Not Another West Meets East Movie

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Turns out there was not just one, but two desi-related films up for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars this year. I’m talking about Denmark’s After the Wedding, which will be released here in the US next week on March 30 in select cities. Don’t know how I overlooked this one back when the nominees were announced, but the late release date probably explains it.

While many films concerning Westerners in India involve characters going to the motherland to find themselves after going through some sort of a crisis (Shantaram and Darjeeling Limited come to mind), After the Wedding is different. This film deals with the emotional turmoil a Westerner goes through after he leaves India. In After the Wedding, a Danish expat, Jacob, lives in India and runs an orphanage. He also has an adopted son, Pramod, whom he’s raised since infancy. When the orphanage is threatened by closure, Jacob begrudgingly leaves India for Denmark to meet with a businessman, Jørgen, who offers to help keep the orphanage open. Jacob also discovers that a) Jørgen’s wife happens to Jacob’s ex and b) Jørgen’s daughter (gasp!) might actually be his. And so Jacob must now ask himself a difficult question: return to India and his adopted Pramod or stay in Denmark with the biological daughter he’s never known?

You can view the trailer after the jump. Is it just me or does Jacob look like he’s in excellent shape for someone who’s about to face a mid-life crisis? Continue reading →

A whole lota environmentalism going on

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In today’s NYT there is an article about a bobo couple’s experiment with low impact living in “an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue”. They’re eating only locally grown food stuffs and eschewing even spices, olive oil and vinegar because these come from further away. They’re buying only food, composting their trash, and they’ve stopped using paper. All paper. Writing paper, paper towel, and even … toilet paper. This last bit is supposed to let us know that they’re serious about their experiment:

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there… Toothpaste is baking soda … Nothing is a substitute for toilet paper, by the way; think of bowls of water and lots of air drying… [Link]

I’m just not impressed. Don’t get me wrong, as an ABD I like my conveniences, and I’m not willingly going give this one up. On the other hand, it just doesn’t seem like that much of a hard core thing to do. My FOB friends swear that TP is unhygienic compared to a lota; a buddy from silicon valley used to smuggle his in and out of the bathroom because he just felt … dirtier without.

For this couple, it’s all part of a stunt designed to generate a non-fiction book (he’s a writer). However, a far better place to look for hard core urban environmentalism is in the Dharavi slums of Bombay, Asia’s largest. Dharavi takes the discards of Bombay’s 19 million residents and turns it into close to $1 Billion of production a year, making it the world’s richest slum. Continue reading →

Buying your way to Nirvana. One charge at a time.

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Have you guys seen the freaking fantastic new credit cards from VISA (thanks Eleanor)! I don’t know about you guys but I am stoked and mailing in my application as I type this post. Now, by purchasing lots of things on credit, I am actually actively working my way toward enlightenment. CO2 producing gasoline at $2.50 a gallon? Charge it. $100 bar tab? What would Buddha do? The more that the U.S. sinks into debt the more we are actually improving our collective karma. In no time at all we’ll be able to work off that whole Iraq thingy. This is so much more worthwhile than that stupid desi(RED) campaign.

It’s Everywhere you want to be!

Look, just think of it this way. You KNOW that you’ll never be able to redeem your dollars for airline miles. The airlines always screw you on that stuff by making you fly on a Wednesday at midnight. Rather than waste your time with cards that give you miles or cash back, why not use a card that will help save your eternal soul? I’m just sayin’.

Continue reading →

Cricket: Farewell, My Aloo

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…wherein Whose God is it Anyways? inspires a second cricket post in a row!

The Sound of Cricket.JPG

The education of my cricket-ignorant kundi continues; I shall torment you with my progress, much like a toddler rushes back to a parent to exclaim, “I did it in the potty!” Like aforementioned kid, I, too would like a cookie and a pat on the head. Thanks, you’re the best.

So. WGiiA left a comment on my last World Cup post which piqued my kitten-like curiosity:

ok. just got very emotional seeing inzi get out and leave the field for the last time in an ODI. he deserved better circumstances under which to leave. [link]

I immediately assaulted consulted one of my cricket tutors, the one who kindly told me a bedtime story via speakerphone last night which starred Sachin Tendulkar– look, when one runs out of Ambien, one reaches for desperate alternatives– and expressively typed “?” in his GChat window. I didn’t expect to like or care about what I’d learn, but I wanted to find out more nonetheless, if only because I’m a sentimental wench and anyone’s last ____ always makes me a bit verklempt. Continue reading →

Cricket: There’s Something Black in the Dal

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What a World Cup. And I say that as a cricket neophyte.

Stunning upsets, out-of-control fans, stocks in effigy companies spiking…and murder?

Bob Woolmer, 58, is dead. They found the unconscious coach of Pakistan’s team in his hotel room this weekend and he died soon after that at a hospital. At first, I was told by my cricket tutors that it was probably a heart attack; after a bruising defeat, it seemed entirely plausible. Woolmer’s family seemed to agree, from various reports that I had read. But what really happened to him? Did he die of unnatural causes (Thanks WGiiA, Anon and Anil)?

