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Gaurav Sabnis Profile picture
Gaurav Sabnis
@gauravsabnis
Food, travel, nature, history, astronomy, and marketing. Associate Professor @stevensbusiness. Opinions/RTs personal. he/him.
প্রদীপ্ত মৈত্র (Pradipto Moitra) Profile picture Amit Goyal Profile picture DrPremchand Jupalli Profile picture Indian Patriot Profile picture Raaman Venmarathoor Profile picture 8 subscribed
Mar 26 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Senator is getting full attention of the Sanghi IT cell. Look at his replies and QTs. Such ridiculous attacks on him too. "You have a Pakistani friend and have been to Pakistan ergo you aren't a friend of India".

Great strategy, sanghis, alienate people who want to be friends. Exactly! What possibly can the BJP gain from flooding the Twitter account of the sitting senator from Maryland who is on the powerful foreign relations committee, just for him expressing a very understandable opinion?

Just reflective ₹2 tweeting.

Mar 25 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
Have you ever wondered how a Jamaican Jerk Chicken Biryani would taste?

No?

Well, I have and today, I will find out.

Marinated bone-in drumstick and thigh pieces in yogurt, minced ginger garlic, and my favorite Jamaican jerk sauce.

We shall return to it in 2 hours. As it marinates, wondering whether to make it Dum Pukht style, chicken slow cooked with the rice like in Hyderabad or Maharashtra. Or Awadhi style, where the chicken is fully cooked before mixing with the rice.

Hmm, given that jerk chicken is roasted, I need Mailard action.
Mar 25 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
There are so many sanghi society sockpupppet accounts on Twitter that are obviously tasked with trolling and continuously insulting specific women. This account for example is primarily to troll @minicnair & @Sanginamby. Very similar repetitive bigoted comments. And even when the account is not trolling Mini or Sangita, it is almost obsessively trolling women accounts.

It's an example of how the sangh weaponizes misogyny online. There are many accounts solely dedicated to trolling Rana, Shehla, Swara.

It's beyond dystopian.
Mar 25 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
You know, you can draw a line from American Desi to Mindy Kaling receiving the National Medal of the Arts.

A couple of years ago, I had recommended the movie to Gen Z American Desi students who watched it and had so many fascinating thoughts! The first reaction was "OMG how is it that my parents and cousins showed me so many crappy Bollywood movies but never showed me this! 😭😭"

It's a fairly standard college rom com template but was applied very well to the Indian American community. Mostly still holds up.
Mar 25 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
TIL that Waiting for a Visa by Dr. Ambedkar is used as a text book in Columbia!

Good!

It's one of things I only read when I was 30 or so and wondered why it was not required reading for me in school in India.

Do read it. It's fairly short.

columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pri… Really, read it. Especially if you're a brahmin or brahmin adjacent. Just read it. Won't take more than half an hour.

columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pri…
Mar 24 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
That bright green and that orange and that scene in the trailer.

Literally the second I saw it, I was like, oh, this is very tactical chum for the sanghi sharks. And they'll only only threaten srk and deepika. They never threaten producers. Chopra's rake in the money. How could anyone in 2023 India who was putting that trailer together, with at least a few hundred grey cells in their head, not see that scene and instantly predict IT cell hate & sanghi outrage?

They bet on the majority of Indians, who are not sanghi, to rally in support. 🤷🏽
Mar 24 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
"I heard you can pay whatever you want to go to the Met or AMNH?"

Tourist season starting cos it's the 4th time this week I got this.

PSA: Neither are "pay as you go" anymore, unless you live in NY/NJ/CT and have proof of that.

Just generally, please don't stiff museums 🤷🏽 Contd: And no, someone local with you can't get your entire party in on pay as you go. Each person in pay as you go has to prove they live in the tristate area. Everyone else, just cough up $25. They are public museums. Taxpayer funded. And extremely worth the price.
Mar 24 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Folks, I have a full time prof job, with something like 35 paying students, from UG to PhD to officially advise. Plus research, teaching, other service.

I don't have the bandwidth to advise complete strangers on their or kids' applications. Please stop DMing for that. 🙏 I mean if it's a limited question or something very specific, sure, I can answer. But asking me to meet or zoom with you or your kid and "mentor" you through the application, sorry, that's a lot of labor for strangers.

Same for moving to NYC. I can't executive produce your move.
Mar 24 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Waking up to pictures from all over North America of Aurora Borealis 🥰🥰🥰

I didn't get to see them from NYC but large swathes of the country saw northern lights on the horizon in places where northern lights are never seen.

They're gonna light up your insta feeds. Wow! Wowww!!!

Kp above 6 and even 7!!!

Oh to be in #Lapland right now!

We were there in Inari in Finland one March when the Kp was close to 5 and we got all night auroras.

Above 6 and 7 means wowwww! Image
Mar 24 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Two things these War on Drugs type just don't understand.

