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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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:
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 […]
Last week I treated myself to a couple of mini-film festivals at home, watching (mostly re-watching) a few films of a particular director or actor. The honorees included James Stewart (whose birth centenary is next week) and Akira Kurosawa, and the fes…
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 […]
The Net is awash in Twenty20 cheerleader videos, the proud fruit of a horny subcontinent armed with a modicum of technical aptitude. This one shows the cheerleaders in context next to the cricket pitch:
One twentysomething desi Internet millionaire throws a catered bash for the homeless for his birthday. Meanwhile his brother and cofounder tries to replace Uday Chopra as reigning Bollywood cheeseball. Click here for the wackness.
He provides nekkid wallpaper downloads, just in case we want ‘em poster-sized. And he calls his bachelor pad the G spot. Stay […]
San Jose State prof Hasan Elahi was questioned by the FBI after 9/11. Now the Bangla-American hairmonger posts his current location, photos and the minutiæ of his daily schedule online. He told Stephen Colbert he’s bringing the surveillance value of his datastream to zero:
It’s an art project, an econ experiment and a passive-aggressive kiss-off to […]
Drunken driving incidents are like Kryptonite for Congressmen. During the Soviet war with Afghanistan, Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-TX) collided with another driver while drunk and was pursued by D.C. police. He locked himself in his apartment and negotiated with the feds for safe passage to the airport, for an overseas trip in support of the […]
Received this email today:
The subject line? **JUNK**
My spam filter has surprisingly good taste.
Previously: ‘Five Point Someone’, Beware Indian mass-market fiction
[From my Metro Now column – another in a series of trying-hard-to-be-optimistic pieces about the traffic situation in Delhi]
Every dark cloud has a silver lining, we are constantly told, but the adage forgets to add that at times the lining must be surgically attached. This can be accomplished by grabbing the squirming cloud, pinning it […]
Mildred Loving, the Rosa Parks of interracial marriage, passed away last Friday. She and her husband Richard’s Supreme Court case Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws nationwide on June 12, 1967:
Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed… five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting […]
One and a half months ago, 23-year-old math prodigy Sufiah Yusof was exposed by a British tabloid earning a living as a call girl. She entered Oxford as a 13-year-old, dropped out after a year and demanded to be placed with a foster family because of her tyrannical father.
Nikita Lalwani builds her Booker-nominated novel […]
Sir Vidya once slagged off his former friend Paul Theroux, who retaliated by writing a poison pen memoir. After reading Theroux’ latest collection, I’m afraid Naipaul had the right idea. The Elephanta Suite, a three-novella collection linked by an eponymous luxury suite at a Bombay hotel, is full of tell-not-show summary and pages of philosophy […]
Greatest paisa vasool moment in Iron Man: Jeff Bridges, the Big Lebowski, whispering ‘Tumhara tofa sirf yeh hai‘ in bad phonetic Hindi into Faran Tahir’s ear.
Second best: Bridges’ first appearance as Obadiah Stane (get it?), his beard gelled and squared off like a Sikh soldier’s.
And: Two cute desi-ish reporters played by Meera Simhan and Irani-American […]