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Brown in America

TOW the SAJA convention ‘07

By: Anantha :+: Under: Brown in America, Culture
On: ⋅ July 22, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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It is almost August. Summer is approaching its home stretch. People are having parties celebrating their favorite boy wizard and India’s cricket team is playing in England. As for me, I am spending most of my waking hours, thinking about my day job in one way or the other. But I do manage to have some fun from time to time, in the weekend mainly. Like last weekend for example. A press-pass for the SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association) convention landed on my lap and I spent the better part of a weekend hobnobbing wide-eyed with the heavyweights of the desi American media.

It all started when I was effectively ordered by UberDesi HQ deep in the Seminole territories to show up at the SAJA convention over the weekend. Given that the choice was between that or staying couch bound playing Forza Motorsports on my Xbox, I hurriedly sent back a “Roger Wilco” and emailed a request to SAJA’s co-founder Sree Srinivasan, asking for a press-pass. I was initially apprehensive, but when I finally made it down to the Columbia campus on Saturday (after missing Thursday and Friday in lieu of the day job), I found that the convention was a riot.

I was very tentative going into the first plenary session with Martin Bashir, but that changed soon. I was smiling when he said that he had “never seen so many sexy Asian babes in one room”. I would agree and say ‘aye’, but to quote Bashir, I don’t want to display my sexism so soon. Bashir was a laugh in some ways and thought provoking in others.

Then there were the panel sessions. The first one, The Media’s Role in the 2008 Presidential Race did make me feel out of place, but it was smooth going afterward. The second panel - Critics, South Asian Arts and Artists was actually informative even for a lay person like me. And then, there was the last panel session about The Boom and Growing Pains in South Asian Media. For someone who grew up reading a mix of current affairs magazines alongside the Tintins and stayed up late every Friday night to watch Prannoy Roy bring the world as it is happened that week, the South Asian media has always been close to the heart. I think I managed to piss off CNBC/TV-18 reporter Anirudh Bhattacharya even before half the session was past. Bob Dietz, the Asia program coordinator with the Committee to Protect Journalists and Ammu George, a freelance journalist contributed to the discussion from their personal experiences with and in and the South Asian media.

The delayed arrival of exiled Pakistani journo, Majid Babar changed the tone of the discussion with his poignant account of the harrowing times that the Pakistani media has been going through under Musharaf. The recent Red mosque incident also featured in the discussion with this blogger showing what an ass he can be, at times. But I did find out that budgets do play a role in the level of coverage of non “War on Terror” related stories, which was an eye-opener.

Being a press pass holder, I had to miss a couple of workshops by Amitava Kumar and Suketu Mehta and another on blogs by Sree Srinivasan where UD might have been mentioned as an example. But with such quality panels, I have no reason to complain.

And then it was time to prepare for the gala. Between the last session and the start of the gala, though, a small press interaction with the evening’s headliner was squeezed in. I had known about the media interaction, but was expecting a press conference type thing that I could hang around like a fly on the wall. And boy, was I in for a surprise, or what?

Sree surprised me with a “Go into that room. Sendhil is waiting for you guys”. I got in there and found him there surrounded by a pair of gushing fangirls from ABCD Lady magazine with mobile voice recorders. After introductions, I decided to play journo and shoot the first question at him and asked him about the whole Aishwarya Rai thing. He was all amused and during the course of the conversation, I found out that his middle name is Amithab (shady spelling, courtesy IMDB). And that he was named after that whatizisname who recently showed up on screen (with a ponytail, no less) in a movie that could yet lead to numerous Chinese population control jokes? I also learnt that his role as “Mohinder Suresh” in Heroes was actually written as a “Caucasian male in his 50s” and it was only because he tested for the role and won over the studio and the creator, was it changed to that of a young Indian male. Apparently he is also getting a lot of calls from Bollywood. Soon the professional journos took over and the rest of us stood around as Sendhil answered all their questions politely and then moved along to mingle with the rest of the crowd at the gala.

The gala itself was a grand affair. Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian in Portland was inducted into the SAJA Hall of Fame. Several journalists, short film and documentary makers were felicitated in lieu of them being the finalists or winning one of several SAJA Journalism awards. A short Q&A session with Sendhil Ramamurthy was one of the highlights of the evening with questions being polled from the convention attendees earlier. Yours truly submitted two questions, both of which were included in the said session.

The company at the dinner table was eclectic and included among others, a documentary maker (and finalist for one of the awards mentioned earlier) whose resume includes a short film on Rahul Bose and the Indian Rugby team. Also sitting on the table was a veteran journo who’s currently with KTCA-TV in St. Paul, Minnesota. I think I ranted non stop about Indian cricket for about half hour through the gala. And when I left that night after dinner, I made up my mind to get back next morning to the post-convention brunch.

The post convention brunch at the Purnima Restaurant was itself a delight. Intelligent conversation was had about blogs over the scrumptious spread prepared by chef Vikas Khanna. The baked peaches and mango kulfi were excellent. LSE alum and comedian Vidur Kapur provided fodder for laughs with his post brunch stand-up routine. Look out for more about him on UberDesi in the coming weeks.

Overall, it was a fun weekend and hopefully loads of exposure for UberDesi, thanks to SAJA and in particular, people like Sree Srinivasan, Arun Venugopal, Deepti Hajela, Aseem Chhabra, Vikas Bajaj, Kiran Khalid, Preston Merchant, Arindam Mukherjee, Dilip Mirchandani and everybody else that said ‘hi’ and put up with my presence.

I hope to put in a few more posts resulting out of my SAJA experience. Watch out for these in the coming weeks.

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