Music family’s matriarch passes away

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From the Los Angeles Times (free registration required):

Tehmina Mehta, the matriarch described as the quiet strength of a classical music family that encompassed her late husband, Mehli, and sons Zubin and Zarin Mehta, has died. She was 96. Mehta died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes…Her late husband perhaps offered the greatest assessment of Tehmina Mehta when he told The Times in 1984: “Though her body is frail, her mind is stronger than all of us put together. She’s the center of our family and the one person who holds it all together.” [Los Angeles Times]

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Incestuous affair crumbles after sex change

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This one has it all: Hermaphroditism, incest, sex change surgery, betrayal, and the inevitable lawsuit. Cable executives score their next movie-of-the-week:

Twenty-nine-year-old rubber tapper Kuttiyamma, born with both male and female genitals, had been in love with the relative, Laura, 25, for 15 years before having surgery to become a man and change her name to Binu, the Hindustan Times reported. But Laura became engaged to another man and Binu is suing her for breach of trust after spending 50,000 rupees ($1,150) on the sex change in southern Kerala state. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: He sues lover after sex change hitch

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Bangladesh thrashes luxury goods

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Bangladeshi customs officials have yet to discover the concept of a seizure auction:

Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka. NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap. "They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals…so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: Declaring cars as scrap? Dhaka customs makes it true

Update: BBC News has a small photo of the glorious event.

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What lies beneath

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Accents matter:

In a rambunctious Meatpacking District bar, I met a woman whose parents were German. She was tall, brown-haired and fair and had grown up in India. She had a Delhi accent.

At a self-storage business, I met a manager who looked black. He had a courtly manner and a delightful accent, and his nametag said Seetram (Sitaram). He was surprised and pleased when I guessed Guyanese.

In college, the hardest partier in the entire coed dorm was a girl from a wealthy Bombay family… She once told me, ‘English is my native language, yaar. I can hardly speak Hindi.’ She had that aggressive Bombay accent, the hard one used by young men on the make, not the singsong one nor the Marathi tapori…

In Barcelona, a middle-aged cab driver with a rich baritone guessed I was Latin American, narrowing it down to either México or Costa Rica. He was very good, because I had picked up my Spanish from a costarricense teacher in a California high school. In his mind, the Hindú bit was of least importance.

In 1993 I rode my motorcycle from San Francisco to Seattle and back, pausing overnight at a remote motel in Crescent City near the California-Oregon border. The motel owner was happy to hear Hindi. It’s a pity I didn’t have Gujarati in my repertoire for that extra discount.

Congratulations, [the talented] Mr. Rupinder. You’ve successfully passed just this once. But you’re only as good as your last con.

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Upgrading my religion

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That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Upgrading my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it…

— apologies to R.E.M., ‘Losing My Religion’

Are you highly religious and anxious about the fast pace of technological change? Simply text your guru for personalized blessings (via Boing Boing):

… they were dubbed “bhajan-kirtan” channels, watched by the very old or the very bored… [Sadhana] has started an SMS service by which viewers can contact their favourite guru for blessings/advice. So, if you want to know from Sudhanshuji Maharaj if it’s the right day to go looking for a job, all you have to do is type “7333” and “S SUD”.

… the channel has empanelled 40 spiritual leaders. “We get 20,000 SMS every day from all kinds of viewers,” says Gupta, who has tied-up with 85 cellular operators…

Or launch a satellite so you know when to pray:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said Sunday it plans to launch an $8 million satellite within two years to take pictures of the moon to find lunar calendar dates… “The satellite will have a fixed camera on board that will take highly detailed pictures of the moon and beam them back to earth…” A moon sighting committee in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, frustrated millions of worshippers when it said it got the date wrong by a day for the peak of this year’s haj pilgrimage in January.

There is already some criticism from religious officials in Saudi Arabia, which uses the lunar calendar. “The shape of the moon has to be seen from the ground,” said Osama al-Bar, dean of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute for Haj Research in Saudi Arabia.

Osama the Hajj researcher has decreed it, so thus it will be.

Abercrummy & Fitch settles

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SM tipster Chai Shenoy, brings it to our attention that there has been a settlement in the discrimination lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch. From the New York Sun:

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge yesterday approved a $40 million settlement of employment discrimination lawsuits charging that a popular clothing chain, Abercrombie & Fitch, avoided hiring minorities and women nationwide in order to preserve the “all-American look” cultivated by the company in its catalogs and advertisements.

