Shilpa Mankikar

Eat, Breathe, Dream Film. www.shilpa.tv

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Ustad Zakir Hussain with Abbaji🙏👌 | The Speaking Hand

Hello Everyone! Here's an amazing clip of Ustad Zakir Hussain with Late Legend, Ustad Alla Rakha aka Abbaji.This is a Famous clip of the Doc

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Haven't been on fb much, but RIP Ustad Zakir Hussain. The first concert I remember was him and his dad Ustad Alla Rakha at Carnegie Hall, when I was 3 years old. It was snowing outside, and such a classic New York moment.

When we were growing up in the US, and studying European and Indian classical music or dance, the Suzuki Method, Bach, and bharat natyam, there were less than a handful of artists invited from India to those elite stages. Zubin Mehta conducted European music at the Philharmonic Orchestra. Ravi Shankar was famous with the hippies and stoners. Zakir Hussain, and of course, his father - maybe I should reverse the order, since his father came first. It was over the decades that American tastes opened up, the World Music Institute sponsored artists, and our own parents' generation started hosting artists here in the US. Now Lincoln Center has a whole week dedicated to South Asian artists, and Times Square has the biggest Diwali outside of India.

The story started a little bit earlier in the 1950's, when my mom's great-aunt Mrs. Byramjee would invite all the artists and influential people to her house in Nagpur. So it was there that my mom first saw Ustad Alla Rakha play, and Zakir Ji was 9 years old. My mom was 13. They were later invited to his apartment in Mumbai, when some other musicians were visiting. Ustad Alla Rakha later traveled the world with Ravi Shankar, and Zakir Ji grew up back stage at Woodstock, the Monterey Pop Festival, and the night markets of Mumbai, where the street drummers would get the crowd going crazy during festivals. They were rock stars.

In the late 90's, Asian Underground music started, and classical music started crossing over into club nights and electronic music, as our generation started making their own music professionally. I had just graduated from music-heavy Oberlin and moved to the East Village, when I saw an unforgettable concert of Zakir Ji with Tito Puente, the Puerto Rican drummer from Harlem, at Symphony Space. At one point, they made the audience clap along and it sounded like the rain forest. Tito Puente died later that year. Suphala, one of this students, scoured New York clubs playing tabla with alien electronic, or country, collaborations. Rimpa Shiva, another student, came up in India on the more classical side. But some purists would consider Zakir Ji to be the tops, and none of these "youngsters" on his level. They were too rock, or too clubby, or too "what is this?"

One day I was taking the bus from West Orange to Manhattan, a New Jersey commuter bus, and @Talvin Singh got on. They were recording Tabla Beat Science at Bill Laswell's studio on Main Street and Llewellyn Park. What a small world. My sister had taken drum lessons in the studio above where they recorded. Some other friends like Karsh Kale and The Midival Punditz, were also on this album.

A couple of years later, in 2001, I had moved to San Francisco, and my first music documentary was interviewing Zakir ji and the Tabla Beat Science Crew at Stern Grove. It was a sold out show in a park, and people had climbed the trees in true San Francisco hippie style, to watch the concert. I have that interview somewhere. Zakir Ji was actually nicer and friendlier than some of the younger and less established artists. This was summer before 9/11.

We started 3rd I South Asian Films a few months before that. We had a safe space post-9/11 when all the anti-South Asian hate crimes backlash was happening. In September 2003, we hosted the US Premiere of the Speaking Hand, which was Zakir Hussain's biography. I had met the director when he was making ads in Mumbai. There was some internal conflict, as some people in our collective didn't think it was "political" or "activist" enough, and kind of a bougie fundraiser...but I could say that music unites, we sold out, and our fundraiser was successful. It was a conflicted and Islamophobic time of war, and he could talk eloquently about music uniting people on a spiritual and international level. Also his own practice of the classical and ancient tradition - combined different beats as representing different goddesses or different spiritual and religious practices from Ganesh to Sufi saints. As many of the classical musicians are spiritual, and music is a higher power.

