Category Archives: News

Red flags in North Dakota

Posted on by

I’ve never hitchhiked, but I’ve often wondered what it would be Harman_Singh.jpglike, sticking your thumb out at motorists, hoping one of them stops, hoping it isn’t someone who wants to take you home and introduce you to his woodchipper.

That’s a reference, of course, to the movie Fargo, set partly in North Dakota, not far from the small city of Edgeley in LaMoure County, where 16-year-old Harman Singh was an exchange student until May 16, when he apparently tried to make it on his own. He left goodbye notes and hit the road for about a week, before calling his host mother from Fergus Falls, Minn., about 130 miles away. He’s now in custody and will be sent back to India.

Continue reading →

Handicapping the semi-finalists

Posted on by

This is sick. Out of the 41 semifinalists left standing today, 15 of the are Indian Americans. The Kenyans have running. The Cubans, baseball. The Chinese, ping-pong. Indian Americans own spelling.

It was a moment to savor. Of the record 293 participants at 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee, only 41 moved on to the nationally televised semifinals that start Thursday morning (10 a.m. ET, ESPN)…

Expected to be in that final group are several returning favorites. Fourteen-year-old Keiko Bridwell of Duncan, S.C., back for the fourth time after tying for 17th last year, had no problem with “swivel” and “mahout” (one who keeps or drives elephants) in her oral rounds and breezed into the semifinals.

Is it easier now because she’s a veteran?

“More pressure,” Keiko said. “Everybody wants me to do better.”… [Link]

When ESPN calls you the Spelling Bee favorite it is just like putting an NFL player on the cover of a Madden game. You are probably cursed. Therefore, based on my own intensive scouting I offer up the following thoughts for those people who have bookies in Vegas and want to bet on these young horses. Word of advice: always bet on brown.

The first one I want you to keep an eye on is Vaibhav S. Vavilala from Indiana. Double V as he is known on the circuit is a 4 time competitor. Experience helps, but it can also prove to be a mental block because you can better visualize past failure.

Click for full profile

The next contestant I want you to watch for is Kavya “The Destroyer” Shivashankar. Like Double V above she is a four time veteran. According to her profile the thirteen year old looks forward to becoming a neurosurgeon. The Kavyas we know stop at nothing when the smell of success is in the air.

Click for full profile

Continue reading →

Deccan Chargers win IPLSAE final

Posted on by

The Chargers were charged up and the Challengers just weren’t challenging enough. As a result, the Deccan Chargers beat the Royal Challengers Bangalore today and were crowned champions of the IPLSAE (Indian Premier League, South African Edition).

Deccan Chargers beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by six runs in Johannesburg in the final of the second season of the Indian Premier League.

Having lost captain Adam Gilchrist for a third-ball duck, Herschelle Gibbs (53 not out) and Andrew Symonds (33 from 21 balls) helped Deccan post 143-6.

And despite Roelof van der Merwe’s 32, Symonds took 2-18 and a late collapse left Bangalore six runs short.

The tournament was staged in South Africa because of security concerns.

It clashed with the recent Indian general election and with the government unable to provide security assurances, South Africa pipped England to act as replacement hosts. [Link]

It’s pretty amazing that a tournament of such magnitude could be moved to another country on fairly short notice. South Africa deserves a lot of credit for what Stuart Hess of The Sunday Independent calls a “terrible inconvenience.”

Continue reading →

The Ultimate Gandhian Road Trip [Updated]

Posted on by

Gandhi Statue 3.jpgMaybe it’s because I live in L.A. and everyone here is working on the latest greatest movie/script/t.v. pilot but I have a great idea for a docu-travel-reality show.

Picture this: As South Asians have slowly immigrated over and made their mark on America, they have also brought along their iconographic image of Mahatma Gandhi. The bronzed image of a walking and robed Gandhi, stick in hand, has been popping up all across the U.S. recently with a statue in almost every major city. Each statue erected has a unique associated story, for the most part an active first generation Indian American community rallying for a statue in their adopted hometown.