After a brief hearing, Judge Susan Illston gave a strong endorsement to the settlement. In addition to offering cash compensation, the deal requires the company to set up a diversity office and to cease the practice of limiting recruiting to certain fraternities and sororities.

“I think this is excellent work,” Judge Illston said. She heaped praise on attorneys for both the company and the class. The judge also paid tribute to the “courage” of Abercrombie employees who were named plaintiffs in the case. “I do think you’ve done a public service,” she said.

The lawsuits alleged that Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos who were hired by the company were often relegated to stockrooms where those staffers could not be seen by customers. An attorney for Abercrombie referred questions to the officials at the company’s headquarters, who offered no comment. In court filings, the company has denied any systemic discrimination.

Incidentally, A & F is also known for its T-shirt “humor”, which pokes fun at minority stereotypes.

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Lassi

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A non-desi former pastry chef has opened a restaurant in Greenwich Village which serves traditional dhaba food, lassi and paranthas (thanks, BridalBeer). The new place is called Lassi:

From delicate plate-dwarfing dosas at Hampton Chutney Co. and the N.Y. Dosa cart, to wraplike rolls at Roomali and the Kati Roll Co., to the colorful, crunchy chaat of Sukhadia’s Gokul, we’re undoubtedly having a Southeast Asian street-food moment…

I think they mean South Asian, but carry on:

Catchily named for the frothy yogurt drinks on offer in mango-flavored profusion all over town, Lassi is much more than an ethnic smoothie shop (though its premade featured beverages, in potent, refreshing flavors ranging from spice-flecked cardamom and vanilla to a complex and curdy lemon, can easily become an après-gym addiction).

… Lassi is bright and cheerful–like its owner, Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez, the former pastry chef of L’Impero and Veritas. A chance encounter with a Punjabi student in a pastry class she was teaching–and many stereotype-shattering home-cooked Indian meals– inspired Carlucci-Rodriguez to change culinary course. And even though she’s an unlikely Indian-restaurant owner, she’s a passionate one. Her food tastes unlike any other Indian in town–fresher, cleaner, but undiluted in its intricately spiced essence.

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Torrent of Aishwarya Rai on ‘Oprah’

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“The most beautiful woman in the world” takes on the most powerful woman in the world in an apocalyptic duel to the death on the “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Download the entire sari-wrapping face-off:

“The Oprah Winfrey Show”: Aishwarya Rai (Quicktime, 11 MB, 11 mins.)
Requires a BitTorrent downloader — PC, Mac

Previous post: Not just a rumor anymore, Ash on Oprah this Monday

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“like radioactive fallout in an arable field”

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Perhaps to build enthusiasm for its annual book festival that took place this past weekend, The LA Times Op-ed section featured a moving ode to books (free registration required) by one Salman Rushdie (tip from Apul).

Books, since we are speaking of books, come into the world and change the lives of their authors for good or ill, and sometimes change the lives of their readers too. This change in the reader is a rare event. Mostly we read books and set them aside, or hurl them from us with great force, and pass on. Yet sometimes there is a small residue that has an effect. The reason for this is the always unexpected and unpredictable intervention of that rare and sneaky phenomenon, love. One may read and like or admire or respect a book and yet remain entirely unchanged by its contents, but love gets under one’s guard and shakes things up, for such is its sneaky nature. When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives, and those books become parts of the way we see our lives; we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds become mixed up with ours — they become ours.

That’s some deep stuff. Walking around the festival yesterday I stumbled across a modest line of people waiting for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni to sign her book at the Artwallah table. Artwallah incidentally just released their book Shabash! which they refer to as “the hip guide to all things South Asian in North America.” The highlight of my day was when I made it over to listen to Jared Diamond speak about his book Collapse. Fascinating. Book festivals kick ass. Continue reading →

Soldier bites off roommate’s nose

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Indian soldiers are apparently grossly underfed, and angry enough to eat just about anything:

The two soldiers from India’s Eastern Frontier Rifles were alone in their barracks Wednesday night when Lance Corporal Bhupesh Rava lost his cool because his roommate wanted the lights on for a little while longer. An enraged Rava, who had returned from daytime duty, attacked Sepoy Durga Lama, pinned him down and gnawed off his nose, police said. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: When Rava asks you to turn out the light…

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