Greeting cards attack when you least expect it

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Not too long ago, a friend and I made our way to a nice movie theater in Los Angeles, Calif. And by nice, I mean the kind of theater that brutally charges more for tickets on weekends, and has an overpriced boutique shop in the lobby. Other than that, it was the same as any other not-quite-as-nice theater.

The boutique shop had a section with South Asian-inspired products. This was especially interesting to me because of the noticeable rise in the commercial utilization of the culture. Besides the standard new age fare — incense, books, teas — there were a couple of products that caught my eye. A candle bust of Siddhartha (struck me as a tad sadistic), and a pair of greeting cards from J&M Martinez, which are pictured to the right.

It looks like they’re trying to depict Hindu Gods, but I don’t have a clue about which ones they’re supposed to be. The blue-skinned male on the left could be Krishna, Ram or Shiva, but none of them were that fat. The female on the right could be Lakshmi, but doesn’t she have another pair of arms? Am I completely leaving someone out? And what are the inscriptions all about?

In the end, and especially after noticing the exorbitant price tag, all I could remark to my friend was, “what the f–k?!” They rolled their eyes, as if to suggest that they didn’t care. I would be forced to allow the confusion to consume me as we walked away, enrage me during a trip to the cash-draining snack counter, and finally choke me with a sanity-busting froth during an endless stream of mind-numbing trailers. Thankfully, the two-hour borefest that followed put me to sleep and out of my misery. Still, please help me make sense of my cardstock nemeses. Or at least help me make sense of this senseless post.

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Taxi Cab Confessions

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Inodlink’s Melvin Durai pays tribute to the last honest profession: The cab driver. What you say?!?

Perhaps all your encounters with cabdrivers have been sour. They donÂŽt stop for you, and if they do, the only place they seem interested in taking you is to the cleaners.

But before you pass judgment on the millions of cabbies in the world, you need to realize that some of them are so honest, theyÂŽll return almost anything left in their cabs, even Harry Potter books.

But wait…

Glenn Sher, a Long Island, NY, cabby, returned a womanÂŽs purse containing $13,300. ThatÂŽs a lot of money, almost enough to take Paris Hilton on a date.

“I could have used the money to pay bills or whatever,” Sher told The New York Post. “But it wasnÂŽt mine. I canÂŽt take whatÂŽs not mine.” The mayor of New York was truly impressed. “ThatÂŽs amazing,” he said. “I didnÂŽt realize we had a cabdriver who spoke English.”

Another New York cabby, Benjamin Adjepong, was commended by the Taxi and Limousine Commission for returning a bag containing $7,000. “It makes me feel good, and my wife is so excited,” he told WABC TV. Now thatÂŽs a good wife — excited about her husbandÂŽs honesty, not even thinking about the number of shoes she could have bought.

Cabbies in other countries have been just as honorable. Ashraf Qureshi, a Pakistani immigrant in Australia, drove a tourist around for three weeks, even let the man make long distance calls on his phone and eat meals in his apartment — allowed him to do everything but sleep with his wife.

The man paid Qureshi $50,000 for various expenses, according to an Ananova.com report. But after the cabby deposited the money in his bank account, he began to feel guilty about accepting so much and returned $40,000 to the man. “It was all getting too much for me,” Qureshi said. ItÂŽs a good thing heÂŽs a taxi driver, because with integrity like that, he could never be a corporate executive.

I am personally undecided on cab drivers. While traveling Jordan I hired a cab driver, who although nice at first, wanted to share a hotel room with me on the first night. Maybe if I’d known him longer. He also began to cry when I didn’t tip him at the same time I paid him for the three days. I tried to explain he’d be getting a big tip when he dropped me off at the airport, but it didn’t seem to register. That’s my taxi cab confession.

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Wealthy skanks complicate “The Simple Life” for mechanic

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Laughs were aplenty during last night’s season premiere of Fox’s “The Simple Life,” when socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie shared their shocking blend of ignorance and helplessness with a no-nonsense desi mechanic.

The reality show inserts Hilton, heiress to the hotel fortune by the same name, and Ritchie, daughter of singer Lionel Ritchie, into fish-out-of-water situations. The past two seasons placed the bicoastal, hard-partying pair in a small farming town, and on a road trip through rural America. The current season assigns them internships in a wide range of fields.

Hilton and Ritchie’s first job landed them in Bayonne, N.J., where they were assigned the seemingly easy tasks of changing oil, customer service and moving cars at Quality Auto Center. Under the supervision of Ketan, the pair showed up late, crashed into cars, alienated customers and stole a police cruiser.

