Dear Sepia Mutiny,

You’ve been a pal. No, seriously, you’re the best yaar a Pakistani-American girl could conjure. That’s why I dedicate Kishore Kumar’s soundtrack, “Chalte, Chalte” to you. The lyrics, “Kabhi alvida na kahna” translate to, “Never say goodbye.” SM, you challenged me. You educated me. You delighted me. You enraged me. And so, I thank you. All of you.

Thank you, Amardeep, my fellow Philadelphian. When I first stumbled across Sepia Mutiny years ago, yours were the first posts I followed closely.  I still go back and reference your eloquent, lyrical writings on music, authors and more. And as I go forward, I hope to keep your last post in mind. Especially this line: “[T]here really is value in spelling out an idea or a perspective at some length, and then giving readers as much space as they want or need to discuss it with you.” Longform writing, ftw!

Thank you A N N A, for welcoming me into the bunker. Your sharp editing eye has saved many a post of mine. Your uncompromising  fierceness continues to inspire.

Thank you, Nila, my Bollywood baaji. You always took the time to help me refine my writing. And I have lost track of the number of times you sent me post ideas.

Thank you, Abhi. Your editorial leadership and support kept me writing throughout grad school. And I don’t regret a single moment I spent blogging instead of briefing.

Thank you, Ennis. You are the best link curator I have ever met. Tweeting with you was a delight. Thank you for always having my back.

Thank you, Sugi. You sent me to NYC to meet Shah Rukh Khan. And you introduced me to the Asian American Writers Workshop. Someday, I will get you to autograph my copy of your book.  Thank you for encouraging me to write about #tinyfabkidney. I remember you saying, “That story will someday be on Good Morning America.” And sure enough. It was.

Thank you to all the past contributors, especially Manish, Vinod, Preston, Siddhartha, Saheli and Neha. You created an online space where I finally felt at home.

Thank you Chaitain and Kunjan. You both devoted hours of your time to helping us diva writers share our content. You let us call/text/email you at all hours of the night for technical support. We couldn’t have done this without you.

Thank you, Cicatrix. Working with you at MTV Desi was a dream come true.

Thank you, Taz. You introduced me to 99% of the music I listen to today.

Thank you, Amitava. I am thrilled you joined us on this mutiny-toned journey. Kya baat hai!

Thank you Razib, Vivek, Lakshmi and Pavani. Your enthusiasm for SM was contagious.

Thank you all of our contributors, for their hard work behind the scenes. So many did so much that remains hidden.

Thank you to all our supporters. Everyone who shared our articles on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Everyone who contributed to our discussions. Everyone who sent us messages of support.

Thank you to everyone who shared their stories with me.

Thank you, Sepia Mutiny. You changed my life.  You gave me a voice. Thank you for giving me a space to write about what I wanted to write about. Thank you for letting me rant. And rant. And rant. Until we meet again.

Mutinously Yours,

PG

P.S. Let’s end this shindig with a little Bollywood, eh?

When did you know that you wanted to sing? After I finished school at Lahore, I started college, but it just didn’t feel right. I had a strange feeling that there had to be something more exciting to do in life. I had always loved music, because of my parents’ love for music and because of the music culture in Lahore. But there were no musical schools in Pakistan, which was kind of annoying.

Now your parents must be pretty cool, to let you come to America and pursue your music. Was there ever a “No beta, don’t do this” moment? It’s such a stereotypically unstable profession. So they always have a “Oh god, why did we let you do this” attitude. But I think secretly they’re excited because they both have great voices themselves and a love for music. In 2003, I made my dad sit down and listen to a cover I did of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and he became really quiet. That was when he started to take  my music seriously.

How much of a music foundation did you have in Pakistan and how was that supplemented in Berklee? I didn’t really have much of a chance to study music in Pakistan. I would love to set aside three or four years to go back home to Pakistan and get some classical training, but I haven’t been able to do that. I have gone back and apprenticed with local Lahori singers. It’s quite hard, they’re very traditional. It all depends on who exactly is teaching you music. Styles vary from teacher to teacher. Whereas over here, it’s very straightforward and standard. You learn European music theory. You learn jazz arrangements. You learn orchestral arrangements. They give you all the information and tell you, “Do what you want to do with it.” Over there it’s much more fluid.

