How Much, Baby, Do We Really Need?

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Jyotsana’s comments on Amardeep’s post last week reminded me of my favorite Kannadasan song

Chorus
பால் இருக்கும் பழம் இருக்கும் பசி இருக்காது paal irukkum pazham irukkum pasi irukkaathu
பஞ்சணையில் காற்று வரும் தூக்கம் வராது panchaNaiyil kaaRRu varum thookkam varaathu
  
Verse #1
நாலு வகை குணம் இருக்கும் ஆசை விடாது naalu vakai guNam irukkum aasai viDaathu
நடக்க வரும் கால்களுக்கும் துணிவிருக்காது naDakka varum kaalkaLukkum thuNivirukkaathu
  
Verse #2
கட்டவிழ்ந்த கண் இரண்டும் உங்களைத் தேடும் – பாதி kaTTavizhntha kaN iraNDum unkaLaith thEDum – paathi
கனவு வந்து மறுபடியும் கண்களை மூடும் kanavu vanthu maRupaDiyum kaNkaLai mooDum
பட்டு நிலா வான் வெளியில் காவியம் பாடும் – கொண்ட paTTu nilaa vaan veLiyil kaaviyam paaDum – koNDa
பள்ளியறைப் பெண் மனதில் போர்க்களம் ஆகும் paLLiyaRaip peN manathil pOrkkaLam aakum
  
Verse #3
காதலுக்குச் சாதி இல்லை மதமும் இல்லையே kaathalukku chaathi illai mathamum illaiyE
கண்கள் பேசும் வார்த்தையிலே பேதம் இல்லையே kaNkaL pEsum vaarththaiyilE bEtham illaiyE
வேதமெல்லாம் காதலையே மறுப்பதில்லையே – அது vEthamellaam kaathalaiyE maRuppathillaiyE – athu
மேகம் செய்த உருவம்போல மறைவதில்லையே mEkam seytha uruvampOla maRaivathillaiyE

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auntie netta Returns

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I first saw Nimmi Harasgama on a plane. I don’t know what year it was. I think I must have been either on the way to Sri Lanka or on the way back; I was exhausted, but when I discovered a captivating Sinhala film, I didn’t want to sleep–I wanted to watch. I was particularly compelled by one of the film’s storylines, which featured a young woman desperate to find her missing husband. The actress had a striking face and delivered a sad and memorable performance. It was perhaps the first Sri Lankan film I had ever seen–indeed, because I found it in progress, I did not even get to see the whole thing. Still, I was transfixed, and impressed.

The dark feel of the film stayed with me for years. Then, in late 2008, a friend sent me a link to a Sri Lankan comedienne doing an auntie character I found hilarious. One of my favorite lines from the first video: “I’m calling from abroad–yes, that’s why I’m wearing a hat, and everything–you can’t see, no?” (At about 20 seconds in.)

When the friend mentioned that the actress had also appeared in the Sri Lankan film “Akasa Kusum,” I did a bit of Googling, and thought that without her auntie getup, she looked familiar. Had she been in the film I’d seen on the plane? I read the descriptions of the rest of the films in her IMDB history and realized that on that flight, I’d watched bits of “Ira Madiyama / August Sun”. She had played the young woman desperate to find her missing husband. And that luminous actress was ALSO auntie netta. Now I was intrigued.

Through the friend, I called the actress up for a chat and she told me a little bit about how she’d come up with auntie netta, and also that she was thinking of maybe developing the character into a stage show. I last posted about her right before that show, auntie netta’s Holiday from Asylum and promised a follow-up that would include a q&a with her.

This interview with Nimmi Harasgama, the award-winning London-based actress behind both of those performances, references that first conversation, so I’ll preface the q&a with some of the background I learned then… and will follow with another post including the more recent exchange. Continue reading →

#Untrendy Topics: Modern Hindi Poetry

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I’ve been doing some research on Indian writers from the 1930s-1960s for a long-term scholarly project, and in the process I’ve been learning a bit about Hindi and Urdu writers I didn’t know about earlier. In Hindi in particular, I’ve been interested in the “New Poetry” (Nayi Kavita) Movement, with a small group of experimental writers adapting the western, free verse style to Hindi. (I may talk about some other topics later in the summer if there is interest.)

