Leave the gun. Take the wattalapam.

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I like to keep track of the various industries where desis are making an impact, especially in New York City. When I was growing up, almost all the news stands were owned by Bangladeshis. Later, Punjabis became a major presence in taxi cabs in the city and gas stations in the suburbs. But the one I missed along the way had to do with Sri Lankans and porn stores [hat tip Manish].

In 1999, Tunku Varadarajan wrote an article for the NYT about Gujarati motel owners that contained the following throwaway line:

Sri Lankans, in case you didn’t know this, run most porn-video stores… [Link]

I did some digging, and the best estimates I could find show only a 10% ownership of the video smut business (I’m not entirely sure that these figures describe the same period as Varadarajan’s article, and they may be low since they came from within the Sri Lankan community). Still, no matter what the numbers, it’s a fascinating history.

The story starts, as all good New York City stories start, with the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra had dominated New York’s red light businesses for a number of decades but finally found their dominance undone by new technology:

Video’s emergence in the ’80s changed the Mafia’s porn role. No longer could the mob dominate distribution by simply running adult theaters and peep shows. Gotti and Basciano allowed businessmen without ties to the Mafia to move into retail stores. Immigrant entrepreneurs, particularly from Israel and Sri Lanka, multiplied X-rated video shops in New York neighborhoods from Greenwhich Village to Queens.

“The days of Mob influence are gone,” claimed a Sri Lankan businessman. “There’s no money in the business for them. Tapes used to be $100 each. Now they’re selling for $3:99.” [Link]

Confusingly, the same source also tells an alternate story, one where Sri Lankans entered the business earlier, working with the Mafia at first:

Sri Lankans worked for the Mafia through the 1980s and moved into ownership when the Mafia left. [Link]

This generates a great image in my mind, almost Benneton-like in its pluralism, of Sicilian and Sri Lankan mobsters working side by side to bring smut to the city that never sleeps. If this is true, a lot of hollywood dialogue needs to be rewritten and desi actors will start to complain that they only get roles as doctors, terrorists or gangsters. Sri Lankan script doctors will have to be hired to write lines like this:

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli wattalapam .”

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Dengue Fever

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In recent weeks, what is fast looking like an epidemic of dengue fever has been spreading in different parts of India. Delhi is over 600 reported cases, with 16 fatalities; Kerala has over 700 cases; Gujarat, 200; West Bengal, 300. At India’s top hospital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), one medical student has died and 20 nurses are infected. In today’s news, it appears that two of the grandsons of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have also contracted the disease and have been admitted to the hospital.

Dengue fever, you ask?

Here’s the scoop. It’s transmitted by mosquitoes: not the Anopheles, which carries malaria, but the Aedes — especially the Aedes aegypti, which the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describe as a “domestic, day-biting mosquito that prefers to feed on humans.” There are two strains of dengue. Regular dengue fever (DF) produces fever, headache, back ache, joint pains, nausea, eye pain and rash. Dengue hemorragic fever (DHF) is nastier and potentially deadly:

Dengue hemorrhagic fever is characterized by a fever that lasts from 2 to 7 days, with general signs and symptoms that could occur with many other illnesses (e.g., nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and headache). This stage is followed by hemorrhagic manifestations, tendency to bruise easily or other types of skin hemorrhages, bleeding nose or gums, and possibly internal bleeding. The smallest blood vessels (capillaries) become excessively permeable (“leaky”), allowing the fluid component to escape from the blood vessels. This may lead to failure of the circulatory system and shock, followed by death, if circulatory failure is not corrected.

There is no vaccine and no specific medication for dengue. Cases of DHF in particular require rapid hospitalization and fluid replacement therapy for the patient to pull through. This requires, obviously, a medical infrastructure that permits rapid hospitalization, not to mention hygienic hospital conditions, never a given anywhere in the world.

