Category Archives: Profiles

The Keymaster

Posted on by

The FBI’s king techie, Zalmai Azmi, is an Afghani-American who got the job after gigs as an auto mechanic, military intelligence in the Marines, the DoJ and the Patent and Trademarks Office:

Zalmai Azmi is CIO of the FBI. He was born in Afghanistan, but emigrated to Germany with his family as a teenager in the early 1980s… He attended a vocational business school, which helped him find a job as an auto mechanic. Azmi joined the Marines in 1984, working in the IT-intensive areas of radio communications and military intelligence. He served for seven years. [Link]

Azmi talks about how people looked at him differently after 9/11:

Have you found your Afghan background to be a deterrent or a problem in any way?‘They were showing pictures of the terrorists on TV and they looked something like me’

… I’ve probably experienced that kind of problem less than five times since I’ve been here.

One of the toughest times was just after 9/11. I put a taskforce together to go to New York and help get our offices there back on line. I spent ten days there, and all the time they were showing pictures of the terrorists on TV and they looked something like me. My face was a constant reminder.

That was probably the only time I noticed that people were looking at me differently, and fortunately it didn’t last long. [Link]
Continue reading →

The Right Stuff

Posted on by

As seen on our News Tab, NASA officially announced the crew of Expedition 14 on Tuesday. The crew, which will be the next one rotated in to live aboard the International Space Station, will consist of mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin serving as flight engineer, and Sunita “Sunny” Williams (formerly Pandya) who will also serve as a flight engineer.

Williams will join Expedition 14 in progress and serve as a flight engineer, after traveling to the station on space shuttle mission STS-116. This will be Williams’s first space flight.

Selected as an astronaut in 1992, Lopez-Alegria flew his first shuttle mission, STS-73, in 1995 and later visited the station on shuttle missions STS-92 in 2000 and STS-113 in 2002, conducting five spacewalks during the station assembly complex. He has logged more than 42 days in space, including 34 hours spacewalking. Lopez-Alegria is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and received a Master of Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Williams was selected as an astronaut in 1998. She also is a graduate of the Naval Academy and received a Master of Science degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. Williams was designated a Naval aviator in 1989 and graduated from the Naval Test Pilot School in 1993. She has logged more than 2,770 flight hours in 30 different types of aircraft. At NASA, Williams has served as a liaison in Moscow supporting Expedition 1 and has supported station robotics work.

Tyurin was selected as a cosmonaut in 1993 and was a flight engineer aboard the station for Expedition 3 in 2001. He has spent 125 days in space. Tyurin is a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute. [Link]

Attentive SM readers will remember that I have covered Williams in a prior post. She is a Navy test pilot who specialized in rotary-winged vehicles (helicopters). Additionally, she is only the second rookie (Edward “Mike” Fincke of Expedition 9 having been the first) to be assigned as an ISS crew member. This is a big deal since in the shuttle era you’d never have more than one or two rookies on a given flight. Astronauts aboard the ISS have almost every minute of every day tasked out. Experience is key to making sure that everything keeps running smoothly up there. Williams has been serving as the astronaut liaison to Moscow so she is used to working with the Russians and is probably fluent in Russian. You will also note that with the current backlog of flightless astronauts, Williams has had to wait eight years for her first shot. Lesson: Get picked up by the Corp when you are still pretty young.

Every mission patch (like the one on the right) tells a story. I haven’t completely translated this one yet (I’m working on it) but the red dot may represent Mars, probably as a reminder that they are keeping an eye on the ultimate prize.

Continue reading →

Come Home

Posted on by

Singer-songwriter Shaheen Sheik, a friend from college, just signed with Times Music in Bombay and is on a promo tour here this week. (Watch her video.) Last night she sang on a TV show with a name that’s a paragon of ridiculously nontransitive branding, the Tuscan Verve Zoom Glam Awards. Other nights she slums with the plebeians. That’s usually when I get to see her.

A few of us went to see her first performance at a downtown Bombay club called Prive, which is around the corner from the Gateway of India. It’s decorated like a Southern strip club (black lacquer ceilings, gold bead curtains and lap dance seats), albeit one with floating roses. It was an odd venue for folk-pop ballads, but Shaheen sang four gorgeous melodies and encored with a cover of ‘In Your Eyes.’ Like most desis of a certain age, the duet guitarist provided by the label knew Pink Floyd, the Eagles and Led Zep but was baffled by Peter Gabriel.

