Twisters on Twitter

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Author Arjun Basu of Montreal got on Twitter last fall and published a handful of “typically banal” tweets. Then inspiration hit and he created his first Twister. That’s what he calls his short short stories of 140 characters. Since then he’s written over a thousand Twisters and become a popular source for readers seeking a regular fix of micro-fiction.

Arjun_01_normal.jpgAs a child he delivered newspapers. As an adult he delivered bad news daily. Because he was a negative person. And the world’s worst surgeon 5:34 AM Apr 29th


Micro-fiction is not new to the web, as those of you who contributed to Sepia Mutiny’s flash fiction Fridays know. The shortest of the form might be six-word memoirs like the ones found at Smith Magazine. Links to more micro-fiction on the web are welcome in the comments. Continue reading →

“I hope you feel better soon!” (Hello from Ireland)

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We’re in Ireland for a little holiday. Some of it is a little bit of long overdue (for me) literary tourism around Dublin, but we also spent several days in some of the beautiful western counties, doing some cycling and hiking, and checking out live music in village pubs. For the most part, there’s nothing very desi going on out there — there’s a sizeable South Asian population in Dublin, but rural western Ireland remains much more ethnically homogenous. A lot of little villages have Indian restaurants, but that’s about it.

Our best night in terms of live traditional Irish music was in a town called Clifden, in County Galway — and it was also the night where we had what you might call a ‘desi moment’. Continue reading →

South (West) Asia

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I’ve been transfixed for the last three days by the news coming out of Pakistan’s neighbor to the west, Iran. And I’ve really really wanted to blog it, but honestly, there just isn’t a desi angle.

Unlike Burma, which is similarly just outside the region, South Asian countries don’t play a large role in Iranian politics, and what’s happening in Iran is unlikely to have direct consequences for either Afghanistan or Pakistan. While Surinder Singh Karkar played an important role in the Burmese democracy movement, there seem to be no desis involved in the Persian protests; a difference most likely due to the fact that there are close to 1 million Burmese desis and only a few thousand desis in Iran:

Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many wealthy Parsis began to travel to Iran to revive the Zoroastrian faith and traditions among the stagnating Zoroastrian community in Iran at the time … In 1950s, more Indians migrated to Iran and settled primarily in Tehran. They consisted Sikhs and some Gujaratis. In the 1960s and early 70s, about 10,000 Indian Doctors, Engineers and Teachers moved to Iran as a response to the open policies initiated by the Shah of Iran, but most of them left Iran after the Iranian revolution.

Now, there are several hundred people each concentrated in and around Tehran and Zahidan, primarily engaged in various businesses. A majority are still Indian citizens. They continue to maintain strong links with India, especially in matters of children’s education, marriage and property acquisition. [link]

Over at Ultrabrown, Manish does a better job of connecting to recent events from a South Asian perspective, including this useful observation:

Mir-Hossein Mousavi is the political hero of the moment. But he’s recycled, and his reform credentials are suspect, like Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. He served as prime minister in the ’80s, during which he was implicated in a massacre of 30,000 political opponents, supported seizing hostages from the U.S. embassy and wanted Salman Rushdie killed. [link]

but honestly, there’s still not a lot of brown in these recent events. If you’re interested, I suggest The Lede and Andrew Sullivan’s blog (The Daily Dish, but nobody calls it that) for breaking developments. Juan Cole’s blog has some good analysis, and I suggest FiveThirtyEight for a fairly geeky analysis of why the official election numbers are fairly improbable. Lastly, the best photos I’ve seen (warning, some are quite graphic) are at the Boston Globe.

Continue reading →

SM featured artist: Namita Kapoor

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A while back we asked for artists to submit their work to SM for inclusion in our new site redesign. We have decided to dedicate the header area of our website to feature South Asian American artists (up-and-coming or well established). Within the next month our website administrator Chaitan will be integrating the artwork of two artists, the first of whom is Namita Kapoor. As luck would have it, Kapoor’s exhibit is opening in San Francisco in just a couple of weeks:

…Kapoor draws from her backgrounds as a South East Asian and American. “I use imagery from Indian myths, Bollywood posters, and vintage commercial advertisements and abstract them with a variety of materials such as sari fabric and appliqué, henna prints, silkscreen and acrylic and oil paint.” Kapoor works her way in and around these various materials, infusing a dance between mediums that explodes off the canvas in a rhythm of brilliant colors. In these paintings, remnants of traditional Indian iconography contrasts with her expressionistic modern brush strokes, creating new environments for her dual cultures to co-exist, thematically and stylistically.

LOCATION: BoConcept: 101 Townsend, San Francisco, 94103

EXHIBITION DATES: June 27-July 31, 2009

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, June 27, 6:00-8:00 PM

VIEWING HOURS: Monday through Friday 10am-7pm; Sun 11am-6pm

You can view some of her additional work here. If you want to go to the reception with other SM readers then you guys can use the comments area to plan. Please forward to your friends in SF.

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Loving every moment

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Today is Loving Day, the celebration of the anniversary of the appositely named Supreme Court decision ever: Loving vs. Virginia. It is because of Mildred and Richard Loving that miscegenation laws were struck down across America, and you can now legally have sex with and marry any member of the opposite sex, regardless of race, anywhere in America.

At the time of the Loving decision, 16 states had anti-miscegenation statutes, and over America’s history 42 states have enforced similar laws. Amazingly though, it took South Carolina until 1998 to remove the anti-miscegenation clause from its state constitution, and Alabama until 2000 to do the same!

