Category Archives: Identity

DC: Subcontinental Drift 2008- January 28

Posted on by

1355204385_205b65bc91.jpg Straight Outta Compton my inbox, an invitation to the first Subcontinental Drift of 2008. This event/collective is one of my favorite things about living in DC. Come find out why for yourself:

2007 sure brought some of the district’s talents out of the basement and into the spotlight. It was nothing less than inspiring to witness the expressive potential of our collective South Asian community.
Subcontinental Drift is excited to be back with the first open mic night of 2008 on Monday, January 28th at 7pm. Come bless us in this new year with your art, your thoughts, your ideas, your presence. The mic will be open from 7-9 pm (to sign up for a spot, shoot an email with your name and performance genre to subdriftdc@gmail.com). And stay for the after party with some chill beats and groovin’.
Where?
Bohemian Caverns, at the corner of 11th and U. We’ll be upstairs. www.bohemiancaverns.com
When?
Doors open at 6:30pm.
More info?
myspace.com/subcontinentaldrift or email subdriftdc@gmail.com

I never go out on Mondays or Tuesdays because those are my most challenging (read: no lunch) days at work, but I’m about to do some serious juggling in order to attend this– THAT’S how amazing Subcontinental Drift is. It is worth the stress and exhaustion. 😉 If you are in DC, please come out so that you, too, can babble beatifically about all the awesomeness. And if you are not in DC, remember that it is a new year; resolve to start something similar where you are. Abhi did it fabulously in Houston, so can you. Everyone deserves to drift. Continue reading →

Portraying Monkeys Is Paramount in Preserving Our Culture?

Posted on by

Greetings Mutineers! I am Nayagan and I am guest-blogging here to fight the good fight for pittu, sodhi and the thosai which embraces us all in it’s fermented glory.

hanuman.jpg

Listen up desi parents: Bina Menon, a classical dance teacher from West Orange NY, has the magical cure to all your ‘heritage preserving’ needs. Indeed, according to the New York Times, a turn in one of her stage productions (portraying an animal of the forest) will do wonders for lifting the Vestern pop-culture cloud which descended over your child’s eyes as soon as he/she exited the womb.

Continue reading →

Gloria Steinem, Clinton’s tears, and rural India

Posted on by

Gloria Steinem had a compelling op-ed in the New York Times this morning that reminded me a lot of one of Ennis’ previous posts about women leaders in rural India. First, some excerpts from “Women Are Never Frontrunners:”

THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. [Link]

Of course, there is another equally compelling argument for why the media “gives Clinton a hard time” and why the voters are so quick to discount her considerable experience, to the point of bringing her to tears. Many voters (like the majority in Iowa) may just want a clean break from the past. They don’t care whether Clinton is more capable than Obama or not. They don’t care if she’d be “a better President on day one.” They just want to rid themselves of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton monarchy and the baggage that comes with it. Perhaps, as Obama says, offering people hope and possibility and having the ability to bring new blood into the broken political process will make up for the experience and insider-Washington-knowledge needed to survive and be an effective President in Washington. There is a lot of credibility behind that argument. Then again, Steinem might also be right:

If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. [Link]
Continue reading →

Zakaria on Obama, Identity

Posted on by

Ruchira sent me a link to a recent Newsweek column by Fareed Zakaria, and it seems like it could use a comment box. Zakaria says he likes Obama, surprisingly, because of “identity.” It’s surprising because, as Zakaria himself admits, he’s not one for identity politics:

Obama’s argument is about more than identity. He was intelligent and prescient about the costs of the Iraq War. But he says that his judgment was formed by his experience as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I’d agree with Obama. I’ve spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I’ve got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I’ve never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I’ve never written an article that contains the phrase “As an Indian-American …” or “As a person of color …”

But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have over others in understanding foreign affairs, it is that I know what it means not to be an American. I know intimately the attraction, the repulsion, the hopes, the disappointments that the other 95 percent of humanity feels when thinking about this country. I know it because for a good part of my life, I wasn’t an American. I was the outsider, growing up 8,000 miles away from the centers of power, being shaped by forces over which my country had no control. (link)

Zakaria’s approach to “identity” is in some sense negative. He wouldn’t argue that Obama is better because he’s black, or mixed-race, or part-African, etc. But he will argue that Obama has enough of a personal, experiential link to the world outside of U.S. borders (non-U.S.) that it will benefit his judgment.

