Expectant South Asian Moms At Risk

“Mother and Child” (RedKettle.Com)

A study out today suggests South Asian and black women generally have shorter-term pregnancies than their white counterparts.

The report, published in the British Medical Journal, considers 12 years-worth of data from 197,000 London births. Findings indicate that “for every stage of gestation, perinatal mortality (death before, during or shortly after birth) is highest in south Asian women.”

Dr. Imelda Balchin, who directed the research effort, suggests race is most likely an “indicator” of genetic deviation from normative gestational length.

“Whether differences in outcome were due to social disadvantage or biology, the implications for management are the same,” says Balchin who calls for increased care and rigor when it comes to screening South Asian and black expectant moms.

Get The Door. It’s Aasif.

It seems our man Mandvi has a nose for pizza. Seen this?

Venti News For India

Starbucks.Com

American coffee colossus Starbucks is headed to India.

Talks are currently underway for the chain to open up shop there by year’s-end.

The company operates just under 13,000 outlets worldwide and is looking to expand to Bangalore.

While chai culture might still dominate, the consumption of coffee is on the rise in India (a whopping 80 thousand tons worth of beans were consumed there last year alone). “The growth is coming mainly from coffee bars mushrooming all over the country and more young people drinking coffee,” says Hamid Ashraff, the managing director of Tata Coffee, India’s largest coffee producer.

Your Dil Is In The Right Place

YOURDil Members Moonlight As Models (Not Really)

New Yorkers! Plan to jump start the weekend next Wednesday night at Element, where Karsh Kale will be holding down the decks for a good cause (fighting illiteracy in Pakistan).

Tickets to the club event are $20 if you buy now ($25 at the door). All proceeds will be donated to YOUR DIL (Youth Outreach, Developments in Literacy) a nonprofit that works to support the disenfranchised, impoverished children of Pakistan–mostly by rebuilding the schools destroyed by the earthquake two years ago.

Can’t make it? Go here to contribute.

More:
Element Nightclub
YOUR DIL projects

Oxfam Goes Glam

AskMen.Com

You first saw her in Sofia Coppola’s award-winning Lost in Translation (then you knew her as Josh Harnett’s ex and the object of Justin Timberlake’s affections).

Now Scarlett Johansson, 23, is in India working to raise awareness around issues of global poverty. Says Ashvin Dayal, South Asian regional director for Oxfam, “”We are delighted that Scarlett is supporting Oxfam and our work to help end global poverty. High-profile support helps us to raise awareness of these issues and urge governments and leaders worldwide to act.”

Johansson has been in India since February 19th “touring schools and slums.”

More:
Oxfam in India

Swati: Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist

Swati (bluhammock music)

Trading in the trombone for the guitar, acoustic rock artist Swati Sharma abandoned the world of classical music after a debut performance at Carnegie Hall in favor of exploring her own singing, songwriting and guitar playing. The NYC native managed nightclub Nightingale’s, immersed herself in the lower east side music and arts scene and played to Knitting Factory and Lilith Fair audiences.

Even though her lyrics don’t necessarily invite radio play (e.g., the mofo track on her myspace page), her music has been featured on KCRW’s “Brave New World.” She plays again at this year’s SXSW.

Approaching songwriting and performing as catharsis, Swati, who goes by her first name, describes being on stage: “When I see a stranger who feels what I feel, the emptiness and loneliness are completely gone.” Her percussive acoustic guitar technique and textured vocals combine to create a sound that has been described as “muscular and delicate.”

With her independent debut album “Small Gods” completed and available 4/17 from Bluhammock Music, Swati is now touring throughout the U.S.

More:
Swati
“2 O’Clock in the A.M.”

Update:
Billboard’s review of Swati’s new album:

“First name basis: the sweet sadness of Swati,” New York singer/songwriter takes the long road to success by releasing debut album at 34 years old
“Out Singer-Songwriter Swati on ‘Small Gods’”

Water Misses Boat

On last night’s Red Carpet (Yahoo.Com)

She calls her critically-acclaimed movie “one of those little films that’s blessed.” The New York Times says it’s “Serene on the surface yet roiling underneath,” effectively paralleling “the plight of widows under Hindu fundamentalism to that of India under British colonialism.”

Deepa Mehta’s Water is a passionate, thoughtful commentary on the societal and institutionalized oppression of widowed women in 1930s India. It might not have walked away with the Oscar for Best Foreign Film last night, but for Mehta that almost seems besides the point.

When filming began seven years ago, production was brought to an almost immediate halt after rioting extremists in India protested the director and her crew. Water was eventually shot five years later in Sri Lanka.

“I just feel that maybe if a film has gone through this type of journey, the payoff has been so generous,” she now says.

Mehta’s film will soon be seen in India, as Ravi Chopra has recently purchased the right to distribute Water there.

More:
Mehta wears mom’s sari to the Oscars
Deepa Mehta tries her hand at radio drama
Water receives Oscar-nod

Impersonation & Identity In India

UCLA’s Center for India and South Asia sponsors tomorrow’s lecture-cum-visual presentation by Purnima Mankekar, an associate professor in Asian American Studies and Women’s Studies. Extracted from a larger project on the role of transnational mass media in the production of South Asian public cultures, “Unsettling India: Impersonation, Mobility, Identity” juxtaposes impersonation in different contexts—by employees of call centers in Gurgaon, India, and by Bunty and Babli, the leads in a Bollywood blockbuster—to explore how it might provide a lens to understand contemporary Indian identity and cultural production.

Manekar is the author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India, an ethnography of TV viewing focused on the responses of upwardly mobile, middle-class urban women to state-sponsored entertainment serials (including Ramayan, Mahabharat and Hum Log).

More: Purnima Mankekar

Telug(h)umor

Stand-up star Hari Kondabolu’s late-night debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live made waves last week (Sepia, The Stranger , NerdNYC).

But the comedian’s day job is actually far from being “funny.”

Kondabolu, a Bowdoin College graduate, recently spoke to his alumni magazine about working in Seattle for Hate Free Zone, a non-profit, founded after 9/11, to help immigrant communities cope with intolerance and backlash. Kondabolu describes the work as “depressing and tiring, but inspiring when it works out.”

Kondabolu’s routines are often based on what it means to be desi in America. Check out his take on speaking Telugu:

Prashad Promotes

Photo courtesy of The New Press

Vijay Prashad groupies rejoice!

The author and Trinity College professor will be in NYC tonight, promoting his latest book The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.

You can catch Prashad, who also wrote The Karma of Brown Folk and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, this evening at the Asian American Writers Workshop (16 West 32nd Street).

Publishers Weekly calls The Darker Nations scholarly but accessible, saying the book “offers a vital assertion of an alternative future, grounded in an anti-imperial vision.”

The reading/launch event begins at 7PM.

A $5 donation is suggested.

More:
The Darker Nations
The Asian American Writers Workshop
Catch Prashad at the YSS birthday celebration this April