The music is by Basheer & The Pied Pipers. Visit Nushmia.net for more about Khan and her trip to Pakistan (“Leaving Pindi is always hard” and “It’s a man’s world”).

In this latest episode, we take a beautiful trip to Goa where Humble to Poet, Midival Punditz and the host of the series Monica Dogra create a song together, No I.D. Required. If you want to go directly to the song, it’s at 32:15, though the whole show is beautifully shot and I would recommend watching it fully through. I knew that Humble was traveling India, but I had no idea that he was pairing up with legends like Midival Punditz while there. It’s so out-of-the-box to put a hip-hop poet with a legendary electronic/dance duo, but I think it totally worked.

The series pairs Imogen Heap with Vishal-Shekar to sing a Tagore poetic classic in Rajasthan; classical singer Shubha Mudgal with folk rock band Swarathma in Mysore; and  Karsh Kale travels with guitar virtuoso Baiju Dharmajan in Kerala. Funded by StarWorld, this documentary web series is a brilliant idea and I’m excited to see what comes out of this project. Best of all, it’s all viewable on YouTube!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikerollinger/

Browns on a Plane is an American horror story not featuring Samuel Jackson and not coming to a theater near you, though it did make its way onto a Detroit-bound flight yesterday and may be replayed on select 9/11 anniversary flights as long as brown people continue to fly the fear-filled skies. To learn more about the plot of this real-life tale, read Shoshana Hebshi’s personal account of being on one of the two flights that were escorted by fighter jets to their destination yesterday on September 11–“Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit.” Hebshi is a self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife” from Ohio who sat next to two Indian men on the Frontier Airlines Flight 623, two men who used the restroom at some point during the flight.

Her account describes how the three of them were cuffed and placed in a squad car, driven to the airport police station/Homeland Security office, detained, questioned, and strip-searched without much explanation. It seems that someone reported her and the two men for suspicious activity.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession? (Stories from the Heartland)

After she was released to go home, a police officer apologized to her and offered an explanation:

He said the three of us were being released and there was nothing suspicious found on the plane. He apologized for what had happened and thanked me for understanding and cooperating. He said, “It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like.     He said there had been 50 other similar incidents across the country that day. (Stories from the Heartland)

A brown person triggering an airplane passenger or crew member’s fears to the point of flight delay or flight ejection by just being brown or doing something mundane like going to the bathroom, praying, talking in another language, or wearing traditional clothing, etc., is not new. Various archive posts here and news articles over the years would show that. But the level of response on this occasion, which included the North American Aerospace Defense Command sending two F16 jets to shadow the flight because the crew noticed two Indian men using the bathroom at different times for an “extraordinarily long time” (next time try knocking?), is notable. It send an ominous message–that being brown is suspicious, being brown on a plane more so, and “Don’t Be Brown on a Plane on 9/11.”

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

In their PBS interview with Hari Sreenivasan, Tariq described the 30 Mosques trip as an opportunity to see how people are living the religion of Islam. Ali highlighted a Muslim community in San Francisco called Ta’leef Collective that impressed him with its inclusive attitudes and “come as you are” philosophy.Their 2011 journey was successfully funded through Kickstarter. You can see the entire 30-day route on their website. It included trips to Alaska, where there is no mosque but there are thousands of Muslims, and Hawaii, where during a 10 hour visit they stopped at heiress Doris Duke’s Shangri La, a public center for Islamic arts and culture.

Along the way, they met many interesting people including a gay imam in DC, a Native American convert in South Dakota, and a female priest in Seattle who practices both Christianity and Islam. The two young men also got permission to enter the women’s space at a Little Rock, Arkansas, mosque. All these trips and others generated some fascinating blog posts, photos and videos, not to mention discussion on their website, where they posted as they traveled.

Ali and Tariq note that their project has inspired others to do their own Ramadan-related explorations. Break_fast at night, for example, is a photo-focused site sharing the Muslim-American experience of Ramadan through images of Muslims partaking in pre-dawn meals at all-night diners, praying at home and at restaurants before breaking the fast, and hitting up piñatas as part of Eid celebrations.

Being brown, you might also be required to play the role of terrorist in a training drill, taking a mock bomb up to a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport security checkpoint. And, oops, your boss might forget to tell airport police that the drill is happening, prompting an armed response.

According to information released Monday by MSP airport police, the May 12 security test included a device in a shaving kit made to look like a bomb. It was a cylinder with wires connected to a wrist watch. The device was brought to a passenger security checkpoint, according to airport Police Sgt. Mark Ledbetter, one of the responding officers.

