Thanks, y’all, for having me over one last time. I’ve already said my goodbyes. This curious form of public performance brought me some of the people I cherish most. It’s been a second education in the erudition of the comments. The Mutiny was alt.culture.us.asian-indian before and @allyousmartf-ers now, and this delicious salon will continue in another face.

I want to toss in one last thought. Early desi American artists began with the idea of marginalization. Their references were specific and elaborate in-jokes. But look at who’s blown up: those who gave no ground in their conception of themselves. They dabbled in the desi palette because it’s rich, not because it’s definitive. Those who started with I am a Queens rapper, or I am an art director, or I am an animator, experienced brownness not as conscription, but freedom.

And in fact it is. It is a thin layer atop a deep commonality. As a species we are, when you zoom out, genetically almost clones. The differences we draw among us are like the fictional Indiana town of Pawnee squabbling with the fictional town of Eagleton: from the outside, all look same.

A couple of years ago I was watching Aziz Ansari make silly jokes at a small NYC club about hitting on MIA in bad Tamil. Today he’s touring in a 007 tux. Still bemoaning his sex life, but on a much bigger stage. Sepia is one of our colors, one near and dear. But it is only one. Let’s launch our flicks, ebooks, startups, campaigns. Let’s let our freak flags fly.

Can’t wait to see it all, and unlike Bill, I will inhale.

—Manish

Siddhartha broke down under the strain of the face-off and admitted to having his back waxed this one night in Tijuana. Neha looked ready to leap in with war stories, but something in Anna’s look said ‘unh-unh, don’t go there, girlfriend.’ The legend of Cooch Behar is apparently not, repeat not about royalty.

Finally it was down to Sajit, Abhi, Fofatlal and me. Sajit flexed his square jaw thoughtfully and instantly sprouted whiskers. Abhi downed some freeze-dried astronaut food and grew a Mangal Pandey before our very eyes. Fofatlal misheard the goal of the contest. He had his eyebrows singed off with incense and honey and pranced around yodeling ‘Ya-hoo!’ like Shammi Kapoor.

I, having out-hirsuted the Greeks, out-grown the Sicilians, out-whiskered the Iranis, was now faced with my own private I-da-ho’: geek stubble from the Punjab was beaten by astronaut stubble from Houston. Abhi once bragged:

I haven’t met a person alive that has more lethal stubble than I. Any girl I might date would have friends thinking I was abusing her because her face would be left raw.

Unable to bear the shame, I went down to the SMU, passed out some endangered bananas and whispered a stoic farewell to my fine-furred friends. And then left the bunker for the last time, the pneumatic doors closing in the distance. Unlike Star Trek, they don’t say ‘shhhhhhhh’ when they close, they say ‘Desi please!’ with sass in the neck and quiver in the booty. Goddamn back-talkin’ bunker doors.

We’ve always thought of the Mutiny as a salon with a rotating cast of hosts. Nearly two years on, I’m proud of the neurocrack we’ve whipped up together. I’m proud of the rockin’ bloggers and readers we’ve managed to swindle rope in. And now I move on.

Please write the Mutineers if you know Movable Type or PHP and are willing to help out on occasion. And do come read me at Vij.com. The samosas and Maggi sauce are always kept aflame.

No rage, rage against the dying of the light. I go gentle into that good night.

Related posts: Night Watch, She sells seashells, Navi Mumbaikar

The world’s most popular fruit… is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed…

The main hope for survival of the Cavendish [variety] lies in developing new hybrids resistant to the [black sigatoka] fungus, but… the seedless modern fruit does not reproduce sexually and has to be bred from cuttings.

… wild banana species are rapidly going extinct as Indian forests are destroyed… In fact many of the genes that could save the Cavendish may already have been lost… One variety that contains genes that resist black sigatoka survives as a single plant in the botanical gardens of Calcutta… [Link]

The banana’s problem is that it is the seedless, infertile mutant cousin of a wild herb. The absence of seeds makes its fruit edible, but also genetically vulnerable… They have survived only because for some 10,000 years banana-lovers have propagated the fruit by taking shoots from the base of the plants…

The most widespread banana disease currently is a leaf fungus called black Sigatoka. It cuts yields by 50 percent or more on hundreds of millions of small farms across the tropics. Commercial banana plantations keep up production with weekly applications of fungicides – the most intensive application of chemicals on any major food crop. But now a new strain of an old disease, Panama disease, threatens to make even fungicides useless…

“In the 1970s we controlled Black Sigatoka by spraying 10 to 12 times a year…” That frequency has jumped to almost weekly… [Link]

<

p>Our Cuban brothers have access to a hybrid fruit which I dub the banapple. In Uganda, you can even buy banana beer.

