Ultrabrown http://www.ultrabrown.com Desi ultragoodness Tue, 13 May 2008 21:57:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 en Flight of the whiteman http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/flight-of-the-whiteman http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/flight-of-the-whiteman#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 21:48:41 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/flight-of-the-whiteman Earlier this spring, Tony D’Souza released one of the finest novels about the South Asian diaspora, The Konkans, and promptly won a Guggenheim Fellowship. I bought him a beer, and he gave me a copy of his first novel.

Whiteman is based on D’Souza’s experiences as an aid worker living in a village in West Africa. The title is simply what Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) residents call Westerners. Jack Diaz / Adama the protagonist isn’t a WASP, but with his relatively light skin he’s close enough to one to the Africans. The title also a play on words, turning inside out white Americans’ conception of themselves as the default race, in a way just as patronizing as ‘Chinaman.’ And there are all kinds of cultural inversions here as Jack assimilates:

Mamadou was the companion the village had given me when I’d first arrived… It was his duty to teach me how to behave politely… Mostly what he did was watch me make horrific mistakes, and then, after weeks of letting me make them, he’d say to me in a small voice, ‘Are you sure you really want to sweep out your hut at night, Adama? The ancestors take it as a great insult… All your neighbors are complaining.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that weeks ago?’

‘Why remind a blind man that he is blind?’ …

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]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/flight-of-the-whiteman/feed Man-sized cross http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/man-sized-cross http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/man-sized-cross#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 12:57:49 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/man-sized-cross

Congrats to Jenna Bush on getting married to the scion of the Haggar wrinkle-free pantaloon dynasty () and putting her hard-partying days behind her.

Boo to her dad, who had a man-sized limestone cross erected with all the subtlety of a khanda on the rear windshield of a tinted, dropped Honda Civic.

That isn’t a dog whistle for evangelical voters, that’s a sledgehammer. But I’m inspired. At my eventual wedding, I’m going to demand an om symbol the shape and size of the Incredible Hulk.

]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/man-sized-cross/feed What you will not find in Jhumpa http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/what-you-will-not-find-in-jhumpa http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/what-you-will-not-find-in-jhumpa#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 08:57:14 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/what-you-will-not-find-in-jhumpa Chachaji points us to this Time story on Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book which states the obvious:

Among the things you will not find in Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction are: humor, suspense, cleverness, profound observations about life, vocabulary above the 10th-grade level, footnotes and typographical experiments. It is debatable whether her keyboard even has an exclamation point on it… In person, Lahiri is almost as reserved as she is on the page… [Link]

Her latest collection’s very accessibility, its refusal to soar on the texture of language rather than an emo kidney punch at the end of a story, is no doubt partly why it sells so well:

Unaccustomed Earth… debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, an astounding feat for a book of quiet, formal short stories about the lives of Bengali immigrants and their children. [Link]

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]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/what-you-will-not-find-in-jhumpa/feed ‘Before the Rains’ http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/before-the-rains http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/before-the-rains#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 03:32:17 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/before-the-rains Because there aren’t enough massa-servant tales on the market, here’s Before the Rains at the Paris Theatre in Manhattan:

Before the Rains [directed by Santosh Sivan] is adapted from ‘Red Roofs’… in the Israeli director Dany Verete’s 2002 film, Yellow Asphalt… Moores… is carrying on a passionate affair with his housekeeper Sajani (Nandita Das), a beautiful, naïve woman who commutes from the village to work at his nearby ranch. One afternoon they are accidentally spied making love at a waterfall by two young boys from the village…

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]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/before-the-rains/feed E-K-ji http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/e-k-ji http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/e-k-ji#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 03:22:10 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/e-k-ji

A cute medical tech ad tips its hat to Indian docs serving in villages. What are probably more in demand, sadly, are portable ultrasound machines.

]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/e-k-ji/feed Light my fire http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/light-my-fire http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/light-my-fire#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 11:20:05 +0000 anonandon http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/light-my-fire On Thursday May 8, after negotiating a few road bumps along the way, the Olympic torch reached China and was planted atop Mount Everest. It was a good idea to plant it there since it was unlikely that Tibetan independence protesters would come together more than 29, 000 feet above sea level. Interestingly, to ensure the flame doesn’t go out, the torch was reportedly designed by a Chinese company that specialises in burning systems for rockets, which could act as a reminder of the military violence that China has displayed repeatedly against its own people and Tibet. However, let us focus on the positive.

As a glowing example of Chinese public relations/ disaster management/ foreign policy, the torch-bearing team was made up of Tibetans, ethnic Han Chinese and one person from the Tujia minority (I wonder whether other Chinese minority communities like the Dong, Tatar and Lhoba feel like they’re part of the happy family that the team portrays). Or of course, it could also be the sheer arrogance of China to think that having this team, in red outfits and yelling “Long live Tibet” and “Long live Beijing”, would make us feel differently about its human rights record. As an additional sop, the one who actually planted the flag was a Tibetan woman (thus hitting two significant minority birds with one stone), Ciren Wangmu, who did the final trek without oxygen. China would like us to look at the symbolic value of this act and so I will. Clearly, Tibet is out in the cold and enduring without oxygen. The only illumination comes from the torch held up by Chinese military (remember who manufactured the torch…). Thank you for reminding us.