For a little background on Hindi literature in the 20th century, you might start with Wikipedia; it’s not bad. The New Poetry movement came out of a general flowering of Hindi poetry from the early 20th century, a style of poetry known as Chhayavad (Shadowism). Mahadevi Verma is one of the best known writers in this style; another notable figure is Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan’s father (and actually quite a good poet).

For me, the Chhayavad poetry sounds a little too pretty (“precious,” as they say in Creative Writing class), though I must admit that part of the problem is that I simply don’t have the Hindi vocabulary to be able to keep up with the language the Chhayavad poets tend to use. I prefer what came after, especially the New Poetry movement. The “New Poetry” style roughly resembles the modernism of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle in English literature. The language is stripped down and conversational, rather than lyrical. Some poets, like Kedarnath Singh, focus intently on conveying, with a kind of crystalline minimalism, pure images. Others are somewhat more conventional.

Below the fold, I’ll give some examples of a few favorite poems from the “New Poetry” movement, with several poems in both transliterated Hindi and English. [UPDATE: Look in the comments for three poems directly in Devanagari] Continue reading →

An outrage for an outrage makes the whole world go deaf

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There is a particularly troublesome side-effect I have seen develop over the years as the internet has become an ever more powerful and effective tool in galvanizing and giving voice to the voiceless (in addition to amplifying the voice of those who already had a platform). I, and a few of the original bloggers and readers of SM, have had the chance to experience how the signal-to-noise ratio on our threads have worsened with time. There is much more reaction and much less reflection. I agree, my statement is laced with some nostalgia and my perception surely skewed with the passage of time. You will doubtless find examples of contrary evidence, but I feel it is true nonetheless. I also sense a generational rift growing wider. It is so much easier for people to be outraged nowadays, as compared to just a few years ago. And why not? We have so many tools at our disposal by which to express this outrage. And none require any thinking whatsoever. When op-ed columns were the only means to highlight an unreported issue, you had to carefully craft your message and had time to reflect on your claims and conclusions. By contrast, our websites/blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts all allow us to be outraged and share our outrage with others in an instant. Groupthink is also encouraged, since many of these platforms come with ready-made friend networks. If my 10 friends are outraged by something then I should be too or I will be the outlier and ostracized. I will be tagged misguided. Or worse. De-friended.

But what bothers me so much more than the frequency of our outrage is WHAT we get outraged about and what we conveniently ignore because it is too difficult to tackle or takes more energy than a mouse click. What bothers me is this new breed of lazy internet armchair activists.

Back in February of 2006 , I wrote a long post in defense of the Danish cartoon of the prophet with a bomb in his turban. I believe in free speech and oppose all censorship, as long as it does not actively incite violence against a group. Poking fun at a religion is all good. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater is not. What happened on the radio in Rwanda before the genocide there was an obscene violation of free speech. Cartoonists, radio shock jocks, satirists, Borat, Glenn Beck, and others all have a right to say whatever they want just as we have the right to be upset about it and write their producer, station owner, etc. But when we do take that step we better understand exactly what it is that we find objectionable and why. We should be able to clearly and concisely articulate it and balance it with our other priorities and concerns. I am not saying don’t get mad about your local asshole shock jock. I did so here (same EXACT topic as Stein’s, but decidely different context and intent). I am just saying that every time you get outraged, you lose just a bit more of your effectiveness unless you are totally on top of your game. Look at what has happened to Jesse Jackson. One time civil rights leader, now a punchline. Look at what has happened to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). One time defender of animals now simply known as a promoter of gorgeous naked women. Look at what happened to the Tea Party. From grass roots revolution against the excess of government a year ago…to angry old xenophobic white people afraid of change. The lesson is that you pick and choose your battles wisely and understand and communicate your outrage in a cogent, unassailable and proportionate manner.

