Our favorite phoren polisee pundit Fareed Zakaria returned to The Daily Show with elegant, desi prep school accent in tow. He gave a surprisingly (for host Jon Stewart) content-filled interview about the Iraqi election, and Stewart let him run with it.
Zakaria gave Dubya plaudits for an inspirational election, lauded the Iraqi Shi’a for their restrained conduct to date, cautioned that much hard work remains and slammed the president for poor execution.
A quick shout out for all you Bay Area Mutineers — the South Asian Political Alliance (SAPA) will be holding it’s launch gala this Saturday evening.
SAPA was formed from the ashes of the South Asians for Kerry (SAKI) organization as a new vehicle to carry forward the Desi Progressive political consciousness.
Sepia Mutiny neither endorses nor condemns this event. 😉 And although I’m probably one of the last to label my politics “progressive”, I’ll probably be there cuz it’s gauranteed to be an interesting and interested crowd. For ex., San Francisco’s colorful (pun intended) District Attorney Kamala Harris – will be in attendance.
Details –
Saturday, February 5th 7pm – 10pm Element Lounge 1028 Geary Street San Francisco, CA Continue reading
The Bay Area edition of Craigslist.org has been buzzing lately over one woman’s post in the Rants and Raves section. Apparently the number of responses she has gotten has inspired her to start her own blog. Normally I would never consider linking to a blog that is so young that it only has two entries, but I have a nose for controversy and thought I’d help this woman by sending some traffic her way (and start a gender war as a bonus). Yes, I am a troublemaker. From her post:
I can tell you the reason why most girls, desi or non don’t like to go for Indians. I have heard more than 100 stories in the last few years from every woman I know who has dated or tried a relationship with a desi guy.
1. There is always that, let’s have a relationship now and I love you and I want to marry you but I won’t tell anyone of my friends or family that you even exist. You are just a friend and then one fine day, make a trip to India to “visit” family and the guy either comes back married or engaged and his answer is “sorry but they forced me and now I can’t do anything.” Some get even worse and then say, I always told you my parents would never approve of anyone that I found and other b.s. things like that. My point is, desi guys tend to want to lie and are dishonest about long term futures even when things are going well and they don’t have the balls to stand up for someone even if they love them. <<<-------- This is the BIGGEST reason why I know most women wont even look at a desi as a serious relationship matter.. What good is it if he can't be a man?
2. They are too cheap. I have actually had a desi guy ask me to split a bill at Taco Bell.. I mean, hey I don’t mind going dutch but ocassionally it would be nice to see a guy actually making things a little romantic than finding the cheapest way to a date.
3. They are NOT romantic. They have no concept of how to treat a woman period. They don’t know about bringing flowers on special occassions or sometimes, just cuz. They don’t know how to show their emotions and care for someone. Their idea of a date is sitting at home or at Naz, watching a Desi movie over a dinner at an indian restaurant. They have no concept of doing something to please a woman and let’s face it.. desi or not, women love romance.
…
Have you heard enough or are you thirsty for more? Needless to say I think this girl is wrong in most of her generalizations. We are victims of our own designs when it comes to dating and love. I am also pretty sure that some Indian male is going to come up with a counter list. It won’t be me however 🙂
I don’t mean to generalize but most women will give you a reason or reasons between the above mentioned ones as to their experiences with a desi guy. Since there aren’t that many desis to go around, once a woman has one or two experience like this, they stay away from desis in general.. Hence, anyone who may not even fit in to this catagory will suffer because of your fellow desi men who have used and abused these above mentioned criterias too much.
You bastards!
The New York Times recently reported that Democratic Congressman Anthony D. Weiner’s (who is running for Mayor of New York City) office has come under scrutiny for a series of suspicious mayoral campaign donations, all brokered by one Girish Soni.
Mr. Weiner collected more money orders in the last six months than any other Democratic mayoral candidate, all of them turned in by a New Jersey pharmacist, Girish Soni, who has raised thousands of dollars for Mr. Weiner’s Congressional campaigns since 1998, according to federal and city campaign finance records.
Mr. Soni gave the Weiner for New York Committee 29 money orders for $250 apiece on Nov. 24, along with two checks totaling $2,000. Each contribution was in a different name, but 25 of them included no information about the person’s profession or place of employment, as required by campaign finance laws, and several of the donors could not be located at the addresses provided.
