Early the morning of Dec 26th, my Choti Buaji (my father's sister) passed away. Dr. Suman Raje was a doctorate in Hindi Literature, a professor, a poet, and the author of many books. But to her family she was a loving mom and wife, to my father and mother she was more than anything else a close friend, and to me she will always be the storyteller.
When I was a young boy we used to travel from Ahmedabad (where we lived) to Kanpur (where Buaji lived) every summer holidays. It was a 2 1/2 day train trip on the Sabarmati Express. I remember the train always arrived at Kanpur in the middle of the night - around 4am or so. Of all the fun things we would do during the summer holidays - my favorite memory was the night when we would go to sleep.
We used to sleep on the roof since these were the days of heat w/ no AC, just a cooler. But before the kids would go to sleep we all had to circle around Choti Buaji for the bedtime story. And every night w/o fail she would churn one up. She was never reading from a book. Every one of her stories came right out of her head. The most imaginative creative fantastical stories a 7 year old had ever heard. In Hindi - often using words I couldn't understand then (or now for that matter). But she managed to create very vivid, very real images in our young minds.
We are expecting twins in early january. However 20 days ago, our dr put my wife on bedrest at the hospital. She's doing fine and so are the babies. But it seems we may be in the hospital now until the babies come.
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The above is an unfinished post I started to write on wednesday Oct 5th, 2008. Two days later; on Day 22 - at 6:24pm and 6:25pm our twin boys were born.
Since then I am desperately trying to find an hour or so to pull together a small little birth announcement package. But between the trips to the NICU and balancing work and home - it's been a little difficult. But I know I will get to it soon. When the time is right. Now, it's time to head back to the NICU.
In 2005, on a family vacation to India, my wife and I bought 3 great paintings from Hauz Kauz Village in New Delhi. Can you believe that it is 3 years later, and we finally got them framed! And they look amazing. Check them out:
I bought these from the original artists in India - sadly though I lost the info on who they were. Gotta dig them up. They had some great stories ... and it's the stories that make the paintings. In any case, I am happy to have finally framed them and put them up in our house. They seem so much happier to be out of the boxes they have been hiding in for the last 3 years. Welcome!
The Fall installment of oscar contenders is yet to come - most of them getting their North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week; but I am in the mood to pull together a list of my favorite films of this year so far.
Yet to see: Mumbai Meri Jaan or Santosh Sivan's Tahaan both of which I am anxious to watch. I am sure I am missing a few movies but this is what was top of mind. If I missed something obvious I will come back and correct.
Have no fear. Go pick up any of these. And if you don't like them you can leave me a flaming comment! ;)
So by now most of you have probably heard and/or seen the following comment by Obama's VP candidate, Sen Biden:
In case you missed it his comment was the following:
"I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."
My first reaction when I heard this was that he better hope the doctor in that ER (if he's ever there) is not an Indian! ;)
But apparently this one has a happier ending per this article from The Times of India:
"I was making the point that up until now in my state, we've had a strong Indian community made up of leading scientists and researchers and engineers," Biden explained later. "We're having middle-class people move to Delaware, take over Dunkin' Donuts, take over businesses, just like other immigrant groups have, and I was saying that ... they're growing, it's moving."
"I could have said that 40 years ago about walking into a delicatessen and hearing an Italian accent in my state," he added.
Most Indian-Americans in Delaware, where indeed there has been a boom in small business growth by the community, did not take Biden's remark amiss. Many of them, expecially those involved in businesses related to motels, liquor stores, and gas stations, are Biden supporters and contributors who have held fund-raisers for him and reeled him into events like the local Navratri garba hosted by the Gujarati community.
"He's a great guy, very experienced. We love him," Pravin Patel, president of the Delaware Asian-American Business Association, said on Saturday after news broke of Biden's selection.
Hmmmmm. So I think the following:
1) How come Senator George Allen who two years ago made the following "macaca" comment did not fare as well?
When he also had Indians rushing to his defense as the following quote shows from a Washington Post article:
Allen's defenders rushed to his side, saying the comments, though careless, do not reflect what is inside the senator's heart. Sudhakar Shenoy, an Indian business executive from Fairfax who has known Allen for years, said he "has been an incredible friend to Indians" and is not a racist. "I'd stake everything I have that George is not that kind of a guy," Shenoy said.
Could it be that he's a Republican and therefore we let some stereotypes, beliefs and such come into play and sway some of us into a certain direction?
2) Isn't it funny that in Sen Biden's explanation the same statement but w/ the "italian accent" would not have generated the same kind of "oh this is inappropriate" buzz? We assume that a comment made about Indians in that way is inappropriate but when made about Italians - it's ok. Does that mean that we are too sensitive as Indian-Americans or as the media? Or perhaps the Italians went through a similar experience 40 years ago ... I hypothesize the latter.
