Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Bharat Gheewala’s dream

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We’ve all seen a movie and been inspired to change our lives. Usually, with me, that impulse lasts around as long as it takes me to get home and then I forget or move on. However, in Bharat Gheewala’s case [I can’t make that name up – what could be a better name than that?], he plans to act on this impulse.

Gheewala’s inspiration came from an unlikely place — the movie “The Last King of Scotland” which should earn Forest Whitaker an Oscar tonight. Watching the movie reminded Gheewala of his own experiences in Uganda over 30 years ago:

“It was a case of leaving the kitchen and the bathroom and all our belongings and just getting out,” he said. “At first no one knew if Amin had meant what he said. But when it became clear that he had there was real panic… “In the end most of us left with nothing. People knew Amin … was a killer and would carry out his threats if we did not obey him…” [Link]

Interestingly enough, it also made Gheewala, now a successful businessman in the UK, feel he should do something to help Uganda:

“There is a saying that when you prosper you should give something back to the land of your birth, the land that created you as a person and that’s what I want to do.” [Link]

Gheewala says he now wants to build a hydroelectric plant to generate electricity in the south of Uganda, and create a lasting legacy for his family. I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, or if this is all clever PR, but I thought, on Oscar night, it would be nice to spotlight somebody who at least claims to have been inspired by the silver screen.

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There’s No Place Like Om

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tattva.jpgOh no. Hot on the heels of Amrita’s most excellent rant on her visit to the “Gateway of India” themed event at New York’s ABC Carpet & Home, and the subsequent deployment on the same thread of the neologism “Ho-rientalists,” here comes, via the SAJA mailing list, a new development that brings it all together more beautifully than one could have dreamed for. It turns out that if you visit the ABC show, which runs til March 14, you can enter to win one of “Six Unique Travel Experiences” being offered by the Taj Hotels group in conjunction with a desi-owned New York travel agency called Our Personal Guest, and known as Tattva Tours.

Tattva? The term the brochure uses to translate this rather complex mystical concept is essence — as in, the essence of India. The press release explains:

Each 10-day tour explores a distinctive cultural perspective of India; some tours also offer a choice of Northern or Southern India itineraries. They are designed to bring out the essence of an Indian experience and are named after the elements that, according to Eastern philosophy, form the basis of all existence.

For details may I direct you to the tour brochure, which is a marvel of — shit, every single last damn cliché you could possibly round up about the mysterious, mystical, spiritual, romantic, esoteric, and not least, luxurious Orient, all set against glowing ochres and purples and yellows and labeled in the requisite faux-Devanagari script. It offers conceptual summaries of the six tours, which include Agni (“The delicacies by Indian fire – It’s not what you taste, it’s what you spice your memory with”), Vaayu (“A flight of fancy with Indian royalty – It’s not how you fly, it’s how high you soar”), Bhoomi (“The earthy splendour of Indian crafts – It’s not what you touch, it’s how it caresses you within”), Aakash, Jal, and Kham.

If we start quoting the descriptive copy for each of these tours we’ll never get out of here, so let me just offer one editorial gem:

Vaayu – Wind
Knowing no bounds, the royalty of India knew no limits when it came to revelry and celebrations. Without India’s royalty, pink would not have become the navy blue of India.

Now hold on a second. This might sound like gibberish to you, but then again, chances are you just aren’t sophisticated enough to understand it. After all, Our Personal Guest is aimed at a very specific type of client, the OPG Traveler: Continue reading →

Medicine Entertainment

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Alright, macacas. We don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s only because we’ve all been crazy busy lately that we haven’t gotten to this one yet. We certainly don’t want you to think that we here at the Mutiny consider ourselves too high-brow(n) to address the strange case of Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, a.k.a. the “meth doctor” who has found himself in the limelight due to his involvement in the now-ended life of Anna Nicole Smith.

kapoor.jpgQuestion One: Is that T-shirt for real, or is it Photoshopped? Either way it’s a remarkable image. Almost as remarkable as the image the gossip sites had of the brother sans shirt, apparently launching into woozy canoodle with Ms. Smith on a couch in a club before some other sycophant shoves a hand on the camera lens. Almost as remarkable as that of the brother astride a West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade “float” — actually a black Saab convertible — gazing fondly down at Ms. Smith while she — oh, just click the link. (I have absolutely no idea whether it’s SFW or NSFW, by the way. I can’t gauge these things anymore.)

One of my Sepia colleagues commented to me that the brewing controversy over Dr. Kapoor, who is now under investigation by the California medical board for his alleged role in supplying Ms. Smith with the alleged pharmaceutical products that are alleged to have contributed to her demise (I think we’re safe with that phrasing), is actually good for the race, in that no one has commented on Kapoor’s ethnicity, leaving his incompetence and general gross-ness to speak for itself without racial qualifiers — he is being judged, if you will, not on the color of his skin but on the content of his character. Well, my co-Mutineer didn’t actually phrase it that way; I’m embellishing, but it’s still his basic point. Which means: Yay! Desis are now so normalized into the field of medicine that they are expected to be insane, incompetent, quacks at no greater or lesser rate than found in the general medical population.