When it came time to evaluate their performance, Ketan gave them appropriate marks:
Customer service: F
Changing oil: D
Appearance: “A for that, for sure.”

“The Simple Life” next airs on February 9 at 8:30 p.m. on Fox.

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Desh-hop

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While we’re freeing Jins from diyas, definitely check out the desh-hop artists who own3d the mike in the hip-hop documentary Brown Like Dat.

First, MC Kabir. The son of Nobel winner Amartya Sen, Kabir is half Italian and lives in Boston. He’s got good flow, an apropos namesake and a solid track in ‘Recognize.’ Kabir tells a great story on screen about freestyling in a dark club and pushing off an overzealous fan who was trying to grab the mike. ‘When I looked closer, I realized it was Wyclef.’ And they jammed. It’s hard to tell the story while looking humble; his lips twitched, but he had it sorted. Listen here.

Also give a listen to the Himalayan Project. Chee Malabar, who showed up to the screening, sported a gaunt frenchie and a serious ‘fro, looking for all the world like a brown Dogg.

The group’s name pays homage to their ancestral roots in India and China — the Himalayan mountain range straddles the borders of both countries. [Official site]

Listen here.

It’s all about the accent

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The Power99 controversy elicited several comments on our website that seemed (to me at least) to partially condone the Shock Jocks behavior because they were receiving “poor service.” The customer service representative, Tina, said “ma’am” instead of sir for example. Many Americans also seem to resent the fact that the Indian call center operators are being taught English in order to supposedly “fool” them into thinking they are talking to a representative in the U.S. The Tampa Tribune reported last week that the imperfection of these learned accents may cost some call centers their jobs:

When Sykes Enterprises began considering India for its customer service call centers a few years ago, it saw a country with many bright, hardworking and English- speaking citizens. What it didn’t anticipate was how much the Indian accent would perplex some American consumers.

On Thursday, Tampa-based Sykes said it would cut the volume of work at its Bangalore, India, facility by half. The call center, which in the past has provided customer service functions for Delta Air Lines and the Internet Service Provider MSN, generates about $4 million a year in revenue. About $2 million of that business will be shifted to Sykes call centers in other Asian countries. Sykes did not name these other countries.

Just because Indian accents aren’t good enough doesn’t mean the jobs will be returning to America. I guess the trick is to better fool American ears. Apparently perception is more important than reality. But where will they be moved?

Formerly controlled by the United States, the Philippines offers a more “Americanized” culture and employees with lighter accents. Also, there is less employee turnover than in India.

So let me get this straight. Slightly imperfect accent -> verbal abuse -> high turnover -> outsource the outsourced work to another country. I guess that would be considered market driven but the fact that its based more on perception than on reality makes it seem kind of silly to me. Then again, I guess everything in the business world is based upon perception. Continue reading →

The Little Terrorist

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The movie Born into Brothels isn’t the only film featuring South Asian youngsters to get an Oscar nod. So does the short film The Little Terrorist about a boy that climbs over the wrong fence in search of his cricket ball. From The Times of India:

thelittleterrorist.jpg

Ashvin Kumar’s Little Terrorist has been nominated for an Oscar in the Short Film (Live Action) category. “The news hasn’t sunk in yet… I didn’t see the nomination coming but after I received a call from the Academy three weeks back, I thought I might make it,” says Ashvin, son of fashion designer Ritu Kumar.

Little Terrorist is about crossing boundaries and is based on the true story of a Pakistani boy who crosses the LoC after his cricket ball lands on a minefield in Indian territory. “The boy is given shelter by an elderly orthodox Hindu Brahmin and the relationship between them is what my film is about,” says Ashvin, pointing out that though the setting of his film is political, the essential theme is that of humanity. “The film shows how, despite artificial boundaries and barbed wires between people, the basic human instinct to give shelter to an innocent remains — no matter how many lines are drawn between people.”

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Jin and juice

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Sajit did a very thorough post about the offensive Hot 97 tsunami song. I wanted to call out the lyrics of Jin tha MC’s reply track. It’s in the finest tradition of angry, political rap, and it’s actually a good track on its own merits. Listen to the track.

