Anil Gupta, the producer of Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42 and executive producer of The Office and number 5 on the Most Powerful Asian in British Media list is about to come out with an irreverant animated comedy which follows the exploits of three exceptionally naughty girls – Keisha Marie, Natella and Latrina – one maverick headmaster, Iqbal, and a group of desperate, overworked and underpaid teachers. Continue reading
The only thing of interest that I learned in the comments of this entry is that SM comment leaver DesiDancer likes food. Well so do I. The Village Voice reports on a fruit that I am ashamed to admit I have never tried. It is the “Queen of fruits,” the Mangosteen:
Last month, after a long discussion with his father, my friend gave up on his latest business idea: Importing mangosteens into America. The plan was to petition the government, build a greenhouse, and then get rich off of this rare South Asian fruit, which apparently tastes like ice cream and causes perfectly normal people to burst into tears. R.W. Apple wrote in The New York Times: “I can no more describe mangosteens than explain why I love my wife and children.“
Good God. What hole have I been living in? I must have this fruit, I simply must.
Recently, I went to Chinatown to find this dark, purple treat, but the few people who had heard of it told me to stop looking. Mangosteen–widely considered the “queen of all fruit”–carries too many flies to be permitted in the U.S. Because durian, the so-called “king,” was hanging from nearly every fruit stand on East Broadway, I bought one instead. It was $8 and about the size of my head–plus spikes. While mangosteens are said to chill the body, durians are 900-calories a piece and so creamy that last year when a man in Thailand ate four in a row, he passed out and died. The Thai Ministry of Public Health then issued a warning against excessive durian consumption.
Durian looks totally freakish to me. It’s not surprising that it has been described as such:
We cracked open the skin with a steak knife. Inside there were five red seeds, surrounded by doughy goo. I thought it resembled a dead chicken, but my friends had other ideas: “porcelain fetus,” “alien baby,” “dinosaur egg,” “anonymous shit on sidewalk.” The pulp tasted burnt, warm and sweet, like onion custard, and got more syrupy the closer it was to the seeds. One friend loved it: “Durian is sublime,” she wrote me in an email later that night, “I want to inflict it on people.”
The Village Voice tries to make everything it likes into something sexy, cool, and happening.
They’re aiming to do the same with Fareed Zakaria in their profile of him in this week’s issue. Joy Press piles on the adjectives, starting with the subtitle to the article: “Muslim, Heartthrob, Super-Pundit.” A rather unlikely string of words, isn’t it? (Especially jarring is “Muslim” and “Pundit.” But we’ll let it go.)
Press pushes the sexy button a bit more before Zakaria’s anti-sexy, policy wonk energies start to dominate the interview:
Sitting in his airy corner office at Newsweek, Zakaria is the definition of dapper, clad in a pale yellow checked shirt and crisp khakis. He ignores the constant ambient ping of incoming e-mails and phone calls as he talks about his PBS show. Zakaria may be the pundit world’s answer to the Backstreet Boys, but there’s nothing sexy about Foreign Exchange. It has the standard muted tones of a serious news program, complete with generic set and antiquated electronic theme music. “People ask how we’ll distinguish ourselves from the competition,” Zakaria says animatedly. “What competition? There’s literally not another show on American television that deals only with foreign affairs–you know, the other 95 percent of humanity.” (link)
She starts off this paragraph with a kind of journalistic optimism that her subject is in fact hot and happening. Looking dapper! Ignores email pings! (Translation: he’s a busy man, but cool about it.) Argably, the reference to the Backstreet Boys doesn’t help her cause (though maybe the Backstreet Boys are cool again and I am just out of the loop). However, this earnest effort at Cutening Fareed is betrayed by Zakaria’s use of the word “foreign affairs,” which is about as appealing to the fashion-obsessed Voice as a Slurpee in January. From here on out, the interview is all rigor, internationalism, policy, and PBS.
The other 95 percent of humanity is not sexy. Fareed Zakaria is interested in them. Therefore, Fareed Zakaria is not sexy. QED.
For the record, that’s just fine with me: the U.S. media needs more unsexy Muslim heartthrob superpundits. And less Botox News, please.
See more Zakaria SM posts here, here, here, here, and here. Continue reading
Apul informs me that Fortune Magazine has released a list of what it considers the 50 most influential people of color. The real name of the list is, Diversity 2005: People with the most clout. Why such a wishy-washy title? Anyways there are three Indians that made the cut:
Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf Publishers
Mehta is arguably the most admired editor in book publishing. In his stable: Michael Crichton and Toni Morrison. Also helped President Clinton’s My Life break nonfiction sales records. [Link]
Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of the Imaging and Printing Group at Hewlett-Packard
Restructuring aside, Joshi is still the straw that stirs the drink. Despite rival Dell’s push into printers, his unit alone would rank No. 79 on the Fortune 500. [Link]
and Indra Nooyi, President and CFO of PepsiCo
The executive is known as a skilled strategist. She has engineered tens of billions of dollars in acquisition deals. [Link]
Who do I have to sleep with to make this list next year? 
