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    Day 22: A Very Bollywood Christmas

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    In my Indian American family, where no occasion passes without celebration, getting into the Christmas spirit means grooving to Bollywood music. Though none of our elders grew up celebrating Christmas, they’ve embraced it wholly, and when we come together for Christmas dinner at my in-law’s home in Los Angeles, everyone has a task. While the moms roast the nuts with chaat masala and the dads gather ’round the wine, my job is to sync my phone to a bluetooth speaker and play deejay. My father-in-law, Vrajesh Lal, the family’s patriarch, begins the evening with a full glass of pinot noir and a request for “something Christmas-y,” like “Elvis’ Christmas Album.” (Having immigrated from India to the U.S. in 1972, Vrajesh is a big fan of Elvis.) But when the nuts give way to Cornish game hens and cumin-crusted squash (for the vegetarians), he never fails to flag me down with a new directive: “Let’s put on some Bollywood, huh?” My playlist includes Bhangra-style covers of Christmas music, with beats that hail from north India, songs from the Bollywood Brass Band and some of my father-in-law’s favorite Bollywood hits. Even the King cannot compete with this family’s compulsion to celebrate Christmas with jams from the mother country.The album, “A Jolly Bolly Christmas,” features Bollywood and Bhangra versions of Christmas classics. Keda Records More

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      ‘The Bengali’ Review: A Woman Reconnecting to Her Roots

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      In this travelogue-meets-mystery documentary, a granddaughter seeks out her grandfather’s past.“The Bengali” documents the parallel journeys of Shaik Mohamed Musa, a Bengali man who leaves his village in India for New Orleans in 1893, and that of his African American granddaughter, Fatima Shaik, who travels from New Orleans to India well over a century later.In telling the story mostly through candid interviews with the modern-day residents of Khori, the village the elder Shaik left behind, the director, Kavery Kaul, captures the inconvenient realities the younger Shaik faces — realities that diverge from her vision of a storybook homecoming where she can bend down to touch the land her grandfather once owned. In this travelogue-meets-mystery documentary, Shaik, a novelist, shows her grandfather’s picture to villagers who have never heard of him, and who question whether this American visitor has pure motives.Viewers could easily walk away from “The Bengali” thinking the Shaik family’s story is an anomaly unique to New Orleans. But it actually isn’t. It’s part of a newly recovered body of history about a smaller wave of Indian immigration to America before the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In the early 20th century, Indian men came to U.S. cities as solo workers and, subject to America’s racial hierarchy, often married Black and Puerto Rican women (like Fatima’s grandmother Tennie Ford, who is African American).This significant omission from “The Bengali” underlines that, despite an intriguing premise, what Kaul actually wants to say here is in need of a lot more fleshing out. The documentary meanders from scene to scene without sufficient dramatic tension (or relevant historical context) to propel it forward into denouement.As much of the film is Shaik essentially journaling aloud in direct-to-camera interviews or in voice-over alongside stiff kitchen table scenes with her family, the visuals land as inconsequential. In other words, this feature-length documentary probably should have been a podcast.The BengaliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Akaash Singh and His Case for Bringing Back Apu