“Upon arriving [at the checkpoint],” Ledbetter wrote in his report, “TSA [Transportation Security Adminstration] screeners were out with a male who appeared to be Middle Eastern in descent or Indian/Pakistani.” (StarTribune)CAIR complained to the Department of Homeland Security that using a person who looks to be Middle Eastern or Indian/Pakistani this way to test security screening procedures reinforces negative ethnic stereotypes, and that this is part of a pattern of stereotyping and inaccurate information used by trainers to the nation’s security personnel that should be investigated. A TSA spokesman stated the agency conducts “thousands of training tests each year, and the individuals carrying out the testing are [of] various ethnicities, ages and appearances, just like the traveling public.”

The TSA seems to be suggesting that selecting you for this training test was a random choice. Being randomly selected happens and doesn’t always feel so random, for example, when you’re going through airport security. Sometimes it’s quick and relatively painless. Other times it’s like having a scarlet T on your forehead. Always you hope you don’t get picked. Sorry you got picked, TSA guy.

CAIR argues that you’ve been used to reinforce a hostile, discriminatory lesson about who is a threat to our national security. It wouldn’t be the first time the government used one of its own citizens enlisted in service to protect our nation, to show what the enemy looks like.

During basic training in Quantico, Va., Don Mitsuo was ordered by his drill instructor to wear the clothes of a Viet Cong soldier (Whelchel includes photos of Sam Yorunga dressed up as the enemy for the U.S. Army). Mitsuo was then made to stand before his fellow marines while his drill instructor shouted, “This is what your enemy looks like. I want you to kill it before it kills you.” (Japan Times)

Miyoshi, who fought in Vietnam, describes an incident that happened in his Marine officer training. One day a drill instructor ordered Miyoshi to get up on the podium and stand at attention in front of his fellow trainees. Pointing in his direction, the instructor told the class, “This is what the enemy looks like. Kill it before it kills you.” (Asian America through the lens, by Jun Xing)

(Image by goldberg.)

Something Aseem Chhabra said this weekend made me think of this.

Several months ago, I was detained at the Michigan-Canadian border because I had loose, unlabeled spices from Toronto, which the Lords of U.S. Customs did not recognize and needed to submit to agricultural inspection, a request I did not consider unreasonable until I saw how it was to be done. We were removed from our vehicle and did not have even visual contact with our property while they searched it.

(Who will inspect the inspection? They could take something! I said.

They could PLANT something, said someone else.)

As far I could tell, the only person of color in the office where we waited was Barack Obama. I found his picture on the wall comforting.

Our vehicle when we returned to it looked ransacked, but to the best of our knowledge, they took (and planted) nothing. Still, I have learned to prefer the airport. Or the New York border, where my loose Sri Lankan spices flummox no one.

Had a customs experience you loved? Hated? Share below.

[Moving Swiftly::][GuerillaTactics][POORPEOPLESPLANET by mandeep.sethi.music

Full disclosure, I've been helping get the word out for Poor Peoples Planet and am excited to support a young Desi American whose lyrics are smart, conscious, and inspired by the hyphenated identity. But in the course of hanging out with Mandeep this week, I was really impressed to find out that he is one of the co-founders of Slumgods. Based in India, Slumgods was founded in 2010 as the first B-Boy collective in India bringing together emcees, breakers, artists of India and America. The Slumgods are bringing it hard and fresh using the the five elements of hip hop as a tool of empowerment for the slum youth in the Dharavi slums with a community center called Tiny Drops Hip Hop Center.

India's first breaking organization for lower income group children, this attention-grabbing mix of street dance and athletics is infiltrating their lives and bringing positive change to their communities.

Kids from the ages of 10 to 21 are breaking to forget the stress and rut of lives lived as rag pickers and apprentices, electricians, tailors and carpenters. They become the dance, like the original breakers, underprivileged youths from the Bronx in the 1970s.

In America, as his mother sewed on buttons at a sweatshop and his father fulfilled his role as the ubiquitous Indian cabdriver, HeRa found a sense of structure at the local community center that he hopes to replicate at TinyDrops. [cnngo]

Mandeep Sethi will be heading back to his Slumgods roots in Feb for a mini-tour throughout India. He’ll be collaborating with local musicians, such as drum and bass artist Delhi Sultanate and the first Indian reggae band Reggae Rajahs. The last time he went he created this.

Armed with a camera, Mandeep will be documenting his journey this time around too, as he goes around India making hip hop musical connections and expanding Slumgods even further. If you are in India or know of hip hop artists that Mandeep should collaborate with, drop a comment in the comments. To follow him even more, become a Mandeep Sethi fan on Facebook or follow him on twitter @mandeepsethi. And of course, keep an eye out on iTunes to download your copy of Poor Peoples Planet soon. Trust me, it’s an album that is not to be missed.

