My friend who went to Gay pride in San Francisco said it seemed to be all about marriage. Marriage equality. The exclusive club of legally married same sex couples. Gay couples pushing babies.

The maturation of the gay movement has come with a mellowing. This was the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall but the drag queens had given way to lesbian moms. They were the new shock troops of the LGBT movement and instead of stilettos and platform heels they work sensible flats and sneakers.

The first time I marched in Gay Pride in San Francisco I remember how thrilling it felt. The first time our local South Asian LGBT group marched in the India Day Parade in Fremont it was asked to please not wear anything too risqué – leather and chains and bared nipples. We dressed decorously in traditional Indian clothes our mothers would have been proud of.

These days the India Day parade would probably not worry. The gays are definitely toning down, the movement settling into becoming Family Guy in its middle age. Stonewall was 40 years ago and fabulous now means the kids took their afternoon nap.
The historian Martin Duberman recently said in an interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian that whereas the LGBT movement once challenged many established institution and values, today it wants to be regarded as “just folks”, patriotic Americans who want the same things everybody else wants.

It’s not a bad thing. Over in India, the government is finally considering doing away with its antiquated sodomy law reports The Hindu and there were Pride Parades all over the country. I am sure a parade that didn’t try to shock and titillate would go a long way to reassure a jittery public that gays weren’t out to corrupt society. But an activist mourned that even in Delhi’s stifling heat, the gay marchers kept their shirts on.

So the parade which was once about flaunting a fabulous otherness now is getting assimilationist, trying to reassure the rest of society we are just like you. Even the go-go boys gyrating on one of the music trucks in San Francisco seemed to be wearing longer shorts sighed my friend.

I can’t vouch for that. I decided since the gays were all about marriage these days, I’d just skip the Parade and go to a real hetero wedding in the East Bay instead. It was strange – you could hardly tell the difference, the hotel ballroom, the crooning lounge singer singing “I just called to say”, the friends giving toasts, the pasta-salmon-chicken options. Gosh I thought, this is what we have bought into.

And then the dancing began. A bit of Abba, Billie Jean in honor of Michael Jackson. And then to my horror, the Village People. A roomful of sari clad Indian women and their husbands in suits and little toddlers broke into Y-M-C-A.

I decided it was my cue to leave.

How do you spell STEREOTYPE?

Two of the three top winners of the Spelling Bee are Indian-American. Again. Kavya Shivashankar took first place. Anamika Viramani came second.

Did second place winner Tim Ruiter really crack under pressure or was it the combined yogic energy of a billion-plus Indians at work?

What the heck is it with Indian Americans?

Here’s the memo to my fellow Indian Americans – All the spelling bees have been won. Let’s try something else now.

I guess its not just Indians. When a Korean woman won the LPGA it set off a golfing craze in South Korea. Last year there were so many Korean women (45!) in the LPGA, it came up with an obviously racist rule about how you needed to be fluent in English in order to play golf! That thankfully was rescinded but I am worried now someone will try and come up with something similar for Spelling Bees.

If your name has more than 3 syllables you can’t compete in the Bee. You will have an unfair advantage. No, Mr. Shivshankar, I know your daughter has been practicing for years just to win the Spelling Bee but rules are rules.

That’s kind of scary. After she spelled Laodicean to become Queen Bee, Kavya Shivashankar said it was her dream and she hopes she could coach her little sister next.

Noooo. Stop. Please make this madness stop.

But why do Indian-Americans do so well at Spelling Bees? I confess I loved words. I used to get up early in the morning before everyone awoke and sit on the windowsill in the early morning light with a tattered old Oxford English dictionary, just reading it. But I wasn’t doing it to learn spellings. I just liked words.

Maybe we have good memories because we come from a culture where we had to learn reams and reams of dates and dynasties just to pass a history exam. The Tughlaqs, the Khiljis, the Aibaks, the Mughals, the Hoysalas, the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Pallavas, not to mention the three battles of Panipat.

