Well, UPS is already in NASCAR, but a desi in NASCAR is definitely news.

Sometimes competing is bigger than winning. Anyone who’s watched Cool Runnings is likely to echo that sentiment. Bollywood better fire up the camera for a desi version of the same movie, for participating in the winter Olympics is Indian luge competitor, Shiva Keshavan. [Vancouver Sun] (Runa via email)
Keshavan was interested in winter sports from an early age, despite being born in Vashisht, a village in the Indian Himalayas. “I was lucky because I was picked out by an international talent scout who started training me,” said Keshavan, who often trained …

We talked about MetroPCS’ Ranjit Chad tech talk commercial in an earlier post, remarking that there was perhaps some stereotyping of desis going on in this ad. [UD]
Well, the perhaps part has been laid to rest. For some ad execs, Indian-Americans particularly the newer immigrants with their accents and garish (at least from an American perspective) choice of attire, make an easy target to garner a quick chuckle or two at their expense. MetroPCS now has an entire series of these commercials, including a couple aired during the recently concluded …

Is there such a thing as the “Slumdog Millionaire” effect? [THR]
Hollywood Reporter … ummmm…. reports on the revival of two new Indian-American themed comedies, “Nevermind Nirvana” on Fox and “Outsourced” on NBC.
The two comedies — “Nirvana” at Fox and “Outsourced” at NBC — have something else in common: They both are ensemble shows about Indians and Indian Americans.
A third project, a U.S. version of popular British comedy “The Kumars at No. 42,” about an immigrant Indian family, also is poised for revival. Eight years after NBC took a stab at …

MetroPCS’ latest commercial: Tech & Talk with Ranjit and Chad, takes desi stereotyping to new heights (or depths) with a couple of desi dudes in dorky clothes, thick Borat-like mustaches and accents to boot. The ending is kind of funny though with Chad dancing to techno music.

On January 12th 2010, Haiti was struck by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. The casualties are expected to be in the thousands with more people injured and millions left homeless. [Y!]
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – A major earthquake rocked Haiti, killing possibly thousands of people as it toppled the presidential palace and hillside shanties alike and left the Caribbean nation appealing for international help.
A five-story U.N. building was also brought down by Tuesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake, the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years according to …

The Star Trek Gandhi post inspired me to look into the other desi on Star Trek – Persis Khambatta.

Persis was a model from Bombay and somehow landed the role of Lt. Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Here’s the twist, Persis was a model from India with beautiful long locks and the role of Lt. Ilia required her to be completely bald. So did she somehow wear a wig or did she actually have to shave her head for this role?
In this behind the scenes footage for the …

This interesting feature on BBC talks about the recent emergence of actors of South Asian origin in Hollywood and US television shows. For decades, they were relegated to token and stereotypical roles. As recently as a couple of years back, one of the biggest South Asian names, Kal Penn, played the role of a ….. surprise ….. terrorist on the TV show, 24. Besides Penn, the article also talks about other popular TV names like Aasif Mandvi and Pooja Kumar.
However, before any of the current crop had an opportunity to …

The holiday season is here in the US and A and with that commences the seemingly never ending list of potluck parties, not that I’m complaining. At one such potluck in an official setting, some of us volunteered to bring food towards the potluck lunch.
I took the easy way out, I brought salad and dressing to the lunch. A co-worker of mine, desi obviously, has his contribution listed as “Indian fried rice”, which brings up an all-important question: WTF is Indian Fried Rice?
I probably missed the memo but what is …

So this lady goes to a dollar store and buys what she thinks is gift wrapping paper. Comes home and horrors! sees that the red and gold paper is covered with “swastikas”.The local press gets involved and the result is this.

