Passengers on one of Finnair’s flights to Delhi were treated to this surprise yesterday. Enjoy!

This of course isn’t the first time Biden’s gotten into hot water with the desi community. Back in 2006, the then-Senator noted that “You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Watch the video of yesterday’s speech below. The imitation begins at 00:09 and ends rather abruptly. As one Buzzfeed commenter noted, “It’s like halfway through the impression he thought, “Oh sh–, better not follow through with this one.”

Skewed Demographic

The online art exhibit Skewed Demographic brings together artists to address the racial disparity in the bone marrow registry. Each piece in the online gallery is being auctioned off with proceeds going towards processing bone marrow testing kits.

Photographers Shirin Adhami and Sunita Prasad curated show in honor of Photojojo founder Amit Gupta and other South Asian leukemia patients. Adhami first met Amit Gupta when both were undergraduates at Amherst College a decade ago. When Gupta first announced his diagnosis and his need for a bone marrow donor, Adhami was one of his many friends who rallied to action.

“Personally, I was working on doing drives and I was thinking of doing a more symbolic gesture,” said Adhami during a recent phone interview. “How could I reach an audience that maybe couldn’t donate marrow? How could it be more than a request for money?”

Adhami decided to put the call out to her contacts to see if they would be willing to donate their work to the cause. “The idea is photo-based, but the artists are not necessarily all photographers. The inspiration is really from Amit’s photo interest,” she said. “There were times that I have not even realized I was using one of his inventions until much later. He has really affected the photo world with Photojojo.”

The show debuted at the Queens Museum in New York last week and now exists solely online. Bidding closes on Monday, December 19, but Adhami says that she continues to receive donated pieces from artists and will keep bidding open for the newer items a bit longer. She estimates that about $10,000 worth of artwork has been donated for the auction.

The bidding process is simple: just email skeweddemographic@gmail.com with the amount you’d like to bid and the lot number of the item. Suggested minimum bids are listed on each piece’s page. As an added bonus, Adhami says one of the artists will send a small print to everyone who bids on an item.

Highlights from the show include pieces from notable artists like this print by Bill Burke and a print by legendary photographer Joe Deal, who passed away from cancer last year. The print was donated by Deal’s widow Betsy and is not currently available anywhere else. Other items up for bid include prints by Jesse Burke, Tom Griggs, and Rebecca Heyl.

In her one-woman show Unladylike: The Pitfalls of Propriety, comedian Radhika Vaz tackles subjects like “proper” female behavior, modern relationships, and the ubiquity of bikini waxes. Having recently returned from touring India, Vaz will be performing Unladylike at the The Producers Club in New York City on Friday, December 9. I recently had the chance to ask her a few questions about the show.

What inspired you to write Unladylike?

I had been doing improv for a really long time and then I started writing monologues. I always wanted to do a one-hour show on my own for a few reasons. I was auditioning for parts and wasn’t getting anything. You know, I am practically 40. I am Indian with an Indian accent, I’m not even an Indian with an American accent, so I wasn’t fitting into any of the roles. Writing the show was what really pushed me out there.

Stories about your husband and family often appear in your work. Have any of your relatives ever told you that something was off-limits?

No, they haven’t. I definitely do believe that I have to at least show them the piece before I post it to my blog. Most of my pieces start out on the blog, I usually post it before it is performed.

I remember I posted something once and my husband was like, “You really should have shown me this before you posted.” If it is something related something like alcohol abuse or anything embarrassing, I show it to them. When writing about my friends I change names a lot.

Read the rest of the interview at Sepia Mutiny.

Image credit: Katarina Kojic Photography and Design.

Dubbing themselves the Indo Pak Express, the India-born Bopanna and his Pakistani counterpart Qureshi received lots of favorable attention during the 2010 tennis season as they declared themselves Champions for Peace and wore warmup jackets emblazoned with the slogan “Stop War, Start Tennis.” Doubles star Bob Bryan went so far as to tell the New York Times that the pairing was good for “world peace.”

The BBC has more details about the split:

The men, who met when they were 16 and are now 30, began playing as partners in 2003.

“As the season has ended now, I can confirm that I am playing with Mahesh [Bhupathi] in 2012,” Bopanna told Indian Express.

He declined to give a reason for the split.

