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Sandip Roy
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Sandip Roy is the Culture Editor for Firstpost.com. He is on leave as editor with New America Media and host of its radio show New America Now on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco. He is also a commentator for Morning Edition on NPR. He is a contributor to various anthologies including Mobile Cultures, A Part Yet Apart - South Asians in Asian America, Storywallah!, Q&A, Contours of the Heart etc. An India-born immigrant, he now lives in San Francisco and writes regularly for mainstream and ethnic media outlets in the U.S. and in India. He is a co-host of the call-in show Your Call and has appeared occasionally on This Week in Northern California on KQED public television. You can read this and other blog postings by him at http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/sandip-roy.

Entries by Sandip Roy

It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's Super-Immigrant.

(2) Comments | Posted June 17, 2013 | 3:02 PM

Superman has always looked like the American flag -- a symphony of red, white and blue -- streaking through the sky. Of course, the inconvenient truth is that America's most beloved superhero is what the Immigration and Naturalization Services would dub an "illegal alien." He crashlanded into the country without...

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A Modern Great Gatsby: Rajat Gupta vs. Raj Rajaratnam and the Great Wall Street Scandal

(2) Comments | Posted May 22, 2013 | 11:48 AM

Leo DiCaprio will never portray him on the screen, but the disgraced Sri Lankan American moneyman Raj Rajaratnam could well be the Jay Gatsby of our times.

The story of Raj Rajaratnam versus Rajat Gupta is playing out in the media like F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel --...

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America's Newest Public Enemy Number 1: The Humble Pressure Cooker

(17) Comments | Posted May 14, 2013 | 2:09 PM

When I went to the United States for the first time, long before 9/11, I wondered if immigration officials would harass me, a single young man from a turbulent part of the world. I didn't have to worry. Customs officials and their formidable sniffing dogs were much more interested in...

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Boston Marathon: A Runner Remembers

(0) Comments | Posted April 16, 2013 | 11:35 AM

Devesh Khatu ran the Boston Marathon twice -- once in 2009 and once in 2010.

This year he was not running it. But ever since the bombs went off at America's oldest and most iconic marathon, his phone and Facebook wall have been flooded with anxious messages.

Khatu once set...

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A 5-Step Guide on How Not to Be a Sexist Politician

(0) Comments | Posted April 8, 2013 | 3:26 PM

Barack Obama has apologized for calling Kamala Harris "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country." This was AFTER he had already praised her as "tough," "fair," "brilliant" and "dedicated."

Political commentator Joan Walsh said the comment made her stomach turn.

Ms. Walsh must have a delicate stomach....

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Hillary's Same-Sex Marriage Video: Too Late to the Party?

(9) Comments | Posted March 20, 2013 | 1:53 PM

In 1996 Bill Clinton signed the Defence of Marriage Act which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman, a signature that gay rights activist Michelangelo Signorile called "an indelible stain" on his presidency. Earlier this month, Bill recanted in an op-ed in the Washington Post....

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Eat, Pray, Rape: The Swiss tourist and India's "unfortunate" image problem

(11) Comments | Posted March 18, 2013 | 1:49 PM

The gang-rape of the Swiss tourist in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh was front page news in newspapers across India. The reverberations of the shocking story were felt well outside India's borders. Even friends from as far away as California, emailed me the story.

But while going through the newspaper, it was...

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Diamonds Are Forever... British: Why Cameron Can't Give India Its Koh-i-noor

(16) Comments | Posted February 22, 2013 | 11:50 AM

Diamonds are forever, and they are for your EYES only.

So India, you can look but don't even dream about getting the Koh-i-noor back.

Instead David Cameron has given India a parting gift -- a post-colonial word -- returnism.

"I certainly don't believe in returnism, as it were," he...

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A Sorry Apology: David Cameron at Jallianwala Bagh

(1) Comments | Posted February 20, 2013 | 1:34 PM

David Cameron thinks that the massacre that happened at Jallianwala Bagh in India was a "deeply shameful event in British history."

In my condolence book, that's as close to a ringing apology as you can expect from a sitting British Prime Minister for the massacre of 1919.

Certainly Cameron sounds...

