The Asian News Blog

A lot of people make many presumptions about my job. The first one is that I sit at my desk making stories up (if only it was that easy – the chances are if I chose to do this I won’t be in any job), secondly many think that i’m in a very dangerous job and that my life is at risk everyday – which is one reason I pay a much higher rate on my car insurance than non-journalists – but 95 per cent of the time I am usually in safe hands though I do think how exciting it would be if that was the case. And thirdly people think I have such an exciting life because I get to meet the stars!
YES, meeting stars can be exciting, YES I do get starstruck and YES sometimes I think “you know what being a journalist is great”. But sometimes when your stood only a few feet away from Bollywood biggest star and you can’t get a one to one interview it can also get VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY frustrating.
I was invited to the IIFA (Indian Oscars) curtain raiser yesterday at the Civic Hall in Leeds. Guest speaker and ambassador of the IIFA ceremony Amitabh Bachchan was also there.
I went along to the press conference, heard what all the speakers had to say including the Big B himself who I am no longer too mesmerised by! The first time I saw him a few years ago I had to pinch myself after finding myself stood opposite him. A few months ago he was sat in the aisle below me, if I had reached my hand out I could have touched his hair, and believe me it took a lot of will power to stop me from taking out a strand and putting it in my portfolio.
Well this was my third time and I am no longer in that stage where I want to grab hold of him. Mr Bachchan very much looks the same as he does on TV, but yesterday he looked very very tired after the journey to Leeds from London early yesterday morning.

After the press conference was over, it was time for all the journalists from the various papers, magazines, radio and TV stations to mull around all desperate to get a one to one, me included.
Now I wish it was that easy, but there wee about 50 reporters and Mr Bachchan had less than an hour to do the interviews. We all tried clamouring to the beginning of the queue (imagine 14-year-old teenage girls trying to get John Abraham’s autograph)! Everybody was desperate to get even just one question in, after all we were dealing with a Bollywood legend! So we wait, and wait and wait. But Mr Bachchan has to go and launch the IIFA cafe and is already late, he is alo tired and we are told, “sorry guys but maybe next time.” Frustrated, those of us who didn’t manage to get a one-to-one head out wondering if that is what we are to expect when the actual four-day extravaganza begins in June!
Now it’s not too bad for me, I only had to travel from Rochdale, but I felt sorry for the two journalists who had travelled all the way from Glasgow that morning. Now that’s a long way to travel and not get anything! But that’s just part and parcel of the job, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you can be waiting around for hours and you don’t get the one to one you so desperately wanted.
Also sometimes being a journalist from a regional paper, we’re not treated as “special” as let’s say a BBC reporter who is about to go live in 5 minutes. I am not saying this was the situation yesterday but it’s often the case. I have been to countless events were print journalists get left to do the interviews till last and often by then we’ve got less than 5 minutes to conduct an interview and by that time all the print journalists have to clamber together, which means we all leave with the same questions and answers and almost identical stories follow in the papers.
So, a message to organisers of any events, please give us print journalists a chance – we are just s important as TV and radio if not more – so let us have our one to ones, TV and radio will no doubt get theirs and we’ll all be happy!
Pictures by Faddy from Desi Malai!

