Confess Away — Til You Get a Book Deal

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Via a tipster, the Telegraph (UK) has something on The Compulsive Confessor, a Bombay-based blogger:

In breezy postings, the 25-year-old girl-about-town – India’s answer to Bridget Jones – told thousands of readers of her partying, smoking and binge drinking, along with candid musings about sexual techniques and escapades. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan writes her Sex and the City-style blog under the pseudonym “EM”, aware that although her material would not seem outrageous to a British audience, in India sex remains a taboo and anti-obscenity laws are strict. (link)

This particular article tries to play up the salacious content of the blog, and seems hell-bent on finding “controversy,” though this angle falls a little flat at certain moments:

Madhavan, a Delhi-born writer for a news magazine, Outlook, launched The Compulsive Confessor during a dull day at the office in 2004.

While her critics grow daily more scandalised, her thousands of fans believe she is changing the face of modern Indian womanhood. Her blog is among the most popular in India, receiving 400-500 hits a day, although only two per cent of India’s 1.1 billion population have internet access. (link)

(I would make a comment about how “400-500 hits a day” is actually not a lot of hits, but I’m sure that number has spiked since this profile appeared.)

The most interesting part of the article, of course, is in the concluding paragraphs, where it’s revealed that The Compulsive Confessor now has a book deal with Penguin India:

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the publisher Penguin India has commissioned Madhavan to write a semi-autobiographical novel, hoping she will rival the success of Candace Bushnell, the American author of Sex and the City, in giving voice to a new generation.

Meanwhile, Madhavan is apprehensive that news of her real identity will spread even further when the book is published, making it harder to be frank in her internet journal. “It will be harder to write when you’re no longer anonymous,” she said. (link)

Hm, she’s worried about news of her identity spreading after her book’s published? What about when she’s profiled by a major British newspaper, where the reporter uses her real name?

(Note: I hope this isn’t one of those situations where the reporter used Madhavan’s name against her wishes, thereby outing her… Something about this profile doesn’t quite smell right…)

Take a look at The Compulsive Confessor; what do you think? Is she the next Shobha De? Or merely the next Amy Sohn? Continue reading →

Market Cap

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The Rupee has been surging against the dollar again (it’s approaching 39:1; see an earlier discussion here), and according to the New York Times, the instability in the U.S. market in recent months has led investors to pour money into Indian corporations:

Fueled in part by overseas investors seeking refuge from America’s subprime mortgage mess, share prices in India’s markets have outpaced other Asian markets in recent weeks. The Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex index set records on 10 of the last 11 days, before closing slightly lower on Thursday at 17,777.14.

The Sensex is up 14.6 percent since Sept. 17. That follows months of somewhat slower gains — the index is up 28.9 percent so far this year, according to Bloomberg Data, and up 102 percent (0r more than double) over the past 24 months.

The real estate company DLF, for example, which had a $2.3 billion initial public offering in July, now has market capital of more than $37 billion — making it roughly the size of Marriott International and Hilton Hotels combined. On Thursday, the company said it would consider overseas acquisitions and offshore fund-raising at its next board meeting.

Reliance Industries, the largest publicly traded company in India, reached a market cap of more than $85 billion this week, up from $6.5 billion in January 2003. Reliance, an oil, chemical and manufacturing company, is now about double the size of Dow Chemical. The market cap of Bharti Airtel, a telecommunications giant, nearly reached $46 billion this week, making it triple the size of Qwest and larger than Telecom Italia. (link)

Those are undeniably impressive gains — and it’s interesting to see companies most Americans have never heard of reaching “blue chip” valuation levels (for more on market capitalization, see Wikipedia).

But — am I right to be worried about a possible bubble? Continue reading →

“Write a Line in Hindi.” Or not — Shaair and Func

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Via Nirali, check out Shaair and Func. Shaair (think “Shayr”) is a desi girl who grew up in the DC area; Func is a Goan from Mumbai who grew up listening to Metallica. What you get when you mix the two is something that sounds like this:

She reminds me a little of Nikka Costa… what do you think? The best part of the profile at Nirali for me were these paragraphs:

And so began a relationship—”We fell in love with each other’s person first,” stresses Dogra—based on the mutual desire to make accessible music, free of the pressure to impose a contrived “Indian” sound (think twangy sitar solos and misplaced tabla beats). “Before I met Randolph, producers would be like, ‘Write a line in Hindi’,” says Dogra. “I can’t even speak Hindi! I’d listen to it and think it was so insincere.”

