Aasif Mandvi on The Daily Show last night:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Shah Rukh Khan Detained at Newark | ||||
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The little Hindi joke at the end was fun; that is why it makes a difference to have people from different ethnic backgrounds on the roster. (Did they bleep it live too?) Continue reading
Happy Raksha Bandhan to those of you who celebrate it, from one who does not. Our family tried to introduce the custom once, when my sister was three, and there are some great photos of her crying and desperately holding on to the rakhi for dear life. There was no way she was going to give the sparkly object and mithai to her brother in return for a promise, merely oral, not even signed and notarized. 
I imagine she also thought “I’ll fork over the tinsel you promise to protect me from you, you big bully! You got to stop bossing me around if you want the sweets. You’re not even big enough to protect me from anybody else, that’s mom and dad’s job.” And so the tradition never took hold.
When I got older, and my offer of protection was more credible, I realized that my sisters-at-large would be likely to take offense at my mafia-like offer of protection in return for tribute. After all, these were not simpering ladies, these were girls and women more than capable of kicking my kundi. If one of these women were ever to need protection, the best course would be to buy them a firearm and some range time and get out of their way.
The holiday also came across as both sexist and unfair. Why can’t I be weak and helpless and trade a trinket in return for protection? It seems like men are getting the worst deal since Indians sold Manhattan for a bunch of beads.
UPDATE: The video seems to have been disappeared from the internets (please link us up if you find it), but lyrics are still up here. (Actually, now the video’s back up and here it is on youtube.)
In his over-the-top “Sickest Buddhist” rap parody comedian Arj Barker of “Flight of the Conchords” and “Marijuana-Logues” fame portrays a Buddhist wannabe with an ego the size of Central Asia who joins classes to meet ladies but finds out that he can “kick ass at this pacifist shit.” One site offers a transcript of his lyrics: Continue reading
Kal Penn e-mailed me this week. That’s right. THE Kal Penn. When I went to check my personal gmail account two days ago there was an e-mail from “Kalpen S. Modi” sitting in my inbox. I gotta admit. I got slightly Desi girl giddy.
Dear Friend [he called me friend!],Last month, President Obama unveiled United We Serve, an extended call to service challenging all Americans to help lay a new foundation for growth in this country by engaging in sustained, meaningful community service.
To encourage participation in service this summer and beyond, the Serve.gov website features a volunteer matching platform called All For Good that allows people to search for volunteer opportunities based on location and interests … The Administration is seeking to further engage the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and amplify outreach efforts in the cause of volunteerism.
Kalpen Modi, Associate Director, White House Office of Public Engagement
I shortened the letter a bit, and as you may have guessed, it was a mass e-mail Kalpen sent. Not a personal one to me. All the same, the e-mail basically told me two things. 1. Kalpen Modi is now officially working in the White House. 2. Kalpen Modi might actually be doing some real work for the AAPI community. How could I tell? On Thursday’s conference call presenting the campaign to community leaders, Modi hosted it. Quite professionally. And nary a pot reference. Continue reading
Via Amitava Kumar, an article in the Telegraph UK about President Zardari’s recent move to criminalize jokes about himself in Pakistan circulated via text or email:
Pakistanis who send jokes about Asif Zardari by text message, email or blog risk being arrested and given a 14-year prison sentence.
The country’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, announced the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been asked to trace electronically transmitted jokes that “slander the political leadership of the country” under the new Cyber Crimes Act.
Mr Malik, said the move would punish the authors of “ill motivated and concocted stories through emails and text messages against the civilian leadership”.
The step, which was described by human rights groups as “draconian and authoritarian”, came after government was particularly riled by a barrage of caustic jokes being sent to the presidency’s official email. (link)
Reading that makes one wonder what the jokes were — there must have been some good ones.
In the interest of encouraging Pakistani democracy, I thought I would follow Amitava in requesting readers to submit their own jokes about Zardari. If we have our act together, we’ll even compile them and send them to the Pakistani consulate to be forwarded via the correct diplomatic channels.
The Telegraph includes three sample jokes: Continue reading
Ok you all know how I felt about this:
Today, a picture of her newborn Ikhyd popped up on her Twitter account. The kid, minus the outfit, is mad cute. But… I am totally against killing albino ladybugs just so that the baby of a wealthy singer can be dressed like this. Can we get PETA up in here or something? Acts of Fashion Fug against a child should at least be a misdemeanor. I’m just saying. And why does this look like a mug shot?
It seems that Burger King decided that Carl’s Jr had a good thing going using (Padma) Lakshmi to advertise hamburgers, so they ran an ad in Spain using Padma Lakshmi to advertise … Ham Burgers with the tag line “The Snack is Sacred.”
I don’t know about you, but even as a non-Hindu I found this pretty offensive. Lakshmi is the Goddess of wealth and learning, and they’re using her image in an ignorant way to promote a pretty cheap foodstuff. I mean, if you’re going to be offensive and use a Hindu Goddess to sell a meat product, why not go all the way and get your forbidden foodstuffs right? Hindus are most offended by beef and Muslims are most offended by pork. It’s like they couldn’t even be bothered to tell their non-Christian religions apart, even though Spain was ruled by Muslims for hundreds of years.
