Christmas Cakes, Bagels and Begging Lepers

She’s a Bryn Mawr grad and account director who will tell you an assignment’s “due on Wednesday, when it’s really due on Friday.”

He’s from a family that likes to name its men after military figures (Rommel and Napoleon, Alexander and Bonaparte–you get the picture).

They met online and had their first date at Grand Central (where they both discovered they share a liking for bagels!). Now they’ve gotten married.

The New York Times’ Style section (c’mon, you know you read it too) featured handsome couple Frances Wu and Rommel Nobay on its front page yesterday. Wu, a Chinese-Japanese American woman from Virginia, moved to Japan seven years ago to find a husband. She was unsuccessful (“…there she heard herself heartlessly referred to as a Christmas cake…Who wants a Christmas cake after the 25th of December?”).

Dispirited, Wu, who is in her thirties, returned to New York where she joined an online dating site looking for a “tall Chinese man.”

Instead she found Nobay, who grew up in Kenya and the US to Goan parents. His first language is Swahili.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shiite Continues to Happen

Vandalized diner in Dearborn. NYT (Fabrizio Costantini)

The Shiite and Sunni communities of Dearborn, Michigan (home to 30,000 Arab Americans) aren’t getting along.

The New York Times reports that the town’s commercial artery Warren Avenue has now seen at least a dozen of its businesses vandalized because of sectarian tension.

Strained relations between the two groups have been more marked lately–in what appears to be a carry-over from the on-going violence in Iraq.

But such discontent is not reserved to the hookah bars of Dearborn, as Shiite college students report feeling left out and even “formally barred” from Sunni-dominated campus student groups.

“A microcosm of what is happening in Iraq happened in New Jersey because people couldn’t put aside their differences,” says Sami Elmansoury, a Sunni and former head of an Islamic student association at Rutgers.

And Azmat Khan, a student at the University of Michigan, talks about the what it means to be a Shiite American on campus today (“To some extent, the minute you identify yourself as a Shiite, it outs you. You feel marginalized.”).

Go here to read the whole article (and let us know what you think).

Sunita Moonwalks Her Way Into History Books

Williams on Jan 31 (AP/NASA)

American astronaut Sunita Williams broke a world record yesterday, having spent more time walking around in space than any other woman.

According to an Associated Press report, Williams set the record–of 22 hours and 27 minutes–while upgrading the international space station’s cooling system.

This beats the previous women’s spacewalking record by over an hour.

More:
Blast off! Sunita Williams Heads Back to Space
We spoke to Williams back in 2004. Read the interview here.

Sawhney in LA (Come Rain or Shine)

Nitin Sawhney will be in LA next weekend. Catch him at the Temple Bar on February 10. Tickets are expected to sell out (so buy yours today).

Here’s the Rishi Rich remix of Rainfall to help tide you over until then:

Princes, Palaces & Passion

Lovers on a terrace, approx.1810.

Today marks the start of a new exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, Princes, Palaces, and Passion: The Art of India’s Mewar Kingdom. For the first time outside of India, an exhibition of 74 rare artworks ranging from the early 16th to early 20th centuries, conveys the artistic traditions of the legendary kingdom of Mewar and its capital city Udaipur in the Rajasthan region. Special events associated with this exhibit include performances by traditional storytellers from Rajasthan Mohan Bhopa and his wife Patashi, who were featured in New Yorker article “Homer in India,” a Kathak dance performance by the award-winning Chitresh Das dance company, and a lecture by Rahul Jain, a World Bank economist turned textile technologist who runs a weaving workshop.

The exhibit seeks to distinguish itself from other exhibits of art from Rajasthan by challenging the notion that Indian art from this period was produced by anonymous artists uninterested in leaving personal legacies, and by broadening the focus beyond courtly production of art to village and temple arts. It will bring together works from great individual Mewari painters Bakhta and his son Chokha, works by other known artists, and paintings that were displayed in shrines and private homes.

The Good Goods

Stationary Set Available at World-Shoppe.Com

It’s a global network that connects consumers with “economically disadvantaged artisans and farmers.”

World-Shoppe, an online market that sells everything from stationary to photo frames and bangles, makes sure its producers (mostly women) get paid a living wage.

The company works with non-profits like Bagdha Enterprise in Bangladesh, and India’s TARA projects in a business environment that is “non-exploitive” and “supportive.”

World Shoppe products have been featured in O and Lucky magazines. Check out the goods here.

Man Pushes Cart, Gets Nomination

Razvi for NoruzFilms.Com

His story is the stuff of Hollywood movies.

Ahmad Razvi (whose modest desi restaurant in Brooklyn gets “pelted by gunshots” after September 11), starts working in a Pakistani eatery where he meets director Ramin Bahrani, and gets cast as the lead in an indie film (Man Push Cart).

Critics begin praising the project and soon enough Razvi, who is not a professional actor, receives an Independent Spirit Award nomination–one of three for the film.

Man Push Cart is art imitating life (or was it the other way around?). The BBC calls it “moving and touching…possessed of intelligence and integrity.” Look for it on DVD later this year.

The Independent Spirit Awards are held in Santa Monica, California annually–on the night before the Oscars (February 24, 2007). See the full list of this year’s nominees here.

More:
Nirali features Razvi

Patel Bros. Gets Market Makeover

(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)

Patel Brothers grocery is #17 on this year’s Saveur 100, an annual list of “favorite restaurants, food, drink, people, places and things” compiled by the food and travel magazine’s editors.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the Patel Brothers flagship store, opened in 1974 on Devon Avenue, is getting a face-lift. What started out as a single family-owned grocery store has expanded into a food empire with 34 Patel Brothers stores in 18 states, and a brand that is carried in some Chicago locations of Whole Foods, Wild Oats and Jewel.

Shoppers will still be able to get those 20-lb bags of chickpea flour and the other traditional staples. Once the makeover is complete, they should also have access to the store’s new features, “a takeout area with prepared entrees and breads, a wider variety of frozen and ready-to-eat items and a pickle bar — much like the olive bar you’d find at Whole Foods.” A cooking demo counter will offer daily samples.

More:
Patel Brothers Grocery, 1984

Tea Time in Udaipur

Wilson, Anderson (Slate.Com)

Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody left India yesterday, having completed work on their new movie Darjeeling Express.

The actors stayed at the Oberoi Udaivilas resort along Lake Pichola. Most of the filming took place in Jodhpur and Udaipur.

The film is a story about three brothers who journey through India. Directed by Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), it also stars Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman.

Darjeeling Express is slated to be released in 2008.

Kaling Snags SAG

Kaling (right, with bangs) at the awards-ceremony. (ImNotObsessed.Com)

Mindy Kaling and her “officemates” were recognized by the Screen Actors Guild Sunday night for their “outstanding performance” as “an ensemble in a comedy series (NBC’s The Office).”

Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor, also writes for the show.