Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Indian Leaves

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Vinod asked me to expound on my art; a task I have to confess I find terribly difficult to do. I balk at even calling it art, actually. So questions like “why” somewhat irk me. I could be a real smart ass and say – “because it was there” but that doesn’t help you any.

I was in India last November and as I waited for my then fiancee to get her clothes stiched by a tailor, I walked around the gardens and found these exotic leaves poking into the afternoon sky. I got a simple reading off of the leaves and by that I mean I exposed only for the leaves and assumed the sky which was pretty darn bright would go to white light. Machines don’t disappoint. Sure enough the sky went white and the leaves punched through.

I am reading a book by Robert Adams called Beauty in Photography: Essays In Defense of Traditional Values. In it, Adams states one way “beauty” can be defined in photography is by the form it takes. I think I must subliminally subscribe to this point of view. Do all photographers have their brains wired this way? I can’t really say for sure.

What I liked, more than the photograph, was the actual experience of photographing the leaves. Process over results. I think that’s really the key to just about anything in life. Enjoy what you are doing and you will end up doing it well. It’s a mantra I keep repeating to myself for it is so easy to forget. And didn’t the Bhagwad Gita say something similar? And therein lies my desi hook to this week’s photograph submission. Enjoy!

leaves.jpg

You will have to trust me when I say that there was very little manipulation to this image. Just a bit of sharpening in Photoshop, but otherwise the image is as-is. I really don’t like fussing about or tweaking my images; even more so when people are in my frame.

Bachelor / Survivor are both so lame…

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if you want real reality TV, you’ve gotta borrow a hindi movie plotline – Gudiya ki shaadi: Indian reality show on TV – The Times of India

NEW DELHI: The life of a young woman being ordered to return to her first husband, who had gone missing for five years, despite being pregnant by her second husband is unfolding before millions of Indians. In a story with all ingredients for a maudlin movie, Gudiya, eight months pregnant with her second husband Taufiq, is being forced by family members and community leaders to return to her first husband, Mohammad Arif, a soldier who had been presumed dead. With Arif’s unexpected return after five years as a prisoner of war in Pakistan, Gudiya’s second marriage has been deemed illegal by Islamic clerics quoting the Shariat. Which man should Gudiya choose?

Truely “the most exciting rose ceremony ever.”

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Naveen Andrews stars in ‘Lost’ on ABC

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Shaggy-haired actor Naveen Andrews (Bride and Prejudice, The English Patient, The Buddha of Suburbia, Wild West, Kama Sutra) is starring in a new ABC series, Lost, satirically described by the New York Post as a show about an airplane crash on an island where only models survive. Andrews plays an Iraqi dealing with racial prejudice from his fellow survivors. Can’t say they’re not trying to be topical.

I wouldn’t have expected this of the U.S. film market vs. that of the UK:

The actor told [Asians in Media] recently that he has moved to the USA because opportunities for non-white actors were greater out there.
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funny girl

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i first heard about controversy-courting comedienne shazia mirza a few years ago, but i wasn’t really a fan of her signature “pilot’s license” joke– i just didn’t think it was THAT funny– so i wasn’t sure that i’d dig her comedic stylings. that might be why i waited to read an interview with her until now:

You used to wear a burqa. Why did you stop?
The reason you’re meant to wear it is because men are meant to be sexually attracted by hair. But I’ve tried, it doesn’t work! (laughs) And I thought, men are the weak ones, yeah? They should be wearing the burqas, they should be locked up in the house, and women should be out. Why is it that those guys who can’t control themselves are let out, and we’re the ones that have to wear the burqas? You can be a perfectly good Muslim without wearing it. You know, it’s not what you wear on your head, it’s what you do with your life.

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DJ Rekha smacks Daler Mehndi

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DJ Rekha calls Daler Mehndi the Punjabi Bobby McFerrin (via Tablatronic):

Mehndi was bhangra lite and a diversion, says DJ Rekha of New York’s hip Bhangra Basement club: “Even back when he was big, he was kind of like the Will Smith of bhangra. Not so respected. Now, after the scandal, his position in the scene is that he doesn’t really have one.”…

There’s a new breed of younger, tougher British bhangra kings in Rishi Rich and Panjabi MC. Rich, in particular, has taken the music to heights Mehndi never dreamed of, fusing it with hip-hop to create a more aggressive sound that has Britney Spears and Ricky Martin queuing up to ask the 26-year-old to add a global street edge to their singles… Rich’s hardening of bhangra takes it back to its roots. As the music of the dry farms of the Punjab, bhangra lyrics were often gritty, and even today Punjabi artists are the most outspoken in India, singing about sex, drugs and crime just as their hip-hop peers do in the West…

In 1999 an American critic, stunned by the ecstatic crowd at one of his New Jersey concerts, declared Mehndi “bigger than the Beatles.”… “You know, I was a very bad taxi driver,” he says. “Always looking in the mirror at myself and imagining I would be a big star in music…”

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Fine French Curry

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The world wide Masala march continues – Now, France succumbs to the taste of Indian chutney : HindustanTimes.com/UK: News for UK Asians –

The enthusiasm for Indian food is touching such heights that even the French food snobs can no longer resist its lure. The age-old Indian chutney, which is believed to have found its way to France through Britain, is being hailed as a symbol of modern cuisine by the French.

