Kazakhstan: Not Nice?

Posted on by

borat.jpg Jagshemash. I’ve seen Borat twice and I’m enchanted; I’m also aware that many of you aren’t. Some of you worry that Kazakhstan is being exploited and humiliated in a huge way, since the movie is so popular. I understand, especially since the movie is depicting a country that is more fictional than real– the “village” scenes were filmed in Romania and neither Russian nor Kazakh are ever spoken (Borat speaks Hebrew mingled with a few other things to Azamat, who replies back in Armenian).

Anyway, since “Borat” isn’t about the real Kazakhstan, I thought I’d find out more about the quondam Soviet republic:

Kazakhstan is the largest and one of the wealthiest of the countries in the Central Asian region. Although it was considered a liberal society, there have been allegations of harassment of religious minorities like protestant Christians, non-state-controlled Muslims and Hindu sects.
Kazakhstan is not a signatory to the UN’s International covenant on Civil and Political Rights or to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.[link]

Well that just proves that Borat has nothing to do with the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan– he picks on Jews and Gypsies but says nothing regarding Hindus. Meanwhile, in the land he was supposedly acquiring cultural learnings for…

The Hindu Forum of Britain alleged that 60 riot police and bulldozers assembled inside a Hindu temple in Kazakhstan and allegedly demolished five Hindu houses…[link]

Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Thank You” Edition

Posted on by

What, like you expected somthing else, after all this? 🙂

Due to one memorable mindfulness class I took in 2003, I have spent the last few years growing more conscious of how we are surrounded by opportunities to be grateful. It’s been such an eye-opening experience, to the point where I feel horrible about the past, because I know I was oblivious to so much goodness which I didn’t acknowledge. I can’t do anything about that, but I’ve tried to incorporate gratitude in my daily life, because the truth is, the act of appreciating something or someone can be transformative and beyond that, it’s just the right thing to do. 294638412_005769f1fb_m.jpg

Around this time of year, it’s even easier to say “Thank you”. 🙂 After all, you get time off from work to do it! I’m not sure if some of you partook in that ritual last night where you go around the table and state whatever you’re thankful for, but if you did, I’d love to hear what bullet points you offered to your family and the turkey carcass. Perhaps you can contain what thrills you in exactly 55 words, but because it’s a holiday, I’ll be just as appreciative if you haiku it. I’m just grateful that you kids play along with my inconsistent flashes of silliness and I’m delighted that a few of you mentioned how you are thankful for “55s” in the comment thread of my last post. It’s nice to know you care. 🙂

This week, our theme song is extra flexible, because I can’t decide if I’m referring to the Dido version of “Thank You” or Alanis Morissette’s much-mocked take on the phrase. I know, the fact that the latter contains the phrase, “Thank you, India” might militate in favor of choosing THAT as our tune du jour, but then, if we invoked the Manish-Vij-anti-exotification clause… 😉

So, write about flavor-free poultry, family, cranberry sauce, gratitude, popular female singers (one of whom was naked!) or whatever else you are loving right now. While you do that, I have to go remind my Mom to make her famous cranberry pickle while the berries are still available, because that exquisite hotness is ridiculously yummy. Unlike the rest of you foodies, I didn’t stuff my strict-vegetarian face yesterday so I’m still hungry. I could totally go for some chor, mor and pickle right now and you’d best believe I’d be thankful for how good rice, yogurt and an extra-spicy condiment always taste. 😀 Continue reading →

It’s TMBWITW Time…Again

Posted on by

It has been some time since we’ve mutinied over Ms. Aishwarya Rai, the Bollywood bombshell who in her past couple of film ventures hasn’t had too much luck conquering the western film market. Rai, who made her Hollywood debut in the somewhat successful English ode to Bollywood, Bride and Prejudice and flopped in the poorly executed (yet visually exciting) Mistress of Spices, may have scored a nice role and hopefully a better foray into the west with her role as Mira, a sword-wielding warriorete, in Doug Lefler’s, The Last Legion. The film, which stars Sir Ben Kingsley and Colin Firth –Rai impressively receives third billing — is the story of twelve-year-old emperor Romulus Augustus, who in the midst of the fall of the Roman Empire, escapes to join up with a small band of survivors who make their way to Britain in search of the chotu ruler’s ultimate legion, one of which I take is Miss Rai.

