Don’t Make me Take my Chappals off…

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shoe at you.jpg The shoe-throwing incident. People love the shoe-throwing incident. Now, I’m blogging about it here, despite the fact that it was an Iraqi who did it to a non-Desi. I am doing this for three reasons:

1) It brought back bad memories of my last trip to Kerala (more on that, after the jump)

2) We think of shoes as dirty and thus, disrespectful as well (AFAIK)

3) The Lobb-ber has received a marriage proposal for his act of bravado:

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday
The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.
Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.
Zaidi’s gesture has struck a chord across the Arab world, where President Bush is widely despised for invading Iraq in 2003 and for his support for Israel. [link]

Disrespecting someone with a shoe AND a potential “alliance” of families? Oh, that’s so brown, even if it’s not technically brown. Whatever mang, I’m down with the spirit and the letter.

It didn’t just strike a chord across the Arab world. A Professor of Technocultural Studies at my alma mater, U.C. Davis (go ags!), published the following thoughts in the Huffington Post (via Sunaina Maira of ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, whose website seems to be down):

Know what Bush was saying when al-Zeidi threw his shoes? “The war is not over. But . . . it is decidedly on its way to being won.”
And Muntadhar al-Zeidi lost it. Threw both his shoes, yelling that shoe #1 was ” a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people!” His second shoe was “for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq!”
This was a gift to the entire world. We all owe a debt to this 28-year old journalist who, for one beautiful moment, letting go of all rational calculation of the possible consequences, stood up and spoke truth to power.
He is currently being held by Iraqi security forces and faces an unknown fate. I would not want to be in his shoes right now. [link]

I’m not sure any of us would want to be in his position, right now: Continue reading →

Hello from Goa; Poem by Daljit Nagra

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I’m always nervous about being too personal in this space, and anyway when you’re traveling with a two-year old your travel experiences tend to revolve around him, so I’ll boil it down to this: Goa sure is nice this time of year. (I’m visiting in-laws, who live here now.)

We were also in London for a couple of days, where I was happy to get to meet Sunny Hundal. Again, let’s keep details to a minimum, and say the highlight of our London experience was a restaurant called Imli, serving Indian Tapas (nice idea, huh).

In a London bookstore I found a book of poems by Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover! (the title poem is a postcolonial answer to Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”). My favorite poem so far is “Rapinder Slips into Tongues,” and I hope the poet won’t mind if I share the poem here, in hopes of provoking discussion. It certainly resonated with me:

Rapinder Slips into Tongues…
by Daljit Nagra

Dad and me were watching the video–
Amar, Akbar, Anthony. It’s about three
brothers separated after the family is parted
by gangsters. You can get it with subtitles, Miss.
When Anthony, who grows up in a Catholic home,
begged Christ for the address of his real parents
then crossed himself, I jumped off our royal red
sofa, joined Anthony with his prayer:
Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary,
four-quartering myself then curtseying a little.

Dad just stared at me, knocking his turban side
to side that I almost thought it would come off
which it normally does when he’s doing his press-ups
and his face goes mauve. Instead he took off
his flip-flop (the one with a broken thong),
held it in the air, shouting in ‘our’ language,
Vat idiot! If you vant to call on Gud,
call anytime on anyvun of our ten gurus,
Do you tink is white Gud’s wife your mudder?

Dad’s got a seriously funny way Miss,
sometimes he cries, and says he’s going to give me
to a Sikh school, a proper school. That’s why
I did what my cousin Ashok does at our local
temple — while you were all doing hail mary
to end registration, I first locked my hands,
knelt down, prayed with this ditty we do on Sundays,

imagined the Golden Temple and our bearded gods
to your up-on-the-cross one, then roared:
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
 Like that.

A critic named Ben Wilkinson has a brief take on the poem, and Daljit Nagra’s poetic style as a whole, here. Continue reading →

Education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq

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Since I’ve had beauty pageant winners on the brain, I thought I’d share this video with the five of you who haven’t seen and rolled your eyes at it yet. I mean, that’s what I did once I realized what she meant by “condone” (way to kinda fake us out on the News Tab, oh person with unintelligible TypeKey handle).