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But Is It Racist?

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There is a mutiny afoot in the Sepia Mutiny bunker. About half of us think that Joel Stein’s piece published in Time on Edison NJ was ill-humored garbage. The other half thinks it’s RACIST ill-humored garbage. I’m of the camp that thinks it’s racist. In the past few days the Desi blogosphere, twitterverse and facebookdom have been in uproar over this piece but what I find the most striking is the debate – “Is it or isn’t it racist?” What is it about the “R” word that makes us recoil and run to words like “stereotype” “bigot” or “xenophobic”? Why are we scared to call things racist?

I thought the article “My Own Private India” was racist – but then again, I come at things from a Critical Race Theory perspective where racialization is an inherent part of our history and narrative. It permeates through every aspect of living in the U.S., whether in how public policies and laws are implemented, healthcare is accessed or in a simple Time satire article. I think a lot of things are racist, more so than the average brown person, whether it be internalized, institutional or blatant. I think implicit biases are real, and people can be racist without intentionally doing so.

But instead of dissecting the Stein piece again, I wanted to highlight another racially controversial piece in the news. Today is the official premier of the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Last Airbender. The movie is based on the Nickelodeon anime-styled cartoon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which is a cartoon heavily influenced by East Asian philosophies, there’s martial arts in it, and the cartoons are brownish Asian looking kids. But the controversy has been around the casting process of the movie. White kids were cast as the main three roles, and the evil people? Why they were cast as the Desis: Dev Patel (as Prince Zuko), Summer Bishil (Princess Azula), Aasif Mandvi (Commander Zhao) and Persian actor Shaun Toub (Uncle Iroh). Question is, is it racist?

Floating World had a fantastic piece on their blog about the history of face painting in the industry, and the use of white people in the entertainment industry to play people of color.

…”The Last Airbender” offends even more [than “Prince of Persia”] with its casting of newcomer/lesser known White actors over equivalent Asian actors to portray its starring Asian characters. The marketing reasons attached to famous actors does not apply here; instead, the marketing assumption is that White actors are more “capable” than Asian actors for pulling in viewers, with a possible secondary assumption in their “superiority” in acting abilities. This overarching assumption is the basis for an institutionalized racism innate to Hollywood’s long, long history of ethnic narratives. [floatingworld]

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Nukistan!

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Drama drama drama at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in New Zealand last week.

You remember that big nuclear deal between India and the US a couple of years ago, right? You know, the one where Bush gave away the whole store to secure some sort of foreign policy legacy? Well, that decision appears to be coming back to bite the US right in the nuke. China now wants to build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan. Given the lengths the US went to make sure its deal with India went through, it’s going to have a hard time objecting to this agreement without upsetting Pakistan or further alienating China.

The reason the India-US nuclear deal was a good idea, at least the way it was sold to Congress, was that the deal would promote non-proliferation by bringing India into the fold of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its monitoring and regulation. But India only agreed to this on the condition that it would split its civil nuclear program from its military nuclear program, and that only the former would be subject to inspection and regulation.

The US also pushed through an exemption in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) which allowed India to trade in nuclear material and technology even though it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Signing the NPT is a prerequisite for participation in the NSG for every country except India. This blanket exemption drew concerns from the non-proliferation crowd. Their argument was that if India was supplied with enrichment and reprocessing technology for their civilian program, there was no mechanism preventing them from using that technology for their military program.

Makes sense, right? An inspection of a facility can establish whether or not the right amount of nuclear material is there, but how can an IAEA inspector determine whether a particular reprocessing method has been duplicated in a military facility that’s off limits?

