FOF #1339 – A Funny Indian Lady
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Comedian Sapna Kumar was born in India but raised in Indiana. There’s more than corn in Indiana. She came out as a lesbian a while ago, but only recently did her mother refer to her as gay and not “one of those people.”
Listen as we curry dish the dirt about this and all the hot news: Lady Gaga, Westboro Baptist and how to get out of jury duty.
FOFA #1339 – A Funny Indian Lady – 08.05.11
FOF #1850 – Body Wonderland – 08.23.13
FOF #1737 – When High Heel Shoes Were Butch – 02.07.13
Westboro Baptist Church Family Disowns Daughter — 20/20 
Comments
I love how you guys are doing such diverse gays lately :). Highlighting the gays in Russia. You interviewed that gay prince and now you’re highlighting a cross culture kid, an Indian Lesbian raised in the USA. Brilliant. I remian forever a fan.
another FABulous show by 2 GORGeous men w/ a ‘funny as hell’ comedian! …hey, i have a question for you guys… have you thought of doing a cable tv talk show? Oprah’s OWN network would be perfect for The Feat of Fun!! iLuv U lots – Dag
“The Feat of Fun!” … never said i could spell! ;p
Good show! Parminder Nagra’s the gal from Beckham and ER, though, different from Archie Panjabi on The Good Wife. Both are radiantly pretty, so it’s easy to get confused.
And Marc, if you’re serious about eating gluten-free, I have two good and simple recipes that fit the bill (lemon-roasted tofu, and peanut-butter-and-chickpea-flour cookies), scanned from cookbooks and stored on my hard drive, if you want them. 🙂
listening to this made we want to have Indian food for dinner .____.
but Sapna was great! Such a funny lady.
and Fausto, I use the screen name Chickengirl for everything on the internet….back in the early days of AOL, Chickengirl was my first screen-name/email I created..and uh…since I was young I’ve had this odd obsession with chickens, I’ve included them in numerous drawings, comics, and animations, cos I’m an artist don’t ya know….and the name has just always stuck….
and a was loling when you read my comment about the tuna..yeah Sapna was right about you not being able to keep fishing an over-fished fish that will eventually go extinct, but what meant was that, the fishing industry isn’t going to stop fishing that fish until it does become extinct..but before that happens they’ll prolly do something to stop their extinction, but will continue to fish the tuna because it is such a profitable business… :/
Hi FOF and listeners!
Just wanted to comment on Fausto’s question about Swami Vivekanada because it actually connects to the whole issue of attitudes about gay people in hinduism. Swami V. was essentially the first Hindu to teach authentic yoga in the US. He ended-up starting a yoga tradition that came to have alot of beatnicks, artists, and queers as devotees including Christopher Isherwood who was more-or-less the first out-of-the-closet european-american hindu convert. (Colin Firth of ‘The King’s Speech’ acclaim played Isherwood in the recent film “A Single Man” which is a must-see for all gay men!
As for homophobia amongst Hindus, a couple of important points:
1. Hinduism is not a single religion but includes five major denomination that have significant theological and cultural differences; each denomination includes literally hundreds of lineages!
2. Almost all hindus agree that the human “soul” and “god” are one one-and-the-same as well as beyond all human conceptions and therefore genderless! Isherwoods guru didn’t care one iota about his gay orientation.
3. There are hindu myths that tell of transexualism and tantric yogis are famous for understanding god as a hermaphrodite. There is even a strong regional tradition in south india of a bachelor male deity who will only allow male devotees wearing loin cloths to approach his shrine; furthermore he is the son of the two most honored male gods: Shiva and Vishnu!
I love you show and appreciate your wide-ranging interests! THANK YOU MARK AND FAUSTO!!!
Hi,
Sapna Kumar here. Just wanted to say a coupla things. I don’t know Ifti Naseem, but I hope he can take a joke. As an out gay Muslim man who writes poetry about his life experiences, I have to say, I’m happy that he is an activist and lets his voice be heard. Also, I know very little about Hinduism, as I mentioned. Having not been embraced by my Hindu relatives, I would say some sects of HInduism are as welcoming as some sects of Christianity. Oh, and finally, I don’t think Indians burned lesbians alive. That was a plot of a movie, a fictional movie. Just trying to clear up any broad generalizations about INdians from India since I am Indian American after all. Phew! I feel better now.
It’s okay, Sapna, Fausto said on a recent episode that FOF is filed under “Comedy” on iTunes precisely so there’s freedom to embellish for the sake of entertainment and thought-provocation. And yet FOF is still more reliable and factual than FOX news! Not to mention more humane, queer-friendly, and generally better for the world!
I think the outcome of Bradley Manning’s trial will be a test of where the US is today and where it is heading.
So far Obama administration’s record has been pretty dismal – Guantanamo is still open; noone of those who originally authorized torture against prisoners or lied to the people about the WMD threat from Saddam in order to start a war in which thousands of Americans died has been as much as charged or arrested (a rather stark contrast with Bradley Manning who is treated like a dangerous war criminal); the reaction to democratic revolts toppling authoritarian (not to mention, anti-gay) tyrants who used to be propped up with US dollars has been quite lukewarm; and colour me unimpressed that the only victory on the GLBT front is that now gay people can kill and be killed in wars started to protect oil companies’ interests.
It’s actually quite stunning that in both game-changing, pro-freedom events of the last twelve months (the Arab world “Winter of Nations” and the Wikileaks’ unprecedented freedom of information) the US government has found itself more or less on the wrong side of history.