Category Archives: Profiles

Boriqua in the Ghar

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Last week, the Daily News (thanks Dave) had a fascinating article about Deevani, the Hindi singer on the Daddy Yankee hit “Mirame”. Details about this singer were always shrouded in mystery, at least until she granted her first interview and cleared up the fact that Deevani (née Adalgisa Inés Rooney) was actually not Indian or even South Asian at all, but a Puerto Rico raised Dominican who fell in love with her first husband’s Bengali language and culture.

Normally I’d want to snark all over something like this. But I can’t. The woman is just too impressive. I think she’s single now, so let me pass on her biodata:

  • She is a 31-year-old mother of 3 kids
  • She has an MBA in finance
  • She is the CEO of her brother’s (Luny, of superproducing duo Luny Tunes) company Mas Flow
  • She taught herself eight languages – Chinese, Japanese, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Punjabi and Arabic. So with her native Spanish, and English, that makes ten.
  • In an industry crammed with female “divas” and all the cliches that the term engenders, she is refreshingly comfortable presenting a low-key, domestic image:
    “I’ve just written this song for [new artist] Nicolle,” she says, passing her iPod across the table. “The melody came to me when I was dusting my house.”

Ughhhrrr…on most mornings, I’m lucky if I can find a pair of black tights without holes, and leave the house with my glasses still on my face. And she records hit songs while she’s dusting. F*ck! Maybe I need to step it up a little…

Rooney also appears to be a driving force behind the electrifying (should be if “Mirame” was just a teaser) Bhangra-Reggaeton fusion known as Bhangraton: Continue reading →

One Desi and Philanthropy

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While most people are in favor of charitable giving, not everybody likes charitable givers. While some donors are seen as saintly figures, donating their hard earned cash for the benefit of the less fortunate, others are seen as social climbers trying to attain respectability by using money generated by less socially beneficial business practices. Consider the story of Darshan Dhaliwal, the gas station king of the Midwest, a man with both supporters and detractors:

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside has received a $4.5 million contribution from Milwaukee businessman Darshan Dhaliwal. The donation, the largest private gift in the university’s 38-year history, … will help fund expansion of the university’s Communication Arts Building … The expanded facility will be named Dhaliwal Hall. Dhaliwal Hall will be the first new academic building on campus since … 1979. [Link]

Dhaliwal is a very wealthy man by all accounts, although it’s hard to know exactly how many gas stations his company owns, especially since he wont provide a figure. In 2000, a he confirmed that he owned at least 400 in 8 states, the “NRI of the month award” over the summer said that he owns “nearly 1,000 gas stations” across the country. This statement, from over a decade ago, claims that “Dhaliwal Enterprises… employs 5,000 people and posts annual profits that exceed $50 million.” In the end, it’s impossible to tell for sure with a private company. What we know is that he’s a very big fish, who operates gas stations in somewhere around twelve states between the coasts.

He has also been a controversial figure in Milwaukee. In 2000, he was accused by some community activists of not doing enough to prevent drug paraphernalia at his stations, sometimes by managers or clerks [see photos]:

There’s the crack pipes actually sitting in the Chore Boy box, on an empty register drawer, next to the ephedrine. Some of the clerks are embarrassed about having to sell this stuff. This is how the manager wants it done. [Link]

… neighborhood leaders asked on numerous occasions to meet with Dhaliwal about their concerns with graffiti, loitering, drug dealing and other problems at the Citgo station. [Link]

Dhaliwal disagreed, saying he was responsive and that he was also being singled out. In a 2000 article, he said:

… he sent a letter to each of the lessees at his 22 Milwaukee gas stations, asking them to stop selling roses with glass tubes, small scales, cigarette papers and Blunt cigars – all items that were known to be purchased for drug use.

The real problem, Dhaliwal says, is not that he won’t cooperate, but rather that the neighborhood groups are asking too much of him. He can’t understand why neighbors are singling him out as an owner, and not asking other area gas stations to comply. [Link]
Continue reading →

Love in the time of Leprosy

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I hate the New York Times Vows Section. I hate how the couple is always young (or young-at-heart!), how the bride is always so quirky and brainy, how the guy is so creative in his wooing of her, how the article name drops schools, professions, connections, and associations as if the NYTimes were a paid fluffer for social ranking porn. And that’s before we meet the parents.

