Fuzon is riding the high wave. They have just bagged the Indus Music ‘Best Composer’ and ‘Best Ballad Song’ awards. The band takes time out to share their views with world Music Chief Editor ARSHAD MAHMUD and his team in this wide-ranging interview.

Arshad Mahmud: One remembers watching each one of your working independently. What brought you together as a band?
Shallum: I and Imran had been working together for about eight years. We live in the same vicinity in PECHS - and we knew each other very well. Immu also used to meet Shafqat off and on. Then Shafqat Bahi’s album was also running in those days. Immu and I had been talking for a long time about doing something different. One day Shafqat met Immu and then they called me over, saying let’s sit together and start working on something as a unit and not as individuals. That was the day when things started moving.

Would you like a Slurpee with that?” says the brown skinned, turban clad Sikh man behind the 7-11 counter. And this introduction serves as the basis for most Americans’ perception of the South Asian experience.

We supposedly work 27 hours a day at gas stations, Patel-owned motels, quick shop marts, Subway stores, computer firms, or emergency wards — and that’s it. On television, our entire culture is represented by television icon Apu Nahasapeemapetalan, the Indian immigrant owner of “Kwik-e- Mart” on The Simpsons. A visually one-dimensional cartoon character with more animation and character than the one-dimensional cardboard caricatures seen in most Hollywood movies, TV shows (with the exception of Naveen Andrews in Lost); talk radio, and academic history books. Desis are also in the news because of “outsourcing:” Our brown brethren of the East are supposedly systematically destroying the American job market by working the same job for 1/10 of the pay.