Were you a musical child? My father would have a musical teacher and instrumentalists come by on the weekends for fun and I would be glued to him. Then they would host these musharas for their friends and I loved them. Musharas go on until four or five in the morning. I would be fully focused and I would listen very carefully. All the other kids would be running around and crying.

They tell me I was also fascinated by the tabla, but my parents discouraged me, saying, “If women play the tabla, then their wrists break.” I had a similar moment in college where I wanted to switch from vocals to a drumset and my parents said,  “Beta, why can’t you play something graceful like the piano!”

Which musicians influence the music you compose and sing you? People like Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Mehdi Hussin. Beghum Akhtar. Super classical people. And of course Ella Fitzgerald, Erykah Badu, Billie Holiday. Also an amazing composer is Meshell Ndegeocello, who has just funky, deep grooves. Her voice is so rich and moving. Her compositions are really dark, melancholic and slow. She’s amazing.

Tell us about your band and how you chose the instruments? I put out an album in 2006 featuring six songs that I had recorded while I was at Berklee. I put them out on the Internet with the world being the test audience. It was just intelligent pop, featuring an acoustic guitar player, an upright bass player and a percussionist. It  also had a little bit of jazz, rock and some flamenco.

Recently, I’ve been switching instruments around, for instance, we have a Turkish percussion player.  We also utilize an Arab instrument called the kanoon, kind of a sit-down harp thing. Also horn. I hope to arrive at a sound that is world music, but not Starbucks café world music. I’m tired of this exoticized South Asian music. There’s so much music like that. It’s so annoying. It has this exoticized vibe in the way that they treat female vocals. It features the same few chords over and over again. It makes me crazy. Over here, just walking around being a South Asian musician, they will just immediately slap that on you. Before they hear you sing or hear your music, they will assume you’re that same exoticized music. That you’re that sound.

What’s it like playing with an all-male band? There have been some really difficult moments. When the leader of the band is female, it’s really important that she be a very strong instrumentalist. Otherwise, people just think, “The diva has arrived.” It’s surprising to me that even being around really well-informed musicians, vocalists – especially females –  are still belittled. There’s always that initial struggle. “I’m not going to write it for you, I’m not going to play for you.” As musicians, we should all be able to communicate with each other with respect and grace.

I have learned that you can’t just hand out charts and say “Play these notes.” That produces a forced, synthetic sound. You have to invite people that you love and respect to come with you to a space and create sound that is super organic and alive. The people I work with now, I really respect.

Tell me about Rebuild Pakistan? My band and I did a three week live installation with Sonny Singh and many other amazing artists. We holed up in a house in Brooklyn and came together in solidarity for Pakistan to record. The result was magical.

When reporter and novelist Sonia Faleiro (The Girl) meets a lively, fast-talking 19-year old dancer named Leela in Mumbai, she finds herself intrigued by the characters of the dance bar world and decides to learn more. Over the course of five years, Faleiro painstakingly interviews Leela and her friends and family, as well as other key characters in the Mumbai dance bar scene and captures their stories. The result? Beautiful Thing, a captivating nonfiction narrative full of rich prose and powerful Hinglish dialogues that exposes readers to an underground world where people are mere commodities. A world where relatives sell young girls to the highest bidder and dancers lose their value well before their mid-20s.

At its center, Leela, a proud, beautiful bar dancer full of infectious joie de vivre whose philosophies and observations belie her horrific upbringing. Faleiro tell us haunting tales of Leela and her compatriots in their own voice — sharp, vivid writing that deftly avoids any preachiness, piety or poverty porn. Faleiro documents Leela and her friends as they navigate the world of exotic dancing, brush up against violent gangsters and educate themselves about the ever-present dangers of HIV/AIDS. But when Leela and the other dancers face a politician determined to rid the city of dance bars, their lives are changed dramatically.

In between her travels in India, a jet-lagged Faleiro kindly agreed to tell SM readers more about Beautiful Thing.