My mum has been having the most strangest dreams recently and they all seem to end with me getting into trouble. Her dreams are not to ignore, she feel as a mother she knows straightaway when something bad was going to happen…….a mothers instinct as she calls it and these recent dreams are no exception.
A few nights ago she dreamt that she was going to Bangladesh and I had secretly followed behind her to surprise her on the plane. She remembers I had a distinct red suitcase and I was hurriedly driving to the airport but my car somehow shot off the road and I ended up in a big accident. But not wanting to be late, I end up leaving the car, a helicopter comes to my rescue and airlifts me to the airport…….I know it sounds like she’s been watching one too many action films, but she feels that someone is trying to put the spanners into work and throw me off my plans………not that I have any at the moment, but she definitely reckons something is going to go down.
In the weekend she had another dream. This time I was in Bangladesh and I was crossing a bridge over a huge river. Somehow I end up slipping off the bridge and clinging onto the end of the bridge with my hands and screaming for help. Mum is watching me from far but can’t do anything to help. The ex-husband is standing on the bridge, but he won’t help me, my mum screams at him to do something, and then he reaches out and pulls out only two of his fingers for me to grab…..she can’t remember what happened after that, but kept on telling me to drive safely everywhere and be careful when I’m out and about.
Mum feels very strongly about her dreams. She normally gives money to charity and the local mosque every month, but after a bad dream she always sends my brother with a £10 note to put in the charity box inside the mosque! This will be followed by prayers where she makes extra special prayers for all her children and then blows on our heads to keep any harm away!
I know that’s just mums for you, but its really got me worried. On top of that, the ex husband’s uncle’s father-in-law who happens to be good friends with my dad told us that he ex has had loads of tabeezes sent over from Bangladesh. For those of you who don’t know what one is, tabeezes are suppose to be charms and amulets. Many people that Ii know wear one for good luck – and in a country like Bangladesh many people rely on them for everything. If they have a headache, if they are seriously ill, for a good crop or even a good marriage proposal, they all end up going to some mullah and getting some kind of charm to help them along the way. They can also used for doing bad things as well for example I know this couple who have been married for a number of years. they seem happy but every time the husband goes back to Kashmir he comes back a different person and is very offish with his wife. Apparently his mum has put a tabeez around his wrist so that he will break up with his wife whom she doesn’t like!
Going back to the ex-husband’s uncle’s father-in-law, well he told us that an envelope full of them arrived and he reckons the ex wants to use them to harm me in some way. Now everybody is panicking. I have to ring my mum first thing in the morning just to let her know I am alive and kicking and she’s told my housemate to look after me!
I’ve tried laughing this whole tabeez business off but some of my friends have told me to take it seriously, but what harm can he possibly do? Maybe I should ring immigration and let them know this marriage is over! Hmmmmmm i just have to wait and see what happens next!

I FOUND out something last night- Dante has a child from a previous relationship! It really took me by surprise. He’s been talking about his friends, all of whom are close to his age and they all have kids. He’s never mentioned his own. Anyway it just occurred to me that I should ask and he told me he had a little girl from his last relationship. I don’t know whether it was the fact that he had a child that surprised me or that he hadn’t told me about her earlier on and I had to ask!
He could tell that I was a little shocked and asked if I had a problem with it. I don’t have a problems with it, I did ask if there were any other children I should know about but he assured me that there wasn’t! I told him I was pissed off that he hadn’t told me about his daughter earlier on, it wouldn’t have made any difference. If I had a child it’s not something that I would have kept to myself for nearly a month. Dante said he wasn’t sure how I would’ve reacted and he had wanted to tell me a number of times but backed out.
He has his daughter over every other weekend and he doesn’t plan to introduce us simply because Dante and his ex decided that unless they were going to marry someone they didn’t want another adult involved in their child’s life, which I think is quite fair. I know of a woman who introduces her boyfriends to her two children straightaway, they’ve had so many “daddies” over the past two-years they’ve lost count and it’s not healthy for the children either. So I (for my own selfish reasons as well) am quite happy to keep things as they are.
Other than that things are going well. Some of my neighbours are getting use to seeing him coming and going. I have four Pakistani families living in my street. All the women say hello to him everytime they see him, I’ve even caught them checking him out when their husbands aren’t looking. Apart from my next door neighbour, an older Pakistani taxi driver who says “hello boss” everytime he sees Dante, the rest of the men continue to give him dirty looks.
My close friends have met him, and they all like him. He’s even helped vett potential husbands for a very close friend. She’s been single for almost five-years and wants to get married. Her parents are out of the country majority of the time so the task of finding a husband has been left to her. She just wants a decent Muslim man to marry and the only way she found to meet one was on Muslimfriends.com and Muslimmatch.com. I tell you there’s some wierdos on those sites. She met two men from these sites, both interested in getting married etc etc and after chats online, we met the first one, a man who worked in pharmaceuticals, he was really nice and really funny, he could’ve been the one but after a couple of weeks it turns out he already had a wife and five kids and was looking for a second wife.
We met the second guy with Dante around, he was a doctor who desperately wanted to get married before he reached 35. The guy came dressed in black trousers and trainers (who wears trainers with trousers with trousers these days?), he had a cold that night and he wore and old rumpled brown jumper. He sure didn’t look like the smart doctor we saw in his picture online!
He bore us to death by talking about his love of music, the guy wanted to become a producer, he had even worked on his own album, which he got out for us to listen! They were his cover versions of George Michael tracks………but that was just to give us a taste of us singing……….he then got out his own material………..his favourite was a track he wrote for an ex girlfriend which he kindly put on for us to listen and give him feedback. I thought he was joking at first – you don’t play a song you wrote for an ex when your meeting someone who could potential be your future partner! His screeching voice and the melodramatic music sent me into the kitchen where I burst out in fits of laughter. Poor Dante was stuck sat next to this doctor not sure what to do. The doctor told Dante he thought he was in with a chance with my mate. Dante could see from our reactions that that was not the case and told the doctor this. Well the doctor told us before he left that he had a very nice evening and wanted to come back again. Dante told him if my friend was interested she’ll ring him and we spent almost an hour trying to show him the door.
So yes, going back to my point, Dante’s getting on well with my friends!