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The Success of NREGA

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The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), a law passed in India in 2005 by the Congress Party that guarantees 100 days of paid labor to every adult member of rural households, has been the subject of enormous attention. It has been lauded for its initiative and criticized as another inefficient welfare program. Recent analysis, including a widely published AP article a few days ago, is shining a positive light on the legislation. It seems that NREGA, while expensive and imperfect, has been effective in reducing poverty across a wide swath of rural India, and has changed numerous lives for the better. As the program continues, civil society and government can do a great deal to improve its efficiency and impact.

The article that brought newfound attention on NREGA was an AP article published a few days ago entitled “One Indian Village Wins Freedom with Job Program” by Ravi Nessman. The article describes the wretched conditions in which the residents of the small town of Pipari, a small town 180 kilometers north of Lucknow, lived in before the job program:

For as long as anyone can remember, the people of Pipari have lived as virtual slaves.

The wealthy, upper-caste landlord forced them to work his fields for almost nothing, gave them loans at impossible interest rates, controlled their access to government welfare and held the police in his pocket.

They were dalits, the lowest caste, with houses made of cattle dung, clothing in tatters and barely enough food for a meal and a half a day. They were trapped below the bottom, serfs in an age-old system of exploitation that few in rural India dared question.

The “world’s largest social welfare program” helped them change their reality. The article describes how the residents demanded work under the new law in 2006, but local officials did not register them for work out of fear it would undermine their power. However, the local residents were emboldened by the law, and spent months fiercely protesting until they received their entitled work and pay.

The program has had a chain effect, allowing rural workers to use their earnings for savings instead of taking loans from the usurious landlord, and forcing the landlord to double wages to compete with the new workfare. They are able to send children to school and put food on the table, and the article ends on an inspiring note:

The men don’t pedal rickshaws in Kanpoor anymore, but stay home with their families and their fields. The women are earning money of their own for the first time. The villagers are even discussing taking on the next most powerful person in the area, the man who runs the government food shop, whom they accuse of stealing their subsidized sugar ration.

As for Shukla (the landlord), they still defer to him, but rebel in small ways. When he tells them to do work for him, they do what is convenient and ignore the rest, they said. And they have stopped touching his feet, giving him a little salute instead.

“He still acts like a king, but we don’t consider him a king anymore,” said Harpal Gautam, 37. “His rights and our rights are equal.”

The story paints a nice picture of NREGA, but is the story an anomaly or reflective of the program’s overall success? General consensus from various media and scholarly examinations seems to determine that the program has problems that need to be fixed, but, on the whole, has been surprisingly successful, especially considering the low expectations for most Indian government social welfare programs. Continue reading →

An Unfunny Joel Stein Walks Into Some Cow Dung

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…because he’s in his hometown of Edison, NJ. Get it? EDISON IS THE HOME OF A LOT OF INDIAN IMMIGRANTS! And they have overrun the township, what with their red dots, and zany, octopus-like deities and of course, their cows! Indians worship cows! And Edison is full of Indians! So there are cows in Edison, and the cows take dumps, and this unfunny columnist named Joel Stein really stepped in it, because the nasty brown shit (and by nasty brown shit, I mean “Indian”) is everywhere! The brown shit is unavoidable! ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS? WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING? Don’t you get it? That paragraph is humorous! I have bludgeoned you about the head with my clever humor! And if you don’t “get” it, you are excessively thin-skinned, like…like…an eggshell plaintiff!

What’s that you say, Desis? You weren’t impressed with Stein’s comedic stylings? Why…if you’re outraged, then that’s GREAT because it means Stein’s humor is EDGY. That’s what great comics do! They challenge you! They inspire your eyebrows to raise up like they’re furry, arched extras in a Petey Pablo video!

You didn’t think it was funny, at all? Well, chin up, dear Mutineers. Neither did I.

And that’s because, it wasn’t.

When I first ventured online today, I had a dozen tweets, emails and FB messages waiting for me. They all contained the same link to TIME magazine, a publication I adored as a child. My interest? Piqued. I started to read.

