“Driving, driving, driving. Our work, a little bit difficult. Driving, a little bit tiring,” Sastry said as he steered his sky-blue BMW — license plate PRIEST-B — around the Capital Beltway from his Ashburn home to the Ellicott City housewarming, a ceremony considered most auspicious if performed before sunrise. “But this is a respected thing,” he said.

Freelance priests are bountiful in India, but just seven serve one of the Washington region’s largest ethnic communities. Census data from 2006 indicate that 105,000 Indians live in the area, about 60 percent of whom are immigrants; most have settled in Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery and Howard counties. To those who regularly call upon them, Sastry and his counterparts become trusted family priests, akin to family doctors or accountants. [link]

Had I only known this, I could have avoided an entire trip to India to get married for the second time (to the same person). Fly Mr. Sastry down, perform the ceremony and voila! We are married the Hindu way. We are happy to have avoided wedding-related trauma drama hungama costs. The ever-increasing-in-religiousness elders are happy since we are officially married the Hindu way. And Mr. Sastry is happy with anything we pay him. So I would have only given him $1 + expenses (I’m Ahmedabadi, after all). Everybody’s happy.

Sastry declined to discuss his fees, saying the payment is up to the devotees

My “suggested fee” wouldn’t cut it. Especially since this priest takes his kids to Disneyworld!

Clients said they typically pay $150 to $200 for a ritual of a few hours. They also pay his expenses, including mileage — “IRS rate,” he said, chuckling. It is enough for a tidy townhouse and a yearly vacation with his wife and two sons, 11-year-old Vignesh and 8-year-old Pavan. Last year, they hit Disney World.

Disneyworld? What kind of a Hindu are you, Mr. Sastry? You should – at the very least – take your kids here. If they’re lucky they’ll get to spot B-list actors in blue paint. And strings are $2 per. I kid, of course. Mr. Sastry can take his kids any where he damn well pleases. Or where they damn well please. Either way.

At any rate though, the one thing that bothers me about this is the license plate. “PRIEST B”? WTF? Something creative would be good. Like say, “SWAHA MAN” or “PUNDIZIT”. What say?

The FDA (after a few years of debate) says that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe to eat. Looks like this thing has been on the back-burner for a while (pun intended, I apologize, I couldn’t resist).

“This is a huge milestone,” said Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, a leading livestock cloning company in Austin, Tex. [NYT]

Well, Walton would think that, of course. I would too if I owned a leading livestock cloning company. But there’s more.

Farmers had long observed a voluntary moratorium on the sale of clones and their offspring into the food supply. The F.D.A. on Tuesday effectively lifted that for clone offspring.

Voluntary, huh? I wonder how many clones and clone-offspring have slipped into the market already? You know, now that I think about it, the beef that I bought yesterday from the grocery tasted exactly the same as the beef today. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!

“When you buy a box of Cheerios in New York and one in Champaign, Illinois, you know they are going to be the same,” said Jon Fisher, president and owner of Prairie State Semen in Illinois. “By shortening the genetic pool using clones, you can do a similar thing.”

I knew it! And what kind of a company is Prairie State Semen, anyhow? A sperm bank? Never mind that. Getting back to the point, it looks like clone-offspring can be sold, but not clones.

…the Agriculture Department, asked farmers to continue withholding clones themselves from the food supply, saying the department wanted time to allay concerns among retailers and overseas trading partners.

Well, it looks like Walton doesn’t seem perturbed by that, though.

“That doesn’t cause me any particular heartburn,” Mr. Walton said of the extended moratorium.

Heartburn! Oh lordy, lordy lord! These meat-cloners, I tell you, they’ve got some sense of humour!

Now, this does not look like a swimwear shoot to me. Look where his right hand is, for crissake! Looking closer (purely intellectual interest, mind you), I read the caption, and saw that there was a URL typed in there, without a link – theindianplayboy.com. With the pursuit of knowledge in mind, armed only with my research background, I soldiered on. I manually (what dedication!) cut-pasted the link into my address bar and…

The amazing story of a Corporate Finance Executive with a passion for Film Making who had had the guts to risk it all by making a quality erotic film in Los Angeles! Now on DVD with an embedded E-Book that answers all your questions and provides you with all the juicy in side information that you have always wanted to know!

…

It is both an interesting Biography and a “How to shoot a porn/erotic film” combo. Nothing comes close to it. [link]

Ok, sardonic quips about the TOI(let) aside (these pics are categorized under “Foreign Fashion Show”) – what the hell? A desi making a movie about the making of a porno? Why doesn’t he just make a porn? Or maybe he already has. Who is this character?

Richard Menon who has previously directed “Miss 2” a film on model aviation that made it to the New York International Film Festival 2004 and an adult film under the Ecstasyvision Inc banner conceived the idea of “The Indian Playboy: Anatomy of a Porn Film” Documentary Film + Book. Since he is the subject of the film, he decided to entrust Steve Clack/DP with the Directorial Assistance. [link]

Richard Menon (48) hails from Trichur, the cultural capital of Kerala State, India. He graduated from the University of Calicut in 1979 and … had his formal film production training at the famous Hollywood Film Institute. [link]

A mallu from Trichur, based in Jersey City, going to LA not just to make porn films (mind it!), but also documentaries on the making of porn films. Hmm. Several comments are flying through my mind right now, but I think the humour intrinsic to that thought is enough. Hell, the concept is a movie in and of itself (starring Johnny Lever). It suffices to say that I’m sure glad he entrusted Steve Clack with directorial assistance, because I’d definitely be distracted when shooting something like that. Unless, of course, it was at gunpoint or if I was doing it out of purely intellectual interest.

