DESHI DOG BUPU STAGES SEPIA MUTINY

By Sajjad “Stu” Rahman, Foreign Correspondent

Westland, MI.

Loyal readers of Joruri Khobor may recall that your humble correspondent was the first reporter to break news of Deshi Dogs, a Chicago area business importing Bangladeshi nationals for Americans unable to afford dogs or cats. A rarity in these days of economic despair, Deshi Dogs seemed an enterprise demonstrating the ingenuity of its founders, Johnny Talukder and Moushum “Moz” Mustakeen.

Showing the courage and forward-thinking entrepreneurship always distinguishing people of Subcontinental descent, Deshi Dogs appeared a genuine American success story—for what is more Baseball and Apple Pie than darkies in a mutually beneficial servitude to their White masters?

Alas, that fateful Dictum of Dhaka Life has proven universally true—no matter the social event or setting, there will always be one Bengali that ruins everything.

In a shocking twist of events, Bupu, the very first Deshi Dog sold, has staged a violent revolt against his American owners, injuring two people, killing seven chickens and causing at least $5000 (US) in property damage to cars.

Bupu’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Fastenblast, of Westland, Michigan, purchased their pet in August. “We didn’t have money for a dog, but Deshi Dogs said Bupu was almost as good as a poodle. He liked us from the get-go, always happy to chase a rubber ball whenever Mother threw it into the grass. But then he turned sour. Look at my arm. No dog would do this,” said Mr. Fastenblast, one of the two people injured by Bupu, as he displayed a series of seven bite marks smeared with feces and marinated with urine.

Mrs. Fastenblast, who was not injured in the attack, was unable to hold back her tears as she discussed Bupu. “He was like my brown, ugly child,” she said, holding photographs of happier times.

So, what happened?

Exact details remain hazy, but it appears that after half a year of captivity, Bupu remembered his in life in Bangladesh. Mr. Fastenblast says the trouble began when Bupu asked to be read the original Joruri Khobor article about Deshi Dogs. The description of the Deshi Dog known as “Kim Kardashian” sounded a disharmonious chord within Bupu, and when Mr. Fastenblast finished reading, he says that his Deshi Dog remained uncharacteristically silent for hours.

Finally, at midnight, Bupu accosted Mrs. Fastenblast. Although unable to recall his exact words, she says he said something akin to, “Alone, bad! Friend, good! Kim Kardashian. Like me. Woman…. Friend… Wife…”

“I didn’t know what he meant,” said Mrs. Fastenblast. “Usually when Bupu talked we didn’t pay any mind—mostly he asked if it was okay to defecate in the house. He never could understand that in America people don’t go number two on the carpet. ”

Mrs. Fastenblast went to sleep. The next morning, she woke to the screaming of her husband.

In his own words, Mr. Fastenblast says, “When I came down into the kitchen, every single wall and window was smeared with feces, and a big puddle of urine was on the kitchen table. Bupu was standing in the middle of it all, naked and drooling. He had a crazy look in his eye. I asked him what he was doing, but all he would say is “debir podochummone ami mogno.” I don’t understand that monkey talk, so I yelled at him to sit down. That’s when he came over and bit me. I’m not a young man. I fell over in pain. That’s when he held me down and wiped his behind on my wounds and urinated on me.”

Leaving Mr. Fastenblast in the kitchen, Bupu ran into the backyard where he attacked the family’s chicken coop, breaking the wings of nearly all the birds, and biting the heads off seven. His face streaming with avian blood, Bupu ran to the front yard where he encountered John Stoutly, a neighborhood mailman.

“As a postal worker,” says Stoutly, “I encounter a lot of hostile pets. You get good at calming animals down, but nothing prepared me for a blood smeared, shit-assed Bangladeshi peasant.”

Stoutly says Bupu pushed him to the ground and kicked him while screaming, “Free Party mayere bap, Communism khaape khap!” After beating Stoutly, Bupu picked up a stick and smashed the headlights and windshields of every car on the Fastenblast’s street, leaving behind a wake of broken glass and dented metal.

Bupu has been missing for five days. Authorities followed his trail but lost the path of human feces when it crisscrossed with a homeless encampment in nearby Detroit. When the owners of Deshi Dogs were contacted with the news of the escape and attack, they denied that Bupu had ever married Kim Kardashian. “Absolutely not,” said Mr. Mustakeen. “There is no connection between the two. We would never split a pair.”