Maybe it’s just good old fashioned family values. Kavya’s coach was her father. It’s a cool way to while away long car drives when you are driving across state lines to the tri-state Gujarati association Navaratri potluck dinner.

Perhaps just having to spell our names over and over again in America, hearing that slight shocked pause from the telemarketer when your name pops up on the screen (unless they are a call center in Chennai), spelling has become second nature to our community.

Why do Indian Americans want their kids to win the spelling bee so badly? I mean there are no spelling bees in India, certainly no national competitions – of course, India has over 20 languages. Maybe that’s the clue. My native Bengali has two n’s, 2 r’s (one r, one rrrr), three s’s. Once you’ve learned the hard way which ‘s’ is used when and the rules governing the n’s, Laodicean seems like child’s play.

But it’s not just Spelling Bee. On May 20 two Indian American teens, Arjun Kandaswamy and Shantan Kroviddi took two of the top three positions in the National Geography Bee.

Well, I thought, its kinda cutely nerdy to have your ambition be “I wanna be spelling bee champion.” It’s not necessarily the mark of an over-achiever.

Then I read more about this year’s winners. Kavya’s hobbies include swimming, cycling and traditional Indian dance. She plans on becoming a neurosurgeon. Anamika’s hobbies include violin, Indian classical music, dance, and golf. She hopes to attend Harvard Medical School, where she hopes to specialize in cardiovascular surgery.

A friend’s status message on Facebook sums up the elections in India best.
Exactly the results India needed – the Left and the Right out of the Centre.
India’s Communist parties got a drubbing in the elections even in their red-lined states. The BJP which was positioning itself to lead a new coalition saw its vote share (and number of seats ) shrink . Instead the hoary old Congress party took its coalition to another term in power.
Some India-watchers heaved a sigh of relief. The Left which has been blocking the US-Indian nuclear deal and other open market reforms is licking its wounds. The BJP with its more hawkish Hindutva agenda is going to have it bide its time. But none of this is a sea change in Indian politics.
In a way this election just bought a little time.
Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister is in his seventies and recovering from multiple bypass surgery. It’s heartening to see a completely uncharismatic man with little rabble-rousing potential but innate decency lead his party to victory. But this is probably his last term in office.
The BJP’s hardline leader L.K. Advani, projected as its prime ministerial candidate does not even want to be the Leader of the Opposition anymore. He senses his time has passed.
So in a way this election already cleared the decks for the next one.
This means all eyes in India turn to yet another Gandhi – Rahul Gandhi who was his party’s star campaigner and will now probably be inducted into the cabinet to be groomed for the PM’s chair.
On the BJP’s side, its formidable (and notorious) firebrand chief minister Narendra Modi might try and make a pitch to become a national leader. Ever since the deadly Gujarat riots in 2002, Modi has become persona non grata around the world (his U.S. visa revoked) but remains hugely popular in Gujarat. Though this election saw his party’s vote share shrink in Gujarat as well this might be Modi’s chance to come out onto the national stage and project himself as a future Prime Minister.
This in itself would be remarkable. The first time the BJP won the most seats it could not even put together a coalition, its Hindu-nationalist label scaring away coalition partners.
Next time around it managed to lead a coalition by projecting Atal Behari Vajpayee, the silver tongued poet as its more moderate face and keeping the hardline L.K. Advani in the background. At least its not Advani, it told India’s anxious urban middle class.
This time around Advani was the projected leader. The subtext was “At least it’s not the divisive Narendra Modi.”
Next time around the rehabilitation of Narendra Modi might be complete.
Unless one of the new young Turks of the BJP rises up. One of them is another Gandhi, Varun Gandhi – Rahul’s cousin – was arrested during the campaign for his communally charged remarks. He was released and won his election.
This parliament will see four Gandhi’s taking their seats – two on each side of the aisle. The family business never had it so good.
Sonia and her son Rahul will be with the Congress. Her estranged sister-in-law Maneka and her son Varun will be with the BJP. Gandhi vs Gandhi next time around? It would be scary if India’s ruling party and its leading opposition both turned into reruns of Dynasty. You can run but you cannot hide. Whichever door you open, there’s a Gandhi.

