Cricket: Reebok Hearts Dravid and Dhoni

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What, you thought I was a fair-weather cricket pupil? 😉

Mutineer Sandeep sent in this tip after having one of those, “Hey. What the-? Brown??” -moments in front of his television:

Saw this commercial while watching NBC primetime TV, and thought I recognized that typical Dravid earnestness saying “actually, it’s 229 million…”. was kind of surprised when I paused and found desi cricket ishtars Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni part of reebok’s new ad campaign…

As for other notables in the ad:

Stevie Williams rides his skateboard. Cricket players MS Dhoni and Rahul Dravid run together. Soccer player Thierry Henry and actress Emmanuelle Chriqui are paired. Tennis player Nicole Vaidišová is on the cell phone. Football players DeAngelo Hall and Chad Johnson run together. Track athlete (heptathlon) Carolina Klüft runs in yellow. Basketball player Allen Iverson and football player Vince Young run together. Track athlete Aries Merritt runs across a skywalk. [splendAd]

Finally, something about Reebok to appreciate. 😀 Continue reading →

Sick, Sad World

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Someone needs to make a Bollywood movie about this; to naive me, that’s the fastest way to reach the masses and start a dialogue about ignorance regarding “black magic”. Somewhere between a jarring, music video-like interlude and a montage of Swiss images, let a flat-screen TV show a fake news story about this, after which Aishwarya turns to Abhishek and says,

“My God, that is terrible!”

“When will people realize black magic is not real?”

“And that doing something like this is murder!”

Etcetera, etcetera. I’m not trying to make light of what I’m about to post, but I do wish there was an immediate way to communicate how heart-breakingly wrong the following is, to the maximum number of people possible…via Reuters and the “Oddly Enough” feature at the top of my GMail inbox:

An elderly Indian husband and wife were burnt to death after villagers accused them of practicing black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire, police said Thursday.
“The aged couple died screaming for help,” said police superintendent P.V. Sunil Kumar.

Well, where the hell were you Superintendent Kumar?

Sayanna, 70, and his 61-year-old wife, Pochamma, were set ablaze after being doused with kerosene.
Both were farm laborers near the southern city of Hyderabad who also practiced traditional medicine. Police have arrested six villagers for the incident.

At least there is an attempt at justice. And now, for some cringe-inducing words…

Belief in black magic is common in some parts of rural India, despite the country’s robust economic growth and cutting-edge high-technology industries.

Hmmm. Belief in misguided, hawkish jingoism is common in some parts of America, despite the country’s robust educational system and cutting-edge technology industries. (Yeah, like THAT will ever get printed.)

Siddhartha covered this almost exactly a year ago:

Dozens of women are murdered each year after being accused of witchcraft.

The following reminds me of the bible story about Abraham and Isaac, though there was no mercy, divine or otherwise for this little boy.

Last year, a barber in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh killed his four-year-old son by slitting his throat with a razor after the man started seeing visions of the Hindu goddess Kali demanding a sacrifice.

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Who Will Soothe Your Heartache?

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Ok, Look. I know when someone lights the SepiaSignal (TM) over the tipline for a worthwhile down-with-brown cause, and when someone hitches a ride on the I’m-brown-too!choo!choo! train. You know, takes one to know one and all that. We ain’t stoopit you know. But then this email came through:

neel[1].jpg

Hey guys,
my name is neel shah–i’m a writer in NYC. I’m involved in some contest for Glamour Magazine write now, and sort of need some assistance from you guys. Essentially, Glamour is trying to find their next male dating columnist, and they’ve pitted three guys against each other (me and two others). It’s hard enough getting white people to vote for a brown person in this thing, so i figured i’d try to galvanize the brown voting community as well. You guys actually wrote about me once (I used to work for Gawker), so i was hoping this might fit with your blog, too.

Anyway, I hate asking for stuff like this, but i figured it was worth a shot. It’s always been my goal to dispense love advice to white women in the midwest. sort of.

So this ‘white people reluctant to vote for a brown’ angle…yeah, not so much. This poll is for a relationship advice column, not the presidency.

