The sexiest wegetarian alive

Posted on by

SM tipster Flogging Mona directs my attention to the website of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Get Your Hot Tamales Here–
A picture is worth a thousand words, but after reviewing the pictures of the hundreds of sultry soy boys and Tofutti cuties who entered our “Sexiest Vegetarian” online photo contest, only one word comes to mind—HOT! The results are in, and our PETA panel has narrowed down the field. It’s time for you to pick the best from this crop of cruelty-free hotties and crown one guy and one gal the “Sexiest Vegetarian Alive.” Let us know which of the hot potatoes below lights your fire by choosing one woman and one man (don’t forget to click “Vote” at the bottom of the page). We’ll tally the votes and publish the winners’ photos in PETA’s Animal Times. Both winners will also receive a terrific cruelty-free prize package!

Thank you to all who entered. For those who missed the deadline, don’t despair—come back soon to GoVeg.com, where we’ll post details about how to strut your stuff in next year’s contest.

I am a little disappointed to see that despite the fact that Indians invented wegetarianism there is only 1 (maybe 2) brown person on the list. Next year we will submit Anna’s profile. Continue reading →

Tribal ‘justice’

Posted on by

With every prison blown to dust,
My enemies walk free… [Sting]

Mukhtaran Bibi’s rapists, who received approval to gang-rape from a village panchayat, were set free by judges in Multan today. In some ways this outcome is hard to believe, in other ways all too easy:

The victim of Pakistan’s most notorious rape case wept bitterly after a court in the southern city of Multan overturned the verdict against three of the four alleged rapists and two tribal elders, and quashed the death sentence against the sixth… five of the men prepared to walk free…

… she has maintained the 24-hour police guard at the gate of her remote farmhouse after several death threats. She believed the threats stemmed from her refusal to entertain repeated clemency pleas from the Mastoi, who still live just 100 metres away…

… the panchayat system… has no legal standing but is still prevalent in many rural towns. Last week elders in another Punjabi village ordered that a two-year-old girl be married to a man 33 years her senior. The betrothal was in compensation for an adulterous affair committed by her uncle. [Guardian]

The wisdom of the elders indeed. Previous post here.

Update: In the herky-jerky, stop-start fashion of a desi criminal justice system, the rapists have been re-arrested (thanks, SD).

Seven chutney squishies, make it quick

Posted on by

Desipina is again hosting its low-rent, highwire theater collection Seven.11 in Manhattan, and Anuvab Pal is contributing a new piece called Paris. The schtick is that playwrights of all colors contribute seven tales of 11 minutes each, all set in convenience stores. It sounds much like 11.9.01: September 11, a collection of short films 11 minutes, nine seconds and one frame long by filmmakers including Mira Nair, Sean Penn, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros), Samira Makhmalbaf and Youssef Chahine.

As far as creative gimmicks go, this is a good one: even the Manhattan Project found creative benefit in time constraints, although nuclear incineration has been known to be motivating. This is the third year of Seven.11, so it’s clearly a successful franchise. The quick-witted Lethia Nall, who was so good in Alter Ego’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, appears in both Paris and Soonderella.

Anuvab Pal’s PARIS: Paris is a play about an 11 minute conversation without consequence on a lazy Paris afternoon…

Samrat Chakrabarti/Sanjiv Jhaveri’s new musical SOONDERELLA: a fairy tale of a different colour… The only way to follow up with last year’s wildly successful A Very Desi Christmas, a pop musical adaptation of Scrooge, is with another 11-minute musical set in the convenience store…

It’s also a clear demarcation between Right and Left Coast desi stereotypes; the Left Coast analogue would be 80 tales of 86 engineers, but who’d go see it? Bugaboo and nerdcore call my bluff.