Mosquitoes are the only vector of the disease, meaning that anyone who contracts it in a hospital environment likely did so from mosquitoes hanging out there. The best way to prevent dengue, therefore, is to reduce mosquito breeding opportunities and infestation settings like standing water. In the immediate, the authorities in Delhi (and presumably other places as well) are carrying out a fumigation campagn with pesticides. At the same time, it seems that the country was also insufficiently prepared to deal with a disease that has been endemic for a long time.

The spread of dengue — as well as chikungunya, which has now killed 71 people in Kerala — comes at a time when health experts are revising their longtime opposition to DDT. The WHO has lifted its ban on DDT, and the US government also supports wider use of the once-dreaded chemical. This is controversial, obviously; this article, for example, makes the opposing case.

Dengue has been spreading worldwide as the Aedes mosquito makes itself at home in more and more places. Here is a map that shows the reinfestation of Aedes in the Americas since 1970. As a side note, there is also a hip band out of Los Angeles called Dengue Fever. They play a blend of psychedelic rock and Cambodian pop. Continue reading →

Kathak at the Crossroads

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My sister Anjali, an occasional commenter here, attended the “Kathak at the Crossroads” conference that was held last weekend in San Francisco. She passes on these thoughts.

I have just returned from an international kathak festival and symposium, organized by the Chitresh Das Dance Company in San Francisco. I’m having trouble refocusing on the mundane trivialities of day-to-day life. This was a rare gathering of a majority of the names and legends of kathak, with close to fifty artists, both dancers and musicians, attending from around the world. Some, like Birju Maharaj and Krishna Mohan Mishra, are descendants of long lines of dancers whose forefathers performed in the Moghul courts. Kumudini Lakhia is a dancer who broke the mold and, in the 1950s, injected “Western” notions of choreography into kathak, beginning a long discussion as to what is and is not traditional. Madhuri Devi Singh is one of the last living baijis (courtesans) of Benares, whose difficult life, etched in lines along her face, nonetheless produced a dancer of almost divine grace and tangible kindness. Other masters and grandes dames of kathak included Tirath Ram Azad, Chitresh Das, Sunayana Hazarilal and the sisters Saswati Sen and Vaswati Mishra. And then there were dancers of a younger generation (and by “younger” I mean close to or in their 40s) such as Rajendra Gangani, Aditi Mangaldas and the members of the Chitresh Das Dance Company.

There were presentations and panels. There was talk of fusion and confusion, of traditional versus contemporary, of authenticity, of accessibility. And there were performances. For a student of dance, this was a treat beyond treats. With three or four hours of performances every evening and additional showcase events during the days, I felt like a child with a bucket of my favorite candy and someone standing over me telling me I had to finish it all at once. It was almost too much. I wanted more time to savor each performance before being swept into another one. I watched in amazement the fastest and most precise footwork I have ever seen, the most deep-seated perfection of rhythm and timing, and the total devotion to an art form that one rarely encounters today. Continue reading →

Sepia Signs

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When I was last in India, around new years, I took a lot of photos of signs (Posts: 1, 2, 3) Of all the ones I saw, however, these two were my favorites. I spotted them at a Reliance truck stop / Dhaba on a toll road in Gujarat, late at night.

The first sign clearly indicates a ladies room, but in a very desi way. This is what I’d always hoped for from modern India; not a straight forward cloning of the west, but instead a bollystyle mashup, a “blend of eastern and western” tackyness. Yes, I know that not all Indian women wear saris, I’m Punjabi. But it’s still more apposite than a woman in a dress, and for Gujarat, it’s dead on many Gujarati women wear saris, albeit in the local style.