“Dare to Be Daring”

I have to say after seeing the trailer (I know, it is just the trailer) Aishwarya’s performance looks quite good (link). The role is completely different than anything she has been in before, the cast is stellar (Ben Kingsley was Gandhi!), and Ash as an ass-kicking, sword handling fighter is a nice contrast to the usual, happy-go-lucky, Bhangra-circle dancing Ms. World that we are used to seeing. It can only be a good thing that she is moving away from doing the strictly desi themed film and towards playing a non-ethnic role. A well-received performance here, in an actual mainstream film, has the potential to really catapult her to the Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz levels, and on top of all that, Rai has extra incentive for this film to be successful, she bought the Indian rights. The Last Legion rated PG 13 is being distributed by MGM and the Weinsteins, and is set to release sometime in 2007 (I’ve seen both January 19 and April 27 as potential release dates).

Continue reading →

Today, I am Thankful for YOU (Updated…AGAIN)

Posted on by

59826608_14facb2cd2_m.jpg I have often said that Sepia Mutiny is the best thing I’ve done with my life during the past two years. Thanks to this blog, I have been given ridiculously cool opportunities (BlogHer, NPR, starring roles in academic papers) as well as a platform to say anything. That latter truth still knocks me over and leaves me breathless. I get to speak to thousands? Who am I? NO ONE. And yet, you trust me, you like me, you respect me enough to listen to me, even when you know you probably won’t agree with me. That’s love, yo. Every single day, when I wake up and hit my SM bookmark, I’m filled with a little bit of awe that this is real, that this community exists, and that you’ve allowed me to be part of it.

I am so thankful for all of you, commenters, lurkers, haters alike. 🙂

I know I tend to express it whenever there’s a meetup, because that’s the logical moment to do so, but I feel this way all the time. What a dynamic, accomplished, enlightened, fascinating group you all are! What a community you have helped create! I hear it time and again, “I never had desi friends, I didn’t do SASA in college…but I love SM.” I always reply, “it’s like we collected you and your counterpart, from every school in America, katamari-like and brought all of us ‘different’ desis together…which is why we seem to get along.”

Whatever we have done, it is magic. Our meetups are proof of this. Ever expanding, multi-hour-spanning, shimmering parties where disappointment and boredom are impossible, where we fall a little more in love with each other and thus weave this mutinous web tighter, which we leave with aching faces because we have smiled and laughed so much. As I look back on 2006, a truly difficult year for me and my family, I am struck by how the majority of good memories I take with me involve this blog and all of you who live within it. You who refresh SM constantly, you who show up, you, who care.

Have I told you how much I dig all of you? 🙂 If it’s not clear yet, read on…this is a list in progress, I’ve typed it during breaks from my cousins’ traditional drunken Thanksgiving feast and it is by no means complete.

This is what I am currently, mutinously thankful for:

• absolutgcs- for being a regular and for your encouragement, at a moment when I truly needed it.

• Al Mujahid- for being comfortingly familiar, for sticking to your guns, for employing sarcasm to great effect, for being pro-debauchery!

• Amitabh- for being so devoted to language (I sweat that, I’m the same way), for leaving memorable comments (one is still stuck in my head, it may inspire an entire post), for being here, for forgiving my senseless omission of you during the first two rounds.

• Arzan- for hosting one of the most cozy meetups, ever. for cooking all of us yummy Parsi food, for being one of my favorite regulars (back when you were still here), for being so veg-friendly. 🙂

• Asha’s Dad- for sick taste in music and even sicker skillz with the comments. Your 55s give me chills and your mere presence makes this space better. Continue reading →

Will no one think of the bacchas?

Posted on by

So moving right along, the other thing that has me alternating between “amused” and “seething with badly suppressed rage” is the gay scene—or lack thereof—in Karachi. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The socialising angle of being homosexual in Pakistan is an issue in and of itself, but the serious drama ensuing from the social angle is enough to make me start hurling kitten pumps right, left and centre at any and every queen unfortunate enough to cross my path. BegumNA.jpg

When I was growing up in Pakistan, being gay went beyond just being taboo; it was one of those “don’t even think the word” concepts, kind of like Dubya, only with, you know, actual concepts and not all conceivable mental processes. And over the years it started getting a bit better, but that coincided with growing up, with getting to know other gay men (and one and a half lesbians), with a slightly more liberal government regime, that sort of thing.