There’s an interesting tradeoff when Indians in the diaspora come back to promote their wares (Apache Indian, Salman Rushdie…) On one hand, the potential market is huge with a built-in cultural interest. On the other, the middle class is limited in size, and you earn less per unit than in your home market after currency conversion.

Ballads at Prive

Continue reading →

"Unafraid of pythons…"

Posted on by

SM’s favorite plus-size man is in the spotlight once again [via Dhoomketu]. Dalip Singh (see previous posts 1,2) made his World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) debut earlier this week (watch him introduced). I will give $5 to anyone who can translate what he says for SM readers :). Here is the ring-side play-by-play:

Daivari made his triumphant return with the giant Dalip Singh! They walked out from backstage, slowly walking to the ring. The announcers didn’t know who this giant man was, but noted that he was being managed by Mark Henry’s manager. Taker bounced Henry’s head off the announce table.

[Under]Taker turned around and saw Singh. Singh stepped over the top rope and got in the ring, staring down Taker. Taker got in the ring. Taker had to look up at Singh. The announcers talked about how massive Singh is. Taker threw a right hand, but Singh basically no sold it. He threw another right hand, but it barely moved him. Singh then hit a karate chop to the head of Taker, knocking him down! Taker sat up, but Singh grabbed him by the throat. He ripped open one of the turnbuckles with one hand, then bounced Taker’s head off the exposed turnbuckle. Singh headbutted Taker in the back of the head twice. Daivari shouted “Do it again! Do it again!” Singh delivered another headbutt to the back of the head. There were tons of boos from the crowd. Singh hit a big kick to Taker’s head. Singh stood over the downed Taker as Daivari celebrated next to him. [Link]

Instead of the above you could just watch the clip and do your own play-by-play. I was never much into “entertainment” wrestling. The only reason I sometimes watched as a kid was because my dad wouldn’t let me. He said watching wrestling made you dumber and so it was forbidden in our house. I’d watch occasionally because I don’t like being told what to do, plus I wanted to see if he was right. The character that Singh plays in the WWE is named “the Great Khali.” He has quite a bio:

Hailing from India, The Great Khali stands at an impressive 7 foot 3 and weighs 420 pounds. The Great Khali has walked the jungles of India unafraid of pythons and wrestled White Bengal tigers. Daivari claims that The Great Khali has “stared into the abyss and the earth trembled at his gaze.” One of the largest athletes the WWE has ever bared witness to, The Great Khali stands to be a powerful force and a threat to every member of the SmackDown locker room. [Link]

But…here is something not in his WWE bio. Singh has wrestled in the States before. According to many wrestling observers he is a nice guy but just not any good at wrestling. Actually, in 2001 he accidentally killed a man in the ring by doing an imperfect “powerbomb.”

Continue reading →

Girls, Girls, Girls

Posted on by

I’ve always been one of those girls that scoured mainstream beauty/fashion mags to see if there was a desi face within the pages. Of course, I was constantly disappointed. While thumbing through Jane Magazine’s April issue (print edition only) this weekend, I surprisingly found two. These two women were profiled in a list of “30 under 30,” basically, 30 cool women under the age of 30…

Miss Congeniality

Kashish Chopra, 22 – Washington D.C. Real Estate Agent; openly gay; Miss Congeniality at the 2003 Miss India pageant. “People would tell me how they were born gay but didn’t know how to come to terms with their personal or cultural identity. But they shouldn’t be afraid of it, because they are not alone.” (p104)

Alpana Singh, 29 – Chicago. Youngest female master sommelier in the country (and one of only 16 in the world). “It’s like, you can see Scarlett Johansson having wine, whereas Tara Reed is doing shots of tequila. Do you want to be Scarlett or Tara?” (p121)

She Likes Her Wine

It got me to thinking…just two? I know there’s more. Most of the people I come across in doing South Asian American work are dynamic women, all moving to break down barriers…Who would I additionally add if it was a list of “Desi Women Under 30”? Continue reading →

Coffee cant

Posted on by

How many times have you seen a desi profile begin with a sexualized coffee metaphor?

Amir Khan, Starbucks menu item

[Boxer] Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. [Link]

That particular style was original before Starbucks was big, when light-skinned black girls calling themselves ‘Mocha’ showed up on prime time to tease the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Only thing is, everyone now knows that coffee beans are actually harvested by poorly-paid brown people. Awkward.