We had a live Q&A, and people never hear him talk in person, especially for so long. I also met his wife & manager Antonia Minnecola at this point, who was a dancer.

As the screening wrapped up, the audience of 500 aunties and uncles, went crazy, bum rushed the stage to meet Zakir Ji, as you see the old movies of the Beatles. One of these people was - my Dad! Acting like a teenage girl. So as the organizer, I scolded him under my breath in Marathi, "Why are you acting so crazy? Act cool." Zakir Ji, having grown up in Mumbai, spoke Marathi. So he saw this interaction and started speaking in Marathi and Gujarati to calm people down, "Calm down, what's the big deal?" Still it was funny to see an Indian classical musician get such a maniac fan response in New York. He was truly an icon. From that experience, I also learned to plan for celebrities and security on sets. Later I was asked to do a commercial with Shah Rukh Khan, and I remembered - the fan base that can show up suddenly.

Over the years, we would try to say Hi after the shows. Initially it was pretty informal. Later the venue unions and post-covid made it more strict. They would kick everyone out of Madison Square Garden. He always remembered me, considering how many people he met over the year. I met his daughters. The younger one was starting college. Anisa Angelica Qureshi later turned out to have a lot of mutual friends.

For an Indian from IST (Indian Standard Time), he liked to shame people for being late. Once I came half way through a show, because I had an evening grad school class. I thought I snuck in the back and sat discreetly in a black kurta, in the shadows. But afterwards, he reprimanded me, "You were 34 minutes late! I saw the clock when you walked in." If someone was late to his show and sat in front, he would play slow music until they finally sat down, drawing attention of the whole audience to that late person.

He had a sense of humor, and after a serious, classical show, would play the Pink Panther in the last set.

I started working in India, and caught him playing at the small Prithvi Theater in Juhu, where Bollywood legend Shabana Azmi attended. Another show was a huge, outdoor, public festival at the Asiatic Library Steps. The stage was set up between road closures. Street People were lined up outside the ropes to listen. Here you really felt India, in the ancient music and the crowds of Mumbai, and the smells of the streets, and the colonial library, mixed with something ancient mixed with modern cars and sweat and heat, and the sea breeze. It was really outside an A/C classical music hall in a cold, snowy country. Here you had a performer, who could still capture everyone's attention, with all these distractions of the Mumbai streets. Blue Frog and other venues were opening up in Mumbai. His brother Taufiq Qureshi played with some beatboxers...an idea I had pitched ten years before that.

Many years later, I saw him in Sacramento. DIWAL'OWEEN had won 13 awards, and he was really proud of me. Although I was aware of all the mistakes I had made. He had scored so many films, and I always wanted to collaborate on something...one day, when I had the budget.

I always made an effort to see Masters of Percussion once a year, when he would bring different percussionists from India. At one show at Town Hall, in New York, a mridangam player was 90 years old and had never left Rajasthan before. He shouted during his set, and the lights blacked out. The "show went on," to the next set. We thought it was some experimental, jazz type thing. Later we found out an ambulance had come back stage, and the performer had died on stage, doing what he loved! But that's how pro the Broadway stage managers were - to just move on with it. Another time, at a qawwali show at Town Hall, someone fell off the balcony while dancing ecstatically, and the crowd caught him.

After the lock down year, Masters of Percussion was the first concert I went back to, wearing a mask. He had just won another Grammy, and was touring the remembrance of Shivkumar Sharma.

Thanks for bringing so much joy and music to us, Zakir Hussain.

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This was a big leap for the Vietnamese American community in media, with so many episodes, characters, and locations shot in several countries. Again, being an American show, it refers to a Vietnamese character as related to the war in the 1960's and 1970's. That is the American frame of reference, I guess, for Vietnam. The thrills of the spy intrigue were well-earned.

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This show is great! There are so many nuanced, emo trans characters now on TV, and a range of South Asians. There were some real emotional highs and lows. I wish it got renewed!

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I really related to this, since I filmed a documentary in 2008 at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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Reminds me of some friends who passed over the last few years.

xx

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Watch Toy Boy | Netflix Official Site

After seven years in a Málaga prison, a male stripper is released pending retrial and sets out to prove his lover framed him for her husband's murder.