So I wouldn’t have stumbled across this gem if Gawker.com hadn’t brought it to my attention. At first glance, Frances Wu and Rommel Nobay appear to fit the profile:

Mr. Nobay, whose first language is Swahili…was named for a military leader, in his case Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Mr. Nobay was born in New York, but spent most of his youth in Kenya, his parentsÂ’ birthplace, and also in Goa in India, where their ancestors originated. Eventually his family settled in the United States, where he learned English, graduated from Princeton and received a masterÂ’s in public health from Yale.

Ms. Wu is a Virginia-born Chinese-Japanese American, who speaks more Japanese than Chinese…Ms. Wu remembers feeling “immediately understood,” and she had little trouble grasping his sense of dual kinship with Goa and Africa.

Cosmopolitan, eccentric background, well-traveled, Ivied, quirky, polished professionals, romantic discovery of soul mate…All good, right? But wait!

As their dating progressed, Ms. Wu researched Mr. Nobay online and learned that in 1998 he sued Princeton, unsuccessfully, for defamation after the university notified medical schools he had applied to that his applications contained misrepresentations and altered his academic record.

What the hoo-ha? Rommel, is this true? I couldn’t believe that the brother would let browns down, so I decided to investigate further… by reading on. According to the AP in 1998 (also via Gawker):

The graduate, Rommel Nobay, had admitted he told numerous lies and half-truths in applying to Princeton and later to medical school. He claimed that he was part black and a National Merit Scholar and that a family of lepers had donated half their beggings to support his dream. … Nobay, 30, a computer science teacher from New Haven, admitted that he was not, in fact, a Merit Scholar and that a family of lepers had not helped send him to school. He also acknowledged that he doesn’t know whether he has any black blood.

Stand tall my friend Rommel. Stand proud. Military history (and the Sepia Mutiny)on this day salutes you. For within the hallowed halls of academia, and the gloried annals of the Grey Lady, I can think of none besides you who, for however a sweet and fleeting moment, got people to believe that lepers helped fund your schooling.

As for me, I think I just might read this section more often… Continue reading →

Asha Rangappa: hottest female law school dean 2006

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There are certain honors that most lawyers aspire to such as clerking for the Supreme Court, or being selected for it. And there are others that descend unwished for, like a boon sent by the gods to the wrong supplicant. One of these is winning the annual contest for hottest law school dean. In 2006, this “honor” went to Yale Law School Assistant Dean Asha Rangappa who the sponsoring web page called “as hot as a fire in a crowded theater.(That’s a little Con Law joke for those of you who don’t remember high school civics) “

Here’s what one of the nominations had to say:

“I write to nominate Asha Rangappa in your beautiful law school dean contest. First, she’s a genius: Princeton, Yale Law, a Fulbright, a First Circuit clerk. Second, she’s totally badass: from 2002 to 2005, she worked in the FBI as a Special Agent, focusing on counterintelligence investigations in New York City. How cool is that?“

“Third, and most importantly, Asha is simply gorgeous. There hasn’t been this beautiful a woman in federal law enforcement since Jennifer Lopez pretended to be a U.S. US Marshal in ‘Out of Sight.’ This South Asian beauty — with her milk-chocolate skin, lively eyes, Julia Roberts smile, and reddish black tresses — will demolish the rest of your field…” [Link]

As if all that wasn’t hot enough, she also “founded the Yale Law School’s first theater troupe, the Court Jesters.”