Boom Bapri-Bap Rap!

Previously: Aisee Taisee Out of Nowhere, Getting Gully

Growing up in a family of post-1965 transnational immigrants, our history is deeply connected with the democratization of air travel — countless flights to and from India, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. Our stories begin and end in airports. (Last flight)As part of the no-flying challenge, the couple crossed continents and oceans to explore solutions to the problem of aviation sector emissions, meeting with environmentalists and planners, including youth activists in India and Vietnam. They crossed the Pacific and Atlantic by container ships and traveled by train through Asia. They also had the infuriating experience of flying to India during the year because emotional, political and logistical factors prevented them from either skipping South Asia or traveling there by land/sea.

Post-challenge they continue to write about the latest developments in green travel and aviation emissions. They also took time to answer my questions.

How did your families and friends react to your decision to stop flying for a year?

I think some of our friends and family members may have thought that we were more adventurous travelers than we really were. Getting around the world in 365 days without flying doesn’t have to involve rappelling through canyons or trekking across Central Asia. We took a mix of container ships, ferries, trains, and buses to get around. [Train Travels slideshow]

We’ve heard that only about 5% of the people on the planet use aviation. Exploring life without planes felt very normal; it’s what people have always done, and most people on the planet still do.

What is your most memorable experience from the project?

The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic crossings were particularly memorable. By the time we got on board the cargo ship that would take us from Seattle to Yokohama [slide show], we were exhausted from having spent the past month madly planning for our year ahead. We finally slowed down as we stood on the deck as the ship pulled out of harbor, watching a spectacular sunset with the shimmering Seattle skyline and Mount Olympia in the background.

It was better than any plane journey we’d ever taken.

For the next ten days we were grateful to have this gift of time and of discovery. It was amazing to look out the window and realize that we were in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by 2,800 containers and with no land in sight. We’d flown over this ocean so many times without ever appreciating its size and depth.

It also gave us a very intimate view of the workings of a modern day cargo ship, and a glimpse into the invisible world of global shipping. Our cargo ship back home from Europe to the US was smaller, but the diverse crew, including a contingent of Sri Lankan sailors, immediately made us feel at home.

Do you have any advice for people who want to help reduce global emissions by cutting down or eliminating their air travel but feel torn by the desire to attend a family wedding across the world or visit grandparents in person, etc.?

Barnali’s brother’s getting married in India later this year, and yeah, we’ll be flying there. We can’t imagine not being there. British writer George Monbiot has a word for this: “love miles” — all those dirty miles we fly, and then justify using love.

We’re trying to deal with this in three steps: understanding the problem, taking personal steps, and trying to fix the larger system. We started off trying to understand the problem.

Aviation’s responsible for about 4.9% of our total impact on the climate. An economy flight from San Francisco to Mumbai and back has the impact of driving a car for an whole year! It takes a while to internalize, but when it comes to the climate, binge flyers can be worse than SUV drivers.

Next, we’re trying to cut back and substitute. We usually fly to India every year to see family, but now we hope to make that basically our only flight each year. Buses, trains, and cars usually beat planes, though that varies; you can check the numbers for your next trip at www.TripFootprint.com.

Finally, though personal efforts are nice, they don’t mean much unless we can make bigger changes: better rail/bus alternatives, more business flights replaced by cheaper and greener remote conferencing, and an end to subsidies for dirty transportation options. We’re supporting climate and transportation justice groups. If you want to learn more, or don’t know where to start, consider the wonderful Transportation For America coalition (www.t4america.org).

For years, Bollywood’s producers and directors have favored the pristine backdrop of Switzerland for their films. The greatest of the Bollywood filmmakers, Yash Chopra, is a self-professed romantic who has made a point of including in virtually all his films scenes shot on location in this country’s high Alpine meadows, around its serene lakes, and in its charming towns and cities to convey an ideal of sunshine, happiness and tranquillity.

In the process, they have created an enormous curiosity about things Swiss in generations of middle-class Indians, who are now earning enough to travel here in search of their dreams.

“The moment you cross the border it is something else,” Mr. Purohit said, “where the scenario changes.”

“No noise, no pollution, no crowds,” said Kamalakar Tarkasband, 72, a retired army officer. [nyt]

No, just pretty scenery as a picturesque backdrop for photo ops wherein they imitate their favorite celluloid moments.