A major new initiative to promote media literacy among women will be launched next tuesday.
Women’s Interfaith Media Literacy, a network of women from across the major faith communities in England, will unveil its website at the Foreign Press Association, Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AJ.
Keynote speaker Clare Short, MP, will stress the importance of the project in encouraging women from diverse faith communities to express their views and concerns to the producers and regulators of the press, broadcasting and on-line media.
Through its website and a series of regional events in 2007, Women’s Interfaith Media Literacy will for the first time bring together women of different faiths specifically to develop skills and confidence in media literacy. Women’s Interfaith Media Literacy is supported by a multi-faith advisory panel drawn from across the faith communities.
The website aims to be an accessible, easy-to-use and up-to-date online resource, covering in particular three key topics identified by women as those they want to change the way the media handle and present : the portrayal of faith and faith communities, marketing to children and their premature sexualisation, the exploitation and stereotyping of women and girls.
The website will also be a guide to media literacy resources, organizations and faith based. networks.
The project was initiated by the National Board of Catholic Women (NBCW). In 2006 the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund (FCCBF) gave a grant to the NCBW to promote media literacy among women in different faith communities.

A FEW days after going on sale, tickets for this year’sIndian ‘Oscars’ have almost sold out with over 60% of tickets bought in just 48 hours. Yorkshire is now beginning preparations for what is to be one of the biggest cinematic events of the year, and thousands of people are expected to flock to the region to take part in various events that will span over a four day weekend.
Ticket sales for the IIFA Awards were launched together with the ticket sales for the IIFA Foundation Charity Celebrity Cricket Match on Monday 12th March 2007.
The Idea IIFA Awards will take place on Saturday 9th June 2007 at Hallam FM Arena, Sheffield, a venue that will provide a sensational environment to celebrate Indian Cinema’s achievements in a fittingly majestic manner. Ticket prices range from £50 to £150 and can be purchased from the Box Office and website of Hallam FM Arena (www.hallamfmarena.co.uk) and through exclusive outlets in each of the participating cities: Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Hull and York.
The IIFA Foundation Charity Celebrity Cricket Match will take place on Friday 8th June 2007 at Headingley Carnegie Stadium. The IIFA celebrity team will comprise Indian and Pakistani cricketing greats with A-list stars from the Indian film fraternity against a UK celebrity cricket team again with UK cricket legends and other celebrities. The proceeds from the match will be donated to the IIFA foundation. Tickets will be priced at £12 and £22 and will be available to purchase at the Box Office and Website of Headingley Carnegie Stadium (www.yorkshireccc.com).
The IIFA Weekend will take place from the 7th to 10th June 2007 in Yorkshire and will include business forums, film premieres, workshops and charity fund-raising events in Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Hull and York. More than 500 luminaries from the Indian film fraternity will travel to the region for the event which will be broadcast globally on STAR TV to nearly 500 million viewers in 110 countries.
Since its inception and launch in 2000, the IIFA Weekend has been staged at prominent locations including Singapore, Malaysia, Amsterdam, South Africa and Dubai. Previous attendees to the IIFA Weekend have included the world’s major celebrities including Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Shekhar Kapur, Ashok Amritraj, Jean Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue, Bo Derek, Aishwarya Rai, Shah Rukh Khan and others.

That Kareena Kapoor is making a sensational appearance in the forthcoming romantic comedy, Kya Love Story Hai, is no surprise. The actress shot for her first song after Yeh Mera Dil (Don) at Mumbai’s Filmistan Studio last week where all they key media were invited.

Rendered by Alisha Chinai and composed by Pritam, Kareena’s It’s Rocking Yaara Kabhi Ishq To Karo is being tipped off as the next chartbuster once its video hits the airwaves before the end of this month.
“Before I went on break I did Yeh Mera Dil and the first thing after my break I have done is this song for Kya Love Story Hai,” she smiles. Kareena’s lost a lot of weight and is back in form thanks to continuous Yoga. “I am looking forward to the release of this song on television. It’s truly rocking!”
Choreographer Bosco can’t have enough of Bebo, and says, “She’s fantastic. What can I say about her? She lends so much energy and attitude to the song.”
What does Kareena like the most about the song? “It’s so lively and danceable. And it’s among the most glamorous numbers I’ve done! I drive in a limo, wear a gown and strum a 25-feet guitar.”
Kya Love Story Hai releases worldwide on April 20. It also stars Tusshar Kapoor and Ayesha Takia and is being distributed internationally by Studio 18.