Although there weren’t many desis in America before the 1967 Loving decision, they were affected by such restrictions as well:

Anti-miscegenation laws discouraging marriages between Whites and non-Whites were affecting South Asian immigrants and their spouses from the late 17th to early 20th century. For example, a Eurasian daughter born to an East Indian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680 was classified as a “mullato” and sold into slavery, and the Bengali revolutionary Tarak Nath Das’s white American wife, Mary K. Das, was stripped of her American citizenship for her marriage to an “alien ineligible for citizenship.” In 1918, there was controversy in Arizona when an Indian farmer married the sixteen year-old daughter of one of his White tenants. [link]

Such discrimination continued into the 20th century. Most desis were in California, which amended its anti-miscegenation statutes in 1931 to prevent inter-marriage between whites and asians. This could have caused problems for Punjabis married to Mexicans since desis had been classified as Asians under the Thind decision and Mexicans were considered white under California state law.

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Dispatches from Kriti: What to Read

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Here I am in the desilicious town of Chicago, which today is so rainy it’s practically imitating Seattle. I’m here to attend the third Kriti festival… a celebration of South Asian authors and writing organized by Mary Anne Mohanraj and Desilit.

This morning’s keynote panel, “What’s Not to Like?” featured Romesh Gunesekera, Amitava Kumar, and Bapsi Sidhwa. The three of them read from the work of writers they particularly admire. Continue reading →

Shashi Tharoor, minister atwitter

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Should government ministers use Twitter to keep the public tharoor_twitter.jpginformed of their daily activities? That’s a question being debated in India, thanks to new Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, who reportedly is the first Indian minister to actively use Twitter.

In case you aren’t one of his growing legion of followers, here’s just a sampling of his recent tweets:

First day in Parliament. Still can’t believe I made it to Delhi! Remind me not to fly Kingfisher again.
7:05 AM May 19th from TwitterBerry

Have given 13 interviews in 3 languages and 2 more TV shows pending. A little overwhelmed by the media scum.
3:31 PM May 19th from TwitterBerry

Scrum. I meant, scrum.
3:32 PM May 19th from TwitterBerry

@koshy no, I won’t be tweeting in Malayalam.
6:54 PM May 19th from TwitterBerry

@sreenivasan I’ve made 500 campaign speeches in Malayalam, given 150+ interviews in Malayalam, cursed my ex-wife in Malayalam!
6:59 PM May 19th from TwitterBerry

@verghese yes, I do regret the last part. I should have done it in French.
7:02 PM May 19th from TwitterBerry

Lunch with Vijay Amritraj, tennis ace and old friend. Discussed Wimbledon, Fed vs. Nad.
2:34 PM May 20th from TwitterBerry

@bhupathi yes, I’m more of a “Go Fed” guy than a “Go Nad” guy.
2:43 PM May 20th from TwitterBerry

Office computer still won’t work  … too many bugs. Clerk used a spray and 100 roaches ran out!
10:22 AM May 24th from TwitterBerry

Continue reading →

Cooking It Up at the Indian Culinary Center

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I was intrigued, but slightly skeptical when I signed up for a cooking class at the newly-opened Indian Culinary Center a few weeks ago. What could I, a vegetarian who has been cooking desi food pretty regularly for the past couple of years, learn that was new and interesting in an Indian Vegetarian Delights Class? A lot, it turns out.

The ICC is run by Geetika Khanna, a former psychologist and graduate of the French Culinary Institute who has been charting a path in the food industry for the past 10+ years. I really felt like I was walking into another world when I rang the buzzer of 131 W. 23rd St., which turned out to be the Chelsea Inn, a cosy bed and breakfast whose ground floor industrial kitchen turned out to be the cooking school of the now-defunct culinary arts program of The New School, where it turns out, Khanna used to be an instructor.

On this particular Tuesday night, nine of us had signed up to spend the evening learning how to cook with Khanna, a tall, relaxed, and skilled instructor who weaves anecdotes about her family in with technique tips and practical approaches on how to make Indian cooking a part of your culinary repertoire, instead of something exotic and inaccessible. For those like me, who generally cook at least one or two Indian meals a week, it was the practical tips like how to clean your spice grinder — run a piece of bread through it — and the ease and humor with which Khanna made cooking a six-course meal seem doable (from scratch, using mostly fresh ingredients) that was the tipping point. Plus, I enjoyed her running commentary on colonialism, the evolution of the Indian “curry,” and the Food Network –and she gave me the courage to fry my first pooris, a big deal for a gal who has always had a fear of deep frying. There were also a few surprises along the way, like the fact that she uses cayenne pepper in her masala dhaba. [Click on the narrated slideshow above for a walk-through of the class and a look at our full menu.]

The three and a half hour class cost $55, and was followed by a delicious six-course meal. A pretty good deal for an evening out in NYC where you’re learning, eating, and meeting a bunch of interesting people. (Other NYC cooking classes range from $100 to $200 per person).

At present, Khanna offers classes every month, and has plans to invite other chefs of Indian cuisine to teach at the ICC. With all the regional variations of Indian food (Indian Chinese, West Indian, and Indo-French, as well as the wealth of Indian chefs in the New York area, I’m sure there are many more yummy lessons and treats to return to at the ICC. I’ll definitely be going back.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in interning with Khanna, she’s looking. Drop her a line. Continue reading →