Natasha Paracha is Miss Pakistan World 2008. She’s an alumna of U.C. Berkeley (go bears!), where she majored in Poli-Sci and started an association for Pakistani students. When she’s not confusing important words which commence with the letter “C” ;), she’s thinking about current events, about which she had the following to share:

The recent tragedy in Mumbai was the work of misguided individuals who do not represent a specific religion, creed or nationality…The fact these young men may have links to Pakistan is in no way indicative of the culture and caliber of people that represent Pakistan. It is my hope the world views this tragedy with those thoughts in mind as we all mourn for the victims and their families. [link]

More:

The tragedy in Mumbai has left us all in shock. It is difficult to understand that such violent acts are taking place in metropolitan regions. First, the attacks that were carried out at Marriott in Islamabad and now this…I have family and friends that live close to the Taj and Oberoi and my heart goes out to all those innocent people involved. [link]

All right, now which one of you (or ten of you) went to Cal with her and have stories about that one time she got her belly pierced at Zebra on a dare, and it, like, totally got infected? Oh, snap…that was me. Carry on, bear cubs and mutineers… Continue reading →

Touched For The Very First Time

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Over at the addictive blog PostSecret, a desi-angled postcard for your procrastination pleasure on a Monday morning [tipster hat tip to Chick Pea].

Postsecrets.jpg

My active imagination went into overdrive trying to figure out the story behind the image. Usually with most PostSecret cards the inspiration is pretty apparent but for this postcard, the story behind the image left me questioning:

a) Was it a guy that lost his virginity to an Indian woman? Or was it a girl that lost her virginity to an Indian man? Or maybe I was presumptive in thinking this was hetero-normative, and really it’s a queer drama being played out.

b) Was the comment filled with xenophobic hate by a non-Indian to an Indian? Or was it a jilted Indian lover that was upset that the other Indian chose another Indian to lose his/her virginity to?

A concerned reader over at PostSecret e-mailed the following to the site, the comment left underneath this postcard.

Subject: Indians aren’t bad.

I am an Indian American and honestly, I think people should feel honored to have sex with Indians. I mean, we DID write the Kama Sutra.

Amen to that. What do you think is the story, morning glories?

Related Posts: Dearest Pecola, I Want to Weep & Postsecret Isn’t Always Tragic. Continue reading →

Posted in Art

Parvathy Omanakuttan: Mallu Mol Just Misses Miss World

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Parvathy is pretty.JPG Kerala’s, I mean India’s Parvathy Omanakuttan was almost Miss World 2008; in the end, however, it was Russia’s glamazon who won the crown. Just another instance of a brown girl being passed over in favor of some blue-eyed blonde…KIDDING. Sort of. 😉 Here is her biodata, I mean, bio (thanks, nik and mithua):

Parvathy, hailing from Kottayam, grew up in Mumbai. Having graduated in Arts, she has studied Sociology, Psychology & English Literature.
Parvathy’s ambition is to further her studies in Psychology to learn more about human behaviour in depth…The lanky beauty is an ardent sports fan with a special interest in basketball, badminton and swimming.
She has a special talent for whistling. She likes listening to music, singing, reading, glass painting, acting, modelling, dancing (varying from local dances to ballroom and Latin dances) and learning new languages.[zee]

I have to ask, why is whistling important? Apart from being extra-able to hail a cab, re-enact the “Whistle while you work” scene from Snow White or tell some hottie that he or she is foine–in a rather inappropriate way–what is it good for? Never mind , I answered my own question with that list.

Parvathy is also very fond of a beautiful quote by former President APJ Abdul Kalam ‘Dreams are not what you see in your sleep, but dreams are that, which do not allow you to sleep’, hence her motto in life is ‘Dream with your eyes open’. [zee]

She might be fond of that dreamy quote, but I’m fond of the fact that she’s athletic. We at SM love us some sporty brown girls.

Speaking of those of us at SM, feast your eyes on this inter-bunker haterade Ennis sent to me, via G-chat:

4:30 PM Ennis: everybody knows mallu chicks are too short to win a pageant 😉

For your information, HATER, she is either 5’8 or 5’9; I’ve seen both heights listed in the 20+ articles I trudged through for this post (which were all filled with the same lame quotes). Either way, she’s tall enough. Oh, when will the North-South hate end? When, I ask? When? 😉

Reading the following made me smile with recognition:

Prior to witnessing the event on TV, close family members visited a few temples to offer prayers for Parvathy’s success.
Those present couldn’t contain their joy when Parvathy’s name was announced in the five semi finalists.
Then followed tense moments as they waited for the winner to be announced, and when the news came that she was the first runner up, not everyone was happy.