In writing this book, you spent roughly nine months with Leela, two years interviewing scenesters in the Mumbai bar dancing scene and two more years continuing to write and research the book – a total of five years. Were you ever tempted to cease work on Beautiful Thing? If so, what led you to persist? I remember coming home at dawn after the birthday party in the hijra brothel, which you read about early in the book, and thinking I couldn’t do this for five years. It was just too hard. But the fact is that however hard it was for me to observe, those times, that life, was a hundred times worse for the hijras or Leela to experience. I reminded myself of that every time I wanted to quit. Researching Beautiful Thing changed me. Now I’m suspicious of easy stories. I know the untold, the hidden, the stories we need to report on take time to reveal themselves. They demand as much as they promise to give.

What are some of the perils and perks of writing nonfiction narrative? Well I’m in Bihar right now. So you tell me, peril or perk? I write non-fiction because I want to understand India. The people who interest me live on the margins or in sub cultures, and they experience India in a way that’s impossible to imagine—It must be observed. And I like to observe people and things. I like to take my time finding my way around what intrigues me. Non-fiction is an excuse to do that.

What did you learn from writing Beautiful Thing that you will incorporate in your next project, also a nonfiction piece (the topic of which you have not yet disclosed)? I’m not sure I should have stopped at five years. I’d like to spend more time on my next book.

Who are the writers (if any) that inspired you while you wrote Beautiful Thing, both contemporary and classic? When I first started writing about the margins I had no template to refer to.  No one in India did that sort of thing. One of the editors at the publication I worked at told me I was being obsessive and suggested I get down to interviewing Aamir Khan instead. Then I discovered Dayanita Singh’s Myself Mona Ahmed, a memoir/biography in which Dayanita’s photos of Mona, a hijra trying to find her place in the world, are accompanied by text supplied by Mona. That was the first book I ever read that made my ‘obsession’ okay. And every couple of years I return to Adrian Nicole Le Blanc’s Random Family. It’s a book about poverty in America. And it’s reportage at peak form.

Beautiful Thing offers a colorful rendering of the Mumbai bar world. In many scenes, you, the narrator, find yourself chatting with gangsters over chai, hanging with hijras in the redlight district, etc. What was the most threatening situation you found yourself in? There were a few. But it’s never going to be easy doing this job, and dwelling on such matters isn’t helpful. I carry my cell phone and pepper spray.

Since writing the book, I know you have been unable, despite efforts on your part, to keep in contact with Leela herself. What do you think her response would be to the finished product? She won’t be thrilled at the amount of space expended on her mother, Apsara. Or on Shetty, her former boss. On people she didn’t care for, either at the time or in retrospect. But that apart, I think—I hope—she’ll really like it.

What surprised you most about the reactions to Beautiful Thing? That Leela’s experiences came as a surprise to many. You cannot live in India and fail to see how difficult women have it. And I’m not just talking about women who are poor or low caste. But of course a woman like Leela who is, in fact, poor and of low caste is born into a life of difficulties that are to us unimaginable. And these difficulties are inevitably compounded by all manner of abuse. This is life for a majority of women in India and we need to realize that. Leela is not the ‘Other India.’ She, and women like her are representative of India.

The New York Times noted its “limber, detailed prose.” The Guardian stated: “Waldman’s prose is almost always pitch-perfect, whether describing a Bangladeshi woman’s relationship with her landlady or the political manoeuvring within a jury.” In The Washington Post, Chris Cleave wrote that Waldman “excels at involving the reader in vibrant dialogues. Additionally, The Submission was named Esquire’s Book of the Year, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Novel for the Year, NPR’s Top Ten Novels for 2011 and the list goes on. NPR’s Maureen Corrigan called it “gorgeously written novel” and went so far as to call it the 9/11 novel. High praise, indeed.

In an interview with The Browser, Waldman was asked to define a 9/11 novel.  She responded:

“I guess a 9/11 novel is one that grows out of the attacks in one way or another and uses literature to try to shed some new light. It seems to cover such a wide range of books – from ones that are trying to completely reinvent that day to ones where it’s only a plot device to reroute characters lives. And it includes one where 9/11 isn’t even mentioned – my novel, The Submission.”

According to that same interview 150 works of fiction and nearly 1,000 works of non-fiction have in some way, shape or form been inspired by the events of 9/11. Salon columnist Laura Miller writes that the absence of any great 9/11 literature suggests the banality of death itself. She states: “Life, not death, is the novelist’s subject.” Well, that doesn’t seem to have stopped hundreds of writers, including Waldman. However, The Submission may be a 9/11 novel, but it isn’t the 9/11 novel. It remains simply one of forgettable hundreds trying and failing to meet the strange, insatiable thirst for 9/11 literature.

