King Khan Comes to Times Square

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We get a lot of press releases here in the bunker. Sometimes one comes along advertising an event that looks like too much fun to pass up.

That’s how I felt when I heard that Madame Tussauds New York would be unveiling of their newest addition- a life-sized statue of Shah Rukh Khan. So last Thursday I headed to the museum’s Bollywood Zone to see the statue for myself.

As costumed dancers from Bollywood Axion performed to a medley of songs from Om Shanti Om, photographers quickly snapped photos and fans patiently waited for the area to be opened to the public. According to Rosemary del Prado, the museum’s director of marketing, Khan’s fans are the reason Madame Tussauds commissioned the statue. “Visitors just started to ask right after the Bollywood Zone opened last year,” she said. While the museum doesn’t keep track of how many tourists from South Asia visit each year, they do know that half of all museum guests are international tourists.

Some more fun facts about the statue: It takes about 3-4 months to create a figure after the celebrity has a sitting. All of the hair is individually inserted, and the eyes are created using silk thread. Shah Rukh Khan is the second Bollywood star to be displayed at the New York Museum. He joins Amitabh Bachchan.

Of course, none of these facts would matter if the statue didn’t look like Khan. I thought it looked quite realistic and the fans I spoke to agreed. “I think it looks really nice. It looks better than the one in the UK,” said Sanchari Ghosh, a 16-year-old fan from New Jersey.

Her brother Saurabh Ghosh, 18, agreed. “I think that Madame Tussaud would be proud,” he said.

Do you agree? And what other celebrities would you like to see at the Madame Tussauds Bollywood Zone? Continue reading

Innoru pazham

A quick post in which we celebrate Kavundamani and Senthil, fixtures in the storied comedy track of Tamil cinema. Actually this is just an excuse for me to share my favorite routine. For a more in depth look at these guys’ comedy and their caste implications, check out “On Castes and Comedians: the language of power in recent Tamil Cinema” by K Ravi Srinivas and Sundar Kaali in Ashish Nandy’s 1999 book, The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema. Excerpt:

Especially noteworth is the dominant mode of comedy over the past several years which comprises two comedians, one of whom is in a dominant position and the other subservient (these are usually played by two well-known comedians in Tamil cinema, Kavundamani and Senthil, though there are exceptions). The dominant one constantly bullies, exercises authority over, and is scornful towards the physical appearance and personality of the subservient one. The latter is clever at dodging this direct and indirect violence, and eventually succeeds in outwitting the former. Though this is nothing new in terms of structure and is well represented in a variety of comedy traditions, ranging from circus clowning to the Laurel and Hardy films, its caste implications are particularly strong in Tamil cinema and this adds a different dimension to the basic structure of comedy.

Anyhoo, here’s the clip, from the 1989 film, Karagaattakkaaran (translation after the jump):

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The Guild Goes Bollywood with “Game On”

I am not a gamer. Never have been, never will be. But my little sister was able to convince me to watch a few episodes of The Guild with her back in ’07, when the web series first came out. The show centers around a group of hardcore gamers who finally meet in real life after one of the members of their online guild, Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh) unexpectedly disappears online. Created by real-life gamer, Felicia Day, the show highlights all the awkwardness that results when people who are more comfortable in front of a computer screen than face-to-face with another person – attempt to form offline relationships.

Last summer, instead of their regular web episode, fans of The Guild were delighted to see a music video, “Do You Want to Date My (Avatar).” This summer, The Guild is back with another music video, “Game On.” Cue Zaboo and Codex (Day) sitting on a bed. Hint: Bollywood-themed dancing results. Enjoy! Continue reading

Music Video faceoff

I have two videos for your viewing pleasure today.

In the total wingnut corner we have this “patriotic” anthem by Trade Martin making the rounds in conservative circles. It reminds us why graduating from college is so important in the modern day:

And in the opposing corner we have this video by Malini Sur, a surgery resident / singer songwriter in New York:

I read a nice quote on blogger Andrew Sullivan’s site yesterday:
“[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom… was finally passed,… a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.” –Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67 [Link]

Well, I guess there was a good reason why the conservative school board in Texas decided to expunge Jefferson from textbooks.