… little research has been done. Almost the only result of 80 years of endeavor has been a banana that tastes like an apple and is only eaten in Cuba, where there is nothing else on the supermarket shelves. [Link]

In the densely populated countries around Lake Victoria–Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda–bananas are primary nutrition, accounting for near-total carbohydrate consumption in some diets (in Uganda, the word for food, “matooke,” translates from Swahili as “banana”). The bananas eaten in East Africa are not the dessert-style fruit consumed in the West; they are far more versatile (there’s even a beer brewed from bananas sold in Kampala). [Link]

A banocalypse has already happened once before:

The banana producers began as railroad companies, with friendly local governments granting thousands of acres of surrounding rainforest for each mile of track laid… By the early 1900s, bananas surpassed apples as the nation’s favorite fruit…

Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest…

… the 1923 musical hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas” is said to have been written after songwriters Frank Silver and Irving Cohn were denied in an attempt to purchase their favorite fruit by a syntactically colorful, out-of-stock neighborhood grocer…

Once a little-known species, the Cavendish was eventually accepted as Big Mike’s replacement after billions of dollars in infrastructure changes were made to accommodate different growing and ripening needs. [Link]

<

p>One solution is to force a reverse mutation back into sexual reproduction using seeds:

The goal of all this is to get seeds, and to use them to grow Aguilar’s experimental varieties, one of which, he hopes, will ultimately yield a tasty, market-friendly Cavendish replacement. What are the odds of an individual seed ultimately yielding a thriving hybrid? “About 1 in 10,000,” Aguilar says.

It takes about four months for a pollinated plant to bear fruit, which is harvested and brought to a processing shed for seed extraction. Workers press thousands of bananas through mesh strainers. About one seed is found for every 300 bananas. The seeds are then brought indoors, to what Aguilar calls the “embryo rescue unit.” Of the tiny number of seeds, only a third of them actually germinate. [Link]

<

p>Another researcher thinks the threat of banana extinction will force the first mass adoption of genetically modified food:

How much time is left for the Cavendish? Some scientists say five years; some say 10…

The race to save the banana is personal. “The bananas,” he says, “are my children…”

Swennen emphasizes that biotech is literally the only way to save the Cavendish, which, because it is 100 percent seedless, can’t be improved on by traditional hybridization methods… “I can’t understand this romantic idea that nature is perfect, and that what we do is create Frankensteins,” Swennen says. People “are frightened–and they’re wrong.” He believes that the threats bananas face mean that they are likely to be the bioengineered food that finally forces global shoppers to consider–and accept–science’s inevitable intervention in the agricultural process. [Link]

<

p>

But if the banana does ever die out, it’s peanut butter jelly time for all of us (audio)

Speed bump courtesy of the Tamil Tigers

London rapper M.I.A. has been denied a visa to visit or work in the USA by immigration officials… Sources close to the British Sri-Lankan MC said that her lawyers are frantically trying to resolve the situation… She is hoping to get back to the USA as soon as US immigration will allow for a collaboration with producer Timbaland on her next album. [Link]

… Arulpragasam doesn’t downplay her Tiger connection, she flaunts it, it’s integral to her marketing. She did a mix album using unauthorized samples called Piracy Funds Terrorism. Her song ‘Sunshowers’ refers to suicide bombs (‘And some showers I’ll be aiming at you’), her first album bears her dad’s [LTTE] codename. Jungle guerrillas are all over the ‘Sunshowers’ video, there’s a large running tiger in her excellent concert visuals, she does a soldier step on stage and a shoutout to the P.L.O. [Link]

<

p>Arulpragasam’s blog is littered with misspellings, but her interview video clips have that sexayy, husky voice, a confidence which shows up on screen but not always on stage. Does your starcrush survive? Roll again.

THEY TRY SHUT MY DOOR!