The Submission tells the tale of half a dozen characters whose lives change after an American-born architect of Indian descent named Mohammed Khan wins a contest to design the  9/11 memorial, provoking widespread outrage and controversy.  (Think the Maya Lin controversy magnified a gazillionfold.) While Claire, a 9/11 widow and wealthy Manhattanite struggles to fight for Khan’s right to remain in the competition, others, like the ambitious New York governor, use the occasion as a vehicle to make political gains. The novel introduces us to a smarmy Muslim American politician, a hapless community of Bangladeshi illegals, a family of angry blue-collar workers who lost a firefighter son in the attack, a radical Islamaphobe and others whose lives have been drastically affected by 9/11.

Waldman, who was assigned to the New York metro desk as a reporter at the Times when the towers fell, likely found herself exposed to many of the factions that arose when the disaster occurred and undoubtedly possess an enormous amount of familiarity with the topic.  As one of the writers who contributed to the Portraits of Grief project, which attempted to chronicle each life lost in the September 11^th attacks, she has seen her share of 9/11 firsthand. One wishes she had been able to take that experience to humanize her characters. In an interview shortly after the book was released, she said:

 “As a novelist, I didn’t want to raid details of people’s lives for material. But also, as a reporter, I felt ambivalent about the “Portraits of Grief”. The wordcount left no room for complexity. The project made me ask, how do you avoid reducing the dead to thumbnail profiles? People are much more complicated than can be represented through daily journalism. They deserve to be portrayed and remembered in all their fullness.”    

Clicking through the Portraits of Grief project, which average 200 words apiece, one can see how tempting it would be to delve into the subject in depth and allow an individual narrative to flow on to the 300+ pages Waldman employs. Unfortunately, allowing a novelist to roam untethered poses its own risks. Waldman makes the rookie mistake of trying to do too much where much less would have sufficed.

The novel first appeared as short-story excerpts in The Atlantic, a form much better suited to Waldman’s futile endeavor to encapsulate the entire post-9/11 debacle in a single book. The Submission nobly attempts to stuff the narratives of half a dozen characters into an entire book, but weaves them in a confusing, unsatisfying manner. The biggest failing, by far, are Waldman’s loosely sketched characters, who spew forth earnest, stiff dialogue that serves to stereotype, not humanize. And sadly, Waldman attempts to accomplish a neat, cyclical narrative through the use of convenient plot twists and various ironies. (Along with a heap of wishful thinking and clunky prose.)

Take for example, a passage about the architect Mohammed “Mo” Khan, as seen through the eyes of a skeptical, tabloid reporter. “He had a beard, but it was tastefully trimmed. His suit looked expensive, and his bearing, unlike the grasping, too-eager-to-please Indians in her neighborhood, was haughty. Next to him sat a dark-haired, foreign-looking woman in a cardinal red suit that suggested she was not only comfortable with attention but craved it. Men, some of them in Islamic costumes, and a few women in headscarves, stood stiffly against the wall behind them, looking like a police lineup of terrorism suspects.”

For a book that drives along on the suspense of a single question (Will Khan be allowed to design the 9/11 memorial?), any interest in an outcome dies of boredom 20 pages in.  For example, Waldman’s depiction of Asma Haque, the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant whose husband, a domestic worker, perished in the attacks, represents potential for a powerful narrative about the problems families of undocumented workers faced after 9-11. However, in Waldman’s prose, any elegance a character like Asma may have had falls flat. Seen through a narrower scope, the characters could be compelling. But as a whole, the characters are tiring.

Somewhere out there, people have come up with some fanciful checklist of the quintessential elements a 9/11 novel contains and have decided that The Submission meets this standard (however vague that may be). But the fact remains, a true 9/11 novel would delve deeper into the human complexities that drive the issues surrounding the attack. Ten years after September 11, the nation still reels with the aftereffects of the catastrophe’s reduction of humans into mere keywords. Brown? Terrorist. Muslim? Terrorist. Turban? Terrorist. Sadly, Waldman’s The Submission does much the same thing. It takes the same tired tropes and trots them out for the reader to rally over. Maybe The Great 9/11 Novel exists. Maybe it doesn’t. But either way, the list will not include The Submission.