Continue reading →

The Last Victims

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Pakistan’s DAWN newspaper features a great investigative piece that details how its reporters tracked down (whereas other major papers failed) the family of Mohammed Ajmal “Babyface” Kasab (who may really be Mohammad Ajmal Amir) and listened to what they had to say. Kasab was, of course, the lone surviving gunman from the recent Mumbai attacks.

Ajmal Kasab…was supposed to belong to the village Faridkot in the Punjab. Media organisations such as the BBC and now the British newspaper Observer have done reports trying to ascertain the veracity of claims appearing in the media that the young man had a home there.

At the weekend, the Observer in England claimed that it had managed to locate the house everyone was looking for so desperately. Its correspondent said he had got hold of the voters’ roll which had the names of Amir Kasab and his wife, identified as Noor, as well as the numbers on the identity cards the couple carried…

However, the man who said he was Amir Kasab confirmed to Dawn that the young man whose face had been beamed over the media was his son.

For the next few minutes, the fifty-something man of medium build agonized over the reality that took time sinking in, amid sobs complaining about the raw deal the fate had given him and his family. [Dawn]

I have commented before on SM about how much I disagree with using the term “evil” to describe men like Ajmal Kasab. To call them “evil” or “insane” (without clinical proof of insanity) in my opinion gives society an undeserved excuse. It allows us to isolate them as others, as subhumans. It allows us to feel superior in thinking that we were born good whereas these men were born bad. Their “affliction” is seen as having zero probability of transmission to good people like us. It just cannot spread. You are born evil. Then you go and talk to their parents and you realize the difference between how we were nurtured and how they were nurtured can’t really be pinpointed except for a few wrong turns and bad decisions that cascade into fanatic acts. The father continued:

‘I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,’ he told Dawn in the courtyard of his house in Faridkot, a village of about 2,500 people just a few kilometres from Deepalpur on the way to Kasur. ‘Now I have accepted it. This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal…’

Indian media reports ‘based on intelligence sources’ said the man was said to be a former Faridkot resident who left home a frustrated teenager about four years ago and went to Lahore…

After his brush with crime and criminals in Lahore, he is said to have run into and joined a religious group during a visit to Rawalpindi.

‘He had asked me for new clothes on Eid that I couldn’t provide him. He got angry and left.’ [Dawn] Continue reading →

Bedi, Bhatt and Nayak

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Sounds like the name of a law practice right? Instead it’s the surnames of the three (brown) stooges in low places who figure at the heart of the Blagojevich pay-for-play scandal, key actors in the attempt to auction off the IL senate seat vacated by Obama to the highest bidder as if it were nothing more than a suitable boy from a “respectable” but dowry mad family.

This is how it allegedly went down, at a lunch meeting at India House, of course:

Businessmen with ties to both Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson discussed raising $1 million for Blagojevich as a way of persuading him to appoint Jackson to President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. [Link]

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak… Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi privately told many of the more than two dozen attendees the fundraising effort was aimed at supporting Jackson’s bid for the Senate. Among the attendees was a Blagojevich fundraiser already under scrutiny by federal investigators, Joliet pharmacist Harish Bhatt.

“Raghu said he needed to raise a million for Rod to make sure Jesse got the seat,” the second businessman said. “He said, ‘I can raise half of it, $500,000.’ The idea was that the other two would help raise the rest.” [Link]

I know that our generation often tries to persuade the older generation to get involved in American politics, but this is not what we have in mind! Legal campaign contributions can be good, but getting busted trying to buy a senate seat is bad.