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      The stand-up comic, whose special has gone viral, takes issue with how some South Asians like Hari Kondabolu portray their experience in the United States.When “The Simpsons” stopped using the Indian convenience store owner Apu in new episodes, many saw it as a hard-won victory against cultural stereotypes. The Indian American comic Akaash Singh was not one of them. In fact, he was upset about it — and as stand-ups do, he brought that onstage.“Here is a brown man married to a beautiful brown woman, owns his own business, selling overpriced products to unwitting white people,” he said, building momentum at the start of his 20-minute debut special, “Bring Back Apu,” released on YouTube a month ago. “Apu is not racist. He’s the American dream.”Singh, 38, hit a nerve, racking up one million views in a week. (It’s now approaching 1.5 million.) The special never mentions the comic Hari Kondabolu by name, but it is a response to a public conversation kicked off by his cutting critiques of “The Simpsons,” which did more than anything else to lead to the removal of the character. Kondabolu started criticizing Apu on late-night television in 2012 and, five years later, built it into a documentary, “The Problem With Apu,” fleshing out the argument that Apu was a modern-day minstrel figure. After avoiding the issue for a while, Hank Azaria, the white actor who voiced Apu for decades, apologized and refused to play the character.Even a decade ago, there were few South Asian voices getting attention in mainstream American comedy. Not only are there more now, but there are enough to reflect sharp divides among them. In a 2019 special, Aziz Ansari mocked the fact that Apu being played by a white person was only lately becoming controversial. “Why didn’t anyone say anything 30 years ago?” he asked, then answered his own question. “Because Indian people could only say something like four years ago, OK? We’ve had a slow rise in the culture.”Singh and Kondabolu have a lot in common: both comics are around the same age; both passionately cite their parents in their arguments about Apu and believe that representation matters. “The Simpsons” was important to Singh, he told me, in part because it was the only show of his childhood to portray a happy, loving Indian couple.What he saw onscreen as a boy “was always an Indian guy who can’t get a girl to save his life or an Indian girl who is supposed to marry an Indian guy but falls in love with someone else,” he said in an interview at Alice’s Tea Cup on the Upper West Side. “With Apu, finally there was one. It was an arranged marriage and he was in love with her. Arranged marriages where people are in love happen. A lot of Indian people I know.”Kondabolu did not respond to a request for an interview. But in a recent conversation with the author Wajahat Ali at the Bell House in Brooklyn, Kondabolu was asked how he responded to South Asians who were unhappy about the loss of Apu. He said that while of course Apu had positive characteristics, the source of the comedy, the reason people laughed, was the accent. As he put it in his documentary, that is “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.”Singh said that he wasn’t necessarily offended by comic accents and even thought Azaria did a better one than most “brown comics I know.” But he added that the accent shouldn’t outweigh the rest of the character. “A lot of my brown acting friends refuse to do a role that has an accent. I don’t understand that,” he said. “Your parents have that accent. That accent is beautiful. My issue is: What are the jokes behind that accent?”When Singh evokes the immigrant generation in his special, it is to soberly lament the loss of their values. He contrasts the South Asians who talk about the racism of “The Simpsons” with the self-reliance of the older generation. “I don’t remember being raised on this stuff by our parents,” he told me. “The mentality everyone I knew had was keep your head down, do the work, everything will work out.”He said he was angry in part because “the industry seemed to reward these stories.” He added pointedly that South Asians in America were not oppressed the way Black people or homosexuals have been. “This is a struggle that you are using to get ahead,” he said about his peers, “but it’s not a real struggle.”There’s something decidedly old-fashioned about Singh’s argument. He’s a comic proud to tell you that he doesn’t drink or do drugs and that he waited to have sex until his 30s, with the woman who became his wife. He also said he might be out of touch, which is why he brings up on his special that he’s from the 1990s. But there is an audience for this kind of comic attack on progressive critiques, one that comedians have been exploiting onstage and in podcasts. Joe Rogan is the most notorious example, but there is a constellation of popular podcasts around him, including Flagrant 2, with Andrew Schulz and Singh as hosts.Singh heatedly balked when I suggested he was part of an “anti-woke” comedy scene. He described himself as a moderate who leans left, but conceded that he spent more time mocking progressives on his podcast. Then again, in reaction to Senator Ted Cruz tweeting out a link to the Apu special, Singh said “I hate him,” noting that his parents had no running water or heat around the time of the power crisis in Texas when Cruz fled to Cancun.Growing up in Dallas, Singh said, and being surrounded by loud Texas conservatives pushed him to be a liberal; after moving to New York in 2008 to pursue comedy, those on the left pushed him in the opposite direction. When I ask if he ever worried about only being reactive, he brushed off the question, saying that is essential to his comedy. Singh is open about how liberal politics can be a good foil. When he appeared on Rogan’s podcast, he defended “woke” people. “Without them,” he asked the host, “what are we?”Singh said he even dabbled in what he described as victimhood in 2018, when he said he was going broke. “I tried to sell a special that had a little bit of that, a little sob story,” he said. “It was about going to India and connecting with my culture. It’s in the same vein of white people going, ‘This is so authentic.’ It didn’t work.”“Bring Back Apu” did. Singh said he recently sold out a 500-seat show at the Irvine Improv in Southern California.Singh is quick to compliment Kondabolu, who he said reached out to him after hearing him on a podcast. “He said I implied he didn’t work hard and I said I don’t think that at all,” Singh said, praising Kondabolu’s joke writing and work ethic. “My issue is with your mentality,” Singh said he told his fellow comic. “The victimhood mentality. The mentality weakens us as a people.”“There’s merit to both sides,” Singh said. “I’m not completely right, as much as I would love to be.” More

