Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Tyler Cowen’s Favorite Indian Things

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Several of the Mutineers are fans of Tyler Cowen over @ Marginal Revolution. The authors of Marginal Revolution are ostensibly Libertarians but have enough intellectual honesty, spark, and insight to draw a broad audience across the political spectrum.

Tyler is perhaps best known for applying the lessons of economics to the global culture industry and has published multiple books on the subject (my reviews are here and here.) In a nutshell, Tyler argues that far from the bland Disney-fied vision of corporatized culture pushed forth by anti-globolists of all stripes, Economics and Culture are actually rather natural allies and responsible for far more cultural creation than homogenization.

Today, Tyler posts on Marginal Revolution: My favorite things Indian and it appears the man is rather erudite on the Desi diaspora –

My favorite things Indian Being here is number one at the moment, but here are a few specifics: 1. My favorite Indian musician – I have to go with Zakir Hussain; yes the CDs are wonderful but they do not compare with seeing him live. Honorary mentions go to Ali Akhbar Khan (sarod) and L. Subramaniam (violin). …3. My favorite Indian novel – Rushdie is the obvious favorite, but I will opt for Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Better than any Dickens but Bleak House. And did you know that he was an errant economics Ph.d. student at Stanford when he wrote the manuscript?

Surfer girls rock!

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A South African film titled, “Surf and Bhoondi” has just won the 2004 Hartley-Merrill National Screenwriting Prize here in the U.S. From iAfrica.com:

‘Surf and Bhoondi’ tells how a young Indian girl has to overcome family pressure and fight racism at the hands of white surfers in order to ride the waves. Set in South Africa, the film deals with issues of change within the one-million-strong Indian community and their relationship with other communities.

It also looks at the bond between father and daughter and how that has also changed for modern Indian families. In public the father is puts on the face of a modern liberal man in the new South Africa, while at home he struggles to maintain his orthodox values.

Sounds very Whale Rider-ish. I hope to check it out.

Raghubir Singh photo exhibition

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The Sepia International photo gallery in Manhattan (how apropos) is hosting a Raghubir Singh retrospective through Dec. 30. Singh, an Indian photographer who worked in brilliant color, did for the humble Ambassador what Austin Powers did for the Mini.

“Unlike people in the West, Indians have always intuitively seen and controlled colour… My artistic sense was shaped early by the culture of the Rajputs of Rajasthan.”… it was the dazzling colours of his native state, its hawelis… clothes… and sand dunes that impressed and inspired the budding artist.

Singh eventually settled in the U.S. and was awarded one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Shri, for his photography in 1983. He passed away in 1999.

Our own Seshu has more.

Arundhati Roy to be Awarded the Sydney Peace Prize

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Booker Prize winning Author Arundhati Roy will be awarded the Sydney Peace Prize on November 3. Roy will deliver the City of Sydney Peace Prize lecture on the same date, while also launching her newest book, “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missiles: Conversation with Arundhati Roy.”

While many disagree with Roy’s politics and her foray into journalistic activism, I have to admit her ability to move minds through her amazing prose is quite impressive.

As a result of her activism, she is now probably better known for her critiques of the coalition of the willing in Iraq, for criticising the giant US corporation Enron for exploiting and sacking Indian workers, and her critique of globalization, which she has called “a process of barbaric dispossession which has few parallels in history,” than for her prize winning novel, “The God of Small Things.”

a perv and his paneer

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Wacko Jacko is hiring a very special personal chef when he visits London in November; Kenyan-born Raj Bajwe is the talented man behind Cafe India, Britain’s best Indian restaurant.

Reports say that Raj, manager of Glasgow’s award-winning Cafe India, will prepare Jackson’s favourite vegetarian dishes including ‘Saag Paneer’, ‘Allo Golu’, ‘pakora’, fried rice dishes, ‘chapatis’ and ‘naan’ breads.
Raj told the media: “I know Michael is facing serious charges but I can only judge the man as I find him. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
“He loves his Indian food, particularly the way we do it in Scotland. Michael doesn’t drink and washes the meal down with iced water.
“His favourite Indian dish is ‘Saag Paneer’, which is spinach cooked through with cheese. He just loves that. He also likes ‘Allo Golu’, which is a spicy potato dish.

Bajwe has cooked for other bold-faced names, including the Governator of my home state:

Cafe India’s other celebrity customers include Sir Sean Connery, Hugh Grant, Keanu Reeves, Diana Ross, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rod Stewart, Billy Connolly, Lionel Richie and Emma Thompson.

Hemachandra numbers everywhere

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Supplesomething forwarded me an interesting NPR piece on Manjul Bhargava, 28, a professor of number theory at Princeton who discusses how the Fibonacci series pops up not just in mathematics but also in the arts.

The Fibonacci series is the set of numbers beginning with 1, 1 where every number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The series begins with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. They were known in India before Fibonacci as the Hemachandra numbers. And the ratio of any two successive Fibonacci numbers approximates a ratio, ~1.618, called the golden section or golden mean.

It’s long been known that the Fibonacci series turns up frequently in nature. The numbers of petals on a daisy and the dimensions of a section of a spiral nautilus shell are usually Fibonacci numbers. For plants, this is because the fractional part of the golden mean, a constant called phi (0.618), is the rotation fraction (222.5 degrees) which yields the most efficient and scalable packing of circular objects such as seeds, petals and leaves.