Bupu’s whereabouts are the daily topic of conversation in the barbershops and beauty parlors of Westland—some people, including the Fastenblasts, believe that he is on his way to find Kim Kardashian. Others wonder how long a Bangladeshi can survive without White masters providing food and water. Many believe that Bupu has perished already, a victim of his own rebellious nature, like the figure of Satan in the poetry of John Milton.

Gentle reader, you may rest assured that whatever the fate of Bupu, Joruri Khobor and your humble correspondent will spare no resources in following the long, dark trail of human feces to its very end—or should we say beginning?

Probashi immigrant intellectual is like a dog fetching sticks

By Sajjad “Stu” Rahman, Foreign Correspondent

Washington, DC. 

For the Bengali, a visit to the United States evokes many strong feelings. He sees so much in contrast with his experience of Dhaka or Chittagong—the immensity of the riches, the width and depth of women’s hips, the variety of sexual possibility—that he can not help but be changed. But what of the children of Bengali immigrants, those born in America and called Bangladeshi-Americans? What is life like for those with one foot firmly rooted in the traditions and customs of the Subcontinent and another planted on the soil of Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald?

One of the great success stories is Reihan Salam, columnist, editor and author. After a long career in journalism, Salam, a Brooklyn, NY native and a Harvard Graduate, recently made waves with the publication of his book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. With co-author Ross Douthat, Salam articulates his cogent vision for the 21^st Century Republican party, a theme that he regularly sounds for The American Scene and in his weekly column for Forbes.com. With a plate this full, it is remarkable that Salam finds time to serve as an associate editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a storied American publication renowned as one of the most influential in the English speaking world.

Salam’s writings extend beyond the political and intellectual—often he casts a keen eye on popular culture, and his unique insights prove, contrary to the repeated assertions of Professor A. F. M. Ruhul Haque, that brown skin in no way impedes one’s ability to comprehend, understand or even enjoy the musical works of Fall Out Boy. Indeed, it is these forays away from the main road of his remarkable career which have brought Salam down a side-path familiar to his fellow Bangaldeshi-Americans.

Consumed with a fever-pitched fear of being unaccepted by his fairer skinned colleagues, Salam has begun posting a series of YouTube videos in which he demonstrates his extensive reading of Shakespeare. In a typical video, Salam sings and dances in an exaggerated manner intended to heighten his colleagues’ sense that their chum is one of the many—after all, if a brown man can laugh at himself, hasn’t he shown not only his good spirit but the basic rightness of being American?

For Maleeha “Mary” Chowdhury, 26, of Bethesda, MD, Salam’s videos struck a chord. “When I saw the one where he pretends he shit his pants,” she says, “I knew exactly what he was up to. You can try grandstanding with Whites, and telling them impressive lies about your lineage, but in the end, the only thing that works is humor. They seem to really enjoy it when you roll around on the ground like a monkey infested with lice.”

Detractors of Reihan have voiced criticisms of his videos. “If you look at this chandu motka,” says Muhammad Faisul, 19, of Queens, New York, “what you see is another afraid to live on his own terms in the white man’s world. Bengalis have been wiping the asses of Americans since the glorious War of Independence. Is this why our forefathers fought and died? Is this why our intellectuals were massacred by the Pakis? To birth a generation of clowns? Can anyone imagine Rabindranath Tagore or Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay eating their own vomit from a bucket on YouTube in the hopes that some white person somewhere might validate their written work? Reihan Salam is like a beggar throwing his shit in the street—he does what is necessary to be noticed. People like him make me ashamed to be Bangladeshi-American.”

But Maleeha Chowdhury disagrees. “A person like this Muhammad Faisul probably lives in the ghetto and doesn’t understand the pressure of fitting in with the real world. There is a lot of stress on minorities. If Reihan has found a way through deference to make Americans respect him as an intellectual, then I say more power to him!”

The reaction of Salam’s colleagues bear out the truth of Chowdhury’s words. Known sodomite blogger Andrew Sullivan linked one of Salam’s YouTube videos, and included the comment, “Look at brownie shuck and jive! He reminds me of a blackamoor, except utterly non-threatening and more likely to lick my boots than steal them!”