Personally, I say we bring the brewless fuck back in style. It’s so darn cute, so dang-diggly underused, that the NYT should apply it to everyone they profile. And the metaphor should evaluate whether the subject is bangable, through coffeerotica.

‘Oscar de la Hoya is a 33-year-old with skin the color of espresso.

‘Avril Lavigne is a 21-year-old with skin the color of a double tall, no-whip vanilla latte.

‘Alan Greenspan is an 80-year-old with skin the color of curdled whipping cream.’

Hey, if you’re good, kick it up a notch into cocoarotica: milk chocolate, caramel, dark chocolate with almond bits. Make the paper of record sound as subtle as hip-hop lyrics. Bam, now we’re cookin’ with gas.

Related posts: We’ve got a live one!, Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

Continue reading →

"The blacker the soul…"

Posted on by

For the past week the darling of the media has been Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia:

President Bush welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the White House on Tuesday, calling Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state “a pioneer.”

In January, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the inauguration of the 67-year-old Harvard-educated former finance minister. She inherits a war-ruined nation of 3 million with an 80 percent unemployment rate, no running water and no electricity. Despite its diamond and timber wealth, Liberia is among the world’s poorest; ranked 206th in per capita income out of 208 countries on a 2004 World Bank list.

Neither leader publicly commented on U.S. aid to Liberia or Sirleaf’s request for Nigeria to hand over exiled former President Charles Taylor, who is wanted on war crimes charges. Taylor has been indicted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity by aiding and directing a Sierra Leone rebel movement and trading guns and gems with insurgents infamous for chopping off the lips, ears and limbs of civilian victims. [Link]

The shadow of Charles Taylor will dominate Liberian politics for the forseeable future. Taylor is one of the main reasons why I have vowed never to purchase a worthless “rock” for anyone.

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia’s president on August 2, 1997, following a landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by observers, although Taylor’s victory has been partially attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost, and therefore many people may have voted for him simply to preserve peace. For example, his campaign song included the words “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I’ll vote for him…”

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor’s arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor’s administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania… [Link]

So that brings us to the negotiations which seek to extradite the scum bag from Nigeria. Many people are afraid that bringing him to justice will cause bloodshed by polarizing the fragile country once again. Some of the negotiations on Taylor’s behalf are being conducted by an American. He is an Indian American evangelical preacher to be precise: Kilari Anand Paul. Continue reading →

Malaysia’s first astronaut?

Posted on by

An engineer named Vanajah Siva Subramaniam is one of the four finalists (and only woman) vying to become Malaysia’s first astronaut:

The Right Stuff

An ethnic Indian woman was on Tuesday named among four candidates short listed to become Malaysia’s first astronaut and travel to the International Space Station next year.

S Vanajah Siva Subramaniam, 35, will travel along with three Malay men to the Russian Space Agency in Moscow soon to undergo medical and technical tests that will establish which of them will take part in the scientific expedition on board the International Space Station in 2007.

The three men are Malaysia Airlines pilot Mohammed Faiz Kamaluddin, 34; army dentist Faiz Khaleed, 26; and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a 34-year-old hospital medical officer.

The four were chosen from more than 11,000 candidates who had submitted their applications in a process that started in 2003.

Vanajah is an engineer by profession. She was the only woman to be short-listed. All the three men are from the dominant Malay community, while Vanajah belongs to the ethnic Indian community, which comprises 8 per cent of Malaysia’s 26-million-strong population. [Link]

Her selection of course is dependent upon whether or not Malaysians think she is too sexy for the job of astronaut (I thought astronauts were REQUIRED to be sexy) . The astronaut who makes the final cut is scheduled to spend an expedition aboard the ISS sometime in 2007 (although I will bet money that the mission will be delayed at least a year).

Vanajah has previously said she hopes to inspire other Malaysian women to participate in science-related projects, saying her achievement proved that women could compete alongside men in rigorous trials.

The finalists have endured a battery of physical and psychological examinations, and officials said the remaining four were chosen on the basis of physical fitness, personality and preparedness, including family support. [Link]

I also found an article that describes some of those psychological tests that the Malaysian astronaut candidates were put through:

After extended periods of physical and mental stress, including sleep deprivation, being roused from a nice warm bed at 3am for a run followed by a swim, it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to continue pretending to be Mr Nice Guy.