Roger roger do you here me over!!!!
the U.S immigration wont let me in!!!!!
i was mennu work with timber startin this week, but now im doin a Akon “im locked out they wont let me in” im locked out! they wont let me in! Now Im strictly making my album outside the borders!!!! so il see you all one day, for now ill keep reportin from the sidelines
to my people who walk wiv me in the America, dont forget we got the internet! Spread the word! or come get me!!!!!! ill be in my bird flu lab in china! liming and drinkin tiger beer with my pet turtel. I love everyone for the support, now i need it more. ill stay up spread out else where. [Link]

im in india right now, hurding cows, theres some minister staying at my hotel, and his body guard has a a.k 47. me and my brother just caught him knockin on peoples doors askin for money. the police body guard that it. [Link]

The last time U.S. immigration turned back a pop star, they nailed international archvillain Cat Stevens. I sleep so much better at night knowing they foiled the plot to threaten America with music from the ’70s. Playing ‘Where’s Osama?’ pales in comparison.

Related posts: M.I.A.: Step up to blow up, The Modi protest, Modi gets B*slapped, Ain’t no junk in her trunk, Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Wah, po’ Maya, I coulda been a contendah, Hello, this is M.I.A., Grind me down sugar salt, Fire Fire (updated again), Tinted Tilly, Bucky Done Underwhelmed, The transit of Venus in Mercury, New York, quieten down…, Acid-washed genes, M.I.A., fashion victim, M.I.A. now a role model?, Missing in Acton, Monsters of rock

• A scandalous, side-by-side audio comparison of ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart,’ a Black Eyed Peas Grammy winner, with the song it plagiarized, ‘Ae Nau Jawan Sab Kuchh Yahan’ from Apradh. The catchy melody is a shameless copy. Listen for yourself.
  
  It’s not a sample, it’s the entire melodic backbone of the song, almost entirely unchanged. Royalties? Nope. Americans really are learning from Bollywood.
  
  
• A video clip of NYU dosa man Thiru Kumar composing his mirch-e-frisbees while wearing a jacket with a big, LTTE-esque airbrushed tiger on the back

  Out-of-Office Tiger

  . Yes, he listens to M.I.A.
  
  
• A stylish trailer for call center documentary John and Jane:

  The most startling character is the re-named Naomi, a Gujurati girl who bleaches her skin and hair and speaks with an American accent even outside working hours. [Link]

• A self-promotional photo essay of PMH stickers pasted throughout San Francisco by friends of the artist

I really love this site’s aesthetic. The photos are ginormous and animated in a flipbook format. Raag loves his fabric textures and Billyburg blue-on-brown palette. The Meena Kumari (?) sticker still looks like she’s post-orgasmic. He’s got some new shirts big-upping ’70s Bollycomposer duo Anand-Kalyan (licensing issues?), who composed the song the Peas lifted.

IMO this biz plan is brilliant. By pairing Anand-Kalyan audio clips with related tees, Raag educates Bollyhip clotheshorses in a much more engaging way than the tiny back story on a Ben & Jerry’s.

Here are a few unsolicited suggestions:

• It’s crying out for a comments feature
• The concept, design and story ideas are great, but the writing needs more of an edge
• More, please! The site looks like a labor of love with eons invested. What Raag needs is some people to help with the gorgeousness (hint, hint).

Related posts: Everyone recycles, Tiffinwalla in New York, The peacock, The tao of Manschot

Cody’s Books, Berkeley, California was firebombed about 4:30 a.m. when a pipe bomb was hurled through a back window just thirty seconds before a similar attack occurred at a nearby Waldenbooks store. One of the world’s finest general bookstores, Cody’s was bombed just fourteen days after Khomeini [issued a fatwa against Salman Rusdhie]… During the cleanup another bomb was found on the floor in the poetry section of the store. The owner of the store… stood across the street while the bomb squad worked with the bomb and as it exploded. [Link]

… the store announced that it would continue to sell Salman Rushdie’s controversial “Satanic Verses” — a decision that Ross called “our finest hour.” [Link]

Rushdie was pithy as ever:

“Rushdie came to the store once, a surprise visit when he was still in hiding,” Ross said. The author gave the bookstore 5-minutes notice to announce that he was in the store and would sign books. “There’s a hole above the information desk from the bombing. Someone scribbled ‘Salman Rushdie memorial hole.’ When Rushdie was here, he looked up and said, ‘Some people get statues, others get holes.’ ” [Link]

Cody’s blames the closure on competition from online textbook and academic bookstores and the general decline of Telegraph Ave., a street which rocks out with revolutionary flava but isn’t all that safe at night.

