I am wanting my MTV

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Wow, I guess when it rains it pours. From Worldscreen.com:

MTV Networks today announced the launch of MTV World, initially consisting of three new channels in the U.S. targeting Indian-American, Chinese-American and Korean-American viewers.

The channels will feature content from MTV’s own international networks, plus original programming, promos and packaging created in the U.S. “We live in an increasingly diverse and multicultural country, where conversations at the dinner table and in the living room are more and more taking place in Chinese, Hindi, Urdu and Korean,” said MTV Networks’ chairman and CEO, Judy McGrath. “Launching these new channels is the next logical and tremendously exciting step for MTV Networks, delivering customized programming that reflects the bi-cultural identities of these audiences, not to mention providing another platform for all the great talent from these communities.”

Okay. Maybe a Sepia Mutiny blog show isn’t respectable enough to get on American Desi TV, but surely MTV will take us? I can’t wait to make an appearance on TRL with all those girls scream… Okay back to reality.

The first to launch will be MTV Desi, targeting Indian Americans. MTV China and MTV Korea will launch in 2005, with additional channels to follow. Tapped to oversee these new networks is Nusrat Durrani, as general manager and senior VP of MTV World.
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“American Desi” T.V.

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Several news services carry a press release announcing the creation of a new 24-hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America:

American Desi, the first and only 24- hour English language American television network for South Asians living in America, today announced the appointment of senior management, advisors and on-air talent who among them represent over 125 years of relevant experience at such media companies as ABC, NBC, ESPN, FOX, PAX-TV and major corporations, including American Express, among others.

The new network’s senior management will lead a team of executives, producers, directors, writers, on-air talent and production personnel who have received many of the U.S. television industry’s top honors — including more than ten Emmy Awards.

Well its about damn time. What can we expect in terms of content? It looks like they are putting together a great team:

American Desi today also unveiled several featured on-air talent appointees, including Divya Ohri, Vice President of Production and Sree Sreenivasan, WABC-TV reporter and South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) co-founder. Ms. Ohri becomes American Desi’s Senior Vice President and host of “American Desi: Prime Time Live,” the flagship show of the network; “Bollywood Fix;” and co-host of “Points of View.” For his part, Mr. Sreenivasan is executive producing and hosting American Desi’s new “Live Wire; The Pulse; The Voice” in-depth affairs programming. “We are extremely proud of the unprecedented and unparalleled team we have assembled both behind and in front of the camera. Never before has such a senior assemblage of Western and South Asian executives and on-air talent been assembled to launch a comprehensive media venture for the Desi community,” said Mr. Verma.

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Eying ’08

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Oh, come on. Everyone knows Hillary is going to run in ’08. It’s inevitable. She is busy putting together her crack team (ostensibly for her ’06 Senate Run), which includes Neera Tanden of NY. From the Hindustan Times:

Senator Hillary Clinton has chosen an Indian American and several other long-time advisers as part of her inner team to gear up for her 2006 re-election bid.

Neera Tanden, who joined the Democrat from New York last year as her legislative director, worked in former President Bill Clinton’s White House and with Hillary Clinton in various capacities for many years.

…Tanden, who was born and brought up in the US, is a law graduate. She worked as Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. She focused on healthcare, education and juvenile crime for then first lady Hillary Clinton. Even before that, she worked on the Clinton-Al Gore campaign in California in 1992 and 1996.

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School, Tanden was on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as deputy campaign manager in her run for Congress in 2001.

So what kind of team is Clinton putting together?

Roll Call magazine called Clinton’s team “a small, ethnically diverse stable of advisers dominated by women,” which is supposed to help “chart her political course over the next four years.”

Makin’ coffee

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Lt. Neil Prakash tells us how the military makes coffee:

Mr. Abrams the coffee maker… slip the lid into the back grill of the exhaust. Then set your canteen cup for about 2 minutes. Let the 900 degree exhaust of your jet engine heat that puppy up and BAM – hot water for shaving, Ramen noodles, coffee…

There’s a certain combination of brute force and delicacy here that I find very appealing 🙂

Classical singer Subbulakshmi passes away

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Indian classical singer Madurai Shanmugavadivu “M.S.” Subbulakshmi died late Saturday in Chennai at the age of 88 (via Sreenath Sreenivasan).

From Rediff:

“The vocalist died peacefully in her sleep,” Dr. C.V. Krishnaswamy, who treated her at the St. Isabel hospital, told PTI.

The musician was admitted to the hospital on December 2 following a bout of viral infection, which later developed into broncho pneumonia.

Her condition worsened on Friday night and she lapsed into a coma as she developed cardiac irregularities. The end came at 23:45 IST.

She was also a chronic diabetic for nearly four decades.

Born as Kunjamma in the temple city of Madurai on September 16, 1916, Subbulakshmi made her debut as a singer at the age of eight and went on to perform in concerts, a domain traditionally reserved for males.

The vocalist immortalized many songs, including “Vaishnava Janatho,” a favorite of Mahatma Gandhi, Meera bhajans, Annamacharya kirthans and the like.

Rediff: M.S. Subbulakshmi passes away
SAJA: Coverage of Indian singer M.S. Subbulakshmi

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Chatwal announces engagement to model

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Hotelier-turned-actor Vikram Chatwal announced on Thursday his engagement to long-rumored girlfriend Priya Sachdev.