Candidates were made to spend hours in pitch-dark jungle conditions to gauge whether they could endure long periods of isolation and sensory deprivation.

“It can be frightening if one is not used to the jungle but the candidates were never in any real danger ? what they did not know was that there were commandos assigned to watch over them at all times,” reveals Dr Teoh.

Continue reading →

They’ll let anyone in these days…even ex-”Tangoes”

Posted on by

Not since that hottie Natalie Portman has a freshman at Yale an ivy-league freshman created this much buzz. Meet 27-year-old former Taliban spokesperson Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi:

The Before and After pictures (via the NY Times)

The University of Yale has a freshman who is thankful to have landed up in the prestigious institution rather than the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a former Taliban spokesperson, who has the dubious distinction of having come in contact with terror mastermind Osama bin Laden has joined a non-degree course, which includes a class on terrorism… Turned away initially from a Taliban office in Kandahar, Hashemi had offered his skills as a computer operator because of his “high proficiency in English”, the New York Times quoted the freshman as saying.

But later, adding a couple of years to his age, he was accepted and became a part of the hardline Islamic regime that also brought him in contact with 9/11 mastermind Laden.

“I saw bin Laden after he was brought to Kandahar in 1997,” Rahmatullah told the Times.

Hashemi fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after the September 11 bombings. [Link]

Hashemi has had a brief flash of fame once before. He appeared in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11:

As the chief spokes-terrorist for the Taliban, Hashemi traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States. While speaking at the Atlantic Council in 2001, Hashemi was confronted with a woman who detailed the horrors facing the women of Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban. He dismissed her as if she were an insolent child and announced to the woman: “I’m really sorry for your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you. Hashemi’s disgusting comments were immortalized in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911…” [Link]

Over a week ago the New York Times did a fantastic 12-page in-depth story on Hashemi (a must read article). Continue reading →

Who let brown folks aboard Air Force One?

Posted on by

As most readers know, President Bush made a not so surprise visit to Afghanistan on Wednesday before his eventual arrival in India. After India he intends to go on to Pakistan. That is THREE South Asian nations in one week. By my rough count however, there are only TWO South Asian journalists along for the ride on Air Force One. The first is our old friend Raghubir “the Foil” Goyal. Word on the street is that “the Foil” is as necessary to the White House Press Office as the “Football” is to the President:

He may not be one the most high-profile media persons accompanying US President George W Bush on his India visit, but Indian American journalist Raghubir Goyal is often the “perfect foil” for the White House spokesperson when he is caught in a tight spot.

“I will be on Air Force One. A few of the other regulars in the press will also be there. They rotate everyone every month,” Goyal told IANS just before boarding the flight for New Delhi.

Goyal has been a White House pressperson for many years and is often ridiculed for his softball questions that deal exclusively with India and for which he has been labelled the “Goyal foil” – or a way out for White House spokesman Scott McClellan when he is in a tight spot.

I tell them, ‘But I get only one chance to ask a question and I want to get in my question about India instead of the other subjects the media is talking about’.”[Link]

“The Foil” now even has an entire website dedicated to his heroic exploits. The second desi reporter may not be as infamous, but she certainly has a large audience. It is Niharika Acharya of Voice of America:

Niharika is VOA Hindi TV’s lead anchor and correspondent. She co-hosts VOA Hindi’s weekly news and current affairs program “Duniya” (The World), aired live on India’s leading TV news channel Aaj Tak. Niharika also contributes to VOA Hindi Radio as fill-in host for the weekly call-in shows ‘Hello India’ and ‘Hello America’, and her television reports are aired on radio as well…

As part of VOA Hindi TV’s collaboration with Aaj Tak, which claims an audience of 30 million households in India, Niharika has also covered major news events including U.S. presidential elections, the 9/11 anniversaries, annual UN General Assembly sessions and important meetings between the leaders of India and the U.S. including President Bush’s meeting with the current and former Prime Ministers of India. [Link]

I dunno. I just find it kind of underwhelming that there aren’t more South Asian American journalists who were deemed by their news organizations to be qualified enough to be along for this ride. It seems like they would be in unique position to report on this story due to their inherent understanding of the cultures involved. Is Goyal the best we got to embed? I dream of the day when a mutinous blogger is allowed onto AF1.

See related posts: One-Track Uncle, Goyal’s toils

Continue reading →