The Magic Mike Mystery Hour

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Gordita Chronicles Season 1 Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV

Check out the new Gordita Chronicles Season 1 Trailer starring Olivia Goncalves! Let us know what you think in the comments below.► Learn more about this sho...

I wish they didn’t cancel this.  It’s so good!  I related to the 1980′s culture, color, and immigrant story.  Maybe HBO will bring it back. 

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#TheGirlInThePicture @netflix

This is a very disturbing documentary with many twists and turns. It’s a true story about a 20-year-old woman who was found missing in the early 90’s. After over twenty years of investigation, her real identity is found. She had a lot of potential living as a kidnapped prisoner, getting into aerospace Engineering school, but then had to survive with her kidnapper.

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The Empress (TV Series 2022– ) - IMDb

The Empress: With Hanna Hilsdorf, Devrim Lingnau, Melika Foroutan, Svenja Jung. Two young people meet. A fateful encounter - the proverbial

I absolutely loved this series - costumes, locations, and performances. Also went down a rabbit hole researching the Habsburgs, and had no idea they married into every European royal family and ran all the Spanish colonies

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Luckiest Girl Alive (2022) - IMDb

Luckiest Girl Alive: Directed by Mike Barker. With Mila Kunis, Chiara Aurelia, Finn Wittrock, Connie Britton. A woman in New York, who seems

Spoilers - This was a very interesting take on survivors. It starts as a typical story about a woman marrying a very rich man. Then it becomes a survivor story, as it’s revealed she survived a school shooting. Then it ends as a survivor story about sexual assault, and how her friends were framed or involved with the school shooting.

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Pachinko | Apple TV+

Based on the New York Times bestseller, this sweeping saga chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as the…

#WhatToWatch

PACHINKO is so good! I’m putting it on my #Emmys watch list. 

The performances, Cinematography, Sets, Character Development. It’s all luscious and epic.  It follows one family across several generations between Korea, Japan, and the US. 

I love stories about women, young and old. The young woman is in Busan, Korea under Japanese colonial rule in the 1920′s and 1930′s.  Without giving anything away, it’s a story of street smarts, resilience, and proving herself.  Then she grows up and as an old lady, returns to Busan.  There’s a simultaneous story about her grandson, who is a cold-hearted American banker.  He returns to Japan to make a deal for his bank.  Then one episode is surprisingly about the antagonist character’s development from an innocent young man.  It is a heart-breaking and masterfully told story from many perspectives. 

I traveled to South Korea a few years ago, when my project Diwal’Oween was in the Seoul Webfest.   The Festival took us on a tour of some of the popular shooting locations in the country side. It was amazing!  I was shocked to find out that the Korea locations for PACHINKO were shot on a Sound Stage or real locations in Vancouver, Canada.  The meticulous details are incredible. 

I also related to a lot of the Asian things - the rice washing montage.  Also interesting to see life under occupation by the Japanese from a Korean perspective.  As an Indian, I am used to seeing the British colonial rule or European colonial rule.  So I have heard a lot about the Japanese occupation of Korea, having worked in Asian American cinema, but I haven’t seen it play out in this scale and scope of a project.  Then I related to the younger, Asian American character returning to Asia and the various jealousies he perceives.  Or Sunja returning to her childhood home, which has completely changed.  My mother returned to her childhood home 50 years later, and could not find it, since the city had grown so much. 

The show also goes into inter-generational trauma and character traits that the characters themselves may not realize.  They have secrets, which is good for building tension and drama between the subtext of what is said and what is unsaid. 

Sunja is played by two actors - Academy Award winner  “YJ” Youn Yuh-jung  and newcomer teenager Minha Kim (younger Sunja), who have very deep emotional performances.  Minho Lee is a huge star and had fans called Minnows following the Production on set.  So cool to see who’s popular overseas cross-over.  He and the whole cast did a wonderful job of conveying so many emotions. 