Seven.11, 4/1-4/18/05, Thurs-Sat & Mon at 8pm, Sun at 3pm; The Tenement Theatre, 97 Orchard St. (bet. Delancey/Broome), Manhattan; $15 General, $11 Students/Seniors; 800-965-4827 or TicketWeb (keyword:SEVEN.11)

Rough Riders

Posted on by

reliefriders.jpg

This one is dedicated to all you out there right now, slaves to your computers, wishing that instead you had a powerful beast between your legs and the warm desert wind blowing through your hair. Outside Magazine recently awarded its 2005 Best Trips Award (Asia category) to Alexander Souri, the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI). As reported by NewKerala.com:

“Alexander Souri, who has worked on “The Matrix” and “X-Men”, is the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI) whose members made the trip in October last year to provide medical and relief supplies to people.

When I created Relief Riders International I never dreamed we would receive such international recognition so soon,” said Souri after winning the Outside Magazine’s Best Trips 2005 award.

“I dreamt of a new way to travel, a chance to see new lands and an opportunity to transform both the visitor and the visited. I am so honoured that Outdoor Magazine appreciated our vision.”

With nearly a million subscribers, New York-based Outside magazine is one of the best-known adventure travel magazines in the world. The magazine recognized RRI for its successful aid component, emphasising the high point of the trip was seeing villagers receive knowledge such as AIDS education plus food and supplies that they desperately need.

RRI is now making final preparations for its second Rajasthan Relief Ride, which begins Feb 25.

The inaugural 15-day ride, created by Souri to establish a living memorial to his Indian father, began at the majestic Imperial Hotel with a bus ride to historic Fort Mukandgarh.

Continue reading →

The next time you’re in Mississippi, wear a white hood while you’re at it.

Posted on by

J Low.jpg So. J.Lo does German TV wearing a very unique outfit; embroidered on the cuff of her white dead-animal-skin with more dead-animal fur-hooded jacket, there is a logo that includes an Iron Cross, a lightning bolt and skulls.

I don’t expect any of you to connect the dots THIS late in the day, so I’ll just TELL you what’s up– the design resembles patches that were once worn by SS troops during WWII. Thanks to Adolf Hitler, the Iron Cross transitioned from a “proud symbol of courage among German soldiers” to something that represented the Third Reich.

Many of you are aware of another symbol that was tragically misappropriated by Hitler– the swastika. Well, the way that Hitler ruined the Iron Cross was by–you guessed it (assuming you intellectuals are still reading about our gen’s liz taylor)–slamming a swastika on it. Heil Assh@le.

J.Lo’s taste in clothing always gets attention, but this time Drudge and the pajamahadeen are on her like a potential husband.

From Drudge’s site:

The designer of the one-of-a-kind, $2,300 jacket, Jeff Sebilia, says his imagery not only doesn’t endorse Nazism, but is meant “to make people aware of just how powerful imagery can be. We all know the swastika was a peaceful Hindu image, and we know what the Nazis did to that. I think we can use imagery that has stark emotion and make it our own.”

Suuuuuure. Hide behind the “Hindu” explanation. I have no doubt that when people see this swastika-less coat of his, they are thinking, “oh, isn’t it sad that something good from Hinduism was so misused?” :p

I’m positive that’s what J.Lo had in mind, too; she was obviously reclaiming symbols– for all of us. Continue reading →

M.I.A. signs with Interscope

Posted on by

Billboard.com reports that powerhouse music label Interscope Records has signed U.K. rapper M.I.A., and will release the controversial musician’s upcoming album “Arular” in the U.S. by mid-April (via Nirali Magazine). She’s currently touring the country, and will appear at the immensely popular Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in May.

Billboard.com: Sources: Interscope signs M.I.A.
Previous posts: M.I.A.: step up to blow up, Steel balls and pots, M.I.A. looked directly into my eyes!, and Military chic

Continue reading →

DRUM beats on Pataki

Posted on by

Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) is organizing a rally on Saturday, March 5th at noon in Queens “to protest attacks on immigrant communities and to demand that Governor Pataki and other political representatives recognize all immigrants’ right to a driver’s license.” This according to their press release:

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles initiated plans last year that would result in the suspension of nearly 300,000 immigrants’ driver’s licenses and inappropriately use the DMV as an immigration agency. Over 40 organizations, mostly based in Queens and many belonging to the New York Coalition for Immigrants’ Rights to Driver’s Licenses, have come together to form the Queens Drivers’ License Coalition and will march in opposition to this policy. They are demanding that the right to drive be recognized as an immigrant worker rights issue, that all drivers be granted one license (no separate driving permits for immigrants), that DMV not act as immigration enforcement, and that Governor Pataki and other elected officials stop pushing immigrant workers underground.

