Tag: South Asian diaspora identity

Desi street food in London (and beyond)

Brown Pundits Archive · March 3, 2014 · 2 comments
Sounds (and tastes) pretty nice, just like the yoga-asanas, jhal muri from Kolkata enters English palates (and hopefully lexicon). Perhaps Londonistanis can compare notes and serve a few new pointers as well.

So what’s on the menu? Horn OK Please has been proudly serving dosa
and chaat since 2011; along with the classic Indian soft drinks like
Thums Up and Frooty that both delight the uninitiated and make long-time
fans come over all nostalgic. Rava, rice, and mung dosas, bhel puri,
pani puri, aloo tikki and samosa chaat form the core of a menu that’s
won them a legion of hardcore supporters.

When it comes to influences, Angus Denoon of The Everybody Love Love
Jhal Muri Express draws his from Kolkata’s culinary artisans. He learned
his finely-honed craft in that city, observing and absorbing. Angus
might be an Africa-born, British bloke; but, as many delighted customers
insist, his heart is Indian. As are his tools, and the gloriously gaudy
signs he commissions from his Bengal-based signwriter. All that would count for little were his food not also authentic. His
chaat captures the streetfood spirit; freestyling, applying andaz,
ever-evolving. Signature jhal muri is shaken into newspaper cones,
puchkas are piled onto palm leaf plates, deep cups of ghughi dal feature
a layer of crispy muri, chewy coconut chunks and a thick thatch of sev.


Outside the capital, England is enjoying Indian street food fresh
from the Rajah Grill – ‘Urban Rajah’ Ivor Peters’ roving pop-up project.
Manchester has Aarti Ormsby’s Chaat Cart; Birmingham the Keralite
Pop-Up Dosa; and Leeds the unstoppable, award-winning Manjit’s Kitchen,
whose legendary Chilli Paneer Wrap now merely needs referencing by
acronym.

regards

Dr David

Brown Pundits Archive · March 1, 2014 · No comments
One gun-shy, low-power doctor is standing up against the high-powered National Rifle Association and may even win. Suddenly the second amendment is in danger due to alien beliefs held by people who were (till recently) aliens. First they take away the jobs from deserving natives and now they are after the guns as well.

“Dr Murthy’s record of political activism in support of radical gun
control measures raises significant concerns about his ability to
objectively examine issues pertinent to America’s 100 million firearm
owners and the likelihood that he would use the office of the Surgeon
General to further his preexisting campaign against gun ownership,” the
NRA said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell, seeking to torpedo the Indian-American’s
nomination.

“Given Dr Murthy’s lengthy history of hostility
towards the right to keep and bear arms, along with his calls for the
full weight of the federal government’s health apparatus to be used to
target lawful gun ownership, there is little reason to believe that he
would not work to further a gun control agenda if confirmed as Surgeon
General. Simply put, the confirmation of Dr Murthy is a prescription for
disaster for America’s gun owners,” the letter said. Murthy, who is
only 37, was examined closely about his stand on gun control during his
confirmation hearing. He trod carefully on the hot-button, hair-trigger,
issue in a country that has argued itself hoarse on the right to bear
arms enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Senator Paul has indicated he will use procedural maneuvers to put a
hold on Murthy’s nomination. But Democrats say they have enough votes to
overcome the block. In confirmed, Murthy will become the highest
ranking Indian-American official in the U.S administration, not to speak
of the youngest surgeon-general in 150-plus years the office has been
in existence.

regards

Adieu to Asia

Brown Pundits Archive · February 19, 2014 · No comments

I’m about to leave Cambodia to head back to Uganda. I’m hoping to share my thoughts as I’ve become a bit of an old hand when it comes to South & South East Asia.

At any rate it’s back to Africa and even though developing countries are broadly similar; I have to admit that Phnom Penh and Kampala are totally different in their levels of organisation.

Oh and Bombay airport is simply spectacular.

Why the elite in the Rest yearn for the West

Brown Pundits Archive · February 17, 2014 · 3 comments

I’ve become an old hand in the developing world since I’ve done a fair bit of travelling.