1. Riverside, CA: I started thinking about this when I literally stumbled across a Gandhi statue in front of City Hall in downtown Riverside, CA. The statue is surrounded by quotes, and plaques with Desi names surrounding it. I learned later, the local Muslim community was in uproar about the statue getting put up. A compromise was eventually reach.

Among the concessions the city was willing to make were naming a street beside the local mosque after a Muslim leader, and considering a sister-city relationship with a Pakistani city. Currently, the city has a sister relationship with Hyderabad, India.[rediff]

2. San Francisco, CA: On the Embarcadero, the statue is located right behind the Ferry Building by the trash dumpsters.

The statue was given to the city in 1988 by the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation, “a controversial non-profit organization run by Yogesh K. Gandhi,” who Gandhi family members claim was a “scam artist” and the White House called “clearly disreputable” when he asked to visit. Then in the 1990’s Yogesh then was the subject of an investigation, and the US Dept of Justice charged him with tax evasion, mail and wire fraud and perjury. The Foundation continued for a few years but then ran into more legal troubles as they found out Yogesh still had his hands in things.[yelp]

3. NYC, NY: At the southwest corner of Union Square, the statue was added in 1986, to mark Union Square’s history of social activism. Continue reading →

Desi Curators of Americana

Posted on by

When Anne Dodge wrote her thesis at MIT about preservation planning along Route 66 — the 2,500-mile corridor that runs through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles — she found out that more than 30 percent of the independent motel owners along Route 66 were Indian Americans.

Her documentary project 66 Motels will combine interviews and photos of historic motels and their owners. Browsing through the photos reveals shots of vintage neon signs and some retrofabulous interiors as well as portraits of the owners at their motels. She writes that interviews will be up by this summer. Some interviews are already online.

One part of her project involves the practice of labeling motels with the “American Owned” sign. A Time Magazine piece that refers to desi motel owners along Route 66 as “curators of a nice slice of Americana” who lovingly refurbished and decorated the historic motels also covers the practice of using “American Owned” signs. Continue reading →

Sepia Mutiny for Kindle

Posted on by

I know your problem, I feel your pain. You want to read our website but you’d rather do so when you have free time. Like on the airplane. Where there is no internet access. Or on the subway. Where there is also no access. Or on the toilet. You are also a cutting-edge early adopter and purchased (or are about to) a Kindle from Amazon. Well then, we have something for you. SM’s e-subscription can now be purchased from Amazon.com for $1.99/month. That is about the cost of a mint tea at Starbucks. We get 30% of the $1.99 cost to pay down our server costs. Happy e-reading.

Continue reading →

Guest Blogger: Nilanjana Bhattacharjya

Posted on by

Since several of our “main” bloggers are off enjoying the fruits of summer (Ciao! you know who you are…), we thought we would keep things moving here in the Bunker with another guest blogger, Nilanjana Bhattacharjya. Nilanjana is an ethnomusicologist who teaches at Colorado College. She is also an avid Twitterer, for those of you for whom that means anything. And for the academics in the house, Nilanjana has an essay in a recent collection called Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, which she co-wrote with another friend of mine, on the inner workings of the commercial Indian film music industry as it operates within India, as well as how it is repackaged as it “travels” in the diaspora. Despite the focus on film and music, Nilanjana has lots of interests, including an interest in subcontinental politics — so expect a diverse array of posts. Continue reading →

‘It doesn’t solve anything’

Posted on by

Vigil.jpg

The Tamil-Canadian community in Winnipeg is minuscule compared to the one in Toronto, but they’re also making their voices heard. More than 100 of them gathered Sunday evening on the steps of the  Manitoba Legislative Building for a somber candlelight vigil that centered on prayers and songs. “We can only pray to God now,” said Dr. Mathu Singarajah, a dentist. “Nobody else can listen to us.”