The Showrunner Soo Hugh said the show is planned for 4 seasons, not as a limited series.  Justin Chon and Kogonada’s directing brought an emotional resonance and visual treat. 

Finally, the Title Credits are cute, yet nostalgic, with cut-away photos from the occupation, historical Korean families, and the cast dancing. 

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Ed, my best friend since high school, whom many of you met over the years, recently passed away.  There is the family you are born into, and the family you choose. He loved that ad “The Most Interesting Man In The World,” and strived to be it.  Here is the legend of Edward Wyckoff Williams.

The day he had his first TV appearance, on Kamau Bell’s Show, I met him at the corner of 34th St and 8th Ave in Manhattan.  I was chewing gum as I walked towards the Stage Door between Tick-Tock Diner and Hammerstein Ballroom.  I started looking through my purse.  

Ed: “Boo, what are you looking for?”

Me: “Do you have a tissue? I want to spit my gum out.”

In a nano-second, he put his palm out.  I spit my gum into it, and he tossed it into a garbage can on the corner, like a grand parent.  We started laughing, surprised because who does that?  

“We’re family, boo,” he said.    

I looked behind him at the Empire State Building and Madison Square Garden, and smiled at how far two kids from Jersey had come, starting out in school plays, and now his first TV appearance in front of a live studio audience. 

Me: “Are you nervous?”

Ed: “A little.  I have no idea what I’m going to say!”

Me: “You never had stage fright.  We’ve been doing this since we were kids. You got this!  Just take a deep breath, and get your points across.”

Then we met Goddess, his Erykah Badu-esque Hair & Makeup Friend, in the Green Room.  He had a shaved head, but needed a Hair Stylist, because he was Ed.  I can’t remember what the topic was, just that the Producer kept telling him to slow down his answers.  He was very excited, and wanted to say everything he was thinking.   

We met in 10th grade. I was a new student at a new school.  It was an elite high school, and some of the kids were snobs, though I had grown up with them in Elementary. Ed walked up to my locker, interviewed me, “Who are YOU? Where are you from? Why are you here?” and I immediately joined the entourage of best friends.  He was loud, proud, and would not be Out for several more years, though I always had a feeling.

One evening, my mom met Ed’s mother at the International Dinner. We sat at the same table, eating an eclectic meal of chicken curry, falafal, and kimchee. I was the first kid in my family to grow up in America, and was not allowed on  dates.  Ed called all the moms at school, “MOM!” Partly because it easier than remembering everyone’s name, and partly because he was friendly.  But my mom didn’t know this.  “Hi, Mom!”  he greeted my mother.  After watching us chattering, and touching hands, my mom assumed Ed was my boyfriend, and was worried I would get pregnant before graduating high school.  Was she “meeting his mother” like meeting a future in-law in India?  Would we lose our teenage minds in this sex-crazed American society, and elope before graduation?  Every Bollywood movie flashed through her mind. Indian Neuroses set in. 

“Ew! No, Ma, he’s gay. We’re just telling jokes. Don’t worry.” 

“Who is a gay?” It was a foreign concept, that now is so common. 

“Ed. Ed is gay. Why would we study so hard at this school, and not go to college? Think about it.”

At the time, no celebrities were Out, and there was another pandemic of AIDS raging around the country, giving an unfair bias.  We lived 25 minutes outside Manhattan, which was a different world of club kids and Christopher Street. Some of our classmates would take the bus after school to audition for Broadway and TV shows.  But the 25 minutes could have been 25 years apart.  In those days, kids at our school waited until the last week of senior year to quietly Come Out before going to college, if at all.

We came from very different backgrounds, but similar families on the conservative edge of American values. He was from Newark.  I was from the suburbs.  His family was Christian, mine Hindu.  In the later years, he started texting me, “Jesus and Ganesh are with you,” on important days with emojis.   I even found a funny gif with many figures from different religions and an alien at the Last Supper.    Since we knew each other for so long, we were always silly or breaking down some intellectual news story.  We both had immense cultural pride. and were never ashamed of who we were. 