But regardless of anything else, there was a substantial lack of a sense of entitlement, of feeling that your parents, friends etc., were obligated to accept and tolerate your particular peccadilloes, whatever those may have been. Drinking, smoking, partying, fucking men—they were all lumped together in an odd smorgasbord of “if youÂ’re going to do it, you make damnÂ’ sure that no one in a position of familial authority finds out”, although the first three occasionally got a free pass, depending on how “fast” and “liberal” the family in question was. [In case anyoneÂ’s interested, there were a fair number of such clans.] Continue reading →

Mahmood the Atheist

Posted on by

Mahmood Farooqui is among the bloggers signed on to a new group blog project called Kafila, which I discovered via DesiPundit. (Other names on the roster include Shivam Vij, the omnipresent progressive blogger/journalist, and Nivedita Menon, a well-known, Delhi-based academic).

For his first post at Kafila, Farooqui reprints an essay he had published in Tehelka, on the uncomfortable position he finds himself in as a secular — indeed, atheist — Muslim intellectual in today’s India. The place to start might be where he lays his cards on the table:

Let me explain my locus. I am an atheist, I follow none of the Islamic taboos, but I live in a locality in the capital that can only be called a ghetto. I lived here for five years, when I was a student, when I was very self-consciously opposed to the Indian Muslim stereotype. I had grown up on Chandamama and Nandan, Holi was my favourite festival, Karna my hero, Shiva the great God, Hinduism a highly tolerant religion and I had dreams of attaining martyrdom fighting Pakistan. I was studying history and detested medieval Muslim rulers; I would expatiate on the reasons why Islam had trouble with modernity; I admired Naipaul and Rushdie; supported Mushirul Hasan during the Satanic Verses controversy — a novel I deeply admire in spite of its undoubted blasphemies — and I detested many things about Indian Muslims, except, predictably, Urdu literature and Sufism. I was, in short, a model Hinduised-Indian-Muslim, who always put India before Islam. I was desperate to leave Okhla. (link)

Continue reading →

Flippin’ the Bird

Posted on by

seattle.jpgI am quite sure many of you macacas have had some version of this experience, recounted by Mukta Tripathi of the Napa Valley Register:

During my first fall in the United States, someone asked me what Indians do for Thanksgiving.

Faced with this sort of inquiry, there are three basic approaches you can take.

1) A thorough, sensitive explanation that Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday unfamiliar to desis-from-desiland or any foreigners for that matter, augmented if you care to, by a description of meals consumed at holidays of the desi tradition of your choice, and if you need to, by a patient clarification that you are not one of those other Indians, you know, like that nice lady Pocahontas;

2) A petulant riposte that you are, by birth or longstanding residence, as American as the questioner, and how dare they suggest you would mark Thanksgiving any differently than they;

3) Simply invite the questioner to sit down with you and get your eat on.

My personal preference goes to option 3, as does Tripathi’s, who contributes in that spirit a menu of desified Thanksgiving delights:

I have put together a list of dishes using some traditional American Thanksgiving ingredients: green beans, pumpkin, turnips, potatoes and even cranberries. The sweet and sour pumpkin dish and the turnip, tomato and pea curry can be served with rice pilaf or rolled in a flour tortilla or flatbread as a wrap. I can guarantee that your vegetarian friends will be happy with these alternatives to turkey, and even the non-vegetarians may be inspired by these recipes.

They include Sweet and Sour Pumpkin with Indian Five Spices, Turnip Tomato and Peas Curry, Rice Pilaf; and Ginger and Cranberry Chutney with Five Spices.

You will have noticed that one key item is missing: the turkey. That’s fine if you’re vegetarian — you get to avoid the chore of preparing this fundamentally boring bird in a way that’s fit to eat — but if you or your guests are not, and unless you splurge for a partridge or goose, you need to deal with the problem. That’s where restaurateurs like Qudrat Syed of Chicago come in. He’ll desify your gobbler for a fee:

For $75, Syed took Motamen’s store-bought bird and gave him back a tandoori turkey with biryani, a vegetable-laden rice dish, and Motamen got to keep his own kitchen clean. “It was really different and really good,” said Motamen, who plans to do it again this year.

Continue reading →

Mon Frere?

Posted on by

Before I begin, forgive me for any inadvertent formatting and presentation mistakes. I don’t use MovableType, and quite frankly WordPress is a hell of a lot easier when it comes to aligning images, doing text wraps, that sort of thing. In other words, my posts may look like a hot mess, but I promise you they will taste like seriously good chaat masala.