Instead, it comes from candid portraits such as that of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, a 20-year old in New Jersey who was appended by the FBI after he tried to join a militant group in Somalia. In her portrait of Alessa, Rockwell depicts him in bubble-gum pink tones, prone on a floral bedspread, cuddling with his beloved cat, Princess Tuna. Unsettling. The narrative of terror that we often see seldom contains photos of wannabe terrorists cuddling with their kitty cats, or of the underwear bomber as a sullen teenager, posing during a school trip.

I first came across Rockwell’s vivid, unforgettable portraits by chance, wandering around an exhibit at the Twelve Gates Gallery in Philadelphia. There, a series of small, glittery paintings of a regal, coy Benazir Bhutto caught my eye. Two years later, on February 3, Rockwell returned to Twelve Gates Gallery for the launch of The Little Book of Terror, where she read from her book to a rapt audience. Rockwell graciously agreed to build upon temporarily suspend the Sepia-Chapati friendship rivalry and share more about her book with SM readers.

Tell us about your time at Chapati Mystery.

About six months or so after I left academia in 2006, I reconnected with Manan Ahmed, aka Sepoy, and he asked me to write for Chapati Mystery. I’d never written for a blog before and I was not interested at first. But Sepoy guaranteed me complete anonymity and after a while I agreed and took the pseudonym Lapata. “Lapata” in Hindi-Urdu can mean anonymous, but also ‘disappeared.’ I had disappeared from my life as an academic, my vocation for fifteen years. I also began to sign my paintings with “Lapata,” because they were only seen online, and on Chapati Mystery for a couple of years. A part of me also wanted to escape the legacy contained within my real name, I suppose, that of my grandfather, Norman Rockwell. I wanted to make art without the burden of expectations that come with that identity.

 Was there a certain amount of hesitation about revealing yourself as Lapata?

Yes, I was happy with remaining anonymous, but after a while I realized that in the absence of any input from me, people invented their own story of my identity. It was clear that I was assumed to be Pakistani, mostly because Sepoy is, I suppose. I decided I’d rather have my own baggage than some invented identity, so I slowly went public, starting with my first art exhibit in San Francisco in 2008. I do continue to blog under that name, though, and all my paintings are signed in Urdu with “Lapata.”

Writing vs. painting. If you were forced to pick just one which would it be and why?

When I was an academic, I did pick one, and that was writing, of course. I stopped thinking of myself for an artist for quite some time. But I was very depressed. I didn’t even think I was going to leave academia to do art, I just knew I had to leave. But when I started to paint again, I realized that it was something I couldn’t live without, like eating or sleeping. Writing is very important to me too, but I suppose I could live without it if I had to.

How has the birth of your daughter refined your artistic process?

That’s a good question. Having a child refines your sense of available time, because all of a sudden you don’t have any. I have become much more efficient in my use of time, and, surprisingly, much more productive. I had a show opening in Canada recently, where someone came up and asked me what I did to get my mind off all the horrible things I’m obviously obsessed with (terrorists, torture, etc.). I said, “I have a two-year-old.” She said, “Ah, I understand now.”

How do you describe “The Little Book of Terror?” A collection of essays? An art book?

It’s both. In my creative process, the art usually comes first, but in some cases a project evolves in tandem, words and images come to me at the same time. It doesn’t take that long to read, because the art is part of what you are meant to ‘read.’ In that sense, it’s similar to a graphic novel. I am a great admirer of that genre, but, unfortunately, I do not have what it takes to pull off that kind of work. Let’s call it an art book with words. Or a words book with art.

Tell me about the cover of your book, it’s a very provocative pose. A young hijabi woman with a gun in her right hand sits cradled in the arms of a young man (ostensibly her lover), also armed. It’s a jarring portrait.

That painting is based on a photograph of the young woman who allegedly suicide bombed the Moscow subway in 2010. Her name was Dzhanet Abdullayeva and she was seventeen years old. The photo was a self-portrait of her with her husband, who had earlier been killed by Russian forces. I remember when I first saw the photo of her on the cover of the New York Times at a rest stop somewhere in Vermont. It’s the kind of grainy, low quality self-portrait people use on their Facebook pages. I couldn’t get it out of my head, which is usually how a painting starts for me.

