Tada! It’s a bloated Bollywood star! And he looks thrilled. What’s up, Sanjay Dutt?

A policeman carries out a security check on actor Sanjay Dutt as he arrives at the Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court in Mumbai on Thursday.

Dutt has been convicted by the TADA court for illegal possession of weapons under the Arms Act, but has been cleared of the more serious charge of being involved in a terrorist consipracy in the over-decade long trial of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.

…Dutt is facing a prison term after being convicted by the TADA court under the Arms Act for illegal possession of an AK-56 rifle and a 9mm pistol. He has sought exemption from a prison term under the POA (Probation of Offenders Act). [Rediff]

A well-connected, wealthy, famous person looking for special treatment? SHOCKING. While I’m sure you found the content blockquoted above fascinating, the real reason I posted this picture is because I thought you might want to play “Caption that photo!” with it, since that’s what I did.

You know how it’s done, if not, see previous posts with caption games here (the Abhishwarya edition!), here (the Tribe Called Quest edition!) and here (the Sikh and destroy edition!). Continue reading →

Several months ago, we received the same tip so many times, I started deleting my emails, because I knew exactly what they contained. Read or unread, every one of them was an exclamation-point-enhanced reference to a certain BBC South Asia article which heralded: Condoms ‘too big’ for Indian men

Finally, Siddhartha took one for the team and posted the mildly infamous, Oh, All Right. But You Asked For It, which immediately exploded in to a 400+ comment orgy about the injustice of it all.

Fast forward to last night, when Conan mentioned a related bit of news in his monologue, which, after some googling, I found here. My brown brothers, take heart.

From News-Medical.Net:

Women are much more interested in a man’s personality and looks than the size of his penis, but men can experience real anxiety even if they are average sized, according to a research review published in the June issue of the urology journal BJU International.

And this is all based on

the findings of more than 50 international research projects into penile size and small penis syndrome carried out since 1942

Men, it’s all in your head:

A survey of over 50,000 heterosexual men and women found that 66 per cent of men said their penis was average sized, 22 per cent said large and 12 per cent said small. 85 per cent of women were satisfied with their partner’s penile size, but only 55 per cent of men were satisfied.

The commenter formerly known as Prince Al Mujahid for Debauchery quite rightly asked:

What about the girth????????

Your eight question marks now have an answer:

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You didn’t think I’d just sit on the sidelines while the Greatest Show on Earth was unfolding did you? The Annual Scripps National Spelling bee wraps up in prime-time tonight! Meet the last of the brown hopefuls (who we must all now pray for as they represent the best of desi-dom):

Name: Kavya Shivashankar Favorite movie: Spellbound Favorite TV show: The View (she reportedly got into it with Rosie when she went on) Abhi’s Scouting Report: She has experience under her belt and stormed into the final rounds last year. Not to mention she plays the violin. A victory by her would also resurrect the name “Kavya” from its current place in infamy.

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Gustavo Arellano runs a nationally syndicated column titled “Ask a Mexican” which began three years ago (first as a joke) in the OC Weekly. A while back, over the tip-line, someone suggested we run a similar column. I think it’s a good idea. I think I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna be the “Desi” with the answers. So…if you have any questions for a Desi (or Indian, South Asian, whatever you prefer) I am now your man. Send them my way at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com. I will try to answer at least one question a week and I will only tackle questions sent via email and not via the comments. I will more than likely ask my bunker mates to opine on certain inquiries, especially if they are more qualified desis for a particular question. To get you in the mood, here is the latest “Ask a Mexican” column:

Q: Is it true that there are a lot more Mexicans hooking up with East Indians now? I know a few mixed Mexican-Indian couples, and I’ve heard that in some parts of the country, there are communities full of Mexican Hindus (products of Mexican-East Indian intermarriage). Is it true that this is a rising trend? If so, do you have any advice for young Indian-Americans interested in attracting Mexican girls or guys?

–El Otro Tipo de Indio

A: Dear Other Type of Indian: I try not to answer questions about interethnic amor (that’s more of a Dan Savage thing), but I’ll run yours because it allows me to plug Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans. This fascinating 1994 ethnography by University of California Irvine anthropology professor Karen Leonard studies Mexican women in the United States who married men from the Punjab region of what’s now India and Pakistan during the first half of the 20th century. There are muchos similarities between Mexican and Punjabi cultures — a love of flatbreads (tortillas and rotis), spicy cuisine and loud, drum-based music (banda and bhangra, respectively) — but Leonard concludes that American immigration policies barring most Asian women from entering this country inspired many of the unions, and that both Mexican and Indian-American communities (never mind the gabachos) discriminated against these families… [Link]

Please, ask this macaca all kinds of questions and not just cheesy relationship questions. I just want to heal. Like Dr. Phil. Or Frasier Crane.

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“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” — Henry Kissinger

Despite their staunch alliance, relations between Pakistan and the USA are … tense. If you were a Pakistani Prime Minister, what could be more natural than … a more personal approach to break the ice, to fill the yawning gap, to closely bring together two former intimates, these two strange bedfellows?

“Shortcut” Aziz gets shot down

Aziz “tried this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: ‘Pakistan is a country of rich traditions,’ staring in (Rice’s) eyes …When Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself as a ladies’ man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone,” the book says. [Link]

Aziz was not some wide eyed naïf when it came to the ways of the West. He was a former ibanker, a VP at Citibank who had worked in London, Athens and New York. He may have had good reason to consider himself an experienced ladies man, a master of international affairs as it were, but he clearly met his match:

“He bragged — to Western diplomats, no less — that he could conquer any woman in two minutes… There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down … By the end of the meeting, he was babbling. The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed…” [Link]

He could conquer any woman in two minutes Pakistan’s response to these reports is that it’s all a cross-cultural misunderstanding:

Pakistan’s deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said that Aziz was only being polite. “The prime minister wanted to be nice with Dr. Rice,” Azeem told AFP. “Our tradition is that we should talk to women gently and decently and this was what the prime minister did…” [Link]

Poor Aziz. He completely miscalculated in his approach :

Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys… [Link]

Although her name means “with sweetness”, nice guys finish last with Dr. Rice. Manmohan Singh would never have made that kind of rookie mistake, he would have shown Condi why you can’t spell aphrodisiac without desi. This is one part of Nehru’s legacy that we can all embrace.

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