One could argue that the key distinction here is “experience” vs. “identity,” and that it’s “experience” of the non-U.S. we’re talking about really, not “identity.” But the way Zakaria phrases it (and from some of the other points he makes in the column) I sense that he’s talking about something much more visceral than what one might learn on a semester abroad in college. Perhaps he really does mean “identity” — as in, a set of immutable attributes — not “experience.” What do you think? Continue reading →

Kashayyam for what ails me.

Posted on by

As much as left-coast-born-and-raised me loves living on the right side of this vast country, there is one situation which inspires a reaction which is more pathetic than independent– being sick. I’m not talking about the sniffles or an errant sneeze or three, I mean, 102 degree fever, rhinitis which resembles a broken faucet and exhaustion which is so powerful, Ambien is envious of its ability to force sleep. I mean, sick sick. inji.jpg

When you’re sick and at home (or near it, even), parents can do what they love to, they can fuss and scold while they bustle about making clucking noises and shaking their heads. There’s something so comforting about the cadence of a mildly-irritated, slightly-worried parent. I tune out the actual words and just follow along until I’ve reached the portal to that ever-running game of subconscious Chutes and Ladders, and then I slide back to baby-hood in a blissful blur.

Don’t hate. You totally do it, too. When you can, that is. But when you are 3,000 miles away, and you are surveying the destruction which is a charitable way to characterize one kleenex-strewn, studio apartment, there is no such succor. We modern, vesternized children who think we know so much, who move so far from mummydaddy, we do the only thing we can. We wallow during those brief moments we’re conscious, reconsider our stubborn and proud refusal to get married already and then, when it’s 4am and we’re awake because the drugs have worn off, we update our Facebook status with something miserable. What, you don’t? Well, I’m kinda glad I did that last thing. I woke up to a post on my wall which immediately cheered me…

I can only suggest the concoction foisted by many mother on her sick, jaded-by-alopathy children, kashayyam:

…and then there was a fantastic link to the substance he suggested.

Inji kashayam, a medicinal drink made with fresh ginger,pepper,coriander seeds and jaggery.This is mother in law’s famous recipe to make us all feel better when we are down with cold,indigestion or even nausea.Simple and easy to make…[link]

Ginger? Pepper? Jaggery? Awww, yeah. You know, I don’t know anything about cricket, I don’t watch Bollywood, I’ve never seen any of those 2nd gen experiments on celluloid which contain various combinations of “American”, “Desi” or “Chai”, but I’m brown in some very persistent, weird ways and this is one of them; I’m talking about the home remedy, the more random and bizarre, the better.

Back when I was a disdainful ten-year old, if you had told me that one day I’d be drinking, nay, CRAVING Jeera-vellam I wouldn’t have believed it. No way. Eeew. Not me. I was too cool for amber-colored water with icky masses of cumin seeds lurking at the bottom of a glass. And yet, there I was last year, 21 years older and determined to steep this mysterious drink, just so. Yes, I know it’s a brew so simple an idiot can make it, but that doesn’t lessen my anxiety, hokay? I was born here. That fact alone has me convinced that I will never be able to replicate my Mother’s legendary Meenkari-with-no-meen.

Anyway, thanks to a darling friend’s sympathetic post on my “wall”, here was another recipe which required ingredients from a store which probably also stocked ladoos (mmm…ladoos), a recipe which would probably work, if for only one reason (but it’s a powerful one, so one is all we need)– it was desi. And someone’s Mom used to make it. And it has nothing to do with medicine, over the counter or otherwise.