The second one I love because it takes the mickey out of the western name for the facilities, the “bathroom”. You know, if you’re doing #2 in a tub, I really don’t want to know about it. Toilets are for p*ssing and sh*tting in, bathrooms are for bathing in. And better still, this icon doesn’t show a western style shower (which many truck drivers may never have used) but instead an Indian style bath (or a very confused man using a lota wrongly ). It’s a shame these signs aren’t available for import here …

Oh yes, in case you were curious, the men’s room was spotless (unlike this: 1, 2) My nostalgia for traditional dhabas only goes so far …

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A bride for Budhia

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I want to start by saying that I DO NOT condone child marriages. In this case however, for the good of Mother India, I think we should all consider the merits of such an arrangement. In the past we have blogged about young (4 year old) Budhia Singh who was running upwards of 30 miles on an average non-competition day. Some overly cautious adults banned him from running marathons in the state of Orissa and charged his coaches/handlers with abuse. Officials said that they didn’t want him to be exploited but I’ll bet it was to protect the other runners (who may have had friends in the government) from embarrassment. Now we get word of another young runner. Meet the hard charging Anastasia Barla:

A 10-year-old tribal girl from a remote village in Sundargarh district ran 72 km in eight hours on Monday but failed to break Budhia Singh’s record.

Five-year-old Budhia had run 65 km non-stop on May 2 in his bid to enter the Limca Book of Records, while Anastasia took a five-minute break after running 58 kms.

Anastasia Barla’s target was to cover 105 km. She began her marathon run from Sundargarh stadium at exactly 5 am amid cheers from a large crowd.

But she stopped at Rambahal near Rajgangpur at around 1 pm, after covering 72 km.

Her coach Dominque Lakra said Anastasia could not achieve the target today as she had ran on hard surface. “The girl is comfortable on soil which is soft…” [Link]

Look, if India wants to get serious about competing athletically on a global stage then they need to start making some tough decisions now. Even if Budhia and Anastasia are held back by the corrupt Indian system, at least their offspring might have a chance to be the great brown hopes. Can you imagine the running abilities of their kids given the genetic stock of Budhia and Anastasia? An arranged marriage seems to this blogger to be the most reasonable course of action. Damn any caste differences if they exist. A modern India calls for pragmatic solutions.

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All brownz must speak English in this airport

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Via BoingBoing comes news of a guy who was detained and missed his flight for “acting suspiciously” by speaking a mixture Tamil and English on his cell at Seattle’s cosmopolitan SeaTac airport:He told officials that he would not speak in a foreign language on his cell phone at an airport in the future

A 32-year-old man speaking Tamil and some English about a sporting rivalry was questioned at Sea-Tac Airport and missed his flight Saturday because at least one person thought he was suspicious.

The Port of Seattle dispatched its police officers to investigate the case, which occurred Saturday around noon, said Bob Parker, airport spokesman. The Chicago man was preparing to board an American Airlines flight to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

The man was speaking Tamil, a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore, on his cell phone at the departure gate and on the aircraft. An off-duty airline employee heard the conversation and informed the flight crew. [Link]

The whole thing was cleared up once he promised to become monolingual at airports!

Parker said the man was cooperative and boarded a later flight to Texas. He told officials that he would not speak in a foreign language on his cell phone at an airport in the future. [Link]

This is hardly the first time this something of this sort has happened. A man was detained for several hours for speaking Arabic on the phone at a bus station. Two britasians were kept off a flight for speaking Urdu (although there is some evidence that they may have been trying to provoke an incident). A flight was even diverted because passengers felt threatened by two orthodox jews praying in Hebrew! There are many more cases like this involving Sikhs immediately after 9/11, I’m just showcasing some non-Sikh examples so that the rest of you can relate.

You don’t even have to open your mouth to have an incident. This Lt. Colonel in the US Army (formerly active service, now reserves) was detained for hours because US Air Marshals didn’t like the “way he looked” [He won a court case based on this incident]

So yeah, even 5 years after 9/11, I still only speak on my cell phone in English at airports, I always call or text somebody to tell them where I am in my journey, and I make extra sure to grin broadly and shuffle my feet while boarding. Nossah massah, I only speaks the english! You gots watermellon on this heah flight? I just love me some watahmellons!

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Tunak Tunak Takes Over

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I found another viral video to add to the list of wackiness (Avon Lady, Little Superstar, Nike) we’ve been broadcasting from here at the bunker (thanks sleepy!). Let me present to you Tunak Tunak Jesus Jesus.