We starred in the school plays, at a time when neither of us realized we would end up working in Media. It was fun and something we could stand out at, in a school where kids turned into Pro Athletes at age 16, or got recruited to college on Sports Scholarships, or had their 4th generation spot reserved at Harvard with a phone call because they were bored of high school. It was this little bit of Talent, Wits, and Drive that allowed us to compete with the so-and-so’s and who’s-who’s.

I got to Electrocute him as Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  We played singing courtiers in One Upon a Mattress.  We lived on a Jewish shtetl in Fiddler On the Roof.  The songs are burned into our memories, word for word. For decades, it would plague us why this simple “color-blind casting” of high school was so hard for mainstream Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera.  Our acting and singing teachers, Mr. & Mrs. Jacoby, were Ed’s “school parents,” always proud of him.

Both of us belonged to many different social cliques. He was a buzzing bee, directing everyone in the hallways.  He played Junior Varsity football with the jocks.  (Got a varsity jacket as Time Keeper, without risking much injury.)  On Fridays, the Cheerleading squad decorated his locker in school colors. He briefly “dated” one of them, which to him meant going to the Homecoming Dance together.

There was  a secret Faculty Lounge called the Eberstadt Room, the fanciest room on campus that was reserved for special Board meetings.  Ed used this like his personal office.  He gave dating advice to the prettiest girls and most awkward nerds, although he himself had very little experience.  It was like the Netflix show Sex Ed.  We would also analyze personalities and motivations of people, giving some underpinning later for writing – about human behavior or politics.  For the rest of our lives, we would have a joke, “Meet me at the Eberstadt Room,” when a juicy conversation had to happen. It meant a phone call, or roof of a bar.

Once, as an adult, I got a big break that was my first time directing with TV Executives’ feedback.  There was some workplace drama that went down, and I wrapped feeling utterly defeated or back-stabbed, though my piece was the best.  My family didn’t understand why I put up with all this, and were encouraging me to quit. I picked up my prop ring from a cold-faced office manager, and called Ed upon exiting the building. 

Ed: OK, I don’t like what these people have done to your confidence. We need to Eberstadt this.  Come over to my place.

I took the 1 train to the Theater District.  Then I walked west - all the way West, almost to West Side Highway - to the Mercedes Building - in heels, as one does in New York.  He really could have picked a more central building.  I stepped into his modern, white walled apartment, with floor to ceiling views of the Hudson River. 

Ed: You have arrived.

Me: I know, you live so far West.  Were you waiting for a while?

Ed: No, I mean, you are having these problems, because you leveled up.  And it comes with the territory.  So it is a lesson God is teaching you, to prepare you for what you are supposed to be doing on a much bigger scale. Because you are Shilp.  And bitches don’t know how talented you are, and what you are capable of, and where you are going.   

He was dressed in a white t-shirt and white shorts.  With the sun shining behind him, he was like a Midtown Angel.  He pulled out some snacks from Amish Market - olives, cheese, and a glass of wine. He sat in an arm chair. 

Ed: Let’s go over it, play by play. 

So I told him the whole saga, play by play.  He made emphatic, disapproving sounds, and frowned and joked.

Ed: Well, next time you see them, they will be working for You.  So forget them, boo.  This was a trial by fire, and you are now a Strong Black or Brown Woman.

We sang in the school choirs.  I still hear his voice when I hear Les Mis  “God on High, Hear my Prayer, in My need, you will always be there.”  The meaning was doubly heart-felt with his religious background.  He also sang Gospel songs. Once a cast member of Hamilton was singing a familiar tune back stage, and I said, “My friend used to sing that.” She was surprised, because I’m Indian American. Ed told me it was a popular song in the Black Church when we were in school.   

We spent almost every Saturday at school, running an enrichment program for middle school kids from Newark, and were engrained with the “each one, teach one” mindset of giving back.  We wrote articles for the school newspaper on hot topics.

Senior year, someone came to school with a college acceptance letter every week.  One of our classmates was offered a full ride to Harvard, because he was nationally ranked in tennis.  He turned Harvard down, because he wanted to party in college, and thought someone else would have worked harder and wanted it more.  To his credit, he knew himself. That was the kind of school we went to, where kids turned down a full ride to Harvard.

