Setting Us Back: Nipa Bhatt

Setting Us Back is a new feature from Bihari Shabab where we examine fellow members of our Desi community that set us back through their actions or words. For example had this feature existed in the past we would have included American Idol nincompoop Sanjaya Malakar, fabulist author Kaavya Viswanathan or that quasi minstrel show, Kashif the dancer from America's got talent. We do this as a service to the rest of us ...or maybe we just like hating.Name: Nipa Bhatt
Age: 35
From: Victoria, MN

Claim to fame: Was a contestant on the currently season of the Food Network's "The Next Food Network Star" before thankfully being ousted this Sunday.

Offense: Semi-Milfish Nipa here came to the show with one simple goal, "to bring Indian flavors to the masses". Hey that doesn't sound so bad. Unfortunately, she thought she would do this without actually having any sort of, what's the phrase, "culinary skills". She kept introducing herself through her stupid "Indian Midwestern Girl" title like that alone would make the job hers. On top of that she bitched and moaned incessantly about all the challenges and had a freak out when she had to touch a dead fish to cook it. Yes, because when would touching dead meat come into play if you had a cooking show. But the coupe de grace of the entire "Nipa Experience" came on her last episode. While doing her presentation before serving food to a group of men and women from the Coast Guard, she decided to do a "Bollywood Dance" show a tell which was as horribly awkward as you can possibly imagine. Maybe even more. I had douche chills that could be viewed from space.

Setting Us Back Score: Although I was initially outraged, after having thought about it for three days I guess it's not that bad. It is after all just the food network. I thought that at the very least, she spilled water on all of the hard work Padma Lakshmi has been doing for the last 3 seasons on Top Chef. But while doing research for this post, I found out that Padma Lakshmi has some very NSFW pictures on the web that I would not dream of linking here, so I'm going to assume Padma's going to be A-OK.

Sure she made me cringe every time she was on screen, but at the end of the day she's just trying to live the dream. So after careful deliberation, I decided to give Nipa a lowly 3.5 on a scale of 1-10 which is not nearly enough to stop the Bobby Jindal Train.

Nipa I wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors...as long as none of them are on television.