Placebo effect? Sure, I won’t dispute that at all. I also won’t dispute the ridiculously smug sense of satisfaction such a concoction summons, as if we have a secret, cultural-velvet-rope-thang. Those moments, when my brain is being boiled by a fever, and when I’m dazed, crazed and amazed at how good pepper, sugar and something I can’t pronounce which was allegedly smuggled in someone’s suitcase can taste…those are the moments when I am consummately down with my brown. Continue reading →

The Drama of Diversity

Posted on by

Five years ago, I attended my first and last HOKANA FOKANA, the conference which is held every other year for Mallus who really want to marinate in Malayaleeosity. At the time, I was working for a non-profit and one of the organizers was interested in some of the post 9/11 stuff I was doing, so I was invited to speak at three of the week’s “Youth” panels.

Since they offered, and the woman who had contacted me was just wonderful to work with, I accepted. Thanks to her, I was treated to one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had, once I arrived at the hotel in downtown Chicago, only to find myself among the most Malayalees I’ve ever seen in one place. It was a little bit bewildering, but it was edifying and fascinating, too.

There was so much to absorb: the regional cliques, the cousins from different coasts squealing as they spotted each other among the crowds, the Uncles strutting about, moustaches in full effect, declaring random things in voices so loud, the three or four white people who dared venture in to this quagmire jumped each time another Malayalee shout rang out. The energy (and scent of Drakkar mixed with Chivas) was potent. I’m glad I went. Everyone should, at some point.

I’ve often referenced my relatively “isolated” childhood– which so many of you share, according to what you confide via meetup and Gmail– and how unlike the other Malayalee Christian kids who grew up here, I never attended the Jacobite or MarThomite religious conferences which seemed to happen every few months, in different regions of the United States. Twenty years after my parents consciously blew off all of my Uncles’ recommendations that we attend that year’s FOKANA, my mother had a Eureka! moment in our kitchen, when during the one and only fight she and I ever had about my “settling down”, I shouted at her that if it were THAT important to her that I marry someone who was Malayalee and Orthodox, then perhaps they should have exposed me to actual Malayalee people while I was growing up.

“You never took me to FOKANA!”, I snapped and there it was, the look of recognition and acceptance. “How was I supposed to find this elusive dream son-in-law of yours, Ma?” I had a solid point. Every wedding we had attended in the two years preceding that argument had one thing in common besides parents who were attempting to one-up the last event by inviting an additional 100 guests; the bride and groom had met at church, at one of the regional denomination-specific conferences or yes, FOKANA. My mother never broke it down like that again. Yindeed, instead of the now familiar barrage of “Is he Jacobite? Marthoma? CATHOLIC?? Ehm…Malayalee at least???”, I was greeted with, “Found a nice boy yet?”

So these strange mega conferences, they have their place in our imperfect, carefully negotiated lives lived in on the hyphen. Sometimes, they can be an opportunity for pure good, like when one of you coordinated a massive effort to “Get Out The Marrow” at the TANA convention which was held in DC this year. What better place to rep Sameer and Vinay’s cause, than at an event which had several thousand potential matches? Continue reading →

Turban + Beard = No <3?

Posted on by

Last week, I wrote a post about ABC’s Notes From the Underbelly (which, btw, is on tonight at 9:30) and most of the comment thread was as fun and fluffy as I expected it to be. In light of that, I am half-willing to apologize for my bromidic attempt at virtually playing the right and left sides of the audience off each other, like it was an old skool rap concert or a pep rally, but most of you resisted my super-smack talk about Sunkrish vs Sendhil so all’s well that ends well…or is it?

One of the last comments on my post was left on Thursday, and it has bothered me since:

Punjabi Sikh kudis prefer clean-shaven men sans turban. They are quite vocal about that on all the Sikh dating and matrimonial sites. It has reached a crisis level in Canada and US with many Sikh men having to go to Desh to find a woman willing to take them with beard, turban and all. [link]

The handle this person chose (Broken Hearted Munda Looking for Kudi) made me extra sad. One of my closest friends is in this exact situation. He’s brilliant, hilarious, considerate and one of the sweetest people I have ever met—and he’s still single. And in his mid/late 30s. What would “normally” make a non-trivial number of girls gasp or pick out curtains— i.e. every attribute I listed in the last sentence PLUS two ivy degrees— seems to come second to the fact that he is a rather Orthodox Sikh. I don’t think the issue is his tee totaling/clean living; I think it’s his turban and beard.

