Punjabi singer Lal Singh Bhatti and beatboxer Radioactive played Oakland last night, a fascinating mix:

In December, Mandeep Sethi and Blackmahal collaborated for S.F.’s Yerba Buena fest. Blackmahal fuses jazz with Punjabi folk:

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Stephen Colbert had a hard-hitting segment last night over Republicans’ questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and the omphaloskepsis of white men in America. It’s Okay If You’re the Majority is a blind spot for every majority group, no less middle-class northie Hindus in India.

Colbert drew a prosaic analogy to light skin-colored band-aids and crayons. One of the nicest things about living in Bombay was rediscovering that clothing proportions and palettes, flavors, vegetarian menus, labels, greeting cards, were designed with you in mind. Like the Apple bonus, it was like two thousand years of brown Steve Jobses had optimized your environment. I’d imagine it’s hard getting a Yorkshire pudding in Patna.

It was obvious, of course, when you match culture to culture. For once, the bunker mentality, the fossilizing of a culture overseas, paid off.

‘Vindaloo’ a parody of a mashup. It’s a riff on how some desis are fake ethnics, like chop suey, chicken tikka or American pizza. And the song about Goan curry became an English football anthem (thanks, khoof):

“Vindaloo” is a song by Fat Les… recorded for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The song was originally written as a parody of football chants, but was adopted as one … Much of the song consists of the phrase “nah nah nah” and the word “vindaloo”… “We’re England; we’re gonna score one more than you”… The song has brief verses, spoken/sung by Keith Allen…

… the band were deliberately waking the ghost of an earlier incident on the BBC TV programme The Late Show. Guest Keith Allen got into an extremely heated row with the panel over his view that comedy was now being hamstrung to appease rules of political correctness. Just before storming off the live broadcast, Allen stormed at an Asian member of the panel that “It’s not a chip you’ve got on your shoulder, it’s a f**king vindaloo!”. He later explained to press reporters that a vindaloo is as faux ethnic (this piece of Goan cuisine actually originated from Portugal) as those who masquerade as self-appointed spokespeople for ethnic minority communities’ rights in order to censor arts and culture according to their own pet prejudices.

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I

Bombay is flooded.
Bombay is water-rationed.
Bombay lies next to the sea.

II

Indian cities budget for storm drains.
Much of those budgets is embezzled.
Indians are major tax evaders.

III

From: [U.S.] City of S–, Traffic Signals
Sent: Monday, July 13

[Re: your email from July 6]

Dear Manish,

It seems that a video camera was not working well. That has been replaced. The signal is now operating properly.

Thank you for your interest in Traffic.

Seven days from complaint to fix, conducted entirely over email.

I

Among three indie cafés,
The only moving thing
Was a tall, stylish, desi barista.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a mod brown brewer
Inside a suburban Starbucks.

III

The popcorn seller whirled at the cinema counter.
Srishti was a small part of the pantomime.

(apologies to Wallace Stevens)

The Hurt Locker is the most intense war movie I’ve seen since Waltz with Bashir. It reminds me of The English Patient novel in some ways. Like Kip the Sikh, the central character is a sapper, an American soldier who defuses IEDs in Iraq; and like Patient, the movie is about the intense personal bonds forged in wartime more than the events of battle themselves.

The movie is an episodic sequence filmed in tight focus, nowhere near as poetic as Ondaatje’s prose. It’s muscular and in-your-face. But there’s a certain elegance in its focus on one Roarkian soldier intent on doing his job well despite his saner, more risk-averse colleagues. He approaches bombs as logic puzzles, grappling with new variations despite — because of — the risk of dying. The character is a seductive combination of chess geek and soldier. The movie, a must-see.

The news column’s RSS feed has moved to this address:

http://www.ultrabrown.com/feed/news

Please update your newsreaders. The posts feed remains unchanged.

Thanks, PK, for the reminder.

Related post: Waste even more time at work

(Vij-vertisement) This isn’t desi-related, but moments ago I finished a techie side project. Phixxit is a place to gripe about, and vote on, issues with brand-new tech. It covers the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, Kindle, Windows 7, Snow Leopard and so on. It’s the nitpicky perfectionist in me writ large.

So please check it out. Post your own gripes. I’ll make sure the product designers see the gripes with the most votes.

By the way, you can post suggestions for the site itself — where else — under the Phixxit tab.

Remember the post I did regarding Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song?
The post covered what the inspiration was behind the song as well as how it inspired a Bollywood tune, if you haven't seen it yet it's worth checking out.

In any case check out this crazy mash up between that song and the insane 1980s Indian religious sitcom ‘Ramayan.‘ What the Wat?