(more...)]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/light-my-fire/feed Mallakhamb http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/mallakhamb http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/mallakhamb#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 12:53:19 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/mallakhamb One of the covers of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance features a little boy sitting atop a pole. It always reminded me of mallakhamb, the Indian art of pole gymnastics. In this mallakhamb clip, a lean, oiled Circque du Soleil-style acrobat shatters the idea of Indian unathleticism. Hottest pole dance ever:

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]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/mallakhamb/feed Critiquing the critic http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/critiquing-the-critic http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/critiquing-the-critic#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 12:50:31 +0000 manish http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/critiquing-the-critic Why NYT book critic Michiko Kakutani can’t abide Salman Rushdie:

Kakutani appears incapable of engaging with language, either playfully or seriously, which puts her at a painful disadvantage when she is supposed to be evaluating writers who can and do. Here, she tries to energize [her own] prose with lapel-grabbing intensifiers like utterly and wonderfully and superfluous adjectives like savvy and embarrassing…

The qualities most glaringly missing from Kakutani’s work are humor and wit. Maybe in an attempt to compensate, she writes one or two parody reviews a year… They are so awful, from start to finish, that you cannot avert your eyes, much as you would like to. [Link]

See also the classics ‘Limning Michiko Kakutani,’ about Kakutani’s favorite word (we all have ‘em), and ‘I Am Michiko Kakutani,’ in which classmate Colin McEnroe claims to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic.

]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/critiquing-the-critic/feed A few notes on The Seven Samurai http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/a-few-notes-on-the-seven-samurai http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/a-few-notes-on-the-seven-samurai#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 00:11:00 +0000 jabberwock http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/a-few-notes-on-the-seven-samurai James Stewart (whose birth centenary is next week) and Akira Kurosawa, and the festival high point, apart from re-experiencing the gorgeousness of Vertigo in its restored print, was watching The Seven Samurai after many years. It was like catching up with old friends. Jaded film buffs often tend to undermine a director’s iconic movies in favour of less-discussed works, but I can’t get over what a timelessly awesome film The Seven Samurai is, and how well it holds up to multiple viewings despite its length. So what if this is Kurosawa’s most popular movie: it’s still arguably his most organic and satisfying too. (Dare one say: "best"?)

A confession here: when I first saw The Seven Samurai (the full-length, 3 hour 20 minute version), I was slightly underwhelmed. This could partly be because I’d been expecting a full-blown action movie and didn’t realise that the first two hours would be dedicated to build-up, character development and strategy. Also, being aware that Samurai was among the many inspirations for Sholay, I probably expected a clearer delineation of the heroes and villains and wasn’t quite prepared for the ambiguity about class relations and the parallels the film draws between marauding bandits and noble samurais. (For viewers unfamiliar with class conflicts in 16th century Japan – the mutual distrust between warriors and peasants – it can take a while to appreciate these nuances anyway.) It was only on a second viewing that I was better able to see the film for what it was and everything fell in place. (Later, Donald Richie’s essay in his excellent Kurosawa book provided a deeper understanding of context.)

(more...)]]> http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/a-few-notes-on-the-seven-samurai/feed Chaos theory http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/chaos-theory http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/chaos-theory#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 23:39:56 +0000 anonandon http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/chaos-theory Burma is disappearing, like Atlantis; sinking under the weight of bloated corpses and greedy governments. We can thank the inimitable junta and Cyclone Nargis (which macabre twit named a cyclone after a flower?) for giving the country the mystique of Greek myths and making sure it doesn’t last into 2009. One million people are believed to be homeless in Rangoon. The death toll is feared to be more than 100, 000 in the Irawaddy delta alone. Hope does not float in south Burma but dead bodies do. Putrid water, disease, food shortage, homelessness - Dante might consider a rewrite of the Inferno if he read the news reports.

Today the UN decided to suspend aid to the ravaged country because the junta is impounding supplies. The Burmese “government” says that it will distribute the supplies all over the country and meanwhile, could the citizens who are not dead and on dry land please vote for the new constitution tomorrow. Considering the fact that the Burmese leader, General Than Shwe, had gold-plated chairs and a five-tiered cake on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding while the Burmese economy was being ground to dirt, we may rest assured that the constitution will be endorsed. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a thumping majority. Perhaps even the dead will cast their vote. Most of our newspapers in India are far more concerned about the passing of a bill in parliament that secures a 33% reservation for women and whether or not Kareena Kapoor is a size zero in Tashan. I wonder whether news of the vote will reach us at all.

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