The coming decade for South Asians

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For the past week, in addition to creating a list of modest New Year’s resolutions (oh how I miss the days when my resolutions were wildly ambitious!), I have been thinking about how the “South Asian American experience” will change and evolve during this decade. For instance, in 2004 when we started this blog, South Asian Americans were still “outsiders” in many respects. Now, we’ve given up noting much of what was quite notable back then (e.g., every actor, politician, musicians). So here is my list of top 10 predictions involving South Asian American society for the next 10 years:

1) The United States will have its first South Asian senator

2) Entrepreneurs will be the new doctors in terms of finding a respectable marriage match (e.g., “oh you should meet their son Ravi, he is having new start-up company”)

3) South Asian reporters on the scene will replace Asian reporters on the scene

4) Every other instance of a NYTimes wedding announcement featuring a South Asian person will be in the context of an interracial couple

5) Movies directed by M. Night Shyamalan will no longer mention the director as part of the movie ad campaign.

6) All South Asian American bloggers will go the way of the Dodo.

7) Slumdog Millionaire will be derided for having won best picture (e.g., really, we thought that was best picture that year?)

8) Americans in the media will pronounce South Asian names correctly…well almost. Much much better at least.

9) Yoga will be the new Starbucks

10) A South Asian American author will write an amazing work of fiction (maybe even one that will be turned into a movie) with almost no hint of any South Asian themes

11) There will be a headline grabbing sex scandal involving a South Asian American

Ok so there are 11 not 10. But only because I believe one of these won’t happen.

Continue reading →

Why Desi Mothers are Superior (Or Not)

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If you haven’t already, I suggest you take a good, long look at the article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” which appeared last Sunday in the WSJ by Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor. The piece, an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, describes Chinese parenting techniques in relation to those of “Western parents.” Chua cites her personal experiences with her two daughters, Sophia and Louisa, and all the activities she doesn’t allow them to do– like “have a playdate” or “choose their own extracurricular activities.” Sound familiar? If you grew up in a desi household, it probably does. And Chua’s recollection of a particular situation, where her seven-year old daughter Lulu had trouble learning a difficult piano piece, may also strike a chord, no pun intended:

I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Now, I consider my own mother to be a very good mother. Edit. I consider my mother to be an excellent mother. As a childhood elementary education major, my mother could be quite rigid when it came to rules, but she gave us siblings room to pursue our own interests. As long as I pulled in semi-respectable grades, I was free to audition for the school play, write for the school paper, etc. Continue reading →

Jai Ho for Jai Paul

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Is it a mohawk or a mullet? With a mo-mullet haircut like that, you can be sure that anything coming out of this 21 year old Brit is anything but average. #MusicMonday for today comes from my latest musical obsession – Jai Paul and his song BTSU (h/t Abhay).

BTSU starts with the tiny, pretty whisper of Don’t fuck with me, though it soon explodes from its small man/big mouth beginnings into a synth storm. Then the squall settles again, back to lazy snare snap and his little coo. At some point there’s smooth saxophone, just a touch. [thefader]

You can download the track here (via Abeano) and keep tabs on Jai Paul on his myspace to see what he comes out with next. Continue reading →

We Are Those Lions

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Photo by simonm1965

Jayaben Desai passed away recently at age 77, leaving an extraordinary legacy in labor history. With a handbag in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, she led a two-year strike in the mid-1970s protesting the unequal pay and poor treatment of workers at a North London Grunwick film processing factory. The factory’s workforce consisted mostly of desi immigrants from East Africa, and many were women.

Before she walked off the job one day in 1976, the diminutive Gujarat-born Desai who came in at under 5 feet tall and immigrated to England by way of Tanzania, had a few words for her manager Malcolm Alden.