Documents leaked last night from the police investigation contradict almost everything the London cops have said about the de Menezes shooting (thanks, Vijay). The current London shoot-to-kill policy now seems like a loose cannon.
The docs say that de Menezes was captured on tape walking into the tube station at a normal pace, picking up a free newspaper, using a tube card to enter and only breaking into a jog at the platform to catch a train. He was wearing a lightweight blue denim jacket (see photo) and was not carrying a backpack. Before getting onto the tube, he took a leisurely, 15-minute bus ride from his apartment to the station, not noticing that he was being tailed by cops. He did not look at all South Asian. Witness statements corroborate the tape.
It’s not clear whether the cops even identified themselves to de Menezes and warned him not to enter the tube. If the leaked docs are accurate, it appears that the only reason the cops killed him is that he emerged from the wrong apartment building. But it’s easy to understand the mistake:
The documents… suggest that the intelligence operation may have been botched because an officer watching a flat… was “relieving himself”. [Link]
One officer reportedly said he “checked the photographs” and “thought it would be worth someone else having a look”. However, he was unable to video the man for subsequent confirmation because he was “relieving” himself at the time. [Link]
Smells like a coverup. What it all means for people with brown skin living under an ill-defined shoot-to-kill policy:
“… he was just unfortunate to be living in a block of flats that was under surveillance and to look slightly brown-skinned…” [Link]
Be careful out there. Details below. Continue reading
Two people are dead and 115 people remain injured after 350 bombs detonated in or around government buildings all over Bangladesh today. (Thanks, Rahul.) The explosions which were apparently the work of Islamic militant group Jamayetul Mujahedin affected 63 of the country’s 64 districts. [link]
The bombs exploded in rapid succession between 10:30 and 11:30 in the morning, local time. From the BBC:
…timing devices were found at the scenes of blasts but most of the bombs were small, homemade devices – wrapped in tape or paper.
One of the deaths was a young boy in Savar, near Dhaka, who was killed when he picked up a device. [link]
The group responsible for the blasts was banned by the Bangladeshi government earlier this year; previously, the government had insisted that Bangladesh didn’t have a problem with Islamic Militancy, so this policy change was significant.
Leaflets from the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh have appeared at the site of some of the blasts.
“It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh” and “Bush and Blair be warned and get out of Muslim countries”, the leaflets say. [link]
Developing… Continue reading
[For people who don’t know The Ramayana at all, here is a short version of the story you can look at to gain some familiarity.]
I’ve been following the discussion of an episode of The Ramayana at Locana. The discussion concerns an event near the end of the saga, after Sita has already undergone the trial by fire (Agni Pariksha), proving her fidelity to Rama during the time she was abducted by Ravana. In some versions of The Ramayana, the trial by fire is essentially the end of the story for Sita. A couple of more things happen, but then Rama rules for 10,000 years.
But in the Malayalam version Anand’s father grew up with (the post is actually the text of an article by Anand’s father, N.V.P. Unithiri), the Agni Pariksha isn’t enough to clear Sita’s honor, and persistent rumors force Rama to abandon Sita once again. Here is the passage quoted:
“What the society thinks is important. The Gods too look down upon ill fame, and fame brings respect everywhere. Does not every noble man yearn for it? I fear dishonour, oh, learned men, I’ll even renounce your company and my own life, if needed, for the sake of honour. Sita has to be deserted. Understand my state of mind, I wasn’t sadder on anyday before. Lakshmana, tomorrow you take Sita in Sumantra’s chariot and leave her at our border. Abandon her near the holy Ashram of Sage Valmiki on the banks of the Tamasa river, and get back here soon.”
This episode is known as Sita Parityaga. I’ll be referring to it in this post simply as the abandonment of Sita. Continue reading
You might be surprised to see a post about Niger on a blog with a South Asian theme, but there is a connection. The same global aid system that worked so well in getting aid to countries in South and South East Asia after the Tsunami, failed to react fast enough to prevent a disaster in Niger. It is even argued that the outpouring of generosity that was shown the people affected by the Tsunami, deflected attention away from this other preventable crisis. The Washington Post reports:
“We always are hearing, ‘They have given something, they have given something.’ But on the ground, we have not seen it yet,” said Ibrahim, his words tumbling out in rush of frustration. “We are crying, ‘Why are they not giving to us? Why are they not giving to us? Our children are dying.’ “
Actually, international donors are giving to Niger — $22.8 million has been contributed so far to ease its food crisis — but the help is arriving too late for many children here. The reasons, said aid workers and analysts, have more to do with miscalculation and hesitation by the international aid bureaucracy, which initially underestimated the severity of the crisis, than with the reluctance of the world to pitch in once the extent of suffering became clear.