“Who I want to play with is my decision… I did have a successful year with Aisam [Qureshi] but now I am starting a new year with Mahesh, and it’s as simple as that.”

While the pair did have some success this year, including a victory at the Stockholm Open, things had not been going well recently. The duo lost in straight sets at the ATP World Tour Finals in London last week.

Check out this PSA Aziz Ansari and his Parks and Recreation co-star Chris Pratt just released encouraging young people to get their cheeks swabbed for the bone marrow registry.

DoSomething.org’s Give a Spit campaign is specifically targeting young people between the ages of 18-24. The campaign and its partners Be The Match and DKMS “need inspired young people like you to take the lead and register more committed college-age donors, especially minority donors. You can save lives by running a “Give a Spit” drive on your campus. Just sign up and we’ll get you everything you need to run a drive.”

And there’s more! The drive that gets the most donors signed up wins $2,000 for a celebratory party and everyone who enters the registry through a Give a Spit drive is eligible for a $500 college scholarship.

Readers who are curious about what donating entails should check out Taz’s recent interview with two donors. You should also check Amit Gupta Needs You for a list of drives across the country.

(Via Gawker)

Now, I don’t begrudge my parents their position toward turkey. It’s a confounding bird for most immigrants, who are generally more comfortable with the bleats of a goat or a lamb, the squawks of the simple-minded chicken. The turkey was an enigma: a heavy, feathered bird with its “gobbledygook” mutterings, freakish red wattle and vast supply of dry, juiceless meat.

“Do the Amreekans realize it is dry?” ask my still perplexed relatives living in Pakistan. “Where is the masala? The taste? The juices? Why do they eat this bird?”

What did you serve this Thanksgiving? Did you desi-fy your turkey? (Aarti Sequeira has a recipe for tandoori turkey here.) I’ve always grown up in a vegetarian household, so no turkey for me, but we did have pumpkin raita and cranberry chutney on the table as a nod to the holiday.

I recently interviewed Kal Penn for Sepia Mutiny. An excerpt:

Tell us about the new film. This obviously isn’t your typical Christmas movie.

In a lot of ways it is a traditional Christmas movie. What was cool is that a lot of things you see are traditional. Santa Claus is in the film- Harold accidentally shoots him in the face. There’s family, friendship, and love [in the movie]. What’s different is that it’s in 3D, and it is vulgar.

This is your first film since leaving your job as an advisor to the White House. I just read this great quote of yours from an interview you did with the LA Times: “When you’re working there, you always think, ‘What is the best time to tell the president that you played a stoner who escaped from Guantanamo Bay?’ Did Harold and Kumar or any of your other roles ever come up in conversation while you were at the White House?

The nice thing about working in the White House is that almost everyone has put a private sector career on hold. There isn’t a lot of conversation about what people put on hold, it’s more about working together to push the president’s agenda.

Click here to read the full interview.

He first blogged about his diagnosis last week:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.

He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”

I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

Amit’s not the only South Asian who is waiting for a match. Dr. Anand Patel, a father of three based in Florida, also recently received a leukemia diagnosis. His family and friends have been organizing bone marrow drives across the country. You can learn more about these drives on Anand’s Facebook page.

I’ve written before in this space about the under-representation of South Asians in the National Bone Marrow Registry. A South Asian patient in need of a bone marrow transplant currently only has a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a match.

We as a community can do much better.  A simple cheek swab is all that is required to enter the marrow registry. More details about what happens if you are a match can be found here.

Interested in entering the registry?

Those in New York City can attend the Brown Bones Benefit Party on Oct 14. Volunteers will have provide all of the necessary paperwork and cheek swab tests.

You can also order a kit and do the cheek swab test at home. Visit Marrow.org to get a kit through Be the Match.

I also think it’s important for potential donors to be certain that they are willing to help. According to the Anand’s Battle for Leukemia Facebook page “only 1.8% of the National Registry is made up of South Asians, and of that half of them decide not to go through with donating.” That statistic sounds heartbreaking for everyone involved. Don’t let that be you.

Pourmecoffee tweeted this photo earlier today of last year’s Arab-Africa summit.

From left to right: Ben Ali of Tunisia, Saleh of Yemen, Colonel Gaddafi, and former Egyptian President Mubarak.