Today, we received another pained comment, from a different person (Munda Still Looking for Kudi), on the same thread:

These women also cite 9/11 and subsequent discrimination against turbanned men as an excuse to avoid us like the plague. They say they don’t want to attract unneccessary attention and inconvenience and do not want to see their men and future children placed in possibly dangerous situations. Is this a cop out? [link]

Oh, 9/11. You changed everything. Now you consistently inspire nightmares like last week’s violence against an innocent Sikh cabdriver in Seattle, who was just trying to help an inebriated person get home, per the police’s request:

Trying to escape the attack, the 48-year-old victim stopped in a car pool lane Saturday night on Interstate 5, near Columbian Way, and scrambled out, state troopers said. His attacker had punched, choked and bitten him, calling him an “Iraqi terrorist,” according to police reports…
The suspect knocked off the victim’s turban and tore out clumps of his hair, according to reports. The beating continued as the victim fell onto the road. The victim briefly was hospitalized at Harborview Medical Center for injuries that included a concussion and bite marks on his head, according to police and acquaintances.
State troopers were called about 8 p.m. A Metro bus stopped next to the cab to block traffic after seeing the suspect attacking the victim in the road. Witnesses aboard the bus made dozens of calls to 911, Merrill said. [MSNBC]

The only comfort I take from that story is that the bus stopped while its riders frantically called 911…to report a crime which was inspired by those very numbers. Continue reading →

Brown Bikers’ Big Beatz

Posted on by

Nobody would ever accuse desis of being quiet folk. You get a few desis together and pretty soon the volume of the chit chat rises; you get them excited and all the white people in the room start giving them dirty looks. We are voluble people.

So it’s not surprising that young desi bikers in Queens are making their presence known. Out where I live, white men on motocycles remove their mufflers and rev their engines, the aural equivalent of pissing on a tree. In Richmond Hill, young Indo-Carribeans mark their territory more euphoniously using huge speakers … on their bicycles, a tradition brought over from Guyana and Trinidad.

That’s right, this desi biker “gang” is real old school, eschewing newfangled innovations like the internal combustion engine for the purity of gears and sweat.

A new biker gang is roaming the streets of Richmond Hill, Queens. This crew of mostly teenagers can be seen riding along 103rd Avenue just west of the Van Wyck Expressway. The bikes roar… these contraptions look and sound more like rolling D.J. booths.

“This one puts out 5,000 watts and cost about $4,000,” said Nick Ragbir, 18, tinkering with his two-wheeled sound system, with its powerful amplifier, two 15-inch bass woofers and four midrange speakers. It plays music from his iPod and is powered by car batteries mounted on a sturdy motocross bike. [Link]

When I started reading the article and noticed all the names were desi, I was hoping for families of four on scooters or mopeds, women riding side saddle, but bicycles are almost as good.

Let other teenagers cruise around in low riding automobiles with the trunk and backseat full of woofers, burning dinosaur juice, bringing us Indian summer year ’round. We’re rolling rickshaw style, moving our bodies to propel the music up and down the streets, dancing in the saddle as we pedal and peddle.

Who needs an iPod when you live in a desi neighborhood?

Slideshow with pictures here. The other photos are even better.

Continue reading →

Kiran Chetry on the “South Asia” Question

Posted on by

Just in case you were unaware of it, Kiran Chetry, the CNN anchor, is half-Nepali, and was born in Kathmandu. kiran-chetry.jpg

In an interview in Nepal Monitor recently posted on our News Tab, Kiran is asked, predictably perhaps, a number of questions relating to her background. For me, her most interesting response came following a question about her “South Asian” identity:

Question: And this is about being a “South Asian.” Because you don’t really seem like a South Asian unless somebody does some research on you! There are very few South Asians actually doing major shows on cable television in the US. What does being a “South Asian” mean to you?

Kiran Chetry: I define it in a more narrow term. I feel that being half-Nepalese is my heritage, something I have always grown up being proud of and living with. It’s never been something that I dwell on a lot; I think that it’s just my life, it’s who my family is, it’s who my father is. My cousins, many of them that are my age, are here in the US, either studying or now have jobs here. And that is just a part of our culture. And I have lived straddling both.

