Some of you may consider it good news that the top three finalists in the the Geography Bee, hosted by the great Alex Trebek himself, were Indian American. I do not. Some of you may also think fondly on the fact that the last four contestants in last year’s Spelling Bee were also Indian American. I do not.

“Well Abhi,” you say. “Aren’t you at least happy that the top Intel Science Award ($50,000) went to an Indian American?”

No.

I am afraid. I am afraid that most Americans aren’t able to tell us apart anymore. We aren’t all “the same.” I come from a vastly different culture and tradition than those people. I am nothing like them and I am tired of all the “so-called intellectuals” that are all “bhai-bhai” and want to give us all a common label. They don’t care about us so why should we be friendly to them? Ever since Indian-American kids started winning these types of competitions I get strange looks on the subway when I am reading a book. I can hear their whispers and their suspicions. “I know what he is up to,” they think. “All those people are the same. They just sit and study vocabulary lists and almanacs. They just come to ‘our country’ to win our competitions.” Nobody sits next to me sometimes, even during rush hour, all because they think we are all the same. I’m sick of it. I can’t even take pictures at tourist attractions anymore. Park security always comes up to me and asks me if I am forming a database of important geographic sites. Last time a guard mentioned to me that his son had “lost to one of you guys in a preliminary round.”

The solution is clear to me but will take some time to implement. Through forums like this we need to do a better job of educating the public. They need to know that some of us can’t spell and instead rely on readers or co-bloggers to point out spelling errors in their blog posts. They need to know that some of us don’t know which river the Port of Rotterdam lies on. Most importantly they need to know that they having nothing to fear from the vast majority of us.

I don’t know if you guys are like me but every time I read about another “incident” in the news I think, “Great. Now they will think that we are all capable of this kind of thing.” Here was the latest:

A woman teacher in Bhubaneswar has been arrested for inflicting three children with burn injuries on finding mistakes in their homework, police said on Sunday…

On Friday evening, Kabita allegedly lost her temper after she found mistakes in the home work of the kids. She punished them with a hot iron, a police official said. [Link]

Moderates in the community need to come forward and speak out against these types of heinous acts. We can no longer afford to remain quiet while a radical minority dictates our image. We should denounce this sort of thing immediately and work to educate the community by pointing out that a lot of us are only average in intelligence and will work to demand the same from our children.

I just wanted to get a dialog started on all of this before next week. In fact, usually I am a little afraid to even leave the house during this period which I often refer to as “hell week.”

Thank you all for your attention. I look forward to a productive dialog.

Continue reading →

I know that I am truly blessed for having a website like Sepia Mutiny to blog on. So few people are granted the chance on a daily basis to voice their thoughts and opinions on the type of megaphone that SM has turned into. Every so often though something comes across my desk that makes my skin tingle, puts everything into focus, and reminds me why I do this every day…why I blog. Today something like that came to my attention. Instead of a story that was particularly newsworthy, or some important cause involving persecuted individuals faceless to me, this one hit home. This one involved a close friend. I may not be able to save the world by blogging for SM but at least I can help to try and right a wrong for my friend.

This morning my old roommate Sandeep emailed me this article featuring another old roommate of mine, Eric Amin:

If civil-liberties-minded New Yorkers were already annoyed by the USA Patriot Act, the recent arrival of the worst allergy season in 50 years (this month, the city jumped from 88th to 11th on the list of worst U.S. cities for allergies) has really made it hit home. The revision of the act, signed by President Bush on March 9, takes aim at an insidious threat to our nation: Sudafed, Claritin-D, and Children’s Motrin. These over-the-counter meds use the decongestant pseudoephedrine (PSE), which is also used to make crystal meth. The revamped Patriot Act, which went into effect in April, limited each sale of PSE-containing drugs to 3.6 grams (about 120 pills) per person per day. In September, drugstores will be required to move them behind the counter and enter the buyer’s name in a registry that tracks sales. Many larger chains are already requiring I.D., turning checkout into something Soviet-esque. Within days of the new regulations, parents were already getting sniffly (“I hate that I can’t buy more than one box of Claritin-D at a time; I missed out on a great sale”) on Urbanbaby.com. New York DEA agent Matthew Barnes explains that it takes about ten packages of Sudafed, combined with ingredients such as antifreeze, lye, battery acid, and fertilizer, to produce one ounce of meth. Despite the fact that 70 percent of meth is smuggled in from Mexico-border “superlabs,” Barnes says that the new restrictions will help hinder meth production in “small toxic labs” throughout the country. Lawyer and Rite Aid customer Eric Amin worries the government registry could be used to track and deport sneezy immigrants. To avoid the hassle of giving his information, he bought nasal spray. [Link]

With the article Sandeep included the following note that he emailed to our common friends, including Eric:

the story below made you look like a total p*ssy

“ohhhh, i’ve fallen and i can’t get up…..”

What has happened to Indian American media culture? Just yesterday it seemed like things were going so well. Indian Americans were winning Jeopardy semifinals, patrolling the streets of Kabul, and getting cast as genetics professors with supernatural powers on network television. And there’s even talk that Indian American women are much in demand on the U.S. dating scene (the talk has been generated by journalists in India, but never mind!).

But then there was KaavyaGate, which got so big that President Bush was forced to address both Houses of Congress to condemn the evils of “Plagierrorism,” and suddenly everyone was looking at us like we’re all plagiarists. And now they’re debating requiring “Plagiarism free” biometric certification cards for all future immigrants from the Indian subcontinent with literary ambitions, and … well, people are freaked. As far as assimilation goes, the Indian American community is evidently back to ground zero square one.

By contrast, folks in India seem to have a much healthier relationship to important issues like religion, plagiarism and the entertainment industry. There are now religious shrines for the ‘Visa Mata’ as well as for a pressure cooker that sacrificed its life pressure to save an army platoon from a heat-seeking missile. Both of these are clearly important facets of India’s world famous spiritual masala, which the post-eminent pop songstress Britney Spears has been known to dabble with, though she has apparently not yet heard of the obscure mystical sect called “Hinduism.”

But by far the most important thing happening in India is the government’s relentless drive to stand up for what is right in the face of pseudo-secularist cinematic sleaze. And I’m not talking about how Muslims and Christians have banded together to suppress the Indian release of The Da Vinci Code; indeed, I’m actually a little confused about why a film that shows albino priests doing sinister things is so offensive. (Personally, I find the plot a little ludicrous — I doubt many Americans will be interested in such a far-fetched story! Well, at least it’s original) No, I’m actually referring to the blasphemous piece of trash known as Tickle My Funny Bone, the story of a “naughty, bold, and sexy nun.” Thank the Visa Mata that the Censor Board is on the case to protect Indian sorta-secularism from the ravages of Bollywood Nunsploitation. Continue reading →