3) We all have internalized many-a-beliefs about all kinds of people, places, professions and so on - our brain does that to help us categorize and process information efficiently. In the new book Sway, the Brafman brothers write: "All of us have certain lenses, or constructs, that we use to sift through the endless flow of information we encounter. For example, when we meet new people we may judge them on whether they dress well or poorly, whether their shoes are polished or not, whether they seem to be liberal or conservative, whether they are religious or secular, hip or nerdy. These constructs are useful insofar as they help us to quickly assess a situation and form a temporary hypothesis about how to react. Forming initial opinions is one of the ways in which we try to make sense of the world given limited time or information. But we have to be careful not to rely too much on such pre-emptive judgments, as they can short-circuit a more nuanced evaluation. They can narrow our perceptions and make us more apt to get swayed by a hasty diagnosis."
Perhaps, neither Sen Biden nor Sen Allen meant anything bad. Perhaps they both displayed a hint of something they feel deep down inside. How we perceive what they said is really driven more by who you are, rather than who they are. Isn't that interesting?
4) To end on a lighter note, or not if you get offended, here's the Indian 7-11 guy from the Mind of Mencia :)
On 18 August, 1988 I came to the US. I flew from Hong Kong to San Francisco on a United Airlines flight. It was a long flight and I think I cried most of the way here. I was excited to go to college, but leaving home turned out to be a bigger fear than I had imagined. This was the first time I was leaving home. And I wasn't going closeby. I would be 6000 miles away. That can be a little disconcerting for an 18 year old. Well, it was for me. So there.
It also didn't help that immediately before I left I was really really sick. So sick that I was in the hospital in HK just 2 days before I had to leave. I had a viral infection while we were vacationing in India in July of 1988. And sometime after we passed through Jhansi and ended up in Lucknow, I got real sick. Until then, I was having a great trip as always, but even more so since I was headed off to college after returning to Hong Kong. I remember staying up many a nights and talking w/ my close friends and my cousin(s) who I grew up with. We talked a lot about going to college - which is really code for "girls". Yup, that's pretty much what we spoke about. :)
In Lucknow though, I fell sick. Real sick. Dr didn't know what it was - so I was on a bunch of medicine. I remember going out sightseeing one day since we were leaving Lucknow soon - and I hadn't been out of the house at all. We went to see the Bada Imambara and Bhool Bhulaiya. Amazing stuff.
Can you believe that was the last time I went to Lucknow? It was also the last time I was in India with my family and friends until I returned in 1994 for my wedding. Wow. I never even for once thought that it'd be another 6 years before I would return and that too for my wedding. Incredible, what turns life holds for you.
So sick I stayed, from Lucknow to Bombay. 2 days in Bombay. A business class flight on Swiss Air back to Hong Kong. Still running a high fever and by this time I had lost a lot of weight. A whole lot. In Hong Kong, I was admitted into a hospital about a week before I was supposed to leave and move to Austin.
In this hospital, the Dr gave me no medicine. He just made sure I drank a whole lot of water. Since this was a viral infection, apparently that's all I needed. 2-3 days later, I was good to go. Still a lot thinner, but ready to go. A heck of an alternative to "weight watchers" - don't recommend it to anyone!
August 18th, 1988. I land in San Francisco. I am really hungry since I pretty much didn't eat much on the plane. My dad's with me and I still remember we both got a chili dog. It was huge! And we loved it. If only my mom were to know that the first meal in my new home country was topped w/ a hearty topping of beef! ;) Oh well, I think she gave up on keeping me a vegetarian long ago. And especially in HK - where my dad, my sister and I (everyone but my mom who is still a pure vegetarian) pretty much ate everything. And I mean everything. That's a whole other post, right there.
From SF, my dad and I got on an AA flight to Dallas. I still remember flying into Dallas, as we flew right by downtown. I was sitting by the window looking outside, filled with curiosity. I remember staring at the Reunion Tower with the bright lights lighting up the globe. I remember
seeing the tall building w/ the green lights. Little did I know that almost 20 years to the day later, I will be sitting in a house in that very city next to my wife (whom I met in this city) and my daughter (who was born here) writing about that moment on my blog.
Another short hop on AA and we are in Austin. It's now probably around 10pm. I come out of the plane into the terminal and carefully inspect what looks like a very very small airport. Shit! I thought - this looks tiny. When the main airport you know of is Hong Kong's (at that time) Kai Tak - the Austin airport to me looks very empty and small-townish. My immediate reaction was, if the airport is this small what could we say about the city? And I'm committed to spend at least the next 3-4 years of my life here. Crap.
