Varsha Sabhnani is Scary

A few short weeks ago, Varsha and Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani were the epitome of the Indian immigrant success story. Varsha, 45, an Indonesian of Indian descent, and Mahender, 51, an Indian, ran a multi-million dollar perfume business from their Long Island home, pictured below. The Muttontown mansion, located in one of the wealthiest areas of [...]

Bindaas Bol: “Condom”

(Thanks Aroon!)
I’m always struck by how well made these Public Service Ads are. Ad film making in India is at a seriously evolved level but even back in the day, the PSAs were something else. I’m old enough to remember the national integration ads with celebrities from different walks of life, not to mention the [...]

Book Tag

Jawahara at Writing Life tagged me to come up with a list of Indian authors/books I’ve read or want to read. She herself has a formidable list of names which is fast giving me a complex.
There are two groups of writers below: the first group is plain old Indian, either by descent or [...]

Tintin, Steven Speilberg & Peter Jackson

Long before Cameron Diaz scooped up a bit of Ben Stiller’s gunk in There’s Something About Mary, there was another fictional character with a famously upswept do – Tintin the investigative boy reporter. His Belgian creator, Herge a.k.a. Georges Prosper Remi, just received a posthumous 100th birthday gift: Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson with one [...]

Zeitgeist

“Are you all right?” Anita asked.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, on a stool he’d pulled up from the counter. Anita leaned against the doorframe and studied his profile, remembering all the other times he’d done the very same thing in all those other houses.
The years had been kind to him, the nose was [...]

Three People on My Mind

Here’s a peek at three people on my mind this past week:
First up, Craig Ferguson. The host of CBS’ Late Night show, Ferguson was pretty much at the bottom of the pool ratings wise when he started. I’d caught brief glimpses of his show here and there while channel surfing - usually when Conan O’Brien [...]

Happy (V. Belated) Birthday Stephen Colbert

“We cannot elect men to office,” said Jane Fonda, cozily ensconced on a charmingly disconcerted Stephen Colbert’s lap, “that are afraid of premature evacuation.”
On May 10th, Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report got an early birthday present when the object of his fantasy, Fonda, decided to turn her interview with him into a [...]

Violence in Punjab

“I called him and said that I’m prepared to meet you by myself, alone and unarmed.”
Who said that? Is that a piece of dialogue from some movie? The emissary of some city under siege offering to go out and meet the marauder at the gates, perhaps?
No, it’s a spokesman of the Dera Sacha Sauda offering [...]

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell is dead.
I’ve been trying really hard to think of something nice to say ever since. Here goes: Jerry, your family will miss you. So will the Moral Majority. And Liberty University.  You were an inspiration to them.
Ok, now here’s what I really think:

2 Million Viewers Vanish

A year or so ago. Conan O’Brien, successful late night television host with shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live on his resume, told Charlie Rose that he felt we were now living in TV’s Golden Age. The writing was better than it had ever been, the production values were excellent and the acting [...]