The gossip sites also inform us (caution: clothed but scary picture) that Dr. Kapoor advertised at some point for a position (chick pea, are you listening?) in which he describes one of his practice’s specialties as Entertainment Medicine. This is, apparently, a hitherto-unknown field. He also does travel immunizations and (ahem) “several national and international clinical pharmaceutical trials.” I don’t know about Entertainment Medicine, but when it comes to Medicine Entertainment, this brother’s gotta be a shoo-in for the Oscar. Continue reading →

The economics of dating

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Two stories have caught my attention in the past two days, and both deal with everyone’s favorite subject: dating! Or rather, I should say the stories are more about the lack of suitable mating options that has resulted from the intersection of two topics we blog about quite often on SM: 1) the growing new economies of India and China; and 2) the messed up sex ratio resulting from female foeticide and infanticide.

Yesterday, PRI’s Marketplace sent a reporter in to the heart of “Parent’s Matchmaker’s Corner” in Shanghai. The corner is basically a trading floor where worried Chinese parents gather to trade biodata on their late-twentysomething children, mostly without the knowledge of said children. The story was set in Shanghai but it might as well have been Delhi, as almost identical market forces are at work. Among the many great insights (some humorous) in the radio story (please listen) are the following:

1) Chinese A-list men date B-list women because they don’t want someone as smart as them. They want a trophy wife.

2) Many Chinese A-list men go abroad to seek their fortune, thus restricting supply.

3) Chinese A-list women get screwed because they are in high demand (since there is an overall shortage of women), but only have B and C-list men to choose from.

4) A-list women throw themselves into work and/or fool around waiting for an A-list man that might never materialize.

5) B and C-list men grow increasingly bitter and frustrated because all the B and C-list women have traded up and the A-list women only want them for their bods.

This chain of events is set into motion for two reasons: 1) there is a skewed sex ratio; and 2) in the “new” economies you have as many or more educated women as men. Again, everything above seems to apply to India as well. You’ll also note that in America reason #2 is already applicable, but what saves us from the same spiral is that we don’t perform sex selection.

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Zen and the Art of Painful Clichés

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religionandethics-bluefluteplayer.jpg

Two Sundays ago, the PBS program, Religion and Ethics, decided to ask the question: “Why are Hinduism and Buddhism capturing the attention of business and management circles?”

The show profiled Professor Srikumar S. Rao, of the enormously popular Columbia University class Creativity and Personal Mastery, and Gautam Jain, of the Vedanta Cultural Foundation.

So the answer to the PBS question? The usual hodgepodge: happiness is elusive, the material world is illusory, one must not be possessed by one’s possessions… Since the 80s proved to business people that greed is not necessarily good, satisfying, or even lucrative in the long run, people are searching for another peg to hang a slogan upon.

I have a reflexive gag reaction to anything that smells of Deepak Chopra and the “pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow” school of thought. While Prof. Rao and Gautamji came across as sincere, thoughtful and genuine (at least in the 5 mins alloted to each), I wonder if, despite their best efforts to explode the If/Then model of happiness, their students listen selectively. After all, these are people willing to pay $1,000 over the cost of the class to listen to Prof. Rao. His website, Are You Ready to Succeed? opens with this passage:

Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off the edge and disappear. So each day is far too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer is a day wasted.

Which, frankly, leaves me lost (lotus, skittering, radiant cheer -what?) and slightly thirsty. Continue reading →

Gimme some o’ that Hot Stuff

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I bring to your attention two pictures taken yesterday near Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It’s a striking reminder as to the source of the deliciousness of Indian cuisine:

“Must remember to not touch my eyes…must remember to not touch my eyes…

And in related news:

India’s Bhut Jolokia chilli has been confirmed as the world’s hottest pepper by The Guinness Book of Records, a US researcher said.

Bhut Jolokia comes in at 1,001,304 Scoville heat units, a measure of hotness for a chilli. It is nearly twice as hot as Red Savina, the variety it replaces as the hottest. By comparison, an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000.

Paul Bosland, a regents professor at New Mexico State University, recalls taking a bite of the chilli pepper and feeling like he was breathing fire. He gulped down a soda, thinking, ”That chilli has got to be some kind of record.” [Link]

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Rage, Rage Against the Dying Satellite

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mtvdesi_small.jpg Bloggers can’t presume objectivity, so despite the fact that I don’t subscribe (only get old-school network TV), I’m frankly quite dismayed by the news that MTVWorld has closed shop. I know some people who work(ed) at MTV Desi, and appeared on a show that might never air, so perhaps my sentiments are self-serving. But an MTV desi producer emailed this rather heartbreaking note to me today:

This is just really tough for all of us who work to the bone on making something progressive and representative of our communities. I’ve been pretty broken up.