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Let it Bhi (Part I)

I’m changing it up a bit for this week’s post, Mutineers, and setting aside the wax gems for flesh-and-blood. I think auntie netta is getting to my head-a, cuz I’ve got Jaffna on my mind. I’d like to focus on a certain young, hot, and hip Tamil artist with politically charged lyrics, plenty of street cred, and an original and inimitable sound. If you are expecting to see gaudy glasses, gold tights, or…whatever this is, well, you are wrong. This Sri Lankan sensation unpretentiously rocks wire frames, loose jeans, and a 5 o’ clock shadow that magically morphs into an uncle-ji stache. I’d like to introduce to the Mutiny my favorite discovery of 2010 and your new folk hero, Bhi Bhiman.

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Behind that deceptively handsome mug is a booming voice backed by a powerful wit, perhaps the deadliest combination since butter met scotch. You don’t have to take my word for it: he’s already garnering critical praise after only doing the coffee-house circuit for a short while. Here’s probably the best assessment of Bhi and his music I’ve come across yet:

“It only makes good sense that the next great American folk hero/political voice is a very un-white, first-generation Sri-Lankan American. Bhi Bhiman (bee-bee-man) is arguably the wittiest and angriest person to pick up a guitar in the last 30 years and wield it like an aural hatchet aimed at chopping the head off all that’s wrong in the world.”

Local IQ (Albuquerque)

Aside from the questionably colorist “very un-white” comment, I could not have said it better myself. Bhi is a star in the making. He’s the closest we have to a brown Randy Newman (except topical and funny) and/or a brown Bob Dylan (except modest and intelligible). Just like Abhi made the bold prediction that Das Racist would be the hottest, brownest thing of 2009, I’m sayin’ that Bhi is going to do to wannabe fakers just like the release of Nevermind did to 80’s butt-rock: render them irrelevant with the strumming of a single chord. Continue reading

Picturing War and Peace: Sri Walpola (Photos)

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This may look like it’s from a picture postcard, but it was a surprise for me to see a lone fisherman in the Jaffna lagoon where fishing had been totally banned during most of the past two decades. The ceasefire, despite its problems, had added a ray of hope for many people of the Northern & Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka.

–photographer Sri Walpola on “Jaffna Fisherman”

This is the episode in which we are on Staten Island! Because a friend recently tipped me off to this:

War & Peace in Sri Lanka Photos by Sri Walpola (Click for the show’s official description. Thanks, Deepti! I am not posting any of the photos here, for obvious reasons … but if you scroll to the end of the post, you’ll see two ways to see some of them much of the rest of the show too. EDITOR’S NOTE/UPDATED 8/11: Sri Walpola and I have been trading messages, and he generously offered to send me pictures to put up here. I have interspersed them with the text that I originally posted, and included his captions.)

Unless you are already lucky enough to live on Staten Island, head to the ferry and take the boat over there. Staten Island has a substantial Sri Lankan community, and indeed, if you find your way into the St. George Library Center (not far from where the ferry docks) and a kindly library staffer thinks you look Sri Lankan and/or confused, he may not even wait for you to ask where the show is before he points you downstairs, toward the reference room. It is possible that this is the warmest reaction you will ever have to being profiled.

If it is the weekend, neighborhood residents will be reading, or perhaps checking e-mail. Comfy chairs and tables are scattered about. Card catalogs, tables. The people leafing through newspapers or working quietly on laptops will not look up to watch you scan what hovers above their heads: the photography of Sri Walpola, a former presidential photographer in Sri Lanka. His pictures of the civil war in Sri Lanka are on display here for the first time in the U.S.

The twentysome pictures on the walls range from heartbreakingly hopeful pictures of the ceasefire to devastating portraits of families separated by fences and displays of military and militant firepower. Some of the pictures are printed in a high gloss; others are matte, so that they appear almost like oils, or old movie stills. A friend describes one as especially painterly–a Jaffna fisherman standing in his boat, the blue of the background dark and pure behind him, the line between water and sky nearly seamless.

(ED 8/11: Obviously that’s the photo up top. Click for more of his pics.) Continue reading

Bollywood x Hollywood: Horror Edition

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This isn’t your grandmother’s Nagin movie–this is “Hisss,” the Split Image Production directed by American Jennifer Lynch, daughter of the famous David Lynch. The story of the Nagin is a classic in Bollywood, and has been portrayed in film and television for decades, even by such high-brow names as Sridevi, Vyjayanthimala, and Rekha. Most often the tale follows the basic plot of somebody angering the mythic Cobra goddess by killing/capturing her husband-snake and thus she exacts her supernatural vendetta on said human. And of course, in true Bollywood style, there are a plethora of songs, some of which have become quite infamous. This formula for a Nagin movie may have been popular in India several decades ago, but for a movie to be successful in today’s India, much less in front of an American audience, a Nagin story would need a major re-telling.

