I like my curry naughty

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I failed to realize until only a couple of weeks ago that there exists an entire underground sub-culture of curry lovers. These people often hold normal 9 to 5 jobs only to come home to start a nightly party in their mouths. Many of them aren’t even [gasp] desi. Take for example the girls of Naughty Curry:

We at the Naughty Curry Kitchen do three (3) main things:
  • We apply Indian spices and spicing techniques to ‘ordinary’ (for us) food, with an emphasis on being (mostly) simple, fast, and healthy or all of the above.
  • We simplify or adapt traditional Indian recipes to fit our very special needs and our busy lifestyles.
  • We experiment, ask lots of ‘what if’ questions, and tend to have lots of fun. And when something doesn’t quite turn out, we laugh.

Be bold. Come play with us.

Hell, they had me at “be bold.” Cooking of this nature is usually not talked about in mixed company. Old temple walls in India show people doing these kinds of things, but it is now taboo. The dishes they reveal are often downright subversive. Where else are you going to go to be taught how to prepare “G-spot mushrooms,” or “Dirty Masala Rice?” But…what makes someone turn to this type of lifestyle? It’s not natural. You don’t just fall into it. There is usually a moment of truth that leads someone down this path of liberation:

As for me [Courtney Knettel], I grew up in the Midwest U.S. of A. with a standard Oscar Meyer-Hamburger Helper childhood. Want to step up the flavor of those green beans? We’ve got three primary options: butter, salt, and cheese (and for those folks with a dash of flair: garlic salt and Lawry’s). Fortunately, my own imagination was expanded in my formative years under the influence of my Indian babysitter, who introduced me to what I called ‘magic sprinkles.’ Once I was ‘spiced’, I became isolated in my tastes. My family thought I was weird. (Actually, they still do.)…

By the time I finished my five-year college stint, I found most ‘ordinary American’ food to be, um, hard to swallow. Yet because I knew how to manifest my own spice-magic, I could quickly, easily and cheaply whip up my own sensational Indian-esque spin to my food. What’s more, I was increasingly attuned to a healthy way of eating, and spices, I quickly discovered, could transform vegetables into memorable experiences. At some point, I evolved into partaking of junk food, cheese and even meat only on occasion, and I don’t even miss it. Ergo, the spicing fixation that had once branded me a weirdo now infuses my life in ways that even I hadn’t imagined. [Link]

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Teach racists a lesson for five bucks (updated)

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In a Houston city council runoff election, a desi candidate’s campaign alleges he’s being called a ‘dot-headed terrorist.’ Again. Let’s stop this shit cold this time. Donate five bucks now.

We now know that ‘terrorist’ is the big new desi slur. You might think that the slur would be thrown around by hard-right Republicans angling for the redneck vote in the deep South.She… ‘joked’ to one of our supporters she was worried that if he lost, he might fly a plane into her building

Not so, says a friend working on Jay Aiyer’s campaign for Houston city council. In the Dec. 10 runoff election, his opponent Sue Lovell, a fellow Democrat and lesbian progressive, reportedly has a campaign official who’s called Jay a ‘dot-headed terrorist.’ As far as I can tell, Lovell says she’s reprimanded the official but has not disavowed the statements in public:

In May, I signed the Texas Code of Fair Campaign Practices, partially in response to disturbing racially bigoted comments coming from Ms. Lovell’s campaign… I called on the other candidates in the race to join me in signing the pledge. No one else signed. [statement from Jay Aiyer]

She’s even occasionally called off her supporters attacks on Jay for being a “terrorist” though that practice still continues to this day. [Link]

Our opponent, Sue Lovell, has a senior campaign adviser who has been publicly calling Jay a “dot-headed terrorist” and attempting to whip up racist sentiment against him within the Democratic party establishment…

… the “dot-headed terrorist” comment- a senior campaign adviser of Jay’s opponent made this comment to our campaign manager and one of our volunteers publicly at a Democratic Party event… But it’s not a one time deal- she also called him a terrorist at a statewide Democratic meeting and “joked” to one of our supporters she was worried that if he lost, he might fly a plane into her building. [email from Mini Timmaraju, a college friend who’s an Aiyer campaign consultant]

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Baby Blue Turbans for Sexual Frankness!

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Yesterday, Manmohan Singh went to the podium and incongruously began to croon a Salt-N-Pepa single from 15 years ago. He said:

Let’s talk about sex, baby
Let’s talk about you and me
Let’s talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex… [Link]

Well, not really. His words were his own, spoken not sung, but they had the same import and were no less surprising than a Karoke act would have been. What he said was:

“Leading a healthy and safe sexual life is a commitment we must all make … This is particularly important given our traditional inhibitions about discussing such matters within our families and among our colleagues, quite apart from doing so in public. This, quite obviously, has to change if we are to create awareness in the war against HIV and Aids.” [Link]

In other words: Let’s talk about S-E-X. This from a 73 year old man who has been married for almost half a century. This is a clarion call from the top, as blunt as we can expect from a policy wonk in a sky blue paag.