Chatwal was in India to promote his film “One Dollar Curry” at a film festival in Goa. During a visit to Bombay, he asked Sachdev to accompany him to a gurudwara. She describes the rest to The Indian Express:

In true filmi style, after they both did the matha tek, he slipped a 10-carat diamond ring on her finger. “He said, ‘This is an engagement ring. Do you accept?’” says Sachdev. “I was stunned. We couldn’t even hug in the temple. But we called his family and then called mine and everyone was very surprised.”

Delhi-based Sachdev, a former New Yorker, currently splits time between modeling and working on her new television show — an “Entertainment Tonight”-like rundown of films, celebrities and gossip. Like Chatwal, she has big-screen aspirations:

Bollywood offers have already poured in for this Bharatnatyam and Kathak dancer, but most of them have involved playing the third angle in a love triangle. “I don’t want to start as the other woman,” says Sachdev. Apparently, certain producers have also offered striptease roles claiming that she could be the next Bipasha Basu of “Jism.”

The pair have not set a wedding date, but agree that “Jism” is the greatest movie title ever.

The Indian Express: Heroine addict
Endless Sepia Mutiny coverage: On the trail of Vikram Chatwal…, Win a date with…Vikram Chatwal?, One more dream for Chatwal, and Vikram Chatwal…actor?

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A good ladaka is hard to find

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A daily part of too many of our late twenty-something, early thirty-something lives seems to revolve around the question of finding someone, simply to get our parents off our backs. 37 year old Priti Chowdhury, who is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Chicagoland, decided to finance and film a semi-documentary about her search for Mr. Right titled, Finding Preet. From the Philadelphia Inquirer [free registration required]:

At first glance, the dilemma sounds familiar: A successful woman in her late 30s isn’t married, and her well-meaning but old-fashioned mother and father nag her to find a husband.

But two things set this story apart.

The victim in question, Priti Chowdhury, 37, a pediatric anesthesiologist named one of Chicago’s most eligible women, spent a quarter of a million dollars to make a movie about her misadventures in love and dating. (And instead of objecting, her proud South Jersey parents are in it.)

I can already imagine dozens of my female friends looking for advanced tickets to this movie. Hell, with that many girls going, I may as well go too 🙂 Continue reading →

Amu: A look at the 1984 Riots

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Amu.jpg

About a year ago, a friend asked me if I could spare a couple hours to talk with her film director friend as well as a lead actress who needed to conduct some basic background research on a film about the 1984 riots against the Sikhs in India that they were working on. They wanted mostly for us to give them our impressions upon returning to India after a long absence. In my case I talked about living in Delhi and doing volunteer work there and how my perceptions of India had changed between the 14 years that passed between the time I visited as a child and when I returned as an adult. The other person she interviewed happened to have been Sikh, and was a small child in Delhi at the time of the Riots. His recollections were perfect for the type of research they needed. It seems that the director, Shonali Bose, is set to release her film next month. From the AFP:

US-based Shonali Bose is set to release a film next month depicting anti-Sikh riots that hit India following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, after accepting cuts demanded by Indian censors.

She told AFP that “Amu”, based on her novel of the same name has been shot in English and cleared for release in India by the Central Board of Film Certification.

“Amu” tells the story of an orphan named Kaju [Actress Konkona Sen Sharma], adopted and brought up in Los Angeles by American parents, who returns to India to discover her roots and finds that her real parents were killed during the anti-Sikh riots.

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Mahabharata and the Illiad

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As Manish recently noted, three Indian-Americans were awarded the Rhodes Scholarship this year. One of them is Ian Desai of the University of Chicago. Ian plans to use his time to make a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata. From The Tribune of India:

A New Yorker, Desai graduated this year with a degree in ancient studies. In 2001, he tried to retrace the mythic journey of Jason and the Argonauts through Greece, Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

He traveled by bus, motor cycle, car and on foot. To get around, he used a little Greek, broken Turkish and the kindness of strangers. He even negotiated with Turkish fishermen to spend 10 days on their trawler.

At one point he and Michael Newton, a photographer who chronicled the trip, were warned by a Georgian train conductor that they were in bandit country.

“WeÂ’re very proud of him,” said Susan Art, Dean of Students of the University of ChicagoÂ’s undergraduate college. “Ian is a remarkable individual who has contributed so much to the university. I think his success does justice to the quality of the education we offer,” Art added. Desai hopes to build upon his undergraduate research that has explored a rarely undertaken subject: a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata.

Now to me, mythology-geek that I am, this sounds like a fascinating study. I Googled the terms “Mahabharata and Illiad” to see what came up and this review of the Mahabharata which draws parallels to the Illiad was one of the first. I suppose all Myth is to a great deal interrelated. Joesph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces does a good job of exploring that hypothesis. In any case I hope to hear more about this in a few years when he finishes.

“Temptation” Island

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Who_knew_srk_smokes

Thanks to “offensive” timing (and who knows why else), it’s a tragedy, not a reality show.

At least two people have been killed and 18 others injured in an explosion at a concert by an Indian Bollywood star in Colombo.
Police said a hand-grenade ripped through the front stands as Shahrukh Khan ended his performance on Saturday.

The grenade exploded in the audience’s VIP section, killing a woman and a child. Also injured? 18 show attendees, six of them critically. All of the affected were Sri Lankan.

The show, called Temptation 2004 and featuring a host of Indian film stars, was billed as Sri Lanka’s biggest musical event of the year, with 10,000 people reported to have attended.
Buddhist monks had planned a peaceful protest during the performance, but they called it off after receiving a written apology from Mr Khan about the bad timing of the concert.

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