One day Ed came in with an Acceptance Letter from Yale.  I got wait-listed, and became hippie-artist-adjacent at Oberlin. Ed’s admission to Yale was a sticking point for some wealthy, white parents at our prep school, who felt their kids were more deserving. One parent called the Dean to complain, and ask Ed to “stop bragging.”  Ed felt betrayed by kids he had gone to school with since sixth grade, and swore never to look back.  He also swore to himself that he would make more money than those parents.  Years later, after his death, people from different classes still remembered this thorny issue at a reunion. It was the touch stone of a bigger, national topic, played out on our school bus.

Some parents and teachers, on the other hand, were like adopted family, and Ed had an open door policy with them.  His Senior Year, before graduating, he and a classmate did an internship with our other classmate’s dad, who was a Supreme Court Justice of New Jersey.  Ed would follow him into the bathroom with questions, which the fellow girl intern found a breach of privacy, that she couldn’t do.  But that was Ed, in aggressive pursuit of a goal or a question he had to ask at that moment.

In college, we kept in touch by writing snail mail letters. I visited him at his dorm, a bastion that looked like a castle. There was an 1800′s fire place in his dorm room.   He again used this secret power of befriending all social groups - to be elected Yale Freshman Class President. 

While at Yale, he interned at Vice President Al Gore’s office in the same White House intern class as Monica Lewinsky.  He kept the class picture framed next to the TV, and liked to point her out, to surprise his guests.  

One day, a Southern Senator asked him, “What are your goals, young man?”

Confident as usual, Ed said, “I want to become President,” as every White House intern probably wants to do.  

The Senator caustically replied, “A Black Man will never become President,” and walked away.

After Yale, Ed went to Law School.  But the biggest lesson he learned from Law School, was that he was Gay, and finally felt comfortable coming out to everyone.  I crashed at his place in Philadelphia one weekend, while at a police brutality protest. 

Ed: “I am so glad you’re here. There is something I have to tell you...” He held my hand.  “I’m gay.” 

Me: “I’m glad you finally came out to yourself.” 

Ed: “You knew?”

Me: “Umm...yeah...I had a feeling. I told my mom at International Dinner.”

He was truly shocked.  Then he told me how one of our teachers had tried to Out him in school, one made homophobic comments, and various boys who seemed really “straight” made a pass at him.  I was surprised.

Me: “But what did your family say?”

Coming from a religious background, it was a hard conversation for them. 

Me: “I’m sure they’ll come around. I love you no matter what, and I’m glad you can be yourself.”

Several years later, we spent months analyzing every interview, article, and opinion poll with the candidate Barack Hussain Obama, who the target demographic was, and whether it worked. 

Me: “Did you see this 10-page article in Vogue with Barack Obama?  He’s kind of...Hot.  But is it Presidential for him to be topless and surfing? Does he look too young?  How will these old people in Middle America swing for him? Then there’s a whole section about all the women he dated before Michelle. It seems gossipy.”

Ed: “That article in Vogue was to show that white women think Barack Obama is hot, and the part about dating a white woman in college is so they think he also thinks they’re hot. Which will make them vote for him.”

Ed became a surrogate for Obama’s Election, which meant he appeared on News shows as an analyst, in favor of Obama on whatever topic. 

We finally celebrated Obama’s historic win. 

Me: “Wait, I thought you were supposed to be the first Black President.”

“But then I’d have to tell everyone who I slept with...and you would be on that list!” Ed joked. 

Me: “Here is a toast to that Senator you met at the White House, who said this would never happen.”

In the Post-9/11 years, he was off to England to study Public Policy at Oxford. I was in San Francisco, and then moved back to New York for film school.  We met one night in Shoreditch for drinks, before I went to an Asian Underground party.  In England, he befriended one of the Queen’s grand-daughters Eugenie, and was invited to meet the Queen at the grand-daughter’s birthday party.  This surprised no one.  Ed stood in the greeting line.  When it was his turn, Queen Elizabeth asked him where he was from.  He said, “Newark, New Jersey, in the United States.”  Legend is, Queen Elizabeth II told him, “You are a man of the people.”  Then he liked to drop that line, “man of the people” into conversation. 

