:::The Desi Flavor:::

Localised Archie comics for India

Iconic US comic-strip hero Archie is all set to go desi and woo sweethearts Veronica and Betty in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, playing cricket instead of baseball and driving a Tata vehicle instead of a Ford.

the company planned to localise stories and use local brand names, holiday spots and festivals in the story-line. "We will integrate Indian holidays or festivals in the stories and plan to use familiar Indian brands. For example, Archie can drive a Tata instead of a Ford; Veronica can wear a saree," Herman said.

The company is also set to publish the comics locally instead of importing them from the US. "Localisation will make the comics very cheap in India, maybe below Rs 25 against the current price of around Rs 80," he said.

The company has also signed an agreement with music and home entertainment major Sa Re Ga Ma, which will distribute Archie DVDs from the middle of this year.

"The Inheritance of Loss" wins Book Critics Circle Award

"Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss," a narrative of global discovery and displacement that has already won the Man Booker Prize, received another literary honor - Thee National Book Critics Circle fiction award" - Source: Washington Post

Related:
: NY Times Book Review

ALTHOUGH it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai's extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. Despite being set in the mid-1980's, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel.

"The Inheritance of Loss" opens with a teenage Indian girl, an orphan called Sai, living with her Cambridge-educated Anglophile grandfather, a retired judge, in the town of Kalimpong on the Indian side of the Himalayas. Sai is romantically involved with her math tutor, Gyan, the descendant of a Nepali Gurkha mercenary, but he eventually recoils from her obvious privilege and falls in with a group of ethnic Nepalese insurgents. In a parallel narrative, we are shown the life of Biju, the son of Sai's grandfather's cook, who belongs to the "shadow class" of illegal immigrants in New York and spends much of his time dodging the authorities, moving from one ill-paid job to another.

: Wikipedia Entry

Firefly - A Fairy Tale by Ritu Beri

 

Celebrated fashion designer Ritu Beri recently completed writing her first book titled Firefly: A Fairytale. The book deals with topics like architecture, history, women and their beauty. It also talks about her experiences in Paris which were important in shaping her career. The book’s price tag is Rs. 100K will be sold in Paris at the new Louis Vuitton flagship store and through Beri's own store. That's some price tag!!!
Related - French applause at Ritu Beri's fashion show

Brown Boys in Chocolate

Brown Boys in Chocolate – Book written by Paul Southern. Synopsis

"When Rafi Rafiq and Richard Armitage leave their flat on Thursdays their ambition stretches no further than their giros and the bookies. Bonded from birth, blood cousins through school, failures in the hereafter, they share everything: draw, food, fags, booze and vaginas, an unholy pentagram of sleaze. Nowhere Rafi leads is out of bounds. Till now. He gets them caught breaking into 

Manchester's first all-Asian brothel, Mohammed's Butt's notorious nach ghar, and they're faced with a simple choice: pay or die. But Richard's fallen in love - with Butt's favourite girl, Fari - and decides they have to save her. And, for Rafi, it gets worse. The Death Angel is back. 'Gorgeous George' Cotterel. On the lookout for starlets to play in his latest video nasty, George knows just the thing that will sell them. And just the way to get them. Brown boys in chocolate. When Rafi and Richard answer a ringing phone in Manley Park, the combination is far from their minds, but George has it all planned - and they find themselves wrestling, literally, for their lives."

Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee - Drama series

The primetime three-part adaptation of Meera Syal's book Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee has been given a slot in early April. This will open up the way for other dramas. More here. "We wanted to do something fresh and contemporary, getting away from this assumption that anything feauring us [Asians] has to be issue based, which is why the focus is very much on universal emotional experiences like friendship, marriage, betrayal, motherhood and especially the changing landscape of male-female relationships."

The script was developed in the early stages with a "fantastic" drama writer called Abi Morgan, she said. She also admitted that finding the right crew was a very tricky exercise for her.

"The casting process took ages as we saw pretty much every suitable Asian actor around. However, I kept well away from the casting process and left the final choices up to the director and the BBC execs as I work with so many of the actors who auditioned and don't want to be in the position of judging my friends!"The writer told AiM she hopes it opens the way for other dramas. We have exclusive pictures from the series. "

Pocket Guide to being an Indian girl

BK Mahal's debut book, the Pocket Guide to being an Indian Girl, has already captured the imagination of many for its fresh and unique look at the life of second generation British Asians. Here is a review of the book.

She is a Muslim and a Feminist

Yes folks, thats Asma Gull Hasan for you, author of her new book - Why I am a Muslim. Rediff recently interviewed her. Here are a few paragraphs on dating:

You have also talked and written about halal dating. What is it?

Young American Muslims have come up with creative solutions to dating -- they fall into roughly three categories.

The first group is Strict Muslims who date halal (in an Islamically permissible style).

The second group I call Eid Muslims, because many are not strict in practice and attend mosques only on holidays. While technically they date haram (unlawfully in Islam), without chaperones, they keep physical intimacy to a minimum and parental involvement at a maximum.

The third group dates Sex and the City-style (definitely haram), openly and freely leading a non-Islamic lifestyle, having premarital sex sometimes in a series of monogamous relationships. Halal dating is a practice gaining much popularity in the American Muslim community among Strict Muslims and Eid Muslims.

The book talks about Sufism:

What does Sufism mean to you? Sufism focuses on inner divinity that is in all of us. When Sufis sing and chant, it is electrifying. Sufis believe that one should keep an open heart to welcome the divinity.

Jhumpa Lahiri's latest piece

Another interesting short story from Jhumpa Lahiri - Hell-Heaven

Tantric Sex in South Asian context

Wendy Donier reviews David Gordon Whites latest book: Kiss of the Yogini - Tantric sex in its South Asian context

There are many good, dull books about Tantra and many that are bad but interesting. This is true of many areas of knowledge, but Tantra is particularly susceptible both to juicy sensationalism and to an overcompensating academic desiccation. Kiss of the Yogini is one of the few good, interesting books about Tantra, a passionately argued work that transforms scholarly understanding of its subject. If it goes too far in arguing its essential point about the origin of Tantra, such excess is justified by the book’s courageous stance against a political censorship that goes much further in the opposite direction.

How you define Tantra is largely determined by what you want to say about it. To the extent that the general reading public is familiar with the term, Tantra has become an Orientalist wet dream, a transgressive, weird, sexy, dangerous world. Many people refer to the Kamasutra, or even The Joy of Sex, as Tantric. But Tantric practice has a narrower and more precise historical genealogy. In David Gordon White’s account, the distinguishing characteristic of South Asian Tantra in its earliest documented stage is a ritual in which bodily fluids – sexual or menstrual discharge – were swallowed as transformative “power substances”

More resources:
: Tantra.com - The resource for Tantra, Tantrix Sex and the Kamasutra

: AskMen.com on Tantra Sex

: Introduction to Tantra : The Transformation of Desire by Lama Yeshe, Jonathan Landaw (Editor), Philip Glass

: Soul Sex: Tantra for Two by Pala Copeland, Al Link

"Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic Science'"

Meera Nanda , the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, trashes pseudo-science and explains why we really don't need to be teaching Vedic Astrology in schools.