Via Boing Boing

Pankaj Advani’s Sankat City has so many things going on at the same time – it's brimming over with good ideas, verbal gymnastics and visual gags – that it leaves you feeling giddy. More than once I felt sure that the film would eventually trip over its own cleverness, but it held its ground. Though it’s loud and ribald, it establishes a lunatic tone and sticks with it, right from the opening shot where a man dressed up in a gaudy Rakshasa costume is shown pursuing another man in Deva get-up through the busy streets of Mumbai. (What is this, you wonder, a Ram-Lila rehearsal gone terribly wrong or a visual metaphor for a corrupt policeman hectoring a minor – and relatively innocent – offender?) Variations on this bizarre chase will recur at different points through the film, as it cuts between many characters and sub-plots.

It would take a long time to detail the plot in a way that would satisfactorily explain the relationship between all the characters (and I’m not sure I even caught every detail), but here’s the essence of it: Guru (Kay Kay Menon), a small-time crook with a soft corner for (living) fish, makes the mistake of stealing a Mercedes that’s transporting a cash stack of 1 crore rupees for the sadistic gangster Faujdaar (Anupam Kher). Deep in trouble and given three days to retrieve the money (which is now mysteriously missing), Guru teams up with con-girl Mona (Rimi Sen) who had once knocked him over the head with a pair of handcuffs after cheating him of his share of a loot. Others involved in this unholy mess include a nervous builder in severe debt to Faujdaar, a Godman with a weakness for bathing with men who supposedly remind him of his childhood friends in the village talaab, and a D-grade film director who has just been arm-twisted into blowing up a van with his hammy leading man inside (which, incidentally, leads to a sly line implying that Amitabh Bachchan’s near-fatal accident during the shooting of Coolie might not have been an accident after all).

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Have a great weekend everyone!
Dont forget to signup for the *PMH Giveaway. Enjoy.....

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Nineteen-year-old Saina Nehwal upset the Chinese at the Indonesian Super Series badminton tourney June 21st with an overhead smash for match point (at 6:10). She became the first Indian to win a Super Series:

Currently ranked number 6 in the world by Badminton World Federation, Saina is the first Indian woman to reach the singles quarterfinals at the Olympics and the first Indian to win the World Junior Badminton Championships… the first Indian to win a Super Series tournament after clinching the Indonesia Open with a stunning victory over higher-ranked Chinese Lin Wang in Jakarta…

Saina was born in Hisar, Haryana, India and spent her complete life in city of Hyderabad. Her foray into the world of badminton was influenced by her father Dr. Harvir Singh, a scientist at the Directorate of Oilseeds Research, Hyderabad and her mother Usha Nehwal, both of whom were former badminton champions in Haryana. [Wiki]

I had been visiting badminton courts with my parents ever since I was an infant. While they were playing, I was made to sleep in the corner for hours. I learnt to handle a racquet at five and by nine I was fully into the game. [Outlook]

Here’s a clip of the medal ceremony.

Does not Vivek Gomber (Mumbai Calling) bear a resemblance to the young Corey Feldman?

Last night I watched episode four of the series, ‘Boy to Man.’ Nitin Ganatra wrote it with help from Meera Syal and my buddy Anuvab Pal. It didn’t much inspire me to watch another. The twitchy handheld cam makes you expect something edgy like The Office. ‘Twas not to be. The episode leaned heavily on uncley humor and stereotype: Indian work culture’s rigid hierarchies and Lilette Dubey forcing her call-center-worker son into an arranged marriage.

It is, to be sure, much better than most Western takes on India. The office of Teknobable is relatively modern, the characters identifiable humans rather than brownies in the background like that Al Brooks flick. There are a handful of good gags, including a running joke about banning romance in the office. But much of the humor is insuperably predictable. The Bombay-based actors are better than the material.

Related posts: ‘Mumbai Calling’, The British Asian Raj (updated)

The contestants on Operación Triunfo (Operation Triumph), a Spanish talent show, sang ‘Jai Ho’ last night:

A kind of cross between Pop Idol, Voces en Función, Star Search, and Big Brother, the show aimed to find the country’s next solo singing sensation, putting a selection of hopefuls through their paces by getting them to sing a variety of cover versions of popular songs (mainly in Spanish and English, but also sporadically in Italian or Portuguese), with tutoring from various professionals, and a headmaster… [Wiki]

Spaniards and Latinos are generally pretty good with their Hindi pronunciation for the same reason why Hindi-wale do well in Spanish. The default consonants in both languages are unaspirated, and both have gendered nouns. Latinos do tend to murder the ‘j’ though, calling my brother ‘Raha-neesh.’

But guess which lyrics they sang to perfection, I mean absolutely nailed? The ones Rahman and Maya took from them. The Spanish.

¡Baila baila! Ahora conmigo, tu bailas para hoy Por nuestro día, olvida Problemas lo que sean ¡Salud! ¡Baila baila! [Link]

Dance dance! Right now, with me, you dance for today For our day, forget Whatever problems may be Cheers! Dance dance!

(thanks, Joolz)

Related posts: Showing us the hand, Soft power, Jai ho Rahman