Give their debut CD a listen, and it’s obvious that Shaa’ir and Func are staying true to their mission of keeping themes universal. “We want to pave a better way for the next generation of not just Indian kids, but kids the world over who want to put out an idea. They can do it without having that ‘Who are you?’ pressure on themselves,” explains Correia. It’s increasingly apparent that the two are committed to their goal as they sing about everything from illegal-alien ancestry to the downsides of long-distance love. (link)

A video with higher production value than the one above is “Oops”. Lots of eye candy, but I’m not feeling the song as much as “Hit,” which I linked to above. Another one to check out is “Government,” a spoken word poem over music. Continue reading →

Hate Crimes In Maryland; Arrests Made

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Via SALDEF, a report on a local Fox affilate about a probable hate crime that occurred in Burtonsville, MD, on September 15. (Warning, the images below are a bit graphic. You might want to finish your breakfast first.)

This particular story caught my attention because, first of all, the area is very close to where my parents live in Maryland. It’s a very safe area, and my folks go out for walks all the time, sometimes around dusk — this could have been someone I know (though in fact, I don’t know this particular family). Secondly, the gentlemen who were attacked are in their 70s, close to my grandfather’s age — and I’m particularly disgusted at the twisted version of national pride that might lead a group of teenagers to attack the elderly in this way.

The day after the two Sikhs were attacked, a Muslim man was attacked by a group of teenagers in the same town. That incident has not been detailed in the media, and I don’t know how badly the man in the second attack was injured.

Luckily, two arrests have been made. I’m not sure yet how they found the kids responsible, or whether further arrests are in the offing; we’ll probably hear more in the coming days.

Recently, Thomas Friedman wrote a column entitled, “9/11 is over.” I wish it were true — I gather he does too — though sadly that is clearly not the case. Continue reading →

Not enough desis help out on The Farm

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USA Today recently reported that the CIA has seen a boost in its minority hiring in the last few years. Ordinarily this might be great news, however, the Agency may not be recruiting the “right type” of minorities to come down to their Farm for training:

More than one in four recruits offered jobs as undercover spies by the CIA this year are members of racial or ethnic minorities — a record high percentage, the agency’s top spy says.

But the CIA continues to lag in fielding spies from the Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds deemed most critical to the war on terrorism, said Jose Rodriguez, the outgoing director of clandestine intelligence gathering, in an interview with USA TODAY. Only about 5% of the agency’s current undercover spy force is from an Asian background. [Link]

I know plenty of South Asian Americans who would be a perfect fit at the CIA. Almost all of these folks would say “no way” to the idea, however. The problem is glaringly obvious. How is the CIA supposed to recruit from a pool of much needed, patriotic South Asian Americans (or anyone else for that matter) when that pool of recruits is worried that they will be asked to de-humanize (potentially innocent) suspects by order of the Executive Branch. From today’s NYTimes:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. [Link]

Continue reading →

An Indian American student as kingmaker?

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Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal carried an interesting profile of Atul Nakhasi. The 19-year-old pre-med (of course) college student from Iowa proclaims: “They’re sucking up to me…” But just who is “they?”

A hand-written thank-you from Bill Clinton and a private lunch with Sen. Joe Biden are becoming normal fare for college junior Atul Nakhasi…

The ambitious, energetic president of the University of Iowa Democrats has cleverly plotted to turn his once-moribund organization into a sought-after player in the Iowa caucuses, where the first delegates in the 2008 presidential campaign will be chosen. Today, Mr. Nakhasi will be on the stage when Barack Obama speaks to the campus…

“He knows every single organizer of the campaigns,” marveled Mark Bowers, 19, president of Hawkeyes for John Edwards, “and they all, obviously, want him to support that candidate…” [Link]

I have to say I’m a bit jealous of young Atul. If I could devote all my energies these days to Sepia Mutiny, I’d be using it for such utterly Machiavellian purposes myself 😉 The fact that young Atul can work the system as efficiently as he does has everything to do with the crazy primary and electoral process we now have. Candidates have to suck up to him (and the vote he can potentially turn out) because if they don’t take Iowa they are facing a standing ten count in their fight to become the nominee. Having to win in a state like Iowa or New Hampshire (who let’s face it, no one cares about) is bound to enable some smart and enterprising kingmakers such as Atul.

