The Daily Show speculates how the Singh-Musharraf man date turned out. Watch the clip.

Yes, that really is the two of them in a hot tub. Like all good Daily Show graphics, it’s completely undoctored.

The Statesman reports that even with two years to go, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is preparing to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Sepoy Mutiny, which he will refer to in a more contemporary fashion:

Mangal Pandey and his men will live again, and not because of Ketan MehtaÂ’s feature film The Rising. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has constituted a Group of Ministers to celebrate the Revolt of 1857. Only, the government will regard it as the first war of Indian independence.

That the Centre has started planning the celebrations a couple of years ahead could be borne out of the concern that the Opposition parties, in power in some states, do not steal the thunder and take over the “nationalist” agenda.

Continue reading →

I haven’t seen Fareed Zakaria do explicit shout-outs that often, unlike Gurinder Chadha:

India is still a poor third-world country, but if you read [Thomas Friedman’s] book you would assume it is on the verge of becoming a global superstar. (Though as an Indian-American, I read Friedman and whisper the old Jewish saying, ”From your lips to God’s ears.”)

L.A. Mayorial Candidate Antonio Villaraigosa has pandered to pretty much every ethnic minority in L.A. in his bid to unseat incumbent Jim Hahn. Why not South Asians? Indiawest reports:

If elected mayor of Los Angeles in the May 17 election, city councilman Antonio Villaraigosa pledged that, in making Los Angeles more “open” to South Asians…His administration would also seriously consider making appointments from within those communities

In fairness though, you have to excessively pander in L.A. to win. Continue reading →

The Voice thinks M.I.A. needs to coin a genre:

Fannypack are like M.I.A., who hops her own scotch and shakes her own jumprope, and they’re in a similar predicament, which is that they don’t quite fit pre-existing genres, dance or hip-hop… Fannypack and M.I.A. should hold a joint press conference and simply declare themselves a genre, invent some name, Jumprope or Streetrope or Boohall or Favela Bratty Beats or Bow-Wow Booty Bop or something… M.I.A. and Fannypack are in dance-club bohemia, which means on the one hand that they’ll be surrounded by preciousness, but on the other that, being bohos, they might stick to their vision, keep doing the jumprope not just for fun or for the moolah but for the art of it, persist long enough and obstinately enough to still be jumping when the world is finally ready to jump with them…

Budding interior designers now have a new way to decorate: have your custom furnishings made in an Indian factory:

[Cornelia] The other fusion element–the Swedish-looking candleholder that I found. I wanted to get 40 made for our wedding. I sent out an Internet request to a consortium of Indian manufacturers: “Can anybody make these?” A man with a factory outside Delhi e-mailed: I can do it!

[Mikael] We use candles a lot in northern countries… We’re a pale people.

Turbanhead brings our attention to an album of Hindi ABBA covers from the 1970s with puzzling translations of song names:
Ho Jayegi Badnami (Money, Money, Money), Mitha Maze Dar (Dancing Queen), Pehil Pehli Preet (Super Trooper), Toba Toba (Mama Mia), etc Continue reading →

Karthik tells a droll story about borrowing a library book in India:

“Do you have The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?”
“Who is the author?”
“John Le Carre.”

… she scribbled something in the note, and left it on her desk… Stuck to the notice with cellophane tape was the make shift post-it note. It said, in Tamil:

Karthik
John
Book with a long name

Shashwati explains murderer Charles Sobhraj’s escape from a Greek prison:

One day he managed to purloin a syringe. He drew some of his own blood, and spat it out during an inspection, and collapsed feigning illness… While in hospital, he lay his hands on a bottle of perfume… Charles and some other inmates were put in a van to be taken back to the prison… Charles threw the perfume on a bunch of oily rags and lit it, starting a fire in the van… Sobhraj escaped in the confusion.

Suketu Mehta wrote this sensuous take on the Great Northeast Power Outage (via Green Channel):

As it got dark, the texture of the city changed. The street lights were out, and people strolled about with flashlights, lanterns. Street vendors were selling glow-sticks and phosphorescent necklaces which would save you from being run over at intersections… It was a steamy night; men walked around without their shirts; women came out in their shortest skirts. People trying to catch the trains to the suburbs realised they couldn’t make it, met other commuters, and made impromptu dinner plans with them; ate pizza by candlelight and slept together in the parks… For one night, the city shed its load.