What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your finger-tips, others are lions who can bite your head off. We are those lions, Mr manager. Continue reading →

Top Fifteen of 2010

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F5D864A1-4E0E-D007-2655-AFBD3F49CEE8wallpaper.jpg What happened this year? Will it be known as the year that Julian Assange brought down the Western World? A year rocked by such high unemployment that it allowed “creative types” like Das Racist, The Kominas and Sunny Ali and the Kid the time to put out new albums? Will 2010 be known as the year of Sarah Palin’s Nikki Haley? Or is it the year of Joel Stein-ism? Let’s take a look. Continue reading →

Even North Koreans Bend It Like Beckham

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Korean Bend It.jpgYou have to wonder… In a country like North Korea where the nation is stuck 1950s time warp and Western influences have officially not been allowed in… Why the 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham? Why now?

The 2002 film starring Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Myers and Parminder Nagra aired Dec. 26 — a break from the regular programming of news, documentaries and soap operas in North Korea, where Western films are largely off limits.

“This was the first Western film to be broadcast on North Korean TV, and as well as football covered issues such as multiculturalism, equality and tolerance,” British Ambassador Peter Hughes told The Associated Press from Pyongyang, where his embassy helped arranged the Boxing Day broadcast.

Britain has been seeking to reach out to North Koreans through football, a sport that has connected the two nations since North Korea first sent a team to the World Cup in England in 1966. [yahoo]

I get it. Soccer can unite the world, teaches sportsmanship, crosses boundaries of nation states, blah, blah, blah. I can understand why the British government would choose this movie to develop ties with North Koreans. What I’m curious about is the South Asian hyphenated identity and pop cultural references. I would think that in a nation sheltered the way North Korea is, that a lot of these subtle nuances would be totally missed. In a nation where immigration simply doesn’t exist, how much of the immigrant experience story line did the North Koreans actually understand?

But typically of the censoring Communist state, eight minutes were cut from the 112-minute show….The Boxing Day screening was a rare treat in a country whose TV normally focuses on docum­entaries about farms and others glorifying its leaders and Army. [mirror]

Of course, they had to censor something. But I wonder what exactly those eight minutes of censored scenes were in this fairly PG rated movie. Was it when the girls were at the club? Religious references? Who knows. All I can say is thank goodness they chose this movie instead of Bride and Prejudice. Continue reading →

The Absolutely Sick Sikh Knowledge

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On his right forearm he has this tattoo. I didn’t recognize it at first – a four by four of solid black squares. “It’s the squares to my drum pad,” Sikh Knowledge said, pointing casually to his arm. It made sense – he was a reggae dancehall musician that loved to produce music. You may not know who he is but you will and I guarantee you’ve heard his beats. His tunes are the base music for many of the up and coming hip hop Desi artists of the day – Humble the Poet, Mandeep Sethi, and Hoodini have all used tracks produced by him.

Hailing from Montreal and well known on the Canuck Desi scene, Sikh Knowledge made his way to California for a mini-tour in December, hitting up cities all along the coast. I met him in Sacramento, where he was doing a show with his Sikh hip-hop posse at the Sol Collective. The show was live and it was intense to see a whole scene of brown underground hip hop heads. I sat down with Sikh Knowledge aka Kanwar Anit Singh Saini before he jumped on the mic at the Sacramento show. Here’s what he had to say.

Sikh Knowledge got his start young, singing at the temple when he was a child. But he got into hip-hop also at a young age. “I was one of those kids that would beat box going to school… I was the only grade 3 kid bringing mixed tapes to school. I lost Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” on the playground and that’s when I cried at school.” It was when he heard the Sound Bwoy Burill track in 1994 that he knew he was going to make music his life.