Mr. Nakhasi, who unsuccessfully ran twice for student body-president, is a year younger than most of his fellow juniors and a year ahead of them in credits; he could graduate in May. This summer, he turned his energies to reviving the [University Democrats].

Mr. Nakhasi created an executive board for the leaders of the candidate-support groups. He gave them titles and positions and established the University Democrats as the umbrella organization, to which all the other groups report. “Who wouldn’t want a position on an executive board?” he said with a laugh. The University Democrats would also take a prominent role in all candidate visits.

Mr. Nakhasi recruited representatives by claiming the other groups were already on board, even those that didn’t like one another. The groups that support Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards all joined when Mr. Nakhasi told them the others had committed. “We played them against each other, and it worked out wonderfully,” he said. [Link]

That dear readers is mutinous. We need more cowbell like that. This last part is my favorite because it shows how to properly reap a reward from what you have worked hard to create:

Mr. Nakhasi announced his most ambitious event to date: a discourse at the university with the top six Democratic contenders, set for Nov. 11. Mr. Nakhasi says he will give each of the candidates 22 minutes to speak, including 18 minutes for Q&A from students. He also wants to include a lightning round, letting students fire quick questions. “Maybe I’ll ask Hillary what the state bird of Iowa is,” Mr. Nakhasi joked. [Link]

In these days of hired audiences and scripted debates, we might learn something by forcing the candidates to take quick-fire questions from students. That’s how you learn the most about a candidate. In the coming months you’ll see SM do its part. Continue reading →

Memory Lane, Desi Cypherpunks & the Marines

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Via Instapundit, ’twas interesting to see an old name pop up again. I love writing about desi’s in non-traditional corners of the world and the story of Sameer Parekh is no exception.

Good Luck & God Speed

First we’ve gotta go back to a time when yours truly was a techie neophyte, http, ftp, & gopher were peers in the protocol pecking order, and Yahoo ran off a server called akebono in a lab at Stanford. While today’s college kids converse via Facebook, back in my day, it was massive listservs and Usenet (several other mutineers are alumni of soc.culture.indian, alt.culture.us.asian-indian and the like).

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p>One favorite mailing list of mine was Cypherpunks where a strange band of folks saw techno-libertarian-utopia at hand in the form of ubiquitous, consumer cryptography. Reading some of my old posts there really brings back the memories…. Ah what a world it would be .

Now, unlike moi who was more or less a lurker on the list, one of the king pins of the cypherpunk list was a guy named Sameer Parekh…

Continue reading →

The Caption Game: The “Surjeet-o Bandito” Edition

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Hold on, let’s get this over with…

Okay, now that I’ve stood in the corner and thought about what I’ve done during my time-out, I half-heartedly apologize for being so insensitive as to vaguely reference a politically incorrect, wayyy-before-your…and-really-my time cartoon character/mascot.

My bad. If it helps, it’s a rather obscure ref and I did change the “first name” to something browner (shout out to my friend Surjeet, who is sure to be THRILLED about this). Anyfoo. cricketers before one-day vs australia.jpg Monday came and went, with nary a caption game in sight; I blame you. What, on top of everything else in my disorganized, estrogen-powered day, I need to discover non-existent time with which to ferret out funny pictures?

Wait, what?

I do? Meh.

Well, if we’re relying on ME, then prepare for tardy everything (including me). I saw this on the BBC website yesterday and that is why we have an uber-late* CG today, which is THURSDAY for those who are either hung-over, a disciple of Rip Van Winkle or too confused to keep count.