He worked in London in Finance for several years.  At this point he started using his middle name “Edward Wyckoff Williams,” his father’s name.    But to those who knew, he was still simply Ed, or Edward Lavalle Williams. Wyckoff became his nickname there.

He was a creature of habit. Though his Instagram was full of photos with celebrities, he hated leaving his apartment, except to go to SoHo House or  Supper Club.  He was a Gay Spokesman, but he hated going to the big Pride parades, because, “It’s too crowded!”  We would have conversations about social media, and how it’s just marketing, but other people think it’s real.  Our realest, closest friends were in person. 

No matter what, he only drank champagne. We were broke students going to happy hour at a diner, and would order champagne overlooking Broadway. 

He came back to Media again due to his innate networking skills.  He met Bill DiBlasio and was able to book him on a talk show the day before he announced his candidacy for Mayor.  As our professional goals re-aligned, and he came back to Entertainment, he won a GLAAD Award Outstanding Television Journalism for "Gay and Muslim in America for Al Jazeera; and a second GLAAD award the same year in Outstanding Digital Journalism for a written piece, "Black Parents, Gay Sons and Redefining Masculinity." 

After this, he became a United Nations Spokesperson for LGBTQI+ and his photo was in Times Square for 1 month during Pride.  This was something, to see someone go, from high school doubts to coming out to his religious family to literally being an international spokesperson. 

He was working on a documentary with Trayvon Martin’s Mom when he passed.

In all this, what truly cemented our friendship was our loyalty, in the most difficult times, and protectors of each others’ secrets.  We often experienced challenges in parallel lives.  We could call with whatever strange Industry or personal experience, and we would break it down as we always had.  We could understand each other, as friends do, in a way that our families couldn’t.  For that, we were pillars of strength for each other. 

He didn’t like to dwell on problems.  If I was feeling bad about something, he would send me a video of a boy without legs and arms who climbed Mount Everest or something.  Life can be worse.  We got this. 

One night, he told me he always had a feeling that he would die young, and that I should investigate his death, should that happen.

In April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, he could see the USS Comfort Hospital coming into New York Harbor from his lock-downed apartment window.  I was watching it on TV. I had been following the pandemic for two months, had already gotten 2 early strains, and already knew people who died.  I didn’t understand why they had been lying to people for so long.  

Me: “This is insane.  There aren’t enough beds on the boat for the numbers. This is a grand gesture, which he likes.”  

Ed: “I know, Boo, but it makes me feel safe.” 

Two weeks before his passing, he called me worried about nuclear war and Vladimir Putin.  

Me: “We survived the Cold War. I think we’ll be fine.  Also if there is a nuclear war, I don’t think you want to survive it.  Better to be in the center.” 

He was worried about all these other things.

He meant something different to different people.  To some, he was a conservative man of faith.  To some he was a boisterous, laughing flirt of the party.  He only wanted the best.  The best clubs.  The best food.  For his younger Mentees, he showed them that a better life was possible, and there were opportunities outside the Hood, and that he made it. 

He always made everyone feel like the most important person in the room.  He always championed and coached friends, to believe in their best outcomes.  He loved to Manifest his own and other people’s dreams. 

He wanted to find true love. He wanted to have kids.  He wanted to win an Emmy.  He still had many dreams, to die at a young age.

All we can do now is embody the light and love that he was for us, and share that spirit with others.

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Watch The Fame Game | Netflix Official Site

When India’s most famous actress goes missing, the search for her chips away at the flawless facade of her life and family, revealing painful truths.

