How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan gave birth to daughter Satyana Denisof yesterday. Celebrity Baby Blog has the details. No word on what inspired the name, which is the Sanskrit word for truth.
Month: March 2009
“Are You Indian?”: Amway Stories
Just talked to a friend who just came from “business meeting” about “making easy money” that an acquaintance recently proposed.
You know what that means: Amway!
Random desis used to ask me if I was Indian all of the time when I lived in Philadelphia- once when I was walking in Rittenhouse Square, another time in the University of Pennsylvania bookstore. I quickly learned to emphatically deny my Indian identity and to walk away as quickly as possible.
Until recently, I actually had no idea that being ambushed by Indians trying to push Amway is a fairly normal occurrence all over this great nation of ours. Stuff Indians Like did a post about it here, as did Sepia Mutiny a few years ago.
Do any readers out there have a particularly memorable Amway moment? Post in the comments.
A New Desi Romantic Comedy
Via SAJAforum, I just watched the trailer for Bollywood Beats, a new desi rom-com. Looks cute.
This Week’s NY Times Wedding Announcements
We have a bit of a drought- none again this week.
The Story of My Experiments with Twitter
Apparently all serious journalists are on Twitter, so I’ve just added my Twitter feed to the sidebar. I’m still trying to figure out how the whole thing works, but you can follow me here.
The Weekly Read
Articles I found interesting today:
Citing security concerns, Australia’s tennis federation wants Davis Cup match moved out of India.
The Wall Street Journal (of all places!) profiles Indian American comedian Aziz Ansari.
IBM offers laid off workers incentives to move to India.
Medical tourism is becoming increasing popular.
Frieda Pinto is the highest paid actress in Bollywood.
This Week’s NY Times Wedding Annoucements
None this week, but I thought I would get in the habit of posting again.
Farewell, ER, We’ll Miss You
After 15 years, NBC’s medical drama ER is wrapping up on April 2. I watched the show obsessively as a middle schooler during the Drs. Ross/Benton/Carter years, but there was always something that bothered me: Where were all of the Indian doctors?
The producers fixed that with the addition of Bend It Like Beckham’s Parminder Nagra in 2003. In today’s NY Times’ director John Wells explains how Nagra ended up on the show:
WELLS I had seen Parminder in “Beckham,” and I realized that we had never had an Indian or Pakistani doctor even though they are many in E.R.’s around the country.
MS. NAGRA I’m very proud of my Indian heritage, but I didn’t want it to become a cliché. I wanted them to be clever about it. The challenge was to make me grow as a character, and I think I did. They put me in so many relationships. I think I set the record on the show for hookups.
The Guardian also had a lovely profile on Nagra where she talks more about portraying a South Asian on American television and the differences between working as an artist in America vs. Britain.
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