The Oldham branch of the Young Muslim Organisation UK is organising a fundraising dinner next week to raise money so they can carry on providing activiites to local people.
The ‘Struggle for Success’ event will take place on 28 March at Westwood East Restaurant and will start at 6.30pm.
Special guest speakers have been invited, this includes the assistant secretary of Islamic Forum Europe, Hamid Uddin Azzad who is also a key community figure and barristor from London and youth co-ordinator of YMOUK, Atiqur Rahman Jilu.
Nasheed singer Nazeel Azami – the new talent from Awakenign who sang at MEN arena and has sold more copies of his albulm ‘Dunya’ that Sami Yusuf’s first albul Mu’ allim – will provide the entertainment.
A spokesperson for Oldham YMO, Kabir Ahmed said: “YMOUK Oldham carries out all its actvities and events with self funding, its work is often limited due to the lack of financial aid, you have all seen, heard and participated in the good work that YMOUK Oldham carries out with its voluntary members in the town.
“This is an opportunity to find out more abpout our work and help and support us.”
Tickets are £15 and all money will go towards the YMOUK Oldham’s work.
Facilties will be available for both male and female, Muslims as well as people of different faiths or no faith.
For more information contact Kabir on 07931455396.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the legal abolishment of the slave trade in Britain an event has been
organised to understand the implications & legacy of the slave trade, its relationship to poverty, and
the positive unique role Muslims played in its abolishment.

The ‘Muslim Contribution To Abolishment of Slavery’ event will be held at the lecture theatre at Central Library, Bolton on 26 March starting 5.30pm.
A spokesperson for the event said: “Slavery in various forms has been practised throughout human history which has led to vast human misery, suffering, injustice and poverty. Different societies and civilisations dealt with the inherited slavery problem using a variety of approaches, ranging from legalisation, immediate abolishment to
phased elimination from society.
“The Islamic civilisation, although condemning all forms of intellectual, physical and spiritual slavery adopted the approach of phased elimination from society. Various speakers will highlight the lessons we need to learn from
the era of slavery, its implications in the modern age and how we can prevent its re-emergence in new forms.”
Speakers at the evnt will include: Imam Rashid Musa from the Zakariyya Masjid, Ramzan Qadri of the Minhaj Welfare Foundation, Farhat Abbas from the Thinkers Forum, Jahangir Mohammed from the Centre for Muslim Affairs.
The event will be followed by a question and answer session.
For more information visit www.thinkersforum.org, email: uk@thinkersforum.org or call 07946 224599 / 07877 743492

THE education secretary Alan Johnson will announce today that under a new uniform policy headteachers can ban children from wearing the niqab on “safety, security and teaching” grounds and that effective teaching must be paramount, coming ahead of the tolerance of religious and cultural beliefs of children.

The guidance follows the case of a 12-year-old girl who lost a legal battle to wear one in lessons.
She claimed that her human rights were being abused when she was banned from wearing it in her Buckinghamshire school. The school argued the veil made communication between teachers and pupils difficult and thus hampered learning.
Some tabloids are having a field day with this news claiming that it will effects thousands of Muslims girl – in practice very few Muslim girls wear the face veil and the full robe and the Department of Education has stressed this is not a blanket ban on veils at schools, and any decision on uniform policy was a matter for individual headteachers.
This must be made clear to Muslims parents reading headlines in today papers. Some people may feel it is an infringement on their freedom – this includes the freedom to express their religious beliefs at school.
But if a veiled student in a science class was using a bunsen burner for example – it can easily set light to the veil thus putting the student in danger- in this situation if a teacher asks the student to take it off for her own safety – is the teacher wrong in her request where she sees there could be a hazard?
There are many practical issues facing headteachers at schools, many do not want to offend and want to get the best out of their students, at the end of the day a decision to ban a student from wearing the veil will not and should not be taken lightly by any headteacher. The guidance is not there to be exploited by any means. Devout Muslims girls should have the right to wear the face veil just as much as a Sikh boy has the right to wear a turban, but where it may cause danger to the child’s safety for example, the guidance is there to help teachers make a correct decision after consulting the parents.
One teacher at a Bradford school told me this morning that the guidelines were welcomed by teachers but that did not mean girls all over the UK were going to be told to take off the face veil off.
She said: “The guidelines are there so we know what to do when a situation arises if we are faced with a student who we think whose learning is being hampered because of her face veil.
“Our main concern in school is safety – and that includes safety for all students.
“This will not effect girls who wear the hijab. As a teacher I have never had problems with girls wearing the hijab and I don’t know of any teacher who has.
“But in reality girls who choose to wear the face veil is in the minority and I don’t think it’s an issue that many headteachers will be faced with.”