In the introduction to your book, Amitava Kumar writes, “I think of Daisy Rockwell’s portraits as a bright, playful gallery composed of pictures that terrorists themselves might put up on their Facebook pages.” Comment.

Perhaps? I kind of imagine terrorists as being subscribers to some service other than Facebook, such as Orkut.

What’s your favorite portrait in the set?

I don’t like to play favorites with my paintings. It’s sort of like asking which of my children I like the best (luckily I only have one of those). I am very fond of portrait of John Walker Lindh, it’s nice and colorful, and empathize with his desire to really immerse himself in learning a language. The cover portrait I’m obviously attached to as well. But really, I love them all equally.

What have been the reactions to your book? The portraits are charmingly idyllic, but feature some of the most divisive figures in history. Can you tell me about the most negative reactions to them?

Well the book is just out, so I have not had that many reactions yet. But I’ve exhibited many of the paintings in different places, and weirdly I have had no negative reactions at all. I’m not sure why, but it might be because the message is ambiguous. Although there is a lot of sympathy in my portraits, I don’t think people think I am saying, “Go, terrorists!” My goal is to provoke thought and reflection, rather than to take sides.

Plans to publish again? This particular book features only a smattering of your paintings.

Definitely there is material for more publications, but I’m not sure which direction I want to go in yet. I also have some books just made out of words in the pipeline, so look out for those!

Why did you feel you had to write Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life? And why this particular title?

I wrote Outdated because I couldn’t believe how profoundly ignorant mainstream books on dating were and I couldn’t believe that no one had already written a book discussing how deeply problematic the assumptions about gender and love were in them. I felt the young women in our generation deserved something better.

If a girl had the opportunity to read one chapter in this book, what would it be and why?

Depends on how old that girl is, but probably the chapter on casual sex (Chapter 8: “Naughty Girls Need Love Too”). It is hard to find Real Talk on the pressures young women feel today to act a certain way sexually and parse through the messages to figure out what they really want.

How does your book speak to desi women, who find themselves pressured by both their families/culture and mainstream media?

I wrote the book from my point of view and I’m a South Asian woman, child of immigrants, and also an activist, feminist, and a whole assortment of other things. I think as a result many people from varying backgrounds will relate to my book. I didn’t gear the book specifically to the South Asian community but also didn’t shy away from talking about my experience as a South Asian woman. The world we live in is complicated and we are all bringing a diversity of experiences to it–will some parts of this book resonate more with some South Asian women? Probably–but it probably resonates mainly with anyone that has a more radical take on romance.

 Were you nervous about using your own experiences in your book?

Yes, my goodness. Did you read my dedication*? I specifically dedicated it to my mother apologizing in advance for the contents of the book.

*Dedication: “To Ma, for sacrificing everything so I could have the opportunity to ask the questions you never had the luxury to ask. (I also dedicate this to you with the hope that you don’t’ kill me after reading its contents.)

 Do you still date? Did you find it affected your post-book dating experiences?

Yes, I still date quite a bit and yes and no. If anything people want to know what it took for someone to get included in the book. I think people are fascinated by the subject more then anything.

Tell us about your Occupy Valentine’s Day movement.

Occupy Valentine’s Day is a tumblr and is in essence a media campaign to give people space to creatively express their frustrations with the narrow and limiting ways we think about love and romance especially on Valentine’s Day.

P.S. Readers, share the story of your worst Valentine’s date in the comments below and I’ll send one lucky person a copy of Outdated.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to submit your entries to the Occupy Valentine’s Day tumblr!

For you poetry noobs, a haiku is a Japanese verse form that employs sentences in the 5-7-5-syllable pattern.  Last year, we received a number of heartfelt entries from our readers. (And quite a few deliciously cheeky ones. Amitava, I’m looking at your “Size does not matter, you say. This small haiku in place of my — uhmmm — love” piece.) Come on, you can do it, mutineers. Give it a shot. Your Valentine will thank you.

