encouraging them to stay away from drugs and urging them to find discipline, health and success by taking up sports. Dalip was married February 27, 2002 to Harpinder Kaur in a Hindu ceremony with the blessings of his Guru, Shri Ashutosh Maharaj Ji. He still serves as a member of the police force having recently been promoted to Sub Inspector of Punjab Police. Dalip is proud to make his debut as an actor in the US with a role in “The Longest Yard.”
FIVE CHICKENS! Continue reading
I’ll say it, ain’t no shame in my game, I LOVE the New York Post. Kindly tell me what other paper entertains so thoroughly for a mere $.50. Exactly.
An item in yesterday’s metro edition caught my eye; buried way in the back, long after the gleeful schadenfreude of page six, I saw the words Black Narcissus in a caption that was being suffocated by movie listings.
Intrigued, I did a double-take while slowly remembering that this was a book by Indian-born, erstwhile resident of Kashmir Rumer Godden, an author I had adored when I was much younger and sadder. Down went the paper and to the iBook I turned. IMDB was immediately summoned and I chortled at the movie’s tagline:
A Story to Storm Your Heart! Drama at the top of the world … where winds of the exotic past sweep men and women to strange and fascinating adventure…
Well, “top of the world” obviously means India. I mean, duh. More:
Anglican nuns, led by the stern Sister Clodagh, attempt to establish a religious community in the Himalayas, and must battle not only suspicious locals and the elements, but their own demons as well.
Oooooooh. They battled their own demons as well? Exciting!
I noticed that one of the cast members had a very Malayalee name, so I predictably clicked through to find out more about…”Sabu”, aka “The first Indian and middle-eastern actor to make it big in Hollywood.” Apparently “he was restricted to stereotypical roles of Indians.” Wow, that’s so sad, I mean, look at how far we’ve come! Indians aren’t subject to such narrow-minded casting now, thank goodness. gag Continue reading
Attack of the blog roundups: MSNBC showed a screenshot of Vinod’s Indra Nooyi post today. Watch the clip.
They focused on Nooyi’s actual remarks and her position as Pepsi president, not the nativist backlash, which is exactly right. Oddly, they quoted the mildest phrase that’s ever been written on Little Green Frothballs: ‘I drink Coke anyway.’
This actually isn’t Vinod’s first time on an NBC network — here’s a photo of his appearance on CNBC several years ago. I’m not sure why he looks angry, but maybe someone stole his copy of ZAMM.
Also, Slate mentioned our MIT time traveler post last week, which Abhi first wrote about.
Thanks for the pixels, anonymous bored journies! Do your bosses know you surf blogs instead of working? Not that you’ll ever read this unless it pops up on Technorati with keywords about national stories. Unfortunately, I don’t see us writing about PARIS HILTON, MICHAEL JACKSON or TERRY SCHIAVO without a genuine desi angle. That would just be crass.
But The Daily Show was right, reading blogs out loud on TV does look pretty silly (watch clip). How about showing our dating profiles next time? Now that would be useful TV 😉
I was enjoying Slate’s coverage of the “Army of the Monkey God” until today. This is the lead picture on Slate.com today. Its one thing to report on the activities of adults but its another thing entirely to “exploit” young kids for an attention grabbing money shot like this one. Little kids all over the world will ape the adults around them. That’s common knowledge. To pass this off a militancy amongst the youth by referencing a Tom Clancy novel about a nuclear terrorist attack, is more than a bit lame. “Look at the hateful litte brown kids.” You see these same types of exploitive pictures from Palestine all the time.
Hmmmm. Come to think of it though it would make a good banner for our site.
Sheba Mariam George, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, is set to release a book next month titled, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration:
With a subtle yet penetrating understanding of the intricate interplay of gender, race, and class, Sheba George examines an unusual immigration pattern to analyze what happens when women who migrate before men become the breadwinners in the family. Focusing on a group of female nurses who moved from India to the United States before their husbands, she shows that this story of economic mobility and professional achievement conceals underlying conditions of upheaval not only in the families and immigrant community but also in the sending community in India. This richly textured and impeccably researched study deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story.
When Women Come First explains how men who lost social status in the immigration process attempted to reclaim ground by creating new roles for themselves in their church. Ironically, they were stigmatized by other upper class immigrants as men who needed to “play in the church” because the “nurses were the bosses” in their homes. At the same time, the nurses were stigmatized as lower class, sexually loose women with too much independence. George’s absorbing story of how these women and men negotiate this complicated network provides a groundbreaking perspective on the shifting interactions of two nations and two cultures.
I think this might be a good stocking stuffer during Christmas for many Mallu moms. Apparently it wouldn’t be a good idea to let any men in the house see it though. You know, bruised egos and all. Continue reading
In 1959 journalist John Howard Griffin published Black Like Me. The book revealed his experiences as a white man disguised as a black man in the segregated south.
In 1959, Griffin, a noted white journalist, decided to try an experiment. He felt that the only way to determine the truth about how African Americans were treated by whites, and to learn if there was discrimination, was to become one. After a series of medical treatments that darkened his skin, he began his travels in the Deep South. Made up primarily of his journal entries during that time, Black Like Me, read by Ray Childs, details the experiences he had while passing for black. He finds that the people who saw him as white days earlier would not give him the time of day. He suffered even more as he rode buses in New Orleans, discovering how whites would no longer sit next to him. Listeners will be fascinated by his bus trip to Mississippi during which the driver would not let any of the African Americans off at a rest stop and how some of the passengers decided to deal with this slight. A fascinating view of life before the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, showing the difficulties of being black in America.
Perhaps inspired by knowledge of this book, Morgan Spurlock (yes, THAT Morgan Spurlock) will document what it is like for a Christian man to live as a Muslim for 30 days. [via DNSI]The BBC reports:
Morgan Spurlock, the director of the cult fast-food documentary Super Size Me, has filmed a Christian living as a Muslim for 30 days for a new TV series. The show is part of his new TV series 30 Days, which puts people in unfamiliar situations for a month.
The shows sees the Christian dealing with “what’s it like to be a Muslim in America … who is seen every day as a threat to our freedom.”
The new series starts in the US on 15 June on the FX network.
Other episodes of the new show include a conservative man living with a gay flatmate, and a woman embarking on a binge-drinking spree as a warning to her daughter.
I want Spurlock to do an episode on what happens to a perfectly reasonable and well adjusted young man, who starts blogging for thirty days straight. Here is what I envision: He loses fifteen lbs., he has no time for anything, and the veins in his head start to bulge. Like this. Continue reading