Let me tell you what I liked about the essay which all of you wanted me to read, first: the title. I loved the B-52s in high school and I love lifting blog titles from song titles. Clearly, Stein was referencing “Private Idaho“, which was a bit before my time (released: 1980) and to my INDIAN ears, a bit annoying. I preferred a single from a full decade later– “Deadbeat Club“. I used to put it on a lot of my mix tapes. Sigh.

Now that we got THAT out of the way, let me tell you what I disliked about Stein’s “meditation” on immigration. See what I did there? Huh? Huh? INDIAN STUFF, AGAIN!

Every. Thing. Else.

Let’s get started, shall we? But first, to really do Mr. Stein justice, I’m going to light some incense, play a “Jai Ho” remix, and nosh on some curry– but daintily! I don’t want to stain my exotic silk costume, which I bought in…of all places…Edison. What are the odds, right? Oh, wait…according to TIME magazine, the odds are very good that my Indian garb is from Edison. The whole place is infested with Patels. Did I mention there’s a dot on my forehead? I’m a dothead! Wheee! Oh, but I am getting ahead of myself (I am waggling my head as I type that. If you’re reading this, switch to an “Apu” voice, would you? Thanks, you’re a doll. I mean, you’re an Aishwarya!)

I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J. The mostly white suburban town I left when I graduated from high school in 1989 — the town that was called Menlo Park when Thomas Alva Edison set up shop there and was later renamed in his honor — has become home to one of the biggest Indian communities in the U.S., as familiar to people in India as how to instruct stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers.

HAHAHA! Stein just called Americans “stupid”. Doing this protects him from any accusations of racism or bias, because he made fun of himself! And he said he was pro-immigration, so he’s nice, too. See how that works? What are you saying? It DIDN’T work? Oh.

Hmmm.

Maybe that’s because it was made by an American! Ooooh, BURN! Like a VINDALOO! And you can’t get mad at me, because I’m an American, too! Huzzah for humor insurance! Continue reading →

Got a story that is “One in a Billion?”

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My friends Geeta and Ravi Patel, a talented brother and sister team based here in Los Angeles, are working on a comedy documentary titled, “One in A Billion.” The documentary follows Ravi’s quest for a wife and explains the odds stacked against him all along the way. Geeta previously co-directed the film Project Kashmir in 2008. Ravi has appeared in a few recent shows as touched on by Taz here. Here is the synopsis of the documentary:

THE ODDS

So, my parents, who are totally, sickly, exuberantly in love- they had a traditional Hindu arranged marriage. Naturally, they want me to marry an Indian girl. Let’s say I want that too. India has a population of over a billion people. Easy, right? But I live in America, where Indians only make up one percent of the general population. My odds of finding this person are one in a hundred. But now let’s say I want this person to be a woman (fifty percent): make that one in two hundred. Now let’s say, I want this woman to be unmarried and over the age of seventeen (fifty percent): one in four hundred. Now, actually, this girl is supposed to be Hindu and her family has to originate from a specific 50-square mile radius in the State of Gujarat, India): one in two thousand. Okay, so now let’s say I have to like her, she has to like me, and we have to actually find each other…what are the chances?

ONE IN A BILLION

This equation, or close versions of it, have been around for a long time in the American desi community. My undergrad buddies at Michigan and I ran through this equation back in the late 90s trying to explain our failed (alright, my failed) love lives. The funny thing is the math is very similar to the Drake Equation which attempts to approximate the number of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. The final odds all depend on the probability you assign to each variable.

    Ravi Patel is approaching age thirty and still single – a cataclysm in his culture. After breaking up with Audrey, his secret white girlfriend of two years, Ravi goes to India for his annual family trip. As usual, the pressure to get married is heavy, only this time Ravi succumbs; he agrees to try things their way: the semi-arranged marriage system. He comes back to America having no idea what he just agreed to. Blind dates with Indian girls introduced to him via biodatas – matrimonial resumes passed amongst the parents. Indian dating websites. Indian weddings. And matrimonial conventions for people all descending from a small group of villages in India – all with the same last name: Patel. Meanwhile, Ravi can’t stop thinking about Audrey. Ravi Patel has one year to find a girl, or next year he tries things the way his parents did it: the arranged marriage.