Frere-Hall.jpg Carrying on…

In my experience (limited though it may be), of all the cities in Pakistan, Karachi probably has the greatest number of intact buildings left over from the days of the British Raj (Lahore has prettier and larger ones, but not perhaps as many). Which is not to equate “intact” with “well-preserved”; in many cases, these building are little more than shells and facades, while others have faded into the background under the manic pressure of urban decay expansion (not unlike many aging aunties struggling with foundation and surma in a desperate effort to hold back the ravages of time). Naturally, the city government finds it a complete waste of time to actually try and maintain these buildings, with a handful of exceptions, preferring instead to focus on cramming as many slum areas into one space-time locus as the laws of physics will allow.

This is important to me, I like the pretty, and I like it a damnÂ’ lot. Continue reading →

Friedman on India

Posted on by

It should be no surprise to most here that I’m a strident fan of Milton Friedman and that his passing was quite a bit more than a garden variety celeb obit for me. While I’m a geek of rather high proportions, there are quite a few of us for whom the loss left an almost personal hollowness.

“The current danger is that India will stretch into centuries what took other countries only decades” – Milton Friedman, 1963Because he called San Francisco home, I actually had the honor of seeing Uncle Milt speak in person about 2 years ago at a benefit gala for a thinktank I’m a contributor to.

And earlier this spring, I had another opportunity to see Milton & Rose Friedman in person at the unveiling of a PBS documentary on his life and times. At the time, I implored several friends to join me with the argument that “at 94, homey ain’t gonna be around too much longer – see him while you can.” Unfortunately, a bout of flu kept Friedman from joining us that evening (Rose did, however make it) and alas, my words were sadly prophetic.

Interestingly, at that event, Gary Becker was on tap for Milton & Rose’s intro. In nearly any other context, Becker’s own Nobel Prize would have garnered him a headline act. But given Friedman’s ginormous stature, Becker’s intro speech was instead somewhat rudely met with idle chatter from the back of the banquet hall. You’d think scoring a Nobel prize would earn a little more respect – apparently not so when you’re between an audience and the Friedman’s.

‘Tis the curse of the passage of a generation that we take for granted previous, hard fought accomplishments – both material and intellectual. In its extreme, we just assume that he world we see around us had to be rather than recgonize the role of volition, creativity, and intellectual accomplishment which enabled it to be.

In Friedman, India, and recent economic history, we see all this wrapped up in a neat tidy little package. So much that seems obvious now was contrarian then. And so many of the arguments we use to excuse and ignore the outcome of disastrous policy was plainly predicted and evident decades ago.

Continue reading →

Global Climax Change: The Science Is Still Out

Posted on by

You have just over one month to eat your nuts and fruits, reserve your favorite setting and line up the partner(s) of your choice. On Friday, December 22nd, you can help change the world by taking part in the Global Orgasm for Peace.

WHO? All Men and Women, you and everyone you know.

WHERE? Everywhere in the world, but especially in countries with weapons of mass destruction.

WHEN? Winter Solstice Day – Friday, December 22nd, at the time of your choosing, in the place of your choosing and with as much privacy as you choose.

WHY? To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy. There are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti-submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, so the time to change EarthÂ’s energy is NOW!

Our minds influence Matter and Energy fields, so by concentrating any thoughts during and after The Big O on peace and partnership, the combination of high orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention will reduce global levels of violence, hatred and fear.

Since the list of countries that possess WMDs includes the United States, India, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, the Global O gives most of our readers an opportunity to do some good. Make sure to tell all the aunties and uncles back in Desh that they too can change the world that day. I am sure they will all want to participate.

It will come as no surprise that the Global Orgasm project originates in San Francisco, the veritable yoni of spiritually-oriented activism. Amusingly sprinkled with double entendres, this article in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle has the details:

While the Global O may sound much like other collective actions attempted over the years, the O’s organizers promise something more on their Web site: “The combination of high-energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.” …

The effect is to be measured by the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University (I’m not making this up), which tracks the impact of major events on the output of random number generators. That scientific dimension distinguishes Global O from earlier ventures:

Not surprisingly, the Global O isn’t the first effort to synchronize pleasure in the name of peace. Or even just in the name of synchronized pleasure. For several years, a weekly climax has been coordinated online (Webcams optional), and sexuality experts say there have been several other attempts to link pleasure and peace.

I’m also reminded of the song by Pulp, “Sheffield Sex City,” which speculates on what might happen if everyone in a depressed Northern England city came at once. But the Global O takes the concept to a more ambitious stage and I am sure you will all want to take part. No word yet on a Meetup.

Continue reading →