According to official figures, India has the second highest number of HIV+ people in the world, and the CIA has forecast that there could be up to 20 million HIV positive Indians within 5 years. Addressing this challenge will not be easy. Ignorance is widespread:

Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said … that despite over 80 per cent of the people being aware of the epidemic, most in the country continues to deny its existence, he said. [Link]

In New Delhi, 30 students completed a 6,800-km (4,200-km) walk across India to warn people against AIDS. “Villagers who have heard about AIDS thought we may be HIV-positive and did not want to stand near us or talk to us because they felt they would get infected,” said 20-year-old Vicky Gill, who is HIV-negative. [Link]

And many are extremely touchy about the subject:

Last month, a popular south Indian actress was pelted with sandals, tomatoes and rotten eggs and hauled before a court for telling Indian men not to expect their brides to be virgins. [Link]

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55Friday: “Brick is Red” edition

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In total support of our lone Guest Blogger PG’s apposite timing with regards to World AIDS Day, today’s edition of our weekly nanofiction writing is inspired by December 1, red ribbons and acronyms.

Friend of SM (and my rival for the affections of Goran) Brimful gently dispatched my mild-grade confusion about the need for more AIDS research funding with her edifying post yesterday:

It is easy to dismiss HIV as an area that already gets plenty of research dollars, and that it is overhyped, because of the way it manifests in this country in 2005. In the US, it tends to affect poor minorities, homosexuals, and IV drug users. And even though we need to get that under control, people can live with HIV here, thanks to the availability of life-saving therapies. But we have to figure out how to get these therapies into the hands of the rest of the world. Morevoer, we have to seek out the holy grail- an AIDS vaccine. Though it’s nearly impossible to develop, we have to try. I have heard people remark that HIV infection is preventable. This is true in theory, but when you have the kind of transmission happening in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, it sure doesn’t feel preventable.

In other news, doubts have surfaced about Brimful’s brown heritage, since her post on World AIDS Day actually was published on that day.

For those of you who are just joining us, 55Friday is a weekly event (two months strong!) for aspiring novelists like me who are ADDled commitment-phobes and therefore can’t take on something serious like NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 word requirement. If you’ve been lurking or are new, here is all you have to do: write a very short story with exactly 55 words and post it or a link to it in the comments below. You may write about anything, but for those who prefer, we have a weekly “theme”. Today’s theme is RED, the second time we’ve had a unifying idea that I ripped off from Krzysztof_Kieslowski, for those who are keeping track. Continue reading →

World AIDS Day on Indian Standard Time

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I meant to post this yesterday and now invoke my ethnic background to excuse my tardiness.

aids in India.jpg While my laptop’s already suffering from too much spyware to withstand finding a cure for HIV, I did want to note World AIDS Day in some way. Via Anupam Chander, I see that HIV+ women in Golaghat, Assam joined a rally “to acknowledge they are living with AIDS and should not be shunned.” From what I can tell, India is doing surprisingly well, particularly compared to some African nations, in admitting its HIV crisis. When I last visited in 2003, there were bilboards with giant pictures of condoms, which is something I’ve never seen even in Houston or Dallas, where conservatism appear to be greater than in Bombay and Hyderabad. Though the government is unwilling to say just how big the population of HIV+ Indians is — as a NYT editorial puts it, “India is providing numbers no one believes” — it has not gone through the lengthy period of denial that the U.S. government did in the 1980s, which allowed HIV to threaten to become epidemic among margnialized groups.

The problem now is getting treatment to sufferers, and unlike the issue of accepting the existence of the disease (though that certainly is far from complete, and contributes to the difficulty of accessing treatment), seems likely to get worse, not better. The WTO is supposed to be giving developing nations more time to comply with patent rules, but Indian already reformed its laws last year. This has had the benefit of drawing large pharmaceutical companies who previously feared that their investments would be unprotected. On the downside, however, are millions of Indians who cannot afford the cost of a patented drug and whose salvation previously had been the cheap generics that local drug makers had pirated. Continue reading →

Journie hall of shame

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In a NYT review of a new Mughal art exhibit at the Met in Manhattan, Holland Cotter pens these lines:

Musharraf as Cupid?

India is the real subject here; you can hear it and taste it in this painting, as spicy as a vindaloo…

That’s what confident cooks and ambitious artists do to the recipes they inherit… A vegetable curry or a peach cobbler can take many inventive forms and still be intensely curryish or delectably peachy…

… there is a picture… of an episode from the fifth and last section of “Khamsa.” And it is pure, melting-on-the-tongue confection. [Link]

I dunno, does a vindaloo make you gag? What clichéd hell is this? Cotter writes with all the insight of Apache Indian. This reads like a kindergarten newsletter hot off the dot matrix printer, clip art carelessly pasted into a Print Shop template. Using a spice metaphor for Indian culture is like complimenting Rosario Dawson on her breasts. Y’know, work a little harder.