For all you guys who are lining up to play George Clooney to her Jennifer Lopez, settle down, she’s taken:

Rangappa said she realizes the contest is not meant to be taken seriously. “More than anything I’m amused, because there’s some irony to winning a hottest anything contest when you’re eight months pregnant,” she said. [Link]

Her response to the award shows that the title hasn’t gone to her photogenic head:

“It’s heartening to know that, despite the terrorists’ attempts to destroy our way of life, a healthy objectification of lawyers continues unabated [Link]

Those looks, a former spy and sense of humor to boot? Smoking hot most definitely, but are you sure she’s a lawyer? [Ducking …]

BTW, in a coda to the whole story:

A month later she gave birth to a boy. Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh dubbed him “America’s hottest law baby.” [Link]

A whole family of hotties it seems …

Continue reading →

Kenya’s Political Gadfly

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Salim Lone turns the car down a winding driveway in Nairobi’s diplomatic enclave to a bright bungalow with a terraced garden. The house is separated from the thick overgrowth in the back by a high fence topped with electric wire. There’s a gate and guard.

“”When I was a young journalist,”” he says, “”I never came back here. This area was all white.””

Today, he says, he lives here by accident. He and his wife, Pat, rented this house because it was one of the few they could find that had a downstairs bedroom, which they needed for his mother. But it is a peaceful spot for a man who has spent his forty-odd years in journalism making other people uncomfortable.

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For his political commentary and muckraking style, he ran afoul of both the Kenyatta and Moi regimes in the 1970s and ’80s. He was jailed, stripped of his Kenyan citizenship, exiled in 1982, and made stateless. He went back to the United States, where he had attended Kenyon College in the 1960s and where he had worked for the United Nations. Later, President Moi sent word that all had been forgiven and that he was free to return. He did so, only to find himself in jail again.

Kenya has matured politically since the return of multi-party elections in 1992 and the end of Moi’s reign a decade later, but Lone still takes to the pages of the Kenya’s Daily Nation to criticize the current president for failing to complete his promised reforms and to call for greater participation in opposition politics. Continue reading →

Sudhir Venkatesh Runs the Voodoo Down

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Venkatesh.jpg“The Wire meets academia” is how Slate describes Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, the fascinating new book by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. Here’s Emily Bazelon’s summary:

Venkatesh, who is now a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia, spent 1995 to 2003 following the money in 10 square blocks of the Chicago ghetto. He finds an intricate underground web. In it are dealers and prostitutes—and also pastors who take their money, nannies who don’t report income, unlicensed cab drivers, off-the-books car mechanics, purveyors of home-cooked soul food, and homeless men paid to sleep outside stores. Venkatesh’s insight is that the neighborhood doesn’t divide between “decent” and “street”—almost everyone has a foot in both worlds.

Readers of Freakonomics will remember Venkatesh as the University of Chicago graduate student whose fieldwork in the ghetto led him to realize why, for instance, drug dealers still live with their mothers. But his really important previous credit is his first book, American Project (2000), which intricately described the life within, and the social and physical disintegration of, several large blocks of South Side housing projects. Like Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk (1999), which investigated the social and economic life of the brothers who sell used books and miscellany on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, Venkatesh’s projects are urban sociology of the most compelling type, and well written to boot.

Yesterday Sudhir was on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC [disclosure: I work for WNYC] and you can hear the conversation, punctuated by some interesting listener calls, here. But all y’all macacas might also enjoy taking a look at the prologue and first chapter of the book, which Harvard University Press makes available on its website. Here’s a quick excerpt from the prologue that points out, among other things, a desi angle: Continue reading →

Muhammad Yunus receives his Nobel Prize

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The award ceremony of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize took place today. Muhammad Yunus was accompanied by nine village women, elected representatives of Grameen Bank’s borrowers. The full text of his speech is an interesting read. He re-tells the story of the founding of the bank and describes the different ways it has branched out, from its program for beggars to its mobile phone, food, and medical care initiatives. He also gives a sense of his personal economic philosophy, which he grounds in an embrace of the free market and globalization. It’s an argument similar to that made for “double bottom line” or “triple bottom line” investment and accounting, which seeks social or environmental value creation along with financial profit. It’s a good read; you can find it here. Continue reading →

First Miss Great Britain of Indian origin

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We have reached yet another milestone as a community, one that was critical to our development. A desi of Indian origin has seized the coveted Miss Great Britain title!