Because this is a documentary (i.e., things need to be serious) Geeta and Ravi are going to be interviewing a panel of all kinds of desi experts, including couples with interesting stories, as part of this PBS documentary. That is where you readers potentially come in. Got a good story about your relationship?

SEARCHING FOR INTERESTING PERSONALITY WITH GREAT DATING STORIES!!!
A PBS Documentary about Indian dating and marriage in America is searching for everyday people to appear as guests for a filmed radio talk show in conjunction with the film.

The talk show panel will include academics from around the world, celebrities, and everyday people. We are searching for the following:
Indian Americans who are currently dating people through biodatas/parents, marriage conventions, the internet, and other methods. We are searching for someone who might have faced a great deal of pressure/conflict from their family regarding love and marriage, and someone who has grappled with the question: “Do I need to marry an Indian to be happy?’ Must be dynamic, interesting personality. Shoot is Los Angeles in early July.

If you would like to share thoughts, have any further questions, or are interested in a preliminary interview, please email: tsbillion [at] gmail.com.

Since relationship posts on SM are always the most commented upon, I am sure some of you will be jumping at this opportunity.

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Tuna Princess

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Tuna Princess by Daisy Rockwell

**Mohamed Mahmood Alessa was arrested with his friend (and co-conspirator) on the way to join a militant group in Somalia. His mother has said that he wanted to take his cat, Tuna Princess, with him, but she did not allow it and they argued. **

Acrylic on wooden panel, 14″ x 14″

I haven’t unpacked my bags yet. Just yesterday I was in North Adams, Massachusetts, where I had driven on Thursday to attend the opening of Rasgulla, Daisy Rockwell’s art-show. (Daisy is a wonderful artist whose work I hadn’t known about till only a few months ago; I have met her since, and regard her as a close friend.) The exhibition in North Adams of Diasy’s paintings draws upon the idea of what Sanskrit aestheticians called “rasas,” the nine perfected moods, distillations of human emotions into a pure form. An important part of the exhibition is Daisy’s exploration of “political rasas,” her attempt to take fleeting news-images of public figures and turn them into physical objects. You see the painting of the Ayatollah in a purple forest; Barack Obama as a boy, standing on the tarmac with his father’s arms around him; Sarah Palin, wearing red shoes, sitting on a sofa, surrounded by dead animals. For me, the greatest interest lay in Daisy’s paintings of those accused of terrorist acts. I have long held that many of the writers and artists working in the aftermath of 9/11 have presented a faux familiarity with the so-called terrorist mind. Daisy’s art makes no such claims. It returns us to what is real–and therefore surprising–about human lives. She has painted portraits of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and there must be some bravery involved in putting these up on the walls of a gallery, but what Daisy is especially good at is painting those one would call ordinary terrorists. These are people who might be behind bars but in the paintings emerge as individuals, as individuals who are neither particularly heroic nor particularly villainous. This isn’t what DeLillo was writing about in a story that invoked Gerhard Richter–this isn’t about a viewer seeing that even terrorists can be forgiven. There is too much irony in Daisy’s paintings, and often, also glitter. There is ambiguity, perhaps, and more than that, a plain sense of attention. It is as if in an effort to find more about the world in which we are living, a world where the war on terror is a fact, the artist has finally found a human face.

But the state lacks all subtlety. Earlier this evening, I read that a six-year-old girl from Ohio, Alyssa Thomas, has been put on a “no-fly” list. Her father, Santhosh Thomas, a doctor, has readily admitted that Alyssa has probably been mean to her sister in the past. And added, “She may have threatened her sister, but I don’t think that constitutes Homeland Security triggers.” I think Daisy should paint the portrait of this little terrorist.
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