I feel truly truly sad…[and would like] people to understand the challenges of creating a 24 hour channel. The reason we repeat so much is because there are fucking four of us working our asses to the bone to get content up. We are growing. We are a start up– give us a chance!!!

It takes time– and we barely cleared a year and we have supported so many many artists and every single one of them has walked out of our studio feeling proud, happy, accomplished, important…[there is] a need for us to get out there… [to represent] what we stand for and how much WE CARE!!

SepiaMutiny blogged about MTVdesi from its inception, as the first video dropped, anchors were selected, desi artists aired their first videos. We even blogged about how MTV desi covered the Pakistan earthquake (internet writing about liquid television…does that count as meta commentary or wankery?) Continue reading →

Indian-American Idol

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In the we-watch-so-you-don’t have-to category, I thought it would be nice to provide an update or two on our non-Bollywood desi brethren continuing to make it in the world of reality television. We blogged previously about the Singing Malakars, and unlike Abhi, I have been known to watch American Idol and other reality fare, especially when they feature South Asians. (For the record, I think it is way better than toilet water.) In this weeks installment of American Idol, we saw saw the splitting of the Malakar siblings, as Simon, Paula, and Randy decided to send Shyamali home, but advance Sanjaya all the way through to the final 24 (link). I thought Sanjaya’s rendition of “Some Kind Of Wonderful,” was pretty good, and it was great to see a desi make it through to the actual competition. Even if he doesn’t win, as long as Sanjaya doesn’t give a performance like like this one from the U.K.’s Pop Idol (definitely click on the link–it is hilarious), he will be a winner in my book. You can follow Sanjaya’s progress, here and on American Idol which airs Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s on Fox.

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Posted in TV

MTV Desi, RIP

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Back in 2005, bloggers at Sepia Mutiny (and me, on my own small blog) announced with some excitement the advent of MTV Desi, a channel geared to NRIs and Second Gen South Asian youth. Now there are news reports that MTV Desi is getting axed, along with its sister diasporic channels MTV Chi and MTV K, as Viacom is undergoing a restructuring. Hollywood Reporter has an MTV executive making the following statement:

“Unfortunately, the premium distribution model for MTV World proved more challenging than we anticipated in this competitive environment,” the company said. “As a result, MTV has decided to shut down its linear MTV World operation. However, we remain steadfast in superserving multicultural youth, and we are continuing to investigate ways to integrate the MTV Desi, Chi and K brands online and on our other screens.” (link)

Well, duh, if it’s only available via Satellite TV, you can bet that “Cheap Ass Desis” (to rip off a former SM commenter’s moniker) aren’t about to shell out a hefty monthly fee for it. I believe I’m the only blogger here who actually subscribes to MTV Desi — and it’s only because my in-laws came to stay with us for a few months, and the channel came packaged with the channels they really wanted — Star One, Star Plus, Star News, and NDTV. Still, I’ve actually spent some hours watching the channel, so maybe I’m the best person to do a little mini-elegy. (By the way, it’s worth noting that the channel is still on the air as of today.)

First, the positive. The best thing I ever saw on MTV Desi was the following inspired rant by Parag Khanna.

There are some statements he makes that miss the mark (India isn’t the poorest country in the world by the indices I’ve seen), but I appreciate the energy. Instead of being the embarrassed, cautious ABCD — do we really know enough about India to comment on corruption? shouldn’t we stay “positive”? — he’s taking a strong stance. (Parag Khanna might make a good blogger.) If MTV Desi is really dead, it’s too bad we’ll get less stuff like this. Continue reading →

Posted in TV

Art or incitement?

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Falak is the name of a Pakistani-Canadian rock band out of Toronto. You can check out their Myspace page to listen to some of their tunes and read their blog entries. Searching the name “Falak” on Youtube will turn up a bunch of clips of their music videos and live performances. At face they sound like a typical hard rock band destined to obscurity. However, MTV Pakistan recently banned them…but not before they had already been airing their video over there for a while (since December).

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

So….just wanted to let you all know…that FALAK’s first video is officially airing in Pakistan. It’s a bit scandalous for North American television though….so don’t really know when you can expect to see it here….maybe when these fascist pigs try exercising real freedom of speech …

In the meanwhile, remember, CNN is bullshit…. [Link]

The ban of course will generate some attention for them. Why the ban? Watch this video, titled Yadein part II:

So I ask the question to SM’s readers because I am still trying to decide. Is this art/expression, or does it lend a rock-and-roll mystique to something else…

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