(For the record, “Jackson’s attorney said while Jackson discussed the Senate seat with Nayak, he never asked him to do anything.” [Link] It really isn’t clear at this point whether Nayak was acting for Jackson or just freelancing, but Jackson’s seems unlikely to gain the senate seat now. )

So who are these jokers? (profiles and pics after the fold) Continue reading →

Driving substantive health care reform

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While we are busy debating the merits of one potential Obama appointee and fawning over another (ok, I know, I am the only one fawning), there is a third that might end up having the most substantive role of all in Obama’s administration. Neera Tanden, who I first wrote about back in 2004, in all likelihood is about to occupy a position that will greatly influence this nation’s health care policy. First, remember that Tom Daschle will serve a new dual role. He will not only be named as the cabinet level head of Health and Human Services, but will also be director of a new WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF HEALTH REFORM. This essentially gives him the powers of a Health Czar and indicates that we will see a major legislative push in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. Tanden is a member of the transition team’s health advisors, having come over from Clinton’s campaign. She is a battle-hardened survivor of Hillary-care and knows the lessons learned and can be a great asset to Daschle. Here is an interesting footnote about Tanden’s role at the inception of Hillary’s campaign:

On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, “I so love this house. Why am I doing this?”

Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. “I’m so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?”

Tanden spoke up. “The White House isn’t so bad,” she said. [Link]

The New York Times had a good article on Tanden way back in 2000 [via Manish]:

How smart is the smart kid in Hillary Clinton’s Senate bid?

From all appearances — including a law degree from Yale — very.

It was Ms. Tanden, signing on with the exploratory committee in July 1999, who moved to New York from the White House and worked with Mrs. Clinton, researching and developing policies. She was 29.

It was Ms. Tanden — with, she wants you to know, her staff of six — who challenged Rick A. Lazio’s first major policy proposal, a tax-reduction plan, in August. In two hours Ms. Tanden prepared a detailed financial response. Finding the facts and figures to defend her candidate’s position is a large part of her work.

Watching Ms. Tanden in action at the Hillary 2000 headquarters on 34th Street is not permitted.

But you can accompany Ms. Tanden, informal, fast-talking, connected to her cell phone as to a body part, across the street to the restaurant she frequents these days, the cafeteria in Macy’s basement. She works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Her husband hates her work, Ms. Tanden allows in an unguarded moment. She makes a quick, politic adjustment: he doesn’t hate the work; he hates the way she brings the work home, the stress. [Link]

Continue reading →

Having to think twice about reporting a burglary

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About a week ago the Houston Chronicle ran a story about a burglary here in Houston. A Sikh family (the Tagores) came home one night to find that their master bedroom had been ransacked and that a window was broken. They did what anyone would have done: called the police to report the crime. Then the story becomes not so routine:

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is investigating allegations that deputies harassed a family of Sikhs whose home was burglarized last week.

Family members say the deputies handcuffed them, roughed them up and taunted them instead of taking a report on the break-in.

One deputy reportedly asked them if they’d “heard about the bombings in Bombay.” Another allegedly said he had been to Kuwait and “knew about Muslims…”

“The allegations, if they’re true, are certainly intolerable and inconsistent with our policies,” said sheriff’s spokesman John Legg.

The deputies could face anything from disciplinary action to termination, Legg said. He declined to release their names pending further investigation. [Houston Chronicle]

This incident occurred on November 26th. On November 27th, a film crew from San Antonio-based Sach Productions was already in Houston to interview the family.

The idea behind the birth of Sach Productions is the creation of an agency that uses the film media to further the Sikh cause. The intention of Sach Productions is to introduce Sikhs to the world and then bring forth issues that concern them.

The initial projects are short documentaries that introduce Sikhs to the Western world. The intention is to then bring issues relating to Punjab, Human Rights, Arts and Culture to the people. [Sach Productions]

By December 5th, as the local news began to pick up on the story, Sach Productions had already filmed and uploaded a documentary about the incident on to the web:

Continue reading →

Live from Good Stuff Eatery- IT’S TOP CHEF!

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I’m back on the right coast and that means that I’m at the hottest possible spot for Top Chef watching– Chef Spike’s Good Stuff Eatery, here on the Hill, in Washington, D.C. By the way, I’m sitting right next to the bad boy himself…ah, being a blogger. It does have its privIleges. 😉

It’s the “palate” test! Spike likes.

I think we can all agree that Padma’s hair looks great. 😉

“Actually, this challenge is kind of stupid.” Can I quote that, Spike? Laughs. “Yeah.”

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

Continue reading →

Posted in TV