there's our catastrophe

Oct 24

Student illegally detained//Kirsty Needham//The Age

AN INDIAN student who paid thousands of dollars to study in Australia was illegally detained at the Villawood detention centre for 18 months because of mistakes by immigration officers, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner has found.

The commissioner, Catherine Branson, has found that Prashant Cherkupalli, 31, should be paid $597,000 in compensation for the 509 days he was illegally detained between November 2004 and April 2006.

Mr Cherkupalli, 31, who kept his ordeal secret from his family, is now suing the Commonwealth in the NSW Supreme Court for damages.

”I was ashamed to tell my parents. I came here to do something and ended up in prison. I spent thousands of dollars from my family,” he said.

The detention caused him to miss classes and forfeit $57,000 in student fees. He has since graduated with a master of engineering degree from Sydney University.

…Mr Cherkupalli believes he lost the opportunity to gain permanent residency in Australia because the time spent in detention meant he was too old when he applied after graduation. ”Everyone’s aim after being a student is to get a job and settle down. I can’t do that,” he says.

via sqhaird

(via squaresome-deactivated20120630)

Oct 23

rekognitionoisuled:

Fiction [compared to rap] is a much better way for me to tackle my feelings about being a working class South Asian American. There really isn’t much representation of that in Postcolonial literature. There’s people like Jhumpa Lahiri, but she’s talking really about upper middle class South Asian American culture. Which is why rap makes sense for me: it’s within that class I am a part of, the class I am speaking about. I don’t think a lot of people would really read a short story I wrote about feeling weird about a guy at a convenience store speaking to me instead of to my mom when I’m a seven year old, because my accent is more American than hers. That’s the type of thing that’s much easier to convey in fiction, but the trade off is that it reaches fewer people than a rap would.

Interviewer: Heck, I’d read it.

I know someone like you would, but that’s the problem with being a working class South Asian kid who went to a school like Wesleyan. I was surrounded by people who would read it, but until I was 18 I wasn’t around people who would read it. So what’s the point of talking about this experience if I am framing it to people who are not working class South Asian? It’s kind of like putting the experience on display, whereas rap is a much more efficient way of targeting the people you are sharing the experience with, rather than letting it be an outsider’s perspective looking in. That’s a large problem when you engage in Postcolonial critique: you are jumping out of the community to look at it, then after a while you are no longer a part of it.

heems, interview at songwriters on process

(via nehrujackets)

May 20

materialworld:

From British Asian Style:fashion & textiles/past and present.

Pics of a 1996 collection by Gavin Fernandes, ‘Skin Too’ inspired by his sisters teenage embrace of late 1960’s London culture; including Ben Sherman shirts and C60 Ska tapes.

have you read this book? if so, can you tell me what you thought about it? these images are the kind of thing I would be megaly interested in — British Asian people as active fashion agents. but the description on the web site makes it sound like it’s more of a celebration of cultural appropriation. “South Asian textiles have shaped British fashion and dress for centuries, from the fashionable chintzes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the silk and paisley Boteh patterns of the nineteenth century, to the orientalism of 1960s Bohemian fashion and the street styles of British Asian youth and designers today.” holy smokes!

there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀

Student illegally detained//Kirsty Needham//The Age

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

⚑ ♀