Deadline: Submit all Valentine’s Day haikus in the comments below by 1PM on Friday, February 10. Please include an email address in your comments so that we can notify the winner.

2012 Theme: Love, ishq, pyar, mohabbatein, kadhal, prema, premam, et. al.

Winner: Winner will be announced in the comments on Tuesday,  February 14, 2012.

Judge: Amitava Kumar – writer, journalist and professor of English at Vassar college.

Prize: Winner gets a copy of The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, along with a personalized, handmade Valentine containing their haiku – mailed to the person of their choice (mom, dad, sis, BFF, bf, gf, yourself, etc.) by Valentine’s Day.

I am writing to thank you for pulling advertising from TLC’s All-American Muslim. On behalf of myself and all other dumb-reality-television-hating folks, I want to express my gratitude for your efforts to make American reality television as transparent as possible. As a longtime Lowes consumer, I am proud to know that my hardware store cares enough about the community to influence the content of its television shows. You’re making history by taking home improvement to a whole new level.

I fervently hope you are the first in a long line of businesses to protest the Kim Kardashianesque shows that constitute American programming. (I mean honestly, if All-American Muslim mother-daughter Lila and Suehaila get into any more wedding-planning shenanigans about Shadia’s nuptials, I’m gonna scream.) For far too long, ‘reality television’ has been attempting to force-feed us citizens a brand of dumbed-down reality that simply doesn’t exist.  I admire you for taking a stand and saying, ‘No more fakery! No more family drama! No more idiotic reality shows!’

When I learned that the Florida Family Association sent out an email alert on December 6th that stated, “All-American Muslim is propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values,” I never imagined you, my hardware store would cave in be influenced by the voices of a small number of ordinary Americans.  

I applaud the strongly-worded email you sent to the FFA, in which you wrote, “While we continue to advertise on various cable networks, including TLC, there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention.  Lowe’s will no longer be advertising on that program.” I definitely agree with you that unless a certain program accurately displays every single variation of a certain demographic it has no place on American television. Incidentally, while we are on the subject of advertising, may I humbly suggest a few more dumb reality shows that I believe could benefit from your advertising guidelines? In no particular order:

• 19 Kids and Counting. The Dugger family. Super Christians. Super fertile. Super nice. But this show only profiles Christians who appear to be somewhat ordinary folks while excluding those fringe-radical Christians that pose a clear threat to our American values.
• Sister Wives. One man. Four wives. Sixteen children. This show purports to innocuously depict a harem of weepy, cake-baking mothers. But it riskily hides the Mormon agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.
• Strange Sex. Glamorizes strange sex acts without fully portaying the dangers that can accompany certain fetishes. Erotic asphyxiation is a silent killer, people.
• Cake Boss. Makes Americans think we can all bake – when in reality – ovens are danger. The last time I tried to bake, I almost burned down my kitchen!
• I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. Propaganda that riskily hides the dangers of pregnancy and makes it seems like anyone can give birth without the proper pre-natal care and be totally okay. False!

Thank you for your consideration. And thank you once again for taking a strong stance against dumb reality shows.

Yours in American home improvement,

PG

P.S. Nice job using Twitter and Facebook to further alienate rally us fellow reality-television haters! I was getting really tired of the same old hammer/nail updates.

P.P.S. I wouldn’t take any #LowesHatesMuslims boycotts to heart. Muslim Americans and their peeps only represent a few million or so consumers. It’s the holidays! Relax! Sell some Christ-mass trees!

P.P.S. I’m telling everyone I know to call your CEO Robert Niblock: (704) 758-2084 or Executive Support Mr. Andrew Kilby: (866) 900-4650 and tell you how we really feel.

How does your lawyering help your bhangra-ing and vice versa? There is a creative aspect and business aspect to music. Lawyering helps the business aspect of music. Bhangra helps relieve any stress lawyering may have caused over the week! It keeps me sane.

Explain to me how you balanced your music during law school. It required a lot of hard work. I often briefed my cases on the plane. Law school is not necessarily hard in terms of the content. It is the voluminous amount of material that you have to manage in a very limited amount of time. I had to become better at time management. Whatever time I had, I had to use it wisely. I also slept very little.

