Who else has warm fuzzies?

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A Muslim Lawyer who “claims she has been meeting Lord Shiva off and on in her dreams for the past six years” has built a Hindu temple for the “libertarian” deity;

Noor Fatima, who laid the foundation for the Shiva Temple, claimed that Shiva had visited her in her dream, prompting her to build the temple. Although Fatima’s faith strictly prohibits idol worship, she decided to build the temple out of respect and tolerance for Hinduism.

The paradigm of secular harmony started her project in Varanasi with a mere five thousand rupees, but others pitched in to make her dream come true.

The temple opened a few days ago (March 5) for Maha Shivratri.

P.S. Thanks Pooja, for the tip 🙂 Continue reading →

The Filmigame

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My friend Atul R. at HBS emails me about a recent alumnus from his program coming up with the hottest game since Star Wars-opoly: The Filmigame filmigame.jpg

THE FILMIGAME is a fun and exciting experience for all Bollywood Movie Lovers. With over 1200 trivia questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Dances, Dialogues and Movie Clips. THE FILMIGAME is packed full of fun for everyone.

Play THE FILMIGAME, the first ever Trivia Game on DVD!

The Best of Bollywood comes right to your living room! Watch your favorite movie moments from blockbusters like KABHI KHUSHI KABHIE GHAM and KAL HO NAA HO to all time favorites like NAMAK HALAAL and SHARAABI!

See how much you know with over 1,200 questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Singers and Dances – All on DVD!

Challenge your friends and family to a night of unforgettable fun and entertainment!

This sucks actually. I am super competetive. If any cute girl invites me over for game night to play this thing, I will totally lose. I know jack about Bollywood films. Hmmmm. Maybe I could use it as a tutorial instead. They should totally market it that way.

THE FILMIGAME has been designed and developed by two dynamic Asian women based in the US, Sunaina Anand and Prita Uppal. Their main goal as UNAMEDIA is to bring people the most innovative and creative, culturally targeted entertainment. They aim to do this through advanced gaming and entertainment techniques, such as THE FILMIGAME.

Both Sunaina and Prita feel very passionate about this new game and are confident that it will be a hit with movie lovers all around the world. Ms Anand says: “We are developing cultural connections between people in a fun, entertaining and unique way. Our goal is to help people understand and enjoy Indian culture and traditions. And we believe THE FILMIGAME is a giant step in that direction.”

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SF Asian American Film Festival – Mar 10-20

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left_3.jpg A quick shout-out for Bay Area / Cali mutineers – the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival starts tomorrow, Thursday, Mar 10 and extends until Mar 20.
left_4.jpg They’ll be playing 16 Desi flicks including –

I’ll be representin’ SM with a crew of friends who are coming up from LA. The socializing promises to continue late into the evening 😉 Continue reading →

Chutney Lady

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The Gray Lady discovers chaat. Next, they’ll be telling their readers about this great new thing called roti 🙂 But then the piece goes all sensual on you:

The contrasts are, as one fan said, “a steeplechase for your mouth,” with different sensations galloping by faster than you can track them… Chaats can be made with almost anything crispy: … fresh ginger, mung bean sprouts and spice-dusted toasted lentils. Chaat masala usually includes amchoor, a tangy powder made from green mangoes, mint, cumin and pomegranate, but it must always include kala namak, a black salt with a pleasant whiff of sulfur… “In India a guy might have a Mercedes and live in a house on a hill, but he still puts on his slippers and goes to eat chaat…”

A fine tribute to pani puri… by Ganghadar Gopal Gadgil… “In that state of beatitude the Maharashtrians stop being surly, the Marwaris look at the millions of stars without being reminded of their own millions, the Sindhis admire the horizon without any intention of selling it, the Gujaratis speculate on the moon instead of the scrips they should have sold, the North Indians dream of things other than Hindi as the official language of the United Nations, and even the Parsi ladies stop nagging their husbands.”

Be still my gurgling stomach. And, more importantly, the story tells you where to get your fix, though Dimple’s been open for years:

… two popular, top-quality chaat specialists have opened in Midtown Manhattan: Dimple Fast Food and Sukhadia’s Sweets. Manhattan has lately been seized by a craze for Indian snacks, with upscale new places like Spice Market, Bombay Talkie, Von Singh’s, Devi, Lassi and Babu all claiming Indian street food as an inspiration…

… Chowpatty Foods [of Iselin, NJ]… has just imported a chaat cart from India in the red-and-white color scheme of the Chowpatty chaat wallahs… a traditional chaat wallah sits surrounded by his mounds of dry ingredients… and his own mix of jal-jeera, the “firewater” that is used to fill the habit-forming pani puri.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

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Was Lord Shiva a Libertarian?