1. As Abhijit says, drugs will never go away cos the urge to modify consciousness is ancient and universal.

2. A massive majority of people, well over 90%, just DO NOT get addicted to anything. Manufactured crisis. The biggest lasting damage from the Reagan years is this bizarre fetishizing of the "Say no to drugs" message. Until it came along, most people were generally saying no to drugs anyway. For millennia!

It's those wanting to make the world 100% sober that are the problem.
Mar 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Is there any other democracy where an opposition leader has been convicted of defamation for criticizing the head of government? Most democracies don't even have criminal defamation. This is not Mother of Democracy, this is mother-sister of democracy.
Mar 24 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This dude put it so well! The anchor was stunned by the truths.

Non-sanghi Indians have been saying this for years now. Every such tantrum makes India look weak. Petulant. Not vishwaguru but more like insecure Russia, whose GDP is the size of America's defense budget. The idea that protestor vandalism must be treated like terrorism is so bizarre to someone in London or New York or Paris or really anywhere in the West, that this whole high commission tantrum is just showing India as petty and weak.

Indian embassies have faced actual terrorism!
Mar 23 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Wife is watching The West Wing these days and rewatching it after having watched everything else Sorkin, I realized that only one actress playing his standard neurotic talkative slim young woman template managed to pull it off as just entirely adorable and not annoying sometimes Notice how Sorkin wrote the same young woman over and over and over again. Often, she is shown obsessed with food. Talks a lot, really fast. Annoyingly perky. And she generally has a male boss or mentor who will be like "silly girl, let me show you how the world works".
Mar 23 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
Serious question for people in Maharashtra or who have eaten out a lot in Maharashtra.

In your mind, what makes a बिर्याणी different from a बिर्यानी? Other than the spelling of course.

I'm trying to parse & codify Marathi Biryanis as a separate category(ies) from other ones.
Mar 23 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There are a bunch of these misconceptions about USA in India that are just passed on second or third or fourth hand. That rarely get corrected cos Americans genuinely do not give a shit what the world thinks of them.

But should be corrected or put in context for everyone. Top ones are

- USA doesn't make anything anymore
- Family isn't really important in USA, it's very transactional
- Teen pregnancies are everywhere
- Schools are horrible, school material is too easy
- Americans aren't good at math, why indian engineers needed
Mar 23 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
LinkedIn bro going "US doesn't make anything grow anything, has to import basic food", try to read and learn beyond just wokephobe podcasts. 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

US exports dal to India and soybeans to China and consistently has agricultural trade surplus. I'd say US grows *too much* food! As for "US doesn't make anything", bro, its manufacturing GDP is the size of India's entire GDP. Sure, it doesn't manufacture as much as it used to or it should. But it's still a massive chunk.
Mar 23 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Millat-e-Millet 💪💪

Happy to hear this. Millets are just a total win win win. For environment, health, taste, and also preserving some history. We forget that wheat wasn't this common in India until the last 60 years or so. We are a dry country, millet people. If you come from a historically jowar bajra ragi culture, you know what I mean when I say that bhakris or anything made with them just hit differently. Extra satisfying, maybe cos nostalgia. The way wheat never hits.

Millets is like taste buds of your ancestors are joining in.
Mar 16 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hi all

Someone I trust runs community libraries in India for underprivileged kids & is looking for for help.

Their current need is $3K. I'm gonna cover $500 of it. Just a simple online transfer.

If you'd like to pitch in, DM amount for transfer details.

Please & thank you. We so far have pledges totaling $1350/3000.

This is so support community libraries for the underprivileged in India.

You'll get all the details on the project before you transfer the money.
Mar 16 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
This is a regular #NYC thing.

The mail piled up for a while.

If you know the neighbors are young, you just shrug and move on.

What if you know that the neighbors are a senior couple, one of whom is disabled? And who keep to themselves?

For me the anxiety built slowly. I've known this couple over a decade, but I've not really known them well like I've known other neighbors. So I don't have a phone number, even through Sandy and lockdown, for them like I do for many other neighbors.

It took a few days for the pile to build up as you can guess.
Mar 16 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Could be an interesting psychographic test 🤣. Would you rather be born a snow leopard or a mountain goat?

I'd rather be a mountain goat cos it doesn't have to fight and hunt every meal. Leopard can't go "today is ekadashi, I'll just eat veg". Snow leopards have it extra hard! Context.

I mean of course, a few mountain goats will be killed by predators. But people are killed by cars everyday and we still drive them. 🤷🏽

Mar 16 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Remember how after #MeToo the media gave a lot of footage to dudes lamenting how they just can't invite a woman colleague to drinks or dinner anymore but not as much to why women find such invitations scary?

Read this. He was a Google-proof meeting too!

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… If any of the Korean women who met him had Googled him, which given that it was a job interview they almost certainly would have, they would have come across a lot of "verification".

He hangs out with the Indian PM. Surely a lunch with him won't result in sexual assault? ImageImageImageImage