Is it possible for the bhangra scene to evolve in the US as it has in the UK? Actually, it is evolving slowly. There are a few artists in the US making bhangra. Unlike the UK, there is a lack of geographical proximity to other artists and musicians in the US, which makes it difficult for artists to pursue music. It will change slowly, as more artists start to make music.

What are your thoughts on the state of the stale UK bhangra scene? Artists in the UK need to experiment more. Everything that has been coming out recently is sounding the same. For some artists it may be important to make wedding music to get wedding bookings, but artists should make music for the art of it too. We need more artists who are not afraid to take a chance.

Tell us what it’s like working with the Das Racist gang? It was a lot of fun! We had a great time recording “Punjabi Song”, together. They are fun guys to hang out with!

So when are you going to quit your day job? Which one? I try to devote equal time to both, law practice & music. I have my own practice, so there is flexibility of time. I enjoy doing both. I will continue both for as long as I can.

What’s your go-to bhangra dance move? I am really not much of a dancer. I usually go for the standard “arms up, screw the light bulb” style move!

What are some of the projects you’re currently working on? I just  finished album, “BIK I AM,” released on Soldier Sound Records, ltd in the UK, Inar Records ( my label) in America and Sony BMG in India. Aside from that, I am working on bunch of collaborations, including partnering with Beatwala. I’m also working with some amazing new producers from the UK, “Atik Middleman”Rehman, Nav Sarao, Bellringer, and others.

Which artists do you have your eye on right now? Who do you think will blow up in the next five years?  I do think that Shide Boss has a great voice. I am not a big fan of his rapping, but I think he can sing.

(L-R) Hisham Matar, Amitava Kumar and Zohra Saeed at the “War and its Representations” panel discussion at last Saturday’s AAWW event. Photo Credit: Preston Merchant

Today is exactly six days after Sugi sent me to the Asian American Literary Festival and four days into National Novel Writing Month. What better than a poetry contest with a literary giveaway and some photos of your favorite Asian American writers to inspire you fervent scribblers?

Here’s the deal. This week marked the end of a pop culture era. I’m talking about the anti-climactic marital misadventures of E! darling Kim Kardashian. Frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. But Sir Salman Rushdie obviously thought it worth a Tweet or three. Here’s his limerick about the sex-tape starlet:

“The marriage of poor kim #kardashian / was krushed like a kar in a krashian. / her kris kried, not fair! / why kan’t I keep my share? / But kardashian fell klean outa fashian

But guess what, mutineers. You can do better. Leave your entries in the comments along. Winner gets a copy of Amitava Kumar’s award-winning book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb. We’ll announce a winner in the comments next Friday, November 11th.

Writer’s block? Check out another lovely photo from the Asian American Literary Festival below from the Mutiny’s own Preston Merchant along with some writing advice. (Thanks Preston!) The accompanying quotes were tweeted on the day of the event through the SepiaMutiny account.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz (L) hangs out with author Min Jin Lee (R). Photo Credit: Preston Merchant

On Finishing a Book

“I live in the universe of doubt. The hard part isn’t writing the book – it’s finishing it.” – Junot Diaz

“It took me 12 years to publish my first book.” – Min Jin Lee

“To finish a book, you need compassion for yourself.” – Junot Diaz

On Authors Who Inspired Them

“Reading Naipaul really helped me as a writer. I don’t think he wants to help me – but he did.” Min Jin Lee on A House for Mr. Biswas

“We’ve drawn so much courage from writers that we didn’t know.” -Min Jin Lee

On [Ethnic] Origins

“As immigrants, we cast our audience as the parents who wish we became doctors. Our audience is the neighbor offering us a joint” Junot Diaz

“The idea of being a fiction writer was such a luxury to me.” Min Jin Lee

“I was told many times that my writing was either too Korean – or not Korean enough.” -Min Jin Lee

“Can we please tell ourselves to stop being the Tiger Mom editors?” -Min Jin Lee

“It’s a-historical of our biographies to write.” Junot Diaz

“If you grew up the way I did – a Dominican kid in New Jersey – being an artist was insane.” – Junot Diaz

On The Importance of Audience

“Despite all the hating in the blogosphere – most of the people [that read your work] want to like you.” Junot Diaz

“As a writer, you need a strong conceptualization of what the reader needs.” – Junot Diaz