Two people whose names appear on money orders said yesterday that they did not recall making the contributions.
Smita Parekh of Queens said she knew nothing about it and referred questions to her husband, Dilip Parekh, who expressed bewilderment at learning that he and his wife were listed as contributors to Mr. Weiner.
“I didn’t send in any money order, no sir,” Mr. Parekh said in a telephone interview from a grocery store he operates in Manhattan. “My wife works for Mr. Soni’s friend. Maybe that has something to do with it.”
The NYT reviews the latest book by Wendy Doniger, a University of Chicago professor who studies Hinduism:
Though sexual imagery is found throughout Hinduism’s baroque mythology, many groups would like to minimize its importance. They have different concerns: some with purity, some with Hindu power, some with minimizing the influence of “Eurocentric” commentators…… threatening e-mail messages were sent to Ms. Doniger and her colleagues. And in November 2003, an egg was lobbed at her at the University of London… Scholarship about Hinduism has also come under scrutiny. Books that explore lurid or embarrassing details about deities or saints have been banned. One Western scholar’s Indian researcher was smeared with tar, and the institute in Pune where the scholar had done his research was destroyed. Ms. Doniger said one of her American pupils who was studying Christianity in India had her work disrupted and was being relentlessly followed. [NYT]
What struck me about this story is the degree to which the reviewer absolutely, unquestioningly takes Doniger’s side without acknowledging there might be another point of view. She’s pushed the envelope, to say the least, on sexual, Freudian interpretations of Hindu mythology and reportedly called the Gita ‘a dishonest book’:
Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century Hindu saint, has been declared by these scholars as being a sexually-abused homosexual, and it has become “academically established” by Wendy Doniger‘s students that Ramakrishna was a child molester, and had also forced homosexual activities upon Vivekananda… Other conclusions by these well-placed scholars include: Ganesha’s trunk symbolizes a “limp phallus”; his broken tusk is a symbol for the castration-complex of the Hindu male; his large belly is a proof of the Hindu male’s enormous appetite for oral sex. Shiva, is interpreted as a womanizer, who encourages ritual rape, prostitution and murder, and his worship is linked to violence and destruction. [Sulekha]
This is a hairy issue, so let me tease out various threads here. I’m not in favor of right-wing Hinduism; I’m certainly against any form of academic intimidation. And there are, in fact, rich veins of sexuality in Hindu mythology. It’s one of the ways Hinduism feels more organic, less Puritan to me than the fire-and-brimstone self-abnegation of the Bible.
This post is from the files of Mr. ‘Everything Comes From India’ and the chest-thumpingly nationalist father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
An author who’s a Hare Krishna is penning a tome on how Star Wars was inspired by Hindu myths. In his formulation, The Jedi and the Lotus, the Force comes from Brahma, Yoda and Luke are guru and disciple, Jedi training is yoga and the Jedi rules are the warrior code of the kshatriya.
[J]ust as Star Wars takes place in deep space, most of the battles in the Ramayana take place in sophisticated aircrafts, and Arjuna, too, in the Mahabharata, is said to engage in many battles while in outer space… Ancient Indian myths are perhaps the earliest examples of these world myths, while Star Wars is merely among the most contemporary… I look at George Lucas’ major influences, from Flash Gordon to Joseph Campbell, and how Indian tales form the central core around which his series is modelled.
So much sci-fi rips from warrior mythology (samurai, cowboys), I find it hard to believe a claim of exclusive inspiration, although there’s an interesting argument for the ferengi and Klingons in Star Trek being desi in origin.
In a quest for validation-by-sticker dating back to those gold stars from third grade, desis are yet again pitching a Diwali stamp to the US Postal Service. The online petition comes with a ‘No fair! Rashid got a bigger piece’ twist, because an Eid stamp came out years ago. Since both the Diwali and Dalip Singh Saund stamps have been rejected before, the latest try shows we can take a lickin’ and keep on stickin’.
Some experts told that the stamp being issued was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’, said Kumar. “Diwali‘s recognition by the US Postal Department… will also honour a civilisation that has the merit of being a continuous propagation for 6,000 years, and Diwali is celebrated not just by Hindus but also Sikhs and even Christians. It’s like Christmas,” he contended.