Raj Kapoor may have been the first Indian director to use foreign sites for shooting on location — in Venice, Paris and Switzerland — when he filmed his 1964 hit, “Sangam.” But the entire bus knew the story of how Mr. Chopra spent his honeymoon in the Swiss resort of Gstaad. [nyt]

SANGAM! That’s one of the dozen or so fillums I’ve actually seen; it was one of my father’s favorites. I loved it.

Here’s something interesting and overwhelmingly sweet, much like a gulab jamun, the round, syrup-laden dessert which often graces Indian buffets (see? I can write like a gora):

“He promised his wife on his honeymoon that every movie he made would have to have one romantic song or scene in Switzerland,” said Rajendra Choudhary, 24, who also studied management in Pune and joined the Enchanted Journey. Mr. Chopra, now 77, kept his promise. Most of the Swiss sequences are dream scenes in which lovers dance or romp on Alpine meadows strewn with flowers or roll in the snow in unlikely flimsy Indian garb on wintry slopes. [nyt]

Obligatory negativity:

But not everyone shares the dream. In June, the Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger featured an article with the headline “Into the Luxury Hotel with a Gas Cooker,” noting that “in some hotels an entire caste of guests is no longer desired: the Indians.”

The article catalogued the complaints of hotel managers: guests who cook curry dishes on camping stoves in their rooms; guests who use bath oils that blacken tubs; guests who book for a husband and wife, only to show up with the entire family. [nyt]

The first complaint makes me wonder if a lack of vegetarian options is the issue. I just asked my most well-traveled friend what he ate in Switzerland and he said his most memorable meal was a repast purchased from a farmhouse; he waxed blissfully about cured meats, cheese and a good baguette. My mom can eat one out of those three. She hates cheese. She wouldn’t be knocking out some Ulli Theeyal in her room, but she’d probably be hungry. I’ve never been, so I don’t know. Maybe Switzerland is littered with veggie noms.

So readily recognizable, so readily wearying, are the woes of the expatriate Indian on a trip to India. But bear with me, gentle reader. My hometown is the place about which the writer Upamanyu Chatterjee, who was born in Patna, has said, “I can’t efface that from my history, it’s in my passport…” Here is my brief travelogue published today in Tehelka:

Going to Patna for a vacation sounds a little bit like going to the bus-stop for a martini. But my parents live there, and Patna is where I visit for the holidays. I find myself reciting the familiar woes of the NRI in the motherland, the endless clichés about the heat and dust, but a part of me also believes that a trip to Patna offers a glimpse of the real India. I’m not talking of “poverty tourism” here, but something quite specific. A report from the UN stated that in India it is easier to have a mobile phone than to have access to a toilet. Well, ladies and gentlemen, come to Patna–you’ll see that the rickshaw-puller has tucked into the little pocket of his torn ganji a small phone, while on both sides of the street, as you ride the rickshaw into the market or the station, arises the distinct aroma of drying urine.

[The fab painting above, of a rickshaw-puller in Patna, is by my yaar and Patna star, Anunaya Chaubey]

I exaggerate, of course, but only marginally. You can go for a boatride on the Ganges in search of fresh air. If you can stand the loud roar of the engines, and the snout-up-in-the-air pose of the boats, it is a fun ride. The brown and pink tones of the buildings seen from a distance, the city revealing another side of itself, like a face glimpsed from another angle. As the boat zooms, what comes close is the magnificent concrete expanse of the five kilometer-long bridge across the river. When the boatman turns around and you are on the way back to the ghat, the human scale reasserts itself in the line of buttocks that form the indelicate horizon. We have always been told that the Ganges is the eternal river, it is pure, and not even this massive outpouring of shit will sully it.

When I was a boy, growing up in that city, relatives who were visiting would sometimes go to the airport in the evening to watch a plane land and take off. And near the airport, the wide roads that lead to the Governor House served as a boulevard for strolling. I was often taken to the Soda Fountain, near Gandhi Maidan, for ice-cream. Of course, neither the place, nor the people, are the same now. In modern-day Patna, you can play pool or visit the fast-food restaurants or stroll in the Maurya Lok shopping centre among the unusually high number of jewelry stores.

But in both the Patna of old and the city that is thriving today, a popular site for visitors remains the Gol Ghar. A giant, dome-shaped granary built by the British in 1786, after the famine that killed ten million people, it is a marvel of architecture. The Gol Ghar is constructed like a stupa; it is pillarless, and has a spiral stairway leading to the top. I always enjoy climbing it. I can look at the city, but also at the people coming on the stairs after me, eager to capture their personal view of Patna. We shouldn’t, I think, search for symbolic significance in the fact that because of a fatal flaw in the construction of its doors, the Gol Ghar has never been put to use in the way that it was originally designed.