The owner of Cal students’ favorite head shop plumbing supply store said:

“Sales are horrible right now,” said Al Geyer, founder of Annapurna, an eclectic store that’s been on Telegraph since 1968 and offers an array of goods ranging from pipes to spiritual music to sex toys. “I don’t think anybody is making any money.” [Link]

Reasons cited include crime, litter, homelessness, the mainstreaming of tokin’ supplies and sex toys, and the growth of lame, overpriced on-campus retail. Progressive bookstores are still businesses, and they ding the city council’s tolerance for broken windows:

“The city has let Telegraph slip… It used to be cool and hip and the center of the city, but people don’t want to come here anymore…”

“They have their heads in the sand… They’re stuck in their own ideology.” … he cited the ongoing problem of People’s Park [owned by the university], which, he says, attracts homeless people who discourage shoppers from coming to the area. He said the city has treated it solely as a social problem, ignoring the crime and quality-of-life implications… At the same time, he said, the city reduced the number of police patrols on Telegraph because of budget cuts. [Link]

<

p>The city of Berkeley was never very good at tackling crime without gentrifying. When I was a Cal student, I kept hearing of drunken, 5’6″ college friends getting mugged by 5’11″ 15-year-olds from Oakland. One evening I moved into a ground floor apartment close to Telegraph; the next morning I arrived at my new place bright and early, just in time to see someone sleeping on my bed, in my clothes. Startled, he bounded away through the bedroom window. He was welcome to my tie-dyes and butterfly collars. I moved again the same day.

Cody’s two other, smaller stores — on Fourth Street in Berkeley and on Stockton Street in San Francisco — will remain open. [Link]

Cody’s eclectic selection has always been cool, but in school I was always too far behind to read much for fun. These days, kids in the know buy their textbooks from India. Blame Crossword for Cody’s coda.

Related post: Insourcing

The #1 city: Delhi. The #1 country: Pakistan.

Three of the top six cities are in India: Delhi, Chennai and Bombay.

The top U.S. city: Salt Lake City. Then Chicago.

The top language: Arabic. Was it really a surprise?

Also check out who searches for the word ‘pornography’ and the word ‘desi.’

One of the ultimate ironies of the traditional Indian gender roles is that, although they strive to keep chastity on every cherubic mind, they accomplish quite the opposite… every interaction is viewed through the filter of gender… it’s a perversion that the platonic part of our lives is defined by the sexual. If chastity were the objective, repression is clearly not the answer. [Link]

Related posts: Everyone’s having sex except you, No sex please, we’re Indian, Bad Indian Boy, There is no place to hide it in India

… [Afghanistan's] Supreme Court sought to ban [a TV channel] for showing the Charlton Heston sword and sandals epic, The Ten Commandments, during Ramadan in 2004. “It showed the prophet Moses with short trousers and among the girls,” Wahid Mujdah, a Supreme Court spokesman, said at the time. “He’s a very holy person and Islam respects him. This is wrong.” [Link - thanks, WGIIA]

And that was when Heston was playing bearded ol’ Moses. I wonder what they’d make of Heston’s other works featuring homoerotic bondage and hot monkey love:

But after a little bronze-limbed tussle, I’m sure the Afghan judges and the former NRA president could have a heart-to-heart about the virtues of widespread AK-47 ownership.

“It’s great for my parents. They’re of that generation that came over here with nothing. My ancestors would never have believed that their offspring would be at the Palace.” [Link]

Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal, who recently had a baby together, are currently filming for the next series of Kumars at No 42… confirmed guests include Cybill Shepherd… [Link]

Life’s sometimes ha-ha-hee-hee

No matter how much I love Bhaskar’s stuff, once a comedian has been knighted, he’s officially jumped the scepter. There’s nothing mutinous about a medal of the British Empire, a street cred slasher. Whereas the medal goes well with Sir Kingsley’s Shakespearean presence, even when he’s playing a goofy vampyre king.

There is one thing I love about the award. Can you keep a secret? Many Bhaskar sketches make fun of English people and their stereotypes about desis (thanks, BB and ksk). Shhh, don’t tell the queen.

Related post: Twee, innit?