My assessment is a bit too flip. It’s true that in the email age, procuring a Diwali stamp is like flyering the Titanic. But it’s actually free marketing for the South Asian brand. You might not have to explain your damn holiday to your elderly neighbors any more. You might get a sponsorship from Illuminations.
You might even pull a Hannukah (eight days of presents? It’s a shanda) and leave work early every day in November. ‘Ours is a very respectful religion,’ you might say. ‘We respect the ancient tradition of shubh ghanta. Also called happy hour. We take converts.’
Sajit did a very thorough post about the offensive Hot 97 tsunami song. I wanted to call out the lyrics of Jin tha MC’s reply track. It’s in the finest tradition of angry, political rap, and it’s actually a good track on its own merits. Listen to the track.
You got it all twisted if you think I’m here to cockblock
on a bunch of no-talent, wanna-be shock jocks (nah)
And you say it’s all freedom of speech
Well, you just lost yours, read ’em and weep
Won’t be happy ’til you’re fired…Fuck the tsunami song and whoever thought of it
Matta fact, fuck the engineer that recorded it…
Anything for ratings, huh? That shit is corporateThat little bullshit statement has gotta be
The world’s most half-assed apology
Thousands are still gettin’ discovered each day
How dare you compare a life to a week’s pay?
HipHopMusic says the station issued a weird, passive-aggressive apology, and Sprint and McDonald’s have pulled their advertising for now:
At 6 AM this morning, Hot 97 announced the Miss Jones morning show is “suspended indefinitely”… Most of the calls they took were in favor of bringing Miss Jones back. Many people have reported to me that when they called to speak against bringing the show back they were screened out…. They’re not saying whether the suspension is permanent or temporary, or whether it is a paid suspension….They also played Jin’s dis track repeatedly.
Women with supportive, well-off fathers often are often at the forefront of women’s rights in conservative nations, because they have the means. One such woman has shocked Egypt by filing a paternity suit against a well-known actor. Because it involves a woman fighting injustice before marriage, losing her privacy and being publicly vilified, it reminds me of the dowry extortion case in Delhi:
The standard three-step program for any unmarried upper-class Egyptian girl who becomes pregnant is an abortion, an operation to refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first unwitting suitor the family can snare… Instead [Hind el-Hinnawy] did the unthinkable here: she had the child and then filed a public paternity suit… Ms. Hinnawy contends that the two had what is known as an urfi [unregistered] marriage… She may well set an Egyptian legal precedent by requesting that the court order Mr. Fishawy to submit to a DNA test…Corporate tycoons and politicians who are married have found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with everyone from secretaries to belly dancers with an Islamic seal of approval… “People prefer that a woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t become a scandal…”
… the case would help defeat the conservative Saudi values that she said had changed Egyptian society for the worse… “These values from Wahhabi Islam are completely different from our Islamic values,” Mrs. Bakr said. “This is petrodollar Islam…” [NYT]
The 2003 Nisha Sharma case in Noida:
Just a couple of hours before her wedding ceremony, Ms Nisha Sharma used her mobile phone to report her in-laws-to-be to the police. They had allegedly demanded Rs 12 lakh from Ms Sharma’s father, and had even assaulted him when he had hesitated to comply with the demand…
The Harvard controversy on whether women’s technical aptitudes are innate:
… [The Harvard president’s] young daughter, when given toy trucks, had treated them as dolls, naming them “Daddy truck” and “baby truck.” But critics dryly observed that men had a longstanding tradition of naming their vehicles, and babying them as though they were humans.
Lt. Neil Prakash:
You can’t beat ol’ Blinkey for armored protection.
I call my baby, Blinkey, ever since she got one of her headlights blown off in Baqubah by an RPG. The RPG had ripped open that little corner of the hull and exposed the depleted uranium armor. She’s taken so much battle-damage that we’re being told she will never return to duty after this deployment… Supposedly, she will be coded out, ripped apart and studied at a lab. If that’s true, that breaks my crew’s hearts. She has taken a pounding and kept her crew alive. She should be bronzed and placed on a concrete slab at Ft. Knox for everyone to see.