I don’t understand one word of the song, but I’m pretty sure that the the subtitles are not telling me what the song is saying.

Manish did a previous post with other earlier video remakes of the song. It has since caught like wildfire. We have of course the original version by Daler Mehndi, A Japanese game show version StarCraft Tunak Tunak, and even for Razib, a Tunak Tunak Brown. There’s even a Tunak Trailer. In fact, a search of Tunak on YouTube shows 321 videos. What is it about this song that can create this viral epidemic?

I think that it’s time for the Tunak Tunak Sepia Mutiny version to be created. I’ll get the monkeys in the bunker working right on it…

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Desi Riot Grrrl

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This weekend, I was in the Bay area to attend a board meeting for the youth publication, Wiretap. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find a fellow desi blogger also on the board with me, Samhita Mukhopadhyay. A former desi riot grrrl, Samhita is now a blogger/editor for the popular Feministing.

The site editors and founders are motivated by their belief that young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing aims to provide a platform for women to comment on and analyze these issues. Roughly 25,000 unique users per day visit the site. [link]

Sweet, a young desi voice in the historically non-diverse feminist movement! And a blogger! In a recent interview done with Alternet, Samhita informs us of the intersections of activism and blogging, a topic that I find fascinating and have written about through the lens of the South Asian American movement before.

But aren’t there drawbacks to leading a feminist movement through blogs?

Samhita: Well, this is our activism; engaging with other bloggers. But yeah, we talk all the time about whether or not we are organizing the people we talk about or if we’re just computer nerds. We want to alliance-build. But is it always safe to sit behind your keyboard? No. I still don’t always feel confident or safe…

People come to the site, read my blog and say things like “Don’t get out of hand.” This is still the dominant view, and there is still such a gendered power imbalance, and it’s easy to get caught up in all that and think, “Well, you’re right.” People have told me I’ll never have a journalism career. Some say my writing is unbalanced and anti-white. But it’s not, not in this context. I write what I feel and what I see, through the lens of post-colonial theory.[link]

A quick perusal through her posts on Feministing show entries that do just that and highlight transnational feminist issues: the Hudood Ordinance, Columbian women try sex ban, Pakistani rape laws, and women praying in Mecca.

Back in 2004, I attended the March for Women’s Lives in DC with a small contingent of desi women – all of us decked in ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’ gear. We were the only desi females we saw at the march. This was frustrating particularly because I feel that the desi women issues that affect all of us in this community, are often pushed to the boundaries of the mainstream feminist movement. Our issues of glass ceilings, hate crimes, higher rates of HPV, and lower weight babies are SAA feminist issues. For these reasons, I often feel that there is a certain amount of distance people like to create with the word “feminist”, especially in our community. But what does it really mean?

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A Different Model Indian Minority

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Towards a better, browner future

Not exactly Desi, but interestingly close. Marginal Revolution points us at a NYT article that examines the case of the only county in the nation where the median income for Blacks exceeds that of Whites (51K vs. 46K respectively). The other thing that makes it interesting? It’s residents aren’t traditionally African-American but rather, West Indian.

Despite the economic progress among blacks in Queens, income gaps still endure within the borough’s black community, where immigrants, mostly from the Caribbean, are generally doing better than American-born blacks.

An earlier Malcom Gladwell article looked into some of these disparaties and observed –

…The implication of West Indian success is that racism does not really exist at all–at least, not in the form that we have assumed it does. The implication is that the key factor in understanding racial prejudice is not the behavior and attitudes of whites but the behavior and attitudes of blacks–not white discrimination but black culture. It implies that when the conservatives in Congress say the responsibility for ending urban poverty lies not with collective action but with the poor themselves they are right.

And, as Alex at Marginal Revolution notes, Gladwell tries hard (and somewhat unsuccessfully) to argue against the most obvious implication – put simply that Culture rather than Race is the primary determinant of success.

So what’s the Desi angle here?

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