Now, it’s back to my research for me…

Are you a man of India? Do you believe in a non-Jesus God? Well, then you should know – your God cannot help you. Why? Because your God is not Jesus.

Yup. It’s that simple.

(via The India Uncut Blog)

But not this Mexican kid. He certainly used glue, but not to sniff it, but to glue himself to his bed, so that he couldn’t be forced to go to school!

Diego had got up early to fetch some industrial-strength glue from the kitchen.

His mother spent two hours trying to free him with nail-polish remover before calling for expert help.

Diego watched cartoons while paramedics dissolved the glue with a spray. [link]

So kids, let this be a lesson to you. This method is legal, it’s relatively safe and you get to watch cartoons while being rescued. If you want to avoid school, don’t do drugs – just glue yourself to your bed.

This Public Service Announcement brought to you by The Great Ganesha. Because we care.

The Great Ganesha is not responsible for irreversible hand damage, bed damage or both. If, in the process of gluing your hand to your bed, you also glue your nose, your face, or any other part of your body, things will get uncomfortable. This message is not intended to endorse avoiding school, even though it comes off as such and the words “avoid school” are explicitly in the message. Also, this is not a legally binding document to show we care. In reality, we don’t care. Finally, ingesting the glue may also cause other digestive disorders like excessive gas, oily discharge in the stool and general abdominal pain. Other than that though, we highly recommend it.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese. [link]

Wow. Never thought I would thank my sixth standard (that’s “sixth grade” in Americanese) class teacher, the late Mrs. Sachdev, but thank you, Mrs. Sachdev for teaching me to go beyond nine times nine. I am now cool in Japan.

Spending five weeks in India after an eight-year hiatus made me painfully aware of a neurological need to go to this place called home. Not going there for almost a decade forced some internal switches to be turned off when, for all practical purposes, they should always be turned on. All’s right with the world when they’re on. Rest assured though, they’re on now.

This trip was a hurricane. I don’t know when it hit, where it took me, how I got there, and when exactly it ended. It’s somewhat relieving that it’s over, but it was also weirdly depressing to get back here. The cold weather, nightfall in the afternoon and gloomy skies didn’t help much either.

The last time I went to Bombay, I was in my penultimate year of college here in the U.S., had no idea what I was going to be doing with my life and was basically “hanging around” in Bombay without any particular aims or objectives. Well, none worth having a written record of, at any rate.

This time, I was married, had a Ph.D. (along with a few straggling degrees), a job, the green card, and an apartment in San Francisco. I still have no idea what I’m going to be doing with my life, though. But I made a critical discovery this time. One could even say that it’s earth-shattering. I learned that if you’re married, the relatives don’t seem to care about anything else. They’re too busy grilling the wife on her family structure, her background, the last ten year’s electricity bills to prove residency in Bombay, etc. etc. In the meantime, you can eat the good food, smile at all the appropriate moments, agree with everything she’s saying and you’ll get away scot-free. Amazing.

Guys, I’m telling you, you could be an alcoholic philanderer and they wouldn’t give a damn. Which then leads me to question the entire reason for wanting to contribute to society in the first place. Why bother? Just get married, drink and sleep around. There might be some marital problems in the long-run, but you know, you can always get a divorce in the US and then go back and tell all your relatives that your wife was an alcoholic philanderer, while eating their good food. Then get married again, and repeat the cycle. I’m just saying, this is something to consider – especially for all you single guys.

But I digress. Ponzi schemes to eat good food notwithstanding, with all of the socializing, there was no time or energy to blog (hence the silence). Now, after recovering from the jet lag and all of the other fatigue-related nonsense, I’m back. Posting shall resume with more-or-less usual frequency.

Anyway, just so you know – we’re hip now, because we no longer live in the boonies. See?

That’s right. We’re in the Mission, baby! Only blocks away from Pancho Villa, Delfina’s, Buy Rite Creamery, Ritual Coffee…

Ok, I got to go. All this typing about area restaurants is making me hungry! Seattle pics will be posted in a day or two…

It being Halloween tomorrow, Google has decided to celebrate by changing its little Street View fellow into a witch. Now, you can fly on a broom-stick to whichever street you want to view.

Well, the other day, I was having a coffee at Ritual Coffee Roasters down in the Mission (here in San Francisco). It’s one of the best coffees in town, as I’ve blogged earlier. So I walk into the restroom, and on the paper towel dispenser, I see:

I wasn’t sure initially, but that is Appu – the 1982 Asian Games mascot. I double-checked on two sites. Now, what the hell is a sticker of the 1982 Asian Games doing in a coffeeshop in San Francisco, 25 years later? That’s a question to ponder. Take a closer look:

Well, whoever put that there, for whatever reason, it definitely got my attention. And now, you’re probably wondering what that comic says on the dispenser. Well, I anticipated that, so I got a close-up of it:

Not really very interesting. Unless you’re in art school and/or an artist having a mid-life crisis. I’ll tell you what was interesting, though: The patterns the barista made on our coffees. Check them out:

Nice, no? The second one looks like a garlic or a heart, depending on where you are in life…