Salam’s co-author, Douthat, had this to say, “Reihan is a real intellect, an American original, but until I saw him perform ‘Disarm’ by the Smashing Pumpkins in a falsetto and dance out a foxtrot, I didn’t really like him as a person. Now he seems like a cat with his claws removed, a brown little beastie waiting to have his tummy scratched. I think that this was Salman Rushdie’s real problem—he forgot how to be funny!”

For his own part, Reihan Salam offers no formal comment on his videos, preferring to let the work stand on its own. But we imagine Salam smiling somewhere, surrounded by his scholarly papers and plotting his next move, knowing that he is two Judas Priest songs and one Macarena away from earning the respect of his betters.

In the wake of economic collapse, Americans eye Bangladeshis as new, cheaper pets

by Sajjad “Stu” Rahman, Foreign Correspondent 

Rockford, IL. January 29. To the casual outsider, America’s most bizarre custom is the barbaric practice of granting animals free range inside the home without any intent of making a meal from their meat or sucking the marrow from their tiny bones. What the denizens of Dhaka call the Elephant Road Beefsteak is stateside likely to retain full control of its central nervous system and be given a pompous name like “Fuzzy” or “Garfield.” These creatures are customarily addressed as gentlemen of good social standing, and are categorized racially as “pets.”

In the last few months, the winds of change have begun their mighty bluster. Threatened with the complete collapse of their nation’s economic infrastructure, the citizens of the United States are scaling back spending on luxury products. The doldrums of money woe have impacted every consumer outlet in America, and the country’s $9.9B pet industry is among the hardest hit.

“We used to sell three dogs a day and maybe six cats,” says Mary Bloenfield, 39, the owner of Kats N Kuddles, a small pet store in Stull, Kansas. “Now we can’t move two animals a week. I don’t know what we’re going to do if these things keep piling up. Maybe eat them.”

While their money disappears, Americans maintain their premium on the horrible ennui of modern existence, a sensation best described in A-Level novel The Stranger by Albert Camus. Social scientists have long theorized that the American love for animals is the product of an emptiness that can be filled by no amount of decadence or sloth.

“People turn to animals because they’re lonely,” says Dr. Ralph Richman, a fully-tenured Professor of Sociology at UMass-Amherst. “The uncritical affection of an animal can lure a person into thinking that their existence maintains a shred of meaning or dignity. People want to own pets, even if they can’t afford them.”

Seeing an opportunity, two Rockford natives have formed a new business offering Americans the chance to adopt Bangladeshis. The two co-founders of Deshi Dogs, Johnny Talukder and Moushum “Moz” Mustakeen, traveled to Bangladesh in early September and secured the necessary business and governmental connections for the weekly importation of Bangladeshis of every shape and size.

Business is brisk. Mustakeen says he and Mr. Talukder encountered skepticism at first. Things turned around after customers saw the lovable round faces and thick noses endemic to Bengalis, and quickly realized that while a dog or a cat might be too expensive, they could own a beast almost as satisfying.

“Look,” says Mustakeen, “I’m not going to lie. They aren’t dogs. They aren’t cats. But Deshis are warm, docile and obey their masters’ commands. They’ll fetch your slippers, bring your paper and cuddle with you all night long. They’re great pets!” 

Some early adopters have discovered that owning a Bangladeshi brings unexpected benefits. Ronnie Starewitz, of Hamtramck, MI, one of Deshi Dogs’ first customers, purchased a twenty-seven year old female after a car struck and killed the family cat. His pet, which he named “Kim Kardashian,” has demonstrated the ability to perform simple tasks of addition, subtraction and multiplication.

“I don’t even need a calculator anymore,” says Starewitz. “Kim Kardashian can’t do division, but that’s OK. I didn’t expect anything from her except to play with my kids and maybe chase away intruders, so this has been a nice surprise. The only problem is that she has been thus far very difficult to toilet-train.”

As for Mr. Johnny Talukder and Moushum “Moz” Mustakeen, they plan to expand Deshi Dogs to several new locations, possibly even a retail outlet in the Mall of America.

“The demand for these things is off the chart,” says Talukder. “If things keep up like they are, we’re going to have a real problem. We only bribed enough for 100 people a week. We might have to go back to Bangladesh and meet the new Government.”