Well, India doesn’t always put its best foot forward in global forums… especially not reality TV forums. Toral, the desi contestant of NBC’s archetypal reality show The Apprentice, was fired last night. And fired hard.

Although Toral did exhibit a few likable traits, her teamates, and most viewers found her to be “snobby” or “bitchy.” From Dancing with Dogs:

Anybody catch “The Apprentice” last night? I was cautiously optimistic about the ex-Bollywood-wannabe Toral Mehta, hoping she would go farther in the competition than dreamy MCP Raj did in the season past. Alas, it was not to be. She turned out to be such a snobby bitch, I would have slapped her if I were one of her fellow apprentice women. Why, oh why can we not get a proper Indian person who can “represent”? Why do we get the Omarosa-wannabe instead of a sane, mature contestant?

An interesting aspect of the story: one of the reasons she got fired was cultural. When asked to dress in a funny costume for a project, she refused, first claiming it would embarrass her and her family, but later changing tactics in the boardroom: it was for religious reasons. Her actual religion was never disclosed, though I’m not sure what religion has a ban on funny costumes? Hindu? Muslim? Maybe that’s a part of the bhagavad gita I’m just not familiar with.

Another observation: in an uncharacteristically desi way, she did not fight hard enough to be project manager, deferring to others at the least sign of conflict. Especially after being saved last week by her friend Rebecca, she should have tried harder to pull it out.

Well, another chapter of the Apprentice is closed, and this time it’s desis that are the biggest losers.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.