You got it all twisted if you think I’m here to cockblock
on a bunch of no-talent, wanna-be shock jocks (nah)
And you say it’s all freedom of speech
Well, you just lost yours, read ’em and weep
Won’t be happy ’til you’re fired…

Fuck the tsunami song and whoever thought of it
Matta fact, fuck the engineer that recorded it…
Anything for ratings, huh? That shit is corporate

That little bullshit statement has gotta be
The world’s most half-assed apology
Thousands are still gettin’ discovered each day
How dare you compare a life to a week’s pay?

HipHopMusic says the station issued a weird, passive-aggressive apology, and Sprint and McDonald’s have pulled their advertising for now:

At 6 AM this morning, Hot 97 announced the Miss Jones morning show is “suspended indefinitely”… Most of the calls they took were in favor of bringing Miss Jones back. Many people have reported to me that when they called to speak against bringing the show back they were screened out…. They’re not saying whether the suspension is permanent or temporary, or whether it is a paid suspension….

They also played Jin’s dis track repeatedly.

Riding the Delhi metro

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I rode the Delhi metro the week it opened its first underground route:

Extra-wide cars, fully automated driverless trains, all-electronic fare gates with magnetic farecards and cool magnetic tokens, overhead electric wires that are safer than a third rail, floor-through layout so you can walk from one end to the other without opening doors… this subway system has the finest in Indian, err, South Korean tech. The subway feels and sounds like the D.C. metro. It’s faster and wider than Boston’s, newer and more luxurious than New York’s.

Check out the photos.

Saru Jayaraman

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The NYT profiled Saru Jayaraman, a 29-year-old activist for Manhattan restaurant workers, last week (thanks, Ms. World):

She is the executive director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, a little nonprofit that just pulled off a David-versus-Goliath feat. The center extracted $164,000 from two fashionable Manhattan restaurants – Cite and the Park Avenue Cafe – to settle lawsuits that involved charges of discrimination and failure to pay overtime to 23 restaurant employees, most of whom are immigrants from Mexico and Bangladesh.

The ‘pretty people in sales, pimply workhorses in the back office’ model is used by many, many industries (software, consulting, finance). But you can’t put it in employment ads. There’s a euphemistic hypocrisy here, but like blind auditions at symphony orchestras, it at least gives interviewees an honest shot.

“… you wouldn’t believe the ads put out by restaurant employers – ‘good-looking required, send photos’ – to be a waiter. Employers have told us that means they want good-looking white people in the front and hard workers in the back. Hard workers mean immigrants…”

Jayaraman has an interesting background:

A daughter of immigrants from southern India, a graduate of Yale Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, she was singled out and honored as one of America’s finest young people in 1995 by President Bill Clinton… Ms. Jayaraman, whose father is an unemployed software developer and whose mother is a school aide, grew up in a Mexican-American neighborhood in southeast Los Angeles… She teaches… immigrant rights at New York University… She is a soprano who used to sing with a gospel choir at Harvard.

Jayaraman’s organization is opening its own coop-style restaurant on a fashionable street in Manhattan. It’ll be an interesting experiment in a tough biz.

This fall, it plans to open a restaurant, Colors, on Lafayette Street near Astor Place, to be owned and governed by workers.

Pushing back on premarital injustice

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Women with supportive, well-off fathers often are often at the forefront of women’s rights in conservative nations, because they have the means. One such woman has shocked Egypt by filing a paternity suit against a well-known actor. Because it involves a woman fighting injustice before marriage, losing her privacy and being publicly vilified, it reminds me of the dowry extortion case in Delhi:

The standard three-step program for any unmarried upper-class Egyptian girl who becomes pregnant is an abortion, an operation to refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first unwitting suitor the family can snare… Instead [Hind el-Hinnawy] did the unthinkable here: she had the child and then filed a public paternity suit… Ms. Hinnawy contends that the two had what is known as an urfi [unregistered] marriage… She may well set an Egyptian legal precedent by requesting that the court order Mr. Fishawy to submit to a DNA test…

Corporate tycoons and politicians who are married have found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with everyone from secretaries to belly dancers with an Islamic seal of approval… “People prefer that a woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t become a scandal…”

… the case would help defeat the conservative Saudi values that she said had changed Egyptian society for the worse… “These values from Wahhabi Islam are completely different from our Islamic values,” Mrs. Bakr said. “This is petrodollar Islam…” [NYT]

The 2003 Nisha Sharma case in Noida:

Just a couple of hours before her wedding ceremony, Ms Nisha Sharma used her mobile phone to report her in-laws-to-be to the police. They had allegedly demanded Rs 12 lakh from Ms Sharma’s father, and had even assaulted him when he had hesitated to comply with the demand…

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