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 […]

Licensing songs for movies is cool, and the Civic is virtually a Sri Lankan car. But Maya shilling for Bud Light is completely selling out. I mean, that swill is so weak it barely qualifies as beer:

Courtesy of angermann

As lightweight e-ink screens like the Sony Reader become more popular, publishers are starting to think about how to crack down on pirated books online. These aren’t the 200-rupee, hastily photocopied titles sold at Bombay traffic signals. These are the books themselves boiled down to their essence, denuded of pretty fonts and layout, […]

A Red Mango fro-yo store recently opened up across the street from its J-pop-bedecked rival Pinkberry, on Bleecker and Macdougal in the Village. This shot of Pinkberry is through the front door of its envious rival.

Actor Debargo Sanyal recently filmed an ad campaign for hot food bars at Holiday Inn Express. The Office-style ads make fun of cringeworthy, late-night bar behavior. In one spot, four women leer over his waiter character:

In another, he plays a gay man making fun of his coworkers’ ineffectual flirting (watch: WMV, Quicktime). Watch for his […]

The camera and photocopier company Canon’s original name came from a multi-armed Buddhist deity:

… the name given to cameras manufactured on a trial basis at the time was Kwanon. This title reflected the benevolence of Kwanon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy… The logo included the word with an image of “Kwanon with 1,000 Arms” and […]

A mailing list rental house owned by Clinton donor Vinod Gupta ran a Super Bowl ad featuring a Ramesh doing a straight-up Apu impersonation, complete with that fake accent and seven kids. Why would a desi-owned company run that accent, playing to a racial caricature propelled into Americana by comedians in brownface? And their panda […]

Check out this ode to Scrabulous, set to Fergie’s ‘Glamorous‘:

I’m hoping Hasbro resolves their copyright dispute with the Agarwallas sensibly. The Scrabulous developers are either copyright pirates or innovators in the mold of Napster and the movie industry, which landed on the West Coast to escape movie camera patents back east:
Edison and his partners […]

Back during the helium-huffing of the first Internet bubble, a second-rate dialup company bought out the publisher of Time magazine with inflated, gilt-edged shares. When the clock struck midnight, the old media diva was left with a lover turned pumpkin and the sickening certainty that she had sold herself cheaply.

… AOL was then at the […]

The latest from the Indian sports wire…

The IPL will be fairly pleased with how 2008 is unfolding so far. January has seen an estimated influx of almost $1.75 billion as famous faces and lucrative TV deals have poured money in. After the sour first half of the Indian tour Down Under, a Test win and […]

Six months after a disastrous engine explosion, Scaled Composites showed off mockups of SpaceShipTwo today. You’d think for $200K, you’d get a better view during your 4½ minutes of weightlessness:

Pakistani-Dubaikar poet and astrologer Namira Salim will be one of the first average Jamilas to rocket into suborbit:

Namira Salim is set to become the […]

The Ritz is now the Taj. How you like them Tatas? (courtesy of bunkosquad)

This month, ailing luxury brands turned up their noses at a wealthy Indian buyer:
‘I don’t believe the public is ready for Jaguar ownership out of India’[Ken Gorin, chairman of the Jaguar Business Operations Council:] “I don’t believe the U.S. public is ready […]

Now that the Sabhnanis have been convicted of torturing their maids, perhaps those of us in thrall to inexpensive vapors could boycott the brands which fund their cutting, beating ways:

Attitude
Blu Treasures
Decent
Eternal Love
Friends
Indecent
Just Perfect
Let’s Be Friends
XLouis

A few of these would comprise a haiku of irony. And if you can’t find it in your heart to boycott […]

India’s military recruiting ads are earnest beyond belief:

Japan’s parade of quality seamen is a little less somber and a lot more ‘In the Navy’:

Someone without Mitt Romney hair was actually appointed head of the largest American bank today. Nice goin’, Vikram:

Citigroup, the country’s largest bank… appointed Vikram S. Pandit as its chief executive today… While Mr. Pandit has an impressive résumé, he is known more as an analytical technocrat than a charismatic leader… [Born in Nagpur,] Pandit has […]

At the Bride and Prejudice premiere in New York, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein came out to introduce Gurinder Chadha. He sounded humble in front of the part desi, part industry audience, nothing like the enfant terrible of movie industry lore. Weinstein’s made a large bet both on desis personally and on desi culture becoming part […]

Here’s a rundown of some of the desi lit on tap at Amazon’s Kindle ebook store, and what’s not available yet:

Author
Book
Ebook?

Salman Rushdie
Shalimar the Clown

Y

Fury

Y

Step Across This Line

Y

Midnight’s Children

N

The Satanic Verses

N

The Moor’s Last Sigh

N

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

N

Waris Singh Ahluwalia is always searched, but it’s truly random

Rootsgear… which designs T-shirts with political and social messages and a hip-hop sensibility aimed at Punjabi Sikh youth, says its Facebook group helps the company stay connected to regulars in its ethnic community and the socially conscious rap scene… the page drives more traffic to Rootsgear… […]

Photos

… Con Edison… buys a quarter of its manhole covers… from India… the workers at one of West Bengal’s many foundries relied on strength and bare hands rather than machinery…. flames, sweat and liquid iron mixing in the smoke like something from the Middle Ages… men, often shoeless and stripped to the waist, waited with […]

What Black Friday means in India:

Black Friday is a film based on the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai which many believe were organised as retaliation for the Bombay riots… It was featured at the Locarno Film Festival and received widespread praise. [Link]
What it means in most of America:

The news media frequently refer to […]