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      in Television

      Sari or Lehenga: Difference Between the Traditional Indian Garments

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      Worn at weddings, festive occasions and most recently on an episode of the “Sex and the City” reboot, these traditional Indian garments are not the same.When the sixth episode of “And Just Like That,” the reboot of “Sex and the City,” aired earlier this month, it garnered a lot of attention from the South Asian community. Named after the Hindu festival Diwali, the episode used the celebration as a plot point and provoked strong reactions to a faux pas that is now being called sari-gate.In one scene, Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, and Seema Patel, a real estate broker played by the Indian-British actress Sarita Choudhury, are shown buying outfits for a Diwali party at what Ms. Bradshaw calls a “sari shop.” After the episode aired, many viewers pointed out that the store was actually stocked with Indian garments beyond the sari, and that Ms. Bradshaw ultimately bought a lehenga, a three-piece garment worn at Indian weddings and celebrations.In the episode, Seema Patel, who is played by Sarita Choudhury, takes Ms. Bradshaw shopping for a Diwali party at what Ms. Bradshaw calls a “sari shop.” Some viewers noted that the show did not seem to point out the difference between a sari and a lehenga.HBO MaxLater in the episode, Ms. Patel and her mother are seen wearing saris, which consist of an uncut piece of fabric that’s wrapped around the body and draped over a shoulder, along with complimenting blouses. But the script never makes an effort to distinguish between their saris and Ms. Bradshaw’s lehenga, an oversight that disappointed some viewers who were otherwise heartened to see Indian culture and fashion enjoy prime real estate on a mainstream TV show.In an Instagram post shared the day after the episode aired, Imran Amed, the founder and CEO of Business of Fashion said “I think it’s really cool” that Ms. Bradshaw wanted to wear Indian clothes to the Diwali party. “The issue is that there are now millions of people out there who think what Carrie is wearing is a sari,” said Mr. Amed, who lives in London. “It’s not.”The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.What’s in a name, really? In this case, centuries of cultural history.The lehenga (or ghagra) is believed to have emerged in popularity around the 10th century, during the Mughal reign over India, and is more predominant in northern India.“The lehenga set is typically made of three elements — the voluminous floor-length skirt called the lehenga; the blouse or choli, often like a crop top; and a dupatta or stole-like drape,” said Divyak D’Souza, a stylist in Mumbai and the host of the Indian edition of “Say Yes To The Dress,” a reality TV show.Ms. Bradshaw’s much-discussed lehenga is a burgundy skirt and midnight-blue blouse ensemble from the spring-summer 2020 collection of Falguni Shane Peacock, a line founded by husband-and-wife designers Falguni Peacock and Shane Peacock. The ornate ensemble, made at the designers’ atelier in Mumbai, features colorful embroidery and gold thread accents on a jacquard fabric, and also comes with a matching tulle net dupatta that Ms. Bradshaw does not wear in the episode.“The motifs on the lehenga feature architectural domes, inspired by the palaces of Udaipur, Rajasthan,” said Ms. Peacock, whose brand enjoys popularity with several celebrities of the diaspora — its lehengas were also recently worn by Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Mindy Kaling for Diwali celebrations in 2021. Mr. Peacock added that he and his wife approach their lehengas almost like gowns, which also makes them a hit with a younger crowd.The sari is an even older garment. K.H. Radharaman, the creative director of Advaya, a brand that is known for its technical innovations of the sari, said that the drape has a rich history. “The sari is one of the oldest surviving garments in human history, with its origins going back to the Indus Valley civilization.”A sari from Advaya, a brand that is known for its technical innovations of the traditional drape. via Advaya“The nature of our ceremonies has changed, but the sari has stayed constant,” said Mr. Radharaman, who lives in Bengaluru. “It represents centuries of continuity in thought, tying us to our past and its traditions.”Saris, he said, are paired with a stitched blouse and mostly worn by women, though some men also wear them. “The commonly depicted way of wearing one is that it’s wrapped around the waist down in concentric pleats, while the extended part — the pallu or tail piece — is thrown over the left shoulder,” said Mr. Radharaman. More contemporary ways to style a sari include wearing it with a tailored jacket, crisp white shirt or even a cape.In its undiluted form, the sari is a textile that assumes the form of a wearer, which means there are as many ways to drape it as there are communities in India.“Every region has its own sari and corresponding visual design vocabulary, with motifs and techniques whose lineage and origin are steeped in history or mythology,” Mr. Radharaman said. “It is deeply symbolic of the culture of both the wearer and its maker — thus representing different cultural sensibilities in a way few garments around the world can.”Between it and the lehenga, is one more popular or more appropriate for certain occasions than the other? In a country as culturally diverse as India, it’s hard to generalize, as both have been part of Indians’ collective sartorial lexicon for centuries (alongside other garments like anarkalis, kurtas and shararas to name a few). Every community has its own mandate on their preferred silhouette or drape for festivities, though Mr. D’Souza said the lehenga is often a choice when an event calls for more formal dressing.“The sari is common garb for many Indian women even for everyday wear,” he said. “The lehenga, in comparison, tends to be brought out more for festive occasions and weddings; seen on both the bride or the guests.”A lehenga’s “colors and surface ornamentation are often linked to the bride’s cultural context,” added Mr. D’Souza, who noted that not every version is spice-colored or high on bling and floral patterns. “The silhouette has evolved immensely. Many designers are taking a modernist approach; experimenting with traditional weaves, contemporary updates and modern styling.” More