(Image: from wesh.com)
Its pretty obvious that this was some cheap wrapping paper made in India or China and targeted to the Diwali gift market. Post -Diwali, the paper finds its way to the dollar store and creates a sensation. Not helping the situation is the Rabbi quoted in the article:
But …

Relatively speaking (in Internet years), South Asian actors are no newcomers to 24, the thriller drama on Fox. Not too long ago, current Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Kalpen Modi, got to fulfill his lifelong passion of holding people hostage and blowing up things, playing the role of a teenage terrorist on 24.
For long it was rumored, that his hirsuteness, Anil Kapoor, the game show host in the multi-Academy award winning movie, Slumdog Millionaire, would be working on the new season of 24. Well turns …

When it rains, it pours cats and dogs. That seems to be moral of the story in the past few months.
Back when we started UD, finding Desis in the media was a big deal. I remember posts in SM and SAJA titled “Identify this brown person”, not anymore. Without over analyzing the situation, the fact is that we find stories about our people everywhere. And it was only a matter of time before they showed up on the wrong side of the financial meltdown.
The Sri Lankan Raj …

For the record I’m not for any kind of religious celebrations sponsored by tax payer dollars, but since that appears to be unavoidable I might as well blog about it. (tip Krupali via Über Desi on Twitter)
The Obama White House deserves a lot of credit for sharing their videos on the world wide interwebs via the U-tubes. Penn Masala makes an appearance, and I’m a big fan of them, but their choice of song appears to not jive with the occasion. Barack Obama flanked by a sea of South …

Rediff reports:
Obama’s Diwali celebration upsets Indian-American community.
Here’s the back story – ex-president Bush started the practice of hosting a Diwali event since 2003, courtesy request of the Indian-American community and it’s been a practice ever since. Some of the events have been full fledged and upto two hours long, while some, like last year’s,  have been less flashy.
While the article about the first Obama-era Diwali, quoted above, points out reasons why Indian Americans are upset (mostly elderly immigrant Indians), the rest of the article quotes two second generation desis – …

Shashi Tharoor, Twitterer extraordinaire, Indian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Colbert Nation’s Official Person from another country made a surprise appearance on The Colbert Report and defended Obama winning the Nobel Peace prize for “giving hope to people around the world”. (desinole via Uber Desi on Twitter)
Also featured on that episode was fellow swine flu sufferer, Dr. Sanjay Gupta in his maiden appearance on the Colbert reports discusses Cheating Death, Ted Williams, slurpee machines and zombies.

The Colbert Report
Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

British-Indian pop star Jay Sean a.k.a Kamaljit Singh Jhooti has gone mainstream in the US with a #1 on the Billboard 100, a single titled “Down”. Indian audiences would be more familiar with his single “Stolen” with Bipasha and his cameo in Bollywood crapflick “Kya Kool Hai Hum”.
The “Down” single has a Chris Brown‘esque feel to it (cue the Rihanna Chris Brown-Rihanna jokes), a tribute to bubblegum R&B pop music, featuring Lil Wayne and …… communism? [TOI]

Psych, a comedy-mystery show on USA channel, paid homage to Bollywood in a recent episode (tip Karthik via Twitter). The episode directed by Jay Chandrashekar featured among others, Indian-American (and Canadian) actors, Jay Chandrashekar himself, his real life cousin Dr. Suresh Mohinder aka Sendhil Ramamurthy and Lisa Ray.

To those unfamiliar with Psych, the story is basically of two friends, Sean and Gus, who con the local police department into employing them as psychics to help with investigating active police cases. This story line, while entertaining, can get repetitive but a …

Those of you who follow my sadly sporadic writing on this site probably know that I shy away from sharing any personal stuff. Today something happened. Something that has me wondering if I overreacted or if I did the right thing. I am going to let you judge.
Like many of our readers and like all my blog mates, I am a proud DBD. I was born and grew up in India. Nine years in the USA may have added Americanisms to my speech but my accent remains firmly Indian. I …

Spiderman plays the sitar on the sidewalk in Key West, FL.

Prof. Ravi Shankar is a published poet, and a faculty member at the Central Connecticut State University. On July 10th this year, he was arrested on false charges, and detained for more than 30 hrs in a NY detention facility while being hurled with racial epithets. His record only had an unpaid speeding ticket, but he was being arrested as he ‘fit’ the description of a 140 pound caucasian male, while being a 200 pound, East Indian male.
After being produced before a magistrate after 30 hrs of detention and being …