But then, as I walked towards the exit I saw this big banner:
"Welcome to Austin. Live music capital of the world."
Hmmm. I thought, it can't be all that bad, eh?
And of course, it wasn't. It's Austin. The best college experience ever, in one of my favorite cities in the world.
20 years ago, I left my parents, my sister and my home in Hong Kong and I came to the United States.
As much as some of the Olympic stories are a little cheesy specially the way NBC "dramatizes" things, I can't help but get drawn into them. I think it helps me get a back story on the individual athletes and they become more than just an athlete. They become human beings w/ a history who are trying to achieve things that many of us can only dream of.
I could be critical of the over-dramatization, but then I grew up on a steady diet of Bollywood flicks, so who am I to judge? :)
Keep them coming. I love the olympics. I just love them. The back-stories - well, ok. Keep them coming. There are lots of closet-admirers ... ;)
Just came across this from the So You Think You Can Dance show on Fox. Apparently two of the contestants got to learn and perform a bollywood song: Dhoom Tana from Om Shanti Om. Here's the clip from the show:
So Bollywood movies have always had a dance number - where you get a whole bunch of backup dancers to the main leads. This is similar to dance numbers in musicals or on music videos. What's funny is that in the old days most of these backup dancers used to be Indian. But now in almost every Bollywood film more and more of these backup dancers (esp female) are white.
This is an interesting development. Since it didn't just happen in one movie and stop. It started somewhere and continues to this day in almost every movie.
So why is that?
Here are some of my hypotheses:
1) Since more and more Bollywood movies are set abroad - it may seem more "natural" that when the hero and the heroine spontaneously bust into a dance song - that they pull passers-by into their in-the-moment routine. And since they are in Canada, Australia, England, Switzerland, New Zealand or South Africa - the dancers tend to be representative of the country where the characters are.
So the thinking must be that an Indian hero dancing w/ an Indian heroine with a bunch of white people dancing behind them is more realistic than an Indian hero dancing w/ an Indian heroine with a bunch of Indian dancers behind them in a foreign location. Just some sarcasm ;)
2) More likely I think this is economics at work. Flying cast and crew to foreign locations is still a very expensive proposition for Bollywood films. Esp as many of the costs are incurred in a foreign currency. Now as the production manager is determining whom to take - he/she probably has some budgetary limitations to be met. So this is a good place to cut - even though to hire foreign dancers may be more expensive than hiring indian dancers - when you add the airfare and hotel and other logistics costs - the foreign dancers are a more efficient option. And they seem more "realistic" per #1.
3) My third hypothesis is somewhat cultural in nature. A culture that was dominated by a white race for almost 200 years finds reason to show off a position of strength. Sometimes this may come across by Indian men who may have a white girlfriend or a wife. Esp in Bollywood films that may be targeting a broad and diverse Indian population - there is some sense of strength in a man who has white chicks dancing behind him and to his tune. (Interestingly enough though, often the guy who is shown w/ a white girlfriend is the bad one - the one w/ moral weaknesses and a strong and ugly love for money. But being with the white woman is different from just having them dancing behind you, right?)
Those are the thoughts that come to mind. Can you think of any other reasons?
The Dallas Historical Society has announced the recipients of the 2008 awards for Excellence in Community Service. Amongst the winners is my dear father-in-law: Raj Seekri. Here's a blurb from today's Dallas Morning News:
For Education-Teacher:
Raj Seekri. As a former teacher of mathematics at Eastfield College and as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, he now serves as a full-time professor of mathematics at Richland College, where he is held in highest regard by administrators, colleagues and students. As one of his many admiring students has written, "His ability to translate the difficult subject of mathematics is surpassed only by his deep and devoted love for his students."
Congratulations to Daddy. A well-deserved honor.
Here's to many more teachers who inspire us to strive for more and more.
And therefore I am awake right now. Because I know that I am off tomorrow. Why - you ask? Well, for no real reason, whatsoever! :) I am hoping to go catch the new batman flick - which I think will be really good. Christian Bale is one of my favs and I think it's directed by Nolan who is quite quite good. In fact Batman Begins was one of my fav comic book movies.
Wow - quite rusty at blog posting. Been so long - it feels strange. Almost like I am talking to myself. Which I most likely am. And that shouldn't bother me - considering how much I do that all the time anyways. So why be bothered now? Doing something that I do all the time anyways?
Who would know?
Not me.
Not anyone in my house. Considering they are all asleep.
Not anyone who's reading. 'Coz I already said - "NOT ME"!