But dispensing “love advice to white women in the midwest” is a goal I can fully and heartily endorse!! I’d love to see Intern Neel (as he was known on Gawker) handle questions about that guy in accounting who leans in too close, and whether visible panty lines are a turn on. Wouldn’t you? But maybe the lovely ladies of Glamor will turn their attention to him instead? Maybe he’ll get questions about tantric sex? Or where they should drop off home-made packets of bhel puri? I mean, lookit that bashful little face! He’s cuter than Knut! (Ok, not cuter, not cuter. Calm down Mr. Cicatrix.)

But he doesn’t really need our help. Go see for yourself. He’s up against an old guy and a pancake-happy Yahoo Serious (yep, just dated myself about seven words ago) so he’s got this sewn in a bag. Yes?

Previous excuse to post Neel Shah’s pic here

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Caribbean Queen

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MIA-pitchfork.jpgWho dat? Why, that’s your girl M.I.A., doin’ the damn thing in Jamaica during a video shoot last week; a tipster on the news tab blessed us with a link to this and several other photos from the shoot posted at hip arbiter Pitchfork Media. Apparently the sister’s new album, called Kala, drops in August; we’ve already gotten down to “Bird Flu” a few months ago, and now if you check the Pitchfork item you’ll find a link to a MySpace page that offers a stream of another new song (though not on the album), called “Hit That.” The topic is, um, exactly what it sounds like — a pure sex/party jam, containing interpolations of previous classics of the genre like Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Shake Your Rump.” Anyway make of the music what you will, but I’m digging the pan-Third World aesthetic that M.I.A.’s been putting forward of late in her videos and indeed, her choice of settings; she’s a reverse ambassador of mash-up globalization, bringing it back to its multiple sources, and the brown skins, big butts and ramshackle backdrops express a politics far more creative, democratic and satisfying than the tired and tendentious tigers of her first go-round. Continue reading →

A Challenger in Pakistan

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iftikhar-chaudhury.jpg We’re starting to see real signs that Pervez Musharraf’s hold on power in Pakistan may not be absolute. Pakistan’s suspended Supreme Court Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry gave a speech in front of thousands of supporters in Lahore yesterday, expressing dissent with the current government. Chaudhry has been under house arrest in Islamabad since March, and it isn’t completely clear to me how he was permitted to address the public on the grounds of the Lahore High Court. But he’s clearly become a popular icon of secular dissent with Musharraf’s rule, and his speech has to be making authorities nervous:

Speaking to the crowd, including many lawyers, the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, said, “The concept of an autocratic system of government is over.” He added, “Rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution, basic human rights and individual freedom granted by the Constitution are essential for the formation of a civilized society.

“Those countries and nations who don’t learn from the past and repeat those mistakes get destroyed,” he said.

He said the government had no right to impose laws that violated basic human rights.

Mr. Chaudhry spoke at the compound of the Lahore High Court, under the scorching Lahore sun. Seventeen judges from the Lahore High court also attended. Many of the supporters covered their heads with newspapers to escape the heat. Banners urging the independence of the judiciary and denouncing the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, hung on boundary walls surrounding the compound. Political workers, who were not allowed inside, listened to the speech outside the boundary wall. (link)

Chaudhry was also greeted by thousands of cheering bystanders on the side of the road between Islamabad and Lahore; the fanfare was so intense that what is normally a four hour journey took twenty-five hours! Continue reading →

Halal in the Family

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sonsacrifice.jpgA Son’s Sacrifice is a 27-minute documentary about a halal slaughterhouse in Ozone Park, Queens, run by a Bangladeshi immigrant and his son, Riaz and Imran Uddin; the film, by Israeli-American Yoni Brook and Kashmiri-American Musa Syeed, who met while studying at NYU Film School, has just won Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Beyond the clear Ibrahim/Abrahamic allusion, the title refers to son Imran’s decision, at age 27 and holding a degree in communications from Clark University, to return to Queens and take over the family business. From an article in the Queens Times-Ledger:

The film is not just about a live meat market, according to its makers. It is a metaphor for the immigrant experience. Brook described the proliferation of live markets in and around New York City as an act of defiance against assimilation. It is an opportunity for immigrants to allow their American-born progeny to experience directly the culture of home by witnessing halal ritual slaughter.