I’ve noticed that elites throughout the world (and middle classes) dream of the West even when they lead fairly prosperous lives at home.
I could never really fathom why this was the case because if one has money (and lots of it) what’s the functional difference between Bombay and London (also the advantage being in the developing markets one can be part of the elite class at much lower wealth levels, which are not possible in the West).
I’ve realised that it’s all to do with self-actualisation and the stress of individuality that seems to be the distinctive hall mark of Western culture. In the East & global South the collective spirits is so strong that people take human connections for granted.
In the West self-actualisation is so pronounced that human ties take a very secondary role to the life of the individual (reality is far more blurred but this is the ideal).
So when Hollywood and Cable Tv bombard images of well turned-out successful Western individuals it takes a hold on the national imagination. Hence the global developing elites aren’t necessarily yearning for personal prosperity but the dream of becoming one’s own self that only seems possible in broadly prosperous and largely middle class societies (even if the US may be among the more unequal societies the huge size of its middle class still holds pronounced cultural sway).

Where is My Family In the Media?

Brown Pundits Archive · February 9, 2014 · No comments

Ever since the first Cheerios commercial last year showing an interracial family in a banal non-controversial context, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the topic. But one thing that has stood out in these treatments is a relatively narrow understanding of what interracial is. This is illustrated by an op-ed in The New York Times, Where Is My Family on TV? I looked up the various references to an interracial family/individual/relationship within the piece (I don’t watch television, so many were unfamiliar to me), and every single instance except for the very last, pointing out Bruno Mars at the Superbowl, is of a black-white nature.

The problem is illustrated by this pie chart produced by the Census: most interracial interaction in the United States is no longer black-white. About 20% of the people who chose more than one race on the 2010 Census selected black and white. When the original controversy over the first Cheerios ad occurred I remembered a Facebook share which featured interracial families. From what I saw ~80% were of the black-white variety. Perhaps this is the reflection of the background of the family in the Cheerios commercial, but it does get a little tiresome that a broad and general term like “interracial” gets totally specified in a way that excludes many people.

To be fair, perhaps I am not being especially sensitive to the history of black-white relations in the United States. Though most minorities in this nation are no longer black, the vast majority were black until the 1965 immigration reform, and this remained the case up to the 1980s. America’s history of race is to a great extent its history of black and white, and modern non-black minority consciousness is strongly influenced by this older template. And to be honest I don’t think of my own family as “interracial” very much, because in my own life race is not that big of a day to day factor. And, unlike the very cute actress in the Cheerios commercial my daughter is not visibly of mixed race*, so presumably her primary interaction with racial issues is going to be the small moments of surprise people feel when they realize that the brown-skinned man is her father. All this is likely related to the emergent reality of America’s true race dynamic being that of a black/non-black divide.

But if that is really what’s going on here, we need to update it more explicitly. Too often the media seem to assume a world that is stuck in 1965, with a white majority and a black minority. We’re nearly 50 years on from that. Our discourse should reflect that in some consistent manner.

* It seems that people of mixed South Asian and European ancestry can look totally South Asian or European in appearance, with most in the middle. My daughter for whatever reason happens to be much closer to a European appearance.

Mathew Martoma = “Triple Package” + Sociopathy

Brown Pundits Archive · February 7, 2014 · 2 comments

The extent of Mathew Martoma’s fraud at Harvard is almost farcical. The fact that someone like him (born Ajai Mathew Thomas) could succeed in high finance tells you something about high finance. But, it also tells you about the toxic brew of individuals with high intellectual competency but low moral compass. These are far more dangerous than garden variety sociopaths, because their success is contingent upon eating away at the fabric of civil society.

But another aspect hinted at in the story is the role that pressure driven Asian immigrant cultures play in incentivizing this sort of behavior.* To be frank I suspect many Asian immigrant parents might be able tolerate a little corner cutting if their child could make it to Harvard. Naturally when you have someone with sociopathic tendencies like Martoma that tends to be interpreted as carte blanche toward a success-at-any-price mode of operation.

Of course culture is not destiny. The man prosecuting Martoma is himself a 1.5 generation Indian American.

* This sort of problem also crops up in corporations where all rewards are based on outcomes. In which case there is a strong incentive to cheat the system.

Cafe Le Whore and other stories

Brown Pundits Archive · February 2, 2014 · No comments

A new book by Pakistani-American author Moazzam Sheikh.
I think its brilliant and original. Moazzam is not interested in writing “Pakistani” fiction or “Western” fiction. Just stories, about people, in strange places, sometimes doing strange things, but always human, all too human…
Funny too. Very funny at places.
All in all, a fresh, different and disturbing new Pakistani-American voice. Migration, migrants, Lahore, Samnabad and the People’s Republic of San Francisco play a role in most of the stories, as they do in the life of the author. But the themes are universal. Check it out.
Full Disclosure: I am related to the author, who is also a friend.

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