#WhatToWatch

This series has interesting twists and turns, as a dysfunctional Bollywood family deals with the past and present of their matriarch’s disappearance.  As with most good thrillers, each episode casts doubt on a different character.  It shows the pressures on stars, and allude to the seediness and insecurity of the film industry.  No one is trustworthy, even Grandma.  Set in elite Mumbai, the locations are drool-worthy.  I didn’t know Indians have such modern and exclusive homes, as we now see on streaming shows.  I’m not surprised, since there are so many Billionaires and glam society.  But I personally have never experienced it there.  The show definitely flips the stereotype on “Slumdog Millionaire” and “poverty porn” that we are always shown of India as a destitute and dirty place.  It also has the realistic elements of cabins in rural locations, street life, orphans, but in a way that Indians domestically would see them.   

I’ve been a Madhuri Dixit fan since college, which was her hey-dey as an amazing dancer and actor in Bollywood.  (Shout-out to all the Marathi people.) A few summers ago, I tried her Youtube Dance Classes, and she is STILL really hard to keep up with!  So I felt the “dance” scenes they put her in were REALLY lacking, compared to what she is known for, and still really good at!  I understand, it’s a Thriller genre and all, but still...it’s Madhuri Dixit.  Fans want to see her dance.  It’s produced by none other than Karan Johar, the biggest director/producer in Bollywood, but I guess he is trying something new.

Also some of the melodrama shots and editing sequences still made me laugh out loud.  If they are trying a more Western color style and shooting style, these things are unnecessary, in my opinion.

There was recently an article about Netflix India not making any worldwide hits, as Netflix Korea has.  However, I think this was in the Top 10 in the US.  So good for them.

#######Spoilers#######

I found it really creepy that her daughter gets physical and falls for the guy from the street who murdered her mom’s hair stylist and friend.  But I just saw a similar murderer-boyfriend in West Side Story. 

After so many decades of being closeted, India is finally coming out with queer stories and characters.  Are they being treated in a predictable way?  Or is it still unexpected to the vast majority of Indian audiences? 

The daughter’s issues of being considered “ugly” could seem petty on the surface, but were believable in that world of stars and wanna-be ingenues. The performances were rooted.

[shilpams]

#WhatToWatch

Unforgotten (PBS in the US or ITV in the UK)

TV Series: 5 Seasons

This is a procedural cop show from the UK.  Nicola Walker gives intense yet subtle performances as a detective, who investigates open cases from the past.  Each season focuses on a different (fictional) murder, discovered in the opening episode.  The detectives find characters from the past who may have committed the crimes, in a web of deceit.  Many of them have moved on in life or evolved.  Each episode has twists and turns worth watching.  Sanjeev Bhaskar, who I was more familiar with from his comedy series Goodness Gracious Me, plays detective Sunil “Sunny” Khan.  This series became very popular in the UK, and fans guessed “what was in Sunny’s backpack” in each episode, which he would reveal on instagram from Set.  Some of the murders have a queer, sex crimes, or hate crimes angle.  A strong, female protagonist.  As a 5-year series, they also go into the characters’ home lives as they evolve and age.  I had been terrified by some true crime series.  This hit the right balance of intrigue, thriller, and character study - that piqued my interest, but didn’t scare the crap out of me. 

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#WhatToWatch 

IN THE LONG RUN (Starz)

This series Created by the one and only #IdrisElba - is very entertaining. It’s a family comedy sitcom based in 1980′s London. So it’s full of the pop music of my childhood.  It went totally under the radar in the US, and I had heard NOTHING about it.  I was bored during the pandemic, and started going through the Starz catalog, looking for comedies.   It features an African immigrant family from Sierra Leone. I related a lot to the immigrant 2nd generation kids vs. parents’ experiences.  There’s a multi-cultural cast, with a white, English “best friend” couple.  It is set in a working class apartment building, where many of the guys work at a local factory, and the manager is Indian. The kids go through their 80′s growing pains. Ultimately, it has a lot of heart, and is worth watching. It’s very funny, and I kept laughing.  

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RIP Carol Moss who ran Insight meditation in Malibu.  She was one of the first people to bring #ThichNhatHanh to the US. She used to have open meditation at her beautiful home on the ocean once a week.  It would be a gathering of seniors from the Vietnam War protest era to young people who were just out of college. It was inspiring to be there, so far away from my own home.  She passed away in April 2021, but I just heard about it today.