I don’t know that I’d call that “defiance against assimilation” — it might just be evidence of a different kind of assimilation or, since the whole idea of “assimilation” is both so imprecise and so loaded, maybe we should just be talking about the constant process of formation of metropolitan culture in the era of globalization. In any event, the film earned an item in yesterday’s New York Times, in which the reporter visits the slaughterhouse: Continue reading →

Even this comes from India

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When you next encounter everything-comes-from-India Auntie or Uncle, you can turn their fixation to your advantage.

Beti: Auntieji, you know, there is another area where India was ahead of the rest of the world.
Auntie: Yes, beti?
Beti: And it was mentioned in the Vedas, ages before any western source mentioned it.
Auntie: Yes yes, that is how it always is. What area of scientific advancement are you talking?
Beti: Auntieji, I am referring to kissing. Snogging. Mouth Mashing. Tonsil Field Hockeying. Two desis each kissing the apple sequentially in a Bollywood movie, except there is no apple and there was no Bollywood.
Auntie: Hai Ram! Chi!
Beti: But it’s in the Vedas, Auntieji! The very first written references to kissing. It was written about, in Sanskrit, long before it was written anywhere else! How can it be a bad thing then?

Unsurprisingly, this news isn’t something that is coming out of a BJP research center, it’s coming from Texas A&M University anthropologist Vaughn Bryant who says:

The earliest written record of humans’ kissing appears in Vedic Sanskrit texts — in India — from around 1500 B.C., where certain passages refer to lovers “setting mouth to mouth,” [Link]

“References to kissing did not appear until 1500 BC when historians found four major texts in Vedic Sanskrit literature of India that suggested an early form of kissing. There are references to the custom of rubbing and pressing noses together. This practice, it is recorded, was a sign of affection, especially between lovers. This is not kissing as we know it today, but we believe it may have been its earliest beginning. About 500 to 1,000 years later, the epic Mahabharata, contained references suggesting that affection between people was expressed by lip kissing. Later, the Kama Sutra, a classic text on erotica, contained many examples of erotic kissing and kissing techniques.” [Link]

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“Americanizing Shelley”

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“When circumstances throw an American country boy and a Himalayan village belle together, the ‘apple pie’ gets a smattering of ‘masala,’ only to prove that ‘You Can’t Curry Love!'”

That’s from the official synopsis of a film called Americanizing Shelley that’s being released this weekend. It’s a production of something called American Pride Films, and stars Namrata Singh Gujral. It had its premiere at the Nashville Film Festival (wonderfully known as NAFF) a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the trailer:

In the video post here, Michelle Malkin endorses the film, describing a scene that is “highly unpopular in HollyWeird” and says that “for once, it will be worth shelling out the big bucks… to support a movie that supports America.” According to this website, the film is “riling the hate-America brigade.” It interviews Singh Gujral, who says she’s “not a political person,” although as Vinod noted here two years ago, she’s certainly been, er, honored in a political setting. As for the early reviews, the LA Weekly calls the film “minor but sweet,” while the Washington Post dismisses it for “embarrassingly low-rent production values.” Finally, although the film appears made for the mainstream U.S. commercial market, Variety opines that “screenwriter and star Namrata Singh Gujral will probably find her most appreciative aud among young Indian moviegoers who want something outside the arthouse.” Your thoughts? Continue reading →

In fear of a dark-skinned Communist mob

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This past week, on May 1st to be precise, our country witnessed a second wave of immigration reform rallies that were noted more for their violence (by the police) than for their size. These rallies weren’t nearly as large as those held to influence the mid-term elections last year. Those rallies were also in response to particularly harsh anti-immigration positions by some members of Congress (positions far less likely to pass with Democrats in charge). However, these demonstrations increasingly pose a problem for me. They are no longer just about immigration (to be fair I wonder if they ever were). They are rallies by the working class against the elite. I worry that conflating these two separate battles will lead to a maelstrom. I worry more that these battles will increasingly become inseparable and that we will start to move toward a culture as in Europe where class and race seem to be inextricably tied and often lead to violence. Our strongest defense against self-immolation as a nation is to fight to de-couple race and class.