So, now that you’ve seen the amusing picture, kindly be doing what some of you do best– caption away. Why should you expend such effort? Because a photograph like that deserves more than this (you know there’s no-o-o-othing):

Indian cricketers pose with turbans, before a one-day international against Australia. [Beeb]

Perplexed? Bemused? Constipated? Consider previous editions of the Caption Game, awailable for procrastinating purposes here: éka, dvá, trí, catúr, páñca, s.as., saptá , as.tá, náva… Continue reading →

The “India Community Center”

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Most of the ideas of Neela Banerjee’s recent New York Times article on Indian-American lobbying were actually covered in a blog post by KXB here a couple of weeks ago.

But what caught my eye was the bit about an India Community Center in Milpitas, California:

The India Community Center in Milpitas, Calif., represents the nonsectarian approach many Indian-Americans take to replicating the experience of American Jews. When Anil Godhwani began talking to other Indians in Silicon Valley about opening a center, “more than one person talked to us about making this a Hindu community center — sometimes in very strong terms,” he said. That was never his intention, though he was raised Hindu.

A Silicon Valley millionaire who sold his company to Netscape in the late 1990s, Mr. Godhwani said he and his brother envisioned a place that promoted the variety of Indian culture to Indian-Americans and non-Indians alike. The Godhwanis canvassed other ethnic centers and the Y.M.C.A. But the Jewish Community Center model resonated with them. It celebrated Jewish culture while avoiding the divisiveness of politics and religion. And it welcomed outsiders. The India Community Center occupies a 40,000-square-foot building that offers, among other things, free medical care for the uninsured, Indian language classes and Bollywood-style aerobics but keeps out religious activities. (link)

I would have loved to have something like this growing up — too bad there isn’t anything similar on the east coast.

More generally, I’m not surprised by the opposition Godhwani encountered as he was trying to put this thing together, though I am disappointed. Most people tend to presume that a South Asian community organized around entirely religion is an inevitable fact of nature, but does it have to be that way?

I’m not saying that Mandirs, Gurdwaras, Masjids, and indeed, Churches don’t have their place; they do. There are things our Gurdwara did well when I was growing up in Maryland, but it was pretty poor when it came to producing a sense of community oriented to aspects of life other than religion, which is what a community center like this is trying to do. They were also quite poor (back then) in language instruction — I learned very little Punjabi even after years of Sunday school. And very few non-Sikhs ever came in, even though Gurdwaras are technically supposed to be open to anyone.

There’s also strength in numbers, especially in parts of the country where the South Asian community might be smaller than it is in the Bay Area or New York/New Jersey. An India-, or perhaps even a “Desi” Community Center, could be a place with more critical mass.

I know, I know — I’m being idealistic again. Continue reading →

Model Minority

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Yesterday I received an email from the Sikh Coalition, letting me know that there is an opportunity for a Sikh model (male) in or around New York City:

If you are interested in modeling for Kenneth Cole, here is what they are looking for: A Sikh male, about 25 to 35 years old, who is “attractive.” If this works for you, please e-mail your picture to xyz@xyz.com at the very latest by 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning [Update: The deadline is passed now]. As an incentive, the person they choose will get a “couple thousand” dollars. The shoot will be half a day, here in the city and will be on either the 18th, 19th, 25th, or 26th of this month.

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p>The email got some funny reactions from friends, including one woman who asked if it was a hoax organized by a very desperate and resourceful New York City sardarni .

Obviously I like the basic impulse – standards of beauty are drawn in such a way as to usually exclude Sikh males: clean shaven, waxed chests, short hair, etc.

I know of only a few cases where Sikh men have tried to make a career of modelling in the west – one was Vikram Chatwal who had a spread in Vogue, another was a caucasian Sikh who modelled with his hair open. Both were from wealthy families, and in neither case did their modelling career last long. This isn’t surprising – if African female fashion models are still struggling, Sikh men will have a far harder time.

Still, for all my enthusiasm, there was a part of this effort which brought me up short:

A casting director, working for Kenneth Cole, is looking for a Sikh male to be part of an advertising campaign that dispels stereotypes about marginalized people in our society.

My response to this was pretty clear: “Dang – why we always gotta be exotic? Can’t we just be you know … gorgeous men without qualification? Why we gotta be marginalized?” It’s better than nothing, but we’re a far way from having our “look” accepted. [More photos after the fold]

Continue reading →