With so few beauty pageant titles left unclaimed by the rising tide of brown in swimwear and heels, it was very important that we capture each of the remaining tiaras:

British-born Preeti Desai has become the first person of Indian origin to win the Miss Great Britain title replacing original winner Danielle Lloyd after she was stripped off the award for reportedly dating Judge Teddy Sheringham and agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine. [Link]

As with many winners, she has a heart-warming story behind her victory, one of filial piety:

Preeti gave all credit to her mum, who is recovering, from a serious illness. “When she was crowned Miss Great Britain she rang to tell me and said, ‘The crown is for you.’ I burst into tears. I felt as if I won that crown. I felt as if I am Miss Great Britain. She only wants to see me happy – both my girls do. They want to see me smiling thanks to them I was able to overcome that dreadful illness,” Hema said. [Link]

Like all good desi children, Preeti is multi-talented and ambitious. She worked for years in hair and beauty, before making a career switch to the family fireworks business and she may now be trying to get into property investment. In what I think are her own words:

She then started, and is currently working for the family business G2 Fireworks full time and was made Jr partner, which she built up after years of working for G2 Fireworks from being a child… Recently she decided to move to London and work as a model until she raised enough money to eventually get into the property business. [Link]

If you’re a fan, you can read her myspace page and personal website.

Continue reading →

Last nights on Earth

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Just a reminder to everyone that STS-116’s first launch window opens up in ~three days and two hours. The mission will take Astronaut Sunita Williams up to the International Space Station where she will live and work for at least 6 months. You can watch the launch live on the internet at NASA TV (or on CNN). The best blogs to follow along at (besides us) are the official NASA blog and The Flame Trench. You can read about the whole crew here.

For those of you who are feeling a bit inspired by Williams’ impending flight, particularly if you are under ~30-years-old, you should also note that NASA is smack in the middle of an aggressive plan to return the United States to the Moon (in competition with both China and India) and just today announced plans for a permanently-manned international base by 2024 near the lunar south pole (close to Aiken Basin). If you are an undeclared undergrad then take note that engineering and science (besides just the life sciences) are about to become sexy once again.

NASA may be going to the same old moon with a ship that looks a lot like a 1960s Apollo capsule, but the space agency said Monday that it’s going to do something dramatically different this time: Stay there.

Unveiling the agency’s bold plan for a return to the moon, NASA said it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon’s poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts land there.

It is a sweeping departure from the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and represents a new phase of space exploration after space shuttles are retired in 2010.

NASA chose a “lunar outpost” over the short expeditions of the ’60s. Apollo flights were all around the middle area of the moon, but NASA decided to go to the moon’s poles because they are best for longer-term settlements. And this time NASA is welcoming other nations on its journey. [Link]

Continue reading →

Colonel Sekhon runs for Congress

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We blogged earlier about the congressional races of Jindal, Bhakta and Nigam. However, we neglected to tell you about Colonel Sekhon’s campaign for Congress in California’s Second District (thanks big bhapa!).

Sekhon is an MD, and a Colonel in the Army Reserves. He’s also one of only two turbaned and bearded Sikhs in the US military (grandfathered in from an earlier time when there was no outright ban). Like many other veterans and reservists running for office, he’s opposed to the war in Iraq and running as a Democrat.

Sekhon started the race strong, with a surprise win in the Democratic primary against favorite Bill Falzett. He’s also running in a district with a large desi population, even if it is still 75% white:

The Punjabi population in the Yuba-Sutter area has grown to be one of the largest in the United States and one of the largest Sikh populations outside of the Punjab state of India. [Link]

However, the incumbent, Wally Herger, has been in office for nearly two decades and has loads of money. Herger has spent almost 11 times what Sekhon has spent, and has almost 7 times as much cash as Sekhon has remaining. For this reason, most pundits and prognosticators think Herger is likely to be re-elected.

Here’s what Esquire Magazine has to say about the race

For someone who has been in Congress for 20 years, Herger seems not to do much more than issue press releases. To wit: “I strongly support the Pledge Protection Act because Congress must not stand idle and let activist judges remove ‘under God’ from our Pledge.” We agree with this small point. But the larger point is: Herger’s pathetic. His opponent is an MD and an Army Reservist. Esquire endorses: Sekhon. [Link]

Continue reading →