While some of our readers exchange well wishes today, PETA India reminds us that Easter, a day traditionally associated with searching for hidden eggs, isn’t a joyous day for everyone [via Nirali]:

The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in have drummed up a new campaign in Kerala. They want eggs banned in the state since they feel eating eggs amounts to committing murder.

“We are showing that eggs signify life and that we should not be eating eggs because chickens also feel the pain,” said Roshini D’Silva, PETA activist…

“Be it Sunday or Monday; don’t eat ‘ande’. From shell to hell” – these slogans will help gain publicity, especially when Easter is nearing. But are there any takers for the ‘anti-anda’ campaign?… [Link]

Have you ever noticed how PETA protests often involve some sort of nudity or semi-nudity? No word on whether or not the “chick” they refer to below was naked, but one can only imagine.

By having a human-sized chick emerge from an egg and distribute leaflets, volunteers People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will seek to draw attention to the cruelty meted out to chickens in modern animal factories and to how people can help stop it.

Easter, a press note issued here said, is traditionally associated with Easter eggs. But PETA has a different and more humane idea… “Eggs are as vegetarian as your chicken tikka or mutton biriyani. They are apart of the chicken’s reproductive system. To produce eggs, the birds spend their entire lives in battery cages housed in dark, crowded sheds were they are treated as egg-laying machines. Baby birds have their beaks cut off with a red-hot blade. Young `layer hens’ are kept in complete darkness except at feeding time. [Link]

PETA India’s website also reveals that they recently had another tiger-in-a-bikini protest to bring attention to abusive circuses. Anyways, in a show of solidarity I am only going to consume vegetarian eggs on this Easter Sunday.

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It’s not just Good Friday today, it’s also National Tartan Day so greetings and felicitations to all you national tarts out there.

I’ve been waiting for this day all year, and have managed to store up a large number of desi angles for this story, most of which, oddly enough are Sikh. The bagpiper at right is easy enough to explain – bagpipes came with the British army all over the world. It’s just a great image, as is this.

But the connections go far deeper than just bagpipes. For example, there is actually a Sikh Laird in Scotland, Baron Sirdar Iqbal Singh, who commissioned his own family tartan:

Mr. Singh, 67, who lives in Little Castle, a turreted Elizabethan mansion in Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, and holds the title Lord of Butley Manor, Suffolk, said … “I remember thinking ‘I’m in Scotland, so why not have my own tartan?'”

The new plaid, which is on display at Paisley Museum, incorporates the Singh family colour of blue, yellow for peace, green to represent the landed gentry and red as a tribute to Gertrude, his Swiss wife. [Link]

Here is the plaid as registered with the Scottish Tartans Society.

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This last weekend saw the Indo-Guyanese Phagwah/Holi celebration in the neighborhood of Richmond Hills, Queens. It’s a big deal:

The Phagwah parade in Richmond Hill is one of the biggest celebrations in North America. If it’s a warm day, some 25,000 people are expected to join the 2007 parade, according to reports. [Link]

Of course things were a bit different than they were in Guyana. Here you can only get messy in a designated area, not on the street:

Freedom in Guyana means color everywhere. In Queens, powders and dyes are restricted to the park. During the parade, police officers eyed the crowd warily, ready to confiscate bottles and packets of the rule breakers, of whom there were many. [Link]

Even this restricted celebration is a compromise on the city’s part. At one point,

… the city threatened to cancel the parade fearing that someone could introduce anthrax into the Johnson’s Baby Powder (the city did not say why someone capable of producing weaponized anthrax by the bucketful would want to kill a bunch of Guyanese). Richmond Hill community leaders protested, and a compromise was reached: people marching in the parade could douse each other but not the spectators along the route. [Link – note, that’s Preston!]

Using fears of anthrax in baby powder to forbid phagwah is around as reasonable as using fears that terrorists will spike green dye with toxins to forbid St. Paddy’s day. I’m glad somebody was able to talk the NYPD down from that ledge.

Preston has some great photos from the 2004 celebration, including the one below. You can see photos of this year’s celebration at the NYT.

Don’t believe uncles and aunties when they say that nobody celebrates Valentines Day in India. Not only is romance a bloomin’, but it has some help from unlikely quarters.

First, Shiv Sena is (again) offering to come to the assistance of lurv:

… hardline Hindu groups have threatened to marry off young couples meeting in public places like parks and restaurants Feb 14. [Link]

They will not manhandle or threaten the Valentines, or vandalise the greeting card shops tomorrow. “The lovers have mistaken Shiv Sainiks to be the heart-breakers. We permanently unite the hearts….” says Shiv Sena District President Gulshan Kumar.

If there is any opposition for the marriage of lovers from their family, Shiv Sainiks stand by them. But the couples should belong to Hindu religion. [Link]

The loophole in this plan is obvious though, leave your ID at home and voila! An entire town of Mary Joshuas and Jacob Abrahams out on dates! [Yes, I know the threatening to forcibly marry couples isn’t new – they did it last year as well]

This being India, mobilization is met with an apposite counter:

… two women’s groups, belonging to the Sawarna Samaj Party (SSP) and the Rashtriya Secular Manch (RSM), have decided to take on those threatening to oppose Valentine’s Day … the RSM has decided to form baton-wielding groups of women to dissuade Bajrang Dal activists from disturbing lovers Wednesday on the Valentine’s Day. These women’s wings have declared to provide the necessary security to citizens if the state government fails to do so. [Link]

I’m sure they will get a lot of calls for their service too — “Quickly! Send 4 or 5 women to the park by the IIT men’s hostel! There are couples being oppressed by the RSS Shiv Sena!” Who knew that crying wolf was a great way to meet women?

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There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have been counting down to Wednesday all year long, and those who wonder why so many people are buying flowers for President’s Day. I count myself in the latter camp, having been single virtually every Vday that I can remember. So I watch with amusement as many of my friends work themselves into a lather because of the intense pressure to commemorate this day with precisely the right amount and kind of conspicuous consumption.

The mingled scent of love and desperation in the air can mean only one thing for desis these days, namely speed dating followed by quirky stories from the mainstream media. Here’s a NYT article about Muslim Speed Dating Meeting:

A few years ago the organizers were forced to establish a limit of one parent per participant and bar them from the tables until the social hour because so many interfered. Parents … alternate between craning their necks to see who their adult children are meeting or horse-trading bios, photographs and telephone numbers among themselves….

Mrs. Siddique said her shy, 20-year-old daughter spent the hours leading up to the banquet crying that her father was forcing her to do something weird. “Back home in Pakistan, the families meet first,” she said. “You are not marrying the guy only, but his whole family…” [Link]

I suspect journalists are tickled by this spectacle because to them speed dating is like the bar scene, but faster. So the idea that conservative parents endorse it is weird. Parents, on the other hand, see it as a faster way to set up little tea encounters for their children, but only wholesale instead of retail. And desis love a bargain!

Desi parents (especially Muslim ones, but I’m sure there are similar scenes in other communities) do make it pretty easy to be mocked:

One panelist, Yasmeen Qadri, suggested that Muslim mothers across the continent band together in an organization called “Mothers Against Dating,” modeled on Mothers Against Drunk Driving. [Link],

So who’s right? Is speed dating/meeting a truly chaste solution to parents’ worries, or is it the first step down the slippery slope to group sex and public handholding?

Mothers trade biodatas while their children speed date

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