Obviously this issue is of great importance to the South Asian community, many of who make their living as drivers:

Moni Alam, a Bangladeshi mother of two and family organizer at DRUM, expresses, “My husband, who is also a target of Special Registration, is very worried that his driver’s license will be taken away and that the DMV will help the Department of Homeland Security to deport him. He drives a taxi six days a week and if he can’t do his work, our family will have no income and we’ll be pushed further underground. I want to ask Governor Pataki and the DMV, ‘How will we survive?’”

Continue reading →

Doping scandal hits kabaddi

Posted on by

SM tipster Vipur Andleigh (by the way, a great stand-up comedian) turns us on to a report in the San Jose Mercury News about the arrest of kabaddi pro — yes, you read that right, kabaddi pro — Kuljeet Singh:

Coming home after a grueling winter season of Kabaddi matches in East India, Kuljeet Singh arrived at San Francisco International Airport two weeks ago with a suitcase full of trophies, neatly folded designer jeans and a stash of syringes and steroids in his shoes.

He got as far as customs.

Singh obviously isn’t the sharpest raider on the kabaddi circle. Everybody knows that the best way to smuggle illegal drugs into the country is by stuffing them up your ass, or ingesting a sealed bag of them. Hiding them in your shoes is so 1998.

Continue reading →

The Wedding Planner

Posted on by

Voice of America gives a little preview of what many of us will be doing through the spring and summer months: going to the elaborate Indian weddings of people younger than us.

The bride is always beautiful.

And Sumit Arya’s job is to make sure she looks perfect. Originally from India – he’s a wedding planner.

“I’ve been raised half over here and half in India, so I do combine a lot of the ideas when it comes to wedding planning,” says Mr. Aray.

Sumit and his wife Shika make a bride’s dreams come true. Their Expos are one-stop shopping trips, where a traditionally-minded bride can find everything from jewels and exquisite silk, to a Hindu clergyman to officiate.

Vimesh Thakkar, a Hindu pundit says, “I go all around the U.S.A. As a matter of fact, next month I am going to Puerto Rico. Nowadays, people want the ceremonies in resorts. So I go to Mexico and other places to do [weddings].”

Must be nice. Maybe I shall become a clergyman. What?
The transcript of the videoclip can be found here. Continue reading →

Vikram Chatwal’s Coolest Years

Posted on by

Of the many entertaining shows on VH-1–The Surreal Life, Strange Love, Fabulous Life of…, etc.–My Coolest Years–Rich Kids, features our own ABCD version of Paris Hilton–Vikram Chatwal.

My Coolest Years is 10 episodes of fun teenage reflection. Each hour episode dedicated to the personal stories of a particular clique. If you grew up in America in the last 30 years, you’ll recognize the types. We all had to pick one. To hang out with. To hook up with. To torment. To be. (Or not to be!) We’ll hear from the Metalheads, Geeks, Hippies, Bad Girls, B Boys, Jocks & Cheerleaders, the Rich Kids, the kids who were In The Closet, their “First” Times (wink wink), and their Summer Vacations.

But, what exactly do we learn about Vikram?

Where did he grow up and what did he drive? Vikram resided in a 10,000 square foot penthouse apartment and drove Porsche’s, Mercedes’, and BMW’s. Cliche, isn’t it?

Did he have a nanny? While the other rich kids were being watched by Olga the swedish exchange student, or Marie the French Au Pair, Vikram was reared by Raju, the male nanny, who would come to school to serve Vikram lunch.

What was his secret stash? When other kids were hiding porno mags, alcohol, and cigarettes, Vikram like a good little desi-boy, hid gaudy jewelry from his parents.

To watch Vikram, and the other rich kids in all their splendour , check out the next episode of My Coolest Years–Rich Kids on VH-1 airing next on March 22.

More Sepia Mutiny on Vikram here, here and here. Continue reading →