Just an hour’s layover at Seoul’s Inchon airport was enough to convince me the swine flu is serious. As soon as the plane from San Francisco landed we were surrounded by men and women in turquoise blue masks who instead of handing us our In Transit stickers made us fill out forms.
Have you had a sore throat, runny nose, or fever in the last seven hours? I answered no, even as my allergies tickled the back of my throat. I desperately wanted to blow my nose but willed it not to run as I stood in line. I waited instead for someone to stick a thermometer in my ear.
Obviously all the avian flu and SARS training has paid off.
The other Americans near me were quite amazed at all the fuss. It’s not like we flew in from Mexico one said to another.
But the sign made it clear – Mexico AND the United States were regarded as swine flu zones. Even as the US tries to erect border fences to separate the two, the swine flu has been a reminder that we aren’t that separate at all. In the rest of the world’s eyes we are one landmass.
It’s actually been kind of amusing to watch Americans grapple with the notion that they could be coming FROM a contaminated, dangerous, infectious part of the world. We are used to going to danger zones of yellow fever and malaria and then coming back to our safe cocoons. Sniffing dogs at the airport make sure we don’t bring in some illegal alien herb that might puncture our bubble. I could never donate blood in America – because I’d always been back to India, a malaria country, in the last year.
Now swine flu has reversed the equation. We are suddenly all Mexicans now.
As you land in Seoul and the signs around you herald your arrival from the land of pandemic flu, you could also read it as a sign that says “Welcome to the Rest of the World – your era of splendid isolation is over.”
I thought that would never happen. At least not until pigs could fly.

A few weeks ago we were googling for pirates. This week it’s teabagging.

But the real word du jour is bottom. Bottoms are in.

When the newspapers report about the economy these days it’s starting to feel a little gay said a friend. He’s right. The Men Seeking Men section of Craigslist has snuck into the headlines and we haven’t even realized it.

Except on Craigslist tops are seeking bottoms, bottoms are seeking tops, vstl tops seeking both.

In this economy everyone is anxiously looking for the bottom. The bottom is top dog, the one everyone is chasing. The bottom is Mr. Right.
Could this really be the bottom? asks The Naperville Sun.

It’s as if you are the new kid in town and you enter a gay bar . And all eyes are on you. Could this be him?
Is this the Bottom? wonders KGO AM 810 in San Francisco.
The bottom? asks Francisco Martin on his blog MarketWatch.

Sam Zell, real estate legend, apparently thinks so. “Bottom is here,” he says on MoneyNews.com.

The question of course is when he does walk into the bar, how will we recognize the bottom. The Motley Fool is listing signs of a bottom. Apparently it has nothing to do with strategically placed handkerchiefs anymore. Even the Wall Street Journal is trying out its gaydar to make sure it doesn’t miss the Bottom. They have helpful hints about Signs of a Bottom though they caution “the market remains hard.”

Others think they have found the elusive bottom. JP Morgan, Barclays Capital and PNC Financial have his number and have all been calling him. Three Banks Call A Bottom dishes Forbes. Talk about being in demand. Pros are even having a bidding war over a bottom says NBC. Pros bidding over a bottom? Hmmm.

But apparently your gaydar can fool you. There are false bottoms out there. Beware, says Francisco Martin in his blog MarketWatch. “Everybody is calling the bottom,” he writes. “I hate to burst anybody’s dreams and hopes but this is nothing else than a ‘Bear Rally.’”

Gosh, a bear rally in search of a bottom. It boggles the mind. Could it get any gayer?

I think the leaders of The Resistance, the Christian media watchdog group which wants Anderson Cooper fired for using the phrase “teabagging” on the air, had better wake up. It’s much bigger, much more serious than tea bagging. This national search for the perfect bottom is a whole different ballgame. Is this the gay agenda seeking to infiltrate the economy?

I don’t know.

All I know is that it sucks that this bottom is taking a really long time to come.