Fair enough — much of what she said there should resonate with many SM readers. Even if your family isn’t bi-cultural, growing up in the U.S. forces you to always in some sense “straddle both” cultures. But it’s when Chetry gets to terminology beyond “helf-Nepali” (or as she says, “Nepalese”) that she starts to hedge:

But you are right, when people look at me they don’t necessarily say, “Wow, Kiran must be Asian” or “Kiran must be from Nepal.” But I think that when you get to really know me and you spend any time with my family, you see what an influence it is. Since my father is from Nepal and that is what I grew up around. It’s just me.

And there are not a lot of South Asians, if you want to put it that way, that are represented in the news. However, there are a lot more at CNN, which is interesting. We have our special correspondent Sanjay Gupta, also Betty Nguyen, who is on our air and Alina Cho, one of our American Morning correspondents. All of them are Asian, or South Asian. So I think it is wonderful to be able to see more faces of diversity. And, I am one of them, even though I may not look like I am! I think I understand what being part of the Asian culture is like, not to put everybody into one big generalization. But I definitely understand a perspective because it is part of how I grew up. (link)

She seems a bit uncomfortable with the term “South Asian,” preferring the more narrowly national “Nepali” or the more general term, “Asian.” And while she mentions Dr. Sanjay Gupta, she’s also quick to mention Alina Cho and Betty Nguyen.

While most desis I know do define “South Asian” as a subset of “Asian,” I’ve never met anyone who wanted to deemphasize (or reject) the “South” in favor of a more generalized “Asian” identity — to be defined as just Asian, and not South Asian.

What might be behind Chetry’s terminological discomfort? (Unfortunately, we kind of have to speculate here, since I don’t think Kiran Chetry has done any other interviews where she’s discussed these kinds of identity issues.) Continue reading →

Sikh-Face — Today’s Version of Blackface

Posted on by

This week’s episode of NBC’s My Name is Earl (thanks, anonymous tipster) features a neighbor in the trailer park who is supposed to be a Sikh. But he looks more like the usual “turbaned” convenience store clerk/taxi driver stock caricature who shows up in Hollywood movies and TV shows from time to time.

sikh face my name is earl.jpg

Is it offensive? Going by just the image, I would say yes, and not just to Sikhs. I think it’s offensive to all South Asians, perhaps even to all immigrants. In a sense the “Sikh” neighbor here stands in for all funny-looking/sounding foreigners in the imaginary world of My Name is Earl, just as Apu does in The Simpsons. It’s not just the wrong-looking turban and the glued on beard, it’s the accent — he’s even wearing a Sherwani suit! (While living in a trailer park!)

On the other hand, it could be pointed out that this particular episode is making fun of the anti-terrorist hysteria that swept the U.S. after 9/11 (the conceit is that the show is actually an episode of “Cops” filmed in 2002 — and the claptrap about catching terrorists is of course all the more absurd since the show is set in a small town). It shows law enforcement officers as particularly incompetent and clueless in their attempt to “profile” suspected terrorists, including the character above. But if your goal is to make fun of hysteria using silly caricatures that actually reinforce the ignorance you’re supposedly satirizing, what are you really doing?

It could also be pointed out that a show like My Name is Earl is so generally politically incorrect (and self-conscious about that political incorrectness — “Look, see, we’re being politically incorrect!”) that getting offended about this one thing seems out of place. (Look at how women are represented in the show, for instance.) I’m not sure — but one does think of the recent controversy over the reference to the Philippines in a recent episode of Desperate Housewives, which got a fair amount of media coverage; this, it seems to me, is much more offensive.

You can watch the show on NBC.com here; it’s episode 307. The “Sikh” character (he self-identifies as a Sikh) shows up briefly in the beginning, and then again in the last third of the show.

What do you think? Is it offensive? Are you planning to write NBC?

[UPDATE: One other thing — in case you’re wondering “what self-respecting Desi would take this role?” — the Sikh character is played by an actor named Alex Endeshaw, who is ethnicity isn’t entirely clear to me from Ethiopia originally.] Continue reading →