They held candles, signs, black flags and pictures of children whom they see as victims of the Sri Lankan government’s assault on civilians. While people in Colombo and elsewhere celebrated the apparent end of the 25-year civil war, those at the vigil mourned the deaths of innocent people and wondered what, if anything, had been solved. “It doesn’t solve anything,” Singarajah said. “People’s grievances aren’t going to be over. This government is so ruthless. They don’t want to give us our rights. As long as that is the case, the problems will go on.”

Anita Subramaniam, a young woman who helped organize the vigil, served as spokeswoman for the group. “I think this is far from over,” she said. “The diaspora all over the world are watching their relatives die and aren’t going to let this go.”

The Tamil community organized the vigil after hearing that 25,000 civilians had just been killed. Because independent journalists aren’t allowed to travel freely in Sri Lanka — some have even been barred from entering the country — casualty numbers can’t be verified and tend to vary considerably, depending on the source. “They need to let the UN go in and investigate,” Subramaniam said.

Continue reading →

Terminator or Resistance fighter?

Posted on by

I find more personal joy in seeing desi characters in science fiction movies than in any other genre of film. I get a completely irrational “see, we made it into the future” type of feeling. I also like the fact that in the future one’s race is usually treated as an incidental rather than defining feature. Terminator Salvation opens next week and features at least one desi character named Rahul (played by actor Anjul Nigam). No pictures or background on his character are available yet (he explains on his Twitter account that he was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement), but I suppose it is too much to wish that he is one of the cyborg terminators. If anyone has the scoop on his character “Rahul” let’s hear it.

If Nigam looks familiar it might be because you have seen him recently on TV’s “Lie to Me” or (*barf*) “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Continue reading →

Indian Election Results: Bring on the links [Updated]

Posted on by

The Indian election results have been pouring in, with the Congress/UPA government set to return to power for another five years. Here is the New York Times’ story; apparently, this is the first time since Nehru that an Indian political party has served out the full five years, and then been reelected to power.

I wanted to give readers a chance to share information and suggest sites that are gathering results in various parts of the country. I am especially curious to see what happens with Shashi Tharoor in Trivandrum (I blogged about him a few weeks ago), and of course the political landscape as a whole. As of 1:00 am EDT, the UPA is up over the NDA/BJP around 220-150 [update: the final number for the UPA will be something more like 259]. The UPA is going to stay in, and even consolidate its power — which means, greater independence from the Left. Manmohan Singh is likely to remain Prime Minister for awhile, and perhaps it’s going to be curtains for L.K. Advani’s Prime Ministerial aspirations.

I was watching IBN live here.

The NDTV VoteMap is pretty nice, though it would be better if there were a way to see who held a given state or a given district earlier.

On Twitter, the tag seems to be #indiavotes09. The stream is moving very quickly. There is something called Tweetgrid, which lets you see feeds for six Twitter keywords at once.

Shashi Tharoor has his own Twitter feed: ShashiTharoor. As of now, he is up by 30,000 votes, with more than half of the votes counted.

The BBC’s live results are pretty good. As of this writing, Varun Gandhi (the communal one, from Sanjay’s wing of the family) is leading, and Mayawati’s BSP is losing. In Kerala, the left is likely to decline dramatically from 2004. The Communists are in decline in West Bengal too, presumably in payback for their handling of Nandigram. Lalu Prasad Yadav, who had earlier decided to pull support from Congress, is now admitting it was a mistake, as his RJD party ended up losing seats.

Via Ultrabrown, Bloomberg has a story, with Congress leaders using “Jai Ho” as a victory chant. Also via Ultrabrown, Mayawati is going to lock up victorious BSP candidates, to prevent them from being picked off by other parties. It’s a typical Mayawati thing to do, and presumably illegal — though that’s never stopped her before.

Please suggest any sites with data and analysis that you would recommend. Continue reading →