“This is not a story of donors being mean,” said Paul Harvey of the Overseas Development Institute, a research group based in London. “This is a story of a failed system.”
Although the hunger crisis was brewing for many months, it was not until the BBC aired several dramatic reports from Niger in July that major donations began to pour in. Moreover, officials of the U.N. World Food Program said they initially tapped only $1.4 million from their emergency reserves for Niger, fearing a larger commitment would leave them unable to respond to other crises.
Not everyone was taken by surprise. Remember during the Tsunami when Nobel Peace Prize winners MSF took the unusual step of declaring that they had received enough aid, and that all incoming donations would be used for other causes? People kept giving to them anyways, perhaps because of their great reputation. They lived up to their pledge:
The contrast between the U.N. response and that of Doctors Without Borders, which is privately funded, is striking.At clinics run by Doctors Without Borders in Niger, doctors saw cases of severe malnutrition surge in January and triple by March. In April, the group put a $13 million plan into action that enabled it to set up more clinics and feeding centers and send triage teams into the worst-hit areas. Almost all the money had been raised since the tsunami, when the group used the huge outpouring of donations to create an emergency fund for less visible crises.
The disappearance of Indian revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose has always been shrouded in Amelia Earhart-like mystery. Adding to the intrigue, a history professor from Ireland just reported that British intelligence planned on assassinating Bose in Istanbul (via arZan):
The British Foreign Office had in March 1941 ordered the assassination of freedom revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose after his escape from house arrest in Kolkata, an Irish scholar said. Eunan O’Halpin of Trinity College, Dublin, made the stunning revelation on Sunday evening while delivering the Sisir Kumar Bose lecture at the Netaji Research Bureau.
A history professor, O’Halpin said the British Special Operation Executive’s plan to assassinate Bose, popularly known as “Netaji” (the leader), on his way to Germany was foiled as he changed his route and went via Russia.
O’Halpin said he had handed over the classified documents backing this to Krishna Bose, a former MP and wife of Netaji’s nephew Sisir Bose… Netaji’s relative Sugato Bose, a professor of history in the Harvard University, said he had already informed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the matter. [Link]O’Halpin said the British Special Operation Executive (SOE) (formed in 1940 to carry out sabotage and underground activities) informed its representatives in Istanbul and Cairo that Bose was thought to be travelling from Afghanistan to Germany via Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The orders had come from London.
“They were asked to wire about the arrangements made for his assassination. Even in the midst of war, this was a remarkable instruction. Bose had definitely planned a rebellion to free India, but the usual punishment for this was prosecution or detention, not an assassination. He was to die because he had a large following in India… If British agents could get close enough to kill him, they surely could have attempted to capture him. The fact that any trace of London’s orders to assassinate Bose remains in official records is just as striking.” [Link]
Update: The Beeb has more:
Describing the decision as “extraordinary, unusual and rare”, Mr O’Halpin said the British took Bose “much more seriously than many thought… Historians working on the subject tell me the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels. It appears to be a last desperate measure against someone who had thrown the Empire in complete panic.”
India’s airport modernization rolls into Bombay with a spanking-new domestic terminal at Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, designed by an Indian architect, no less (via Etcetera):
The new aluminium and glass-fronted terminal will house the operations of all major private domestic carriers and will cater to seven million passengers a year.
From July 28, all private airlines such as Jet Airways, Air Sahara, Spice Jet and Air Deccan will move into the upgraded building.The two-phase upgradation of the domestic terminal costs Rs. 83 crores [~$19M, or $~60M PPP]. Construction on the second phase, which is expected to start once this new terminal is in operation, will take four months. [Link]
With new carriers coming in, the terminus needed major expansion… Mumbai airport, said Kumar, was the first and 30 airports were likely to will follow this pattern… the revamped portion of the terminal building has an all-new look: Aluminum composite panels, a glass roof, a skylight, a 1,575-sq metre pillarless check-in area, 38 check-in counters and a 1,651-sq metre security hold. [Link]
This is the first time I’ve seen reports about Indian buildings paying attention to handicapped accessibility:
Facilities for disabled persons, including ramps and toilets [Link]
Desis immediately begin enjoying the national sport of caviling 
More than 12 hours after the revamped Terminal 1B was opened… while it sports a swish international feel, with wide open, naturally-lit spaces and a thought-out design effort — the quality of the experience is some way from being truly world class. At the end of a rushed schedule to get the facility ready in time, the entrance has three men perched on bars, painting them white… ”Looks like they’re still building it. The signboards for toilets are not up yet and there are no food counters…” [Link]
See photos of the new terminal.