Last week was very hectic. I came back on Wednesday after a busy few days in Spain to find my parents house was booming with relatives who had come to visit from Canada and due to lack of space at my mums I am now harbouring three of my cousins in my spare bedroom.
To top it off, my younger sister has taken to wearing the hijab. Now I don’t have a problem with that at all, my parents are very very pleased, my relatives were very impressed that my sister took her own initiative to wear it. My parents had tried convincing me and my other two sisters to wear it when we were teenagers, but the more they persisted the more we resisted. But as we got older they gave up trying to force feed religion to us. My teenage brother and sister however were not made to go to mosque every evening like we were. Instead they had a tutor visit out home early every weekend to teach them Arabic. It wasn’t too much work for them and they enjoyed it a lot more than when we were kids. Anyway my kid sister swears she’ll never take her hijab off, well at least outside of the house and that she will wear it to school everyday and even special occasions will not stop her from wearing it. Good on you I told her, but why all of sudden did she want to wear it I asked?
My sister told me she didn’t want to go to hell! It took me by surprise that my 13-year-old teenage sister and the baby of the family didn’t want to go to hell. To me she was still very innocent, a good girl, who went to school, did her homework and in the weekend tried her best to get out of any household chores and harbour at my house all day! So as far as going to hell was concerned, at her age it was the least of my worries.
I asked her why she thought this way all of a sudden.
Well my sister and her best friend had been handed an Islamic book by some girl. The book was titled ‘Women who DESERVE to go to Hell.’ Now i’m all for my siblings reading up about the religion, but I wasn’t too keen on my younger sister reading a book with that as its title which alone sounds scary.
I’ve not managed to get hold of the book yet but she did mention to me that the book talked about there being more women in hell than men because they were “disobedient” to their husbands and ungrateful. The book she explained talked about how women were always committing sins and led men astray. It described hell and she said that to enter paradise she must start behaving like a good Muslim girl and a start to that was wearing the hijab. She did not like the thought of going to hell. Fear was why she has started wearing the hijab. If she had told me she read about the religion thoroughly and provided me with some great stories about Islam and the positive aspect women have played in the religion, then great. But she didn’t, the only thing she knew is that there were going to be more women in hell!
It’s no wonder the book put the frighteners on my sister. I have no qualms about her reading about the hijab and why women wear it etc but as I said to her I will rather get a much more educational and less fearful book about the hijab and Islam. I don’t think she should be doing anything out of fear, she should be doing it out of love. Once the fear disappears, I also think the hijab will disappear after that. In the meantime my mum is smiling from ear to ear, she just reckons my sister’s best friend was a good influence on her and she’s proud that she did not have to “force” her daughter to wear it!
What I did find amusing was catching my sister and her friend watching MTV in the weekend. Both had their heads scarves on and were bopping their heads away whilst listening to Beyonce and Shakira! Well they’re still normal teenagers at the end of the day!
After that shock I tried dealing with my cousin who was in complete denial about any drug taking. He told me he had “friends” who did “experiment” and that he occasionaly took weed, but swore he hasn’t and he never will take hard drugs. He said he hates drug dealers who were ruining lives and communities. He gave me a long lecture about how our society was suffering because of drug use and that parents and children needed to be educated more about it. I told him I completely agreed and even dug out a copy of an article in a newspaper recently that showed a woman whose hands almost rotted off because of her constant heroin use. He kept on reassuring me that there was nothing to worry about. I told him that I had my eye on him and reassured his wife that everything will be OK but to let me know if she sees any change in him or if she finds drugs in his pockets again. Next time i’ll confront him with any findings!
Back at my house my cousin’s have three days left before they go back home. They live in a town called London in Ontario. The three teenage girls staying with me at nights have loved their visit. They enjoyed Manchester and its mix of people. It’s hard to believe but they have never interacted with a black person before. At home they go to a school where 99 per cent of students are white. When they met my housemate Raeni they were full of questions and were excited to be around her and found her stories about Jamaica fascinating. Raeni jokingly told them she knew Sean Paul and that they were welcome to visit her in Jamaica and now that’s all they are talking about, but more importantly they know someone who supposedly knows Sean Paul!