It might be useful to first understand what happened at one of these rallies. Here is a good clip that will give you a feel for what it was like to be on the ground in L.A. both before and after things turned bad:

As most of you know, SM’s readership is quite diverse. We have 13-year-olds that read us and sometimes send us nice comments. We also have older readers who might enjoy our unfiltered perspective. One such reader, Ruchira, emailed me about her daughter. Here is an excerpt from her blog:
Most of you have by now seen news reports of the May Day rally at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles which turned violent when some demonstrators threw bottles and cans and the LAPD opened “fire” with rubber bullets and charged into the crowd with batons (the CNN report here). Although the incident is reported in the media as an “immigration rally,” the afternoon event at the park was an International Workers’ Day gathering where undocumented workers too demonstrated for their rights.

My daughter was present at the afternoon protest rally as an observer on behalf of the National Lawyers’ Guild along with other attorneys. She was caught in the middle of the melee when she tried to help move the back of the crowd away from the advancing police line. During her efforts, she was charged and beaten by a policeman. (full report on Indymedia here.) Some other attorneys, journalists, photographers and other non-protesting bystanders too were beaten and injured…

According to my daughter who reported Tuesday’s incident to her parents only on Wednesday (!!!), the Indymedia reports are a bit breathless and somewhat erroneous. She did not receive a blow to her kidneys. The policeman slugged her with his baton at least four times in the stomach. Oh, the report left out another detail. My daughter was also shot in the back with a rubber bullet! She is shaken, angry but otherwise okay and did not need to make a trip to the hospital.[Link]

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Taking “Looting” to A Whole New Level: Vaman Ghiya

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There’s the makings of a nice suspense novel in a recent New Yorker piece on one of India’s greatest — and most evil — contemporary antiquities smugglers, Vaman Narayan Ghiya. Ghiya operated a transnational smuggling network out of Jaipur, which included three Swiss shell companies that bought and sold smuggled vast quantities of Indian antiquities, ultimately so the priceless works could be acquired by London auction houses — and “legally” sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Ghiya, who was extremely cautious in his business operations, was brought down by a dedicated police officer, Anand Shrivastava, who essentially dedicated years to learning about the workings of the international antiquities market in order to better understand the criminal side of it. Almost miraculously, Ghiya wasn’t able to bribe his way out of prison, nor was bail allowed in his case — and his case is currently in process. Just to give you a sense of scale, here’s what the police found when they raided Ghiya’s house and his various warehouses:

Then Superintendent Shrivastava and his men searched the house, spending hours rummaging through the elegant rooms. Behind the wood panelling of Ghiya’s private study, the officers discovered a set of secret cupboards, which held hundreds of photographs of ancient Indian sculptures: graceful stone figures of the deities Vishnu, Shiva, and Parvati and Parvati’s elephant-headed son, Ganesha; Jain Tirthankaras and Chola bronzes; dancing goddesses with many arms and melon breasts, festooned with delicately rendered ornaments. The photographs were color snapshots, and the objects pictured sat outdoors, in patches of grass or mud. Many evidently had been roughly pried away from temple walls and were missing limbs or heads. The police also discovered sixty-eight glossy auction catalogues from Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London and New York.

This stash seemed to confirm Shrivastava’s suspicion that Vaman Ghiya operated one of the most extensive and sophisticated clandestine antiquities rings in history, and that he had grown rich in the past three decades by smuggling thousands of Indian antiques to auction houses and private collectors in the West. The police found no sculptures in Ghiya’s home. But, in the days that followed, Shrivastava’s men raided half a dozen properties that Ghiya owned around Jaipur, his farm outside the city, and various godowns, or storage facilities, in Mathura and Delhi. They discovered antique paintings, swords and shields, marble panels, stone pillars, three hundred and forty-eight pieces of sculpture, and a dismantled Mogul pavilion the size of a small house. (link)

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