Of course, when news got out, a holy ruckus was raised, and BK issued a rare apology:
“We are apologising because it wasn’t our intent to offend anyone,” said spokeswoman Denise T Wilson. “Burger King Corporation values and respects all of its guests as well as the communities we serve. This in-store advertisement was running to support only local promotion for three restaurants in Spain and was not intended to offend anyone. “Out of respect for the Hindu community, the limited-time advertisement has been removed from the restaurants,” she added. [link]
At BK, we offend you our way.
The other day, my wife and her parents picked up a film called “Hum Phirr Mileinge” (sic) from our local Indian store, apparently without reading the blurb on the back.
Just to be clear, I have not altered the following in any way. I just ran it through the scanner, compressed it a little so as not to crash the site, and posted it for you:
If you’re having trouble reading it, never fear; the text is plagiarized verbatim from a Oneindia.in web review. And here is a short excerpt in case you’re too lazy to click:
To put it bluntly, Hum Phirr Mileinge is archaic and outdated. You actually pinch yourself while watching this one. Is this real? Perhaps, director Manish Goel is completely clueless about the kind of cinema being made these days. The direction is unbelievably weak and so is the writing. Frankly, nothing works in this film, except for a couple of tuneful songs [Sandesh Shandilya], which, sadly, show up even if there’s no situation.
Remember, they are trying to sell DVDs with this blurb!
My question for you is this: how do you think this happened? A DVD printing/label company operator phoning it in, or intentional subversion? Continue reading
Aharay! What a waste of perfectly good achar…
The X-ray equipment used by TSA airport security in Columbus could not detect what was inside a sealed canister in a bag being inspected around 7 p.m. Tuesday. [wlwt]
A brown woman? A suspicious package? Airport security to the rescue!
The container was labeled “baby food,” but authorities say security personnel became suspicious when the woman who owned the suitcase claimed the canister held pickles. [kansascity]
There’s only one thing to do.
The fire department bomb squad removed the item from the airport and detonated it, discovering the mangoes.There are two things I love to this story. First, I wonder where this woman was going that she absolutely had to pack mango achar in her luggage. Where ever it was, she just absolutely could not leave home without the essential mango pickle to take with her. Secondly, I find it hilarious that they detonated the canister of achar. I imagine flying tangy orange sauce exploding all over the members of the bomb squad and pieces of mango getting stuck in their hair. Couldn’t they have just uncapped the jar and tasted it instead? Desi, please. Continue readingNo one was hurt. Flights and other airport operations were not interrupted.[wlwt]
Doubtless many readers saw the recent article in the New York Times, profiling Katherine Russell Rich, author most recently of a book called Dreaming in Hindi — a memoir of a year spent in Rajasthan, learning Hindi.
Something about the article in the Times bugged me, starting with the following passage:
One store owner insists in English that she is not actually speaking Hindi; when Ms. Rich explains, in Hindi, that she studied the language for some time in Rajasthan, he retorts, in English, “They don’t speak Hindi in Rajasthan.†(This happens not to be true.)
When Ms. Rich returned to New York from abroad, she spontaneously spoke Hindi to a friend of a friend. “He told me that when I spoke Hindi to him, it was like a body blow,” Ms. Rich said. “I think to Indians, sometimes it feels like I’m eavesdropping on a private conversation, like I’m breaking the fourth wall.” (link)
Wait, couldn’t it also be that the people Rich has been accosting, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, might simply find this persistent American annoying, and have refused to speak Hindi with her mainly to make her go away? Lady, I’m sorry if your being in New York means your newly-acquired Hindi is going to start getting rusty. But I got a job to do, and that involves speaking English to patrons as I sell them stuff, not teaching you how to pronounce “lajawab” correctly. Next in line, please?
The question has to be asked: why does Katherine Russell Rich want to learn to speak Hindi? Is it to communicate with Hindi speakers while living in India? That would be a perfectly fine reason, indeed, an admirable one. But I suspect that sadly her real desire was to a) get paid for writing a book where she can talk all about her Hindi lessons and her impressions of Rajasthan, only to b) promptly move back to Manhattan, where she’ll irk Hindi speaking New Yorkers with her persistent demands that they speak Hindi with her?
Another annoyance in the article is the presumption that people refuse to acknowledge a white woman who speaks Hindi because we desis like to gossip about Americans in our secret language:
To some people from India, Ms. Rich learned, it is insulting to be addressed in anything other than English, a language of the privileged. And for some immigrants, domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim. (link)
I really don’t know where the author of the article got this idea. (Why not ask an actual Indian, Hindi-speaker before making the speculative statement that “domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim”?)
Finally, there is the obligatory dis on second-generation, “heritage” students who take Hindi classes at their universities:
“A lot of Indians who were born here or moved here when they were very small want to rediscover the language,†he said. (Ms. Rich said that she had overlapped with such students at New York University, and that many were already proficient in the language, less interested in their heritage and more interested in an easy A.) (link)
I’ll have you know, Ms. Rich, that most second gen, Indian-American college students do not take Hindi for this reason. I myself took Hindi at Cornell, and my professor gave me a “B” in intermediate Hindi (I deserved it, but it still smarts: certainly not an “easy A”).
In fact, most Indian-American college students actually take Hindi to meet, and flirt with, other Indian-American college students. So there. Continue reading