If you can get past the cringe-inducing title, there seems to be quite a lot this film has to offer that many recent Bollywood/Hollywood crossovers failed at. In fact, while some may claim that the two cinemas are a perfect match, the epic flop of Hrithik Roshan’s recent movie, “Kites,” would show that it may be simply impossible to perfectly please both audiences. And now where superstars Rai and Roshan have left off, the sex symbol Mallika Sherawat steps in, along with the great Irrfan Khan, who, coming hot off a role in Slumdog Millionaire, is back on the world stage to play co-star to Sherawat. Continue reading

Nimmi² + D’Lo = Awesome

A week and change ago I blogged about the awesome Nimmi Harasgama and her invented auntie: netta, a dame with a mouth blunt enough to make even your amma’s honesty look as soft as rasmalai.

Speaking of Amma, one of the videos I linked to in that post included part of netta’s collaboration with D’Lo, who referenced an “Amma” character. Herewith, a few more of those joint sketches, including appearances by Amma herself… and if the tickets haven’t all gone yet and you are in New York, then, you lucky reader, you can get a ticket and see D’Lo live tonight at D’FunQT : A BIG D’Lo SHOW. (You can pronounce it “defunct.” Did I mention TONIGHT? It’s part of Dixon Place’s 2010 HOT Festival.) Wish I could go! I met D’Lo a few years ago through mutual friends, and… what an actor! what a mimic! what a riot!

The show is described as “a stand-up story show with tales from the QT side mixed in with a Sri L.Ankan twist. D’Lo the artist explores topics relating to South Asia, transgender social justice, hip-hop culture, loneliness, and the resilience of the human spirit.” I’m struck by the mention of loneliness; one of the most touching things in the videos I’m linking below is the genuine sweetness of D’Lo’s attempt to alleviate auntie netta’s loneliness.

Here’s some more D’Lo / Nimmi stuff, and then, below the fold (can I say that on a blog?), Nimmi answers questions about a few things, including their collaboration.

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Five Reels Later

96a8f5d0.jpg The media event today was Amardeep’s saying goodbye to Sepia Mutiny. Why, Amardeep, why? And why did you have to make your intelligent commentary on my novel your swan-song? menu_unda_chicken.jpg Have you read the comments section? What happened to the discussion of the point you had made, for instance, about provincial cosmopolitanisms? Talking of swan songs, you could perhaps have done this. Much better, nahin?. A friend ate a kati roll today and told me I should point this out in the comments section myself. Continue reading

On Amitava’s “Nobody Does the Right Thing.” (and bye for now from Amardeep)

“Write what you know” is one of those creative writing class truisms that actually happens to be true, if our goal is to tell a realistic story about a society at a given moment in time. Writers want people to believe that the kinds of fictional lives they’re asking them to live with and care about for a few hours, as they read, are actually plausible. Chances are, what makes a story seem plausible is the fact that it is based, even if only partially, on the truth.

But “write what you know” is also much, much harder than it might seem. At times, it can even feel like a chain around your neck — though that doesn’t mean you can just walk away from it. In his new novel, Nobody Does the Right Thing, Amitava Kumar acknowledges the problem directly in what might be my favorite line of the book: “If you could tell just any story you wanted, no demands ever needed to be made on your honesty.” [Another favorite line: “Bihari society was conservative; it was also corrupt, hollow to its core; you put a finger on its thin, distended skin and it split under your touch, revealing white worms”]

For Amitava Kumar, who was born and raised in Patna, in the Indian state of Bihar, it’s Bihar that encapsulates the memories and history that are what the author “knows,” and what he returns to (always slightly differently), in book after book. “Honesty” and “Bihar” live in the same site for Amitava, and yet the content of that Honesty — the Truth one seeks to represent — remains stubbornly elusive. Kumar’s recently-published novel Nobody Does the Right Thing, which was first published as Home Products in India in 2007, continues to develop this theme. It’s a terrific novel, which I think will be challenging to many readers in the Indian subcontinent as well as the West, but many of the elements that make it challenging are also what make it great. Continue reading