Police are now treating Bob Woolmer’s death as suspicious, Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner of police, told a news conference in Jamaica. A full-scale investigation has been ordered.
…”Having met with the pathologists, our medical personnel and investigators, there is now sufficient information to continue a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Woolmer, which we are now treating as suspicious.”
However, unconfirmed reports suggested Woolmer might have been murdered because marks were found around his neck. [Link]

Hmmmm. I’ll keep you posted. Well, you’ll probably keep ME posted, but you know what I meant. The education of this dilettante cricket fan continues…and really, it doesn’t need to be THIS interesting. Continue reading →

No, Not Like the Thing for When it Rains

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Siddhartha’s post on lovely lime pickle got me thinking about my favorite. Behold: The Amazing Ambarella!

Before

 

After

Other names for this fruit and close relatives are Otaheite apple, Tahitian quince, Jamaica plum, golden apple and wi…The tree grows tall, reaching almost 20 m (60 ft). The fruit, which is popular in Asia, is plum shaped, sweet-sour and eaten at all stages of ripeness. Its distinguishing feature is a spiny seed. The spines toughen as the fruit matures, so that when eating conserve made from the almost-ripe fruit, the sweet flesh should be carefully sucked from the seed to avoid an unsolicited lip-piercing or a tough fibre stuck between the teeth. In the unripe stages the green skin is peeled with a knife and slices of the firm, pale flesh dipped in chilli powder and salt before being relished by street-side snackers or school children. Unripe fruit is also cooked in chutneys. As the fruit ripens it becomes yellow to orange in colour and more fragrant and sweet, though still with a good percentage of acidity. It has been described as having a flavour like pineapple.link

I don’t think it tastes like a pineapple at all, but the rest of it is pretty accurate. I’ve never seen ambarellas for sale anywhere in the U.S. and the web didn’t have much except for these odd little facts:

In Sri Lanka, ambarellas are made into chutneys, curries, and pickles of all kinds. Cut a raw one up, sprinkle a little salt, sugar, vinegar and chili powder…oooh, heaven. My grandmother had a gigantic tree growing right over her house, and we’d visit her carrying buckets during the fruiting season. I’ve got strangely happy memories of eating peeled, uncut ambarella while reading a book, only noticing my bleeding gums (those spines are shaarrp) when my mother grimaced.

So does anyone else have memories of eating an ambarella? Maybe you call it by another name? Or (and this would be fabulous) you know where I could buy some?! Continue reading →

Tricked into a Guest Worker Program

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My friend Ansour forwarded me this story from the LA Times on a group of Indian guest workers in the Gulf Coast. Signal International, a marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Texas and Mississippi, hired approximately 300 laborers from India as welders and pipe fitters in Mississippi under a guest worker program. In addition to decent wages, Signal allegedly promised good accommodations and steps to permanent US residency to its guest workers. But some of these workers have protested that Signal did not live up to any of its promises, and that they’ve been subjected to “slave” conditions.

Sabulal Vijayan of Kerala, for example, said that upon arriving to Mississippi, he discovered that the “good” accommodations promised by Signal were actually quite horrible:

“We were like pigs in a cage,” he said. His living quarters were cramped bunk houses where two dozen laborers shared two bathrooms.

In an interview on Democracy Now, Vijayan further elaborated:

It is too hard to live there, because somebody is sneezing, somebody is snoring, and somebody is making sound, and we cannot even go to bathroom without spending hours. There is only two bathrooms and four toilets. And we are struggling very well. And in the mess hall we are not getting good food even. And they are saying that this is Indian good. And when we make complain, the camp manager said to us that, “You are living in slums in India. It is better than that slums.”

Even worse, the company retaliated against employees who complained:

The company cut the workers’ wages from $1,850 a week to $1,350 or $950, depending on the position, Vijayan said. When he and other workers complained, they were fired without notice.

And now Vijayan finds himself in an awful predicament. He spent his entire life savings and went into debt in order to pay $15,000 to Signal’s recruiters. He was told this was “the price of coming to the U.S.”:

“I cannot go back to India because I cannot pay my debt,” Vijayan said of the money he borrowed to pay recruiters. He was so distraught that he recently slashed his wrist in a suicide attempt. His left arm is still bandaged.

Continue reading →

Blanco C*ck-Blocks Jindal. Big time.

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Up until today it seemed that by 2009 the United States would have its first Indian American Governor in Piyush “Bobby” Jindal of Louisiana. You can read my most recent entry about it here. No more. Jindal went from a shoe-in to what some might consider an underdog in the span of a single day. Via Politico:

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) announced she’s not running for re-election this evening at the state Capitol, setting the stage for former Sen. John Breaux (D) to enter the race.

