The Week in Gup-Shup

*In an interview earlier this week, Madonna told Howard Stern she’s interested in reinventing herself yet again. “I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon – but I want to stay alive,” she said, adding: “we all need to be Jesus in our time.”

*Turns out Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, a graduate of Boston University’s School of Medicine, was illegally supplying Anna Nicole Smith with methadone while Smith was eight months preggers with her daughter. Kapoor’s lawyers have released a statement suggesting he handled things in a “medically sound and appropriate” way.

*And seventeen-year-old Sanjaya Malakar has made it to the semi-finals of American Idol. Malakar, from Washington State, entered the contest with his sister Shymali who used to wait tables at Hooters.

Meera Masi For Curious Kids

Sonali Sahni Herrera, Sheetal Sahni Singhal (The Hindu)

“We all need a masi, the person you go to for fun,” says Sonali Herrera. “Someone who can spin tales for you and take you on adventures.” Herrera and her sister Sheetal Singhal founded Meera Masi, a publisher offering children stories on Indian language and culture. (“Sharing heritage with next generation, Immigrants from India write, market kids’ books in Hindi“)

While Singhal had the opportunity to attend boarding school in India and reads Hindi script, Herrera came to the U.S. at age four and does not read the script. Both can use Meera Masi books to read stories aloud to their children because the books include Hindi script, English transliteration of the Hindi script and an audio recording of the text to ensure correct pronunciation.

Watch the interview with the sisters on ABC’s View From The Bay, including “Itsy Bitsy Spider” in Hindi (“Chhote Mote Makade”) from their Khushē Manäo series. Meera Masi also offers a DVD featuring Laddoo the Elephant introducing children ages 6 to 30 months to Hindi, Tamil or Telugu.

Total Denial: Doe vs. UNOCAL

Shot in Burma, Thailand, Europe, and the U.S. courts between 2000-2005, Total Denial documents the story of a historic lawsuit: Fifteen villagers from the jungles of Burma bringing suit in U.S. courts against a giant oil corporation for human-rights abuses committed in the mid-1990s by soldiers providing security for Unocal’s natural gas pipeline in southern Burma.

The plaintiffs achieved victory in Doe vs. UNOCAL after 10 years of fierce legal battles. John Doe IX, who had done back-breaking forced labor, said, “I don’t care about the money. Most of all I wanted the world to know what Unocal did. Now you know.”

Producer/director Milena Kaneva documented the abuses of villagers with help from Ka Hsaw Wa, a member of the Karen, an ethnic minority discriminated against by Burma’s military regime. Award-winning environmentalist and human rights activist Ka Hsaw Wa was also one of the leaders of the Burmese student democracy movement in 1988. In hiding in the jungle for more than seven years, he gathered the evidence of thousands of victims. At the federal court hearings, Kaneva’s camera was the only one allowed.

Total Denial is part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2007. Other films running at the festival include the Oscar-nominated My Country, My Country, and Black Gold, an exploration of the the global coffee trade from Ethiopian bean growers to multinational companies to U.S. coffee consumers.

More:
HRW 2007 International Film Festival

Tandoori Sizzlers? OK.

Doritos Tandoori Sizzlers have made it to British and Canadian grocery stores apparently—and the commercials promoting them are now everywhere:

More YouTube Clips:
Doritos “Bold”
Doritos “Exotic”

2007: A Love Story

Wedding Day! (Sujeet.Com)

Oprah dedicated today’s show to “exceptional” love, and included this couple’s heartwarming story.

Sujeet Desai and Carrie Bergeron fell in love (“at first sight”) and decided to tie the knot six months later, having not one but two ceremonies—one Hindu, one Christian.

“I thought very hard that I wanted to propose and it was a very touching moment,” Sujeet said on the show. “I burst out in tears.”

Desai plays six musical instruments and spends his time touring the country. Visit his personal website for details.

Both Desai and Bergeron were born with Down syndrome.

More:
Sujeet and his family
Carrie & Sujeet’s wedding announcement

I Want My MTV

Pink Slip-Time for MTV Desi? (MTVDesi.Com)

Rumor has it MTV World (home to MTV Desi, MTV Chi, and MTVK) is the latest victim of the firing frenzy at Viacom.

If reports are to be believed, the plug is being pulled completely on the channels. The “Classics Department” at VH1 has also recently been on the chopping block. MTVu will, however, remain relatively intact.

Low Cal for NoJo

NorahJones.Info

Something is wrong with the universe when Norah Jones is being told she needs to lose weight.

The Grammy-winning songstress made headlines last week when her third album settled into the number one position on both the US and UK charts. Jones was told to shed a few pounds in preparation for her debut on the big screen (she is set to star opposite Jude Law and Natalie Portman in the film My Blueberry Nights).

“First I got really mad, then I got nervous, thinking, ‘Oh no! I’m fat!” Jones told reporters at British Glamour.

Jones has sold over 45 million records to date.

Roy Returns to Roots

Roy (FreedomFits.Com)

It has been a decade since Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize.

Roy, who spent the last ten years dedicating herself to issues of social justice and nonfiction writing, now tells reporters she is ready for something different.

“I will be writing a novel. I want to say things where I am not always walking a fine line.”

“I want to step off whatever this stage is that I have been given,” says Roy, 45.

“I feel very imprisoned by facts, by having to get it right. I don’t want to play these games of statistics any more, I have done that. I don’t want to be imprisoned by that, or by the morality that is expected of activists. I have never been that pristine person, that role model.”

The author did not reveal what her new book would be about, but did hint that it might involve (possibly take place in?) Kashmir.

More:
Arundhati Roy fan site
Roy on YouTube
‘Not Again’

Ralph Fiennes: Coming To An Aircraft Toilet Near You?

Fiennes, Sharmila Tagore and AIDS Victim (WashingtonPost.Com)

Ralph Fiennes fans might be disappointed to hear the 44-year-old star likes to follow strangers into cramped aircraft lavatories.

Fiennes, who starred in The English Patient and The Constant Gardner recently found himself in hot water after allegedly trying to have an amorous in-flight encounter with a Qantas airline hostess.

“While conversing with Mr Fiennes during my break, I expressed a need to go to the toilet. I entered it, he followed me and entered the same toilet. I explained to him that this was inappropriate and asked him to leave,” said the stewardess, 38, in a statement.

The actor was flying from Darwin, Australia to Mumbai–where he was scheduled (as a Unicef ambassador to India) to promote safe sex and HIV/AIDS awareness. Fiennes’s reps declined to comment.

Holly/Bolly Love Story

Sheth, Kamkolkar in Indian Cowboy

Indian Cowboy, running in selected U.S. theaters starting February 23, is described as “a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the idea of ‘true love’ with a South Asian twist, playing upon both Bollywood and Hollywood romantic comedy conventions.”

Nick, a character partly inspired by the brother of the film’s writer/director Nikhil Kamkolkar and played by Kamkolkar as well, is a writer who dreams of a love story with a glorious, happy ending. A cynical Sapna (Sheetal Sheth—Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, American Chai) on the other hand believes that true love always leads to a tragic end as in Romeo & Juliet or Laila & Majnu. When the two meet and fall for each other, their love story begins. The cast includes cowboy Deep Katdare (American Desi) and Sundra Oakley (Survivor: Cook Islands). Karsh Kale, Kam Dhillon, Alms for Shanti and Shaheen Sheik feature on the film’s soundtrack.

According to the director’s blog, indianrising.com, you should be able to view a sneak preview of the movie on the film’s site today—Valentine’s Day.

More:
Theatrical trailer