{"id":356,"date":"2004-09-08T05:27:12","date_gmt":"2004-09-08T10:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=356"},"modified":"2005-01-14T00:48:19","modified_gmt":"2005-01-14T05:48:19","slug":"sick_of_spices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/08\/sick_of_spices\/","title":{"rendered":"Sick of spices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blogger <a href=\"http:\/\/priyalalista.blogspot.com\">Priya Lal<\/a> wrote that the Oscars found many desi films <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greencine.com\/article?action=view&#038;articleID=125\">&#8216;not Indian enough&#8217;<\/a> for the foreign language category. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vij.com\/archive\/indian_enough.html\">what&#8217;s Indian enough?<\/a><\/p>\n\n<blockquote>Second-gen writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica Ali have largely been re-telling their parents\u00c2\u2019 tales. It\u00c2\u2019s interesting as a topic but repetitive as an entire oeuvre, made even worse by book covers which all feature nubile brown women with mehndi hands and first-gen authors who willingly swan with incense and sarod music at book readings&#8230;\n\nPeacocks and payals are gorgeous when judiciously applied, and any desi could be forgiven for admiring a royal, nose-ringed <i>nariz<\/i> evocative of Mughal miniature. It gets annoying mainly when lit and film treats culture as a tourist backdrop, a Potemkin village with the thinnest faci\u00c3\u00a6 of stereotype&#8230; when directors ask for the Peter Sellers \/ <i>Gunga Din<\/i> caricature of a desi accent rather than the real one, like Apu on <i>The Simpsons<\/i> and the dad\u00c2\u2019s accent in <i>Harold and Kumar.<\/i> That\u00c2\u2019s just insulting&#8230;\n\nCan\u00c2\u2019t we all just agree to consign mehndi to weddings, mangos to dinner plates and the words <i>exotic<\/i> and <i>spicy<\/i> to the seventh circle of hell?<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vij.com\/archive\/indian_enough.html\">Continue reading \u00c2\u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogger Priya Lal wrote that the Oscars found many desi films &#8216;not Indian enough&#8217; for the foreign language category. But what&#8217;s Indian enough? Second-gen writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica Ali have largely been re-telling their parents\u00c2\u2019 tales. It\u00c2\u2019s interesting &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/08\/sick_of_spices\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}