“I am choosing to do what is best for my state. I will focus my time and energy on the people’s work, not politics. After much prayer, I have decided I will not seek reelection as your governor,” said Blanco in her address at the governor’s mansion.

Breaux is currently asking the state attorney general for an opinion on his residency status. Though Breaux represented Louisiana in the House and Senate from 1973-2005, he remained in the Washington area since leaving Congress. He currently lives in Maryland, and serves as senior counsel for the prestigious law firm and lobbying shop Patton Boggs. [Link]

Breaux is the former (popular) Democrat senator from Louisiana (although he often voted like a Republican). With him entering the race, Jindal’s lock on the governor’s mansion is shattered.

Breaux issued a statement following Blanco’s speech: “I join other Louisianians in thanking Governor Blanco for her many years of public service to the people of our state, the last couple under extremely difficult circumstances. I wish her the very best over the rest of her term, and in the future as she enjoys spending time with her family and pursuing other opportunities.”

Blanco was widely criticized for her response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and her popularity had not recovered since the storm. GOP Rep. Bobby Jindal, who narrowly lost to Blanco in 2003, has already begun his campaign

A January Southern Media and Opinion Research poll showed him leading Blanco by 24 points, 59-34 percent. [Link]

Let me re-phrase Breaux’s statement: “Blanco sucks and is resigning because she wouldn’t even be able to beat a corpse in 2008.” Now it is either “Breaux” or “Jindal.” It is the favorite son vs. the guy who has been laying a lot of groundwork for the last few years. The Swing State Project opines on what Jindal’s new strategy might be:

With Blanco out and John Breaux presumably announcing his candidacy within the next few days, at the very least, Louisiana Democrats are buying an extra inning to hold on to the state. At best, Breaux’s entry will be exactly what’s needed to throw a monkey wrench in hard-right Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal’s longtime gubernatorial ambitions. Expect a lot of mud to be hurled at Breaux about how he’s “gone Washington” and lived out of state for a couple of years. It won’t be easy, but I think we can all agree that Breaux’s chances, even with one hand tied behind his back due to his residency issues, are a heck of a lot better than those of a damaged Kathleen Blanco. [Link]

Continue reading →

The Great Achar of Wigan

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limepickle.jpgBehold: The lime pickle. Not the chili pickle, the mango pickle, the garlic pickle, the eggplant pickle, or any other kind of pickle. And certainly not that abomination, the “mixed pickle.” This here is lime pickle, the greatest and more exalted of all the pickles.

Man, me and lime pickle go back a long, long way. You see, in all my mixed-up, tri-continental, ruthlessly secular upbringing, desi food always held its rightful place. Now we lived in France, not a major center of desi culture either then or now, and this was before the globalization of so-called ethnic gourmet cuisine made the basic spices and ingredients available in all the world’s major cities. But we made do, and the key to our survival, desi food-wise, was the one line of prepared foods, spice mixes and achars on the market, which was inevitably Patak’s. So there was always a bottle of curry paste around — not to serve as the sole ingredient, of course, but to accelerate the process. And whether the curry was prepared from a paste or from scratch, there was always lime pickle on hand to give it the necessary je ne sais quoi.

To this day lime pickle is one of the essential condiments in my refrigerator — that and Dijon mustard (the proper smooth kind, not the grainy stuff), a combination that I guess pretty much encapsulates the flavors of my childhood. I find uses for lime pickle that other people don’t have — or so I think. Except I know that now, as I confess to you that I add lime pickle to my tuna fish salad, a whole bunch of you are going to reveal that you do the same. Continue reading →

NEJM on AIDS in India today

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The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a short “perspective” piece on the state of HIV/AIDS in India. This is the first article in what appears to be a series, the next one is on the challenges involved in containing HIV in India. Here are a few points from the piece:

We don’t know how many people have HIV in India

The best estimate right now is 5.7 million HIV infected Indians, that’s one in every eight cases world wide (India has one in every six people in the world). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty around this number:

The epidemiologic data for India (estimates of the number of infected persons range from 3.4 million to 9.4 million) are far less precise than for South Africa … In 2005, no data were available for many of India’s more than 600 districts. [Link]

See the image to the right? The data come from the National AIDS Control Organization. The northern states are all blank because there isn’t enough data. That’s really distressing.

Estimates indicate that rates are not (yet?) high in the general population:

The estimated HIV prevalence among people 15 to 49 years old in India is 0.5 to 1.5%, whereas in South Africa it is 16.8 to 20.7%. [Link]

But higher in high risk subgroups:

Female and male sex workers, men who have sex with men, and injection-drug users have the highest rates of infection — surveys typically find a prevalence of 10 to 20%…. [Link]

Prevention faces many hurdles, especially amongst women:

Across India as a whole, only 35% of women know that consistent condom use can reduce the risk of infection. However, since 37% of women who have been married at one point have experienced sexual abuse, not all women have much leverage to negotiate. Continue reading →