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Goodbye Wrestling: How the IOC Betrayed Its Olympic Soul

(37) Comments | Posted February 13, 2013 | 8:27 AM

Let me admit off the bat that I am not the world's biggest wrestling fan. Nor do I stay up till odd hours of the night to watch the Olympics live. But even I can tell that tossing wrestling out of the Olympics program is terribly unjust.

Wrestling deserves...

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The Not-So-Unbearable Loneliness of Being Jodie Foster

(20) Comments | Posted January 15, 2013 | 9:03 AM

At the Golden Globe awards, lifetime honoree Jodie Foster revealed something a Bollywood celebrity would never, ever 'fess up to.

She came out.

Not as a lesbian. I mean she did come out as a lesbian. Well, sort of, without saying those actual words. It was a "I am not...

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What One 23-year-old Gang Rape Victim Taught Us

(201) Comments | Posted December 29, 2012 | 8:59 AM

She was 23. She came from Ballia from Eastern Uttar Pradesh in India. She was a paramedical student. On December 16, she thought she was boarding a bus in Delhi. But in fact, she was boarding a nightmare. That nightmare has ended in a hospital in Singapore.

That is all...

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Ravi Shankar Was India's Columbus (And a Damn Good-Looking One)

(30) Comments | Posted December 12, 2012 | 2:40 PM

Ravi Shankar was our Columbus. While one explorer came looking for India, the other took India to the world. Perhaps that's why it's only fitting, that though I grew up in India, the first time I saw him perform was not in India, but at the Kremlin in Moscow.

I...

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Royal Hoax: Let's Not Make Scapegoats Out of Pranksters

(26) Comments | Posted December 11, 2012 | 12:52 PM

This is shaping up to be one royal mess. Nurse Jacintha Saldanha is dead. The Australian radio hosts behind the prank call to the hospital say they are "shattered, gutted, heartbroken." Apologies are flying all around and the share price of Southern Cross Media, the owner of the radio station,...

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The End of the Culture War? The Real Winner of Elections 2012

(74) Comments | Posted November 8, 2012 | 7:34 AM

In 1992, I was a fresh-off-the-boat graduate student in the US.

Bill Clinton was running for president against George H.W. Bush. Ross Perot was acting as the third wheel. It was the first presidential campaign I was witnessing and an exciting one. But the person who stopped me in my...

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Why They Care: A View of the American elections from India

(1) Comments | Posted November 6, 2012 | 7:57 AM

I have one indelible memory from election night 2008.

A gay man was standing outside the grand ballroom of the St Francis hotel in San Francisco where the Democratic Party's election result watching jamboree was in full swing in front of giant television screens. He had one finger in his...

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Stumping for 'My' President: How Bill Clinton Won 2012

(3) Comments | Posted November 5, 2012 | 10:44 AM

One word makes all the difference.

Especially when it's said by Bill Clinton.

At a campaign rally stumping for Barack Obama in Virginia, a hoarse, raspy-voiced Bill Clinton turned to the cheering crowd.

"As you can see, I have given my voice in the service of my president," he

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Is the Sky Falling on Obama? Quick, Take a Poll

(72) Comments | Posted October 10, 2012 | 2:44 PM

The sky is falling in America. It's all because of one poll. A Pew poll done after the first presidential debate has Obama supporters in a complete tizzy.

Andrew Sullivan on The Daily Beast had his finger jammed on the panic button.

Look: I'm trying to rally...
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Dude, Check the Calendar Next Time: Quick Debating Tips for Barack Obama

(4) Comments | Posted October 4, 2012 | 8:50 AM

Sometimes political campaigns get in the way of life.

The most heart-rending example of that was when candidate Barack Obama paused to remember his grandmother after her death, days before the election.That pursed lip, the single tear he wiped was terribly moving because it genuine. It was...

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Sam Bacile to Salman Rushdie: The Age of Outrage-ism

(151) Comments | Posted September 18, 2012 | 4:35 PM

A mysterious man in California hires a soft porn director and tricks some low-rent actors into making a trashy movie about the Prophet Muhammad.

Now an Iranian foundation ups the price on Salman Rushdie's head saying that if he had been killed earlier for blasphemy, this newest anti-Islam film would...

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