Sunday, December 10, 2006

Desi Christmas

Elvis rules ... and all in a neat south Indian accent ... :-)

9 comments:

St. Elizabeth of Cayce said...

I didn't eat the baby
T'was the dingo ate the baby...


Brilliant!

Just missing the motel owner/operator stereotype, as best I can tell...

Dogwood Dell said...

Quite a funny video. I'm passing this along to others.

Thanks for sharing.

Sincerely,

Dogwood

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Hmm apparently the artist is Australia based ... maybe there are no Patel motel owners down there ... ?

St. Izzy said...

Gashwin writes:
maybe there are no Patel motel owners down [under]

How does that joke end, the one about why the dot is there? A convenience store, a motel, or... what?

Izzy
who used to stay at a reputable Patel motel with Lizzy when visiting the in-laws

assiniboine said...

I thought that was a Pakistani joke about Hindu as opposed to Muslim weddings and the consummation thereof. The punchline is that the bridegroom takes a coin, scratches the dot off the bride's forehead and finds out whether he has won a 7-Eleven outlet, a Subway franchise or a motel in New Jersey.

Australian artist, eh? That would explain "G'day mate, this is Colin Jones. Are you wanting cheaper call rates?" (Surely they have a different chat-up line in the States.) (Actually I did take "Elvis Presley" and "Tom Jones" up on their offer, which really was a good one. But only on condition that they disclose their real names and identities: I suggested that they couldn't possibly be Gujaratis in Bombay, being such hopeless salesmen, and sure enough, they were Sikhs in Chandigarh.

Eleven-syllable names indeed. Anyone who knows any South Indian Hindus can go considerably better than the song's "Pessavanmuthudoubledeckerbus" though, I'm sure. Sivakumarsithraputhran. (Actually he's an Anglican but you know....) Sivasathiasilan Nadaraja ("Are you a good dancer?")
.

assiniboine said...

Ah yes of course: Carols in the Park. I had clean forgotten that this is an Australian institution. (I vaguely thought warm climes...Florida...California...)

The Australian government has announced that it is about to introduce a considerably tightened up qualification for Australian citizenship. Inter alia, a 100-question test of "mateship." Oops. If it involves a test of knowledge of cricket and the rules of Aussie
Rules Football (and the indicators are that it will) -- well, yes, it will certainly exclude male Lebs (as they say) and hijab-wearing girls; it will also entirely rule out people like me. I'd better hurry up, eh.

assiniboine said...

Oh. Hang on...President Bush couldn't possibly qualify as understanding "mateship" under those rubrics. Perhaps I am safe....

Do you think I could make a representation that having a very clear understanding of the rules of (ice) hockey and curling makes me a "mate"?

No, maybe not.

Sorry, President Bush...you don't understand the rules of cricket and Aussie Rules Football: you must be a hijab-wearing Lebanese woman. Or, alternatively a bomb-building Paki man.

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

That just means that ol' GW should end up in Gitmo, eh? :-) We'll let John Howard work on that one ... :)

You really ought to get your Ozzie passport after all these years. It must be a pain renewing your residency permit every 5 years or what have you. Will the Dominion of Canada require you to surrender your citizenship if you do? I would hope not.

assiniboine said...

Well actually it's just plain Canada, and no it wouldn't. (Nor would the US: we got a notice from the Law Society of BC many years ago announcing that the Americans now not only permitted dual citizenship but had retroactively restored it to all former Americans who had passively renounced it by taking Canadian citizenship in the past. And that this might have tax or other consequences that clients should be aware of.

(Which is somewhat in the same vein as the Brits who decline to acknowledge renunciation of British citizenship in consequence of adopting another: can't get out of it that easy, mate....)