As for the art, Mughal miniatures are absolutely gorgeous, but the exhibit in Connecticut sounds far more innovative, an art version of the game of telephone:

One artist would create an image on a sheet of paper, then mail the sheet to someone else, who would add to it before sending it on to the next artist. Part improvisation, part calculation, each finished painting both is and is not the sum of its parts…

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Liveblogging ER’s “I Do”

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wed.jpg Yes, yes I am aware that a good portion of our readers aren’t lucky enough to live on the right coast but I can’t resist liveblogging this huuuuugely important event— my girl crush is goin’ to the chapel and she’s, gonnnnnna get marrrrrried. Besides, the original post on Neela’s nuptials has triggered a fascinating discussion about regional bridal traditions in South Asia; that’s a lovely development, and this way we can feel free to focus on the actual ER ep, here.

So this is what I’m going to do for everyone in a different time zone who isn’t watching with me right now: blogging starts after the jump. You don’t want to know what happens during tonight’s ER? Don’t click that handy-dandy “Continued” box OR the comments OR the permalink for this entry. Everyone wins.

SPOILER ALERT- after the jump. Continue reading →

Dial Eminem for murder

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A sick and senseless London murder finally comes to trial (thanks, Chiraag):

A fan of US rapper Eminem has admitted murdering the woman who idolised him and stuffing her in a suitcase. Christopher Duncan, 21, had the same tattoos as the rap star and had been performing his songs at a karaoke bar in London on the night of 13 May 2004.

Law student Jagdip Najran, 26, who had met him only two weeks before, left the bar with him, only to be battered over the head with an iron bat at his flat… Najran was in her final year at London Metropolitan University… [Link]

… Najran… told a friend her heart was “aflutter” at seeing him at a karaoke night. [Link]

… the couple slept together before Duncan, high on a cocktail of LSD, ecstasy and cocaine, set about her with a metal baseball bat, shattering her skull. He then stuffed her body into a suitcase because he “could not bear to look at her”… Duncan said he flipped after the “beautiful and clever” law student smiled at him…

Detectives who searched the killer’s flat in Bethnal Green discovered violent videos, knives, samurai swords and ninja weapons. A martial arts expert, Duncan also wrote his own songs…

Jagdip, 26, had seen Duncan performing at a pub a few weeks earlier and had gone back to the bar a second time on May 13 last year… Duncan… was born in Glasgow but moved to London at a young age… [Link]

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Hot Shots, Part Deux

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And now a followup to one of the most vehemently commented old Sepia Mutiny posts – the annual fighter war games between the USAF and IAF. This year brought a new set of games and apparently a similar result –

Mingling over a few rounds of golf, dogfighting a bit over the jungles of West Bengal – this month’s Cope India 2005 war games were billed as a standard two-week exercise between Indian and American top guns.

…The exercises had mixed teams of Indian and American pilots on both sides, which means that both the Americans and the Indians won, and lost. Yet, observers say that in a surprising number of encounters – particularly between the American F-16s and the Indian Sukhoi-30 MKIs – the Indian pilots came out the winners.

“Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn’t perform well,” says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. “That myth has been blown out by the results” of these air exercises.

Predictably, chauvinists of all stripes were pulled out of the woodwork –

…during Cope India ’05, Bharat Rakshak was a veritable cheering session for the underestimated Indian Air Force.

Typical was a posting by a blogger who called himself “Babui.” Citing a quote from a US Air Force participant in Cope India ’05 in Stars and Stripes – “We try to replicate how these aircraft perform in the air, and I think we’re good at doing that in our Air Force, but what we can’t replicate is what’s going on in their minds. They’ve challenged our traditional way of thinking on how an adversary, from whichever country, would fight.” – “Babui” wrote, “That quote is as good an admission that the F-16 jocks got their clocks cleaned.”

…an American pilot who participated in the exercise, added his own two cents on the blog. “It makes me sick to see some of the posts on this website,” wrote a purported US “Viper” pilot. “They made some mistakes and so did we…. That’s what happens and you learn from it.”

Oh yeah? Well mine’s bigger than yours. Manish previously covered the new SU-30’s the Indian team fielded for the games. An impressive piece of machinery indeed and certainly an impetus for next generation F35’s and F22’s.

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East Lansing’s got a new mayor

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East Lansing, Michigan (home to the second rate Michigan State Spartans) has a brand new mayor. 34-year-old Samir “Sam” Singh was elected mayor by the city council two weeks ago. The Lansing State Journal reports:

For the first time in eight years, East Lansing has a new mayor.

Sam Singh, 34, who has been mayor pro tem for eight of his 10 years on the council, was unanimously elected to a two-year term as mayor by his fellow City Council members Tuesday…

The mayor has all of the responsibilities of a council member, chairs council meetings and serves as the city’s representative on ceremonial occasions.

He is the city’s chief executive, although the city manager is responsible for day-to-day operation of the city. [Link]

Well good. Despite the fact that he graduated from the second best university in the state, I think he’ll do a fine job. He has actually been on the city council since 1995 so he has definitely paid his dues (as you can tell by the hints of silver in his hair and beard).

“I was hopeful my colleagues would vote for me,” he said. “I was very honored when they voted to support me.”

Singh said the issues facing the community are “very complex and complicated” and that taking care of them is his priority.

I hate that issues are always complex. I am not sure if that particular community can handle complexity (okay no more Spartan jokes). Maybe we can look for Samir to make the jump to national politics a few years down the road. Michigan would be a good state to run in. Continue reading →