New South Asian magazines popping up

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A new Asian entertainment newspaper that is being distributed by Urban Media Ltd. of Birmingham will go on sale today in England as reported by Asians in Media:

Editor Reena Combo says: “Desi Xpress is the type of publication the young Asian community is crying out for at this moment. The Asian music scene has never been so popular so it’s not only great to give our stars a platform to reach their fans, but for our readers to keep up-to-date with the latest events in the world of Asian showbiz.”

Although I don’t envision this publication gaining any significant readership in the U.S. for quite some time, if ever, I thought some of the more dedicated music buffs would appreciate the heads up.

Also recently launched was Nirali Magazine:

Nirali, which means “different” in several South Asian languages, is just tha–a different kind of magazine for today’s modern South Asian American woman. Published monthly online, Nirali Magazine reflects the identity, needs and interests of South Asian American women all over the United States.

Nirali is your complete one-stop source for all things South Asian. It’s not your typical women’s magazine: While you’ll find the requisite fashion and beauty stories within Nirali, you’ll also see stories on politics, trends in the South Asian community, profiles of strong, smart South Asian women, and introspective pieces about what it means to have an identity that is both South Asian and American. Nirali’s stories are like the smart and supportive conversations you’d have with your girlfriends over lunch.

Nirali does have a feature article on some of the current young politicos in the South Asian community that is worth checking out.

Story-wallah

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A new collection of South Asian diasporic short stories has been put together by editor Shyam Selvadurai under the title Story-Wallah as reported by The Globe and Mail. This might be a great way to get your diasporic writing fix if you are like me and find a full novel much too depressing to read through.

Indo-American writer Bharati Mukherjee, one of the contributors in this collection, believes that the diasporic posture is fraudulent and self-serving. “In literary terms,” she writes, “being an immigrant is very déclassé. There is a low grade ashcan realism implied in its very material.” In Karima, one of the stories in the collection, Pakistan’s Aameer Hussein writes of a character who is alienated both from Bangladesh and Pakistan: “With pride we assume the mantle of the dispossessed.”

The contrary view, held by writers such as Salman Rushdie, asserts that the immigrant is a cultural nomad, an Everyman in a world of shifting values and cultures — an interpreter of maladies (to quote the London-born, U.S.-raised Jhumpa Lahiri). Selvadurai, closer to this latter group, mentions the importance of this cultural clash to his own plots. And this is the theme running throughout the stories in this anthology.

How Rushdie got his groove back, an aria

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Salman Rushdie has adapted Haroun and the Sea of Stories into an opera playing at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center from Oct. 31 to Nov. 11. Haroun is a fabulist children’s tale, more accessible than his usual work, but still layered with allegory:

Haroun narrates the fate of the story-teller, who loses his ability to tell tales. His son then sets out on a journey to save his father’s skills. Rushdie had intended the book as a gift to his son Zafar… to make the son understand his father’s plight… [T]he book reached out to audiences uncomfortable with the complexities of Rushdie’s other novels…

Rushdie found the process of adaptation taxing:

S.R. ItÂ’s a strange book, Haroun. This was the one that came with the greatest fluency—it took me less than a year, and itÂ’s now taken ten times that long to adapt, so you know this is a much larger achievement… C.W. ThereÂ’s a practical reason for that. Its brevity makes it a little bit more manageable. I mean, I have my eye on The MoorÂ’s Last Sigh… S.R. Yes, that would be a very long opera.

Rushdie’s last stage adaptation was the excellent, albeit rushed, Midnight’s Children in London and at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He’s also working on a film version of his short story The Firebird’s Nest, in which he’s cast his inamorata Padma Lakshmi.

Update: Amardeep Singh has more.

Welcome to reality

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AnishShroff.jpg Desis have begun competing in reality shows with a vengeance: Raj Bhakta on The Apprentice, Julie Ann Titus on America’s Next Top Model, and now Anish Shroff on Dream Job, a competition to be the next ESPN SportsCenter anchor (thanks, Jagjit). Shroff is a 22-year-old Yankees fan and radio sports announcer, a Syracuse University graduate from Bloomfield, NJ.

I’m looking forward to seeing Thuggee leader Amrish Puri on Fear Factor and backstabbing Bollyistas on Real World, though young Neil Kadakia of Spellbound qualifies under fear and loathing on film.

Maybe this will be the next topic of competition conversation between desi moms: ‘My Twinkle was just on American Idol last week.’ ‘That’s nothing, my Sweetie was on Survivor.‘

Ah, who am I kidding. With all due respect to Hari Sreenivasan and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the most common desis on American TV will probably be on Beat the Geeks and Jeopardy. You’ll have to watch CNN International to catch Monita Rajpal, Daljit Dhaliwal and Zain Verjee. BBC World has at least six more, and the UK’s Channel 4 is rife.

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