But what really made an impression on me was Sikh Knowledge’s confidence in pursuing his life. At the age of 20, he decided to stop being what other people wanted him to be, dropped out of engineering school and re-started honestly. “I dropped out, came out, and rearranged my whole life,” he stated. “I reapplied and did my undergraduate degree in music with a minor in linguistics. It was the happiest time of my life. I felt good about the decisions that I made.” He’s currently pursuing his Master degree in speech language pathology while having the dual career of mixing some of the ill-est beats in North America. Continue reading →

Trigger Happy Sub Swara

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending one of the most bass booming dance frenzy inducing parties I’ve been to since moving to the Bay area. Held at the dope new venue Public Works, it was a record release party for Trigger the latest out of the electronic/hip hop/dubstep/desi beat making duo, Sub Swara. Originating from a NYC club night, Dhruva Ganesan and Dave Sharma have turned Sub Swara into an electronic dubstep music touring machine. Performing that night were also San Francisco’s own Surya Dub DJs Kush Arora, Maneesh the Twister, Jimmy Love and DJ Amar. Almost all of these folks are tied in with the sound barrier breaking Dhamaal Soundsystem.

But enough about the party that you missed. Let me give you something to listen to on this Music Monday. Check out the Triggers Mixtape Volume 2, opening up with a track co-writ by Dead Prez. That’s right, it’s a Dead Prez meets Sub Swara – an unlikely combo but somehow it works. Also check out minute 9.00 for the Ceelo remix, my personal fave.

Sub Swara — Triggers Mixtape Vol 2 by Sub Swara

The above Mixtape is the second in what I can only imagine to be a series – bookmark the Sub Swara soundcloud page to keep track of other mixes that may be coming from their crew. Just in case you were the OG type, below you can listen to Trigger in it’s entirety and original form.

I’ve never been a huge fan of electronic music (though I did attend my fair share of raves in my college days) but I find the music coming out of Sub Swara and their associated DJ crew different. There is more bass, more beats, amazing obscure dancehall and reggae finds that blend seamlessly with bhangra and deep bass beats. I’m a big fan of dubstep and love how this team of musicians can spin to take listeners on an audio adventure.

I’m sure Sub Swara will be doing a show near you very soon (looks like CT, NY and CO are in luck). Keep your eye on their website, and their twitter to keep posted on when the bass goes boom. Continue reading →

That’s Santa Singh to you …

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Always remember, as you track Santa’s travels around the world, that Santa is South Asian.

Yes, we’ve posted this before, but I’m going to post it every single year on Christmas Eve.

Seriously, how many of y’all believed in Santa? My parents never pretended he existed, and my classmates all knew better. We had no chimney, no fireplace, and I knew there was no White Man keeping track of whether I was naughty or nice. Whole thing made around as much sense as the Easter Bunny. Were you a Santaphile growing up? If you’ve got kids, do you want them to believe? Continue reading →

Cure Sonia – Bone Marrow Donor Needed

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cure_sonia_rai_2010.jpgWhile visiting Boston on business, I learned some shocking news this past weekend. My good friend Sonia was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) about 10 days ago. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy. She is 24 and in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant. I am still in shock and having a hard time absorbing this. Since I have known her, I cannot imagine her as being anything other than the cheerful, always smiling, bollywood-movie-loving, happy and positive person that I have known her to be. She is an active member of the South Asian community and many may recognized her contributions as a board member of NetSAP Boston. I pray she finds a donor soon.

Team Sonia – Sonia’s brother Sumit Rai, family and friends are organizing drives today and in the next few weeks. Please take the time to help spread the word about the drives and join the NMDP registry if you have not already done so. You can visit www.curesonia.org, or visit their Facebook page.

As you may be aware from our previous posts on the topic, the National Bone Marrow Registry (NMDP) is in dire need of more ethnic donors. South Asians, as well as any minority, and especially people of mixed ethnicity are needed. Sonia is currently receiving excellent care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, but in order to survive beyond the next few months, she requires a bone marrow transplant. Most matches occur within ethniticty and increasing the number of South Asians registered as potential bone marrow donors will help Sonia as well as many others who are searching.

Among the 7 million registered donors currently, approximately, only 2% are South Asians. Ethnic Minorities have a 30-40% chance of finding a match from the existing NMDP registry. Caucasians have an 80% chance of finding a match from the existing NMDP registry [link]. Continue reading →