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Tipster Suresh V. points us to this post on Instapundit. Within the post, an ill-informed commenter compares Lord Shiva’s destructive tendencies to those of whack-jobs like Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Before we could set the record straight by posting a critique on this site, an Instapundit reader named Srikanth Bellalacheruvu did so in a rather unusual manner:

Shiva is not simply a “destroyer”, and if he was, Indians wouldn’t worship him. They have several million Gods to choose from – it’s a free market out there.

Shiva is, to be accurate, the “Renewer”. Shiva destroys a world when it is beyond all hope of reform, in order to allow creative energies to build a better world. His anger is that of a righteousness, not that of hatred.

And Vishnu is not a “creator”. To be accurate, he “maintains order” in world that already exists.

If we were to use business terminology, Shiva’s rage would be “gales of creative destruction” and Vishnu would be a brilliant CEO adding to shareholder value.

If this analogy holds then that means Vinod is going to Heaven and I’m going to Hell.

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Salman and Padma

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I guess Salman Rushdie and his supermodel turned cook-book author-wife Padma Lakshmi are of the school that there is no such thing as bad publicity. After their most recent appearance in the New York press, you know when Rushdie threatened to beat NY Times writer Guy Trebay with a bat, Rush and Molloy are reporting in the New York Post that Rushdie will be writing his wife a screenplay.

Rushdie told Webster Hall’s Baird Jones: “I am working on a script for Padma to direct. It starts as a comedy, then becomes tragedy and finally ends in horrendous violence.”

This wouldn’t be that unusual, but the thing is, Padma can’t really act (Have you seen the Mariah Carey bomb Glitter or Kaizad Gustad’s Boom?). What makes him, or anyone, think she can direct?

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Russian dolls: diaspora within diaspora

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My friend Santhosh Daniel emails:

So, I was tooling around, looking for designs, and I dropped in or “on” [Tamil Nation].  As you can guess or tell from the address, it’s a site devoted to the Tamil diaspora, which got me thinking about the concept of diaspora not in terms of nation, but state…

My father is a Malaysian Tamil, my mother an Indian Tamil and I, an American Tamil and, my sense of ‘place resides in all three regions and often supersedes my sense of being Indian and/or “desi…”

In the States there is incessant discussion about the Indian diaspora, and I feel wholly disconnected from it… I am part of the Tamil diaspora as defined by Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka-Malaysia-U.S. just as a Punjabi is part of his diaspora as defined by Punjab-Pakistan-Canada-U.S. and a Gujarati via Gujarat-Africa-U.S. There is a cultural history to each of those things that is both separate and part of the “Indian diaspora”… Each group has its own values, transgressions, literature, heroes, migrations…

My life tends to be guided by the Tamil diaspora, I notice, as I get older.  Doesn’t mean I don’t see myself as part of the Indian gaggle, it’s just that I notice more and more how much I am also part of something else. (posted with permission)

Great observation. To the Punjabi diaspora, I’d add the U.K. To Gujaratis, add Antwerp. To Tamils, Singapore. And you see micro-diasporas in the U.S. with clusters of different ethnicities in different cities.

And it’s simultaneously more and less profound than Santhosh describes: every person is a morass of fault lines and microcommunities on axes like sexual preferences, hobbies and musical taste.

How to become a bubblegum pop star

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Step 1: Be born to cave-chested parents. Or purge.

Step 2: Hose on some primer and paint. Pluck out your eyebrows so they’re Filipino nail salon thin. Erase all personality, standardize your face so you look like every other club birdie.

Step 3: Make sure your belly’s showing. Don a booty mini. Can’t do much about the cleavage (see step 1).

Step 4: Shoot a skank vid. Grab yourself as much as possible. Tacky eyeshadow is a plus.

Step 5: Do a fawning interview with a British or Canadian desi Web site.

If you get around to it: Oh yeah, cut a track too. Just jack the beats from someone else, I’m sure she won’t mind.

If you have any, get rid of it: originality, singularity, musical talent

See also: D’Luscious, Sneha Mistri, Deeyah

As Jin tha MC said, ‘Don’t take this in a (personal) fashion. Nope, it’s just a good ol’ lyrical bashin’.’ Just how boring is bubblegum pop?

(thanks, sd)

Ya don’t say?

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The first step to solving a problem is admitting you’ve got one –

`Proper sanitation will boost Indian tourism` There is a need for a hygienic environment with a well-regulated sanitisation mechanism to boost the Indian tourism industry as it has good prospects even in the face of stiff competition from neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

It seems that fed-up tourism officials are raising a Sepia Mutiny of a different sort. Continue reading →