Continue reading →

Prince2Priest

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prince2priest.jpg

This is something deep from my dusty archives. At Ohio University, where I studied visual communications for a year, we were asked to illustrate a concept. I took the legend behind the Buddha and his transformation from stately prince to the high priest of a new ideology – perhaps even a religion – as my concept. Given that Buddhist art is already so beautifully, how do you go about illustrating that?

I found an Indian ornament lying around in my apartment; a puppet of a man wearing a sparkling turban riding on a legless horse. I used his face alone and intentionally lit him in the background to appear overbearing, ominous and perhaps even violent. Notice the direction of the light. It’s from below. Ever see this technique in a horror flick?

Several years back, my mother sent me a handpainted scroll from Bhutan depicting the Buddha. If you can believe it, the six Buddhas in the bottom are all from that same image. Ideally there should be eight of them to symbolize the eight-fold path in Buddhist theology, but I couldn’t get them all to fit (this time).

The images were shot on film, scanned at a high resolution and then brought into Photoshop where there was quite a bit of manipulating (something I wouldn’t ever do to an editorial image). Each of the Buddhas were sent through a bunch of Photoshop filters. Each filter tweaks the image to a specification that I was happy to see on my screen. I really wasn’t sure what they would look like before I got started and I was pleasantly surprised by what the results looked like in the end.

The exercise was a grand departure from what I usually do – wedding photojournalism. It was really a time to experiment and have fun. I am not really sure I have conveyed the principal premise of the image clearly. Let’s just call this a work in progress, shall we?

Happy Curry Week!

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I’ve always hated korma; I’m not sure what that says about me, but the next time I order Aloo Vindaloo at Gaylord’s Ghirardelli, I’m going to smirk as I think of this survey from England:

One fifth of men questioned for Sky digital and Star Plus’ National Curry Week (October 17 – 24) survey said, they had eaten a vindaloo curry to impress a lady or their friends! When it comes to impressing friends or members of the opposite sex Lancashire has the toughest taste buds with over 20 per cent who have braved a vindaloo in the face of peer pressure. Whilst those in Newcastle seem to have the puniest palette and are least likely (7 per cent) to indulge in hot and spicy dishes to win over friends and lovers!
Women seem to be tongue-challenged when it comes to vindaloos. The findings show four in 10 men like their curries hot or extremely hot compared to only one in 10 women. Two-thirds (62 per cent) of women questioned admit they like mild curries, such as a korma.
Star Plus’ spokeswoman, Suruchi Sthalekar said: “The results are hilarious, I can just imagine the scenes in curry houses and homes across the UK. To think men measure their sexual prowess against the spiciness of their curry. And I would urge all woman to go out there and try vindaloo today to prove we can handle it.”

Handle it? I consummately require it. 😉

Desi Culture March – Worldwide

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lisa4.jpgYou guys probably know or can guess that I travel quite a bit for work. When you’re the lonely business traveller, you end up spending a fair number of your jetlagged hours channel surfing the local TV. In between dubbed reruns of TJ Hooker in various languages, one ofthe things that’s surprising me more and more is how much Desi culture I’m running into in random countries.

I was impressed, for ex., with the Desi quarter of Singapore (one of the cleanest cities in the world, and yet, Desi’s have managed to make an entire street smell like Garam Masala ;-). But I think most folks generally expect to see (and smell?) the Desi presence there.

The spate of more surprising examples began about a year ago when I was in Stockholm and flipped out when I saw the video for Mundian To Bach Ke on Swede MTV.

A little over a month ago, I was in Amsterdam and Russell Peters was on TV (with Dutch subtitles). He appeared to be delivering his usual desi-themed material to a UK audience and the show was rebroadcast on a local TV station.

And now, I’m in Sao Paolo, Brazil and just a few minutes ago, a total 3rd tier ABCD movie – Bollywood/Hollywood was on the boob-tube complete with Portugese subtitles. The movie still sucked but it was sorta interesting to see a Brazilian announcer say something about the flick afterwards with a headshot of Lisa Ray in the corner of the screen.

Can an American Idol save a Bombay Dream

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Playbill.com reports that singer Tamyra Gray, who shot to stardom in the first edition of TV’s “American Idol,” will make her Broadway debut in the struggling Bombay Dreams on Nov. 9.

Gray, who placed fourth in the hit TV singing competition in 2002, will assume the role of Priya, the earnest film director in the Bollywood-themed musical, for a limited engagement of 12 weeks. Priya is currently being played by young desi actress Anisha Nagarajan.

“I have been an admirer of Tamyra Gray from the start and am thrilled she’s joined the Broadway Company of Bombay Dreams. She’s going to be wonderful”, said the composer of the show, A.R. Rahman.

Playbill.com is also referring to a Variety story that suggests Bombay Dreams is headed for celluloid. Variety reports that the musical, originally produced on the London stage by Andrew Lloyd Webber, may make the stage-to-screen leap via Really Useful Films. In fact, a motion picture is currently being developed, and shooting will most likely be done in India. Austin Shaw, the managing director of Really Useful Films, told the industry paper, “It’s effectively a Bollywood film in a Western style, so it makes sense to shoot it in India.” Farah Khan, the co-choreographer of Bombay Dreams, is in the running to helm the motion picture.